Shadows of the Stage Part 3

Actors, as a cla.s.s, know nothing but the stage and see nothing but the pursuit in which they are occupied. Whoever has lived much among them knows that fact, from personal observation. Whoever has read the various and numerous memoirs that have from time to time been published by elderly members of that profession must have been amused to perceive that, while they conventionally agree that "all the world's a stage,"

they are enthusiastically convinced that the stage is all the world.

Jefferson's book, although it contains much about the theatre, shows him to be an exception in this respect, even as he is in many others. He has seen many countries and many kinds of men and things, and he has long looked upon life with the thoughtful gaze of a philosopher as well as the wise smile of a humourist. He can, if he likes, talk of something besides the shop. His account of his life "lacks form a little," and his indifference to "accurate statistics"--which he declares to be "somewhat tedious"--is now and then felt to be an embarra.s.sment. One would like to know, for instance, while reading about the primitive theatrical times, when actors sailed the western rivers in flatboats, and shot beasts and birds on the bank, precisely the extent and limits of that period. Nor is this the only queer aspect of the dramatic past that might be illumined. The total environment of a man's life is almost equally important with the life itself--being, indeed, the scenery amid which the action pa.s.ses--and a good method for the writing of a biography is that which sharply defines the successive periods of childhood, youth, manhood, and age, and, while depicting the development of the individual from point to point, depicts also the entire field through which he moves, and the mutations, affecting his life, that occur in the historic and social fabric around him. Jefferson, while he has painted vigorously and often happily, on a large canvas, has left many s.p.a.ces empty and others but thinly filled. The reader who accompanies him may, nevertheless, with a little care, piece out the story so as to perceive it as a sequent, distinct, harmonious, and rounded narrative. Meanwhile the companions.h.i.+p of this heedless historian is delightful--for whether as actor, painter, or writer, Jefferson steadily exerts the charm of a genial personality. You are as one walking along a country road, on a golden autumn day, with a kind, merry companion, who knows all about the trees that fringe your track and the birds that flit through their branches, and who beguiles the way with many a humorous tale and many a pleasant remembrance, now impressing your mind by the sagacity of his reflections, now touching your heart by some sudden trait of sentiment or pathos, and always pleasing and satisfying you with the consciousness of a sweet, human, broad, charitable, piquant nature. Although an autobiographer Jefferson is not egotistical, and although a moralist he is not a bore. There is a tinge of the Horatian mood in him--for his reader often becomes aware of that composed, sagacious, half-droll, quizzical mind that indicates, with grave gentleness, the folly of ambition, the vanity of riches, the value of the present hour, the idleness of borrowing trouble, the blessing of the golden medium in fortune, the absurdity of flatterers, and the comfort of keeping a steadfast spirit amid the inevitable vicissitudes of this mortal state.

Jefferson has memories of a boyhood that was pa.s.sed in Was.h.i.+ngton, Baltimore, and New York. He went to Chicago in 1838, when that place was scarcely more than a village--making the journey from New York to Buffalo in a ca.n.a.l-boat, and sailing thence, aboard a steamer, through the lakes of Erie, Huron, and Michigan. He travelled with his parents, and they gave dramatic performances, in which he a.s.sisted, in western towns. It was a time of poverty and hards.h.i.+p, but those ills were borne cheerfully--the brighter side of a hard life being kept steadily in view, and every comic incident of it being seen and appreciated. His father was a gentleman of the Mark Tapley temperament, who came out strong amid adverse circ.u.mstances, and the early disappearance from the book of that delightful person (who died in 1842, of yellow fever, at Mobile), is a positive sorrow. His mother, a refined and gentle lady, of steadfast character and of uncommon musical and dramatic talents and accomplishments, survived till 1849, and her ashes rest in Ronaldson's cemetery, in Philadelphia. Jefferson might have said much more about his parents, and especially about his famous grandfather, without risk of becoming tedious--for they were remarkably interesting people; but he was writing his own life and not theirs, and he has explained that he likes not to dwell much upon domestic matters. The story of his long ancestry of actors, which reaches back to the days of Garrick (for there have been five generations of the Jeffersons upon the stage), he has not mentioned; and the story of his own young days is hurried rapidly to a conclusion. He was brought on the stage, when a child, at the theatre in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., by the negro comedian Thomas D. Rice, who emptied him out of a bag; and thereupon, being dressed as "a n.i.g.g.e.r dancer," in imitation of Rice, he performed the antics of Jim Crow. He adverts to his first appearance in New York and remembers his stage combat with Master t.i.tus; and he thinks that Master t.i.tus must remember it also,--since one of that boy's big toes was nearly cut off in the fray.

That combat occurred at the Franklin theatre, September 30, 1837--a useful fact that the autobiographer cares not to mention. He speedily becomes a young man, as the reader follows him through the first three chapters of his narrative,--of which there are seventeen,--and he is found to be acting, as a stock player, in support of James W. Wallack, Junius Brutus Booth, W.C. Macready, and Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Wallack, Jr.

