John Barrymore

“ As the husband, Jack Barrymore is every inch a John Drew. He feels, and makes the audience feel, the humiliation of his position. When he confesses, it is a terrible confession. Hattie Williams, in her odd manner, imitated Nazimova—as Nazimova would play a butler.
So these artists step out into the light—before a houseful of great laughter; one feels that they have struck the true note of what you meant your play should have. I think the impossible seriousness of triangle scenes in modern plays has been swept off the stage here—and "A Slice of Life" has done it.... ”

“ Charles Frohman saw her for the first time. He looked at her sharply, but said nothing. Later, during this engagement, she met the man who was to shape her career.
About this time Miss Barrymore went to London. Charles had accepted Haddon Chambers's play "The Tyranny of Tears," in which John Drew was to star in America. She got the impression that she would be cast for one of the two female parts in this play, and she studied the costuming and other details. With eager expectancy she called on Frohman in London. ”

“ A waiter passing by at the time, Lord Barrymore said, "You know me; let that gentleman have whatever he calls for:" when he told the parson to fall to, and call for as much arrack punch as he pleased. "Thank ye, my Lord," said he, "for I begins to be hungry, and I don't care how soon I pecks a bit."
'Lord Barrymore had, that morning, unknown to us, contrived to dress Tom Hooper, the tin man, (one of the first pugilists at that time) , as a clergyman, to be in waiting at Vauxhall, in case we should get into any dispute. ”

“ Barrymore and Ada Gilman, two of the first actresses of their time, and John Ince, father of Tom and Ralph Ince. Will Harris, father of Averill Harris, who is playing in "When You Smile" at the Walnut, Philadelphia, as I write, took one curtain by himself. A dagger in one hand and a revolver in the other, he kissed each to the audience, and escaped. The Mobile and Ohio train, which was to carry the company to Mobile, where we would catch the L. & N. for New Orleans, had been held two hours for us. ”

“ Taken up by Lord Barrymore, who made an inseparable companion of him, he directed during some years the amateur theatricals at Wargrave, Berkshire, the seat of that nobleman. After his marriage to Miss Richards in 1791 he took Mrs. ”

“ They would play loosely at cards, swindle a dear friend at horse-dealing, and half a dozen of them together would not be afraid to fall upon some helpless creature and beat him into pulp by way of a ‘lark.’ Lord Barrymore was simply a ‘rake,’ and he [Pg 128] injured no man but himself. He came into the hunting field more like a king of France and Navarre than an English gentleman, and his negro trumpeters played fantasias in the woods, to the infinite surprise, no doubt, of the foxes. ”

“ It follows, therefore, that Barrymore, since only this window would serve his purpose, must have been looking out for something or somebody upon the moor. The night was very dark, so that I can hardly imagine how he could have hoped to see any one. It had struck me that it was possible that some love intrigue was on foot. That would have accounted for his stealthy movements and also for the uneasiness of his wife. The man is a striking-looking fellow, very well equipped to steal the heart of a country girl, so that this theory seemed to have something to support it. ”

“ No artist, no accepted artist, has given a more suggestive rendering than has Barrymore here. It would be difficult to say where he is at his best, except that the first half of the play counts for most in point of strength and opportunity.
A tall frail young man, we find him, blanched with wonder and with awe at the perplexity of life, seeking a solution of things by means of the dream, as only the dreamer and the visionary can, lost from first to last, seemingly unloved in the ways boys think they want to be loved ”

“ Whether the admirers of her former girlish charm and slenderness liked it or not, she was now inevitably a deeper-natured and more mature woman and, consequently, capable of deeper and better acting. The fact was speedily proved in Mid-Channel. The play is a grim tragedy of English middle-class life, in which a fine-natured wife, after a gradual course of unhappy, deteriorating life with a selfish and sensual husband, ends her problems with suicide;—surely not one of the pretty Barrymore parts. ”

