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 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 By W. J. LAWRENCE. 
 
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 LONDON . 
 W. & G. Baird, 62 LuDGATE Hn 
 
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THE JAMES D. PHELAN 
 CELTIC COLLECTION 
 
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BABBY SULLIVAN: 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 BY , 
 
 W. J. LAWRENCE, 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 'The Life of Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, Tragedian.^ 
 
 ' Farewell ! Nor mist, nor flying cloud, 
 Xor night can ever dim 
 The wreath of honours, pure and proud, 
 
 Our hearts have twined for him ! 
 But bells of memory still shall chime, 
 
 And violets star the sod, 
 Till one last broken wave of time 
 Dies on the shores of God." 
 
 —William Winter. 
 
 \ LONDON: 
 W. & G. Baird, 62 LUDGATE Hill, E.G. 
 1893. 
 
 [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]. 
 
PHELAN 
 
TO MY OLD FRIEND, 
 
 WILLIAM R. MCCLELLAND, 
 
 IN MEMORY OF HALCYON DAYS 
 
 WHEN DRAMATIC TASTES WERE MUTUALLY 
 FOSTERED. 
 
 81Q283 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/barrysullivanbioOOIawrrich 
 
COlNrTEITTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 PREFATORY NOTE - - - - - 7 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1824-1852) 
 EARLY STOCK DAYS - - - - 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1852-1862) 
 METROPOLITAN AND EARLY AMERICAN EXPERIENCES - 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1862-1891) 
 IN THE COLONIES AND ELSEWHERE - - - 60 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 niHIS Sketch has been almost entirely compiled from, a 
 very considerable mass of Sullivana accumulated by 
 the author duriny many years — the flotsam and jetsam of 
 theatrical matter acquired and utilised in pursuit of by y one 
 literary ventures. It is, indeed, in the words of old Burton, 
 ** a thing of meere industry, a collection without wit or 
 invention, a very toy,'^ 
 
 Where inspiration has been derived from a thousand 
 and one sources, it would be futile to attempt to make 
 reparation to the midtitude of writers whose thunder has 
 been appropriated. But the reader may be afforded a few 
 of the chief well-sprinys of information without risk of 
 tediousness. Aynony theatrical works, Pascoe's ^^ Dramatic 
 List," Dibdin's ^^ Annals of the Edinburgh Stage,'' Colonel 
 Brown's ** History of the Theatre in America," and the 
 sensational little book called **The Truth about the Stage,'' 
 have all proved helpful in their way, Mr. John Coleman's 
 absorbing In Memoriam sketch, in the '' Theatre" Magazine, 
 Jun£, 1891, has been laid freely under contribution as 
 presenting pei^sonal reminiscences of the first importance. 
 Indebtedness must also be acknowledged to the Memoir of 
 Barry Sullivan, written by Mr. J. W. Flynn, and published 
 
8 Prefatory Note. 
 
 in the Cork Examiner of May 9 and 16, 1891 ; and to an 
 article entitled ^^ Barry Sullivan's Career,'' the result of an 
 interriew, tvhich apjieared in the Birmingham Daily Mail 
 of October 13, 1886. Finally, the author desires to return 
 his best thanks to Mr, W. H. Campbell of San Francisco, 
 and to Mr. James Smith of Melbourne, for the trouble under- 
 (jone in sending him their impressions of the tragedian's 
 Australian career. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the issuing of this monograph at 
 once in a popular form ivill meet with due appreciation 
 at the hands of that 2^it-and-galle7y section of the public 
 whose suffrages it was ever Barry Sullivan s especial delight 
 to ivin. 
 
BARRY SULLIVAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. (1824-1852). 
 
 EARLY STOCK DAYS. 
 
 TO few men professing the Roman Catholic faith has 
 it been given, as to poor Barry Sullivan, to linger 
 on in this world for close on three years after the 
 administration of the last rites of the Church. With 
 the fatal word Thanatos written so long and so plainly 
 on the great tragedian's brow, the intelligence of his 
 release from suffering brought with it satisfaction of a 
 melancholy nature rather than unpleasant shock. None 
 the less widespread, however, was the regret at the loss 
 of one who for fully three decades boasted a well-nigh 
 undisputed sovereignty over the legitimate drama in the 
 provinces, and led his willing captives in silken chains. 
 In the sorrow expressed over his departure there was, 
 moreover, a deeper and graver significance than the 
 merely personal. The people were no longer able to 
 raise the old cry of ** The King is dead ; long live the 
 King " — for, sooth to say, the dynasty had gone its way 
 for ever with the potentate. No more for us the stately 
 presence, the virile breadth and lusty vigour of Vanden- 
 hoff, Phelps, and G. V. Brooke. Alas ! these are as the 
 snows of yester-year. With Barry Sullivan gone we 
 can no more recall the majestic deportment and sonorous 
 declamation of the grand old traditional school than 
 
 B 
 
10 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 we can revivify the dodo. Doubtless to many of the 
 younger generation, in these days of Ibsenism and 
 stage archaeology, the loss will not appear momentous. 
 ** TraditicJn, " said ^ the dead tragedian once to a 
 Birmingham interviewer, '* Tradition is the peculiar 
 instruction which Shakespeare himself gave to the 
 actors of his day, and which has been handed down 
 from one to another from that time. It is to acting 
 what Euclid is to the mechanical arts ; a book, so to 
 speak, containing the great principles of the art — the 
 great ideas of the greatest men in the profession." 
 Most indubitably they who are laudatores temporis acti 
 will agree with all this, and mourn that the heirloom 
 should lack claimants. 
 
 Concerning Barry Sullivan's early antecedents little 
 or no definite information was procurable, strange to 
 say, prior to his decease. Albeit he subjugated his old- 
 world spirit so far, some six years ago, as to permit 
 himself to be " interviewed" by one or two enterprising 
 English journalists, still he was never in sympathy 
 with such purely modern methods of theatrical puffery 
 as the hawking of an actor's private affairs in the news- 
 papers, and resolutely refused at all times to be "drawn" 
 in regard to the experiences of his boyhood. Indeed, the 
 frankest avowal ever made by him in this direction was 
 the slight morsel of early autobiography vouchsafed his 
 admirers in a capital speech dehvered at the National 
 Banquet given in his honour in DubHn, in December, 
 1878. " It may not be considered out of place," he said, 
 **if I mention here the fact that I commenced the art 
 which I have the honour to profess, not on the first rung 
 
His Birthplace, 11 
 
 of the ladder, but on the very ground. While yet a boy 
 I stood alone in the world, without father, mother, or 
 friend — without means, and master only of a little 
 Latin and less Greek." To this dignified, if perplexing, 
 reticence on the part of the tragedian must we attribute 
 the mystery which shrouded until recently the circum- 
 stances of his origin, and rendered him second only 
 to Homer in respect to the number of cities which laid 
 claim to the honour of his birthplace. That his parents 
 were Irish, and that he himself (to use his own expres- 
 sion) was " Irish to the heart's core," no one for a 
 moment ever doubted. Not content with this, however, 
 there have been perfervid Celts whose patriotic zeal so 
 far warped their reasoning powers as to induce them on 
 the slenderest of evidence to maintain that the tragedian 
 first saw the light in the County of Cork, some pinning 
 their faith to Clonakilty and others standing up for 
 Dunmanway. Surely after all it was more in keeping 
 with the fitness of things that Thomas Barry Sullivan 
 (or Barry Sullivan, as he is best remembered now) 
 should have first seen the light in the capital of Shake- 
 speare's shire, and on the anniversary of the bard's 
 birthday ? Beyond the fact, however, that he was born 
 at Birmingham on Friday, April 23, 1824, of parents 
 in humble circumstances, little of any trustworthiness 
 is known concerning his early boyhood. To Cork, the 
 home of the O'SuUivans from time immemorial, he is 
 commonly reported to have migrated with his father 
 and mother while as yet a child. There, at any rate, 
 we find him in 1838, a poor, ill-educated lad on the 
 threshhold of life as a draper's assistant in a new em- 
 
12 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 porium opened by one Swinburne in Winthrop Street. 
 But what it once pleased the penny-a-Hner to call "the 
 devouring element " soon made away with Swinburne's 
 establishment, and the embryonic tragedian had per- 
 force to take a situation in Todd's (now Cash & Co.'s) 
 pretentious drapery house. Moth-like, however, the juve- 
 nile counter-jumper had already singed his wings at the 
 histrionic flame. There was something decidedly attrac- 
 tive about this orphaned and friendless lad of fifteen, with 
 his handsome Irish face already showing in its linea- 
 ments the dawnings of character and resolution, his spare, 
 elegant figure, and his profusion of jet-black ringlets. 
 At least so thought the local player folk into whose 
 good graces he speedily ingratiated himself. Finding 
 that he had a tenor of light but eminently pleasing 
 quality, they pressed him into service to appear one 
 night at the old theatre in George's Street, for the 
 benefit of one of the Misses Smith, the charming 
 duettists, recognised as nieces of Kitty the fascinating 
 Countess of Essex. Making his bow, en amateur, as 
 young Meadows in the once popular comic opera of 
 Love in a Village, Sullivan's success proved so un- 
 equivocal that manager Seymour of whimsical notoriety 
 (once epithetised by an enraged actress as *'You, Frank 
 Seymour, the very boards of whose stage are enseamed 
 with the sweat of unpaid artists ! ") engaged him forth- 
 with to play ** leading, singing, walking gentleman." 
 Not long afterwards, however, Seymour had a dispute 
 with Mr. John McDonnell, the lessee of the George's 
 Street house, and seceding from the management he, 
 with the financial aid of a friendly solicitor, transformed 
 
Cork Sixty Years Ago, 13 
 
 the old diorama hall in Cook Street into a temple of the 
 drama, and proceeded to *'run" it in opposition to the 
 established theatre. Among the stars of varying magni- 
 tude whom Frank Schemer (as he was significantly nick- 
 named) induced by specious promises to journey from 
 Dublin was one Paumier, a tragedian of some distinction, 
 who turned the tables on the gay deceiver by constituting 
 himself manager of McDonnell's theatre. Exercising 
 considerable forethought, Sullivan very wisely elected, 
 in the spring of 1840, to join the forces of the new- 
 comer. Under Paumier he gained many valuable 
 lessons in fencing and dramatic elocution which after- 
 wards stood him in good stead. But his stay there was 
 of brief duration, as the George's Street Theatre was 
 burnt to the ground immediately after the successful 
 engagement of Mr. and Mrs, Wood, the operatic stars, 
 causing his mentor to leave at once for England. 
 Making tlie best of a bad job, Barry returned to the 
 fold of the slippery Seymour, and by way of apology 
 for his former desertion placed himself at the beck and 
 call of the manager, played a great variety of characters 
 with unremitting carefulness, and thus laid up a store 
 of unpopularity with the other members of the Cook 
 Street company. Things were in a bad way in the 
 little Victoria Theatre notwithstanding the disappear- 
 ance of the other house. ** The ghost seldom walked." 
 (Few who are not actors will comprehend the sad 
 significance of this peculiar phrase.) And poor Seymour 
 attributed it all to that confounded fellow Collins, who 
 had brought his travelling booth to the city, and by 
 dint of a good company, attractive melodramas, and 
 
14 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 reduced prices was doing a roaring business with the 
 rough-and-ready playgoers of the neighbourhood. What 
 with financial straits on the one hand and internecine 
 squabbles on the other, Sullivan determined once more 
 to go over to the enemy. Exercising his powers of 
 persuasion, he induced Collins to permit him to appear 
 in the booth in a round of leading legitimate characters. 
 The venture proved happy for all concerned ; money 
 kept pouring in ; and Collins grew so elated that he 
 set about erecting a more commodious wooden structure 
 on the site at present occupied by the Cork Opera House. 
 Strange to say, however, his luck departed with the 
 abandonment of the old booth. Before long Barry 
 found it expedient to eat the leek and return to his 
 former humble position in Seymour's Cook Street 
 company. A quaint old building this Eoyal Victoria 
 Theatre ! Owing to its very primitive construction the 
 ladies had to dress themselves in the " flies,' which 
 were reached by a step-ladder ; while the actors had to 
 content themselves with the dread regions beneath tbe 
 stage, and at spring tides (when the water had a 
 provokmg babit of coming up the sewers) not infre- 
 quently found portions of their attire floatmg about, 
 seemingly on a voyage of expedition. 
 
 During the winter of 1840, Barry Sullivan had the 
 felicity of supporting the divine Ellen Tree (afterwards 
 Mrs. Charles Kean), then very popular in Cork. On 
 one occasion the bill presented a rather curious combi- 
 nation of pieces, the evening's entertainment commenc- 
 ing with a performance of Sheridan Knowles' Love, 
 followed by the drama of Matrimony, and concluding 
 
A Realistic Stage Fight. 15 
 
 with Thi'ee TFeeks after Marriage. That burly comedian 
 and capital singer Paul Bedford (afterwards to be 
 recognised as the Adelphi favourite of "I believe you, 
 my boy," notoriety) was at this period one of the 
 members of Seymour's company, and played Blueskin 
 to the Darrell of Barry Sullivan in the famous drama 
 of Jack Sheppard. When things grew dull in Cook 
 Street, the players, by way of variety, paid flying visits 
 to Waterford, Limerick, and other adjacent towns. Not 
 the least important among the formative influences on 
 Barry Sullivan's character was a striking episode which 
 took place during their visit to Clonmel. Utterly dis- 
 credited by society, actors in those days for the most part 
 led an ultra-bohemian life, and were rather prone to look 
 on the wine when it was red. On the occasion referred to, 
 SulHvan had been indulging in '' the native " — 
 
 '' Fresh from the still, and faithful to its fires," 
 
 with the result that when he went on in Rory O'More 
 as De Welskein the smuggler, he lost control of himself, 
 and running amuck in the scrimmage seriously injured 
 one of the attacking party. Grieving over the folly of his 
 conduct as soon as reason had asserted itself, he vowed 
 there and then to eschew strong drink. Eeflection 
 showed him that the highway to histrionic fame was 
 littered with premature tombstones, marking the fate of 
 self-indulgent genius. He had strength of character, 
 and religiously kept his resolution to the end. 
 
 Equally striking in its way was the incident which 
 occurred during the visit of the Cork Company to 
 Tralee, particulars of which will be best related in Barry 
 
16 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 Sullivan's own words. Eeplying to the toast of his 
 health at a banquet given in his honour by the citizens 
 of Cork, at the Imperial Hotel, oh Saturday, December 
 2, 1878, he said, inter alia — " I was going to the 
 theatre, and as I was passing through the principal 
 street, Denny Street, there was a cry of fire. I went 
 down with the other boys — for I was only a big boy at 
 the time — to look at the fire, and presently I saw a very 
 beautiful girl looking out of a window above, and with 
 her a gentleman with a white head. To make a long 
 story short, I went through the flames and saved those 
 two. (Applause.) Suddenly I remembered that I was 
 wanted at the theatre, which, by the way, was in the 
 Market-house, and I really did not think I had done 
 anything worth remembering. Two or three days after- 
 wards, however, it became known that the boy, the 
 individual, the young man who had saved the lives of 
 this lady and gentleman — I remember that they were 
 Mr. Primrose and Miss Primrose his daughter — it was 
 discovered was young Sullivan, the vulgar little player, 
 who had done this. Up to that time our theatre had 
 been doing very badly, but from that time forward we 
 had crowded houses, I can tell you. (Laughter and 
 applause.)" 
 
 It must indeed be reckoned a happy circumstance 
 that we are able to relate this incident on the authority 
 of Sullivan's ipse dixit ; for some such story has been 
 told about most of the prominent tragedians of the 
 century. As a matter of fact (Creswick bearing witness) 
 we know for certain that a similar adventure befell 
 Gustavus Brooke in his salad days. 
 
In the Edmhurgh Stock Company, 17 
 
 On returning to Cork, Sullivan found himself cast for 
 a leading tenor role in Fra Diavolo, in support of those 
 celebrated dramatic vocalists Leffler, John Wilson, and 
 Miss Romer. He acquitted himself with so much distinc- 
 tion that Wilson, who was a Scotchman, at once gave 
 him a letter of introduction to the well-remembered W. 
 H. Murray, of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, then justly 
 considered the wet-nurse j9ar excellence of the histrionic 
 child. Thither Barry repaired with all due expedition, 
 and was engaged forthwith under the stipulation that he 
 was not to be too fastidious about his line of business, 
 as progress and diversified work went hand-in-hand. It 
 is worthy of note that during his first season in the 
 Scottish capital Sullivan found himself associated with 
 such artists as Edmund Glover, Mr. and Mrs. Leigh 
 Murray, John Ryder, Sam. Cowell, and the then budding 
 Sims Reeves, who played walking gentlemen at a salary 
 of something under a pound a-week. But there were 
 no princely emoluments for the poor player in those 
 days. Sullivan himself was engaged by Murray to play 
 ** second heavies " and render general assistance in 
 musical pieces at the modest weekly stipend of thirty 
 shillings. Kept, however, for some little time after his 
 arrival at the prompter's box, he did not make his first 
 appearance in Edinburgh until the 24th November, 
 1841, when he played Red Rody in The Bobber's Wife, 
 During Charles Kean's engagement in March, 1842, he 
 was the Bates to the star's Beverley in The Gamester, and 
 subsequently appeared at the Adelphi during the off- 
 season at the Royal, acting there the part of Gaston in 
 Richelieu, when Lord Lytton's play was presented for the 
 
18 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 first time in the Northern Athens. Seekers after the 
 curious will be interested to learn that when Henry 
 Irving made his first appearance at the Edinburgh 
 Theatre Royal on February 7, 1857 (after a brief novi- 
 tiate in Sunderland), it was in this self-same part ; and 
 that the wily Cardinal on that particular occasion was 
 personated by none other than the hero of these pages, 
 then a fixed star in the theatrical firmament. Moreover, 
 it may afford food for reflection to adherents of either 
 tragedian to learn that both buffooned it in their time in 
 pantomime on these classic boards, a period of thirteen 
 years naturally intervening. In the Pall Mall Gazette of 
 May 4, 1891, there appeared a sympathetic sketch, en- 
 titled *' The Late Mr. Barry Sullivan, by One Who Knew 
 Him," in the course of which the writer represented the 
 dead tragedian as having said to him a couple of years 
 previously, '' Do you remember that I told you the other 
 day that the prominent actor who had not supported 
 me was Henry Irving ? Well, I was introduced to Mr. 
 Irving, with whom I was much charmed, and on my 
 making that remark to him, he replied, ' Pardon me ; 
 when once you were acting in Liverpool I made my 
 debut at the same theatre, and recollect I held a banner ! ' 
 No wonder I didn't know him again ! " Of which state- 
 ment the best that can be said is that it is neither true 
 nor well found. Here is Mr. Irving's contradiction : — 
 
 Lyceum Theatre, 
 
 22nd May, 1891. 
 My Dear Sir, 
 
 Let me thank you for your kind letter. You are quite 
 correct in your statement. The only occasion on which I ever 
 
An Outspoken Critic, 19 
 
 played with the late Mr. Barry Sullivan was at Edinburgh, 
 in 1857, when I played Gaston to his Richelieu. The Liver- 
 pool story is, of course, a silly one. 
 
