The Return Visit to Chicago—Welcomed Back again—Farewell Speech—Niagara in the Winter—A Sensation at the Hotel—Requisitioning adjacent Towns for Chickens and Turkeys—Ira Aldridge and a Colored Dramatic Club—A Blizzard from the North-west—The Scene of Webb’s Death—“A great Stage-manager, Nature”—Life and Death of “The Hermit of Niagara”—A Fatal Picnic—The Lyceum Company at Dinner—Mr. Howe proposes a Toast—Terriss meets with an Accident that recalls a Romantic Tragedy.

I.

“The fact of Mr. Irving and Miss Terry and their company attracting an audience to fill Haverly’s Theatre on so speedy a return after leaving us, and that, too, following a rugged strain of grand opera,” said the “Chicago Inter-Ocean,” of February 12, “may be accepted as conclusive evidence of genuine appreciation and admiration of their worth. This testimony is much strengthened by the fact that the plays presented were those most frequently seen during the original engagements,—‘The Bells,’ and ‘The Belle’s Stratagem,’—for, though it is thought Mr. Irving is seen to exceptional advantage as Mathias, mere curiosity would have held off to see him in a new character. It was a generous and highly gratifying welcome back; and it is certainly a great pleasure, as well as an artistic privilege worthy to be acknowledged, that we have Mr. Irving and his superb surroundings again before us. We are in no danger of seeing too much of this sort of work.”

“Hamlet” and “Much Ado” were produced for the first time at Chicago during this second season. Both excited genuine interest, and were received with as much favor by audiences and critics as his previous work. Only two weeks had intervened between his first and second visit. More money was paid at the doors of Haverly’s during the week than had gone into the treasury for a week of grand opera. The programme for the last night was “Much Ado,” and the recitation of Hood’s “Eugene Aram.” After enthusiastic calls for Irving and Miss Terry, at the close of the comedy, there were cries of “Speech! Speech!” Irving, in evening dress for the recitation, presently responded to the wishes of his audience. He said he would be made of sterner stuff—and he was glad that such was not the case—if he failed to feel profoundly the welcome that had been accorded him in Chicago. Not one shadow had fallen across the brightness of that welcome; there was not a jarring note in the generous applause that had greeted the company’s efforts. The encouragement had been most grateful, and it had urged himself and his associates to do their best work. He thanked the press of the city for overlooking shortcomings, and for recognizing so generously what they found to be good. The notices had been most eloquent and sympathetic. He wished to thank the audience on behalf of his associates, and particularly on behalf of Miss Ellen Terry, whose great gifts had been so quickly recognized. If he might be permitted to say so in public, he himself heartily joined in their appreciation of Miss Terry’s work. Parting was “a sweet sorrow,” and the sweet part of his leave-taking was in expressing his deep sense of Chicago’s great welcome. Again he would say good-by to every one; but he hoped circumstances would make it possible to meet a Chicago audience in the future, and he trusted that “you will remember us as we will surely remember you.”

“The speaker,” says the “Tribune,” “was frequently interrupted by applause, his reference to Miss Terry especially awakening enthusiasm. He then recited ‘Eugene Aram’s Dream’ with fine effect, and after inducing him to respond to a fifth and last recall the audience dispersed.”

II.

On the following Monday and Tuesday the company appeared for two nights at Detroit,[48] the chief city of Michigan, to large and most friendly audiences. I was in New York at this time, and had arranged to meet Irving, Miss Terry, and a few friends, at Niagara, on Wednesday. “If Abbey is agreeable, I shall give the company a holiday, so that they can go to Niagara,[49] spend the day, and sleep in Toronto at night. It will do us all good.” Abbey was agreeable, and Wednesday, February 20, was one of the most memorable days of the tour.