“ But to some more thoughtful men and women it is a source of rare satisfaction that at last the promise of that lovely voice and expressive353 face has been fulfilled, and you can weep with her, suffer with her, understand through the spell of her acting a little better the sorrows and perplexities of our frail humanity. In short, Miss Barrymore has become an actress.... Her many admirers, gathered in force, who evidently knew more about her than they cared about Pinero, were disposed to laugh in the first act during the scenes of her bickerings. ”

“ Barrymore, to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel.’ That should let us know before evening whether Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not.”
“That’s so,” said Baskerville. By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this Barrymore, anyhow?”
“He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife. are as respectable a couple as any in the county.” ”

“ Barrymore was telling his terrible experience in the Lambs' Club in New York.
"Extraordinary," commented Augustus Thomas, the playwright. "It took a convulsion of nature to make Jack take a bath, and the United States Army to make him go to work."
CAUTION
Marshall Field, 3rd, according to a story that was going the rounds several years ago, bids fair to become a very cautious business man when he grows up. Approaching an old lady in a Lakewood hotel, he said:
"Can you crack nuts?" ”

“ Frohman was always impressed by this sort of thing. It was about this time that he said to a friend of his.
"There is going to be a big development in one of my companies before long. There's a daughter of 'Barry' [meaning Maurice Barrymore] who gets a big reception wherever she goes. She has got the real stuff in her."
Miss Barrymore's first genuine opportunity came when Charles cast her for the part of Stella De Gex in Marshall's delightful comedy "His Excellency the Governor," which was first put on at the Empire in May, 1899. ”

“ Thaw how you came to be sent to school at Pompton, N. J., and if so, relate it to the jury, and also wherein the name of Jack Barrymore entered into the discussion, and tell what your relations to Barrymore were.”
“I met Mr. Barrymore when I was with the ‘Wild Rose’ company at the Knickerbocker theater. Mr. White gave a dinner to a whole lot of friends. I was asked to attend and I went there and met his friends at the party. Mr. Barrymore was there.”
Mrs. Thaw privately mentioned the names of the members of the party to Mr. Jerome. ”

“ The man put a loaded gun into the carriage, and Lord Barrymore had not ridden far when it exploded and killed him on the spot. Thus ended, at the age of twenty-four years, the career of the young earl, who was the most indefatigable, if not the most able, amateur actor of his day.
Such examples fired less noble youths, who left their lawful callings, broke articles and indentures, and set up for themselves by representing somebody else. Three of our best bygone comedians belong to this class, and may claim some brief record at our hands. ”

“ Barrymore.
"What fun!" exclaimed Beechy. "We'll wait here in the moonlight and see him dive. It will be lovely."
Mr. Barrymore was gone before she finished.
It was nearly eleven o'clock. The music-barges had gone; the hotel garden was deserted, and scarcely a moving star of light glided over the canal. Our three gondolas, drawn up like carriages at the marble steps of the Britannia, where the water lapped and gurgled, awaited the great event. The Prince pooh-poohed the idea that Mr. Barrymore could find a diver, or that, if he did, the bag could be retrieved in such an amateurish way. ”

“ Barrymore happening to come late to the theatre, and having to dress for his part, was driven to the last moment, when, to heighten his perplexity, the key of his drawer was amissing.—'D—n it," said he, "I must have swallowed it." 'Never mind," says Jack Bannister, "if you have, it will serve to open your chest." ”

“ Barrymore all the better; for it draws you nearer to a person when you find that your thoughts resemble each other in shape and colour. Oddly enough, it's often so with Mr. Barrymore and me; which is the reason it's so agreeable to have the place beside him when he drives.
No more than half a dozen miles from Peschiera we saw the Tower of San Martino, raised on the great battlefield of Solferino. By this time we had left the lake behind; but we had exchanged the low, amethyst mountains for tall white ones, glorious pinnacles of snow which were the higher Austrian Alps. ”

