A Stormy Night in New York—Ticket-Speculators at Work—A First-night Audience—Mathias received with Enthusiasm—Behind the Scenes—Lighting the Stage—Returning Thanks—Criticism of the Crowd—John Gilbert’s Opinion—Actor and Audience—English Playgoers and Londoners—Laughter and Applause—An Artistic Triumph.

I.

Torrents of rain without, and a great fashionable crowd within the Star Theatre, inaugurated Irving’s first appearance on the American stage.

The electric lights, away up among the wet clouds that emptied themselves over Union square, flashed coldly on untended roadways, which vehicles of all kinds churned into rivers of mud. The architectural surroundings of the place and the well-appointed carriages that dashed along to the Star Theatre and the opera were singularly out of keeping with the broken streets and the everlasting telegraph poles of the American continent.

It was a night on which London would have hesitated to turn out of its comfortable homes to greet even the most illustrious stranger; for the rain was tropical in its density. It splashed on the pavements in great drops, or, taken hold of by the wind, came at you in sheets of water. Carriage-horses were protected with “rubber cloths,” and the people who stepped out of the cars at the top of Broadway, or were driven to the door of the theatre in the public stages, were enveloped in “water-proofs.” Nevertheless, the moment they alighted they were mobbed by a band of ticket-speculators, who followed or preceded them into the broad vestibule of the theatre, hawking seats even under the box-office windows. In appearance these energetic dealers were the counterpart of the betting men you may see on any English race-course,—the same in manner, and almost in voice. They were warmly and well clad, had satchels strapped to their shoulders; but, instead of shouting, “Two to one, bar one!” “I’ll bet on the field!” and other similar invitations to do business, they announced, in hoarse tones, “I have seats in the front row!” “Orchestra seats, third row!” “I have the best seats in the orchestra!” These New York speculators held in one hand a thick bundle of notes, and a packet of tickets in the other. They had change ready for any note you might offer them, and their tickets were frequently what they represented them to be, “for the choicest locations.”

For some time a notable crowd of persons, distinguished in New York society, pushed their way to seats which they had already secured, many of them at a premium of one hundred per cent. beyond the box-office rates.[8] A large number of persons waited in the vestibule until the curtain should go up, in the hope that the speculators would, for a moderate consideration, relax their grip on “choice seats.” Many tickets were sold, however, in the street, and in the vestibule of the theatre, for sums varying from five to ten dollars. Later in the evening, during the first and second acts of the play, the speculators parted with the balance of their property at box-office rates, which they readily obtained.

The entire floor of an American theatre is devoted to stall seats. Ladies and gentlemen who occupied the back seats had to submit to constant arrivals all through the first and second acts. The doors at the Star Theatre open right upon the audience. They were swinging backwards and forwards during the first half hour of the piece. It is a universal habit in America not to be seated at the time announced for the curtain to go up. Add to this the obstruction of the ticket-speculators, and the premium they offer to late comers. Supplement these disturbing elements with a wet night, the natural annoyance of individuals who have paid large premiums for their seats, the prejudice against Irving which had been persistently promoted by his few but active enemies; and you will understand the severity of the ordeal of this first appearance in the United States.

II.

A round of applause greeted the rise of the curtain upon the first scene of “The Bells.” The audience thus testified their desire to be kindly; but, as the first part of the story was told, there was a certain impatience even in their recognition of the artistic simplicity of the scene. “The Bells” opens more like a novel than a play; and yet the suggestiveness of the narrative at the table, as the topers chat and drink, is singularly dramatic. On this first night the play seemed to drag, and the audience were on the tiptoe of expectation. Those who were comfortably seated were anxious for the appearance of Irving; those who poured in to fill vacant seats at the back, and the hundreds who pushed in to stand behind them, created an uncomfortable sensation of disquiet. Had the Star been a London theatre, the patience of the people who were seated would have been so seriously taxed that they would hardly have permitted the play to proceed until order had been secured in all parts of the house.

