Among the visitors who have called on Mr. Irving, Viscount Bury, James McHenry, and General Collis were among the favored ones who were admitted to audience. Scores of invitations for every kind of entertainment have overwhelmed him, keeping three or four of his secretaries busy with writing his expression of regrets.
When Irving was at Philadelphia he had a young English friend visiting him. The waiter (who was evidently in the confidence of the local reporter, or might have been the reporter himself masquerading as a waiter) pressed him in as a secretary. Abbey’s manager, Mr. Palser, Mr. Stoker, Mr. Loveday, and another friend, a resident of Philadelphia, were all promoted to the secretarial office. There is a sublime touch of unconscious satire in this staff of secretaries, engaged upon the work of answering Irving’s letters, which will be particularly appreciated in London, where that one special sin of his—neglecting to answer letters—is even commented upon in learned reviews. The after-dinner “study and meditations” is “Jeames’s” view of the siesta, which is a needful incident of every actor’s day. The data of the sketch being fairly correct, the _bona fides_ of it, from the reporter’s point of view, make it interesting as well as characteristic of the “personal” character of some of the clever news journals of the day.
ONE day, during “this interval after dinner,” which is “passed in study and meditation,” Irving said, “Have you followed out all the story of the Bisbee murderers?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is one of those strange cases of lawlessness, that I have taken out of the newspapers for my scrap-book. Charles Reade[61] would have been interested in it. Have you ever seen his scrap-books?”
“No,” said Irving; “are they very remarkable?”
“Yes, and in my slovenly attempts to save newspaper cuttings I often think of him. I once spent a whole day with him, looking over his journalistic extracts, and he was lamenting all the time the trouble involved in their arrangement and indexing. He subscribed to many odd out-of-the-way newspapers for his collections. If he had ever visited America he would have been tempted to make a very formidable addition to his list.
“Do you know the beginning of the Bisbee business? I have only seen the account of the hunting down of one of the murderers, which has interested me tremendously. Have you seen any accounts of the capture?”