McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908

Various

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Project Gutenberg's McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908, by Various

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Title: McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908

Author: Various

Release Date: January 4, 2009 [EBook #27699]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, VOL 31 ***

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Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was added by the transcriber.

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS FROM THE PAINTING BY ELLEN EMMET Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Emmet

McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XXXI JUNE, 1908 No. 2

CONTENTS

MY FIRST APPEARANCE IN AMERICA THE DECREE MADE ABSOLUTE PRESIDENT JOHNSON AND HIS WAR ON CONGRESS THE CRYSTAL-GAZER BOB, DÉBUTANT TWO PORTRAITS BY GILBERT STUART MARY BAKER G. EDDY HER FRUITS THE KEY TO THE DOOR THE WAYFARERS

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THE PROBLEMS OF SUICIDE PRAIRIE DAWN THE DOINGS OF THE DEVIL YOUNG HENRY AND THE OLD MAN EDITORIAL

[1] MY FIRST APPEARANCE IN AMERICA

BY

ELLEN TERRY

The first time that there was any talk of my going to America was, I think, in 1874, when I was playing in "The Wandering Heir." Dion Boucicault wanted me to go, and dazzled me with figures, but I expect the cautious Charles Reade influenced me against accepting the engagement.

When I did go, in 1883, I was thirty-five and had a n assured position in my profession. It was the first of eight tours, seven of which I went with Henry Irving. The last was in 1907, after his death. I also went to America one summer on a pleasure trip. The tours lasted three months at least, seven months at most. After a rough calculation, I find that I have spent not quite five years of my life in America. Five out of sixty is not a large proportion, yet I often feel that I am half American. This says a good deal for the hospitality of a people who can make a stranger feel so completely at home in their midst. Perhaps it also says something for my adaptableness!

"When we do not speak of things with a partiality full of love, what we say is not worth being repeated." That was the answer of a courteous Frenchman, who was asked for his impressions of a country. In any case it is almost imprudent to give one's impressions of America. The country is so vast and complex that even those who have amassed mountains of impressions soon find that there still are mountains more. I have lived in New York, Boston, and Chicago for a month at a time, and have felt that to know any of these great towns even superficially would take a year. I have become acquainted with this and that class of Americans, but I realize that there are thousands of other classes that remain unknown.

Copyrighted by Window & Grove From the collections of Miss Frances Johnson and Mrs. Evelyn Smalley ELLEN TERRY OPHELIA, AND HENRIETTA MARIA, THREE PARTS WHICH SHE PLAYED ON THE FIRST AMERICAN TOUR

The Unknown Dangers of America

I set out in 1883 from Liverpool on board the "Brit annic" with the fixed conviction that I should never, never return. For six weeks before we started the word America had only to be breathed to me, and I burst into floods of tears! I was leaving my children, my bullfinch, my parrot, my "aunt" Boo, whom I never expected to see again alive, just because she said I never would, and I was going to face the unknown dangers of the Atlantic and of a strange, barbarous land. Our farewell performances in London had cheered me up a little—though I wept copiously at every one—by showing us that we should be missed. Henry Irving's position seemed to be confirmed and ratifi ed by all that took place before his departure. The dinners he had to eat, the speeches he had to make and to listen to, were really terrific! One speech at the Rabelais Club had, it was said, the longest peroration on record. It was this kind of thing: "Where is our friend Irving going? He is not going like Nares to face the perils of the far North. He is not going like A—— to face something else. He is not going to China," etc.—and so on. After about the hundredth "he is not going," Lord Houghton, who was one of theguests,grew veryimpatient and interrupted the orator with:

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"Of course he isn't! He's going to New York by the Cunard Line. It'll take him about a week!"

New York Before the "Sky-scrapers"

My first voyage was a voyage of enchantment to me. The ship was laden with pig-iron, but she rolled and rolled and rolled. She could never roll too much for me. I have always been a splendid sailor, and I feel jolly at sea. The sudden leap from home into the wilderness of waves does not give me any sensation of melancholy.

What I thought I was going to see when I arrived in America, I hardly remember. I had a vague idea that all American women wore red flannel shirts and bowie knives and that I might be sandbagged in the street! From somewhere or other I had derived an impression that New York was an ugly, noisy place.

Ugly! When I first saw that marvellous harbour I ne arly cried—it was so beautiful. Whenever I come now to the unequalled ap proach to New York I wonder what Americans must think of the approach from the sea to London. How different are the mean, flat, marshy banks of the Thames, and the wooden toy light-house at Dungeness, to the vast, spreading harbour, with its busy multitude of steam boats and ferry boats, its wharf upon wharf, and its tall statue of Liberty dominating all the racket and bustle of the sea traffic of the world!

That was one of the few times in America when I did not miss the poetry of the past. The poetry of the present, gigantic, colossal , and enormous, made me forget it. The "sky-scrapers," so splendid in the landscape now, did not exist in 1883; but I find it difficult to divide my early impressions from my later ones. There was Brooklyn Bridge, though, hung up high in the air like a vast spider's web. Between 1883 and 1893 I noticed a great change in New York and other cities. In ten years they seemed to have grown with the energy of tropical plants. But between 1893 and 1907 I saw no evidence of such feverish increase. It is possible that the Americans are arriving at a stage when they can no longer beat the record! There is a vast difference between one of the old New York brownstone houses and one of the fourteen-storied buildings near the river, but between this and the Times Square Bu ilding or the still more amazing Flatiron Building, which is said to oscillate at the top—it is so far from the ground—there is very little difference. I hear that they are now beginning to build downwards into the earth, but this will not change the appearance of New York for a long time.

