I THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES EDITED BY M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE EDWIN BOOTH BY CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/edwinbootliOOcoperich THE B0SX03ir EDWIN BOOTH CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND 7/ BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY MDCCCCI Copyright^ I^OI By Small^ Maynard ^ Company {Incorporated) Entered at Stationers^ Hall a Press of George H, Ellis^ Boston The photogravure used as a frontispiece to this volume is from a copy of a photo- graph taken in 1890 hy Mr. Ignatius Gross- mann, BootWs son-in-law. Booth sent this copy to Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, with a letter from which the following words, giving his own opinion of the likeness, are taken : 'Hhe whole thing, [the Sargent portrait] even the long thin legs <^ graceless trousers are me & mine. I have a photograph for you whose expression is very similar, & wh. I consider the best of me ever made : it was done by chance by Grossmann one day last Summer, at the Pier ; I liked it so well that he had it enlarged <& finished properly & I had a few for my friends struck off. The absence of theatrical effect &c, is its great merit S that is what pleases me in Sargent^ s portrait. '^ Love for you all, God bless you. " ED WINr The present engraving is by John Andrew & Son, Boston. 4r\r\r-^r^r^/r^ IN MEMOKIAM D. B. PEEFACB. Without Mr. William Winter^ s full and authoritative ''Life and Art of Edwin Boothj^^ this hook could not have been writ- ten. It owes less yet much to " The Elder and the Younger Booth,^^ by the late Mrs. J. S. Clarice; and to ''Edwin Booth: Eecollections by his Daughter, Edwina Booth Grossmann ; and Letters to her and to his Friends.^ ^ The writer is greatly indebted to Mr. Aldrich for permission to print hitherto unpublished letters of Booth, and for the loan of the rare photograph reproduced as frontispiece. The writer is obliged to Messrs. Hough- ton, Mifflin & Co., and to Mr. Aldrich, for permission to reprint the poem entitled "8argenfs Portrait of Edwin Booth at 'The Players.'' ^^ 0. T. C. Cambbidgb, 8 Noyember, 1901. CHEOKOLOGY. 1833 November 13. Edwin Booth was born at Belair, Maryland. 1849 First appearance on the stage, at Boston Museum. 1851 Acted Eiehard III for the first time. 1852 Went to California with his father. His father died. 1854 Visited Australia, Samoan and Sand- wich Islands. 1857 April 20. Appeared at Boston Theatre as Sir Giles Overreach. 1860 July 7. Married Miss Mary Devlin and sailed soon afterwards for England. 1861 September. First appearance in London, as Shylock, xii CHEONOLOGY 1861 (continued) December 9. Edwina Booth born at Pul- ham^ London. 1862 September 29. Eeappearance in New York. 1863 February 21. Death, of Mary Devlin Booth. September 21. Took management of Win- ter Grarden Theatre, "New York. 1864 November 25. Produced ^^ Julins Caesar'' at Winter Garden Theatre ; Junius, Ed- win, and John Wilkes Booth in cast. November 26. Produced ^^ Hamlet'' at Winter Garden Theatre. 1865 March 22. One hundredth night of ^* Hamlet" at Winter Garden Theatre. April 14. Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Eetired from the stage. CHEONOLOGY xiii 1866 January 3. Eeappeared at Winter Gar- den Theatre, as Hamlet, 1867 January 22. Presentation of Hamlet Medal. January 28. Eevival of ^^The Merchant of Venice '* at Winter Garden Theatre. March 22-23. Winter Garden Theatre destroyed by fire. 1868 April 8. Corner-stone of Booth's The- atre, [N'ew York, laid. November 3. Appeared in ^^ Macbeth/' Boston Theatre, with Mme. Janauschek. 1869 February 3. Booth's Theatre opened with ^^Eomeo and Juliet." April 12. Produced ^^OtheUo." June 7. Married Miss Mary P. M^- Yicker of Chicago. 1871 December 25. Produced ^^ Julius Caesar" at Booth's Theatre. xiv CHEOKOLOGY 1873 Eetired from management. 1874 Went into bankruptcy. 1875 March, Eeleased from bankruptcy. Thrown from carriage at Cos- Cob, Con- necticut ; seriously injured. October 25. Eeappeared in IsTew York, at Fifth Avenue Theatre. 1876 January S-March 3. Successful tour of southern states. Eevisited California. November 20. Began long engagement in New York. 1877-78 Fifteen volumes of Prompt-BooJcs (Will- iam Winter, editor) published. 1879 April 23. Mark Gray's attempt to assas- sinate Booth, at Chicago. 1880 April, Appeared as Fetruchio, Madison CHEOI^OLOGY xv Square Theatre, ^ew York, for benefit of Poe Memorial. June 15. Booth festival at Delmonico^s. June 30. Sailed for England. November 6. Appeared at Princess's The- atre, London, as Samlet. 1881 Presented ^'King Lear.'' March 29. Ended season at Princess's Theatre, London. May 2. Appeared at Lyceum Theatre, London, as Othello, Henry Irving lago. October 3. Eeappeared in New York, Booth's Theatre. November 13. Death of Mary M'Vicker Booth. 1882 May 31. Sailed for England. June 25. Eeappeared at Princess's The- atre, London. 1883 January 11. Appeared at Berlin. Tour of Germany. April 7. Closed tour at Vienna. Ee- turned to America. xvi CHEOl^OLOGY 1885 May 4t. Delivered address at dedication of Poe Memorial, Metropolitan Museum, iN'ew York. May 7. Appeared in ^^ Macbeth'' witli Mme. Eistori at Academy of Music, I^ew York. 1886 April 27-30 and May 1. Appeared in ^^ Hamlet'' and ^^ Othello" with Salvini at Academy of Music, I^ew York. Booth-Barrett combination formed. 1887 Delivered address at dedication of Ac- tors' Monument, Long Island. 1888 May 21. Appeared as Hamlet at testimo- nial benefit for Lester Wallack, Metro- politan Opera House, Kew York. December 31. Founded The Players. 1889 Mme. Modjeska joined the Booth-Bar- rett Company. CHEO:NOLOaY xvii 1889 (^continued) April 3. Had a light stroke of paralysis at Eochester, ^New York. 1891 March 20. Death of Lawrence Barrett. April 4. Last appearance on the stage, as JEamlet 1893 June 7. Edwin Booth died at The Play- ers^ IsTew York City. EDWIN BOOTH I EDWIN BOOTH. Jumus Brutus Booth, known for many years in this country as ^Hhe elder Booth/ ^ was born on the first day of May, 1796, in the parish of St. Pancras, London. Through his grandmother, Elizabeth Wilkes, he was related to the famous John Wilke?i,-, aaid, through iiiis mother he came of a W^lish family named Llewellyn. Thu^s bqfeji 'the eldei* ian4 .til^e/; younger Booth had in tliem that strain of Celtic blood so often found in English actors, artists, and writers. ' ' The Booths and Wilkes of Clerkenwell," writes Mrs. J. S. Clarke in her memoir of her father, ^^ were honourably known in their time ; the house of Bishop Burnet, an historical old building, was the birthplace of many of the Booths, and the yard of the an- cient church of St. John of Jerusalem still contains the gravestones of their de- scendants, on which the names of the 2 EDWm BOOTH two families are frequently intermingled. Euin and demolition have been busy, the black mould of years is over the nar- row streets and by-ways ; but the little court keeps its name of ^ Booth/ and the graves in the narrow slip of church- ground seem likely to last till dooms- day. '' Eichard, the father of J. B. Booth, was educated for the law ; but his devo- tion to a profession more firmly attached Vc i6 })te^dsB:b : thaw any other — except perhaps that of his son and grandsons — was not enough to keep him from be- coming a red Eepublican and resolving to fight for England's American colonies against the mother-country. After be- ing taken prisoner and brought back to England, Booth addressed himself to study, and the practice of law. Al- though he seems not to have been punished for his disloyalty, a freely proclaimed republicanism kept him un- popular. Eichard Booth's rule that EDWIN BOOTH 3 everyone who entered his Bloomsbury drawing-room should bow before a por- trait of Washington that hung there, was probably the most whimsical mani- festation of his principles. Clearly in- dicative of these were also the names of his two sons, Junius Brutus and Alger- non Sidney. After a brief rivalry with Kean, J. B. Booth came to try his fortune in the new world, where he was long and widely known for his great genius and even greater eccentricity. On the eighteenth of January, 1821, he had married Mary Anne Holmes, and the same year found them at Norfolk, Virginia. The young actor's gifts and oddities were combined with a strong desire for a quiet country life when he was not acting. So, after a number of brilliant engagements, in the summer of 1822 he bought a farm in Harford County, Maryland, twenty- five miles from Baltimore. He passed much time there, and there his six sons and four daughters were born. 4 EDWIN BOOTH Known always as ^^The Farm,'' tMs estate was really a wood, tliree miles from eacli of tliree small villages — Bel- air, Hickory, and Churchville. Over the stony coacli-road, tkrough an arch of great trees, the post-boy, with his horn and mail-bags, used to ride once a week, and toss the Booths' letters and papers over their gate. The house was a quar- ter of a mile from the gate, by a narrow, crooked path. The house, it should be said, was no more than a log-cabin, as innocent of locks and bolts as if it had been in Arcadia. The square window- frames and broad shutters of the cabin — which was plastered and whitewashed on the outside — were painted red. ^ ^ Four rooms besides the loffc, the kitchen, and the Old Dominion chimney, made up a picturesque and comfortable abode, standing in a clearing encompassed by huge oak, black walnut, beech, and tu- lip trees." Booth caused his cabin to be removed across several fields, in order to EDWm BOOTH 6 bring it near an excellent spring whicli he had discovered under the thickest trees. These were left standing, and the spring was furnished with granite ledges and steps. ^^ In its grateful depths/' continues Mrs. Clarke, ^^ dwelt an im- mense green bull-frog ; and as these creat- ures are said to live a hundred years, the children of the family used to imag- ine that he had croaked to the first invaders of his solitude as he did to them. In this shaded spot a little dairy was built, and the thoughtful possessor planted in front of his door a cherry- shoot, anticipating the future when his children should gather under its branches. Those days came in their time, and his tall sons swung themselves up among its great boughs, to read or doze away many a sultry afternoon. Merry groups gossiped under its shelter, little ones danced there, while older ones dreamed, and reared airy castles ; the aged mother in her widowhood remem- 6 EDWIK BOOTH bered happier days in its shadows ; and every year the orioles and mocking-birds paid their welcome visits. This grand old grafted tree was very tall and straight, and shaded the entire lawn.'' In his green clearing, circled by un- broken forest as far as the eye could reach, the Farmer — the world forget- ting, though not by the world forgot — planted a large orchard, and had negro quarters, barns, and stables, built. Among other necessities added to the Farm, were a vineyard, a cider-press, and a fishing stream : among its luxuries was a swimming-pond, with a little willow-grown island. In a few years, when it became neces- sary to provide for the dead as well as for the living, a little graveyard was railed in. With true Southern refusal to join in death those who in life were so far asunder. Booth buried black mem- bers of his large household outside of the enclosure, which was shaded with EDWm BOOTH 7 Jewish althea bushes, yews, and weeping willows. The white dead were laid with- in the rails. As clergymen were usually no nearer than the rest of civilisation, the owner of all this seclusion often found it a part of his duty to read the burial service. Within the cabin the master of it typified his two fold life by keeping in one file the numbers of a weekly paper on farming, and in another, playbills. Incidents and pleasures of the farm life he minutely described in a note-book, along with passages from plays, memo- randa of dresses and properties, stage directions, births and deaths of children, astronomical observations, fast days, and lastly a few verses. On the Actor-Farmer's few but catho- lic book-shelves, stood volumes of Shel- ley, Coleridge, and Keats — new poets then — a Gazetteer of the World, an English and a French dictionary, Ea- cine, Alfieri, Tasso, Dante, Burton's An- 8 EDWm BOOTH atomy of Melancholy ^ Plutarch's Morals and lAves^ Milton, Shakespeare, the Koran (by which the elder Booth set great store), Locke's Essay on the Suman Understanding J and Paley's Theology. On the parlour walls hung three en- gravings — ^ ^ Timon of Athens, ' ' ^ ^ The Eoman Matron showing her Husband how to Die/' and ^^The Death of Bona- parte," ^^with these words written in the clouds, ^T^te d'Armee.' " The furniture of the cabin, though simple and rough, was of a sort that is looked upon with increasing interest and affec- tion. The corner cupboard, full of old- fashioned china ; a narrow looking- glass, with the sun and moon (in the guise of human faces) painted on the upper half; the spinning wheel j the tall brass andirons and fender — all these objects, even without the particu- lar association, would be cherished as household reminders of former times. The old Herbalist and Almanack, side EDWm BOOTH 9 by side on the wall, the ink-horn, bunch of quills, and little bags of seeds, hung from hooks round the looking-glass, added harmonious details to a picture strangely contrasted with the scenes in which the world thinks of the elder and the younger Booth. The family bread was baked in a Dutch oven, the family meals eaten from immense pewter plat- ters, which were used in later days as covers to the milk- crocks in the dairy. A rigid vegetarianism was practised on the Farm. ' ^ Mr. Booth usually travelled from Harford County to Baltimore and to Eichmond in his carryall with two horses — ^ Captain,^ a very large animal, and the favourite but diminutive ' Pea- cock,' '' a piebald pony bought on the island of Madeira. It has seemed worth while to recite all these details of Edwin Booth's first home, not only for their interest, but because they were so very different from every- thing in and about his last home, the 10 EDWIN BOOTH Players' Club in New York. Between the two, we have only the most general record of any of his abodes. A word or two as to the physical aspect of father and son will be a further help to most readers. The father was short, spare, and sinewy. He had the head of a Greek, the chest of an athlete, and a face of the pallor often though not always seen in scholars. His hair was dark, and his eyes blue-grey. His voice ranged from organ to flute. Mr. Joseph Jefferson's brief description of his acting, to be found in the Autobiography, is worth most of the many others scattered through books of reminiscence and criticism. ^^When but twenty-two years of age,'' says Mr. Jefferson, ^^I was cast for Marrall in ^A New Way to Pay Old Debts,' the elder Booth playing Sir Giles Overreach, . . . The elder Booth's act- ing of Sir Giles was indeed something to be remembered. During the last scene he beats Marrall, who hides for protec- EDWUsT BOOTH 11 tion behind Lord LoveJl, Booth's face, when he found he could not reach his victim, had the look of an uncaged tiger. His eyes flashed and seemed to snap with fire ; his nostrils dilated ; his cheeks appeared to quiver ; his half-opened mouth, with its thin lips pressed tightly against the white teeth, made a picture of anger fearful to look upon. At the point where he is about to draw his sword his arm shakes, his right hand refuses to do its ofi&ce, and, stricken with paralysis, he stands the embodiment of despair ; then come his terrible words of anguish and self-reproach : ^ Some undone widow sits upon mine arm, my sword. Glued to my scabbard, with wronged orphans' tears.' His whole frame, shaken with convul- sions, seems to collapse, his head sinks upon his breast, his jaw drops, and the cruel man is dead. There was no ap- 12 EDWIN BOOTH plause the niglit I speak of ; the acting was so intense and so natural that the mimic scenes seemed really to have hap- pened. ' ' We have all sat through scenes followed by no applause, though not for the reason given by Mr. Jefferson. But the audiences of half a century ago and more were either more impressionable than those of to-day, or else, as the sur- vivors af&rm, they had better reason for being impressed. Certain it is that Mrs. Siddons and Kean and the elder Booth had a power over their houses that even Salvini has not exercised in our own time. It is also clear that in bodily pres- ence the elder Booth was more impos- ing, though not more brilliant, than the younger. Yet there was a resem- blance between them — a resemblance that showed itself mainly in the shape of head and face ; in the arch of eye- brow, ^Hhe actor's feature'' for which both men were notable ; and in a mo- EDWI]^ BOOTH 13 bility and positive radiance of face that were among Edwin Booth's most beauti- ful endowments. His eyes were dark brown, and so full of light that boys and girls often kept the look of them as almost the sole recollection of plays in which they had seen him. I, for one, saw Booth's Shylock at a very early age ; and for years after, I remember, the Jew to me was nothing but a pair of eyes, large, dark, awful, and bright — above all, bright, and seeming to give out light. In the opinion of Mr. Will- iam Winter, ^^only one man of our time has equalled Edwin Booth in this sin- gular splendour of countenance — the great IS'ew England orator Eufus Choate. Had Choate been an actor upon the stage — as he was before a jury — with those terrible eyes of his, and that pas- sionate Arab face, he must have towered fully to the height of the tradition of George Frederick Cooke." In poise, grace, and swiftness of motion, for which 14 EDWm BOOTH tlie elder Booth was famous, neither he nor any one could well have surpassed his son. Of the middle height and size, the younger Booth was closely knit and admirably proportioned. His physical command of himself recalled the Ger- man traveller's note that Garrick seemed all right hand, so that within Booth's easy achievement were the march of Othello, lago^s leopard tread, and the tottering majesty of Lear. His voice, although a little ^^ veiled'' — at least in later years — ranged wide and carried far. Its sweetness and strength spoke to the inner even more than to the outer ear. It stirred not only the blood but the spirit. IL The youth of this rare person was schooled by constant association with a man of genius, and saddened by his strange, almost mad perversities. But in forming an artist and disciplining a character, the privilege of being son to the elder Booth far outweighed the fre- quent penalty of acting as his guardian. Edwin Thomas Booth — Edwin after Edwin Forrest — was born at the Mary- land farm on ISTovember 13, 1833. The negroes said he was ^^born lucky'' and ^^ gifted to see ghosts,'' because there was a brilliant shower of meteors on the night of the boy's birth, and because he was born with a caul. His first recollection of his father was of their having travelled a whole day together and reaching the Farm late at night, under the dark trees. A man who had come with them to take back the hired horses they had ridden, went away into the night; and Booth 16 EDWm BOOTH lifted his little son over the snake-fence into the grass, saying as he did so — "Your foot is on your native heath.'' The boy's education began under Miss Susan Hyde, who taught the rudiments to boys and girls. Miss Hyde, who afterward became secretary of the Pea- body Institute in Baltimore, was always affectionately remembered by her most distinguished pupil. Somewhat later, Booth sent his son to an old Frenchman, a West-Indian naval officer, M. Louis Dugas. He went — probably for a very short time — to ^^ a university " which Mrs. Clarke does not name ; and studied intermittently with a Mr. Kearney, who wrote all his own school-books. Kear- ney encouraged his boys to act scenes from plays, and on one occasion the elder Booth, sitting on the corner of a bench near the door, was an unseen and a gratified witness of the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius^ recited with gestures by Edwin Booth and John S. EDWIK BOOTH 17 } Clarke, whose delightful art afterward led '■ him quite away from tragedy. The young Eomans wore white linen trousers and black jackets, then the fashion. \ Mr. J. H. Hewitt, of Baltimore, remem- bered Edwin as ^^a comely lad ... dressed in a Spanish cloak.'' A varied education was made still more fragmentary by periodical trips, on which Edwin Booth had the respon- sible task of caring for the health and even the safety of his father. In Louis- ; ville, to give one example of the sort of s thing that often happened, Booth had i on a certain night been playing Bichard ' III with great brilliancy. On the way \ to his hotel he suddenly determined to | walk the streets alone. When he found ! that Edwin would not leave him, he \ went rapidly to a long covered market, in which he began to walk up and down. The promenade, from end to end of the market, did not cease until daylight. Now hastening, now lagging. 