Chapter IX: Part 9

“Oh, yes!” says Loveday, who is directing the last finishing touches to the throne-room set for “Louis XI.” “Tight work, eh? Got into the town at two—scenery to unpack—some of it is still on the train. But we get through it. The chief has his rehearsal somehow—finished half an hour ago—in two hours the curtain goes up. Had to do it all ourselves. Shall have to turn Arnot’s men into Burgundians. No help to be had of any kind. It is Christmas, you know, and Christmas comes but once a year, thank goodness! The chief carpenter, who is also the gas-man, has not turned up. Some of the other fellows are ‘Merrie-Christmasing,’ also. Tried to get some additional assistance in the way of labor. Found a few chaps loafing; asked them if they wanted work. Said they did not mind. Offered them good wages. ‘Oh, no,’ they said; ‘get niggers to do that!’ They were above it. I acted on their advice. The moment it was dark the ‘colored boys,’ as they call themselves, knocked off. Said they never worked after dark. ‘Night is the time to rest and sleep,’ they said. ‘For black men, perhaps,’ I said; ‘but not for white.’ Seemed to me as if they said, ‘You had us for slaves a good many years; it is our turn now.’ Funny, eh? They wouldn’t go on working. However, we shall be all right. It’s a good thing I’m not the only Mark Tapley in the company, don’t you know; and the governor, by Jove! he stands it like,—well, like only Henry Irving can!”

Two hours later Irving is received with rapturous applause by a comparatively small audience. “More power to them!” he says, “for they have left cosey hearths to drive or tramp through the slush of the first snow of the Baltimore winter.” And the company, all round, never played with more spirit. “It is the only return we can make to those who have come to see us on such a night,” said Irving to several of them before the curtain went up, “to do our very best.” And they did. Terriss was never more successful as Nemours. The audience was cold at first, but as the dramatic story unravelled itself, under the grip of the master, they caught the infection of its grim interest, and their applause rung out heartily and long. Irving developed the leading character with more than ordinary care, and was called and recalled after every act,—a triple call at the close including Terriss, whose manliness of gait and manner are peculiarly acceptable to every audience.

“There is one thing I observe about this company,” said the Boston manager: “it walks well; it is the best company on its legs I have ever seen. Our young men, as a rule, particularly in costume, turn out their toes too much, or are knock-kneed; all your people stand well on their feet,—it is a treat to see them.”

“Yes,” says Irving, smiling, when this is reported to him. “I engaged them to show me off. But did not Emerson say that the Englishman is, of all other people, the man who stands firmest in his shoes? There is one thing to be said about our cousins on this side,—they do not stand still; they are like young Rapid in ‘A Cure for the Heart-ache,’—always on the move. And when they are behind a trotting-horse how they go! I am a little disappointed, so far, with the sleighing as a matter of speed; but the snow was too soft when we took our first drive at Boston.”

III.

IT is the custom in America to open the theatres on Christmas day. The doors of the Baltimore house could not have been opened in more wretched weather. The streets were impassable, except for carriages, or for pedestrians in “Arctic rubbers,” or on stilts. The snow was melting everywhere. Nothing had been done to clear the sidewalks. They were full of treacherous puddles, or equally treacherous snow-drifts. The Turks blow horns at certain periods of the year, to frighten away evil spirits. I know of no explanation for the blowing of horns at Baltimore; but the boys indulge themselves in this exercise to a bewildering extent at Christmas. Carol-singing is evidently not a custom there, nor “waits.” I heard a boy shouting at the top of his voice the refrain of a popular ditty:—

“In the morning, in the morning,
When Gabriel blows his trumpet,
In the morning.”

But I conclude that he had only adapted these modern words to what was evidently an old custom at Baltimore; for he blew his horn vigorously at the end of the refrain, as if competing for supremacy with Gabriel himself.

“You are right; it does not seem like Christmas,” said Irving, as we sat down to supper,—close upon midnight,—a section of that same party which, a year previously, had gathered about the round table in the host’s Beefsteak Club room at the Lyceum Theatre.

“It seems so strange,” said Ellen Terry, “to play on Christmas Day; that, to me, makes the time wholly unlike Christmas. On the other hand, there is the snow, and we shall have an English Christmas pudding,—I brought it from home, and my mother made it.”

“Well done; bless her heart!” said Irving; “but I have played before on Christmas Day. They open the theatres in Scotland on Christmas Day. They don’t pay much attention, I am told, to church festivals in Boston and New England; but one would have expected it in the South, where they are observing the social character of Christmas, I learn, more and more every year; and not alone to the snow, but to that fact, I am told, we are to attribute the small houses we had last night and to-night.”

“Small for America and for us,” chimed in Loveday; “but what we should, after our experience, call bad business here would be very good in England.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Irving; “but here’s holly and mistletoe,—where did they come from?”

He was looking at a very English decoration that swung from the chandelier.

“From London, with the pudding,” said Miss Terry.

The colored attendants took great interest in our celebration of the festival. If they could have put their thoughts into words they would probably have expressed surprise that artists of whom they had heard so much could entertain each other in so simple a fashion.

When the pudding came on the table it was not lighted.

“Who has had charge of this affair?” Irving asked, looking slyly at everybody but Stoker.

“I have,” said the usual delinquent.

“That accounts for it,” said Irving. “Who ever heard of a Christmas pudding without a blaze, except, perhaps, in Ireland?”

“Oh, we’ll soon light it up!” said Stoker. “Waiter, bring some brandy!”

Presently the pudding flamed up, to the delight of the African gentlemen who served it.

