Actors and Dramatic Critics
Joseph Jefferson is an actor in whom the romantic ardor of devotion to the dramatic art has never languished. Youth is gone, but not its enthusiasm, its faith, or its fire. He still embodies Rip Van Winkle with a sincerity as intense and with an artistic execution as thorough and as fresh as if the part were new, and as if he were playing it for the first time. The spontaneous drollery, the wildwood freedom, the endearing gentleness, the piquant, quizzical sapience, the unconscious humor, the pathetic blending of forlorn, wistful patience with awestricken apprehension, the dazed, submissive, drifting surrender to the current of fate, and the apparently careless, but clear-cut and beautiful method—all those attributes that bewitched the community long ago remain unchanged, and have lost no particle of their charm.
One Sunday morning, in Plymouth Church, just as Mr. Beecher was about to begin his sermon, and there was a deathly silence all over the house, Mr. Beecher said:
“Yes, I have been to the theatre. Mr. Beecher has been to the theatre. Now if you will all wait until you are past seventy years of age and will then go and see Joseph Jefferson in ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ I venture the risk that it will not affect your eligibility for heaven if you do nothing worse.”
Mr. Jefferson can command $1,000 a night in the large cities, if he will only consent to lecture. He and Sir Henry Irving are overrun with invitations to appear before college audiences.
WILLIAM WINTER was first called to my attention by Henry Ward Beecher, in 1876, while we were on the train between Fall River and Boston. Mr. Beecher was reading the New York Tribune. He usually read his morning paper from beginning to end, and this time he had got as far as the dramatic criticism, when he said to me:
“If you want to have the true estimate concerning the drama you should read William Winter in The Tribune. He is the most graphic writer there is, and he is a fine critic and absolutely clean. Here’s what he says of this young actress, Mary Anderson, as ‘Juliet.’”
Mr. Beecher then read aloud to me a column prophesying a brilliant success, which proved to be fully realized. Since that time I have read everything Mr. Winter has written. I watched and read and admired the man. I noted the interest that he took in all matters pertaining to the advancement, culture, and education of the community where he lives, his founding of the Arthur Winter Memorial Library at the Staten Island Academy, with a contribution of rare books and gems of literature that could have been collected only by one of fine gifts and refined tastes such as Mr. Winter possesses.
Reading of this acquisition to the academy and the erection of a hall for lectures, etc., I felt an interest in the success of this movement, and wrote my first letter to Mr. Winter, proposing to furnish such of my stars as would contribute lectures and entertainments for his public.
A most gracious and appreciative letter of thanks came in return, which is one of my choicest delights. I so wrote him, and received another characteristic reply. So it has kept up ever since. I now, as far as possible, stipulate with my coming stars that they give one evening during their season to the Winter Memorial Library, and it has come about that they all look forward to that appointment with great expectation, because it is an audience that, for fine appreciation, is not to be excelled anywhere. Marion Crawford, Annie Grey, H. E. Krehbiel, and Ernest Seton-Thompson, all declare the Winter Memorial their ideal audience.
For over thirty-five years (since August, 1865), Mr. Winter has been the dramatic critic of the New York Tribune, and during that time he has wielded an influence more potent in the advancement of the drama than that of all the other New York critics combined. He is incorruptible and not afraid of consequences. Once a very prominent manager, knowing that Mr. Winter and I were friends, came into my office and asked for a confidential talk, which was granted. He began like this:
“You know William Winter well, do you not?”
“I have very little association with him. I know him well enough to understand that he is my friend and would go as far to serve me as he would any friend.”
“Is he well fixed or is he poor?” asked the manager.
“He’s not rich. How could he be, with only the resources of his pen as his income, and with a family of sons and a daughter to educate?”
“Major, would $2,500 be any inducement for him to visit the Union Square Theatre to-morrow evening, and give that girl, the greatest actress in the world, a send off?”
I said: “It would be a waste of time and money. You would be as safe in offering $50,000 as any other amount. If Mr. Winter goes there he will write as he sees, and will do the subject justice.”
The manager told me that he had made sure of every paper that he wanted but the Tribune, and he would give more for that paper than for all the others, because whatever Winter wrote the public believed. He had already secured the next best dramatic writer for less than half he offered me if I could secure Winter.
