VI.
It was quite like a council of war to see Irving, Loveday, Palser, and Stoker, bending over a map of the United States, during the journey from Washington to New York, en route for several New England cities. The chart was scanned with careful interest, Irving passing his finger over it here and there, not with the intensity of the overthrown monarch in “Charles the First,” but with a close scrutiny of routes. The chief was sketching out his next tour in America.
“No more long journeys,” he said.
“They are not necessary,” Loveday replied.
“No jumping from Brooklyn to Chicago, and from Chicago to Boston. This sort of thing may have been necessary by our relinquishment of the one-night places set down for us in the original plan of the tour; but we’ll reform that altogether.”
Then all the heads went down upon the chart; and pencil-marks begin to appear, dotting out a route which began at Quebec, and traversed, by easy stages, Canada and the United States,—from Quebec to Toronto, from Toronto to New York, and thence to Chicago, and, by easy calls, back again to the Empire city.
An hour or two later and the route was settled, Palser remarking, “It is the most complete and easiest tour that has ever been mapped out.”
“And we will begin it in the autumn of this year. We have sowed the seed; we are entitled to reap the harvest. All my American friends say so; and the great American play-going public would like me to do so. I am sure of it. My pulses quickened at the great cheer that went up at Boston when I said I hoped to come back this year. Let us consider it settled. We will come in September.”
The map was folded up, and the work of organizing the next tour was at once commenced. Telegraphic “feelers,” in regard to “dates,” had already been sent to the leading theatres. The best of them were ready to accept for the time proposed; and a week or so later the business was settled.
Meanwhile we arrived at New York (the trees in Washington and Union squares, and Fifth avenue were crystal trees; every house was coated with ice that sparkled under the electric lamps), and the next day “Louis XI.” was given at New Haven. The week was spent between this picturesque city and Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, and Providence. Only “Louis XI.” and “The Bells” were played, Miss Terry taking a week’s rest at Washington. The New England audiences were as cordial at these cities as they had been at Boston; the critics interpreted their sentiments. At Hartford, Mark Twain (S. L. Clemens) entertained Irving under his hospitable roof, and at Springfield there was a memorable gathering at the Springfield Club,—in fact, Irving was welcomed everywhere with tokens of respect and esteem. One regrets that these pages and the time of the patient reader are not sufficiently elastic to allow of one devoting a volume to the New England cities, so interesting as they are, historically and otherwise, from American as well as English points of view.