Transcriber’s Note
Obvious typos and punctuation errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in spelling have been retained.
The book advertisement at the end of the text uses a Unicode character
"White Right Pointing Index" (U+261E) for a right pointing hand. If
the font in use on the reader's device does not support it, this
character, ☞, may not display correctly.
Italic text in the original is represented by underscores surrounding
the _italic text_.
Small capitals in the original have been converted to ALLCAPS in the
text.
Superscripted letters are indicated by a preceding ^ character, and
multiple consecutive superscripted characters are surrounded by
brackets, for example, 1^{st}.
Descriptions of illustrations without captions have been added to the
text.
The Index lists an entry "Newton, Sir Isaac, quoted, 5-6." but this
quotation does not seem to exist at those pages or anywhere else in
the text.
The Index lists an entry "Volk, Leonard W., quoted, 237, 238." but this
quotation does not seem to exist at those pages. A reference to Volk
is found on pp. 249-250.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: EDWIN BOOTH]
[See page 38
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Portraits in Plaster
FROM
THE COLLECTION
OF
LAURENCE HUTTON
[Illustration of torch being passed hand to hand]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1894
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
EDWIN BOOTH _Frontispiece_
DANTE 7
TORQUATO TASSO 11
SHAKSPERE—Stratford Bust 15
SHAKSPERE—Kesselstadt Mask 17
DAVID GARRICK 21
EDMUND KEAN 25
JOHN M’CULLOUGH 29
DION BOUCICAULT 31
LAWRENCE BARRETT 35
HENRY EDWARDS 39
EDWIN BOOTH 43
MRS. SIDDONS 47
LOUISE OF PRUSSIA 51
MARIA F. MALIBRAN 55
FREDERICK SCHILLER 59
LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN—From Life 63
LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN—From Death 65
FELIX MENDELSSOHN 69
G. R. MIRABEAU 73
JEAN PAUL MARAT 77
MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE 79
SIR ISAAC NEWTON 83
BEN. CAUNT 87
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 89
THOMAS CHALMERS 93
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 97
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 101
JOHN KEATS 107
SAMUEL JOHNSON 111
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON 115
JEREMY BENTHAM 119
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 123
COUNT CAVOUR 127
PIUS IX 129
GIACOMO LEOPARDI 133
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY 135
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE 139
J. M. W. TURNER 143
HIRAM POWERS 147
LOUIS AGASSIZ—From Life 151
LOUIS AGASSIZ—From Death 153
CHARLES SUMNER 155
ANTONIO CANOVA 159
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN 161
THOMAS MOORE 165
EDMUND BURKE 169
JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 173
LORD PALMERSTON 175
BENJAMIN DISRAELI 179
JONATHAN SWIFT 183
SIR WALTER SCOTT 189
ROBERT BURNS 193
KING ROBERT THE BRUCE 195
NAPOLEON I 199
NAPOLEON III 203
OLIVER CROMWELL 207
HENRY IV. OF FRANCE 215
CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN 219
FREDERICK THE GREAT 223
U. S. GRANT 227
WILLIAM T. SHERMAN 231
GEORGE WASHINGTON 235
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 239
THOMAS PAINE 243
AARON BURR 247
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 251
DANIEL WEBSTER 255
HENRY CLAY 257
JOHN C. CALHOUN 259
LORD BROUGHAM 263
FLORIDA NEGRO BOY 266
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION.
The story of the beginning of my collection of masks is curious and
perhaps interesting. The half-dozen casts upon which it is based were
found, early in the Sixties, in a dust-bin in one of the old-fashioned
streets which run towards the East River, in the neighborhood of
Tompkins Square, New York. Their owner had lately died; his
unsympathetic and unappreciative heirs had thrown away what they
considered “the horrible things;” a small boy had found them, and
offered them for sale to a dealer in phrenological casts, who realized
their worth, although, in many cases, he did not know whose heads they
represented; and so, by chance, they came into my possession, and
inspired the search for more.
The history of these masks which formed the nucleus of the collection,
or the history of the original collector himself, I have never been able
to discover. They are, however, the casts most frequently described in
the printed lectures of George Combe, who came to America in the winter
of 1838-39, and the inference is that they were left here by him in the
hands of one of his disciples.
The earliest masks in the collection to-day are replicas of those of
Dante, made, perhaps, in the first part of the fourteenth century, and
of Tasso, certainly made at the end of the sixteenth. The latest mask is
that of Edwin Booth, who died only a few months ago. They range from Sir
Isaac Newton, the wisest of men, to Sambo, the lowest type of the
American negro; from Oliver Cromwell to Henry Clay; from Bonaparte to
Grant; from Keats to Leopardi; from Pius IX. to Thomas Paine; from Ben
Caunt, the prize-fighter, to Thomas Chalmers, the light of the Scottish
pulpit.