I travelled from New York by the West Shore road, an admirably equipped railway (and having at Syracuse the most picturesque and one of the finest stations in America), to meet my friends at the Falls. At two o’clock, on Tuesday, I arrived on the Canadian side of the river. The country was covered with snow, but a thaw had set in during the morning. Driving from the railway station the scene was wild, weird, and impressive. The steep banks of the Niagara river were seamed and furrowed with ice and snow. The American side of the ravine was ploughed by the weather into ridges. One might say the river banks were corrugated, cracked, grooved into strange lines, every channel ribbed with ice. Here and there tiny falls, that had mimicked the colossal ones beyond, were frozen into columns. Others had been converted into pillars that seemed to be supporting white, ghost-like figures. Further on there was a cluster of fountains gushing out of the rocks beneath a number of mills, the wheels of which they had turned on their way to the river. These waters leaped down some fifty or sixty feet into great ice-bowls. You would think they had found an outlet other than the river but for its discoloration at the base of the great natural urns, or bowls, into which they fell. There were ponderous heaps of ice at the bed of the American falls. A section of them was literally frozen into a curious mass of icicles. The ice was not bright, but had a dull, woolly appearance. Coming upon the two great falls at a slight bend of the river you see them both at once. On this day they were almost enveloped in spray. Our horses splashed through thawing snow, and picked their way over a road broken up with scoriated ice and flooded with water. A strong, but not a cold, wind blew in our faces, and covered us with spray. The water was pouring down the abyss in greater masses it seemed to me than usual; and this was my third visit to Niagara. I had seen the falls in summer and autumn. Their winter aspect had not the fascinating charm of the softer periods of the year, when the banks are green, and the leaves are rustling on the trees of the islands. The Clifton House was closed. The balconies, upon which merry parties are sitting and chatting in summer evenings, were empty. Even the Prospect House looked chilly. The flood fell into its awful gulf with a dull, thudding boom, and the rapids above were white and angry.

I wondered what Irving would think of the scene. Some people profess that they are disappointed with the first sight of Niagara. There are also people who look upon the ocean without surprise; and some who see the curtain go up on a great play, or a grand opera, for the first time in their lives, without experiencing one throb of the sensation which Bulwer, in one of his novels, describes with pathetic eloquence. The Rev. Dr. Thomas, a popular preacher in the Prairie city, went to his first play while Irving was at Chicago, and was greatly impressed; although he half confessed that, on the whole, he liked a good lecture quite as well. A colored man and his wife, at Philadelphia, told me they had always considered the play wicked, and would never have thought to go to a theatre had not one of their clergymen done so. “But,” said the husband, “I see noffin’ wicked nor wrong, and it did my heart good to see all dem white folk bowing to de colored gentleman and making much of him.” It was the casket scene in “The Merchant” that had most delighted these people.

Almost the first thing I did on arriving at Niagara was to send Irving a telegram, asking if he had settled where to stay, advising him that for a brief visit the Prospect House was most conveniently placed for seeing the falls. My response was a request for rooms. This was followed by an inquiry if the house could provide a dinner for seventy; and from that moment I found myself actively engaged, not in reviving my former recollections of Niagara, but in preparing to receive the Irving Company. The landlord of the Prospect House is a land-owner in Manitoba. He was looking after his interests in those distant regions. The landlady, a bright, clever woman of business, however, undertook to “run the dinner.”

“The house is partially closed, as you know,” she said, “and it is small. We have only a few servants during the winter, and it is difficult to get provisions at short notice. But we have the Western Union telegraph in the house, and a telephone. We will do our best.”

The intelligent colored waiter found it impossible to seat seventy persons in the dining-room.

“They must dine at twice,” he said; “that’s the only chance; no help for it.”

It was night before the order for dinner was really closed and settled, many telegrams passing between Detroit and Niagara; and, as I found to my consternation, between Niagara and many adjacent towns.

“Not a turkey nor a chicken to be got for love or money,” said the landlady. “I have telegraphed and telephoned the whole neighborhood,—just going to try Buffalo, as a last resort. You see the hotels here are closed, and it is very quiet in the winter.”

“As good a dinner as can be provided,” was one of Stoker’s latest telegrams, “and it must be ready at half-past three to the minute.”

The excitement at the Prospect House was tremendous. The falls were quite discounted. They were of no moment for the time being, compared with the question of turkeys and the seating of the coming guests.

“You have beef, mutton, ham, you say?”

“Yes, and we can make some excellent soup,—a nice lot of fish has come in from Toronto, lake fish,—but turkeys, no; chickens, no; though I have telegraphed everywhere and offered any price for them. Ah, if we had only known two days ago!” said the landlady.