At last the door of the burgomaster’s homelike inn is flung open, and Irving stands there in his snow-sprinkled furs, his right hand raised above his head in the action of greeting his family, his left hand grasping his whip. His entrance was never more natural, never more picturesque. The audience hardly heard his opening words,—“It’s I!” They greeted him with thunders of applause, and shouts of welcome. He presently stepped forward from the door. Those who knew him would not fail to detect an effort to control his emotions, when he bowed his acknowledgments of a greeting as spontaneous as it was hearty. I had seen him in his dressing-room only a short time before. He was anxious, but firm as a rock; not in doubt of his own powers, but impressed, as any man might be, under similar circumstances, with the knowledge of how high the expectations of the people had been raised; how great the task of even approaching the standard of their excited hopes.

And now that the audience, touched by the artistic novelty of his appearance, and moved by their sentiments of hospitality, had given vent to their feelings, they settled down to allow the actor, of whose methods they had heard so much, to conquer their favorable opinion if he could. Despite the prejudices of some, and the annoyance of those who had been victimized by the speculators, auditors were willing to be captured,—nay, were desirous, if they could honestly do so, to endorse the verdict of their cousins of England, as to the place which Henry Irving holds in dramatic art.

“The Bells” is a weird play. Its lines are simple; it never halts. Mathias is an inn-keeper. He murders his guest, a Polish Jew, murders him on the highway for his gold, and is forever haunted by his crime. The jangle of the sleigh-bells, as the Jew’s horse gallops away after its master’s death, is continually in the assassin’s ears. Their sad music trickles through the story like the ripple of a rising stream through stubble-fields in autumn. It sweeps over the dramatic narrative like the sighing of the wind in “chill October.” Remorse takes possession of the criminal; he dreams he is being tried for his life.

This scene affords special opportunities for illustrating Irving’s dramatic magnetism. The judicial court of his dreamland forces him to submit to the operations of a mesmerist. Under this influence he makes confession of his crime by reËnacting it. Nothing more weirdly suggestive can be imagined. Before an audience as breathless as the court, the actor went through the pantomime of stopping the Jew’s horse, cutting down the Jew with an axe, plundering the body and thrusting it into a lime-kiln. Then, convicted and condemned, the murderer dies under the violent shock to his nerves of this retributive force of imagination,—dies while the church-bells are ringing for his daughter’s marriage,—his last agonizing words, “Take the rope from my throat!”

Only a daring artist would undertake such a part; only a great one could succeed in it. Most of the second and last acts is a monologue; and, in a country like America, which is accustomed to rapidity of thought and action, Irving was courageous in risking the result of so serious a strain upon the mind of a highly strung audience. The experiment, however, was entirely a triumph, notwithstanding the previously-mentioned discomforts attending an overcrowded house, and the rain that stormed without.

III.

The curtain having fallen on the first act, Irving received the honor of a triple call, after which I went to his room, and found him reading some of the numerous cables and telegrams from home, and from several distant American and Canadian cities, wishing him success.

“How kind everybody is!” he exclaimed, as he handed me a bundle of despatches. “You should have seen the hundreds of telegrams and letters that were sent to me on board the steamer as I was leaving Liverpool!”

“You are pleased?”

“More than pleased,” he said. “What an audience! I never played to a more sympathetic lot of people in my life. They respond to every movement and point of the scene with a marvellous promptitude.”

“You still feel that you are among friends?”

“I do, indeed.”

“I believe you played that first act to-night better than ever you played it in London.”

“Do you think so? ‘Art is long and life is fleeting.’”

There was in the atmosphere behind the foot-lights something of the electricity of a first night at the Lyceum,—no fuss, but a suppression of feeling, a kind of setting of the teeth and a girding up of the loins. The fine “property” horse of the vision scene, covered with snow that would not melt, had been dragged to the rear, and the stage was being set for the trial scene. Mr. Frank Tyars had donned his ermine as the judge, the mesmerist was ready at the wing, the last nail was being driven into the judicial bench. The local stage-hands and supers were at last evidently impressed with the importance of attention to some little matter of detail which they had daily tried to shirk at rehearsal. There had even been difficulties, on the stage and off, in regard to the regulation of the lights. Prominent gas-brackets had been removed from the auditorium, but the lowering of the lights down nearly to darkness for the last act of “The Bells” had been resisted. Later, however, Mr. Loveday found his New York collaborators in this respect willing allies; and within the first week the man who had charge of the calcium lights said, “I have seen them all; every one of the great actors and stage-managers; and they don’t begin to know as much about lighting the stage as this Mr. Henry Irving has forgotten!”

