of plays than to book notices. In fact, the keen interest of
New Yorkers in the theater had produced very competent dramatic
criticism before the newspaper was founded. William Dunlap, the
famous manager-playwright of the time, tells us that in 1796 there
was organized in the city a little group of critics, including Dr.
Peter Irving, Charles Adams, son of John Adams, Samuel Jones, William
Cutting, and John Wells, the law-partner of Coleman. They would take
turns writing a criticism of the evening’s play, and meet next day to
discuss and revise it before handing it to one of the newspapers. Their
meetings had ended before 1801, but after the _Evening Post_ began
publication several of the group, and especially Wells, wrote much for
the new journal.
The theater was the more prominent in Old New York because the variety
of public entertainments in and just after 1803 was small. Those with
a literary turn of mind might drop in at the Shakespeare Gallery on
Park Street, which afforded a “belles lettres lounge”--that is, a
table laden with newspapers and magazines of the day, and soft seats
in a well-lighted room, for $1.50 a year. Those with scientific tastes
could go to the Museum on Broadway, with its curiosities ranging from
mastodon bones to a representation of Gen. Butler being tomahawked
by the Osages, and another of Mrs. Rawlings and her six infants at a
birth. There was a thin stream of entertainers--magicians, who were
approved because their illusions taught the young to beware of wily
rogues; ventriloquists, balloonists, rare at first and objects of
supreme interest, exhibitors of lions and tapirs, and novelties like
the Eskimo whom a sea captain brought to town and who gave aquatic
exhibitions on the Hudson. In summer the public had several open-air
amusement places. One named Vauxhall was situated near the top of the
Bowery, offering music, fireworks, and refreshments. Another was the
Columbian Gardens, and the most ambitious was the Mt. Vernon Gardens.
In winter, one of the chief fashionable events was the annual concert
of the Philharmonic Society, held impressively at Tontine Hall on
Broadway, and consisting half of instrumental music, half of vocal
solos from now forgotten operas like the “Siege of Belgrade.” About New
Year’s began the select dances of the City Assembly, in the assembly
rooms in William Street. Here young ladies made their début, the finest
gowns were exhibited, and the bucks showed a skill acquired at the
dancing school of M. Lalliet.
This list of amusements comes near being exhaustive, and the Park
Theater was always the center of attraction. The building, fronting on
Park Row, had been completed in 1798 at a cost placed by the _Evening
Post_--no doubt an overestimate--at $130,500. The charge was $1 for
box seats, of which there were at first three full circle tiers, and
after 1807 four; 75 cents to the pit, and 50 cents to the gallery.
Early in the century performances began at 6:30, and at 9:30; the
first play was usually followed by a farcical after-piece. Washington
Irving as a lad used to pretend to go to bed after prayers, descend
to the ground by way of the roof of a woodshed, and slip away to see
this final performance. The _Evening Post_ gives us a good deal of
information about the management of the theater, which was under Dunlap
until 1808, and then under Cooper and Price. In its first issue Dunlap
appealed to his patrons against the dangerous practice of “smoaking,”
saying that the use of cigars was a constant topic for ridicule by
European travelers. From Coleman’s later comments we learn that no
woman would for a moment have thought of sitting anywhere but in the
boxes, and that no gentleman would have shared the gallery with the
rough crowd that filled it. Even the pit, with its dirty, broken floor,
its backless benches, and its incursions of rats from crannies under
the stage, would now be considered hardly tolerable. About the entrance
there always clustered a set of idle boys and disorderly adults who,
when spectators left during an intermission or before the after-piece,
set up a clamor for the return checks. Efforts to stop the gift or sale
of these checks were in general futile. The interior was renovated in
1807, enlargements were made to give a total of 2,372 seats, patent
lamps were installed, and a room above the lobby was fitted up as a bar
and restaurant. Still further improvements were made in 1809.
The independent and severe criticisms of the acting which appeared
in the _Evening Post_, and to a lesser extent in Irving’s _Morning
Chronicle_, were not at first relished by theatrical folk. The names
of the actors and actresses, Cooper, Fennell, Hallam, Turnbull, Mrs.
