The mad progress of Big Business can almost be likened to a mighty
cyclone which sweeps across the countryside with destruction in its
wake, but here and there leaving, quite untouched, a farm, a fruit tree,
or a windmill—delightful oases—which serve as the only record of a
struggling civilization. Big Business in New York has wiped out the
homes of the people and sent them in a frantic rush hither and thither
in search of a place to live. Always there is that uprooting, due to the
steady march of the threatening skyscraper up the island of Manhattan.
As in the case of the cyclone, however, verdant places are left behind
in this barren desert of commerce, little green spots which remain an
eternal blessing and evidence that there were once normal human beings
here who thought and had time to care for beauty. One such place is
Gramercy Park.
I started one day to try to guess the origin of the name “Gramercy.”
Samuel Ruggles, the son of the maker of the park, told me that when his
father had bought the land the squatters called it “Grommercy Crick”
(there was then a small stream of water flowing through it) and the only
word that sounded near enough to that was “Gramercy.” I asked Carl
Arendt, a well-known actor, what Grommercy meant in Dutch. At first he
said, “Nothing,” but later stopped me and said:
“You may have been aiming at _Kromme Zee_, which means _Crooked Creek_.”
Like _Zuyder Zee_, I believe this is the origin of Gramercy.
The Park reminds one of certain places in London more than anything
else. In fact, I have often seen moving-picture companies taking films
down here which were afterward to be represented on the screen as taking
place in the British metropolis. The garden is perfect in its miniature
representation of the different seasons. There is one lilac bush at the
southwest corner that always tells me of the approach of spring. One
year it did not blossom and I felt as if I had lost a friend. The same
gardener has been caring for the growing things for a number of years,
and many a child has been intrusted to his care while the nurse or
parent was busy elsewhere. He teaches them to love the flowers, to play
on the paths so that the grass may grow, patches up the quarrels and
broken heads, and is tsar in his little domain.
The plot of ground, with enough money to keep it going, was presented to
the residents who live about the square, and most of the provisos have
been kept, except that the donor required that no buildings more than
four stories be allowed, and no house of other than brick or stone
(barring wood, evidently). One or two taller ones have managed to creep
in, but in general everything is almost the same as it was in the
’nineties, when I first landed in New York.
One Sunday in winter the son of the maker of the park was out walking
with his dad, when along came a man with a gun, dragging a big animal.
It was a wolf, and the man took them to the spot where he had shot it.
There was a big patch of blood upon the snow. This is the place where
The Players now stands.
Edwin Booth gave the house to the club, with the condition that he be
allowed to make it his home as long as he lived. It is well known how
the idea started on the yacht of Commodore Benedict and how that nucleus
of clever folk grew into the institution we have to-day. It was not to
be essentially an actors’ club, but a place where the actor could meet
his equals. One must be an artist or a patron of the arts to belong and,
of course, this includes writers, architects, sculptors, and painters.
It is a very beautiful club. Stanford White is responsible for the
architecture and gave his services gratis, as he did for The Lambs. Men
coming from the Old World say that it is the only place in America that
reminds them of home. The tonality of the rooms is like that of the very
old houses of Europe; time has mellowed the walls as it does a bit of
lace or tapestry. One of the ceilings that was a pale robin’s-egg blue
in ’91 is now an exquisite velvet khaki. No man could paint it. Whistler
would give up in despair the idea of even copying it. Like the quality
of the hair and skin of a dear old face, it gives an air of good
breeding, calm, and quiet over all.
The halls and stairways of the house are lined with photographs and
playbills, with, here and there, a painting. Over the fireplace hangs
that admirable portrait of Edwin Booth by Sargent which gives one an
entirely new conception of the actor. On one of the walls is a drawing
by Tom Nast, whom I knew well and loved dearly. It is a political
cartoon which was the original, I am told, of the “Tammany tiger.” Tom
is the illustrator who disposed of the Irish-American question forever
by drawing a banner flying over the Capitol at Washington, on which were
the words, “Erin go unum pluribus bragh.” There are a number of
unusually valuable mezzotints and wood engravings scattered about, and
the biggest collection known to exist, twenty-six portraits in all, of
the painter Naegle. Altogether there are five Sullys, an average Sir
Joshua Reynolds, a remarkably good Gilbert Stuart, a beautiful
Gainsborough in the earlier manner, while on one wall are two small
panels by Benjamin West.
As to the books, there is a veritable treasure house—all the knowledge
of the stage that one could possibly desire, with many valuable
autographed copies and rare editions. The most unusual possession of the
club in the way of printed stuff is the second, third, and fourth folios
of Shakespeare’s plays. The library room, arranged for ease and comfort,
runs the whole length of the house. In the center are soft chairs and
couches, with lights close to one’s elbow. There is an air of rest and
quiet which has often been found more conducive to sleep than weighty
reading by certain of us who are in the habit of staying up till the
“wee sma’ hours.” One memento that has always cheered me in my moments
of financial stress—for misery loves company—is a letter, written by
Oliver Goldsmith to Doctor Johnson, trying to borrow three pounds, which
he promises will be repaid as soon as _The Traveller_ shall be
published. The letter is probably worth twelve hundred dollars to-day!
Gifts flow into such a place, some appropriate and some ridiculous. The
costumes of Edwin Booth, for instance, are of great interest to all, but
the back tooth of a comedian—a molar—which the wife of one actor
presented to us after his death, is not a very great treasure. But there
it is in a glass case by day, and locked up in a steel safe at night
along with the paste jewels of the stage.
My earlier friends are the most vivid to me—those who are now gone.
Descriptions of them are futile and have been done too many times by
others far better equipped in a literary way than myself. I remember
them only as they came into the club—some peculiarity of looks, some
small joke, some story around the long table at luncheon where we were
brought together for a fleeting instant, each to depart the next moment
and go his own way. The stories, the wit, and the necessity of competing
with the best brains of America in The Players was an education to me.
There were the Aldriches—Louis and Thomas Bailey—no relation, except
Louis was named after the writer. As a boy he was very poor, did not
know where he came from, only that he was called “Louis.” Having the job
of running errands around a theater out west, he was accosted by the
stage carpenter one day, who was a great admirer of the writing of
Thomas Bailey.
“Your name from now on is Aldrich,” he said, “Louis Aldrich. Don’t
forget it or you will catch the devil from me.”
Louis Aldrich it was, and when he had made his way in the world and was
successful enough to go in the same society with Thomas Bailey, he had
reached the goal that the carpenter had unwittingly marked for him. The
poet always rather resented his existence, however.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote delightful verse and was a charming man, but
little things sometimes irritated him greatly. I remember him coming
into the club evidently as cross as two sticks. The publishers had had
the “cheek” to refuse a poem of his. I asked why. “Oh, I suppose they
found it too meter-icious.” And this was long before the days of free
verse.
Louis Aldrich made a fortune from the play “My Pardner,” taken from the
Bret Harte story called _Tennessee’s Pardner_.
When Louis Aldrich was chairman of the house committee of The Players, I
saw him one noon standing at the door of the dining room, talking to
Walter, the head waiter. Presently, in a loud voice, he said:
“Walter, what is the lunch to-day?”
“Pork chops and sausages, sir.”
“An insult to the house committee.”
Then later at the table:
“Walter, bring me some of that damn Christian food.”
Henry E. Dixey and Louis were in a war play together, and I heard the
latter pray Harry (who had the part of a New York policeman) to spare
him when he gave a long speech about the flag. I was one of the
first-night audience, and at that most pathetic climax about Old Glory,
etc., the policeman suddenly fell dead.
Many actors have a ready wit. Jack Wendall became quite famous for his
excellent portrayal of the dog in Rostand’s “Chanticleer.” One of these
silly, satisfied business men was a guest at The Players and, meeting
Jack, insisted upon his giving an example of his bark right then and
there. After much persuasion and, in order to silence the man, he did
so. Whereupon the man proceeded to bark much louder and much better than
Jack. The actor was worsted at his own game and by such a fatuous
creature, but he turned and said, with the most cunning inference:
“It is fine, but you see, sir, _I_ had to learn.”
Speaking of Rostand, I _am_ proud of a translation of mine of two lines
of “Cyrano.” Mark Smith had challenged my statement that it could be
done in English verse and gave as a test:
“_Qu’est-ce qu’un baiser? C’est le point rose sur l’I du mot aimer._”
I gave him:
“What is a kiss? The rosy dot upon the ‘I’ of bliss.”
Mark was an actor and the son of an actor. I saw him first with Mrs.
Leslie Carter. It is told of him that just before his birth his parents
were in Paris. His father, being very patriotic, went to the American
embassy, got some earth from the cellar, and, filling four saucers with
it, placed them under the legs of the bed where his wife lay. With Old
Glory over the bed, Mark was ushered into the world as near an American
citizen as his father could make him.
One of the most interesting stage families of my time was the group of
Hollands. E. S., whom we called “Ned,” was perhaps the best known
throughout the country and was a finished actor of the so-called old
school. It was the father of these boys who made that immortal remark
which named a house of worship and made it famous. Holland, with others,
approached the pastor of a large Fifth Avenue church to get him to read
the burial service for a dead actor. The minister refused, saying that
actors could not be buried from his church. Seeing their despair, he
repented a trifle and suggested that they try the little church just
around the corner. The elder Holland raised his hat and said:
“God bless the Little Church Around the Corner.”
Joe Holland is the only member of the family alive to-day, and he
retired from the stage a few years ago. He became very deaf and finally
paralyzed, but he has in no way let it ruin his life. With grit and
persistence to a degree that should be an example to everyone, here is
this man, no longer young, learning to read and, although totally deaf,
to speak a beautiful French, sailing a boat better than most
professionals and becoming the commodore of the yacht club of the
seaport town where he lives in the summer, leading a full life where
most people would have given up the ghost long ago.
Joe used to ask one or another of us to go out for a drive with him in
the evening. I often wondered what pleasure it could give him and once
wrote on his paper (which he always carried), “Why do you do this?” A
most pathetic look came into his face.
“I know you are all just being good to me and you can’t keep it up long,
but somehow, if I can get you to drive in the moonlight where you
wouldn’t want to talk, anyway, we are just as much companions in those
moments as if I were not deaf.”
Such delicacy of feeling could not help but come out in his actions, and
something Joe did once impressed me very much. Frank Worthing, the
actor, was going to England, and, although it was not mentioned, he was
going to die. Joe bought half a dozen calendars and sent a sheet to
everyone of Frank’s friends, asking that they write a note, a poem, or
music, and, if they were artists, make a sketch. These he collected, had
beautifully bound and put in the stateroom of the steamer so that “every
day when Frank wakes up, he will receive a good morning from a friend.”
There is something very fine about a man who thinks that way.
The Players sets aside one day a year for the ladies on Shakespeare’s
birthday, when the feminine friends of the members are allowed to invade
the house between the hours of two and six in the afternoon. Here the
stage-struck young girl may come in hopes of meeting her favorite
matinee hero, but I am afraid she is often disappointed, as the young
actor is generally timid and stays away that day. It is left to the
older gallants to offer a substitute and, if it did not seem like
boasting of my own generation, I should say that a John Drew, a Francis
Wilson, or that dean of the American stage, an F. F. Mackay is still
just as capable of holding his own with the modern flapper as he ever
was. Every American or visiting actress of importance has been
entertained at these receptions, while special days have been given, on
rare occasions, to a few. There was one for Clara Louise Kellogg, one
for Mrs. Forbes-Robertson, and one for the divine Sarah.