A breathless silence testified to the impressiveness of the last act. You might almost have fancied you heard, in the car-bells of the streets, faint echoes of the sleigh-bells that jangled in the ears of Mathias. I remember the first night of “The Bells,” at the Lyceum. The stillness in this New York house, as Mathias died of imaginary strangulation, reminded me of the London theatre on that occasion. The sensation in the two houses was the same. Nobody moved until the thud of the drop-curtain roller emphatically announced the end. Then the Star audience, as the Lyceum audience had done before them, gave vent to their enthusiasm.

Called and recalled, Irving appeared before the curtain. Then there was a cry of “Speech!” “Speech!” whereupon, he said:—

“Ladies and Gentlemen,—I believe it is a custom with you to allow an actor to thank you for the pleasure you have given to him; and I will avail myself of that custom now, to say that I thank you with all my heart and soul. It seems to me that the greatness of your welcome typifies the greatness of your nation. I thank you, and, ‘beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.’ Let me say that my comrades are also deeply sensible of your kindness, and let me add that I hope you will give a warmer welcome, if such were possible, than I have received, to my associate and friend, Miss Ellen Terry, who will have the honor of appearing before you to-morrow night. And, finally, if it be not a liberty, will you allow me to express the hope ‘that our loves may increase even as our days do grow.’”

As the audience left the theatre, the opinions expressed accentuated the reality of the actor’s success. “The things that have been said about his mannerisms are shameful”; “Why, he has no more mannerisms than Booth!” “I never was more agreeably surprised”; “He speaks like an educated American”; “And in the street looks like a Yale or Harvard professor”; “Never saw anything finer”; “Most awfully impressive scene, that last act”; “Stage magnetism in the highest degree”; “Guess he is safe for the biggest run of popularity of any actor or any man who has ever come to this country”; “Oh, he is immense!” “Did you hear Tony Pastor say it’s the intensest acting he’s ever seen,—that’s a compliment, from what you may call a low comedian”; “Madame Nilsson,—wasn’t she delighted?” “Yes, she wouldn’t sing to-night; would have a box to come and see Irving.” These were some of the remarks one caught as the audience left the theatre, and the most practical criticism is often heard as one leaves a theatre among the crowd.

Coming upon a group of critics and others I learn that the critic of “The Telegram” says, “Irving is, indeed, a revelation!” while Mr. Oakey Hall, of “Truth,” thanks God he has lived to see such an actor. Several members of the Press Club join in the chorus of praise. Buck and Fiske, of “The Spirit of the Times,” smile quietly, as much as to say, “We told you so.” The famous critic of the “Tribune” goes out saying, “Yes, it is great; there is no denying it.” Mr. Wallack, who, too ill to walk, had been carried to his box, expresses his hearty admiration of the actor whom for so many years he had longed to see; and Mr. Gilbert,[9] the veteran comedian and stage-manager at Wallack’s, is “impressed beyond expression, especially with the business of counting the dowry.”

There is a rush of critics, reporters, correspondents, “down-town” to chronicle the night’s success. One or two writers, whose eccentricities give a commercial value to their work, go away to maintain their lively reputations; but, on the whole, it is evident that everybody, press men and public, is greatly pleased. Many American journals in distant States were represented at the theatre by their own critics and by correspondents. Long telegraphic despatches were wired to the leading cities of the Union; the Associated Press sent out special messages; the London journals were in evidence, and a new Anglo-French paper in Paris had commissioned its New York correspondent to cable some thousand or more words of Irving’s opening night. Since the Forrest-Macready riot no theatrical event had created so general an interest as the first appearance of Irving in America.

IV.

Going behind the scenes, after the play, I found a representative of the “Herald” already ensconced in Mr. Irving’s dressing-room. He was pressing the actor for his views of the audience, and for some contrasts of his sensations under the influence of this audience and others before whom he had played in England. At first Irving seemed inclined to say no more than to express satisfaction at his success. But the “Herald” representative was a quiet, cultivated, and experienced journalist. Evidently a gentleman of education, a travelled man, and discreet, he led the actor into the conversational direction he desired him to go, and the result was a pleasant and instructive interview:—

“When I first stepped into view of the audience, and saw and heard the great reception it gave me, I was filled with emotion. I felt that it was a great epoch in my life. The moment I faced the people I felt that we were friends. I knew that they wished to like me, and would go away, if I disappointed them, saying, ‘Well, we wanted to like him; but we couldn’t.’ Who could stand before such an audience, on such an occasion, and not be deeply moved? All I can say is, that it was a glorious reception, and typical of your great people.”

