The Project Gutenberg eBook of Empty Chairs, by Squire Bancroft

These pages are mainly concerned with men and women who, in days gone by, have done my wife and me the honour to sit at our table, and have now left us. I think of their Empty Chairs from a warm corner of my heart: their friendship has brightened my life and stored my mind with rosemary.

Having already written Recollections, I am bound to repeat myself, so let me plead forgiveness for the besetting sin of advanced years.

I

KING EDWARD VII

All who were born, as I was, in 1841 must count it an honour to have come into the world in the same year as King Edward the Peacemaker. And the honour appeals especially perhaps to one who owes many of his friends and much of his happiness to the stage, for the stage has never found among Royal heads a firmer friend than was the late King; his gracious words and acts went far to conquer a decaying prejudice.

The first time that either my wife or I met or had speech with the Prince of Wales (as he was for many years) was so far back as in 1868, when he, with the present Queen Alexandra, attended an early performance of one of Robertson's comedies during our managerial {2} career at the old Prince of Wales's Theatre (which he had graciously given his permission, through the Lord Chamberlain, to name after him). On this occasion the Prince came for the first time behind the scenes, and honoured our little green-room with a visit. His love of exactitude in all matters of costume enabled us then, I remember, to correct a slight error in a military uniform.

His Royal Highness was accompanied by Frederic Leighton, then young and handsome, who ten years later was elected President of the Royal Academy; and by Carlo Pellegrini, whose caricatures, bearing the now historic signature "Ape," were then attracting both attention and admiration. The celebrated "originals," I imagine, have now all passed away. Lord Chaplin was the last survivor of the unpublished "set" which enrich the Marlborough Club.

The weather was foggy, and during the performance became so dense that at the close the streets were dangerous. The Royal carriages, after great difficulty, arrived safely, surrounded by a body of police, bearing torches, who escorted our visitors to Marlborough House. In all the years of our management the Prince never came again without asking, upon his arrival, to be {3} informed at which interval it would be convenient for my wife to receive his visit to the green-room.

One of these visits to our theatre caused, indirectly, the plot of a domestic drama.

The Royal box was constructed by throwing two private boxes into one, and on a certain Friday night news reached the theatre that it was required by the Prince for the following evening. This was before the days of telephones. Both boxes had been taken—one at the theatre, the other at a librarian's in Bond Street—and nothing remained unlet but a small box on the top tier. Not to disappoint the Prince of Wales, it was decided that every effort should be made to arrange matters. The box which had been sold at the theatre was kindly given up by the purchaser, and a visit to Bond Street fortunately disclosed the name of the possessor of the other. The gentleman was a stockbroker; so a messenger was at once sent to his office in the City, only to find that he had just gone. After a great deal of difficulty our invincible messenger succeeded in learning his private address, where, on arrival, he was told that "Master went to Liverpool on business this morning, and won't be back till Monday."

The door of a room leading from the hall {4} was opened at this moment, and a portly lady appeared upon the scene.

"Went to Liverpool!" echoed the messenger. "Nonsense! He's going to the Prince of Wales's Theatre this evening."

The lady now approached, and asked if she could be of any service. The messenger repeated his story and stated his errand. The lady smiled blandly, and said that, if the small box on the upper tier were reserved, matters no doubt would be amicably arranged in the evening, and so that man went away rejoicing.

At night, not long before the play began, the gentleman who had in vain been sought so urgently arrived in high spirits, accompanied by a lady, handsome but not portly. When the circumstances were explained to him, he agreed to use the smaller, and upstairs box.

There ended our share in the transaction; but hardly were the unfortunate man and his attractive companion left alone than the portly lady reached the theatre and asked to be shown to Box X. She was conducted there; the door was opened. Tableau! What explanation was given as to the business trip to Liverpool we never knew, or whether the third act of this domestic drama was afterwards played at the Law Courts before "the President."

It was in the winter of 1871 that the Prince fell seriously ill from typhoid fever. The national excitement reached so high a pitch and the craving for the latest news of his condition grew so great, that the bulletins from Sandringham were read out in the theatres between the acts, and the National Anthem and "God Bless the Prince of Wales" were nightly played by the various orchestras.

The Prince was hardly expected to survive from hour to hour, but when reassuring bulletins were issued I vividly remember the relief they caused. The extraordinary manifestation of loyalty to the Throne and attachment to the Prince which this illness set ablaze culminated on the day of General Thanksgiving, when London was en fête, and Queen Victoria, with her convalescent son, went to the service held at St. Paul's. My wife and I were fortunate in being invited by the Lord Chamberlain to represent the stage—young managers as we then were—at the Cathedral. I shall never forget the effect when the great west door was thrown open and a loud voice announced "The Queen." The imposing ceremony, the aspect of the building, with its splendid assemblage of people, have only since been equalled at the Jubilee Thanksgiving of 1887 in Westminster Abbey, at which we were {6} also present. On the day which followed I remember being at the corner of Pall Mall and St. James's Street while the decorations were being taken down. I said to a police constable: "You fellows must have had a long and very tiring day, yesterday." "Yes, sir, we had," the man replied, "and we'd willingly go through it all for her again to-morrow."

I also recall an amusing incident which took place at that time in the grounds of Chelsea Hospital. There was a parade of the old Pensioners, looking as if they had stepped from the canvas of Herkomer's "Last Muster." The Prince and Princess of Wales, with other Royalties, including the Duchess of Teck, who was in a bath-chair, passed along the line, the Prince in his kindly way stopping now and then to say a pleasant word. The breast of one old man was ablaze with medals—the Prince handled them and said: "You have indeed seen a deal of service, my man." The old fellow drew himself up, saluted, and answered: "Yes, your wusshup!" The Prince controlled his amusement at the new title and passed along, but, as she was drawn after him in her chair, the Duchess did not repress the merry laughter for which she was loved by all sorts of people.

Among my treasured memories is that of {7} the dinner given by the Prince at Marlborough House to the principal actors of London—one of the many acts by which he endeared himself to the theatrical profession. On this occasion I was honoured by being placed on the right-hand of our host. This was in 1882. Without having realised it, I found that I had already been the senior manager in London for some years. Thirty-eight were at table, the actors present being Henry Irving, J. L. Toole, John Hare, Charles Wyndham, Charles Coghlan, W. H. Kendal, John Clayton, David James, Arthur Cecil, Henry Neville, Lionel Brough, Hermann Vezin, George Grossmith the elder, and myself. H. J. Byron was invited, but serious illness kept him away. I am the only survivor of that happy company. Of the guests invited to meet us, Lord Lincolnshire (then known to his intimates as "Charlie Carington") alone is with us still. Lord Knollys, a charming guest, the trusted servant of three monarchs, and Sir Dighton Probyn, for so many years Queen Alexandra's devoted henchman, have both recently gone from us.

The Prince gave a similar dinner a year or two later at the Marlborough Club, and also honoured the actors by accepting an invitation to dine with them at the Garrick.

During an interval in a performance of Robertson's comedy, Ours, at the Haymarket Theatre, I was conducting the Prince to the green-room, when, on crossing the stage, there was a congested condition of some scenery. I turned to our master-carpenter, whose name chanced to be Oliver Wales, and said, "Which way, Wales?" I realised the effect of the words by an amused look on the Prince's face. My wife on that evening had taken her autograph book to the theatre to ask the Prince to add his name to it; he wrote at once, "Not 'Ours,' but Yours sincerely, EDWARD P."

My wife and I were naturally proud of the personal interest taken by King Edward in the farewell performance which we gave on our retiring from management in 1885. The Prince (as he still then was) suggested the date, in order that with the Princess of Wales he might be present. They were accompanied by the three young princesses.

On November 9th, 1891, some of the leading actors, including Hare and myself—Irving was in America at the time—went to Sandringham as a deputation, to present H.R.H. on his fiftieth birthday with a cigar and cigarette box, in gold, with the feathers mounted in brilliants, the gift of members of the theatrical profession. The Prince was greatly pleased with {9} what was really a handsome present, and, to my knowledge, he never missed an opportunity, when the box was placed by his order in front of him after dinner, to say what it was and who gave it. On the occasion, after a happy luncheon, we were, as was customary, I was told, weighed in the hall, much to the annoyance of one of the party, who had a superstitious objection to the proceeding.

London was visited by violent blizzards in March 1892. On an afternoon in that month I determined to go out and face one of the worst of them. I dressed for the enterprise, and as the door of our house—then in Berkeley Square—was opened for me, a solitary pedestrian passed the portico, wearing a black Inverness cape and, with difficulty, holding up an umbrella. In spite of the driving sleet and snow I could not help noticing a remarkable resemblance borne by the passer-by, who was walking towards Piccadilly, to the Prince of Wales. I followed at short distance, and was more and more surprised by what I thought must be a striking "double." At the corner of Hay Hill the pedestrian stopped, turned round, stared at me as I was slowly approaching, and after some hesitation trudged on down Berkeley Street. By this time I felt certain it must be the Prince, so I crossed the road and {10} continued my walk by the side of the wall enclosing the gardens of Lord Lansdowne and the Duke of Devonshire. As I reached the passage which divides them, the Prince again stopped and looked at me; he then crossed the slushy road with the evident intention of speaking. I advanced towards him. The Prince begged me to put on my hat and walked with me to the pavement I had left; he stood there and spoke of the recent death of the Duke of Clarence, of the grave illness of Prince Louis of Hesse, of the disastrous fire at Sandringham; since when, he said, according to an old superstition, he had known no luck, adding that he was starting that evening with the Princess for the south of France and a stay at Cap Martin, that meanwhile "he did not know what to do with himself, as they were so steeped in sorrow." After some minutes I said that I must not keep him standing longer in such weather. The Prince then shook me cordially by the hand, and said, very simply, "I am so glad to have had this talk with you." He hesitated again as I left him, then turned back and passed out of my sight up Hay Hill.

On the evening of the same day it chanced that my wife and I had been invited to a musical party given by Lady Londesborough. {11} We took our places in a row of chairs; a few minutes later the one next to mine was occupied by the then Lord Wharncliffe, whom, as Chairman of the Beefsteak Club and in other ways, I knew. He turned to me and said: "Bancroft, if there is such a thing as a ghost, I saw one this afternoon, for as I was slithering down Hay Hill in a hansom, hanging on to the doors through the dangerous condition of the road, a man was walking on the pavement, so like the Prince of Wales, that I instinctively raised my hand to take off my hat, when I remembered that it could only be some amazing resemblance to the Prince, who never walks in the streets alone." I was able to convince him that it had been no ghost.

A few weeks afterwards I went to Monte Carlo. On my arrival I heard that Arthur Sullivan was lying very ill at Eze. I went to his villa on a broiling hot day, and was talking under the verandah with his devoted nephew, Herbert Sullivan, then a young fellow, when the sound of a carriage stopping at the gate was followed by the figure of a visitor walking up the garden path alone. I saw at once it was the Prince of Wales, who, directly he came close to us, greeted me with the words: "Very different weather from when we last met." The Prince, among other kind acts, {12} sent his own doctor to see the sufferer, who was too ill to be allowed to receive anyone.

At that time I was much occupied by the readings of Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol, which I gave on behalf of hospitals. A great stimulus to their success was one of the many acts of kindness which I have received from the then Prince of Wales. Soon after I started them I had the good fortune to meet the Prince, by the invitation of the late Lord Burnham, at Hall Barn, where he was staying for a shoot extending over several days. The Prince spoke to me warmly about the "Carol," and asked if I would like to give the reading at Sandringham at the coming Christmas-time, when the house would be full of guests. Needless to say, I could have wished for no greater help to any project that I had a part in.

On my arrival at Sandringham I was met by Sir Dighton Probyn. We were soon joined by my host, who took a personal interest in the preparations for my evening's work. In the drawing-room, before dinner, I found among the "house-party" two old friends, Sir Charles du Plat and Sir Charles Hall. On entering, the Princess of Wales paused to look round the room; she then left the Prince's arm, advanced towards me, and most graciously welcomed me. {13} At the table, also, were the present King and Queen. The audience for my reading was completed by invitations given to many friends and neighbours, the household, the tenants, and the servants—the ballroom being full. The reading was accompanied by laughter and applause, a special tribute being paid to my impromptu description of the memorable turkey as "real Norfolk." In the billiard-room, later in the evening, I had suitable opportunity to show the Prince the cigar-case which was given to me by Queen Victoria at Balmoral, saying that it was the first occasion on which I had carried it. The Prince at once replied, suiting the action to the word, "Perhaps you would like me to be the first to take a cigar from it?"

When in 1897 the late Marquess of Salisbury submitted to Queen Victoria that the honour of Knighthood should be conferred upon me, none of the many congratulations that my wife and I received were more charmingly or warmly expressed than those of the Prince of Wales.

It was, however, at Marienbad, where King Edward went annually to take the waters, that he might be seen at his friendliest, free from the cares of his high estate and able, as the "Duke of Lancaster," to relax something of Royal {14} ceremony; but, however unbending, the King had great unconscious dignity. Happy luncheons and pleasant dinners have I enjoyed in his company there, charmed by a perfect host, put entirely at ease by his geniality and constantly impressed by his wide knowledge and deep interest in the affairs of the world. Among fellow guests I may mention Pinero, Tree, and Hawtrey.

The one exception to "Marienbad dress" was when the King gave a dinner on the fête-day of Francis Joseph, the old Emperor; then the card bore the words, "Evening dress and decorations." I was honoured with an invitation, and that year had no tail-coat with me. A soldier friend said if his decorations, for which he had telegraphed, did not arrive in time he would lend me his "tails." After luncheon, however, I bolted up to the golf-course, hunted down Sir Edward Goschen's attaché, a charming tall fellow, and, knowing he would have to wear diplomatic uniform at the dinner, asked if he would lend me his ordinary evening coat. On the night of the ceremony the guests were assembled waiting for the King, who went the round of the half-circle with a happy word in several languages to all. His humorous salutation to me was, "A very becoming coat, Bancroft."

I recall an amusing incident told me by my neighbour at table, who was High Sheriff of his county. At a ceremony which the King had journeyed from London to perform, a provincial Mayor, after being himself presented, nervously said: "May I present Your Majesty to the Mayoress?" The King immediately replied: "Certainly; the Mayoress is generally presented to me, so it will be a novelty."

I have referred to King Edward's well-known love of exactitude in matters of etiquette and ceremony, and I remember a curious instance of this quality. On one of the occasions when I was His Majesty's guest, a discussion arose about the period of some incident that had been mentioned in the course of conversation; one of the guests said that it took place early in the reign of Queen Victoria.

"No," said our host, "you are mistaken; it happened towards the close of the reign of the late King."

Not for a moment or two did those present realise that by "the late King" His Majesty was referring to King William IV, who, sure enough, was strictly "the late King," although full seventy years had passed since the "sailor King" sat on the throne of England, and he had {16} died before anyone then at the table was born. I had occasion to notice also that King Edward was always punctilious to give his predecessors their Royal title. Should anyone, for instance, allude to "the statue of Charles I" at Charing Cross, the King would be sure to reply with a reference to "the statue of King Charles I."

In 1909, the year of the King's last visit to Marienbad, my memory for dates was appealed to at His Majesty's table with regard to the year of Lord Fisher's birth. I answered that the great little "Jacky" was born in the same year as the King and, as it happened, myself. This led to other names, all friends of our host, being similarly mentioned. I told the King that I held the Royal vintage to be a good one. He was both amused and interested, and wished the list of names to be made out for him, adding: "I must ask you all to dinner."

Alas, too soon afterwards came his death—a national sorrow! King Edward impressed the world by his conduct on the throne, which he filled greatly and with a great humanity from the hour he was called to it. He was beloved by all sorts and conditions of men, who felt that when he died they had lost a great friend, the State a great servant, our country {17} a great King. "The King is dead: long live the King."

Of the present Prince of Wales it may be truly said, in the words of Shakespeare: "Thy noble grandfather doth live again in thee."

II

PLACE AUX DAMES

It is a long cry back to 1878, when we had Jenny Lind for our guest and we had the pleasure of hearing her sing; there cannot be many people living who have listened to a trill from the throat of the "Swedish Nightingale." My wife and I first met her at Pontresina, where she was staying with her husband—"Little Otto," as we called Mr. Goldschmidt. It is difficult to describe that gifted creature—plain in feature, insignificant in figure—until she opened her lips: then everything changed—she cast a spell round her and became idealised.

I remember, too, the humour with which the great lady told and acted an amusing incident that occurred on one of her travelling operatic tours when she appeared at a different place every evening. This was not altogether lost; my wife reproduced it afterwards. All the members of the company were seated in the train except the tenor, a funny-looking little {19} fat man who stammered painfully when speaking, but sang without a trace of his affliction. Just on the point of starting he appeared in a state of excitement at the door of the great songstress's compartment, having discovered that a large black box which contained her wardrobe had been left behind. He hurriedly opened the door and stammered violently: "Mad-ame, Mad-ame." "Yes, yes." The poor tenor got a step further: "The b-b-b-b—" The bewildered lady cried, "What is it? What's the matter?" Still the afflicted tenor, stammering more and more, could only answer, "The b-b-b——-" "Yes, yes, yes, but what is the b-b-b—, my dear fellow?" The stammer nearly choked the wretched creature as he gasped, "The bl-bl-bl-bl——" "Sing it, sing it, for mercy's sake, sing it!" cried the diva. The tenor lapsed dramatically into recitative: "All, I fear, is lost!" "Go on, go on. What's lost?" "I fe-ar—is lost!" "Go on, tell us, go on, what's lost?" The wretched tenor struck an attitude as he sang, "The black box!" "Yes, yes, what about it?" The only answer was, "The black box!" "What of it, man?" cried the poor lady in despair. The tenor reached his highest note as he shrieked, "The black box has been for-got-t-en!" Jenny Lind fell back in her corner and {20} muttered: "Great Heaven! I shall have no clothes!"

The whistle sounded, the tenor was hoisted into his compartment, and the train started.

I recall another story of how when a great composer—I think it was Meyerbeer—died, a pushing musician sent a great musician the score of a funeral march, which he had written in honour of the illustrious man who had passed away, with the hope that it might be played at his burial, and asking for a candid opinion of its merits. He was rebuffed by a judgment to the effect that things would have shaped better had he himself died and Meyerbeer undertaken to compose a funeral march.

It is bewildering to contrast the modest fees earned in Jenny Lind's day, and by gifted creatures like Malibran, Grisi and Mario (the pair sang in large houses for about thirty guineas) with the fabulous figures reached by such artists as Melba, Caruso and Paderewski in recent times.

There is a pretty medallion of Jenny Lind on the walls of Westminster Abbey, and I am glad that a statue has now been erected to her memory in the capital of her native land.

Another glorious songstress, Adelina Patti, was our friend for many years. She invited {21} us to stay at her Welsh castle, but we could not go. She amassed wealth and also charmed the world longer than any of her rivals. It has been truly said that the harp-strings slumber until touched by a magic hand: the echo of her wonderful voice still beats in human hearts, although its music has ended in the silence that waits for us all.

In this little chapter—devoted to honoured women who have been our guests—mention must be made of one so famed as Sarah Bernhardt, the first actress to receive the Legion d'Honneur. My wife and I met her, and sat by her side, at the Mansion House, the occasion being a luncheon given by the then Lord Mayor in 1879 to the members of the Comédie Française, which comprised a group of players no theatre then could equal or has ever equalled since. I recall an amusing incident which occurred at the banquet concerning two busts—one of Nelson, the other of Wellington—which prominently adorned the room we were in, called the Long Parlour. We were obliged to assure "the divine Sarah" and her angry comrades that the Lord Mayor meant no slight to them or to their country in not having the offending busts removed, and also had to defend his lordship for not wearing his robes and chain of office, and for being {22} unaccompanied by sword and mace bearers. Incredible, but true.

The finest piece of acting I ever saw from "Sarah" was at the répétition générale in Paris of Sardou's play Fédora. She rose to great heights, and held a brilliantly composed audience under a spell and in her grasp. Among those present, I remember well, were Alexandre Dumas, Alphonse Daudet, and Georges Ohnet; Got and Coquelin; Blanche Pierson and Maria Legault.

"The English version of Fédora is an admirable piece of literary workmanship. It reads almost like an English original. The part is all Sarah. It is written exactly to her measure—that electric play of feature and gesture, that nervous intensity, that range of power and variety of accent, and sudden changefulness of mood, which belong to the feline instinct or temperament."

Later on, when I saw that great actress—so soon to be a legend, a tradition—Eleanora Duse, play in Fédora I learnt that Sardou and Sarah had left some things unthought of.

"Je vous remercie mille fois pour vos si belles roses et l'aimable lettre de Monsieur Bancroft. Je suis très heureuse que vous ayez pris plaiser à m'entendre, et très touchée que deux artistes de votre valeur m'accordent du talent.

"Veuillez me croire reconnaissante, et agréez, Madame, je vous prie, mes meilleurs sentiments.

Years afterwards, on the fiftieth anniversary of the great actress's first appearance on the stage, my wife was chosen to present a testimonial which had been prepared in her honour, in the presence of a remarkable gathering in which Monsieur Paul Cambon, the honoured French Ambassador to our Court for so many years, took a prominent part.

"Dear Madame Bernhardt, or, as you have so closely fastened yourself to our hearts 'with hoops of steel,' I hope you will allow me to say, dear Sarah. My words will be brief, but they come from my heart—the heart of a comrade and friend. Since my retirement no greater pleasure has befallen me than I feel at this moment, and when I was invited to perform {24} this delightful ceremony I was proud to be remembered and to be thought worthy to have the honour of presenting this tribute to your genius; an endorsement, as it were, of the force and value of the Entente Cordiale which so happily unites our two great countries. Your fame belongs to all the world—the homage of every land is yours. Your name will live with those of Siddons, Rachel and Ristori. You have shed lustre and glory on the beautiful art you have so long and nobly served and in which you reign supreme."

The great woman took the opportunity to repeat her opinion given to a mutual friend, Hamilton Aidé, years before, of my wife's acting as Peg Woffington.

But great as she was, unequalled in technique, wonderful in the range of her art, perfect in her command of every tone in her beautiful language, Sarah Bernhardt was never to my mind quite free from the blemish—it may be thought heresy to say so—of being something of a show-woman. The drum was too big in her orchestra, while I always considered her to be surpassed in the reality of emotion and passion by one other woman I have seen upon the stage—Aimée Desclée. No other serious actress, to my mind, took more absolute {25} possession of her audience. I doubt if even Rachel could have eclipsed her. Her acting in Froufrou, her original part, was supreme. The quarrel with her sister I can best describe as a whirlwind of dramatic art in its highest form, as was the pathos with which—when she had wrecked her life and gone away with her lover—she moaned: "Une heure de colère, et voilà ou j'en suis." Only those who are now quite old can have seen Desclée. Her fame was achieved in a few brief years, as she died in the flower of youth, being little more than thirty, if my memory serves me, in 1873. When Sarah then was asked her opinion of Desclée's acting she answered, "Truth!" She made no claim to beauty, but possessed more "magnetism"—I know no better word—unclouded by exaggeration than any of her rivals. Had Desclée been spared to act for twenty years her name would have lived among the immortals.

"Nothing remains of what was once so dear. Let us regret this great artist, but pity not her death. She has won the rest for which she prayed. Her best reward is death. Of the details of her actual life I have told you nothing. Where was she born? How was she brought up? Where did she first appear? {26} What became of her? What matters it at all? A woman like her has no biography. She touched our souls: and she is dead. There is her history."

Another Frenchwoman whose name and fame give her an honoured place among the great ones, was Réjane. Our acquaintance began with a visit she paid us behind the scenes at the Haymarket when she was quite young. My wife at the time was acting the part first played by Réjane in a play by Sardou, called Odette.

She was never a guest at our table at home, but only when we met in France. Her art was the embodiment of abiding charm in Ma Cousine, in La Vierge Folle, in Madame Sans-Gêne, and many another play. Paris loved her and she loved Paris. How they must miss each other!

She was proud of her Montmartre origin, where she passed a poor and hard-working youth, painting fans and teaching. She told the company assembled to celebrate her nomination to the Légion d'Honneur, that it was at Montmartre she learnt her art and at Montmartre, in contact with lovers of the theatre, that she perfected it.

I remember the days in London when her {27} carriage was drawn by a pair of Spanish mules and people would struggle for a glimpse of her fascinating, though not beautiful, face. The last time I saw Réjane was at the Queen's Hall, during the War, when she recited Émile Cammaerts's poem, Carillon, to the music written for it by the composer, Edward Elgar, who conducted it himself. All concerned seemed to be inspired and gave you out of themselves some minutes of ecstasy; just as Karsavina and Nijinsky did in The Spectre of The Rose at Covent Garden, before the War. These are things which are yours while memory lasts.

A dear friend and guest was the brilliant Helena Modjeska. Like the distinguished actor, Fechter, she never quite mastered the difficulties of the English tongue, but again, as in the Frenchman, her foreign accent became a fascination. She ran the great Sarah very close in La Dame aux Camélias. Her performance was the more spiritual: she seemed to have sacrificed purity only through passion and was ever fighting for Divine forgiveness. You almost had doubts if she could have so sinned, but none as to her salvation. My wife could give a most dramatic imitation of their different treatments of the tragic end, when with difficulty the feeble, outstretched {28} hands reached a table-mirror and they looked upon their dying faces. It was hard to decide if the heart-rending, pitiful wail with which the one murmured, "How changed I am!" was surpassed by the terrifying awe which slowly spread over the emaciated face of the other. Both were supreme moments in their beautiful art.

I recall an incident at a dinner given by Madame Modjeska and her husband, when the subject of an unhappy break-up of what seemed a happy marriage through an unfortunate lapse on the husband's part became the topic. The lady by my side said passionately: "That is an indiscretion, an outrage, a sin, call it what you will, I could never forgive—whoever the woman might be." She paused for a moment and added: "With one exception—Ellen Terry. Any man ought to be forgiven."

Let me say a word about an Irish girl born at Limerick but taken to America in her childhood; the delightful, alluring Ada Rehan. She and Irving were our guests, both for the last time, together, I remember, and when they sat side by side. No words of mine could compete with those I copy, written by one who had followed Ada Rehan's art in every phase:

"The secret of her allurement was elusive. Among its elements were absolute sincerity, the manifest capability of imparting great happiness, triumphant personal beauty, touched and softened by a wistful and sympathetic sadness, and that controlling and compelling instinct, essentially feminine, which endows with vital import every experience of love, and creates a perfect illusion in scenes of fancied bliss or woe."

It has been a pleasant task to pay my tribute to brilliant artists of foreign birth; I do not wish to write of gifted women now before the public, but let me render homage to comrades of the stage in days gone by who were born in these isles, and who reigned in their kingdom with a splendour equal to the great of any land. That mistress of her beautiful art, Madge Kendal; the incomparable Ellen Terry; the glorious and unique Mrs. John Wood; and Marie Bancroft—the salt of the art they adorned, who, in their bright springtime and their affluent summer, filled the scene: all as distinct from one another as Raphael from Rubens, as Watts from Whistler, yet each stamping the mark of her personality on every part she played, and of whom it might be said the deaf could hear them in their eloquent faces: the blind could see them {30} in their vibrant voices. Deep is the debt which never can be paid for the cares they lightened, for the sorrows they soothed; they dragged creatures from the books wherein they were born, making them live, their hearts beating, their pulses throbbing, and enshrined their joyousness in many grateful memories.

The mantle of the great must be of their own weaving; on other shoulders it is bound to be a misfit.

It is pleasant to have one's views confirmed; the more so in the judgment of a distinguished American man of letters whose knowledge of people connected with the stage was remarkable.

"Our age indeed has no Colley Cibber to describe their loveliness and celebrate their achievements; but surely if he were living at this hour, that courtly, characteristic, and sensuous writer—who saw so clearly and could portray so well the peculiarities of the feminine nature—would not deem the period of Marie Bancroft and Ellen Terry, of Clara Morris and Ada Rehan, of Sarah Bernhardt and Jane Hading, unworthy of his pen. As often as fancy ranges over those bright names and others that are kindred with them—a glistering sisterhood of charms and talents—the regret must arise that no literary artist with just the {31} gallant spirit, the chivalry, the fine insight and the pictorial touch of old Cibber is extant to perpetuate their glory."

I turn to another calling, and can say something of two distinguished women whose fame was earned as writers of fiction—Ouida (Louise de la Ramée) and Miss Braddon (Mrs. Maxwell). They were much of an age, but their careers had no other resemblance; except in their enormous vogue and hold upon the public of their day.

The name "Ouida" was a nursery corruption of Louisa. She had an English mother and a French father, but lived chiefly in Italy.

My wife and I first met her at the Langham Hotel, where she stayed when in London—as odd to look upon as she was pleasant to talk with. She had strange large eyes of a sort of dark blue and, in her white satin gown and sandalled shoes, was strangely reminiscent of mid-Victorian days. She always wore white frocks in the summer time and, as I was told, black velvet in the winter months.

We hoped Ouida might, as she earnestly wished, write a play for us, but she got no further than a title. Of her novels, if I remember rightly, quite a fairly good play was {32} concocted from Moths. She had a great appreciation of my wife, both on and off the stage, and we valued her friendship. There are few readers nowadays, I suppose, of Under Two Flags, Puck, or Two Little Wooden Shoes, which engrossed the public of her time. She was proud of the fact that Bulwer Lytton read every book she wrote.

