The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go,
and does not wish to go,
The justified mother of men.”
I followed Dowden in the speaking and we carried the question. I find a
note in my diary, which if egotistical has at least that merit of
sincerity which is to be found now and again in a man’s diary—when he is
young:
“Spoke—I think well.”
III
That night before I went to bed—three o’clock—I wrote a long letter to
Walt Whitman. I had written to him before, but never so freely; my
letters were only of the usual pattern and did not call for answer. But
this letter was one in which I poured out my heart. I had long wished to
do so but was, somehow, ashamed or diffident—the qualities are much
alike. That night I spoke out; the stress of the evening had given me
courage.
Mails were fewer and slower thirty years ago than they are to-day. My
letter was written in the early morning of February 15. Walt Whitman
wrote in answer on March 6, and I received it exactly two weeks later;
so that he must have written very soon after receipt of my letter. Here
is his reply:
“431 STEVENS ST.
COR. WEST.
CAMDEN, N. JERSEY,
U.S. AMERICA,
_March 6, ’76_.
“BRAM STOKER,—My dear young man,—Your letters have been most welcome
to me—welcome to me as a Person and then as Author—I don’t know which
most. You did well to write to me so unconventionally, so fresh, so
manly, and so affectionately too. I, too, hope (though it is not
probable) that we shall one day personally meet each other. Meantime I
send you my friendship and thanks.
“Edward Dowden’s letter containing among others your subscription for
a copy of my new edition has just been rec’d. I shall send the book
very soon by express in a package to his address. I have just written
to E. D.
“My physique is entirely shatter’d—doubtless permanently—from
paralysis and other ailments. But I am up and dress’d, and get out
every day a little, live here quite lonesome, but hearty, and good
spirits.—Write to me again.
“WALT WHITMAN.”
In 1871 a correspondence had begun between Walt Whitman and Tennyson
which lasted for some years. In the first of Tennyson’s letters, July
12, 1871, he had said:
“I trust that if you visit England, you will grant me the pleasure of
receiving and entertaining you under my own roof.”
This kind invitation took root in Walt Whitman’s mind and blossomed into
intention. He was arranging to come to England, and Edward Dowden asked
him to prolong his stay and come to Ireland also. This was provisionally
arranged with him. When he should have paid his visit to Tennyson he was
to come on to Dublin, where his visit was to have been shared between
Dowden and myself. Dowden was a married man with a house of his own. I
was a bachelor, living in the top rooms of a house, which I had
furnished myself. We knew that Walt Whitman lived a peculiarly isolated
life, and the opportunity which either one or other of us could afford
him would fairly suit his taste. He could then repeat his visit to
either, and prolong it as he wished. We had also made provisional
arrangements for his giving a lecture whilst in Dublin; and as the
friends whom we asked were eager to take tickets, he would be assured of
a sum of at least a hundred pounds sterling—a large sum to him in those
days.
But alas!
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley.”
At the very beginning of 1873 Walt Whitman was struck down by a stroke
of paralysis which left him a wreck for the rest of his days. He could
at best move but a very little; the joys of travel and visiting distant
friends were not to be for him.
IV
At the meeting in 1884 he and Irving became friends at once. He knew
some at least of Walt Whitman’s work, for we often spoke of it; I myself
gave him a two-volume edition. Walt Whitman was sitting on a sofa and
Irving drew up a chair, a large rocker, beside him. They talked together
for a good while and seemed to take to each other mightily. Irving
doubtless struck by his height, his poetic appearance, his voice, and
breadth of manner, said presently:
“You know you are like Tennyson in several ways. You quite remind me of
him!” Then knowing that many people like their identity to be unique and
not comparable with any one else, however great, he added:
“You don’t mind that, do you?” The answer came quickly:
“Mind it! I like it!—I am very proud to be told so! I like to be
tickled!” He actually beamed and chuckled with delight at the praise. He
always had a lofty idea of Tennyson and respect as well as love for him
and his work; and he was hugely pleased at the comparison. He stood up
so that Irving might gauge his height comparatively with Tennyson’s.
