[Boston—Wednesday, 22 May 1872]
Wednesday. Mr. Longfellow, Dr. Holmes, and Jefferson and Warren, the two first comedians of our time, dined here. The hour was three o’clock to accom[m]odate the two professional gentlemen. The hours until three with the exception of two visits (Miss Sara Clarke & Miss Wainwright in spite of saying “engaged”) was occupied in making preparations for the little feast. I mean the hours after breakfast until time to dress (of hours before breakfast I have now-a-days nothing to say. I am not strong enough to do anything early but country life this summer is to change all that.) Mr. Jefferson & Mr. Warren arrived first. Finding much to interest them in the pictures of our lower room they lingered there a few moments before coming to the library when we talked of Marny’s pictures (Mr J. owns some of his water colors) and looked about at others. Soon Longfellow came with Jamie. He said he felt like one on a journey. He left home early in the morning, had been sight-seeing in Boston all day, was to dine and go to the theatre with us afterward.
He asked Mr. Warren why a Mr. Inglis was selling his fine library and pictures—a question nobody had been able to solve. Mr. Inglis is however in some way connected with the stage and Warren told us it was because he had been arrested with Mr. Harvey Parker and others and condemned to be thrown in the house of Corrections for selling liquor. His money protected him from the rigor of the law but the disgrace remained. His children felt it much and he was going to Europe at least for a season. We could not help feeling the injustice of this when we remembered the myriad liquor shops for the poor all over the town with which no one interferes.
Mr. Jefferson was deeply interested in our picture of the players by Zamaçois. Dr. Holmes came in talked a little at my suggestion about Anne Whitney’s bust of Keats which he appears to know nothing about artistically (I observed the same lack of knowledge in Emerson) but he criticized the hair. He said he supposed nothing was known about Keats’s hair, so it might as well be one way as another. I told him on the contrary I owned some of it whereat I got it out and he went off in a little episode about an essay which he had sometimes thought of writing about hair. He has a machine by which the size of a hair can be measured & recorded. This he would like to use and make a note of comparison between the hairs of “G.W.” (as he laughingly called Washington), Jefferson, Milton and other celebrities of the earth. He thought it might be very curious to discover the difference in quality.
We were soon seated at the table (only six all told) where the conversation never flagged. Longfellow properly began it by saying he thought Mr. Charles Matthews was entirely unjust to Mr. Forrest as King Lear. He considered Mr. Forrest’s rendering of the part, and he sat through the whole, as fine and close to nature. He could not understand Mr. Matthews’ underrating it as he did. Of course the other two gentlemen could say nothing more than the difficulty Mr. Matthews from his nature would have in estimating at its proper worth anything Mr. Forrest might do; their idea of Art being so dissimilar. Here arose the question if one actor was a good judge of another. Jefferson said he sometimes thought actors very bad judges—indeed he preferred to be judged by an audience inspired by feeling rather than by one intellectually critical.
Jefferson has a clear blue eye, very fine & bright and sweet. Longfellow thinks his mouth a very weak one—and certainly his face is not impressive. Warren appears a man of finer intellect and more wit. He had many witty things to say & his little tales were always dramatically given. Dr. Holmes could not seem to recover from the idea that Jefferson had made a fortune out of one play and that he never played but one. “I hear Mr. Jefferson he said when he first came in that you have been playing the same play ever since you came here” (He has been playing the same for a dozen years I believe nearly—and has been here three weeks!) Jefferson could hardly help laughing as he assured him that for the space of three weeks he had given the same every night. Dr. Holmes had a way at the table of talking of “you actors”, “You gentlemen of the stage” until I saw Longfellow was quite disturbed at the unsympathetic unmannerliness of it, in appearance and tried to talk more than ever in a different strain. After I left the table, which I did because I thought they might like to smoke, Jamie sent for Parsons’s poems and read them some of the finest. Of course the talk was wittier and quicker as the time came to separate but I cannot report upon it. The impression the two actors left upon me however was rather that of men who enjoyed coming up to the surface to breathe a natural air seldom vouchsafed to them than of men sparring with their wits—they are affectionate, gentle, subdued gentlemen and a noble contrast to the self-opinionated ignorance which we often meet in society. Dr. Holmes was however the wit of the occasion as he always is and every body richly enjoyed his sallies. They stayed until the last moment—indeed I do not see how they got to their two theaters in time to dress. It must have been as they say of eggs a “hard scrabble.” We went afterward—we four—to see a new actor, Raymond, play “Colleen Bawn” at the Globe—pretty play though very touching & melodramatic; by Boucicault. I must confess to dislike such plays where your feelings are wrought to the highest pitch for nothing. Though it would not be for nothing I suppose if the acting were good. Longfellow spoke to me again at the theatre about my “Little Guinever”.
