I

The first time I saw Eugene Aram, June 6, 1879, I was much struck with one fact—amongst many—which afforded a real lesson in the art of acting in all its phases—philosophy, effect, value and method. It is that of the effect, intellectual as well as emotional, of a lightning-like change in the actor’s manner. In this play, the Yorkshire schoolmaster, who under the stress of violent emotion wrought by wrong to the woman he loved, has avoided the danger of discovery and has for a long time remained in outward peace in the house of Parson Meadows, the Vicar of Knaresborough. The evil genius of his early day, Richard Houseman, who alone knew of his crime, had succeeded in “tracking” him down; and now, being in desperate straits, tried to blackmail him. Knowing his man, however, he will not meet him. Such a one as Houseman is a veritable “daughter of the horseleech”; the giving is each time a firmer ground for further chantage. Houseman, grown desperate, threatens him that he will expose him to Meadows; and Eugene Aram, who has loved in secret the Vicar’s daughter Ruth, seeing all his cherished hopes of happiness shattered, grows more desperate still. All the murderous potentialities which have already manifested themselves wake to new life in the “climbing” passion of the moment—the hysterica passio of King Lear. As Irving played it, the hunted man at bay was transformed from his gentleness to a ravening tiger; he looked the spirit of murder incarnate as he answered threat by threat. Just at that moment the door opened and in walked Ruth Meadows, bright and cheery as a ray of spring sunshine. In a second—less than a second, for the change was like lightning—the sentence begun in one way went on in another without a quaver or pause. The mind and powers of the remorse-haunted man who had for weary years trained himself for just such an emergency worked true. Unfailingly a sudden and marked burst of applause rewarded on each occasion this remarkable artistic tour de force.