Chapter 23

The classical drama of France has not found much favor in England and America. We are all, perhaps, apt to think with Thackeray disrespectfully of the "old tragedies--well-nigh dead, and full time too--in which half a dozen characters appear and shout sonorous Alexandrines for half a dozen hours;" or we are disposed to agree with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that their drama, being fundamentally insufficient both in substance and in form, the French, with all their gifts, have not, as we have, an adequate form for poetry of the highest class. Those who remember Rachel, however, can testify that she breathed the most ardent life into the frigid remains of Racine and Corneille, relumed them with Promethean heat, and showed them to be instinct with the truest and intensest passion--When she occupied the scene, there could be no thought of the old artificial times of hair powder and rouge, periwigs and patches, in connection with the characters she represented. Phèdre and Hermione, Pauline and Camille, interpreted by her genius, became as real and natural, warm and palpitating, as Constance or Lady Macbeth could have been when played by Mrs. Siddons, or as Juliet when impersonated by Miss O'Neill. Before Rachel came, it had been thought that the new romantic drama of MM. Hugo and Dumas, because of its greater truth to nature, had given the _coup de grâce_ to the old classic plays; but the public, at her bidding, turned gladly from the spasms and the rant of "Angelo" and "Angèle," "Antony" and "Hernani," to the old-world stories, the formal tragedies of the seventeenth century poet-dramatists of France. The actress fairly witched her public. There was something of magic in her very presence upon the scene.

None could fail to be impressed by the aspect of the slight, pallid woman who seemed to gain height by reason of her slenderness, who moved toward her audience with such simple natural majesty, who wore and conducted her fluent classical draperies with such admirable and perfect grace. It was as though she had lived always so attired in tunic, peplum, and pallium--had known no other dress--not that she was of modern times playing at antiquity, she was the muse of Greek tragedy in person. The physical traditions of her race found expression or incarnation in her. Her face was of refined Judaical character--the thin nose slightly curved, the lower lip a trifle full, but the mouth exquisitely shaped, and the teeth small, white, and even. The profuse black-brown hair was smoothed and braided from the broad, low, white, somewhat over-hanging brow, beneath which in shadow the keen black eyes flashed out their lightnings, or glowed luridly like coals at a red heat. Her gestures were remarkable for their dignity and appropriateness; the long, slight arms lent themselves surprisingly to gracefulness; the beautifully formed hands, with the thin tapering fingers and the pink filbert nails, seemed always tremblingly on the alert to add significance or accent to her speeches. But there was eloquence in her very silence and complete repose. She could relate a whole history by her changes of facial expression. She possessed special powers of self-control; she was under subjection to both art and nature when she seemed to abandon herself the most absolutely to the whirlwind of her passion. There were no undue excesses of posture, movement, or tone. Her attitudes, it was once said, were those of "a Pythoness cast in bronze." Her voice thrilled and awed at its first note: it was so strangely deep, so solemnly melodious, until, stirred by passion as it were, it became thick and husky in certain of its tones; but it was always audible, articulate, and telling, whether sunk to a whisper or raised clamorously. Her declamation was superb, if, as critics reported, there had been decline in this matter during those later years of her life, to which my own acquaintance with Rachel's acting is confined. I saw her first at the Français in 1849, and I was present at her last performance at the St. James' Theatre in 1853, having in the interval witnessed her assumption of certain of her most admired characters. And it may be true, too, that, like Kean, she was more and more disposed, as the years passed, to make "points," to slur over the less important scenes, and reserve herself for a grand outburst or a vehement climax, sacrificing thus many of the subtler graces, refinements, and graduations of elocution, for which she had once been famous. To English ears, it was hardly an offence that she broke up the sing-song of the rhymed tirades of the old plays and gave them a more natural sound, regardless of the traditional methods of speech of Clairon, Le Kain, and others of the great French players of the past.

Less success than had been looked for attended Rachel's invasion of the repertory of Mlle. Mars, an actress so idolized by the Parisians that her sixty years and great portliness of form were not thought hindrances to her personation of the youthful heroines of modern comedy and drama. But Rachel's fittest occupation and her greatest triumphs were found in the classical poetic plays. She, perhaps, intellectualized too much the creations of Hugo, Dumas, and Scribe; gave them excess of majesty. Her histrionic style was too exalted an ideal for the conventional characters of the drama of her own time; it was even said of her that she could not speak its prose properly or tolerably. She disliked the hair-powder necessary to Adrienne Lecouvreur and Gabrielle de Belle Isle, although her beauty, for all its severity, did not lose picturesqueness in the costumes of the time of Louis XV. As Gabrielle she was more girlish and gentle, pathetic, and tender, than was her wont, while the signal fervor of her speech addressed to Richelieu, beginning, "Vous mentez, Monsieur le Duc," stirred the audience to the most excited applause.

