USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 22
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Thus it appears that this city has enjoyed the drama for upwards of one hundred years. On that fifty which had passed away before the establish- ment of our Historical Society, I intend not now to enlarge. Suffice it to say, as to the character and abilities of the performers of the American company, our oldest playgoers were often heard to speak in terms of highest approbation ; and when we enumerate Hallam, Henry, Harwood, Jefferson, Cooper, Fennell, Johnstone, Hodgkinson and his wife, Mrs. Oldmixon, and Mrs. Merry, we need not apprehend that their plaudits were unmerited. The names of several of these efficient actors of the olden times may be seen recorded on the bills which announced the arrival of Cooke.
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To one who contemplates the progress of art and education in our land, it will at once occur that with theatricals, as with instruction generally, we depended almost altogether upon supplies from abroad. Our preachers, our professors in colleges, our artists, our books, were rarely indigenous, and the stage illustrates our early reliance on the mother country in an equal, if not in a greater degrce, than in any of the other vocations of busy life. If our condition was once so restricted that farmer Giles imported from beyond the seas wooden axc-handles when the country was overrun with forests, surely it may be pronounced to have been admissible that a truthful Cordelia might be in- cluded among importable articles, for the praise- worthy design of disciplining the humanities of the man of refinement. At the time of the first representation of Richard the Third, animadver- sions appeared on the corruptions of the stage ; but, in its defence, Whitefield is cited, inasmuch as he had ascribed his inimitable gesture and bewitching address to his having acted in his youth ; and the writer moreover adds, with great earnestness, that the abuse of a thing against its use is no argument, as there is nothing in this world but must fall before such demolishing kind of logic. There was little dramatic criticism, however, among us in the earlier days of the theatre.
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
The chronicler who would be faithful to the history of the stage in New York would be com- pelled to say something concerning that period which elapsed between the commencement of the great American war of 1776, and its end in 1783. During that interval the English plays of Garrick, Foote, Cumberland, Colman, O'Keefe, Sheridan, and others, reached from time to time this coun- try, and were enacted by the officers of the army and navy, and by select aids in private or social circles ; and a remarkable peculiarity of the times seems to have been, that it was quite a common circumstance to appropriate or designate some leading or prominent individual among the inhab- itants of the city as the character drawn by the dramatist abroad. Qui capit, ille facit. Thus, when the Busy Body appeared, it was thought that Dr. Atwood would be the best exemplar of it. Atwood, as all who hear me probably know, was the first practitioner of medicine in this city who regularly assumed, by advertisement, the functions of a male accoucheur. He obtained confidence, notwithstanding the novelty of the attempt. At- wood knew every thing of every family ; he abounded in anecdote, but his company was more courted than admired. He at one time possessed, by inheritance, great wealth, but died poor, through the conduct of his son Charles.
When Laugh and Grow Fat appeared, the
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THE DRAMA OF THE REVOLUTION.
public said it well fitted the case of Mortier. He was a cheerful old gentleman and paymaster to the British army ; but the leanest of all human beings, according to the MS. I lately inspected of Mr. John Moore. He was almost diaphanous. Mortier built the great mansion on the Trinity Church grounds, to which I have already alluded in my account of Col. Burr's residence.
It would seem that during these times an Ode to love was recited ; the sympathetic public as- cribed it to old Judge Horsmanden, so famous in the Negro Plot, who had married at seventy years of age. The Wheel of Fortune was made appli- cable to Governor Gage, who had arrived in this country as a captain in 1756, in the old French war, and in 1775 was commander-in-chief of the British army. The Male Coquette was, by a sort of unanimous concurrence, applied to Dr. James Smith, the brother of the historian of New York, the man whom I described in my sketch of Chris- topher Colles as writing madrigals for the young ladies. He must have pursued the game nearly half a century. When Anacreon Moore visited this city in 1802-3, and while he was sequestered behind the Dunderbarracks on the Hudson, on ac- count of his Bermuda troubles, Smith had the te- merity to offer with renewed vigor his poetic obla- tions on the altar of love. I knew him well. He was an M.D. of Leyden. I have often seen him,
9*
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when he had arrived at the age of seventy and up- ward, attired in velvet coat, with his gold snuff- box in one hand, pressing forward with his vast projecting shirt frills, discolored with the drippings of his box, and his little brochure of poetry in the other hand, tottering through the streets, engaged in distributing to the chosen fair his rhyming pro- ducts :
" He reeled as though he scarce could stand, Yet Cupid led him by the hand."