As an instance of her "style," here is a description of a young Italian peasant girl:

"The marigolds and the sunflowers had given her their ripe rich gold to tint her hair; the lupins had lent their azure for her eyes; the moss-rose buds had made her pretty mouth; the arum lilies had uncurled their softness for her skin; and the lime blossoms had given her their frank, fresh, innocent fragrance."

Ouida would have had no vogue in these times. She violently opposed female suffrage and expressed her view that "millions of ordinary women have as little of the sage in them as of the angel."

As for the new woman, she wrote of her as "violating every law alike of common sense and of artistic fitness, and yet comes forward as a fit and proper person to make laws for others." She was strong in her views that {33} the private lives of all artists are not fit objects of curiosity, and was firm in declining, in unedited language, to be interviewed. Ouida was undoubtedly an eccentric, with a golden heart, and a passion for dogs. She died in her beloved Italy, alas! in abject poverty, mainly due, I fear, to her unpractical nature and her uncurbed generosities. No one is left to tell us what became of all the lovely things by which she was surrounded in her prosperous days at the Florentine Villa Farinola. I think she rests in peace.

"I have been and am still very ill. For two days I was near death. I should grieve to leave my dear dogs. Their lives are too short in comparison with their devotion. I got your long letter after some delay and fear many letters are lost between Italy and England. I have seen a bag filled with the contents of pillar-boxes reposing in sweet solitude on the pavement of a deserted street in Florence!

"I am so glad that you and your dear husband are well and happy.... I wish I could come and see you all and the dear old country where its sons and daughters {34} are never content except when they are out of it.

"Love to you and Sir Squire. Believe me, always your and his admirer and friend.

I was a young actor in the country, full sixty years ago, when a new novel appeared which made the writer of it—a girl in her twenties—famous throughout the land. The book was Lady Audley's Secret. The girl was Miss Braddon. The fame of the new novel spread like wildfire and the rush for its three volumes—most novels were so published in those days—was extraordinary.

From one of the old Strand Theatre burlesques I recall words like these: "Always a lady's secret I respect, save Lady Audley's Secret which that deep Mudie lets out and won't let people keep."

Dickens and Thackeray were still alive and at work, as were George Eliot, Bulwer Lytton and Wilkie Collins.

Miss Braddon's own share reached more than seventy novels in more than fifty years of work. We knew her for many of those years, and loved her company, here in London, as in Switzerland and Italy.

In a long railway journey we took together {35} from Lugano to Boulogne some anxiety arose as we neared the sea about what the "crossing" would be like. I remember Mrs. Maxwell's amusement at my wife's saying: "I don't feel comfortable about it; the small boats and fishing-smacks in harbour are too polite to each other, with their little bows and curtseys. I fear we shall find things more quarrelsome when we have crossed the bar."

The famous novelist was an open-air woman, at home in a saddle, loved to follow the hounds, and was devoted to her dogs, her cats and her birds. She adored Dickens, had great admiration for Balzac, and placed George Eliot on a lofty pedestal. The way she did her work was the oddest thing in the world. She huddled herself up in a little low chair, made a desk of her knees, and wrote for hours in that position.

Happily, she bountifully bequeathed her power over the pen to her son "Willie," who has the affection of his troops of friends.

I will close this chapter with a reference, full of kind thoughts and remembrances, to one of the most remarkable, as she was one of the most delightful, women my wife and I ever had the privilege to know—Lady Dorothy Nevill. She was a great little lady—happy, blithesome, clever, and so gay.

At her Sunday luncheon parties in Charles Street, one met everybody worth knowing and heard pretty well everything worth listening to. There assembled folk of all opinions and of every class and calling—honey gathered from many a hive.

Few people could have had—and kept—three such different friends as Cobden, Disraeli and Chamberlain; but the little lady knew how to deal with contradictions. Her sense of humour was as keen as a razor.

Happily for us, Lady Dorothy loved a play and rejoiced in visits to our theatre. She had a great affection for my wife. Often and often, generally in the early winter evenings, she would dismiss her carriage at our door, walk upstairs to the second floor, and sit for hours with her. When she left she declined all help or offer to be seen safely home, preferring to walk there in the dark, facing two crossings on her way, and this when she was more than eighty years of age.

Her reminiscences, edited by her son, Ralph Nevill, are delightful reading, while the characteristic portrait painted of her in early life by Watts—so happily reproduced—will tell you what she looked like. It helps you to feel that she uttered no ill of anyone.

Lady Dorothy once said to me: "One of the greatest treats I can now be given is to be taken by a strong young man to Piccadilly, there to be hoisted on to the top of a 'bus, and driven through the City to Whitechapel, with time to look in at the London Hospital on my way back."

III

THE CHURCH

"There is, I know not how, in the minds of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls."—CICERO.

We have not been honoured with the friendship of distinguished members of the Church so intimately as to leave many empty chairs once filled by them, but I can write something in affectionate remembrance of a few.

The first prominent clergyman whom we knew was that strange creature Bellew, first as the Reverend J. M. Bellew, when he preached at a church in Bloomsbury and drew large congregations, having previously enjoyed great popularity at St. Mark's, Hamilton Terrace. He was gifted with an exceptionally fine voice and a striking appearance. I never heard the death chapter from the Corinthians better read than by him—it was dramatic without being theatrical. There was, however, a pitfall into which he used to stumble when he attacked the Commandments—in the Fifth {39} he thundered out the first three words "Honour thy father," then dropped his voice to its softest tones, quietly murmuring, "and thy mother."

I will repeat a story he told of another neighbour, a canon of the Church, who wore the most palpable of wigs, which took every shade of colour in the sunlight, but was blindly convinced in his own mind that no one shared his secret. Bellew met this friend one morning as he was leaving his house, and suggested their proceeding together. "Delighted," said the owner of the many-coloured "jasey"; "I am going to Bond Street to get my hair cut." The pretender went so far as to have various wigs of different lengths to aid the evident deception.

In middle life Bellew appeared as a public reader and reciter here and in America, having left the Church of England, and become a devout Roman Catholic, in which faith he died.

Henry White, the Chaplain of the Chapel Royal, Savoy, as it then was, was many a time a welcome Sunday guest, almost invariably punctual, though always begging to be forgiven should he not be. His letters, carefully {40} sealed with the Savoy arms, were full of quotations, such as, "I cannot tell you how much I value the friendship you have allowed me to enjoy so long: 'my love's more richer than my tongue,'" while his interesting sermons were often described as "elegant extracts." His reading of the Litany was peculiarly impressive. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts was a frequent member of his restricted congregation. I left an evening party in his company long years ago, when we walked together towards our different homes. On the way I put a straight question to him on a sacred subject. His answer was frank enough: "If it is in my power to be of use to you, or indeed to any man, it can only be from my pulpit." He tried his utmost to persuade me to read the Lessons in the Chapel Royal. I firmly declined, adding that if I consented I should ask to be allowed to select them. "Even that," he said, "might be arranged."

An old, and to us, dearly-loved friend who also enjoyed his Sunday visits, was the Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royal, Canon Edgar Sheppard. Our hospitality was returned by him and Mrs. Sheppard at their quaint old home adjoining Marlborough House Chapel: and I also knew the Canon in his other home, {41} so picturesque, in the precincts of Windsor Castle. One of his last public services was held for me when my sorrow came. His friendship had so long been valued by my wife; the kindness shown to me then, as well as by his son, the present vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, dwells sacredly in my memory, and will be referred to in the final chapter of this book.

Archdeacon Wilberforce—who belonged to the 1841 "Vintage"—was also our friend. He drew large congregations to the church of St. John the Evangelist, Westminster—that odd-looking building which looks rather like an elephant sprawling on his back with his short legs in the air. I recall an afternoon when we were the guests of Mrs. Wilberforce and himself in Dean's Yard; he took us aside and said they were asking some of their friends to linger when the party broke up, as they had a treat to follow. We gladly did so, and were well repaid, being conducted to the Abbey by the Archdeacon, and seated in the choir. Presently Sir Frederick Bridge—("Westminster Bridge ")—another old friend who has left an empty chair—broke the silence—the tones of the organ swelled out—when, from by his side in the loft and out of sight, the wonderful voice of Clara Butt {42} sang "Abide with Me." There are moments in life, and that was one, the remembrance of which can never fade; this we felt, as afterwards we went from the Abbey in the falling light.

I recall an occasion when both Bishop Ellicott and Archdeacon Wilberforce were staying at Birchington. The Bishop was gravely ill. We had known him in the Engadine and at the Bel Alp, and had also been to those musical parties in Great Cumberland Place, to which Mrs. Ellicott and all her family were so passionately and unceasingly devoted that they seemed to fill their lives. The Bishop was always expected to be a listener. My wife drove to the bungalow where the Bishop was, to ask after him, and, to her delight, was told he would like to see her. She found the Archdeacon by his side, and as she approached his chair the Bishop was thanking him for "kind and comforting words," adding: "I hope, my dear friend, when it shall please God to take me, He will graciously grant me a little niche—and not too near the music!"

The Archdeacon's love of animals is well known. He adored his dogs, and at a garden-party showed us the graves of little lost friends by the Cloisters, dwelling in a {43} most interesting way on his belief in their after-life. In support of this, I recall an incident told by my old comrade, John Hare, when he had a seaside home at Overstrand. The Archdeacon visited him one day: and Hare, who was never without a dog, put a question to him.

A friend whom it was always a pleasure to welcome or to meet was Father Bernard Vaughan. We became acquainted many years ago at Manchester, where my wife and I were acting. He was then the rector of a church there, and would come and see us at our hotel, and tell us Lancashire stories. From time to time he visited us in London, and later on at our seaside home.

He never spoke a word to me on religious subjects, knowing, I suppose, that I did not chance to belong to the beautiful faith which he and his many brothers and sisters so devoutly served as priests and nuns, beginning with the eminent Cardinal. Father Bernard Vaughan attracted crowded congregations, {44} drawn from all degrees of creed, to Farm Street, there to listen to his outspoken sermons on the Sins of Society. They were both romantic and emotional, with sentences to the effect that unless England fed the fires of religion with the fuel of faith she might wake one day to the sound of a passing bell tolling her soul's death.

The circumstances in which I first saw Dr. Boyd-Carpenter, then the Bishop of Ripon, were comical, although the scene of them was a place of worship. I have a predilection for a good sermon, and at one period made a practice of hearing the best English preachers of the day, no matter what their particular aspect of the Faith might be. On a Saturday I read in The Times that the Bishop of Ripon was to preach at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall; so I determined to go and listen.

The Chapel Royal, Whitehall, exists no more, but at that time it occupied the first floor of the old banqueting hall (from one of the windows of which King Charles I stepped forth to his execution), since given over to the Royal United Services Institution. The hall was not, from the clergy's point of view, well adapted to its sacred purpose, for there was no vestry, or, at any rate, no separate entrance for the officiating minister, who could only {45} enter the chapel by the staircase in the same way as the general public.

Presenting myself on a wintry morning, some time before the appointed hour, after fighting my way up the crowded staircase, I found the chapel already full, when the verger, catching sight of and recognising me, whispered that if I waited a moment he would find a seat for me among the front rows. Just then I felt someone trying to push past me, and looking down saw a small and energetic figure, the head swathed in a large white muffler, eagerly struggling to make towards the altar. The verger, prompt but polite, attempted to stop the vigorous little man. "You really can't, sir; there isn't another empty place."

What was the good man's surprise and confusion to receive the answer, in a telling stage whisper: "But I've come to preach!"

The intruder was no other than the Bishop, then in the prime of life. When at last he reached the pulpit, he preached so fine a sermon that though my watch told me it lasted only five minutes short of an hour, it seemed to occupy less than the half of one.

Another trenchant and dramatic sermon I recall was preached by Boyd-Carpenter in the Abbey soon after the death of Tennyson, {46} when the Bishop shattered an idea which had got abroad that the great poet had no faith in an after-life. Who, I wonder, could have attributed such thoughts to the man who wrote: "I hope to meet my Pilot face to face when I have crossed the bar"? The only time I saw the Victorian Poet Laureate, a picturesque figure, was on board a Channel steamer. He passed the time between Calais and Dover on the bridge, talking with the captain and smoking a short clay pipe.

Acquaintance with the Bishop soon followed the episode at the Chapel Royal, and, I rejoice to add, warm friendship with my wife and myself both in London and at our seaside home, which lasted until his death.

There is a story told of the Bishop—which may or may not be true—of his being rudely interrupted at a public meeting by the query if he believed Jonah was really swallowed by the whale. The Bishop said that if he got to heaven he would try to find out. The man in the crowd answered loudly: "But suppose he is not there?" The Bishop at once replied: "Then you'll have to ask him." For my own part, I have always thought that Jonah's condition was like that of a vulgar tourist—he travelled much and saw little.

I remember well a happy week-end passed {47} with the Bishop at his palace, and a delightful drive in the snow to Fountains Abbey. It was then that he persuaded me to undertake the difficult task of saying something at a forthcoming Church Congress on "The Art of Speaking and Reading," and I devoted time and thought to so important a subject.

I began by saying that it was customary for a clergyman to preface his sermon by a text from the Bible, but that I, as an actor, would begin my address with a quotation from Shakespeare to be found in the comedy of Much Ado About Nothing: "Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending."

This text, if I may so call it, led to some remarks on the affinity between the words of Shakespeare and the pages of Holy Writ. The same inspired truths so abound throughout them both as to prove that the poet was a student of the Scriptures. There could be no firmer bond between Church and Stage; it must, for all time, be the strongest link, for both books are eternal.

I called to mind the care and cost lavished upon choral services in our cathedrals, the pains taken to acquire the skill melodiously to chant the Litany: why were not the same labour, the like devotion bestowed upon the {48} teaching of young clergymen to speak audibly and to control a congregation? One could not but be amazed at glaring instances of false emphasis in the dull recital of the Order for Morning Prayer: surely such a monument of learning and piety should be spared such treatment.

I dared to add that I had heard the Bible read—now and then very beautifully, often very vilely. That I had listened to such extracts as tell of the death of Absalom, of the death of Jezebel, of Daniel in the Den, of the Prodigal's Return, read as though the moving stories were little more dramatic than so many stale problems in Euclid; and had heard St. Paul's funeral chapter so droned as to make the hallowed bones of the Apostle who bequeathed it to humanity turn in their resting-place. On the other hand, I had heard the same words read so truthfully by men who are living and men who are dead, as to be a lasting memory.

It was natural on my part to draw attention to the resemblance which exists between the great preacher and the famous player, not only for the mighty sermons he can preach, but because, when his work is done, when he has for ever left the pulpit or the stage, the "divine spark" is extinguished; his voice, {49} his fascination, his originality, are soon but memories; while his renown too often rests upon the imperfect records of tradition. The personality of John Knox must remain a mystery; the tragic tones of Sarah Siddons can be heard no more. What would the young parson not give to hear Martin Luther preach? What would I not give to see David Garrick act? "Into the night go one and all."

I reminded my listeners of the answer David Garrick gave to the bishop who asked him this question: "Can you tell me, sir, why it is that you players, who deal with romance, can yet profoundly move an audience, while we preachers, who deal with reality, fail to do so?" "Yes, my lord, I can. It is because we players act fiction as if it were the truth; while you preachers too often speak of truth as though it were but fiction."

Thackeray wrote: "There is an examiner of plays, and there ought to be an examiner of sermons." I would go further, and urge that every curate should pass an examination in the art of preaching before he is allowed to mount a pulpit. A bad preacher will empty a church more easily than a good preacher will fill one. It was well said, also, by an eminent {50} minister in the Nonconformist Church, the late Dr. Parker:

"To-day the man who would preach with true and lasting effect must be sincere, intelligent, and sympathetic—in a word, he must be a man, a teacher, a friend. Preaching is the most impertinent of all impertinences if there is not behind it and round about it a sense of authority other and better than human."

The best advice I can remember was once given by my wife, in a single sentence, to a public speaker who consulted her on the subject; she said simply: "Don't be afraid of opening your mouth, and don't forget that the roof of it is Nature's sounding-board."

Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, as some may still recollect, was honoured with the personal friendship of the late Empress Frederick of Germany. In connection with that unhappy lady, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, and our Princess Royal, he told me an interesting story, the point of which was to be proved tragically true in later years.

The Bishop was summoned to Germany to give the Empress the consolations of religion in a grave illness. The Prince of Wales, who had hastened to the bedside of his favourite {51} sister, in the kindness of his peace-loving heart was attempting to smooth over the notorious differences between the suffering lady and her son, the ex-Kaiser, who, as is well-known, had treated her with unfilial harshness. But the Empress knew Wilhelm too well to hope for reconciliation. She laid her hand on her brother's arm, saying sadly and earnestly: "Bertie, your country has no greater enemy than my son."

Among my papers I find a letter from Boyd-Carpenter, redeeming a promise which he had made over the dinner-table to look up for me a Mohammedan legend upon which he had preached a remarkable sermon:

"When God made the earth it shook to and fro till He put the mountains on it to keep it firm.

"Then the angels asked: 'O God, is there anything in Thy creation stronger than those mountains?'

"'Yes, a good man giving alms: if he give with his right hand and conceal it from his left he overcomes all things.'"

I may here relate an unaccountable blunder I committed when on my way to do a little service for the Bishop at Bradford. At that time there were two express trains to the North, one from Euston, the other from King's Cross; both started at 1.30. Full of thought, I drove to Euston instead of to King's Cross. When I asked for a ticket there was some delay; at last it was given to me with the name of my destination written upon it in ink. I thought it strange that tickets for so important a place should be out of print, but took my seat in the train; and it was only when well beyond Rugby that I realised what I had done. Eventually, after hurried, anxious talk with the authorities at Stafford, I got out at Stockport. There, in great excitement, I ordered a special train and telegraphed home to allay anxiety. Some difficulties about the special were overcome by earnest appeals to disregard cost, as I was prepared to pay anything demanded of me, for never in my life had I failed to keep an {53} appointment with the public, and should have been doubly distressed at breaking an engagement in which I was doing the work without any question of a fee. Eventually I reached Bradford five minutes before the time fixed for the entertainment. To add to my troubles, the confusion had driven out of my head the name of the hall where I was to appear. Fortunately, one of the flymen on the station rank remembered it, and drove me quickly to its doors as the audience was pouring in. After inquiry at an hotel hard by—the same hotel in which a few years later Irving stumbled in the hall and then fell dead—I found the Bishop. He had telegraphed to London for the cause of my absence, and, receiving no explanation, had settled to fill my place by giving his lecture on Dante; but on my appearance he drove to the hall, asked for a short delay, explained the reason, and then returned to fetch me. I dressed as if by magic, swallowed some soup, and, appearing on the platform only fifteen minutes late, was greeted with great warmth. I had never felt so pleased to face my audience.

The Bishop of Ripon, like myself, was born in the year 1841, and, like myself, was proud to belong to that fine "vintage."

I am not likely to forget a dinner-party he {54} gave at his home in the Abbey Cloisters in 1916 to a select band of "75's," or "soixante-quinzes," as he called us.

The company included the Bishop of Chichester (Dr. Ridgeway), Field-Marshal Lord Grenfell, Admiral Fisher, Lord Sanderson, Sir Frank Lascelles, Sir Walter Parratt, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace and myself. The late Lord Cromer was invited, but was prevented by illness from being present. Our host had not only prepared for us a delightful evening, but had composed some appropriate verses for the occasion, of which each guest was presented with a copy. This is how they ran:

"The Fairies stood and watched the years
    'Till forth came Forty-one,
The Fairies smiled and then they gave
    Their kiss to Forty-one.
The vintage ripened well and good,
That year must ever famous be,
Because it brought forth you and me,
    The men of Forty-one.

"The Fairies watch where kisses go
    In hope that they survive;
Lo! great in arms by land[1] and sea[2]
    Their sons in valour thrive;
{55} In Russian lore[3], in minstrelsy[4],
In mock[5] and true[6] diplomacy,
Till brave in toil they came to be
    The men of Seventy-five.

"Great William said 'Ripeness is all,'
    And we are Seventy-five,
Old dogs are more than lions dead,
    And we are still alive!
We need not fear age or mischance,
In good we may and will advance,
Like soixante-quinzes in war-tossed France
    Our guns are good at Seventy-five."

[1] Lord Grenfell.
[2] Lord Fisher.
[3] Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace.
[4] Sir Walter Parratt.
[5] Sir Squire Bancroft.
[6] Sir Frank Lascelles.

The good Bishop did not live to see the return of Peace which followed the triumphant victory of the soixante-quinzes and their Allies. In the month before the Armistice was declared, he was laid in his grave. But he had not forgotten the happy gathering of 1916, as is proved by the following treasured letter, which I received from his son, Major Boyd-Carpenter:

"Shortly before my father's death he asked that 'a message of greeting be sent to all the 77's.' As you were one of those {56} who joined him at the gathering he always remembered with such pleasure, I am sending you this, his message.

More recently we lost another honoured friend in that remarkable and distinguished man, Dr. Wace, the Dean of Canterbury. When we had a home by Folkestone he was often our guest, while we have enjoyed the hospitality of himself and Mrs. Wace at the Deanery. Their kindness at all times to my wife is a happy remembrance. The Dean loved a good story: he told many and was an appreciative listener.

I always read the powerful letters which he wrote to The Times, and could not but admire the strenuous blows he dealt with dauntless courage on matters which were too profound for the likes of me. Shortly before his lamented death I met the Dean at the Athenæum and, during our talk, had more than one proof of the undiminished power of his great memory.

As an end to this chapter I quote the most startling words I ever heard from a pulpit, uttered by a prominent dignitary of the Church, {57} in referring to the first chapter of Genesis, which had been the lesson of the day: "Adam was a cad; Eve, I am afraid, was no better than she should be; and for my part, I have long since regarded the silent serpent as the most respectable of a disreputable trio."

IV

THE LAW

There is a sort of affinity between the bar and the stage: actors are attached to lawyers because lawyers are attached to actors; at least that has been my experience—my wife and I were rich in their friendship from very early days.

I have often thought there is a strong link between our callings. The feelings of the distinguished counsel when he goes into court, with all the anxious weight upon his mind, with all his grave responsibility, cannot be unlike the feelings of the great actor on a "first night," when his fame may be in peril.

I was once, when a child, taken to the House of Lords by my grandfather; he pointed out to me the venerable Lord Brougham, who was sitting in judgment with other Law Lords. I remember that he wore shepherd's plaid trousers, also his nose, the famous nose which {59} was immortalised by Dicky Doyle on the mask which is being dragged along the lower part of the title page of Punch.

Lord Chief Justice Cockburn was the first great man we knew; our meeting was at dinner, when we were young, at the house of Henry Fothergill Chorley, a worshipper of Dickens and a prominent musical critic of those days; two of the guests were "Mamie" Dickens, the elder daughter of the great novelist, and Arthur Sullivan, then quite young and a protégé of our host.

I have never forgotten the feeling of awe which came over me when the butler announced, "The Lord Chief Justice of England." I always thought he looked less like a lawyer than an admiral, or the skipper of his own beloved yacht, the Sybil. My wife had the good fortune to be placed next to the Lord Chief. She had the gift of manners, and was at home in any surroundings. He took a great fancy to her, and we enjoyed the charm of his friendship for about ten years, until the end of his career. In those days I thought his was the most attractive male voice I ever listened to, whether on the Bench or in a room—even during the lengthy summing-up of the Tichborne trial it never grew monotonous—although I admit that, nowadays, the voices of Johnston {60} Forbes-Robertson and Henry Ainley could run it very close.

Let me add that the two most attractive female voices I have listened to were owned by women widely apart in rank and station: one belonged to Queen Victoria, the other to my wife, and both voices were preserved unto old age. It is pleasant to have this opinion confirmed by no less a person than Ellen Terry, who wrote of my wife "such a very pretty voice—one of the most silvery voices I have ever heard from any woman except the late Queen Victoria, whose voice was like a silver stream flowing over golden stones."

The Lord Chief was a perfect host, well described as having the vivacity of youth tempered by the wisdom of age.

He also adored music: it was almost certain you would meet its professors at his house, and I recall memories of Madame Schumann, Joachim and Piatti. During a short time when my wife was not acting, her delight was great at being taken by him to the Monday Pops. Among his other accomplishments was an intimate acquaintance with languages: his French was as near perfection as a foreigner could get to.

On one occasion when we had asked Sir Alexander Cockburn to dine with us, my wife {61} took George Critchett, the eminent ophthalmic surgeon and father of our lost friend, Sir Anderson, to him, saying: "Let me present Mr. Critchett to you, Lord Chief; as Justice is said to be blind, you may find his services useful." On another, in reply to a similar invitation, he wrote that he was just starting for Geneva to preside at the Alabama Conference, and wished that troublesome vessel had gone to the bottom of the sea the day she was launched. Soon afterwards, at the close of our annual Swiss holiday, we passed through Geneva just at the time the Alabama claims were settled there, and paid our respects to the Lord Chief at the old Hôtel des Bergues, to the sound of guns firing and the glory of flags flying.

This delightful friendship was broken suddenly. It was in the year we opened our newly rebuilt Haymarket Theatre, which he greatly admired, that after presiding over an intricate case in Westminster Hall, the Lord Chief left the haunts of justice and the "law's delay" for the last time. He dismissed his smart little brougham and walked home to Hertford Street. During the night came a fatal attack of angina pectoris.

When I was a struggling country actor in Liverpool, so far back as 1864, I made the acquaintance of a struggling barrister on the {62} Northern Circuit. His name was Charles Russell, and he, too, became Lord Chief Justice of England. I enjoyed his friendship until his death. His personality was both dominating and downright. You could not be in a room with him and not be conscious of his presence. No man more firmly said what he meant and meant what he said, while his Irish tongue was ever ready with the apt bright answer, as, for instance, when, asked the severest sentence for bigamy, he answered: "Two mothers-in-law!" He was a relentless cross-examiner, and though sometimes a sharp antagonist was always a friend. There was no littleness about him, and he had no use for a fool.

When I started my hospital "readings," I made a point of avoiding any suggestion of "creed," and arranged two recitals on behalf of Jewish and Roman Catholic institutions: at the former the Chief Rabbi presided, at the latter Cardinal Vaughan promised to do so, but was prevented by sudden illness: his place was taken by the Lord Chief Justice. Soon afterwards I was asked to serve a cause which was pronouncedly Protestant. In talking over who was to be invited to preside, I found the committee very desirous that Lord Russell should be approached. I pointed out that he, being a fervent Roman Catholic, {63} could hardly be expected to comply, adding that he had only quite recently presided at a "reading" of the same story which I had given for the benefit of Catholics. The committee, however, said they could but be refused, and made their request. Lord Russell replied that I had gone out of my way to help a charity of his Faith, and that he would gladly do the same for me. The generous speech he made on the occasion was a warm tribute to the Reverend William Rogers—known widely as "Hang Theology Rogers." I cherish the remembrance of many acts of kindness shown to me and mine by Lord Russell of Killowen, but not one of them touched me more than that I have just related.

He was an ardent playgoer, with an intimate knowledge of Shakespeare, and rarely missed first nights, or when a play of one of his many friends was produced. He loved a game—of cards or otherwise—and I have seen him at Monte Carlo writhe because his exalted position robbed him of the pleasure of a "flutter" at trente-et-quarante. He was a real sportsman and a member of the Jockey Club.

I was greatly struck by a tribute the Lord Chief paid to an old guest, a host and true friend of mine for many years, the late Sir George Lewis. It was at the close of the {64} Parnell trial, when he spoke to this effect: "The most remarkable attribute in George Lewis is not his great knowledge of the law, not his unrivalled skill in conducting difficult cases, not his wonderful tact, not his genius for compromise. They are all beaten by his courage."

At a banquet given to Irving on his return from one of his tours in the United States, I was seated next to Lord Russell, who, half-way through the dinner, suddenly said to me: "I have to propose Irving's health. What shall I say?" I replied that no one could answer the question so well as himself. However, the Chief persisted, with that well-remembered, imperious manner of his, "Come, come, my friend, you must have done it often: tell me what I am to say." I recalled an occasion when I had proposed Irving's health, and said that I spoke of him as possessing "the strength of a man, the sweetness of a woman, and the simplicity of a child." Lord Russell turned to me with the question, "How about the wisdom of a serpent? I could not have left that out."

Lord Alverstone, so long known as "Dick" Webster, who succeeded Russell, was Attorney-General, Master of the Rolls, and Lord Chief Justice, all in the same year. It was as Attorney-General that Webster dined with {65} me, and I paid a pleasant visit in his company to the Isle of Wight (which he represented in the House of Commons) to do him a small service.

I have always understood that he was a great worker: one of the gang, like Francis Jeune and Rufus Isaacs, who could light a fire and brew tea at any ghastly hour a.m.

Soon after he became Lord Chief, Alverstone presided at the Annual Dinner of the Actors' Benevolent Fund. He made an eloquent appeal on its behalf and generously headed the list of subscriptions. This was not the only instance of the real interest he took in the drama, being of great service when the old Covent Garden Theatre Fund came to an end.

He was no mean athlete, and fond of all sports; also a capital singer—a conspicuous figure for many years in the choir of the church in the Kensington High Street.

I have had the privilege to know, but not to act as their host, all the eminent lawyers who have held the office of Lord Chief Justice of England since the Cockburn days: Coleridge, Reading, Trevethin and Hewart.

The late Lord Esher, Master of the Rolls, my wife and I had the pleasure to know well and to delight in his friendship and hospitality. My acquaintance began when the Courts were {66} held in Westminster Hall, and I was foreman of a jury before "Mr. Justice Brett," in an interesting case, but troublesome to me, as it kept me from important rehearsals.