Rachel was seen upon the stage for the last time at Charleston on December 17, 1856. She played Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had been tempted to America by the prospect of extravagant profits. It had been dinned into her ears that Jenny Lind, by thirty-eight performances in America, had realized seventeen hundred thousand francs. Why might not she, Rachel, receive as much? And then, she was eager to quit Paris. There had been strange worship there of Madame Ristori, even in the rejected part of Medea. But already Rachel's health was in a deplorable state. Her constitution, never very strong, had suffered severely from the cruel fatigues, the incessant exertions, she had undergone. It may be, too, that the deprivations and sufferings of her childhood now made themselves felt as over-due claims that could be no longer denied or deferred. She forced herself to play, in fulfilment of her engagement, but she was languid, weak, emaciated; she coughed incessantly, her strength was gone; she was dying slowly but certainly of phthisis. And she appeared before an audience that applauded her, it is true, but cared nothing for Racine and Corneille, knew little of the French language, and were urgent that she should sing the "Marseillaise" as she had sung it in 1848! It was forgotten, or it was not known in America, that the actress had long since renounced revolutionary sentiments to espouse the cause of the Second Empire. She performed all her more important characters, however, at New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nor was the undertaking commercially disappointing, if it did not wholly satisfy expectation. She returned to France possessed of nearly three hundred thousand francs as her share of the profits of her forty-two performances in the United States; but she returned to die. The winter of 1856 she passed at Cairo. She returned to France in the spring of 1857, but her physicians forbade her to remain long in Paris. In September she moved again to the South, finding her last retreat in the villa Sardou, at Cannet, a little village in the environs of Cannes. She lingered to January 3, 1858. The Théâtre Français closed its doors when news arrived of her death, and again on the day of her funeral. The body was embalmed and brought to Paris for interment in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, the obsequies being performed in accordance with the Jewish rites. The most eminent of the authors and actors of France were present, and funeral orations were delivered by MM. Jules Janin, Bataille, and Auguste Maquet. Victor Hugo was in exile; or, as Janin announced, the author of "Angelo" would not have withheld the tribute of his eulogy upon the sad occasion.

EDWIN BOOTH[15]

[Footnote 15: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By CLARENCE COOK

(1833-1893)

The great actor who has lately left the world furnished, in his own remarkable character and shining career, a striking exception to the popular tradition that men of genius are the fathers of ordinary sons. The father of Edwin Booth was in his time one of the glories of the English and American stage; but, even in his case the strict rule wavered, for his father, though not a genius, was yet a man of exceptional character; one who marked out a clear path for himself in the world, and walked in it to the end.

How far back the line of the family can be traced, or what was its origin, we do not know; but it has lately been said that the family was of Hebrew extraction, and came into England from Spain, where it had been known by the Spanish name, Cabana. The branch of the family that left Spain to live in England translated the name into the language of their new home, and from "Cabana," a shepherd's cabin, made the English equivalent, Booth.

However it may have been in this case, it was quite in the order of things that this change of name should be made. It has been done everywhere in Europe since very early times, and is doing to-day in this country by new comers from all parts of the old world.

The first of the Booths we read of in England was a silversmith, living in Bloomsbury, London, in the latter half of the last century. He had a son, Richard, who was bred to the law, but who was so imbued with the republican ideas rife at the time that he actually came to America to fight in the cause of Independence! He was taken prisoner, and carried back to England, where, not without some struggles, he again applied himself to the practice of the law, and in time made a fortune. He did not, however, forget America, and we are told that he had, hanging in his house, a portrait of Washington, which he expected all his visitors to salute.

