uld 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 eve