Curiosities of the American Stage Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: F. S. CHANFRAU AS MOSE.]

The original of all these local dramas was _New York in 1848_, or, as it was called during its long run of twelve weeks at the Olympic in that year, _A Glance at New York_. It was a play of shreds and patches, hurriedly and carelessly st.i.tched together by Mr. Baker, the prompter of Mitch.e.l.l's famous little theatre, in order to cover the nakedness of the programme on the night of his own annual benefit. It had no literary merit, and no pretensions thereto; and it would never have attracted public attention but for the wonderful "B'hoy" of the period, played by F.

S. Chanfrau--one of those accidental but complete successes upon the stage which are never antic.i.p.ated, and which cannot always be explained.

He wore the "soap locks" of the period, the "plug hat," with a narrow black band, the red shirt, the trousers turned up--without which the genus was never seen--and he had a peculiarly sardonic curve of the lip, expressive of more impudence, self-satisfaction, suppressed profanity, and "general cussedness" than Delsarte ever dared to put into any single facial gesture. Mr. Chanfrau's Mose hit the popular fancy at once, and retained it until the Volunteer Fire Department was disbanded; and _A Glance at New York_ was fol-lowed by _Mose in California_, _Mose in a Muss_, and even _Mose in China_. Mr. Matthews, in an article contributed to one of the magazines a few years ago, records the fact that during one season Mr. Chanfrau played Mose at two New York theatres and in one theatre in Newark on the same night.

_The Mulligan Guards_, _The Skidmores_, and their followers were the legitimate descendants of _Mose_, and they came in with the steam-engines and the salaried firemen, who took away the occupation and the opportunities of Sykesy and Jake. Harrigan and Hart began their theatrical management at the Theatre Comique, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1876, and introduced what may be called the Irish-German-Negro-American play, ill.u.s.trating phases of tenement-house life in New York, and amusing everybody who ever saw them, from the Babies on our Block to Muldoon himself, the Solid Man. Mr. Harrigan wrote his own plays; both he and Mr.

Hart were inimitable in their peculiar line as actors, and they were wise and fortunate in their selection of their company, which included Mrs.

Annie Yeamans, "Johnny" Wild, and other equally talented artists, for whom "Dave" Braham, the leader of the orchestra, wrote original and catching music, which was sung and whistled and ground out from one end of the country to the other. Mr. Harrigan is a close observer and a born manager, and his productions have been masterpieces in their way. He puts living men and women upon the stage. He has done for a certain phase of city life what Denman Thompson has done for life upon a farm; and he is more to be envied than Mr. Thompson, because no cla.s.s of theatre-goers enjoy his productions more than do the living men and women whom his company, with real art, represent. But, alas! his plays are not the _great_ American plays for which the American dramatic critic is pining; although, like _The Old Homestead_, and _Shenandoah_, and _Horizon_, and _Metamora_, and _Fashion_ they approach greatness, if only in the fact that they have introduced, and preserved, a series of purely American types which are as great in their way as are the dramatic characters of other lands, and greater and more enduring than many of the Americans to be found in other branches of American literature.

SCENE VI.

THE SOCIETY DRAMA.

"Full of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and great showing."--_Hamlet_, Act v. Sc. 2.

A few extracts from the prologue which Mr. Epes Sargent wrote for Mrs.

Mowatt's _Fashion_, in 1845, will give a comparatively correct picture of the feeling which existed between native playwrights and the dramatic critics of this country towards the end of the first half of the present century, and will show how strong was the prejudice then existing against dramatic works of home manufacture. The comedy was purely original; its writer was an American, and a woman; its scenes were laid in the city of New York; and _Fashion_ was emphatically an American play.

At the rising of the curtain on the opening night Mr. Crisp was discovered reading a newspaper; and he spoke as follows, the italics being Mr.

Sargent's own:

"_Fashion_, a Comedy! I'll go--but stay-- Now I read farther, 'tis a _native_ play!

Bah! home-made calicoes are well enough, But home-made dramas _must_ be stupid stuff.

Had it the _London_ stamp 'twould do; but then For plays we lack the manners and the men!

