His gesture was superb; he was not, as so many actors are, apparently afraid of using a big sweeping movement; he (perhaps it was the Irishman in him) was never afraid that a big gesture would look ridiculous. He knew that anything, whether tone of voice or gesture or movement is very rarely ridiculous if it is prompted by real feeling. He knew that the real justification for anything an actor may do on the stage is “because I feel it”, not “because I think it will look effective”. As a producer—and he was one of the best producers I have ever seen—he got the very last ounce out of his company because he always, when asked “What do you want me to do here?”, answered “What do you feel you want to do?” He “nursed” his company, and watched them grow strong under his care.
All his movements were good. He could use his feet in a way that, if anyone had tried to copy, would have looked ridiculous. He had a little rapid trick of shifting from one foot to the other, when he was worried or uncertain, which I have never seen attempted by anyone else. He did it in the last act of Twenty-One, when the girl he loves is trying to get him to propose to her; he used it again in A Kiss or Two, and it gave you the keynote to the man’s mental attitude as much as his spoken words. In this latter play, during his telling of the “Legend”, which I have quoted in another chapter, he used that sweeping gesture of his arm of which I have spoken. Seated in a chair, leaning forward, carried away by the story he tells, he comes to the words, “and there in the sunlight stood a beautiful young woman”. Out went his arm, his eyes following it, the fingers outspread to take in the whole of the picture, until, when he looked behind him, looked to where his arm and hand pointed, you might almost have seen her, “her eyes all agog with laughter”.
He was curiously affected by the parts he played; I mean he actually became very much the man he depicted on the stage. When he played old men, he would come home in the evening still very much “in the part”, inclined to walk slowly and move rather stiffly. When he played young men—such as “Captain Pat Delaney”, for example—he was gallant, walked buoyantly, and very evidently was thoroughly in love with life. I have known him at such times, when we were out together, raise his hat to any girl we met who was young and pretty—not because he wanted to speak to her, certainly not because he knew her, but simply because he loved pretty girls, and wanted an excuse to smile at them, all from the pure joy of being alive.
So there is Harry Esmond, the actor, as I knew him—enjoying his work, never letting it sink to anything less than a profession of which he was very proud. He chose the Stage because he loved it, and he loved it as long as he lived. He studied each part with a kind of concentrated interest, and played them as he believed them to be meant to be played. I think for everything he did he could have given a definite and sufficient reason, and so believed in what he did. “He hath the letter, observe his construction of it”; and if his construction was new or strange, unconventional or untraditional, it was so because that was how Harry Esmond was convinced it should be.
His position as an actor was something of the attitude of “How happy I could be with either, were t’other dear charmer away”. He loved all his work, whether character-studies, gallant soldiers, or tender lovers; they all claimed the best that was in him, and, as the best was “very good”, it became not what he could play, but what he could not play. So I review them mentally, the parts that Harry played, and wonder if he had been less gifted, if he had not had in his composition that very big streak of genius, whether he might not perhaps have been one of the names which will be handed down to posterity as “the world’s greatest actors”. Then I ask myself in which direction should he have concentrated, and which of the big parts that he played would I have been willing to have missed. Which? I cannot decide. “D’Artagnan”, “Touchstone”, “Sandy”, “Kean”, “Jacob Ussher”, “Mercutio”, even that really poor part “Little Billee”, were all so good that I am glad he played them. I think, too, that the success of them all came from a great understanding as well as great observation, and that was why “one man in his time” played so many parts, and played them all with more than ordinary distinction and feeling.
CHAPTER XVI
AND LAST
“Hush! Come away!”—The Wilderness..sp 2
So I come to the end, so far as one can come to the end of recollections and memories, for each one brings with it many others; they crowd in upon me as I write, and I have to be very firm with myself and shut the door in the face of many.
I have tried to tell you some of the incidents which have amused and interested me; I have tried to make you see men and women as I have seen them; and have tried to make you walk with me down “life’s busy street”. I have tried to pay the tribute of affection and regard to the various “Cæsars” I have known, and if in this book any names are missing—names of men and women who have been, and are, my very dear and good friends—I can only tell them that they are not missing in my heart.
I look back over the years that are past, look back to the time when I first came to London, and looked on “leading ladies” and “leading men” as giants who walked the earth, when I used to wonder if I could ever hope to be one of them; and then, it seemed with wonderful swiftness, the years flew past and, behold! I was a leading lady myself. That is one of the wonderful tricks life plays for our mystification: the far-off hope of “some day” becomes the realisation of “to-day”.