“Never mind, let it be a plain English dinner, horseradish sauce with the beef,—can you manage that?”

“Yes! Oh, yes!”

“And boiled legs of mutton, eh?”

“Yes, with caper-sauce.”

“Capital. And what do you say to plum-pudding?”

“I fear there will not be time to stone the raisins; but I’ll telephone into the town at once and see.”

While she was gone I surveyed the dining-room once more. “If you moved the stove, and placed forms against the walls, instead of chairs, how would that be?” I asked.

It was a great problem, this. My colored ally and his two assistants set to measuring with a foot-rule. They had their woolly heads together when I looked in upon them an hour later.

“Yes, I believe it can be done,” said the chief waiter; and before midnight the tables were arranged, the stove cleared out, and the room almost ready for the feasters. As he was leaving for the night he said, “The people of my race honor Mr. Irving. He knew our great actor, Ira Aldridge. There was a letter from Mr. Irving about him, and a Dramatic Club started by our folk in the New York papers. Rely on me, sir, to have this dinner a success.”[50]

III.

Wednesday morning was ushered in with a blizzard from the north-west. The roads that had been slushy the day before were hard as adamant. There was ice in the wind. The air was keen as a knife. A traveller who had come in from Manitoba said that during the night it was “as much as your life was worth to pass from one car to another.” Towards noon the weather moderated. The sun came out, the wind changed, the spray from the falls fell into the river. A rainbow stretched its luminous arch over the American falls.

“I have often thought,” I said to Irving, “during this tour, how surprised any English traveller who knew London well would be, if he encountered the Lyceum Company by accident at some wayside American depot, not knowing of this visit to the States.”

“Yes,” he said, “do you remember the people at Amsterdam, in Holland, who followed us in amazement to the hotel there, one of them, a German, making a bet about us, the others ridiculing the idea that I could be out of London, when he had seen me acting there a few days before?”

We were on our way to the falls, driving in a close carriage, Irving, Miss Terry, and myself, and I think we talked on general topics a little, while they were trying to take in the approaches to the great scene of all.

“Toole and his dear boy, Frank, lost their way, one night, about here,” said Irving. “I remember his telling me of it—couldn’t get a carriage—were belated, I remember. There was no fence to the river then, I expect,—a dangerous place to lose your way in. How weird it looks!”

“Oh, there are the falls!” Miss Terry exclaimed, looking through the glass window in front of us. “Surely! Yes, indeed! There they are! How wonderful!”

I had told the driver to pull up at the bend of the river, where we should get the first view of them. Irving turned to look.

“Drive on,” I said, and in a few minutes we pulled up in full view of both falls.

“Very marvellous!” said Irving. “Do you see those gulls sailing through the spray? How regularly the water comes over! It hardly looks like water,—there seems to be no variety in its grand, solid-like roll; and, do you notice, in parts it curls like long, broken ringlets, curls and ripples, but is always the same? What a power it suggests! Of course, the color will vary in the light. It is blue and green in the summer, I suppose; now it is yellowish here and there, and grey. There have been great floods above,—yonder are the rapids above the falls, I suppose? How wonderfully the waters come leaping along,—like an angry sea!”

He stood for some time watching the scene, and noting everything that struck him. Miss Terry joined some members of the company, and went driving. Later a party of us went to the rapids and the whirlpool, where Webb was drowned. Irving discussed the fatal feat, for a long time, with one of the men who saw the swimmer take his courageous header and go bounding through the rapids.

“It was there where he disappeared,” said the man, pointing to a spot where the waters appeared to leap as if clearing an obstruction; “he dived, intending to go through that wave, and never was seen again alive. It is believed his head struck a sunken rock there, which stunned him.”

Irving stood for a long time looking at this part of the river, discussing the various theories as to its depth. “A bold fellow!” he exclaimed, as he left the place; “he deserved to get through it. Imagine the coolness, the daring of it! He takes a quiet dinner, it seems, at his hotel, rests a little, then hires a boat, rows to the place where the rapids fairly begin, strips and dives into this awful torrent,—a great soul, sir, any man who has the nerve for such an enterprise!”

We walked back to the falls, and on our return observed a great change in the color of the scene.

