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Photograph by Sarony

FRIEND of mine, no longer living, conservative in his theology, consistent in his Calvinism, once said to me something like this: "If the theater is wholly evil, if there is no place in the kingdom of God for the actor's profession, why does God endow some of his children with the dramatic and mimetic instinct and seem to call them to the stage by an inward impulse as distinct as that by which he seems to call others of his children to the pulpit?"

The only answer I can give to that question is that the theater is not wholly evil and that there is a place in the kingdom of God for the profession of the actor. No doubt there are in every one of the great cities some theaters which we could well spare and some actors we could see banished from the stage without regret. But if it were possible by edict to close all theaters and banish all actors from American life the loss to the community would amount to an irreparable moral disaster.

The theater has a threefold service to render: it has to furnish amusement, rest, and inspiration.

We need amusement. It is an old saying that "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." The fathers and mothers need it as well as their children. "A merry heart," says the proverb, "doeth good like a medicine." A hearty laugh is medicinal. A co-operative

laugh, a laugh all together, promotes good fellowship. Sympathy in fun may be as valuable as sympathy in sorrow. A good play inspires us to comply with Paul's injunction: We weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice.

We need rest. America would easily turn into a great factory and Americans into machine-like drudges, if there were not literature to take us out of ourselves; and the theater is enacted literature. The monotony of the kitchen, the more monotonous monotony of the shop, would become deadening if there were no provision for occasional forgetfulness. To many Americans the theater is an oasis of restful enjoyment set in the midst of a desert of unvarying toil. I suspect that my experience is not uncommon. Reading stimulates; a concert inspires; a play rests. For two hours I am passive, played upon by a story which drives all cares and perplexities out of my mind; and I come away from a clean and healthful play refreshed in spirit as from a swim in the ocean refreshed in body.

But the highest service of the theater is its inspirational power. Great literature is an interpreter of life; a great actor is an interpreter of great literature. If it was worth while for Shakespeare to write "The Merchant of Venice," it was worth while for Edwin

Booth and Madame Modjeska to interpret it. Let me explain by an illustration what I mean by interpretation of literature.

Henry Ward Beecher was a remarkable elocutionist. He had to a very unusual degree the power to put himself into any mood of feeling which he wished to illustrate and to employ in its illustration the appropriate tones of voice and, if need be, the appropriate attitude of body. He was preaching once upon his favorite theme, the infinite pity of Jesus to sinners, when he stopped abruptly and said, Some one will ask me, did not Jesus also condemn sinners with wrathful indignation? That de pends, he replied, upon how you interpret him. Then he took up his pocket Bible, which was his constant companion, and read a few verses from the denunciation of the Pharisees in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, putting into his voice, and doubtless for the moment into his spirit, the wrathful indignation of a just judge: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." Then, after a moment's pause, he read the same words again, but now as a lament, with tears in his voice, as of a mother weeping over her child. Then, without further comment, he went on with his sermon. He had in less than three minutes and by the actor's art given two interpretations to that passage; and since then it has had for me a new meaning.

This is what I mean by saying that the great actor is an interpreter of great literature. It is narrated in the book of Nehemiah that, at a camp-meeting there described, the Levites "read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading." If ministers could culti vate the actor's art sufficiently to enable them to feel the mood of the sacrec writers and interpret that mood by their voice, the Bible reading in church ser vices would not be, as it now often is. an act of almost unmeaning formalism.

Edwin Booth's character and career illustrated these principles.

His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was a famous actor. Nature's equipment impelled the son to follow the father on the stage. "I had rather," he wrote his daughter, "be an obscure farmer, a hay seed from Wayback, or a cabinetmaker as my father advised, than the most dis tinguished man on earth. But nature cast me for the part she found me best fitted for, and I have had to play it. and must play it till the curtain falls." At first he took such parts as were as signed him, generally comic parts in farces and burlesques. But he was not

long in graduating, and his wonderful success as Richard III, acted for the benefit of a comrade, in which he showed the advantage of studies quietly pursued, introduced him at once to a first rank among the actors of his day. This early success was partly due doubtless to an inherited dramatic talent and to his early companionship with his father, but there are abundant indications in his daughter's charming biographical sketch and in the letters she has published that from the first a religious impulse inspired him; that the following sentences penned to a friend expressed, not the fleeting impulse of the moment, but the dominating principle of his life: "I cannot help but believe that there is sufficient importance in my art to interest them still; that to a higher influence than the world believes I am moved by I owe the success I have achieved."