Johnson, and so on are now all but forgotten. In Boston in 1802
dramatic criticism was written largely by performers themselves, who
sat up till an early hour to insure proper newspaper notices, and in
Charleston the same practice had been known. In all cities most actors
held that no one was really competent to serve as a critic unless he
was familiar with the performances at the two great London theaters. So
irritated did the dramatic guild become that in January, 1802, there
was produced at the theater a satire upon the _Evening Post_ reviews,
written by Fennell and called “The Wheel of Truth.” It was designed
to show one Littlewit, a newspaper critic, in a ludicrous and foolish
light. He was represented as finding fault with Stuart’s portrait of
Washington because by the footrule the head was a half-inch too long,
and with a certain book because for the same price he could buy one
twice as heavy. Coleman answered this attack in five columns published
in two issues, which was five columns more than it deserved. He, Wells,
and Anthony Bleecker continued reviewing, and a contemporary writer
records that he “aimed to settle all criticism by his individual
verdict.”
Upon most of the plays there was little to say, for they were long
familiar to readers and theater-goers. Shakespeare was given year in
and year out, a full dozen of his dramas. Others of the Elizabethans,
including Ben Jonson, Marlowe (“The Jew of Malta”), Massinger,
Middleton, and Beaumont and Fletcher, were occasionally seen. Otway’s
“Venice Preserved” was something of a favorite. The comedies of
Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Fielding had regular representations. George
Colman’s plays, especially “John Bull,” were highly popular, John
Home’s “Douglas” was always sure of a house, and for the first two
decades of the century Kotzebue was much played and admired; while many
of Scott’s novels and poems were dramatized. The _Evening Post_ said
of the first performance of “Marmion,” in 1812, that it “presents a
chef-d’œuvre of melodramatic excellence.” In William Dunlap at first,
and later in M. M. Noah, New York had its own rather crude dramatists.
When the latter’s patriotic play, “She Would be a Soldier; or, The
Plains of Chippewa,” was presented in 1819, Coleman spoke of it coldly,
suggesting that the plot had been inspired by the French tale of
“Lindor et Clara, ou la Fille Soldat,” and admitting only that “it is
not deficient in interest.” But he applauded Noah’s “Siege of Tripoli”
next year as deserving what it met, “a greater degree of success than
we ever recollect to have attended an original piece on our stage.” Its
vivacity, its martial ardor, its declamation, he thought calculated to
arouse a high and manly patriotism. Nearly the whole of the criticisms,
however, had to be given up not to plays, but to performers and
interpretations of parts.
It was only toward the end of Coleman’s long editorship that the first
brilliant chapter in the history of the New York stage began. The actor
of greatest note before the War of 1812 was George Frederick Cooke,
who was warmly applauded by the _Evening Post_ in a run which began at
the Park Theater in November, 1810, and who lies buried in St. Paul’s
churchyard. It is interesting to note that during the war English
stage-folk, for most of the actors and actresses of the day were
English, continued to play before admiring audiences. An engagement
which the manager had made with Philip Kemble was suspended; but the
_Evening Post_ announced in August, 1812, when fighting was general,
that the well-known London actor Holman and his daughter had just
sailed, and they had a successful New York engagement that autumn. The
_Evening Post_ in 1819 greatly admired the English singer and actor
Phillipps, and Coleman’s praise helped to bring him $9,900 gross in six
benefit nights. It had a warm word for Catherine Lesugg and for James
W. Wallack, when they made their New York début in September, 1818.
But the first great dramatic event at the Park Theater was the initial
American appearance, on Nov. 29, 1820, of Edmund Kean in “Richard III.”
