Theatrical and Circus Life
by John J. Jennings · English · Gutenberg #49517 · 855,615 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Theatrical and Circus Life
Author: John J. Jennings
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEATRICAL AND CIRCUS LIFE ***
[Illustration: TRANSFORMATION SCENE.]
THEATRICAL
AND
CIRCUS LIFE;
OR,
SECRETS OF THE STAGE,
GREEN-ROOM AND SAWDUST ARENA.
EMBRACING
A HISTORY OF THE THEATRE FROM SHAKESPEARE'S TIME TO THE PRESENT
DAY, AND ABOUNDING IN ANECDOTES CONCERNING THE MOST PROMINENT
ACTORS AND ACTRESSES BEFORE THE PUBLIC; ALSO, A
COMPLETE EXPOSITION OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE STAGE,
SHOWING THE MANNER IN WHICH WONDERFUL SCENIC AND
OTHER EFFECTS ARE PRODUCED; THE ORIGIN AND
GROWTH OF NEGRO MINSTRELSY; THE MOST ASTONISHING
TRICKS OF MODERN MAGICIANS, AND A
HISTORY OF THE HIPPODROME, ETC., ETC.
Illustrated with Numerous Engravings and
Fine Colored Plates.
BY JOHN J. JENNINGS.
CHICAGO:
Globe Publishing Co.
1886.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by
GLOBE PUBLISHING CO.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PROLOGUE.
The theatre and the circus, both sources of unlimited amusement to the
world, are also objects of the greatest interest to all who have had
even a single peep at the stage or pressed their feet even once upon
the sawdust precincts of the tented show. The tricks and illusions
that are mystifying to nine-tenths of those to whom they are presented
rarely fail to be productive of pleasure, and the performers, whether
before the foot-lights or within the circus ring, generally succeed
in so thoroughly winning the hearts of the public, that, though their
faces, when the paint is off and the atmosphere of glory has departed,
might not be recognized upon the street, their names are so fixedly
identified with the pleasant moments associated with their art, that
they become household words, and are spoken, with admiration and
praise, by all classes, from the newsboy and bootblack up through the
various strata of society even to the ruler of the nation.
In presenting this volume to the public the intention has been to bring
the player and the people into closer relations, and by revealing
the secrets of the stage and sawdust arena to show that what appears
at first to be deep mystery and to many, who are bigoted and averse
to theatrical and kindred entertainments, the blackest diabolism, is
merely the result of the simplest combinations of mechanical skill and
studied art, and is as innocent of the sinister character bestowed upon
it as are the efforts of school children at their annual exhibitions
or the exercises of a Sabbath School class before a row of drowsy and
nodding church-deacons. Fault may be found with the private lives of
numbers of the members of the theatrical and circus profession, but the
sins and shortcomings of individuals, can be visited upon the entire
class with no more justice than can the frailties of a few preachers
be applied generally to the pulpit, or the dishonesty of a handful of
lawyers be reflected upon all the disciples of Blackstone in existence.
Neither is it just to class as theatres places of resort that do
not deserve the name--the "dives" and "dens" that are frequented by
disreputable men and women whose low tastes are catered to by men and
women every bit as disreputable as their patrons. Such establishments
receive, in this volume, only the severe treatment they fully merit.
In explaining the mysteries of stage representations, and indicating
the tricks of ring performances, as well as in speaking of the private
lives of performers and giving biographies of the most noted actors
and actresses now before the public, an attempt has been made to be
perfectly accurate in every detail. The anecdotal portion of the book
has likewise received careful attention, and indeed every feature of
the work has been given due consideration, in the hope that in and out
of the profession, THEATRICAL AND CIRCUS LIFE may meet with a favorable
reception and be regarded as worthy the subjects of which it treats.
Commending it to the kindness of all into whose hands it falls; and
assuring the inhabitants of the mimic and real worlds, that, whatever
construction may be placed upon his sentences, naught but respect and
affection is felt for the true and good men and women of the stage, the
author parts from his volume regretting that it is not large enough
to give everybody a place in its pages, or to say as much about each
individual as each deserves.
J. J. J.
ST. LOUIS, August 1, 1882.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
A PRELIMINARY PEEP.
PAGES
Admission Fees--Cerberus at the Back Door--The Awe-Stricken
Stranger behind the Scene--Swarms of Actors and Employees--
Description of Stage Settings--The Green-Room and Dressing-Room
Explored--A Visit to the Dressing-Tent of the Circus--An
Act that Beats anything of the kind in the World--The Female
Minstrel Gang and the Break-o'-Day Girls 19-27
CHAPTER II.
A THEATRE OF SHAKESPEARE'S DAY.
Rude Carts as Primitive Stages--Followed by Stone Theatres
with Pits for Stages--Theatres of the Elizabethan Period--
Sunday Theatres in the "Golden Age"--Description of the Globe
in Shakespeare's Time--Plays in the Times of Henry VIII.--
Sign-boards as Scenes--Anecdote of Charles II.--The "Wits,"
"Clever" Men and the Vulgar Crowd--Pipes, Tankards, and
Gossip 28-36
CHAPTER III.
THE AMERICAN THEATRE.
Davy Garrick at Drury Lane, London--English Actors sail for
America--Voyage in the Charming Sally in 1752--The First
American Theatre--The First Programme--The First New York
Theatre, 1753--The First Performance in Philadelphia, April,
1754--The First Show in Boston, August, 1792--The Priest
and the Spanish Lady--Elegant Theatres of the Present
Period 37-42
CHAPTER IV.
AT THE STAGE-DOOR.
Front Door and Back Door Entrances--"Mashers" at the "Stage-Door"
--The Cerberus who Stands Guard--Perquisites Paid to Him--
Bulkhead and the Ballet Girls--The Tricks of the Scene Painter
on the Girls--The Girls' Revenge--Bold and Heartless Lovers
--Notes Pushed under the Dressing-Room Door--Alice Oates's
Mash--Watching the Manœuvres of the "Mashers"--Tale of the
Pink Symmetrical 43-54
CHAPTER V.
BEFORE THE FOOT-LIGHTS.
People who Patronize the Theatre--The Young Blood--Members of
the "Profesh"--The Giddy and Gushing Usher--The Bouncer--
The Peanut Cruncher--The People who go out "Between Acts"--
The Big Hat Nuisance--Anecdote of George and Harry 55-68
CHAPTER VI.
BEHIND THE SCENES.
An Amateur Theatre--The Author's Experience as "Imp" in a
Spectacular Scene--A Trip to the Moon 69-85
CHAPTER VII.
IN THE DRESSING-ROOM.
Goodwin's "Make-up" for Hobbies--Booth and Company Playing
"Hamlet" in Street Costume--Dressing-Rooms of Old-Time and
Present Theatres--Louis Harrison Spoils a Play at San Francisco
--How Actors "Make up" for Various Parts--The Hair-Dresser and
the Actress 86-105
CHAPTER VIII.
WITHIN THE WINGS.
The Stage Prompter and His Duties--Actors who "Stick" and some
who "Never Stick"--A Popular Actress and her Useful Husband
--The Firemen's Amours--Mary Anderson and Her Chewing-Gum--
Emmet's Indiscretions 106-121
CHAPTER IX.
STAGE CHARMS AND OMENS.
Burning of the Southern Hotel and Kate Claxton's Presence--
Superstitions of John McCullough, Raymond, Joe Jefferson,
Sothern, Florence, Booth, Chanfrau, Byron, Thorne, Neilson,
Lotta, etc., etc.--Courtaine and Ince 122-143
CHAPTER X.
NOT DOWN IN THE BILL.
Actors who Memorize whole Newspapers--Lovely Peggy--Kean Dying
as he Played--Sol. Smith's Funny Adventure--A Masher made
Serviceable--Charlotte Cushman and the Colored Bell-Boy who
brought Down the House--The Call-Boy's Revenge--The Lecturer,
Trick Candle and Trap Door--An English Performance of William
Tell 144-161
CHAPTER XI.
THE ILLUSIONS OF THE STAGE.
Mrs. Bellamy and Mr. St. Leger in Dublin--Rousseau's Description
of Paris Opera--Modern Mechanism--Producing Steam, Fire,
Thunder, Lightning, etc.--Olive Logan and her Jewels--Snow
Storm in "The Two Orphans"--Rain in "Hearts of Oak"--Rivulets
in "Danites"--Funny Inventory of "Property" in a London
Theatre 162-182
CHAPTER XII.
MORE OF THE MYSTERIES.
The Property-Man and his Duties--Sunlight--Moonlight--
Twinkling of Stars--Ocean Waves--Fire in "Phœnix" and
"Streets of New York"--Full Description of the Famous Raft
Scene 183-194
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ARMY OF ATTACHES.
Broken Down or "Crushed" Actors as Door-Keepers--The Treasurer of
the Theatre--The Usher--Orchestra and Leader--Stage Manager
--The Scenic Artist--The Stage Carpenter, Supes and Minor
Attaches, and Last but not Least the Call-Boy 195-205
CHAPTER XIV.
STAGE STRUCK.
The Young Man from Cahokia--The Box of Gags--Stage Struck Girls
of Louisville--The College Graduate from Illinois--"The
Warrior Bowed His Crested Head"--The "N. G." Curtain--Marie
Dixon's Failure--Mrs. H. M. Lewis, of Charleston, Duped by
Schwab & Rummel--Harry Russell Pseudo "Manager"--A Colored
Troop's Curious Epistle 206-226
CHAPTER XV.
THE REHEARSAL.
Old-Time and Present Rehearsals--Olive Logan's Description of a
Rehearsal--Rehearsal of the _Corps de Ballet_--Appearance of
Taglioni, Cerito, Carlotta Grisi, Lucile Grahn at Her Majesty's
Theatre, in London 227-240
CHAPTER XVI.
CANDIDATES FOR SHORT CLOTHES.
Advertising for Ballet Girls--Salaries Paid them--Who Apply--
Where the Can-Can Flourishes--The Ups and Downs of a Ballet
Girl's Life--The Nautch Dancers 241-250
CHAPTER XVII.
TRAINING BALLET DANCERS.
Interviewing Sig. J. F. Cardella--The French School Theatre La
Scala--Amount of Practice Required--The American Ballet--
Salaries of Premieres, Coryphees, etc.--The Time Required--A
Little Fond and Foolish at Times 251-263
CHAPTER XVIII.
PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS.
The Trials and Tribulations of the Gawky Young Dramatist--
English, French and American Playwrights--The Desire for
Foreign Plays--Bartley Campbell's Christmas Story 264-275
CHAPTER XIX.
MASHERS AND MASHING.
Gunakophagists or Woman-Eaters--Corner Loafers--Mashers of the
Profession--Female Mashers--The Blonde Beauties of the Leg
Drama--Model Letter--Lillian Russell's Escapades--"Patti"
and the Midget "Foster"--The Old Masher Squeezed--The Girl in
Red Tights at Uhrig's Cave--Music and Mashing 276-295
CHAPTER XX.
THE MAIDEN AND THE TENOR.
Ambleleg--His Soul Full of Art and Throat Full of Music--Miss
Justaytine the Pink of Beauty and Perfection of Belleship--The
Chorus Singer Mashed on the Maiden--The Mash Mutual--The
Brother and Lover Mash the Tenor--Suit for $10,000 and the
Compromise 296-302
CHAPTER XXI.
FISHING FOR FREE PUFFS.
A First-Class Puff in a Leadville Paper--All Anxious to Appear
in Print--Various Ways of Puffing--Sending Photos--Diamond
Robberies--Falling Heir to a Fortune, etc.--Minnie Palmer's
Artless Display of Underwear--The Abbott Kiss--Catherine
Lewis Fling--Emelie Melville's Presents to Critics--The
Morning Buzzard and the Evening Crow 303-314
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ACTRESS AND THE INTERVIEWER.
All Performers must Meet the Interviewing Fiend--How the
Interviewer is Received by Patti, Nilsson, Gerster, Kellogg,
Cary, Hauk, Abbott, Bernhardt, Morris, Modjeska, Neilson,
Anderson, Davenport, Mitchell, Lotta, and Others 315-319
CHAPTER XXIII.
A FEW FOOT-LIGHT FAVORITES.
Mistress Woffington--Children as Actors and Actresses--Little
Corinne--Debut of Emma Livry--Nell Gwynne the Fish Girl--
Lola Montez, the Pretty Irish Girl--Adah Isaacs Menken as
_Mazeppa_--Mary Anderson the Tragedienne--Lotta and Maggie
Mitchell, and a Host of Others 320-342
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHINESE AND JAPANESE THEATRICALS.
Great Length of the Play--Description of a Chinese Theatre--
The Prompter--The Audience--The Actors--The Musicians--
Japanese Theatres--No "Reserved Seats"--Prices of Admission
--Side Shows 343-352
CHAPTER XXV.
OPERA AND OPERA SINGERS.
Palmo, the Father of Italian Opera in America--Interview with
Col. Mapleson--The Cost of Rigging a Company--What it Costs
Every Time the Curtain is Rung Up--Mme. Grisi's Superstition--
The Best Operas--Salaries of Singers--Neilson and the Diamond
Merchant 353-366
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE MINSTREL BOYS.
Emmet, Brower, Whitlock and Pelham among the Earliest--Pot-Pie
Herbert--Daddy Rice and Jim Crow--Zip Coon--Coal Black Rose
--My Long Tail Blue--Early Days of George Christy--Minstrel
Men Generally Improvident--Minstrel Men as Mashers--Haverly's
Mastodon Minstrels--The Boys at Rehearsal 367-381
CHAPTER XXVII.
PANTOMIME.
George L. Fox, the King--G. H. Adams, his Successor--Boxing
Night in London 382-388
CHAPTER XXVIII.
VARIETY DIVES AND CONCERT SALOONS.
First-Class Varieties--Harry Hill's Famous Resort--Interview
with Harry Hill--Ida and Johnnie--Deacons in a Dive--The
Bouncer at Work--The Cow-Boy's Call for Mary--The Can-Can--
Music by Bands--Over the Rhine 389-415
CHAPTER XXIX.
A TEAM OF IRISH COMEDIANS.
The Song and Dance Men--Harrigan & Hart--Levi McGinnis the
Alderman 416-429
CHAPTER XXX.
THE BLACK ART.
Sword Swallowers--Jugglers in America, Europe, China, and
Hindoostan--Herman Sells the Barbers--Herman Sold by the
"Boys"--Wonderful Chinese Jugglers--How Ladies are Suspended
in Mid-Air--How to Eat Fire--Walk on Red Hot Iron--Cut off
a Man's Head, etc., etc. 430-439
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE INDIAN BOX AND BASKET TRICK.
The Trick-Box--The Board--The Basket--The Magician's "Ghost
Story" 440-448
CHAPTER XXXII.
VENTRILOQUISM.
Prof. Kennedy and Val Vose--Louis Brabant _Valet de Chambre_ to
Francis I. Wins Wife and Fortune through his Wonderful Gift--M.
St. Gille and his Wonderful Exploits--Alexandre and the Load
of Hay--The Delusion Fully Explained--How to do it--The
Suffocated Victim 449-458
CHAPTER XXXIII.
ON THE ROAD.
Making Dates at the "the Square"--Copy of Contracts--Billing
the Town--The Cyclonic Advance Agent 459-465
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE GREEN-EYED AND OTHER MONSTERS.
The Street Arabs and Lotta--The Stage at the Beginning of the
Eighteenth Century--Little "Accidents" of Bernhardt and
Indiscretions of Patti--"Sudden Johnnie" and Colombier--
Lizzie McCall's Crime--Miss Bertha Welby and Miss Cleves--The
"Old Gray" and the Skipping Rope Dancer--Husband and Wife and
Ballet Girl--Mephistopheles and Venus 466-483
CHAPTER XXXV.
JOHN WILKES BOOTH, PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN.
Shooting of Abraham Lincoln--Booth's Rehearsal at Wallack's--
An Old Actor's Opinion of J. W. Booth--His _Richard the III._
a Fine Piece of Acting--Booth and Collier as _Richard_ and
_Richmond_ 484-491
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE SUMMER VACATION.
How the Stars and Lesser Lights Disport Themselves--Actors at the
Seaside--The "Old Gray" Surprises the Actors at the Banquet--
Millions Spent upon Theatricals 492-501
CHAPTER XXXVII.
FUN AMONG THE ELKS.
Who the "Elks" are--Jughandle's Friend Wants to be an Elk--
Getting the Candidate Ready--The High Muck-a-Muck--The
Peculiar Circle--The Descent--The Path of Progress--The
Upward Flight to Glory--Down! Down!! Down!!!--On "Eincycle"
--The Merciful Net--An Elk 502-511
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE CIRCUS IS HERE.
The Disengaged Canvasman's Poetry--Circus Posters--The Grand
Parade--The $25,000 Beauty--Twelve Ponies and Forty Horses
on a Rampage--Henry Clay Scott and his Aged Father--Sold his
Stove to go to the Circus 512-521
CHAPTER XXXIX.
UNDER THE CANVAS.
The Small Boy and the Circus--Beating the Show--Slack Wire and
Balloon Performances--Donaldson's Ill-Fated Trip--Frightful
Accident in Mexico--Circus Green-Room and Dressing-Rooms--The
Clown--Bareback Riders and Tumblers--Merryman's Admission Fee
--The Clown's Baby 522-535
CHAPTER XL.
ACROBATICS AND EQUESTRIANISM.
Training Children--Olive Logan on the Circus--Trapeze
Performers--Tight Rope Feats--Training Riders--The Leading
Equestrienne--The Great English Rider, Miss Lily Deacon--The
Georgia Lady's Experience--Cow-Boys Raid on the Ring 536-552
CHAPTER XLI.
A ROMANCE OF THE RING.
Shadowville--Miss Nannie Florenstein, the most Wonderful Bareback
Rider in the World--Her Cruel Taskmaster--Ned Struthers to
the Rescue--"All's Well that Ends Well" 553-562
CHAPTER XLII.
LEAPING AND TUMBLING.
The Athlete of Ancient Rome--Grand and Lofty Tumbling of To-day
--Double and Triple Somersaults 563-571
CHAPTER XLIII.
AN ADVENTURE WITH GIANTS.
Capt. M. V. Bates and Wife--The Tallest Couple in the World--
The Fat Woman and the Living Skeleton--The Circassian
Girl 572-580
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE TATTOOED TWINS.
The "Ad." in the Morning Paper--Capt. Costentenus--The _Modus
Operandi_--Henneberry and the "Old Salt"--Singular Story Told
by Henry Frumell--Tattooed by South Pacific Savages 581-589
CHAPTER XLV.
IN THE MENAGERIE.
Zazel Shot out of a Cannon--The Zulus--Gen. Tom Thumb and Wife
--Thumb and Campanini--Hugged and Kissed by an Ape--Millie
Christine the Famous Two-Headed Lady--The Eighth Wonder of
the World--Jocko Spoils a Comedy--Circus in Winter
Quarters 590-608
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE.
