curbed and guided, not by a cold and formal design but by a grave and
sweet gentleness of mind, always a part of his nature, but more and more
developed by the stress of experience, by the reactionary subduing
influence of noble success, and by the definite consciousness of power.
He found no difficulty in portraying the misery of Othello and of Lear,
because this is a form of misery that flows out of laceration of the
heart, and not from the more subtle wounds that are inflicted upon the
spirit through the imagination. There was no brooding over the awful
mysteries of the universe, nor any of that corroding, haunted gloom that
comes of an over-spiritualised state of suffering, longing, questioning,
doubting humanity. Above all things else Othello and Lear are human; and
the human heart, above all things else, was the domain of that actor.
The character of Coriolanus, though high and noble, is quite as likely
to inspire resentment as to awaken sympathy. It contains many elements
and all of them are good; but chiefly it typifies the pride of
intellect. This, in itself a natural feeling and a virtuous quality,
practically becomes a vice when it is not tempered with charity for
ignorance, weakness, and the lower orders of mind. In the character of
Coriolanus it is not so tempered, and therefore it vitiates his
greatness and leads to his destruction. Much, of course, can be urged in
his defence. He is a man of spotless honour, unswerving integrity,
dauntless courage, simple mind, straightforward conduct, and magnanimous
disposition. He is always ready to brave the perils of battle for the
service of his country. He constantly does great deeds--and would
continue constantly to do them--for their own sake and in a spirit of
total indifference alike to praises and rewards. He exists in the
consciousness of being great and has no life in the opinions of other
persons. He dwells in "the cedar's top" and "dallies with the wind and
scorns the sun." He knows and he despises with active and immitigable
contempt the shallowness and fickleness of the multitude. He is of an
icy purity, physical as well as mental, and his nerves tingle with
disgust of the personal uncleanliness of the mob. "Bid them wash their
faces," he says--when urged to ask the suffrages of the people--"and
keep their teeth clean." "He rewards his deeds with doing them," says
his fellow-soldier Cominius, "and looks upon things precious as the
common muck of the world." His aristocracy does not sit in a corner,
deedless and meritless, brooding over a transmitted name and sucking the
orange of empty self-conceit: it is the aristocracy of achievement and
of nature--the solid superiority of having done the brightest and best
deeds that could be done in his time and of being the greatest man of
his generation. It is as if a Washington, having made and saved a
nation, were to spurn it from him with his foot, in lofty and by no
means groundless contempt for the ignorance, pettiness, meanness, and
filth of mankind. The story of Coriolanus, as it occurs in Plutarch, is
thought to be fabulous, but it is very far from being fabulous as it
stands transfigured in the stately, eloquent tragedy of Shakespeare. The
character and the experience are indubitably representative. It was some
modified form of the condition thus shown that resulted in the treason
and subsequent ruin of Benedict Arnold. Pride of intellect largely
dominated the career of Aaron Burr. More than one great thinker has
split on that rock, and gone to pieces in the surges of popular
resentment. "No man," said Dr. Chapin, in his discourse over the coffin
of Horace Greeley, "can lift himself above himself." He who repudiates
the humanity of which he is a part will inevitably come to sorrow and
ruin. It is perfectly true that no intellectual person should in the
least depend upon the opinions of others--which, in the nature of
things, exist in all stages of immaturity, mutability, and error--but
should aim to do the greatest deeds and should find reward in doing
them: yet always the right mood toward humanity is gentleness and not
scorn. "Thou, my father," said Matthew Arnold, in his tribute to one of
the best men of the century, "wouldst not be saved alone." To enlighten
the ignorant, to raise the weak, to pity the frail, to disregard the
meanness, ingratitude, misapprehension, dulness, and petty malice of the
lower orders of humanity--that is the wisdom of the wise; and that is
accordant with the moral law of the universe, from the operation of
which no man escapes. To study, in Shakespeare, the story of Coriolanus
is to observe the violation of that law and the consequent retribution.
