New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-09-25
STUDIES In AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY cnARtrs 7. coNopoN.
JAMES FENNELL. ACTOR.

stage have been great autobiographers; and that
for various their performances IN PRINT are
frequently as amusing their performances
in person. Usually they have waited before max
ing record of their loves and adventures until
overtaken by old age and poverty 10 both OF which
many OF them seem to have been equally predes
tined. The recourse of writing q book when tie
public is willing to read IL and to pay for 1t rs GER
tainly harmless one. and as there is something
about the stage which pques good deal of curiosity
tile Thespian reminscents have been encouraged to
tell all that they knew if not a tri1e more. 1t
must for many of them have been o sad business
under press of pinch and of poverty. in squald
garrets sometimes Jail, with hardly money
enough to purchase pens and ink withal, to look
back upon the wasteful luxury of prosperous years
to think OF public favor which may have faded into
public forgetfulness, and to compare the slow pulse
of approaching senility with its dancing measure
when praise and profit were unlimited while every
might they were sure of the full handed thunders
of PIT and box and gallery. 1t must be q hard for
tune to exchange life of appreciation, hatery and
personal display for one grown ineffective that
nobody save its pOssess0r to have it prolonged
all the beauty and bravery gone out of it moth
hing left of its mercuria voubity; the voice
which begued thousands of their tears
turned again toward childish treble" 1t has not
bettered matters much that in spite of contrary
prognOstics actors have usually been long-lived.
Some of them have met whose prattle of outlived
Importance really divertng, and who ha wing
brought to their retirement the high-shouldered
Roman manners of the stage, together with no end
pof anecdote and adventure. of personal memories
and of professional eccentrcites, have been sure of
"a fiji audience though few, while the lamp of life
grew DINNER and DINNER. and finally went out in a
feeble sputtcr.
In selecting Mr. Fennells book as a specimen of
theatrical autobiography. l have not been deter
mined by its literary merit any more thar by the
writer's fame. There many books of tho kind
much better written and historically moro valu
able, and as for the actor he is pretty nearly for
gotten. But Fennel is good specimen of his
claSs--a sort of sublimated Mr. Crummles--a man
who, in spite of all the ills of life which fell to hi
share went about upon stills to the last of his fifty
years, dying in Philadelphia in 1916, two years
after the publication of his "Apology." He had
been rather popular tTagedian, helped, perhaps
by the circumstances that he was born gentleman
was educated at Elton and Cambridge, aud had
managed while yet young to get rid of his money
In the matter of style Fennell reminds the reader
of Weems's Life of Washington" Tor no saws the
simplest things in the loftiest language, and his
vocabulary is too profuse for prudent management
am tempted into giving the following specimen Of
Mr.. FenncPs rhetoric 4" / sing not the history of
the StyX. dipped Achilles. his anger or invulner-
ability; sing not the wandcrings, the cunning or
the bravery of the artful Ulysses tho praises
of that truly pious and dutiful son who ran away
from his wife and T'lother to himself from the
flames of Troy. You will hear of no Jerusalem
Delivered no Heuriade, Telemachus with a {
Mentor constantly at his Sue, Vasco de CANA
with feet earth and head in heaven even on the
Cape of Good Hope; but you may hear occasionally I
of Shakespeare and Paradise Lost" Mr.. Fennell
goes in this absurd way for a good many pages,
and ends his preface thus Reader and book! !
commend To you mutual concordance. BE the
friends of virtue, you will be mine" Then
do IN CO.
out to be female friend of Mr.. Fenneu but
whether he is addressing the flower or the friend
1t is sometimes difficult to determine. For in
stance: q" But while the soul is imprisoned on this
earth, we breathe in darkness as in light; should
then the cold, the gloomy dew of sorrows night
Cypress thy delicate essential tenderness, the
restorative sun shall hail the peary moisture as
the chastc tribute to his felt ABSENCE smiling in
morning beams shall kiss it from thy tremuous
2eayes and watt it to the zenith of creation where
transplanted like the immortal amaranth mayst
Hhou remain forever best" l hope that the lady
Mmosa understood these fine phrase. / confess
Shat to they convey very little if any, meaning
Fennell begins by alphabetically saying that if
he was born he could help it-so it was" His
father had lived in America, but Just before the
birth OF this marvellous son, in 1906 had returned
to England Mr. Fennell is quite unable to say
simply that this father died. but states that he as
called to the bosom of his Saviour" He also in
bOriilS us LuaJ very early IN lie ne was afflicted
with tumor of some nature on the upper part of
The right arm" Several pages are devoted 10
history of the extirpaton of this excrescence and
of the fortitude with which the future tragedian
bore the pain of the operation. Unfortunately Mr..
Fennell has no sense of proportion, and usually
accords the greatest space to matters of the smallest
Importance. The incidents of his childhood. which
precisely the incidents of every bodys childhood
and his reflections thereon. which it would be com
ELEMENTARY to call commonplace, occupy more
pages of his book than they reasonably entitled
TO. 1t is relief when he gets to Eton and tells us
that he had Mr.. Canning for fellow pupil there.
The future Prime Minister of England had then
love of private theatricas. which he probably in
heried from his mother, who, as Miss Mary Ann
Costello the stage. al think" says
Fennell. that never saw any boy play with more
energy, spirit aud science than young Canning
Going to Paris the student that city Just be-
fore it given up to the demon of Revolution.
He kissed the hand of that little Dauphin who was
afterward to be atrociously tortured and starved
to death; and he went to the theatre where he
saw " the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magda-
aene and the Apostles exhibited upon the stage
The person who represented Saviour had his
hair extravagantly dressed, frizzled and daubed
with powder and pomatum. He had large bag
dangling from the back of his head full dress
superb suit silk stockings shoes with diamond
and paste buckles a chapeau de bras and hand
some sword by his side"
Afterward Mr.. Fennell went to Cambridge where
The " for a little while sedate and regular"
though presently his passions swayed consider
ably" and he lost much money tor the scandalous
fame of running horse at Newmarket" SO that he
sometimes suffered the torrents of the damnedn
or dull the armadillo in his winters cave"