Sarah is easily the one person alive to-day who knows how to give a
personal thrill to everyone with whom she comes into contact. I remember
seeing her a year or two ago, driving in New York in an open carriage. I
did not recognize her at first, but some subtle influence compelled me
to raise my hat and bow in homage to—I know not what. I got in return a
thrilling smile. When Madame Bernhardt was guest of honor at The
Players, she chose the landing of the stairway upon which to hold her
court of honor, thereby stopping all progress up or down. It required
all the tact of Mr. Booth to get her satellites away from her and
finally move her to a more remote spot. How fine to be a queen and
calmly acknowledge it to the world!
Once I was standing with Stanhope Forbes, the Royal Academician, and his
brother at the Victoria Station. The brother was then the head of the
continental affairs of the Chatham and Dover Railway. All of a sudden an
official rushed up and asked what he should do about the next train for
Dover, saying that there was a lady who was stopping everything by
insisting that she must have her dog with her.
“Well, she can’t,” said Forbes.
“But she insists, sir, and she is making an awful row.
“That’s no matter. Who is she?”
“She says her name is something like Sarah Bernhard,” said the man.
“Good God!” said Forbes, wilting. “Give her the train.”
In my student days there were two “gags” on Sarah. One was, “Yesterday
an open carriage drove up to the Théâtre Français out of which got Sarah
Bernhardt.” The other was a caricature of Sarah and Sarcey, the critic;
she taking fattening, and he anti-obesity, pills. While he is
interviewing her one of his pills falls out of the box and is eaten by
Sarah’s pet tiger, which is crouched beside her on the floor. The tiger
immediately becomes a rug. Sarah screams and gives it one of her pills;
it becomes a tiger again.
Duse is a direct contrast, at least to an outside observer, to Sarah. I
was walking in Union Square, approaching the place where Tiffany used to
be, when out of the door came a somewhat elegant, but modest-appearing
figure in black, moving swiftly toward a private carriage at the curb.
Something about her seemed familiar and I recognized Duse. Then I saw,
to my astonishment, that she was lame. She did not impress me at all on
the street, but on the stage she is the finest woman actor I have ever
seen. Just realize the physical handicap—you never see it behind the
footlights.
What a marvelous quality she gets out of that death-bed scene in
“Camille”—her simple nightgown, her expression while waiting for the
nurse to leave the room that she might reach under the bolster and get a
letter from “him,” the tragedy of her face as her fingers do not find
it, and the breaking of the sky after the storm. Her hand had touched
it! My respect rose for the great simplicity of this Italian actress.
Duse’s Armand throws everything at her when he begins to think she cares
for material things alone. I was telling this in The Players, when an
actor, since knighted by the British government, said when _he_ was
acting Armand, he threw the bag of gold at her. Imagine a “bag” of gold.
In my first days in Paris I saw the effects of the woman Dumas used for
the heroine of “Camille” sold at auction.
Duse seemed to me a failure in “Magda.” It had a northern humor that
required a Modjeska to sense. The second meeting with the former lover,
the country baron, which has always been such a tragedy to most
actresses, produced in Modjeska nothing but amusement and a sense of
irony. She had the most beautiful hands and arms I ever saw. I once sent
her a sonnet about them, and, although it was ten years later before I
met her, she remembered it, saying that I was the only man who had
discovered the secret of her appeal to her public. Even when she was old
and played “La Bataille des Dames,” her arms spoke to the audience and
expressed what she wished.
I have met few actresses and have been behind the scenes in the theater
only once or twice in my lifetime. Aside from paying my respects to that
superb raconteur, Madame Yvette Guilbert, painting a portrait of the
fascinating Nazimova, meeting Ellen Terry at tea, and being kissed by
the beautiful Maxine Elliott for saying she was a better actor than her
husband, I have come into personal contact with only one other—an
American.
One rainy March day, while walking down Thirty-sixth Street when The
Lambs was in that delightful house that Stanford White built, a closed
carriage stopped between me and a Dutch stoop and a young woman got out.
