American meals. Everything is served on ice, and the ice-water, however
pernicious the European may consider it as a drink, looks charming and
cool in the hot rooms.
I liked the traveling; but then we traveled in a very princely fashion.
The Lyceum company and baggage occupied eight cars, and Henry's private
parlor car was lovely. The only thing that we found was better
understood in England, so far as railway traveling is concerned, was
_privacy_. You may have a _private_ car in America, 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!
The "parlor car" in America is more luxurious than our first class, but
you travel in it (if you have no "private" car) with thirty other
people.
"What do you want to be private for?" asked an American, and you don't
know how to answer, for you find that with them that privacy means
concealment. For this reason, I believe, they don't have hedges or walls
round their estates and gardens. "Why should we? We have nothing to
hide!"
In the cars, as in the rooms at one's hotel, the "cuspidor" is always
with you as a thing of beauty! When I first went to America the "Ladies'
Entrance" to the hotel was really necessary, because the ordinary
entrance was impassable! Since then very severe laws against spitting in
public places have been passed, and there is a _great_ improvement. But
the habit, I suppose due to the dryness of the climate, or to the very
strong cigars smoked, or to chronic catarrh, or to a feeling of
independence--"This is a free country and I can spit if I
choose!"--remains sufficiently disgusting to a stranger visiting the
country.
The American voice is the one thing in the country that I find
unbearable; yet the truly terrible variety only exists in one State, and
is not widely distributed. I suppose it is its very assertiveness that
makes one forget the very sweet voices that also exist in America. The
Southern voice is very low in tone and soothing, like the "darkey"
voice. It is as different from Yankee as the Yorkshire burr is from the
Cockney accent.
This question of accent is a very funny one. I had not been in America
long when a friend said to me:
"We like your voice. You have so little English accent!"
This struck me as rather cool. Surely English should be spoken with an
_English_ accent, not with a French, German, or double-dutch one! Then I
found that what they meant by an English accent was an English
affectation of speech--a drawl with a tendency to "aw" and "ah"
everything. They thought that every one in England who did not miss out
aspirates where they should be, and put them in where they should not
be, talked of "the rivah," "ma brothar," and so on. Their conclusion
was, after all, quite as well founded as ours about _their_ accent. The
American intonation, with its freedom from violent emphasis, is, I
think, rather pretty when the quality of the voice is sweet.
Of course the Americans would have their jokes about Henry's method of
speech. Ristori followed us once in New York, and a newspaper man said
he was not sure whether she or Mr. Irving was the more difficult for an
American to understand.
"He pronounces the English tongue as it is pronounced by no other man,
woman or child," wrote the critic, and proceeded to give a phonetically
spelled version of Irving's delivery of Shylock's speech of Antonio.
"Wa thane, ett no eperes
Ah! um! yo ned m'clp
Ough! ough! Gaw too thane! Ha! um!
Yo com'n say
Ah! Shilok, um! ouch! we wode hev moanies!"
I wonder if the clever American reporter stopped to think how _his_
delivery of the same speech would look in print! As for the
ejaculations, the interjections and grunts with which Henry interlarded
the text, they often helped to reveal the meaning of Shakespeare to his
audience--a meaning which many a perfect elocutionist has left perfectly
obscure. The use of "m'" or "me" for "my" has often been hurled in my
face as a reproach, but I never contracted "my" without good reason. I
had a line in Olivia which I began by delivering as--
"My sorrows and my shame are my own."
Then I saw that the "mys" sounded ridiculous, and abbreviated the two
first ones into "me's."
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.
"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 who managed to reach the theater 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.
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 Mr. Austin called a
"Lyceum Christmas Play."
Every one roared with laughter until it came to the verse of which he
was the victim, when suddenly he found the fun rather labored!
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]
Pooh for Wenman's bass![2] Why should he make a boast of it?"
[Footnote 1: Alexander had just succeeded Terriss as our leading young
man.]
[Footnote 2: Wenman had a rolling bass voice of which he was very proud.
He was a valuable actor, yet somehow never interesting. Young Norman
Forbes-Robertson played Sir Andrew Ague Cheak with us on our second
American tour.]
_Norman Forbes_:
"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!"
_T. Mead_:
(Of whom much has already been written in these pages.)
"What's this about a voice? Surely you forget it, or
Wilfully conceal that _I_ have no competitor!
I do not know the play, or even what the title is,
But safe to make success a charnel-house recital is!
So please to bear in mind, if I am not to fail in it,
That Hamlet's father's ghost must rob the Lyons Mail in it!
No! that's not correct! But you may spare your charity--
A good sepulchral groan's the thing for popularity!"
