I told him he looked thin and ill, but rested.
"Rested! I should think so. I have plenty of time to rest. They tell me I shall be here eight weeks. Of course I shan't, but still—It was that rug in front of the door. I tripped over it. A commercial traveller picked me up—a kind fellow, but damn him, he wouldn't leave me afterwards—wanted to talk to me all night."
I remembered his having said this, when I was told by his servant, Walter Collinson, that on the night of his death at Bradford he stumbled over the rug when he walked into the hotel corridor.
We fell to talking about work. He said he hoped that I had a good manager ... agreed very heartily with me about Frohman, saying he was always so fair—more than fair.
"What a wonderful life you've had, haven't you?" I exclaimed, thinking of it all in a flash.
"Oh, yes," he said quietly, ... "a wonderful life—of work."
Copyright by the London Stereoscopic Co.
HENRY IRVING AS MATTHIAS IN "THE BELLS"
IRVING GAVE HIS LAST PERFORMANCE OF "THE BELLS" AT BRADFORD, ON OCTOBER 12, 1905, THE NIGHT BEFORE HIS DEATH