She looked up in the air, annoyed, and was going to scuttle up the
steps, when I stepped forward to put my umbrella over her. I would have
done the same for a washerwoman. She took my arm like a thoroughbred,
and I saw her to her door. I had hardly gotten back to the walk when a
boy from The Lambs, opposite, came up, saying, “Some gentlemen in the
club wish to see you, sir.” I crossed over and went upstairs to confront
a line of men drawn up in martial order. There were twenty of them at
least, who saluted, chanting:
“We wish to congratulate you on your skill as a professional masher. You
are the first man who has succeeded in picking up Maude Adams.”
This was my first and only meeting with her, but she must represent a
type that I think beautiful, for one of the figures in a decoration that
I made entirely out of my head resembles her so much that I have been
asked many times if she did not pose for it. Miss Adams is one of the
women who have helped to bring the stage to that position among the arts
which men like Booth hoped it would reach.
Besides women, who always come first—who is it who says, “A man and his
wife are one, and she’s the one?”—The Players have entertained many
notable men, both local and foreign. I met Theodore Roosevelt there for
the first time. Not long after, I was in a Broadway car, when I saw him
hanging on to a strap. The talk turned to war. I had been back from
Europe only a short time and argued that America was not like England, a
cuttlefish with a vulnerable body needing long arms to get its food and
protect itself against its enemies; but rather like China, an oyster
covered by hard shell. The large navy necessary to the first was
superfluous to the second. I was met with a hurricane of abuse, to the
amusement of the whole car. I did not know that Roosevelt had just been
made Secretary of the Navy at Washington.
He told this story to us at the club. Two young Englishmen once turned
up at his office and he sent them out to visit at his home in Oyster
Bay. After some Saturday night festivities, when the women had all
retired from the table, one of the young men started to give his
impressions of America. He had been here two weeks.
“Mr. Roosevelt,” he said, “do you not feel that one arriving in a
foreign country is often shocked by things that the people living there
have gotten used to? Now we have been horrified by the American habit of
lynching. Cowardly, you’ll admit; subversive of all law and barbarous?”
“Oh yes,” said T. R., “that’s only natural. Now, for instance, I am
always shocked, when I land in England, at your habit of knocking down
your womenfolk and kicking them in the stomach. Subversive of all law,
cowardly you’ll admit—”
“Of course, that happens only among the lower classes,” replied the
young man, laughing mightily.
Roosevelt then showed all his teeth in a grin and said, “Well, I don’t
think you boys will be asked to meet any lynchers at dinner.”
Literature and the stage meet in The Players, but the stage generally
gets the better of it. Brander Matthews was talking to me once about a
play by him and Bronson Howard that was to open shortly. I asked him
about its possibilities. “Oh,” he said, “if it goes it will be called
another of Bronson’s successes, but if not it will be just another
failure of mine.”
Tarkington was one of the successful writer-playwrights even in those
days. He is one of the few who have borne out their early promise, a man
if there ever was one, with a joy of life that is abounding and a
tremendous interest in his fellow beings, however humble. This natural
curiosity about life and living seems to me a necessity for anyone who
is to do big work in the world. He was modest about his writing. I went
with him to the first night of Richard Mansfield in “Monsieur
Beaucaire.” We were in tweeds and sat up in the “nigger heaven.” On the
stairs I said, “I suppose you dramatized this?”
“Oh no,” he answered, “Mansfield found a coat of mine he liked the looks
of and I cut it over to fit him.”
Tark. thinks so artistically and so cleverly. Here is a quotation from a
letter written to me in 1914. He tells about Arnold Bennett criticizing
the writing of a well-known author as being “too adult,” then goes on to
say:
“Adults make everybody uncomfortable; they want to. Most of the
surprises saved for the startling tags of stories by Guy de Maupassant
and O. Henry are merely little bursts of naturalness—some boyish thing.
We recognize the truth of them at sight—and are surprised for the reason
that a boy or an artist always catches us off our guard.”
