"I am tired in body and brain. The poor girl is passing away from us. For weeks she has been failing rapidly; and the doctors tell me that she is dying. You can imagine my condition: acting at random every evening, and nursing a half-insane, dying wife all day, and all night too, for that matter. I am scarce sane myself. I scribble this in haste at two in the morning, for I know not when I will have a chance to write sensibly again."
The room in which Edwin Booth died—which I have visited—at the Players' Club in Grammercy Park, New York, founded by himself, and where he had been so beloved, was left untouched after he had passed away, and, I understand, so remains.
When I was a lad of seventeen I went for a trip to New York, and during my stay I chanced to see Edward Askew Sothern—to give him his full name—play his world-renowned character, Lord Dundreary, for the first time in his life. Some years later, when we met upon the stage, I gave him my copy of the original playbill, which, of course, had great interest for him. The eccentric nobleman drew all playgoers for years in England as well as in America. At the time I mention I saw Sothern and Jefferson act together in a round of old English comedies. As young men they made giant successes in individual parts—Dundreary and Rip Van Winkle—the one a masterpiece of caricature, the other a veritable old Dutch master.
Another of Sothern's chief parts, in those days, was David Garrick, of which he was the original representative, long before the play was taken over and prominently associated with the career of Charles Wyndham.
Sothern was always kind to me, whether in my early days in the provinces or afterwards in town. He was my guest at the first dinner-party I had the courage to give. Among those who sat with him were Dion Boucicault, W. S. Gilbert, W. R. McConnell and Tom Hood. I was a young host, not having struck twenty-six. He was a fearless rider and hunting man. Once, after he had met with a bad accident, following the staghounds, I went to see him at his charming old house, called The Cedars, in Kensington, and found his bed placed in the middle of the room. The house, when I last saw it, had become a home for cripples.
Sothern was the king of practical-jokers and would stop at nothing in the way of thought, time or money, to carry out his wild projects. A poor game at its best, I have often thought in mature age; a selfish form of innings.
He was an intense admirer of my wife's art. Only after he had passed away did it come to my knowledge that in some stage experiences, published in America, with the title Birds of a Feather, he gave his judgment of her.
"Among the actresses I should certainly place Mrs. Bancroft and Mrs. Kendal in the foremost rank, their specialities being high comedy. Mrs. Bancroft I consider the best actress on the English stage; in fact, I might say on any stage."
Sam Sothern, so long a pleasant actor on our stage, is dead, so his father's name and fame are now successfully held by his son, Edward, in America.
Dion Boucicault