manhood in an hour in New York than one can find in a day in London or a week in Paris or Berlin or Moscow. How is it that American athletes hold all the records? How is it that they can run faster and jump higher than any of the English athletes, though the other day the English were supposed to be supreme in all forms of sport and athletics?
In forty years there has not been a single English heavyweight boxer of the first class simply because the mass of the people have been impoverished to a degree that is not yet realized even in England. The physical manhood of the race has been dwarfed by destitution.
But this argument had led me away from my theme. Shortly after my first meeting with Mary Anderson, I saw Tommaso Salvini as Othello. Salvini had every personal qualification: fine presence and in especial a magnificent and perfectly trained voice, now splendidly sonorous, now sweet, always grateful to the ear. The speech containing the lament, 'Othello's occupation gone,' was never so superbly rendered: the breaking voice, the tears falling from the convulsed face, the hands even knitting and relaxing, formed an unforgettable picture. Salvini at that moment was Othello and when he suddenly turned on Iago he was terrific; but the famous soliloquy in the bed376 chamber before he murders Desdemona was given in far too loud a voice: he would have waked the dead. He had no conception of the complex English passion, that a man can admire, love, even, what he's resolved to destroy, lest 'she should sting more men': Shakespeare's own passion, far too complex for the Italian nature. And in Macbeth Salvini had no inkling that he was acting the thought-plagued Hamlet. His Macbeth never hesitates, never falters: he has not the 'if 'twere done, when 'tis done,' and so forth. Yet he was the best Othello I've ever seen.
Why are actors, like politicians, always over praised? It would take a dozen of the best of them to portray Hamlet to my satisfaction. I should want Irving to look the part, and Forbes-Robertson to recite some of the soliloquies, and Terriss to stab Polonius, and Sarah Bernhardt to send Ophelia to a nunnery with ineffable tenderness; and even then, whom should I get to show the passion of Hamlet's jealousy or the contempt he felt for Kemp, the clown, who gagged probably and did not say the lines set down for him because he was lifted out of himself by the applause of the groundlings; and worst omission of all, who would impersonate the supreme poet who sings of 'the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns,' though he has just been talking to his father's ghost?
It was at a dinner that Arthur Walter gave in his house off Queen's Gate, that I got to know Henry Irving. I had met him before, notably at a supper given by Beerbohm Tree in the Garrick Club after he had played Shylock at the Lyceum.
I had come from Munich to see his Shylock and compare it with the best Shylock I had ever seen, that of Ernst Possart Irving, having been told by Tree that I had come a thousand miles to see him play, was very gracious and hoped I had liked his impersonation. Naturally, I said, 'It was very wonderful, but not Shakespeare's-quite!' Irving insisted on knowing what I meant.
Everyone who saw him will remember the scene when Shylock prays to be allowed to go home as a beaten and broken man:
Shy. I pray you give me leave to go from hence I am not well; send the deed after me, And I will sign it.
Duke. Get thee gone, but do it.
Or. In christening shall thou have two godfathers:
Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, To bring thee to the gallows, not the font: (Exit Shylock) It is the only case, I think, in which our gentle Shakespeare allows a gentleman to insult a beaten man. I was therefore outraged by Irving's conception: he was near the door when Gratiano spoke; at once he turned, walked back to Gratiano, drew himself up, crossing his arms, and scanned him contemptuously from head to foot amid the wild applause of the whole house. When Irving challenged me to explain, I said it seemed to me that if Shylock had treated Gratiano in this way, Gratiano would probably have spat in his face and kicked him off the stage.
'I can't agree with you,' retorted Irving dryly. 'I think the applause showed I was right in my conception of Shylock as a great tragic figure.'
'But Shylock himself tells us,' I replied, 'that the hero Antonio spat upon his Jewish gabardine.'
Irving turned away and began talking to someone else. His rudeness annoyed the more because I was reproaching myself for having been too frank.
Long afterwards, when Mounet-Sully played Hamlet in Paris and Lemaitre, the great French critic, wanted to know how he compared with Irving, I could not help telling the truth. 'Irving,' I said, 'is the ideal Hamlet for the deaf and Mounet-Sully for the blind!'
