Complete Works of Bram Stoker (676 page)

I left word with the hallkeeper to send for me whenever the gentleman came. I did not know who he was or what he wanted: but I did know what “ fatherly or brotherly advice “ meant. At that period of his life the demands made on Irving’s time were fearful. He used to get shoals of letters every day asking for appointments. Nearly all the writers wanted something  —  money, advice, free tickets, engagements for self or friend, to sell work of their own or of others, to read plays, to get him to sit for photographs, to ask him for sittings for pictures. There was no end to them; no limit to the range of their wants. Of all the classes three were naturally within the range of his own work: authors of plays, actors wanting engagements, artists of all kinds. Rarely indeed did any one of secured position come in that way; such usually sent letters of introduction. Even then they had in most cases to see me; it was a physical impossibility that Irving could give the time; rehearsals, production, and his work at night and in the day took up the whole possible working hours.

A little after noon I was sent for; the expected stranger had arrived. In those days the stage door in Exeter Street was very small and absolutely inconvenient. There was comfortable room for Sergeant Barry, the hallkeeper, who was a fine, big, bulky man; two in the room crowded it. Barry waited outside and I went in. The stranger was a young man of medium height, thin, dark haired. His hair rose back from his forehead without parting of any kind, in the way which we in those days associated in our minds with French artists. His face was pale, a little sallow, fine in profile and moulding; a nose of distinction with sensitive nostrils. He had a small beard and moustache. His eyes were dark and concentrated  —  distinctly “ seeing “ eyes. My heart warmed to him at once. He was young and earnest and fine; I knew at a glance that he was an artist, and with a future. Still I had to be on guard. One of my functions at the theatre, as I had come to know after a year of exceedingly arduous work, was to act as a barrier. I was “ the Spirit that denies! “ In fact I had to be. No one likes to say “ no! “  —  a very few are constitutionally able to. I had set myself to help Irving in his work and this was one of the best ways I could help him. He recognised gratefully the utility of the service, and as he trusted absolutely in my discretion I gradually fell into the habit of using my own decision in the great majority of cases. “ First fire! Then enquire! “ was an old saying of an Irish sergeant instructing recruits on sentry duty. He was pretty right!

When Mr. Onslow Ford told me that he wished to make a statuette of Henry Irving as Hamlet I felt that the time for “ advice “ had come, and began to pave the way for a non possumus strong in intention though gentle in expression. The young sculptor, however, had thought the matter all over for himself. He knew the demands on Irving’s time and how vastly difficult it would be to get sittings so many and so long as would be required for the work he had projected. I listened of course and thought better of him and his chance in that he knew his difficulties at the beginning.

Presently he put his hand in his pocket and took out something rolled in paper  —  a parcel about as big as a pork pie. When he had unrolled it heheld up a rough clay model of a seated figure.

“This,” said he, “ is something of the idea. I have been several times in the front row of the stalls watching as closely as I could. One cannot well model clay in the stalls of a theatre. But I did this after the first time, and I have had it with me on each other occasion. I compared it on such opportunities as I had  —  you do keep the Lyceum dark all but the stage; and I think I can see my way. I don’t want to waste Irving’s time or my own opportunities if I am so fortunate as to get sittings!”

That was the sort of artist that needed none of my “ advice “  —  fatherly, brotherly, or otherwise. My mind was already made up.

“Would you mind waiting here a while? “ I asked. In those early days we had only the one office and no waiting room except the stage. He waited gladly, whilst I went back to the Office. Irving had by this time arrived. I told him I had seen Mr. Ford.

“I hope you put it nicely to him that I can’t possibly give him sittings,” he said.

“That is why I came to see if you had arrived.” “ How do you mean,” he asked again. So I said:

“I think you had better see him, and if you think as I do you will give him sittings!”

“Oh, my dear fellow, I can’t. I am really too pressed with work.”

