An hour or two later and the route was settled, Palser remarking, “It is the most complete and easiest tour that has ever been mapped out.”
“And we will begin it in the autumn of this year. We have sowed the seed; we are entitled to reap the harvest. All my American friends say so; and the great American play-going public would like me to do so. I am sure of it. My pulses quickened at the great cheer that went up at Boston when I said I hoped to come back this year. Let us consider it settled. We will come in September.”
The map was folded up, and the work of organizing the next tour was at once commenced. Telegraphic “feelers,” in regard to “dates,” had already been sent to the leading theatres. The best of them were ready to accept for the time proposed; and a week or so later the business was settled.
Meanwhile we arrived at New York (the trees in Washington and Union squares, and Fifth avenue were crystal trees; every house was coated with ice that sparkled under the electric lamps), and the next day “Louis XI.” was given at New Haven. The week was spent between this picturesque city and Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, and Providence. Only “Louis XI.” and “The Bells” were played, Miss Terry taking a week’s rest at Washington. The New England audiences were as cordial at these cities as they had been at Boston; the critics interpreted their sentiments. At Hartford, Mark Twain (S. L. Clemens) entertained Irving under his hospitable roof, and at Springfield there was a memorable gathering at the Springfield Club,—in fact, Irving was welcomed everywhere with tokens of respect and esteem. One regrets that these pages and the time of the patient reader are not sufficiently elastic to allow of one devoting a volume to the New England cities, so interesting as they are, historically and otherwise, from American as well as English points of view.
VII.
Following the New England cities come the last of the return visits,—Philadelphia, Brooklyn,[57] New York. They reindorsed the previous successes, and fully justified the decision of a second visit next season.
One of the most interesting incidents of the second visit to Philadelphia was Irving’s entertainment in the new rooms of the “Clover Club.”[58] Accustomed to play the host, the club found itself in a novel position when it accepted that of guest. The occasion was one not likely to be forgotten in the annals of an institution which interprets the best and highest social instincts of an eminently hospitable city. The club-room was decorated with its characteristic taste.
Mr. Dion Boucicault, in a brief address, spoke of the beneficent change which Irving had wrought in the methods of the English stage; Mr. McClure, the popular and powerful director of the “Times,” thanked him, in the name of all lovers of art, for extending that reformation to the American stage; Col. Snowden depicted his high place in the history of the best civilization of America; and Irving, while accepting with pride the honors which had been conferred upon him, defended the great actors of America’s past and present from the criticism of several speakers, who complained of their adherence to what Boucicault called “the pedestal style” of acting Shakespeare. Irving described to them how, in years gone by, both England and America had possessed provincial schools of acting, in the stock companies that had flourished in such cities as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities on one side of the Atlantic, and Bristol, Bath, Manchester, Birmingham on the other; how these had been broken up by “combinations” in travelling companies; and how the leading actors of America had thus been disabled from presenting the dramas of the great masters in a manner they would, no doubt, have desired to present them. He said he had found similar difficulties in his own country; but, actuated by the resolute purpose of a sense of duty to his art, and a devoted love for it, he had overcome them. For some eight or ten years he had worked with a company, trained with the object of interpreting, to the best of their ability, the work of the dramatist. They subordinated themselves to the objects and intentions of the play they had to illustrate, and only by such self-abnegations to the harmony of the entire play, he said, could anything like an approach be made to the realization of a dramatic theme. He disclaimed any such ambition as to be ranked foremost among the great actors whose names had been mentioned; but he confessed to a feeling of intense satisfaction that America should have accepted with a generous, and he must say a remarkable, spontaneity, the methods which he had inaugurated at the Lyceum Theatre.