Naturally, his eyes turned to Italy, but he had no money to take him there, so perforce remained at home, getting such instruction as he could. In 1837, at the age of twenty-three, he produced his first marble bust, and within the next four years, had carved at least forty more, besides four or five figures. From all this work, he managed to save the money needed for the trip to Italy, but after four years in the Italian studios, he sailed for home again. On July 4, 1856, the second equestrian statue to be set up in the United States was unveiled in Union Square, New York City, and gave Brown a reputation which still endures.

It is a statue of Washington, and, in some amazing fashion, Brown succeeded in producing a work of art, which, in some respects, has never been surpassed in America, and which has served as a pattern and guide to other sculptors from that day to this. It is a sincere, honest and dignified embodiment of the First American. Brown did some notable work after that, but none of it possesses the high inspiration which produced the noble and commanding figure which dominates Union Square.

We have said that it was the second equestrian statue produced in America. The first may still be seen by all who, on entering or leaving the White House, glance across the street at the public square beyond. One glance is certain to be followed by others, for that statue is not only the first, it is the most amazing ever set up in a public place in this country. It has divided with Greenough's "Washington," at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the horrors of being a national joke. Its author was Clarke Mills, and its inception is probably unparalleled in the history of sculpture.

Mills was born in New York State in 1815, lost his father while still a child, and at the age of thirteen was driven by harsh treatment to run away from the uncle with whom he had made his home. Thenceforward he supported himself in any way he could—as farm-hand, teamster, canal-hand, post-cutter, and finally as cabinet maker. He drifted about the country; to New Orleans, and finally to Charleston, South Carolina, where he learned to do stucco work, and whiled away his leisure hours by modelling busts in clay.

With Yankee ingenuity, he invented a process of taking a cast from the living face, and this simple method of getting a likeness enabled him to turn out busts so rapidly and cheaply that he had all the work he could do. He was, of course, anxious to try his hand at marble, and procuring a block of native Carolina stone, hewed out, with infinite labor, a bust of that South Carolina idol, John C. Calhoun. It was the best bust ever made of that celebrated statesman, and was the beginning of Mills's good fortune, and of the sequence of events which resulted in his statue of the hero of New Orleans.

For his Calhoun attracted much attention and secured him other commissions—among them, one for the busts of Webster and Crittenden. To get these, he was forced to go to Washington, and there he met the Hon. Cave Johnson, President of the Jackson Monument Commission, which had got together the funds for an equestrian statue of that old hero. Johnson suggested to Mills that he submit a design for this statue. As Mills had never seen either General Jackson or an equestrian statue, and had only the vaguest idea of what either was like, he naturally felt some doubt of his ability to execute such a work; but Johnson pointed out that this was only modesty, and so Mills finally evolved a design, which the commission accepted.

Then he went to work on his model, and executed it on an entirely new principle, which was to secure a balanced figure by bringing the hind legs of the horse under the centre of its body. Congress donated for the bronze of the statue the British cannon which Jackson had captured at New Orleans, and after many trials and disheartening failures, it was finally cast, hoisted into place, and dedicated on the eighth of January, 1853.

The whole country gazed at it in wonder and admiration, for surely never had another work of art so unique and original been unveiled in any land. Mills had balanced his horse adroitly on his hind legs, and represented the rider as clinging calmly to this perilous perch and doffing his chapeau to the admiring multitude. A delighted Congress added $20,000 to the price already paid, while New Orleans ordered a replica at an even higher figure. Absurd as the statue is, it yet must command from us a certain respect for the enthusiast who designed it. Remember, he had never seen an equestrian statue, because there was none in the country for him to see; he had no notion of dignified sculptural treatment; but he did what he could, as well as he was able.

Mills was the last of the primitives, for following him came Erasmus D. Palmer and Thomas Ball, the two men who, more than any others, shaped the course and guided the development of American sculpture.

Erasmus Palmer was born in 1817, and followed the trade of a carpenter. But in the odd moments of 1845, he made a cameo portrait of his wife, which was a rather unusual likeness. Encouraged by this success, he practised further, and ended by abandoning his saws and planes to devote his whole time to carving portraits. But the constant strain so weakened his eyes, that he was about to return to carpentering, when a friend suggested that he try his hand at modelling in clay. The result was the "Infant Ceres," modelled from one of his own children, which, reproduced in marble, created a sensation at the exhibitions in 1850.

From that moment, Palmer's career was steadily upwards. It culminated eight years later in his delightful figure, the "White Captive," reminiscent in a way of the "Greek Slave," but a better work of art, and one which stands among the most charming achievements of American sculpture. One of its wonders, too—wonder that an untrained hand and an unschooled brain should have been able to create a work of art at once so tender and so firm. Following it came some admirable portrait busts; and finally, in 1862, his "Peace in Bondage." No doubt the sculptor's beautiful and adequate conception sprang from the tragic period which gave it birth; for "Peace in Bondage" shows a winged female figure leaning wearily against a tree-trunk, and gazing hopelessly into space. It is carved in high relief, with great skill and insight. In fact, nothing finer had been produced in America.

With this work, American art may be said to have found itself. It not only raised the standard of achievement, but it put an end at once and forever to the idea that study in Italy was necessary to artistic success. For only once did Palmer visit Europe, and then it was to stay but a short time. In fact, Italy was artistic poison for many men; its art lacked originality and vigor, and it sapped the native strength of many of the Americans who worked in its studios.

Thomas Ball was an exception to this; for, in spite of many years abroad, he remained always characteristically American. He comes next to Palmer in strength and rightness of achievement; his work, like his life, was earnest and noble.

Thomas Ball's father was a house and sign painter of Boston, with some artistic skill, which he passed on to his son. That was the boy's only inheritance, and when his father died, he undertook the support of the family, first as a boy-of-all-work in the New England Museum, and then as a cameo-cutter. From that he graduated naturally to engraving, miniature painting, and finally to portraiture.

His first attempt at modelling resulted in a bust of Jenny Lind, done entirely from photographs, which had a wide vogue, for the Swedish Nightingale was then at the height of her popularity. Other more ambitious work followed, and finally, at the age of thirty-five, he was able to realize his ambition to study in the studios of Florence. But he found the Italian environment less inspiring than he had hoped, and two years later he was back in Boston, working on an equestrian statue of Washington—the first equestrian group in New England and the fourth in the United States. He built his plaster model with his own hands, and was three years getting it ready. The result was a work which ranks among the first equestrian statues of the country. Other works of importance followed, among them the well-known emancipation group showing Lincoln blessing a kneeling slave, which was unveiled at Washington in 1875.

The years touched Ball lightly, and at seventy years of age, he undertook his greatest work, an elaborate Washington monument for the town of Methuan, Massachusetts. The principal figure, a gigantic Washington in bronze, was exhibited at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and received the highest honors of the exposition—a distinction it richly merited by its nobility of a conception and execution. Thomas Ball, indeed, set a new standard in public statuary, and one which no successor has dared to disregard. The far-reaching effects of his influence and that of Erasmus Palmer can hardly be over-estimated.

One of the most engaging and versatile personalities in the whole range of American art was that of William Wetmore Story. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1819, graduated at Harvard, admitted to the bar, the author of a volume of graceful verse and of a valuable life of his father, Chief Justice Story, he yet, in 1851, put all this work aside, adopted sculpture as a profession, and, proceeding to Rome, opened a studio there.

It was from the first an extraordinary studio, attracting the most brilliant people of Rome in literature as well as art; and if Story did not quite practise the perfection he was somewhat fond of preaching, it was because of his very versatility, which absorbed his talent in so many directions that it could not be concentrated in any. His imagination outran his achievement, and the most famous of his works, his statue of Cleopatra, owes its reputation not so much to its own merit, which is far from overwhelming, as to the ecstatic description of it which Nathaniel Hawthorne included in "The Marble Faun." A master of literature is not necessarily an inspired critic of art, and it is to be suspected that Hawthorne permitted some of the fire of his imagination to play about the cold and uninspired marble.

"Cleopatra" marked Story's culmination. He fell away from it year by year, producing a long line of figures whose only impressive features were the names he gave them—"The Libyan Sibyl," "Semiramis," "Salome," "Medea," and so on. However, he did much to increase the popularity of sculpture, for the stories he attempted to tell in stone by means of heavy-browed, frowning women in classic costume and with classic names, were exactly suited to the child-like intelligence of his public. He gave art, too—as William Penn gave the Quakers—a sort of social sanction because of his own social position. If the son of Chief Justice Story could turn sculptor, surely that profession was not so irregular, after all!

