USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 15
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But, no sooner had the Tremont closed its doors than Mr. Kimball made arrangements to give regular dramatic performances in his Museum and several members of the Tremont Company were engaged to float the venture. Miss Adelaide Phillips, then a child of ten, was among the number, and for several years during her early connection with the Museum she was wont to drive her hoop back and forth to rehearsals from her parents' home on Tremont Street.
The price of admission during all the Bromfield Street period of the Museum's history was 25 cents, "children under twelve years of age half price." Great emphasis was laid upon the educational value of the curiosities and such shows as were produced were represented to
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be of the strictly " moral " variety. On the bills for 1844 a prize of $100 was offered by the management "for the best moral domestic drama adapted to the stock company of the Museum." To win this prize there was sent in a play called " The Drunkard " the author- ship of which has never been accurately known, but which John Bouvé Clapp - who has made a special study of the Museum's history to which I am indebted for many of these facts - attributes to Rev. John Pierpont, then pastor of the Hollis Street Church. Pierpont was an ardent worker in the movement for temperance reform, and he was wont to thunder from his pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, against those who had built up fortunes by liquor manu- facture. This despite the fact that three of the pillars of his church were distillers and stored their rum in the basement of the church - thus giving point to the epigram:
" Above the spirit Divine, Below the spirits of Wine."
Perhaps it was in the belief that he could preach temperance to a larger audience through the theatre than through the church that Mr. Pierpont turned his attention to the writing of a play. One of the parts in this highly moral " Drunkard " was taken, it is interesting to know, by Miss Caroline Fox, who afterwards
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became famous, the world over, as the original Topsy.
So kindly had the Boston public taken to theatre-going at a "Museum " that Mr. Kim- ball now began to arrange for ampler quarters. Hammatt Billings and J. E. Billings were com- missioned to make plans for an adequate auditorium and on November 6, 1846, what we of today know as "the Old Boston Museum " was opened. The first performance began with the playing of " America " by the orchestra and in the course of the evening Adelaide Phillips danced.
When the new Museum opened its doors the curios were displayed in the pillared prom- enade where the pictures hung later. Not until the season of 1850-51 was the ".wax statuary hall 100 feet in length " fitted up as their home and " The Murder of Miss McCrea," the " Scene in the Cabin of a Vessel Captured by Pirates," the "Three Stages of Intemper- ance " and "The Last Supper " there " ex- hibited without extra charge to all who desired to view them." The "Feejee Mermaid," alluded to by Barnum in his Autobiography was also duly here. Mr. Kimball was by no means stingy with his treasures, however, and when the Cochituate water was let on in Boston (1848) two of the Museum's huge stuffed elephants were lent to be in the procession.
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In that charming book, Yesterdays With Actors,1 there is a Hawthornesque passage descriptive of the quaint old gentleman who was long the care-taker and preserver of the wax figures. When Mrs. Winslow, the new recruit to the company, first met him (about 1860) he conducted her to the upper gallery she says, " with a confiding yet startled air which was almost furtive and suggested fear and suspicion. I could not but believe that, engrossed with his dumb companions, when he sought human fellowship, the eyes that moved, the lips that spoke half terrified him! However, being a silent person, I was taken the rounds, and every perfection pointed out to me. Was I not smitten with the belief that Chang and Eng were before me? These Siamese, were they not real? He spoke with solemn earnestness of Miss McCrea's need of a clean gown. She
should have it yet. But the school - the
school. Look at it! Every face, he told me, had been wiped, every collar washed, every shoe brushed. The schoolmaster, was I not deceived by him? The scholar with the dunce's cap? Wax? No! it was life! . . . The ghastly tragedy of the drunkard's history, the verisimili- tude of the sealing wax blood of poor Miss McCrea, stark staring Santa Anna, were always things terrible to me, but as I think now of the
1 Written by Mrs. Erving Winslow, née Kate Reignolds.
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pale moonlight falling on those awful spectres [this book was written before the Museum was demolished] I have an eerie feeling that the little old man, though he died some time since, still creeps about the gallery, fulfilling his faithful task."