This spiritual faith carried him through experiences of great personal sorrow and professional disappointment. His wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, died, leaving him to be both father and mother to the daughter two years old. Writing to the clergyman who had performed the marriage ceremony and had written him a letter of sympathy, Mr. Booth said: "You have been pleased to mention my art and to express the hope that I may be spared to serve it long and faithfully; if it be His will, I bow before it meekly as I now bear the terrible affliction He has seen fit to lay upon me; but I cannot repress an inward hope that I may soon rejoin her who, next to God, was the object of my devotion." Two years later the sorrow still remained, but his faith in immortality and in his art as a divinely inspired service had grown clearer and stronger: "Two years ago to-day," he writes to a friend, "I last saw May alive! But, my dear friend, a light from heaven has settled fairly and fully in my soul, and I regard death, as God intended we should understand it, as the breaking of eternal daylight and a birthday of the soul. I feel that all my actions have been and are influenced by her whose love is to me the strength and wisdom of my spirit. Whatever I may do of serious import, I regard it as a performance of a sacred duty I owe to all that is pure and honest in my nature-a duty to the very religion of my heart." Nine years later the theater which he had built and in and by which he had helped to raise the dramatic standards in New York City to something which should at least approximate his ideals had failed and he was bankrupt. "My disappointment is great, to be sure," he wrote to a friend, "but I have the consciousness of having tried to do what I deemed to be my duty. Since the talent God has given me can be made available for no other purpose, I believe the object to which I devote it to be worthy of self-sacrifice."

This spirit of consecration of what he believed was a divinely given power to a divinely ordained purpose inspired and guided him through the ordinary experiences of his life. A clergyman

once wrote him asking if he could not be admitted to his theater by a side or rear door, as he preferred to run no risk of being seen by any of his parishioners; to whom Mr. Booth replied, "There is no door in my theater through which God cannot see." The theater while it continued under Booth's control was maintained as one should be which lay open to God's sight. Mr. William Winter, whose dramatic ideals were unquestionably high, says of it that its affairs "were conducted in a steadfast spirit of sympathy with what is pure and good in dramatic art." And he quotes two testimonies in support of this statement: one from Joseph Jefferson, "Booth's Theater is conducted as a theater should

From "Edwin Booth: Recollections by his Daughter, Edwina Booth Grossmann" (The Century Co.)

EDWIN BOOTH IN 1852

be like a church behind the curtain and like a counting-house in front of it;" and one from Dion Boucicault: "I have been in every theater, I think, in civilized Christendom, and Booth's is the only theater that I have ever seen properly managed."

The prevailing attitude of the Church toward the theater and the acting profession was one of bitter hostility in 1877, much modified since; but it elicited from Mr. Booth no word of ill temper or counter-hostility. The only response to that hostility which I have been able to find in his correspondence is in a letter to a clerical friend, who was an exception to the general rule among the clergy and to whom he wrote: "I am glad that I have been the cause of so much pleasure to you and rejoice in your strong charity against prejudice. If the Church would teach discrimination between the true and the false in my profession, instead of condemning both as worthless, to say the least, the stage would serve the pulpit as a loyal subject, and both go shoulder to shoulder, not with 'frowning brow to brow' through the fight."

His life was in some respects a lonely How lonely is indicated by the one

one.

incident in which his life and mine came together. Heartily sympathizing with his endeavor to secure an elevating and inspiring drama in New York, I wrote to ask of him an article on the subject, and received in reply the following letter, which was published with his consent in the then "Christian Union:"

Baltimore, April 18, 1878

Lyman Abbott, Esq.

Dear Sir

On my arrival here I found your favor of 1st inst: but have been prevented from answering it until to-day.

Having no literary ability whatever I must decline your flattering invitation; nor do I know how to aid the worthy cause you advocate; could I do so be assured it should be freely done.

