north-east wind is blowing, that the Lake is of a light green,
except a blue strip in the far north. The eastern horizon joins
the water by an almost indefinable white line, as if they had been
welded together, but all is vague and indistinct and vailed in a haze
into which a vessel here and there melts like a phantom. There is
hardly wind enough to form waves, but there is regular motion of the
water--as regular as the rhythm of music--and in the distance you
will see, now and then, a wave breaking white upon the shore, like
the white hand of some spent swimmer, clutching at the sand in mortal
agony. In the eastern sky, the lower strata of clouds are ragged
and angular in shape, and dark gray in color, and only afford you
glimpses, here and there, of the clouds above them, which are round
and billowy, and would be white but for the roseate glow with which
they are suffused by the sun, which is sinking into an angry bank
of clouds, such as Dore loves to paint, like a great crimson stain
upon the sky. Wherever the tips of these upper clouds appear, they
cast a faint reflection upon the green of the water, not producing
a duplicate of color, but bronzing the water in spots, which are
continually changing. Sometimes, for a moment, the lower clouds part,
and reveal a golden glory behind them, which, for only an instant,
illumines the water beneath. This is peculiarly the dreamy feeling
of the Lake. There is a dreamy tone in the wash of the waves. The
rhythm is perfectly uniform, and the key is in accord with melancholy
and tenderness. The flow is peaceful, only now and then you may hear
a tone in the hazy distance, a little louder than the rest, like a
drum-beat in a far-off orchestra. You may be so near the Lake that
the foam of the spent waves will crawl over your feet, and their
sound will still be dreamy, and apparently in the distance. It is
like nothing so much as the voices and the faces which come to you in
the night out of the Past. Its cadence is mournful and yet beautiful.
It is then the time to be alone, to cast yourself upon the sand
and listen to the stories of these waves--stories of the sailors
who sailed the Spanish main, and never came home again--of vessels
which went down, and left no one to tell the tale--of phantom ships,
which suddenly loom up before affrighted sailors in the darkness--of
storms, driving their black chariots over the deep--of Mermaids,
and Sirens, and Undines, luring on their victims to destruction,
with their white bosoms and voluptuous melodies--of the beautiful
fabrics you reared years ago--all gone, as the wave washes out the
print of your feet in the sands. And, as you lie there and dream,
the moon, yet silvery-gray in the early evening, passes behind a
cloud. The distant city is hidden by a curtain of gray mist--hidden,
with all its men and women, toiling, struggling, loving, cursing and
praying--hidden, with all its squat misery in the alleys and by-ways,
and with all its splendid wretchedness in the high places. All sounds
die away. The cruel mist creeps over the water, and you are alone
upon the sand, with only the melancholy moaning of the immemorial
waves, which will moan thus when you and I are gone--which have
moaned thus since the youth of the years.
Have you seen the Lake when thunder-storms are brooding all around
the horizon, and the wrath of the tempest is sweeping up from the
west, where, in thundering caverns, the Titans are forging the bolts?
You may, now and then, hear the clang of their hammers, and see the
fire from their anvils, what time gigantic masses of clouds, assuming
fantastic shapes and dark forms of demons, come tearing their way
to the zenith. In the east all is quiet, and the fleecy, cumulous
clouds, towering up like peaks of snow, and illuminated by the
waning sun, send straight pink shafts of light across the dull, blue
surface of the Lake. In the distance, this blue is changed to the
most delicate green. Watch it, and in a moment it will change to blue
again, and then again to green; and the shafts of pink light on its
surface will come and go like the blushes upon a girl's cheek. Never
mind the near approach of the storm. You cannot afford to lose the
Lake yet. As the black clouds gather in the east, the blues and the
greens disappear, and the Lake turns to black, reflecting the wrath
of the clouds above. The darts of the lightning descend into it, and
the crash of the thunder borne over its surface is almost deafening.
The sound of the waves dies away. Long, smooth, irregular patches
appear, looking as if the air had died above them. A few heavy spats
of rain strike here and there. A dense mist begins to settle down.
