USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 14
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1 To whom I am indebted for interesting and valuable material about Col. Shaw.
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almost immediately he fell dead on the parapet, in the midst of a terribly fierce fire in which no less than two hundred and fifty-five of his black soldiers were killed or wounded with him!
Colonel Hallowell has written very beautifully of the qualities of this man under whom he was proud to serve. "His clean-cut face, quick, decided step and singular charm of manner, full of grace and virtue, bespoke the hero. The immortal charge of his black regi- ment reads like a page of the Iliad or a story from Plutarch. I have always thought that in the great war with the slave power the figure that stands out in boldest relief is that of Colonel Shaw. There were many others as brave and devoted as he, - the humblest private who sleeps in yonder cemetery or fills an unknown grave in the South is as much entitled to our gratitude, - but to no others was given an equal opportunity. By the earnestness of his convictions, the unselfishness of his character, his championship of an en- slaved race, and the manner of his death, all the conditions are given to make Shaw the best historical exponent of the underlying cause, the real meaning of the war. He was the fair type of all that was brave, generous, beautiful and of all that was best worth fighting for in the war of the slaveholders' Rebellion."
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Yet when he died in the prime of his beautiful young manhood his body was stripped of all but underclothing, exposed for a time on the fort and finally buried in a trench with the negroes! Robert Gould Shaw of Boston was the only officer buried with the colored troops. Not that being side by side, in death as in life, with the men he had loved and trusted could have given Shaw anything but joy! It is for this reason that I like especially the wonderful St. Gaudens monument in which he and his negro followers make up an impressive and artistic unit. Each year on Memorial day the Robert Bell post of Grand Army men, all of whom are colored, hang wreaths of immortelles on the Shaw Memorial and it seems to me a particularly happy thing that they must thus honor at one and the same time their black brethren and the white hero who was their leader.
"I want to fling my leaf on dear Shaw's grave," wrote Lowell to Fields when preparing the poem " Memoriae Positum " in which the brave youth is so stirringly sung. Then he added, " I want the poem to be a little monu- mental." It is that. Especially the verse:
" Brave, good and true, I see him stand before me now, And read again on that young brow, Where every hope was new,
-
GOVERNOR JOHN A. ANDREW.
From the painting by William Morris Hunt, in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
COLONEL ROBERT GOULD SHAW. From a photograph taken in 1862.
T. W. HIGGINSON, AET. 20. From a crayon drawing by Eastman Johnson.
T. W. HIGGINSON, AS COLONEL OF THE FIRST SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS.
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How sweet were life! Yet, by the mouth firm-set, And look made up for Duty's utmost debt, I could divine he knew That death within the sulphurous hostile lines, In the mere wreck of nobly-pitched designs,
Plucks hearts-ease, and not rue."
The Fifty-fifth infantry and the Fifth Cavalry were other Massachusetts regiments made up of black men, while all the soldiers in the black regiment of which Thomas Wentworth Hig- ginson of Cambridge was chosen colonel had been slaves. It was in this connection that the following " nonsense verse " began to be cir- culated in Boston:
" There was a young curate of Worcester Who could have a command if he'd choose ter; But he said each recruit Must be blacker than soot
Or else he'd go preach where he used ter."
Higginson denies that this verse is a literal statement of the facts; but it is significant that the only title to which he clings, after a full and remarkably varied life, is that of colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers.
Through the suffering and the sacrifice en- tailed upon all classes by the Civil War the old differences between parties and clans in Boston were gradually forgotten. Much of the credit for this was due to John Albion Andrew, a man of imperturbable sweetness of temper, who,
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though just to all his opponents, was yet capable of immensely effective service in the cause he believed to be right.
Andrew was one of those who believed that " John Brown himself was right." He stated very clearly, in 1859, that he sympathized with the man and sympathized with the idea because he sympathized with and believed in the Eternal Right. He made this declaration at a time that it took great courage to do so and he never retracted. Yet, the next year, he was chosen to be governor by a popular vote larger than had been received by any of his predecessors. Massachusetts' heart appears to have been in the right place after all! During the long and difficult interval when every governor was a war-minister John A. Andrew was of the greatest service to Lincoln. In many ways, indeed, his mind and that of the President worked alike. And, like Lincoln, he was always accessible, always gentle, kind and just. There is a story that, on one of the days when the pressure of details and decisions was simply tremendous he gave patient audience, at the State House, to a man who was setting forth the virtues of a patent knapsack and that he ended by having the bag packed and buckled on over his own shoulders that he might decide intelli- gently whether it would really be a good substi- tute for the regulation knapsack of the army.
