The friendship between Henry Irving and John Lawrence Toole began in Edinburgh in 1857. Toole was the elder and had already won for himself the position of a local semi-star. The chances of distinction come to the “Low” comedian quicker than to the exponent of Tragedy or “High” Comedy, and Toole had commenced his stage experience at almost as early an age as Irving—eighteen. On 20th June 1894, during a Benefit at the Lyceum for the Southwark Eye Hospital, at which he did the wonderfully droll character sketch, “Trying a Magistrate,” he told me that forty-five years before, Charles Dickens had heard him do the sketch and advised him to go on the stage. Wisely he had taken the advice; from the very start he had an exceptionally prosperous career.
He, the kindliest and most genial soul on earth, became a fast friend with the proud, shy, ambitious young beginner, eight years his junior. From the first he seemed to believe in Irving, and predicted for him a great career. To this end he contributed all through his life. When he toured on his own account he took Irving with him, giving him a star place in his bill, and an opportunity of exhibiting his own special tragic power in a recital of The Dream of Eugene Aram.
To the last day of Irving’s life the friendship of the two men each for the other never flagged or faltered. Such a thing as jealousy of the other never entered into the heart of either. Toole simply venerated his friend and enjoyed his triumph more than he did his own. He would not hear without protest any one speak of Irving except in a becoming way; and there was nothing which Toole possessed which he would not have shared with Irving. When one entertained, there was always a place for the other; whoever had the good fortune to become a friend of either found his friendship doubled at once. The two men seemed to supplement each other’s natures. Each had, in his own way and of its own kind, a great sense of humour. Toole’s genial, ebullient, pronounced; Irving’s saturnine, keen, and suggestive. Both had—each again in his own way—a very remarkable seriousness. Those who only saw Toole in his inimitable pranks knew little how keenly the man felt emotion; how unwavering he was in his sense of duty; how earnest in his work. With Irving the humour was a fixed quantity, which all through his life kept its relative proportion to his seriousness; but Toole, being a low comedian, and perhaps because of it, seemed at times vastly different in his hours of work and relaxation. For it is a strange thing that the conditions of emotion are such that what is work in one case is rest in another, and vice versa; the serious man finds ease in relaxation, the humorous man seeks in quietude his rest from the stress of laughter. In their younger days and up to middle life the two men had indulged in harmless pranks. They both loved a joke and would take any pains to compass it. The tricks they played together would fill a volume. Of course from their protean powers of expressing themselves and in merging their identities actors have rare opportunities of consummating jokes. Moreover they are in the habit of working together, and two or three men who understand each other’s methods can go far to sway the unwary how they will.
One of the practical jokes of Toole and Irving is almost classical. One Sunday when they both happened to be playing at Liverpool at the same time they went to dine at an old inn at Wavertree celebrated for the excellence of its hospitality. They had a good dinner and a good bottle of port and sat late. When most of the guests in the hotel had gone to bed and when the time necessary for their own departure was drawing nigh, they rang and told the waiter to get the bill. When he had gone for it they took all the silver off the table—they had fine old silver in the inn—and placed it in the garden on which the room opened. Then they turned out the gas and got under the table. Hearing no answer to his repeated knocking the waiter opened the door. When he saw the lights out, the window opened, and the guests—and the silver—gone he cried out:
“Done! They have bolted with the silver.” Then he ran down the passage crying out: “Thieves, thieves!”
The instant he was gone the two men came from under the table, closed the door, lit the gas, and took in the silver which they replaced on the table. Presently a wild rush of persons came down the passage and burst into the room: the landlord and his family, servants of the house, guests en deshabille—most of them carrying pokers and other impromptu weapons. They found the two gentlemen sitting quietly smoking their cigars. As they stood amazed Irving said in his quiet, well-bred voice:
“Do you always come in like this when gentlemen are having their dinner here?”
Toole would even play pranks on Irving, these generally taking the form of some sort of gift. For instance, he once sent Irving on his birthday what he called in his letter “a miniature which he had picked up!” It came in a furniture van, an enormous portrait of an actor, painted nearly a hundred years before; it was so large that it would not fit in any room of the theatre and had to be put in a high passage. Again, when he was in Australia he sent to Irving, timed so that it would arrive at Christmas, a present of two frozen sheep and a live kangaroo. These arrived at Irving’s rooms in Grafton Street. He had them housed at the Lyceum for the night, and next day sent the sheep to gladden the hearts—and anatomies—of the Costermongers’ Club at Chicksand Street, Mile End, New Town. The kangaroo was sent with a donation to the Zoological Society as a contribution from “J. L. Toole and Henry Irving.” A brass plate was fixed over the cage by the Society.
Toole loved to make beautiful presents to Irving. Amongst them was a splendid gilt silver claret jug; several silver cups and bowls, the trophy designed by Flaxman which was presented to Macready in 1818—a magnificent piece of jeweller’s work; a “grangerised” edition of Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens—unique in its richness of material and its fine workmanship—which he had bought in Paris for £500.
