_Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)_
It is only human to make comparisons between American and English
institutions, although they are likely to turn out as odious as the
proverb says! The first institution in America that distressed me was
the steam heat. It is far more manageable now than it was, both in
hotels and theatres, because there are more individual heaters. But how
I suffered from it at first I cannot describe. I used to feel dreadfully
ill, and when we could not turn the heat off at the theatre, the play
always went badly. My voice was affected, too. At Toledo, once, it
nearly went altogether. Then the next night, after a good fight, we got
the theatre cool, and the difference to the play was extraordinary. I
was in my best form, feeling well and jolly!
If I did not like steam heat, I loved the ice which is such a feature at
American meals. Everything is served on ice. I took kindly to their
dishes--their cookery, at its best, is better than the French--and I
sadly missed planked shad, terrapin, and the oyster--at its best and at
its cheapest in America--when I returned to England.
_Travelling in America_
The American hotels seemed luxurious even in 1883; but it only takes ten
years there for an hotel to be quite done, to become old-fashioned and
useless as a rusty nail. Hotel life in America is now the perfection of
comfort. Hotels as good as the Savoy, the Ritz, the Carlton, and
Claridge's can be counted by the dozen in New York, and are to be found
in all the principal cities.
I liked the travelling, but then we travelled in a very princely
fashion. The Lyceum Company and baggage occupied eight cars, and Henry's
private parlour-car was lovely. The only thing that we found was better
understood in England, so far as railway travelling is concerned, was
_privacy_. You may have a _private_ car, but all the conductors on the
train, and there is one to each car, can walk through it. So can any
official, baggage-man, or newsboy who has the mind!
There were, of course, people ready to say that the Americans did not
like Henry Irving as an actor, and that they only accepted him as a
manager--that he triumphed in New York, as he had done in London,
through his lavish spectacular effects. This is all moonshine. Henry
made his first appearance in "The Bells," his second in "Charles I," his
third in "Louis XI." By that time he had conquered, and without the aid
of anything at all notable in the mounting of the plays. It was not
until we did "The Merchant of Venice" that he gave the Americans
anything of a "production."
My first appearance in America in Shakespeare was as Portia, and I could
not help feeling pleased by my success. A few weeks later I played
Ophelia at Philadelphia. It is in Shakespeare that I have been best
liked in America, and I consider that Beatrice was the part about which
they were most enthusiastic.
During our first tour we visited in succession New York, Philadelphia,
Boston, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit,
and Toronto. To most of these places we paid return visits. I think it
was in Chicago that a reporter approached Henry Irving with the
question: "To what do you attribute your success, Mr. Irving?"
"To my acting," was the simple reply.
We never had poor houses except in Baltimore and St. Louis. Our journey
to Baltimore was made in a blizzard. They were clearing the snow before
us all the way from New Jersey, and we took forty-two hours to reach
Baltimore. The bells of trains before us and behind us sounded very
alarming. We opened in Baltimore on Christmas Day. The audience was
wretchedly small, but the poor things who were there had left their warm
firesides to drive or tramp through the slush of melting snow, and each
one was worth a hundred on an ordinary night.
At the hotel I put up holly and mistletoe, and produced from my trunks a
real Christmas pudding that my mother had made. We had it for supper,
and it was very good.
_Burned Hare Soup and Camphor Pudding in Pittsburg_
It never does to repeat an experiment. Next year at Pittsburg my little
son Teddy brought me out another pudding from England. For once we were
in an uncomfortable hotel, and the Christmas dinner was deplorable. It
began with _burned hare soup_.
"It seems to me," said Henry, "that we aren't going to get anything to
eat, but we'll make up for it by drinking!"
He had brought his own wine out with him from England, and the company
took him at his word and _did_ make up for it.
"Never mind!" I said, as the soup was followed by worse and worse.
"There's my pudding!"
It came on blazing and looked superb. Henry tasted a mouthful.
"Very odd," he said, "but I think this is a camphor pudding."
He said it so politely--as if he might easily be mistaken. My maid in
England had packed the pudding with my furs! It simply reeked of
camphor.
So we had to dine on Henry's wine and L. F. Austin's wit. This dear,
brilliant man, now dead, acted for many years as Henry's secretary, and
one of his gifts was the happy knack of hitting off people's
peculiarities in rhyme. This dreadful Christmas dinner at Pittsburg was
enlivened by a collection of such rhymes, which Austin called a "Lyceum
Christmas Play."
Everyone roared with laughter until it came to the verse of which he was
the victim, when suddenly he found the fun rather laboured.
The first verse was spoken by Loveday, who announces that the "Governor"
has a new play which is "_wonderful_"--a great word of Loveday's.
George Alexander replies:
But I say, Loveday, have I got a part in it,
That I can wear a cloak in and look smart in it?
Not that I care a fig for gaudy show, dear boy--
But juveniles must _look_ well, don't you know, dear boy;
And shall I lordly hall and tuns of claret own?
And may I murmur love in dulcet baritone?
Tell me, at least, this simple fact of it--
Can I beat Terriss hollow in one act of it?[1]
Norman Forbes:
Pooh for Wenman's[2] bass! Why should he make a boast of it?
If he has a voice, I have got the ghost of it!
When I pitch it low, you may say how weak it is,
When I pitch it high, heavens! what a squeak it is!
But I never mind; for what does it signify?
See my graceful hands, they're the things that dignify:
All the rest is froth, and egotism's dizziness--
Have I not played with Phelps?
(_To Wenman_) I'll teach you all the business!
[Illustration: HENRY IRVING AS CARDINAL WOLSEY IN "HENRY VIII."