“WILL you please tell me about the report, cabled from London to the
American press, that you propose to stand for Parliament, in the
Liberal interest, on your return to England?” asked a journalistic
interviewer, at Boston.
“I can only say that the report is entirely unfounded. It arose,
I imagine, from my election to the Reform Club. You know they do
occasionally elect out-of-the-way fellows, such as I am, in the matter
of politics. The welcome news reached me last night in my dressing-room
at the theatre. To be elected in my absence adds to the pleasure of
the thing. I have only that interest in politics which all honest
men should have, but it exists only under my own roof. I do not think
artists should mix up in politics. Art is my vocation, and I confine
myself to it.”
“Then, I assume, you have never cherished political aspirations.”
“Oh, no, never! In fact I should be totally unfit for Parliament. I
am not eloquent, and should be unfit in other ways. We do not look
upon politics in England as you do here. Here political life is an
avenue to office and to emoluments, in a broader and deeper sense
than is possible in England, and many choose the law as a profession
with a view to politics. Do they not? It is not so with us. A seat
in the House of Commons, as a rule, involves great expense, as well
as a claim upon a man’s time; and he may sit there all his life, if
he is returned often enough, and spend every year a large income,
socially in London, and locally on charities, hospitals, reading-rooms,
churches and chapels, among his constituents. We do not pay our
representatives salaries; and I believe, particularly in the country,
the constituencies watch with the greatest jealousy every vote a member
records. The House of Commons is not a bed of roses.”
I have said, in a previous chapter, that the trouble in respect to
the new form of journalism in some of the cities of the United States
is, that the reader is left too much in doubt as to the truth of the
daily chronicles. The Chicago reporter, who held up the “interviews”
of other journals as more or less “bogus,” would himself have found it
difficult in this respect to winnow the chaff from the wheat. At St.
Louis a reporter professed to have taken an engagement as a “super” in
the Irving Company. He wrote a description of “behind the scenes” in
that capacity, but “gave himself away,” by making all the company, from
the leading actor down to the call-boy, drop their h’s. The American
reporter’s leading idea when burlesquing the English is to take every
_h_ out of a Britisher’s conversation, and even to make the Queen
herself drop the aspirate or misuse it; for instance, here is a summary
of the royal speech on the opening of Parliament, which appeared in a
Philadelphia journal: “We’re pretty well, I thank you, and we ‘opes
to remain so, we does.” If in our stage and journalistic satire we
make Jonathan “guess,” “calkalate,” and “lick all creation, you bet,”
he “gets even” with “yahs, deah boy,” and “‘ow bar’ you,” and “‘pon
my ‘onor, don’t cher know?” But, referring back to the many imaginary
interviews and fictitious sketches of Irving and his life behind
the scenes, here is an extract from an account of “Irving’s day,”
which appeared in one of the light-headed dailies, that is, in some
respects, truer than I dare say any of its readers believed it to be.
The introduction of “the secretaries” is worthy of “Punch,” and in its
earnestness funnier than some of the great humorist’s sketches of the
Irving tour in America. Here are the leading points of the article:—