"One point must strike all in connection with Bancroft's career—before he left the Haymarket, at the age of forty-four, he was the senior theatrical manager of London. In conjunction with that gifted lady who was the genius of English comedy, he popularised a system of management which has dominated our stage ever since, and the principle of which may be described as the harmony of realism and art."
It is to be much regretted that no really satisfactory portrait of Irving exists. The one painted by Millais, and given by him to the Garrick Club in 1884, is a beautiful work of art, but, to my mind, somewhat effeminate in its beauty. A portrait by Sargent, painted when Irving was fifty, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, was amazingly clever, but a somewhat painful likeness. The great painter showed something in the great actor—as he so often does in his sitters—which his gifted and searching eyes could not help seeing, and which, once having been shown, you cannot afterwards help seeing always. Irving hated the portrait, and when it was taken from the walls of the Academy it was never seen again. I heard Irving, at my table, tell Sir Edward Poynter that he hid it away in a garret, and when he left the old Grafton Street chambers, his solitary home for many years, he hacked the canvas to shreds with a knife. What a treasure lost!
Irving's hospitality was unbounded. At one of his many parties I recollect his saying to Frank Lockwood, when he was Solicitor-General: "The fortunate actor is the actor who works hard." He then pointed across the table to me, and added: "Look at that fellow, and remember what hard work meant in his case. 'B' is the only actor since Garrick who made a fortune purely by management of his own theatre—I mean without the aid of provincial tours and visits to America." After a pause he continued: "But he has paid the penalty of leaving his best work as an actor undone."
Knighthood
It will ever be remembered that Henry Irving was the first actor to receive from his Sovereign the honour of State recognition: so placing his calling on a level with the rest, no more to be looked at askance, but recognised as leading to a share of the distinctions enjoyed by his fellow-men.
For a year or more before the end it was manifest to those who loved him that the sword had worn out the scabbard—it hung so listlessly by his side. This I strongly realised the last time he sat at our table, and was struck by his plaintive manner to my wife and to me. He then had a flat in Stratton Street, and left us at midnight, saying that he must be home before the lift ceased running or he would have to be carried upstairs.
In affectionate remembrance I close my tribute to Henry Irving. His remarkable career has taken its place in the history of his country, for he was one of the leaders of men who earned the privilege, given to but few, to become the property of the world.
It may also be truly said of Irving, as of one of the most distinguished of his predecessors: "He who has done a single thing that others never forget, and feel ennobled whenever they think of, need not regret his having been, and may throw aside this fleshly coil like any other worn-out part, grateful and contented."
Although I knew and loved them from their boyhood, I find it difficult to write of Irving's sons, being, as they were, so overpowered by the dominant personality of the father.
"H.B." and Laurence