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A short season of six weeks had been arranged for Drury Lane. This began on 29th April. There were three weeks of Becket and two of The Merchant of Venice. In the last week were four nights of Waterloo and Becket, the last performance of this bill being the last night of the season, and two nights of Louis XI. All went well for the six weeks. He was none the worse for the effort.

The last night of the season, June 10, 1905, was one never to be forgotten by any one who was present. It almost seemed as if the public had some precognition that it was the last time they would see Irving play. The house was crowded in every part—an enormous audience, the biggest Irving ever played to in London—and full of wild enthusiasm. An inspiring audience! Irving felt it and played magnificently; he never played better in his life. The moment of his entrance was the signal for a roar of welcome, prolonged to an extraordinary degree. Something of the same kind marked the close of each act. At the end the audience simply went mad. It was a scene to be present at once in a lifetime. The calls were innumerable. Time after time the curtain had to be raised to ever the same wild roar. It was marvellous how the strength of the audience held out so long.

It had been arranged that on that night at the close of the play the presentation of a Loving Cup by the workmen of all the theatres throughout the kingdom should take place on the stage. The representatives of the various theatres assembled in due course, about a hundred of them. As there were to be some speeches, a moment of quiet was necessary; we tried turning down the lights in the theatre, for still the audience kept cheering. It never ceased—that prolonged insistent note of perpetual renewals which once heard has a place in memory. After a while we did a thing I never saw done before: the lights were turned quite out. But still the audience remained cheering through the black darkness of the house.

HENRY IRVING AND JOHN HARE

The last photograph of Henry Irving taken in John Hare’s garden at Overstrand by Miss Hare, 1905

Irving with his usual discernment and courtesy recognised the right thing to do. He ordered the curtain to go up once more; and stepping in front of the stage said, so soon as the wild roar of renewed strength, stilled on purpose, would allow him:

“Ladies and gentlemen,—We have a little ceremony of our own to take place on the stage to-night. I think, however, it will be the mind of all my friends on the stage that you should join in our little ceremony. So with your permission we will go on with it.”

Another short sharp cheer and then sudden stillness.

The presentation was made in due form and then—the curtain still remaining up, for there was to be no more formal barrier that night—the audience, cheering all the time, melted away.

It was a worthy finish to a lifetime of loving appreciation of the art work of a great man.

This was Irving’s last regular London performance, and with the exception of his playing Waterloo for the benefit of his old friend, Lionel Brough, at His Majesty’s Theatre on 15th June, the last time he ever appeared in London.