 Believe me, dear sir, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 W. J. Lawrence, Esq. H. Irving. 
 
 With the secession of Ryder, in the autumn of 1842, 
 Manager Murray promoted Barry Sullivan to '* first 
 heavies," and in that capacity he was not exempted 
 from appearing in the opening of the Christmas panto- 
 mime of Johnnie Fa ; or, Harlequin and the King of the 
 Gipsies. Considering that the budding tragedian had 
 frequently to " get-up " as many as eighteen new parts 
 a-week, it is matter for little surprise that, notwith- 
 standing many an ** all-night sitting," he was occa- 
 sionally weak in his lines, and more often than not far 
 from letter-perfect. During the engagement of Charles 
 Mathews and Madame Vestris, a local sheet called The 
 Prompter, in noticing the performance of Faint Heart 
 Never Won Fair Lady, launched out at poor Barry, who, 
 in the critic's estimation, ** not only acted most abomin- 
 ably, but was sadly deficient in the text ; indeed, once 
 or twice we were afraid he would absolutely break down." 
 Among the great variety of parts which fell to his lot 
 at this period were Sir Francis Vernon in Boh Roy (to 
 the Bailie Nicol Jarvie of Mackay) ; Sebastian in Guy 
 Mannering (to the Henry Bertram of Sims Reeves and 
 the Lucy of Miss Woolgar) ; Drayton in Grandfather 
 Whitehead ; Antonio in The Merchant of Venice ; and 
 Beauseant in The Lady of Lyons, 
 
20 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 To the last hour of his waking consciousness Barry 
 Sulhvan always spoke of Helen Faucit as his beau-ideal 
 of an actress, and was never ashamed to confess that 
 he had learned more from watching her in his tyro 
 days than in musing over the methods of all the other 
 stars, male and female, put together. November 14, 
 1843, marks the date of their earliest professional 
 association — the scene, the Edinburgh Theatre Royal. 
 It is noteworthy, furthermore, that Barry Sullivan was 
 present in the green-room of the same house when the 
 great tragedienne first met her future husband, Mr. 
 (now Sir Theodore) Martin. 
 
 Becoming dissatisfied with his position under Murray 
 our hero determined to seek his fortune elsewhere, and 
 so appealed to his Edinburgh friends in a farewell 
 benefit on May 30, 1844, when the bill comprised four 
 pieces, besides incidental songs and dances, and a speech 
 from the benejiciaire. His own share of the evening's 
 entertainment consisted in playing Kirkpatrick in the 
 tragedy of Wallace, and Alexander Massaroni in The 
 Italian Brigand. On leaving Edinburgh he took with 
 him an undesirable memento of his sojourn there, in 
 the shape of a scar on the cheek occasioned by an 
 unlucky pistol-shot in a stage scrimmage. One whose 
 face already possessed that perfect handsomeness which 
 Mirabeau, with supreme self-satisfaction, once said was 
 only found in the pock-marked man, could readily have 
 dispensed with such a reminder. Subsequently he 
 fulfilled engagements at Paisley, Dundee, Aberdeen, 
 Montrose, and Arbroath, and while still a minor was 
 engaged as leading man for the City Theatre, Glasgow. 
 
The Drama in Glasgoiv. 21 
 
 Here he first became acquainted with his Hfe-long 
 friend Mr. John Coleman, who gave some details of the 
 engagement in a sympathetic *' In Memoriam " sketch 
 (in The Theatre for June, 1891), which we cannot do 
 better than quote : — 
 
 ** We first met in Glasgow," writes Mr. Coleman, 
 ** where John Henry Anderson — the Wizard of the North 
 — had built upon the Green, within a stone's-throw of 
 the Saut Market, immortalised by Bailie Nicol Jarvie, a 
 beautiful temple of Thespis, called * The City Theatre,' 
 for the purpose of opposing the eccentric Alexander, who 
 had for many years monopolised the drama in St. Mungo's 
 City. At the period to which I refer there was in this 
 vicinity an eruption of theatres, licensed and unlicensed 
 — theatres to suit every taste and every pocket. At the 
 very corner of the Green stood the Adelphi, a very fine 
 theatre, built for David Prince Miller, the famous show- 
 man, whom Alexander had made a martyr by consign- 
 ing him to the Tolbooth for having acted without a 
 license. Exactly opposite the Adelphi stood Mumford's 
 * Bawbee Show,' where a very excellent company of 
 comedians were wont to give three performances a- night 
 of Hamlet, Othello, or Romeo, for three half-pence ! . . . 
 Anderson had been himself an actor — an ambitious and 
 disappointed one — and he could no more keep out of the 
 theatre than a thirsty cat can keep her whiskers out of a 
 bowl of cream. He had no sooner made a small fortune 
 by conjuring than he lost it by management. Upon 
 this occasion, determining to carry everything before 
 him, he engaged a double company in every department. 
 There was an opera company, headed by our great 
 
22 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 singer, Sims Eeeves ; and a dramatic company, headed 
 by the rival tragedians Mr. James Bennett and Mr. 
 Barry SuUivan, and the then yoimg and majestic Laura 
 Addison, and Mrs. Ada Dyas. Anderson had engaged 
 two ladies and two gentlemen for every line of business, 
 with the intention of having his pick of the best, 
 retaining the successful and dismissing the unsuccessful 
 candidates for public favour. As nearly every member 
 of the company had taken long and expensive journeys 
 from England, much discontent ensued, and the theatre 
 was a perfect hot-bed of strife. The disaffection was 
 increased by the unprecedented occurrence that nearly 
 every member of the dramatic company was coerced 
 into going on the stage for the chorus in the various 
 operas. The opera season lasted for a month, during 
 the greater portion of which Sullivan, Bennett, and 
 Miss Laura Addison were condemned to inglorious 
 inactivity. Sullivan particularly resented this, and as 
 I sympathised with him he poured his wrongs into the 
 ears of a not unwilling listener. . . . When he 
 accepted the engagement for Glasgow, he anticipated 
 undivided sway ; so did Bennett, and their indignation 
 was unbounded when they found themselves pitted 
 against each other. 
 
 ** At length the rival tragedians were notified that they 
 were to open as Claude Melnotte, and Miss Addison and 
 Mrs. Dyas were noticed for Pauline, but the play 
 was to be done after the opera of The Bohemian Girl, 
 There were more rows, but the man who pays is 
 usually master, and the Wizard was no exception to 
 this rule. 
 
James Bennett. 23 
 
 " Bennett was the older and more experienced actor, 
 and, though anything but a typical Claude, took the 
 popular fancy. Sullivan ran his rival hard in Claude, 
 Hamlet, and Romeo, but when it came to Macbeth, 
 Othello, and parts of that class, he was pronounced to 
 be an admirable walking gentleman actor of tragedy, 
 while Bennett was proclaimed to be a tragedian. The 
 result was (and a very cruel result too) that Sullivan 
 was dismissed and Bennett remained ' monarch of all he 
 surveyed.' This was a wrong which Sullivan never 
 forgot, never forgave, even when time had reversed this 
 unjust verdict. Only a few years ago, while dining 
 tete-a-tete at the Savage Club, this subject cropped up, 
 and instantly lashed him to a white heat." 
 
 Good actor as he always was (and even in the later 
 sixties his lago was a superb impersonation), poor 
 Bennett never had the luck to reach the height clearly 
 indicated by his early promise. When given the chance 
 of his life by Jarrett and Palmer, who engaged him to 
 play Eichard HI. in a splendidly-mounted production of 
 Shakespeare's play at Niblo's Garden, in April, 1871, 
 his courage forsook him, and he failed ignominiously. 
 Truly the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind 
 exceeding small. Barry Sullivan could have well 
 afforded to blot out all recollection of Anderson's 
 injustice when he saw with what unrelenting cruelty 
 Time had quashed the manager's decree. By an irony 
 of circumstance when he received that unlucky sword- 
 thrust while acting Richard III. at Drury Lane, in 1876, 
 necessitating his retirement from the cast, the obscure 
 under-study who took up his part was none other than 
 
24 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 the quondam Glasgow favourite upon whom Anderson 
 had beamed with a beneficent eye. 
 
 After his summary dismissal from the City Theatre, 
 Sullivan experienced a period of inaction, but was 
 eventually engaged by a committee to manage the 
 Aberdeen Theatre. During his sojourn in Scotland his 
 command of the brogue had enabled him to make a 
 gratifying hit in an Irish character part ; indeed, his 
 success was so pronounced that he was strongly advised 
 to seek the path of fame and fortune after the manner 
 of Tyrone Power. But he had already conceived 
 Shakespearian aspirations, and, not foreseeing the 
 acceptance of Brooke both as tragedian and Irish 
 character actor, feared to create a reputation which he 
 thought might blast his ambition in the higher walks 
 of the drama. Meantime we find him in the Granite 
 City, toiling hard, developing his powers, sparing himself 
 but little. Finding, however, at the expiration of two 
 years that his material fortunes, like the farmer drinking 
 his landlord's claret, got **no forrader," he crossed the 
 Border, and opened his first English engagement under 
 one Oppenheim at Wakefield. It proved anything but 
 auspicious, as a demand for salary in arrears on the 
 part of our hero, one night during the performance of 
 the tragedy of Bertram, led to fisticuffs with the manager, 
 and abruptly brought the evening's entertainment to a 
 close. Not a whit disheartened at this fiasco, Sullivan very 
 shortly afterwards succeeded in obtaining an engagement 
 from Mr. Robert Roxby, of the Theatre Royal, Williamson 
 Square, Liverpool, as leading man, at a salary of £5 per 
 week. Among the other members of the stock company 
 
First Appearance in lAverpool. 25 
 
 at that period were Messrs. Artaud, Mortimer, Fitzroy, 
 Willis, Suter, W. S. Branson, J. W. Benson, James 
 Lunt, Mrs. Seyton, Miss Treble, Miss Murray, and Miss 
 K. Love. By some mistake Sullivan was announced to 
 make his first appearance at the Royal on May 7, 1847, 
 as Sir Edward Mortimer in The Iron Chest — a part he 
 had never studied, and, moreover, greatly disliked. But 
 making the best of a bad job he tackled the character, 
 and, as he once remarked in after years, "if he had 
 selected the part himself he could not have made a 
 bigger success." Of this performance Mr. Coleman, who 
 was at that time a member of Copeland's Company at 
 the Amphitheatre, writes as follows : — 
 
 " While I was occupied with rehearsal he (Sullivan) 
 came to renew our acquaintance, and to borrow an indis- 
 pensable * property,' or, to be precise, to borrow a pair 
 of black silk tights for Sir Edward Mortimer in The 
 Iron Chest, in which gloomy play he was about to open. 
 By- the- way, those same tights that very same season 
 did duty to introduce Robert Brough to the stage as 
 Lampedo in The Honeymoon, after which inauspicious 
 event — for poor Bob did not set the Mersey on fire — 
 they went the way of all — tights. They passed from 
 my gaze and I saw them no more. 
 
 ** The gallery was a shilling in those days, and thither 
 I went with a friend to give the new tragedian * a hand.' 
 Sir Edward Mortimer was no more suited to Sullivan 
 than it was to John Kemble. Latterly it has been the 
 fashion to decry Barry Sullivan as being stilted, formal, 
 and old-fashioned, but, as I have shown already, in 
 Glasgow he had been pronounced a walking gentleman 
 
26 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 actor of tragedy, and unquestionably his style was too 
 modern and too natural for this mouthing, super- sensitive 
 hypocondriac. Of late years I have seen little of 
 Sullivan's acting, but when I knew him at his best he 
 was vigorous, vivacious, and versatile. His Charles 
 Surface, Young Rapid, Petruchio, Benedick, and Falcon- 
 bridge were hard to beat ; and his Long Tom Coffin, 
 William in Black-eyed Susan, Rory O'More, Myles-Na- 
 Coppaleen, and Shaun-the-Post were performances of 
 unapproachable excellence. 
 
 ** The second performance in Liverpool was Jaffier in 
 Venice Preserved. There was a miserable house, and 
 the good old tragedian who played Pierre was wretchedly 
 imperfect, while the beautiful but unfortunate woman 
 who played Belvidera was worse ; but Sullivan was a 
 tower of strength in his knowledge of the text, and 
 pulled the play through to a successful termination. 
 From that moment I felt convinced he only needed time 
 and opportunity to make his way — the world itself 
 comes round to him who knows how to wait, and at 
 length it came round to him." 
 
 Subsequently, when the management of the Theatre 
 Royal passed into the hands of Mr. W. R. Copeland, 
 who also presided over the fortunes of the Amphi- 
 theatre, Sullivan transferred his services to that sterling 
 manager. Acting principally at the Amphitheatre his 
 reputation and popularity in Liverpool grew apace ; so 
 much so that Copeland before his death made him 
 promise that whenever he revisited his old friends he 
 would never play at any other house so long as it 
 remained in the hands of his family. The tragedian 
 
First Appearance in MancJiester. 27 
 
 religiously kept his word, making his last appearance 
 at the Amphitheatre, prior to its reconstruction, on 
 November 15, 1880, when he sustained the character of 
 Hamlet to Miss Maud Brennan's Ophelia. To his credit 
 be it said, he never forgot the kindness of those early 
 Liverpool friends who, by dint of liberal encouragement, 
 helped him on the way to fame and fortune. Years 
 afterwards, when he was acting in Melbourne, Mr. 
 Edward Whitty, a brilliant Liverpool journalist, who 
 wrote ** The Stranger in Parliament," went out there 
 with the view of arresting the ravages of consumption. 
 The Whittys had been paramount among those who 
 had supported the tragedian in the Press in the late 
 forties, and he did his best to smooth the last moments 
 of the sufferer. Finally, when all was over, he caused 
 a handsome monument to be erected over the remains 
 of his friend. Now a memorial to himself — showing 
 with eloquent muteness that the man who never forgave 
 an injury never forgot a kindness. 
 
 In the midst of his popularity with the Liverpudlians, 
 Sullivan was induced by a tempting offer from Knowles, 
 of Manchester, to transfer his services to the Theatre 
 Royal in that city, where he shared the lead with his 
 compatriot Gustavus Brooke. Here his success was as 
 pronounced as it was instantaneous. Making his first 
 appearance on October 9, 1847, as Stukely in Tlie 
 Gamester, to the Mr. and Mrs. Beverley of Charles 
 Kean and his wife, he was delighted to find that all the 
 honours of the evening were not reserved for the stars, 
 with whom he had the felicity to share the distinction 
 of a recall. The good impression conveyed at the 
 
28 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 outset was amply confirmed on the 26th of the same 
 
 month, when SulHvan played Hamlet for the first time 
 
 on any stage, having previously studied the part for 
 
 upwards of seven years. Basing his conception of the 
 
 role on the theory that the Prince was of sound mind 
 
 and only pretended madness for a special purpose, the 
 
 youthful tragedian invested the character with much 
 
 new business of a striking nature. This he claimed in 
 
 after years had been copied unblushingly by many 
 
 famous actors. Speaking of this early performance 
 
 to a Manchester interviewer in 1886, he said — ** I 
 
 showed them for the first time the reason of Hamlet's 
 
 sudden change in demeanour as he discovers Polonius 
 
 and the King eavesdropping, and at once concludes 
 
 that Ophelia is concerned in the plot. The * hawk 
 
 and handsaw' reading, too, I altered. During my 
 
 studies I tried to thoroughly grasp the meaning 
 
 of each sentence, but I was unable to find any 
 
 intelligible meaning in the line as it appeared in the 
 
 ordinary text. Taking into consideration the context 
 
 and the situation, I, as Hamlet, believe that Guilden- 
 
 stern and Rosencrantz had been specially sent * to 
 
 pump the Prince,' who discovered their purpose, and 
 
 pumped them instead, and I, therefore, when the climax 
 
 was reached, said, *I am but mad nor'-nor'-west ; when 
 
 the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a heron ; 
 
 pshaw 1 ' the * pshaw ' being the outcome of the disgust 
 
 Hamlet felt at being treated in such a manner. I felt 
 
 there was a meaning and a point in the line, when 
 
 delivered in this way which was entirely wanting in the 
 
 * handsaw ' reading. So, too, with the Ghost, who tells 
 
His Hamlet. 29 
 
 Hamlet he is ' doomed for a certain time to walk the 
 night, and for the day confined to fast in fire.' This 
 I felt was absurd, and I made my Ghost say, * Qon^ned 
 fast in fire,' thereby getting rid of the difficulty, and 
 making intelligible what had previously been obscure. 
 I could go through the play, and show many instances 
 where the lines had become encrusted with absurdities, 
 arising from the alteration of ignorant commentators 
 and actors ; but I have no desire now to enter into any 
 argument or justification of my alterations and resto- 
 rations." In a word, the new interpretation created 
 considerable stir, culminating in a banquet in Barry 
 Sullivan's honour, at which one of the speakers evoked 
 much laughter by a voluntary confession. During 
 the previous week, he said, he had gone to the Royal 
 to see the guest of the evening as Long Tom Coffin, 
 in the melo- drama of The Pilot. He had enjoyed 
 himself immensely. Not even Tippy Cooke, he 
 thought, could have given a better characterisation 
 of the roistering sailor ; while the incidental comic 
 song was certainly rendered in excellent fashion. But 
 the idea of such a man attempting to play Hamlet, 
 as he heard he was doing ! He must go to the theatre 
 and laugh at him for his presumption. He went, and, 
 contrary to expectation, stayed to pray that the actor 
 might long continue to play the part. 
 