Faster and faster the rain-drops fall, and now the mad gods are all
abroad; and in the mists there, the lightnings are rending the bosom
of the Lake. But, in the midst of all the din, if you only listen
acutely, you will hear the steady patter of the rain in the water--a
soothing, tranquilizing sound; and in some dense forest, if you were
lying upon the needle-covered ground, you would hear exactly the same
sound made by the wind in the tree-tops. And now, if you could sleep
in some old-fashioned attic, without a care or a trouble in your
breast, where you could hear the rain playing its merry fantasie on
the shingles, you would sleep the most refreshing of all sleeps.
And then there are days when the heavens are cloudless, the
temperature cool, and the breeze blowing briskly and steadily from
the north, that the Lake is a very kaleidoscope of colors, and puts
on a habit it has borrowed from fairy-land. Start with the extreme
eastern limit, and you may trace nearly all the primitive colors of
the prism, with their variations at intervals--blue, light green,
grass-green, and the green of the waters in which the icebergs float,
light and dark bronze, silvery gray, pink and purple, and a dull,
dead gray color, close by you. Let but the breeze be strong enough
to comb the crest of the waves into foam, and a more beautiful sight
it would be impossible to conceive. These colors are not fixed. The
smallest cloud which passes over the sky will agitate and intermingle
them in a very chaos of beauty, but as the cloud disappears they will
return to their original order. Sometimes a larger cloud will hurry
across the sky, fleeing from its shadow, which skims over the lake,
as you have seen the same shadows skim over a meadow, and this shadow
will absorb color after color and leave a new one in its place, so
that the whole of them will often be reversed. In such seasons, the
lake is a perfect picture of life, with its phases of trouble, of
mirth, of youthful vivacity, of ambition, of hope, and of despair.
Your life and my life are there, with all the dreams we have dreamed
and the loves we have loved--with the bubbles which fancy has blown,
and the castles we have built in the air--with the ties which have
been formed and been broken--with the fates which have brought you
and me together, like ships upon the ocean, to meet for a minute
and hold converse, and then sail again and apart into the opposite
horizons; and yet always teaching the lesson that, in the darkest
moments, there is compensation in the great beauty and blessing of
nature, and that the Great Mother, who always clothes every material
wreck with loveliness, and makes it beautiful and sacred to the eye,
can also bring balm to every wrecked life, if we only approach her
with loving hearts and outstretched arms.
There is another aspect of the Lake, which I hope you will never see.
It is when the air is sultry and heavy with moisture; when a chill,
penetrating wind has settled down upon it, as in the late falls; when
you can see only a stone's throw from the shore; when the water is
of a dull, milky color, and its wash against the sand is sullen and
despondent, and there is not a pleasant sound or sight. The Lake then
is suicidal in its tendencies, and is deliberately inviting you or
Atropos to sever the thread in your web of life. Keep away from the
Lake at such times, for it is a very monster, and you can have no
good thoughts in its presence.
August 1, 1868.
_RIP VAN WINKLE._
In this world of amusement in which we dwell, palpably the finest
piece of dramatic art is the "Rip Van Winkle" of Mr. Joseph
Jefferson. We are accustomed to compare the personations of other
actors. We establish degrees of merit in the efforts of Booth, Adams,
Couldock, and Forrest, in tragedy, and Warren, Hackett, Owens, and
Brougham in comedy. But when we come to Mr. Jefferson's "Rip,"
comparisons cease. It stands by itself, as sharply defined, as
superbly drawn, as the Venus di Medici in statuary, one of Raphael's
cartoons in painting, or Jenny Lind's Bird Song in music; and, if we
ransack the records of the stage, we find nothing to which we can
compare it.
For the reason that his personation belongs to an entirely new
school. It is the commencement of that dramatic era which Shakspeare
foreshadowed in his advice to the players. It is the dissolution
of that system against which Charles Lamb and Addison wrote so
powerfully in "Elia" and the "Spectator." I verily believe if
Charles Lamb had seen Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle," although he was
denouncing such great artists as Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, he would
never have written that essay on the plays of Shakspeare; and that,
if Addison had seen it, the "Spectator" would have been minus some of
those sketchy papers on the playhouses. I believe that gentle soul,
Charles Lamb, would have taken his sister to see "Rip," and that they
would have talked to each other as no two ever talked before; that
great-hearted Addison would have taken off his hat and made his best
bow to him; that watery Sterne would have shed a Niagara of tears
over the simple narrative, and Steele would have gone and got drunk,
out of sheer inability to do justice to the subject in any other way.
