XIV.
ON THE DEATH OF LAWRENCE BARRETT.
[Obiit March 20, 1891.]
The death of Lawrence Barrett was the disappearance of one of the noblest figures of the modern stage. During the whole of his career, in a public life of thirty-five years, he was steadily and continuously impelled by a pure and fine ambition and the objects that he sought to accomplish were always the worthiest and the best. His devotion to the dramatic art was a passionate devotion, and in an equal degree he was devoted to a high ideal of personal conduct. Doctrines of expediency never influenced him and indeed were never considered by him. He had early fixed his eyes on the dramatic sceptre. He knew that it never could be gained except by the greatest and brightest of artistic achievements, and to them accordingly he consecrated his life. Whenever and wherever he appeared the community was impressed with a sense of intellectual character, moral worth, and individual dignity. Many other dramatic efforts might be trivial. Those of Lawrence Barrett were always felt to be important. Most of the plays with which his name is identified are among the greatest plays in our language, and the spirit in which he treated them was that of exalted scholarship, austere reverence, and perfect refinement. He was profoundly true to all that is noble and beautiful, and because he was true the world of art everywhere recognised him as the image of fidelity and gave to him the high tribute of its unwavering homage. His coming was always a signal to arouse the mind. His mental vitality, which was very great, impressed even unsympathetic beholders with a sense of fiery thought struggling in its fetters of mortality and almost shattering and consuming the frail temple of its human life. His stately head, silvered with graying hair, his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, his thin visage pallid with study and pain, his form of grace and his voice of sonorous eloquence and solemn music (in compass, variety, and sweetness one of the few great voices of the current dramatic generation), his tremendous earnestness, his superb bearing, and his invariable authority and distinction—all those attributes united to announce a ruler and leader in the realm of the intellect. The exceeding tumult of his spirit enhanced the effect of this mordant personality. The same sleepless energy that inspired Loyola and Lanfranc burned in the bosom of this modern actor; and it was entirely in keeping with the drift of his character and the tenor of his life that the last subject that occupied his thoughts should have been the story of Becket, the great prelate—whom he intended to represent, and to whom in mental qualities he was nearly allied. In losing Lawrence Barrett the American stage lost the one man who served it with an apostle's zeal because he loved it with an apostle's love.
The essential attributes that Lawrence Barrett did not possess were enchantment for the public and adequate and philosophic patience for himself. He gained, indeed, a great amount of public favour, and,—with reference to an indisputable lack of universal sympathy and enthusiasm,—he was learning to regard that as a natural consequence of his character which formerly he had resented as the injustice of the world. Men and women of austere mind do not fascinate their fellow-creatures. They impress by their strangeness. They awe by their majesty. They predominate by their power. But they do not involuntarily entice. Lawrence Barrett,—although full of kindness and gentleness, and, to those who knew him well, one of the most affectionate and lovable of men,—was essentially a man of austere intellect; and his experience was according to his nature. To some persons the world gives everything, without being asked to give at all. To others it gives only what it must, and that with a kind of icy reluctance that often makes the gift a bitter one. Lawrence Barrett, who rose from an obscure and humble position,—without fortune, without friends, without favouring circumstances, without education, without help save that of his talents and his will,—was for a long time met with indifference, or frigid obstruction, or impatient disparagement. He gained nothing without battle. He had to make his way by his strength. His progress involved continual effort and his course was attended with continual controversy and strife. When at last it had to be conceded that he was a great actor, the concession was, in many quarters, grudgingly made. Even then detraction steadily followed him, and its voice—though impotent and immeasurably trivial—has not yet died away. There came a time when his worth was widely recognised, and from that moment onward he had much prosperity, and his nature expanded and grew calmer, sweeter, and brighter under its influence. But the habit of warfare had got into his acting, and more or less it remained there to the last. The assertive quality, indeed, had long since begun to die away. The volume of needless emphasis was growing less and less. Few performances on the contemporary stage are commensurate with his embodiments of Harebell and Gringoire, in softness, simplicity, poetic charm, and the gentle tranquillity that is the repose of a self-centred soul. But his deep and burning desire to be understood, his anxiety lest his effects should not be appreciated, his inveterate purpose of conquest,—that overwhelming solicitude of ambition often led him to insist upon his points, to over-elaborate and enforce them, and in that way his art to some extent defeated itself by the excess of its eager zeal. The spirit of beauty that the human race pursues is the spirit that is typified in Emerson's poem of Forerunners—the elusive spirit that all men feel and no man understands. This truth, undiscerned by him at first, had become the conviction of his riper years; and if his life had been prolonged the autumn of his professional career would have been gentle, serene, and full of tranquil loveliness.