So far as I have been able to discover, mine is the most nearly complete
and the largest collection of its kind in the world. I have, indeed,
found nothing anywhere to compare with it. Usually, the Phrenological
Museums contain casts of idiots, criminals, and monstrosities, and these
are seemingly gathered together to illustrate what man’s cranial
structure ought not to be. There are but three or four casts of the
faces of distinguished persons in the British Museum, and about as many
in the National Portrait Gallery in London; and all of these I am able
to present here, with the exception of that of James II., who belongs,
perhaps, to the criminal class. In the Hohenzollern Museum are many
casts, but these generally are those of civic or national
celebrities—Berlin aldermen or German warriors, in whom the world at
large has but little interest. The casts of Frederick the Great, Queen
Louise, Schiller, and one or two more in that institution, however, I
was permitted to have reproduced. The others I have gathered after many
years of patient and pleasant research in the studios, the
curiosity-shops, and the plaster-shops of most of the capitals of Europe
and America. The story of this research, with an account of the means
taken to identify the masks when they were discovered, could itself make
a book of this size. I am sure that mine is the actual death-mask of
Aaron Burr, for instance, because I have the personal guarantee of the
man who made the mould in 1836; I am positive of the identity of another
cast, because I saw it made myself; and concerning still another, I have
no question, because I know the man who stole it! In the matter of the
great majority of the masks, however, the difficulties were very great.
Hardly one _per centum_ of the hundreds of biographers whose works I
have consulted ever refer to the taking of a mask in life, or after
death, and there is absolutely no literature which is devoted to the
subject. The cast of Sheridan’s hand is often alluded to, the mask of
his dead face is nowhere mentioned; and yet there appears to be no doubt
that both were taken. The cast of his head has been compared carefully
with all the existing portraits; it has been examined by experts in
portraiture; phrenologists have described the character of the man most
accurately, from its bumps and its physiognomy; it was certainly made
from nature; it is too like Sheridan to have been made from the nature
of any other man; and yet there is no record of its having been made. No
surviving member of the family of Coleridge had ever heard of the
existence of his death-mask until my copy was discovered, but they all
accept it as genuine; and I recognized Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge
once, in the corridor of a London club, by his wonderful resemblance in
features, and in the shape of his head, to the mask of his grandfather.
The mask of Dean Swift which I possess is exactly like the long-lost
cast as it is engraved in Dr. Wilde’s book. The mask of Charles XII.
shows distinctly the marks of the bullet in the temple; and I have
succeeded in tracing the other casts in many and very different ways.
I may mention here that some of these masks, as you now see them, were
broken in the Custom-house in New York, and that the mask of Elihu
Burritt was demolished entirely and without hope of restoration. Upon
these, notwithstanding their condition, and upon all the imported masks,
I paid a duty of fifty-five _per centum_, upon a valuation assessed
usually at twenty-five _per centum_ above what I swore was their value
in Europe; the Custom-house charges of various kinds being, in many
instances, larger than the original cost of the casts themselves. So far
as I can understand, I was taxed in this matter in order to protect the
ghosts of the plasterers of America, who could not have made these casts
even if they had so wished!
The value of a plaster cast as a portrait of the dead or living face
cannot for a moment be questioned. It must, of necessity, be absolutely
true to nature. It cannot flatter; it cannot caricature. It shows the
subject as he was, not only as others saw him, in the actual flesh, but
as he saw himself. And in the case of the death-mask particularly, it
shows the subject often as he permitted no one but himself to see
himself. He does not pose; he does not “try to look pleasant.” In his
mask he is seen, as it were, with his mask off!
Lavater, in his _Physiognomy_, says that “the dead, and the impressions
of the dead, taken in plaster, are not less worthy of observation [than
the living faces]. The settled features are much more prominent than in
the living and in the sleeping. What life makes fugitive, death arrests.
What was undefinable is defined. All is reduced to its proper level;
each trait is in its true proportion, unless excruciating disease or
accident have preceded death.” And Mr. W. W. Story, in writing of the
life-mask of Washington, says of life-masks generally: “Indeed a mask
from the living face, though it repeats exactly the true forms of the
original, lacks the spirit and expression of the real person. But this
is not always the case. The more mobile and variable the face, the more
the mask loses; the more set and determined the character and
expression, the more perfectly the work reproduces it.”
The procedure of taking a mould of the living face is not pleasant to
the subject. In order to prevent the adhesion of the plaster, a strong
lather of soap and water, or more frequently a small quantity of oil, is
applied to the hair and to the beard. This will explain the flat and
unnatural appearance of the familiar mustache and imperial in the cast
of Napoleon III. In some instances, as in that of Keats, a napkin is
placed over the hair. The face is then moistened with sweet-oil; quills
are inserted into the nostrils in order that the victim may breathe
during the operation, or else openings are left in the plaster for that
purpose. A description of the taking of the mould of the face of a Mr.
