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

XIV.
CHRISTMAS, AND AN INCIDENT BY THE WAY.

At Baltimore—Street Scenes—Christmas Wares—Pretty Women in “Rubber Cloaks”—Contrasts—Street Hawkers—Southern Blondes—Furs and Diamonds—Rehearsing under Difficulties—Blacks and Whites—Negro Philosophy—Honest Work—“The Best Company on its Legs I have ever seen”—Our Christmas Supper—“Absent Friends”—Pictures in the Fire and Afterwards—An Intercepted Contribution to Magazine Literature—Correcting a Falsehood—Honesty and Fair Play.

I.

Baltimore street is the Broadway of the Monumental City. It also suggests Chestnut street in Philadelphia, more particularly in the matter of signboards. A city of stores and offices, it proclaims its various businesses in signs of every conceivable shape. They swing from ornamental brackets over door-ways, and hang right across the sidewalk. They are of many shapes, but as to color are invariably black and gold. The inscriptions upon them are characteristic; some of them are strange to the non-travelled Englishmen. I note a few of them: “Gent’s Neck Wear,” “Fine Jewelry,” “Men’s Furnishing.” This latter is the general sign of American hosiers and shirt-makers. “Diamonds,” “Fine Shoes,” “Dry Goods,” “Imported Goods,” “Books,” “Cheap Railroad Tickets,” “Cheap Tickets for Chicago,” “Saddlery,” “Adams’ Express.” To these are added the names of the dealers. The “Cheap Railroad Tickets” is a branch of the speculative operations in theatrical admissions. “Adams’ Express” is a familiar sign everywhere. It represents the great and universal system of baggage distribution. Adams and other firms will take charge of a traveller’s luggage, or any other kind of goods, and “check” it through to any part of the United States, possibly to any corner of the world. To-day, in honor of Christmas, the ordinary signs have been supplemented by such attractive proclamations as “Holiday Presents,” “Toys for the Season,” “For Christmas and New Year’s,” “Home-made Christmas Puddings.” At the doors of tobacco stores the figure of a North American Indian, in complete war-paint, offers you a bundle of the finest cigars, and his tomahawk is poised for action in case you decline his invitation to “Try them.” In New York this colored commercial statuary is varied with an occasional “Punch,” and by many buxom ballet-girls in short dresses and chignons. But the taste of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago runs in the direction of the Indian. Nowhere do you see the blackamoor, once popular at the door of English tobacconists; nor, except at Brooklyn, have I seen on the American side of the Atlantic the kilted Highlander, with his “mull” as a sign for the information or temptation of snuff-takers. At Chicago there is a Scotch sculptor, who has ornamented the exterior of more than one store with life-size realizations of the heroes of some of Burns’s most popular poems. Several of these are represented as snuff-takers; but the collection includes a few really admirable studies. The city architect, by the way, at Chicago, is a Scotchman, and he is responsible for the fine designs of the chief public buildings. Baltimore is not singular in its habit of pictorial signs, the origin of which may possibly be traced to old English custom. The saddler exhibits the gilded head of a horse; the watchmaker hangs out a clock; the glover a hand; the dry-goods stores display bright rugs and carpets. Now and then the cabinet-makers show their goods on the sidewalks. Many stores erect handsome outside glass-case stands for exhibiting knick-knacks at their door-ways. The fruit shops open their windows on the street. Itinerant dealers in oranges, bananas, and grapes rig up tent-like houses of business under the windows of established traders (for which heavy rents are paid, notably “down-town” in New York), and all this gives a pleasant variety of life and color to the street. One is everywhere reminded of the excellence of English Manufactures, “English Tanned Gloves,” “English Storm-coats,” “English Cloth”; and many other commercial compliments are paid to “Imported Goods.”