Donaldson in his book on Walt Whitman, published after the Poet’s death,
wrote of the interview:
“Mr. Whitman was greatly pleased with Mr. Irving, and remarked to me
how little of the actor there was in his manner or talk. Frequently,
after this, Mr. Whitman expressed to me his admiration for Mr. Irving,
now Sir Henry Irving, for his gentle and unaffected manners and his
evident intellectual power and heart.”
Be it remembered that Walt Whitman was fond of the theatre and went to
it a good deal before he was incapacitated by his paralysis; but he did
not like the vulgarity of certain actors in their posing off the stage.
When he met the great actor, with whose praise the whole country was
then ringing, and found that he was gentle and restrained and unassuming
in manner the whole craft rose in his estimation.
When it came to my own turn to have a chat with Walt Whitman I found him
all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him: large-minded,
broad-viewed, tolerant to the last degree; incarnate sympathy;
understanding with an insight that seemed more than human. Small wonder,
I thought, that in that terrible war of ’61–5 this man made a place for
himself in the world of aid to the suffering, which was unique. No
wonder that men opened their hearts to him—told him their secrets, their
woes and hopes and griefs and loves! A man amongst men! With a herculean
physical strength and stamina; with courage and hope and belief that
never seemed to tire or stale he moved amongst those legions of the
wounded and sick like a very angel of comfort materialised to an
understanding man.
To me he was an old friend, and on his part he made me feel that I was
one. We spoke of Dublin and those friends there who had manifested
themselves to him. He remembered all their names and asked me many
questions as to their various personalities. Before we parted he asked
me to come to see him at his home in Camden whenever I could manage it.
Need I say that I promised.
V
It was not till after two years that I had opportunity to pay my visit
to Walt Whitman. The cares and responsibilities of a theatre are always
exacting, and the demands on the time of any one concerned in management
are so endless that the few hours of leisure necessary for such a visit
are rare.
At last came a time when I could see my way. On 23rd October 1886 I left
London for New York, arriving on 31st. I had come over to make out a
tour for _Faust_ to commence next year. On 2nd November I went to
Philadelphia by an early train. There after I had done my work at the
theatre I met Donaldson, and as I had time to spare we went over to
Camden to pay the visit to which I had looked forward so long.
His house, 328 Mickle Street, was a small ordinary one in a row, built
of the usual fine red brick which marks Philadelphia and gives it an
appearance so peculiarly Dutch. It was a small house, though large
enough for his needs. He sat in the front room in a big rocking-chair
which Donaldson’s children had given him; it had been specially made for
him, as he was a man of over six feet high and very thick-set. He was
dressed all in grey, the trousers cut straight and wide, and the coat
loose. All the cloth was a sort of thick smooth frieze. His shirt was of
rather coarse cotton, unstarched, with a very wide full collar open low—
very low in the neck and fastened with a big white stud. The old lady
who cared for him and nursed him had for him a manifest admiration. She
evidently liked to add on her own account some little adornment; she had
fastened a bit of cheap narrow lace on his wide soft shirt cuffs and at
the neck of his collar. It was clumsily sewn on and was pathetic to see,
for it marked a limited but devoted intelligence used for his care. The
cuffs of his coat were unusually deep and wide and were stuck here and
there with pins which he used for his work. His hair seemed longer and
wilder and shaggier and whiter than when I had seen him two years
before. He seemed feebler, and when he rose from his chair or moved
about the room did so with difficulty. I could notice his eyes better
now. They were not so quick and searching as before; tireder-looking, I
thought, with the blue paler and the grey less warm in colour.
Altogether the whole man looked more worn out. There was not, however,
any symptom of wear or tire in his intellectual or psychic faculties.
He seemed genuinely glad to see me. He was most hearty in his manner and
interested about everything. He asked much about London and its people,
specially those of the literary world; and spoke of Irving in a way that
delighted me. Our conversation presently drifted towards Abraham Lincoln
for whom he had an almost idolatrous affection. I confess that in this I
shared; and it was another bond of union between us. He said:
“No one will ever know the real Abraham Lincoln or his place in
history!”