One of the ways in which the republicans of that time showed where their sympathies lay, was in naming their children after the heroes of Greece and Rome; and accordingly we find Richard Booth calling his eldest son, Junius Brutus Booth, after the Roman patriot. This son was born in London, in 1796. His father was a man of scholarly tastes, and gave the boy a classical education, but it was long before he showed a marked inclination for any particular walk in life. He tried his hand at painting, sculpture, and poetry; and for a while studied law with his father. But, when the time came to choose, he gave his voice for the navy, and would have joined the brig Boxer, then fitting out for Nova Scotia. But, as war threatened between England and America, he was induced, by the strong persuasions of his father, not to run the risk of being forced to fight against America. He then decided to go upon the stage, and, in spite of his father's remonstrances, carried out his purpose. After some unimportant essays he at last succeeded in attracting public attention, and before long showed such unmistakable ability in dealing with difficult parts, that the public, till that time undivided in its enthusiasm for Kean, awoke to the fact that a dangerous rival threatened the security of their idol's throne. In the midst of his successes, however, Booth married and left England with his wife for a honeymoon trip to the West Indies. He had intended to return at once to England, but he was persuaded to prolong his journey and to visit New York. After playing a successful engagement there he went to Richmond, where he was no less prosperous. He next visited New Orleans and acquired such facility in speaking French that he played parts in French plays more than acceptably, and distinguished himself by acting Orestes in Racine's "Andromaque," to the delight of the French-speaking population. His accent is said to have been remarkable for its purity. Returning to New York, he acted Othello to Forrest's Iago; but, in the midst of his successes, the death of two of his children produced a temporary insanity, and this was made worse by the news of the death of his favorite son, Henry Byron, in London, of small-pox. This grievous loss was, however, to be made up to him by his son, Edwin, in whom he was to find the counterpart of himself, softened, refined, ennobled, while between father and son was to grow a strong attachment, a bond of mutual affection to last as long as life should endure.

Edwin Thomas Booth was born at Bel Air, Maryland, November 12, 1833. He was named Edwin, after his father's friend, Edwin Forrest, and Thomas, after Thomas Flynn, the actor, whom the elder Booth had known intimately in London. His son dropped the name of Thomas, later in life, and was only known to the public by the name of Edwin Booth. Owing to his father's wandering life Edwin had few advantages of education, but he made the most of his opportunities, and indeed was a student of good letters all his life, turning the light of all he learned from books and experience upon his art. His youth is described as reticent, and marked by a strong individuality, with a deep sympathy for his father, early manifested; his father, a much enduring, suffering man, strongly in need of sympathy, knowing to repay it, too, in kind.

Edwin Booth made his first appearance on the stage in 1849 at the Boston Museum in the youthful part of Tressil, in Colley Cibber's version of Shakespeare's "Richard III." It had been against his father's wishes that he had adopted the stage as a profession; but, as his father had done in a like case before him he persevered, and soon had the satisfaction of convincing his parent that he had decided wisely. He did not at once come to New York after his success in Boston, but went to Providence and to Philadelphia, acting Cassio in "Othello," and Wilford in the "Iron Chest," a part he soon made his own and in which he made his first appearance in New York, playing at the National Theatre in Chatham Street, in 1850. The next year he played Richard III. for the first time, taking the part unexpectedly to fill the place of his father, who was suddenly ill. In 1852 he went out with his father to San Francisco, where his brother, Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., was the manager of a theatre; and the father and his two sons acted together. At Sacramento, we are told that the incident occurred which led Edwin Booth to think of acting Hamlet, a part which was to become as closely associated with his name as that of Richard III. was with his father. He was dressed for the part of Jaffier in Otway's play, "Venice Preserved," when some one said to him "You look like Hamlet, why not play it?" It was, however, some time before he ventured to assume the part. In October, 1852, the father and son parted, not to meet again. The elder Booth went to New Orleans, and after playing for a week took passage in a steamboat on the Mississippi, and catching a severe cold succumbed after a few days' illness and died. For a while after his father's death Edwin suffered greatly from poverty and from the hardships of his precarious life, unsustained as he now was by the affection and encouragement of a father who, with all his faults, and in all the misfortunes brought on by serious ill-health and some aberrations that were the effect of ill-health had always been an affectionate and true friend. But a talent such as Edwin Booth possessed, united to a high character, and to a dauntless spirit, could not long be hid, and in a short time his name began to be heard of as that of one destined to great ends. In 1854 he went to Australia as a member of Laura Keene's company. He had made a deep impression in California, acting such parts as Richard III., Shylock, Macbeth, and Hamlet, and on returning there from Australia that first impression was greatly strengthened. On leaving San Francisco he received various testimonials showing the high esteem in which his acting was held by the educated part of the community; but throughout Edwin Booth's career, the interest he excited in the vast audiences that followed him was by no means confined to the self-styled "best people." Though he never "played to the gallery," the heart of the gallery was as much with him as the heart of the boxes, and he knew the value of its rapt silence as well as of its stormy voices.