A—— (condensed from a copy of the _Phrenological Journal_, published in
Edinburgh in January, 1845), will give the uninitiated some idea of the
process: “The person was made to recline on his back at an angle of
about thirty-five degrees, and upon a seat ingeniously adapted to the
purpose. The hair and the face being anointed with a little pure scented
oil, the plaster was laid carefully upon the nose, mouth, eyes, and
forehead, in such a way as to avoid disturbing the features; and this
being set, the back of the head was pressed into a flat dish containing
plaster, where it continued to recline, as on a pillow. The plaster was
then applied to the parts of the head still uncovered, and soon
afterwards the mould was hard enough to be removed in three pieces, one
of which, covering the occiput, was bounded anteriorly by a vertical
section immediately behind the ears, and the other two, which covered
the rest of the head, were divided from each other by pulling up a
strong silken thread previously so disposed upon the face on one side of
the nose.” The account closes with the statement that “Mr. A—— declared
that he had been as comfortable as possible all the time”!
Since these papers originally appeared in HARPER’S MAGAZINE in the
autumn of 1892, they have been revised, enlarged, and virtually
rewritten. Eighteen new masks are here presented, and I have added many
pages to the descriptive text.
The subject-matter of the volume may not be considered very cheerful
reading, but I feel that to those to whom the work appeals at all it
will appeal strongly as an unique portrait gallery of men and women of
all countries and of many ages, distinguished in many walks of life. I
trust that it will lend itself particularly to extra-illustration. And
to all those who make human portraiture a study, or a hobby, it is
cordially inscribed.
LAURENCE HUTTON.
NEW YORK, January 1, 1894.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PORTRAITS IN PLASTER
“The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures.”
—_Macbeth_, act ii., scene 2.
If the creator of Duncan was right in saying that there is no art to
find the mind’s construction in the face, then must the author of the
_Novum Organum_ have been wrong when he declared that “physiognomy ...
discovereth the disposition of the mind by the lineaments of the body;”
and these, curiously enough, are parallel passages never quoted by the
believers in the theory that Bacon was the writer of Shakspere’s plays.
It is not intended here to enter into a discussion of the merits or
demerits of physiognomy. This is an Exhibition of Portraits, not a
Phrenological Lecture. I shall try to show how these men and women
looked, in life and in death, not why they happened to look as they did;
and I shall dwell generally upon their brains, occasionally upon their
bones, but only incidentally upon their bumps.
The ancient Romans are said to have made, in wax, casts of the faces of
their illustrious dead. These masks are believed to have been colored to
represent the originals as they appeared in life, to have been cherished
religiously by their descendants through many generations, and, on the
occasion of a public and formal funeral, it is thought that they were
sometimes worn by professional mourners, as a sort of posthumous tribute
from the dead already to the memory of the latest man who had died. And
recent explorers have satisfied themselves that in the early burials of
many nations it was the custom to cover the heads and bodies of the dead
with sheets of gold so pliable that they took the impress of the form;
and not infrequently, when in the course of centuries the embalmed flesh
had shrivelled or fallen away, the gold retained the exact cast of the
features. Schliemann found a number of bodies “covered with large masks
of gold-plate in _repoussé_-work,” several of which have been reproduced
by means of engraving, in his _Mycenæ_; and he asserted that there can
be no doubt whatever that each one of these represents the likeness of
the deceased person whose face it covered.
When Hamlet said that Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander
returneth to dust, he overlooked the fact that Alexander’s dust, instead
of being converted into loam to stop a beer-barrel, was preserved from
corruption by the process of embalming, and from external injury by
being cased in the most precious of metals. Pettigrew, in his _History
of Egyptian Mummies_, said of the death-mask of Alexander that “it was a
sort of chase-work, and of such a nature that it could be applied so
closely to the skin as to preserve not only the form of the body, but
also to give the expression of the features to the countenance.” He did
not quote his authority for this statement, but it is unquestionably
derived from the account of the death and burial of Alexander written by
Diodorus Siculus, who said: “And first a coffin of beaten gold was
provided, so wrought by the hammer as to answer to the proportions of
the body; it was half filled with aromatic spices, which served as well
to delight the sense as to prevent the body from putrefaction.” Then
follows a description of the funeral chariot, and of the long line of
march from Babylon to Alexandria, where Augustus Cæsar saw the tomb
three hundred years later; but there is no reference to a mask of
Alexander’s face in gold. It is greatly to be regretted that such a mask
does not exist now, that it might be compared with the plaster masks of
Cromwell, Washington, Frederick the Great, Bonaparte, Grant, and
Sherman, and other conquerors of later days here presented to the public
scrutiny.
Among the gold mummy-masks exhibited in the Museum of the Louvre is one,
as Mr. John C. Van Dyke points out, which bears a curious and striking
resemblance not only to Washington, but to the familiar portraits of
Greuze, the painter. It is No. 536 of the Egyptian Collection, and bears
a card with the following inscription: “Masque de Momie trouvé dans le
chambre d’Apis consacré par le Prince Kha-Em-Onas.”
In the collection of antiques presented to the museum at Naples by
Prince Corignano is a wax mask with glass eyes. It was found with four
decapitated bodies in a tomb at Cumæ, and it is evidently a portrait of
the original, who is said to have been a Christian martyr. And Mr. W. M.
