First Impressions of Chicago—A Bitter Winter—Great Storms—Thirty Degrees below Zero—On the Shores of Lake Michigan—Street Architecture—Pullman City—Western Journalism—Chicago Criticism—Notable Entertainments—At the Press Club—The Club Life of America—What America has done—Unfair Comparisons between the Great New World and the Older Civilizations of Europe—Mistaking Notoriety for Fame—A Speech of Thanks—Facts, Figures, and Tests of Popularity, Past and to Come.

I.

Through piles of lumber, into back streets filled with liquor bars, “side shows,” and decorated with flaming posters, into fine, stately thoroughfares, crowded with people, past imposing buildings marked with architectural dignity, to the Grand Pacific Hotel.

“It is as if Manchester had given Greenwich Fair a blow in the face,” said Irving,—“that is my first impression of Chicago. ‘The Living Skeleton,’ ‘The Tattooed Man,’ ‘The Heaviest Woman in the World,’ ‘The Museum of Wonders,’ with the painted show-pictures of our youth; public houses, old-clothes shops, picturesque squalor. And then great warehouses, handsome shops, and magnificent civic buildings,—what a change! There is something of the ‘go’ of Liverpool and Manchester about it. If I was ever afraid of Chicago, I am afraid no longer. A people that have rebuilt this city within a comparatively few years must be great, broad-minded, and ready in appreciating what is good. We have something to show them in the way of dramatic art,—they will ‘catch on,’ as they say on this side of the Atlantic, I am sure of it.”

The city was more or less snow-bound. Little or no effort had been made to remove the white downfall, either from street or sidewalk. The sun was shining. The air was, nevertheless, very cold. Within a few days of our arrival the thermometer had fallen to twenty and thirty degrees below zero. We had selected for our visit to America what was destined to be the bitterest winter that had been known in the United States for over twenty years. There were storms on sea and land; storms of rain, and snow, and wind, followed by frosts that closed the great rivers, and made even Lake Michigan solid for ice-boats a dozen or twenty miles out. The South Jersey coast was strewn with wreckage. Railway tracks were swept away. At Cape May the principal pier was destroyed. The sea demolished the piles of Coney Island’s iron piers. At Long Branch cottages were undermined by the water, and their contents carried out to sea. The well-known dancing platform and piazza of the Grand Union Hotel, on Rockaway Beach, were washed away. Terrific winds blew over Boston and New England. A little fleet of schooners were driven ashore at Portland. Vessels broke from their moorings in the adjacent harbors. Atlantic City had boarding-houses, stores, and dwellings carried away by high tides.

The mails were delayed for hours, and in some cases for days, on the principal railroads. Where the obstacles were not rain and flood they were wind and snow. Lockport, New York, reported that the snow on that day was four feet on the level, and still falling. Bradford, telegraphing for Pennsylvania generally, announced that fourteen inches of snow had fallen within a few hours, the weight of it crushing in many roofs and awnings. “The narrow-gauge railways,” ran the despatch, “five in number, have been closed all day; the trains are stalled a few miles from the city.” Even at Louisville, in Kentucky, navigation was suspended, and floating ice-blocks were battering in the sides of steamers lying at the wharves of Baltimore. On the Rappahannock river, in Virginia, a ship laden with corn was cut down and sunk by floating ice. These and kindred incidents occurred on or about the day of our arrival in Chicago. The record of the few previous days, judged from the official reports of Washington, and the ordinary chronicles of the times, was a very remarkable one, even for the coldest States of America. In some places the weather had been the coldest known for more than fifty years. Canada had had the most extreme experiences in this respect. At Winnipeg, Manitoba, the thermometer had fallen as low as forty-five degrees below zero.

