by Bram Stoker
III
In her first youth Miss Ward was a singer and had great success in Grand Opera. But overwork in Cuba strained her voice. It was thought that this might militate against great and final success; so, bowing to the inevitable, she with her usual courage forsook the lyric for the dramatic stage. It was when she had prepared herself for the latter and was ready to make her new venture that I first saw her.
IV
During the holiday season of 1879, whilst Irving was yachting in the Mediterranean, Miss Ward rented the Lyceum for a short season commencing 2nd August. By the contract Irving had agreed to find, in addition to the theatre, the heads of departments, box-office and the usual working staff at an inclusive rent, as he wished to keep all his people together. So I had to remain in London to look after these matters. Miss Ward asked me to be manager for her also; but I said I could not do so as a matter of business as it might be possible that her interests and Irving’s might clash; but that I would do all I could.
She opened in a play called Zillah written by her old friend Palgrave Simpson and another. It was put in preparation some time before and was carefully rehearsed. My own work kept me so busy that I did not have any time to see rehearsals till the night before the performance when the dress rehearsal was held. That rehearsal was one which I shall never forget. It was too late to say anything — there was no time then to make any radical change; and so I held my peace.
The play was of the oldest-fashioned and worst type of “ Adelphi “ drama! It was machine-made and heartless and tiresome to the last degree, and in addition the language was turgid beyond belief. It was an absolute failure, and was taken off after a few nights. Lucrezia Borgia was put up whilst a new play should be got ready. She had not made arrangements for a second new play, so we all undertook to do what we could to find a suitable play, a new one. Miss Ward gave me a great parcel of plays sent to her at various times — some two feet high of them; with a heavy heart I began to wade through them. Some five or six down the line I came on one play which at once arrested my attention. As I shortly afterwards learned it was one which had been hawked about unsuccessfully. So soon as I had read it I sent it up to Miss Ward’s home by a messenger, together with a note to the effect that I thought the enclosed, with a little alteration in the first act, would make a great success. Miss Ward’s judgment agreed with my own. She knew the author and wrote to him to see her. He came to the Lyceum that night. She had asked me what price she should pay, say for five years with right of renewal. I told her the price then usual for plays, so much per act, and we agreed that she should offer that price for the term of lease, to be duplicated if the option of renewal were acted on. The author came in a hurry, passing through London. Miss Ward was dressing and sent for me and asked me through her door if I could open negotiations for her and she would see the author when she was dressed. I saw him and asked the price he expected. He named that which she had decided upon, so I told him that Miss Ward would take the play; she saw him a few minutes after and the agreement was verbally made.
The play was produced on August 2I — within a fortnight of the time of its discovery. It was an enormous success, and ran the whole time of her tenancy — indeed a week longer than had been decided on as Irving was loth to disturb the successful run.
The play was Forget me not, by Hermann Merivale and F. C. Grove. Miss Ward played it continuously for ten years and made a fortune with it.
V
Miss Genevi6ve Ward played in four of Irving’s great productions, of course always as a special engagement. The first was Becket, in which she “ created “ the part of Queen Eleanor — by old custom, to “ create “ a stage part is to play it first in London; the second was Morgan Le Fay in King Arthur; the third the Queen in Cymbeline; and the fourth Queen Margaret in Richard III. In all these parts she was exceedingly good.
With regard to the last-named play, there was one of the few instances in which Irving was open to correction with regard to emphasis of a word. In Act IV. scene 3, of his acting version — Act IV. scene 4, of the original play — the last two lines of Queen Margaret’s speech to Queen Elizabeth before her exit:
“Bettering thy loss makes the bad-causer worse Revolving this will teach thee how to curse!
When Miss Ward spoke the last line she emphasised the word this — “ Revolving this will teach thee how to curse! “ Irving said the emphasised word should be teach — ” Revolving this will teach thee how to curse!”
They each stuck to their own opinion; but at the last rehearsal he came to her and said:
“You are quite right, Miss Ward, your reading is correct.” I daresay he had not considered the reading when arranging the play. As a matter of fact in his original arrangement of the play, at his first production of it under Mrs. Bateman in 1877, Queen Margaret was not in the scene at all. In the new version he had restored her to the scene as he wished to “ fatten “ Miss Ward’s part and so add to the strength of the play. Miss Ward was always a particularly strong actress, good at invective, and as the play had no part for Ellen Terry he wished to give it all the other help he could.
VI
Miss Ward has one great stage gift which is not given to many: her eyes can blaze. I can only recall two other actresses who had the same quality in good degree: Mdlle. Schneider who forty years ago played the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein in Offenbach’s Opera; and Christine Nilsson. The latter I saw in London in 1867, and from where I sat — high up in the seat just in front of the gallery — I could note the starry splendour of her blue eyes. Ten years later, in Lohengrin at Her Majesty’s Opera House, I noticed the same — this time from the stalls. And yet once again when I sat opposite her at supper on the night of her retirement, June 20, 1888. The supper party was a small one, given by Mr. and Mrs.