The great event of the season 1847-1848 at the Museum was the first appearance at this house of William Warren, who (with the excep- tion of one year) was exclusively associated with this playhouse for the next thirty-five seasons. His initial appearance was in Pocock's old comedy, "Sweethearts and Wives," and he acted for the last time, May 12, 1883, playing Old Eccles in " Caste." His career may thus be said to cover the history of the Museum throughout the entire period of its palmy days. Mr. Warren was the son of an English player and of an American lady of acting family. He got his training through the old stock company system and of him it might peculiarly be said that in his time he " played many parts." While at the Museum, alone, his rôles numbered over 575 and the per- formances to his credit were upwards of 13,000. On the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance in Boston he was given a testimonial and Vin- ton's portrait, herewith reproduced, which was painted at the order of a number of Bostonians, was exhibited in the lobby. The picture now
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hangs in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, a worthy memorial of one who was a gifted actor and an old school gentleman of the finest type.
For many years Mr. Warren was a most interesting Boston figure as he took his daily walks to the Museum from his boarding place kept by Miss Fisher, for he never married. Henry Austin Clapp has declared that his manners were the finest he ever saw in a man and that he remembers hearing it said at a time, near the close of the Great War, by some men who were native here, and to the best Boston manner born, that "Edward Everett, A. B., A. M., LL.D., ex-Governor of Massa- chusetts, ex-United States Senator from Massa- chusetts, ex-President of Harvard College, ex- Minister to England, litterateur, orator, states- man, was, in respect of distinction of manners, in a class with but one other of his fellow citi- zens: that one other appearing in the local directory as Warren, William, comedian, boards 2 Bulfinch Place." 1
For sixteen years the stage-manager and lead- ing man at the Museum was W. H. Smith. He was succeeded in the stage management by Mr. E. F. Keach, a dashing actor as well as a capable director. Mrs. Winslow gives us an interesting glimpse into the green room and behind the scenes when Keach was at the helm:
1 Reminiscences of a Dramatic Critic.
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" We entered by a narrow door from one of the galleries which gave at a touch, but fell back as quickly with the force of a ponderous spring. A door-keeper, seated at the end of a narrow aisle some three feet wide between enormous piles of dusty canvas, permitted none to pass except the actual employees of the theatre. About the same space between the inner edge of the scenery standing in its grooves and the masses stacked along the walls, allowed a scant passage down the side of the stage. At one corner, where the private box is now was a property room, behind that the manager's office.
" On the opposite side, a small space of per- haps six feet wide at one end tapering down to four at the other was the green room, its furni- ture a bench about the wall, a cast case, a dictionary and a mirror, over which was in- scribed ' Trifles make Perfection.' . . A hasty glance at the 'call ' in the green room for the coming plays, a word of courteous greeting for our fellow actors, the last conning of the part; such were the interludes between the appearances on the stage; and a more workaday, matter of fact place it would be hard to find."
Yet because the players were clever men and women many a good thing flashed out in that dingy room. William Warren, Mrs. Winslow relates, she saw one night surrounded by a
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bevy of girls "who in their æsthetic clinging gowns and admring attitudes could not but remind me of the maidens in Patience grouped around Bunthorn. In speaking to him after- wards I told him he was the lion of the night. ' Ah,' said Warren, 'I never heard of but one man who was not hurt by lionizing, and he was a Jew by the name of Daniel.'" It was of Warren that the great Rachel said simply, " He is one of us."
One of Warren's early successes at the Museum was as Mustapha in "The Forty Thieves," which, with " Aladdin," "Cinder- ella," " Valentine and Orson," "The Enchanted Beauty," "Blue Beard " and " The Children of Cyprus " formed the series of " grand dramatic spectacles " which served to make friends for Mr. Kimball's enterprise because parents " took the children," - just as we all do now when the circus is in town. "The Children of Cy- prus " is especially remembered for its bird song rendered by Adelaide Phillips. It was the young artist's work in this part which first caused Jenny Lind to be interested in her, and to help her, subsequently, to a musical educa- tion.
The naïve readiness of the Bostonians to take the new theatre, disguised as a " Museum," at Mr. Kimball's shrewedly calculated valua- tion is nowhere more amusingly shown than
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in the various handbooks of the time. In the 1856 edition of Boston Sights and Strangers' Guide we find unbounded enthusiasm over " the spacious and superb building, its front adorned by elegant balconies and rows of ground glass globes like enormous pearls which at night are luminous with gas. Three tiers of elegantly arched windows admit light into the building," adds the writer, " and we reach the interior by a bold flight of stairs."
