“A TRANSFORMATION scene, indeed!” said Irving. “Yesterday, autumn
winds, bright streets, a rattle of traffic—to-day, snow and
sleigh-bells—yesterday, wheels—to-day, runners, as they call the
enormous skating-irons upon which they appear to have placed every
vehicle in the city. I have just returned from rehearsal, and find
everybody sleighing. The omnibuses are sleighs—the grocer’s cart is a
sleigh—the express-wagons are sleighs; it is a city of sleighs! The
snow began to fall in earnest yesterday. Last night it must have been a
foot deep. It would have ruined the business at a London theatre. Here
it made no difference. We had a splendid house.”
“As I walked to my hotel at midnight,” I replied, “snow-ploughs were
in the streets clearing the roads and scouring the car-tracks. Boston
tackles the snow in earnest. The trees on the Common were a marvel of
beauty. They looked like an orchard of the Hesperides, all in blossom,
and the electric lamps added to the fairy-like beauty of the scene.”
“A lovely city. Shall we take a sleigh-ride?”
“‘Why, certainly,’ as they say in ‘The Colonel,’ but rarely in America.”
Irving rings for his colored attendant. He has discovered that his
surname is Brooks, and takes a curious pleasure in addressing him as
Brooks, sometimes as “Brooks, of Sheffield!”
“Order me a sleigh, Brooks!”
“Yes, sah,” says Brooks, grinning.
“Two horses, Brooks!”
“Yes, sah,” says the attendant, preparing to go, not hurriedly, for
who ever saw a colored gentleman (they are all colored gentlemen) in a
hurry?
“And take my rugs down!”
“Yes, sah,” he says, marching slowly into the next room for the rugs.
“And, Brooks—”
“Yes, sah.”
“Would you like to go to the theatre one night?”
“Berry much, sah—yes, sah.”
“What play would you like to see?”
“Hamlet, sah!”
“Hamlet! Very good. Is there a Mrs. Brooks?”
“‘Deed there is, sah,” answers the darkey, grinning from ear to ear.
“And some little Brookses—of Sheffield?”
“Yes, sah; not ob Sheffield, ob Boston.”
“That’s all right. Mr. Stoker shall give all of you seats. See if he is
in the hotel.”
“Yes, sah.”
As he stalks to the door Stoker comes bounding in (Stoker is always on
the run), to the discomfiture of Brooks and his load of rugs.
Brooks picks himself up with dignity. Stoker assures his chief that
there is not a seat in the house for anybody.
“Then buy some for Brooks,” says Irving.
“Where?” asks Stoker, in amazement.
“Anywhere,” says Irving, adding, with a significant glance at
me,—“from the speculators.”
“Oh, very well, if you wish it,” says Stoker.
“And, Brooks”—
“Yes, sah.”
“Anybody else in the hotel like to go?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, sah!” says Brooks—“de cook, sah.”
“And what play would the cook like to see?”
“Hamlet, sah.”
“You’ve been paid to say this!” says Irving, quoting from Louis. “Who
bade you do it?”
But this was only whispered in a humorous “aside” for me, who know how
much he likes Hamlet, and how much he likes other people to like Hamlet.
At the door of the Brunswick we find a sleigh, pair of horses,
smart-looking driver, a heap of rugs and furs, under which we ensconce
ourselves. The weather is bitterly cold, the sky blue; the windows of
the houses in the fine streets of the Back Bay district flash icily;
the air is sharp, and the sleigh-bells ring out aggressively as the
horses go away.
The snow is too deep for rapid sleighing; there has been no time for it
to solidify. It is white and pure as it has fallen, and when we get out
into the suburbs it is dazzling to the eyes, almost painful. Crossing
the Charles river the scene is singularly picturesque: a cumbersome
old barge in the foreground; on the opposite shore a long stretch
of red-brick buildings, vanishing at the point where the heights of
Brookline climb away, in white and green and grey undulations, to the
bright blue sky. As we enter Cambridge there are fir-trees growing out
of the snow, their sombre greens all the darker for the white weight
that bows their branches down to the drifts that wrap their trunks high
up; for here and there the snow has drifted until there are banks of it
five and six feet deep.
“Very pretty, these villas; nearly all wood,—do you notice?—very
comfortable, I am sure; lined with brick, I am told, some of them.
Nearly all have balconies or verandas; and there are trees and
gardens everywhere,—must be lovely in summer; good enough now, for
that matter. One thing makes them look a trifle lonely,—no smoke
coming from the chimneys. They burn anthracite coal,—good for this
atmosphere,—excellent and clean; but how a bit of blue smoke curling
up among the trees finishes and gives poetry to a landscape,—suggests
home and cosey firesides, eh?”
“Yes. New York owes some of its clear atmosphere to its smokeless coal.”
“What a pity we don’t have it in London! Only fancy a smokeless
London,—what a lovely city!”
“It may come about one day, either by the adoption of smokeless coal
or the interposition of the electrician. Last summer I spent some time
in the Swansea Valley, England, not far from Craig-y-nos, the British
home of Patti. One day I suddenly noticed that there was no smoke over
the villages; none at some local ironworks, except occasional bursts
of white steam from the engine-houses; nothing to blemish the lovely
sky that just slightly touched the mountain-tops with a grey mist. I
was near Ynyscedwyn, the famous smokeless-coal district of South Wales.
London need not burn another ounce of bituminous coal; there is enough
anthracite in Wales to supply all England for a thousand years.”
“What a blessing it would be if London were to use nothing else!”
Through Cambridge, so intimately associated with Longfellow, past
its famous colleges, we skirted Brookline, and returned to our
head-quarters in Clarendon street, meeting on the way many stylish
sleighs and gay driving-parties.
On another day Irving took luncheon with a little party of
undergraduates in Common hall, was received by the President of the
college, inspected the gymnasium, saw the theatre, and had long talks
with several of the professors.
Perhaps from a literary and artistic stand-point the most interesting
social event among the many entertainments given to Irving was a
dinner given by Mr. Charles Fairchild and Mr. James R. Osgood, at
the Somerset Club. The company included Messrs. T. B. Aldrich, A. V.
S. Anthony, Francis Bartlett, William Bliss, George Baty Blake, S.
L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”), T. L. Higginson, W. D. Howells, Laurence
Hutton, W. M. Laffan, Francis A. Walker, George E. Waring, and William
Warren. After dinner the conversation was quite as brilliant as the
company—Mark Twain told some of his best stories in his best manner.
Mr. Howells and Mr. Aldrich in no wise fell short of their reputations
as conversationalists. There were no drinking of toasts, no formal
speeches, which enhanced the general joy of the whole company.
Driving homewards along the Common, Irving said, “By gas-light, and in
the snow, is not this a little like the Green park, with, yonder, the
clock-tower of the Houses of Parliament?”
“Do you wish it were?”
“I wouldn’t mind it for an hour or two, eh? Although one really
sometimes hardly feels that one is out of London.”