CHAPTER III

Arrival – The Custom House – Things Look Bad – The Interviewers – First Visits – Things Look Brighter – “O Vanity of Vanities.”

New York Harbor; January 5.

At seven o’clock in the morning the Custom House officers came on board. One of them at once recognizing me, said, calling me by name, that he was glad to see me back, and inquired if I had not brought Madame with me this time. It is extraordinary the memory of many of these Americans! This one had seen me for a few minutes two years before, and probably had had to deal with two or three hundred thousand people since.

All the passengers came to the saloon and made their declarations one after another, after which they swore in the usual form that they had told the truth, and signed a paper to that effect. This done, many a poor pilgrim innocently imagines that he has finished with the Custom House, and he renders thanks to Heaven that he is going to set foot on a soil where a man’s word is not doubted. He reckons without his host. In spite of his declaration, sworn and signed, his trunks are opened and searched with all the dogged zeal of a policeman who believes he is on the track of a criminal, and who will only give up after perfectly convincing himself that the trunks do not contain the slightest dutiable article. Everything is taken out and examined. If there are any objects of apparel that appear like new ones to that scrutinizing eye, look out for squalls.

I must say that the officer was very kind to me. For that matter, the luggage of a man who travels alone, without Madame and her impedimenta, is soon examined.

Before leaving the ship, I went to shake hands with Captain Parsell, that experienced sailor whose bright, interesting conversation, added to the tempting delicacies provided by the cook, made many an hour pass right cheerily for those who, like myself, had the good fortune to sit at his table. I thanked him for all the kind attentions I had received at his hands. I should have liked to thank all the employees of the “White Star” line company. Their politeness is above all praise; their patience perfectly angelical. Ask them twenty times a day the most absurd questions, such as, “Will the sea soon calm down?” “Shall we get into harbor on Wednesday?” “Do you think we shall be in early enough to land in the evening?” and so on. You find them always ready with a kind and encouraging answer. “The barometer is going up and the sea is going down,” or, “We are now doing our nineteen knots an hour.” Is it true, or not? It satisfies you, at all events. In certain cases it is so sweet to be deceived! Better to be left to nurse a beloved illusion than have to give it up for a harsh reality that you are powerless against. Every one is grateful to those kind sailors and stewards for the little innocent fibs that they are willing to load their consciences with, in order that they may brighten your path across the ocean a little.

…

Everett House. Noon.

My baggage examined, I took a cab to go to the hotel. Three dollars for a mile and a half. A mere trifle.

It was pouring with rain. New York on a Sunday is never very gay. To-day the city seemed to me horrible: dull, dirty, and dreary. It is not the fault of New York altogether. I have the spleen. A horribly stormy passage, the stomach upside down, the heart up in the throat, the thought that my dear ones are three thousand miles away, all these things help to make everything look black. It would have needed a radiant sun in one of those pure blue skies that North America is so rich in to make life look agreeable and New York passable to-day.

In ten minutes cabby set me down at the Everett House. After having signed the register, I went and looked up my manager, whose bureau is on the ground floor of the hotel.

The spectacle which awaited me was appalling.

There sat the unhappy Major Pond in his office, his head bowed upon his chest, his arms hanging limp, the very picture of despair.

The country is seized with a panic. Everybody has the influenza. Every one does not die of it, but every one is having it. The malady is not called influenza over here, as it is in Europe. It is called “Grippe.” No American escapes it. Some have la grippe, others have the grippe, a few, even, have the la grippe. Others, again, the lucky ones, think they have it. Those who have not had it, or do not think they have it yet, are expecting it. The nation is in a complete state of demoralization. Theaters are empty, business almost suspended, doctors on their backs or run off their legs.

At twelve a telegram is handed to me. It is from my friend, Wilson Barrett, who is playing in Philadelphia. “Hearty greetings, dear friend. Five grains of quinine and two tablets of antipyrine a day, or you get grippe.” Then came many letters by every post. “Impossible to go and welcome you in person. I have la grippe. Take every precaution.” Such is the tenor of them all.

The outlook is not bright. What to do? For a moment I have half a mind to call a cab and get on board the first boat bound for Europe.