 His wish has been gratified. From Sullivan's first 
 performance of Hamlet in Manchester to his last a period 
 of well nigh forty years elapsed, during which he must 
 have played the Dane something like three thousand five 
 hundred times. Of late years his interpretation of the 
 
80 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 role was among the most attractive in a limited repertory. 
 Consequently it is not surprising to find the critic of 
 the Manchester Umpire saying, in October, 1886, that 
 ** Sullivan's Hamlet, like the Tower of London, is 
 not a performance ; it is an institution." Setting his 
 face sternly against ** moods," the tragedian always 
 endeavoured to mete out strict impartiality to all the 
 characters he represented. He professed to have no 
 likes and dislikes, but in his heart of hearts, as his 
 intimates knew, he had decided predilection for the 
 distraught Dane. It was the first character in which 
 his ** counterfeit presentment" was given to the world, 
 as they who care to turn over the pages of Halliwell's 
 edition of Shakespeare can verify. Thanks to generous 
 friends and the genius of the sculptor, it will be as 
 Hamlet that future generations of Irishmen will do 
 tribute to the demi-god of their fathers. 
 
 Speaking to a friend, on setting out on his last tour, 
 of the great number of times he had acted Hamlet, the 
 tragedian said, **I can assure you I never go through 
 the part without finding in it some new point, some 
 new beauty. Ah ! there's no one can appreciate 
 Shakespeare like the man who conscientiously attempts 
 to interpret him. But never in all my career have I 
 gone on the stage to act Hamlet — or indeed any other 
 part — without feeling a very great deal of the nervousness 
 I experienced on the night I first appeared in public." 
 Before leaving the subject it is worthy of passing 
 mention that Sullivan (stimulated by the discussion 
 raised by Devrient's personation of the part) once 
 began to study German with the idea of playing Hamlet 
 
The Sullivan Memorial Statue. 
 
 81 
 
32 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 in Berlin; but he gave up the attempt in despair, on 
 finding how many ugly pitfalls presented themselves in 
 the accent. 
 
 Harking back, we find that when Brooke appeared 
 for the first time this season, on Monday, October 23, 
 as Claude Melnotte, Barry Sullivan played Eichard 
 Parker in the afterpiece of The Mutiny of the Nore, 
 Subsequently our hero sustained Pierre to Brooke's 
 Jaffier, and the Ghost to the same actor's Hamlet. 
 When Ivanhoe was produced, towards the end of the 
 month, Brooke figured as Isaac of York, and Sullivan 
 as Front de Boeuf. The piece made a hit, but the 
 Guardian qualified its praise by hinting that ** Mr. 
 Brooke and Mr. Sullivan might have advantageously 
 changed parts as the Jew and the Templar. We think 
 Mr. Brooke would have imparted more of the chivalrous 
 spirit to the latter ; and Mr. Sullivan would probably 
 have imparted more intensity with less physical vigour 
 to the ancient Israelite." During November, Sullivan 
 played King Lear to Brooke's Edgar, Cassius to his 
 Brutus, Friar Lawrence to his Eomeo, and Werner 
 to his Ulric. While sharing the lead between them 
 at the Royal the two Irishmen were the best of good 
 friends. They occupied a joint dressing-room, and 
 it was there that Brooke made his engagement with 
 Captain Spicerto appear at the Olympic in January, 1848. 
 During the negotiations Sullivan's advice was frequently 
 taken, and he was at length instrumental in persuading 
 his compatriot to accept the London manager's offer. 
 
 Again we are constrained to fall back on Mr. Coleman's 
 reminiscences. The genial raconteur happened to be 
 
A Characteristic Anecdote, 33 
 
 acting at the Queen's Theatre, Manchester, precisely at 
 this period, and occasionally fraternised with his old 
 friend at the Alton House — a noted tavern where the 
 members of the three local stock companies were wont 
 to meet. ** During our Manchester experiences," he 
 writes, ** Sullivan gave himself no tragic airs, and had a 
 happy knack of saying smart things. One evening as 
 we lounged into the tavern together, an eminent idiot 
 was monopolising the conversation, and his theme was 
 the bard (as it always was) ; he had the bard on the 
 brain — or would have had, had he possessed one. 
 
 ** * Ha, Mr. Sullivan,' exclaimed the bore in triumph, 
 * the very man we want ! You can set us right on the 
 subject.' 
 
 *' * What subject ? ' enquired Barry. 
 
 ** * Mrs. Siddons' reading in Lady Macbeth. Was 
 she right or wrong ? Should it be ** We fail \'' ov ''We 
 fail ? " What is your opinion, sir ? * 
 
 '* * Can't possibly express an opinion on the subject.' 
 
 " * Why not, sir ? Why not ? ' 
 
 ** * Because I never have failed, and never mean to 
 fail ! ' 
 
 *' Perhaps," adds Mr. Coleman, *'it cannot be truly 
 affirmed that Sullivan never failed, but he had a bull- 
 dog-like tenacity of purpose which never admitted he 
 was beaten." 
 
 Douglas in those days was as yet in the dawning of 
 its popularity as a hohday resort, although in great 
 vogue among the player folk during the summer 
 months. Thither Barry repaired at the termination of 
 his first season in Manchester, accompanied by Mrs. 
 
84 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 Sullivan, who, however, suffered so much on the voyage 
 that she never afterwards went with him on another. 
 When the . Theatre Koyal re-opened its doors on 
 Monday, October 30, 1848, Glover, from Edinburgh, 
 made his first appearance there as lago. *'Mr. Barry 
 Sullivan," says The Theatrical Journal, "• played Othello 
 with his usual care, and into many passages threw much 
 beauty." Not long after this George Henry Lewes, 
 critic and philosopher (dubbed, however, by our hero 
 *' a poor weak creature"), conceived the insane idea 
 that his shoulders were fated to bear the mantle of the 
 departing Macready. Without any of the fundamental 
 attributes of an actor save the informing quality, 
 Lewes was rash enough to appear as Shylock at the 
 Manchester Theatre Royal on March 10, 1849. Out of 
 respect for his literary reputation Sullivan humoured 
 what he considered a mere whim, and agreed to play 
 seconds to the new-comer. But gossipmongers were not 
 lacking to convey the intelligence to his ears that Lewes 
 at an evening party had announced his intention of 
 taking to the stage permanently, with the view of filling 
 the lamentable hiatus about to be created. Added to 
 this he was represented as speaking so contemptuously 
 of Sullivan that our hero at once stood upon his dignity 
 and notified Wallack, the stage manager, he could no 
 longer consent to act with his traducer. The moral of all 
 which is (pardon the mustiness of the precept) Ne sutor 
 ultra crepidam. 
 
 Serious complications ensued. On the 26th of the 
 same month a remarkable scene took place at the Theatre 
 Royal, bringing Sullivan's connection with that house 
 
Unpleasant Experiences, 85 
 
 to a sudden close. The Stranger was in the bill, and at 
 the end of the performance, Barry, in the name-part, 
 was honoured with a recall. On appearing before the 
 curtain he returned thanks to the audience for their 
 uniform appreciation of his acting, and intimated that 
 it was the last occasion on which he would have the 
 pleasure of acting there. He regretted the fact as the 
 fault was not his, but Mr. H. J. Wallack's, who had 
 treated him unjustly. At this the house began to hiss 
 and groan by way of disapproval of the manager's 
 conduct. Mr. Wallack then appeared, but failed to gain 
 a hearing. Quietness was not restored until SulHvan 
 had made another speech, in which the audience learned 
 that the favourite had been deprived of his benefit night 
 — then a source of considerable pecuniary emolument 
 to an under-paid actor. Although theatrical Man- 
 chester was to a man on Sullivan's side in the dispute, 
 the breach was never healed. He left the Royal forth- 
 with ; but the Queen's Theatre in Spring Gardens was 
 secured for a night, and Barry, in Claude Melnotte and 
 Petruchio, had his benefit (and a big one it was) after 
 all. A visit to Edinburgh followed in June, when our 
 hero starred as Hotspur, Young Norval, Romeo, etc., 
 etc. Later on Copeland was only too glad to have him 
 back again in Liverpool, where his reputation in the 
 legitimate increased by leaps and bounds. When 
 Phelps played King John in that city during a starring 
 engagement, he was so pleased with Barry's acting as 
 Falconbridge that on his return to town he said a 
 good word for the Liverpool tragedian to Benjamin 
 Webster, of the Haymarket, always on the qui vive for 
 
36 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 rising talent wherewith to recruit his company. 
 Negotiations ensued, with the result that Barry Sullivan 
 made his first appearance in London at the above- 
 mentioned theatre on February 7, 1852. Thus, after 
 twelve years' probation, during which he experieneed 
 all the ups and downs of the provincial stock actor, we 
 find our hero, at the age of twenty-eight, safely housed 
 at last in the player's Mecca. 
 
 \^ 
 
CHAPTER II. (1852-1862). 
 
 METKOPOLITAN AND EARLY AMERICAN EXPERIENCES. 
 
 FOR his debut at the Haymarket, SuUivan, not 
 inappropriately, chose the character of Hamlet. 
 Slender and exceedingly graceful in those days, he had 
 most of the physical qualifications for an ideal Dane, 
 save that his voice had not then developed its powers, 
 and was at times thin and reedy. His success at the 
 outset was not particularly pronounced. Said the 
 Illustrated London News — ** In the present dearth of 
 juvenile actors we were sorry to find that the public 
 took so little interest in the event, and we fear that, 
 notwithstanding the evident merits of Mr. Sullivan, the 
 impression produced by his avatar will be exceedingly 
 small." The critics praised the artistic discrimination 
 with which he delivered the text, and remarked how 
 adroitly he bolstered up his deficiencies by presenting 
 mental ingenuity and picturesque posing in lieu of 
 forceful acting. Happily for him, too, they came down 
 with a dull sickening thud on his innovations and new 
 readings. This aroused public curiosity, and soon all 
 London was flocking to the Haymarket to hear Barry 
 deliver himself of the "hawk from a heron — pshaw!" 
 heresy. On Saturday, the 14th following, we find him 
 acting the leading male role (Angiolo the Sculptor) in 
 a new play by Miss Vandenhoff called Woman's 
 Heart, the authoress herself appearing as Isohna the 
 
88 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 Blind Girl. Other important characters were sustained 
 by Mr. Howe, Mr. Vandenhoff, and Miss Amelia 
 Vining. Evidently his first " creation " (as the phrase 
 goes), Sullivan's Angiolo was replete with power, and 
 did much to save a piece possessing little merit beyond 
 the beauty of its diction. According to the Illustrated 
 London News, Money was revived in April for the 
 purpose of further testing the merits of the new-comer. 
 ** His Evelyn is indeed an intelligent and elegant piece 
 of acting ; and we have no doubt that this actor will 
 gradually grow into public favour." As a matter of 
 fact, the comedy was so far successful that it was- put 
 up in the bills again for a week, with Sullivan in the 
 same character, during October. 
 
 About the most important feature of the Haymarket 
 season 1852-53 was the production of Sir Edward 
 Bulwer Lytton's comedy, '* Not So Bad as We Seem; 
 or, Many Sides to a Character," on Saturday, February 
 12, 1853. Originally written for the benefit of the 
 Literary Guild, this piece first saw the light at Devon- 
 shire House on May 16, 1851, when it was performed 
 before the Queen and Prince Consort, by a distinguished 
 body of amateurs, comprising Mr. Frank Stone, Mr. 
 Dudley Costello, Mr.^ Charles Dickens, Mr. Douglas 
 Jerrold, Mr. John Forster, Mr. Mark Lemon, Mr. E. W. 
 Topham, Mr. Peter Cunningham, Mr. R. H. Home, 
 Dr. Westland Marston, Mr. Charles Knight, Mr. John 
 Tenniel, and Mr. Wilkie CoUins. The play was a 
 brilliant portrait gallery of well-marked types. 
 Choosing for his period the reign of George I., the 
 author had framed his plot to depict the probity of the 
 
In Goodly Company. 39 
 
 literary character. Although the performance was in 
 some measure improved in the hands of the Haymarket 
 Company, the difference between the amateur and the 
 professional rendering was, strange to say, not very 
 remarkable. Howe gave an excellent rendering of 
 Lytton's hero — one David Fallen — a poor poet, fallen 
 from the high estate to that of Grub Street Pamphleteer, 
 and as such beset with trials and temptations. Stuart 
 acted only middling as the Duke of Middlesex, the type 
 of aristocratic pride. Leigh Murray, as Lord Wilmot, 
 a man of fashion (Charles Dickens' original character), 
 succeeded admirably in pourtraying the reigning mode ; 
 he also doubled the part of the unprincipled publisher 
 Curll, whom Pope endowed with dubious immortality. 
 Benjamin Webster, in Mark Lemon's character of Sir 
 Geoffrey Thornside, '* a gentleman of good family and 
 estate," gave an impersonation at once clear-cut, subtle, 
 and full of detail. The hit of the piece, however, seems 
 to have been made by Keeley and J. B. Buckstone, in 
 the drunken business allotted in the third act to the 
 two young gentlemen from the city, Mr. Shadowly 
 Softhead and Mr. Goodenough Easy. Sullivan played 
 the part of Hardman, ** a rising M.P. and adherent of 
 Sir Robert Walpole," as originally sustained by Mr. 
 John Forster. Although reckoned somewhat stagey 
 and inflexible in the earlier and more level scenes, Barry 
 came out splendidly in the last act — whose burthen 
 rested almost entirely upon him — aroused his audience, 
 and was rewarded with several rounds of hearty applause. 
 When Webster gave over the reins of management at 
 the Haymarket to Buckstone, our hero elected to swear 
 
40 Barry Sullivmi. 
 
 allegiance under the new chieftain, and on Thursday, 
 April 7th following, created the part of Travers in 
 Robert Sullivan's sprightly comedy of Elopements in 
 High Life. Some idea of the strength of the Haymarket 
 Company at this period may be gathered from the cast 
 of this piece : — 
 
 Lord Betterton Mr. Chippendale. 
 
 Lady Betterton Mrs. Fitzwilliam. 
 
 Sybilla (their daughter) - - - Mrs. Buckingham. 
 
 '^■"^'sybiUa ^"^''^°*''''.^'" ''T"^*^ *°} Mr. Barry Sullivan. " 
 Tom Singleheart . - . . Mr. Howe. 
 The Widow Lovelock - - - Miss Keynolds. 
 Catherine (Lady Betterton 's daughter) Miss Louisa Howard 
 Charles Perfect (Lord Betterton 's son) Mr. Wm. Farren. 
 
 Jemmy Tulip Mr. J. B. Buckstone. 
 
 Captain Gawk (of the Unattached) - Mr. Compton. 
 
 Having entered upon the management of the theatre 
 with the intention of giving a series of dramatic novelties 
 from the most eminent authors, Buckstone, later on in 
 the same month, produced Browning's poetic play, 
 Colombe's Birthday, with Barry Sullivan in the principal 
 male role of Valence the Advocate, and Helen Faucit as 
 Colombe of Ravenstein, Duchess of Juliers and Cleves. 
 Sweet and pure in sentiment, although slight in 
 structure, the piece did credit to the theatre, and met 
 with instantaneous success. The two principal dramatic 
 artists manifested great power in the scene where 
 Valence carries an offer of marriage to the Duchess 
 from the genial soldier of fortune. Prince Berthold, 
 although loving her with the deepest passion himself. 
 Diplomacy urges her to accept an offer which will 
 
His Creations. 41 
 
 eventually make her an Empress, but in doing so she 
 betrays her real feelings and urges the advocate to 
 declare his love. It is satisfactory to learn that while 
 on all hands this scene was pronounced to be one of 
 the most delicious within recollection, the rendering 
 of it by Barry Sullivan and Helen Faucit was 
 considered fully equal to its merits. 
 
 Novelty being quite the order of the day under 
 Buckstone, another new piece (with an interesting if 
 somewhat sombre plot), called The Civil Kindness, saw 
 the light on Monday, June 6, when Sullivan gave a 
 painstaking and meritorious personation of the hapless 
 Giulio. Unfortunately the serious dialogue of Mrs. 
 Crowe's five-act play was rather too long-winded, and 
 not always to the point ; but some capital comic relief 
 was afforded by the acting of Buckstone, Corri, Mrs. 
 Fitz William, and Miss E. Chaplin. A month or two 
 afterwards Barry repaired to the Standard Theatre (his 
 first appearance on transpontine boards), were he played 
 a principal part in the revival of Bennett's drama 
 Retribution. Returning to his old love, the Haymarket, 
 in 1855, he made somewhat of a hit as Claude Melnotte 
 to Helen Faucit's Pauline, in May ; and on Monday, 
 June 11, created the character of Franklyn the amor- 
 ous and distraught hunchback in John Saunders's fine 
 poetical play of Love's Martyrdom, ** Mr. Sullivan," says 
 the finnikin critic of the Illiistrated London News, ** as 
 the deformed hero, laboured hard, and gave a mechanical 
 outline correct enough to a part which in the hands of 
 Edmund Kean (!) would have been instinct with life 
 and electricity. For his diligence and good intention, 
 
42 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 he shall receive full praise from us, and we trust that, 
 by steady practice and submission to criticism, he may 
 become an improving actor. Let him, however, above all, 
 resist a tendency to exaggeration." After appearing as 
 Jaques to Helen Faucit's Eosalind, he had another new 
 part on Monday, July 23, in the hero of Heraud's five- 
 act domestic drama of Wife or No Wife. ' Miss Edith 
 Heraud, daughter of the dramatist, created the role of 
 Olympia, a lady of the period of Queen Anne, who, having 
 secretly married a nobleman whose position ranked 
 much higher than her own, laid up for herself a store 
 of trouble by incontinently losing her marriage certi- 
 ficate. " Mr. Barry Sullivan as the hero," says the 
 critic just cited, " was zealous and painstaking ; though 
 in the last scene, which requires, indeed, some central 
 incident to collect all its meaning into a focus, he was 
 not so effective as we could have desired." 
 