"DEAR FRIEND,—You are a very perplexing person to write to. If I say 'Dear old friend' it won't do in every sense: because, although you are an old friend, you are in looks and ways a young woman. If I say 'Dear little friend,' it is a term of endearment—but you are a very great person. However, I begin by wishing you both a very happy year. If it is as prosperous as your goodness deserves I can wish you in that respect no more. I cannot tell you how I chafed under not being able to see you in Money; but in the mornings I was in Court, and in the evenings did not venture out! Vile old age!! Lady Esher went to see you, and told me she had never seen anything more charming than you. With that I stop. My love to you both. Believe me always a very true admirer and very truly yours."

Of all the judges I have known I think the imposing presence of Lord Hannen on the Bench was second to none. His dignity appealed to me enormously when, through the kindness {67} of the Bar, I attended some of the sittings of the Parnell Commission. I remember my wife saying to him at our table, when he was President of the Divorce Court, that he seemed to her to pass too much of his life in separating united couples. His answer was that he passed much more of it in wondering why the couples had ever wished to be joined together.

I never knew much of Lord James of Hereford, but saw a good deal in early days of Mr. Henry James, a successful self-made barrister who had just taken silk, and was on the way to the great position he reached.

He was one of a little coterie which included Lord Anglesey, ("P."), Millais, Merewether, Q.C., Hare, "Willie" Mathews, one or two others, and myself, who played, with great zest, an old-fashioned card game—four-handed cribbage.

James was made Attorney-General, refused the Lord Chancellorship, and became a Peer.

One of our early legal friends was Baron Huddleston. When we first met he was known as "the buck of the Bar," and always pleaded as Counsel in black kid gloves. We owed to him and "Lady 'Di'" many happy visits in {68} delightful company to the Grange at Ascot. He had his vanities, and gloried in being written and spoken of as "The Last of the Barons."

I was dining with Arnold Morley, at one time Postmaster General, after Huddleston's funeral, when I "put my foot in it" more painfully than ever in my life. The little company comprised: John Morley, Herbert Gardner, afterwards Lord Burghclere, Sir Charles Dilke, George Lewis, Henry Labouchere, and one other man whose name I forget. During dinner Lewis said: "Oh! Bancroft, I saw by an evening paper that you were among Huddleston's friends to-day, tell us about his cremation; what is it really like?" Without thought I let myself go and replied that when the coffin disappeared from view Henry James (Lord James of Hereford) asked Sir Henry Thompson, the pioneer and President of the new movement, if we could see any more. Accompanied by Lord Falkland, we entered the inner compartment, so I described what we there saw, it being remembered that cremation was then in its infancy, adding that I revolted against the idea of consigning the remains of a loved one to such a fate. As I spoke my eyes fell upon Sir Charles Dilke, and I was conscious that his late wife had been {69} so treated. It did not need the leer on Labouchere's face to tell me so.

Lord St. Helier, who became President of the Divorce Court, was also a kind friend of long standing. My wife and I first met him as Francis Jeune, when he was just foreshadowing his successful career, at the house of Lady St. Helier, Mrs. John Stanley then, and soon afterwards we passed them in a carriage on the St. Gothard Pass—before the days of its wonderful railway—when they were on their honeymoon. He was a great authority on ritualistic and ecclesiastical law generally and always a tremendous worker. He had charming manners and was never ruffled—not even when he committed a duchess to gaol. We enjoyed their hospitality in London and at Arlington Manor. I have only one little objection to offer—I cannot help a feeling of resentment against a judge, or, in fact, any barrister, having a moustache and beard. It is not fair to the wig.

A dear friend of far-away days was Lord Justice Holker ("Sleepy Jack"). I knew him first in my old Liverpool apprenticeship when he was leader of the Northern Circuit and its legal giants. I saw him once at the Assizes there stop a case for some minutes after whispering to his clerk, who hurriedly left the court, {70} and returned with Holker's snuff-box, which had been left in the robing-room.

Later on he had a place in Yorkshire where he had happy shooting-parties for his friends, but nothing would induce him to fire a gun himself.

Another legal friend and welcome guest was Lord Justice Mathew, who told us a pretty story of his witty fellow-countryman, Father Healy.

A young Englishwoman, who was his companion at a dinner party, asked him, as there was no mistletoe in Ireland, what the girls and boys did at Christmas-time without it. "Ah, if it's kissing you mean," the old priest answered, "they do it under the rose!"

Mathew had a witty tongue of his own. No doubt, it will be remembered by his legal friends that at the time Herschell was Lord Chancellor, Arthur Cohen, a distinguished Q.C., quite looked to be appointed to a puisne judgeship, which he did not get. When Mathew heard of Cohen's resentment, he expressed surprise that his learned friend expected anything else from Herschell but a Passover.

I made acquaintance in my early professional days with Serjeant Ballantine, always a pleasant and amusing companion, with a {71} great love of the theatre. Throughout his life he was very Bohemian in his tastes and habits. I remember him first at Evans's, a music-hall of those days, in Covent Garden—it stood where prize-fights now take place at the National Sporting Club—where there was a noted choir of boys, and where "Paddy Green," the manager, squeezed hot potatoes from their jackets with his napkin for favoured guests.

Ballantine devoted himself entirely to criminal cases. He was a great cross-examiner, but he found his equal in Serjeant Parry, who had masterly power over a jury. Another of his rivals was the distinguished advocate, Henry Hawkins, afterwards Lord Brampton, who was known to be as rich as Ballantine was poor. In a robing-room on one occasion Ballantine asked Hawkins what he was going to do with all his money, adding that when he died he could not take it with him, and that even if he could he feared it would melt.

Ballantine defended the impostor Arthur Orton, the "Claimant," in the first Tichborne trial and professed belief in the genuineness of that rascal. Later he was retained for the defence of the Gaekwar of Baroda in India. He received for his services the largest fee then {72} known, but he lost the bulk of it at Monte Carlo on his way home.

When I became acquainted with Frank Lockwood he was a young actor at a seaside theatre. He did not, in the judgment of his comrades, show much promise and wisely abandoned the stage as a career. I next met him as a rising barrister at the house of the Kendals, with whom he was on terms of close friendship, as he soon became with my wife and me.

Lockwood was a brilliant caricaturist. His company was always a delight. I remember an evening when he sat by me at dinner after he had fought many a hard battle, and I asked if he were offered a judgeship would he accept it. In a moment he answered, no; he loved the fight too much. Soon afterwards, however, he had changed his mind, longed for relief from the struggle and sighed for peace. It was not to be. His health suddenly broke down, his strength was failing, and he had to give in.

Frank Lockwood was a popular leader at the Bar, a genial Member in the House, a perfect host, a welcome guest, a delightful companion, a staunch friend.

The career of Montagu Williams was the most varied of any man I have known. Both {73} his father and his grandfather were barristers. After he left Eton, Montagu was for a time a schoolmaster; then fired, I suppose, by the outbreak of the Crimean War, he entered the Army. After peace was declared he resigned his commission and became a member of a theatrical touring company with a well-known amateur of those days, Captain Disney Roebuck. Next, on the advice, I believe, of his godfather, Montagu Chambers, he resolved to go to the Bar. During his studies he wrote for the Press, including Dickens's Household Words. He also wrote plays, chiefly in collaboration with his old friend and school companion at Eton, Frank Burnand. The best of them was The Isle of St. Tropez, a really good drama, in which Alfred Wigan played.

From the time Montagu was called by the Inner Temple there were few important criminal cases in which he did not take a part—and very quickly a prominent one. His great knowledge of every side of life and quick grasp of things resulted in a large practice, and he defended more scoundrels than any man of his day. Later on, he was grievously afflicted by throat mischief, which ended in the saving of his life at the cost of his voice, through a serious operation; he could afterwards only speak in a whisper. He was, however, {74} appointed a London police magistrate, in which work he again distinguished himself, and soon became known as "the poor man's beak."

It was during the theatrical episode in his varied career that he came across, and married, Louise, a daughter of two prominent and respected early Victorian players, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, whom I remember seeing act so long ago as 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, when Robert Keeley was the partner of Charles Kean at the old Princess's Theatre.

Louise Williams was gifted with a sweet voice and sang with charm. I still seem to hear her exquisite rendering of Edgar Allan Poe's words, which I can trust my memory to recall:

"And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."

I can recall no man who enjoyed more universal popularity than Douglas Straight; it began at Harrow and followed him throughout his life. He never allowed his interests to become cramped: they embraced the law, politics, journalism, sport, the drama and society. He began as a journalist, was {75} Conservative M.P. for Shrewsbury, and had a successful career at the Bar, which ended in a judgeship of the High Court in India.

He had great social gifts, nowhere better proved than by my friend Pett Ridge, who tells a story of his popularity with the fair sex, that twelve ladies agreed to give a dinner at a fashionable restaurant, the novelty on the occasion being that each of them was to be responsible for one male guest. The whole dozen invited Douglas!

I lost a close and affectionate friend in Charles Mathews, the Public Prosecutor, whom I first knew in the sixties, when he was a little chap at Eton and wore a turn-down collar. My next remembrance of him is as the "baby" member of the Garrick Club, where, from the date of his election, he was beloved. In those days "Willie" Mathews was "devil" to Montagu Williams and working hard in his company and that of Douglas Straight at the criminal bar, the scene of many triumphs in his successful career. He was persona grata wherever he went, and in widely different circles, from Balmoral to Bohemia.

Charles Gill was another old friend. We saw more of him at his beloved Birchington than in London. He was known in his Kentish home as "The Mayor"—so christened, I {76} think, by his neighbour, that modern Colossus who seems to be always striding between New York and Leicester Square, the successful and erratic Frederick Lonsdale.

Gill was closely associated in early days with Straight and Mathews; later in his brilliant career there was scarcely a sensational criminal trial in which he did not play a leading part.

A very wise member of his profession only lately said that were any friend of his in a difficulty that called for unerring judgment and delicacy of handling his best advice would be: "Consult Charles Gill."

V

PAINTING: SCULPTURE: MUSIC

It is many years since, as my wife and I were leaving the Savoy Theatre at the close of an afternoon performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, we were shocked by a newsboy shouting "Death of Lord Leighton." We made Frederic Leighton's acquaintance in the green-room of our theatre. Soon afterwards we dined at his beautiful house in Kensington. In its neighbourhood there was a nest of his comrades in art, including Val Prinsep, Luke Fildes and Marcus Stone. We were friends for years: he did me the honour to propose me at the Athenæum, but did not live to see me elected. He was a remarkable and gifted man—an Admirable Crichton—painter, sculptor, linguist—as well as an eloquent, if a somewhat florid, speaker, and an admirable man of affairs, besides, as we actors say, having a perfect appearance for his part. Was it not Thackeray who told him once that Millais {78} was the only man with a chance against him for the Presidency of the Royal Academy?

His beautiful art was best illustrated in his early days, I always thought, by The Slinger and the sculptured figure of an athlete struggling with a python. I also remember well his life-like portrait of the famous explorer, Sir Richard Burton.

In many respects a total contrast to Leighton was the successor to his great office, John Everett Millais. I was fortunate in his acquaintance at the Garrick Club when I was elected as a member fifty-six years ago. Millais loved the club and cared but little for any other.

Although looked upon as a Jerseyman, he chanced to be born at Southampton, and I remember being told by a man—who was for many years prompter under our management—that he had seen Millais, as a very small boy, sprawling upon the stage of the Southampton theatre and drawing with a piece of chalk things that had form and shape.

I don't know when he first came into fame and astounded the world by the wonderful children of his brush and brain. Beautiful things teem through the memory. I see the little creature, on a church bench, listening to The First Sermon; a work of infinite pathos {79} called The Blind Girl; Walter Raleigh on the shingly shore, clutching his knees and absorbing the yarns of an old sea-dog; the two nuns digging a grave for a comrade in The Vale of Rest; those well-known masterpieces, The Princes in the Tower, The Black Brunswicker and The Order of Release. And then the gallery of portraits—Tennyson, Newman, Gladstone, Bright and the unfinished Disraeli. Others also crowd upon remembrance: those of my comrades, Henry Irving and John Hare—not, in my judgment, among his best examples,—of Arthur Sullivan—one of the very best,—and the great surgeon, Henry Thompson, which, like the striking portrait of Mr. Wertheimer by Sargent, as you look at it, seems that it might speak. I see also the beautiful portraits of Mrs. Langtry and Mrs. Jopling Rowe, but, alas! not one of my wife. I offered Millais a large sum to paint one of her for me, but he declined, for two reasons; he said that he could not bring himself to accept money from a brother artist, and that he should fail, as the face would change while his eyes turned even for a moment to the palette. One word to recall his masterly landscapes, Chill October, and, if I remember their attractive titles, The Fringe of the Moor and The Sound of Many Waters. Never in any man's work was {80} refinement more closely merged with art. I see a fine photograph of him daily, if in London, with an autograph in the corner, briefly accepting an invitation to dinner in these words: "I'm your man." I looked down upon his handsome features, as he was fading away from life, and kissed him.

Edward Poynter succeeded to the President's chair, which had only been occupied by Millais briefly. It was during his reign that I had the honour at the Royal Academy Banquet to respond for the Drama: the toast had only once been proposed before, when Irving replied. It was a difficult task, and the greatness of the audience impressed me with my own littleness. Wisely, I am sure, I limited myself to five minutes only, and venture to give an extract from what I said:

"I was not unmindful that the proposal of this toast at that great banquet was a mark of respect to the stage which could only make the stage the more respect itself. I could not speak in that room—surrounded as I was by the rulers in that fairyland—without some attempt, however faint, to say that my admiration of the beautiful art, so splendidly illustrated year by year upon those walls, was as true as my love for the living pictures we players tried to paint. Our pictures, alas! {81} died early, for the greatest actor's work must be a passing triumph; it was not cut in marble, nor did it live on canvas, but could only owe its fame to written records and traditions. Vast wealth might keep for us, and for the ages yet to come, the undying splendour of a Reynolds or a Millais, but no sum could buy one single echo of the voice of Sarah Siddons. The drama was the most winning, fascinating, alluring thing that ever was conceived for the recreation of mankind. As England could claim to be the parent of the drama in Europe, so could she claim to be the mother of the greatest dramatist the world had owned, whose mighty genius left all art in debt that never could be paid, and whose works alone would make the stage eternal."

The pictures by Poynter which live clearest in my memory are his Catapult and Visit to Æsculapius. Concerning the latter work a story "went the rounds"—possibly as untrue as many another—that two beautiful sisters were as flattered by the eminent painter's wish to make drawings of their heads as they were horrified to find them reproduced upon bodies of well-known models in the nude.

Poynter painted a portrait of himself for the Uffizi Gallery as Millais did. There is an {82} admirable copy of this portrait in his beloved Garrick.

I was never really intimate with Alma Tadema, although I knew him for many years, beginning with the time when he lived in Regent's Park. Owing to an explosion of gunpowder on the canal there, if my memory is accurate, his house was wrecked and he went to live in the Grove End Road, in a house formerly occupied by Tissot, a French artist, who had quite a vogue for a time. Tadema translated the house into "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever," where he entertained a great artistic company, worthy to be surrounded by the Roses of Heliogabalus.

I owe the following painful and remarkable story to my friend Aston Webb, lately President of the Royal Academy; it was told to him and others by Tadema. A young woman, an American, the daughter of parents of wealth and position, was the cause of great anxiety to her father and mother, to her intimate friends, and to her doctor, on the score of health, which puzzled all concerned, and became a mystery which no one seemed able to unravel. At last the doctor was driven to advise a year's absence from home and its surroundings by a trip to Europe, to be spent where and how the girl might wish, in the companionship of a {83} female friend—she had no sisters, and the parents could not leave their own country at the time.

The patient went first to London and enjoyed her stay there. During it, she conceived a strong wish to be painted by her eminent fellow-countryman, Sargent, the magician who reveals unknowingly what have been hidden mysteries. The portrait when finished was highly thought of and presently despatched to the parents of the sitter, while she went her way to Switzerland and Italy. The great artist's work delighted the father and mother. An "at home" was arranged that their many friends might share their admiration. All of this took place; among the invited guests being the friendly doctor who had been so puzzled by the condition of his patient. I will come briefly to the sad sequel. The doctor gazed at the portrait long and earnestly: he left the house perturbed and saddened. On the following day he sought an interview with the father, told him that Sargent had revealed to him, beyond doubt, what he had failed to discover himself. Put briefly, the poor girl afterwards died in a madhouse. When Tadema had finished his story, Abbey, who was also present, quietly remarked: "All too true. I could tell you the names of those concerned."

The painter who ran dear Millais close in my appreciation, and who has given me, if I bare my heart and tell the naked truth, greater pleasure than any other painter, was Orchardson; the fact that his work is so dramatic being, I suppose, the reason. His two phases of the Mariage de Convenance were gems. I don't know whether Act I surpassed Act II, or if the verdict was the other way. The glorious Queen of the Swords, The Challenge, Hard Hit, The Young Duke, Napoleon in the Bellerophon, The First Cloud, with their exquisite colourings, the secret of which never seems to have been divulged; and still one other, so delicate in conception, so perfect in its pathos, Her Mother's Voice. What a story! How simply told!

Edwin Abbey was also a painter who appealed strongly to me; again, because he was dramatic. His Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and the Lady Anne, I always looked upon with admiration. The splendour of its colouring is lost to me, for I see it now only en gravure. Nor can his Hamlet and King Lear be forgotten, while his decorative work was magnificent and will preserve his fame. He had great charm as host and guest.

I travel back to the far-off days when W. P. Frith, an old friend, was the popular Academician {85} of his time; his pictures of the Derby Day and Ramsgate Sands having to be "railed in" at the Annual Exhibition, which was then held in the National Gallery, to protect them from the crowd.

Frith, I remember, was struck with the beauty of our production of the School for Scandal, which he highly praised. In its acting and historical accuracy he said it was like the last edition of a grand book, the handsomest and the best. He fell in love with the minuet, and said it took him back to the days of his great-grandmother. The minuet, which was introduced at Lady Sneerwell's "rout," was the brilliant idea of my wife: it was danced by two couples in a crowded room of guests. I have since seen it danced by a crowd to an otherwise empty stage.

I look back with interest to pleasant times spent in the company of Hubert Herkomer, that "jack-of-all-trades and master of many." His versatility was bewildering. Tools of every kind and shape seemed to be playthings in his hands; he grasped them with firmness and used them with skill; painting, engraving, etching, and all sorts of metal work alike came easily to him; he played the piano and the zither, composed and wrote, and was, in a way, a pioneer of film work. His shoals {86} of portraits were amazing, and his fame might rest enduringly upon his painting of The Last Muster.

Briton Rivière was for many years our friend. We met first in the Engadine. He was, in my opinion, a great artist, and has crowded my memory with his works. I think often of those speaking dogs in The Vacant Chair, Sympathy and Charity, as I do of Circe with the amorous pigs, and the majestic Daniel facing the lions in their den.

I have always understood that Rivière was within an ace of being elected President when Millais died.

In early Bohemian days, Henry Stacey Marks, long before he had blossomed into a Royal Academician, was an amusing and pleasant friend. Years afterwards I bought, at Christie's, the attractive panels of the Seven Ages of Man which he had painted for Birket Foster. They were well-beloved companions until a changed life came to me; they now adorn the walls of the Green Room Club.

Another R.A. and old friend was Val Prinsep, whose burly form looms from distant days, which his name recalls. It is easy to believe that he was the original "Taffy" in George du Maurier's Trilby. I have a remembrance of him in the sketch he made for his painting {87} The Minuet, which was inspired by our introduction of the dance into The School for Scandal, again in its turn reproduced in our act-drop at the Haymarket Theatre. On his return to England after painting the Great Durbar, when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, he gave my wife a handsome native bracelet, which, as a souvenir of her, I passed on a little while ago to Marie Löhr, who married Val's son, Anthony.

Recently another friend of long standing, Marcus Stone, left us. He once told me an interesting incident of his childhood, a link with the past, when he was kissed by a very old and well-known man named Pickersgill, the engraver, who begged him, impressively, always to remember that he had been kissed by a man who once was kissed by Dr. Johnson. It is odd to remember, in these days of petrol, that Johnson said there were few keener pleasures in life than being whirled along in a post-chaise, in the company of a pretty lady, at the average speed of ten miles an hour.

Stone owed much to his early, almost boyish, friendship with Dickens, who engaged him to illustrate the book he was then writing, thereby made him known to eminent men, {88} and altogether helped his career greatly. He was a good talker, and he read more books in a week than I do in a year: he also had what are called good looks and a distinguished bearing. Was it not written of him:

In the hope that I have not been tiresome, I will close my remembrances of Academicians with the names of two sculptors: one, whom we knew with some intimacy, was Edgar Boehm. He chanced to be our guest on the evening when his baronetcy was "in his pocket," to be announced to his large circle of friends on the following morning.

There was a beautiful work of his on the staircase landing of the house Millais built for himself in Kensington. His fame rests chiefly, I suppose, on the statue of Carlyle, near to his Chelsea home; on the tomb of Dean Stanley; and the statue of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner, which replaced the old one, now at Aldershot, that I was taken as a child to see when it was erected—an earlier remembrance than that I retain of the Iron Duke's funeral.

I always remember an evening as Boehm's guest, when a lady whom I had taken down to {89} dinner, in answer to an opinion I timidly expressed that it was just possible she might be on the verge of "spoiling" her two boys, who chanced to be at Eton with my son, turned upon me with the amazing question: "Do you think I can ever sufficiently apologise to them for my share in bringing them into this world?"

Boehm's end was distressing. He was a great Court favourite, and one afternoon, in his studio, told his man that he expected a visit from the Princess Louise, and that Her Royal Highness, with her lady, was to be conducted to the studio at once. When taken there, on the door being opened, they found Boehm, who had sunk upon the floor from a sudden heart attack, unconscious and just breathing; he passed away in a few minutes.

Onslow Ford, another friend of ours, was as well known for his personal charm as for the refinement of his work. He was beloved by his brother Academicians, the features of several of whom he has immortalised in marble, and by a large circle of friends. One of his best achievements is the seated figure of Henry Irving, now in the Guildhall Picture Gallery; while the Christopher Marlowe memorial at Canterbury, the Shelley memorial in University College, Oxford, and the great {90} statue of Gordon, mounted on a camel, at Chatham, will make his fame secure.

Another sculptor whose friendship we enjoyed was the late Count Gleichen, who regarded his art as far more than a recreation; and his statue of King Alfred at Wantage is the work of no mere amateur. We found it an interesting experience to sit to him for the two portrait busts which are now in the Garrick Club. The sittings in his studio at St. James's Palace were often enlivened by visits from well-known people of many kinds, which I hope did not detract from the merit of the sculptor's work.

I dare not try the patience of my readers by attempting at any length to write of that rebellious, capricious, tempestuous, and captivating genius "Jimmy" Whistler.

After welcoming him as our amusing and interesting guest, my wife and I were bidden to one of his historic luncheons at the White House, which then stood quite alone in Chelsea by the river. We had excellent company and ate buckwheat cakes, cooked by himself.

His despotic value of himself was exalted and could not be excelled: nothing shook it. The rapier and the bludgeon were alike his weapons of either attack or defence.

I believe his portrait of Irving as King {91} Philip has varied in different markets from bids of a few pounds to some thousands.

Sir John Tenniel was an old friend and guest. His remarkable connection with Punch extended over fifty years. During this marvellous record he contributed between two and three thousand cartoons to its pages. The most famous of this vast collection was, perhaps, Dropping the Pilot, which showed Bismarck leaving the Ship of State, while his new chief, who was to wreck Europe, looked superciliously down on him.

I was present at a banquet given in his honour upon his retirement. The company gathered was exceptional and was presided over by Mr. Balfour, as he then was. When Tenniel rose to return his thanks, the demonstration was too much for the old man; he was unable to speak, and resumed his seat in tears. As the chairman said at once, no expression of thanks could have been more eloquent.

We knew George du Maurier for many years: I wish it had been more intimately. After his early days in Paris and his familiarity with the Quartier Latin, his connection with Punch began, ten years later than Tenniel's. Soon afterwards he succeeded to Leach's prominent position and earned his world-wide {92} fame, which was not lessened by his novels, Peter Ibbetson and Trilby.

I should have loved to hear him say at one of the weekly Punch dinners, as the man who told me did: "Fellows will write to me as de Maurier; I wish they'd give the devil his du."

One of du Maurier's closest friends was that fascinating man Canon Ainger, Master of the Temple, with whom I had only a slight acquaintance. They met constantly, almost daily, in their beloved Hampstead, and indeed haunted its Heath: du Maurier was at home in Bohemia; Ainger had never stood upon its soil; while their widely separated religious views never hurt their friendship. "A strange world, my masters."

He loved the stage. Would he had lived to see the position of its leader in England, to-day, achieved by his son Gerald!

"Sammy," as Linley Sambourne was affectionately called by his intimates, will complete my trio of Punch draughtsmen.

He was an amusing little creature, always very horsey in get up. I have his gift of the first drawing from his pencil which appeared in Punch, so long ago as 1867, when he was but twenty-two; it is a droll little sketch of George Honey as Eccles, John Hare as Sam Gerridge, {93} and myself as Captain Hawtree in Caste. He told me that it was drawn from memory, after visits to the pit when Robertson's comedy was at the height of its first success.

I recall an amusing incident which occurred at a fancy-dress ball, largely attended by the artistic and "Bohemian" world. "Sammy" appeared, admirably appointed and dressed, as a little fat Dutchman. He was cheerily greeted by Gilbert, who ran against him with the words: "One Dutch of Sambourne makes the whole world grin."

I must write a few lines in memory of the prince of caricaturists, Carlo Pellegrini. We knew him throughout his career and always enjoyed his company. On one evening when he gave it to us, on being announced, he kissed my wife's hand and uttered some compliment in Italian; she immediately, in a spirit of fun, rapidly recited an old and rather long "proverb" in his language, which she had learned by heart, as a child—it being her sole acquaintance with Italian—the little man's expression of amazement was a study.

She played the same trick, with still greater effect, on the stage of the Scala Theatre at Milan which we went over with a party of friends, when Arthur Cecil asked her to address an imaginary audience.

I sat to Pellegrini once, when he began to paint portraits seriously—the idea was soon abandoned.—With regard to mine he wrote: "I have sent your fac simile to the Grosvenor: I hope you will be well hanged."

I saw the "Pelican"—as Pellegrini was called by his friends—in his last illness at his rooms in Mortimer Street. Shortly before the peaceful end he said pathetically to his faithful servant: "Wil-li-am, put me on clean shirt—I die clean."

I hardly regarded my old friend Leslie Ward as a caricaturist; his clever drawings were, to my mind, portraits—humorously, but gently, exaggerated. They were mainly the result of sittings. Pellegrini's work was produced from memory.

Leslie Ward was the son of distinguished painters; his sister Beatrice shared their art, as I can testify by a valued possession, a very charming drawing of my wife.

The brilliant composer and musician, Arthur Sullivan, was our much-loved friend for thirty years. We first knew him about the time he and W. S. Gilbert were made known to each other by Frederic Clay. His great career began, like many others, very simply, for he was one of the "Children of the Chapel Royal," as they are still called, before his more serious {95} studies began at the Royal Academy of Music and at Leipzig. He returned with his music to The Tempest, to be followed by The Light of the World.

His wonderful partnership with Gilbert has given joy to every land. It is said that the success of H.M.S. Pinafore was so amazing in America that 100,000 barrel-organs were specially constructed to play nothing else.

I recall a happy gathering of friends at Pontresina. Sullivan was one of them, and his old mother was with him: his devotion to her revealed a beautiful side of his affectionate nature.

A different meeting was when my wife and I met him one morning in the rooms at Monte Carlo. It was settled that we should have lunch together at the Café de Paris, which they went away to order, leaving me, unfortunately, at my own request, to join them in a few minutes. When I did so, my face must have told the sad story of those few minutes, as Arthur called out, cheerily: "Come along, B; this way to the cemetery."

He had a peculiarly entrancing personality: he lived a happy but not a long life, laden with honours.

When I had the sad privilege of being one of the pall-bearers at his funeral I was as {96} impressed as I was pleased to see the blinds of the Athenæum drawn as we passed on our way to St. Paul's Cathedral, where, I have always understood, he was laid to rest by the wish of Queen Victoria.

Music had to bear three heavy blows, dealt within a few days, when Charles Stanford, with his keen sense of humour, Walter Parratt, with his winning personality, and Frederick Bridge, with his ever-ready stories of killing fish, left us. I knew them all, but Parratt was never my guest. He had no London home. We met pleasantly sometimes at the Athenæum, and my nearest link with him was that of having been born in the same year. Bridge and I received our knighthoods together. I have happy recollections of a stay at Harrogate when Stanford was also there. Although he lived so many years in London, he seemed to me to have left Dublin only recently; but what lingers most firmly in my mind in regard to him, is the majestic march he composed for Irving when Tennyson's play Becket was produced at the Lyceum. The last time I listened to its strains was at his own funeral service in the Abbey.

The name of another old musical friend, Frederic Clay, must be remembered, for it was in his company that I met Gounod. I {97} dined with Clay when he lived with his father, who was the friend of Lord Beaconsfield, and known as the finest whist-player in London. I once saw the old gentleman in the cardroom of the Garrick, where he distinguished himself by revoking.

Frederic Clay's career was checked by a long and distressing illness. His fame will live in the remembrance of his melodies: "She wandered down the Mountain Side," "The Sands of Dee," and, above all, by the ever-enduring "I'll sing thee songs of Araby."

