Chapter LVIII
AT JACKWOOD
During the early days at Jackwood when I was busily engaged in hiring guests to come and partake of my board and rooms (I mean the professional diners out) I found great difficulty in securing patrons. I had plenty at my command so far as professional friends and visiting Americans were concerned, but the fair Maxine had the English bee in her American bonnet and insisted that we try to get together some of the impecunious nobility and army men as guests.
I knew of no one who represented those particular branches and had no desire to know any, but being under her hypnotic influence I sought a woman, the wife of a friend of mine, an American mining man, who knew all the swagger members of "the Guards." Through her influence one of these sapheads was persuaded to visit our humble home from Saturday to Monday. He came, accompanied by one of the present Dukes of England (whose father, by the way, died owing me a paltry two thousand dollars, borrowed on the race course at Deauville, France). They came down with Mme. Melba and Haddon Chambers.
We had a lovely time (that is, I presume they had). Max insisted on my entertaining the guests between courses with my supposedly funny stories. Generally after the telling of each one, which occupied some little time, my portion of the feast was either cold or confiscated by the butler. Very little attention was paid to me anyway except when I was telling anecdotes (and on the first of every month when the bills became due!).
On this particular Sunday evening the guests sauntered into the drawing room expecting to hear Melba sing. She didn't even talk!
Then the party, in couples, sauntered through the house and inspected the grounds.
Being on particularly good terms with the butler I selected him for my companion and we quietly strolled through the upper rose terrace discussing a menu that might appeal to the next influx of England's dilettantes. By this time all my American friends were barred. Max considered them "extremely common" by now.
The butler and I were figuring out the expenses of the previous month as the pale moon cast its rays over my book of memoranda. Inadvertently we stopped before an open window of the drawing room. As we stood there I chanced to overhear this remark:
"How could you possibly have married such a vulgar little person?"
Being terribly self conscious at all times I said to my butler, "Luic, I am the v. l. p. to whom that chocolate soldier is referring. Listen, and we'll have a Warrior's opinion of a Thespian!"
Then ensued the following dialogue: —
She: Do you think him vulgar?
He: Not necessarily vulgar, but an awful accent!
She: Well, no one ever accused him of an American accent. He was educated in Boston. Don't you think him rather amusing?
He: In what way?
She: By way of anecdotes and funny stories?
He: Were those stories he told at dinner supposed to be funny?
She: Of course; didn't you hear the guests laugh?
He: Yes; so did I, but simply in a spirit of compliment. Is he supposed to be a comic man in your country?
She: Extremely so.
He: Really?
She: And he talks remarkably well.
He: Did he talk remarkably well to-night?
She: I thought so.
He: Well, maybe, but I was deafened by your beauty. I saw nothing but those beauteous eyes of yours, my dear Mrs. Goodwin and everything else was a blank. Really, I —
She: Now don't pay me silly compliments, Lord Algy; it isn't nice.
He: I beg your pardon; but please tell me how did you happen to marry that funny little man.
She: Now don't ask impertinent questions; one has to get married and, really, when he talks he says something.
He: Does he – really?
The butler and I resumed our stroll.
Some time after I met this Grenadier, talked – and said something! (My editor refuses even to edit it.)
Jackwood proved a lovely summer abode for me. It cost me fifty thousand dollars to get it and fifteen thousand a "year" to keep it up (we were there about ten weeks every season). It cost me twenty-five thousand dollars to lose it!
During our lives at Jackwood incident followed incident, each of which convinced me the autumn leaves were falling that would soon bury me. I discovered the fair Maxine was being bored save when the house was filled with English guests. Americans bored her even more than I did! My repertoire palled and the anecdotes she screamed at when we first were wed met with but little response and that only when the dinner table was filled with English guests who found it quite as difficult to fathom my wit as Maxine.
Life at Jackwood was beginning to pall on me. Many Sundays found me a lonely host. Max was constantly accepting invitations to meet people at country houses, spending the usual Saturday to Monday outing away from her own fireside.
