But granting these were "second fiddle" parts, I want to make quite clear that I had my turn of "first fiddle" ones. "[Romeo and Juliet]," "[Much Ado About Nothing]," "[Olivia]," and "The Cup" all gave me finer opportunities than they gave Henry. In "[The Merchant of Venice]" and "[Charles I]." they were at least equal to his.
I have sometimes wondered what I should have accomplished without Henry Irving. I might have had "bigger" parts, but it doesn't follow that they would have been better ones, and if they had been written by contemporary dramatists my success would have been less durable. "No actor or actress who doesn't play in the 'classics'—in Shakespeare or old comedy—will be heard of long," was one of Henry Irving's sayings, by the way, and he was right.
It was a long time before we had much talk with each other. In the "Hamlet" days, Henry Irving's melancholy was appalling. I remember feeling as if I had laughed in church when he came to the foot of the stairs leading to my dressing-room, and caught me sliding down the banisters! He smiled at me, but didn't seem able to get over it.
"[Lacy]," he said some days later, "what do you think! I found her the other day sliding down the banisters!"
Some one says—I think it is Keats, in a letter—that the poet lives not in one, but in a thousand worlds, and the actor has not one, but a hundred natures. What was the real Henry Irving? I used to speculate!
His religious upbringing always left its mark on him, though no one could be more "raffish" and mischievous than he when entertaining friends at supper in the Beefsteak Room, or chaffing his valued adjutants, [Bram Stoker] and [Loveday]. H.J. Loveday, our dear stage manager, was, I think, as absolutely devoted to Henry as anyone except his fox-terrier, [Fussie]. Loveday's loyalty made him agree with everything that Henry said, however preposterous, and didn't Henry trade on it sometimes!
Once while he was talking to me, when he was making up, he absently took a white lily out of a bowl on the table and began to stripe and dot the petals with the stick of grease-paint in his hand. He pulled off one or two of the petals, and held it out to me.
"Pretty flower, isn't it?"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Henry!" I said.
"You wait!" he said mischievously. "We'll show it to Loveday."