KAND LAURENCE IRVING 
 

 
 
" H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
"H. B.' 
 
"H.B." and Laurence 
 Irving 
 
 By 
 
 Austin Brereton 
 
 With Eight Illustrations 
 
 London 
 Grant Richards Ltd. 
 
 mdccccxxii 
 

 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED 
 EDINBURGH 
 
Contents 
 
 PART I. "H.B." 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD . . . . .15 
 
 II. OXFORD . . . . .26 
 
 III. THE STAGE OR THE BAR . . .40 
 
 IV. " YOUNG HAMLET " . . 53 
 V. MARRIAGE AND LONDON . . .62 
 
 VI. CRICHTON AND JEFFREYS . . .68 
 
 VII. IN AMERICA . . . . .81 
 
 VIII. His OWN MANAGER . . . .92 
 
 IX. MATHIAS IN LONDON . . . . 101 
 
 X. HAMLET ..... 120 
 
 XI. AUSTRALIA AND HOME . . . 139 
 
 XII. AUTHOR AND CRIMINOLOGIST . . . 149 
 
 PART II. LAURENCE 
 
 XIII. MARLBOROUGH TO RUSSIA . . . 165 
 
 XIV. ACTOR AND AUTHOR .... 172 
 XV. SUCCESS IN SHAKESPEARE . . . 177 
 
 XVI. BRIEUX AND DOSTOIEVSKY . . . 183 
 
 XVII. HAMLET AND SKULE .... 189 
 
 XVIII. TYPHOON AND CANADA . . . 199 
 
 XIX. A TRAGIC END . . . .216 
 
 APPENDIX ..... 227 
 
 INDEX . . . . . 235 
 
 5 
 
 516881 
 
Illustrations 
 
 " H.B." ..... Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "HARRY" ...... 48 
 
 THE BROTHERS . . . V ' . .96 
 
 HARRY AS HAMLET . . * . .128 
 
 "H.B." AND LAURENCE .... 144 
 With the Bust of their Father 
 
 LAURENCE IRVING . . . . 163 
 
 LAURENCE AS CHARLES SURFACE ... ' . . 176 
 
 LAURENCE AS RICHARD LOVELACE . . .192 
 
 The portrait of " Harry " is from a photograph by Elliott and Fry, 
 that of The Brothers by Window and Grove, of Laurence Irving 
 by J. Beagles and Co., of Laurence as Charles Surface by 
 W. and D. Downey, of Laurence as Richard Lovelace by 
 Norman May and Co., Cheltenham. 
 
 6 
 
Introduction 
 
 ON the afternoon of a summer day, nearly 
 thirty-nine years ago, a lonely man sat in 
 his study awaiting the arrival of his two 
 sons. He was at the zenith of his career. He had 
 surmounted vast difficulties, he had conquered 
 where thousands of other men would have been 
 discouraged and failed. The old world was at his 
 feet. He was on the eve of winning triumph after 
 triumph in the new. But his thoughts just then 
 had a tinge of sadness in them. His great victory 
 in the world, his pride of place for he was at the 
 head of his calling had been purchased at a price 
 that cannot be estimated. Despite his achieve- 
 ments, although the adulation which he constantly 
 received would have turned the brain of one of 
 lesser calibre, he was then, as ever, a lonely man. 
 Even his very rooms, his abode for over a quarter 
 of a century, situated as they were in the heart of 
 the most fashionable street in the world, were dull, 
 though artistic. The sun hardly ever touched 
 them, and what daylight there was had to find its 
 way in through windows either heavily curtained 
 or of stained glass. Suitable though they were to 
 the occupant, they would now be considered ex- 
 tremely uncomfortable and somewhat depressing. 
 Their unstudied richness, their artistic profusion, 
 7 
 
8 "' '- Introduction 
 
 typical of those Bohemian days, were wanting 
 in something which struck the visitor strangely 
 that is, the visitor who came in the morning or 
 afternoon. At night, when the curtains were 
 drawn, the gas and candles lit, the host was at his 
 best in his element, so to speak. The feeling 
 that then permeated him and communicated itself 
 to his guests was eminently one of cheerfulness, 
 of brilliancy, of satisfaction. In the daytime, the 
 dominant manner of the inhabitant of these Bond 
 Street rooms kept off, to some extent, the feeling 
 that would creep in upon the friendly and sensitive 
 visitor. It was the absence of a woman's hand. The 
 rooms were distinctly a man's rooms. There was no 
 sign or token that a loving woman ever crossed the 
 portal. There was no feminine touch about them. 
 On that afternoon in 1883, Henry Irving was 
 in the hey-day of his career. He had just ter- 
 minated a season of marvellous success at the 
 Lyceum Theatre. Much Ado About Nothing had 
 enjoyed a run of eight months, over two hundred 
 performances, and farewell weeks at the Lyceum, 
 devoted to repertoire, in preparation for the first 
 tour of America, had drawn admiring crowds to 
 Wellington Street. The actor had entertained 
 the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII.) 
 to supper on the stage of the Lyceum. The Lord 
 Chief Justice of England had presided at a banquet 
 which was attended by over five hundred of the 
 distinguished men of the day. Yet was Henry 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 Irving a lonely man. As he waited for the coming 
 of his boys, his mind went back to his struggling 
 days, when he married the brown-haired girl, with 
 the Irish grey eyes, who became the mother of 
 Henry and Laurence, his only children. 
 
 When Henry and Laurence came to their 
 father's rooms on that June afternoon, although 
 they were welcomed and made much of what 
 curious feelings, what sad memories, must have 
 surged through the breast of the father ! they 
 were somewhat constrained in their manner, a little, 
 perhaps, disdainful. So it seemed to one who, by 
 a curious chance, was a spectator at this strange 
 meeting between the father and his children. 
 The manner of the boys is not to be wondered at, 
 for they only knew of their father by name and by 
 the echo of his fame which reached them in their 
 schoolroom. This glimpse of him could have given 
 them but little insight into his real nature ; for it 
 was only a glimpse, a brief visit of formality to a 
 parent who was far removed from their own lives. 
 
 The reason for this unhappy state of affairs is to 
 be found in a story which, unfortunately, is a com- 
 mon one an ill-assorted marriage. Henry Irving 
 married, on isth July 1869, Florence O'Callaghan, 
 daughter of Surgeon-General O'Callaghan. For 
 reasons which need not be entered upon, and 
 may be put down to " incompatibility of temper," 
 the husband left his domicile shortly after the 
 birth of his younger son and lived for a while 
 
io Introduction 
 
 with his manager, the father of the Bateman 
 family, first of all at Kensington Gore and 
 then at Rutland Gate. He subsequently, for a 
 little while, occupied chambers in Bruton Street, 
 Bond Street. He then took the rooms in Grafton 
 Street, Bond Street, which he occupied for many 
 years, until 1899, when he was advised by his 
 doctors to remove to sunnier quarters, in Stratton 
 Street, Piccadilly. It was not until 1879, when a 
 deed of separation was entered into between the 
 actor and his wife, that the final parting* came. 
 The mother had the care of the children until they 
 went to college. Harry resided in her house, 
 whenever he was in London, until his marriage. 
 Her house was also the home of Laurence whenever 
 he was in England. 
 
 The boys grew up without intimate knowledge 
 of their father, but, happily, they came in due 
 season to recognise his worth. At the time of my 
 meeting them in their father's rooms, I was just 
 finishing the first biography of Henry Irving, a 
 volume which, with all the ardour and courage of 
 youth, I had conceived and written with a view to 
 publication simultaneously with his first appear- 
 ance in the United States. Strangely enough, 
 after the lapse of twenty-five years, a much more 
 ambitious undertaking, my Life of my great 
 friend, was published. Still more strangely, it has 
 fallen to my lot to write the lives of his softs, who 
 were also friends of mine. I knew Harry Irving, 
 
Introduction 1 1 
 
 the public's beloved " H. B. ," better than Laurence, 
 for, by a chain of curious circumstances, I became 
 his guide, philosopher, and friend for three years, 
 during his management of the Queen's Theatre, 
 seeing him daily and nightly during almost all that 
 time. Again, during the last year or so before his 
 death, we had many long meetings, when we 
 discussed the subjects in which he was most 
 interested. Although I was not brought into 
 such continuous contact with Laurence, he was 
 a simple character and was easy to know and 
 understand. It was my good fortune to be able 
 to do him a signal service in connection with 
 Typhoon, and in that way I was brought closely 
 into his life. 
 
 I had no personal acquaintance with Lady 
 Irving until after the death oi Harry. It then 
 became necessary for me to consult her about his 
 childhood. Later on, when I decided to tell the 
 story of Harry and Laurence, in lieu (as originally 
 intended) of the memoir of the elder brother only, 
 it again was necessary for me to see the mother of 
 the boys. It would be extremely ungracious if I 
 did not acknowledge the willingness with which 
 Lady Irving acceded to my request. On two 
 occasions, when she placed at my service all the 
 treasured souvenirs of her children, I spent many 
 hours in her house at Folkestone. And her 
 memory, wonderfully keen and correct, helped in 
 many ways. For she was the only person who 
 
12 Introduction 
 
 could enlighten me about the early years of Harry 
 and Laurence. Putting all else aside, she con- 
 sidered that I was the friend of her sons, and, in 
 that spirit, she received me with frank courtesy 
 and an open mind. I am grateful. 
 
 Lady Irving was present in Westminster Abbey 
 when the incinerated remains of Henry Irving 
 were interred in Poets' Corner. Had she been 
 there two days later, she would have heard Canon 
 Duckworth say of her husband : " We can thank 
 God from our hearts when a man of noble nature 
 attains the summit of the actor's calling, and from 
 that summit to which rare natural gifts and un- 
 ceasing toil have raised him invited the world to 
 share his enlightened aims, to give its patronage 
 only to what is intellectually good and morally 
 sound in the art he loves. . . . He had the 
 magnetic charm which drew and held men of 
 every rank and vocation. In him the scholar's 
 fastidious taste and aversion from inferior work 
 was combined with a character of peculiar loftiness 
 and refinement, which gave its consistent prefer- 
 ence to whatever is lovely and of good report in 
 human conduct." Such was the father of Harry 
 and Laurence Irving. 
 
Part I 
 " H.B. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 THERE are many examples in stage history, 
 so far as it applies in what, without 
 offence, may be called the second rank of 
 actors, of hereditj'. In modern times especially 
 there are many families which could be cited in 
 this connection. Conspicuous examples are to be 
 seen in the Farrens, the Batemans, the Comptons 
 and so on. The great actors of the past did not 
 leave any descendants equally great. Betterton 
 and Garrick were childless. Edmund Kean's son 
 was a good archaeologist, but not a great actor. 
 Macready's son is a soldier. It looked, for once, 
 after the death of Henry Irving, as though his sons 
 would be, although not so great as he, worthy 
 successors. So they were until death cut them off. 
 His elder son inherited talent from both his parents, 
 and there can be no question that had he devoted 
 himself entirely to literature he would have made 
 a name for himself bigger than he did. On the 
 other hand, Laurence had not so much the literary 
 gift as that of the player. 
 
 Their maternal uncle, who was, in some literary 
 respects, the forerunner of Irving the second, was 
 John Cornelius O'Callaghan, who died, at the age 
 of seventy-eight, in 1883. 
 15 
 
1 6 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 He was a tall, dark, strong man, " who spoke 
 a dialect compounded, apparently, in equal parts 
 from Johnson and Cobbett, in a voice too loud for 
 social intercourse. ' I love/ he would say, ' not 
 the entremets of literature, but the strong meat of 
 sedition/ or, ' I make a daily meal on the smoked 
 carcase of Irish history.'" So wrote Charles 
 Gavan Duffy. Apart from much journalistic 
 work, chiefly in the columns of The Nation, John 
 Cornelius wrote two books, both of which in- 
 volved an almost superhuman attention to detail 
 and a marvellous capacity for mastering facts 
 and incidents and marshalling them in due order. 
 In historical knowledge of everything concerning 
 Ireland, it is doubtful if he had a rival. It was 
 supposed that he knew the whereabouts of every 
 historical manuscript in Europe, and it was said 
 of him that, " living as he did amongst the 
 ancients, he had their sayings always on his tongue, 
 and would walk into a friend's drawing-room 
 quoting Hannibal in such a way as to give the 
 impression that he had just left that General at 
 the gate." His first important volume, The Green 
 Book, or Gleanings from the Writing Desk of a 
 Literary Agitator, in which he controverted many 
 of the statements made by the Orange Party 
 against Irish Catholics, created such an interest 
 that Daniel O'Connell, at a meeting of the Repeal 
 Association in 1841, proposed that " six copies of 
 the book be purchased in order that, being stamped 
 
Childhood 17 
 
 with the seal of their approbation, the attention 
 of the public might be called to it and it might 
 thus obtain the circulation which it so eminently 
 deserved. His other most learned book was The 
 History of the Irish Brigades in the Service of 
 France, from the Revolution in Great Britain 
 and Ireland under James II. to the Revolution 
 in France under Louis XVI. 
 
 The author of these historical volumes, like all 
 true Irishmen, had a mighty pride in his ancestry. 
 In a footnote in The Green Book he tells us that 
 among the chief in rank of the great Catholics 
 of the counties of Cork and Kerry " were the 
 O'Callaghans, descended from the celebrated con- 
 queror of the Danes, Callaghan Cashel, King 
 of Munster, who died about A.D. 952." John 
 O 'Callaghan, the father of John Cornelius, was 
 one of the first Catholics who were admitted to 
 the profession of attorney in Ireland after the 
 partial relaxation of the penal laws of 1793. His 
 youngest son, Daniel, the maternal grandfather of 
 Henry Brodribb and Laurence Irving, served in 
 the navy, and then joined, in 1842, the East India 
 Company. He saw service with the field hospital 
 of the army of the Sutlej, and was engaged in the 
 Chinese War of 1860. Three years previously he was 
 surgeon in chief medical charge of foot artillery 
 at the Siege of Delhi, and received the medal 
 and clasp. In 1872 he retired, with the rank of 
 Surgeon-General. He married Elizabeth Walsh, 
 
1 8 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 daughter of George Walsh, of the Foreign Office, 
 of a King's County family. His wife was " remark- 
 able for her intellect, no less than her personal 
 beauty. " The Surgeon-General died in 1900, at 
 the age of eighty-five. He was a frequent con- 
 tributor to the Press in India, and at one time was 
 on the staffs of the leading Calcutta papers. 
 
 Young Henry Irving had, like his distinguished 
 uncle, the capacity for quick assimilation. This 
 was shown in the days of his childhood in a 
 marked degree. Those days were mostly passed 
 in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park and Holland 
 Park. 
 
 He was born on Friday, 5th August 1870, at 
 5 Linden Grove, Bayswater ; his brother was born 
 in the year following, on the 2ist of December. 
 The boys were educated together and did not part 
 until they had reached man's estate. In 1879, 
 they were at a preparatory school in Hereford 
 Square, South Kensington, the master whereof 
 wrote to their mother a report which is of interest 
 because it foreshadows the coming years. It is 
 dated in April, when Harry, as he is called in it, 
 was not nine years of age : 
 
 " Harry has continued to give, in all his lessons, 
 daily proofs of his great cleverness ; by very few 
 boys can knowledge be acquired so easily and 
 rapidly as by him. He is consequently a great 
 favourite with all his masters. Upon the whole, 
 however, Laurence has this term done even better 
 
Childhood 19 
 
 than Harry. He has a thoughtfulness, quiet am- 
 bition and a determination which are gradually 
 carrying him to the front, and will, I think, help 
 him there. With his fellow-pupils he is not only a 
 great favourite, but a great authority/' 
 
 How strangely this reads and how it tells the 
 after-life of the brothers ! The writer of the re- 
 port deserves credit for his discernment. It is 
 evident that young Harry had been well grounded 
 at the girls' school to which, when a mite of three, 
 he had been sent. This was at 4 Coleherne Road, 
 not far from 14 Wharfdale Street, the birthplace 
 of his brother. 
 
 From Hereford Square, the boys were sent to 
 Lint on House School, n Holland Park Avenue, 
 the director of which was the late James Hardie. 
 Harry and Laurence were pupils here from 1879 
 to 1882, going through the usual routine and 
 winning the average number of marks. During 
 this period their mother's home was at 10 Gilston 
 Road, The Boltons, which, after the death of Sir 
 Henry Irving, became the residence of Mr and Mrs 
 Laurence Irving, Lady Irving removing to Kent. 
 Harry always took a keen interest in the school 
 at Linton House. Within three years of his death 
 he distributed the prizes there. As he stood on 
 that occasion he was able to see the bedroom 
 which he and his brother had occupied, and his 
 speech was full of affectionate regard for those 
 days of his boyhood. 
 
20 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 In those early days Harry and Laurence 
 used to entertain their headmaster and fellow- 
 boarders with their acting. On one occasion they 
 went farther afield than Linton House in the 
 display of that histrionic talent which they had 
 inherited. On the 3oth of June 1882 there was 
 an entertainment for the purpose of endowing a cot 
 in a Chelsea hospital for sick and incurable children. 
 Appropriately enough, children provided a large 
 part of the performance, although they had the 
 support of their elders Mrs Kendal, Arthur Cecil, 
 and John L. Toole being the best known. The 
 chief part of the children's contribution was the 
 screen scene from The School for Scandal, acted by 
 a " Lilliputian cast " trained by a grand old actress, 
 Mrs Chippendale. There was a female Sir Peter, 
 Josephine Webling, whose sister, Peggy, was Lady 
 Teazle. Even before he was twelve years of age 
 Harry was marked down for villains, for to him 
 was allotted Joseph Surface, Laurence being the 
 Charles. On the next day the representation was 
 repeated twice by the precocious youngsters. 
 The Knightsbridge performance was the first public 
 one of the brothers. They had previously taken 
 part in H.M.S. Pinafore at the house of their 
 father's friend, Edmund Routledge, in Clanricarde 
 Gardens. The characters were taken by children 
 six Routledges, three Beerbohms, and the Irvings. 
 Master Harry was cast for the part of Captain 
 Corcoran. He retained a vivid recollection of this 
 
Childhood 21 
 
 childish effort. " It is said/' he related in later 
 years, " that I was lazy and quite incompetent, 
 and for those reasons I was discharged during 
 the rehearsals of the piece. However, I remember 
 experiencing a feeling of great satisfaction when I 
 was asked to come back into the part, owing to the 
 fact that they couldn't find anyone else to play 
 it. There was another amateur dramatic perform- 
 ance a short time later at St George's Hall, and 
 in this I played Master Bardell, the play being 
 Pickwick. I was a somewhat weedy child and 
 had to be padded for the part." From Linton 
 House the boys were sent to Marlborough, where 
 they passed some five or six useful, if uneventful, 
 years. 
 
 Among her most treasured memories of these 
 days of childhood and youth the mother cherishes 
 that of the affection which the boys had for each 
 other an affection, be it said, which lasted until 
 the end. They literally went hand in hand 
 together. Laurence looked up to his brother with 
 awe, as well as affection. At a party from which 
 some ailment had prevented Harry from attend- 
 ing, Laurence was given some sweets. With a 
 solemn face, he carefully divided them. " I shall 
 keep some for Harry/' he said. On another occa- 
 sion, when spelling-bees were the rage, the mother 
 took the boys to a theatre, where questions on the 
 all-important topic were asked from the stage. 
 The answers were not very satisfactory. Laurence 
 
22 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 got so excited at the dullness of the replies that, 
 jumping on his seat and waving his arms frantic- 
 ally, he shouted out, " Harry can spell/' a brotherly 
 tribute which drew forth the admiration of all 
 around him. 
 
 Not only were the children instructed in dancing 
 and music Harry danced a sailor's hornpipe at 
 the age of three on the stage of the Haymarket 
 Theatre, and he excelled in a minuet in which he 
 had been taught by the elder D'Auban but they 
 revelled, strange to say, in mock trials. These 
 chiefly took place at the house of the vicar of 
 Leigh, the Rev. Hugh Collum, near Tunbridge, where 
 the mother, with her sons, visited in the holidays. 
 The wife of the vicar was a friend whom she had 
 known from girlhood. The most favoured of 
 these mock trials was one in which a man was sup- 
 posed to have been knocked down by a carriage. 
 The boys were in turn counsel for the prosecution 
 and the defence. It is remarkable that thus early 
 in life Harry should have been interpreting a line 
 of thought which developed strongly in later years. 
 It is also a curious coincidence that he should 
 have gone to a fancy-dress entertainment at the 
 Mansion House as Hamlet, a character in which 
 he was profoundly interested throughout his career. 
 At Leigh, the boys, assisted by the vicar's daughter, 
 Miss Rita Collum, and Rowland, a son of J. B. 
 Buckstone, performed scenes from Shakespeare 
 and Sheridan. In 1884 " Mr Henry Irving, Jun./' 
 
Childhood 23 
 
 as he appeared on the programme, recited The 
 Erl King and Laurence recited The Fall of 
 Poland. 
 
 The boys had some experience in real acting. 
 They were taken on occasion to the Lyceum 
 Theatre and here they formed a friendship which 
 remained unbroken. In the year 1880, their father 
 revived Dion Boucicault's version of the weird 
 story by Alexandre Dumas, Les Freres Corses. 
 The melodrama was preceded by a new one-act 
 play, the author of which was Arthur W. Pinero. 
 The manager of the Lyceum was much commended 
 in the Press for having abolished the old-fashioned, 
 noisy farce which generally preceded the principal 
 piece of the evening. Mr Pinero, an actor at the 
 Lyceum from January, 1877, to J u ty> i88i,-was 
 then making his first essay as a dramatist. His 
 third play, Daisy's Escape, an " original comedi- 
 etta/' had been brought out at the Lyceum in 
 September, 1879. His second Lyceum play, By- 
 gones, which preceded The Corsican Brothers a 
 twelve-month later, " not only pleasantly opened 
 the evening with a pretty surprise, but the applause 
 that greeted the young author must have assured 
 him that whenever he makes a bolder bid for fame 
 he will receive the sympathetic encouragement of 
 those who have watched his brief career with 
 interest, and who see far more than average merit 
 in his well-considered and conscientious work " 
 prophetic words. Mr Pinero played a simple old 
 
24 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 gentleman in Bygones and Alfred Meynard in 
 The Corsican Brothers. 
 
 Sir Arthur Pinero 's earliest memories of Harry 
 and Laurence Irving are connected with this period 
 of his career. They " used to come ' behind the 
 scenes/ " he recalls in a letter to me, "and hover 
 about the wings, two manly little chaps in Eton 
 jackets and tall hats." Henry Irving and Arthur 
 Pinero always retained their mutual esteem and 
 friendship. Just after his father's death (i3th 
 October 1905) Laurence, in writing to Sir Arthur 
 Pinero, referred to the days of The Corsican 
 Brothers as the time " when Harry and I were 
 rather forward and impish boys." The recipient 
 of the letter, however, is unable to recall " any- 
 thing ' impish ' in Harry's manner or behaviour as 
 a boy. On the contrary he struck me as being a 
 particularly staid and orderly lad, and I recollect 
 receiving his earnest moral support on the occasion 
 of my bringing pressure to bear on Laurence to 
 induce him to apologise to Arthur Matthison a 
 not too lucky actor who played the elder living's 
 ' double ' in The Corsican Brothers to whom he 
 had been unfeelingly cheeky. But perhaps that 
 was a bit of sly mischievousness on Harry's part 
 a more subtle form of impishness than Laurence's, 
 inherited from his father. Laurence and I often 
 talked and laughed over the dreadful Matthison 
 business in after years. Sitting with me in my 
 dressing-room one night, watching me ' make 
 
Childhood 25 
 
 up ' for the old gentleman in Bygones Laurence 
 remarked that he supposed the little piece, which 
 he had not seen, was based upon a classical theme. 
 I asked him his reason for the assumption and 
 he replied, ' The title. ' This puzzled me until I 
 found out that, on studying the playbill, he had 
 read Bygones as Biggoneese. Which showed that 
 Laurence, impish as he was, had at any rate a 
 decided taste for the classics." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 FROM Marlborough we pass to Oxford, and 
 here, for the purpose of this part of the 
 story, we must deal with Harry only. To 
 be correct, we must call him by his father's first 
 name, for it was Mr Henry Irving, jun., who went 
 up to New College in 1889. Soon afterwards, 
 Laurence, who had decided leanings towards the 
 diplomatic world, went to Russia, and did not 
 return until 1891. A very old friend of those first 
 Oxford days was Mr W. J. Morris, M.A., of Jesus 
 College, and Recorder of the Oxford University 
 Dramatic Society. Mr Morris has given me his 
 reminiscences of the coming to Oxford of H. B. 
 Irving and his stay there. We can readily under- 
 stand that he was " a striking figure as an under- 
 graduate." But " a man with a white bowler hat 
 at the 'Varsity causes young men to say ' Who is 
 that fellow ? ' But it was not alone the white 
 ' bowler ' that caused them to stop and look back 
 at the passer-by. No, it was something much 
 more than this. It was the striking personality, 
 and the wonderful resemblance to his distinguished 
 father, that occasioned more than a momentary 
 glance. He was, though, terribly ' ragged ' on 
 account of this white ' bowler,' which seemed to 
 
 26 
 
Oxford 27 
 
 affect undergraduates in much the same way as a 
 red rag annoys the proverbial bull. Indeed, after 
 a time they ' went for it ' literally, and it was 
 abandoned in favour of a black hat. I should not 
 say that he was popular at the 'Varsity, by which 
 I do not mean that the converse is to be inferred, 
 or, in other words, that he was unpopular. Far 
 from it. But he never courted popularity. 
 Amongst the members of the O.U.D.S. he was 
 greatly liked, though to some he appeared to have 
 a certain ' aloofness ' which a few a very few 
 misconstrued as ' side. ' Freshmen, however, were 
 apt to be alarmed by those penetrating eyes, and 
 the judicial manner, which seemed to suggest ' six 
 months without the option of a fine/ He was a 
 man who took some knowing ; but when one won 
 his confidence, one soon became proud of the 
 friendship it implied/' Mr Morris considers that 
 although, as w r e shall see, Harry Irving made a hit 
 as King John, " undoubtedly his greatest histrionic 
 success at Oxford was as Strafford, admirably 
 stage-managed by Alan Mackinnon, a very old 
 friend of both Irving and myself, with whom it was 
 a real privilege and happiness to be associated in 
 our dramatic ventures/' 
 
 Canon Meyrick, of Norwich, sends me an anec- 
 dote which is an interesting revelation of character. 
 He recalls the incident vividly : " It so happened 
 that he and I he a fourth year man and I a 
 freshman were ' haled ' before Dr Spooner, of 
 
28 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 New College, for ' cutting ' college chapel. As 
 the senior man, he was interviewed first, while I 
 waited. Dr Spooner was sitting in a low chair, 
 with his eyes a few inches off his book. Irving 
 was towering above him, carelessly leaning on one 
 elbow on the mantelpiece. At length, Dr Spooner 
 looked up with the words : ' You seem, Mr Irving, 
 to be very regular, very persistent, in your absence 
 from chapel.' Irving's answer and manner struck 
 me forcibly, and still remain a vivid impression. 
 There was no playing to the gallery, no striving to 
 be clever. It was all so natural that it disarmed 
 criticism. In anyone else's mouth, the reply 
 would have been sheer insolence. Dr Spooner 
 knew his man too well, and was far too generous 
 to be offended. He probably enjoyed the joke as 
 much as I did. ' Believe me/ was Irving's answer, 
 ' I've never been regular, never been persistent in 
 my life. ' It is quite impossible to express in words 
 the voice and manner and bearing with which the 
 reply was made." 
 
 It was only to be expected that the elder son of 
 Henry Irving, stamped as he was by his own 
 individuality, should be welcomed into the ranks 
 of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. He, 
 however, had gifts of his own which, after his first 
 essay with the O.U.D.S., marked him out for 
 difficult parts Strafford and King John. Even 
 his first part at Oxford, although not a chief one, 
 called for the display of that fine intelligence and 
 
Oxford 29 
 
 subtlety which afterwards were so observant in his 
 acting. Decius Brutus is a character that is often 
 spoiled on the professional stage by actors who 
 imagine that they should be playing Marcus 
 Brutus or Antony. Here was an amateur, making 
 his first appearance, doing his work modestly and 
 with effect. Peculiarities of form, voice, and gait 
 associated with his father were noticed, but young 
 Mr Irving had " a distinctness and roundness of 
 utterance for which our leading actor has not been 
 so strikingly renowned/' He attracted attention, 
 not only " because he is the son of his father, but 
 because even in so small a part as that of Decius 
 Brutus he showed himself a true actor, his facial 
 expression and his gestures being alike good. His 
 delivery of the lines in the scene in which he 
 persuades Caesar to repair to the Capitol in spite 
 of Calpurnia's fears was one of the best features in 
 the whole play. In form and countenance he is 
 wonderfully like his father : I hope he may live to 
 succeed him and to take rank among the first of 
 English actors." Thus wrote one of the leading 
 critics of the day. 
 
 He had not been twelve months at Oxford ere 
 he was strongly tempted to go on the stage forth- 
 with. Happily for his future, he had the courage 
 to resist an offer which it must have been some- 
 what difficult to decline. Be it borne in mind that 
 Henry Irving had then, as in other days, many 
 enemies, in and out of his calling, and, thus early, 
 
30 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 some of them sought to set up the elder son as a 
 rival to his father. Others, guided by commercial 
 instincts and in view of the success attained by the 
 representative of Decius Brutus, made bids for the 
 services of the amateur actor. One of sundry 
 suggestions was made on behalf of Mrs Langtry, 
 who, in the autumn of 1889, was making arrange- 
 ments for her revival in the February following of 
 As You Like It at the St James's Theatre. The 
 following letter, written by the student of New 
 College, on 27th October, is an interesting side- 
 light on this subject : 
 
 " DEAR MOTHER, The great visit has come off, 
 and was in a way of note. He came to see me 
 principally to make me an offer, if I wished by any 
 chance still to go on the stage, to go and play jeune 
 premier parts with Mrs Langtry, when she comes 
 to the St James's, at probably about 12 a week. I 
 told him that unless anything unforeseen happened 
 to H.L, I had no present intention of taking such 
 a step. Mrs L. appears very keen to get me, and 
 he asked me for my photo to show her, and he said 
 it was certainly a grand chance for me if I cared 
 to take it ; and so it is, but cannot be. He also 
 paid me many compliments, and said that, apropos 
 Julius Ccesar, people were saying that I had all 
 H.I.'s powers without his mannerisms, etc., etc." 
 
 Who " he " was, I know not, but the temptation 
 failed, and Mrs Langtry found another Orlando. 
 
Oxford 3 1 
 
 The Oxford performance of Julius Ccesar was 
 followed a year afterwards by Strafford, in which 
 Mr Irving, jun., was invited to take the character 
 first impersonated by Macready, to whom Robert 
 Browning dedicated the drama. Macready, who 
 produced Strafford at Covent Garden on ist May 
 1837, never liked the play, and was convinced 
 " that it must fail if, by some happy chance, not 
 at once to-morrow, yet still, at best, it will only 
 stagger out a lingering existence of a few nights, 
 and then die out and for ever." He was right. 
 His own acting and that of Helen Faucit could 
 not save it. It was performed for five nights 
 in the month of its production, and then dis- 
 appeared from the stage until 1886, when a 
 society of dramatic students gave a representation 
 of the tragedy in London. Browning himself had 
 no great admiration for this early work, his first 
 tragedy, written at the age of twenty-five. " Two 
 or three years ago," he said, " I wrote a play, 
 about which the chief matter I much care to 
 recollect at present is, that a pit full of good- 
 natured people applauded it : ever since I have 
 been desirious of doing something in the same way 
 that should better reward their attention." Mr 
 W. L. Courtney, our hero's first master at Oxford, 
 prepared a version of the play, and, by judicious 
 condensation, made it as actable as possible. The 
 drama is a turgid one at best. The title role was 
 taken by young Irving, and one paper noted not 
 
32 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 only the power, but the grace of the actor in the 
 character in which Macready had exerted himself 
 to no purpose. He showed, according to another 
 critic, a real ability in interpreting the various 
 moods of the enigmatic Wentworth, and there 
 was " a combination of fire and finish about his 
 presentation " which was a happy augury for the 
 future. Yet another critic was struck not only 
 by his power but by that " easy grace " which 
 was always his. 
 
 With King John, which was the Oxford play for 
 1891, came an even greater trial than Strafford. 
 That young Irving should have been selected for 
 the part shows the effect already created by his 
 acting and the estimation in which he was held 
 by his fellow-students. King John is a character 
 that has called forth some of the greatest efforts 
 of the famous players of other days. Garrick, 
 John Philip Kemble, Macready, Samuel Phelps, 
 all had acted King John. It was a bold under- 
 taking for an amateur, not yet twenty-one years 
 old, to attempt such a part. The endeavour was 
 a meritorious one at least. It was received with 
 sympathy and ready appreciation. The London 
 critics witnessed the performance, and lengthy 
 notices were published in the leading papers. A 
 thoughtful essay appeared in The Illustrated 
 London News. The writer pronounced Mr H. B. 
 Irving this was the first time that he was so 
 called to be " an actor of real power and of great 
 
Oxford 3 3 
 
 promise. Earnest, intelligent, imaginative, and 
 gifted with a rich voice and graceful person, Mr 
 Irving bids fair, should he ever adopt the stage 
 as his profession, to add fresh lustre to the name 
 he bears. His conception of King John is note- 
 worthy for its consistence and force. He makes 
 him, above all, royal, proud, remorseful, swayed 
 by temptation, smitten by ill-fortune, cool-brained, 
 cold-hearted, but never lacking the grace and 
 generosity and personal charm which we always 
 associate with such men as Edward IV. and 
 Charles II." The writer singled out for special 
 praise the death scene, " a piece of acting which 
 for delicacy and restrained power deserves the 
 special commendation it has received from en- 
 thusiastic audiences." Note once more the allu- 
 sion to the grace and delicacy of the young actor. 
 Among the many celebrities of the day who 
 went to Oxford to see Henry Irving's son as King 
 John was Mrs Bancroft, the Marie Wilton of the 
 sixties, afterwards Lady Bancroft. Her letter, 
 written on the I2th of February, is a charming 
 tribute from the older generation of actress to 
 the young student-player : 
 
 " DEAR HARRY " (it says)," I am so busy with 
 some tableaux that I am getting up or I should 
 have written sooner to tell you how truly delighted 
 I was with your performance of King John. You 
 have a handsome presence, a good voice, and clear, 
 
34 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 distinct delivery of words. Your movements are 
 easy and natural, which is a wonderful and most 
 rare achievement, and to think that you have only 
 appeared now and again in your young life upon 
 a stage makes it all the more astonishing. I con- 
 sider your acting as King John one of the most 
 remarkable things I have ever seen. Believe 
 me, with my kind love and best wishes, yours 
 affectionately, M. E. BANCROFT/' 
 
 " Dear Harry " was wise in his generation, or 
 his head would have been turned by all the 
 adulation which his King John brought forth. 
 
 These performances of King John enabled "Mr 
 H. Irving, of New College/' as he appeared on the 
 programme, to consolidate some Oxford friend- 
 ships and to make some new friends. Alan 
 Mackinnon, of Trinity, who arranged the play for 
 representation and planned its grouping, was a 
 college friend ; so also was W. H. Goschen, who 
 acted the King of France. The Countess of 
 Radnor conducted her own ladies' string band. 
 She became a fervent and sincere admirer of the 
 young actor. Her friendship, a lasting one, was 
 a valuable aid in the early London days to follow. 
 Mr E. H. Clark, New College, who designed the 
 scenery and appeared as Hubert de Burgh, was 
 and is Mr Holman Clark, who became a lifelong 
 friend, and was associated with the King John of 
 these Oxford days throughout his London life. 
 
Oxford 35 
 
 The father showed his interest in his son's per- 
 formance by lending the chain-mail and tapestries. 
 Decius Brutus, Strafford, and King John were 
 not the only parts which Mr Irving, of New 
 College, acted at that time, albeit the biographical 
 dictionaries are silent on the point. During the 
 Julius Ccesar year, the Oxford amateurs went over 
 to Totteridge, Herts, where, in the grounds of 
 Copped Hall, they gave a performance of Love's 
 Labour's Lost in aid of local charities. Mr William 
 Archer, the critic of The World, a paper which 
 was an authority on other matters than those 
 of " society," wrote that " Mr Henry Irving, jun., 
 made a young and handsome, instead of an old 
 and formal Boyet, but spoke with good discretion. 
 Youth, too, was the most obvious drawback to Mr 
 Laurence Irving's performance of Sir Nathaniel." 
 The representation of the comedy was a light- 
 hearted affair over which the Oxford amateurs 
 enjoyed themselves as hugely as did the audience. 
 On another occasion, while H. B. Irving was at 
 Oxford, the cause of charity drew forth an interest- 
 ing effort. In January, 1890, an entertainment 
 was given at Tottenham, by " past and present 
 Malburians," on behalf of the building fund of the 
 Marlborough College Mission. Young Mr Irving 
 recited The Dream of Eugene Aram, and afterwards 
 gave some humorous recitations. Called upon for 
 a speech after the first part of the programme, " he 
 thanked his hearers in a few well-chosen words." 
 
36 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Before he left Oxford, it will thus be seen, he 
 had gained experience not only as an actor but 
 in the gentle art of speech-making, in which, even 
 in these young days, he was an adept. He made 
 excellent speeches at the Union and political clubs. 
 His acting was invariably distinguished by the 
 grace and charm which, in later years, was a 
 dominant characteristic of the man as well as the 
 actor. He endeared himself to his teachers and 
 his fellow-students alike. Here is a letter, which 
 tells its own tale, written to the mother by Mr 
 Courtney : 
 
 " DEAR MRS IRVING, I will get leave for your 
 son with pleasure, and I do not think anyone will 
 make any objection to his going. He has given no 
 one any trouble : and he has been especially nice 
 tome." 
 
 He had three hobbies at Oxford the drama, 
 criminology, and speaking at the Union Society. 
 He was on the committee of the Union, and had 
 he so cared, he would have attained the honour 
 of the president's chair. Even then, according to 
 Mr Morris, he was an effective speaker, " not so 
 much from any power of oratory mere rhetoric 
 he despised but from a clear-cut, logical appeal 
 that went home to his hearers." Even then " he 
 loved to talk about criminals and to analyse the 
 case for the prosecution and the defence, as though 
 the Law Courts had been his lifelong environment. 
 
