Both Gerty MacDowell and Molly Bloom think of "Martin Harvey,"
a handsome English stage actor who toured widely in the early
1900s. Molly has seen Harvey perform on stage but the actor's
visage was also widely available in promotional photographs,
one of which Gerty owns.
John Martin-Harvey was born in 1863 and joined Sir Henry
Irving's Lyceum Theatre company in 1882. His career took off
in 1899 when Irving gave him the lead role of Sydney Carton in
The Only Way, a new stage adaptation of Dickens' A
Tale of Two Cities. When Irving died in 1905
Martin-Harvey took over the business and added many production
credits to his acting résumé. He was knighted in 1921, and
played Sydney Carton in a 1927 film production of The
Only Way that was a box-office success.
Martin-Harvey toured extensively in the UK and in North
America. Gifford notes that his autobiography describes his
visits to Dublin in the early 1900s as "a series of triumphs."
On her Irish photography weblog, Dublin librarian Orla
Fitzpatrick observes that "according to The Irish
Times of the 26th November 1904, crowds thronged
to see him in the Theatre Royal where he performed Hamlet. His
photograph was taken in the same month by Chancellor’s of
Dublin and doubtless it sold well."
Sitting across from Bloom on the strand, Gerty sees "the
image of the photo she had of Martin Harvey, the
matinee idol, only for the moustache which
she preferred because she wasn't stagestruck like Winny
Rippingham." Even accounting for the lateness of the hour and
the rosy glow that drapes all of Gerty's romantic affections,
this comparison is very flattering. Bloom may not be the most
muscular or dashing man on Dublin's streets, but clearly it
would be a mistake to assume that he is sexually unattractive.
Molly too implies that he possesses some smoldering good
looks. She remembers that in his courting days he had a
"splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look at them,"
and she thinks that "he was very handsome at that time trying
to look like lord Byron I said I liked though he was too
beautiful for a man."
Molly also recalls a time in the recent past when she went
with Milly to see "the Only Way in the Theatre royal."
Milly was quite taken with Martin-Harvey's performance: "she
clapped when the curtain came down because he looked so
handsome then we had Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and
supper I thought to myself afterwards it must be real love
if a man gives up his life for her that way for nothing."
Molly's thoughts about true love are a response to the story
of The Only Way (1899), which Gifford summarizes:
"The play de-emphasizes the novel's dark, melodramatic
concentration on the human cost of the French Revolution and
concentrates instead on the pathos of the dissipated hero
Sydney Carton's Platonic love for Lucie Manette (the
Marchioness St. Evremonde), a love that prompts him to go to
the guillotine in place of her condemned husband." The play,
Gifford notes, was written by an Irish cleric named Freeman
Crofts Wills with the help of another churchman, Frederick
Langbridge.