 Early in the October following, Barry Sullivan was 
 engaged by Mr. E. T. Smith to play Tihrak in Fitzball's 
 grand Egyptian spectacle Nitocris at DruryLane. This 
 new play was lavishly mounted — a rare thing in those 
 days for aught save revivals. But despite the fine acting 
 of Sulhvan, E. F. Edgar, Stuart, and Miss Glyn, it 
 proved a failure through clumsy stage management, 
 and resulted in a loss to the treasury of about £2,000. 
 Theatres in London were not nearly so numerous forty 
 years ago as they are now, and the salaries of important 
 artists were a great deal more moderate. Hence Barry, 
 after remaining at Drury Lane for some little time, 
 found himself unable to obtain another remunerative 
 metropolitan engagement, and with the cares of a 
 
New York. 43 
 
 regularly-increasing family thick upon liim, had to 
 resort to the provinces. Even there his name was not 
 much of a draw at the outset. Mr. Coleman tells us 
 that he once constituted the sole box audience on Barry's 
 benefit night at Wigan, when there was only twelve 
 shillings, all told, in the house. *' I had my struggles 
 in my time," the tragedian remarked to a Birmingham 
 interviewer in 1886. **I knew what it was to play to 
 empty benches when I first effected a start and affected 
 the * star.' But empty benches never discouraged me. 
 It did not matter if the audience was thirty, or three 
 hundred, or three thousand, I always did my best. 
 The consequence was people came again, and every time 
 I returned to a town I found the audience larger and 
 larger, until at last I met the success for which I had 
 striven and waited." 
 
 On his return to London in 1857, Sullivan held office 
 for a time under Phelps at Sadlers' Wells, where he 
 sustained a variety of important characters in the 
 legitimate. Unable, however, to secure a firm foothold 
 in the metropolis he decided to hazard his fortunes 
 in America, and setting sail for New York made his 
 first appearence at the Broadway Theatre in that city, 
 on November 22, 1858, in the character of Hamlet. 
 Personations of Claude Melnotte, Macbeth, Shylock, 
 Petruchio, and Richard III. followed. On December 
 20, he opened at Burton's New Theatre in the same city 
 as Hamlet, subsequently playing Beverley, Benedick, 
 and King Lear. At the latter house he was principally 
 supported by Wm. Davidge, J. H. Allen, Fanny Morant, 
 and Ada Clifton. Said the tragedian, in speaking of 
 
44 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 this visit in after years — " I went alone without a great 
 company, and without hundreds of tons of luggage, but 
 my success was remarkable. I gained fame and dollars 
 too, for what money I made, I made for myself." 
 Nevertheless, in some of the cities of the Union after- 
 wards visited Sullivan encountered a spirit of malig- 
 nant persecution. During his first engagement at the 
 Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, he was charged 
 with spitting at Mr. Harry Perry (Richmond) in the 
 last act of Richard III., the partisans of that actor 
 construing a characteristic morsel of stage business 
 on the part of the Hibernian tragedian into a personal 
 insult to their favourite. There can be no doubt, 
 furthermore, that the ill-feeling excited by this mistaken 
 impression was considerably aggravated by a remarkable 
 passage at arms which Sullivan had at this time, in this 
 very theatre, with the great Edwin Forrest. When not 
 acting himself, the stentorian American tragedian had 
 an unpleasant habit of going to see whatever rival player 
 happened to be in the neighbourhood, and of truculently 
 expressing his disapproval of any passage not delivered 
 to his liking. This unlucky penchant led to serious 
 consequences. Under the delusion that Macready had 
 subsidised the metropolitan press to write him down, 
 Forrest hissed the eminent tragedian's Hamlet at Edin- 
 burgh in 1846, and by his personal animus created a 
 bitterness that ere long developed into an international 
 question. It culminated, as most students of theatrical 
 history know, in the Astor Place Opera House riot of 
 May, 1849, when thirty innocent beings lost their lives, 
 and Macready himself had a narrow escape. 
 
Sullivan and Edwin Forrest. 45 
 
 Happening to be in Philadelphia during Sullivan's 
 visit, Forrest went to see our hero's Hamlet, and was so 
 disgusted with the resemblance to Macready (whom 
 Barry followed in the part), and the many new readings, 
 that during the first two acts he annoyed both players 
 and audience by his intermittent snorts of disapproba- 
 tion. Sullivan bided his time, however, and soon had 
 his revenge. On coming to a portion of the text in the 
 second act having direct allusion to Polonius, Hamlet 
 drew Eosencrantz and Guildenstern aside, and striding 
 towards the box in which Forrest sat, made a con- 
 temptuous gesture in that direction, and keeping strictly 
 to the text, said — *' Do you see that great baby yonder ? 
 He is not yet out of his swaddling clouts." Lawrence 
 Barrett, on whose authority we relate this incident, 
 adds, ** mingled hisses and applause were the actor's 
 reward for what was certainly * a hit, a palpable hit,' 
 although perhaps not in very good taste." To which 
 the best that can be said is perhaps that one does not 
 give fair words to the would-be garrotter > should a 
 bludgeon prove handy. 
 
 To Routledge's Christmas Annual, The Stage Door 
 (1880), Barry Sullivan contributed an interesting 
 morsel of reminiscence, entitled A Wrestling Match, 
 which, as it relates to this period, and is about the 
 only specimen of his literary effort known to the author, 
 may well be cited here in full. 
 
 " Some years ago," he writes, " while on my first 
 professional tour of America, I played an engagement 
 in New Orleans, and my Shylock night will be ever 
 memorable to me, from an occurrence that took place in 
 
46 Baiiy Sullivan. 
 
 the St. Charles's Hotel, my temporary abode. During 
 my short stay in the city I had made the acquaintance 
 of a Mr. Eose, a well-to-do man, a great lover of the 
 drama, and a pleasant companion. 
 
 '* On the evening in question my new-found friend 
 had taken seats for the performance, and we were enjoy- 
 ing a quiet chat on the subject of the play, while Mrs. 
 Eose, who had just left us, had gone to her room to 
 make some necessary changes in her toilette. 
 
 '' While we were thus pleasantly occupied, a friend of 
 Eose's, somewhat overcharged with wine, came into the 
 bar, * liquored up ' once more, and with his irrelevant 
 remarks soon put Shakespeare to flight. He had been 
 to a wrestling match, had caught the spirit of the enter- 
 tainment, and began challenging everybody to throw 
 him. To my surprise, he eventually challenged Eose, a 
 more powerful man than himself, to try a fall there and 
 then, on the spot. 
 
 " Eose, in the kindest manner possible, evaded the 
 challenge. *No, no,* *not now,' 'not here,' 'some other 
 time,' etc., etc. ; but all to no purpose, unless, perhaps, 
 to make the man more insisting and determined to have 
 his own way ; indeed, he went so far as to seize Eose 
 by the collar to compel him to wrestle, whether he liked 
 to do so or not. 
 
 " At last, after being taunted and laid hold of several 
 times, Eose, losing all patience, closed with his tor- 
 mentor, and threw him heavily. The man, whose name 
 I forget, raised himself slowly, and, without saying a 
 word, lurched sulkily out of the bar. I congratulated 
 Eose on having got rid of such an insolent and impor- 
 
A New Orleans Tragedy, 47 
 
 tunate person, and a few minutes afterwards took my 
 leave, and strolled to the theatre. 
 
 '* Half-an-hour had scarcely elapsed when, to my 
 horror, I heard in my dressing-room of the tragical 
 termination to this impromptu match. Rose remained 
 in the bar, waiting till his wife should be ready, and 
 talking with his friends. His antagonist returned, 
 walked deliberately towards him, and, without uttering 
 a word, took out a revolver and shot him in the back. 
 Rose turned around quickly, and advanced upon his 
 assassin — another shot ! Still he advanced, and still 
 another shot. The next instant Rose had seized the 
 murderer, wrenched the pistol from his grasp, and with 
 it struck him a crushing blow upon the forehead. 
 Again was the coward's weapon raised against himself, 
 and with the second terrible stroke both men fell to 
 the ground. His left hand still clutching the wretch's 
 throat. Rose, with a dying effort, got to his knees, raised 
 the revolver for yet another blow when, with a convul- 
 sive quiver, his whole body seemed to collapse, and he 
 fell dead across the face of his murderer. 
 
 ** The tragedy was so suddenly, so swiftly enacted, 
 that interference or prevention had been impossible. 
 
 ** The corse of poor Rose was borne to his rooms. 
 While ascending the stairs the sad little procession was 
 met by the unfortunate wife, gaily dressed to go to the 
 theatre with the husband she had left but a short half- 
 hour before, in full and happy life, and whose cruel 
 murder she thus suddenly and hideously realised. 
 
 " That part of the picture I will not dwell upon ; it 
 may be better imagined than described by me. The 
 
48 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 wretched man, who had taken such terrible revenge for 
 his self- sought and well- merited defeat, never spoke 
 again; he died three days after his victim — slain, and 
 righteously slain, by his own murderous weapon." 
 
 Among Barry Sullivan's best cherished recollections 
 of his first tour in the New World was his visit to 
 Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Sothern had entered 
 upon the management of the theatre, and soon found 
 his evil star in the ascendant. Even his own Dundreary 
 had failed to draw, principally owing to the fact that 
 the English officers in garrison there, who were the 
 mainstay of the theatre, deemed the personation an 
 outrageous caricature of the British aristocracy. 
 Having exhausted all his resources in the endeavour 
 to please these capricious patrons, Sothern was at 
 his wits' end, when Barry arrived to fulfil a week's 
 engagement. Our hero's attraction, however, was such 
 that he remained close on seven weeks, and piloted poor 
 Dundreary's craft into still waters before leaving. 
 
 Eeturning home with a solid balance at his bankers', 
 besides many memento nuggets, the gift of enthusiastic 
 friends in California, Sullivan made his reappearance 
 in London at the St. James's Theatre, on Monday, 
 August 20, 1860, as Hamlet. It has been generally 
 felt by metropolitan playgoers that most accepted stage 
 favourites, on their return from a prolonged course of 
 starring in out-of-the-way and uncultured districts, 
 prove to have coarsened in style. In such cases the 
 deterioration usually manifests itself in a desire upon 
 the part of the artist to enlarge the area of his canvas, 
 so to speak, and to attain breadth of treatment by slap- 
 
At the St. James's Theatre. 49 
 
 dash painting. Strange to say, Sullivan on his return 
 exhibited none of these signs and tokens, despite the 
 fact that during his lengthened tour of North America 
 he had fretted and strutted it for the delectation of the 
 miner and the lumberman, the gold-digger of California, 
 the backwoodsman, and even (tell it not in Gath !) for 
 the copper-coloured roamers of the prairies. Hence 
 The Times, in commenting upon his reappearance, said 
 — '*A11 the qualities that have rendered his memory 
 estimable in the minds of playgoers he retains to their 
 full extent. He is a careful, correct, and perspicuous 
 declaimer, turning to good account his natural advan- 
 tages of voice and figure ; and he is, moreover, 
 thoroughly versed in the routine of the part, which he 
 has evidently studied with laudable assiduity. Though 
 he makes no particular attempt to startle his audience, 
 he is neither tame nor listless, and all that he does is 
 well considered and quite to the purpose. A numerous 
 audience witnessed his performance of Hamlet, and 
 greeted him with a hearty welcome.*' 
 
 On the termination of his London engagement, Barry 
 made a prosperous tour of the provinces. Towards the 
 middle of January, 1862, he, in the face of inclement 
 weather and formidable counter-attractions, laid the 
 foundations of an abiding popularity in Belfast. For 
 fully a quarter of a -century afterwards he remained the 
 God of the Ulsterman's idolatry, and during many 
 pleasant Christmas-tides upheld the Shakespearian 
 banner in the Northern capital what time other cities 
 were indulging in the inanities of pantomime. 
 
CHAPTER III. (1862-1891). 
 
 IN THE COLONIES AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 ON G. V. Brooke's return to England, in 1861, after 
 a lengthened period of unparalleled success in 
 the Colonies (marred only by his business incapacity 
 and ultra-bohemianism) , the larger cities of Australasia 
 had, for a time, a heavy miss of a first-class tragedian. 
 Seeing an opportunity to enlarge his experiences, Barry 
 Sullivan at once took his tide at the flood, and entering 
 into negotiations with Mr. J. Wilton, lessee of the 
 Theatre Royal, Melbourne, agreed to make his dehut in 
 ** the Australian Drury Lane." His success was by no 
 means assured at the outset, however, as Colonial play- 
 goers were not sufficiently off with the old love to be 
 on with the new. In other words, they still retained 
 wistful yearnings towards the prodigal who was fated 
 never to return. But Sullivan was not of that fibre to 
 become disheartened under momentary coldness. It 
 was an uphill fight, but he conquered by sheer tenacity 
 and strength of will. 
 
 Mr. W. H. Campbell, a prosperous Ulsterman at 
 present residing in San Francisco, writes as follows, in 
 an interesting communication to the author : — 
 
 *' I frequently met and was pretty well acquainted 
 with both G. V. Brooke and Barry Sullivan during the 
 golden early days of Victoria, better known then as Port 
 Philip, the ' Australian Felix ' of the veteran pioneer, 
 
Playing with Joseph Jefferson. 51 
 
 John Pascoe Fawkner. Brooke was undoubtedly the 
 most popular actor who ever set foot in the Colonies, 
 but he had left for good before Sullivan's arrival there. 
 The contrast between the two men, both Irishmen as 
 they were, was very striking. Brooke was good-natured, 
 convivial, careless, and had moments of superb inspi- 
 ration. Sullivan, on the other hand, was practical, 
 energetic, abstemious, methodical. He was for the most 
 part painfully aware of his importance, had immense 
 vim, aimed high, and succeeded in reaching the grand 
 goal of his ambition. 
 
 '* The days when genteel comedy was at its best in 
 Melbourne found Sullivan, with Joe Jefferson,* Fanny 
 Cathcart, Heir, and a galaxy of lesser talent playing at 
 the Princess's. I think they opened in Money — Barry 
 as Evelyn, and Jefferson, Graves. A little supper was 
 tendered these gentlemen and the two captains 
 commanding the ships which brought them out to 
 Australia. Of those who made merry that night only 
 Mr. Jefferson, Captain D. H. Johnston, E.N.E., and 
 myself remain to tell the tale. H. B. Donaldson 
 Sandridge was there, and my fellow-survivors doubtless 
 remember how he. and the genial C.L.Throckmorton 
 went through the farcical ceremony of marrying the 
 landlord's daughter over the broomstick for the special 
 entertainment of our theatrical guests. 
 
 **It fell to my lot to propose Mr. Sullivan's health. 
 In doing so I alluded to a keen, fussy controversy then 
 
 * Passing strange is it that, from first to last, in Jefferson's 
 delightful Autobiography no mention is made of Barry 
 Sullivan's name. 
 
52 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 going on in the newspapers over a dispute between the 
 tragedian and the management of the Eoyal, in which 
 the ladies of the company were involved — owing to 
 Sullivan's methods in regard to them being at variance 
 with those formerly practised. My endeavour was to 
 throw oil on the troubled waters, and bring the 
 unhappy dispute to an end. So I ventured to suggest 
 to our friend the desirability of compromise, or such 
 concession as might please the ladies and satisfy 
 popular prejudice and clamour. 
 
 ** Jumping up, the tragedian replied in these charac- 
 teristic words : * Do you think, sir' — addressing me 
 directly— ' that I will concede? No, sir! Never, sir!! 
 Never for a moment, sir ! ! ! Do you mean to say that 
 I, Barry Sullivan, must stoop down to the people of 
 Melbourne ? No, sir ! Far from it — I'll bring them up 
 to me !' And he carried out his point, as he always did, 
 by sheer pluck, energy, and * go.' 
 
 ** Though very abstemious, Mr. Sullivan was not a 
 total abstainer. I on many occasions supped with him, 
 at Spiers & Pond's Cafe Eoyal, when he invariably 
 partook of a broiled steak or chop, accompanied by a 
 pint or half-pint of Guinness's Dublin porter. He was 
 fond of praise, though impatient of adverse criticism. 
 * Did you see my Don Caesar ? ' he asked me on the 
 street, a few days after the production of Bon CcBsar ds 
 Bazan, He fished for a compliment, and received a 
 well- merited one." 
 