Brydges-Willyams at 19 Upper Brook Street. Irving was there and Ellen Terry, Lord Burnham and Miss Matilda Levy — brother and sister of our hostess, Count Miranda to whom Nilsson was afterwards married and his daughter, my wife and myself.
Nilsson came in from her triumph at the Albert Hall, blazing with jewels. She wore that night only those that had been given to her by Kings and Queens — and other varieties of monarchs.
CHAPTER LXIV
JOHN LAWRENCE TOOLE
Took and Irving — A life-long friendship — Their jokes — A seeming robbery — An odd Christmas present — Toole and a sentry — A hornpipe in a landau — Moving Canterbury Cathedral — Took and the verger — A joke to the King — Other jokes — His grief at Irving’s death — Our last par-ting
THE friendship between Henry Irving and John Lawrence Toole began in Edinburgh just fifty years ago. Toole was the elder and had already won for himself the position of a local semi-star. The chances of distinction come to the “ Low “ comedian quicker than to the exponent of Tragedy or “ High “ Comedy, and Toole had commenced his stage experience at almost as early an age as Irving — eighteen. On loth June 1894, during a Benefit at the Lyceum for the Southwark Eye Hospital, at which he did the wonderfully droll character sketch, “ Trying a Magistrate,” he told me that forty-five years before, Charles Dickens had heard him do the sketch and advised him to go on the stage. Wisely he had taken the advice; from the very start he had an exceptionally prosperous career.
He, the kindliest and most genial soul on earth, became a fast friend with the proud, shy, ambitious young beginner, eight years his junior. From the first he seemed to believe in Irving and predicted for him a great career. To this end he contributed all through his life. When he toured on his own account he took Irving with him, giving him a star place in his bill, and an opportunity of exhibiting his own special tragic power in a recital of The Dream of Eugene Aram. I give as an illustration a bill of such a tour in 1869 which is illustrative of the method of the time.
To the last day of Irving’s life the friendship of the two men each for the other never flagged or faltered. Such a thing as jealousy of the other never entered into the heart of ei
ther. Toole simply venerated his friend and enjoyed his triumph more than he did his own. He would not hear without protest any one speak of Irving except in a becoming way; and there was nothing which Toole possessed which he would not have shared with Irving. When one entertained, there was always a place for the other; whoever had the good fortune to become a friend of either found his friendship doubled at once. The two men seemed to supplement each other’s natures. Each had, in his own way and of its own kind, a great sense of humour. Toole’s genial, ebullient, pronounced; Irving’s saturnine, keen, and suggestive. Both had — each again in his own way — a very remarkable seriousness. Those who only saw Toole in his inimitable pranks knew little how keenly the man felt emotion; how unwavering he was in his sense of duty; how earnest in his work. With Irving the humour was a fixed quantity, which all through his life kept its relative proportion to his seriousness; but Toole, being a low-comedian, and perhaps because of it, seemed at times vastly different in his hours of work and relaxation. For it is a strange thing that the conditions of emotion are such that what is work in one case is rest in another, and vice versd; the serious man finds ease in relaxation, the humorous man seeks in quietude his rest from the stress of laughter. In their younger days and up to middle life the two men had indulged in harmless pranks. They both loved a joke and would take any pains to compass it. The tricks they played together would fill a volume. Of course from their protean powers of expressing themselves and in merging their identities actors have rare opportunities of consummating jokes. Moreover they are in the habit of working together, and two or -three men who understand each other’s methods can go far to sway the unwary how they will.
One of the practical jokes of Toole and Irving is almost classical: One Sunday when they both happened to be playing at Liverpool at the same time they went to dine at an old inn at Wavertree celebrated for the excellence of its hospitality. They had a good dinner and a good bottle of port and sat late. When most of the guests in the hotel had gone to bed and when the time necessary for their own departure was drawing nigh, they rang and told the waiter to get the bill. When he had gone for it they took all the silver off the table — they had fine old silver in the inn — and placed it in the garden on which the room opened. Then they turned out the gas and got under the table. Hearing no answer to his repeated knocking the waiter opened the door. When he saw the lights out, the window opened, and the guests gone he cried out:
“Done! They have bolted with the silver.” Then he ran down the passage crying out: “ Thieves, thieves!”