It is three o’clock in the day, and while Irving, his lieutenant, Loveday, and his able subalterns, Arnot and Allen, are getting the stage of the Academy of Music into some kind of shape for the Christmas-eve performance, I plod through the rain and slush to make my first acquaintance with this chief street of Baltimore. It is curiously picturesque, in spite of the weather and the dirty snow, which is melting and freezing almost simultaneously. Here and there the sidewalks are slabs of ice; here and there they are sloppy snow-drifts. But a surging crowd covers every foot of them. The roadway presents a continual block of tram-cars, buggies, wagons, carts, and carriages. Women leaving and getting upon the cars plunge in and out of snow-heaps and watery gutters. It is a very democratic institution, the American car. The people crowd it as they please. There is no limit to its capacity. It may carry as many persons as can get into it or stand upon its platforms. This afternoon the cars are human hives on wheels. One notices that the crowd chiefly consists of women. They fill the sidewalks. All of them are shopping. They are all talking, and all at the same time. This is a peculiarity of our charming cousins. Their costume on this wet afternoon is a very sensible one. It might almost be called a uniform. A black water-proof cloak and hood is all the costume you can see. Often it is a pretty, bright face that the hood encases. Now and then some woman, a trifle more vain or reckless than her sisters, wears a hat and feathers with her water-proof cloak. This incongruous arrangement, however, helps to give color to the crowd,—a desirable point on so dull, grey, and cloudy a day as this. The men who move about here are mostly smoking. They do not appear to have any hand in the shopping. The ladies are evidently doing all that, and they are very much in earnest. Not one of them but deigns to carry a parcel. The children are evidently coming in for precious gifts. In one shop window “Father Christmas” himself is busy showing his toys to a numerous audience. He is made up with white flowing locks and beard, and ruddy, though aged, features. His dress is an ermine tippet, scarlet frock trimmed with gold, and top-boots of patent leather,—quite the nursery ideal of his genial majesty. Another store has filled its window with a skating scene. A company of gay dolls are sliding for their very lives. They go through their lively work without any change of expression, and their gyrations never alter; but the spectators change, and the store within is full of bustle. I look around for the poor people we would see in a London group of this character. I seek in vain for the Smikes and Twists who would be feasting their sunken eyes on such a free show in London. I try to find the slipshod women, with infants huddled to their cold bosoms. They are not here. A boy of twelve, with a cigarette in his hand, asks me for a light. Another “guesses” his “papa” will buy “the whole concern” for him if he wants it. No poor people. The Irish are a small community here. How one’s mind goes wandering to the West End of London and to the Strand and Fleet street, to the Seven Dials and to Ratcliffe highway, where (it is five hours later there than here) Christmas eve is being celebrated with such contrasts of fortune and variations of wealth and poverty, of joy and sorrow, as make the heart ache to think upon! Not a single poor-looking person do I note in this long, busy street of Baltimore. Nobody begs from me; and the hawkers on the sidewalk offer me their wares with an air of almost aggressive independence. “Japanese silk, ten cents,” one cries, with a bundle of small handkerchiefs in his hand. “The magic mouse,” says another, vending a mechanical toy. “Now, then, one dime a packet,” is the proposal of a third, offering material for decorating Christmas trees. “Try ‘em!” almost commands a fourth, as I pause opposite his stand of peanuts. If you buy nobody thanks you, and if you thank the vendor he is surprised, and will probably stammer out, “You’re welcome.” Yet “this is the Cavalier city,” a friend reminds me, “and aristocratic to the core.”

The fruit-stores are bright with tropical fruits; but not with the roses, carnations, pinks, and smilax creeper, so plentiful in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. I pause to scan the faces of the crowd. It is a popular fiction in England that the women of the South are brunettes. The truth is, the further South you go, the fairer the women, and the more delicate their complexions. On Baltimore street I observe quite a number of ladies with red hair. Many of them are blondes, who might have been natives of Lincolnshire. They are all pretty; some are beautiful; and their charms certainly obtained no fictitious aid from their dress or surroundings. Water-proof cloaks and a muddy street could not help them. Baltimoreans may say I should look for beauty in North Charles street, or Mount Vernon place, if I expect to see it en promenade. But I am not looking for it. I find it in the great, busy, Christmas crowd, tramping through the snow, and buying toys and candies for the children. The “carriage ladies” wear furs, and those everlasting diamond ear-rings, without which expensive ornament few American women appear to consider themselves “real ladies.” New York and Boston modify the fashion in this respect, though you may still see women sitting down to breakfast at hotel restaurants in silks, satins, and diamonds.

II.

While I have been studying Baltimore street darkness has fallen upon it. The gas-lamps and the electric arcs are beginning their nightly competition as I retrace my steps to the Academy of Music. Irving, who arrived in Baltimore at two, after a journey of forty-two hours, has just left the stage, I am told,—“gone to get a little rest.”

“Have you had a rehearsal?”