These Saturday to Monday gatherings as a rule were the rendezvous for unblushing husbands and wives whose mates were enjoying the hospitality of opposite houses of intrigue. Generally no husband is ever invited to these meetings accompanied by his own wife, the husband always accepting invitations to the house party of his friend's wife – and thus the silly and unwholesome game goes on.
In nine weeks my wife made nine trips of from two to six days' duration each. These outings included a visit to one of England's ex-Prime Minister's country house, a Member of Parliament's yacht and a society lady's home at Doncaster.
Being very respectable at the time, I was never invited to any of these functions.
During my entire occupancy of Jackwood I accepted just one such invitation. And then I was bored stiff. Of all the asinine, vacant, vapid lot of people I ever saw commend me to the polyglot mob one meets at the average Saturday to Monday gathering. Even the few actors and actresses who were present seemed to absorb the atmosphere and became deadly dull.
You must understand the guests are invited from some ulterior motive – women to meet men for every kind of purpose, men to mingle with men for financial reasons, from a tip on the race course to the promotion of a South African mining scheme, women to meet women to plot and intrigue and make trouble for either of the sexes. It is a sort of clearing-house for the sale of souls and the ruin of women's morals. At these gatherings more plots are schemed, more sins consummated, more crimes committed than at Whitechapel during a busy Sunday! When one stops to consider what can be accomplished by a bunch of these parasites in forty-eight hours it is appalling. I leave it to your imagination – what can be consummated in a week at these places – where statesmen and financiers lend themselves to such intrigues – on yachts, in closed stone castles and concealed hunting lodges!
At first I mildly protested against my wife's accepting these invitations and was always met with mild acquiescence and a desire to do what I demanded. If it were distasteful to me she would not accept and, like a dutiful wife, remain at home with me from Saturday to Monday. For two Sundays we sat in the drawing room with each other twirling our thumbs! It was a day of eloquent silence – each of those Sundays! At first I tried to think up stories to amuse her but she would look up from her book with those dreamy, cruel eyes, listen for a moment and in sweet dulcet tones remark: —
"Very clever, my dear, and most amusing, but you told me that some time ago at Seattle!" Then she would resume the reading of her engagement book for the following week.
I soon grew tired of our Saturday-to-Monday tête-à-têtes and let her go on her own as they say in England. We gave a few parties, but as I found it difficult to separate my friends from their wives I gave it up – and usually spent my forty-eight hours going to Paris to see a play or to Ostend to indulge in it.
It took me but a short time to become disgusted with our mode of living and alarmed at the expense involved. My clever wife adroitly managed to avoid all expense (although we had agreed to share it equally). Once in a while she would accidentally leave her check book where I could see it and the stubs convinced me she was not paying any of the household bills. Large sums were artfully arranged in a cipher which a Philadelphia lawyer or a writing expert could not fathom.
"Cigarette case for A" might mean Arthur or Alice; "Luncheon to N" might be Nellie or Ned; "Sundries for M" might mean Mike or Mabel – and there you are. Wherever her money went she was contributing nothing to the maintenance of the home (which included the services of sixteen servants)!
I made up my mind to bring things to an issue – to use a slang expression, to vamp. Ugly rumors were rife concerning the attentions of the ex-Prime Minister, the Member of Parliament, two American millionaires, an English Lord and the leading man of Maxine's company. I put Jackwood on the books of a real estate firm and placed my furniture in a storehouse together with the contents of my wine cellar (only to see them again, alas, adorning the home of my wife on Duke Street, London, a residence purchased during our marriage, to which I was never invited!).
After I had tried so hard to entertain her at Jackwood I think her conduct most discourteous.
Our life was very tranquil at Jackwood so far as we were personally concerned. Things went along pretty smoothly until we made a trip to Trouville for a holiday. I was privileged to enjoy myself alone most of the time as the fair Maxine would leave me early in the morning returning in time for dinner after a day's outing on the golf links accompanied by some English admirer. I spent most of my time gambling at the Casino, where I managed to lose thirty thousand dollars! And some ass has written: —
"Unlucky in love, lucky at cards!"