Upon the powers and peculiarities of those actors, and upon the traits of many others who, like them, are dead and gone (for there is scarcely a word in the book about any of his living contemporaries), he comments freely and instructively. He was "barn-storming" in Texas when the Mexican war began, and he followed in the track of the American army, and acted in the old Spanish theatre in Matamoras, in the spring of 1846; and, subsequently, finding that this did no good, he opened a stall there for the sale of coffee and other refreshments, in the corner of a gambling h.e.l.l. He calls to mind the way of domestic life and the every-day aspect of houses, gardens, people, and manners in Matamoras, and those he describes with especial skill--deftly introducing the portraiture of a dusky, black-eyed, volatile Mexican girl, to whom he lost, temporarily, the light heart of youth, and whom he thinks that he might have married had he not deemed it prudent to journey northward toward a cooler clime. In New Orleans, at about that time, he first saw the then young comedian John E. Owens: and he records the fact that his ambition to excel as an actor was awakened by the spectacle of that rival's success. Owens has had his career since then,--and a brilliant one it was,--and now he sleeps in peace.

After that experience Jefferson repaired to Philadelphia, and during the next ten years, from 1846 to 1856, he wrought in that city and in New York, Baltimore, Richmond, and other places, sometimes as a stock actor, sometimes as a star, and sometimes as a manager. He encountered various difficulties. He took a few serious steps and many comic ones. He was brought into contact with some individuals that were eminent and with some that were ludicrous. He crossed the Allegheny mountains in mid-winter, from Wheeling to c.u.mberland, in a cold stage-coach, and almost perished. He was a member of Burton's company at the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, and was one of the chorus in that great actor's revival of _Antigone_--which there is little doubt that the chorus extinguished. He was the low comedian in Joseph Foster's amphitheatre, where he sang _Captain Kidd_ to fill up the "carpenter scenes," and where he sported amid the turbulent rhetorical billows of _Timour the Tartar_ and _The Terror of the Road_. He acted in New York at the Franklin theatre and also at the Chatham. He managed theatres in Macon and Savannah, where he brought out the blithe Sir William Don; and one of the sprightliest episodes of his memoir is the chapter in which he describes that tall, elegant, nonchalant adventurer. Don was a Scotchman, born in 1826, who made his first appearance in America in November 1850 at the Broadway theatre, New York, and afterward drifted aimlessly through the provincial theatres. Don was married in 1857 to Miss Emily Sanders, and he died at Tasmania, March 19, 1862, and was buried at Hobartstown. Jefferson saw the dawn of promise in the career of Julia Dean,--when that beautiful girl was acting with him, in the stock--and afterwards he saw the noonday splendour of her prosperity; and he might have recalled, but that sad touches are excluded from his biography, her mournful decline. In 1853 he was stage manager of the Baltimore museum, for Henry C. Jarrett, and in 1854 he was manager of the Richmond theatre, for John T. Ford. Among the players whom he met, and who deeply influenced him, were James E. Murdoch, Henry Placide, Edwin Forrest, Edwin Adams, and Agnes Robertson. But the actor who most affected the youth of Joseph Jefferson, whose influence sank deepest into his heart and has remained longest in his memory and upon his style, was his half-brother, Charles Burke: and certainly, as a serio-comic actor, it may be doubted whether Charles Burke ever was surpa.s.sed. That comedian was born March 27, 1822, in Philadelphia, and he died in New York, November 10, 1854. Jefferson's mother, Cornelia Frances Thomas, born in New York, October 1, 1796, the daughter of French parents, was married in her girlhood to the Irish comedian Thomas Burke, who died in 1824; and she contracted her second marriage, with Jefferson's father, in 1826. Jefferson writes at his best in the description of scenery, in the a.n.a.lysis of character, and in the statement of artistic principles. His portraiture of Murdoch, as a comedian, is particularly clear and fine. His account of Julia Dean's. .h.i.t, as Lady Priory, is excellent and will often be cited. His portrayal of the reciprocal action of Burton and Charles Burke, when they were a.s.sociated in the same piece, conveys a valuable lesson. His anecdotes of Edwin Forrest present that grim figure as yet again the involuntary cause of mirth. It often was so. Jefferson, however, draws a veil of gentle charity over those misused powers, that perverse will, that wasted life. The most striking dramatic portraiture in the book is that bestowed on Charles Burke, William Warren, George Holland, Tom Glessing, and Edwin Adams. Those were men who lived in Jefferson's affections, and when he wrote about them he wrote from the heart. The sketch of Glessing, whom everybody loved that ever knew him, is in a touching strain of tender remembrance.

