A Frenchman in America Part 17
CITIZEN GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN'S RECEPTION To CITOYEN MAX O'RELL.
P.S.--"Demons" have checkmated "Psychos"! Invitations canceled! "Hub"
Boycotts Sunday Receptions! Boston half century behind New York and Europe's Elite Society. (Ancient Athens still Ancient!) Regrets and Regards! Good-by, Tremont! (The Proprietors not to blame.)
_Vide_ some of his "Apothegmic Works"! (Reviewed in Pulitzer's New York _World_ and Cosmos Press!)
John Bull et Son Ile! Les Filles de John Bull! Les Chers Voisins!
L'Ami Macdonald! John Bull, Junior! Jonathan et Son Continent!
L'Eloquence Francaise! etc.
YOU ARE INVITED TO MEET
this distinguished French Traveler, Author, and Lecturer (From the land of Lafayette, Rochambeau, and De Gra.s.se),
AT MY SIXTH "POP-CORN RECEPTION"!
SUNDAY, JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH, From 2 to 7 P. M.
(Tremont House!)
_Private Banquet Hall!_ _Fifty "Notables"!_
Talent from Dozen Operas and Theaters! All Stars! No Airs! No "Wall Flowers"! No Amens! No Selahs! But "MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB OF GOOD FELLOWSHIP"! No Boredom! No Formality! (Dress as you like!) No Programme! (Pianos! Cellos! Guitars! Mandolins! Banjos! Violins!
Harmonicas! Zithers!) Opera, Theater and Press Represented!
Succeeding Receptions: To Steele Mackaye! Nat Goodwin! Count Zubof (St. Petersburg)! Prima Donna Clementina De Vere (Italy)! Albany Press Club! (Duly announced printed invitations!)
GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN, Tremont House for Winter!
Psychic Press thanks for friendly notices of Sunday Musicales!
It will be seen from the "P. S." that the reception could not be held at the Tremont House; but the plucky Citizen did not allow himself to be beaten, and the reception took place at the house of a friend.
In the evening I lectured in the Boston Theater to a beautiful audience.
If there is a horrible fascination about "the man who won't smile," as I mentioned in a foregoing chapter, there is a lovely fascination about the lady who seems to enjoy your lecture thoroughly. You watch the effects of your remarks on her face, and her bright, intellectual eyes keep you in good form the whole evening; in fact, you give the lecture to her. I perhaps never felt the influence of that face more powerfully than to-night. I had spoken for a few minutes, when Madame Modjeska, accompanied by her husband, arrived and took a seat on the first row of the orchestra stalls. To be able to entertain the great _tragedienne_ became my sole aim, and as soon as I perceived that I was successful, I felt perfectly proud and happy. I lectured to her the whole evening. Her laughter and applause encouraged me, her beautiful, intellectual face cheered me up, and I was able to introduce a little more acting and by-play than usual.
I had had the pleasure of making Madame Modjeska's acquaintance two years ago, during my first visit to the United States, and it was a great pleasure to be able to renew it after the lecture.
I will go and see her _Ophelia_ to-morrow night.
_January 27._
Spent the whole morning wandering about Boston, and visiting a few interesting places. Beacon Street, the public gardens, and Commonwealth Avenue are among the finest thoroughfares I know. What enormous wealth is contained in those miles of huge mansions!
The more I see Boston, the more it strikes me as a great English city.
It has a character of its own, as no other American city has, excepting perhaps Washington and Philadelphia. The solidity of the buildings, the parks, the quietness of the women's dresses, the absence of the tw.a.n.g in most of the voices, all remind you of England.
After lunch I called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is now over eighty, but he is as young as ever, and will die with a kind smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eyes.
I know no more delightful talker than this delightful man. You may say of him that every time he talks he says something. When he asked me what it was I had found most interesting in America, I wished I could have answered: "Why, my dear doctor, to see and to hear such a man as you, to be sure!" But the doctor is so simple, so unaffected, that I felt an answer of that kind, though perfectly sincere, would not have been one calculated to please him. The articles "Over the Tea Cups," which he writes every month for the _Atlantic Monthly_, and which will soon appear in book form, are as bright, witty, humorous, and philosophic as anything he ever wrote. Long may he live to delight his native land!
In the evening I went to see Mr. Edwin Booth and Madame Modjeska in "Hamlet." By far the two greatest tragedians of America in Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. I expected great things. I had seen Mounet-Sully in the part, Henry Irving, Wilson Barrett; and I remembered the witty French _quatrain_, published on the occasion of Mounet-Sully attempting the part:
Sans Fechter ni Riviere Le cas etait hasardeux; Jamais, non jamais sur terre, On n'a fait d'Hamlet sans eux.
I had seen Mr. Booth three times before. As _Brutus_, I thought he was excellent. As _Richelieu_ he was certainly magnificent; as _Iago_ ideally superb.
His _Hamlet_ was a revelation to me. After seeing the raving _Hamlet_ of Mounet-Sully, the somber _Hamlet_ of Irving, and the dreamy _Hamlet_ of Wilson Barrett, I saw this evening _Hamlet_ the philosopher, the rhetorician.
Mr. Booth is too old to play _Hamlet_ as he does, that is to say, without any attempt at making-up. He puts on a black wig, and that is all, absolutely all. It is, however, a most remarkable, subtle piece of acting in his hands.
Madame Modjeska was beautiful as _Ophelia_. No _tragedienne_ that I have ever seen weeps more naturally. In all sad situations she makes the chords of one's heart vibrate, and that without any trick or artifice, but simply by the modulations of her singularly sympathetic voice and such like natural means.
It is very seldom that you can see in America, outside of New York, more than one very good actor or actress playing together. So you may imagine the success of such a combination as Booth-Modjeska.
Every night the theater is packed from floor to ceiling, although the prices of admission are doubled.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XVIII.
ST. JOHNSBURY--THE STATE OF MAINE--NEW ENGLAND SELF-CONTROL--COLD CLIMATES AND FRIGID AUDIENCES--WHERE IS THE AUDIENCE?--ALL DRUNK!--A REMINISCENCE OF A SCOTCH AUDIENCE ON A SAt.u.r.dAY NIGHT.
_St. Johnsbury (Vt.), January 28._
ST. Johnsbury is a charming little town perched on the top of a mountain, from which a lovely scene of hills and woods can be enjoyed.
The whole country is covered with snow, and as I looked at it in the evening by the electric light, the effect was very beautiful. The town has only six thousand inhabitants, eleven hundred of whom came to hear my lecture to-night. Which is the European town of six thousand inhabitants that would supply an audience of eleven hundred people to a literary _causerie_?
St. Johnsbury has a dozen churches, a public library of 15,000 volumes, with a reading-room beautifully fitted with desks and perfectly adapted for study. A museum, a Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, with gymnasium, school-rooms, reading-rooms, play-rooms, and a lecture hall capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Who, after that, would consider himself an exile if he had to live in St. Johnsbury? There is more intellectual life in it than in any French town outside of Paris and about a dozen more large cities.
_Portsea, January 30._
I have been in the State of Maine for two days; a strange State to be in, let me tell you.
After addressing the Connecticut audience in Meriden a few days ago, I thought I had had the experience of the most frigid audience that could possibly be gathered together. Last Tuesday night, at Portsea, I was undeceived.