USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 49
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The stained glass windows were especially admired. Good judges have held that in this field no city in the world produces work superior in design and color to that of the leading studios of Boston.
Other artists, most of them master craftsmen of the Society of Arts and Crafts, pre- sented eighty-three specimens of their work in bookbinding and book printing. The exhibit of silver, in which Boston has a tradition of excellence running back beyond Paul Revere to the colonial craftsmen, contained a varied assortment of objects, fifty-two specimens in all. That of jewelry contained ninety-eight examples. There were thirteen examples of work in enamel and copper, a large display of pottery and a number of miscellaneous objects.
All the work was by living eraftsmen. It was not merely a historical and reminiscent display but one designed to illustrate the flourishing state of the decorative arts in present- day Boston.
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THE STAGE IN BOSTON IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
By CHARLES H. GRANDGENT
These years have marked the passing of the old Museum and the experiment of the Opera House. Other things have happened, but these have been the great things. Any period of half a century will cover deaths and births a-plenty. Some of the newborn will live on into the next era, for the most part with diminished glory; others will perish while still in their prime. And the deaths will scar with a wound not to be healed. Whatever be the charm of a fresh arrival, it will always suffer by comparison with the memory of the departed. "A splendid playhouse, to be sure, but for acoustics and for grandeur not in the same class with the old Boston Theater!" "The new stock company is excellent as things go nowadays. Ah! when shall we ever see the like of the old Museum Company?" And these repinings have a good basis in fact.
The earliest Boston Theater - not the one we remember - dated back to 1791. Our own, so recently demolished, was opened with pomp in 1854; its destruction began seventy years later. In its day it was one of the great theaters of the world; its stage was for years the biggest in the country, easily housing Shakespeare's "Tempest" or "Midsummer Night's Dream" or the archery scene from "William Tell" or (passing to later times) "The Black Crook," "Around the World in Eighty Days" and "The Children of Captain Grant." There, too, was held every year the prize drill of the Boston School Regiment. Those were thrilling days for the schoolboys. What a sensation it was to tread those mysterious boards, to look up at the bewildering array of ropes and scenery; and what a surprise it always was to see how very narrow a space divided the back drop from the outside rear wall. Then the boys would get a close-up of the imperturbable stage cat, which on all too rare occasions used to make an inopportune appearance on the stage; then, also, they could verify the existence of the bats which they had so often thought to see hovering in the upper reaches of the auditorium.
It was a fine old house, built in the European style with shallow balconies, thus allowing even soft-spoken lines on the boards to be heard everywhere - although it must be confessed there were some seats from which the stage was quite invisible. A larger portion of it was cut off from the view of the upper tiers in the days of the magnificent central chandelier, which was really in itself gorgeous enough to compensate for the loss.
Eugene Tompkins was the manager, having succeeded L. R. Shewell in 1878. For years there was a good stock company: Shewell, Mrs. Barry, Louis James, Dan Maguinnis. They did effective work, despite the huge size of the hall. One remembers them, for instance, in "The Exiles," which banished them to Siberia. Reinforcing or replacing them were the occasional first-
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magnitude stars - Jefferson in "Rip Van Winkle," Booth and Barrett in "Macbeth," which Forrest had acted there years before.
Chiefly, I fancy, it is opera more than anything else that associates itself with the Boston Theater in its last half-century. Companies of varied speech and school there regaled Bostonian ears. Italian one remembers with Patti, Campanini and Del Puente, with Caruso and Bonci; French with Plançon. Several excellent American companies; one in particular, with a "Flying Dutch- man" called Ludwig (he was really an Irishman), never equaled in grace and for singing scarcely to be rated below the great Bispham. And one must never forget our own Bostonians, earlier the Ideal Opera Company. Most solemn of occasions, however, was the annual visit of the Metropolitan Company with Wagner, - occasionally diversified by Beethoven or Weber, - when we used to get up at five and stand in line before the box office to get our season tickets. This is no place to retail the history of German opera in America; but who can pass it by without recalling Max Alvary, Lehmann, Ternina, the genial Fischer? One appreciated the opportunity better after a few seasons at Mechanics Hall, even if we did have the privilege there of hearing Wagner sung by the Reszke brothers. It was in the Boston Theater that our fellow townsmen first learned to know the "Ring" and "Tristan." For "Parsifal" they had to wait for Savage's company at the Tremont - quickly followed, however, by the Metropolitan with Burgstaller.
