Complete Works of Bram Stoker (677 page)

III

As we know, the production of Coriolanus did not take place till twenty-two years later; but all through 188o and 1881 Alma-Tadema had the matter in hand. In those years the high policy of his theatre management was a good deal changed. When Irving had experience of Ellen Terry’s remarkable powers and gifts he wisely determined to devote to them, so far as was possible, the remaining years of her youth. She had now been twenty-five years on the stage; and though she began in her very babyhood  —  at eight years old  —  the flight of time has to be considered, for the future if not for the past. She was now thirty-three years of age; in the very height of her beauty and charm, and to all seeming still in her girlhood. He therefore arranged Romeo and Juliet as the next Shakespearean production. This was followed in time by Much Ado about Nothing; Twelfth Night, Olivia, Faust  —    —  all plays that showed her in her brightness and pathos; and so Coriolanus was kept postponed. But well into 1881 it was still being worked on, and in those days I had many visits to the studio of Alma-Tadema. The house he then occupied was Townshend House, North Gate, Regent’s Park, which he had so exquisitely fitted up after his previous home had been almost entirely destroyed by the blowing up of a barge carrying explosives on the Regent’s Canal.

I have never forgotten  —  no one who had seen it could ever forget  —  that wonderful house; its windows of hammered bronze in Roman design, with panes of onyx and marble cut so thin as to be translucent, almost transparent; its dado rail of the Elgin marbles reproduced in petto in carved ivory; its tesselated floors, its wood carvings, its golden alcoves, its Chinese draperies, its Japanese bronzes. All the exquisite adornment and things of beauty with which a great and successful artist can surround himself in the many years of devotion to his art. It is surely no wonder that Alma-Tadema has prospered. Even with a lesser measure of genius than his, labour and application and such devotion to work could not but achieve success in so marked a degree.

IV

Let me give an instance of his thoroughness in his art work.

Once when in his studio I saw him occupied on a beautiful piece of painting, a shrub with a myriad of branches laden with berries and but few leaves, through which was seen the detail of the architecture of the marble building beyond. The picture was then almost finished. The next time I came I found him still hard at work on the same painting; but it was not nearly so far advanced. Dissatisfied with the total effect, he had painted out the entire background and was engaged on a new and quite different one. The labour involved in this stupendous change almost made me shudder. It needs but a small amount of thought to understand the infinite care and delicacy of touch to complete an elaborate architectural drawing between the gaps of those hundreds of spreading twigs.

V

This devotion to his art is often one of the touchstones of the success of an artist in any medium; the actor, or the singer, or the musician as well as the worker in any of the plastic arts.

I remember Irving telling me of a conversation he had with the late W. H. Vanderbilt when, after lunch in his own house in Fifth Avenue, the great millionaire took him round his beautiful picture gallery. He was pointing out the portrait of himself finished not long before by Meissonier, and gave many details of how the great painter did his work and the extraordinary care which he took. Vanderbilt used to give long sittings, and Meissonier, to aid the tedium of his posing, had mirrors fitted up in such a way that he could see the work being executed. “ Do you know,” the millionaire concluded, “ that sometimes after a long sitting he would take his cloth and wipe out everything he had done in the day’s work. And I calculated roughly that every touch of his brush cost me five dollars!”

VI

When in 1896 Irving produced Cymbeline, Alma-Tadema undertook to design and supervise the picturesque side; or, as it was by his wish announced in the programme: “ kindly acted as adviser in the production of the play.”

He chose a time of England when architecture expressed itself mainly in wood; natural enough when it was a country of forest. It is not a play allowing of much display of fine dresses, and Irving never under any circumstances wished a play to be unsuitably mounted. The opportunities of picturesque effect came, in this instance, in beautiful scenery.

CHAPTER L

SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, BART.