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For five years John A. Andrew worked early and late as Massachusetts' chief executive, tasting, in that time, more cares and sorrows, hopes and joys and labors than most men would in four score years of ordinary life. He did not long survive the great strain of this period; it has been well said " no soldier struck by a rebel bullet on the battle-field died more truly a victim to the national cause than John A. Andrew." 1 So his life, also, must be counted among those offered up in Boston on the altar of " the irrepressible conflict."
1 By Albert G. Brown, Jr., in his Sketch of the Official Life of John A. Andrew.
CHAPTER VIII
THE OLD BOSTON THEATRES AND THEIR STARS
W RITING in April, 1831, the Boston correspondent of the New York Mir- ror - whose lamentations over the Puritan city's paucity of histrionic attractions have been referred to in an earlier chapter - observes plaintively, "There is now but one theatre open.' ' That theatre was the Tremont, on the site of the present Tremont Temple, and it had now been making its bid for public patronage for nearly two years, disparaging in every possible way, the while, the Federal Street theatre, its rival. In 1830 the latter was forced to capitulate. It then passed into the hands of the owners of the Tremont, who kept it closed, except for a brief season, until 1835.
The performances at the Tremont began at seven o'clock and the best seats cost only one dollar. Yet several of the greatest artists of the nineteenth century made their appearance here, chief among them being Edwin Forrest, who here played "Hamlet " for the first time in
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Boston on November 15, 1828. Forrest was then only twenty-two (he had been born in Philadelphia March 9, 1806) and he looked as well as acted the young Prince of Denmark. Moreover, he had not yet developed that brusqueness of manner under which he elected,
in later years, to cloak what seems to have been a thoroughly kind heart and a real love of humanity. It was at the Tremont Theatre in 1828, also, that John Gibbs Gilbert, a resident of Boston's North End, made his debut. J. B.
Booth was at this time manager and one night, when he was in the bill, there was enacted a sad scene which serves amply to establish the contention of those who claim that his son, who shot Lincoln, inherited insanity. Upon his first entrance on the stage, for the after-piece in which a comic part had been assigned him, it was observed that he was faltering in his delivery and that jumbled scraps from other plays were finding their way into the dialogue. Yet he managed somehow to get through two acts. In the early part of the third act, he suddenly dropped all pretense of carrying his part and fell into a colloquial chat with the King of Naples in the play. For a moment there was silence. Then, making a desperate effort to regain his self-control, the actor turned to the audience and said, " Ladies and gentle- men, I really don't know this part. I studied
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it only once before and against my inclination. I will read the part and the play shall go on. By your leave the play shall go on and Mr. Wilson shall read the part for me." Hisses greeted this suggestion. Meanwhile Booth, with a silly grin, which soon broke into a mirth- less laugh, was being led into the wings, by a friend in the company, muttering as he went, " I can't read, - I am a charity boy; - I can't read. Take me to the Lunatic Hospital." In later years Booth appeared several times on the Boston stage, having, to all appearances, recovered entirely from this attack of insanity.
In January, 1831, the celebrated Master Burke, announced as the "Irish Roscius," played an engagement of more than a month at the Tremont to houses that were most unusual for that time. "Balls and parties, sleigh rides and social gatherings were for the time dispensed with," says the record, "and the theatre was the centre of the fashionable and literary world of Boston. Burke opened as " Young Norval " but he played also Dr. Pangloss, Shylock, Richard III, Hamlet and Romeo, besides several parts whose names mean nothing to us of today.
