Wired Love and Thereby Hangs a Tale

By the 1890s, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle achieved considerable success, as the author of Sherlock Holmes, but was anxious to start writing something different. In 1892, he wrote a play, which was immediately snatched up by London's most famous actor, Henry Irving, and presented to his theatre manager, Bram Stoker.

In his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, Stoker recorded the event, as follows:

WATERLOO 

"KING ARTHUR" 

"DON QUIXOTE" 

ONE day early in March 1892, whilst we were rehearsing Tennyson's play, The Foresters, which in accordance with the author's request was produced for copyright purposes at the Lyceum, Irving came into the office in a hurry. He was a little late. He, Loveday and myself always used the same office, as we found it in all ways convenient for our perpetual consultations. As he came hurrying out to the stage, after putting on the brown soft broad-brimmed felt hat for which he usually exchanged his "topper" during rehearsals, he stopped beside my table where I was writing, and laying a parcel on it said: 

"I wish you would throw an eye over that during rehearsal. It came this morning. You can tell me what you think of it when I come off!" 

I took up the packet and unrolled a number of type-written sheets a little longer than foolscap. I read it with profound interest and was touched to my very heart's core by its humour and pathos. It was very short, and before Irving came in again from the stage I had read it a second time. When he came in he said presently in an unconcerned way: 

"By the way, did you read that play?"

"Yes!" 

"What do you think of it?" 

"I think this," I said, "that that play is never going to leave the Lyceum. You must own it at any price. It is made for you." 

"So I think, too!" he said heartily. 

"You had better write to the author to-day and ask him what cheque we are to send. We had better buy the whole rights!' 

"Who is the author?" 

"Conan Doyle!" 

The author answered at once and the cheque was sent in due course. The play was then named A Straggler of '15. This Irving changed to A Story of Waterloo, when the play was down for production. Later this was simplified to Waterloo. 

Irving fell in love with the character, and began to study it right away. The only change in the play he made was to get Sir Arthur then "Dr." or "Mr." Conan Doyle to consolidate the matter of the first few pages into a shorter space. The rest of the MS. remained exactly as written. 

It was not, however, for nearly two years that he got an opportunity of playing it. It is a difficult matter to find a place for an hour-long play in a working bill. Henry VII., King Lear, and Becket held the Lyceum stage till the middle of 1893. Then came a tour in America lasting up to end of March 1 894. The short London season was taken up with a prearranged reproduction of Faust. 

Then followed a provincial tour from September to Christmas. Here was found the opportunity. The Bells is a short play, and for mere length allows of an addition. 

In the first week of the tour at the Princes Theatre, Bristol, on September 21, 1894, A Story of Waterloo was given. The matter was one of considerable importance in the dramatic world ; not only was Irving to play a new piece, but that piece was Conan Doyle's first attempt at the drama. The chief newspapers of London and some of the greater provincial cities wished to be represented on the occasion ; the American press also wished to send its critical contingent. Accordingly we arranged for a special train to bring the critical force. Hearing that so many of his London journalistic friends were coming an old friend of Irving' s then resident in Bristol, Mr. John Saunders, arranged to give a supper in the Liberal Club, to which they were all invited, together with many persons of local importance. 

The play met with a success extraordinary even for Irving. The audience followed with rapt attention and manifest emotion, swaying with the varying sentiments of the scene. The brief aid to memory in my diary of that day runs: 

"New play enormous success. H. I. fine and great. All laughed and wept. Marvellous study of senility. Eight calls at end." Unfortunately the author was not present to share the triumph, for it would have been a delightful memory for him. He was on a tour in America; "and thereby hangs a tale."

 Amongst the audience who had come specially from London was  Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat, owner and editor of the Chicago Times Herald,  a close and valued friend of Irving and myself. He was booked  to leave for America the next day. When the play was over  and the curtain finally down, he hurried away just in time to  catch the train for Southampton, whence the American Line boat  started in the morning. He got on board all right. The follow-  ing Saturday he arrived in New York, just in time to catch the "flyer," as they call the fast train to Chicago on the New York  Central line. On Sunday night a public dinner was given to Conan  Doyle to which of course Kohlsaat had been bidden. He arrived  too late for the dining part ; but having dressed in the train he  came on to the hotel just as dinner was finished and before  the speeches began. He took a chair next to Doyle and said  to him:

"I am delighted to tell you that your play at Bristol was an  enormous success!"   

