LXIV
GENEVIÈVE WARD
I
On the evening of Thursday, 20th November 1873, I strolled into the Theatre Royal, Dublin, to see what was on. I had been then for two years a dramatic critic, and was fairly well used to the routine of things. There was a very poor house indeed; in that huge theatre the few hundreds scattered about were like the plums in a fo’c’sle duff. The play was Legouve’s Adrienne Lecouvreur, a somewhat machine-made play of the old school. The lady who played Adrienne interested me at once; she was like a triton amongst minnows. She was very handsome; of a rich dark beauty, with clear-cut classical features, black hair, and great eyes that now and again flashed fire. I sat in growing admiration of her powers. Though there was a trace here and there of something which I thought amateurish she was so masterful, so dominating in other ways that I could not understand it. At the end of the second act I went into the lobby to ask the attendants if they could tell me anything about her as the name on the bill was entirely new to me. None of them, however, could enlighten me on any point except that she had appeared on Monday in Lucrezia Borgia; and that the business was very bad.
When the grand scene of the play came—that between the actress and her rival, the Princesse de Bouillon—the audience was all afire. Their enthusiasm and the sound of it recalled the description of Edmund Kean’s appearance at Drury Lane. I went round on the stage and saw John Harris the manager. I asked him who was the woman who was playing and where did she come from.
“She has no right to be playing to an audience like that!” I said pointing at the curtain which lay between us and the auditorium.
“I quite agree with you!” he answered. “She is fine; isn’t she? I saw her play in Manchester and at once offered her the date here which was vacant.” Just then she came upon the stage and he introduced me to her. When the play was over I went home and wrote my criticism, which duly appeared in the Irish Echo next evening.
That engagement of nine days was a series of débuts. In addition to Adrienne Lecouvreur she appeared in Medea, Lucrezia Borgia, The Actress of Padua, the “sleep-walking” scene of Macbeth, The Honeymoon. In one and all she showed great power and greater promise. It is a satisfactory memory to me to find, after her career has been made and her retirement—all too soon—effected after more than thirty years of stage success, in my diary of 29th November 1873—the last night of her engagement—
(“Mem. will be a great actress”).
I was reintroduced to her—this time by a personal friend—and there and then began a close friendship which has never faltered, which has been one of the delights of my life and which will I trust remain as warm as it is now till the death of either of us shall cut it short.
II
Geneviève Ward, both in the choice of her plays and in her manner of playing, followed at that time the “old” school. I had a good opportunity of judging the excellence of her method, for that very year, 1873, after an absence of fifteen years, Madame Ristori had visited Dublin. She was then in her very prime; an actress of amazing power and finish. She had played Medea, Mary Stuart, Queen Elizabeth and Marie Antoinette. Her method was of course the “Italian,” of which she was the finest living exponent—probably the finest that ever had been. Her speech was a series of cadences; the voice rose and fell in waves—sometimes ripples, sometimes billows—but always modified with such exquisite precision as not to attract special attention to the rhythmic quality. Its effect was entirely unconscious. Indeed it was a method which in time could, and did, become of itself mechanical—like breathing—so that it did not in the least degree interfere even with the volcanic expression of passion. The study was of youth and at the beginning of art; but when the method was once formed nature could express herself in it as unfettered as in any other medium. Years afterwards Miss Ward showed me one of Ristori’s promptbooks; and I could not but be struck with the accentuation. Indeed the marking above the syllables ran in such unbroken line as to look like musical scoring.
Miss Ward was a friend of the great Italian and had learned most of her art from her. She was a fine linguist, speaking French, Italian and Spanish as easily as her own tongue. At that time Ristori, who was in private life La Comtessa Campramican del Grillo, lived in her husband’s ancestral home in Rome, and Miss Ward often stayed with her. Miss Ward in her private life was also a Countess, having whilst a very young girl married a Russian, Count de Gerbel of Nicolaeiff. The marriage was a romance as marked as anything that could appear on the stage. In 1855 at Nice Count de Gerbel had met and fallen in love with her and proposed marriage. She was willing and they were duly married at the Consulate at Nice, the marriage in the Russian church was to follow in Paris. But the Count was not of chivalrous nature. In time his fancy veered round to some other quarter, and he declared that by a trick of Russian law which does not acknowledge the marriage of a Russian until the ceremony in the Russian church has been performed, the marriage which had taken place was not legal. His wife and her father and mother, however, were not those to pass such a despicable act. With her mother she appealed to the Czar, who having heard the story was furiously indignant. Being an autocrat, he took his own course. He summoned his vassal Count de Gerbel to go to Warsaw, where he was to carry out the orders which would be declared to him. There in due time he appeared. The altar was set for marriage and before it stood the injured lady, her father, Colonel Ward, and her mother. Her father was armed, for the occasion was to them one of grim import. De Gerbel yielded to the mandate of his Czar, and the marriage—with all needful safeguards this time—was duly effected. Then the injured Countess bowed to him and moved away with her own kin. At the church door husband and wife parted, never to meet again.