Up to this time I considered my wife thoughtless and fond of admiration as all women are – but not worse than that. The only time she failed to exercise her diplomacy and splendid tact was during our sojourn at this French watering place. Perhaps my constant presence irritated her. There is nothing that so gets on one's nerves as the presence of someone who is a bore. I don't blame any woman for wanting to jump the traces under these conditions. The only thing I hold against her is that she never told me. It would have been very easy and I would willingly have released her from her misery, but to inform people by inference – to make a boob of me – was unkind, unjust and cruel.
It never occurred to me that I was boring her until I came across a letter which fell into my hands quite by accident. My servant mistook it for a note addressed to me and placed it with several others he had previously opened for my perusal. It furnished one of my reasons for divorcing the most beautiful woman in the world. Here it is: —
Wednesday
Dear Lord —
You see I don't quite dare say " – " yet but you wait till we take our next walk together and I shall practice it every minute. You nice thing! I am delighted with the photograph – it stands before me as I write giving the modest room an air of fashion and I shall always keep it among my treasures.
Aren't you lucky to be at – with that blessed – and as many attractive people; this place would bore you to death I think – the gaiety seems such hollow, tinsel-ly sort; if it were not for golf I should find it intolerable. Unless one is filled with sporting blood and goes in for gambling at the races, one has a pretty dull time but then, England is the only place for me and my dolly is always stuffed with sawdust when I am away from it. Perhaps I shall have the good luck to see you in London. I get back Sept. 1st but only as a bird of passage; probably we can't stay there even one night for I must go at once to the country to see my sister and stay with Lady – from Sat. to Monday and sail the 7th which means Tuesday would be our only day in town I suppose. Alas! My love to you and don't forget me. I am filled with the most affectionate thoughts of you all at —
Maxine
Any man who could live with a woman who wrote such a letter does not deserve the name of man. I made up my mind to quit then and there and told her so. I gave her my reason, kept the letter and took the train for London and the boat for America – thirty thousand loser!
Gee! but I had a bully summer!
Maxine Elliott is a variously gifted woman. With the ambition of a Cleopatra she used me as a ladder to reach her goal and found her crowning glory in the blinding glare of a myriad incandescent lights which spell her name over the portals of a New York theatre. She is one of the cleverest women I ever met. Her dignity is that of a Joan of Arc, her demeanor Nero-like in its assertive quality and yet she has channels of emotion that manifest womanhood in the truest sense of the word.
Chapter LIX
"WHY DO BEAUTIFUL WOMEN MARRY NAT GOODWIN"?
Why, oh why, do beautiful women marry Nat Goodwin?"
I shall endeavor to answer that query so frequently put to me by the newspapers, not from any sense of obligation but simply in the spirit of anecdote.
Time and again impertinent printed remarks have been made about my plunging into matrimony and there have appeared flaming headlines such as, "Bluebeard Goodwin Anticipates a Marriage" (or divorce!), "Red Headed Nat Contemplates Matrimony!" etc.
These polite and complimentary references in the yellow journals appear as a rule annually. Generally they occupy half a page and are illustrated with pictures of the poor misguided creatures who had the misfortune to bear my name with my photograph stuck up in one corner (with a countenance suggesting more the physiognomy of a Bill Sykes than a Romeo!). Then some extremely clever reviewer of prize fights comes forth with this headline: —
"Why do Beautiful Women Shake Nat Goodwin?"
The scoffers, the envious, who know nothing about me except the fact that I have furnished paragraphers much material anent my "matrimonial forays," are inclined to credit my succession of beautiful wives for any success that I have attained. Matrimony may and often does breed notoriety and an actor's record may excite comment upon its endurance, but neither personal antics nor long service ever won a man genuine fame.
Is it a crime to be respectable? Is it a crime to have an honest fireside?
I never stole any of my wives, neither were they ever forced into matrimony – with me.
My friends who have been privileged to visit any home of mine will tell you that it was the abode of a lady and gentleman!
