The Actor and the Journalist--The Newspaper and the State--Joseph
Jefferson--His Personal and Artistic Career--Modest Character and
Religious Belief
I
The journalist and the player have some things in common. Each turns night
into day. I have known rather intimately all the eminent English-speaking
actors of my time from Henry Irving and Charles Wyndham to Edwin Booth and
Joseph Jefferson, from Charlotte Cushman to Helena Modjeska. No people are
quite so interesting as stage people.
During nearly fifty years my life and the life of Joseph Jefferson ran
close upon parallel lines. He was eleven years my senior; but after
the desultory acquaintance of a man and a boy we came together under
circumstances which obliterated the disparity of age and established
between us a lasting bond of affection. His wife, Margaret, had died, and
he was passing through Washington with the little brood of children she had
left him.
It made the saddest spectacle I had ever seen. As I recall it after more
than sixty years, the scene of silent grief, of unutterable helplessness,
has still a haunting power over me, the oldest lad not eight years of age,
the youngest a girl baby in arms, the young father aghast before the sudden
tragedy which had come upon him. There must have been something in my
sympathy which drew him toward me, for on his return a few months later
he sought me out and we fell into the easy intercourse of established
relations.
I was recovering from an illness, and every day he would come and read by
my bedside. I had not then lost the action of one of my hands, putting an
end to a course of musical study I had hoped to develop into a career. He
was infinitely fond of music and sufficiently familiar with the old masters
to understand and enjoy them. He was an artist through and through,
possessing a sweet nor yet an uncultivated voice--a blend between a low
tenor and a high baritone--I was almost about to write a "contralto," it
was so soft and liquid. Its tones in speech retained to the last their
charm. Who that heard them shall ever forget them?
Early in 1861 my friend Jefferson came to me and said: "There is going to
be a war of the sections. I am not a warrior. I am neither a Northerner
nor a Southerner. I cannot bring myself to engage in bloodshed, or to take
sides. I have near and dear ones North and South. I am going away and I
shall stay away until the storm blows over. It may seem to you unpatriotic,
and it is, I know, unheroic. I am not a hero; I am, I hope, an artist. My
world is the world of art, and I must be true to that; it is my patriotism,
my religion. I can do no manner of good here, and I am going away."