Flynders Petrie exhibited in London, in the autumn of 1892, an
exceedingly interesting collection of antiquities brought from
Tel-el-Amarna, the Arab name for the ancient city of Khuenaten, situated
about one hundred and eighty miles south of Cairo. That city was built
about fourteen hundred years before Christ, by Khuenaten, son of
Amenhotep III., who made it the centre of his proposed great revolution
in religion, art, and ethics. The collection comprised, among other
things, a cast from the head of Khuenaten himself, taken after death,
according to Mr. Petrie, for the use of the sculptor who was preparing
the sarcophagus for his tomb. These are among the earliest examples of
death-masks which have come down to us.
At least three copies of the Dante mask, all believed to be authentic,
are known to be in existence. First, that which is called the Torrigiani
cast, which can be traced back to 1750; second, the so-called Seymour
Kirkup mask, given to him by the sculptor Bartolini, who is said to have
found it in Ravenna; and third, a mask belonging, according to Kirkup,
to “the late sculptor Professor Ricci.” “The slight differences between
these,” adds Kirkup, “are such as might occur in casts made from the
original mask.” Concerning the original mask itself, says Mr. Charles
Eliot Norton, there is no trustworthy history to be obtained. On the
very threshold of his inquiry into the matter he was met with the doubt
whether the art of taking casts was practised at the time of Dante’s
death at all, Vasari, in his life of Andrea del Verocchio, who
flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century, having declared that
the art first came into use in Verocchio’s day. It is certain that there
is no record of the Dante mask for three hundred years after Dante died;
but it is equally certain that it resembles nearly all the portraits of
Dante down to the time of Raphael. Mr. Norton believes, from external
evidence, that it is, at all events, a death-mask of some one; and of
this, it seems to me, there can be no question.
There are two masks of Dante now on public exhibition in Florence. One
is in the house built upon the site of the mansion in which Dante was
born; the other is in a small cabinet adjoining the Hall of the
Hermaphrodite in the Uffizi Gallery. The former is a cast of the face
only, and it bears every evidence of recent construction. The latter is
a cast in plaster of the head and shoulders, and is one of the masks of
which Mr. Norton speaks. It has, unfortunately, been painted, the face a
flesh color, the cap and gown red, the waistcoat and the tabs over the
ears green; but it is undoubtedly a very early cast from the mould made
from the actual head. It bears the following inscription, “Effigie di
Dante Alighieri, Maschera Formata sul di lui Cadavere in Ravenna l’Anno
1321,” and to it is attached a card saying that it was bequeathed to the
Museum by the Marquis Torrigiani in 1865. It is here reproduced.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: DANTE]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Why keep you your eyes closed, Signor Torquato?” said a watcher at the
death-bed of Tasso—one of those silly persons who ask silly questions,
even under the most serious circumstances—“Why keep you your eyes
closed?” “That they may grow accustomed to remain closed,” was the
feeble reply. They have been closed to all mortal vision for three
hundred years now, but in the pale, cold plaster of the accompanying
mask his face is still seen as it was seen by the vast and sorrowing
multitudes who lined the streets of Rome to look upon his triumphant
funeral procession. His body was clad in an antique toga, kindled tapers
lighted his way, and his pallid brow was at last encircled by the wreath
of laurel he had waited for so long. And thus at the end of the
Nineteenth Century do we, in the New World, look upon the cast of the
actual face of the great poet of the Old World who died at the end of
the century he adorned. The original mask is preserved, with other
personal relics of Tasso, in the room of the convent of San Onofrio, in
which he died. But the great powder explosion which shook all Rome a few
years ago so shattered this part of the convent that the room and the
mask are no longer shown to the public.
The personal appearance of Tasso has been carefully and minutely
described by his friend and biographer Manso. His broad forehead was
high and inclined to baldness; his thin hair was of a lighter color than
that of his countrymen generally; his eyes were large, dark blue, and
set wide apart; his eyebrows were black and arched; his nose was
aquiline; his mouth was wide; his lips were thin; and his beard was
thick and of a reddish-brown tinge.
Tasso went from Naples to Rome to receive from the hands of the Pope the
crown of bay which had been worn by Petrarch and other laureates of
Italy; and he died upon the day set apart for his coronation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: TASSO]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The head of Shakspere here presented, from the monumental bust in the
chancel of the church at Stratford, like everything else relating to
Shakspere, in life or in death, is shrouded in mystery. It is supposed
to be the work of one Gerard Johnson, and to have been “cut from a
death-mask” shortly after Shakspere’s funeral. The earliest allusion to
it is to be found in a poem of Leonard Digges, written seven years
later. It was certainly in existence during the lifetime of Anne
Hathaway Shakspere, and of other members of his family, who would,
perhaps, have objected or protested if the likeness had not been
considered a good one. Sir Francis Chantrey believed it to have been
worked from a cast of the living or the dead face. “There are in the
original in the church,” he wrote, “marks of individuality which are not
to be observed in the usual casts from it; for instance, the markings
about the eyes, the wrinkles on the forehead, and the undercutting from
the moustachios.” Wordsworth, among others, accepted its authenticity,
and Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps did not hesitate to put himself on record,
more than once, as having every faith in its superiority, in the matter
of actual resemblance, to any of the alleged portraits. He ranked it, in
point of authority, before the Droeshout print, endorsed by Ben Jonson
as perfect; and he called attention to the general resemblance to be
traced between them.
