“Perhaps the most remarkable Christmas dinner at which I have ever been present, was one at which we dined upon underclothing. Do you remember Joe Robins—a nice, genial fellow who played small parts in the provinces? Ah, no! that was before your time. Joe Robins was once in the gentleman’s furnishing business in London city. I think he had a wholesale trade, and was doing well. However, he belonged to one of the semi-Bohemian clubs; associated a great deal with actors and journalists, and when an amateur performance was organised for some charitable object, he was cast for the clown in a burlesque called Guy Fawkes.
“Perhaps he played the part capitally; perhaps his friends were making game of him when they loaded him with praise; perhaps the papers for which his Bohemian associates wrote went rather too far when they asserted that he was the artistic descendant and successor of Grimaldi. At any rate Joe believed all that was said to and written about him, and when some wit discovered that Grimaldi’s name was also Joe, the fate of Joe Robins was sealed. He determined to go upon the stage professionally and become a great actor. Fortunately Joe was able to dispose of his stock and goodwill for a few hundreds, which he invested, so as to give him an income sufficient to prevent the wolf from getting inside his door, in case he did not eclipse Garrick, Kean, and Kemble. He also packed up for himself a liberal supply of his wares, and started in his profession with enough shirts, collars, handkerchiefs, and underclothing to equip him for several years.
“The amateur success of poor Joe was never repeated on the regular stage. He did not make an absolute failure; no manager would trust him with big enough parts for him to fail in; but he drifted down to “general utility,” and then out of London, and when I met him he was engaged in a very small way, on a very small salary, at a Manchester theatre.
“His income eked out his salary; Joe, however, was a generous, great-hearted fellow, who liked everybody, and whom everybody liked, and when he had money, he was always glad to spend it upon a friend or give it away to somebody more needy than himself. So piece by piece, as necessity demanded, his princely supply of haberdashery diminished, and at last only a few shirts and underclothes remained to him.
“Christmas came in very bitter weather. Joe had a part in the Christmas pantomime. He dressed with other poor actors, and he saw how thinly some of them were clad when they stripped before him to put on their stage costumes. For one poor fellow in especial his heart ached. In the depth of a very cold winter he was shivering in a suit of very light summer underclothing, and whenever Joe looked at him, the warm flannel under-garments snugly packed away in an extra trunk weighed heavily on his mind. Joe thought the matter over, and determined to give the actors who dressed with him a Christmas dinner. It was literally a dinner upon underclothing, for most of the shirts and drawers which Joe had cherished so long went to the pawnbrokers, or the slop-shop to provide the money for the meal. The guests assembled promptly, for nobody else is ever so hungry as a hungry actor. The dinner was to be served at Joe’s lodgings, and before it was placed on the table, Joe beckoned his friend with the gauze underclothing into a bedroom, and pointing to a chair, silently withdrew. On that chair hung a suit of underwear, which had been Joe’s pride. It was of a comfortable scarlet colour; it was thick, warm, and heavy; it fitted the poor actor as if it had been manufactured especially to his measure. He put it on, and as the flaming flannels encased his limbs, he felt his heart glowing within him with gratitude to dear Joe Robins.
“That actor never knew—or, if he knew, could never remember—what he had for dinner on that Christmas afternoon. He revelled in the luxury of warm garments. The roast beef was nothing to him in comparison with the comfort of his under-vest: he appreciated the drawers more than the plum-pudding. Proud, happy, warm, and comfortable, he felt little inclination to eat; but sat quietly, and thanked Providence and Joe Robins with all his heart.
“‘You seem to enter into that poor actor’s feelings very sympathetically.’
“‘I have good reason to do so,’ replied Mr. Irving, with his sunshiny smile, ‘for I was that poor actor!’”
Irving, like most theatrical folk, has a weakness for applause. It is not surprising that hand-clapping should have an exhilarating effect, or that the volley of air vibrations should set the actor’s blood a-tingling. Applause is the breath in the nostrils of every “mummer.” On one occasion the great Kean finding his audience apathetic, stopped in the middle of his lines and said: