inherited the laughing blue eyes and sunny disposition of his father,
but he had not his talent as an actor; he is said to have been best in
old men's parts. His taste, however, led him to scene-painting rather
than to acting; yet his skill in either direction was not enough to
win success, and, in spite of well-meant efforts, he lived and died a
poor man: ill luck pursuing him to the end of his days, when he was
carried off by yellow fever at Mobile in 1842, just as his
unprosperous skies were brightening a little. His son bears
affectionate witness to the upright character of the man and to his
indomitable cheerfulness in the most adverse circumstances. He spared
no pains in bringing up his children in good ways, and he was
earnestly seconded by his wife, a heroic figure in her humble sphere,
whose tact and courage not seldom saved the family bark when it was
drifting in shoal water. Mrs. Jefferson came of French parents, and
was a Mrs. Burke, a widow with one child, a son, when she married Mr.
Jefferson. Her son tells us that she had been one of the most
attractive stars in America, the leading prima donna of the country;
but she bore her changed fortune, as the wife of an unsuccessful actor
and manager, with no less dignity on the stage of real life, where no
applause was to be had but what came from those who loved her as
mother, wife, and friend.
This, then, was the family circle in which our Joseph Jefferson
passed his earliest years, the formative period of his life. There
were the kind-hearted, easy-going father, the practical, energetic
mother, a sister, and the half-brother, Charles Burke, whose
after-reputation as an actor lives in the pages of Jefferson's
autobiography enshrined in words of warm but judicious appreciation.
"Although only a half-brother," says Jefferson, "he seemed like a
father to me, and there was a deep and strange affection between us."
Nor must mention be forgotten of one other member of the family: Mary,
his foster-mother, as Jefferson affectionately calls her, "a faithful,
loving, truthful friend, rather than a servant, with no ambition or
thought for herself, living only for us, and totally unconscious of
her own existence."
Joseph Jefferson, the third of the name, and in whom the talent of his
grandfather was to reappear enriched with added graces of his own, was
born in Philadelphia in 1829. He tells us that his earliest
recollections are connected with a theatre in Washington. This was a
rickety, old, frame-building adjoining the house in which his father
lived as manager, the door at the end of the hall-way opening directly
upon the stage; and as a toddling little chap in a short frock he was
allowed full run of the place. Thus "behind the scenes" was his first
playground; and here, "in this huge and dusty toy-shop made for
children of a larger growth," he got his first experience. He was
early accustomed to face an audience; for, being the son of the
manager and almost living in the theatre, he was always pressed into
the service whenever a small child was wanted, and "often went on the
stage in long clothes as a property infant in groups of happy
peasantry." His first dim recollection of such a public appearance is
as the "child," in Kotzebue's play, "Pizarro," who is carried across
the bridge by Rolla. His next appearance was in a new entertainment,
called "Living Statues," where he struck attitudes as "Ajax Defying
the Lightning," or "The Dying Gladiator." At four years of age he made
a hit by accompanying T. D. Rice, the original "Jim Crow," as a
miniature copy of that once famous character, and the first money he
earned was the sum of $24 thrown upon the stage in silver from pit and
gallery, to reward his childish dancing and singing on that occasion.
Thus early wedded to the stage, Jefferson followed the fortunes of his
family, and led with them a wandering life for many years, growing, by
slow degrees and constant, varied practice, to the perfection of his
prime. In 1838 his father led the flock to Chicago, just then grown
from an Indian village to a thriving place of two thousand
inhabitants, where he was to join his brother in the management of a
new theatre, then building. Jefferson's account of the journey is a
striking picture, at once amusing and pathetic, of the changes that
have been wrought by fifty years. The real privations and hardships of
the trip are veiled in the actor's story by his quiet humor and his
disposition to see everything in a cheerful light. Always quizzing his
own youthful follies, he cannot conceal from us by any mischievous
anecdotes his essential goodness of nature, his merry helpfulness, his
unselfish devotion to the welfare of the others, or the pluck with
which he met the accidents of this itinerant life. From Chicago, where
their success was not brilliant, the family went by stage to
Springfield, where, by a singular chance, they were rescued from the
danger that threatened them in the closing of the theatre by a
municipal law trumped up in the interest of religious revivalists, by
the adroitness of a young lawyer, who proved to be none other than
Abraham Lincoln. In Memphis, when bad business had closed the theatre,
young Jefferson's pluck and ready wit saved the family purse from
absolute collapse. A city ordinance had been passed, requiring that
all carts, drays, and public vehicles should be numbered; and the boy,
hearing of this, called at the mayor's office, and, explaining the
situation that had obliged his father to exchange acting for
sign-painting, applied in his name for the contract for painting the
numbers--and obtained it! The new industry furnished father and son
with a month's work, and some jobs at sign-painting helped still
further to make life easier.