FRONTISPIECE (COLORED PLATE) 1
Stage of Modern Theatre 18
Lotta 22
Interior of Modern Theatre 36
Decorating a Scene Painter 47
The "Masher" 56
The Big Hat 61
George and Harry 63
Louise Montague 64
Maud Branscombe 65
Selina Dolaro 68
John McCullough 70
Belle Howitt 73
John A. Stevens 76
Lillie West 79
PAULINE MARKHAM (COLORED PLATE) 80
Adah Isaac Menken 83
Millie La Fonte 85
Ballet Girl's Dressing-Room 87
Edwin Booth 89
McKee Rankin 91
The Three Villas 93
Sarah Bernhardt 96
The Late Adelaide Neilson 99
Dressing an Actress' Hair 102
Marie Roze 105
In the Green-Room 106
A Green-Room Tableau 107
Getting their "Lines" 109
Milton Nobles 110
Improving Spare Moments 112
An Actress' Useful Husband 113
Making Love in the Side Scenes 115
M'lle Geraldine and Little Gerry 117
Sobering a Comedian 120
McCullough as Virginius 121
Kate Claxton 123
The Late Venie Clancie 126
Catherine Lewis 128
Chanfrau 131
Fanny Davenport 134
Dion Boucicault 135
Mrs. Boucicault 136
Maud Granger 139
Portia and Shylock 143
Lizzie McCall 145
Pin up my Skirts 148
Annie Pixley as M'liss 150
The Call Boy's Revenge 151
Thos. W. Keene 154
Emma Thursby 156
Lillian Russell 158
Joe Jefferson 159
Roland Reed 160
LIZZIE WEBSTER (COLORED PLATE) 160
Lawrence Barrett 161
J. K. Emmett 164
John T. Raymond 166
Katherine Rogers 168
Josephine D'Orme 170
Ferdinand and Miranda 173
Lester Wallack 175
Clara Morris 177
Helen Dingeon 178
Scott-Siddons 181
John Parselle 184
Sol Smith Russell 187
Rose Coghlan 189
The Raft Scene 192
Minnie Hauk 197
Helping the Scene Painter 201
The Old Woman of the Company 204
The Æsthetic Drama 205
Kitty Blanchard 209
Mrs. Langtry 213
Marie Prescott as Parthenia 217
Mme. Fanny Janauschek 222
Rose Eytinge 226
Agnes Booth 230
"Now then, Ladies and Gentlemen, all Together" 234
Training Ballet Dancers 235
National Dances 237
MARION ELMORE (COLORED PLATE) 240
Drilling for the Chorus 245
The "Sucker" 248
Donna Julia's Eyes 253
Oberon and Titania 255
Measuring for the Costume 257
M. B. Curtis 260
A Premiere before the Audience 262
A Bowery "Masher" 276
Lady Macbeth 278
Working a Greeny at a Matinee 280
From one of the Mashed 282
Adelina Patti's "Mash" 287
J. H. Haverly 288
A Monkey Spoiling a Mash 292
Ambleleg 295
Serving a Writ on Fanny Davenport 304
Ernesti Rossi 307
Slippers for Free Puffs 311
MISS CONNOLLY (COLORED PLATE) 320
Little Corinne 322
Taglioni Congratulating Emma Livry 326
Lotta 332
Maggie Mitchell 333
Emma Abbott 334
Called before the Curtain 338
Fay Templeton 342
Chinese Theatre 348
Chinese Property Room 351
Minnie Maddern 352
Crowning a Tenor 356
Patti 359
Gerster 361
George Christy 370
You are the Sort of Man I Like 373
Jim Crow 378
G. H. Adams 382
Fencing Scene in Black Crock 390
Mad. Theo 392
Gus Williams 394
She Tickled Him Under the Chin 399
M'LLE GENEVIEVE (COLORED PLATE) 400
Armado and Jaquenetta 402
Laura Don 404
Benedick and Beatrice 405
Materna 406
Thatcher, Primrose and West 407
A "Bowery" on a Lark 408
Concert Saloon Band 410
Female Band 411
Female Orchestra 412
James O'Neill 413
An Ideal Masher 414
Edwin Harrigan 417
Tony Hart 418
Herman's Sell 432
The Box Trick, Fig. 1 440
The Box Trick, Fig. 2 441
The Box Trick, Fig. 3 441
The Box Trick, Fig. 4 442
The Box Trick, Fig. 5 443
On the Road 465
The McCall Tragedy 472
Blackmailing an Actress 474
Jealousy 476
Edward Kendall 478
Out in the Cold 480
John Wilkes Booth 485
Scene from Grand Duchess 493
John W. Norton 496
MARY ANDERSON (COLORED PLATE) 496
A Candidate in Regalia 504
Muck-a-Muck 508
The Circus World 512
Twenty-five Thousand Dollar Beauty 517
Adam Forepaugh 520
Beating the Circus 523
W. H. Donaldson 525
Catalina Georgio's Frightful Death 526
Bareback Riding 537
Trapeze 539
Mdme. Lasalle 542
ANNIE LIVINGSTONE (COLORED PLATE) 545
Circus Riders 546
Dan Rice 550
A Human Pyramid 562
Leaping 565
Bicycle Riding 571
Giant and Giantess 579, 580
Performing Elephants 596
Jumbo 599
Curtain 608
[Illustration: STAGE OF A MODERN THEATRE.]
CHAPTER I.
A PRELIMINARY PEEP.
Anybody can get into the auditorium of a theatre by paying an admission
fee reaching from twenty-five cents up to $1.50, and the sawdust
precincts of the circus may be penetrated for the modest sum of fifty
cents; but behind the curtain of the theatre and beyond the screened
door through which circus attractions enter the exhibition arena, are
sacred places, with secrets that are so valuable to their owners that
they dare not for less than a small fortune allow the public to view
or even to understand them. A general knowledge of the simplicity
of theatrical and circus tricks--of the delusions that make up the
stock in trade of showmen generally--would destroy their value as
salable articles, and make everybody a little Barnum or Jack Haverly
of his own, with ability to furnish himself with amusement at home,
while the former mastodonic managers could only look on and weep at
the educational facilities with which the country was overrun, and
mourn the Shakespearian days when people were easily pleased with the
poverty-ridden stage and bare representations that were offered them.
But there is no fear that the public will ever be instructed up to
such a high degree in regard to the inside workings of the theatre and
circus, that there will not at all times be plenty of patrons for both
these excellent forms of entertainment. The managers take good care
to keep their secrets to themselves, as those who go prying around the
shrines in which the theatric arcana are held, very soon find out.
At the back door of every theatre--the entrance to the stage--is a
cerberus of the most pronounced kind, who would sooner bite his own
grandfather's ear off than allow anybody not entitled to the privilege,
to pass him; while at the door of the circus dressing-room and all
around it are faithful sentinels who will listen to no password, and
through whose ranks it is as impossible to break as it is for the
fat boy in the side show to throw a double somersault over seventeen
horses, with an elephant as big as Jumbo at the far end of the line.
It will, however, be the proud privilege of the readers of this book
to get as close to the secrets of the stage and sawdust arena as one
can well do without knowing absolutely all about them, and by the time
the last page is read and the volume is ready to be closed, I think the
readers will be both delighted and astonished with the revelations that
have been made.
Turn the average man loose on the stage of a theatre at night, while a
play is going on, and it is a Russian kobol against a whole San Juan
mining district that he will not know whether he has struck the seventh
circle of heaven or is in a lunatic asylum. He will meet some very
queer creatures in the scenes; he will see many strange things; the
brilliant lights around him, the patches of color flashing into his
eyes, the sea of faces and the tangle of millinery in the auditorium,
will mystify him; the startling streaks of black upon the faces of
the men and women who jostle him as he closely hugs the wings, their
red noses and blooming cheeks, the general tomato-can aspect of their
faces, the shaggy wigs and straggling beards that look as if they had
been torn off the back of a goat only ten minutes before; the dismal,
commonplace clothes that shine so radiantly when seen from a chair in
the parquette or dress circle,--all these things will set his poor
brain in a whirl; and while he is looking on awe-stricken, the scene
shifters will come rushing down upon him with a new delusion, trampling
on his toes in a manner that suggests in a most potential way his
superfluity in that particular place, and pushing him aside without
the merest apology, and perhaps with no other remark than a fragment
of fervent profanity, as if he were a wretched street Arab in that
mimic world in which the scene shifter and the captain of the "supers"
play such very important parts. People come out of every imaginable
place all around him. There seem to be doors everywhere,--in the walls,
the floor, the ceiling, and even in space; and as the "vasty deep"
and the rest of the surroundings give up their dwellers, the intruder
receives fresh jolts and thrusts, and possibly additional donations
of profanity. This, of course, applies only to the male apparitions
that overwhelm the strange visitor to the new world behind the scenes.
The female portion of that illusory sphere have nothing to say to him
except with their eyes, which very forcibly inquire the meaning of his
presence there.
[Illustration: LOTTA.]
If a person would like to understand how awfully strange and lonely it
will be for the last individual left alive upon earth, he need only
pay a first visit to the stage of a theatre where he is not acquainted
with any of the actors or actresses, and has not even the pleasure of
knowing one of the minor attaches. Any attempt to form an acquaintance
is promptly and unmistakably repelled, and all the poor unfortunate
has to do is to move up where he is out of everybody's way, and he
can look on and wonder to his heart's content. As he inspects his
surroundings and has his attention called to the actions of the people
whose business it is to place the stage in shape for an act or scene
of a play, he will readily comprehend the meaning of forming a world
out of chaos. If they are getting ready the balcony scene for "Romeo
and Juliet," wing pieces are pushed out to represent trees and the side
of the house of the Capulets--and what a house it usually is, too,
for such elegant people! The front of the house is rapidly placed in
position between two wings, the balcony is quickly nailed on, and with
the aid of a rude scaffolding behind the scene and a ladder, the fair
Juliet mounts, and, feeling her way carefully, at last steps out upon
the frail structure to tell the sweet moon her love for Romeo. The
whole thing looks ridiculous. Even the stately daughter of the Capulets
has not beauty or skill enough to remove the absurdity from the scene
which has the appearance of being, and is in reality nothing else than
wood and canvas freely splashed with paint of the proper colors. A
painted box represents a stone; a green carpet passes for grass; the
beautiful bric-a-brac that opens the eyes of the æsthetic people in the
audience is only brown paper hurriedly daubed by the scene painter's
apprentice; the wall of the Capulets' garden is a very frail canvas
concern, and the floral attributes are frauds of the deepest dye from
the scenic artist's long table of colors. The whole picture is simple,
but unintelligible to the looker-on for the first time, and as he
vanishes through the door he laughs heartily at the very thin disguise
tragedy and comedy are required to put on to delude and please the
public.
Let him return to the theatre in the morning and view its mysteries
shorn of the dazzle and splendor that the night brings. He will be more
astonished still. The place is usually as dark as a dungeon, there
being something peculiar in the construction of theatres which makes
them bright at night and dismal during daylight. If a stray slant of
light falls anywhere upon the stage it will be rudely mocked by the
bits of burning candle by the aid of which the stage carpenter is at
work right in the very spot where, twelve hours before, Romeo and
Juliet lived and died for each other in such a lamentably pathetic way
that the audience shed tears, and only gave the lachrymal rainstorm
a rest at intervals long enough to shower the star with applause.
The stage carpenter's assistant is there too, the machinist, the
scene painters, the men who have charge of the company's baggage, the
property-man, and others. They fill the scene in a lugubrious and
wholly uninteresting way,--all are at work, and as heedless of the
attendance of strangers as the actors and stage hands of the night
before had been. The scenes have lost their color--such as are left,
and this mimic world that had its admiring and aspiring hundreds is
as bare and desert-like as a bald head after its owner has been using
hair restoratives for about six months. It has neither shape nor any
suggestion of its whilom beauty and attractiveness. The green-room may
be explored, and the dressing-rooms, but they will reveal nothing;
their former occupants are probably still abed, and unless there is
to be a rehearsal they will not be seen around again until 7 o'clock
at night. He must not be too searching in his explorations or the
attention of the attaches will be attracted, and the conversation that
will follow may not be the most pleasant in the world to him. Moving
down the stairs that lead to the space under the stage, the explorer
will find it darker and more dungeon-like still, and even if it were
light nothing could be seen but the steam boiler, for heating and power
purposes, the ventilating apparatus, the numerous trap-door openings
and the posts about them, with a few other accessories that are hardly
worth mentioning. Again he will be forced to confess that everything is
very simple, but he cannot understand any part of it, and again he goes
away with a laugh on his lips and merriment in his heart because the
people are so easily pleased, and theatrical managers find it so easy
to entertain them.
A visit to the dressing-tent of the circus will be equally barren
of appreciable results. He can see the dazzling costumes, the
shapely limbs of the females, the gaily-caparisoned steeds, the red
gold-laced coats of the supers, and a chaotic heaping up of a number
of indescribable articles, but behind the canvas screen that divides
the tent lie secrets that he must not attempt to penetrate, for there
are the lives, the lies and the fascinations of the performers.
There, awkward limbs receive their roundly shaping, and old age,
by a magic touch with the elixir of the "make-up" box, puts on the
masquerading bloom of youth. The same might, to some extent, be said
of the dressing-rooms of the theatre, only the application could not
be as wide or general as in the circus profession, for the lives these
people lead soon lay waste their beauty if they happen to be young,
and crowd senility upon them long before the usual time. Their work is
always hard, their surroundings are of the very worst kind, they grow
up in an atmosphere of fraud, and they necessarily learn early the
arts of deception whereby their employers make fame and fortune. But
I have taken a stranger into the dressing-tent, and I must not abuse
the hospitality of the place by exposing its sins in his presence. The
stranger is introduced all around, shakes hands with everybody, even
the premiere equestrienne, or, perhaps, the charming and daring little
lady who is twice daily shot out of a cannon, and besides makes two
headlong dives a day from the dome of the tent into the net spread
beneath. All are glad to see him, and he is surprised to find that
the two Indians who juggle fire-brands and do other feats not at all
consistent with the traditions of the aborigines, have not sufficient
savage blood in their veins to make respectable cigar store signs, but
are base counterfeits of the noble red man, applications of chocolate
and vermilion to their faces, and the usual accompaniment of black
hair, feathers, and deerskin clothing having bestowed upon them all the
air of the child of the forest that they possessed. As the band sounds
the music for the riding act the equestrienne's horse dashes tamely
into the ring, and the gentlemanly agent of the show pushes the visitor
out to have him "look at an act that beats anything of the kind in the
world."
As in the material or mechanical features of the show there are
mysteries of the most interesting and instructive kind, so, too, the
personal features of the realm of entertainment--the great world of
amusement--contain much that will not only surprise, but will tickle
the unsophisticated. By lifting the veil the least bit, the reader
can have a peep at the most attractive of the events and incidents
that go to make the romantic career of an actor or actress. There are
various little things that look simple and innocent enough when they
appear in the shape of a newspaper paragraph that contain a world of
meaning to the initiated. There are methods of getting and keeping
players before the public of which the latter know no more than they
do of the wife of the man in the moon. There are flagrant scandals
mingling with the innocent revels of these masquerading people,
and there are, too, some of the saintliest, sweetest, manliest and
womanliest of individuals in a profession that almost the entire world
looks upon with the wildest suspicion, and whose bright names and
fair fames can never be tarnished by the iniquitous doings of persons
lower and less respectable in character. In all that will be written
here regarding the dark side of theatrical life, I wish it distinctly
understood that there is no desire or intention to cast even the
slightest reflection upon the honored and respected members of a grand
profession, and wherever a seemingly sweeping and uncomplimentary
statement may be made, the reader will be kind enough to add a saving
clause in favor of all those who do not deserve such condemnation.
In the concert saloon, the variety den, the boys' theatre, and the
numerous other dives in which vice parades boldly and nakedly, will
be found ample field for trenchant and graphic writing. These pits
of infamy flourish everywhere, and are as freely patronized as the
charms of their female attractions are freely displayed; the girls in
short dresses, in gleaming tights, with padded bust and cotton-rounded
limbs, their seductive wiles, their beer-thirstiness, their reckless
familiarity with male friends and strangers, alike from the beardless
boy of fourteen to the bald and withering _roué_, the ample freedom
with which they throw themselves into the arms of victims and give
themselves up to the most outrageous revels; the female minstrel gang
and the break-o'-day girls, who supplement their sins on the stage with
subsequent and even more surprising iniquity in the hop or dance that
follows the show,--all these phases of the lower strata of theatrical
life, as being more productive of interesting secrets of a so-called
stage, must be touched upon, that the reader may be able to contrast
the extremes of the amusement world, and understand that in mimic as
well as real life, there are abject misery and squalid sinfulness
while, above all, shines the grand and stainless character of the noble
and pure-minded people who bring genius and virtue to the profession of
which they are bright, shining ornaments.
CHAPTER II.
A THEATRE OF SHAKESPEARE'S DAY.
If some of the old Greek dramatists could shake together their ashes
and assume life, they would open their ancient eyes to look upon the
beauty, comfort, and charming symmetry of the first-class theatre of
the present day. The ancients were at first obliged to put up with
representations given upon rude carts; afterwards stone theatres were
constructed, with the performers placed in a pit in the middle space,
but no such effort at decoration, or to provide for the convenience
of spectators, was to be seen as is to be found everywhere now. The
plays, too, while they may have been delightful to our Hellenic
predecessors, would hardly draw a corporal's guard at the present time,
when spectacular melodrama is all the rage, and the only chorus the
average theatre-goer cares to see is the aggregation of pretty girls in
entrancing tights, and with the utmost scantiness of clothes to hide
their personal charms, who sing the concerted music in comic opera.
This is the kind of chorus that sends a thrill of ecstacy through the
heart, and around the resplendent dome of thought of the much-maligned
modern bald-head. The strophe and anti-strophe of the ancient drama
would set the nineteenth century citizen crazy as a wild man of
Borneo. The ancient drama was gradually replaced by the ecclesiastical
drama,--the mystery or miracle play,--an example of which remains
to us in the celebrated "Passion Play," performed at Obarammergan at
stated intervals, and over the projected production of which, in this
country, there was so much trouble that the play was never produced.
In this style of drama, events in the life of the Savior, or the great
mysteries of the church, were the topics dealt with by the saintly
playwright, and the actors personated characters ranging from the Devil
up through the various grades of saintliness and angelic beatification
to God Almighty himself. The miracle play flourished during the
middle ages, and survived down almost to the Elizabethan period, when
Shakespeare appeared upon the scene; and with his advent there came a
revolution, the outgrowth of which is the present perfect and beautiful
theatre. The change in the style of plays brought a change in the style
of places for their representations, and while the Bard of Avon was
making his reputation in the dramatic line, the Globe and Blackfriars
were leading the way to advancement in the matter of theatrical
structures. They had performances on Sunday in those olden times, and
while good Christians were worshipping God in their sanctuaries, the
undevout Britons of the "golden age" were worshipping Thespis in his.
Let us drop back into a theatre of the Shakespearian epoch, some Sunday
afternoon when the weather is fine, and you will not be compelled to
stand bare-headed in the pit. Let us go to the Globe. It was situated
on the Bankside. It was a wooden building, of hexagonal shape, open to
the sky, and partly thatched. To a little tower-like projection from
the roof was fastened a staff of no inconsiderable height, from which
always fluttered the flag of England. Windows were sparsely distributed
here and there, on each side of the building, while over the door was
displayed the figure of Hercules bearing the globe upon his brawny
shoulders. Whether the mythological giant came with his terrestrial
burden to dedicate, _in propria persona_, this temple to the mightiest
of the muses, or whether the whole thing was only a cunning contrivance
of some skilful artisan, embodying the conception of a clever play
writer, history does not record.
Whenever a play was to be enacted, the entrance to the Globe was always
jammed with footboys, eager for a chance to hold a gentleman's horse,
or lounging gallants, who collected to show themselves and to ogle the
ladies as they entered. It was a lively spectacle, as stiff dames and
ruffled noblemen, poor artisans and sleek gallants, wits and critics,
footmen and laborers and ragged urchins stepped forward to pay the
admittance fee of a shilling or a sixpence, or to make a respectful
offer of their credit, which was usually most disrespectfully condemned
as unlawful tender. It was a lively sight as gouty old gentlemen
flourished huge _batons_ over the scraggy heads of malicious boys
who jostled them purposely; as titled old dames in immense flaring
petticoats endeavored to smooth their noble wrinkles, and look mincing
and modest under the impertinent gaze of the bedizened fops, and
as the fops themselves twisted and bent and bowed and shook their
powdered wigs, twirled their glove-fingers, or turned out their toes
fastidiously, at the imminent risk of dislocating their tarsals.
But let us enter with the crowd and observe the internal economy of
the theatre, and the character of the performance. Though externally
hexagonal, the building within is circular in form. There is no roof,
as before intimated, and the exhibitions occurring only in the summer
and in pleasant weather, the air is always serene and pure, and the
audience requires no protection from storms or wind. In the centre
of the enclosure is the pit, as in modern play-houses. Here, "the
understanding gentlemen of the ground," as Ben Jonson has it, revelled
in the delights of the drama at sixpence a head; the bosom of the earth
their sole footstool, and the blue canopy of heaven their only shelter.
The "great unwashed did congregate" upon this spot, sometimes in
immense numbers, to luxuriate at once in Shakespeare and tobacco; for
be it known, the ancient theatres of London were to the working classes
very much what its modern porter and beer shops are. They were places
of resort where tradesmen and tradesmen's wives assembled to gossip and
smoke and steep.
