“And who knows,” said Irving, as we walked back to the hotel, “whether we shall have a success or not? The wild manner in which the speculators in tickets are going on is enough to ruin anything.[5] They have bought up every good seat in the house, I am told, and will only part with them at almost prohibitive prices. The play-goers may resent their operations and keep away; if they pay ten and twenty dollars for a seat, instead of two and a half or three, they cannot be expected to come to the house in a contented frame of mind. The more money they have been plundered of, the more exacting they will be in regard to the actors; it is only natural they should. Then we have no pit proper, and the lowest admission price to the gallery is a dollar. I would have preferred to play to Lyceum prices; but in that case they say I should only have been putting so much more into the pockets of the speculators. These operators in tickets are protected by the law; managers are obliged to sell to them, and the dealers have a right to hawk them on the pavement at the entrance of the theatres.”
“This is a State or city law, only applying to New York. I don’t think it exists anywhere else in the Union. It certainly does not at Philadelphia and Boston.”
“It is an outrage on the public,” he replied. “Legitimate agencies for the convenience of the public, with a profit of ten or twenty per cent. to the vendor, is one thing; but exacting from the public five and ten dollars for a two-and-a-half-dollar seat is another. After all, a community, however rich, have only a certain amount of money to spend on amusements. Therefore the special attractions and the speculators get the lion’s share, and the general or regular amusements of the place have to be content with short commons.”
“If the ‘Sun’ reporter could hear you he would congratulate himself on having called you ‘a business-like Hamlet.’”
IV.
AT THE LOTOS CLUB.
The Savage Club of America—Thackeray and Lord Houghton—A Great Banquet—Mr. Whitelaw Reid on Irving and the Actor’s Calling—“Welcome to a Country where he may find not Unworthy Brethren”—An Answer to the Warnings of the English Traveller of Chapter I.—“Shakespeare’s Charles the First”—A Night of Wit and Humor—Chauncey M. Depew on Theatrical Evolution—The Knighting of Sullivan—The Delineator of Romance visiting the Home of America’s Creator of Romance—After-dinner Stories—Conspiring against the Peace of a Harmless Scotchman—A Pleasant Jest.
I.
The Lotos Club is the Savage of America, as the Century is its Garrick; each, however, with a difference. The Lotos admits to membership gentlemen who are not necessarily journalists, authors, actors, and painters, earning their subsistence out of the arts. They must be clubable and good fellows, in the estimation of the committee; and herein lies their best qualification. This combination of the arts proper with trade and finance has made the club a success in the broadest sense of the term. Their home is a palace compared with that of the Savage in London. The general atmosphere of the Century is more akin to that of the Garrick, and it is a far closer corporation than the Lotos. Mr. Thackeray spent a good deal of his time there when he was in New York; while Lord Houghton, it is said, preferred the more jovial fireside of the Lotos. In those days the younger club was in humbler, but not less comfortable, quarters than those it now occupies; while the Century, conservative and conscious of its more aristocratic record, is well content with the house which is associated with many years of pleasant memories.