He never got at anything easily, and often I felt angry that he would waste so much of his strength in trying to teach people to do things in the right way.  Very often it only ended in his producing actors who gave colorless, feeble and unintelligent imitations of him.  There were exceptions, of course.

When it came to the last ten days before the date named for the production of “Hamlet,” and my scenes with him were still unrehearsed, I grew very anxious and miserable.  I was still a stranger in the theater, and in awe of Henry Irving personally; but I plucked up courage, and said: 

“I am very nervous about my first appearance with you.  Couldn’t we rehearse our scenes?”

“We shall be all right!” he answered, “but we are not going to run the risk of being bottled up by a gas-man or a fiddler.”

When I spoke, I think he was conducting a band rehearsal.  Although he did not understand a note of music, he felt, through intuition, what the music ought to be, and would pull it about and have alterations made.  No one was cleverer than Hamilton Clarke, Henry’s first musical director, and a most gifted composer, at carrying out his instructions.  Hamilton Clarke often grew angry and flung out of the theater, saying that it was quite impossible to do what Mr. Irving required.

“Patch it together, indeed!” he used to say to me indignantly, when I was told off to smooth him down.  “Mr. Irving knows nothing about music, or he couldn’t ask me to do such a thing.”

But the next day he would return with the score altered on the lines suggested by Henry, and would confess that the music was improved.  “Upon my soul, it’s better!  The ‘Guv’nor’ was perfectly right.”

His Danish march in “Hamlet,” his Brocken music in “Faust,” and his music for “The Merchant of Venice” were all, to my mind, exactly right.  The brilliant gifts of Clarke, before many years had passed, “o’er-leaped” themselves, and he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.

The only person who did not profit by Henry’s ceaseless labors was poor Ophelia.  When the first night came, I did not play the part well, although the critics and the public were pleased.  To myself I failed.  I had not rehearsed enough.  I can remember one occasion when I played Ophelia really well.  It was in Chicago some ten years later.  At Drury Lane, in 1896, when I played the mad scene for Nelly Farren’s benefit, and took farewell of the part for ever, I was just damnable!

Ophelia only pervades the scenes in which she is concerned until the mad scene.  This was a tremendous thing for me, who am not capable of sustained effort, but can perhaps manage a cumulative effort better than most actresses.  I have been told that Ophelia has “nothing to do” at first.  I found so much to do!  Little bits of business which, slight in themselves, contributed to a definite result, and kept me always in the picture.