On the day we were travelling to the prairie city, while the thermometer was rising in that section of the country, it was falling in the eastern and southern States, registering thirty degrees below zero at Whitehall, New York. The Straits of Mackinaw, connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, were navigable only on foot or runners. We arrived in Chicago on Monday, Jan. 7. On the 6th the thermometer registered twenty-two degrees below zero. Monday’s newspapers congratulated their readers that, “the wave had passed over.” Incidents of its severity were curious and numerous. Hundreds of hogs had been frozen to death on freight-trains. The Terre Haute express from Chicago was snowed up for thirty-one hours. At fires which had broken out, water from the engines froze as it fell, and covered the buildings with strange, fantastic shapes.

I had arranged to visit Gunnison (Colorado), and other mining cities, within a reasonable distance from Chicago and St. Louis; but was persuaded to postpone my trip by private and public reports of the storm in those regions. One day’s newspaper (the “Daily-News-Democrat,” of Gunnison) contained startling evidence of the difficulties I should have had to encounter. Within a few days twenty-seven men had been killed by snow-slides in the mountains between Ouray and Telluride. A local mail-carrier was among the victims. All the available snow-ploughs and engines of the various districts were at work on the tracks. Engines were helplessly stuck in the snow on the Rio Grande. “The miner,” remarked the “Daily News” editor, “who goes into the mountains at this season takes his life in his hands.” I remained in Chicago with Irving, and am spared to chronicle these things. The weather was sufficiently cold for both of us in Chicago. It varied, too, with a persistency of variation that is trying to the strongest constitution. One hour the thermometer would be fairly above zero, the next it would be far below it. Men went about the frozen streets in fur coats and caps, carefully protecting their ears and hands. Along the shores of Lake Michigan were barricades of ice; they looked like solid palisades of marble. Here and there, where tiny icebergs had been formed, the polar bear would not have looked out of place. It was strange to see the ice-boats, with their bending sails, literally flying along, while away out lay ships at anchor. Mr. Lyon took Miss Terry, Irving, and myself sleighing along the lake shore and upon the prairie beyond. My friends were delighted with the novel excursion, astonished at the fine boulevards through which we passed, amazed at the possibilities of Chicago, as they realized what had been done and what space had been laid out for the future. A forty-mile drive through great, wide boulevards designed to encompass the city, is the biggest of the city’s schemes, and it is in vigorous course of formation.

“One is forced to admire the pluck of Chicago,” said Irving, after our first drive. “Twice burnt down, twice built up, and laid out anew, on a plan that is magnificent. Some of the houses along Prairie and Michigan avenues are palaces.[37] The art revival in street architecture and house decoration is as actively rife here as in London. And what a superb stone they have for building purposes in their yellow cream-colored marble! It is marvellous to see how they have taken hold of the new ideas. The Calumet and the Chicago club-houses,—nothing could be more chaste than their decorations.”

One day we went to Pullman City, an industrial town, akin to Saltaire, near Bradford, in its scope and enterprise. We were invited and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Pullman, Miss Terry, Mr. and Mrs. Dexter, Mr. and Mrs. James Runnion, and several other ladies and gentlemen. Going out in Mr. Pullman’s private car, we lunched with him at the pretty hotel of the novel city, and afterwards inspected the workshops and principal buildings.

“The story of the conception and creation of this Pullman City,” said Irving, “interested me very much, though I confess the method of it all strikes me as somewhat like living by machinery: the private houses being massed, as it were, en bloc; the shops collected together like arcades; the whole place laid out with geometrical system; and yet one feels that there are fine principles underlying it; that the scheme is founded upon wise plans; and that, from a moral and sanitary stand-point, the city is an ideal combination of work and rest, of capital and labor. Pullman’s idea was a lofty one, and the result is very remarkable: a centre of industry that should give to labor its best chance, with capital taking its place on a platform as human as labor. That is the notion, as Pullman explained it to me. What a square, level head it is! Just the determined kind of man to be the author of a new city on new lines. He told me that Charles Reade’s novel, ‘Put Yourself in his Place,’ had influenced him greatly in his ambition to found this place; that it has affected all his relations towards the people under his direction. Politically, Pullman City is a paradox. A despotism, it still is very democratic. It owes its successful administration to what may be called a benevolent autocracy. The theatre, I am told, is more prosperous than the church proper, though religion is represented by several earnest communities. The idea of giving the people a chance to buy land and build cottage homes for themselves, at a reasonable distance beyond Pullman, appears to be a good one. Pullman himself may well be proud of his work. It is worthy of Chicago and the West.”