When Toole and Irving were separated they were in constant communication by letter, telegram or cable. No birthday of the other passed without a visit if near enough, or a letter or telegram if apart, and there was always a basket of flowers each to each. For a dozen years before Irving’s death Toole had been in bad health, growing worse and worse as the years went on. He grew very feeble and very, very sad. But without fail Irving used to go to see him whenever he had an opportunity. At his house in Maida Vale, at Margate, or at Brighton, in which latter place he mainly lived for years past, Irving would go to him and spend all the hours he could command. Even though the width of the world separated them, the two men seemed to have, day by day, exact cognisance of the whereabouts and doings of the other, and not a week but the cables were flashing between them.
Poor Toole had one by one lost all his immediate family—son, wife, daughter; and his tie to life was in great part the love to and from his friend. He used to think of him unceasingly. Wherever he was, Toole’s wire would come unfailingly making for good luck and remembrance. He would keep the flowers that Irving sent to him till they faded and dropped away; even then the baskets and bare stalks were kept in his room.
No one appreciated more than Toole the finest of Irving’s work. For instance, when he saw him play King Lear he was touched to his heart’s core, and his artistic admiration was boundless. I supped with him that night after the play, and he said to me:
“King Lear is the finest thing of Irving’s life—or of any one else’s.”
When Toole was going to Australia there were many farewell gatherings to wish him God-speed. Some of them were great and elaborate affairs, but the last of all was reserved for Irving, when Toole, with some old friends, supped in the Beefsteak Room. When Irving proposed his old friend’s health—a rare function indeed in that room—he never spoke more beautifully in his life. His little speech was packed with pathos, and so great was his own emotion that at moments he was obliged to pause to pull himself together.
Toole and I were very close friends ever since I knew him first in the early seventies. I shared with him many delightful hours. And when sorrow came to him I was able to give him sympathy and such comfort as could be from my presence. I was with him at the funeral of his son and then of his wife. When his daughter died in Edinburgh, where he was then playing, I went up to him and stayed with him. We brought her body back to London and I went with him to her grave. With me he was always affectionate, always sympathetic, always merry when there was no cause for gloom, always grave and earnest when such were becoming. I have been with him on endless occasions when his merriment and geniality simply bubbled over. Unless some sorrow sat heavily on him he was always full of merriment which evidenced itself in the quaintest and most unexpected ways.
THE CAST OF “DEARER THAN LIFE,” 1868
One evening, for instance, we were walking together along the western end of Pall Mall. When we came near Marlborough House, where on either side of the gateway stood a Guardsman on sentry, he winked at me and took from his pocket a letter which he had ready for post. Then when we came up close to the nearest soldier he moved cautiously in a semi-blind manner and peering out tried to put the letter in the breast of the scarlet tunic as though mistaking the soldier for a postal pillar-box. The soldier remained upright and stolid, and did not move a muscle. Toole was equally surprised and pleased when from the Guardsman’s moveless lips came the words:
“It’s all right, Mr. Toole! I hope you’re well, sir?”
Another time I was staying with him at the Granville at Ramsgate, and on the Sunday afternoon we drove out to Kingsgate. Lionel Brough was another of the party. As we passed a coastguard station we stopped opposite a very handsome, spruce, and dandified coastguard. The two men greeted him, but his manner was somewhat haughty. Whereupon the two actors without leaving their seats proceeded to dance a hornpipe. That is they seemed, from the waist up, to be dancing that lively measure. Their arms and hands took motion as though in a real dance and their bodies swayed with appropriate movement. The little holiday crowd looked on delighted, and even the haughty sailor found it too much. He unbent and, smiling, danced also in very graceful fashion.
Again at another time we found ourselves in Canterbury, where Toole amused himself for a whole afternoon by spreading a report that the Government were going to move the Cathedral from Canterbury to Margate, giving as a reason that the latter place was so much larger. Strange to say that there were some who believed it. Toole worked systematically. He went into barbers’ shops—three of them in turn, and in each got shaved. As I wore a beard I had to be content with having my hair cut; it came out pretty short in the end. As he underwent the shaving operation he brought conversation round to the subject of the moving of the Cathedral. Then we went into shops without end where he bought all sorts of things—collars, braces, socks, caps, fruits and spice for making puddings, children’s toys, arrowroot, ginger wine, little shawls, sewing cotton, emery paper, hair oil, goloshes, corn plasters—there was no end to the variety of his purchases, each of which was an opening for some fresh variant of the coming change.
At one other visit to Canterbury we came across in the ancient Cathedral an insolent verger. Toole, who was, for all his fun, a man of reverent nature, was as usual with him grave and composed in the church. The verger, taking him for some stranger of the bourgeois class, thought him a fit subject to impress. When Toole spoke of the new Dean who had been lately appointed the man said in a flippant way:
“We don’t care much for him. We don’t think we’ll keep him!”
This was enough for Toole. He looked over at me in a way I understood and forthwith began to ask questions:
“Did you, may I ask, sir, preach this morning?”
“No. Not this morning. I don’t preach this week.” We knew then that that verger was to be “had on toast.” Toole went on:
“Do you preach on next Sunday, sir? I should like to hear you.”
“Well, no! I don’t think I’ll preach on Sunday.”
“Will you preach the Sunday after?”
