There was no Diana on the top of the Madison Square Building then. The
building did not exist, to cheer the heart of a new arrival as the first
evidence of _beauty_ in the city. There were horse trams instead of
cable cars, but a quarter of a century has not altered the peculiarly
dilapidated carriages in which one drives from the dock, the muddy
side-walks, and the cavernous holes in the cobble-paved streets. Had the
elevated railway, the first sign of _power_ that one notices after
leaving the boat, begun to thunder through the streets? I cannot
remember New York without it.
I missed then, as I miss now, the numberless _hansoms_ of London plying
in the streets for hire. People in New York get about in the cars,
unless they have their own carriages. The hired carriage has no reason
for existing, and when it does, it celebrates its unique position by
charging two dollars (8_s._) for a journey which in London would not
cost fifty cents (2_s._)!
I cried for two hours at the Hotel Dam! Then my companion, Miss
Harries, came bustling in with: "Never mind! here's a piano!" and sat
down and played "Annie Laurie" very badly until I screamed with
laughter. Before the evening came my room was like a bower of roses, and
my dear friends in America have been throwing bouquets at me in the same
lavish way ever since. I had quite cheered up when Henry came to take me
to see some minstrels who were performing at the Star Theater, the very
theater where in a few days we were to open. I didn't understand many of
the jokes which the American comedians made that night, but I liked
their dry, cool way of making them. They did not "hand a lemon" or
"skiddoo" in those days; American slang changes as quickly as thieves'
slang, and only "Gee!" and "Gee-whiz!" seem to be permanent.
There were very few theaters in New York when we first went there. All
that part of the city which is now "up town" did not exist, and what was
then "up" is now more than "down" town. The American stage has changed
almost as much. In those days their most distinguished actors were
playing Shakespeare or old comedy, and their new plays were chiefly
"imported" goods. Even then there was a liking for local plays which
showed the peculiarities of the different States, but they were more
violent and crude than now. The original American genius and the true
dramatic pleasure of the people is, I believe, in such plays, where very
complete observation of certain phases of American life and very real
pictures of manners are combined with comedy almost childlike in its
na•vetŽ. The sovereignty of the young girl which is such a marked
feature in social life is reflected in American plays.
This is by the way.
What I want to make clear is that in 1883 there was no living American
drama as there is now, that such productions of romantic plays and
Shakespeare as Henry Irving brought over from England were unknown, and
that the extraordinary success of our first tours would be impossible
now. We were the first and we were pioneers, and we were _new_. To be
new is everything in America.
Such palaces as the Hudson Theater, New York, were not dreamed of when
we were at the Star, which was, however, quite equal to any theater in
London in front of the footlights. The stage itself, the lighting
appliances, and the dressing-rooms were inferior.
Henry made his first appearance in America in "The Bells." He was not at
his best on the first night, but he could be pretty good even when he
was not at his best. I watched him from a box. Nervousness made the
company very slow. The audience was a splendid one--discriminating and
appreciative. We felt that the Americans _wanted_ to like us. We felt in
a few days so extraordinarily at home. The first sensation of entering a
foreign city was quickly wiped out.
The difference in atmosphere disappears directly one understands it. I
kept on coming across duplicates of "my friends in England." "How this
girl reminds me of Alice." "How like that one is to Gill!" We had
transported the Lyceum three thousand miles--that was all.
On the second night in New York it was my turn. "Command yourself--this
is the time to show you can act!" I said to myself as I went on to the
stage of the Star Theater, dressed as Henrietta Maria. But I could not
command myself. I played badly and cried too much in the last act. But
the people liked me, and they liked the play, perhaps because it was
historical; and of history the Americans are passionately fond. The
audience took many points which had been ignored in London. I had always
thought Henry as Charles I. most moving when he made that involuntary
effort to kneel to his subject, Moray, but the Lyceum audiences never
seemed to notice it. In New York the audience burst out into the most
sympathetic spontaneous applause that I have ever heard in a theater.
I know that there are some advanced stage reformers who prefer to think
applause "vulgar," and would suppress it in the theater if they could.
