Complete Works of Bram Stoker (686 page)

That engagement of nine days was a series of debuts. In addition to Adrienne Lecouvreur she appeared in Medea, Lucrezia Borgia, The Actress of Padua, the “ sleep-walking “ scene of Macbeth, The Honeymoon. In one and all she showed great power and greater promise. It is a satisfactory memory to me to find after her career has been made and her retirement  —  all too soon  —  effected after more than thirty years of stage success when I find this mem. in my diary of 29th November 1873  —  the last night of her engagement” (Mem. will be a great actress).”

During the engagement, Monday, 24th November, one night behind the scenes I met a great friend of mine, the American Consul, Wilson King of Pittsburg, who was paying a visit to the actress, whom he had known since childhood, his family and hers having all been old friends. He introduced me to his countrywoman, not formally this time but as a friend. And there and then began a close friendship which has never faltered, which has been one of the delights of my life and which will I trust remain as warm as it is now till the death of either of us shall cut it short.

II

Genevieve Ward both in the choice of her plays and in her manner of playing followed at that time the “ old “ school. I had a good opportunity of judging the excellence of her method, for that very year 1873, after an absence of fifteen years, Madame Ristori had visited Dublin. She was then in her very prime; an actress of amazing power and finish. She had played Medea, Mary Stuart, Queen Elizabeth and Marie Antoinette. Her method was of course the “ Italian “ of which she was the finest living exponent  —  probably the finest that ever had been. Her speech was a series of cadences; the voice rose and fell in waves  —  sometimes ripples sometimes billows  —  but always modified with such exquisite precision as not to attract special attention to the rhythmic quality. Its effect was entirely unconscious. Indeed it was a method which in time could, and did, become of itself mechanical  —  like breathing  —  so that it did not in the least degree interfere even with the volcanic expression of passion. The study was of youth and at the beginning of art; but when the method was once formed nature could express herself in it as unfettered as in any other medium. Years afterwards Miss Ward showed me one of Ristori’s prompt books; and I could not but be struck with the accentuation. Indeed the marking above the syllables ran in such unbroken line as to look like musical scoring.

Miss Ward was a friend of the great Italian and had learned most of her art from her. She was a fine linguist, speaking French, Italian, and Spanish as easily as her own tongue. At that time Ristori, who was in private life La Comtessa Campramican del Grillo, lived in her husband’s ancestral home in Rome, and Miss Ward often stayed with her. Miss Ward in her private life was also a Countess, having whilst a very young girl married a Russian, Count de Gerbel of Nicolaeiff. The marriage was a romance as marked as anything that could appear upon the stage. In 1855 at Nice Count de Gerbel had met and fallen in love with her and proposed marriage. She was willing and they were duly married at the Consulate at Nice, the marriage in the Russian church was to follow in Paris. But the Count was not of chivalrous nature. In time his fancy veered round to some other quarter, and he declared that by a trick of Russian law which does not acknowledge the marriage of a Russian until the ceremony in the Russian church has been performed, the marriage which had taken place was not legal. His wife and her father and mother, however, were not those to pass such a despicable act. With her mother she appealed to the Czar, who having heard the story was furiously indignant. Being an autocrat, he took his own course. He summoned his vassal Count de Gerbel to go to Warsaw, where he was to carry out the orders which would be declared to him. There in due time he appeared. The altar was set for marriage and before it stood the injured lady, her father, Colonel Ward, and her mother. Her father was armed, for the occasion was to them one of grim import. De Gerbel yielded to the mandate of his Czar, and the marriage  —  with all needful safeguards this time  —  was duly effected. Then the injured Countess bowed to him and moved away with her own kin. At the church door husband and wife parted, never to meet again.

III

In her first youth Miss Ward was a singer and had great success in Grand Opera. But overwork in Cuba strained her voice. It was thought that this might militate against great and final success; so, bowing to the inevitable, she with her usual courage forsook the lyric for the dramatic stage. It was when she had prepared herself for the latter and was ready to make her new venture that I first saw her.

