Part 9

"The most important task assigned to me has now to be fulfilled, and I rise to propose what is called the toast of the evening with a mixture of pleasure and trepidation. I was going to say that I was placed in a novel but unprecedented position, by being asked to occupy the chair. But it is not so. There is nothing new in saying that there is nothing new. In _The Times_ of October 3rd, 1798, there is an advertisement of a dinner given to Mr. Fox {151} on the anniversary of his first election for Westminster: 'The Hon. Charles James Fox in the chair.' Here is a great precedent; and what was done by Charles James Fox in 1798 is only imitated in 1870 by Charles James Mathews. I venture to assert that a fitter man than myself to propose the health of our guest could not be found; for I venture to affirm that there is no man so well acquainted with the merits and demerits of that gifted individual as I am. I have been on intimate terms with him from his earliest youth. I have watched over his progress from childhood, have shared in his joys and griefs, and I assert boldly that there is not a man on earth for whom I entertain so sincere a regard and affection. Nor do I go too far in stating that he has an equal affection for me. He has come to me for advice in the most embarrassing circumstances, and what is still more remarkable, has always taken my advice in preference to that of any one else."

Needless to say the speech was interrupted at every point by laughter. Here is a characteristic letter I received from him during a winter which he was passing at Nice:

"It is hard to be obliged to come indoors on such a heavenly day to write a letter, and you will no doubt think it harder to be {152} obliged to read it. But friendship calls, and I sacrifice myself upon its altar. Do thou likewise.

"A very nice fellow has written a comedy. ('O Lord!' I hear you say.) All I ask of you is to read it, have the parts copied out and produce it, playing the principal part yourself--nothing more. Your new piece, of course, will not run more than two or three years, and then you will have this ready to fall back upon. The human mind naturally looks forward, and managers cannot make their arrangements too soon. If by any unforeseen and improbable chance you may not fancy the piece (such things have happened), please drop me a sweet little note, so charmingly worded that the unhappy author may swallow the gilded pill without difficulty. There is something in the piece--or I would not inflict it upon you. If well dressed, and carefully put upon the stage, it _might_ be effective.

"This is what is called writing just _one line_. You will of course say it 'wants cutting,' like the piece. So I will cut it--short.

"On reading this rigmarole, I find I have only used the word 'piece' four times. When you give my letter to the copyist, you can make the following alterations: For 'piece' (No. 1) read 'play.' For 'piece' (No. 2) read 'production.' For 'piece' (No. 3) read 'work.' For 'piece' (No. 4) read 'comedy.'"

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[Sidenote: "Our Boys"]

As an instance of his good judgment, on the first night of Byron's comedy, _Our Boys_, which had a phenomenal run, I was in the billiard room of the Garrick Club; a group of men came in who said they had been to see a new comedy at the Vaudeville Theatre. Various opinions were expressed, several present thinking the comedy would only have a moderate run, when Mathews, who was playing pool, said, quietly: "I don't agree with you fellows. I was there, and haven't laughed so heartily for a long while. Byron this time--he doesn't always--has taken his goods to exactly the right shop. That play is sure to run."

Charles Mathews was originally an architect of considerable skill and promise. Although he did not go upon the stage until he was thirty, he became one of the most beloved of the public's favourites. Mathews was distinctly an actor of manners: it was beyond his range to portray emotion. Later on, Charles Wyndham, at one time in his career, had some of his attributes, and so, very strongly, had Kendal. Nowadays, the actor who at times recalls him to me in the delicacy and refinement of his comedy is Gerald du Maurier.

Pictorially, Charles Mathews lives again in {154} the interesting series of stage portraits on the walls of the Garrick Club with which I was first familiar on the staircases when he lived in Pelham Crescent and Belgrave Road.

In a defence of himself and the view he took of his art, he once said: "It has been urged against me that I always play the same characters in the same way, and that ten years hence I should play the parts exactly as I play them now; this I take as a great compliment. It is a precision which has been aimed at by the models of my profession, which I am proud to follow, and shows, at least, that my acting, such as it is, is the result of art, and study, and not of mere accident."

[Sidenote: Charles Fechter]

I can also take the reader back to another link with the past and tell him briefly something of Charles Fechter, also of Victorian fame, whose name opens up a mine of memories. In our early married days we lived in St. John's Wood; Fechter was our neighbour and once our guest. I regard him as the finest actor of the romantic drama I have ever seen. The eye, the voice, the grace--all so needed--were at his command. He was the original of the lover in _La Dame aux Camélias_. I was present at his début in London, so long ago as 1860, when, as Ruy Blas, he forsook the French for the English stage, and I saw his first {155} performance of _The Corsican Brothers_, in which play he also acted originally in Paris. This was at the old Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street, which, a decade earlier, had been the scene of the Charles Kean Shakespearean revivals, most of which I saw in my 'teens. They were a great advance scenically on all that had been done by Macready, while their splendours and pageantry were in turn eclipsed first by Irving and afterwards by Tree; but genius has no part in plastering treacle on jam.

