Adventures and Letters [68]
if it was that odious Dunraven they were going to war about.
My article was a very lucky thing and is greatly quoted and in social gatherings I am appealed to as a final authority.
The football story, by the way, did me a heap of good with the newspapers and the price was quoted as the highest ever paid for a piece of reporting. People sent for it so that the edition was exhausted. The Journal people were greatly pleased.
Yvette Guilbert is at Hammerstein's and crowds the new music hall nightly, at two dollars a seat. Irving and Miss Terry have been most friendly to me and to the family. Frohman is going to put "Zenda" on in New York because he has played a failure, which will of course kill it for next year for Eddie, when he comes out as a star. I have never seen such general indignation over a private affair. Barrymore called it a case of Ollaga Zenda. They even went to Brooklyn when Eddie was playing there and asked him to stage the play for them and how he made his changes and put on his whiskers. Poor Eddie, he lacks a business head and a business manager--and Sam talks and shakes his head but is little better. Lots of love and best wishes for the New Year.
DICK.
CHAPTER IX
MOSCOW, BUDAPEST, LONDON
The years 1896--1897 were probably the most active of Richard's very active life. In the space of twelve months he reported the Coronation at Moscow, the Millennial Celebration at Budapest, the Spanish-Cuban War, the McKinley Inauguration, the Greek-Turkish War and the Queen's Jubilee. Although this required a great deal of time spent in travelling, Richard still found opportunity to do considerable work on his novel "Captain Macklin," to which he refers in one of his letters from London.
As correspondent of the New York American, then The Journal, Richard went from Florence, where he was visiting me, to Moscow. He was accompanied by Augustus Trowbridge, an old friend of my brother's and a rarely good linguist. The latter qualification proved of the greatest possible assistance to Richard in his efforts to witness the actual coronation ceremony. To have finally been admitted to the Kremlin my brother always regarded as one of his greatest successes as a correspondent.
En route--May 1896. DEAR CHAS:
The night is passed and with the day comes "a hope" but during the blackness I had "a suffer"-- I read until two--five hours--and then slept until five when the middle man who had slept on my shoulder all night left the train and the second one to whom Bernardi was so polite left me alone and had the porter fit me up a bed so that I slept until seven again-- Then the Guardian Angel returned for his traps and I bade him a sleepy adieu and was startled to see two soldiers standing shading their eyes in salute in the doorway and two gentlemen bowing to my kind protector with the obsequiousness of servants-- He sort of smiled back at me and walked away with the soldiers and 13 porters carrying his traps. So I rung up the conductor and he said it was the King's Minister with his eyes sticking out of his head--the conductor's eyes--not the Minister's. I don't know what a King's Minister is but he liked your whiskey-- I am now passing through the Austrian Tyrol which pleases me so much that I am chortling with joy-- None of the places for which my ticket call are on any map--but don't you care, I don't care-- I wish I could adequately describe last night with nothing but tunnels hours in length so that you had to have all the windows down and the room looked like a safe and full of tobacco smoke and damp spongey smoke from the engine, and bad air. That first compartment I went in was filled later with German women who took off their skirts and the men took off their shoes. Everybody in the rear of the car is filthy dirty but I had a wash at the Custom house and now I am almost clean and quite happy. The day is beautiful and the compartment is all my own-- I am absolutely enchanted with the Tyrol-- I have never seen such quaint picture book houses and mills with wheels like that
My article was a very lucky thing and is greatly quoted and in social gatherings I am appealed to as a final authority.
The football story, by the way, did me a heap of good with the newspapers and the price was quoted as the highest ever paid for a piece of reporting. People sent for it so that the edition was exhausted. The Journal people were greatly pleased.
Yvette Guilbert is at Hammerstein's and crowds the new music hall nightly, at two dollars a seat. Irving and Miss Terry have been most friendly to me and to the family. Frohman is going to put "Zenda" on in New York because he has played a failure, which will of course kill it for next year for Eddie, when he comes out as a star. I have never seen such general indignation over a private affair. Barrymore called it a case of Ollaga Zenda. They even went to Brooklyn when Eddie was playing there and asked him to stage the play for them and how he made his changes and put on his whiskers. Poor Eddie, he lacks a business head and a business manager--and Sam talks and shakes his head but is little better. Lots of love and best wishes for the New Year.
DICK.
CHAPTER IX
MOSCOW, BUDAPEST, LONDON
The years 1896--1897 were probably the most active of Richard's very active life. In the space of twelve months he reported the Coronation at Moscow, the Millennial Celebration at Budapest, the Spanish-Cuban War, the McKinley Inauguration, the Greek-Turkish War and the Queen's Jubilee. Although this required a great deal of time spent in travelling, Richard still found opportunity to do considerable work on his novel "Captain Macklin," to which he refers in one of his letters from London.
As correspondent of the New York American, then The Journal, Richard went from Florence, where he was visiting me, to Moscow. He was accompanied by Augustus Trowbridge, an old friend of my brother's and a rarely good linguist. The latter qualification proved of the greatest possible assistance to Richard in his efforts to witness the actual coronation ceremony. To have finally been admitted to the Kremlin my brother always regarded as one of his greatest successes as a correspondent.
En route--May 1896. DEAR CHAS:
The night is passed and with the day comes "a hope" but during the blackness I had "a suffer"-- I read until two--five hours--and then slept until five when the middle man who had slept on my shoulder all night left the train and the second one to whom Bernardi was so polite left me alone and had the porter fit me up a bed so that I slept until seven again-- Then the Guardian Angel returned for his traps and I bade him a sleepy adieu and was startled to see two soldiers standing shading their eyes in salute in the doorway and two gentlemen bowing to my kind protector with the obsequiousness of servants-- He sort of smiled back at me and walked away with the soldiers and 13 porters carrying his traps. So I rung up the conductor and he said it was the King's Minister with his eyes sticking out of his head--the conductor's eyes--not the Minister's. I don't know what a King's Minister is but he liked your whiskey-- I am now passing through the Austrian Tyrol which pleases me so much that I am chortling with joy-- None of the places for which my ticket call are on any map--but don't you care, I don't care-- I wish I could adequately describe last night with nothing but tunnels hours in length so that you had to have all the windows down and the room looked like a safe and full of tobacco smoke and damp spongey smoke from the engine, and bad air. That first compartment I went in was filled later with German women who took off their skirts and the men took off their shoes. Everybody in the rear of the car is filthy dirty but I had a wash at the Custom house and now I am almost clean and quite happy. The day is beautiful and the compartment is all my own-- I am absolutely enchanted with the Tyrol-- I have never seen such quaint picture book houses and mills with wheels like that