“I fear there is no sauce,” said one of the ladies.

“No sauce! Christmas pudding and no sauce!” I exclaimed. “Here’s stage management!”

“Sauce!” said Stoker,—“to plum pudding?”

“Yes, always in England,” said Loveday.

This kind of mild banter was checked by Irving filling his glass with champagne, and observing, “After the experience of last year, of course we ought not to have entrusted Stoker with the pudding. However, let us make the best of it. It seems a very good pudding, after all. I want you all to fill your glasses. Let us wish each other in the old way, ‘A merry Christmas and A happy New Year,’ and ‘God bless our absent friends!’”

Some of us gulped the wine a little spasmodically, and some of us found it hard to keep back our tears. Who can pledge that familiar toast, and not think of the empty chairs that seem so very, very empty at Christmas!

When the women and my girls had been escorted to their carriages, and sent home to their hotel, with flowers and bon-bons on their laps, we three men of the little party sat round the fire and talked of old times. Irving had ordered the biggest logs the hotel’s wood-yard afforded to be heaped into the grate. The fire cracked and spluttered and blazed, and had in the lower bars of the grate a solid, steady glow of white ash that was truly English; and I think we each looked into it for a time, busy with our own individual thoughts and reflections. Presently, under the more cheerful influences of the season, we talked of many things, and finally drifted into “shop.” The chief subject was started by Irving himself, and it dealt with the novel treatment of the next Shakespeare play which he intends to produce at the Lyceum. Irving looked into the fire and saw it there, scene by scene, act by act. As he saw it, he described it.

It was in the glamour of his rosiest pictures that I said good-night, to have the witchery of the fire-light dispelled by the outer bitterness of the weather, and the lonely, desolate appearance of the city. The streets were now as hard as they had been soft; the pools were ice, the snow adamant; and icicles hung down from the eaves of every house. The roadways glistened in the lamp-light. Not a soul was abroad. It might have been a city of the dead. A strain of Christmas music would have redeemed the situation. Even a London “waits” band at its worst, such as one awakens to with a growl on cold nights at home, would have been a God-send. Not a sound; not a footstep; no distant jangle of car-bells; not even a policeman; only the winter night itself, with a few chilly-looking stars above, and the cold, hard, icy streets below.

IV.

IT is a long way from Baltimore to Brooklyn,—five or six hundred miles,—still from Brooklyn to Chicago is over a thousand; yet these were the journeys that followed each other. The company, as you already know, travelled from Boston to Baltimore, close upon a thousand miles; from Baltimore it went to Brooklyn; and from the city of churches its next trip was to the great city on Lake Michigan. But, not to get ahead of events, we will pause at Brooklyn[33]: first, to say that the theatre was crowded there all the week; secondly, for Irving to relate an incident by the way; and, thirdly, to introduce the succeeding chapter, which will describe our departure therefrom.

Irving was a little ruffled during his journey from Baltimore by the sting of one of those vagrant gadflies of the press that are not confined to the American continent; but, as a matter of course, exist in that broader field in large numbers, and are of greater variety than in the narrower limits of Great Britain.

“I promised to write a little gossip of my experiences in America for the—— magazine, and I think the Baltimore incident is a very good subject, told as an episode of the trip, with just a few lines about my reception. What do you think?”

“Very good, indeed,” I said.

“Ah! I’m glad you like the notion, because I have written it. Here it is; I’ll read it to you.”

“The Baltimore man will feel flattered when he learns how much you have taken his ‘Tribune’ despatch to heart,” I said.

“I don’t care for that at all; nor would I, as you know, have thought of answering him, only that he put his falsehood into so ingeniously damaging a shape. But no matter,—this is what I have written.

“AN INCIDENT OF MY AMERICAN TOUR.

“The Sunday newspapers of America are the largest and certainly the most amusing of the week. They were especially welcome to me during the railway journey between Baltimore and Brooklyn. The landscape was striking now and then; but we were travelling literally through a snow world, and the monotony of it was a trifle tedious.

“I turned to the New York papers, a bundle of which had been brought ‘on board’ (this term is applied to railway trains as to ships in America), and was not long in coming upon a surprise. It was in the shape of a special telegraphic despatch from Baltimore to the ‘Tribune,’ of December 30. I read that ‘Henry Irving closed a very successful week at the Academy of Music’; that his ‘audiences were large’; that ‘his success was due to curiosity’; that ’”Hamlet” raised a storm of criticism about his new-fangled ideas, and when the ghost appeared on the stage in a green gown the audience roared at the strange sight, to the evident embarrassment of the ghost’; that ‘individually, however, Henry Irving’s stay in Baltimore was of the pleasantest nature’; and that ‘Dr. W. Crim,[34] the well-known surgeon, gave him a reception, where he proved himself an entertaining conversationalist. He was favorably impressed with Americans, but said they were not yet fully educated to appreciate true artistic ability; they were progressing.’

“As I had never remembered the closet scene in ‘Hamlet’ to have been more impressive, and particularly as regarded the appearance of the ghost; as the question of curiosity, _per se_, had never been raised by the local press; as on our first two nights we had bad houses, and on our last two the theatre was crowded; as the remark attributed to me at Dr. Crim’s was a false report, calculated to injure me in the eyes of the American people,—this newspaper despatch, I confess, annoyed me.

“I consulted my friends on the train as to the advisability of contradicting the latter part of it.

“The general verdict was against me. Said an American journalistic friend, ‘If you get into a controversy of that kind, it will be never-ending.’