VI

LITERATURE

"Think of the achievements of a great writer—a great poet—their works embrace the past, the present, and the future: their fame is for ever growing through the gifts they have made to the dead: the pleasure they have still the power to bestow upon the living: and the delight of bequeathing their wealth to unknown ages while their language lives."

The most prominent man of letters known to my wife and to me was Robert Browning, who looked as unlike the conventional idea of a poet as I resemble a sweep; his appearance seemed to me a better "make-up" for a family physician or legal adviser.

Many years ago my wife and I were present at the wedding of an old friend's daughter and afterwards at the reception. On entering the drawing-room, which had heavy blinds and was rather sombre, my wife mistook an elderly and bearded guest for the host, went behind him, turned his head round, and, as she thought, kissed her congratulations to the bride's father. The recipient of the mistaken salute proved to be Browning, who avowed that {99} whenever and wherever he met my wife he was to be treated in the same way. The ceremony was afterwards always gone through, and more than once in the open street.

When he first dined with us he was made happy in finding a bottle of port by his hand, that he might help himself and not be offered other wines. I remember a story he told us of Longfellow when he visited England. The two poets were driving in a hansom, and a heavy shower suddenly came on. Longfellow insisted upon thrusting his umbrella through the trap in the roof of the cab that the driver might protect himself from the rain, which he did.

At a dinner given at the old Star and Garter, Richmond, Browning met my wife on the terrace with an impromptu, hurriedly scrawled on a menu, which I may give imperfectly:

"Her advent was not hailed with shouts,
Nor banners, garlands, cymbals, drums;
The trees breathed gently sighs of love,
And whispered softly, 'Hush! she comes!'"

In the last letter my wife received from him he wrote: "I heartily wish I had been privileged to begin feeling twenty years ago what I feel now, and I shall make what amends are in my power, by feeling so as long as I live."

I was in the Abbey on the cheerless, foggy, December day, when Browning joined the "Poets" in their "Corner."

I had the honour of enjoying the friendship of that distinguished man of letters, Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. He once told me a story worth repeating. He was in search of a piece of furniture. On entering a dealer's shop in Wardour Street, he caught sight of the portrait of an admiral, apparently of the last century, and of this he asked the price. "Ten pounds," was the answer. Lord Houghton offered five; the dealer was obdurate. The article wanted was sought for, found and bargained for. On going away Lord Houghton returned to the price of the admiral's portrait. At last the dealer said: "Well, my lord, and to your lordship only, seven pound ten"; but his customer would not go beyond his offer of a fiver, and there was an end of the matter.

Soon afterwards, visiting a neighbour in Yorkshire, Lord Houghton recognised the portrait of the admiral hanging in the dining-room, and said: "Hallo! who's that? What have you got there? Something new?" "Yes," replied the friend; "he was a well-known admiral in his day—fought with Nelson—good bit of work too—recently bequeathed to us— {101} an ancestor of my wife's." "Ah, was he?" said Lord Houghton. "Six weeks ago he was within two pound ten of becoming one of mine!"

Once, at a dinner party we gave, a scrupulously clean-shaven guest was announced, whose name neither host nor hostess had caught. He shook hands gaily with us both, and as he moved away to another couple, whom he evidently knew, I gathered from the expression of my wife's face that she, like myself, had no idea of his identity. A bachelor friend who was next announced, after speaking familiarly with the puzzling stranger, came back to me and said, happily in the hearing of my wife: "Do you like Henry James's appearance better with or without his beard?" The mystery was solved. That sort of transformation seems hardly fair.

I beg to be forgiven if I quote a few words from Henry James, written in The Middle Years: "How can I think of the 'run' of the more successful of Mr. Robertson's comedies at the 'dear little old' Prince of Wales's Theatre, by Tottenham Court Road, as anything less than one of the wonders of our age?"

Some ten years ago, James became a British subject—many people, I dare say, have thought him to have always been one—and in return {102} England rightly bestowed upon him the Order of Merit.

Even at the end, when telling a friend of the pain he suffered in his fatal illness, he was gay, and said of death, that he felt the distinguished thing had come to him at last. Much the same thought doubtless crossed the mind of Charles Frohman, the theatrical manager, when he went down on board the Lusitania. He turned to his companion with the words, borrowed from Peter Pan: "Now for the great adventure." Courage is expressed in many wonderful ways.

I have mentioned my first meeting at the elder Boucicault's with Charles Reade, author of The Cloister and the Hearth. As a man of letters, his name is entitled to be enrolled among the giants of his day. Friendship with him began at the Garrick Club, where I have seen him at a whist table with Anthony Trollope and Charles Lever, playing in the same rubber. It ripened rapidly when we produced Masks and Faces, over which my wife and I had many a fight in getting him to agree to some important changes we wished to make. We won the day, and the old book was done with for all time. I will quote from a superb description, written with the insight of a gifted woman, Ellen Terry: "Dear, {103} kind, unjust, generous, cautious, impulsive, passionate, gentle Charles Reade! who combined so many qualities, far asunder as the poles. He was placid and turbulent, yet always majestic. He was inexplicable and entirely lovable—a stupid old dear, and as wise as Solomon! He seemed guileless, and yet had moments of suspicion and craftiness worthy of the serpent."

Wilkie Collins was another Victorian novelist of high repute, whose books would give great pleasure to modern readers if they sampled The Woman in White, Armadale, or The Moonstone, and left themselves in debt to such creations as Count Fosco, Margaret Vanstone, Mercy Merrick, and many more. We knew him well, and sided with his view of the well-known unfortunate episode in the early history of the Garrick Club which resulted in the expulsion of Edmund Yates, through his youthful indiscretion in writing of Thackeray in a way that so great a giant could have afforded to ignore.

At the most, he might have called for an apology—which was offered but declined. "Wilkie" stood by Dickens in the defence of Yates, and they resigned their membership together.

For years Collins was a confirmed opium {104} taker and a slave to the drug. He once left the Engadine, in its primitive days, and found himself, to his horror, without any. He and an intimate friend, who happily spoke German like a native, were travelling together: they represented themselves to be doctors and so obtained from chemists at Coire, and afterwards at Basle, the maximum supply the Swiss law allowed, and so reached Paris without the catastrophe Collins described in alarming words.

At my table, Wilkie Collins, George Critchett, who had left general practice and become an eye specialist, and Sir William Fergusson, the eminent Victorian surgeon, were present together. Critchett told Sir William that Collins had confided to him what was the dose of laudanum he then took every night, and had his permission to ask Sir William if it was not more than enough to prevent any ordinary person from awaking. Fergusson replied that the dose of opium named would suffice to kill the twelve men who sat round the table.

It is impossible for me not to recall, however briefly, from the shadowy past the name of T. W. Robertson, whose empty chair was left vacant more than fifty years ago. He was the first of my friends to speak and write to me as {105} "B." There are few to whom the once-famous name of Tom Robertson now has full meaning, although his comedies made so deep a mark in their day and so largely influenced the future of the stage. Time has not lessened my remembrance of the charm with which he read his comedies; a melody sung sweetly in the long-ago. My wife was always very proud that he dedicated to her the best of them, his masterpiece, Caste.

I look back with sorrow at the small reward he received from them, and the brief time he enjoyed their fame. The fees paid to dramatic authors were miserably poor in those days, although we advanced them materially, added to which, there was no copyright for foreign authors in America. Expert shorthand writers were cunningly scattered in different parts of our theatre on successive nights, until the text of Robertson's principal comedies was completely taken down, and they were played throughout the United States without a dollar being sent to the author. No wonder that Robertson was sarcastic and bitter.

The unusual compliment of closing our theatre when he died was, I fear, but a small set-off against the pain he must have endured before he once said to me: "My dear B, I have often dined on my pipe."

Edmund Yates was an old friend. He knew my wife in her girlhood, and I first met him at Epsom on the historic day, in 1867, that Hermit won the Derby in a snowstorm. My mention of that incident reminds me that, years afterwards, at a public sale, among effects which had belonged to Mr. Baird—known on the turf as "Mr. Abingdon"—I came across a letter-case made from the coat of Hermit, and so inscribed on a silver shield. I bought it, that I might have the pleasure of giving it, on the thirtieth anniversary of the race, to Mr. Henry Chaplin, as he then was, the great horse's owner. Yates at that time held a position in the General Post Office and told me, soon afterwards, that he made an early marriage upon a small income and was handicapped for many a long year by a domestic calamity—the birth of three sons in eleven months.

Yates was an admirable after-dinner speaker and story-teller, a power which doubtless owed something to inheritance, both his parents having held prominent positions on the stage. At one dinner party, Edmund Yates, Dion Boucicault and George Augustus Sala, all being present, were asked in turn if they regretted and repented of any "backslidings" they had to answer for. Boucicault at once {107} said he was sorry for his sins; Sala admitted that he hoped some day to be sorry; Yates, after a pause, smote the table and muttered "No." He was a fierce fighter.

A mutual friend was rather severely caricatured in Vanity Fair. I asked Yates what he thought the original would say about it. "Say, my dear B.? He'll say he thinks it delightful, but will go upstairs to his bedroom, lock the door, and rub his head in the hearthrug." When his trouble came, as it did soon afterwards, I wonder what his own conduct was.

His tragic end was connected with the revival of a comedy in which my wife appeared for her old friend John Hare, at the Garrick Theatre. Yates was seated in the centre of the stalls, and throughout my wife's performance had laughed and applauded heartily. At its close, when she was loudly called for by the audience, he gave her his last smile, turned to his neighbour and said: "The old brigade, the old brigade—it will take a deal to beat it!" He stooped for his hat, fell forward in a fit, and never recovered consciousness. "How oft when men are at the point of death have they been merry!"

I made the acquaintance of W. S. Gilbert during the year I spent in Liverpool; he had just been "called" and was a briefless barrister {108} on the Northern Circuit. Having failed to become attached to the staff of Punch, he was already a contributor to a comic journal called Fun, in which his Bab Ballads first appeared. Soon afterwards he began to write for the theatre. The Palace of Truth and Pygmalion and Galatea both had great success at the old Haymarket; the latter was perhaps a starting point in the brilliant career of Madge Robertson (Mrs. Kendal).

He will, of course, be best remembered through the enduring success of the comic operas he wrote in conjunction with Arthur Sullivan, the most memorable of artistic partnerships.

What humorous things he was constantly uttering! I will endeavour to repeat one or two which may not have been heard. When the beautiful Scala Theatre was built on the site of our old Prince of Wales's, my wife was appropriately invited to perform the opening ceremony. At the end of the pretty speech she made, Gilbert joined her on the stage, and said he had been to the back of the dress circle, where he heard every word of it; adding that the voice was as beautiful as ever and that, if she continued to take pains and work hard, she might be sure of having a great career behind her.

Talking with a Mr. Such Granville, who was {109} on the stage and said to Gilbert: "My name is Such, but I act as Granville," he at once replied: "I wish your name were Granville and you'd act as such."

A young lady who was always known as "Nelia" was about to be married. Gilbert was congratulating her, adding that her Christian name would join charmingly with her forthcoming surname; the girl then told him that her first name was really "Cornelia." Gilbert at once replied: "Oh, I see, you've cut your corn."

Once, in my presence, Gilbert was being questioned by an ardent playgoer as to one of his serious plays, and was finally asked how it ended; its author immediately answered that it had ended in a fortnight.

On another occasion I arrived at the Garrick Club on foot as Gilbert drove up in a hansom: when he alighted he handed the driver half-a-crown. The cabman asked, "What's this?" Answer: "It's your fare." Cabman: "This ain't my fare." Gilbert took back the half-crown, saying: "I beg your pardon, I made a mistake, there's your fare"—as he gave the man a florin. Tableau.

Someone remarked to him what an extraordinary title Henry Arthur Jones had given a new play of his. Gilbert asked: "What is {110} it?" The Princess's Nose. Gilbert hoped it would "run."

The fashion of the "hobble skirt" was being discussed in Gilbert's presence, who said that it reminded him of the boards outside a prospering theatre—"standing room only."

In long past days what was called a shilling subscription was got up by the Daily Telegraph as a testimonial to W. G. Grace. At one time there was a fine cricket ground known as Prince's, which was a rival to the Oval and Lord's, and stood upon the land now occupied by Pont Street and Lennox Gardens. At an afternoon party the question of the testimonial was being discussed, and a young girl asked Gilbert if Grace was anything besides a great cricketer. The brilliant tongue at once replied: "Oh, yes, my dear, he is lord of Lord's and the only ruler of Prince's."

As a rule I have been careful in the choice of guests and successful in seating them to ensure good companionship, for what you put on the chairs is quite as important as what you place on the table, but let me confess to a terrible blunder when I invited Gilbert and Burnand to the same dinner. At an early stage of it, when all was going well, a loud-voiced guest said: "Tell me, Mr. Burnand, do you ever receive for Punch good jokes and things {111} from outsiders?" This was not long after he had been elected to the editor's chair, and Burnand replied, cheerfully: "Oh, often." Gilbert sharply grunted from the opposite side of the table, over his knife and fork: "They never appear!" The rest was silence. This is the true version of an otherwise much-told tale.

The allusion to Punch reminds me that I can readily tell how many weeks old I am, as we were born in the same year; and not many people now can say they have known all its editors: Mark Lemon—when he was old and I was young, Shirley Brooks—who was my proposer at the Garrick Club, Tom Taylor, Frank Burnand and Owen Seaman. What pleasure they have given, and how incomplete the week would be without the charm of Mr. Punch's infinite pen and pencil!

Burnand's humour was different from Gilbert's: he excelled as a punster. From his earliest days he was devoted to the theatre and founded the A.D.C. at Cambridge. He wrote with marvellous rapidity. When he saw Diplomacy, in the height of the play's original success, he left the theatre, sat up through the night, began and finished a most amusing travesty, which he called Diplunacy.

Years ago my son was at Ramsgate, reading for an examination in the law. He met {112} Burnand, who asked what he had been doing. George told him that he had been on the Goodwins with his "coach." Burnand replied that he had no idea you could drive there!

He told me once that, in spite of every kind of exercise, he was a slave to liver—a livery servant. One of the best of his many smart things was said when he was recovering from a serious illness. A journalist friend paid him a sympathetic visit, and said: "Your condition has been so grave that my editor asked me to write an obituary notice of you, adding that he wished it to be generous and that I must give you a column." Burnand at once exclaimed: "A column! Why, that's all they gave Nelson."

My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was at Oxford. He had recently "come down," but was visiting a friend there. His appearance suggested to me that he might have prompted Disraeli to write these words, they seemed so accurately to apply to the once spoiled darling: "The affectations of youth should be viewed leniently; every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful."

I think the best plays from his pen were Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest.

He was talking with us about one of his comedies, just produced, when my wife {113} remarked that the leading situation rather reminded her of the great scene in a play by Scribe, to which Wilde unblushingly replied: "Taken bodily from it, dear lady. Why not? Nobody reads nowadays."

He once congratulated us when we wrote some account of ourselves, on and off the stage, on not having waited, as most people do, until they have lost all memory.

One of many heavy blows I have naturally had to bear during my fifty-six years' membership of the Garrick Club was through the loss of Robert Marshall. His was a strange career. The last man to imagine who could claim the honour of rising from the ranks, through failing to pass an examination, to be a captain in the army. He had left it before we met, but was always smart and soldierly in appearance.

He wrote some charming plays, with a distinctive quality of their own. I recall especially A Royal Family, His Excellency the Governor, The Second in Command, and The Duke of Killiecrankie. What pleasant evenings they gave us! When he was stricken and his friends knew that his lease of life was not to be renewed, he was lying in a nursing home close to Portland Place. A man who loved him was sitting by his bed-side one afternoon when Marshall's quick ear caught the sound of {114} approaching military music. It was the band of the Horse Guards on the way from Albany Street barracks to a Royal function. He started up in bed and with a far-off look in his eyes, his mind having travelled back to his soldier days, listened for the last time to the trumpets and the drums: as their sound died away he fell back on his pillow in a flood of tears.

Henry Lucy—Toby, M.P.—was an old and amusing friend; we often enjoyed the pleasant parties to which Lady Lucy invited us, and they were our guests in London and frequently at Underlea, when they lived hard-by, at Hythe. Perhaps the greatest of the many surprises I have had was the discovery that instead of the poor journalist he was thought to be, he left a quarter of a million. How so vast a fortune was accumulated has remained a mystery to me, fostered by the fact that during the War they discharged their servants as a duty, and ran their cottage themselves, with the simple help of one old woman and then only once in a week. However his wealth was achieved, it was hardly by such means as those of a brother journalist, a wily Scot, who, when he was seen coming out of a telegraph office by a friend, who knew his penurious ways and asked: "Surely, Mac, you've not been wasting your money in sending {115} telegrams?" replied: "Not I, mon, I've only been giving my fountain pen a drink!"

Lucy was an odd looking little creature, with his hair standing straight up, reminding me of some strange bird that might have escaped from the zoo. I remember his telling me once that, when dining with Lord Rothschild, he arrived late, jumped from a hansom, ran up the steps, flung his Inverness cape into the arms of a footman, but, as he passed his hand through his hair, was stopped from entering the dining-room by a stately butler, who told him, pointing to a door, that he would find brushes in his lordship's dressing-room.

On the occasion of one of his visits to us, the talk turned upon Forbes-Robertson's acting in The Passing of the Third Floor Back. Lucy told my wife that he had not yet seen the play, but much wished to do so, and would she tell him the story. To the amazement of those who heard her, she gave the most perfect and dramatic illustration I have ever listened to—if I may use the expression, she seemed to be inspired. We sat spell-bound as the various incidents were unfolded and brought to a wonderful climax. After a pause, Lucy rose from his chair, took her hand, and said: "Good-bye, my dear; there is no need for me to see the play."

VII

MORE MEN OF MARK

For the egotism which is bound to occur in a book of this sort it is useless to offer excuses or apology; it must have its sway.

My wife one day on returning from an afternoon party, to which I was unable to go, in answer to my question: "Who were there?" humorously replied: "Oh, ladies and other dukes." The phrase came to stay—being often used by us. In writing further of departed guests—"Shadows of the things that have been"—it will constantly be on my tongue.

I enjoyed the acquaintanceship of Prince Francis of Teck, who was certainly a man of mark, at a social club as well as at the Middlesex Hospital, of which he was the energetic chairman. Having been a member of the weekly board for more than thirty years, I ought to know something of the value of his services and devotion to the welfare of that institution. {117} My wife first met the Prince in the Engadine, long before he was our guest; in fact, when he was a boy on a visit to St. Moritz, in the company of his mother, the Duchess of Teck, his sister, Queen Mary, and other members of his family.

The Prince was a good soldier, and bore himself well, with an air of command. He served with distinction in Egypt and South Africa.

He died at forty, or thereabouts. I saw him in the Welbeck Street nursing home before he succumbed to that enemy, even of the robust, pneumonia, and was one of the deputation from the hospital bidden to Windsor, where he was buried.

I now find myself up against a duke. There is no need to dwell at any length on the name of his late Grace of Beaufort, beyond saying that he was a great lover of the stage and gave us his friendship. (I mean the grandfather of the present Duke.)

When it became known that my wife and I had decided to abandon the old Prince of Wales's Theatre, and had a lease of the Haymarket, a movement was set on foot, in which the Duke took a prominent part, to present us with a "testimonial." That sort of thing was always obnoxious to me; and, happily, {118} the intention came to my ears in time for me to bring it to a prompt end.

Referring to our farewell night at the Haymarket Theatre, later on, the Duke wrote to my wife:

"Do you know, I feel it to be too melancholy an occasion to assist at. I should hate it all the time. Some day, when you both play for a benefit or a charity, I hope to be there to welcome you. Let me say how very much I regret your determination to retire from management. What a loss I feel it, and how sure I am the general public share that feeling."

Another duke!—but merely a viscount when he sat at our table—Viscount Macduff, a close friend of Horace Farquhar, whose name reminds me of his amusing brother Gilbert, generally known as "Gillie" Farquhar. Gillie, when it was rumoured that he intended to go on the stage, was angrily sent for by Horace, his elder and prosperous brother, who loudly expostulated on such a step being taken, but learned from Gillie that he was quite in earnest. Horace then thundered: "Of course you will take some other name. What do you mean to call yourself?" Gillie quietly replied: "I have thought of calling myself Mr. Horace Farquhar!"

When we first knew Macduff we were neighbours, {119} and constantly saw him lead his father, the old and infirm Earl of Fife, into the garden of Cavendish Square, where tea was taken across the road to them.

I was invited to dine at No. 4 one Sunday evening, but had to be elsewhere with my wife, so asked leave to join the party later, as I knew it would not be an early one. When I entered the room a young man was standing in the middle, giving an imitation of myself. When he had finished I was made acquainted with Herbert Tree.

Lord Londesborough, the first earl, was also a keen playgoer. For years he and Lady Londesborough showed us thoughtful kindness. Our theatre did not seem to be complete if they were not present on a "first night."

With reference to the farewell performance of Caste, which had an added interest from Hare's coming to us, from his own theatre, to play his original part, Lord Londesborough wrote: "The demonstration was most thoroughly well deserved, for there is no one to whom the stage, and therefore the country, owes more than to you and to Mrs. Bancroft. It is always satisfactory when the public shows its appreciation of those who do their work, and make their mark, without beat of drum and flourish of trumpets."

He was a great "whip" and a prominent member of the Coaching Club. I was of his joyous party to the Derby for a number of years, until his sight failed him through an accident while shooting; and I remember his telling my wife, in the later years of his life, that the remaining eye was saved by a consultation held at Lord's between C. I. Thornton, W. G. Grace and myself. I was fond of cricket in those days, and became a member of the M.C.C. before it was necessary to be proposed in boyhood.

On one occasion I drove with our kind friend to Ascot. While seated in a prominent position on the front of his coach, helping a group of gorgeously-dressed ladies to lobster salad, I felt someone touching my toe; on looking down I saw a well-known "nigger," who for years frequented the race-courses. He held up his tambourine to me and called out, with a grin: "Now, Mr. B, don't forget the perfession!"

These Men of Mark who gave me the joy of their friendship are more numerous than I had looked for, and the names of those left to me must not be dwelt upon. I cannot ignore, however, the delightful and unique dinners enjoyed in Whitehall with the late Lord Onslow, when Members from both {121} Houses streamed in and sat, informally, at separate tables, reinforced by men prominent in other walks of life. As an example, I once was placed in the company of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mr. Balfour, as he then was. Onslow was a delightful host and a delightful guest. I have never forgotten his saying to me that very few men, even eminent men, had any idea who their great-grandfathers were.

Few more attractive men have graced a table than Lord Rowton: we knew him first as Montagu Corry. Later on he became a next door neighbour: our No. was 18, his 17. In his courtly way he said to my wife we ought to change houses, so that he might address her as "sweet seventeen," and not as his "dear neighbour." It is, to my pen, difficult to describe his pervasive charm, which I am sure was as manifest in simple homes as at Balmoral. He always appeared to be gay, never boisterous, and his devotion to his great chief, Disraeli, must have been priceless.

I was told by an eminent authority for many years at the bar, my friend Sir Edward Clarke, that in his early days he "read" in chambers where "Monty" Corry was his companion. The career of my informant speaks for his diligence; and he assured me that Corry {122} chiefly passed his time in making rhymes on the names which appeared in The Times of the day in the column restricted to the announcements of "hatches," "matches" and "despatches"!

Two other things about this dear man occur to me. He told me, after the great fancy-dress ball given at Devonshire House on a State event, that he was at the head of the staircase when Irving arrived, and was struck with the impression that the actor alone of all the distinguished crowd wore his robes (he went as a cardinal) as if they were his daily garb, and not obviously hired from a costumier's store, or made for the occasion.

My last remembrance of Rowton is on leaving a club with him one night to walk home; he suddenly stood still on the way and, after a pause, said, as if dreaming of secrets under mental lock and key: "I seem to have passed the whole of my life in holding my tongue."

At the hospitable board of mutual friends we first met Sir John and Lady Fisher, as they then were. The great Admiral took my wife down to dinner, and from that evening was her good friend and mine. Others at the table, I remember, were the scientist Lord Kelvin and Canon Ainger, the Master of the Temple. {123} Fisher accepted an invitation to dine with me in these words: "On the 25th, with pleasure. Yours till hell freezes, J. F." His bad language was really only a not very bad habit—his bark was infinitely worse than his bite; in fact, he was a deeply religious man, as a beautiful letter he wrote to my wife when Lady Fisher died would testify. He knew much of the Bible, and quotations from it were as often on his lips as were his stock phrases. A friend of mine told me that he was once as astounded to hear the old Sea Lord preach a sermon in the Duke of Hamilton's private chapel as he was by its excellence. Whenever he caught sight of me, no matter where, Lord Fisher would call out, cheerily, "How's the vintage?"

When Queen Alexandra shared King Edward's throne, Lord Fisher paid Her Majesty a pretty compliment when offering his congratulations on her sixtieth birthday. "Have you seen, Ma'am," he asked, "the paper which says: 'Her Majesty is sixty years old to-day; may she live till she looks it!' The words were his own, but he thought it would please the Queen more to believe that the compliment had been paid to her publicly. Soon afterwards, the Queen cut out from an illustrated catalogue the figure of a little girl, stuck on the top of it a portrait of her own head, and {124} wrote underneath it: "May she live till she looks it!" and sent it to Lord Fisher.

This reminds me of a compliment that I will dare to mention, paid to me by Alfred Sutro on my eightieth birthday, when he ended a charming letter with these words: "But then, my dear B, you are not really eighty, you are only forty for the second time."

We did not know that dandy of the Senior Service, Lord Alcester, until he had retired upon his laurels and left the planks of an ironclad for the pavement of St. James's Street, of which his lavender kid gloves seemed to be a daily part, and had earned for him his gorgeous nickname, the "Swell of the Ocean."

It was as Beauchamp Seymour that he so ably served his country, the height of his career being the brilliant success of his bombardment of Alexandria, which gave him his Peerage, and doubtless paved the way to our occupation of Egypt. It is interesting to know that two of his captains at the time were named John Fisher and Charles Beresford.

The first Admiral Sir Edward Inglefield was our neighbour fifty years ago, and many a nautical salute have we exchanged "over the garden wall." As a "handy man" I never met his equal. If a pane of glass in house or conservatory was broken he replaced it; if {125} the kitchen clock stopped he soon made it go again; if a chimney took to smoking it soon gave up the habit through his means.

On the other hand, Lady Inglefield used to say that the punctuality with which she heard our wheels at night, when we returned from work, regulated her movements.

At a garden party given by them we met the celebrated Mrs. Norton, the granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, famous alike for her poetry and novels, and for her unhappy relations with her mean and cruel husband. She was still a beautiful woman in the sixties, and it was easy to believe that she was the granddaughter of the lovely Elizabeth Linley. Time had then all but obliterated the old and untrue scandal that she had sold to The Times the news of Peel's conversion to Free Trade, and his intention to get the Corn Laws repealed. George Meredith's novel, Diana of the Crossways, had (though wholly against the author's will) done something to revive the false report that, for her own financial ends, Caroline Norton had wormed the secret out of Sidney Herbert; the truth being that Delane had been told it by Lord Aberdeen himself, who intended him to publish it.

On one occasion, when Sir Edward was in command of one of our fleets, he condemned {126} a man to receive so many strokes from the lash, and was on deck to see the sentence carried out. When the delinquent approached he made certain signs known to Freemasons. "Oh," said the Admiral, "a Mason, eh? Well, I doubt if you're better at that job than as a seaman. Go down and take your punishment."

Having written of Lord Fisher, a great sailor, I will now turn my attention to a great soldier, whom we first knew, fifty years ago, as Sir Garnet Wolseley. We became friends and later on were neighbours.

To my regret, I only had a club acquaintance with Lord Roberts, who was too true a gentleman ever to murmur: "I told you so—why did you not listen to me?" The same with Lord Kitchener; we only knew him as a fellow-guest at other people's tables. It was a Frenchman who wrote this tribute on his sad end, which staggered the country: "Great England's valiant soldier needed a nobler tomb than a hole in the ground, and he had the noblest of all tombs. God ordered his funeral; the waves sang his requiem; the organ-pipes were rocky cliffs; his pall was the black sky, foam the flowers, and the lightning his funeral torches."

Wolseley was, I repeat, a great soldier. One of those leaders whom men will follow—even {127} unto death. These words were written before the powerful biography written by two friends of mine, Sir Frederick Maurice and Sir George Arthur, was published. I think he saw service even before the Crimean War, where, as little more than a boy, he became Captain, and was almost cut to pieces by bullets. Then came Lucknow and service in many lands. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel when twenty-six; and throughout his long career honours of all kinds poured on him. He became Commander-in-Chief, but was not destined to have realised the wish expressed to my wife—"I hope I shall never die in a bed." There was something about him, about that slight cheerful figure, and that glowing face, that outspoken talk, that was very helpful and strengthening: he seemed in some way to shed happiness round him.

Among the accumulated correspondence we found waiting after a holiday in 1882 was a cheery letter from Wolseley, postmark Alexandria, August 18th, in which he wrote: "The 'army' keeps arriving daily, and I hope very soon to be in a position to bring Mr. Arabi to book." The realisation of this prophecy, and the curious incident of an atmospheric phenomenon caused by the comet of that year, prompted some verses, that were sent to the hero of the achievement and thus {128} acknowledged from the War Office: "I am very glad Bancroft induced you to send me your lines on Tel-el-Kebir, for I like them extremely. The word-painting is admirable, and the whole incident is told most feelingly and well. I shall put the little poem away among my treasures. Many, many thanks for it." I wonder where it is now. He was a shockingly bad speller—double pp's and double ll's were sure to be found where they were not wanted.

