LAWRENCE BARRETT
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.