Irving also published acting editions of many of his productions, including ‘Becket,’ and himself prepared with the assistance of Francis Albert Marshall [q.v.] and many other coadjutors the text, with suggestions for excisions in performance, of the ‘Henry Irving Shakespeare,’ to which he contributed an essay on ‘Shakespeare as a Playwright’ (1888).
Irving opened many memorials, among them the Shakespeare fountain presented to Stratford-upon-Avon by G. W. Childs in Oct. 1887, the memorial of Marlowe at Canterbury in Sept. 1891, and the statue of Mrs. Siddons on Paddington Green in June 1897.
His degrees and honours included the LL.D. of Dublin (1892), the Litt.D. of Cambridge (1898), the LL.D. of Glasgow (1899), and the Komthur Cross of the Ernestine Order of the second class, conferred upon him by the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Meiningen. In 1883 he was approached on the subject of a knighthood, and declined the honour (The Times, 24 Oct. 1905, p. 12); in 1895 he accepted it, and thus, being the first actor to be knighted for his services to the stage, obtained for his profession the ‘official recognition’ which he had declared to be its due. He was the first actor to speak at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, and the inclusion of the toast of ‘The Drama’ dates from that occasion.
Irving married on 15 July 1869 Florence, daughter of Daniel James O'Callaghan, surgeon-general in the East India Company, and niece of John Cornelius O'Callaghan [q. v.], author of ‘The Green Book, or Gleanings from the Desk of a Literary Agitator.’ There were two children of the marriage: Henry Brodribb, born on 5 Aug. 1870, and Laurence Sidney Brodribb, born on 21 Dec. 1871. Early in 1872 the husband and wife ceased to live together, and a deed of separation was executed in 1879. During the greater part of his London career Irving lived in rooms at 15a Grafton Street, Bond Street; in 1899 he moved to a flat at 17 Stratton Street, Piccadilly.
In figure Irving was tall and very thin, in constitution wiry and capable of great and prolonged exertion. The beauty and nobility of his face and head increased with years (on his appearance in youth see Ellen Terry, The Story of my Life, pp. 147–8, and The Bancrofts, p. 324); and he had expressive features and beautiful hands. In character he was ambitious, proud, lonely, and self-centred (‘an egotist of the great type’ is Miss Terry's phrase for him), but gentle, courteous, and lavishly generous. His personal magnetism was very strong; he inspired devotion in those who worked with him and adulation in his admirers. His resentment of parody and caricature may probably be ascribed to his jealousy for the dignity of his art as much as to sensitiveness in himself; of direct attack (and perhaps few actors have been so virulently attacked as Irving was in his earlier years at the Lyceum) he took little notice. Though open to suggestion, he relied almost entirely upon his own mind, and had sufficient power of genius and will to force acceptance of his always sincere and original views. As an actor, he had many disabilities, natural and contracted, a voice monotonous and not powerful, a peculiar pronunciation, a stamping gait, and a tendency to drag his leg behind him, angular and excessive gesture, and a slowness of speech which became more marked when powerful emotion choked his utterance. These mannerisms, which were at their height between 1873 and 1880, were less pronounced after his second American tour in 1884; and through most of his career he may be said to have either kept them in check or made good use of them. It has been said that in all his parts he was ‘always Irving’; this is true inasmuch as his physical characteristics and commanding personality could not be disguised, but his assumptions of character were nearly always complete ‘from the mind outwards.’ He has been called an intellectual actor. If the phrase is meant to state that he could not express great passion, it is unjust: unsurpassed in the portrayal of fear, horror, scorn or malignity, he could draw tears as freely as any ‘emotional’ actor. His intellectuality lay in the thought which he brought to bear on any part or play he undertook. The dregs of the old school in tragedy still lingered on the stage when he forced his audiences to think out Shakespeare's characters anew, and helped forward the revolution begun by Fechter, a revolution which aimed, no less than did that of Garrick, at restoring nature and truth. Irving's bent led him towards the bizarre and fantastic, and touches of these appeared in all his work. He kept it, however, in check, and his distinction of appearance and manner, with a power of donning a noble simplicity, enabled the impersonator of Mathias and of Mephistopheles to be admirable also as Charles I, Dr. Primrose, or Becket. Of his Shakespearean characters, his finest