So vivid is my remembrance of Fechter's acting in _Hamlet_, which took the town by storm, that I can describe and illustrate much of it after a lapse of more than fifty years. He made the Prince a fair-haired, almost flaxen, Dane. Dickens said: "No innovation was ever accepted with so much favour by so many intellectuals as Fechter's Hamlet."

Quite recently I came across the impressions of Clement Scott, for many years one of the most prominent of our dramatic critics. He wrote: "Let me candidly own that I never quite understood _Hamlet_ until I saw Fechter play the Prince of Denmark. Phelps and Charles Kean impressed me with the play, but with Fechter, I loved the play, and was charmed as well as fascinated by the player." He {156} afterwards failed as Othello, while his performance of Iago was a triumph. It is a coincidence that Fechter should have received valuable help during his reign at the Lyceum from Kate Terry, whose younger sister, Ellen, in a similar position, did so much for Irving in the same theatre later on.

Fechter died in America in 1879. His last years were sad. But a decade or so before, the idol of the playgoing public, the compeer of all distinguished in the arts, the welcome guest of Charles Dickens at Gad's Hill, he died beyond the seas neglected, friendless, almost forgotten. Few actors at their zenith have held greater sway; few could compare with him in romantic parts; fewer still could claim to have stirred two nations of playgoers in different tongues; but such is the fleeting nature of our work, so faint the record of it left behind, that one might ask how many now can speak of Fechter as he really was, how few will even know his name? "Out, out, brief candle!" His talent was not confined to the stage, as a spirited bust of himself, his own work, now in the Garrick Club, will show.

[Sidenote: Salvini]

Later on, there came the eminent Italian actor, Salvini, whose visit to this country in 1875 may still be remembered by a dwindling few. He was the greatest tragedian I have {157} seen--he was never a tenor trying to sing a bass song. On the stage the Italians, to my mind, have the advantage over other actors in being beyond question the finest pantomimists in the world--they can say so much without speaking. Those two great actresses, Ristori and Duse, made masterly use of this gift.

At an afternoon performance of _Othello_ by Salvini, specially given at Drury Lane Theatre to the leading representatives of the English Stage, who chiefly composed the vast assemblage, I was present. Salvini's superbly delivered address to the Senate at once convinced the remarkable audience that no ordinary actor was before them--so calm, so dignified, so motionless--broken only by the portrayal of love as he caught sight of Desdemona entering on the scene. No ovation that I have taken part in equalled in enthusiasm the reception from his up-standing comrades at the close of the third act. His death scene I took exception to as being too shocking, too realistic, too like an animal dying in the shambles or on a battle-field. There I thought the Italian was surpassed by the Irishman, G. V. Brooke, the only actor I have seen who shared Salvini's natural gifts of voice and bearing, and who, but for his unfortunate intemperate habits, might have achieved lasting {158} fame upon the stage. His death in _Othello_ seemed to me as poetic in conception as it was pathetic in execution. Acting, although not speaking, the closing words, "Killing myself, to die upon a kiss," he staggered towards the bed, dying as he clutched the heavy curtains of it, which, giving way, fell upon his prostrate body as a kind of pall, disclosing, at the same time, the dead form of Desdemona. I agree with the great Frenchman who said: "Even when it assassinates, even when it strangles, tragedy remembers that it wears the crown and carries a sceptre."

In a little letter to my wife, Salvini wrote:

"CHÈRE MADAME,--Que vous êtes aimable! Je tiendrai votre joli cadeau comme un doux souvenir de votre sincère amitié. Ce sera un précieux talisman qui suivra le reste de ma carrière artistique, et qui, je suis sûr, m'apportera du bonheur."

[Sidenote: The perfect Hamlet]

In a conversation I had with Salvini, he modestly said his nationality and Southern blood made it comparatively easy for him to play the jealous Moor, while they stood in his way when he attempted the part of the Northern moody Dane, to which his robust physique was not suited. Salvini's performance, however, of _Hamlet_ has left me {159} memories almost as keen as those bequeathed by Fechter. In his arrangement of the play he acted the long speech of his father's ghost. You only heard, and hardly saw the Phantom. His scene with his mother was very fine: his management of the foils in the fight with Laertes as superb as it was original: his death the most touching I can recall: it was the "Kiss me, Hardy" of Nelson; he felt for Horatio's head and drew it down to his face as the spirit fled. To make a perfect Hamlet I should weld together ever to be remembered portions from the performances of Fechter, Salvini, Irving and Forbes-Robertson.