_H. Howe_:
(The "agricultural" actor, as Henry called him.)
"Boys, take my advice, the stage is not the question,
But whether at three score you'll all have my digestion.
Why yearn for plays, to pose as Brutuses or Catos in,
When you may get a garden to grow the best potatoes in?
You see that at my age by Nature's shocks unharmed I am!
Tho' if I sneeze but thrice, good heavens, how alarmed I am!
But act your parts like men, and tho' you all great sinners are,
You're sure to act like men wherever Irving's dinners are!"
_J.H. Allen_ (our prompter):
"Whatever be the play, _I_ must have a hand in it,
For won't I teach the supers how to stalk and stand in it?
Tho' that blessed Shakespeare never gives a ray to them,
_I_ explain the text, and then it's clear as day to them![1]
Plain as A B C is a plot historical,
When _I_ overhaul allusions allegorical!
Shakespeare's not so bad; he'd have more pounds and pence in him,
If actors stood aside, and let me show the sense in him!"
[Footnote 1: Once when Allen was rehearsing the supers in the Church
Scene in "Much Ado about Nothing," we overheard him show the sense in
Shakespeare like this:
"This 'Ero let me tell you is a perfect lady, a nice, innercent young
thing, and when the feller she's engaged to calls 'er an 'approved
wanton,' you naturally claps yer 'ands to yer swords. A wanton is a kind
of--well, you know she ain't what she ought to be!"
Allen would then proceed to read the part of Claudio:
"... not to knit my soul to an approved wanton."
Seven or eight times the supers clapped their "'ands to their swords"
without giving Allen satisfaction.
"No, no, no, that's not a bit like it, not a bit! If any of your sisters
was 'ere and you 'eard me call 'er a ----, would yer stand gapin' at me
as if this was a bloomin' tea party!"]
Louis Austin's little "Lyceum Play" was presented to me with a silver
water-jug, a souvenir from the company, and ended up with the following
pretty lines spoken by Katie Brown, a clever little girl who played all
the small pages' parts at this time:
"Although I'm but a little page,
Who waits for Portia's kind behest,
Mine is the part upon this stage
To tell the plot you have not guessed.
"Dear lady, oft in Belmont's hall,
Whose mistress is so sweet and fair,
Your humble slaves would gladly fall
Upon their knees, and praise you there.
"To offer you this little gift,
Dear Portia, now we crave your leave,
And let it have the grace to lift
Our hearts to yours this Christmas eve.
"And so we pray that you may live
Thro' many, many, happy years,
And feel what you so often give--
The joy that is akin to tears!"
How nice of Louis Austin! It quite made up for my mortification over the
camphor pudding!
Pittsburg has been called "hell with the lid off," and other insulting
names. I have always thought it beautiful, especially at night when its
furnaces make it look like a city of flame. The lovely park that the
city has made on the heights that surround it is a lesson to Birmingham,
Sheffield, and our other black towns. George Alexander said that
Pittsburg reminded him of his native town of Sheffield. "Had he said
Birmingham, now instead of Sheffield," wrote a Pittsburg newspaper man,
"he would have touched our tender spot exactly. As it is, we can be as
cheerful as the Chicago man was who boasted that his sweetheart 'came
pretty near calling him "honey,"' when in fact she had called him 'Old
Beeswax'!"
When I played Ophelia for the first time in Chicago, I played the part
better than I had ever played it before, and I don't believe I ever
played it so well again. _Why_, it is almost impossible to say. I had
heard a good deal of the crime of Chicago, that the people were a rough,
murderous, sand-bagging crew. I ran on to the stage in the mad scene,
and never have I felt such sympathy! This frail wraith, this poor
demented thing, could hold them in the hollow of her hand.... It was
splendid! "How long can I hold them?" I thought: "For ever!" Then I
laughed. That was the best Ophelia laugh of my life--my life that is
such a perfect kaleidoscope with the people and the places turning round
and round.
At the risk of being accused of indiscriminate flattery I must say that
I liked _all_ the American cities. Every one of them has a joke at the
expense of the others. They talk in New York of a man who lost both his
sons--"One died and the other went to live in Philadelphia." Pittsburg
is the subject of endless criticism, and Chicago is "the limit." To me,
indeed, it seemed "the limit"--of the industry, energy, and enterprise
of man. In 1812 this vast city was only a frontier post--Fort Dearborn.
In 1871 the town that first rose on these great plains was burned to the
ground. The growth of the present Chicago began when I was a grown
woman. I have celebrated my jubilee. Chicago will not do that for
another fifteen years!