Oxford 37 
 
 I lent him some valued books of mine, which 
 recorded all the famous trials for the past two 
 hundred years, and in these volumes he fairly 
 revelled. I remember one night in my rooms 
 discussing Eugene Aram, and I was amazed at 
 his wonderful knowledge of the ' scoundrel/ as he 
 called him. Unlike a good many in statu pupillari, 
 he really enjoyed his work for the ' schools ' ; so 
 that the excellent ' record ' which he took in the 
 history school was not a difficult task for him. 
 Indeed, the only wonder is that he missed a ' first 
 class.' He wrote admirable essays for his college 
 tutor, his style being, like that of his books, terse, 
 arresting, thoughtful, suggesting at once the 
 scholar and the student, and breathing a freshness 
 far removed from the midnight oil. He was never 
 idle. If not discussing the drama, he was either 
 reading some book thereon, or some legal tome 
 generally the latter while of ' recreations ' in the 
 ordinary sense he seemed to have none/' 
 
 During his last year at Oxford, although he was 
 studying all the time, his mind had a strong bias 
 towards acting. In the course of a letter written 
 in May to the Countess of Radnor he says: "I 
 have been doing little work and how I shall fare 
 in the schools is a prospect I hardly dare to dwell 
 upon. It is not altogether my fault that I have 
 been remiss : the weather and incipient influenza 
 have oppressed me terribly ; but I am better now, 
 and long to make another start. I want to act 
 
38 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 more and more every day!!" In the same 
 letter there is a pleasant allusion to Laurence : 
 " My brother comes back from Russia in a day or 
 two a great event for me ; one seems to have 
 almost lost recollection of him after nearly two 
 years' absence ; and I have missed him very 
 much." 
 
 Allusion has been made, in connection with 
 King John, to the friendships then made. Per- 
 haps the most fortunate of these friendships was 
 that of Helena Matilda, daughter of the Rev. 
 Henry Chaplin, and wife of the fifth Earl of 
 Radnor (who was Treasurer of the Household 
 for some years before his death in 1900). It was 
 fortunate not so much for the high position of 
 Lady Radnor although that was of inestimable 
 advantage to one who had to make his way in the 
 world but her motherly affection for the youth was 
 of even greater value than the advantages of her 
 place in society. It helped in guiding him aright, 
 in directing his thoughts into a noble channel. He 
 was a welcome visitor in her home for some years, 
 until, indeed, he went on tour as an actor and she 
 was abroad. Countless letters were interchanged 
 between Lady Radnor and the young student. 
 Those written by Lady Radnor were carefully 
 preserved by the recipient. It has been my 
 privilege to read them. They are, indeed, in my 
 keeping. All who care for the memory of the 
 second Irving should be grateful that he came 
 
Oxford 39 
 
 under such inspiring influence at an age when a 
 man is most in need of good counsel. 
 
 At Lady Radnor's country home, Longford 
 Castle, near Salisbury, he frequently played in 
 amateur theatricals, his favourite part being 
 Walker Chalks, the milkman, in a famous farce, 
 The Area Belle, by William Brough and Andrew 
 Halliday, in which Henry living's great friend, 
 the comedian, John Lawrence Toole, was the orig- 
 inal Pitcher. Elderly playgoers still recall Toole's 
 singing of E. L. Blanchard's mock-sentimental 
 ditty, A Norrible Tale, in this piece. Another 
 part which he acted at Longford was that 
 of the young man, Philip Graham, in Sydney 
 Grundy's masterly condensation from Une Chaine, 
 of Eugene Scribe, called In Honour Bound. 
 Hence, in writing at this period to Lady Radnor 
 he signed his. letters " Philip Chalks. " That most 
 gracious lady retains the tenderest and happiest 
 recollections of those days of thirty years ago. 
 Her first impression of H. B. Irving, of a man of 
 "jest and jollity " and with " a love for quips 
 and cranks/' yet of earnest and most delightful 
 nature, is one that has not been impaired by the 
 passing of time. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE STAGE OR THE BAR 
 
 THE most famous pictures of players are 
 those by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Mrs 
 Siddons as the Muse of Tragedy and of 
 David Garrick between Comedy and Tragedy. O 
 that there had been a Reynolds in modern times ! 
 H. B. Irving would then have been depicted 
 between Law and the Stage. Well might he 
 have echoed Captain Macheath's " How happy 
 could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer 
 away." The law beckoned him one way, the 
 stage the other, in the nineties. He was very 
 undecided. His father, he knew, did not wish 
 him to adopt the theatre as his calling. Yet, I 
 think, his instincts were all that way. He was 
 longing to " act " when he wrote to Lady Radnor 
 from Oxford, and when he came down he sought 
 out his father's actor-friend and the friend of his 
 own childhood, and begged for advice as to his 
 future. 
 
 Sir Arthur Pinero tells me that " his inclinations 
 were divided or he imagined they were between 
 the Bar and the stage, and I had no hesitation in 
 urging him to choose the Bar. Having conformed 
 to custom by reminding him of the precariousness 
 of the actor's calling, I pointed out to him that his 
 
 40 
 
The Stage or the Bar 4 i 
 
 histrionic gifts, if he had any, allied to his educa- 
 tional advantages, would be of as much value to 
 him in the solid profession as in the lighter one, 
 and I told him I truly believed that, while his 
 father's commanding public position would be of 
 assistance to him at the Bar, it would assuredly 
 overshadow him in the theatre. Finally, I ex- 
 pressed the opinion that a man, in his choice of 
 a profession, should always make the circum- 
 stances in which it is likely to land him in later 
 life his first consideration, and I entreated him to 
 remember that a barrister of fifty is still young, 
 and that an actor of fifty especially a romantic 
 actor is a veteran. He listened to me with the 
 deepest attention, and seemed impressed by my 
 arguments. Not long afterwards I heard that he 
 had decided to entrust his fortunes to the stage." 
 
 His father and his father's friends were im- 
 portant factors in connection with his first engage- 
 ment in London. The Bancrofts were much con- 
 cerned in it. As far back as May, when he was 
 still at New College, they were helping to advance 
 his aims. On the 3oth of that month Mrs Bancroft 
 wrote to him : 
 
 "DEAR HARRY, Many thanks for the photo- 
 graph it is most excellent. I hear it is all settled 
 with Mr Hare for September, and I am very 
 pleased. He was here late on Sunday afternoon 
 and wondering who he could get for Lord Beauf oy, 
 
42 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 when I immediately said, ' Why not ask Harry 
 Irving? I feel sure he would like to do it.' 
 Mr Hare seemed very pleased with the idea and 
 Mr Bancroft advised him to see your father about 
 it without delay. I consider it a fine opportunity 
 the part is a charming one and poor Harry 
 Montague was the original. Good luck to you, 
 dear Harry. All things happen for the best ! 
 Yours affectionately, M. E. BANCROFT." 
 
 Mrs Bancroft, modern playgoers may be told, 
 was the original Naomi Tighe in School (i6th 
 January 1869), and thus knew all about the play 
 and the part of Lord Beaufoy. " Dear Harry " 
 replied at once to her kind letter, asking for the 
 benefit of the advice of the actress, a request that 
 brought an immediate and cheering reply. 
 
 In the middle of September, 1891, on a Sunday, 
 he wrote to the Countess of Radnor in answer to 
 a letter from her. He snatched the time from 
 "a quiet morning ; only a quiet morning, for this 
 afternoon, at four o'clock, to the ruin of my soul, 
 I have a dress rehearsal ! However, Mr Hare is 
 responsible, for it is to suit his convenience we 
 thus imperil our futures ; he can only get up from 
 Manchester, where he is playing, for the day, and 
 so we bow to his wishes. " Alluding to the coming 
 ordeal, he continues : " O terrible night ! Let 
 us not think of it. Last Friday night I went to 
 Birmingham to have a last talk over things with 
 
The Stage or the Bar 43 
 
 my manager. He told me (between ourselves) 
 that if I was not too nervous I ought to make a 
 ' great success. ' It is very cheering to hear this, 
 and I know will give you pleasure. May it be 
 true!" 
 
 His first appearance as a member of the actor's 
 calling was by no means auspicious. On Saturday 
 evening, igth September 1891, there took place at 
 the Garrick Theatre a revival of T. W. Robertson's 
 play, School, perhaps the most successful of all the 
 pieces produced by the Bancrofts at the old Prince 
 of Wales's Theatre. As Lord Beaufoy, Mr H. B. 
 Irving, as he then was called in the bill of the play, 
 followed in the footsteps of two of the best -looking 
 and most experienced of younger actors of the 
 English stage, the fascinating H. J. Montague and 
 handsome H. B. Conway. Although he had done 
 good work at Oxford, H. B. Irving had had small 
 experience of facing the public, and, more in his 
 disfavour, he knew next to nothing of the art or 
 the artifices of the actor. Even at this period, 
 he would probably have acted the schoolmaster, 
 Mr Krux, to perfection (the manager's son, Mr 
 Gilbert Hare, played that part, and won unstinted 
 praise in it). But he was not then, and indeed he 
 never was, a jeune premier, the easy, self-satisfied, 
 worldly beau-ideal of the miss in her teens. It is 
 to be supposed that he was nervous on the first 
 night, and his first appearance before the foot- 
 lights drew forth such rounds of applause that he 
 
44 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 was momentarily nonplussed. His voice was 
 monotonous and too highly pitched. His manner, 
 it was said, was " stilted and ultra-priggish ; he 
 is cold in his love-making and particularly hard 
 in the closing scene " all of which it is easy to 
 understand. Again, he was greatly handicapped 
 by the name and fame of his father. That ban of 
 " heredity " cropped up then, and it seldom was 
 absent from the dissertations upon his acting. 
 It certainly was a severe drawback in those early 
 days. As he grew in years, he found that it was a 
 distinct advantage to be Sir Henry Irving's son. 
 When he was but twenty-one, this " heredity " 
 was against him. Three or four years after his 
 d6but in London he was asked if he found that 
 being Henry Irving, jun., cut both ways. " I do, 
 very keenly/' he answered. " And do you think 
 that the advantage of bearing such a name out- 
 weighs the disadvantages of the great expectations 
 the public must have of you, and of the very high 
 standard by which they must necessarily judge 
 you ? " "I suppose it does/' was his reply, 
 " just as one adverse criticism often makes one 
 forget the kindly ones/' 
 
 The revival of School was followed, on 2nd 
 January 1892, by A Fool's Paradise, a play by 
 Sydney Grundy, which had been originally acted 
 under the title of The Mousetrap, under which 
 name it was given in America. In this he appeared 
 as a husband, Philip Selwyn, who believes that his 
 
The Stage or the Bar 45 
 
 wife is faithful, whereas she is endeavouring to 
 cause his death by poison so that she may be free 
 to marry a former lover. The character proved 
 to the advantage of the young actor, who was 
 commended for his sincerity and naturalness. 
 The engagement at the Garrick Theatre did not 
 last very long, nor did it lead to offers elsewhere. 
 Thus discouraged in his first attempts to become 
 a regular actor, he abandoned the stage for the 
 law, and for the settled study of his Life of Judge 
 Jeffreys. He had a room in the Temple, at one 
 time, crammed full of the books which he had 
 accumulated at Oxford and after leaving there. 
 He lived with his mother, at her house in The 
 Boltons, at this period. He spent the summer 
 of 1892 in the quiet of a village inn at Heddon's 
 Mouth, Barnstaple. Instead of indulging in the 
 usual pastimes of a young man of position and 
 some little celebrity, he was hard at work upon his 
 first book. This, as w r e have seen, he had begun 
 at Oxford. Its preparation occupied several years, 
 off and on, for it was not until 1898 that the Life 
 was published. In the meantime, he had been 
 called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1894. 
 But his thoughts never went far from the theatre. 
 He reappeared on the stage in London at the 
 Comedy Theatre on 3rd February 1894, as Dick 
 Sheridan in a play of that name, written by Robert 
 Buchanan. This was an even greater trial than 
 that of Lord Beaufoy. Lacking in the necessary 
 
46 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 experience and technique, totally different in 
 appearance, manner, and temperament, he was 
 the very opposite of the brilliant, devil-may-care 
 author of The School for Scandal In the next 
 month he appeared in another part for which he 
 had little or no qualification, the lover, de Valreas, 
 in Frou-Frou, that ultra-sentimental drama by 
 Meilhac and Halevy. If he had not been his 
 father's son, the embryo actor would not have 
 made such a false start. As John Hare and Henry 
 Irving were friends of old, so it was with the 
 manager of the Comedy Theatre, Joseph Comyns 
 Carr, who, but for Henry Irving, would never 
 have dreamed of giving important parts to one 
 who had little in his favour but an inherited 
 name and high intelligence. 
 
 Fortunately that high intelligence, which was 
 one of his supreme gifts, came to the rescue of 
 H. B. Irving at this critical moment. He realised 
 that experience of the stage was vital to him if 
 he was to succeed in a calling which he had now 
 resolved to adopt. He was fortunate in obtaining 
 an engagement with Mr Ben Greet, an actor and 
 manager of sound principles, whose touring com- 
 panies interpreted Shakespeare and other standard 
 plays in a careful and adequate manner, due to the 
 training of their leader. Whether it was wise for 
 an actor who really wanted experience to begin 
 at the top instead of the bottom of the ladder is an 
 open question. But for H. B. Irving there was no 
 
The Stage or the Bar 47 
 
 drudgery, no playing a succession of small parts. 
 Excepting, it may be argued, that it was experi- 
 ence of a kind, he could not have gained much by 
 appearing in such parts as Sir Charles Pomander 
 in Masks and Faces, Julian Beauclerc in Diplomacy, 
 Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, Alfred 
 Evelyn in Money, Young Marlow in She Stoops to 
 Conquer, and Charles Surface in The School for 
 Scandal. However, he learned something of the 
 technique of the stage. London lured him back 
 in 1895, and on gth February, almost exactly a 
 twelvemonth after his first appearance at the 
 Comedy Theatre, he acted the part of a Member 
 of Parliament in a play by an unknown author, A 
 Leader of Men. The piece was a failure. It was 
 succeeded in March by a revival of Sowing the 
 Wind, in which he acted Lord Petworth. 
 
 After this, his third excursion on the London 
 stage, he returned to Mr Greet 's company, and in 
 April, at Stratford-on-Avon, played the leading 
 male part, Leontes, in The Winter's Tale. This was 
 a big undertaking for one who was not yet twenty- 
 five. Without delving too deeply into old history, 
 it may be recalled that some giants of the stage 
 have impersonated Leontes Kemble, Charles 
 Mayne Young, and Macready among them. The 
 jealous king is an exacting part, one that calls for 
 power and passion. Yet here was our young 
 actor playing it and playing it well. He also acted 
 Digby Grant in Two Roses, and three more chief 
 
48 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Shakespearean characters Othello, Benedick, and 
 Hamlet. It was a bold step to thus follow so 
 absolutely in his father's footsteps. Henry Irving 
 was the original impersonator of Digby Grant, the 
 impecunious father of Lottie and Ida, the two roses 
 of the comedy by James Albery, which was first 
 acted at the Vaudeville Theatre on 4th June 1870, 
 two months before the birth of Irving's elder son. 
 As we all know, Digby Grant was the stepping- 
 stone to the Lyceum. Irving the first had acted 
 Hamlet at the Lyceum in 1874, Othello in 1876, 
 Benedick in 1882. To many playgoers, therefore, 
 the memory of those impersonations would not, in 
 1895, be very vivid. Again, if not, perhaps, the 
 most desirable of experience, still it was something 
 to have thus early played Leontes and Othello, 
 Benedick and Hamlet. When Macready first 
 acted Leontes he was only two and twenty ; five 
 years later he played the part at Drury Lane. 
 
 If the subject of this biography had not been 
 imbued with that highly conscientious feeling, that 
 innate sense of honour, that was always his, he 
 might have thrown the bugbear, stage experience, 
 to the winds thus early in his career. Although 
 his father's friends had helped him in his London 
 engagements, his father was not enthusiastic in 
 his son's choice of a calling. During one of the 
 Oxford vacations there was an exhibition of fencing 
 at the Lyceum, at which the Prince of Wales 
 (Edward VII.) was present. The son was pre- 
 
The Stage or the Bar 49 
 
 sented to the Prince by a father who looked askance 
 at the idea of his boy becoming an actor. ' What 
 is he going to be ? " inquired the Prince. " Poor 
 boy/' was the father's reply, " he wants to be 
 an actor." " Well/' answered the Prince, " if he 
 wants to be actor, why shouldn't he ? " an obser- 
 vation that cheered the heart of the disconsolate 
 youth and w r as recalled by him with gratitude 
 when success as an actor had come to him. 
 
 " I think my father felt that one ought to be in 
 a more settled vocation than that of an actor/' he 
 said, when interviewed after the death of his 
 father, " something that did not have so much 
 uncertainty, so much anxiety connected with it. 
 I know I feel the same way about my own son. I 
 don't want him to be an actor. But I got bitten 
 with the notion while I was at Oxford. When 
 my father saw that one was determined upon a 
 theatrical career he said, ' Very well, but I think 
 you had better strike out for yourself.' I never 
 played in my father's company, but I used to sit 
 and study him in all his parts. Being his son and 
 an actor, I think, perhaps, one got a better idea of 
 his worth than one otherwise would." 
 
 Fortune certainly smiled on Harry Irving! 
 His parentage meant that all London was open to 
 the young actor. The distinction which he derived 
 from his father was of priceless value. It placed 
 him upon a sure footing in social circles. In 1895, 
 Lord Rosebery's birthday list of honours contained 
 
50 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 the name of Henry Irving. The knighthood 
 conferred upon the great actor was the first official 
 recognition in this country of the art of acting. 
 Although this recognition was accepted by Henry 
 Irving as an honour to his calling rather than a 
 high compliment to himself, it was something to be 
 the elder son of Sir Henry Irving. In addition, to 
 have won honours at Oxford, and to have played 
 important characters in Shakespeare at the age of 
 twenty-five, was no bad start. Think of Edmund 
 Kean and his long years of misery ere he played 
 Shylock and shook the walls of Drury Lane with 
 the plaudits of the multitude ! In all theatrical 
 history there is no record that has any comparison 
 with that of H. B. Irving. That of David Garrick 
 has some slight resemblance. Garrick had no 
 training for the stage, yet, when he was only 
 twenty-five, he drew the town to the far end of 
 London, and his Hamlet, a few months later, won 
 the approbation of Dublin. 
 
 " There was a star danced " when Beatrice was 
 born. If ever a man was born under a lucky star, 
 that man was H. B. Irving. His childhood was 
 by no means gloomy ; his schooldays were full of 
 occupation. At Oxford, he gained success and 
 won troops of friends. At twenty-five, he had the 
 world at his feet. Fortunate in all other things 
 that matter, he was most fortunate in meeting the 
 right woman. At the most critical moment in his 
 career, his star was in the ascendant and he fol- 
 
The Stage or the Bar 51 
 
 lowed its course. To this day Oxford has tender 
 memories of the beautiful girl whose first experi- 
 ence of the stage was acquired as an amateur 
 with the O.U.D.S. Dorothea Baird, a daughter 
 of John Forster Baird, barrister-at-law, and in 
 private life a painter of no mean accomplishment, 
 was born in 1874. She was educated at the Hamp- 
 stead High School for Girls. At Oxford she played 
 some minor Shakespearean characters, including 
 Iris in The Tempest, and Galatea in the Pygmalion 
 and Galatea of W. S. Gilbert. By good fortune 
 that same lucky star, perhaps, was dominating the 
 career of her future husband Mr Ben Greet was 
 present at one of the performances and offered her 
 an engagement. In the spring of the year 1^895, 
 she was, owing to the illness of the principal actress, 
 obliged to play Rosalind, with but scant prepara- 
 tion, at the Shakespeare memorial performances 
 at Stratford-on-Avon. She made an excellent 
 impression, so excellent, indeed, that she was next 
 asked to appear as Hermione in The Winter's Tale. 
 Certainly Mr Greet saw to it that his actresses had 
 every opportunity to discover in what particular 
 line their talents lay. It was but natural that a 
 young and charming Rosalind should attract 
 attention. That meant, amongst other advan- 
 tages, the benefit of publicity. A portrait of the 
 Rosalind appeared in one of the weekly papers. 
 It was seen by the author of Trilby, and George du 
 Maurier was so struck by the resemblance which 
 
52 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 it bore to his own drawings of Trilby O'Ferrall 
 that he instantly said that the one and only Trilby 
 for the stage play was Dorothea Baird. Herbert 
 Tree lost no time in seeing the fair original of the 
 picture of Rosalind, and, to the disappointment of 
 at least one member of Mr Ben Greet 's company, 
 the lady who was soon to delight all London by 
 her impersonation of Trilby, left her old associates. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 "YOUNG HAMLET " 
 
 " f I < HERE'S a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 rough-hew them how we will/' The 
 
 A divinity that was shaping H. B. Irving's 
 course at this period mapped out a pleasant path 
 for him. The London production of Trilby did not 
 take place until the end of October, and it so hap- 
 pened that the towns in which the piece was played 
 during the preliminary tour coincided sufficiently 
 with that of the Greet tour to enable the young 
 actor and actress to meet at brief intervals, with 
 the result that their sincere friendship became 
 firmly established, and, in a few months, developed 
 into a lasting affection. While the fair Trilby was 
 winning great approbation in London, her future 
 husband was working hard and appearing in a 
 round of characters which gave him an experience 
 that was of much value. He was acting seven 
 times a week, not in one part only, but in several. 
 Even if the young actor of to-day was capable of 
 such a feat, he would rebel against acting in a 
 single week Romeo, Hamlet, Benedick, Othello, 
 Leontes, and Claude Melnotte. Such was the 
 routine work of this tour. The Shakespearean 
 parts were varied by one of his father's original 
 characters, Digby Grant, and by Armand, a some- 
 
 53 
 
54 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 what priggish character in Sydney Grundy's 
 Haymarket drama, A Village Priest. 
 
 For relaxation he indulged, with other members 
 of the company, in those mock trials which had 
 always interested him. He had no time to resume 
 his writing about Judge Jeffreys ; he had, indeed, 
 left his notes for that important work in his room 
 in the Temple. He was, however, studying in- 
 cessantly while in the provinces. The latter part 
 of the tour was occupied by preparations for 
 Hamlet. As for the words, he was a quick 
 study and took that part of the business light- 
 heartedly. On the other hand, he spent many 
 hours in research and in the endeavour to give 
 an earnest rendering of the character. He was 
 in luck's way. He had profited by his learn- 
 ing at Oxford, he had no monetary troubles, his 
 mother's house in London was always open to him. 
 In Mr Greet he had the assistance of a sound actor, 
 well versed in Shakespeare, and one who was a 
 friend as well as manager. Mr Greet understood 
 his leading juvenile and handled him with sym- 
 pathy. This was another stroke of good fortune 
 for Harry Irving, who, when he was rehearsing, 
 got a bit overwrought. It cannot be said of him 
 that he was " splenitive and rash/' yet, like 
 Hamlet, he had in him something dangerous at 
 moments, due to the excitement of a sensitive 
 nature. In later years, he was able to check this im- 
 petuosity, this quickness of temper. The excitement 
 
" Young Hamlet " 55 
 
 was transient, but, in those first years on the stage, 
 it certainly existed. These outbursts frightened 
 those who were not used to them, dismayed all 
 around him, especially his friends. Happily, the 
 sun shone ere the cloud had disappeared, and the 
 beautiful smile, inherited from the father, but more 
 lavish in the son, banished alarm and discontent 
 on the instant. To those who knew him, it was not 
 surprising that the young actor, who had studied 
 Hamlet deeply, should have come to grief at the 
 first rehearsal. He was very angry with Mr Greet, 
 who, as I have said, understood his man, and was 
 patient with him. The storm-in-a-teacup passed 
 as rapidly as it had arisen. Manager and actor 
 were soon reconciled. It was well, otherwise 
 " young Hamlet " would not have made, thus 
 early in life, an artistic success which was of vast 
 importance to him. 
 
 It was at Sunderland that, on 2gth September 
 1856, Henry Irving made his first appearance, 
 speaking, as Gaston in Richelieu, the first line 
 in the play, " Here's to our enterprise ! " At 
 Sunderland, on Thursday, 2ist November 1895, 
 his elder son appeared for the first time as 
 Hamlet. A few hours before he went on the stage 
 in that character, he received a cablegram convey- 
 ing the good wishes of his father, who was then 
 acting in New York. He again played Hamlet 
 in Edinburgh, the city where his father spent 
 some two and a half years (1857-1859), acting 
 
56 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 in that period four hundred and twenty-eight 
 parts. 
 
 It was another fortunate circumstance that 
 H. B. Irving should have had the opportunity of 
 acting Hamlet in the northern capital, inasmuch as 
 The Scotsman published a lengthy criticism on the 
 performance. In passing let it be noted that the 
 hard work of the tour was never relaxed. There 
 were constant rehearsals, seven performances a 
 week, and tedious journeys on the Sunday. On the 
 afternoon of Saturday, 7th December, what was de- 
 scribed as " a beautiful performance " of Much Ado 
 About Nothing was given to a well-filled theatre. 
 As Benedick, we learn : " Mr Henry B. Irving 
 showed a fine appreciation of the dramatist's pure 
 comedy and brilliant repartee, the impersona- 
 tion being characterised throughout by dash and 
 verve." In the evening, he played Hamlet. 
 
 In all the Shakespearean drama there are not 
 two more widely contrasted characters than Bene- 
 dick and Hamlet. The transition was accom- 
 plished without apparent effort and with masterly 
 success. 
 
 " On Saturday night," the notice in The Scots- 
 man began, " the announcement of Hamlet, with 
 Mr Henry B. Irving in the title rfile, brought 
 out a large audience, who were well repaid for 
 their attendance by the excellent character of 
 the performance. It is the ambition of every 
 young actor to play the Prince of Denmark. If 
 
" Young Hamlet " 57 
 
 an actor can get through Hamlet with credit, the 
 probability is that he is good for a great deal else 
 besides. Mr Henry B. Irving, both on this and 
 his previous tour, has shown much promise as 
 an actor, and on his success in this great part on 
 Saturday night -the second occasion only upon 
 which he has essayed it he may be heartily 
 complimented/' 
 
 After this graceful and encouraging opening, the 
 article proceeded : 
 
 " His Hamlet was an excellent piece of work 
 thoughtful, scholarly, and well sustained from the 
 rise to the fall of the curtain. It was not perfect, 
 but it was more than promising, for in every act 
 there was great achievement in it. He attempted 
 no fantastical new readings ; on the other hand, 
 there was no blind following of tradition. Mr 
 Irving had brought to the reading of the part his 
 own cultivated intellect and imagination. His 
 Hamlet was a living and vital personality, which 
 from the first commended itself to the intelligent 
 sympathy of the audience. His view of the char- 
 acter of Hamlet is the one which has been adopted 
 by most scholarly men. The keynote of the im- 
 personation was struck in the mental excitement 
 and unsettlement of thought which results from 
 the message of the ghostly visitant. The commis- 
 sion he receives to avenge the ' foul and most un- 
 natural ' murder is one which Hamlet feels is too 
 heavy a task for him. The times are out of joint, 
 
58 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 and it is a ' cursed spite ' that it has fallen upon 
 him to set it right. He is the philosophising, 
 excuse-seeking, mentally unhinged Hamlet, work- 
 ing under the domination of what to him is a 
 monomania which colours his thought and action, 
 and which leads him to sacrifice even his love for 
 Ophelia, lest that passion should interfere with his 
 purpose of revenge. This was the Hamlet which 
 Mr Irving consistently worked out with admirable 
 dramatic and elocutionary effect. He looked 
 youthful and picturesque in his ' suits of woe/ 
 and caught the eye of the audience. Many of his 
 poses were easy and very pictorial. The ear of the 
 house he reached by his well-studied and pleasing 
 elocution ; the intelligence of the spectators by 
 the general appropriateness and convincing 
 character of the impersonation, and by his well- 
 attuned accord between voice and action. A wide 
 range and variety of expression characterised his 
 elocution, and it was notable, as showing the re- 
 sources of this young actor, that he was not less 
 successful in his reading of the pathetic and tender 
 passages of the text than in declaiming the more 
 frothy and hysterical outbursts in which Hamlet 
 indulges, and which Mr Irving emphasised, as 
 essential to the development of the true character 
 of the Prince. This was very noticeable in that 
 wordy outbreak of passion beginning, ' O what a 
 rogue and peasant slave am I/ which rounds off 
 the second act. In this and similar passages Mr 
 
" Young Hamlet " 59 
 
 Irving showed that he had well studied the advice 
 Hamlet gives to the players, for in the ' very 
 torrent and tempest of passion ' he had acquired 
 ' a temperance that gave it smoothness. ' 
 
 " The play opened most auspiciously. Everyone 
 seemed to follow it with the keenest interest. It 
 is not often that so quiet and attentive a Saturday 
 night's gallery audience is seen in the Royal. 
 Mr Irving carried through the first act so well, and 
 so roused the enthusiasm of the spectators at this 
 early stage of the drama, that they accorded to him 
 a double recall. It was a well-deserved compli- 
 ment, which apparently had upon him a stimulat- 
 ing influence. All the great scenes were enacted 
 with similar effect. The soliloquy was beautifully 
 and simply rendered ; the great interview with 
 Ophelia was listened to with breathless interest ; 
 the play scene was intensely dramatic, and the 
 closing scenes were full of spirit and dignity. A 
 fine vein of comedy, such as everyone knows is in 
 his father's art, was developed by Mr Irving in the 
 course of the evening in his satirical and bantering 
 interludes with Polonius, and especially in the 
 scene with Osric, which was treated with a dainty 
 touch. All through the play there were many well- 
 studied and interesting bits of ' business/ well 
 calculated to elucidate the text. Only one or two 
 can be referred to. In the end of the second act, 
 for example, when Hamlet ultimately makes up 
 his mind that ' the play's the thing/ as the curtain 
 
60 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 falls the spectator sees him at a table beginning to 
 indite the lines which are to be spoken by the first 
 actor, ' Thoughts black, hands apt/ etc., and 
 great point was given to the play scene by Hamlet 
 closely following, on his own copy of the manu- 
 script, the convicting lines which are to catch 
 ' the conscience of the King. ' An excellent effect 
 was secured in the chamber scene with his mother 
 by the treatment of the two portraits, and he 
 contributed greatly to a natural way of getting 
 the room into partial darkness, and preparing 
 it in that manner for the visit of the ghost, by 
 smashing the small portrait of the King over the 
 lamp. All through there were equally sensible and 
 well thought-out ' business/ which showed how 
 thoroughly the part had been studied. Mr Irving 
 will by and by give the performance, when he has 
 had more experience, with greater finish. Some 
 of the shorter dialogues were a trifle abruptly 
 spoken ; a little more repose will come from in- 
 creased familiarity with the text ; the ' pale cast 
 of thought ' will suffuse other passages, and from 
 the splendid basis which he laid on Saturday night 
 will be developed a performance of Hamlet by 
 Mr Irving which one may be safe to prophesy will 
 soon take its place among other great representa- 
 tions of the part. Those who are interested in the 
 drama are often heard wondering where the actors 
 of the future are to come from. By his perform- 
 ance on Saturday night, Mr Irving distinctly 
 
" Young Hamlet' 3 61 
 
 marked himself out as one of the most promising 
 young actors at present on the stage." 
 
 The tour closed in the middle of December. By 
 this time the affection of the young actor and 
 actress, both of whom had now their feet upon 
 the ladder of fame, had become somewhat ardent. 
 Miss Baird was then residing with her sister, the 
 wife of Mr (afterwards Sir) E. T. Cook, in Tavistock 
 Square. There she was visited by Harry Irving, 
 who shortly after his return to town went to 
 Seacox Heath; Hawkhurst, Surrey, the home 
 of Mr W. H. "Willie" Goschen, one of the 
 friends of Oxford. There he spent Christmas, 
 preparing his plans for the future, and writing, 
 incidentally, to Tavistock Square. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MARRIAGE AND LONDON 
 
 H. B. IRVING and Miss Baird saw in the 
 New Year together at the house of mutual 
 friends, with a happy result. On i6th 
 January 1896 they became engaged to be married, 
 an announcement which was received with showers 
 of congratulations, not only from those in their 
 immediate circle, but from the public. On the 
 other hand, the young actor received a rebuff 
 before January was out. London had a special 
 charm for him just then, and he was tempted 
 to appear at a theatre wherein he experienced a 
 considerable disappointment at that time. At the 
 same house, less than six years later, he made one 
 oi the most memorable successes of his career. 
 At the Duke of York's Theatre, on 3oth January, 
 there was produced a melodramatic farce called 
 The Fool of the Family. The cast was excellent. 
 Charles Cartwright, an admirable actor, was the 
 " Fool," but Mr Robert Pateman, Miss Gertrude 
 Kingston, Miss Lena Ashwell, and other good 
 players, as well as Mr H. B. Irving, who acted an 
 adventurer, could not prevent a dismal failure. 
 Three representations saw the end of this piece. 
 
 His next experience was a happier one, from 
 the point of view of prosperity. For some months 
 
 62 
 
Marriage and London 63 
 
 before the year which had just begun, all play- 
 going London had heard of the praise bestowed in 
 America and the English provinces upon Wilson 
 Barrett as Marcus Superbus in his own play, The 
 Sign of the Cross. The piece was brought out in 
 London, at the Lyric Theatre, on the fourth night 
 of the New Year, and with such success that it 
 subsequently attained four hundred and thirty- 
 five consecutive representations. " Innumerable 
 clergymen, a famous Dean, and at least one 
 Bishop " were reported as having bestowed their 
 benediction upon it. Despite the blessings of 
 these dignitaries, the actor who had won his 
 laurels in Shakespeare did not relish the idea of 
 following another player in a somewhat showy 
 part. Still, when it came to the point, he accepted 
 the engagement and for some months toured the 
 country as Marcus Superbus. In April, however, 
 he had the satisfaction of acting Hamlet, Romeo, 
 and Jaques in As You Like It y at the Metropole, 
 Camberwell, a new and handsome theatre, which 
 has since been diverted from its original purpose. 
 During that week he played Hamlet five times 
 and Romeo twice, and appeared, at an afternoon 
 performance, in scenes from Hamlet, Romeo and 
 Juliet, and As You Like It. On the evening of 
 Shakespeare's birthday Mr Archer saw Romeo and 
 Juliet and found the Romeo of H. B. Irving " a 
 gallant and picturesque performance, bearing too 
 evident traces, however, of haste and overwork, 
 
64 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 which is not to be wondered at. Although he 
 frankly recognised the " unmistakable gifts " of 
 the actor, he noted that his voice was wanting 
 in " tenderness, intensity, passion." Nevertheless, 
 continued the critic, " the performance was inter- 
 esting and attractive." Mr Archer gave some 
 sound advice to the young player. " If only Mr 
 Irving could find time and opportunity to cultivate 
 his very real talent/' he said, " instead of going 
 Marcus-vSuperbussing about the world ! " Mr 
 Archer was quite right, but how many of us, alas, 
 have to go " Marcus Superbussing " against our 
 wiU! 
 
 The marriage of Mr. H. B. Irving and Miss 
 Dorothea Baird took place at the parish church 
 of St Pancras on the 20th July. " Not only out- 
 side the church/ 1 it was chronicled, " but in front 
 of the residence of the bride's brother-in-law, 
 where the reception was held, an immense crowd 
 assembled to do honour to the two, and would not 
 disperse until they had appeared on the balcony." 
 Sir Henry Irving was taking a holiday in the north 
 of England. He was visited at Bamborough, 
 Northumberland, by his son and daughter-in-law. 
 On their return to London, Mr and Mrs H. B. 
 Irving occupied a flat in Southampton Row, 
 whence, on many occasions, the former made 
 expeditions to the Reading Room of the British 
 Museum in pursuance of his studies for his books 
 and literary essays. He was always faithful to 
 
Marriage and London 65 
 
 Bloomsbury. He had a delightful house for some 
 years at the corner of Upper Woburn Place. 
 After that he had another corner house, No. 7 
 Gordon Place. Indeed, it is curious that, until 
 failing health drove him to the comparative 
 seclusion of Harrow-on-the-Hill, so much of his 
 time was spent within the sound of the bells of 
 the church where he was married and within a 
 few j^ards of the house wherein, on that Sunday 
 in 1895, he became engaged. 
 
 The next period marks the real beginning of his 
 London career. It began in August 1896, when 
 he joined George Alexander's company and ap- 
 peared at the Grand Theatre, Islington, as Captain 
 Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda. In this 
 character he made his first appearance at the St 
 James's Theatre in October. This was a happy 
 and prosperous engagement ; for the St James's 
 Theatre was in the front rank of London play- 
 houses, and its management was conducted on 
 sound principles of commerce, as well as art. It 
 was excellent for the young actor who desired 
 experience, as he was called upon to create many 
 parts. I have often thought that this side of the 
 management of George Alexander has not received 
 the recognition which is due. The English plays 
 produced at the St James's are a highly creditable 
 feature in the stage career of the late actor-manager. 
 Apart from the value of the plays, the advantage 
 to the members of his company was inestimable. 
 