Another sculptor who shared with Story the admiration of the public was Randolph Rogers, born at Waterloo, New York, in 1825. Until the age of twenty-three such modelling as he did was done in the spare moments of a business life; but when he gave an exhibition of the results of this labor, his employers were so impressed that they provided the money needed to send him to Italy, where he was to spend the remainder of his life, with the exception of five years' residence in New York. Two of his earlier figures are his most famous, his "Nydia" and his "Lost Pleiad." Scores of replicas in marble of these two figures were made during their author's life time, and they still retain for many people a simple and pathetic charm. Nearly every one, of course, has made the acquaintance of Nydia, the blind girl, in Bulwer-Lytton's "The Last Days of Pompeii," and so gaze at Rogers's fleeing figure with eyes too sympathetic to see its faults.

Far more important is the work of William H. Rinehart, of the same age as Rogers, and resembling him somewhat in development. Born on a Maryland farm, his early years were those of the average farmer's boy, but at last some blind instinct led him to abandon farming for stonecutting, and he became assistant to a mason and stonecutter of the neighborhood. As soon as he had learned his trade, at the age of twenty-one, he went to Baltimore, where there was work in plenty, and where he could, at the same time, attend the night schools of the Maryland Institute. This sounds much easier than it really was. To devote the evenings to study, after ten and often twelve hours of the hardest of all manual labor, required grit and moral courage such as few possess.

He was soon trying his hand at modelling, and convinced, at last, that sculpture was his vocation, he managed, by the time he was thirty, to save enough money for a short period of study at Rome. Three years of work at Baltimore, after that, gave him some reputation, and he then returned to Rome, to spend the remainder of his life there.

If you have ever visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, you have seen, in the hall of statuary, one of Rinehart's most characteristic groups, "Latona and Her Children." The mother half seated, half lying upon the ground, gazes tenderly down at the two sleeping children, sheltered in the folds of her mantle. The whole work possesses a serene poetic charm and dignity very noteworthy; and this and other groups are among the most beautiful that any American ever turned out of an Italian studio.

Rinehart was one of the last American disciples of the classic school. Certainly no art could have been more opposed to his than the frank and vivid realism of his immediate successor, John Rogers. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of a family of merchants, he was educated in the common schools, worked for a time in a store, and then entered a machine shop as an apprentice, working up through all the grades, until finally he was in charge of a railroad repair shop.

During all these years he had no suspicion of artistic talent within himself, but one day in Boston he happened to see a man modelling some images in clay. In that instant, the artist instinct clutched him, and procuring some clay and modelling tools, he spent all his leisure in practice. This leisure was scant enough, for his trade kept him employed fourteen hours of every day; but at the age of twenty-nine he was able to secure an eight months' vacation, which he spent in Europe, principally at Paris and Rome. He returned to America greatly discouraged, for the only thing he saw in Europe was classic sculpture, with which he had no sympathy and which, indeed, he could not understand.

So, abandoning all thought of making sculpture a profession, he went to work as a draughtsman in Chicago, amusing himself, at odd hours, by the construction of a group of small figures, which he called "The Checker Players." It was exhibited at a charity fair, and awakened so much interest and delight that Rogers burned his bridges behind him by resigning his position, and proceeded to New York, and rented a studio, determined to be a sculptor in spite of classicism.

The outbreak of the Civil War furnished him a host of subjects which he treated with a patriotic fervor that went straight to the heart of an overwrought people. "The Returned Volunteer," "The Picket-Guard," "The Sharp-shooters," "The Camp-fire," "One More Shot," and many others, came from his studio in rapid succession. They were all thoroughly American, and some were even admirably sculptural. They, at least, stood for an original idea, and deserve better treatment than the silent contempt which, in these days, is about all that has been accorded them.

At about this time, there came upon the scene the first and only really famous woman sculptor in the history of American art, Harriet Hosmer. She had had an unusual childhood, and had grown into an original and engaging woman. Born in 1830, at Watertown, Massachusetts, the daughter of a physician, she inherited her mother's delicate constitution, and her father encouraged her in an outdoor life of physical exercise such as only boys, at that time, were accustomed to. She became expert in rowing, riding, skating and shooting, developed great endurance, filled her room with snakes and insects and birds' nests, and in a clay pit at the end of her father's garden modelled rude figures of animals.

A few years of schooling followed this wild girlhood; then she was sent to Boston to study drawing and modelling; but finding that no woman would be admitted to the Boston Medical School, whose course in anatomy she was anxious to take, she went to St. Louis and entered the medical college there. Finally, in 1852, accompanied by her father and Charlotte Cushman, she set sail for Italy.

She remained there for eight years, turning out a number of very creditable figures, which, if not great, at least possess some measure of grace and charm. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his "Italian Note-Book," has left a vivid impression of Miss Hosmer, whose eccentricity of dress and manner impressed him deeply, as did also the work which she showed him. But she never reached any high development.

Which brings us to the present of American art, for the sculptors we have yet to consider are either yet alive or have died so recently that they belong to the present rather than the past.

The first and one of the most important of these is John Quincy Adams Ward, born in 1830 on an Ohio farm. An accident showed the possession of latent talent, for some good pottery clay happened to be discovered on his father's farm, and his guardian angel inspired the boy to take a handful of it and model the grotesque countenance of a negro servant. The result was striking, and no doubt he felt within himself some of the stirrings of genius, but not until 1849 did he realize his vocation. Then, while on a visit to a sister in Brooklyn, he happened to pass the open door of H. K. Brown's studio. The glimpse he caught of the scene within fascinated him; he returned again and again, and ended by entering the studio as a pupil.

He could have found no better master, and for seven years he remained there, assisting Brown in every detail of his work. His first group, modelled after long study, was his "Indian Hunter," now placed in Central Park, New York—a group instinct with vitality—a glimpse of a forgotten past, evoked with the skill of a master. It was the first of a long line of statues, many of them portraits of contemporaries, a field in which Ward has no superior. It is perhaps the highest tribute which could be paid the man to say that, with all his great production, he has never done bad work, never produced anything trifling or unworthy.

A fellow student with Ward in Henry Kirke Brown's studio was Larkin G. Meade, the first indication of whose talent was a unique one. One winter morning, about the middle of the century, the good people of Brattleboro, Vermont, were astonished to find set up in one of the public squares of the town a colossal snow image, in the form of a majestic angel—crude, no doubt, in execution, but singularly effective. Inquiry developed that it was the work of young Meade, then only fifteen years of age. The incident got into the newspapers, magnified considerably, and attracted the attention of old Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, who, on more than one occasion, had himself appeared as angel to struggling artists.

It was so in this case. Mr. Longworth wrote to Brattleboro, making some inquiries as to the essential truth of the story, and having satisfied himself on that point, offered to help the boy to get an artistic education. The offer was accepted, and young Meade was placed in Brown's studio, going afterwards to Italy. While there, he heard of the assassination of President Lincoln, and prepared an elaborate design in plaster for a national monument to the martyred President's memory. As soon as this was completed, he started for home with it, arriving at precisely the right moment. The rage for monument building was sweeping up and down the land. Councils, legislatures, all sorts of public and private bodies, were making appropriations to commemorate some particular hero of the Civil War, which was just ended; Meade's design appealed to the popular imagination, and the commission was awarded him.

The monument, which was destined to cost a quarter of a million dollars, was by far the most important that had ever been erected in this country, and the inexperienced young sculptor sailed back to Italy to begin work. Not until 1874 was it sufficiently completed to dedicate, and the last group of statuary was not put in place until ten years later. All this time, the sculptor had spent quietly in his studio at Florence, quite apart from the world of progress or of new ideas in art, and long before his work was finished, public taste had outgrown it and found it uninspired and commonplace.

Much more important to American art is the work of Olin Levi Warner, the son of an itinerant Methodist preacher, whose wanderings prevented the boy getting any regular schooling. During his childhood, he had shown considerable talent for carving statuettes in chalk, and he finally decided to immortalize his father by carving a portrait bust of him. For a stone, he "set" a barrel of plaster in one solid mass and then, breaking off the staves, began hacking away at it with such poor implements as he could command. It was a well-nigh endless task, but "it's dogged that does it," and the boy worked doggedly away until the bust was completed. It was considered such a success that young Warner, convinced of his vocation, set to work to earn enough money to go abroad. For six years he worked as a telegrapher, and it was not until 1869, when he was twenty-five years old, that he had saved the money needed.

Three years later he returned to New York, and opened a studio, but met with a reception so dismal and indifferent that, after a four years' desperate struggle, he was forced to abandon the fight and return to his father's farm. Anxious for any employment, he applied to Henry Plant, President of the Southern Express Company, for work. Mr. Plant was interested, and instead of offering him a job as messenger or teamster, gave him a commission for two portrait busts.

It was the turning point in Warner's career, for the busts he produced were of a craftsmanship so delicate and beautiful that they at once established his position among his fellow-sculptors, though years elapsed before he received any wide public recognition. The truth is that he was too great and sincere an artist to cater to a public taste which he had himself outgrown; so that, until quite recently, he has remained a sculptor's sculptor. His untimely death, in 1896, from the effects of a fall while riding in Central Park, brought forth a notable tribute from his fellow-craftsmen, and students of sculpture have come to recognize in him one of the most delicate and truly inspired artists in our history.

