collar and clothes in the order named; the face is generally left to the
last, though it should be the first. Nothing is so significant to me as
the eye, especially if it won’t look straight at me. Some men of great
mental vitality carry so much strength focalized in the eye that they
absolutely absorb. After an earnest conversation with such a person one
feels as if he had done a day’s work.
[Illustration: “You hesitate to say which dog is driving.”]
Men often suggest their business occupations by their walk. A dentist
displays the gait and bearing he has when he is coming to the side of
your chair to draw a tooth. A printer carries his arm forward, as if
feeling for the “case.” The preacher you can almost hear saying “Now we
will hear from Brother Hawkins.” The rôles of stage people stick to them
on the outside; the tragedian I rarely mistake; the “leading man” can’t
get rid of his descriptive look. The villain and the comedian you will
know apart, although, strange to say, their real characters are generally
diametrically opposite to the parts they play.
Faces are like looking-glasses; they generally reflect the treatment
they receive. Driving in the park, the wealthy lady wants Mrs. Jones to
know she is on deck—footman, mountings, dog-chairs and all. You can tell
her by the “Oh-have-I-to-go-through-with-this-again?” sort of look. The
young Wall Street plunger’s face says, “You thought I wouldn’t be here,
eh? well, here I am.” One man’s face tells you he is driving with his
sweetheart; the simple soft quietude of one woman’s face tells you that
she is beyond all else a mother.
As a rule, however,—and more’s the pity—a man’s real nature is obscured
when he is in pursuit of gain—absorbed in business, of any kind. You
would no more know him then, than you would your own house-cat when the
Mr. Hyde side of his nature crops out on your garden fence late at night.
Two boys were selling newspapers on a car; the larger in his eagerness
for business, pushed the other off. The little fellow fell, dropped
and scattered his papers and began to cry. Instantly the big boy was a
different being; he lost all thought of business, hurried to his disabled
rival, put the little chap on his feet and got his papers together for
him.
Some people have a magnetic manner that is both instant and quelling
in its effect. A certain woman enters a parlor, and for some subtle,
indefinable reason all eyes are fixed upon her. She may not be brilliant
yet she holds the winning hand; she bears on her face “a royal flush,”
yet let her go out and some inferior will say, “now that she’s gone, we
can talk about her.” Her quality is generally called instinctive, but
probably it was slowly acquired, for lives are like lead-pencils—it takes
long experience to sharpen them so they will leave a clear, keen line.
Sometimes this line appears in the profile, which I have often believed a
sure indication of character; so did Talleyrand.
Human expression is much affected by geographical location and custom.
An American in Japan asked his host’s servants for a bath, and was soon
informed it was ready. As he saw nothing to indicate its whereabouts, he
asked,
“Where?”
“Look out into the garden, sir.” He looked and saw his hostess and host,
the latter being governor of the town, awaiting him, beside an artificial
pool, and entirely nude. He was told that according to Japanese custom
the first plunge is the right of the guest, so there was no time to lose,
for the good people were shivering while they waited. The guest went out
looking like Adam before the downfall, and much embarrassed besides.
Stepping into the water he found it too hot and begged for cold water;
the Japanese take only warm baths, but at once the pool was emptied
and cold water was turned in. Meanwhile the lord and lady stood as
unadorned as Greek statues, this being Japanese custom while waiting at
a bath. Such a performance in New York would cause even Tammany to rally
around Dr. Parkhurst, but in Japan it “goes.” This gentle, courteous,
considerate family also expressed wonder at the straightness of their
guest’s legs, their own being bent through the habit of sitting on them
in tailor-fashion;—Japanese custom again.
When men do not act in accordance with their looks, some tradition or
custom of their ancestors or associates will account for it; a man is
generally a Democrat because his father was one, though it doesn’t
invariably follow that because “the governor” is a total abstainer the
“Martigny” is unknown to his son. Men unconsciously initiate other men
and their ways, because other men have done it. We dress in black when
some one dear to us dies.