The achievement of Lawrence Barrett as an actor was great, but his influence upon the stage was greater than his achievement. Among the Shakespearian parts that he played were Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Iago, Shylock, Leontes, Cassius, Wolsey, Richard III., Romeo, and Benedick. Outside of Shakespeare (to mention only a few of his impersonations) he acted Richelieu, Evelyn, Aranza, Garrick, Claude Melnotte, Rienzi, Dan'l Druce, Lanciotto, Hernani, King Arthur, and Ganelon. The parts in which he was superlatively fine,—and in some respects incomparable,—are Cassius, Harebell, Yorick, Gringoire, King Arthur, Ganelon, and James V., King of the Commons. In his time he had played hundreds of parts, ranging over the whole field of the drama, but as the years passed and the liberty of choice came more and more within his reach, he concentrated his powers upon a few works and upon a specific line of expression. The aspect of human nature and human experience that especially aroused his sympathy was the loneliness of beneficent intellectual grandeur, isolated by its supremacy and pathetic in its isolation. He loved the character of Richelieu, and if he had acted Becket, as he purposed to do, in Tennyson's tragedy, he would have presented another and a different type of that same ideal—lonely, austere, passionate age, defiant of profane authority and protective of innocent weakness against wicked and cruel strength. His embodiment of Cassius, with all its intensity of repressed spleen and caustic malevolence, was softly touched and sweetly ennobled with the majesty of venerable loneliness,—the bleak light of pathetic sequestration from human ties, without the forfeiture of human love,—that is the natural adjunct of intellectual greatness. He loved also the character of Harebell, because in that he could express his devotion to the beautiful, the honest impulses of his affectionate heart, and his ideal of a friendship that is too pure and simple even to dream that such a thing as guile can exist anywhere in the world. Toward the expression, under dramatic conditions, of natures such as those, the development of his acting was steadily directed; and, even if he fell short, in any degree, of accomplishing all that he purposed, it is certain that his spirit and his conduct dignified the theatrical profession, strengthened the stage in the esteem of good men, and cheered the heart and fired the energy of every sincere artist that came within the reach of his example. For his own best personal success he required a part in which, after long repression, the torrent of passion can break loose in a tumult of frenzy and a wild strain of eloquent words. The terrible exultation of Cassius, after the fall of Cæsar, the ecstasy of Lanciotto when he first believes himself to be loved by Francesca, the delirium of Yorick when he can no longer restrain the doubts that madden his jealous and wounded soul, the rapture of King James over the vindication of his friend Seyton, whom his suspicions have wronged—those were among his distinctively great moments, and his image as he was in such moments is worthy to live among the storied traditions and the bright memories of the stage.
Censure seems to be easy to most people, and few men are rated at their full value while they are yet alive. Just as mountains seem more sublime in the vague and hazy distance, so a noble mind looms grandly through the dusk of death. So it will be with him. Lawrence Barrett was a man of high principle and perfect integrity. He never spoke a false word nor knowingly harmed a human being, in all his life. Although sometimes he seemed to be harsh and imperious, he was at heart kind and humble. Strife with the world, and in past times uncertainty as to his position, caused in him the assumption of a stern and frigid manner, but beneath that haughty reserve there was a great longing for human affection and a sincere humility of spirit. He never nurtured hostility. He had no memory for injuries; but a kindness he never forgot. His good deeds were as numerous as his days—for no day rolled over his head without its act of benevolence in one direction or another. He was as impulsive as a child. He had much of the woman in his nature, and therefore his views were impetuous, strong, and often strongly stated; but his sense of humour kept pace with his sensibility and so maintained the equilibrium of his mind. In temperament he was sad, pensive, introspective, almost gloomy; but he opposed to that tendency an incessant mental activity and the force of a tremendous will. In his lighter moods he was not only appreciative of mirth but was the cause of it. His humour was elemental and whatever aspect of life he saw in a comic light he could set in that light before the eyes of others. He had been a studious reader for many years and his mind was stored with ample, exact, and diversified information. He had a scholar's knowledge of Roman history and his familiar acquaintance with the character and career of the first Napoleon was extraordinary. In acting he was largely influenced by his studies of Edmund Kean and by his association with Charlotte Cushman. For a few years after 1864 his art was especially affected by that of Edwin Booth; but the style to which he finally gravitated was his own. He was not so much an impersonator as he was an interpreter of character, and the elocutionary part of acting was made more conspicuous and important by him than by any other tragedian since the days of Forrest and Brooke.
It was a beautiful life prematurely ended. It was a brave, strong spirit suddenly called out of the world. To the dramatic profession the loss is irreparable. In the condition of the contemporary theatre there are not many hopeful signs. No doubt there will be bright days in the future, as there have been in the past. They go and they return. The stage declines and the stage advances. At present its estate is low. Few men like Lawrence Barrett remain for it to lose. Its main hope is in the abiding influence of such examples as he has left. The old theatrical period is fast passing away. The new age rushes on the scene, with youthful vigour and impetuous tumult. But to some of us,—who perhaps have not long to stay, and to whom, whatever be their fortune, this tumult is unsympathetic and insignificant,—the way grows darker and lonelier as we lay our garlands of eternal farewell upon the coffin of Lawrence Barrett.