Kean was in his early thirties, and for a half dozen years, since
his first triumphant season at Drury Lane in 1814, New York had been
hearing of his magnificent powers. Coleman went to the theater that
autumn night suspicious that most of his reputation had been acquired
by stage trickery and appeals to the groundlings. He saw a man below
the middle stature, and heard a voice thin and grating in its upper
tones. “But,” admitted the editor, “he had not finished his soliloquy
before our prejudices gave way, and we saw the most complete actor,
in our judgment, that ever appeared on our boards.” The eyes were
wonderfully expressive and commanding, and in its lower register the
voice, said Coleman, “strikes with electric force upon the nerves, and
at times chills the very blood.” He declared, in an enthusiasm which
recalls Coleridge’s remark that seeing Kean play was like reading
Shakespeare by lightning flashes:
We had been induced to suppose that it was only in the more
important scenes that we should see Kean’s superiority, and that
the lighter passages would, in theatrical phrase, be _walked over_.
Far otherwise; he gave to what has heretofore seemed the most
trivial, an interest and effect never by us imagined. The most
striking point he made in the whole play (for we cannot notice the
many minor beauties he exhibited) was his manner of waking and
starting from his couch, with the cry of “Give me a horse--bind up
my wounds! Have mercy, heaven! Ha, soft, ’twas but a dream.” ...
This, with all that followed, was so admirable; bespeaking a soul,
so harrowed up by remorse, so loaded with his guilt, as gave such
an awful and impressive lesson to youth, that no one who witnessed
it can ever forget it.
When Kean played in “The Merchant of Venice,” according to the
_Evening Post_, the audience hung so breathless upon him that “when
it was almost impossible to restrain loud bursts of delight, a kind
of general ‘hush!’ was whispered from every part.” Many thought that
his best rôle was Sir Giles Overreach, and an anonymous critic in the
_Evening Post_ said so. Coleman wrote that the effect he produced as
King Lear was indescribable:
Strong emotions even to tears were excited in all parts of the
house; nor were they confined to the female part of the audience.
It could not be otherwise. Who could remain callous to the
appearance of a feeble old monarch, upwards of fourscore years,
staggering under decrepitude and overwhelmed with misfortunes,
attended with aberration of mind which ends in downright madness?
Such a representation was given with perfect fidelity by Mr. Kean.
His plaintive tones were heard from the bottom of a broken heart,
and completed the picture of human woe. Nature, writhing under the
poignancy of her feeling, and finding no utterance in words or
tears, found a vent at length for her indescribable sensations in a
spontaneous, idiotic laugh. The impression made upon all who were
present, will never be forgotten. His dreadful imprecations upon
his daughters, his solemn appeals to heaven, struck the soul with
awe.
On the final night, Dec. 28, according to the report in the _Evening
Post_, the theater rang with unprecedented plaudits, and at the close
the audience rose by common impulse and cheered Kean three times three.
But when Kean returned to New York in 1825 he was greeted with a
storm of mixed applause and anger--his first night was the night of
the famous “Kean Riot.” In 1821 he had accepted a summer engagement
in Boston, and on the third night, finding the theater almost empty
because of the heat, refused to go on with the play, thereby giving
great offense. Moreover, after his return to England, reports of his
flagrant immorality reached America. When the _Commercial Advertiser_
heard of his second tour, it denounced him as a shameless “scoundrel”
and “libertine.” Coleman, however, was eager to defend him. The Park
Theater opened on Kean’s first night, Nov. 14, at 5:30, and it was at
once filled with a crowd of more than 2,000. Seven-eighths, according
to the _Evening Post_, were eager to hear Kean, but about one hundred,
many of them Bostonians, made up an organized opposition. The moment
the actor stepped forward, the groans, hisses, and shouts of “Off
Kean!” mingled with the clapping and the cheers of his friends, were
deafening. The play proceeded amid a continued uproar. Some few scenes
in the fourth and fifth acts were heard, but the others, including
all in which Kean appeared, were given in dumb show. The actor tried
repeatedly to address the audience, but in vain. At one point he was
struck in the chest by an orange. One interrupter was put out by the
infuriated audience, and fights occurred in various parts of the pit,
with damage to benches and furniture.
It would be pleasant to say that the _Evening Post_ roundly denounced
this disgraceful scene, but it rebuked it only mildly. Fortunately,
the outrage was not repeated. Kean issued a mollifying address, the
Bostonians went home, and a reaction ensued. As the _Evening Post_
records, every one of his houses was filled to overflowing, and when
he took his benefit night on Feb. 25, 1826, upon leaving, his receipts
were $1,800 clear.
