Actors in the Next World.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6750, 3 February 1892, Page 3

Actors in the Next World.

At the Manchester Arts Club, in the course of a speech last month, Mr Henry Irving said: —“There is a whole class of persons who spend a considerable amount of their time in predicting, both in speech and writing, the pains and penalties of our future state. Now, Ido not know that we ought to complain of this, but, so far as I know, actors are the only members of the artistic fraternity who are singled out for this sort of warning, I think it is high time tbo painters and musicians had a turn. There are some members of this club, I dare say, who would be all the bettor for a little friendly prophecy. I have my eye on certain architects who build theatres and palaces of varieties and other shocking places. How is it that they escape ? Actors are getting tired of having this foretaste of immortality ail to themselves. The other day 1 was gently taken to task in a highly respectable journal for talking so much about the moral status of the stage, and comp'aining that it was always being blown up with religous dynamite. But gentlemen, I don’t object to this in the least, provided that eternal destruction is impartially distributed all round. Let some Jeremiah get up and declare that the Arts Club is a favourite haunt of Satan, and then I shall begin to feel that something like justice is done on this earth. I see that a great painter, no less a personage than the president of the Eoyal Academy, has got into the black books of those amiable beings who superintend our morals and thoughtfully provide us with little tropicd nooks in the next world. They object to the exhibition on book stalls of any engraving from some picture of Sir Frederick Leighton’e. Now this looks like fair play. lam hoping the musician and the architect will catch it soon. When we are all put on the same level of irreclaimable turpitude, then I shall sit at your hospitable board with a really sociable feeling.”