ELLEN TERRY AS MARGUERITE IN "FAUST"
from a drawing by eric pape
Henry Irving has often been attacked for not preferring Robert Louis Stevenson's "Macaire" to the version which he actually produced in 1883. It would have been hardly more unreasonable to complain of his producing "Hamlet" in preference to Mr. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality that is claimed for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only making a delightful idiot of himself in it! Anyhow, it is frankly a burlesque, a skit, a satire on the real "Macaire." The Lyceum was not a burlesque house! Why should Henry have done it?
It was funny to see Toole and Henry rehearsing together for "Macaire." Henry was always plotting to be funny. When Toole, as Jacques Strop, hid the dinner in his pocket, Henry, after much labour, thought of his hiding the plate inside his waistcoat. There was much laughter later on when Macaire, playfully tapping Strop with his stick, cracked the plate, and the pieces fell out! Toole hadn't to bother about such subtleties, and Henry's deep-laid plans for getting a laugh must have seemed funny to dear Toole, who had only to come on and say "Whoop!" and the audience roared.
Henry's death as Macaire was one of a long list of splendid deaths. Macaire knows the game is up and makes a rush for the French windows at the back of the stage. The soldiers on the stage shoot him before he gets away. Henry did not drop, but turned round, swaggered impudently down to the table, leaned on it, then suddenly rolled over, dead.
Henry's production of "Werner" for one matinée was to do some one a good turn, and when Henry did a good turn he did it magnificently. We rehearsed the play as carefully as if we were in for a long run. Beautiful dresses were made for me by my friend Alice Carr, but when we had given that one matinée they were put away for ever. The play may be described as gloom, gloom, gloom. It was worse than "The Iron Chest."
While Henry was occupying himself with "Werner" I was pleasing myself with "The Amber Heart," a play by Alfred Calmour, a young man who was at this time Wills' secretary. I wanted to do it, not only to help Calmour, but because I believed in the play and liked the part of Ellaline. I had thought of giving a matinée of it at some other theatre, but Henry, who at first didn't like my doing it at all, said: "You must do it at the Lyceum. I can't let you, or it, go out of the theatre."
So we had the matinée at the Lyceum. Mr. Willard and Mr. Beerbohm Tree were in the cast, and it was a great success. For the first time Henry saw me act—a whole part and from the "front," at least, for he had seen and liked scraps of my Juliet from the "side." Although he had known me such a long time, my Ellaline seemed to come quite as a surprise. "I wish I could tell you of the dream of beauty that you realised," he wrote after the performance. He bought the play for me, and I continued to do it "on and off," in England and in America, until 1902.
Many people said that I was good, but that the play was bad. This was hard on Alfred Calmour. He had created the opportunity for me, and few plays with the beauty of "The Amber Heart" have come my way since. "He thinks it's all his doing!" said Henry. "If he only knew!" "Well, that's the way of authors!" I answered. "They imagine so much more about their work than we put into it that although we may seem to the outsider to be creating, to the author we are, at our best, only doing our duty by him!"
Our next production was "Macbeth"; but meanwhile we had visited America three times. In the next chapter I shall give an account of my tours in America, of my friends there; and of some of the impressions that the vast, wonderful country made on me.