But the most powerful influence in the recent development of American sculpture has been that great artist, Augustus Saint Gaudens. Born in 1848, at Dublin, Ireland, of a French father and an Irish mother, he was brought to this country while still an infant. Perhaps this mixed ancestry explains to some degree Saint Gaudens's peculiar genius. At the age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter in New York City, and worked for six years at this employment, which demands the utmost keenness of vision, delicacy of touch, and refinement of manner. His evenings he spent in studying drawing, first at Cooper Union and then, outgrowing that, at the National Academy of Design. So it happened that, at the age of twenty, when most men were just beginning their special studies, Saint Gaudens was thoroughly grounded in drawing and an expert in low relief.

Another thing he had learned; and let us pause here to lay stress upon it, for it is the thing which must be learned before any great life-work can be done. He had learned the value of systematic industry, of putting in so many hours every day at faithful work. The weak artist, whether in stone or paint or ink, always contends that he must wait for inspiration, and so excuses long periods of unproductive idleness, during which he grows weaker and weaker for lack of exercise. The great artist compels inspiration by whipping himself to his work and setting grimly about it, knowing that the "inspiration," so-called, will come. For inspiration is only seeing a thing clearly, and the one way to see it clearly is to keep the eyes and mind fixed upon it.

At the age of twenty, then, Saint Gaudens was not only a trained artist, but an industrious one. Three years in the inspiring atmosphere of Paris, and three years in Italy, followed; and finally, in 1874, he landed again at New York with such an equipment as few sculptors ever had. And seven years later he proved his mastery when his statue of Admiral Farragut was unveiled in Union Square, New York. That superb work of art made its author a national figure, and Saint Gaudens took definitely that place at the head of American sculpture which was his until his death.

Six years later Saint Gaudens's "Lincoln" was unveiled in Lincoln Park, Chicago, and was at once recognized as the greatest portrait statue in the United States. It has remained so—a masterpiece of exalted conception and dignified execution. Other statues followed, each memorable in its way; but Saint Gaudens proved himself not only the greatest but the most versatile of our sculptors by his work in other fields—by portraits in high and low relief, by ideal figures, and notably by the memorial to Robert Gould Shaw, a work distinctively American and without a counterpart in the annals of art. It is the spiritual quality of Saint Gaudens's work which sets it apart upon a lofty pinnacle—the largeness of the man behind it, the artist mind and the poet heart.

Saint Gaudens's death in 1907 deprived American art of one of its most commanding figures, but there are other American sculptors alive to-day whose work is noteworthy in a high degree. One of these is Daniel Chester French. Born of a substantial New England family, and showing no especial artistic talent in youth, one day, in his nineteenth year, he surprised his family by showing them the grotesque figure of a frog in clothes which he had carved from a turnip. Modelling tools were secured for him, and he went to work. The schooling which prepared him for his remarkable career was of the slightest. He studied for a month with J. Q. A. Ward, and for the rest, worked out his own salvation as best he could.

His first important commission came to him at the age of twenty-three—the figure of the "Minute Man" for the battle monument at Concord, Massachusetts. It was unveiled on April 19, 1875, and attracted wide attention. For here was a work of strength and originality produced by a young man without schooling or experience—produced, too, without a model, or, at least, from nothing but a large cast of the "Apollo Belvidere," which was the only model the sculptor had. But there was no hint of that famous figure under the clothes of the "Minute Man." It had been entirely concealed by the personality and vigor he had impressed upon his work.

After that Mr. French spent a year in Florence, but he returned to America at the end of that period to remain. He has grown steadily in power and certainty of touch, rising perhaps to his greatest height in his famous group, "The Angel of Death and the Young Sculptor," intended as a memorial to Martin Milmore, but touching the universal heart by its deep appeal, conveyed with a sure and admirable artistry. Mr. French's great distinction is to have created good sculpture which has touched the public heart, and to have done this with no concession to public taste.

Another sculptor who has gained a wide appreciation is Frederick MacMonnies, who for sheer audacity and dexterity of manipulation is almost without a rival. He was born in Brooklyn in 1863, his father a Scotchman who had come to New York at the age of eighteen, and his mother a niece of Benjamin West. The boy's talent revealed itself early, and was developed in the face of many difficulties. Obliged to leave school while still a child and to earn his living as a clerk in a jewelry store, he still found time to study drawing, and at the age of sixteen had the good fortune to attract the attention of Saint Gaudens, who received him as an apprentice in his studio.

No better fate could have befallen the lad, and the five years spent with Saint Gaudens gave him the best of all training in the fundamentals of his art. Some years in Paris followed, where he replenished his slender purse with such work as he could find to do, until, in 1889, his "Diana" emerged from his studio, radiant and superb. A year later came his statue of "Nathan Hale," and there was never any lack of commissions after that. "Nathan Hale" stands in City Hall Park, New York City, the very embodiment of that devoted young patriot. The artist has shown him at the supreme moment when, facing the scaffold, he uttered the memorable words which still thrill the American heart, and expression and sentiment were never more perfectly in accord. He struck the same high note with his famous fountain at Chicago Exposition, where hundreds of thousands of people suddenly discovered in this young man a national possession to be proud of.

A year later his name was again in every mouth, when the Boston Public Library refused a place to perhaps his greatest work, the dancing "Bacchante," which has since found refuge in the Metropolitan Museum at New York—a composition so original and daring that it astonishes while it delights.

Like MacMonnies, George Gray Barnard began life as a jeweller's apprentice, became an expert engraver and letterer, and finally, urged by a ceaseless longing, deserted that lucrative profession for the extremely uncertain one of sculpture. A year and a half of study in Chicago brought him an order for a portrait bust of a little girl, and with the $350 he received for this, he set off for Paris. That meagre sum supported him for three years and a half—with what privation and self-denial may be imagined; but he never complained. He lived, indeed, the life of a recluse, shutting himself up in his studio with his work, emerging only at night to walk the streets of Paris, lost in dreams of ambition. That from this period of ordeal came some of the deep emotion which marks his work cannot be doubted.

This quality, which sets Barnard apart, is well illustrated in his famous group, "The Two Natures," suggested by a line of Victor Hugo, "I feel two natures struggling within me." Two male figures are shown, heroic in size and powerfully modelled, a victor half erect bending over a prostrate foe.

Besides these men, who are, in a way, the giants of the American sculptors of to-day, there are, especially in New York, many others whose work is graceful and distinctive. Paul Wayland Bartlett, Herbert Adams, Charles Niehaus, John J. Boyle, Frank Elwell, Frederick Ruckstuhl, to mention only a few of them, are all men of originality and power, whose work is a pleasure and an inspiration, and to whose hands the future of American sculpture may safely be confided.

SUMMARY

GREENOUGH, HORATIO. Born at Boston, September 6, 1805; graduated at Harvard, 1825; went to Italy, 1825, and made his home there, with the exception of short visits to America and France; died at Somerville, Massachusetts, December 18, 1852.

POWERS, HIRAM. Born at Woodstock, Vermont, July 29, 1805; modelled wax figures at Cincinnati, Ohio, for seven years; went to Washington, 1835, and to Florence, 1837; died there, June 27, 1873.

CRAWFORD, THOMAS. Born at New York City, March 22, 1814; went to Italy, 1834, and took up residence at Rome for the remainder of his life; afflicted with sudden blindness in 1856, and died at London, October 16, 1857.

BROWN, HENRY KIRKE. Born at Leyden, Massachusetts, February 24, 1814; studied in Italy, 1842-46; opened Brooklyn studio, 1850; died at Newburgh, New York, July 10, 1886.

MILLS, CLARKE. Born in Onondaga County, New York, December 1, 1815; died at Washington, January 12, 1883.

PALMER, ERASTUS DOW. Born at Pompey, Onondaga County, New York, April 2, 1817; opened studio in Albany, 1849; in Paris, 1873-74; died at Albany, New York, March 9, 1904.

BALL, THOMAS. Born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, June 3, 1819; practised painting, 1840-52; adopted sculpture, 1851; resided in Florence, Italy, 1865-97; opened New York studio, 1898.

STORY, WILLIAM WETMORE. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, February 19, 1819; graduated at Harvard, 1838; admitted to the bar, 1840; published a volume of poems, 1847; went to Italy, 1848, and lived at Florence until his death, October 5, 1895.

ROGERS, RANDOLPH. Born at Waterloo, New York, July 6, 1825; removed to Italy, 1855; died at Rome, January 15, 1892.

RINEHART, WILLIAM HENRY. Born in Maryland, September 13, 1825; removed to Rome, 1858, and died there, October 28, 1874.

ROGERS, JOHN. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, October 30, 1829; visited Europe, 1858-59; died, July 27, 1904.