I was told of a terrible rebuff Wolseley brought upon himself on an occasion when he took Madame Melba down to dinner, not having, most unfortunately, caught her name when presented. He neglected her at table and devoted himself to a charming lady on his other side, whom he knew well. After a time he asked—as was rather his habit—too loudly, "Who is my other neighbour?" "Surely you know Madame Melba," was the answer. "Only heard of her: never met her before: did not catch her name: when I brought her down she conveyed nothing to me." At last he turned to the great songstress and addressed some casual remark to her. Melba quietly asked: "To whom am I speaking?" He answered: "General Wolseley," and received the reply: "I am afraid the name conveys {129} nothing to me." I hope Dame Nellie Melba will forgive me for repeating the story.

Writing of Wolseley reminds me of another, his comrade, Sir Redvers Buller, for years, with Lady Audrey, our friend and neighbour. Buller was a man of unflinching courage and dogged bravery: it was said that he had won his Victoria Cross three times over.

He invited me to join a congratulatory dinner party to be given by him, at a military club, in honour of Wolseley having been made a Field-Marshal. All the guests turned up except Wolseley, who had received a late summons from Windsor, commanding him to dine at the Castle, as Her Majesty wished to present the bâton to him in person on that very evening.

A long spell of years has passed since my wife and I were guests at what was then Thomas's Hotel, in Berkeley Square, now converted into flats, and met Evelyn Wood when he was about thirty, having already won the V.C. in the Indian Mutiny, after beginning his adventurous career as a midshipman and being wounded in the Crimea. We lost sight of him for a long while, and he must have become a Field-Marshal when he dined with us, as he often did, until increasing deafness made him cautious of accepting such invitations. He amused us once by {130} threatening to recite the Lord's Prayer in an alarming number of languages if provoked.

Another Field-Marshal and V.C. whom we knew was the hero of Ladysmith, Sir George White. I met him first on board a P. & O. steamer when he was Governor of Gibraltar. We walked many a mile together on the deck of the Arabia. Both he and Lady White were very kind to me when I landed from his launch for a short stay on the Rock, and enabled me to be present at a memorial service for the Duke of Cambridge. When his own time came White was Governor of Chelsea Hospital. His body was taken across London, for burial in his native Ireland, to such a tribute of affection and regard from his comrades and the people as is rarely given.

I first knew the popular old soldier and father of the charming Lady Burnham and Lady Somerleyton, Sir Henry de Bathe, in the early days of my membership of the Garrick, and was so struck by his appearance that I did my best to suggest it in a part I played soon afterwards—I suppose with a measure of success, for when I stepped upon the stage Lady de Bathe (now the Dowager, still, happily, strong and well), who was seated in the stalls, exclaimed audibly, "Why, it's Henry!"

My wife was so impressed by a dramatic {131} story the old general told of his Crimean days, that she often repeated it.

One evening, in the severe winter time, it was de Bathe's duty to direct the clearing of the dead and wounded after a deadly encounter with the enemy, the brunt of which had been borne by men drawn from the French convict settlements, who were thrust into the hottest places when trying work had to be done. The searching party came across one poor fellow who was grievously wounded but still alive: de Bathe had him placed upon a stretcher, lifted his head, and poured brandy into the soldier's mouth. The man took his hand and pressed it, murmuring in English, "Thank you, de Bathe." Thunderstruck, he stooped down and asked how a Frenchman knew his name and could also speak such perfect English. The wounded man smiled and whispered, "Eton!" as he fainted; de Bathe accompanied the stretcher to the French lines, saying that he would return as soon as his duty would allow him. He did so, but the man was dead; de Bathe lifted the sheet from his face and gazed upon it earnestly without recognising the lost creature, once his school companion, then known only as a French convict with a fictitious name.

I remember being once so fortunate, when {132} the old general dined with me, as to place him between Sir William Howard Russell, the war correspondent, and Dion Boucicault, the dramatist, and to learn that all three of them in boyhood's days had been at the same school together in Dublin.

Lord Rathmore—better remembered and thought of by me as David Plunket—was a fascinating creature. What otherwise could he be with such youthfulness, brightness, wit—such qualities as earned for him the friendship of the sphinx-like Disraeli?

Our acquaintance with him began many years ago at Homburg, where we had a happy time, and continued until 1915, when, with his company and that of other pleasant people, my wife and I passed a holiday at the old Queen Hotel, on The Stray, at Harrogate. He was a delightful guest, an arresting personality at any table, and one of the most gifted orators—I can use no smaller word—I have listened to; his highly polished sentences being rendered even more attractive by his sometimes pronounced stammer, which often added charm to his brilliant flow of language. David Plunket's many friends at his favourite club, the Garrick, where he was beloved, missed him greatly and mourned his loss.

Lord Glenesk, always a great supporter of {133} the drama, gave us his friendship for many years. As Sir Algernon Borthwick, he was, to our great delight, at Balmoral when we were commanded by the late Queen to act there. From his house in Piccadilly, we saw both joyful and mournful processions. In a letter to my wife he wrote: "You were the first to teach the school of Nature, and not only by your own bright impersonations, but also by your influence over all those with whom you were brought in contact, to prove that English art is second to none."

Acquaintance with the first Lord Ashbourne, so long Lord Chancellor of Ireland, began years ago in the Engadine, and I recall happy times spent there and by the Lake of Como in his excellent company.

We were dining with him one evening when my wife asked who was a young man at the farther end of the table. "Oh," said her host, "his name is Carson. He is a fellow-countryman of mine, who has just been called to the English Bar, where he means to practise." "And where he will go far, if I am any judge of a face," was my wife's reply. Lord Ashbourne brought the "young Irishman" to her afterwards, and so an affectionate and enduring friendship with the brilliant advocate, the valiant patriot, Lord Carson, had its birth.

I was one of four who made up a table with Lord Ashbourne—who was gay and amusing—to play bridge at the Athenæum on the day before he was stricken.

I first met Edward Lawson, afterwards Lord Burnham, on the morning of my wedding day, which chanced to be his birthday. My wife had made his acquaintance before, as also that of his sage old father, who founded the fortunes of the great newspaper, of which three generations have now been justly proud.

I gratefully remember that it is to the senior of the trio the stage owes much of its present recognition by the press. To digress for a moment, it was well that Clement Scott, young and enthusiastic, was given his head, and for a long while—years, in fact—his virile pen was devoted to the service of the drama.

Lord Burnham continued in his father's footsteps, as, in his turn, his own son has done. I remember hearing Burnham say, when asked if there was any particular advantage in being very rich: "Only one; you can afford to be robbed."

I was indebted to his constant kindness and hospitality, especially at Hall Barn, for little short of fifty years, until the war broke his splendid spirit and claimed him as its victim.

Of my friend since his boyhood, the present {135} Viscount, I will only say, although I can hardly believe it, that I have given him a sovereign when he went back to Eton!

My first acquaintance with Alfred Lyttelton was as a spectator at Lord's, in the field, and in the courts. Before I knew him I had the privilege of two well-remembered talks with Miss Laura Tennant, whose beauty and charm left a lasting impression. His career, political and otherwise, is too well known to need a word from me. The widespread popularity he enjoyed began early. He was captain of both his school and university elevens, and held the tennis championship without a break for many years.

A personal note I can strike with this most lovable man is through going with him in Paris to see one of the earliest performances of Cyrano by Coquelin. He also did me the honour to take the place of Sir Henry Thompson as my seconder at the Athenæum.

Alfred Lyttelton was spared the agonies of the Great War and the bewildering sense of uncertainty as to what will result from it in this much-altered world. On the day he was buried, in July, 1913, the Oxford and Cambridge match was being played at Lord's. At the solemn hour the game was stopped, and the great assemblage stood uncovered as they {136} thought of him. Later, on the same day, Mr. Asquith said of him in the House of Commons that he, perhaps of all men of this generation, came nearest to the ideal of manhood which every English father would like to see his son aspire to and attain.

It is among my happy memories to have been many times the guest of that prince of hosts, Sir Henry Thompson, extending over twenty years. No dinner parties were more justly celebrated than the "octaves," generally eight guests and himself, he arranged with so much thought and knowledge.

He was an exceptional, an extraordinary, man, in addition to his skill as a great surgeon. He had talent as a painter, had pictures hung in both the Academy and the Salon; he wrote novels, and his knowledge of old Nanking china, of which he owned a fine collection, was that of an expert; and he was founder and president of the Cremation Society. He introduced me to motoring, when it was in its infancy. He was an enthusiast in astronomy, having a private observatory erected by himself. He gave a valuable book on this subject to my wife with the inscription: "Homage from an Astronomer to a Star of the First Magnitude."

Other names crowd my mind: Sir Frank {137} Lascelles, so long our Ambassador in Berlin, and Sir Rivers Wilson, also a distinguished public servant—delightful hosts, delightful guests—both great gentlemen, and both devoted to cards as an amusement. The former cursed them (never his partner) when they persistently went against him; the latter caressed them, however badly they treated him.

Of Schomberg McDonnell, known better to his big circle of friends as "Pom," I recall one personal incident. He was the first to congratulate me on my knighthood, through being at the time Lord Salisbury's private secretary, a post which he had the courage to give up to take his part in the South African War, where he did good service with the C.I.V., and was rewarded on his return by being reinstated. He again served his country in the Great War and died from his wounds, beloved and regretted.

I must in these names include that of a friend of many years, Sir Thomas Sutherland, so long the chairman of the P. & O. Company. To the kindness of his invitations to be a guest on trial trips of ships of that great fleet I owe the happiest "week-ends," in wonderful company, I have ever spent.

"Mr. Alfred," as Alfred de Rothschild was generally spoken of, was once our guest; {138} we were often his in Seamore Place. I was invited to join a week-end party, when I might have seen the wonders of his country home, with its circus and performing animals, but I could not go. Being delicate and of a highly nervous temperament, he must have been a mine of wealth to members of the medical profession. He was a great lover and patron of the theatre. I remember a peculiar incident concerning him when we revived Robertson's comedy School at the Haymarket. Sometimes for several nights running, sometimes twice in a week, he took a large stage box, occupied it for not more than half an hour, sat alone to see the second act of the comedy, and then went.

The two famous travellers and explorers, Burton and Stanley, were old friends of ours. I couple their names because it so chanced that we saw the most of them, and more intimately, together with Lady Burton and Lady Stanley, in hotels—one in Switzerland, the other in Italy—when we were all holiday making.

Burton's early career was that of a wild, untamed gipsy spirit. His childhood was passed in France and Italy, when his mastery of tongues began. At Oxford he acquired Arabic, having turned his back on Latin and {139} Greek. He told me that, eventually, he conquered well over thirty languages—I forget the exact number—as well as made progress towards interpreting what he called the speech of monkeys. We first met him at the table of a dear friend, Dr. George Bird, who asked how he felt when he had killed a man. Burton replied that the doctor ought to know, as he had done it oftener.

Stanley's fame was chiefly established by his "finding" of Livingstone, when he was only about thirty, the search having occupied eight months.

Of the two, Burton was the easier to get on with, being full of talk and anecdotes. Stanley was reserved, and it often took my wife some time to draw from him stories, full of interest, about the King of Uganda and other persons, and incidents of his courageous travels.

Our acquaintance with Henry Labouchere dates back to the time when he built the Queen's Theatre in Long Acre, where St. Martin's Hall formerly stood, and of which his wife was the manageress. Henrietta Hodson was a clever actress, whom, in the early days of the old Prince of Wales's Theatre, we introduced to London. She afterwards played Esther Eccles in Caste with the first complete company which toured the provinces.

Labouchere's varied career, after he left Eton and Cambridge, began in diplomacy. Among many similar stories I have heard of him in those days, is one of a pompous visitor who, calling at the embassy in Washington, and not liking the look of so youthful an attaché, said abruptly: "Can I see your boss?" Labouchere calmly replied: "With pleasure, if you'll tell me to what part of my person you refer."

After giving up diplomacy he entered Parliament; at one time represented Northampton with Bradlaugh. I think it was then he became known as "Labby," and a sort of licensed clown. He was also prominently associated with journalism. His "Letters of a Besieged Resident," sent over from Paris by balloons, were so sensational as to increase the circulation of a daily paper by more than double.

We knew him best on the Lake of Como, at Cadenabbia, a place he loved, which my wife said ought really to be renamed Cadelabbya. I remember his suddenly turning to her one morning and saying that he would rather be deformed than unnoticed.

On the night that our Haymarket career commenced London was fog-bound. The density lasted for days, being unique in its horrors, as records of the time can tell. {141} Labouchere was at the theatre and emerged with the rest of the audience into dreadful gloom. This is the story of his reaching home. He ran heavily against a man, who asked him in what direction he wanted to go. Labouchere replied, "Queen Anne's Gate." The questioner said that he also was going that way, in fact, that he lived hard by, and would take him there safely if he chose to go with him. Labouchere had some fears as to being trapped, but decided to risk it and be wary. The two plodded along together arm-in-arm; they met with one or two minor difficulties; but presently the cheerful stranger, who evidently was of humble station, stood still in the pitch darkness and said: "Here we are; what's your number?" Labouchere told him, and his companion answered: "Then we must cross the road." They did so, the man groped about a door with his fingers and said: "That's your house; you're all right now; try your latchkey."

Labouchere, before rewarding his friendly guide, in amazement asked how he had found his way so accurately on such a night. The simple answer was: "I'm blind!"

He ended his days at his villa in Italy. When I read his name in the Honours List as Privy Councillor, I sent him a telegram: {142} "Labouchere, Florence. Congratulations. Bancroft." His reply was to the effect that I had puzzled him dreadfully, as he had no idea to what I referred until he received The Times on the following day.

Oscar Browning—or shall I say "O.B."?—was an odd-looking creature. We made his acquaintance in our haunt for many years, the Engadine, when my wife christened him "The Wicked Monk." For my part, I never felt quite certain how much of him was "Jekyll" and how little there was of "Hyde."

Some time afterwards he sent word to me at the theatre that he was in the stalls and would like to introduce me to a young friend who was his companion. I arranged that he should do so at the end of the play, when they were brought behind the scenes, and O.B. made me known to Mr. George Curzon, who had recently left Eton, and whose friendship, if I may use the word, I claim the privilege of having since enjoyed, in the great position to which Browning had no doubt foreseen that his pupil would attain. Our last meeting was when Lord Curzon presided at the dinner given to another old friend of mine, T. P. O'Connor, with a charm only equalled, in my experience, on somewhat similar occasions by Lord Rosebery and Lord Balfour.

I think it was when I first met Comyns Carr—"Joe"—early in the seventies, that I heard him rebuke a pushing young man as "a pantaloon without his maturity and a clown without his colour"—the sort of thing that he fired off throughout his life, as if he were a well-charged satirical machine-gun.

He had been called to the Bar, but was then on the eve of his marriage with the attractive Miss Strettell, the daughter of a delightful old clergyman whom I knew as the chaplain at St. Moritz. Carr did not stick to his first choice of a profession, which I always regarded as a pity, but drifted into journalism instead. He was, in his day, attached to many newspapers. Then, fostered by his love and knowledge of art, came a long career when Sir Coutts Lindsay, our old friend and guest, reigned at the Grosvenor Gallery, with Carr as Director. It was famous for Sunday afternoon parties, which were unique. The robes of Royalty rubbed against the skirts of Bohemia. "Ladies and other dukes" were plentiful, as were the followers of every art, and all were happy. Then he wrote plays; next managed a theatre.

I often think he was right when he said to me: "My dear B, the first duty of wine is to be red." Most of the witty things he uttered {144} have no doubt appeared in print; perhaps the following gem has not. An old and well-known friend, who dyed his hair and beard so unnatural a black that even the raven's wing had no chance against it, was lunching, on a hot day, in the revealing sun's rays, with some club friends, of whom one was Comyns Carr, and presenting a sad picture of the struggle between the ravages of time and the appliances of art. He left the table early, and his departure was followed by remarks. "How dreadful—what a pity!" "Can't somebody advise something?" Some one turned to Carr, who had remained silent, and asked him what he thought. Joe replied that of all his friends and acquaintances the old fellow was the only one who really was as black as he was painted.

Carr's gift of eloquence was naturally sought at public banquets, where his speeches took high rank. But was it not, after all, the old story of "a rolling stone" which left him best remembered by his brilliant tongue?

I could go on writing of other Men of Mark to whom I have had the good fortune to play the host, and tell again of the great goodness shown to followers of the stage by members of the healing art, and by lights in the law; but let me bring this chapter to its close by a reference to Cecil Clay, who wrote A Pantomime {145} Rehearsal and, with those who acted his amusing play, gave the old generation much pleasure. He was beloved in every circle that he moved in, and I never heard an unkind word pass his lips or saw an unkind look upon his face. He went so far once as to reproach a fellow-member of one of his many clubs who swore at the matches because they would not strike. "My dear fellow, don't be angry; pray remember they are the only things in the country that don't!"

I have asked Owen Seaman to allow me to reprint some lines which appeared in Punch, written, I feel sure, by the pen of Charles Graves.

"Athlete and wit, whose genial tongue
Cheered and refreshed but never stung:
Creator, to our endless joy,
Of priceless Arthur Pomeroy.
Light lie the earth above his head
Who lightened many a heart of lead;
Courteous and chivalrous and gay,
In very truth no common Clay."

I have alluded to an early visit to New York, when I was a lad of seventeen. During my stay what was known as "The Sickles Tragedy" occurred in Washington; the details of which have lingered in my mind ever since. Many years afterwards my wife {146} and I were at an evening party given by the Dion Boucicaults to a handsome and distinguished-looking American, with one leg and a crutch; the other leg he had lost, valiantly, on the field of Gettysburg. His name was Daniel Sickles. My interest was at once aroused. He was, or had been, United States Minister to Spain, being no less eminent in diplomacy and the civil service than as a volunteer soldier and general. At one time the tragedy of his life might have robbed his country of his great abilities. He had married, some six years before, a beautiful girl of sixteen, Italian by origin, and they were living in Washington, where Sickles held a Government appointment, when he learned from an anonymous letter that his young wife was false to him, clandestinely meeting at a certain house hired from an old negro woman by her lover, named Philip Barton Key, a widower nearly twice her age, a Government lawyer, and the son of the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Sickles had the house watched, and found that the news was true. Charged with the offence, his wife confessed all, and explained the system of signals by which, from an upper window, she and Key, watching through an opera-glass from his club, arranged their meetings. Sickles demanded her wedding-ring, told {147} her to leave his house and return to her parents. Soon afterwards, looking out of his window, he saw the seducer walking towards the house and make a signal with his handkerchief. He went out, and coming up with Key at the street-corner, accused him to his face and shot him. Key attempted to defend himself, but Sickles fired twice more, and then, while Key was on the ground and still breathing, put his revolver to his own head. Twice it missed fire. Sickles then walked away and gave himself up to the police. The case aroused intense excitement, not only in America but in England. The trial lasted some weeks, and so strong was public opinion in the prisoner's favour that he was acquitted, and set free to do his country services in the future. I have been told that, in years after, husband and wife came together again. It is certain that all through the affair, Sickles treated her with the greatest consideration, even allowing her to keep their eldest child, who, grown into a beautiful girl, was present with her father when we met at the Boucicaults' and who soon afterwards was our guest.

Of the distinguished Americans who have been sent to our country as Ambassadors from their own land I have met Mr. Lowell, Mr. Phelps, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Choate, Mr. Page, and {148} Mr. Davis. It is a privilege to have known such men; a greater privilege, in the case of Mr. Choate, to have been his host. I don't know whether a charming little story has been in print before—very likely it has—but I can answer for its exactitude as I now tell it, and where the incident occurred.

On one of his visits to us the subject was started—I think by Bishop Boyd-Carpenter—of changing one's identity. My wife turned to her chief guest and said: "Tell us, Your Excellency, who you would rather be if you were not Mr. Choate." The Ambassador, slightly rising from his chair, bowed across the table to his wife, who was at my side, and at once replied: "Mrs. Choate's second husband."

VIII

THE STAGE

"Of all amusements the theatre is the most profitable, for there we see important actions when we cannot act importantly ourselves."—MARTIN LUTHER.

When I was nineteen I ran away from home to become an actor, and have been stage-struck ever since.

Of eminent Victorian leaders of my calling the first to be our guest, in very far-away days, was the accomplished Charles Mathews, the most conspicuous comedian of his time. The memory of childhood's play-going days tells me that I once saw Madame Vestris, his first wife, a beautiful and accomplished woman, in one of Planche's extravaganzas called The King of the Peacocks, at the Lyceum Theatre. I first met Charles Mathews in 1863, as a star in the theatrical firmament when I was a struggling young actor in Dublin, where I had the great advantage of playing with him in a round of his favourite comedies for a whole {150} month; during which I hope I learnt something from his delightful personality of the beautiful art of acting.

Among other accomplishments, he was an amusing after-dinner speaker. When presiding at a theatrical charity banquet, with his own charm of manner, he began: "Douglas Jerrold once said to me that he did not despair of living to see the day when I should be trudging up Ludgate Hill, with an umbrella under my arm, to invest my funds in the Bank of England. I am sorry to say that the great humorist did not live to see that vision realised. The only step I have advanced towards it is, that I have bought the umbrella."

When Mathews left England for a tour in Australia, a banquet was given in his honour at which he presided; himself proposing the toast of his own health in these words:

"The most important task assigned to me has now to be fulfilled, and I rise to propose what is called the toast of the evening with a mixture of pleasure and trepidation. I was going to say that I was placed in a novel but unprecedented position, by being asked to occupy the chair. But it is not so. There is nothing new in saying that there is nothing new. In The Times of October 3rd, 1798, there is an advertisement of a dinner given to Mr. Fox {151} on the anniversary of his first election for Westminster: 'The Hon. Charles James Fox in the chair.' Here is a great precedent; and what was done by Charles James Fox in 1798 is only imitated in 1870 by Charles James Mathews. I venture to assert that a fitter man than myself to propose the health of our guest could not be found; for I venture to affirm that there is no man so well acquainted with the merits and demerits of that gifted individual as I am. I have been on intimate terms with him from his earliest youth. I have watched over his progress from childhood, have shared in his joys and griefs, and I assert boldly that there is not a man on earth for whom I entertain so sincere a regard and affection. Nor do I go too far in stating that he has an equal affection for me. He has come to me for advice in the most embarrassing circumstances, and what is still more remarkable, has always taken my advice in preference to that of any one else."

Needless to say the speech was interrupted at every point by laughter. Here is a characteristic letter I received from him during a winter which he was passing at Nice:

"It is hard to be obliged to come indoors on such a heavenly day to write a letter, and you will no doubt think it harder to be {152} obliged to read it. But friendship calls, and I sacrifice myself upon its altar. Do thou likewise.

"A very nice fellow has written a comedy. ('O Lord!' I hear you say.) All I ask of you is to read it, have the parts copied out and produce it, playing the principal part yourself—nothing more. Your new piece, of course, will not run more than two or three years, and then you will have this ready to fall back upon. The human mind naturally looks forward, and managers cannot make their arrangements too soon. If by any unforeseen and improbable chance you may not fancy the piece (such things have happened), please drop me a sweet little note, so charmingly worded that the unhappy author may swallow the gilded pill without difficulty. There is something in the piece—or I would not inflict it upon you. If well dressed, and carefully put upon the stage, it might be effective.

"This is what is called writing just one line. You will of course say it 'wants cutting,' like the piece. So I will cut it—short.

"On reading this rigmarole, I find I have only used the word 'piece' four times. When you give my letter to the copyist, you can make the following alterations: For 'piece' (No. 1) read 'play.' For 'piece' (No. 2) read 'production.' For 'piece' (No. 3) read 'work.' For 'piece' (No. 4) read 'comedy.'"

As an instance of his good judgment, on the first night of Byron's comedy, Our Boys, which had a phenomenal run, I was in the billiard room of the Garrick Club; a group of men came in who said they had been to see a new comedy at the Vaudeville Theatre. Various opinions were expressed, several present thinking the comedy would only have a moderate run, when Mathews, who was playing pool, said, quietly: "I don't agree with you fellows. I was there, and haven't laughed so heartily for a long while. Byron this time—he doesn't always—has taken his goods to exactly the right shop. That play is sure to run."

Charles Mathews was originally an architect of considerable skill and promise. Although he did not go upon the stage until he was thirty, he became one of the most beloved of the public's favourites. Mathews was distinctly an actor of manners: it was beyond his range to portray emotion. Later on, Charles Wyndham, at one time in his career, had some of his attributes, and so, very strongly, had Kendal. Nowadays, the actor who at times recalls him to me in the delicacy and refinement of his comedy is Gerald du Maurier.

Pictorially, Charles Mathews lives again in {154} the interesting series of stage portraits on the walls of the Garrick Club with which I was first familiar on the staircases when he lived in Pelham Crescent and Belgrave Road.

In a defence of himself and the view he took of his art, he once said: "It has been urged against me that I always play the same characters in the same way, and that ten years hence I should play the parts exactly as I play them now; this I take as a great compliment. It is a precision which has been aimed at by the models of my profession, which I am proud to follow, and shows, at least, that my acting, such as it is, is the result of art, and study, and not of mere accident."

I can also take the reader back to another link with the past and tell him briefly something of Charles Fechter, also of Victorian fame, whose name opens up a mine of memories. In our early married days we lived in St. John's Wood; Fechter was our neighbour and once our guest. I regard him as the finest actor of the romantic drama I have ever seen. The eye, the voice, the grace—all so needed—were at his command. He was the original of the lover in La Dame aux Camélias. I was present at his début in London, so long ago as 1860, when, as Ruy Blas, he forsook the French for the English stage, and I saw his first {155} performance of The Corsican Brothers, in which play he also acted originally in Paris. This was at the old Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street, which, a decade earlier, had been the scene of the Charles Kean Shakespearean revivals, most of which I saw in my 'teens. They were a great advance scenically on all that had been done by Macready, while their splendours and pageantry were in turn eclipsed first by Irving and afterwards by Tree; but genius has no part in plastering treacle on jam.

So vivid is my remembrance of Fechter's acting in Hamlet, which took the town by storm, that I can describe and illustrate much of it after a lapse of more than fifty years. He made the Prince a fair-haired, almost flaxen, Dane. Dickens said: "No innovation was ever accepted with so much favour by so many intellectuals as Fechter's Hamlet."

Quite recently I came across the impressions of Clement Scott, for many years one of the most prominent of our dramatic critics. He wrote: "Let me candidly own that I never quite understood Hamlet until I saw Fechter play the Prince of Denmark. Phelps and Charles Kean impressed me with the play, but with Fechter, I loved the play, and was charmed as well as fascinated by the player." He {156} afterwards failed as Othello, while his performance of Iago was a triumph. It is a coincidence that Fechter should have received valuable help during his reign at the Lyceum from Kate Terry, whose younger sister, Ellen, in a similar position, did so much for Irving in the same theatre later on.

Fechter died in America in 1879. His last years were sad. But a decade or so before, the idol of the playgoing public, the compeer of all distinguished in the arts, the welcome guest of Charles Dickens at Gad's Hill, he died beyond the seas neglected, friendless, almost forgotten. Few actors at their zenith have held greater sway; few could compare with him in romantic parts; fewer still could claim to have stirred two nations of playgoers in different tongues; but such is the fleeting nature of our work, so faint the record of it left behind, that one might ask how many now can speak of Fechter as he really was, how few will even know his name? "Out, out, brief candle!" His talent was not confined to the stage, as a spirited bust of himself, his own work, now in the Garrick Club, will show.

Later on, there came the eminent Italian actor, Salvini, whose visit to this country in 1875 may still be remembered by a dwindling few. He was the greatest tragedian I have {157} seen—he was never a tenor trying to sing a bass song. On the stage the Italians, to my mind, have the advantage over other actors in being beyond question the finest pantomimists in the world—they can say so much without speaking. Those two great actresses, Ristori and Duse, made masterly use of this gift.

At an afternoon performance of Othello by Salvini, specially given at Drury Lane Theatre to the leading representatives of the English Stage, who chiefly composed the vast assemblage, I was present. Salvini's superbly delivered address to the Senate at once convinced the remarkable audience that no ordinary actor was before them—so calm, so dignified, so motionless—broken only by the portrayal of love as he caught sight of Desdemona entering on the scene. No ovation that I have taken part in equalled in enthusiasm the reception from his up-standing comrades at the close of the third act. His death scene I took exception to as being too shocking, too realistic, too like an animal dying in the shambles or on a battle-field. There I thought the Italian was surpassed by the Irishman, G. V. Brooke, the only actor I have seen who shared Salvini's natural gifts of voice and bearing, and who, but for his unfortunate intemperate habits, might have achieved lasting {158} fame upon the stage. His death in Othello seemed to me as poetic in conception as it was pathetic in execution. Acting, although not speaking, the closing words, "Killing myself, to die upon a kiss," he staggered towards the bed, dying as he clutched the heavy curtains of it, which, giving way, fell upon his prostrate body as a kind of pall, disclosing, at the same time, the dead form of Desdemona. I agree with the great Frenchman who said: "Even when it assassinates, even when it strangles, tragedy remembers that it wears the crown and carries a sceptre."

"CHÈRE MADAME,—Que vous êtes aimable! Je tiendrai votre joli cadeau comme un doux souvenir de votre sincère amitié. Ce sera un précieux talisman qui suivra le reste de ma carrière artistique, et qui, je suis sûr, m'apportera du bonheur."