“‘But it is not a question for controversy; it is a question of fact. If this man’s statement is allowed to go forth, I simply stand before the American people as a downright prig.’

“‘If you take the trouble to contradict every misrepresentation of what you say and do you will have no other occupation.’

“‘So far this is the only thing I have cared to contradict; for I think the press, as a rule, has been generous to me, and to all of us. As for the point about the “ghost,” that does not matter; it is a lie, and, even if it be malicious, it will be corrected wherever we play “Hamlet.” It is true, our friend of the “Standard” may publish it; but truth will prevail even against his curiously persistent misrepresentations.’

“‘Oh, but,’ said my adviser, and he was backed by others, ‘the London “Standard” will not repeat such obvious nonsense, and the American people will not believe a mere Baltimore correspondent. Take no notice of it.’

“Thus the matter rested until the close of the journey. I hope I endure criticism with becoming fortitude, but a wilful and malicious falsehood reflecting upon my personal conduct frets me. I therefore resolved to send the following letter to the editor of the ‘Tribune’ (who had devoted much valuable space to my work, and whose personal courtesy I shall always remember):—

“‘SIR,—I value so highly the good opinion of the American people that it is painful to me to see any estimate of their education and culture misrepresented. In your journal of to-day a Baltimore despatch states that I have said: “The Americans are not yet fully educated to appreciate true artistic ability; they are progressing.” This statement is utterly untrue; and, while I take this opportunity to contradict it, I feel sure that America by this time knows me sufficiently well to believe that I am incapable of uttering such conceited nonsense, or of the bad taste and ingratitude which the correspondent desires to fix upon me.

“‘Faithfully yours,
“‘HENRY IRVING.’

Sometimes instinct is one’s best guide in dealing with mere personal matters. The invidious character of the newspaper report in this case is apparent, and my letter was, in many directions, referred to as a well-advised and necessary rejoinder to a calumny. The ‘Tribune’ mentioned it in the following terms, a day or two afterwards:—

“‘Mr. Irving’s recent card in the “Tribune,” concerning the absurd charge that he had disparaged American audiences, was graceful and manly. An imputation of invidious remarks to those persons who are prosperous in the public esteem is one of the commonest methods of malicious detraction. It has been used, of course, against Mr. Irving, who is altogether too fortunate a man for envy and malice to endure. An old remark, made by the poet Samuel Rogers, applies to this case: “To succeed is no little crime in the eyes of those who fail; and those who cannot climb will endeavor to pull you down by the skirts.“‘

“The ‘absurd charge’ was not too absurd, I learned later, for it appeared in the cable correspondence of the ‘Standard.’ You ask me for a few notes on my work in this great country. I hope you may consider this personal matter of sufficient interest. From the first I have been received with unbounded kindness; from the first I have played to large and enthusiastic audiences. My most sanguine hopes never reached so high as the success I have realized. Here and there, prompted, possibly, by the preliminary appeal of the ‘Standard’ to the American people ‘not to nail my ears to the pump’ (as the ‘Herald’ put it in commenting upon the article), and, encouraged by a parchment pamphlet circulated here, some few pressmen, of the Baltimore stamp, have had their malicious fling at me; but I have reason to be deeply grateful to the American critics and to the American people for judging me and my work in a spirit of honesty and fair play. The study of a lifetime, and the conscientious working out of my own convictions in regard to the representation of stage stories in a natural manner, have been stamped with the approval of the American people; and I shall return to my native land very proud of their artistic endorsement and their personal friendship.

“HENRY IRVING.

“There! What do you think of it?”

“It is excellent,” I said, “and most interesting; but I would rather see it in ‘Henry Irving’s Impressions of America’ than in the”——

And here it is accordingly, an intercepted contribution to an English magazine.

“I thought,” he said, “the editor would publish it as a ‘P.S.,’ after the manner of other contributions about the stage.”

“No doubt,” I replied; “but I think we will sandwich it between our chapters on Baltimore and the trip to Chicago.”

XV.

FROM BROOKLYN TO CHICAGO.

“Fussy”—The Brooklyn Ferry—Crossing the North River—A Picturesque Crowd—Brooklyn Bridge at Night—Warned against Chicago—Conservatism of American Critics—Dangers of the Road—Railway-Train Bandits—An Early Interviewer—A Reporter’s Story—Life on a Private Car—Miss Terry and her “Luck”—American Women.

I.

THE clocks are hammering out the midnight hour on Saturday, January 5th, as several carriages dash over the snowy streets of Brooklyn, one of them made more conspicuous than the rest by the antics of an attendant dog. It is a black and white fox terrier, with a suggestion of the lurcher in its pedigree. Busy with many tram-cars and a variety of other traffic, the streets are bright with gas and electric lamps. “Fussy” is quite a foreigner in Brooklyn; carriage, horses, and driver are strange to him. One looks out to see the sagacious animal leaping along through the crowd, never heeding the calls of boys and men, now making short cuts to head the vehicle, and now dropping behind.

“You will lose him one day,” I say to Fussy’s owner, by way of warning.

“Oh, no!” says Miss Terry. “He follows my carriage everywhere, day or night, going to the theatre or leaving it, strange town or otherwise. I have a small piece of carpet for him to lie upon in my dressing-room. Sometimes, just as we are leaving for the theatre, my maid pretends to forget it. But Fussy will dart back to my room and bring it, dragging it downstairs into the street, and only dropping it by the carriage-door. One day, at New York, he leaped into the hotel elevator with it, and out again on the ground floor, as if he had been accustomed to elevators all his life.”