One thrilling incident stands out in one's memory. It was a "Lohengrin" evening. The tenor, it appeared, was suddenly ill and there was nobody to take his place. The audience waited anxiously; would the management at the last moment change the bill? No, the resourceful executive, knowing that in the operetta "Rob Roy," then running at the Castle Square, there was a young tenor, Barron Berthald, who knew "Lohengrin" and many other rôles, hurried across town, snatched "Prince Charles" from the stage, rushed him to the Boston, where, without a moment's preparation, he sang the "Swan Knight" with brilliant success. Before long he was engaged in grand opera in Berlin.
Sad as was the disappearance of the familiar Boston Theater, still more tragic was the demolition of the dear old Museum. Both, to be sure, had some- what declined from their earlier high estate but both had the genuine aroma. Whither can have gone the extensive and really valuable ethnological collec- tions that filled the alcoves of the great hall; and whatever can have become of the dusty, dream-haunting waxworks that haunted the top floor? Established in 1841, the Boston Museum held its farewell performance in 1903. On its planks, since 1880, had appeared Lester Wallack in 1881, Clara Morris and Salvini in 1882, Edward Harrigan in 1884, Augustin Daly's company also in 1884, the Florences in 1885, Janauschek in 1887, James A. Herne in 1892. Among the well-remembered pieces are "Harbor Lights," "Hands Across the Sea," "Held by the Enemy" (with Gillette), "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (with Mansfield), all in 1886; "Little Lord Fauntleroy," "Shenandoah," "Sweet Lavender," in 1888; "All the Comforts of Home" in 1891; "Prince Pro Tem." in 1893; "Westward Ho!" in 1894. Richard Mansfield first performed in Boston at the Museum in 1885 in "A Parisian Romance." In 1887 came that
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most unforgetable and nerve-destroying piece, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Dion Boucicault was a frequent visitor, with "The Shaughraun," "The Colleen Bawn" and the rest. His earlier piece, "The Octoroon," had led the way there.
Whether as support to a distinguished star from without or as a body self- supporting in itself, the Museum troupe always won and merited acclaim. It was for many a decade one of the leading stock companies in the English- speaking world. Even after the older generation had withdrawn, it maintained its reputation. Jack Mason and Joseph Haworth joined the band before 1880: so did Sadie Martinot (in 1878); so did William Seymour and his wife, May Davenport (in 1879). The "leading ladies" form a distinguished list, too long to quote in full, and it were invidious to make a choice. One might say the same of the many jeunes premiers who first made their reputation on this stage.
In the older group there was just one outstanding heroine, Miss Annie Clarke; and one hero, Charles Barron. As age advances, apparently it is diffi- cult for those who have always been identified with leading rôles to appear before the same public in more elderly or minor characters. Miss Clarke retired in 1886, but afterwards joined the Julia Marlowe Company, with which she remained until her death in 1902. How many parts, classic and modern, she had made her own before her departure! In her later years, one thinks of her with pleasure in "She Stoops to Conquer." As to Barron, his elder period includes "Romany Rye," "Tom Jones" and the astonishingly different rôle of Silky in "Masks and Faces." He left the Museum to travel with McCullough.
One finds it impossible to refer to the Museum without mention of the delectable Mrs. Vincent, unsurpassable as comic old ladies. And one is con- strained to pause for a moment over Burroughs, Hudson, Nolan and his popular wife, Kate Ryan.
One authentic genius, however, had dominated the assembly. William Warren, a comedian of absolutely the first caliber, retired in May, 1883; his last rôle was that of Eccles in "Caste." The year before, on October 27, 1882, he had been tendered a golden jubilee, to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary on the stage. On that occasion he played Doctor Pangloss and Sir Peter Teazle in "The Heir-at-Law" and "The School for Scandal." He died at his home in Bulfinch place on September 21, 1888, admired as an artist, respected and loved as a man. Most comic actors always play the same part, under different names and make-ups. An unusual virtue of Warren was his versatility. He could play anything from Sir Peter to Jefferson Scattering Batkins; and he has been known even to enact a dyed-in-the-wool villain.