I had of course read his wonderful description of the assassination by
Wilkes Booth given in his _Memoranda during the War_, published in the
volume called _Two Rivulets_ in the Centennial Edition of his works in
1876. This is so startlingly vivid that I thought that the man who had
written it could tell me more. So I asked him if he were present at the
time. He said:
“No, I was not present at the time of the assassination; but I was close
to the theatre and was one of the first in when the news came. Then I
afterwards spent the better part of the night interviewing many of those
who were present and of the President’s Guard, who, when the terrible
word came out that he had been murdered, stormed the house with fixed
bayonets. It was a wonder that there was not a holocaust, for it was a
wild frenzy of grief and rage. It might have been that the old sagas had
been enacted again when amongst the Vikings a Chief went to the Valhalla
with a legion of spirits around him!”
The memory of that room will never leave me. The small, close room—it
was cold that day and when we came in he had lit his stove, which soon
grew almost red-hot; the poor furniture; the dim light of the winter
afternoon struggling in through the not-over-large window shadowed as it
was by the bare plane-tree on the sidewalk, whose branches creaked in
the harsh wind; the floor strewn in places knee-deep with piles of
newspapers and books and all the odds and ends of a literary working
room. Amongst them were quite a number of old hats—of the soft grey
wide-brimmed felt which he always wore.
Donaldson and I had arrived at Mickle Street about three, and at four we
left. I think Walt Whitman was really sorry to have us go. Thomas
Donaldson describes the visit in his book _Walt Whitman as I knew him_.
VI
The opportunity for my next visit to Walt Whitman came in the winter of
1887 when we were playing in Philadelphia. On the 22nd December
Donaldson and I again found our way over to Mickle Street. In the
meantime I had had much conversation about Walt Whitman with many of his
friends. The week after my last interview I had been again in
Philadelphia for a day, on the evening of which I had dined with his
friend and mine, Talcott Williams of the _Press_. During the evening we
talked much of Walt Whitman, and we agreed that it was a great pity that
he did not cut certain lines and passages out of the poems. Talcott
Williams said he would do it if permitted, and I said I would speak to
Walt Whitman about it whenever we should meet again. The following year,
1887, I breakfasted with Talcott Williams, 19th December, and in much
intimate conversation we spoke of the subject again.
We found Walt Whitman hale and well. His hair was more snowy white than
ever and more picturesque. He looked like King Lear in Ford Madox
Brown’s picture. He seemed very glad to see me and greeted me quite
affectionately. He said he was “in good heart,” and looked bright though
his body had distinctly grown feebler.
I ventured to speak to him what was in my mind as to certain excisions
in his work. I said:
“If you will only allow your friends to do this—they will only want to
cut about a hundred lines in all—your books will go into every house in
America. Is not that worth the sacrifice?” He answered at once, as
though his mind had long ago been made up and he did not want any
special thinking:
“It would not be any sacrifice. So far as I am concerned they might cut
a thousand. It is not that—it is quite another matter:”—here both face
and voice grew rather solemn—“when I wrote as I did I thought I was
doing right and right makes for good. I think so still. I think that all
that God made is for good—that the work of His hands is clean in all
ways if used as He intended! If I was wrong I have done harm. And for
that I deserve to be punished by being forgotten! It has been and cannot
not be. No, I shall never cut a line so long as I live!”
One had to respect a decision so made and on such grounds. I said no
more.
When we were going he held up his hand saying, “Wait a minute.” He got
up laboriously and hobbled out of the room and to his bedroom overhead.
There we heard him moving about and shifting things. It was nearly a
quarter of an hour when he came down holding in his hand a thin
green-covered volume and a printed picture of himself. He wrote on the
picture with his indelible blue pencil. Then he handed to me both book
and picture, saying:
“Take these and keep them from me and Good-bye!”
The book was the 1872 edition of the _Leaves of Grass_—“As a Strong Bird
on Pinions Free”—and contained his autograph in ink. The portrait was a
photograph by Gutekunst, of Philadelphia. On it he had written:
_To_
Bram Stoker.
Walt Whitman. Dec. 22, ’87.
That was the last time I ever saw the man who for nearly twenty years
had held my heart as a dear friend.
