His whole face and form were ablaze with expression—literally transfigured; and his voice embodied a majestic terrible rage that electrified the listeners. Men rose in all parts of the house and shouted with delight. I had seen Rachel and Forrest and Cushman and Grisi then, and I have seen Bernhardt and Irving and Salvini and Ristori since, but I never saw or heard on the stage anything more tremendous than the picture he presented and the passion he portrayed in his youth in Richard III.
I went the next night and the next, and found the fascination increase. I saw him in Petruchio, Brutus, Hamlet, Richelieu, Lear, Iago, Claude Melnotte, Sir Giles Overreach, Romeo, and Pescara. He was uneven and fitful in everything, but in every part he played he did something that no other actor could rival. His youth, too, had a charm; the very crudeness of his acting gave a certain interest—it left room for anticipation. I was very much attracted by the stage at that time, so I called on young Booth and told him what I thought of his acting. He had plenty of admirers, but my enthusiasm seemed to touch him, and we struck up a friendship at once. At the end of a week he consented to spend Sunday with me; and from that time dated a peculiar intimacy. I had a good deal of leisure and could pass my days as well as nights in his company, and I knew no greater pleasure than he gave me, either on or off the stage. He was not then a finished scholar, nor by any means the great artist that he afterward became, and I was anxious that he should be both. I used to hunt up books and pictures about the stage, the finest criticisms, the works that illustrated his scenes, the biographies of great actors, and we studied them together. We visited the Astor Library and the Society Library to verify costumes, and every picture or picture-gallery in New York, public or private, that was accessible. He discussed his parts with me, and with the conceit of youth I often ventured to differ with him on points in his art where he should have been an authority. Often we quarrelled all day about an interpretation or a rendering, and I went to the theatre at night to be convinced that he was right and I was wrong. Sometimes he gave me a private box, and I took notes of the performance, and of the criticisms or changes that occurred to me. Next day we went over them together, and at night he would play Richard or Iago according to my suggestions—perhaps as much to gratify me as because he thought my judgment correct.
Oftener I went to his dressing-room. It was very fascinating to watch the face of the character he was to play grow and vary beneath his hand. The character itself seemed to grow at the same time. When we entered at the stage door he was my friend—“Ned,” I always called him; but as the paint and the cotton eyebrows, the wig and the tights, were put on, the stage personage appeared; and when Hamlet or Romeo was ready his manner assumed all the grace and dignity of the Prince or the Montagu. After he had played a scene or two the transformation was complete, and lasted till the stage clothes were taken off.
How completely he personated the characters that he assumed I can testify from comparison with what may be called his originals, the actual Hotspurs and Hamlets, the soldiers and princes, of the real world. One night in Louisiana before a battle I was with General T. W. Sherman while he was giving orders to his officers and aides-de-camp. It was nearly midnight, and there was to be an attack at dawn. First came in one messenger, then another, next the leader of the advance, last the captain of the reserves. The night was warm and the tent was thrown open; a candle burned on a table within, while the general paced up and down in the darkness outside. There was a hush and a bustle combined, a subdued intensity and a dramatic haste, as the commander gave his different orders and received his successive subordinates, that brought to my mind at the moment the tent scene in “Richard III.” I thought, just then, “How like all this is to what I have 260 seen on the stage.” Yet Booth had never witnessed actual war.
In the same way in Europe: I often thought of him when princes and sovereigns were holding levees or processions, receiving homage or conferring honors; no Guelph or Bourbon of them all went through his part with greater dignity or grace than the young American who had never been at court; and sometimes the magic of genius arrayed him in a majesty which all the reality of their grandeur could not inspire.
There was one character, however, that he could not play—the lover. He was the poorest of Romeos, and he knew it. He looked the part, of course, in his youth; the women always wanted to see him play it, and the actresses all wanted to be Juliet; but there was a lack of tenderness in his eye, and of ardor in his tone; even the gestures were tame. He was not anxious or persuasive enough; he was too confident, or too indifferent. The only point in the play where he rose to his usual level was in the fight with Tybalt; but then there was killing to be done, and this was passion of a different sort—this was tragedy. Then he became inspired, and looked for a moment like one of the demi-gods in Homer’s battles. But in the scenes with the friar and with Juliet, even in the balcony scene, he was comparatively spiritless. Whether he was not actually a good lover, or whether he felt a certain delicacy about love-making in public, the fact remains that he was always more effective in parts that represent harsh or violent emotions than in tender ones with women.
So, too, though he had a keen sense of humor, and was full of jokes and funny stories off the stage, and told them with a genuine comic power, he could not act a comic part. I once saw him in “Little Toddlekins,” in white trousers and a high hat, and I never wanted to see him in farce again. Even in high comedy he was not so interesting as in tragedy. Benedick himself was not to his taste, and his nearest approach to success in comedy was as Don Cæsar de Bazan; but there the fascination was in his superb appearance and irresistible grace quite as much as in dramatic power. His Don Cæsar, however, was a wonderful picture, an embodied romance. He delighted in the caustic speeches of Shylock or Hamlet, or the irony of Iago, but these can hardly be called comedy. His Petruchio was a game of romps; but it was Donatello romping with Miriam, or Bacchus with Ariadne.
Yet, I repeat, he was bubbling over with a grim sort of humor in real life, like that which Shakespeare sprinkles over his tragedies. Behind the scenes he would mock and gibe at himself, had odd remarks to make about his face or his costume, and was alive with waggeries and witticisms. I once pulled aside his robes in Richelieu as he sat smoking between the acts, and he shrank back and screamed, “How dare you, sir?” in a shrill tone, exactly like a woman. The next moment he was the stately cardinal again.
I was very anxious that Booth should receive a social recognition. Thirty years ago actors had not overleaped the barriers which had existed for centuries, to anything like the extent we know at present, and I wanted him to meet people of distinction, to hold the position which Garrick once occupied in England; but he hardly shared my ambition for him. If people wanted him they had to seek him, and even then were not sure of getting him. Social attentions sometimes gratified, but quite as often bored him. But his genius was so positive and so attractive, that the most prominent people all over the country courted his society. I had the pleasure of putting up his name at the Century Club, where he was more than cordially welcomed. The wits, the scholars, artists, authors, all were glad to know the man who had given them so refined a pleasure. Bancroft, Bryant, Curtis, and their families, Sumner, Mrs. Ward Howe, men and women of the first social position, as well as cultivation, were his personal friends, even at that early day. But he seemed indifferent to his fame.