There was a galaxy of playwrights, among them Bronson Howard and Clyde
Fitch, now gone as is that dear, kindly, clever man, William Dean
Howells—one ever to be missed. I dined somewhere beside a charming girl,
and the conversation drifted to the usual topic—marriage. I noticed
across the table, just opposite me, the head of Mr. Howells twisting to
right and left and trying to follow our talk, so I said rather
maliciously:
“One of our cleverest writers has said, ‘Man, even after eighteen
hundred years of Christianity, is only imperfectly monogamous.’”
Applause from across the table. “Oh, that is fine, Simmons! Do you
remember who said it?”
“Why, I found it in a book I have just been reading, called _Indian
Summer_.”
He suddenly drew back behind the flowers. “Oh, really!”
A few days afterward a short figure crowded up to me in the elevator of
a large building with an: “Oh, Simmons, I looked that up. I _did_ say
it.”
Kipling was not a member of The Players, on account of his book about
the United States. He was not well known when he first came here, and no
one was prophet enough to guess that he was to become the greatest name
in English of his time. Many of the older men would not “stand for” his
criticism of America. I heard old Edward Bell burst forth to Edwin
Booth:
“If that cussed young Englishman ever comes into this club, I’ll boot
him out of it.”
“Yes,” said Booth, and immediately left for his own room, as he always
did if anything seriously disturbed him.
In spite of these prejudices, Kipling was a visitor and became a friend
to many of the members. I met him very casually, but admired him
greatly, thinking his comments upon us a little harsh, but quite fair in
many ways. His classification of England, France, and America to Brander
Matthews is interesting. England he claimed, would die for liberty, but
had a poor idea of equality; France would die for equality, but was hazy
about fraternity; the United States was hazy about both liberty and
equality, but went in heart and soul for fraternity; and that was why
they would pay five cents to stand up in a street car when others sit
down for the same price.
Zogbaum, the artist, once took Kipling over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to
meet Commander Evans, known as “Fighting Bob.” He told me that they at
once squatted down together and began to “swap” stories, nor did they do
anything else until it was time for Kipling to go. He was silent on the
ferryboat coming home, and upon landing in New York asked for the
nearest bookseller, where he bought a copy of his own _Seven Seas_.
Borrowing a pencil from Zogbaum, he sat in the shop and wrote for some
time, then handing the book to the clerk, he asked him to mail it to
Evans at the Navy Yard. That is the way we got the poem, “Zogbaum looks
after his pencil and I look after my style.”
Edwin Booth was the spirit and controlling force of The Players when I
joined. It was his home and he lent an atmosphere of good breeding and
repose that has endured to the present day. I was made a member in ’91
and had the honor of seeing quite a bit of him before his death. His
memory for names was already going, and almost every day after
breakfast, when he and I would be sitting together in the reading room
with the morning papers, he would suddenly look over his newspaper at me
in a quizzical manner and say:
“Pardon me, sir, but you remind me forcibly of a family of dear friends
of mine the—the—the—actor-painter people—the—”
“The Forbes-Robertsons?” I would suggest.
“Yes, the Forbes-Robertsons. Have you ever been mistaken for them?”
“Oh yes, several times in London,” I would reply. And, the ice so
broken, we would talk of all sorts of matters.
One of the most amusing stories told me by Mr. Booth was about a skull,
which, by the way, is one of the relics of The Players to-day. A woman
in St. Louis wrote to Booth’s father and told him she was the widow of a
friend of his who was hanged for murder. She asked permission to send
the skull to the actor, suggesting that he use it in “Hamlet”—“Alas,
poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio!” Booth’s father respectfully but
disgustedly declined. But the woman was not to be so easily put off.
Young Edwin Booth happened to be in St. Louis years later, when he
received a letter from the same woman, offering to the son the present
the father had refused. The property skull happened to be in pretty bad
condition at that time, and as he had no sentiment about it, he replied
that he should like to own it. Then Booth said:
“I was in bed one morning when a little nigger boy called to see me. He
had a covered basket on his arm. I was curious to see what it contained,
so asked him to open it up. Placing the basket on the table, he removed
the top and a napkin which was underneath. Before I knew it, basket,
cover, napkin flew up in the air, and the most frightened nigger you
ever saw was flying down the passageway, while on the floor lay a
skull.”