Surrounding the pit upon all sides except where the stage completed
the circle, were the boxes or rooms, as they were called. In these
were assembled those who could lay claim to rank or wealth. They were
furnished with wooden benches--a luxury of which the pit could never
boast, and which was purchased for a shilling. It will be observed,
from what has been said, that the internal arrangements of the ancient
theatres were upon precisely the same plan as those of the modern. The
cause of this identity of structure may be easily traced. As late as
the reign of Henry VIII., it was customary to enact plays and pageants
in the courts of inns. These were usually quadrangular in form, with
balconies or piazzas projecting into the court, and corresponding
with the stories of the building. The stage was erected near the
entrance-gate, and occupied one entire side of the quadrangle. The
inn-yard thus formed the pit or parquette, for the accommodation of
the "understanding gentlemen," while the balconies or rooms (rising
above each other in tiers varying with the number of stories)
corresponded to the boxes. It was from this crude, original conception
that the architects of Queen Elizabeth's reign fashioned the Globe and
Blackfriars, and from thence has it come down to the present day.
Directly in front of the pit was the stage, protected by a woollen
curtain. Unlike modern "drops," it was divided in the middle, and
suspended by rings from an iron rod. When the performance was about to
commence it was drawn aside--opening from the middle; the rolling up
process is an achievement of some later mind.
Hark! Do you hear the gentle grating, the jingling, the rustling of
woollen? Without the slightest premonitory symptoms there has been a
rupture of the curtain, and the mysteries it so securely hid are most
unexpectedly revealed. Seated upon wooden stools or reclining upon the
rushes with which the stage is strewn, are a number of individuals
composedly smoking long pipes, whom the unsophisticated might take for
actors. Far from it; they are the perpetual bane of actors--wits and
gallants, who delight in nothing so much as in exhibiting themselves
for the public to admire, or confusing the actors by their pleasantries
and disturbing the progress of the play.
Protruding from the further wall of the stage is a balcony, supported
on wooden pillars, and flanked by a pair of boxes in which those who
rejoiced in being singular or who could not afford the full price of
admission were accommodated. The balcony was used by the actors. It
served as the rostrum when a large company was to be addressed; it was
the throne of kings and princes, the grand judgment-seat of mighty
umpires, and in cases of necessity was convenient as the first-story
window of an imaginary dwelling-house. For this latter purpose it was
particularly useful in the garden scene between Romeo and Juliet. But
while we have been delaying in description, the rushes upon the boards
have rustled, the actors have made their appearance, and the business
of the play has commenced.
For the purpose of illustrating the manner in which performances were
conducted, we select the "As You Like It," of Shakespeare, as being
most familiar to the general reader, and also peculiarly adapted to
our purpose. Orlando and Adam make their appearance, and a signboard
nailed to one of the side entrance communicates the altogether
unsuspected fact that we are gazing upon an orchard. We see nothing
which in any way favors the agreeable illusion: there are the rushes,
the smoking fops, the balcony and a maze of pine boards, but nothing
that looks like trees. Still, let not these things move you to that
degree of uncharitableness or presumption that you doubt whether there
be an orchard; does not the infallible board with its painted letters
positively affirm, "This be an orchard?" Other _dramatis personæ_
soon enter, and the hypothetical orchard becomes the scene of a most
animated and interesting colloquy--the assembled company receiving no
intimation that the fruit trees are no more, until the curtain falls,
or rather is drawn, upon the first act.
When the woolen hangings are again separated, the imagination is no
longer painfully strained to support the illusion of the apples, but
the unerring board directs the wandering eye to the vast forests of
Arden. Here Jaques makes his sublime forest meditations in an area of
ten feet by twelve, enclosed in rough pine boards; his enthusiasm,
considerably damped by the provoking witticisms of critics and
gallants, and his utterances choked by the volumes of tobacco smoke
which roll in lazy, suffocating clouds toward the ceiling from a score
of pipes. The affectionate ditties of Orlando are nailed to visionary
trees, and he makes passionate love to the fair Rosalind amid fumes
which strangle tender phrases, and convert sighings into pulmonary
symptoms of a different character.
It should here be observed by way of explanation, that Rosalind, when
personated in Elizabeth's time, was fair only by courtesy; for female
parts were enacted during her reign, and indeed, during many subsequent
reigns, by boys or young men. There is an anecdote related of Charles
II., which is a matter of history, and illustrates this point very
well. It is said that on one occasion, visiting the theatre at the
bringing out of a new play, by some great author, he became impatient
at the unusual delay in drawing asunder the curtain. The royal wrath
soon became extreme, and it was essential to the prospects of the
"management" that it should be appeased. Accordingly, when the vials of
imperial indignation were about to be emptied promiscuously upon the
assembly, when the storm was just about to burst, a messenger from the
green-room informed his majesty that the fair heroine had not finished
shaving,--and the tempest immediately subsided. At each successive act
new boards with fresh inscriptions inform us of the situation of the
performers. The saloons of the duke's palace and the cottage of the
peasant--scenes in doors and scenes out of doors--are precisely the
same, with the exception of the invariable and ever-changing signboard.
But there is one novelty, one new feature in the representation as
the play progresses. It will be recollected that the balcony was
mentioned as furnishing a throne for princes, and a judgment-seat for
dispensers of justice. During the wrestling contest between Charles and
Orlando, this most serviceable commodity comes into requisition. Here
sits the "duke" as umpire of the combat and general of the troops and
retainers who stand on guard below. It is quite refreshing to hear his
stentorian voice issuing from so unusual a quarter--it furnishes quite
an agreeable relief to the tedious monotony of insipid dialogue going
on among the rushes below.
The play, however, proceeds rather sluggishly from the utter meagreness
and insufficiency of the "scenery, machinery and decorations," so
indispensable to the attractiveness of theatrical exhibitions. The
tradesmen in the pit turn their backs to the stage and their eyes
to the skies, as they clasp affectionately the almost exhausted
flagon, and pour into their thirsty throats the residue of half a
dozen potations. The crimpled dames in the boxes relax their majestic
stiffness, and relapse somnolent into the arms of the gouty old
gentlemen, their husbands. The wits and "clever" men upon the stage
grow more boisterous in their pleasantries, and fumigate more zealously
as they pelt the unfortunate actors with rushes, or trip them as
they "exeunt." To the vulgar crowd the only attractions which the
performance offers, are the brilliant dresses of the actors and the
vestige of a plot which the personation enables them to glean. As a
general thing, however, the stage now receives hardly any attention.
Pipes, tankards, and gossip are the order of the day, and everybody is
glad when Orlando succeeds in obtaining his hereditary rights, wins the
hand of the beautiful Rosalind, is dismissed in happiness, and the
woolen screen slips along its iron rod for the last time.
Such was the style of dramatic exhibitions in the Elizabethan era. The
stage was totally devoid of all scenic appendages calculated to produce
the illusion necessary to add interest and intelligence to the plot.
Rocks and trees, palaces and hamlets, places of festivity and scenes
of shipwreck, all existed merely in the imagination, with neither
properties nor scenery to aid in the deception.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A MODERN THEATRE.]
CHAPTER III.
THE AMERICAN THEATRE.
Good-natured, rosy-cheeked, cheerful little Davy Garrick, as Dr.
Johnson called the tragedian, was in the zenith of his glory at the
Drury Lane, London, about the middle of the last century, and Goodman's
Fields, which had cradled the wonderful actor, was in its decline. It
declined so rapidly after Garrick deserted it that its manager, Wm.
Hallam, failed in 1750, and the theatre was closed. Hallam at once
turned his thoughts toward America as a field in which his fortune
might be replenished,--English actors and managers still look upon this
country as an El Dorado,--and so he consulted with his brother Lewis
Hallam, a comedian, and the two came to the conclusion to organize a
company and run the risk of being scalped by what they considered the
liberal but bloodthirsty tomahawk-wielding citizens of the New World.
They got a company together, twenty-four stock plays, many of them
Shakespearian, were selected, with eight farces and a single pantomime,
"The Harlequin Collector, or The Miller Deceived." Wm. Hallam and his
brother were to share the profits of the venture, and the former was to
remain at home while the latter managed the company and threw in his
services as first low comedian, his wife and children also taking parts
in the performances.
Under the direction of Lewis the company, with some scenery, costumes,
and all the usual stage accessories, set sail on board the Charming
Sally in 1752. During the voyage when the weather permitted, the
company rehearsed their plays on the quarter-deck of the vessel, having
the crew and officers for their audience, and receiving from them many
manifestations of the delight which their histrionic efforts brought to
the Jack Tars' hearts. They landed at Williamsburg, then the capital of
Virginia, and the manager after a diligent search found a store-house
on the outskirts of the town, which he thought would suit his purpose.
This he leased and metamorphosed into a theatre with pit, gallery,
and boxes, and having the establishment ready on September 5, 1752,
on that day the first performance ever given in America by a regular
company of comedians, was given to a presumably large and delighted
audience. As was the custom in those days, the bill was a double one,
consisting of "The Merchant of Venice" and the farce "Lethe." The cast
for "The Merchant of Venice" was as follows: _Bassanio_, Mr. Rigby;
_Antonio_, Mr. Clarkson; _Gratiano_, Mr. Singleton; _Salanio_ and
_Duke_, Mr. Herbert; _Salarino_ and _Gobbs_, Mr. Wignel; _Launcelot_
and _Tubal_, Mr. Hallam; _Shylock_, Mr. Malone; _Servant to Portia_,
Master Lewis Hallam (being his first appearance on any stage);
_Nerissa_, Miss Palmer; _Jesica_ (her first appearance on any stage),
Miss Hallam; _Portia_, Mrs. Hallam. The cast for "Lethe" was as follows
(the _Tailor_ having been cut out, and the part of _Lord Chalkston_
not having been written into the farce at the time the Hallam company
left England): _Esop_, Mr. Clarkson; _Old Man_, Mr. Malone; _Fine
Gentleman_, Mr. Singleton; _Frenchman_, Mr. Rigby; _Charon_, Mr.
Herbert; _Mercury_, Mr. Adcock; _Drunken Man_ and _Tattoo_, Mr.
Hallam; _John_, Mr. Wignel; _Mrs. Tattoo_, Miss Palmer; _Fine Lady_,
Mrs. Hallam.
The Williamsburg theatre was a very rude structure, and so near the
woods that the manager could, as he often did, stand in the back door
of the building and shoot pigeons for his dinner. Still the company
remained here for a long time and met with much success. The house
was finally destroyed by fire and the company removed to Annapolis,
where a substantial building was converted to their use and where they
remained with fortune favoring them until they got ready to go to
New York. This they did in 1753, opening a theatre in the metropolis
on September 17th, that on Nassau Street, in a building afterwards
occupied by the old Dutch Church. The bill for the first night was
"The Conscious Lovers" and the ballad-farce "Damon and Phillida." But
three performances were given each week--on Mondays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays--and this continued to be the rule up to the beginning of the
present century. The price of admission was eight shillings to the
boxes, six shillings to the pit and three shillings to the gallery.
This was on the first night, but the second night the prices were
lowered to six shillings, five shillings, and three shillings for
boxes, pit, and gallery respectively, and by the middle of October
a fourth reduction was made, so that admission to the pit could be
had for four shillings and to the gallery for two shillings. The
performance began at six o'clock, and on the bill for the opening night
appears a request that ladies and gentlemen will come to the theatre
in time, and a statement that nothing under the full price will be
taken during the entire performance. This seems to be a departure from
the custom of the mother country, where half price was received for
admission after the third act. The Nassau Street theatre was closed
on the evening of March 18, 1754, with "The Beggars' Opera" and "The
Devil to Pay."
While the company was still in New York, Manager Hallam was endeavoring
to come to terms with the Quakers of Philadelphia, who strenuously
objected to having players in their midst, or to allowing stage
representations in their city. Mr. Malone, a member of the company, was
at length sent on to the Quaker City, as Hallam's ambassador, and after
considerable trouble succeeded in obtaining Gov. Hamilton's permission
to present twenty-four plays and their attendant farces provided there
was nothing indecent or immoral in them. In April, 1754 the company
gave its first performance in Philadelphia, playing the tragedy of
"The Fair Penitent," and the farce, "Miss in Her Teens." The building
occupied by the actors is designated by William Dunlap, the historian
of the early American theatre, as "the store-house of a Mr. Plumstead,"
and was situated "on the corner of the first alley above Pine Street."
After the twenty-four performances had been given by "authority of his
excellency," Gov. Hamilton, the players were allowed to add six more
nights, after which they returned to New York. Here they erected a
theatre on Cruger's wharf, between Old Slip and Coffee House Slip, and
prospered.
Boston did not have a theatre until 1792, and then got its first place
of amusement only because Wignell and three other members of Hallam's
company, for some reason or other, seceded from it. The seceders
brought to their standard some money men of the Hub, a building was
erected, and on August 10, 1792, the first show was given; feats on
the tight rope and acrobatic and other artists contributing to the
entertainment. Five years later New York had two theatres, one on the
Johns, and the other on Greenwich Street, and when the nineteenth
century began, amusements were in a flourishing condition in all the
large cities of the country, and the theatre had taken firm root and
gave full promise of its present prosperity in the New World.
They were a queer band, these early strollers on American soil. It
reads like a romance to follow them through the history of their
early struggles, and to scrutinize the personal peculiarities of the
individuals who composed the company. One of them--I forget which at
the present moment--was an imaginative fellow given up to all sorts of
schemes and inventions, and published far and wide the announcement
that he had discovered a process of manufacturing salt from sea water.
A member of one of the earliest orchestras--a short time after Hallam
had ceased furnishing music to his audience with "one Mr. Pelham and
his harpsichord" or the single fiddle of a Mr. Hewlett--had been a
Catholic priest in Switzerland, and had suffered the tortures of the
Inquisition. He told his story to his manager one day and it was really
touching. His mother, he said, had dedicated him in his infancy to the
priesthood. When he became old enough he was placed in a theological
seminary, instructed and duly ordained. He was a priest when Spain went
to war against France. His canton raised a regiment, and the priest
being made its chaplain accompanied it to Madrid. In Madrid he for the
first time learned to love. He met in the street a handsome Spanish
lady who won his heart and lit the fire of passion in his frame. He
became acquainted with her, and ascertained that the lady reciprocated
his affection. There were many moments of stolen pleasure, many sighs
and vows, until they finally agreed to flee together to America. The
day and hour were agreed upon, and the lovers were in readiness, when
a strong hand was laid upon the recreant priest's shoulder and he was
thrown into prison. He realized his awful position at once, knowing
that he was in the power of that monster, the Inquisition. For weeks
he remained chained to the floor of his cell. Once he was led out
to execution, but by some miracle or accident, was saved. At last,
having suffered severely, he was put to the torture, and weak, dying,
and distracted was led to the gate of his prison, thrust out into
the street, and warned as he valued his life to leave Madrid within
ten days. It is needless to say he did so, and never learned or saw
anything more of his Spanish sweetheart.
From the rude and uncomfortable theatre of a century ago, with
dressing-rooms under the stage, and but a single fiddle or harpsichord
player for the orchestra, with poorly lighted and illy ventilated
auditoriums, with meagre scenery and ragged wardrobes--from the
primitive theatre of the New World has grown the magnificent,
symmetrical, and elegantly appointed houses of amusement of the
present day--structures beautifully and chastely ornamented in their
exteriors, while their interiors have received the most delicate
touches of the artist's brush and the most careful attention from
the upholsterer--beautiful in color and drapery, rich in furniture,
and the very perfection of architectural design. Our stages are
revelations of dramatic completeness, sometimes presenting scenic
pictures that challenge nature itself in their attractiveness, and at
all times surrounding the actors of a play with accessories gorgeous
and extensive enough to mystify as well as delight nine out of every
ten patrons of the theatre. The manner in which these extraordinary
and pleasing illusions are produced is one of the great secrets of the
stage, and when the mechanism employed is explained the reader will be
surprised to learn how simple and almost undisguised are the methods
whereby the people behind the scenes work and multiply wonders.
CHAPTER IV.
AT THE STAGE-DOOR.
The patrons of the theatre must all find their way into the house
through the front doors; only the privileged few are allowed access
to the mysteries and wonders of the stage through the back door. Here
stands a gentleman, generally of repulsive mien and unattractive
manners, whose special business it is to see that nobody, not entitled
to do so, penetrates the sacred precincts, and who learns at once to
distinguish between the people who come prying around his bailiwick
merely for curiosity, and those who are there to "mash" a susceptible
ballet girl or perhaps an indiscreet member of the company. Those
who are led to the stage-door by curiosity are numerous and they are
all promptly repulsed; and the "mashers" who stand at the stage-door
after the performance is over, must get into the good graces of the
door-keeper, and retain his friendship if they desire the course of
true love to run smoother than the old adage says it runs.
In the large theatres of Eastern cities the cerberus who guards the
stage entrance generally has a little sentry box just inside the door,
with a window cut in it, a stove placed inside in cold weather, a
number of pigeon-holes for letters, and indeed all modern conveniences,
as the saying goes. Here he sits and smokes, hailing everybody who
passes in and saying a kind or snarling word to all who pass out. If
the mail has brought a letter for any member of the company, or a
"masher" has sent one of the girls a dainty little note expressive
of the sentiment that is swelling in his twenty-six-inch bosom, the
cerberus will have it, and will hand it out to the person for whom it
is intended with an appropriate and not always complimentary remark
about it. Sometimes this guardian of the theatric arcana will take
advantage of his position to tyrranize over the ballet girls and
other subordinates of a company, and will rule in his autocratic way
to his own pecuniary and other profit. In the East he is made a kind
of time-keeper, notes when the performers appear for duty and when
they are absent, besides otherwise making himself serviceable to the
management and careful of the interests of his house.
A story is told about one of them--I think his name was Bulkhead--who
was employed at a theatre where the ballet was large, and the girls
paid very liberal tribute to him. They gave him silk handkerchiefs
of the prettiest and most expensive kind to wipe his fantastic mug
on; they paid for innumerable hot drinks with which he rounded out
the waist of his pantaloons; they dropped cigars into his always
outstretched paw, and otherwise drained their own resources to make
Mr. Bulkhead as happy and comfortable as possible. He, at first, took
whatever was offered, but soon grew bold, and demanded fifty cents each
of their little five dollars a week, every salary day. The girls made
up their minds not to accede to this demand, which they deemed unjust
and exorbitant; they not only positively refused to give Bulkhead any
money, but would give him nothing else, not even a two-cent cigar. As
a result, about one-half of the girls forfeited a portion of their
salaries next pay-day. This aroused all the fury there was in the
entire ballet, and when they found out, too, that Bulkhead had driven
away their male admirers they were as wild as so many hyenas. It did
not take long for them to hit upon a means of wreaking vengeance upon
the heartless and unscrupulous door-keeper. They clubbed together what
change they had and got Bulkhead boiling drunk; by the time the show
was over on that (to him) memorable night he did not know which way
to look for Sunday. After the final curtain had fallen and the lights
were dimmed, Bulkhead sat at the door on his stool swaying like an
unsteady church-steeple and snoring like an engine when its boiler is
nearly empty. The girls picked him up and carried him into a remote
corner of the stage, where they piled a lot of old scenery around him
after tying his hands and feet securely. Then they got red and blue
fire ready, almost under his cherry red and panting nose; one of the
girls took her position at the thunder drum; another had hold of the
rain wheel; another was at the wind machine; a fourth got a big brass
horn out of the music room and a fifth got the bass drum; the remainder
stood ready to lend assistance with their hands and throats. At a
given signal the thunder rolled loudly, the wind whistled vigorously,
the rain came down in torrents, the brass horn moaned piteously, the
bass drum was beaten unmercifully, and pans of burning blue and red
fire were poked through crevices in the piled-up machinery right under
the drunken door-keeper's nostrils, while all the girls shouted at
the tops of their voices and clapped as enthusiastically as if they
were applauding a favorite. Bulkhead after opening his eyes and having
his ears assailed by the din, shouted wildly for assistance and mercy
and all kinds of things; but he got neither assistance nor mercy. The
racket continued for nearly ten minutes when quiet and darkness were
restored, and the girls quietly stole away leaving Bulkhead alone
in his agony under the pile of scenery, where he was found by the
stage carpenter next morning, a first-class, double-barrelled case of
jim-jams. He is now in an insane asylum, and employs most of his time
telling people that notwithstanding all Bob Ingersoll's buncombe and
blarney there must be a hereafter, for he has himself been through the
sunstroke section of it.