It certainly differs in many respects from the famous plaster cast found
in a curiosity-shop in Germany some years ago, and known as the
Kesselstadt mask, a photograph of which is here reproduced. This mask is
believed, by those who believe in it at all, to have been made from
Shakspere’s dead face, to have been carried to Germany by a German envoy
to England in the reign of James I., to have been cherished as an
authentic and valuable relic for many generations, to have been sold for
rubbish at the death of the last of the race, and to have been recovered
in a most fortuitous way. It bears upon its back the date of Shakspere’s
death, 1616, it has been the subject of more discussion than any piece
of plaster of its size in the world, and even those who believe that it
is not Shakspere have never asserted that it _is_ Bacon!
According to Mr. G. Huntley Gordon, this cast from the Stratford bust
was taken about 1845, stealthily and in the middle of the night, by a
young Stratford plasterer, who was frightened by imaginary noises before
he succeeded in getting a mould of the entire head. After the protest
raised against Malone for whitewashing the bust in 1793, the
authorities, naturally, had put an embargo upon any handling of the
monument, and the operation was fraught with much risk to the aspiring
youth who undertook it. A cast is known to have been taken for Malone,
however, and since then other casts have been made by other artists,
notably one by George Bullock, who made the death-mask of Scott.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SHAKSPERE—Stratford Bust]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: SHAKSPERE—Kesselstadt Mask]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next to the Stratford bust, the sculptured portrait of Shakspere most
familiar to the world is that which stands in Poets’ Corner, Westminster
Abbey. The artist went to some strange source for the likeness, and
although it was for gentle Shakspere cut, by no means does it outdo the
life. “I saw old Samuel Johnson,” said Cumberland, describing Garrick’s
funeral—“I saw old Samuel Johnson standing at the foot of Shakspere’s
monument, and bathed in tears.” Burke on that occasion remarked that the
statue of Shakspere looked towards Garrick’s grave; and on this stray
hint, as Mr. Brander Matthews believes, Sheridan hung his famous couplet
in the _Monody_:
“While Shakspere’s image, from its hallowed base,
Served to prescribe the grave and point the place.”
Garrick’s face, it is said, was wonderfully under control, and his
features had a marvellous flexibility, which rendered variety and rapid
change of expression an easy matter. The story of his having frightened
Hogarth by standing before him as the ghost of Fielding, assuming the
appearance of the dead novelist in all the fixedness and rigidity of
death, has often been told. There are many original portraits of Garrick
in existence. The Garrick Club in London possesses at least a dozen,
while The Players in New York own two by Zoffany, and one by Reynolds.
A not uncommon print, entitled “The Mask of Garrick taken from the Face
after Death,” is in the Shaksperian Library at Stratford-upon-Avon, and
it is to be found in Evans’s “Catalogue of Engraved Portraits.” It does
not seem, however, to be the portrait of a dead man, being full of
living expression, and it is, perhaps, an enlarged reproduction of the
face in the miniature by Pine of Bath, now in the Garrick Club, the eyes
having the same dilatation of pupil which was characteristic of the
great actor.
The mask here shown was purchased in 1876 from the late Mr. Marshall,
the antiquarian dealer in Stratford, who possessed what he believed to
be its pedigree written in pencil on the back of the plaster, and now
unfortunately defaced. He asserted that it was taken from life, and that
it had come by direct descent from the sculptor’s hands into his. There
is a replica of it in the Shakspere Museum at Stratford, but no history
is attached to it, and the trustees know nothing about it, except that
it was “the gift of the late Miss Wheeler.” It resembles very strongly
the familiar portrait of Garrick by Hogarth, the original of which hangs
in one of the bedrooms of Windsor Castle.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: DAVID GARRICK]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a very early cast of the Garrick mask, still existing in London, the
texture of the skin proves conclusively that it was taken from nature,
and most probably from life.
