The Mapleson Memoirs, 1848-1888 Volume Ii Part 15

_An Act to Protect Hotel and Boarding-house Keepers._

"Be it enacted by the General a.s.sembly of the State of Missouri as follows:--

"Section I.--Every person who shall obtain board or lodging in any hotel or boarding-house by means of any statement or pretence, or shall fail or refuse to pay therefor, shall be held to have obtained the same with the intent to cheat and defraud such hotel or boarding-house keeper, and shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in the county gaol or city workhouse not exceeding six months, or by both (such) fine and imprisonment.

"Section II.--It shall be the duty of every hotel and boarding-house keeper in this State to post a printed copy of this Act in a conspicuous place in each room of his or her hotel or boarding-house, and no conviction shall be had under the foregoing section until it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the Court that the provisions of this section have been substantially complied with by the hotel or boarding-house keeper making the complaint.

"Approved March 25th, 1885."

I had, counting princ.i.p.als, chorus, ballet, and orchestra, 160 persons under my care, and by the terms of the hotel notice just reproduced the penalties incurred by my Company, had they quartered themselves upon innkeepers without possessing the means of paying their bills, would have amounted in the gross to 16,000 in fines and eighty years in periods of imprisonment. It was evidently better to bivouac in the open than to run the chance of so crus.h.i.+ng a punishment.

A deputation of the chorus waited upon me, saying that as their artistic career seemed to be at an end, it would be as well for them to take to the sale of bananas and ice creams in the streets; whilst others proposed to start restaurants, or to blacken their faces and form themselves into companies of Italian n.i.g.g.e.rs.

Some of the female choristers wished to take engagements as cooks, and one ancient dame who in her early youth had sold flowers on the banks of the Arno thought it would be pretty and profitable to resume in Frisco the occupation which she had pursued some thirty or forty years previously at Florence.

All these chorus singers seemed to have a trade of some kind to depend upon. In Italy they had been choristers only by night, and in the day time had followed the various callings to which now in their difficult position they desired to return. All I was asked for by my choristers was permission to consider themselves free, and in a few cases a little money with which to buy wheelbarrows. I adjured them, however, to remain faithful to me, and soon persuaded them that if they stuck to the colours all would yet be right. For forty-eight hours they remained encamped outside the theatre. Fortunately they were in a climate as beautiful as that of their native land; and with a little macaroni, which they cooked in the open air, a little Californian wine, which costs next to nothing, and a little tobacco they managed to get on.

_From the "Morning Call."_

"The scene outside the Grand Opera-house looked very much like Act 3 from _Carmen_--about 100 antique and picturesque members of Mapleson's chorus and ballet, male and female, were sitting or lying on their baggage where they had pa.s.sed the night. As these light-hearted and light-pursed children of sunny Italy lay basking in the sun they helped the hours to pa.s.s by card playing, cigarette smoking, and the exercise of other international vices. One could notice that there was a sort of expectant fear amongst them seldom seen in people of their cla.s.s."

What above all annoyed them was that they were not allowed to go to their trunks, an embargo having been laid not only on my music, but on the whole of the Company's baggage. One of them, Mdme. Isia, wished to get something out of her box, but she was warned off by the Sheriff, who at once drew his revolver.

The Oakland steamer was ready to carry us across the bay to the railway station as soon as we should be free to depart. But there were formalities still to go through and positive obstacles to overcome. At last my anxious choristers, looking everywhere for some sign, saw me driving towards them in a buggy with the Sheriff's officer. I bore in my hand a significant bit of blue paper which I waved like a flag as I approached them. They responded with a ringing cheer. They understood me and knew that they were saved.

How, it will be asked, did the Company lose its popularity with the American public to such an extent as to be unable to perform with any profitable result? In the first place several of the singers had fallen ill, and though the various maladies by which they were affected could not by any foresight on my part have been prevented, the public, while recognizing that fact, ended at last by losing faith in a Company whose leading members were invalids.

One of the St. Louis papers had given at the time a detailed account of the illnesses from which so many members of my Company were suffering.

"An astonis.h.i.+ng amount of sickness," said the writer, "has seriously interfered with the success of the Italian Opera. Fohstrom and Dotti sang during the engagement, but both complained of colds and sore-throats, and claimed that their singing was not near as good as it usually is. Minnie Hauk had a cold and stayed all the week in St. Paul.

Mdlle. Bauermeister could not sing on account of bronchitis. Signor Belasco was compelled to have several teeth pulled out, and complained of swollen gums. Mdme. Nordica was sick, without going into particulars.

Signor Rigo was sick after the same fas.h.i.+on. Signor Sapio was attacked by quinsy at Chicago, and returned to New York. Signor Arditi, the musical conductor, was confined to his bed with pneumonia. Mdme.

Lablache had a bad cold and appeared with difficulty. Many of the costumes failed to appear because Signor Belasco, the armourer, was taken sick en route, and held the keys of the trunks."

The illness from which so many of the members of my Company were suffering might, in part at least, be accounted for by their reckless gaiety at St. Paul. The winter festival was in full swing, and the ice-palace and tobogganing had charms for my vocalists, which they were unable to resist. They went sliding down the hill several times every day. The ladies would come home with their clinging garments thoroughly wet. They caught cold as a matter of course, and the sport they had had sliding down hill took several thousand dollars out of my pocket.

