Curiosities of the American Stage Part 4

They read selections from _Richelieu_ and _The Stranger_, as well as the quarrel scene from _Julius Caesar_, singing during the evening (with blackened faces) a number of negro melodies, "using appropriate dialogue"--as Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke records in the memoir of her brother--"and accompanying their vocal attempts with the somewhat inharmonious banjo and bones." Mrs. Clarke reprints the programme of this performance, and pictures the distress of the young tragedians when they discovered, on arriving in the town, that the simon-pure negro they had employed as an advance agent had in every instance posted their bills upsidedown.

Mr. Booth, during his first San Francisco engagement, appeared more than once in the character of what was then termed a "Dandy n.i.g.g.e.r;" and he remembers that his father, "some time in the forties," played Sam Johnson in _Bone Squash_ at the Front Street Theatre, Baltimore, for the benefit of an old theatrical acquaintance, and played it with great applause.

Lawrence Barrett's negro parts, in the beginning of his career, were George Harris and Uncle Tom himself, in a dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's famous tale.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RALPH KEELER.]

Among the stage negroes of later years, whom the world is not accustomed to a.s.sociate with that profession, Ralph Keeler is one of the most prominent. His "Three Years a Negro Minstrel," first published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1869, and afterwards elaborated in his _Vagabond Adventures_, is very entertaining and instructive reading, and gives an excellent idea of the wandering minstrel life of that period. He began his career at Toledo, Ohio, when he was not more than eleven years of age; and under the management of the celebrated Mr. Booker, the subject of the once famous song, "Meet Johnny Booker on the Bowling-green," he "danced 'Juba'" in small canton-flannel knee-breeches (familiarly known as pants) cheap lace, tarnished gold tinsel, a corked face, and a woolly wig, to the great gratification of the Toledans, who for several months, with pardonable pride, hailed him as their own particular infant phenomenon. At the close of his first engagement he received what was termed a "rousing benefit," the entire proceeds of which, as was the custom of the time, going into the pockets of his enterprising managers. During his short although distinguished professional life he was a.s.sociated with such artists as "Frank" Lynch, "Mike" Mitch.e.l.l, "Dave" Reed, and "Professor"

Lowe, the balloonist, and he was even offered a position in E. P.

Christy's company in New York--the highest compliment which could then be paid to budding talent. Keeler, a brilliant but eccentric writer, whose _Vagabond Adventures_ is too good, in its way, to be forgotten so soon, was a man of decided mark as a journalist. He went to Cuba in 1873 as special correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, and suddenly and absolutely disappeared. He is supposed to have been murdered and thrown into the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: P. T. BARNUM.]

Lynch, when Keeler first knew him, had declined into the fat and slippered end man, too gross to dance, who ordinarily played the tambourine and the banjo, but who could, and not infrequently did, perform everything in the orchestra, from a solo on the penny trumpet to an obligato on the double-ba.s.s. He had been a.s.sociated as a boy, in 1839 or 1840, under Barnum's management, with "Jack" Diamond, who was "the best representative of Ethiopian break-downs" in his day, and, according to P. T. Barnum, the prototype of the many performers of that sort who have entertained the public ever since. Lynch a.s.serted that he and Barnum had appeared together in black faces; and Mr. Barnum, in his _Autobiography_, called Mr. Lynch "an orphan vagabond" whom he had picked up on the road; neither statement seeming to be entirely true. Lynch was his own worst enemy, and, like so many of his kind, he died in poverty and obscurity, his most perfect "break-down" being his own!

It is a melancholy fact that George Holland joined Christy and Wood's minstrels in 1857, playing female characters in a blackened face, and dividing with George Christy the honors of a short season. He returned to Wallack's Theatre in 1858. This is a page in dramatic history which old play-goers do not like to read.

The name of John B. Gough, the temperance orator, occurs occasionally in the reminiscences of old minstrels. He certainly did appear upon the stage as a comic singer in New York and elsewhere during his early and dissipated youth, and even gave exhibitions of ventriloquism and the like in low bar-rooms for the sake of the few pennies he could gather to keep himself in liquor, as he himself describes; but there is no hint in his _Autobiography_ of his ever having appeared in a blackened face, and his theatrical life, if it may be so called, was very short.

Joseph Jefferson, the third and present bearer of that honored name, was unquestionably the youngest actor who ever made his mark with a piece of burnt cork. The story of his first appearance is told by William Winter in his volume ent.i.tled _The Jeffersons_. Coming from a family of actors, the boy, as was natural, was reared amid theatrical surroundings, and when only four years of age--in 1833--he was brought upon the stage by Thomas D. Rice himself, on a benefit occasion at the Was.h.i.+ngton Theatre. Little Joe, blackened and arrayed precisely like his senior, was carried onto the stage in a bag upon the shoulders of the shambling Ethiopian, and emptied from it with the appropriate couplet,

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'd have you for to know I's got a little darky here to jump Jim Crow."