It is interesting to read what Macready, the greatest of the Victorian classic actors, said of this complex, fascinating character:

"It seems to me as if only now at fifty-one years of age, I thoroughly see and appreciate the artistic power of Shakespeare in this great human phenomenon: nor do any of the critics, Goethe, Schlegel, or Coleridge, present to me, in their elaborate remarks, the exquisite artistical effects which I see in this work, as long meditation, like long straining after light, gives the minutest portion of its excellence to my view."

From my childhood I have always looked {160} upon Macready as the head of my craft, and regarded him with the reverence a young curate would feel, I suppose, towards the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I regret that I never saw Macready act. I was not ten years old when he left the stage. I had the pleasure, long afterwards, to know his son, Jonathan, a clever surgeon, whose son, Major Macready, I now know; and I rejoice in the friendship of the tragedian's youngest child, General Sir Nevil Macready, whom I first saw at his father's funeral, when he was lifted from a mourning coach--a little fellow of about ten.

My wife was the last stage link with Macready. At one of the farewell performances he gave when he retired she appeared as the child apparition in _Macbeth_.

I am wandering from my departed guests, but may mention that in my boyhood I saw much of that fine actor, Samuel Phelps, who had so wide a range and to whom no character seemed to come amiss. I have always felt, however, that he was a disciple of Macready, to whom undoubtedly he owed much, and whom he followed as Richelieu, Werner and Virginius.

I may just say that, in my early career, I have acted with Phelps, as well as with Charles Kean and G. V. Brooke, and it may surprise {161} young actors of to-day to know that, in my provincial novitiate of four years and three months, I played no fewer than three hundred and forty-six different parts, with the advantage of repeating many of the Shakespearean characters with different leading actors.

[Sidenote: A tribute from Got]

I met and knew the great French comedian Edmond Got, for many years doyen of the _Comédie française_, in the far-off days of the Commune. The chief members of the troupe were here in exile for many months, when it was a privilege to entertain them. It was strange to learn that Got had served in the French cavalry before he went upon the stage. I append a gracious letter I received from him:

"Je veux vous remercier de la gracieuse hospitalité que vous avez bien voulu nous offrir, et vous prier de mettre aux pieds de Mme. Bancroft l'hommage de mon respect et de ma très sincère admiration.

"Quant à vous, monsieur, vous avez montré ce que peut obtenir de ses artistes un habile administrateur, doublé d'un parfait comédien, c'est-à-dire un ensemble que je souhaiterais rencontrer sur beaucoup de scènes parisiennes, et quelquefois sur la nôtre."

Two often welcomed guests were the brothers Coquelin, _ainé_ and _cadet_. The elder was a great actor, the younger a good actor and a {162} brilliant _diseur_. Coquelin, as well as his distinguished comrade, Mounet-Sully, also his eminent compatriot, Clemenceau, belonged to "The Vintage."

[Sidenote: Coquelin]

My friendship for Coquelin was one of many years. No stage-struck youth perhaps was more unlikely to succeed; but his teacher at the Conservatoire--the great Regnier--always argued that to make a really fine actor a man should have to fight against some physical drawback.

Coquelin was the most outspoken admirer of my wife's acting. He said: "her splendid vitality was contagious: her winning magnetism would fill the largest stage." If my saying so does not detract from this praise, I may add that he showered encomiums in a Parisian journal on my performance in _The Dead Heart_, when I acted with Irving. He once wrote to me:

"CHER BANCROFT,--Vous avez un excellent théâtre que vous dirigez en maître--et en maître artiste--que pouvez-vous désirer de plus? Ah, cette fois-ci, Bravo, et sans restriction. Cet orchestre qu'on ne voit pas, cette rampe presque imperceptible, cette absence du manteau d'Arlequin, ce cadre contournant la scène! Le spectateur est devant un tableau dont les personnages parlent et agissent. C'est {163} parfait pour l'illusion et pour le plaisir artistique. Votre ami,--C. COQUELIN."

I have a valued souvenir of him in his autographed portrait as Cyrano.

In his home his gaiety was delightful, while his love for his simple old mother was enshrined in his heart as it would seem always to be in that of a good Frenchman.

The farewell words of Jules Claretie, the accomplished director of the _Théâtre français_, spoken by his grave, were indeed a tribute: "Coquelin was more than a stage king, he was a king of the stage, and has left a luminous trail in the heaven of art."

I was one of the group of English actors who went to Paris with our sculptured offering to his genius which is enshrined in the historic foyer, where, at a luncheon, I had the temerity to make a short speech in indifferent French, urged to do so by Madame Bartet, a brilliant actress, who helped me to frame some of its sentences.