Jefferson visited England and France in 1856, but not to act. At that time he saw the famous English comedians Compton, Buckstone, Robson, and Wright, and that extraordinary actor, fine alike in tragedy and comedy, the versatile Samuel Phelps. In 1857 he was a.s.sociated with Laura Keene at her theatre in New York; and from that date onward his career has been upon a high and sunlit path, visible to the world. His first part at Laura Keene's theatre was Dr. Pangloss. Then came _Our American Cousin_, in which he gained a memorable success as Asa Trenchard, and in which Edward A. Sothern laid the basis of that fantastic structure of whim and grotesque humour that afterward became famous as Lord Dundreary. Sothern, Laura Keene, and William Rufus Blake, of course, gained much of Jefferson's attention at that time, and he has not omitted to describe them. His account of Blake, however, does not impart an adequate idea of the excellence of that comedian. In 1858 he went to the Winter Garden theatre, and was a.s.sociated with the late Dion Boucicault. His characters then were Newman Hoggs, Caleb Plummer, and Salem Scudder--in _Nicholas Nickleby_, _The Cricket on the Hearth_, and _The Octoroon_. Mr. Boucicault told him not to make Caleb Plummer a solemn character at the beginning--a deliverance that Jefferson seems to have cherished as one of colossal wisdom. He made a brilliant hit in Salem Scudder, and it was then that he determined finally to a.s.sume the position of a star. "Art has always been my sweetheart," exclaims Jefferson, "and I have loved her for herself alone." No observer can doubt that who has followed his career. It was in 1859 that he reverted to the subject of Rip Van Winkle, as the right theme for his dramatic purpose. He had seen Charles Burke as Rip, and he knew the several versions of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's story that had been made for the theatre by Burke, Hackett, and Yates. The first Rip Van Winkle upon the stage, of whom there is any record in theatrical annals, was Thomas Flynn (1804-1849). That comedian, the friend of the elder Booth, acted the part for the first time on May 24, 1828, at Albany. Charles B. Parsons, who afterward acted in many theatres as Rip, and ultimately became a preacher, was, on that night, the performer of Derrick. Jefferson's predecessors as Rip Van Winkle were remarkably clever men--Flynn, Parsons, Burke, Chapman, Hackett, Yates, and William Isherwood. But it remained for Jefferson to do with that character what no one else had ever thought of doing--to lift it above the level of the tipsy rustic and make it the poetical type of the drifting and dreaming vagrant--half-haunted, half-inspired, a child of the trees and the clouds. Jefferson records that he was lying on the hay in a barn in Paradise Valley, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1859, taking advantage of a rainy day to read Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's _Life and Letters_, when that plan came to him. It proved an inspiration of happiness to thousands of people all over the world. The comedian made a play for himself, on the basis of Charles Burke's play, but with one vital improvement--he arranged the text and business of the supernatural scene so that Rip only should speak, while the ghosts should remain silent. That stroke of genius accomplished his object. The man capable of that exploit in dramatic art could not fail to win the world, because he would at once fascinate its imagination while touching its heart.

In 1861 Jefferson went to California and thence to Australia, and in the latter country he remained four years. He has written a fine description of the entrance to the harbour at Sydney. His accounts of "the skeleton dance," as he saw it performed by the black natives of that land; of his meeting with the haunted hermit in the woods; of the convict audience at Tasmania, for whom he acted in _The Ticket-of-Leave Man_; and of the entertainment furnished in a Chinese theatre, are compositions that would impart to any book the interest of adventure and the zest of novelty. Such pictures as those have a broad background; they are not circ.u.mscribed within the proscenium frame. The man is seen in those pa.s.sages as well as the actor; and he plays his part well, amid picturesque surroundings of evil and peril, of tragedy and of pathos. In Australia Jefferson met Charles Kean and his wife (Ellen Tree), of whom his sketches are boldly drawn and his memories are pleasant. Mr. and Mrs. Kean afterward made their farewell visit to the United States, beginning, when they reached New York (from San Francisco, in April 1865), with _Henry VIII._, and closing with _The Jealous Wife_. In 1865 Jefferson went from Australia to South America and pa.s.sed some time in Lima, where he saw much tropical luxury and many beautiful ladies--an inspiriting spectacle, fittingly described by him in some of the most felicitous of his fervent words. In June 1865 he reached London, and presently he came forth, at the Adelphi, as Rip Van Winkle,--having caused the piece to be rewritten by Mr. Boucicault, who introduced the colloquy of the children, paraphrased for it the recognition scene between King Lear and Cordelia, and kept Gretchen alive to be married to Derrick. Mr. Boucicault, however, had no faith in the piece or the actor's plan, and down to the last moment prophesied failure.

Jefferson's success was unequivocal. Friends surrounded him and in the gentle and genial record that he has made of those auspicious days some of the brightest names of modern English literature sparkle on his page.

Benjamin Webster, Paul Bedford, John Billington, John Brougham, and Marie Wilton were among the actors who were glad to be his a.s.sociates.

Robertson, the dramatist, was his constant companion--one of the most intellectual and one of the wittiest of men. Planche, aged yet hearty and genial (and no man had more in his nature of the sweet spirit of the comrade), speedily sought him. Charles Reade and Anthony Trollope became his cronies; and poor Artemas Ward arrived and joined the party just as Jefferson was leaving it--as bright a spirit, as kind a heart, and as fine and quaint a humourist as ever cheered this age--from which he vanished too soon for the happiness of his friends and for the fruition of his fame. "I was much impressed," says the comedian, "with Ward's genial manner; he was not in good health, and I advised him to be careful lest the kindness of London should kill him." That advice was not heeded, and the kindness of London speedily ended Ward's days.