I never visited the stock-yards. Somehow I had no curiosity to see a
live pig turned in fifteen minutes into ham, sausages, hair-oil, and the
binding for a Bible! I had some dread of being made sad by the spectacle
of so much slaughter--of hating the Chicago of the "abattoir" as much as
I had loved the Chicago of the Lake with the white buildings of the
World's Fair shining on it, the Chicago built on piles in splendid
isolation in the middle of the prairie, the Chicago of Marshall Field's
beautiful palace of a store, the Chicago of my dear friends, the Chicago
of my son's first appearance on the stage! Was it not a Chicago man who
wrote of my boy, tending the roses in the stage garden in "Eugene Aram,"
that he was "a most beautiful lad"!
"His eyes are full of sparkle, his smile is a ripple over his face,
and his laugh is as cherry and natural as a bird's song.... This
Joey is Miss Ellen Terry's son, and the apple of her eye. On this
Wednesday night, January 14, 1885, he spoke his first lines upon
the stage. His mother has high hopes of this child's dramatic
future. He has the instinct and the soul of art in him. Already the
theater is his home. His postures and his playfulness with the
gardener, his natural and graceful movement, had been the subject
of much drilling, of study and practice. He acquitted himself
beautifully and received the wise congratulations of his mother, of
Mr. Irving, and of the company."
That is the nicest newspaper notice I have ever read!
At Chicago I made my first speech. The Haverley Theater, at which we
first appeared in 1884, was altered and rechristened the "Columbia" in
1885. I was called upon for a speech after the special performance in
honor of the occasion, consisting of scenes from "Charles I.," "Louis
XI," "The Merchant of Venice," and "The Bells," had come to an end. I
think it must be the shortest speech on record:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been asked to christen your beautiful
theater. 'Hail Columbia!'"
When we acted in Brooklyn we used to stay in New York and drive over
that wonderful bridge every night. There were no trolley cars on it
then. I shall never forget how it looked in winter, with the snow and
ice on it--a gigantic trellis of dazzling white, as incredible as a
dream. The old stone bridges were works of _art_. This bridge, woven of
iron and steel for a length of over 500 yards, and hung high in the air
over the water so that great ships can pass beneath it, is the work of
_science_. It looks as if it had been built by some power, not by men at
all.
It was during our week at Brooklyn in 1885 that Henry was ill, too ill
to act for four nights. Alexander played Benedick, and got through it
wonderfully well. Then old Mr. Mead did (_did_ is the word) Shylock.
There was no intention behind his words or what he did.
I had such a funny batch of letters on my birthday that year. "Dear,
sweet Miss Terry, etc., etc. Will you give me a piano?"!! etc., etc.
Another: "Dear Ellen. Come to Jesus. Mary." Another, a lovely letter of
thanks from a poor woman in the most ghastly distress, and lastly an
offer of a _two years'_ engagement in America. There was a simple coming
in for one woman acting at Brooklyn on her birthday!
Brooklyn is as sure a laugh in New York as the mother-in-law in a London
music hall. "All cities begin by being lonesome," a comedian explained,
"and Brooklyn has never gotten over it."
My only complaint against Brooklyn was that they would not take Fussie
in at the hotel there. Fussie, during these early American tours, was
still _my_ dog. Later on he became Henry's. He had his affections
alienated by a course of chops, tomatoes, strawberries, "ladies'
fingers" soaked in champagne, and a beautiful fur rug of his very own
presented by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts!
How did I come by Fussie? I went to Newmarket with Rosa Corder, whom
Whistler painted. She was one of those plain-beautiful women who are so
far more attractive than some of the pretty ones. She had wonderful
hair--like a fair, pale veil, a white, waxen face, and a very good
figure; and she wore very odd clothes. She had a studio in Southampton
Row, and another at Newmarket where she went to paint horses. I went to
Cambridge once and drove back with her across the heath to her studio.
"How wonderfully different are the expressions on terriers' faces," I
said to her, looking at a painting of hers of a fox-terrier pup. "That's
the only sort of dog I should like to have."
"That one belonged to Fred Archer," Rosa Corder said. "I daresay he
could get you one like it."
We went out to find Archer. Curiously enough I had known the famous
jockey at Harpenden when he was a little boy, and I believe used to come
round with vegetables.
"I'll send you a dog, Miss Terry, that won't be any trouble. He's got a
very good head, a first-rate tail, stuck in splendidly, but his legs are
too long. He'd follow you to America!"
Prophetic words! On one of our departures for America, Fussie was left
behind by mistake at Southampton. He could not get across the Atlantic,
but he did the next best thing. He found his way back from there to his
own theater in the Strand, London!