My knowledge of the modern drama is so very meagre that I never permit my wife or daughter to witness a play without previously ascertaining its character. This is the method I pursue; I can suggest no other-unless it might be by means of a 'dramatic censor' whose taste or judgement might, however, be frequently at fault.

If the management of theatres could be denied to speculators and placed in the hands of actors who value their reputations and respect their calling, the stage would at least afford healthy recreation, if not, indeed, a wholesome stimulus to the exercise of noble sentiments. But while the theatre is permitted to be a mere shop for gain -open to every huckster of immoral gimcracks, there is no other way to discriminate between the pure and base than through the experience of others. Truly yours EDWIN BOOTH

There were a few actors who shared Mr. Booth's spirit and to whom acting was truly an art. But the stage was passing under the control of money-making managers, and money-making and artistic ambitions never go well together. Mr. Booth was not a good business man, and lack of good business management, not of good dramatic management, caused the failure of his theater. "Had I given proper attention to my dollar-and-cent dealings with men," he writes to his daughter, "I would now be at least a millionaire, perhaps doubly so; but I never considered that side of the question, taking from managers just what they offered." He defines in his letters his ambition, nowhere perhaps more clearly than in this pregnant sentence: "He [Betterton] is my ideal of an actor, both on and off the stage. He aimed at truth in his art and lived it at home." Successes always stimulated Booth to new effort. "Life," he wrote to his daughter, "is a great big spelling book, and on every page we turn the words grow harder to understand the meaning of. But there is a meaning, and when the last leaf flops over we'll know the whole lesson by heart." He kept up his studies, professional and other, to the very end of his life, and this included a study of himself as impersonator. "When I am enwrapt in a character I am impersonating,"

wrote, "there seems to be another and a distinct individuality, another me sitting in judgment on myself."

This judgment was not always encouraging. Mr. Bispham in his autobiography narrates the following incident. One night when Booth seemed to have attained the very pinnacle of his powers a friend went round to congratulate him on his great success and "found Booth with his head upon his hands in the deepest dejection from which not even the praise of his old friend could arouse him, disgusted at having given so miserable a performance." From this double consciousness he seems never to have escaped. "I believe," he writes, "you understand how completely I ain't here' most of

the time. It's an awful thing to be somebody else all the while." Reserved he was, self-restrained, but not internally placid, and never self-conceited. Selfcontrol to such a man is not the easy virtue it is to simple natures. He had inherited the drink appetite from his father; conquered it completely but not without a hard battle. Nor was that his only struggle. The very ability to interpret different human passions was the mark of a composite character. "Much of my life's struggle," he wrote his daughter, "has been with myself, and the pain I have endured in overcoming and correcting the evils of my untrained disposition has been very great."

I must stop. This article has already overrun the limits I had set myself. Readers who wish an analysis of Mr. Booth's art upon the stage will find it in William Winter's Life of Edwin Booth. I have wished in this article to introduce the man to readers to whom he is known only as an actor. For the re-reading of Mr. Booth's letters has not only reawakened my admiration for this great interpreter of the greatest literature, but also a new sense of indignation that so pure and brave a man should have been left to fight his battle for a purer theater with so little sympathy and help from the Christian Church and the Christian ministry.

M

Y first experience with the theater was at the age of fourteen, when, in Worcester, Massachusetts, I witnessed Booth in the character of Hamlet and was afterward introduced to Mr. Booth when, at the close of the play, I went back of the curtain with Mr. Russell. While impressed with the man, I am compelled to disclose that a full enjoyment of the play had been sadly marred by a pair of new and tight shoes. Thus a minor incident of physical discomfort can leave a lifetime memory embarrassing to one's introduction to the histrionic art.

The following letters came to me with other personal effects by devise from the widow of John E. Russell, loved and regarded as a member of my family. Those selected by Dr. Abbott for The Outlook constitute only a small fraction of what I have.

A friendship between Edwin Booth and John E. Russell existed for many years, the beginning of which arose through the appreciation of Mr. Booth's great art as an interpreter expressed by Mr. Russell in the New York "Sun."

This was at the early period of Mr. Booth's presentment of Shakespeare. At that time Mr. Russell wrote the dramatic criticism for the "Sun;" Mr. Booth sought to know him, and a close intimacy followed with Booth, Jefferson, and others of the artistic world.