66 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 In the case of H. B. Irving, he originated a dozen 
 characters at the St James's, some of which were 
 of the first importance. The majority of the plays 
 of those times have passed out of general recollec- 
 tion. As all the pieces in which H. B. Irving 
 acted are enumerated in the list at the end of this 
 book, it is not necessary to dwell upon them in 
 this chapter. Some of those performances won 
 immediate recognition and stamped him as a 
 young actor of unusual talent. His first original 
 part here was Edward Oriel in Pinero's The 
 Princess and the Butterfly. He had previously 
 acted Oliver in the revival of As You Like It, in 
 which his wife played Phebe. His first success 
 came when he acted Loftus Roupell in the five-act 
 play, The Tree of Knowledge, on 25th October 1897. 
 Loftus Roupell is a young, wealthy, cold-blooded, 
 cynical man-about -town, a heartless and calculat- 
 ing scoundrel. A dog that has never been known 
 to growl does so at Roupell he kicks the dog. He 
 fishes and catches one fish that gives him " quite 
 a delightful amount of trouble/' But having 
 caught and killed the fish, it no longer interests 
 him and he throws it away. " Most kind-hearted 
 people are a little tedious," he languidly remarks. 
 He is a cruel, bizarre figure in an English country 
 home. He carries off another man's wife a fast, 
 vicious creature, who knows her fate and is content 
 to abide by it. As Loftus Roupell, the actor had 
 a clever make-up, in which a monocle and a mous- 
 
Marriage and London 67 
 
 tache were conspicuous. The character disappears 
 from the later part of the play, but it was stamped 
 with so much individuality, and was so exceedingly 
 clever, that it stood out conspicuously. The 
 thorough excellence of the impersonation was 
 recognised on all sides, and by no one more readily 
 than Mr Carton. " It contributed/' he says, " in 
 no small measure to the success of the play, and 
 earned the lasting gratitude of its author/' 
 
 Loftus Roupell was followed by Don John in 
 Much Ado About Nothing, an incisive, telling im- 
 personation of that villain. Later on, his Roger 
 and Lewis Dunster in The Man of Forty and his 
 Paul Digby in Barrie's play, The Wedding Guest 
 (at the Garrick Theatre), enhanced his reputation 
 and gave good promise for the popular, as well as 
 artistic, success which was soon to be his. From 
 George Alexander, the St James's, and other 
 theatres he passed, under engagement to that most 
 admirable of American managers who have held 
 sway in London, Charles Frohman, with whom he 
 remained at the Duke of York's Theatre from 
 January 1902 until the spring of 1904. During 
 this period he acted three characters of distinct 
 kinds, and with effect in all. As Orlando, in The 
 Twin Sister, he had a picturesque, romantic part 
 in which there was a grim vein of irony. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CRICHTON AND JEFFREYS 
 
 HIS great chance came with the production, 
 on 4th November 1902, of The Admir- 
 able Crichton. His impersonation of Mr 
 Crichton won him immense and lasting popularity. 
 The chief advantage, however, was that it proved 
 that he could get out of the beaten track of stage 
 villains and other disagreeable characters which 
 he had so often been called upon to play. It 
 has been well and truly said, in connection with 
 a revival of The Admirable Crichton, that "it is 
 a curious and suggestive fact that few, if any, of 
 Sir James Barriers characters are ever so well 
 acted as by their original exponents/' 
 
 The characters in the plays by Sir James 
 Barrie are, in the majority of cases, so original, so 
 out of the common, that you must have excep- 
 tional exponents for them. And if the characters 
 are not actually written with certain performers in 
 view, the original representation may be taken as 
 representing the views of the author. I cannot 
 imagine that there would ever have been an 
 Admirable Crichton if there had not been an 
 H. B. Irving and an Irene Vanbrugh an actress 
 of personality, if there ever was one to endow 
 the author's pen-portraits with flesh and blood. 
 
 68 
 
Crichton and Jeffreys 69 
 
 H. B. Irving himself felt strongly on this subject of 
 the original exponents of particular parts. When 
 he was in management he more than once expressed 
 a wish that it could be possible to revive this 
 particular play. " Ah/' he said to me, " even if 
 one could get Irene, it couldn't be done without 
 ' the Beetle ' " the nickname for Henry Kemble, 
 who had very heavy eyebrows and at one time wore 
 a large brown cape. His Lord Loam was admir- 
 able. The quiet power, the dignity, the majesty, 
 and the prevailing charm of the first Mr Crichton 
 have not been equalled by any of his successors. 
 It was not difficult to imagine that such a man 
 had indeed been a king in Babylon. 
 
 He was greatly interested in the character and 
 loved to act it. " Of all the modern parts I have 
 played/' he said, in 1909, " ' Crichton ' is un- 
 doubtedly my favourite, and though I played it 
 over three hundred times, I never grew tired of him. 
 There was a charm about the part and the play 
 which prevented it from becoming wearisome. 
 Perhaps the reason for this was that one felt that, 
 though the setting of the play was fantastic, it was 
 very real, and there was a great inherent truth in 
 the character of Crichton. That curious mixture 
 of fantasy and realism is, if I may say so, part of 
 Mr Barrie's genius. There were a few people who 
 could not appreciate the humour of the play. On 
 the other hand, it made an undoubted appeal to 
 most. So strong was that appeal that I knew a 
 
70 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 man who bought seats to see the play four nights 
 running. The part was delightful, as every sym- 
 pathetic part is, and it had the additional charm that 
 it was sympathetic to the audience without being 
 either mawkish or sentimental." After Crichton, 
 the modern part which up to that time had made 
 the greatest appeal to him was Loftus Roupell, 
 and he confessed to a liking for playing that part. 
 
 During the run of The Admirable Crichton, the 
 father and son appeared for the one and only time 
 together on the same stage. On the afternoon of 
 Tuesday, i4th July 1903, a performance of The 
 Merchant of Venice was given at the Theatre 
 Royal, Drury Lane, in aid of the Actors' Associa- 
 tion. Henry Irving was the Shylock, H. B. Irving 
 the Salerio. The only part of the play in which 
 these characters appear on the stage at the same 
 time is the trial scene. Salerio has not much to 
 say, nor does he address the Jew. He is a kind of 
 door-keeper, or, at any rate, he is used for that 
 purpose by Shakespeare. He shows in Shylock, 
 also Nerissa : 
 
 DUKE. Go one, and call the Jew into court. 
 SALERIO. He is ready at the door : he comes, my 
 lord. 
 
 
 SALERIO, My lord, here stays without 
 A messenger with letters from the doctor, 
 New come from Padua. 
 
 DUKE. Bring us the letters : call the messenger. 
 
Crichton and Jeffreys 71 
 
 The cast was a most remarkable one. It would 
 be impossible nowadays to assemble such a com- 
 pany. Old playgoers will like to see the record : 
 
 Shylock . 
 
 Bassanio 
 
 Duke of Venice 
 
 Antonio 
 
 Prince of Morocco 
 
 Salerio 
 
 Salanio 
 
 Salarino 
 
 Gratiano 
 
 Lorenzo 
 
 Tubal . 
 
 Launcelot Gobbo 
 
 Old Gobbo 
 
 Gaoler 
 
 Leonardo 
 
 Balthazar 
 
 Stephano 
 
 Clerk of the Court 
 
 Nerissa . 
 
 Jessica . 
 
 Portia 
 
 HENRY IRVING 
 GEORGE ALEXANDER 
 J. H. BARNES 
 CHARLES WARNER 
 OSCAR ASCHE 
 H. B. IRVING 
 HERBERT WARING 
 H. B. STANFORD 
 BEN WEBSTER 
 MARTIN HARVEY 
 JOHN ARCHER 
 NORMAN FORBES 
 CYRIL MAUDE 
 LIONEL BROUGH 
 HOLBROOK BLINN 
 SEYMOUR HICKS 
 EDWARD TERRY 
 DION BOUCICAULT 
 LILY BRAYTON 
 EVELYN MILLARD 
 ELLEN TERRY 
 
 Many other distinguished members of the actor's 
 calling "walked on." Alas how many of them 
 have left us ! 
 
 The third part in the modern drama in which he 
 
72 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 made a striking success was that of the degenerate 
 Nevill Letchmere in Pinero's drama, Letty, at the 
 Duke of York's Theatre, on 8th October 1903. 
 Nevill Letchmere comes of "a family of wasters 
 and divorcees, a vicious crew, rotten-bad to the 
 core/' not a " nice " part by any means. He made 
 a pronounced acting success in it with the public, 
 although the character was not one in which he 
 could either please or obtain the sympathy of the 
 audience. 
 
 The opinion of the author of the play in regard 
 to the impersonation of Nevill Letchmere is ex- 
 pressed in a letter written to me by Sir Arthur 
 Pinero, who says : " H. B. Irving's performance 
 in Letty was of the kind that is more satisfying to 
 the author than to the public. Essentially, it was 
 beautiful. But he was, in the highest sense, as his 
 father was before him, a ' character ' actor ; in 
 ' straight' parts, as they are called in the theatre, 
 he was hampered by a personality which always 
 had in it something of the quality of grimness. 
 And so, though his understanding of Nevill Letch- 
 mere was perfect, the man became in his hands too 
 determined a libertine. A lesser a merely charm- 
 ing actor would have been more in the picture. 
 But for sheer intellectuality, Harry's performance 
 of Nevill was comparable if small work may be 
 mentioned in the same breath with great to the 
 fine Hamlet he was to give us later on." 
 
 The ten years, 1895 to 1905, were very busy and 
 
Crichton and Jeffreys 73 
 
 important ones. Beginning with Hamlet, the 
 acting life alone would have satisfied many workers. 
 Loftus Roupell, Mr Crichton, and Nevill Letch- 
 mere were three original characters which brought 
 him popular as well as artistic recognition. In 
 this period, in addition to other parts, he created 
 no less than fifteen other characters. During this 
 time, he played twenty-nine characters in London, 
 a record of industry which in itself is remarkable. 
 But he did not spare himself. He was, during 
 every possible hour, pursuing his literary studies. 
 Every morning that was not occupied with re- 
 hearsals found him either in the Reading Room of 
 the British Museum or at the Record Office, com- 
 pleting his research for the big book which he had 
 begun at Oxford, continued at Hunter's Hill, and 
 put aside while he was on the country tours. 
 London gave him the opportunity to complete his 
 labours. The Life of Judge Jeffreys was published 
 in the spring of 1898. The preface marked the 
 innate modesty with which he took his literary 
 work. " This book/' he said, " is an attempt, 
 however imperfectly executed, to fill a gap in the 
 biographical literature of the seventeenth century, 
 and to reproduce the general features of a period 
 during which the proceedings in the courts of law 
 were intimately associated with the history of the 
 nation. After consulting all accessible authorities, 
 both printed and manuscript, some of which have 
 not been hitherto made use of, I have formed a 
 
74 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 rather different estimate of Jeffreys' life and 
 character from that generally accepted. I venture 
 to hope that my reasons for arriving at such an 
 estimate may not appear unjustifiable/ 7 His 
 " accessible authorities/' of which he gives a list 
 at the end of the Life, are formidable. The mere 
 contemplation of them would have appalled the 
 ordinary mind. 
 
 The research involved in The Life of Judge 
 Jeffreys was enormous. He had the happy ability 
 to grasp a multiplicity of details, to marshal them 
 in due order, to separate the wheat from the chaff, 
 and to produce a lucid, fascinating story. He had 
 his reward in the widespread recognition which he 
 obtained for his first book. Its high literary merit 
 and its understanding of character were readily 
 acknowledged. So, also, was the sense of humour 
 which it possessed, although that sense of humour 
 was not fully developed. The Spectator devoted 
 three and a half columns to The Life of Judge 
 Jeffreys, and concluded its review with a high 
 tribute to the writer : " We have read Mr Irving's 
 book with the greatest interest and pleasure, and 
 if we have made it rather a ' peg ' for a dissertation 
 of our own than a subject of particular criticism, 
 it is because we, to a considerable extent, accept 
 his conclusions, and have so little fault to find with 
 the details of his work that we have preferred to 
 pay him the compliment of an independent testi- 
 mony to the general soundness of his presentation 
 
Crichton and Jeffreys 75 
 
 and estimate of this extraordinary man." The 
 book at once gave him a literary position. There 
 can be little doubt that if the author of The Life 
 of Judge Jeffreys had been able to devote all his 
 time, all his vivacity to writing, he would have made 
 a lasting name for himself in literature. A year 
 before his first book was published, he had become 
 a happy father, and, having already achieved con- 
 siderable success in the theatre, he felt that, while 
 literature was a good prop, there was safer support 
 in the stage. 
 
 At the same time, he never relaxed in his purely 
 literary work. His second book, Studies of French 
 Criminals of the Nineteenth Century, published 
 in 1901, a massive volume of three hundred 
 and fifty closely printed pages, deals, it is true, 
 with criminals who are unknown to the majority 
 of English readers. Here, again, we see the same 
 grasp of detail. The reading-up for any one of 
 these seventeen studies must have meant many 
 hours of concentrated work. The French books 
 and records which he cites as having been con- 
 sulted form a small library in themselves. Here 
 he pursued those studies of character for which 
 he had a special facility. " The annals of criminal 
 jurisprudence/' wrote Edmund Burke, " exhibit 
 human nature in a variety of positions, at once the 
 most striking, interesting, and affecting. They 
 present tragedies of real life, often heightened in 
 their effect by the grossness of the injustice and 
 
76 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 the malignity of the prejudices, which accompanied 
 them. At the same time real culprits, as original 
 characters, stand forward on the canvas of human- 
 ity as prominent objects for our special study/' 
 The last sentence in this passage applies directly 
 to the cases dwelt upon in the volume. The 
 studies are of real culprits. " As Mr Goldwin 
 Smith has pointed out/' he added, in the preface, 
 " the persistent criminal has his status in nature 
 and society, as an organism to whom ' altruistic 
 pleasure ' simply does not appeal ; who, for his 
 own satisfaction, pursues ' a congenial, though 
 conventionally reprobated, walk of life ' ; and 
 whom, it may be added, society has a perfect 
 right to destroy by its own superior strength and 
 for its particular convenience." 
 
 In April 1901, at the O.P. Club, he read a paper 
 on " The Art and Status of the Actor/' a thought- 
 ful dissertation, lightened up by many a touch of 
 irony. Here again he proved himself a master of 
 his subject, and his trenchant delivery gave point 
 to one of the finest expositions of the actor's 
 calling ever penned. Three years later, again 
 invited to give a lecture before the members of the 
 O.P. Club, he chose Colley Cibber's Apology for 
 his subject. He began with an allusion to a 
 writer in one of the evening papers who had said 
 that if a conspiracy of silence could be arranged 
 by which the theatrical world players, play- 
 makers, and play-criticswere, like the good little 
 
Crichton and Jeffreys 77 
 
 boy, seen and not heard of for a while, the rest of 
 humanity would gain immeasurably, while the 
 stage and the drama would certainly not lose. 
 " Indeed/' he continued, " it seems almost im- 
 possible to open any newspaper or review with- 
 out lighting on criticisms, reflections, strictures 
 mostly strictures on the condition of the drama, 
 the poverty of our dramatists, the unfitness of our 
 actors, the vulgarity of the public taste. Wise 
 and unwise utterances, some earnest and impartial, 
 some bearing all the marks of spleen and disappoint- 
 ment, meet one at every turn, all proceeding from 
 those advisers, professional and unprofessional, 
 who, ever since the theatre began to have a history, 
 have been gathered round the bed of the sick 
 drama, which, however, in spite of the many 
 remedies that are being perpetually administered 
 to it, continues to live after its own fashion, really 
 far less hindered than might be supposed by the 
 attentions showered upon it by well-meaning out- 
 siders." Proceeding in this strain, and taking as 
 his text Colley Gibber's Apology for his Life 
 " one of the most brilliant and entertaining auto- 
 biographies in our language " he proceeded to 
 deliver a most dignified and witty exposition of 
 the actor's calling, itself " brilliant and entertain- 
 ing," imbued with sound common sense and 
 earnestness. 
 
 " We actors," he said in conclusion, " must not 
 look to all men for sympathy, nor expect it from 
 
78 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 them. As some men of high ability, of refined 
 taste in many things, are deaf to the charms of 
 music, it has no appeal to them, the sense of it is 
 lacking in their natures, so are there men of cul- 
 ture and attainment, men of genius like Rousseau, 
 to whom the art of acting makes no appeal, who 
 have no sympathy with the actor's work. Such 
 men have, no doubt, at different times been 
 called on to write about the theatre, and that 
 they should write with little sympathy is all that 
 we can expect ; nor should we resent what we 
 cannot correct. But we have at least the right to 
 ask that such a want of sympathy should be the 
 strongest reason for making any man pause and 
 consider before he proclaims himself to be the con- 
 stant witness or judge of what, if it be true that to 
 act unmans a man, must be a degrading spectacle, 
 before he ever suggests, however ingeniously, 
 against any section of his fellow-men that, in com- 
 parison with himself, in comparison with those 
 who watch and enjoy their achievements, they are 
 impaired and unmanly citizens. In all times and 
 ages since the theatre has been established, and 
 never more so than at the present day, the actor, 
 to succeed and hold his own, to encounter the diffi- 
 culties, the chances, the, at times, cruel anxieties 
 of his calling, has required, shall I say, a greater 
 mastery of his fate, a higher captaincy of soul than 
 many another man is called on to exercise whose 
 work is done in more peaceful and secure surround- 
 
Crichton and Jeffreys 79 
 
 ings ; and when I look around on the careers of 
 those who are at the head of my profession, I feel 
 that, whatever the varieties of their artistic 
 achievement to reach the positions which they 
 have attained, they have had to exercise those 
 same qualities of endurance, pluck, determination 
 and self-control that we look for in all men who 
 have made their mark, in however modest a sphere, 
 on the history of their time. " This essay was pub- 
 lished in The Nineteenth Century: that on "The 
 Art and Status of the Actor " in The Fortnightly 
 Review. 
 
 In the latter magazine his lecture on f ' The Call- 
 ing of the Actor," given to the students of the (now 
 Royal) Academy of Dramatic Art, in the early 
 part of 1905, was printed. These articles were 
 subsequently published in book form in a volume 
 entitled Occasional Papers. His preface to the 
 volume was brief and, as usual, almost self- 
 depreciatory : "I have ventured to publish these 
 occasional papers in the hope that the few who 
 did me the honour of hearing or reading them may 
 care to possess them in book form, and that to the 
 many who have neither heard nor read them the 
 subjects of which they treat may be sufficiently 
 interesting in themselves to help to while away a 
 leisure hour/' In the preliminary preparation for 
 these Occasional Papers many hours must have 
 been spent before a single line was penned. In 
 addition to those mentioned, they include his Royal 
 
80 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Institution lectures, delivered in 1906, the "True 
 Story of Eugene Aram/' and a particularly interest- 
 ing and informative article on the " Early Life of 
 Chief Justice Scroggs " (a hard drinker, who was 
 knighted after the Restoration and became Lord 
 Chief Justice of England in 1678). His study of 
 this character, although not so lengthy, is just as 
 masterly in its way as was that of Jeffreys. It is 
 evidence not only of his great industry in reading 
 up, but of his insighta kind of intuition which 
 he possessed in a marked degree into personality. 
 It is lightly written and has many a flash of 
 humour. 
 
 His purely literary work occupied a vast amount 
 of time, but his labours in that direction did not 
 detract from his acting. From the Duke of York's 
 Theatre he proceeded on a country tour in Lefty, 
 and on returning to London played his final en- 
 gagement as a member of Mr Frohman's company. 
 But Captain Dieppe, in the play of the same name, 
 and Sir Montague Martin, in a revival of His 
 Excellency the Governor, did not afford the oppor- 
 tunity for distinction which he found in Crichton 
 or Nevill Letchmere. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN AMERICA 
 
 THE year 1905 was a strenuous one in 
 some respects. The beginning of it saw 
 his first appearance in playgoing London 
 proper as Hamlet : with the autumn came the 
 death of his father and added responsibilities. 
 He impersonated Hamlet in three revivals of the 
 tragedy in London at the Adelphi Theatre, under 
 the management of Mr Otho Stuart and Mr Oscar 
 Asche, on 4th April 1905 ; at the Shaftesbury 
 Theatre, on 8th February 1909 ; at the Savoy 
 Theatre, on 26th April 1917. On the two latter 
 occasions, the revivals were under his own man- 
 agement. It may, therefore, be more convenient, 
 for purposes of comparison, to discuss his inter- 
 pretation, which varied considerably, in a later 
 chapter. 
 
 The death of Henry Irving, which came without 
 warning, on the I3th October, was a shock which 
 was felt very deeply by his sons, who had now 
 grown to love and revere their father. There were 
 also certain burdens to be borne and serious con- 
 tingencies to be met. Sir Henry Irving, in the 
 period of his management feist August 1878 to 
 loth June 1905), took over two and a quarter 
 millions of money, in pounds sterling, from the 
 F 81 
 
82 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 playgoers of Great Britain and America. Not- 
 withstanding these colossal receipts, his heavy 
 expenditure in the theatre, his lavish hospitality, 
 and his immense charities, administered in private 
 and of which the world knew nothing, left him a 
 poor man. He was literally worked to death, and 
 he died in harness, the result of an endeavour to 
 pay his way. Some six years before, he had been 
 forced to sell the greater part of his dramatic 
 library. After his death it was necessary to dis- 
 pose of his effects by auction, the net result of 
 which was a sum of over fourteen thousand pounds. 
 By the terms of the will, this sale was necessary, and 
 by these same terms the plays in which Sir Henry 
 Irving had a property had to be realised for their 
 monetary worth. This was a paramount reason 
 for the appearance hereafter of his elder son in 
 certain of his father's characters. He did not, out 
 of respect for his father's name and reputation, 
 desire the plays to get into the hands of strangers. 
 When he came to play these pieces he explained 
 this. What he did not explain, however, was that 
 he paid certain agreed fees to the estate for the 
 right of acting these pieces, the money therefrom 
 being divided in equal proportions between the 
 parties concerned. He was the soul of integrity, 
 and he carried out his father's intention to the 
 full, in a spirit, indeed, which emulated that 
 father's generosity and charity. 
 
 The details and thought ensuing upon his 
 
In America 83 
 
 father's death were enormous. But he fulfilled 
 an engagement which he had made to appear at 
 the Waldorf Theatre (now the Strand), in Lights 
 Out, a drama which he had translated from the 
 German, on the 25th of October. It was a sad 
 time for him, and the play was a sad story of love 
 and death. The pathos of his rendering of Lieut, 
 von Lauffen, and the touching performance of the 
 heroine by Miss Eva Moore, secured a run of one 
 hundred nights for Lights Out. Indeed, this must 
 have been a trying period in his career. He had 
 no theatre of his own and he was, therefore, still 
 in the position of a salaried actor, without the 
 ability to give full play to his ambitions. 
 
 The year 1906 began with an invitation to 
 lecture at the Royal Institution, a distinction 
 rarely accorded to an actor. His two lectures 
 were delivered in February. He chose for his 
 subject the history of the English stage in the 
 eighteenth century, upon which he was well 
 qualified to speak. Generally speaking, he knew 
 his ground thoroughly, but the amount of research 
 required for these lectures can only be appreciated 
 by those who, from time to time, have to delve 
 into the past. The research occupies much time, 
 and, in matters of stage history, vast care has 
 to be exercised in regard to facts and dates, 
 the truthfulness or otherwise of statements. The 
 evolution of a clear, consistent, interesting story 
 requires that particular kind of brain which, 
 
84 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 fortunately, he possessed. In these lectures he 
 traverses the period of James Quin, Colley Gibber, 
 David Garrick, and the rest, in a light vein, yet 
 withal in a pointed manner and with many a 
 satirical hit at those who attempted to belie his 
 calling. In this respect he followed in the foot- 
 steps of his father, who was ever ready to defend 
 himself and his fellow-players from the charges 
 which have too often been aimed at the actor. 
 " The history of our theatre has been as glorious/' 
 he claimed, "as it has been brief. For the three 
 centuries of its existence as a part of our national 
 life our stage can point, with justifiable pride, to 
 a record, splendid in its achievement, in some 
 respects unsurpassed, a history that may well 
 rank in quality and distinction with those of 
 literature and art, and compare worthily with the 
 annals of any of the European theatres/' The 
 lectures were immediately reprinted in The Fort- 
 nightly Review , and subsequently formed the open- 
 ing chapters of his volume of Occasional Papers. 
 
 His literary work was accomplished amid all 
 that entailed by the arduous life of the actor. 
 From the Strand he went to the Shaftesbury 
 Theatre, where he acted Rene Delorme in The Jury 
 of Fate. An engagement at the Lyric Theatre fol- 
 lowed. There he played in a drama, Mauricette, 
 which he translated from the French. Jeunesse 
 is a peculiarly Gallic piece. Roger d'Autran 
 is a middle-aged husband, who imagines himself 
 
In America 85 
 
 in love with a charming young girl and argues out 
 his passion. It was not a good or convincing part. 
 A fortnight after the production ot Mauricette 
 the heroine was acted by Miss Dorothea Baird 
 the principal piece of the evening was preceded by 
 Markheim, an extremely sombre one-act drama, 
 adapted by Mr W. L. Courtney from a short story 
 of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 The character of Markheim is a study in the 
 remorse of a man of education who commits a 
 dastardly murder for greed of gold. Markheim 
 is a half -sentimental, half -philosophic person, with 
 a great facility for argument. There was nothing 
 in these characters, Roger d'Autran and Mark- 
 heim, to enhance the art of the actor. He had 
 now been playing serious, and sometimes gloomy, 
 parts for six months and the change to lago 
 was welcome. The late Lewis Waller, then the 
 manager of the Lyric, began a series of matinees 
 of Othello on I7th May, appearing as Othello. 
 Miss Evelyn Millard was the Desdemona, Mr 
 Henry Ainley the Cassio. The lago of the occa- 
 sion was " alert in action, incisive in his humour, 
 persuasive in his easy bearing and cold-blooded in 
 his resolute craft, rejoicing in his highly intellectual 
 villainy/' The performance did not satisfy certain 
 austere critics, who wanted a more ambitious kind 
 of a rendering, something super-subtle and indica- 
 tive of deep-dyed villainy proceeding from con- 
 stant thought and keen intention. His lago was 
 
86 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 too light and careless in bearing for some people, 
 who could not understand this swaggering 
 scoundrel, whose villainy was " as easy as lying/' 
 first, not even second nature, a joyful scamp. 
 The " intellectual " actor is such a scarcity that 
 when he is found even his admirers are disap- 
 pointed if he does not remain on a high plane-- 
 just when they think that he should do so. 
 
 From this point onwards he became his own 
 manager. Unfortunately, as I think, he had not 
 a theatre of his own. For there was no one to 
 carry on the traditions of his father's theatre, 
 which he certainly would have done had he not 
 been forced as was his father to travel out of 
 London in order to fulfil his obligations. He 
 accordingly organised his own company, with his 
 wife as leading lady, Frank Tyars, an old member 
 of the Lyceum company, to help him with his 
 experience and sound acting, and Mr Tom Rey- 
 nolds as comedian and stage manager. Mr 
 Reynolds was an actor at the Lyceum and he was 
 of invaluable service to his new manager, with 
 whom he remained until 1918. The Lyons Mail 
 was revived at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, 
 on I3th August ; Charles the First at the Court 
 Theatre, Liverpool, on loth September. But 
 H. B. Irving did not rely entirely upon his father's 
 old plays. He took with him Paolo and Francesca, 
 the four-act tragedy by Stephen Phillips, which 
 had been produced at the St James's Theatre, some 
 
In America 87 
 
 four years previously, with so much success that 
 it ran for over a hundred nights. On literary 
 grounds, as well as dramatic, he was justified in 
 this procedure, for the play had been acclaimed by 
 the critics, one and all, as a work of great worth. 
 Mr William Archer declared it to be " a thing of 
 exquisite poetic form, yet tingling from first to 
 last with intense dramatic life. Sardou could not 
 have ordered the action more skilfully, Tennyson 
 could not have clothed the passion in words of 
 purer loveliness." Giovanni Malatesta first 
 played by George Alexander is a fine part, from 
 the actor's point of view. It is strong, essentially 
 dramatic and calls for cleverness, in order to 
 avoid tediousness as well as intensity. For all 
 that it is " against the audience/' as actors say, 
 the sympathies of the spectators being with 
 " II Bello " Paolo. 
 
 It was in this play that, on ist October, at the 
 Amsterdam Theatre, New York, he made his first 
 appearance in America. He went there without 
 preparation, or propaganda, as the term now is. 
 The Americans knew him not, and they had seen 
 his father not long before (Henry Irving's last 
 appearance in America was on 25th March 1904). 
 He was not too kindly treated by the Press. He 
 made many private friends, and in some cities he 
 was warmly received. He was virtually a stranger, 
 and he did not have the time to establish him- 
 self in favour. It was in Chicago that, on the 
 
88 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 i8th December, he made his first appearance as 
 Mathias in The Bells. It was in this character, 
 twenty-three years previously, in New York, that 
 his father made his debut in the United States. 
 In England, "H.B." was recognised for him- 
 self and his own abilities. In America, the same 
 old arguments of heredity cohtinually stood in his 
 way. Some papers, however, were quite fair. 
 One of the most influential of them observed : 
 " There is no longer much room for reasonable 
 doubt that he has inherited a considerable share 
 of his father's fine acting instinct and ability it 
 is a little too soon to talk about genius yet or 
 that he is capable of great development. He is no 
 mere copyist, although in voice, intonation, facial 
 expression, attitude and gesture he frequently offers 
 a faithful, if somewhat faint, image of his sire. 
 In the case of a personality so striking it is not 
 surprising that the physical traits inherited from it 
 should be clearly marked. But the intelligence of 
 the younger man is as individual as it is bright." 
 
 He rather dreaded the American interviewer. 
 As the tour progressed, however, he became 
 familiar with that important personage in the 
 journalism of the United States. One interviewer 
 in Philadelphia was successful in obtaining quite 
 a long talk with him, and was much struck by that 
 modesty which, from first to last, was a notable 
 characteristic of him, both as man and as actor. 
 He almost invariably repressed the personal pro- 
 
In America 89 
 
 noun and spoke of himself as " one/' a peculiarity 
 which the writer, Mr Walter R. Linn, in the Phila- 
 delphia paper, was quick to seize upon. Moreover 
 he touched, lightly and cleverly, on the disadvan- 
 tage of being the son of a man who was famous 
 on both sides of the Atlantic. " It was just like 
 interviewing an ancient portrait of Sir Henry 
 Irving/' he said ; " the resemblance between the 
 great English tragedian and his son is startling, in 
 voice and mannerisms, as well as in features. I 
 refrained from mentioning it in the young man's 
 presence, because I felt sure he must be tired hear- 
 ing about it. Sons of great men are under a serious 
 handicap in this world. When they are still in 
 knee-breeches they are expected to be as smart as 
 their fathers were in their prime. If Ulysses S. 
 Grant, junr., wasn't qualified to thrash Lee before 
 he quit riding velocipedes, he was a failure in the 
 public's estimation. If Robert Lincoln does not 
 make all his legal briefs as thrilling as the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation, he is not worthy of Abraham. 
 Mr Irving's attitude was almost apologetic," 
 he continued. " He was anxious to assure the 
 American people that he didn't consider himself 
 as great an actor as his father and that he is now 
 appearing in his father's plays more through force 
 of circumstance than from choice." He then gave 
 the reason, which has been already stated. " The 
 son of Sir Henry almost invariably refers to him- 
 self as ' one.' It is an English idiosyncrasy which 
 
go " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 he carries to such extremes that his avoidance of 
 the personal pronoun sounds like self-abasement/' 
 
 The entire interview was delightfully done, and 
 it introduced some charming touches concerning 
 " the other one " Mrs Irving, who was acting 
 with her husband and the children. 
 
 " ' Laurence is at school, and, of course, one 
 couldn't have brought him, but Elizabeth I tell 
 you/ said ' the other one/ ' that was tugging at the 
 heartstrings ! I have never been away from them 
 before. I left them in July and won't see them again 
 until February. I get a letter every mail telling 
 me how they are and everything that they have 
 said since the last letter/ Tve been away from 
 them when I was on tour/ chimed in Mr Irving, 
 ' but never so far that one couldn't get home to 
 see them on Sunday/ " Towards the end of the 
 interview the actor said : " One doesn't like to 
 have the public think that one is trying to give a 
 slavish imitation of one's father. That doesn't 
 mean that one doesn't appreciate one's father, 
 that I am not proud to follow his general methods, 
 but one likes to have a little personality of one's 
 own. Unless one has, one cannot amount to 
 much." 
 
 The graceful observations with which Mr Linn 
 concluded his article are well worthy of record : 
 
 " The deluge of deprecatory ' ones ' ; the gentle, 
 almost pathetic air with which he referred to his 
 father and to his own struggle against the weight 
 
In America 91 
 
 of a great name ; the beautiful gentility of the 
 man ; his charitable reception of some harsh 
 criticism that he has received in the United States ; 
 his ingenuous delight in his children ; his fondness 
 for his wife and her fondness for him ; their un- 
 affected pleasure in everything that is new and 
 strange to them in this new and strange land ; the 
 cordial manner in which they expressed their ap- 
 preciation of the hospitality that has been accorded 
 to them here ; the merry laugh with which Mr 
 Irving said that they had been warned against the 
 terrible American interviewer, and that they had 
 been amazed to find the operation quite painless 
 all these things made my heart go out to the 
 descendant of Sir Henry and to his wife." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HIS OWN MANAGER 
 
 ON returning from America in the spring of 
 1907 he took a little rest prior to going on 
 tour once more. Then, and in the autumn, 
 he played The Bells, The Lyons Mail, and Charles 
 the First, and on 26th September, at the Theatre 
 Royal, Manchester, acted a fourth part identified 
 with the name of his father, Louis XL As a relief 
 from the more serious side of affairs, he played a 
 comedy character, King Charles II. , in The Lion 
 and the Unicorn, a one-act farce, written by his 
 brother and old and esteemed fellow-actor, Mr 
 Tom Heslewood, at Bolton, on 28th August. At 
 Edinburgh, on the 2ist of November, he brought 
 out a new play, by Mr Justin Huntly McCarthy, 
 Ccesar Borgia, a tragedy in four acts, written in 
 unrhymed verse. 
 
 The play, according to The Scotsman, was 
 " an excellent piece of literary work, and for 
 stage representation certain thrilling incidents 
 in the life of this notorious member of the great 
 Roman family are set forth in attractive form. 
 Into his dialogue the author has imported some- 
 thing of the mediaeval spirit of the period to which 
 the play belongs. There are romance and intrigue, 
 colour and crime, and that varied presentation of 
 
 92 
 
His Own Manager 93 
 
 human nature which is essential in a good play 
 where characters of historic association are for the 
 time awakened into new life "altogether, then, 
 a worthy play. Caesar Borgia, however, although 
 he appears as an ardent, Romeo-like lover in the 
 first act of Mr McCarthy's play, is not a sympathetic 
 character. He has many interesting scenes and 
 is eventually killed in a desperate combat. The 
 staging and the general interpretation were 
 admirable. The principal character, said the 
 authority already mentioned, was " splendidly 
 acted. Mr Irving played the lover with Southern 
 fervour ; in the other acts he carried himself with 
 splendid nobility of mien and interpreted the vary- 
 ing moods of the despotic prince with convincing 
 power." 
 
 He received a significant honour, on the i6th of 
 March 1908, in his election to the Athenaeum Club. 
 This was a tribute to his work as a literary man, 
 inasmuch as he was elected in the ordinary way. 
 His proposer was the late Mr Justice Lawrance, 
 who took the place of his father, the late Mr J. B. 
 Atlay being his seconder. The late secretary and 
 librarian of the club, Mr Henry R. Tedder, has 
 " a very warm recollection of Mr Irving and of his 
 personal charm and amiable character. He was 
 a constant visitor in the library, and in this way/' 
 he writes, " I was in frequent association with 
 him and was able to appreciate his wide reading 
 and lively interest in many and diverse literary 
 
94 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 questions.'* His father had been also a member of 
 the Athenaeum, having been elected in 1882 by the 
 committee under the special rule which permits 
 them to elect " each year nine persons of distin- 
 guished eminence in science, literature, the arts, or 
 for public service." 
 
 In 1908, very fortunately, the days of extortion- 
 ate rents for London theatres had not dawned. 
 Longing to establish himself in town as his own 
 manager, he seized the opportunity to rent the 
 Shaftesbury Theatre for a brief period, hoping that 
 the event would turn out prosperously and enable 
 him to occupy that position which he felt he had 
 a right to own. His experiment was justified. 
 The Lyons Mail, with which, on I5th October, 
 he began his London management, had such a 
 favourable reception that it was acted for one 
 hundred and twenty-eight consecutive times, the 
 longest run in the history of the play, a success 
 that was vastly encouraging for the young actor- 
 manager. The Lyons Mail was succeeded, on 
 8th February 1909, by Hamlet, after which came 
 Charles the First and Louis XL 
 
 The experiment was a bold one. It was char- 
 acteristic of H. B. Irving that, once having come 
 to a decision, he adhered to it. To play characters 
 in which his father had been so vastly admired by 
 thousands of persons who were still alive, and in 
 whose memory the old performances were vivid, 
 needed courage of a rare order. " H. B. " had that 
 
His Own Manager 95 
 
 courage, and he was well rewarded. The first night 
 of the Shaft esbury season was a memorable one. 
 An impression of it and of the chief actor of the 
 evening was written by Mr H. M. Walbrook, one of 
 the most thoughtful and sympathetic critics of 
 the drama and of the art of the player of his day. 
 This is what Mr Walbrook wrote in The Pall Mall 
 Gazette : 
 
 "In the graceful little speech which Mr H. B. 
 Irving made to the audience at the Shaftesbury 
 Theatre at the end of an exciting evening with 
 The Lyons Mail y he said : ' If any of those present 
 have seen this play before, we hope we have recalled 
 pleasant memories to them' and from several 
 parts of the auditorium came cries of ' You have ! ' 
 The mere recalling of such memories, however, was 
 facile enough. The simple announcement of the 
 play on a poster would have done it. The im- 
 portant fact of the evening was that, even with 
 vivid memories of Henry Irving pressing upon one 
 all the time, one could sit through the performance 
 with genuine pleasure. Obviously, it could not 
 have been from those memories only that the 
 gratification came : for, had the acting of Mr 
 Irving been seriously in conflict with them, the 
 evening would have been one of torture. The 
 general cheers, however, that followed the descent 
 of the curtain after each act, and particularly after 
 the second and third, proved that the audience 
 had been moved to real admiration ; and, with the 
 
96 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 memory of his father's performance still so vivid, 
 the evening must be chronicled as one of triumph 
 for the son. We are not going to say that either 
 the new Lesurques or the new Dubosc has the 
 magnetism of the old. The one has not that 
 pathos that really tore at the heart ; the other 
 does not set one shivering with horror as Henry 
 living's did in the garret scene, in which his aspect 
 and his acting combined to compose one of the 
 most appalling figures seen on the English stage 
 since the days of Edmund Kean. But we saw 
 quite enough to convince us that there is only one 
 man before the present playgoing public who has 
 the artistic right to play the two parts, and that 
 man is Henry living's elder son. 
 
 " Mr living's Lesurques is brisker than his father's 
 and walks and talks more rapidly. When first we 
 meet him, he seems gayer. He bears himself like a 
 gentleman prepared to enjoy the bottle of wine for 
 which he pays his five francs to the boy at the 
 Lieursaint inn ; and he has the prompt air of a 
 man who has made a fortune while still in the prime 
 of life, and has risen to distinction from somewhat 
 obscure beginnings. Henry living's Lesurques 
 seemed haunted from the first with tragical pre- 
 monitions ; not so the Lesurques of last night. 
 Consequently, when the crash came and he found 
 himself confronted with witness after witness 
 charging him with robbery and murder, his be- 
 wilderment and horror were no less dramatic. At 
 
THE BROTHERS 
 
His Own Manager 97 
 
 the Lyceum we were shown a dreamy, deeply 
 religious idealist suddenly brought face to face 
 with something revolting. At the Shaftesbury 
 we saw a man full of the joy of life brought low, a 
 man happy in his daughter's affection and in his 
 love for her, proud of the fact that he had been able, 
 as he thought, to secure a competency for his aged 
 father, and, above all, an honest and successful 
 merchant. The Lyceum Lesurques, driven almost 
 to despair by the damning evidence of his own 
 father, was wont suddenly to pause, and then, his 
 face lit with almost saintly rapture, to cry, c God 
 sees us both and knows it is a lie. ' At the Shaftes- 
 bury there was no pause, and the words came 
 rushing forth with the energy born of a pride that 
 had been cut to the quick. The effect was different, 
 the consistency was the same. As the scene pro- 
 ceeded, the earnestness of the actor deepened. The 
 haughty repudiation of the idea of suicide was 
 one of the finest things of the evening ; and the 
 attitude and look of the man as the curtain fell 
 standing pale and alone, with eyes directed 
 upwards and a hand stretched to heaven as if for 
 help made a figure of memorable beauty. 
 
 ' We should have said that of the two parts the 
 Lesurques was the harder to play, yet Mr Irving 
 was more completely successful in it than as 
 Dubosc, though here, too, his acting was full of 
 interest. The husky voice was well done, so also 
 was the curious, jaunty walk which was such a 
 
 G 
 
u 
 
 H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 piece of horrible grotesque in his father's impersona- 
 tion ; and there was an ugly evilness in the narrow 
 oblique eyes and the thin flexible lips. We missed, 
 however, the awful strength with which Henry 
 Irving made the garret scene so appalling, the 
 diabolic power which seemed to add feet to his 
 stature and make him gigantic, a terrifying figure 
 with a livid face that had Hell in every line 
 of it. At the Shaftesbury the drunken wretch 
 seemed for a time to have lost his power with his 
 sobriety. At the same time, we think that this 
 effect may possibly have been caused by the fact 
 that Mr Irving was not quite so audible early in 
 this scene as he had been through the preceding 
 part of the play. It is important that every word 
 even of his bemused mutterings should be dis- 
 tinctly heard ; and no doubt in future perform- 
 ances this defect will be remedied. When that is 
 done the full value of his acting will be attained, 
 and his Dubosc should be a worthy artistic 
 complement of his exceedingly fine Lesurques." 
 
 As the weeks wore on at the Shaftesbury, the 
 performance was improved in many respects, for 
 the younger Irving was never satisfied, never con- 
 tent with merely letting well alone. He had strongly 
 developed the faculty, which he inherited from his 
 father, of improving upon an early interpretation. 
 As the run of the play progressed an original 
 season of six weeks was extended to five months 
 his Dubosc became stronger and more brutal, 
 
His Own Manager 99 
 
 especially in the garret scene, his Lesurques more 
 and more charming. Irving the first, in the ac- 
 cusation scene, became a saint upon earth. His 
 Lesurques was an ideal creature whom no one 
 could, by any possible weight of evidence, imagine 
 guilty of a diabolical murder. " In the case of the 
 son," as I wrote when the impersonation was fresh 
 in my mind, " the audience, who know that 
 Lesurques is innocent, do not blame the magistrate 
 for doubting that fact. This effect is due to a 
 difference of treatment. It may yet come to pass 
 that the son also will idealise Lesurques. At 
 present, and it is a perfectly correct view of the 
 character, he keeps Lesurques as a man of our- 
 selves, one upon whom such a blow might fall at 
 any moment. He does this without any loss of 
 dignity or sympathy. The father idealised : the 
 son is quite natural. This observation does not 
 detract from the merit of the father. Henry 
 Irving applied to drama the same method of 
 idealisation which made him ever a distinguished 
 figure on the stage, even in parts which were en- 
 tirely unsuited to him. He did this in Lesurques, 
 in the second act particularly, whereas the son, 
 laying stress upon the purely domestic side of the 
 character, makes us feel the cruelty of the accusa- 
 tion, although we must be in accord with the 
 justice of the condemnation. His affection for his 
 daughter and his horror at his father's belief in his 
 guilt are fine touches in a performance of great 
 
ioo " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 beauty." The scenes between Lesurques and 
 Julie were extremely beautiful, tender and natural, 
 charged with depth of feeling, yet expressed with 
 simplicity. 
 
 His Louis XI. and his Charles I. resembled his 
 father so much in appearance that it seemed as 
 though the father himself was on the stage. The 
 most striking difference, however, was apparent in 
 the voice, that of the son being much stronger, 
 more vibrant. "H.B." rejoiced in acting that 
 terrible creature, Louis XL He found the part 
 " most delightful and fascinating. It may sound 
 humorous or incongruous," he said, " to use such 
 a word as ' delightful ' in speaking of Louis, but 
 there is everything in the part that the actor can 
 desire from point of view of effect. On the other 
 hand, in opposition to the ease of Louis, I should 
 put the strain of Mathias. The emotional stress of 
 the part, and the fact that he is more or less on the 
 rack all during the play, impose a severe tax on 
 one's energy and involve a serious intellectual 
 strain as well, although the interest I derive from 
 that character is very great indeed." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 MATHIAS IN LONDON 
 
 THE effect of this season at the Shaftesbury 
 Theatre showed the wisdom of the venture. 
 A new public was created, for, be it ob- 
 served, there were many who viewed askance the 
 idea of the son appearing in parts made memor- 
 able by the father. The warmest admirers of 
 the latter, however, found much to praise in the 
 performance of the son. 
 
 It is impossible for the present generation 
 of playgoers to understand the affection and 
 reverence in which Henry Irving was held. He 
 was loved, as no other actor ever was, by the 
 public, while individuals of all sorts revered 
 him. Immediately after his death so anxious 
 were many people to show their acquaintance with 
 him a whole crop of "intimate friends" came 
 suddenly into being, which was very amusing in 
 the case of a man who in the whole course of 
 his life had no more intimate friends than could 
 be counted upon the fingers of one hand. Henry 
 Irving was a sealed book to all, save to some three 
 or four men to whom he sometimes drew aside the 
 curtain which, to the world, veiled his heart. On 
 the other side of the picture, I have in recent years 
 been brought into contact with many people to 
 
 101 
 
, 
 
 
 102 " H;B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 whom Henry Irving is a memory which will be 
 treasured by them so long as life lasts. Women, as 
 well as men, who had but seen him act, loved him 
 as they would a dear father. One of these admirers 
 whom I have in my mind as I write, a keen, clever, 
 business man, simply worships the memory of the 
 man and the actor, and can describe every detail 
 of his impersonations. Yet he never so much as 
 shook hands with Henry Irving. I do not want to 
 insist too much upon this point, but it is necessary 
 to note the wonderful feeling which existed, and 
 still exists, for the elder Irving, to show the nature 
 and the courage required for the son to invite 
 comparison in London with his father. He did so 
 reverently, modestly, not as a challenge, but as a 
 matter of necessity and because he had the inward 
 feeling that he was not unworthy, either as man or 
 actor, to follow in his father's footsteps. Had he 
 approached his task from another point of view, 
 with a flourish of trumpets and a blazoning of his 
 own intrinsic merits, the happy result would not 
 have been attained. His charm of manner, as 
 much as the excellence of his acting, won the day. 
 He did not have to sweep prejudice aside. He 
 had a far more difficult task. He had to get over 
 the footlights, not only as an actor that would 
 have been easy enoughbut as the son of a man 
 greatly reverenced. This he did. He won the old 
 generation by his ease and grace, the new by his 
 admirable acting. 
 
Mathias in London 103 
 
 So far, then, he had acted three of his father's 
 plays in London The Lyons Mail, Charles the 
 First, and Louis XI. A more severe ordeal was 
 in store for him. This was his first appearance in 
 the metropolis in The Bells. Before that event he 
 went from the Shaftesbury to the country, playing 
 in the chief towns and being received with increas- 
 ing favour. At Newcastle-on-Tyne, on 28th April 
 1909, a supper was given in his honour by the Pen 
 and Palette Club. It was the first time, he said in 
 reply to the toast of the evening, that a great city 
 had so honoured him, and the memory would ever 
 remain with him as one to be cherished. It was 
 all the more pleasing, he added, that Newcastle 
 should be the first place to thus entertain him, 
 because he had many close ties with the north of 
 England. He had kindly remembrances of North 
 Country places and people, and there was one 
 debt he owed to Northumberland the gift of a 
 wife which nothing could cancel. 
 
 Mr W. Waite Sanderson, in his speech of welcome, 
 recalled the circumstance that six years before the 
 Club had extended its " homely hospitality to one 
 whose brilliant genius did more to elevate the 
 English stage than every other force combined. 
 That night is to all of us a sacred memory. We 
 hold in grateful recollection the fact that Sir Henry 
 Irving came among us and talked, as only he could, 
 of his art and of the great aims and aspirations 
 which were bound up in his life and dominated his 
 
104 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 work." Mr Sanderson gave a most interesting 
 review of the work of the guest of the evening. 
 By good fortune he had been present at the Garrick 
 Theatre on the occasion of the revival there of 
 School. The first scene in the play is a forest 
 glade ; " presently there entered a tall, dark, 
 boyish figure. We turned to our programmes and 
 read, ' Lord Beaufort Mr H. B. Irving/ and 
 underneath this note, ' His first appearance on the 
 stage. ' What a shout of welcome went up, not in- 
 spired by the youth that stood before us he had 
 yet to win his spurs but because he was the son of 
 the revered head of the English stage. Brethren, 
 it was not long before we learned to value Mr 
 Irving for his own inherent qualities." He closed 
 his address with a fine appreciation of one of the 
 most remarkable traits in the character of the 
 actor : " I speak of him as one who has not yet 
 reached the zenith of his fame, because his is a 
 nature which will never rest content with the 
 success of to-day, but must ever look forward, with 
 the true artistic temperament, to the strenuous 
 work and greater triumphs of the morrow." In 
 his reply, "H.B." made some trenchant and 
 witty remarks upon the subject of the National 
 Theatre, a project that was then being much 
 discussed. 
 
 The autumn of this year witnessed the reopening 
 of the Queen's Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, with 
 Mr H. B. Irving as lessee and manager. This 
 
Mathias in London 105 
 
 theatre had not been noted for its prosperity, and 
 it was an uphill game to bring it into favour. 
 For the only time in his management he had the 
 support of a syndicate, so that he was relieved 
 of pecuniary worries. He had, moreover, a loyal 
 staff, in the " front of the house " as on the stage. 
 As at the Shaftesbury, he decided to once more 
 rely upon a play made famous by his father. On 
 the 22nd of September the house was opened with 
 The Bells. In deciding upon so important a step, 
 he had to consider many arguments on both sides 
 of the question. It was Mathias that enabled 
 Henry Irving to make his first great advance on 
 the ladder of fame. The miserable state of the 
 Lyceum Theatre when, on 25th November 1871, 
 The Bells was played for the first time is an oft- 
 told tale and one that need not be repeated here. 
 It is only necessary to state that the Lyceum, 
 then in a condition bordering 'on complete failure, 
 in every sense, was suddenly raised to absolute suc- 
 cess by the thrilling impersonation of Mathias by 
 Irving the first. All London rang with his praises 
 and the public flocked to the Lyceum. The pros- 
 perity of the theatre and the success of the actor 
 were established from that moment. The Bells re- 
 mained in the repertoire of Henry Irving until the 
 end. His fame as Mathias was world-wide. To 
 follow his father as Mathias was an even bolder 
 step than the revival of The Lyons Mail at the 
 Shaftesbury. That play was open to anyone, for 
 
106 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 other actors had impersonated Lesurques and 
 Dubosc, though none so well as Henry Irving. 
 Mathias, however, was distinctly and peculiarly 
 his own. The subject was pondered well, the 
 decision was announced, not without some mis- 
 givings on the part of the pessimists, and, on that 
 eventful night in 1909, H, B. Irving appeared for 
 the first time in London as Mathias. In under- 
 taking so great a venture he had derived en- 
 couragement from a leading article which had 
 appeared in The Liverpool Daily Post in May. It 
 is not easy to express the value of this article and 
 just what it meant to the young actor-manager. 
 It was no ordinary criticism, hastily penned after 
 a first performance. On the contrary, it was a 
 well-considered essay by one of the finest and most 
 thoughtful critics of the day, a man of vast experi- 
 ence in acting and one who was noted for his 
 sound judgment. Moreover, and this is the chief 
 value of the article, it was written by one of Henry 
 Irving's best friends, Edward R. Russell (after- 
 wards Sir Edward Russell, and then Lord Russell 
 of Liverpool), who, if he did not exactly " discover " 
 Henry Irving, was one of the first of the leading 
 critics to recognise his supreme gifts. Russell's 
 essays on Irving as Hamlet, as Macbeth, and as 
 Mephistopheles are masterpieces of analysis. He 
 was a profound admirer of the genius of the 
 father. Being a man who was eminently just, he 
 recognised the talent of the son. His comparison 
 
Mathias in London 107 
 
 of the acting of Mathias by the two livings 
 is so illuminating that I make no apology for 
 printing it in full. 
 
 " No one can see H. B. Irving in The Bells without 
 being asked the question : ' How does he compare 
 with his father ? ' This is a compliment to the 
 elder Irving which would be paid whoever were 
 to undertake the part of Mathias a compliment 
 which is all the greater when we consider that the 
 original Mathias of the Erckmann-Chatrian play 
 was not Irving, but Coquelin, the great exponent 
 of the great French school, now, alas ! also dead. 
 No one is more flattered at being compared to the 
 elder Irving than the younger, and, for many 
 reasons, we all should go and see him play his 
 father's plays. It is a delicate thing to make 
 comparisons, but we feel that the more we can 
 say of Sir Henry Irving's Mathias, the more will 
 H. B. Irving be pleased, such are his feelings as 
 an artist and a son. 
 
 " Now in both performances there is this com- 
 mon element : the transformation of a melodrama, 
 by sheer force of magnetic histrionic power, into a 
 psychological study of the finest and most subtle 
 order. What is The Bells as a play to read ? An 
 interesting case of a crime and its mental conse- 
 quences, which Mr H. B. Irving, expert as he is in 
 criminology, would read with interest and no more. 
 What is it as a play ? It is drama itself- but only 
 when played by an Irving. No wonder the part of 
 
io8 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Mathias so fascinated Sir Henry Irving that he 
 chose to appear as Mathias rather than anything 
 else before the great American public on the first 
 night of his first tour in the United States. He 
 wanted to do something which nobody else could 
 do at that date. Now, however, H. B. Irvirg 
 can do it. It is worth noting that most playgoers 
 have seen The Bells only after their expectancy 
 of something great and uncanny has been raised 
 to its utmost level. And not many have been 
 disappointed only those who are young enough, 
 childish enough, or ignorant enough of art to 
 expect to be kept from sleeping at nights, or to 
 wake in terror whenever a hansom passes the door. 
 This attitude is not the greatest tribute one can 
 pay the artist. What we should think of is the 
 composite emotions passing through the guilty 
 Mathias's brain and the difficulty to the actor of 
 portraying them. We have always, for instance, 
 regarded the second act as the finest of the 
 elder Irving's work in this part. The domestic 
 humanity, the gradual yet rapid wrecking of his 
 nerve system, the keen and clever encounter with 
 Christian about the limekilns, the counting of the 
 dowry, the hysterical snarl at the maid who reads 
 about criminals all these incidents and aspects 
 of the character one looked for and appreciated 
 more and more at every performance of the elder 
 Irving's, which improved, in this act, to the day 
 of his death. His son plays this act on the same 
 
Mathias in London 109 
 
 lines, and one point more remarkable in his than 
 his father's performance is specially notable. 
 When the Jew's coin turns up in the dowry the 
 fine pause which follows the words, ' No, no, not 
 for them for me/ suggests a burden too heavy 
 to be borne. This middle act in H. B. living's 
 earlier days was played too quickly or it seemed 
 so but now we find him filling out the part 
 with all the charm, all the soul and all the 
 ghastly nervous symptoms which have lifted both 
 performances on to the highest plane. 
 
 " The last act the dream scene is the one most 
 talked of, but the best only to those who appreci- 
 ate the more obvious efforts in powerful acting. 
 H. B. Irving's physique is more equal to this act 
 than his father's was during the last few years of 
 his life. It is all played up stage, and this means 
 a corresponding strain on the voice, which began 
 to tell on him. Just now in this act, however, 
 the son is probably at his best in a magnificent 
 performance. It used to be said by the unthink- 
 ing that Irving was always Irving. Of course 
 he was, just as Michelangelo and Rubens were 
 always Michelangelo and Rubens. This com- 
 parison is all the more just and all the more ap- 
 plicable because these artists worked with pigments 
 and tools common to all other artists ; whilst the 
 actor works with physical attributes common to 
 no one but himself. The truth is, Henry Irving 
 had a personality so great, so grand, so majestic, 
 
no "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 that it was impossible to efface. So it is with 
 H. B. Irving. He has enough of his father's 
 magnetism to play every part in his own way and 
 yet convey the same impression that in that part 
 nobody could excel him." 
 
 During the run of The Bells , Mr George Ashton 
 came to the theatre with the pleasing intelligence 
 that the King had commanded a performance of 
 The Lyons Mail at Windsor Castle. The compli- 
 ment was a marked one, for Edward VII. was an 
 ardent playgoer and a keen critic. Moreover, he 
 was entertaining some guests of unusual distinc- 
 tion and his choice of a dramatic programme was 
 made with special care. The performance took 
 place, in the Waterloo Chamber, on Friday even- 
 ing, i gth November. For the benefit of the foreign 
 visitors, a synopsis of the story of the play was 
 printed in French. 
 
 A few days later, "H.B." was the recipient of 
 a charming letter of thanks not by any means 
 a stereotyped document which, with the boyish 
 impetuousness which never deserted him, he sent 
 on immediately to his mother. " Enclosed, from 
 the Master of the Household, will interest you/' 
 he wrote to her. " It certainly is a very nice letter 
 and the play did go wonderfully well made quite 
 an impression, from all I hear. When we meet 
 you shall hear all about it. Frightfully busy at 
 the moment." 
 
 He was " frightfully busy " with the rehearsals 
 
Mathias in London 1 1 T 
 
 of a new play, written by a friend of the Oxford 
 days, Mr Perceval Landon (the Earl of Pembroke 
 of King John), entitled The House Opposite. Un- 
 fortunately, the piece did not hit the public taste, 
 being possibly too morbid or too psychological. 
 Nor was there any capital to be made out of 
 the character of Richard Cardyne. In order to 
 strengthen the bill a one-act play, For the Soul 
 of the King, translated from the French by Mr 
 Landon, was brought out in December and played 
 as a first piece. It was a sad little play, and 
 although there were one or two fine moments in it, 
 it did not call for much more than the mournful 
 appearance made by the impersonator of the 
 Stranger. 
 
 A change of bill was imperative. The success 
 which attended The Lyons Mail may have in- 
 duced a second essay in dual impersonation. 
 Joseph Comyns Carr, art critic, theatrical manager, 
 and playwright, had prepared a version of The 
 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert 
 Louis Stevenson's gruesome story, published in 
 1885. It was in an adaptation of the same story 
 that the American actor, Richard Mansfield, made, 
 on 4th August 1888, his appearance in London at 
 the Lyceum Theatre, which he had rented from 
 Henry Irving. Mansfield had succeeded in 
 America, if not in England, in making money out 
 of the drama, and there was no apparent reason 
 why H. B. Irving should not succeed in the same 
 
ii2 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 direction. Money was badly needed at the 
 Queen's. Not that the shareholders were un- 
 generous, but it mortified "H.B." to feel com- 
 pelled to draw upon their funds. Therefore, 
 redoubled energy was put into all the prepara- 
 tions. The title was shortened to Dr Jekyll and 
 Mr Hyde, and the play was produced on 2Qth 
 January 1910. 
 
 The end of the first month in the year was not, 
 perhaps, the most opportune moment for the act- 
 ing of a new and strenuous play, but there was 
 no other course open. Unmitigated horror is not 
 acceptable to the English playgoer, and there 
 was little to mitigate the horror and brutality of 
 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It obtained, nevertheless, 
 a run of four months, the greatest strain upon the 
 actor, physically and mentally, which he ever en- 
 dured. The effort was much greater than it had 
 been in The Lyons Mail. Incessant was the study 
 for the impersonation of the good and evil char- 
 acters ; perpetual was the drag upon bodily and 
 mental strength in the acting. He went below 
 the surface of things and tried to get at the heart 
 of the idea as expressed by the novelist in the 
 words of Jekyll : 
 
 " I saw that, of the two natures which contended 
 in the field of my consciousness, even if I could 
 rightly be said to be either, it was only because I 
 was radically both. ... I learned to dwell with 
 pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought 
 
Mathias in London 113 
 
 of the separation of these elements. If each could 
 be housed in separate identities, life would be 
 relieved of all that was unbearable. ... I began 
 to perceive . . . the trembling immateriality, the 
 mist-like transcience, of this seemingly solid body 
 in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found 
 to have the power to shake and to pluck back that 
 fleshy vestment, even as a wind might toss the 
 curtains of a pavilion. ... I not only recognised 
 my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence 
 of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, 
 but managed to compound a drug by which these 
 powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, 
 and a second form and countenance substituted, 
 none the less natural to me because they were the 
 expression and bore the stamp of lower elements 
 in my soul." 
 
 Of all the psychological parts that he played 
 Jekyll taxed him most. For an actor of his ability 
 the change to the revolting murderer, Hyde, was 
 an easy transition, and the playing of that part, 
 although it demanded constant effort, mild by 
 comparison. By his idealism of Jekyll he elevated 
 the character and raised Stevenson's story to a 
 height which no ordinary reader of the book could 
 imagine possible. The Dr Jekyll of the novelist 
 is " a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, 
 something of a sly cast, perhaps, but with every 
 mark of capacity and kindness." The Jekyll of 
 H. B. Irving was pale, aesthetic, refined, the 
 
ii4 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 essence of gentility. From the first he bore the 
 look of intense suffering. As the play progressed 
 this expression of mental pain, of yearning, of 
 striving after the good that was in him, became 
 almost unbearable to the spectator. It was in- 
 finitely pathetic. Would that it had not been so ! 
 I saw him act Jekyll many times and was always 
 relieved beyond measure when the death scene 
 was over. Never can I forget that white, up- 
 turned face, the yearning agony of it, the soul of 
 a good man longing, entreating for mercy. 
 
 Another study in psychology followed, happily 
 not so exacting. On 28th May there was a 
 " double bill " at the Queen's Judge Not and 
 Robert Macaire. In the former, a two-act French 
 drama, he impersonated a magistrate who, all un- 
 consciously, has committed a murder. The magis- 
 trate examines the witnesses in the case and it is 
 gradually brought home to him that he is the 
 culprit. He is, in short, an epileptic. Here was 
 need for skill, incisiveness, and intensity. From 
 this dramatic part he turned, lightly and with a 
 grace all his own, to Robert Macaire, in a con- 
 densed version of the old French melodrama, 
 rendered famous by Frederic Lemaitre and acted 
 at various times by Henry Irving. 
 
 L'Auberge des Ardets y the original of Robert 
 Macaire, was written as a serious piece of blood- 
 curdling melodrama, the basis of its story being a 
 murder at a roadside inn. But the great Lemaitre, 
 
Mathias in London 1 1 5 
 
 quickly seeing the absurdities and conventionalities 
 of the piece, turned it into a farce, with just a 
 touch of tragedy. George Henry Lewes, who re- 
 garded Frederic Lemaitre as a performer of genius, 
 said that there was invariably something offensive 
 to good taste in his acting" a note of vulgarity, 
 partly owing to his daring animal spirits, but 
 mainly owing, I suspect, to an innate vulgarity of 
 nature, In his great moments he was great ; but 
 he was seldom admirable throughout an entire 
 scene and never throughout an entire play. 
 In his famous character of Robert Macaire the 
 defects were scarcely felt, because the colossal 
 buffoonery of that conception carried you at once 
 into the region of hyperbole and Aristophanic fun 
 which soared beyond the range of criticism. It 
 disgusted or subdued you at once. . . . He sang, 
 took snuff, philosophised and jested with an air of 
 native superiority, and yet made you feel that he 
 was a hateful scoundrel all the while. You laughed 
 at his impudence, you admired his ease and readi- 
 ness, and yet you would have killed him like a rat. 
 He was jovial, graceful, false, and cruel." This 
 grandiose creation of Macaire became more farcical 
 as time passed, and the part, in the compressed 
 English version of the French play, was not so 
 elaborate as in Lemaltre's day. 
 
 The Macaire of H. B. Irving was distinguished 
 by its grace rather than its eccentricity. He wore 
 the threadbare, patched pantaloons of tradition 
 
n6 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 and indulged in much of the old stage " business/' 
 such as the use of the snuff-box with the squeaky 
 lid, the sound of which sets Jacques Strop quivering 
 with dread of the guillotine. It was a performance 
 that was all the actor's own. It did not " disgust " 
 or "subdue." On the contrary it elevated. It 
 was conceived on a high plane of jocosity, of 
 airy humour, of thorough enjoyment. It was all 
 nonsense, but such nonsense ! The personality of 
 the actor was at its best in this brilliant imper- 
 sonation. There was nothing " false " or " cruel " 
 in his Macaire. Far from wanting to kill him like 
 a rat, one wished him a long life. He had an 
 admirable foil in Mr Reynolds, who played the 
 cowardly Jacques Strop, the miserable accom- 
 plice, who is obsessed by the exploits and mock 
 grandeur of his chief, with a subdued note which 
 was in excellent contrast to the gaiety of Macaire. 
 It was a happy combination of two actors who 
 understood each other perfectly and played up to 
 his fellow. 
 
 "H.B." was keenly alive to his surroundings, 
 depressed or aided by them as the circumstances 
 varied. He had invaluable help in the Jacques 
 Strop to his Macaire. He was still more happily 
 situated, the play being a long one and the under- 
 taking more important, in his next production. 
 This was a dramatisation of Mr A. E. W. Mason's 
 novel, Clementina y made by " George Pleydell " 
 (Mr G. P. Bancroft) in conjunction with the 
 
Mathias in London 117 
 
 author of the book. The general company was 
 well chosen and the drama, as a whole, was pre- 
 sented with a remarkable degree of efficiency. 
 The success of the piece, however, depended upon 
 the representatives of Wogan and Clementina. If 
 these characters had not become real live people 
 upon the stage the play could not have secured 
 any degree of popularity. The Clementina was 
 Miss Stella Campbell, the daughter of Mrs Patrick 
 Campbell. She was young, she was charming ; 
 not only graceful and pretty, she had wonderful 
 delicacy of manner. Her Clementina, simple, 
 natural, free from all affectation, entirely devoid 
 of all appearance of stage technicality, was an ideal 
 princess, well worth the winning. Charles Wogan 
 was a companion picture, though on a higher 
 scale. As represented by H. B. Irving, he was a 
 real figure of romance. The spectator felt that he 
 was capable of performing all the heroic deeds 
 which were set down for him. He was no swagger- 
 ing, blustering stage hero. Always a soldier and a 
 gentleman, he got into the part a depth of serious- 
 ness which raised it beyond ordinary drama. I 
 cannot recall any scene of its kind in the acted 
 drama of greater beauty than that in the lonely 
 hut on the hilltop on the road to Bologna. The 
 sense of mystery, the note of expectation, the sug- 
 gestion of impending tragedy were conveyed by the 
 scene itself, by the lighting, by the stage manage- 
 ment. But it was the acting that triumphed 
 
n8 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 and made this love scene one of the most exquisite 
 that our stage has known. It was full of sincerity, 
 of tenderness beyond words, of absolute purity of 
 motive as of love. It touched the heart and 
 brought out the best of one's nature. It ended 
 just at the right moment, with Wogan's exultant 
 cry of renunciation, " You are for the King/ 1 I 
 do not think that it could have been played with 
 such human and artistic effect if the protagonists 
 had not been so well matched girlish grace and 
 modesty on the one side, the chivalry of a great 
 gentleman on the other. For me, the memory of 
 this scene, acted with sweetness and pathos, with 
 grace and gallantry, can never be effaced. One 
 can only regret that H. B. Irving did not imperson- 
 ate more characters of a romantic nature. His 
 Charles Wogan showed him as a perfect lover. It 
 is a pity that Fate cast him so often before the 
 public in less picturesque and charming characters. 
 " H. B. " was in a happy frame of mind during the 
 run of The Princess Clementina, which, produced 
 in London on I4th December 1910, was acted 
 for over a hundred nights. Jekyll and Hyde 
 depressed him, physically and mentally. Wogan 
 raised his spirits wonderfully. He himself had the 
 chivalry of a Wogan and he rejoiced in playing a 
 part which came naturally to him. I supped with 
 him and his wife many times during the run of 
 The Princess Clementina. They were joyous occa- 
 sions, so gay, so free from care. His work done, 
 
Mathias in London n 9 
 
 he was in the airiest and most captivating of moods 
 on these delightful nights. His eyes sparkled 
 with merriment as he drank his favourite beverage 
 at supper, a weak decoction of champagne and 
 water. He was more like a happy schoolboy than 
 the man, the real man, he was. I remember on 
 one of these happy nights some question arising 
 about the heroine of Mr Henry Arthur Jones's play, 
 Dolly Reforming Herself. Half fearing that I 
 might say something derogatory about the lady 
 of the comedy, he held up a finger and, with a 
 warning, merry eye, said : "Be careful, Dolly is a 
 name that is very precious in this house ! " There 
 was a world of love and tenderness in the words. 
 " Dolly " herself could not repress a tear of -gladness. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 HAMLET 
 
 TO The Princess Clementina period belongs 
 one incident in his public life which must 
 not go unrecorded. On the 5th December 
 1910 the statue of Henry Irving in Charing Cross 
 Road was unveiled. The speech of the son was 
 remarkably brief, but it was wonderfully eloquent. 
 It came from the heart. It was simple, eloquent, 
 and infinitely more affecting than any learned 
 essay, such as he might easily have permitted him- 
 self. As I write, I recall the clear, bell-like tones 
 of his voice. He spoke quickly, but his earnest- 
 ness was such that every syllable was heard by 
 the dense mass of people around him. This was 
 the speech : 
 
 " I gladly express, on behalf of my father's family, 
 our deep gratitude for the honour you, his com- 
 rades, have paid to his memory to-day, and the 
 affectionate eloquence with which Sir John Hare 
 has spoken to you of his old friend. One cannot 
 help feeling that, on such an occasion as the present, 
 it is rather to all men than to his own kith and kin 
 that a great man belongs. Yet, at the same time, 
 for those few of us who bear my father's name, 
 there must be in our hearts to-day a feeling of 
 pride and rejoicing- pride, that the profession he 
 
 120 
 
Hamlet 121 
 
 respected and loved should, with unexampled 
 generosity, have erected this noble emblem of their 
 love for him rejoicing, that for those of us who 
 bear his name there will stand here for all time this 
 splendid token of his great place in the history of 
 the theatre and in the hearts of men, to encourage, 
 stimulate and inspire those who may seek to 
 follow him in his high endeavour. 
 
 " There is one quality in my father's character, 
 known best, perhaps, to those closest to him in life, 
 which the noble poise and grave dignity of this 
 statue seem to me to finely express. I mean his 
 steadfast courage, his calm, continual self-control. 
 He was fond of repeating Goethe's saying that 
 1 Self-possession is the art of life. ' Certainly my 
 father had, in a rare degree, that great quality of 
 possessing his soul in patience and meeting fate 
 with calmness and resolution. He had his share, 
 especially in the last few years of his life, of the 
 difficulties and anxieties, as well as the glories, of 
 his art. But he bore all storm or sunshine, fair 
 weather or foul with unflinching courage, stead- 
 fast resolution, and faith in the cause he served. 
 If ever man was c master of his fate and captain of 
 his soul ' it was my father. And it seems to me 
 that it is as ' master of his fate and captain of his 
 soul' that the sculptor has graven his image 
 to-day. 
 
 ' ( On behalf of my father's family, I beg to assure 
 you of our deep sense of the signal tribute his 
 
122 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 profession have paid to him whose memory we 
 cherish with love and reverence. If my father's 
 spirit is here to-day, he would be glad that the 
 work of his life should be crowned by you, his 
 brothers and sisters in art, by this memorial, 
 which adds yet one more leaf to the many laurels 
 that he won/' 
 
 We come now to the consideration of the Hamlet 
 of H. B. Irving, for it was during this happy time 
 that he gave his best and most typical performance 
 of Hamlet in London. All actors of Hamlet 
 should be judged by their best performance of that 
 character, especially in the case of an actor who is 
 easily affected by his surroundings. There was 
 nothing mechanical about H. B. Irving. Not only 
 is it true that he did not rest upon his laurels, 
 remain content with what he had accomplished. 
 He was in acting a man of temperament, artistic 
 in every sense. By nature happy, he wanted 
 others to be happy. Unlike his father, however, 
 he could not put aside or trample down with iron 
 will the littlenesses of life, especially those of the 
 theatre. They affected him in a terribly adverse 
 manner. By the same token, smoothness in small 
 things helped him vastly. All went well in 1910 
 and 1911, with one admirable result his Hamlet 
 was a beautiful rendering of the character. He 
 felt this himself, albeit he did not use the word 
 " beautiful' ' of it, and insisted that he should 
 begin his forthcoming Australasian tour in the 
 
Hamlet 123 
 
 character. His first Hamlet, as we have seen 
 from The Scotsman criticism, had much to commend 
 it. That was in 1895. Unhappily for myself, 
 being then in America, I did not see that early 
 Hamlet, or that at Camberwell in April following. 
 I have, however, received from a trusted playgoer, 
 one who has studied the art of the actor and has 
 made notes of all that has interested him in the 
 theatre, his impressions of this first Hamlet. Mr 
 A. E. Hanford has seen the important perform- 
 ances on the London stage for some thirty odd 
 years and retains a recollection, which is as accurate 
 as it is in other respects remarkable, of those which 
 have pleased him. This is how he describes the 
 performance at Camberwell : 
 
 " It appeared to me at the time a very arresting 
 and beautiful performance, and the impression I 
 had was, and I remember remarking on it to an 
 old playgoer very much older than myself who 
 went with me on the second occasion, that I should 
 think ' H. B. ' had always had the part of Hamlet 
 in mind from his very earliest youth, because there 
 were so many fine pieces of, to me, quite new 
 business. The tenderness of his scene with his 
 mother, and his awestruck attitude on first meet- 
 ing with the Ghost, were quite remarkable. He 
 had a very interesting way of giving the ' To be or 
 not to be ' soliloquy. He entered from the back 
 of the stage reading a book, which he carried in his 
 hand, and was so wrapped in what he was doing 
 
124 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 that he walked into the table in the centre of the 
 stage. He then seated himself sideways on the 
 table, swinging his leg, and held his hand out over 
 a brazier which contained a live coal, still absorbed 
 in the book. After warming and withdrawing his 
 hand two or three times, he became more absorbed 
 in the book, and withdrew his hand very hurriedly 
 from the brazier, having been brought to a sense of 
 his surroundings evidently by burning his hand. 
 He then sighed, and resting the book on his knee, 
 began the soliloquy. 
 
 " He gave a very thoughtful reading of the scene 
 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and when one 
 of them (I never can distinguish one from the other) 
 held out his hands in a protesting way to him, he 
 struck them down on the words ' Nay, nay, by 
 these pickers and stealers.' 
 
 " The scene with his mother at the moment when 
 the Ghost entered was managed very well. Most 
 actors have generally boldly faced the difficulty, 
 and have had the lights lowered to enable the 
 Ghost to enter. Others have carried through the 
 scene without a visible Ghost. 'H.B.' worked 
 himself up to a fine pitch of indignation in Hamlet's 
 comparison between his father and his uncle, and 
 on the passage : 
 
 ' A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, 
 That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, 
 And put it in his pocket ! ' 
 
 he banged his uncle's portrait, which he held in his 
 
Hamlet 125 
 
 hand, down on the table, extinguishing the light. 
 Down went the footlights, and on came the 
 Ghost. 
 
 " The pathos of his scenes with Ophelia was very 
 marked indeed. The struggle in his mind between 
 love for Ophelia and the necessity of breaking off 
 the intercourse to follow the injunctions of the 
 Ghost was very clearly indicated, and at certain 
 moments, to my recollection, were quite heart- 
 rending. 
 
 " I saw him when he played Hamlet about ten 
 years afterwards at the Adelphi Theatre, and 
 whether I had become blase, or he had become 
 blase, I do not know, but it did not seem to me 
 to be nearly so fine a performance. There is a 
 tradition that there is no Hamlet so fine as one's 
 first Hamlet. " 
 
 The Adelphi performance of Hamlet was a tre- 
 mendous ordeal. Many people, especially writers 
 for the Press, remembered or believed that 
 they did !the Hamlet of the father and could 
 not bring themselves to imagine that the Hamlet 
 of the son could approach that of Irving the 
 first. But for that feeling, the Hamlet of 1905 
 would have been a much more tender impersona- 
 tion than, in fact, it was, and if H. B. Irving had 
 not been, to a great extent, overshadowed by the 
 reputation of his father as Hamlet, he would have 
 received a fairer hearing. I do not mean to 
 infer that either playgoers or critics were unjust, 
 
126 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 consciously or otherwise. Had "H.B." been a 
 stranger, had he not borne such a striking resem- 
 blance to his father, it would have been to his 
 advantage in this case. He looked so like the 
 Hamlet of another generation that it was im- 
 possible to avoid comparison. 
 
 An old student of the stage, one who went to 
 the theatre for sheer love of good plays and good 
 acting, one who paid his way and had no axe to 
 grind, has printed the record of his theatre-going 
 days, in which his impressions, noted at the time, 
 are set down "without fear or favour." Mr 
 Richard Dickins, in his Forty Years of Shakespeare 
 on the English Stage, 1867-1907, says of the 
 Adelphi Hamlet : 
 
 "In appearance he was quite startlingly like 
 the great Hamlet of 1874, and while free from his 
 father's mannerisms, he fortunately inherits a good 
 deal of his personal charm. Throughout the play 
 he never failed in strength ; the more exacting 
 the scene, the finer and stronger was his acting. 
 He was, indeed, almost too self-reliant, and his 
 impersonation lacked the gentle sweetness, the 
 yearning for sympathy and love that made the 
 Lyceum Hamlet so irresistibly affecting. Never- 
 theless, his Hamlet is an achievement of which 
 ' H. B. ' may well be proud. All the first three acts 
 were so good that it is difficult to particularise, but 
 I may, perhaps, specially praise the manner in 
 which he indicated the depth of his love for his 
 
Hamlet 127 
 
 father, his conduct of the whole scene with the 
 Ghost (a fine touch being his groan of shame and 
 horror when he hears of his mother's faithlessness), 
 his delivery of the long speech beginning ' Now 
 am I alone/ the scene with Ophelia, and the whole 
 of the play scene. In the graveyard scene, too, 
 he was admirable." 
 
