“There comes a time in every man’s life when his own judgment is of greater use to him than other people’s.” —When We Were Twenty-One. “I have been lectured a good deal during my career.” —Fools of Nature. No man in his time played more parts than Harry. To begin with, he started very young, started off from the bosom of a family which had no knowledge of the stage. So innocent were they of the life on which he was embarking, that his mother, hearing that he had joined a company of touring actors, asked, in all seriousness, “What time is the caravan calling for you, my dear?” He started his career with a salary of ten shillings a week, and played anything and everything that was offered. He used to tell the story of “how he played a wave”—lying underneath a very dusty floor cloth, “billowing up and down”—and a nasty, stuffy business it must have been, too! Imagine the horror of the modern young actor, touring the provinces, if he were asked to lie on the stage and give an impersonation of that element which Britain is popularly reputed to rule! When at last he came to London it was to appear in The Panel Picture, in which he made an amazing success in the part of a boy who was shot on the stage and had a big death scene; and then the round of playing old men began. I have told how, when I I hesitate to use the word “genius”; but my excuse, if one is needed, must be that others used it before in referring to Harry. In the old days, when we all used to go holiday-making together, when Harry, Gerald du Maurier, and Charles Hallard were almost inseparable companions, they were known as “The Gent., The Genius, and The Young Greek God”—one of those happy phrases, coined under sunny skies, which, under all the fun that prompts them, have a sub-stratum of truth. The phrase has lived, for only a year ago Gerald du His character-studies were real people, not bundles of eccentricities, with amazing and repulsive tricks; they were real old people, treated, where it was demanded, with humour, but a humour which was from the heart and spoke to the heart, and not only apparent to the eye of the beholder. His young men were charming, virile, and obviously enjoying life. He could play devout lovers, rakes (and what delightful rakes, too, they were!), old men, and mad men, and play them all with more than a touch of genius. There you had his handicap: from the very fact of the excellence of all he did, he was never allowed to specialise. He never became definitely associated with any special type of part. It never became a case of “No one can play that except Harry Esmond”, for there was probably a part in almost every play which Harry Esmond could have played, and played with charm and distinction. Photograph by Alfred Ellis, London, W. To face p. 218 When the Royal Performance of Trilby was given, as far as possible it was attempted to present the original cast. Harry was asked to play the “young and tender Little Billee”. At first he refused, saying that he was too old, but finally he was persuaded to appear. Phyllis Neilson Terry was to play “Trilby”, and I remember hearing of her dismay when she was told who was to be “Billee”. She remembered seeing Harry in the part when she “was a little girl”! At the dress rehearsal her fears vanished. She came up to me and told me what she had feared. “But now,” she said, “well, just look at him; he’s straight from the nursery; my husband says I’m baby-snatching.” Swing the pendulum to the other side, and recall his “Jacob Ussher” in his own play, Birds of a Feather—the old Jew, the modern Shylock, who sees himself bereft of the only thing he loves in life, his daughter. Ussher is no more ashamed of the way in which he has made his money than Shylock was, but he, with all his pride of race, is very definitely ashamed that his daughter should wish to marry such I have told you how he came to play “D’Artagnan” in the Musketeers, in the place of Lewis Waller, and I remember the doubts which were expressed everywhere as to whether Harry was sufficiently robust and virile to play the part of the Gascon soldier of fortune. How Harry, realising that so far as personal appearance went he was as unlike the traditional hero of Dumas’ romance as well could be imagined, set to work to give such a reading that his slimness, his boyishness, his delicate air of romance, might be changed from handicaps to assets. Lewis When Lewis Waller produced Romeo and Juliet, Harry was cast for “Mercutio”, a part which called for all the gaiety, all the youth, all the gallantry which he knew so well how to portray. I find that one critic said of his performance that “it had that touch of mystery which Mr. Esmond has given before, a touch of aloofness, indefinably appealing and tragic”, which seems to me to sum up the performance admirably. I find, too, another critic who says “he cannot interpret that youthfulness which springs from the joy of living”—“the joy of living”, which was an integral part of the man all his life! Speaking of “Mercutio” brings me to another Photograph by Gabell & Co., London, W. To face p. 222 With a soldier that day, And took with her your trifle of money— Bless your heart, they don’t mind, They’re exceedingly kind; They don’t blame you so long as you’re funny.” That is the cry of your jester all the world over, and that was the feeling which existed in Harry’s mind when he depicted “Touchstone” as a rather sardonic, melancholy person, with a great brain, the only use for which he can