The envelope contained in a rough card folio pasted down on thick paper the original notes from which he delivered his lecture on Abraham Lincoln at the Chestnut Street Opera House on April 15, 1886.
“With it was a letter to Donaldson, in which he said:
“Enclosed I send a full report of my Lincoln Lecture for our friend Bram Stoker.”
This was my Message from the Dead.
LVI
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
Irving, like all who have ever known him, loved the “Hoosier” poet. We saw a great deal of him when he was in London; and whenever we were in Indianapolis, to meet him was one of the expected pleasures. Riley is one of the most dramatic reciters that live, and when he gives one of his own poems it is an intellectual delight. I remember two specially delightful occasions in which he was a participant. Once in Indianapolis when he came and supped on the car with us whilst we were waiting after the play for the luggage to be loaded. He was in great form, and Irving sat all the time with an expectant smile whilst Riley told us of some of his experiences amongst the hill folk of Indiana where conditions of life are almost primitive. One tale gave Irving intense pleasure—that in which he told of how he had asked a mountaineer who was going down to the nearest town to bring him back some tobacco. This the man had done gladly; but when Riley went to pay him the cost of it he drew his gun on him. When the other asked the cause of offence, which he did not intend or even understand, the mountaineer answered:
“Didn’t I do what ye asked me! Then why do you go for to insult me. I ain’t a tobacker dealer. I bought it for ye, an’ I give it to ye free and glad. I ain’t sellin’ it!”
The other occasion was a dinner at the Savoy Hotel, July 29, 1891, to which Irving had asked some friends to meet him. “Jamesy”—for so his friends call him—recited several of his poems, most exquisitely. His rendering of the powerful little poem, “Good-bye, Jim,” made every one of the other eight men at the table weep.
LVII
ERNEST RENAN
On April 3, 1880, when we were playing The Merchant of Venice, Ernest Renan came to the Lyceum; the Rev. H. R. Haweis was with him. At the end of the third act they both came round to Irving’s dressing-room. It was interesting to note the progress through the long Royal passage of that strangely assorted pair. Haweis was diminutive, and had an extraordinary head of black hair. Renan was ponderously fat and bald as a billiard ball. The historian waddled along with an odd rolling gait, whilst the preacher, who was lame, hopped along like a sort of jackdaw. The conversation between Irving and Renan was a strange one to listen to. Neither knew the other’s language; but each kept talking his own with, strange to say, the result that they really understood something of what was said. When I was alone with Irving and remarked on it he said: