Curiosities of the American Stage Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAY HAINES AND ISA BOWMAN AS THE TWO PRINCES IN KING RICHARD III.]

The most remarkable and most successful of the Infant Phenomena of modern times in America have been the Bateman Children, the Marsh Juvenile Troupe, and the Boone and the Holman Children. On the 10th of December, 1849, E. A. Marshall, manager of the Broadway Theatre, introduced on the boards of that house, for the first time to New York audiences, Kate and Ellen Bateman, whose united ages were not ten years. Kate made her _debut_ as Richmond, and Ellen, the younger, as Richard, in scenes from Shakspere's _Richard III._ The announcement of the coming of the infantile Thespians was not favorably received by the regular attendants of the Broadway; the appearance of prodigies of any kind being a departure from the ways of that traditional home of the legitimate drama, and there was a prejudice formed against these young stars which nothing but the absolute cleverness of their performances was able to overcome. After Mr.

Hackett as Falstaff, and Miss Cushman as Lady Macbeth, it was scarcely natural that unknown children in the same and kindred parts should satisfy the critical audiences of the Old Broadway. The popularity of the Batemans, however, was quickly established; those who came to scoff on the first night returned to praise; the whole town, young and old, petted and applauded the children; while still the wonder grew, during the single week of their engagement, how the two small heads could carry all they knew. It seemed incredible that an infant of four years like Ellen Bateman could present anything approaching an embodiment of such characters as Shylock, Richard, or Lady Macbeth; or that a child of six, as was Kate at that time, should be able to play Richmond, Portia, or the Thane with the correctness of elocution, the spirit, and the proper comprehension of the language and the business which she displayed. The simple task of committing to memory the text of so many parts was in itself a marvellous effort for children of their tender age, but to be able to speak these lines as set down for them with correct emphasis and gesture, and with every appearance of a thorough conception of the character sustained, as the little Batemans are said to have done, certainly warranted all the praise that was bestowed upon them. Every fresh character they undertook was a surprise, and was considered more clever than any that had preceded it. Lady Macbeth was, perhaps, the most successful of Ellen's a.s.sumptions, while Kate read Portia with amazing skill and propriety; her delivery of the familiar lines was finished, and her carriage throughout was that of an experienced artist.

After appearing in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other American cities, the Bateman Children were taken to England by P. T. Barnum, in the summer of 1851, making their first appearance there at the St. James's Theatre, London, on the 23d August, as _The Young Couple_, and meeting with decided success. They returned to the Old Broadway November 15, 1852, and opened in a comedietta ent.i.tled _Her Royal Highness_, written expressly for them. They were quite as popular here as when they first appeared, and before they left New York Mayor Kingsland, "on behalf of a committee of leading citizens," presented to each of the children a tiny gold watch.

In 1856, no longer juveniles, though still most acute, voluble, and full of grace, they retired from the stage. Miss Kate Bateman returned to it, however, in a few years, a young lady, and an actress of more than ordinary merit. Even if she had not since then made for herself, both in this country and in England, a reputation as one of the strongest tragic and melodramatic artists on the English-speaking stage, the story of her early career as told here is worthy of a place in dramatic history because of the precocious excellence of her acting as a child, and of the wonderful success which she everywhere won. She was a Phenomenon among Phenomena in this respect, that she grew and advanced in her profession as she grew in stature and advanced in years--one of the very few of the infant prodigies who, in later life, became an ornament to the stage.

On the 10th of December, 1855, precisely six years after the first appearance of the Bateman Children at the Broadway Theatre, the Marsh Juvenile Troupe made their first appearance here at the same house, and made, also, a very favorable impression even upon critics not predisposed to be attracted by any exhibition of prodigies. In their acting was a perceptible absence of that familiar, parrot-like, mechanical repet.i.tion of unfamiliar words, and of those studied and artificial att.i.tudes so painfully marked in juvenile players generally. Their impersonations were spirited and exact, and evinced unusual mental apt.i.tude and training, their audiences being sometimes startled by the extraordinary precocity with which some of the leading parts were filled. Their initial performance consisted of _Beauty and the Beast_, Miss Louisa Marsh representing the Beast, while little Mary Marsh, as Beauty, pleasantly filled all of the personal and mental requirements of that _role_. _Beauty and the Beast_ was followed by _The Wandering Minstrel_, Master George H.

