Within twenty-four hours of his last
death as Matthias, he was dead.
What a heroic thing was that last performance of Becket which came
between! I am told by those who were in the company at the time that he
was obviously suffering and dazed, this last night of life. But he went
through it all as usual. The courteous little speech to the audience,
the signing of a worrying boy's drawing at the stage-door--all that he
had done for years, he did faithfully for the last time.
Yes, I know it seems sad to the ordinary mind that he should have died
in the entrance to an hotel in a country-town with no friend, no
relation near him. Only his faithful and devoted servant Walter
Collinson (whom, as was not his usual custom, he had asked to drive back
to the hotel with him that night) was there. Do I not feel the tragedy
of the beautiful body, for so many years the house of a thousand souls,
being laid out in death by hands faithful and devoted enough, but not
the hands of his kindred either in blood or in sympathy!
I do feel it, yet I know it was more appropriate to such a man than the
deathbed where friends and relations weep.
Henry Irving belonged to England, not to a family. England showed that
she knew it when she buried him in Westminster Abbey.
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