i^
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON 
 AT HOME 
 
 BY 
 
 NATHAN HASKELL DOLE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BOSTON 
 ESTES AND LAURIAT 
 
 1898
 
 Copyright, i8g7 
 By T. E. Marr 
 
 Copyright, i8g8 
 By Estes and Lauriat 
 
 Colmtial tPrcss: 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
 Boston. U. S. A.
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FAGB 
 
 Crow's Nest, Showing Family Group on Piazza . Frontispiece 
 Joseph Jefferson Telling a Story to Sol Smith Russell, 
 His Youngest Son Standing in the Centre Listen- 
 ing, AND His Little Grandson Sitting on Arm of 
 Chair . . . . . . . . .13 
 
 Joseph Jefferson and Sol Smith Russell at Crow's Nest . 19 
 Reception Hall, Crow's Nest . . . . . .25 
 
 Parlor, Showing Carved Figures in the Play of *' Rip 
 
 Van Winkle " under the Mantel . . . .31 
 
 Down-stairs Library, Showing a Painting by Joseph Jef- 
 ferson . . ■ . . . . . . -37 
 
 Dining-room, Crow's Nest ...... 43 
 
 Mantel, Brought from India, in the Dining-room . . 51 
 
 Upper Hall, Crow's Nest ...... 57 
 
 Joseph Jefferson in His Studio ..... 63 
 
 Landscape, by Jefferson, '96 (Painting) .... 69 
 
 Marine, by Jefferson, '97 (Painting) .... 75 
 
 The Mill, by Jefferson, '97 (Painting) . . . .81 
 
 Back View of Jefferson at the Easel .... 87 
 
 Jefferson's Stable, Showing His Youngest Son on Pony . 93 
 Electric Plant ........ 101
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 A PAINTER lives in the legacy of his pictures ; the 
 poet goes down to posterity in his verses ; the musi- 
 cal composer wins immortality by his operas or sym- 
 phonies, which live on in the possibilities of the printed 
 page : but the singer and the actor, however great their ^he 
 
 r o ' o ' o ephemeral 
 
 c '111 1 1 • • lot of the 
 
 contemporary tame, quickly become only a tradition, actor. 
 We read of the triumphs of the Siddonses and the 
 Ristoris, of the Grisis and the Marios, and there is 
 nothing to bring them before our imaginations, except 
 the extravagant encomiums of their day. 
 
 The praise and applause which crown the efforts of 
 the popular actor is his compensation for the temporary 
 character of his work. 
 
 Fortunate is the actor who lives in this later genera- 
 ation. The gulf, so artificial and unnecessary, that in 
 former times separated him from society, has been practi- 
 cally closed ; the narrow and bitter prejudice which has, p*^Xe. 
 indeed, always existed and in all countries, against those 
 who " show themselves for money," who pretend to be 
 what they are not, has largely died out. Occasionally, 
 
 9
 
 lO JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 some popular preacher will rail against the theatre, or 
 bring odium on the church by refusing Christian burial to 
 the buskined son of the Muses; but the world, as it in- 
 creases in knowledge, recognises more and more openly 
 that prejudices are ignorant and unreasoning ; they are 
 now mainly confined to bigoted sectarians. We know 
 that the " stage- villain " may be in his private life the 
 pattern of propriety. The actor is not only " admired, 
 applauded, highly rewarded, loved, envied, the object 
 of the most flattering (not to say the most impertinent) 
 curiosity," but, what is better, he is weighed on his own 
 merits, and if his character and behaviour be blameless, 
 his profession is regarded as in no respect derogatory ; 
 he is everywhere received in the most exclusive cir- 
 cles ; he is decorated with the ribbon of the legion of 
 honour ; he is granted titles and honours ; he is wel- 
 comed for his own sake. 
 Character It is undcniable that the standard of character among; 
 
 oi actors. o 
 
 actors has been constantly rising. Whereas the glare of 
 publicity may seem to bring out into prominence the 
 failings of certain erratic geniuses, on the other hand, 
 the search-light of criticism finds that many of the most 
 popular actors and actresses of the day are without re- 
 proach, that they lead perfectly exemplary lives, and 
 have all the virtues of humanity. Many are those 
 whom one might select as object-lessons of this worthi-
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 1 1 
 
 ness ; one would, perhaps, think most naturally, at the 
 very first, of the name of Jefferson, borne irreproachably 
 through five generations, and culminating in the fasci- 
 nating and admirable personality of Joseph Jefferson, the 
 Rip Van Winkle so dear to thousands. It is with 
 Joseph Jefferson, the third to bear that honoured name, 
 that this unpretentious monograph has to deal, not so 
 much for the purpose of defending the stage, as to 
 gratify a laudable desire on the part of many to have 
 a compact sketch of the life, and particularly of the 
 home life, of an actor who has been so long before 
 the footlights, and secondly, to lay an humble wreath 
 at the feet of one whom we all are proud to honour.
 
 I. 
 
 Joseph Jefferson was born in Philadelphia, Feb. 20, 
 1829, at the southwest corner of Spruce Street and Sixth 
 Street. In his autobiography, he says that he could 
 almost claim to have been born in a theatre ; his earliest 
 recollections were connected with one ; his first play- 
 house was, in both senses of the word, a playhouse ; 
 Early « behind the scenes " he could amuse himself with 
 
 passion 
 
 oracing. « j-j^Qge g^j-g tokens of bad weather, the thunder-drum 
 and rain-box," or play hide-and-seek in the " Tomb 
 of the Capulets," or Ali Baba's robbers' cave ; or behind 
 the green bank, from which stray babies " were usually 
 stolen, when left there by affectionate but careless moth- 
 ers." Even when he was in long clothes, at a time 
 before which his memory is a blank, he was carried 
 on the stage to add realism to the scene. His earliest 
 passion was for theatricals ; he says that as he had a 
 theatre stocked with scenery and properties, he could 
 indulge his passion at small expense, especially as his 
 stock company were volunteers, consisting of two little 
 boys and their sister, who used to play with him on 
 Saturdays. 
 
 12
 
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 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. I 5 
 
 This early passion for the stage was not merely the 
 
 •^ ^ . Inherited 
 
 result of environment. Inheritance, reaching back nearly talents. 
 a hundred years before his birth, must be also called in 
 to explain it. In 1746, a youth of eighteen named 
 Thomas Jefferson, the son of a Yorkshire farmer, rode 
 to London, mounted on a thoroughbred horse, and was 
 by a happy accident immediately thrown into the society 
 of David Garrick. He was a jovial young fellow, and 
 so charming that he was admitted into Garrick's inti- 
 mate friendship, and by his advice adopted the stage. 
 His earliest recorded appearance at Drury Lane was 
 in October, 1753. He took the management of sev- 
 eral theatres, and was an actor of sterling merit in 
 some sixty parts, and passed a highly successful life, 
 dying in 1807, after sixty years of connection with the 
 stage. His first wife came from a family connected 
 with the Navy, and opposed to her becoming an act- 
 ress, but she succeeded in overcoming her father's scru- 
 ples, and went on the stage, playing with her husband 
 at Drury Lane in 1753. One of their two sons became 
 a clergyman, and went as a missionary to Africa ; the 
 other, Joseph, born in 1774, became an actor, and hav- jo|e^ph 
 ing some difficulties with his father's second wife, he 
 came to America in 1797, for a salary of seventeen 
 dollars a week, and the payment of his passage, offered 
 by Charles Stuart Powell, the first manager of the Bos- 
 
 fferson 
 the first.
 
 humour. 
 
 1 6 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 ton Theatre. By the time that Jefferson reached Boston 
 Powell had failed, and the Federal Street Theatre was in 
 other hands. It is possible that he played as one of the 
 witches in " Macbeth," in December, 1795, but his first 
 important appearance in this country was in February of 
 the following year, when he played the part of " Squire 
 Richard " in " The Provoked Husband." He was de- 
 scribed as small and slender, with a Grecian nose, blue 
 eyes full of laughter, and an unrivalled capacity for 
 we'^of*^ exciting mirth. He seems to have inherited his father's 
 love for a good joke, — a characteristic that has been 
 handed down, like a Toledo blade, from generation to 
 generation. Joseph Jefferson found lodgings in New 
 York with a Mrs. Fortune, the widow of a Scotch mer- 
 chant. Her house was next the John Street Theatre, 
 where he made his first successes. She had two daugh- 
 ters; one, Euphemia, became the young comedian's wife: 
 the other, eleven years later, became the second wife of 
 William Warren, and the mother of no less than six 
 children, all of whom find mention in the history of 
 the American stage ; the fifth was William Warren, 
 who for over forty years was the mainstay of the 
 Boston Museum company, Boston's especial pride and 
 favourite in many varied parts. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson both accepted an engagement 
 at the Park Theatre, his service lasting five years, hers
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. ly 
 
 lasting three. It is said that his greatest successes were 
 made in the delineation of old men ; and one of his fa- 
 vourite autobiographical anecdotes relates how a philan- 
 thropic lady once called at the Park Theatre with a ^rop/^" 
 
 . scheme. 
 
 subscription blank, and begged the managers to with- 
 draw that poor old Mr. Jefferson from the stage. She 
 had seen him as " Item," in " The Steward," and she felt 
 that it would be only Christian charity to provide for 
 such an aged and feeble person. She herself had headed 
 the subscription with a generous sum, and was on her 
 way to increase it, in order to provide a home for the 
 infirm old man in his declining years. Thomas Cooper, 
 a fellow actor, listened to her generous scheme, and 
 assured her that the management would gladly cooper- 
 ate in relieving Jefferson's condition. At that propi- 
 tious moment Jefferson himself came in, and Cooper had 
 the pleasure of presenting him to his benefactress, who 
 was amazed to see such a handsome young man, and 
 could hardly believe her eyes. She tore the subscrip- 
 tion-blank into pieces and went away, not sadder, but 
 wiser. 
 
 In 1803, the Jeffersons moved to Philadelphia, and Jegersons 
 joined the company playing at the Chestnut Street ddphla^" 
 Theatre, with which their fortunes were identified until 
 the theatre was burned down in 1821. After that 
 Jefferson's popularity gradually declined. His wife died
 
 1 8 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 in January, 1831, and he himself, disappointed and suf- 
 fering from the disease of gout, which he had inherited 
 and vainly struggled against, " closed his pure and 
 blameless life " in Harrisburg, eighteen months later. 
 William Winter sums up contemporaneous opinions of 
 him in the statement that " he was a man of original 
 mind, studious habits, fine temperament, natural dignity, 
 and great charm of character, and his life was free from 
 contention, acrimony, and reproach." He had the gift 
 of making people happy. The very sound of his 
 voice compelled laughter. " Alas ! Poor Yorick ! " 
 
 He appeared in upwards of two hundred characters, 
 but all his talents could not save him from waning popu- 
 larity. Edwin Forrest spoke once with deep feeling of 
 " that beautiful and gifted old man ; what poverty and 
 what purity and high moraHty were in his household ; 
 how he had educated his children, and how at last he 
 had died among strangers, heart-broken by ingratitude." 
 Not wholly unappreciated ! For Chief Justice Gibson 
 4itoph!'^' composed an epitaph for his gravestone, in which he 
 called him " an actor whose unrivalled powers took in 
 the whole range of comic character, from pathos to soul- 
 shaking mirth ; his colouring of the part was that of 
 nature, — warm, pure and fresh ; but of nature enriched 
 with the finest conceptions of genius." 
 