III
In her first youth Miss Ward was a singer and had great success in Grand Opera. But overwork in Cuba strained her voice. It was thought that this might militate against great and final success; so, bowing to the inevitable, she with her usual courage forsook the lyric for the dramatic stage. It was when she had prepared herself for the latter and was ready to make her new venture that I first saw her.
IV
During the holiday season of 1879, whilst Irving was yachting in the Mediterranean, Miss Ward rented the Lyceum for a short season commencing 2nd August. By the contract Irving had agreed to find, in addition to the theatre, the heads of departments, box-office and the usual working staff at an inclusive rent, as he wished to keep all his people together. So I had to remain in London to look after these matters. Miss Ward asked me to be manager for her also; but I said I could not do so as a matter of business as it might be possible that her interests and Irving’s might clash; but that I would do all I could.
She opened in a play called Zillah written by her friend Palgrave Simpson and another. It was put in preparation some time before and was carefully rehearsed. My own work kept me so busy that I did not have any time to see the rehearsals till the night before the performance when the dress rehearsal was held. That rehearsal was one which I shall never forget. It was too late to say anything—there was no time then to make any radical change; and so I held my peace.
The play was of the oldest-fashioned and worst type of “Adelphi” drama! It was machine-made and heartless and tiresome to the last degree, and in addition the language was turgid beyond belief. It was an absolute failure, and was taken off after a few nights. Lucrezia Borgia was put up whilst a new play should be got ready. She had not made arrangements for a second new play, so we all undertook to do what we could to find a suitable play, a new one. Miss Ward gave me a great parcel of plays sent to her at various times. I came on one play which at once arrested my attention. As I shortly afterwards learned, it was one which had been hawked about unsuccessfully. So soon as I had read it I sent word to Miss Ward that I thought, with a little alteration in the first act, it would make a great success. Miss Ward’s judgment agreed with my own. She knew the author, Hermann Merivale, and wrote to him to see her. He came to the Lyceum that night. He came in a hurry, passing through London; she saw him a few minutes after and the agreement was verbally made.
The play was produced on August 21—within a fortnight of the time of its discovery. It was an enormous success, and ran the whole time of her tenancy—indeed a week longer than had been decided on as Irving was loth to disturb the successful run.
The play was Forget me not, by Hermann Merivale and F. C. Grove. Miss Ward played it continuously for ten years and made a fortune with it.
V
Miss Geneviève Ward played in four of Irving’s great productions, of course always as a special engagement. The first was Becket, in which she “created” the part of Queen Eleanor—by old custom, to “create” a stage part is to play it first in London; the second was Morgan Le Fay in King Arthur; the third the Queen in Cymbeline; and the fourth Queen Margaret in Richard III. In all these parts she was exceedingly good.
With regard to the last-named play, there was one of the few instances in which Irving was open to correction with regard to emphasis of a word. In Act IV. scene 3, of his acting version—Act IV. scene 4, of the original play—the last two lines of Queen Margaret’s speech to Queen Elizabeth before her exit:
When Miss Ward spoke the last line she emphasised the word this—“Revolving this will teach thee how to curse!” Irving said the emphasised word should be teach—“Revolving this will teach thee how to curse!”
They each stuck to their own opinion; but at the last rehearsal he came to her and said:
“You are quite right, Miss Ward, your reading is quite correct.” I daresay he had not considered the reading when arranging the play. As a matter of fact in his original arrangement of the play, at his first production of it under Mrs. Bateman in 1877, Queen Margaret was not in the scene at all. In the new version he had restored her to the scene as he wished to “fatten” Miss Ward’s part and so add to the strength of the play. Miss Ward was always a particularly strong actress, good at invective, and as the play had no part for Ellen Terry he wished to give it all the other help he could.
VI
Miss Ward has one great stage gift which is not given to many: her eyes can blaze. I can only recall two other actresses who had the same quality in good degree: Mdlle. Schneider, who forty years ago played the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein in Offenbach’s Opera; and Christine Nilsson. The latter I saw in London in 1867, and from where I sat—high up in the seat just in front of the gallery—I could note the starry splendour of her blue eyes. Ten years later, in Lohengrin at Her Majesty’s Opera House, I noticed the same—this time from the stalls. And yet once again when I sat opposite her at supper on the night of her retirement, June 20, 1888. The supper party was a small one, given by Mr. and Mrs. Brydges-Willyams at 9 Upper Brook Street. Irving was there and Ellen Terry, Lord Burnham and Miss Matilda Levy—brother and sister of our hostess—Count Miranda, to whom Nilsson was afterwards married, and his daughter, my wife and myself.
Nilsson came in from her triumph at the Albert Hall, blazing with jewels. She wore that night only those that had been given to her by Kings and Queens—and other varieties of monarchs.