I go to my room, the windows of which overlook Union Square. The sky is somber, the street is black and deserted, the air is suffocatingly warm, and a very heavy rain is beating against the windows.

Shade of Columbus, how I wish I were home again!

…

Cheer up, boy, the hand-grasps of your dear New York friends will be sweet after the frantic grasping of stair-rails and other ship furniture for so many days.

I will have lunch and go and pay calls.

…

Excuse me if I leave you for a few minutes. The interviewers are waiting for me downstairs in Major Pond’s office. The interviewers! a gay note at last. The hall porter hands me their cards. They are all there: representatives of the Tribune, the Times, the Sun, the Herald, the World, the Star.

What nonsense Europeans have written on the subject of interviewing in America, to be sure! To hear them speak, you would believe that it is the greatest nuisance in the world.

A Frenchman writes in the Figaro: “I will go to America if my life can be insured against that terrific nuisance, interviewing.”

An Englishman writes to an English paper, on returning from America: “When the reporters called on me, I invariably refused to see them.”

Trash! Cant! Hypocrisy! With the exception of a king, or the prime minister of one of the great powers, a man is only too glad to be interviewed. Don’t talk to me about the nuisance, tell the truth, it is always such a treat to hear it. I consider that interviewing is a compliment, a great compliment paid to the interviewed. In asking a man to give you his views, so as to enlighten the public on such and such a subject, you acknowledge that he is an important man, which is flattering to him; or you take him for one, which is more flattering still.

I maintain that American interviewers are extremely courteous and obliging, and, as a rule, very faithful reporters of what you say to them.

Let me say that I have a lurking doubt in my mind whether those who have so much to say against interviewing in America have ever been asked to be interviewed at all, or have even ever run such a danger.

I object to interviewing as a sign of decadence in modern journalism; but I do not object to being interviewed, I like it; and, to prove it, I will go down at once, and be interviewed.

…

Midnight.

The interview with the New York reporters passed off very well. I went through the operation like a man.

After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had shown me a great deal of kindness during my first visit to America. I found in him a friend ready to welcome me.

The poet and literary critic is a man of about fifty, rather below middle height, with a beautifully chiseled head. In every one of the features you can detect the artist, the man of delicate, tender, and refined feelings. It was a great pleasure for me to see him again. He has finished his “Library of American Literature,” a gigantic work of erudite criticism and judicious compilation, which he undertook a few years ago in collaboration with Miss Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. These eleven volumes form a perfect national monument, a complete cyclopædia of American literature, giving extracts from the writings of every American who has published anything for the last three hundred years (1607-1890).

On leaving him, I went to call on Mrs. Anna Bowman Dodd, the author of “Cathedral Days,” “Glorinda,” “The Republic of the Future,” and other charming books, and one of the brightest conversationalists it has ever been my good fortune to meet. After an hour’s chat with her, I had forgotten all about the grippe, and all other more or less imaginary miseries.

I returned to the Everett House to dress, and went to the Union League Club to dine with General Horace Porter.

The general possesses a rare and most happy combination of brilliant flashing Parisian wit and dry, quiet, American humor. This charming causeur and conteur tells an anecdote as nobody I know can do; he never misses fire. He assured me at table that the copyright bill will soon be passed, for, he added, “we have now a pure and pious Administration. At the White House they open their oysters with prayer.” The conversation fell on American society, or, rather, on American Societies. The highest and lowest of these can be distinguished by the use of van. “The blue blood of America put it before their names, as Van Nicken; political society puts it after, as Sullivan.”

O Van-itas Van-itatum!

Time passed rapidly in such delightful company.

I finished the evening at the house of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. If there had been any cloud of gloom still left hanging about me, it would have vanished at the sight of his sunny face. There was a small gathering of some thirty people, among them Mr. Edgar Fawcett, whose acquaintance I was delighted to make. Conversation went on briskly with one and the other, and at half-past eleven I returned to the hotel completely cured.

To-morrow morning I leave for Boston at ten o’clock to begin the lecture tour in that city, or, to use an Americanism, to “open the show.”