XLIX E. ONSLOW FORD, R.A.

One morning—it was 12th January 1880—I got a note from Irving sent down by cab from his rooms. In it he said:

“There is a certain Mr. Onslow Ford coming to the theatre this morning. Please see him for me and give him some fatherly or brotherly advice.”

I left word with the hall-keeper to send for me whenever the gentleman came. I did not know who he was or what he wanted: but I did know what “fatherly or brotherly advice” meant. At that period of his life the demands made on Irving’s time were fearful. There was no end to them; no limit to the range of their wants. And I was the “fatherly adviser” in such cases.

A little after noon I was sent for; the expected stranger had arrived. In those days the stage door in Exeter Street was very small and absolutely inconvenient. There was comfortable room for Sergeant Barry, the hall-keeper, who was a fine, big, bulky man; two in the room crowded it. Barry waited outside and I went in. The stranger was a young man of medium height, thin, dark haired. His hair rose back from his forehead without parting of any kind, in the way which we in those days associated in our minds with French artists. His face was pale, a little sallow, fine in profile and moulding; a nose of distinction with sensitive nostrils. He had a small beard and moustache. His eyes were dark and concentrated—distinctly “seeing” eyes. My heart warmed to him at once. He was young and earnest and fine; I knew at a glance that he was an artist, and with a future. Still I had to be on guard. One of my functions at the theatre, as I had come to know after a year of exceedingly arduous work, was to act as a barrier. I was “the Spirit that Denies!” In fact I had to be. No one likes to say “no!”—a very few are constitutionally able to. I had set myself to help Irving in his work and this was one of the best ways I could help him. He recognised gratefully the utility of the service, and as he trusted absolutely in my discretion. I gradually fell into the habit of using my own decision in the great majority of cases.

When Mr. Onslow Ford told me that he wished to make a statuette of Henry Irving as Hamlet I felt that the time for “advice” had come, and began to pave the way for a non possumus, strong in intention though gentle in expression. The young sculptor, however, had thought the matter all over for himself. He knew the demands on Irving’s time and how vastly difficult it would be to get sittings so many and so long as would be required for the work he had projected. I listened of course and thought better of him and his chance in that he knew his difficulties at the beginning.

Presently he put his hand in his pocket and took out something rolled in paper—a parcel about as big as a pork pie. When he had unrolled it he held up a rough clay model of a seated figure.

“This,” said he, “is something of the idea. I have been several times in the front row of the stalls watching as closely as I could. One cannot well model clay in the stalls of a theatre. But I did this after the first time, and I have had it with me on each other occasion. I compared it on such opportunities as I had—you do keep the Lyceum dark all but the stage; and I think I can see my way. I don’t want to waste Irving’s time or my own opportunities if I am so fortunate as to get sittings!”

That was the sort of artist that needed none of my “advice”—fatherly, brotherly, or otherwise. My mind was already made up.

“Would you mind waiting here a while?” I asked. In those early days we had only the one office and no waiting-room except the stage. He waited gladly, whilst I went back to the office. Irving had by this time arrived. I told him I had seen Mr. Ford.

“I hope you put it nicely to him that I can’t possibly give him sittings,” he said.

“That is why I came to see if you had arrived.”

“How do you mean,” he asked again. So I said:

“I think you had better see him, and if you think as I do you will give him sittings!”

“Oh, my dear fellow, I can’t. I am really too pressed with work.”

“Well, see him any way!” I said; “I have asked him to wait on purpose.” He looked at me keenly for an instant as though I had somehow “gone back” on him. Then he smiled:

“All right. I’ll see him now!”

I brought Onslow Ford. When the two men met, Irving did share my opinion. He did give sittings for a bronze statuette. The result was so fine that he gave quite another series of sittings for him to do the life-size marble statue of “Irving as Hamlet” now in the Library of the London Guildhall. It is a magnificent work, and will perhaps best of all his works perpetuate the memory of the great Sculptor who died all too young.

Irving gave many sittings for the statue. With the experience of his first work Onslow Ford could begin with knowledge of the face so necessary in portrait art. I often went with him and it was an intense pleasure to see Onslow Ford’s fine hands at work. They seemed like living things working as though they had their own brains and initiation.

I was even able to be of some little assistance. I knew Irving’s face so well from seeing it so perpetually under almost all possible phases of emotion that I could notice any error of effect if not of measurement. Often either Irving or Onslow Ford would ask me and I would give my opinion. For instance:

“I think the right jowl is not right!” The sculptor examined it thoughtfully for quite a while. Then he said suddenly:

“Quite right! but not in that way. I see what it is!” and he proceeded to add to the left of the forehead.

After all, effect is comparative; this is one of the great principles of art!

On 31st March 1906, one of the Academy view days of those not yet Royal Academicians, I went to Onslow Ford’s old studio in Acacia Road, now in possession of his son, Wolfram the painter, to see his portrait of his beautiful young wife, the daughter of George Henschel. Whilst we were talking of old days he unearthed treasures which I did not know existed: casts from life of Henry Irving’s hands.

No other such relics of the actor exist; and these are of supreme interest. Irving had the finest man’s hands I have ever seen. Later on he sent me a cast of one of them in bronze; a rare and beautiful thing which I shall always value. Size and shape, proportion and articulation were all alike beautiful and distinguished and distinctive. It would be hard to mistake them for those of any other man. With them he could speak. It was not possible to doubt the meaning which he intended to convey. With such models to work on a few lines of pencil or brush made for the actor an enlightening identity of character. The weakness of Charles I., which not all the skill of Vandyck could hide; the vulture grip of Shylock; the fossilised age of Gregory Brewster; the asceticism of Becket.

What, after the face, can compare with the hand for character, or intention, or illustration. It can be an index to the working of the mind.