“THE rivalries between American cities,” said Irving, “seem to take
a far more aggressive form than the rivalry between England and
America, or even between France and England; I mean in regard to their
criticisms of each other, and their hostile chaff or badinage in regard
to each other’s peculiarities.”
“Is it not very much the same in England?”
“Perhaps.”
“Sheffield scoffs at Birmingham, Liverpool sneers at Bristol,
Manchester is supercilious concerning London,” I said.
“And London mildly patronizes the whole of them. I think you are right;
but one does not notice the competition at home so much, perhaps, as
in America. Boston and Philadelphia seem to indulge in a good deal of
badinage at each other’s expense.”
“And they are both sarcastic about the morality of Chicago.”
“A Boston friend of ours,” said Irving, “was telling me yesterday of
a little war of words he had with a Philadelphian. Said Boston to
the Quaker, ‘Well, there is one thing in which you have the best of
us.’—‘Glad you admit one point in our favor anyhow; what is it?’—‘You
are nearer to New York than we are.’ Our Boston friend is fond of New
York, takes his holidays there; says he likes it nearly as well as
London. A less subtle, but more direct, hit at Philadelphia was that of
the Bostonian, who, in reply to the question of a Philadelphian, ‘Why
don’t you lay out your streets properly?’ said, ‘If they were as dead
as yours we would lay them out.’”
“Looked at from a balloon,” I said, “Philadelphia would have the
appearance of a checker-board. Boston, on the other hand, would present
many of the irregular features of an English city. Both cities are
eminently representative of American characteristics, and both are
possibly more English in their habits, manners, and customs, than any
other cities of the Union.”
“There is nothing dead about the Philadelphia streets, so far as I
have noticed them,” Irving replied. “This morning I walked along
Chestnut street, and thought it particularly lively and pleasant. The
absence of the elevated railroad struck me as an advantage. I felt that
when walking down Broadway, in New York. Then the cars in the street
itself did not rush along at the New York pace. These seem to me to be
advantages in their way on the side of life in Philadelphia. Perhaps
one feels the rest, too, of a calmer city, a quieter atmosphere.”
We are sitting near a front window at the Bellevue, looking out upon
Broad street. Presently we are joined by the interviewer, and Irving is
not long before he is engaged in a conversation about the actor’s art,
and his own methods.
“Every character,” he says, “has its proper place on the stage,
and each should be developed to its greatest excellence, without
unduly intruding upon another, or impairing the general harmony of
the picture. Nothing, perhaps, is more difficult in a play than to
determine the exact relation of the real, and what I may call the
picturesque. For instance, it is the custom in Alsatia for men to wear
their hats in a public room; but in a play located in that country it
would not do to have a room scene in which a number of men should sit
around on the stage with their hats on. There are reasons why they
should not do that. In the first place, their hats would hide their
faces from the audience. It is also an incongruity to see men sitting
in the presence of an audience with their heads covered. Then, again,
the attention of the audience would be distracted from the play by a
feeling of curiosity as to the reason why the hats were not removed.
These are little things that should be avoided; but in general they
are not likely to intrude themselves where proper regard is paid to
the general appearance of a scene. The make-up of the stage is exactly
like the drawing of a picture, in which lights and colors are studied,
with a view to their effect upon the whole. There is another feature.
I would not have the costume and general appearance of a company of
soldiers returning from a war exactly the same as they appeared when
the men were starting for the battle-field. I would have them dishevel
their hair and assume a careworn aspect, but yet appear in clean
clothes. Everything on the stage should always be clean and pleasant.”
The subject of realism being mentioned, he said his death in “The
Bells” had been called very realistic, whereas the entire story was
unrealistic, in the strict sense, particularly the trial and death.
“Dramatically poetic, if you like,” he said, “but not realistic.
There are so-called realisms on the stage that are no doubt
offensive,—overstrained illustrations of the pangs of death, physical
deformities, and such like. As for the interest of an audience in
the person who is acting, the knowledge that what they see is an
impersonation has its intellectual attractions for them. For instance,
it would not be satisfactory to see an old man of eighty play ‘King
Lear’; but it would be highly satisfactory to an audience to know that
the character was being portrayed by a man in the vigor of life. As
you look upon a picture you do not see something that is real, but
something that draws upon the imagination.
“Perhaps there is no character about which such a variety of opinions
has been expressed as that of Hamlet, and there is no book that will
give any one as much opportunity of understanding it as the ‘Variorum
Shakespeare’ of Mr. Horace Howard Furness. He is still a young man,—he
is not an old man,—and I trust that he will be able to complete the
whole of the work that he has begun, and I hope that some one will
follow in his footsteps. It was a labor of love, of most intense love
to him, and he has earned the gratitude of all readers of Shakespeare.
I hope I shall meet him.”