One very curious thing about the early theatrical history of Boston is the seriousness with which the public took the private pecca- dilloes of artists. Theatrical riots were of
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common occurrence. The most important one, since that connected with the appearance of Edmund Kean at the Federal Street Theatre, 1 came at the Tremont in 1831 when Mr. J. R. Anderson, an English singer, was hissed off the stage because he was believed to have spoken " disrespectfully of the American peo- ple." In those days this was an unpardonable sin and poor Anderson and his managers had a hard time of it notwithstanding the fact that they deluged the papers with letters and affi- davits asserting that he "never did it."
The spring of 1833, at the Tremont, was marked by two very interesting events, a benefit given (April 3) to John Howard Payne by the citizens of Boston, after his absence for nearly twenty years from the scene of his early triumphs, and the first appearance in Boston, on Tuesday, April 16, of Miss Fanny Kemble. The Payne benefit was carried out by a committee of citizens appointed at a meeting held in the Tremont House and the pieces chosen for presentation consisted en- tirely of selections from various plays, written by him whom we now know only as the author of " Home, Sweet Home." Whether by reason of Miss Kemble's approaching season, or be- cause the plays Payne offered were all familiar ones, and the night selected was on the eve of
1 See Old Boston Days and Ways, p. 456.
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Fast Day, -when it was the custom for Boston families to unite in social gatherings, - whatever the reason may have been the fact remains that the receipts for the benefit were small. Yet the occasion was an impressive one. Park Benjamin wrote for it a poem celebrating the events of Payne's varied career which makes much better reading than most " efforts " of the kind, and the affair appropriately came to a close with the rendering of " Home, Sweet Home " by the orchestra followed by a speech from Payne himself.
The season of Miss Kemble and her father was a pronounced triumph, the wealth and beauty of the city crowding the playhouse night after night to do honor to this lovely woman and charming actress. Though the Hamlet of Charles Kemble was much approved, it was when the two appeared together in " School For Scandal " or "Romeo and Juliet " that the enthusiasm of the audience reached its highest pitch. When they played their fall engagement at the Tremont, under the manage- ment of Thomas Barry, the admirable stage- manager who had just come over from the Park Theatre in New York to direct the destinies of Boston's leading theatre, the receipts were very large for that time: $11,671 in eighteen nights. Thomas Barry was then called the best stage-manager in America and he con-
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tinued to deserve the title, winning and holding universal respect not only among the members of his profession but also with the general public. His first move after coming to the Tremont was to put the theatre in complete repair at an expense of $5,000 which came out of his own pocket. Gas was then introduced into the house much to the satisfaction of the ladies, "many of whom," we read, " could trace a ruined dress to a visit to the theatre, owing to the dripping of the oil from the lamps."
Charles H. Eaton, a Boston boy who became " the most capable, scholarly and polished American actor of his time," his untimely and tragic death (by a fall down a spiral staircase) bringing to a sad end what would undoubtedly have been a very brilliant career, played at the Tremont this same year. Then (in 1833) came Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wood, whose appear- ance here in opera created almost as great an excitement as the coming of Jenny Lind. To us the Woods are interesting chiefly because it was with them that Charlotte Cushman, America's greatest tragic actress and the only Boston woman to attain international fame on the stage, made her début. In those days Charlotte thought herself destined to be a great singer. It is interesting to note in passing that at this period she sang Lucy Bertram at the Tremont Theatre in a musical version of
1
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the play which was afterwards to afford her her master-rôle.
The great event in the history of the Tremont Theatre was its connection with Fanny Ellsler, the first theatrical celebrity of French birth ever to win the plaudits of conservative Bos- tonians. She made her initial appearance in Boston on the evening of September 7, 1840, and, almost immediately, became the talk of the town. Even Emerson, who with Margaret Fuller had gone to witness this unusual attrac- tion, seems to have been dazzled by the grace and charm of the lovely Fanny, for, as she was executing one of her inimitable pirouettes, balancing her supple body on the toe of her left foot while she extended her right one " to a dangerous not to say questionable height into space," he replied to Margaret's ecstatic whisper, "Ralph, this is poetry!" with a fervent, " Margaret, it is religion !" The press notices of the time almost persuade one to accept these transcendental testimonies. " All that we had imagined," says one critic, " of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of refinement, elegance and beauty, were realized. The colors of the rainbow, the delicacy of the flowers, the purity of the crystal waters, have nothing more radiant, exquisite or transparent than the gossamer floatings of this glorious creature." If the following categorical descrip-
FANNY ELLSLER. From a drawing by W. K. Hewitt.
