Complete Works of Bram Stoker (633 page)
Read Complete Works of Bram Stoker Online
Authors: Bram Stoker
The first edition
CONTENTS
EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS OF HENRY IRVING
HONOURS FROM DUBLIN UNIVERSITY
“WATERLOO “ — ” KING ARTHUR “ — ” DON QUIXOTE”
CHARLES DICKENS AND HENRY IRVING
IRVING’S LAST RECEPTION AT THE LYCEUM
IRVING’S PHILOSOPHY OF HIS ART
THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
SIR LAURENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.
PERFORMANCES AT SANDRINGHAM AND WINDSOR
PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES
VOLUME I
Sir Henry Irving, as Hamlet in 1893
PREFACE
WERE my book a “life” of Henry Irving instead of a grouping of such matters as came into my own purview, I should probably feel some embarrassment in the commencement of a preface. Logically speaking, even the life of an actor has no preface. He begins, and that is all. And such beginning is usually obscure; but faintly remembered at the best. Art is a completion; not merely a history of endeavour. It is only when completeness has been obtained that the beginnings of endeavour gain importance, and that the steps by which it has been won assume any shape of permanent interest. After all, the struggle for supremacy is so universal that the matters of hope and difficulty of one person are hardly of general interest. When the individual has won out from the huddle of strife, the means and steps of his succeeding become of interest, either historically or in the educational aspect — but not before. From every life there may be a lesson to some one; but in the teeming millions of humanity such lessons can but seldom have any general or exhaustive force. The mere din of strife is too incessant for any individual sound to carry far. Fame, who rides in higher atmosphere, can alone make her purpose heard. Well did the framers of picturesque idea understand their work when in her hand they put a symbolic trumpet.
The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years. The latter are only helpful in the recurrence of opportunities; in the possibilities of repetition. It is not feasible, therefore, adequately to record the progress of his work. Indeed that work in its perfection cannot be recorded; words are, and can be, but faint suggestions of awakened emotion. The student of history can, after all, but accept in matters evanescent the judgment of contemporary experience. Of such, the weight of evidence can at best incline in one direction; and that tendency is not susceptible of further proof. So much, then, for the work of art that is not plastic and permanent. There remains therefore but the artist. Of him the other arts can make record in so far as external appearance goes. Nay, more, the genius of sculptor or painter can suggest — with an understanding as subtle as that of the sun-rays which on sensitive media can depict what cannot be seen by the eye — the existence of these inner forces and qualities whence accomplished works of any kind proceed. It is to such art that we look for the teaching of our eyes. Modern science can record something of the actualities of voice and tone. Writers of force and skill and judgment can convey abstract ideas of controlling forces and purposes; of thwarting passions; of embarrassing weaknesses; of all the bundle of inconsistencies which make up an item of concrete humanity. From all these may be derived some consistent idea of individuality. This individuality is at once the ideal and the objective of portraiture.
For my own part the work which I have undertaken in this book is to show future minds something of Henry Irving as he was to me. I have chosen the form of the book for this purpose. As I cannot give the myriad of details and impressions which went to the making up of my own convictions, I have tried to select such instances as were self-sufficient to the purpose. If here and there I have been able to lift for a single instant the veil which covers the mystery of individual nature, I shall have made something known which must help the lasting memory of my dear dead friend. In the doing of my work, I am painfully conscious that I have obtruded my own personality, but I trust that for this I may be forgiven, since it is only by this means that I can convey at all the ideas which I wish to impress.
As I cannot adequately convey the sense of Irving’s worthiness myself, I try to do it by other means. By showing him amongst his friends, and explaining who those friends were; by giving incidents with explanatory matter of intention; by telling of the pressure of circumstance and his bearing under it; by affording such glimpses of his inner life and mind as one man may of another. I have earnestly tried to avoid giving pain to the living, to respect the sanctity of the dead; and finally to keep from any breach of trust — either that specifically confided in me, or implied by the accepted intimacy of our relations. Well I know how easy it is to err in this respect; to overlook the evil force of irresponsible chatter. But I have always tried to bear in mind the grim warning of Tennyson’s biting words:
“Proclaim the faults he would not show; Break lock and seal; betray the trust; Keep nothing sacred; ‘tis but just The many-headed beast should know.”
For nearly thirty years I was an intimate friend of Irving; in certain ways the most intimate friend of his life. I knew him as well as it is given to any man to know another. And this knowledge is fully in my mind, when I say that, so far as I know, there is not in this book a word of his inner life or his outer circumstances that he would wish unsaid; no omission that he would have liked filled.
Let any one who will read the book through say whether I have tried to do him honour — and to do it by worthy means: the honour and respect which I feel; which in days gone I held for him; which now I hold for his memory.
BRAM STOKER.
4 DURHAM PLACE, CHELSEA, LONDON.
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS OF HENRY IRVING
Earliest Recollection, Dublin,1867 — Captain Absolute — Impersonation — Distinction — Local Criticism — ” Two Roses,” Dublin, 1871 — The Archetype of Digby Grant — Chevalier Wikog
I
THE first time I ever saw Henry Irving was at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, on the evening of ‘Wednesday, August 28, 1867. Miss Herbert had brought the St. James’s Company on tour, playing some of the Old Comedies and Miss Braddon’s new drama founded on her successful novel, LadyAudley’s Secret. The piece chosen for this particular night was The Rivals in which Irving played Captain Absolute.
Forty years ago provincial playgoers did not have much opportunity of seeing great acting, except in the star parts. It was the day of the Stock Companies, when the chief theatres everywhere had good actors who played for the whole season, each in his or her established class; but notable excellence was not to be expected at the salaries then possible to even the most enterprising management. The “ business “ — the term still applied to the minor incidents of acting, as well as to the disposition of the various characters and the entrances and exits — was, of necessity, of a formal and traditional kind. There was no time for the exhaustive rehearsal of minor details to which actors are in these days accustomed. When the bill was changed five or six times a week it was only possible, even at the longest rehearsal, to get through the standard outline of action, and the perfection of the cues — in fact those conditions of the interdependence of the actors and mechanics on which the structural excellence of the play depends. Moreover, the system by which great actors appeared as “ stars “ supported by only one or two players of their own bringing, made it necessary that there should be in the higher order of theatres some kind of standard way of regulating the action of the plays in vogue. It was a matter of considerable interest to me to see, when some fourteen years later Edwin Booth came to play at the Lyceum, that he sent his “ dresser “ to represent him at the earlier rehearsals so as to point out to the stage management the disposition of the characters and general arrangement of matured action to which he was accustomed. I only mention this here to illustrate the conditions of stage work at an earlier period.
This adherence to standard “ business “ was so strict, though unwritten, a rule that no one actor could venture to break it. To do so without preparation would have been to at least endanger the success of the play; and “ preparation “ was the prerogative of the management, not of the individual player. Even Henry Irving, though he had been, as well as a player, the Stage Manager of the St. James’s Company and could so carry out his ideas partially, could not have altered the broad lines of the play established by nearly a century of usage.