Henry said to me once:  “What makes a popular actor?  Physique!  What makes a great actor?  Imagination and sensibility.”  I tried to believe it.  Then I thought to myself:  “Henry himself is not quite what is understood by ‘an actor of physique,’ and certainly he is popular.  And that he is a great actor I know.  He certainly has both imagination and ’sense and sensibility.’” After the lapse of years I begin to wonder if Henry was ever really popular.  It was natural to most people to dislike his acting—­they found it queer, as some find the painting of Whistler—­but he forced them, almost against their will and nature, out of dislike into admiration.  They had to come up to him, for never would he go down to them.  This is not popularity.

Brain allied with the instinct of the actor tells, but stupidity allied with the instinct of the actor tells more than brain alone.  I have sometimes seen a clever man who was not a born actor play a small part with his brains, and have felt that the cleverness was telling more with the actors on the stage than with the audience.

Terriss, like Mrs. Pritchard, if we are to believe what Dr. Johnson said of her, often did not know what on earth he was talking about!  One morning we went over and over one scene in “Much Ado”—­at least a dozen times I should think—­and each time when Terriss came to the speech beginning: 

     “What needs the bridge much broader than the flood,”

he managed to give a different emphasis.  First it would be: 

“What! Needs the bridge much broader than the flood!” Then: 

“What needs the bridge much broader than the flood.”

After he had been floundering about for some time, Henry said: 

“Terriss, what’s the meaning of that?”

“Oh, get along, Guv’nor, you know!”

Henry laughed.  He never could be angry with Terriss, not even when he came to rehearsal full of absurd excuses.  One day, however, he was so late that it was past a joke, and Henry spoke to him sharply.

“I think you’ll be sorry you’ve spoken to me like this, Guv’nor,” said Terriss, casting down his eyes.

“Now no hanky-panky tricks, Terriss.”

“Tricks, Guv’nor!  I think you’ll regret having said that when you hear that my poor mother passed away early this morning.”

And Terriss wept.

Henry promptly gave him the day off.  A few weeks later, when Terriss and I were looking through the curtain at the audience just before the play began, he said to me gaily: 

“See that dear old woman sitting in the fourth row of stalls—­that’s my dear old mother.”

The wretch had quite forgotten that he had killed her!

He was the only person who ever ventured to “cheek” Henry, yet he never gave offense, not even when he wrote a letter of this kind: 

“My dear Guv.,—­

“I hope you are enjoying yourself, and in the best of health.  I very much want to play ‘Othello’ with you next year (don’t laugh).  Shall I study it up, and will you do it with me on tour if possible?  Say yes, and lighten the drooping heart of yours sincerely,