While I was writing this book, one of the other New York dramatic critics to whom that manager referred was in my office, and we went out to lunch together. He wanted to borrow $2. He said that the New York newspapers of to-day would accept nothing from his pen, nor from other prominent old journalists, while William Winter seemed to be as much in evidence as ever.
I couldn’t help saying: “I will quote what a theatrical manager said to me twelve years ago: ‘I secured the next best writer in New York for less than half what I would offer to Winter, but the public believes what Winter writes’; and it is true.”
In reply to a letter from him recommending a great Shakespearean scholar and reader, I once wrote Mr. Winter that there was no public demand for a scholarly address on Shakespeare or any literary subject; that there was scarcely a statesman even, or any man of letters, that even colleges and institutions of learning cared to engage for commencements and other public occasions, but that I had letters from many leading colleges offering fabulous prices if I could secure Henry Irving or Joseph Jefferson for them, and on this encouraging symptom I offered each of these great actors $10,000 if they would each give ten addresses on these occasions.
Here is Mr. Winter’s reply:
“September 5, 1896.
“My Dear Major Pond:
“I observed with some wonder your amazing offer of $1,000 a night to Irving and to Jefferson, for ten lectures, for college commencements. There must, of course, be some ‘business’ in this, or you would not think of it, but I should be very glad to know what qualifications are possessed by these gentlemen, or by any other actors, which entitled them to this peculiar eminence. A university is a seat of learning, and I have always supposed that the honors and rewards of learning are due to great scholars, whose lives have been passed in study, in thought, and in labor for the art of literature and the cause of education. Mr. Irving and Mr. Jefferson are masters of the art of acting, and no one admires them more than I do; but I should hardly select either of them as monitors for a university commencement, any more than they would select me as a director of the stage.
“Faithfully yours, “William Winter.”
One of Mr. Winter’s most cherished friends was George William. Curtis, and it is his ambition to add a George William Curtis Memorial Lyceum to the Staten Island Academy. He is sure to accomplish the work if he is spared another five years.
He is the last of his kind. Only by his bravery and his fidelity to his profession could he survive the natural loneliness of his environment.
There has been scarcely a great actor or actress or theatrical manager for the last forty years whom he has not known intimately and who has not been his dear friend. Among this number must be included Joseph Jefferson, Sir Henry Irving, Edwin Booth, Lester Wallack, John McCullagh, Lawrence Barrett, Barney Williams, W. J. Florence, William Weaver, John Gilbert, Adelaide Neilson, Ellen Terry, Charlotte Cushman, and Augustin Daly. One can readily come in touch with the tender vibrations and longings of his heart by reading the following poem in memory of his friend Augustin Daly, which is here reprinted by the kind permission of the Macmillan Co.:
A. D.
Died June 7, 1899.
Long he slumbers; will he waken, greeting, as he used to do,
With his kindly, playful smile, his old companions, me and you?
Long he slumbers—though the wind of morning sweetly blows to sea,
Though his barque has weighed her anchor, and the tide is flowing free.
Long he slumbers; why, so helpless, doth he falter on the shore?
Wherefore stays he in the silence, he that never stayed before?
“Do not wake me!” Oh, the pity! How shall we poor toilers strive
If his strong and steadfast spirit keep not our frail hope alive?
All his days were given to action, all his powers of mind and will:
Now the restless heart is silent, and the busy brain is still.
Gone the fine ideal fancies, glorious, like the summer dawn!
Ev’ry passionate throb of purpose, ev’ry dream of grandeur gone!
Courage, patience, deep devotion, long endurance, manly trust,
Zeal for truth and love for beauty—gone, and buried in the dust!
Ah, what pictures rise in mem’ry and what strains of music flow,
When we think of all the magic times and scenes of Long Ago!
When once more we hear, in Arden, rustling trees and rippling streams;
When on fair Olivia’s palace faint and pale the moonlight beams;
When the storm-clouds break and scatter, and o’er beach, and crag, and wave,
Angels float, and heavenly voices haunt the gloom of Prosp’ro’s cave!
Well he wrought—and we remember! Faded rainbow! fallen leaf!
All fair things are but as shadows, and all glory ends in grief.