VII
When I had come to New York after my visit to Walt Whitman in 1886 I
made it my business to see Augustus St. Gaudens, the sculptor, regarding
a project which had occurred to me. That was to have him do a bust of
Walt Whitman. He jumped at the idea, and said it would be a delight to
him—that there ought to be such a record of the great Poet and that he
would be proud to do it. I arranged that I should ask if he could have
the necessary facilities from Walt Whitman. We thought that I could do
it best as I knew him and those of his friends who were closest to him.
I made inquiries at once through Donaldson, and when business took me
again to Philadelphia, on 8th and 9th November, we arranged the matter.
Walt Whitman acquiesced and was very pleased at the idea. I wrote the
necessary letters and left addresses and so forth with St. Gaudens. He
was at that time very busy with his great statue of Abraham Lincoln for
Chicago. Incidentally I saw in his studio the life mask and hands of
Lincoln made by the sculptor Volk before he went to Washington for his
first Presidency. The mould had just been found by the sculptor’s son
twenty-five years after their making. Twenty men joined to purchase the
models and present them to the nation. St. Gaudens made casts in bronze
of the face and hands with a set for each of the twenty subscribers with
his name in each case cast in the bronze. Henry Irving and I had the
honour of being two of the twenty. The bronze mask and hands, together
with the original plaster moulds, rest in the Smithsonian Institute in
Washington with a bronze plate recording the history and the names of
the donors. I felt proud when, some years later, I saw by chance my own
name in such a place, in such company, and for such a cause.
Unhappily, for want of time—for he was overwhelmed with work—and other
causes, St. Gaudens could not get to Philadelphia for a long time. Then
Walt Whitman got another stroke of paralysis early in 1888. Before the
combination of possibilities came when he could sit to the sculptor and
the latter could give the time to the work he died.
VIII
I was not in America between the spring of 1888 and the early fall of
1893 at which time Irving opened the tour in San Francisco. We did not
reach Philadelphia till towards the end of January 1894. In the meantime
Walt Whitman had died, March 26, 1892. On 4th February I spent the
afternoon with Donaldson in his home. Shortly after I came in he went
away for a minute and came back with a large envelope which he handed to
me:
“That is for you from Walt Whitman. I have been keeping it till I should
see you.”
The envelope contained in a rough card folio pasted down on thick paper
the original notes from which he delivered his lecture on Abraham
Lincoln at the Chestnut Street Opera House on April 15, 1886.
“With it was a letter to Donaldson, in which he said:
“Enclosed I send a full report of my Lincoln Lecture for our friend
Bram Stoker.”
This was my Message from the Dead.
LVI
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
Irving, like all who have ever known him, loved the “Hoosier” poet. We
saw a great deal of him when he was in London; and whenever we were in
Indianapolis, to meet him was one of the expected pleasures. Riley is
one of the most dramatic reciters that live, and when he gives one of
his own poems it is an intellectual delight. I remember two specially
delightful occasions in which he was a participant. Once in Indianapolis
when he came and supped on the car with us whilst we were waiting after
the play for the luggage to be loaded. He was in great form, and Irving
sat all the time with an expectant smile whilst Riley told us of some of
his experiences amongst the hill folk of Indiana where conditions of
life are almost primitive. One tale gave Irving intense pleasure—that in
which he told of how he had asked a mountaineer who was going down to
the nearest town to bring him back some tobacco. This the man had done
gladly; but when Riley went to pay him the cost of it he drew his gun on
him. When the other asked the cause of offence, which he did not intend
or even understand, the mountaineer answered:
“Didn’t I do what ye asked me! Then why do you go for to insult me. I
ain’t a tobacker dealer. I bought it for ye, an’ I give it to ye free
and glad. I ain’t sellin’ it!”
The other occasion was a dinner at the Savoy Hotel, July 29, 1891, to
which Irving had asked some friends to meet him. “Jamesy”—for so his
friends call him—recited several of his poems, most exquisitely. His
rendering of the powerful little poem, “Good-bye, Jim,” made every one
of the other eight men at the table weep.
LVII
ERNEST RENAN
On April 3, 1880, when we were playing _The Merchant of Venice_, Ernest
Renan came to the Lyceum; the Rev. H. R. Haweis was with him. At the end
of the third act they both came round to Irving’s dressing-room. It was
interesting to note the progress through the long Royal passage of that
strangely assorted pair. Haweis was diminutive, and had an extraordinary
head of black hair. Renan was ponderously fat and bald as a billiard
ball. The historian waddled along with an odd rolling gait, whilst the
preacher, who was lame, hopped along like a sort of jackdaw. The
conversation between Irving and Renan was a strange one to listen to.
