A little after noon I was sent for; the expected stranger had arrived. In those days the stage door in Exeter Street was very small and absolutely inconvenient. There was comfortable room for Sergeant Barry, the hall-keeper, who was a fine, big, bulky man; two in the room crowded it. Barry waited outside and I went in. The stranger was a young man of medium height, thin, dark haired. His hair rose back from his forehead without parting of any kind, in the way which we in those days associated in our minds with French artists. His face was pale, a little sallow, fine in profile and moulding; a nose of distinction with sensitive nostrils. He had a small beard and moustache. His eyes were dark and concentrated—distinctly “seeing” eyes. My heart warmed to him at once. He was young and earnest and fine; I knew at a glance that he was an artist, and with a future. Still I had to be on guard. One of my functions at the theatre, as I had come to know after a year of exceedingly arduous work, was to act as a barrier. I was “the Spirit that Denies!” In fact I had to be. No one likes to say “no!”—a very few are constitutionally able to. I had set myself to help Irving in his work and this was one of the best ways I could help him. He recognised gratefully the utility of the service, and as he trusted absolutely in my discretion. I gradually fell into the habit of using my own decision in the great majority of cases.
When Mr. Onslow Ford told me that he wished to make a statuette of Henry Irving as Hamlet I felt that the time for “advice” had come, and began to pave the way for a non possumus, strong in intention though gentle in expression. The young sculptor, however, had thought the matter all over for himself. He knew the demands on Irving’s time and how vastly difficult it would be to get sittings so many and so long as would be required for the work he had projected. I listened of course and thought better of him and his chance in that he knew his difficulties at the beginning.
Presently he put his hand in his pocket and took out something rolled in paper—a parcel about as big as a pork pie. When he had unrolled it he held up a rough clay model of a seated figure.
“This,” said he, “is something of the idea. I have been several times in the front row of the stalls watching as closely as I could. One cannot well model clay in the stalls of a theatre. But I did this after the first time, and I have had it with me on each other occasion. I compared it on such opportunities as I had—you do keep the Lyceum dark all but the stage; and I think I can see my way. I don’t want to waste Irving’s time or my own opportunities if I am so fortunate as to get sittings!”
That was the sort of artist that needed none of my “advice”—fatherly, brotherly, or otherwise. My mind was already made up.
“Would you mind waiting here a while?” I asked. In those early days we had only the one office and no waiting-room except the stage. He waited gladly, whilst I went back to the office. Irving had by this time arrived. I told him I had seen Mr. Ford.
“I hope you put it nicely to him that I can’t possibly give him sittings,” he said.
“That is why I came to see if you had arrived.”
“How do you mean,” he asked again. So I said:
“I think you had better see him, and if you think as I do you will give him sittings!”