David Irving

“ No man was ever more written of or talked about in America than Henry Irving; probably no man was ever more misrepresented as to his art and his life. A monster, according to his enemies; an angel, if you took the verdict of his friends; he was a mystery to untravelled American journalists, and an enigma to the great play-going public of the American cities. They were told that people either loved or hated him at first sight. American tourists even carried home contradictory reports of him, though the majority were enthusiastic in praise of him as an actor and as a man. ”

“ Irving is simply thrilling. The tones, the glances, the approach, the embrace, lift up the words into new light, keen and tender as the brightness of a summer morning. The words themselves are by no means striking, are, indeed, the merest commonplace, but, uttered with the natural pathos of a consummate actor, they carry the play to its most subduing climax. The humanity and the genius satisfy expectation in its most eager and jealous temper. Failure at that point would have ruined the play. Which was better, Lear or Cordelia, in that critical action? ”

“ Irving has done more for dramatic art all round than any actor of our time; and it is open to serious question whether any artist of any time has done as much. Not alone on the stage, but in front of it, at the very entrance of his theatre, the dignified influence of his management is felt. Every department has for its head a man of experience and tact, and every person about the place, from the humblest messenger to the highest officer and actor, seems to carry about with him a certain pride of association with the management. ”

“ But after all, as was said of Milton in a different connection, Irving has worn "the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients." His kinship to them in temper of thought and feeling was closer than his resemblance in manner. Like Addison and Goldsmith, he wins his audience through sheer charm of personality. To open one of his books is like meeting a congenial stranger. You like his looks at first glance, you feel somehow that he likes yours; and while you may be hesitating about advances, he is at your side, and there is nothing more to be said. ”

“ Then, convicted and condemned, the murderer dies under the violent shock to his nerves of this retributive force of imagination,—dies while the church-bells are ringing for his daughter’s marriage,—his last agonizing words, “Take the rope from my throat!”
Only a daring artist would undertake such a part; only a great one could succeed in it. Most of the second and last acts is a monologue; and, in a country like America, which is accustomed to rapidity of thought and action, Irving was courageous in risking the result of so serious a strain upon the mind of a highly strung audience. ”

“ Irving has been made by himself alone. He became popular as an actor in a stock company; his popularity transformed him into a star and a manager; and, as a star and a manager, he has widened, deepened, and improved his popularity. He has won his position fairly, by his own talents and exertions, against overwhelming odds, and he has nobody to thank for it but himself, in spite of the theories which we have exploded.—Spirit of the Times, New York, Oct. 27, 1883.
[5] Speculation in theatre tickets seems now to have reached its height. ”

“ Irving is honored with a few of these attendants upon fame. If the people who regard his reputation as a thing that has been “worked” could have visited New York a week before his arrival they could not have failed to be delighted to see how much was being done against him, and how little for him. An ingenious and hostile pamphleteer was in evidence in every bookseller’s window. Villainous cheap photographs of “actor and manager” were hawked in the streets. Copies of an untruthful sketch of his career, printed by a London weekly, were circulated through the mails. ”

“ Irving was an idealist, fearless of standing by his ideals in any company. He was a scholar in knowledge as in expression, and as an actor had already attained to a great height. His work, like the man himself, was always original. ”

“ He, since Kean, most fully realises the author’s idea of the style of man best suited to fill the part—‘a man of sable hue, and one in whose soul there’s something o’er which his melancholy sits and broods.’ But the secret of Irving’s success lies in his fine annihilation of self—a rare quality among players—combined with an originality which triumphs over tradition. There is a marked naturalness about his acting of this character, bottomed on enthusiasm. Like genius, he seems at times to have the power of kindling his own fire into any degree of intensity. ”

“ It has sometimes been thought that the acting of Henry Irving is seen at its best in those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias, Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and spiritual, are sombre. ”

“ I have sometimes wondered what I should have accomplished without Henry Irving. I might have had "bigger" parts, but it doesn't follow that they would have been better ones, and if they had been written by contemporary dramatists my success would have been less durable. "No actor or actress who doesn't play in the 'classics'—in Shakespeare or old comedy—will be heard of long," was one of Henry Irving's sayings, by the way, and he was right. ”

“ The data of Irving's literary achievements have been brought near a conclusion; what remains to be said may now deal less with what he wrote, and more with what he did and was. It is luckily unnecessary to try for a sharply drawn distinction between his popularity as a writer and as a man. In his home, in society, and in literature the single charm of his personality had made him beloved in the same way. And he had become, in the best sense of the term, a public character. For many years his name had been better known abroad than that of any other living American ”

“ We must be loyal to each other. That is to be helpful, and it is to the honour of our art and our calling!”
There he stopped and turned away. No one said a word. For a short space they stood still and then melted slowly away in silence, like the multitude of a dream.
VI The fourth occasion was on the night of March 27 when Irving, having been taken with a serious cold, was unable to play—the first time he had been out of the bill for seven years! The note in my diary runs:
“Stage very dismal. Ellen Terry met me in the passage and began to cry! I felt very like joining her!” ”

“ Irving’s own performance, it has been already so elaborately criticised and described, from his business with the supposed pictures in the closet scene down to his use of ‘peacock’ for ‘paddock,’ that little remains to be said; nor, indeed, does a Lyceum audience require the interposition of the dramatic critic in order to understand or to appreciate the Hamlet of this great actor. I call him a great actor because he brings to the interpretation of a work of art the two qualities which we in this century so much desire, the qualities of personality and of perfection. ”