When professor of chemistry in Columbia College, then called King's, his flowery diction with the students about the " round-tops " of science, greatly disturbed both analysis and synthesis. Hempstead Plains was brought forward in those times, most probably an indigenous work. It is affirmed that it alluded to a descendant of one of the prominent members of the affluent Beekman family, Gerardus, a great sportsman, who secured the reputation of having killed more birds than any other man that ever lived. He shot deer in the city Common (now Park), and antlers, the trophies of his skill, are yet preserved among his descendants as curi- osities to mark the city's progress. He kept a diary of his gunnery. I need scarcely add that Beekman street received its name from these first settlers.
During the possession of the city by the Brit-
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LAMBERTUS DE RHONDE.
ish, I find that comparatively little deferenee was paid to the condition of the ministry, not of the Episeopate, by the men in power, and more par- tieularly by the military order. Lampoons on the clergy were not unfrequent, particularly if they were found tinetured with Whigism. Lambertus de Rhonde, whom our learned Vice President, Dr. De Witt, has faithfully recorded in his Diseourse and History of the North Duteh Church, was one of those against whom the shafts of ridieule were aimed. De Rhonde was thoroughly edueated in Holland, and preached here in the Dutch lan- guage-he had a long eareer. His ardor attraeted notiee, and he came under the lashes of the abet- tors of royalty. He was accordingly illustrated in return for his fervor and earnestness, by a faree called Hell in a Smoke. This worthy man lived until 1795, and died honored and respeeted.
But we must hasten to times nearer our own. About the beginning of the second part of the designated one hundred years, the Morning Chron- iele, a journal of mueh taste in literature and the arts, edited by Dr. Peter Irving, and the New York Evening Post, edited by William Coleman, were the prominent papers in which any thing like regular theatrical eritieisms was published. In the former a series of articles on plays and aetors was printed in 1802-3, over the signature of Jona- than Oldstyle. At the time of their appearanee
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they were generally ascribed to the accomplished editor, Dr. Irving, who enjoyed great distinction for classical acquisition and belles-lettres knowl- edge. I knew him only in his advanced life, when illness had nearly exhausted his frame : yct he was most courteous, refined, and engaging. He was a graduate in medicine of Columbia College. Years elapsed before the real author became known. They are, I believe, among the earliest literary efforts of our countryman, Washington Irving, then about the nineteenth year of his age. These criticisms were not wanting in free ani- madversion ; yet betrayed something of that genial humor which so amply abounds in several of the subsequent writings of that eminent author. Coleman, a man of culture and of impulse, often supplied the city with his lucubrations, and aimed to settle all other criticisms by his individual ver- dict. He was often furnished with articles of pe- culiar merit on acting and actors, by John Wells, afterwards the renowned lawyer, by William John- son, the well-remembered reporter, and by our lamented Anthony Blcecker. Will Wizzard, in the Salmagundi of 1807, also favored the town with two or three theatricals on the histrionic talents of the Old Park Theatre.
The arrival of Cooke in this country consti- tutes the great epoch in the progress of the drama, and is the period at which the historian of the
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G. F. COOKE.
American stage turns to contemplate the wonders of scenic power. On the night of the 21st of No- vember, 1810, Cooke appeared at the Park The- atre in Richard Third, before an unprecedentedly crowded house. His vast renown had preceded him ; but every anticipation was more than real- ized. He had reached his fifty-fourth year, yet possessed all the physical energies of thirty, profit- ing largely on the score of health by his sca voy- age. The old playgoers, by his expositions, dis- covered a mine of wealth in Shakspeare, now first opened. His commanding person, his expressive countenance, his elevated front, his eye, his every feature and movement, his intonations, showed the great master who eclipsed all predecessors. His capacious intellect, his boldness and origi- nality, at once convinced his hearers of the supe- riority of his study and his matchless compre- hension of his great author. The critics pro- nounced him the first of living actors : he engrossed all minds. It must suffice at this time to observe, that this remarkable man and performer, during his whole career in the several cities of the Union, sustained his dramatic reputation unimpaired. The sad infirmity which too often laid hold of him, to the casual detriment of his great abilities, was dealt with by the public more in pity than in anger ; and indeed he seemed to be at times be- loved the more for the dangers he had passed.
