On the death of the third baronet, the title devolved upon his brother, Cowsajee (1853-1908), who became Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, fourth baronet, and the recognized leader of the Parsee community all over the world. He was succeeded by his son Rustomjee (b. 1878), who became Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, fifth baronet.
Since their emigration from Persia, the Parsee community had never had a titular chief or head, its communal funds and affairs being managed by a public body, more or less democratic in its constitution, termed the Parsee panchayat. The first Sir Jamsetjee, by the hold that he established on the community, by his charities and public spirit, gradually came to be regarded in the light of its chief; and the recognition which he was the first in India to receive at the hands of the British sovereign finally fixed him and his successors in the baronetcy in the position and title of the official Parsee leader.
(M. M. Bh.)
JEFFERIES, RICHARD (1848-1887), English naturalist and author, was born on the 6th of November 1848, at the farmhouse of Coate about 2½ m. from Swindon, on the road to Marlborough. He was sent to school, first at Sydenham and then at Swindon, till the age of fifteen or so, but his actual education was at the hands of his father, who gave him his love for Nature and taught him how to observe. For the faculty of observation, as Jefferies, Gilbert White, and H. D. Thoreau have remarked, several gifts are necessary, including the possession of long sight and quick sight, two things which do not always go together. To them must be joined trained sight and the knowledge of what to expect. The boy’s father first showed him what there was to look for in the hedge, in the field, in the trees, and in the sky. This kind of training would in many cases be wasted: to one who can understand it, the book of Nature will by-and-by offer pages which are blurred and illegible to the city-bred lad, and even to the country lad the power of reading them must be maintained by constant practice. To live amid streets or in the working world destroys it. The observer must live alone and always in the country; he must not worry himself about the ways of the world; he must be always, from day to day, watching the infinite changes and variations of Nature. Perhaps, even when the observer can actually read this book of Nature, his power of articulate speech may prove inadequate for the expression of what he sees. But Jefferies, as a boy, was more than an observer of the fields; he was bookish, and read all the books that he could borrow or buy. And presently, as is apt to be the fate of a bookish boy who cannot enter a learned profession, he became a journalist and obtained a post on the local paper. He developed literary ambitions, but for a long time to come was as one beating the air. He tried local history and novels; but his early novels, which were published at his own risk and expense, were, deservedly, failures. In 1872, however, he published a remarkable letter in The Times, on “The Wiltshire Labourer,” full of original ideas and of facts new to most readers. This was in reality the turning-point in his career. In 1873, after more false starts, Jefferies returned to his true field of work, the life of the country, and began to write for Fraser’s Magazine on “Farming and Farmers.” He had now found himself. The rest of his history is that of continual advance, from close observation becoming daily more and more close, to that intimate communion with Nature with which his later pages are filled. The developments of the later period are throughout touched with the melancholy that belongs to ill-health. For, though in his prose poem called “The Pageant of Summer” the writer seems absolutely revelling in the strength of manhood that belongs to that pageant, yet, in the Story of My Heart, written about the same time, we detect the mind that is continually turned to death. He died at Goring, worn out with many ailments, on the 14th of August 1887. The best-known books of Richard Jefferies are: The Gamekeeper at Home (1878); The Story of My Heart (1883); Life of the Fields (1884), containing the best paper he ever wrote, “The Pageant of Summer”; Amaryllis at the Fair (1884), in which may be found the portraits of his own people; and The Open Air. He stands among the scanty company of men who address a small audience, for whom he read aloud these pages of Nature spoken of above, which only he, and the few like unto him, can decipher.
See Sir Walter Besant, Eulogy of Richard Jefferies (1888); H. S. Salt, Richard Jefferies: a Study (1894); Edward Thomas, Richard Jefferies, his Life and Work (1909).
(W. Be.)
JEFFERSON, JOSEPH (1820-1905), American actor, was born in Philadelphia on the 20th of February 1829. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and the most famous of all American comedians. At the age of three he appeared as the boy in Kotzebue’s Pizarro, and throughout his youth he underwent all the hardships connected with theatrical touring in those early days. After a miscellaneous experience, partly as actor, partly as manager, he won his first pronounced success in 1858 as Asa Trenchard in Tom Taylor’s Our American Cousin at Laura Keene’s theatre in New York. This play was the turning-point of his career, as it was of Sothern’s. The naturalness and spontaneity of humour with which he acted the love scenes revealed a spirit in comedy new to his contemporaries, long used to a more artificial convention; and the touch of pathos which the part required revealed no less to the actor an unexpected power in himself. Other early parts were Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby, Caleb Plummer in The Cricket on the Hearth, Dr Pangloss in The Heir at Law, Salem Scudder in The Octoroon, and Bob Acres in The Rivals, the last being not so much an interpretation of the character as Sheridan sketched it as a creation of the actor’s. In 1859 Jefferson made a dramatic version of the story of Rip Van Winkle on the basis of older plays, and acted it with success at Washington. The play was given its permanent form by Dion Boucicault in London, where (1865) it ran 170 nights, with Jefferson in the leading part. Jefferson continued to act with undiminished popularity in a limited number of parts in nearly every town in the United States, his Rip Van Winkle, Bob Acres, and Caleb Plummer being the most popular. He was one of the first to establish the travelling combinations which superseded the old system of local stock companies. With the exception of minor parts, such as the First Gravedigger in Hamlet, which he played in an “all star combination” headed by Edwin Booth, Jefferson created no new character after 1865; and the success of Rip Van Winkle was so pronounced that he has often been called a one-part actor. If this was a fault, it was the public’s, who never wearied of his one masterpiece. Jefferson died on the 23rd of April 1905. No man in his profession was more honoured for his achievements or his character. He was the friend of many of the leading men in American politics, art and literature. He was an ardent fisherman and lover of nature, and devoted to painting. Jefferson was twice married: to an actress, Margaret Clements Lockyer (1832-1861), in 1850, and in 1867 to Sarah Warren, niece of William Warren the actor.
Jefferson’s Autobiography (New York, 1889) is written with admirable spirit and humour, and its judgments with regard to the art of the actor and of the playwright entitle it to a place beside Cibber’s Apology. See William Winter, The Jeffersons (1881), and Life of Joseph Jefferson (1894); Mrs. E. P. Jefferson, Recollections of Joseph Jefferson (1909).