Compared with that of Kean, the début of Junius Brutus Booth, made in
“Richard III” on the night of Oct. 5, 1821, attracted little attention.
He came to the city a perfect stranger, and slowly made his way. When
Edwin Forrest appeared at the New York Theater, in the Bowery, in
the autumn of 1826, the _Evening Post_ pronounced this American-born
actor as good as any but the very foremost Englishmen--“irresistibly
imposing,” indeed. But the only engagement comparable with Kean’s
was that of Macready, who made his bow on Oct. 3, 1826, as Virginius
in the well-known tragedy of that name by Knowles. He was greeted so
enthusiastically that he was disconcerted, and many thought him no
better than their old favorite, Cooper. But on the second night, when
he impersonated Macbeth, his genius was perceived. Coleman wrote that
he had never seen the rôle embodied so consistently. “There was a
unity in his conception of character, which made the development of
Macbeth’s feelings and prompting motives ... perfectly intelligible,
from his first interview with the weird sisters to the final overthrow
of all his hopes, and his desperate conflict with Macduff.”
The New York which Macready visited in 1826 was no longer a city of one
playhouse, though when people spoke of “the theatre” they still always
meant that on Park Row. The people could now support more than one star
and one company at a time. Macready finished his October engagement
on the 20th, and was immediately followed by Mr. and Mrs. James K.
Hackett, in the first American performance of “The Comedy of Errors.”
At the Chatham Theater, Junius Brutus Booth was playing Shakespeare; on
the 25th he gave “Othello,” with James Wallack as Iago. Mrs. Gilbert at
the New York Theater, a brand-new edifice in the Bowery, seating 3,000
spectators, was presenting “Much Ado About Nothing.” She was succeeded
the next month by Forrest in a repertory of plays. The _Evening Post_
that spring had surprised many by stating that the profits of the
Chatham Theater the previous season had been $23,000, and the gross
receipts $75,000. Of the former sum “The Lady of the Lake” alone,
a play with musical numbers interspersed, had yielded $10,000. The
newspaper was delighted when the Hacketts received, on their three
benefit nights in “The Comedy of Errors,” a total of $3,500. This was
actually $1,100 more than the balloonist, Eugene Robertson, took one
afternoon that month when he floated from Castle Garden to Elizabeth,
N. J., in the presence of a crowd estimated at more than 40,000.
The day when the _Evening Post_ should have a musical editor was as far
distant as that when it should give to sports more than a semi-annual
paragraph or two upon the races. But Coleman enthusiastically reviewed
the first Italian opera offered in the city--a performance of Rossini’s
“Barber of Seville” at the New York Theater on Nov. 29, 1825. The
fashion of the town turned out to see this Italian troupe, headed by
Señor Garcia, on every Tuesday and Saturday during the middle of the
winter; paying $2 for box seats and $1 for the pit. “In what language
shall we speak of an entertainment so novel in this country?” asked the
editor:
All have obtained a general idea of the opera by report. But report
can give but a faint idea of it. Until it is seen, it will never be
believed that a play can be conducted in recitative or singing and
yet appear nearly as natural as the ordinary drama. We were last
night surprised, delighted, enchanted; and such were the feelings
of all who witnessed the performance. The repeated plaudits with
which the theater rang were unequivocal, unaffected bursts of
rapture.
Would American taste approve of the opera? “We predict,” Coleman
ventured, “that it will never hereafter dispense with it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
BRYANT BECOMES EDITOR OF THE “EVENING POST”
In 1829 Richard H. Dana, the poet and father of the author of “Two
Years Before the Mast,” remarked that “If Bryant must write in a
paper to get his bread, I pray God he may get a bellyful.” Bryant
had entered the office of the _Evening Post_ in the summer of 1826,
half by accident and without any intention of making journalism his
profession; yet he was to remain there fifty-two years, till the very
day he received his death-stroke. No other great figure in American
literature save Dr. Franklin has such a record as a publicist. How did
it happen that the foremost poet in America, already known as such by
“Thanatopsis” and “To a Waterfowl,” became the “junior editor” of the
_Evening Post_ in Coleman’s declining years?