“Quite a transformation in its way, is it not?” said Irving; “let us take in the picture, as a painter might. The horizon, you see, is a bluish-purple; the Canadian falls have a grayish-blue tint, except where the positive golden yellow of the water comes in; then, as it plunges below, the foam is of a creamy whiteness; the mist and spray rise up a warmish-gray in the half-shaded sunlight; the snowy rocks are white against it. The sun is about to set, I suppose, and these are some of its premonitory colors. The river, you see, is now a deep blue,—it was muddy-looking this morning,—and the trees on the banks are a warm greyish-brown. Beyond the American falls, above there, where it is like a lake, the white houses are whiter still, the red ones redder, and the country looks as if it had quite changed its atmosphere. A great stage-manager, Nature! What wonders can be done with effective lighting!”

Then, turning away to go into the house, he said, “Do you remember the lighting of the garden scene in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’—the change from sunset to night, from sunset to moonlight, from moonlight to morning, and the motion of the sunlit trees, as if a zephyr had touched them?”

“I do, indeed!”

“Well, let us talk of something else. Niagara must offer to artist or poet a continual study. Did you notice how the fir-trees on the little island close to the Canadian falls are twisted and warped, as if they had tried to turn away from the tempest, and had been beaten down with the wind and snow? You were telling me one day about a scholarly hermit, who had spent his life at a lonely place on the Hudson. That is also a curious story,—the life and death of Francis Abbott, ‘the hermit of Niagara,’ as they call him in one of the old guide-books. He first appeared here, it seems, on a summer day in 1839,—a young man, tall, well-built, but pale and haggard. He carried a bundle of blankets, a portfolio, a book, and a flute; went to a little out-of-the-way inn and took a room; visited the local library; played his flute, and rambled about the country; got permission to live in a deserted log-house near the head of Goat Island; lived there in a strange seclusion during two winters, then built himself a cabin at Point View, near the American falls, and did not appear to shun his fellow-man so much as formerly. A local judge became quite friendly with him; they would meet and have long talks. Sometimes, too, he would enter into conversation with the villagers, and others whom he encountered on his rambles. He talked well, they say; spoke of Asia and Greece with familiarity, and liked to discuss theological questions. His religious views were akin to quakerism. He was a fine figure, had a sorrowful face, and was attended by a dog, which trotted at his heels always. During the summer he lived in his cabin at Point View; he went down the ferry-steps and bathed in the river, and, on June 10, 1841, he lost his life there,—after two years of this strange solitude. The body had been in the water ten days before it was found at the outlet of the river. The villagers brought it back and buried it. They went to his cabin. His dog guarded the door, a cat lay asleep on his rough sofa, books and music scattered about. There was no writing to be found, though the local judge said he wrote a great deal, chiefly in Latin, and, as a rule, burned his work, whatever it was. In later days friends and relatives of the poor young fellow came to Niagara, and identified him as the son of a Quaker gentleman of Plymouth. Rather a sad story, eh?”

“Yes, very, and there are others, less romantic, but more tragic, in connection with the falls.”

“None more sad, after all, than the death of poor Webb. It is true, he deliberately risked his life. I have seen it stated that the rapids where he dived are by some persons estimated as only twenty or thirty feet deep. Of course nothing can be more absurd. The channel is only three hundred feet wide, and through this gorge rush the waters of five great lakes. Calculating the volume of water, and the velocity of it, the scientists who estimate the depth at two hundred and fifty feet are nearer the mark. The most surprising thing to me about Niagara is the fact—it must be a fact—that this mighty torrent, after falling into the river, ploughs its way along the bottom,—the surface being comparatively calm,—drives along for two miles, and then leaps up from its imprisonment, as it were, into the general view, a wild, fierce torrent, with, further down, that awful whirlpool. Webb knew the force of it all; he had surveyed it,—the cruellest stretch of waters in the world, I suppose,—and yet he took that header, and went along with it hand-over-hand, as the man told us, and with an easy confidence that was heroic,—one would have thought the water would have beaten the life out of him before he had time to rise and fight it!”