“King Arthur “  —  The Painter’s thought  —  His illustrative stories from child life

I

IT was to Irving an intense pleasure to work with Sir Edward Burne-J ones. The painter seemed to bring to whatever he had in hand a sort of concentration of all his great gifts, and to apply them with unsparing purpose and energy. His energy was of that kind which seems to accomplish without strenuous effort; after all it is the waste of force and not its use which proclaims itself in the doing. This man had such mighty gifts that in his work there was no waste; all the creations of his teeming brain were so fine in themselves that they simply stood ready for artistic use. His imagination working out through perfected art peopled a whole world of its own and filled that world around them with beautiful things. This world had been opened to Irving as to the rest of the world who admired it. But when the player came adventuring into it, the painter displayed to him a vast of hidden treasures. There was simply no end to his imaginative ideas, his artistic efforts, his working into material beauty the thoughts which flitted through his mind. As a colourist he was supreme, and he could use colour as a medium of conveying ideas to the same effect as others used form. His own power of dealing with the beauties of form was supreme.

To work with such an artist was to Irving a real joy. He simply revelled in the task. Every time they met it was to him a fresh stimulation. Burne-J ones, too, seemed to be stimulated; the stage had always been to him a fairyland of its own, but he had not had artistic dealings with it. Now he entered it with full power to let himself run free. The play which he undertook for Irving, King Arthur, was of the period which he had made his own: that mystic time when life had single purposes and the noblest prevailed the most; when beauty was a symbol of inner worth; when love in some dainty as well as holy form showed that even flesh, which was God’s handiwork, was not base.

In the working out of the play each day saw some new evidence of the painter’s thought; the roughest sketch given as a direction or a light to scene painter or property maker or costumier was in itself a thing of beauty. I veritably believe that Irving was sorry when the production of the play was complete. He so enjoyed the creative process that the completion was a lesser good.

Regarding human nature, which was Irving’s own especial study, Burne-J ones had a mind tuned to the same key as his own. To them both the things which were basic and typal were closest. The varieties of mankind were of lesser importance than the species. The individual was the particular method and opportunity of conveyance of an idea; %and, as such, was of original importance. To each of the two great artists such individual grew in his mind, and ever grew; till in the end, on canvas or before the footlights, the being lived.

II

It would be hard to better illustrate the mental attitude of both to man and type and individual than by some of the stories which Burne-Jones loved to tell and Irving to hear. The painter had an endless collection of stories of all sorts; but those relating to children seemed closest to his heart. In our meetings on the stage or at supper in the Beefsteak Room, or on those delightful Sunday afternoons when he allowed a friend to stroll with him round his studio, there was always some little tale breathing the very essence of human nature.

I remember once when he told us an incident in the life of his daughter, who was then a most beautiful girl and is now a most beautiful woman, Mrs. J. W. Mackail. When she was quite a little girl, she came home from school one day and with thoughtful eyes and puckered brows asked her mother:

“Mother, can you tell me why it is that whenever I see a little boy crying in the street I always want to kiss him; and when I see a little girl crying I want to slap her?”

III

Another story was of a little boy, one of a large family. This little chap on one occasion asked to be allowed to go to bed at the children’s tea time, a circumstance so unique as to puzzle the domestic authorities. The mother refused, but the child whimpered and persevered  —  and succeeded. The father was presently in his study at the back of the house looking out on the garden when he saw the child in his little night-shirt come secretly down the steps and steal to a corner of the garden behind some shrubs. He had a garden fork in his hand. After a lapse of some minutes he came out again and stole quietly upstairs. The father’s curiosity was aroused, and he too went behind the shrubs to see what had happened. He found some freshly turned earth, and began to investigate. Some few inches down was a closed envelope which the child had buried. On opening it he found a lucifer match and a slip of paper on which was written in pencil in a sprawling hand:

“DEAR DEVIL,  —  Please take away Aunt Julia.”

