It was a pity that after all this success there should come an
aftermath of unhappy, unpaid singers and players who were unable to
realize a farthing from their splendid work. Mr. Bugbee slipped
quietly out of the city, Mr. Kinross sailed on the Portland steamer,
Mr. Benham disappeared, as did also Mr. Easton. The concerts certainly
paid a splendid profit, but expenses and high salaries of these men
ate up the expected profits. Everything was carried out with a
lavish hand and Mr. Bugbee, with all his promises, did not fulfill
them as by contract. I do not know what the other soloists' losses
were, but my portion was to be $150 for three days, carriages, etc.
After the concert in the opera house I never saw Mr. Bugbee, although
I made every effort to do so. He was lost to San Francisco forever. A
number of years after all this trouble I saw a notice of his death in
a southern city. Carl Zerrahn was the only one who benefited by his
coming and he returned home with $2,500 in his pockets, a gold medal,
laurel wreath and embossed letters of appreciation from the musicians
of California. I never knew how settlement was made with the managers
and the Eastern artists. It is my opinion they received nothing and
were obliged to return on their own expenses. The papers were full of
sarcasm and by-play upon the names of the prominent men who had the
matter in hand. "Charles Stoddard, our poet, had his genius completely
crushed under the $20 that he did not receive for his work." The San
Francisco Chronicle said further: "In the meantime, the present
creditors are singing with much vim the Oweratoweriwoe of the
Götterdämmerung."
Laying all jokes aside, it was a great event. It would give the reader
only a faint idea of the mass of humanity to express its size merely
by so many thousands. The spectator looking down upon it from some
upper seat of the boundless gallery of the choral amphitheater saw an
awe-inspiring scene. People in numbers almost as great as the standing
army of the United States were packed so closely together that all
individuality was lost, and the pulsating aggregate looked like the
exposed and mottled back of some submerged sea monster. Between the
parts of the programme the combined hum of ten thousand voices floated
upon the air like the deep boom of the surf on the seashore. When the
raised seats were well filled in the vast gallery the graduation was
lost to the eye, and the whole presented a plane surface as rich in
coloring as if it had been a hanging of rarely worked tapestry. The
main floor was one solid mass of female loveliness and manly worth.
There were national dignitaries on a visit to the coast, state
dignitaries from Sacramento, city dignitaries and nature's noblemen
from all over the country at large. The amiable and heavily bearded
countenance of Governor Irwin was conspicuous in one of the boxes. The
buxom and benign countenance of Mayor Bryant, his person clad in a
rigorously accurate full dress costume, was not less noticeable. But
the ladies! Oh, there began the tempest of the soul of any man who
tried to pick out any one who was more pre-eminently attractive than
the other. The eye could travel on forever through the boxes from east
to west, from Mission street to Market, from the main floor to the
roof, and every prospect was pleasing and man was utterly outvied. At
half past two the tall and graceful conductor, Carl Zerrahn, arrayed
in a black frock coat and a pair of lavender colored trousers, stepped
lightly down the gorgeous hill of choristers to the front of the
orchestra, made a profound bow to the audience, then turned and raised
his baton to the chorus. Instantly the 1,800 rose to their feet with a
motion so well timed that it seemed as if the whole south end of the
pavilion was rising. As 1,800 scarlet-covered chorus books were
hoisted into view, the whole amphitheater seemed aflame as if for an
exaggerated incantation scene of Fra Diavolo. Then there was another
motion of the baton, with the precision of a machine fifty bows
scraped upwards over fifty violins and 150 other instruments, and
1,800 voices burst forth in melody.
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