“Not long since,” I said, “there was a picnic party on Goat Island. A young fellow, I think the father of the child itself, picked up a little girl, and in fun held it over the rapids above the falls. The child struggled and fell; he leaped in after it, caught it, struggled gallantly in presence of the child’s mother and the distracted friends, but went over the falls. I read the incident in a newspaper chronicle, and have it put away at home with many other notes about the falls, which I hoped to use in this book. Our critics will, of course, recognize the difficulties attending the preparation of these Impressions. We have worked at them in odd places, and at curious times. One wonders how they will come out.”

“Oh, all right, I am sure!” Irving replied: “they are quite unpretentious, and it is delightful to note how they grow up and assume shape and form. I think it was a happy idea.”

IV.

But nobody will ever know, except those who took part in the work, how much ingenuity, patience, and enterprise were expended on that dinner. It was ready to the minute. The guests all sat down together. There were turkeys and there were chickens, too. Horsemen had ridden hard half the night to bring them in. There were plum-puddings, also. Lovely maidens at Buffalo and Niagara, had been pressed into the service of stoning them. When Stoker, at midnight, in order to smooth the way, had telegraphed that “rare flowers and hot-house fruits can be dispensed with” (he was thinking of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia), the landlady had looked at me in dismay. “There isn’t a flower in the whole neighborhood! I’m afraid they are expecting too much,” she said. “Not at all; it is only Mr. Stoker’s little joke,” I replied, fearing that at the last moment the entire business might fall through. As the reader already understands, it did not fall through; but, on the contrary, was a great and surprising success; for, when Mr. Howe got up to propose the health of the founder of the feast, he said, “This has been the first English dinner we have had since we left home, and, what is more, we have eaten it off English plates,—not those little dishes and saucers they give us everywhere in America. Not, ladies and gentlemen, that I have a word to say against the American food,—not I,—because it is good and abundant; but I do like large plates, and I love to see the joints on the table and carved before our eyes.” Everybody laughed at this and applauded; but the cheering increased, and was followed by “three times three” and the chorus, “He’s a jolly good fellow!” when Mr. Howe thanked their “host and chief, Mr. Irving, for his hospitality and kindness that day, and for his energy and courage in bringing them all from the old country on a tour in the New World.”

It was nearly six when we left Niagara for the railway station, in every kind of vehicle, omnibus, buggy, brougham, and carriage. Mr. McHenry and a party of ladies and gentlemen came to see us off. The members of the company were loud in their expressions of wonder at the falls. “So strange,” said one, “to be sitting down to dinner in view of them.” “What a day to remember!” exclaimed another. Tyars, Andrews, Terriss, Arnot, and some others, had donned the water-proof dress, known to every visitor, and explored the regions below the falls. Terriss had a narrow escape. There were special dangers to be encountered, owing to the accumulations of ice; and, at the hands of a party of Englishmen, the dangers were of course duly attacked. Terriss slipped upon an icy descent, and saved himself from going headlong into the torrent by clutching a jagged rock, which severely lacerated his right hand. He played with his arm in a sling for several nights afterwards.

One of the saddest stories of the falls is the history of a calamity that occurred almost at this very spot, in the autumn of 1875. Miss Philpott, her two brothers, a sister-in-law, and Miss Philpott’s lover, Ethelbert Parsons, went through the Cave of the Winds, and climbed over the rocks towards the American falls. They were residents of Niagara, and knew the ground. The sheltered eddies in the lighter currents under the falls are pleasant bathing-places. The Philpott party took advantage of them. Miss Philpott was venturesome. She bathed near one of the strongest currents. Mr. Parsons, seeing her in danger, went to her rescue. Seeking for a firm foothold for both of them, the girl slipped and fell. Parsons sprang for her, and both were carried into the current. He caught her around the waist. The young lady could swim, and Parsons was an expert; they struck out for the rocks on the other side of the current. The torrent carried them out. By and by Parsons swam on his back, the girl cleverly supporting herself with her hand upon his shoulder. Then she suddenly pushed him away from her,—the inference being that she discovered the impossibility of both being saved,—flung up her arms and sank. Parsons turned and dived after her. They were seen no more until some days afterwards, when the bodies were recovered at the whirlpool.

Terriss and his friends had more reason than they quite realized to congratulate themselves upon the fact that they were enabled to comply with the kindly and considerate programme of the holiday, which arranged that they should sleep that night in Toronto.