IV

Another story related to a little baby child, the first in the household. There was a dinner party, and the child, curious as to what was going on, lay awake with torturing thoughts. At last, when a favourable opportunity came through the nurse’s absence, she got quietly from her cot and stole downstairs just as she was. The dining-room door was ajar, and before the agonised nurse could effect a capture she had slipped into the room. There she was, of course, made much of. She was taken in turn on each one’s knees and kissed. Mother frowned, of course, but father gave her a grape and a wee drop of wine and water. Then she was kissed again and taken to the waiting nurse. Safe in the nursery her guardian berated her:

“Oh, Miss Angy, this is very dreadful. Going down to the dining-room!  —  And in your nighty!- And before strangers!  —  Before gentlemen! You must never let any gentleman see you in your nighty!  —  Never Never! Never! Never I That is Wicked!  —  Awful! “ And so on.

A few nights afterwards the father, when going from his dressing-room for dinner, went into the nursery to say another “ good-night “ to baby. When he went in she was saying her prayers at nurse’s knee, in long night-robe and with folded hands like the picture of the Infant Samuel. Hearing the footstep she turned her head round, and on catching sight of her father jumped up crying: “ Nau’ty  —  nauity  —  nau’ty! “ and ran behind a screen. The father looked at the nurse puzzled:

“What is it, nurse?”

“I don’t know, sir! I haven’t the faintest idea! “ she answered, equally puzzled.

“I’ll wait a few minutes and see,” he said, as he sat down. Half a minute later the little tot ran from behind the screen, quite naked, and running over to him threw herself on his knee. She snuggled in close to him with her arms round his neck, and putting her little rosebud of a mouth close to his ear whispered wooingly:

“Pap-pa, me dood girl now!”

CHAPTER LI

EDWIN A. ABBEY, R.A.

“RichardII.”  —  ” The Kinsmen”  —  Artistic collaboration  —  Medireval life  —  The character of Richard

I

WHEN Irving was having the enforced rest consequent to the accident to his knee in December 1896, he made up his mind that his next Shakespearean production should be Richard II. For a long time he had had it in view and already formed his opinion as to what the leading features of such a production as was necessary should be. He knew that it could not in any case be made into a strong play, for the indeterminate character of Richard would not allow of such. The strong thing that is in the play is, of course, his suffering; but such when the outcome of one’s own nature is not the same as when it is effected by Fate, or external oppression. He knew therefore that the play would want all the help he could give it. Now he set himself to work out the text to acting shape as he considered it would be best. Despite what any one may say to the contrary, and it is only faddists that say it, there is not a play of Shakespeare’s which does not need arranging or cutting for the stage. So much can now be expressed by pictorial effect  —  by costume, by lighting and properties and music  —  which in Shakespeare’s time had to be expressed in words, that compression is at least advisable. Then again, the existence of varied scenery and dresses requires time for changes, which can sometimes be effected only by the transposition of parts of the play. In his spare time, therefore, of 1897 he began the arrangement with a definite idea of production in 1899. When he had the general scheme prepared  —  for later on there are always changes in readings and minor details  —  he approached the man who in his mind would be the best to design and advise concerning the artistic side: Edwin A. Abbey, R.A.

II

Irving and Abbey were close friends; and I am proud to say I can say the same of myself and Abbey for the last twenty-five years. Irving had a great admiration for his work, especially with regard to Shakespeare’s plays, many of which he illustrated for Harper’s Magazine. The two men had been often thrown together as members of “ The Kinsmen,” a little dining club of literary and artistic men of British and American nationality. Abbey and George Boughton and John Sargent represented in London the American painters of the group. Naturally in the intimate companionship which such a club affords, men understand more of the wishes and aims and ambitions of their friends. Irving had instinctive belief that the painter who thought out his work so carefully and produced effects at once so picturesque and so illuminative of character would or might care for stage work where everything has to seem real and regarding which there must be an intelligent purpose somewhere. Irving, having already produced Richard III. with the limited resources of the Bateman days, knew the difficulties of the play and the effects which he wished to produce. When afterwards Abbey painted his great picture of the funeral of Henry VI., Irving recognised a master-hand of scenic purpose. Years afterwards when he produced the play he availed himself, to the best of his own ability and the possibilities of the stage, of the painter’s original work. It was not possible to realise on the stage Abbey’s great conception. It is possible to use in the illusion of a picture a perspective forbidden on the stage by limited space and the non-compressible actuality of human bodies.