From Memphis the family went to Mobile, where they hoped to rest after
their long wanderings, and where it was also hoped the children,
Joseph and his sister, might be put to school. But the yellow fever
was raging in Mobile, and they had been in the city only a fortnight
when Mr. Jefferson was attacked by the disease and died. In Mobile,
too, the good Mary died, and Mrs. Jefferson was left alone to care for
herself and her children as she could. She had no longer a heart for
acting, and she decided to open a boarding-house for actors, while
Joseph and his sister earned a small stipend by variety work in the
theatre.
More years of hardship followed--the trio of mother and children
wandering over the country, south and west: in Mississippi and Mexico,
seeing life in all its phases of ill luck and disappointment, with
faint gleams of success here and there, but meeting all with a spirit
of such cheerful bravery as makes the darkest experience yield a
pleasure in the telling. Surely, it might soften the heart of the
sourest enemy of the stage to read the spirit in which this family met
the long-continued crosses of their professional life.
[Illustration: Joe Jefferson as Bob Acres.]
Joseph Jefferson tells the story of his career so modestly, that it is
hard to discover just when it was that success first began to turn a
smiling face upon his efforts. Yet it would seem as if, for himself,
the day broke when he created the part of Asa Trenchard in "Our
American Cousin." He says that up to 1858, when he acted that part, he
had been always more or less a "legitimate" actor, that is, one who
has his place with others in a stock company, and never thinks of
himself as an individual and single attraction--a star, as it is
called. While engaged with this part, it suddenly occurred to him that
in acting Asa Trenchard he had, for the first time in his life on the
stage, spoken a pathetic speech; up to that time all with him had been
pure comedy. Now he had found a part in which he could move his
audience to tears as well as smiles. This was to him a delightful
discovery, and he looked about for a new part in which he could repeat
the experiment. One day in summer, as he lay in the loft of a barn
reading in a book he well calls delightful, Pierre Irving's "Life and
Letters of Washington Irving," he learned that the great writer had
seen him act the part of Goldfinch, in Holcroft's "Road to Ruin," and
that he reminded him of his grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, "in look,
gesture, size, and make." Naturally pleased to find himself
remembered and written of by such a man, he lay musing on the
compliment, when the "Sketch Book" and the story of Rip van Winkle
came suddenly into his mind. "There was to me," he writes, "magic in
the sound of the name as I repeated it. Why was not this the very
character I wanted? An American story by an American author was surely
just the thing suited to an American actor."
There had been three or four plays founded on this story, but
Jefferson says that none of them were good. His father and his
half-brother had acted the part before him, but nothing that he
remembered gave him any hope that he could make a good play out of
existing material. He therefore went to work to construct a play for
himself, and his story of how he did it, told in two pages of his
book, and with the most unconscious air in the world, reveals the
whole secret of Jefferson's acting: its humor and pathos subtly
mingled, its deep humanity, its pure poetry--the assemblage of
qualities, in fine, that make it the most perfect as well as the most
original product of the American stage.
Yet the play, even in the form he gave it, did not satisfy him, nor
did it make the impression in America that he desired. It was not
until five years later that Dion Boucicault, in London, remade it for
Jefferson; and it was in that city it first saw the light in its new
form, September 5, 1865. It was at once successful, and had a run of
one hundred and seventy-five nights.