 Remaining long enough in Melbourne to win all 
 lovers of the legitimate on his side, Barry, early in 
 1863, made his way to Sydney, where he met with such 
 
Melbourne, 53 
 
 speedy and unequivocal success that he returned there 
 again and again. On retracing his steps to the Victorian 
 capital, he, for the first time in his eventful career, took 
 upon himself the cares of responsible management, 
 having secured a lease of the Colonial Drury Lane from 
 Mr. Ambrose Kyte, the proprietor. Unlike poor Brooke, 
 who had burnt his fingers severely in such enterprises, 
 Sullivan never had cause to regret his plunge into the 
 hazardous. Securing the services of such able hench- 
 men as Mr. Hennings and Mr. H. R. Harwood, he began 
 his reign at the Melbourne Theatre Royal on March 7, 
 1863, producing a series of brilliant Shakespearian 
 revivals which more than recalled the palmy days of his 
 predecessor and friend. Just as our hero had got his 
 barque well under weigh, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean came 
 to the Queen city of the South to renew for many an old 
 colonial happy memories of his boyhood. Manager 
 Coppin (Brooke's quondam ally) had arranged for these 
 eminent artists to appear in the Olympic Theatre, more 
 familiarly known — owing to its peculiar shape and the 
 material from which it was constructed — as '* The 
 Iron Pot." To most opposition managers the prospect 
 would have proved uninviting. But Sullivan, nothing 
 daunted, threw down the gauntlet to the elder tragedian, 
 and set about producing all the pieces in his repertory. 
 From all accounts it would appear that only in one 
 part (that of Louis XL), did Kean, then in the decline 
 of his powers, seem to have the advantage over his more 
 youthful antagonist. 
 
 It is satisfactory to find that Mr. W. H. Campbell's 
 personal estimate of the Sullivan of the sixties agrees 
 
64 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 in the main with the impression left upon the mind of 
 Mr. James Smith, the Nestor of AustraHan dramatic 
 critics, who has now been associated with the fortunes 
 of The Argus for fully forty years. In a communication 
 to the author, written some twelve months ago, aprojws 
 to our hero's career in the colonies, this accomplished 
 journalist says, inter alia — *'As a man I did not like 
 him. He was hard, cold, and repellent ; and his vanity 
 amounted to a disease. He seriously believed that the 
 British stage had only produced three great actors — 
 David Garrick, W. C. Macready, and himself! His 
 self-love was as irritable as it was irritating, and his 
 jealousy of other actors was almost childish. I could 
 never detect any of the fire of genius in his performances ; 
 but he possessed great talent, and that ' infinite capacity 
 for taking pains ' which come very near genius. Short 
 of that he was one of the best all-round actors I ever 
 saw — equally good in tragedy, comedy, Irish drama, 
 and farce. He was also an admirable manager. He 
 was master of all the duties and detail connected with 
 a theatre, from those of the call-boy upwards. He was 
 very frugal, perhaps penurious ; for instance, he would 
 see that no candle ends were wasted behind the scenes. 
 And no doubt he was in the right, for 'colonials' are 
 naturally wasteful and unthrifty ; and poor Brooke's 
 loss of the fortune he made here was in part attributable 
 to his carelessness and his toleration of extravagance 
 and pillage in his subordinates. In spite of his jealousy, 
 Barry Sullivan, while managing the Theatre Royal in 
 this city, surrounded himself with an excellent stock 
 company — such a company, indeed, as could not be 
 
Personal Characteristics, 55 
 
 organised now — a company scarcely less complete and 
 efficient than Daly's. Every piece lie produced was 
 handsomely mounted, thoroughly rehearsed, and effec- 
 tively played, and I have always understood that he 
 went home with a small fortune. I do not suppose his 
 personal expenses ever exceeded £2 or £S per week. 
 His temper was as vile as Macready's, without being con- 
 scious of and penitent for it, as that actor was. I wrote 
 an adverse criticism of some performance of Sullivan's, 
 and a day or two afterwards I got into the compartment 
 of a railway carriage on a suburban line, when he opened 
 out upon me a torrent of coarse abuse in the presence 
 of half-a-dozen other occupants of the compartment. 
 His object was evidently to provoke me to strike him. 
 But I preserved my own self-control, and ironically 
 complimented him on his gentlemanly conduct and 
 demeanour ; and he looked and acted like a man 
 obsessed by an evil spirit. Only a few months before 
 he had dined at my house in company with Joseph 
 Jefferson and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. 
 
 " Sullivan's reign at the Theatre Eoyal, Melbourne, 
 was certainly not the least brilliant episode in the history 
 of that theatre. He was one of the most hard-working 
 both of managers and actors. He never spared 
 himself, and he did not spare others. Indeed, he 
 could not have succeeded or have fulfilled his duty 
 to the public had he been indulgent or remiss. 
 There was a good deal of personal magnetism in the 
 man : he could be almost winsome in his manners ; 
 but you felt that it was the attractiveness of the 
 * well-graced actor.' " 
 
56 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 In after years Sullivan always looked back with 
 pleasant memories to his four years' sojourn in the 
 Colonies. In face of the opposition encountered at the 
 outset he was justified in referring with pride to the fact 
 that in Melbourne alone during that time he had per- 
 formed with acceptance for fully a thousand nights. 
 Obviously enough, like most histrionic birds of passage, 
 he was delighted with the climate. In speaking of his 
 Australian experiences to Mr. J. W. Flynn, of Cork, he 
 said, not many years ago — *' I often came off the stage 
 at night hot after an exciting combat, and having hastily 
 changed my costume for a suit of thin clothes, left the 
 theatre and drove miles in an open vehicle without a 
 thought of catching cold." 
 
 To about a round dozen of the world's greatest players 
 (of whom the names of Garrick, Peg Woffington, and 
 Adrienne Lecouvreur come readiest to mind) has it been 
 given to enjoy posthumous theatrical notoriety as the 
 central figure in some ingenious ''fairy tale" of the 
 dramatist. But to one only, so far as we know, has it 
 been given '' to enter living into his immortality." Not 
 very many moons had waned after our hero had bidden 
 goodbye to his friends in Australasia ere his counterfeit 
 presentment stepped on to the boards of the Melbourne 
 Theatre Royal. A story was once current, it appears, 
 in the Colonies that Barry Sullivan had some time or 
 other been arrested at Belfast in mistake for a prominent 
 and much sought after Fenian. Mr. R. P. Whit worth, 
 an adroit Victorian playwright (who still lives despite 
 such delinquencies), seized upon this legend, and round 
 about it wove a capital little play called Catching a 
 
Reappears at Drury Lane. 57 
 
 Conspirator. By a happy inspiration he represented 
 Barry as spouting Shakespeare to his captors, every 
 quotation being of such a nature as to strengthen the 
 suspicions of the poHce. Thanks to a Hvely sustainment 
 of the equivoke and the excellent acting and mimicry 
 of H. R. Harwood — splendidly made-up to resemble his 
 old colleague — the little piece had great vogue, and ran 
 for forty-six nights to good houses. 
 
 After acting with his usual success in Queensland, 
 early in 1866 Sullivan sailed from Brisbane to India, 
 and thence reached England in June. Thus, with a 
 score of acting years still before him, he had already 
 shown his right to the epithet ** world-famous," the use 
 of which by indiscreet business managers, in theatrical 
 advertisements in more recent times, drew down upon his 
 head the occasional sarcasms of the prunes-and-prisms 
 school. Greatly improved in health and physique, and 
 with his histrionic capabilities mellowed in proportion, 
 Sullivan made his reappearance at Drury Lane, under 
 Messrs. Falconer and Chatterton, on September 22 
 following, playing Falconbridge to Phelps's King John. 
 ** The new Falconbridge," said the AthemBurn, then as 
 now a coldly critical journal not easily roused to 
 enthusiasm — ** The new Falconbridge was safe with his 
 audience from his very first utterances. Mr. Sullivan's 
 conception of the character is nearer to that of Charles 
 Kemble than of any other actor within the memory of 
 contemporaries. There is an abundance, but not a 
 superabundance of spirit in it ; the utmost freedom, 
 without vulgarity ; a graceful ease and not a braggart 
 swagger. . . . Mr. Sullivan's success was not con- 
 
 £ 
 
58 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 fined to the comedy or melo-dramatic element of the 
 character. There were other portions in which his 
 display of feeling was given with a quiet but telling effect, 
 no jot of which was lost with the critical part of his 
 audience, who were closely scanning his speech, action, 
 bearing, and expression. His by-play was equally 
 good ; that is, his part in the drama was never forgotten. 
 His very bow to King John was of a real Sir Eichard 
 to a substantial king ; and when he bent over the body 
 of the dying monarch there was earnestness of signi- 
 ficance in the action, as if the gallant knight felt a 
 respectful sorrow for the condition of his uncle. * Old 
 Drury,' in short, may be congratulated on its acquisition 
 of Mr. Barry Sullivan. Some time has passed since he 
 won golden opinions by his impersonation of Hamlet ; 
 but a certain lack of strength and want of practice were 
 observable. Since then, however, his experience in the 
 Colonies has made a considerable difference in this 
 respect. As manager and chief actor of an Australian 
 theatre he was compelled to venture what in England 
 he might have avoided ; and having, by his excellent 
 conduct of his establishment, secured an extensive 
 patronage was enabled to make essay of his powers in 
 the most trying parts." 
 
 Impersonations of Macbeth, Macduff, Hamlet, 
 Eichard HI., and Charles Surface followed; the last 
 mentioned to the Sir Peter of Phelps and the Lady 
 Teazle of Mrs. Herman Vezin. Said the Daily 
 Telegraph of October 3 — " Mr. Sullivan's rendering of 
 Macbeth is much less familiar to the playgoing public 
 of this country ; but if the sustained applause of such a 
 
His Macbeth. 69 
 
 strong gathering as that of last evening be any criterion, 
 the admiration of the earnest lovers of Shakespeare 
 who are nightly making ' Old Drury ' their trysting- 
 place will be found pretty equally divided. Without 
 attempting an elaborate analysis of the character as 
 presented by Mr. Sullivan, it would be difficult to 
 indicate the numerous points of departure from those 
 readings with which the town is familiar. It may be 
 briefly stated, however, that Mr. Barry Sullivan 
 strongly impresses his auditory with the conviction that 
 from the first supernatural soliciting of the witches 
 Macbeth is fully resolved to remove all obstacles in the 
 way of his ambition, and that the letter to his wife 
 conveys that intention. Lady Macbeth readily becomes 
 the partner of his crime, but is thus hardly to be 
 accused of being its instigator, and in those passages in 
 the text which tend to support this view the tragedian 
 places very forcible emphasis. There are some notable 
 variations also from the usual mode of delivermg the 
 most familiar lines which will interest, if they do not 
 convince, the hearer ; and of these * Tide and the hour 
 run through the roughest day' may be quoted as a fair 
 specimen. The performance throughout exhibits the 
 characteristics of an actor who has at least had the 
 courage to venture on novel ground, and who possesses 
 the power to render justice to his own conception. It 
 may be fairly objected to Mr. Barry Sullivan's notion 
 of the rapidity with which the thought of the murder 
 entered the mind of Macbeth that his wife, who con- 
 siders him * too full o' the milk of human kindness,* 
 could have had but little knowledge of the darker 
 
60 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 moods of his disposition, or else we must be enforced to 
 believe that his nature entirely changed on being 
 accosted by the witches. Whatever opinion may be 
 entertained it is in favour of the Macbeth of Tuesday 
 night that he was unconsciously assisted by Miss Amy 
 Sedgwick, who, venturing for the first time in London 
 on the personation of Lady Macbeth, gave a suggestive 
 rather than a powerful rendering of the character. Her 
 performance is not lacking in intelligence, but it is 
 deficient in force, and much less decided in form and 
 colour than could be desired." 
 
 Unfortunately the heartiness of his reception at 
 Drury Lane, together with the inducements of a fat 
 purse and the success of his Australian venture, 
 tempted Barry to enter upon the cares of management 
 in the metropolis. Not a whit disheartened by the 
 proverbially unlucky reputation of the house, he 
 signalised his inception at the Holborn Theatre on 
 Saturday, May 1, 1868, by a revival of Mofiey, with 
 himself as Evelyn. The choice of a piece so titled 
 must be reckoned among the ironies of fortuitous cir- 
 cumstance. The enterprise proved what in green-room 
 parlance is equivocally known as *' an artistic success"; 
 or, in plain English, a serious pecuniary failure. 
 Sullivan struggled on gamely in the face of ever- 
 increasing difficulties for a couple of years, and then 
 threw up the sponge. Oddly enough, every reason save 
 the right one has been given in explanation of this 
 fiasco. Ignoring the tragedian's preceding popularity 
 at Drury Lane, Mr. W. Davenport Adams, in a 
 sympathetic article contributed to Black and White 
 
Lessee of the Holborn Theatre. 61 
 
 (May 9, 1891), suggests that *'he had possibly lost 
 touch, once and for all, with that rather capricious 
 person, the metropolitan playgoer." To this he adds, 
 ** Moreover, he had become wedded to the * star ' 
 system. I do not think it can fairly be said of him 
 that he ever presented a * legitimate ' play in a 
 perfunctory or utterly inadequate fashion ; but undoubt- 
 edly he did not, as a rule, surround himself with 
 colleagues of the first distinction." In writing all this 
 one can quite well see that Mr. Davenport Adams did 
 not view Sullivan's career as a whole, but was thinking 
 of him purely in his latter-day aspect — as a provincial 
 tragedian. Mr. Dutton Cook, in criticising the produc- 
 tion of The Gamester at the Holborn, in October, 1869,* 
 has no such strictures to pass on the conduct of the 
 theatre. ** Each scene of the play," he writes, **is 
 followed with marked attention, and great applause 
 attends the fall of the curtain. The tragedy has been 
 produced with due regard to scenic appointments and 
 decorations ; the costumes pertaining rather to the 
 Kemble than the Garrick period. Hair powder is 
 eschewed, and the dresses are of the sober fashion 
 that obtained during the later years of George the 
 Third's reign. Mr. Barry Sullivan is well versed 
 in the traditional style of presenting Beverley's 
 troubles, and plays the part with considerable power. 
 That many of the speeches should be delivered in an 
 extravagant style of elocution, and that the death-scene 
 should be painfully elaborated, must be regarded as a 
 
 * Vide " Nights at the Play," p. 79. 
 
62 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 tribute to the established rules of the stage. The author's 
 language — ' numerous prose ' it used to be designated 
 in the last century — is of a high-flown, decorated kind 
 that almost bids defiance to simpHcity of delivery. Mr. 
 Sullivan's exertions — and a performance of Beverley is 
 no light tax upon the physical resources of an actor — 
 were rewarded with continual applause. Mrs. Vezin 
 appears as Mrs. Beverley, and though lacking the 
 strength and compass of voice required for delivering 
 with full effect what are known as * the Siddons points ' 
 of the part, the actress displayed much feeling, and 
 largely enlisted the sympathies of her audience. Mr. 
 Cowper gave a subdued and careful portraiture of the 
 villainous Stukely. Mr. Stephens was quite pathetic 
 enough as the faithful Jarvis, and Mr. Rayne acquitted 
 himself tolerably as the chivalrous Lewson." According 
 to Pascoe's Dramatic List, the Mr. Lin Rayne here referred 
 to made his first hit at the Holborn in a comedy 
 entitled Plain Enc/lish — a fact which goes to show that 
 the management was " advanced " enough not to pin 
 its faith entirely to the stock legitimate. 
 
 The true secret of Sullivan's qualified failure at the 
 Holborn lay in the inopportuneness of the attempt. In 
 and about the year 1868 dramatic affairs were in a state 
 of crude transition. An infusion of new blood had been 
 experienced with the advent of Fechter, who was fast 
 popularising romantic drama. T. W. Robertson was 
 paramount likewise among the forces which were 
 operating to dissipate outworn creeds ; and the sensa- 
 tional drama loomed ahead. Amid all this seething 
 and ferment, Shakespeare (after long courses of Phelps 
 
Not a ^^Fashionable'' Tragedian, 63 
 
 and Charles Kean) fell into desuetude, and his exponents 
 became martyrs to the moment. Alack that it should 
 be said ! Sullivan never afterwards gained firm foothold 
 in the metropolis ; and to his exceeding vexation never 
 found himself appraised there at his colonial or provin- 
 cial valuation. It was the one vulnerable spot in his 
 armour — the little rift within the lute that made discord 
 of the hymns of his admirers. *' That Barry Sullivan 
 was a man of genius," says the writer in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette already spoken of in our first chapter, " will not, 
 I fancy, be denied ; but his genius, so to speak, was 
 rather that of the emotions than of the intellect. And 
 herein, in my humble opinion, lay the secret of his 
 failure to attain the highest goal. Endowed by nature 
 with all the personal requisites that go to make up a 
 great actor, and capable of realising all the feeling he 
 experienced from it — expressing his conception with 
 individuality and originality — he lacked the intellect 
 to extract all the subtleties of a character. And 
 this failure the London playgoer was quick to 
 detect." 
 
 One smells out something sophistical in this morsel 
 of reasoning — probably because of its implied reflection 
 on the critical acumen of all play-goers outside the pale. 
 In reality it only expresses a half-truth. Thoroughly 
 democratic in fibre, Sullivan had an utter repugnance 
 to working up an adventitious if vitally essential popu- 
 larity outside the theatre. He had not the makings of 
 a ** fashionable" tragedian, and lacked that j^ ne saisquoi 
 which made of the diminutive and vocally defective 
 Charles Kean the idol of society. 
 