“Perhaps.”
“May I ask, sir, are you the Dean?”
“No. I am not the Dean!” His manner implied that he was something more.
“Are you the Sub-Dean?”
“Not the Sub-Dean.” His answers were getting short.
“Are you what they call a Canon?”
“No, I should not exactly call myself a Canon.”
“Are you a minor Canon?”
“No!”
“Are you a precentor?”
“Not exactly that.”
“Are you in the choir?”
“No.”
“May I ask you what you are then, sir?”—this was said with great deference. The man, cornered at last, thought it best to speak the truth, so he answered:
“I am what they call a ‘verger!’”
“Quite so!” said Toole gravely; “I thought you were only a servant by the insolent way you spoke of your superiors!”
The remainder of that personal conduction was made in silence.
On one occasion when Toole was taking the waters at Homburg, King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, was there. He had a breakfast party to which he had asked Toole and also Sir George Lewis and Sir Squire Bancroft. In the course of conversation his Royal Highness asked Bancroft where he was going after Homburg. The answer was that he was going to Maloya in Switzerland. Then turning to Toole he asked him:
“Are you going to Maloya also, Mr. Toole?” In reply Toole said, as he bowed and pointed to the great solicitor:
“No, sir, Ma-loya (my lawyer) is here!”
I remember one Derby day, 1893, when we were both in the party to which Mr. Knox D’Arcy extended the hospitality of his own stand next to that of the Jockey Club—a hospitality which I may say was boundless and complete. When I arrived the racing was just beginning, and the course was crowded by the moving mass seeking outlets before the cordon of police with their rope. As I got close to the stand I heard a voice that I knew coming from the wicket-gate, which was surrounded with a seething mass of humanity of all kinds pushing and struggling to get close.
“Walk this way, ladies and gentlemen! Walk this way! get tickets here. Only one shilling, including lunch. Walk this way!”
A somewhat similar joke on his part was on board a steamer on Lake Lucerne, when he was there with Irving. He went quietly to one end of the steamer and cried out in a loud voice: “Cook’s tourists, this way. Sandwich and glass of sherry provided free!” Then, slipping over to the other end of the boat as the crowd began to rush for the free lunch, he again made proclamation: “Gaze’s party, this way. Brandy and soda, hard-boiled eggs, and butterscotch provided free!” Again he disappeared before the crowd could assemble.
A favourite joke of his when playing Paul Pry was to find out what friends of his were in the house and then to have their names put upon the blackboard at the inn with scores against them of gigantic amount. This was a never-stale source of surprise and delight to the children of his friends. He loved all children, and next to his own, the children of his friends. For each of such there was always a box of chocolates. He kept a supply in his dressing-room, and I never knew the child of a friend to go away empty-handed. With such a love in his heart was it strange that in his own bad time, when his sadness was just beginning to take hold on his very heart’s core, he loved to think much of those old friends who had loved his own children who had gone?
Somehow his mirth never lessened his pathos. His acting—his whole life—has been a sort of proof that the two can coexist. His Caleb Plummer was never a whit less moving because his audience laughed through their tears. It may be his art became typified in his life.
When Irving died I telegraphed the same night to Frank Arlton, Toole’s nephew, who during all his long illness had given him the most tender care. I feared that if I did not send such warning some well-intentioned blunderer might give him a terrible shock. Arlton acted most prudently, and broke the sad news himself at a favourable opportunity the next day. When poor Toole heard it his remark was one of infinite pathos:
“Then let me die too!”
Such a wish is in itself an epitaph of lasting honour.
Toole’s belief and sympathy and help were of infinite service to the friend whom he loved. Comfort and confidence and assistance all in one. And it is hardly too much to say that Irving could never have done what he did, and in the way he did it, without the countenance and help of his old friend. Irving always, ever since I knew him, liked to associate Toole with himself in everything; and to me who know all that was between them it is but just—as well as the carrying out of my dear friend’s wishes—that in this book their names shall be associated as closely as I can achieve by the Dedication. Shortly before his last illness I went down to Brighton to see him and to ask formally his permission to this end. He seemed greatly moved by it. Later on I sent the proof of the page containing it, asking Arlton to show it to him if he thought it advisable. Toole had then partially recovered from the attack and occasionally saw friends and was interested in what went on. Arlton’s letter to me described the effect:
“I gave him your message last night, and I fear I did unwisely, as nurse says he has been talking all night about Sir Henry and books.”
That visit to Brighton was the last time I saw Toole. He was then very low in health and spirits. He could hardly move or see; his voice was very feeble and one had to speak close and clearly that he might hear well. But his intellect was as clear as ever, and he spoke of many old friends. I spent the day with him; after lunch I walked by his bath-chair to the end of the Madeira Walk. There we stayed a while, and when my time for leaving came, I told him—but not before. In his late years Toole could not bear the idea of any one whom he loved leaving him, even for a time. We used therefore to say no word of parting till the moment came. When he held out his poor, thin, trembling hand to me he said with an infinite pathos whose memory moves me still:
“Bram, we have often parted—but this time is the last. I shall never see you again! Won’t you let me kiss you, dear!”