We are three,—Miss Terry, Irving, and myself. We are making our way to the Brooklyn ferry. The boat belonging to the Pennsylvania Railroad is waiting to convey us across the North river to the Desbrosses-street depot of that well-known corporation. “Fussy” is there as soon as we are, and poor “Charlie,” who is getting blind, has to be carried aboard. Nearly all the members of the company are here already. They are a picturesque group in the somewhat uncertain light of distant lamps, and a world of stars sparkling in a frosty sky that seems further away from the earth than our English firmament. Mr. Terriss looks like a dashing Capt. Hawksley on his travels,—fur coat, cap, self-possessed air, and all. Mr. Tyars wears a “Tam O’Shanter” and ulster. He might be the laird of a Scotch county, just come down from the hills. The grey-haired, pale-faced gentleman, muffled to the eyes in fur cap and comforter, is Mr. Mead, whose imperial stride as “the buried majesty of Denmark” is repeated here in response to the call of a friend in the cabin. Mr. Howe carries his years and experience with an elastic gait, and a fresh, pleasant face. He is a notable figure in the group, dressed in every respect like an English gentleman,—overcoat, hat, gloves. He has a breezy country manner, and, if one did not know him, one might say, “This is a Yorkshire man, who farms his own land, going to the West to have a look at Kansas, and perhaps at Manitoba.” Mr. Ball, the musical conductor, wears his fur collar and spectacles with quite a professional air. Norman Forbes brings with him ideas of Bond street, and Robertson, who sings “Hey, Nonnie,” to the swells in Leonato’s garden, is wrapped up as a tenor should be, though he has the carriage of an athlete. The American winter lends itself to artistic considerations in the matter of cloaks, coats, leggins, scarfs, and “head-gear.” The ladies of the company have sought the hot shelter of the spacious saloon. Miss Terry pushes the swinging-door.

“I shall be stifled in there,” she says, retreating before a blast of hot air.

“And starved to death out here,” says Irving.

“Well, I prefer the latter,” she replies, taking her place among the crowd on the outer platform.

“Our English friends would complain of heat at the North pole,” says an American gentleman to another, as they push their way into the saloon.

It is an impressive sight, this great, rolling flood of the North river at midnight. The reflection of the boat’s lights upon the tide give it an oily appearance.

“Looks harmless enough, eh?” remarks an American friend, answering his own question; “but it aint. The strongest swimmer might fail in breasting the current at this state of the tide.”

Bright electric lamps mark out the graceful lines of the Brooklyn bridge. The twinkling signals of river craft are seen afar off beneath the span of the suspended roadway, along which gay-looking cars are flashing their white and red and green lights. We pass and meet gigantic ferry-boats, as large as the Terrace at Harley-on-Thames would be if converted into a houseboat, but a thousand times brighter, with tier upon tier of illuminated windows. Irving, in his great Astrachan overcoat, contemplates the scene with deep interest.

“It is, indeed, very wonderful,” he says. “We could give an idea of the bridge at night on the Lyceum stage; but these ferry-boats would bother us, eh, Loveday?”

“Not more than they do now with their heat and cold. Don’t you think Miss Terry ought to go inside? It is very bitter here.”

“No, I’ll die first!” says the lady, amidst a general laugh.

II.

PRESENTLY we run into dock, and are as firmly part of it as if the two structures were one, and so we land and struggle along in groups to the platform, where our special train is to start for Chicago, a run of one thousand miles. Mr. Carpenter, the traffic manager of this road, is here to receive us. He and Mr. Abbey exchange some not unpleasant badinage about the tribulations of our previous journey from Boston to Baltimore, and we get aboard. Mr. Blanchard, the president of the Erie Railroad, has lent Mr. Irving his own parlor-car for the journey, although it is necessary that the company shall travel over the Pennsylvania road. He has provisioned it also. It contains a private room for Miss Terry, a special room for Irving, and sections for myself and other friends. There is also a smoking-room and little parlor, besides, of course, a well-appointed kitchen. Mr. Blanchard’s own _chef_ is in the car, with a couple of servants; they are colored gentlemen, and very attentive to our wants. Miss Terry and her maid go straight to bed; so likewise do the other occupants of the car, except Irving and myself. We think there may be much rest for mind and body in a quiet chat before turning in for the night.

“Besides,” says Irving, lighting a cigar, “we may not be in the humor for such recreation after Monday night. I am to get it hot in Chicago, they tell me.”

“I believe you will find the gate of the West wide open to receive you, and the people of Chicago quick to recognize all that is good in your work, and not a whit behind the other cities in its appreciation of it.”

“They can have no prejudices, at all events,” he replied; “there has been no time for tradition to take root there. They will not be afraid to say what they think, one way or the other. I would not feel anxious at all if we had to stay there a month instead of a fortnight.”

“I should not wonder if reporters meet the train and ask for interviews long before we arrive at Chicago.”

