The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-02-25

duct that boy might have erected
with building blocks; and finally. when
it was stopped by the bandits in the
foreground. its noisy approach was
followed by the sight of no more than
the tip end of the locomotive obtruded
at one side. Harlem was indifferent,
but Denver might be resentful.
A trip of little more than suburban
length took me to see Lincoln" a
drama which, I fancy, the people of
Washington, Kentucky or Illinois will
not resent as belittling their great citi-
zen. The making Of it was an unusual
process. Benjamin Chaplin was on the
lyceum platform with deIineatons of
Lincoln. His face and physique en-
abled him to produce a striking like
ness of the war president, whose wit
and humOr, craftsmanship and patriot
ism. were illustrated by characterize
ton in anecdotes Chaplin soon made
up his mind TO expand his mOnologue
into a play. The job might have been
done in a year by the ordinary method,
and probably quite as well as by
spending ten years at it. However, he
was getting a living with his church
entertainment while he wrote and re-
wrote enough matter for a dozen
dramas, trying it bit by bit on his au-
diences, retaining and rejecting, and so
Isboriously putting together a single
play while Fitch and Thomas have
brought out thirty-seven.
Lincoln, i'm Lincoln" is all the time
in the White House, except for one call
at the war department We see him
first as he gets the news of the firing
on Fort Sumter, and last as he starts
for the theatre to be killed; and be
tween those two ends of the play he is
shown TO us while the final fighting of
the war is going on at Gettysburg. He
has domestic scenes of good humOr
with Mrs. Lincoln and Tad; he lays a
kindly hand on the tangled love af-
fairs of two young friends; he has
serio-comic contentious with the testy
Stanton and the bellicOse Hooker: and
a momentous junctures he shows him
self a political and even military mas
ter. The mentioned historic persons
are the principals in a most sympa-
thetic and respectful Lincoln drama,
shrewdly calculated to lead church folk
to the theatre. and also satisfactory to
people with the theatrical habit. But
wasn't that an anxious first night for
Chaplin, who couldn't know that his
ten years Of labor wouldn't end in one
evening Of futility.
One scene may set Old-timeTs to delv-
ing into the annals of Lincoln when
this drama gets to Washington. Stan
tons Feasibility and the presidents
patience with il are set forth when
General Hooker. having been put I'M
der arrest Iy the secretary for insub-
ordination. goes TO quarrel with the
head Of the war department. There is
an alteration that almost comes to
blows. for the men hate each other in
tensely, while Lincoln, who believes in
the sincerity and value Of both, quietly
contrives by droT trickery to turn them
into friends. Nowhere in the play is
H. Il T1F
statuesque; he is the human Lincoln of
awkward mannerisms and disregard Of
polite usages; always a joker, yet
never lacking in an uncouth force and
dignity.
The climax is an example of dra-
matte effect wrought without stage de-
vice. Lincoln is said by historians to
have had a dream in which he saw
himself lying q corpse in state. In
the play he tells of it TO Stanton and
Hooker as having been dreampt the
night before. and now he is dressing
himself to go to the fateful perform
ance of "Our American Cousin" While
clumsily and pTotestingly completing
the toilet which Mrs. Lincoln has in
sisted on, he gives simply and on
hand. yet graphic and thrilling account
of his vision. Mrs. Lincoln begs him
TO stay at home. Stanton advises him
that plots against his life are real and
numerous. But he is not superstitious
and he decides to go. The audience
knows every detail of the tragedy that
stopped the comedy at Ford's. No at
tempt to reproduce ii in make-belieVe
would send an assemblage home i'm
pressed half so deeply as to have final
" seen Lincoln quietly put on his old
cloak and unbrushed hat and stalk out
Of the room on his way to his death p
To Yvette Guilbert from Benjamin
Chaplin Is the widest possible contrast
in dramatic art. But the first queS-
ton to answer as to Yvette's Teappear-
ance this week is, how does she look
now2 Did you see her in 1892 She
was then the soul and body of Partisan
deviItry in exquisitely wicked exhibit
lions. At the age of IS she was the
ideal not the real, siren of the bOule-
vardes; for where all the other ballad
actresses Of the concert halls were no
more than limitations of their own pic
lures on the billboards, she was as
wispy-waspy, and especially as naked,
as the most fantastical of the creatures
made by the poster artists.
Yvette at that period had hardly any
flesh between her skin and her bones,
vet the smoothness of the surface gave
no signs of the skeleton just under
meath. That physical popularity made
it feasible to cut her cOTsage down al
most to the belt line before as well as
behind Long black gloves and mar
row shoulder straps were practically all
she wore, except her hair, above where
her hips would have been if she had
had any hips worth mentioning. When
she lifted no her arms, the front and
rear sections of nudity were seen to be
Joined by bare side sections. But we
were, generally, not ashamed to look
at her, for she didn't seem to be an
actual woman, but fictitious carica-
ture of French recklessness-
A dozen years have passed with
Yvette. all, mel and now the annual
layers of tissue amount to a consider
able separation of her cuticle from her
bones, making her a rather plump ma
tron- No more does she care or dare
to denude herself as she used to. But
she still is a Tesourceful artist. She
gives a concert of French risky songs
of two bygone periods. For the first
lot, she wears a costume copied from
Nine PompadouT and another from
Mime. DuBarTy-king's harlots both,
don't YOU see: suggestive under cover
of the wickedness which formerly she
disclosed freely. For the second sec
ton of the show. while singing songs