When Henry Irving left Manchester he was twenty-seven years old and had been nearly nine years on the stage. But still the touring went on, fish and actors being shunted with the scenery from town to town—Liverpool, the Isle of Man, Edinburgh, back to Manchester—and although the parts were varied Irving was still little more than a walking gentleman. Liverpool boasted two weekly journals, called Tomahawk and Porcupine, and they did their best to live up to their names. Tomahawk said that Irving was a sterling actor, but had many disagreeable peculiarities: licking his lips, wrinkling his forehead, and speaking through his nose. It was as low a point in his career as the moment when he had been glad to accept warm underclothes from a fellow actor. But his sense of power within, as always, held him on course, and, in 1866, he was at last given the chance to create an original part.