With his Asa Trenchard and his Rip van Winkle will ever be associated
in the loving memory of play-goers his Bob Acres in Sheridan's
"Rivals," thought by many to be his capital part--a personification
where all the foibles of the would-be man-of-the-world: his
self-conceit, his brag, his cowardice, are transformed into virtues
and captivate our hearts, dissolved in the brimming humor which yet
never overflows the just measure, so degenerating into farce.
Between the two productions of Rip van Winkle in New York and in
London, Jefferson had had many strange experiences. His wife died in
1861, and he broke up his household in New York, and leaving three of
his children at school in that city, he left home with his eldest son
and went to California. After acting in San Francisco, he sailed for
Australia, where he was warmly received; thence went to the other
British colonies in that region, touched on his return at Lima and
Callao and Panama, at which place he took a sailing-packet for London,
and after his great success in that city returned to America in 1866.
In 1867 he married, in Chicago, Miss Sarah Warren, and since that time
his life has flowed on in an even stream, happy in all its relations,
private and public, crowned with honors, not of a gaudy or brilliant
kind, but solid and enduring. His art is henceforth part and parcel of
the rich treasure of the American stage.
[Signature of the author.]
ADELINA PATTI
By FREDERICK F. BUFFEN
(BORN 1843)
[Illustration: Adelina Patti.]
A consensus of opinion places this distinguished artiste at the head
of all her compeers, for it may be truly said that she is the
brightest star which has dazzled the musical firmament during the past
half century, and, is still in the very zenith of her noonday
splendor.
Regardful of the transcendent beauty of her voice, enhanced as this is
by her other natural and attractive attributes, one might almost
believe that nightingales have surrounded the cradle presided over by
Euterpe, for never has bird sung so sweetly as the gifted subject of
my memoir, and while the Fates smiled on the birth of their favorite,
destined to become the unrivalled Queen of Song throughout the
civilized world, fanciful natures might conceive a poetical vision,
and behold Melpomene with her sad, grave eyes breathing into her the
spirit of tragedy, and Thalia, with her laughing smile, welcoming a
gifted disciple by whose genius her fire was to be rekindled in the
far future.
In the year 1861 there arrived in England a young singer who,
accompanied by her brother-in-law, took apartments in Norfolk Street,
Strand. The young lady, then only seventeen, sought Mr. Frederick Gye,
who was the lessee of the Royal Italian Opera, for his permission to
sing at his theatre, volunteering to do so _for nothing_. The offer
was at first absolutely declined, but subsequently the young artiste
succeeded, and made her first appearance on May 14, 1861, as Amina in
Bellini's opera of "La Sonnambula." Unheralded by any previous notice,
she was then totally unknown to the English public. Not a syllable had
reached that country of her antecedents or fame. I remember being
present on the occasion when this youthful cantatrice tripped lightly
on to the centre of the stage. Not a single hand was raised to greet
her, nor a sound of welcome extended to encourage the young artiste.
The audience of Covent Garden, usually reserved, except to
old-established favorites, seemed wrapped in more than their
conventional coldness on that particular evening. Ere long, however,
indeed before she had finished the opening aria, a change manifested
itself in the feelings of all present. The _habitues_ looked round in
astonishment, and people near me almost held their breath in
amazement. The second act followed, and to surprise quickly succeeded
delight, for when in the third act she threw all her vocal and
dramatic power into the melodious wailing of "_Ah non credea_," with
its brilliant sequel, "_Ah non giunge_," the enthusiasm of the
audience forgot all restriction, and burst into a spontaneous shout
of applause, the pent-up fervor of the assembly exploding in a ringing
cheer of acclamation rarely heard within the walls of the Royal
Italian Opera House. The heroine of the evening was Adelina Patti, who
thenceforward became the idol of the musical world. When I left the
theatre that evening, I became conscious that a course of fascination
had commenced of a most unwonted nature; one that neither time nor
change has modified, but which three decades have served only to
enhance and intensify.
At the conclusion of the performance, Mr. Gye went on to the stage
full of the excitement which prevailed in the theatre, and he
immediately concluded an engagement with Mlle. Patti on the terms
which had been previously agreed between them; these being that Mlle.