“Is it possible? Well, let them come. I am told that if we should be snowed up, there are much worse persons to fear than our friends, the reporters. Mr. Abbey carries pistols, and the conductors and guards are armed. During the Bernhardt tour more than one plot to stop Abbey’s special trains was discovered. A band of masked men were disappointed at one place, and a company of desperadoes from a western camp at another. One of Abbey’s agents was attacked in his sleeping-car, and badly wounded, by men who sneaked on board during a stoppage near a signal station; but he made a good fight, and the guard coming quickly to his aid, the fellows got off. Travelling as we did, even from Boston to Baltimore, pulling up at lonely and unpeopled points, one can understand how easily a gang of reckless robbers might capture a train, the facilities for getting aboard and walking right through the cars being largely in favor of success. It was known, Mr. Abbey tells me, that Madame Bernhardt carried her diamonds about with her; and, acting on reliable information, he found it desirable to have a smart chief of police on the train, who had each end of her car protected at night by an armed guard. No such honor is, I suppose, provided for us; and then we do not go so far West, nor so near the frontiers, as she and her company went. I suppose Abbey is not chaffing us, as Raymond and those other fellows tried to do in London?”[35]

“Oh, no; Abbey’s is a true bill. In the West a detective well known to the thieves sat by Madame Bernhardt’s coachman whenever she went out, to or from the theatre, or anywhere else; and, apart from the weapons he carried, his courage and skill made him a terror to evil-doers. The western bandit is singularly discreet when he knows the reputation of the police is pledged against him in a public enterprise.

III.

THE Chicago press justified my forecast of its enterprise. The story of one of its representatives (he was a baron, by the way, in his German Fatherland, though content to be a reporter in Chicago) is best told in his own way. He begins it with rather a series of “catching” titles, thus:—

A CHAT WITH MR. IRVING.

_A Daily News Reporter climbs into the English Tragedian’s Special Train, and Interviews him._

MISS ELLEN TERRY thinks her AMERICAN SISTERS “Very nice,” but she has not yet seen DAISY MILLER.

Then he goes on to narrate his own adventures, and the results, and without much exaggeration, almost as follows:—

“Mr. Henry Irving, the notable English actor, is in Chicago now, and so is the ‘Daily News’ man, who accompanied him part of the way. The manner in which these two—the great representative of the British stage and its latest and finest fruition, and the modest representative of the ‘Daily News’—met was quite peculiar; and it may be amusing to a discerning public to, for once, learn that the interviewer’s path is not always strewn with roses when he sets out upon his way past the thorny hedges that beset his road. Who doesn’t pity him in his various plights, and concede that naught but the reputation of Chicago for having the pluckiest and most irrepressible reporters did not make him wilt long before accomplishing his task, must bear a stone in his bosom, instead of the usual muscular fibre called a human heart.

“It is well known to the newspaper fraternity that Mr. Irving holds the interviewer in dread, and that nearly all the so-called interviews with him published in the American papers have been spurious. Duly appreciating this fact, the ‘Daily News’ man had not only been munificently fitted out with the requisite lucre by the business department, but had furthermore been furnished with a letter of introduction,—one of the combination sort,—addressed to both Mr. Copleston, Manager Abbey’s representative, and to Mr. Palser,[36] couched in terms to make the flintiest heart melt. Thus attired, then, the emissary boarded at Fort Wayne the train which had carried safely thus far Cæsar and his luck from Jersey City. Entry to the cars was effected with difficulty, the rules proscribing any but the theatrical company for whom the train was chartered from riding in it. Perseverance and gall in equal doses prevailed, however, as they usually do, and the drowsy Senegambian, who was doing the Cerberus act, at the entrance of the car, yielded to an amount of eloquence perhaps never before brought to bear upon his pachydermatous anatomy. As soon as the train had started, a still-hunt was begun for the two prospective victims, Miss Terry and Mr. Irving. Alas! they had both obeyed nature’s call, and were at that moment sweetly slumbering, oblivious even of the Chicago interviewer. Everybody else was likewise sleeping, even unto the dusky porters. Passing up and down the train from end to end, nothing but the cheerful and melodious British snore greeted the attentive ear. Here, to the right, it was the wheezing note of a snore combined with a cold; there, it was the thundering roll of a _snoro basso profundo;_ across the aisle the gentler breathing of some youthful British blonde, struck the expectant senses, and again a confused jumble of snores, of all sexes and ages, would fall ‘with a dull thud’ upon the tympanum of the investigator. It forced itself upon the latter’s conviction that it would be a difficult matter to attain the object for which he had been deputed. It was then after three o’clock. The train was due in Chicago at eight, and it looked very unlikely that Mr. Irving would overcome his aversion to interviewing and grant audience to a stranger at such a time. This was a hiatus which had not been thought of, and the ‘Daily News’ man sat down in an abandoned chair (on which were peacefully reclining some articles of feminine attire), and reflected. Reflecting, he caught himself in a nap, and woke out of it with a slight shudder. He gave himself a poke in the rib and muttered, in grave-like accents: ‘_Nil desperandum_.’

“The next move in the direction of the desired interview was a vigorous rap administered to the saddle-colored individual who in that car discharged the duties of collecting ‘50 cents all ‘round.’ When the kicked one had gathered up his portly limbs he was sent on a search for Mr. Palser first, and, that proving unavailing, on a hunt for Mr. Copleston. The latter, after considerable energy had been expended by the colored brother, awoke and gave vent to his indignation at having been thus rudely snatched from Morpheus’s arms. He did so in rather vigorous style and language, which, under the circumstances, was hardly to be wondered at. He declined to come forth from under his blankets, and not even the cutting repartee of the reporter could rouse him. He said he had been but an hour and a half asleep, he and some friends in another car having played poker till very late, and he, the speaker, having lost quite heavily. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t get up and wake Mr. Irving, and an interview, he concluded, on the train was an impossibility.