As a prelude to a reference to Mr. Russell which is asked of me by the editors of The Outlook, I may remind the reader of a remark credited to Mr. Kipling to the effect that an institutional education produces young men resembling each other as peas in a pod; that it is a common experience to meet most interesting men, broad in education and culture, who are genuinely cultivated through tutors and travel, though such men must possess, as part of their original outfit, minds that are inquiring and seek always to confirm or correct their impressions.

Travel at home and abroad, study of history and literature for a period of years with well-selected tutors, took the place of college education in the case of Mr. Russell. Five years in Nicaragua, after marriage at twenty-one, introduced him to Latin America, its history and ways.

Returning to this country, Mr. Russell lived for some years in Washington. There he was the confidential negotiator for Ben Holliday, a forceful uneducated men who, before the establishment of a transcontinental railway, established a superior overland stagecoach line to the Pacific. This Washington life brought Mr. Russell into contact with the men of prominence, and gave him an interesting and unusual experience, enabling him to retire on a competence, and he took up his residence in New York. Later he retired to Leicester, Massachusetts, with frequent European visits.

The following extract from the 1904 book of the Century Club, New York City, briefly continues the story of his accomplishments.

man, of a type more familiar in England than in our country, was lost to us in John E. Russell, of Leicester, Massachusetts, who had been a member of the Club for nearly forty years.

Born of an old New England family, descendant of Jonathan Edwards, trained by study abroad and home, possessed of an ample fortune acquired in a brief but brilliant business. career, he passed his time between the development of an extensive estate and numerous public and semi-public activities.

His only position in National politics was that of Representative for one term in Congress. He declined two Cabinet appointments offered him by President Cleveland, and two high diplomatic posts. But twice he led a gallant, forlorn hope for the office of Governor of Massachusetts, and his voice and pen were constantly at the service of his party in advocacy of its most advanced policies. The office he really delighted in was that of Secretary to the State Board of Agriculture, in which, for a number of years, he did efficient service. He loved the land, and the labor thereof, was a successful breeder of sheep and horses, and a leader in scientific tillage.

He was a connoisseur of books and

than

atters.

P. S

of

prints, a brilliant writer, likable companion, whose memory will long linger within the Century, where, for so many years, he was a welcome habitué.

Mr. Russell's diary is in my possession-the Century Club is often mentioned-with allusion to members. He speaks of the old house in East Fifteenth Street, and the garden back of it. Of Gulian Verplanck, its first President, he says: "A fine scholar, and an editor of Shakespeare. I thought it a great honor to drink a gin toddy with him at the 'buttery bar' of the House. He was then very old, and died soon after, succeeded by Bancroft, and later by Bryant."

He writes of Bierstadt, Bradford, Beard, F. E. Church, Bryant, Huntington, Le Clear, Gifford, Winslow Homer, Stone, Martin, Booth, Jefferson, and others-all friends. That membership was taken seriously in the earlier days is indicated where he writes: "Membership was a distinction, and a social passport, lost somewhat later by enlargement and change in the times."

I never knew Mr. Russell to fail to locate a quotation from Shakespeare when asked.

THE "INFERNAL EXPENSE"
New York, August 22, 1869

My dear John E

Forgive me! oh, forgive me! Your letters all came safely-the last 2 are now before me. I think you are very wise in avoiding the agony of city life-altho' you have not seen the abovenamed edifice. [Referring to "Booth's Theatre" on letter-head.] N'importe! You'll see it some day and see it chockfull too, I hope. Jefferson is jamming it now. Adams helped me along to pay expenses during my absence and after Joe "the child" (Bateman) begins. All flourishes well-only the infernal expense is perfectly barbarous 'tis overwhelming, and the d'l of it is-I don't see any possible method of reducing it,

now-or ever.

I have a copperplate engraving of my Father, as Richard, considered good-tho' it has not his mouth, by a toothfull. It is at your service-or anything in that line of him or your humble uncle that I possess. Come up to my rooms over the drug-store next the theatre and overhaul my scrap-books and portrait gallery and take thence what you will. I have a bill of the opening also for you, with one or two other 'relics'-I believe-don't remember just what.