LORENZO PAPANTI. From a painting in the possession of the Bostonian Society Page 314.
PARK SQUARE IN 1870.
PARK SQUARE IN 1880.
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tion 1 of Miss Ellsler's charms be just, she must certainly have been " glorious: "
" La Fanny is tall, beautifully formed, with limbs that resemble those of the hunting Diana, combining strength with the most delicate and graceful style; her small and classically shaped head is placed on her shoulders in a singularly elegant manner; the pure fairness of her skin requires no artificial whiteness, while her eyes beam with a species of playful malice, well suited to the half-ironical expression at times visible in the corners of her finely curved lips; her rich glossy hair of bright chestnut hue is usually braided over a forehead formed to wear with equal grace and dignity the diadem of a queen or the floral wreath of a nymph."
No wonder our ordinarily staid citizens walked before the Tremont House for hours in hopes that the divinity would show herself at the window! Articles of use and ornament, from bread and bootjacks to cuffs and brass buttons were named in her honor; and so great was her vogue that her help was gladly accepted by " society " in raising money for the granite shaft on Bunker Hill, then nearing completion. The wags of the day declared that Fanny had kicked the cap on the Monument. During her thirteen nights in Boston she earned $15,000 by her dancing!
1 In Beauties of the Opera and Ballet.
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A keen rival of the Tremont Theatre at this time was the National, brought into being by the same disgruntled actor, William Pelby, who had caused the Tremont to be started. For four years he called his venture, at the corner of Portland and Travers Streets, the Warren, but, in 1836, he reconstructed its interior and announced that its name would henceforth be the National. Here it was that Jean Daven- port made in 1838 the success which induced her father to lease the Lion Theatre, on the site of the present Bijou, for her. Miss Daven- port was at this time stated to be only " eleven years of age " and was justly regarded as an infant phenomenon, equal to Master Betty in the best days of that prodigy and surpassing the wonderful Burke to whom allusion has already been made. Why anyone should wish to see a mere child playing Richard and Shylock I cannot see, but that the desire to be thus entertained was keen there seems no doubt. Her ten performances in as many parts netted nearly sixteen hundred dollars for her fond father! The National burned in 1852 but was promptly rebuilt and for many years continued to draw large audiences. Its pieces were always well mounted and its prices reasonable.
The Howard Athenæum, once characterized 1 as an edifice " which has had an experience of 1 By Henry Austin Clapp.
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more variety than any other piece of masonry in the city of Boston," dates from 1845 and is still given over to amusement purposes. This place was built to be a temple of the Miller- ites, whose prophet, the venerable Father Miller, predicted with such persuasiveness,
" The end of the world will surely be In Eighteen Hundred and Forty-three."
that large numbers of his followers sold all their possessions preparatory to immediate departure for a land more blessed. When the day set apart for the closing up of all earthly affairs had however passed with no sign of being the Last Day Father Miller reviewed his calculations and discovered that he had been wrong in his arithmetic to the extent of a few thousand years. Whereupon the Millerites reluctantly consented to lease their former gathering-place to a group of men desirous of establishing another theatre in Boston. At the time of its opening (October 13, 1845) this new theatre had a regular stock company, which included James H. Hackett, afterwards the manager of the Howard. One feature of Hackett's acting was his originality. It is related that, on a certain occasion when he had been vociferously applauded for his work in Nimrod Wildfire, a piece that concludes with a dance in which the star kicks over a table spread with tea things,
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the gallery gods continued their applause out of all limits. Whereupon Hackett advanced to the footlights and said, "I should be most happy to repeat the dance, but I am out of breath, and what is worse, the manager is out of cups and saucers!"