18 EDWIN BOOTH the father could not shake off his son, who — sometimes angry, sometimes ready to laugh, and always weary — kept his father^ s changing pace until morning moved Booth to go home to bed. During the whole time neither had spoken a word. It is not strange that such experiences as these should have made a sensitive youth grave beyond his years ; or that more painful demands upon his patience and courage, with no anodyne of the ab- surd, should have deepened his inherited melancholy. The noble motto of the noble Italian house, ^^ Though sad, I am strong, ' ' might well have been this boy' s. And at only one moment of later life, in the disaster that almost crushed him, could he have felt its sadness or needed its strength more than in the early, hard probation of being attendant, dresser, and guardian, to a man whose genius was not without its authenticating strain of madness. EDWIN BOOTH 19 In spite of all this association with the theatre, the actor's son saw little of its processes. His father intended him to be a cabinet-maker. ^^ During my con- stant attendance on him in the thea- tre'' — says Edwin Booth in ^^Some Words about my Father" — ^^he for- bade my quitting his dressing-room — where he supposed my school-lessons were studied. But the idle boy, ignor- ing Lindley Murray and such small deer, seldom seeing the actors, listened at the keyhole to the garbled text of the mighty dramatists, as given in the acting ver- sions of the plays. By this means at an early age my memory became stored with the words of all the parts of every play in which my father performed." It is common knowledge that the loss of one sense often sharpens the others. Who shall say that so much hearing without seeing, did not tune the listen- er's ear, and train unconsciously the tongue that was afterward to rob the Hybla bees'? 20 EDWIN BOOTH iN'ot only was the boy forbidden to see plays, but he seldom heard his father speak of actors or the theatre. Only once, indeed, was he allowed to hear any of the elder Booth's recollections of the stage. This was on an occasion when, after reading ^ ^ Coriolanus " to his son ^^ until far into the morning, he spoke of the marvellous acting of Edmund Kean." Clearly enough, however, Edwin Booth's hereditary talent, his delphic association with the theatre, his strange responsibilities, and the grotesque con- trasts of his life, were hurrying the neg- lectful grammar-student into a closer walk with ^Hhe mighty dramatists'' to whom he had hearkened so attentively. Yet, when he made his first appearance on any stage, it was by accident, and — characteristically enough — to do some one a kindness. Mr. Thoman, who doubled the parts of prompter and actor, was attending to some detail in prepara- EDWIN BOOTH 21 tion for the elder Booth's Eichard III at the Boston Museum. Suddenly he turned to Edwin, who was standing by, and exclaimed: — ^^This is too much work for one man ; you ought to play TresseV^ The boy consented, and, when the night of the play came — it was Sep- tember 10, 1849 — he was called to his father's dressing-room. Booth, dressed for Eichard, then catechised his son as if the two had been teacher and pupil : ^ ^ ^ Who was Tressel 1 ' ^^^A messenger from the field of Tewkesbury.' ^^ ^ What was his mission ^ ' ^^ ^ To bear the news of the defeat of the king's party.' ^^ ^How did he make the journey? ' ^^ ^ On horseback.' ^' ^ Where are your spurs ? ' ^^ Edwin glanced quickly down" — he had doubtless told the story more than once to Mrs. Clarke, from whose account the dialogue is taken — ^^and said he had not thought of them. 22 EDWIK BOOTH ^' ^Here, take mine.' ^^ Edwin unbuckled his father's spurs, and fastened them on his own boots. His part being ended on the stage, he found his father still sitting in the dress- ing-room, apparently engrossed in thought. ^^ ^ Have you done well ? ' he asked. ^^ ^I think so,' replied Edwin. ^^^Give me my spurs,' rejoined his father, and obediently young Tressel replaced the spurs upon Gloucester's feet." The only copy of the bill of this per- formance which is known to be in exist- ence, was given by the actor of Tressel to the Players' Club, where it hangs in the dining-room. What followed the performance is no less interesting than what preceded. By that time the Eoman father had softened. ^^ After my debut in the very small part of Tressel '^ — wrote the son almost forty years later — ^^he ^coddled' me; gave EDWIN BOOTH 23 me gruel (his usual meal at night, when acting) and made me don his worsted night- cap, which when his work was ended he always wore as a protection for his heated head, to prevent me from taking cold after my labours, which were doubtless very exhausting on that occasion, being confined to one brief scene at the beginning of the play ! " In the next summer Edwin Booth made a more ambitious trial of his wings, though in a more secluded scene — the court-house at Belair. There, on the evening of August 2, Mr. Edwin Booth and Mr. J. S. Clarke gave ^^Shakespearian Eeadings, Etc." The former's part of the programme included selections from ^^Eichard III,'' ^^The Merchant of Venice,'' and ^' Eichelieu "5 ^^ Hamlet's Soliloquy on Death" ; and ^^The Celebrated Dagger Scene from Macbeth." The young men slackened the tension with ^^ Etc.," for ^^ during the evening they sang a number of negro 24 EDWIN BOOTH melodies with blackened faces, using appropriate dialect, and accompanying their vocal attempts with the somewhat inharmonious banjo and bones.'' Those fragments of Shakespeare, recited half a century ago in the Maryland woods, were probably ardent and faithful imitations of the elder Booth, but the imagination can paint no picture of his son as Brother Bones. Neither he nor any of his fam- ily — on the stage, at all events — ever ^ had the giffc of making people laugh. III. DuEiNa Booth's second season on the stage, that of 1851, he played again in ^^Eichard III/' but this time as Eich- ard himself, at the l^ational Theatre, ^N^ew York. In his opinion his father had determined to test his ^ Equality.'' His own account of the experiment is worth reading. ^^One evening, just as he [the elder Booth] should have started for the theatre to prepare for his per- formance of Eichard III, he feigned ill- ness 5 nor would he leave the bed where he had been napping (his custom always in the afternoon), but told me to go and act Eichard for him. This amazed me, for my experience as yet had been con- fined to minor parts. But he could not be coaxed to waver from his determina- tion not to act that night, and as it was time for the manager to be notified, there was no course to pursue but to go to the theatre to announce the fact. ^Well/ 26 EDWIN BOOTH exclaimed the manager, ^ there is no time to change the bill 5 we must close the house — unless you will act the part.' The stage- director and several actors pres- ent urged me to try it, and, before my brain had recovered from its confusion, they hurried me into my father's dress, and on to the stage, in a state of bewil- derment.'' Someone heard the novice repeat the soliloquy, and he was soon be- fore a crowded house. As no explana- tion had been made, the son was greeted with a great round of applause intended for the father. As soon as the audience discovered their mistake, they lapsed into utter silence and allowed the piece to begin. Although the difficultly placed young actor played as he had seen his father play, in look and tone and gesture, his achievement was some- thing more than even the best of imita- tions, for the suddenly interrupted ap- plause soon began again, and in a key which must have assured the performer EDWm BOOTH 27 that lie had won it for himself. He thus modestly concludes his own too brief ac- count of the episode: — ^^My effort was not altogether futile, for it satisfied my father that his boy's prospects were fair for, at least, a reputable position in the profession. . . . Thenceforth he made no great objection to my acting occasionally with him, although he never gave me instruction, professional advice or en- couragement in any form : he had, doubtless, resolved to make me work my way unaided ; and though his seeming indifference was painful then, it com- pelled me to exercise my callow wits ; it made me think ! And for this he has ever had my dearest gratitude." The character of Gloster has always been a favourite with actors. It is no wonder, since whoever wrote the play — let us for convenience say Shakespeare — could not easily have done them a better service. Against a necessary background of persons dramatically insignificant, and 28 EDWIK BOOTH the undramatic lamentation of queens and other distressed ladies of rank, who repeat one another as only Maeterlinck's people do nowadays, the author has thrown in dominant relief a figure of gi- gantic evil, an all-conquering fiend in gorgeous raiment. We cannot recapture the old performances of Gloster or the de- light the old audiences felt in them, nor have we better means of recovering Ed- win Booth's early renderings of the part in Gibber's theatrical patchwork called ' ^ Eichard III. ' ' The effectiveness of that version is of the sort which perpetually tempts the actor to over-act. As Booth ripened late, it is probable that, in his younger, cruder state, he was a brill- iantly docile pupil of a school not averse to violent effects. By the time I saw him, although there was still (and continued till the end to be) an ever- lessening degree of old-fashioned theat- ricality in all his impersonations, he sel- dom, even in ^^ Eichard III," played EDWm BOOTH 29 obviously for points. Gibber, and all that Gibber typified, had long since been discarded. Booth's version of the orig- inal would have been still better than it was, had he taken the pioneer step, not yet taken, I think, of omitting BicharWs proposal to Queen Elizabeth^ which comes like a faded echo of the direct proposal to the Lady Anne. But that is a detail, though an important one. Booth's dressing of the character — splendid, as Gloster^s apparel is known to have been — proclaimed the man he represented. He wore long brown hair, cut straight across the forehead, and a ring on the third finger of his left hand. He reproduced the king's habit of sheathing and unsheathing his dagger. The hump was a suggestion, not an ob- trusion, of deformity. This Eichard had ^^entertained a score or two of tailors" not only ^Ho study fashions to adorn his body,'' but also to conceal the ill turn Nature had done him, and leave him a 30 EDWra BOOTH monster solely in his mind. Even the moral hump was not obtruded. Booth remembered Bichard* s ' ' dissembling looks" as well as ^Hhe plain devil" that rejoiced within him, but was never fully revealed except where the text de- manded it. Some modern actors, follow- ing tradition, have made Richard confide too much in the audience. The audi- ence got no direct information from Booth except in the asides and the solilo- quies, which thus of course gained all the more by contrast. BicharWs many en- trances, most of them unreasonably well timed, gave Booth an opportunity that he richly used, of showing the apparent omnipresence of strong evil. A cheer- ful, brisk malignant, he strode here, there, and everywhere, about the stage, speaking and acting the lines in such a way as to show that the villain's life- work was his pleasure not less than his business. Into his smiling seduction of the Lady Anne he put enough of the ser- EDWIN BOOTH 31 pent to bedevil any daughter of Eve and rouse cynical thoughts in the sons of Adam. I, for one, don't believe the scene when I read it ; but Booth's act- ing, if he was in the mood — for he was i the most unequal of players — compelled belief until the episode was over. His bits of hypocrisy were delicious, and of an intellectual keenness that always drew smiles and a ripple of appreciation from the audience. I^othing in this kind could be better than the mock-humility with which Booth's Eichard knelt and asked the Duchesses blessing, unless in- deed it were the fine insolence with which he spoke the lines that follow the poor lady's ^^God bless thee" : — ^^ Amen ! And make me die a good old man : That is the butt end of a mother's blessing : I marvel why her grace did leave it out." This light treatment of so much that 32 EDWm BOOTH most Richards have treated heavily, was not only right in itself, but it contrasted sharply with the sudden thunder of the sentence pronounced on Hastings, with . the threat against Stanley , g^nd with the lowering tone and look Booth gave to that most royal snub : — ^'Thou troublest me; I am not in the dWn'*^ vein.'' Many critics have praised, and praised highly. Booth's rendering of the dream and the soliloquy that follows it. As I remember this part of the performance, his mode of giving the soliloquy was a blot on an achievement made up of many perfections. The restraint, the tempered art of previous scenes, gave way here to a flaming theatricality that gravely hurt — though it could not de- stroy — the actor's consciousness and vivid revelation of BicharWs tortured soul. In all of the same scene that pre- cedes the dream. Booth was altogether .V' ED Wm BOOTS 33 admirable. The dim light in the tent and the muffled drum withoat, conspired with his gloomy fitfulness and his sombre voice in the few words given him. to send out among all the spectators a m -- sage of foreboding — a feeling that the ' i king foresaw his doom. The line, j '^Stir with the lark tomorrow, gentle I^orfolk,'^ Booth spoke resolutely, yet with a curi- i ous sweetness and melancholy, and as if \ he already tasted the morning of his de- ] feat. The fight and the fall were pro- digious. ! As a part of Booth's general concep- ' tion — a conception in which the hump and the limp were minimised — it should be remembered that he always repre- sented Eichard as a man of restless Intel- ; lect and great personal fascination. ; Also, departing wholly from the ruf&an \ theory held by more than one famous i , actor. Booth seldom allowed Eichard to i 34 EDWm" BOOTH forget his kingship, but gave him dig- nity at his most atrocious moments. *^ I was born so high/' cries Gloster to Dorsety *^Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun.'' These lines, the most exalted and the most imaginative in a play that, by Shakespeare^s gauge, lacks imagination, mark the Plantagenet's consciousness of his rank. Taken with other utterances of BicharWs towering pride, the speech might have been Booth's warrant for cloaking the king's crimes with majesty. IV. Soon after Edwin Booth's first play- ing of Bichard he made an engagement with Theodore Barton, of Baltimore, to act any part given him, at a salary of six dollars a week. Valuable as the training probably was, Booth seldom succeeded in little parts or in plays other than tragedy. One of his direst failures was an attempt in pantomime with Madame Ciocca, who abused him in broken English for his awkward struggle to be graceful in a light and airy fashion. Excellent discipline, too, was this failure for a youth who had determined to become a well-graced actor and to make every fibre in his body expressive. In the year 1852 the elder Booth, Junius and Edwin with him, sailed from Kew York for California. A week brought them to Aspinwall, whence they went up the Ohagres Eiver to Gorgona, 36 EDWIK BOOTH on a flat-boat that carried both pas- sengers and luggage. They passed one well-remembered night at Gorgona, sleeping or trying to sleep in a hut, on trunks and wine-casks. The onlv woman in the party occupied a hammock. Each man held a pistol under his pillow. Edwin, unable to sleep, could see the natives sharpening their maeheetos — '^or long knives which they used to cut the tall grass in front of them as they journeyed on foot'' — but could not understand their whispered talk. Eats ran about the hut