CHRISTMAS BOOK SUPPLEMENT
The Story of a Great Actor
THERE is a legend, more firmly upheld by actors than other people, that no human being's renown is so fleeting as that of the player. On the day he dies, his work dies, too. The painter, the writer, the composer and the sculptor can not only be enjoyed by posterity, but may rise in repute. But who wishes to be told about mimes and mummers no longer alive to be seen at work ? The actor is less durable, the argument runs,, than any other interpreter of the arts. So convinced are players that this is the case that they use it as Justification for the excessive adulation sorde of them receive in their lifetime. It is their compensation for being so soon snuffed out.
But is the legend true ? Are great actors and actresses more promptly, forgotten than Prime Ministers ? Sarah Siddons and David Garrick are still known, but how many can tell off-hand who Addington was ? I daresay that Irving, Ellen Terry, Coquelin, Bernhardt and Duse are more widely known than, say, Lord Salis- bury, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Bonar Law. Henry Irving could not walk down any street without attracting attention though he dressed as demurely as Mr. Anthony Eden.
John Henry Brodribb, who changed his name to Henry Irving, because, in his youth, a man who became an actor was considered to have brought shame upon his family, and a woman who went on the stage was thought to be irredeemably damned, was born in the Somerset village of Keinton Mandeville, not far from Glastonbury : In the region, that is to say, of religion and romance, by both of which he was affected through his life. Queen Victoria had ascended the throne about a year before the date of his birth: February 6, 1838. He came of a long line of West Country farmers, mingling the diverse elements of Cornwall and Devonshire in his blood. His father, Samuel Brodribb, however, had deserted the land to become a travelling salesman in the general store of Keinton Mandeville. This was an easy-going, unambitious man, who took the world very lightly and aspired to nothing better than a small corner where he could be comfortable. During his travels in Corn- wall he met a handsome girl, Mary Behenna, one of the three lovely daughters of a Cornish farmer who had taken to tippling and now lived precariously in St. Ives. These girls were gay and devout: ardent Methodists who laughed and looked happy. The rtlost envious of plain women could find no fault in them except that they were beautiful. Brodribb married Mary Behenna whose only
child was our actor. The decline in. fortune of the village store caused the Brodribbs to remove to Bristol, but Mary was determined that her son should not breathe polluted air, so she sen't him to live with her sister at Halsetown, outside St. Ives, where he remained until he was eleven: an odd, gangling lad, with long, spindly, rather clumsy legs ; deep, brilliant eyes ; very dark hair ;• and an embarrass- ing stammer. He was a nervous and romantic boy, with moods as mingled as his mother's.
The story of how this poor boy, without influence of any sort, and heavily afflicted by a stammer, overcame all his troubles aqd rose to be the most influential actor-manager in his country and one of the most notable actors in the world is told in a brilliant biography by his grandson* who has turned what might have been a perfunc- tory piece of pious duty into an' inspiring religious rite. Irving's life was not easy. It was very hard. Having, as he thought, cured his stammer, he went on to the stage, to the distress of his mother whose piety was steadily becoming more austere, as is often the way with women who marry easy-going men ; but when he made his first entry in his most important part, he was horrified to find that his stammer had returned and that he was unable to utter a single word. He fled the dreadful scene, while an outraged gallery booed and hissed him. He was a flat failure. His long legs caused him to move about the stage like a clumsy colt. Ten years after he had become an actor, during which time he had played 400 parts of every sort and acquired an extraordinary knowledge of stage tech- nique, he spent a penniless Christmas in Liverpool, wondering whether he had not better resume his clerking. Misfortune followed him even when he became successful. The young actress he had loved deeply, and never forgot, died when they were about to be married ; and when he married a young Woman of the upper middle- class, she developed a jealousy of his growing renown which made it impossible for him to live with her. Her love was too possessive : she could not share him with the public. Once, gazing at his lean body in a mirror in his dressing-room, he remarked that "one never entirely made up for not having enough to eat in one's youth." His junior by eighteen years, Bernard Shaw, who had endured hardship as severe as his and for as long a time, said much the same. "A man who has been poor in his childhood, never gets the chill of poverty out of his blood." It is part of the mournful history of these two men that they, who should have been colleagues, became irreconcilable opponents.
Yet Shaw was right about Irving, though he was tactlessly right. It was not contempt which made him rail at his elder, but admira- tion: He wished him to do bigger and more diverse work, and to lead the European drama to the Lyceum with all the power he possessed. Shaw had seen Irving in Dublin in his boyhood and had declared that he was his man. The whole of the correspondence with Ellen Terry was a subtle effort to win Irving to Shaw's side. When the attempt failed, the correspondence ceased. Who could have acted Peer Gynt better than Irving ? Shaw cried. The part of the Bishop in The Pretenders was a gift from God, but Irving would not accept it. He was offended by the offer of Captain Brassbound's Conversion, believing that Shaw, who, he complained, had no respect for eminence, wished to expose him to derision in the last act of that comedy where the bandit is dressed up in a silk hat and a frock coat! But Shaw remembered what Irving had forgotten, what a superb comedian the actor was. Had he not played Jingle ? If Irving could have taken hold of Shaw and Gordon Craig, he could have formed a triumvirate of actor, author and stage-designer that would have made the Lyceum the first theatre in the world, as in some respects it was. But a perverse fate prevented this most desirable consummation.
Irving's detractors sometimes suggest that his style of acting would seem absurd today. The same has been said about Mrs. Siddons and Garrick. These detractors forget that a man of genius, which Irving was, can use the changes of time for his purpose. Is it suggested that Nelson, who was a genius under sail, would have been a fool under steam ? We have had to wait a long while for an authoritative book on Irving, but his grandson has now supplied it ; and all who may wish to comment on this great actor in the future will have to consult this book, and need not consult * Henry Irving: The Actor and His World. By Laurence Irving.
(Faber. 50s.) •
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