Fred Archer sent him originally to the stage-door at the Lyceum. The man
who brought him out from there to my house in Earl's Court said:
"I'm afraid he gives tongue, Miss. He don't like music, anyway. There
was a band at the bottom of your road, and he started hollering."
We were at luncheon when Fussie made his dŽbut into the family circle,
and I very quickly saw his _stomach_ was his fault. He had a great
dislike to "Charles I."; we could never make out why. Perhaps it was
because Henry wore armor in one act--and Fussie may have barked his
shins against it. Perhaps it was the firing off of the guns; but more
probably it was because the play once got him into trouble. As a rule
Fussie had the most wonderful sense of the stage, and at rehearsal would
skirt the edge of it, but never cross it. But at Brooklyn one night when
we were playing "Charles I."--the last act, and that most pathetic part
of it where Charles is taking a last farewell of his wife and
children--Fussie, perhaps excited by his run over the bridge from New
York, suddenly bounded on to the stage! The good children who were
playing Princess Mary and Prince Henry didn't even smile; the audience
remained solemn, but Henry and I nearly went into hysterics. Fussie knew
directly that he had done wrong. He lay down on his stomach, then rolled
over on his back, whimpering an apology--while carpenters kept on
whistling and calling to him from the wings. The children took him up to
the window at the back of the scene, and he stayed there cowering
between them until the end of the play.
America seems to have been always fatal to Fussie. Another time when
Henry and I were playing in some charity performance in which John Drew
and Maude Adams were also acting, he disgraced himself again. Henry
having "done his bit" and put on hat and coat to leave the theater,
Fussie thought the end of the performance must have come; the stage had
no further sanctity for him, and he ran across it to the stage door
barking! John Drew and Maude Adams were playing "A Pair of Lunatics."
Maude Adams, sitting looking into the fire, did not see Fussie, but was
amazed to hear John Drew departing madly from the text:
"Is this a dog I see before me,
His tail towards my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee."
She began to think that he had really gone mad!
When Fussie first came, Charlie was still alive, and I have often gone
into Henry's dressing-room and seen the two dogs curled up in both the
available chairs, Henry _standing_ while he made up, rather than disturb
them!
When Charlie died, Fussie had Henry's idolatry all to himself. I have
caught them often sitting quietly opposite each other at Grafton Street,
just adoring each other! Occasionally Fussie would thump his tail on the
ground to express his pleasure.
Wherever we went in America the hotel people wanted to get rid of the
dog. In the paper they had it that Miss Terry asserted that Fussie was a
little terrier, while the hotel people regarded him as a pointer, and
funny caricatures were drawn of a very big me with a very tiny dog, and
a very tiny me with a dog the size of an elephant! Henry often walked
straight out of an hotel where an objection was made to Fussie. If he
wanted to stay, he had recourse to strategy. At Detroit the manager of
the hotel said that dogs were against the rules. Being very tired Henry
let Fussie go to the stables for the night, and sent Walter to look
after him. The next morning he sent for the manager.
"Yours is a very old-fashioned hotel, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir, very old and ancient."
"Got a good chef? I didn't think much of the supper last night; but
still--the beds are comfortable enough--I am afraid you don't like
animals?"
"Yes, sir, in their proper place."
"It's a pity," said Henry meditatively, "because you happen to be
overrun by rats!"
"Sir, you must have made a mistake. Such a thing couldn't--"
"Well, I couldn't pass another night here without my dog," Henry
interrupted. "But there are, I suppose, other hotels?"
"If it will be any comfort to you to have your dog with you, sir, do by
all means, but I assure you that he'll catch no rat here."
"I'll be on the safe side," said Henry calmly.
And so it was settled. That very night Fussie supped off, not rats, but
terrapin and other delicacies in Henry's private sitting-room.
It was the 1888 tour, the great blizzard year, that Fussie was left
behind by mistake at Southampton. He jumped out at the station just
before Southampton, where they stop to collect tickets. After this long
separation, Henry naturally thought that the dog would go nearly mad
with joy when he saw him again. He described to me the meeting in a
letter.
"My dear Fussie gave me a terrible shock on Sunday night. When we
got in, J----, Hatton, and I dined at the Cafe Royal. I told Walter
to bring Fussie there. He did, and Fussie burst into the room while
the waiter was cutting some mutton, when, what d'ye think--one
bound at me--another instantaneous bound at the mutton, and from
the mutton nothing would get him until he'd got his plateful.
"Oh, what a surprise it was indeed! He never now will leave my
side, my legs, or my presence, but I cannot but think, alas, of
that seductive piece of mutton!"