II.
The short season at Toronto was very successful, in every way. A great body of students filled the gallery of the Opera House every night. Stalls, boxes, and dress-circle were crowded, the audience being in full evening dress. The house looked like a London theatre on a first night. Boston and Philadelphia were the only cities that had shown anything like an approach to uniformity in dressing for the theatre in America, though New York made a good deal of display in regard to bonnets, costumes, and diamonds. New York copies the French more than the English in the matter of dressing for the theatre, consulting convenience rather than style,—a very sensible plan.
On the Saturday night, after repeated calls and loud requests for a speech, Irving, in his “Louis XI.” robes, stepped down to the foot-lights, amidst thunders of applause.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I regret that I have to appear before you as somebody else, though I feel quite incompetent in my own person to respond to your kindness at all as I could wish, or in such a way as to make you understand how keenly I feel the compliment of your enthusiastic welcome. I thank you with all my heart for myself and comrades, and more especially for my co-worker, Miss Terry, for the right-royal Canadian, I will say British, welcome you have given us. I can only regret that the arrangements of this present tour do not enable me to extend my personal knowledge of Canada beyond Toronto.”
“Come again!” shouted a voice from the gallery, quite after the manner of the London gods; “come again, sir!”
“Thank you very much,” Irving replied, amidst shouts of laughter and applause. “I will accept your invitation.”
“Hurrah!” shouted the gallery; and the house generally applauded Mr. Irving’s prompt and gratifying repartee.
“I would have liked,” said Irving, pulling his “Louis XI.” robes around him, “to have travelled right through the Dominion, and have shaken hands with your neighbors of Montreal, Quebec, and Ottawa. That, however, is only a pleasure deferred. In the Indian language, I am told, Toronto means ‘The place of meeting.’ To you and me, ladies and gentlemen, brother and sister subjects of the English throne”—
A burst of applause compelled the speaker to pause for some seconds.
“To us, ladies and gentlemen, to you before the curtain, to us behind it, I hope Toronto may mean ‘The place of meeting again and again.’”
His last words of thanks were drowned in applause. The students tried to recall him again, even after he had spoken. The band struck up “God save the Queen,” and a few minutes later the audience was on its way home, and Irving was conducting a rehearsal of scenes in “Much Ado,” and “The Merchant of Venice,” rendered necessary by the illnesses which are referred to in another chapter.