In his numerous addresses at institutes, and before the Universities, he has urged the same plea. And yet, with this skilful and loyal advocacy, we have an instinct that the stage can have but small effect on the masses, and does little beyond making them acquainted with certain refining ideas and situations. As for its fostering moral or religious impressions, by exhibiting “virtue triumphant and vice defeated,” that seems to be rather fanciful. It is probable that the playwrights, managers, actors, and audiences use the theatres for profit and for amusement, not for self improvement in religion or morals. Even the great classical works, such as those of Shakespeare, are set forward with so much magnificence, show, and spectacle, that the teachings are overpowered in the spectacle and general entertainment. But even granting the contention that it may become a pure leaven in the profession, or sweetening salt to purify the rest, who can maintain that the stage as a whole, with its burlesques, “grotesques,” frivolities, fooleries, and license of speech and manners, can be considered an edifying school for morality and religion? What a deep impression, on the other hand, leaves such a piece as ‘The School for Scandal’! what a genuine disgust for deceit and insincerity! How it shows the danger of “playing with fire”! What a pleasant sympathy is aroused with the natural, manly virtues! Here is a certain sort of teaching if you will, and here, too, is there an elemental morality. But in these days we unhappily not only lack the talent to supply such comedies, but the public taste is debauched and gorged with grosser dishes.
In his paper, addressed to the Church of England Temperance Society, and read on March 3, 1876, Irving very valiantly pressed for the formal recognition of his profession by the Church. “Make the theatre respected by openly recognising its services. Let members of religious congregations know that there is no harm, but rather good, in entering into ordinary amusements, so far as they are decorous. Use the pulpit, the press, and the platform to denounce not the stage, but certain evils that find allowance on it. Change your attitude towards the stage, and, believe me, the stage will co-operate with you,” etc.
It must be said, however, as regards this friendly invitation, that this idea of the churches cordially recommending the stage and of the clergy being seen in the stalls, and of bishops who would go to the theatre but for fear of the Rock and the Record, seems but a pleasant delusion. Some few stray clerical visitants there are, no doubt; but in all ages and climes the Church has found itself opposed to the stage, on the ground that in the majority of theatres is found what is destroying and corrupting. As I have said, the pieces in which anything instructive, or even elevating, is set forth are but few.
Irving has collected his various addresses in a charming little volume, “The Drama,” 1893. Here, in an exceedingly persuasive and graceful style, he has expounded the principles of his art. On every point he has something to say, and all is marked by judiciousness and a temperate reserve. He does not adopt Diderot’s well-known theory. How true, for instance, is this: “Nor do I think that servility to archæology on the stage is an unmixed good. Correctness of costume is admirable and necessary up to a certain point, but when it ceases to be ‘as wholesome as sweet’ it should, I think, be sacrificed. The nicest discretion is needed in the use of the materials which are nowadays at the disposal of the manager. Music, painting, architecture, costume, have all to be employed, with a strict regard to the production of an artistic whole in which no element shall be obtrusive.” When ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ was produced, there was a scene representing a cedar walk, and a critic discovered that there were no cedars in England until fifty years later, on which he comments—“Absolute realism on the stage is not always desirable, any more than the photographic reproduction of Nature can claim to rank with the highest art.”
A little bit of pleasant comedy is found in a recent speech of his at the dinner of the Cabdrivers’ Benevolent Association in June last. He had always a friendly feeling for this hard-worked body of men, as he told his audience autobiographically: “I have spent a great part of my life in cabs. There was a time, indeed, when a hansom, by a slight stretch of the picturesque, might have been described as my address. That was in the days of youth and high spirits. But there comes a moment in the experience of all of us when the taste for adventure is satiated, when we are no longer eager to sit under the charioteer of the sun, and snatch a fearful joy from sharp corners and a sudden congestion of the traffic. So when the decisive moment came for me I dropped the hansom and took up with the growler. I remember that my first appearance in that staid and unambitious vehicle excited a certain amount of feeling amongst my old friends the hansom cabmen. There were letters of remonstrance. One correspondent, as genial a humorist as Gentleman Joe, hinted that to be seen in a growler was equivalent to being dead, and I think he offered to paint my epitaph on the back. I must say that I am very comfortable in a growler, except when the bottom drops out almost as suddenly as if it were a gold mine. That accident once happened to a friend of mine whose professional business compelled him to make a quick change of dress in the cab, and as it was a light summer evening the passers-by were astonished to see a pair of white legs running under the vehicle, and not apparently connected with the horse.”