 Mr Dickins thought the killing of Laertes " too 
 rough/' and he disapproved of the death scene. 
 The latter scene was spoilt by some new " business," 
 for which, however, "H.B." was not responsible. 
 This criticism of Mr Dickins represents the opinion, 
 not only of a profound student of Shakespeare, but 
 of one who was, and, happily, still is, a fervent 
 admirer of the art of Henry Irving. Therein lies 
 the inestimable value of the praise of the son. 
 Mr Dickins, it will be noted, misses " the gentle 
 sweetness " of the Hamlet of the elder Irving. 
 The professional critics also dwelt upon this defect. 
 Mr Ernest A. Bendall, the doyen of dramatic 
 critics, had been writing about plays and players 
 for thirty-five years when he saw the Hamlet 
 of "H.B." at the Adelphi. One of the "old- 
 fashioned " critics, who wrote for his readers, and 
 not for himself, Mr Bendall who gave up criticism 
 when, in 1912, he became Examiner of Plays for 
 the Lord Chamberlain was honest, unbiassed, and 
 the possessor of an extensive knowledge of acting. 
 Although he freely recognised the value of the 
 work done by Henry Irving, he was always sober 
 
i28 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 in his judgment and measured in his praise of the 
 actor-manager of the Lyceum. From all points of 
 view, therefore, his opinion of the impersonation 
 of Hamlet by H. B. Irving is one that is worthy of 
 respect and consideration. 
 
 " Just at the right moment in a career which has 
 long been watched with expectant interest by all 
 lovers of our stage, Mr H. B. Irving has come for- 
 ward to undergo the test recognised as supreme by 
 all young actors of his nationality and his ambition. 
 For the maturing by thoughtful work of his powers 
 and methods he has waited patiently, but not too 
 long ; and the brilliant success which came to him 
 with his Hamlet at the Adelphi on Tuesday evening 
 arrived as the legitimate and well-deserved result 
 of artistic impulse guided in its development by 
 finely studied art. Hamlet is a character so 
 many-sided, and capable of such varied interpreta- 
 tions, that it has been said to ensure nearly all of 
 its representatives against complete failure, while 
 on the other hand a complete success in rendering 
 and harmonising all of its phases must inevitably 
 be very rare, if indeed it be possible. Such a 
 triumph as this need not be claimed for Mr Irving, 
 even by those who appraise most highly the extreme 
 cleverness and undeniable effectiveness of his per- 
 formance. It may be granted that there is less 
 of heart than of brain in his work, less of poetic 
 beauty and charm than of intellect and grip, less 
 to move profound feeling than to excite vivid 
 
HARRY AS HAMLET 
 
Hamlet 1 29 
 
 interest. But to admit so much is merely to 
 confess to a length of memory which recalls from 
 some bygone Hamlet some melody of rich-voiced 
 elocution, some touch of ineffable tenderness, or 
 some exercise of indefinable fascination such as, 
 for us at any rate, could hardly be repeated. 
 
 "What is certain about Mr living's Hamlet is 
 that he rouses sympathy not less lively, apprecia- 
 tion not less enthusiastic, and interest even keener 
 than any won by any other Hamlet since that 
 whereby his father's first took London by storm 
 just over thirty years ago. To begin with, the new 
 Hamlet has the inestimable vitality and fervour 
 of youth ; he is a real living human being, and 
 no mere abstract of philosophical suggestion. His 
 impersonator, moreover, has no doubt whatever 
 about the qualities, intellectual, emotional, senti- 
 mental and cynical, wherewith he means to endow 
 him, and there is no hesitation or fumbling about 
 methods whereby he seeks to realise his conception. 
 He speaks every line and every syllable of every 
 line with delightful clearness and with perfect 
 precision of rapid emphasis. He brings out with 
 easy certainty the exact meaning that he desires 
 to convey ; he employs no trickery in his reading, 
 and he suggests none of the devices of the crank, 
 of the faddist or of the deliberate innovator in his 
 conception. He aims throughout at a wholly 
 natural bearing, and he hits this mark so accurately 
 that he sometimes verges on the modern and 
 
130 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 casual, as, for example, in the ironical banter of 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and in the advice 
 to the players, which latter he gives after the 
 manner of the shrewd stage manager who knows 
 his business rather than that of the cultured 
 Prince elaborating as a connoisseur his instructions 
 to the strollers for their ' command ' performance. 
 His spirit throughout is less that of inevitable 
 tragedy than that of almost melodramatic romance, 
 and in this respect as in others his reading is very 
 near akin to Fechter's. His nervous excitement 
 in his scene with the Ghost, his passionate pity 
 for his father, his indignation and his inception 
 of a scheme of vengeance are all most vividly 
 illustrated ; so also is his contempt for his own 
 infirmity of purpose as recognised by him in 
 the soliloquy very finely delivered : ' O what a 
 rogue and peasant slave am I ! ' 
 
 " There is, of course, no hint of real insanity 
 in the ' antic disposition ' which this spirited young 
 fellow puts on for the purpose of cloaking his 
 designs. He is as sane in the execution of his plot 
 as in its conception, and he is as much master of 
 himself in his scenes with Gertrude and Ophelia as 
 in his passages of arms with Claudius and Polonius. 
 He makes it, indeed, a cause for wonder that, being 
 the man he is and having convinced himself of the 
 King's guilt, he does not ' kill him pat ' long 
 before the time comes for the general slaughter 
 which closes the play. There is little trace of 
 
Hamlet 131 
 
 weakness, whether lovable or otherwise, in his 
 attitude towards either his mother or to the un- 
 happy lady-love whom he suspects of unworthy 
 strategy. To both women he is occasionally 
 almost violent, and he generally suggests such 
 mastery of the situation that he commands respect 
 rather than pity. But until towards the end of 
 the performance, when the young actor palpably 
 tried, and thus minimised the effect of the grave- 
 yard scene and the well-managed final combat, 
 he succeeded by his alert intensity, his incisive 
 humour, his easy alternations of mood, and his 
 admirably studied diction in holding fast the 
 eager attention of the house. If he never quite 
 wrung our hearts, he never failed to give our minds 
 food for thought ; and he was always interesting 
 in his picturesquely persuasive personality. 1 ' 
 
 Another critic of the Adelphi Hamlet discerned 
 the keynote to the interpretation of the character 
 by H. B. Irving. 
 
 " The new Hamlet is a most lovable person," 
 he wrote. " An affectionate disposition turned 
 awry by tragic events is the keynote of Mr 
 Irving's impersonation. Of all the celebrated 
 Hamlets that the stage has ever seen and the 
 accounts of famous Hamlets are most exact 
 that of Mr Irving is most calculated to im- 
 press by reason of this development on the part 
 of the actor/' 
 
 The accounts of famous Hamlets are, indeed, 
 
132 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 exact. That is to say, we know in what parti- 
 cular the celebrated Hamlets have excelled. From 
 Colley Gibber we get the idea that the Hamlet of 
 Betterton was most effective in the scenes with 
 the Ghost. In the beautiful speech which begins 
 with 
 
 " Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! " 
 " the passion never rises beyond an almost breath- 
 less astonishment, or an impatience, limited by 
 filial reverence, to inquire into the suspected 
 wrongs that may have raised him from his peace- 
 ful tomb ! and a desire to know what a spirit 
 so seemingly distrest, might wish to enjoin a 
 sorrowful son to execute towards his future 
 quiet in the grave. This was the light into which 
 Betterton threw this scene : which he open'd with 
 a pause of mute amazement ! then, rising slowly, 
 to a solemn, trembling voice, he made the Ghost 
 equally terrible to the spectator, as to himself ! and 
 in the descriptive part of the natural emotions 
 which the ghastly vision gave him, the boldness of 
 his expostulation was still governed by decency, 
 manly, but not braving ; his voice never rising into 
 that seeming outrage, or wild defiance of what he 
 naturally rever'd." 
 
 Garrick, like Betterton, made his greatest 
 effect in the scenes with the Ghost. His Hamlet 
 was distinguished by the note of filial piety 
 which he displayed in the opening scene with 
 the Ghost. The fear with which he was filled on 
 
Hamlet 133 
 
 the first appearance of the vision was so real and 
 deep that it imparted the same feeling to the 
 audience. The progress of the scene was inter- 
 preted with an admirable expression of terror and 
 reverence. He also delivered the soliloquies with 
 wonderful effect, but his scenes with the Ghost 
 were by far the most remarkable in his imper- 
 sonation. Fielding, in Tom Jones, described those 
 scenes most graphically. Hannah More tells us 
 that the Hamlet of David Garrick " never once 
 forgot he was a prince, and in every variety of 
 situation and transition of feelings, you discovered 
 the highest polish of good breeding and courtly 
 manners." But we hear nothing of tenderness in 
 the Hamlet of Garrick, which, from all accounts, 
 was the performance of a skilled actor who knew 
 how to make his points. In the closet scene, 
 when Hamlet sees the Ghost, Garrick followed 
 tradition : " Mr Garrick, sir, always overthrew 
 the chair/' 
 
 The Hamlet of John Philip Kemble was a cold 
 and studied performance, although not wanting 
 in a beauty of its own. " There he was/' wrote 
 Hazlitt, " the sweet, the graceful, the gentlemanly 
 Hamlet. The scholar's eye shone in him with 
 learned beauty ; the soldier's spirit decorated his 
 person ; the beauty of its performance was its 
 retrospective air, its intensity and abstraction ; 
 his youth seemed delivered over to sorrow. Later 
 actors have played the part with more energy, 
 
134 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 walked more in the sun, dashed more at effect 
 piqued themselves more on the girth of a foil ; but 
 Kemble's sensible, lonely Hamlet has not been 
 surpassed." One of the most popular Hamlets 
 of the last century was Charles Mayne Young, an 
 actor who had all the classic training of the Kemble 
 school, yet had more fire and freedom in his acting 
 than John Philip Kemble or Sarah Siddons. His 
 chief effects were made in the play scene and in the 
 fencing bout with Laertes, which were better suited 
 to his nature than the scenes with Ophelia and the 
 Queen. These were wanting in tenderness and 
 had in them something of irritability. Some of the 
 lines were delivered with undue passion. In brief, 
 Young's Hamlet was fiery and impetuous. 
 
 The Hamlet of Edmund Kean, although not 
 so effective with the audience as his Shylock, 
 was, nevertheless, an impersonation of wonderful 
 beauty. His grace and earnestness throughout, 
 and the tender tones in his voice when addressing 
 the Ghost, were particularly noted. The chief 
 features of his Hamlet were tenderness for Ophelia, 
 affection for his mother, reverence for his father's 
 spirit, and an inflexible idea of revenge for his 
 father's murder. Old Mrs Garrick, the widow of 
 Kean's great predecessor, showed such interest in 
 Kean's rendering of the character that she induced 
 him to alter his reading of the closet scene. Kean 
 always played this with an infinite tenderness. 
 " Davy," however, was somewhat severe in his 
 
Hamlet 135 
 
 treatment of the Queen. Kean adopted the sug- 
 gestion, although against his convictions, but after 
 two or three nights abandoned it and returned to 
 his own view of the scene. The Hamlet of Mac- 
 ready was studied and correct, in accordance with 
 his conception of the character ; his portrayal 
 was monotonous, harsh, and severe, which anyone 
 who has read the Diaries of the actor can well 
 understand. There was nothing of Hamlet in 
 Macready's composition. 
 
 When Mr Bendall compared the Hamlet of 
 H. B. Irving with that of Charles Albert Fechter, 
 he must have had the naturalness and beauty of 
 the impersonation by the latter actor in mind. 
 Fechter's Hamlet was distinguished by several 
 passages of exquisite beauty of thought and ex- 
 pression and, generally speaking, by high refine- 
 ment and excellent taste. In appearance, though, 
 there could not have been a greater contrast. 
 Fechter's Hamlet was " a pale, woe-begone Norse- 
 man, with long flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb 
 never associated with the English stage (if ever 
 seen there at all)." He wore a medallion portrait 
 of his father, swinging round his neck on a gold 
 chain. In similar manner, the Queen wore a por- 
 trait of Claudius ; so, also, did Guildenstern. 
 Fechter made vast use of these portraits. Thus, 
 for instance, as Rosencrantz did not wear a 
 portrait, he was less hateful to Hamlet than 
 his co-conspirator. Despite an infinity of stage 
 
136 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 " business/' the Hamlet of Fechter was ' ' natural " 
 and charming. His appearance and bearing were 
 such that the eye rested on him with delight and 
 the sympathy of the spectators was assured. 
 " Intellectually and physically/' said George Henry 
 Lewes, " he so satisfies the audience that they 
 exclaim, ' How natural ! ' " 
 
 It was inevitable that when H. B. Irving acted 
 Hamlet he should be compared with his father in 
 this character. In 1905, there were not many play- 
 goers who could speak from their own remem- 
 brance of the Hamlet of Henry Irving. In this 
 respect, however, as in the case of the other great 
 actors of the English stage, the records are full. 
 It is not necessary for me to eulogise that imper- 
 sonation. The Hamlet of Henry Irving lives in 
 the story of our stage and will, so long as history 
 lasts, be one of the brightest chapters in connection 
 with the English theatre. For two hundred con- 
 secutive times, 3ist October 1874 to 2Qth June 
 1875, Henry Irving acted Hamlet at the Lyceum 
 Theatre. Nor was there any of that " scenic 
 embellishment," which blurs the vision of the 
 ignorant, to aid him, and the Ophelia was just 
 an ordinary actress, the daughter of the manager. 
 There must have been something " uncommon 
 good " about such a Hamlet 1 It had intensity 
 of feeling, flashes of passion, above all, the quality 
 of princeliness. This Hamlet was a lonely being. 
 He was a prince in this respect, a man apart, one 
 
Hamlet 1 37 
 
 whose courtly airs raised him above his surround- 
 ings. His air of separation was a dominant note. 
 He was, all the same, very human. The tender 
 beauty of his treatment of Ophelia was one of the 
 most exquisite points in the interpretation. This 
 Hamlet loved Horatio, relied upon him, did not 
 treat him as a lay figure. His Hamlet was pro- 
 foundly melancholy, infinitely sad, piteous in 
 its absolute separation from all sympathy. Yet 
 withal a sympathetic impersonation, a sad, lonely, 
 introspective figure. 
 
 In 1910 and 1911, H. B. Irving gave two 
 performances of Hamlet, during the Shakespeare 
 Festival seasons, at His Majesty's Theatre. His 
 Hamlet then represented the impersonation by 
 which his interpretation should be judged. He 
 was then free from care or comparatively so, for 
 the life of the real actor has many anxieties and 
 this settled frame of mind enabled him to act the 
 character to the very best of his ability. He then 
 brought out, more than he had ever done, the most 
 charming, the most tender side of it. I knbw well 
 all the descriptions of the famous Hamlets of old 
 and I have seen all the Hamlets of note of my own 
 time. And I have no hesitation in giving it as my 
 opinion that in one quality the Hamlet of H. B. 
 Irving transcended them all. He was the most 
 lovable Hamlet that the stage has known. In the 
 course of an article which appeared in The Windsor 
 Magazine early in 1910, in which I was asked to 
 
138 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 compare the acting of father and son, I wrote : 
 " The Hamlet of the son recalls that of the father 
 in many important respects. It, too, is full of fine 
 feeling, it has its passionate noteas in the play 
 sceneit has intensity of an order which, by 
 comparison, is subdued ; it has great tenderness 
 for Ophelia. It is a much more youthful Hamlet 
 than, I imagine, his father's ever was. And it is 
 certainly extremely lovable. The Hamlet of our 
 day has two paramount features, youth and 
 lovableness. It has not the profound melancholy 
 of the father, but it is a most engaging picture. 
 Hamlet can be interpreted in divers ways and by 
 actors of varying personality. Discussion on this 
 or that point will last until the crack of doom. 
 But so long as the actor brings home to us some- 
 thing of the nature of Hamlet, something of his 
 distinction, something of that fine nature over- 
 burdened with a sense of terror sufficient to unseat 
 the reason and impair the soul, we must be grateful. 
 Irving the First did this by, above and beyond 
 other means, his deep-seated melancholy. The 
 son impresses us and draws us to him by the 
 lovableness which dominates his Hamlet." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 AUSTRALIA AND HOME 
 
 A LENGTHY tour of Australia and New 
 Zealand having been arranged for by the 
 syndicate already mentioned, he opened 
 in Sydney, on 24th June 1911, as Hamlet. In that 
 city, where he attained more success, perhaps, 
 than elsewhere in Australia, the tour closed, on 
 5th April 1912, with scenes from The Bells and 
 Hamlet. A special compliment was paid to him 
 soon after his arrival in New South Wales. On 
 i8th July, at the invitation of the Chancellor and 
 Senate of Sydney University, he delivered a lecture, 
 " Some Thoughts on Hamlet" in the Great Hall 
 of the University. He dwelt largely upon a point 
 which his father had taken up on more than one 
 occasion, that of Shakespeare, the actor, intend- 
 ing that his plays were for public performance, 
 not merely for the seclusion of the study. As was 
 to be expected, his remarks on Hamlet evinced 
 research and clear reasoning. He afterwards 
 amplified the lecture and delivered it in England. 
 On his way home from Australia he received a 
 handsome offer from Mr Arthur Collins to take 
 the part of Nobody in a " modern morality play/' 
 of American origin, called Every&oman, or The 
 Quest of Love, which had the advantage of being 
 
140 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 adapted for the English stage by Stephen Phillips. 
 It was produced at Drury Lane on I2th September 
 1912 and filled in the time lucratively between the 
 Australian tour and one that had been planned for 
 him in South Africa. From an artistic point of 
 view there was nothing in the part of Nobody 
 whereby to enhance his reputation. He wore a 
 purple hood and bore a resemblance that at times 
 was uncanny to his father as Dante on that same 
 stage. The centenary of the opening of the 
 Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (the existing building, 
 the fourth on the same site) was celebrated in 
 October. An address, written for the occasion 
 by Stephen Phillips, was spoken by " H.B." The 
 South African tour began on 26th December 
 following, with A Maid of Honour and The Lyons 
 Mail, at Johannesburg. It was in the latter city 
 that, in March 1913, he brought out The Sin of 
 David, by Stephen Phillips, appearing as Sir 
 Hubert Lisle. The tour ended at Cape Town on 
 24th May 1913. With it also ended his connec- 
 tion with the company which had supported him 
 for two and a half years. Its chairman was Mr 
 Edward G. Hemmerde, K.C., the other members 
 of the board of directors being four of the most 
 experienced theatre managers in England Mr 
 Milton Bode, the late James Macready Chute, the 
 late Edward Compton, and Mr John Hart. 
 
 During the last five or six years of his life he gave 
 some remarkable performances. One of these was 
 
Australia and Home 141 
 
 the gentleman burglar in The Van Dyck. It 
 did not attract the attention that it deserved, 
 partly because he was not the first representative 
 of the character, partly because he acted it in the 
 music-halls only. It was farce-acting of the highest 
 order, easy, bright and excruciatingly funny, a 
 strong contrast to the graceful D6sire in The Grand 
 Seigneur. His last season at the Savoy was marked 
 by much acting of a high order. His dignified Robert 
 Elaine in Searchlights, the airy, fantastic Hyacinth 
 Petavel in The Angel in the House , his clear-cut 
 Harley Napier in The Case of Lady Camber, gave 
 full play to his marked individuality. As for 
 Beverley in The Barton Mystery, despite the hum- 
 bug of the man, one could not help liking him for 
 his calm effrontery as well as his underlying charm. 
 This period was also one in which he experienced 
 a keen disappointment. Thinking that Hamlet 
 might be made into a better acting play than in 
 the versions in which he had hitherto appeared, 
 and with a view to attracting war-time audiences 
 to Shakespeare, he made some extraordinary 
 excisions in his attempts to present the "story." 
 It was his avowed aim to emphasise " the dramatic, 
 as apart from the literary, interest." With this 
 end in view the advice of Polonius to Laertes 
 and Hamlet's address to the players went by the 
 board. The omissions did not find favour with 
 the public, and the reduction of the tragedy to a 
 " story " drama failed in its effect. This strange 
 
142 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 condensation of Hamlet , brought out on 26th April 
 
 1917, had only twenty-six performances. It was 
 a mistake, one that the admirers of the actor could 
 only regret. It was one which might not have 
 occurred but for the physical illness then making 
 itself felt, which, I have no doubt, affected his 
 judgment somewhat in regard to this particular 
 play. 
 
 His last part at the Savoy was that of Stephen 
 Pryde, a weird character in The Invisible Foe. 
 His last public appearance was made on i7th 
 December 1918, when at His Majesty's Theatre, at 
 a matinee in aid of King George's Pension Fund 
 for Actors and Actresses, he played Sir Charles 
 Pomander in an act from Masks and Faces. It 
 was on that occasion also that a friend of his youth, 
 Lady Bancroft, made her last appearance in public. 
 
 His health was on the decline in the spring of 
 
 1918. On agth April he wrote to Mr Golding 
 Bright, with whom he had been talking about a 
 version of Treasure Island, saying : "I am afraid 
 for the present I shall not be dealing in plays. I 
 am going to the Intelligence Department at the 
 Admiralty to-day. I give them all my time, and 
 for how long I suppose depends to some extent 
 on the duration of the war. At any rate, for the 
 present I shall not be doing anything in our line 
 of business/' Those who were in the office where 
 he worked at the Admiralty testify to his worn 
 appearance when he joined the service. Never 
 
Australia and Home 143 
 
 robust, he was not fitted for the routine of an office, 
 with its long hours of desk work and its close 
 application to the perusal of a multitude of docu- 
 ments, which, although his keen brain mastered 
 them, tired him. Although he was not employed 
 at the Admiralty for five months his services 
 terminated with the Armistice he suffered 
 severely from the strain. 
 
 During the autumn of that year we met at lunch 
 some half-dozen times. It was apparent that 
 Disease had marked him for her own. Usually 
 abstemious in the pleasures of the table, he ate 
 and drank ravenously and, to my astonishment, 
 smoked a large cigar at each meal with a feverish 
 enjoyment. All this was unnatural and a sure 
 mark of that illness which eventually caused his 
 death. He was just wasting away. In the follow- 
 ing summer he spent some months at his house at 
 Whitstable in the hope of regaining his strength. 
 It was not to be. From Whitstable he came to 
 town occasionally for a few hours. On one of 
 those days he had an appointment with me. He 
 had to walk from the Savoy to the Adelphi. 
 Knowing that he would be punctual, I was looking 
 for him from the window of my office, which is on 
 the street level. It was well that I did so, for I 
 was appalled at his appearance. He had aged 
 terribly, he was stooping and dejected in appear- 
 ance, a shocking change from his old, alert 
 self. The interval before I opened the door was 
 
144 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 sufficient for me to recover my composure, so that 
 I was able to greet him with a smiling face. 
 
 That was the last time that I saw him alive. 
 He had no idea that his illness was so serious or 
 that it could only end in death. Early in October, 
 he wrote to me from a house which he had just 
 taken in Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, 
 suggesting a visit. The visit, unfortunately, never 
 took place, as, not knowing how serious was his 
 case, I did not go to see him at once. 
 
 It is now over two years since I wrote the 
 following article. It was written at a time of 
 great stress and amid surroundings which did not 
 tend to the quiet mind. I see no reason to alter 
 it in any way. It was my thought on that sad 
 October morning in 1919. It is a thought that is 
 unchanged now : 
 
 " With the death of Henry Brodribb Irving there 
 passes a great spirit. A distinguished actor, a 
 man of high honour and, best of all, a most lovable 
 man. I have just looked upon him for the last 
 time. Lying in his beautiful room, his face in 
 death is that of a Roman emperor, clean-cut, firm, 
 austere, yet touched in a strange way by gentleness. 
 When one writes immediately after the death of a 
 beloved friend, one is apt to become sentimental, 
 and sentimentality he despised. But there is 
 nothing unduly sentimental in describing the elder 
 son of Henry Irving as lovable. It was his chief 
 quality, his great value in the world. It shone out 
 
"H. B. AND LAURENCE 
 With the bust of their father 
 
Australia and Home 145 
 
 in his acting and made him loved by the people. 
 To thousands who never knew him personally he 
 was c H.B./ a tribute of affectionate regard which 
 denotes character. He was not just ' Irving the 
 actor/ but 'H.B./ a personality, one who was 
 something more than a mere player. Yet he, 
 by some contrariness of nature, or by reason of his 
 keen, penetrating sense ot humour, preferred the 
 uncanny, the weird, the whimsical. But when he 
 did play a part in which he could win sympathy 
 he acted to perfection. His father's Hamlet was 
 the most princely Hamlet ever known. The 
 Hamlet of 'H.B.' was the most lovable. What 
 a charming performance was his Wogan in The 
 Princess Clementina how graceful, how pensive, 
 how touched with sweetness ! 
 
 " 1 dwell upon this lovableness of the man, not 
 only because it comes uppermost to the mind at 
 such a time, but because, not having acted recently, 
 some people associate him with the playing of 
 villains and persons of mystery. They think, too, 
 of his studies t in crime and imagine him to have 
 been steeped in gloom, whereas his outlook on life 
 was always clear and, through the years of the 
 war, calmly hopeful. Perhaps it might have been 
 better for him if he had been less studious and if 
 he had not devoted himself so much to his favourite 
 hobby. I have often thought that the constant 
 delving into the past by way of tracing the motives 
 of murders was not conducive to the best of health 
 
146 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 and spirits. And although in the acting of such 
 characters as Lesurques and Dubosc, and Dr Jekyll 
 and Mr Hyde, the good predominated in his im- 
 personations who can ever forget the tenderness, 
 the sorrowfulness of his acting in the scene in The 
 Lyons Mail, where Lesurques is falsely accused ? 
 it would have been better for him and for his art if 
 he had not confined himself so much to the darker 
 side of characters. 
 
 " He arrived at all his effects in real life, as on 
 the stage, by simple means. Unlike his father, 
 his ambitions were limited. Indeed, he was not 
 ambitious in the ordinary way. He did not aspire 
 to fame. On the contrary, he dreaded the lime- 
 light. He was never a poseur. With the inherit- 
 ance of a great name, with the finest of scholastic 
 educations by which he profited immensely he 
 could have achieved a very high place in the world 
 had he so wished. Had he devoted himself to the 
 law there is no honour that he might not have 
 attained. He preferred the simple life, and such 
 distraction as he needed he found in the theatre. 
 There he was happy when he got before the public. 
 But the littleness of the stage, its petty jealousies 
 and artificialities he could not brook. Nor could he 
 attend to the business side of affairs. The ' front 
 of the house ' was not to his liking. He loved to 
 act to please the public. But his mind was not 
 bent on the money-bags. If he had played light 
 comedy, for which he had a genius, he would have 
 
Australia and Home 147 
 
 made a fortune. He soon tired of comedy and re- 
 turned at the earliest possible moment to the serious 
 parts with which his name as an actor is identified. 
 
 " It is curious as showing what that tricksy 
 sprite, Fate, can do against our own intent that, 
 after a life of labour, ' H. B. 's ' last years were 
 relieved from financial strain by the profits which 
 he derived from the Savoy Theatre. And in this 
 his inner nature and his high principles were shown. 
 When he took up work in the Admiralty work 
 which tried his strength severely, and, as I believe, 
 started the illness from which he never recovered 
 he let the theatre. Not, however, at a large profit, 
 which he might have obtained for the asking. On 
 the contrary, his own rent being small thanks to 
 the discernment and good offices of his friend, the 
 late J. D. Langton, whose death was a blow from 
 which 'H.B.' never recovered he was content 
 with a profit which he thought fair. It was 
 sufficient to leave a handsome margin, but it was 
 not exorbitant. 
 
 " Sir Henry Irving died in harness, for he had to 
 struggle to the end in order to pay his way. His 
 son died in easy circumstances and surrounded by 
 every comfort that was necessary. His wife was 
 by his side during all the months of his long illness, 
 and, during these last sad days, was his devoted 
 attendant. His son, Laurence, was constantly 
 with him, and his daughter, Elizabeth, saw her 
 father and cheered him by her presence not many 
 
148 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 hours before the end. His death was eminently 
 peaceful. His mentality triumphed over his frail 
 body and enabled him to retain his consciousness 
 to within a few hours of the sleep from which he 
 did not awake. His intellect was clear, his brain 
 penetrating to the last. In all his life he did his 
 duty. His death was serene. He died beloved. 
 Could a man wish for more?" 
 
 All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me, 
 Know my last state is happy free from doubt, 
 Or touch of fear. Love me and wish me well ! 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
\ 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 AUTHOR AND CRIMINOLOGIST 
 
 IN his Book of Remarkable Criminals, pub- 
 lished during the year before his death, 
 dedicated " to my friend, E. V. Lucas/' 
 H. B. Irving begins his Introduction with an 
 interesting reminiscence : " I remember my father 
 telling me that sitting up late one night talking 
 with Tennyson the latter remarked that he had 
 not kept such late hours since a recent visit of 
 Jowett. On that occasion the poet and the phil- 
 osopher had talked together well into the small 
 hours of the morning. My father asked Tennyson 
 what was the subject of conversation that had 
 so engrossed them. ' Murders/ replied Tennyson. 
 It would have been interesting to have heard 
 Tennyson and Jowett discussing such a theme. 
 The fact is a tribute to the interest that crime 
 has for many men of intellect and imagination. 
 Indeed, how could it be otherwise ? Rob history 
 and fiction of crime, how tame and colourless 
 would be the residue ! " He then proceeds, with 
 great skill and biting humour, to argue his point. 
 " In the investigation of crime/' he says in his 
 conclusion, " especially on the broader lines of 
 Continental procedure, we can track to the source 
 the springs of conduct and character, and come 
 149 
 
150 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 near to solving as far as is humanly possible the 
 mystery of human motive. There is always and 
 must be in every crime a terra incognita which, 
 unless we could enter the very soul of man, we 
 cannot hope to reach. Thus far may we go, no 
 farther. It is rarely indeed that a man lays bare 
 his whole soul, and even when he does we can 
 never be quite sure that he is telling us all the truth, 
 that he is not keeping back some vital secret. It 
 is no doubt better so, and that it should be left to 
 the writer of imagination to picture for us a man's 
 inmost soul. The study of crime will help him to 
 that end. It will help us also in the ethical apprecia- 
 tion of good and evil in individual conduct, about 
 which our notions have been somewhat obscured by 
 too narrow a definition of what constitutes crime. 
 These themes, touched on lightly and imperfectly 
 in these pages, are rich in human interest. And 
 so it is hardly a matter for surprise that the poet 
 and the philosopher sat up late one night talking 
 about murders/' 
 
 In this "mystery of human motive," in this 
 " human interest " of crime, lay the attraction 
 which caused H. B. Irving to devote so large a 
 part of his short life to its study and exposition. 
 This was his view in 1918. But was it always so ? 
 And it has often occurred to his friends, Cui bono ? 
 The first thought induced by the attentive perusal 
 of his books is the immense amount of research 
 which was necessary for some of them. In others, 
 
Author and Criminologist 151 
 
 his grasp of detail, his ready condensation of facts 
 and his lucid style are particularly remarkable. 
 From the purely literary point of view, his first 
 and his last books are his best. The Lije of Judge 
 Jeffreys, published before he was twenty-eight, is 
 a monument of industry, consisting of nearly four 
 hundred closely printed pages, and although the 
 writing was spread over a number of years, from 
 his student days at Oxford until he had made some 
 real success on the stage, the necessary study was 
 enormous. His list of authorities relating to the 
 life and times of Judge Jeffreys is a formidable one, 
 and there is no doubt that he had consulted them 
 all and mastered the contents of the more useful 
 accounts. What is more, he produced a clear and 
 eminently readable book, a sound and sometimes 
 brilliant, if not entirely convincing, biography. 
 
 He had, indeed, a special facility in biography. 
 Take, for example, a minor effort in comparison 
 with the Jeffreys, book, his lecture on Colley Gibber. 
 Professedly a lecture on the Apology for the life of 
 that worthy actor-manager, it is a fine essay on the 
 period of the player, and, incidentally, it castigates 
 with many a rapier-like thrust the prejudice against 
 the stage which has prevailed since Shakespeare's 
 day to our own. Masterly also is his account of 
 the arch-burglar, Charles Peace, written some four- 
 teen years later. 
 
 Some may think it a pity that he did not confine 
 his literary studies to people of his own country, 
 
152 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 even though they included a fair proportion of 
 murderers. His second big volume, Studies of 
 French Criminals of the Nineteenth Century, which 
 came from the press three years after The Life of 
 Judge Jeffreys, dealt with a number of foreign 
 criminals whose misdeeds are best buried in 
 oblivion. " They are studies of real culprits 
 whose guilt is, in all but one instance, beyond 
 the suspicion of a doubt. As studies of character, 
 and as examples of the administration of criminal 
 justice in France, they may be of some interest or 
 value to those who look to the human document 
 for specimens of human character as it actually is, 
 or for suggestions on which to build some work of 
 fiction." It will thus be seen that he was imbued 
 at the outset of his studies in crime by the idea 
 of their " human " interest. The careers of the 
 bombastic and vulgar thief and murderer of 
 1836, Lacenaire, of the terrible Troppmann, who 
 stabbed and battered to death a woman and her 
 five children, of the Abbe Bruneau, who murdered 
 his superior, an aged priest, in a particularly 
 revolting manner, of Pranzini and others, have 
 nothing " human " about them. On the contrary, 
 " inhuman " is the only epithet that can be applied 
 to these monsters. Two murders done in Algiers 
 are included in this recapitulation of horrors on 
 foreign soil, and there is a chapter on the notori- 
 ous Ravachel and two others, " criminals first 
 and anarchists afterwards," uninteresting creatures 
 
Author and Criminologist 153 
 
 whose crimes should not be recalled in fiction 
 and to whom the word " human " was foreign. 
 " Historically/' the English writer admitted, 
 " Ravachel and his fellows are passing nightmares, 
 unworthy to be more than barely chronicled in the 
 lifetime of a great people ; but there are points in 
 the characters of these criminals and the circum- 
 stances of their punishments which are not without 
 significance to the better understanding of the 
 French character and administration of justice." 
 
 To the healthy English mind this collection of 
 the records of these seventeen French criminals 
 seems superfluous, despite the plea that "the 
 French system of criminal procedure " the re- 
 lentless examination of the accused at the Assize 
 Court " possesses one supreme merit from the 
 point of view of the student of character." Are 
 such people worth the attention of " the student 
 of character " ? If so, their doings are minutely 
 chronicled in the Gazette des Tribunaux and other 
 publications. In France, there is no end to the 
 printed records of Causes Cdkbres of murderers 
 and other lalefactors. H. B, Irving's second 
 book was not a scientific work. It was simply the 
 story of some of the most atrocious criminals ever 
 known to the French law. It represents " human 
 nature " in its utmost depravity. 
 
 Seventeen years were to pass before his third, 
 and best, book was published (his Occasional 
 Papers, noticed in a previous chapter, were issued 
 
154 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 in volume form in 1906). A Book of Remarkable 
 Criminals takes us to various parts of the world. 
 Peace was English. The son of a man who was 
 successively a collier, a lion tamer, and a shoe- 
 maker, he was born at Sheffield, " in the county of 
 Yorkshire, already famous in the annals of crime 
 as the county of John Nevinson and Eugene Aram. ' ' 
 All his exploits were performed in England. 
 Robert Butler committed his murders in Dunedin, 
 New Zealand. Professor Webster, of Harvard 
 University, committed, in 1849, a murder for the 
 sake of pecuniary gain, a sordid crime, which is 
 presented with abundant detail in Remarkable 
 Criminals. The author of the recapitulation of the 
 mournful story , in the course of his professional visit 
 to America in 1906-7, visited the scene. Another 
 American murder story dwelt upon at full length 
 in this book is that officially known as the Holmes- 
 Pitezel Case. H. H. Holmes, who will be remem- 
 bered as the keeper of a place in Chicago which 
 became known as " Holmes' Castle/' killed, so far 
 as is known for certain, about ten persons, includ- 
 ing several children. And, as in the case of the 
 Harvard Professor of Chemistry, for the purpose, 
 primarily, of monetary gain. The story of Pro- 
 fessor Webster is a melancholy one, relieved some- 
 what by its psychological interest ; that of Holmes 
 is revolting. A long account of a swindler and 
 murderer of the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century, one Derues, who was executed in the 
 
Author and Criminologist 155 
 
 barbarous fashion of those times, and of Dr 
 Castaing, another French murderer, who met his 
 fate a century ago, are included in this volume, 
 together with accounts of other murderers of 
 France whose misdeeds bear out, to some extent, 
 the theory of suggestion in crime. There is a 
 wonderful wealth of detail in the descriptions of 
 these murderers and their crimes. But the ques- 
 tion always arises, Cui bono P What purpose, 
 good or otherwise, is served by their relation ? 
 
 On the other hand, the memoir of Peace, the 
 notorious burglar of forty years ago, is distin- 
 guished by its easy style, its lightness of touch, its 
 bright humour, its occasional grim irony. Here 
 our author was dealing with a popular subject, 
 and although he was obliged to condemn his 
 crimes, he admired the ability of the man. 
 
 " Charley Peace/' he says, " stands out as the 
 one great personality among English criminals of 
 the nineteenth century. In Charley Peace alone is 
 revived that good-humoured popularity which in 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fell to 
 the lot of Claude Duval, Dick Turpin, and Jack 
 Sheppard. But Peace has one grievance which 
 these heroes have been spared. His name has been 
 omitted from the pages of the Dictionary of 
 National Biography. From Duval, in the seven- 
 teenth, down to the Mannings, Palmer, Arthur 
 Orton, Morgan and Kelly, the bushrangers, in the 
 nineteenth century, many a criminal, far less 
 
156 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 notable or individual than Charley Peace, finds 
 his or her place in that great record of the past 
 achievements of our countrymen. Room has been 
 denied to perhaps the greatest and most naturally 
 gifted criminal England has produced, one whose 
 character is all the more remarkable for its 
 modesty, its entire freedom from that vanity and 
 vaingloriousness so common among his class." 
 
 The biography of Peace is the leading, as it is the 
 longest, essay in the book. It is a masterly pro- 
 duction, the more so as H'. B. Irving had to follow 
 other writers who had dealt fully with the subject. 
 Here, as in all this kind of work, his grasp of 
 detail, his clearness as to facts, his power of 
 selecting the essential, and discarding the un- 
 necessary, incidents and statements in the mass of 
 material upon which he worked, were invaluable. 
 He contrasts Jack Sheppard with Peace in an 
 amusing way : 
 
 " Sheppard loves to stroll openly about the 
 London streets in his fine suit of black, his 
 ruffled shirt and his silver-hilted sword. Peace 
 lies concealed at Peckham beneath the homely 
 disguise of old Mr Thompson. Sheppard is an 
 imp, Peace a goblin. But both have that gift of 
 personality which, in their peculiar line, lifts them 
 out from the ruck, and makes them Jack and 
 Charley to those who like to know famous people 
 by cheery nicknames. And so we must accept 
 Charles Peace as a remarkable character, whose 
 
Author and Criminologist 157 
 
 unquestioned gifts as a man of action were 
 squandered on a criminal career ; neither better 
 nor worse than a great number of other persons 
 whose good fortune it has been to develop similar 
 qualities under happier surroundings. There are 
 many more complete villains than the ordinary 
 criminal, who contrive to go through life without 
 offending against the law. Close and scientific in- 
 vestigation has shown that the average convicted 
 criminal differs intellectually from the normal 
 person only in a slightly lower level of intelli- 
 gence, a condition that may well be explained by 
 the fact that the convicted criminal has been found 
 out." 
 