Mrs. John Drew, who was present, says that the boy instantly a.s.sumed the exact att.i.tude of Jim Crow Rice, and sang and danced in imitation of his sable companion, a perfect miniature likeness of that long, ungainly, grotesque, and exceedingly droll comedian.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN B. GOUGH.]

Thomas D. Rice is generally conceded to have been the founder of Ethiopian minstrelsy. Although, as has been seen, it did not originate with him, he made it popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and his image deserves an honored niche in its cathedral. The history of "Jim Crow" Rice, as he was affectionately called for many years, has been written by many scribes and in many different ways, the most complete and most truthful account, perhaps, being that of Edmon S. Conner, who described in the columns of the New York _Times_, June 5, 1881, what he saw and remembered of the birth of Jim Crow. Mr. Conner was a member of the company at the Columbia Street Theatre, Cincinnati, in 1828-29, when he first met Rice, "doing little negro bits" between the acts at that house, notably a sketch he had studied from life in Louisville the preceding summer. Back of the Louisville theatre was a livery-stable kept by a man named Crow. The actors could look into the stable-yard from the windows of their dressing-rooms, and were fond of watching the movements of an old and decrepit slave who was employed by the proprietor to do all sorts of odd jobs. As was the custom among the negroes, he had a.s.sumed his master's name, and called himself Jim Crow. He was very much deformed--the right shoulder was drawn up high, and the left leg was stiff and crooked at the knee, which gave him a painful but at the same time ludicrous limp. He was in the habit of crooning a queer old tune, to which he had applied words of his own. At the end of each verse he gave a peculiar step, "rocking de heel" in the manner since so general among the many generations of his imitators; and these were the words of his refrain:

"Wheel about, turn about, Do jis so, An' ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RICE AS JIM CROW.]

Rice closely watched this unconscious performer, and recognized in him a character entirely new to the stage. He wrote a number of verses, quickened and slightly changed the air, made up exactly like the original, and appeared before a Louisville audience, which, as Mr. Conner says, "went mad with delight," recalling him on the first night at least twenty times. And so Jim Crow jumped into fame and something that looks almost like immortality. "Sol" Smith says that the character was first seen in a piece by Solon Robinson, called _The Rifle_, and that he, Smith, "helped Rice a little in fixing the tune."

Other cities besides Louisville claim Jim Crow. Francis Courtney Wemyss, in his _Autobiography_, says he was a native of Pittsburg, whose name was Jim Cuff; while Robert P. Nevin, in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for November, 1867, declares that the original was a negro stage-driver of Cincinnati, and that Pittsburg was the scene of Rice's first appearance in the part--a local negro there, whose professional career was confined to holding his mouth open for pennies thrown to him on the docks and the streets, furnis.h.i.+ng the wardrobe for the initial performance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THOMAS D. RICE.]

Rice was born in the Seventh Ward of New York in 1808. He was a supernumerary at the Park Theatre, where "Sam" Cowell remembered him in _Bombastes Furioso_ attracting so much attention by his eccentricities that Hilson and Barnes, the leading characters in the cast, made a formal complaint, and had him dismissed from the company Cowell; adding that this man, whose name did not even appear in the bills, was the only actor on the stage whom the audience seemed to notice. Cowell also describes him in Cincinnati, in 1829, as a very una.s.suming modest young man, who wore "a very queer hat, very much pointed down before and behind, and very much c.o.c.ked on one side." He went to England in 1836, where he met with great success, laid the foundation of a very comfortable fortune, and professionally he was the Buffalo Bill of the London of half a century ago. Mr. Ireland, speaking of his popularity in this country, says that he drew more money to the Bowery Theatre than any other performer in the same period of time.

Rice was the author of many of his own farces, notably _Bone Squash_ and _The Virginia Mummy_, and he was the veritable originator of the _genus_ known to the stage as the "dandy darky," represented particularly in his creations of "Dandy Jim of Caroline" and "Spruce Pink." He died in 1860, never having forfeited the respect of the public or the good-will of his fellow-men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES ROBERTS.]

