Ellen Terry and Her Sisters

by T. Edgar Pemberton

Go! fight, and conquer if ye can;

But if ye rise, or if ye fall,

Be each, pray God, a gentleman."

One of his most charming characteristics is that he has never forgotten an old friend. Videlicet: in the troubled days of 1856 there was playing at the Sunderland theatre a comedian named Sam Johnson. He never achieved great things, but he encouraged the anxious aspirant with kindly words, and in the after years he found himself an honoured member of the famous Lyceum company.

In these early days I did not see any performance by Henry Irving that could strictly be called impressive, and yet, to me, and to many others, there was something in his appearance and manner that was singularly attractive. We did not realise it then, but no doubt it was that subtle charm that, for want of a better name or definition, we call, in an actor, "magnetism." Added to this was his wonderful capacity for painstaking, which, according to Thomas Carlyle, is the very essence of genius. For some time he was a member of the well-conducted stock company of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh. The late Robert Wyndham, the genial and highly-esteemed proprietor of that historic playhouse, once told me that though in those early days he did not look upon Henry Irving as a particularly promising actor, he was always struck with the intense care that he took over any part entrusted to him, however small and insignificant it might be. "I am certain," he said, "that Henry Irving, without being in the least degree a fop, would have gone without his dinner in order to buy a 'button-hole,' or any such trivial adornment that he thought might add, even in the minutest degree, to the effect of the part in which he had to appear."

But for a long time the critics were painfully and, as I think, perversely against him. They either did not understand or waywardly resented the crack of the new whip. In 1865, at the Prince of Wales' Theatre, Birmingham, I saw him play Laertes to the Hamlet of Fechter. It was an original Laertes, and not modelled on the perfunctory reading of the part generally adopted by the ordinary provincial stock-actor of those days. To me, and I am sure to the large majority of the audience, it was a very interesting and entirely satisfying performance, but it was recorded by a local critic as "as bad as could be."

This is only one example of many little stabs that must have wounded him at the time. But I noticed that he never altered his methods, and in due season he convinced his would-be censors that he knew more than they did. From the time when he played Rawdon Scudamore at the St. James' Theatre, to the day when he made his first great triumph as Mathias at the Lyceum, it was my good fortune to see him in nearly all his London impersonations—as Harry Dornton in "The Road to Ruin," as Bob Gassitt in H. J. Byron's "Dearer than Life" (in which at the Queen's Theatre he shared honours with J. L. Toole and Lionel Brough), as Compton Kerr in Dion Boucicault's much discussed "Formosa" at Drury Lane, as Mr. Chevenix in H. J. Byron's "Uncle Dick's Darling" at the Gaiety, and in many other parts (one and all played with the touch of a master); until at the Vaudeville Theatre, as Digby Grant in James Albery's "Two Roses," he put the seal to his reputation. How some of us, who had faithfully followed him about from theatre to theatre, carefully watching and delighting in his growing reputation, rejoiced when we knew that he had conquered his opponents and become a king of the stage. How excited we were when in "The Bells" at the Lyceum he made the world ring with his praises.

It was when he was playing the part of Redburn in H. J. Byron's "Lancashire Lass" at the Queen's Theatre that he excited the admiration of Charles Dickens. Some years later the eldest son of the great novelist said in the course of a speech that his father had spoken with enthusiasm of "a young fellow in the play who sits at the table and is bullied by Sam Emery; his name is Henry Irving, and if that young man does not one day come out as a great actor, I know nothing of art."

Charles Dickens might have seen Henry Irving's graphic impersonation of Bill Sikes in a poor stage version of "Oliver Twist," in which Toole used to revel in the character of "The Artful Dodger," but he did not live to appreciate his life-like impersonation of Jingle. Sensitive as the author always was with regard to the interpretation of his creations in the theatre, that inimitable and realistic stage-portrait would surely have satisfied him.

Never, it may safely be said, has any actor been more popular than Henry Irving, not only with the public but with members of his own profession. That he deserves his popularity no one who has studied his remarkable career will deny; that he has won it "facing fearful odds" his most intimate friends and ardent admirers must candidly admit. Even to-day, when his fame is so firmly established, that he could, if it troubled him at all, laugh at adverse and hostile criticism, we find any number of self-constituted and ridiculously complacent censors ready to tell us that he won his spurs by a fluke, and that he cannot be regarded as a great actor. Men existed who said the same of Betterton, Garrick, and Kean. But how absurd it is to hear such opinions when we know that, thanks to him, the Lyceum Theatre has for years and years been the cherished resort of all that is intellectual in modern life.