II.

In spite of “wind and weather” the people of Chicago crowded Haverly’s Theatre, where Irving and Miss Terry appeared, night after night, for two weeks; and the critics of the great papers of the West, the “Times,” “Tribune,” “Inter-Ocean,” and “Daily News,” were equal to the occasion. They showed a knowledge of their work, and an appreciation of dramatic art, as illustrated by Irving, quite in keeping with the spirit and ambition of their new and wonderful city. A news-collector, having in view the prejudices of New York and London, as to the literary and journalistic cultivation of Chicago, selected an enthusiastic line or two from the Chicago notices of Irving and Miss Terry, with a view to cast ridicule upon western criticism. This kind of thing is common to news-collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. A reporter desires to please his editor, and to cater for his public. In London, believing that New York will be stirred with the report of a hostile demonstration against an American artist, he makes the most of the working of a rival American clique there against Lotta. New York looks down loftily upon the art culture of Chicago, and London chiefly knows Chicago through its great fire, borne with so much fortitude, and for its “corners in pork.” The local caterer for the news columns of New York and London panders to these ideas. The best-educated writer, the neatest essayist, might appear foolish by cutting unconnected sentences out of his work, and printing them alone.

In the journalistic literature of modern criticism there is nothing better than some of the essays on Irving and his art that appeared in the papers of Chicago and the West. In this connection it is worth while pointing out that the absence of an international copyright between England and America forces native writers, who otherwise would be writing books, into the press. So long as publishers can steal or buy “for a mere song” the works of popular English authors they will not give a remunerative wage to the comparatively unknown writers of their own country. Therefore, busy thinkers,—men and women with literary inspirations devote themselves to journalism. It would be surprising if, under these circumstances, the western press should not here and there entertain and instruct its readers with literary and critical work as much entitled to respect, and as worthy to live, as the more pretentious and more happily and fortunately placed literature of London, Boston, and New York. The American authors best known to-day, and most praised in both hemispheres, have written for the newspapers, and some of them had their training on the press: Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Howells, Aldrich, John Hay, James, Habberton, Winter, Bryant, Artemus Ward (I leave the reader to complete the list, for I mention these name en passant and at random); and how many others are coming on through the columns of the newspapers to take up the running, who shall say? The Chicago press often sacrifices dignity and good taste in the headings with which it seeks to surprise and excite its readers. But this is a feature of Western journalism that will go out with the disappearance of the lower civilization to which, in covering the entire ground of its circulation, it unhesitatingly appeals. The London press is not free from the charge of pandering to depraved tastes in its reports of sensational murders and divorce cases, though the great body of its writers and contributors no doubt sit down to their work with a higher sense of their responsibility to the public than is felt by their American contemporaries.

“Do you think that is so?” Irving asked, when I was propounding this view to an American colleague.

“Yes,” said the journalist addressed; “but I think our newspapers are far more interesting than yours. At the same time you beat us in essay-writing, for that is what your editorials are,—they are essays.”

“That is true,” said Irving, “and very fine some of them are.”

But to return to Chicago criticism,—I repeat that among the best and most appreciative and most scholarly of the criticisms upon Irving and his art, in England and America, are the writings of the Chicago journalists,—McPhelin, of the “Tribune,” Barron, of the “Inter-Ocean,” McConnell, of the “Times,” and Pierce, of the “Daily News.” The two first mentioned are quite young men, not either of them more than twenty-five. I am tempted to quote, in justification of this opinion, and as an example of Chicago work, the following extracts from one of several equally well-written criticisms in the “Tribune”:—

III.