“ Barrymore complained bitterly of a ‘swarm of interloping French mountebanks who wander on their levies with titles and commissions of their own stamp and coinage, with which they are so prided up, as some of them have dared to contest for pressed men with my employed servants.’ Three hundred volunteers, collected for him by an O’Sullivan were thus enticed away, and he believed that Strafford’s enemy Sir Piers Crosbie was at the bottom of it all. Barrymore landed in Lancashire before the middle of June 1639, but with much less than the thousand men whom he was authorised to raise. ”

“ Barrymore, motioning to the gondolier. "But now, unless you're to pay six times what everything's worth, you must put yourselves in my hands. Remember, you don't care to glance either at statues, well-heads, or sun-dials."
"But that's what we're here for!" cried Aunt Kathryn.
[Pg 261] "Ah, but the man mustn't guess that for the world! We appear to be searching for—let's say, mirrors; but not finding the kind we want, we may deign to look at a few marbles as we pass. We don't fancy the fellow's stock; still, the things aren't bad; we may decide to save ourselves the trouble of going further. ”

“ The only known portraits of Barry represent him [340] as Timon and Macheath. They were taken before he entered upon his last ten years, in London;—years of gradual, noble, but irresistible decay. Like Betterton, Barry suffered excruciatingly from attacks of gout; but, like Betterton, and John Kemble in this respect resembled them both,—he performed in defiance of physical pain: mind triumphing over matter.
On the 8th of October 1776, he played Jaffier to the Pierre of Aikin, and the Belvidera of his wife. ”

“ The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. ”

“ Half past two—it struck John as a particularly unaccountable hour. Yet if there were anything wrong, why should they want him? She had said that they needed him—not herself only, but Barham. To be wanted by Lord Barham was an event in the life of any business man.
The Raymond Saunderses had always lived in a tiny apartment—really an old-fashioned flat—overlooking somebody else's garden in a district so far up-town as to have been almost suburban, although now fashion was creeping up to it. The sitting-room was full of pretty things, for Beatrice had taste, and poverty develops selectiveness. ”

“ Charles Frohman, who from this time on became much impressed with her appealing charm and beauty, gave her a small rôle with the company he sent over with Gillette to play "Secret Service" in the British capital. Odette Tyler played the leading comedy part. One night when Miss Barrymore was standing in the wings the stage-manager rushed up to her and said, excitedly:
"You will have to play Miss Tyler's part."
"But I don't know her lines," said Miss Barrymore.
"That makes no difference; you will have to play. She's gone home sick." ”

“ Mary’s Plains. Look at this room. Look out of the window and remember. Don’t I remember? Wooden sidewalks with weeds growing between the boards, boys playing marbles in the street, women hanging out their washing in backyards, Sunday clothes, oh, those best Sunday clothes, revival meetings, Moody and Sankey in tents on the lake shore, picnics, bicycle rides, dances at the Country Club, freckled youths kissing you on the verandah, great news—Ethel Barrymore is coming in her new play that’s been running a year in New York. ”

“ Barry, concerning whose origin nothing is known, except that he was of gentle birth and Irish extraction, is supposed to have died soon after the production of his play. The sole evidence in favour of this is that a promise made in his preface that if ‘Ram Alley’ met with public approval, he would ‘never cease his brain to toil’ until he had produced
Conceits so new, so harmless free,
That Puritans themselves may see,
is not known to have been kept. ”

“ Our fathers and mothers and fairy godmothers have to concur. If Geoffrey Barrington has asked you to marry him, it is because he loves you. He does not scatter proposals like calling-cards, as some young men do. ”

“ Among those of our adopted citizens of foreign birth, who have contributed to the growth of the town and by their industry, prudence, and other distinguishing individual qualities, have made a good record for themselves and families, may be named, John Burke, James Doran. Patrick Martin, James Kirby, Robert Tobin. Barrington has always been a hospitable home for honest men of whatever race, color, religion, and the fact that
⁠ Honor and shame from no conditions rise ”