HOSMER, HARRIET G. Born at Watertown, Massachusetts, October 9, 1830; studied in Rome, 1852-60; opened Boston studio, 1861; died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 21, 1908.

WARD, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Born at Urbana, Ohio, June 29, 1830; studied under H. K. Brown, 1850-57; studio in New York City since 1861.

MEADE, LARKIN GOLDSMITH. Born at Chesterfield, New Hampshire, January 3, 1835; studied under Brown and in Florence; artist at the front for Harper's Weekly during Civil War; afterwards returned to Florence and made his home there.

WARNER, OLIN LEVI. Born at Suffield, Connecticut, April 9, 1844; studied in Paris, 1869-72; opened New York studio, 1873; died there, August 14, 1896.

SAINT GAUDENS, AUGUSTUS. Born at Dublin, Ireland, March 1, 1848; came to America in infancy; learned trade of cameo cutter; studied at Paris, 1867-70; Rome, 1870-72; opened New York studio, 1872; died at Corinth, N. H., August 3, 1907.

FRENCH, DANIEL CHESTER. Born at Exeter, New Hampshire, April 20, 1850; studied in Boston and Florence; studio in Washington, 1876-78; in Boston, 1878-87; in New York since 1887.

MACMONNIES, FREDERICK. Born at Brooklyn, New York, September 20, 1863; studied under Saint Gaudens, 1880-84; also at Paris, and has spent many of the succeeding years in France.

BARNARD, GEORGE GRAY. Born at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, May 24, 1863; studied at Paris, 1884-87; spent some years in New York, and then returned to France.



CHAPTER VI

THE STAGE

The golden age of American acting was not so very long ago. Most white-haired men remember it, and love to talk of the days of Booth and Forrest and Charlotte Cushman. Joseph Jefferson, the last survivor of the old regime, died just the other day, and to the very end showed the present generation the charm and humor of Bob Acres and Rip Van Winkle.

No doubt that golden age is made to appear more golden than it really was by the mists of time; but undoubtedly the old actors possessed a mellowness, a solidity, a sort of high tradition now almost unknown. These qualities were due in part, perhaps, to the long and arduous stock company training, where, in the old days, every actor must serve his apprenticeship, and in part to the study of the classic drama which had so large a place in stock company repertoire.

Success was infinitely harder to win than it is to-day. There were fewer theatres, so that the great actors were forced to play together, to their mutual advantage and improvement. The multiplication of theatres at the present time, and the vast increase of the theatre-going public, has led to the "star" system—to the placing of an actor at the head of a company, as soon as he has won a certain reputation. And, since care is taken that the "star" shall outshine all his associates, it follows that he has no one to measure himself with, he is no longer on his metal, and his growth usually stops then and there.

But let us be frank about it. The attitude of the public toward the theatre has changed. To-day we would not tolerate the heavy melodramas which enchained our parents and grandparents. The age of rant and fustian has passed away, and Edwin Forrest could never gain a second fortune from such a combination of these qualities as "Metamora." We are more sophisticated; we refuse to be thrilled by Ingomar, no matter how loudly he bellows. What we ask for principally is to be amused, and consequently the great effort of the theatre is to amuse us, for the theatre must cater to its public. So, if the stage to-day is not what it was fifty years ago, the fault lies principally in front of the footlights and not behind them.

* * * * *



To the student of American acting, one name stands out before all the rest, the name of Booth. No other actors in this country have ever equalled the achievements of Junius Brutus Booth and of his son, Edwin Booth. They possessed the genius of tragedy, if any men ever did, and no one who saw them in their great moments can forget the impression of absolute reality which they conveyed.

Junius Brutus Booth was the son of an eccentric silversmith of London, and was born there in 1796. Let us pause here to remark that, just as the greatest Frenchman who ever lived was an Italian, and the greatest Russian woman a German, so most of the early American actors were either English or Irish. This sounds rather Irish itself; but it is true. Certainly, in the end Napoleon Bonaparte became as French as any Frenchman and the Empress Catherine II Russian to the core; and the English and Irish actors who came to these shores in search of fame and fortune, and who found them and spent the remainder of their lives here, have every right to be considered in any account of the American stage which they did so much to adorn.

Junius Brutus Booth, then, was born in London in 1796. Twenty years before, his father had been so carried away by Republican principles that he had sailed for America to join the ranks of the army of independence, but he was captured and sent back to England. So it will be seen that he was something more than a mere silversmith; but he was very successful at his trade, and was able to give his son a careful classical education, to fit him for the bar. Imagine his chagrin when the boy, after a short experience in amateur theatricals, announced his intention of becoming an actor.

He secured some small parts, made a tour of the provinces, and finally, in London, engaged in a remarkable war with the great tragedian, Edmund Kean, which divided the town into two factions. But Booth tired of the struggle, in which the odds were all against him, and in 1821 sailed for America. He won an instant success, and was a great popular favorite until the day of his death. He was a short, spare, muscular man, with a pale countenance, set off by dark hair and lighted by a pair of piercing blue eyes, and he possessed a voice of wonderful compass and thrilling power. Upon the stage he was formidable and tremendous, giving an impression of overwhelming power, in which his son, perhaps, never quite equalled him.

Shortly after his arrival in America, Booth bought a farm near Baltimore, and there, on November 13, 1833, Edwin Booth was born. There was a great shower of meteors that night, which, if they portended nothing else, may be taken as symbolical of the career of America's greatest tragedian. He was the seventh of ten children, all of whom inherited, in some degree, their father's genius. It was not without a trace of madness, and reached a fearful culmination in John Wilkes Booth, when he shot down Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

From the first, Edwin Booth felt himself destined for the stage. His father did not encourage him, but finally, in 1849, consented to his appearance with him in the unimportant part of Tressel, in "King Richard the Third." From that time on, he accompanied his father in all his wanderings, and partook of the strange and sad adventures of that wayward man of genius. In 1852, he went with his father to California, and was left there by the elder Booth, who no doubt thought it the best school for the boy's budding talent. There, in the Sandwich Islands, and in Australia, among the rough crowds of the mining camps, he had four years of the most severe training that hardship, discipline, and stern reality can furnish. Amid it all his genius grew and deepened, and when he returned again to the east in 1856 he was no longer a novice, but an accomplished actor.

His last years in California had been shadowed by a great sorrow—the sudden and pitiful death of his father. The elder Booth had for years been subject to attacks of insanity, brought on, or at least intensified, by extreme intemperance. On one occasion he had attempted to commit suicide. On another, he had had his nose broken, an accident which so interfered with his voice that he did not regain complete control of it for nearly two years. On his return from California, where he had left his son, he stopped at New Orleans, and remained there a week, performing to crowded houses. He then started north by way of the Mississippi, and was found dying in his stateroom a few days later. He had been caught in a severe rain as he left New Orleans, a cold developed, complications followed, and for forty-eight hours he lay unattended in his stateroom, without that medical attention which he was unable or unwilling to summon. He died November 30, 1852, and his body was interred at Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore, in a grave afterwards marked by a monument erected by his son Edwin.

This was only one of many tragedies which darkened the life of Edwin Booth, for, to use the words of William Winter, he was "tried by some of the most terrible afflictions that ever tested the fortitude of a human soul. Over his youth, plainly visible, impended the lowering cloud of insanity. While he was yet a boy, and while literally struggling for life in the semi-barbarous wilds of old California, he lost his beloved father, under circumstances of singular misery. In early manhood he laid in her grave the woman of his first love, the wife who had died in absence from him, herself scarcely past the threshold of youth, lovely as an angel and to all who knew her precious beyond expression. A little later his heart was well nigh broken and his life was well nigh blasted by the crime of a lunatic brother that for a moment seemed to darken the hope of the world. Recovering from that blow, he threw all his resources and powers into the establishment of the grandest theatre in the metropolis of America, and he saw his fortune of more than a million dollars, together with the toil of some of the best years of his life frittered away. Under all trials he bore bravely up, and kept the even, steadfast tenor of his course; strong, patient, gentle, neither elated by public homage nor embittered by private grief."

It has been said that Booth returned from California a finished actor. He had, besides, the prestige of a great name, and he was welcomed with open arms. He had not yet reached the summit of his skill, but he showed an extraordinary grace and "a spirit ardent with the fire of genius." From that time forward, his career was one of lofty endeavor and of high achievement. In the great characters of Shakespeare, especially in those of Hamlet, Richard the Third, and Iago, he had no rivals, and no one who witnessed him in any of these parts ever outlived the deep impression the performance made. During the last two or three years of his life his health failed gradually, and he was finally compelled to leave the stage. On April 19, 1893, he suffered a stroke of paralysis from which he never rallied, lingering in a semi-conscious state until June 7th, when he sank rapidly and died.