All the forecasts that warned Irving to expect in Chicago a coarse fibre of civilization and an absence of artistic appreciation were reversed in the Prairie city. Night after night great, generous, enthusiastic audiences crowded Haverly’s Theatre. Quick of perception, frank in their recognition of the best features of Irving’s work, they were cordial in their applause, and hearty in their greetings of the novelty of it. The critics interpreted the sentiments of the audiences, and put their feelings into eloquent sentences. They showed knowledge and sincerity of intention and purpose, and some of them criticised severely the carping spirit in which one or two Eastern contemporaries had dealt with the London actors. The hospitality of Chicago is proverbial. It was made manifest in many ways,—in offers of carriages for sleigh-riding, of ice-boats, of railway cars. Irving and Miss Terry had to decline more invitations than they accepted. Members of the company were also entertained at breakfasts and suppers. After the first night, and the acceptation of Irving as a reformer of the stage, and as the author of what to Chicago was a new pleasure, the city literally opened its doors to Irving and his friends. Among the receptions to Mr. Irving was a breakfast given by Mr. John B. Carson,[38] at which the Mayor spoke of the pleasure Chicago experienced in Irving’s visit, and upon which occasion Mr. Joseph Medill, the editor of the “Tribune,” who had seen Irving in London, as well as in Chicago, proclaimed him the one Shakespearian actor who interprets and exhibits the conceptions of the poet with a proper naturalness, and in such a manner as to make people regret that Shakespeare could not revisit the world to see what had at last been done for his plays. The health of Miss Terry was proposed and drunk with all the honors; as it was, also, at a very dainty reception given one night after the play to Miss Terry herself, at the Calumet Club, by Mr. and Mrs. John B. Jeffery,[39] and, on a later occasion, at the Leland Hotel, at a supper given by Mr. Emery A. Storrs[40] to Mr. Irving. Professor Swing was among the speakers on this occasion, and during the evening pleasant allusion was made to the visit of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, and to English writers who had not confined their attention solely to the shortcomings of Chicago. Irving, in responding to the toast of his health, described his sensations on entering Chicago: “I came warned against you; but knowing your history. When I saw your great city, and felt how much you had done, and how much that was broad and generous and courageous belonged to such enterprise and ambition, my instinct told me that you would be with me in my work; that you would, at least, respect it; and that if you liked it no jealousies, no prejudices, would stand in the way of your saying so.”

The Press Club[41] “received” Irving and Miss Terry and several members of the Lyceum company. “Nothing could have been conceived or carried out in a more frank and friendly spirit than the Press Club reception,” said Irving, on returning to his hotel; “no pretence, no affectation, a hearty crowd. They treated us as if we had known each other all our lives, and I begin to feel as if they were old friends. It is the absence of caste in America, I conclude, that gives a meeting of this kind its real cordiality. Nobody is afraid of anybody else; there is an absence of self-restraint, and, at the same time, of self-consciousness. I liked them, too, for not apologizing for their very unpretentious rooms; and I think they are right in adhering to the principles on which the club is founded, that it shall be purely a press club. Do you remember the evening at the journalists’ club in Philadelphia? But that was a man’s night only. Very delightful too, eh? I thought so. Indeed, the club life of America, from the humblest to the highest, is characterized by a cordiality and freedom that is glorious; I think so. No nonsense, no unnecessary formality; they give you the best, and make you at home at once. So nice to be introduced straightway, and be on terms with all the fellows! I find, by one of the newspapers, that I am keeping a scrap-book,—they have seen Houson’s handiwork, I imagine. I was just thinking that if one indulged in that sort of thing, what a collection of club cards and menus one would have! There is not a city we have visited where we have not been made free of all the clubs, from Boston to Chicago. The Boston clubs are very fine, English-like in many respects. But there is nothing, I suppose, more gorgeous than the Union League, at New York. I’ll tell you what strikes me most about America,—the immensity of the work it has done in regard to the material welfare of its people; in building up a new civilization; providing for the comforts of the thousands who crowd into its ports from the Old World; taking care of them and governing them, giving them a share of their wealth, and welding the incongruous mass into one great people. I don’t wonder that young men who have only their honest hands and hopes as legacies from parents come here to make homes and names, to found families, and lay up for their old age. It is a wonderful country; the thought of it almost inspires me with eloquence, and I think on many a night it has given me a new energy, and a new love for my own work. I notice, by the papers, that some English visitor has been writing in one of the English periodicals what is called ‘a slashing criticism’ upon American habits and customs, and making unfair comparisons between the life objects of the men and women of this great New World and the older civilizations of Europe. This sort of criticism can only be mere surface work; it does not consider and weigh results; it does not count how great a thing has been done in a short time; it does not see how marvellously successful this people has been in making a law unto itself, a civilization unto itself, and how it has not yet had time to rest and tack on to its great, sweeping garments the fringes and ribbons and jewels that belong to an age of rest, and luxury, and art. They are but small critics, and they are not respectfully conscious of the possibilities of the close union of England and America, who discuss America in a petty way, and do not give her the credit she deserves for all she has done in the cause of freedom and of humanity.”