Jefferson came home in 1866 and pa.s.sed ten years in America--years of fame and fortune, whereof the record is smooth prosperity. Its most important personal incident was his second marriage, on December 20, 1867, at Chicago, to Miss Sarah Warren. In July 1873 he made a voyage to Europe, with his wife and William Warren, the comedian, and remained there till autumn. From November 1, 1875 to April 29, 1876 and from Easter 1877 until midsummer he was again acting in London, where he redoubled his former success. In October 1877 he returned home, and since then he has remained in America. The chronicle that he has written glides lightly over these latter years, only now and then touching on their golden summits. The manifest wish of the writer has been to people his pages as much as possible with the men and women of his artistic circle and knowledge who would be likely to interest the reader. Robert Browning, Charles Kingsley, and George Augustus Sala come into the picture, and there is a pleasing story of Browning and Longfellow walking arm in arm in London streets till driven into a cab by a summer shower, when Longfellow insisted on pa.s.sing his umbrella through the hole in the roof, for the protection of the cab-driver. Jefferson lived for one summer in an old mansion at Morningside, Edinburgh, and he dwells with natural delight on his recollections of that majestic city.

He had many a talk, at odd times, with the glittering farceur Charles Mathews, about dramatic art, and some of this is recorded in piquant anecdotes. "By many," says the amiable annalist, "he was thought to be cold and selfish; I do not think he was so." There is a kind word for Charles Fechter, whose imitations of Frederick Lemaitre, in _Belphegor, the Mountebank_, live in Jefferson's remembrance as wonderfully graphic.

There are glimpses of James Wallack, Walter Montgomery, Peter Richings, E.A. Sothern, Laura Keene, James G. Burnett, John Gilbert, Tyrone Power, Lester Wallack, John McCullough, John T. Raymond, Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams, John Drew (the elder), F.S. Chanfrau, Charlotte Cushman, Mrs.

Drake, and many others; and the record incorporates two letters, not before published, from John Howard Payne, the author of _Home, Sweet Home_--a melody that is the natural accompaniment of Jefferson's life.

There is a pretty picture of that ancient supper-room at No. 2 Bulfinch Place, Boston--Miss Fisher's kitchen--as it appeared when William Warren sat behind the mound of lobsters, at the head of the table, while the polished pewters reflected the cheerful light, and wit and raillery enlivened the happy throng, and many a face was wreathed with smiles that now is dark and still forever. In one chapter Jefferson sets forth his views upon the art of acting; and seldom within so brief a compa.s.s will so many sensible reflections be found so simply and tersely expressed. The book closes with words of grat.i.tude for many blessings, and with an emblematic picture of a spirit resigned to whatever vicissitudes of fortune may yet be decreed.

Jefferson's memoir is a simple message to simple minds. It will find its way to thousands of readers to whom a paper by Addison or an essay by Hume would have no meaning. It will point for them the moral of a good life. It will impress them with the spectacle of a n.o.ble actor, profoundly and pa.s.sionately true to the high art by which he lives, bearing eloquent testimony to its beauty and its worth, and to the fine powers and sterling virtues of the good men and women with whom he has been a.s.sociated in its pursuit. It will display to them--and to all others who may chance to read it--a type of that absolute humility of spirit which yet is perfectly compatible with a just pride of intellect.

It will help to preserve interesting traits of famous actors of an earlier time, together with bright stories that illumine the dry chronicle of our theatrical history. And, in its simple record of the motives by which he has been impelled, and the artistic purposes that he has sought to accomplish, it will remain an eloquent, vital, indestructible memorial to the art and the character of a great comedian, when the present reality of his exquisite acting shall have changed to a dim tradition and a fading memory of the past.

VIII.

ON JEFFERSON'S ACTING.

Fifty years from now the historian of the American stage, if he should be asked to name the actor of this period who was most beloved by the people of this generation, will answer that it was Joseph Jefferson.

Other actors of our time are famous, and they possess in various degrees the affection of the public. Jefferson is not only renowned but universally beloved. To state the cause of this effect is at once to explain his acting and to do it the honour to which it is ent.i.tled. That cause can be stated in a single sentence. Jefferson is at once a poetic and a human actor, and he is thus able to charm all minds and to win all hearts. His success, therefore, is especially important not to himself alone but to the people.

Public taste is twofold. It has a surface liking, and it has a deep, instinctive, natural preference. The former is alert, capricious, incessant, and continually pa.s.ses from fancy to fancy. It scarcely knows what it wants, except that it wants excitement and change. Those persons in the dramatic world who make a point to address it are experimental speculators, whose one and only object is personal gain, and who are willing and ready to furnish any sort of entertainment that they think will please a pa.s.sing caprice, and thereby will turn a penny for themselves. To judge the public entirely by this surface liking is to find the public what Tennyson once called it--a many-headed beast. With that animal every paltry and noxious thing can be made, for a time, to flourish; and that fact leads observers who do not carefully look beneath the surface to conclude that the public is always wrong. But the deep preference of the public comes into the question, and observers who are able to see and to consider that fact presently perceive that the artist, whether actor or otherwise, who gives to the public, not what it says it wants but what it ought to have, is in the long run the victor.