There were many lithographed and a few engraved portraits of Rice made during the years of his great popularity, a number of which are still preserved. In Mr. McKee's collection he is to be seen dancing "Jim Crow"

in English as well as in American prints--as "Gumbo Chaff," on a flat-boat, and, in character, singing the songs "A Long Time Ago" and "Such a Gettin' Up-stairs." In the same collection, among prints of George Dimond and other half-remembered clog-dancers and singers, is a portrait of John N. Smith as "Jim Along Josey," on a sheet of music published by Firth & Hall in 1840; and, more curious and rare than any of these, upon a musical composition, "on which copyright was secured according to law October 7, 1824," is a picture of Mr. Roberts singing "Ma.s.sa George Was.h.i.+ngton and Ma.s.sa Lafayette" in a Continental uniform and with a blackened face. This would make James Roberts, a Scottish vocalist, who died in 1833, the senior of Jim Crow by a number of years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE WAs.h.i.+NGTON DIXON.]

George Was.h.i.+ngton Dixon, whose very name is now almost forgotten, also preceded Rice in this cla.s.s of entertainment, but without Rice's talent, and with nothing like Rice's success. He sang "Coal Black Rose" and "The Long-tailed Blue" at the old amphitheatre in North Pearl Street, Albany, as early as 1827, and he claimed to have been the author of "Old Zip c.o.o.n," which he sang for Allen's benefit in Philadelphia in 1834. He became notorious as a "filibuster" at the time of the troubles in Yucatan, and he made himself particularly offensive to a large portion of the community as the editor of a scurrilous paper called the _Polyanthus_, published in New York. He was caned, shot at, imprisoned for libel, and finally forced to leave the city. He died in the Charity Hospital, New Orleans, in 1861.

Mr. White says that in early days negro songs were sung from the backs of horses in the sawdust ring; that Robert Farrell, "a circus actor," was the original "Zip c.o.o.n," and that the first colored gentleman to wear "The Long-tailed Blue" was Barney Burns, who broke his neck on a vaulting board in Cincinnati in 1838. When the historians disagree in this confusing way, who can possibly decide?

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. DIXON AS ZIP c.o.o.n.]

Rice very naturally had many imitators, and Jim Crow wheeled about the country with considerable success, particularly when the original was in other lands. In the collection of Mr. Moreau is a bill of "The Theatre"

(the Park), dated May 4, 1833, in which Mr. Blakeley was announced to sing the "Comic Extravaganza of Jim Crow" between the comedy of _Laugh When You Can_, in which he played Costly, and the melodrama of _The Floating Beacon_, and preceded by "Signora Adelaide Ferrero in a new ballet dance ent.i.tled 'The Festival of Bacchus';" the entertainments in those days being varied and long. Thomas H. Blakeley was a popular representative of what are called "second old men," Mr. Ireland p.r.o.nouncing him the best Sulky, Rowley, and Humphrey Dobbin ever seen on the New York stage: and the fact that such a man should have appeared at a leading theatre, between the acts, in plantation dress and with blackened face, shows better than anything else, perhaps, the respectable position held by the negro minstrel half a century ago.

Mr. White, so frequently quoted here, is an old minstrel who was part and parcel of what he has more than once described in the public press, and upon his authority the following account of the first _band_ of negro minstrels is given. It was organized in the boarding-house of a Mrs.

Brooks, in Catherine Street, New York, late in the winter of 1842, and it consisted of "Dan" Emmett, "Frank" Brower, "Billy" Whitlock, and "d.i.c.k"

Pelham--the name of the really great negro minstrel being always shortened in this familiar way. According to Mr. White, they made their first appearance in public, for Pelham's benefit, at the Chatham Theatre, New York, on the 17th of February, 1843; later they went to other cities, and even to Europe. This statement was verified by a fragment of autobiography of William Whitlock, given to the New York _Clipper_ by his daughter, Mrs.

Edwin Adams, at the time of Whitlock's death. It is worth quoting here in full, although it contains no dates: "The organization of the minstrels I claim to be my own idea, and it cannot be blotted out. One day I asked Dan Emmett, who was in New York at the time, to practise the fiddle and the banjo with me at his boarding-house in Catherine Street. We went down there, and when we had practised Frank Brower called in by accident. He listened to our music, charmed to his soul[!]. I told him to join with the bones, which he did. Presently d.i.c.k Pelham came in, also by accident, and looked amazed. I asked him to procure a tambourine, and make one of the party, and he went out and got one. After practising for a while we went to the old resort of the circus crowd--the 'Branch,' in the Bowery--with our instruments, and in Bartlett's billiard-room performed for the first time as the Virginia Minstrels. A programme was made out, and the first time we appeared upon the stage before an audience was for the benefit of Pelham at the Chatham Theatre. The house was crammed and jammed with our friends; and d.i.c.k, of course, put ducats in his purse."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DANIEL EMMETT.]