Patti was to receive at the rate of _L_150 a month for three years,
appearing twice each week during the season, or at the rate of about
_L_17 for each performance. Mr. Gye also offered her the sum of _L_200
if she would consent to sing exclusively at Covent Garden.
Patti repeated her performance of Amina eight times during the season,
and subsequently confirmed her success by her assumption of Lucia,
Violetta, Zerlina, Martha, and Rosina.
Having met with such unprecedented success throughout the London
season, Mlle. Patti was offered an engagement to sing at the Italian
Opera in Paris, where unusual curiosity was awakened concerning her.
Everyone is aware that the Parisians do not admit an artist to be a
celebrity until they have themselves acknowledged it. At Paris, after
the first act, the sensation was indescribable, musicians, ministers,
poets, and fashionable beauties all concurring in the general chorus
of acclamation; while the genial Auber, the composer of so many
delightful operas, and one of the greatest authorities, by his
experience and judgment, on all musical matters, was so enchanted that
he declared she had made him young again, and for several days he
could scarcely talk on any other subject but Adelina Patti and opera.
The conquest she had achieved with the English public was thus
triumphantly ratified by the exacting and critical members of musical
society in Paris.
Adele Juan Maria Patti, according to her own statement, which she
related to the Queen Isabella of Spain, was born at Madrid, on
February 19, 1843, and is the youngest daughter of two famous Italian
singers, Signor Salvatore Patti and Signora Patti-Barili. The signor
having placed her two sisters--Amalia, who subsequently married
Maurice Strakosch, the well-known impresario, and Carlotta, also a
vocalist of remarkable powers--in a boarding-school at Milan, went to
New York with his wife and daughter, where they remained until Adelina
reached sixteen.
Adelina Patti had barely reached the age of three years when she was
heard humming and singing the airs her mother sang.
The child's voice was naturally so flexible that executive
difficulties were always easy to her, and, before she had attained her
ninth year she could execute a prolonged shake with fluency. Her
father not being prosperous at the time, it became a necessity for
him to look for support to his little Adelina, who had shown such
remarkable promise; and, accordingly, she began to take singing
lessons--not, as is stated in Grove's "Dictionary of Musicians," from
Maurice Strakosch, but from a French lady, subsequently studying with
her step-brother, Ettore Barili, who was a famous baritone singer; but
nature had been so prodigal of her gifts to the child that she never
undertook a serious course of study, but, as she herself says, her
real master was "le bon Dieu." At a very early age she would sing and
play the part of Norma, and knew the whole of the words and music of
Rosina, the heroine of Rossini's immortal "Il Barbiere di Seviglia."
She sang at various concerts in different cities, until she reached
the age of twelve and a half, when her career was temporarily
interrupted, for Maurice Strakosch, observing the ruinous effect the
continuous strain upon her delicate voice was working, insisted upon
her discontinuing singing altogether, which advice she happily
followed. After this interval of two years' silence, and having
emerged from the wonder-child to the young artiste, she recommenced
her studies under M. Strakosch, and very soon afterward was engaged to
sing on a regular stage. Strakosch travelled with her and Gottschalk,
the pianist, through the United States, during the tour giving a
number of concerts with varying financial results; ultimately
returning to New York in 1859, where she appeared at a concert of
which _The New York Herald_ of November 28th gives the following
notice: "One of the most remarkable events in the operatic history of
the metropolis, or even of the world, has taken place during the last
week at the Academy of Music. Mlle. Patti sang the mad scene from
Lucia in such a superb manner as to stir up the audience to the
heartiest demonstrations of delight. The success of this artiste,
educated and reared among us, has made everybody talk of her." In the
following year, Strakosch considered the time had arrived for her to
appear in Europe. He accordingly brought his young protegee to
England, with the result I have already attempted to describe.
