Nat Goodwin's Book. Goodwin Nathaniel Carll
enjoy this play for they hang Nat in the last act."
"Have you any idea what the price of American beauties is?" asked a friend of Hoyt's one day, referring to the exorbitant charges of the florists. "I ought to" answered the witty Hoyt, "I married one."
Years after I indulged in flowery dissipation for I married a bunch and yet there are some curious creatures who wondered why I was appearing in vaudeville while Hoyt was playing a harp.
Chapter IX
SIR CHARLES WYNDHAM
Sir Charles Wyndham is a remarkable man in many ways, a delightful actor, a splendid manager and a most sagacious business man. Of prepossessing appearance, he is further blessed with a slight figure which he keeps even after passing the age of seventy. He still manages to win approval in jeune première rôles in spite of a most disagreeable, rasping voice. He is ably assisted, artistically and managerially, by Miss Mary Moore. He has won a place on the English stage second to none.
What a blessing to win fame on the English stage! No impertinent references to one's age; no vulgar inferences concerning the social position of any player! How like our own delightfully free country! (It's so different.)
One afternoon at the Green Room Club while actors of renown and some just budding were seated at the long table enjoying the "two and six" dinner, Sir Charles came in. He had just finished his matinee performance of "David Garrick" with which he was packing the Criterion Theatre. They have a chair in the club, supposed to have been the property of Garrick. Wyndham sank into it, seemingly overcome by his efforts of the afternoon. (Many of the poor devils dining would have liked to share his exhaustion.)
A very clever dramatist named Hamilton, looking up, caught sight of him and in a quizzical tone remarked, "Wyndham, you make rather a fetching picture, sitting in the original Garrick Chair – and, what is most remarkable, you are absolutely playing the character!"
Wyndham nodded back a mumbling and patronizing answer, evidently pleased with the interest that he was creating.
Hamilton studied his victim a moment and then said, "By Jove, Wyndham, do you know, you are more and more like Garrick every day and less and less like him every night!"
Chapter X
CHARLES R. THORNE, Jr
What an extraordinary, complex creature was Charles R. Thorne, Jr.
Beginning a stage career under the management of his father, an actor of considerable repute in the '40's, young Charlie soon developed into a leading actor of the old school, a ranting, vigorous player, declamatory and thoroughly devoid of repose. He gradually drifted from California to the East and during the '60's became the leading man of the then well known Boston Theatre Stock Company. There he remained for several seasons supporting all the leading players then starring throughout the United States, including such celebrated artists as Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, Charlotte Cushman, Lotta, Edwin Adams and many others.
Of an extremely jovial disposition, never dissipated but fond of company, naturally witty and an extremely courageous man, he soon worked himself into the hearts of the Boston public. He was not particularly versatile, but had a splendid personality and a magnificent physique – marred only by a head too small for the quality of intelligence such a figure demanded. However, he was a royal picture to contemplate, particularly in romantic and Shakespearean rôles. In these he truly suggested the "Greek god." He gave his professional work little thought and was quite content to bask in the sunshine of the encomiums of press and friends until Dion Boucicault discovered latent talents which even Thorne himself did not know he possessed.
Boucicault was about to produce one of his plays, "Led Astray," at the Union Square Theatre, New York, and selected Thorne to create the leading rôle. Taking him under his wing for a few months he succeeded in transforming the man. Under his able tutelage Thorne, discarding his ranting and mouthing methods, awoke the morning after the première of "Led Astray" to find himself famous. He became founder of the modern school of suppressed, natural acting and the most convincing actor of the American stage.
He was not a man easily handled and had no respect for the rules and regulations of any theatre. He was in constant difficulties with A. M. Palmer, manager of the Union Square, but Palmer realized Thorne's value and put up with many annoyances from him. Thorne held despotic sway, much to the amusement of his companion players who loved him as they loathed the management. Palmer exercised every means within his power to humiliate Thorne, casting him for leading heavies for instance, but Thorne's convincing methods always made the hero look ridiculous. In the play "False Shame," in which he was cast for the villain, he took all the sympathy from the hero and of course killed the property.
Palmer brought over the late Charles Coghlan at a salary of $1,000 a week – Thorne's salary had never gone beyond $125! – and cast them both to create simultaneously the leading rôle in "A Celebrated Case," giving Coghlan the quodus of the New York and Thorne the Pittsburgh opening. I saw Coghlan's opening. He gave a marvelously thought-out performance and made a tremendous hit. I saw Thorne some weeks after and told him of my impressions.
I remarked, "Charlie, I think that Palmer has got you at last." He observed, "Yes, I hear that that chap Coghlan is an actor. I am up the spout as Palmer intends playing me at the Grand Opera House in two weeks and I guess the boys will get me as that English fellow has had the first whack at them and they will have the chance to compare us in the same rôle." I said, "Well, I am going in front to-night and I will tell you what I think." Before leaving his dressing-room I added, "Charlie, if you take my advice you won't go to New York. Be ill, and let your understudy go on." He laughed and, waving his hand, cried, "All right, sonny boy, I may take your advice!"
I went in front and after the performance I rushed back into his dressing-room and yelled, "For God's sake, don't get ill! Get to New York as soon as possible!"
I had never seen such a performance! While you admired Coghlan's technique and art, Thorne gave you no time to think of anything – he was so real, so convincing. He drowned all judgment with the tears his acting started. You simply sobbed your heart out.
In a few weeks Thorne went to New York and amazed the public. In a short time Coghlan's name headed the road company and Thorne was snugly housed again at the Union Square Theatre where he remained a Czar for many years, until John Stetson engaged him to star in "Monte Cristo," a play made famous by the French actor, Charles Fechter. He opened at Booth's Theatre to a $3,500 house. The streets were packed for blocks by a swaying, eager multitude ready to pay homage to an actor who for twenty years had been their idol and whose salary was never more than $150 a week at any time.
He was very ill on the opening night – in fact he was dying on the stage before his beloved public, but no one knew it. The fact that his performance was most unsatisfactory gave no one an inkling of the truth. He was driven home after the play, and never appeared again, dying in a few weeks. Just as power was within his grasp, they rang the curtain down and poor Thorne's soul passed into the great beyond.
All of the Thorne family were possessed of a wonderful sense of humor. I, as I have said, knew them all – Charles, William and Edwin and their father and mother. Many happy evenings have I passed with this delightful family. They were truly, to quote from Dumas' "Three Guardsmen," "One for all, and all for one!" Charles had a much keener sense of the ridiculous than the others and he would exercise it even in a serious scene, if for no other reason than to break up the players.
One day at the old Niblo's Garden in New York, Charlie came to play a two weeks' starring engagement for his father who was at that time the lessee of the theatre. I was a member of the company playing general utility. Business was very, very bad and the advent of Charles did not enhance the exchequer of the theatre. We were playing a Scotch drama, "Roderick Dhu." Charles and his father had a powerful scene, ending an act. The old gentleman spoke the tag, saying to Charlie, "If you are King James of Scotland, I am Roderick Dhu!" Before the curtain fell upon the line Charlie, who had bribed the prompter to delay its coming down on the direct cue, took out a large document and said, "Yes, Mr. Thorne, and your rent is due."
When the curtain fell the old man chased his son out of the theatre and in a fit of passion swore he