Why, oh men of Athens, do we do these things? Should any dear relative of
mine die, I think I would go to the theatre that night,—if I felt like
it. I believe, with Mr. Beecher, in rose-colored funerals; not in those
which are gray and ghostly with ashes. There is too much convention about
these things. Why do we have all the formal funerals, when the only real
sentiment is attended to by the hearts of the bereaved? When the body is
dead it should be put away quietly, kindly, reverently, but without any
display of tears—and without the cards and flowers. They are the style,
you know, but—why cards? Why shouldn’t we send flowers anonymously, so as
to spare the real mourners the pains of writing an acknowledgment? Let us
steer clear of conventional sorrow when we can, for there is enough of
the real article to go round. If the night must come, sprinkle it with
stars; if there be the winding sheet of snow, tinkle sleigh bells over
it. The living want your love far more than the dead want your tears.
But, after all that can and must be said against it, human nature is
kind. Deceit, love of gain, suspicion and even violence are often mere
means of defense. Get through the joints of any one’s every-day armor and
reach the heart and the same sweet response of sympathy rings out, the
world over, in tones as mellow as old Trinity’s chimes on New Year’s eve,
and self-disguised people become genuine. For illustration, let an old
man or old woman enter a streetcar crowded with men whose faces are hard
with business cares; why every seat is at their disposal; there is the
genuineness of the people.
Yet if we were all and always genuine there would be no human nature to
study, for “Truth is simple, requiring neither study nor art.”
XXIII
SUNNY STAGE PEOPLE
“Joe” Jefferson.—I Take His Life.—His
Absent-Mindedness.—Jefferson and General Grant.—Nat Goodwin and
How He Helped Me Make Trouble.—Our Bicycling Mishap.—Goodwin
Pours Oil on Troubled Dramatic Waters Abroad.—George
Leslie.—Wilton Lackaye.—Burr McIntosh.—Miss Ada Rehan.
Every class of people on earth contains a pleasing number of cheery folk,
but far the greatest proportion is found in the theatrical profession.
Get together, if you can, all the companionable, hospitable souls of all
other classes and the stage people by themselves can make almost as good
a showing. When talking of them I never know where to begin or how to
stop, for they have loaded me with kindnesses, and began it when I was on
the extreme outer edge of a profession which they regarded as a mere side
show to their own.
Years ago when I was on the lecture platform I used to have some cloudy
hours, in spite of my efforts to be sunny, for, unlike theatrical people,
lecturers are usually their own only traveling companions, the railway
runs are long, the engagements are what the dramatic agents call “one
night stands,” so the stops are so short that the lecturer has no chance
to adapt his digestive apparatus to the surprises that unknown chefs
of unknown hotels delight in springing upon him. Years ago—as I said a
moment ago, I was thinking of all these miseries, as I left a train at
Utica on a snowy, stormy afternoon of the Christmas holidays, when I
specially longed to be with some friends in New York. I had four blank
hours before me, for I was not to appear on the platform until evening,
and it was one of the days when I was too tired to study or read and too
shaken up to sleep. Suddenly a negro porter in drawing-room car uniform
accosted me with:
“Mr. Wilder, Mr. Jefferson would like to see you.”
He pointed to the right, and there in the window of a parlor car,
sidetracked for the day only, stood “Joe” Jefferson. When I got into
the car and looked about me I saw the great “all-star” cast of “The
Rivals”—dear Mme. Ponisi, Mr. John Drew, Viola Allen, W. J. Florence,
Otis Skinner, Frederic Paulding, Frank Bangs, George Dunham, Elsie C.
Lombard (now Mrs. John T. Brush), and Mr. Jefferson’s sons, Tom, Charlie,
Joe, Jr., and Willie.
These good people were all seated around the dining-table of the special
car that I entered, and the cordial greeting I received, combined with
the contrast with “all-outdoors” and all else that had been depressing
me, made me the happiest man on the continent. I remained there two
or three hours, partly because, when manners suggested I should go, I
was forcibly detained. I told stories whenever I could, but I was more
entertained than entertaining. The time came when I was really obliged to
go and I said:
“Mr. Jefferson, I am booked here to-night at a church, and I must begin
my hour-long entertainment at seven o’clock.”
“Well, Marshall,” was the reply, “that will give you a chance to see our
performance, so we’ll reserve a box for you.”
I thanked him, seized my bag, hurried to a hotel and prepared for my
work. The church in which I appeared was crowded—packed, in fact; I
afterward learned that, although I was well and properly paid, there had
been no charge for admission. When I reached the theatre the house was
only half full, but the performance of “The Rivals” was of full size.