Emmett, describing this scene, places the time "in the spring of 1843,"

and says that they were all of them "end men, and all interlocutors." They sang songs, played their instruments, danced jigs, singly and doubly, and "did 'The Essence of Old Virginia' and the 'Lucy Long Walk Around.'"

Emmett remained upon the minstrel stage for many years; he was a member of the Bryant troupe from 1858 to 1865, and he was the composer of many popular songs, including "Old Dan Tucker," "Boatman's Dance," "Walk Along, John," "Early in the Mornin'," and, according to some authorities, he was the author of "Dixie," which afterwards became the war-song of the South.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES WHITE.]

Mr. White, according to a biographical sketch published in the New York _Clipper_, was born in 1821. He played the accordion--when he was too young to be held responsible for the offence--at Thalian Hall, in Grand Street, New York, as long ago as 1843, and the next year organized what he called "'The Kitchen Minstrels' on the second floor of the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. The first floor was occupied by Tiffany, Young & Ellis, jewellers; the third by the renowned Ottignon as a gymnasium. Here, where the venerable Palmo had introduced to delighted audiences the Italian opera, and regaled them with fragrant Mocha coffee handed around by obsequious waiters, he first came most prominently before the public.... In 1846 he opened the Melodeon at 53 Bowery." Here, as usual, there is a decided confusion of dates and of facts. _Valentine's Manual_ for 1865 says, "Palmo's cafe, on the corner of Reade Street and Broadway, was a popular resort from 1835 to 1840, at which later period he abandoned his former occupation and erected the opera-house in Chambers Street, afterwards Burton's Theatre." Joseph N. Ireland, in his _Records of the New York Stage_, published in 1867, says--and Mr. Ireland is usually correct--"The fourth attempt to introduce the Italian opera in New York, and the second to give it an individual local habitation, was this season [1843-44], made by Ferdinand Palmo, on the site long previously occupied by Stoppani's Arcade Baths, in Chambers Street (Nos. 39 and 41), and nearly opposite the centre of the building on the north end of the Park originally erected for the city almshouse, and afterwards used for various public offices.... Signor Palmo had been a popular and successful _restaurateur_ in Broadway between the hospital and Duane Street....

Palmo's Opera-house was first opened by its proprietor on the 3d of February, 1844"; while Charles T. Cook, of Tiffany & Co., who has been connected with that house for over forty years, shows by its records that Tiffany, Young & Ellis did not move to 271 Broadway, on the southwest corner of Chambers Street, until 1847, when they occupied the second floor as well as the first. That Sir Walter Raleigh, losing all confidence in the infallibility of human testimony, should have thrown the second part of his _History of the World_ into the flames is not to be wondered at!

Mr. White, nevertheless, was prominently before the public for many years as manager and performer; he was a.s.sociated with the "Virginia Serenaders," with "The Ethiopian Operatic Brothers" (Operatic Brother Barney Williams playing the tambourine at one end of the line); with "The Sable Sisters and Ethiopian Minstrels;" with "The New York Minstrels,"

etc. He introduced "Dan" Bryant to the public, and has done other good services in contributing to the healthful, harmless amus.e.m.e.nt of his fellow-men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWIN P. CHRISTY.]

"Christy's Minstrels, organized in 1842," was the legend for a number of years upon the bills and advertis.e.m.e.nts of the company of E. P. Christy.

This would give it precedence of the "Virginia Minstrels" by a few months at least. When the matter was called to the attention of Mr. Emmett, many years later, he wrote from Chicago on the 1st of May, 1877, that after his own band had gone to Europe a number of similar entertainments were given in all parts of the country, and that Enam d.i.c.kinson, who had had some experience in that line in other companies, had trained Christy's troupe in Buffalo in all the business of the scenes, Mr. Emmett believing that Mr. Christy simply claimed, and with truth, that he was "the first to harmonize and originate the present style of negro minstrelsy," meaning the singing in concert and the introduction of the various acts, which were universally followed by other bands on both sides of the Atlantic, and which have led our English brethren to give to all Ethiopian entertainments the generic name of "Christy Minstrels," as they call all top-boots "Wellingtons" and all policemen "Bobbies."

Christy's Minstrels proper began their metropolitan career at the hall of the Mechanics' Society, 472 Broadway, near Grand Street, early in 1846, and remained there until the summer of 1854, when Edwin P. Christy, the leader and founder of the company, retired from business. George Christy, who the year before had joined forces with Henry Wood at 444 Broadway, formerly Mitch.e.l.l's Olympic, took both halls after the abdication of the elder Christy, and rattled the bones at one establishment, "Billy"

Birch, afterwards so popular in San Francisco and New York, cutting similar capers at the other, and each performer appearing at both houses on the same evening.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE CHRISTY.]

