Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/767

1867.] everybody admired the personation. New York had often seen finer displays of dramatic wit, and had not taken especial note of them either. New York had seen Charlotte Cushman, Burton, Blake, Matthews, Brougham, Walcott senior, Mark Smith, and Charles Fisher all together in “ The School for Scandal,” one of the most brilliant comedies of the theatre, and it had not crowded the house for one night as it did later for hundreds of nights to see the performance of a single artist, in probably the very worstwritten play that was ever put upon the stage.

“Solon Shingle” was not an inspiration of art, but rather a faithful copy from a peculiarly marked original, and just so far was it an artistic triumph. Mr. Jefferson evolved and developed the character of Rip Van Winkle from a purely poetic conception, that had no existence except in the mind of the dramatist and in the genius of his interpreter. Its humor, pathos, and passion were, until Mr. Jefferson’s rare talents moulded them into shape, dim and intangible as Irving’s weird legend, or as the mists that enwrapped the sullen Catskills. With Mr. Owens it was different: he had the man he impersonated to sit to him for his picture, and the popularity and the merits of the performance rested upon the sure foundation of its wonderful fidelity to nature. As a copy, it was as exact as a photograph, or as a landscape thrown upon a blank wall by the camera obscura, and almost as cold. There was perfection alike in the dress, the uncouth action, the awkward, rolling gait, suggestive of following the plough and straddling furrows, the shrewd, inquisitive habit, and the quaint patois, as true to the original in the pronunciation of each syllable as in the whole. And to attain this fidelity of accent was a greater difficulty than Mr. Jefferson had to overcome in reproducing the guttural dialect of Rip Van Winkle. Mr. Jefferson had simply to adhere to certain well-known principles in following the peculiarities of the Dutchman’s language; but the oddities in Mr. Owens’s case were all arbitrary ; and consequently not only each word, but all its parts, became a matter of individual study, into which the entire performance resolved itself, — a profound study for the reproduction of the personal identity of one man standing as a type for many.

But excellent as the study was, justly admired as it was, there is one thing that will be remembered concerning it, — while it excited praise in abundance, it seldom shook the audiences of pit and boxes from their propriety by virtue of its intrinsic drollery. There were, indeed, some points that convulsed the house, yet they were confined to things not humorous in themselves, but in their frequent repetition and exaggeration by the comedian. As, for instance, his ever-recurring reference to that “ bar’I of apple-sars,” — his as frequent utterance of “Jess so!” — or his making that very peculiar ejaculation in sitting down. And the way in which this latter action was accomplished was one of the best assurances we saw of the actor’s power. The slow drawing up of the draggling coat-tails, his feeble gropings for the arm of the chair, his letting himself down to within an inch of the seat, then, when the bent old legs would bend no more, his suddenly dropping into it like over-ripe fruit from a tree, — this action and the scene in the witness-box, often gross and in bad taste as they always seemed to us, were the finest points he made. The first he weakened by too frequent recurrence.

In the whole performance we recognized the same merits, and only those, which once made his personation of another character the delight of equally crowded houses for quite as extended a period. In both characters exactly the same rare powers of reproduction, the same excellences and detects, were elicited. And from these we conclude that Mr. Owens’s talents lie exclusively in detecting and seizing the salient points of an individual nature, and producing