This will jar my vilifiers. I have no right to be respectable and have a home. I am a brawler and a reveler, a drunkard and a gambler. Maybe. Yet with all these alleged vagaries I fail to remember any time when I dined a mistress at the same table with my wife and children – an incident in the career of a most conspicuous member of our profession who has the reputation of being possessed of supreme chastity. He prefers marshmallows to champagne – stick licorice to Havana cigars. He married at the beginning of his career and is quite content to stand pat – with his head in the sand.
I have often wondered if these self-elected critics of my actions would have refused any of the women whom I have had the privilege of marrying!
Does it ever occur to them that a woman must first be interested in a man (in some little degree!) before allowing him the privilege of taking her hand in marriage? If she has a brain she understands his motives and even if moved by other reasons than that of affection it is still she who decides to meet the issue.
The women who married me had the reputation of being possessed of brain as well as beauty and all of them had tasted the sweets of matrimony before I came along. I wonder what these ebony-tipped-fingered gentlemen who have marvelled at my success in the matrimonial field would say if they were privileged to glance at my visitors' book in use at Jackwood or in my West End Avenue home in New York! It would convince them that they never could have passed the butler!
It has never been chronicled that the heads of the theatrical profession were my constant visitors. Statesmen, diplomats, lawyers, conspicuous public men from abroad, multi-millionaires (not forgetting one President) and some of the nobility have graced my board. This may have been the reason why one of the beautiful women married me!
Fancy any of my critics writing that Lord – had visited me, Senator – dined with me, Marchioness – accompanied me on a hunting trip! That would not be news – it's too clean! But they do cable to the remotest corner of the globe my presence at a prize fight. That is interesting matter – and news! How considerate of the feelings of one's aged parents who are forced to bear the brunt of their unwholesome lies! How I loathe these mephitic hounds who burglarize men's firesides, the pestilential pirates of women's homes who invade the sanctity of loving hearts, who write with pens steeped in venom!
Chapter LX
BILLY THOMPSON
What a splendid player is William H. Thompson – Bill as he is known to his friends!
I have known him for over thirty years and have admired him in many rôles. An artist to his finger tips, he is obliged by existing conditions to fritter away his time in vaudeville instead of heading his own company or occupying a theatre as the bright particular star.
While the Favershams, Millers and Skinners are starring through the country at the head of their own companies this grand artist is compelled to stifle his ambitions in playhouses which feature performing elephants, negroes and monkeys!
He tells me he is acting now only to gather enough shekels to make his passing down the other side of the mountain of life be unincumbered by financial difficulties. This is a sad situation – an actor willing and capable forced to humiliate himself while ignorant German comedians, song and dance men and incompetent leading men foster their wares before a vacillating public.
Well, perhaps things may change, but I fear not in dear Bill's day. The moving pictures reign supreme! Pantomime seems to gratify the multitude!
Let the incense burn low and as it disappears let memories of the work of a master like Thompson cast its shadow on the pathway of the time to come!
Chapter LXI
THE CRITICS
Praise is the best diet after all."
In an address before the National Press Club on November 17, 1909, the Hon. Henry Watterson had this to say:
"Pretending to be the especial defenders of liberty we are becoming the invaders of private rights. No household seems any longer safe against intrusion. Our reporters are being turned into detectives. As surely as this is not checked, we shall grow to be the objects of fear and hatred, instead of trust and respect."
"Shall grow!" As if you have not already grown, decayed and gone to seed, once more to be transplanted and again born, to invade the sanctity of homes and become the invaders of private rights! "Detectives" indeed! As a rule you are not even common cops!
No wonder public men look upon such "journalists" with aversion and contempt and liken them to the police and the scavenger! No wonder honest journalists, like Watterson, antagonize such methods as are employed by the emissaries who represent the yellow journalism of our delightfully free country!
Very often after reading one of the vilifying attacks made upon me (for no apparent reason other than to vent the writer's spleen or for lack of other material) I have wondered what effect it has had upon my associates, my audiences and my friends. It is wonderful how little the power of will asserts itself. Falsehood and scandal seldom concern any except those personally negligent. It is a pity that a critic who has so much power to do good and make happy the artist by a few kind words will use the weapon of the wood chopper. Fortunately you cannot make or unmake the artist of to-day. You may flaunt your accusations regarding his private life, but after all the good remains.
