He was a man of the world,
whose strenuous fighting now was to be done as a general--not, as
hitherto, in the ranks. His manner was very quiet and gentle. "In
quietness and confidence shall be your strength," says the Psalmist.
That was always like Henry Irving.
And here, perhaps, is the place to say that I, of all people, can
perhaps appreciate Henry Irving least justly, although I was his
associate on the stage for a quarter of a century, and was on the terms
of the closest friendship with him for almost as long a time. He had
precisely the qualities that I never find likable.
He was an egotist--an egotist of the great type, _never_ "a mean
egotist," as he was once slanderously described--and all his faults
sprang from egotism, which is in one sense, after all, only another name
for greatness. So much absorbed was he in his own achievements that he
was unable or unwilling to appreciate the achievements of others. I
never heard him speak in high terms of the great foreign actors and
actresses who from time to time visited England. It would be easy to
attribute this to jealousy, but the easy explanation is not the true
one. He simply would not give himself up to appreciation. Perhaps
appreciation is a _wasting_ though a generous quality of the mind and
heart, and best left to lookers-on, who have plenty of time to develop
it.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212