A bold flight of description this! Yet even more impressive matter follows, for we are told of the statuary and superb works of art, of the curios which are " products of many a clime " . . and of an observatory surmounting all " whence splendid panoramic views of the city and harbor and its islands may be obtained." After which comes the editorial assurance that " the Museum theatre is one of the most beautifully decorated, best constructed and well managed theatres in the United States. The visitor there has no rowdyism to fear and nothing ever occurs either in the audience por- tion or on the stage to offend the most fastidious. As good order is maintained in Mr. Kimball's theatre as in any drawing room in the land."
The reserved seat plan was adopted at the Museum in 1848, slips entitling to the same being partly printed and partly filled out by hand. The following year Edwin Booth, called
GREEN ROOM OF THE BOSTON MUSEUM. Page 258.
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Copyright, 1903, by N. L. Stebbins.
FOYER OF THE BOSTON MUSEUM.
MRS. VINCENT.
WILLIAM WARREN.
From the painting by Frederic Vinton, in the pos- session of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Page 256.
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in the bills Edwin T. Booth, was seen here for the first time on any stage, his rôle being the small one of Tressel in " Richard III " to his father's Gloster. This was September 10, 1849, young Booth being then sixteen years old.
Two very interesting things happened at the Museum in the season of 1852-53: " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was staged and Mrs. Vincent joined the company. The dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's story was made by H. J. Conway, Frank Whitman played Uncle Tom, W. H. Smith did Drover John, J. Davies was Simon Legree, E. F. Keach did the George Harris, J. A. Smith was the St. Clare, Mrs. Wulf Fries did the Eliza, Mrs. Thoman was Aunt Ophelia, Helen Western was the Eva and Miss Gazzynski acted Topsy. An interpolated character - Penetrate Partyside - who created " comic relief " in the play was done by William Warren, and Mrs. Vincent, then a slim and swift young woman, acted Cassy. On one memorable evening Mrs. Stowe and her sister, together with their father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, - who hated the theatre generally, - attended the performance.
Mrs. Vincent's maiden name was Mary Ann Farley and she was born in Portsmouth, Eng- land, September 18, 1818. Her father was a naval officer but he died when she was only two and her mother's decease soon afterward
... ... ........
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left the child to be brought up and cared for by an aunt, a grandmother and an old servant. This servant married a man who lived in Gos- port and began to take boarders, among them several actors, including Charles Wilson, man- ager of the Theatre at Cowes, and his wife. Little Miss Farley used to go to have tea with them at the theatre; thus her stage desires were early kindled. She made her début at Cowes in April, 1835, in " The Review, or the Wags of Windsor," by George Colman, Jr., playing with much vim and vigor the part of a chamber- maid. The following August, when only sixteen, she married James R. Vincent, a comedian many years her senior. Her Boston début, as has been said, was at the National Theatre and she had been in the company there six years when the burning of the playhouse made her eligible for an engagement at the Museum. Here her connection was continuous, (with the exception of the season 1861-62 when she supported Edwin Forrest at the Howard Athenæum) until her death September 4, 1887. In 1856 she married John Wilson of the Museum com- pany, but, this alliance not proving a happy one, she was divorced from him ten years later. It is quite properly as Mrs. Vincent, therefore, -" dear old Mrs. Vincent," - that this gifted woman is remembered and honored in Boston. Up to the very end of her life she kept happily
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in the harness. She died, September 4, 1887, at her home 112 Charles Street; on the pre- ceding Wednesday she had played Kezia Beek- man in " The Dominie's Daughter! "
Mrs. Vincent's kindness to animals and her generous charities were famous in the Boston of a quarter century ago. On one occasion when all the other members of the Museum company were assembled, she was found by messengers, hastily sent out in quest of her, standing in the midst of a crowd at the corner of Tremont Row and Pemberton Square, haranguing a teamster who was driving a lame horse. "Her fervent denunciations, pointed by her umbrella," says Kate Reignolds Winslow,1 " were scarcely to be interrupted by the urgent reminder that the stage was waiting. As she was dragged away and hurried up the stairs of the Museum, we heard her panting for breath and brokenly exclaiming in anything but a tone of penitence: ' Well, I don't care if the stage is waiting, and I don't care for Mr. Keach nor twenty like him. I won't see a brute driving a horse on three legs without speaking my mind.'"