during the night. In the morning the unrefreshed travel- lers rose and proceeded on mules across the isthmus. After an engagement of two weeks at San Francisco, whose tentative civilisa- tion may have seemed eftete by contrast with the Booths' checkered progress to it, they went on to Sacramento. There, for his benefit, the elder Booth put up "Eichard III." Next night Junius, EDWIN BOOTH 37 at his benefit^ played Othello to Ms father's lago. On the third night of benefits, Edwin took his as Jaffier to his father's Pierre, in ^^ Venice Preserved.'' This very rhetorical but very interesting tragedy, although now unknown to the young play-goer, was an important por- tion of his grandfather's dramatic meat and drink. When the elder Booth caught sight of Edwin in his Jaffier costume — it was of course, black — he said: ^^ You look like Samlet; why did you not act Samlet for your benefit *?" Edwin replied, — ^^ If I ever have another, I mlV^ At his next benefit, which did not occur until after the death of his father, he remembered the lightly spoken word, and played Samlet, Disappointed at the lack of a suitable theatre in San Francisco, and influenced also by the sudden coming of ^^hard times," the elder Booth, in October, 1852, started for New York. As Edwin was now in earnest to be an actor, his 38 EDWm BOOTH father would not take him along, but advised him to go on with his profession in California. He took the advice and, when the hard times soon became harder, he agreed with Mr. D. W. Waller to go with him to a town or settlement called INTevada. There Booth first acted lago. At parting, his brother Junius (J. B. Booth, Jr.) had said to him : — ^^ Put a slug [^ a large octagonal gold piece of fifty dollars ' ] in the bottom of your trunk, forget you have it, and when things are at the worst, bring out the slug.'' It was soon time to dig up the buried treasure. With ruin staring them in the face, the people of ISTevada had not a penny for the fine arts, and the theatrical thermometer registered zero. The physical tempera- ture was scarcely higher. Snow fell incessantly until the poor strollers were cut off from the world. One night, when the theatre had been ^^dark'' a fortnight. Booth was walking along a EDWIN BOOTH 39 road where the gold-diggers had under- mined the houses and left dangerous gulches. Suddenly, in the mud and snow and darkness, he came face to face with a man carrying a lantern. By its flickering dimness he made out the features of George Spear, an actor fa- miliarly called ^^Old Spudge,'' who exclaimed, ^^ Hello! Ted, is that you? There's a mail in, and a letter for you, ' ' The retarded courier had at last broken through the drifts and arrived on horse- back with the mail-bag. ^* What news is there 1 " asked Booth. ^^Not good news for you, my boy.'' In the tone of the reply or the look of the speaker, the boy seemed to read an omen, for he cried out, ^^ Spear, is my father dead?" The old actor led him back, half- crazed, to the hotel, where the kind friends who tried to calm him were none the less kind because they could not fathom his deep grief or understand his self-reproach for having allowed his father to go home alone. 40 EDWm BOOTH Still the cold held, still the snow fell, and men considered what to do. Win- ter and misfortune had made equals in ]:^evada of ^^ ruffian, gambler, labourer, and scholar.'' One day, as a group of the motley democracy stood at a street corner bewailing their outcast state, some one proposed that they should walk to Marysville. Among those who took up the gage were an actor named Barry and a musician whose violin, a la Paganini's single string, had been the theatre's whole orchestra. Booth added himself to the handful of adventurers 5 and together, the foremost being road- breaker, they tramped fifty miles across the snowy mountains. At the end of the second day they came to Marysville, where they disbanded. Booth went thence to Sacramento. After more days of leanness and a hard though profitable apprenticeship at ^^ utility" parts under the management of J. B. Booth and the Messrs. Chap- EDWIIST BOOTH 41 man, in San Francisco, Edwin Booth had. a great success as Bichard III, played for the benefit of Fairchild, a scene-painter. Sir Giles Overreach and Macbeth were good seconds in public favour. Sam- let, although the managers urged it upon Booth, he consistently refused to play until a benefit was offered him. The careless pledge made to his father, had become ^^an oath in Heaven.'* J. B. Booth, in spite of his brother's triumphs, thought him still of a pupil age, and reduced him three times from star parts to utility. This apparent snubbing, as he once said to Mr. William Winter, was ^^a lesson for crushed tragedians.'' And Booth's unquestioning docility, no less than the power to act effectively to his father's audiences parts in which his father had long been famous, adapted to him Heine's saying about another youth of rich promise, that he had a magnificent past before him. Booth went on briskly accumulating 42 EDWIJST BOOTH his past by taking a trip to Australia in the year 1854, with Miss Laura Keene, a well-known actress of the time, and D. C. Anderson, a much older actor whose intimate friendship he had formed. On going aboard their brig, Booth discovered that two ladies had invited themselves to share his voyage and act with him in Australia. One was the captain's wife, who had been an actress and was then insane 5 the other, an ac- tress of ^^ heavy business'' who was not without vogue in San Francisco. Ko one of the three player- queens had known the intentions of either of the others. When they met on the brig, with their respec- tive wardrobes, the scene must have been comedy, broadening into farce or darkening into melodrama : the record doesn't tell us which. The voyage from San Francisco to Sydney lasted seventy-two days, during twelve of which the vessel was becalmed. In Sydney Booth played a satisfactory EDWIN BOOTH 43 engagement, opening with ShylocJc, which he had never acted before. At Mel- bourne, which was less auspicious than Sydney, Booth and Miss Keene parted. He then took passage with Anderson and a few other players for the Sand- wich Islands. At Honolulu, Booth — who had just fifty dollars in his pocket — hired the only theatre and brought out ^^Eichard III,'^ ^^ The Lady of Lyons/' and other plays. As the court was in mourning for the King of the Sandwich Islands, his successor could not go pub- licly to the play ; but, on his signifying a wish to see Booth's Eichard, His Majesty was seated on the stage- throne, placed in the wings with a theatrical robe thrown over it. ^^His escort'' — says Mrs. Clarke — ^^ who were a French- man and a huge Kanaka, the latter wear- ing a military jacket, white trousers, and a long sword, stood by his side." In the coronation scene Booth had t6 trouble His Majesty for the throne, which, as a 44 EDWIlSr BOOTH matter of fact, was but an arm-chair ; and Kamehamelia lY obligingly stood until Eichard III was duly crowned. Entertaining as was a good deal of tlie Sandwich. Island venture, its gains were not enough to keep Booth from going back soon to California. At Sacra- mentO; during the dramatic season of 1855, he ^^ created" the part of Eaphael in the first American production of ^^ The Marble Heart.'' More hardships followed, ending in a second penniless return to Sacramento, which had played a curiously varied part in Booth's West- ern travels. Good friends, however, ar- ranged two benefits, and in San Fran- cisco he was given a third, at which he acted King Lear for the first time — in the Tate version, afterward discarded. September, 1856, ended the California period, which, with the Australian and Sandwich-Island nine months, had lasted a little over four years. ^^The world's rough hand" had, with roughest meth- EDWIN BOOTH 45 ods, in these four years at the world's university^ fashioned a boy into a man and an artist. He had studied men and cities, as well as Shakespeare and the stage. Though he did not know it then, the day of small things, small cares, and meagre living, had passed : the many bright days of an illustrious career were opening before him. True (though this, also, he happily could not know), their brightness was to be shadowed — once almost eclipsed forever — by griefs of a kind to make poverty, anxiety for the morrow, cold, almost hunger itself, seem light and trivial annoyances. But fame was to be his inalienable possession ; and fortune, won at first only to be lost, was to be won again in even larger measure, and used to his lasting honour. Better than the fame and fortune so soon to be his, more important, perhaps, than any other element in Booth's nature or train- ing, was the fact that both the man and the actor were of a sort to crystallise 46 EDWIN BOOTH late. He had still, and knew that he had, a thousand things to learn, and he never wearied of the lesson. So that the Booth whom the world saw and his Mends knew, in the eighties, was a much nobler creature than the brilliant, winning young man who, in the fifties, fulfilled the prophecy of his Californian friends and took the American stage by storm. V. Booth's first Eastern successes were in Baltimore^ Washington, Eiclimond, Charleston, Kew Orleans, and other Southern towns. To Boston, however, he looked for a decision whether he should keep on as a ^^star," or ^^ retire to the stock.'' ^^The playgoers of that city," Mr. Winter tells us, ^^were re- markable for refinement of taste and severity of judgment, and Booth assured me that he looked forward to his appear- ance there with trepidation." Such was his trepidation, such his modesty, that he wrote afterward in a manuscript note: ^^The height of my expectation was to become a leading actor in a 'New York theatre, after my starring tour — which I supposed would last a season or two." On the evening of April 20, 1857, Booth appeared at the Boston Theatre, one of the very largest of playhouses, 48 EDWm BOOTH in the character of Sir Giles Overreach. Not yet twenty-four years old, lie was called to make his difficult essay before a small audience in a large theatre. Worse than this, many of the few present were white-haired, critical persons who had seen the elder Booth act Sir Giles in the fulness of his power. The spring night was chill, as spring nights often are in Boston. ^^When Sir Giles ap- peared'' — so runs Mrs. Clarke's account — ^^oud and prolonged applause greeted him ; then (as he described it) the people braced themselves, self-satisfied, in their seats, as if to say, Now, young man, let us see what you can do for yourself. The play proceeded quietly until the fourth act, when the player was on his mettle. This Boston indorsement was to decide his future ; and with a nervous calm he reserved himself for the last great scenes. The effect was electrifying, the call genuine and spontaneous 5 he knew his power, and felt that he was EDWIK BOOTH 49 safe. The next day his pronounced success was universally acknowledged, and the press was unanimous in his praise. '^ Mr. Winter, who was among the young persons in the house, records that Booth ' ' was completely victorious. ' ' In this, as in all his victories, he re- mained modest, but he no longer mis- trusted himself or doubted his own IDOwers. From Boston Booth went to Xew York, where, at Burton^ s Metropolitan Theatre, on May 4, he began (against his will) with Bichard III. In this performance, says Ireland, author of Records of the New York Stage, Booth ^^gave evidence of the highest order of talenf Sir Giles, ShylocJc, Lear, and Borneo, followed 5 Hamlet, Claude Mel- notte, Sir Edward Mortimer, Petrucliio, St. Pierre, The Stranger, Lucius Brutus, and Pescara. Bichelieu, first played by Booth at Sacramento, in July, 1856, was also among the characters in another 50 EDWIN BOOTH ^ ' completely victorious ' ' engagement. In measuring the value of Booth's New York success, it is well to remember Mr. Jefferson's statement about one aspect of the New York theatres in that very year. After speaking of his own engagement, in September, 1857, for ^Hhe leading comedy '^ at Laura Keene's theatre, he says: ^^It was my first appearance on the western side of the city. ... It was looked upon as a kind of presump- tion in those days for an American actor to intrude himself into a Broadway theatre 5 the domestic article seldom aspired to anything higher than the Bowery ; consequently I was regarded as something of an interloper.'' August 31 saw Booth beginning another series of performances at the Metropolitan, which he followed with a second trip through the South and one to the West. In 1858, at the Eichmond theatre, he met Miss Mary Devlin, after- ward his wife. This gentle, beautifal EDWIN BOOTH 51 girl was a good musician and at least a pleasing actress, but left tlie stage upon her betrothal to Booth in 1859. On July 7, I860, they were married by the Eev. Dr. Osgood at his house, 'No, 154 (now 113) West 11th Street, New York. In the winter of 1879-80 Booth went to the house and asked to see again the clergyman's study, in which, he said, he had ^^ secured his greatest happi- ness. '^ The all too short life of the two together was indeed a happy one. Yery soon after their marriage, Mrs. Booth accompanied her husband to England, where they lived till September, 1862. Their only child, Edwina, now Mrs. Ig- natius Grossmann, was born at Fulham, London, December 9, 1861. When the Booths came back to America, they made their home at Dorchester, Massa- chusetts. Although the health of Mrs. Booth had already broken, she was not thought seriously ill when Booth left her to go upon a distant tour. But they 52 EDWIN BOOTH never met again, for Mrs. Booth grew suddenly worse, and died on February 21, 1863. At Mount Auburn, almost a third of a century later, her husband was laid beside her. The beauty of Mrs. Booth's face was commemorated in one art by Eastman Johnson and W. J. Hennessey ; in another, her virtues and the loveliness of her nature were finely suggested by Parsons, a true poet who is little read. Booth wrote of his loss to Adam Badeau : — ^^ My heart is crushed, dryed up, and desolate. . . . My child can never fill her place, for she was my child, my baby- wife. Every little toy of hers, every little scrap of paper the most worthless, are full of her because she has touched them. They recall her more vividly than the baby does. . . . She climbs my knee, and prattles all day long to me ; but still she is not the baby I have loved and cherished so de- votedly.'' Later in the same letter the mourner cries out that he needs ^^some EDWIN BOOTH 53 sign from her, some little breath of wind, nothing more, whispering comfortable words of her.'' That Booth was capable of ardent friendship as of ardent love, he gave more than one gracious token. For Captain Eichard Gary, one of his dear- est friends, who was killed in the Civil War, he expressed his affection in a remarkable letter to Cary's sister, Mrs. Felton, of Cambridge. ^^But, above alP' — this is a part of what Booth wrote, under date of September 11, 1862 — ''the sad, sweet relic he has left me — the letter signed with his death — will forever be to me a source of conso- lation. It will keep forever fresh the truth of him who thought of his friend even on the field of battle. ^^ Eichard was always in my eyes the noblest of men, and his conduct in the face of death proves that I was right in my judgment of him. He was a hero born ; he acted as Eichard Cary only 54 EDWm BOOTH ] could act, — nobly, unselfishly, bravely. ' I knew it would be so ; I knew that he would be loved by all about him 5 and I knew that if he fell, he would be found ' contented, grand in death. I can appre- j ciate the feelings of him who felt like ■ kissing him. ... 