After that illness of 1898 Irving’s health was never the same as it had been before it. There was always a shortness of breath which, if it did not limit effort, made him careful how he exerted himself. It may have been partly this; it may have been partly the wound to a proud nature which was entailed by the long series of misfortunes with their consequent losses; but there was a certain shrinkage within himself during the last seven years of his life which was only too apparent to the eyes of those who loved him. To the outer world he still bore himself as ever: quiet, self-contained, masterful in his long purpose. Perhaps the little note of defiance which was added was the conscious recognition of the blows of Fate. But outside his own immediate circle this was not to be seen; he was far too good an actor to betray himself. The bitterness was all for himself. He did not vent it on any one; he did not blame any one. He took it as a good fighter takes a hard blow: he fought all the more valiantly. When he was stricken with pleurisy and pneumonia he was in his sixty-first year. He had been working hard for forty-two years; strenuously for twenty-seven of them. Growing age more or less limits the resilient power; labour so exacting and so prolonged increases vastly the wear and tear of life. So we may, I think, take it that he was actually older than his years. Thus every little ailment told on him with undue force. Things that he used not to mind had now to be carefully considered. He had when working to give up many of his old pleasures so as to save himself for his work. Amongst these pleasures was that of sitting up late. Work had to be considered first, and last, and between; and whatever would take from his strength had to be rigorously put aside. Thus life lost part of its charm for him. He felt it deeply; and, all unknowing, was fostered that bitterness which had struck root already. It is the nature of strong men to fight harder through evil hours; and this was indeed a strong man. He would not give way on any point. Well he knew, with that deep, true instinct of his which is always the superior to mere logical thought, that to give way in anything however small is the beginning of the end.
His bearing through the last seven years was truly heroic. Now that it may be spoken of and known, I may say that I can recall in my own experience nothing like it. Each day, each hour, had its own tally of difficulty to be overcome—of pain or hardship to be borne—of some form of self-denial to be exercised. For a long time before this he had a complaint which always goes on increasing—a complaint common to actors and to all men and women who have to speak much; the complaint which is called “clergyman’s sore throat.” Doctors classify it as Follicular Pharyngitis. It is, as well as an irritating and often painful malady, a lowering condition from its constant loss of those secretions which make for perfect health. After his illness this seemed to grow to alarming proportions. Month by month and year by year the weakening expectoration increased, till for the last three years he used some five hundred pocket-handkerchiefs in each week. Such a detail is a somewhat sickening one even to read—what must it have been to the poor brave soul who through it all had to so bear himself as to conceal it from the world. He who lived with the fierce light of publicity on him had eternally to play his part day and night, bearing his old brave front so that none might know. Whoso is worthy to wear the crown must have the courage and the patience to endure. I ask no pity for him. He would have scorned even with his dying breath to ask for himself pity from any of the sons of men. But to ask for pity and to deserve it are different things. It is my duty—my privilege now that in the perspective of history, recent though it be, I am writing the true inwardness of his life—to speak the exact truth so that those who loved him, even those who were content to accept him unquestioned, should learn how unfalteringly brave he was. It was not till February 1905 when after a hard night’s work he fell fainting in the hall-way of the hotel at Wolverhampton that the true cause of his weakness was diagnosed. Fortunately he fell into the hands of one of the most able doctors in England, Dr. W. A. Lloyd-Davis of that town—a man to whom grateful thanks are due for his loving care of my dear friend. He it was who discovered that for more than six years—ever since his attack of pleurisy and pneumonia—Irving had been coughing up pus from an unhealed lung. I ask no pardon for giving these medical details. It was prudent to be silent all those years; but the time has gone for such reticence. It is well that the truth should be known.
