AND this Christmas chat is the result of the dramatic editor’s decision.
“It was a gloomy, rainy, miserable day. The theatre, always a dreary
place in the morning, seemed even more depressing than usual. Mr.
Irving was rehearsing the first act of ‘Richard III.,’ possibly with a
view to Baltimore or Chicago.
“With that infinite patience which some philosophers define as genius,
Mr. Irving went over and over the lines of Richard and Lady Ann, and
acted all the business of the scene. His street costume and tall silk
hat appeared ridiculously incongruous with his sword and his words.
He knelt upon the stage and showed Lady Ann how to take hold of the
weapon and threaten to kill him. He rose and repeated her speeches with
appropriate gestures. He knelt again, gave her the cues, and watched
her from under his heavy eyebrows, while she again rehearsed the scene.
“Repeated a dozen times, this performance became as monotonous as the
dripping of the rain without, or the slow motions of the cleaners in
the front of the theatre. At last, with a few final kindly words,
the Lady Ann was dismissed, and Mr. Irving sat down wearily at the
prompter’s table.
“‘Where shall you eat your Christmas dinner?’ I inquired.
“‘At Baltimore,’ replied Mr. Irving. ‘Several of my company have
brought their home-made Christmas puddings over with them, and are to
carry them about, with the rest of the luggage, until the day arrives.
I have determined to try the American Christmas puddings, which, I am
told, are very good indeed,—like most things American.’
“‘Oh, our people manufacture them by thousands! After all, a Christmas
pudding is only a mince-pie boiled.’
“Just so,’ said Mr. Irving, laughing in his silent, interior,
Leatherstocking manner. ‘I am thinking,’ he exclaimed, ‘of the
Christmas dinner I gave last year, in the room of the old Beefsteak
Club, which, you know, is now part of the Lyceum Theatre. We had talked
the matter over,—a few friends and myself,—and decided that we were
tired of professional cooks and conventional bills of fare, and that
the best stimulus for our jaded palates was a return to plain, homely
dishes.
“‘You can fancy Stoker saying that. He said it over and over for at
least a month, and kept humming, “There’s no place—or no dinner—like
home,” in the most disquieting way, whenever the matter was mentioned.
He also undertook to arrange the whole affair.
“‘Well, it was arranged. There were to be no professional caterers,
no professional waiters, no luxuries of any kind,—except the wines,
which I took under my own care, being cast for the part of the butler.
Stoker was to buy the material. The property-man’s wife was to roast
the beef and the turkey. The mistress of the wardrobe undertook to
boil the pudding. An usher, born with a genius for cookery, who was
discovered by Stoker, had charge of the soup, fish, and vegetables. We
were to wait upon ourselves,—a genuine family party. A suggestion to
order ices from Gunter’s, in case the pudding was a failure, was voted
down indignantly.
“‘As Christmas approached I became quite interested in this home
dinner,—hungry for it days in advance, as one may say. I began by
inviting one friend who had a reputation as an epicure; then another
asked to be allowed to share our homely feast. Presently our family
party grew to thirty. I began to have forebodings. You see, a small
family can wait upon themselves, but not a family of thirty.
“‘However, Stoker appeared cheerily satisfied and mysteriously
complacent, and seemed to think that our motto should be “The more
the merrier!” I imagined that he had secretly tested some of the home
cooking beforehand, and rather envied him his position as taster.
“‘The guests were met; the table set. I had made sure that the wines
were all right. As I looked along at the happy, friendly faces I felt
that a home dinner was the most pleasant, after all. The soup tureen
was before me, and I lifted the cover with the anxious pride of a
Wellington firing the first gun at Waterloo.
“‘The chance simile of a battle holds good; for the soup was awfully
smoky. Somebody said that it tasted like a chimney on fire. The fish
was worse. The roast beef was uneatable. Persistent as I naturally am,
I gave up the attempt to carve the turkey. The pudding was as hard as a
stone. What little appetite remained to us was lost while carving the
meats and passing the plates around. I had felt like Wellington before
Waterloo; but, when the dinner was over, I could appreciate the despair
of the defeated Napoleon.
“‘Had we been only a family party the fiasco would not have been so
fatal; but, as I told you, I had invited epicures; I had dragged my
friends from their comfortable homes on Christmas Day to partake of
this terrible repast. Some of them have never quite forgiven me. Some
have forgiven me, because I had a chance to take them aside and put
all the blame upon Stoker. But nobody who was present can ever have
forgotten it.
“‘Like Napoleon, I retreated to Fontainebleau,—I fell back upon the
wines. One of the guests won my heart by loudly eulogizing the cheese
and the crackers. They were not home-made. They had not been cooked in
the theatre!
“‘Here comes Stoker,’ continued Mr. Irving, relapsing into his curious
solemnity of manner; ‘let us ask him about it.
“‘I say, Stoker, do you remember the home dinner you gave us at the
Lyceum last Christmas?’
“Mr. Stoker stopped on his way across the stage, and stood like a
statue of amazement, of indignation, of outraged virtue. ‘The dinner
_I_ gave you?’ he at last exclaimed. Then his loyalty to his chief
triumphed, and he added, ‘Well, you may call it my dinner, if you
like; but I have the original copy of the bill of fare in your own
handwriting.’