1 ^^With dearest love for you all, in ! which my wife joins me, believe me j ever your friend and servant, and your ! brother's lover, Edwin Booth.'' I \ During the stay in England already : spoken of. Booth played at the Hay- j market his first London engagement. \ He began in September, 1861, with \ Shylock; continued a not too successful : venture with Sir Giles Overreach^ and \ ended with Eichelieu, a character in ] which he at last excited enthusiasm. : From London he went to Liverpool and | Manchester. At Manchester, Henry j Irving — then a member of the stock j company that supported Booth — played I EDWIN BOOTH 55 Laertes to liis Hamlet^ Cassio to his Othello, Bassanio to his ShylocJc, Wellborn to his Sir Giles, and BucJcingham to his Gloster. A strong element of Booth's ill success at that time was no doubt the deplorable attitude of the English toward ^^ Yan- kees'' and their cause. Before Booth's return to New York, the Metropolitan Theatre, in Broadway- opposite to the end of Bond Street, had become the Winter Garden. Beginning on September 29, 1862, Booth acted at the renamed theatre, with brief inter- vals, until March 23, 1867. This long period was principally given to a series of splendid and splendidly successful performances of the standard drama. During the first engagement Booth acted Samlet, Othello, Lucius Brutus, ShylocJc, Bichard LIL, Borneo, Bescara, Sir Edward Mortimer, and Don Ccesar de Bazan, Not a poor part (though some poor plays) in the list ; and each piece was liberally put on the stage in accord with 56 EDWIN BOOTH the best taste of the time. The eager and continued zest of the public for these representations, the approval of elect persons in the community, and much thoughtful discussion in newspapers and periodicals, marked what would have been an achievement for any actor. For an actor not yet thirty, the achieve- ment was extraordinary. ^ ^ Long afterward, ' ' writes Mr. Winter, ^^ referring to the Winter Garden en- gagement which his wife's death had terminated, he said, ^ I had not yet got the control of my devil.' His infirmity, which he had inherited from his erratic father — and which, in report, was greatly exaggerated — was an intermit- tent craze for drink." This craze, although he resisted it, from time to time possessed him. From the day of his wife's death, however, to the last day of his own life, he was, in this regard, master of himself. Mr. Winter, a pre- cise and competent witness in the matter, EDWIN BOOTH 67 declares that not only did Booth never drink again to excess, but that, in the last thirty years of his life, he would very rarely allow himself alcohol even as a medicine. In tobacco he did ex- ceed, and tobacco slowly killed him. ^^ He could not live without it, and yet it steadily injured him." Toward the end of his career — that is, in the last four or five years of acting — his brain seemed to be growing numb. He rallied superbly again and again, but more and more often he sank into apathy ; his speech suffered ; and vertigo attacked him. This sometimes happened when he was acting, and then certain news- papers accused him of drunkenness. It is pleasant to know that, all and singu- lar, these charges were false. Booth had got ^^his deviP^ under foot, and never let him up again into fighting position. It is good to know also that through grief he steadily grew stronger. His near friends observed too that he became 58 EDWm BOOTH yet more humble, fuller of faith, more gentle, than he had ever been. His charities, always very generous, took a still wider scope. And to these virtues Booth, like the great sorrowful queen in the play, added one more ^^ honour — a great patience.'' For the next few years he needed, and showed that he possessed, the power to bear prosperity well. In 1863 Booth and his brother-in-law, J. S. Clarke, bought the Walnut Street Theatre, Phil- adelphia, which they directed together from the summer of 1863 till March, 1870, when Clarke bought out his part- ner. The two also undertook the man- agement of the Winter Garden, associat- ing with themselves — first as agent, then as lessee — an injurious person named Edmund OTlaherty, but called William Stuart. Booth's first appear- ance on the stage after the death of Mrs. Booth was as Hamlet^ on September 21, 1863. With that performance began EDWIK BOOTH 59 the new management of tlie Winter Garden. Toward the end of the en- gagement, which lasted till October 17, Booth played Buy Bias for the first time. The twenty-eighth of March, 1864, was dies mirabilis, for on the evening of that day, at Mblo's Garden, Booth gave his first 'New York performance of Bertuccio, in ^^The FooFs Eevenge.'' His acting in this character, then and afterward, transcended the effect of the theatre and — like Salvini's Conrad, Jananschek's Lady JDedlocJc and Sortense, Jefferson^ s Eip van WinMe, Dnse's Santuzza, and a very few other impersonations that might be named — seemed almost to take its place in the personal experi- ence of those who saw it. Meanwhile the next important point in Booth's progress was his acting of Macbeth, also at Mblo's, with Charlotte Oushman as Lady Macbeth, Miss Cush- man dissented from the subtlety of Booth's idea of the Thane of Cawdor, 60 EDWm BOOTH and — so it is said — begged him to re- member that '^ Macbeth is the ancestor of all the Bowery ruffians.'' An anti- quated view. A special performance of ^^ Julius Caesar'' was given at the Winter Gar- den on ISTovember 25, 1864, in aid of the fund to erect a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park. Edwin Booth acted Bru- tuSj Junius acted CassiuSy and John Wilkes, Mark Antony. VI. After a summer of preparation, ^^ Hamlet'' was put on the stage on the evening of November 26. Exceeding all American precedent for a play of Shake- speare, it ran one hundred nights. ^^It was more splendidly produced" — Mrs. Clarke thought — ^^than any other that had ever been presented, with the excep- tion, perhaps, of^ King John' and ^Eich- ard III,' many years previously, at the old Park Theatre, under the direction of Mr. Charles Kean." ^^ Hamlet" could not run now for half a hundred nights — partly, no doubt, be- cause within the last twenty years there have been so many exponents of the Prince of Denmark. Although the other tragedies of Shakespeare have vanished, one by one, from the American stage, until ^^ Macbeth" is the only one famil- iar to it, ^^Eomeo and Juliet" — the tragedy of young love — and ' ' Hamlet, ' ' 62 EDWIN BOOTH Shakespeare's anticipation of the sad- ness and doubt of nineteenth- century thought, experience ever new incarna- tions. JN'ow, as always, every girl must play Juliet I^ow, more than ever, every young man must play Samlet The young actor is not checked but rather urged by the fact that, within the last twenty years, at least a dozen more or less noteworthy Hamlets have been seen upon our stage. Not one of them was without interesting attributes. Not one was quite a failure — not even the epicene French Samlet that splashed brilliantly about in the shallows of the character. But if they have' thus borne out the truth of the old saying that no player ever failed in Samlet, they have also testified to the truth of what should be equally a proverb — that no actor makes his greatest success in that part. Sir \^ Henry Irving might have done it (for he has more ideas to the scene in ^^ Ham- EDWIK BOOTH 63 lef than any other three actors), ex- cept that he is clogged by a grotesquely unequal execution and by the inabilityj to speak verse. Of Booth's Samlet, as of his other per- formances, it is strangely hard to write intelligently, or even intelligibly, for persons who never saw him, because there is no actor on the American or the English stage with whom he can reason- ably be compared. Here is not to fol- low a mourning paragraph on the de- cadence of the stage. I should be sorry to make another Jeremiah, however un- important, in the long line of those who, if their lamentations were to be believed, would convince us that the theatre has been degenerating ever since ^^ Eliza and our James,'' and would make us wonder why it is not extinct. On the contrary, I see many hopeful signs in play- writers and play-actors. I do not despair even of play-goers. In saying that there is no one on our stage at all like Booth, I 64 EDWII^ BOOTH mean merely that, with the passing of serious drama in verse, the sort of actor who could embody it has also gone. 'Booth represented the end of a tradition in acting as clearly as Burns represented the end of a tradition in song and ballad writing. The school to which he be- longed began with Burbage, included Mrs. Siddons and the other Kembles, ended in England with Macready, and I in America with Booth. The word rhetorical, so often applied • this famous school, is not a misnomer if only it be remembered that their native and acquired mastery of diction — in the French sense — was but one means of expressing the ideal quality of the highest characters they imperson- ated. Whatever their excesses and ex- aggerations — and these have been the objects of much refreshing satire long before and long since ^^The Critic'' — the players of the old, or rhetorical, or idealising school, were aware that poetic r ■ I to- EDWIN BOOTH 65 tragedy is one thing and comedy of man- ners another, that verse is one thing and prose another. Booth, no more than his predecessors, wonld have subscribed to the notion that a character of Shake- speare may fitly be rendered like a char- acter of Pinero or the younger Dumas. He was sure, if I may trust my recollec- tion of his performances, that no creat- ure of the poet's imagination is more remote from Vhomme moyen sensuel (whom we now know and value as the man in the street), than Samlet^ Prince of Den- 1 marJc. But, before considering Booth's man- ner of portraying the prince, let me say another word, however ineffectual, about the kinship with Shakespeare that re- vealed itself so nobly in his utterance of Shakespeare's verse. The Greeks were unanimous in their opinion that a voice is the actor's chief gift. Plato knew what he was about when he excluded from his ideal republic ^^ the actors, with 66 edwi:n^ booth their sweet voices." For were they not mouthL-pieces of those other inadmissible persons, the poets? So that one of Booth's passports to Shakespeare land would have been the very means of stopping him at Plato's frontier. As it was with the Greeks, so it was with the English actors from whom Booth de- rived — actors of the old, or rhetorical, or idealising school. When they did not inherit good voices, they strove to "build'' them. They studied hard, moreover, not only to supply defects, but to cover irremediable faults. Bet- terton's '^ voice was low and grumbling ; yet he could tune it by an artfal climax, which enforced universal attention, even from fops and orange-girls." And with their voices, good, bad, or indifferent, but always trained, they learned to speak both verse and prose. r Booth, as we know, had by nature a beautiful and eloquent voice. Listening at the keyhole to his father, years of EDWII!^ BOOTH 67 association with his father, and constant self-training, with the aid of his own in- tellect, taste, and aptitude, brought Booth's delivery — especially of blank verse — to such excellence that, during the last twenty-five years of his career, when he was without an English-speak- ing rival in heroic parts in tragedy, his \ speech was a recognised model. It was as far as possible from an artificial or external elocution, which is a vain thing. It was equally far from the laborious diction of pedants. Booth did not mouth, or recite, or — except in bad moments — declaim, as it is to be feared the old actors often did. Nor did he croon or chant. He was simply a clear medium for the poet ; and, with a per- fect adherence to metre, he yet brought out the meaning as easily as if he had first learned to talk in iambic penta-| meter, unrhymed. Quite different is the present practice. Mr. Henry A. Clapp, an eminent an- 68 EDWm BOOTH thority on the theatre, and especially on the acting of Shakespeare's plays, touched upon this matter in a fine appre- ciation of Booth, contributed, not long after his death, to the Atlantic Monthly, ^^ The vast majority of our players,'' says Mr. Clapp, contrasting them with Booth, ^^ helplessly and hopelessly stumble, now- adays, in the attempt to interpret Shake- speare's lines : if they essay the rhythm, the meaning sujQTers a kind of smooth asphyxiation at their hands ; if they devote themselves to the thought, the verse degenerates into a queer variety of hitchy prose." In an interesting and much talked of Shakespearian ' ' revival ' ' last year, it was sad to see how the able, accomplished actor of the chief charac- ter narrowed and broke the imaginative horizon, how he dispelled the imagina- tive atmosphere of his author, by turn- ing the verse portions of the text into ^^a queer variety of hitchy prose." And this was no isolated instance. EDWIN BOOTH 69 More remarkable still in Bootli than tlie interweaving of thought and music which has become almost a lost art, was his wise economy of emphasis. JSamleVs ^^A little more than kin and less than kind," MacbeW s ^^The mind I sway by and the heart I bear Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear," logons ^^The wine she drinks is made of grapes" — such lines are usually given, even by good actors, with a hammer- and- anvil emphasis that Booth, in his maturity, always avoided. In such cases he was sparing of emphasis, and relied upon the subtler means of inflection and quality of tone. Another refinement of art — but / to tell everything is the secret of being " a bore. It is enough to say that Booth 70 EDWIN BOOTH was a past master of Shakespeare's verse and prose. Like Salvini and Coquelin, lie reversed tlie dreary modern triumpli of the written over the spoken word, and proved to all who had ears that man may continue to be a speaking as well as a writing animal. As to Booth's Samlet In the first place his father was right : he ^^ looked like SamleV^ Gentlemen of the stage may make themselves up for the part like Mr. Beerbohm Tree, with light brown hair and beard, and the general aspect of bookish troubadours. Or they may ^^ discharge it" in ^^your French- crown-coloured beard, your perfect yel- low.' ' They may put on the red wig of Fechter, which was red, by the way, and not at all '^ blond'' — it is to be seen at the Players' Club in New York. But however they follow tradition, or defy it, they won' t look much like Hamlet to all those of us who saw the dark -haired, unbearded Samlet of Edwin Booth, his EDWm BOOTH 71 pale face lighted with darkly bright, melancholy eyes. As he looked when he followed the Ghost, when he spoke the brooding phrases of ^^To be or not to be," when he took his wild farewell of Ophelia — at almost any juncture of the play, indeed, Booth's picture would have made a portrait of the Prince of Denmark. The much discussed question of the Prince's madness. Booth settled as the vast majority of actors inevitably settle it. If Hamlet is mad, there is no tragedy — for him — except a purely physical one. If, as Dr. Furness holds, he is neither mad nor pretending to be so, why then we must wait a little while for a performer super-subtle enough to make that plain to the audience and at the same time get any effect out of his im- personation. Booth, as he once wrote to an inquiring correspondent, thought Hamlet mad only in '' craft," and there- fore, of course, represented him as simu- lating lunacy. 72 EDWm BOOTH Booth's performance of the character, as a whole, probably kept to the last more of his early artificiality than was allowed to linger in other roles ; more v^^ of the mannerisms, or shall one say man- fnev, of the old school. Moved by a laudable wish to preserve the imagina- tive remoteness of Samletj Booth began (and long continued) to play the part on stilts. Trustworthy observers noted, however, that, as time went on, he grew less and less stilted. A great comedian once said in my hearing that he preferred Booth's later Samlet because he ^' left out so much '' — in other words, because he simplified the poses, action, gestures, and ^^ business" of the performance. With a less arbitrary and exalted method of showing the awfulness of HamleVs ex- perience and his aloofness from common life, came a more humanised tone in many passages and some whole scenes. The gradual change was strikingly ex- emplified in the tenderness of HamleVs EDWm BOOTH 73 manner toward SoratiOj after the first act ; in the seemingly spontaneous grace of his speech to the players ] and in the enlivening, without hurt to dignity, of his last colloquy with Eosencrantz and Guildenstern. Toward all his inferiors this Hamlet grew more gentle, and in his whimsical talk with the Grave-digger the gentleness was tinged with a sense of hu- mour, that yet never lost the sense of rank. After years of the usual sardonic tone toward Folonius, Booth's Hamlet came to recognise that, though the Lord Chamberlain is a tedious old man, he is also Ophelia's father. The recognition, and the resulting access of kindness toward Folonius, were carried very far indeed in the newest Hamlet, last year. Among things that Booth, in the come- dian's phrase, ^^ left out," was some un- necessary violence of voice and action in certain scenes. That this tempering process would bring gain, not loss, of force, was to be expected 5 but the gain 74 EDWIN BOOTH at several points, notably in the scene with Laertes at Ophelia^ s grave, was won- derful. There lingered always, however, as I have intimated, divers means and modes of expression that Booth might well have left out. More often than in any other of his performances within my recollec- tion, he smote his brow, tragedian fash- ion, to signify deep thought. He ^Hook the stage'' more often, and adopted an undue ^^ distance'' of speech and bear- ing. And, though long before I saw Booth, he had exempted himself from the reproach of ^^ making statues all over the stage," he was, perhaps, SisHam- letf too fond of attitudes that — perfect in their grace — had a pictorial rather than a dramatic significance. Quite apart from the important, never- to-be-settled question (which he settled in practice on the safe side for poetry), of the middle way between the ideal and the familiar, Booth did not make clear EDWII^ BOOTH 75 all Hamlefs yearning for affection, which reads itself into his talk in unexpected places. This was of course a matter of conception, and did not concern Booth's method, which easily compassed every subtlety of expression. It seems also to my recollection that Booth, in accord with a correct general principle of acting, tended to slur some of the ab- rupt changes of mood in Samlet. Mem- ory, however, after ten years and more, may play strange tricks with details of acting, and I may be wholly right nei- r in this impression nor in the equally jng feeling that Booth did not enough iidicate SamleVs strange freakishness of mood and manner. I!^ot that he should have laid more stress on the pretended madness. Too many Hamlets have been ^^ funny without being vulgar,'' in that part of their task ; but surely, after Hamlet first sees the Ghost, a fever of un- rest is one of his most frequent states. Taken together with the Prince's tre- 76 EDWIN BOOTH mendous, morbid activity of mind — which shows itself nowhere more plainly than in his habit of exciting himself with his own talk — this feverish temper is likely to produce at times so much of the excitement (dangerously approach- ing the aberration) of mania, that an actor who can truly represent it need be at little pains to provide symbols of counterfeited mania. But, whatever many persons deemed the faults of Booth's method, whatever some persons deemed the defects of his conception, the countervailing excel- lences of the impersonation, regarded as a whole, distinguished Booth's Hamlet as the best that was known to the gene- ration familiar with it. He thoroughly, almost constitutionally, it may be said, felt the deep essentials of the character ; and he played it in a manner inexpress- ibly noble. That Samlet shall be a self- examining dreamer, loving the foreseen order of the university, disconcerted by EDWm BOOTH 77 the ii ... ^gular happenings of the world ; that he shall be melancholy, first by temperament, then from circumstance ; that his resolve shall be too weak to make head under the burden laid upon a sensitive nature ; — these elements are of the essence. And these Booth blended and showed forth like the great artist he was. He made us believe in the spirit- uality of Samlet, in his kinship with the beyond. Partridge, seeing Booth in the first scene with the Ghost, would never have exclaimed : — ^^ If that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life.'' What Booth expressed was not physical fear, but a solemn awe, mixed with the passionate and pitying affection of which the word ^^ father,'' as he spoke it, was most eloquent. From this scene on, a memorable trait of Booth's Hamlet was a look he had, as if the Ghost had never quite vanished from his sight. When he spoke the words — 78 EDWIN BOOTH ^^And, for my soul, what can i^Io to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?'' — his face lighted, his voice rang with the certainty of an authentic revelation. Yet over the whole characterisation hung, like a dark vapour, the sense of tragic fate. Without that, Booth well knew, there might be the play of ^* Ham- let,'' but most of Hamlet would be left out. VIL ^^ Hamlet/' withdrawn from the Winter Garden on Marcli 24, 1865, was taken to the Boston Theatre, where Booth was acting, when, on April 14, his younger brother killed the President of the United States at the national capital. Eage and grief pos- sessed the people of the I^orth, and all thoughtful persons throughout the South knew that in Lincoln the South had lost its best and most powerful friend. Fifteen years later, in writing from Lon- don to an old friend, of certain persons of rank who had shown him kindness, Booth added whimsically: ^^You see, Fve been so accustomed to the purple -, with kings and cardinals have I hob- nobbed so familiarly since my boyhood, that Fm accustomed to these honours." But the actor of many tragedies came all unprepared to the tragedy that must, perforce, be acted in his own life. To 80 EDWIK BOOTH Booth, a loyal citizen, and a man of most sensitive nature, the shock would have been terrible enough, even if he had had no personal connection with it. His letters during the war to men who were in the field, and to their friends at home, make it plain that his country was inexpressibly dear to him. To Mrs. Eich- ard Gary, the widow of Captain Gary, Booth had written, only a month before the assassination : ' ^ Yes, our news (no news now, though) is indeed glorious. I am happy in it, and glory in it, although Southern-born. God grant the end, or rather the beginning, is now at hand. For when the war ceases, we shall only have begun to live — a nation never to be shaken again, ten times more glorious, a million times firmer than before.'' To contemporaries, although we are prone now to lose sight of the fact, the loss of Lincoln brought not only sorrow and deep resentment, but doubt as well concerning the restoration of the Union. In per- EDWII^ BOOTH 81 sonal liiiniiliation Booth did not forget former hopes and present fears for the country. Surely, however, he might have been forgiven if the individual had obliterated the state. Since the death of Washington no calamity had so dark- ened the land, and for the moment it seemed as if all Booth's fame was of no use except to enable the millions that had seen him to recall the face of the man whose brother, the murderer of the wisest and best American, was being hunted to his vile death. In his shame and his consciousness of the public feeling toward the assassin's family, Booth naturally thought that he should never act again. Months after the awful day, he wrote to a friend, ^^I have lost the level run of time and events, and am living in a misf ^' He left the stage," says Mr. Winter, ^^and buried himself in obscurity, and from that retirement he would never have emerged but for the stern necessity of 82 EDWIN BOOTH meeting obligations incurred long before, and only now to be met by bis active resumption of professional industry.'' Though this was no doubt the main motive, others only less honourable im- pelled him to return. On December 20, 1865, Booth wrote from Kew York to Mrs. Cary, concerning his decision : — ^^ Sincerely, were it not for means, I would not do so, public sympathy not- withstanding ; but I have huge debts to pay, a family to care for, a love for the grand and beautiful in art, to boot, to gratify, and hence my sudden resolve to abandon the heavy, aching gloom of my little red room, where I have sat so long chewing my heart in solitude, for the excitement of the only trade for which God has fitted me. ' ' Opinion had changed toward him, as he implied in this letter ; and whatever a welcome both loud and deep could do to comfort him, was done when the inter- rupted run of *^ Hamlet" was resumed EDWIIsr BOOTH 83 at the Winter Garden on January 3, 1866. At Booth^s entrance the great audience rose, and gave him in look and act every assurance of good- will. Cheer followed cheer, and on the stage flowers fell upon flowers. Most Americans have the English love of fair play that has passed into a proverb, and the drop of quick-silver which Colonel Higginson believes to be in the blood of every American, distinguishing him from an Englishman, perhaps accounts for our more demonstrative way of making our traditional trait felt. So that everywhere, as in New York, Booth was told with cheers and praise that the stage and the public needed him, and that the sins of the guilty were not to be visited upon his head. Thus he fell gradually into his old mode of life and work, not forget- ting — that would have been impos- sible — yet not brooding selfishly over the awful occurrence which had threatened to destroy his hopes. 84 EDWIN BOOTH ^'Eichelieu/' the next play to be re- vived at the Winter Garden, was given on February 1, with no less care and liberality than had been shown in the performances of ^^Hamlef One of the most noteworthy *^sets'^ was a room in the cardinal's palace at Euelle. Arches composed the perspective, and the moonlight, coming in through a Gothic window, half showed, half hid, the sombre splendour of the apartment in which Bichelieii waited for the packet that should put the conspirators in his power. This representation of the play was in large part the model for the still more beautiful and effective one at Booth's Theatre in 1871. At the same time, by the way, the novel device was tried of putting the French Court into mourning — in act fifth — for the sup- posed death of the cardinal. On December 29, 1866, Booth and Davison acted together as lago and OthellOj with Madame Methua-Scheller as Desdemona. EDWIN BOOTH 85 On January 22 of tlie next year, after a performance of ^^ Hamlet'' and in the presence of a great company of specta- tors, Booth received a medal that had been intended to mark the hundredth night of the play, in 1865. The gold oval is enfolded with a gold serpent, its head pendent. Above are the skull of Toricky crossed foils, and bunches of Ophelia^ s flowers. Bound the oval is a ribbon of gold, bearing the motto, ^^Palmam qui meruit ferat.'' Overall is the crown of Denmark, from which hang two wreaths of laurel and myrtle. In the centre, in high relief, is a head of Booth as Samlet. The brooch to which the medal is attached, shows a head of Shakespeare between the tragic and the comic mask. The inscription on the reverse is : ^^To Edwin Booth : In com- memoration of the unprecedented run of ^ Hamlet, ' as enacted by him in 'New York City for one hundred nights.'' But Judge FuUerton, in his address for 86 EDWIN BOOTH the committee of presentation, was care- ful to say: — ^^It was thougM proper that this presentation should take place on the occasion of the play of ^Hamlet/ with which your name will ever be associated 5 but the choice of time and place for this ceremony intends a recog- nition of your life-long efforts to raise the standard of the drama, and to cheer you in your future endeavours. ' ' When Judge Fullerton had finished speaking, he hung the medal round Booth's neck. Booth was in the dress of Samlet, The presentation committee included Major-general Eobert Anderson, Agas- siz, George Bancroft, George William Curtis, Charles A. Dana, and Bayard Taylor. The days of the Winter Garden were numbered. On the night of March 22, 1867, Booth acted Lucius Brutus there, and it is supposed that the fire which is used in one scene of Payne's tragedy communicated itself to the theatre. EDWm BOOTH 87 Toward morning, at all events, flames burst out below the stage, and in a few hours destroyed the house. With it disappeared the scenery used in ^^ Ham- let, ' ' ' ^ Eichelieu, ' ' and ' ' The Merchant of Venice '^ ; Booth's stage wardrobe, including more than one article that his father had worn ; a large and costly col- lection of theatre dresses, jewels, armour, and furniture 5 many books and manu- scripts, several of the latter being impor- tant; and portraits of Betterton, the elder Booth, Garrick, Kean, Kemble, Macready, Mrs. Siddons, and many an- other player not unknown to fame. Only the associations of the house re- mained, but these long survived the destruction of the fabric that had made them possible. The bad acoustics and the bad optics of the house had been genially forgotten by persons who saw upon its stage the favourite performers of their youth. And play-goers who do not yet lag superfluous heard Jenny Lind at 8S EDWIN BOOTH the Winter Gardeia, marvelled at Char- lotte Cushman as Scott's Gypsy touched to finer issues, and were swayed by the strange, evil power, then waning, of Eachel, the greatest actress of her time. Those who delighted in Blake and Bur- ton and Clarke at the Winter Garden, remember how the Comic Spirit «vas incarnated in them. Before the same lamps, as Caleb Flummerm ^^The Cricket on the Hearth,'' Jefferson discovered new secrets in his giffc of imaginative comedy. VIII. With the destruction of the Winter Garden ended Booth's first organised at- tempt to give the best plays in the best manner. With Booth's Theatre began a far more ambitious and more highly or- ganised attempt to do the same thing. The corner-stone of the new house was laid on the eighth day of April, 1868; and the first performance — ^ ^ Eomeo and Juliet" it was — took place on Feb- ruary 3 of the following year. The building, which stood on the south-east corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue, was of granite, and measured one hundred and eighty-four feet in length. One hundred and fifty feet of this made the front of the theatre proper, and the rest formed the width of a wing used mainly for shops and studios. The theatre was solidly built, and elaborately decorated with frescoes, statues, and busts of famous actors, 90 EDWm BOOTH / among them Gould's well-known repre- sentation of the elder Booth. This was midway of the wide stone staircase lead- ing from the south end of the lobby to the balcony. Above the balcony was a second balcony, and above that an ^ * amphitheatre. ' ' The lobby was paved with Italian marble. The house seated seventeen hundred and fifty persons, and there was standing room for three hundred more. Behind the curtain everything was [done with the same liberal hand and measure. The footlights were fifty-five feet from the back wall, the arch was seventy-six feet wide, and beneath was a pit, thirty-two feet deep, blasted out of the solid rock, into which a scene could be lowered out of sight. The flats were raised and lowered by hydraulic rams, under the stage. The Juliet to Booth's Borneo on the opening night was Miss Mary M' Vicker, a step- daughter of J. H. M'Yicker, long EDWIK BOOTH 9l) at the head of theatrical management in Chicago. Miss M'Yicker was a person of energy and intelligence, who had much practical knowledge of the theatre and a slight but serviceable gift for act- ing. Later in the year 1869 she took permanent leave of the stage, and on June 7, at Long Branch, was married to Booth. As stage lovers, from the Veronese to the Lyonnais, were not for Booth or he for them, we must conclude that his ex- traordinary good looks, his repute as an actor, a good company, and a rich ^^ production'^ in the imposing new house, reconciled the public to a ten weeks' run of ^^Eomeo and Julief It gave way on April 12 to ^^ Othello,'' Booth playing the Moor; and on May 31 Edwin Adams, a popular young actor of that day who had been the Mercutio and the lago of the two revivals, began a two months' round of romantic char- acters. Mr. Jefferson, as Bip vanWinMe^ 92 EDWIN BOOTH finished the summer. Miss Kate Bate- / man^ Hackett — the only great Falstaff I of the second half of the nineteenth cen- / tury — and Mrs. Waller, followed Mr. Jefferson ; and only on January 5, 1870, did Booth again appear at his own thea- tre. This reappearance was in ^^Ham- lef (with ^^ stage accessories'' that were ^^fine beyond precedent"), which ran till March 19. After Booth's Sam- lety Sir Giles Overreaeh, Claude Melnotte, and Macbethj John S. Clarke played a series of comic rdles — among them De Boots and Mr. Toodle — from April 18 till May 28. During the same year Mr. Jefferson acted Eip van WinJcle one hun- dred and forty-nine times in succession. In 1871 Booth gave ^^Eichelieu," with unexampled splendour ; ^* Othello," and * ' The Fool' s Eevenge ' ' ; revived ^ ' Win- ter' s Tale," with Barrett as Leontes; and acted BenedicJc for the first time in New York. Barrett played James Harebell in ^^The Man of Airlie" (taken from a EDWIN BOOTH 93^ German piece called ^^ Laurel Tree and Beggar's Staff'')? ^^^ ^^^^ E- Owens, Caleb Flummer. These performances would have been enough to distinguish any theatre, but the year was made yet more remarkable by Miss Cushman's re- turn to the stage after an absence of ten years, and by a notable revival of ^^ Ju- lius Caesar." Miss Cushman showed un- abated power as Queen KatJiarinej Lady Macbeth, and Meg Merrilies, — the three characters with which her fame is mainly associated. '^Julius Caesar," in which at different periods during the run Booth played Brutus, Cassius, and An- tony, was given eighty-five times between Christmas Night, 1871, and March 16, 1872. This dry enumeration, read in the light of understanding, is a noble and pathetic bit of history. Noble, because it is a record of what, in the finest spirit, a great actor tried to do for the stage, and therefore for the country. Pathetic, / fk EDWIN BOOTH because the Mgli attempt failed. Audi- ences, large in numbers and excellent in quality, were seldom lacking at Booth's Theatre ; nor did Booth's ambition and the performance in which it took shape, ever lack recognition and praise from the discriminating few or the capricious many. But the cost of the theatre had been more than a million dollars, the running expenses were enormous, and Booth had not the gift of financial man- agement. So disaster was the result, in spite of constant public support given to the enterprise, and in spite of the very large sums that Booth made on the road and sent home to his treasury. Mr. Aldrich has preserved the following let- ter, which Booth wrote to him on one of these trips. " POBTSMOUTH, Octr. 3rd 1872. ''My dear Tom: ^^Tho' centuries have flown since we last corresponded and — for aught we know — both of us may be dead and gone EDWII^ BOOTH 95 — I feel as if you were close at hand today. In this quaint old town — your native heath, I believe — everything re- calls the ^ Bad Boy' T. B. Esquire.— It's raining like blazes and things in general look blue. I hope I shall not be obliged to call on you for aid to get away. Of course you know where I am to ^ Hamlet ' to-night — a man (the janitor, or proprie- tor, perhaps) tells me you went to school just under the old Temple — it seems to me that it must have been hundreds of year ago. — I wish you were here to show me about the city — I am sure there is much of curious interest here; I like these old ^bygones' and the really excel- lent modern hotel seems out of its element altogether, while the Temple seems quite at home. I bought some Brette Harte paper collars (!) here and asked for some ditto Aldrich cuffs, but to its shame be it spoken the town does not contain them. A prophet at home, you know the prov- erb. . . . 96 EDWm BOOTH I began to write this very close think- ing I had much to say, but you know it / is my habit to begin quite vigorously / and terminate abruptly — you may re- member an evening at Fields' — lang syne. All I can do now to keep up ap- pearances is to tell you what I've been doing since we parted. You know I then had a fine place at Long Branch — which I transferred to my partner (Robertson) as so much cash in buying his interest in the theatre — he owned f of it. I owned several other pieces of real estate, all of which he took at a very liberal figure — and I thus got free from a sense of restraint that annoyed me ex- cessively. Since then the theatre has been doing well and at present is in a glorious way with Boucicault, while I am off scouring the provinces for the stray ducats that lie around loose. So far my trip has been very pleasant in every way — with here and there a weak town, but the old-fashioned fun I have EDWIN BOOTH 97 in extemporising stages and scenes com- pensates me for the ^sparcity ' of shekels. It reminds me very much of my early California tramps 5 I have my own com- pany — no rehearsals, and the travel is done by short stages of not more than two hours the longest. — I do wish you were here tonight — to see me bury Ophelia ' above board ' ; there is but a six X six square hole, into which my large-legged Laertes could not leap — and so Tve ^ faked' (as we mummers style a make-shift) a grave above the stage ; Ophelia's coffin, mind you, is packed with Yorick's skull and bones, swords, spears, etc., while we travel — this is a secret, but you're behind the scenes. ^^Well — finding myself without a home I bought a place at Cos Cob (go to your map and scour Connecticut) — quite near old Putnam's pump at Horse-neck — from Barras, author of Blk Crook. Here's a mingling of black spirits and 98 EDWIN BOOTH grey for you ; Barras and Shakespeare, Booth and Ballet, legs and legitimate! It's a delightfal spot — a fairy spot — with every kind of pleasure close at hand, boating, bathing, fishing and driving at your very doorstep. I hope — should you ever pass that way (on the Boston & New Haven E.E.) you'll ask to be dropped at Cos-Cob — an hour's ride from New York — and see my retreat 5 I hope to pass a good long vacation there this next spring and summer .... ^'I hope your dear ones are all well and that your home is as happy as you deserve and desire it to be, in which pious wish Mary joins me. ^'With kisses for those twa siller heads, and love to yourself and wife, ''Ever Yours, ''Ned." It will be seen from this letter that Booth, by buying out his partner, had EDWIlsT BOOTH 99 become sole proprietor of tlie theatre. In 1874 he failed. A detailed account of Booth's Theatre may be found in Mr. Winter's lAfe and Art of Edwin Booth, Mr. Jefferson once said of his manage- ment: ^^ Booth's theatre is conducted as a theatre should be — like a church behind the curtain and like a counting- house in front of it." It is evident from the facts, however, that the accounts were a good deal muddled. IX. All, through the troubled time Booth showed the courage, the constancy, and the consideration for others, that were a part of his nature. The published let- ters to his little daughter, which begin in 1869, are peculiarly touching. Many — most, fathers less burdened, would have had a less intimate care for a little girl's work and play. She must apply herself to French, and write him another letter all in that language 5 she should learn to skate — he is doing so 5 he tries to plan for their meeting. Once he preaches a little homily drawn from his own young experience ; and at another writing he asks, in the very thick of his troubles : — ^^ Don't you think it jollier to receive silly letters sometimes than to get a repetition of sermons on good be- haviour? It is because I desire to en- courage in you a vein of pleasantry, which is most desirable in one's corre- EDWIN BOOTH 101 spondence, as well as in conversation, that I put aside the stern o\6. father, and play jpa2>a now and then.'' Two of the letters are from St. Valentine, a canary bird, and Pip, a dog. Each is full of spirited onomatopoeia, such as would de- light a child, and in the originals Booth had drawn small figures of the corre- spondents for whom he merely ^^held the pen.'' In the same year, the year of the bankruptcy, he speaks out his real mind to his friend Bispham : — ^^This is by no means the heaviest blow my life has felt, and I shall recover from it very shortly if my creditors have any feeling whatever. ... '^I gave up all that r.^^n hold dearest, wealth and luxurious eas*i } n?oi^ do I com- plain because that unlucky, t slip ,'twixt the cup and lip ' ' has '^ :>pilled ^i\ ^^\ tea. ^'With a continuance of the health and popularity the good Lord has thus far blessed me with I will pay every 102 EDWIN BOOTH Sou/ and exclaim with Don Ccesar — though in a different spirit — ^Tve done great things.' If you doubt me, ask my creditors!'' As Burke's words were things, so Booth's became deeds. He gave up to his creditors the whole of his private and personal property, not excepting what might, one conjectures, have been fairly kept as ^^ tools of his trade," namely books and theatrical wardrobe. Then, after a rest at his wife's house at Cos-Cob (already spoken of in the letter to Mr. Aldrich), Booth applied all his splendid powers to the payment of his debts. But never again did he act as his own or £|,ny one, ease's manager. oKe seems 'UOt even to have stipulated , for, decent conjfiettocein supporting play- , ;efs or- decent oa§te and liberality in the ^* production." The ^Stars'' in per- formances of Shakespeare to-day are not always of the first magnitude, and the other members of the cast would some- EDWm BOOTH 103 times have been less unsuccessful in other lines of life; but so well trained are these flesh- and-blood marionettes of ours, so gorgeous are the dolls'- clothes lavished on their backs, so handsome is every- thing about them, so brisk and crisp the stage management, that no one who did not see Madame Janauschek, Booth, and Signor Salvini — after the adoption of his biglottic system — can be made to under- stand what sort of background, human and scenic, was provided for their genius. In those years, at all events, during which I used to see Booth often — the years from 1878 to 1891 — among the few exceptions to the wretchedness of his presentment were his appearances under the direction of Lawrence Barrett, and at the Boston Museum, where he was assisted by a company whose general competence had only the drawback of a comparative inexperience in playing Shakespeare. On most other occasions the courts of the Plantagenets, the 104 EDWIN BOOTH Doges, and the Macbeths, were forlorn and homesick places. Court, battle-field, rialto, and blasted heath, were peopled alike by the dreary, impossible theatre- folk whom Booth himself used to call ^ ' dogans. ' ' ^ ' Dogans, ' ' pray mark, was a class term given in humourous tolerance to ignorant, conceited players. Of in- dividuals Booth spoke with unvarying kindness, treated them with the utmost consideration, and praised them when he could. As his assistants were by no means all dogans, he could often give him- self that pleasure. Perhaps all of them, even the dejected supers — who does not remember those Venetian senators? — would have brightened up a little if the scenes and chairs and tables and clothes had been better. ^^ Hamlet'' seems in recollection the worst of all as to these matters. I remember one piece of hag- gard scenery held in place by the visible hand of a shifter 5 I remember a certain burly, Milesian Horatio ; and a fat Queen EDWII^ BOOTH 105 that roamed about lier halls, clad, for outer garments, in what appeared to be a purple piano- cover bordered with gilt paper. And alas, poor Ghost! I can never forget one of him who, in solemnly lifting up his arm, disclosed, through the green gauze in which, twenty years ago, ghosts always travelled, that he had wisely put on a red flannel shirt before revisiting the Danish climate. It was an honest ghost, that let me tell you. People complained of the untoward conditions, but, though complaining, they went still to see the gracious person who was so ill attended. He himself moved about the stage, apparently un- conscious of any lack ; always admirably dressed for his part; letter-perfect in the lines, and acting always with a con- science even when he could not com- mand his mood. Perhaps the poor sup- port and shabby appointments enabled Booth to make more money — there were those who said so 5 and certainly 106 EDWIN BOOTH his managers profited by the arrange- ment. One calumny, however, should be forever silenced — the charge that Booth feared the rivalry of able players, and preferred to shine by contrast, like Queen Elizabeth among her ugly waiting- maids. On the contrary, not only did Booth in his own term of management call about him the best people that money could hire, but he was always glad to act with the greatest of his con- temporaries. It was not a self- distrust- ing or weakly jealous man who acted with Salvini, Janauschek, Eistori, Cush- man, Irving, Davison, and several other Germans of high repute in their own country. With Miss Cushman Booth once acted two weeks in different plays ; with Mr. Irving for six weeks, alternat- ing the parts with him in ^'Othello'' 5 with Madame Modjeska during a whole season. It was generally observed that, the more formidable Booth's ^ ^ opposite, ' ' the better he played. As to jealousy, if EDWm BOOTH 107 lie felt it, he was not least an actor in Ms concealment of it. In ^Hhe profes- sion'' he was renowned for kindness and fair dealing, as well as for an open- handed charity that was remarkable even in a calling famed for generosity. And two of the distinguished persons with whom he played, have told me that they found his courtesy almost unexam- pled. He was always ready to adopt their *^ business'' or their arrangement of a scene. ^^ He was willing to do any- thing except come to rehearsal." In the fall of 1875, then (later than he had intended, on account of a serious accident at Cos-Cob) , Booth began his brilliantly successful struggle to pay his debts and to make another fortune. From that time the outward history of his life is little but the record of tour after tour in the United States, varied with two successful visits to England and a brief professional experience in €rer- many which was, perhaps, the highest triumph in his forty years of acting. 108 EDWm BOOTH On October 25, 1875 — he was released from bankruptcy in March of that year — Booth began an engagement at Daly's Fifth Avenue Theatre in which he played for the first time Shakespeare's Eichard 11. Although it had been in Kean's repertory and in that of the elder Booth, the character had somehow fallen out of favour on the stage, and Edwin Booth had never seen it. He played Eichard II exquisitely. Dur- ing the same season he gave, for the first time in New York, Shakespeare's ^^King Lear" according to his own adaptation. As a young man he used the old stage version, made by Tate and modified by John Philip Kemble. This he gave up about 1860, allowed himself ten years to forget it, and then — in Chicago — with- drew ^Hhe hook " that Kahum Tate had put in ^^the nostrils of Leviathan," and began to play Shakespeare's Lear. In 1876, beginning at Baltimore Jan- uary 3, ending at Bowling Green, March EDWIlSr BOOTH 109 3, Booth gave fifty-two performances in the South, under the management of J. T. Ford. As he had not acted on the Atlantic coast south of Baltimore since 1859, the wish to see him was very great. People came from many miles round to Charleston, Eichmond, and the other towns that Booth visited. Crowds wel- comed him at every stopping-place, and often at way-stations the cars had to be locked, to keep out the multitude. Leg- islatures and ^^ society'' adapted their hours to Booth's appearances. ^^No actor had ever caused such excitement, or received such a tribute, in the south- ern country." The next excursion was to California, ' from which Booth had long been refus- ing offers. Xow he needed money too much to refuse. After a journey of twelve days from Chicago, he reached San Francisco on September 5, twenty years to a day from the time he had left it. The receipts of an eight weeks' en- 110 EDWm BOOTH gagement in San Francisco were ninety- six thousand dollars. Mrs. Clarke stat3s that for the season beginning in "New York in November, 1876, and ending in Boston on May 19, 1877, Booth received one hundred and twenty-one thousand three hundred and fifty-three dollars. In 1877, according to the same author- ity, the debts were paid. That year saw also the execution of a long-cherished design. Booth cut and arranged fifteen of the plays in his rep- ertory. These, with many stage direc- tions, and introductions and notes by Mr. Winter, were published under the general title of The Frompt Book, The first of the prompt books was ^^Eichard III, ' ' the motley Gibber version of which Booth had given up in 1876. The other plays of the series are ^ ' Hamlet, ' ' ^ ^ Mac- beth,'' ^^ Othello,'' ^^ King Lear," ^^Eich- ard the Second," ^^ Henry the Eighth," '^Much Ado about I^o thing," ^^The Merchant of Venice," ^^ Katharine and EDWIN BOOTH 111 PetrucMo'' (the little that Garrick left of ^^The Taming of the Shrew"), ^^Eichelieu/' ^^The FooPs Eevenge/' ^^ Brutus/' ^^ Buy Bias/' and ^^DonCse- sar de Bazan.'' Each play-book con- tains sufficient directions for putting the play on the stage. There is none of that taking Shakespeare apart and putting him together differently which makes the Daly renderings an irritating puzzle to those who have more than a bowing acquaintance with the text. The Young Person was perhaps too much considered by Booth. For other reasons, of course, he cut the plays freely, and when they are cut they bleed. But Mrs. Penden- nis, merely by practising the art to skip, might follow a Prompt-Book perform- ance well enough with her copy of the dramatist ; and in this edition, as a whole, Shakespeare is treated with such reverence as actors and managers have seldom paid him. It is worth noting here as a matter of record that, in spite 112 EDWIN BOOTH of Booth's long habit of playing the ^^ restored'' text of Shakespeare, Miss Marlowe gave her first performances of Juliet in a version that retained the old stage ending. This ending, how- ever, Miss Marlowe soon abandoned. Booth himself went back to the Gibber Bichard for one season, or part of a sea- son, in the last few years of his acting. One startling incident broke into the long years of Booth's prosperity. He was shot at in M'Yicker's Theatre, Chicago, on April 23, 1879. The play was ^^Eichard II," and suddenly, just as Booth was speaking the prison solilo- quy in the last act which begins, ^^ I have been studying how I may compare The prison where I live, unto the world," a man in the first balcony fired two pistol shots at him. ^^ Mr. Booth slowly rose " — says an eye-witness, in The Dial EDWm BOOTH 113 of June 16, 1893— ^^ stepped to tlie front of tlie stage and looked inquiringly towards the balcony. He saw the would- be assassin, saw the pistol raised for a third shot, turned around, and very deliberately walked back out of sight. In the meanwhile, his assailant was seized from behind, and was not permitted to pull the trigger for the third time. What particularly impressed me about the whole affair was the coolness displayed by Mr. Booth. He was playing the part of a king, and did not for a moment for- sake the kingly impersonation. After a short time, Mr. Booth reappeared, begged the audience to excuse him for a few moments longer, while he should speak to his wife, finally came upon the stage again, and finished the act." Mark Gray was the name of the lunatic who fired the shots. Booth had one of the bullets mounted in a gold cartridge cap, and had engraved upon it — ^' From Mark Gray to Edwin Booth." The 114 EDWIN BOOTH northerly humour of the inscription is said by his friends to have been as characteristic of him as his courage in the danger it commemorates. Four days after the shooting Booth wrote to Mr. E. C. Stedman: — ^^My temporary self- control gave way after a day or two to a highly nervous excitement — a condition similar to that which I believe Shake- speare illustrates by RamleVs frivolity after the ghost is gone, and the terrible tension of his brain is relaxed. I have a ghostly kind of disposition to joke about the affair which is hardly control- lable.'' Booth must have differed much from all other true artists if this and many another ^^ emotion remembered in tranquillity '' did not help to vivify and, as it were, to found his art. Of a deeper tragedy than the moment's peril in Chicago, was what had happened years before at an evening party in ITew York. "There was another evening" — Mr. Howells tells the story in his EDWm BOOTH 115 Literary Friends and Acquaintance — ^^ There was another evening when, after we all went into the library, something tragical happened. Edwin Booth was of our number, a gentle, rather silent person in company, or with at least little social initiative, who, as his fate would, went up to the cast of a huge hand that lay upon one of the shelves. ^ Whose hand is this, Lorry % ' he asked our host, as he took it up and turned it over in both his own hands. Graham feigned not to hear, and Booth asked again, ^ Whose hand is thisV Then there was nothing for Graham but to say, ^It's Lincoln's hand,' and the man for whom it meant such unspeakable things put it softly down without a word.'' X. In 1880 Bootli made another visit to Europe. He had. long intended it. A breakfast was given him at Delmonico's on June 15, at which many well-known men spoke — among them Mr. Jefferson, William Warren, Lawrence Barrett, Mr. Whitelaw Eeid, Mr. Stedman, the Eev. Eobert CoUyer, and Parke Godwin. Mr. Winter read a poem. On June 30 Booth, with his wife and daughter, sailed for England. After a brief tarry at Strat- ford-on-Avon and a journey through Switzerland, in the course of which he saw and much disliked the ^^ Passion Play'' at Oberammergau, he returned to England. On the evening of November 6, at the new Princess's Theatre, Booth appeared in London as Samlet. Since the choice of character, which was urged by Mrs. Booth, seemed in the eyes of many persons like a challenge to Mr. Irving, that may have accounted for the EDWm BOOTH 117 temperate (verging upon frigid) tone of most of the professional critics, in such praise as they bestowed. Booth, it must also be remembered, thought ill of his own performance on that occasion, and — Americans were not yet the fashion. Many qualified judges, however, admired the American Hamlet^ and, on the whole, both audiences and the news- paper press received him with honour. When the bill was changed to '^ Eiche- lieu,'' Booth's performance excited an enthusiasm that the critics shared with the public. He wrote to Mr. Aldrich on Sunday after the first night of ^^Eichelieu,'' when he knew only the public mind. "Novr21'80, "St. James's Hotel '' My dear ' T. B,' " Piccadilly. ^^The sight of your dear old fist was like a metaphorical handshake. Since ^he receipt of your letter I've made a * double-header, ' as Samlet and BicJie- 118 EDWIN ..^OTH lieu. The former called forth a series ; of silly articles — some for, some against ; me, but none worthy to be read twice, i . . . All agree (even the worst fault- I finders) that my English is perfect and \ that Tm master of blank- verse, but : my old style of acting is out of date, \ etc. To read all the opinions would j set you laughing hyena-like, for no | two agree. . . . Bichelieu, last night, set ! the people wild. Old Eyder, who acted \ many years with Macready, played \ Joseph with me and after the play disclosed that I had upset his idol. The \ dear old man was quite over- come by his I emotion and could barely speak. To- \ night we called at Lady Martin's, once : a famous actress [Helen Faucit], now a \ nob, and at her house met several who ! were describing me when we entered. If I have a long enough swing at these folks Fm pretty sure to divide the cur- rent of opinion — if I do not succeed in turning it entirely. The actors all wel- EDWm BOOTH 119 come me with, kindly greetings — some- thing very unusual. The company is as good as any in London and the best here is far worse than those we complain of in America. . . . Boughton has been here twice and has seen me in both parts — Tve been too busy to visit him yet. Dined once with Smalley and met Lady Gordon, Huxley, and a nephew of Macaulay. The first named and Mary have exchanged calls several times, but the rest of London is still out of town, I'm told, still we've had a peep at Nobbydom. '' Our passage over was like a sail up the Hudson — so with the Channel, which we crossed three times. Had no occasion to hunt up ^ Galloot ' — for when I decided to appear this fall in London, I deferred my continental trip and contented myself with a flying visit (a sort of bird's-eye- view) to Ammergau ; with the Fassion Flay I was rather dis- appointed — I could not get rid of the 120 EDWm BOOTH theatrical effect of it, of the truly dra- matic, or religious (of which IVe read so much), there was very little perceptible. I have twice written and shall telegraph my protest against its being produced at BooWsj for it is a subject out of place in the play-house. Indeed I think it has lost whatever sacred sentiment it may have possessed at Ammergau. The Sun- day papers are full of kindlier notice, (of Eichelieu) than they had last weeks but not 'till to-morrow will I know the verdict of the standard papers. You know that ^ first nights' occur on Sat- urday here and not till Monday does a poor devil know his fate. But the uni- versal howls of approval that shook the theatre last night and what I've already heard to-day — assure me that ^I've got 'em ! ' ^ ' Did you ever use a stylographic pen 1 Don't ! I've two I'd like to lend, lose, or give away to some ^ dearest foe ' — but the derned things cling to me and EDWIN BOOTH 121 ink my taper tips. I can't get rid of 'em, and the worst of it is they've spoiled my use of other pens. Kill the first man that offers you one — especially if he be an agent for their sale. . . . ' ' Some day send me another line or two. 