XLV
THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

I

For fourteen years, from 1881 to 1895, Mr. Gladstone was a visitor at the Lyceum. The first occasion was on the First night of The Cup, January 3, 1881, of which I have already written. He had known Irving before, but this was the first time he had been behind the Lyceum scenes. He was very interested in everything, especially those matters of which up to then he knew little such as the setting of the scenes. His fund of information was prodigious and one could feel that he took a delight in adding to it. He was on that occasion very complimentary about all he saw and very anxious to know of the reality—as distinguished from the seeming—of things such as food and drink used, &c. That night his visit to the stage was only a passing one as he sat through the active part of the play in his own box, except during a part of one scene.

He seemed ever afterwards to take a great interest in Irving and all he did. On July 8 of the same year he came to the Lyceum and brought Lord Northbrook with him. Whenever he visited the theatre after 1881 he always came and went by the private door in Burleigh Street, and he always managed to visit Irving on the stage or in his dressing-room or both. The public seemed to take a delight in seeing him at the theatre, and he appeared to take a delight in coming. I honestly believe that he found in it, now and again, an intellectual stimulant—either an excitement or a pausing-time before some great effort, or a relief of change from fact to fancy after it. For instance: On April 8, 1886, Thursday, he made his great speech in the House of Commons introducing the Home Rule Bill—amid a time of great excitement. Two nights after, Saturday night, he came to the Lyceum—and received an immense ovation. Again, in the time of bitter regret and anxiety when Parnell made the violent attack on him in his Manifesto, November 29, 1890, Saturday, he took his earliest opportunity, Tuesday, December 2, of coming to the Lyceum.

Photo Window & Grove
ELLEN TERRY AS IMOGEN, 1896

This visit was a somewhat special one, for it was the first time that Mr. Gladstone came to sit behind the scenes in the O.P.[[4]] proscenium corner which then became known as “Mr. Gladstone’s seat.” The occasion of it was thus: I had the year previously written an Irish novel, The Snake’s Pass, which after running as a serial through the London People and several provincial papers had now been published in book form. I had done myself the pleasure of sending an early copy to Mr. Gladstone, whose magnificent power and ability and character I had all my life so much admired. Having met and conversed with him several times I felt in a way justified in so doing. He had at once written; I received his letter the same day—that of publication, November 18, 1890. I give his letter, which was in the post-card form then usual to him. I think it is a good example of his method of correspondence, kind and thoughtful and courteous—a model of style. I had as may be gathered written with some diffidence, or delicacy of feeling:

[4]. Opposite prompt.

“Dear Mr. Bram Stoker,—My social memory is indeed a bad one, yet not so bad as to prevent my recollection of our various meetings. I thank you much for your work, and for your sympathy; and I hope to have perused all your pages before we meet again. When that will be I know not; but I am so fond a lover of The Bride of Lammermoor that I may take the desperate step of asking Mr. Irving whether he will some night, if it is on, let me sit behind the stage pillar—a post which C. Kean once gave me, and which alone would make me sure to hear.—Yours faithfully,

“W.E. Gladstone.