[Mr. William Winter's "Life and Art of Edwin Booth" is indispensable to a student of the American stage. Here are two paragraphs chosen from many as illuminating:
"The salient attributes of Booth's art were imagination, insight, grace, intense emotion, and melancholy refinement. In Hamlet, Richelieu, Othello, Iago, Lear, Bertuccio, and Lucius Brutus they were conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,--that which imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his acting,--was the thoughtful introspective habit of a stately mind, abstracted from passion and suffused with mournful dreaminess of temperament. The moment that charm began to work, his victory was complete. It was that which made him the true image of Shakespeare's thought, in the glittering halls of Elsinore, on its midnight battlements, and in its lonely, wind-beaten place of graves.
"Under the discipline of sorrow, and through years that bring the philosophic mind, Booth drifted further and further away from things dark and terrible, whether in the possibilities of human life or in the world of imagination. That is the direction of true growth. In all characters that evoked his essential spirit--in characters which rested on spiritualised intellect, or on sensibility to fragile loveliness, the joy that is unattainable, the glory that fades, and the beauty that perishes--he was peerless. Hamlet, Richelieu, Faust, Manfred, Jacques, Esmond, Sydney Carton, and Sir Edward Mortimer are all, in different ways, suggestive of the personality that Booth was fitted to illustrate. It is the loftiest type that human nature affords, because it is the embodied supremacy of the soul, and because therein it denotes the only possible escape from the cares and vanities of a transitory world."The letters which follow are from "Edwin Booth: Recollections by his daughter, Edwina Booth Grossman, and Letters to Her and to His Friends." Copyright, 1894, Century Company, New York.--ED.]
TO HIS DAUGHTER
BOOTH'S THEATER, NEW YORK, November 15, 1871.
MY OWN DEAR DAUGHTER:
I arrived here last night, and found your pretty gift awaiting me.
Your letter pleased me very, very much in every respect, and your little souvenir gave me far more delight than if it were of real gold.
When you are older you will understand how precious little things, seemingly of no value in themselves, can be loved and prized above all price when they convey the love and thoughtfulness of a good heart.
This little token of your desire to please me, my darling, is therefore very dear to me, and I will cherish it as long as I live.
If God grants me so many years, I will show it you when you are a woman, and then you will appreciate my preference for so little a thing, made by you, to anything money might have bought. God bless you, my darling! ...
God bless you again and again! Your loving father.
TO HIS DAUGHTER
CHICAGO, March 2, 1873.
MY DEAR BIG DAUGHTER:
Your last letter was very jolly, and made me almost happy. Pip (the dog) is yelping to write to you, and so is your little brother, St.
Valentine, the bird; but I greatly fear they will have to wait another week, for, you know, I have to hold the pen for them, and I have written so many letters, and to-day my hand is tired.
Don't you think it jollier to receive silly letters sometimes than to get a repetition of sermons on good behaviour? It is because I desire to encourage in you a vein of pleasantry, which is most desirable in one's correspondence, as well as in conversation, that I put aside the stern old father, and play papa now and then.
When I was learning to act tragedy, I had frequently to perform comic parts, in order to acquire a certain ease of manner that my serious parts might not appear too stilted; so you must endeavour in your letters, in your conversation, and your general deportment, to be easy and natural, graceful and dignified. But remember that dignity does not consist of over-becoming pride and haughtiness; self-respect, politeness and gentleness in all things and to all persons will give you sufficient dignity. Well, I declare, I've dropped into a sermon, after all, haven't I? I'm afraid I'11 have to let Pip and the bird have a chance, or else I'11 go on preaching till the end of my letter.
You must tell me what you are reading now, and how you progress in your studies, and how good you are trying to be. Of that I have no fear. I doubt if I shall get to Philadelphia in June; so do not expect me until school breaks up and then--"hey for Cos Cob" and the fish-poles! When I was last there the snow was high above our knees;but still I liked it better than the city ....
Love and kisses from your grim old father.
TO HIS DAUGHTER
April 23, 1876.
MY DARLING DAUGHTER, ... When I was at Eton (I don't refer now to the dinner-table) my Greek and Latin were of such a superior quality that had it not been for an unforeseen accident I would have carried off all the honours.
The accident lay in this: I never went to school there except in dreams. How often, ah! how often have I imagined the delights of a collegiate education! What a world of never-ending interest lies open to the master of languages!
The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness. I have suffered so much from the lack of that which my father could easily have given me in youth, and which he himself possessed, that I am all the more anxious you shall escape my punishment in that respect; that you may not, like me, dream of those advantages which others enjoy through any lack of opportunity or neglect of mine. Therefore, learn to love your Latin, your French, and your English grammar; standing firmly and securely on them, you have a solid foothold in the field of literature....
