None the less was Raymond an accomplished comedian, brisk, lively, laughter-compelling and authoritative. Like many another comic actor, he longed to play pathetic parts; and unlike most of those who have this ambition, he did possess the power of drawing tears. I had first seen him as Asa Trenchard in Paris during the Exposition of 1867, when Sothern had ventured across the Channel to disclose Lord Dundreary to the unresponsive French; and I have never forgotten the simple and manly pathos of the scene in which Asa burns the will leaving him the fortune which would otherwise go to the girl he is in love with. Audiences are always ready to appreciate a brief pathetic episode when the comic character unexpectedly turns his serious side to the spectators. But they are resentful when the funny man whom they have gone to laugh with, and even to laugh at, is presented in a play wherein he is persistently pathetic and not even intermittently humorous. Raymond lost money for himself and for his managers when he impersonated a dreary sobseeker in a dull domestic drama, ‘My Son,’ derived from a tearful Teutonic tale of woe.
In collaboration with H. C. Bunner I put together a rather boisterous farce called ‘Touch and Go,’ which Raymond liked enough to contract to produce but not enough for him ever to set about its production. In its place he had brought out in succession two plays in which the fun was less acrobatic—‘In Paradise’ and ‘For Congress.’ After these pieces had run their course, G. H. Jessop (who was a part author of ‘In Paradise’) came to me with an idea for a comic drama for Raymond and asked me to join him in working it out. It was to be called ‘A Gold Mine’; and having in mind Raymond’s Asa Trenchard in the ‘American Cousin,’ I suggested that we lay the scene in London, so as to repeat the contrast of an American with the British. We also decided to develop our plot so that at the end of the second of our three acts Raymond should have a chance to be pathetic if only for a brief moment.
When our play was read to Raymond he was delighted with it; the character suited him and he rejoiced that he was to have an opportunity to show that he could be serious when the situation required it. During his annual tour he tried out our comedy in one of the smaller Western cities on a Friday night. He sent us a glowing report of the reception of our play and of his own triumph at the end of the second act. And in less than a fortnight thereafter we read in the morning paper that he had had a sudden seizure which had carried him off within twenty-four hours.
IV
Fortunately for the authors, thus unexpectedly bereft of the actor for whom the piece had been composed and to whose personality it had been adjusted, Helen Tracy, who had played the heroine in the single performance which Raymond had given, wrote at once to Nat Goodwin, advising him to secure our play, as it had made a hit and as the star-part would just suit him. Goodwin asked us to let him read the piece; he liked it and we soon came to terms with him, both Jessop and I believing that he was an actor of promise, altho up to that time he had never undertaken a part demanding any subtlety of treatment or any veracity of characterization.
When he was a very young man, Goodwin had made his first appearance in a variety-show, giving imitations of the actors then prominent. It is a curious fact that even the most adroit mimics are rarely able to become accomplished actors, competent to sustain a character consistently throughout a play. Goodwin was one of the few exceptions to this rule. He soon gave up mimicry for burlesque, succeeding that fine comedian William H. Crane, in the chief comic part of the perennially popular ‘Evangeline’ and playing it in careful imitation of his predecessor. As Joseph Jefferson—who had often appeared in burlesque early in his career, notably in a parody of ‘Mazeppa’—once said to me, “burlesque is a very good school for a young comedian, as it tends to give him breadth of effect and certainty of execution.”
From burlesque Goodwin progressed to farce; and when he came to us for ‘A Gold Mine,’ he was playing the part of a drunken undertaker in ‘Turned Up,’ a robustious piece of British manufacture. As the attraction of this whirlwind farcicality was not exhausted, Goodwin arranged with us to postpone our play for a year; and he utilized the delay to prepare the public to accept him in a comedy of a more refined type. He added to his bill the ingenious and whimsical piece called ‘Lend Me Five Shillings’ which Jefferson was still acting occasionally. As he said to me, “I’d sooner finish third to Jefferson than run a dead heat with Dixey!”—Dixey having just made a great hit in ‘Adonis.’
Goodwin also appealed to us to modify the entrance of Silas K. Woolcott, the American who had gone to England to sell a gold mine. “That entrance is all right in itself,” he explained; “and it was all right for Raymond, because he had played parts of that kind before. But I haven’t; and it’s too quiet for me, since they’ll be disappointed if I don’t make them laugh with my first half-dozen speeches.” So we brought Woolcott in through the conservatory, instead of through the front door, and we contrived a very brief episode of equivoke in which Goodwin mistook the butler for a certain Sir Thomas Butler whom Woolcott had been invited to meet.
‘A Gold Mine’ was a more or less artificial comedy with a complicated plot and with dialog as brilliant as the combined wits of the two collaborators could compass. For the part of the fascinating widow with whom Woolcott was to pair off at the end of the play Goodwin engaged Kate Forsythe; and the rest of the cast was at least adequate if not entirely satisfactory. McCarty of the Boston Theater produced the play most judiciously, making a valuable suggestion for heightening the effect of the pathetic speech at the end of the second act. When we asked Goodwin if he was certain that he could play this serious bit and carry the audience with him, the actor answered modestly, “Yes—at least I think so. You see, I’m going to do it in imitation of Charley Thorne.”