In a conversation I had with Salvini, he modestly said his nationality and Southern blood made it comparatively easy for him to play the jealous Moor, while they stood in his way when he attempted the part of the Northern moody Dane, to which his robust physique was not suited. Salvini's performance, however, of Hamlet has left me {159} memories almost as keen as those bequeathed by Fechter. In his arrangement of the play he acted the long speech of his father's ghost. You only heard, and hardly saw the Phantom. His scene with his mother was very fine: his management of the foils in the fight with Laertes as superb as it was original: his death the most touching I can recall: it was the "Kiss me, Hardy" of Nelson; he felt for Horatio's head and drew it down to his face as the spirit fled. To make a perfect Hamlet I should weld together ever to be remembered portions from the performances of Fechter, Salvini, Irving and Forbes-Robertson.

It is interesting to read what Macready, the greatest of the Victorian classic actors, said of this complex, fascinating character:

"It seems to me as if only now at fifty-one years of age, I thoroughly see and appreciate the artistic power of Shakespeare in this great human phenomenon: nor do any of the critics, Goethe, Schlegel, or Coleridge, present to me, in their elaborate remarks, the exquisite artistical effects which I see in this work, as long meditation, like long straining after light, gives the minutest portion of its excellence to my view."

From my childhood I have always looked {160} upon Macready as the head of my craft, and regarded him with the reverence a young curate would feel, I suppose, towards the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I regret that I never saw Macready act. I was not ten years old when he left the stage. I had the pleasure, long afterwards, to know his son, Jonathan, a clever surgeon, whose son, Major Macready, I now know; and I rejoice in the friendship of the tragedian's youngest child, General Sir Nevil Macready, whom I first saw at his father's funeral, when he was lifted from a mourning coach—a little fellow of about ten.

My wife was the last stage link with Macready. At one of the farewell performances he gave when he retired she appeared as the child apparition in Macbeth.

I am wandering from my departed guests, but may mention that in my boyhood I saw much of that fine actor, Samuel Phelps, who had so wide a range and to whom no character seemed to come amiss. I have always felt, however, that he was a disciple of Macready, to whom undoubtedly he owed much, and whom he followed as Richelieu, Werner and Virginius.

I may just say that, in my early career, I have acted with Phelps, as well as with Charles Kean and G. V. Brooke, and it may surprise {161} young actors of to-day to know that, in my provincial novitiate of four years and three months, I played no fewer than three hundred and forty-six different parts, with the advantage of repeating many of the Shakespearean characters with different leading actors.

I met and knew the great French comedian Edmond Got, for many years doyen of the Comédie française, in the far-off days of the Commune. The chief members of the troupe were here in exile for many months, when it was a privilege to entertain them. It was strange to learn that Got had served in the French cavalry before he went upon the stage. I append a gracious letter I received from him:

"Je veux vous remercier de la gracieuse hospitalité que vous avez bien voulu nous offrir, et vous prier de mettre aux pieds de Mme. Bancroft l'hommage de mon respect et de ma très sincère admiration.

"Quant à vous, monsieur, vous avez montré ce que peut obtenir de ses artistes un habile administrateur, doublé d'un parfait comédien, c'est-à-dire un ensemble que je souhaiterais rencontrer sur beaucoup de scènes parisiennes, et quelquefois sur la nôtre."

Two often welcomed guests were the brothers Coquelin, ainé and cadet. The elder was a great actor, the younger a good actor and a {162} brilliant diseur. Coquelin, as well as his distinguished comrade, Mounet-Sully, also his eminent compatriot, Clemenceau, belonged to "The Vintage."

My friendship for Coquelin was one of many years. No stage-struck youth perhaps was more unlikely to succeed; but his teacher at the Conservatoire—the great Regnier—always argued that to make a really fine actor a man should have to fight against some physical drawback.

Coquelin was the most outspoken admirer of my wife's acting. He said: "her splendid vitality was contagious: her winning magnetism would fill the largest stage." If my saying so does not detract from this praise, I may add that he showered encomiums in a Parisian journal on my performance in The Dead Heart, when I acted with Irving. He once wrote to me:

"CHER BANCROFT,—Vous avez un excellent théâtre que vous dirigez en maître—et en maître artiste—que pouvez-vous désirer de plus? Ah, cette fois-ci, Bravo, et sans restriction. Cet orchestre qu'on ne voit pas, cette rampe presque imperceptible, cette absence du manteau d'Arlequin, ce cadre contournant la scène! Le spectateur est devant un tableau dont les personnages parlent et agissent. C'est {163} parfait pour l'illusion et pour le plaisir artistique. Votre ami,—C. COQUELIN."

In his home his gaiety was delightful, while his love for his simple old mother was enshrined in his heart as it would seem always to be in that of a good Frenchman.

The farewell words of Jules Claretie, the accomplished director of the Théâtre français, spoken by his grave, were indeed a tribute: "Coquelin was more than a stage king, he was a king of the stage, and has left a luminous trail in the heaven of art."

I was one of the group of English actors who went to Paris with our sculptured offering to his genius which is enshrined in the historic foyer, where, at a luncheon, I had the temerity to make a short speech in indifferent French, urged to do so by Madame Bartet, a brilliant actress, who helped me to frame some of its sentences.

And his poor brother. It is painful to think of cadet's bright nature being quenched by incurable melancholia: distressing indeed to imagine what his sufferings must have been before the evening when, in the middle of the play, he rushed through the stage door, clad {164} as an abbé, to be seen no more at his beloved Comédie française. In an amusing account published in a leading Paris paper of a visit to see Robertson's comedy, School, he wrote:

"Les décors sont executés de main de maître. C'est le triomphe de l'exactitude. Les comédiens sont excellents. M. Bancroft joue dans la pièce un rôle de grand gommeux à monocle, et rien n'égale son élégance et sa stupidité. Madame Bancroft joue la pensionnaire gaie: cette petite femme est un mélange d'Alphonsine et de Chaumont—gaie, pimpante, mordante et d'une adresse! ... C'est la great attraction du Théâtre de Haymarket.

"Après je reviens rapidement en cab ("hansom") à mon hôtel, et je me demande en chemin pourquoi les cabs vont si vite? C'est tout simple; les cabs vont très vite parce que les cochers les poussent derrière."

No less an authority than David Garrick once said to an ambitious stage aspirant who sought his advice, that he might humbug the public in tragedy, but warned him not to try to do so in comedy, for that was a serious thing. This opinion was borne out by Voltaire, who, in his anxiety not to imperil the success he had achieved in tragedy, when he wrote his first comedy did so anonymously.

Having pleasant memories of two distinguished American actors—one a comedian, the other a tragedian—I will follow the high opinion held by the great Englishman of Thalia's children, and write first of Joseph Jefferson, incomparably the finest actor who has come to us from America, and who in his day made a powerful impression and won enduring fame by his performance of Rip Van Winkle and his new rendering of Bob Acres in The Rivals, which he admitted was not free from liberties with Sheridan. I can think of no actor who has been more beloved by audiences in his native land. I must, of course, use that expression, although his grandfather, or perhaps great-grandfather, was British, and an actor under David Garrick. He was, as it were, cradled on the stage.

Jefferson might also have made fame and money by his brush. His work was worthily hung upon the walls of the Royal Academy. I cherish two of his paintings: one, a gift to my wife in remembrance of a happy day we all spent together on the Thames, a charming example of one of its many backwaters near Cookham; the other—a purchase—of Shakespeare's church at Stratford-on-Avon—both reminiscent of Corot. The former always suggests to me the misty Hebrides and an {166} appropriate background for the "Island that liked to be visited," in Barrie's Mary Rose.

Gazing, I remember, at the old Maidenhead bridge at sunset, Jefferson murmured: "What a lovely place is this England of yours! How I should just like to lift it in my arms and carry it right away."

When Edwin Booth, the American tragedian, came over to play in London, Millais gave him a dinner, and invited the leading players of the day to make his acquaintance. He was a fine actor; especially so, I thought, in The Fool's Revenge and Richelieu. When he drew the "awful circle" round the shrinking form of the young heroine and said to the villain of the play: "Set but a foot within that holy ground and on thy head—yea, though it wore a crown—I launch the curse of Rome!" you felt you were in the presence of high dramatic art. The performance at the Lyceum Theatre, in which he and Irving alternated the parts of Othello and Iago, created great interest. Booth was the better Othello; Irving the more attractive and less conventional Iago.

Booth would now and then dine with us on a Sunday evening—to help him bear a sorrow which is, at such times, the actor's lot, and which an extract from a letter to a close friend will best explain:

"I am tired in body and brain. The poor girl is passing away from us. For weeks she has been failing rapidly; and the doctors tell me that she is dying. You can imagine my condition: acting at random every evening, and nursing a half-insane, dying wife all day, and all night too, for that matter. I am scarce sane myself. I scribble this in haste at two in the morning, for I know not when I will have a chance to write sensibly again."

The room in which Edwin Booth died—which I have visited—at the Players' Club in Grammercy Park, New York, founded by himself, and where he had been so beloved, was left untouched after he had passed away, and, I understand, so remains.

When I was a lad of seventeen I went for a trip to New York, and during my stay I chanced to see Edward Askew Sothern—to give him his full name—play his world-renowned character, Lord Dundreary, for the first time in his life. Some years later, when we met upon the stage, I gave him my copy of the original playbill, which, of course, had great interest for him. The eccentric nobleman drew all playgoers for years in England as well as in America. At the time I mention I saw Sothern and Jefferson act together in a round of old English comedies. As young men they {168} made giant successes in individual parts—Dundreary and Rip Van Winkle—the one a masterpiece of caricature, the other a veritable old Dutch master.

Another of Sothern's chief parts, in those days, was David Garrick, of which he was the original representative, long before the play was taken over and prominently associated with the career of Charles Wyndham.

Sothern was always kind to me, whether in my early days in the provinces or afterwards in town. He was my guest at the first dinner-party I had the courage to give. Among those who sat with him were Dion Boucicault, W. S. Gilbert, W. R. McConnell and Tom Hood. I was a young host, not having struck twenty-six. He was a fearless rider and hunting man. Once, after he had met with a bad accident, following the staghounds, I went to see him at his charming old house, called The Cedars, in Kensington, and found his bed placed in the middle of the room. The house, when I last saw it, had become a home for cripples.

Sothern was the king of practical-jokers and would stop at nothing in the way of thought, time or money, to carry out his wild projects. A poor game at its best, I have often thought in mature age; a selfish form of innings.

He was an intense admirer of my wife's art. {169} Only after he had passed away did it come to my knowledge that in some stage experiences, published in America, with the title Birds of a Feather, he gave his judgment of her.

"Among the actresses I should certainly place Mrs. Bancroft and Mrs. Kendal in the foremost rank, their specialities being high comedy. Mrs. Bancroft I consider the best actress on the English stage; in fact, I might say on any stage."

Sam Sothern, so long a pleasant actor on our stage, is dead, so his father's name and fame are now successfully held by his son, Edward, in America.

One of the most remarkable of Victorians in stage-land was Dion Boucicault, father of my life-long little friend, "Dot," the accomplished husband of Irene Vanbrugh. Boucicault produced his first comedy, London Assurance—a brilliant one in its day—about the date of my birth, when he himself was not more than twenty-one. He was a colossal worker as author, actor, and producer until 1890; a career as distinguished as it was lengthy. His delightful Irish plays, The Colleen Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue and The Shaughraun, were among the joys of my youth. I first met Boucicault {170} at Birmingham, where I was specially engaged to act his own part, the counsel for the defence in his drama The Trial of Effie Deans. I learnt much from him at the one rehearsal he travelled from London to attend. When about half way through the trial scene he took me aside and told me I was wrong in my treatment of the part, adding: "Let me rehearse the rest of the scene for you, and I am sure you will grasp my own idea of it directly." I saw at once how right he was, how wrong I had been. The result was a considerable success for me. In the early days of our managerial career we produced a comedy of his, How She Loves Him—clever, but not one of the best. A situation at the end of an act became very muddled, after being tried at rehearsal in several ways. An idea struck me, which was a distinct improvement, but I hardly dared to interfere with so great an autocrat, kind as he had always been. At last, in despair, I suggested to Boucicault that his original ending of the act was more effective than that he had changed it to. He said: "What was that?" I then boldly explained my own idea as if it were his. No doubt he saw through the strategy, but merely said: "Perhaps you're right," and rewarded my shrewdness by adopting the suggestion.

When, years afterwards, I asked his consent to my making some alterations in London Assurance and combining the fourth and fifth acts, he replied from Chicago: "Your shape of London Assurance will be, like all you have done, unexceptionable, and I wish I could be there to taste your brew."

Later on, when my wife was taking only a small part in some of our plays, he wrote:

"MY DEAR FRIEND,—Will you feel offended with an old soldier if he intrudes on your plan of battle by a remark?

"Why are the Bancrofts taking a back seat in their own theatre; they efface themselves! Who made the establishment? with whom is it wholly identified? of what materials is it built? There—it's out!

"Tell Marie, with my love, that there is nothing so destructive as rest if persisted in; you must alter the vowel—it becomes rust, and eats into life. Hers is too precious to let her fool it away; she is looking splendid, and as fresh as a pat of butter. Why don't you get up a version of The Country Girl? Let her play Hoyden and you play Lord Foppington."

Boucicault was a perfect host, a brilliant talker and sympathetic listener. I first dined with him, when a young man, in the delightful {172} company, I remember well, of Charles Reade, J. M. Bellew and Edmund Yates. On the menu was printed: "The wine will be tabled. Every man his own butler. Smiles and self-help." And there was cognac of 1803 from the cellars of Napoleon III. I had many years of unbroken friendship with Boucicault. His final words to me were in a letter from America, following on an illness:

"I doubt whether I shall cross the ocean again. I am rusticating at Washington, having recovered some strength, and am waiting to know if my lease of life is out, or is to be renewed for another term. I have had notice to quit, but am arguing the point ('just like you,' I think I hear you say), and nothing yet is settled between Nature and me."

He was a hard worker, and said his epitaph should be: "Dion Boucicault; his first holiday."

I can revive memories in the old—and tell a little to the young—of actors who became prominent as members of our companies at different times. Let me try to do so. First, there was Harry Montague. Without being an actor of high rank, he had a great value as a jeune premier. He was what I heard an American describe as "so easy to look at." His charm {173} of manner made him a special favourite everywhere, and he was the original matinee idol. When in his company he had the gift of making you believe that he had thought but of you since your last parting, and, when he said "good-bye," that you would remain in his memory until you met again.

He was in America, acting in Diplomacy, when he died suddenly; as young in years as he always seemed in heart; for he was but midway between thirty and forty, that age upon the border-land when one has to own to being no more young, while resenting for a little while that ambiguous epithet, "middle-aged."

Charles Coghlan was an actor of a higher grade; gifted, cultivated and able: his acting as Alfred Evelyn and Charles Surface in our elaborate revivals of Money and The School for Scandal was of the highest character. It may be interesting to note that when he first joined our company his salary was £9 a week; during his last engagement we paid him £60, which would be doubled now. I asked him once to accompany me on a short holiday abroad, and found him a delightful companion. This was soon after the siege of Paris, when many of the terrible stains left on the fair city's face were sadly visible.

Coghlan often lived outside London, at places like Elstree and Kingsbury, generally in picturesque old houses. My wife and I rode out to one of them to luncheon. For a time he drove a rather ramshackle four-in-hand, and, naturally, was in constant financial trouble. He ended his career rather recklessly in America, at Galveston, and his body was washed out to sea from the catacombs by a flood. It was afterwards recovered and reburied.

The father of the happily present Dion and Donald Calthrop, a connection of Lord Alverstone, John Clayton (Calthrop) was also a fine actor. His performance in All for Her was of a high order, and he did some admirable work with Irving at the Lyceum. I also recall a remarkable piece of acting on his part in a play, adapted from the French, in which he appeared as a father whose brain was turned by his having accidentally shot his little son. Under our flag, he only acted in Diplomacy and Caste. He was then growing fat, and never knew of a strong wish I had to revive the Merry Wives of Windsor, with himself as Falstaff. He was otherwise engaged, unfortunately. This was when that brilliant actress Mrs. John Wood was with us, to play with my wife the two Merry Wives, supported by myself as the jealous Mr. Ford—I always found the portrayal {175} of jealousy very amusing—and a troupe of able and suitable comedians.

Clayton gave remarkable performances in the joyous comedies by Pinero at the Court Theatre. He died young.

Arthur Cecil comes next to my mind: an amiable gentleman and companion. It was I who, when he was "wobbling," as he did on every subject, induced him to go on the professional stage. He seemed to me to pass a large slice of his life in the effort—or want of effort—to make up his mind on trivial things, and so wasted at least one half of it.

At the dress rehearsal of Diplomacy—in which he gave a fine performance of Baron Stein—he appeared with a totally different make-up in each act. They were all clever and appropriate, but we, not he, had to decide for him which was to be finally adopted. He was very devoted to what Sir James Barrie christened "Little Mary." On one occasion, after dining at the Garrick Club, before his evening's work, having finished his meal with a double helping of orange tart, he was leaving the coffee-room, when he saw a friend seated near the door just beginning his dinner. Cecil sat down opposite to him for a few minutes to exchange greetings; he became so restless and agitated at the sight of a dish of stewed eels that at last he dug {176} a fork into a mouthful, saying, "I must," and so wound up his meal. There are several similar stories extant, equally amazing, equally true.

Our old and staunch friend, Henry Kemble, a descendant of the illustrious stage family whose name he bore, was for years a valued member of our company; a capable but restricted actor, from his peculiarity of diction. My wife christened him "The Beetle," owing to a large brown Inverness cape he wore at night. Many are the amusing stories told of him. He fought the income tax strenuously, and on one occasion, being brought to bay, told the collector that he belonged to a precarious profession, and begged that Her Majesty might be asked not to look upon him as a source of income!

Kemble was well up in Shakespeare, and had a greater knowledge of the Bible than any actor I have known, except one.

This reminds me of a visit paid, at his instigation, on a New Year's Eve, in the company of his close friend, Arthur Cecil, to a midnight service held in one of the big churches. They entered reverently, just before the hour, and were about to kneel, when a verger touched Kemble on the shoulder and said: "I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but this is a service being held for fallen women."

Kemble suddenly made up his mind to retire from the stage and end his days in Jersey, not in a cloistered cathedral city, as he said would be the case. He, unfortunately, invested his savings in an annuity, as he only lived a few months after doing so. He came to see my wife, to whom he was much attached, to say good-bye, and brought her some fine Waterford glass as a farewell gift. When fatally ill, his last words were written to her on a telegraph form: "All over, dear, dear Lady B. Blessings on you all. Beetle." The doctor who attended him transcribed the words, and sent my wife the tremblingly-written farewell he had penned himself—a touching and kind act.

Another friend and comrade of those days was the humorous Charles Brookfield, son of Canon Brookfield, a distinguished preacher. My wife and I gave the young undergraduate what was practically his first engagement, and he remained a popular member of our company during the whole of our career at the Haymarket. Several of his performances showed marked ability, notably in Sardou's play, Odette, and Pinero's comedy, Lords and Commons. Many amusing stories are attributed to him. Against the accuracy of one of them I must rebel. It ran in this way: That at a time when Charles Wyndham was appearing {178} in his favourite part of David Garrick, for a run, he was sitting in the club named after the great actor, just under one of his several portraits there, when Brookfield went up to Wyndham and said: "It really seems quite surprising, you grow more like Garrick every day." Wyndham gave a delighted smile; when Brookfield continued, in his peculiar cynical way: "Yes, every day, but less like him every night." A good story; but, unfortunately, Brookfield was never a member of the Garrick Club.

I think it was Brookfield who, when a friend asked his advice, saying that a member of a club they frequented having called him a "mangy ass," whether he should appeal to the committee or consult a solicitor, quietly told him he thought it a case for a vet to decide.

He wrote various amusing comedies, and, later on, was appointed by the Lord Chamberlain to be joint examiner of plays.

Brookfield had his serious side, and wrote us the following letter, affectionately signed, when we retired from management:

"The sadness I feel at the prospect of never again working under your management is far too genuine for me to endeavour to convey it {179} by any conventional expressions of regret. Although I have always appreciated your unvarying goodness to me, it is only by the depression of spirits and general apathy which I now experience, that I recognise how much my enjoyment of my profession was affected by the kind auspices under which I had the good fortune to practise it."

IX

THE STAGE

"Pity it is that the animated graces of the player can live no longer than the instant breath and motion that presents them, or at best can but faintly glimmer through the memory of a few surviving spectators."

I will now write of the man who was for many years the chief of the English stage, Henry Irving. He was a born leader and had the magnetism which compels the affection of his comrades; he knew that to be well served meant first to be well beloved. Although denied the advantages of early education, Irving had the learning which colleges may fail to teach; and in his later years would have graced, in manner and in aspect, any position in life. This personal attribute came to him gradually, when, as it were, he had recreated himself. Truth to tell, in the early part of his career he had none of it. In those distant days there was a strong smack of the country actor in his appearance, and a suggestion of a {181} type immortalised by Dickens in Mr. Lenville and Mr. Folair.

We soon became friends and remained so throughout his remarkable career—the most remarkable in many respects that ever befell an actor. He told me an interesting incident of his early life. He was engaged, in the summer of 1867, to act in Paris. The enterprise proved a failure. The little troupe of players was disbanded and returned to London, with the exception of Irving, who, finding himself abroad for the first time, lingered in the bright city for a couple of months. He lived in a garret on a few francs a day, and paid nightly visits to the cheap parts of the theatre. Although he had no knowledge of the language, he was all the while studying the art of acting in its different grades and kinds.

When, in later years, he entertained in his princely fashion eminent foreign artists, in answer to compliments showered upon him in French, he would, without the slightest affectation—a failing from which he was free—answer simply: "I am sure all you are saying is very kind, but I don't understand a word of it."

Soon after his success as Digby Grant in James Albery's comedy, Two Roses, shortly before what proved to be the turning-point in his career—his becoming a member of the {182} Lyceum company, then under the Bateman management—I had occasion to see a well-known dramatic agent, who, as I was leaving his office, said: "Oh, by the way, would Henry Irving be of use to you next season? I have reason to believe he would welcome such a change." The question was startling. I replied that I should be delighted, but feared it would be difficult, as Hare, Coghlan and myself would be in his way. How possible it is that a different answer might have influenced future events in theatre-land! Then came his memorable performance in The Bells, which gave him fame in a single night, followed by other early triumphs, Charles the First and Hamlet.

I once saw Irving on horseback, cantering in the Row on a Sunday afternoon: it was a singular experience. His companion was George Critchett, who gave up his practice one day in the week to hunt instead, and who was as much at home on a horse as Irving was plainly uncomfortable.

Later on, Irving was speaking to me of the success of one of our plays. I answered that in my belief the same could be achieved at the Lyceum (the theatre was not yet under his own management), if money were freely and wisely spent. But wide is the difference {183} between spending and wasting. While the disasters which darkened his brilliant reign were sometimes, it must be conceded, the result of errors of judgment in the choice of plays, had he been in partnership with a capable comrade, to whose guidance he would sometimes have submitted, he might have realised a fortune, instead of allowing several to pass like water through his hands. As an artistic asset, Irving was often wasted and thrown away.

In the gloaming of a Christmas Day, full forty years ago, my wife and I were sitting alone, when, to our amazement, Irving was announced. It was a bolt from the blue. After a pleasant talk, we asked him who was to have the pleasure of giving him his pudding and mince-pie. He answered that he should be all alone in Grafton Street with his dog. We told him that ourselves and our son George, then a small boy, comprised our party, and begged him to join us. Irving gladly said he would. At the time he was acting in The Corsican Brothers, of which famous melodrama Master George had his own version in his little model theatre, with an elaborate scene of the duel in the snow, represented by masses of salt smuggled from the kitchen; and this, {184} with managerial pride, he told Irving he would act before him after dinner. To an audience of three the performance was solemnly gone through, being subjected to the criticisms, seriously pronounced and respectfully received, of the great man. I seem to hear his voice crying out: "Light not strong enough on the prompt side, my boy." For years a broken blade of one of the rapiers used in the duel at the Lyceum, given to him by Irving, was among the boy's proud possessions. I daresay he has it still. A memorable Christmas evening!

The idea occurred to me to give a supper to Irving before his first visit to America in 1883, and to let it have a distinctive character by inviting none but actors. Feeling that nowhere could be it so appropriately given as in the Garrick Club, I wrote to my fellow-members of the Committee to ask if, in the special circumstances, it might take place in the dining-room. Greatly to my delight, my request was granted, with the remark, that it was "an honour to the Club." The attractive room, so suitable for the purpose, its walls being lined with the portraits of those whose names recall all that is famous in the great past of our stage, was arranged to accommodate a party of a hundred, of whom there are but very few {185} survivors. A humorous drawing of a supposed wind-up to the supper—Irving, Toole and myself staggering home, arm-in-arm—was among the early successes of Phil May. He made two copies of it. One of the three belonged to King Edward, which I afterwards saw at Sandringham, the others are owned by Pinero and myself.

"I shall wear your gift—and a rare one it is—as I wear you, the giver, in my heart. My regard for you is not a fading one. In this world there is not too much fair friendship, is there? And I hope it is a gratification to you—it is to me, old friend—to know that we can count alike upon a friend in sorrow and in gladness."

When Irving contemplated a production of The Dead Heart, he flattered me by saying that unless I appeared with him as the Abbé Latour he would not carry out the idea. I was then free from management, and tried to persuade him to let me undertake the part as a labour of love, but he would not listen. After a long talk—neither of us, I remember it all so well, looking at the other, but each gazing separately at different angles into Bond Street {186} from the windows of the rooms he so long occupied at the corner of Grafton Street—he said that I must content him by being specially engaged, on terms which soon were settled.

It was a strange experience to re-enter a theatre to serve instead of to govern; and in one where the policy was so different. My wife and I had so often been content to choose plays without regard to ourselves: the policy of the Lyceum was upon another plane. The Dead Heart is a story of the French Revolution, on the lines of A Tale of Two Cities. The best scene in the play was between Irving and myself, in which we fought a duel to the death. A clever drawing of the scene—I regret failing to secure it when it was sold at Christie's—was made by Bernard Partridge. From all I have heard said of it, the fight must have been well done—real, brief, and determined. It was a grim business, in the sombre moonlit room, and forcibly gave the impression that one of the two combatants would not leave it alive. I confess that I had not the courage of Terriss, who found himself in a similar position with Irving when they fought a duel in The Corsican Brothers, and boldly attacked his chief by suggesting that a little of the limelight might fall on his side of the stage, as Nature was impartial.

One night during the hundred and sixty on which The Dead Heart was acted, when we had acknowledged the applause which followed the duel, Irving put his arm round me as we walked up the stage together, and said: "What a big name you might have made for yourself had you never come across those Robertson plays! What a pity, for your own sake; for no actor can be remembered long who does not appear in the classical drama."

"One point must strike all in connection with Bancroft's career—before he left the Haymarket, at the age of forty-four, he was the senior theatrical manager of London. In conjunction with that gifted lady who was the genius of English comedy, he popularised a system of management which has dominated our stage ever since, and the principle of which may be described as the harmony of realism and art."

It is to be much regretted that no really satisfactory portrait of Irving exists. The one painted by Millais, and given by him to the Garrick Club in 1884, is a beautiful work of art, but, to my mind, somewhat effeminate in its {188} beauty. A portrait by Sargent, painted when Irving was fifty, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, was amazingly clever, but a somewhat painful likeness. The great painter showed something in the great actor—as he so often does in his sitters—which his gifted and searching eyes could not help seeing, and which, once having been shown, you cannot afterwards help seeing always. Irving hated the portrait, and when it was taken from the walls of the Academy it was never seen again. I heard Irving, at my table, tell Sir Edward Poynter that he hid it away in a garret, and when he left the old Grafton Street chambers, his solitary home for many years, he hacked the canvas to shreds with a knife. What a treasure lost!

Irving's hospitality was unbounded. At one of his many parties I recollect his saying to Frank Lockwood, when he was Solicitor-General: "The fortunate actor is the actor who works hard." He then pointed across the table to me, and added: "Look at that fellow, and remember what hard work meant in his case. 'B' is the only actor since Garrick who made a fortune purely by management of his own theatre—I mean without the aid of provincial tours and visits to America." After a pause he continued: "But he has paid the {189} penalty of leaving his best work as an actor undone."

It will ever be remembered that Henry Irving was the first actor to receive from his Sovereign the honour of State recognition: so placing his calling on a level with the rest, no more to be looked at askance, but recognised as leading to a share of the distinctions enjoyed by his fellow-men.

For a year or more before the end it was manifest to those who loved him that the sword had worn out the scabbard—it hung so listlessly by his side. This I strongly realised the last time he sat at our table, and was struck by his plaintive manner to my wife and to me. He then had a flat in Stratton Street, and left us at midnight, saying that he must be home before the lift ceased running or he would have to be carried upstairs.

In affectionate remembrance I close my tribute to Henry Irving. His remarkable career has taken its place in the history of his country, for he was one of the leaders of men who earned the privilege, given to but few, to become the property of the world.

It may also be truly said of Irving, as of one of the most distinguished of his predecessors: "He who has done a single thing that others never forget, and feel ennobled whenever they {190} think of, need not regret his having been, and may throw aside this fleshly coil like any other worn-out part, grateful and contented."

Although I knew and loved them from their boyhood, I find it difficult to write of Irving's sons, being, as they were, so overpowered by the dominant personality of the father.