Edwin P. Christy died in May, 1862. George Harrington, known to the stage as George Christy, died in May, 1868; while in April of the latter year Mechanics' Hall, with which in the minds of so many old New-Yorkers they are both so pleasantly a.s.sociated, was entirely destroyed by fire, never to be rebuilt for minstrel uses.

The contemporaries and successors of the Christys were numerous and various. The air was full of their music, and dozens of halls in the city of New York alone echoed the patter of their clogged feet for years. Among the more famous of them the following may briefly be mentioned: Buckley's "New Orleans Serenaders" were organized in 1843; they consisted of George Swayne, Frederick, and R. Bishop Buckley, and were very popular throughout the country. "White's Serenaders" were at the Melodeon, 53 Bowery, perhaps as early as 1846, and certainly at White's Athenaeum, 585 Broadway, opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, as late as 1872. The Harrington Minstrels were at Palmo's Opera-house in 1847 or 1848. Bryant's Minstrels, as their old play-bills show, were organized in 1857, when they occupied Mechanics' Hall; they went to the Tammany Building on Fourteenth Street in 1868, were at 730 Broadway the next year, and opened the hall on Twenty-third Street near Sixth Avenue in 1870, where they remained until Dan Bryant, the last of his race, died in 1875. Wood's Minstrels were at 514 Broadway, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1862 and later. "Sam"

Sharpley's Minstrels were at 201 Bowery in 1864. "Tony" Pastor's troupe were in the same building in 1865, where they remained two years; they were upon the site of the Metropolitan Theatre--later Winter Garden--for a few seasons, and until they removed to their present cosey home near Tammany Hall. The San Francisco Minstrels were at 585 Broadway in 1865, and in 1874 went to the more familiar hall on Broadway, opposite the Sturtevant House, Budworth's Minstrels opened the Fifth Avenue Hall, where the Madison Square Theatre now stands, in 1866. Kelly and Leon, who were on Broadway on the site of Hope Chapel in 1867, where they were credited with having "Africanized opera bouffe," followed Budworth to the Twenty-fourth Street house. Besides these were the companies of Morris Brothers, of Cotton and Murphy and Cotton and Reed, of Hooley, of Haverly, of Dockstader, of Pelham, of Pierce, of Campbell, of Pell and Trowbridge, of Thatcher, Primrose and West, of Huntley, and of very many more, to say nothing of the bands of veritable negroes who have endeavored to imitate themselves in imitation of their white brethren in all parts of the land.

Brander Matthews, in an article on "Negro Minstrelsy," printed in the London _Sat.u.r.day Review_ in 1884, and afterwards published as one of the chapters of a volume of _Sat.u.r.day Review_ essays, ent.i.tled _The New Book of Sports_ (London, 1885), describes a "minstrel show" given by the negro waiters of one of the large summer hotels in Saratoga a few summers before, in which, "when the curtains were drawn aside, discovering a row of sable performers, it was perceived, to the great and abiding joy of the spectators, that the musicians were all of a uniform darkness of hue, and that they, genuine negroes as they were, had 'blackened up,' the more closely to resemble the professional negro minstrel."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE SWAYNE BUCKLEY.]

The dignified and imposing Mr. Johnston has sat during all these years in the centre of a long line of black comedians, which includes such artists as "Eph" Horn, "Dan" Neil, and "Jerry" Bryant--whose real name was...o...b..ien--Charles H. Fox, "Charley" White, George Christy, "Nelse"

Seymour--Thomas Nelson Sanderson--the Buckleys, J. W. Raynor, Birch, Bernard, Wambold, Backus, "Pony" Moore, "Dan" Cotton, "Bob" Hart, "Cool"

White, "Dan" Emmett, "Dave" Reed, "Matt" Peel, "Ben" Gardner, Luke Schoolcraft, James H. Budworth, Kelly, Leon, "Frank" Brower, S. C.

Campbell, "Gus" Howard, "Billy" Newcomb, "Billy" Gray, Aynsley Cooke, "Hughey" Dougherty, "Tony" Hart, Unsworth, W. H. Delehanty, "Sam" Devere, "Add" Ryman, George Thatcher, "Master Eugene," "Ricardo," "Andy" Leavitt, "Sam" Sanford, "Lew" Benedict, "Harry" Bloodgood, "Cal" Wagner, "Ben"