Again a pleasant sketch: “Taking them as a body, the cabmen are as industrious and deserving a class as you can find in the community. There still lingers amongst them, perhaps, some of the old spirit which prompted the cabmen to expostulate rather forcibly with Mr. Pickwick. And considering the vast area in which these public servants have to work, and the elasticity of the four-mile radius in the minds of some citizens, the friction is surprisingly small. Not a few of us have known cabmen whom we held in special regard. There was one affable driver that I invited to the Lyceum, giving him the money for admission. The next time I saw him I said, ‘Well, and how did you like the play?’ He hesitated for a moment, choosing, as I thought, the most grateful words to express his pleasure and admiration, and then he said, ‘Well, sir, I didn’t go.’ ‘You didn’t go! Why not?’ ‘Well, sir, you see, there’s the missus, and she preferred the Waxworks.’
“A friend of mine, a great ornament of the medical profession, used to tell a story of the cabman who drove him regularly on his rounds for some years, and always spoke of him with affectionate familiarity by his Christian name. The time came for the rising surgeon to set up a brougham, and with much reluctance he broke this news to his good friend the cabby, who responded with cheerful alacrity, ‘Oh, you’re going to get rid of me, are you? Not a bit of it—I’ll drive that brougham.’ And drive it he did, till he became too old and infirm for the duty. ‘Ah, well, I must give it up,’ he said one day; ‘I ain’t fit for it any longer.’ ‘Dear me,’ said the doctor, in great concern, ‘I am very sorry, very sorry indeed. And what are you going to do?’ ‘What am I going to do? What are you going to do for me? Don’t you fear—I’ll never leave you!’ And he spent the rest of his days on a pension. That story has always seemed to me to put the spirit of charity and goodwill in a thoroughly practical light. You can scarcely get through life in this town without a sense of your dependence on cabby’s skill and endurance, and with as grateful an obligation to him as that of the voyager to the pilot amidst the reefs in a storm. In this labyrinth of London, it is rare for cabby not to know his way. I have never ceased to wonder at the cabman’s dexterity of eye and hand—unrivalled, I venture to say, in any other capital in Europe. And when you consider how small is the proportion of accidents in this vast business of locomotion, you may cheerfully grant that cabby has some claim upon your respect and generosity.”
I think the whole “key” of this is admirably appropriate, and the touch of the lightest.[61]
At dinners and meetings he often glides into lively recollections of his early days, related in an unaffected style, as when, not long since, he told his lieges at Bristol: “My recollections of Bristol carry me back to the days when my father told me stirring tales of the great Bristol Riots, which had brought him the honours of a special constable. I think I wanted to grow up to be a special constable too, and I had great hopes that Bristol would kindly become sufficiently riotous to favour that ambition. But I also had a turn for natural history, and it is indelibly stamped upon my memory that on one occasion, when I was about four years old, I made a little excursion by myself from St. James’s Barton to Redcliffe Street in order to study a stag’s head which projected as a sign from a certain house, where I was found by my anxious mother peacefully contemplating the head of the antlered beast and wondering why on earth he smelt so strongly of tallow. It was soon after this incident that I witnessed a great event in the history of Bristol, the launching of the steamship Great Britain. There was a vast throng of people to see this mighty vessel, but the one thing which monopolized my attention was the moustache of Prince Albert, who presided over the ceremony. I was fired by an unquenchable longing to possess a similar ornament, and I consulted a friend of mine, a chemist, who kept a particular brand of acid-drops which I patronized at that time, and who consented to make a moustache for me. It was a long business, and when I impatiently inquired how it was getting on, he used to explain that he was growing it somewhere at the back of his shop. Well, one day I demanded it with an imperious energy which was not to be resisted, so he put me on a chair and adorned my upper lip with burnt cork, with which I went home feeling much elated, though a little disturbed by the demonstrations of the juvenile public on the way. I have sometimes wondered whether it was that burnt cork—the earliest of the rites in honour of Thespis—which gave my career the bent that has brought me among you to-day. If my distinguished colleague, Miss Ellen Terry, were here, she could tell you many stories of the Bristol Theatre, in which I may almost say she was cradled.”
Such is an imperfect picture of a really remarkable man, who has left a deep impression on his contemporaries. It was lately written of him by one not always inclined to be partial to him: “We find the quality of nobility to be the keynote of his character. No one ever accused him of a mean or low act. His instincts are, to use a word that has been often applied to them, ‘princely.’ He has in him that curious combination of gentleness and dignity which used to be called ‘the grand style.’ Without being tortuous in his methods, he is instinctively diplomatic, and there are suggestions of delicacy, almost of asceticism, in his physique, which convey an impression of refinement and possible self-denial.” Such a character as this given of some stranger unknown would irresistibly attract and make us eager to know him. And the author of animated pictures of society in the various capitals adds these touches: “Whatever he does is done on a great, even a grand, scale, and done without ostentation, without violating any of the laws of good taste. His figure is interesting, and not wanting in distinction. His manner is polished and gentle; his voice, off the stage, always agreeable, and his style peculiarly winning.”