The first thing that happened to me on arriving in the free country, was that I was most courteously but resolutely deprived of my liberty by the interviewers. Hobnobbing as I was with Irving and Ellen Terry, they had evidently taken me for somebody, and, under that mistaken impression, at once proceeded to extract copy from me.
What a splendid institution that interviewing is! The stranger has from the first a unique opportunity of showing himself just as he wishes to appear. He can drape himself in dignity, or pose for the free and easy; he can borrow good works from his friends and virtues from good books, and throw in as much soft-soap and blarney as he thinks the natives can stand. What I may have said I don't know; but I am quite sure I missed my chance. I was much too innocent then, and probably told the truth.
On Ellen the interviewers must have doted from the first; she was so charmingly impulsive, so spontaneous and overflowing with copy. I dare say she gave them points about Art and the Drama, from Sophocles viâ Shakespeare down to the last thing out; but I only remember the delightful insight into her personal habits and tastes she let them have when she chose to take the world into her confidence.
"What do I drink?" she said on one occasion. "Very little wine, I am so nervous. The doctor restricts me to milk, but restrictions and doctors combined will never come between me and my tea. I must have tea—tea or death—three times a day, and, as Johnson said about Mrs. Woffington and her tea, 'It is strong, and red as blood.' I take English tea, which I buy by the caddy, and wherever I am, there are my caddy and my dog—Fussy and caddy. Without them 'Othello's occupation's gone.'"
At the custom-house I gave the customary tip, for I had been confidentially informed that no official on the landing-stage, calling himself a gentleman, would misinterpret my courtesy, or allow himself to be unfairly influenced by it. I had fully expected that, by some ingenious mechanical device, my luggage would be landed simultaneously with myself, and placed on certain square yards of the American Continent set apart for our temporary use. I had imagined the custom-house a many-storied edifice in keeping with the high tariff it enforced. Instead, however, of any such expectations being realised, I found myself in a large open shed, from which I could watch the luggage as it was being ejected in a most primitive way from our ship, with a good riddance shove from above, and a "look out" shout from below.
An army of porters made a rush for it, and began strewing it all over the place, getting everybody's belongings thoroughly mixed, and generally acting as if they were shuffling a pack of cards before commencing a new game.
The new game took the shape of a free fight, which was waged with varying fortunes for two or three hours. By dint of displaying much energy in the attainment of my own ends, to the detriment of everybody else's, I succeeded in regrouping the greater part of my effects; not without sorrow can I look back, however, to that field-day, and the sad losses I sustained, the latter conclusively proving to me that within the carefully guarded precincts of the custom-house no thieves are admitted except on business.
The process of clearing and of being cleared out once terminated, I drove to the "Brevoort," that most respectable of hotels, founded, I believe, by a party that came over in the Mayflower, a house second only in antiquity to some "Noah's Ark Hotel" in Philadelphia. I went there because the last, not least, of the Henrys had selected it for his headquarters. As soon as the rescued trunks reached me I unpacked my writing materials, and, following illustrious examples, at once sat down to write a book about America, and the manners and customs of its inhabitants. But, unlike the illustrious ones, I thought better of it, and got up again. The fact that I have now once more taken up the pen, evidently with the same purpose, somewhat recalls Jean Paul Richter's story of the tippler, who, for once resisting temptation, passes the door of the public-house, and then, proud of his achievement, turns back that he may reward himself for so much self-denial. So, too, do I appear to be tardily, but none the less surely, succumbing to temptation; and the parallel goes even further, for, as the tippler in all probability did not rest satisfied with one glass, so I feel a morbid craving to write as many volumes on America, as there are kinds of drinks at the bar of a big New York hotel. If such volumes, full of pleasant memories, are destined never to appear, it will only be because publishers are, perhaps providentially, placed as protecting buffers between the public and the author. A few chapters may, however, possibly be allowed to pass, so I let them take their chance.
"Dis moi qui tu hantes, et je te dirai qui tu es," says the French proverb, which, freely translated, might be made to say: "Tell me whom you knew in America, and I will tell you what you thought of the country." Well, I think I knew just the right people, and from that you can gather what my impressions were. I certainly started fair, equipped as I was with a batch of letters of introduction. These, according to American usage, I posted to their addresses, and then sat in state at a given time, waiting for the friends of my friends to come and make friends with me. One letter, however, I carefully kept, and only showed to those who I thought would appreciate it. It was that best and kindest of men, Robert Browning, who had given it me, and to this day, when I read it, it seems more like music than like epistolary prose to me. It ran thus:—
"19 Warwick Crescent, W.,
11th August 1884.