'Tis uncertain how long I shall remain here, and what my future movements will be. ^^ You see below an illustration of my stylographic abilities — ain't I smart ! the pen I ^^ Mary and Edwina join Edwin in his love to you all and to the two twins, too. i i jg^^j, g^j^^ forever, ^^E. B." On Christmas Eve Booth said in a letter to Mr. Stedmanthat ^^Eichelieu" had '^warmed them up," but that in his opinion the houses would have been quite as full if he had kept on with 122 EDWIN BOOTH ^^ Hamlet.'' He wrote also that, ''out- side of the ^res^/' he had had ''all that one's heart could desire in the way of courtesy and encouragement." ' ' Lear ' ' was given with extraordinary success on February 14, 1881. E. L. Blanchard, a well-known and influential critic of the time, after naming — in The Era — several passages in which "Booth's delivery and acting were superb'' added, "We are disposed to say that nothing finer of the kind has been known upon the English stage." Like praises came from many other critics. Among the distinguished per- sons who saw Booth do Lear in Lon- don, were Dean Stanley, Charles Eeade, and Lord Tennyson. The poet asked the player to dine with him, and remarked at dinner, with his island frankness, "Most interesting, most touching and powerful, but not a bit like Xear." The engagement at the Princess's EDWII^ BOOTH 123 ended on March 26 with '^The Mer- chant ' ' and ^ ^ Katharine and Petruchio. ' ' Booth now proposed to Mr. Irving to give a number of parts in a series of morning performances at his theatre, the Lyceum. Mr. Irving immediately ac- cepted the proposal, but soon suggested that the performances should be given at night, that ^^ Othello" should be the only piece, and that he and Booth should alternate the characters of Othello and lago. This generous suggestion Booth gladly accepted, and made his first ap- pearance at the Lyceum on the 2d of May, 1881. He played the Moor ; Mr. Irving, for the first time, the Ancient, Miss Terry was Desdemona. The densely crowded house seemed to contain everybody of importance then in London, and, in spite of doubled prices, it continued to be crowded until June 19, when the joint performances ended. It was a cruel stroke of fortune that this delightful engagement, in which 124 EDWIN BOOTH everything was done for Booth's honour and pleasure, should have been played under a shadow that dimmed all the brightness. Mrs. Booth had long been ill of a distressing malady. During the engagement at the Princess's Booth had written to a friend : — ^* Add to this [the nightly acting of Lear] the anxiety on Mary's account, and loss of sleep, and you may guess how sane I am. I some- times feel as though my brain were tot- tering on the verge. Perhaps acting mad every night has something to do with it. I once read of a French actress who went mad after a continued run of an insane character she personated." Now, in June, Mrs. Booth had grown so ill that her return to America was thought necessary. On the thirteenth of the following November Mrs. Booth died in New York. After Booth's return from England he lived in New York, and made frequent visits to his mother, at Long Branch 5 EDWIN BOOTH 125 and to old Mends. The dramatic sea- son of 1881-82, beginning on October 3 at Booth's Theatre, he passed in Amer- ica. On New Year's Day, 1882, Booth sent Mr. Aldrich an odd gift, with the sub- joined letter. Mr. Aldrich kindly al- lows me to use his explanatory note as preface : — ^^Mr. Booth afterward gave me a dif- ferent version of the story. An eccen- tric old party named Buggies invented an instrument to imitate the crowing of a cock — to be used in Samlet j Act I, scene 1. The imitation was so perfect as to throw the audience into convul- sions of laughter. After one night's trial, Booth didn't dare to use the toy, and the horrid thing — it was a sort of trumpet with pneumonia — was sent to me. No one but the inventor however, could work it. I think that was its only commendable feature. ^^T. B. A." 126 EDWIK BOOTH ''Dear Tom, — *^IVe concluded to dispense with the Kok in Hamlet. Therefore I send it to you for the edification of ye twins and the delight of their parents — at early dawn. This remarkable instrument will crow you like any sucking hen, if prop- erly manipulated ; but how that's done I'm at a loss to tell. All that I know about it is that its creator, a Mr. Bug- gies, put it to his lips and set all the cocks acrowing, one dark night, in [word illegible]. To aid Buggies and avenge myself on some fraternal foe (or friend) I bought the infernal thing and promised to use it in Hamlet as an espe- cial advertisement for him. After the darling came into my possession and Buggies had vamosed I forgot the secret of its crow, so couldn't use it to scare my Danish daddy's shade. Then I de- termined to bestow it on some one I loved, some one with children, boy-chil- dren, twins, in order to keep my mem- ory alive in the brain of their Papa. EDWIN BOOTH 127 ^'So, here it is! Aren't 'em pretty*? ^^ When yon' re thirsty 'twill serve for lager. Buggies believes his bully old fortune is made by Booth buying his blooming bugle ! ^^Ta-ta! ^^Till time stops ^^ Yours " H. N. Y., 1882." '^ Edwin. June 26, 1882, found Booth in Eng- land again, beginning a second and highly successful engagement, devoted to ^^Eichelieu" and ^^The Fool's Ee- venge," at the Princess's Theatre. After this ended, on August 5, Booth went over to Switzerland with his daughter, and then — on September 11 — began a tour of the provinces which the illness of Mrs. Booth had rendered impossible the year before. In Dublin, although people compared Booth's Samlet unfavourably with the impersonations of Mr. Irving and Barry Sullivan, the actor himself 128 EDWIK BOOTH was heartily welcomed and his acting, in general, mucli applauded. At Aber- deen, at Dundee, and at Edinburgh, ^^the audience rose and cheered him at the end of his performances.'' Every- where the managers asked him to return. In December of that year Booth wrote to Mr. Anderson : — ^^ Saw ^ Much Ado ' — the finest production, in every respect, I ever saw. Terry is Beatrice herself 5 Irving' s conception and treatment of the part IBenediclc] are excellent." On December 27 Booth left London for Berlin, where, on January 11, 1883, he began an engagement at the Eesidenz- theater. This was renewed, on the twenty-third, for twelve additional per- formances. !N'o ^^ starring" tour was ever more modestly made than Booth's in Grermany, or with less help from puffs, direct, oblique, or circumstantial. The first American actor who had ever visited Germany used none of the means and methods of advertisement that are EDWII^ BOOTH 129 sometimes thouglit peculiarly American. ^^In the Leipziger TageblatV^ — wrote a correspondent of tlie ISTew York Nation — ^^a newspaper otherwise filled with the gossip of the day, I found but a single brief paragraph on Booth before his representation of Hamlet in Leipzig on March 19. The theatre posters of the same date, as well as the theatre adver- tisements in the newspapers, contained nothing beyond the usual laconic an- nouncement (not even in full-faced type, as is generally the case) : Urste Gastdar- stellung des Serrn Edwin Booth — Ham- let : — JEEerr Edwin Booth, IsTeverthe- less, for the three evenings on which he played in Leipzig, every seat in the Stadttheater not occupied by the regular subscription audience could have been sold twice over.'' At Berlin the fact that the Court was in mourning did not keep Booth's engagement from being very brilliant indeed. The enthusiasm of the German actors was one of the 130 EDWIN BOOTH most remarkable and most gratifying ele- ments in Booth's success. On the stage of the Eesidenztheater, at the close of the Berlin engagement, a member of the company made an address in English, and at the same time Booth was given a silver laurel wreath, bearing the fol- lowing inscription : — *^To Mr. Edwin Booth, the unrivalled tragedian, in kind remembrance of his first engagement in Germany, January and February 1883. '' Similar beautiful tokens he received at Hamburg, at Bremen, and at Leipzig. In these cities, at Hanover, and in Vienna, there were very few opposing voices to the consensus, critical and popular, of approval that was both loud and deep. In a letter from Berlin I find Booth saying : — ^^I shall be glad when I get through with this tour — it is terrible work, as I have mentally to recite in English what the Germans are saying, in order to make the speeches fit. '' In less than a month, how- EDWIN BOOTH 131 ever, he was won over to declaring: — ^^ I feel more like acting than I have felt for years, and wish I could keep it up here in Germany for six months at least.'' In the same letter (to Mr. Anderson, February 18, from Hamburg) Booth writes : — ^^The actors and actresses weep and kiss galore, and the audience last night formed a passage from the lobby to my carriage till I was in and off ; yet I was nearly an hour in the the- atre after the play (^Lear'). Having had a surfeit of public applause — for it seems as though I had it through father, being with him so long — the most is but as little to me ; but this per- sonal enthusiasm from actors, old and young, is a new experience, and still stimulates me strangely." The significance of Booth's German success cannot easily be exaggerated. In Germany most if not all of Shakespeare's plays are acted; in English-speaking countries, a beggarly few. And although, 132 EDWIN BOOTH to our thinking, German critics of Shakespeare are often bent on proving themselves mad, especially when they write about ^^ Hamlet,'' German actors of Shakespeare average to be the best in the world, and have had among them players as great as Devrient and Barnay. At least ten educated Germans under- stand English, to one educated English- man, or American of English race, who understands German. Booth, then, played in an atmosphere that is charged with Shakespeare ; in theatres that are stored with standards and traditions. He was right in regarding the German tour as the chief professional experience of his life. XL Of Mr. Booth off the stage I can say only, Tantum vidi Yirgilium. I saw him just once in his own person, within the next few years after his return from Ger- many. The precise year and month have escaped me, but the scene was Park Street in Boston ; the time, a very cold and very bright winter morning. The street lay white under the sun, and the Common stretched white beyond. Doubtless there were other people about. I don't remember seeing any: I remem- ber only that I caught sight of Booth at some distance, coming down the hill toward me. As he drew near, walking slow, I watched him intently 5 and even when we came face to face, it is to be feared that I still gazed. There was no harm — Mr. Booth must long before have formed the habit of being stared at ! And it was a reverential stare. Such was my deep respect for him and 134 EDWIN BOOTH all lie had done, that, not knowing then the fate of Charles Lamb's ^^ merry Mend,'' Jem White, I came near taking off my hat to a gentleman I had never ''met." It is a question whether, at that moment, Booth would have per- ceived even such an attack, for he seemed to be looking in, not out, with the cu- rious, introverted gaze of his own Hamlet Let no one suppose that his expression was subdued to a professional melancholy, or that he had the consciously uncon- scious air which so often marks the celebrity in his walks abroad. But as he came toward me on that glittering, bitter day — stepping lightly though not quickly, his head a little bent and his hands in his pockets — he looked like Hamlet in a great-coat. I thought then that I had never seen so sad a face, and I have never yet beheld a sadder one. Booth on the stage, I saw in many characters between 1878 and his retire- ment in 1891: — Hamlet, Lear, Othello^ EDWIN BOOTH 135 lagOy Macbeth, Marcus Brutus, Bichard III, ShylocJc, Benedick, FetrucMo, Bicfie- Ueu, and Bertuccio. I saw him often as Hamlet, often as lago; in each of the other parts except Benedick, several times. Bichard II he played for a few years midway of his career, and during the first half Borneo was in his repertory, though he did not give it often. Cassius, Antony, Cardinal Wolsey, and King John, he also acted. Early characters were Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger's ^^A l^ew Way to Pay Old Debts," Bon Ocesar de Bazan, Sir Edward Mortimer in ^^The Iron Chest,'' Claude Mel- notte, and Fescara in ^^The Apostate.'' After a long time of disuse. Booth *^ revived" these parts for a season or two, about eight or nine years before his death. I never saw any of them, and do not regret the loss of any except Sir Giles, which, by all competent accounts. Booth played superbly. And Sir Giles is of course a great part — outside of 136 EDWm BOOTH Shakespeare there is none greater in English. As for Sir Edward Mortimer^ Fescaray and Brutus (another of Booth's performances that went by me), why, George Colman the younger, Shiel, and even John Howard Payne, are dead authors. Genius can galvanise but not quicken them. As for Claude MelnoUe, he is a lover suited to his Pauline or to Laura Matilda ; and Booth, it has been already said, could not do lovers, real or unreal. Eome's Antony he played, but Cleopatra's Antony he did not even try to play. As for Don Ccesar^ he belongs to com- edy quite as much as to romance ; and comedy was not Booth's trade, though he had the good- will of a sinister, unnamed muse, half-sister to Thalia. Without her help his lago and his Bieh- ard could not have been what they were. But to all except blind lovers of Booth's genius it seemed as if he kept comedy in his repertory only to show that, like EDWm BOOTH 137 ^^Todgers'S;" lie could do it when he chose. Whoever saw his BenedicJc, at all events in Booth's last public years, with- out having read ^ ' Much Ado,' ' would not have made acquaintance with the true BenedicJc, As he took away most of the joy and all the panache from Bon Ccesar, so he desiccated of all his mirth the Elizabethan courtier-scholar-wit whom Shakespeare chose to place in Messina. Intellectually, the performance was full of stimulus and entertainment, l^o one else could speak the very difficult and often archaic text as Booth spoke it, with all its variety, all its sweet yet lively rhythm. The soliloquies, which bristle with points of danger for every- one except a man of brains who is at the same time an artist in speech, Booth talked out quietly with himself and merely allowed the audience to overhear. One among many of these felicities was the inimitable cadence of afterthought with which the hearty affirmation, '^The 138 EDWIN BOOTH world must be peopled," dropped into the mock apology, ^^When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.'' This Benedick had charm, too, and careless ease ; but he was a brown-tinted person- age, who missed the essential nature of the character — a nature that, in terms of the wind, would be a fresh easterly with the sun shining bright 5 or, in terms of apples, ^* a pleasant tart." The war of Booth's Benedick with Beatrice was not a ^^ merry war." He suggested rather the compromise that Leonato, act- ing upon a hint from Beatrice, offers her as the right husband: ^^Half Signior Benedick's tongue in Count John's mouth, and half Count John's melan- choly in Signior Benedick's face." He was pleasant to see and very pleasant to hear, but he waked no laughter. His grimly frolicsome Fetruchio, graceful and alert as it was, had the same defect. Yet Booth's friends delighted in his EDWII^T BOOTH 139 inirth-provoking gift of telling good storieSj and they often felt the presence of that hnmour in his conversation which shows itself occasionally in his letters. He says somewhere in a letter that com- edy is excellent practice for serious actors, on the principle that those move easiest who have learned to dance. It has already been said that, as an actor of heroic parts, Booth surpassed every rival in his own language. In Shakespeare's four chief tragedies there are three such characters — LeaVj Othello, and Macbeth, Hamlet is beginning to be recognised as a character part. Kow, tried by an absolute standard — not by the merits of other actors — Booth's renderings of Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, fell short of what lovers of Shakespeare long to see on the stage, as his Shylock, Bichardj lago, EichelieUy and Bertuccio, never did. And they are character parts, all. Booth's Macbeth, impressive, in many 140 EDWIN BOOTH of its elements, was less a unit and therefore less satisfying than most of his other characters of Shakespeare. He showed, often with startling distinct- ness, the Macbeth of physical courage and moral cowardice. Booth also made clear, to a degree, the Macbeth whose re- deeming quality is such love as he bears his wife ; the warrior of a barbarous age was scarcely visible ; and the triumph of the impersonation was in Booth's in- dication of surface sensibility, with a bed rock of selfishness below. In this skilful psychology and in a few single scenes, Booth was at his best. The ban- quet scene, in particular, was appalling, and stood out even among his studies of episodes in which the supernatural plays a part. But Booth did not succeed in leaving a vivid, unified impression of a complex personality. It was as if he had been attracted by separate phases of Macbeth, instead of living with the char- acter as he li9'd lived with his Samlet, EDWIN^ BOOTH 141 his LeaVj or his lago. The poet whom Shakespeare has incorporated with the murderer in Macbeth, had all his dues from the melody, variety, and imagina- tion with which Booth spoke the verse. If Booth's Macbeth, in comparison with other of his achievements, was unsatisfy- ing for vague reasons, his Lear