It was at the Howard Athenæum on its opening night under Hackett's management (October 5, 1846) in a new building which replaced the wooden structure of the Millerites, that William Warren, whom we of today inevi- tably connect with the Boston Museum, made his first appearance in this city as Sir Lucius O'Trigger in "The Rivals." The crowning theatrical achievement of that season in this house was, however, the dancing of the Vien- noise Children; in opera the year is marked by the fact that here, for the first time in Boston, genuine Italian opera was presented, the vehicle being Verdi's "Ernani " and the stars Tedesco and Perilli. Before the theatre ceased, in 1868, to be the home of " the legitimate " it saw many opera seasons worthy of note, not the least of these being one in the spring of 1853 of which Madame Sontag was the star. It also had many distinguished managers, among them E. L. Davenport, John Gibbs Gilbert, Lester Wallack the elder, Sothern the elder, Isaac B. Rich and John Stetson. Joseph Jefferson was a member of the company at this house during the season
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of 1853-54. Clever advertisements have always been a feature here and, even today, when the talent to be exploited is by no means of a high order, the emanations from the press room of the " Old Howard " are gems of their kind. In 1845 it was announced by a soulful press agent:
" As Rome points proudly to her Coliseum, So Boston treats her Howard Athenæum."
Someone has observed that this deference on Boston's part may have arisen from the fact that the Howard was the first Boston theatre to have cushioned seats.
The first Boston theatre to have a " nigger heaven " was the Tremont. An early program stated that the central gallery, to which the admission was fifty cents, was " reserved for people of color." It would be interesting to know how largely these people took advantage of the special provision made for them. Lyman Beecher hated with a godly hatred this Tremont Theatre and he once boasted that he " would yet preach " in the building then desecrated by playhouse use. He lived to fulfil the boast; for following a religious revival of unusual fervor, it was decided to sell the theatre to Rev. Mr. Colver's Baptist Society. The bitter resentment cherished by many of the clergy towards the theatres in Boston can hardly be appreciated in these days when it is so generally
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felt that the stage at its best is bent on the same ideals as inspire the church. Yet Lyman Beecher declared, when one of the theatres in the city was burned down, that " another gateway of Hell has been destroyed by the direct intervention of divine Providence!" · After the Tremont Theatre had been modelled over into Tremont Temple it was opened (in the fall of 1843) with the hymn "Lord, Let These Ransomed Walls Rejoice."
The last June of the Tremont's life as a theatre was none the less a gala month. The city was thronged with people who had come to town to be present at the ceremonies incident to the completion of Bunker Hill Monument - for which Webster delivered the oration - and so many people were desirous of attending the theatre that, for the first time in history, Boston had a playhouse open on Saturday evening. A week later, the last performance in the old house was held. Ere the company broke up on this occasion two or three speeches were made by actors which, to my mind, compare - to Lyman Beecher's disadvantage - with some of that divine's discourses on the subject of the drama. Gilbert, for instance, defended feel- ingly his profess There were defects, he admitted, in the drama, but they could be removed by judicious management so that the most scrupulously fastidious should feel that
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the theatre was a good institution and be induced to patronize it.
The cue in all this, that " by judicious man- agement the most scrupulously fastidious might be made to feel the theatre a good institution and so to patronize it " was promptly taken up by a very clever man, Moses Kimball. Mr. Kimball had the shrewdness to see that the Boston public could be made to take very kindly to a new theatre if the plan were broken to them gradually. On June 14, 1841, he had opened his Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts in a building on the site where the Horti- cultural Hall stood later and the Paddock Building stands now, and to furnish his Museum had purchased generously from the collection which had been in the possession of the New England Museum. One of his choice acquisi- tions was the famous so-called historical paint- ing by Rembrandt Peale, representing the Roman Daughter giving sustenance to her father in prison, a startling canvas which until the demolition of the Old Boston Mu- seum greeted all who were making their exit down the long flight of steps that led out to the street.
In order to understand what a unique oppor- tunity Mr. Kimball had to develop a successful theatre from this unobjectionable beginning it should be recalled that theatricals in Boston
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were just then at very low ebb. The Boston Theatre on Federal Street was closed, the National Theatre was making an appeal which was chiefly local, the Howard had not yet been started and the Tremont Theatre was expiring. Mr. Kimball's problem, then, was to move so cautiously as to make no enemies, trusting to Providence that, in good time, he should make many friends. He opened his institution with a "grand concert " and for two years nothing more exciting than dioramas and pano- ramas was offered, - in addition to music and the curiosities.
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