Another admirable French player, Got, once the glory of the French Comédie, and unquestionably the most powerful and varied performer of his day, used to come a good deal to London between the years 1870 and 1880.
It was a singular tribute to Irving that so great a player, in his day greater even than Coquelin, should have been drawn from his retirement to take up one of his characters. Got, the “Dean of the French stage,” as Irving is “Dean” of the English theatre, by-and-by felt himself irresistibly impelled to give his version of ‘The Bells.’ He induced a Paris manager to draw forth the long-forgotten piece from its obscurity, and presented Mathias very much on the bourgeois lines of Coquelin.
CHAPTER XIII.
1887.
‘FAUST’—‘WERNER’—‘MACAIRE’—THE ACTOR’S SOCIAL GIFTS.
He was now preparing for his third American tour, the object of which was to introduce to the audiences of the United States his splendid spectacular piece, ‘Faust.’ This had excited much interest and expectation, and its attractions were even magnified by distance. It was the “last word” in scenic display. The Americans have now become a section, as it were, of the Lyceum audiences, and it would seem to be inevitable that at fixed intervals, and when a series of striking plays have been given in England, the manager should feel a sort of irresistible pressure to present the same attractions on the other side of the Atlantic. This expedition took place in October, 1887, and was crowned with all success. Henceforth the periodical visit to America will become a necessity; and a new visit was already planned in concert with Mr. Abbey, which was fixed for 1893.
On the return of the company, after their United States triumphs, ‘Faust’ was revived for a short period. At the close of the first performance the manager announced his plans, which were awaited with some curiosity. “The devil,” he said, “had been to and fro on the face of the earth.” After a month of ‘Faust,’ he proposed to give Mr. Calmour’s ‘Amber Heart,’ to bring forward Miss Terry, while he himself was to conclude the evening with a revival of ‘Robert Macaire.’
On July 1, 1887, the manager of the Lyceum performed one of those many kindly, graceful acts with which his name is connected—an act done at the right moment, and for the suitable person. He gave his theatre to benefit a veteran dramatist, Dr. Westland Marston, who in his day had been associated with the classical glories of the stage, and had written the interesting ‘Wife’s Secret’ for Charles Kean. As he now told the audience from the stage, fifty years had elapsed since he had written his first piece for Macready. The committee formed was a most influential one, and comprised the names of such eminent littérateurs as Browning, Alfred Austin, E. W. Gosse, William Black, Wilkie Collins, Gilbert, Swinburne, Tennyson, and many more. The performance was an afternoon one, and the play selected was Byron’s ‘Werner,’ written “up to date,” as it is called, by Frank Marshall. New scenery and dresses had been provided, though the actor did not propose giving another representation. He, however, intended to perform it on his approaching American tour. It must be said that the play gave little satisfaction, and was about as lugubrious as ‘The Stranger,’ some of the acts, moreover, being played in almost Cimmerian gloom. What inclined the manager to this choice it would be difficult to say. He has rather a penchant for these morosely gloomy men, who stalk about the stage and deliver long and remorseful reviews and retrospects of their lives. The audience, however, sympathizes, and listens with respectful attention.
‘Werner’ was to illustrate once more the conscientious and laborious care of the manager in the production of his pieces. He engaged Mr. Seymour Lucas to furnish designs for the dresses, who drew his inspirations from an old volume of etchings of one “Stefano della Bella” in 1630. So patiently difficile is our manager in satisfying himself, that it is said the dresses in ‘Faust’ were made and re-made three times before they were found satisfactory. In this case all the arms of antique pattern, the dresses, quaint head-dresses, and the like, even down to the peculiar buttons of the period, were made especially in Paris under Auguste’s superintendence.
‘Robert Macaire,’ that strange, almost weird-like drama, was familiar enough to Irving, who had occasionally played it in the early part of his course, and also at the St. James’s Theatre in 1867. For all performers of genius who have taste for the mere diablerie of acting, and the eccentric mixture of tragic and comic, this character offers an attraction, if not a fascination. We can feel its power ourselves as we call up the grotesque figure; nay, even those who have never seen the piece can have an understanding of the character, as a coherent piece of grotesque. There is something of genius in the contrasted and yet intimate union between the eccentric pair. In June, 1883, there had been a performance at the Lyceum for the Royal College of Music, when Irving had played the character, assisted by “friend Toole,” Bancroft, Terriss, and Miss Terry—certainly a strong cast. Toole, on this occasion, was almost too irrepressible, and rather distorted the proportion of the two characters, encroaching on the delicate details in the part of his friend, and overflowing with the pantomimic humours, or “gags,” which are the traditions of Jacques Strop. When the piece was formally brought out, the part was allotted to Mr. Weedon Grossmith, who was in the other extreme, and too subordinate.
The play was produced in July, 1888, and was found not so attractive as was anticipated. It seemed as though it were not wholly intelligible to the audience. There were some reasons for this, the chief being the gruesome assassination at “the roadside inn,” which is old-fashioned, being literally “played out.” More curious was it to find that the quaint type of Macaire seemed to convey nothing very distinct. All accepted it as an incoherent extravagance: which opens an interesting speculation—viz., How many such parts are there which have been the characters of the original actors, and not the author’s—the former’s creation, in short? Lemaître’s extraordinary success was, as is well known, the result of a happy inspiration conceived during the progress of the piece. From being a serious or tragic character, he turned it into a grotesque one. There may have been here something founded on the sort of gaminerie that seems to go with crime; or it may have been recklessness, which, together with a ludicrous attempt at a squalid dandyism, showed a mind not only depraved, but dulled and embêté. This sort of inspiration, where an actor sees his own conception in the part and makes it his own, is illustrated by ‘The Bells,’ which—in the hands of another actor—might have been played according to conventional laws.
An English actor who would have succeeded in the part was the elder Robson. In Irving’s case, the audience were not in key, or in tune; the thing seemed passé, though our actor had all the traditions of the part, even to the curiously “creaking snuff-box.”[42]