From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley
IRVING'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
His death as Matthias—the death of a strong, robust man—was different from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die—he imagined death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upwards, his face grow gray, his limbs cold.
No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor's warning was disregarded, and Henry played "The Bells" at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his last death as Matthias, he was dead.
What a heroic thing was that last performance of Becket which came between! I am told by those who were in the company at the time that he was obviously suffering and dazed this last night of life. But he went through it all as usual. All that he had done for years, he did faithfully for the last time.
Yes, I know it seems sad to the ordinary mind that he should have died in the entrance to an hotel in a country town, with no friend, no relation near him; only his faithful and devoted servant, Walter Collinson, whom—as was not his usual custom—he had asked to drive back to the hotel with him that night, was there. Do I not feel the tragedy of the beautiful body, for so many years the house of a thousand souls, being laid out in death by hands faithful and devoted enough, but not the hands of his kindred either in blood or in sympathy?...
I do feel it, yet I know it was more appropriate to such a man than the deathbed where friends and relations weep. Henry Irving belonged to England, not to a family. England showed that she knew it when she buried him in Westminster Abbey.
Years before I had discussed, half in joke, the possibility of this honour. I remember his saying to me with great simplicity, when I asked him what he expected of the public after his death: "I should like them to do their duty by me. And they will—they will!"
There was not a touch of arrogance in this, just as I hope there was no touch of heartlessness in me because my chief thought during the funeral in Westminster Abbey was: "How Henry would have liked it!" The right note was struck, as I think was not the case at Tennyson's funeral thirteen years earlier.
"Tennyson is buried to-day in Westminster Abbey," I wrote in my diary October 12th, 1892. "His majestic life and death spoke of him better than the service.... The music was poor and dull and weak while he was strong. The triumphant should have been the sentiment expressed. Faces one knew everywhere. Lord Salisbury looked fine. His massive head and sad eyes were remarkable. No face there, however, looked anything by the side of Henry's.... He looked very pale and slim and wonderful!"