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Dunlap appears throughout his whole biography to have delighted more to record. his inebriation, than to unfold his great professional powers. Per- haps it was easier to describe a debauch than to analyze the qualities of a sublime genius.
At this late date, after a lapse of nearly half a century, it might be pronounced foolishness to offer even a passing remark on Cooke's peculiar merits in portraying individual character. Cibber has said, the momentary beauties flowing from an harmonious elocution, cannot, like those of poetry, be their own record, and everybody has felt the force of the observation. I had seen little of the stage before I saw Cooke, and must therefore hold in comparison, in the little that I utter, the im- pressions experienced from actors of a later date. Cooke's Shylock, a new reading to the western world, was a most impassioncd exhibition. His aquiline nose was of itself a legacy here. The rc- vengeful Jew made his great and successful im- pression with Tubal, and in the trial scene his triumph was complete. Iago, with Cooke, was a more palpable and consummate villain than with any other actor I have subsequently scen. I think I have seen a better Macbeth ; the transitions of Cooke were scarcely immediate enough for the timid, hesitating, wavering monarch. His Sir Giles Overreach was not so terrifically impressive as that of Kean. His Kitely was an intellectual
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G. F. COOKE.
repast. His Lear verified the opinion of Johnson concerning that tragedy. "There is no play," says he, " which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity." As a whole, Cooke's performance of the wretched monarch was one of great credit, and possessed points of exquisite con- ception and felicity, as when he interrogates the Theban philosopher, " What is the cause of thun- der ?" Cooke's Sir Pertinax, for comic force, ver- satility of features, blandishments, inimitable plia- bility of address, and perfect personation of char- acter, is acknowledged to have greatly surpassed Macklin's. A like tribute is due to his Sir Archy M'Sarcasm. I believe that no actor in any one part within the compass of the entire drama, ever excelled therein to an equal degree as did Mr. Cooke in the Scotch character. The impression created by its representation is too deep to be ob- literated while one surviving witness remains. It was his greatest performance, and was rendered the more acceptable by his wonderful enunciation of the Scotch dialect. In one of my medical visits to him at the Old Tontine, his first residence in New York, I incidentally spoke to him con- cerning his personation of Sir Pertinax, and stated all the town had concluded he was a Scotchman. " They have the same opinion of me in Scotland," said he ; "I am an Englishman." And how, sir, did you acquire so profound a knowledge of the
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Scotch accentuation ? I rejoined. "I studied more than two and a half years in my own room, with repeated intercourse with Scotch society, in order to master the Scottish dialect, before I ven- tured to appear on the boards in Edinburgh, as Sir Pertinax, and when I did, Sawney took me for a native. It was the hardest task I ever un- dertook."
Cooke justly demands a greater space than this occasion warrants ; but the able critical pens of the time have commemorated his achievements, and the veteran Wood, in his personal reminis- cences of the stage, has dealt with him impar- tially, and delineated his character with great fidelity. He was of a kindly disposition, of great benevolence, and filled with charitable impulses. His strong mental powers were improved by read- ing, yet more by observation and a study of man- kind. Self-reliance was his distinguishing quality ; few ever were at any time able to overcome his de- termination. His resolves scarcely ever yielded. When not influenced by the goblet, his conver- sation was instructive and his manners urbane ; he had a tear for distress, and a hand of liberality for want. He was a great original, and had the logic within himself to justify innovation. His master was nature, and he would submit to no ar- tificial rhetoric. He thought much of Kemble, and every thing of Garrick, both of whom he had
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G. F. COOKE.
seen perform. He cherished an exalted idea of his art, and demanded deference from the menial and the noble. He was thoroughly imbued with the value of Franklin's aphorism, " If you make a sheep of yourself, the wolves will devour you." He toler- ated no invasion of his rights. And yet that one stain on his character, his mania for drink (a peri- odical disease, often of some duration), dethroned his high purpose, and at times degraded him below the dignity of man. In that condition his whole nature was altered, and his appearance almost dia- bolical ; you dwindled under his indignant frown ; no violence was like his ; abuse of kindest friends, extravagance beyond limits, obstinacy invincible. On the return of right reason, he would cast a withering glance at those around him, and ask, " What part is George Frederick Cooke placarded for to-night ? "
After one of those catastrophes to which I have alluded, I paid him a visit at early afternoon, the better to secure his attendance at the theatre. He was seated at his table, with many decanters, all exhausted, save two or three appropriated for candlesticks, the lights in full blaze. He had not rested for some thirty hours or more. With much ado, aided by Price the manager, he was persuaded to enter the carriage waiting at the door to take him to the play-house. It was a stormy night. He repaired to the green room, and was soon ready.
