I asked the leading juvenile of the company—young Bridges, who was supposed to attract women to the theatre, and for whose glorification “The Lady of Lyons” was sometimes revived at matinées—how the old man had acquired the nickname.
“I gave it to him myself last season,” replied Bridges, loftily. “Can't you guess why? You remember the graveyard scene in 'Hamlet.' The skull of Yorick, you know, had lain in the earth three and twenty years. Yorick had been dead that long. Well, the old man had been dead for about the same length of time,—professionally dead, I mean. See?”
It was true that, so far as being known by the world went, the old man was as good, or as bad, as dead. He no longer played other than quite unimportant parts.
It was said by some one that he was the poorest actor and the noblest man in the country; a statement commended by Jennison, an Englishman who usually played villains, to this, that his were the worst art and best heart in the profession.
Poor Yorick was a thin man, with a smooth, gentle face, lamblike blue eyes, and curling gray locks that receded gracefully from his forehead. He had just an individualizing amount of the pomposity characteristic of many old-time actors. He was not known to have any living kin. He permitted himself one weakness, a liking for whiskey, an indulgence which was never noticed to have brought appreciable harm upon him.
Once I asked him when he had made his début. He answered, “When Joe Jefferson was still young and before Billie Crane was heard of.”
“In what rôle?”
“As four soldiers,” he replied.
“How could that be?”
He explained that he had first appeared as a super in a military drama, marching as a soldier. The procession, in order to create an illusion of length, had passed across the stage and back, the return being made behind the scenes four times continuously in the same direction.