“‘Here is a fix,’ was the mental commentary. Poking his hand in here and there into berths, and being startled now by the apparition of a female face, then by a powerful snort of defiance from some male actor, the investigator finally groped his way back into the rear car, one of the palace pattern, placed at Mr. Irving’s disposal by Mr. Blanchard of the Erie road. And there he found, at last, Mr. Irving, who, being duly apprised of the mission of his unwelcome visitor, and having a bit of pasteboard with the latter’s address thrust into his unwilling palm, murmured plaintively, but politely, that he would see him before reaching Chicago. Later on, Mr. Abbey’s services were enlisted in the same cause, and his promise to the same effect obtained. Wearily the time dragged on, till but another twenty-five miles lay between the train and its destination. Just at this opportune moment the great actor’s friend, Mr. Joseph Hatton, stepped up and invited the hungry, wild, and desperate minion of the press to partake of a cup of coffee. Gladly this was accepted, and, being made aware of what was wanted, he, with the sympathizing spirit of a brother journalist, said he would try and have Mr. Irving appear. Mr. Hatton, by the way, is the famous London correspondent of the ‘New York Times,’ and is accompanying Mr. Irving for the purpose of gathering material for a book, in which jointly the impressions of American travel of himself and the eminent actor will be deposited. While he went off to wake Mr. Irving, another trip was taken to Mr. Abbey’s room, in doing which, both coming and returning, the reporter’s modesty underwent the severe ordeal of passing in review a large array of British beauties, all in different stages of evolution—as to dress—and all talking sauce in choice Cockney English at him for his ‘shocking impropriety.’ When the somewhat cowed Daily Newsian returned to his cup of coffee he found not only Mr. Copleston, the surly bear of a few hours ago, transformed into a most amiable gentleman, but also among the other gentlemen, Mr. Irving himself.

“‘After the tedious business of introduction had been gone through with all around; after it had been remarked that the trip had been a trying one to them all, as not being used to these long journeys in their tight little island, where a twelve hours’ ride was considered the utmost,—after saying this, all felt broke up, and, expressing anxiety as to the Siberian climate of Chicago, Mr. Irving took out his cigar-case, invited his _vis-à-vis_ to light one of his choice weeds, and then prepared himself for the torture to be inflicted.

“‘What is your opinion of dramatic art, especially when comparing the English with the American, and both with the French tragedians?’ was the first query.

“‘English dramatic art is improving, I think, and the prospects for it are brightening,’ he said, slowly and reflectively. ‘I’ve seen fine acting in some of your American theatres—very fine acting; very fine.’

“‘What do you think of the custom of mutilating and cutting up and abbreviating the pieces of classical authors when presented on the stage? In “The Merchant of Venice,” for instance, the last act is omitted so as to give Shylock the exit. Do you approve of such methods, Mr. Irving?’

“‘No, I do not; but the custom is such an old one it is very difficult to alter it. The cause of it is, I suppose, that our forefathers didn’t know so well, nor did they read Shakespeare much. It is but very recently, for example, that “Romeo and Juliet,” “Richard III.,” and “King Lear” have been spoken on the stage the way Shakespeare wrote them. Of the last one Garrick’s version has been used for a century. Yet I do not think it right. Shakespeare is difficult to improve upon. Better let him alone.’

“‘How are you pleased with your reception in America?’

“‘Beyond all expectation and desert. I have been treated with a kindness, courteousness, and hospitality that have been really touching to me. And this, you know, has been done despite the fact that my trip to America had not been indorsed by all. While on my way across the Atlantic, for instance, a London daily paper published a leading article on me, suggesting to the Americans not to receive me cordially; and, not satisfied with this, the article was cabled over before our arrival. I thought this unfair and ungenerous. I like America, of course, though like is hardly the proper term. I feel deeply grateful to the American people for the very kind manner in which they have treated me. But you must come to the theatre to-night. I am sorry that Miss Terry will not play to-night.’

“‘I noticed in the papers that you have always expressed yourself in a very chivalrous spirit when speaking of Miss Terry, sir.’

“‘That is because I have the highest respect for the lady, both for her character and her talents.’

“‘Now, Mr. Irving, shirking your modesty for a moment, and assuming as a settled fact that you are one of the most eminent actors living, what made you such? What cause or causes do you attribute your good acting to?’

“‘To acting.’

“‘What do you mean by that? This answer is not quite clear to me.’

“‘I merely want to say that by incessant acting, and love and study of my art, I have attained whatever position I hold in my profession. This is a leading cause, as it is, I believe, in every other art.’

“‘What made you choose “Louis XI.” in preference to “The Bells” as your first piece here, Mr. Irving?’

“‘Because it takes the least amount of stage preparation, that’s all. That reminds me to say that the reports you have heard about my gorgeous scenery, etc., you will find, I think, exaggerated. Our stage decorations are quite simple, and their beauty consists merely in their nice adjustment, and the scrupulous calculation of the effect produced by them on the audience.’

“Meanwhile Miss Terry’s maid had been very busy preparing tea and buttered toast for her mistress, taking out dainty little things for wear out of a big lockbasket. Being repeatedly asked if Miss Terry could not be seen a moment, the train meanwhile arrived in Chicago, and most of the other actors and actresses having got off, she made evasive answers. Suddenly, however, the door opened, and a very pretty lady looked briskly around. This, then, was Miss Ellen Terry! A beautiful woman, indeed! Lustrous eyes of rare azure; a profuseness of wavy blonde hair, long and of a luminous shade and silky texture; the form lithe, yet full, every motion of a natural supple grace. She was shaking hands with the ‘Daily News’ man, even while Mr. Copleston introduced him, and then scurried back into the dark depths of her room, where she continued wailing: ‘I’ve lost my luck! I’ve lost my luck,—my beautiful horseshoe brooch, which I wouldn’t have missed for the world!’ And maid and mistress went down on their knees, peering into every nook and cranny. While still thus employed: ‘You see, Miss Terry, the Chicago reporter is the first introduced to give you a hearty greeting to this city, and to hope you’ll like your stay here as well as I am sure Chicago will like to hold you within her walls.’