This manager, Mr. E. F. Keach, appears to have been a good deal of a martinet. Yet it was undoubtedly due to him that the Boston Museum developed from a mere stage adjunct of wax figures and curiosities (frequented by 1 In Yesterdays with Actors.
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good people who were afraid of the very name, theatre) to a first rate home of first rate drama. His " Rules and Regulations " concerning the conduct of the company, while in the Green Room, were quite above the standard in other theatres. They made it clear that the " Green Room is provided for the quiet and respectable assemblage of the ladies and gentlemen of the company," that " conversation there must be carried on in low tones," and that " smoking and spirituous liquors would not be allowed there or in any part of the theatre at any time." After four years as manager Mr. Keach was succeeded by R. M. Field, who held the place until the stock company was dis- continued in 1895.
Mrs. Winslow (then Kate Reignolds) was leading woman in the company beginning with the first season under Keach (1860-61), and her vivid account of acting with John Wilkes Booth, who soon came to play an engagement, leaves one in no doubt that this man was very close to insanity even before his affliction was recognized. " If ever there was an irresponsible person," she says, "it was this sad-faced, handsome, passionate boy. As an actor he had more of the native fire and fury of his great father than any of his family but he was as undisciplined on the stage as off. When he fought it was no stage fight. He told me that
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he generally slept smothered in steak and oysters to cure his own bruises after Richard the Third, because he necessarily got as good as he gave, - in fact more, for though an excellent swordsman, in his blind passion he constantly cut himself. How he threw me about ! In Othello, when with fiery remorse, he rushed to the bed of Desdemona after the murder, I used to hold my breath, lest the bang his cimeter gave when he threw himself at me should force me back to life with a shriek." Once when he and she had been playing " Romeo and Juliet " the curtain fell on Romeo with a sprained thumb, and a good deal of long hair on his sleeve, and with Juliet in rags while her two white satin shoes were lying in the corner of the stage. In his last struggle Romeo had literally shaken his beloved out of her shoes !
Agnes Robertson was one of the attractions at the Museum in writing of whom Mrs. Wins- low waxes exceedingly enthusiastic. This gifted young Scotchwoman played for the first time in the United States (in the season of 1856-57) at this house and so great was her vogue that all Boston stood in line to secure tickets. "She was petted in society, - for women were fas- cinated by her perhaps even more than men, - and equally in drawing-rooms and among the garish adjuncts of the stage there was a bright
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purity about her, like the atmosphere of her own Scotland.
" Opposite the Museum in those days was Mrs. Mayer's ice-cream saloon, a favorite meeting place for parties going to the play. A mob of girls would cluster about the sidewalk to wait the exit of Agnes Robertson, and the more favored customers of the shop gathered at its windows, which Mrs. Mayer would empty of her showcase to make room for the curious throng. . Often under good Mrs. Vincent's care, and beneath her ample cloak, the little form was smuggled past the eager eyes " to her quarters in the Tremont House. One other delightful bit about Mrs. Vincent must be quoted from this book. It is a picture of that lady among her cats! "Once when a visitor, who could not abide that 'harmless necessary ' animal, was calling at the house on Charles Street the door was pushed stealthily open, after a little space, and a great glossy black puss, with tail erect and gleaming eyes, slowly entered the darkened parlor. Soon a second followed the first, this one with bushy tail, red eyes and bristling fur. Then came another and another until there were five. Great was the visitor's relief when the hostess herself bustled in calling 'William Warren,' 'Smithy,' and so on, for all had the names of principal members of the Museum company!"
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But the temptation to linger unduly over the story of the Museum must be resisted. In 1892 the exhibition of curiosities was prac- tically discontinued. In 1896 the wax figures were sold to a travelling manager and the mum- mies were given to the Boston Art Museum. On April 13, 1900, there occurred a slight fire in the hall of curiosities by which some of the paintings were injured and, in 1903, Margaret Anglin played " Mrs. Dane's Defence " for the benefit of the Vincent Memorial Hospital, this being the last performance held in the old playhouse before it gave way to an office building. " Auld Lang Syne " was sung in the course of the evening and, as the final curtain rang down, the eyes of many a seasoned play- goer were dimmed with tears. For Boston loved its " old Museum " and the associations which clustered around it.