was in- complete for very definite reasons indeed. All that intellect, imagination, pathos, and a perfect command of histrionic means could do for the character, was present in Booth's rendering. ^Nor would the theatricality of the first act have been a serious objection to it ; Shakespeare, following his original, is theatrical there himself. A more im- posing physique and greater tempera- mental force were what Booth lacked for the exhibition of the upheaval and deracination of Learns nature. Another modern actor had exactly the endow- ment for this character which Booth had not. Salvini — in words used by 142 EDWm BOOTH George Henry Lewes, in his famous little book on acting, to lay down a general principle — Salvini had ^'the qualities which give the force of animal passion demanded by tragedy [by some tragedies, Lewes might better have said], and which cannot be represented except by a certain animal power." As Lear, unhappily, the Italian was poor in other qualities ' * demanded by tragedy ^ ' — namely, spirituality and imagination; and there seemed even to be some con- fusion in his idea of the character. Booth and Salvini, fused, would have given the stage such a King Lear as it may some day see. In Lear the honours were thus divided between the two actors. In Othello the balance was overwhelmingly with Sal- vini. Whether or not his conception was justifiable — and there are good arguments on each side — his perform- ance of the Moor was by far the most moving portrayal of an heroic part that EDWIK BOOTH 143 I ever saw. It was literally tlie '* whirl- wind of passion'' of whicli Hamlet speaks. Yet Salvini never lost control of himself or the character. He rode in the whirlwind and directed the storm. Although Booth, as an actor of heroic parts of poetic tragedy, was so definitely superior to his English-speaking contem- poraries, it was in certain character parts that he did himself most entire justice. In these, of course, he had formidable rivals, whose merits by com- parison with his cannot be considered here. But as Bichelieu, as Bertuccio, and as lago, he was unapproached 5 and these impersonations were probably his best, with ShylocJc, Bichard Illy and Hamlet, as a good second group. In certain passages of Lear, Hamlet, and other characters. Booth's genius took a higher range of thought and imagina- tion than can be found in Bichelieu, or Bertuccio, or lago. His renderings 144 EDWm BOOTH of these tliree parts, however, were al- most perfect. Exquisitely proportioned and almost flawlessly acted, they were, in sum and in detail, among the very few finest achievements of the modern stage. Booth's years after his return from Germany were, as lie once put it, ^^te- diously successful.'' He revived some old parts, but played no new ones. He bought a house in Chestnut Street, Bos- ton, and for a year or two he called it home. There, on May 16, 1885, Booth's daughter, Edwina, was married to Mr. Ignatius Grossmann. On the seventh of the same month, at the Academy of Music in ^ew York, Booth had played ^^ Mac- beth" with Eistori. During the spring of 1886 he gave a few performances with Salvini in 'New York, Boston, and Phila- delphia. I remember their third act of '' Othello " as if I had seen it last night. It shines now in my memory as the greatest acting I have ever seen. Cole- ridge thought that to see Kean was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of light- ning. When Salvini played Othello and Booth lago, there were no flashes because \ 146 EDWIN BOOTH ] there were no periods of darkness. It : was like reading Shakespeare by a mighty fire that rose and fell with the I I)assion of the scene, and lighted a re- : flection of itself in the face of each be- holder. Even more talked of than the appear- ances with Salvini, yet far less worthy | of note, was the ^^testimonial'' benefit to Lester Wallack, at the Metropolitan Opera House, on May 21, 1888. Booth acted Hamlet and Madame Modjeska Ophelia — an auspicious combination. The Metropolitan, however, is much too large for anything except opera and spectacle. And in such a cast, assem- bled for one occasion, when everybody is somebody — John Gilbert was Folo- nius at the Wallack benefit, Mr. Jeffer- son and William Florence were the Grave-diggers — what should be team- work disintegrates itself into a dramatic go-as-you-please. The more celebrities in such a company, and the more cele- EDWm BOOTH 147 brated they are^ the more the whole thing becomes a mere oddity, a theatri- cal curio which a man may be glad to say he has seen, but which he is not sorry to forget. In 1886, Lawrence Barrett became Booth's manager, and at the same time directed a tour of his own. Beginning next season, the two acted prosperously together, except during 1889-90, until the death of Barrett, March 20, 1891. Although the prosperity was broken for a little by a stroke of paralysis, on April 3, 1889, which temporarily hurt Booth's speech, still he struggled on. In the season of 1889-90 he and Madame Modjeska appeared together in a round of plays. As their methods harmonised, the art of each gained from that of the other. Indeed, during the steady de- cline of Booth's physical powers, from the warning stroke until the hour of his retirement, his art won triumphs of a new sort. His knowledge, inherited and 148 EDWIK BOOTBt acquired, of the stage and all its devices, was extraordinarily minute, and tlius art i assisted waning nature in many subtle ways. Occasional returns of strength there were, too, when Booth would act for a whole evening with much of his old spirit, and with a skill that had never before been quite so delicately fine. But even his art, and will, and cour- age, could not keep up forever man's losing game with Death, which Huxley grimly depicted and stanchly played. Barrett's piteous end was apparently the signal for Booth to drown his book and break his staff, for, on the fourth day of April, 1891, in '^Hamlet,'' quietly, and — as it was like him to do — without hint of farewell, he brought his public life to a close. He was ^ Hired of travelling,'' he said ; he had been ^ travelling all his life." And so, for the two years of it that re- mained, he settled himself in his own EDWIK^ BOOTH 149 rooms at the Players' Club, the largely planned and beautifully appointed house with which, in 1888, he had made a home for the homeless and ever travel- ling profession. This great benevolence crowned a life that was as full of benev- olence as it was of grief and triumph. Ko man could have been more mindful or more wisely mindful than Booth — in his gift of The Players — of the deep saying that every man is a debtor to his profession. Booth was marked out by Fortune for honour and despite. He felt the strange- ness of his lot, and reflected much upon the mysteries of life and death. Helped by his religion, a kind of stoical Chris- tianity, he came to some definite conclu- sions in the face of all the mysteries. ^^ All my life,'' he wrote to Mr. Winter, in 1886, ^^has been passed on ^picket duty,' as it were. I have been on guard, on the lookout for disasters — for which, when they come, I am prepared. There- 150 EDWm BOOTH fore I have seemed, to those who do not i really know me, callous to the many blows that have been dealt me. Why do not you look at this miserable little life, with all its ups and downs, as I do? At the very worst, 'tis but a scratch, a temporary ill, to be soon cured, by that dear old doctor, Death — who gives us a life more healthful and endur- ing than all the physicians, temporal or spiritual, can give." In 1888 Booth wrote to his daughter : — ^^ If there be rewards, I certainly am well paid ; but hard schooling in life's thank- less lessons has made me somewhat of a philosopher, and Pve learned to take the buffets and rewards of fortune with equal thanks, and in suffering all to suffer — I won't say nothing , but comparatively little, Dick Stoddard wrote a poem called 'The King's Bell,' which fits my case exactly (you may have read it). He dedicated it to Lorimer Graham, who never knew an unhappy day in his brief life, instead EDWIN BOOTH 151 of to me, who never knew a really happy one. You mustn't suppose from this that I'm ill in mind or body : on the contrary, I am well enough in both ; nor am I a pessimist. I merely wanted you to know that the sugar of my life is bitter-sweet ; perhaps not more so than every man's whose experience has been above and below the surface." Hawthorne, in the last year of his life, had a word on the same poem. He wrote to Mr. Stoddard, after receiving from him ^ ^ The King' s Bell " : — ^ a sincerely thank you for your beautiful poem, which I have read with a great deal of pleasure. It is such as the public had a right to expect from what you gave us in years gone by 5 only I wish the idea had not been so sad. I think Felix might have rung the bell once in his life- time, and again at the moment of death. Yet you may be right. I have been a happy man, and yet I do not remember any one moment of such happy conspir- 152 EDWm BOOTH \ ing circumstances, that I could have rung j a joy-bell for if Here are two Americans, at least, our ! greatest man of letters and our greatest j actor, who have proved by comment on | the same text that they are not open to i the charge of unreasoning optimism so '\ often brought against us. Since both i expressions of Booth's philosophy were written before his attack of dangerous illness, in a time of unbroken success, and long after his bitterest experiences, \ they may be accepted as deliberate \ statements of his attitude toward life. But, whatever his general attitude and view, he gave no sign, even toward the end, of feeling poignantly the separate pang of the actor's lot. Booth's case, | he must have known, was that of the dying painter before whose eyes all his pictures and all copies of them should be torn in shreds; of the dying sculptor whose statues and all casts of them should i be hammered to bits ; of the writer, EDWIN BOOTH 153 who, in his last days, should look upon a bonfire of all his books and all means of reproducing them. Booth knew that his Lear J and Samlet, and the rest, would go down into the grave before him, and that the spiritual body of his art would crumble before his natural body. Yet, however much he felt the pity of his fate — and he must have felt it so far as the absence of all vanity or littleness would let him — there is no record to show that he lamented it. Nor was there anything of the awful gloom and vacancy of spirit that came to Garrick, or of Mrs. Siddons's forlorn repetition — ^^This is the time I used to be thinking of going to the theatre ; first came the pleasure of dressing for my part, and then the pleasure of acting it ; but that is all over now." Instead, Booth looked back, not uncheerfully, over the long road that had led him from The Cabin and The Farm to the beauti- ful house of The Players. His thoughts 154 EDWIN BOOTH turned often to his father and to religion. He spoke of actors, living and dead ; of remarkable and comic happenings in his own career ; of his German tour ; of his friejids. He took pleasure in the club, and in seeing the members of his family. His little grandchildren were a particu- lar delight to him. To them, indeed. Booth's ^4ast coherent words were ad- dressed." ^^My boy,'' Mrs. Grossmann writes, ^^ called gently, ^How are you, dear grandpa?' and the answer came loud and clear, in the familiar, boyish way, ^How are you yourself, old fel- lowr '' ^^ As he lay dying '' — says Mrs. Gross- mann — ^^unconscious even of my pres- ence, or of the fearful electric storm which was raging without, on that sad afternoon of the sixth of June, a glory seemed to rest upon his loved features, and I felt, in spite of heart-breaking grief, that he was at peace. And when the dark curtain of night had fallen, EDWIN BOOTH 155 and the storm had ceased without, and we sat watching and waiting for what we knew had to come we were startled by the sudden going out of all the electric lights in the chamber and in the street beneath. Was such dark- ness ever felt before 1 Alas ! not for me.'' Edwin Booth died at the Players' Club, a little after one o'clock on the morning of June 7, 1893. On the ninth, just before sunset, he was buried at Mount Auburn, beside the wife of his youth. He was a great actor, a good Christian, a brave and much-tried man. SAEGENT'S POETEAIT OF EDWIN j BOOTH AT ^^THE PLAYEES.'' I That face which no man ever saw And from his memory banished quite, With eyes in which are Hamlet's awe And Cardinal Eichelieu's subtle light, Looks from this frame. A master' s hand Has set the master-player here, In the fair temple that he planned Kot for himself. To us most dear This image of him ! ^^It was thus He looked ; such pallor touched his cheek ; With that same grace he greeted us — Nay, 'tis the man, could it but speak ! " Sad words that shall be said some day — Far fall the day ! O cruel Time, Whose breath sweeps mortal things away, Spare long this image of his prime. That others standing in the place Where, save as ghosts, we come no more, May know what sweet majestic face The gentle Prince of Players wore ! Thomas Bailey Aldrice BIBLIOGEAPHY. For Bootli's own contributions to the literature of the drama the reader may turn to the fifteen volumes of Prompt- Books, containing his stage versions of ^'Hamlet/' ^^King Lear" and many other plays, edited, with notes and stage directions, by William Winter (New York, 1878 : Francis Hart & Co.) ; to the third volume of Actors and Act- resses of Great Britain and the United States, edited by Laurence Hutton and Brander Matthews (New York, 1886: Cassell & Co., 5 vols.), and containing papers on Kean and Junius Brutus Booth by Edwin Booth ; and to the notes contributed by Booth to Dr. Horace Howard Furness's Variorum Editions of '^Othello'' and ^^The Mer- chant of Venice '' (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.). Of the writings about Booth the fol- lowing may be mentioned : 158 BIBLIOGEAPHY I. The Elder and the Younger Booth. By Asia Booth Clarke. Ameri- can Actor Series. (Boston, 1882 : James E. Osgood & Co.) II. The Atlantic Monthly, September, 1893. ' ' Edwin Booth. ' ' By Henry A. Clapp. III. The Century Magazine. November and December, 1893. ^^ Memories and Letters of Edwin Booth.'' By WiUiam Bispham. IV. Edwin Booth. By Laurence Hutton. Black and White Series. (New York, 1893 : Harper & Brothers.) Y. Shadows of the Stage. By William Winter. Articles in the Sec- ond and Third Series. (New York, 1893-95 : The MacmiUan Co.) YI. LiEE AND Art of Edwin Booth. By WiUiam Winter. (New York, 1893 : The Macmillan Co. Eevised edition, 1894.) I BIBLIOGEAPHY 159 VII. Edwin Booth. EecoUections by his Daughter, and Letters to Her and to His Friends. By Edwina Booth Gross- mann. Q^ew York, 1894 : The Century Co.) The beacon BIOGRAPHIES. M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE, Editor. The aim of this series is to furnish brief, read- able, and authentic accounts of the lives of those Americans whose personalities have impressed themselves most deeply on the character and history of their country. On account of the length of the more formal lives, often running into large volumes, the average busy man and woman have not the time or hardly the inclina- tion to acquaint themselves with American bi- ography. In the present series everything that such a reader would ordinarily care to know is given by writers of special competence, who possess in full measure the best contemporary point of view. Each volume is equipped with a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important dates, and a brief bibliography for further read- ing. Finally, the volumes are printed in a form convenient for reading and for carrying handily in the pocket. SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers. Pierce Building, Copley Square, Boston. [over"] The beacon BIOGRAPHIES The following volumes are issued: — Louis Agassiz, by Alice Bache Gould. Edwin Booth, by Charles Townsend Copeland. Phillips Brooks, by M. A. De Wolfe Howe. John Brown, by Joseph Edgar Chamberlin. Aaron Burr, by Henry Childs Merwin. James Fenimore Cooper, by W. B. Shubrick Clymer. Stephen Decatur, by Cyrus Townsend Brady. Frederick Douglass, by Charles W. Chesnutt. Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Frank B. Sanborn. David G. Farragut, by James Barnes. Ulysses S. Grant, by Owen Wister. Alexander Hamilton, by James Schouler. Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Mrs. James T. Fields. Father Hecker, by Henry D. Sedgwick, Jr. Sam Houston, by Sarah Barnwell Elliott. ** Stonewall " Jackson, by Carl Hovey. Thomas Jefferson, by Thomas E. Watson. Robert E. Lee, by William P. Trent. Henry W. Longfellow, by George Rice Carpenter. James Russell Lowell, by Edward Everett Hale, Jr. Samuel F. B. Morse, by John Trowbridge. Thomas Paine, by Ellery Sedgwick. Daniel Webster, by Norman Hapgood. John Greenleaf Whittier, by Richard Burton. The following are among those in preparation: — John Jacob Astor, by Arthur Astor Carey. John James Audubon, by John Burroughs. Benjamin Franklin, by Lindsay Swift. THE WESTMINSTER BIOG- RAPHIES. The Westminster Biographies arc uniform in plan, size, and general make-up with the Beacon Biographies, the point of important difference lying in the fact that they deal with the lives of eminent Englishmen instead of eminent Americans. They are bound in limp red cloth, are gilt-topped, and have a cover design and a vignette title- page by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Like the Beacon Biographies^ each volume has a frontispiece portrait, a photogravure, a calendar of dates, and a bibliography for further reading. The following volumes are issued: — Robert Browning, by Arthur Waugh. Daniel Defoe, by Wilfred Whitten. Adam Duncan (Lord Camperdown), by H. W. Wilson. George Eliot, by Clara Thomson. Cardinal Newman, by A. R. Waller. John Wesley, by Frank Banfield. Many others are in preparation. SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers, Pierce Building, Copley Square, Boston. C OJ 1 1 D a ) u : ) z 5 ^ 1 u : 2 c ■ CO o 405 X)oks to i Drior ft O ,o CN 2^ o UJ ■^ O O) flQ ' O 1 Q 0>.5 Q K — -Q -D UJ ^ ^ a o >- 2 a. DAFT ed by irged i y be 1 < l.c ^^^9 P i CN lo BE RECAL y be rene ly be rec horges n CN O CN A 1 u UJ ^LL Dwu^cj AAAY 1 1 -month loons mo 6-month loons mc Desk Renewals and rec UJ O CO ? ^ fi li c < o If YdSK'S^ 9^5656 f^-jtX ^ *r ^■'"* THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY """1