“As it did, of course. We pulled up at the stage door of the Lyceum, and I went in and told the attendant that Sir John had arrived. He wasn’t one of your proper old stage doormen, but a young fellow who took himself very seriously, and had a sheaf of papers naming the people he was authorized to admit. No Sir John Tresize was on the list. He showed it to me, in support of his downright refusal. I protested. He stuck his head out of the door and looked at our limousine, and made off through the passage that led to the stage, and I stuck close to him. He approached an elegant figure whom I knew to be one of the most eminent of the younger actor-knights and hissed ‘There’s an old geezer outside dressed as Nero who says he’s to appear; will you speak to him, sir?’ I intervened; ‘It’s Sir John Tresize,’ I said, ‘and it was arranged that he was to speak an Epilogue—a tribute to Irving.’ The eminent actor-knight went rather pale under his make-up (he was rigged out as Hamlet) and asked for details, which I supplied. The eminent actor-knight cursed with brilliant invention for a few seconds, and beckoned me to the corridor. I went, but not before I was able to identify the sounds that were coming from the stage as a passage from The Lyons Mail; the rhythm, the tune of what I heard was all wrong, too colloquial, too matter-of-fact.

“We made our way back to the stage door, and the eminent actor-knight darted across the pavement, leapt into the limousine beside Sir John, and began to talk to him urgently. I would have given a great deal to hear what was said, but I could only catch scraps of it from where I sat in the driver’s seat. ‘Dreadful state of confusion … can’t imagine what the organization of such an affair entails … would not for the world have slighted so great a man of the theatre and the most eminent successor of Irving … but when the proposal to the Poet Laureate fell through all communication had seemed to stop … nothing further had been heard … no, there had been no message during the past week or something would certainly have been done to alter the program … but as things stand … greatest reluctance … beg indulgence … express deepest personal regret but as you know I do not stand alone and cannot act on personal authority so late in the afternoon.…’

“A great deal of this; the eminent actor-knight was sweating and I could see in the rear-vision mirror that his distress was real, and his determination to stick to his guns was equally real. They were a notable study. You could do wonders with them, Harry: the young actor so vivid, the old one so silvery in the splendour of his distinction; both giving the quality of art to a common human blunder. Sir John’s face was grave, but at last he reached out and patted the knee in the Hamlet tights and said, ‘I won’t say I understand, because I don’t; still, nothing to be done now, eh? Damned embarrassing for us both, quonk? But I think I may say a little more than just embarrassing for me.’ Then Hamlet, delighted to have been let off the hook, smiled the smile of spiritual radiance for which he was famous, and did an inspired thing: he took the hand Sir John extended to him and raised it to his lips. It seemed under the circumstances precisely the right thing to do.