"What shall we do now, Mary being dead,
Or say, or write, that shall express the half?
What can we do but pillow that fair head
And let the spring-time write her epitaph?
"As it will soon in snow-drop, violet,
Wind-flower, and columbine, and maiden's tear,—
Each letter of that pretty alphabet
That spells in flowers the pageant of the year.
"She was a maiden for a man to love,
She was a woman for a husband's life,
One that had learned to value far above
The name of Love the sacred name of Wife.
"Her little life-dream, rounded so with sleep,
Had all there is of life—except gray hairs:
Hope, love, trust, passion, and devotion deep,
And that mysterious tie a Mother bears.
"She hath fulfilled her promise and hath past:
Set her down gently at the iron door!
Eyes! look on that loved image for the last:
Now cover it in earth—her earth no more!"
Let us now summon, as first in order, the name that heads the list of the actors above given. Henry Placide enjoyed in public estimation a fame worthy and well deserved. He was an actor of the old school, and his conceptions were the fruit of appreciative and careful study; his acting was a lucid and harmonious interpretation of his author; and his elocution, clear and resonant, was the speech of a scholar and a gentleman. The artistic sense was never forgotten in his delineations, and his name on the bills was a guaranty of intellectual pleasure. He was not broadly funny like Burton, or Holland; but those who remember his Sir Harcourt Courtley, his Jean Jacques François Antoine Hypolite de Frisac, in "Paris and London," and his Clown, in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," will not deny that he was the owner of a rich vein of eccentric humor, and that he worked his possession effectually. He was an expert in the Gallic parts where the speech is a struggle between French and English, and, indeed, since his departure they, too, have vanished from the stage. But those who saw him as Haversac, in "The Old Guard"; as The Tutor, in "To Parents and Guardians"; or as Monsieur Dufard, in "The First Night," will bear witness to his inimitable manner, and to his facile blending of the grave and gay. We shall never forget how, in the last-named character (Mons. Dufard), having engaged his daughter for a "first appearance," and having declared his own ability to manage the drum in the orchestra on the occasion, he, suddenly, during the mimic rehearsal, at an allusion in the text to sunrise, stamped violently on the stage; and to the startled manager's exclamation of "What's that!" serenely replied: "Zat ees ze cannon vich announce ze brek of day—I play him on ze big drum in ze night." In choleric old men Placide was unsurpassed. All the touches that go toward the creation of a grim, irascible, thwarted, bluff old gentleman, he commanded at will. His Colonel Hardy, in "Paul Pry," for instance, what an example was that! I hear him, now, at the close of the comedy, when things had drifted to a happy anchorage—hear him saying in reply to the soothing remark: "Why, Colonel, you've every thing your own way,"—"Yes, I know I have every thing my own way; but—— it, I hav'n't my own way of having it!" His repertory covered a wide range; and we retain vivid recollections of his Sir Peter Teazle, his Doctor Ollapod, and his Silky; the last in "The Road to Ruin," in which comedy, by the way, we remember seeing Placide, Blake, Burton, Lester, Bland, and Mrs. Hughes; truly a phenomenal cast.
Such, briefly sketched, was the actor who constituted one of Burton's strongest pillars. For some years he played at no other theatre in New York. He gave enjoyment to thousands, and in dramatic annals his name and achievements have distinguished and honorable record. As one of the many who remain to own their debt of pleasure and instruction, the present writer pays this tribute to the genius and memory of Henry Placide. [7]
We now summon another name from the famous corps, for the purpose of analysis, since we should be ill content with the cold respect of a passing glance at an artist so celebrated as was William Rufus Blake. We can recall no actor of the past, and we know of but one in the present, comparable with Blake in certain lines of old men—certainly in the rôle of tender pathos like Old Dornton, and in the portrayal of a sweetly noble nature framed in venerable simplicity, as in Jesse Rural, he had no equal; and it is simply truth to say that with him departed from the stage that unique, all-affecting, wondrous embodiment of Geoffrey Dale, in "The Last Man."
The characteristics of Blake's power were a broad heartiness, suggestive sentiment, and eloquent idealization. These traits informed respectively the parts he essayed, and gave to each in turn rare flow of spirit, richness of color, and poetic fervor. For the verbal expression of these salient elements, he possessed a tuneful voice, which rose or fell as the sway of feeling dictated, and his delivery was singularly felicitous in tone and emphasis. Nor was he lacking in a humor at once subtle and delicate, happily evinced in his acting of Mr. Primrose, in the comedietta of "Bachelors' Torments."
Those who saw Blake at the period of which we are writing, found it hard to believe that the Sir Anthony Absolute of aldermanic proportions before them was once a slender young man and played light comedy! Yet so it was. Very old play-goers will recollect the Chatham Garden theatre, and perhaps some tenacious memory bears record of having seen Blake there in the long ago; for there he first appeared to a New York audience, in 1824, playing Frederick, in Colman's "Poor Gentleman." We never saw him earlier than at Burton's, and then with added years had come a rotundity of person which, however unobjectionable in the famous impersonations of his prime, was not, it must be confessed, the ideal physique of light comedy; so his Frederick had long departed and his Sir Robert Bramble had appeared.