Actors' Dressing Rooms.
HE robing apartments of actors are pleasant retreats. Quaint old prints, autographed portraits and pictures, highly-prized programmes, letters from celebrities are as numerous as they are interesting, whilst every actor bids "good luck" cross his threshold by exhibiting his own particular horse-shoe in a conspicuous corner.
Mr. Irving's dressing-room.
Where is a more picturesque room than that which Henry Irving enters nightly? Scarcely a dozen square inches of wall paper is to be seen—pictures are everywhere. The eminent tragedian has a private entrance in Burleigh-street, and you may know when the actor is not far away, for "Fussie," a pet fox-terrier, always heralds his approach. "Fussie" has his own mat to sit on, and here he waits during the whole of the performance until after the second act, when he regularly looks up for his customary biscuit. It was "Fussie" who was lost at Southampton when Mr. Irving was on his way to America. He turned up, however, at the Lyceum stage door four days afterwards, and it remains a mystery to this day as to whether Fussie came by road or rail.
Henry Irving's room is a comfortable apartment. The floor is covered with oil-cloth, and a huge rug imparts a cosy appearance. Irving always uses the same chair to sit in when making up. It has broken down a score of times, but has been patched up again and again. In fact, the actor has almost a reverence for anything which is a connecting link with old associations.
Look at the costumes, for instance, hanging behind a door which leads to a very unpretentious-looking wash-basin. There hangs the clothing of The Master of Ravenswood. The two Spanish hats with long feathers, the velvet coat and waistcoat with innumerable buttons, a quaint old crimson waistcoat, with elaborate silver work. Mr. Irving clings to an old coat so long as it will cling to him. He makes his clothes old—wears them during the day.