In Boston, in 1857, he played Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the profound impression he made in it confirmed him in his purpose to devote himself to tragic acting. The story of an actor's life is seldom eventful, and Mr. Booth's history, after his first assured success, is the record of a long line of triumphs without a failure. The most remarkable of these triumphs was at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, where he acted Hamlet to large and ever-increasing audiences for over one hundred successive nights, that is, from November 21, 1864, to March 24, 1865. On this occasion a gold medal was presented to the actor by friends and admirers in New York; the list of subscribers including the names of many well-known citizens. The Winter Garden Theatre was managed by Booth and his brother-in-law, the clever actor, J. S. Clarke, until Booth bought out Clarke and assumed the entire management himself. In 1865 the terrible tragedy occurred which blighted Booth's whole after-life, and for a time drove him from the stage. He did not act again until 1866; in 1867 the theatre was destroyed by fire, and in 1868 the corner-stone of a new building, to be known as Booth's Theatre, was laid, and in a short time New York was in possession, for the first time, of a thoroughly appointed, comfortable, and handsome theatre. This building was made famous by a number of Shakespearian revivals that for beauty, magnificence, and scenic poetry have, we believe, never been equalled. We doubt if "Hamlet," "Julius Cæsar," or "Romeo and Juliet," have ever been presented with more satisfying completeness to the eye and to the imagination than in this theatre by Mr. Booth and his company. Although the theatre was in existence for thirteen years, from 1868 to 1882, when it was finally closed, Mr. Booth's management lasted only about half that time. The speculation was not a fortunate one for the actor; the expenses ate up all the profits, and Mr. Booth was bankrupted by his venture. He paid all his debts, however, and went bravely to work to build up a new fortune. He made a tour of the South, which was one long ovation, and in a season of eight weeks in San Francisco he took in $96,000.

In 1880 he went to England and remained there two years. In 1882 he visited Germany, acting in both countries with great success, and in 1883 he returned home and made a tour of America, repeating everywhere his old triumphs, and winning golden opinions from all classes of his countrymen.

Edwin Booth died in New York, June 7, 1893, at the Players' Club, where he had lived for the last few years of his life. This was a building erected by his own munificence, fitted up with luxurious completeness, and presented to a society of his professional brethren for the use and behoof of his fellow-artists, reserving for himself only the modest apartment where he chose to live, in sympathetic touch with those who still pursued the noble art he had relinquished.

Mr. Booth was twice married. By his first wife, Miss Mary Devlin, who died in 1863, he had one child, a daughter; by the second, Miss McVicker, he had no children. She died in 1881.

[Signature of the author.]

JOSEPH JEFFERSON[16]

[Footnote 16: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By CLARENCE COOK

(BORN 1829)

Joseph Jefferson, distinguished, among his other brilliant successes as an actor, as the creator for this generation of the character of Rip Van Winkle in the play dramatized from the story in Washington Irving's "Sketch Book," was the third of his name in a family of actors. The first of the three was born at Plymouth, England, in 1774. He was the son of Thomas Jefferson, a comedian of merit, the contemporary and friend of Garrick, and came to this country in 1795, making his first appearance in New York on February 10, 1796, in the part of Squire Richard in "The Provoked Husband." Dunlap says that, young as he was, he was already an artist, and that among the men of the company he held the first place. He lived in this country for thirty-six years, admired as an actor and respected as a man. He died at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1832.

Joseph Jefferson, the second, was born in Philadelphia in 1804. He inherited the laughing blue eyes and sunny disposition of his father, but he had not his talent as an actor; he is said to have been best in old men's parts. His taste, however, led him to scene-painting rather than to acting; yet his skill in either direction was not enough to win success, and, in spite of well-meant efforts, he lived and died a poor man: ill luck pursuing him to the end of his days, when he was carried off by yellow fever at Mobile in 1842, just as his unprosperous skies were brightening a little. His son bears affectionate witness to the upright character of the man and to his indomitable cheerfulness in the most adverse circumstances. He spared no pains in bringing up his children in good ways, and he was earnestly seconded by his wife, a heroic figure in her humble sphere, whose tact and courage not seldom saved the family bark when it was drifting in shoal water. Mrs. Jefferson came of French parents, and was a Mrs. Burke, a widow with one child, a son, when she married Mr. Jefferson. Her son tells us that she had been one of the most attractive stars in America, the leading prima donna of the country; but she bore her changed fortune, as the wife of an unsuccessful actor and manager, with no less dignity on the stage of real life, where no applause was to be had but what came from those who loved her as mother, wife, and friend.

This, then, was the family circle in which our Joseph Jefferson passed his earliest years, the formative period of his life. There were the kind-hearted, easy-going father, the practical, energetic mother, a sister, and the half-brother, Charles Burke, whose after-reputation as an actor lives in the pages of Jefferson's autobiography enshrined in words of warm but judicious appreciation. "Although only a half-brother," says Jefferson, "he seemed like a father to me, and there was a deep and strange affection between us." Nor must mention be forgotten of one other member of the family: Mary, his foster-mother, as Jefferson affectionately calls her, "a faithful, loving, truthful friend, rather than a servant, with no ambition or thought for herself, living only for us, and totally unconscious of her own existence."