In the “Guild Hall” of “The City of Lushington,” an ancient and very
unique social club, which has met for many years in a dark and dingy
little back room connected with the Harp Tavern, in Russell Street,
Covent Garden, London, are still preserved the chair of Edmund Kean, the
hole in the wall made by the quart pot he threw once, in a fit of gross
insubordination, at a former “Lord Mayor,” and what is religiously
considered by all the citizens of Lushington to be a death-mask of Kean
himself. This cast is covered with glass and with dust and its history
is lost in the mists of time. There is no record of it in the
metropolitan archives, the corporation will not permit it to be
reproduced, even by photography, and it bears but little resemblance to
Kean, or to the mask in my possession, which also has no history, but
which I believe to be authentic, and which is certainly very like the
sketch of Kean done in oils by George Clint, and now in the possession
of Mr. Henry Irving. This hurried sketch of Clint’s is said to be the
only portrait for which Kean could be induced to sit. It was made in
Kean’s bedroom in a few hours, and it is the groundwork of more than one
finished portrait of the same subject by the same artist. The portrait
of Kean by Neagle, now the property of The Players, has a similar
tradition.
The Lushington cast is perhaps an early life-mask of the elder Kean,
perhaps a life-mask, or a death-mask, of the younger Kean, more probably
the mask of some defunct and commonplace and now forgotten mayor or
alderman of Lushington, who did not even look like Kean.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: EDMUND KEAN]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The eye-witnesses of Kean’s theatrical performances were generally so
much impressed by the force of his acting that they paid little
attention to his personal appearance. We read in Leslie’s
_Autobiography_ that “he had an amazing power of expression in his
face,” and “that his face, although not handsome, was picturesque;” a
writer in the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1833 spoke of him as “a small
man with an Italian face and fatal eye;” a writer in _Blackwood_, a few
years later, called him “a man of low and meagre figure, of a Jewish
physiognomy, and a stifled and husky voice;” while Miss Fanny Kemble
said that “he possessed particular physical qualifications; an eye like
an orb of light; a voice exquisitely touching and melodious in its
tendencies, but in the harsh dissonance of vehement passion terribly
true.” Barry Cornwall, in his poor _Life of Kean_, spoke of “his thin,
dark face, full of meaning, taking, at every turn, a sinister or
vigilant expression,” and as being “just adapted to the ascetic and
revengeful Shylock.” And Henry Crabb Robinson said in 1814, “Kean’s face
is finely expressive, though his mouth is not handsome, and he projects
his lower lip ungracefully.”
The portrait of Kean by Helen Faucit, Lady Martin, is the best that has
been presented to us. She met him once on the Green at Richmond when she
was a child, and he a broken-down old man. “I was startled, frightened
at what I saw,” she wrote: “a small pale man with a fur cap, and wrapped
in a fur cloak. He looked to me as if come from the grave. A stray lock
of very dark hair crossed his forehead, under which shone eyes which
looked dark, and yet bright as lamps. So large were they, so piercing,
so absorbing, I could see no other features.... Oh, what a voice was
that which spoke! It seemed to come from far away—a long, long way
behind him. After the first salutation, it said, ‘Who is this little
one?’ When my sister had explained, the face smiled; I was reassured by
the smile, and the face looked less terrible.”
Among the English-speaking actors of later days few have been better
known and better liked, in America at all events, than John McCullough,
Dion Boucicault, Lawrence Barrett, Henry Edwards, and Edwin Booth, the
faces of all of whom I am able to present here. John McCullough, the
first of this galaxy of stars to quit the stage of life, was a man of
strong and attractive personality, if not a great actor; he had many
admirers in his profession and many friends out of it. The cloak which
Forrest dropped fell upon his shoulders, and in such parts as Virginius,
Damon, and the Brutus of John Howard Payne, it was nobly worn. He was as
modest, as simple, and as manly in character as are the characters he
represented on the stage. Unhappily, mental disease preceded
McCullough’s death, and during the last few years of his life those who
loved him best prayed for the rest which is here shown on his face. The
_post-mortem_ examination revealed a brain of unusual size and of very
high development. The death-mask was made by Mr. H. H. Kitson, of
Boston.
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[Illustration: JOHN M’CULLOUGH]
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[Illustration: DION BOUCICAULT]
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Dion Boucicault, worn by age, died in the city of New York in the early
autumn of 1890. He was one of the most remarkably versatile men of the
century. He was a fairly good actor, an excellent stage-manager, an
ingenious stage-machinist, an admirable judge of plays and of the
capacities of the men about him, the most entertaining of companions, a
man of quick wit, of restless personality, and the author and adapter,
perhaps, of more dramatic productions, good and bad, than any man who
ever lived. The cast of the head of Boucicault was made the day after
his death, by Mr. J. Scott Hartley, of New York.
Of the masks of Lawrence Barrett and of Henry Edwards I can hardly trust
myself to speak here or yet. My personal friendship with them was so
intimate, my affection so strong, and their taking away so recent, that
I can only look upon the casts of their dead faces as I looked upon the
dead faces themselves a few months ago, and grieve afresh for what I
have lost.
Mr. William Winter, who knew Barrett long and well, has spoken of “his
stately head silvered during the last few years with graying hair, of
his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, of his thin
visage paled with study and with pain, of his form of grace, and of his
voice of sonorous eloquence and solemn music, one of the few great
voices of this present dramatic generation in its compass, variety, and
sweetness. His head was a grand head; his face beautiful in its spirit,
its bravery, and its strength.” As the Rev. John A. Chadwick finely said
of him in the _Christian Register_, “The noblest part he ever acted was
the part of Lawrence Barrett—an honest, brave, and kindly gentleman.”