After the curtain fell I went to my hotel, packed my bag and hurried to
the station; I had almost two hours to spare, but there are times when
the station is more interesting than the hotel. Soon Charlie Jefferson
stumbled over me and took me back to the company’s car, where I had
supper with the entire cast.
My train was due about an hour after midnight and as I rose to make my
adieux, Mr. Jefferson looked kindly down on me, took me by the ear and
said, in his own inimitable plaintive manner,
[Illustration: “I Seized My Bag and Hurried to a Hotel.”]
“Friends, I want you to look at this little scoundrel. He comes up here
from New York; we entertain him; we dine him for three hours, he queers
our house, yet gets a big fee for his own work. We again entertain him
for hours by giving a “Rival” show, and yet he is not satisfied without
taking my life”—with this he handed me a beautifully bound book, “Memoirs
of Joseph Jefferson,” with the inscription in the fly-leaf, “Presented
to my little friend, Marshall P. Wilder.”
Everybody tells stories of Jefferson’s absent-mindedness, and he
sometimes tells them himself. I can venture to repeat two which he
himself has told. A friend of young Joe was making a long visit at Mr.
Jefferson’s house, so the comedian saw him at the table every day for a
fortnight. One evening young Joe took his friend to the Player’s Club,
in New York. The elder Jefferson was there, and on being reminded of the
young man’s presence he said cordially,
“My boy, I’m very glad to meet you. Why don’t you come up and see us? Do
come and make me a visit.”
But here is Jefferson’s star story against himself.
“I was in a down-town office building in New York, a few years ago, and
when I entered the elevator a short stout gentleman with a cigar in his
fingers spoke to me, saying,
“‘How do you do, Mr. Jefferson?’
“‘I am very glad to see you,’ I replied. He continued,
“‘You don’t know me, do you, Mr. Jefferson?’
“‘Well, really, you must pardon me, but your face is quite familiar but
your name has escaped my memory.’
“‘My name is Grant,’ he said quietly, with a twinkle in his eye. I got
out at the next floor; I was so afraid I might ask him if he had been in
the war.”
But there is no accounting for absent-mindedness. Charles Wyndham, the
English comedian, tells of an enthusiastic hunter, a man who thought of
nothing else. One morning his wife saw him leaving the house and asked:
“Where are you going?”
“Hunting,” was the reply.
“But where is your gun?”
“Bless me! I was sure I had left something behind.”
Regarding sunny-hearted actors, it is well to remember that they too
have troubles peculiarly their own, and one of the worst is to have an
impulse where only solemnity is in order. Nat Goodwin who has been making
audiences laugh for the last thirty years and I “took” a certain degree
of masonry together, and as all masons know, the proceedings were quite
as solemn as a church ceremony. Taking the degree with us was a worthy
German, whose hold on the English language was both weak and spasmodic,
as was manifested when it became our duty to repeat certain obligations,
sentence or sentences after an officer of the lodge. Both Goodwin and I
were fully impressed by the gravity of the occasion, yet we could not
help hearing that German; he had a dialectic utterance that would have
driven a Philadelphia vaudeville audience wild with delight and although
he caught the sense of all the responses required of us, he unconsciously
repeated many of them backward according to the constructive forms of the
German language.
Goodwin and I knew it would be an unpardonable breach of decorum, as
bad as laughing aloud in church in prayer time, if we gave way to our
feelings. I bit my lips till they bled. Nat, less conventional, tried
to stow his entire handkerchief in one side of his mouth, while he
voiced the responses from the other. We had almost got full control of
ourselves; the beautiful and impressive service was almost over, but
when the oath was required, that engaging German repeated it backward. I
yelled; Goodwin had a spasm—almost a fit.
To square ourselves, required a dinner for the entire lodge, and Goodwin
and I were the hosts.
This was not the only scrape I was in with Nat Goodwin. During the
bicycle craze of a few years ago, when wheels were as numerous at any
good road-house as free-ticket beggars at a theatre, Nat and I met at
the Casino, in McGowan’s Pass, Central Park, and he asked me to wait for
him, so that we might ride home together. We found many acquaintances
about the tables, remained till after dark and then started homeward
on bicycles without lamps. We had not expected to be out after sunset.
At that time the law was very stringent and rightly so, about lights on
bicycles, so I urged haste. Luckily I had many friends among the Park
Police; they knew I was not a “scorcher” and that I had proper respect
for my own life, so they kindly looked aside as we passed. But Nat—well
they probably had seen him on the stage again and again and been the
better for it, but actors don’t wear their stage clothes and wigs and
paint when they go bicycling, so none of the officers recognized him. At
a turn of the road we came upon a policeman who didn’t know me either,
and he shouted—“Here you fellows—stop!” I don’t believe I am a slippery
chap, but I slipped past that officer before he could touch my wheel, but
alas for poor Nat! he didn’t. I did not remain to hear the conversation,
for I knew I could not make any useful addition to it. Goodwin was to
play the next night in Boston, so I expected to see a “scare head”
story in the morning paper about his arrest. But fortunately while he
was reasoning with the policeman, a friend came along in a carriage and
succeeded in rescuing Nat and his bicycle from the clutches of the law.
I wish the carriage had been mine for Nat Goodwin has come to my
rescue more than once. I recall one of the (London) Green-room Club’s
annual dinners, which Nat and I attended. It was given at the Crystal
Palace; Mr. Bancroft—“Squire” Bancroft, “Squire” being his name and not
a title—Mr. Bancroft was in the chair. About the middle of the evening
a four cornered discussion between Sir Augustus Harris, Henry Arthur
Jones, Henry Pettit and Comyns-Carr, all good fellows, became so heated
that something had to be done to restore quiet, so Chairman Bancroft in a
suave, diplomatic manner of which he has a mastery, arose and said,
[Illustration: “I Slipped Past, But Alas for Poor Nat, He Didn’t!”]
“Gentlemen, we’re here to-night for a good time. Let’s quarrel
to-morrow. I take great pleasure in calling upon our American friend, Mr.
Marshall P. Wilder.”
I arose, but the excitement had got all around the tables; my job was too
big for me, and I could not raise a laugh.
As I dropped into my chair, the chairman called upon Mr. Goodwin. Nat got
up; he began gently to spray oil on the troubled waters; then he drizzled
it; showered it and finally poured it on by the tub full until he got the
entire assemblage laughing and saved the day. I mean the night.
Some actors produce sunshine, that is, laughter, by direct means, others
indirectly and by inversion. George Leslie and Wilton Lackaye are to
the point, for Leslie is an optimist and “jollier,” while Lackaye is
sarcastic. One day Lackaye said to Leslie: “The only difference between
you and me is that you bless people and things and I damn them—and
neither of us is on the level.”
At a dinner at the Lambs’ Club, Lackaye bet Burr McIntosh that Burr would
“make a break” nine times out of ten in whatever he did, and he added,
“McIntosh, I’ll let you select the times.” It was amusing to hear Lackaye
say, at the beginning of every dinner,—“Burr, that bet still goes.” I
believe it has not yet been decided.
But Lackaye is best when telling a joke against himself. While he was a
member of the Daly Company, he said:
“Miss Ada Rehan is a charming lady, and I’ve always considered her a
great comedienne—a creative one. At rehearsal one day we were standing
aside and chatting, the scene not being ours and I asked off-hand,
[Illustration: “How Long Would it Take You to Like Me?”]
“‘Are you a quick study?’
“‘Oh, yes, very,’ she replied. I looked at her doubtingly and asked,
“‘How long do you think it would take you to like me?’
“‘Present?—or absent?’ she asked. That floored me.”
XXIV
SUNSHINE IS IN DEMAND
Laughter Wanted Everywhere.—Dismal Efforts at Fun.—English
Humor.—The Difference Between Humor and Wit.— Composite
Merriment.—Carefully Studied “Impromptus.”—National Types of
Humor.—Some Queer Substitutes for the Real Article.—Humor is
Sometimes “Knocked Out,” Yet Mirth is Medicine and Laughter
Lengthens Life.
