A dispatch from Brooklyn states that at the conclusion of a performance
at the theatre, Fanny Davenport's wardrobe was attached by Anna
Dickinson and the remark is made that Fanny will contest the matter.
Well, we should think she would. What girl would sit down silently and
allow another to attach her wardrobe without contesting? It is no light
thing for an actress to have her wardrobe attached after the theatre is
out. Of course Fanny could throw something over her, a piece of
scenery, or a curtain, and go to her hotel, but how would she look? Miss
Davenport always looked well with her wardrobe on, but it may have been
all in the wardrobe. Without a wardrobe she may look very plain and
unattractive.
Anna Dickinson has done very wrong. She has struck Fanny in a vital
part. An actress with a wardrobe is one of the noblest works of nature.
She is the next thing to an honest man, which is the noblest work,
though we do not say it boastingly. We say she is next to an honest man,
with a wardrobe, but if she has no wardrobe it is not right.
However, we will change the subject before it gets too deep for us.
Now, the question is, what is Anna Dickinson going to do with Fanny's
wardrobe? She may think Fanny's talent goes with it, but if she will
carefully search the pockets she will find that Fanny retains her
talent, and has probably hid it under a bushel, or an umbrella; or
something, before this time. Anna cannot wear Fanny's wardrobe to play
on the stage, because she is not bigger than a banana, while Fanny is
nearly six feet long, from tip to tip. If Anna should come out on a
stage with the Davenport wardrobe, the boys would throw rolls of cotton
batting at her.
Fanny's dress, accustomed to so much talent, would have to be stuffed
full of stuff. There would be room in Fanny's dress, if Anna had it on,
as we remember the two, to put in a feather bed, eleven rolls of cotton
batting, twelve pounds of bird seed, four rubber air cushions, two dozen
towels, two brass bird cages, a bundle of old papers, a sack of bran and
a bale of hay. That is, in different places. Of course all this truck
wouldn't go in the dress in any one given locality. If Anna should put
on Fanny's dress, and have it filled up so it would look any way decent,
and attempt to go to Canada, she would be arrested for smuggling.
Why, if Dickinson should put on a pair of Davenport's stockings, now for
instance, it would be necessary to get out a search warrant to find
her. She could pin the tops of them at her throat with a brooch, and her
whole frame would not fill one stocking half as well as they have been
filled before being attached, and Anna would look like a Santa Claus
present of a crying doll, hung on to a mantel piece.
Fanny Davenport is one of the handsomest and splendidest formed women on
the American stage, and a perfect lady, while Dickinson, who succeeds
to her old clothes through the law, is small, not handsome, and a
quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this
country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of
than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store.