by Bram Stoker
He seemed genuinely glad to see ‘me. He was most hearty in his manner and interested about everything. Asked much about London and its people, specially those of the literary world; and spoke of Irving in a way that delighted me. Our conversation presently drifted towards Abraham Lincoln for whom he had an almost idolatrous affection. I confess that in this I shared; and it was another bond of union between us. He said:
“No one will ever know the real Abraham Lincoln or his place in history I”
I had of course read his wonderful description of the assassination by Wilkes Booth given in his Memoranda during the War, published in the volume called Two Rivulets in the Centennial Edition of his works in 1876. This is so startlingly vivid that I thought that the man who had written it could tell me more. So I asked him if he were present at the time. He said:
“No, I was not present at the time of the assassination; but I was close to the theatre and was one of the first in when the news came. Then I afterwards spent the better part of the night interviewing many of those who were present and of the President’s Guard, who, when the terrible word came out that he had been murdered, stormed the house with fixed bayonets. It was a wonder that there was not a holocaust, for it was a wild frenzy of grief and rage. It might have been that the old sagas had been enacted again when amongst the Vikings a Chief went to the Valhalla with a legion of spirits around him!”
The memory of that room will never leave me. The small, close room — it was cold that day and when we came in he had lit his stove, which soon grew almost red-hot; the poor furniture; the dim light of the winter afternoon struggling in through the not over large window shadowed as it was by the bare plane tree on the sidewalk, whose branches creaked in the harsh wind; the floor strewn in places knee-deep with piles of newspapers and books and all the odds and ends of a literary working room. Amongst them were quite a number of old hats — of the soft grey wide-brimmed felt which he always wore.
I was more interested than I can say and was loth to leave. I had to catch the 4.3o train to New York, there to meet General Horace Porter, with whom I was to travel that night to Boston, where he was to lecture at the Tremont Temple on “ General Grant “ to the Loyal Legion. We were to sup with the Loyal Legion afterwards. Donaldson and I had arrived at Mickle Street about three, and at four we left. I think Walt Whitman was really sorry to have us go. Indeed Thomas Donaldson describes the visit. I venture to give it in extenso, even at the cost of seeming vain. But I was and am proud of it — and I humbly think I have good reason to be:
“Mr. Bram Stoker, a man of intelligence and cultivation, having had the advantage of association with the most cultivated in all walks of contemporary English life, was at his best. Mr. Whitman was captivated. Mr. Stoker had previously met Mr. Whitman at my house in Philadelphia in 1884. We remained an hour, and then left in spite of his protest. Many days after this visit he referred to it by saying: And friend Stoker; where is he now? ‘ I replied, ‘ In Chicago.’ [In this, by the way, Donaldson,’ writing ten years after the event, made a slight error. We paid two visits together, 1886 and 1887 — it is to the latter that Chicago referred.] Well, well; what a broth of a boy he is! My gracious, he knows enough for four or five ordinary men; and what tact! Henry Irving knows a good thing when he sees it, eh? Stoker is an adroit lad, and many think that he made Mr. Irving’s path, in a business way, a smooth one over here.’ I replied Indeed! ‘ I should say so,’ was his answer. See that he comes over again to see me before he leaves the country. He’s like a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air.’“
I can only ask pardon for the quotation. But I think it justifies itself and bears out all that I have already said. It was contemporary and not even in my knowledge till Donaldson sent me his book in 1896.
VI
The opportunity for my next visit to Walt Whitman came in the winter of 1887 when we were playing in Philadelphia. On the 22nd December Donaldson and I again found our way over to Mickle Street. In the meantime I had had much conversation about Walt Whitman with many of his friends. The week after my last interview I had been again in Philadelphia for a day, on the evening of which I had dined with his friend and mine, Talcott Williams of the Press. During the evening we talked much of Walt Whitman, and we agreed that it was a great pity that he did not cut certain lines and passages out of the poems. Talcott Williams said he would do it if permitted, and I said I would speak to Walt Whitman about it whenever we should meet again. The following year, 1887, I breakfasted with Talcott Williams, Igth December, and in much intimate conversation’ we spoke of the subject again.
We found Walt Whitman hale and well. His hair was more snowy white than ever and more picturesque. He looked like King Lear in Ford Madox Brown’s picture. He seemed very glad to see me and greeted me quite affectionately. He said he was “ in good heart,” and looked bright though his body had distinctly grown feebler.
I ventured to speak to him what was in my mind as to certain excisions in his work. I said:
“If you will only allow your friends to do this — they will only want to cut about a hundred lines in all — your books will go into every house in America. Is not that worth the sacrifice? “ He answered at once, as though his mind had long ago been made up and he did not want any special thinking:
“It would not be any sacrifice. So far as I am concerned they might cut a thousand. It is not that — it is quite another matter: “ — here both face and voice grew rather solemn — ” when I wrote as I did I thought I was doing right and right makes for good. I think so still. I think that all that God made is for good — that the work of His hands is clean in all ways if used as He intended If I was wrong I have done harm. And for that I deserve to be punished by being forgotten! It has been and cannot not-be. No, I shall never cut a line so long as I live!”
