He began the speech in the Trial Scene very slowly.
Between every word Henry was whispering: "Get on—get on!" Old Mead, whose memory was never good, became flustered, and at the end of the line came to a dead stop.
"Get on, get on," said Henry.
Mead looked round with dignity, opened his mouth and shut it, opened it again, and in his anxiety to oblige Henry, did get on indeed!—to the last line of the long speech.
"We all expect a gentle answer, Jew."
The first line and the last line were all that we heard of the Duke's speech that night. It must have been the shortest version of it on record.
This was the play with which the Lyceum reopened in the autumn of 1880. I was on the last of my provincial tours with [Charles Kelly] at the time, but I must have come up to see the revival, for I remember Henry Irving in it very distinctly. He had not played the dual rôle of Louis and Fabien del Franchi before, and he had to compete with old playgoers' memories of [Charles Kean] and [Fechter]. Wisely enough he made of it a "period" play, emphasizing its old-fashioned atmosphere. In 1891, when the play was revived, the D'Orsay costumes were noticed and considered piquant and charming. In 1880 I am afraid they were regarded with indifference as merely antiquated.
The grace and elegance of Henry as the civilized brother I shall never forget. There was something in him to which the perfect style of the D'Orsay period appealed, and he spoke the stilted language with as much truth as he wore the cravat and the tight-waisted full-breasted coats. Such lines as—
"'Tis she! Her footstep beats upon my heart!"
were not absurd from his lips.