"Battles, and the breath
Of stormy war and violent death"
fill up the first part of the tragedy as it stands in Shakespeare, and
that portion is also much diversified with abrupt changes of scene; so
that it has been found expedient to alter the piece, with a view to its
more practical adaptation to the stage. While however it is not acted in
strict accordance with Shakespeare its essential parts are retained and
represented. Many new lines, though, occur toward the close. McCullough
used the version that was used by Forrest, who followed in the footsteps
of Cooper, the elder Vandenhoff, and James R. Anderson. There is,
perhaps, an excess of foreground--a superfluity of fights and
processions--by way of preparing for the ordeal through which the
character of Coriolanus is to be displayed. Yet when Hecuba at last is
reached the interest of the situation makes itself felt with force. The
massive presence and stalwart declamation of Edwin Forrest made him
superb in this character; but the embodiment of Coriolanus by
McCullough, while equal to its predecessor in physical majesty, was
superior to it in intellectual haughtiness and in refinement. An actor's
treatment of the character must, unavoidably, follow the large, broad
style of the historical painter. There is scant opportunity afforded in
any of the scenes allotted to Coriolanus for fine touches and delicate
shading. During much of the action the spectator is aware only of an
imperial figure that moves with a mountainous grace through the fleeting
rabble of Roman plebeians and Volscians, dreadful in war, loftily calm
in peace, irradiating the conscious superiority of power, dignity,
worth, and honourable renown. McCullough filled that aspect of the part
as if he had been born for it. His movements had the splendid repose
not merely of great strength but of intellectual poise and native mental
supremacy. The "I must be found" air of Othello was again displayed, in
ripe perfection, through the Roman toga. His declamation was as fluent
and as massively graceful as his demeanour. If this actor had not the
sonorous, clarion voice of John Kemble, he yet certainly suggested the
tradition of the stately port and dominating step of that great master
of the dramatic art. He looked Coriolanus, to the life. More of poetic
freedom might have been wished, in the decorative treatment of the
person--a touch of wildness in the hair, a tinge of imaginative
exaltation in the countenance, an air of mischance in the gashes of
combat. Still the embodiment was correct in its superficial
conventionality; and it certainly possessed affecting grandeur. Whenever
there was opportunity for fine treatment, moreover, the actor seized and
filled it, with the easy grace of unerring intuition and spontaneity.
The delicacy of vocalism, the movement, the tone of sentiment, and the
manliness of condition--the royal fibre of a great mind--in the act of
withdrawal from the senate, was right and beautiful. It is difficult not
to over-emphasise the physical symbols of mental condition, in the
street scene with "the voices"; but there again the actor denoted a fine
spiritual instinct. To a situation like that of the banishment he proved
easily equal: indeed, he gave that magnificent outburst of scorn with
tremendous power: but it was in the pathetic scene with Volumnia and
Virgilia that he reached the summit of the Shakespearean conception. The
deep heart as well as the imperial intellect of Coriolanus must then
speak. It is, for the distracted son, a moment of agonised and pathetic
conflict: for McCullough it was a moment of perfect adequacy and
consummate success. The stormy utterance of revolted pride and furious
disgust, in the denial of Volumnia's request--the tempestuous outburst,
"I will not do it"--made as wild, fiery, and fine a moment in tragic
acting as could be imagined; but the climax was attained in the pathetic
cry--
"The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
They laugh at."
XIII.
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
Making, one summer day, a pilgrimage to the grave of Charlotte Cushman,
I was guided to the place of her rest by one of the labourers employed
about the cemetery, who incidentally pronounced upon the deceased a
comprehensive and remarkable eulogium. "She was," he said, "considerable
of a woman, for a play-actress." Well--she was. The place of her
sepulture is on the east slope of the principal hill in Mount Auburn.