Skied at the top of the staircase and as much out of sight as possible
is a horrible portrait, larger than life size, of a well-known actress
which was once presented to The Players by some of her relatives. Booth
told me that on one Ladies’ Day he suddenly saw these same relatives
coming up the stairs.
“I was between them and the portrait,” he said, “and I succeeded in
keeping them from seeing it. Never in my life have I attempted to hold
an audience as I tried to hold them. I am certain that they saw nothing
but Edwin Booth until I had turned them around and backed them down the
stairway again.”
In connecting me with the Forbes-Robertson family Mr. Booth’s thoughts
would often wander to painting and he once told me how Sargent did the
portrait which hangs in the club. As I remember, he sat for it in
several places until one day Sargent asked him to have a look at it and
say what he thought. Booth was loath to give an opinion, saying it was
not to be his, anyway, and he was not the one to be suited. But Sargent
pressed him until he said, “No, to be frank, I do not think it is a
characteristic expression of mine.”
“Are you very tired?” asked the painter.
“No.”
“Then again, if you will.”
“That time,” said Booth, “I did get tired. He must have kept me standing
an hour. What did he do? Why, he began by scraping out the entire head,
then rubbed in some blackish stuff and painted that,” pointing to the
portrait.
Sargent must have done that wonderful head _premier coup_ in less than
an hour!
When I look at the mouth in this picture, I am reminded of what
physiognomists say, that it is the indication of our true character more
than any other part of the face. Compare the young and old photographs
of Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Booth, and you will see that it
is within the power of anyone (no matter how plain at birth) to have at
least one beautiful feature before he dies. One may not change the
setting of the eyeball—because it is dependent upon bone, which cannot
be altered. The setting of the eye is what gives the beauty. Those of
Christine Nilsson, the singer, appeared on the stage as dark, luminous
patches of velvet, for the socket cast a deep shadow; but when I met her
personally, they were pale blue and ineffectual. It is the same with the
nose.
But the mouth has no bones. It is merely flesh under the control of many
muscles. Surgeons tell me that if one opens the cheek of a man who has
lived an intellectual life, it is surprising how many muscles one finds.
On the other hand, the cheek of an ignorant laborer does not contain
much more than a muscle for chewing, for opening and shutting the mouth,
and for grinning and frowning. The muscles that give irony, humor, and
sadness are not there.
One of the prominent men in America, who has a beautiful mouth, has told
me that when he was a boy his family objected so to it as an unsightly
thing and that for many years he had the habit of covering it with his
hand whenever he expressed himself, for fear of comment. The change has
been within the man himself and the mouth has echoed it.
One may train a plain mouth to express the beauty of the human mind
which controls it. Mr. Emerson had a hole in his face as a boy, not a
mouth. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the plainest man that ever lived, had a
sweet, tender, one might say almost beautiful mouth, before he died. At
any actors’ gathering, one can see a dozen mouths like Booth’s at
twenty-five, but you will hunt a long time before finding the mouth
Booth died with.
The delicacy shown in a study of Edwin Booth’s face was borne out in his
life. He did the most dignified thing in the world, to apologize for an
act of his family against the American nation, by retiring for a period
from public life after the assassination of Lincoln.
He was a man who felt keenly, both mentally and physically. He hated to
be touched by anyone and loathed to be buttonholed. I remember a
well-known writer of fiction, who had the extraordinary capacity for
doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, eagerly presenting Mr. Booth
with a playbill of the performance of the night at Ford’s Theater. He
simply arose and went to bed, as he always did on such occasions.
Something of the same kind happened quite by accident when Booth was
visiting at Nutley, the home of Laurence Hutton, secretary of The
Players and an old friend of the actor’s. Booth had retired for the
night, when Hutton remembered with horror that at the foot of the bed
and in full view upon the wall was one of those same playbills. He knew
that if Booth saw it he would pack his bag and silently depart. What to
do he did not know. Finally, waiting until he hoped Booth was asleep, he
stole upstairs, crept into the room, and carried off the bill.