Of his art no words can give an adequate idea. It was essentially poetic, full of a strange and compelling charm. His great moments laid upon his audience the spell of his genius, and rank with the highest achievements of any actor who ever lived. His countenance—

"That face which no man ever saw And from his memory banished quite, The eyes in which are Hamlet's awe And Cardinal Richelieu's subtle light"—

as Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote of Sargent's portrait, which heads this chapter—was a strange and moving one, and in range of expression unsurpassed. His eyes were especially wonderful, dark brown, but seeming to turn black in moments of passion, and conveying, with electrical effect, the actor's thought. He was unique. He stood apart. The American stage has never produced another like him.

Second only to Edwin Booth in sheer glory of achievement stands Edwin Forrest. He fell far below Booth in grace, in charm, and in poetic insight, but he surpassed him in physical equipment for the great parts of tragedy, particularly in his voice, magnificent, vibrating, with an extraordinary depth and purity of tone.

Unlike Booth, Forrest came from no family of actors, nor inherited a name famous in the annals of the stage. He was born in Philadelphia in 1806, his father being a Scotchman, employed in Stephen Girard's bank, and making just enough money to keep his family of six children from actual want. He died when Edwin was thirteen years old, and his widow, by opening a little store, managed to support the children. She was a serious and devout woman and decided that Edwin should enter the ministry. But meantime, he must earn a living, so he was apprenticed to a cooper.

How long he stayed with the cooper nobody knows; but it could not have been long, for already he was fired with an ambition to be an actor, and after some experience as an amateur, astonished and grieved his mother by announcing that he was going on the stage. He made his first appearance on the 27th of November, 1820, as Young Norval, in Home's tragedy of "Douglas," and was an immediate success. His youth—remember, he was but fourteen—his handsome face and manly bearing, and, above all, that wonderful and resonant voice, won the audience at once, and his career was begun.

But many hardships awaited him. The theatres of New York and Philadelphia had their companies of well-known and well-trained actors. There was no hope for him in either of those cities; but at last he secured an engagement to play juvenile parts at Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, and other towns of the middle west, at a salary of eight dollars a week. This, of course, was scarcely enough to keep body and soul together, but all Forrest wanted was a chance, and he did not murmur at the suffering and hardship which followed.

For business was poor, and Forrest did not always receive even that eight dollars. The end came at Dayton, Ohio, where the company went to pieces. Forrest, without money and almost without clothes, walked the forty miles to Cincinnati, where, after a time, he found another position. Such was the beginning of his career, and this hard novitiate lasted for four years, until, in 1826, at the age of twenty, he was able to return to New York and secure an engagement at the old Bowery Theatre. He was an instant success, and from year to year his wonderful powers seemed to increase, until he became easily the most famous actor of the day.

But his fame was soon to be dulled by unfortunate personalities. Conceiving a jealousy of Macready, the famous English actor, he hissed him at a performance in Edinburgh, and when Macready came to America in 1849, Forrest's followers broke in upon a performance at the Astor Place opera house, and a riot followed in which twenty-two men were killed. A quarrel with his wife led to the divorce court, and the suit was decided against him.

The end was pathetic. He had been troubled with gout for a long time, and in 1865, it took a malignant turn, paralyzing the sciatic nerve, so that he lost the use of one hand, and could not walk steadily. His power had left him, and in the five years that followed, he played to empty houses and an indifferent public, not content to retire, but hoping against hope that he might in some way regain his lost prestige. A stroke of paralysis finally ended the hopeless struggle.

Forrest's art was of a cruder and more robust sort than Edwin Booth's who, by the way, was named after him. He was greatest in characters demanding a great physique, a commanding presence and—yes, let us say it!—a loud voice. Coriolanus, Spartacus, Virginius—those were his roles, and no man ever looked more imposing in a Roman toga.

Forrest, during his English engagement of 1845, and on other occasions, shared the honors with a remarkable actress, Charlotte Cushman. And perhaps none ever had a more astonishing career. Born in Boston in 1816, her youth was one of poverty, for her father died while she was very young, leaving no property. The girl was remarkably bright, and soon developed a contralto voice of unusual richness and compass. She sang in a choir and assisted to support the family from the age of twelve, securing such musical instruction as she could. In 1834, she made her first appearance in opera and scored a tremendous success. A splendid career seemed opening before her, when suddenly, a few months later, her voice, strained by the soprano parts which had been, assigned her, failed completely.

Her friends advised her to become an actress, and she went diligently to work, not allowing herself to despond over that first great disappointment. For the next seven years, she worked faithfully learning the new profession from the very bottom. "I became aware," she said, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast." In that way she learned hers, playing minor parts, doing cheerfully the drudgery of her profession, refusing all offers for more important work until she felt herself thoroughly capable of undertaking it. One would wish that her example might be taken to heart by her sisters of the present day.

At last her chance came. In 1842, William C. Macready, the great English tragedian, visited the United States, and in Charlotte Cushman he found a splendid support. Indeed, she divided the honors with him. A year later, she went to London and won immense applause. "Since the first appearance of Edmund Keane, in 1814," said a London journal, in speaking of her first night as "Bianca," "never has there been such a debut on the stage of an English theatre." For eighty-four nights she appeared with Edwin Forrest. "All my successes put together," she wrote to her mother, "would not come near my success in London."

In the winter of 1845 she tried one of the most daring experiments ever made by an actress, appearing as Romeo to her sister, Susan Cushman's, Juliet. It was a notable success. Her deep contralto voice made it possible for her to give a complete illusion of the young and handsome lover. She played other male characters in after years, notably Hamlet, and created a deep impression in them. Her sister was a lovely girl, and an accomplished actress, and their "Romeo and Juliet" ran for two hundred nights. Susan Cushman would no doubt also have won high fame as an actress, but she soon retired from the stage, marrying the distinguished chemist and author, James Sheridan Muspratt, of Liverpool.

Charlotte Cushman returned to America in the fall of 1849, and was received with acclamation. There was never any question, after that, of her position as the greatest English-speaking actress, and that position she easily maintained until her death. She gathered wealth as well as fame, built a villa at Newport, and in 1863 earned nearly nine thousand dollars for the United States Sanitary Commission by benefit performances. Energetic, resolute, faithful, impatient of any achievement but the highest, she seemed the very embodiment of many of Shakespeare's greatest creations. She possessed a strange, and weird genius, akin, in some respects, to that of Edwin Booth, and her delineation of the sublime, the beautiful, the terrible has never been surpassed. A noble interpreter of noble minds, Charlotte Cushman stands for the supreme achievement of the actress.

What Booth and Forrest were to tragedy, William J. Florence was to comedy. Indeed, he may be said to have gone farther than either Booth or Forrest, for he founded a school and gave to the stage the chivalrous, light-hearted and lucky Irishman, who has since become so familiar to the drama, however rare he may be outside the theatre.

Florence was born in Albany, New York, in 1831. His family name was Conlin, from which it will be seen that he came naturally by his insight into Irish character; but he changed this name when he went upon the stage to the more romantic and euphonious one of Florence. He gave evidence of possessing unusual dramatic talent while still a boy, and made his debut on the regular stage at the age of eighteen. He had the usual hardships of the young actor, playing in various stock companies without attracting especial attention, and finally, in 1853, marrying Malvina Pray, herself an actress of considerable ability.

It was at this time that Florence began to find his field in the delineation of Irish and Yankee characters, his wife appearing with him, and together they won a wide popularity. Florence wrote some plays and a number of sprightly songs, which his wife sang inimitably. He himself improved steadily in his acting, and, especially in the gentle humor and melting pathos with which he clothed his characters, stood quite alone. A tour through England added to his fame, and his songs were soon being sung and whistled in the streets pretty generally wherever the English tongue was spoken. One song in particular, called "Bobbing Around," had immense popularity.

But Florence was more than a mere song-writer Irish comedian. In his later years he proved himself to be an actor of high attainments and no one who ever witnessed a performance of "The Rivals," with Jefferson as Bob Acres, and Florence as Sir Lucius O'Trigger, will ever forget his finished and glowing impersonation.

When Edwin Forrest, heart-broken and discredited, died in 1872, he left his manuscript plays to another great tragedian, whom he regarded as his legitimate successor, John McCullough. In some respects McCullough was a greater actor than Forrest, for he possessed that quality of poetic insight and high imagination which Forrest lacked, while in physical equipment for the great characters of tragedy he was in no whit his inferior.

John McCullough was born in Coleraine, Ireland, in 1837, his parents, who were small farmers, bringing him to this country at the age of sixteen. They settled at Philadelphia and the boy was apprenticed to a chair-maker, but he soon broke away from that hum-drum employment, and in 1855, appeared in a minor part in "The Belle's Strategem." His story, after that, was the usual one of long years of training in various stock companies. He gradually worked his way into prominence, and finally in 1866, became associated with Edwin Forrest, taking the second parts in the latter's plays; and, after Forrest's death, taking his place as the first impersonator of robust tragedy in America.