But in 1884-85,1 met Irving frequently, and Bram Stoker, his manager, always sent me tickets for the Lyceum when I asked for them.
One night I gave a supper party and had Lord Lytton and Harold Frederic, both passionate admirers of Irving; and when we drew together to smoke with the Turkish coffee, Irving talked better than I had ever heard him talk; indeed, till then I had thought him rather inarticulate. I had mentioned, I remember, that Lord Randolph Churchill had promised to come to 'the apotheosis of the God,' as he phrased it, but at the last moment had to excuse himself because of an important debate in the House. 'Please tell Mr. Irving,' he added in his letter, 'how I should have liked to describe the prodigious effect of his Mephistopheles made upon me.' Of course Irving was delighted and went off at score, speaking in his natural voice and with no trace of his stage mannerisms and mumblings, which I found so insupportable.
'I met Lord Randolph first in 1880 in Dublin,' he began. 'His father was there as Viceroy and Lord Randolph had gone to live in Dublin. We went across to play a week of Shakespeare and the first night we opened with Hamlet. To my surprise, there was no great reception, no special recognition. At the end of the first act Bram Stoker came to me. 'There's someone in the Vice regal box,' he said. 'I think it's Randolph Churchill, the younger son of the Duke.'
Now Blandford, his elder brother, had made himself notorious a little while before through a very ugly divorce case; but after all, those affairs are private. I shrugged my shoulders therefore. At the end of the next act Bram Stoker came to say that Lord Randolph would like to make my acquaintance and thank me for my wonderful acting, etc. I told him to bring him round, and at the end of the act he brought Lord Randolph to me in my dressing room.
He came to me at once with outstretched hands. 'I have to thank you, Mr.
Irving,' he began, 'for one of the greatest pleasures of my life, an incomparable evening!' I bowed of course, but he went on. 'I had no idea that Hamlet was such a great play.' 'I stared at him: was he trying to be humorous? I replied dryly: ' Hamlet is usually supposed to be a great play.' ''Really!' he said, 'I hadn't heard of it.' This was too much for me: he was either a fool or trying to pull my leg. I turned away. At once Randolph added in a very courtly way, 'I mustn't take up your time by exposing my ignorances; you are no doubt busy.' ''No,' I replied, 'this act is chiefly taken up by the fair Ophelia.' ''Really!' he burst out again. 'I think Miss Terry too is wonderful. I mustn't lose a word of what she says.' I smiled and he added, 'I can't go without hoping to meet you again; won't you dine with me on Sunday next in the lodge in Phoenix Park, which my father has been good enough to place at my disposal?' 'His manner, something ingenuous and enthusiastic in his youth, pleased me, and I accepted at once, conscious of a certain sympathy. During the week I was told that he had been in the Vice regal box every night. On the Sunday I went to dine with him a little intrigued: what would he say? He met me in the hall: 'Oh, Mr. Irving,' he began, 'I can't reckon what I owe you: through you I've come to know Shakespeare; what a man he was! Half a dozen of his plays are great plays, and interesting-' ''But surely you must have known them before?' I asked. 'Surely at Oxford you must have read some of them, even if in our schooldays the great things get neglected?' ''No, no, I assure you,' he replied. 'I never read him at school nor at Oxford. I'm afraid I was very lazy and idle all through, but his Lear is a great, great play:
I'd love to see you in it; and there's something in the Antony and Cleopatra that appeals to me peculiarly. Do you ever play it?' ''It's a little difficult to stage,' I answered, and while explaining we took our seats at the table and I found him a first-rate host.
'Lord Randolph made a profound impression on me,' Irving went on. 'As soon as I realized that he was not posing I said to myself, 'This is a great man, too; unconsciously he thinks that even Shakespeare needs his approval! He makes himself instinctively the measure of all things and of all men and doesn't trouble himself about the opinions or estimates of others.' Afterwards, when they made fun of him in Parliament, as they did at first with silly caricatures of him as an impudent boy, I knew the day would come when they'd have to take him seriously.'
I was delighted with the story and with the simple, sincere way Irving told it. I think still it shows intellect in