Mr. Jefferson's personation is totally unlike anything on the
modern stage. Matilda Heron's "Camille," in her younger days,
approximated to it somewhat, but at present there is nothing that
resembles it on the stage. Mr. Jefferson has quietly ignored all
the rules, regulations and precedents of the stage. The stereotyped
stage-walk--a sort of comico-heroic strut, which has been pressed
into service for all sorts of characters, from "Harlequin" to
"Hamlet;" the stage gestures; the stage attitudes, which "Mrs.
Toodles," curtain-lecturing her intoxicated spouse, and "Lucrezia
Borgia," shielding "Genarro" from the "Duke," both assume; the
rolling of the eyes in a fine frenzy; the mouthing of phrases in a
set manner, to catch the praise of the groundlings; the hackneyed
entrances and exits; the rant, and the making of points, are all
foreign to Mr. Jefferson. With him, the stage is merely an accident
and no more essential to his personation than it was to Irving's
conception.
This school of acting which Mr. Jefferson has adopted is the very
highest form of dramatic art. In it, he realizes the truth of
the old adage, that it is the province of art to conceal art. _He
completely identifies himself with the character._ That is the secret
of his success--of his potent sway over the emotions of his auditors.
It is this faculty which enables him so to blend humor with pathos
that smiles follow tears in as quick succession as light follows
shadow over a field on a summer afternoon. It is, perhaps, impossible
for any person who has seen Booth to form any original conception
of Hamlet. He invariably connects Hamlet with Booth, and the result
is a theatrical Hamlet; and the poor Ghost always walks into our
memories with a theatrical stride, and smells of the calcium. So with
Couldock's "Luke Fielding," Charlotte Cushman's "Meg Merrilies,"
Forrest's "Coriolanus," or Burton's "Toodles." All these personations
were unusually fine, but the actors could not always merge themselves
in the characters, because there was always the partition of
theatrical necessities and precedents in the way. This is not the
case with Mr. Jefferson. We do not connect "Rip Van Winkle" with
Jefferson, but Jefferson with "Rip Van Winkle." The transformation
is complete. He acts, talks, walks, laughs, rejoices and mourns
just as "Rip Van Winkle" would have done--just as any human being
would have done in "Rip Van Winkle's" place. In looking at this
personation--and I own to having laughed and cried over it many
times--I never think of Jefferson. I never think of his art. I never
get "enthused" enough even to applaud, for I should never think of
applauding "Rip," were he alive and walking to-day the streets of the
village of Falling Waters. To me, there is no Jefferson on the stage,
but the magnificent creation of Irving, moving before me. And all
this is done without the show of art. Mr. Jefferson never talks above
the ordinary conversational tone of voice, uses only a few gestures,
and those of the simplest description, attempts no tricks of facial
expression, and makes less fuss than the veriest supernumerary on
the stage; and yet I question whether any living artist has such an
instantaneous command of the smiles and tears of an audience as he.
In fact, I confess I should be afraid of that man or woman who was
not affected by this personation. It has been my good or bad luck,
as the case may be, for many years past to have written on every
actor and actress who have come to this city, and to have witnessed
thousands of dramatic performances. Constant dropping of water wears
away the rock, and I confess until I saw Mr. Jefferson, I have looked
upon stage murders and all sorts of villainies with a large degree of
composure; have even smiled at the lachrymose Mrs. Haller, beloved
of young women, and have studied with all my might to discover the
fun in the stage situation at which the audience was laughing; and
instances are on record where I have slept the sleep of the just
all through a five-act tragedy, overrunning with murders, suicides,
rapes, burglaries, divorces and _crim. con._ enough to have started
a second Boston in business. And when I first went to see Mr.
Jefferson, I went all calloused with dramatic labor. But if that man
didn't have me laughing and crying alternately the whole evening,
then I'm a sinner.