Perhaps the reason that the true jester is always sunny of heart and
manner is that his output is always in demand. Busy though his wits and
tongue may be, the demand always exceeds the supply. Laughter, like gold,
is never a drug on the market, and, as is true regarding gold, people
will endure some frightful substitutes rather than go without it. In
countries that have no real fun in them—and there are such countries,
the people insist on having laughter provided for them, even if they
must depend on the public executioner to do it. It is said that in some
Asiatic countries the people become wildly mirthful at the contortions of
a criminal’s body from which the head has just been severed; as to that,
there are solemn Americans—men who would think it sinful to smile at a
comedy, who almost split their sides with laughter over the floppings of
a beheaded chicken.
[Illustration: “Split their sides with laughter over the flapping of a
beheaded chicken.”]
As to that, I assert on my honor that I have seen Englishmen laugh over
the pages of _Punch_ and Frenchmen roused gleefully by a copy of _Le
Petit Journal Pour Rire_, though both papers seem as dismal, to the
average American, as an old-fashioned German on the doom of the finally
impenitent. According to competent judges the best thing that ever
appeared in _Punch_ was a poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, which
was not exactly a laughing matter. Yet the English are a good-natured
people, and full of laughter. Sometimes it takes them a lot of time
to get off a laugh, but, when the climax is really reached, the sound
resembles an Indian war-whoop tangled up in a thunder-storm. They don’t
take their pleasure sadly, for there are no more cheery-faced people
in the world, but their joke-makers are not successful when at work on
serious subjects. _Punch_ was never more popular than during the recent
war in South Africa, when the greatest and best nation in Europe was
being humiliated in plain sight of all the world by a few thousand Boers,
not one in ten of whom ever fired a shot. It made me almost wish I could
be an Englishman, just to see where the fun came in, for it was plain to
see that it came.
But, to get back to my subject, every healthy man likes to laugh;
therefore he likes whoever will make him laugh. Ella Wheeler Wilcox
voiced a great truth when she wrote “Laugh, and the world laughs with
you.” Men are so fond of laughing that they will endure nine wormy
chestnuts, badly served, if the tenth effort produces the genuine thing.
Much of the best fun comes by accident; that is, from incongruity. Two of
the few immortal figures of humorous literature—Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza, owe their existence to this double motif; in the knight, by
idealized chivalry being put down among pigs and kitchen wenches; while
the persistent coarseness and vulgarity of his squire are thrown into
juxtaposition with the chivalry and splendor of lords and ladies.
Every soul, man and woman, as well as many who are not, tries to provoke
smiles, but not one in a thousand succeeds; as for those who actually
create new humor, their name may be called on the fingers of two hands.
Almost all humorists, whether amateur or professional, get no further
than to evolve variations of old forms and climaxes, but what does it
matter so long as they compel a laugh? At this sort of thing Americans
beat the world. A cook who can serve a dozen different soups from one
kettle is a bungler when compared with the American joker.
Mark Twain says there are only seven original jokes in existence and he
ought to know, yet out of them has come an output that is incomparable,
in proportion, except to the evolution of the entire English language, by
varying the changes on the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.
The demand for laugh-making gives employment to many who might otherwise
be in far worse business. These men are the founts of inspiration for the
newspapers and the stage. The press and the footlights are ever clamoring
for new fun and numberless are the attempts to supply the demand and
incidentally utilize it in the form of cold cash. This stimulus has
produced the humorist pure and simple, the paragrapher, the comic
versifier, the compounder of burlesque and the maker of witty dialogue
to spice the works of serious playwrights. There is also the humorous
artist; when there isn’t, there can always be found half a dozen tipsters
who can’t draw a line unless they have a yardstick to help them but who
have enough funny concepts on tap (and for sale) to make fame and money
for all the artists in the land.
The clever impromptu you hear in a vaudeville sketch, the delicious eight
line dialogue you chuckle over in the morning paper, the flashing contest
of wit you enjoy in a society drama often represent the labor, not of one
but of a half dozen intellects trained to the elaboration of humorous
conceits.
If all the humor which appears daily in print and on the stage could
be clipped and put into scrap-books, it would fill forty large volumes
in a year, yet nine-tenths of it—yes nine hundred and ninety-nine one
thousandth would consist of variations of old facts, personalities,
situations and plays upon words.
[Illustration: “The latest _jeux d’esprit_ of Chinatown.”]