[Illustration: DECORATING A SCENE PAINTER.]
The ballet girls of another theatre played an equally effective and
amusing trick upon an obnoxious scene painter. The artist had been in
the habit of painting posts, doorsteps, etc., in the neighborhood of
the stage-door in colors that were not readily perceptible, and when
the young ladies' "mashes" came around after the performance to wait
for them to dress, they innocently sat down upon or leaned against the
fresh paint and ruined their clothes. The scene painter and his friend
were always in the neighborhood to raise a laugh when the disaster
was made known, and the result was that the gay young men would
come near the stage-door no more, and that the sweetly susceptible
creature known as the ballet girl was obliged to go home alone,
supperless. Well, one day the girls found the artist asleep against
his paint-table with a half emptied pitcher of beer by his side.
This was their opportunity. One of the girls who was of a decorative
Oscar-Wilde-like turn of mind got a small brush while another held
the colors, and in ten minutes they had that man's face painted so
that he would pass for a whole stock of scenery; the tattooed Greek
was a mere five-cent chromo alongside of him, and a Sioux Indian with
forty pounds of war-paint on would be a ten-cent side-show beside a
twelve-monster-shows-in-one-under-a-single-canvas exhibition. In this
elaborate but undecorative condition the scene painter wandered off to
a neighboring saloon, the wonder and merriment of all who saw him. He
did not understand the cause of the general stare and unusual laugh at
him, until a too sensitive friend took him to a mirror and showed him
his frescoed features. Profanity and gnashing of teeth followed, and
the artist was prevented from going back to the theatre to murder ten
or twelve people only by a thoughtful policeman who picked him up as
he flew out through the door of the saloon, and carried him off to the
calaboose. He was sorry when he got sober, and from that day to this
has not attempted to paint the coat-tails of the ballet girls' lovers.
A great many of these lovers, as they are designated, are bold
and heartless wretches, who have in some way or other obtained an
introduction to or scraped acquaintance with the sometimes fair young
creatures who fill in the crevices and chinks of a play, or air their
limbs in the labyrinths of a march, or shake them in some strange and
fascinating dance. They look upon the ballet girl, whether she be a
dancer or merely below the line of utility, as legitimate prey, and
without the slightest scruple will waylay or spread a net to catch
her in some quiet but successful manner. They forget that many girls
enter the theatre with the intention of making honorable and honest
livings; that they prize their virtue as highly as the most respected
young lady who moves in the topmost circles of the best society, and
that the theatrical profession is only misrepresented by the men and
women who give themselves up to debauchery, and allow their passions
to run riot to such an extent that they win notoriety of the most
unsavory and unenviable kind. It is only because the stage is besieged
by so many scoundrels and villains who have either bought or begged the
privileges of the back door that the profession is dangerous to young
and innocent girlhood. The stage itself is pure, and could be kept so,
if these hangers-on were only done away with and the youthful student
and aspirant for histrionic honors were allowed to pursue her vocation
unassailed by the handsome tempters who begin by flattery and after an
usually easy conquest, end the dream of love by rudely casting the
fallen girl aside to make room for another victim.
Stand here in the shadow awhile. The performance is at an end, and the
gentlemen who haunt the stage-door are beginning to assemble. There are
probably a half dozen of them. They stand around sucking the heads of
their canes and anxiously awaiting the appearance of their inamoratas.
A burlesque company has the theatre this week, and there are probably
eighteen or twenty handsome young ladies in the combination. Nearly
every one of them is a "masher," and can be depended upon to hit the
centre of a weak male heart, with an arrow from her beaming eye, at
one hundred yards. Some of them have received tender notes from the
front of the house during the night, making appointments for a private
supper at one of the free and easy restaurants; others have met their
gentlemen friends before and can depend upon them to wait at the
stage-door every night. Those who send the notes during the performance
are of what is classed as the ultra-cheeky kind. A man of this class
will do anything to make the acquaintance of a ballet or chorus girl.
I knew one, one night, to push a dozen different notes under the door
of Eme Rousseau's dressing-room, which opened into the parquette,
and he would not desist until Samuel Colville, the manager, caused
him to be dragged out of the theatre and given over to the police.
Another gentleman of the same proclivities having failed to gain Alice
Oates's attention when she was in Chicago, followed her to St. Louis,
Cincinnati, and Louisville, and still being unable to effect a proper
"mash," endeavored to introduce himself successfully and gain her favor
forever by making her a present of a pair of fast horses. Alice very
sensibly refused to accept the gift, and told the fond and foolish
young man to go home to his mother.
Many cases of this kind might be cited to show how easily the women
who enter the profession, partly for the purpose of prostituting their
art, find easy conquest among the hair-brained fellows who are only too
willing to be captives and rarely try to break the fetters of roses
with which they find themselves bound. But keep here in the shadow a
while and watch the manœuvres of the "mashers." The stage-door opens
and out comes a very modest little girl. She does not belong to the
combination playing at the house this week, but is a member of the
regular ballet of the theatre,--one of the few poor creatures who are
obliged to get into ridiculous costumes of enormous dresses or unpadded
tights, to increase the throng of court-ladies, the number of pages, or
add to the proportions of a crowd. She does not dress any better than
a girl who finds employment in a factory. She is young, however, and
stage-struck. She has gone into the profession, braving all its dangers
and with a firm resolution to go unscathed through it, carrying with
her a sincere love for art and a burning desire to attain eminence. But
alas! she has little talent, and absolutely no genius. This can be seen
and appreciated already, although she has not had two lines to speak
since entering the theatre. She has been in the employ of the house
only since the beginning of the season. The "mashers" part to make room
for her as with eyes cast down she trips along the street. Some of
them say smart and pretty things, and some have the impudence to raise
their hats and bid her good-evening. She pays no attention to them,
however, and it is probably fortunate that the tall muscular gentleman
in work-day clothes who has had a pass to the gallery or may not have
been in the theatre at all, and who is waiting a block below to escort
her home, does not know the petty insults that are put upon her or the
snares that beset her path. Every night the big burly fellow waits for
the modest little ballet girl to see her home in safety. The girl does
not tell them at home to what dangers she is exposed, and they never
learn until sometime the fall comes, when a troupe of negro minstrels
or a large comic opera chorus invade the house and lay siege to the
hearts of all the females they find behind the scenes.
Here come two laughing blondes through the stage door. The light
falling upon their faces shows that although they try to appear light
and cheery, there is weariness in their limbs and perhaps distress
in their hearts. They select their male friends at once; indeed, the
latter have been waiting for the gay burlesquers.
"Charley dear, I didn't see you in front to-night," says one.
"Neither did I," says the other; "but George was there. I could tell
him by his red eyes and cherry nose."
"Yes," responds Charley, "there was too much champagne in that last
bottle, and I didn't care about getting out of bed until half an hour
ago."
"You had considerable of the juicy under your vest, last night," the
first girl remarks; and then there is a laugh, and Charley says he
feels in a good humor for tackling more wine at that particular moment,
and the quartette move off to a hack-stand, jump into an open carriage
and with lots of laughter the party are driven away to some suburban
garden with wine-room attachment, or to some urban restaurant where
wine may flow as freely as morality may fade away with the speeding
hours, and the pleasure may last just as long as the restauranteur
thinks he is being well paid for the privileges of his establishment.
Another girl comes through the stage-door. She is probably twenty-four
years of age, is tall, handsome, and most attractive in her manners.
There is the least suspicion of the matron in her appearance, that
dignity of carriage that characterizes women after marriage being
clearly defined in her motions. She knows somebody has been waiting for
her,--a young fellow as tall, handsome, and attractive as herself. He
sees her at once as she comes out, and goes to meet her. Her footsteps
are bent in his direction also. As they come together she lays her hand
upon his extended arm, and says:--
"No, Fred, I cannot go to-night. Sister is sick at the hotel, and the
baby has no one to take care of her. I must go home to my child."
"Pshaw!" says Fred, "I had everything arranged for an elegant drive and
a rattling supper."
"I'm so sorry, Fred;" the woman pleads, "but I can't go to-night. You
will have to excuse me this once. You know it was daylight when we
parted this morning."
"I know," her friend insisted; "but what's the use in worrying about
the baby. She's probably asleep now and won't need your care. Come, go
along."
"No, I cannot. I will not to-night." But Fred continues to plead,
asking the pleasure of her presence at a supper, just for a half hour
and no more. Unable to resist the warmth of his appeals, she at last
consents, and it is safe to say, that once the evening's entertainment
begins, morning breaks upon the sleepy babe and sick sister at the
hotel before Fred and his companion are ready to part.
I knew a friend--a dramatic writer--who stood at the back door one
night and waited for a pair of pretty chorus singers. My friend had
another friend with him--a prominent merchant. The two gay and giddy
young girls, who were only foolish flirts, did not know that the
gentlemen who had invited them to a midnight ride and a late supper
were married. Indeed, they may not have cared. So when the opera of
"Olivette" was over and the pair of chorus singers emerged at the
back door of the stage and found the two gentlemen waiting patiently
for them, the girls each gave over a bundle to her particular friend
to have him carry in his pocket until such time as the quartette
got ready to separate. The bundles each contained a pair of pink
"symmetricals"--padded tights. The young ladies informed their friends
of this fact, and cautioned them to be sure to return the bundles
before leaving. Well, the night wore on joyously with wine and singing
and the usual pleasures of a late drive. At last, at 3 A. M., the girls
got ready to return to their hotel. They were driven thither, and the
entire party having imbibed more wine than was necessary, soft and
sweet adieus were so tenderly spoken that nobody thought about the two
pairs of pink symmetricals. The gentlemen ordered the carriage driver
to speed homeward with them, and he did so. First the dramatic writer
disembarked at the door of his residence, ran up stairs, pulled off
his clothes, and was soon sound asleep. The merchant was soon at his
own door, had settled with the driver and the carriage had just rolled
away when, as he was fumbling at the latch-key he thought of the pair
of tights. With one bound he cleared the steps, and running into the
street, shouted after the carriage. The driver heard him, stopped, and
was given the pair of tights to take around to the chorus girl's hotel
that day and a $5 bill to pocket for the services. It was a narrow
escape for the merchant. For the dramatic writer it was no escape at
all. He was rudely awakened at ten o'clock in the morning, and the
first sight that met his eyes was his infuriated wife holding the pair
of pink tights by the toes and stretching them out so that the sin of
the husband stood revealed to him in all its fulness.
"Where did these come from?" the exasperated wife shrieked, flaunting
them before the husband's eyes.
"Where did you get them?" He asked, trembling, and unable to think of
any good excuse to make.
"I got them in your coat pocket," his spouse shouted, piling up the
evidence and agony in a way that was excruciating.
"By jingo! is that so?" exclaimed the husband, coming suddenly to a
sitting posture in bed, and bringing his hands together vehemently.
"Now, I'll bet $4 Charley ----," giving the name of his merchant
friend, "put them there. He told me he had a pair that he was going to
make a present of to one of the "Olivette" girls at the ----."
Brilliant as this thought was, it did not satisfy the little lady.
She kept up the argument all day, and that night paid a visit to the
merchant's wife, where the affair got into such a tangle that the
two husbands brought in a bachelor friend to shoulder the blame, and
who made the excuse that the whole thing was a trick put up by a few
gentlemen (among them the bachelor was not) on the dramatic man and
merchant to get them into domestic trouble, as they had succeeded in
doing, beyond their most sanguine desires.
And now that we have been long enough at the back door of the theatre,
let us go home and come around to-morrow night to have a view of the
plagues and annoyances to be found before the foot-lights.
CHAPTER V.
BEFORE THE FOOT-LIGHTS.
There are people who patronize the theatre who do not go there simply
to see the play or to be pleased by the players, and whose interest in
the stage is more than double discounted by the interest they manifest
in and towards the audience. The "masher" makes it a market in which
to display his fascinations and call upon the susceptible fraction of
femininity to inspect and avail themselves of his heart-breaking and
soul-wasting wares. Whether he modestly takes his stand in the rear of
the auditorium, overcoat on arm and stove-pipe hat gracefully poised
upon the thumb of his left hand, while, with polished opera-glass, he
sweeps the sea of variegated millinery and obtrusive-hued cosmetics,
or bravely hangs up his charms to view on the front row of the dress
circle, or prominently displays them in a proscenium box, he is ever
the same offensive and shameless barber-and-tailor-shop decoration,
moved by a wild ambition to attract and hold feminine attention,
and always attaining to a degree of notoriety among the masculine
theatre-goers that keeps him overwhelmed with contempt, and causes
him to be as readily recognized as if he had a tag tied to his back
or spread across his vest front, declaring him to be a fisher after
femininity. When the "masher" takes the shape of the young blood,
whose short and tightly-fighting coat is matched by the shallowness of
the crown of his straight-brimmed hat, and whose eye-glasses straddle
his nose as gracefully as his twenty-five-cent cane is carried in his
hand, and this irresistible combination of attractions is thrust upon
the audience from a box opening, the acme of the lady-killing art is
reached and if all the world does not admire the effective tableau it
must be because all the world is unappreciative and the "masher" stands
on an æsthetic plane to which the rest of mankind cannot hope to aspire.
[Illustration: THE "MASHER."]
But the "masher" is only a fraction of the class of amusement patrons
to which attention has been called in the opening sentence of this
chapter. Apart from the people who deem it their duty to come tramping
into the theatre while the performance is going on, and whose coming
is followed by a triumphal flourish of banging seats, and the heaving
footbeats of hurrying ushers, to the intense disgust of all who
care to hear the first act of the play, there are others who have a
hundred ways of annoying an audience, and who make a very effectual
use of their gifts in this direction. There is the member of the
"profesh,"--the gaseous advance agent, or the bloviate business
manager, the actor "up a stump," or the "super" who has played the
part of a silent but spectacular lictor with John McCullough or Tom
Keene, and who sits in the rear of the house, but sufficiently forward
to be distinctly heard by people in the dress circle, criticising
the mannerisms of the ladies or gentlemen on the stage and "guying"
everybody in the cast from the star down to the frightened and
stiff-kneed little ballet girl whom an inscrutable Providence has
allowed to wander in upon the scene occasionally, to say, "Yes, mum,"
or "No, mum." The leisurely but loud professional who thus disports
himself must necessarily enjoy a large share of the audience's
attention, and the more of this he attracts the more he is encouraged
to be extravagant in his criticisms and unreserved in his elocution.
He sometimes must dispute the title to obstreperous obtrusiveness
with some liquor-laden auditor who has succeeded in passing the
door-keeper only to find that the heat of the house has accelerated
his inebriation and given freedom and license to his tongue until the
"bouncer" lifts him out of his seat by the collar and deposits him in
a reflective and emetic mood on the curbstone in front of the theatre.
Then, too, a crowd of friends sometimes get together in the parquette,
who begin a conversation before the first curtain rises and keep it
going on in careless and annoying tones until the final flourish of
the orchestra arrives with the dimming of the lights as the audience
files out. But if the loud members of the "profesh," the interjective
inebriate, and the crowd of communicative friends are not on hand
to furnish diversion for the folks who are trying to follow what is
going forward on the stage, there is one other never-failing source of
distraction and annoyance--the giddy and gushing usher. It is safe to
bet that just when the most pathetic passage of a play is reached, or
the tragedian is singing smallest, a few ushers will throw themselves
hastily together in the lobby and hold a mass meeting long and loud
enough to be taken for a November night political meeting, if there
were only a stake wagon and a few Chinese lanterns strewn around.
Indeed, the usher seems to assume that he is a sort of safety-valve
through which a disturbance must break out now and then to offset
the quiet of the audience. If the usher isn't plying his fiendish
proclivity, some bald-headed man in the parquette is sure to throw his
skating rink over the back of the seat, and, with shining brow turned
up towards the sun-burner in the dome, mouth rounded out like the base
of a cupola and nostrils working like a suction pump, his beautiful
snore will rise above the wildest roar of the orchestra and drown the
mellifluous racket of the big bass drum, until some friendly hand
disturbs the dreamer, and the "or-g-g-g-g-g-g-g!" that rushes up his
nostrils, down his throat and out through his ears, is thus gently and
perhaps only temporarily interrupted. The enthusiast--the man who is
carried away by the spirit of the scene--is also a source of annoyance,
and when he signifies from the balcony his willingness to take a hand
in what is being enacted on the stage, damning the villain heartily,
and, like the sailor of old, openly sympathizing with femininity in
distress, he first becomes a target for the gallery boys' gutter-wit
and finally a prey to the inexorable "bouncer," who roams around the
upper tiers of every theatre and unceremoniously dumps disturbers down
stairs. Last, but by no means least, in the distracting and disturbing
features at theatrical performances is the peanut cruncher. He is
the most cold-blooded and least excusable of all the annoyances with
which amusement patrons are afflicted. He wraps his teeth around the
roasted goober, utterly reckless of the distress he is stirring up in
the bosoms of those around him, and he grinds and smacks and continues
to crunch, stopping occasionally to charge his dental quartz-crusher
anew, and always beginning on the latest goober with the greatest
ferocity, while he seems to make it go ten times further, as far as
time and agony are concerned, than any of its predecessors. All the
other disturbance consequent upon attending a play are petty, compared
with peanut-crunching, and it is the opinion of the writer that a law
should be passed at once, making it a felony for any banana-stand or
hand-cart man to sell peanuts to citizens who are on their way to the
theatre. If such a law were passed, and if it were not a dead letter,
the people whose backbones feel as if they were being fondled by a
circular saw every time they hear the rustling of a goober-shell, would
flop right down on their knees and renew their confidence in the wisdom
of Providence.
The young men and the old men, too, who go out "between acts" to hold
spirit seances with neighboring bar-keepers, while the orchestra is
playing a Strauss waltz or a medley of comic opera numbers for the
solace of the lovely ladies they have left behind them, are a greater
nuisance to the audience of a first-class theatre than one would
imagine. In nine cases out of ten, the man who goes out to see another
man, as the saying is, has his seat in the middle of a row, so that
it is necessary for him to make trouble for ten or a dozen persons
before he can reach the aisle. He tramples on ladies' dresses, comes
into collision with their knees, and sends a thrill of pain to the
utmost ends of the roots of every man's corn he treads on. The same
thing is repeated on the way back to his seat, and there are bitter
mutterings, a great deal of subdued or smothered profanity, and fierce,
rebuking looks flash from beneath the beautiful bonnets of the females.
It doesn't seem to affect the nuisance any, however, for he does the
same thing over every act, and at each repetition increases to the
damage he does and the commotion he creates. Then, to make bad worse,
he manages to surround himself with a distillery odor that assails
feminine nostrils in a most offensive manner, and that will not suffer
itself to be concealed or tempered by the chewing of coffee-grounds,
cloves, or orange-peel. I witnessed the discomfiture of a young man of
this kind, one night, and the scene was a very funny one. He occupied
a seat in the orchestra, in the centre of a row of seats principally
filled with ladies. As the curtain went down the young man determined
to go over and have a look through the saloon opposite. Unwilling to
incommode the ladies in the least, the young man, with Chesterfieldian
grace, elevated a pedal extremity over the back of his chair, with
the intention of going out through the aisle behind. Unfortunately he
stepped between the seat and the back, the movable seat flew up, and
the thirsty young man was left astride of the chair in a decidedly
uncomfortable position. By this time the gallery gods had marked
him for their victim. They hooted, whistled, cat-called, and made
slang remarks about straddling the "ragged edge," to his evident
discomfiture. In vain he attempted to disengage his No. 10's. The rest
of the audience became interested, and opera-glasses were directed
toward the blushing young man. The feminine giggles in his neighborhood
rendered him frantic; laughter and uproar were becoming general, when a
good-natured individual kindly assisted him to escape from his awkward
position. Amid "thunders of applause" he disappeared.