The entire personation is so complete and individualized that it is
very difficult to select any particular scene as better than others,
for Mr. Jefferson is so thorough an artist that he neglects not
even the smallest detail. But there are two or three scenes which
seem to me to stand out more prominently than the rest. One in
particular is the episode where he is ordered to leave the house of
his wife. Most actors would have torn a passion to tatters at this
point, ranted and rushed round the stage, delivered mock heroics and
dashed off in an ecstasy of blue fire with their arms flourished in
the air, utterly forgetful of unities or proprieties. How different,
Jefferson! He is sitting upon a chair, partially turned from the
audience, in a maudlin state. His wife orders him to leave her house
and never return. Perhaps she has ordered him that way before, for
he pays little heed to it. She repeats the order in a louder tone
of voice, but still he pays no heed to it. He has stretched out his
arm and raised his head as if to speak, when she again issues her
order in an unmistakable manner. It strikes him like a thunder-bolt.
Without changing the position of a limb, he sits as if that instant
petrified. He is dumb with amazement, as the terrible truth gradually
becomes clear in his muddled brains. The silence, the motionlessness,
the fixed look of the face, are literally terrible. And when he rises
slowly, quietly tells the wife he shall never return--for he has been
driven away--stoops and kisses the little one, and so easily passes
from the doorstep to the outer darkness, that it might have been the
flitting of a shadow, you inevitably draw a breath of relief that the
scene is over, and indulge in a genuine feeling of the most hearty
sympathy for this good-for-nothing, lazy, drunken, good-hearted
vagabond.
Equally, can there be anything more affecting than the scene when,
after his sleep, he returns to his native village to find that
no one remembers him? Or anything more sadly eloquent than the
simple phrase, "Are we, then, so soon forgotten when we are gone?"
pronounced so simply and quietly, and with such a gentle vein of
sadness running through it? This appeal, which any other actor would
have thrust into the face of his audience as the place for "a point,"
Mr. Jefferson delivers so simply that you hardly at first catch
the full force of its meaning, or become aware how much of life is
summed up in the few simple words. It is a page out of real life,
only another proof of the folly of supposing that you or I are at all
essential to the rest of the world.
Mr. Jefferson's make up is very remarkable. He must have studied
the character with remarkable earnestness and closeness to draw it
so perfectly. Before the sleep, his face is a thorough picture of
the good-for-nothing vagabond who exists in every village and is
remarkable for nothing but his big heart, which draws to him all the
children and dogs of the neighborhood--a sure proof of the humanity
of the dog. In general I think that big dogs and small children are
the most perfect instances of thorough humanity in the world. A man
who has a big heart will always be recognized by a dog quicker than
by the two-legged humans. Equally, dogs and small children always
recognize each other. After the sleep, the picture of the old man is
just as perfect. In every detail of age--the pains in the joints, the
shambling gait, the wrinkled face and the childish expression--he
is the counterpart of old age. In neither phase of the character
does he ever forget himself. He is always "Rip Van Winkle." His
forgetfulness of the audience amounts almost to impudence, and he is
equally forgetful of the actors. Off the stage, Jefferson is the most
genial of men; like Yorick, full of jest and humor. On the stage, he
never forgets that he is playing a character. He is "Rip Van Winkle"
in front of the audience, behind the scenes, in the dressing room,
and in the _entr' actes_ even. He never lets himself down for an
instant from the necessities of the _role_ until the curtain falls on
the last act. He believes that an actor can never become too familiar
with a part, never study it too much, and the result is that he plays
just as conscientiously now, as he did when he commenced, and is
constantly making the personation better.
Another singular feature of Mr. Jefferson's acting, is, that he not
only makes "Rip Van Winkle" an actual living personage, but the dog
"Snyder" also. Although "Snyder" never puts in an appearance upon the
stage, he is as important a _dramatis persona_ as any on the stage.
I think I have a perfect conception of that dog "Snyder"--a long,
lank, shaggy, ill favored, yellow cur, loving "Rip" with all his
heart, hating "Mrs. Rip," a sworn friend of all the children in the
village, one ear bitten off in an unpleasantness with "Nick Vedder's"
mean bull dog, but with a big heart after all in his carcass, and a
dog who would always take the part of a small dog in a quarrel with a
bigger one. Jefferson succeeds in making "Snyder" an actual canine,
although he is never visible to the eye; and when "Snyder" goes
rattling down the hill, scared out of his senses by Hendrick Hudson's
phantom crew, I acknowledge to a feeling of sadness for the poor
beast who is "Rip's" only friend.
Although Mr. Jefferson never makes a point of theatrical attitudes
for mere effect, some of his poses are remarkably beautiful and
artistic, especially that one as he stands shading his eyes with his
hands, looking with amazement at the village of Falling Waters, after
waking up from his sleep; also the careless way in which he sits upon
the table in the first act, and the peculiar attitude in the chair
when he is ordered from the house, to which I have already alluded.
They are just such attitudes as a painter would choose to paint, or
a sculptor to chisel. They are thoroughly artistic, and much of this
is undoubtedly due to the fact that Mr. Jefferson has very excellent
talent in, and knowledge of, the sculptor's art. Had he followed it
as a profession he would undoubtedly have achieved an eminence quite
as elevated as that which he enjoys in the dramatic world.
If I have devoted considerable of this letter's space to Mr.
Jefferson, it is because his "Rip Van Winkle" is a production of
art worthy more than passing notice, in the presence of which, the
gauze and tinsel of the spectacular drama seem very tawdry, and mock
heroics of the sensational and romantic schools of action very false.
He stands the only embodiment of the natural school of action--the
only true school. Who will be the next to follow him, and assist to
reform and restore the stage to its proper place as a great educator
of the people and exponent of art?
September 5, 1868.
_AN AUTUMN REVERIE._
It seems only a little handful of days ago that I was writing you
of the note of the little blue trumpeter, announcing from the bare
boughs the advent of Spring, and now the Autumn is here. And holding
the days in our hands like grains of sand, there was now and then a
golden one which you and I would have kept; but, alas! they, too,
slipped through our powerless fingers, and the gold in the sand was
but a dream within a dream.
I told Mignon the Fall was here, for our trees have commenced to lose
their yellowing leaves, and show here and there in their boughs,
hectic flushes, and harbingers of speedy dissolution.
But Mignon said that the flowers were still blossoming brightly in
the garden, and that there was some happiness yet.
But I replied: "It is only for a few days my dear. The great trees
are nearer the heart of nature and learn her secrets first. But
the flowers will soon feel the dying breath of the year, and,
smitten with the cruel arrows of the frost, will bow their heads in
recognition of the great mystery, and the dahlias, and the asters,
and the marigolds will strew the earth with the souvenirs of the
summer sunshine. Some of the shrubs, to be sure, will decorate
themselves with berries in a childish way, and the pines and
ever-greens, clad in sombre green, will stand moodily thinking of
their gay friends who have left them--bearing the winter's white
burden on their bent branches as the penalty of life in death,
condemned to live forever, like Ahasuerus, with the recollection of
numberless summers and companions--strong, firm and inflexible, to
bear the storms of winter, but without a leaf which may stir next
spring in glad recognition of the breezes and the birds coming back
again.
"The birds, too, have learned the mystery, and have flown, all save
the brown sparrow, and other sober, songless little fellows, who know
that they have no business here when the flowers are in bloom, and
little winged bunches of blue and crimson and gold, are filling all
the air with their trills and roulades. You may listen very earnestly
now, and you will only hear in the day a chirp from the cricket,
that little black undertaker of the insects, who tries to be very
cheerful, but only succeeds in being sad."
And I further said to Mignon: "These latter days of the year are
akin to music, which is only music when there runs through it a
vein of melancholy--a melancholy like Tennyson's 'tender grace of
a day that's dead'--not sorrow nor grief, but that indefinable
sadness which is to sorrow what the twilight is to the blackness
of darkness. But we will make these days the happiest, for believe
me, the chattering bobolink is not as happy as the sparrow, nor the
shrill, noisy, cicada as happy as the chirping cricket; and the
truest happiness will be found in those lives which are shadowed with
regrets, or veined with melancholy memories to which hope's tendrils
may cling."
September 19, 1868.
_THE BEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD._