LITMIR.BIZ

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by assembling here to-night. To look around this room and scan the faces of my distinguished hosts would stir to its depths a colder nature than mine. It is not in my power, my lords and gentlemen, to thank you for the compliment you have to-night paid me.

      “ ‘The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

       Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.’

      “Never before have I so strongly felt the magic of those words; but you will remember it is also said, in the same sentence, ‘Give thy thoughts no tongue.’ (Laughter.) And gladly, had it been possible, would I have obeyed that wise injunction to-night. (Renewed laughter.) The actor is profoundly influenced by precedent, and I cannot forget that many of my predecessors have been nerved by farewell banquets for the honor which awaited them on the other side of the Atlantic; but this occasion I regard as much more than a compliment to myself—I regard it as a tribute to the art which I am proud to serve—(Cheers)—and I believe that feeling will be shared by the profession to which you have assembled to do honor. (Cheers.) The time has long gone by when there was any need to apologize for the actor’s calling. (Hear! Hear!) The world can no more exist without the drama than it can without its sister art—music. The stage gives the readiest response to the demand of human nature to be transported out of itself into the realms of the ideal—not that all our ideas on the stage are realized; none but the artist knows how immeasurably he may fall short of his aim or his conception; but to have an ideal in art, and to strive through one’s life to embody it, may be a passion to the actor, as it may be to the poet. (Cheers.) Your lordship has spoken most eloquently of my career. Possessed of a generous mind and a highly judicial faculty, your lordship has been to-night, I fear, more generous than judicial. But, if I have in any way deserved commendation, I am proud that it is as an actor that I have won it. (Cheers.) As the director of a theatre my experience has been short, but as an actor I have been before the London public for seventeen years; and on one thing I am sure you will all agree—that no actor or manager has ever received from that public more generous and ungrudging encouragement and support. (Cheers.) Concerning our visit to America I need hardly say that I am looking forward to it with no common pleasure. It has often been an ambition with English actors to gain the good-will of the English-speaking race—a good-will which is right heartily reciprocated towards our American fellow-workers, when they gratify us by sojourning here. (Cheers.) Your God-speed would alone assure me a hearty welcome in any land; but I am not going amongst strangers—I am going amongst friends (Cheers)—and when I, for the first time, touch American ground, I shall receive many a grip of the hand from men whose friendship I am proud to possess. (Cheers.) Concerning our expedition the American people will no doubt exercise an independent judgment—a prejudice of theirs and a habit of long-standing—(Laughter)—as your lordship has reminded us, by the fact that to-day is the fourth of July—an anniversary rapidly becoming an English institution. Your lordship is doubtless aware, as to-night has so happily proved, that the stage has reckoned amongst its stanchest supporters many great and distinguished lawyers. There are many lawyers, I am told, in America—(Laughter)—and as I am sure that they all deserve to be judges, I am in hopes that they will materially help me to gain a favorable verdict from the American people. (Cheers and laughter.) I have given but poor expression to my sense of the honor you have conferred upon me, and upon the comrades associated with me in this our enterprise—an enterprise which, I hope, will favorably show the method and discipline of a company of English actors; on their behalf I thank you, and I also thank you on behalf of the lady who has so adorned the Lyceum stage—(Cheers)—and to whose rare gifts your lordship has paid so just and gracious a tribute. (Cheers.) The climax of the favor extended to me by my countrymen has been reached to-night. You have set upon me a burden of responsibility—a burden which I gladly and proudly bear. The memory of to-night will be to me a sacred thing—a memory which will, throughout my life, be ever treasured; a memory which will stimulate me to further endeavor, and encourage me to loftier aim. (Loud and continued cheers.)

II.

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      No man was ever more written of or talked about in America than Henry Irving; probably no man was ever more misrepresented as to his art and his life. A monster, according to his enemies; an angel, if you took the verdict of his friends; he was a mystery to untravelled American journalists, and an enigma to the great play-going public of the American cities. They were told that people either loved or hated him at first sight. American tourists even carried home contradictory reports of him, though the majority were enthusiastic in praise of him as an actor and as a man. The American newspaper correspondent is naturally a trifle more sensational in the style of his work than his English colleague, because his editor favors graphic writing, entertaining chronicles, picturesque descriptions. Then the sub-editor or compiler of news from the foreign exchanges looks out for “English personals,” gossip about the Queen, notes on the Prince of Wales, out-of-the-way criticisms of actors and public persons of all classes; and so every outre thing that has been published about Irving in England has found its way into the ubiquitous press of America. Added to this publicity, private correspondence has also dealt largely with him, his work, his manners, his habits; for every American who travels writes letters home to his family and often to his local paper, and many English people who have visited America keep up a pleasant epistolary communication with their good friends in the New World.

III.

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      Being in New York ahead of Mr. Irving’s arrival, I found much of the curious fiction of which gossip had made him the hero, crystallized into definite assertions, that were accepted as undisputed facts. A day’s sail from the Empire city, in a pretty Eastern villa, I discovered the London gossip-monger’s influence rampant. But if a prominent critic in London could publicly credit Mr. Irving’s success as an actor to his hospitable dispensation of “chicken and champagne,” one need not be surprised that ordinary gossips should draw as liberally on their imagination for illustrations of his social popularity. A leading figure in the world of art, and a person of distinction in Vanity Fair, it is not to be wondered at that Jealousy and Mrs. Grundy, standing outside his orbit, should invent many startling stories about him. I have not exaggerated the following conversation, and I am glad to use it here, not only as illustrative of the singular misrepresentations of Irving’s life and habits, but to bind up in this volume a sketch of the actor and the man which has the merit of being eminently true, and at the same time not inappropriate to these pages.

      “Lives in chambers!” exclaimed an American lady, during an after-dinner conversation in a pleasant eastern home. “I thought he owned a lovely palace.”

      “Indeed; where, madam?” I asked, “in Utopia?”

      “No, sir; on the banks of your Thames river. A little English friend of mine told me so, and described the furnishing of it. I understand that it is as splendid as Claude Melnotte’s by the Lake of Como.”

      “And as real?”

      “I don’t know what you mean; but, if what she says is true, it is wickeder, any way. You do not say that it is all false about his banquets to the aristocracy, his royal receptions? What about the Prince of Wales, then, and Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone and the Poet Laureate visiting him? And his garden parties and the illuminations at night, parterres of flowers mixed up with colored lamps, his collections of rhododendrons and his military bands?”

      “Were you ever at a Botanical Fête in Regent’s Park?” I asked.

      “I have never crossed the Atlantic.”

      “Your little English friend evidently knows the Botanical well.”

      “She is acquainted with everything and everybody in London. I wish she were here now. Perhaps she knows a little more than some of Mr. Irving’s friends care to admit.”

      “Does she know Mr. Irving?”

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