The instant he was gone the two men came from under the table, closed the door, lit the gas, and took in the silver which they replaced on the table. Presently a wild rush of persons came down the passage and burst into the room; the landlord and his family, servants of the house, guests en deshabille — most of them carrying pokers and other impromptu weapons. They found the two gentlemen sitting quietly smoking their cigars. As they stood amazed Irving said in his quiet, well-bred voice:
“Do you always come in like this when gentlemen are having their dinner here?”
Toole would even play pranks on Irving, these generally taking the form of some sort of gift. For instance, he once sent Irving on his birthday what he called in his letter “ a miniature which he had picked up! “ It came in a furniture van, an enormous portrait of Conway the actor, painted about a hundred years ago; it was so large that it would not fit in any room of the theatre and had to be put in a high passage. Again, when he was in Australia he sent to Irving, timed so that it would arrive at Christmas, a present of two frozen sheep and a live kangaroo. These arrived at Irving’s rooms in Grafton Street. He had them housed at the Lyceum for the night, and next day sent the sheep to gladden the hearts — and anatomies — of the Costermongers’ Club at Chicksand Street, Mile End, New Town. The kangaroo was sent with a donation to the Zoological Society as a contribution from “ J. L. Toole and Henry Irving.” A brass plate was fixed over the cage by the Society.
Toole loved to make beautiful presents to Irving. Amongst them was a splendid gilt silver claret jug; several silver cups and bowls; the trophy designed by Flaxman which was presented to Macready in 1818 — a magnificent piece of jeweller’s work; a “ grangerised “ edition of Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens — unique in its richness of material and its fine workmanship — which he had bought in Paris for £500.
When Toole and Irving were separated they were in constant communication by letter, telegram or cable. No birthday of the other passed without a visit if near enough, or a letter or telegram if apart, and there was always a basket of flowers each to each. For a dozen years before Irving’s death Toole had been in bad health, growing worse and worse as the years went on. He grew very feeble and very, very sad. But without fail Irving used to go to see him whenever he had an opportunity. At his house in Maida Vale, at Margate, or at Brighton, in which latter place he mainly lived for years past, Irving would go to him and spend all the hours he could command. Even though the width of the world separated them, the two men seemed to have, day by day, exact cognisance of the whereabouts and doings of the other, and not a week but the cables were flashing between them.
Poor Toole had one by one lost all his immediate family — son, wife, daughter; and his tie to life was in great part the love to and from his friend. He used to think of him unceasingly. Wherever he was, Toole’s wire would come unfailingly making for good luck and remembrance. He would keep the flowers that Irving sent to him till they faded and dropped away; even then the baskets and bare stalks were kept in his room.
No one appreciated more than Toole the finest of Irving’s work. For instance, when he saw him play King Lear he was touched to his heart’s core, and his artistic admiration was boundless. I supped with him that night after the play, and he said to me:
“King Lear is the finest thing of Irving’s life — or of any one else’s!”
When Toole was going to Australia there were many farewell gatherings to wish him God-speed. Some of them were great and elaborate affairs, but the last of all was reserved for Irving, when Toole, with some old friends, supped in the Beefsteak Room. When Irving proposed his old friend’s health — a rare function indeed in that room — he never spoke more beautifully in his life. His little speech was packed with pathos, and so great was his own emotion that at moments he was obliged to pause to pull himself together.
Toole and I were very close friends ever since I knew him first in the early seventies. I shared with him many delightful hours. And when sorrow came to him I was able to give him sympathy and such comfort as could be from my presence. I was with him at the funeral of his son and then of his wife. When his daughter died in Edinburgh, where he was then playing, I went up to him and stayed with him. We brought her body back to London and I went with him to her grave. With me he was always affectionate, always sympathetic, always merry when there was no cause for gloom, always grave and earnest when such were becoming. I have been with him on endless occasions when his merriment and geniality simply bubbled over. Unless some sorrow sat heavily on him he was always full of merriment which evidenced itself in the quaintest and most unexpected ways.
One evening, for instance, we were walking together along the western end of Pall Mall. When we came near Marlborough House, where on either side of the gateway stood a guardsman on sentry, he winked at me and took from his pocket a letter which he had ready for post. Then when we came up close to the nearest soldier he moved cautiously in a semi-blind manner and peering out tried to put the letter in the breast of the scarlet tunic as though mistaking the soldier for a postal pillar box. The soldier remained upright and stolid, and did not move a muscle. Toole was equally surprised and pleased when from the guardsman’s moveless lips came the words:
“It’s all right, Mr. Toole! I hope you’re well, sir?”
Another time I was staying with him at the Granville at Ramsgate, and on the Sunday afternoon we drove out to Kingsgate. Lionel Brough was
another of the party. As we passed a coastguard station we stopped opposite a very handsome, spruce, dandified coastguard. The two men greeted him, but his manner was somewhat haughty.