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Henry Irving's Impressions of America / Narrated in a Series of Sketches, Chronicles, and Conversations

Chapter 2: TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.
By Joseph Hatton
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About This Book

The work records an English actor and his company's American tour through a sequence of sketches, chronicles, and conversations. It combines travel impressions with theatrical reportage: farewells in London, the Atlantic crossing, arrival and reception in New York, encounters with reporters and clubs, first-night performances, and backstage episodes. Anecdotes about audiences, critics, ticket speculators, and social banquets alternate with reflections on acting, production, and cultural contrasts, offering a blended portrait of practical touring life and the performers' observations on reception and theatrical taste in the United States.

TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.

This book is the outcome of a desire to chronicle, in a lasting form, some of the events of a tour which your kindness has made a delight to Ellen Terry and myself. Before leaving London I ventured upon a prophecy that in journeying to America we were going amongst friends. That prophecy has been fulfilled.

In the history of the stage the Lyceum Company is the first complete organization which has crossed the Atlantic with the entire equipment of a theatre.

As the tour is, I believe, unique, so also is this record of it; and I particularly desire to emphasize a fact concerning its authorship. I am, myself, only responsible for my share in the conversations and dialogues that are set down, everything else being the work of my friend, Joseph Hatton, well known to you as the author of “To-day in America.”

I can but trust that I have not erred in expressing, for publication, some passing thoughts about a country which has excited my profound admiration, and which has the highest claims upon my gratitude.

HENRY IRVING.

New York, April 30, 1884.