Forward to the starry track
Glimmering up the heights beyond me
On, and always on!”
II
Becket, having been in preparation since the end of September, was ready to take its place after the run of King Lear. The first dress rehearsal was held on the evening of February 3, 1893, beginning at 6.30 and lasting till one o’clock. It was an excellent rehearsal and all went well. The play was produced three nights later, February 6, 1893—Irving’s fifty-fifth birthday—and was a really enormous success. The public, who had been waiting since early morning at the pit and gallery, could not contain themselves; and even the more staid portions of the house lost their reserve. It was like one huge personal triumph. No one seemed to compare the play or the character to anything seen before. Not even to Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey, which had held the stage for eight months the previous year.
Becket was played one hundred and twelve times that season. The entire scenery was burned in the disastrous fire of 1898. There was a new production in 1904. Altogether Tennyson’s play was performed three hundred and eight times, as follows:
London, 147; British Provinces, 92; America, 69.
III
In 1897 Irving gave a remarkable Reading of Becket. This was in the old Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral, which had been recently restored exactly to its ancient condition. Farrar was then Dean of Canterbury, and as Irving had promised to read Becket for the benefit of the Cathedral Restoration Fund, he and I had three meetings on the subject for which he came specially from Canterbury to London on April 21 and 28 and May 5. At our first meeting the Dean suggested that the Reading should be held in the restored Chapter House, which the Prince of Wales was to open on May 29. Thus Irving’s Reading of Becket would be on the first occasion which the restored room should be used. I well remember my host’s dismay when he met me at the doorway of the Athenæum Club and apologised that there was not a single room in the club to which a member could ask a stranger. I do not know if that iron-clad rule still exists; a somewhat similar one existed at that time at the United Service Club, on the other side of Waterloo Place. There a member could ask a friend into the hall and there give him a glass of sherry. Such was the only measure of hospitality allowable at the “Senior.” That rule has been since abandoned in the “Service” Club; the usual club hospitalities can now be extended to guests.
At these meetings, as I was authorised to speak for Irving on all matters, we arranged the necessary details. The Reading was to be given on Monday, May 31, at two o’clock, the tickets to be a guinea and half a guinea each. As time was then pressing and publicity with regard to the undertaking was necessary, we decided at the last meeting that Dean Farrar was to write a letter to the newspapers calling attention to the coming event and its beneficent purpose. I undertook if he would send me the letter to have it facsimiled and sent to four hundred newspapers.