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.”