The deep preference is for the good thing, the real thing, the right. It is not intelligent. It does not go with thinking and reasoning. It does not pretend to have grounds of belief. It simply responds. But upon the stage the actor who is able to reach it is omnipotent. Jefferson conspicuously is an actor who appeals to the deep, instinctive, natural preference of humanity, and who reaches it, arouses it, and satisfies it. Throughout the whole of his mature career he has addressed the n.o.bler soul of humanity and given to the people what they ought to have; and the actor who is really able to do that naturally conquers everything. It is not a matter of artifice and simulation; it is a matter of being genuine and not a sham.

Still further, Jefferson has aroused and touched and satisfied the feelings of the people, not by attempting to interpret literature but by being an actor. An actor is a man who acts. He may be an uneducated man, deficient in learning and in mental discipline, and yet a fine actor.

The people care not at all for literature. They do not read it, and they know nothing about it until it is brought home to their hearts by some great interpreter of it. What they do know is action. They can see and they can feel, and the actor who makes them see and feel can do anything with them that he pleases. It is his privilege and his responsibility. Jefferson is one of those artists (and they are few) who depend for their effects not upon what authors have written but upon impersonation. He takes liberties with the text. It would not perhaps be saying too much to say that he does not primarily heed the text at all.

He is an actor; and speaking with reference to him and to others like him it would perhaps be well if those persons who write criticisms upon the stage would come to a definite conclusion upon this point and finally understand that an actor must produce his effects on the instant by something that he does and is, and not by rhetoric and elocution, and therefore that he should not be expected to repeat every word of every part, or to be a translator of somebody else, but that he must be himself. If we want the full, literal text of Shakespeare we can stop at home and read it. What we want of the actor is that he should give himself; and the true actor does give himself. The play is the medium. A man who acts Romeo must embody, impersonate, express, convey, and make evident what he knows and feels about love. He need not trouble himself about Shakespeare. That great poet will survive; while if Romeo, being ever so correct, bores the house, Romeo will be d.a.m.ned. Jefferson is an actor who invariably produces effect, and he produces it by impersonation, and by impersonation that is poetic and human.

Jefferson's performance of Acres conspicuously exemplifies the principles that have been stated here. He has not hesitated to alter the comedy of _The Rivals_, and in his alteration of it he has improved it.

Acres has been made a better part for an actor, and a more significant and sympathetic part for an audience. You could not care particularly for Acres if he were played exactly as he is written. You might laugh at him, and probably would, but he would not touch your feelings. Jefferson embodies him in such a way that he often makes you feel like laughing and crying at the same moment, and you end with loving the character, and storing it in your memory with such cherished comrades of the fancy as Mark Tapley and Uncle Toby. There is but little human nature in Acres as Sheridan has drawn him, and what there is of human nature is coa.r.s.e; but as embodied by Jefferson, while he never ceases to be comically absurd, he becomes fine and sweet, and wins sympathy and inspires affection, and every spectator is glad to have seen him and to remember him. It is not possible to take that sort of liberty with every author.

You can do it but seldom with Shakespeare; never in any but his juvenile plays. But there are authors who can be improved by that process, and Sheridan--in _The Rivals_, not in _The School for Scandal_--is one of them. And anyway, since it ought to be felt, known, understood, and practically admitted that an actor is something more than a telegraph wire, that his personal faculty and testimony enter into the matter of embodiment and expression, Jefferson's rare excellence and great success as Acres should teach a valuable lesson, correcting that pernicious habit of the critical mind which measures an actor by the printed text of a play-book and by the hide-bound traditions of custom on the stage.

Jefferson has had a royal plenitude of success as an actor, chiefly with the part of Rip Van Winkle, but also with the characters of Caleb Plummer, Bob Brierly, Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Ollapod, Mr. Golightly, and Hugh de Bra.s.s. The reason of that success cannot be found in conventional adherence to stage customs and critical standards.

Jefferson has gained his great power over the people--of which his great fame is the shadow--- by giving himself in his art--his own rich and splendid nature and the crystallised conclusions of his experience. As an artist, when it comes to execution, he leaves nothing to chance. The most seemingly artless of his proceedings is absolutely defined in advance, and never is what heedless observers call impulsive and spontaneous. But his temperament is free, fluent, opulent, and infinitely tender; and when the whole man is aroused, this flows into the moulds of literary and dramatic art and glorifies them. When you are looking at Jefferson as Acres in the duel scene in _The Rivals_, you laugh at him, but almost you laugh through your tears. When you see Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle confronting the ghosts on the lonely mountain-top at midnight, you see a display of imaginative personality quite as high as that of Hamlet in tremulous sensibility to supernatural influence, although wholly apart from Hamlet in alt.i.tude of intellect and in anguish of experience. The poetry of the impersonation, though, is entirely consonant with Hamlet, and that is the secret of Jefferson's exceptional hold upon the heart and the imagination of his time. The public taste does not ask Jefferson to trifle with his art. Its deep, spontaneous, natural preference feels that he is a true actor, and so yields to his power, and enjoys his charm, and is all the time improved and made fitter to enjoy it. He has reached as great a height as it is possible to reach in his profession. He could if he chose play greater parts than he has ever attempted; he could not give a better exemplification than he gives, in his chose and customary achievement, of all that is distinctive, beautiful, and beneficent in the art of the actor.

IX.