This sensitiveness about his family was not due entirely to the
unfortunate occurrence of Lincoln’s assassination, for it was shown in
various ways. One evening a man, who had become a member of The Players
by presenting the club with a second folio of Shakespeare, brought a
friend in as a guest and presented him to Mr. Booth.
“Why, Mr. Booth,” were the friend’s first words, “I saw your father
play. I was in the theater in St. Louis when, as Hamlet, he drove
Laertes off the stage and out into the alleyway.”
I saw Booth’s eyes grow dark and ominous, and, rising, he said:
“Sir, I do not doubt that you _think_ you saw that, but of course you
did not. That incident never took place. It has been told to me as
having happened in four or five different cities in this Union. Good
night, sir.” And he was off to bed.
Booth was a superman and showed it in many ways, but there is just one
incident which he told me, himself, that proves him one in my eyes. When
I see another man’s mind working, I compare it with my own, and when I
see that mind doing things that my own could never do, I realize there
are grades of mentality that I do not understand and cannot reach; so I
bow down and worship. I do not remember how the subject of religion ever
arose between us, but he said that the Booths had always been
superstitious folk and that he himself had at one time been almost a
convinced spiritualist. Having made up his mind on the subject, he was
talking to his friend Kellar, the magician. Kellar explained to him how
all the wonderful miracles were worked at the seances and then performed
before Booth’s very eyes, tricks more wonderful than any he had seen
done in the spiritualistic meetings. All of these Kellar explained also.
“Then,” said Mr. Booth, “Kellar performed some miracles that surpassed
all of those that had gone before. I asked him how he did them. ‘Mr.
Booth,’ he said, ‘I could show you with ease, but these are professional
secrets and my own personal property, the explanations of which I must
divulge to none!’ On reflection, I decided that my former belief in such
matters was harmful to my mind and I gave it up.”
I can understand, if I had the will power, giving up any physical habit
which I might feel was doing my body harm, but to have a mental disease,
realize it, and cure it, is to me almost inconceivable.
Booth was seemingly of a serene nature, but he was introspective, and
underneath that outward calm must have been a deep passion and sense of
his own being. He told me that he never stepped upon the stage for a
first night that his knees did not knock together horribly, but once
before the footlights, he forgot himself entirely. His sense of humor
was deep, and although he was always the quiet one of the group, he was
probably the most appreciative of a funny story or a witty remark. Even
when he lay in bed with his last illness his thoughts were upon these
things, for he was much disturbed because he could not remember the
point of a clever story he had heard.
For quite a while he had been failing. His legs had been giving out, so
that he used the little trunk elevator to go up to his room; then he
slowly grew feebler and feebler. I don’t doubt he suffered, but he never
let us know it, and his death was merely a gentle going away. I remember
the doctor coming downstairs and saying that he had just closed the eyes
of a man more than seventy years old. Mr. Booth had crowded into
fifty-nine years of life the experiences of an old man.
The Players is changed to-day. Of course, all old things must give way
to new; but there is a certain fine sentiment that remains. Perhaps the
young man does not appreciate the ideas upon which the club was founded
and the traditions which have kept it together, but something of the old
spirit is bound to be communicated to him on Pipe Nights or Founders’
Night, or on those occasions when old Joe Holland is brought up in his
big armchair. Then all gather around, a fire blazes in the great
fireplace, Mr. Booth’s eyes gaze down serenely from the wall above, and
each one vies with his neighbor in handing a drink or a smoke to Joe, or
telling him the latest story. Then will come in some wit or jester of
the gang, and jokes will be told that are as old as the hills, but ever
new. There is always a visitor or recent member to be delighted at the
old gag when Harry Dixey goes up to Joe and says:
“Lend me five dollars, Joe.”
“Go around to my good ear, Harry.”
With great ceremony, Harry will walk around.
“Lend me ten dollars, Joe.”
“Go back to my five-dollar ear, Harry.”