by Bram Stoker
STORMS AT SEA a Irving was across the Atlantic eighteen times, of which one, in 1886, was for a summer holiday trip. Of course there were many times when there was bad weather; but on one crossing in 1899 we encountered a terrific storm. The waves were greater by far than any I had ever seen when I crossed in the Germanic in the February of the same year during the week of the worst weather ever recorded. On the occasion we were on the Atlantic transport S.S. Marquette. The weather had been nice for three days from our leaving London. But in the afternoon of the fourth day, 18th October, we ran into the track of a hurricane. As we went on the seas got bigger and bigger till at last they were mountainous. When we were down in the trough the waves seemed to stand up higher than our masts. The wind was blowing furiously something like a hundred miles an hour, but there was no rain. The moon came out early, a splendid bright moon still in its second quarter, so that when night fell the scene was sublimely grand. We forged on as long as we could, but the screw raced so furiously as the waves swept past us that we had perforce to lie by for six hours; it was not safe to go on as we might lose our screw-head. The tossing in that frightful sea was awful. Most of those on board were dreadfully frightened. Irving came out for a while and stood on the bridge holding on like grim death, for the shaking was like an earthquake. He seemed to really enjoy it. He stayed as long as he could and only went in when he began to feel the chill. Ellen Terry came out with me and was so enraptured with the scene that she stayed there for hours. I had to hold her against the rail for at times we rolled so that our feet shot off the deck. I showed her how to look into the wind without feeling it; to hold the eyes just above the bulwark — or the “ dodger “ if you are on the bridge — and a few inches away from it. The wind strikes below you and makes a clear section of a circle right over and round your head, you remaining in the calm. To test the force of the wind I asked her to put out her hand, palm out so as to make a fair resistance; but she could not hold it for an instant. Neither could I; my hand was driven back as though struck with a hammer.
In the companion-way of the Marquette several trunks too large for the adjacent cabin had been placed. They had been carefully lashed to the hand-rail, but in that wild sea they strained at their lashings rising right off the ground the way a chained dog does when he raises himself on his hind legs. One of the trunks, belonging to Irving, a great leather one, full of books and papers, was lashed by its own straps. In the companion-way had gathered nearly all the passengers, huddled together for comfort — especially the women, who were mostly in a panic. In such cases the only real comfort a poor woman can have is to hold on to a man. I happen to be a big one, and therefore of extra desirability in such cases of stress. I was sitting on a trunk on the other side of the companion- way from Irving’s trunk, surrounded by as many of the womenkind as could catch hold of me, when in a roll of extra magnitude the leather straps gave way and the trunk seemed to hurl itself at us. I shoved the women away right and left, but missed the clearing its course myself by the fraction of a second. The corner of it caught me on the calf sideways, fortunately just clearing the bone. Another half-inch and I should certainly have lost my leg. I was lifted into the music saloon which was close at hand and my trouser leg cut open. We had three American footballers on board and these at once began to rub and knead the injured muscle, quite the best thing to do. Then it seemed as if every soul on board, man, woman, and child, had each a separate bottle of embrocation or liniment. These were all produced at once — and used.
Before a minute was over the skin of the wounded spot and for inches around it was completely rubbed off! The pain was excruciating — like an acre of toothache; but I suppose it did me good. In the morning my foot was quite black, but by degrees this passed away. I limped for a week or two and then got all right.
The women had a sore time of it that night. They nearly all refused absolutely to go to their cabins, and, producing rugs and pillows, camped’ in the music saloon which was on deck.
One young man, who spent most of his time leaning on the counter of the bar, gained instant notoriety by christening the saloon: “ the Geeser’s Doss-house!” b On Saturday, 5th October 1901, we left the Thames for New York on the Atlantic transport S.S. Minnehaha. In the river the wind began to blow, and by the time we rounded the South Foreland a whole gale was on. Our boat was a large one, so that we on board did not mind, but it was a bad time for the pilot whom we had to shed at Dover. The row boat to take him off had come out to us in the comparative shelter of the Goodwins and had trailed beside us on the starboard quarter, nearly swamped in the rough sea. When we slowed down off Dover the sea seemed to get worse than ever. To look at it in the darkness of the night, each black slope crested with white as the lighthouse lit up its savage power, one could not believe that a little boat could live in it. It took the men on board all their time to keep her baled. A number of us men had gone down on the after-deck to see the pilot depart. He was a huge man; tall as he was, the breadth of his shoulders seemed prodigious. When he descended the rope-ladder and debarked, which was a deed requiring skill and nerve, he seemed to overweight the little boat, he so towered over the two men in it. When a few strokes took them out of the shelter of our good ship, the boat, as she caught the gale, lurched sideways so much that it looked as though she were heeling over. My own heart was in my mouth. I heard a sudden loud laugh behind me, and turning round, saw one of the passengers, a stranger to me. I cried out with angry indignation:
“What the devil are you laughing at? Is it to see splendid fellows like that in danger of their lives? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. The men could actually hear you! “ For a few seconds he continued laughing wildly; then turning to me said quite heartily:
“Sorry 1 It’s a shame I know; but I could not help laughing! “ Despite myself and my indignation I could not help smiling.
“What at? “ I said again. “ There’s nothing to laugh at there!”
“Well, my dear fellow,” he gasped out, “ I was laughing to think that I’m not a pilot! “ And once again his wild laughter pealed out.
VI
FALLING SCENERY
In the great mass of scenery in a theatre and its many appliances, some of considerable weight, resting overhead there are certain elements of danger to those on the stage. Things have to be shifted so often and so hastily that there is always room for accident, no matter what care may be exercised. For instance, in Abbey’s theatre in New York — afterwards “ The Knickerbocker “ — on the first night of Irving’s playing Macbeth, one of the limelight men, who was perched on a high platform behind the proscenium and O.P., fell on the stage together with the heavy gas cylinder beside him. The play was then over and Irving was making a speech in front of the curtain. Happily the cylinder did not explode. The man did not seem at the moment to be much injured, but he died on his way to hospital. Had any one been waiting underneath in the wing, as is nearly always the case all through a play, that falling weight must have brought certain death.
I have myself seen Irving lifted from the stage by the Act drop catching his clothing. I have seen him thrown into the “ cut “ in the stage with the possibility of a fall to the mezzanine floor below. On another occasion something went wrong with the bracing up of the framed cloths and the whole scene fell about the stage. This happened between the acts whilst Irving was showing the stage to some American friends, Mr. and Mrs. Francis of Troy, N.Y. Happily no one was hurt. Such accidents, veritable bolts from the blue, are, however, both disconcerting and alarming. During Faust the great platforms which made the sloping stage on which some hundreds of people danced wildly at the Witches’ Sabbath on the Brokken had to be suspended over the acting portion of the stage. The slightest thing going wrong would have meant death to all underneath. In such cases there must always be great apprehension.
VII
I have mentioned all these matters under the heading of “ adventures “ — torpedoes, fires, floods, train accidents, storms at sea, mishaps of the stage —
for a special reason. Not once in the twenty-seven years of our working together did I ever see a sign of fear on Henry Irving. Whether danger came in an instant unexpectedly, or slowly to expecting eyes, it never disturbed him. Danger of any kind, so far as I ever had the opportunity of judging, always found him ready.
When he was lying ill at Wolverhampton in the spring of 1905 Ellen Terry ran down from London, where she was then playing, to see him. She had known from me and others how dangerously ill he had been and was concerned as to how fear of death might act on his strength. She had asked him if he had such fear; her description of the occasion as she gave it to me after his death left nothing open to doubt:
“He looked at me steadily for a minute, and then putting his third finger against his thumb — like that — held his hand fixedly for a few seconds. Then with a quick movement he snapped his fingers and let his hand fall. How could I not understand!”
As the great actress spoke, her face through some mysterious power grew like Irving’s. The raised hand, with the fingers interlaced, was rigid till with a sudden movement the fingers snapped, the hand going down as propelled from the wrist. It conveyed in a wonderful way the absence of a sense of fear, even on such a subject as Death. Even at second hand it was not possible not to understand. It said as plainly as if in words: “ Not that! “ There was no room for doubt!
I have often heard him relate an incident from which he said he learned much. It referred to a certain habit of mind: an experience learned and carried so far as to become a part of one’s nature — a veritable second nature. There used to be a Superintendent at Bow Street, who in the early days of the Vaudeville and the Lyceum was a friend of his. Mr. Thompson was a very capable officer who had in his years of experience learned the value of self-control. One evening Irving and David James coming along the Strand saw the Superintendent before them, and determined to try an experiment on him. They crept softly up behind him and clapped sudden and violent hands on his shoulders. He did not turn or draw away suddenly, as an ordinary individual acting instinctively would have done. He stayed very still and turned his head slowly round till he saw who and what it was that disturbed him. As Irving said, he was a master of himself — of his face. No one could have gathered from either expression or action what his emotions were. The lesson which he thus learned he applied twice at least to the practice of his art. Once was negatively — that is, the negative side of the lesson, when in his departure from the Court in The Merchant ofVenice he dropped his shoulder and shrank from the touch of Gratiano; the other was his eternal consciousness of danger and preparation to meet it instinctively in Eugene Aram.
This is indeed part of that “ Dual Consciousness “ to which Irving so often alluded and which had in his estimation so basic a part in the Philosophy of his Art. We shall have to consider it when we reach that portion of the subject of this book: the summing up of the guiding principles of his art.
CHAPTER LXXII
BURNING OF THE LYCEUM STORAGE
Difficulty of storing scenery — New storage — A clever fraud — The fire — — Forty-four plays burned — Checkmate to repertoire
AT ten minutes past five on the morning of Friday, 18th February 1898, I was wakened by a continuous knock at a door somewhere near my house in Chelsea. I soon discovered that it was at my own house. I went downstairs and opened the door, when a muffled up cab-driver gave me a letter. It was from the police station at Bow Street telling me that the Lyceum Storage, Bear Lane, Southwark, was on fire. The four-wheeler was waiting, and I was soon on the way there as fast as the horse could go. It was a dim, dank morning, bitterly cold. I found Bear Lane a chaos. The narrow way was blocked with fire-engines panting and thumping away for dear life. The heat was terrific. There was so much stuff in the storage that nothing could possibly be done till the fire had burnt itself out; all that the firemen could do was to prevent the fire spreading.
These premises deserve some special mention, for they played an important part in many ways, as shall be seen.
One of the really great difficulties in the management of a London theatre is that of storage. A “ going “ theatre has to be always producing new plays and occasionally repeating the old. In fact, to a theatrical manager his productions form the major part of his stock-in-trade. Now, no one outside theatrical management — and very few who are inside — can have any idea of the bulk of a lot of plays. In Irving’s case it was really vast; the bulk was almost as big as the whole Lyceum theatre. To get housing for such is a very serious matter. In the first place, the rental is, on account of the space — no matter where the locality, great. In the second, it does not do to have it too far away from the theatre, for in such case the cartage to and from, together with the workmen’s time, makes an enormous item of expense. In the third place, storage for scenery has to be of a kind where it can easily be got at. Scenery is long, unhandy stuff to handle. That of the Lyceum was forty-two feet long when the cloths were rolled up round their battens; the framed cloths were thirty feet high and six feet wide in the folding plaques. In the first ten years of Irving’s management we had to keep the scenery stored in all sorts of places and the space available in the theatre was packed solid. We were always on the look out for a really fine storage; and at last we heard of one. This consisted of two great, high railway arches under the Chatham and Dover Railway, then leased to the South-Eastern. It was a part of Southwark where the ground lies low and the railway line very high, so that there was full height for our scenes. In front was a large yard. We took the premises on a good long lease and set to work to make them complete for our work. The backs of the arches were bricked up. Great scaffold poles were firmly fixed for the piling of scenery against them. It is hard to believe what lateral pressure a great pack of scenery can exercise. Before we had occupied this storage a year one of the poles gave way and the scenery sinking against the new wall at the back of the arch carried it entirely away. We had to pay expenses of restoration to the injured neighbour and to compensate him. We had the entire yard in front roofed over, brought in gas, which was carefully protected, and water, and made the storage the best of its kind that was known. The experience of a good many years-went to the making of it.
We had had to put in a clause when making the agreement to take the lease for a reason not devoid of humour to any one not a sufferer by it. When I went to look at the arches I found them full almost to the top with mud — old mud that had been put in wet and had dried in time to something like the consistency of that to be found at Herculaneum. The manager of the estate office of the railway told me the history of it.
Some years before, the arches were placarded as to let, and in due course came an applicant. He said he was satisfied with the rent and took out his lease. The railway people were pleased to get such a big place off their hands and took no more trouble about it till the half-year’s rental became due. They applied to the lessee, but could get no reply. So they sent to the premises to make inquiries. There was no one there; and they could not hear any tidings of the lessee. They did find, however, that the arches were filled with mud, and discovered on inquiry that the lessee had taken a contract for the removal of road sweepings. This is a serious item in municipal accounts, for the conveyance of such out of London is costly, whether by road or barge or rail. Into the arches he had for half a year dumped all the stuff; thousands and thousands of loads of it. He had drawn his money as earned from the municipal authorities. Rent day drew near, and as he feared discovery he had bolted, leaving every one, including the contractors for carting, unpaid.
It took the railway company months of continuous work with a large staff of men and carts and horses to remove the accumulation.
As the premises were secure in every way we could devise, we looked upon them as comparatively immune from fire risk. No one lived in them. They were all brick, stone, and slate — as the insurance policies put it. They were completely isolated front and back; at the sides were blocks of solid brickwork like b
astions. I had at first, with Irving’s consent, insured the contents for aro,000, but only that year when the policies were to be renewed he said it was wasting money as the place was so secure, and would not let me put on more than g000.
In these premises were the scenes for the following plays, forty-four in all, of which in only ten Irving himself did not play. Twenty - two were great productions:
Hamlet. Much Ado about Nothing.
The Merchant ofVenice. Twelfth Night.
Othello. Macbeth.
Henry VIII.
Louis XI.
King Lear.
Charles I.
Cymbeline.
The Lyons Mail.
Richard III.
The Bells.
The Corsican Brothers.
The Iron Chest.
The Cup.
Iolanthe.
The Belle’s Stratagem.
The Amber Heart.
Two Roses.
Robert Macaire.
Olivia.
Don Quixote.
Faust.
Raising the Wind.
Werner.
Daisy’s Escape.
The Dead Heart.
Bygones.
Ravenswood.
High Life Below Stairs.
Becket.
The Boarding School.
King Arthur.
The King and the Miller.
Richelieu.
The Captain of the Watch.
The Lady of Lyons.
The Balance of Comfort.
Eugene Aram.
Book III. Chapter V.
Jingle.
Cool as a Cucumber.