64 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 Nothing daunted at his repulse, our hero at once 
 ** appealed to the suffrages of the country," entering 
 upon a series of triumphal processions through the 
 provinces, which, allowing for brief, intermittent 
 appearances in the metropolis, went on without cessa- 
 tion until the beginning of the end, some six years ago. 
 Believing, like Brooke, in courting the favour of the 
 masses, he was indulged, times without number, with 
 torchlight processions and other public ebullitions of 
 popular feeling, and (equally like Brooke) was presented 
 in his day with '* some hundreds -weight" — to use his 
 own phrase — of gold and silver trophies. Idolised in 
 most provincial cities, his popularity reached its zenith 
 in Dublin, where he would sometimes be met at the 
 railway station by congregated thousands, who, accom- 
 panied by half-a-dozen brass bands, would follow him 
 to the Portobello Hotel and clamour outside until 
 appeased by a few remarks from their favourite on the 
 balcony. Indeed, the story goes that a cockney tourist, 
 who once chanced to travel from Dublin to Belfast in 
 the same compartment as the tragedian, became so 
 unnerved at the uproarious welcoming accorded en 
 route that, fearing the safety of his scalp at the hands 
 of the wild Irish, he incontinently took refuge under 
 the seat and stubbornly refused to be comforted. 
 Lest, however, it should be considered that these 
 demonstrations of affection were purely the out- 
 come of Celtic impressionism, it may be pointed out 
 that so late as 1885 John Bull himself was similarly 
 worked up to enthusiasm, Northampton in January of 
 that year being a noteworthy example. In Liverpool, 
 
His Political Tefidencies, 65 
 
 where his NationaUst procHvities were widely known, 
 he had been urged, without avail, three years previously 
 to stand for the representation of that city in the 
 Imperial Parliament. At Belfast in 1883 this culmi- 
 nated in a splendid advertisement for the actor, as 
 the local au thorites deemed it expedient to forbid a 
 torchlight procession in his honour, fearing a revival of 
 old feuds between the Montagues and Capulets of 
 inflammable Linenopolis. What with unvaryingly good 
 houses and sixty per cent, of the receipts as his share, 
 it is by no means surprising to find that Sullivan's 
 earnings in later days averaged £7,000 per annum, or 
 that dying, full of honours and of years, he left a 
 handsome fortune to his kin. 
 
 An interesting letter addressed to the lessee of the 
 Belfast Theatre — 
 
 Queen's and North Western Hotel, 
 
 Birmingham, 23rd April, 1873. 
 
 My dear Warden, 
 
 I am not fixing dates yet, but you shall hear 
 from me at the first opportunity. I am glad your panto, 
 has been successful. You will be pleased to learn that my old 
 luck sticks to me — crowds turned away from all parts nightly 
 in every principal city I have visited since I left you. 
 Methinks I hear you exclaim, "More power to you ! " Hope 
 you are both quite well, and with very kind regards from both, 
 
 I am, dear Warden, 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 Just shaken hands with the captain with whom I sailed 
 from Queensland to India. 
 
66 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 During the autumn of 1874 Barry Sullivan closed 
 with an offer of £10,000 from Messrs. Jarrett & Palmer, 
 the American managers, for a twelve months' tour 
 through the United States in the year succeeding. The 
 tragedian's many Cork friends had some intelligence of 
 this fact prior to his reappearance at the old Theatre 
 Royal, in George's Street, on November 30, when he 
 was supported by a company under the management of 
 Mr. J. F. Warden, and having for its principal members 
 Miss Eose Coghlan and Mr. J. F. Cathcart. Conse- 
 quently, at a matinee of Hamlet, the Mayor (Aid. D. 
 Nagle) , accompanied by a number of distinguished Cork- 
 men, among whom were two members of Parliament, 
 visited the theatre, and, on behalf of ** his fellow-citizens,'* 
 presented the tragedian with an address and testimonial, 
 the latter consisting of a magnificent two-handled vase 
 of solid silver, in the Louis Quatorze style, standing 
 upon a richly-chased Shrewsbury salver of the same 
 metal. By way of inscription, the salver bore the fol- 
 lowing : — " Presented with the accompanying vase, as 
 a tribute to Barry Sullivan, from the citizens of Cork, 
 who are proud of his genius and his fame." As the 
 time drew near for his departure, another " God-speed" 
 was tendered him by his old friends and admirers in 
 London, who assembled at a farewell banquet, held in 
 his honour at the Alexandra Palace, on July 14, 1875. 
 Among those whose names were appended to the 
 tastefully illuminated address presented to our hero on 
 that occasion (and afterwards published in reduced 
 fac-simile by an enterprising photographer), we remark 
 in particular — The Earl of Dunraven (chairman), 
 
Revisits New York. 67 
 
 Andrew Halliday, E. L. Blanchard, F. B. Chatterton, 
 W. Creswick, E. Falconer, Joseph Hatton, George Honey, 
 Justin McCarthy, John Ryder, Guy Roslyn, G. A. Sala, 
 E. A. Sothern, A. M. Sulhvan, B. Webster, and Charles 
 \Vyhdham. Similarly feted at Liverpool on the 24th 
 following, the tragedian sailed for America six days 
 after, and made his reappearance in New York at 
 Booth's Theatre on August 30. A memorable night 
 this ! Sullivan's heart swelled with pride when he 
 found himself escorted to the theatre by the Irish Regi- 
 ment the famous Sixty-ninth, who, some two thousand 
 strong, soon crammed to repletion a house already half- 
 filled by the actor's affectionate compatriots. The play 
 was Hamlet, with James Cathcart as the Ghost, Fred. 
 Warde as Laertes, and Louise Hibbert as Ophelia. On 
 the same night Mr. E. L. Davenport, a formidable rival, 
 played the Dane at the Grand Opera House in opposi- 
 tion to our hero. " Mr. Sullivan is a long way from 
 being a great actor," says Appleto7i's Journal (No. 338, 
 vol. xiv., p. 345). *' He has a very pleasing face and 
 presence, a fine mellow voice, and he knows how to pose 
 in very picturesque attitudes, and to fill the eye with a 
 succession of well-studied pictures. He unites in these 
 particulars the instincts of the sculptor and the painter ; 
 his eminently picturesque make-ups show a fine taste 
 for colour, and his attitudes evince a plastic grace that 
 would make him always an attractive actor in purely 
 picturesque parts. Nor is he without a calm, balanced 
 intelligence. But there is absolutely no fire and no 
 imagination. His grasp of Hamlet is of the stage, 
 stagey — that is, it is just that perception of the part 
 
68 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 that a thoroughly trained actor would have who has 
 limited his study to all the external arts — of how he 
 shall walk, how he shall stand, how he shall sit, how he 
 shall do this and that piece of * business,' how and where 
 he shall deliver this and that line — but there is no sub- 
 jective insight, no heed of the fires that burn within, 
 no psychological study, no imaginative grasp for the 
 character of the melancholy and philosophic prince. 
 . . . In the play scene he makes a telling picture by 
 graceful posing on the floor ; and, in fact, throughout 
 this actor is always good in a stage sense, but never 
 really anything more. He is not vigorous enough to 
 please the untutored, nor introspective enough to charm 
 the lovers of Shakespeare's great creation." To this it 
 is only fair to add, on the authority of Mr. Laurence 
 Hutton,^ that Hamlet was never looked upon as Barry's 
 strongest part in America. Richard IH., Beverley, and 
 Richelieu were his best drawing cards there ; although 
 his success, taken generally, was not so thorough as his 
 great English reputation would have justified. 
 
 Our correspondent, Mr. W. H. Campbell, renewed 
 his acquaintance with our hero at San Francisco early 
 in 1876, whither he had repaired to open the new 
 Baldwin Theatre. " Strolling up Market Street one 
 forenoon," he writes, "I met Sullivan, who invited me 
 into the Baldwin Theatre, where rehearsal was going 
 on. As we chatted quietly in the back stalls, his quick 
 ear detected some mistake in the recital of the piece. 
 * What's that ? What's that ? Horrible— that will 
 
 *Vide " Curiosities of the American Stage," pp. 289 290. 
 
A Martinet at BeJiearsal. 69 
 
 never do ! ' he muttered. Then he called out lustily, 
 ' Stop ! Stop ! Hold on will you there ? ' Like a 
 flash he left my side, bounding over seats, footlights, 
 and every other impediment, and was upon the stage 
 amidst the performers befor-e I could realise what was 
 the matter. A good deal of his financial success he 
 attributed, by- the- way, to his son, Mr. T. S. Amory 
 Sullivan, whom he described to me as a very capable 
 business man, who attended closely to details." 
 
 Although the adherent of a school which paid little 
 attention to scenic accessories, and utterly ignored stage 
 archaeology, Barry Sullivan was a martinet at rehearsals, 
 and despite the limited extent of his latter-day 
 repertory, never wearied in the task of thoroughly 
 instilling the business of the piece into his company. 
 A scene of striking importance would be run through 
 again and again until all concerned felt easy in their 
 parts. If the rehearsal went off to his satisfaction he 
 never omitted to thank the ladies and gentlemen for 
 their patience and attention. To those, however, 
 whom he found abstracted or careless he did not 
 hesitate to say, " Here am I putting into a nut she] 1 
 what it has taken me years of labour and observation to 
 acquire, and you haven't the common courtesy to pay 
 attention." Always kind and gentle to the humblest 
 member of his company whom he found trying to do 
 his best, he invariably came down with a strong hand 
 on all lapses from strict discipline, whether in the form 
 of drunkenness, gagging, guying, or fluffiness. He 
 attributed failure to the ** all -right -at -night " system, 
 and saw everything rehearsed as it was to be played. 
 
70 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 Preserving this dominating principle outside the theatre 
 he was never hail-fellow-well-met with his company, 
 and did not believe with that unfortunate genius Charles 
 Dillon in adjourning after the labours of the morning, 
 in association with his satellites, to the nearest house of 
 refreshment. Keeping himself to himself when not 
 rehearsing, he generally remained during the day at his 
 hotel, musing over the role he was to sustain in the 
 evening, and attending to such details as the examina- 
 tion of every weapon with which he might have to 
 fence during the performance. Unfortunately, owing 
 to his rigid economy there were from time to time 
 many incompetent players in his provincial companies 
 who neither admired his exclusiveness nor relished 
 his rebukes ; and these, together with bibulous stage 
 carpenters and property men, were not slow in circulat- 
 ing mendacious stories to his detriment. He was always 
 a good friend, however, to those who served him faith- 
 fully, and once gave an old dresser, who had followed 
 his fortunes for years, a present of one hundred pounds 
 to start him in business as a tobacconist. 
 
 As an offset to these stories let us hear what the 
 anonymous author of " The Truth about the Stage "* 
 has to say regarding the actor. ** My own experience 
 of this eminent tragedian contrasted agreeably with the 
 lying reports of my stage companions. If I had been 
 fortunate enough to meet Mr. Sullivan at the commence- 
 
 * A production which owing to its extreme pessimism 
 created some sensation on its appearance in 1885. The late 
 Mr. Hal Louther is said, in theatrical circles, to have been 
 the author ; but nothing is known for certain. 
 
A Just Rebuke. 71 
 
 ment of my career, I should have been saved many 
 
 years of toil and degradation I have known 
 
 his finest dramatic situations ruined by young actors, 
 who through nervousness have either forgotten some 
 particular bit of business, or failed to give the proper 
 cue. At the end of the act, when some poor fellow had 
 gone to the tragedian's dressing-room to apologise for 
 his shortcomings, instead of black looks and a curse he 
 has received kind words of encouragement. On one 
 occasion, when a persevering young actor ruined a 
 grand scene in a Shakespearian play, I heard Mr. 
 Sullivan interrupt his apology, when the curtain fell, 
 with the following words : — * My dear boy, you did 
 your best. You were a little nervous. You will do 
 better next time.' The play of As you Like It was 
 being performed at a provincial theatre in the Midland 
 Counties one evening, Mr. Sullivan enacted the role of 
 the melancholy Jaques. Touchstone was represented 
 by one of those clowns who always say more than is set 
 down for them. This particular comedian thought he 
 could improve upon the author. In the wrestling scene, 
 when the wrestler was thrown, he had to say, in reply 
 to the duke — 
 
 " ' He cannot speak, my lord.' 
 
 " In order to obtain a laugh the comedian distorted his 
 features, and exclaimed *He says he cannot speak, my lord.' 
 
 '' When the act-drop fell, Mr. Sullivan went over to 
 where the comedian was standing and said — * Touch- 
 stone was a fool, but not a d d fool as you have 
 
 made him. You have obtained a laugh, sir ; but you 
 have spoilt your pari' " 
 
72 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 Genius may be a law unto itself, but mediocrity, more 
 especially in the legitimate drama, must go by accepted 
 canons. Leaving the metropolis out of the question, 
 the provinces at the present moment are not devoid of 
 sound Shakespearian actors. But the question might 
 well be asked (and in big capitals) — on whose shoulders 
 fell the mantle of Barry Sullivan, as a repositary of the 
 traditions ? Even in his own late day, the tragedian was 
 never tired of complaining that the hona-fide actor had 
 disappeared with the stock system, that few among the 
 coming men knew how to speak their mother tongue 
 or walk the stage correctly, and that the one besetting 
 sin of the profession was the insatiate thirst for unearned 
 advancement. Whatever the faults of his system, it at 
 least afforded a rough and ready training in Shakespeare 
 for the novice, the loss of which cannot but be felt and 
 deplored. One has only to point to the many prominent 
 actors and actresses who learnt the A B C of their art 
 under Barry Sullivan to justify the "old guard" of play- 
 goers for their loyal support to the chieftain. 
 
 Eeappearing at Drury Lane on September 23, 1876 
 (what time the dramatic critic of The Tiynes and the 
 lessee of the theatre had a wordy warfare concerning 
 his impersonation of Richard III.),* our hero had the 
 
 * Macbeth and Richard III. were performed on alternate 
 nights during this engagement, the latter with "new historical 
 scenery" by William Beverly, and "historically correct 
 costumes " designed by Alfred Maltby from researches among 
 the following authorities : — The Harleian MSS., Hewitt, 
 Meyrick, Shaw, Grose, Planche, &c. Among those figuring 
 in prominent support to Sullivan were J. F. Cathcart, 
 Henry Sinclair, Charles Vandenhoff, Frank Tyars, Percy Bell, 
 James Johnstone, Mrs. Hermann Vezin, Madame Fanny 
 Hnddart, and Miss Edith Stuart. 
 
Meets until an Accident. 78 
 
 misfortune, on the sixtieth night of the run of Gibber's 
 hybridous play, to receive an unlucky sword thrust in the 
 left eye, Mr. Sinclair, the bright, particular Richmond, 
 having made a mistake in the preconcerted business of 
 the great fight in the last act. For some time the 
 recovery of his sight was despaired of ; but after lying 
 twenty days and nights, Richard was himself again, 
 seemingly, in every faculty. We qualify this record of 
 his recovery advisedly, as a curious episode related 
 by Mr. J. W. Flynn will go to show. It appears that 
 some time afterwards Barry, while on a visit to Cork, 
 called at the house of a friend, and had occasion in the 
 course of conversation to allude to the accident. '* The 
 strange thing about it," he remarked, *'is that while 
 the eye is quite healed, there is a sort of mist over it, as 
 if all were not right yet." On hearing this one of the 
 daughters of his host asked the tragedian to turn his 
 eyes to the light. ** Why, Mr. Sullivan," ejaculated, 
 the lady, after examining the injured place with the 
 scrutiny of a hawk, " there's a hair in your eye !" 
 Further consultation with an eminent London oculist at 
 once demonstrated the correctness of this statement. A 
 hair of the eyelash which had remained in the eyeball 
 after the process of curing the wound had been effected 
 was then removed, giving to the tragedian his pristine 
 visual acuteness. 
 
 When one recalls to mind the intense realism and 
 soul-stirring vigour of the Sullivanic stage combat — in 
 every way the antithesis of the *' two up and two down " 
 of the palmy days — the wonder is that accidents were so 
 infrequent. Some idea of the virulence with which 
 
74 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 Barry, as Richard, assailed Richmond in the last act 
 may be gathered from the fact that, comparatively 
 trifling as is the latter- mentioned part, he would never, 
 under any circumstances, permit it to be doubled, 
 deeming the brief but remarkably effective contest with 
 himself quite exhaustive enough for the sturdiest 
 member of his company. It was no mean compliment 
 to the tragedian that his stage-fights in Richard III. and 
 Macbeth invariably drew as big an audience of profes- 
 sionals in the wings as of horny-handed sons of toil in 
 the pit and gallery. With the first superb flourish of the 
 Crookback's sword, excitement reached fever-heat, and 
 the house, as if by an electric shock, became surcharged 
 with a terrible sense of the realism of the thing. The 
 ** gods," losing all touch with the illusion of the scene, 
 not infrequently viewed the contest as a matter of 
 personal rivalry between the actors, and, scrambling to 
 their feet as one man, invariably punctuated each cut 
 and thirst with stentorian cries of " Go on, Barry !" 
 
 On Saturday, December 1, 1878, a National Banquet 
 in Sullivan's honour was held in Dublin, at the Exhibi- 
 tion Palace, when Mr. C. J. Fay, M.P., read an address 
 eminently flattering to the guest of the evening. The 
 Right Hon. the Lord Mayor (Maurice Brooks, M.P.), 
 presided, and the large and distinguished assembly 
 comprised the leading citizens of Dublin, members of 
 Parliament and of the learned professions, and repre- 
 sentatives of literature and art. A similar compliment 
 was paid the tragedian on the following Saturday 
 evening, when the citizens of Cork tendered him a 
 banquet at the Imperial Hotel. It was then he made 
 
At Stratford-upon-Avon. 75 
 
 the memorable speech from which we have already 
 quoted in our opening chapter, and in the course of 
 which, referring with pardonable pride to an early 
 period in his starring career, said, *' I took my 
 standard as a Shakespearian actor and determined to 
 raise the Shakespearian banner aloft, and never to 
 lower it. And I assure you that it was with extreme 
 difficulty I, for many years alone, upheld the Shakes- 
 pearian drama in Great Britain. Every new piece, 
 every new straw that came upon the surface, was 
 caught up in order to make ends meet ; but I never 
 lowered the Shakespearian standard, and perhaps to 
 that I now owe the honour, the delight, the privilege, 
 of standing here, your guest, to-night." At a latter 
 stage of the proceedings tbe tragedian so far unbent as 
 to delight the assembly with a capitally-rendered Irish 
 comic song ! 
 