Hard by, upon the summit of the hill, stands the gray tower that
overlooks the surrounding region and constantly symbolises, to eyes both
far and near, the perpetual peace of which it is at once guardian and
image. All around the spot tall trees give shade and music, as the sun
streams on their branches and the wind murmurs in their leaves. At a
little distance, visible across green meadows and the river
Charles,--full and calm between its verdant banks,--rise the "dreaming
spires" of Cambridge. Further away, crowned with her golden dome, towers
old Boston, the storied city that Charlotte Cushman loved. Upon the spot
where her ashes now rest the great actress stood, and, looking toward
the city of her home and heart, chose that to be the place of her grave;
and there she sleeps, in peace, after many a conflict with her stormy
nature and after many sorrows and pains. What terrific ideals of the
imagination she made to be realities of life! What burning eloquence of
poesy she made to blaze! What moments of pathos she lived! What moods of
holy self-abnegation and of exalted power she brought to many a
sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense
and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy
silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she
used to move--the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits
of a delighted multitude--came strongly on the mind, and asked, in
perplexity and sadness, what was the good of it all. To her but little.
Fame and wealth were her cold rewards, after much privation and labour;
but she found neither love nor happiness, and the fullest years of her
life were blighted with the shadow of fatal disease and impending death.
To the world, however, her career was of great and enduring benefit. She
was a noble interpreter of the noble minds of the past, and thus she
helped to educate the men and women of her time--to ennoble them in
mood, to strengthen them in duty, to lift them up in hope of
immortality. She did not live in vain. It is not likely that the
American people will ever suffer her name to drift quite out of their
remembrance: it is a name that never can be erased from the rolls of
honourable renown.
Charlotte Cushman was born on July 23, 1816, and she died on February
12, 1876. Boston was the place of her birth and of her death. She lived
till her sixtieth year and she was for forty years an actress. Her youth
was one of poverty and the early years of her professional career were
full of labour, trouble, heart-ache, and conflict. The name of Cushman
signifies "cross-bearer," and certainly Charlotte Cushman did indeed
bear the cross, long before and long after, she wore the crown. At first
she was a vocalist, but, having broken her voice by misusing it, she
was compelled to quit the lyric and adopt the dramatic stage, and when
nineteen years old she came out, at New Orleans, as Lady Macbeth. After
that she removed to New York and for the next seven years she battled
with adverse fortune in the theatres of that city and of Albany and
Philadelphia. From 1837 to 1840 she was under engagement at the old Park
as walking lady and for general utility business. "I became aware," she
wrote, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin
windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast. This was the
way that I would henceforth learn mine."
Her first remarkable hits were made in Emilia, Meg Merrilies, and
Nancy--the latter in _Oliver Twist_. But it was not till she met with
Macready that the day of her deliverance from drudgery really dawned.
They acted together in New York in 1842 and 1843, and in Boston in 1844,
and in the autumn of the latter year Miss Cushman went to England,
where, after much effort, she obtained an opening in London, at the
Princess's, and in 1845 made her memorable success as Bianca. "Since the
first appearance of Edmund Kean, in 1814," said a London journal of
that time, "never has there been such a _début_ on the stage of an
English theatre." Her engagement lasted eighty-four nights (it was an
engagement to act with Edwin Forrest), and she recorded its result in a
letter to her mother, saying: "All my successes put together since I
have been upon the stage would not come near my success in London, and I
only wanted some one of you here to enjoy it with me, to make it
complete." She acted Bianca, Emilia, Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Haller, and
Rosalind. A prosperous provincial tour followed, and then, in December,
1845, she came out at the Haymarket, as Romeo, her sister Susan
appearing as Juliet. Her stay abroad lasted till the end of the summer
of 1849, and to that period belongs her great achievement as Queen
Katharine.
From the fall of 1849 till the spring of 1852 Miss Cushman was in
America, and she was everywhere received with acclamation, gathering
with ease both laurels and riches. When she first reappeared, October 8,
1849, at the old Broadway theatre, New York--as Mrs. Haller--she
introduced Charles W. Couldock to our stage, on which he has ever since
maintained his rank as a powerful and versatile actor. He acted the
Stranger and subsequently was seen in the other leading characters
opposite to her own. Miss Cushman's repertory then included Lady
Macbeth, Queen Katharine, Meg Merrilies, Beatrice, Rosalind, Bianca,
Julia, Mariana, Katharine, the Countess, Pauline, Juliana, Lady Gay
Spanker, and Mrs. Simpson. Her principal male characters then, or later,
were Romeo, Wolsey, Hamlet, and Claude Melnotte. In 1852 she announced
her intention of retiring from the stage, and from that time till the
end of her days she wavered between retirement and professional
occupation. The explanation of this is readily divined, in her
condition. There never was a time, during all those years, when she was
not haunted by dread of the disease that ultimately destroyed her life.
From 1852 to 1857 she lived in England, and in the course of that period
she acted many times, in different cities. In December 1854, when dining
with the Duke of Devonshire, at Brighton, she read _Henry VIII._ to the
Duke and his guests, and in that way began her experience as a reader.
In the autumn of 1857 she acted at Burton's theatre, New York, and was
seen as Cardinal Wolsey, and in the early summer of 1858 she gave a
series of "farewell" performances at Niblo's Garden--after which she
again crossed the Atlantic and established her residence in Rome. In
June 1860 the great actress came home again and passed a year in
America. _Oliver Twist_ was given at the Winter Garden in the spring of
1861, when Miss Cushman acted Nancy, and J.W. Wallack, Jr., J.B.
Studley, William Davidge, and Owen Marlowe were in the company. In 1863,
having come from Rome for that purpose, Miss Cushman acted in four
cities, for the benefit of the United States Sanitary Commission, and
earned for it $8267. The seven ensuing years were passed by her in
Europe, but in October 1870 she returned home for the last time, and the
brief remainder of her life was devoted to public readings, occasional
dramatic performances, and the society of friends. She built a villa at
Newport, which still bears her name. She gave final farewell
performances, in the season of 1874-1875, in New York, Philadelphia, and
Boston. Her final public appearance was made on June 2, 1875, at Easton,
Pennsylvania, where she gave a reading. Her death occurred at the Parker
House, in Boston, February 18, 1876, and she was buried from King's
chapel.
There is a mournful pleasure in recalling the details of Miss Cushman's
life and meditating upon her energetic, resolute, patient, creative
nature. She was faithful, throughout her career, to high principles of
art and a high standard of duty. Nature gave her great powers but
fettered her also with great impediments. She conquered by the spell of
a strange, weird genius and by hard, persistent labour. In this latter
particular she is an example to every member of the dramatic profession,
present or future. In what she was as a woman she could not be
imitated--for her colossal individuality dwelt apart, in its loneliness,
as well of suffering that no one could share as of an imaginative life
that no one could fathom. Without the stage she would still have been a
great woman, although perhaps she might have lacked an entirely suitable
vehicle for the display of her powers. With the stage she gave a body to
the soul of some of Shakespeare's greatest conceptions, and she gave
soul and body both to many works of inferior origin. There is no
likelihood that we shall ever see again such a creation as her Meg
Merrilies. Her genius could embody the sublime, the beautiful, the
terrible, and with all this the humorous; and it was saturated with
goodness. If the love of beauty was intensified by the influence of her
art, virtue was also strengthened by the force of her example and the
inherent dignity of her nature.
XIV.
ON THE DEATH OF LAWRENCE BARRETT.
[Obiit March 20, 1891.]