Worn and weary with the struggle, broken with the weight of care,
Low he lies, and all his pageants vanish in the empty air.
Nevermore can such things lure us, nevermore be quite the same;
Other hands may grasp the laurel, other brows be twined with fame.
Far, and less’ning in the distance, dies the music of the Past;
In our ears a note discordant vibrates like an angry blast;
On our eyes the Future rushes, blatant, acrid, fraught with strife,
Arrogant with tinselled youth and rank with flux of sensual life.
Naught avails to stem the tumult—vulgar aims and commonplace,
Greed and vice and dross and folly, frenzied in the frantic race.
Naught avails, and we that linger, sick at heart and old and grim,
Can but pray to leave this rabble, loving Art and following him.
Very lonely seems the pathway; long we journeyed side by side;
Much with kindred hope were solaced, much with kindred anguish tried;
Had our transient jars and murmurs, had our purpose to be blest,
In our brotherhood of travel, in our dreams of age and rest,—
Yonder, where the tinted hawthorns scarlet poppyfields enfold,
And the prodigal laburnum blooms in clust’ring globes of gold.
Ended all—and all is shadow, where but late a glory shone,
And the wanderer, gray and fragile, walks the vacant scene, alone.
Only now the phantom faces that in waking dreams appear!
Only now the aerial voices that the heart alone can hear!
Round and red the sun is sinking, lurid in his misty light;
Faintly sighs the wind of evening, coldly falls the brooding night.
Fare thee well—forever parted, speeding onward in the day
Where, through God’s supernal mercy, human frailties drop away!
Fare thee well; while o’er thy ashes softly tolls the funeral knell—
Peace, and love, and tender memory! so, forever, fare thee well!
William Winter.
SIR HENRY IRVING’S advancement to the order of knighthood aroused great interest among theatrical people throughout the world. An honor has been conferred upon dramatic art, and it has fallen on the one person in the English-speaking world most fitted to bear it as the representative of all that is best in dramatic art.
Honors of this kind have been bestowed with much freedom on painters, writers, and musicians, but never before accorded to an actor. This instance, therefore, involves an unusual recognition of the acted drama as the peer of its kindred arts.
No actor is held in higher esteem by his fellow-actors than Sir Henry Irving. His high abilities are not more admired on the stage than his personal qualities in private life. The congratulations he has received on this advancement are more general and more sincere than could have been bestowed on any other living actor. For the above reason, Sir Henry Irving is offered fabulous sums if he will lecture or give readings. I offered him $10,000 if he would give ten readings before college societies.
It was my privilege to introduce Henry Irving to Mr. Beecher during the season of the latter’s first visit to this country. I accompanied him and Miss Terry to Plymouth Church; we all sat in Mr. Beecher’s pew with Mrs. Beecher. Two more attentive listeners Mr. Beecher never had. Irving had heard Mr. Beecher lecture once—that memorable lecture in Manchester, England, in 1863, when he stood before that great English mob four hours before they would allow him to be heard. Mr. Irving had told me of having been one of the standees on that occasion, and was so intensely interested that he hadn’t time to be tired.
Mr. Irving listened without moving even a muscle of his face during the sermon.
Of course, no two auditors would have attracted the attention of that great congregation more intensely at that time. After the benediction, everybody seemed fixed in their places with eyes centred on Irving and Terry. Mr. Beecher stepped down from the pulpit and made his way to the pastor’s pew. As he approached Mr. Irving he said in a loud voice that all could hear, “Will the congregation please move out?” He then extended his hand to Mr. Irving, saying to me, “Mr. Pond, please walk with Mr. Irving to my house.” He then shook hands with Miss Terry, who at that time held Mrs. Beecher in her embrace. As the crowd passed out, Mr. Irving and I walked ahead of Mr. Beecher, who had Miss Terry on his left arm and Mrs. Beecher on his right. As we entered Mr. Beecher’s drawing-room, Mr. Irving and Mr. Beecher engaged in topical conversation on the sofa, and Mrs. Beecher sat down in a rocking-chair, and Miss Terry, taking an ottoman, placed it at Mrs. Beecher’s feet and threw herself upon it, with both hands clasping Mrs. Beecher, and her head in Mrs. Beecher’s lap. She was not aware of the capture she had made, to the surprise of all the Beecher family; for of all women that Mrs. Beecher had always shunned and despised, actresses she most abhorred, and Miss Terry was the first one to whom she had even spoken to her knowledge. This was the beginning of a friendship that was more like that of mother and daughter than mere friends, and continued until the end of Mrs. Beecher’s life.