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From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley HENRY IRVING AS MATHIAS IN "THE BELLS" THE PART IN WHICH IRVING MADE HIS FIRST APPEARANCE IN AMERICA

I had not to endure the wooden shed in which most people landing in America have to struggle with the custom-house officials—a struggle as brutal as a "round in the ring" as Paul Bourget describes it. W e were taken off the "Britannic" in a tug, and Mr. Abbey, Lawrence Barrett, and many other friends met us—including the much-dreaded reporters.

Lent by The Century Co. THE REJECTED DESIGN FOR A COLUMBIAN MEDAL MADE BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

When we landed, I drove to the Hotel Dam, Henry to the Brevoort House. There was no Diana on the top of the Madison Square Building then—the building did not exist, to cheer the heart of a new arrival as the first evidence ofbeauty in

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the city. There were horse trams instead of cable cars; but a quarter of a century has not altered the peculiarly dilapidated carriages in which one drives from the dock, the muddy sidewalks, and the cavernous holes in the cobble-paved streets. Had the elevated railway, the first sign ofpowerthat one notices after leaving the boat, begun to thunder through the streets? I cannot remember New York without it.

Lent by The Century Co. THE BAS-RELIEF PORTRAIT OF BASTIEN-LEPAGE MODELED BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS. SAINT-GAUDENS GAVE A CAST OF THE PORTRAIT TO MISS TERRY

I missed then, as I miss now, the numberlesshansomsof London plying in the streets for hire. People in New York get about in the cars, unless they have their own carriages. The hired carriage has no reason for existing, and when it does, it celebrates its unique position by charging two dollars for a journey which in London would not cost fifty cents!

THE BAS-RELIEF PORTRAIT OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON MODELED BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS FOR THE ST. GILES CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH. SAINT-GAUDENS GAVE A CAST OF THIS PORTRAIT TO MISS TERRY'S DAUGHTER, EDITH CRAIG

Irving Brings Shakespeare to America

There were very few theatres in New York when we first went there. All that part of the city which is now "up town" did not exist, and what was then "up" is now more than "down" town. The American stage has changed almost as much. Even then there was a liking for local plays which showed the peculiarities of the different States, but they were more violent an d crude than now. The original American genius and the true dramatic plea sure of the people is, I believe, in such plays, where very complete observation of certain phases of American life and very real pictures of manners are combined with comedy almost childlike in its naïveté. The sovereignty of the young girl which is such a marked feature in social life is reflected in American plays. This is by the way. What I want to make clear is that in 1883 there was no living American drama as there is now, that such productions of romantic plays and Shakespeare as Henry Irving brought over from England, were unknow n, and that the extraordinary success of our first tours would be impossible now. We were the first, and we were pioneers and we werenew. To be new is everything in America. Such palaces as the Hudson Theatre, New York, were not dreamed of when we were at the Star, which was, however, quite equal to any theatre in London, in front of the footlights. The stage itself, the lighting appliances, and the dressing-rooms were inferior.

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HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET FROM THE STATUE BY E. ONSLOW FORD, R. A., IN THE GUILDHALL OF THE CITY OF LONDON

ELLEN TERRY AS IMOGEN DRAWN BY ALMA-TADEMA FOR MISS TERRY'S JUBILEE IN 1906

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ELLEN TERRY AS PORTIA FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR JOHN MILLAIS, R. A.

Our First Appearance Before an American Audience

Henry made his first appearance in America in "The Bells." He was not at his best on the first night, but he could be pretty good even when he was not at his best. I watched him from a box. Nervousness made the company very slow. The audience was a splendid one—discriminating and appreciative. We felt that the Americanswantedto like us. We felt in a few days so extraordinarily at home. The first sensation of entering a foreign city was quickly wiped out.

WILLIAM WINTER— ONE OF THE FIRST CRITICS TO WELCOME IRVING TO THIS COUNTRY

On the second night in New York it was my turn. "Command yourself—this is the time to show you can act!" I said to myself as I went on the stage of the Star Theatre, dressed as Henrietta Maria. But I could not command myself. I played badly and cried too much in the last act. But the people liked me, and they liked the play, perhaps because it was historical, and of history the Americans are passionately fond. The audience took many points which had been ignored in London. I had always thought Henry as Charles I. most moving when he made that involuntary effort to kneel to his subject, Moray, but the Lyceum audiences never seemed to notice it. In New York the audience burst out into the most sympathetic, spontaneous applause that I have ever heard in a theatre.

American Clothes

My impression of the way the American women dressed in 1883 was not favourable. Some of them wore Indian shawls and dia mond ear-rings. They dressed too grandly in the street and too dowdily i n the theatre. All this has changed. The stores in New York are now the most beautiful in the world, and the women are dressed to perfection. They are as clever at thedemi-toiletteas the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and smartness of their walking gowns is very refreshing after the floppy, blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa, of which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor- made," now seem so fond. The universal white "waist" is so pretty and trim on the American girl. It is one of the distinguishing marks of a land of the free, a land where "class" hardly exists. The girl in the store wears the white waist; so does the rich girl on Fifth Avenue. It costs anything from seventy-five cents to fifty dollars!

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