IV

During the holiday season of 1879, whilst Irving was yachting in the Mediterranean, Miss Ward rented the Lyceum for a short season commencing 2nd August. By the contract Irving had agreed to find, in addition to the theatre, the heads of departments, box-office and the usual working staff at an inclusive rent, as he wished to keep all his people together. So I had to remain in London to look after these matters. Miss Ward asked me to be manager for her also; but I said I could not do so as a matter of business as it might be possible that her interests and Irving’s might clash; but that I would do all I could.

She opened in a play called Zillah written by her old friend Palgrave Simpson and another. It was put in preparation some time before and was carefully rehearsed. My own work kept me so busy that I did not have any time to see rehearsals till the night before the performance when the dress rehearsal was held. That rehearsal was one which I shall never forget. It was too late to say anything  —  there was no time then to make any radical change; and so I held my peace.

The play was of the oldest-fashioned and worst type of “ Adelphi “ drama! It was machine-made and heartless and tiresome to the last degree, and in addition the language was turgid beyond belief. It was an absolute failure, and was taken off after a few nights. Lucrezia Borgia was put up whilst a new play should be got ready. She had not made arrangements for a second new play, so we all undertook to do what we could to find a suitable play, a new one. Miss Ward gave me a great parcel of plays sent to her at various times  —  some two feet high of them; with a heavy heart I began to wade through them. Some five or six down the line I came on one play which at once arrested my attention. As I shortly afterwards learned it was one which had been hawked about unsuccessfully. So soon as I had read it I sent it up to Miss Ward’s home by a messenger, together with a note to the effect that I thought the enclosed, with a little alteration in the first act, would make a great success. Miss Ward’s judgment agreed with my own. She knew the author and wrote to him to see her. He came to the Lyceum that night. She had asked me what price she should pay, say for five years with right of renewal. I told her the price then usual for plays, so much per act, and we agreed that she should offer that price for the term of lease, to be duplicated if the option of renewal were acted on. The author came in a hurry, passing through London. Miss Ward was dressing and sent for me and asked me through her door if I could open negotiations for her and she would see the author when she was dressed. I saw him and asked the price he expected. He named that which she had decided upon, so I told him that Miss Ward would take the play; she saw him a few minutes after and the agreement was verbally made.

The play was produced on August 2I  —  within a fortnight of the time of its discovery. It was an enormous success, and ran the whole time of her tenancy  —  indeed a week longer than had been decided on as Irving was loth to disturb the successful run.

The play was Forget me not, by Hermann Merivale and F. C. Grove. Miss Ward played it continuously for ten years and made a fortune with it.

V

Miss Genevi6ve Ward played in four of Irving’s great productions, of course always as a special engagement. The first was Becket, in which she “ created “ the part of Queen Eleanor  —  by old custom, to “ create “ a stage part is to play it first in London; the second was Morgan Le Fay in King Arthur; the third the Queen in Cymbeline; and the fourth Queen Margaret in Richard III. In all these parts she was exceedingly good.

With regard to the last-named play, there was one of the few instances in which Irving was open to correction with regard to emphasis of a word. In Act IV. scene 3, of his acting version  —  Act IV. scene 4, of the original play  —  the last two lines of Queen Margaret’s speech to Queen Elizabeth before her exit:

“Bettering thy loss makes the bad-causer worse Revolving this will teach thee how to curse!

When Miss Ward spoke the last line she emphasised the word this  —  “ Revolving this will teach thee how to curse! “ Irving said the emphasised word should be teach  —  ” Revolving this will teach thee how to curse!”

They each stuck to their own opinion; but at the last rehearsal he came to her and said:

“You are quite right, Miss Ward, your reading is correct.” I daresay he had not considered the reading when arranging the play. As a matter of fact in his original arrangement of the play, at his first production of it under Mrs. Bateman in 1877, Queen Margaret was not in the scene at all. In the new version he had restored her to the scene as he wished to “ fatten “ Miss Ward’s part and so add to the strength of the play. Miss Ward was always a particularly strong actress, good at invective, and as the play had no part for Ellen Terry he wished to give it all the other help he could.