The death of Lawrence Barrett was the disappearance of one of the
noblest figures of the modern stage. During the whole of his career, in
a public life of thirty-five years, he was steadily and continuously
impelled by a pure and fine ambition and the objects that he sought to
accomplish were always the worthiest and the best. His devotion to the
dramatic art was a passionate devotion, and in an equal degree he was
devoted to a high ideal of personal conduct. Doctrines of expediency
never influenced him and indeed were never considered by him. He had
early fixed his eyes on the dramatic sceptre. He knew that it never
could be gained except by the greatest and brightest of artistic
achievements, and to them accordingly he consecrated his life. Whenever
and wherever he appeared the community was impressed with a sense of
intellectual character, moral worth, and individual dignity. Many other
dramatic efforts might be trivial. Those of Lawrence Barrett were always
felt to be important. Most of the plays with which his name is
identified are among the greatest plays in our language, and the spirit
in which he treated them was that of exalted scholarship, austere
reverence, and perfect refinement. He was profoundly true to all that is
noble and beautiful, and because he was true the world of art everywhere
recognised him as the image of fidelity and gave to him the high tribute
of its unwavering homage. His coming was always a signal to arouse the
mind. His mental vitality, which was very great, impressed even
unsympathetic beholders with a sense of fiery thought struggling in its
fetters of mortality and almost shattering and consuming the frail
temple of its human life. His stately head, silvered with graying hair,
his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, his thin
visage pallid with study and pain, his form of grace and his voice of
sonorous eloquence and solemn music (in compass, variety, and sweetness
one of the few great voices of the current dramatic generation), his
tremendous earnestness, his superb bearing, and his invariable authority
and distinction--all those attributes united to announce a ruler and
leader in the realm of the intellect. The exceeding tumult of his spirit
enhanced the effect of this mordant personality. The same sleepless
energy that inspired Loyola and Lanfranc burned in the bosom of this
modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his
character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied
his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great
prelate--whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities
he was nearly allied. In losing Lawrence Barrett the American stage lost
the one man who served it with an apostle's zeal because he loved it
with an apostle's love.
The essential attributes that Lawrence Barrett did not possess were
enchantment for the public and adequate and philosophic patience for
himself. He gained, indeed, a great amount of public favour, and,--with
reference to an indisputable lack of universal sympathy and
enthusiasm,--he was learning to regard that as a natural consequence of
his character which formerly he had resented as the injustice of the
world. Men and women of austere mind do not fascinate their
fellow-creatures. They impress by their strangeness. They awe by their
majesty. They predominate by their power. But they do not involuntarily
entice. Lawrence Barrett,--although full of kindness and gentleness,
and, to those who knew him well, one of the most affectionate and
lovable of men,--was essentially a man of austere intellect; and his
experience was according to his nature. To some persons the world gives
everything, without being asked to give at all. To others it gives only
what it must, and that with a kind of icy reluctance that often makes
the gift a bitter one. Lawrence Barrett, who rose from an obscure and
humble position,--without fortune, without friends, without favouring
circumstances, without education, without help save that of his talents
and his will,--was for a long time met with indifference, or frigid
obstruction, or impatient disparagement. He gained nothing without
battle. He had to make his way by his strength. His progress involved
continual effort and his course was attended with continual controversy
and strife. When at last it had to be conceded that he was a great
actor, the concession was, in many quarters, grudgingly made. Even then
detraction steadily followed him, and its voice--though impotent and
immeasurably trivial--has not yet died away. There came a time when his
worth was widely recognised, and from that moment onward he had much
prosperity, and his nature expanded and grew calmer, sweeter, and
brighter under its influence. But the habit of warfare had got into his
acting, and more or less it remained there to the last. The assertive
quality, indeed, had long since begun to die away. The volume of
needless emphasis was growing less and less. Few performances on the
contemporary stage are commensurate with his embodiments of Harebell and
Gringoire, in softness, simplicity, poetic charm, and the gentle
tranquillity that is the repose of a self-centred soul. But his deep and
burning desire to be understood, his anxiety lest his effects should not
be appreciated, his inveterate purpose of conquest,--that overwhelming
solicitude of ambition often led him to insist upon his points, to
over-elaborate and enforce them, and in that way his art to some extent
defeated itself by the excess of its eager zeal. The spirit of beauty
that the human race pursues is the spirit that is typified in Emerson's
poem of _Forerunners_--the elusive spirit that all men feel and no man
understands. This truth, undiscerned by him at first, had become the
conviction of his riper years; and if his life had been prolonged the
autumn of his professional career would have been gentle, serene, and
full of tranquil loveliness.