The End of Gilt

Abstract

Page 25 May–June 2009 The End of Gilt Charles Marowitz A Strange Eventual History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families Michael Holroyd Farrar, Straus and Giroux http://us.macmillan.com/FSG.aspx 640 pages; cloth, $40.00 There haven’t been too many theatrical dynasties inAmerica. In the nineteenth century, we had the Booths—Junius Brutus, Edwin, and John Wilkes. In the twentieth century, the Barrymores—John, Lionel, and Ethel. In England (by adoption) the Redgraves— Michael, Lynn, and Vanessa. But the most long-lived, and in many ways the most influential, were the offspring of Henry Irving—Lawrence and Harry. As it grew, that dynasty included Ellen Terry and, arguably, Gordon Craig as well—although strictly speaking his father was Edward Godwin, his primary paternal influence was Henry Irving. In his voluminous A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families, Michael Holroyd has taken on the daunting task of delineating the ways in which the Irving-Terry partnership peopled the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with some of the most colorful characters during that period in which modernism began to remove the gilt from the Gilded Age and usher in what can only be described as a New World. Michael Holroyd’s book is a biographical masterpiece. The book begins with the enchanting fusion of Henry Irving, the leading actor of the age and the first to become knighted, and his charismatic partner, Ellen Terry, a “superstar” before that opprobrious term was ever invented and yet one which suits her more than it does the tinseled celebrities who are now hyped into that luminous category. Terry was not simply admired, she was beloved, and in a way that contemporary stage actresses can never be. We may appreciate the Glenda Jacksons and Vanessa Redgraves, but we do not exult them, or involve them in our dream-lives. But Terry’s charisma was such that her admirers felt a sense of public ownership. They had experienced her as Ophelia, Portia, Imogen, and Lady Macbeth and lived through her exploits and tragedies for over three decades. At some point in their partnership, Ellen and Irving became lovers. Although the union was never publicly revealed, the signs of it were clearly visible in their Lyceum productions . Both had married unwisely—three times in Ellen’s case; once, disastrously, in Irving’s. When Terry died, her remains were placed into a wall at St. Paul’s Covent Garden so that her memory would be available to her legion of fans. In describing the range and consistency of Irving’a triumphs at the Lyceum in London, Holroyd rehashes the success of the man who was considered the most outstanding actor of his age, but he doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge the fact that Irving’s achievements drew as much adverse criticism as they did praise. He does quote British critic John Gross’s criticism that Irving’s success represented “the triumph of personal magnetism over plot-line” which is itself an inference drawn from George Bernard Shaw’s more brutal description of Irving’s shortcomings : “The truth,” wrote Shaw is that [Irving] never in his life conceived or interpreted the characters of any author except himself. He is really as incapable of acting another man’s play as Wagner was of setting another man’s libretto; and he should, like Wagner, have written his plays for himself. But as he did not find himself out until it was too late for him to learn that supplementary trade, he was compelled to use other men’s plays as the framework of his own creations. Which jibes more closely with the negative view of Irving expressed by Henry James and a verdict that was widespread, particularly after Irving’s death. These differences of opinion are similar to those describing the talents of the more subdued and subtle Eleanora Duse as opposed to the obstreperous muscularity of Sarah Bernhardt. Clusters of fans who admire one tend to disdain the other and which evaluation is closer to the truth can never be conclusively proven. The book resembles a heavyweight three-act play with three...