For ten years his success was tremendous—then came the sad ending. McCullough had always been supremely great in characters requiring the delineation of madness—Virginius, King Lear, Othello. Whether this had anything to do with the final tragedy cannot be said, but in 1884, while playing at Chicago, he broke down in the midst of a performance, and had to be led from the stage. His mind was gone; he never rallied, and ended his days in an asylum for the insane.

One of the most successful engagements McCullough ever had was in 1869 and for some years thereafter, when, with Lawrence Barrett, he appeared at the Bush Street theatre in San Francisco. Barrett's name is also closely associated with that of Edwin Booth, for he played opposite Booth through many seasons—Othello to Booth's Iago, Cassius to Booth's Brutus, and so on; and the two formed a combination which for sheer genius has never been surpassed. But Barrett never commanded the adoration of the public as Booth did, because he lacked that power of enchantment which Booth possessed in a supreme degree. His mind was austere, he could win respect but not affection, and, as a result, criticism was more captious, honors came grudgingly or not at all, and the fight for recognition was up-hill all the way.

Lawrence Barrett was born in 1838, and he began his theatrical career at the age of fifteen. After the usual hard stock-company experience, he secured a New York engagement, where, for nearly two years, he supported such actors as Charlotte Cushman and Edwin Booth. From New York he went to Boston for a similar engagement, but at the outbreak of the Civil War he left the stage, accepted a captaincy in the Twenty-eighth Massachusetts Infantry, and served through the war with distinction. Then he returned to the theatre, gaining an ever-increasing reputation until his death.

Clara Morris called him "The Man with the Hungry Eyes," and they were hungry, for life was always a battle to him. From an obscure and humble position, without fortune, friends, or favoring circumstances he had fought his way upward in the face of indifference, disparagement and cold dislike.

Clara Morris has told the story of her own life better than anyone else could tell it, and has shown in doing it the very qualities which made most for her success—a wide sympathy, an impetuous heart, and an invincible optimism. She, too, had a hard struggle at the first—entering the ballet at the age of fifteen to help her mother after her father's death, and working her way up until she secured a New York engagement with Augustin Daly's famous stock company, where she soon was sharing the honors with Ada Rehan. Ill health shortened her acting career, and compelled her retirement from the stage when at the very height of her powers.

Just the other day there died in California another woman who won a great public a generation ago by a genius and charm seldom equalled. Helena Modjeska's story was an unusual one. Born in Cracow, Poland, in 1844, the daughter of a great musician, her early years were passed in an inspiring atmosphere, and almost from the first she felt an impulse toward the stage. But her family refused to permit her to become an actress, and it was not until after her marriage that her chance came. Her husband consented to a few trial appearances, and her success was so great that she was soon engaged as leading lady for the theatre at Cracow.

But her husband incurred the ill-will of the authorities by his political writings, and she herself got into trouble with them by resisting the Russian censorship of the Polish theatre. It was evident that arrest and banishment for either or both of them might come at any moment, and under this incessant and increasing worry, her health began to fail. So she renounced the theatre, as she thought, forever, came to America, purchased a ranch in California, and settled down to spend the remainder of her life in quiet. But Edwin Booth, John McCullough, and others, encouraged her to study English and appear upon the American stage. She did so, and four months later appeared at San Francisco as Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had an instant success, and for more than thirty years maintained her position as one of the greatest actresses of the day.

Her personal fascination was of an exceedingly rare kind, her figure tall and graceful, her face wonderfully attractive in its intellectual charm and eloquent mobility. Shakespeare was her chief delight, and as Juliet, Rosalind and Ophelia she enchanted thousands.

* * * * *

On the evening of Thursday, November 25, 1875, an audience assembled at one of the theatres of Louisville, Kentucky, to witness "the first appearance upon any stage" of "a young lady of Louisville." The young lady in question had chosen as her vehicle Shakespeare's Juliet, which was certainly beginning at the top; she was only sixteen years of age and had never received any practical stage training; her experience of life was narrow and provincial—and yet, when the curtain rang down for the last time, the discerning ones in that audience knew that, despite the crudity of the performance, a new star had arisen and a great career begun. For that "young lady of Louisville" was Mary Anderson. Her story is unique in the history of the American stage.

Born in California in 1859, but taken to Louisville a year later; her father, Charles Joseph Anderson, dying in 1863, an officer in the Confederate army, Mary Anderson was reared by her mother in the Roman Catholic faith and received her education in a parochial school at Louisville. She left school before she was fourteen, and two years later, as we have seen, was upon the stage. Her first appearance won her an engagement at Louisville, and for thirteen years thereafter she was an actress, never in a stock company, but always a star. Then, at the very meridian of her career, she married and retired forever from the stage.

Mary Anderson's charm was not that of a great actress, for a great actress she never became. She had not the training necessary to finished and rounded work. Her charm was rather that of a sweet and gracious personality, of a beautiful nature and a high sincerity. Sumptuously beautiful, and possessed of a clear and resonant voice, such statuesque characters as Galatea and Hermione attracted her irresistibly, and in these she achieved her greatest triumphs.

Scarcely second to her was Ada Rehan, born a year later, appearing on the stage two years earlier, in other words, at the age of thirteen. Ada Rehan, appropriately enough, was born at Limerick, Ireland, and the roguish and perverse Irish spirit was ever uppermost in her acting. She was brought to America when she was five years old, and lived and went to school in Brooklyn. Two of her elder sisters were upon the stage, but she does not seem to have indicated any especial desire to imitate them, and her first appearance was by accident. An actress playing a small part in "Across the Continent" was taken suddenly ill, and the child, who happened to be at the theatre, was hastily dressed for it and taught her few lines; but she displayed so much readiness and natural talent that, at a family council which followed the performance, it was decided that she should proceed with a stage career, and she was soon regularly embarked.

This meant a long and severe course of training in the stock companies maintained at the various theatres throughout the country to support such wandering stars as Booth and McCullough, and Barrett, and Adelaide Neilson, and she emerged from this training well grounded in all the business of the actress. In 1879, she attracted Augustin Daly's attention, and from that time forward until Daly's death, she was the leading woman at his famous New York house, becoming one of the most admired figures upon the stage. Her art, luminous and sparkling, especially fitted her for high comedy, and it was there that she achieved her greatest distinction.

Ada Rehan's name was closely associated for many years with that of John Drew, also a member of the Daly company, and a son of the famous "Mr. and Mrs. John Drew," two of the most versatile, charming and popular members of the old school. The elder John Drew was born in Ireland in 1825, but came to America at the age of twenty and spent the remainder of his life here, except for a few absences on tour. He was considered the best Irish comedian on the American stage. His wife, born in London in 1820 of a theatrical family, appeared in child's parts at the age of eight, came to this country at the age of twenty, and made a great success here in high comedy parts. Their son can scarcely be said to have fulfilled the promise of his early years, but seems to be content with an achievement which shows him to be an accomplished and finished, but by no means inspired or imaginative, actor.

Another family as celebrated in American theatrical annals as that of John Drew was E. L. Davenport's. Davenport himself had received his training in the old stock companies, and notably as Junius Brutus Booth's support in a number of plays. He was equally at home in tragedy and comedy. Associated with him after their marriage in 1849 was his wife, Fanny Elizabeth Vining, an actress of considerable ability.

No less than six of their children followed the stage as a career. The most famous of them was Fanny Davenport, whose stage career began when she was a mere baby. Her young girlhood was occupied with soubrette parts, but she soon developed unusual emotional powers, and attracted Augustin Daly's notice. He added her to his stock company in 1869, and she soon won a notable success in such parts as Lady Gay Spanker, Lady Teazle and Rosalind.

Perhaps no American actor ever had a more remarkable career than William Warren. Born in 1812, the son of a player of considerable reputation, his first appearance was at the age of twenty. For twelve years his history was that of most other struggling actors, but in 1846 he became connected with the Howard Athenaeum at Boston, where he remained for thirty-five years, retiring permanently from the stage in 1882.

During his career, he had given 13,345 performances and had appeared in 577 characters, a record which has probably never been approached. He was especially notable in his representations of the "fine old English gentleman," and he became to Boston a sort of Conservatory of Acting in himself. That he was appreciated both as man and artist his long residence in Boston proves.

He was a cousin of one of the best loved actors who ever trod the American stage—Joseph Jefferson; but their careers were very different, for Jefferson, in the last quarter century of his life confined himself to a few parts—practically to four, Bob Acres, Rip Van Winkle, Dr. Pangloss and Cabel Plummer. In these he was inimitable. Something is gained and lost, of course, by either of these methods; one is inclined to think the wiser plan, that making for the greatest achievement, is a wide diversity of parts, and constant creation of new ones. And yet, when one looks back upon Jefferson's delicate and cameo-clear impersonations, one would not have him different.

