III.
Irving did not expect to be called upon for a set speech at the Lambs Club. The President, Mr. Florence, did, and was prepared. He made no secret of his nervousness, nor of his arrangements against failure. The manuscript of his address was lying before him during the dinner. He consulted it occasionally, to the amusement of his neighbors. When the time came he rose, his speech in his hand, his heart in his mouth. The most eminent of actors have felt similar sensations under the influence of an exaggerated sense of the responsibility of making a public speech. This banquet of the Lambs was not reported in the newspapers. As in other instances where I have ventured to annex speeches and incidents for these pages, I have done so with the full consent of all the parties concerned.
“Gentlemen,” said President Florence, “we have met to-night to do honor to a brother actor,—for in that character do we welcome the distinguished guest of the evening,—an artist who has done more to elevate and dignify our calling than any actor that ever trod the stage.”
A ringing cheer greeted these few sentences. The applause evidently disturbed the speaker’s memory. He consulted his MS. and could make nothing of it. Throwing it upon the table, he continued his address. The few unstudied sentences that followed came from the heart, and were sufficiently effective. They commended Irving as an example to all of them,—an example of work, of unostentation, of success worthily won and worn, and expressed the gratification it afforded the Lambs—a club largely composed of actors—to welcome him at their board.
“I’ll never make another speech as long as I live!” exclaimed the president, as he resumed his seat.
“Give me the manuscript,” said Irving. “Do you mind my using it?”
“Not at all, my dear friend; do what you like with it.”
Irving, rising to reply, stood up with the president’s unspoken speech in his hand. Referring to the difficulties actors often experience in regard to public speaking, he said, “At Edinburgh, recently, looking over the old ‘Courant,’ I came across an incident apropos of the present occasion. It was concerning a dinner given to John Kemble in that city. ‘The chair was taken at six o’clock by Francis Jeffrey, Esq., who was most ably assisted by the croupiers, John Wilson and Walter Scott,’—the creator in fiction of poor, old, wretched King Louis XI.—Walter Scott, the mighty master of romance, who also proposed this night ‘The Memory of Burns.’ (Applause.) In reply to the toast of his health, John Kemble said, ‘I am not successful in extemporaneous delivery; actors are so much more in the habit of giving utterance to the thoughts of others than in embodying their own, that we are much in the same position with those animals who, subsisting by the aid of others are completely lost when abandoned to their own resources.’ Gentlemen, brother actors, I feel that I am in a similar condition to-night. (Cries of ‘No! no!’ and laughter.) But my friend, the president, has given me leave to avail myself of the eloquent speech which he had written, but has not read to you.” (Laughter.)
Irving looked down at the president for his final consent.
“Certainly, go ahead,” was the response.
“The president,” said Irving, reading the MS. amidst shouts of laughter and applause, “was anxious to tell you that ‘the efforts of the guest of the evening have always been to make his dramatic work in every way worthy the respect and admiration of those who honor our art; and at the same time he has been none the less indefatigable in promoting the social and intellectual standing of the profession; this has been to him a labor of love.’”
Irving read these lines with mock-oratorical show; but when the laughter of his hearers changed to loud applause, he laid aside the written speech of his friend, and in a few simple words expressed himself proud of the honor the club had done him, and grateful for the cordiality of its welcome.
“There is one point, however, in that speech which I would like you to hear,” said the president, rising again, “and it is this: ‘We are not here to pass an opinion on Mr. Irving’s qualities as an actor,—the critics have done that already; and, if you had at first any doubts as to the high position he should occupy in our profession, the American critics and your own judgment have removed them. Possibly it was just as well that David Garrick did not live in the White Star epoch, for, had he ever crossed the Atlantic ocean, his bones might not now be reposing so peacefully under the ancient towers of Westminster Abbey.’”
During the evening Mr. Henry Edwards,[21] of Wallack’s, recited with stirring effect the following:—
WELCOME TO HENRY IRVING.
Round about the board of banquet
Blazed the bright wits of the town:
“A royal toast,” and well they drank it—
“‘Tis for a king to wear the crown;
Thrones may totter in the tempest,
Empires, too, may rise and fall;
But a king, by grace of genius,
Sits secure above them all.”
Thus, a grave and graceful poet,
And his glowing glass uplifts
With a warm eye-flash of welcome
To the Man of Many Gifts;
Then a clamor and kindly clinking
Like sudden song breaks round the board,
And the soul of the wine they’re drinking
Seems into their own souls poured.
And, “Huzza for our guest, King Irving;”
From a hundred hearty throats,
And the lovingly lengthened greeting,
Like a chorused chime, up floats—
When more swift than an earthly echo
Bursts a sound over guest and hosts,
Strangely shrill, yet faint and far off,—
“Way there for the coming ghosts!”
Into statued silence stricken,
Stand and gaze the speechless throng,
While the walls slide wide from side to side
As if moved in grooves along,
And a shadowy stage, whose foot-lights
Loom white through a weirdly mist,
Is peopled with phantoms of players
Trooping in as if keeping a tryst.
Then with buskined steps and soundless,
Streaming forward as a tide,
Surge the serried shades of actors
Whose greatness time has testified;
And their brows are bound with bay-leaves,
And their garments’ phantomed fold
Shape out the bygone costumes
Of the parts they played of old.
All the fine and famous faces
In the records of the stage,
Canonized in highest places
On the drama’s brightest page!
Their “brief hour” made eternal,
Where the deathless laurel nods,
And where Shakespeare reigns superral
In the green-room of the gods!
There, each grandly visioned visage,
Looking through a mellow haze
On the spell-bound reverent watchers
With a long, fraternal gaze,
Whose mute and mighty meaning
Seem, like a benediction, cast
O’er the promise of the present,
By the high priests of the past!
Then, at an unseen, silent signal,
Given by some mystic chief,
Each of the ghosts of great ones
From his own wreath plucks a leaf,
And fleeter than arrowed lightning
Through space a chaplet’s sped!
And the brow of the actor living
Is laurelled by actors dead!
And a sigh sweeps over the silence,
And the walls are walls again,
While the lights flash up to brightness,
And sparkles the gold champagne;
And the joyous voice of the poet
Rings out the blended toasts,
“Huzza for our good guest, Irving!”
And “Huzza for our grand old ghosts!”