After singing in London and Paris, Patti was engaged to appear at
Berlin, Brussels, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, at which latter city
enthusiasm reached its climax, when on one occasion she was called
before the curtain no fewer than forty times. One who was with her
there during her last visit, writes: "Having been witness of Adelina's
many triumphs and of outbursts of enthusiasm bordering upon madness, I
did not think that greater demonstrations were possible. I was
profoundly mistaken, however, for the St. Petersburg public far
surpassed anything I have seen before. On Adelina's nights
extraordinary profits were made. Places for the gallery were sold for
ten roubles each, while stalls were quickly disposed of for a hundred
roubles each. The emperor and empress, with the whole court, took part
in the brilliant reception accorded to Patti, and flowers to the
amount of six thousand roubles were thrown at her."
That she has been literally worshipped from infancy upward is only a
natural consequence of her unsurpassable gifts, and nowhere has this
feeling manifested itself to such an extent as in Paris, and by none
more so than by the four famous composers, Auber, Meyerbeer, Rossini,
and Gounod. Auber, after hearing her sing Norina, in Donizetti's "Don
Pasquale," offered her a bouquet of roses from Normandy, and in answer
to her questions about her diamonds, said, "The diamonds you wear are
beautiful indeed, but those you place in our ears are a thousand times
better." Patti was the pet of the gifted composer of "Guillaume Tell,"
and no one was ever more welcome at Rossini's beautiful villa at
Passy, well known as the centre of a great musical and artistic
circle. The genial Italian died in November, 1868, and Patti paid her
last tribute of respect to his memory by taking part in the
performance of his immortal "Stabat Mater," which was given on the
occasion of Rossini's burial service.
Gounod, always enthusiastic in his remarks upon her, said, "that until
he heard Patti, all the Marguerites were Northern maidens, but Patti
was the only Southern Gretchen, and that from her all future singers
could learn what to do and avoid."
Although it is not the custom to bestow titles or honorific
distinctions upon artists of the fair sex, yet, in lieu of these, to
such an extent have presents been showered upon Adelina Patti, that
the jewels which she has been presented with from time to time are
said to be of the enormous value of _L_100,000. In the year 1885, when
she appeared in New York as Violetta, the diamonds she wore on that
occasion were estimated to be worth _L_60,000. One of the handsomest
lockets in her possession is a present from Her Majesty, Queen
Victoria, and a splendid solitaire ring which she is in the habit of
wearing was given to her by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Of no less
than twenty-three valuable bracelets, one of the most costly is that
presented by the committee of the Birmingham festival. A magnificent
comb, set with twenty-three large diamonds, is the gift of the Empress
Eugenie. The emperors of Germany, Austria, and Russia have vied with
each other in sending her jewels of the rarest value.
When singing in Italy, King Victor Emmanuel each night visited the
opera for the purpose of hearing her; and at Florence, where the
enthusiastic Italians applauded to the very echo, Mario, prince of
Italian tenors, leaned from his box to crown her with a laurel wreath.
A similar honor was bestowed upon her by the Duke of Alba at Madrid,
who presented her with a laurel crown. At the opera house in that city
numbers of bouquets and poems were to be seen whirling through the air
attached to the necks of birds. Queen Isabella of Spain, gave a large
amethyst brooch surrounded by forty enormous pearls, and the Jockey
Club of Paris presented her with twelve laurel crowns. The citizens of
San Francisco, upon the occasion of her last visit, presented her with
a five-pointed star formed of thirty large brilliants, and from the
Queen of Portugal she received a massive locket containing Her
Majesty's portrait, enriched by an enormous oriental pearl encrusted
in brilliants; and even at the present time scarcely a day passes
without the "Diva" receiving some acknowledgment in recognition of her
transcendent powers.
Adelina Patti's first husband was Henri, Marquis de Caux, an equerry
to the Empress Eugenie, from whom she was separated and subsequently
divorced; and, on June 10, 1886, she married Ernesto Nicolini, the
famous tenor singer.
In appearance, Patti is still youthful, and really seems destined to
rival the celebrated French beauty, Ninon de l'Enclos, who was so
beautiful at sixty that the grandsons of the men who loved her in her
youth adored her with equal ardor. Patti's figure is still slim and
rounded, and not a wrinkle as yet is to be seen on her cheeks, or a
line about her eyes, which are as clear and bright as ever, and which,
when she speaks to you, look you straight in the face with her old
winning smile.