 He had nine children, all but two of whom adopted
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 1 1 
 
 the profession of acting. His second son, Joseph Jeffer- 
 son II., was born in 1804, in Powell Street, Philadelphia. Jjff|g'^°°j 
 He inherited his father's talent for drawing and painting, 
 and he showed some proficiency in architecture. When 
 he was a boy of ten, he appeared at the Chestnut Street 
 Theatre, and played such parts as the First Murderer in 
 " Macbeth." Like his father, he was excellent in play- 
 ing old men. In 1824 he was a member of the Chatham 
 Garden Theatre and met Mrs. Thomas Burke, whom he 
 married, though she was eight years his senior. She was 
 born in New York, the daughter of a French gentleman 
 named Thomas, who, with his wife, was on his way to San 
 Domingo, to take possession of an estate. M. Thomas 
 lived on the island until the rising of the negroes in 
 1804, when they were assisted to escape by a faithful 
 slave. He arrived penniless at Charleston, S. C, and, 
 through the favour of the athlete and rope-dancer, Alex- 
 andre Placide, then managing the Charleston Theatre, he 
 found humble employment behind the scenes, but not as 
 an actor. His now motherless daughter, Cornelie Fran- ^ofher°°'^ 
 ^oise, first served in the ballet and afterwards in minor 
 parts in regular plays. She became well known as a 
 singer : Ireland says that she had " a pleasing face and 
 person, and an exquisite voice, which, in power, purity, 
 and sweetness, was unapproached by any contempo- 
 rary." She was early married to the handsome, talented.
 
 22 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 but dissipated Irish comedian, Thomas Burke, who died 
 of delirium tremens in 1824, leaving one son, Charles St. 
 Thomas, who gave great promise, but died at the early 
 age of thirty-two. Even then he had appeared on the 
 stage in upwards of fifty parts, and was the first to dram- 
 atise and to act the part of "Rip Van Winkle." 
 
 Joseph Jefferson III. well remembered how his half- 
 brother spoke the line, " Are we so soon forgot when we 
 are gone ? " and, out of sweet loyalty to that lamented 
 genius, pronounces them in a diflferent tone. He is 
 quoted as saying of him : 
 
 " Charles Burke was to acting what Mendelssohn was 
 to music. He did not have to work for his effects, as I 
 do. He was not analytical, as I am. Whatever he did 
 came to him naturally, as grass grows or water runs. It 
 was not talent that informed his art, but genius." 
 
 Such was the ancestry and inheritance of the future 
 Anunsuiiied " Rip Van Winkle," an inheritance of unsullied character 
 
 inheritance. ^ 
 
 through five generations ; of varied talents ; and finally 
 those blended strands of nationality — English, Scotch, 
 and French — which so often result in original genius.
 
 II. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson gives an amusing account of his first 
 conscious public appearance, when, " in a white tunic ^ariy 
 
 r r r ■' ' appearance 
 
 beautifully striped with gold bands, and in the grasp and ""^ ^^^^^^' 
 on the shoulders of an infuriated tragedian," he was car- 
 ried across " a shaky bridge amid the deafening report of 
 guns and pistols and in a blaze of fire and smoke. To 
 me," he goes on to say, " the situation seemed perilous, 
 and in order to render my position more secure, I seized 
 * Rolla ' by the hair of his head. ' Let go,' he cried, but 
 I was obeying the first law of nature, not ' Rolla,' so I 
 tightened my grasp upon his tragic topknot. The 
 battle was short but decisive, for in the next moment I 
 had pulled off his feather-duster head-dress, wig and all, 
 thereby unintentionally scalping the enemy ; and, as he 
 was past the prime of life, the noble Peruvian stood 
 bald-headed before an admiring audience." 
 
 When he was three years old, he was taken to witness 
 a new entertainment in the shape of " Living Statues," 
 and his imitative genius impelled him to copy the tab- 
 leaux. He posed for his own amusement before the 
 green-room glass as " Ajax defying the Lightning," or as 
 
 23
 
 24 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 " The Dying Gladiator." His family also had the bene- 
 fit of these amateur performances, and it was but a step 
 to transfer the gifted child to the stage, to repeat them 
 for the amusement of the public. 
 
 His aunt Ehzabeth, in her recollections,' recalls how, 
 Ind thfe"" when little more than two years old, he gave an imitation 
 statues. of Fletcher the statue man, and his grandmother, chanc- 
 ing to notice him in a corner of the room trying that ex- 
 periment, found that he had caught all the " business " 
 of the statues, though he could not have pronounced the 
 name of one of them. She made him a dress similar to 
 that worn by Fletcher, and that he made somewhat of a 
 sensation is proved by a statement quoted from an inter- 
 view with an eye-witness who recollected how little Joe, 
 " in white fleshings, white wig, and chalked face, was 
 placed on a small round table and gave imitations of 
 Fletcher's statuary, — 'The Discobolus,' ' Ajax Defy- 
 ing the Lightning,' etc. He was hardly longer than 
 the legs of the table, but so admirably he struck the 
 attitudes, and so perfectly proportioned was he, that the 
 audiences were charmed with the graceful, lovely boy." 
 He himself says : 
 
 " I am in the dark as to whether this entertainment 
 was ' the talk of the town ' or not, but I fancy not ; an 
 attenuated child representing Hercules struggling with 
 
 ' Printed in Mr. William Winter's " Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson."
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 1'J 
 
 a lion could scarcely excite terror ; so I presume I did 
 no harm if I did no good," 
 
 When he was four years old, he likewise imitated Pjfm°^ 
 
 Crow." 
 
 T. D. Rice, one of the first to delineate negro charac- 
 ters. That fantastic " knight of the burnt cork " saw 
 his imitation of "Jim Crow," and insisted that the boy 
 should appear for his benefit. Mr. Jefferson, in his 
 autobiography, says: " I was duly blacked up, and 
 dressed as a complete miniature likeness of the origi- 
 nal. He put me in a bag, which almost smothered 
 me, and carried me upon the stage on his shoulders. 
 No word of this proceeding had been mentioned in 
 the bills, so that, figuratively speaking, the public were 
 as much in the dark as I was. After dancing and 
 singing the first stanza, he began the second, the fol- 
 lowing being the two lines which introduced me : 
 
 ** * Oh, ladies and gentlemen, I'd have you for to know 
 
 That I've got a little darkey here, that jumps Jim Crow ; ' 
 
 and turning the bag upside down, he emptied me out 
 head first before the eyes of the astonished audience. 
 The picture must have been a curious one ; it is as 
 vividly before me now as any recollection of my past 
 life. Rice was considerably over six feet high, I was 
 but four years old, and as we stood there, dressed 
 exactly alike, the audience roared with laughter. Rice
 
 28 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 and I now sang alternate stanzas, and the excitement 
 increased ; showers of pennies, sixpences, and shiUings 
 were tossed from the pit, and thrown from the gal- 
 leries upon the stage. I took no notice of this, but 
 
 doSS°* suddenly the clear, ringing sound of a dollar caught 
 my ear, and as the bright coin was rolling from the 
 stage into the orchestra, I darted forward, and secured 
 my prize. Holding it triumphantly between my finger 
 and thumb, I grinned at the leader of the orchestra, 
 as much as to say, ^ No, you don't.' This not only 
 brought down the house, but many half-dollars and dol- 
 lars besides. At the fall of the curtain, twenty-four 
 dollars were picked up, and given into my delighted 
 hands." That was not the last golden, or rather sil- 
 ver, shower that fell at the feet of the young actor. 
 
 That performance took place in Washington. Mr. 
 Jefferson's childhood was a kind of an Odyssey, and 
 his wanderings were many and full of adventures. 
 
 c^a. Combats were not lacking ; thus at his first appear- 
 ance "out of the juvenile supernumerary ranks:" He 
 was dressed to represent a Greek pirate, and Master 
 Titus, the son of a City Hall official, represented an 
 American sailor. They had a fierce encounter, but 
 young Jefferson was magnanimous, and allowed his 
 opponent, for whose benefit the fight took place, to 
 overcome and slay him. The fight was redemanded.
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 29 
 
 and the Greek pirate " had to come to life again, — 
 quite a common thing for stage pirates, — and die 
 twice." Mr. Jefferson recalls that he rather delighted 
 in being the slain foe, and having a star-spangled ban- 
 ner waved over him, but he is at a loss to know why 
 Mrs. Ireland refers to that combat as celebrated. " In 
 the accounts of our last war with the Greeks," he says, 
 " there is no mention made of this circumstance. If, 
 therefore, the combat was celebrated, it must have been 
 for historical inaccuracy." 
 
 The Jeffersons' stay in New York could not have 
 been very long or very successfiil, for though they 
 were there in 1835, ^^ years later, or at the end of 
 the season of 1837—38, having received an invitation 
 from a brother-in-law, Alexander Mackenzie, to go 
 to Chicago and take part in the management of a new 
 theatre in that enterprising little town, they were in 
 such straitened circumstances that they had to sell cer- 
 tain cherished articles to procure " necessary comforts 
 for the trip," and in order to pay their fare on an 
 Erie canal-boat, they depended upon such precarious 
 receipts as they might get by acting at Schenectady, 
 Utica, or Syracuse. The captain of the canal-boat ona"™!?" 
 had conscientious scruples against attending the theatre, 
 but not against taking the entrance fees. But, un- 
 fortunately, at Syracuse it rained in torrents, and the
 
 30 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 attendance was light. They still owed ten dollars 
 passage-money. So the captain, having an inward han- 
 kering for the forbidden, offered to call it " square " if 
 the actors in the company would give him a private 
 show in the cabin. They declined, with a pride worthy 
 of the Baron de Sigognac. But Mrs. Jefferson was not 
 averse to show off the abilities of her son, and he was 
 permitted to ransom the rest. Mr. Jefferson, in his 
 amusing account of this episode, says : 
 tSlf *°' " '^^^ captain turned it over in his mind, — being, I 
 am afraid, a little suspicious of my genius, — but after 
 due consideration, consented. So he prepared himself 
 for the entertainment, the cook and my mother com- 
 prising the rest of the audience. The actors had wisely 
 retired to the upper deck, as they had been afflicted on 
 former occasions. I now began a dismal comic song, 
 called * The Devil and Little Mike.' It consisted of 
 some twenty-five stanzas, each one containing two lines, 
 with a large margin of * whack fol de riddle.' It was 
 never quite clear whether the captain enjoyed this enter- 
 tainment or not ; my mother said he did, for though 
 the religious turn of his mind would naturally suppress 
 any impulse to applaud, he said, even before I had half 
 finished, that he was quite satisfied." 
 
 Many years later, Mr. Jefferson is said to have had 
 another opportunity to turn an honest penny by giving
 
 2 a 
 
 r 5
 
 Fifty cents' 
 worth of 
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. o o 
 
 a Strictly private performance. He was out on the tran- 
 quil waters of Buzzard's Bay, when a fisherman's craft 
 slowly drifted alongside of his boat, and the owner, 
 seated amid the debris of his conquests, growled out: 
 
 " Be you an actor ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Wal, here's fifty cents, and I want you should make flc^s 
 up fifty cents' worth of faces for me." 
 
 Accordingly he flung a silver piece over into Mr. Jef- 
 ferson's boat ! 
 
 From Bufl^alo the gay emigrants, hope beckoning on, 
 took steamer for the long and beautiful sail through the 
 Great Lakes, a leisurely voyage, with delightful experi- 
 ences of Indians and primitive life for the impressionable 
 young Thespian. At that day Chicago contained only 
 about two thousand inhabitants, and everything was new, 
 even the theatre — new and crude. " Don't you think 
 your angels are a little stiff in their attitudes .? " asked 
 Jefferson of the scene-painter of his Chicago rival. 
 
 " No, sir, not for angels," was his reply, evidently, like 
 the ancient bishop, mistaking angles for angels. " When I 
 deal with mythological subjects I never put my figures in Natural 
 
 . r / D attitudes 
 
 natural attitudes ; it would be inharmonious. A natural 
 
 angel would be out of keeping with the rest of the work." 
 
 There may also have been a hidden sting of sarcasm in 
 
 that memorable reply, reflecting on the work on the stage.
 
 III. 
 
 Their season in Chicago was short, and the golden 
 
 prospects which the ever-hopeful hoped for in vain led 
 
 them on into still newer fields. Often, says his son, 
 
 when the roads were heavy and the horses were jaded, 
 
 A hopeful he would see his father " trudging along ahead of the 
 
 spint. DO O 
 
 wagon, smoking his pipe and no doubt thinking of the 
 large fortune he was going to make in the next town, 
 now and then looking back with his light blue eyes, and 
 giving the mother a cheerful nod which plainly said : 
 'I'm all right; this is splendid, nothing could be finer.' 
 If it rained he was glad it was not snowing ; if it snowed 
 he was thankful it was not raining. This contented 
 spirit was his only inheritance ; but it was better than a 
 fortune made in Galena or anywhere else, for nothing 
 could rob him of it." 
 
 They travelled from Galena to Dubuque on the frozen 
 Mississippi, but a warm spell had set in, and they could 
 see the ice bending under the horses' feet. The passen- 
 gers arrived safely, but the sleigh containing their bag- 
 gage, their scenery and properties and all broke through. 
 " My poor mother," says Mr. Jefferson, " was in tears, 
 
 34
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 3 5 
 
 but my father was in high spirits at his good luck, as he 
 called it, — because there was a sand-bar where the sleigh 
 went in ! " 
 
 He, poor man, had painted the scenery, and its appear- frfthe'^ 
 
 . , MississippL 
 
 ance was not improved by a six hours' cold bath ! " A 
 wood scene had amalgamated with a Roman scene painted 
 on the back of it, and had so run into stains and winding 
 streaks that he said it looked like a large map of South 
 America ; and pointing out the Andes with his cane, he 
 humorously traced the Amazon to its source." This 
 accident delayed their opening for a week, and the soaked 
 helmets of pasteboard were beyond repair. 
 
 What humorous memories such episodes must recall 
 in better, if not happier days ! Here they acted in a 
 court-house, there in a large warehouse ; in one place 
 they routed an army of pigs out of their barracks on the "<^°^^' 
 prairie at the edge of the town, and, having thoroughly pig-house, 
 cleansed and whitewashed it, they played there in " Clari, 
 the Maid of Milan," by John Howard Payne. Mrs. 
 Jefferson sang the popular ballad of " Home, Sweet 
 Home," which was a part of that now-forgotten drama. 
 The banished pigs, who had collected under the flooring, 
 were so affected by the music that they set up a pathetic 
 wail in the midst of the song, and quite ruined it. Mn 
 Jefferson says that his mother was in tears at the unex- 
 pected failure : but his father, with his usual fund of
 
 36 
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME, 
 
 Lincoln 
 comes to 
 their rescue. 
 
 Art in 
 tlie West 
 
 philosophy, consoled her by saying that, " Though the 
 grunting was not quite in harmony with the music, it 
 was in perfect sympathy with the sentiment." 
 
 At Springfield the two managers resolved to build a 
 new theatre. When it was completed it was forty feet 
 wide and ninety feet deep, looking like " a large dry- 
 goods box with a roof." No sooner was it completed, 
 however, than a political shyster, taking advantage of a 
 religious revival then in progress, and working on ram- 
 pant prejudices, got the town to pass a new law calling 
 for a heavy license for " play-acting." Ruin stared them 
 in the face. But a young lawyer came to their aid, and, 
 by a masterly argument full of characteristic humour, 
 completely turned the tables on the bigots. " That law- 
 yer," says Mr. Jefferson, with pardonable pride, " was 
 Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 At Memphis the Jeffersons, who had parted company 
 with McKenzie, were stranded ; and, as an ordinance 
 had been passed requiring all carts, drays, and public 
 vehicles to have the names of their owners painted on 
 them, young Jefferson went boldly to the mayor and 
 represented that his father was an artist as well as a com- 
 edian, and that, as the theatrical season was over, he was 
 devoting his time to sign and ornamental painting. The 
 result was that the contract was assigned to the stranded 
 actor, and he and his son spent a month in carrying on
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 39 
 
 this artistic and lucrative avocation, while their leading 
 man manufactured genuine Havana cigars in the same 
 studio. He was also engaged to decorate a billiard- 
 saloon and bar-room, and then a house, for a Scotch 
 saloon-keeper. For this work no pay was forthcoming, 
 and, after waiting in vain for two weeks, they took steer- 
 age passage down the river in order to reach Mobile in 
 time for the fall season. But at the last moment Mrs. 
 Jefferson resolved to appeal to the wife of the unjust 
 debtor. She succeeded and returned to the boat with 
 the hard-earned wages. This would have enabled them 
 to travel first-class, but she persuaded her husband that 
 it would be better to save the money and go as they had 
 
 at first intended. Misfortunes 
 
 in Mobile. 
 
 This showed the contrast between the two natures of 
 Mr. Jefferson's parents ; " she was content to bear present 
 humiliation for the sake of future good ; he would will- 
 ingly have parted with all his money for the sake of 
 giving his family present comfort." So they went by 
 steerage, and reached Mobile, to meet with worse mis- 
 fortune than ever: yellow fever was raging there, and 
 in less than a fortnight after their arrival, on the 24th 
 of November, 1842, Joseph Jefferson II. fell a victim 
 to the dreadful disease. Instead of oroinor to school, 
 young Jefferson and his sister were engaged at the 
 theatre, to act in fancy dances and comic duets ; and
 
 40 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 employments more menial, such as grinding paints in 
 the paint-room, were put on the young artist. They 
 received, each, a salary of six dollars a week, and were 
 made to understand that it v/as given to them as a 
 charity. Mr. Jefferson adds grimly to his account of 
 these troublous days, that if there was any charity in 
 the matter, it was on their side, considering the numer- 
 ous duties imposed on them. Mrs. Jefferson undertook 
 to open a boarding-house for actors, but the season was 
 disastrous for " the profession," and so she found herself 
 in debt. Fortunateiv. a benevolent lady had taken an 
 interest in her enterprise, and volunteered to get up a 
 benefit for the two talented children ; it was a success. 
 Jefferson ^^ Mobilc, Jefferson acted with both Macready and 
 
 the elder Booth. He got into disgrace with Macready, 
 however, by accidentally setting fire to his wig. Mac- 
 ready chased him all over the theatre. The papers the 
 next morning declared that Macready had never in his 
 life acted with so much fire ; but poor Jefferson was 
 temporarily banished from the stage, although the fault 
 was clearly the actor's. 
 
 After the Mobile season was over, the company, 
 including the Jeffersons, went to Nashville, and trav- 
 elled through the State. On their return to Nash- 
 ville, they found the river so low that steamboats 
 were not running ; so, although the season had been 
 
 Macready.
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 41 
 
 very bad, they managed to buy a barge and fit it up, 
 and sailed down the river " in the queerest-looking craft doZrivlr. 
 that ever carried a legitimate stock company of the old 
 school." Jefferson declared that it was heaven; to stand 
 his watch at night gave him a manly feeling. He helped 
 supply the larder with wild game, and, no doubt, when 
 they got farther down the river, and there was a fair 
 wind blowing down stream, he took the keenest delight 
 in their swift progress, rendered possible by unfurling a 
 drop scene as a sail. " The wonder-stricken farmers," 
 he says, " and their wives and children would run out 
 of their log cabins, and, standing on the river bank, gaze 
 with amazement at our curious craft. It was delight- 
 ful to watch the steamboats as they went by. The pas- 
 sengers would crowd the deck and look with wonder 
 at us. For a bit of sport, the captain and I would 
 vary the picture, and as a boat steamed past, we 
 would first show them the wood scene, and then 
 suddenly swing the sail around, exhibiting the gor- 
 geous palace. Adding to this sport, our leading man 
 and the low comedian would sometimes get a couple 
 of old-fashioned broadswords, and fight a melodramatic 
 combat on the deck. There is no doubt," he adds, 
 " that at times our barge was taken for a floating lunatic 
 asylum." 
 
 Later the next season, he was called upon to grace
 
 42 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 a patriotic occasion by singing the " Star Spangled Ban- 
 
 An attack . r ^ • r 
 
 of stage ner " at St. Louis. His own account of his first attack 
 
 fright. 
 
 of Stage fright is so delightfully humorous, that I can 
 not resist quoting the whole of it : 
 
 " I had studied and restudied it so often that I knew 
 Jt backwards ; and that is about the way I sung it. But 
 I must not anticipate. The curtain rose upon the com- 
 pany, partly attired in evening dress ; that is to say, 
 those who had swallow-tail coats wore them, and those 
 who were not blessed with that graceful garment did 
 the best they could. We were arranged in the old 
 conventional half-circle, with the ' Goddess of Liberty ' 
 in the centre. The ' Mother of her Country ' had a 
 Roman helmet — pasteboard, I am afraid — on her 
 head, and was tastefully draped with the American flag. 
 My heart was in my mouth as the music started up, 
 but I stepped boldly forward to begin. I got as far 
 as ' Oh, say can you see,' — and here the words left 
 me. My mind was a blank. I tried it again : ' Oh, 
 say, can you see — Whether they could see or not, 
 I am quite sure that I could not. I was blind with 
 fright ; the house swam before my eyes ; the thousand 
 faces seemed to melt into one huge, expressionless 
 Behaviour physioenomv. The audience began to hiss, — oh, that 
 
 of audiences, r J C> J o -' -' 
 
 dreadful sound ! I love my country, and am, under 
 ordinary circumstances, fairly patriotic ; but at that
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 4^ 
 
 moment I cursed our national anthem from the bot- 
 tom of my heart. I heard the gentle voice of the 
 Goddess of Liberty say, ' Poor fellow ! ' The remark 
 was kind, but not encouraging. The hissing increased. 
 Old Miiller, the German leader, called out to me, * Go 
 on, Yo ! ' But ' Yo ' couldn't go on, so ' Yo ' thought 
 he had better go off. I bowed, therefore, to the jus- 
 tice of this public rebuke, and made a graceful retreat. 
 My poor mother stood at the wings in tears ; I threw 
 myself into her arms, and we had it out together." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson thinks that there has been a vast im- 
 provement in public behaviour since he was hissed and 
 jeered for so slight an offence as a momentary lapse of 
 memory, and he attributes the improvement in manners 
 to the free school. 
 
 Perhaps the darkest hour in vouns: Jefferson's life park, 
 
 ^ y O •' hours in 
 
 occurred a few months later, when, having been stranded '^*'^^'pp*- 
 for several weeks in the town of Grand Gulf, Miss., and 
 having been found by his half-brother, Charles Burke, 
 they started for Port Gibson, where Burke's little com- 
 pany were to play the same evening. Burke had engaged 
 a wagon and team to take his mother and the two chil- 
 dren there, but when they were half-way the driver re- 
 fused to go any farther until he should be paid. Burke 
 had no money, but expected to settle the man's bill 
 from the evening's receipts. Mrs. Jefferson's famous
 
 46 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 Stocking had been emptied of its last coin, and there was 
 nothing left for them but to bundle themselves uncere- 
 moniously out of the wagon and wait until Burke found 
 some substitute. There is no little pathos in the pic- 
 ture that Mr. Jefferson draws of his mother, who had 
 been " one of the most attractive stars in America, the 
 leading prima donna of her time, reduced through no 
 fault of her own to the humiliation of being put out of 
 a wagon with her two children, in a lonely road in the 
 far-off State of Mississippi, because she could not pay 
 a wagoner the sum of ten dollars." 
 
 It was raining, and they had to wait under the shelter of 
 
 a tree. But after a long time the sun came out, and soon 
 
 afterwards Burke put in an appearance mounted on an 
 
 ox-cart driven by an old negro. It took four hours to 
 
 Genuine ffo the four milcs to their destination, but once there, 
 
 barn-storm- " 
 
 their fortunes began to mend. One night they acted in 
 a barn, all the neighbours for miles around coming and 
 gladly paying a dollar apiece to see a real play. Their 
 supply of candles held out for them to give the " Lady 
 of Lyons," but they played " The Spectre Bridegroom " 
 by the light of the harvest moon. Mr. Winter tells a 
 somewhat similar story, but in this case the farmer, of 
 "more than commonly benevolent aspect," claimed all 
 the receipts as a fair rental for his barn, and the poor 
 actors had to walk all the way to the next town hungry 
 
 ing.
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 47 
 
 and footsore. In Mr. Winter's story the distance from 
 the sheltering tree to Port Gibson has grown to fifteen 
 miles, but in either form the picture of the trials of stroll- 
 ing actors fifty years ago is just as vivid. They certainly 
 served the young Jefferson in good stead of a more for- 
 mal education. 
 
 After some weeks of this precarious existence, Mrs. 
 Jefferson was called to Galveston, and at the end of the 
 season there they went to Houston, where the remnant 
 of their company acted with just enough success to keep 
 " their heads above water." They were there at the ^n^w^"" 
 outbreak of the Mexican war, and their manager decided 
 to follow in the wake of the American army. They 
 embarked in May, 1846, for Point Isabel, where they 
 arrived in time to hear the firing at the battle of Palo 
 Alto ; and the following morning Jefferson saw the 
 ambulance bringing in the wounded Major Ringgold. 
 After the capture of Matamoras, they entered the town 
 in the rear of the army, and obtained permission from 
 the commandant to occupy the old Spanish theatre, 
 "acting," says Jefferson, " to the most motley group 
 that ever filled a theatre," — soldiers, settlers, sutlers, 
 gamblers, and adventurers. But by the middle of Momfrey!" 
 September the army had moved on to Monterey, the 
 town was deserted, and the manager, disbanding his 
 company, disappeared, leaving their salaries unpaid.
 
 48 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 The Jeffersons and one other actor, named Badger, from 
 Philadelphia, alone were left, and being penniless, they 
 were in desperate straits ; so they called a council of war 
 and determined to open a coffee and cake stand for the 
 benefit of the gamblers with which the town was still 
 swarming. There was a magnificent gambling and 
 ^st?i!?a^nf. drinking den, called " The Grand Spanish Saloon," the 
 proprietor of which allowed them to start their restaurant 
 at one end, on condition that he should be paid ten per 
 cent, of the gross receipts. Two boards placed between a 
 dry-goods box and the counter and draped with Turkey 
 red served as their " stand," and here " a large and elab- 
 orate tin coffee urn," heated by alcohol, and surrounded 
 by a glittering array of cups, saucers, and German silver 
 spoons, looked down upon their stock of pies, sand- 
 wiches, and cheap cigars. They counted much on " the 
 large, round, burnt-sienna-looking cakes, called ' mandil- 
 los.'" These were glazed on top with some sticky sub- 
 stance, and served the double purpose of man-enticers and 
 fly-traps. The stand became a great success, especially 
 after the mandillos had been banished from sight. But a 
 terrible murder that took place in the saloon, when three 
 Mexicans attacked the famous Buck Wallace and stabbed 
 him to the heart, made the young actors realise the precari- 
 ousness of their calling, and they sold out. 
 
 At Matamoras Jefferson met his first love, a Spanish
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 49 
 
 girl with merry black eyes and pearly teeth. She taught 
 him to speak a few Spanish words, to play the guitar, i^eauty. 
 and to smoke cigarettes. At first their communications 
 were conducted only in the language of smiles and eyes, 
 and Mr. Jefferson says that it was all for the best, for 
 otherwise he might have astonished his mother with a 
 Mexican daughter-in-law. Through an interpreter he 
 told her that he was going back to his own country, 
 but that as soon as he had made his fortune he should 
 come back and claim her for his bride. Alas ! it was 
 the old story of the Blue Alsatian Mountains : he never 
 saw her again, or any of her sixteen brothers and sisters.
 
 IV. 
 
 Young Jefferson returned to New Orleans on a brig, 
 ci^^iil^tion. and eagerly scanned the first newspapers to see what 
 theatrical attractions were on hand. He went to the 
 theatre and witnessed " King Richard III.," with Mr. 
 and Mrs. James W. Wallack as the stars, followed by 
 " A Kiss in the Dark," with John E. Owens as " Mr. 
 Pittibone." It was a night to remember, for Mr. Jeffer- 
 son not only conquered himself and extinguished the spark 
 of envy that he confessed to have felt at sight of such a 
 brilliant success, but, moreover, he felt stirred up to the 
 great ambition and resolve to equal Owens some day. 
 
 Mrs. Jefferson and her daughter decided to remain in 
 New Orleans, but Joseph accepted an invitation from 
 his half-brother to join him in Philadelphia. He 
 i^^oTeltage! crossed the Alleghanies by stage-coach, and gave a 
 travelling performance for the benefit of the passen- 
 gers. He declares that he should have felt offended 
 if they had not pressed him to do so. He sang a 
 comic song, about " The Good Old Days of Adam 
 and Eve," the passengers filling up the chorus. Then 
 he indulged his auditors with what he calls " bad imi- 
 
 50
 
 MANTEL, liROUGHT FKO.M IMJIA. I.\" TH1-: Dl X lN(;-ROOM.
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. ^3 
 
 tations " of Forrest and Booth. Probably, however, 
 his later personations on the stage were not more 
 kindly received than these impromptu ones in the 
 stage. 
 
 At Philadelphia, Jefferson found a warm welcome 
 from his brother Burke, who enabled him to take 
 parts that he now thinks were far beyond his reach, 
 but were not beyond his ambition. He must have 
 made considerable strides in his profession, for when 
 Burke joined the Bowery Theatre in New York, Jef- 
 ferson took his place at the Arch. One of his most 
 amusing experiences was where Burton, the manager, 
 revived the perennially unsuccessful " Antigone " of Jefferson 
 Sophocles (probably for the pleasure of having the '^°*'^°°^" 
 audience call for the author), and Jefferson was one 
 of the quartet that played the chorus, " done up to 
 the chin in white Grecian togas," and crowned with 
 laurel wreaths that continually threatened to fall off. 
 
 After acting with the stock company all winter, Mr. 
 Jefferson took delight in going on the summer circuit as Going as 
 a star. It happened on the eve of one of these theat- 
 rical tramps that the people of Cumberland made the 
 opening of their first telegraph-office a holiday, and so 
 they crowded the theatre, and his receipts were nearly 
 three times as much as usual, — in other words, over 
 a hundred dollars, all in silver. As the town contained
 
 r^ JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 only about five hundred inhabitants, they had to change 
 the bill every night, and as their finances did not at first 
 allow them the luxury of a bill-poster, he and his part- 
 ner put up their own bills. Mr. Jefferson says : 
 
 " No one who has not passed through the actual 
 experience of country management, combined with act- 
 ing, can imagine the really hard work and anxiety of 
 it, — daily rehearsals, constant change of performance, 
 and the continual study of new parts ; but for all this, 
 there was a fascination about the life so powerful that 
 I have known but few that have ever abandoned it for 
 any other." 
 
 Glamour of That is true ; the public, thinking only of the suc- 
 cessful actor, feted, and winning great rewards, has 
 little realisation of the long, hard hours of work, the 
 dreary rehearsals, the late hours, and the perpetual 
 risks of failure that oppress the actor. No wonder 
 that the stage-struck boy or girl, overpowered by the 
 glamour of the footlights, finds the reality a dreadful 
 awakening. 
 
 Marriage Mr. Teffcrson, contrary to the advice of his brother, 
 
 to Margaret j ^ j •» 
 
 Lo^ckyer? — his mother had died in 1849, — married before he 
 was twenty-one. Knowing that his friends, the other 
 actors, would be likely to be present at the ceremony, 
 " not so much out of compliment as for the purpose 
 of indulging in that passion for quizzing, which seems
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. cc 
 
 to be SO deeply planted in the histrionic breast," he 
 boldly told the company that he was to be married at 
 church, the following Sunday, after the morning ser- 
 vice, and invited them to be present. The wedding 
 took place with extreme privacy, at the Oliver Street 
 Church, New York. His groomsman, Barney Williams, 
 expressed his amazement, stating that he had supposed 
 the whole company would be present. Mr. Jefferson 
 confessed that he had sent them to the wrono- church ! 
 When Jefferson was twenty-two, he was assigned the 
 difficult part of " Marrall," in Massinger's "New Way 
 to Pay Old Debts," with the elder Booth in the part 
 of " Sir Giles Overreach," Booth took much pains to Jefierson 
 
 ^ and Booth 
 
 teach him the business of the character, though Jeffer- 
 son thinks that the great actor must have been disap- 
 pointed, if not shocked, to have a stripling supporting 
 him with so little physical or dramatic strength. But 
 Booth's assistance and good nature were of great assist- 
 ance to him. Two or three years later, he went into 
 partnership with John Ellsler, and took a company 
 through the South. At Macon they had good luck, 
 but at Savannah misfortune pursued them until they 
 happened to enlist a live baronet, the tall Sir William 
 Don, who, though a bad actor, was intensely comical. 
 His society connections, however, saved the season for 
 his managers, and they ended with a blaze of glory.
 
 A theatrical 
 voyage. 
 
 ^6 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 The next year they repeated the experiment, sending 
 their company on a saiHng vessel from New York to 
 Wilmington. Mr. Jefferson gives an amusing account 
 of the vessel's departure : 
 
 "It was an ill-shapen hulk, with two great, badly 
 repaired sails, flapping against her clumsy and fore- 
 boding masts. The deck and sides were besmeared 
 with the sticky remnants of the last importation, so 
 that when our leading actor, who had been seated on 
 the taffrail, arose to greet his managers, he was una- 
 voidably detained. The ladies and gentlemen of the 
 company were uncomfortably disposed about the ves- 
 sel, seated on their trunks and boxes, that had not yet 
 been stowed away. . „ . It was a doleful picture. The 
 captain, too, was anything but a skipper to inspire con- 
 fidence. He had a glazed and dishevelled look that 
 told of last night's booze. Our second comedian, who 
 was the reverse of being droll on the stage, but 
 who now and then ventured a grim joke off it with 
 better success, told me in confidence that they all had 
 been lamenting their ill-tarred fate." 
 
 But they reached Wilmington, after a week's voyage, 
 
 looking jaded and miserable. On their second evening 
 
 ^en?°°^ they gave " Romeo and Juliet," and for the balcony 
 
 scene Mr. Jefferson had built up with great care a tipply 
 
 construction made out of empty boxes, painted a neat
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. rg 
 
 Stone colour. The immortal love-scene was proceeding 
 with due warmth when the quick" ears of the manager 
 heard the audience beginning to laugh; the hilarity 
 increased. "Juliet retreated in amazement, and Romeo 
 rushed off in despair," and when the curtain was rung 
 hastily down Mr. Jefferson discovered to his horror that 
 one of the boxes had been set in with the unpainted 
 trade-mark side out, advertising a choice brand of 
 candles. 
 
 At Charleston, S. C, they found a treasure in the 
 beautiful Julia Dean, with whom Jefferson had acted 
 in Mobile seven years before, and who had now risen a successful 
 
 1 , partnership. 
 
 to be the leadmg juvenile actress in America. So suc- 
 cessful was her alliance that Jefferson and his partner 
 shared |i8oo for their first week's profits. With a part 
 of this money he bought a blue enamelled watch with 
 a diamond in the centre of the case, for his wife, and a 
 patent lever for himself 
 
 The following season he was attached to the Chestnut 
 Street Theatre, under Mr. John Gilbert, and played 
 "Doctor Ollapod" and "Bob Acres," as well as "Doctor 
 Pangloss." In order to represent that learned character 
 he took his first lessons in Latin and Greek, and suc- 
 ceeded in pronouncing the words to the satisfaction of 
 his audience, if not to his own. In 1853 he became 
 stage-manager at the Baltimore Museum, and more
 
 manager. 
 
 60 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 than once went over to Washington with his company, 
 stage which contained some of the best comedians of the day. 
 
 Curiously enough, the " School for Scandal," produced 
 with such an exceptional cast, was an artistic failure. 
 Mr. Jefferson says, " Harmony is the most important 
 element in a work of art. In this instance each piece 
 of mosaic was perfect in form and beautiful in colour, 
 but when fitted together they matched badly, and the 
 effect was crude. ... A play is like a picture : the actors 
 are the colours, and they must blend with one another 
 if a perfect work is to be produced."
 
 V. 
 
 After another year's experience as manager, — this 
 time in Richmond, Va., where Agnes Robertson, Dion France. 
 Boucicault, and Edwin Forrest were among his stars, — 
 he went to Europe and had a chance to see and srady 
 many of the able comedians then acting in London. 
 
 His dehght in visiting the native land of his mother's 
 parents was unbounded. He could now add French 
 to his other accomplishments, "getting off the French 
 pronunciation pat and glib, as if he had lived there for 
 years !" He also used much of the savings of two years 
 in replenishing his theatrical wardrobe at the second-hand 
 shops in the Temple. What a fascinating account the 
 old actor gives of that royal expedition ; of his attempts 
 to appear cool and indifferent, of his queer misunder- 
 standings in conversing with the little old women who 
 had armour and robes to sell, of his solicitude lest his 
 guide should walk off with his purchases ! At one 
 place he surprised a vivacious little flirtation between 
 a pretty young girl, the daughter of the dealer, and tw^o 
 sprightly young French actors. Madame presented 
 him to the trio as an actor from America. One of the 
 
 61
 
 A scene 
 
 Si JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 men, hideously ugly, with a turned-up nose and a wide 
 from7eai pash in the middle of his face for a mouth, and the image 
 of a monkey, assumed a grotesquely tragic air, grasped 
 Jefferson by the hand as if he were his long-lost brother, 
 then, pointing despairingly at the lovers, made it evident 
 that his life was blasted by unrequited affection. Then 
 he fell on his knees before the girl and implored her 
 love. Her scornful laugh pricked the comedian to 
 heart; "with a sudden spring he picked up a Roman 
 helmet, cocked it sidewise on his head, seized a poker, 
 and rushed upon his rival. Then he paused, and, burst- 
 ing into tears, relented, and taking the lovers' hands he 
 joined them in wedlock, invoked Heaven's blessings on 
 them, stabbed himself with the poker, and rushed out 
 into the front shop." It was a very gay party, but 
 Jefferson saw plainly enough that a good deal of their 
 fun was at his expense. 
 
 On his return to New York he joined the forces 
 which Laura Keene had gathered for her new Broadway 
 Theatre, and made a hit as " Doctor Pangloss," in " The 
 Heir-at-Law." He took many liberties with the text, 
 but in reply to a critic who charged him with "making 
 a number of curious interpolations, occasionally using 
 the text prepared by the author," Mr. Jefferson rightly 
 defended his method : 
 
 " Old plays, and particularly old comedies, are filled
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 65 
 
 with traditional introductions, good and bad. If an 
 
 Propriety of 
 
 actor, in exercising his taste and judgment, presumes to innovations. 
 leave out any of these respectable antiquities, he is, by 
 the conventional critic, considered sacrilegious in ignoring 
 them. And, on the other hand, if in amplifying the 
 traditional business he introduces new material, he is 
 thought to be equally impertinent ; whereas the question 
 as to the introduction should be whether it is good or 
 bad, not whether it is old or new. If there is any prefer- 
 ence, it should be given to the new, which must neces- 
 sarily be fresh and original, while the old is only a copy." 
 
 That remark well illustrates the simple common sense 
 so characteristic of Mr. Jefferson. An actor once rated 
 him for curtailing some of the speeches in one of the old 
 comedies. Jefferson replied that he had his own ideas on 
 those matters ; " that the plays were written for a past age, 
 that society had changed, and that it seemed to him good ^^^'^^'^'^ 
 taste to alter the text, when it could be done without 
 detriment, to suit the audience of the present day, partic- 
 ularly when the lines were coarse and unfit for ladies and 
 gentlemen to speak or listen to." 
 
 The actor insinuated that Jefferson was audacious in 
 setting himself up as authority in such matters; that his 
 course was a tacit reproach to older and better judges, and 
 that " some people did that sort of thing to make profes- 
 sional capital out of it."
 
 66 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 No one now will doubt that by just such scrupulous 
 conduct as that, Jefferson has done his great share in 
 elevating the tone and morale of the stage, and it never 
 really injured him either with the public or with the pro- 
 fession that on account of it he was for a time called " the 
 Sunday-school Comedian." 
 
 His dictum that a man has no more right to be offen- 
 sive on the stage than in the drawing-room might well be 
 TfiegPanic the motto of every theatre. 
 
 During the panic of 1857, Mr. Jefferson tried his 
 hand at concocting a melodrama from a Revolutionary 
 story entitled " Blanche of Brandywine." It was so full 
 of " battles, marches, countermarches, murders, abduc- 
 tions, hairbreadth escapes, militia trainings and extrav- 
 agant Yankee comicalities," that it made audiences forget 
 their anxieties caused by falling stocks and failing banks. 
 It has been said that during panics theatres are gen- 
 erally well patronised, but at this time, Mr. Jefferson 
 says, " the public despondently stayed at home, the 
 theatres were empty, the managers depressed." But 
 he notes that the actors were always in the best of 
 spirits when business was bad and salaries were un- 
 certain.
 
 VI. 
 
 The year 1858 brought great good fortune to Joseph 
 Jefferson. Tom Taylor's comedy, "The American Trenchard." 
 Cousin," was presented for the first time. It had been 
 offered to several experienced managers, who rejected it, 
 and it was reserved for an inexperienced business-man- 
 ager to discover its latent possibilities. It was recom- 
 mended to Jefferson, who was greatly taken with the 
 naturalness of the love-scenes and instantly saw the 
 chance of making something out of the leading part. 
 
 It made the fortune of three of the actors. At the 
 rehearsal, and indeed for the first fortnight, E. H. Sothern 
 found everything to depress him in the part of " Lord 
 Dundreary," but as he began to add all sorts of extrava- 
 gances to his acting, the originality of the character began 
 to dawn on him, until he made it a personation of world- 
 wide fame. Jefferson, as "Asa Trenchard," took his place 
 instantly as one of America's leading actors. Mr. Win- 
 ter says : 
 
 "Seldom has an actor found a medium for the expres- 
 sion of his spirit so ample and so congenial as that part 
 proved for Jefferson. Rustic grace, simple manliness, 
 
 67
 
 68 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 unconscious drollery, and unaffected pathos, expressed 
 with artistic control, and in an atmosphere of repose, 
 could not have been more truthfully and beautifully 
 combined." 
 
 The play ran for the whole season, — one hundred and 
 
 forty nights, — and in the summer, having parted from 
 
 Laura Keene's company, Jefferson took it through the 
 
 " provinces." 
 
 "Caleb His next great success was as "Caleb Plummer" in 
 
 Plummer." 
 
 an adaptation of Dickens's "Cricket on the Hearth," 
 which was played at Boucicault's " Winter Garden." 
 After the first night Boucicault said to him: "If that 
 is the way you intend to act the part, I don't wonder 
 you were afraid to undertake it." Jefferson, who had 
 expressed his fear that he could not act a part requiring 
 Boucicault pathos, was nevertheless willing to learn, so he asked 
 hLr ^ the experienced actor what he meant. The reply was : 
 " You have acted your last scene first ; if you begin in 
 that solemn strain, you have nothing left for the end 
 of the play." 
 
 Jefferson declares that the common sense underlying 
 this remark so appealed to him that he acted upon it, 
 and so achieved success. He learned not to anticipate 
 strong effects, but to lead the audience up to a proper 
 climax. He succeeded in raising the part to such a 
 degree of perfection that the critics said of him, " The
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 7 1 
 
 gentle old man of Dickens's story lives again in him and 
 touches every heart by his sweet self-sacrifice. Jeffer- 
 son's sensibility makes him sympathetic with the char- 
 acter, while his admirable art enables him to embody it 
 with thorough precision of detail." 
 
 He was also successful in the parts of " Newman 
 Noggs," " Salem Scudder," " Granby Gag," and others, 
 and when Boucicault suddenly withdrew, Jefferson's ver- 
 sion of " Oliver Twist " was presented with immense ;;oiiver 
 success with J. W. Wallack as " Fagin " and Matilda 
 Heron as " Nancy." He was not so successful in the 
 humorous portraiture in Mrs. Bateman's version of' 
 " Evangeline." He declared it was the worst comic 
 part he had ever played. 
 
 Twist."
 
 VII. 
 
 The actor who has had success in a part, the actor 
 who has written a play, cannot fail to keep his eyes 
 open for further possibilities ; his ambition will be stim- 
 ulated to create some character that shall be his, and his 
 alone. Jefferson says that when the curtain descended on 
 the first night of " The American Cousin," he then and 
 there resolved to be " a star." He had made his audi- 
 ence both laugh and cry. That great marriage of dra- 
 matic powers, the Humorous and the Pathetic, is the 
 source of all success. 
 
 One rainy day in the summer of 1859, while he was 
 "The reading the " Life and Letters of Washington Irving," 
 
 Sketch- => . . 
 
 in the hayloft of a barn in Paradise Valley, at the foot of 
 Pocono Mountain, in Pennsylvania, he happened to come 
 across his own name in a passage where Irving had noted 
 that the younger Jefferson was like his father in " look, 
 gesture, size, and make." He had never seen Jefferson's 
 father, and of course meant his grandfather. By a 
 natural transition he was led to think of " Rip Van 
 Winkle." An American story by an American author 
 for an American actor 1 He hastened into the house 
 
 72 
 
 Book."
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. y o 
 
 and got "The Sketch-Book," but on re-reading the 
 story of " Rip," he was disappointed to find it so un- 
 dramatic. In Irving's placid narrative it is merely the 
 old story of the Cretan poet Epimenides (whom St. Paul 
 quotes in Titus), believed by the ancients to have been 
 sent out by his father after the sheep and to have fallen 
 fast asleep (like the likewise mythical little Bo-Peep), 
 only to awaken at the end of fifty-seven years, and find 
 the whole world changed. 
 
 Within nine years after the publication of " The dons^of'^' 
 Sketch-Book," Thomas Flynn had made a poor dramati- win'kie.»° 
 sation of " Rip," and several others had followed. In 
 1829, Jefferson's aunt Elizabeth had played in one, 
 supposed to have been a version made in England. 
 Charles Burke made still another in 1 849, and Jefferson 
 acted the part of the innkeeper, Seth. There were no 
 less than seven predecessors to Jefferson in the part of 
 " Rip Van Winkle." Mr. Winter, who gives an inter- '^''■ 
 esting account of the various versions, says : 
 
 " All the salient extremes of a representative picture 
 of human experience are found in it, — fact and fancy; 
 youth and age ; love and hatred ; loss and gain ; mirth 
 and sadness; humour and pathos; rosy childhood and 
 decrepit senility ; lovers with their troubles, which will 
 all be smoothed away, and married people with their 
 anxieties, which will never cease ; life within doors, and 
 
 An ideal
 
 y^ JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 life among trees and mountains ; the domestic and the 
 romantic ; the natural and the preternatural ; and through 
 all, the development and exposition of a humorous, cheer- 
 ing, romantic, restful human character. Such a theme 
 cannot be too much commended to thoughtful consid- 
 eration. It is prolific of lessons for the conduct of life. 
 It teaches no direct moral ; but its power is in its influ- 
 ence, — to lure us away from absorption in the busy 
 world, and to make us hear again the music of running 
 water and rippling leaves, the wind in the pine-trees, the 
 surf upon the beach, and, under all, the distant murmur 
 of that great ocean to which our spirits turn, and into 
 which we must vanish." 
 
 Some persons would go even further than Mr. Win- 
 ter, and argue that in Mr. Jefferson's presentation of the 
 henpecked tippler he taught a lesson in temperance 
 more powerful than any temperance lecture ever de- 
 livered, 
 ofprrprdng M^- Jefferson remembered several of the versions of 
 the story, but none of them seemed to give him what he 
 wanted. He went down to the city and got together 
 " Rip's " wardrobe before he had written a hne of the 
 play. He does not recommend this way as the ideal 
 method of writing a play, but tells the story to illustrate 
 the impatience and enthusiasm with which he entered on 
 his task. He got the three printed versions of the play, 
 
 for a play.
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. nn 
 
 and compared them. They were in two acts, and in all 
 
 of them the spectre crew was introduced as speaking and 
 
 singing. Jefferson divided the play into three acts, 
 
 and made the second act wholly a monologue, while 
 
 Sir Hendrik Hudson's companions merely gesticulate. 
 
 Though it took considerable thought to arrange the 
 
 questions so that the answers might be made by ghostly 
 
 nods, yet, within a few days, he had his version of the 
 
 play all ready, and he learned and rehearsed the part, so 
 
 that in the early fall he was enabled to present it to the 
 
 pubhc in Washington. It won sufficient success to 
 
 prove to him that the character was what he was after ; ^if vl 
 
 nevertheless, the play was not satisfactory. "The ac- ^^"'^'" 
 
 tion," he says, " had neither the body nor the strength 
 
 to carry the hero; the spiritual quality was there, but 
 
 the human interest was wanting." 
 
 Early
 
 VIII. 
 
 In 1 86 1, Mrs. Jefferson died, and the New York 
 Antipodes, homc was broken up. Leaving three of his children 
 at school, he started with his eldest son for California. 
 He states that his engagement in San Francisco was an 
 unmistakable failure, and he attributes the cause of it 
 to the overzeal of his manager, who had raised expecta- 
 tions too high, or, in theatrical parlance, had "overbilled" 
 him. However that may have been, he acted there, ac- 
 according to Mr. Winter, for nearly four months. In 
 September, — Mr. Winter says November, — he sailed 
 for Australia in the clipper-ship Nimrod. On board 
 atheofogiM. ship he had great success as a theologian, and his 
 arguments were so powerful in favour of marriage, that 
 his fellow-passenger. Father O'Grady, had not been in 
 Sydney three years before he renounced his orders, 
 and married, though he still remained faithful to his 
 church. Mr. Jefferson came to the conclusion that 
 it was the beauty of the lady, rather than his good 
 advice, that had overcome the " good St. Anthony's " 
 scruples. 
 
 In Australia, Mr. Jefferson depended for his support 
 
 78
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. y^ 
 
 on talent there assembled, and as he brought a num- 
 ber of fresh plays, such as " Rip Van Winkle," " Our 
 American Cousin," and " The Octoroon," he made a 
 great sensation. At Melbourne his engagement reached 
 one hundred and sixty-four consecutive nights. At 
 Castlemaine, he was introduced to the notice of the 
 inhabitants by a town crier, who, dressed in a high 
 white hat and seedy black suit, stood on a barrel in 
 front of the theatre, crying : 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Oh, yes ! Oh, yes ! Step up, ladies and 
 gentlemen ; now or never is your honly chance to see 
 the greatest living wonder of the age, Joseph Jefferson, 
 the great hactor from Amerikee. His power of pro- 
 ducing tears at vun and the same time is so great 
 that he caused the Emperor of Roushia to weep on 
 his weddin' night, and made her gracious Majesty, the 
 Queen, bu'st out laughin' at the funeral of Prince 
 Albert. He is the bosom friend of the President of 
 Amerikee, and the hidol of 'is Royal 'Ighness, the 
 Prince of Wales." 
 
 That was too much for the modest and truth-loving 
 Jefferson, and he declared that he would not act unless 
 the little bell-man should be suppressed. This was 
 more of a job than the manager had expected. Mr. 
 Jefferson describes the scene with that delightful humour 
 which always enlivens his conversation : 
 
 A town 
 crier.
 
 8o 
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 A comic 
 scene. 
 
 Kean and 
 
 the 
 
 boomerang. 
 
 A convict 
 play played 
 to convicts. 
 
 " The little fat man now stood with his arms folded, 
 glaring defiance at the manager and his myrmidons, 
 but they seized him, and a tremendous struggle ensued. 
 The tall white hat was completely mashed over his eyes, 
 and in stamping violently with his rage, the head of the 
 barrel burst in, letting him through, till only a fat head 
 just appeared above the top. They tipped the barrel 
 over, and rolled him off inside, to the great amusement 
 of the bystanders, who had been roaring with laughter 
 all the time." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson not only toured through the various 
 large cities of Australia, but visited the interior, and 
 saw a good deal of interesting life among the natives ; 
 but he confesses that he never learned to throw a boom- 
 erang with native skill. He gives an interesting pic- 
 ture of himself, sitting with the great English actor, 
 Edmund Kean, on a bench in St. Kilda Park, watching 
 a party of blacks throwing the boomerang. 
 
 In Hobart Town, the capital of Van Diemen's Land, 
 Mr. Jefferson played " The Ticket-of- Leave Man " for 
 the first time. The city had a large element of former 
 convicts, and the announcement of the play aroused 
 great excitement among the Tasmaniacs (as H. J. Byron 
 called them). Mr. Winter says that upwards of six 
 hundred ticket-of-leave men were included in his audi- 
 ence on one occasion. Mr. Jefferson says :
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 83 
 
 "At least one hundred ticket-of-leave men were in 
 the pit on the first night of its production." Before 
 the curtain rose, he looked out, and thought it the 
 most terrible audience he had ever seen. " Men with 
 low foreheads, and small, peering, ferret-looking eyes ; 
 some with flat noses, and square, cruel jaws ; some with 
 sinister expression, leering, low and cunning, all wearing 
 a sullen, dogged look, as if they would tear the benches 
 from the pit and gut the theatre of its scenery if one 
 of their kind was held up to public scorn upon the 
 stage." 
 
 The impersonation of "Bob Brierly" was an immense 
 success ; the audience rose to him and " cheered to the 
 very echo." Jefferson was more than once accosted in 
 the street by less innocent congeners of poor "Bob," who 
 would tell him some touching story of their early days. 
 
 He also visited New Zealand, where the old comedies 
 proved most successful, and then, after a short return Jefferson as 
 
 . peacemaker. 
 
 engagement m Australia, he sailed from Melbourne in a 
 clipper-ship for South America. It had taken him fifty- 
 seven days from San Francisco to Melbourne; it took 
 fifty-seven days for him to reach Callao. On the first 
 voyage the only excitement was religious discussions with 
 Father O'Grady ; on this voyage a Northern man and a 
 Southerner were among the passengers, and Mr. Jeffer- 
 son had to act as peacemaker, so belligerent were their
 
 84 
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 discussions of politics. It was during the sixties, and the 
 result of the war of the RebeUion had not yet been 
 AtcaUao. announced. A Callao ship-calker, formerly from the 
 States, recognised Mr. Jefferson as soon as he set eyes 
 on him; he brought them the tidings, "The war's over: 
 the South caved in and Richmond is took." 
 
 This same theatrical connoisseur offered to enable Jef- 
 ferson to see the " Spanish fandango " danced, but as 
 the place was rather dangerous, he declined. He was 
 amazed at the beauty of the ladies of Lima, at the horse- 
 back-riding beggars, and at the religious fervour and the 
 religious democracy of all classes, as they mingled in 
 the dingy cathedral. 
 
 He was kept a week in Peru before the ship sailed for 
 Panama, and it was not until June, 1865, that he reached 
 London. There he met Dion Boucicault, who, without 
 much enthusiasm for the subject, agreed to rewrite Jef- 
 ferson's " Rip Van Winkle " for a consideration. Mr. 
 Clarke Davis says that many of the suggested changes 
 came from Jefferson ; the impressive ending of the first 
 act was Boucicault's, while the climax of the third act — 
 Menie recognising her father — is merely the reverse of 
 King Lear recognising Cordelia. Boucicault also intro- 
 duced the scheme of the second marriage and many of 
 the now familiar details. Boucicault told Jefferson that 
 it could not possibly keep the stage more than a month, 
 
 The new 
 " Rip Van 
 Winkle."
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. % t 
 
 but Billington, one of the London cast, told Paul Bed- 
 ford, the original "Nick Vedder," "There's a hundred 
 nights in that play." 
 
 A quarrel between Boucicault and Webster, the man- 
 ager of the Adelphi Theatre, nearly resulted in the play 
 being withdrawn before it was presented, but Mr. Jeffer- 
 son's tact prevented this calamity, and the fateful night 
 approached. Mr. Jefferson gives an amusing description 
 of his last private rehearsal. It was Sunday evening, and 
 he was alone in his lodging, and had got out his new wig 
 and beard for the last scene. He put them on and be- 
 gan acting and posing in front of the mirror. 
 
 In about twenty minutes there came a knock at the 
 door. This dialogue ensued : 
 
 " Who's there ? " 
 
 " It's me," said the gentle but agitated voice of the 
 chambermaid. " May I come in } " 
 
 " Certainly not," replied Mr. Jefferson, for he had no 
 desire to be seen in his disguise. 
 
 "Is there anything wrong in the room, sir.?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Nothing at all. Go away." 
 
 "Well, sir, there's a policeman at the door, and he 
 says as 'ow there's a crazy old man in your room, a 
 flingin' of 'is 'ands and a-goin' on hawflil, and there's a 
 crowd of people across the street a-blockin' hup the way." 
 
 A public 
 rehearsal.
 
 86 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson turned to the window and discovered to 
 his horror that he had forgotten to draw down the cur- 
 tain. At first he was mortified at having thus uncon- 
 sciously acted before an audience of deadheads, but 
 afterwards the comicahty of the situation so overcame 
 him that he laughed till he was cured of a sharp attack 
 of indigestion. 
 
 The London critics hailed Jefferson as one of the most 
 genuine artists that had ever appeared on the British 
 stage, and large audiences made his engagement a trium- 
 phant success. 
 Yorker ain After playing a farewell engagement in Manchester 
 and Liverpool, he took a sailing vessel for New York, 
 and on the third of September, 1866, appeared at the 
 Olympic Theatre, where his performance of "Rip" won 
 immense applause. As Mr. Winter says, " The fame 
 of its beauty soon ran over the land." He also revived 
 "The American Cousin " and other old comedies, in each 
 winning the heartiest commendation. At the close of 
 that management he went West, and in December, 1867, 
 was married in Chicago to his second wife, Miss Sarah 
 Isabel Warren, the niece of William Warren, his father's 
 cousin. He now used some of his savings in buying 
 homes. In 1869 he purchased an estate near Yonkers, 
 another at Hohokus, N. J., on the Saddle River, and a 
 third, consisting of a ruined plantation on a lovely island
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. go 
 
 in Louisiana. His relative, John B. Rice, of Chicago, 
 rated him for his extravagance in buying " a large planta- 
 
 • • , J-, , or Profitable 
 
 tion m the South, with nothing left of the sugar-house ^"^^»'°^'''- 
 but the chimney, all the fences and everything in a di- 
 lapidated condition," and calling it an investment ! Jef- 
 ferson suggested that in time the orange groves might 
 pay him ; but when, some years afterwards, his son in- 
 formed him that the only profits on a large consignment 
 of oranges, after deducting the expenses, were three two- 
 cent postage-stamps, he concluded that " Uncle John " 
 was about right. 
 
 The plantation is situated on an island of about two 
 hundred acres, high above the sea, and covered with 
 splendid live-oak and magnolia trees, as well as with the 
 oranges and pecans that were in bloom when he bought Pirates- 
 it. Formerly a famous buccaneer had made the island ''°'"^" 
 his haunt, and the natives of the region imagine that 
 there are hoards of precious treasures buried along its 
 shores or under the trees. The gold and silver that 
 is hidden by pirates during the last century on our 
 seaboard would pay off the national debt. From New- 
 foundland to Ogunquit, and from Cape Cod to the 
 Mississippi, the whole coast, if one may judge by the 
 mounds that one sees near Bald Head Cliff, must have 
 been dug up a score of times,— at night, too, with weird 
 incantations. No wonder that Mr. Jefferson objects to
 
 A picture 
 in words. 
 
 90 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 the disfiguring of the picturesque shores of the Bayou 
 Teche. His description of their arrival at his Southern 
 home is a picture in words ; it must not be forgotten 
 that Mr. Jefferson is a painter of pictures as well as an 
 actor : 
 
 " At Brashear, the terminus of the railway, we used to 
 get on board of a little stern-wheel boat, so small that, 
 contrasted with the leviathan Texas steamers anchored 
 in the bay, it looked like a toy. Our route lay west- 
 ward, up the Bayou Atchafalaya to where it rnet the 
 Bayou Teche. This is the point where Gabriel and 
 Evangeline are separated in Longfellow's poem. Our 
 passage up the Teche was extremely picturesque. The 
 stream is narrow, and the live-oak and cypress trees 
 stretch their branches over it till in places they fairly 
 meet and interlock. When the darkness came on, pine- 
 knots were burned in the bow of the boat, and as she 
 steamed up the narrow river a strong light fell on the 
 gaunt trees that suddenly started out of the black night 
 like weird spectres. The negro deck-hands, some bare 
 to the waist, and others in red and blue shirts, would 
 sit in lazy groups chanting their plantation songs, keep- 
 ing perfect time with the beat of the engine." 
 
 And the pleasure of the arrival at this paradise of 
 leisure, where, amid a kindly population, the kind- 
 hearted owners would enter into their season of rest !
 
 duties. 
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. g i 
 
 Mr. JefFerson reports one amusing conversation with \ 
 
 ^ • ».ii showman'! 
 
 a coloured boy, who had paddled him out duck-hunting ' 
 on the bayou. This was the dialogue : 
 
 " Mr. Joe, will you be mad if I ax you somefen?" 
 
 " No, John ; what is it .? " » 
 
 " What does you do in a show ? " 
 
 " That is rather hard to explain." 
 
 " Well, does you swallow knives .? " 
 
 " No ; I have no talent that way." 
 
 " Why, your son tole me that you swallowed knives 
 and forks and fire and de Lawd knows what all; I 
 b'lieve he was jest a-foolin' of me." 
 
 "He's quite capable of it." 
 
 Well, dere's one thing certain ; you don't act in the 
 circus." 
 
 " How can you be sure of that.? " 
 
 " Oh, no sah,— oh, no sah ; you cain't fool me on dat. 
 I've seen you get on your horse; you ain't no circus 
 rider." 
 
 By taking long vacations in this enchanting Southern 
 home, by making his seasons comparatively short, and shon 
 by reserving several off-nights each week, Mr. Jefferson ''"" 
 diminished the monotony of acting his great part. And 
 when he once more came back to the boards, he was as 
 fresh as at the very beginning. He played it for the 
 first time in Boston in the summer of 1869, and shortly 
 
 Seasons.
 
 The little 
 
 church 
 around 
 comer. 
 
 92 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 after Booth's splendid theatre was opened he began a 
 triumphant series of seasons there. It has been esti- 
 mated that upwards of 150,000 persons witnessed his 
 Rip at that one theatre. 
 
 In 1870, the veteran actor, George Holland, died, and 
 around the Mrs. Holknd's sister desired the funeral to be held at 
 her own church. Mr. Jefferson, as an old friend of the 
 family, went to the minister with one of Holland's sons. 
 Mr. Jefferson told the rector that his friend was an actor, 
 and the rector replied that in the circumstances he should 
 have to decline holding the services at the church. The 
 boy was in tears at such a reply. Mr. Jefferson was too 
 indignant to say a word, but as they left the room he 
 paused and asked if there was any other church from 
 which his friend might be buried. The rector replied 
 that there was a little church around the corner where it 
 might be done. Mr. Jefferson said, "Then if this be 
 so, God bless *the little church around the corner.'" 
 
 From that time forth the Rev. Mr. 's church 
 
 bore that famous appellation. In the following January 
 Mr. Jefferson played the part of " Mr. Golightly," in the 
 amusing farce of " Lend me Five Shillings," given, with 
 other plays, for the benefit of George Holland's widow 
 and children. His personation of that fascinating and 
 laughable character was regarded as one of his most 
 brilliant successes.
 
 Threatened 
 blindness. 
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 9^ 
 
 When Mr. Jefferson was about forty-three, he was 
 attacked by glaucoma and threatened with complete 
 blindness. The oculist assured him that unless he 
 submitted to an immediate operation his case would be 
 hopeless. It was performed at his home at Hohokus 
 and proved entirely successful. In August he was enabled 
 to write to a friend, " All traces of the disease have 
 entirely disappeared. I no longer wear glasses, and in 
 fact am as good as new." 
 
 By the following January he reappeared on the stage 
 with greater popularity than ever. And he soon trans- 
 ferred his conquests to England. The summer before 
 his season opened in London he spent with his family in 
 Paris. He gives an amusing account of his attempts to -^^^^^ 
 learn French, — " the pure, solid mother tongue, with a pafn"ing^° 
 
 ^ pictures. 
 
 full Parisian accent." He pictures his celebrated teacher, 
 who came dressed in the extreme of tawdry fashion, full 
 of flounces and frills, with a large head decked out in an 
 enormous bonnet and smothered in a flower-garden in full 
 bloom, hugging three or four big books under one arm, 
 and flourishing a formidable blue cotton umbrella. His 
 progress was so rapid that, he says, at the end of the first 
 month, by hard study and close application, he knew less 
 about it than when he began. So he abdicated in favour 
 of his children, and spent the happy days painting pictures 
 of old chateaux or picturesque cottages embowered under
 
 cnticism. 
 
 96 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 tall poplar trees. It was during this visit that Mr. Jeffer- 
 son gathered together some of the beautiful specimens of 
 French art that were later destroyed when his summer cot- 
 tage was burnt down. His criticism on the French school 
 is very interesting. He says : 
 Art " I am of the opinion that the greatest landscapes are 
 
 works of the imagination rather than transcripts of reali- 
 ties. Nature refuses to be imitated, but invariably rewards 
 the artist who has the modesty to suggest her. The 
 painter who attempts to give an exact picture of a natural 
 scene will find himself surrounded by insurmountable 
 difficulties. As an example, let us suppose that he takes 
 for his subject a certain view with which we are familiar ; 
 the sky, water, foreground, trees, and distance may be 
 painted in the exact form, colour, and perspective propor- 
 tions of the original, and yet fail to give one idea of the 
 spot. What is the reason of this non-resemblance when 
 all the details have been so carefully imitated ? What is 
 it that has no existence in the picture, and that so pervades 
 nature ? Where are the sweet sounds of the woods ? 
 Where is the singing of the birds, the hum of busy insects, 
 and the murmur of the brooks ? Where is the movement 
 of the clouds, the graceful bending of the trees, and the 
 perfume of the pines and woodland flowers ? He cannot 
 paint these, and so his realistic work is cold and lifeless. 
 But if in modest truth he suggests his work, omitting hard
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. qh 
 
 details and impertinent finish, the simple picture will lead 
 us in our imagination to supply the artistic impossibili- 
 ties of sound and movement." 
 
 These suggestions are extremely interesting, for Mr. 
 Jefferson has won no small success in the art of land- 
 scape painting, and some of his pictures well illustrate 
 this very quality of which he speaks.
 
 IX. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson spent two winters in London at the 
 Princess's Theatre, and ended his London engagement 
 with a brief season at which he played " Mr. Golightly " 
 and other light comedy parts. His London life was made 
 memorable by his friendship or acquaintance with some 
 of the greatest men of the day. He was invited to make 
 a visit at a splendid estate in Scotland, and there he had a 
 courteous, memorable encounter with the daughter of an English 
 earl. She was radiantly beautiful, " witty, aristocratic, 
 haughty, and satirical," and she amused herself by quizzing 
 the American actor. At first he took her questions 
 seriously, but soon perceived that she was making sport 
 of him, and when she asked him with apparent innocence 
 if he had lately met the Queen, he replied with equal seri- 
 ousness, " No, madam, I was out when her Majesty 
 called." He was revenged. 
 
 Before he came back to America he played "Rip" in 
 Dublin and Belfast. In the one the engagement was a 
 flat failure ; indeed, he was asked at the first rehearsal to 
 make the character Irish instead of Dutch, and he was 
 told that if he would do so the Dublin audience was such 
 
 98
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 99 
 
 a rare one that he might defy the world. He declares 
 that if the scarcity of spectators was a test of its rareness, 
 it certainly was. 
 
 After his return to America he confined himself prin- versatility, 
 cipally to his two great parts. Assuredly, he who had 
 won his laurels in over a hundred distinct characters did 
 not deserve the reproach of lacking versatility. In ref- 
 erence to this charge, — that he has been remiss in learn- 
 ing new parts, — he quotes a conversation with Charles 
 Mathews, in which that clever comedian rallied him as 
 " the prince of dramatic carpetbaggers," carrying all his 
 wardrobe in a gripsack. But Mr. Jefferson retorted 
 that he was confounding wardrobe with talent, and as- 
 sured him that " it requires more skill to act one part 
 fifty different ways, than to act fifty parts all one way." 
 
 For his own sake an actor needs some change, and 
 Mr. Jefferson, who had come upon " Rip Van Winkle " 
 after long search, found the part of " Bob Acres " obsess- 
 ing him in somewhat the same way as " Rip " had done. 
 He says : " Bob was an attractive fellow to contemplate. Acres" an 
 Sheridan had filled him with such quaintness and eccen- 
 tricity that he became to me irresistible. I would often 
 think of him in the middle of the night. At odd times, 
 when there was apparently no reason for him to call, he 
 would pop up before me like a new acquaintance, — for 
 I had acted him before, — but alwavs with a new expres-
 
 Innovations. 
 
 lOO JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 sion on his face. The variety of situations in which the 
 author had placed him ; his arrival in town with his shal- 
 low head full of nonsense and curl-papers, and his warm 
 heart overflowing with love for an heiress who could not 
 endure him in the country because he used to dress so 
 badly ; a nature soft and vain, with a strong mixture of 
 goose and peacock ; his aping of the fashion of the town, 
 with an unmistakable survival of rural manners ; his 
 swagger and braggadocio while writing a challenge ; and, 
 above all, the abject fright that falls upon him when he 
 realises what he has done, — could the exacting heart of 
 a comedian ask for more than these ? " 
 
 So he fell to work, condensing and revising, and, in 
 fact, largely rewriting " The Rivals," just as Sheridan 
 himself had altered and renamed Vanbrugh's comedy of 
 " The Relapse." He condensed the play from five acts 
 to three, he cut several of the characters out of it, and he 
 expunged the few lines that had any shadow of coarse- 
 ness about them. 
 
 At the first rehearsal at Philadelphia, Mrs. John Drew 
 introduced some novel business in the part of "Mrs. 
 Malaprop," and asked him if he thought the innovation 
 was admissible. Mr. Jefferson replied that he thought 
 it was ; moreover, that he was convinced that Sheridan 
 himself would have done the same thing, if he had only 
 thought of it. The revised play was warmly received.
 
 ELliC'l UlC I'l.AN 1 .
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. lOJ 
 
 but of course some of the old actors felt called upon to 
 indulge in harmless sarcasms. Jefferson's cousin, Wil- 
 liam Warren, remarked that it reminded him of Thomas 
 Buchanan Read's poem, " And Sheridan twenty miles 
 away." John Gilbert predicted that the shade of Sher- 
 idan would haunt him. At a Christmas tree, when his 
 manager received a bundle of railway guides, his gift was 
 a book of " The Rivals," with all the parts but his own 
 cut out. But all this was innocent fun. Mr. Winter, 
 in a long and careful analysis of the part, says, " The 
 spirit of Jefferson's impersonation was humanity and 
 sweet good nature, while the traits that he especially 
 emphasised were ludicrous vanity and comic trepidation. 
 He left no moment unfilled with action, when he was on 
 the scene, and all his by-play was made tributary to the 
 expression of these traits." 
 
 Since 1880, then, Mr. Jefferson's life has been one a delightful 
 which any actor might set for himself as an ideal. Lim- 
 iting himself to a repertoire of not more than a dozen 
 characters, and for the greater part of the time to only 
 two, — " Rip " and " Bob Acres," — he has made short 
 seasons, and played to full and profitable houses. Age 
 has not dimmed the fervour of those immortal impersona- 
 tions. During the hard months of winter he has sought, 
 and apparently found. Ponce de Leon's fountain of 
 eternal youth on his beautiful estate of Orange Island. 
 
 old age.
 
 1 04 JOSEPH JEFFERSON A T HOME. 
 
 Here is the picture of him, painted by himself, in his 
 serene old age : 
 
 "In Louisiana the live-oak is the king of the forest, 
 and the magnoHa is its queen ; and there is nothing more 
 delightful than to sit under them on a clear, calm spring 
 morning like this. The old limbs twine themselves in 
 fantastic forms, the rich, yellow foliage mantles the trees 
 with a sheen of gold, and from beneath the leaves, the 
 gray moss is draped, hanging in graceful festoons, and 
 swaying slowly in the gentle air. I am listening to the 
 merry chirp of the tuneful cardinal, as he sparkles like a 
 ruby amid the green boughs, and to the more glorious 
 melody of the mocking-bird. Now, in the distance, 
 comes the solemn cawing of two crafty crows ; they are 
 far apart ; one sits on the high branch of a dead cypress, 
 wo?^*" while his cautious mate is hidden away in some secluded 
 spot ; they jabber to each other as though they held a 
 conference of deep importance ; he on the high limb 
 gives a croak as though he made a signal to his distant 
 mate, and here she comes out of the dense wood and 
 lights quite near him on the cypress branch ; they sidle 
 up to each other, and lay their wise old heads together, 
 now seeming to agree upon a plan of action ; with one 
 accord they flutter from the limb, and slowly flap them- 
 selves away. 
 
 " I am sitting here upon the fragment of a broken
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 1 05 
 
 wheel ; the wood is fast decaying, and the iron cogs 
 are rusting in their age. It is as old as I am, but 
 will last much longer. Most likely it belonged to 
 some old mill, and has been here in idleness, through 
 generations of the crows ; it must have done good ser- 
 vice in its day, and if it were a sentient wheel, perhaps 
 would feel the comfort, in old age, of having done its 
 duty. 
 
 " Over my head the gray arms of two live-oaks stretch 
 their limbs, and looking down into the ravine, I see 
 the trees are arched, as though they canopied the aisle 
 of a cathedral ; and doubtless they stood here before 
 the builder of the mill was born. Behind a fallen tree 
 there stands another ; and on the trunk, from where I 
 sit, I plainly see the initials of my wife's name, cut 
 there by me on some romantic birthday, many years 
 ago." 
 
 We can see Mr. Jefferson surrounded by members of 
 his family in this Southern paradise ; his genial, shrewd, 
 expressive face beaming with happy thoughts. One 
 can fill in the figure painting in addition to his own 
 landscape. 
 
 When the summer breezes blow too torrid across the 
 waters of the bayou, Mr. Jefferson flits like the birds 
 to the North. He has a charming estate called Crow's 
 Nest, near the upper waters of Buzzard's Bay. The 
 
 Crow's 
 
 Nest.
 
 106 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 house which was built in 1889 was filled with many- 
 choice works of art, — a portrait of Mrs. Siddons, by- 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, a portrait of himself by Wilkie, 
 and other pictures by Lawrence, Corot, Daubigny, Tro- 
 yon, Rousseau, Diaz, and others. By the explosion of 
 a gasolene tank. Crow's Nest was set on fire, and burnt 
 to the ground, with all its precious contents, in April, 
 1893. The following year it was rebuilt, and here, in 
 summer, Mr. Jefferson lives a delightful life, in inti- 
 mate association with ex-President Cleveland and other 
 congenial friends. Buzzard's Bay offers every enticing 
 sport, with its bluefish, and a safe expanse for boating. 
 Not far away are the charming ponds of the Cape, 
 where trout and bass abound. The scenery is not 
 Kard's^ magnificent, but the quiet landscape is full of charm ; 
 in driving over the hard shell roads that cut across 
 the sandy soil, there are fascinating glimpses of blue 
 water, and there are wild tracts, where not a house can 
 be seen. The air is peculiarly soft and balmy, and 
 the daily breeze from the Bay tempers the extreme 
 heat of the equinox. 
 
 Here Mr. Jefferson gathers around him, not only his 
 own children, — of which ten have been born to him, — 
 but also his children's children; and any one who has 
 ever seen Rip with the children of Falling Water will 
 not hesitate to believe that Mr. Jefferson is fond of 
 
 The 
 beau 
 Buz: 
 Bay.
 
 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 1 07 
 
 children, and some of the most attractive portraits 
 of him show him with children at his knee or climb- 
 ing over his back. 
 
 He still paints enthusiastically, and some of his pic- jigersona 
 tures have been shown in exhibitions, always attracting 
 great interest, not merely because they are the work of 
 the popular actor, but because they have intrinsic merit. 
 Their dominant quality has been described as being akin 
 to his acting : " marked by tenderness of feeling, com- 
 bined with a touch of mystery," — an imaginative 
 quality, reminding of the works of Corot. It is no 
 small privilege to be admitted to the sanctum of Mr. 
 Jefferson's studio, where he so skilfully wields the brush 
 and mahlstick. It is certainly an instructive sight to see 
 a man who has won fame and fortune in a calling that 
 tends to unsettle domesticity, thus utilising his pleasant 
 leisure with an avocation so ennobling and satisfactory. 
 
 His residence in Louisiana is so far away, and in 
 so large a domain, — Mr. Winter calls It six hundred 
 acres, — that he seems to disappear from sight when 
 he gets there. But at Buzzard's Bay he is in the eye hospitality. 
 of the world. His noble mansion stands out prom- 
 inent on a breezy height, overlooking the Bay ; and 
 here he may be seen with his family, or entertaining 
 the guests who delight in his genial hospitality and 
 ever-fluent store of anecdote, reminiscence, and wit.
 
 Nest. 
 
 1 08 JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 The house itself is filled with valuable relics, with art 
 treasures brought from all parts of the world. His own 
 a/crow's^ pictures hang upon the walls, and hold their own in 
 comparison with those of men who have made paint- 
 ing their life-work, rather than a diversion. The man- 
 telpiece in the dining-room was brought from India, is 
 richly carved, and is in itself a work of art. Under the 
 mantel in the parlor is a panel representing, in relief, 
 scenes from "Rip Van Winkle." The electrical lighting 
 is furnished from a power-house situated on the premises, 
 and, typical of its owner, keeps the whole establishment 
 in a glow of brilliancy. Ample stables furnish recreation 
 in riding and driving. In fact. Crow's Nest is a home, 
 — a home of wealth and comfort and cosiness. 
 
 Four of Mr. Jefferson's sons have either adopted the 
 stage, or shown talent for the drama. One of his daugh- 
 ters is married to the distinguished English novelist, 
 Benjamin L. Farjeon, author of " The King of Noland" 
 and " Miriam Rozella." She lives in London. His 
 youngest son was born in 1885.
 
 X. 
 
 One might fill many pages with analyses of Mr. jefferson 
 Jefferson's impersonations. They have been so many ™^'"^^'^^'i- 
 times described that it will not be hard for those of 
 another generation to get some idea of his powers. Yet 
 even the present generation will remember him chiefly 
 as the creator of " Rip Van Winkle" and " Bob Acres." 
 These two parts, so dissimilar and yet with somewhat 
 the same strength and the same lovable weaknesses, 
 have amused and delighted unnumbered thousands. 
 Mr. Jefferson's success in working out an original con- 
 ception for these parts teaches a lesson to persons of 
 every age and every profession ; it is to have an ideal, 
 and constantly to strive to reach it. To be sure, Mr. 
 Jefferson seems to have inherited peculiar talent for the 
 profession into which he was born, and circumstances 
 favoured his training in it in a school not by any means 
 easy, but nevertheless adequate to bring out his best 
 qualities. Throughout his course, he shaped every 
 change and possibility so as to bear on his coming 
 mastership. It was, therefore, something better than 
 "Good Fortune" that brought him such an immense 
 
 109
 
 An amiable 
 
 I lo JOSEPH JEFFERSON AT HOME. 
 
 measure of reward. No one can grudge him the good 
 things that have fallen to his share. He has preserved 
 character, j^ ^ circumstances the sweet and wholesome sense that 
 acts as a salt against conceit. His friends are unanimous 
 in their praise of his simplicity, cordiality, and frankness. 
 To have reached to the serene old age of fourscore " so 
 unspotted of the world," is as fine a lesson of genius as 
 history can afford. 
 
 THE END.
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
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