JEFFERSON AND FLORENCE IN OLD COMEDY.

A revival of _The Heir at Law_ was accomplished in the New York season of 1890, with Joseph Jefferson in the character of Dr. Pangloss and William James Florence in that of Zekiel Homespun. That play dates back to 1797, a period in which a sedulous deference to conventionality prevailed in the British theatre, as to the treatment of domestic subjects; and, although the younger Colman wrote in a more flexible style than was possessed by any other dramatist of the time, excepting Sheridan, he was influenced to this extent by contemporary usage, that often when he became serious he also became artificial and stilted. The sentimental part of _The Heir at Law_ is trite in plan and hard in expression. Furthermore that portion of it which, in the character of Dr. Pangloss, satirises the indigent, mercenary, disreputable private tutors who const.i.tuted a distinct and pernicious cla.s.s of social humbugs in Colman's day, has lost its direct point for the present age, through the disappearance of the peculiar type of imposture against which its irony was directed. Dr. Pangloss, nevertheless, remains abstractly a humorous personage; and when he is embodied by an actor like Jefferson, who can elucidate his buoyant animal spirits, his gay audacity, his inveterate good-nature, his nimble craft, his jocular sportiveness, his shrewd knowledge of character and of society, and his scholar-like quaintness, he becomes a delightful presence; for his mendacity disappears in the suns.h.i.+ne of his humour; his faults seem venial; and we entertain him much as we do the infinitely greater and more disreputable character of Falstaff,--knowing him to be a vagabond, but finding him a charming companion, for all that. This is one great relief to the hollow and metallic sentimentality of the piece. Persons like Henry Moreland, Caroline Dormer, and Mr. Steadfast would be tiresome in actual life; they belong, with Julia and Falkland and Peregrine and Glenroy, to the n.o.ble army of the bores, and they are insipid on the stage; but the a.s.sociation of the sprightly and jocose Pangloss with those drab-tinted and preachy people irradiates even their const.i.tutional plat.i.tude with a sparkle of mirth. They s.h.i.+ne, in spite of themselves.

Colman's humour is infectious and penetrating. In that quality he was original and affluent. As we look along the line of the British dramatists for the last hundred years we shall find no parallel to his felicity in the use of comic inversion and equivoke, till we come to Gilbert. Though he was tedious while he deferred to that theatrical sentimentality which was the fas.h.i.+on of his day (and against which Goldsmith, in _She Stoops to Conquer_, was the first to strike), he could sometimes escape from it; and when he did escape he was brilliant.

In _The Heir at Law_ he has not only illumined it by the contrast of Dr.

Pangloss but by the unctuous humour and irresistible comic force of the character of Daniel Dowlas, Lord Duberly. Situations in a play, in order to be invested with the enduring quality of humour, must result from such conduct as is the natural and spontaneous expression of comic character. The idea of the comic parvenue is ancient. It did not originate with Colman. His application of it, however, was novel and his treatment of it--taking fast hold of the elemental springs of mirth--is as fresh to-day as it was a hundred years ago. French minds, indeed, and such as subscribe to French notions, would object that the means employed to elicit character and awaken mirth are not scientifically and photographically correct, and that they are violent. Circ.u.mstances, they would say, do not so fall out that a tallow-chandler is made a lord. The Christopher Sly expedient, they would add, is a forced expedient.

Perhaps it is. But English art sees with the eyes of the imagination and in dramatic matters it likes to use colour and emphasis. Daniel Dowlas, as Lord Duberly, is all the droller for being a retired tallow-chandler, ignorant, greasy, conventional, blunt, a st.u.r.dy, honest, ridiculous person, who thinks he has observed how lords act and who intends to put his gained knowledge into practical use. We shall never again see him acted as he was acted by Burton, or by that fine actor William Rufus Blake, or even by John Gilbert--who was of rather too choleric a temperament and too fine a texture for such an oily and stupidly complacent personage. But whenever and however he is acted he will be recognised as an elemental type of absurd human nature made ludicrous by comic circ.u.mstances; and he will give rich and deep amus.e.m.e.nt.

It is to be observed, in the a.n.a.lysis of this comedy, that according to Colman's intention the essential persons in it are all, at heart, human.