Joseph Jefferson was the third of his name to challenge American theatre-goers. His grandfather, born in England, in 1774, came to America twenty-three years later and spent the remainder of his life here, gaining some reputation as a comedian. His father is said to have had little ability, and to have been careless and improvident. The third of the name was born in Philadelphia in 1829, and began his stage career at the age of three, appearing as the child in "Pizarro," which must have frightened him nearly to death.

His father died when he was only fourteen, and the lad joined a company of strolling players, who made their way through Texas, and during the war with Mexico, followed the American army into Mexican territory. American drama was in no great demand, so at Matamoras Jefferson opened a stall for the sale of coffee and other refreshments, making enough money to get back to the United States.

For the next ten years he appeared in stock companies in the larger eastern cities, meeting such players as Edwin Forrest, James E. Murdoch, and Edwin Adams; but the one who influenced him most was his own half-brother, Charles Burke, an unusually accomplished serio-comic. William Warren also ranked high in his affections.

The turning point of his career came in 1857 when he became associated with Laura Keene at her theatre in New York. Here his first part was one with which he was afterwards so closely identified, that of Dr. Pangloss, and then came "Our American Cousin," in which he gained a notable success as Asa Trenchard, and in which Edward A. Sothern laid the foundation of the fantastic character of Lord Dundreary, which was to make him famous. A year later, he created another of his great characters, Caleb Plummer, in "The Cricket on the Hearth," and soon afterwards, the most famous of all, Rip Van Winkle, which remained to the end his supreme impersonation.

After that time, his career was a golden and happy one. He won the affection of the American public as perhaps no recent player has ever done. His art had a peculiarly wide appeal because it was fine and sweet; he won sympathy and inspired affection; and seemed the very embodiment of the tender, artless and lovable characters it was his joy to represent.

Jefferson's death marked the passing of the last of the "old school"—that mellow, fluent, and accomplished circle of players who seem so different to their successors. But public taste is different too. We care no longer for the rantings and heroics of Virginius and Spartacus and all the rest of those toga-clothed gentlemen who differed from each other only in their names. We demand something more subtle, more—yes, let us say it!—intellectual. The modern who came nearest to answering this demand, to showing us the complex thing which we know human nature to be, was Richard Mansfield. A great artist, whom no difficulty appalled, he gave the American public, season after season, the most significant procession of worthy dramas that one man ever produced.

Mansfield was born in Heligoland in 1857, and studied for the East Indian civil service, but came to Boston and opened a studio, studied art, and then suddenly abandoned it for the stage. Curiously enough, he began with small parts in comic opera, and a few years later, made one of the funniest Kokos who ever appeared in "The Mikado." But he soon changed to straight drama, and the first great success of his career was as Baron Chevrial in "A Parisian Romance," a part which was given him after other actors had refused to take it, and in which he created a real sensation. His reputation was secure after that, and grew steadily until the swift and complete collapse from over-work, which ended his life at the age of fifty-one.

Are there any great players alive in America to-day? E. H. Sothern, perhaps, comes nearest to greatness, and has at least won respectful attention by a sincerity and earnestness which have accomplished much. He is the son of Edward Askew Sothern, whose career was a most peculiar one. Intended for the ministry, he chose the stage instead, apparently with no talent for it, and for six or seven years, only the most unimportant of minor parts were entrusted to him.

One of these was that of Lord Dundreary in "Our American Cousin." It consisted of only a few lines and Sothern accepted it under protest, but he made such a hit in it that it was amplified and became the principal part of the play. In fact, the play became, in the end, a series of monologues for Dundreary. It had some remarkable runs, one, for instance, in London, for four hundred and ninety-six consecutive nights. Sothern continued playing the part until his death. His son is undoubtedly a far greater actor, and may achieve a high and lasting fame.

Associated with him in many of his later and more ambitious productions has been Julia Marlowe, undoubtedly the most finished and accomplished actress in America. She had a thorough training, having been on the stage since her twelfth year, and devoting herself closely to the study of her art. Her sincerity, too, promises much for the future. After Sothern, Otis Skinner is perhaps the most noteworthy, and after him, well, anyone of a dozen, whom it is needless to name here.

It was Joseph Jefferson who remarked that "all the good actors are dead." He meant, of course, that the present seems always of little worth when compared with the past; and this is the case not only with the theatre, but in some degree with all the arts. It is especially true of the theatre, however, because the player lives only in the memories of those who saw him, and memory sees things, as it were, through a golden glow.

SUMMARY

BOOTH, JUNIUS BRUTUS. Born at London, May 1, 1796; first appearance, 1813; came to America, 1821; died on a Mississippi steamboat, November 30, 1852.

BOOTH, EDWIN. Born at Bel Air, Maryland, November 13, 1833; first appearance, 1849; first appearance as "star," as Sir Giles Overreach, 1857; played under management of Lawrence Barrett, 1886-91, in "Hamlet"; founded "The Players' Club," 1888; died at its club-house, in New York City, June 7, 1893.

FORREST, EDWIN. Born at Philadelphia, March 9, 1806; first appearance, 1820; first notable success as Othello, 1826; last appearance in March, 1871; died at Philadelphia, December 12, 1872.

CUSHMAN, CHARLOTTE. Born at Boston, July 23, 1816; first appearance, 1835; played with Macready, 1842-44; in London, 1844-48; died at Boston, February 8, 1876.

FLORENCE, WILLIAM JAMES. Born at Albany, New York, July 26, 1831; first appearance, 1849; died at Philadelphia, November 19, 1891.

MCCULLOUGH, JOHN. Born at Coleraine, Ireland, November 2, 1837; came to America, 1853; first appearance, 1855; broke down mentally and physically, 1884; died in insane asylum at Philadelphia, November 8, 1885.

BARRETT, LAWRENCE. Born at Paterson, New Jersey, April 4, 1838; first appearance, 1853; enlisted in 28th Massachusetts Volunteers, 1861; from 1887 until his death closely associated with Edwin Booth; died at New York City, March 21, 1891.

MORRIS, CLARA. Born at Toronto, Canada, 1849; first appearance, 1861; leading lady, 1869; joined Daly's company, 1870; married Frederick C. Harriott, 1874.

MODJESKA, HELENA. Born at Cracow, Poland, October 12, 1844; first appearance, 1861; first appearance in English at San Francisco, 1877; died in California, April 8, 1909.

ANDERSON, MARY. Born at Sacramento, California, July 28, 1859; first appearance, 1875; married Antonio de Navarro, 1889, and retired from the stage.

REHAN, ADA. Born at Limerick, Ireland, April 22, 1860; came to America in childhood; first appearance, 1874; joined Daly's company, 1879; leading lady there until his death in 1899.

DREW, JOHN. Born at Philadelphia, in 1853; first appearance, 1873; leading man in Daly's company, 1879-99.

DREW, JOHN, SR. Born at Dublin, Ireland, September 3, 1825; first appearance in New York, 1845; died at Philadelphia, May 21, 1862.

DREW, MRS. JOHN, SR. (LOUISA LANE). Born at London, January 10, 1820; first appearance when mere child; came to America, 1828; married John Drew, 1850; died at Larchmont, New York, August 31, 1897.

DAVENPORT, EDWARD LOOMIS. Born at Boston, Massachusetts, November 15, 1814; first appearance, 1836; played in England, 1847-54; died at Canton, Pennsylvania, September 1, 1877.

DAVENPORT, FANNY ELIZABETH VINING. Born at London, July 6, 1829; began playing baby parts at age of three; made first appearance, 1847, as Juliet; married E. L. Davenport, January 8, 1849; first appearance in New York, 1854.

DAVENPORT, FANNY LILY GIPSY. Born in London, April 10, 1850; first American appearance, 1862; died at Danbury, Massachusetts, September 26, 1898.

WARREN, WILLIAM. Born at Philadelphia, November 17, 1812; first appearance, 1832; died at Boston, September 21, 1888.

JEFFERSON, JOSEPH. Born at Philadelphia, February 20, 1829; first appearance on stage as child; first became prominent as Asa Trenchard, in "Our American Cousin," 1858; died at West Palm Beach, Florida, April 23, 1905.

SOTHERN, EDWARD ASKEW. Born at Liverpool, England, April 1, 1826; first appearance, 1849; first American appearance, 1852; made his mark as Lord Dundreary, 1858; died at London, January 20, 1881.

SOTHERN, EDWARD H. Born in London; appeared as child; first took leading part, 1887.



CHAPTER VII

SCIENTISTS AND EDUCATORS

To give even the briefest account, within the limits of a single chapter, of the lives of noteworthy American scientists and educators is, of course, quite beyond the bounds of possibility. All that can be done, even at best, is to mention a few of the greatest names and to indicate in outline the particular achievements with which they are associated. That is all that has been attempted here. There are at least a hundred men, in addition to those mentioned in this chapter, whose work is of consequence in the development of American science and education. The record of their achievements is an inspiring one which, if properly told, would occupy many volumes.