Happily he left a successor equally versatile, full of comic force, equipped with all the resources of his art - George W. Wilson, who appeared with the Museum company in 1877 and remained, after the retirement of Warren, as its leading comedian, until the disruption of the stock company in 1894. His first great success was as Uriah Heep, a rôle which he could still reproduce at the age of eighty with undiminished effectiveness. He was a Boston boy, originally a bank clerk, early imbued with love of the stage; the Boston and other play- houses saw him before he became attached to the Museum. One of his best remembered plays was "The Guv'nor." In the classics one recalls him as Bob
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Acres and Tony Lumpkin, and especially as Crabtree in "The School for Scandal." He became, so to speak, a national figure for his performance of Sir Joseph Porter when "Pinafore," at the Museum, had its first presentation in America in 1878. When "Patience" followed a few years later, Wilson revealed himself as the one and only perfect Bunthorne. For Wilson had the gift of extracting the utmost of fun from a part while remaining strictly within the limits of the character.
In connection with Gilbert and Sullivan one recalls with mingled ecstasy and regret the meteoric career of the Bijou Theater, opened in 1882. As a preface, let it be said that from 1836 on there had existed on Washington street a certain Lion Theater, which in 1878 became the Gaiety, the abode of light opera ("The Mascot," for instance, "Pinafore" and "Patience") and light comedy (witness Neil Burgess in "Widow Bedott"). Now, in 1882, refashioned into a modern, clegant playhouse of intimate dimensions, the old stand blossomcd into the Bijou, and began its all too brief career with "Iolanthe" and "The Sorcerer," led by the iridescent Henry E. Dixey, by a handsome and musical baritone who called himself Broccolini, and by the beautiful, sweet-voiced Janet Edmondson. These performances remained, I think, unequaled until the reign of Winthrop Ames.
On the heels of this offering came an opera never revived, as far as I can learn, composed by the versatile Benjamin E. Woolf. It was called "Pounce and Co." and dealt, in uncannily modern fashion, with a strike. Just as Charles Readc's "Put Yourself in His Place" might have been written about labor troubles of today, so "Pounce and Co." seems to foretell the strikes of yesterday and tomorrow. In a word, the workingmen insist on taking over the management of the mill and after a short and sad experience beg the owner to take it back. The performers were, in part, the same who had played in Gilbert and Sullivan. Broccolini, as always, was faultless - this time as a pompous labor leader. Remember that in "Iolanthe" he had been Strephon and in "The Sorcerer" Sir Marmaduke. His singing of the minuet, with Miss Edmondson as Lady Sangazure, is one of the gladdest memories of my life. His resourcefulness was still further exhibited - though not at this theater - in the character of Sir Roderick Murgatroyd in "Ruddygore," when he played with "Ruddygore Reed" at the Globe.
The house remained devoted to light opera during 1885, was closed (perhaps because it was too small to pay expenses) in 1886, and was afterwards absorbed by Kcith. Keith's, by the way, was opened in 1894, and from then until now has remained in Boston the chief exponent of the type of performance to which Benjamin Keith (nobody ever knew why) gave the inappropriate name, vaudeville. The sort of show which Keith so well developed had previously been called variety or oleo. The word "vaudeville," on the other hand, means in French originally a popular song, then an extended farce interspersed with verses set to familiar airs (as the "Chapeau de Paille d'Italie"), lastly a farce in three acts (as the "Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon"). At this point Mr. Keith appropriated the name to his own brand of amusement. This brand, it appears, is approaching extinction, threatened on the one hand by the moving picture, on the other by musical comedy.
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Playhouses of the more popular order have not been lacking. The old Howard Athenaeum, once a theater of high standing, had before our period become a home of light and varicd diversion; and so it has remained. The Bowdoin Square, a comparatively recent venture, has pursued its venturesomc course through several species of entertainment, including melodrama and tragedy, to the apparent satisfaction of its patrons. The St. James, a large, comfortable house on Huntington avenue, for several years, with a stock com- pany, pursued the policy of repcating Broadway successes of not too long ago. The principal obstacle to the success of this laudable project was the audience's over-personal and jocose interest in the players. Later several distinguished artists, temporarily out of a job, heightened somewhat the quality of the offering; until within a year or two, as we shall see, the conquering films came along and displaced them.