Marsh playing Jem Baggs, "with the popular, doleful, pathetic, sympathetic, lamentable history of 'Villikins and his Dinah.'" These were supplemented later, during the Marshes' engagement, with _The Rivals_--Mr.

Blake as Sir Anthony, Madame Ponisi as Julia--or with _A Morning Call_, Madame Ponisi playing Mrs. Chillington, and Augustus A. Fenno Sir Edward; the Juveniles, although attractive, being scarcely successful in filling the house by their sole exertions.

The Marsh Children, although generally announced by that name on the bills, were not members of one family, nor were they Marshes. George and Mary, brother and sister, and both of them said to have been less than eight years of age when they came here first, were in private life Master and Miss Guerineau--while the other leading lady, Louisa Marsh, was properly Miss McLaughlin. The entire company was composed of children. As they died--and the mortality among them was remarkable--or as they grew too large for the troupe, their places were filled by other precocious infants, engaged by their clever manager in his strollings from town to town. Among the members of the company at different times were Miss Ada Webb, Miss f.a.n.n.y Berkley, Miss Ada and Miss Minnie Monk, and Louis Aldrich, all of whom, if not great, subsequently, in their profession, are still not unknown to fame. Unlike the Batemans, however, none of the Marsh Juveniles ever became stars of more than common magnitude, and none of them are s.h.i.+ning very brilliantly on the stage to-day. George Marsh, the low comedian, was very clever in his way, although not original in his impersonations. His powers of imitation were marvellous, and his Toodles, a miniature copy of Burton's Toodles, in which all of the business and many of the gags--even to the profanity at the mention of Thompson--were retained, was almost as funny in its uproariousness as was Burton's Toodles itself, and certainly better than many of the imitations that have been seen since Burton's day. Little Mary Marsh was an uncommonly attractive child, bright-eyed, graceful, fresh, and fair. The boy between eight and fifteen in her audiences who did not succ.u.mb to her loveliness was only fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. Her name was to be found written in some copy-book, her face sketched in some drawing-book in the male department of every school in New York, and in the average schoolboy's mind she was a.s.sociated in some romantic way with all of the good and beautiful women of his history or his mythology; she inhabited all the salubrious and balmy isles in his geography; she was dreamed of in his philosophy; and one particular lad, who is now more than old enough to pay the school bills of boys of his own, when asked, in a chemistry cla.s.s, by the master, "What is the symbol and equivalent of pota.s.sium?" answered, absently, but without hesitation, "Mary Mars.h.!.+"

The pa.s.sion the child inspired in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of her adorers was a pure one, and, except in the neglect of a prosy lesson or two, it did no harm.

Her memory is still kept green in the hearts of many practical men of to-day, who unblus.h.i.+ngly confess to a filling of their boyish eyes and a quivering of their boyish lips when the sad story of her untimely and dreadful death was told here. While playing in one of the Southern cities, her dress took fire from the footlights and she was fatally burned, living but an hour or two after the accident occurred.

On the 3d of August, 1857, the Marshes played _Black-eyed Susan_ at Laura Keene's Theatre here, followed by _The Toodles_. From the bill of this, their opening night, the following casts are copied:

BLACK-EYED SUSAN.

William Miss Louisa Marsh.

Gnatbrain Master George H. Marsh.

Tom Bowling Master Alfred (Stewart).

Admiral Master Waldo (Todd).

Dolly Mayflower Miss Carrie (Todd).

Black-eyed Susan Miss Mary Marsh.

TOODLES.

Timothy Toodles Master George H. Marsh.

George Acorn Miss Louisa Marsh.

Tabitha Toodles Miss Mary Marsh.

This was probably the last season of the Marsh Juveniles in New York, and since their exit no startling troupe of Phenomena have appeared here. The Boone and the Holman Children were clever, but not so successful as the Marshes. The Worrell Sisters were popular, but, although young girls, they were in their teens, and scarcely came under the head of infant players.

They made their New York _debut_ at Wood's Theatre, 514 Broadway, afterwards the Theatre Comique, under the management of George Wood, in a burletta called _The Elves_, April 30, 1866, Miss Sophie Worrell, the eldest of the three sisters, being at that time fully eighteen years of age.