If they ever succeed they will suppress a great deal of good acting. It
is said that the American actor, Edwin Forrest, once walked down to the
footlights and said to the audience very gravely and sincerely: "If you
don't applaud, I can't act," and I do sympathize with him. Applause is
an instinctive, unconscious act expressing the sympathy between actors
and audience. Just as our art demands more instinct than intellect in
its exercise, so we demand of those who watch us an appreciation of the
simple unconscious kind which finds an outlet in clapping rather than
the cold, intellectual approval which would self-consciously think
applause derogatory. I have yet to meet the actor who was _sincere_ in
saying that he disliked applause.
My impression of the way the American women dressed in 1883 was not
favorable. Some of them wore Indian shawls and diamond earrings. They
dressed too grandly in the street and too dowdily in the theater. All
this has changed. The stores in New York are now the most beautiful in
the world, and the women are dressed to perfection. They are as clever
at the _demi-toilette_ as the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and
smartness of their walking-gowns are very refreshing after the floppy,
blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa of
which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor-made," now seem
so fond. The universal white "waist" is very pretty and trim on the
American girl. It is one of the distinguishing marks of a land of the
free, a land where "class" hardly exists. The girl in the store wears
the white waist; so does the rich girl on Fifth Avenue. It costs
anything from seventy-five cents to fifty dollars!
London when I come back from America always seems at first like an
ill-lighted village, strangely tame, peaceful and backward. Above all, I
miss the sunlight of America, and the clear blue skies of an evening.
"Are you glad to get back?" said an English friend.
"Very."
"It's a land of vulgarity, isn't it?"
"Oh yes, if you mean by that a wonderful land--a land of sunshine and
light, of happiness, of faith in the future!" I answered. I saw no
misery or poverty there. Every one looked happy. What hurts me on coming
back to England is the _hopeless_ look on so many faces; the dejection
and apathy of the people standing about in the streets. Of course there
is poverty in New York, but not among the Americans. The Italians, the
Russians, the Poles--all the host of immigrants washed in daily on the
bosom of the Hudson--these are poor, but you don't see them unless you
go Bowery-ways, and even then you can't help feeling that in their
sufferings there is always hope. The barrow man of to-day is the
millionaire of to-morrow! Vulgarity? I saw little of it. I thought that
the people who had amassed large fortunes used their wealth beautifully.
When a man is rich enough to build himself a big new house, he remembers
some old house which he once admired, and he has it imitated with all
the technical skill and care that can be had in America. This accounts
for the odd jumble of styles in Fifth Avenue, along the lakeside in
Chicago, in the new avenues in St. Louis and elsewhere. One
millionaire's house is modeled on a French ch‰teau, another on an old
Colonial house in Virginia, another on a monastery in Mexico, another is
like an Italian palazzo. And their imitations are never weak or
pretentious. The architects in America seem to me to be far more able
than ours, or else they have a freer hand and more money. It is sad to
remember that Mr. Stanford White was one of the best of these splendid
architects.
It was Stanford White with Saint-Gaudens--that great sculptor, whose
work dignifies nearly all the great cities in America--who had most to
do with the Exhibition buildings of the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893.
It was odd to see that fair dream city rising out of the lake, so far
more beautiful in its fleeting beauty than the Chicago of the
stock-yards and the Pit which had provided the money for its beauty. The
millionaires did not interfere with the artists at all. They gave their
thousands--and stood aside. The result was one of the loveliest things
conceivable. Saint-Gaudens and the rest did their work as well as though
the buildings were to endure for centuries instead of being burned in a
year to save the trouble of pulling down! The World's Fair always
recalled to me the story of Michael Angelo, who carved a figure in snow
which, says the chronicler who saw it, "was superb."
Saint-Gaudens gave me a cast of his medallion of Bastien-Lepage, and
wrote to a friend of mine that "Bastien had '_le coeur au mŽtier_.' So
has Miss Terry, and I will place that saying in the frame that is to
replace the present unsatisfactory one." He was very fastidious about
this frame, and took such a lot of trouble to get it right. It must have
been very irritating to Saint-Gaudens when he fell a victim to that
extraordinary official puritanism which sometimes exercises a petty
censorship over works of art in America. The medal that he made for the
World's Fair was rejected at Washington because it had on it a beautiful
little nude figure of a boy holding an olive branch, emblematical of
young America. I think a commonplace wreath and some lettering were
substituted.