VI

Miss Ward has one great stage gift which is not given to many: her eyes can blaze. I can only recall two other actresses who had the same quality in good degree: Mdlle. Schneider who forty years ago played the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein in Offenbach’s Opera; and Christine Nilsson. The latter I saw in London in 1867, and from where I sat  —  high up in the seat just in front of the gallery  —  I could note the starry splendour of her blue eyes. Ten years later, in Lohengrin at Her Majesty’s Opera House, I noticed the same  —  this time from the stalls. And yet once again when I sat opposite her at supper on the night of her retirement, June 20, 1888. The supper party was a small one, given by Mr. and Mrs.

Brydges-Willyams at 19 Upper Brook Street. Irving was there and Ellen Terry, Lord Burnham and Miss Matilda Levy  —  brother and sister of our hostess, Count Miranda to whom Nilsson was afterwards married and his daughter, my wife and myself.

Nilsson came in from her triumph at the Albert Hall, blazing with jewels. She wore that night only those that had been given to her by Kings and Queens  —  and other varieties of monarchs.

CHAPTER LXIV

JOHN LAWRENCE TOOLE

Took and Irving  —  A life-long friendship  —  Their jokes  —  A seeming robbery  —  An odd Christmas present  —  Toole and a sentry  —  A hornpipe in a landau  —  Moving Canterbury Cathedral  —  Took and the verger  —  A joke to the King  —  Other jokes  —  His grief at Irving’s death  —  Our last par-ting

THE friendship between Henry Irving and John Lawrence Toole began in Edinburgh just fifty years ago. Toole was the elder and had already won for himself the position of a local semi-star. The chances of distinction come to the “ Low “ comedian quicker than to the exponent of Tragedy or “ High “ Comedy, and Toole had commenced his stage experience at almost as early an age as Irving  —  eighteen. On loth June 1894, during a Benefit at the Lyceum for the Southwark Eye Hospital, at which he did the wonderfully droll character sketch, “ Trying a Magistrate,” he told me that forty-five years before, Charles Dickens had heard him do the sketch and advised him to go on the stage. Wisely he had taken the advice; from the very start he had an exceptionally prosperous career.

He, the kindliest and most genial soul on earth, became a fast friend with the proud, shy, ambitious young beginner, eight years his junior. From the first he seemed to believe in Irving and predicted for him a great career. To this end he contributed all through his life. When he toured on his own account he took Irving with him, giving him a star place in his bill, and an opportunity of exhibiting his own special tragic power in a recital of The Dream of Eugene Aram. I give as an illustration a bill of such a tour in 1869 which is illustrative of the method of the time.

To the last day of Irving’s life the friendship of the two men each for the other never flagged or faltered. Such a thing as jealousy of the other never entered into the heart of either. Toole simply venerated his friend and enjoyed his triumph more than he did his own. He would not hear without protest any one speak of Irving except in a becoming way; and there was nothing which Toole possessed which he would not have shared with Irving. When one entertained, there was always a place for the other; whoever had the good fortune to become a friend of either found his friendship doubled at once. The two men seemed to supplement each other’s natures. Each had, in his own way and of its own kind, a great sense of humour. Toole’s genial, ebullient, pronounced; Irving’s saturnine, keen, and suggestive. Both had  —  each again in his own way  —  a very remarkable seriousness. Those who only saw Toole in his inimitable pranks knew little how keenly the man felt emotion; how unwavering he was in his sense of duty; how earnest in his work. With Irving the humour was a fixed quantity, which all through his life kept its relative proportion to his seriousness; but Toole, being a low-comedian, and perhaps because of it, seemed at times vastly different in his hours of work and relaxation. For it is a strange thing that the conditions of emotion are such that what is work in one case is rest in another, and vice versd; the serious man finds ease in relaxation, the humorous man seeks in quietude his rest from the stress of laughter. In their younger days and up to middle life the two men had indulged in harmless pranks. They both loved a joke and would take any pains to compass it. The tricks they played together would fill a volume. Of course from their protean powers of expressing themselves and in merging their identities actors have rare opportunities of consummating jokes. Moreover they are in the habit of working together, and two or -three men who understand each other’s methods can go far to sway the unwary how they will.