Henry called a rehearsal the next day—­on Sunday, I think.  The company stood about in groups on the stage while Henry walked up and down, speechless, but humming a tune occasionally, always a portentous sign with him.  The scene set was the Brocken Scene, and Conway stood at the top of the slope as far away from Henry as he could get!  He looked abject.  His handsome face was very red, his eyes full of tears.  He was terrified at the thought of what was going to happen.  The actor was summoned to the office, and presently Loveday came out and said that Mr. George Alexander would play Faust the following night.  Alec had been wonderful as Valentine the night before, and as Faust he more than justified Henry’s belief in him.  After that he never looked back.  He had come to the Lyceum for the first time in 1882, an unknown quantity from a stock company in Glasgow, to play Caleb Decie in “The Two Roses.”  He then left us for a time, returned for “Faust,” and remained in the Lyceum company for some years playing all Terriss’s parts.

Alexander had the romantic quality which was lacking in Terriss, but there was a kind of shy modesty about him which handicapped him when he played Squire Thornhill in “Olivia.”  “Be more dashing, Alec!” I used to say to him.  “Well, I do my best,” he said.  “At the hotels I chuck all the barmaids under the chin, and pretend I’m a dog of a fellow for the sake of this part!” Conscientious, dear, delightful Alec!  No one ever deserved success more than he did and used it better when it came, as the history of the St. James’s Theater under his management proves.  He had the good luck to marry a wife who was clever as well as charming, and could help him.

The original cast of “Faust” was never improved upon.  What Martha was ever so good as Mrs. Stirling?  The dear old lady’s sight had failed since “Romeo and Juliet,” but she was very clever at concealing it.  When she let Mephistopheles in at the door, she used to drop her work on the floor so that she could find her way back to her chair.  I never knew why she dropped it—­she used to do it so naturally with a start when Mephistopheles knocked at the door—­until one night when it was in my way and I picked it up, to the confusion of poor Mrs. Stirling, who nearly walked into the orchestra.

“Faust” was abused a good deal as a pantomime, a distorted caricature of Goethe, and a thoroughly inartistic production.  But it proved the greatest of all Henry’s financial successes.  The Germans who came to see it, oddly enough, did not scorn it nearly as much as the English who were sensitive on behalf of the Germans, and the Goethe Society wrote a tribute to Henry Irving after his death, acknowledging his services to Goethe!

It is a curious paradox in the theater that the play for which every one has a good word is often the play which no one is going to see, while the play which is apparently disliked and run down is crowded every night.