I honestly believe that a true American man or woman derives more pleasure from reading an account of the happy marriage of Ethel Barrymore and the delightful coming of her first born than from the lurid announcement that Mary Mannering has at last secured her permanent release from the bonds of her unhappy alliance with James K. Hackett. It has taken me many years to come to this conclusion, and it was only after two years passed in silent retrospect among the flowers, hand in hand with nature in glorious California, that I determined to don again the sock and buskin. But I went back to my professional work with a clearer conscience, a lighter heart, a determination to pay little heed to the scoffers and a resolve to try to make the world laugh once more.
He who rises above mediocrity is sure to incur the envy and hatred of the mediocre. I am astounded that I among so many should be selected as a perpetual target. Were I as egotistical as some of my critics say, the published reports of my vagaries and dissipations would have been as Balm in Gilead to my immoral soul! But such balm is far from any desire of mine. The unwholesome notoriety that I received during my absence in Australia shocked and grieved me and had it not been for the few good friends who gallantly came to my assistance with cheery words of encouragement my burden would have been too heavy to bear.
With the greatest indignation I read the truly astonishing articles written about me during my exile. Away from home as we had been for months and always looking forward eagerly to the arrival of the American mail, it was a shock indeed to be deluged with highly sensational accounts of my divorce suit, a shock all the more disagreeable for the wholly unwarrantable dragging in of the name of one as completely ignorant of the entire matter as any one of you who may read this.
For years I have been brutally assailed by certain members of our press who have disliked the color of my hair or the shape of my nose. As I alone have been the victim of these assaults, I have not wearied the public with constant denials, realizing the futility of the "apology" our great dailies vouchsafe when they are proven to be in the wrong. This generous "apology" may be found in an obscure corner of the paper, in very small print, weeks after columns and columns have spicily set forth the details of one's supposed wrong doings. And this is all we get by way of reparation from our traducers.
Here is the article, written by the Hon. Henry Watterson in the Louisville "Courier Journal," January 10, 1895, to which I have referred:
"In the course of an interview with one of our local contemporaries Mr. Nat C. Goodwin, the eminent comedian, takes occasion to correct some recent stories circulated to his disadvantage and to protest against that species of journalism which seeks to enrich itself by the heedless sacrifice of private character.
"Since no one has suffered more in this regard than Mr. Goodwin himself he has certainly the right to speak in his own behalf and at the same time he has a claim upon the consideration of a public which owes so great a debt to his genius. As a matter of fact, however, Mr. Goodwin is just beginning to realize the seriousness of life and the importance of his own relation to the art of which he has long been an unconscious master.
"With an exuberance of talent rivaled only by his buoyancy of spirit, uniting to extraordinary conversational resources a personal charm unequaled on or off the stage, he has scattered his benefactions of all kinds with a lavish disregard of consequences and that disdain for appearances which emanates, in his case, from a frank nature, incapable of intentional wrong and unconscious of giving cause for evil report.
"He is still a very young man, but he has been and is a great, over-grown boy; fearless and loyal; as open as the day; enjoying the abundance which nature gave him at his birth, which his professional duties have created so profusely around about him and seeking to have others enjoy it with him. But, before all else, it ought to be known by the public that he amply provides for those having the best claim upon his bounty; that he is not merely one of the most generous of friends, but one of the most devoted of sons, and that it can be truly said that no one ever suffered through any act of his.
"To a man of so many gifts and such real merits the press and the public might be more indulgent even if Mr. Goodwin were as erratic as it is sometimes said he is. But he is not so in the sense sought to be ascribed to him. He never could have reached the results, which each season we see re-enforced by new creations, except at the cost of infinite painstaking, conscientious toil; for, exquisite and apparently spontaneous as his art is, he is pre-eminently an intellectual actor and it is preposterous to suppose that he has not been a thoughtful, laborious student, finding his relief in moments of relaxation, which may too often have lapsed into unguarded gayety, but which never degenerated into vulgarity or wantonness. Indeed the warp and woof of Mr. Goodwin's character are wholly serious.