Let us return from the new to the old. The Globe Theater - not the present establishment of that name, but the one on Harvard College property, a little north of Essex street - opened in 1870 under the management of that great romantic actor, Charles Fechter. Be it said in passing, Fechter, now remembered chiefly in "Monte Cristo" and "The Corsican Brothers," was in his day one of the best of Hamlets, playing the Dane as a blond of full habit. The Globe was partly burned in 1872, reopened in 1874, finally destroyed by fire in 1894. In the meantime it had a distinguished career. Let us recall a few of its successes. First, of course, Fechter in "Monte Cristo." In 1886, "The Mikado" with sumptuous settings. "The Pirates of Penzance" also made their home there. Therc, too, Mansfield performed "Prince Karl," "Beau Brumincl," "Nero," "A Parisian Romance" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Rose Coghlan acted in "Diplomacy"; De Wolf Hopper gave us "Wang"; Francis Wilson "The Lion Tamer"; William Gillette "The Private Secretary." Wilson Barrett appeared in several pieces; Duse in "Camille," "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "La Locandiera"; Mrs. Potter and Kyrle Bellew in "Thérèse," "Camille," "Frou Frou" and "Romeo and Juliet." In its last year came the gay "Isle of Champagne," with Thomas Seabrooke.
Next in age of the major playhouses - but with a long interval - is the Hollis, made over from the Hollis Street Church in 1885. Despite its position a wee bit uptown, it became at once and has ever since remained the preferred abode of serious drama and the halting-place of the most esteemed troupes and artists. The Augustin Daly Company made it their Boston headquarters and there introduced to Boston the bewitching Ada Rehan. Julia Marlowe graced its rather stern interior. There disported themselves John Drew and Maude Adams; and there, in a minor part, at the age of seventeen Ethel Barry- more dawned upon us. There we have seen Walter Hampden. Thither betakes itself the Theater Guild; and there Boston has recently been entranced by the Stratford Players.
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Close upon the Hollis, in 1889, came the Tremont, named after an older playhouse of 1827. Always an attractive and well-managed establishment, it underwent considerable alterations after a fire in 1916. More varied in its entertainment than the Hollis, it has always maintained a high standard - witness the following selected list: Charles Wyndham in "David Garrick";
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Henry Irving and Ellen Terry; Sarah Bernhardt; Nat Goodwin; Mrs. Fiske in "Tess" and "Becky Sharp"; Francis Wilson in "Erminie," "Half a King" and his ambitious fling at "Cyrano"; De Wolf Hopper in "El Capitan"; E. S. Willard and Ada Rehan and Richard Mansfield and John Hare and the Kendals, in their respective repertories; Modjeska in Shakespeare; Réjane in "Sapho," "Madame Sans-Gêne," "La Maison de Poupée"; Lillian Russell in "La Grande Duchesse"; the Bostonians in "Robin Hood"; Rosina Vokes in her playlets; Agnes Booth in "Jim the Penman"; Beerbohm Tree in the "Balladmonger." and the "Merry Wives of Windsor"; even Wagner's "Parsifal."
As we naturally class together the Hollis and the Tremont, so we inevitably make a pair of the Plymouth and the Wilbur, the former dating from 1911, the latter from 1914. Both are houses of reasonable size; the Wilbur, surely the prettiest theater in Boston, is also, in my opinion, the only one of com- fortable dimensions for a play. Neither playhouse has held to a particular specialty; the two have agreed in presenting every year a pleasing medley of good pieces. At the Plymouth we have seen - by way of sample - the Irish Players, "The Garden of Allah," "Pomander Walk," "Disraeli," "Alias Jimmy Valentine," "The Green Goddess." With the Wilbur we associate Sheldon's "Romance" (its opening piece, with Doris Keane), "The Beggar on Horseback," "The Green Hat," "The Road to Rome," "Caponsacchi."
Another convenient pair consists of the Majestic, born in 1903, and the Shubert, a child of 1910, neighbors on Tremont street. We are apt to think of them both as hospitable to musical comedy, as they happily are. But the Shubert opened with Sothern and Marlowe in "The Taming of the Shrew"; it has offered us Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird"; and it has eternally endeared itself by housing Winthrop Ames's productions of "Iolanthe," "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado." Perhaps, even in this choice company, one might name "Chu Chin Chow." Not to be outdone in serious drama, the Majestic has given us two weeks of the great tragedian and comedian, Ermete Novelli, with Shakespeare in Italian; Blanche Bates in "The Girl of the Golden West"; David Warfield in "The Music Master"; Lena Ashwell in "Mrs. Dane's Defense."
Where shall we put the spacious and gorgeous Colonial, a bit older than either of these, for it opened in 1900 with "Ben Hur" ? Two years later it first showed "Florodora" to Boston. Adapted by its size to spectacular pieces, such as the various "Follies" and Fred Stone's joyous diversions, it has never- theless offered its hospitality to Mansfield, to Marlowe, to Dietrichstein.