“‘Thanks! thanks!’ said Miss Terry, and then continued her search for that obstreperous brooch.

“‘And what do you think of America?’

“Miss Terry held up a round, well-shaped arm appealingly, and merely said. ‘No, no. You mustn’t try to interview me. I won’t stumble into that pitfall.’

“‘How do you like the American women, then?’

“‘Very nice and pretty they are,—those I’ve seen, at least. I think we must say, in this regard, what Lord Coleridge did: ‘They can’t be all so nice and pretty; I suppose I’ve only seen the nicest ones.’ And one thing I’ll tell you which I have not seen; I’ve never set eyes on any Daisy Millers.’

“‘Of course not,’ rejoined the reporter. ‘Who ever heard of or saw a Daisy Miller outside of a book? That’s a character you’ll only find in James’s novel,—not in America, Miss Terry.’

“And thus, still hunting for that unfortunate brooch, which she plaintively called her ‘lost luck,’ and so apparently a kind of voodoo or talisman, the reporter left her, momentarily feeling a ray out of the sun of her glorious eyes lighting up his departure. It was a little after eight o’clock then, and, while she soon after went by carriage to the Leland Hotel, Mr. Irving put up at the Grand Pacific, and was, two hours later, busily arranging things at Haverly’s Theatre.”

XVI.

THE PRAIRIE CITY.

First Impressions of Chicago—A Bitter Winter—Great Storms—Thirty Degrees below Zero—On the Shores of Lake Michigan—Street Architecture—Pullman City—Western Journalism—Chicago Criticism—Notable Entertainments—At the Press Club—The Club Life of America—What America has done—Unfair Comparisons between the Great New World and the Older Civilizations of Europe—Mistaking Notoriety for Fame—A Speech of Thanks—Facts, Figures, and Tests of Popularity, Past and to Come.

I.

THROUGH piles of lumber, into back streets filled with liquor bars, “side shows,” and decorated with flaming posters, into fine, stately thoroughfares, crowded with people, past imposing buildings marked with architectural dignity, to the Grand Pacific Hotel.

“It is as if Manchester had given Greenwich Fair a blow in the face,” said Irving,—“that is my first impression of Chicago. ‘The Living Skeleton,’ ‘The Tattooed Man,’ ‘The Heaviest Woman in the World,’ ‘The Museum of Wonders,’ with the painted show-pictures of our youth; public houses, old-clothes shops, picturesque squalor. And then great warehouses, handsome shops, and magnificent civic buildings,—what a change! There is something of the ‘go’ of Liverpool and Manchester about it. If I was ever afraid of Chicago, I am afraid no longer. A people that have rebuilt this city within a comparatively few years must be great, broad-minded, and ready in appreciating what is good. We have something to show them in the way of dramatic art,—they will ‘catch on,’ as they say on this side of the Atlantic, I am sure of it.”

The city was more or less snow-bound. Little or no effort had been made to remove the white downfall, either from street or sidewalk. The sun was shining. The air was, nevertheless, very cold. Within a few days of our arrival the thermometer had fallen to twenty and thirty degrees below zero. We had selected for our visit to America what was destined to be the bitterest winter that had been known in the United States for over twenty years. There were storms on sea and land; storms of rain, and snow, and wind, followed by frosts that closed the great rivers, and made even Lake Michigan solid for ice-boats a dozen or twenty miles out. The South Jersey coast was strewn with wreckage. Railway tracks were swept away. At Cape May the principal pier was destroyed. The sea demolished the piles of Coney Island’s iron piers. At Long Branch cottages were undermined by the water, and their contents carried out to sea. The well-known dancing platform and piazza of the Grand Union Hotel, on Rockaway Beach, were washed away. Terrific winds blew over Boston and New England. A little fleet of schooners were driven ashore at Portland. Vessels broke from their moorings in the adjacent harbors. Atlantic City had boarding-houses, stores, and dwellings carried away by high tides.

The mails were delayed for hours, and in some cases for days, on the principal railroads. Where the obstacles were not rain and flood they were wind and snow. Lockport, New York, reported that the snow on that day was four feet on the level, and still falling. Bradford, telegraphing for Pennsylvania generally, announced that fourteen inches of snow had fallen within a few hours, the weight of it crushing in many roofs and awnings. “The narrow-gauge railways,” ran the despatch, “five in number, have been closed all day; the trains are stalled a few miles from the city.” Even at Louisville, in Kentucky, navigation was suspended, and floating ice-blocks were battering in the sides of steamers lying at the wharves of Baltimore. On the Rappahannock river, in Virginia, a ship laden with corn was cut down and sunk by floating ice. These and kindred incidents occurred on or about the day of our arrival in Chicago. The record of the few previous days, judged from the official reports of Washington, and the ordinary chronicles of the times, was a very remarkable one, even for the coldest States of America. In some places the weather had been the coldest known for more than fifty years. Canada had had the most extreme experiences in this respect. At Winnipeg, Manitoba, the thermometer had fallen as low as forty-five degrees below zero.