Many and many a time; day or night; in stillness; in travel; in tropic heat such as now and again is experienced in early summer in America; through raging blizzards; in still cold when the thermometer registered down to figures below zero which would kill us in a breath did we have it in our moist atmosphere; in dust-storms of rapid travel; in the abounding dust of many theatres, the man had to toil unendingly. For others there was rest; for him none. For others there was cessation, or at worst now and again a lull in the storm of responsibility; for him none. Others could find occasional seclusion; for him there was no such thing. His very popularity was an added strain and trial to increasing weakness and ill-health. But in all, and through all, he never faltered or thought of faltering. For the well-meaning friend or stranger there was the same ever-ready hand of friendship, the same old winning smile of welcome. He might have later to pay for the added strain entailed by his very kindness of heart, but he went on his way all the same.
Henry Irving had undertaken to play the game of life; and he played it well. Right up to the very last hour of his life, when he was at work he would not think of himself. He would play as he had ever played: to the best of his power; in the fulness of his intention; with the last ounce of his strength.
If those who make it their business to direct the minds of youth knew what I know about him they would take this man—this great Englishman—as a shining light of endeavour; as a living embodiment of that fine principle, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.” All his life long Irving worked for others—for his art; never for himself. If rewards came—and they showered upon him—he took them meekly without undue pride, without arrogance; never as other than tributes beyond his worth. He made throughout years a great fortune, but nearly all of it he spent as it came on his art, and in helping his poorer brethren. His own needs were small. He lived in a few rooms, ate sparingly, drank moderately. He had no vices that I know of; he was not extravagant; did not gamble, was not ostentatious even in his charities. There are many widows and orphans who mourn his loss; if only for his comforting sympathy and the helping of his kindly hand. In the sacred niche of many, many hearts there is a blank space which only a memory—no longer an image—fills.
Requiescat in pace!
V
In those last seven years of his life I was not able to see so much of him as I had been in the habit of doing throughout the previous twenty. We had each of us his own work to do, and the only way I could help him was to take on my own shoulders all the work I could. As he did not come to his office in the theatre regularly every day as he was accustomed to do, I used to go to him; to his flat in Stratton Street when in London, to his hotel when we travelled. He did not often have supper in the old way. He still entertained to a reasonable amount, but such entertainments were generally in the shape of dinners on Sunday, the only day possible to him. When the play was over at night he would dress slowly, having a chat as he did so; for he loved to talk over his work past, present and future. When travelling he would often be reluctant to take his way to his lonely home—if indeed a hotel can be called a home. When in London he would linger and linger; the loneliness of his home made it in a degree a prison house. But all that while, night by night and year by year, he would stick to his purpose of saving himself for his work—at any cost to himself in the shape of loss of pleasure, of any form of self-abnegation.
Thus it was that through those last seven years I saw less of his private life than I had hitherto done. My work became to save him all I could. Of course each day during working months, each night—except at holiday times—I would see him for hours; and our relations were always the same. But the opportunities were different. Seldom now were there the old long meetings when occasion was full of chances for self-development, for self-illumination; when idea leads on idea till presently the secret chambers of the soul are made manifest. Seldom did one gather the half-formed thoughts and purposes which tell so much of the inner working of the mind. It was, of course, in part that hopes and purposes belonged to an earlier age. There is more life and spring in intentions that have illimitable possibilities than in those that are manifestly bounded, if not cramped, by existing and adverse facts. But the effect was the same. The man, wearied by long toil and more or less deprived by age and health of the spurs of ambition, shrank somewhat into himself.
This book is no mere panegyric; it is not intended to be. For my own part, my love and admiration for Irving were such that nothing I could tell to others—nothing that I can recall to myself—could lessen his worth. I only wish that, so far as I can achieve it, others now and hereafter may see him with my eyes. For well I know that if they do, his memory shall not lack. He was a man with all a man’s weaknesses and mutabilities as well as a man’s strong qualities. Had he not had in his own nature all the qualities of natural man how could he have for close on half a century embodied such forces—general and distinctive—in such a long series of histrionic characters whose fidelity to natural type became famous. I have the feeling strong upon me that the more Irving’s inner life is known, the better he must stand in the minds and hearts of all to whom his name, his work, and his fame are of interest.