One had to respect a decision thus made and on such grounds. I said no more.
When we were going he held up his hand saying, “ Wait a minute.” He got up laboriously and hobbled out of the room and to his bedroom overhead. There we heard him moving about and shifting things. It was nearly a quarter of an hour when he came down holding in his hand a thin green-covered volume and a printed picture of himself. He wrote on the picture with his indelible blue pencil. Then he handed to me both book and picture, saying:
“Take these and keep them from me and Goodbye!”
The book was the 1872 edition of the Leaves of Grass — ” As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free “ — and contained his autograph in ink. The picture was a photograph by Gutekunst, of Philadelphia. On it he had written:
To Bram Stoker.
Walt Whitman. Dec. 22, ‘87.
That was the last time I ever saw the man who for nearly twenty years I had held in my heart as a dear friend.
VII
When I had come to New York after my visit to Walt Whitman in 1886 I made it my business to see Augustus St. Gaudens, the sculptor, regarding a project which had occurred to me. That was to have him do a bust of Walt Whitman. He jumped at the idea, and said it would be a delight to him — that there ought to be such a record of the great Poet and that he would be proud to do it. I arranged that I should ask if he could have the necessary facilities from Walt Whitman. We thought that I could do it best as I knew him and those of his friends who were closest to him. I made inquiries at once through Donaldson, and when business took me again to Philadelphia, on 8th and gth November, we arranged the matter. Walt Whitman acquiesced and was very pleased at the idea. I wrote the necessary letters and left addresses and so forth with St. Gaudens. He was at that time very busy with his great statue of Abraham Lincoln for Chicago. Incidentally I saw in his studio the life mask and hands of Lincoln made by the sculptor Volk before he went to Washington for his first Presidency. The mould had just been found by the sculptor’s son twenty-five years after their making. Twenty men joined to purchase the models and present them to the nation. St. Gaudens made casts in bronze of the face and hands with a set for each of
the twenty subscribers with his name in each case cut in the bronze. Henry Irving and I had the honour of being two of the twenty. The bronze mask and hands, together with the original plaster moulds, rest in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington with a bronze plate recording the history and the names of the donors. I felt proud when, some years later, I saw by chance my own name in such a place, in such company, and for such a cause.
Before leaving New York, which I did on November 1886, I saw a good many friends, and arranged with them that we should each pay a certain sum towards a fund which would at least defray out-of-pocket expenses of casting the bronze bust of Walt Whitman when St. Gaudens should have done it.
Unhappily, for want of time — for he was overwhelmed with work — and other causes, St. Gaudens could not get to Philadelphia for a long time. Then Walt Whitman got another stroke of paralysis early in 1888. Before the combination of possibilities came when he could sit to the sculptor and the latter could give the time to the work he died.
Happily he did not in the last years of his life want for anything. He earned enough for his wants, and if anything were lacking for comforts it came. He had good friends. In 1889 Irving sent him a cheque for which he was grateful. But there was one friend as willing as able to help; that was George W. Childs, owner and editor of the Philadelphian Ledger. He was always doing kind and generous things, and used to ask certain of his friends to suggest good cases for help. Once he asked me if there was anything of the kind which I wished him to do. This was in his office on December 14, 1887. Irving and I had been to see him. Irving stayed for only a short while, but I remained as I was going with Mr. Childs to lunch with “ Tony “ Drexel in the Bank parlour of his great bank in Chestnut Street. When he asked me if I wished him to do anything, I said:
“Yes, Mr. Childs, there is Walt Whitman! A lot of us are anxious about him for he is old and feeble and in bad health. Moreover, though he is not in want, he is poor. His needs are very small, but in his state of health they are likely to be continuous. We are all willing to help, but we are scattered about and may not know. It will be very good of you if you will have an eye on him.” He was sitting down, but he rose up as he said very sweetly:
“Thank you very much, my dear Bram Stoker, for speaking to me about him. But be quite assured and easy in your mind. Walt Whitman will never want. That is already seen to.” It was only after his death and Walt Whitman’s that Donaldson, who looked after the Poet’s affairs for him, knew that the $1200, which had relieved the mortgage on Whitman’s house in Mickle Street, had been secretly paid by Mr. Childs.
Let me lay the memory of this kindness as a flower on the grave of a good man.
VIII
I was not in America between the spring of 1888 and the early fall of 1893 at which time Irving opened the tour in San Francisco. We did not reach Philadelphia till towards the end of January 1894. In the meantime Walt Whitman had died, March 26, 1892. On 4th February I spent the afternoon with Donaldson in his home. Shortly after I came in he went away for a minute and came back with a large envelope which he handed to me:
“That is for you from Walt Whitman. I have been keeping it till I should see you.”