"So I am told," said Doyle modestly. "The cables are excellent."   

"They are not half enough!" answered Kohlsaat, who had been  reading in the train the papers for the last week.   

"Indeed! I am rejoiced to hear it! " said Conan Doyle  somewhat dubiously. 

"May I ask if you have had any special  report?"   

"I didn't need any report, I saw it! "   

"Oh, come!" said Conan Doyle, who thought that he was in  some way chaffing him." 

That is impossible!"   

"Not to me! But I am in all human probability the only man on the American continent who was there?" 

Then whilst the  gratified author listened he gave him a full description of the play  and the scene which followed it. To my own mind Waterloo as an acting play is perfect ; and  Irving's playing in it was the high-water mark of histrionic art.  Nothing was wanting in the whole gamut of human feeling. It was a cameo, with all the delicacy of touch of a master-hand  working in the fine material of the layered shell. It seemed to  touch all hearts always. When the dying veteran sprang from his  chair to salute the colonel of his old regiment the whole house  simultaneously burst into a wild roar of applause. This was  often the effect at subsequent performances both at home and in America.

There's so much in this tale that I love, but mostly it's the global nature of the story. Even years later, as Stoker sits writing it, he can hardly believe the speed with which his friend got from the Lyceum Theatre in London to Doyle in Chicago - faster than the cables even! No wonder Victorians were interested in evolution and felt they were sitting on the edge of the future. No wonder we relate to them so well today.

Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes tells a very contemporary story, which, after being forgetten for many years, is resurfacing as something very much like internet dating, and is near the top of my reading list. Stoker's Dracula was also considered a bit of technofiction, in which the protagonists used half a dozen new modes of recording their thoughts to tell the story of a vampire in London. I wonder what Stoker and Doyle would have thought of FaceTime and Skype.

I'm not, however, convinced that Stoker ever used most of the technology he was fascinated with. For many Victorians, new technology was frightening. Sigmund Freud and Queen Victoria were afraid of trains. The first time they showed a movie of a train in London, people fled the theatre afraid that the train was headed right for them!

Back to Stoker's story above, I love almost any story that can incorporate the word foolscap. It's a word I'm afraid will drop out of usage, during my lifetime. And I love that Stoker explains why he shared an office at the Lyceum, though my heart breaks for him a little bit.

He was the theatre manager and he was sitting there writing (maybe working on Dracula, when Irving barged in. Mrs. Stoker didn't like it when he wrote at home because he liked to act out his characters, so maybe the theatre was the right place for him to be writing, but he probably justified his sharing an office to his father too.

Abraham Stoker, Bram Stoker's father, was a petty Dublin cleric, who felt he had let his employers walk all over him throughout his career and wanted his sons to have more than him. Stoker doted on Irving and still had to share an office - poor guy.

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Faust in America

For most of his life, Bram Stoker worked for the famous actor, Henry Irving. On many occasions, this work brought Stoker to America. As I'm about to set off on my own summer adventures, I found this passage about a trip in 1888 from Stoker's Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving especially appealing.

When we played Faust in America, it was curious to note the different reception accorded to it undoubtedly arising from traditional belief.

In Boston, where the old puritanical belief of a real devil still holds, we took in one evening four thousand eight hundred and fifty-two dollars more than a thousand pounds the largest dramatic house up to then known in America. Strangely the night was that of Irving's fiftieth birthday. For the rest the lowest receipts out of thirteen performances was two thousand and ten dollars. Seven were over three thousand, and three over four thousand.

In Philadelphia, where are the descendants of the pious Quakers who followed Penu into the wilderness, the average receipts were even greater. Indeed at the matinee on Saturday, the crowd was so vast that the doors were carried by storm. All the seats had been sold, but in America it was usual to sell admissions to stand at one dollar each. The crowd of "standees," almost entirely women, began to assemble whilst the treasurer, who in an American theatre sells the tickets, was at his dinner. His assistant, being without definite instructions, went on selling till the whole seven hundred left with him were exhausted. It was vain to try to stem the rush of these enthusiastic ladies. They carried the outer door and the checktaker with it ; and broke down by sheer weight of numbers the great inner doors of heavy mahogany and glass standing some eight feet high. It was impossible for the seat-holders to get in till a whole posse of police appeared on the scene and cleared them all out, only readmitting them when the seats had been filled. 