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[Illustration: LAWRENCE BARRETT]
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Mr. Barrett was one of the little party who were with Mr. Booth when the
idea of The Players was first conceived, and who helped their friend,
the Founder, to bring that association to its present perfected state.
Mr. Barrett was one of its legal incorporators; from the beginning until
his death he was a member of its governing body, and he was always
enthusiastic in his devotion to it, and to the objects for which Mr.
Booth had endowed it. At the annual celebration of the club, held upon
what is called “Founder’s Night,” December 31, 1890, Mr. Barrett read
aloud, and with a great deal of feeling, in the club-house, Mr. Thomas
Bailey Aldrich’s touching poem upon Mr. John S. Sargent’s portrait of
Mr. Booth, and it was noticed by many present that his voice faltered
when he spoke of
“Others standing in the place
Where save as ghosts we come no more.”
He was himself the first of those present to go to the Land of Shadows.
That his gentle spirit haunts the place, and will haunt it pleasantly
for many years to come, not one who knew and loved him there can for a
moment doubt.
Henry Edwards was not only an actor but a man of science. He was
recognized as a distinguished entomologist by many persons on both sides
of the Atlantic who had never even heard of his theatrical career. He
left a magnificent collection of butterflies, now preserved in one of
the leading museums of America, and he contributed to the press of both
countries a number of valuable books and pamphlets upon the subject he
loved. His work upon the stage was uniformly good. As Mr. Winter said of
him, in a funeral oration, he did not astonish and dazzle; he satisfied.
He excelled in the representation of rough pathos, of bluff good-humor,
and of honest indignation. He had a frank, expressive, cheerful face and
a hearty voice. He was a man of genuine, healthy honesty and simplicity,
who left behind him many warmly attached friends. He was sympathetic and
always interested in anything that interested the men about him. Many a
time has he studied, discussed, and moralized over, the collection which
now, alas! contains the cast of his own dead face. The mask was made by
Mr. J. Scott Hartley.
A death-mask of Booth was taken under the direction of Mr. Augustus St.
Gaudens. Although there is about it nothing which is distressing or
unpleasant, his family and his friends prefer to have it withheld from
the public gaze. The life-mask which, by the courtesy of The Players,
prefaces this volume, was made by Mr. John Rogers in 1864, when Booth
was in the thirtieth year of his age, and in the zenith of his strength
and his beauty.
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[Illustration: HENRY EDWARDS]
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Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke wrote of her brother in 1857: “He had come back
[from California] older in experience only, for he looked a boy still,
and very fragile; his wild black eyes and long locks gave him an air of
melancholy. He had the gentle dignity and inherent grace that one
attributes to a young prince; yet he was merry, cheerful, and boyish in
disposition, as one can imagine Hamlet to have been in the days before
the tragedy was enacted in the orchard.”
Mr. Barrett, who supported him in New York a few months later, said: “A
slight, pale youth, with black, flowing hair, soft brown eyes, full of
tenderness and gentle timidity, a manner mixed with shyness and quiet
repose, he took his place [at the first rehearsal] with no air of
conquest or self-assertion, and gave his directions with a grace and
courtesy which never left him.”
Mr. Irving, recalling his earliest associations with Booth in
Manchester, in 1861, has told me that the young actor seemed to him at
that time to be the most magnificent specimen of intellectual manhood he
had ever seen. And George William Curtis, writing in 1864, said: “Booth
is altogether princely. His costume is still the solemn suit of sables,
varied according to his fancy of greater fitness; and his small, lithe
form, with the mobility and intellectual sadness of his face, and his
large, melancholy eyes, satisfy the most fastidious imagination that
this is Hamlet as he lived in Shakspere’s time.”
Mrs. M. E. W. Sherwood, speaking of him when he was in his perfect
prime, in the part of Othello alludes to “that dark face to which the
Eastern robe was so becoming, seeming at once to be telling its mighty
story of adventure and conquest. It was a proud and beautiful face.
Desdemona was not worthy of it.”
Booth’s face was to me one of the most beautiful and most lovable that I
ever looked upon.
The only feminine heads in the collection graced once the shoulders of a
trio of queens, a Queen of Tragedy, a Queen of Prussia, and a Queen of
Song. The mask of Mrs. Siddons is in the possession of Mr. Percy
Fitzgerald. It is generally accepted as having been taken from the
actual face of the great actress, but its pedigree or its history Mr.
Fitzgerald does not know.
A bust of Mrs. Siddons by J. Smith, 57 Upper Norton Street, Marylebone,
was exhibited in the Model Room of the Royal Academy in 1813, the year
before she retired from the stage. Mr. Edward W. Hennell has an
autograph letter of Mrs. Siddons, undated and addressed simply “Sir,”
but written, evidently, to this artist and referring to this bust. In it
she says, “The time is drawing near which will bring my labors to an
end, and I shall then hope to be able to indulge myself in many
gratifications of which they have hitherto deprived me, and among which
that of visiting your study will stand very forward.”