“But as to the merits of the audience,—theatre-goers will judge your acting,—what is your opinion of them?”

“The audience was a fine one. Apart from the marks of intelligence, which could be read with the naked eye, it was a fine assembly. I never played before a more responsive or sympathetic audience. It did not miss a point. I could tell all through the play that every motion I made was being closely watched; that every look, gesture, and tone was carefully observed. It is stimulating to an actor to feel that he has won his audience.”

“You felt confident that you had made an impression upon the audience, and that there was no flattery in the applause?”

“After the first burst of welcome was over, yes. I had not been on the stage five minutes before I knew that I had control of my hearers, and that I could make every point in the play tell. Then the silence of the people—the greatest compliment that could be paid to one in such a play—was always succeeded by genuine applause at the end of the act!”

“Did you get such a reception when you appeared as Mathias first before a London audience?”

“Oh, no. Don’t you see, I was comparatively little known then.”

“Mr. Irving, an English newspaper, a few days ago, expressed a hope that you would be judged by your merits, independent of anything that had previously been said or written about you, and that Americans in this case would not slavishly echo English opinion.[10] Was there any trace of independence in the manner of the audience?”

“Yes, yes,—there was, certainly,” said the actor, rising and pacing the room. “It is not presumption in me to say that I am sure I was judged solely on my merits, and that the audience went away pleased with me. There were times to-night when I could feel the sympathy of my hearers,—actually feel it.”

“The audience was quiet in the first act. The interest is worked up to the climax so smoothly and gradually that there was no opportunity for applause until the end?”

“There, now, you have found one of the differences between the judgment of my audience to-night and those I have played to in London. In the first part of the play the English audiences laughed a great deal; quite boisterously, in fact, at some of the comedy scenes. But the absence of this to-night, I think, was due to the fact that the people were straining to get the exact run of the play, and were laboring under anxiety—it is not presumption if I say so—to see me.

“Was there any other feature of this kind that you noticed?”

“Yes; when Christian yields to my demand for a promise that he will never leave the village while I am alive, I say, ‘It was necessary!’ This point has generally provoked laughter in England. To-night it evoked earnest applause. On the other hand, for the first time I heard the audience laugh at ‘Now the dowry to be given to our dear son-in-law in order that our dear son-in-law may love us.’”

“Are you willing to be judged as an actor by tonight’s performance, Mr. Irving?”

“For that character, yes.”

“Is Mathias not your greatest rÔle?”

“My best? Well, now, that’s hard to say. There is no ground for comparison,—Charles the First is so different; he is full of qualities that are foreign to Mathias. I cannot name a character in which I feel I am best. They afford opportunities for the display of different powers. I am fond of the part of Mathias, it is true.”

“Did your company play up to the standard of their work in the Lyceum?”

“Well, you have not seen them all; you have not seen Miss Terry or Mr. Howe.”

“But did those of the company who were in the cast to-night do as well as usual?”

“They were rather slower, but quite good. Of course every one was excited, more or less. There is only one strong part in the play, and that is mine. Mr. Terriss was excellent. Don’t you think he is a fine fellow?”

Suiting the action to the word, Irving unconsciously dropped into a military attitude, stretched his hand out and threw back his head,—a perfect fac-simile of Mr. Terriss’ impersonation of Christian.

“Is the scenery the same that was used in the Lyceum?”

“Exactly the same. You prompt me to mention a particular point, now. Did you notice how little the scenery had to do with the play? I have it so on purpose. Why, there is practically no scenery. I try to get as near truth as possible, as Caleb Plummer says. I have sometimes heard that I rely on scenery. So far I do: if it were the hovel of King Lear I would have a hovel, and if it were the palace of Cleopatra I would make it as gorgeous as the possibilities of art would allow.”

“Do you look upon your reception to-night as a success?”

“In every way. One of your greatest actors told me that American audiences are proverbially cold on first nights. He was trying to save me from a possible disappointment. In addition to this, ‘The Bells’ is not a play for applause, but for earnest, sympathetic silence. Need I say that the demonstrations, which burst forth on every occasion that good taste would allow, are the best evidences that to-night I have won an artistic triumph?”