“Oh, yes!” says Loveday, who is directing the last finishing touches to the throne-room set for “Louis XI.” “Tight work, eh? Got into the town at two—scenery to unpack—some of it is still on the train. But we get through it. The chief has his rehearsal somehow—finished half an hour ago—in two hours the curtain goes up. Had to do it all ourselves. Shall have to turn Arnot’s men into Burgundians. No help to be had of any kind. It is Christmas, you know, and Christmas comes but once a year, thank goodness! The chief carpenter, who is also the gas-man, has not turned up. Some of the other fellows are ‘Merrie-Christmasing,’ also. Tried to get some additional assistance in the way of labor. Found a few chaps loafing; asked them if they wanted work. Said they did not mind. Offered them good wages. ‘Oh, no,’ they said; ‘get niggers to do that!’ They were above it. I acted on their advice. The moment it was dark the ‘colored boys,’ as they call themselves, knocked off. Said they never worked after dark. ‘Night is the time to rest and sleep,’ they said. ‘For black men, perhaps,’ I said; ‘but not for white.’ Seemed to me as if they said, ‘You had us for slaves a good many years; it is our turn now.’ Funny, eh? They wouldn’t go on working. However, we shall be all right. It’s a good thing I’m not the only Mark Tapley in the company, don’t you know; and the governor, by Jove! he stands it like,—well, like only Henry Irving can!”

Two hours later Irving is received with rapturous applause by a comparatively small audience. “More power to them!” he says, “for they have left cosey hearths to drive or tramp through the slush of the first snow of the Baltimore winter.” And the company, all round, never played with more spirit. “It is the only return we can make to those who have come to see us on such a night,” said Irving to several of them before the curtain went up, “to do our very best.” And they did. Terriss was never more successful as Nemours. The audience was cold at first, but as the dramatic story unravelled itself, under the grip of the master, they caught the infection of its grim interest, and their applause rung out heartily and long. Irving developed the leading character with more than ordinary care, and was called and recalled after every act,—a triple call at the close including Terriss, whose manliness of gait and manner are peculiarly acceptable to every audience.

“There is one thing I observe about this company,” said the Boston manager: “it walks well; it is the best company on its legs I have ever seen. Our young men, as a rule, particularly in costume, turn out their toes too much, or are knock-kneed; all your people stand well on their feet,—it is a treat to see them.”

“Yes,” says Irving, smiling, when this is reported to him. “I engaged them to show me off. But did not Emerson say that the Englishman is, of all other people, the man who stands firmest in his shoes? There is one thing to be said about our cousins on this side,—they do not stand still; they are like young Rapid in ‘A Cure for the Heart-ache,’—always on the move. And when they are behind a trotting-horse how they go! I am a little disappointed, so far, with the sleighing as a matter of speed; but the snow was too soft when we took our first drive at Boston.”

III.

It is the custom in America to open the theatres on Christmas day. The doors of the Baltimore house could not have been opened in more wretched weather. The streets were impassable, except for carriages, or for pedestrians in “Arctic rubbers,” or on stilts. The snow was melting everywhere. Nothing had been done to clear the sidewalks. They were full of treacherous puddles, or equally treacherous snow-drifts. The Turks blow horns at certain periods of the year, to frighten away evil spirits. I know of no explanation for the blowing of horns at Baltimore; but the boys indulge themselves in this exercise to a bewildering extent at Christmas. Carol-singing is evidently not a custom there, nor “waits.” I heard a boy shouting at the top of his voice the refrain of a popular ditty:—

“In the morning, in the morning,
When Gabriel blows his trumpet,
In the morning.”

But I conclude that he had only adapted these modern words to what was evidently an old custom at Baltimore; for he blew his horn vigorously at the end of the refrain, as if competing for supremacy with Gabriel himself.

“You are right; it does not seem like Christmas,” said Irving, as we sat down to supper,—close upon midnight,—a section of that same party which, a year previously, had gathered about the round table in the host’s Beefsteak Club room at the Lyceum Theatre.

“It seems so strange,” said Ellen Terry, “to play on Christmas Day; that, to me, makes the time wholly unlike Christmas. On the other hand, there is the snow, and we shall have an English Christmas pudding,—I brought it from home, and my mother made it.”

“Well done; bless her heart!” said Irving; “but I have played before on Christmas Day. They open the theatres in Scotland on Christmas Day. They don’t pay much attention, I am told, to church festivals in Boston and New England; but one would have expected it in the South, where they are observing the social character of Christmas, I learn, more and more every year; and not alone to the snow, but to that fact, I am told, we are to attribute the small houses we had last night and to-night.”

“Small for America and for us,” chimed in Loveday; “but what we should, after our experience, call bad business here would be very good in England.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Irving; “but here’s holly and mistletoe,—where did they come from?”

He was looking at a very English decoration that swung from the chandelier.

“From London, with the pudding,” said Miss Terry.

The colored attendants took great interest in our celebration of the festival. If they could have put their thoughts into words they would probably have expressed surprise that artists of whom they had heard so much could entertain each other in so simple a fashion.

When the pudding came on the table it was not lighted.

“Who has had charge of this affair?” Irving asked, looking slyly at everybody but Stoker.