 His Introduction to A Book of Remarkable 
 Criminals is a fascinating chapter. It is exceed- 
 ingly clever, audacious, and, in some passages, 
 buoyant and humorous. In it, also, he makes a 
 departure from beaten tracks, and even finds scope 
 for a comparison between Holmes, the Chicago 
 murderer, and Richard III. Holmes was " com- 
 pletely insensible to all feelings of humanity. 
 Taking life is a mere incident in the accomplish- 
 ment of his schemes ; men, women, and children 
 are sacrificed with equal mercilessness to the neces- 
 sary end. A consummate liar and hypocrite, he 
 has the strange power of fascination over others, 
 women in particular, which is often independent 
 altogether of moral or even physical attractiveness. 
 We are accustomed to look for a certain vastness, 
 
158 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 grandeur of scale, in the achievements of America. 
 A study of American crime will show that it does 
 not disappoint us in this expectation. The extent 
 and audacity of the crimes of Holmes are proof 
 of it." He finds the " counterpart in imaginative 
 literature to the complete criminal of the Holmes 
 type in the pages of Shakespeare. " Richard III. 
 espoused " deliberately a career of crime, as de- 
 liberately as Peace, Holmes, or Butler." Shake- 
 speare, he thinks, got nearer to the domestic, as 
 opposed to the political, crimes of the historical 
 criminal " when he created lago. In their envy 
 and dislike of their fellow-men, their contempt 
 for humanity in general, their callousness to the 
 ordinary sympathies of human nature, Robert 
 Butler, Lacenaire, Ruloff are witnesses to the 
 poet's fidelity to criminal character in his drawing 
 of the Ancient." He considered the King in 
 Hamlet " the most successful and therefore, per- 
 haps, the greatest criminal in Shakespeare," the 
 murder of his brother being " skilfully carried out 
 by one whose genial good-fellowship and convivial 
 habits gave the lie to any suggestion of criminality. " 
 He takes the case of the murder of, Duncan by 
 Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as an example of a 
 class of crime of which there are four modern 
 instances cited in the book, the dual crime. In 
 a number of cases " in which two persons have 
 jointly committed heinous crimes," there is gener- 
 ally one who commits the deed at the suggestion of 
 
Author and Criminologist 159 
 
 the other. " In some cases these two roles are 
 clearly differentiated ; it is easy, as in the case of 
 lago and Othello, Cassius and Brutus, to say who 
 prompted the crime. In others, the guilt seems 
 equally divided and the original suggestion of 
 crime to spring from a mutual tendency towards 
 the adoption of such an expedient. In Macbeth 
 and his wife we have a perfect instance of the latter 
 class. No sooner have the witches prophesied 
 that Macbeth shall be a king than the ' horrid 
 image ' of the suggestion to murder Duncan 
 presents itself to his mind, and, on returning to his 
 wife, he answers her question as to when Duncan 
 is to leave their house by the significant remark, 
 ' To-morrow as he proposes/ To Lady Macbeth, 
 from the moment she has received her husband's 
 letter telling of the prophecy of the weird sisters, 
 murder occurs as a means of accomplishing their 
 prediction. In the minds of Macbeth and his wife 
 the suggestion of murder is originally an auto- 
 suggestion, coming to them independently of each 
 other as soon as they learn from the witches that 
 Macbeth is one day to be a king/' The criminals 
 of Shakespeare, discussed in this Introduction, 
 was the basis for a deeper study of the subject 
 which, unfortunately, he had not the opportunity 
 to elaborate. It would, no doubt, have been a 
 valuable contribution to Shakespearean literature. 
 The final volumes in which he was concerned 
 were published posthumously in 1921. Last 
 
160 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Studies in Criminology, issued without any preface 
 or other preliminary matter, and wanting the 
 references which he himself was so careful to 
 supply, consists of the records in four cases of 
 wrongful accusations. The only one of interest 
 to English readers, from a legal point of view, is 
 that of Adolf Beck, an unfortunate Norwegian, 
 who, accused of crimes of which he was entirely 
 innocent, was condemned to penal servitude and 
 languished in prison for five years, only to be re- 
 leased when it was too late. He died a broken 
 man and in penury at the end of 1909. It was 
 a terrible case of mistaken identity. Beck was 
 truly a martyr. His sufferings did, however, lead 
 to certain reforms in our legal procedure, and his 
 conviction proved the utter worthlessness of the 
 evidence of so-called experts in handwriting. The 
 research evinced in this record must have been 
 enormous. In the three other cases dealt with in 
 these Last Studies, the writer had an easier task. 
 The story of the wrongful conviction of Joseph 
 Lesurques, of Emile Clement de la Ronciere and 
 of Peter Vaux, are good reading, but their interest 
 is more for the French than the English. The 
 story of Lesurques is well known through the 
 various plays on the subject, Le Courrier de Lyon, 
 The Lyons Mail, etc. In that case "H.B." had 
 wealth of material, including the lengthy book, 
 L' Affaire du Courrier de Lyon, issued in 1905, to 
 work upon. 
 
Author and Criminologist 161 
 
 The other book published after his death was one 
 of the " Notable Trial Series " (he had previously 
 edited two of these volumes : Franz Mutter and 
 Mrs Maybrick). The editing of the report of 
 the trial of Henry Wainwright, a sanctimonious 
 humbug and callous murderer, whose crime, com- 
 mitted in 1875, created an enormous sensation, 
 evidences just the same scrupulous care which 
 H. B. Irving invariably bestowed upon his work. 
 His Introduction is a clever and concise memoir 
 of the Whitechapel murderer. The volume has a 
 warm-hearted " Appreciation " from the pen of Sir 
 Edward Marshall Hall, the eminent counsel, who 
 relates the keen interest which the subject of his 
 praise always took in the discussion of notorious 
 crime. He was a member of " Our Society/' or 
 the " Crimes Club/' originally an association of 
 twelve, subsequently of forty, " members inter- 
 ested in criminology, who were to meet periodically 
 at dinner and after dinner debate cases and matters 
 connected with that subject. It has been very 
 successful, and the meetings have been all the more 
 interesting because members and their guests are 
 pledged to absolute secrecy. Nowhere will Harry 
 Irving be more missed than at the meetings of this 
 club." 
 
 One of H. B. living's best friends was the late 
 Churton Collins, one of the leading Shakespearean 
 scholars of the day, Chairman of English Litera- 
 ture in the University of Birmingham, a tremendous 
 
1 62 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 worker, a learned man, and a gentleman in the 
 true sense of the word. He was held in esteem 
 and affection by all who knew him. He was noted 
 for the gentleness of his nature, for his lovableness. 
 He was a perpetual burner of the midnight oil, 
 rarely taking more than five or six hours' sleep, 
 sometimes less. The study of criminology was one 
 of his hobbies. In the pursuance of this study he 
 made an exhaustive inquiry into the Merstham 
 tunnel murder and into the Wyrley cattle-maiming 
 outrages. He often sat up half the night discussing 
 crime with H. B. Irving. Unhappily, he came to 
 an untimely end, in 1908, at the age of sixty. 
 "H.B." outwore his physical strength ere he was 
 fifty. Would it have been otherwise if he had 
 not so thoroughly and so constantly pursued such 
 a morbid hobby as the study of murder ? And 
 could he not have put his fine intelligence and 
 exceptional literary gifts to better use than per- 
 petuating in print the deeds of criminals ? In any 
 case, although old gentlemen, be they poets or 
 philosophers or otherwise, may sit up without 
 doing themselves any harm once in a lifetime 
 "talking about murders," the pastime would not 
 seem to be a healthy exercise for a busy professor 
 and an ambitious actor. 
 
LAURENCE IRVING 
 
Part II 
 Laurence 
 
Ay 
 
 3 
 
 (6xH FEBRUARY, 1838 ISTH OCTOBER, 1905) 
 
 AUGUST, 1870 I7TH OCTOBER, 1919) 
 
 (aisT DECEMBER,' i8;i~29TH MAY, 1914) 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MARLBOROUGH TO RUSSIA 
 
 THE path of Harry Irving was strewn with 
 roses. For him, in his death as in his life, 
 there was sunshine always. The clouds 
 hung over Laurence almost to the end. Then 
 they lifted, only to descend again with appalling 
 swiftness, robbing him in an instant, even as he 
 stood upon the threshold of great achievement, of 
 wife, of life, of high attainment. Although his 
 years on earth were short, he accomplished much, 
 and his future wa,s full of good promise. Ever 
 working, ever striving, seldom coming within sight 
 of success, he was never envious of those who, with 
 lesser gifts, were more fortunate than himself. He 
 was supremely happy in one thing, one priceless 
 possession he had a high sense of duty. That 
 sense never failed him. Added to his natural 
 simplicity of nature, and a touch of humour which, 
 in the main, was genial, his duty to his fellow-men, 
 his sympathy with those whose lives were sad and 
 sombre, kept his intellectual activities alert and 
 his spirits buoyant. 
 
 His affectionate and amiable nature was one of 
 the characteristics most marked in his childhood. 
 It is borne out by all who knew him in his youth 
 165 
 
166 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 and as he grew to manhood. There is the testi- 
 mony not only of his mother, but of early friends, 
 the Rev. Mr Collum, the vicar of Leigh, his wife 
 and daughters, who speak laughingly to-day of his 
 untidy habits, although, with well-remembered 
 affection, of his winning ways. How he came to be 
 imbued with his love for Russia no one can tell. 
 It may have been instinct ; some chance may 
 have opened the way. Certain it is that he had it 
 quite early in life. His mother's house contained 
 a " Russian library" of some fifty volumes which 
 he formed for himself ; and one of his earliest 
 , recitations at Leigh, in January 1884, when he 
 had only just turned twelve, was proof of his 
 sympathy with the oppressed! It was The Fall 
 of Poland (on the same occasion, it will be re- 
 membered, Harry recited The Erl King). His 
 leanings toward Russia and his desire to enter 
 the Diplomatic Service were all of his " own 
 inclining/' 
 
 He was barely sixteen when he left Marlborough, 
 with, be it noted, " an excellent character," albeit 
 the report of his form master was " Not at all 
 satisfactory Bible lessons very poor," alas ! 
 Shortly afterwards he was sent to Paris, there to 
 perfect his French, in which, at college, he had 
 done fairly well. There he won the esteem of all 
 around him, his French master writing in praise 
 of his amiable character. From Paris he was 
 taken by his mother to St Petersburg. He was 
 
Marlborough to Russia 167 
 
 introduced by the Hon. Eric Harrington to the 
 English ambassador, Sir Robert Morier, an intro- 
 duction which was most valuable. He first lived 
 with an English resident, and afterwards, so that 
 his knowledge of the language of the country 
 should be completed, with a Russian. In St 
 Petersburg he received much hospitality from two 
 ladies, the Misses Page, daughters of a clergyman. 
 Here is an excerpt from a letter, dated December 
 1890, to the mother of the young student, from one 
 of these ladies : 
 
 " Now we will talk about dear Laurence. Sweet 
 boy, to-morrow is his birthday, and he will dine 
 with us. You may be proud of him and never can 
 praise him too much to me, for I begin to think 
 there is not such a nice boy in the world (although 
 he does lose and forget everything), but he can't 
 help it, for his thoughts are always far away, and 
 then how can he think of gloves, goloshes, and such 
 things. Those clever as he don't think of those 
 little things. ... I often wish that he lived with 
 me, for I would be better able to look after him. 
 However, where he is, he has learnt to speak 
 Russian well, for there they speak nothing else. 
 His head is full of acting just at present." 
 
 Let it not be thought, from the concluding 
 sentence of the letter, that the embryo diplomatist 
 was turning his thoughts towards the professional 
 stage. He had no such intention. No : some of 
 the English colony in St Petersburg, bent upon 
 
1 68 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 private theatricals, had asked Laurence Irving to 
 stage-manage a performance and play the principal 
 part. He wrote in fever-heat to his mother asking 
 her to obtain books of (a) David Garrick, (b) Two 
 Roses, (c) The Bells. He was most insistent about 
 David Garrick. Charles Wyndham had acted that 
 character, with superb success, in London in 1886, 
 and he had played it in German in St Petersburg 
 in January, 1888. It was a bold desire for an 
 amateur to wish to follow in Wyndham's footsteps, 
 only three years later, and in English, too ! Yet 
 David Garrick was the character which Laurence 
 longed to essay. In a letter to his " darling 
 mother" he says : 
 
 " Move heaven and earth, my darling, to get 
 Garrick, as I think it is by far the most suited to 
 our needs. I like Garrick. Turner, the father, 
 and all the common people who come to dinner, I 
 have got to the life. Garrick I can fairly well 
 carry off on my shoulders if I act well, and the rest 
 will have as small a chance as possible of spoiling 
 it. Try, darling, for D.G." 
 
 David Garrick was duly played, it being the first 
 piece given in English in St Petersburg. 
 
 Laurence never forgot the ladies who were kind 
 to him in St Petersburg. Years afterwards, the 
 Misses Page were in London and in sore straits. 
 Laurence made sure that they did not want, and 
 provided a pension for the surviving sister until 
 the day of her death. 
 
Maryborough to Russia 169 
 
 Laurence spent some three years in St Peters- 
 burg, becoming proficient in the knowledge of the 
 people, as well as in the language of Russia. 
 Young as he was, his sympathies were with the 
 people, not the aristocrats. He saw a great deal 
 of the latter, going constantly to receptions, balls, 
 the opera, and other functions. He had a joyous 
 existence, for he was extremely popular, and was 
 invited to many state and diplomatic affairs. I 
 have read some dozens of his letters written at this 
 period. They are all light-hearted, wonderfully 
 affectionate. The mother loved both her sons, 
 but there is no doubt that her heart was set upon 
 her youngest born. Laurence was devoted to her 
 all his life. His letters from Russia give evidence 
 of one trait which was strong in him, and in which 
 he differed vastly from his brother. Laurence 
 loved animals, Harry did not. Laurence had a 
 dog for companion almost always. There is 
 frequent mention in his letters from St Petersburg 
 of "Patch," a favourite dog which had perforce 
 been left in England. As for " Lop," his dog of 
 manhood, there are hundreds of people who can 
 recall the mutual affection of master and animal. 
 
 I think those brief years in Russia must have 
 been the happiest period ever lived by Laurence. 
 They were, in any case, free from care and full of 
 promise. Alas ! his hopes of becoming a member 
 of the diplomatic corps were dashed to the ground 
 while he was still in his teens. The disappoint- 
 
170 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 ment was not through any fault of his. He had 
 studied hard, he was proficient in French and 
 Russian, he was welcomed at the Embassy in St 
 Petersburg. Happily, or unhappily, a consider- 
 able sum of money, as well as influence, was re- 
 quired for those who entered into the diplomatic 
 service in those days. The influence was there, 
 but the financial aspect was not roseate. Henry 
 Irving could not supply the funds which were 
 necessary to secure his son a position free from 
 anxiety while he was on the first rung of the dip- 
 lomatic ladder. He considered the subject very 
 seriously and made careful inquiries into every 
 possibility of helping his son in this early ambition. 
 Unfortunately, although to the outer world Henry 
 Irving was one of the most successful men who 
 ever trod the stage, his finances in 1891 did not 
 permit him to make the monetary settlement 
 which was deemed the minimum for the would-be 
 diplomat. He was drawing huge sums from the 
 public, but spending the greater part upon his 
 theatre. One of my trusted possessions is his 
 private ledger, giving the receipts and expenses 
 week by week, as well as other particulars of 
 interest, from the beginning of his management of 
 the Lyceum in 1878 until his death. That instruc- 
 tive " human document " shows me that the 
 season August 1890 to July 1891 resulted in a 
 loss of over four thousand pounds, while the 
 seven months, December of the latter year until 
 
Maryborough to Russia 171 
 
 the end of the following July, showed a further 
 deficit, despite the receipts exceeding fifty-eight 
 thousand pounds. In the autumn of 1891, a 
 provincial tour enriched the treasury by a goodly 
 sum, insufficient, however, to balance the London 
 losses. He was not to blame for his inability to 
 settle an income upon his son. 
 
 It may have been for the best. Who knows ? 
 If one of the brothers was by nature a diplomat, 
 it certainly was not Laurence. Harry had much 
 more intuitive diplomacy. Laurence was far too 
 free and open, not to say explosive, for a career 
 which has for one of its guiding principles the iron 
 hand in the velvet glove. His was not the nature 
 that would have led him skilfully through the 
 tortuous, wily ways of what the man-in-the-street 
 knows of diplomacy. As he was not fated to 
 become a diplomat, he turned his attention to the 
 career which was open to him and resolved to 
 become an actor. It is to his credit that he was 
 never known to rebel against a keen disappoint- 
 ment, such as this early one must have been, nor 
 had he a harsh word to say of his father. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ACTOR AND AUTHOR 
 
 AT the age of twenty, as ever after, he was 
 a man of instant action. In August 1891 
 we find him making his first appearance on 
 the stage, in Dundee, as a member of the Shake- 
 spearean company directed by F. R. (now Sir 
 Frank) Benson, thus starting his public career a 
 month in advance of his brother. His opening 
 part was not a lengthy or ambitious one. Snug, 
 the joiner, is not exactly what actors call a " fat " 
 part. The lion in A Midsummer Night's Dream 
 is, good Peter Quince says, " nothing but roaring.'' 
 Snug has a few lines to speak, but he is one of the 
 least important of the rustics, although " a very 
 gentle beast, and of a good conscience." 
 
 Laurence living's experiences with the Benson 
 company were not limited to those of acting. While 
 on the stage at Belfast the shot from a pistol which 
 was not known to be loaded came near to ending 
 his career. In those times of piping peace the event 
 caused a commotion which now seems dispro- 
 portionate. The newspapers were eager in their 
 ventilation of the news and bulletins were issued 
 daily. The mother hurried from England to the 
 bedside of her wounded son; the father sent a 
 
 172 
 
Actor and Author 173 
 
 surgeon from this country to confer with those in 
 Belfast. The wound itself was not dangerous, but 
 the escape was almost miraculous, for the shot 
 penetrated the chest. Skill and a healthy con- 
 stitution triumphed, and Laurence Irving was 
 spared, at that period, a sudden death. 
 
 His next engagement "was with his father's old 
 friend and his own godfather, John Lawrence 
 Toole (after whom he was called, his name, how- 
 ever, being spelled Laurence). He made his first 
 appearance in London, on 26th March 1892, at 
 Toole's Theatre (originally the Folly, a small 
 house in King William Street, subsequently 
 absorbed by Charing Cross Hospital). His opening 
 part was Mr Augustus Cadell in Daisy's Escape, 
 the little play by another friend of his father, 
 Arthur W. Pinero. When the comedietta was 
 acted at the Lyceum, the author, as we have 
 seen, was a member of living's company. 
 He appeared as Mr Cadell, the rude, bad- 
 tempered creature with whom Daisy has run 
 away. It is worthy of notice that Laurence 
 Irving was thus identified at the beginning of his 
 work in London with the theatre and the work 
 of two men for whom his father had the highest 
 esteem and affection. He remained with Toole 
 for several months, playing, on tour, Andrew 
 MThail in Barrie's Walker, London, and other 
 parts. He appeared in minor parts at Toole's 
 Theatre in Dot, a version of The Cricket on the 
 
174 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Hearth, and other pieces. Much of this uneventful 
 sort of work followed, until, in 1896, he was selected 
 by Herbert Tree to act Svengali in Trilby on tour. 
 It was no small compliment that, with an experi- 
 ence of only five years, he should have been chosen 
 for a character of such importance. It is satis- 
 factory to know that he made an excellent impres- 
 sion as Svengali. He had, of course, to follow in 
 the footsteps of the original. It is said by some 
 that he bettered his predecessor. Be this as 
 it may, it is certain that his performance was a 
 worthy one. 
 
 A new phase began for him when he became a 
 member of his father's company. He had, being 
 the recipient of a regular and good salary, the 
 leisure for the development of his talent for 
 writing. His first play, a one-act drama, Time, 
 Hunger, and the Law, had been acted at a charity 
 matinee at the Criterion Theatre on 24th May 
 1894. It was a sad and sordid story of Russian 
 life, affording strong evidence of the gloom with 
 which Russia had affected him. He and his 
 brother, Mr Cyril Maude, and Mr Tom Heslewood 
 appeared in it and Charles Wyndham gave a 
 friendly hint to the David Garrick of St Petersburg. 
 He, also, had been appearing on that afternoon, 
 and, meeting Harry and Laurence immediately 
 afterwards, he thus admonished them : "I dare 
 say you're very clever young men, but youVe got 
 to learn your business as your father and as I did." 
 
Actor and Author 175 
 
 Shortly afterwards Harry, as we have seen, joined 
 Mr Ben Greet 's company, and Laurence, in 1896, 
 was playing Svengali. Mr Heslewood remained a 
 close friend to the brothers. 
 
 The little Russian drama was his first unaided 
 effort in play-writing. Fifteen months before 
 that representation at the Criterion, there was 
 acted, also at a matinee, an adaptation of Sheridan 
 Le Fanu's creepy story, Uncle Silas, in which 
 Laurence Irving was associated with Mr Seymour 
 Hicks. Both adapters appeared in their play, 
 together with Miss Violet Vanbrugh and Miss 
 Irene Vanbrugh. As there was already in exist- 
 ence a really excellent version of the novel, The 
 Dark Secret, by John Douglass, an expert in such 
 matters, it was a doubtful experiment for the 
 young actors to try their 'prentice hands on the 
 novel. Laurence living's third venture in writing 
 was also an adaptation. A Christmas Story was 
 an English version, in blank verse, of the Conte de 
 Noel of M. Maurice Boucher, played at the Theatre 
 Frangais in 1894. A Christmas Story was acted as 
 a first piece to The Bells, on 5th December 1895, 
 in New York, a mark of paternal solicitude, for it 
 never came into Henry Irving's regular programme. 
 
 Laurence was also indebted to his father for the 
 production of his fourth essay in drama. This was 
 a one-act play, Godefroi and Yolande, brought out in 
 Chicago on I3th March 1896, and in New York on 
 the i4th of May in the following year, with Ellen 
 
176 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Terry as Yolande. Laurence had a deep-seated 
 regard for women and for the chivalry due to them 
 from men. This feeling, strongly imbued in him, 
 was the impelling force of this his first important 
 essay as a dramatist. He had before him the 
 noble sacrifice of Father Damien, who cast in his 
 lot with the lepers of Molokai, living and working 
 for them, ultimately dying of the terrible disease. 
 The story of Godefroi and Yolande is one that is by 
 no means ennobling. It did not appeal to the 
 public, and, save that it was published in book 
 form, in 1898, and performed once after the death 
 of the author, as a well-meant tribute to his 
 memory, it has disappeared. 
 
LAURENCE AS CHARLES SURFACE 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 SUCCESS IN SHAKESPEARE 
 
 THE year 1898 was a fortunate one for 
 Laurence Irving. It brought him into 
 much prominence as a playwright, and he 
 gave one of the most admirable pieces of acting in 
 his career. He had received the greatest encourage- 
 ment from his father, who now gave a further proof 
 of his affection. Peter the Great was an admirable 
 work for a young writer, but it had the prevailing 
 defect of all the dramas of Laurence Irving. It was 
 entirely lacking in comedy. There was nothing to 
 relieve the gloom. The turbulent emperor was not 
 a character in which Henry Irving, his physical 
 health then failing him and terribly burdened as 
 he was by financial anxiety, could attract the 
 public. Ellen Terry was the Catherine, and the 
 support, it is almost superfluous to add, was 
 the best that could be obtained. It was given 
 thirty-eight times only at the Lyceum and was 
 heard of no more. 
 
 Peter the Great was, however, a valuable asset 
 for the young writer. It was something to have 
 a five-act play produced by Henry Irving. It was 
 also a privilege to take his place in the bill. This 
 happened on a night when the Prince of Wales 
 M 177 
 
178 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 (Edward VII.) had arranged to see Peter the Great. 
 Unfortunately for some reasons, fortunately for 
 others, the actor-manager of the Lyceum was too 
 ill to act, and the Royal visit could not be post- 
 poned. Laurence took his father's part and was 
 complimented by the Prince, who, this time 
 accompanied by the Princess of Wales, came again 
 to see Peter the Great. Henry Irving, who was 
 acting on that night, was congratulated by the 
 Prince upon the ability of his son, the Prince 
 quoting a line from the play: " Emperors don't 
 have sons, they have successors." Unhappily for 
 our stage, the prophecy was not fully realised by 
 either of Henry Irving's sons. 
 
 It was in the spring following the performance 
 of Peter the Great that Laurence gave an im- 
 personation which, if it had been seen in London, 
 would have established his position as an actor. 
 The records of his work published in his life- 
 time say nothing of his Justice Shallow, so that 
 it may be assumed that he did not attach any im- 
 portance to that feat. I do not find any allusion 
 to it in the numerous biographical articles which 
 appeared after his death. The memory of this 
 fine achievement made a vivid impression upon a 
 writer in The Manchester Guardian. That paper, 
 shortly after the news had reached this country of 
 the tragedy of the St Lawrence river, published 
 a special article in which it dealt at considerable 
 length with the actor. The revival of the second part 
 
Success in Shakespeare 179 
 
 of Henry IV., in which Laurence Irving appeared 
 was given by Mr Louis Calvert (who, curiously 
 enough, does not mention it in his own memoir) 
 and was pronounced "the best performance of a 
 play of Shakespeare as far as the actmg alone 
 went that has been seen in Manchester during the 
 last quarter of a century." Falstaff was played 
 by Mr Calvert, the producer of the play, " the best 
 English Falstaff, at any rate, of our time." There 
 was high praise for other members of the company, 
 but " the most amazing of all was the Justice 
 Shallow of Mr Laurence Irving, an actor then only 
 known to most of us here and a most dangerous 
 way to be known as a son of a great actor, the 
 mere shadow, presumably, of a great name. You 
 might really go to the theatre regularly for twenty 
 years without seeing so singular a feat of creative 
 imagination by an actor of a minor or middle-aged 
 part. The figure of greedy, timid, boastful, leering, 
 crackling dotage was so delightful and minutely 
 worked out, so embroidered upon with curious, 
 picturesque little traits, so elaborated into a kind 
 of brilliant and humorous exposition of the whole 
 psychology of senility, and it was all so supremely 
 veracious and so perfect in its cohesion and unity, 
 that the playgoer who saw it was sent back to read 
 his text of the play with a new wonder at the 
 genius of Shakespeare which, by a few broken 
 scraps of speech, could convey to a player the 
 material for such a picture. But it was also with 
 
180 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 wonder and joy at the cunning genius with which 
 the young artist had put hint and hint together, 
 inferred a human quality or a deficiency from the 
 rhythm of a sentence or the idle repetition of a 
 word, and pieced out that grotesque and awful 
 image of a weak mind's and soul's decay from the 
 broken fragments of drivelling reminiscence in the 
 text." 
 
 All this was highly complimentary, even if the 
 writer of the article was a little too lavish in his 
 praise of the invention of the actor. Justice 
 Shallow is delineated with much detail by Shake- 
 speare. Falstaff's description of him in his youth 
 is a masterpiece: "I do remember him at 
 Clement's Inn, like a man made after supper of a 
 cheese-paring ; when he was naked, he was for all 
 the world like a forked radish, with a head fan- 
 tastically carved upon it with a knife ; he was so 
 forlorn that his dimensions to any thick sight were 
 invincible, he was the very genius of famine, yet 
 lecherous as a monkey. . . . And now is this Vice's 
 dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly of 
 John o' Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to 
 him. " Shallow has been acted by some of the best 
 players on the English stage. Thomas Doggett, 
 whose coat and badge are still rowed for by Thames 
 watermen, distinguished himself in this character 
 in the days of Charles II. Colley Gibber thought 
 so much of the part that he took it away from 
 the actor to whom it had been allotted and made a 
 
Success in Shakespeare 181 
 
 success with it that is historical. The house shook 
 with laughter whenever he was on the stage. 
 " Gibber's transition from asking the price of 
 bullocks to trite but grave reflections on morality 
 was so natural, and attended with such an unmean- 
 ing roll of his small pig's eyes, accomplished with 
 an important utterance of ' tick ! tick ! tick ! ' not 
 much louder than the balance of a watch's pen- 
 dulum, that I question/' says Thomas Davies in 
 his Dramatic Miscellanies, "if any actor was ever 
 superior in the conception or expression of such 
 solemn insignificance." Shallow was long a 
 favourite part with Gibber. Many other actors 
 of note, including William Farren the first and 
 Samuel Phelps, played it. Charles Calvert, father 
 of Louis Calvert, revived the second part of 
 Henry IV. in Manchester in 1874, when Phelps 
 doubled the characters of the King and Shallow, 
 as he had done at Sadler's Wells two decades 
 before. His Shallow won the highest praise from 
 the celebrated critic of The Times, John Oxenford. 
 To have followed such actors, and to have won 
 unstinted praise as the doddering old fellow, was an 
 Achievement of considerable credit for the young 
 player. During that same year he gave another 
 performance, which impressed itself upon the 
 writer of some recollections of Laurence Irving 
 which appeared after his death, in The Evening 
 Standard. " He could speak a few simple words 
 so that they called up pictures before the mental 
 
1 82 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 eye. There was an instance of his playing the 
 rackety author in Hedda Gabler. when the fellow 
 tells of throwing away his manuscript and seeing 
 it flutter over the waters of the fiord, there is an 
 image to be evoked. How Irving painted it to the 
 imagination ! One saw the lonely, haggard figure 
 on the heights, sending his laboured leaves adrift 
 on the wind saw them flutter across the liquid 
 stillness and understood the agony the man 
 wanted his hearers to believe in." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 BRIEUX AND DOSTOIEVSKY 
 
 THE year which began with Peter the Great, 
 and saw the two fine performances just 
 alluded to, also witnessed the production 
 of his sixth play, Richard Lovelace, in which 
 E. H. Sothern, an American, and, subsequently, the 
 author, appeared as the cavalier. All this meant 
 hard and continuous work. He had, in addition, 
 another play in preparation. This was a commis- 
 sion from his father, the translation of Sardou's 
 Robespierre, which was brought out at the Lyceum 
 on I5th April 1899. In this Laurence acted the 
 part of Tallien, and, during the absence of his 
 father through illness, that of Robespierre. He was 
 now a regular member of the Lyceum company, and 
 acted Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, Nemours 
 in Louis XI. , Valentine in Faust, and other parts. 
 He went with his father on his last three American 
 tours (1899-1900, 1901-1962, 1903-1904). 
 
 His next six years were mainly occupied by touring 
 the provinces, in theatres and music-halls, by visits 
 to America, acting and writing incessantly. Until 
 1910, his visits to London were not many. At 
 the Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill, he appeared in 
 his own one-act drama, The Phcenix, at the Court 
 183 
 
184 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Theatre, in The Incubus, his own translation of 
 Les Hannetons, by Eugene Brieux. His luck, 
 however, was out, and he went on a tour of the 
 provincial music halls, frankly, as he avowed, to 
 gain the means whereby to live. He also admitted 
 that the necessity for obtaining a rapid effect 
 taught him much in the art of play-writing as of 
 acting. He acted Triplet in a condensed version of 
 the story of Peg Woffington, and appeared in other 
 sketches, including The Dog Between, in which his 
 faithful canine companion, "Lop," had a share of 
 the acting honours. 
 
 His labours hitherto had met with little recog- 
 nition or financial reward. Had he resolved to 
 remain in London, the case might have been other- 
 wise, and he would probably have come into his 
 own. His roving disposition, however, took him 
 across the Atlantic on his own account. He was 
 already known there from having acted with his 
 father, also as the author of Richard Lovelace, 
 which, produced in New York in 1901, had been 
 favourably received. Mr Sothern had also pro- 
 duced, during 1908, his version of Crime and 
 Punishment. He toured the American music- 
 halls playing Louis XI. in a version of The Ballad 
 Monger. He appeared in New York in April 1909, 
 in The Incubus. Only two performances were then 
 given, but, returning to America in the autumn of 
 the same year, he presented The Incubus under 
 another name, The Affinity, in many cities. The 
 
Brieux and Dostoievsky 185 
 
 story of Les Hannetons is decidedly unpleasant 
 and its characters are vicious. The acting won 
 recognition, but the play itself was condemned. 
 Nothing daunted, Laurence Irving returned to 
 New York in the spring of 1910, and brought out 
 a translation of yet another " unpleasant " play, 
 also by M. Brieux, The Three Daughters of M. 
 Dupont. Never politic, he made a hasty speech, 
 on the eve of the production, at the Lotos Club, 
 in the course of which he said that " one fourth of 
 Shakespeare's words cannot be spoken in public/' 
 and he denounced The Merry Widow as " a highly 
 deleterious entertainment." After-dinner speeches 
 must not be taken too seriously, but there was no 
 wisdom in this particular one. The story of M. 
 Brieux's play is well known here and need not be 
 dwelt upon. The piece was denounced in good set 
 terms by more than one of the leading critics of 
 New York, one of whom found it " representative 
 of nothing except that which is sordid and base in 
 human nature and domestic life, and remarkable 
 only for one exceedingly disgusting scene, in which 
 husband and wife, after abusing each other in 
 coarsely recriminative language, some of which is 
 unfit to be heard and should not be spoken, engage 
 in a sort of human cat -fight, snorting and snarling, 
 upsetting the furniture, and presenting an odious 
 spectacle of vulgarity ; the woman finally biting 
 the man, and the man then hurling the woman 
 upon a lounge." 
 
1 86 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 It seems a pity that his mind did not run on the 
 lighter side of life, strange, indeed. For Laurence 
 Irving was by no means a sordid or lugubrious 
 person. The tendency which in Harry worked 
 itself out in the study of crime was seen in Laurence 
 in the plays which he translated or otherwise had 
 some share in the writing. They invariably deal 
 in the seamy side and they have little comedy. 
 
 From New York, Laurence came back to Eng- 
 land, and brought out, in July, a play by Walter 
 Frith, Margaret Catchpole, founded on the story of 
 the Suffolk girl as depicted in the tale by the Rev. 
 Mr Cobbold. The part of the adventurous heroine 
 was a showy and exciting one for her representative, 
 and Laurence received much commendation for his 
 vigorous and humorous portrayal of the amusing 
 scamp, John Luff. 
 
 His first striking and enduring success in London 
 was made in The Unwritten Law, his own version 
 of the chief work, Crime and Punishment, of the 
 Russian novelist, Fedor Dostoievsky. Written in 
 1868, the story found its way to the stage through 
 the version of C. H. Meltzer, acted by Richard 
 Mansfield in America in 1895. That actor, how- 
 ever, found the character of Rodion Romanytch 
 unsuitable and he speedily ceased to appear in it. 
 The realistic story made a strong appeal to Laurence 
 Irving, who fashioned it into a play for E. H. 
 Sothern, by whom it was produced for the first 
 time in New York in March 1908. It did not 
 
Brieux and Dostoievsky 187 
 
 prove an attraction to that player, who, like 
 Mansfield, soon discarded it. 
 
 Now called The Unwritten Law, it was brought, 
 after a preliminary trial in the provinces, to 
 London, and at the Garrick Theatre in November 
 1910 Laurence Irving, as actor and adapter, 
 found an opportunity for his ability. The story is 
 gruesome and there was not a touch of humour 
 in the dramatisation. The whole thing is pitched in 
 a minor key. The pall of despair hangs over all 
 the sad story. Rodion is a half-mad enthusiast, a 
 student impregnated with the sadness and horror 
 which almost envelop him. He is constantly 
 brooding over the wrongs of his country and its 
 people, until at last, in a moment of wrath, he slays 
 a man, thereby saving the honour of a girl, Sonia. 
 This act he considers a just one, and he excuses 
 himself on that ground. He is, nevertheless, 
 suspected by the police and eventually subjected 
 to a terrifying ordeal. The murder is re-enacted 
 in his presence, with such detail that he nearly 
 betrays himself. He goes through a world of 
 torture, somewhat similar to that inflicted upon 
 the unhappy burgomaster in The Bells. In the 
 end his mind is restored by " the pious counsel 
 and admonition of Sonia : and whereas, at first, 
 he was strong in the opinion that there is no God 
 and that every man is entitled to take into his own 
 hands the execution of justice, he is at last per- 
 suaded that God reigns and that vengeance is a 
 
1 88 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 province of Divine Power." He portrayed the 
 anguish of the character very finely. His artistic 
 success was fully recognised, but, as his predecessors 
 in the part in America had found, such plays and 
 such parts do not make for popularity. From the 
 Garrick Theatre, he migrated to the Kingsway, 
 where he gave a polished, incisive impersonation 
 of the old scoundrel, the Comte de Marigny, in 
 The Lily, which formed a remarkable contrast to 
 the maddened Rodion. A few weeks later he was 
 seen as the Governor in his own one-act play of 
 Russian life, The Terrorist, and as John Luff, at the 
 Duke of York's Theatre. .Unhappily for Laurence 
 Irving, the London public did not like Dostoievsky's 
 drama, or the vicious picture of French life in The 
 Lily, or the story of the Suffolk celebrity, Margaret 
 Catchpole. Once more, there was a tour in the 
 country, in the autumn of 1911, with The Lily and 
 The Unwritten Law. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 HAMLET AND SKULE 
 
 IN the course of that tour he made his appear- 
 ance as Hamlet. Every serious actor longs 
 to play Hamlet. Once an actor has deter- 
 mined upon that venture, nothing can prevent 
 the attempt. Ambition is generally the motive, 
 for has not every great actor of serious intention 
 appeared as the Prince of Denmark, even though 
 not always with success? Hamlet , moreover, is 
 such an excellent play, viewed merely from the 
 point of stage-craft, that, even if inadequately 
 presented, it seldom fails. Laurence Irving was 
 far above the average actor, in mentality and 
 in individuality. There was no reason why he 
 should attempt to follow in the footsteps of his 
 father and other great Hamlets. He had his own 
 idea of Hamlet, whom he represented as a very 
 young man and a veritable spoilt child. He 
 placed him among Elizabethan surroundings, as 
 he " could not help feeling that the actual clothes, 
 ornaments, weapons, and other things mentioned 
 belonged to that period." By thus framing the 
 tragedy in an old English setting, he gave the court 
 scene of the first act, in particular, a novel air, 
 albeit the appearance of the King dressed like Sir 
 189 
 
190 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 Walter Raleigh or the Earl of Leicester seemed 
 incongruous. This new decoration of Hamlet was 
 novel, but not in keeping with the spirit of 
 Shakespeare. It was, of course, in accordance 
 with the Hamlet of the occasion, a picturesque 
 and extremely youthful figure. Laurence living's 
 Hamlet was that of an affectionate, rather impish 
 boy, who shrank from the task of avenger in no 
 uncertain manner. He was admirable in the 
 emphasis which he gave to Hamlet's " antic dis- 
 position." His elocution was particularly good 
 thanks, maybe, to having the lines of Shakespeare 
 to interpret his variety and descriptive force 
 enabling him to give a winning picture of the 
 young prince. As was to be expected in one of his 
 virility, the great scene between Hamlet and the 
 Queen was most effective. It should be recorded 
 that he acted Hamlet for the first time on gth 
 November 1911, in Edinburgh, where, it will be 
 remembered, his brother had played the part six 
 years previously. 
 