The ladies, too, sometimes contribute largely to the annoyance of
an audience. They are, as everybody knows, inveterate talkers, and
insist on saying almost as much during a performance as the players
say. Their criticism of the toilets of friends and of strangers also,
is loud-sweeping and usually denunciatory, and they have a style of
pillorying their victims in speech that is decidedly heartless, yet
refreshing. But all the faults of loud and untamed talk might have been
forgiven had they not introduced the tremendous big hats which rise
high above their heads and stick far out from their ears completely
shutting off a view of the stage from the persons immediately in the
rear. Strong men have shed tears to find themselves conquered by these
big hats; they have tried to peep around them, and have stood tip-toed
on their chairs to have a glance over the tops of the millinery
structures, but in vain. The hats were too much for them. In a mild,
æsthetic way the ladies' big hats rank among the greatest plagues that
have ever visited the modern play-house.
[Illustration: THE BIG HAT.]
I was in the Grand Opera House at St. Louis, one evening, sitting in
seat No. 3, row B, centre section, parquette circle. Before the play
began two ladies, one dressed in black silk with a white satin jacket
and black beaver hat, with long sweeping feather, and the other plainly
dressed in black cashmere, with a "Sensation" hat and tassel on, came
in and took seats 1 and 2 in row A, same section. Prior to settling
down in their places, they looked inquiringly around the rear of the
theatre, one remarking to the other as they plumped down in the chairs,
"I suppose they haven't got here yet." Seats three and four adjoining
them were vacant. The ladies had come unattended. After they had
arranged themselves the lady with the beaver hat drew out a letter and
held it up to the light so that the reporter could read it. It had a
cut of one of the principal hotels at the top and was note-paper from
that establishment. It said:--
TO MAMIE AND SADIE: Your note of to-day received. We like your
style and enclose two seats for Grand Opera House to-night, where
we hope to meet you both and make your acquaintance.
Yours sincerely,
GEORGE AND HARRY.
Just as the orchestra began the overture in walked two gentlemen whom
the usher showed to the vacant seats in row A. One of the men was
tall, bald, portly and rather good-looking and well dressed; he had a
sandy moustache, and what hair was left on his head was reddish, crisp,
and curly. He was probably forty-five years old. His companion was
probably not more than twenty-one, tall, thin, dark-complexioned, with
but a semblance of a moustache. The ladies smiled as the gentlemen took
their places. The men looked at each other, winked, and laughed. When
the two were seated, the bald-headed man made a close and evidently
satisfactory scrutiny of the ladies, and catching the eye of the one in
the beaver hat, the two exchanged smiles--not broad, committal grins,
but soft smiles of mutual recognition. The second lady only dared to
look sideways now and then. The second gentleman, who sat next to the
ladies, was rather shy and kept his hand up to his face from beginning
to end of the play. It was evident this was the first time the
quartette had met, and it was evident also that they had made up their
minds to act with all due decorum while in the theatre. Smiles were now
and then exchanged, but no words were spoken. Once one of the ladies
sent her programme to the bald man, who had none. During the third act
of the play the baldhead began writing short notes which the lady in
the beaver hat answered affirmatively with a nod of her head. When the
show was over the two ladies went around one street, the two men around
another, and they met in the middle of the block opposite the theatre.
There was a brief conversation in which a great deal of tittering was
heard, and then the quartette proceeded to a quiet restaurant of the
most questionable reputation and took one of the private supper-rooms,
which are at the disposal of people whose visit to the establishment is
not by any means for the sole purpose of drinking and eating, but has a
broad and very unmistakable suggestion of immorality in it.
[Illustration: GEORGE AND HARRY.]
[Illustration: LOUISE MONTAGUE.]
The key to the whole affair can be found in the following
advertisement, published in the _Globe-Democrat_ of the preceding
Sunday:--
PERSONAL.--Two gentlemen of middle age and means desire to become
acquainted with two vivacious, fun-loving young ladies who like to go
to the theatre. Address George and Harry, this office.
[Illustration: MAUD BRANSCOMB.]
George and Harry had received an answer to this advertisement from
"Mamie and Sadie," and, just to meet and become acquainted with them,
had purchased the four seats in row A, centre section, Grand Opera
House, making the theatre their place of assignation. "Mamie and Sadie"
were by no means the innocent and unsophisticated creatures they seemed
to be. One of them was the wife of a travelling man who was necessarily
away from home ten months in a year; the other was _nymph du pave_--a
street-walker--who scoured the principal thoroughfares at night for
victims to carry to her "furnished room," and who had been educated up
to the "personal" racket by the lonely and wayward young wife of the
commercial drummer.
So much for the noisy, otherwise obtrusive phases of the subject. The
ladies who go to the theatre to display themselves, to flash their
jewels and flaunt their silks and laces in the faces of the community,
have become so accustomed to the general run of theatrical attractions
that they are really no longer spectators, and may be justly classed
among the distracting agencies in the audience. Their mission is a
"mashing" one to a certain extent, but it is "mashing" of a vain and by
no means harmful character. Other ladies are seen in the dress circle
and the boxes who do not disguise the fact that they have come to the
theatre to fascinate the too, too yielding men. At the matinees there
are women of questionable repute who unblushingly advertise their
calling and who must be set down as a feature most objectionable to the
respectable portion of any community. They behave themselves as far
as words or actions go, but their mere presence in the play-house is
an annoyance that refined and elegant people cannot tolerate. That is
all about them. Now for the very worst practices that are occasionally
noted in theatres, and that the managers know very little if anything
about,--the women who are there for nefarious purposes, and the men
who have other ideas than gratifying their vanity or merely making
heart-conquests. It is a notorious and flagrant fact that fast women
use the theatre as places of assignation, wherein they meet old and
make new acquaintances, and it is equally notorious that men whose
whole energy seems bent to the distruction of innocent girlhood make it
a rendezvous for the purpose of selecting and snaring their victims.
It is perfectly safe to assume that the cunning and sinful pair fleeced
George and Harry before they got through with them.
The very same evening my attention was called by a young lady to a
thinly-bearded, spectacled, sickly-looking middle-aged man who sat in
the next seat to the lady, and who, she complained, had stepped on her
foot several times and in other ways tried to attract her attention and
get her into a conversation. I at once recognized the fellow as one of
an unscrupulous set who pored over big ledgers in the Court-House, and
gave the greater portion of their time to discussions concerning female
friends of ill-repute, and to boasting of the ruin they had brought or
were about to bring to some innocent young girl.
The same man was in the habit of buying single seats in the dress
circle and visited the theatre frequently. He represents a class of
venerable, but iniquitous fellows who make a practice of mixing in
among the ladies, in the hope of scraping an occasional acquaintance,
and who have no good intention in desiring to extend the circle of
their female friends. They should be kept out of every respectable
place of amusement.
[Illustration: SELINA DOLARO.]
CHAPTER VI.
BEHIND THE SCENES.
My first experiences behind the scenes were in a small, dark cellar,
owned by a man who is now a member of the Missouri Legislature,
and where daily and nightly a select company of would-be Ethiopian
comedians of tender age gave performances to small crowds of children
each of whom had paid an admission fee in pins or corks--for we valued
the corks highly as a necessary portion of our stock in trade; we
charred many a one to blacken our faces and treasured them as if they
were worth their weight in gold. Our stage was roughly constructed
of boards laid upon barrels; bagging material hung around the rear
and sides of the stage to shut in the mysteries of the remarkable
dressing-room we had, and an old gray cloth and blanket formed the
curtain which parted in the middle in the manner of the stage curtains
of the Elizabethan age. Bits of candles were our foot-lights and the
audience, made up of boys and girls, were satisfied to sit for hours
on rude benches stretched across the width of the cellar. We played
nothing but black-face pieces, and as they were not taken from books,
but were the memories of sketches we had seen in some pretentious
theatrical resort, they were, of course, short and entirely crude. No
member of that little band has risen to greatness in the theatrical
profession, but I think every one of them now living looks back fondly
to the triumphs of our cellar career. To me that rude stage and its
gunny-bag surroundings were more interesting and full of mystery than
have been any of the wonderful and beautiful temples of Thespis which I
have since entered; and I think when I played the part of _Ephraim_ in
some ludicrous sketch, and in response to the old man's cries from the
stage, "Ephraim! Ephraim! say boy, whar is you?" and I got up suddenly
in the rear of the audience and shouted back, "Hyar I is, boss!"--when
this supreme moment arrived, and the crowd looked back surprised and
laughed, the glow of conscious pride and artistic power that filled
my heart was as genuinely agreeable as the thunders of applause that
greet Booth or John McCullough when their admirers call them before the
curtain after a great act.
[Illustration: JOHN W. M'CULLOUGH.]
I have only a dim recollection of my first introduction to the
professional stage. The fairy spectacle of "Cherry and Fair Star" was
running at a local theatre, with Robert McWade, of recent Rip Van
Winkle fame, and Miss Wallace in the cast. By some good or bad fortune
I happened to be loitering in the neighborhood of the back door of
the theatre, when the captain of the supers called me and hired me at
twenty-five cents a night to go on as imp in one of the spectacular
scenes. I was on hand promptly, and shall never forget my wonder and
astonishment at getting a first glimpse of the secrets of the stage.
It was almost pitch dark when the back door was entered, and there
was nothing in the place at all suggestive of the glamour that the
foot-lights throw upon the scene. Huge clouds of black canvas rose
upon all sides, and men and boys in the dirtiest of workday clothes
were the only persons met. The noise of hammer and saw rose on various
sides, and it seemed as if the stage had not been one-half prepared
for the play that the curtain would ring up on within an hour. The
dressing-room in which fifty or sixty boys were arraying themselves
looked like the interior of a costume establishment after a cyclone
had passed through it. But when all were dressed, and the fairies and
the goblins assembled in the "wings," and the foot-lights were turned
up and the orchestra outside was rattling through some inspiring
air, the small boy in impish raiment was immediately wrapt into a
seventh heaven of delight. There was a multitude of girls in very
low-necked and short dresses with glowing flesh-colored tights that
seemed such inadequate covering for the rounded limbs that blushing was
inevitable. The bright colors in their cheeks, the blackly outlined
eyes and the blonde wigs added to the interest of the new charms.
Every bit of glorious color in the gorgeous scenery appeared to flash
out amid the flood of light. I ran against every variety of demon
that was ever known to M. D. Conway, and was pushed out of the way
of a hundred persons only to find myself obstructing somebody else's
progress. The magnificent revelations of that night filled me with awe
and astonishment for many a week afterward. It was the only night I
appeared as an imp, for I had accepted the engagement without parental
knowledge or consent, and when they learned of my success they at once
put a decided and impressive veto upon any further efforts in the
direction of the professional stage.
That first experience was not, of course, as abundant in opportunities
for observation as later experiences have been. The world behind the
foot-lights--the mimic world as it is called--is a realm of the most
startling and pleasing kind. Not only is there food for wonder in
what the eye falls upon, but the people who furnish the fun for the
world are often among themselves as prolific of pleasantry as if they
expected the applause of a full house to follow their jokes. They say
and do the strangest things, and for a visitor who is investigating
the mysteries of their surroundings, often make the time as lively and
the surroundings as enjoyable as it is possible for really clever and
good-natured people to do. The best time to go behind the scenes is
during the engagement of a burlesque or comic opera company, and I
will introduce the reader to a happy crowd of this kind that I once
found myself in.
[Illustration: BELLE HOWITT IN "BLACK CROOK."]
In 1879 the Kiralfys brought out their spectacular burlesque entitled
"A Trip to the Moon," and I had the pleasure, during its run, of
dropping in behind the scenes of a Western theatre one night to have
a peep at the pictures there presented. Now, the moon is something
like two hundred and eighty thousand miles from here--that is the one
reputed to be made of green cheese, and having phases as numerous
as the occasions that ring the April skies with rainbows. But the
Kiralfys' moon was in another firmament, shining out amid stars that,
when they wink their twinkling eyes or shuffle their shining feet, as
they do frequently, the celestial shiners have got to put on their
cloud ulsters, and sit down while the lachrymose eyes of the heavens
give up their tears. That is why it was raining torrents the night
I went behind the scenes with Mr. Bolossy Kiralfy. As I went in the
back door _Prof. Microscope_, one of the funny characters in the play,
brushed by with a telescope under his arm that was large enough to put
Lord Ross's famous spy-glass into its vest pocket, if it had one. The
moon to which the trip was to be made was not so far as two hundred and
eighty thousand miles by a half block or so, but it was a very funny
world, full of gaslight and laughter, and with the most mirthful sports
imaginable on its glowing surface. I was inclined somewhat to lunar
ways, and thinking like a great many other credulous mortals, that the
trans-atmospheric trip was really made in a cartridge-built coach that
was fired out of a huge mortar at the rate of about eighteen thousand
six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds miles a minute, had fully
made up my mind to ride on the roof or cow-catcher of the concern, at
whatever risks to life and limb space might abound in. I expected to
find something like a solid space-annihilating Columbiad behind the
scenes, but I was somewhat mistaken.
Just before the curtain was rung up I found myself in the midst of
the fairy world upon which the brilliancy of the foot-light falls.
While the curtain was still down, and before the gasman had opened
the floodgates of splendor, the place was dark; not pitch dark, but
pretty dark, compared with the brilliancy that shown in, over, and
around its space a few minutes later. And then its intricacies, pieces
of scenery here, various properties there, and sections of everything
and anything scattered anywhere and everywhere, made a fellow feel as
if the place was darker than it really was. Glittering and glowing as
the stage appears before the foot-lights; wonderfully romantic as are
its shades and lights, its love and laughter; and astounding as are
its scenic effects; its area and surroundings are terribly realistic
when the foot-lights are left behind, and the "business" of a play is
once laid bare. Here the sighs of love-sick maidens and the spooning
of gilt-edged but uncourageous wooers, the tears of injured innocence
and the self-gratulations of hard-hearted villains who still pursue the
flying female, the prattle of young mouths and the mumblings of "old
men" and "old women," are lost with the departed scenes of the play in
the unceasing desire of the actors to get back into their proper social
and friendly relations to each other, and, once the prompter's book is
closed, stage talk and stage manner are under metaphoric lock and key,
and romance is for a while at an end.
[Illustration: JNO. A. STEVENS.]
On opera bouffe or burlesque nights, however, a great deal of the
stage charm clings to the characters even when off the stage, and one
is compelled to be interested in the grotesqueness of those to be met
in the side scenes--the odd and often pretty creatures who stand,
sit, lie or lean around in the "wings" at their own sweet leisure and
pleasure. There is something so indescribably funny in the costumes,
in the facial make-up, and all that, of the happy opera-bouffer or
festive burlesquer, that the eye follows a quaint character through
the scenes with the same inalienable interest as that with which the
small boy hovers around the heels of an Italian with a hand-organ and a
monkey. The eye, however, must not, cannot linger or languish long upon
a single one of these walking wardrobes. There is a moving panorama
constantly in front of the surprised vision, and before an electric
flash could photograph one single individual in his droll toggery there
would be a dozen or more "shassaying" before the camera.
There was leaning against one of the "wings" a _naive_ and sprightly
piece of feminine beauty, set off in the handsomest and most enticing
manner in the world by a well-rounded, gracefully curved pair of pink
tights, a white satin surtout and mantelet, plentifully besprent with
glittering braid and flashing beads, dainty silk slippers that would
have made a Chinese princess weep with envy, and a jaunty white hat to
match. She was, of course, to figure as the charming little hero of
the evening, if burlesques can be said to have such things as heroes.
A doughty old chap, with bristling hair and a porcupine moustache,
was standing by talking to little pink tights. He was gotten up like
a circus poster in forty colors, with a plentiful array of red on his
head and legs and a sort of sickly-looking, rainbow-sandwich built
about his body. Red, blue and black streaks straying over his features
made it appear as if he might have been assigned the role of an ogre
and was accustomed to nightly look around for his fair companion to
make a meal of her. I immediately made friends with the comic horror
and the little lady in pink tights and learned who and what they were.
The latter was (in the play, of course) a nobby young blood known as
_Prince Caprice_, personated by Miss Alice Harrison; the red-legged
comedian was _King Pin_, the young _Prince's_ funny father and Mr.
Louis Harrison was hidden under the remarkable royal disguise.
"Well, when are we going to start for the moon?" I asked,
good-humoredly.
"In a few fleeting moments," was the regal dough-belly's reply.
"And are all these folks going into the projectile?" pointing to the
crowd of curious characters passing and repassing us.
"Not if the court knows herself and she thinks she does," put in the
_Prince_, pertly; "only the _King_, _Prof. Microscope_ and myself ride
in the cab."
_Prof. Microscope_ was a long, scrawny fellow. He was twirling a
shaggy moustache and buzzing a handsome and not at all bashful ballet
girl at the same time, a short distance away. He was gotten up in a
blue-striped, swallow-tail coat, long enough, if the _Professor_ cared
about lending or renting it out, to be used for a streamer on the City
Hall flagstaff, and short enough in the back to have the waist-buttons
constantly challenging the collar to a prize fight or wrestling
match. Very tight black pants, a luxuriantly frilled shirt front,
fluted cuffs, and white hair allowed to grow to the length worn by
Buffalo Bill, completed his outfit. When I was introduced to him, the
_Professor_ swore by the bones of Copernicus's grandmother on a volume
of patent office reports that he was the sole originator and engineer
of the only direct moon line, and he'd bet his boots or eat his hat
that it never took more than fifteen minutes to make the trip.
"You see," said _King Pin_, "that _Microscope_ is a queer fellow--not a
coney man, you mind."
"Although," said the _Prince_, "he now and then casts his lot on the
turn of the die."
[Illustration: LILLIE WEST.]
"Yes, his lot of last year's clothing," the jolly _King_ remarked, "on
the turn of the dyer."
This effort resulted in six of the supers, who were gotten up in
voluminous dominoes with elaborate, but inexpensive, pasteboard
trimmings, and who were within hearing distance, falling stiff and
stark to the stage.
"Does this kind of thing occur often?" I inquired.
"Oh," growled the _Professor_, "that gag was stuffed and on exhibition
at the Centennial. It was found in an Indian mound near Memphis, and is
old."
And so the talk went on for a while, when up went the curtain and _King
Pin_ leaping on the stage amidst the laughter and plaudits of the
house, told how the pretty _Prince Caprice_ had tired of mundane things
and was heavily sighing for the fountain-head of the lambent silvery
moonlight. _Microscope_, who was at the head of the Royal College
of Astronomers, was besought to do something to aid the _Prince_ in
accomplishing the journey to Merrie Moonland, and in a neat speech
unfolded his plans for a grand dynamo-etherial line that would speedily
carry the _Prince_ to the wished-for happy Land of Luna.
[Illustration: PAULINE MARKHAM.]
Then came the glorious moment when the flight moonwards was to be
made. I hurried around to the prompter's side of the stage where I saw
the mouth of the huge cannon gaping, and got there as they were about
to fire it. Imagine my surprise to find the extraordinary piece of
ordnance made entirely of pasteboard, a substance that a few grains of
gunpowder would blow into as many pieces as the leaves of Vallambrosia.
Still the passengers were to be fired out of this contrivance, and I
felt that if they and the cannon could stand it, it was none of my
business. It had all been explained to the audience, that _King Pin_,
_Prince Caprice_ and _Prof. Microscope_ were the only three persons
to be given seats in the cartridge-cab in which the wonderful journey
was to be made. The question therefore naturally arose, what was
to become of the multitude of characters that crowded the "wings."
There were "supers" in black, yellow and mottled dominoes with high
_papier-maché_ casques, and huge ear-trimmings that reminded one of the
flaps that decorate the sides of a Chicago girl's head, or the sails of
a lake lumberman. There were star-gazers with zodiacal garments and tin
telescopes, all set off by great pairs of soda-bottle-lens eye-glasses,
that gave them the air of a Secchi, or somebody else of astronomical
aspect. There were guards who shouldered tooth brushes made entirely
of wood, with index hands surmounting the tops of their chapeaux and
serving to indicate that their intellects had gone moon-hunting; and
there were other creatures, among them, horrible genii, who started for
the moon by some short route across lots and got there long before the
regular excursionists.