Neither knew the other’s language; but each kept talking his own with,
strange to say, the result that they really understood something of what
was said. When I was alone with Irving and remarked on it he said:
“If you don’t know the other person’s language, keep on speaking your
own. Do not get hurried or flustered, but keep as natural as you can;
your intonation, being natural, will convey something. You have a far
better chance of being understood than if you try to talk a language you
don’t know!”
LVIII
HALL CAINE
I
The early relations between Irving and Hall Caine are especially
interesting, considering the positions which both men afterwards
attained. They began in 1874. On the 16th of October in that year Irving
wrote to him a very kindly and friendly letter in answer to Hall Caine’s
request that he should allow his portrait to be inserted in a monthly
magazine which he was projecting.
A fortnight later Hall Caine, as critic of the Liverpool _Town Crier_,
attended the first night of _Hamlet_ at the Lyceum—31st October, 1874.
His criticism was by many friends thought so excellent that he was asked
to reprint it. This was done in the shape of a broad-sheet pamphlet. The
critique is throughout keen and appreciative. The last two paragraphs
are worthy of preservation:
“To conclude. Throughout this work (which is not confined to the
language of terror and pity, the language of impassioned intellect,
but includes also the words of everyday life), every passage has its
proper pulse and receives from the actor its characteristic mode of
expression. Every speech is good and weighty, correct and dignified,
and treated with feeling. The variety, strength and splendour of the
whole conception have left impressions which neither time nor
circumstance can ever efface. They are happy, indeed, who hear Hamlet
first from Mr. Irving. They may see other actors essay the part (a
very improbable circumstance whilst Mr. Irving holds his claim to it),
but the memory of the noble embodiment of the character will never
leave them.
“We will not say that Mr. Irving is the Betterton, Garrick, or Kemble
of his age. In consideration of this performance we claim for him a
position altogether distinct and unborrowed. Mr. Irving will, we
judge, be the leader of a school of actors now eagerly enlisting
themselves under his name. The object will be—the triumph of _mental_
over _physical_ histrionic art.”
This critical forecast is very remarkable considering the writer’s age.
At that time he was only in his _twenty-second_ year. He had already
been writing and lecturing for some time and making a little place for
himself locally as a man of letters.
Two years later they had a meeting by Irving’s request. This was during
a visit to Liverpool whilst the actor was on tour. There began a close
friendship which lasted till Irving’s death. Caine seemed to intuitively
understand not only Irving’s work but his aim and method. Irving felt
this and had a high opinion of Caine’s powers. I do not know any one
whose opinions interested him more. There was to both men a natural
expression of intellectual frankness, as if they held the purpose as
well as the facts of ideas in common. The two men were very much alike
in certain intellectual ways. To both was given an almost abnormal
faculty of self-abstraction and of concentrating all their powers on a
given subject for any length of time. To both was illimitable patience
in the doing of their work. And in yet one other way their powers were
similar: a faculty of getting up and ultimately applying to the work in
hand an amazing amount of information. When Irving undertook a character
he set himself to work to inform himself of the facts appertaining to
it; when the time for acting it came, it was found that he knew pretty
well all that could be known about. Hall Caine was also a “glutton” in
the same way. He absorbed facts and ideas almost by an instinct and
assimilated them with natural ease. For instance, when he went to
Morocco to get local colour before writing _The Scapegoat_ he so steeped
himself in the knowledge of Jewish life and ideas and ritual that those
who read his book almost accepted him as an authority on the subject.
II
When Hall Caine published _The Deemster_ in 1887 Irving was one of its
most appreciative admirers. We were then on tour in America and he
naturally got hold of the book a little later than its great and sudden
English success. Still he read it unprejudiced by its success and
thought it would make a fine play. When we got back to England early in
April 1888, he took his earliest opportunity of approaching the author;
but only to find that he had already entered into an arrangement with
Wilson Barrett with regard to dramatisation of the novel.