find is to make people laugh. I will take only two instances to justify his idea of “Touchstone”. The first: Are the words “The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly” those of a “clown” or “a fool” in the ordinary sense? Take also “Corin’s” words: “You have too courtly a wit for me, I’ll rest.” He is frankly puzzled by the Jester’s humour. Yet “Corin” is a typical shepherd of the times, and an English shepherd (for all we meet him in the Forest of Arden): as such, he was used to the jokes and witticisms of the ordinary clown; he had “roared his When Sir Herbert Tree revived The School for Scandal, Harry played “Sir Benjamin Backbite”. Harry, Who loved sincerity, and truth, and simplicity, played the affected fop of the period, with his cane, his lace handkerchief, his fur muff, his bouquet, and his general air of affectation, and played him so that to watch and listen to it was a sheer delight. These are but a few of his parts—the parts which, when he played them, were both praised and blamed. I want to touch on his method of playing, and call to your memory some of the features which characterised it. He was always sincere; he might, and did (as in Eliza), get bored with a part, but he was too good an actor, too proud of his work, ever to let it appear to an audience. His voice was wonderful; he could put more tenderness, without the least touch of sentimentality, into his words than anyone I ever heard. To hear Harry say “My dear”, as he did in The Dangerous Age and again in The Law Divine, was to hear all His gesture was superb; he was not, as so many actors are, apparently afraid of using a big sweeping movement; he (perhaps it was the Irishman in him) was never afraid that a big gesture would look ridiculous. He knew that anything, whether tone of voice or gesture or movement is very rarely ridiculous if it is prompted by real feeling. He knew that the real justification for anything an actor may do on the stage is “because I feel it”, not “because I think it will look effective”. As a producer—and he was one of the best producers I have ever seen—he got the very last ounce out of his company because he always, when asked “What do you want me to do here?”, answered “What do you feel you want to do?” He “nursed” his company, and watched them grow strong under his care. All his movements were good. He could use his feet in a way that, if anyone had tried to copy, would have looked ridiculous. He had a little rapid trick of shifting from one foot to the other, when he was worried or uncertain, which I have never seen attempted by anyone else. He did it in the last act of Twenty-One, when the girl he loves is trying to get him to propose to her; he used it again in A Kiss or Two, and it gave you the keynote to the man’s mental attitude as much as his spoken words. In this latter play, during his telling of the “Legend”, which I have quoted in another chapter, he used that sweeping gesture of his arm of which I have spoken. Seated in a chair, leaning forward, carried away by He was curiously affected by the parts he played; I mean he actually became very much the man he depicted on the stage. When he played old men, he would come home in the evening still very much “in the part”, inclined to walk slowly and move rather stiffly. When he played young men—such as “Captain Pat Delaney”, for example—he was gallant, walked buoyantly, and very evidently was thoroughly in love with life. I have known him at such times, when we were out together, raise his hat to any girl we met who was young and pretty—not because he wanted to speak to her, certainly not because he knew her, but simply because he loved pretty girls, and wanted an excuse to smile at them, all from the pure joy of being alive. So there is Harry Esmond, the actor, as I knew him—enjoying his work, never letting it sink to anything less than a profession of which he was very proud. He chose the Stage because he loved it, and he loved it as long as he lived. He studied each part with a kind of concentrated interest, and played them as he believed them to be meant to be played. I think for everything he did he could have given a definite and sufficient reason, and so believed in what he did. “He hath the letter, observe his construction of it”; His position as an actor was something of the attitude of “How happy I could be with either, were t’other dear charmer away”. He loved all his work, whether character-studies, gallant soldiers, or tender lovers; they all claimed the best that was in him, and, as the best was “very good”, it became not what he could play, but what he could not play. So I review them mentally, the parts that Harry played, and wonder if he had been less gifted, if he had not had in his composition that very big streak of genius, whether he might not perhaps have been one of the names which will be handed down to posterity as “the world’s greatest actors”. Then I ask myself in which direction should he have concentrated, and which of the big parts that he played would I have been willing to have missed. Which? I cannot decide. “D’Artagnan”, “Touchstone”, “Sandy”, “Kean”, “Jacob Ussher”, “Mercutio”, even that really poor part “Little Billee”, were all so good that I am glad he played them. I think, too, that the success of them all came from a great understanding as well as great observation, and that was why “one man in his time” played so many parts, and played them all with more than ordinary distinction and feeling. |