Among the occasional companies of children who have appeared in New York were "The Mexican Juvenile Troupe." They occupied Mr. Daly's Fifth Avenue Theatre during the summer season of 1875, remaining two weeks, and appearing at the Lyceum Theatre, on Fourteenth Street, from the 1st to the 13th of November in the same year. Their performances were conducted in the Spanish language, and their specialty was opera-bouffe. They were well trained in voice and action, but the music in their childish treble was weak; and, personally, the troupe ran to legs and arms and hands and feet, and the general angular and awkward undevelopment characteristic of their age and size. The bit of a _prima donna_ who sang La Grand d.u.c.h.esse and La Belle Helene in the t.i.tular parts, and who was known to fame as Signorina Carmen Unda y Moron, was made up carefully after Tostee, whom, in certain actions and gestures and expression of face, she much resembled. She displayed all of the vim and _abandon_ and _chic_ of the veteran actress, and tossed her head, and switched her train, and ogled and leered, and capered like the very Tostee herself, as seen through the reverse of an opera-gla.s.s. The child acted with spirit, or something that was like it, and seemed to have a morbid enjoyment and comprehension of the indelicate parts she played. The spectacle was far from being a pleasant one, and probably shocked more persons than it amused. Little Carmen was certainly not more than eight years old, and barely as tall as the table in her stage parlor, while none of the company reached in height the backs of the chairs of ordinary size with which, in strange incongruity, the stage of the Lyceum was always set.

During the past fifteen or twenty years there have appeared upon the New York stage, generally unheralded, several little actors and actresses who have shown decided ability for the profession, while claiming no phenomenal talent, and in whom certainly there seemed to be fair promise of a brilliant future. Among these have been little Minnie Maddern, who appeared at the French Theatre on Fourteenth Street, May 30, 1870, as Sibyl Carew, in Tom Taylor's _Sheep in Wolf's Clothing_, supporting Miss Carlotta Leclercq as Anne. Her knowledge of stage business, her general carriage, and the careful delivery of her lines throughout the play were remarkable for a child of her years; and hers was considered one of the most satisfactory representations in the piece. The pleasant reputation she made there was sustained at Booth's Theatre in the month of May, 1874, when she played Arthur in _King John_, with Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., in the t.i.tular part, Mrs. Agnes Booth as Constance, and John McCullough as the b.a.s.t.a.r.d--a good cast. A more pretentious Arthur--an older, not a better one--was that of Master Percy Roselle, who played it in one act of _King John_ at a _matinee_ benefit given to Miss Matilda Heron, January 17, 1872.

Miss Jennie Yeamans was _almost_ a Phenomenon, although, fortunately for herself, she was never subjected by her managers to the forcing process.

As Joseph in a burlesque of _Richelieu_, at the Olympic, in February, 1871, she was very good, second only to George Fox as the Cardinal-Duke, whom, with a piece of chalk, she a.s.sisted in drawing the awful circle of the Tammany Ring around the form of Miss Lillie Eldridge as Julie. The solemnity of the entire performance on the child's part, her wonderful command of her features, and her display of a dry, apparently unconscious humor, all in the true spirit of burlesque, were delightful to contemplate. She was equally good and amusing in a part of an entirely different nature, Notah, the Little Pappoose, in Augustin Daly's _Horizon_, a little later in the same season at the same house.

Representing an Indian child who had no knowledge of the English tongue, and who united to the natural mischievousness of childhood all of the untamed viciousness of the Indian nature, she was captured on the plains by the Hon. Sundown Bowse (G. L. Fox), and she made that gentleman's stage existence more than a burden to him through several acts. When Charles Fisher played Falstaff at the Fifth Avenue Theatre she was an excellent William Page.

Miss Mabel Leonard, apparently some five years old, supported H. J.

Montague at Wallack's Theatre in the month of October, 1874, when the _Romance of a Poor Young Man_ was produced, playing with a good deal of skill a little Breton peasant girl. The same young lady and Bijou Heron were the children in Miss Morris's version of _East Lynne_, called _Miss Multon_, at the Union Square Theatre in November, 1876. Their judicious training, and the careful acting of their not unimportant parts, added much to the general completeness of the drama, and will be still vividly remembered by all now living who were play-goers years ago.