Saint-Gaudens did the fine bas-relief of Robert Louis Stevenson which
was chosen for the monument in St. Gile's Cathedral, Edinburgh. He gave
my daughter a medallion cast from this, because he knew that she was a
great lover of Stevenson. The bas-relief was dedicated to his friend Joe
Evans. I knew Saint-Gaudens first through Joe Evans, an artist who,
while he lived, was to me and to my daughter the dearest of all in
America. His character was so fine and noble--his nature so perfect.
Many were the birthday cards he did for me, original in design,
beautiful in execution. Whatever he did he put the best of himself into
it. I wrote to my daughter soon after his death:--
"I heard on Saturday that our dear Joe Evans is dangerously ill.
Yesterday came the worst news. Joe was not happy, but he was just
heroic, and this world wasn't half good enough for him. I keep on
getting letters about him. He seems to have been so glad to die. It
was like a child's funeral, I am told, and all his American friends
seem to have been there--Saint-Gaudens, Taber, etc. A poem about
the dear fellow by Mr. Gilder has one very good line in which he
says the grave 'might snatch a brightness from his presence there.'
I thought that was very happy, the love of light and gladness being
the most remarkable thing about him, the dear sad Joe."
Robert Taber, dear, and rather sad too, was a great friend of Joe's.
They both came to me first in the shape of a little book in which was
inscribed, "Never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender
it." "Upon this hint I spake," the book began. It was all the work of a
few boys and girls who from the gallery of the Star Theater, New York,
had watched Irving's productions and learned to love him and me. Joe
Evans had done a lovely picture by way of frontispiece of a group of
eager heads hanging over the gallery's edge, his own and Taber's among
them. Eventually Taber came to England and acted with Henry Irving in
"Peter the Great" and other plays.
Like his friend Joe, he too was heroic. His health was bad and his life
none too happy--but he struggled on. His career was cut short by
consumption, and he died in the Adirondacks in 1904.
I cannot speak of all my friends in America, or anywhere, for the matter
of that, _individually_. My personal friends are so many, and they are
all wonderful--wonderfully staunch to me! I have "tried" them so, and
they have never given me up as a bad job.
My first friends of all in America were Mr. Bayard, afterwards the
American Ambassador in London, and his sister, Mrs. Benoni Lockwood, her
husband and their children. Now after all these years they are still my
friends, and I can hope for none better to the end.
William Winter, poet, critic and exquisite man, was one of the first to
write of Henry with whole-hearted appreciation. But all the criticism in
America, favorable and unfavorable, surprised us by the scholarly
knowledge it displayed. In Chicago the notices were worthy of the
_Temps_ or the _Journal des DŽbats_. There was no attempt to force the
personality of the writer into the foreground nor to write a style that
should attract attention to the critic and leave the thing criticized to
take care of itself. William Winter, and, of late years, Allan Dale,
have had their personalities associated with their criticisms, but they
are exceptions. Curiously enough the art of acting appears to bore most
dramatic critics, the very people who might be expected to be interested
in it. The American critics, however, at the time of our early visits,
were keenly interested, and showed it by their observation of many
points which our English critics had passed over. For instance, writing
of "Much Ado about Nothing," one of the Americans said of Henry in the
Church Scene that "something of him as a subtle interpreter of doubtful
situations was exquisitely shown in the early part of this fine scene by
his suspicion of Don John--felt by him alone, and expressed only by a
quick covert look, but a look so full of intelligence as to proclaim him
a sharer in the secret with his audience."
"Wherein does the superiority lie?" wrote another critic in comparing
our productions with those which had been seen in America up to 1884.