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
Price saw he was the worse from excess, but the public were not to be disappointed. "Let him," says the manager, "only get before the lights and the receipts are secure." Within the wonted time Cooke entered on his part, the Duke of Gloster. The public were unanimous in their decision, that he never performed with greater satisfaction. As he left the house he whispered, "Have I not pleased the Yankee Doodles ?" Hardly twenty- four hours after this memorable night, he scattered some $400 among the needy and the solicitous, and took refreshment in a sound sleep. A striking peculiarity often marked the conduct of Cooke : he was the most indifferent of mortals to the results which might be attendant on his folly and his recklessness. When his society was solicited by the highest in literature and the arts, he might determine to while away a limited leisure among the illiterate and the vulgar, and yet none was so fastidious in the demands of courtesy. When the painter Stuart was engaged with the delineation of his noble features, he chose to select those hours for sleeping ; yet the great artist triumphed and satisfied his liberal patron, Price. Stuart proved a match for him, by occasionally raising the lid of his eye. On the night of his benefit, the most memorable of his career in New York, with a house crowded to suffocation, he abused public confidence, and had nothing to say but that
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G. F. COOKE.
Cato had full right to take liberty with his senate.
Throbbing invades the heart when narrating the career of this extraordinary man, of herculean constitution, so abundant in recuperative energies ; of faculties so rare, and so sublime, cut off so early. In consultation with Drs. Maclean and Hosack I often attended him, and in his last illness passed most of my time with him until the closing scene. He died September, 1812. Serous effusion of the chest and abdomen were the immediate cause of his death. He was conscious to the last and resigned to his fate. Cooke attracted a mighty notice when with his dignified mien and stately person, attired as the old English gentleman, he walked Broadway. His funeral was an imposing spectacle. The reverend the clergy, the physicians, the members of the bar, officers of the army and navy, the literati and men of science, the mem- bers of the dramatic corps, and a large concourse of citizens moved in the procession. My worthy friend, George B. Rapelye, is the only survivor of the long train, whom I can now call to mind. The quiet Sabbath added to the solemnity. He nad no kindred to follow in the procession, but there were many real mourners. The sketches of Mr. Cooke in the Dramatic Mirror of Philadelphia, executed by Leslie, then a boy, and now the artist
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of European celebrity, are of most remarkable fidelity.
The professional triumphs of Cooke led Holman soon after to visit America. He arrived in 1812, and saw his old friend on his dying bed. Holman had a checkered carecr. He was an Oxford scholar, and was granted the honors of the University even after he had become attached to the stage. On assuming the civilian's gown, he delivered with great success a Latin oration ; the eclat which followed his oratorical displays at the Soho Acad- emy, led him to abandon theology and adopt the stage. He made a great hit in Orestes, and his appearance as Romeo was a decided triumph. His Lord Townley won him most applause in New York, and was deemed a finished performance. The elegant scholarship of Holman, his rigid tem- perance, surpassing all I had seen in any other person, and his fidelity to all obligations, secured him a consideration which enhanced the moral es- timation of the dramatic corps. His nature was truly noblc. His pecuniary resources were sacri- ficed in his ambitious efforts to enhance dramatic taste, and add splendor to scenic representation. He was the first to give me an idea of the extent of works on dramatic literature. His books on costumes alone formed quite a library. Impaired health led him to seek relief at the watering-place, Rockaway, where he was seized with a fatal apo-
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J. HOWARD PAYNE.
plexy, in August, 1817. The journals abroad stated that he lost his life by one of those remark- able phenomena which sometimes signalize our climate, a sort of cpidemical lightning, by which himself and several of his family were strieken down. We gave him a village funeral, most re- spectable in numbers, at the head of which, with due solemnity, walked the long-remembered old Joseph Tyler, the comedian, who has often trod the stage with Garrick, and Charles Gilfert, the musical composer, who subsequently married Hol- man's daughter.