But the corps de ballet! It was everything but a beauty. If there
is anything likely to strike a theatre-goer as ludicrous, it is an
awkward squad of over-grown girls, with gauze-garnished limbs and
dissipated-looking blonde wigs. A precocious ballet-debutante is a
bit of Dead-Sea fruit shot backward off Terpsichore's head, and if
the bullet does not lay Terpsichore herself out in a first-class
undertaker's style it is because Terpsichore happens to be in terribly
good luck. These reflections were suggested by a sight of the
intermingling danseuses that kept pretty well in the rear of the stage.
You could tell the height to which each one could safely fling her foot
on looking at her. The girl who was making her first appearance had not
yet gotten over her splayfootedness, and every time she took a peep
at the audience and began to realize the airiness of her costume and
gawkiness of her manners, her knees knocked together fast enough to
keep a few notes ahead of her chattering teeth. And her dress! there
was nothing marvellous about it--nothing that would carry a person off
into the ideal financial realms of a national debt. It was powerfully
plain with a stiff and provoking effort at showiness. The next line,
who also may be classed as figurantes, are plainly to be distinguished
by their natty air of sauciness and a noticeable clipping-off of the
super-abundant clothing that encumbers the latest additions to the
corps. The coryphees, though, are radiant in glittering, close-fitting
silver mail, and there is acquired grace in their actions, and a
high haughtiness in the toss of their heads. The premieres everybody
understands and recognizes, who has once seen them pirouette on their
toes or slam around in a wild ecstasy of dancing delight that would
give anybody else a vertigo and lead to numerous and possibly serious
dislocations. Well, all these were whispering or prattling together,
in the way of the scene-shifters, who went around reckless of their
language, with sleeves rolled up and anxious faces and questioning
eyes turned upon all whom they encountered there. It struck me, as I
gazed upon this almost naked and highly interesting ballet, that if the
moon had no atmosphere, as those who know best claim, the costumes of
these gay and giddy girls were airy enough to stock it with a pretty
extensive and healthy one. Out of this jumble of scenery and from the
midst of these jostling characters the start was made for the moon.
There was no carriage, no cartridge, no load in the cannon. Her trip as
a trip was a most undisguised and diaphanous fraud. While _King Pin_,
the _Prince_, the _Professor_, and the rest were arranging themselves
in a happy tableau behind the second "flat" bang! went a gun fired by
one of the supers, across the stage flew several "dummies" or stuffed
figures in the direction of the roof, the scene opened and lo the jolly
crowd were in Moonland. _King Pin_, _Prince Caprice_ and _Microscope_
were there together, as fresh and fair as if they were accustomed
to making two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand-mile trips. The monarch
of the moon, _King Kosmos_ (W. A. Mestayer), after having summoned
his retinue of Selenites--the same long-robed, pillow-stomached and
pasteboard-eared crew who had died behind the scenes a few minutes
before from an over-stroke of punning--and having things explained to
everybody's satisfaction, came forward and fell on the several necks
of the terrestrial visitors, was punched in the paunch, by the _King_,
enough times to set all the Moonites into roars of laughter, and then
they all joined in stretching their necks and rasping their throats in
a welcoming chorus to their guests.
[Illustration: ADAH ISAAC MENKEN.]
It was unfortunate for the visitors that _King Kosmos_ had a beautiful
little princess of a daughter called _Fantasia_ (Miss Gracie Plaisted),
with a voice that rippled and rolled in music, earthly as the bulbul's
notes and celestial as the songs of the spheres; and, of course,
foolish little _Caprice_ had to go and fall in love with her and sing
innumerable sweet songs to her, all of which only got poor old _Pin_
and his friends into all sorts of trouble. This they finally managed
to get out of by returning to mother earth in a gorgeously-appointed
flying ship, as grand as Cleopatra's galley. Before decamping, however,
Moonland was visited in every part, and its gardens of silver-tinged
foliage, its crystal palaces, that made pale Luna's light more
brilliant still, its icy mountains with mass of frostage, in and
about which the ballet wound in the graceful rhythm of "Les Flocons de
Niege," were all taken in, and notwithstanding an occasional hitch in
getting the panorama around, everything in this new and gleaming sphere
was really glorious for a first-night visit.
[Illustration: MILLIE LA FONTE.]
CHAPTER VII.
IN THE DRESSING-ROOM.
These same people who appear grotesque, and out of the pale of ordinary
every-day existence on the stage, are nearly always the most unromantic
and realistic-looking folks in the world when you meet them on the
street. The extraordinary metamorphosis they go through to arrive at
an appearance suitable for presentation before the foot-lights is a
secret of the dressing-room. In the privacy of this carefully guarded
apartment street clothes are laid aside, and what is more wonderful
still, faces, eyes, and hands and lower limbs, too, very frequently,
are subjected to processes that produce the most remarkable results.
Anybody who has seen Nat Goodwin, of "Hobbies" reputation, will
readily understand that it takes a pretty extensive transformation
to change his appearance from that of the man to that of _Prof.
Pygmalion Whiffles_, the eccentric character that makes "Hobbies"
the laughable and popular play that it is. Mr. Goodwin is young--not
more than twenty-four--but I saw him slip out of his youthfulness
into the bald-headed, red-wigged and merry old professor one night in
almost as short a time as it takes a boy to fall through a four-story
elevator shaft. I accompanied him to his dressing-room one night. He
had just a few minutes to get ready, and was in proper shape in time
to make his appearance at the upper entrance, amid the crash that
always accompanies his first appearance in the play, and gives him an
opportunity to make some remarks about _Maj. Bang's_ dog, which has
ripped his "ulster" up the back. Well, Goodwin went to work the moment
he was inside the door. Off came the everyday clothes, and in a jiffy
on went the one white and black stocking that will be remembered by all
who have seen "Hobbies." The shirt, coat, pantaloons, linen duster and
hat that forms the rest of his toilet, were carefully laid upon a side
table. The shirt was flapped over his head in a second, the pantaloons
went on like lightning and then bending towards a looking-glass he
dipped his fingers in red and black color boxes, and soon had the
necessary painting done upon his face. The velvet coat followed the
making-up of the face; then the torn linen duster, finally the red wig
with its charming bald spot, was clapped upon his head; the white hat
was gracefully tilted over it, and with a call to the man who played
_Arthur Doveleigh_ for his cane and an "I'll see you later" to his
visitor, he bounded up the stairs, and the next moment, as I left the
stage door, I could hear the hand-clapping and the howls of delight
with which a crowded house was greeting their favorite.
[Illustration: BALLET GIRLS DRESSING-ROOM.]
The great value of the art of making-up, as the preparation for
participation in a play is called, both in the matter of painting the
face and costuming, will be understood when the story told by Maze
Edwards, who was Edwin Booth's manager during the tour of 1881-2, is
recited. * * * The company got to Waterbury, Connecticut, ahead of
their baggage. When the hour for the performance arrived the baggage,
consisting of all their costumes and paraphernalia was still missing.
The manager was in a terrible plight; but I will let him tell his own
story as he told it to a newspaper reporter a short time after the
occurrence.
[Illustration: EDWIN BOOTH.]
"When I found the baggage, with the costumes, had not arrived," said
Edwards, "I was just going to throw myself into the river. Then I
thought I would go and tell Mr. Booth about it and bid good-bye to some
of the people who had always thought a good deal of me, before killing
myself. To my astonishment Mr. Booth took it as coolly as you would
take an invitation to drink. He said, inasmuch as the people were in
the hall, he would make a few remarks to them about the accident, and
then they would go on and play three acts of "Hamlet" in the clothes
they had on. And so it was fixed up that way. Well, the thought of
_Hamlet_ in a short-tailed coat and light pants almost made me sick,
and when Mr. Booth came upon the stage, looking like an Episcopal
minister, with a Knight Templar's cheese knife that he borrowed,
I couldn't think of anything but _Hamlet_. I forgot all about his
clothes, and I believe if he had only had on a pair of sailor's pants
and a red flannel fireman's shirt that the people would only have seen
_Hamlet_. I tell you he is the greatest actor that ever lived. The
people sat perfectly still, and seemed wrapped up in Booth. That is,
they were when they did not look at the other fellows. But when they
took _Laertes_, with a short, ham-fat coat on, a pair of lah-de-dah
pants and a pan-cake hat, it seemed to me I could hear them smile. And
the _King_, _Hamlet's_ step-father, he was a sight. Imagine a king
with a cut-away checkered coat, a Pullman car blanket thrown over his
shoulder for a robe, and a leg of a chair for a sceptre, mashed on a
queen with a travelling dress and a gray woollen basque with buttons
on it. And think of _Polonius_, with a linen duster and a straw hat
with a blue ribbon on. Oh, it made me tired. _Ophelia_ was all right
enough. She had on some crazy clothes that she had been travelling
in, and we got some straw out of a barn and some artificial flowers
off the bonnets, and she pulled through pretty well. But the _Ghost_!
You would have died to have seen the _Ghost_. He had on one of those
long hand-me-down ulster overcoats with a buckle on the back as big
as a currycomb and the belt was hanging down on both sides. The boys
got him a green mosquito bar to put over it, and with a stuffed club
for a sceptre, he fell over a chair and then came on. I should have
laughed if I had been on my death-bed when he said to _Hamlet_, 'I am
thy father's ghost!' He looked more like a drummer for a wholesale
confectionery house, with a sort of tin skimmer on his head, and I
believe the audience would have gone wild with laughter if it had not
been for Mr. Booth. I don't believe you could get him to laugh on the
stage for a million dollars. He just looked at the _Ghost_ as though it
was a genuine one, and the audience looked at Booth, and forgot all
about the ulster and the _Ghost's_ pants being rolled up at the bottom.
It was probably the greatest triumph that an actor ever had for Mr.
Booth to compel the vast audience to forget the ludicrous surroundings
and think only of the character he was portraying. I wouldn't have
missed the night's performance for a thousand dollars, and when, at 10
o'clock, I heard the boys getting the trunks up-stairs, I was almost
sorry. The last two acts were played with the costumes, but they were
no better performed than the first. Still, I think, on the whole, I had
rather the baggage would be there. It makes a manager feel better."
[Illustration: M'KEE RANKIN.]
In the olden times, and in the days of the early American theatre,
the dressing-rooms were beneath the stage, and were by no means the
perfect and cozy places that are to be found in existence at present.
Hodgkinson, I think it was, who, during the last century built the
first theatre having dressing-rooms above and upon the stage. Later
improvement has removed the dressing-rooms, in first-class houses,
entirely from the stage, ample and neatly-furnished rooms being
provided in adjoining buildings. This change has been necessitated by
the demand made upon theatrical managers for greater stage room and
better opportunities than they had heretofore in keeping up with the
growing taste for extensive scenic representations with magnificent
appointments. The star of a company, male or female, always has the
best dressing-room the establishment affords, and it is generally very
close to the green-room. Minor performers share their rooms; and the
captain of the supers usually has an apartment beneath the stage where
he gathers his Roman mob, or marshals his mail-clad but awkward squad
of warriors. No better burlesque upon this ill-clothed, dirty-faced,
knock-kneed and ridiculous theatrical contingent has ever been
presented either in type or on the stage, than the character of the
Roman Lictor created by Louis Harrison in San Francisco, and afterwards
relegated to another performer in "Photos." The story is told that
Harrison having been cast for the part of a lictor in a tragedy in
which John McCullough took the leading role, he grew offended, having
higher aspirations than mere utility business, and determined to make
the part funny and, if possible, spoil the scene. When he came on
the stage, he was in war-paint, his face strewn with gory colors and
intermingling black; he had on the dirtiest costume he could find, with
a battered rusty helmet, and carried the insignia of his office so
awkwardly, while his knees came together his toes turned in, and his
general attitude was that of a man in the third week of a hard spree.
He brought the house down, spoiled the play and was discharged for
making too much of a success of the part. But this is a digression, and
we must hurry back to the dressing-room.
[Illustration: THE THREE VILLAS.]
The most difficult part of the actor's work preliminary to going on
the stage is to make-up his face. By the judicious use of powder and
paint, and a proper disposition of wigs, beard, etc., the oldest man
may be made to assume juvenility and the youngest to seem to bend
with the weight of years. Wigs are to a great extent reliable, but
the old fashioned false beard is clumsy and apt to make the wearer
feel dissatisfied with himself and the rest of the world. But the old
fashioned beard is going out of style, and gray wool stuck on the face
with grease is generally used. I can recall vividly how a beard of
this sort worn by poor George Conly, the basso, while singing the part
of _Gaspard_ in "The Chimes of Normandy," while with the Emma Abbot
troupe last season, struck me as the perfection of deception. It always
requires a dresser to put on one of these beards in anything like a
satisfactory manner.
An old actor of the "crushed" type who has been almost forced off the
stage and into running a dramatic college, by the young and pushing
element in the profession, in an interview had with him lately in
Philadelphia, remarked, as he looked with evident interest upon the
crowds in the street: "I like to study faces. To my mind it is the most
absorbing study in the world--that of men's faces. You see, the thing
has more interest for me than for the run of men even in my profession,
because I'm an enthusiast in a certain sense. I belong to the times
when the study and make-up of faces was mighty important in the
theatrical line. It wasn't such a long time ago, either; but the times
have changed since then, until now there seems to be almost no effort
at all to make-up and look your part."
"It must be a great deal of trouble to make up every night."
"Oh, but, my boy, look at the result! Go down to the theatre, where
they still do it, and if only five years have elapsed between the acts,
see how it is shown on every face on the stage."
"It is difficult to make-up well, is it not?"
"Well, no," said the actor, lighting a fresh cigar and assuming a more
confidential pose, "the rules are simple enough, and with a little
practice, almost any amateur could learn to make up artistically if he
has any eye for effect. Some parts, like _Romeo_, _Charles Surface_,
_Sidney Darrell_ or _Claude Melnotte_, require very little make up for
a young and good-looking actor. The face and neck should be thoroughly
covered with white powder, and the cheek bones and chin lightly touched
with rouge, which should not be too red. Then, as the lover ought
to look handsome, he should draw a fine black line under his lower
eye-lashes with a camel hair brush and burnt umber. This makes the eyes
brilliant. I'm sure it isn't much trouble to make up that way."
[Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT.]
"Other characters are harder, though?"
"Oh, immeasurably so. But to make a maturer man, like _Cassio_, _Iago_,
_Mercutio_, _John Midway_ or _Hawksley_, it requires only a little
more work. After the actor has laid on his powder and rouged his face
pretty heavily--for men are commonly rather red-faced--he must take
his brush and umber and trace some lines from the outer corners of
the eyes, and other lines down toward the corners of the mouth from
the nose. In short, he must make the 'crows' feet that are visible in
all men who have lived over thirty years in this tantalizing world of
ours. Then the chin should be touched with a little blue powder, which
makes it look as if recently shaved. These precautions will make the
most juvenile face look mature. If he has to go further, and look like
old age, as in such characters as _Lear_, _Virginius_,--for, as I said
before, _Virginius_, was an old man,--_Richelieu_, _Sir Peter Teazle_,
and so on, more work is necessary. Heavy false eyebrows must be pasted
on, and the eye-hollow darkened and fairly crowded with lines. Wrinkles
must be painted across the forehead, furrows down the cheeks, downward
lines from the corners of the mouth, and (very important) three or
four heavy wrinkles painted around the neck to give it the shriveled
appearance common to old age. The hollow over the upper lip should
be darkened, and also the hollow under the lower lip. This gives the
mouth the pinched and toothless look. A little powdered antimony on
the cheeks makes them look fallen in and shrunken. Then tone the face
down with a delicate coating of pearl powder, and you'll have as old a
looking man as you'd care to see."
"How does it feel?"
"At first your face feels tightened, and the muscles don't play easily,
but after a few grimaces it comes out all right. It's a great relief to
get off, however, after three hours' work."
"It must cause rather mournful forecasts when a man looks on his own
face made up for the age of, say, eighty years."
"Not so bad as when he makes up for a corpse, however. I'll never
forget the first glance I had at my face after it had been made up
for _Gaston's_ death scene, when playing the "Man of the Iron Mask,"
in '62. It positively appalled me, sir, and I lay awake all that
night thinking of it, and dreamed of myself in a coffin for a month
afterward."
"How is it done?"
"Well, it varies slightly. You see, such characters as _Lear_,
_Virginius_, _Werner_, and _Beverly_ are before the audience some time
before they actually die, and therefore, their faces cannot be made
very corpse-like; but _Mathias_ in 'The Bells,' _Louis XI._, _Gaston_
and _Danny Mann_ are discovered dying when the scene opens, or are
brought in dead, so that their faces can be made extreme. For the last
series the face and neck should be spread with prepared pink to give
it a livid hue in places. Then put a deep shading of powdered antimony
under the eyebrows and well into the hollow of the eye, on the cheeks,
throat and temples. This is very effective, as it gives the face that
dreadfully sunken appearance as in death. The sides of the nose and
even the upper lip should also be darkened, and the lips powdered blue.
Then the face will look about as dead as it would three hours after a
real death."
"In the make up of grotesque faces do they use false noses and chins?"
"Very rarely. Usually the method is to stick some wool on the nose
with a gum and mold it in whatever shape you will; then powder and
paint it as you would the natural nose for grotesque or comedy parts.
Paste is put on with gum, instead of wool, sometimes. Clowns have
to encase themselves fairly with whiting, and they find this trouble
enough without building up noses or cheeks. Grotesque artists have to
work hard with their faces as a rule, but they are often repaid by
discovering neat points. Many of our best Dutch and Irish comedians owe
their first lift to a lucky make-up."
[Illustration: THE LATE ADELAIDE NEILSON.]
"I suppose there are types of the representation of different
nationalities?"
"Well, a gentleman is usually made-up the same, no matter where he
may be supposed to belong, but the caricature is usually one of the
well-known make-ups. A Frenchman has to be powdered with dark rouge,
and has his eyebrows blackened with dark ink. All dark characters, as
mulattoes, creoles, Spaniards, and so on, are done with whiting and
dark rouge, with plenty of burnt cork and umber."
"Is much work necessary on the hands?"
"In witches it is of great importance that the hands and arms should be
skinny and bony. This is usually done by a liberal powdering of Dutch
pink, and painting between the knuckles with burnt umber. Painting
between the knuckles, you see, makes them look large and bony. But this
sounds a good deal like ancient history, now, does it not? The art is
falling into disuse, my boy, and I've no doubt the time is not far off
when we shall have youngsters playing old men with signs on their back
reading, 'Please, sir, I'm eighty years old,' while their faces are as
fresh as daisies."
"To what do you attribute this tendency."
"Laziness. The theatrical age of to-day is a wonder to me. The entire
profession wants to star. An actor plays old men now simply for a
living, while he matures his plans for his contemplated starring
tour. An actress does old women heavies or juveniles only until she
can find a capitalist who will enable her to star, and none of them
seem to take any pride in the minor parts. Hence, they don't take the
trouble to make up artistically, and the stage is robbed of its chief
charm--realism."
[Illustration: DRESSING AN ACTRESS' HAIR.]
The looking-glass and the pots of paint and boxes of powder upon the
shelves of the dressing-room are as important adjuncts of the play, and
even more important, sometimes, than the huge boxes and trunks filled
with costumes that are found in the same place. They hold their place
amid the diamond necklaces and brilliant bracelets of the prima donna,
the cheaper jewels of the dramatic artiste and the crowns of kings and
helmets of warriors. Their power is great, and that power is fully
recognized by all who are within the domain of dramatic art. And the
actor or actress, the prima donna and the swell tenor, all generally
make it their business to attend to their own beautification in this
way themselves. Nearly all star actors carry male servants who are
known as dressers, and all prominent actresses have maids who accompany
them to the theatre and these help to complete the artiste's toilets.
Formerly there were barbers and hair-dressers, as well as other
specialists, attached to places of amusement, and whose business it
was to shave an actor or dress a head of hair before the performance.
Many establishments retain these yet, but they are not as numerous or
as well-known as they were before the days of travelling combinations.
Apropos the theatrical hair-dresser there is quite an interesting story
told. One of this class fell in love with a popular actress he was
frequently called upon to beautify. He confessed his devouring passion
on his knees and she laughed him to scorn. More than that, she
insisted on his continuing his ministrations to her and made him the
butt of her heartless gibes while he was devoting himself to enhance
her cruel loveliness. The iron entered his soul and he swore vengeance.
