Henry Irving

Irving, Sir Henry [real name John Henry Brodribb] (1838–1905), actor, took the name Irving for his appearance at a private theatre in 1856 and made it official when he assumed it by royal licence in 1889, by which time it was famous. He was born at Keinton Mandeville, Somerset, on Saturday 6 February 1838; the house is marked with a plaque which was unveiled by Sir John Martin-Harvey on 31 October 1925.

A Methodist background

Irving's father, Samuel Brodribb, of yeoman stock, was unsuccessful in a number of occupations; his mother, Mary Behenna, was Cornish; he was their only child. When he was four years old his parents moved to London, and he was left with his aunt Sarah Penberthy, in the mining village of Halsetown near St Ives. It was here, under the affectionate care of his aunt and her powerful, mercurial husband, Isaac, who was ‘captain’ of four tin mines, that Irving grew until his eleventh year, schooled in the Methodist teetotal religion of his foster parents, but also deep in the romance of the harsh but beautiful Cornwall of the time, when it was still a remote part of Britain. Those who knew him best said that he never wholly shook off the rusticity of his childhood. Ellen Terry was amazed and amused that when, as Lear (1892), he picked her up to carry her onstage in their final scene, he invariably spat on his hands.

In 1849 Irving joined his parents in London, living at 65 Old Broad Street. It was his father who first introduced the boy to popular entertainment when he took him to see Van Amburgh, the ‘Brute Tamer of Pompeii’. In his Cornwall days Irving had a repertory of recitations, and declared to his playmates that his ambition was to be an actor, a thing unthinkable in his Methodist world. But in London he was sent to the City Commercial School by happy chance, for Dr Pinches, the headmaster, insisted that all his pupils be instructed in elocution for public performance, and young Irving quickly became his star turn. Dr Pinches remained a friend as long as he lived, and was succeeded as a friend by his son Edward, who in time advised Irving about the education of his own sons.

Irving's schooling ended when he was thirteen. He became a clerk in the solicitors' office of Peterson and Longman, in Milk Street, Cheapside; though the work was not disagreeable it led nowhere and in 1851 an opening was found for him in the offices of Thacker, Spink, & Co., East India merchants, in Newgate Street. It was during this time that he first attended a theatre, seeing Samuel Phelps as Hamlet, at Sadler's Wells. His ambition was now absorbing and he joined elocution classes and made the acquaintance of private theatres, where an aspirant might act a leading or subordinate role in a play of his choosing, upon payment of a fee—Richard III at £2, Buckingham at 15s. Squalid as these places were (vide Dickens in Sketches by Boz) they were an opening, and it was at the Soho that Irving made his first appearance under that name as Romeo.

Irving's determination to be an actor was a cause of grief and apprehension to his Methodist mother, and created a breach between them that never healed; it was the earliest evidence of the iron will that governed him all his life. His father encouraged him as long as he lived, and kept detailed scrapbooks of his son's notices.

When he was sixteen Irving became acquainted with a member of Phelps's company, William Hoskins, who gave him some instruction in acting and introduced him to Phelps. Learning of Irving's burning ambition Phelps warned him against the stage as ‘an ill-requited profession’, but seeing that this was unavailing he offered him an engagement in his company. With a wisdom beyond his years, Irving determined to gain experience in the provinces before seeking employment in London, and in 1856 Hoskins introduced him to E. D. Davis, who hired him for his stock company at the Lyceum Theatre, Sunderland.

Theatrical apprenticeship

Here Irving made his first professional appearance, on 18 September 1856; his role was that of Gaston, duke of Orleans, in Bulwer-Lytton's Richelieu, and his first line, opening the play, was ‘Here's to our enterprise’.

Thus began Irving's fifteen years of apprenticeship to what was indeed an ill-requited profession. Success came slowly and the craft was long to learn. Between 1856 and 1871 he played ‘as cast’ in stock companies in Sunderland, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, and the Isle of Man; he endured a disastrous three weeks in Dublin in 1860 where, as he was replacing a popular favourite who had been dismissed, he was hooted down at every performance until at last he overcame the audience's hostility. He toured with his lifelong friend John L. Toole, the most popular low comedian of his day. In 1867 he appeared briefly in London at the Queen's Theatre in Catherine and Petruchio, David Garrick's drastically cut version of The Taming of the Shrew, as Petruchio to the Catherine of Ellen Terry; neither at that time thought much of the other. A detailed list of his engagements and roles is to be found in appendix B of Laurence Irving's fine biography of his grandfather.

In all Irving played more than 700 parts during this time, learning them hastily from ‘sides’ provided by the theatre's copyist; these were half-sheets of paper on which the words of a role were written, with cues that might be not more than three words in length, making a full understanding of the play difficult. Theatres provided basic costumes; actors were expected to provide any additional finery themselves, and Irving spent from his meagre earnings for swords, jewellery, and hats, which called attention to him as an actor who dressed his roles carefully, when many of the profession were careless. But he enjoyed no rapid success, and local critics ‘cut him up’ badly or ignored him entirely.

Irving played roles described as ‘utility’ or ‘walking gentleman’ much of the time but he appeared in all the stock favourites of the day. He played in fourteen of Shakespeare's plays and in the repertory of what was called old comedy. He played in raw-head-and-bloody-bones melodrama, imbecile farce, patriotic drama, both military and naval; he played drag roles in pantomime as an Ugly Sister in Cinderella, as Venoma in The Sleeping Beauty; he also appeared as an Ogre in Puss in Boots and as Scruncher the Wolf in Little Bo-Peep. Let no one scorn this as training for later and more sophisticated villainy. It was during this period of his career that he gained his mastery of make-up, using the technique of water-based colours applied with brushes which he never abandoned, even after the virtually universal acceptance of greasepaint in the fourth quarter of the century.

On one occasion he sang a principal role in Rob Roy as substitute for Sims Reeves, one of the finest tenors of the day (Irving could sing, but not in the Sims Reeves class). As time wore on he gained a reputation as a reliable ‘heavy’ and in this category ranged from Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist to the sophisticated gambler Dudley Smooth in Bulwer-Lytton's Money. It was a prolonged and gruelling training, during which he became accustomed to criticism of his manner of speaking, the grotesquerie of his gestures, and his very thin legs, which never ceased even after he achieved an unassailable position as the leader of the British theatre.

During this time Irving regularly sent a portion of his salary, which could drop to 25s. a week, to his parents; he continued an allowance to his father throughout the latter's life. He knew want and hunger, and a gift of a suit of warm underwear from a more fortunate friend, Joe Robins, was a great moment of Christmas 1862.

Success, marriage, and The Bells

At last Irving's fortunes began to turn. He secured a number of London engagements, in which he was well received, and on 4 June 1870 he appeared in a new play, Two Roses, by James Albery, in which the role of the pretentious and false-hearted Digby Grant suited him admirably. The play ran for almost 300 nights and Irving's place as a leading London actor was secured.

In another respect his fortunes had taken a wry turn. For some years Irving had been in love with Nellie Moore, a young actress of promise, but a false friend had come between them, and Nellie Moore's sudden death in January 1869 was unaccountable except perhaps as the result of a botched abortion. Until his death, Irving carried a photograph of her in his pocket book. At this time he had become acquainted with Florence O'Callaghan, the daughter of an Irish surgeon-general in the Indian service, and thus considerably the social superior of even a successful actor. Florence was wilful, and determined to marry Irving; she did so on 15 July 1869 at the parish church of St Marylebone. From the beginning the marriage was stormy, for Florence could not forget the social gulf between them, and Irving's bohemian habits did not make him an easy husband. They had met at the house of Clement Scott, another suitor, who later became the most influential critic of his time; it may well have been that Mrs Irving's interest in the theatre was predominantly critical.

In another respect, however, fortune had begun to smile—though somewhat reservedly—on Irving, for he was engaged by an American impresario, Colonel Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman, as leading man at the Lyceum Theatre, which Bateman had taken with the purpose of presenting his daughters Kate, Isabel, and Virginia before the London public. The girls had been actresses since childhood, in the ‘infant phenomenon’ mode, and it was now time for them to seek London stardom. Irving greatly liked the Bateman family, who were troupers to the depths of their souls, and they adopted him almost as a son. It was in their household that he sought refuge when home affairs were stormy.

It was clear, however, that with Colonel Bateman his daughters came first, second, and all the time, and Irving found himself playing uncongenial and unsuitable roles, such as Landry Barbeau in Fanchette, a much-mauled stage adaptation of George Sand's La petite fadette, prepared by Mrs Bateman, with Isabel's part grossly padded. Isabel Bateman was seventeen and, although unquestionably beautiful, she lacked the energy and charm of a leading actress. It was to ‘support’ her for an indefinite period that Irving had committed himself.

Irving's burning ambition would not suffer it. He persuaded the reluctant Bateman to mount a play which he had long had under his eye, an adaptation of Erckmann-Chatrian's Le juif polonais called The Bells, adapted by Leopold Lewis. Cheaply mounted, but rigorously rehearsed by Irving, The Bells first appeared on the night of Saturday 25 November 1871 before a small audience. During the following week London critics united to declare that they had seen a great actor.

In more than one way it was a turning point. The marriage was not going well. One son, Henry Brodribb, had been born on 5 August 1870; Florence was pregnant with the second; Laurence Sidney would be born in December 1871. As they drove home in their brougham, after the triumphant first night of The Bells, Irving said to his wife, ‘Well, my dear, we shall soon have our own carriage and pair.’ Her response was, ‘Are you going to go on making a fool of yourself like this all your life?’ Irving called to the driver to stop. He got out of the carriage and never returned to his home or spoke to his wife again. He had broken with his mother because of her disapproval of his profession, and thus he broke with his wife because she scorned it.

That night Irving went to his friends the Batemans, and during the subsequent months of despair they stood by him with exemplary loyalty, and Mrs Bateman in particular restrained the heavy drinking in which he sought forgetfulness. This association was complicated by the fact that Isabel was deeply in love with Irving, making affairs at the Lyceum difficult to maintain on a strictly professional footing, for he was now the unquestioned great attraction of the theatre, and it was the Bateman girls who were ‘support’. His performances as King Charles I, as Eugene Aram, as Richelieu, and on 31 October 1874 as Hamlet, in which role he established himself as the unrivalled great Hamlet of his period, marked him as the foremost actor of the time. Bateman had generously subjected his ambition for his daughters to the advancement of his friend. Hamlet ran for 200 nights, an unheard of success for a Shakespearian play; it was on the day after the hundredth performance that Bateman died of a heart attack.

The management was carried on by Mrs Bateman, and from September 1875 until July 1878 she presented seasons in which Irving was unsatisfactory in Macbeth and Othello but magnificent as Richard III and as Louis XI in a poor play (rescued by a great part) by Dion Boucicault. It was at this time that he appeared in the ‘dual role’ of the virtuous Leserques and the villainous Dubosc in Charles Reade's The Lyons Mail, and this became one of his melodramatic standbys.

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