“I don’t care for that at all; nor would I, as you know, have thought of answering him, only that he put his falsehood into so ingeniously damaging a shape. But no matter,—this is what I have written.
“AN INCIDENT OF MY AMERICAN TOUR.
“The Sunday newspapers of America are the largest and certainly the most amusing of the week. They were especially welcome to me during the railway journey between Baltimore and Brooklyn. The landscape was striking now and then; but we were travelling literally through a snow world, and the monotony of it was a trifle tedious.
“I turned to the New York papers, a bundle of which had been brought ‘on board’ (this term is applied to railway trains as to ships in America), and was not long in coming upon a surprise. It was in the shape of a special telegraphic despatch from Baltimore to the ‘Tribune,’ of December 30. I read that ‘Henry Irving closed a very successful week at the Academy of Music’; that his ‘audiences were large’; that ‘his success was due to curiosity’; that ’”Hamlet” raised a storm of criticism about his new-fangled ideas, and when the ghost appeared on the stage in a green gown the audience roared at the strange sight, to the evident embarrassment of the ghost’; that ‘individually, however, Henry Irving’s stay in Baltimore was of the pleasantest nature’; and that ‘Dr. W. Crim,[34] the well-known surgeon, gave him a reception, where he proved himself an entertaining conversationalist. He was favorably impressed with Americans, but said they were not yet fully educated to appreciate true artistic ability; they were progressing.’
“As I had never remembered the closet scene in ‘Hamlet’ to have been more impressive, and particularly as regarded the appearance of the ghost; as the question of curiosity, per se, had never been raised by the local press; as on our first two nights we had bad houses, and on our last two the theatre was crowded; as the remark attributed to me at Dr. Crim’s was a false report, calculated to injure me in the eyes of the American people,—this newspaper despatch, I confess, annoyed me.
“I consulted my friends on the train as to the advisability of contradicting the latter part of it.
“The general verdict was against me. Said an American journalistic friend, ‘If you get into a controversy of that kind, it will be never-ending.’
“‘But it is not a question for controversy; it is a question of fact. If this man’s statement is allowed to go forth, I simply stand before the American people as a downright prig.’
“‘If you take the trouble to contradict every misrepresentation of what you say and do you will have no other occupation.’