LITMIR.BIZ

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I reply, as we slip back to the stove in the saloon. “What a picture Doré would have made of the ladies’ cabin!” says the English artist.

II.

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      We encounter more new-comers in the saloon. Two of them bring copies of the morning papers. I recognize several of the interesting crowd, and cannot help telling them something of the conversation of the Beefsteak Club room guest who drew their pictures in London, as a warning to the traveller whom they were going to meet. I find them almost as ill-informed, and quite as entertaining, concerning Irving’s mannerisms, as was the traveller in question touching their own occupation. They talk very much in the spirit of what has recently appeared here in some of the newspapers about Irving and his art-methods. New York, they say, will not be dictated to by London; New York judges for itself. At the same time they do not think it a generous thing on the part of the London “Standard” to send a hostile editorial avant-courier to New York, to prejudice the English actor’s audiences and his critics.[2] Nor do they think this “British malevolence” will have any effect either way, though the “Standard” practically proclaims Mr. Irving and Miss Terry as impostors. This article has been printed by the press, from New York to San Francisco, while the Lyceum Company and its chief are on the Atlantic. I have often heard it said, in England, that Irving had been wonderfully “worked” in America. Men who are worthy to have great and devoted friends unconsciously make bitter enemies. Irving is honored with a few of these attendants upon fame. If the people who regard his reputation as a thing that has been “worked” could have visited New York a week before his arrival they could not have failed to be delighted to see how much was being done against him, and how little for him. An ingenious and hostile pamphleteer was in evidence in every bookseller’s window. Villainous cheap photographs of “actor and manager” were hawked in the streets. Copies of an untruthful sketch of his career, printed by a London weekly, were circulated through the mails. The “Standard’s” strange appeal to New York, Boston, and Chicago was cabled to the “Herald” and republished in the evening papers. Ticket speculators had bought up all the best seats at the Star Theatre, where the English actor was to appear, and refused to sell them to the public except at exorbitant, and, for many play-goers, prohibitive rates. So far as “working” went the London enemies of the Lyceum manager were so actively represented in New York that his friends in the Empire city must have felt a trifle chilled at the outlook. The operations of the ticket speculators, it must, however, be admitted, seemed to project in Irving’s path the most formidable of all the other obstacles.

III.

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      But Irving’s ship is sailing on through the darkness while I have been making this “aside,” and the “Blackbird” is in motion; for I hear the swish of the river, and the lights on shore are dancing by the port-holes. Mr. Abbey’s fine military band, from the Metropolitan Opera House, has come on board; so also has a band of waiters from the Brunswick. Breakfast is being spread in the saloon. The brigands from the ladies’ cabin have laid aside their slouch hats and cloaks. They look as harmless and as amiable as any company of English journalists. Night and dark-lanterns might convert the mildest-mannered crowd into the appearance of a pirate crew.

      I wish the Irving guest of my first chapter could see and talk to these interviewers. I learn that they represent journals at Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and other cities besides New York. One of them has interviewed Lord Coleridge; another was with Grant during the war; a third was with Lee. They have all had interesting experiences. One is an Englishman; another hails from “bonnie Scotland.” There is no suggestion of rowdyism among them. I owe them an apology on the “excuse accuse” principle, for saying these things; but the “interviewer” is not understood in England; he is often abused in America, and I should like to do him justice. These gentlemen of the press who are going out to meet Irving are reporters. Socially they occupy the lowest station of journalism, though their work is of primary importance. Intellectually they are capable men, and the best of them write graphically, and with an artistic sense of the picturesque. They should, and no doubt do, develop into accomplished and powerful journalists; for theirs is the best of education. They study mankind; they come in contact with the most prominent of American statesmen; they talk with all great foreigners who visit the United States; they are admitted into close intercourse with the leading spirits of the age; they have chatted on familiar terms with Lincoln, Sheridan, Grant, Garfield, Huxley, Coleridge, Arnold, Patti, Bernhardt, Nilsson, and they will presently have added to the long list of their personal acquaintances Irving and Miss Terry. They are travellers, and, of necessity, observers. Their presscard is a talisman that opens to them all doors of current knowledge; and I am bound to say that these men on board the “Blackbird” are, in conversation and manners, quite worthy of the trust reposed in them by the several great journals which they represent.

IV.

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      “ ‘Britannic’ ahead!” shouts a voice from the gangway. We clamber on deck. It is daylight. The air is still keen. The wooded shores of Staten island are brown with the last tints of autumn. Up the wide reaches of the river, an arm of the great sea, come all kinds of craft; some beating along under sail; others, floating palaces, propelled by steam. These latter are ferry-boats and passenger steamers. You have seen them in many a marine picture and panorama of American travel. The “Blackbird” is typical of the rest—double decks, broad saloons, tiers of berths, ladies’ cabins, and every ceiling packed with life-buoys in case of accident. We push along through the choppy water, our steam-whistle screaming hoarse announcements of our course. The “Britannic” lies calmly at quarantine, the stars and stripes at her topmast, the British flag at her stern. She is an impressive picture—her masts reaching up into the gray sky, every rope taut, her outlines sharp and firm. In the distance other ocean steamers glide towards us, attended by busy tugs and handsome launches. One tries to compare the scene with the Mersey and the Thames, and the only likeness is in the ocean steamers, which have come thence across the seas. For the rest, the scene is essentially American—the broad river, the gay wooden villas ashore, the brown hills, the bright steam craft on the river, the fast rig of the trading schooners; and above all the stars and stripes of the many flags that flutter in the breeze, and the triumphant eagles that extend their golden wings over the lofty steerage turrets of tug and floating palace.

      Now we are alongside the “Britannic.” As our engines stop, the band of thirty Italians on our deck strikes up “God save the Queen.” One or two British hands instinctively raise one or two British hats, and many a heart, I am sure, on board the “Britannic” beats the quicker under the influence of the familiar strains. A few emigrants, with unkempt hair, on the after deck, gaze open-mouthed at the “Blackbird.” Several early risers appear forward and greet with waving hands the welcoming crowd from New York. One has time to note the weather-beaten color of the “Britannic’s” funnels.

      “What sort of a passage?” cries a voice, shouting in competition with the wind that is blowing hard through the rigging.

      “Pretty rough,” is the answer.

      “Where is Mr. Irving?” cries out another “Blackbird” passenger.

      “In bed,” is the response.

      “Oh!” says the interrogator, amidst a general laugh.

      “Beg pardon, no,” presently shouts the man on the “Britannic,”—“he’s shaving.”

      Another laugh, drowned by a salute of some neighboring guns. At this moment a boat is lowered from the splendid yacht “Yosemite,” which has been steaming round about the “Britannic” for some time. It is Mr. Tilden’s vessel. He has lent it to Mr. Lawrence

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