IX

Naturally the years that went to the doing of this fine art work threw the two players together in a remarkable way, and made for an artistic comradeship which, so far as I know, has had no equal in their own branch of art. It began with Irving’s management at the end of 1878 and lasted as a working reality for twenty-four years. At the Prince’s Theatre, Bristol, on the last night of the Provincial Tour of 1902, December 13, she played for the last time under his management. Some months later, July 14, 1903, they played again in the same piece The Merchant of Venice at Drury Lane for the benefit of the Actors’ Association. This occasion has become a memorable one; it was the last time when they played together.

Their cause of separation was in no wise any form of disagreement. It was simply effluxion of time. To the last hour of Irving’s life the brotherly affection between them remained undimmed. Naturally when these two great powers who had worked together in the public eye for nearly a quarter of a century separated Curiosity began to search for causes, and her handmaid Gossip proclaimed what she alleged to be them. Let me tell the simple truth and so set the matter right:

In the course of their long artistic co-operation Irving had produced twenty-seven plays in which they had acted together. In nineteen of these Ellen Terry had played young parts, which naturally in the course of so many years became unsuitable. Indeed the first person to find fault with them was Ellen Terry herself, who, with her keen uncompromising critical faculty always awake to the purposes of her work, realised the wisdom of abandonment long before the public had ever such a thought. There remained, therefore, for their mutual use but eight plays of the répertoire—the finished work of so many years. Of these, two, Macbeth and Henry VIII., had been destroyed by fire, and the expense of reproducing them adequately for only occasional presentation was prohibitive. Two others, Coriolanus and Peter the Great, were not popular. Robespierre had had its day, a long run to the full extent of its excellence. There remained, therefore, but three: Charles I., The Merchant of Venice and Madame Sans-Gêne. The last of these had not proved a very great success in England; in America it had been done to death. For Charles I., by its very sadness and its dramatic scope, the audience could only be drawn from a limited class. So that there remained for practical purposes of continuous playing only The Merchant of Venice. There was one other play in which, though her part was a young one, Ellen Terry could always play, Much Ado About Nothing. But then Irving had grown too old for Benedick, and so for his purposes the play was past.

Ellen Terry did not care—and rightly enough—to play only once or twice a week as Portia—or in Nance Oldfield, given with The Bells—whilst there was so much excellent work, in all ways suitable to her personality and her years, to be done. Ordinarily one would not allude to these matters; ladies have by right no date. But when a lady’s Jubilee on the Stage has been a completed fact, to whose paramount success the whole world has rung, there is no need for misleading reticence.

The mere fact of their ceasing to play together did not bring to a close the long artistic comradeship of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. To the very last the kindly interest in each other’s work and the affection between them never ceased or even slackened. Whatever one did the other followed with eager anxiety. Right up to the hour of his death Irving was interested in all that she did. On that last sad evening, even whilst anxiety for the coming changes in his own work was looming over him, he spoke to me in his dressing-room about her health and her work. He spoke feelingly and sympathetically, and with confidence and affection; just as he had always done during the long period of their working together. He had written to her himself in the same vein. In his letter he had told her what a delight it would be to him to hear her Lecture on “The Letters in Shakespeare’s Plays.”