“ It inspired me, however, with no ill will toward the artist, for it must be said of Mr. Irving that his aberrations are not of a vulgar quality, and that one likes him, somehow, in spite of them. But one's liking takes the form of making one wish that really he had selected some other profession than the histrionic. Nature has done very little to make an actor of him. ”

“ In the second act the curtain fell on the conclusion of one of the grandest results that any actor has achieved in New York for years. A continued succession of plaudits came from all parts of the house. The performance was profoundly conceived, acted out with infinite care, elaborated with rare skill, and invested with naturalness that deserved all praise. Irving, in his finale, merited fully every word that has been written of his power, intensity, and dramatic excellence; and he was enthusiastically called before the curtain, in order that the audience might assure him of that verdict. ”

“ An intellectual audience—eager, alert, responsive, quick to see the intention almost before it was suggested, and to recognize each and every point, however subtle and delicate, of the actor’s art—seemed to awaken all his latent fire, and nerve him to a free and bounteous utterance of his own spirit; and every sensitive mind in that numerous and brilliant throng most assuredly felt the presence of a royal nature, and a great artist in acting. Upon Mr. Irving’s first entrance the applause of welcome was prodigious, and it was long before it died away. ”

“ He rarely enters a theatre; in fact, he could count on his fingers the times he has done so during the last twenty years. Life is his stage, men and women its characters, his surroundings the scenes. He does not wish a State theatre, and thinks Irving has done more for the stage than any man in any time. He has the greatest love for his old master, and considers Irving’s Hamlet the “most intelligent performance of the age.” He waxes warm on the subject of Irving’s “magnetic touch,” which influences all that great actor’s work. ”

“ Irving, when particularly moved, likes to tramp about. Whenever the situation allows it he does so upon the stage. Probably recalling the way in which pit and gallery rose at him—and stalls and dress-circle, too, for that matter—on his farewell night at the Lyceum, he paces about the deck, all the interviewers making rapid mental note of his gait, and watching for some startling peculiarity that does not manifest itself.
“He has not got it; why, the man is as natural and as straight and capable as a man can be,” says one to another. ”

“ Only once does he stand at bay and front his destiny with a defiance of desperate will; and even then it is for [Pg 364] the woman's sake rather than for his own. Henry Irving's acting made clear and beautiful that condition of temperament. A noble and affectionate nature, shipwrecked, going to pieces, doomed, but making one last tremendous though futile effort to avert the final and inevitable ruin—this ideal was made actual in his performance. ”

“ Everybody laughs. Barrett and Florence look on curiously. Bram Stoker, Mr. Irving’s acting manager, cannot disguise his anxiety. Loveday, his stage-manager and old friend, is amused. He has heard many curious things about America from his brother George, who accompanied the famous English comedian, Mr. J. L. Toole (one of Irving’s oldest, and perhaps his most intimate, friend) , on his American tour. Neither Loveday nor Stoker has ever crossed the Atlantic before. They have talked of it, and pictured themselves steaming up the North river into New York many a time ”

“ The result is, that every play to which this student-actor lends his attention becomes correct and faithful, historically and artistically. He remains in Chicago for another week, and those of our citizens who love art in its highest sense have now an opportunity that is not likely to be offered again for studying the man whose name is a household word in England, and whose fame is world-renowned. Miss Terry likewise is winning well-earned laurels, while the entire company of English actors are Mr. Irving’s continuous and carefully chosen support, and rank high in their respective rôles. ”

“ Open by chance and read almost anywhere in his score of books,—it may be the "Tour on the Prairies," the familiar dream of the Alhambra, or the narratives of the brilliant exploits of New World explorers; surrender yourself to the flowing current of his transparent style, and you are conscious of a beguilement which is the crowning excellence of all lighter literature, for which we have no word but "charm."
The consensus of opinion about Irving in England and America for thirty years was very remarkable. He had a universal popularity rarely enjoyed by any writer. ”

“ Washington Irving was by no means such a man; he was kind-hearted to the last degree; and yet, remembering as we do that sly look of humor which lurked always in the corner of his eye, we cannot believe but that in his freer moments he has pricked through many a bag of bombast, and made dashing onslaught upon noisy literary pretension. Of all this, however, we find nothing in the volumes before us,—nothing in his own books. Always, in his contact with the world, he is genial; the face of every friend is beautiful to him; every acquaintance is at the least comely ”

“ She is the one actress who cannot be criticised; for is she not Ellen Terry?”
[13] All that has been said in recognition of Mr. Irving’s intellectual leadership, and of his puissant genius and beautiful and thorough method of dramatic art, was more than justified by his impersonation of Louis XI., given, yesterday afternoon, before an audience mainly composed of actors, at the Star Theatre. He has not, since the remarkable occasion of his first advent in America, acted with such a noble affluence of power as he displayed in this splendid and wonderful effort. ”

“ Sensitive as the author always was with regard to the interpretation of his creations in the [214] theatre, that inimitable and realistic stage-portrait would surely have satisfied him.
Never, it may safely be said, has any actor been more popular than Henry Irving, not only with the public but with members of his own profession. That he deserves his popularity no one who has studied his remarkable career will deny; that he has won it "facing fearful odds" his most intimate friends and ardent admirers must candidly admit. ”