The pervasive spirit of the piece is kindly. Old Dowlas, restricted to his proper place in life, is a worthy man. d.i.c.k Dowlas, intoxicated by vanity and prosperity, has no harm in him, and he turns out well at last. Even Dr. Pangloss--although of the species of rogue that subsists by artfully playing upon the weakness of human vanity--is genial and amiable; he is a laughing philosopher; he gives good counsel; he hurts n.o.body; he is but a mild type of sinner--and the satirical censure that is bestowed upon him is neither merciless nor bitter. Pangloss, in Milk Alley, spinning his brains for a subsistence, might be expected to prove unscrupulous; but the moraliser can imagine Pangloss, if he were only made secure by permanent good fortune, leading a life of blameless indolence and piquant eccentricity. From that point of view Jefferson formed his ideal of the character; and, indeed, his treatment of the whole piece denoted an active practical sympathy with that gentle view of the subject. He placed before his audience a truthful picture of old English manners; telling them, in rapid and cheery action, Colman's quaint story--in which there is no malice and no bitterness, but in which simple virtue proves superior to temptation, and integrity is strong amid vicissitudes--and leaving in their minds, at the last, an amused conviction that indeed "Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time." His own performance was full of nervous vitality and mental sparkle, and of a humour deliciously quaint and droll. Dr. Pangla.s.s, as embodied by Jefferson, is a man who always sees the comical aspect of things and can make you see it with him, and all the while can be completely self-possessed and grave without ever once becoming slow or heavy. There was an air of candour, of ingenuous simplicity, of demure propriety, about the embodiment, that made it inexpressibly funny. There was no effort and no distortion. The structure of the impersonation tingled with life, and the expression of it--in demeanour, movement, facial play, intonation and business--was clear and crisp, with that absolute precision and beautiful finish for which the acting of Jefferson has always been distinguished. He is probably the only American comedian now left, excepting John S. Clarke, who knows all the traditional embellishments that have gone to the making of this part upon the stage--embellishments fitly typified by the bank-note business with Zekiel Homespun; a device, however, that perhaps suggests a greater degree of moral obliquity in Dr. Pangloss than was intended by the author. It was exceedingly comical, though, and it served its purpose.

Jefferson has had the character of Pangloss in his repertory for almost forty years. He first acted it in New York as long ago as 1857, at Laura Keene's theatre, when that beautiful woman played Cicely and when Duberly was represented by the lamented James G. Burnett. It takes the playgoer a long way back, to be thinking about this old piece and the casts that it has had upon the American stage. _The Heir at Law_ was a great favourite in Boston thirty years ago and more, when William Warren was in his prime and could play Dr. Pangloss with the best of them, and when Julia Bennett Barrow was living and acting, who could play Cicely in a way that no later actress has excelled. John E. Owens as Pangloss will never be forgotten. It was a favourite part with John Brougham. And the grotesque fun of John S. Clarke in that droll character has been recognised on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Jefferson's impersonation of Dr. Pangloss the predominant beauty was spontaneous and perfectly graceful identification with the part. The felicity of the apt quotations seemed to be accidental. The manner was buoyant, but the alacrity of the mind was more nimble than the celerity of the body, and those wise and witty comments that Pangloss makes upon life, character, and manners flowed naturally from a brain that was in the vigour and repose of intense animation. The actor was completely merged in the character, which nevertheless his judgment dominated and his will directed. No other representative of Pangloss has quite equalled Jefferson in the element of authoritative and convincing sincerity. His demure sapience was of the most intense order and it arose out of great mental excitement. No other actor of the part has equalled him in softness and winning charm of humour. His embodiment of Dr. Pangloss has left in the memory of his time an image of eccentric character not less lovable than ludicrous.

With Zekiel Homespun, an actor who is true to the author's plan will produce the impression of an affectionate heart, virtuous principles, and absolute honesty of purpose, combined with rustic simplicity.

Florence easily reached that result. His preservation of a dialect was admirably exact. The soul of the part is fraternal love, and when Zekiel finds that his trusted friend has repulsed him and would wrong his sister, there is a fine flash of n.o.ble anger in the pride and scorn with which he confronts this falsehood and dishonour. Florence in days when he used to act the Irish Emigrant proved himself the consummate master of simple pathos. He struck that familiar note again in the lovely manner of Zekiel toward his sister Cicely, and his denotement of the struggle between affection and resentment in the heart of the brother when wounded by the depravity of his friend was not less beautiful in the grace of art than impressive in simple dignity and touching in pa.s.sionate fervour. In point of natural feeling Zekiel Homespun is a stronger part than Dr. Pangloss, although not nearly so complex nor so difficult to act. The sentiments by which it is animated awaken instant sympathy and the principles that impel command universal respect. No actor who has attempted Zekiel Homespun in this generation on the American stage has approached the performance that was given by Florence, in conviction, in artless sweetness, in truth of pa.s.sion, and in the heartfelt expression of the heart.

Purists customarily insist that the old comedies are sacred; that no one of their celestial commas or holy hyphens can be omitted without sin; and that the alteration of a sentence in them is sacrilege. The truth stands, however, without regard to hysterics: and it is a truth that the old comedies owe their vitality mostly to the actors who now and then resuscitate them. No play of the past is ever acted with scrupulous fidelity to the original text. The public that saw the _Heir-at-Law_ and the _Rivals_, when Jefferson and Florence acted in them, saw condensed versions, animated by a living soul of to-day, and therefore it was impressed. The one thing indispensable on the stage is the art of the actor.

X.

ON THE DEATH OF FLORENCE.

The melancholy tidings of the death of Florence came suddenly (he died in Philadelphia, after a brief illness, November 19, 1891), and struck the hearts of his friends not simply with affliction but with dismay.

Florence was a man of such vigorous and affluent health that the idea of illness and death was never a.s.sociated with him. Whoever else might go, he at least would remain, and for many cheerful years he would please our fancy and brighten our lives. His spirit was so buoyant and brilliant that it seemed not possible it could ever be dimmed. Yet now, in a moment, his light was quenched and there was darkness on his mirth.