The only two of the really old theatres which survive today are the Howard and the Boston, both now given over to "variety" forms of entertainment. But the Boston Theatre is still a delight to the eye, as its designers intended it should be. William W. Clapp, Jr., to whose Record of the Boston Stage (published in 1853) I am indebted for much informa- tion about the old theatres, closes his carefully compiled volume with an allusion to the "New Opera House and Theatre now in
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process of erection " and the hope that the same would receive from the public a most generous support. Whereupon he quotes as follows from a letter just sent him by Thomas Barry, " The drama is firmly planted in New England for good or for evil; you cannot crush it by preju- dice or destroy it by misplaced religious en- thusiasm. The public can make a theatre a blessing or a curse. . . . You will have sooner or later a first class theatre in Boston and, if properly built and properly conducted, it will prove a boon to the public and a fortune to the manager." In many ways these words were prophetic. For Barry himself soon came over : from New York to establish such a theatre in Boston and it proved to be quite as successful as he had said it would.
It was built in this wise: A meeting was called at the Revere House in 1852 by Joseph Leonard, the auctioneer, for the purpose of creating interest in the erection of a new Boston playhouse. The sum deemed necessary to the undertaking ($250,000 in blocks of stock sold at $1,000 a share) was soon secured, an appro- priate site purchased, the contract let to a firm of architects who carried out the design for which H. Noury had won a prize of $500, - and, on September 11, 1854, the house was dedicated.
The perfect harmony of proportions attained
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in this theatre are a great credit to the period in which the structure was built. For excellent acoustics and symmetry were the aims of those behind the undertaking, not simply accommoda- tion for as many seats as could be crowded into a given space. Alexander Corbett, Jr., who has written entertainingly ì of this old house, says that " standees," who nowadays often contrib- ute liberally to a theatre's income, were practically unknown when the Boston Theatre was built and that there still existed much of that old prejudice against occupants of the lower floor seats - those whom Hamlet char- acterizes as "groundlings, caring only for inexplicable dumb show and noise." The balcony, where seats sold for one dollar each, was the place where fashion chose to sit, when it was not occupying a stage box, which then cost six dollars.
The very first folding chairs ever used in a theatre were found here on the opening night and were warmly commended by one of the critics, as " being so ingeniously contrived as to fold up and allow passing and having nicely cushioned backs." Another innovation, which deserved the critic's praise, - though I have yet to find that it got it, - was the substitution of a refreshment counter at which ice-cream, temperance drinks and the like were served, 1 In The Bostonian, vol. I.
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for the bar-room on the third tier, which was then a feature of most local playhouses. (The most baneful part of the bar lay not in the drinks served but in the " demi-mondaines " who fluttered about near by.)
The first word spoken on the stage of this new theatre was by John Gilbert, who read an original poem of Thomas W. Parsons, which had won a prize of one hundred dollars. The opening play was Sheridan's "Rivals " and a farce called "The Loan of a Lover " followed. According to the custom of the times, this introduced what are now known as " vaudeville specialties." A feature of the orchestral selec- tions was the playing of the " William Tell " overture, the critics greatly praising this change from the " tinkling polkas " with which most theatre orchestras regaled their patrons. Only five performances a week were given here at first. Then Saturday matinées were inaugu- rated; but not for several years was there a performance on the eve of the Lord's Day.
During the season 1859-60 the name of the house was changed to the "Boston Academy of Music " and grand opera with Adelina Patti as the prima donna and Brignoli as the tenor introduced. Then (in 1862), under the man- agement of Wyzeman Marshall, the former name was restored. Six years later, in February, 1868, came the memorable production of " The
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White Fawn," that marvel of spectacular dis- play which marks the beginning, in this city, of the kind of thing of which " The Black Crook" was the pioneer in New York. The Boston Theatre's chief renown, however, was to come from its association with great acting and great actors, among them Forrest, Edwin Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Rachel, Fechter and Irving.
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