Arts and Letters

Upon the question whether the true actor is or is not the creator of his part there will be long discussion in the future as in the past. But in any case the actor who loses himself in his part is lost indeed, for he is no longer the master of that by which he creates, to wit: his gesture, his speech, and his costume. On the contrary, he has become their slave, and is the creature, not the creator. Into this pit Joseph Jefferson, third and greatest of his name, fourth of his stock likewise to be a player, never fell. His personality was so genial, his soul so kind and appreciative, his quality so sensitive, his humor so good, and his heart so true, that to outward and surface seeming his heredity blended completely with his environment, and the beholder felt as if the actor and the character portrayed were one. But those who were favored with his intimacy knew quite to the contrary. Within that capacious brow and in the convolutions of that spacious brain was a mind of grasp and penetration, its own severest critic, sternest judge, and fairest jury. His great rôles were neither the imaginings of the author nor his own. From the powers of the playwright, the manager, and the interpreter was made a careful selection for securing the resultant which we all saw and at which we all wondered. The performances, moreover, were not iterations or repetitions: each stood out by itself, marked by little whimsical touches of genius which made every presentation of the dramatic tale a new experience to the playgoer. To have seen Jefferson once in a part was the sure inducement to seeing him again and again and again in the same part. Autopsies and the use of the knife do not reveal genius, nor does wordy analysis. To be great in any line requires a great man. To this the actor is no exception. Our greatest American actors have been great men off the stage as well as on it, fit for any Olympian circle. Jefferson could be judged by his intimacies and by his avocation of painting almost as well as by the art in which he was so grand a master. He was a worthy comrade in conversation with statesmen, with writers, with creative minds of every kind, thoroughly versed in the ways of men throughout the past and at the present hour. His amusements were varied, and among other recreations was that of outdoor sport: his prowess as an angler admitted him to high circles of the gentle art, and there his lighter gifts found the freest play. But his painting was almost a passion, and while he remained an amateur to the end, there was depth and breadth in his composition, a revel of color in his spaces, and great suggestiveness in the moods of nature as he sought to present them. Solitude in the forest, careless ease in the use of brush and pigment, a temperament disposed to gentle melancholy, given these, and you have the design and purpose together with the handicraft of the actor-painter. His life was opulent in friends and in worldly success; his hand was open to relieve the embarrassments of his fellows; the reservoir of his gladness to lend a hand was overflowing.