"I don't care! She's spoilt my nice book!"
I am glad to say that when the little girl understood, she forgave me.
Still, it was dreadful of me and I did feel ashamed at the time.
_Joseph Jefferson_
In November, 1901, I wrote in my diary: "Philadelphia. Supper at
Henry's. Jefferson there, sweeter and more interesting than ever--and
younger."
Dear Joe Jefferson--actor, painter, courteous gentleman, _profound_
student of Shakespeare! When the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was
raging in America (it really _did_ rage there!) Jefferson wrote the most
delicious doggerel about it. He ridiculed, and his ridicule killed the
Bacon enthusiasts all the more dead because it was barbed with
erudition.
He said that when I first came into the box to see him as "Rip," he
thought I did not like him, because I fidgetted and rustled and moved my
place, as is my wicked way. "But I'll get her, and I'll hold her," he
said to himself. I was held indeed--enthralled!
_The Night of the Great Blizzard_
Our first American tours were in 1883-1884; the third was in 1887-88,
the year of the great blizzard. We were playing in New York when the
storm began, and Henry came to fetch us at half-past ten in the morning.
His hotel was near the theatre where we were to play at night. He said
the weather was stormy, and we had better make for his hotel while
there was time. The German actor, Ludwig Barnay, was to open in New
York that night, but the blizzard affected his nerves to such an extent
that he did not appear at all and returned to Germany directly the
weather improved!
Most of the theatres closed for three days, but we remained open,
although there was a famine in the town and the streets were impassable.
The cold was intense. Henry sent Walter out to buy some violets for
Barnay, and when he brought them in to the dressing-room--he had only
carried them a few yards--they were frozen so hard that they could have
been chipped with a hammer.
We rang up on "Faust" three-quarters of an hour late. This was not bad,
considering all things. Although the house was sold out, there was
hardly any audience, and only a harp and two violins in the orchestra.
But discipline was so strong in the Lyceum Company that every member of
it reached the theatre by eight o'clock, although some of them had had
to walk from Brooklyn Bridge. The Mayor of New York and his daughter
managed to reach their box somehow. Then we thought it was time to
begin. A few members of Daly's company, including John Drew, came in,
and a few friends. It was the oddest, sparsest audience! But the
enthusiasm was terrific.
Five years went by before we visited America again. Five years in a
country of rapid changes is a long time, long enough for friends to
forget. But they didn't forget. This time we made new friends, too, in
the Far West. We went to San Francisco, among other places. We attended
part of a performance at the Chinese theatre. Oh, those rows of
impenetrable faces gazing at the stage with their long, shining,
inexpressive eyes. What a look of the everlasting the Chinese have! "We
have been before you--we shall be after you," they seem to say.
The chief incident of the fifth American tour was our production at
Chicago of Laurence Irving's one-act play "Godefroi and Yolande." I
regard that little play as an inspiration. By instinct the young author
did everything right.
In 1900-1 I was ill and hated the parts I was playing in America. The
Lyceum was not what it had been. Everything was changed.
In 1907--only the other day--I toured in America for the first time on
my own account--playing modern plays for the first time. I made new
friends and found my old ones still faithful.
But this tour was chiefly momentous to me because at Pittsburg I was
married for the third time, and married to an American, Mr. James
Usselman of Indiana, who acts under the name of James Carew.