There are about this period of the drama, as- sociated with Cooke, many theatrical celebrities, whose names might justly find a record here : many whom the critics lauded, and the spectators admired. Among the foremost is John Howard Payne, the American Roscius, who was signalized for his Norval, and his playing Edgar to Cooke's Lear. As an author, Payne's Brutus, and his Home Sweet Home, have secured him a world- wide renown. I became acquainted with him as the editor of the Thespian Mirror, when he was about thirteen years of age. A more engaging youth could not be imagined ; he won all hearts by the beauty of his person, and his captivating address, the premature richness of his mind, and his chaste and flowing utterance. But I will ab- stain from further notice of him on this occasion ;
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every reader enamored of the story of his eventful life, with the vicissitudes of authorship, of play- wrights, and of actors, will satisfy his desires by turning to the instructive pages of Duyckinck's Cyclopædia- of American Literature.
A list of the most popular actors, male and fcmale, of that period, and of some subsequent years, would necessarily include Jefferson, Simpson, Wood, Hogg, Hilson, Barnes, Bernard, Barret, the Placides, Conway, James Wallack, Mrs. Old- mixon, Mrs. Johnson, Miss Johnson, Mrs. Wheat- ley, Mrs. Darley, Mrs. Gilfert, and Mrs. Holman. As prominent in this long catalogue, James Wal- lack might be permitted to stand first, as a trage- dian of powers, and as a comic performer of re- markable capabilities. His Shaksperian range and his Dick Dashall arc enough for present citation. Wallack is still with us, and continues as the con- necting link between the old and new order of theatrical affairs. The acting drama of these times, fairly set forth, would also introduce that distinguished American, James Hackett, whose Falstaff has been the theme of applause from even the lips of fastidious critics, and whose Yan- kee characters have stamped his powers with the bold impress of originality. Moreover, Hackett, in his correspondence on Hamlet with that able scholar, John Quincy Adams, has given us proofs that he had trained himself in a deep study of the
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EDMUND SIMPSON.
philosophy of Shakspeare. It would not be un- profitable to dwell upon the capabilities of Edmund Simpson, whose range of characters was most ex- tensive, and whose talents manifested deep pene- tration in a broad expanse of dramatic individual- ities. He was for many years the active manager of the Park Theatre, and his systematic attention to his business gave satisfaction to authors, actors, and the public. No pendulum could be more regular than Simpson in his engagements : watch the dial plate of the City Hall, and in all seasons and in all weather you might see him in his daily walk in Broadway towards old Drury at the same spot, within the same hour, at the same minute. The passers-by often used him as a chronometer. His ambition to gratify the taste of the play- goers led him to seek the highest histrionic talent, a task of some perplexity to gratify a community who had enjoyed Hallam and Hodgkinson, Twaits, the Placides, Mrs. Merry, Mrs. Oldmixon, Mrs. Johnson. But Simpson found Hilson and Barnes, Yates, Spiller, and Barret, Cooper and Fennell, Mrs. Mason, &c. With the exception of the younger Placide and George Barret, the grave has closed upon all these heroes and heroines. Gen- tleman George, whom I saw on what I thought his deathbed, nearly fifty years ago, has only re- cently retired from the stage, and lives, I believe, on Long Island, with the prospect of approaching
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the age of the indurated Irishman, Macklin. Hen- ry Placide still sustains his almost unrivalled powers as the great comedian. But here I must forbear the recital of a thousand circumstances in- cident to dramatic life. I may be justified in remarking that, professionally, I became acquaint- ed with many of thesc players, and can testify to the repeated evidences they afforded, from time to time, of their charitable feelings for the relief of suffering humanity, and their excellent principles in the conduct of life. At a little later date we find the boards enriched by George Bart- ley and his wife, formerly a Miss Smith, to whom Moore dedicated a series of his Irish melodies. His Autolychus, his Sir Anthony Absolute, and his Falstaff, will long hold possession of the mem- ory, and Mrs. Bartley, cnacting the Ode on the Passions, was a consummation of artistic skill equally rare and entrancing.
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