The envelope contained in a rough card folio pasted down on thick paper the original notes from which he delivered his lecture on Abraham Lincoln at the Chestnut Street Opera House on April 15, 1886.
With it was a letter to Donaldson, in which he said:
“Enclosed I send a full report of my Lincoln Lecture for our friend Bram Stoker.”
This was my Message from the Dead.
CHAPTER LV
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
Supper on a car — A sensitive mountaineer — ” Good-bye, Jim”
IRVING, like all who have ever known him, loved the “ Hoosier “ poet. We saw a great deal of him when he was in London; and whenever we were in Indianapolis, to meet him was one of the expected pleasures. Riley is one of the most dramatic reciters that live, and when he gives one of his own poems it is an intellectual delight. I remember two specially delightful occasions in which he was a participant. Once in Indianapolis when he came and supped on the car with us whilst we were waiting after the play for the luggage to be loaded. He was in great form, and Irving sat all the time with an expectant smile whilst Riley told us of some of his experiences amongst the hill folk of Indiana where conditions of life are almost primitive. One tale gave Irving intense pleasure — that in which he told of how he had asked a mountaineer who was going down to the nearest town to bring him back some tobacco. This the man had done gladly; but when Riley went to pay him the cost of it he drew his gun on him. When the other asked the cause of offence, which he did not intend or even understand, the mountaineer answered:
“Didn’t I do what ye asked me! Then why do you go for to insult me. I ain’t a tobacker dealer. I bought it for ye, an’ I give it to ye free and glad. I ain’t sellin’ it!”
The other occasion was a dinner at the Savoy Hotel, July 29, 1891, to which Irving had asked some friends to meet him. “ Jamesy “ — for so his friends call him — recited several of his poems, most exquisitely. His rendering of the powerful little poem, “ Good-bye, Jim,” made every one of the other eight men at the table weep.
CHAPTER LVI
ERNEST RENAN
Renan and Haweis — How to converse in a language you don’t know
ON April 3, 188o, when we were playing The Merchant of Venice, Ernest Renan came to the Lyceum; the Rev. H. R. Haweis was with him. At the end of the third act they both came round to Irving’s dressing-room. It was interesting to note the progress through the long Royal passage of that strangely assorted pair. Haweis was diminutive, and had an extraordinary head of black hair. Renan was ponderously fat and bald as a billiard ball. The historian waddled along with an odd rolling gait, whilst the preacher, who was lame, hopped along like a sort of jackdaw. The conversation between Irving and Renan was a strange one to listen to. Neither knew the other’s language; but each kept talking his own with, strange to say, the result that they really understood something of what was said. When I was alone with Irving and remarked on it he said:
“If you don’t know the other person’s language, keep on speaking your own. Do not get hurried or flustered, but keep as natural as you can; your intonation, being natural, will convey something. You have a far better chance of being understood than if you try to talk a language you don’t know!”
CHAPTER LVII
HALL CAINE
A remarkable criticism — Irving and “ The Deemster “- “ Mahomet” — For reasons of State — ’Weird remembrances — ” The Flying Dutchman “ — ” Home, Sweet Home” — “ Glory and John Storm” — Irving and the chimpanzee — A dangerous moment — Unceremonious treatment of a lion — Irving’s last night at the play
I
THE early relations between Irving and Hall Caine are especially interesting, considering the positions which both men afterwards attained. They began in 1874. On the 16th of October in that year Irving wrote to him a very kindly and friendly letter in answer to Hall Caine’s request that he should allow his portrait to be inserted in a monthly magazine which he was projecting.
A fortnight later Hall Caine, as critic of the Liverpool Town Crier, attended the first night of Hamlet at the Lyceum-31st October 1874. His criticism was by many friends thought so excellent that he was asked to reprint it. This was done in the shape of a broad-sheet pamphlet. The critique is throughout keen and appreciative. The last two paragraphs are worthy of preservation:
“To conclude. — Throughout this work (which is not confined to the language of terror and pity, the language of impassioned intellect, but includes also the words of everyday life), every passage has its proper pulse and receives from the actor its characteristic mode of expression. Every speech is good and weighty, correct and dignified, and treated with feeling. The variety, strength and splendour of the whole conception have left impressions which neither time nor circumstanc
e can ever efface. They are happy, indeed, who hear Hamlet first from Mr. Irving. They may see other actors essay the part (a very improbable circumstance whilst Mr. Irving holds his claim to it), but the memory of the noble embodiment of the character will never leave them.
“We will not say that Mr. Irving is the Betterton, Garrick, or Kemble of his age. In consideration of this performance we claim for him a position altogether distinct and unborrowed. Mr. Irving will, we judge, be the leader of a school of actors now eagerly enlisting themselves under his name. The object will be — the triumph of mental over physical histrionic art.”
This critical forecast is very remarkable considering the writer’s age. At that time he was only in his twenty-second year. He had been writing and lecturing for already some time and making a little place for himself locally as a man of letters.