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[Illustration: EDWIN BOOTH]
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It is not improbable that Smith made a cast of Mrs. Siddons’s face, a
common occurrence in those days, although unfortunately no such
occurrence is recorded by Mrs. Siddons herself, or by any of her
biographers.
The present cast is believed by experts to have been taken from life,
and at about the time of her retirement. It shows, in a marked degree,
the peculiar thickness of the underlip remembered by persons still
living who remember Mrs. Siddons, and noticeable in the portraits of all
the Kembles of her generation, particularly in those of the great
actress herself. The cast resembles strongly an unfinished sketch of her
in the South Kensington Museum, made in her old age by an unknown
artist, and it is not unlike the bust she made of herself, now in the
Dyce Library in the same institution. Other features of Mrs. Siddons
were as prominent as her under-lip; Gainsborough is said to have
remarked to her once, in a fit of almost inspired courage, “Damn your
nose, madam, there is no end to it!” and she herself is reported to have
said that “the jaw-bone of the Kembles is as notorious as the jaw-bone
used by Samson.”
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[Illustration: MRS. SIDDONS]
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The personal appearance of Mrs. Siddons has many times been described,
but, curiously enough, none of her contemporaries allude to this unusual
development of the lower lip. Mr. Fitzgerald says of her first
appearance: “The audience saw a frail, delicate-looking, but pretty
creature, tottering towards them rather than walking.... The criticism
of the pit amounted to this, ‘that she was a pretty, awkward, and
interesting creature—frightfully dressed.’” The London _Morning Post_,
speaking of the event, said: “Her figure is a very fine one; her
features are beautifully expressive; her action is graceful and easy,
and her whole deportment that of a gentlewoman.” Thomas Davies wrote
later: “Just rising above the middle stature, she looks, walks, and
moves like a woman of superior rank. Her countenance is expressive, her
eye so full of information that the passion is told from her look before
she speaks.” Madame d’Arblay, in her _Diary_ (December 15, 1782), wrote
that “she behaved with great propriety; very calm, modest, quiet and
unaffected. She has a very fine countenance, and her eyes look both
intelligent and soft.” Leigh Hunt said, “I did not see her, I believe,
in her best days; but she must always have been a somewhat masculine
beauty.” Peter Irving wrote to his brother Washington in 1813: “I was
surprised to find her face, even at the near approach of sitting by her
side, absolutely handsome, and unmarked by any of those wrinkles which
generally attend advanced life. Her form is at present becoming
unwieldy, but not shapeless, and is full of dignity. Her gestures and
movements are eminently graceful.” Two years later George Ticknor wrote:
“She is now, I suppose, sixty years old, and has one of the finest and
most spirited countenances and one of the most dignified and commanding
persons I ever beheld. Her portraits are very faithful as to her general
air and outline, but no art can express or imitate the dignity of her
manner, or the intelligent illumination of her face.” And John Howard
Payne said of her about the same period, 1817: “The grace of her person,
the beauty of her arms, the mental beauty of her face, the tragic
expression of her voice, and the perfect identification with the
character [Mrs. Beverley] left nothing for me to wish for. In these she
was so great that even her unwieldy figure, which at first somewhat
annoyed me, was soon forgotten.”
In 1783 Mrs. Siddons called on Dr. Johnson at Bolt Court, and he gave to
Mrs. Thrale an account of how she impressed him by her “modesty and
propriety.” He says they “talked of plays,” but, unfortunately, he does
not permit himself to say what he thought of her nose or her mouth or
her jaw.
The beautiful Louise of Prussia, mother of the first Emperor William of
Germany, lies in the family mausoleum at Charlottenburg, and the cast of
her dead face, with that of Frederick the Great and of others of their
distinguished countrymen and countrywomen, is preserved in the Museum of
Berlin. Her last illness was severe and painful, but her attendants have
left on record the fact that in her rare intervals of relief from
suffering “she was very tranquil, and lay looking like an angel;” that
“the countenance was beautiful in death, particularly the brow; and that
the calm expression of the mouth told that the struggle was forever
past.”
At the age of sixteen she was thus described: “She was like her sister
Charlotte—had the same loving blue eyes, but the expression changed more
quickly with the feeling or thought of the moment. Her soft brown hair
still retained a gleam of the golden tints of childhood; her fair,
transparent complexion was, in the bloom of its exquisite beauty,
painted by nature as softly as were the roses she gathered and enjoyed.
The princess was tall and slight, and graceful in her movements. This
grace was not merely external; it arose from the inner depths of a pure
and noble mind, and therefore was so full of soul.”
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[Illustration: LOUISE OF PRUSSIA]
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Madame Malibran, the Queen of Song, died in Manchester, England, in
1836. The mask here reproduced came, perhaps, from the collection of
George Combe, who visited America a few years later.