Thus speaks _one_ critic--hear _another's_ creed: _Fashion!_ What's here? [_Reads._] It never can succeed!

What! from a _woman's_ pen? It takes a _man_ To write a comedy--no woman can!

But, sir--but, gentlemen--you, sir, who think No comedy can flow from _native_ ink-- Are we such _perfect_ monsters, or such _dull_, That wit no traits for ridicule can cull?

Have we no follies here to be redressed?

No vices gibbeted? No crimes confessed?

Friends, from these scoffers we appeal to you!

Condemn the _false_, but, oh, applaud the _true_!

Grant that _some_ wit may grow on native soil, And Art's fair fabric rise from _woman's_ toil!

While we exhibit but to _reprehend_ The social vices, 'tis for _you_ to mend!"

The audience was long and loud in its applause of the prologue, but the play was so well written, so well represented, and so deserving of success that Mrs. Mowatt and Mr. Sargent might have spared themselves their appeal to the sympathy of the general public. The critics, as a rule, were well disposed, although Edgar Allan Poe, one of the sternest of them, said that _Fashion_ resembled _The School for Scandal_, to which some of its admirers had likened it, as the sh.e.l.l resembles the living locust; a stricture which was hardly just. _Fashion_ created an excitement in the theatrical world that had not been known for years before, and has hardly been equalled since. It was said, and with some truth, to have revived the drama in this country, and to have reawakened a declining taste for dramatic representations of the higher and purer kind. It was almost the first attempt made to exhibit on our stage a correct picture of American society and manners, and although it was a satire on a certain _parvenu_ cla.s.s, conspicuous then as now in the metropolis, and always likely to exist here, it was a kindly, good-natured satire that did not intend to wound even when it was most pointed. Several familiar New York types were faithfully and cleverly represented: the millionaire merchant, vulgar, self-made, proud of his maker; and his wife, uneducated, pretentious, devoted to dress and display, seeking to marry her daughter to the adventurous foreigner who is not yet obsolete in the "upper circles" of metropolitan society. There were besides these, in the underplot, a rich old Cattaraugus farmer, his granddaughter (a dependant in the merchant's family), a prying old maid, a black servant, a poet, and a fashionable selfish man of the world. All of these were well drawn and natural. The situations were probable, and had existed and do exist in real life, while the language was bright and pure. The dramatic critic of the _Albion_, then a leading and influential journal, p.r.o.nounced _Fashion_ to be "the best American comedy in existence, and one that sufficiently indicated Mrs. Mowatt's ability to write a play that would rank among the first of the age." Mrs. Mowatt, however, was the author of but one other successful drama, _Armand, the Child of the People_. It was first played at the Park Theatre on September 27, 1847; while _Fashion_ itself has not been put upon the stage here in many years, and is almost forgotten, although its influence is still felt. Its popularity endured longer, perhaps, than that of any of its contemporaries; it was played throughout the United States, and was well received by London and English provincial audiences. The oblivion into which it has fallen now should by no means be ascribed to its want of merit, the fashion of the time having changed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EPES SARGENT.]

The comedy was produced at the Park Theatre on the 24th of March, 1845.

The _Herald_ of the next day said it had one of the best houses ever seen in New York; boxes, pit, and gallery were crowded; all of the _literati_ of the city were present, with a tolerable sprinkling of the _elite_--the _Herald's_ distinction between the _elite_ and _literati_ might have suggested another satirical play--and the comedy was enthusiastically received. Its initial cast was a very strong one and worthy of preservation. William Chippendale played Adam Trueman, the farmer; William H. Crisp, the elder, was Count Jolimaitre, the fraudulent n.o.bleman; John Dyott was Colonel Howard, of the United States Army, in love with Gertrude; Thomas Barry was Tiffany, the wealthy merchant; T. B. De Walden, author of _Sam_, _The Baroness_, and other plays, was T. Tennyson Twinkle, a modern poet; John Fisher played Sn.o.bson, the confidential clerk, and Mr.

Skerrett Zeke, a colored servant. None of these gentlemen are known to our stage to-day, but without exception they were as great in the various lines in which they were cast as could then be found in America. In the ladies of its first representations _Fashion_ was equally fortunate, and Mrs. Mowatt herself, in her _Autobiography_, writes that she felt much of the great success of the play to be justly due to the cleverness of the players. Mrs. Barry--the first Mrs. Barry, who died in 1854--represented the would-be lady of fashion; Miss Kate Horn (Mrs. Buckland), Seraphina Tiffany, her daughter; Miss Clara Ellis, a young Englishwoman, who remained but a few years in this country, was the Gertrude; Mrs. Dyott was Millinette, the French maid; and Mrs. Edward Knight (Mary Ann Povey) played Prudence, the maiden lady of a certain age. The part of Adam Trueman, the blunt, old-fashioned, warm-hearted farmer, with his unfashionable energy and st.u.r.dy common-sense, pointing homely morals and bursting social bubbles--"Seventy-two last August, man! Strong as a hickory, and every whit as sound"--was for many years a favorite with the representatives of "character old men" on our stage. Mr. Blake, the original Adam in Philadelphia, was particularly happy in the _role_, playing it many times in New York; and E. L. Davenport made a decided hit as Adam at the Olympic in London, in January, 1850, when the comedy was first produced in England. Mr. Davenport on this occasion had the support of his wife, who played Gertrude, and who was then still billed as Miss f.a.n.n.y Vining.

There is no record of Mrs. Mowatt's appearance in _Fashion_, except on one evening in Philadelphia, when she played Gertrude for the benefit of Mr.

Blake, and once in New York--at the Park, May 15, 1846. She felt that the character gave her no great opportunity, and she never attempted it again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANNA CORA MOWATT RITCHIE.]

Mrs. Mowatt's career as an actress was very remarkable. She was one of the few persons of adult years who, going upon the stage without the severe training and long apprenticeship so necessary even to indifferent dramatic success, display anything like brilliant dramatic qualities. She was an actress and a "star" born, not made. Her reasons for adopting the profession were as remarkable as the triumphs she won; her success as a playwright encouraging her, she said, to attempt to achieve like favor as a player. Every one familiar with the history of the theatre since it has had a history knows well how great is the distinction between producer and performer, and how few are the actors who have written clever plays, how few the authors who have become distinguished as actors upon the stage.

The popularity of Miss Elizabeth Thompson's battle pictures would not encourage her to attempt to lead armies in the field; gun-makers are proverbially poor marksmen; and Von Bulow would never succeed were he to attempt the construction of a grand-piano.

Mrs. Mowatt, however, had stronger inducements than those given in her _Autobiography_ for the step she took. In looking back upon her life, she felt that all of her tastes, studies, and pursuits from childhood had combined to make her an actress. She had exhibited a pa.s.sion for theatrical entertainments when she was little more than an infant; she had written plays, such as they were, before she had seen the inside of a theatre, and she had played in an amateur way before she had ever seen a professional performance. Above and beyond all of these things she was a woman of uncommon intelligence and grace, almost a genius. She had, with some success, given public readings. She felt the stage to be her destiny.

She determined that her destiny should be fulfilled, and she became a good actress if not absolutely a great one, and seemingly with little effort and few rebuffs. The pleasant account she has given of her own theatrical experiences, and her touching and beautiful defence of those women who make their living on the stage, have encouraged many ladies who have felt themselves gifted with similar talents, and possessed of like ambitions and aspirations, to make the same attempts, and generally to fail.

There have been _debutantes_ enough in New York since the _debut_ of Mrs.

Mowatt to fill to overflowing the auditorium of any single city theatre, could they be gathered under one roof to witness the first effort of the next aspirant, whoever she may be. During the season of 1876-77 alone, not less than seven ladies--Mrs. Louise M. Pomeroy, Miss Bessie Darling, Miss Anna d.i.c.kinson, Mrs. J. H. Hackett, Miss Minnie c.u.mmings, Miss Marie Wainwright, and Miss Adelaide Lennox--in leading parts made their first bows to metropolitan audiences, without training or experience; and the season was not considered a particularly strong one in _debutantes_ at that. For much of this Mrs. Mowatt, unconsciously and unwittingly, was responsible. Her sudden success turned many heads, while the equally sudden failures, not recorded, but very many in number, have been quite forgotten, and will be still ignored as long as there are new Camilles and new Juliets to achieve greatness at one fell swoop, and as long as there are unwise friends and speculative managers to encourage them. The careers of these candidates for dramatic fame, as they are familiar to the world, are certainly not inspiring to their foolish sisters who would follow them. A few still in the profession are filling, creditably but ingloriously, humble positions; a very small proportion have by the hardest of work become prominent and popular; but the great majority, dispirited and disheartened, have gone back to the private life from which they sprung, without song, without honor, and without tears, except the many tears they have shed themselves.

Mrs. Mowatt was never behind the scenes of a theatre until she was taken to witness a rehearsal of _Fashion_ the day before its first production.

Her second pa.s.sage through a "stage door" was when she had her single rehearsal of _The Lady of Lyons_, in which she made her _debut_, and she became an actress, and a triumphant one, three weeks after her determination to go upon the stage was formed. Her house was crowded, the applause was genuine and discriminating, and one gentleman, wholly unprejudiced and of great experience, publicly p.r.o.nounced it "the best first appearance" he ever saw.

The performance took place at the Park Theatre, New York, on the 13th of June, 1845, less than three months after the production of her comedy. The occasion was the benefit of Mr. Crisp, who had given her the little instruction her limited time permitted her to receive, and who played Claude to her Pauline, Mrs. Vernon representing Madame Deschapelles. While she writes candidly in her _Autobiography_ of her hopes, her experiences, and her trials, she modestly says but little of the decided praise from all quarters which she certainly received, the account of her success here given being taken from current journals and from the recollections of old theatre-goers, not from her own story of her theatrical life.

On the 13th of July of the same year (1845) Mrs. Mowatt appeared at Niblo's Garden, playing a very successful engagement of two weeks, supported by Messrs. Crisp, Chippendale, E. L. Davenport, Thomas Placide, Nickinson, John Sefton, and Mrs. Watts, afterwards Mrs. Sefton. Here she a.s.sumed her second _role_, that of Juliana in the _Honeymoon_, and more than strengthened the favorable impression she had made as Pauline.

During the first year she was upon the stage she acted more than two hundred nights, and in almost every important city in the United States, playing Lady Teazle, Mrs. Haller in _The Stranger_, Lucy Ashton in the _Bride of Lammermoor_, Katherine in the _Taming of the Shrew_, Julia, Juliet, and all of the then most popular characters in the line of juvenile tragedy and comedy. The amount of labor, physical and mental, she endured during this period must have been enormous; and the intellectual strain alone was enough to have destroyed the strongest mental const.i.tution. In the history of the stage in all countries there is no single instance of a mere novice playing so many important parts so many nights, before so many different audiences, and winning so much and such merited praise, as did this lady during the first twelve months of her career as an actress.

Mrs. Mowatt went to England in the autumn of 1847, where her success was as marked as in her own country, and more, perhaps, to her professional credit. She had to contend with a certain prejudice against her nationality, which still existed in Britain; she was compared with the leading English actresses of long experience in their own familiar _roles_, and she could not depend upon the social popularity and personal good-will which were so strongly in her favor at home. Her English _debut_ was made in Manchester a few weeks after her arrival. Her first appearance in London was at the Princess's Theatre on the 5th of January, 1848; Mr.

Davenport, who had played opposite characters to her during her American tours, giving her excellent support during her English engagements. She returned to America in the summer of 1851, greatly improved in her personal appearance and in her art. Her subsequent career here, as long as she remained upon the stage, was marked with uniform success, the reputation she had acquired on the other side of the water establishing even more strongly her claims on this.

Mrs. Mowatt, after nine years of experience as an actress, took her farewell of the stage at Niblo's Garden on the evening of the 3d of June, 1854. As her _Autobiography_ was published during the preceding year her reason for this step is not given, unless it was her marriage to Mr.

Ritchie a few days later. The occasion was very interesting. A testimonial signed by many of the leading citizens, and highly eulogistic, was presented to her, and her last appearance created as great an excitement in the dramatic and social world as did her first. The play selected was _The Lady of Lyons_, the same in which she made her _debut_.

Old play-goers who still remember her consider her one of the most satisfactory Paulines who have been seen in this country, and the part was always a favorite of her own. On the last play-bill which contains her name are found as her support the names of Walter G. Keeble, who played Claude; of George H. Andrews, then a favorite "old man," who played Colonel Damas; of T. B. De Walden, who played Glavis; and of Mrs. Mann, who played Madame Deschapelles. Mrs. Mowatt never again appeared here, or elsewhere, in any public capacity.

Anna Cora Ogden was born in Bordeaux, France, during a visit of her parents to that country in 1819. She married James Mowatt, a young lawyer of New York, when she was only fifteen years of age. Her first appearance as a public reader was made in Boston in 1841--Mr. Mowatt's financial troubles leading her to seek that means of contributing to her own support. During this same year she gave readings in the hall of the old Stuyvesant Inst.i.tute in New York. In 1845, as has been shown above, she became an actress. Mr. Mowatt died in London in the spring of 1851. On the 7th of June, 1854, she was married (on Staten Island) to William F.

Ritchie, of the Richmond _Enquirer_, and she died in the little English village of Henley-on-the-Thames in the month of July, 1870, Mr. Ritchie surviving her some years, and dying in Lower Brandon, Virginia, on the 24th of April, 1877.

Mrs. Mowatt is described, by those who remember her in the first flush of her youth and her success, as "a fascinating actress and accomplished lady; in person fragile and exquisitely delicate, with a face in whose calm depths the beautiful and pure alone were mirrored, a voice ever soft, gentle, and low, a subdued earnestness of manner, a winning witchery of enunciation, and a grace and refinement in every action"; and it was felt by her admirers that she would have become, had she remained longer in the profession, a consummate artist--one of the greatest this country has ever produced.

After her retirement, and until the breaking out of the civil war, her home in Richmond, Virginia, was the centre of all that was refined and cultured in the Southern capital. She devoted herself to literature and to her social and family cares, writing during this period her _Mimic Life; or, Before and Behind the Curtain_, in which she spoke so many kind and encouraging words of her sisters in the profession, particularly of the ballet girls and the representatives of small and thankless parts, who contribute in their quiet way so much to the public amus.e.m.e.nt, and who too often, by authors and public, are entirely ignored. Among her more important works, other than those already mentioned here, written in her youth and later life, was _Gulzara; or, The Persian Slave_, a play without heroes, the scenes of which were laid within the walls of a Turkish harem, and which was chiefly remarkable from the fact that the only male character in the _dramatis personae_ was a boy of ten years.

Marion Harland, in her _Recollections of a Christian Actress_, printed a few years ago, has paid the highest tribute to the personal worth of Mrs.

Mowatt. What she accomplished during her professional life has, in a manner, been shown here. She was a representative American woman of whom American women have every reason to be proud; and as the writer of the first absolutely American society play, she must be forgiven the harm her brilliant and easy success as an actress has, by its example, since done to the American stage.

Very few of our earlier native dramatists followed the fashion set by Mrs.

Mowatt in writing original plays of American social life. "Plays of contemporaneous society," as they were called, were popular and fairly successful here; but they were the charming home comedies of men like Byron or Robertson, thoroughly English in character and tone, or they were taken from the French and the German, with purely foreign incidents and scenes. Some of these were "localized," and thus became cruel libels upon American men and manners, except upon such Americans as are influenced by the worship of _The Mighty Dollar_, or such as are to be found only in _Our Boarding-houses_, and _Under the Gas-light_. The New York play-goer of thirty years since looked in vain upon the stage for the domestic stories of American city and country life which he found in the then new novels of Theodore Winthrop, or in the then familiar poems of Dr. Holland.

Until Joshua Whitcomb appeared we saw no American Peter Probity in an American _Chimney Corner_; and until Bronson Howard and David Lloyd and Brander Matthews and Edgar Fawcett began to write American plays we saw no American Haversack in an American _Old Guard_--not even an American Peter Teazle or an American John Mildmay; while we could not help feeling that _Still Waters Run as Deep_ in this country as they run in the old, and that the _School for Scandal_ in real life has as many graduates and undergraduates in the United States as it has anywhere else.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDGAR FAWCETT.]