On the day we were travelling to the prairie city, while the thermometer was rising in that section of the country, it was falling in the eastern and southern States, registering thirty degrees below zero at Whitehall, New York. The Straits of Mackinaw, connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, were navigable only on foot or runners. We arrived in Chicago on Monday, Jan. 7. On the 6th the thermometer registered twenty-two degrees below zero. Monday’s newspapers congratulated their readers that, “the wave had passed over.” Incidents of its severity were curious and numerous. Hundreds of hogs had been frozen to death on freight-trains. The Terre Haute express from Chicago was snowed up for thirty-one hours. At fires which had broken out, water from the engines froze as it fell, and covered the buildings with strange, fantastic shapes.

I had arranged to visit Gunnison (Colorado), and other mining cities, within a reasonable distance from Chicago and St. Louis; but was persuaded to postpone my trip by private and public reports of the storm in those regions. One day’s newspaper (the “Daily-News-Democrat,” of Gunnison) contained startling evidence of the difficulties I should have had to encounter. Within a few days twenty-seven men had been killed by snow-slides in the mountains between Ouray and Telluride. A local mail-carrier was among the victims. All the available snow-ploughs and engines of the various districts were at work on the tracks. Engines were helplessly stuck in the snow on the Rio Grande. “The miner,” remarked the “Daily News” editor, “who goes into the mountains at this season takes his life in his hands.” I remained in Chicago with Irving, and am spared to chronicle these things. The weather was sufficiently cold for both of us in Chicago. It varied, too, with a persistency of variation that is trying to the strongest constitution. One hour the thermometer would be fairly above zero, the next it would be far below it. Men went about the frozen streets in fur coats and caps, carefully protecting their ears and hands. Along the shores of Lake Michigan were barricades of ice; they looked like solid palisades of marble. Here and there, where tiny icebergs had been formed, the polar bear would not have looked out of place. It was strange to see the ice-boats, with their bending sails, literally flying along, while away out lay ships at anchor. Mr. Lyon took Miss Terry, Irving, and myself sleighing along the lake shore and upon the prairie beyond. My friends were delighted with the novel excursion, astonished at the fine boulevards through which we passed, amazed at the possibilities of Chicago, as they realized what had been done and what space had been laid out for the future. A forty-mile drive through great, wide boulevards designed to encompass the city, is the biggest of the city’s schemes, and it is in vigorous course of formation.

“One is forced to admire the pluck of Chicago,” said Irving, after our first drive. “Twice burnt down, twice built up, and laid out anew, on a plan that is magnificent. Some of the houses along Prairie and Michigan avenues are palaces.[37] The art revival in street architecture and house decoration is as actively rife here as in London. And what a superb stone they have for building purposes in their yellow cream-colored marble! It is marvellous to see how they have taken hold of the new ideas. The Calumet and the Chicago club-houses,—nothing could be more chaste than their decorations.”

One day we went to Pullman City, an industrial town, akin to Saltaire, near Bradford, in its scope and enterprise. We were invited and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Pullman, Miss Terry, Mr. and Mrs. Dexter, Mr. and Mrs. James Runnion, and several other ladies and gentlemen. Going out in Mr. Pullman’s private car, we lunched with him at the pretty hotel of the novel city, and afterwards inspected the workshops and principal buildings.

“The story of the conception and creation of this Pullman City,” said Irving, “interested me very much, though I confess the method of it all strikes me as somewhat like living by machinery: the private houses being massed, as it were, _en bloc_; the shops collected together like arcades; the whole place laid out with geometrical system; and yet one feels that there are fine principles underlying it; that the scheme is founded upon wise plans; and that, from a moral and sanitary stand-point, the city is an ideal combination of work and rest, of capital and labor. Pullman’s idea was a lofty one, and the result is very remarkable: a centre of industry that should give to labor its best chance, with capital taking its place on a platform as human as labor. That is the notion, as Pullman explained it to me. What a square, level head it is! Just the determined kind of man to be the author of a new city on new lines. He told me that Charles Reade’s novel, ‘Put Yourself in his Place,’ had influenced him greatly in his ambition to found this place; that it has affected all his relations towards the people under his direction. Politically, Pullman City is a paradox. A despotism, it still is very democratic. It owes its successful administration to what may be called a benevolent autocracy. The theatre, I am told, is more prosperous than the church proper, though religion is represented by several earnest communities. The idea of giving the people a chance to buy land and build cottage homes for themselves, at a reasonable distance beyond Pullman, appears to be a good one. Pullman himself may well be proud of his work. It is worthy of Chicago and the West.”

II.

IN spite of “wind and weather” the people of Chicago crowded Haverly’s Theatre, where Irving and Miss Terry appeared, night after night, for two weeks; and the critics of the great papers of the West, the “Times,” “Tribune,” “Inter-Ocean,” and “Daily News,” were equal to the occasion. They showed a knowledge of their work, and an appreciation of dramatic art, as illustrated by Irving, quite in keeping with the spirit and ambition of their new and wonderful city. A news-collector, having in view the prejudices of New York and London, as to the literary and journalistic cultivation of Chicago, selected an enthusiastic line or two from the Chicago notices of Irving and Miss Terry, with a view to cast ridicule upon western criticism. This kind of thing is common to news-collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. A reporter desires to please his editor, and to cater for his public. In London, believing that New York will be stirred with the report of a hostile demonstration against an American artist, he makes the most of the working of a rival American clique there against Lotta. New York looks down loftily upon the art culture of Chicago, and London chiefly knows Chicago through its great fire, borne with so much fortitude, and for its “corners in pork.” The local caterer for the news columns of New York and London panders to these ideas. The best-educated writer, the neatest essayist, might appear foolish by cutting unconnected sentences out of his work, and printing them alone.