 Laurence Irving did not appear as Hamlet in 
 London the character, indeed, was soon dropped 
 from his repertoire and his Justice Shallow was 
 not seen in the metropolis. To Antonio in The 
 Merchant of Venice he gave a nobility which is 
 generally wanting on the stage and very properly 
 made him a less doleful person than he is generally 
 represented. His Shakespearean characters, save 
 the early one in which he appeared with the Benson 
 
Hamlet and Skule 191 
 
 company, were very few insubordinate ones with 
 his father, then Shallow, Hamlet, and, in April 
 1912, lago to the Othello of Herbert Tree at His 
 Majesty's Theatre. The latter impersonation was 
 highly intellectual, and helped in the impression 
 that Laurence Irving would, if his lines had fallen 
 in such pleasant places as those of his brother, 
 have risen to a high place as an actor. Even 
 though all the critics were not agreed as to the 
 perfection of his interpretation, there was no 
 variant as to his intention as lago. " Here we 
 saw/' said a writer in The Outlook, shortly after 
 the death of the actor, " not Othello's visage, but 
 lago's, in his mind. His was the very mental 
 picture of the man ; no honest, burly ensign, but 
 a limber devil, a word-player, a snapper-up of 
 unconsidered trifles. It was, above all, the verbal 
 dexterity of the man which seized and caught the 
 actor's fancy ; he elaborated the portrait with the 
 wealth of thoughtful understanding which was 
 his own. It was in a net of true Shakespearean 
 equivoque that this lago did enmesh them all. He 
 spoke the words trippingly, and built all the time 
 a picture of a man who was the essence of cold, 
 intellectualised malignity ; seconding his imagina- 
 tive understanding with that ability to place the 
 figure corporeally before us which is always within 
 the power of the natural actor. One remembers 
 particularly his play upon the word ' angry ' in 
 that fourth scene of the third act ; his cat-like 
 
192 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 watching of Desdemona ; his exit, at her request, 
 to care for Othello. It was a fine performance, 
 never melodramatic, completely well realised and 
 at one with itself. " On the other hand, in further- 
 ance of being unconventional, he turned the blank 
 verse into a kind of mechanical prose, a proceeding 
 which caused censure. 
 
 The engagement at His Majesty's over, he was 
 once more forced to find scope for his work in the 
 provinces. His labours, it is evident, were un- 
 ceasing. At Harrogate, two months after his first 
 appearance as lago, he produced a version, written 
 by himself, of The Barber of Seville, in which he 
 acted the libertine Count of Almaviva. Fortune, 
 hitherto none too kind, was at long last about to 
 bestow her favours, fleeting though they were, upon 
 him. In the autumn of this year, at Newcastle- 
 on-Tyne, he produced the one play which, in all 
 his career, brought him welcome popularity, and, 
 as a consequence, a certain monetary reward. 
 This was Typhoon, by the Hungarian dramatist, 
 Melchior Lengyl, a drama of Japanese life and 
 character, which he fashioned for the English stage. 
 Between the provincial and the London production 
 of that piece he gave the finest impersonation that 
 he ever accomplished. Dr Takeramo won him 
 favour with the multitude. Earl Skule stamped 
 him as an actor who bade fair to take his place in 
 the front rank of his calling. 
 
 It was a misfortune that such an exceptional 
 
LAURENCE AS RICHARD LOVELACE 
 
Hamlet and Skule 193 
 
 performance should not have had the chance to 
 win its way with the public. The Pretenders 
 is a magnificent drama. Its production at the 
 Haymarket Theatre (on I3th February 1913) is a 
 brilliant feather in the cap of the present manage- 
 ment of that historic house. It is no disparagement 
 to that management when I say that such a play, to 
 have had complete justice done to it, would have 
 needed the combined efforts of a Henry Irving and 
 an Arthur Collins, and a stage of far greater pro- 
 portions than that of the Haymarket. It is a play 
 that must have its proper scenic background, with 
 space as well as imagination for its effects, and with 
 stage crowds as well drilled as those which aston- 
 ished London when the Saxe-Meinengen company 
 came to Drury Lane forty odd years ago, when 
 Irving himself followed the good example and gave, 
 in Romeo and Juliet, such stage crowds as were 
 entirely new to the English theatre. The pictorial 
 accessories of The Pretenders are paramount. As 
 for the acting, there is not one of the twenty char- 
 acters that does not call for the very best that is 
 possible. The minor parts are as clearly delineated 
 by Ibsen as the more important and require care- 
 ful handling. The three chief characters, King 
 Hakon, Earl Skule, and Nicholas Arnesson, the 
 Bishop of Oslo, demand a trio of actors of the 
 highest ability. The Bishop is a character much 
 resembling that of Louis XL, a cunning, wicked 
 old man, who gloats even in the hour of his death 
 
 N 
 
194 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 over the wickedness which he is about to do in 
 order that he may perpetuate trouble in the land, 
 a splendid " character " part which Henry Irving 
 could have played to perfection. King Hakon, an 
 honest, brave, open-hearted soldier, stalwart in 
 mind and body, calls chiefly for a good presence, 
 a robust and honest-visaged performer. It is a 
 straightforward part which any sound actor, pos- 
 sessing the necessary and physical qualifications, 
 could appear in to advantage. 
 
 Earl Skule is on an entirely different plane. He 
 would be King, but kingship is not his by right 
 either of birth or of noble qualities. There is much 
 of Macbeth in him the longing to be on high, but 
 fearing the way and of Hamlet, the doubter, the 
 dreamer. He is led hither and thither by the 
 schemes of the wily Bishop Nicholas. It takes 
 mountains to move him to make the effort to which 
 his ambition prompts him. It is not until he is 
 rebuked for his want of kingly qualities that he 
 resolves to carve his way to the throne. " You 
 had been well fitted for a chieftain's part/' Hakon 
 tells him, " but the time has grown away from you 
 and you know it not. See you not that Norway's 
 realm may be likened to a church that stands as 
 yet unconsecrate ? The walls soar aloft with 
 mighty buttresses, the vaultings have a noble 
 span, the spire points upwards, like a fir-tree in the 
 forest ; but the life, the throbbing heart, the fresh 
 brook-stream, is lacking to the work ; God's living 
 
Hamlet and Skule 195 
 
 spirit is not breathed into it ; it stands unconse- 
 crate. I will bring consecration! Norway has 
 been a kingdom. It shall become a people" It is 
 the King's idea to unite the Tronder with the 
 Viken, the Agdeman with the Hordalander, the 
 Halogalander with the Sogndalesman. " All shall 
 be one hereafter, and all shall feel and know that 
 they are one ! That is the task that God has laid 
 on my shoulders ; that's the life-work that lies 
 before the King of Norway. That work, Duke, I 
 think you were best to leave untried, for truly it is 
 beyond you." Skule is at first appalled by the 
 idea : " To unite the whole people to awaken it 
 so that it shall know itself one ! Whence got you 
 so strange a thought ? It runs like ice and fire 
 through me." He finally resolves to steal the 
 King's thought and himself to be King of Norway. 
 For a time the battles go in his favour, but he has 
 not state-craft or the power of command. He is 
 at his best in defeat. He has taken sanctuary in 
 the convent of Elgesaeter. By a miracle, as it 
 seems, he meets here his wife and daughter, his 
 sister, and, afterwards, his newly found son, Peter. 
 He has been out-generalled by King Hakon, and 
 the end approaches. Margrete, his daughter, who is 
 the wife of Hakon, says : " Oh, how pale you are 
 and aged. You are cold." " I am not cold but 
 I am weary, weary," he replies. " Twill soon be 
 time to rest." To his wife and daughter he says : 
 " Have you loved me so deeply, you two ? I 
 
196 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 sought after happiness abroad, and noted not that 
 I had a home wherein I might have found it. I 
 pursued after love through sin and guilt, little 
 dreaming that 'twas mine already, in right of God's 
 law and man's." In this momentary happiness, 
 he vacillates and would save himself, but is brought 
 to his sense of duty through the uplifting of his 
 noble sister, Sigrid. To his son he confesses : 
 " You saw in me the heaven-chosen one him 
 who should do the great King's work in the land. 
 Look at me better, bewildered boy. The rags of 
 kingship I have decked myself withal, they were 
 borrowed and stolen now I put them off me one 
 by one. The King's thought is Hakon's, not mine ; 
 to him alone has the Lord granted the power that 
 can make substance of it. You have believed in 
 a lie; turn from me, and save your soul." His 
 wife implores him to flee and save himself. E&ut 
 he sees his duty and does it : 
 
 SKULE. To-night have I found you for the first 
 time ; there must fall no shade between me and 
 you, my silent, faithful wife ; therefore must we 
 not seek to unite our lives on this earth. 
 
 SIGRID. My kingly brother ! I see you need 
 me not. I see you know what path to take. 
 
 SKULE. There are men born to live and men born 
 to die. My desire was ever thitherward where 
 God's finger pointed not the way for me ; therefore 
 I never saw my path clear till now. My peaceful 
 
Hamlet and Skule 197 
 
 home life have I wrecked that I can never restore. 
 My sins against Hakon I can atone by freeing him 
 from a kingly duty which must have parted him 
 from his dearest possession. The townsfolk stand 
 without ; I will not wait for King Hakon. . . . 
 See, look upwards ! See how it wanes and pales, 
 the flaming sword that has hung over my head. 
 Yes, yes God has spoken and I have understood 
 Him, and His wrath is appeased. Not in the 
 sanctuary of Elgesseter will I cast me down and 
 beg for grace of an earthly king. I must into the 
 mighty church roofed with the vault of stars, and 
 'tis the King of Kings I must implore for grace and 
 salvation over all my life-work.' 1 
 
 SKULE (as he hears the singing in the chapel). 
 Hark ! They are singing loud to God of salvation 
 and peace ! 
 
 SIGRID. Hark again ! All the bells in Nidaros 
 are ringing ! 
 
 SKULE. They are ringing a king to his grave. 
 
 SIGRID. Nay, nay, they ring for your true 
 crowning ! Farewell, my brother, let the purple 
 robe of His blood flow wide over your shoulders ; 
 under it may all sin be hidden ! Go forth, go into 
 the great church and take the crown of life. 
 
 Skule is indeed a great part, one of the greatest 
 written in modern times. It is also the character 
 that made what was formerly called an " Irving 
 
198 "H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 part." In it Laurence Irving proved himself a 
 worthy successor of his father as an actor. It was 
 a wonderful embodiment. Unhappily, few people 
 saw it, and the most notable performance of all 
 that he ever gave passed out of mind. The Earl 
 Skule of Laurence Irving reminded elderly play- 
 goers of the subtlety and light and shade of his 
 father's Macbeth, as his Comte de Marigny had 
 made them compare that performance, and not 
 unfavourably, with Henry living's Digby Grant. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 TYPHOON AND CANADA 
 
 FROM artistic and popular triumph to sudden 
 death. That is the last phase in the story 
 of Laurence Irving. Strangely enough, he 
 had barely fulfilled his engagement as Earl Skule 
 ere he was brought back to the stage whereon 
 he had achieved so much. The Pretenders did 
 not secure that commercial success which is neces- 
 sary to a self-supporting theatre. Still, thirty-five 
 performances of Ibsen's drama were given, a 
 creditable result for all concerned in its production. 
 The run terminated on i5th March and the 
 Haymarket Theatre closed. The representative of 
 Earl Skule left London once more, little dreaming 
 that he was to return in a fortnight. He had great 
 faith, a faith that was fully justified, in Typhoon. 
 He felt sure of himself in it, and it had, as we have 
 seen, been tried in the provinces with success. It 
 is a happiness to me when I think of the share 
 which I had in suggesting its London production. 
 No sooner had Laurence Irving reached Birming- 
 ham than he begged me to come down and see the 
 play. His request was made on the spur of the 
 moment, for I had seen him but seldom since the 
 death of his father. To Birmingham I went with- 
 199 
 
200 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 out delay. Well do I remember my arrival on 
 a murky afternoon at New Street Station. There 
 was Laurence, untidy-looking, but smiling cheer- 
 fully, accompanied by his faithful dog, "Lop." 
 Well do I remember the walk back to the hotel 
 after the performance and the long and earnest talk 
 in which Laurence and his wife confided to me their 
 hopes and prospects, which were poor indeed at 
 that moment, and their belief in Typhoon. If only 
 they could get it to London, and to the Haymarket, 
 now closed and in need of a play ! Laurence 
 living's impersonation of the Japanese, Takeramo, 
 had impressed me greatly. I felt that the drama 
 would have a good chance of success in London, 
 especially if done at the Haymarket, with the 
 artistic reputation and prestige of that house for 
 discernment. I promised to intercede at once with 
 the Haymarket manager, Mr Frederick Harrison, 
 and left Birmingham early in the morning after 
 the performance which I had witnessed. I was 
 soon in touch with Mr Harrison, who lost no time 
 in seeing Typhoon. His judgment confirmed mine, 
 details were arranged with celerity, provincial 
 engagements were transferred, and on 2nd April 
 eighteen days after the withdrawal of The 
 Pretenders -Laurence Irving returned to the 
 Haymarket Theatre. 
 
 It was pointed out by the critic of The Times 
 that Laurence Irving as Takeramo appeared 
 " more Japanese than the real Japanese who 
 
Typhoon and Canada 201 
 
 appear here and there in the cast ; not merely in 
 make-up, but in every trick of speech and gait and 
 gesture, in his persistent suppression of emotion, 
 in the calm, almost saintly, dignity of his de- 
 meanour." Here, indeed, was a contrast in acting. 
 From the wild, excited student of The Unwritten 
 Law to the mystery of Earl Skule and the dignity 
 and nobility of the Japanese Takeramo. Great 
 public success, as well as artistic, came to him at 
 once. Typhoon soon became a paying attraction 
 (which, as just suggested, was very important to 
 the chief actor). After more than one transfer 
 it was played successively at the Haymarket, 
 Queen's, Globe, and New theatres it finished its 
 London career with over two hundred performances 
 to its credit. 
 
 We now approach the last scene in this eventful 
 history, this story of constant endeavour, of long 
 looked-for success at last, and of a tragic end. 
 Haunted, as was his father at the close of his life, 
 by the necessity of earning money, he accepted an 
 offer to tour Canada for four months, beginning on 
 gth February, in Montreal, and ending on i8th 
 May, in Winnipeg. In that short period he played 
 in thirty towns from one side of the continent to 
 the other. A letter to his mother, one of many 
 sent from Canada, is characteristic : " There are a 
 hundred and one things to do in this country/' he 
 writes, soon after his arrival. " More even than 
 in England the natives seem to think that one's 
 
202 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 chief concern in life should be meeting them, 
 lunching with them, lecturing to them, and so on. 
 Our most pleasant experience so far has been our 
 lunching at Government House with the Duke and 
 Duchess of Connaught. Mabel sat on the Duke's 
 right and I sat between the Duchess and Princess 
 Patricia. They were all exceedingly charming. 
 After lunch the Duke came and talked to me for 
 about a quarter of an hour in the drawing-room. 
 This was on the Thursday afternoon. On the 
 Tuesday evening the Royal party had been to see 
 Typhoon again, and they sent round two aides to 
 take us to the Royal box. As in Canada they 
 have no Royal room attached to it, we, practically 
 in our war-paint, had to pass through the audience, 
 and any prying members of the audience could see 
 the Royalties conversing with us. The Duke said 
 that he thought Typhoon was just as well done 
 as at the Haymarket. Sir Edward Worthington 
 told Mabel that he would always come to any first 
 night of mine, and could hardly stop talking about 
 Takeramo. We had a filthy voyage, five days of 
 continuous gale, but now, Heaven be praised, we 
 are quite well, but we are certainly looking forward 
 to getting home/' 
 
 Early in this Canadian tour, on the loth March, 
 he delivered, before the University of Toronto, an 
 address on The Drama as a Factor in Social Pro- 
 gress. The majority of addresses, or lectures, by 
 actors on subjects connected with the stage are, as 
 
Typhoon and Canada 203 
 
 a rule, dry reading. They rely for their acceptance 
 upon the popularity, or personality, of the player, 
 and after their delivery the mere words no longer 
 interest. Laurence living's last " address " is a 
 remarkable exception. It is typical of himself. 
 It came from his heart in 1914, and its eloquence 
 speaks to-day: 
 
 " Every child is a theatre-lover and every child 
 is a born actor. I will not say that every child is 
 born with the skill to act, but at least every child is 
 born with the desire to act. From what does this 
 desire spring ? It springs, I believe, from the 
 divine gift of dissatisfaction from that quality of 
 the human mind which has been very well summed 
 up in a Russian proverb that says : ' Happiness is 
 there where we are not. ' 
 
 " What human creature is satisfied with the con- 
 ditions and environment into which it is born ? A 
 certain inevitability reconciles us at an early age to 
 our own particular father and mother, but other- 
 wise it is, I am sure, a primary condition of human 
 existence to envy the lot of others- as contrasted 
 with our own. We all know that a millionaire's 
 son in his early years will probably above all things 
 wish to be a tram-conductor, or an engine-driver, 
 and an engine-driver's son will probably above all 
 things wish to be a Lord Mayor's footman, or some- 
 thing equally resplendent. And the child of the 
 millionaire, feeling himself trammelled by what 
 appear to him, in the budding state of his 
 
204 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 intelligence, as the inane and perfectly unpleasur- 
 able millions of his father, loves to get himself well 
 grimed and to imagine himself heroically annihilat- 
 ing space on the footplate of an engine ; whilst the 
 son of the engine-driver, being bred up in an atmos- 
 phere of coal and machinery, finds no charm what- 
 soever in either. Both these young gentlemen no 
 doubt in early years solace their disappointment, 
 and as far as possible satiate their energy, by the 
 art of acting that is, by imaging themselves to 
 be, and pretending to be the objects of their envy. 
 
 " With the growth of the body and the mind this 
 projecting of the imagination into other states of 
 being, and this dissatisfaction with the actual and 
 compulsory conditions of the earthly lot deepens 
 and becomes intensified in the heart of the a'dult ; 
 it is touched to even finer issues ; and in the 
 noblest of minds it finds its ultimate imaginative 
 bourne in the sublime philosophy of religious con- 
 templation and the transcendental visions of 
 religious ecstasy. The burnt cork which the little 
 boy of three or four years smears on his upper lip, 
 whilst he tastes the reckless and ferocious joys of 
 imaging himself a pirate captain, has no doubt 
 often developed and sanctified into the tonsure of 
 the monk. In such strange and mysterious ways 
 does the wanton imagination of the boy change 
 into the sublime and purified yearning of the full- 
 grown man. 
 
 " It is the desire of the heart that draws after it 
 
Typhoon and Canada 205 
 
 the imagination, and in its turn, the imagination 
 saturates the desire of the heart. For the ultimate 
 desire of the heart is bound at last in the final 
 resort to turn towards religion. And I do not 
 think I can better illustrate to you the exact 
 meaning of my thought than by quoting what 
 seems to me one of the most perfectly solemn and 
 exquisitely phrased poems that I have ever read : 
 
 "'DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA 
 
 In the hour of death, after this life's whim, 
 When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim, 
 And pain has exhausted every limb 
 The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him. 
 
 When the will has forgotten the lifelong aim, 
 And the mind can only disgrace its fame, 
 And a man is uncertain of his own name 
 The power of the Lord shall fill this frame. 
 
 When the last sigh is heaved, and the last tear shed, 
 And the coffin is waiting beside the bed, 
 And the widow and child forsake the dead 
 The angel of the Lord shall lift this head. 
 
 For even the purest delight may pall, 
 And power must fail, and the pride must fall, 
 And the love of the dearest friends grow small 
 But the glory of the Lord is all in all. ' 
 
 " Who can resist the sublime summons of those 
 sixteen lines ? And whoever has seen the famous 
 mystery play, Everyman, will surely feel that a like 
 supernal grandeur of sentiment has been borne in 
 
ao6 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 upon him, with all the added vividness of human 
 presentation, from the stage of a theatre. 
 
 " Perceiving this enormous power of influence, it 
 has come about that in all ages the theatre has 
 received its initial development at the hands of the 
 priesthood, and under the aegis of religion. Those 
 whose special pretension it has been to inculcate 
 upon their fellow-men the higher standards of 
 conduct and to safeguard them against back- 
 sliding by the promises of an after life, have never 
 at the outset failed to realise that for the inculca- 
 tion of the particular virtues set forth in their 
 several creeds, and for the preservation of a fine 
 and noble imagination, no channel is so direct 
 and powerful as that of the stage. This is clearly 
 exemplified in the religious origin of Greek tragedy, 
 in the miracle and mystery plays of mediaeval 
 Christianity, and in what are known as the Bud- 
 dhistic No dramas of Japan ; we even see the same 
 phenomenon amongst the nomadic tribes of Siberia, 
 as Tolstoi has told us in his famous essay : What 
 is Art? Which makes it the more pitiful to see 
 how much of modern drama has become at the 
 best trivial and at the worst salacious. A fact 
 which calls for no demonstration it is before the 
 eyes of all of us. 
 
 " But there are manifold signs to-day that the 
 theatre is returning nay, has already traversed a 
 great part of the way towards founts from which 
 it sprang ; that it is becoming again a draught of 
 
Typhoon and Canada 207 
 
 clear and life-giving water for the parched and 
 thirsty imagination, as well as a stay and a 
 stimulus to the loftiest emotions of our nature. 
 
 "There is no doubt that the stage presents, in 
 common with every human impulse and every 
 human activity, a power for evil in closest prox- 
 imity to its power for good. One sees how a noble 
 ambition most easily degenerates into a love of 
 idle glory and conquest ; how kindliness of disposi- 
 tion may gradually sink into a mere lazy tolera- 
 tion ; how purity of conduct often leads to a hard 
 self -righteousness of outlook; how love of one's 
 family may gradually shrink into a narrow ex- 
 clusiveness, and love of one's country into a mere 
 purblind Jingoism. 
 
 " As it is with our moral qualities, so it is with the 
 institutions which minister to our wants or supply 
 our pleasures ; and as is the case with all other 
 arts, so it is with the theatre. The theatre can 
 diffuse light and high imaginative sustenance, or 
 it can pour forth streams of debasement and 
 pollution. And many nobly zealous but unwise 
 moralists have fallen into the terrible pit of banning 
 all art, and most particularly the theatrical, as 
 being the most vivid in its appeal, because of this 
 duality of influence. 
 
 " In trying to eradicate the high pleasures of 
 the theatre from the purview of their flocks, these 
 good-minded people have set themselves a labour 
 of Sisyphus ; and, however estimable the motives 
 
208 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 which actuate them in trying to curtail the imagina- 
 tion of one of its keenest pleasures, it behoves them 
 to be warned that by depriving themselves of what 
 should be a lofty and legitimate source of delight 
 and inducing others to do the same they are simply 
 abandoning the field of theatrical entertainment 
 to be overrun with tares and leaving the laborious 
 husbandman, who spends his artistic life sowing 
 and trying to reap a harvest of worthy theatrical 
 entertainment, by the abstention of these pious 
 folk, to be gradually weighed down beneath neglect 
 and disappointment ; or, what is still worse, if 
 he be not of very strong fibre, gradually forced to 
 lower his work to the low standard of taste dictated 
 by those who patronise the theatre only to degrade 
 it. But such a warning is, I think, more necessary 
 on our side of the Atlantic than on yours. 
 
 " Of this kind of degradation imposed on a great 
 writer by the public of his time we have a very 
 notable example in Dryden, who may induce our 
 pity, but hardly our respect, when he pleads the 
 low theatrical tastes of his day in exoneration of 
 the grossness of his own plays. Nevertheless, in 
 the age of the Restoration as in every other the 
 age which produced The Pilgrim's Progress -there 
 must have been a vast public that could have 
 found wholesome relaxation and the loftiest edifica- 
 tion in the theatre. But, alas, libertinage had 
 taken possession of the boards, and bigotry 
 certainly in this case very excusable had written 
 
Typhoon and Canada 209 
 
 up over the door of every playhouse ' Abandon 
 Hope All Ye Who Enter Here/ 
 
 " And, unhappily, even to the present day that 
 bigotry still holds its sway over the spirit of many 
 an otherwise admirable person. The conflict 
 between high and low between evil and good, 
 between the spirit and the flesh must rage within 
 the breast of every one of us, and therefore nothing 
 that proceeds from our mental or spiritual activities 
 can exist without it but to say that Art, or any 
 branch of Art, is wholly and irredeemably given 
 over to the purposes of evil is surely a blasphemy 
 against a function of the human spirit which, as I 
 have pointed out, has received its earliest recorded 
 form as a concerted and elaborate act of prayer 
 and praise, as a means for inculcating acceptance 
 of the dictates and obedience to revelations of the 
 Heavenly powers. 
 
 " Granting, then, that the true function of the 
 stage be to strengthen men in high resolves, to 
 expand their sympathies and, in the case of comedy, 
 to correct their foibles and to keep their minds 
 healthily poised, how does the present-day theatre 
 discharge this trust ? 
 
 " For my part, though in a very obvious transition 
 state, I think that the theatre is to-day in a period 
 of lusty strength and bursting promise ; and, with- 
 out wishing to wound the susceptibilities of anyone 
 present to-day but since I am committed to 
 express as candidly as lies in me my views regarding 
 
" H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 the form of artistic activity by which I live I can- 
 not help saying that If eel that the religious feel- 
 ing of the community at large is more thoroughly 
 interpreted and more vigorously expounded by the 
 work of our great writers and dramatists than by 
 any other body of men. I think that in these days 
 religion has, so to say, burst its bonds ; it has 
 ceased to dwell in the high places with its sacred 
 fire guarded by some College of Ministers, or sacred 
 sisterhood of Vestals ; it has come down into the 
 market-place ; its fire burns on every hearth ; it 
 permeates and sanctifies the pages of such writers 
 as Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Lyoff Tolstoi, 
 John Galsworthy, Maurice Maeterlinck nay, even 
 on the pages of that laughing, but ever kindly 
 humanitarian philosopher, George Bernard Shaw, 
 and that relentless arraigner of social ills, Eugfene 
 Brieux ; it likewise sends suffragettes to jail, and, 
 when carefully examined, the religious instinct is 
 undoubtedly at the root of that vast universally 
 upheaving force which we loosely lump together 
 under the vague term of socialism. 
 
 " To-day the individual cannot breathe without 
 taking in draughts of socialistic tendency, and 
 every vent of our much criticised and sorely 
 troubled social order exudes the same balm, or, as 
 some would call it, the same virus. It behoves the 
 State as at the present time it behoves us all to 
 take stock of and to resent the terrible waste of 
 life, the misdirection of energy, the vast stagnant 
 
Typhoon and Canada 211 
 
 pool of degrading penury that in my own country 
 most flagrantly and pitifully assails the eye of any- 
 one who late at night on a summer's evening walks 
 by the railings of Hyde Park or by the polluted 
 waters of the Thames once the inspiration of 
 poets and now the laceration of every sympathetic 
 heart. Such a spectacle should stab one's patriot- 
 ism, if it be a true patriotism, to the very core ; 
 and it should turn one's pleasures to gall if one's 
 pleasures be of the kind that are worthy of a 
 human being. 
 
 "A great cry for the draining of these social 
 quagmires that pollute the air we breathe and the 
 ground we tread on is going up in all lands, and 
 from all manner of people. And the stage is 
 rightly taking its share in riveting our gaze upon 
 these evils. 
 
 ''There is a great and, I think, a very right im- 
 patience of the quietistic injunction so comforting 
 to the selfish well-to-do that ' the poor shall be 
 always with us/ Perhaps they shall, but need 
 they be with us in such enormous numbers or in 
 poverty so filthy ? 
 
 " The theatre has in a hundred and one directions 
 sought to bring home to our consciences the pre- 
 ventability of much of the misery that darkens 
 the world, and in doing so the modern theatre has 
 incurred the stigma of being sordid, squalid, cheer- 
 less, didactic ; many of the foremost dramatists 
 have been branded as pamphleteers. Nor are 
 
212 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 these charges false. And power that might have 
 been devoted to the creation of works of beauty 
 and exaltation has been diverted to purposes which 
 were at one time served exclusively in the pulpit, 
 and not in the playhouse. Perhaps the three most 
 illustrious instances of this diverting of creative 
 genius to social exhortation are presented in the 
 cases of Ruskin, Tolstoi, and William Morris. As 
 in every man of vast genius the primary impulse 
 and the dominating force comes from what in 
 figurative language we term the heart, it is for that 
 reason that these three artistic giants, as well as 
 many of lesser stature, did in the maturity of their 
 powers to a large extent forgo the pursuit and 
 creation of works of art to raise their potent voices 
 on behalf of the outcast and downtrodden of 
 Society. It is the ugliness of so much of modern 
 life, its base and ruthless pursuit of money, its 
 vulgar material standards, which are answerable 
 for the dethronement of that joyous instinct from 
 which works of the highest art spring. It is only 
 the small singer or dramatist who is able to sit 
 aloof and tune his pipe or manipulate the puppets 
 of his imagination whilst hundreds of thousands 
 are born into the mire, live in it and die in it. 
 
 " I do not think any great creative artist has ever 
 been satisfied with the creed of ' Art for Art's 
 sake/ The big men care first and last for the 
 welfare of their own kind pity ever wells up in 
 their hearts, and from that divine sentiment are 
 
Typhoon and Canada 213 
 
 born such terrible arraignments of modern condi- 
 tions, such passionate pleas for amelioration as 
 Resurrection, as many burning passages in Fors 
 Clavigera, as Les Misfrables, as Tolstoi's Dominion 
 of Darkness ; in drama, as the bulk of the work of 
 Galsworthy and Brieux, and many more. 
 
 " Yet we must hold to the belief that the travail 
 of unrest now permeating, one might almost say, the 
 Globe, will eventually bring forth a state in which 
 toil and leisure will be fairly adjusted between man 
 and man ; and that out of such a social redistribu- 
 tion there will re-arise a condition propitious and 
 fruitful in the creation of great works of universal 
 Art. 
 
 "Thus in the theatre, as in every other art, we 
 must keep our lamps burning, so that when the 
 cleansing fire of high passionate dramatic work or 
 the pure clear flame of lucid comedy is again offered 
 to us as it was in the days of Shakespeare and the 
 days of Moli&re we may, as actors, be found ready 
 equipped to interpret to the utmost finish of our 
 art fine diction, clear enunciation, appropriate 
 gesture, eloquent facial play the renascent genius 
 of our writers. 
 
 "Not that I would for a moment suggest that 
 most brilliant work is not being done, as well in the 
 British as in the foreign drama. On the contrary, 
 there is plenty of such work now to hand finer, I 
 think, than the actor has had presented to him for 
 many decades, rich in clever character study and 
 
214 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 fresh with wit and humour. But for the most 
 part it is what I would call contentious work the 
 dust of controversy is apt to cake it, and the source 
 of much of its inspiration came from that gloomy 
 Scandinavian Titan, whose perspicuous and some- 
 what morose broodings certainly enveloped much 
 of his work in what dear old Samuel Johnson 
 characterised as 'inspissated gloom/ But, as I 
 say, there is every sign of revival of a more joyous, 
 a more care-free art, but our civic and social life is 
 indivisibly bound up with our faculties for giving 
 and receiving high artistic enjoyment, and only as 
 we move forward along the path of social ameliora- 
 tion that path that shall once for all dispel the 
 false animosities of races and nations, which shall 
 found distinctions of class on a basis of conduct 
 and attainment and not of birth, which shall teach 
 Science to follow its salutary labours without 
 torturing the bodies of our humbler fellow-creatures 
 that is, when war, snobbism and vivisection are 
 relegated to the shameful limbo of cannibalism, 
 voodoo, witchcraft and other excesses of the bar- 
 barous state when the divine teaching of Christi- 
 anity as regards our conduct to one another, and 
 the sweet tenets of Buddhism as regards our kinship 
 to the animal world ; when they shall have made 
 our material progress what it should be, a source of 
 wise peace, of lightness and of increased recreation 
 for all, then again I think we shall enter into that 
 palace of Art whose service has been very beauti- 
 
Typhoon and Canada 215 
 
 fully described in a passage I lit on the other day 
 from the writings of the Hindoo poet, Tagore : 
 
 " ( My heart is full and I feel that happiness is simple 
 
 like a meadow flower, 
 We grasp it with a cruel eagerness and crush it ; 
 
 we jump beyond it in our mad pursuit 
 
 and miss it forever. 
 I look around me and see the silent sky and 
 
 flowing water and feel that happiness 
 
 is spread abroad as simply as a smile on 
 
 a child's face. ' 
 
 " Again, I think Samuel Taylor Coleridge has, 
 with something of the simplicity the Hindoo poet 
 so beautifully characterises, summed up the 
 spiritual position of man in these two lines : 
 
 " ' He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things, both great and small. '" 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 A TRAGIC END 
 
 W ^\E mortuis nil nisi bonum. It is a royal rule 
 / Jfor those who write about worthy men. 
 Harry and Laurence Irving were worthy in 
 every sense of the word. In other respects they 
 were strongly contrasted. Both were tall, but 
 Harry was so thin that one wondered how his 
 emaciated frame ever stood the strain of his 
 forty-nine years. He had no love for animals 
 (he could " sense " a cat, although he did not 
 see it, in a room). He was never a trencher- 
 man ; and, like Cassio, he had " poor and un- 
 happy brains for drinking." Laurence resembled 
 in stature many of the Brodribbs who rest in 
 Glutton churchyard, big, burly fellows, fine speci- 
 mens of the yeomen of Somerset. His father used 
 to relate the story of an uncle, a farmer, who, 
 returning from the market -town where he had sold 
 his stock, was set upon by ruffians, robbed and 
 left for dead near the roadside. He was awakened 
 in the early morning by his mare, who had escaped 
 from the miscreants, licking his face. He managed 
 to scramble on her back, and the faithful animal 
 found her way home, with her master still stunned 
 and his blood sticking him to the saddle. Laurence 
 
 216 
 
A Tragic End 217 
 
 was like that ancestor. He was just that physical 
 type. He would have done the same thing. And 
 his horse would have loved him in that same way. 
 He enjoyed a good dinner and a good cigar. "I'm 
 like my father about food/' he said to me one 
 evening at dinner during the Typhoon year. " I 
 like good food and/' with a cheery smile at her, 
 " Mabel sees that I get it ! and a cigar." Harry 
 smoked but rarely, and then only on special 
 occasions of hospitality. 
 
 Laurence was intensely fond of his home. It 
 has been my privilege to read many of his letters. 
 There is hardly one that does not contain some 
 kindly thought for his home in London or an 
 affectionate reference to his cottage in the country, 
 and to his dog. Here is one, written in the train 
 on his way from Exeter during his tour of the 
 music halls : 
 
 " DEAR MOTHER, Please excuse pencil, but 
 your poor younger son has been rushing from one 
 town to another doing flying matinees. They are 
 over-trying, and at this time of year not profitable. 
 Only sea baths have kept me up at all. . . . The 
 little place at Hove is delightful. When I can, I 
 always go down on a Sunday and work in the 
 gardenwhich is full of all manner of fruit and 
 vegetables. If it were not for the loneliness, it 
 is wonderful what attractive and uncostly little 
 places one can buy in the country buy and 
 
218 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 possess. I feel I never better invested money 
 
 than in the I paid for the little house at 
 
 Hove. There is for all time a roof over our 
 heads." 
 
 A little later he writes : 
 
 " We take definite flight to the country on 
 Monday. I hope we shall get a good four or five 
 weeks in the cottage." 
 
 On reaching home from his visit to America in 
 1909 he wrote : 
 
 " DEAREST MOTHER, So delightful to get your 
 words of welcome on being back in this most 
 comfortable of little homes. Ellen has wonderfully 
 looked after everything, including Lop, whose only 
 fault is that he has grown rather too stout in our 
 absence. We had a bad crossing from the New 
 World to the Old, but we have really had quite an 
 overwhelming amount of success, and that without 
 any extrinsic aid. We gave two matinees in New 
 York of Les Hannetons during the last week, with 
 the result that we are offered an autumn tour in 
 the U.S. at 200 per week joint, and for ourselves 
 alone. The difficulty is, can I shift my English 
 autumn dates ? If I can, in America I fancy we 
 are really made. The papers were all loud in their 
 praise of the play and of us. Well, I hung on to it 
 despite disappointments here, and I am rewarded. 
 And in the music-halls we were also a great success. 
 So at the moment all smiles on my fortunes. 1 ' 
 
A Tragic End 219 
 
 Ever cheerful, always hopeful, loving his home. 
 "All smiles on my fortunes/' Brave fellow, 
 Fortune smiled upon him but seldom, and then not 
 for long. As in life, so it was in death. Harry 
 died not only in peace, but in the lap of luxury. 
 I esteem it an honour that I was the only one of his 
 friends who was asked by Mrs Irving to accompany 
 his dead body from his house to the Church of 
 St Margaret for the funeral service (his widow, 
 mother, and children followed later). The way 
 was prepared and cleared for us by the police ; 
 and, as we passed from Regent's Park to West- 
 minster without a halt, it seemed to me that I 
 was taking a prince to his resting-place. An hour 
 or two later, as the last words of the Committal 
 Service were read, the sun came forth in great 
 brilliance, lighting up the masses of flowers which 
 had been arranged around his grave, illuminating 
 a picture of beauty and peace. 
 