But in Chicago, which as a city neither fears the devil nor troubles its head about him or all his works, the receipts were not much more than half the other places Not nearly so good as for the other plays of the repertoire presented. 

In New York the business with the play was steady and enormous. New York was founded by the Bible-loving righteous-living Dutch. 

This passage appeals to me because of the sense that Stoker is making grand and sweeping judgements as a foreign observer. It's something that can be humourous, but is also important not to do when you are travelling. 

I also find this passage interesting because of the old stereotypes about Americans as superstitious religious fanatics. Stoker extols these stereotypes here. Stoker sees Americans' religious biases as more pervasive than their ability to appreciate art, literature, and theatre. 

It's funny that Stoker is unable to see New York, Boston, and Philadelphia as cultural centres themselves. Even by the late 1880s, New York was blossoming as a cultural centre.

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Bram Stoker on Abraham Lincoln

I never would have guessed that Bram Stoker was an Amerophile, but he was. He aspired to learn the histories of all the American presidents and research Abraham Lincoln extensively. I think he was attracted to Lincoln by the name. I know I'm always pretty stoked to meet someone with the same first name as myself - and I think I'd still be stoked if my first name were more common.

I was surprised to find this out about Stoker because we remember writers for their successes. I find Stoker's relationship to Lincoln interesting because it’s a writer's failures that make him/her human. Also, doing my own writing and research, it's sometimes comforting to know that even "great" writers weren't always a success.

Did I mention that Stoker wasn't a successful Loncoln scholar? No one ever thinks of him as an Amerophile because he didn't have much success as one. Moreover, I think thins might have caused him a bit anxiety and trepidation as he prepared to meet one of his favorite writers, Walt Whitman - an American. 

In 1887, Bram researched and prepared a lecture on Lincoln, which he practiced, with some success, in England, before delivering it in the United States, where he was to later meet his idol, Walt Whitman. When he met Whitman, also a fan of Lincoln, he said nothing about his lecture. Historians speculate this is because he was embarrassed, after receiving a terrible review in the New York Times.

Less than 100 people listened to a lecture by Bram Stoker yesterday afternoon in Chickering Hall, the subject being 'Abraham Lincoln.' 

Mr. Stoker has delivered this lecture with great acceptance before unenlightened English audiences, and his utterances have been highly commended by the semi-educated English press. 

On this side of the water, however, where Abraham Lincoln lived and died, and where American history is taught in public schools, a historical review of the life and times of the martyr-President, even when presented by Mr. Henry Irving's manager, is apt to fall flat. : General Horace Porter, who was an apparently interested auditor, congratulated Mr. Stoker at the conclusion of the lecture, and Major Pond, as he gazed sadly around the vast array of empty seats, said: "Well, I didn't expect any thing else. This lecture was advertised just as extensively as the readings of Charles Dickens or the talk of Max O'Reil. I spent just as much money on it. Mr. Stoker showed me some very flattering notices of his lecture clipped from the English press. So I said to him one day, 'Why don’t you deliver that lecture in New York, Stoker!' 

The fact is," said the Major, reflectively, "nobody cares to listen to a lecture on Abraham Lincoln in this country." 

We can understand, if Bram was embarrassed after reading that, knowing his hero likely read it too before their meeting. Swallowing his pride, Bram and Whitman became friends.

Bram made frequent trips to the United States, but arrived a little too late in 1894 to see Whitman for the last time. On this visit, however, he learned that Whitman had left something behind for him: an envelope with the original notes from his own American lecture on Abraham Lincoln, dated April 15, 1886. With this, was a letter that said: “Enclosed I send a full report of my Lincoln Lecture for our friend Bram Stoker.”

23 April 2014

To this, I would like to add that my opinions here were based on limited research, using source materials created in the United States. I think that I, like the others I was reading before, had trouble finding a primary source on Stoker's Lincoln Lectures. Such a source may be found in: Robert J. Havlik's “Bram Stoker’s Lecture on Abraham Lincoln,” Irish Studies Review 10:1 (April 2002).

I'm yet to find any reviews of Stoker's Lincoln Lectures in London, but suspect that research based on the American reviews is inclined to mimic the mocking tone of those reviews. Stoker's interest in Lincoln was actually fuelled by Whitman and borrowed from Whitman's research into Lincoln's assassination. Reading the Stoker essay, presented by Havlik, I found Stoker's thoughts to be balanced and elegantly presented.

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