And his poor brother. It is painful to think of _cadet's_ bright nature being quenched by incurable melancholia: distressing indeed to imagine what his sufferings must have been before the evening when, in the middle of the play, he rushed through the stage door, clad {164} as an abbé, to be seen no more at his beloved _Comédie française_. In an amusing account published in a leading Paris paper of a visit to see Robertson's comedy, _School_, he wrote:

"Les décors sont executés de main de maître. C'est le triomphe de l'exactitude. Les comédiens sont excellents. M. Bancroft joue dans la pièce un rôle de grand gommeux à monocle, et rien n'égale son élégance et sa stupidité. Madame Bancroft joue la pensionnaire gaie: cette petite femme est un mélange d'Alphonsine et de Chaumont--gaie, pimpante, mordante et d'une adresse! ... C'est la _great attraction_ du Théâtre de Haymarket.

"Après je reviens rapidement en cab ("hansom") à mon hôtel, et je me demande en chemin pourquoi les cabs vont si vite? C'est tout simple; les cabs vont très vite parce que les cochers les poussent derrière."

No less an authority than David Garrick once said to an ambitious stage aspirant who sought his advice, that he might humbug the public in tragedy, but warned him not to try to do so in comedy, for that was a serious thing. This opinion was borne out by Voltaire, who, in his anxiety not to imperil the success he had achieved in tragedy, when he wrote his first comedy did so anonymously.

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[Sidenote: Joseph Jefferson]

Having pleasant memories of two distinguished American actors--one a comedian, the other a tragedian--I will follow the high opinion held by the great Englishman of Thalia's children, and write first of Joseph Jefferson, incomparably the finest actor who has come to us from America, and who in his day made a powerful impression and won enduring fame by his performance of _Rip Van Winkle_ and his new rendering of Bob Acres in _The Rivals_, which he admitted was not free from liberties with Sheridan. I can think of no actor who has been more beloved by audiences in his native land. I must, of course, use that expression, although his grandfather, or perhaps great-grandfather, was British, and an actor under David Garrick. He was, as it were, cradled on the stage.

Jefferson might also have made fame and money by his brush. His work was worthily hung upon the walls of the Royal Academy. I cherish two of his paintings: one, a gift to my wife in remembrance of a happy day we all spent together on the Thames, a charming example of one of its many backwaters near Cookham; the other--a purchase--of Shakespeare's church at Stratford-on-Avon--both reminiscent of Corot. The former always suggests to me the misty Hebrides and an {166} appropriate background for the "Island that liked to be visited," in Barrie's _Mary Rose_.

Gazing, I remember, at the old Maidenhead bridge at sunset, Jefferson murmured: "What a lovely place is this England of yours! How I should just like to lift it in my arms and carry it right away."

When Edwin Booth, the American tragedian, came over to play in London, Millais gave him a dinner, and invited the leading players of the day to make his acquaintance. He was a fine actor; especially so, I thought, in _The Fool's Revenge_ and _Richelieu_. When he drew the "awful circle" round the shrinking form of the young heroine and said to the villain of the play: "Set but a foot within that holy ground and on thy head--yea, though it wore a crown--I launch the curse of Rome!" you felt you were in the presence of high dramatic art. The performance at the Lyceum Theatre, in which he and Irving alternated the parts of _Othello_ and _Iago_, created great interest. Booth was the better Othello; Irving the more attractive and less conventional Iago.

Booth would now and then dine with us on a Sunday evening--to help him bear a sorrow which is, at such times, the actor's lot, and which an extract from a letter to a close friend will best explain:

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"I am tired in body and brain. The poor girl is passing away from us. For weeks she has been failing rapidly; and the doctors tell me that she is dying. You can imagine my condition: acting at random every evening, and nursing a half-insane, dying wife all day, and all night too, for that matter. I am scarce sane myself. I scribble this in haste at two in the morning, for I know not when I will have a chance to write sensibly again."

The room in which Edwin Booth died--which I have visited--at the Players' Club in Grammercy Park, New York, founded by himself, and where he had been so beloved, was left untouched after he had passed away, and, I understand, so remains.

When I was a lad of seventeen I went for a trip to New York, and during my stay I chanced to see Edward Askew Sothern--to give him his full name--play his world-renowned character, _Lord Dundreary_, for the first time in his life. Some years later, when we met upon the stage, I gave him my copy of the original playbill, which, of course, had great interest for him. The eccentric nobleman drew all playgoers for years in England as well as in America. At the time I mention I saw Sothern and Jefferson act together in a round of old English comedies. As young men they {168} made giant successes in individual parts--_Dundreary_ and _Rip Van Winkle_--the one a masterpiece of caricature, the other a veritable old Dutch master.

Another of Sothern's chief parts, in those days, was _David Garrick_, of which he was the original representative, long before the play was taken over and prominently associated with the career of Charles Wyndham.