Of all the children who have appeared upon the stage during the past twenty years, Bijou Heron was one of the brightest and most promising. In face refined, intelligent, and attractive, in voice pleasant and sympathetic, in figure neat, graceful, and _pet.i.te_ even for her years, she had all the personal requirements of success in her profession, combined with careful training, quick comprehension, tact, intelligence, and love for her art. As the only child, and as the hope and idol of a once favorite actress, whose popularity was of so comparatively recent a date that she had not pa.s.sed out of the memory of the theatre-goers of her daughter's time, she was kindly and affectionately received in New York for Matilda Heron's sake, even before she had won for herself, and by her own exertions, so many friends here.

After long preparation she made her first appearance on any stage at Daly's Fifth Avenue Theatre, Twenty-eighth Street, on April 14, 1874, in a play ent.i.tled _Monsieur Alphonse_, from the French of the younger Dumas, by Mr. Daly, and first presented that evening in this country. It was probably one of the most thoroughly successful _debuts_ witnessed here in many years. Aside from the shyness and constraint so natural to the _debutante_, and without which no true actor ever stepped for the first time before a critical public, she bore herself naturally, simply, and with charming grace. The part is long and difficult, not one of the commonplace, childish _roles_ usually intrusted to infant players, nor one of the high tragedy star _roles_ sometimes inflicted upon juvenile prodigies, but a bit of leading juvenile business requiring more than ordinary intelligence and skill upon the part of its representative. Many actresses who have been years upon the stage, and who are considered beyond the average in their playing, would have played it with less appreciation and success.

Of the juvenile actors of the present time something has already been said. As a rule they belong to the legitimate branches of the profession, and they are as rational, perhaps, as is the drummer-boy of the army, the elevator-boy of society, or the cash-boy of trade. Alice in Wonderland adorns a charming tale, Prince and Pauper and Little Lord Fauntleroy point a pretty moral, even Editha's Burglar may have his uses; but, take them as a whole, it is a difficult matter to determine the exact position of the Infant Phenomena upon the stage. They occupy, perhaps, the neutral ground between the amateurs and the monstrosities, without belonging to either cla.s.s, or to art. As professional performers, although in embryo, they cannot share exemption from the severe tests of criticism with those who only play at being players; and as human beings, although undeveloped, they cannot be judged as leniently as are the learned pigs and the trained monkeys from whom some of Mr. Darwin's disciples might believe them to be evolved. The public demands them, however, and dramatists make them; therefore let them pa.s.s for stars!

ACT V.

A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.

A CENTURY OF AMERICAN HAMLETS.

"So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet."

_Hamlet_, Act i. Sc. 3.

Hamlet, in his wholesome advice to the players, in his command to the garrulous old gentleman who would have been his father-in-law had Hamlet been a low comedy instead of a high tragedy part, that the players be well bestowed, and in his bold a.s.sertion that the play's the thing, showed plainly how great was his interest in the drama, and how keen his appreciation of what the Profession ought to be. Hamlet has done much for the players, but the players have cruelly wronged Hamlet. They have mouthed him, and strutted him, and bellowed him, have sawn him in the air with their hands, and have torn his pa.s.sions to tatters, till it were better for Hamlet often that the town-crier himself had spoken his lines.

A very few of our tragedians of the city have had enough respect for the character of Hamlet to let him alone. Others have done full justice to Hamlet, and as Hamlet have reflected credit upon Hamlet and upon themselves; but there have been players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, who, not to speak it profanely, having neither the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have made nights and _matinees_ hideous with the part, and have done murder most foul to Hamlet.

There can be no question that New York is the dramatic metropolis of the United States--and despite the absence of anything like State aid--as certainly as Paris is the capital of France, and as surely as London is the centre of Great Britain. A New York success is of as much importance to the new play and to the young player as is the crown of the Academy to the new book, or the degree to the young doctor; and a history of _Hamlet_ in New York, therefore, is virtually a history of _Hamlet_ in America.