"He is a most unaffected, affectionate man and with the recognition which the world is giving him as the foremost comedian of his time, the inevitable and natural successor to the great Jefferson, it is safe to predict that he will fall into his place with the ready grace that sits upon all he says and does.
"Meanwhile the boys in the City Editor's Room ought to use more blue and less red in pencilling the coming and going of one so brilliant and so gentle and, in all that they have a right to take note of, so unoffending."
God bless you, Marse Henry!
The avidity with which the average penny-a-liners scent failure is only equaled by the blatant exposition of their reviews. They are like a lot of sheep huddled together, vainly endeavoring to emerge from the perfume of their own manure to flaunt their individual opinions before the garrulous public which itself is only too willing to proclaim "the king is dead!"
Senator Arthur Pugh Gorman once told me that failures were a good remedy for success and brought people to a realization of their own unimportance. Granted, if failure were individual, but as failure does not as a rule affect only one's self it is hard to administer the doses of the plural to mitigate the humiliation of the singular.
Has it ever occurred to the average critic that when a play fails not only the author and the leading artist are submerged in the vortex of despair, but all the tributaries of the enterprise go down with the ship? But what do they care – when many of the successful actors proclaim to the world that they enjoy their "art" – succeeding or failing! – and respect the reviewers of their work? I regret that many of them are only too willing to assist the critics in tearing down the structure of the successful player.
Some time ago I had a long talk with a comedian, short and very funny, on and off the stage. He is a true artist, a wit, gentle in his methods and a truly legitimate comedian. He was complaining of the existing conditions of the stage and assured me that it was only the lack of funds which compelled him to remain upon the boards to make the public laugh; that he was praying for the time when he could forget his gifts and leave the stage forever.
The little chap has worked like a galley slave for years. I know of one period in his career when he produced three consecutive failures in an equal number of weeks in a New York theatre; produced them and incurred all the risks – and finally landed the fourth a winner. He is constantly producing new material and to-day a New York playhouse displays an electric sign which spells his name. Yet he desires to leave the stage forever! Of course, he does! What honest actor does not?
Another artist, a friend of mine who has played to the largest receipts ever known in the history of the stage, told me recently that he was going to give it up, imparting to me the fact that he could no longer stand the humiliation and the heartaches he was forced to endure!
The attitude of these gifted players is as an oasis in the desert of incompetency and convinces me that irrespective of the type that spells inadequacy and commercial success for a few of the ephemeral stars there are some self-respecting actors left who refuse to accompany these unworthy disciples down the narrow path that must lead to an eventual eclipse.
What an unthinking person is the average front-of-the-curtain speech maker! Fancy thanking an audience for the privilege of entertaining it! It has always struck me as being ludicrous. But I can sympathize with an actor thanking an audience for sitting out a failure!
I believe it was Charles Lamb or someone equally clever who remarked, "Apprentices are required for every trade, save that of critic; he is ready-made."
How true!
Critics – what a queer lot! – are generally foes to art – from Dr. Johnson down to those of the present day. Seldom sponsors, always antagonistic, jealous and even venomous, they are eager to tear down citadels of honest thought and houses of worthy purpose! They remain hostile until the continued success of their victim compels a truce. And how cravenly they acknowledge defeat! Like the shot coyote they will only fight when wounded.
The reviewer of a prize fight will comment upon a picture; criticize sculpture, literature, acting!
Why should the average critic know anything about acting when his horizon does not extend beyond the ill-ventilated room containing his trunk filled with the manuscripts which he has not succeeded in having produced? Conscious of the revenues of the successful playwrights of the day he criticizes with venom in his drab heart and vitriol in his ink-bottle! No wonder he enjoys storming the forts of prosperity!
But what gets on my nerves is the attention given some of these penny-a-liners by the average American manager-producer who cull the complimentary expressions of these incompetents and print them conspicuously upon their posters. To add further insult to the honest player most of the yellow journals photograph these critics, heading the columns of their uninstructive matter with their faces!