“Well, see him any.way! “ I said; “ I have asked him to wait on purpose.” He looked at me keenly for an instant as though I had somehow “ gone back “ on him. Then he smiled: “ All right. I’ll see him now! “ I brought Onslow Ford. When the two men met, Irving did share my opinion. He did give sittings for a bronze statuette. The result was so fine that he gave quite another series of sittings for him to do the life-size marble statue of “ Irving as Hamlet “ now in the Library of the London Guildhall. It is a magnificent work, and will perhaps best of all his works perpetuate the memory of the great Sculptor who died all too young.

Irving gave many sittings for the statue. With the experience of his first work Onslow Ford could begin with knowledge of the face so necessary in portrait art. I often went with him and it was an intense pleasure to see Onslow Ford’s fine hands at work. They seemed like living things working as though they had their own brains and initiation.

I was even able to be of some little assistance. I knew Irving’s face so well from seeing it so perpetually under almost all possible phases of emotion that I could notice any error of effect if not of measurement. Often either Irving or Onslow Ford would ask me and I would give my opinion. For instance:

“I think the right jowl is not right! “ The sculptor examined it thoughtfully for quite a while. Then he said suddenly:

“Quite right but not in that way. I see what it is! “ and he proceeded to add to the left of the forehead.

After all, effect is comparative; this is one of the great principles of art!

On 31st March last, one of the Academy view days of those not yet Royal Academicians, I went to Onslow Ford’s old studio in Acacia Road, now in possession of his son, Wolfram the painter, to see his portrait of his beautiful young wife, the daughter of George Henschel. Whilst we were talking of old days he unearthed treasures which I did not know existed: casts from life of Henry Irving’s hands.

No other such relics of the actor exist; and these are of supreme interest. Irving had the finest man’s hands I have ever seen. Later on he sent me a cast of one of them in bronze; a rare and beautiful thing which I shall always value. Size, and shape, proportion and articulation were all alike beautiful and distinguished and distinctive. It would be hard to mistake them for those of any other man. With them he could speak. It was not possible to doubt the meaning which he intended to convey. With such models to work on a few lines of pencil or brush made for the actor an enlightening identity of character. The weakness of Charles I., which not all the skill of Vandyck could hide; the vulture grip of Shylock; the fossilised age of Gregory Brewster; the asceticism of Becket.

What, after the face, can compare with the hand for character, or intention, or illustration. It can be an index to the working of the mind.

CHAPTER XLIX

SIR LAURENCE ALMA-TADEMA, R.A.

“Coriolanus “  —  Union of the Arts  —  Archccology  —  The reevolution of the toga  —  Twenty-two years’ delay  —    —  Alma-Tadema’s house  —  A lesson in care  —  “Cymbeline”

