He was not feeling well. He sat in a great chair with the cut play on his knee, one finger between the pages as though to mark a place. He had been studying the alterations; and as he did not look happy, I feared that there might be something not satisfactory with regard to some of the cuts. Presently he said to me suddenly:
“Who is God, the Virgin?”
“Who is what?” I asked, bewildered as to his meaning; I feared I could not have heard aright.
“God, the Virgin! That is what I want to know too. Here it is!”
“As he spoke he opened the play where his finger marked it. He handed it to me and there to my astonishment I read:
“I do commend my soul to God, the Virgin....”
When Irving had been cutting the speech he had omitted to draw his pencil through the last two words. The speech as written ran thus:
“I do commend my soul to God, the Virgin,
St. Denis of France, and St. Alphege of England,
And all the tutelary saints of Canterbury.”