“I have,” said the usual delinquent.

“That accounts for it,” said Irving. “Who ever heard of a Christmas pudding without a blaze, except, perhaps, in Ireland?”

“Oh, we’ll soon light it up!” said Stoker. “Waiter, bring some brandy!”

Presently the pudding flamed up, to the delight of the African gentlemen who served it.

“I fear there is no sauce,” said one of the ladies.

“No sauce! Christmas pudding and no sauce!” I exclaimed. “Here’s stage management!”

“Sauce!” said Stoker,—“to plum pudding?”

“Yes, always in England,” said Loveday.

This kind of mild banter was checked by Irving filling his glass with champagne, and observing, “After the experience of last year, of course we ought not to have entrusted Stoker with the pudding. However, let us make the best of it. It seems a very good pudding, after all. I want you all to fill your glasses. Let us wish each other in the old way, ‘A merry Christmas and A happy New Year,’ and ‘God bless our absent friends!’”

Some of us gulped the wine a little spasmodically, and some of us found it hard to keep back our tears. Who can pledge that familiar toast, and not think of the empty chairs that seem so very, very empty at Christmas!

When the women and my girls had been escorted to their carriages, and sent home to their hotel, with flowers and bon-bons on their laps, we three men of the little party sat round the fire and talked of old times. Irving had ordered the biggest logs the hotel’s wood-yard afforded to be heaped into the grate. The fire cracked and spluttered and blazed, and had in the lower bars of the grate a solid, steady glow of white ash that was truly English; and I think we each looked into it for a time, busy with our own individual thoughts and reflections. Presently, under the more cheerful influences of the season, we talked of many things, and finally drifted into “shop.” The chief subject was started by Irving himself, and it dealt with the novel treatment of the next Shakespeare play which he intends to produce at the Lyceum. Irving looked into the fire and saw it there, scene by scene, act by act. As he saw it, he described it.

It was in the glamour of his rosiest pictures that I said good-night, to have the witchery of the fire-light dispelled by the outer bitterness of the weather, and the lonely, desolate appearance of the city. The streets were now as hard as they had been soft; the pools were ice, the snow adamant; and icicles hung down from the eaves of every house. The roadways glistened in the lamp-light. Not a soul was abroad. It might have been a city of the dead. A strain of Christmas music would have redeemed the situation. Even a London “waits” band at its worst, such as one awakens to with a growl on cold nights at home, would have been a God-send. Not a sound; not a footstep; no distant jangle of car-bells; not even a policeman; only the winter night itself, with a few chilly-looking stars above, and the cold, hard, icy streets below.

IV.

It is a long way from Baltimore to Brooklyn,—five or six hundred miles,—still from Brooklyn to Chicago is over a thousand; yet these were the journeys that followed each other. The company, as you already know, travelled from Boston to Baltimore, close upon a thousand miles; from Baltimore it went to Brooklyn; and from the city of churches its next trip was to the great city on Lake Michigan. But, not to get ahead of events, we will pause at Brooklyn[33]: first, to say that the theatre was crowded there all the week; secondly, for Irving to relate an incident by the way; and, thirdly, to introduce the succeeding chapter, which will describe our departure therefrom.

Irving was a little ruffled during his journey from Baltimore by the sting of one of those vagrant gadflies of the press that are not confined to the American continent; but, as a matter of course, exist in that broader field in large numbers, and are of greater variety than in the narrower limits of Great Britain.

“I promised to write a little gossip of my experiences in America for the—— magazine, and I think the Baltimore incident is a very good subject, told as an episode of the trip, with just a few lines about my reception. What do you think?”

“Very good, indeed,” I said.

“Ah! I’m glad you like the notion, because I have written it. Here it is; I’ll read it to you.”

“The Baltimore man will feel flattered when he learns how much you have taken his ‘Tribune’ despatch to heart,” I said.

“I don’t care for that at all; nor would I, as you know, have thought of answering him, only that he put his falsehood into so ingeniously damaging a shape. But no matter,—this is what I have written.

“AN INCIDENT OF MY AMERICAN TOUR.

“The Sunday newspapers of America are the largest and certainly the most amusing of the week. They were especially welcome to me during the railway journey between Baltimore and Brooklyn. The landscape was striking now and then; but we were travelling literally through a snow world, and the monotony of it was a trifle tedious.