"Not in the amount of money expended, but in the amount of brains;--in
the artistic intelligence and careful and earnest pains with which every
detail is studied and worked out. Nor is there any reason why Mr. Irving
or any other foreigner should have a monopoly of either intelligence or
pains. They are common property, and one man's money can buy them as
well as another's. The defect in the American manager's policy
heretofore has been that he has squandered his money upon high salaries
for a few of his actors and costly, because unintelligent, expenditure
for mere dazzle and show."
William Winter soon became a great personal friend of ours, and visited
us in England. He was one of the few _sad_ people I met in America. He
could have sat upon the ground and told "sad stories of the deaths of
kings" with the best. He was very familiar with the poetry of the
_immediate_ past--Cowper, Coleridge, Gray, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats,
and the rest. He _liked_ us, so everything we did was right to him. He
could not help being guided entirely by his feelings. If he disliked a
thing, he had no use for it. Some men can say, "I hate this play, but
of its kind it is admirable." Willie Winter could never take that
unemotional point of view. In England he loved going to see graveyards,
and knew where every poet was buried.
His children came to stay with me in London. When we were all coming
home from the theater one night after "Faust" (the year must have been
1886) I said to little Willie:
"Well, what do you think of the play?"
"Oh my!" said he, "it takes the cake."
"Takes the _cake_!" said his little sister scornfully, "it takes the
ice-cream!"
"Won't you give me a kiss?" said Henry to the same young miss one night.
"No, I _won't_ with all that blue stuff on your face." (He was made up
for Mephistopheles.) Then, after a pause, "But why--why don't you _take_
it!" She was only five years old at the time!
I love the American papers, especially the Sunday ones, although they do
weigh nearly half a ton! As for the interviewers, I never cease to
marvel at their cleverness. I tell them nothing, and the next day I read
their "story" and find that I have said the most brilliant things! The
following delightful "skit" on one of these interviews suggested itself
to my clever friend Miss AimŽe Lowther:--
WHAT CONSTITUTES CHARM
AN ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEW WITH MISS ELLEN TERRY
"Yes, I know that I am very charming," said Miss Ellen Terry, "a
perfectly delightful creature, a Queen of Hearts, a regular witch!" she
added thoughtfully, at the same time projecting a pip of the orange she
was chewing, with inimitable grace and accurate aim into
THE REPORTER'S EYE.
"You know, at all events, that you have charm?" I said.
"What do you think, you idiot! I exercise absolute power over my
audiences--I cast over them an irresistible spell--I do with them what I
will.... I am omnipotent, enthralling--and no wonder!"
I looked at her across the table, wondering at so much simple modesty.
"But feeling your power, you must often be tempted to experiment with
it," I ventured.
"Yes, now and then I am," replied Miss Terry. "Once, I remember, when I
was to appear as Ophelia, on making my entrance and seeing the audience
waiting breathlessly--as they always do--for what I was going to do
next, I said to myself, 'You silly fools, you shall have a treat
to-night--I will give you something you will appreciate more than
Shakespeare!' Hastily slipping on a
FALSE NOSE
which I always carry in my pocket, I struck an attitude, and then turned
A SOMERSAULT.
"Ah! the applause, the delirious, intoxicating applause! That night I
felt my power, that night I knew that I had wished I could have held
them indefinitely! But I am only one of several gifted beings on the
stage who are blessed with this mysterious quality. Dan Leno, Herbert
Campbell, and Little Tich all have it. Dan Leno, in particular, rivets
the attention of his audience by his entrancing by-play, even when he
doesn't speak. And yet it is
NOT HIS BEAUTY
precisely that does it."
At that moment Miss Terry's little grandchild, who was playing about the
room,
BEGAN TO HOWL
most dismally.
"Here is a little maid who was a charmer from her cradle," said the
delightful actress, picking up the child and
PLAYFULLY TOSSING
it out of the third-floor window. Seeing me look relieved, though
somewhat surprised, she said merrily: "I have plenty more of them at
home, and they are
ALL CHARMING,
every one of them! If you want to be charming you must be natural--I
always am. Even in my cradle I was
QUITE NATURAL.
And now, please go. Your conversation bores me inexpressibly, and your
countenance, which is at once vacuous and singularly plain, disagrees
with me thoroughly. Go! or I shall
BE SICK!"
