Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

a fierce encounter between the message that was in him to convey and the restricted means that nature had placed at his disposal. His individuality betrayed at the first, and indelibly stamped upon every creation even to the close of his career, formed at first a serious weakness and again, finally, the saving element of strength in the work that he had to offer to the theatre.

There will always, I suppose, be a radical divergence of thought as to the proper attributes of an actor. To some minds it seems a self-evident proposition that the highest triumph of histrionic art is that in which the personality of the performer is most effectively concealed. To such critics completeness of disguise is completeness of victory, and in the region of comedy there is perhaps room for the confident assertion of this idea, for it is unquestionable that a full measure of enjoyment is conferred upon his audience by the actor’s successful assumption of alien idiosyncrasies of bearing and manner. In what is technically known in the theatre as character-acting, this is a goal of perfection that is rightly sought for; and although Irving proved himself on occasion a capable actor of character, it seems to me that his efforts in this direction bore with rare exception an impression of exaggeration.

And the reason is not far to seek. Conscious of his own peculiarities, so difficult if not impossible to efface, he was disposed to seek for concealment by forcing to the verge of the grotesque the personation of characteristics that were not his own. He was for this reason, to my thinking, never wholly successful as an actor of disguise; but at the opposite pole of histrionic achievement lies, I think, a faculty that is both rarer and greater, the faculty of revelation. Between these two spheres of disguise and revelation lie all the possibilities of the actor’s art. The choice of the one or of the other must be determined by the temperament of the actor, and in an equal measure by the response he receives from the temper of his audience. Speaking only for myself, I may frankly say that the greatest impressions I have received in the theatre have been made upon me by performers who never left me for a moment to imagine they were not themselves; but who, without greatly striving to realise the external attributes of the characters they were presenting, have succeeded in the power of constantly identifying themselves with the culminating passions of life. And of course these greater victories, if they are greater, belong in the nature of things to those actors whose ambition it is to present and interpret the deeper emotions—those emotions, I mean, so deeply seated in humanity that their occasional difference of expression counts as for nothing beside the intensity with which they are felt and experienced by all.

The justice of this view of the final victory of the actor’s art can only be decided by individual experience and individual impression. Looking back and recalling the performances that have most deeply moved me, I find myself suddenly reverting in recollection to those supreme moments in a great play or in a great impersonation in which the individual is forgotten, and the supreme power of sounding the depths of human feeling is indelibly stamped upon the memory.

I saw Desclée, and greatly admired her; and I remember, long afterwards, when I witnessed Sarah Bernhardt’s performance of Frou-frou, how much I thought it suffered in comparison with the original in those lighter and earlier scenes of the play in which the qualities of the heroine’s temperament have to be exhibited; and yet, when Madame Bernhardt came to the great scene in the third act, the recollection of Desclée, by a single stroke of genius, was almost effaced, and I can only think of Frou-frou as it is recalled to me by that superb exhibition of passion in her encounter with Louise.

It was not Irving’s performance of The Bells or the impression it yielded which satisfied me, even in those days, that he was a great actor. The picture as drawn, both by the author and by the actor, is so narrowly concentrated upon almost a single phase of criminal instinct and abnormal remorse, that it might well have been the outcome of an intelligence intense assuredly and yet confessedly limited in its outlook. It gave no assurance that the actor could touch the finer or deeper notes of feeling, and it was only when he afterwards played Hamlet that he convinced me of the possession of deeper imaginative powers.

À propos of Hamlet, Irving used to tell a story that was characteristic of his imperturbable self-possession and was no less interesting in the light it throws upon the striking individuality of a youth who afterwards rose to a foremost position in public affairs. It was some few years after his performance of the character in London that Irving found himself in Dublin at a time when the Duke of Marlborough, the father of Lord Randolph Churchill, was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Hamlet was the play of the evening, and Lord Randolph, seated alone, occupied the viceregal box. When the second act was ended he went behind the scenes to Irving’s dressing-room and introduced himself to the actor. With an apology that was evidently sincere he expressed his regret that, owing to a reception at the Castle, he was unable to wait for the conclusion of the performance. He declared himself, however, intensely interested with what he had seen, and begged Irving to tell him in a few words, as his time was limited, how the play ended. Irving, as he told me, was at first so taken aback that he thought his visitor was indulging in a humorous sally at the expense of the immortal dramatist, but a quick glance at the young man’s earnest face sufficed to reassure him, and he then told Lord Randolph the outline of that concluding part of the story which his social engagement did not permit him to see represented upon the boards.

“When do you play it again?” inquired the young man of the actor.

“On Wednesday next,” answered Irving.

“I shall be there,” replied Lord Randolph, earnestly; and there assuredly he was from the rise of the curtain to its fall, in rapt attention to every succeeding scene of the tragedy.