He paced the room as he talked, and I applauded his peroration.

“And you say you cannot ‘orate,’ to use a local phrase, except about acting.”

“It is an easy thing to make a speech in one’s own room, but a different thing standing up before an audience, eh?”

“Anyhow,” I said, “we will make a point about that hap-hazard criticism of irresponsible persons, who do not consider either the truth, or the feelings of a nation, so long as they can put together a few smart things for their own glorification. Nobody ever heard of the writer you mention until he abused America; and some men mistake notoriety for fame.”

IV.

The pieces produced during the two weeks of Irving’s stay in Chicago were “Louis XI.,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “The Bells,” “The Belle’s Stratagem,” and “The Lyons Mail.” On the last night, being called before the curtain by one of the most crowded houses of the season, he addressed the audience as follows:—

“Ladies and Gentlemen,—It is my privilege to thank you for the hearty and enthusiastic welcome which you have given us during our too short stay amongst you. Many years ago, when a boy in England, I remember a song,—

“‘To the West! to the West!
To the land of the free!’

“I little dreamed in those days I should ever see your fair city—the Queen of the West. For the welcome you have given my colleagues and myself I thank you,—especially I thank you on behalf of Miss Ellen Terry, whose indebtedness to you is equal to my own. I was good-humoredly told the other day that I was too pleased with America, especially with Chicago; and if I were to find some faults it might be a relief, and would vary the monotony a little. (Laughter.)

“Well, I hope I am not naturally a fault-finder; but, if I were, you have afforded me no opening; for you have loaded us with gratitude, and extended to us a welcome as broad as the prairie upon which you stand. I cannot leave you without thanking the press of Chicago for its sympathy, its eloquent and its ungrudging recognition of at least a sincere, although incomplete, effort to bring the dramatic art abreast of the other arts, and not leave the art of the stage behind and out in the cold in the general march of progress.

“I am very glad to tell you that we shall soon meet again; for we shall have the honor of appearing before you on the 11th of next month, when we shall have the gratification of spending another week amongst you. And now I beg to thank you again and again, and I can but hope that we may live in your memories as you will live in ours.” (Applause.)

The receipts for the first week in Chicago were $17,048, and for the second, $19,117; making a total of $36,166. From a mere box-office point of view the success of his visit is unprecedented; the increase of the receipts at the close of the engagement dissipating the last “weak invention of the enemy,” that Irving only excites curiosity. If this shallow nonsense merited the smallest attention the figures already quoted would be a sufficient answer. A truer test of the genuineness of Irving’s popularity, and the hold his work has obtained upon the intelligent and intellectual public of America, will be the character of his reception when, in the course of the present tour, he begins to pay return visits to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; for he goes back to these cities when their enthusiasm may be said to have cooled, and in the Lenten season, which is largely observed in the chief cities of the United States.