“‘Ah!’ resumed Mr. Irving, quite placidly, as his acting manager dashed
away, ‘I thought Stoker would remember that dinner!’
“‘This Christmas you will dine upon roast canvas-backs, instead of
roast beef, and stewed terrapin, instead of smoked soup,’ I observed.
“‘Yes,’ replied the English actor; ‘I am told that Baltimore is the
best place for those delicacies. But they will not seem strange to me;
I have eaten canvas-backs at Christmas before.’
“‘In England?’
“‘Certainly. My first American manager—Papa Bateman you used to call
him—had many good friends in this country, who kept him liberally
supplied with almost all your American luxuries. Under his tuition I
learned to like the oysters, the terrapin, and canvas-backs, upon which
my generous hosts are feasting me now, long before I ever thought of
coming to America.
“‘But perhaps the most remarkable Christmas dinner at which I have
ever been present,’ continued Mr. Irving, after reflecting for a few
moments, ‘was the one at which we dined upon under-clothing.’
“‘Do you mean upon your under-clothing or in your under-clothing?’
queried the astonished ‘Spirit,’ conjuring up visions of Christmas
dinners on uninhabited islands, at which shipwrecked mariners had been
known to devour their apparel, and of the tropical Christmas dinners
in India and Australia, at which scanty costumes are appropriate to the
climate.
“‘Both!’ replied Mr. Irving. ‘It is not a story of wonderful adventure;
but I’ll tell it to you, if you have five minutes more to spare. Do you
remember Joe Robins,—a nice, genial fellow who played small parts in
provinces? Ah, no; that was before your time.
“‘Joe Robins was once in the gentleman’s furnishing business in London
city. I think that he had a wholesale trade, and was doing well.
However, he belonged to one of the semi-Bohemian clubs; associated
a great deal with actors and journalists, and, when an amateur
performance was organized for some charitable object, Joe was cast for
the clown in a burlesque called “Guy Fawkes.”
“‘Perhaps he played the part capitally; perhaps his friends were making
game of him when they loaded him with praises; perhaps the papers for
which his Bohemian associates wrote went rather too far when they
asserted that he was the artistic descendant and successor of Grimaldi.
At any rate, Joe believed all that was said to him and written about
him, and when some wit discovered that Grimaldi’s name was also Joe,
the fate of Joe Robins was sealed. He determined to go upon the stage
professionally and become a great actor.
“‘Fortunately Joe was able to dispose of his stock and good-will for
a few hundred pounds, which he invested so as to give him an income
sufficient to prevent the wolf from getting inside his door, in
case he did not eclipse Garrick, Kean, and Kemble. He also packed
up for himself a liberal supply of his wares, and started in the
profession with enough shirts, collars, handkerchiefs, stockings, and
under-clothing to equip him for several years.
“‘The amateur success of poor Joe was never repeated on the regular
stage. He did not make an absolute failure; no manager would entrust
him with parts big enough for him to fail in. But he drifted down to
general utility, and then out of London, and when I met him he was
engaged in a very small way, on a very small salary, at a Manchester
theatre.
“‘His income eked out his salary; but Joe was a generous, great-hearted
fellow, who liked everybody, and whom everybody liked, and when he had
money he was always glad to spend it upon a friend or give it away to
somebody more needy. So, piece by piece, as necessity demanded, his
princely supply of haberdashery had diminished, and now only a few
shirts and under-clothes remained to him.
“‘Christmas came in very bitter weather. Joe had a part in the
Christmas pantomime. He dressed with other poor actors, and he saw how
thinly some of them were clad when they stripped before him to put on
their stage costumes. For one poor fellow in especial his heart ached.
In the depth of a very cold winter he was shivering in a suit of very
light summer under-clothing, and whenever Joe looked at him the warm
flannel under-garments snugly packed away in an extra trunk weighed
heavily upon his mind.
“‘Joe thought the matter over, and determined to give the actors who
dressed with him a Christmas dinner. It was literally a dinner upon
under-clothing; for the most of the shirts and drawers which Joe had
cherished so long went to the pawnbroker’s, or the slop-shop, to
provide the money for the meal.
“‘The guests assembled promptly, for nobody else is ever so hungry as
a hungry actor. The dinner was to be served at Joe’s lodgings, and,
before it was placed on the table, Joe beckoned his friend with the
gauze under-clothes into a bedroom, and, pointing to a chair, silently
withdrew.
“‘On that chair hung a suit of under-wear which had been Joe’s pride.
It was of a comfortable scarlet color; it was thick, warm, and heavy;
it fitted the poor actor as if it had been manufactured especially to
his measure. He put it on, and, as the flaming flannels encased his
limbs, he felt his heart glowing within him with gratitude to dear Joe
Robins.
“‘That actor never knew—or, if he knew, he never could remember—what
he had for dinner on that Christmas afternoon. He revelled in
the luxury of warm garments. The roast beef was nothing to him
in comparison with the comfort of his undervest; he appreciated
the drawers more than the plum-pudding. Proud, happy, warm, and
comfortable, he felt little inclination to eat, but sat quietly, and
thanked Providence and Joe Robins with all his heart.’
“‘You seem to enter into that poor actor’s feelings very
sympathetically,’ I observed, as Mr. Irving paused.
“‘I have good reason to do so,’ replied Mr. Irving, with his gentle,
sunshiny smile; ‘for I was that poor actor!’”