The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-09-15
CRITICIsING A CRITIC.
A Pen Picture of Mr.. William Winter, Which
Makes Him Not a Thing of Beauty.

Makes Him Not a Thing of Beauty.
New York Letter, in St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Wheeler does not like William Winter, the
critic of The New York Tribune. 1 have yet
to find anybody who does. Of all the Gotham
critics, Winter is probably the most peculiar
and as l have before remarked, they are a
peculiar crowd He has been on the Tribune
for years; and there was a time, long ago,
when he sometimes did good work. William
Winter is not beautiful to look at. He is a
little chap with a narrow face, a spiky mus
tache, a long nose with a high instep, gray
eyes stuck so closely together that if they
ever got crossed they would fall into a hope
less tangle, and a great shock of brown hair
that is all brushed forward to his eyebrows.
The result is that Mr.. Win
ter bears at all times a general
resemblance to a window mop. He
has some eccentric habits. saw him get up
in a theater one night and try to embrace
another writer while the play was progress
ing. The audience seemed slightly aston
ished, and the man who was Rugged sat Mr..
Winter down gently but firmly in his chair.
Mr.. Winter writes poetry, and gives it
away a hundred yards at a time. He is the
sort of a man who is always going into the
poetic ecstacy upon commonplace topics.
For instance, when Edwin Booth vent to
England, Winter was on hand with about
half a ream of rhymed delirium. Mr.. Win
ter is not a good critic, because he is not Just.
He is not a good poet, because his mind is as
fat as a pancake, though not as large. As a
critic, William Winter has five favorites.
They are Booth, Mccullough, Jefferson. Bar
rett and George Fawcett Rowe. OF the first
four named 1 can say nothing in disparage-
ment. They are great artists. But the case
of Rowe is enough to prove Winters disabil-
ity to reason. Rowe, who is a blarsted,
blooming, double-hand-twisted, dyed-hin-
the wool Britisher, don't We knaw, came to
fhIO- nnr1ntr couor0l hnob ~ith ~
American play, which he had written before
he had ever smelled American air. 1t was
called Misunderstanding, was a dramatization
of Cooper's tale. and served to introduce
Row in the principal character. If you can
imagine a cockney Misunderstanding, you will
easily understand what sort of a performance
Rowe gave. Why, he used to go around
leaving a trail of dropped HIS behind him big
enough to trip you up if you tried to step
over it. Such a nerve l never saw in mortal
man. Well, Rowe got columns of praise in
the Tribune. He was the greatest author and
the greatest actor ever seen. But he was a
dazzling failure, just the m After awhile
he wrote Fun on the Bristol" To read
Winters notices you would think this piece
a gem of literary work. Then Rowe wrote
Sniff" which was without exception the
most idiotic, the most inexcusable, and the
most sickening mess of Stops ever brought for
ward in New York. Winter gushed some more
anu Oullu eAplTeQ DclOT6 IL WdS ldlTIy porn.
Rowe's latest is called Pop" The actors in il
are funny, which goes to show that they could
be comic in a densely populated vault.
That Winter should speak we'll of it and the
piece still live is one of the ~lnarvels of the
age. Rowe is an empty, blatant, unlettered
English prig, and Winter declares that he is
a gentleman simply because they are friends.
Not long ago Winter went to the Cincinnati
dramatic festival, where he did some writing
for his paper. In one dispatch he described
the marvellous accuracy of the production of
Julius Cesar" He gave a pen-picture of
the romantic night, the weird surroundings
and 1.-The midnight clock, striking the
hour, which showed the deep learn
ing of William Winter. But whether it was
a seven-day clock, a cuckoo clock or an
ordinary nickel plated alarm clock from An
sonia, Conn, Mr.. Winter thoughtlessly neg
lected to inform his readers. 1t is well-known
that Julius Caesar had a clock in every room
of his cottage at Long Branch; that he carried
a 500 JurgeEsen watch to look at and a $16
Waltham watch in German silver cases for
actual use. 1t is equally a matter of history
that Julius's clocks were all of them strikers,
and that he was the originator of the guile
less phrase, Hooks all clear, O. K.-Somer-
VILE" He uttered that phrase when his
clocks were on a strike. Indeed, in the time
of ]. Caesar striking clocks grew on every
tree. But the fact had been overlooked,
oddly enough, until the gigantic mind of
William Winter corralled it between drinks
in Cincinnati.