“What at?” I said again. “There’s nothing to laugh at there?”
“Well, my dear fellow,” he gasped out, “I was laughing just to think that I’m not a pilot!” And once again his wild laughter pealed out.
VI
FALLING SCENERY
In the great mass of scenery in a theatre and its many appliances, some of considerable weight, resting overhead there are certain elements of danger to those on the stage. Things have to be shifted so often and so hastily that there is always room for accident, no matter what care may be exercised. For instance, in Abbey’s theatre in New York—afterwards “The Knickerbocker”—on the first night of Irving’s playing Macbeth, one of the limelight men, who was perched on a high platform behind the proscenium O.P., fell on the stage together with the heavy gas cylinder beside him. The play was then over and Irving was making a speech in front of the curtain. Happily the cylinder did not explode. The man did not seem at the moment to be much injured, but he died on his way to hospital. Had any one been waiting underneath in the wing, as is nearly always the case all through a play, that falling weight must have brought certain death.
I have myself seen Irving lifted from the stage by the Act drop catching his clothing. I have seen him thrown into the “cut” in the stage with the possibility of a fall to the mezzanine floor below. On another occasion something went wrong with the bracing up of the framed cloths and the whole scene fell about the stage. This happened between the acts whilst Irving was showing the stage to some American friends. Happily no one was hurt. Such accidents, veritable bolts from the blue, are, however, both disconcerting and alarming. During Faust the great platforms which made the sloping stage on which some hundreds of people danced wildly at the Witches’ Sabbath on the Brocken had to be suspended over the acting portion of the stage. The slightest thing going wrong would have meant death to all underneath. In such cases there must always be great apprehension.
VII
I have mentioned all these matters under the heading of “Adventures”—torpedoes, fires, floods, train accidents, storms at sea, mishaps of the stage—for a special reason. Not once in the twenty-seven years of our working together did I ever see a sign of fear on Henry Irving. Whether danger came in an instant unexpectedly, or slowly to expecting eyes, it never disturbed him. Danger of any kind, so far as I ever had the opportunity of judging, always found him ready.
When he was lying ill at Wolverhampton in the spring of 1905 Ellen Terry ran down from London, where she was then playing, to see him. She had known from me and others how dangerously ill he had been and was concerned as to how fear of death might act on his strength. She had asked him if he had such fear; her description of the occasion as she gave it to me after his death left the matter settled:
“He looked at me steadily for a minute, and then putting his third finger against his thumb—like that—held his hand fixedly for a few seconds. Then with a quick movement he snapped his fingers and let his hand fall. How could I not understand!”
As the great actress spoke, her face through some mysterious power grew like Irving’s. The raised hand, with the fingers interlaced, was rigid till with a sudden movement the fingers snapped, the hand going down as if propelled from the wrist! It conveyed in a wonderful way the absence of a sense of fear, even on such a subject as Death. Even at second hand it was not possible not to understand. It said as plainly as if in words: “Not that!” There was no room for doubt!