 Erected by public subscription, on a plot of ground 
 bordering on the river, and presented by that munifi- 
 cent patron of the bard, the late Mr. C. E. Flower, 
 tbe Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon- 
 Avon, was dedicated to Thespian worship on April 23, 
 1879, by a performance of Much Ado About Nothing. 
 On that noteworthy occasion Barry Sullivan renewed 
 old-time associations by playing Benedick to the 
 Beatrice of Helen Faucit, who as Mrs. Theodore (now 
 Lady) Martin, emerged from a well-earned retirement 
 to pay her tribute to the Master. As You Like It, 
 Hamlet, and Much Ado were represented on subsequent 
 evenings, when our hero appeared alternately with Helen 
 Faucit and Miss WalHs. During the August following 
 
76 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 a series of five benefit performances were arranged at 
 the Haymarket Theatre (through the generosity of Mr. 
 J. S. Clarke, the lessee), as a testimonial to Buckstone 
 the comedian ; and at one of these Sullivan repeated 
 his impersonation of Benedick. In quite a comedy 
 mood at this period — and with equal generosity — he 
 played the same part to the Beatrice of Miss Wallis, 
 at one of two benefits tendered in Manchester to Mr. 
 Tom Chambers, sometime treasurer of the Theatre 
 Koyal in that city. The other took place on the pre- 
 ceding night, when Henry Irving and Ellen Terry 
 appeared in Charles I. 
 
 A second dramatic festival, extending over three weeks, 
 began at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 
 on April 19, 1880, when Sullivan as the star was 
 principally supported by Messrs. W. H. Stephens, John 
 Amory, W. H. Hallatt, Arthur Matthison, F. A. 
 Scudamore, H. Hamilton, Steyne, H. Turner, and 
 Mesdames Masson, Austin, Hope, and Newcome. The 
 productions consisted of Hamlet, The Lady of Lyons, As 
 You Like It, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado 
 about Nothing, The Gamester, and The School for Scandal, 
 Behaving in the true spirit of an artist and an enthu- 
 siast, the tragedian, although proferred half the receipts 
 by the governing council, gave his ow^n and his com- 
 pany's services free as a donation to the institution. 
 
 In keeping with the steadfastness of his loves and hates 
 was Sullivan's princely act in heading the testimonial 
 presented by the profession and the public to Mr. and 
 Mrs. J. F. Warden, after the destruction by fire of the 
 Theatre Royal, Belfast, early in June, 1881, with the 
 
Opens the Neiv Belfast Theatre. 77 
 
 handsome sum of fifty pounds. Not that this was by 
 any means the tragedian's first substantial tribute 
 of esteem to the man who had for years organised his 
 provincial tours and in every way conserved his interests. 
 Among the few cherished relics saved out of the debris 
 of the Theatre Royal fire was a very massive vestibule 
 clock presented years previously by Sullivan to his 
 fidus Achates. Although it never recovered the shock 
 of this disaster, and, like a more famous timepiece, 
 " stopped short, never to go again," its proud possessor 
 has given it a place of honour on the dress-circle lobby 
 of his new theatre. Unfortunately a slight misunder- 
 standing marred the communion of our Damon and 
 Pythias in later years ; but one is safe in saying that no 
 sincerer mourner followed the remains of Barry Sullivan 
 to their last resting place than Joseph Warden. 
 
 Not contenting himself in merely subscribing to 
 the Warden testimonial, our hero gave especial eclat to 
 the opening of the new Theatre Royal, Belfast, on 
 Thursday, December 22, 1881, by appearing there, 
 under circumstances of some personal inconvenience, as 
 Evelyn in Money. It was stated at that time that he 
 had been offered the enormous sum of £24,000 for a 
 ten-months tour in America. For the truth of this we 
 are not prepared to vouch ; but it is at any rate certain 
 that Transatlantic playgoers were still prepared to 
 receive their old favourite with open arms. So late as 
 the July of 1886 Mr. Henry E. Abbey made overtures 
 to the tragedian for a tour of forty weeks, commencing 
 in New York, and proceeding through Boston, 
 Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, St. Paul, 
 
78 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 Cincinnati, Omaha, Kansas, and Denver, thence to the 
 Western States of Canada. The American manager 
 was to provide the entire company, scenery, and all 
 accessories, to defray all the star's travelling and hotel 
 expenses, and allow him 70 per cent, of the receipts. 
 It is safe to infer that only the lack of self-confidence, 
 induced by ill-health, prevented the tragedian from 
 swallowing this tempting bait. Happily for his Trans- 
 atlantic friends, they did not see him in his decadence, 
 and can only remember him in the meridian of his 
 powers. 
 
 Of Sullivanic stories, good, bad, and indifferent, there 
 is virtually no end. Two feline anecdotes are related, 
 which speak volumes for the tragedian's hold upon his 
 audiences. During an engagement at Cork, in 1881, 
 Richard III. was played at the Saturday matinee to an 
 overflowing house. The curtain had not long risen on 
 the tent scene when, amid the deepest silence and the 
 most concentrated attention of the audience, a large 
 black cat, the property of the housekeeper, emerged 
 slowly from the wings. Making straight for the foot- 
 lights — like an old actor striving to get into the focus — 
 pussy upraised one paw and gave forth a pleading 
 miaow ! There was a smothered exclamation from the 
 background which had not the ring of a benison, and 
 the cat, having delivered herself of her message, made 
 a graceful exit on the O.P. side. For keen appreciation 
 of the humour of an unrehearsed situation, commend us 
 to a South of Ireland audience. But, strange to say, 
 the incident, which on most occasions would have 
 evoked a burst of merriment, passed over with a flicker- 
 
An Intelligent Cat, 79 
 
 ing smile and a tightening of the lips. About two years 
 afterwards (or, for the benefit of the sticklers for chapter 
 and verse, on Monday, September 17, 1883) a similar 
 episode occurred, with equally happy results, during an 
 engagement at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, Birming- 
 ham. Just as Barry Sullivan, in the closet scene of 
 Hamlet, had exclaimed *' A rat, a rat, dead for a ducat 
 — dead," and rushed off hastily, another very fine and 
 large black cat (all well-constituted theatrical cats are 
 of sable hue) bounded after him, as if to make assurance 
 doubly sure. 
 
 In Stirling's'* Old DruryLane" a story is related which 
 we give in the writer's own words. " Sullivan, acting in 
 the Potteries, requested the leader of a small orchestra 
 to let him have the wind instruments behind the scenes 
 in the fifth act of Richard the Third, 
 " * Sir, I c — a — n — t ' {with a stutter). 
 << Offended Tragedian : * Sir, I insist ; send up your 
 wind.' 
 
 ** Agitated Fiddler : * I — I — I — ' 
 ** Enraged Actor : * Where's the manager T 
 ** The manager answered for himself: ' Here, sir.' 
 ** * Mr. Elphinstone, your conductor objects to let me 
 have his wind instruments on the stage for the march 
 in the fifth act.' 
 
 " * Poor fellow ! he stutters, and is deaf.' 
 ** Barry : * Why did he not tell me so ?' 
 ** Irate Violin : Yes ; and I— I— I'll tell you more, 
 sir : there's only one wind, a trombone. Am I to — 
 to — to cut him in two ; send up one half to you, and 
 keep the other half in the orchestra ?' 
 
80 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 " This silenced Kichard ; he proceeded to Bos worth 
 Field minus wind." 
 
 Of late years, when not pursuing his professional 
 avocation, nothing delighted Sullivan better than spend- 
 ing his days in that quondam Bohemian resort, the 
 Savage Club, of which he was an extremely popular 
 member. It was remarked there by his many friends 
 that the grace of action and old-world courtliness which 
 were distinguishing traits of his art-work clung to him 
 unconsciously in his private life. Not that, like the great 
 Elliston of yore, he acted off the stage as well as on. 
 Everything he did or said was effected with so much 
 naturalness and ease that one could quite well see that 
 the acquirements and accomplishments of the actor had 
 merged into and become part and parcel of the individu- 
 ality of the ma7i. In the Pall Mall Gazette sketch already 
 referred to, Sullivan's anonymous panegyrist took occa- 
 sion to point out that in the early days of his Savage 
 Club membership it was his custom to dye his hair, *'but 
 since the time when the Prince of Wales accepted the 
 companionship of that last corner of Bohemia, his broad, 
 strong frame, surmounted by a handsome head, with its 
 refined and clear-cut features, its white hair, black 
 shaggy eyebrows and piercing eyes, formed one of the 
 most decorative ensembles in human shape well to be 
 conceived. His face was plentifully pitted with smallpox, 
 but such was the charm of his sweet smile, or, when 
 in anger, of his flashing eye, that the marks seemed 
 in no way to interfere with its beauty." To which 
 pen- portrait might well be added the fact that Sullivan 
 possessed in striking degree that peculiar conformation 
 
T. C. King, 81 
 
 of nose wherein the nostrils expand upon the cheeks — 
 an invariable concomitant, according to the testimony 
 of expert physiognomists, of well-developed histrionic 
 capacity. 
 
 The allusion just made to the custom in the profession 
 of dyeing the hair on the first indications of the foot- 
 marks of time becoming apparent, remind us of a rather 
 good story. Some years ago Mr. J. F. Warden and 
 the popular tragedian Mr. T. C. King were to meet in 
 Birmingham, to renew their professional associations 
 after a long separation. On proceeding towards the 
 theatre King met one of the company coming in the 
 opposite direction, and evidently considerably excited in 
 his mind over something. '' Have you seen Joe Warden 
 yet ? ' ' said the other with abruptness, on arriving at hailing 
 distance. *' No," replied King, *' what's up ?" ** Bless 
 your soul, he's as white as the driven snow." ** Bah," 
 retorted King, with half-amused petulance, as he strode 
 away, " there's nothing in that. I could have been 
 white twenty years before Warden, if Fd wanted ! " 
 
 Taking up our narrative, we find that Barry Sullivan, 
 on Wednesday, July 26, 1882, entertained a hundred 
 of his fellow '* Savages " to supper at a banquet given 
 in the Criterion Eestaurant. Subsequently, when mak- 
 ing the usual inquiries, one of the guests sent him the 
 following acrostic : — 
 
 B e mine, dear friend, to say we owe 
 A pleasant debt to you, 
 R emembering how, two nights ago, 
 R eflecting all your genial glow, 
 Y our guests around you drew. 
 
82 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 S urrounded there by song and wit, 
 U nheeded sped the night ; 
 L ike laggards, when we rose to flit, 
 L o ! it was morning light. 
 1 will not frame upon my lip 
 V ain words my heart to speak 
 A t such a pledge of fellowship — 
 N o ! words are all too weak. 
 
 On the verge of his provincial tour of 1883-84 the 
 Savage Club returned the compliment to the tragedian 
 by giving a supper in his honour, towards the middle of 
 August, in their own dining hall. Mr. P. J. Duffy, a 
 Dublin man, presided over an assemblage of close on 
 two hundred members and guests — all men of light and 
 leading, of the stamp of Barton M'Guckin, Charles 
 Duval, Walter Mackay, Edward Terry, Charles Warner, 
 and Signor Carados. Sometime in the " wee sma' 
 hours ayont the twal" Mr. Horace Lennard, the society 
 poet, recited the following impromptu fait a loisir as 
 fitting to the moment : — 
 
 How often is mirth but a mask for a sorrow. 
 And laughter is loudest when hiding regret ; 
 
 The guest of to-night shall have left us to-morrow, 
 So let us be merry — the table is set. 
 
 Away on the warpath a chieftain is going, 
 
 The trail of the Guineas is seen through the land, 
 
 The Savage shall follow where'er it is showing, 
 And gather the bright golden scalps in his hand. 
 
 What cheer shall we give him who now is departing, 
 The bravest of all our Bohemian tribe ? 
 
 A shake of the hand and a toast before starting, 
 The goodwill of player, of painter, and scribe. 
 
Feted hy the Savage Club. 83 
 
 May Health and Good Fortune for ever attend him, 
 May Pleasure be always his scarecrow for pain ; 
 
 And after his triumphs may fellowship send him 
 To rest on his honours among us again. 
 
 The supper card, designed by Mr. Walter Mackay, 
 so long identified as **The Captious Critic" of the 
 Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic NewSy was quite a 
 happy inspiration. As thus : — 
 
 MENU. 
 
 ** Better cheer may you have, but not with better heart." — 
 Comedy of Errors. 
 
 SALMON. 
 
 "Sweet fish." — Cymbeline, 
 
 SALMON MAYONNAISE. 
 
 ** What have we here ? A fish." — Love's Labour Lost. 
 
 RICHELIEU LOBSTERS. 
 LOBSTER SALAD. 
 
 "My salad days, when I was green in judgment." — Antony 
 and Cleopatra. 
 
 "Short-legged hens." —Henry IV. 
 
 (ROAST AND BOILED.) 
 
 " There is cold meat." — Cymbeline. 
 
 "A piece of beef and mustard." — Taming of the Shrew. 
 
 "Baked meats." — Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 BEEF A LA PRESSE. 
 
 " What's this V— Taming of the Shrew. 
 
 HAM-LOTTE (i.e.y A LITTLE HAM). 
 
 " My Lady Tongue. "—ilft^cA Ado About Nothing. 
 
 GALANTINE OF VEAL. 
 
 "Is not veal a calf V— Love's Labour Lost. 
 
 GAMESTER PIE. 
 
84 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 " Sweets to the sweet." — Hamlet. 
 
 VERONESE PASTRY. 
 
 MERINGUES AU MICHAEL GUNN. 
 
 SHAMROCK JELLY. 
 
 CREME AU MACBETH. 
 
 " Stewed prunes." — Measure for Measure. 
 
 "Pippins and cheese." — Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
 *' Just so much as you can take on a knife's point." — Much 
 Ado About Nothing. 
 
 "A thousand salads." — All's Well that Ends Well. 
 
 "Drink to the general joy of the whole table and to our dear 
 friend. " — Macbeth. 
 
 Opening his tour under Mr. Michael Gunn's manage- 
 ment at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool, on 
 Monday, August 20, Barry Sullivan proceeded to "gather 
 the bright golden scalps " with the utmost prompti- 
 tude, playing during his first week there to upwards 
 of £1,300. Visits to Leeds, Sheffield, and Birmingham 
 followed with equally pleasant results ; and the warmth 
 of the Caed mille failthe given him in Dublin was some- 
 thing to remember. This tour (which ended in May, 
 1884) is noteworthy for Sullivan's capital assumption of 
 Falstaff in Henry IV., in which the younger generation 
 of playgoers were afforded some indication of his early 
 versatility. An impersonation in the highest sense of 
 the term, Barry's fat knight had not a suspicion of the 
 measured mannerisms of voice and action which marked 
 his latter-day tragic acting. Indeed, the Belfast News- 
 Letter, to our mind, did not exceed the limits of critical 
 panegyric in referring to it as "a piece of comedy 
 which, for subtlety of portraiture, without a suspicion 
 
The Beginning of the End. 85 
 
 of caricature, is scarcely equalled upon the modern 
 stage." 
 
 Nothing of moment occurred from this period until the 
 year 1886, when the first indications of Sullivan's iron 
 constitution giving way under the strain were to be noted. 
 Paradoxical as it may seem, the last of the great tradi- 
 tional school of tragedians unwittingly courted death 
 in striving to avoid the errors and indiscretions which 
 blasted the career of many of his illustrious predecessors. 
 Steering his barque with exceeding care, he sailed clear 
 of the Scylla of self-indulgence only to become wrecked 
 upon the Chary bdis of asceticism. Of firm resolution, 
 and never giving way to moods, not a drop of liquor had 
 passed his lips within the walls of a theatre for fully forty 
 years. Warned by the result of Kean's occasional **cold 
 brandy" at the wings, and of Brooke's *'hot rummer," 
 he eschewed stimulants, merely moistening his lips from 
 time to time with lemonade or barley-water. Apart 
 from this, he lived, on the whole, somewhat frugally ; 
 and even for supper was wont to content himself with 
 a glass of water and a piece of dry bread. Naturally 
 enough this extreme abstinence, combined with the 
 continuous and very exacting labour of acting, told in 
 time on an otherwise strong frame. When Sir Andrew 
 Clarke was called in, on the first serious signs of 
 breaking up becoming apparent, he at once advised 
 the tragedian to live more generously, and take a 
 little whiskey with his meals. It was too late, 
 however, and one can only regret now that such self- 
 denial in the cause of art did not meet with more 
 fitting reward. 
 
86 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 Skilfully patched up, the tragedian started his tour 
 on September 13, 1886. Keplying to a Manchester 
 interviewer shortly afterwards, he expressed his great 
 dislike to the spirit of the present generation of actors 
 who advertise their every ailment. " What little repu- 
 tation I've had," said he, ''I think I have won finely and 
 honourably by my public performances, and I detest 
 and despise those tricks which now seem to form part 
 of the actor's stock-in-trade. If a player now-a-days 
 has the toothache the news seems to find its way into 
 print ; but throughout my illness, which was long 
 and severe, I sedulously prevented any details from 
 appearing in the papers. Let an actor stand or fall by 
 his art, and not depend upon adventitious aids and paltry 
 newspaper advertisements." 
 
 Eager for work, the strong mind so far subjugated 
 and buoyed up the ailing body, it was actually said 
 of him by the press in Glasgow — during the prosperous 
 visit there of March, 1887 — that he showed no falling 
 off in his robust and vigorous method, and appeared 
 like Antaeus of old to have renewed his powers 
 after temporary discomfiture. His confidants, neverthe- 
 less, knew full well he had suffered greatly all through 
 the tour, and that towards the end of it he had 
 extreme difficulty in acting at all. As a matter of fact, 
 when he brought his Liverpool engagement at the 
 Eoyal Alexandra Theatre to a close on Saturday, June 
 4, 1887, with an impersonation of Eichard III. he had 
 all unconsciously fought his last fight and aroused 
 his last audience. Fitting was it that the unpre- 
 meditated event should take place in the city where 
 
His Last Illness. 87 
 
 his gifts were first recognised and his talents so gener- 
 ously fostered. 
 