At dinner was such a Sunday scene as was often the custom, one which could occur nowhere else except in the Beecher family. There were present Col. H. B. Beecher, Henry Ward’s eldest son, and his wife; Colonel Beecher’s daughter Kate (the late Mrs. Harper); and Mr. William C. Beecher, the second son, all endowed with Beecher brains. The hour was a display of intellect and wit. I never saw Mr. Irving so delightfully entertaining as on this occasion, and he and Miss Terry told me it was the most interesting and delightful day of their lives.
When Mr. Beecher died, I received a cablegram from Henry Irving, asking me to place a wreath on the casket, with the card, “Adieu, noble friend!—Henry Irving.”
Mr. Irving came into my office one morning in November, 1887, while he and his company were playing at Wallack’s Theatre. He asked if I were busy. Of course I was at his service then and there. He said:
“I see by the papers that a fund is being raised for a statue to Mr. Beecher, in Brooklyn. Can you tell me if the plans are formulated, and if Miss Terry and I can be of assistance? I think my company would gladly contribute their services for an extra matinée of ‘Faust’ for that object.”
I assured Mr. Irving that it would be highly appreciated. I went with him to the theatre, where a rehearsal was on. Mr. Irving asked the attention of the company for a moment. He told them that he and Miss Terry would like to invite them all to join in an extra performance of “Faust,” the entire proceeds to be given to the Henry Ward Beecher Statue Fund. The suggestion met with a very hearty and unanimous approval. The matinée was given, and $3,100 was sent to Ripley Ropes, treasurer of the fund, which was duly acknowledged.
MISS CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN was on the stage forty years. The last twenty-five of these years she was the greatest actress of her time. She died in the Parker House, Boston, February, 1876. I started for Kings Chapel, from where she was buried, at 8:30, and found the little church and neighboring thoroughfares thronged with the sorrowing multitude waiting with the hope of getting just one view of the casket which contained the remains of their departed friend.
Miss Cushman’s memory is still green. Her cottage at Newport and her grave at Mount Auburn are among the first objects inquired for by visitors to these places.
The last few years of her public life were devoted to public reading. In that department she was without a rival,—Fanny Kemble having retired to private life,—and in simplicity, personal magnetism, humor, and stalwart force of execution her readings have never been equalled. In the autumn of 1874 she gave six readings in Chicago for Messrs. Carpenter & Sheldon, managers of the Star Course, for which they paid her $5,000. The readings took place in McCormick’s Hall, on the north side of the city. The gross receipts for those six readings aggregated upward of $17,000.
In 1857 a tramping jour printer had come from Kansas seeking employment on the daily papers in St. Louis. It was the year of the great financial panic. There were so many printers out of work that those having steady employment yielded half of their time to “subs.”
At the house where I boarded I sat next to the prompter of the People’s Theatre, an old man, the most popular prompter ever known to the profession, Jimmie Anderson. I took to the old fellow, and he was very nice to me. One evening he invited me to the theatre, on the stage, where I stood beside him and saw Neafie in the “Corsican Brothers.” I walked home with him after the theatre. Before retiring that night he told me that the office of call-boy in the theatre was vacant, and I might have it—seven dollars a week. I began the following Monday. Charlotte Cushman opened that night with Lady Macbeth. It was the first time I ever saw her.
During the play Miss Cushman came to Mr. Anderson somewhat excited, saying, “Jimmie”—they all called him Jimmie—“the boy who carried my basket to-night loitered by the way. That basket contains most of my jewels. I must have somebody that I can rely upon who will walk faithfully by my side.”
Anxious to earn an extra dollar, I hunched old Jimmie, and he turned around and spoke very savagely to me:
“Will you do it?”
“Yes,” said I.
So that night I walked home with Charlotte Cushman, the great actress, carrying her basket to her room in the Planters’ House.