“I turned to the New York papers, a bundle of which had been brought ‘on board’ (this term is applied to railway trains as to ships in America), and was not long in coming upon a surprise. It was in the shape of a special telegraphic despatch from Baltimore to the ‘Tribune,’ of December 30. I read that ‘Henry Irving closed a very successful week at the Academy of Music’; that his ‘audiences were large’; that ‘his success was due to curiosity’; that ’”Hamlet” raised a storm of criticism about his new-fangled ideas, and when the ghost appeared on the stage in a green gown the audience roared at the strange sight, to the evident embarrassment of the ghost’; that ‘individually, however, Henry Irving’s stay in Baltimore was of the pleasantest nature’; and that ‘Dr. W. Crim,[34] the well-known surgeon, gave him a reception, where he proved himself an entertaining conversationalist. He was favorably impressed with Americans, but said they were not yet fully educated to appreciate true artistic ability; they were progressing.’

“As I had never remembered the closet scene in ‘Hamlet’ to have been more impressive, and particularly as regarded the appearance of the ghost; as the question of curiosity, per se, had never been raised by the local press; as on our first two nights we had bad houses, and on our last two the theatre was crowded; as the remark attributed to me at Dr. Crim’s was a false report, calculated to injure me in the eyes of the American people,—this newspaper despatch, I confess, annoyed me.

“I consulted my friends on the train as to the advisability of contradicting the latter part of it.

“The general verdict was against me. Said an American journalistic friend, ‘If you get into a controversy of that kind, it will be never-ending.’

“‘But it is not a question for controversy; it is a question of fact. If this man’s statement is allowed to go forth, I simply stand before the American people as a downright prig.’

“‘If you take the trouble to contradict every misrepresentation of what you say and do you will have no other occupation.’

“‘So far this is the only thing I have cared to contradict; for I think the press, as a rule, has been generous to me, and to all of us. As for the point about the “ghost,” that does not matter; it is a lie, and, even if it be malicious, it will be corrected wherever we play “Hamlet.” It is true, our friend of the “Standard” may publish it; but truth will prevail even against his curiously persistent misrepresentations.’

“‘Oh, but,’ said my adviser, and he was backed by others, ‘the London “Standard” will not repeat such obvious nonsense, and the American people will not believe a mere Baltimore correspondent. Take no notice of it.’

“Thus the matter rested until the close of the journey. I hope I endure criticism with becoming fortitude, but a wilful and malicious falsehood reflecting upon my personal conduct frets me. I therefore resolved to send the following letter to the editor of the ‘Tribune’ (who had devoted much valuable space to my work, and whose personal courtesy I shall always remember):—

Sometimes instinct is one’s best guide in dealing with mere personal matters. The invidious character of the newspaper report in this case is apparent, and my letter was, in many directions, referred to as a well-advised and necessary rejoinder to a calumny. The ‘Tribune’ mentioned it in the following terms, a day or two afterwards:—

“‘Mr. Irving’s recent card in the “Tribune,” concerning the absurd charge that he had disparaged American audiences, was graceful and manly. An imputation of invidious remarks to those persons who are prosperous in the public esteem is one of the commonest methods of malicious detraction. It has been used, of course, against Mr. Irving, who is altogether too fortunate a man for envy and malice to endure. An old remark, made by the poet Samuel Rogers, applies to this case: “To succeed is no little crime in the eyes of those who fail; and those who cannot climb will endeavor to pull you down by the skirts.“‘

“The ‘absurd charge’ was not too absurd, I learned later, for it appeared in the cable correspondence of the ‘Standard.’ You ask me for a few notes on my work in this great country. I hope you may consider this personal matter of sufficient interest. From the first I have been received with unbounded kindness; from the first I have played to large and enthusiastic audiences. My most sanguine hopes never reached so high as the success I have realized. Here and there, prompted, possibly, by the preliminary appeal of the ‘Standard’ to the American people ‘not to nail my ears to the pump’ (as the ‘Herald’ put it in commenting upon the article), and, encouraged by a parchment pamphlet circulated here, some few pressmen, of the Baltimore stamp, have had their malicious fling at me; but I have reason to be deeply grateful to the American critics and to the American people for judging me and my work in a spirit of honesty and fair play. The study of a lifetime, and the conscientious working out of my own convictions in regard to the representation of stage stories in a natural manner, have been stamped with the approval of the American people; and I shall return to my native land very proud of their artistic endorsement and their personal friendship.

“HENRY IRVING.

“There! What do you think of it?”

“It is excellent,” I said, “and most interesting; but I would rather see it in ‘Henry Irving’s Impressions of America’ than in the”——

And here it is accordingly, an intercepted contribution to an English magazine.

“I thought,” he said, “the editor would publish it as a ‘P.S.,’ after the manner of other contributions about the stage.”

“No doubt,” I replied; “but I think we will sandwich it between our chapters on Baltimore and the trip to Chicago.”