In the annals of American science, two names stand out with peculiar lustre—John James Audubon and Louis Agassiz. Neither was, strictly speaking, American, for Agassiz was born in Switzerland and did not come to this country until he was nearly forty years of age; while Audubon was born in French territory, the son of a French naval officer, and was educated in France. But the work of both men was distinctively American, for Audubon devoted his life to the study of American birds, and Agassiz the latter part of his to the study and classification of American fishes—as well as to services of the most valuable kind in the field of geology and paleontology.

Audubon's story is a curious and interesting one. His father, the son of a Vendean fisherman, after working his way up to the command of a French man-of-war, purchased a plantation in Louisiana, which at that time belonged to France. He married there, and there, in 1780, John James Audubon was born. He was a precocious child, and early developed a love for nature, which his parents encouraged in every way they could. He was especially fond of drawing birds and coloring his drawings. He acquired so much skill in doing this that his father sent him to Paris and placed him in the studio of the celebrated painter, David.

It is related of young Audubon that his drawings for many years fell so far short of his ideal, that on each of his birthdays he regularly made a bonfire of all he had produced during the previous year. He cared for nothing else, however, and after his return to America, his home became a museum of birds' eggs and stuffed birds. He took long tramps through the wilderness, with no companions save dog and gun, all the time adding new drawings to his collection. Some birds he was obliged to shoot, afterwards supporting them in natural positions while he painted them; others which he could not approach, he drew with the aid of a telescope, representing them amid their natural surroundings, and all with painstaking care and exactitude.

This work, occupying years of time, and accompanied by every sort of suffering and exposure, by long trips through the wilderness of the west, in heat and cold, snow and rain, was carried forward from pure love of nature and enthusiasm for the work itself, without thought or hope of reward. Audubon's friends began to consider him a kind of harmless madman, for what sane person would devote his life to a work so laborious and seemingly so useless? He made a little money occasionally by giving drawing lessons; but he was never content except when roaming the plains and forests, hunting for some new specimen. For his ambition was to study and draw every kind of bird which lived in America.

In 1824 he happened to be in Philadelphia, and met there a son of Lucien Bonaparte, to whom he showed his drawings. The Frenchman was at once deeply interested, for he saw their beauty and value, and he urged upon Audubon that some arrangement be made by which they could be published and given to the world. The obstacles in the way of such an enterprise were enormous, for the processes of color reproduction at that time were slow and expensive, and it was estimated that the cost of the entire work would exceed a hundred thousand dollars.

But Audubon had overcome obstacles before that, and three years later he issued the prospectus of his famous "Birds of America." It was to consist of four folio volumes of plates, and the price of each copy was fixed at a thousand dollars. Three years more were spent in securing subscriptions, and then the work of publication began, though Audubon had barely enough money to pay for a single issue. Funds came in, however, after the appearance of the first number, and the work went steadily forward to completion in 1839. It was called by the great naturalist, Cuvier, "the most magnificent monument that art ever raised to ornithology." It contained 448 beautifully colored plates, showing 1065 species of North American birds, each of them life size.

Before it was completed, Audubon had planned another work on similar lines, to be known as "The Quadrupeds of America," and set to work at once to gather the necessary material, which meant the study from life of each of these animals. He even projected an extensive trip to the Rocky Mountains in search of material, but was pursuaded by his friends to give it up, as he was then nearly sixty years of age, and suffering from the effects of his long years of exposure. His sons assisted him in the preparation of the work, the first volume of which appeared in 1846, the last in 1854, three years after his death.

Audubon's life illustrates strikingly the compelling power of devotion to an ideal. Few men have met such discouragements as he, and fewer still have overcome them. For many years, in all climates, in all weathers, pausing at no difficulty or peril, his life frequently endangered by wild beasts or still wilder savages, he trudged the pathless wilderness, quite alone, sleeping under a rude shelter of boughs or in a hollow tree, living on such game as he could shoot, seeking only one thing, new birds, and when he found them, observing their habits and setting them on paper with an infinite patience. On one occasion, rats got into the room where his drawings were stored, and destroyed almost all of them; but he set to work at once re-drawing them, where most men would have given up in despair. His work remains to this day the standard one on American birds—a mighty monument to the ideals of its maker.



Jean Louis Rudolphe Agassiz was also a born naturalist, but no such obstacles confronted him as Audubon surmounted, nor did he strike out for himself a field so absolutely original. Born in Switzerland in 1807, the descendent of six generations of preachers, but destined for the profession of medicine, he refused to be anything but a naturalist. From his earliest years, he showed a passion for gathering specimens, and his first collection of fishes was made when he was ten years old. He received the very best training to be had in Switzerland, France and Germany, and early attracted attention for original work of the most important description. He came to be recognized as the greatest authority on fishes in Europe, and his work on fossil fishes, published in 1843, was a contribution to science of the first importance.

In 1846, Agassiz came to the United States, partly to deliver a course of lectures at Boston and partly to make himself familiar with the geology and natural history of this country. His reception was so cordial and he found so much to interest him here, that he accepted the chair of zoology and geology in the Lawrence Scientific School at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and decided to make the United States his home. He soon made Cambridge a great scientific centre, and proved himself the most inspiring, magnetic and influential teacher of science this country has ever seen.

In succeeding years, he traversed practically the entire country, accumulating vast collections of specimens which formed the foundation of the great natural history museum at Cambridge. He was preparing himself for the publication of a comprehensive work to be called "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," the first volume of which appeared in 1857. Succeeding years were occupied with a journey to Brazil, another around Cape Horn, and the establishment of the Pekinese Island school of natural history, where he was able to carry out his long contemplated plan of teaching directly from nature. But his labors had impaired his health, and he died in Cambridge in 1873, after a short illness. His grave is marked by a boulder from the glacier of the Aar, and shaded by pine trees brought from his native Switzerland.

Agassiz was one of the most remarkable teachers of science that ever lived. Handsome, enthusiastic, overflowing with vitality, and with a learning broad and deep, his students found in him a real inspiration to intellectual endeavor. His lectures, however technical and abstruse their subjects, were of an incomparable clarity and simplicity. He was one of the first to advocate the teaching of science to women, not in its technical details, but in its broad outlines.

"What I wish for you," he said, one day, addressing a class of girls, "is a culture that is alive and active. My instruction is only intended to show you the thoughts in nature which science reveals.

"A physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle," he used to say. "Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance."

Of the pupils of Agassiz, not the least famous was his son, Alexander, who, after graduating from Harvard, assisted his father in his work, collected many specimens for the museum at Cambridge, and was finally appointed assistant in zoology there. In the following years he put his scientific knowledge to a very practical use. In his geological surveys of the country, he had been impressed with the richness of the copper mines on Lake Superior. For five years, he acted as superintendent of the famous Calumet and Hecla mines, developing them into the most successful copper mines in the world, and himself gaining wealth from them which permitted his making gifts to Harvard aggregating half a million dollars. It was characteristic of him that, after his service with the Calumet and Hecla, he resumed his duties at the museum at Cambridge, and continued as curator until ill health compelled his resignation in 1885.

Among other pupils of Agassiz who won more than ordinary fame as naturalists may be mentioned Albert Smith Bickmore, Alonzo Howard Clark, Charles Frederick Hartt, Alpheus Hyatt, Theodore Lyman, Edward Sylvester Morse, Alpheus Spring Packard, Frederick Ward Putnam, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, William Stimpson, Sanborn Tenney, Addison Emory Merrill, Burt Green Wilder and Henry Augustus Ward—as brilliant a galaxy of names as American science can boast, bearing remarkable testimony to the inspiring qualities of their great teacher.

What Agassiz did for geology and natural history, Asa Gray to some extent did for botany. Born at Paris, N. Y., in 1810, and at an early age abandoning the study of medicine for that of botany, he accepted, in 1842, a call to the Fisher professorship of natural history at Harvard, a post which he held for over thirty years. Gray's work began at the time when the old artificial system of classification was giving way to the natural system, and he, perhaps more than any other one man, established this system firmly on the basis of affinity.

In 1864, he presented to Harvard his herbarium of more than two hundred thousand specimens, and his botanical library. He remained in charge of the herbarium until his death, adding to it constantly, until it became one of the most complete in the world. His publications upon the subject of botany were numerous and of the highest order of scholarship, and long before his death he was recognized as the foremost botanist of the country.

Scarcely inferior to him in reputation was John Torrey. It was to Torrey that Gray owed his first lessons in botany, and if the pupil afterwards surpassed the master, it was because he was able to build on the foundations which the master laid. John Torrey, born in New York City in 1796, was the son of a Revolutionary soldier, and in early life determined to become a machinist, but afterwards studied medicine and began to practice in New York, taking up the study of botany as an avocation. He found the profession of medicine uncongenial, and finally abandoned it altogether for science, serving for many years as professor of chemistry and botany at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. The succeeding years brought him many honors, and saw many works of importance issue from his hands.