We shall hear his pleasant voice no more and see no more the suns.h.i.+ne of a face that was never seen without joy and can never be remembered without sorrow. The loss to the public was great. Few actors within the last forty years have stood upon a level with Florence in versatility and charm. His gentleness, his simplicity, his modesty, his affectionate fidelity, his ready sympathy, his inexhaustibly patience, his fine talents--all those attributes united with his spontaneous drollery to enshrine him in tender affection.

William James Florence, whose family name was Conlin, was born in Albany, July 26, 1831. When a youth he joined the Murdoch Dramatic a.s.sociation, and he early gave evidence of extraordinary dramatic talent. On December 9, 1849 he made his first appearance on the regular stage, at the Marshall theatre in Richmond, Virginia, where he impersonated Tobias, in _The Stranger_. After that he met with the usual vicissitudes of a young player. He was a member of various stock companies--notably that of W.C. Forbes, of the Providence museum, and that of the once-popular John Nickinson, of Toronto and Quebec--the famous Havresack of his period. Later he joined the company at Niblo's theatre, New York, under the management of Chippendale and John Sefton, appearing there on May 8, 1850. He also acted at the Broadway, under Marshall's management, and in 1852 he was a member of the company at Brougham's Lyceum. On January 1, 1853 he married Malvina Pray, sister of the wife of Barney Williams; and in that way those two Irish comedians came to be domestically a.s.sociated.

At that time Florence wrote several plays, upon Irish and Yankee subjects, then very popular, and he began to figure as a star--his wife standing beside him. They appeared at Purdy's National theatre, June 8, 1853, and then, and for a long time afterward, they had much popularity and success. Florence had composed many songs of a sprightly character (one of them, called _Bobbing Around_, had a sale of more than 100,000 copies), and those songs were sung by his wife, to the delight of the public. The Irish drama served his purpose for many years, but he varied that form of art by occasional resort to burlesque and by incursions into the realm of melodrama. One of his best performances was that of O'Bryan, in John Brougham's play of _Temptation, or the Irish Emigrant_, with which he often graced the stage of the Winter Garden. In that he touched the extremes of gentle humour and melting pathos. He was delightfully humorous, also, in Handy Andy, and in all that long line of Irish characters that came to our stage with Tyrone Power and the elder John Drew. He had exceptional talent for burlesque, and that was often manifested in his early days. _Fra Diavolo_, _Beppo_, _Lallah Rookh_, _The Lady of the Lions_, and _The Colleen Bawn_, were among the burlesques that he produced, and with those he was the pioneer.

Engagements were filled by Mr. and Mrs. Florence, at the outset of their starring tour, in many cities of the republic, and everywhere they met with kindness and honour. Among the plays written by Florence were _The Irish Princess_, _O'Neil the Great_, _The Sicilian Bride_, _Woman's Wrongs_, _Eva_, and _The Drunkard's Doom_. On April 2, 1856 Mr. and Mrs.

Florence sailed for England, and presently they appeared at Drury Lane theatre, where they at once stepped into favour. The performance of the _Yankee Gal_ by Mrs. Florence aroused positive enthusiasm--for it was new, and Mrs. Florence was the first American comic actress that had appeared upon the English stage. More than two hundred representations of it were given at that time. Florence used to relate that his fortunes were greatly benefited by his success in London, and he habitually spoke with earnest grat.i.tude of the kindness that he received there. From that time onward he enjoyed almost incessant prosperity. A tour of the English provincial cities followed his London season. He acted at Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin, and both his wife and himself became favourites--so that their songs were sung and whistled in the streets, wherever they went.

Returning to the United States Mr. and Mrs. Florence renewed their triumphs, all over the land. In 1861 Florence played some of Burton's characters in Wallack's theatre--among them being Toodle and Cuttle. At a later period he made it a custom to lease Wallack's theatre during the summer, and there he produced many burlesques. In 1863, at the Winter Garden, he offered _The Ticket-of-Leave Man_ and acted Bob Brierly, which was one of the best exploits of his life. In 1867 Wallack's old theatre being then called the Broadway and managed by Barney Williams, he brought to that house the comedy of _Caste_ and presented it with a distribution of the parts that has not been equalled. The actors were Mrs. Chanfrau, Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Florence, William Davidge, Owen Marlowe, Edward Lamb, and Florence--who played George D'Alroy. In 1868 he presented _No Thoroughfare_ and enacted Obenreizer,--a performance that established his rank among the leading actors of the time. In 1876 he made a remarkable hit as the Hon. Bardwell Slote in the play of _The Mighty Dollar_, by Benjamin E. Woolff. That was the last important new play that he produced. During the last fifteen years of his life he offered selections from his accepted repertory. For a time he was a.s.sociated with Jefferson--to whom he brought a strength that was deeply valued and appreciated, equally by that famous actor and by the public--acting Sir Lucius O'Trigger in _The Rivals_ and Zekiel Homespun in _The Heir-at-Law_.

The power of Florence was that of impersonation. He was imaginative and sympathetic; his style was flexible; and he had an unerring instinct of effect. The secret of his success lay in his profound feeling, guided by perfect taste and perfect self-control. He was an actor of humanity, and he diffused an irresistible charm of truth and gentleness. His place was his own and it can never be filled.