Henry Irving took his theatre companies to the United States on eight different occasions between 1883 and 1904. He had always been drawn towards America. The idea of the country and its people was often on his mind. The man who had put the weapons of success into the actor’s hands, ‘Colonel’ Bateman, was American. After the failure of Fanchette, Bateman, disillusioned with London, had proposed to Irving that they should seek their fortune on the other side of the Atlantic. Both Irving and Ellen terry had been tempted on various occasions by American managers who had come with these tentative approaches. American correspondents and newspaper critics had written a great deal about Irving. The impresario Henry Abbey had finally persuaded Irving to test his company in America. The resultant explosion of tears, tributes, dinners and emotion engendered in London could hardly have been greater if Gladstone had decided to emigrate.