I

IN his speech at the close of the second “ season “ at the Lyceum, 25th July 1879, Irving announced amongst the old plays which he intended to do, Coriolanus. He never announced any play, then or thereafter, without having thought it well over and come to some conclusion as to its practicability. In this instance he had already made up his mind to ask Laurence Alma-Tadema to make designs for the play and to superintend its production. The experience of having a free hand in such matters, now that he was his own master in regard to stage productions, had shown to him the great possibilities of effect to be produced by the great masters of technique. There had in the past been great painters who had worked for the stage. Loutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield, for instance, had made fame in both ways of picturesque art, the Gallery and the Stage. But the idea was new of getting specialists in various periods to apply their personal skill as well as their archaeological known ledge to stage effect. Indeed up to that time even great painters were not always historically accurate. A survey of the work of most of the painters of the first half of the Victorian epoch will show such glaring instances of anachronism and such manifest breaches of geographical, ethnological, and technological exactness as to illustrate the extraordinary change for the better in the way of accuracy in the work of to-day. The National Gallery and Holland House have instances of errors in costumes incorrect as to alleged nationality and date. Irving wanted things to be correct, well knowing that as every age has its own suitabilities to its own need that which is accurate is most likely to convince. Alma - Tadema had made a speciality of artistic archeology of Ancient Rome. In working from his knowledge he had reformed the whole artistic ideas of the time. He had so studied the life of old Rome that he had for his own purposes reconstructed it. tip to his time, for instance, the toga was in art depicted as a thin linen robe of somewhat scanty proportions. Look at the picture of Kemble as Cato by Lawrence, or indeed of any ancient Roman by any one. Irving had become possessed of the toga of Macready, and anything more absurd one could hardly imagine; it was something like a voluminous night - shirt. Of course the audience also were ignorant of the real thing, and so it did not matter; the great actor’s powers were unlessened by the common ignorance. In his studying for his art Alma-Tadema had taken from many statues and fragments the folds as well as the texture of the toga. With infinite patience he had gathered up details of various kinds, till at last, with a mind stored with knowledge, he set to himself the task of reconstruction; to restore the toga so that it would answer all the conditions evidenced in contemporary statuary. And the result? Not a flimsy covering which would have become draggle-tailed in a day or an hour of strenuous work; but a huge garment of heavy cloth which would allow of infinite varieties of wearing, and which would preserve the body from the burning heat of the day and the reacting chills of night. Even for the purposes of pictorial art the revived toga made a new condition of things, in all ways harmonising with the accepted facts. There is in record plenty of marble and stone work of old Rome; of work in bronze and brass and iron and copper; in silver and gold; in jewels and crystals  —  in fact in all those materials which do not yield to the ravages of time. All this Alma-Tadema had studied till he knew it. He was familiar with the kinds of marble and stone used in Roman architecture, statuary, and domestic service. The kinds of glass and crystal; of armour and arms; of furniture; of lighting; sacerdotal and public and domestic service. He knew how a velarum should be made and of what, and how adorned; how it should be put up and secured. He was learned of boats and chariots; of carts and carriages, and of the trappings of horses. Implements of agriculture and trade and manufacture and for domestic use were familiar to him. He was a master of the many ceremonial undertakings which had such a part in Roman life.  In fact, Alma-Tadema’s artistic reconstruction was like that of Owen; he reconciled fragments and brought to light proof of the unities and harmonies and suitabilities of ancient life.

II

Irving felt that with such an artist to help- arch2eologist, specialist, and genius in one  —  he would be able to put before an audience such work as would not only charm them by its beauty and interest them in its novelty, but would convince by its suitability. For there is an enormous aid to conviction in a story when those who follow it accept from the beginning in good faith the things of common knowledge and use which are put before them. I often say myself that the Faith which still exists is to be found more often in a theatre than in a church. When an audience go into a playhouse which is not connected in their minds with the habit of deceit they are unconsciously prepared to accept all things ab initio in the simple and direct manner of childhood. When therefore what they see is vraisemblable  —  with the manifest appearance of truth to something  —  all the powers of intellectual examination and working habit come into force in the right direction.

In that summer of 1879 when Irving announced Coriolanus he also announced several other plays.

It was not, of course, his intention to produce these plays all at once but one by one as occasion served. As has been seen, the putting on of The Merchant of Venice and its phenomenal success shelved or postponed most of the plays then announced; but Irving did not lose sight of Coriolanus. One morning in the following winter, whilst Sir Laurence Alma-

Tadema, as he has himself told me, was in his studio in his house at North Gate, Regent’s Park, he heard the sound of sleigh bells coming over the bridge. Naturally his thoughts went back to The Bells and Irving, for no one who has seen the play can hear the sound unexpectedly without the thought. He heard the sound stop at his own gate; and whilst wondering what it could mean Irving was announced. He was accompanied by Mr. W. L. Ashmead Bartlett, who afterwards took his present name on his marriage to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Irving at once entered upon the subject of his visit; and the great painter was charmed to entertain it. As was usual with him when working on a new play, Irving had a rough scenario in his mind; and he and Alma-Tadema spoke of it then and there. Irving could tell him of the scenes he wanted and give some hints not only as to their practical use but of the ideas which he wished them to convey. When he had gone Alma-Tadema took down his Shakespeare and began his own study of the play. The continuous success of The Merchant of Venice gave him ample time, and his studies and designs were unique and lovely.