I am told that Joe again acquitted himself well at a dinner given to Arthur Balfour, when Anthony Hope called upon him without notice from the chair to return thanks for his proposed health. I don’t know why or how the inspiration came, but “Love” was Joe’s topic, and it is easy to imagine what a gracious and merry time he made with the various aspects of this subject.
Of his meetings with Italian actors and actresses Joe does not speak save in the instance of Madame Ristori, for whose genius he had an unsurpassed veneration.
His Eminent Victorians contains the tale of an afternoon at her house when she had invited him and one or two of the dramatic critics to hear her speak Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene in English with a view to doing it before a British audience.
Her large and sonorous rendering of the line “All the perfumes of Arâbia” delighted him, though he tried to teach her our own insular pronunciation; he was loudly in favour of the public performance in English, which she finally gave, and I shall never forget the awe-inspiring effect of the slow and gentle snoring which she kept running through the whole of the speech.
Joe never admired even Salvini as much, though he revelled in his great voice on the resounding Roman tongue. He made us all laugh one day by mimicking the mincing tones of a Cockney interpreter translating the Italian tragedian’s sonorous language when returning thanks for his London welcome at a public dinner.
Eleonora Duse, for whom our Nell had the most ardent admiration, was rarely able, by reason of her frail health, to grace festive occasions after her work; but Joe had one or two interesting meetings with her during the season that she rented one of the theatres that he managed and we were all present together at her pathetic performance of the Dame aux Camelias; the next night we witnessed Sarah Bernhardt in the same rôle, and Joe gives an able comparison of the two performances in Coasting Bohemia. On the latter occasion a note came round to Nell from the stage saying: “To-night I play for you.” And the promise was well kept.
Speaking of Sarah Bernhardt, I recall a happening of the days before Joe was entitled to the consideration due to a theatrical manager; he had obtained a promise from the famous lady that she would lunch with us in our quiet home and we bade to meet her not by any means our “second-best” friends—to quote a huffed English actor regarding the guests of another evening. We waited an hour with a patient party and then Joe hastened with a cab to fetch the lady, only to be told that she had forgotten the engagement and was in her bath preparing to keep another. I need not perhaps record that Joe’s wit was equal to the occasion in pacifying our outraged guests.
He and Sarah became firm friends later, and she had Joe’s King Arthur translated into French with a view to playing the part of Lancelot; but this intention was never carried out.
So many and various are the memories which crowd upon me connected with the stage that it is quite impossible for me to sift and record them without undue risk of boring any readers I may have. Suffice it to say that I think, of his many occupations, the theatre, whether in writing for it or in labouring at productions upon it, was the one which most entranced and held Joe. Not only did he love every detail of the work, but it brought him in daily contact with all sorts and conditions of men and women, taxed his powers as a leader of them and gave him hourly opportunity for the exercise of his humanizing and inspiring gift: that highest kind of humour which needs no preparation, but is evoked by every little passing incident and has its real might in the love of mankind.