The tragedy has been played here during the last century and a quarter in many languages, by actors of all ages and of both s.e.xes, in blond wigs and in natural black hair, with elaborate scenery and with no scenery at all, by almost every tragedian in the country, and on the stage of almost every theatre in the city with the exception of Wallack's last theatre, now Palmer's. It has been burlesqued, and sung as an opera; and its representatives have been good, bad, and very, very indifferent. So much is there to be said about _Hamlet_ in New York that the great difficulty in preparing this sketch of its career is the proper and natural selection of what not to say.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDMUND KEAN.]

_Hamlet_ was first presented in the city of New York on the evening of the 26th of November, 1761, and at the "New Theatre in Chappel Street"--now Beekman Street--near Na.s.sau, the younger Lewis Hallam, the original Hamlet in America (at Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1759), playing the t.i.tular part. Hallam was a versatile actor, who was on the stage in this country for over fifty years, and always popular. Concerning his Hamlet very little is now known, except the curious statement in the _Memoirs of Alexander Graydon_, published in 1811, that Hallam once ventured to appear as Hamlet in London--"and was endured!" He was the acknowledged leading tragedian of the New York stage until his retirement in 1806, and he is known to have played Hamlet as late as 1797, when he must have been close upon sixty years of age. Mr. Ireland is of the impression that John Hodgkinson, a contemporary of Hallam's, who appeared as Hamlet in Charleston, South Carolina, early in the present century, conceded Hallam's rights to the character in the metropolis, and never attempted it here.

The first Hamlet in New York in point of quality, and perhaps the second in point of time, was that of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, who played the part at the John Street Theatre on the 22d of November, 1797, although Mr.

Ireland believes that he was preceded by Mr. Moreton at the theatre on Greenwich Street, in the summer of the same year, as he had played the Ghost to Moreton's Hamlet in Baltimore a short time before. William Dunlap speaks in the highest terms of Cooper's Hamlet, and John Bernard ranks it with the Hamlet of John Philip Kemble himself.

James Fennell, a brilliant but uncertain English actor, who came to America in 1794, was the next Hamlet worthy of note to appear in New York.

He was at the John Street Theatre as early as 1797, but he does not seem to have undertaken the character of the Dane until 1806, when he was at the Park for a few nights. He was an eccentric person, who figures in all of the dramatic memoirs of his time, and who published in 1841 a very remarkable book, called an _Apology_ for his own life. Educated for the Church, he became in turn--and nothing long--an actor in the provinces of England, a teacher of declamation in Paris, a writer for the press in London, and a salt-maker, a bridge-builder, a lecturer, an editor, a school-master, and again and again an actor in America. John Bernard speaks of him as that "whirligig-weatherc.o.c.k-fellow Fennell," and as "the maddest madman I ever knew." He was excellent as Oth.e.l.lo and Iago, and, according to Mr. Ireland, "beyond all compet.i.tion as Zanga," but concerning his Hamlet history is silent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM AUGUSTUS CONWAY.]

John Howard Payne enjoys the distinction of being the first American Hamlet who was born in America, and he had been born but seventeen years when he played Hamlet at the Park Theatre in May, 1809. Two years later, on the 5th of April, 1811, he introduced the tragedy to Albany audiences, and his Hamlet, naturally, was as immature and as amateur as it was premature.

Other juvenile tragedians followed Master Payne upon the stage when they should have been in bed, notably Master George F. Smith, who played Hamlet at the Park Theatre on the 28th of March, 1822, and, very notably, Master Joseph Burke, who played in Dublin in 1824, when he was five years old, and who was recognized as a star in _Hamlet_ in the United States when he was twelve.

But to leave the pygmies and return to the giants. Play-goers in New York between the years 1810 and 1821 were blessed, as play-goers have never been blessed before, in being able to enjoy and to compare the performances of three of the greatest actors it has ever been the lot of any single pair of eyes to see or of any single pair of ears to hear: to wit, Cooke, Kean, and Booth. George Frederick Cooke arrived in America in 1810, and remained here until his death in 1812. Setting at defiance all the laws of nature, society, and art, he was in nothing more remarkable than in the fact that in the whole history of the drama in this country he is the only really great tragedian, old or young, who never attempted to play Hamlet here. His diary records his failure in the part in London years before; and Leigh Hunt, who praises him highly in other lines, says that he could willingly spare the recollection of his Hamlet, and that "the most accomplished character on the stage he converted into an unpolished, obstinate, sarcastic madman."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES WILLIAM WALLACK.]