One night, when he had to prepare her for a most important part, he
surpassed himself in the splendor of her crowning decoration. Having
finished he anointed her golden locks with a compound of a peculiarly
fascinating aromatic odor, which so attracted his callous enslaver's
notice that she asked him what it was.
"It is a mixture of my own, Madame," he replied. "I call it the last
breath of love."
The actress remarked that she would call him a fool, and he bowed and
withdrew. A few minutes later, when she appeared behind the foot-lights,
instead of the roar of applause which she expected, she was hailed
with a tempestuous scream of laughter. Her discarded lover had had his
revenge. He had dyed her golden locks with a chemical which turned pea
green as soon as it was dry. She dresses what hair she has left herself
now, while he is boss of a five-cent shaving emporium, never speaks to
any lady but his landlady, and has a Chinaman to do his washing.
If there is a ballet or a burlesque crowd or comic opera chorus in
the theatre the scenes in their rooms will be of a more diversified
nature. The girls in addition to making their faces pretty, must have
their limbs so shapely that no fault can be found even by the most
cavilling of the gentlemen who crowd up behind the orchestra while the
house holds a host of female attractions. The rage for limb exhibitions
rendered it necessary that some means should be devised to hide the
calves or poorly turned ankles of the creatures whose limbs are
displayed. Happily the symmetricals, as padded tights are called, were
hit upon and now you cannot find an unsightly piece of underpinning in
any combination, and even the poor ballet girl who does page's parts
or helps to make up a crowd for $6 a week, will, if she has sense and
taste, go early to the dealer in theatrical goods and have symmetricals
made to suit the exigencies of her case. These artistic accessories of
feminine fictitiousness are leggings or tights woven in such a manner
the thickness of a deficient thigh, the pipe-stem character of a calf,
are filled out with silk and cotton into shapefulness and beauty that
Venus de Medici herself would not be ashamed to make a display of. I
heard a story about an operatic artist who for a long time refused to
play parts demanding the exhibition even of a fraction of a limb, and
all because her lower members were too attenuated to attract anything
else but ridicule. Lately she has found her way to the pad-maker's and
now can present as pretty an ankle and as round a calf to the audience
as sister artists who have more flesh and blood in their composition.
Men as well as women patronize the pad-maker and any actor of the
mashing persuasion who may have had to keep his bandy legs in wide
pantaloons heretofore can now burst forth upon the sight of his adored
in all the gorgeous loveliness and perfection of an attractive anatomy.
[Illustration: MARIE ROZE.]
CHAPTER VIII.
WITHIN THE WINGS.
[Illustration: IN THE GREEN ROOM.]
The green-room, except where stock companies prevail--and there are not
more than three or four in the United States now--has passed out of the
shadow of the rigorous rules that sometime ago were posted here, and
that had to be observed. By this I do not mean that rules have been
entirely done away with behind the scenes; but travelling companies are
governed by their own rules, carry their own stage manager, prompter,
etc., and the only persons that local green-room rules could apply to
now-a-days would be the four or five poorly paid young girls who, in
their desire to go on the stage and become stars, start and generally
stay at the bottom of the ladder, where they are paid pitiful salaries
and continue to "mash" wandering minstrels, or the equally poorly paid
and badly treated members of some male chorus. These girls usually
spend the lengthy leisure a performance gives them sitting demurely
on chairs in the corner of the green-room until the call-boy sends
them word that they are needed to fill up some silent gap in the
entertainment. Beyond these there are few to be found in the green-room
during a performance. Occasionally an actor will drop in to pace the
floor as he mumbles his lines over, or an actress, who is tired from
standing in the wings, or on the stage, will hurry in and drop to rest
on the sofa. The side scenes, or "wings," as they are termed, are the
places in which to find almost everybody who has any business around
the stage of a theatre. Under the stage, in a "music-room," the
musicians may be found when they are not harassing the audience with
some unanimously discordant air.
[Illustration: A GREEN-ROOM TABLEAU.]
[Illustration: GETTING THEIR "LINES."]
Gathered together in the entrances and within easy call of the
prompter, whose business it has recently become to mind everybody
else's business, are the performers, male and female mingling together,
waiting for their cue to go on. The absence of chairs makes it
necessary for all to remain on their feet, and only when a friendly
"property" that may be used for sedentary purposes is within reach will
a weary actor or actress take possession of it. Enough has been said
already about the general aspect of affairs behind the scenes and the
groupings in the green-room. Now, let us turn our attention to some
of the individuals and incidents of this remarkable little world. The
stage prompter is, probably, as important a gentleman as we could first
run against. The prompter stands at his desk at one side of the stage,
with a book of the play before him during the entire performance. It is
his business to furnish the players with their lines when memory fails
them. He must be quick to give the performer the exact word that has
thrown him off the track, and just as soon as an actor or actress looks
appealingly towards him he knows what it means--that the performer is
"stuck"--and he must run to their aid at once. His position is almost
as responsible as that of the prompter in the Japanese theatre, who
goes from one actor to the other, during the whole performance, and,
with a lantern placed up against the play-book, reads off the lines
which the actor is expected to repeat. He must be at the theatre
during the morning rehearsals; and he also writes out parts; changes
of scenes; makes lists of the properties or articles needed; and
altogether, his position is nothing like a sinecure. A rule of the
theatre, that in many places, has glided quietly out of existence, is
to the effect that nobody must lounge in the prompter's corner. But
they do. Many a fairy queen, with shining raiment and powerful wand,
loiters around to catch a glimpse of the few lines she has to speak,
while darling little princes in the nicest of tights, or pirates, or
bandits, with symmetrical limbs fully displayed, and the softest of
hearts beating under their corsets, get alongside of him, and because
they have had little parts to memorize, and have let them slip lightly
and swiftly beyond their recollection, tease the prompter to help them
regain the lost words.
[Illustration: MILTON NOBLES.]
A veteran prompter, who has evidently seen a great deal of the world
beyond the foot-lights, in giving his reminiscences, said--"Some actors
boast that they never stick. No matter if they have totally forgotten
their lines, they 'say something,' as they phrase it, and I have never
seen the difference noted by the audience yet. Once, while I was making
the rounds of the Pacific coast, twenty years or so ago, I went to see
a performance of 'Macbeth,' by the company of a friend of mine in San
Francisco. It was a tough company, a band of regulation old-time barn
stormers, and the fellow who played _Macbeth_ was so far gone in the
dreamy vacancy of whiskey that he 'gagged' his part more than once in
the first scene. Finally, in the middle of his second, he was also
dead lost. He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he threw his arms
around _Lady Macbeth's_ waist, and drawing her to him, coolly said:
'Let us retire, dearest chuck, and con this matter over in a more
sequestered spot, far from the busy haunts of men. Here the walls and
doors are spies, and our every word is echoed far and near. Come, then,
let's away! False heart must hide, you know, what false heart dare
not show.' They made their exit in a roar of applause, and I thought,
'There's a man who has no use for a prompter, sure enough.'
[Illustration: IMPROVING SPARE MOMENTS.]
"All actors are not like him, however. Raw actors are the prompter's
horror. The debutante is another. She will forget every line the
moment she strikes the stage, and be so nervous, moreover, that she
will not be able to repeat those the prompter reads to her. I remember
one young lady who thought she had a mission to play _Juliet_. She
made her appearance, supported by a country company, and lost every
line, as usual. We prompted her through her first scene, somehow. When
the balcony scene was on, her mother stood on the ladder behind her,
reading her speeches word for word, which she repeated after her. But
the old lady was a heavy weight, and the step-ladder was no longer in
the flower of youth; so, in the middle of the farewell, it gave way.
The old lady was tumbled forward against the ricketty staging of the
balcony, and it fell against the set piece that masked it in from the
audience. So _Juliet_, mother, balcony, and all toppled down on
_Romeo_, and by the time he was taken from the wreck he was as mournful
a lover as the play makes him out to be."
[Illustration: AN ACTRESS' USEFUL HUSBAND.]
Looking around among the players again we find a fairy leaning up
against some object with her lithe limbs crossed, and she putting in
the spare time allowed her in doing crochet or some kindred work.
Perhaps she is knitting a purse for some distant lover, or maybe it is
a tiny pair of socks for the little baby that is waiting for her at
home. For many of these youthful, charming, and heart-breaking fairies
and fair burlesquers are married, and frequently their husbands are in
the same company. A story is told of a well-known and popular actress
who brings her husband with her to the theatre every night, and while
the old man--a dear, innocent and uncomplaining old fellow sits in the
side scenes nursing baby with a bottle, on one knee, and holding an
English pug on the other, while the mother is out before the admiring
public throwing her arms about some strange _Romeo_, and clinging to
him with all the warmth and affection of the fair _Juliet's_ young love.
[Illustration: MAKING LOVE IN THE SIDE-SCENES.]
The story is told of a New York fireman, who made real love, and too
much of it, on the stage. According to the rules of the fire department
there, a member of the department is kept on duty at every performance
in the theatres. While there he has nothing to do except respond to
any call of fire, and give his valuable services in suppressing it.
But it is very seldom that his services are called into requisition,
and consequently the position at the theatre is much sought after by
the gallant fire laddies. As a rule, the members of the department
are a fine body of men, but those detailed at the theatres are very
fine-looking and consequently very popular with the actresses at the
theatres. The natural result is that the fireman soon has a "mash," and
having unrestricted liberties perambulates through the building without
hindrance. Becoming well acquainted with the nooks and corners he is
enabled to snatch a few moments' sweet converse with the object of
his affections, and in a place where they can commune with one another
uninfluenced by the presence of anyone. But recently the regular
disappearance of the fireman of a certain theatre at a stated time
became the subject of comment among the attaches, and another female
admirer of the gallant fireman, actuated possibly by jealous motives,
watched him receding from view and followed his footsteps silently.
In an unfrequented nook among the ruins of ancient mountains, pillars
and broad fields--on canvas--stood the object of her disappointed
affections, embracing the fair form of her rival and giving vent to the
pent-up feelings of his heart, while she, coy, and dove-like, stood,
blushingly receiving the compliments which were being showered upon
her. This was too much for the slighted fair one, and the place that
knew the loving hearts for many evenings is now vacant and ready for
the occupancy of another loving couple.
Another fire lad of the same department thought he smelt fire one night
just before the performance began. He pried around through every nook
and corner in the fulfilment of his duty, and at last was satisfied
that he had found the place. He was not sufficiently well posted to
know that he had located the incipient blaze in one of the ladies'
dressing-rooms. So in he popped without giving any warning. The girls
were dressing for the ballet and already one of them was in condition
to get into her symmetricals. Imagine the consternation of the girls at
sight of the apparition in blue clothes, cap, and brass buttons. They
hastily got behind towels and other articles within reach and set up a
screech that came near creating a panic among the audience. The fire
boy did not wait to find the origin of the smoke, and it took all the
persuasive powers of the manager and company to keep the girls from
swearing out warrants for burglary or something of that kind against
the luckless laddie.
[Illustration: M'LLE GERALDINE AND LITTLE GERRY.]
There are a great many other ludicrous things that have happened
behind the scenes, and but few of which have reached the public. The
legend about Atkins Lawrence's lion skin, which he wears when he
plays _Ingomar_, and which was so heavily sprinkled with snuff as a
preservative against moths that when _Parthenia_ began to woo the
barbarian chief and leant lovingly upon his shoulder she almost sneezed
her head off before the alarmed audience, is told of Mary Anderson. The
Milwaukee _Sun_ printed something about the same actress, that whether
true or false is equally good. The writer says:--"It is well known that
Miss Anderson is addicted to the gum-chewing habit, and that when she
goes upon the stage she sticks her chew of gum on an old castle painted
on the scenery. There was a wicked young man playing a minor part in
the play who had been treated scornfully by Mary, as he thought, and he
had been heard to say he would make her sick. He did. He took her chew
of gum and spread it out so it was as thin as paper, then placed a chew
of tobacco inside, neatly wrapped it up, and stuck it back on the old
castle. Mary came off, when the curtain went down, and going up to the
castle she bit like a bass. Putting the gum, which she had no idea was
loaded, into her mouth, she mashed it between her ivories and rolled it
as a sweet morsel under her tongue. It is said by those who happened to
be behind the scenes, that when the tobacco began to get in its work
there was the worst transformation scene that ever appeared on the
stage. The air, one supe said, seemed to be full of fine cut tobacco
and spruce gum, and Mary stood there and leaned against a painted rock,
a picture of homesickness. She was pale about the gills, and trembled
like an aspen leaf shaken by the wind. She was calm as a summer's
morning, and while concealment like a worm in an apple, gnawed at her
stomach, and tore her corset strings, she did not upbraid the wretch
who had smuggled the vile pill into her countenance. All she said, as
she turned her pale face to the painted ivy on the rock, and grasped a
painted mantel piece with her left hand, as her right hand rested on
her heaving stomach, was, 'I die by the hand of an assassin.' Women
can't be too careful where they put their gum."
[Illustration: SOBERING A COMEDIAN.]
Actors are not fonder of or indulge more in liquor than any other
class. Occasionally you will find a member of the profession whose
passion for the ardent will lead him far enough to disappoint the
public. Joe Emmet's indiscretions in this direction gave him world-wide
notoriety, and for this reason only do I mention them here. He is a
favorite everywhere and for that reason the entire public regretted his
one fault among so many agreeable virtues. But Joe has occasioned many
comical situations in the side scenes while actors and manager were
plying him with seltzer, bromide of potassium and other soberatives in
order to get him to begin or finish a play, when there was a jammed
house waiting to applaud him at every turn in "Fritz." But Emmet has
crossed the Rubicon again and once more his worldful of friends rejoice
in his happiness and growing fortune. He is not the only one in the
profession who has been addicted to the cup that cheers and inebriates
at the same time. I have heard that a pretty and popular soubrette must
have her glass of brandy between the acts, and that an actor already at
the top of the ladder is succumbing to the seductive and rosy liquid.
Still liquor has not made nearly the number of victims in the ranks of
the theatrical class that it has in other professions, and it is only
alluded to here to illustrate a comical incident that once occurred
during the engagement of a burlesque combination in Kansas City. It was
not known until six o'clock at night that the comedian of the comedy
was in a sad state of intoxication somewhere through the town. Parties
were sent out at once to look him up. They did not succeed in finding
him until 7:30 when they hurried him to the theatre. It was a terrible
job to get him into his stage-clothes and to keep his head steady and
his eyes open long enough to allow his friends to make him up for his
part. By the time this had been done the impatient audience shouted and
whistled and stamped so violently that at last the manager was obliged
to ring the curtain up. Mr. Comedian was in the wings reluctantly
accepting the remedies provided by his friends, while they waited for
his cue to go on. He was fairly sober when he reached the presence of
the audience and although he betrayed his condition slightly, few in
the house knew enough about the trouble that had been taken with him
in order that the manager might keep his word with the public. It is
needless to add that Mr. Comedian was very sorry, and sick when he got
sober.
[Illustration: M'CULLOUGH AS "VIRGINIUS."]
CHAPTER IX.
STAGE CHARMS AND OMENS.
The night the Southern Hotel burned down in St. Louis, I was standing
at the ladies' entrance when Kate Claxton, whose presence is now always
regarded in a city as ominous of a conflagration, came down through the
fire and smoke in her night dress and was hurried across the street
and out of danger by a gentleman who lent her his overcoat while she
made her way to another hotel. There were seventeen lives lost that
terrible night, and a young and beautiful actress--Frankie McLellan--in
a frantic effort to escape the flames, jumped from a three story window
and had her face marked for life by the fall. Just as soon as people
got over the horror of the first news of the catastrophe, gossip turned
to theorizing and from that diversant stories were told concerning the
prominent people who figured in the calamity. Then it became known
that Milton Nobles had lost a brand new pair of lavender trousers, in
the pockets of which were several hundred dollars that "The Phœnix"
had brought him that same evening. Then too, the narrow escape of Rose
Osborne, of the Olympic stock company, was recited; but prominent above
all, Miss Kate Claxton's presence in the hotel was dwelt upon, and, as
she had already fairly earned the unanimous reputation that has since
followed her, her name became part of the history of the conflagration,
as it has been associated with every conflagration that occurred in
her vicinage since. She is rather ungallantly and untruly styled the
"Fire Fiend," and all sorts of predictions are made about the theatre
she plays in, the hotel she has her rooms at, and the very town and
county in which she is temporarily domiciled. But Kate Claxton, who by
the way is Mrs. Stevenson, is not the first person in her profession
to have acquired such an unenviable reputation. Thomas S. Hamblin, an
actor and manager of the early half of the present century, who came
from England in 1825 to star in "Shakespeare," was followed by fire
even more relentlessly than Miss Claxton has been. No less than four
theatres burned under his management, and it was generally said when he
undertook to open or run a place of amusement that from that moment it
was fated to the flames. Hamblin figures conspicuously in the history
of the Bowery. He died in 1854.
[Illustration: KATE CLAXTON.]
The sailor who braves the dangers of the deep is always blindly
superstitious. There is something in the vastness of the ocean, in its
misty immensity, in its magic mirage, its wonders and its terrors,
that puzzles the mind and sets fire to the imagination of poor Jack,
and even bewilders his superior officers. The artist who undertakes to
sail before the public and to amuse it for a living is quite as much
at sea as your genuine Jack Tar. He or she finds himself or herself
on a veritable ocean, beset by dangers, surrounded by unknown and
fickle conditions of atmosphere and phenomena. All the logic of the
dry land is of no avail in such a situation. The relations of cause
and effect are broken up. Magic is the only excuse for the arrival of
the unexpected. The seemingly impossible in results is always the most
possible. Once embarked in the dramatic sea, no one can tell where the
voyage may end, or what it may bring forth. A shipwreck on auriferous
rocks may prove a success.
Triumph may come from ruin; happiness from danger, and the longest
voyage and the richest freight are often given the most leaky and
shallow craft. There is no knowing which boat will float the longest on
the dramatic sea--the best equipped or the most shaky and flimsy. So it
is no wonder that actors are all superstitious. They have no compass
even to guide them when beset by the varying winds of public opinion.
The impossible is always sure to meet them; so they are always on
the lookout for magic, and depend in secret quite as much upon their
simple necromancy as upon their talent or their study. Every star
has, so to speak, a fetich that insures success, or goes through an
imaginary formula to invoke prosperity. The public is constantly under
the influence of the voudoo arts of actors, and incantations and mystic
signs rule the world of Thespis and enslave the public without its
knowledge. Some of these fancies and formulæ of intelligent actors are,
indeed, more simple and childlike than those that characterize poor
Jack of the briny deep.
Imagine, for instance, an actor like John McCullough refusing to
approach a theatre except by one route (the one he first takes, no
matter how roundabout) from night to night, for fear of breaking the
charm of success. Imagine, too, a lot of other trifling things that
beset him--signs, omens and the like. If he stumbles when he first
enters a scene it is a sign of good luck. If he receives faint applause
in the first scene he is sure to succeed, amid thunderous plaudits, in
the last; if Forrest's sword, used in the Gladiator, becomes dim by
damp air or other cause, it is a sign of lack of fervor in the audience
of the evening, while, on the contrary an extraordinary brightness of
the weapon is a sure sign of great success. If a negro should cross his
path while he is on his way to a performance, that is a never-failing
omen of a prosperous engagement, while to encounter a cross-eyed woman
(not a man, for strabismus in that sort of creature does not affect
John, probably because it is only the woman he looks at), is a sure
sign if not of failure, at least of annoyance to himself and coldness
on the part of his audience. The Macbeth music is, of course, his great
bugbear, as it is with all actors.
[Illustration: THE LATE VENIE CLANCIE.]