 The last scene in this life of Laurence was one of 
 vast gloom, and swift, terrible tragedy. It was due, 
 without a doubt, to the home longing which he had 
 always possessed. We have seen how this feeling 
 was strong in him at the outset of his Canadian 
 tour. " We are certainly looking forward to 
 getting home." At the end of that tour, instead 
 of returning with his company, as had been 
 arranged, he journeyed from Winnipeg (where, on, 
 Saturday, 23rd May, he made, in The Unwritten 
 Law, his last appearance on the stage) to Montreal, 
 
220 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 where he embarked in the Empress of Ireland, with 
 the idea of reaching home two days earlier than if 
 he had kept to his original plans. On the following 
 Friday it became known that the vessel, one of the 
 most magnificent of her kind, obliged to stop in 
 consequence of a dense fog, had been rammed by 
 a Norwegian collier. She sank in ten minutes, 
 with the loss of eight hundred lives. Laurence 
 Irving died nobly, as became him, in trying to save, 
 and in comforting, his wife. This is the story of 
 that last scene, the witness being a credible one, 
 Mr F. E. Abbott, of Montreal, who saved himself 
 by diving from the doomed ship and clinging to a 
 piece of wreckage : 
 
 "I met him first in the passage-way, and he 
 said calmly : ' Is the boat going down ? ' I said 
 that it looked like it. ' Dearie/ said Mr Irving 
 to his wife, ' hurry, there is no time to lose. ' 
 Mrs Irving began to cry, and as the actor reached 
 for a life-belt the boat suddenly lurched forward 
 and he was thrown against the door of his cabin. 
 His face was covered with blood, and Mrs Irving 
 became frantic. ' Keep cool/ he warned her, but 
 she persisted in holding her arms around him. He 
 forced a life-belt over her and pushed her out of 
 the doorway. He then practically carried her up 
 the stairs. I said : ' Can I help you ? ' and Mr 
 Irving said : ' Look after yourself first, old man. 
 God bless you, all the same/ " 
 
 As the ship went down, husband and wife were 
 
A Tragic End 221 
 
 clasped in each other's arms and Laurence was 
 kissing his faithful friend and helpmate as the 
 waters of the St Lawrence closed over his dreams 
 and that ever-present longing for home whereby 
 had come his tragic death. 
 
 The tragedy of his death was all the deeper be- 
 cause, before that unlooked-for calamity, Laurence 
 Irving was apparently to be rewarded for his 
 earnest work and his honest life of high endeavour. 
 In the prime of manhood, in the best of health, 
 physical and mental, he was coming home at 
 last, home to success, well-won, and seemingly 
 assured. Although Fate struck him this cruel 
 blow, his death served one good purpose. It 
 revealed, in regard to his brother and himself, 
 the joyful fact that the sons had come, through all 
 doubt and prejudice, to know their father as he 
 really was. No actor on the English or any other 
 stage suffered in his lifetime such malignity 
 as Henry Irving. He was the butt of envious 
 scrawlers, and was caricatured, in print and in the 
 theatre, in a manner which it would be difficult for 
 the present generation to realise. He lived all that 
 down and came to be loved and honoured in the 
 land. In that love and honour the sons shared. 
 The death of Laurence evoked from Harry a 
 beautiful letter written in reply to one sent by their 
 father's old friend, and the friend of their boyhood, 
 Arthur Pinero. Harry was on tour at the time. 
 Very properly, he decided to keep faith with the 
 
222 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 public and he continued to fulfil his engagements. 
 This was the answer which he sent to the words of 
 sympathy expressed by one who had known and 
 revered his father : 
 
 " KING'S ARMS HOTEL, 
 
 " OXFORD, 
 "June $rd, 1914. 
 
 " MY DEAR PINERO, There is one letter of all I 
 have received I am going to reply to now, for it has 
 brought more comfort and given me greater heart 
 and encouragement to bear my sorrow than any 
 otherand that is yours and so I just want to 
 tell you that as best I can. To know at such a 
 time that we two boys to whom you were so kind 
 and good in those far-off days have not disappointed 
 in our lives the hopes of so true and affectionate a 
 friend is something to be happy about in the midst 
 of so much that is dark and sorrowful, and please 
 God, I will do my best to be worthy of a father and 
 brother such as mine. There is plenty to contend 
 against but a letter such as yours gives one heart 
 and courage to bear and endure. Whether one 
 succeed or fail, there can be no worthier endeavour 
 than to try to do right in the eyes of those we love 
 and respect. I know these words are poor to 
 express what I feel, but your letter has made me 
 face this awful tragedy with some touch of resolve 
 to be the better and the stronger for it. It has all 
 seemed so bewildering and cruel why one is taken 
 
A Tragic End 223 
 
 and the other left often the least worthy. 
 This is the first time I have tried to write, 
 but I had to open my heart to you your letter 
 called me to do it. It has meant, and will 
 mean, something to me which I feel your words 
 intended that it should. My love to you both 
 and oh 1 so greatly do I thank you, kindest of 
 friends. 
 
 "HARRY." 
 
 We have seen, in connection with the unveiling 
 of the statue in Charing Cross Road, the loyal 
 words used on that occasion by "H.B." That 
 was a public function, when it was only natural 
 that a son should speak in praise of his father. 
 Even so, sincerity was the keynote of the speech. 
 Here, however, we have a private letter, written 
 from the heart, and without any thought that 
 it would be read in the cold light of publicity 
 eight years after it was penned. " Please God, I 
 will do my best to be worthy of a father and brother 
 such as mine." The appreciation of their father 
 was shown by the younger as well as by the elder 
 son. To the same " kindest of friends," Laurence 
 Irving, immediately after the death of Henry 
 Irving, wrote as follows : 
 
 " I remember the last conversation I had with 
 you how grave you then considered the state of 
 my father's health : now the sad end has come. 
 The grief remains with us ; but for himself such a 
 
224 " H.B." and Laurence Irving 
 
 weariness had come upon him lately, that one can 
 hardly help feeling that the rest he craved for has 
 come to him almost without struggle or suffering. 
 I am very thankful that I was able to see much of 
 him during his last years ; to judge of my poor 
 father, I think, fairly which the unfortunate 
 circumstances, you know, did not allow me to do 
 when I was younger. I still feel sorrowfully that 
 we were not all, I think, we might have been to 
 one another : I think it was difficult for either of 
 us to say what was in our hearts. I don't think 
 you will wonder at my writing like this to you : I 
 always felt how true an affection you had for my 
 father and what a true and strong regard he had 
 for you." 
 
 The story of Henry Irving and his sons is as 
 wonderful as it is sad. It began in loneliness, in 
 gloom, in mistrust. It ended in sadness, but in 
 understanding. The father died ere yet the sons 
 had come to their complete knowledge of him and 
 their consequent reverence and affection. " I am 
 very thankful that I was able to see much of him 
 during his last years ; to judge of my poor father, 
 I think, fairly." There is a world of meaning in 
 those simple words. It was death that called them 
 forth, just as the passing from " life to eternity " 
 of Laurence caused Harry Irving to let his own 
 heart reveal the truth. Thus, were the father and 
 his sons united at last. Thus, death dissolved all 
 doubt and brought peace to Harry and Laurence 
 
A Tragic End 225 
 
 and true affection for the memory of the great 
 man who had gone before them, his ambition 
 accomplished. 
 
 Be patient and be wise ! The eyes of Death 
 
 Look on us with a smile : her soft caress, 
 
 That stills the anguish and that stops the breath, 
 
 Is Nature's ordination, meant to bless 
 
 Our mortal woes with peaceful nothingness. 
 
 Be not afraid ! The Power that made the light 
 
 In your kind eyes, and set the stars on high, 
 
 And gave us love, meant not that all should die 
 
 Like a brief day-beam quenched in sudden night. 
 
 Think that to die is but to fall asleep 
 
 And wake refreshed where the new morning breaks, 
 
 And golden day her rosy vigour takes 
 
 From winds that fan eternity's far height, 
 
 And the white crests of God's perpetual deep. 
 
 WILLIAM WINTER. 
 
Appendix 
 
 PARTS PLAYED BY H. B. IRVING 
 
 THE following is a list of the parts played by H. B. Irving through- 
 out his career. Including the four characters acted by him while 
 he was at Oxford, it will be seen that he impersonated ninety 
 characters, during the thirty years of his life, at Oxford and as a 
 member of the actor's calling. His Shakespearean impersonations 
 were fifteen in number. Those parts marked with an asterisk * 
 he acted for the first time. He created thirty-seven parts. 
 The dates are those of the original performance of the various 
 plays. 
 
 OXFORD, 1889-1891. 
 
 Decius Brutus in Julius Ccesar. 
 Wentworth in Straff ord. 
 King John. 
 
 Boyet in Lovers Labour 1 s Lost. 
 GARRICK THEATRE, 1891. 
 
 Lord Beaufoy in School (comedy, by T. W. Robertson, i6th 
 
 January 1869). 
 Philip Selwyn in A Fool l s Paradise (play, by Sydney Grundy, 
 
 7th October 1887). 
 COMEDY THEATRE, 1894. 
 *Dick Sheridan (comedy, of the same name, by Robert 
 
 Buchanan, 3rd February 1894). 
 Paul de Valreas in Frou-Frou (drama, by Henri Meilhac and 
 
 Ludovic Halevy, Paris, 3oth October 1869). 
 WITH MR BEN GREET 's COMPANY, 1894-1895. 
 
 Ned Annesley in Sowing the Wind (comedy, by Sydney 
 
 Grundy, 3oth September 1893). 
 Sir Charles Pomander in Masks and Faces (comedy, by 
 
 Charles Reade and Tom Taylor, 2oth November 1852). 
 Julian Beauclerc in Diplomacy (the English version, by B. C. 
 Stephenson and Clement Scott, of Victorien Sardou's Dora, 
 I2th January 1878). 
 
 Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons (Bulwer Lytton's play, 
 i5th February 1838). 
 227 
 
228 Appendix 
 
 Alfred Evelyn in Money (Lytton's comedy, 8th December 
 
 1840). 
 Young Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer (Goldsmith's comedy, 
 
 I5th March 1773). 
 Charles Surface in The School for Scandal (Sheridan's comedy, 
 
 8th May 1777). 
 COMEDY THEATRE, 1895. 
 Louis Farquhar, M.P., in A Leader of Men (comedy, by 
 
 Charles E. D. Ward, 9th February 1895). 
 Lord Petworth in Sowing the Wind. 
 WITH MR BEN GREET 's COMPANY, 1895. 
 Leontes in The Winters Tale. 
 Digby Grant in Two Roses. 
 Othello. 
 
 Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. 
 Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing. 
 Orlando in As You Like It. 
 Biron in Love's Labours Lost. 
 Orsino in Twelfth Night. 
 Sir Tristram in King Rene's Daughter. 
 Armand in A Village Priest (adapted by Sydney Grundy from 
 
 the French, Haymarket Theatre, 3rd April 1890). 
 Hamlet. 
 DUKE OF YORK'S THEATRE, 1896. 
 
 Basil Lambert in The Fool of the Family (comedy, by Fergus 
 
 Hume, 3oth January 1896). 
 WITH MR BEN GREET'S COMPANY, 1896. 
 Marcus Superbus in The Sign of the Cross. 
 Jaques in As You Like It. 
 Romeo. 
 
 ST JAMES'S THEATRE, 1896-1901. 
 Captain Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda (adapted from 
 
 Anthony Hope's story, 7th January 1896). 
 Oliver in As You Like It. 
 *Edward Oriel in The Princess and the Butterfly (comedy, by 
 
 Arthur W. Pinero, 29th March 1897). 
 *Loftus Roupell in The Tree of Knowledge (play, by R. C. 
 
 Carton, 25th October 1897). 
 Don John in Much Ado About Nothing. 
 Jean Beaudin in The Conquerors (drama, by Paul M. Potter, 
 
 originally produced in America ; St James's, I4th April 
 
 1898). 
 
Appendix 229 
 
 *Sir William Beaudevere in The Ambassador (comedy, by 
 
 John Oliver Hobbes [Mrs Craigie], 2nd June 1898). 
 *Marquis of Monfero in A Repentance (drama, in one act, by 
 
 J. O. Hobbes, 28th February 1899). 
 *Sir Ulick Beddart in In Days of Old (drama, by Edward 
 
 Rose, 26th April 1899). 
 *Rupert of Hentzau in play of same name (one act, by Anthony 
 
 Hope, Glasgow, 5th October 1899 ; St James's, ist February 
 
 1900). 
 *Roger and Lewis Dunster in The Man of Forty (play, by 
 
 W. Frith, Manchester, 2/th October 1898 ; St James's, 
 
 28th March 1900). 
 GARRICK THEATRE. 
 *Paul Digby in The Wedding Guest (play, by J. M. Barrie, 
 
 Garrick Theatre, 2;th September 1900). 
 ST JAMES'S THEATRE. 
 *Lord Appleford in The Wisdom of the Wise (comedy, by J. O. 
 
 Hobbes, St James's, 22nd November 1900). 
 Sir Bryce Skene in The Masqueraders (play, by H. A. Jones, 
 
 St James's, 28th April 1894). 
 *Lord Reginald Dugdale in The Awakening (play, by C. 
 
 Haddon Chambers, St James's, 6th February 1901). 
 TERRY'S THEATRE, 1901. 
 *Bellac in The Lion Hunter (comedy, by J. T. Grein and Martha 
 
 Leonard, loth March 1901). 
 IMPERIAL THEATRE, 1901. 
 *Col. Sir Philip Pangdon in A Man of his Word (play, by Boyle 
 
 Lawrence, Imperial, 2ist August 1901). 
 DUKE OF YORK'S THEATRE, 1902-1904. 
 *Orlando Delia Torre in The Twin Sister (adapted by Louis N. 
 
 Parker from Ludwig Fulda, ist January 1902). 
 *Prince de Chalencon in The Princesses Nose (comedy, by 
 
 Henry Arthur Jones, nth March 1902). 
 Baron de Montrichard in There's Many a Slip l Twixt Cup and 
 
 Lip (play, adapted by Robert Marshall from Legouve's 
 
 comedy, La Bataille de Dames, Haymarket, 23rd August 
 
 1902). 
 *Mr Crichton in The Admirable Crichton (play, by J. M. Barrie, 
 
 4th November 1902). 
 *Nevill Letchmere in Letty (drama, by A. W. Pinero, 8th 
 
 October 1903). 
 *Captain Dieppe in play of that name (by Anthony Hope and 
 
230 Appendix 
 
 Harrison Rhodes, first acted in America ; Duke of York's, 
 5th February 1904). 
 
 Sir Montague Martin in His Excellency the Governor (play, by 
 Robert Marshall, nth June 1898; revived, Duke of York's, 
 1 2th March 1904). 
 ADELPHI THEATRE, 1905. 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 WALDORF (now STRAND) THEATRE, 1905. 
 *Lieut. Von Lauffen in Lights Out (drama, translated by H. B. 
 Irving from Zapfenstreich, by Franz Adam Beyerstein, 
 Waldorf, 25th October 1905). 
 SHAFTESBURY THEATRE, 1906. 
 *Rene Delorme in The Jury of Fate (play, by C. M. S. McClellan, 
 
 Shaftesbury, 2nd January 1906). 
 LYRIC THEATRE, 1906. 
 *Roger d'Autran in Mauricette (play, translated by H. B. Irving 
 
 from Andre Picard's Jeunesse, Lyric, sist March 1906). 
 *Markheim in a play of that name (adapted by W. L. Courtney, 
 from a story of the same name, by R. L. Stevenson, Lyric, 
 1 4th April 1906). 
 lago. 
 PROVINCES, 1906. 
 
 Giovanni Malatesta in Paolo and Francesca (tragedy, by 
 
 Stephen Phillips, St James's, 6th March 1902). 
 Lesurques and Dubosc in The Lyons Mail. 
 Charles the First. 
 CHICAGO, 1906. 
 
 Mathias in The Bells. 
 PROVINCES, 1907. 
 
 *King Charles II. in The Lion and the Unicorn (farce, in one 
 act, by Laurence Irving and Tom Heslewood, Bolton, 28th 
 August 1907). 
 Louis XI. 
 *Caesar Borgia in a play of that name (by Justin Huntly 
 
 McCarthy, Edinburgh, 2ist November 1907). 
 SHAFTESBURY THEATRE, 1908-1909. 
 
 [Lesurques and Dubosc, Hamlet, Charles L, Louis XL] 
 QUEEN'S THEATRE, 1909-1911. 
 [Mathias.] 
 *Richard Cardyne in The House Opposite (drama, by Perceval 
 
 Landon, 3oth November 1909). 
 *The Stranger in For the Soul of the King (one-act drama, 
 
Appendix 231 
 
 translated from the French by Perceval Landon, December 
 1909). 
 *Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (in a new version, by J. Comyns Carr, 
 
 of Stevenson's story, 29th January 1910). 
 *The Examining Magistrate in Judge Not (from the French of 
 
 P. G. Duchesne, 28th May 1910). 
 Robert Macaire. 
 
 *Charles Wogan in The Princess Clementina. 
 His MAJESTY'S THEATRE. 
 
 [Hamlet, I4th April 1910 ; 9th May 1911.] 
 [AUSTRALIAN TOUR, May I9ii-May 1912.] 
 DRURYLANE 1912. 
 
 Nobody in Everywoman. 
 SOUTH AFRICAN TOUR, 1913. 
 *Sir Hubert Lisle in The Sin of David (play, by Stephen 
 
 Phillips, Johannesburg, March 1913). 
 ST JAMES'S THEATRE, 1913. 
 
 Dazzle in London Assurance (comedy, by Dion Boucicault, 
 
 4th March 1841). 
 SAVOY THEATRE, 4th October 1913. 
 
 *Desire in The Grand Seigneur. 
 PALACE THEATRE, 1913. 
 
 Arthur Blair Woldingham in The Van Dyck (he subsequently 
 played the same part in the principal provincial music- 
 halls). 
 His MAJESTY'S THEATRE, 22nd May 1914. 
 
 Wilfred Denver in The Silver King. 
 SAVOY THEATRE, July 1914. 
 
 [Sir Hubert Lisle in The Sin of David.] 
 STRAND THEATRE, September 1914. 
 
 [Wilfred Denver.] 
 PALACE THEATRE, MANCHESTER, November 1914. 
 
 Corporal Gregory Brewster in A Story of Waterloo. 
 COLISEUM, December 1914. 
 
 [Corporal Gregory Brewster.] 
 SAVOY THEATRE, 1915-1918. 
 *Robert Blaine in Searchlights (play, by H. A. Vachell, nth 
 
 February 1915). 
 
 *Hon. Hyacinth Petavel in The Angel in the House (play, by 
 Eden Phillpotts and B. Macdonald Hastings, i8th May 1915). 
 *Harley Napier in The Case of Lady Camber (play by H. A. 
 Vachell, i5th October 1915). 
 
232 Appendix 
 
 *Beverley in The Barton Mystery (drama, by Walter Hackett, 
 
 22nd March 1916). 
 
 Professor Goodwillie in The Professor's Love Story (comedy, 
 by J. M. Barrie ; first time in London, 25th June 1894 ; 
 Savoy, 7th September 1916). 
 [Mathias, Hamlet.] 
 *Albert Mott in Humpty Dumpty (comedy, by H. A. Vachell, 
 
 I4th June 1917). 
 *Stephen Pryde in The Invisible Foe (drama, by Walter 
 
 Hackett, 23rd August 1917). 
 DRURY LANE THEATRE, 2nd May 1916. 
 
 Cassius in Julius Ccesav. 
 His MAJESTY'S THEATRE, 5th July 1915. 
 
 Cardinal Campeius in King Henry VIII. 
 His MAJESTY'S THEATRE, i7th December 1918. 
 [Sir Charles Pomander in Masks and Faces.} 
 
 THE LITERARY WORKS OF H. B. IRVING 
 
 The Life of Judge Jeffreys, 1898. 
 
 Studies of French Criminals of the Nineteenth Century, 1901. 
 
 Occasional Papers, Dramatic and Historical, 1906. 
 
 Notable English Trials : Franz Mutter, 1911 ; Mrs Maybrick, 
 
 1913 ; The Wainwrights, 1921 (with an Appreciation by 
 
 Sir Edward Marshall Hall, K.C.). 
 A Book of Remarkable Criminals, 1918. 
 Last Studies in Criminology, 1921. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 H, B. Irving: An Appreciation. By M. E. Wotton, with 21 
 illustrations. A 48-page pamphlet. 1912. 
 
 H.B.' J AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 H. B. Irving was the father of two children, Laurence Henry 
 Forster Irving, born nth April 1897, and Elizabeth Dorothea 
 Irving, born I4th April, 1904. His son, who distinguished him- 
 self during the war in the Air Force, is now an artist. He was 
 married on I9th April 1920 to Rosalind Woolner. His daughter 
 made her first appearance on the stage, as one of the peasant girls 
 in The Bells, at the Savoy Theatre, 22nd April 1917. She made 
 her professional debut on 4th December 1920, at the Court 
 Theatre, as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Subse- 
 
Appendix 233 
 
 quently, she appeared in her mother's old part, Trilby, in August 
 1921, with the Old Stagers at Canterbury, again, in December, 
 with the Windsor Strollers. Laurence had no children. The 
 will of H. B. Irving was proved for 39,176. The estate of 
 Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving was valued at 937 gross, with 
 net personality nil. 
 
 MRS LAURENCE IRVING 
 
 Mrs Laurence Irving, known to the majority of theatre-goers 
 as Mabel Hackney, was overshadowed by her husband. She 
 was, however, a good all-round actress, especially in parts which 
 did not call for the display of the tender side of woman's nature. 
 Yet she was by no means unsympathetic, and she made Laurence 
 an affectionate and devoted helpmate, understanding his simple 
 nature and tending him with solicitude, guiding him as best she 
 could in his work in the theatre, seeing that his home and his 
 comforts wanted nothing that her loving care could provide. 
 He never tired, in public as well as in private, of testifying to her 
 good qualities. Mabel Lucy Hackney was a native of Swansea. 
 In her early career, she was at the St James's Theatre, and then, in 
 1900, became a member of Henry living's company. At the 
 time of her marriage, May 1903, she was twenty-eight, three years 
 younger than Laurence. She left ^5761. A memorial service for 
 Laurence and his wife was held at St Margaret's, Westminster, 
 on loth June 1914. The funeral service for his brother took 
 place in the same church on 2ist October 1919, seven years 
 almost to a day (aoth October) after the interment of his father's 
 ashes in the Abbey near by. Harry was buried in the cemetery 
 at Hampstead. 
 
 BARRIE AND THE IRVINGS 
 
 There is an interesting connection between the " Irving boys " 
 and Sir James Barrie. " H.B." was the first representative of 
 the Admirable Crichton ; Laurence played in Walker, London (a 
 three-act comedy, produced at Toole's Theatre on 25th February 
 1892), the play which brought the author into prominence. In 
 his speech at the dinner given to him by the Critics' Circle at the 
 Savoy Hotel on Friday, 26th May 1922, Sir James Barrie, describ- 
 ing his imaginary island, made a beautiful allusion to the three 
 Irvings : " The dead are here also, and you can hardly distinguish 
 them from the living. The laughing Irving boys arrive in a skiff, 
 trying to capsize each other ; and on magic nights there is Sir 
 Henry himself, pacing along the beach, a solitary figure. 11 
 
NOTE 
 
 THE criticism on H. B. Irving as Hamlet by Mr Bendall, 
 quoted in Chapter X., and my own article, written 
 immediately after the death of "H.B., M appeared in 
 The Observer. I contributed to The Times, in 1921, six 
 articles on Harry and Laurence Irving. Those memoirs 
 met with such a sympathetic reception that I was en- 
 couraged to write this book. 
 
 A. B. 
 
 234 
 
Index 
 
 A 
 
 ABBOTT, F. E., 220 
 
 Academy of Dramatic Art, the, 
 
 79 
 
 Actors' Association, 70 
 Adelphi Theatre, 127 
 Admiralty, the, 142 
 Affinity, The, 184 
 Africa, South, 140 
 Ainley, Henry, 85 
 Alexander, Sir George, 65, 87 
 Angel in the House, The, 141 
 Archer, William, 35, 63, 87 
 A vea Belle, The, 39 
 Asche, Oscar, 81 
 Ashton, George, no 
 Ashwell, Lena, 62 
 Athenaeum Club, 93 
 Atlay, J. B., 93 
 
 BAIRD, Dorothea (Mrs H. B. 
 
 Irving), 50-53, 61, 64, 66, 85, 
 
 90, 119, 147, 219 
 Ballad Monger, The, 184 
 Bamborough, 64 
 Bancroft, M. E. (Lady), 33, 41 
 Barber of Seville, The, 192 
 Barrett, Wilson, 63 
 Barrie, Sir James, 67, 68-70, 173, 
 
 233 
 
 Barrington, Eric, 166 
 Barton Mystery, The, 141 
 Bateman, H. L., 12 
 Beck, Adolf, 160 
 Belfast, 172 
 
 Bells, The, 88, 92, 105-110, 139 
 Bendall, Ernest A., 127, 234 
 Benson, F. R., 172 
 Betterton, Thomas, 132 
 Birmingham, 199 
 Bode, Milton, 140 
 
 235 
 
 Bolton, 92 
 
 Book of Remarkable Criminals, A , 
 
 149, 154, 157 
 Boucher, Maurice, 175 
 Boucicault, Dion (the elder), 23 
 Brieux, Eugene, 184, 185 
 Bright, Golding, 142 
 Browning, Robert, 31 
 Bruton Street, 10 
 Buchanan, Robert, 45 
 Buckstone, Rowland, 22 
 Bygones, 23-25 
 
 Ctesar Borgia, 92 
 Calvert, Charles, 181 
 Calvert, Louis, 179 
 Campbell, Stella, 116 
 Cape Town, 140 
 Carr, J. Comyns, in 
 Carton, R. C., 66 
 Cartwright, Charles, 62 
 Case of Lady Camber, The, 141 
 Cecil, Arthur, 20 
 Charles the First, 86, 92, 94 
 Chicago, 175 
 Christmas Story, A, 175 
 Chute, James Macready, 140 
 Cibber, Colley, 76, 151, 180 
 Clanricarde Gardens, 20 
 Clark, E. Holman, 34 
 Clementina, 116 
 Clutton (Somerset), 216 
 Cobbold, Rev. Richard, 186 
 Coleherne Road, 19 
 Coleridge, S. T., 215 
 Collins, Arthur, 139, 193 
 Collins, Churton, 161 
 Collum, Rev. Hugh, 22, 166 
 Collum, Rita, 22 
 Compton, Edward, 140 
 Connaught, Duke and Duchess 
 of, 202 
 
236 
 
 Index 
 
 Cook, Sir E. T., 61 
 Coronet Theatre, 183 
 Court Theatre, 183 
 Courtney, W. L., 31, 36, 85 
 Crichton, The Admirable, 68-70 
 Cricket on the Hearth, The, 173 
 Crime and Punishment, 184, 1 86 
 " Crimes Club," the, 161 
 Criterion Theatre, 174 
 Critics' Circle, the, 233 
 Cumberland Terrace, 144 
 
 Daisy's Escape, 23, 173 
 Damien, Father Joseph, 176 
 Dark Secret, The, 175 
 D'Auban, John, 22 
 David Garrick, 168 
 Davies, Thomas, 181 
 Dickins, Richard, 126 
 Dog Between, The, 184 
 Doggett, Thomas, 180 
 Dolly Reforming Herself, 119 
 Dostoievsky, Fedor, 186 
 Dot, 173 
 
 Douglass, John, 175 
 Drama as a Factor in Social Pro- 
 gress, The, 202-215 
 Dream of Eugene Aram, The, 35 
 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 111-114 
 Drury Lane Theatre, 70, 140, 
 
 193 
 
 Duckworth, Canon, 12 
 Duffy, Charles Gavan, 16 
 Duke of York's Theatre, 62, 67, 
 
 188 
 Dumas, Alexandra (pere], 23 
 
 EDINBURGH, 55, 92, 190 
 Edward VII., 8, 48, no, 178 
 Empress of Ireland, the (ship), 
 
 220 
 
 Erl King, The, 23 
 Evening Standard, The, 181 
 Everyman, 205 
 Everywoman, 139 
 
 Fall of Poland, The, 23 
 Fanu, Sheridan Le, 175 
 Farren, William, the first, 181 
 Faucit, Helen, 31 
 Faust, 183 
 
 Fechter, Charles Albert, 130, 135 
 Folkestone, n 
 Fool of the Family, The, 62 
 Fool's Paradise, A, 44 
 For the Soul of the King, 1 1 1 
 Fortnightly Review, The, 79, 84 
 French Criminals of the Nine- 
 teenth Century, 75, 152 
 Freres Corses, Les, 23 
 Frith, Walter, 186 
 Frohman, Charles, 67 
 
 GARRICK, David, 133 
 Garrick Theatre, 43, 67, 187 
 Gilston Road, 19 
 Globe Theatre, 201 
 Godefroi and Yolande, 175 
 Gordon Place, 65 
 Goschen, W. H., 34, 61 
 Graf ton Street, 10 
 Grand Seigneur, The, 141 
 Grand Theatre, Islington, 65 
 Green Book, The, 16 
 Greet, Ben, 46-47, 51, 54-55 
 Grundy, Sydney, 44 
 
 H 
 
 HACKNEY, Mabel (Mrs Laurence 
 
 Irving), 217, 220, 233 
 Hall, Sir Edward Marshall, K.C., 
 
 161 
 Hamlet, 55-61, 94, 122-139, 141, 
 
 189 
 
 Hamlets, famous, 132-135 
 Hanford, A. E., 123 
 Hannetons, Les, 184, 218 
 Hardie, James, 19 
 Hare, Gilbert, 43 
 Hare, Sir John, 42, 120 
 Harrison, Frederick, 200 
 
Index 
 
 237 
 
 Harrogate, 192 
 
 Harrow-on-the-Hill, 65 
 
 Hart, John, 140 
 
 Haymarket Theatre, 193, 199- 
 
 201, 202 
 
 Hedda Gabler, 182 
 Heddon's Mouth, 45 
 Hemmerde, Edward G., K.C., 
 
 140 
 
 Henry IV., Part II., 179 
 Hereford Square, 19 
 Heslewood, Tom, 92, 174 
 Hicks, Seymour, 175 
 His Excellency the Governor, 80 
 His Majesty's Theatre, 137, 142, 
 
 191 
 House Opposite, The, in 
 
 IBSEN, Henrik (The Pretenders), 
 
 193-199 
 
 Illustrated London News, The, 32 
 Incubus, The, 184 
 In Honour Bound, 39 
 Invisible Foe, The, 142 
 Irish Brigades in France, History 
 
 f> *7 
 
 Irving, Elizabeth, 90, 147, 232 
 
 Irving, Lady, 11-12, 19, no, 201, 
 217-218 
 
 Irving, Laurence H. F., 90, 147, 
 232 
 
 Irving, Sir Henry, 9-15, 35, 48, 
 49. 55. 6 4. 81, 70, 87, 94, 101, 
 105, 120, 136, 149, 170, 177, 
 193. 198, 221-225, 233 
 
 Jeffreys, The Life of Judge, 73-75, 
 
 151 
 
 Johannesburg, 140 
 Jones, Henry Arthur, 119 
 Jowett, Prof. B., 149 
 Judge Not, 114 
 Jury of Fate, The, 84 
 
 K 
 
 KEAN, Edmund, 134 
 Kemble, Henry, 69 
 
 Kemble, John Philip, 133 
 
 Kendal, Mrs, 20 
 
 Kensington Gore, 10 
 
 King George's Pension Fund for 
 
 Actors and Actresses, 142 
 King John, 32 
 Kingston, Gertrude, 62 
 Kingsway Theatre, 188 
 
 LANDOR, Perceval, in 
 
 Langton, J. D., 147 
 
 Langtry, Mrs, 30 
 
 Last Studies in Criminology, 160 
 
 Lawrance, Mr Justice, 93 
 
 Leigh, Tunbridge, 22 
 
 Lemaitre, Frederic, 115 
 
 Lengyl, Melchior, 192 
 
 Letty, 72, 80 
 
 Lewes, George Henry, 115 
 
 Lights Out, 83 
 
 Lily, The, 188 
 
 Linden Grove, Bayswater, 18 
 
 Linn, Walter R., 89 
 
 Linton House School, 19 
 
 Lion and the Unicorn, The, 92 
 
 Liverpool, Court Theatre, 86 
 
 Liverpool Daily Post, The, 106 
 
 Longford Castle, 39 
 
 Lotos Club, New York, 185 
 
 Louis XI., 94, 183 
 
 Lovers Labour's Lost, 35 
 
 Lucas, E. V., 149 
 
 Lyceum Theatre, 8, 23-25, 173, 
 
 183, 193 
 Lyons Mail, The, 86, 92, 94-100, 
 
 no, 140 
 Lyric Theatre, 63, 84-85 
 
 M 
 
 MACKINNON, Alan, 27, 34 
 Macready, W. M., 31, 135 
 Maid of Honour, A , 140 
 Manchester, 86, 92, 179 
 Manchester Guardian, The, 178 
 Man of Forty, The, 67 
 Mansfield, Richard, in, 186 
 Mansion House, London, 22 
 
238 
 
 Index 
 
 Margaret Catchpole, 186 
 
 Markheim, 85 
 
 Marlborough College, 21 
 
 Marlborough College Mission, 35 
 
 Masks and Faces, 142 
 
 Mason, A. E. W., 116 
 
 Matthison, Arthur, 24 
 
 Maude, Cyril, 174 
 
 Mauricette, 84 
 
 McCarthy, Justin Huntly, 92 
 
 Meltzer, C. H., 186 
 
 Men, A Leader of, 47 
 
 Merchant of Venice, The, 70, 183, 
 
 190 
 
 Merry Widow, The, 185 
 Metropole Theatre, Camberwell, 
 
 63 
 
 Meyrick, Canon, 27 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 
 
 172 
 
 Millard, Evelyn, 85 
 Montreal, 201, 220 
 Moore, Eva, 83 
 More, Hannah, 133 
 Morris, W. J., 26-28, 36-37 
 Much Ado About Nothing, 8 
 
 N 
 
 Nation, The, 16 
 
 Newcastle - on - Tyne, Pen and 
 
 Palette Club, 103, 192 
 New Theatre, 201 
 New York, 87, 175, 184, 185, 186 
 Nineteenth Century, The, 79 
 
 Observer, The, 234 
 O'Callaghan, Daniel, 17 
 O'Callaghan, John Cornelius, 15- 
 
 J 7 
 
 O'Callaghan, Surgeon-General, 9 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 16 
 Occasional Papers, 79, 84, 153 
 O.P. Club, the, 76 
 " Our Society,' 1 161 
 Outlook, The, 191 
 Oxenford, John, 181 
 Oxford, 26-29, 5o> 222 
 
 PAGE, the Misses, 167 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, The, 94 
 
 Paolo and Francesco, 86 
 
 Paris, 1 66 
 
 Pateman, Robert, 62 
 
 Patricia of Connaught, Princess, 
 
 202 
 
 Peace, Charles, 151 
 Peter the Great, 177 
 Petersburg, St, 166-169 
 Phelps, Samuel, 181 
 Phillips, Stephen, 140 
 Phcenix, The, 183 
 Pickwick, 21 
 Pinafore, H.M.S., 20 
 Pinero, Sir Arthur, 23-25, 40-41, 
 
 66, 72, 173, 222-224 
 Pretenders, The, 193-199 
 Princess and the Butterfly, The, 
 
 66 
 Prisoner of Zenda, The, 65 
 
 QUEEN'S THEATRE, 104-119, 201 
 
 R 
 
 RADNOR, Helena (Dowager) 
 Countess of Radnor, 34, 37- 
 
 39. 42 
 
 Reynolds, Tom, 86, 116 
 Richard Lovelace, 183 
 Robert Macaire, 114 
 Robespierre, 183 
 Romeo and Juliet, 193 
 id, 
 
 Routledge, Edmund, 20 
 Russell, Edward R. 
 
 Russell), 106 
 Rutland Gate, 10 
 
 (Lord 
 
 SANDERSON, W. Waite, 103 
 Sardou, Victorien, 183 
 Savoy Hotel, 233 
 Savoy Theatre, 81, 141-143, 147 
 
Index 
 
 239 
 
 Saxe-Meiningen company, 193 
 
 School, 42-44 
 
 School for Scandal, The, 20 
 
 Scotsman, The, 56, 92 
 
 Searchlights, 141 
 
 Shaftesbury Theatre, 81, 84, 94- 
 
 100 
 
 Sign of the Cross, The, 63 
 Sin of David, The, 140 
 Sothern, E. H., 183, 184, 186 
 Southampton Row, 64 
 Sowing the Wind, 47 
 Spectator, The, 74 
 Spooner, Dr, 27 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 85, in 
 St George's Hall, 21 
 St James's Theatre, 65-67 
 St Margaret (Westminster), 
 
 Church of, 219, 233 
 Strand Theatre, 83 
 Strafford, 31 
 Stratton Street, 10 
 Stuart, Otho, 81 
 Sunderland, 55 
 Sydney, New South Wales, 139 
 
 TAGORE, Rabindranath, 215 
 Tavistock Square, 61, 64 
 Tedder, Henry R., 93 
 Temple, the, 45 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 149 
 Terrorist, The, 188 
 Terry, Ellen, 175, 177 
 Theatre Fran9ais, 175 
 Three Daughters of M. Dupont, 
 
 The, 185 
 
 Time, Hunger, and the Law, 174 
 Times, The, 181, 200, 234 
 Toole, John L., 20, 39, 173 
 Toole's Theatre, 173 
 Toronto, University of, 202 
 Totteridge, Herts, 35 
 Tree of Knowledge, The, 66 
 
 Tree, Sir Herbert, 191 
 Trilby, 51-53, 174 
 Twin Sister, The, 67 
 Tyars, Frank, 86 
 Typhoon, n, 192, 199-202 
 
 U 
 
 Uncle Silas, 175 
 
 Unwritten Law, The, 186-188, 
 219 
 
 VANBRUGH, Irene, 68, 175 
 Vanbrugh, Violet, 175 
 Van Dyc/t, The, 141 
 
 W 
 
 WAIN WRIGHT, Henry, 161 
 Walbrook, H. M., 95 
 Walker, London, 173, 233 
 Waller, Lewis, 85 
 Walsh, Elizabeth, 17 
 Webling, Josephine, 20 
 Webling, Peggy, 20 
 Wedding Guest, The, 67 
 Westminster Abbey, 12, 233 
 Wharfdale Street, 19 
 Whitstable, 143 
 Windsor Castle, no 
 Windsor Magazine, The, 137 
 Winnipeg, 201, 219 
 Woburn Place, Upper, 65 
 World, The, 35 
 
 Worthington, Sir Edward, 202 
 Wyndham, Charles, 168, 174 
 
 YOUNG, Charles Mayne, 134 
 
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