“Yes, yes. But after this you must ride”—and Mr. Irving ordered that the boy should be supplied with bus fares thereafter. Later Mr. Irving noticed that the boy had a troubled look on his face. Asked if he didn’t enjoy riding, he confessed that he had been walking to save his ’bus fares, for his mother was ill and his father out of work. An order was given that the boy’s salary should be raised; throughout the summer, though the company was not playing, the child continued to receive his salary, at Irving’s personal order.
Still more significant of his cherishing regard for children is a story of how he squandered time—more carefully guarded on the stage than anything else,—to make a boy happy. It occurred in a one-act piece—“Cramond Brig,” in which there is a supper-scene in a cottage, a steaming sheep’s head and an oat-cake are brought in and the cottar’s little son is supposed to do boyish justice to the feast. The little chap who played the part did not look as if he had eaten more than his allowance, which was not to be wondered at; stage feasts are not prepared by chefs, and the sheep’s head was indifferently cooked, the only stage demand being that it should send up a cloud of steam and look piping hot. One night, when the meat chanced to be well cooked, Mr. Irving noted that the boy entered into the spirit of the scene with extreme realism, so with a smile at the youngster’s energy he asked:
“Like it, me boy? Ah, yes; I thought so. Boys are always hungry.”
No sooner was that hungry boy out of hearing than Mr. Irving ordered that the sheep’s head and oat-cake should in future be properly seasoned and carefully cooked; still more, he informed the players that the supper-scene was not to be hurried, but was to be governed by the boy’s appetite. And how that boy did enjoy the change!—though Mr. Irving seemed to get as much pleasure out of the feast as he.
“Old John,” Irving’s personal servant and dressing-room valet, used to go on a spree about once a year. With the fatality peculiar to such men, his weakness took possession of him on a night of “The Lyon’s Mail”—a play in which the leading character must make so rapid a change that quick and sober hands must assist him. Just as the change was impending poor John stole into the theatre and stood in the wings with comb, brush and other necessary articles hugged to his breast, though he was plainly incompetent to use them. He cut a ludicrous figure, though the time was not one for fun—not for the star. Mr. Irving grasped the situation; almost any other actor in similar circumstances would have grasped the valet also and shaken the life out of him. Irving merely said mildly—very mildly:
“John, you’re tired. Go home.”
Almost any man possessing a sense of humor has one and only one way of manifesting it, but in humor as on the stage Mr. Irving is protean. In the course of a long chat which he and Richard Mansfield had one night at the Garrick Club, Mansfield spoke of his noted Jekyll-and-Hyde part, which was very long yet called for but two notes of his voice—a severe physical strain, and he said:
“John, you’re tired.”
“You know, Mr. Irving, it is longer than your great speech in Macbeth. I have been advised by our New York physicians not to do it.”