No success could attend any of his performances if any one were to hum
or whistle the witches' chorus in the wings or the dressing-rooms. Any
poor, inexperienced devil who might try it would find John, and, in
fact, all the company, wrestling with him, and himself lying in the
gutter at the back door before he had warbled through two bars of the
fatal music. This is, in the opinion of every actor, a sure invocation
of disaster. Under the malign influence of this melodic devilishness
either the theatre will be burned down (for, if we are to believe the
actors and stage tradition, every theatre that was ever burned in this
country was put under the spell of fire by some singer or whistler of
the witches' chorus), or salaries will not be paid, or the manager will
bring his season to an early and disastrous end. Something ill is sure
to happen if the Macbeth music is heard, and John shares that belief in
common with even the humblest Roman of them all who parades his scraggy
shanks nightly in ridiculous contrast with the heroic legs of the
tragedian.
John T. Raymond, while believing faithfully in all the regular signs
and omens of the stage, has his own special claims to "hog 'em," using
the stage vernacular. He has only one suit of clothes for _Colonel
Sellers_, and would not have any other under any circumstances. It
would change his luck from good to bad.
"Remark," he says, "there never was a success continued where a play
was entirely re-costumed. The public interest began to flag always in
some mysterious way from the time the new dresses came on. It is the
old story of old wine in new bottles. The wine will burst the bottles.
There's going to be no burst with my wine. I stick to my old clothes as
long as they will stick to me."
[Illustration: CATHERINE LEWIS.]
He has also a lucky $5 gold piece, which he always carries in his
vest pocket on the stage, whatever part he is playing, and when he is
nervous and fearful of lack of appreciation he has only to rub his
magic coin to make everything lovely. In getting out of bed he will
not slip out with the left foot first, lest he may have bad luck all
the day. His dreams decide his acceptance of a play, and when he is
puzzled between two methods of working up a "point," he is perfectly
satisfied to settle it by the toss up of a cent.
Joe Jefferson is also impressed with the magical potency of old
clothes. He has never changed his first "Rip Van Winkle" suit, but
he has been forced to have it patched and renovated. His hat, wig,
beard and "trick" rifle--the one that falls to pieces after his long
sleep--are the same that he used when he made his great success in the
part in London fifteen years ago. He mislaid this gun last season,
just before he played at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and was forced to
get another. That engagement was his first failure, and a bad one.
He has found the old rifle, and, the charm being now complete again,
he has opened the season with a very successful week in Brooklyn.
Joe would break an engagement in any theatre if a dog were to walk
across the stage at the first rehearsal. That is a sure sign of death,
loss, or fire, as every actor knows. A cat parading the coulisses or
walking with dainty tread across the scene, however (even at an evening
performance), would be hailed by him and colleagues with delight as an
unfailing sign of prosperity, health and renown.
Sothern felt that he was sure to fail with his audience if his valet,
by an accident, handed him his wig before his coat was on, while, if he
put it on his head at the last moment, and not before the voices of the
call-boy was heard summoning all on for his first scene, he had "got
'em dead to rights."
Florence, like Raymond, carries a lucky $5 gold piece, and believes the
charm of his popularity reposes in the fact that he always puts on his
costumes in a never-varying order, and never changes his old brushes
and articles of "make-up." He, too, is afraid of the necromantic powers
of the evil-omened dog, and believes in the magic spells of fairy
grimalkin. If the orchestra plays a waltz between the first and second
acts of his piece, success is more likely than ever to seal his efforts
of the evening.
Mrs. Florence, on the contrary, does not believe in old clothes, but
quite the reverse. She thinks, however, that birds (canaries, or any
other variety) are sure to bring bad luck, and will not play in the
company where there is a cross-eyed girl. The cross-eyed man doesn't
count. If the prompter should tear a page of manuscript accidentally,
or, moreover, if the page should contain the name or a speech of the
character she is acting, there is no use in hoping for a great furor
that evening, for there will be nothing but disappointments in the
making of points and contretemps in the management of the stage. If the
prompter turns out the foot-lights or a row of border-lights, swift
disaster is sure to come on the theatre. This was never known to fail
in her experience.
Booth will never go on the stage, no matter how late or hurried he may
be, without first pacing three time across the green-room, mumbling
over not the first, but the very last speech of the piece he is to play
that night. Then he walks on, sure of his triumph. If he should fail
in his formula, the audience would be cold and unappreciative. It has
been his custom to have _Desdemona's_ couch set in the second entrance
on the stage, left in the last scene of "Othello." According to the old
style, the couch should be set in the centre door, behind curtains,
exactly in front of the audience. Booth believes in signs, however,
and should he consent to have _Desdemona_ slumber in any other place
than U. E. L. he would lose his charm in the character of _Iago_.
[Illustration: CHANFRAU.]
Frank Chanfrau believes in the efficacy of old clothes. He has only one
suit in _Kit_, and his success is unvarying in that piece. He hates
dogs on the stage, believes in cats, knows birds are bad luck, is
convinced that a house decorated in a prevailing hue of decided blue
is sure of ill-fortune, and shudders at the mere mention of the Macbeth
music. He has steered clear of all these evil influences during his
stage career, and has been uniformly successful.
Oliver Doud Byron has a special claim in addition to the regular
superstitions of his class. He has a certain tattoo mark of India ink
on his right forearm. When he rolls up his sleeves for his "terrible
combat" in the last act of "Across the Continent," he must uncover that
mark without looking at it, or his fetich is not complete, and the
charm of his prosperity will be broken.
Charles Thorne believes his success lies in the fact that he always
steps on the stage in the first scene with his right foot foremost, and
keeps it in advance until he has delivered his first speech. This done,
he is safe and sure of a "walk over" before his critics. Once or twice
he has inadvertently stepped out with his left, and on these occasions
he has failed, or the piece has fallen flat. Such an accident happened
him on the first night of "Lost Children." Manager Palmer, of the
Union Square, who has also become a victim of stage superstitions, is
fearful of Thorne stepping out with his terrible left foot on a first
night, just out of retaliation for some slight or disagreement. Thorne,
possessing this magic power for good or evil, not at his fingers'
ends, but at the ends of his toes, is a terror to the establishment,
and on first nights is treated with distinguished consideration by the
entire company. No one gets in his way when he is about to make his
stage entrance on a first night, lest he may be thrown out of step and
advance with sinister effect upon the scene. Thorne's right foot once
put forward, every one breathes freer and plays with greater vim. The
critical point of every new play, therefore, lies, though the critics
may not think it, in the malign or favorable magic of Thorne's feet,
according as he puts them forward.
Adelaide Neilson was as superstitious as all actresses are. Her
evenly-balanced beauty and brains did not free her from the slavery of
omens. She carried about with her, ever since her first London success
in _Juliet_, a lucky silken rag--a dingy, straw-colored drapery--which
she insisted upon hanging over the railing of the balcony when _Juliet_
breathes her complaints to the moon. Without this, the fair Adelaide
was sure she could not succeed in the scene in any part of the world.
She brought the silken rag across the water with her again and again.
The drapery was somewhat faded and tattered from long service in the
two worlds, but she still clung fondly to it, and said it was possessed
of all its olden magic.
Lotta sleeps three hours by daylight, but if she should wake up ten
minutes before the usual time (just the time to rush to the theatre)
the fates are against her, and she will not do well that evening. If
any one whistles in a dressing-room within her hearing while she is
donning her costume, she is sure the person is "whistling away her
luck," and the house is going to be bad.
Fanny Davenport would not, for any consideration, miss rearranging
her wig before the green-room mirror just previous to going on the
stage. She has a regular, unvarying formula to go through to guarantee
success. She first presses her hands to the sides of her head to be
sure the springs are firmly fixed (although she has just had her
dresser make that sure in her dressing-room), then gives the "bang"
three smart tugs, puffs up the frizzes with a nervous twitch of her
fingers, presses the entire wig down from the top of her head, gives
her silken trail a final kick to induce it to unfold itself, and then
rushes pell mell to the stage in answer to the alarming cry of "stage
waiting." Without this formality she would not be herself the whole
evening.
[Illustration: FANNY DAVENPORT.]
Clara Morris believes in the efficacy of a small medicine vial, which
she carries (empty) through every scene, she says, through habit,
though it is fair to presume, through superstition. Without the vial
she could not get along.
Neilson also had a vial--a special one--which she insisted should only
be used for _Romeo's_ poison potion. She would handle no other, and has
been known to have the bill changed because the vial was mislaid, and
would not allow "Romeo and Juliet" to be put up for performance until
it was found.
Frank Mayo thinks his magic lies in an old fur cap and a hare's foot,
for rouging, which he had ever since he has been on the stage.
[Illustration: DION BOUCICAULT.]
Boucicault trembles and is sure of failure for any one of his pieces
which is greeted with commendation by all the actors without a
dissenting voice. If the players condemn his piece at the rehearsals,
he is sure the audience will like it. But in any event no play of his
can be a success unless he tears off the cover to the first act, and
makes away with the title page at the last rehearsal.
Maude Granger has a certain magic smelling-bottle which she puts to her
nostrils just before going on the stage.
Maggie Mitchell attributes her success in "Fanchon" to an old pair of
shoes which she wears in that piece.
Eliza Weathersby hates birds, doesn't like whistlers, and has for her
special charm an embroidered rose, which always appears on her dress or
tights, according to the style of part she may be playing.
Paola-Marie, the little Parisienne of Grau's opera bouffe, has a pet
pug dog which she always fondles at the side-scenes for luck, before
going on the stage. This, too, to the intense horror of the rest of the
company, who think dogs in theatres bad luck.
Sara Jewett imagines that she commands success and enslaves her
audiences by walking through her positions on the stage in her first
scene every night before the curtain is rung up for the play.
[Illustration: MRS. BOUCICAULT.]
The managers, too, share this weakness of their actors. None of them
would change their ticket-boxes for fear of a change of luck. When they
move they take their ticket-boxes with them. Wallack has the same boxes
that were used at the doors of his father's theatre years ago, and
Daly has those which received the pasteboards during his first season
of success. When Tony Pastor removed from the Bowery to Broadway he
took his boxes over there, and has them with him now in his tour over
the country. With all our modern innovations and realism, we have not
made any inroads on the folk-lore of the drama. The theatre is still
fairy-land, and its creatures, though not fairies themselves, commune
with them closely.
Actors like many other people have a perfect horror of the number
thirteen. The only man in the profession who openly defies the
superstition attaching to this number is John R. Rogers, the manager
of the "My Sweetheart" Company, of which Minnie Palmer and Robert E.
Graham are the star features. Rogers, it is said, not only got together
a company of thirteen people, in which the thirteen letters of Mr.
Graham's name stood out in uninviting prominence; but he began his
season on Friday, the 13th of the month, and in other ways wooed a dire
and speedy fate for himself and his people; but good luck appears to
have attended him, and he is still defiant as ever of the terror-laden
and ominous number. In contradistinction to Mr. Roger's success, the
failure of another combination may be given. Frank L. Gardner, who has
thirteen letters in his name, brought out the play "Legion of Honor,"
whose title is composed of exactly thirteen letters, and had Samuel
W. Piercy,--who died last winter in Boston, while supporting Edwin
Booth in his tour,--for leading man, and by doing so freighted down
his enterprise with another ill-starred feature, for Mr. Piercy's name
contained thirteen letters. The play failed, and the superstitious
people of the profession immediately attributed the failure to the
presence of too many baker's dozens in the organization. A certain
well-known prima donna whose engagement was to begin on the 13th of
the month went to the impresario and begged to have the date changed;
she said she knew she would have no luck if she began to sing on the
date provided for her; besides that her friends had persuaded her that
fortune would only frown upon her if she made her first appearance on
the 13th. The 12th was Friday, another day fraught with frightful evil
to the singing and acting fraternity, so rather than make an unlucky
beginning, the prima donna opened on the 11th, and sang two nights for
nothing, although two nights' warbling under her contract meant an
amount of money that would make a poor man's head swim.
The New York _Dramatic News_ in a late number contained a funny story
about Harry Courtaine and John E. Ince, both gentlemen well and
favorably known in the profession. Mr. Ince had solemnly professed
his non-belief in good or bad luck, after which he was invited by Mr.
Courtaine to walk with him. The _News_ tells the story in this happy
style: To a query as to where he was going, Mr. Courtaine replied that
he was to make an engagement for the coming season with a gentleman
now awaiting him at the Union Square Hotel, "and I want a witness," he
said, "but I wouldn't have one of those superstitious fellows with me
for all the world. They make me ashamed of myself with their besotted--"
Mr. Courtaine stopped suddenly and turned deadly pale. "Here, here!"
he cried, "cross fingers, quick!" and seizing Mr. Ince's hand, he
crossed the forefinger of his own over it while a tramp with one arm
slouched by them. "I saw him over my left shoulder, too," murmured Mr.
Courtaine. "Dear me! dear me! how exceedingly annoying!"
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Ince, whom the performance of his
companion had thrown into a profound amazement. "Don't you feel well?
What is it?"
[Illustration: MAUD GRANGER.]
"Nothing," replied Mr. Courtaine, in some confusion. "A slight twinge
of my old gout. Those fellows on the square are enough to give a man
the colic, with their eternal talk about Jonahs, unlucky houses,
hoodoo managers and the like. I don't know anything I detest more than
superstition," said Mr. Courtaine, with indignant fervor. "I think it
is a lower and more debased vice than habitual drunkenness. If there
was a law passed to make it a capital offence, I'm d--d if I wouldn't
serve as hangman without asking a cent pay."
At this juncture an old woman, enveloped in an odorous combination of
rags and liquor, seized Mr. Courtaine by the sleeve and rolled two
eyes, which squinted across at each other almost at right-angles,
towards the sky, as she whined:--
"Please, good gentleman, a penny to buy a poor widow bread. Only a
penny, dear, handsome gentleman, and God go with you."
Mr. Courtaine dove into his pocket to respond to this artful appeal,
and as he did so, glanced at the old woman. Then he began a performance
which plunged his companion in a stupor of wonder. Crossing his
forefingers, he deliberately spat upon the pavement over them, and then
turning in a circle, repeated the expectoration at each of the four
points of the compass. This accomplished, he mopped the perspiration
from his pallid brow, and shuddered visibly. "It's Friday, too," he
muttered. "D--n it all! I might have known it."
"Known what?" asked Mr. Ince.
"Let's go down to Theiss's and get a beer," said Mr. Courtaine abruptly
and irrelevantly.
"You'd better see your man first," suggested the prudent Mr. Ince.
"Oh, no. He can wait; besides I think it's too late to catch him in
now. I'll hunt him up to-morrow. Come along."
The libation performed, Mr. Ince suggested that they should drop in
at the matinee at Pastor's. Mr. Courtaine favored a stroll. Mr. Ince
suggested that his programme would turn out the most pleasing one,
and Mr. Courtaine said: "Hold on; we can easily see;" and producing a
half-dollar he flipped it, asking, "What is it?"
"Heads," answered Mr. Ince.
"It's tail," remarked Mr. Courtaine. "So the stroll will turn out best.
Let's be moving."
They moved along, and as they passed a fruit stand Mr. Ince remarked:
"Hello! there are some strawberries."
"Ze first-a of ze season a-Signore," said the Neapolitan nobleman, who
presided over the destinies of the stand, with a bow of invitation, "ze
very first-a, only feefty cent-a ze box-a."
"By Jove!" cried Mr. Courtaine, picking out three of the finest and
leaving the box a quarter empty, "now, then, Ince, make a wish."
"What for?" demanded Mr. Ince, making a raid on the box on his own
account.
"Never mind," replied Mr. Courtaine, evasively, "only whenever you eat
new fruit or vegetables make a wish."
And he posted the strawberries into his oratorical orifice, and walked
off, leaving the fruit vender foaming at the mouth, and snarling
"_corpo di diavola!_ zese actor 'ave-a ze sheek-a of a policeman. Oh!
_Madonna mia!_ Eef zem boys 'ad not steal-a my club!"
The stroll was varied by no further incidents except that Mr. Courtaine
walked a block around to avoid passing a drunken man, and nearly lost
his life snatching a cast horseshoe up from in front of a street-car.
As they turned homeward Mr. Courtaine's eyes singled out a lady
approaching with an armful of bundles, and he commenced a species of
maniac gavotte, waving his hands at her and shouting: "Go into the
street. Hey! Hey! look out for the ladder!"
And when in spite of his adjurations, Mrs. Courtaine--for the lady was
none other--walked under a ladder leaning against the side of a rising
building. He sank upon a row of beer kegs and fastened a cumulative
grip on Mr. Ince's arm, exclaiming--"Did you witness it wasn't my
fault? I warned her in time, didn't I?"
* * * * *
"Do you remember my wife walking under a ladder yesterday?" observed
Mr. Courtaine to Mr. Ince on the morrow.
"Yes, what of it?"
"Well, when we got home we found the cat had killed the canary
bird--killed and ate it all but the tail feathers," said Mr. Courtaine
triumphantly. "Now what do you think of that? Here come around to
Theiss's or we'll have those fellows around us with their infernal
low-minded superstitions again."
[Illustration: PORTIA AND SHYLOCK.
PORTIA:--Nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,
Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
_Merchant of Venice, Act IV., Scene 1._
]
CHAPTER X.
NOT DOWN IN THE BILL.
Some very queer things happen behind the scenes, and even on the stage
in full view of the audience--occurrences that often mar the pleasure
of the play for the people in the auditorium, and raise the wrath of
the performer. Anything out of the usual run of business that occurs
behind the scenes throws the players off the track frequently. There is
a great deal of work going on at all times, out of sight or knowledge
of the audience, and a slight disturbance may be an interruption
fraught with dire disaster. There are actors and actresses in the
wings, often, completing the memorization of their parts--"winging"
parts, as it is called--or it may be going over their lines again, if
they are not confident that they have full possession of them; and to
these people, of course, an interruption is a matter of the merest
moment. Actors and actresses have always been credited with good
memories, but even the best memory may sometimes be thrown off the
track, and, indeed, sometimes is, by an untoward or startling incident.
[Illustration: LIZZIE M'CALL.]
Speaking of memory, reminds me that an actor once memorized an entire
newspaper, when they were smaller than now, in a single night. The
actor was a man named Lyon, who was playing small parts through the
country. An English actor committed the contents of the London _Times_,
advertisements and all, within a week, besides studying a new part for
every night. The feat was accomplished on a wager. An actor in London,
sat through a play, and although he had never seen it before, could
repeat every line and word of it when he got home. He sat down and
wrote it out, and the copy thus written was used for the performance of
the play in New York. Many readers will recollect the New York couple
prosecuted by the Madison Square Theatre Company for selling copies of
"Hazel Kirke" to companies that had no right to play the drama. The
wife, it was explained, went to the theatre, sat the play out a few
times, and dictated the lines to her husband from memory. She had been
an actress. There are many other remarkable instances of swift and
retentive memories in the profession, but one of the most astonishing
of all these feats is what is known as "winging a part," an expression
I have used before in this chapter. This consists in going on the stage
without having studied the lines at all, the actor carrying the book in
his pocket, and pulling it out every time he gets out of sight of the
audience, studying the part in the "wings" until he receives his cue to
go on again. This method of going through the part continues during the
performance, the actor speaking the lines to the best of his ability,
and following the text as closely as possible.
Returning to the subject of the chapter, there are several instances
of actors and actresses, prominent and minor, receiving their death
strokes on the stage while playing. Mistress Woffington, known as
"lovely Peggy," while playing at Covent Garden, London, May 3, 1757,
fell to the stage at the end of the fourth act of "As You Like it,"
in which she was playing _Rosalind_, and after muttering "O God! O
God!" was carried home to die after a lingering confinement of three
years to her bed. George Frederick Cooke received his death stroke in
New York, while playing _Sir Giles Overreach_, and Edmund Kean died
in England under similar circumstances. The elder Kean and his son
Charles were playing together, the former having the role of _Othello_,
the latter that of _Iago_. The date was March 25, 1833. The event, says
a chronicler, created great excitement among play-goers; the house
was crammed. Kean, who had worn himself out with dissipation, went
through the part, "dying as he went," until he came to the "Farewell,"
and the strangely appropriate words, "Othello's occupation's gone."
Then he gasped for breath and fell upon his son's shoulder, moaning,
"I am dying--speak to them for me!" And so the curtain descended upon
him--forever. His wife had separated from him. "Come home to me; forget
and forgive!" he wrote her after he had been conveyed to Richmond. And
she came. An hour before he died he sprang out of bed, exclaiming,
"A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" and he expired with the
dying words of Octavian, "Farewell, Flo----
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