They both went to Marlborough. "H.B." afterwards to New College, Oxford. Laurence left school for Paris, to perfect his knowledge of French, his ambition and inclination being the diplomatic service. He then passed some three years in Russia, acquiring mastery of the difficult language. Unhappily, his wished-for career had to be abandoned for want of the imperative funds. "H.B." was called to the Bar, but lacked the necessary patience, and so abandoned a profession, as was thought by many competent judges, in which he was eminently qualified to take a high position; while his "hobby" until the end was criminology, and he wrote remarkable books on that fascinating subject.

Both sons drifted on to the stage. Before that step was taken I had seen "H.B." at Oxford give a striking performance, for one so young, of King John.

Towards the end of the War he left his work at the Savoy Theatre and devoted himself to hard work in the Intelligence Department at the Admiralty, which proved to be a great strain upon him. We met frequently at that time, by appointment, at the Athenæum, hard by, and had luncheon together, as he did with his close friend, E. V. Lucas. It was manifest then that his fatal illness had begun.

Laurence was a more frequent guest of ours than Harry, especially at Christmas time, having no children to command his presence at home; he was not so trammelled on the stage as his brother; it was easier for him to escape from perpetual reminders. The performances I remember best on his part are his high-class acting in Typhoon and the admirable drawing of a character he played in The Incubus, who is, in point of fact, his mistress and has become sadly in the way. My wife and I saw the play together from a stage box, and were much amused at the end of it by a conversation between what we took to be a young married couple in the stalls, just beneath us.

The girl said: "Good play, isn't it?" The man answered: "Capital. I've only one fault to find with it." "What's that?" "Title." "Title, why it's a perfect title." The man: "Rotten title—it's nothing about an incubus." {192} The girl: "It's all about an incubus." The man: "The thing was never once mentioned." The girl, in amazement: "What is an incubus?" The man: "Why, one of those things in which they hatch chickens."

The sons died at an age that is not closed to hope and promise, which now must be handed on to another generation—Laurence and Elizabeth, the children of Harry Irving, both gifted with good looks and charm. The boy distinguished himself during the War in the Air Force and now shows promise as a painter. My love descends to them.

Extremes meet; they always do and always will. The closest friend Henry Irving had was J. L. Toole. The strong affection between the two men, which lasted until the end, began when Toole was making a name on the stage in Edinburgh and Irving only a beginner. The famous comedian belonged, as it were, to "the City," and was educated at the City of London School. He was a close second to Sothern in inventing practical jokes, generally harmless, and would take as infinite pains to carry them through. I remember a silly story he loved to tell, how, after a bad baccarat night at Aix-les-Bains, he went to the bank to draw money on his letter of credit. Tapping at the guichet, he inquired of the clerk in feeble, {193} broken English how much the bank would advance upon a gold-headed cane which he carried. As might be expected, the little window was slammed in his face. Nothing daunted, Toole made his way to the market-place hard by, and bought from various stalls some small fish, a bunch of carrots, and a child's toy; he then returned to the bank and arranged his purchases on the counter, with the addition of his watch, a half-franc piece and a penknife. When all was ready he again tapped at the window, and, in a tremulous voice, implored the clerk to accept these offerings in pledge for the small sum needed to save him from starvation. The clerk indignantly requested Toole to leave the establishment, explaining, in the best English at his command, that the bank only made advances upon letters of credit. At the last-named word Toole broke into smiles, and, producing his letter of credit, handed it to the astonished clerk, with the explanation that he would have offered it at first had he thought the bank cared about it, but the porter at his hotel had emphatically told him the bankers of Aix preferred fish.

Toole was never the same after the painful death of his son: he became more and more a slave to "late hours," but was still a delightful, {194} buoyant companion, beloved by his comrades and friends.

Wilson Barrett was a good actor of the robust type. He had an adventurous career: sometimes high on the wave of success, at others deep down in the trough of the sea of failure, but always strictly honourable. At the old Princess's Theatre, in Oxford Street, he made large sums by good dramas like The Silver King and The Lights of London, and lost them through the failures of ambitious efforts, which included a youthful Hamlet, to be wiped out in turn by the enormous success of The Sign of the Cross, a religious drama that appealed to a large public which rarely entered theatres. The play provoked Bernard Shaw to say that Wilson Barrett could always bring down the house with a hymn, and had so evident a desire to personate the Messiah that we might depend upon seeing him crucified yet.

A restless, untamable spirit was born in William Terriss. He tried various callings before settling down to the one for which he was so eminently fitted. He embarked in the mercantile marine, but the craze only lasted a fortnight. Then came tea-planting in China. The next experiment was made in medicine, to be followed by an attack upon engineering. {195} He then positively bluffed me into giving him an engagement, and made his appearance on the stage. Suddenly he decided to go sheep farming in the Falkland Islands. He made an early marriage, and his beloved Ellaline was born there. Of course he soon came back; returned to and left the stage again; next to Kentucky to try horse-breeding. Another failure brought him to his senses. Five years after he had first adopted the stage he was an actor in earnest and became one of its greatest favourites.

His career was chiefly identified with the Lyceum and the Adelphi; but he first became prominent by his acting as Thornhill in Olivia, under Hare's management at the Court Theatre. His bright, breezy nature was a tonic, and, like his daughter and her husband, Seymour Hicks, he carried sunshine about with him and shed it on all he met. He was as brave as a lion and as graceful as a panther.

Alas! one Saturday evening the town was horrified as the tragic news quickly spread that Terriss had been fatally stabbed by a malignant madman as he was entering the Adelphi Theatre to prepare for his evening's work. At his funeral there was an extraordinary manifestation of public sympathy.

Lionel Monckton told me a curious story of {196} how when he reached home he found that a clock which Terriss gave him had stopped at the hour of the murder.

However briefly, I must record grateful thanks for past enjoyment given us by Corney Grain, as great a master in his branch of art as that friend of my youth, John Parry. His odd name was often wrongly thought to be assumed, as was that of a dramatist of those days, Stirling Coyne, who rejoiced in the nickname of "Filthy Lucre."

I always remember the stifled laughter of my wife and Corney Grain, who was present with ourselves at a dinner party, when a distinguished foreigner, accredited by Spain to the Court of St. James, was announced by a nervous manservant as the "Spanish Ham..."—a long pause being followed by a trembling sotto voce—"bassador."

George Grossmith, the elder—"Gee Gee"—is of course best remembered by his long connection with the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. To their great success he contributed a share of which he was justly proud. After he left the Savoy Theatre he toured as an entertainer, with excellent financial results, both here and from two visits to the United States. When he returned for the second time, I remember his saying to me, in his funny, {197} plaintive way: "Do you know, my dear 'B,' things are really very sad. The first time I came back from America I found myself spoken of as 'Weedon Grossmith's brother,' and now, after my second visit, I am only 'George Grossmith's father.'"

I have always looked upon Weedon Grossmith—"Wee Gee"—as an admirable actor, and his death as bringing a personal loss, having valued his friendship and his company. On the stage I best remember him in Pinero's comedies, The Cabinet Minister and The Amazons, in A Pantomime Rehearsal, and, towards the end of his career, in a remarkable performance of a demented odd creature, who believed himself to be the great Napoleon. My wife was so impressed by the acting that she wrote to our little friend about it in a way which delighted him beyond words. Weedon was educated as a painter, and became an exhibitor at the Academy and other galleries. I have two charming examples from his brush, which I bought at Christie's.

The Great War dealt severe blows to the stage, many a young life of promise being taken. The toll was heavy; but they are honoured always by their comrades and remembered for their valour, as are those who served so bravely and survived. During those {198} terrible years the stage also lost E. S. Willard, Lewis Waller, Herbert Tree, William Kendal and George Alexander—all men in the front rank; every one hard to replace.

I associate Willard with his success in The Silver King, and afterwards in Henry Arthur Jones's plays, The Middleman and Judah. In these he had a prosperous career through the United States—as in the part in which I best remember him—the old man in Barrie's comedy, The Professor's Love Story, a charming piece of artistic work. He owed a modest fortune to the appreciation he met with in America.

Willard had an ambition to build a theatre at the top of Lower Regent Street, where the County Fire Office, so long a London landmark, stood; but, granting the site to have been available, it had no depth: the theatre could only have been erected on a part of the Regent Palace Hotel, and reached by burrowing under the road—so far as my architectural knowledge serves me. With the demolition of the County Fire Office the last fragment of the old colonnade disappeared, which, I remember, in my boyhood extended on both sides of the Quadrant from the Circus to Vigo Street.

Early retirement from management prevented intimacy with several prominent actors, who otherwise might have been associated {199} with our work. For instance, Lewis Waller was only once our guest, as things happened. Of his acting, my wife and I were among the warm admirers. The first play in which he commanded our attention was The Profligate, which Pinero wrote for Hare when his management of the Garrick Theatre began. One recalls with admiration his acting as Hotspur, Brutus, Faulconbridge, and King Henry V.

I am sorry I did not know him better, or see more of him. He was a great loss to the stage he loved.

It was, naturally, a satisfaction to my wife, as to me, when Herbert Tree became our successor at the Haymarket. We felt the future of the theatre to be secure for a while, and that its traditions would be worthily maintained. He did all sorts of good work there, ranging from Hamlet and Henry V to The Dancing Girl and Trilby, until he was responsible for building its beautiful opposite neighbour, the present His Majesty's Theatre, where he migrated. During its erection I was walking one day on the opposite side with Comyns Carr, who asked me what I thought of it. He seemed to be greatly amused by my answer: "Too many windows to clean."

Good fortune continued to smile upon the smaller house under the joint management of {200} Frederick Harrison and Cyril Maude. Much of its deserved success was due, in those days, to the art of Winifred Emery, which was then approaching its best, before cruel disease came in the plenitude of her powers and robbed her of that very front position which is reached by so few, and which I think she would surely have attained in her maturity.

Herbert Tree was for many years a power and an authority upon our stage: he rendered its alluring profession great service. I still trust in the hope that successors may be found with something of his splendid courage, his boundless imagination, to follow in his firmest footsteps and leave as memorable marks.

In private life he was an amusing creature, a delightful companion, a perfect host. It was once said of him, not altogether without truth, that he walked in a dream, talked in a dream, ate in a dream, drank in a dream, smoked in a dream, and acted in a dream.

He had enormous energy in starting things, but less strength in carrying his ideas through: he grew tired quickly through his love of change.

I will end with a comic note, for which I am indebted to Pinero. It so happened that the names of Arthur Pinero and Herbert Tree were announced for knighthood in the same Honours {201} List. A man who was an old friend of both wrote a letter of felicitation to each of them; but unfortunately he put his letters into the wrong envelopes. The one Pinero received was as follows: "My dear Tree. Hearty congratulations. You ought to have had it long ago. But why Pinero?" The distinguished dramatist sent this letter to the distinguished actor with the necessary explanation, and in return had from him the note intended for himself. This was it: "My dear Pinero. Hearty congratulations. You ought to have had it long ago. But why Tree?"

"Will" Kendal, until he "passed into the night," chanced to be my oldest theatrical friend. We first met at Birmingham, in our early struggling days, and not again until he had planted his feet firmly at the Haymarket. Mrs. Kendal I knew in the following year, when we acted together in the country. She was Madge Robertson then, and a "flapper" of fifteen, already foreshadowing her brilliant future. After the Kendals married, my wife and I had the great advantage of their services in our company for two seasons. When, later on, their successful partnership with Hare came to an end, they travelled much in America, where they became special favourites and amassed a large fortune.

Kendal was an actor in the foremost rank, being trained by some years of hard work in the provincial "stock companies," as we of the "old brigade" all were. There were certain parts he played to perfection. I never saw his equal as Captain Absolute in The Rivals, young Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer, and Charles Courtly in London Assurance.

It must be full five and forty years since George Alexander called upon my wife one Sunday afternoon with a letter of introduction from our dear friend, Sir Morell Mackenzie. We were sorry, for all our sakes, that we could only offer him encouragement. He had much in his favour; was acting with a travelling company in the Robertson comedies, and warmly recommended for a London engagement, which he soon received from Irving at the Lyceum. Many pleasant tributes from Ellen Terry were paid to him during his stay there, and he rendered yeoman service to his chief. Alexander's long and successful management of the St. James's Theatre was beyond reproach, and for years gave stability to the stage and good repute to those who worked with him. He was a staunch friend to English dramatists and produced plays written by Arthur Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, Alfred Sutro, Anthony Hope, Claude Carton, Haddon Chambers, Louis {203} Parker, Stephen Phillips, Oscar Wilde, and Henry James: a worthy record.

The finest feather in Alexander's managerial cap—his panache—was the production of Pinero's great play, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. He alone had the courage—a quality most essential in theatrical enterprise—to risk what thirty years ago was a dangerous undertaking, the truth and humanity of the play, which has kept it vigorously alive, being at the time of its production lost sight of in the sensation caused by the selection of such a daring scheme and subject for the stage. That fears existed for the success of the play on that score may now excite wonder in the minds of the present advanced generation.

The part of Paula has been a vehicle for the widely differing genius and conceptions of so many eminent actresses—Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Duse, Jane Hading, Mrs. Kendal, Miss Gladys Cooper, and numerous other distinguished foreigners—that special interest attaches to the curious incidents surrounding the first production of the play and the original casting of the heroine.

The play was in the first instance offered to Hare, who very decidedly refused it. On Hare's rejection, it was offered to Alexander, who, though greatly impressed by its strength, {204} also, but reluctantly, declined it. Pinero then proposed to Alexander that he should do the play at a matinée, without being asked for any author's fee. This proposal was agreed to; and the play was announced for a series of morning performances. It happened, however, that Alexander's forthcoming production was Liberty Hall, a comedy written by Claude Carton, who, not unnaturally, represented to Alexander that the performances of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray in the afternoons might militate against the success of the regular evening bill. (An odd little coincidence is that one of the characters in Liberty Hall was originally named Tanqueray—a name which Carton, out of consideration for Pinero, changed to Harringay.) Alexander thereupon undertook that, if Pinero would release him from his agreement to give morning performances of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, he would at the earliest opportunity put the play into the evening bill. In these circumstances the play was produced towards the end of the season of 1893.

In the ordinary course the original Paula would have been Winifred Emery, but the expected arrival of one of her daughters robbed her of the chance. The choice at the time was very limited, actresses of prominence all being engaged. It happened, however, {205} that at the Adelphi a young and handsome lady of no long stage experience, named Mrs. Patrick Campbell, was acting in a drama by G. R. Sims. There were doubts whether the methods of an actress who had graduated at the Adelphi were suitable to the St. James's, but Pinero suggested to Alexander that they should see what impression she produced upon them in a talk with her in a room. The interview took place, and after it Pinero told Alexander that, if she would act on the stage as she talked in his office, he felt pretty sure that she was the woman for the part. But her engagement was dependent on her release by the management of the Adelphi. Word promptly came that this was refused, and once more the author of the play and the manager of the St. James's were up to their necks in difficulties. Pinero then proposed to Alexander that he should wind up the matter by engaging Miss Elizabeth Robins, who had lately made a striking success in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and he proceeded to do so.

As was the custom then, the date and hour were fixed for the author to read his play to the actors and actresses who were to represent it. Alexander was engaged to have luncheon that day in Portland Place, and Pinero arranged to call for him on his way to the theatre. As {206} he drove up in a hansom, Alexander came out of the house in a state of great excitement, crying out: "We can get Mrs. Campbell!"

It appeared that he had only just heard from her that, thanks to pressure put upon them by G. R. Sims, the managers of the Adelphi had consented to release her. On reaching the St. James's Theatre, Pinero said to Alexander: "Look here; this is your job. I will go for a walk in St. James's Park and come back in half an hour to read my play either to Miss Robins or Mrs. Campbell, as it may turn out."

Alexander went to his room, rang the bell, asked if Miss Robins had arrived, and on learning that she was in the theatre requested her to come and see him. She soon entered, holding the book of the play. Alexander told her that an unexpected condition of things had arisen. He would put his cards on the table. Did Miss Robins know that the part of Paula had been first offered to Mrs. Campbell, who, in fact, had been engaged to play it? He was answered: "Yes." Alexander then said: "She has been set free, and is in the theatre. What am I to do?"

Pointing to the book in her hand, Miss Robins replied: "Mr. Alexander, this is the chance of my life. It is also the chance of {207} Mrs. Campbell's life. She is a friend of mine, and I will not take the chance from her."

It was, in my opinion, a great mistake on Alexander's part to add the cares of the London County Council to the management of an important theatre. The strain, I have no doubt, shortened his life, which was of great service to his calling.

"Alec" was always my good friend; and when he summoned a meeting of the leading actors and managers in 1916, the year the Shakespearean Tercentenary was to be celebrated at Drury Lane Theatre, he put the matter so strongly to those assembled that there was no gainsaying his suggestion that I should there and then be invited to speak the address on the occasion if, as he hoped, I would undertake the task. It was no mean effort, and I am afraid that egotism is again fast getting the better of me and urging me to print the result of my labour. My excuse is that the event had national importance: a dramatic episode being the knighthood conferred by the King on Frank Benson, who had given the best years of his life to spreading the love of Shakespeare throughout the land.

"I am proud, indeed, that it was thought {208} fitting by my comrades to give me the unsought honour, on this great day, of addressing you on their behalf. I thank them for the privilege with all my heart, and promise to bear in mind the wise counsel of Polonius, 'brevity is the soul of wit!' I can only speak from my point of view. There are debts which can never be paid in full; there is homage which never can be amply rendered; there is love no tongue can truly tell. All these are Shakespeare's. As every tribute must fall short of what is really due, I resolved to speak my own words—the best in my power to frame—rather than be but the echo of an abler brain.

"In my early days in theatreland, with the audacity of youth, I acted many characters in Shakespeare's plays and then laid some budding leaves of a modest chaplet at the shrine of the master whose works have made the stage eternal. Now, in my old age, I rejoice in the remembrance that I have been what William Shakespeare was—an actor. With a boundless prodigality he has enriched this England which claims his birth—the dear land he loved so deeply and called:

'This fortress built by Nature for herself,
This precious stone set in the silver sea.'

"We owe to Shakespeare the most alluring, the most entrancing creations in our mother-tongue. How much poorer should we be if we lacked the imperishable charm of those {209} Princesses of the drama—Juliet, Rosalind, Ophelia, Beatrice, Viola, Miranda, Portia, Imogen, Desdemona, and Cordelia. They are not withered by age, nor stricken by decay. The Angel of Death passes them by. They are celestial and immortal. What joy that mighty pen must have given for three hundred years to the gifted women who have portrayed those matchless heroines.

"As Shakespeare is 'for all time,' so is he for all men the 'guide, philosopher, and friend.' From whom can even monarchs surer look for majesty? Who so inspires the statesman with true patriotism? Who so teaches the gentleman his conduct; the preacher simple piety; the soldier chivalry and courage? Who gives the poet nobler themes; the painter loftier models; the lover sweeter idols; a son such sound advice? Who so plainly tells the player of his faults? and by whom is youth so upheld by hope, or declining years so soothed with consolation?

"I remember well a visit I paid upon a dusky evening to Westminster Abbey. As I walked beneath its stately roof, to the sounds of the organ, twilight shadows were cast down the sacred aisles. It seemed easy under such influence to believe the legend that, while writing the awful scene between Hamlet and his father's ghost, Shakespeare passed a long night alone within those hallowed walls. In the fading light I looked upon the monument {210} in Poets' Corner and read the lines from The Tempest as they are inscribed there:

'The cloudcapt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like the baseless Fabric of a Vision
Leave not a wrack behind.'

What grandeur, what pathos, are in the words; but we will not believe them—at least not of him. The lustre—the undying lustre—Shakespeare's transcendent genius has shed upon the world marches down the ages undimmed by time."

I lately came across a tribute to Shakespeare which provoked alike my admiration and surprise: the author being that brilliant wit and humorist, Douglas Jerrold. These are his words:

"The great magician who has left immortal company for the spirit of man in his weary journey through this briary world—has bequeathed scenes of immortal loveliness for the human fancy to delight in—founts of eternal truth for the lip of man to drink, and drink—and for all time to be renovated with every draught."

Of that accomplished and delightful comedian, Charles Wyndham, there are bright thoughts of the happiness he gave to playgoers {211} during an exceptionally prolonged career. Its only blemish, indeed, was its length, when the inevitable decay, which at last declines to be warded off, became manifest towards the end.

His early successes were made at the Criterion Theatre, in plays of an amusing and frivolous kind, such as The Great Divorce Case, Pink Dominoes and Betsy. These were followed by far better work, of a higher kind, and the production of those admirable comedies by Henry Arthur Jones, The Case of Rebellious Susan and The Liars.

I confess to having thought, had I remained longer on the stage, how happy I should have been to have played some types of those delightful, helpful, elderly men, who often make life pleasanter to the young, and were so perfectly acted by Wyndham.

He retained his youthful appearance until late in life: the preservation of his "figure" was amazing, and he remained a good walker to the end, but never carried a cane.

To recall a peculiarity of his hard working days, I have frequently known him stop at a post office and scrawl a hurried letter or send a telegram to himself, as a reminder of something important that he had to remember or to do.

The memory of Charles Wyndham should {212} always be held in high regard for his unbounded generosity and devoted service to the Actors' Benevolent Fund. It was a pleasure and a privilege to me to propose that Lady Wyndham should be chosen to follow in his footsteps as its president.

Charles Hawtrey was a very old friend. We knew him first at his father's well-known preparatory school for Eton, where I sent my son. The next phase came soon afterwards, when he confided to us his wish to go upon the stage; a wish my wife and I at once encouraged. This appeared a little before we commenced our Haymarket career with a revival of Lord Lytton's comedy, Money. We said he could appear as a young member in the club scene, with a few lines to speak. Hawtrey enthusiastically accepted the offer. Unfortunately, an illness prevented its fulfilment, or he would have been the companion of Fred Terry in making his first appearance on that eventful evening.

Our paths in life, both on and off the stage, were much asunder, but we were always the best of friends, and I remember with pleasure a strong wish he expressed, during one of our meetings at Marienbad, when a scheme was on foot to build a theatre for him in the Haymarket, that he might christen it "The Bancroft." {213} My wife and I were sorry when the scheme fell through.

He leaves the happiest memories to his shoals of friends—from the early days, of The Private Secretary; the middle stage, of Lord and Lady Algy and The Man from Blankley's; to end, with the gay maturity of Ambrose Applejohn's Adventure,—and laughter all the way.

Charles Hawtrey was the actor I have alluded to who had the widest knowledge of the Bible of any layman I have known.

My intimate and affectionate relations, both private and professional, with John Hare make me a little shy of writing about him with the warmth his long and brilliant career upon the stage deserves. I was his oldest professional friend, having been a member of the company he first joined. In the following year my wife offered him an engagement, and for ten years he was prominent among the attractive company of the old Prince of Wales's Theatre. No young actor was, perhaps, so fortunate as himself, appearing as he did in three such successive and distinctive character parts as Lord Ptarmigant, the sleepy old Peer in Society, Prince Perovsky, the courtly Russian diplomat in Ours, and Sam Gerridge, the humble gasfitter in Caste. The delicacy and finish of Hare's {214} acting was of great service to the Robertson comedies, in all of which he appeared.

When he left us it was to enter into friendly managerial rivalry. I applauded the step as a wise one on his part; but, after so many years of close intimacy, I felt the wrench. From that moment the dressing-room he and I had shared knew me no more, and I found a lonely corner on another floor.

And a friendly rivalry it was. If we had our Diplomacy, he had his Olivia, a delightful play, in which Ellen Terry made so conspicuous a success and Terriss laid the firm foundation of his fine career. My sole disappointment in connection with this beautiful production was that Hare had not plucked up the courage to attack the part of the dear old Vicar himself.

It is not for me to dwell upon his career, which was always to the credit of his calling, or enumerate his successes, only naming Pinero's brilliant works, The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith and The Gay Lord Quex. In the first of them Mrs. Patrick Campbell clinched her previous triumph; in the second Irene Vanbrugh seized the opportunity of rushing to the front, where she has remained ever since.

On an occasion when Hare proposed my health in distinguished company, it was pleasant {215} to listen to words which were too flattering to allow of their repetition.

I am inclined to say that Hare's best and most complete individual work was his delightful portrait of old Benjamin Goldfinch in A Pair of Spectacles, a performance which gave us something of the simplicity and benevolence of the immortal Samuel Pickwick. I think of Hare, in all he did, as the Meissonier of our stage.

X

ONE OTHER EMPTY CHAIR

"If we really love those whom we lose,
We never really lose those whom we love."

The time has come for me to offer my apology for this book. In my lonely, but not unhappy, old age, the most void of all the Empty Chairs which now surround me is the one so long filled by my partner for more than fifty years.

Let me begin by saying that the foundation of our fortunes was due, solely, to her courage in gallantly deciding that danger was preferable to dullness, and in producing Society, the first of the Robertson comedies, against adverse advice and the fact that the manuscript had been "turned down" by the leading London managers of the day. It may be that the brave decision was also pleasant to her because at the time our mutual attachment was steadily ripening, and, although the part she was willing to take was not prominent, the character which would fall to my lot was a good one and likely to advance my position, if I played it well.

To the exceptional and startling success upon production of Robertson's five delicate little comedies, and to the frequently-recurring revivals of them, we owed much. They appeared just when they were wanted to revive interest in the drama. Nature was Robertson's goddess, and he looked upon the bright young manager as the high-priestess of the natural school of acting.

When the prolific fountain ceased, through the early and untimely death of Robertson, the choice of plays until the end of our career was left to me. I was honoured and helped by implicit confidence in my judgment; no word of rebuke passed her lips for a mistake, no word of praise was withheld when it was thought merited. No spark of professional jealousy was born to her; she always loved to act with the ablest and best equipped of her comrades. She had no place for the more sordid side of life, and was as free from extravagance as she was indifferent about money. Her life from childhood was passed in the service of the public until I thought the time had come for it to be less strenuous.

It may be that for the early withdrawal from triumphant scenes of the great gifts of so famous an actress I was to blame—if blame there was. I plead excuse in a painful {218} remembrance of pitiful words, written by a powerful pen, on lingering too long upon the stage; words which drew the sad picture of a much-loved servant of the public clinging to the faded chaplet won as its idol in earlier days; of clutching at the withered trophy after the time had come for its graceful surrender to youth and promise, and before the admiration once so showered upon her should be replaced by indulgence—indulgence to be followed by compassion, compassion in its turn by indifference. Indulgence—compassion—indifference. The mere utterance of such words causes one pain. Twilight in art—as in nature—must be mournful: surely a sweeter picture is the splendid sinking of an early autumnal sun.

It will mean happiness to me to lay a few flowers at her feet, gathered in the gardens of those who knew and loved her. So I have asked three dear friends, a man of letters, a dramatist, and an actor, to help me in that task.

"I gladly avail myself of the opportunity you give me to pay a tribute to the memory of Lady Bancroft.

"She herself has told us the sort of impression she made on those around her when she was {219} a child; and because that early verdict passed on her is singularly prescient, it is worth recalling. Macready is the first witness. Marie Wilton—to use her maiden name, which was soon to be famous on the stage—acted the parts of the boy Fleance and the apparition of a child in the caldron scene to Macready's Macbeth at the close of his career, and was invited by the great actor to visit him in his room. 'Well,' he said, 'I suppose you hope to be a great actress some day. And what do you intend to play?' The answer came at once: 'Lady Macbeth.' 'Oh, is that all! Well, I like your ambition. You are a strange little thing and have such curious eyes. But you must change them before you play Lady Macbeth, or you will make your audience laugh instead of cry.' The story shows that Macready had quickly noticed two things about the child. Her eyes, which were not so much curious as unusual and always alive, were laughing, merry, twinkling eyes, the eyes of one who would never allow her outlook on the world to be other than genial and good; who could bear misfortune with as much courage as good fortune. He had noticed also what was almost the first thing that the spectator observed about Marie Bancroft's performance in almost every one of her parts, and that was the inscrutable fashion in which she at once established the best relations with her audience. It was in its way a little bit of {220} magic, the secret of which she retained. The effect was irresistible. She came down to the footlights, or stayed where she was, without movement, and instantly flashes of mutual goodwill passed between her and the audience, even before the musical tones of her voice were heard. Sometimes, as with an actress like Eleonora Duse, time has to elapse while she is, so to speak, making herself at home. Marie Bancroft had undoubtedly what I have called a little bit of magic. Whatever the part that she was to play, there was always the comfortable feeling when she was on the stage that everything was going well, and that success was practically assured. In the series of her parts in the Robertsonian drama she was, of course, helped by the author's knowledge of her and of her temperament; but whether she was a schoolgirl or supposed to be grown up; whether the part belonged to the upper or the lower levels of society: in every case sympathy was instantly linking her with the eager and attentive house. She no sooner came than she saw what was wanted, and she conquered with what seemed consummate ease and economy of effort. I have never seen an actress who more rapidly and easily made her presence known on the stage as a gracious, winsome, affectionate creature, filled with human kindness, and always ready to believe the best of people and of things.

