g was that last performance of Becket which came
between! I am told by those who were in the company at the time that he
was obviously suffering and dazed, this last night of life. But he went
through it all as usual. The courteous little speech to the audience,
the signing of a worrying boy's drawing at the stage-door--all that he
had done for years, he did faithfully for the last time.

Yes, I know it seems sad to the ordinary mind that he should have died
in the entrance to an hotel in a country-town with no friend, no
relation near him. Only his faithful and devoted servant Walter
Collinson (whom, as was not his usual custom, he had asked to drive back
to the hotel with him that night) was there. Do I not feel the tragedy
of the beautiful body, for so many years the house of a thousand souls,
being laid out in death by hands faithful and devoted enough, but not
the hands of his kindred either in blood or in sympathy!

I do feel it, yet I know it was more appropriate to such a man than the
deathbed where friends and relations weep.

Henry Irving belonged to England, not to a family. England showed that
she knew it when she buried him in Westminster Abbey.

Years before I had discussed, half in joke, the possibility of this
honor. I remember his saying to me with great simplicity, when I asked
him what he expected of the public after his death: "I should like them
to do their duty by me. And they will--they will!"

There was not a touch of arrogance in this, just as I hope there was no
touch of heartlessness in me because my chief thought during the funeral
in Westminster Abbey was: "How Henry would have liked it!" The right
note was struck, as I think was not the case at Tennyson's funeral
thirteen years earlier.

"Tennyson is buried to-day in Westminster Abbey," I wrote in my
diary, October 12, 1892. "His majestic life and death spoke of him
better than the service.... The music was poor and dull and weak,
while he was _strong_. The triumphant should have been the
sentiment expressed.... Faces one knew everywhere. Lord Salisbury
looked fine. His massive head and sad eyes were remarkable. No face
there, however, looked anything by the side of Henry's.... He
looked very pale and slim and wonderful!"

How terribly I missed that face at Henry's own funeral! I kept on
expecting to see it, for indeed it seemed to me that he was directing
the whole most moving and impressive c