“I answered your own question.”
“Ah!” she said, laughing merrily, “now I know my little English friend spoke the truth, because I remember she said there was a mystery about Mr. Irving’s lovely house; that he only receives a certain princely and lordly set there. How could she have described it if she had not seen it? A baronial castle, a park, lovely gardens, great dogs lying about on the lawns, wainscoted chambers, a library full of scarce books and costly bric-à-brac, Oriental rugs, baths, stained-glass windows, suits of armor, and a powerful bell in a turret to call the servants in to meals.”
“Beautiful! But if there is a mystery about it, what of those gorgeous receptions?”
“Oh, don’t ask me questions. It is I who am seeking for information. There is no public person in the world just at this moment in whom I take a deeper interest. If he were not coming to America I should have been obliged to go to London, if only to see what you call a first night at the Lyceum. We read all about these things. We are kept well informed by our newspaper correspondents—”
“And your little English friend.”
“Yes, she writes to me quite often.”
“Well, now I will tell you the truth about that palace on the Thames,” I said.
“Ah! he confesses,” exclaimed the bright little lady, whose friends suspect her of writing more than one of the famous American novels.
An interested and interesting group of ladies and gentlemen brought their chairs closer to the conversational centre of the company.
“A few years ago, Irving and a friend, strolling through the purlieus of Brook Green (a decayed village that has been swallowed up by the progress of West End, London), towards Hammersmith, saw a house to be sold. It was low and dilapidated, but it had an old-fashioned garden, and the lease was offered at a small sum. Irving knew the house, and he had a mind to examine its half-ruined rooms. He did so, and concluded his investigation by buying the lease. It cost him about half the money you would pay for an ordinary house off Fifth avenue, in New York; less than you would pay for a house in Remsen street, Brooklyn; in Michigan avenue, Chicago; or in Commonwealth avenue, Boston. Since then it has been one of his few sources of amusement to lay out its garden, to restore the old house and make it habitable. It is a typical English home, with low red roofs, ancient trees, oaken stairs, and a garden with old-fashioned flowers and fruit in it; but it is the home of a yeoman rather than a prince, the home of a Cincinnatus rather than the palace of an Alcibiades. The staff of servants consists of a gardener and his wife, and I have been present at several of the owner’s receptions. The invitation was given in this wise: ‘I am going to drive to the Grange, on Sunday afternoon,—will you bring your wife, and have a cup of tea?’ And that described the feast; but Irving, looking at his gilliflowers and tulips, watching the gambols of his dogs, and discussing between whiles the relative cost of carpets and India matting, illustrated the truth of the philosophy, that there is real recreation and rest in a mere change of occupation. Those persons who tell you that Irving’s tastes are not simple, his private life an honor to him, and his success the result of earnestness of purpose, clearness of aim, deep study and hard work, neither know him nor understand how great a battle men fight in England, who cut their way upwards from the ranks, to stand with the highest at head-quarters.”