That dear old mare! I wish indeed that I could back her and ride again with you. My wife has a superb trotter who is excellent under the saddlebut we keep her at the Branch most of the time being too busy here to indulge in that kind of luxury. I sold my house some weeks ago-obtained comfortable quarters for my brother and sisterwith whom Joe resides, and have established my home en garçon (I believe

's the kick) in the studio building

here. I sit now in our cosy little library (which serves also as our dining room) with the bust of Mickey the Angel and some half dozen rare engravings of his Vatican works about me. I think both you and Mrs. Russell will be pleasedif you ever call, which I hope you will. My little wife is a quaint, cosy, loveable little body, and we get on famously. She and Edwina are all in all, and I feel jealous by turns-first of one and then of t'other.

bye-bye. Launt is on the high-road our-way, and may be happy yet. I've not seen Le Clear since his wife's death -poor fellow! When do you come to York? Love to both.

Today I greet thee-oh, my brother! Where and how art thou, friend of my soul?

I read of your very narrow escape on your way south-by Jove! I was scared-but fortunately the same paper which told me of the accident spoke of the following train and mentioned you and wife (with other Northern folks) as being safe.

When will you be in these latitudes again? Magonigle, the gorgeous, is in Florida-or rather is now on his way hither from that balmy clime. I am at Macbeth-it serves as a mere rehearsal for a future elaboration-for after Ham

A FUNNY LOT

My dear John

New York, December 10, 1871

For a little while a gloom hangs over "Comfort Cottage"-may the veil soon lift and all be bright again.

I am also enraged at Winter's conduct for he denounced Sothern to me as a "buffoon" &c. and yet applauds him to the echo in print.

The critics are all a funny lot-take them as you will-now they are all for me and Hamlet, a little while ago and they were lashing me, a little while hence and I'll catch it again-they are even now divided on the position as to whether my company is d-d bad or only tolerably so. . . . Yours ever

NED

EVIDENTLY HE HADN'T HEARD LATELY FROM RUSSELL

Dear Sir:

let I am used up and too weary both Jo E. Russell, Esq.— in head and hinges to do anything with so huge a part. I am surprised how badly I act it-I have lost all the conceit you put into me, and feel a lack of that intensity you so particularly liked in it. It will come back some day, no doubt.

I took off Hamlet from sheer fatigue although it was drawing well up to the last. I shall end in two weeks when Clarke begins.

I was asking Harry about the expenses of this shop t'other day and I was wrong about the printer's billaltho' it reaches $30,000 very often. That is d- -nable! and, I think, unnecessary.

A SPECIMEN OF REFINEMENT New York, February 12, 1871

Dear John E: Your yaller strip with enclosure came duly and safely to hand. I appreciate all you say, my dear boy, but if the great gods will have it so-how in h-11 can I help being refined? (The above is a specimen of it)-I can't paint with big brushes the fine touches come in spite of me and it's all folly to say 'don't elaborate-don't refine it'-I can't help it. I make desperate attempts to 'pitch in' but there's no pitch in meI'm too d-d genteel and exquisite, I s'pose, and some buster with a 'big woice' and a broad axe gesticulation will oust me one of these fine days. Dern the odds-so long as I get my

Evans House, Boston October 14, 1873

Many years ago-when a lad-"the down upon my . . . . lip, less man than boy," &c, &c,-there lived, somewhere in your vicinity, a joyous youth yclept the same as you be. Did you know him? Can you tell me if he vas kith or kin o' yourn and if he's still among the breathers?

I last saw him at a place called Worcester en route to Gotham, and as I shall shortly journey thitherward again I would like to ascertain the condition of his corpse that I may determine whether it wd be better to "lay over" a night. Should you meet any of his surviving relatives or friends (perhaps the oldest inhabitant may recall him) ascertain for me if an old forgotten pal of his wd be welcome in the village.

I shan't write to him-until I learn some particulars of his present "how" regarding myself & Co.

Convey my greetings to him and his good little home-mate on the hill, and tell him me and mine is his'n still. Ajew!

Respectfully, my dear sir, and with great esteem, I am, believe me, yours in grief. E. BOOTH, Esqre