And here, perhaps, is the place to say that I, of all people, can
perhaps appreciate Henry Irving least justly, although I was his
associate on the stage for a quarter of a century, and was on the terms
of the closest friendship with him for almost as long a time. He had
precisely the qualities that I never find likable.

He was an egotist--an egotist of the great type, _never_ "a mean
egotist," as he was once slanderously described--and all his faults
sprang from egotism, which is in one sense, after all, only another name
for greatness. So much absorbed was he in his own achievements that he
was unable or unwilling to appreciate the achievements of others. I
never heard him speak in high terms of the great foreign actors and
actresses who from time to time visited England. It would be easy to
attribute this to jealousy, but the easy explanation is not the true
one. He simply would not give himself up to appreciation. Perhaps
appreciation is a _wasting_ though a generous quality of the mind and
heart, and best left to lookers-on, who have plenty of time to develop
it.

I was with him when he saw Sarah Bernhardt act for the first time. The
play was "Ruy Blas," and it was one of Sarah's bad days. She was
walking through the part listlessly, and I was angry that there should
be any ground for Henry's indifference. The same thing happened years
later, when I took him to see Eleonora Duse. The play was "La
Locandiera," in which to my mind she is not at her very best. He was
surprised at my enthusiasm. There was an element of justice in his
attitude towards the performance which infuriated me, but I doubt if he
would have shown more enthusiasm if he had seen her at her very best.