Minnie Hauk was nearly crazy on tobogganing; so was Nordica. Signori Sapio and Rigo tried heroically to keep up with the ladies in this sport, and were afterwards threatened with consumption as a reward for their gallant efforts.

But it was above all the conflict between Ravelli and Minnie Hauk in _Carmen_ that did us harm, for the details of the affair soon got known and were at once reproduced in all the papers. It has been seen that Mr.

von Wartegg found it necessary to bring Ravelli before the police magistrate and get him bound over on a very heavy penalty to keep the peace towards Mdme. von Wartegg, otherwise Mdme. Minnie Hauk; and the case, as a matter of course, was fully reported.

What could the public think of an Opera Company in which the tenor was always threatening to murder the prima donna, while the prima donna's husband found himself forced to take up a position at one of the wings bearing a revolver with which he proposed to shoot the tenor the moment he showed the slightest intention of approaching the personage for whom he is supposed to entertain an ungovernable pa.s.sion? "Don Jose" was, according to the opera, madly in love with "Carmen." But it was an understood thing between the singers impersonating these two characters that they were to keep at a respectful distance one from the other.

Ravelli was afraid of Minnie Hauk's throttling him while engaged in the emission of a high B flat; and Minnie Hauk, on her side, dreaded the murderous knife with which Ravelli again and again had threatened her.

Love-making looks, under such conditions, a little unreal. "I adore you; but I will not allow you under pretence of embracing me to pinch my throat!"

"If you don't keep at a respectful distance I will stab you!"

Such contradictions between words and gestures, between the music of the singers and their general demeanour towards one another, could not satisfy even the least discriminating of audiences; and the American public, if appreciative, is also critical.

With some of my singers ill in bed, others quarrelling and fighting among themselves on the public stage, my Company got the credit of being entirely disorganized, and at every fresh city we visited our receipts became smaller and smaller. The expenditure meanwhile in salaries, travelling expenses, law costs, and hotel bills was something enormous.

The end of it all was that at San Francisco we found ourselves defeated and compelled to seek safety in flight.

We did our best at one final performance to get in a little money with which to begin the retreat; and I must frankly admit that the hotel-keepers on whom the various members of my Company were at this time quartered did their very best to push the sale of tickets, for in that alone lay their hope of getting their bills paid.

It has been seen that at one time I was threatened with a complete break-up: my forces seemed on the point of dispersing.

I succeeded, however, in keeping the Company together with the exception only of Ravelli, Cherubini, and Mdlle. Devigne, who afterwards started to give representations on their own account, and soon found themselves in a worse plight than even their former a.s.sociates who had the loyalty and the sense to remain with me. After much aimless rambling they turned their heads towards New York, which, in the course of two months, they contrived by almost superhuman efforts to reach.

Before leaving, Ravelli, as I have shown, dealt me a treacherous blow by getting an embargo laid on my music as if to secure him payment of money due, but which was proved not to be owing as soon as the matter was brought before the Court. That there may be no mistake on this point I will here give exact reproductions of Ravelli's claim as set forth in due legal form, and of my reply thereto. Apart from the substance of the case, it will interest the reader to see that an American brief bears but little resemblance to the ponderous doc.u.ment known by that name in England. An American lawyer sets forth in plain direct language what in England would be concealed beneath a ma.s.s of puzzling and almost unintelligible verbiage. I may add that law papers in America are not pen-written but type-written, being thus made clear not only to the mind, but also to the eye. In America a lawyer arrives in Court with a few type-written papers in the breast-pocket of his coat. In England he would be attended by an unhappy boy groaning beneath the weight of a whole ma.s.s of scribbled paper divided into numerous parcels, each one tied up with red tape.

I will now give the doc.u.ments in the case of Ravelli against Mapleson, which, after being heard, was dismissed, but which, in spite of the admirable rapidity of American law proceedings, caused me several days'

delay, and, as a result, incalculable losses; for apart from the sudden rise in the railway rates I missed engagements at several important cities along my line of march.

"_Superior Court City and County of San Francisco_, _State of California_.

"LUIGI RAVELLI, Plaintiff, v. J. H. MAPLESON, Defendant.

"_Complaint._

"Plaintiff above named complains of defendant above named, and for cause of action alleges:

"That between the 4th day of February 1886, and the 4th day of April 1886 the Plaintiff rendered services to the defendant at said defendant's special instance and request, in the capacity of an Opera singer.

"That for said services the said defendant promised to pay plaintiff a salary at the rate of twenty-four hundred dollars per month.

"That said defendant has not paid the said salary or any part thereof, and no part of the same has been paid, and plaintiff has often demanded payment thereof.

"Wherefore plaintiff demands judgment against the defendant for the sum of forty-eight hundred dollars and costs of suit and interest.

"FRANK & EISNER & REGENSBURGER, "Attorneys for Plaintiff."

_"State of California, City and County of San Francisco._

"LUIGI RAVELLI being duly sworn says that he is the Plaintiff in the above ent.i.tled action. That he has heard read the foregoing complaint and knows the contents thereof. That the same is true of his own knowledge except as to the matters therein stated on his information and belief and as to those matters he believes the same to be true.

"LUIGI RAVELLI

"Sworn to before me this 10th day of April 1886.

"SAMUEL HERINGHIE,

"Dep. Co. Clerk."

In reply to the above my attorney and friend, the invincible General W.

H. L. Barnes, put in the following "answer and cross complaint":--

"_In the Superior Court of the State of California in and for the City and County of San Francisco._