Amongst the audience who had come specially from London was Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat, owner and editor of the Chicago Times Herald, a close and valued friend of Irving and myself. He was booked to leave for America the next day. When the play was over and the curtain finally down, he hurried away just in time to catch the train for Southampton, whence the American Line boat started in the morning. He got on board all right. The following Saturday he arrived in New York, just in time to catch the “flyer,” as they call the fast train to Chicago on the New York Central line. On Sunday night a public dinner was given to Conan Doyle to which of course Kohlsaat had been bidden. He arrived too late for the dining part; but having dressed in the train he came on to the hotel just as dinner was finished and before the speeches began. He took a chair next to Doyle and said to him:
“I am delighted to tell you that your play at Bristol was an enormous success!”
“So I am told,” said Doyle modestly. “The cables are excellent.”
“They are not half enough!” answered Kohlsaat, who had been reading in the train the papers for the last week.
“Indeed! I am rejoiced to hear it!” said Conan Doyle somewhat dubiously. “May I ask if you have had any special report?”
“I didn’t need any report, I saw it!”
“Oh, come!” said Conan Doyle, who thought that he was in some way chaffing him. “That is impossible!”
“Not to me! But I am in all human probability the only man on the American continent who was there?” Then whilst the gratified author listened he gave him a full description of the play and the scene which followed it.
To my own mind Waterloo as an acting play is perfect; and Irving’s playing in it was the high-water mark of histrionic art. Nothing was wanting in the whole gamut of human feeling. It was a cameo, with all the delicacy of touch of a master-hand working in the fine material of the layered shell. It seemed to touch all hearts always. When the dying veteran sprang from his chair to salute the colonel of his old regiment the whole house simultaneously burst into a wild roar of applause. This was often the effect at subsequent performances both at home and in America.