A case of tragic downfall is that of the Columbia, situated at too southerly a latitude, just below the Boston and Albany tracks. With a Moorish exterior and an alluring entrance, it started life on the highest and most hopeful plane in 1891. "Lady Windermere's Fan" was performed by an admirable company, including Maurice Barrymore. "The Lost Paradise" was beautifully done. Here it was that Nance O'Neil, after failure in Chicago, won her first and greatest triumph; "Magda," "Camille," "The Fires of St. John" were the pieces she played. After a period of stock actors comes opera, then vaudeville, along from 1900 to 1903. What exactly is the date of that boat-racing success, "The Defender," in which real society characters were introduced under slightly
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disguised names? Harry Davenport was in it and Alexander Clark; and Blanche Ring, with "The Good Old Summer Time." Now the trains rumble by and the Elevated cars whiz unfeelingly past that Arabic façade that once promised so much glory.
Another checkered career, a longer one, less exalted in its start but less pathetic in its finish, is that of the Park. The Park Theater goes away back to 1879, and it was owned by Lotta Crabtree. Naturally enough it opened with. "La Cigale," played by that sprightly artist. One recalls amid vicissitudes of later years - culminating in the cinema - the distinction of a performance of "Everyman" in 1902. Two years later "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch" was on the scene. "The Belle of New York" came in, too. But one most gladly remembers the Park for Hoyt's "farce comedies": "A Black Sheep," for instance, and "A Temperance Town." At the Park, moreover, the San Carlo Opera Company periodically ministered to our thirst for music.
From 1894 to 1897 Boston enjoyed a real carnival of operetta - and of grand opera, too - at the Castle Square Theater, dubbed in 1918 the Arlington. The Castle Square is another victim of unfashionable location. An attractive, spacious and commodious auditorium, a sizable stage, intelligent management, endless enterprise have done their best; but, while they have succeeded in giving keen delight to a whole army of devotees, they have not made the venture continuously remunerative. Far in the southern zone, its prices have always had to be ridiculously low - so low that, if the great hall was not absolutely full, the house lost money. While it lasted, the Clara Lane Opera Company (as it was generally called after its dainty prima donna) gave to the unsophisticated a first experience of real opera and to the sophisticated a chance to hear a galaxy of famous operettas which they had always known by name, but by name only.
After the operatic era came a period of plays; a stock company managed by John Craig and including his wife, Mary Young, performed everything from "The Circus Girl" to "Richard III," from "The Prisoner of Zenda" to "Hamlet." To the Shakesperean matinees school children were generously invited. Another evidence of Mr. Craig's liberality was the prize offered by him for the best play written by an American student of the drama, a helpful adjunct to Professor Baker's course at Harvard, known as "English 47." Even more valued than the prize itself was the opportunity to have one's product adequately performed. Several pieces thus saw the light: "Believe Me, Xantippe," "Common Clay," "The End of the Bridge."
For awhile the theater was given over to cheap reproductions of various New York successes. Then, for a while, the Craigs resumed control. Again came reflections of Gotham and miscellaneous engagements. On the one hand "Abie's Irish Rose"; on the other, a Shakesperean season by Leiber. One of the many hopeful attempts to create a moderate-priced grand opera met its Waterloo there in 1929.
Boston has always craved real opera, but has habitually fallen between reluctance to pay for the very best and equal reluctance to hear anything else. The visitations of the Metropolitan and the Chicago company have been glorious, but brief. More unassuming troupes, offering second-rate entertain- i ment at third-rate cost, have generally failed. At last in 1909 came the dawn.
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The generosity of a citizen, Eben D. Jordan, built an adequate and dignified house and guaranteed expenses for three years. There was a Board of Directors - fifteen, including G. W. Chadwick, F. S. Converse, Eben D. Jordan, Otto H. Kahn, G. M. Lanc, J. N. Perkins. The managing director was Henry Russell. Among the thirce stage directors was J. Urban, destined to work so extraor- dinary an artistic vein. The new house opened with "La Gioconda," with Nordiea, Louise Homer and Baklanoff. Was it an evil omen that a strike eaused unduc delay between the acts? If it was, the baleful effect was not at onec manifest. The opera gathered an excellent troupe of its own, including Mareoux (as yet without the Vanni), and invited distinguished artists from outside. The production was strikingly good. One saw an occasional rarity: Bizet's "Djamileh," for instance. "La Forêt Bleuc," which was to become a regular feature of the Paris Grand Opera repertory, had its first presentation (after knocking unsuccessfully at several doors) on our own stage.
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