"And so the judgment of Charles Dickens is {221} established as surely as that of Macready. 'I really wish,' said Dickens in a letter to John Forster, 'I really wish you would go to see The Maid and the Magpie burlesque at the Strand Theatre. There is the strangest thing in it that I have ever seen on the stage. The boy Pippo, by Miss Marie Wilton, while it is astonishingly impudent—must be or it could not be done at all—is so stupendously like a boy and unlike a woman that it is perfectly free from offence. I have never seen such a curious thing; the manner, the appearance, the levity, impulse and spirits of it are so exactly like a boy that you cannot see anything like her sex in association with it. I call her the cleverest girl I have ever seen on the stage in my time, and the most original.' That is, of course, a tribute to her cleverness, which made her the best of burlesque actresses. If Macready's judgment refers to the seriousness of her ambition, Charles Dickens calls attention to her extraordinary versatility, her power of identifying herself with any part she assumed, and the rapidity with which she comprehended all that was implicit in it. Of the burlesques of those days Marie Wilton was the acknowledged queen, inspiring the whole of the silly or serious business with her inimitable gaiety and amazing ability.

"The more general the sympathy an actress possesses with human nature, the wider will be her interpretation of a part. We talk {222} about building up a character. It is only saying in other words that the primary duty of the heroine in a play is to make us understand, not only what she is in the play, but what she might be under other conditions. The extraordinary thing about Marie Bancroft, when she left burlesque for modern comedy, is that from the first she interpreted the character she was representing in the largest, most sympathetic manner, as having an inner nature or temperament of much more subtle value than came out in the actual presentation. Superficially, the characters of Polly Eccles and Naomi Tighe—both great favourites with Marie Bancroft—can be easily described. They are bright, garrulous, happy creatures, full of fun, quick in tongue, responsive to humour, and always amusing to watch. But as we left the theatre, after seeing her act them, we were aware that they are something more. Behind the drolleries of Naomi Tighe beats an extremely warm heart, a genuine comradeship, and an especial love, of course, of her dear friend, Bella. But in Polly Eccles there was still more. I was always surprised to think that Marie Bancroft should have preferred the schoolgirl Naomi to the high-hearted, devoted friend who was Polly Eccles, in whom we have touches of a fuller personality than could be found either in Naomi or in Mary Netley of Ours.

"These, however, were, after all, the earlier {223} creations in comedy of an artist destined to do much finer work. Her full powers were proved later on, especially in Peg Woffington. The picture showed traces of the same handiwork; and indeed the audience would never have been satisfied if Marie Bancroft had not set her unmistakeable seal on this character as on others. There was something in the pathos of the main situation, however; something, too, in the exquisite sympathy between Peg and Triplet, which touched the very source of tears. What we saw here was the fulfilment of a promise discerned in her earlier creations, an admirable example of the many-sided presentment of a character, so that it becomes something of daily experience. The humorous eyes, the sensitive mouth, the face ever ready to suggest laughter and fun, the attractive little touches of temperament and feeling—those had come together to form a beautiful presentment of a gracious and affectionate being, who could help others in their distress, because she herself had come through deep waters.

"There is one point which it would be wrong to pass over without comment. There is sometimes talk of jealousy between artists. Of the spirit of emulation, the spirit of ambition, the desire to do the best possible under the given conditions—of these, which are part and parcel of a noble nature, Marie Bancroft had her full share. But it was always noticed that {224} she had no touch of professional jealousy. She often sank her own importance as an actress, cheerfully taking a small part. Both she and you had made up your minds not to allow consideration of your own parts to bias your judgment in the refusal or acceptance of plays. You judged the plays on their merits—not on the ground that parts in them would or would not suit either of you. With the utmost readiness Marie Bancroft played second parts to Madame Modjeska, to Mrs. John Wood, to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, as well as to Mrs. Kendal and to Ellen Terry. Self-abnegation of this kind is sufficiently rare to be worthy of comment. Its value, is, of course, obvious. Without it some of your most successful productions would never have been given.

"Many critics, especially young ones, are inclined to decry the value of Robertson's plays; but the fact remains that, with those comedies as your material, Marie Bancroft and you initiated a revolution in English drama. In those plays she rejoiced in characters exactly suited to her genius, characters to which she could give all her laughter and sense of fun, in creating personalities which will always live in the memories of those who saw them. She not only acted; she possessed that constructive instinct which enabled her to pass judgment on and vastly to improve the comedies submitted to her. Of this, there is no better example than what happened with {225} Charles Reade's play, Masks and Faces, when Reade, moved to tears by her performance of the ending which at one rehearsal she substituted for that which he had written, very wisely gave way to the superior imaginative perception of Marie Bancroft, the actress of Peg Woffington.

"In final retrospect, we come back to the 'curious eyes' and the laughter-provoking face which Macready discovered. In all arts we have to recognise the personal element, which makes the work of one man so different from that of another. We do not mistake the inimitable touch of a Millais or confuse it with that of a Sargent. We do not read a page of Henry James and imagine that it could have been written by George Meredith. In the same way an actor portraying a character puts into it so much of himself that we contrast his representation with that of another actor—quite as good, perhaps, but of a different quality. This element of personality is called 'style,' and it is by style that an artist lives and betrays his or her idiosyncrasy. And no one had a more appealing style than Marie Bancroft, who could do with our hearts what she pleased. The roguish eyes, the inimitable smile, the sense of humour, the joy of living—all those were hers; and it was by some wonderful combination of all dramatic gifts that she won her complete and perfect triumph. Those (alas! now how few) who in old days {226} sat spellbound, as they saw her winning the palms of victory in many a famous play, will confess with unbounded gratitude how much of happy memory they owe to the grace, the skill, the charm, the sympathy of Marie Bancroft.

"It is my firm belief that the most ardent and persistent lover of the drama, after a long life of playgoing, and when the footlights illuminating his own private and personal drama are beginning to burn low, can, if he be honest with himself, count his red-letter nights in the theatre, at a liberal estimate, on the fingers of both hands. Such is the case with me at any rate. Many distinguished and moving performances, memorable in their way, have I witnessed; but the real, unmistakeable red-letter nights—heart and brain clutching—how few! Some premieres at the old Lyceum, under the management of the Batemans and, subsequently, of Irving himself, two or three representations at the Théâtre Français—notably Mounet Sully's acting, as it was thirty years ago, in Œdipe Roi—Duse's earliest appearance in England in La Dame aux {227} Camélias; to recall these things gives one a catch in the breath—these and the first time I saw Marie Wilton as 'Polly Eccles.'

"This particular red-letter night happened at the Standard Theatre in Shoreditch in, I think, August, 1873. (You, in whose honour a University should create the degree of Master of Dates, so curious, so infallible—occasionally, to the ladies, so disconcerting—is your memory, will correct me if I am wrong as to the month or year.) The company of the dainty little Prince of Wales's Theatre had carried their delicate art to that not too salubrious quarter of the town, and were delighting the East-enders in Robertson's Caste. Nowadays it is the critical habit to sniff at Robertson and his simple, humane comedies; but the work of a writer for the stage should be judged in relation to the period which produced it, and, so judged, Robertson was a man of vision and courage. There is no dramatist now writing, 'advanced' or otherwise, who is not in a measure indebted to Robertson. But how lucky he was in the people who interpreted him! Take Caste, for instance. Lydia Foote—her appealing 'Esther Eccles' was approached in later years only by Olga Brandon in a revival of the piece at the Criterion—the highly capable Mrs. Leigh Murray, the unctuous Honey, John Hare, most refined of miniaturists, the fascinating Coghlan—who had succeeded Frederick Younge, whom I never {228} saw, as 'George D'Alroy'—-yourself as 'Hawtree'—a monumental picture of Swelldom, unequalled, in its combination of grotesqueness and good breeding, by any stage Swell of my time—even Sothern's 'Dundreary' couldn't touch your 'Hawtree'—and, above and beyond you all, the glorious actress who used to figure in the playbills as 'Miss Marie Wilton (Mrs. Bancroft),' and was to become Lady Bancroft; what a wonderful—what an unmatchable—troupe!

"That red-letter night in unsavoury Shoreditch! Outside the theatre, the thick air of a warm evening, presently to be fouled by the fumes of the naphtha lamps of the gutter tradesmen; the incessant bawling of those gentry; the garish display of cheap wares in the shop-windows; the jostling and shoving of the loiterers on the pavement; and the sensation of complete happiness, almost choking in its intensity, because one was going to the play! And the fight for a front seat in the pit; the contentment, after a terrific struggle resulting in a torn jacket and the limpest of shirt-collars, at finding oneself in possession of about eight inches of bare board; and the settling down to enjoy the blended odours, peculiar to the popular theatre of that day, of gas and stale orange-peel, than which no more agreeable smell could greet the nostrils of a stage-struck youth! Then the tuning-up by the orchestra—joyful discord—and the unheeded playing of a {229} 'selection'; and then the rising of the curtain, the sudden hush of voices, and lo! there is the poor, shabby room on the ground-floor of the lodging-house in Stangate! George appears, followed by Hawtree; they talk, and I wonder that their talk should be so different from the talk I had heard in other plays; then comes 'Papa Eccles,' who 'can tell a real gentleman with half a sov'; then, when Papa, the half-sovereign in his dirty fist, has shuffled away to meet a friend round the corner, Esther steals in; and then—oh, then!—'Enter Polly, D.R.H.,' as the stage direction says, and in a moment the audience is enraptured by the brightest, freshest, sweetest little woman that ever gladdened ears and eyes in or out of a playhouse!

"Those, my dear B., who can remember Lady Bancroft in the plenitude of her powers, the fulness of her witchery, are—I speak feelingly—rapidly growing fewer and fewer; and it is with the aim, I suppose, of conveying an impression of what she was at the time I mention, and for at least a decade afterwards, to the theatre-lovers of to-day—who saw her, if they saw her at all, when age had begun to weigh upon her—and to the theatre-lovers of the future, that you are inviting two or three men, old enough so to remember her, and who yet linger more or less actively on the scene, to contribute to your forthcoming book. Phew! A pretty difficult task, unless one employs {230} language which in modern slang I understand is called 'mushy.' In the first place, of course, she knew her business to her finger-tips. That a practitioner of any of the arts should have known his or her business is frequently remarked in disparagement. Great artists, however, will take care to include a knowledge of their business—i.e. of the tricks of their trade—among other accomplishments, one of the latter being the faculty for hiding those tricks from the public. Lady Bancroft knew her business—and other people's; that is, though a born comedian, she could, if her physique had allowed of it, have 'gone on,' in theatrical phrase, for Lady Macbeth, or Juliet, or Ophelia, and have triumphed. (In fact, occasionally, she did 'go on' for parts for which she was hardly physically suited, and perhaps it was a pity she didn't do so oftener. She would have been forgiven.) And her experience, commencing in babyhood, and her innate cleverness, had taught her how, while keeping strictly within the picture-frame, to button-hole, as it were, each individual member of the audience. The man on the farthest bench of the topmost gallery, as well as the man in the stalls, was flattered by her skill into believing that she was acting specially for him. I myself have watched her act from the sixpenny gallery of a large theatre—that same Standard in Shoreditch, the pit being beyond my means for a second visit—and felt that she was so {231} near to me that by stretching out my hand I could have grasped hers. As for her laugh, I won't—I daren't—attempt to describe it, because I should have to say that at one moment it was like the trill of a singing-bird, at another that it seemed not to be the music of her throat, but to bubble up from her very soul; and that, though gospel-truth, would be too terribly mushy. Nor her speaking-voice, because, again, I should have to say that it had something of the quality of the note of the purest of silver bells; nor her eyes, because in mirth they twinkled—thrice-hackneyed simile!—like twin stars, and in expressing sorrow resembled the little rain-pools when the sun has come out after a summer shower; and to say anything of the sort, while it would be equally true, would also be mushy to an insupportable degree. But I will say, because it is just a trifle less trite and banal, and because to do her justice it ought to be said, that the secret and source of her genius lay not in her artistry—which was consummate—but in herself. She was a fine, warm-hearted creature, and her acting was a reflection of the glow of her innermost nature.

"Patches of shadow becloud every career, however brilliant. The tragedy of Lady Bancroft's career was that after Robertson's death no dramatist arose who could, or would, provide her with material worthy of her talent. For years, therefore, she retained her hold {232} upon the public mainly by her 'Polly' in Caste, 'Naomi Tighe' in School, and 'Mary Netley' in Ours. From time to time she acted in new pieces by other authors, which lacked the attraction of Robertson at his best; and then, after giving us a captivating Lady Teazle, and delighting us in revivals of some other old comedies, in order to extend the repertory of the theatre she gallantly subordinated herself, when policy demanded it, to playing parts of minor importance. Towards the end, spurred by a surviving ambition into trying to make bricks without straw—and it must be confessed that she made sounder bricks without straw than did many an actress who was supplied with stacks of that commodity—she took to applying her ready wit to 'writing up' the tiny parts she was condemned to play, until at last her rare appearances became not so much those of an actress engaged in impersonating a character as of a charming lady determined at all costs to be amusing.

"But she had done enough long before then to win a place in stage history with the most illustrious of the comic actresses of the past. Margaret Woffington, Kitty Clive, Frances Abington and Dorothea Jordan had a legitimate successor in Marie Wilton.

"It is a great privilege to comply with your wish. It was in 1878 that I first met Lady Bancroft. She was then about to retire for a holiday from the part of Zicka in Diplomacy. A year later I had the good fortune to meet her on the stage when you engaged me to act in Ours. In the following year I moved with the celebrated company from the Prince of Wales's to the Haymarket Theatre, which had been transformed by you into the most beautiful theatre in London. Here I was cast for a part in School: hence it is my proud boast that I acted with Marie Bancroft in her prime, and was in personal touch with Mary Netley and Naomi Tighe!

"Alas! it is not in me to convey to the present generation the powers of this incomparable actress. The winsomeness, the cajolery, the sprightly vivacity, the joyousness, and the tenderness of it all! Every note could she play upon, and never was any note forced. The means by which she attained these varied and subtle emotions were not to be traced. All appeared so simple, so illusive, that it came home to one as being absolutely true to nature. She was complete mistress of all the resources of her art, and yet those resources were never laid bare, never discoverable {234} by the onlooker. Every movement was simple, direct and natural; every intonation and inflection true; every word that fell from her lips clean cut and distinct. No matter how rapidly a passage was delivered, she was heard even to the farthest seat of the largest theatre.

"Polly Eccles! Why, the very thought of the name makes my face pucker with smiles, and it must be bordering on fifty years ago when first she bewitched me in the part! Yes, 'bewitching Marie Wilton' was a phrase common amongst us in those days, and in truth the witchery was there in full measure, and to overflowing.

"Still in my mind is the beautiful farewell to her on the day when her mortal remains were laid to rest. I was very proud at finding myself one of the four intimate friends chosen to pay their last respects at her burial; and when, towards the close of the memorial service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields which immediately followed it, that inspired man delivered the farewell address (quite the most beautiful of the many I have heard), I was shaken with a deep emotion even to tears.

I will restrict myself to writing of her in one play only, and will choose W. S. Gilbert's dramatic contrast Sweethearts—which, by the way, I had the good fortune to name.

No play of its length has ever excited more attention than Sweethearts. Pages could be filled with the chorus of praise which swelled from the press. One leading critic wrote that Gilbert had determined to test talent by a most difficult stage exercise; and that my wife had been able to prove the studied grace and polished elegance of her dramatic scholarship. From the subject set to her, called Sweethearts, she produced the poem of "Jenny." The success of the creation was complete. No striking or unusually clever writing, no wit, or epigram, or quaint expression of words, no telling scene, or passionate speech, taken separately or in combination, could account for the impression made by the actress. The audience was fascinated by the detail of the portrait, as charming in youth as it was beautiful in age.

An accomplished judge of acting, well acquainted with the European stage, after our retirement from management, said of my wife: "In my humble opinion, the gem of her repertoire is Sweethearts, next to that, Masks and Faces and Caste." Ellen Terry has written that her performance in Sweethearts was unapproachable.

More perfect acting, I venture to say, has not been seen upon our stage. The ars celare {236} artem was at its highest and best; there were tones and touches, hints and suggestions, which were marvellous in the wealth of meaning they conveyed. Of her acting, indeed, it might be said, as one of our old poets proclaimed of the face of his mistress:

"'Tis like the milky way i' the sky,
A meeting of gentle lights without a name!"

I have seen all the finest acting available to me in the last seventy years—since my boyhood—and still delight in the enjoyment of the stage. I can summon noble phantoms from the past, and dwell gladly upon the experiences of more recent days. After searching thought, the most critical remembrance, I can recall no acting more perfect, in my judgment, than my wife's performances in Sweethearts. The creatures of the different acts were, from the first line to the last, absolutely distinct, but equally complete; the one, a portrait of impetuous girlhood, the other of calm maturity. There was not, throughout, one movement of the body, one tone of the voice, one look on the speaking face, to change or amend. There was nothing, it seemed to me, that could in any way be bettered. There shone throughout those gleams of genius which in all art are priceless.

The parts she played upon the stage were the sweet romance of life, but she was ever ready to face its stern realities; and I was proud of her record in the Great War. In spite of advanced years and broken health, she lived through it, with brief absences only, and without a murmur, on the shore of the sea, with all its alarms and risks; but, then, I have always known her to be brave, even when her life was in danger. She was unsparing in hospitality—I recall an occasion when she had the pleasant company of General Sir Arthur Sloggett and Edward Knoblock, who were hung up with their men for the night at Folkestone—and untiring in organising and leading in amusements, helped by her interest in those who were spared, and those who were maimed and wounded, and by the remembrance of those who rest in the grave-fields of Flanders and France, or lie deep down under the sea.

By her own written request, the hour and place of her funeral were kept secret, and were only known to immediate members of her family and four friends who were chosen to represent the calling she had loved and served. These four friends were Arthur Pinero, Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Arthur Chudleigh and Gerald du Maurier.

The funeral was conducted by her friend and {238} mine, the Reverend W. H. Elliott, the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Folkestone, who delivered the Address at the Memorial Service which, immediately afterwards, was held at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields by Canon Edgar Sheppard.

This was the address to which Forbes-Robertson refers in his tribute; and I ask the reader, as a favour to myself, not to pass it by.

"We have come together to remember before God one who, having played her part bravely and earnestly in this scene that men call life, is now hidden from us by the curtain that men call death. We do so in the sure and certain hope that what we know of life here is only the First Act in a great eternal drama, of the which the end is not yet. So often we feel, as one by one our friends depart in this mystery of death, that the curtain has fallen upon a tale that is only half told, its problems unsolved, its meaning undisclosed, its virtues unrewarded. But the play is not done. We wait as Christians for the hour when, at the sounding of celestial trumpets, this great curtain shall uproll once again and reveal to our amazed eyes that last tremendous scene, in which all things shall be made new. Such is death. It is a pause—that is all—and one that does but make more wonderful the music of an endless life.

"I shall not do more than remind you of {239} those many gifts which Lady Bancroft possessed, which the years in their passing seemed to leave almost untouched, which she offered so freely for the public good. After all, the work and significance of any life depend not so much upon its natural endowment as upon the spirit in which that endowment is accepted and used. It is the spirit of the artist that matters, and it is of this in the lifetime of Lady Bancroft that you are thinking, I know, at this hour. Without that eager generous spirit her influence could never have been what it was. I have heard her say more than once that in her youth she was not a very apt pupil in the use of the voice, and indeed that she made very little effort in regard to it, until one day her mother bade her think of the poor man who, tired out with his day's work, spent a hard-earned sixpence to see the play, and then went away disappointed, because he could not hear. From that moment everything for her was changed. And the thought of that man at the back of the gallery—what she could do for him, to make him forget his cares and have his part in the sunshine and merriment of life, to take away the frown and to win the smile—was for her, I believe, the true motive and the abiding inspiration of her art. Such a task, one cannot but think, is very much according to the mind of Him who gives the wayside flower a robe that Solomon might envy, that we may see it and be glad. And there are few {240} things, I imagine, that bring so much comfort at the last, when the time has come to retreat from the active work of the world, and to reflect quietly in the gathering dusk upon what has been and what is yet to be, as the thought that one has done something to make others happy, that now and again one has managed to light a lamp or to kindle a fire in a cold and darksome room, that one has done what one could in one's own way to share the burdens of humanity and to minister to its need.

"I need scarcely say that one of the secrets of such a work as this is a heart which, in spite of all that time and circumstance can do, keeps young. The first test of all art is sincerity. It is impossible, I should suppose, to be in any true sense an interpreter of emotions that one has ceased to feel. To represent in any way the vivacity, the buoyancy, the gaiety that belong to youth, its irrepressible humour, its unquenchable hope, is a task that the years make difficult enough for us all. To attempt it successfully is only for those who in themselves have never yet grown old. Lady Bancroft was a lover of young life. She was beloved by all young people who knew her. And one felt in talking to her that, as her voice had kept its magic, so her nature had preserved within a tired body something of its youth.

"The world saw little of her during these latter years. She lived her life in quiet places, among the trees and flowers in which she {241} delighted, within sight and sound of the ever-changing sea. During these spring months her thoughts had dwelt much on that other world and the mysteries that await us there. She spoke of it often, and expressed to me more than once what seemed rather a curious wish—curious because one so rarely meets it—to sit at a table with learned divines, as she called them, and to hear them discuss together the great matters of God and man, life and death, things present and things to come. She had a most intense desire to know better that Power that holds us and shapes our ends. She wanted to see His work more plainly that she might adore Him more perfectly. She longed to discern His will that she might do it with a ready heart. And, as she talked of all this, deep reverence and great wistfulness came into her voice. She wished so much to understand. Well, she has passed through the Valley now. She has climbed above the mists that hang so closely around human life. She has come out into the light—the light that never was on sea or land—before which all the shadows flee away.

"So we think of her, so we give thanks for her to-day. Men differ much in their ideas of success. For myself, there is one definition that I like very much: 'He has achieved success who has lived long, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the affection of little children; who has filled his niche and {242} accomplished his task; who has left the world a little better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy or by a perfect poem or by a saintly soul; who was looking always for the best in others, and was trying always to give the best he had.' So much of that is true of her whom we commemorate. And we follow her now with our earnest prayers into that state of life into which it has pleased God to call her."

After the end many treasured letters came to me about her. One was written by the Queen, and sent to me by hand; my wife for many years had been given the honour of writing direct to Her Majesty.

"Your loss is indeed great, and the world is poorer by the loss of a brilliant personality. Nobody has ever given greater pleasure to thousands and thousands than she did. Let me tell you a little incident. The first time you and Lady Bancroft came to us in Belgrave Square was one day when my mother was alive; she died forty years ago, so you will not recollect it. At the time she was very ill, very depressed, and scarcely ever smiled. After you and your wife left, my mother turned to me and said: 'What a wonderful woman! She has made my sad heart like a bright garden.'"

I will end by telling of an episode which occurred on the day the old Prince of Wales's Theatre was launched on its eventful career, which, as it happily chanced, was a success from start to finish. The incidents may have interest for the superstitious and afford amusement to the sceptic. My wife's mother was too nervous to attend the first performance, and a married daughter took her for a country drive to distract her anxious thoughts. They followed the road leading to Willesden, then quite rural. All kinds of subjects were begun, to no purpose; the mother's mind was in the little theatre. "Mary"—my wife was christened Marie, but Mrs. Wilton called her Mary—"has always been so fortunate; she seems to have lived a charmed life, but her luck may desert her now, and I am always wondering and dreaming, Emma, what may be the end of this brave but dangerous enterprise." As the words left the mother's lips a corner in the road was reached, and suddenly their eyes encountered a little block of stone with an inscription upon it let into the wall of a row of humble houses facing them. The inscription was: "Mary's Place, Fortune Gate." It seemed like an answer, a prophecy, and it comforted Mrs. Wilton's anxious wonderings.

Later on, we often drove in that direction, to look at what became known to us as "The Stone of Destiny," and when, more than twenty years afterwards, the story appeared in print, we received a letter informing us that the little row was about to be pulled down to make room for larger and better houses to be built in their place. The letter came from one interested in the property—a Mr. Bennett—who kindly asked if we would accept the "talisman"; and he afterwards left it at our door. The stone was taken by us from one home to another; it is now let into the wall of the mausoleum I built for my wife in Brompton Cemetery, where all that is left of her in this world is at rest and where there is room for me.

INDEX

Bancroft, Marie, Lady, character of her acting, 29, 30, 162, 169; testimonial to Sarah Bernhardt, 23; letter from Ouida, 33; voice, 60; letter from Lord Esher, 66; recites in Italian, 93; opens the Scala Theatre, 108; description of The Passing of the Third Floor Back, 115; character, 217; tribute from W. L. Courtney, 218-226; from A. Pinero, 226-232; from Sir J. Forbes-Robertson, 233; acting in Sweethearts, 234-236; work in the War, 237; funeral 237. See Wilton

Bancroft, Sir Squire, date of his birth, 1; attends the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul's, 5; at Marlborough House, 7; presentation to King Edward VII, 8; meeting with him, 9; at Monte Carlo, 11; readings for hospitals, 12, 62; at Sandringham, 12; knighthood conferred, 13; at Marienbad, 14, 16; predilection for a good sermon, 44; "The Art of Speaking and Reading," 47-50; journey to Bradford, 52; views on cremation, 68; member of the Garrick Club, 78; speech at the Royal Academy Banquet, 80; portrait, 94; retires from the Haymarket Theatre, 118,178; member of the M.C.C., 120; compliment on his age, 124; entertains Sir H. Irving, 183-185; address at the Tercentenary of Shakespeare, 207-210

Bernhardt, Sarah, 21, 30; acting of Fedora, 22; letter from, 23; testimonial to, 23; character of her acting, 24

Boucicault, Dion, 106, 132, 146, 168; London Assurance, 169, 171; Irish plays, 169; The Trial of Effie Deans, 170; How She Loves Him, 170; letters from 171, 172; epitaph, 172

Boyd-Carpenter, Dr., Bishop of Ripon, 44; sermons, 45, 51; story of, 46; friendship with the Empress Frederick, 50; date of his birth, 53; entertains the "75's," 54; verses, 54; death, 55

Braddon, Miss, 31; Lady Audley's Secret, 34; number of her novels, 34; method of working, 35. See Maxwell Bradford, 53

Brookfield, Charles, 177; stories of, 177; joint Examiner of Plays, 178; letter from, 178

Clayton, John, 7; character of his acting, 174. See Calthrop Clemenceau, M., 162

Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice, 59; voice, 59; knowledge of languages, 60; president of the Alabama Conference, 61; death, 61

Dickens, Charles, 34, 35, 156; Christmas Carols, 12; Household Words, 73; opinion of Marie Wilton's acting, 221

Edward VII, H.M. King, date of his birth, 1; at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, 2; illness, 5; attends a Thanksgiving Service, 5; at Chelsea Hospital, 6; entertains actors, 7; stories of, 8-11, 13-16; presented with a cigar box, 8; acts of kindness, 11; at Marienbad, 13, 16; characteristics, 14-16; death, 16

Fisher, Viscount, 54, 122; date of his birth, 16; religious views, 123; compliment to Queen Alexandra, 123

Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston, 60; tribute to the memory of Lady Bancroft, 233; at her funeral, 237

Gilbert, Sir W. S., 94, 107, 168; Bab Ballads, 108; plays, 108; comic operas, 108; humorous sayings, 108-111; Sweethearts, 234-236

Irving, Sir Henry, 7, 180; banquet to, 64; portraits, 79, 90, 187, 188; statue, 89; at a fancy-dress ball, 122; in Paris, 181; acting in The Bells, 182; entertained at the Garrick Club, 184; gift from Sir S. Bancroft, 187; spends Christmas Day with him, 183; hospitality, 188; tribute to, 189; sons, 190

Labouchere, Henry, 68, 139; stories of, 140; "Letters of a Besieged Resident," 140; Privy Councillor, 141

Leighton, Lord, President of the Royal Academy, 2; death, 77; remarkable gifts, 77; The Slinger, 78

Mathews, Charles, 149; speech at a banquet, 150; letter from, 151; opinion of Our Boys, 153; character of his acting, 153

Millais, Sir John Everett, 67; President of the Royal Academy, 78; pictures, 78, 79; portraits, 79, 187; landscapes, 79

"Ouida," 31; novels, 32; views on female suffrage, 32; letter from, 33. See Ramée

Pinero, Sir Arthur W., 14, 202; Lords and Commons, 177; The Profligate, 199; knighthood conferred, 200; The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 203-207; The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, 214; The Gay Lord Quex, 214; tribute to the memory of Lady Bancroft, 226-232; at her funeral, 237

Reade, Charles, 172; The Cloister and the Hearth, 102; characteristics, 103; Masks and Faces, 225

Russell, Charles, Lord Chief Justice, personality, 62; tribute to Sir G. Lewis, 63; story of, 64

Shakespeare, W., Hamlet, 155, 158; Othello, 157, 166; Macbeth, 160; Merry Wives of Windsor, 174; Tercentenary, 207; address, 207-210; tribute to, 208

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 125; School for Scandal, 85, 87, 173; The Rivals, 165

Sothern, Edward Askew, 167; accident, 168; practical jokes, 168; Birds of a Feather, 169

Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 59, 94, 108; illness, 11; portrait, 79; personality, 95; funeral, 95

Terry, Ellen, 28, 29, 30, 60, 156, 202, 214, 235; on the characteristics of Charles Reade, 102

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm, 14, 119, 198; manager of the Haymarket, 199; characteristics, 200; knighthood conferred, 200

Victoria, H.M. Queen, attends a Thanksgiving Service, 5; Jubilee, 5; gift to Sir S. Bancroft, 13; voice, 60; Empress of India, 87

Williams, Montagu, 72; career, 73; The Isle of St. Tropez, 73; criminal cases, 73; marriage, 74

Wyndham, Sir Charles, 7, 153, 177, 210; character of his acting, 211; President of the Actors' Benevolent Fund, 212

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