 Resting for some months in the bosom of his family, 
 at his residence, 46 Albany Villas, Hove, Brighton, 
 Sullivan recuperated to such an extent that he urged 
 upon his eldest son and business manager to make the 
 usual engagements for the tour of 1888-89.^ Not long 
 after this, however, as the tragedian was indulging in a 
 hearty laugh over some reminiscence of his salad days, 
 which he had just related to the home circle, he fell 
 back in his chair, without a word of warning, stricken 
 with paralysis of the brain. So little hope was enter- 
 tained of his recovery that on Thursday, August 23, 
 1888, it was deemed expedient the Rev. Father Donnelly 
 should administer the last rites of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. At this juncture one is somewhat curiously 
 reminded of the passage from Hamlet, which the trage- 
 dian had written out years previously for reproduction 
 in fac- simile in The Era Almanack of 1875 — 
 
 " If it be now, 'tis not to come ; 
 If it be not to come, it will be now ; 
 If it be not now, yet it will come ; 
 The readiness is all ! " 
 
 With some such philosophy, indeed, did he bear his 
 long and tedious illness. Helplessly bedridden, and with 
 but faint glimmerings of intelligence, he was grit to 
 the last. Kept alive for weeks and weeks on milk and 
 
 * These dates were not cancelled subsequently, as stated 
 by The Era in its obituary article, but fulfilled by Mr. John 
 Amory Sullivan, the tragedian's younger son, who appeared in 
 his father's repertory. 
 
88 Barry Sullivan, 
 
 lime-juice, he wasted away under the devastations of 
 disease until the task of lifting, him in and out of bed, 
 which could with difficulty be performed at the outset 
 by two sisters from the Convent of the Sacred Heart, was 
 accomplished with ease before the end by only one of 
 these sympathetic nurses. With it all, however, he clung 
 stubbornly to life, and only yielded at last to an attack 
 of Eussian influenza. After a moment of consciousness 
 he passed quietly away at one o'clock on Sunday, May 3, 
 1891, in the presence of the entire family, consisting of 
 his wife, three daughters, and two sons. 
 
 On the Friday following a solemn Requiem Mass for 
 the repose of his soul was celebrated at the Church of the 
 Sacred Heart, in Hove, the music being impressively 
 rendered by some of the principal members of the choir 
 of Brompton Oratory. Subsequently the remains were 
 conveyed to London, and thence to Dublin via Holyhead, 
 for interment on the following day in Glasnevin Ceme- 
 tery. Owing to the privacy of the funeral arrangements, 
 there was not as large a gathering of the public on 
 Saturday morning as might have been expected ; but 
 by twelve o'clock Westland Row was crowded with 
 people, waiting to get a glimpse of the cortege as it passed 
 towards Brunswick Street. All along the route knots 
 of sympathetic Irishmen had gathered to pay their last 
 respects to their great compatriot. Signs of mourning 
 were also to be noted in the drawn blinds and closed 
 doors of many of the principal places of business. 
 
 Encased in a coffin of polished elm, with Gothic 
 fittings, the remains of the deceased tragedian were 
 conveyed to their last resting-place in a hearse drawn 
 
His Funeral. 89 
 
 by four horses. Conspicuous among the mass of floral 
 memorials sent by sorrowing relatives and friends was 
 a large wreath of beautiful roses "with Henry Irving's 
 respectful sympathy," and another composed princi- 
 pally of lilies of the valley and orchids, "with loving 
 sympathy from J. L. Toole." The chief mourners 
 were Mr. Amory Sullivan and Mr. Terrot, secretary 
 of the Savage Club. 
 
 Glasnevin Cemetery was reached about one o'clock, 
 when all that was mortal of poor Barry Sullivan was 
 rendered up to Alderman Meagher and Mr. J. Lombard, 
 members of the cemetries committee, and to Mr. John 
 O'Connell, the superintendent. After prayers had been 
 read in the Mortuary Chapel by the Eev. Mr. Coffey, 
 chaplain, the body of the great actor was laid in its last 
 resting-place in the new chapel section, bordering on 
 the O'Connell circle. *' After life's fitful fever he sleeps 
 well" — side by side with some of Ireland's noblest sons. 
 
 "Calm-fronted, staunch, expectant, and unshaken. 
 He dared the worst that any fate could bring — 
 For him, by iron purpose ne'er forsaken. 
 The grave no victory had, and death no sting. " 
 
 Among the sorrowing friends and admirers of the 
 dead actor who heard the clods rattle with a cruel 
 harshness on his coffin were Mr. T. D. Sullivan, M.P. ; 
 Mr. T. Harrington, M.P. ; Dr. J. E. Kenny, M.P. ; Mr. 
 John Redmond, M.P.; Mr. Patrick O'Brien, M.P.; Mr. 
 Edmund Leamy, M.P. ; Dr. Christopher Gunn and 
 Mrs. Gunn, Captain M'Keon, Dr. Wade, T.C. ; Dr. J. J. 
 Murphy, Dr. Michael Connolly, F.R.C.S. ; Professor 
 
 G 
 
90 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 Fitzpatrick, Messrs. Michael Davitt, Charles Hyland, 
 Ellis Jones, J. Whitbread, F. R. Benson, J. B. Hall, 
 Charles O'Connell, B.L.; W. J. M'Dowell, W. Willis 
 Healy, Joseph Gallagher, Gerald R. Fitzgerald, J. F. 
 Warden, J. Petrie O'Byrne, John O'Hea, S. R. Cunning- 
 ham, James Woods, J. J. Nagle, R. M. Levey, Charles 
 Dunne, B.L. ; John Horgan, R. Downing, J. Symington, 
 John Clancy, Christopher Enrell, P. J. Gough, J. B. 
 Armstrong, John Magrath, Hugh Doyle, W. W. Small, 
 J. Wyse Power, Joseph Holland, James Logan, James 
 Pentony, James Carlyle, J. C. Sherlocke, Christopher 
 Carroll, Timothy Hanley, jun., Thomas G. Warren, 
 Patrick Biggins, Jeremiah Perry, John J. Foley, A. 
 Rosenberg, R. F. O'Connor, George J. W. Stone, 
 Bernard Goulding, jun., C. H. Callanan, and James 
 Delaney, the last mentioned representing the Dublin 
 Typographical Benevolent Fund, to which the deceased 
 had been a frequent donor. 
 
 Of Barry Sullivan's career, more particularly in its 
 latter-day aspects, something more by way of impartial 
 summing up needs to be said before closing this record. 
 Despite the venom of detractors, who affected to see 
 the whole man in the stilted mannerisms of his brief 
 period of decadence, he can never be said — like many 
 another fine tragedian — to have lagged superfluous on 
 the stage. To the last his popularity with provincial 
 9,udiences never waned ; but we fear it was a popularity 
 born of accretive goodwill rather than critical appre- 
 ciation. If, therefore, he did not experience the cutting 
 callousness meted out to the great Edwin Forrest, who, 
 in the sear and yellow leaf, played week after week to 
 
His Latter-day Career. 91 
 
 a succession of empty houses, there is at any rate no 
 doubt that without much excuse he hngered too long 
 on the boards for his reputation's sake. Whatever his 
 blemishes they were purely the outcome of the dogmas 
 of his school reduced to an absurdity, most likely, by the 
 exigence of the times. It was the stately and orotund 
 school of the Kembles, the ''paw and pause" cultus, 
 which really lost all true vitality with the abandonment 
 of the stock system a score of years ago. It is best for 
 us that we should frankly acknowledge its demise at 
 this period, and concede that Barry Sullivan, by dint of 
 a fine individuality and immense will-power, galvanized 
 it in after years into something bearing a marvellous 
 resemblance to full-blooded life. Obviously enough the 
 twitching corpse of out-worn creeds had begun to 
 crumble away even before the hands of the manipulator 
 had lost a tittle of their cunning. 
 
 At the outset of his starring career, and in fact up 
 to the year 1876, Sullivan, during his provincial 
 wanderings, contented himself in taking with him a 
 leading lady and gentleman, by way of principal 
 support, confident that the stock companies then in 
 vogue were sufficiently grounded in the legitimate for 
 his purpose and for the requirements and demands of 
 the (theatrically) uneducated audiences of the period. 
 The rule of the metropolis soon, however, began to be 
 felt in the larger provincial cities owing to accelerated 
 methods of travel, and with the dawn of the combina- 
 tion system country playgoers were taught to look 
 for a higher level of all-round acting, with more careful 
 stage mounting. Conservative to the finger-tips, our 
 
92 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 hero presented an unbending front to this innova- 
 tion, and, deprived of his stationary stock company, 
 arranged for an itinerant one to accompany him. In 
 justification of the faith within him he strove for years 
 to perpetuate an anachronism, labouring with so much 
 strenuousness against overwhelming odds that one need 
 scarcely wonder whence came the seeds of disease whose 
 development resulted in premature dissolution. 
 
 To say that Sullivan never enjoyed the support of any 
 players of capability or eminence would be doing an 
 unwarrantable injustice to his memory. Glancing back 
 through the vista of years, we can easily recall without 
 much forethought, as having figured from time to time 
 in the tragedian's retinue, such names as Rose Coghlan, 
 Adeline Stanhope, Maud Brennan, Grace Edgar, Mrs. 
 Hudson Kirby, J. F. Warden, J. F. Cathcart, George 
 Warde, J. G. Swanton, and Bassett Roe. But taken as 
 a whole, his support from first to last had all the crudity, 
 all the unevenness, and all the inefficiency which marked 
 the second-rate stock company in days of yore ; and his 
 productions were generally mounted and costumed " in 
 a concatenation accordingly." It was only necessary for 
 Henry Irving to make one tour of the provinces in 1876, 
 and present his repertory with attention to ensemble and 
 careful staging, to give the death-blow to this slip-shod 
 method of performing the legitimate. Year after year, 
 however, Barry Sullivan went on in his own sweet way, 
 and it was not indeed until the tour of 1883-84 (when 
 '* special scenery and armour " figured prominently in 
 the bills) that any concession was made to the spirit of 
 the times. 
 
His BejMTtory. 93 
 
 For the limited nature of his latter-day repertory, 
 Barry Sullivan was less to blame than some of 
 his posthumous detractors would have us believe. 
 During the last two decades of his career, he had 
 favoured the provinces with productions of Richard III., 
 Hamlety The Gamester, Richelieu, The Stranger, Macbeth, 
 The Merchant of Veiiice, The Wonder, The Lady of Lyons , 
 Much Ado About Nothiny, The Taming of a Shrew, The 
 School for Scandal, Othello, Money, Doji Caesar de Bazan, 
 The Wife, King Lear, Henry IV., and Love's Sacrifice. 
 In many of his lesser known impersonations, he was 
 if anything finer than in the parts now prominently 
 associated with his name. In King Lear he had the 
 regal bearing, the powers of voice, the tender though 
 vehement spirit, essential to the character. His curse 
 scene, as the demented king, has certainly never been 
 excelled within living memory, save perhaps in the one 
 noteworthy instance of John M*Cullough. His Julian 
 St. Pierre was magnificent in its melodramatic pictur- 
 esqueness and force, and his Falstaff surprisingly 
 •unctuous and natural. Nevertheless, experience taught 
 him that the first seven or eight plays on our list 
 possessed the greatest drawing powers, and hence he 
 grew in time to perform little else. 
 
 ** You said just now that you had no favourite 
 parts,'' said a Liverpool journalist once in the course 
 of an interview with the tragedian.* ** Now, I confess 
 I have always found it rather difficult to account for 
 your preference for Beverley and the Stranger— the first 
 especially." 
 
 * Vide The Liverpool Liberal Review, Nov. 7th, 1886. 
 
94 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 **I have no special fondness, as you seem to imply, for 
 those parts. In produciog them I am guided by the 
 judgment of the public. You mayn't like them, but the 
 public do. Besides, I consider Mrs. Beverley one of the 
 most charming characters in dramatic fiction." 
 
 ** But the unrelieved gloom of the story ? " 
 
 *' (Smiling) People like to be harrowed sometimes, 
 you know — regularly screwed up ; and English people 
 do especially. Another proof of the truth of the saying 
 about their taking their pleasures sadly." 
 
 Something has already been said in these pages of 
 the hold which Sullivan had on his admirers in such 
 characters as Richard III. A curious scene, which took 
 place since his death, in the Belfast Theatre, served to 
 show how thoroughly acceptable he had rendered the 
 effective clap -traps of Gibber in that exacting role. Mr. 
 F. R. Benson, with praiseworthy reverence for the bard, 
 had announced a performance of Richard III. from the 
 original text, but "the gods" on the night of production, 
 being practically unversed in the refinements of descrip- 
 tion, soon became mystified at the absence of all the' 
 well-known and well-beloved points. The clamour in 
 the regions above grew apace until Mr. Benson thought 
 it expedient to step forward and explain the discrepancy. 
 The house then settled down to enjoy the performance, 
 but not. before one of "the gods" had jocosely suggested 
 that they should " Send for Barry." 
 
 SulUvan's frequent repetition of the half-dozen 
 characters referred to no doubt contributed in time to 
 the development of a stageyness which opponents of the 
 old school were not slow in animadverting upon. But 
 
His Decadence, 95 
 
 other elements conduced to the decline in his maturity 
 of a man whom we know, on the testimony of experts, 
 to have been in his early days not only an actor of 
 extreme versatility and naturalness, but one, moreover, 
 who was somewhat in advance of his time. Mr. John 
 Coleman has expressed some surprise that the protean 
 acquaintance of his youth should in later years (when he 
 seldom saw him act) be characterised as stilted and old- 
 fashioned. Still the two styles are after all reconcilable. 
 Youth, ever anticipative, lives in the day afcer to-morrow; 
 Age, blandly retrospective, pins its faith in the day 
 before yesterday. 
 
 The responsibilities of Barry Sullivan's position grew 
 with his ever-increasing popularity. Hating incom- 
 petence, he yet (partly from principle and partly owing to 
 economic considerations) put a premium upon it in his 
 companies. Playgoers came in time to tolerate such 
 blemishes, and gave the tragedian to understand that 
 he alone was ** the show." Hence he divined that 
 great things were invariably expected of him, and, sooth 
 to say, he seldom disappointed the anticipations of his 
 audience. Though an actor of the emotions rather 
 than of the intellect, he could not afford — with all 
 this responsibility resting Atlas-like upon him — to 
 have those moods which are at once the blessing 
 and the curse of the intuitive actor. Unlike 
 many others of his class and kidney, he fought 
 these demons with stern resolution instead of 
 alcohol. His was the victory every time; but in 
 gaining it he grew more and more mechanical in 
 utterance and bearing. 
 
96 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 In conceding this, however, to his detractors we 
 abate not a tittle of our claim that, in days to come 
 when reputations can be dispassionately weighed, Barry 
 Sullivan will rank side by side with the leading theat- 
 rical luminaries of the century. The stage wants many 
 such men now — men of high ideals ; steadfast of purpose ; 
 thorough ; capable of self-abnegation in the cause of art. 
 But alas ! autre temps, autre moeurs ! Under existing 
 conditions it would be idle to look for the up- spring- 
 ing of a new race of Creswicks, Phelps, Booths, or 
 SuUivans. Darkness fast gathers in around the Old 
 Guard of playgoers, but amid their sorrow and despair 
 they have still some slight consolation left in remem- 
 bering that 
 
 " Those great spirits went down like the suns, 
 And left upon the mountain tops of death 
 A light which made them lovely." 
 
APPEI^DIX. 
 
 BARRY SULLIVAN S FIRST APPEARANCE ON THE STAGE. 
 
 — Vide p. 12. 
 
 Although the tragedian frequently stated that he made 
 his dehut, under Seymour, at Cork, as Young Meadows 
 in Love in a Yillwje, he apparently never gave the date 
 of the occurrence. It would seem now to have taken 
 place at an earlier period than is usually assigned to 
 that event. Just as we are going to press an important 
 communication reaches us from Mr. George Arbuckle, 
 SoHcitor, of 42 Fleet Street, Dublin, in which our 
 correspondent says — "His name (as 'Mr. Sullivan') 
 appears all through the bills of Seymour's Company in 
 1837, and that is also what he is called in Paumier's 
 bills all through the Spring season of 1840, when he 
 appeared in several small parts with Mrs. Honey, 
 Sheridan Knowles, Miss Elphinstone, and others. I 
 saw Barry Sullivan several times with Mr. Paumier 
 (an excellent tragedian but never sufficiently appreciated) 
 in the season of 1840, and recollect his appearance well. 
 He was then deeply marked with smallpox, which wore 
 out as he advanced in life. I was present, futhermore, 
 several times subsequently when he acted with Frank 
 Seymour's Company. I did not see him in 1837, but 
 have very little doubt that he is the same who appears 
 in Seymour's bills of that year." 
 
98 Barry Sullivan. 
 
 While some surprise might naturally be expressed 
 that a boy of thirteen should - make his clehut in a 
 leading role in a comic opera, it is not impossible that 
 Sullivan at that age might have had a good soprano 
 voice qualifying him in some measure to render the 
 music of the tenor part. 
 
 In corroboration of his statement Mr. Arbuckle for- 
 wards two interesting play-bills dealing with the old 
 Theatre Royal, George's Street, Cork. The first (under 
 Seymour) bears date June 16, 1837, and shows that 
 **Mr. Sullivan" played Seyton to the Macbeth of 
 Charles Kean, then fulfilling a starrmg engagement, and 
 the Gardener in the farce of The Weathercock. The 
 other bill is dated Monday, February 24, 1840, and 
 shows that our hero played First Pirate to the Norman 
 of Paumier in the drama of The Sea Captain, and 
 Firedrake (a Demon) in the musical burletta of 
 Giovanni in London to the Don of Mrs. Wilkins — 
 announced as her original character. 
 
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