“How do you do, Mr. Jenkins—or perhaps I should ask, how do you shine?”
“With the mild effulgence of the glow-worm,” is the answer of Our Mr. Jenkins.
“We are all worms,” interpolates his wife.
“Yes, my dear; but we don’t all glow,” was the answer, given by Honey with a half-deprecatory, half exultant expression that was simply inimitable and delightful.
But the Digby Grand of Irving was, after all said and done, the gem of the production. In all his after-life he never surpassed it. Only once did he equal it. I have seen Irving in every impersonation he gave in London, and I shall always hold that he reached high-water mark with the selfish swell of “Two Roses,” and that he touched that mark for the second time with Matthias in “The Bells.”
Albery’s “Two Roses” was succeeded by a comedy from the same author called “Apple-Blossoms.” It was not a success. Nor, indeed, did Albery ever produce another play to equal his first. I came to know him well; collaborated with him in a small way; and visited him when he was living at Evans’s Hotel, and after he had furnished some pleasant chambers in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury. He was an admirable talker, a splendid listener, and possessed a pretty turn for unexpected epigram. The Suffragette existed in those remote days. But she practised under another name. And the questions of Woman’s Rights and Female Emancipation were argued as warmly then as now. The subject came up on one occasion at Albery’s rooms. His visitors were taking sides. One strong believer in tradition took his stand on Genesis, and asserted woman’s inferiority on Scriptural grounds.
“Woman was made out of the rib of Man,” he declared.
“And was thus a mere side-issue of creation,” suggested Albery.
Albery ended sadly. He became addicted to a habit which ruined a good many of the best fellows of a convivial period. His great gifts were wasted entirely in conversational sallies, and among boon companions at the Savage Club and other Bohemian resorts. He had married a lady who subsequently “went on the stage,” and greatly succeeded in her vocation, becoming one of the most popular actresses of her time and of our own. A story of the days of Albery’s decadence has come to me. Some time before his lamented death, and in a contrite mood, he called his wife to his bedside, and said:
“Ah, my dear, you should have married a different man!”