Mr. Henry Irving New Part
Mr. Henry Irving New Part is an article published in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper on 23 september 1894.
Mr. Henry Irving New Part
On Friday night, at the Prince's theatre, Bristol, Mr. Irving achieved a very great success in A Story of Waterloo, a play in one act by Dr. Conan Doyle. In terse and vigorous fashion the author sets forth sundry slight incidents occur. ring on the final day of a Waterloo veteran's life. It does not contain a line that fails to bear immediately upon the central figure in the dramatic sketch, whilst the details are plentiful and sufficiently varied. Both from the literary and the stage aspect the workmanship is exceedingly neat, but the real strength of the piece lies in the opportunities it affords Mr. Irving, whose artistic skill and power of finished characterisation were never displayed to better effect, although the time occupied in the representation is less than an hour. Corporal Gregory Brewster received in August, 1815, in the presence of the Prince Regent, a special medal for bravery in bringing through the flames of Hougoumont a cart filled with powder when his regiment was getting short of ammunition. This daring deed, at a critical period of the action, is believed to have saved the British position. The main features of the battle, the names of his comrades, and events associated with his joining the army, are as green in the memory of the gaunt and feeble octogenarian as though they had taken place but yesterday. Of the progress in science and in the arts of war made in later years he has little know. ledge: he is surprised when his grandniece tells him that she has come forty miles by train instead of by coach; he cannot understand that a young soldier should so easily have gained his stripes. On handling a breechloader, the breech of which flies open on being pressed, he declares that Brown Bess will prove a more valuable weapon in the end, and when a regiment passes beneath his window he chuckles at the thought that they have forgotten their stooks. This, he says, would not have done for the "Dook" (meaning the victor of Waterloo), who would certainly have had a word to say on the subject. To his grandniece, who arrives to take charge of his cottage and to see that he wants for nothing; to a young sergeant of artillery, and to an elderly colonel he goзsips about his old companions and of Wellington. Exhausted by a description he gives of the battle with the aid of a medicine phial, a pill-box, and other small articles, he falls into a doze, from which he suddenly awakes, crying "The Guards need powder!" and then drops dead into his chair. This is the character played by Mr. Irving with a breadth and fidelity that could not be surpassed. His make-up and bearing, as the bent, decrepit, and broken-voiced veteran of 1815, are superb; whilst in every particular of his performance there is irreproachable consistency. Wonderfully impressive is a brief scene with the girl, who on asking Brewster what part of the Bible he would like her to read, receives the reply, "Oh, them wars." He adds "Aye, keep to the wars. Give me the Old Testament, parson,' says I. 'There's more taste to it,' says I. Parson, he wants to get off to something else, but it's Joshua or nothing with me. Them Israelites was good soldiers, good growed soldiers all of 'em." Referring to the old regiment, be says they've all marched away from the colonel to the drummer boys, and that he's left a straggler, so when he suddenly expires the young artilleryman gravely says, "I think that the 3rd Guards has a full muster now," and then the curtain falls Mr. Irving was ably assisted in his moving performance by Miss Annie Hughes, Mr. Fuller Mellish (the sergeant), and Mr. Haviland. At the close, after being repeatedly called before the curtain, Mr. Irving announced that the author was not in England, but he would at once cable him the gratifying verdict passed by a Bristol audience on his first play on its first performance. A Story of Waterloo is a most interesting little play, and Mr. Irving's impersonation of the old soldier is replete with those subtle and truthful touches in the manifestation of which he is such a master.
Mr. Henry Irving and the Lyceum company appear next week at the Prince of Wales's, Birmingham. They then go to the Grand, at Leeds. Subsequently they pay visits to Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, and Manchester, returning to the metropolis the middle of December.
