Barry and I were sitting together one night at the Lambs’ Club when a big fellow came up to our table and, hammering on it, said:
“Maurice Barrymore, you are a —— —— liar!”
“Oh no,” said Barry, quietly, “not if you say so.”
Once at the old Fifth Avenue Hotel he was taking a drink with some friends, when he heard a voice mumbling behind him something about a blankety, blank actor. He immediately turned and told the man to shut up, adding a well-known phrase which indicated that he was the son, on his maternal side, of a domestic animal we all know. The man rose and came forward, swinging his arms and shouting wildly:
“You call me that? By God! I wish I had you in Louisville! You wouldn’t dare to call me that in Louisville!”
Barry knew that he was not really dangerous, and, besides, he was afraid of no one, so he calmly walked up to the stranger and, putting his arm affectionately about him, said:
“Oh, if your mother’s reputation is a question of geography, come and have a drink.”
The extreme delicacy of Barry was shown in many ways—chiefly in his kindness to any young actor who was trying to get ahead. He was not the type to help by a lot of talk, but by little attentions quietly shown. When he was playing Rawdon Crawley with Mrs. Fiske in “Becky Sharp,” there was a young countryman of his, newly come over from England, who had the part of Dobbin. Barry was notoriously careless of his appearance on the stage, but in this case he groomed himself to the eyes just to give the younger man a chance to shine by contrast. He was perfectly willing to be what in vaudeville parlance is called a “feeder,” if it were for the good of the play or anyone in it.
Englishmen sometimes twitted Barry for his love of America, and he often had to stand quips from us about his British parentage. An American once stuck a coin in his eye and, in a leering manner, walked up to Barry, singing that famous song of Henry Dixey’s called, “It’s English, You Know.” Thinking to add a little flavor and more insult, the man made a vulgar remark. Barry turned to him quietly and said:
“No, it is not the English I know.”