So saying the great actress gave me a
VIGOROUS KICK
which landed me outside her room, considerably shaken, and entirely
under the spell of her matchless charm.
* * * * *
For "quite a while" during the first tour I stayed in Washington with
my friend Miss Olive Seward, and all the servants of that delightful
household were colored. This was my first introduction to the negroes,
whose presence more than anything else in the country, makes America
seem foreign to European eyes. They are more sharply divided into high
and low types than white people, and are not in the least alike in their
types. It is safe to call any colored man "George." They all love it,
perhaps because of George Washington, and most of them are really named
George. I never met such perfect service as they can give. _Some_ of
them are delightful. The beautiful, full voice of the "darkey" is so
attractive, so soothing, and they are so deft and gentle. Some of the
women are beautiful, and all the young appeared to me to be well-formed.
As for the babies! I washed two or three little piccaninnies when I was
in the South, and the way they rolled their gorgeous eyes at me was "too
cute," which means in British-English "fascinating."
At the Washington house, the servants danced a cake-walk for me--the
colored cook, a magnificent type, who "took the cake," saying, "that was
because I chose a good handsome boy to dance with, Missie."
They sang too. Their voices were beautiful--with such illimitable power,
yet as sweet as treacle.
The little page-boy had a pet of a wooly head. Henry once gave him a
tip--"fee," as they call it in America--and said: "There, that's for a
new wig when this one is worn out," gently pulling the astrakhan-like
hair. The tip would have bought him many wigs, I think!
"Why, Uncle Tom, how your face shines to-night!" said my hostess to one
of the very old servants.
"Yes, Missie, glycerine and rose-water, Missie!"
He had taken some from her dressing-table to shine up his face in honor
of me! A shiny complexion is considered to be a great beauty among the
negroes! The dear old man! He was very bent and very old; and looked
like one of the logs that he used to bring in for the fire--a log from
some hoary, lichened tree whose life was long since past. He would
produce a pin from his head when you wanted one; he had them stuck in
his pad of white wooly hair: "Always handy then, Missie," he would say.
"Ask them to sing 'Sweet Violets,' Uncle Tom."
He was acting as a sort of master of the ceremonies at the entertainment
the servants were giving me.
"Don't think they know dat, Miss Olly."
"Why, I heard them singing it the other night!" And she hummed the tune.
"Oh, dat was 'Sweet Vio-_letts_,' Miss Olly!"
Washington was the first city I had seen in America where the people did
not hurry, and where the social life did not seem entirely the work of
women. The men asserted themselves here as something more than machines
in the background untiringly turning out the dollars, while their wives
and daughters give luncheons and teas at which only women are present.
Beautifully as the women dress, they talk very little about clothes. I
was much struck by their culture--by the evidences that they had read
far more and developed a more fastidious taste than most young
Englishwomen. Yet it is all mixed up with extraordinary na•vetŽ. The
vivacity, the appearance, at least, of _reality_, the animation, the
energy of American women delighted me. They are very sympathetic, too,
in spite of a certain callousness which comes of regarding everything in
life, even love, as "lots of fun." I did not think that they, or the men
either, had much natural sense of beauty. They admire beauty in a
curious way through their intellect. Nearly every American girl has a
cast of the winged Victory of the Louvre in her room. She makes it a
point of her _education_ to admire it.
There! I am beginning to generalize--the very thing I was resolute to
avoid. How silly to generalize about a country which embraces such
extremes of climate as the sharp winters of Boston and New York and the
warm winds of Florida which blow through palms and orange groves!
XII
SOME LIKES AND DISLIKES
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 theaters, 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 theater, the plays
always went badly. My voice was affected too. At Toledo once, it nearly
went altogether. Then the next night, after a good fight for it, we got
the theater cool, and the difference that it made to the play was
extraordinary. I was in my best form, feeling well and jolly!
No wonder the Americans drink ice-water and wear very thin clothes
indoors. Their rooms are hotter than ours ever are, even in the height
of the summer--when we have a summer! But no wonder, either, that
Americans in England shiver at our cold, draughty rooms. They are
brought up in hot-houses.