I did this until Saturday, when I was taken ill and obliged to send a substitute, who brought the basket on Saturday night.
After the play, when the lights were turned off with the exception of the star’s dressing-room, I was curled up on the stage among a lot of scenery. I heard Miss Cushman, coming out of her room, say:
“Where is that boy who carried my basket?”
I replied, “Here.”
She walked across the stage, piloted by the night watchman with his lantern, and reaching out her hand to me said:
“I hope you are not going to be ill,” and placed a coin in my hands.
I hurried to get to where there was sufficient light, to discover that I was the owner of a twenty-dollar gold piece.
That night I changed my lodging.
I did not meet Miss Cushman personally after that until 1874-5. I was giving Sunday-night entertainments in Boston, which were meeting with very great success. I thought of Charlotte Cushman, and telegraphed her at Newport, offering her $1,000 if she would give a reading in the Boston. She accepted.
The night of the reading I was so busy that I did not have an opportunity to place in Miss Cushman’s hands the envelope containing the certified check for $1,000. It was not until after the performance that I went to her hotel and sent up my card. The bell-boy returned with the answer, “Miss Cushman says show the gentleman up.”
Miss Cushman met me very cordially in her room. She was in a very happy mood, as the hall had been crowded with people.
“Miss Cushman,” I said, “I intended to hand this envelope to you on the platform, but I was so busy in front of the house that I could not get an opportunity. Please pardon me.”
“Oh, that is all right, Major Pond. Sit down and have some supper.” (Stars always have supper after their performances.)
During the conversation at the table I said: “Miss Cushman, that $1,000 check of this evening is the interest on twenty dollars that you invested in me in 1857.”
Then I related the incident of the twenty-dollar gold piece which she gave me when I was sick back of the stage in St. Louis.
“Are you that boy?” she asked, with a reminiscent smile.
“Yes,” said I, smiling back, “the very boy.”
“Well, I am glad to see you. I have often wondered if you survived.”
We were both glad.
MISS ELLEN TERRY, the greatest actress of our times, possesses a remarkable range of powers from low comedy to the highest tragic force, but always suggesting a lovely spirit behind the mask. At one moment she can be a queen of tragedy, at another a boisterous hoyden, at another a gentle, refined, high-bred lady. Her mirth is perfect gladness.
In private or social life, no matter how select or distinguished the surroundings or attractive the company, she eclipses every lady present, and is always the centre of attraction.
No better estimate of the genius of Miss Terry can be given than Mr. William Winter’s description of her in the character of Rosamund, in Tennyson’s “Becket,” which I quote, by permission of the Macmillan Co., from “Shadows of the Stage”:
“Tennyson’s Rosamund is one of the loveliest creations in English literature. No character could be imagined in more complete unison with the nature and attributes disclosed in the acting of Ellen Terry. She embodied it in a fluent and delicious vein of spontaneity. In that part, as in Goethe’s Margaret, she conquered by simply allowing a rich individuality to show itself through careless glee, confiding abandonment, and a sweet bewilderment of tremulous apprehension, and once through the proud self-assertion of elemental nobility. That seems not difficult in the saying, but, obviously, it must be difficult to do; for whenever, in acting, the effect of nature is most absolute, there the means of art have been applied with the most of glamour, and concealed with the best of disguise. Throughout her performance there was no effort. All was grace. In the fugitive scene with Becket, and in the affectionate prattle—half raillery, half fondness—in the bower scene with Henry, the conditions are so simple that the effect might have become insipid but for her sumptuous personality, her profound sincerity, the plenitude of her enticing and piquant ways, the sunshine of her face, and the music of her delicious voice. During those scenes her preservation of girlish sprightliness never lapsed—till, with the final exclamation, ‘Some dreadful truth is breaking on me,’ she struck the chord of tenderest pathos, and showed herself all woman. Beauty and tenderness, in forlorn apprehension, overshadowed, shaken, and made half wild with nameless dread, constitute a conflicting image of lovely grief, such as Ellen Terry, beyond all the players of our time, is best fitted to impress upon the heart.”
I have frequently been offered $1,000 if I could secure Miss Terry for an afternoon’s reading in the drawing-rooms of wealthy people in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.