The young poet-lawyer had come to New York city from Great Barrington,
Mass., at the beginning of 1825, when he was but thirty years old,
brought thither by Henry D. Sedgwick and Gulian C. Verplanck, two
citizens of substance and influence who had been struck by the genius
shown in his first volume of verse. The Sedgwicks were a well-known
Berkshire family. Catharine M. Sedgwick, later modestly famous as a
novelist, was the first to make Bryant’s acquaintance, and had strongly
commended the struggling barrister to her older brother Henry, who was
a leader at the New York bar. With neither his profession nor with
life in a small town was Bryant contented; and the applause which had
been given to “Thanatopsis” in the _North American Review_, to “The
Ages” when he read it before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard,
and to his first thin volume in 1821, seemed to justify his hopes for
a metropolitan literary career. “The time is peculiarly propitious,”
Henry Sedgwick urged him from New York; “the Athenæum, just
instituted, is exciting a sort of literary rage, and it is proposed
to set up a journal in connection with it.” If his pen did not yield
a full living, he could make an additional sum by giving lessons to
foreigners in the English language and literature. Bryant willingly
yielded. Leaving his wife and baby behind, he settled in a boarding
house that spring, and became one of the two editors of the monthly
_New York Review_, the first number of which appeared in June, 1825.
His arrival to reside in New York had attracted general notice. To
all discerning lovers of literature in the city, and they were many,
his best poems were well known. Verplanck had given his first volume
a cordial review in the New York _American_, and when he had made a
preliminary visit to the city in 1824 the _Evening Post_ had reprinted
“Thanatopsis” with a warm word of praise. At the homes of Sedgwick and
Verplanck, the former a sort of Holland House for New York, Bryant was
at once made acquainted with Fitzgreene Halleck and J. G. Percival,
with the aspiring young poets Hillhouse and Robert Sands, with the
artists S. F. B. Morse and Dunlap, with Chancellor Kent and President
Duer of Columbia. We may be sure that Coleman, who was proud of his
friendship with Brockden Brown and Irving, did not fail to seek out the
young New Englander who had come from near his former home, and whose
poem “Green River” celebrated a stream that Coleman knew well. On Nov.
16, 1825, the _Evening Post_ republished from the _New York Review_
Bryant’s “The Death of the Flowers,” on March 3, 1826, it took from a
magazine his “To a Cloud,” and on June 11 it reprinted “The Song of
Pitcairn’s Island”; while various flattering references were made to
his work.
Yet Bryant’s position was a precarious and anxious one. He wrote
his friend Dana that, relieved as he was to get out of his “shabby”
profession as a lawyer, in which he had been shocked by a bad
miscarriage of justice and by the petty wrangles in which he was
involved, he was not sure that he had found a better. Reviewing books
was not the most congenial of employments. His salary was at first
$1,000 a year; but the _Review_ drooped, and after an effort had been
made to bolster it up by amalgamation with two other periodicals,
Bryant found himself in the early summer of 1826 co-editor of the
_United States Review and Literary Gazette_, with a quarter ownership
and a salary of only $500. His confidence in his ability to live by his
pen was so shaken that he obtained a permit to practice law in the city
courts, and was actually associated with Henry Sedgwick in a case.
At this juncture, in the middle of June, William Coleman was thrown
from his gig by a runaway horse. It was for a time doubted whether he
would recover, and as he was confined to his room for ten weeks, it was
necessary to find some one to assist his son on the _Evening Post_.
A temporary position was offered Bryant, and Verplanck and others
earnestly counselled him to take it. “The establishment is an extremely
lucrative one,” wrote Bryant. “It is owned by two individuals--Mr.
Coleman and Mr. Burnham. The profits are estimated at about thirty
thousand dollars a year--fifteen to each proprietor. This is better
than poetry and magazines.”
Throughout July Bryant was busy upon the _Evening Post_; on Aug. 2
he wrote an account of the Columbia Commencement for it, criticizing
the young speakers for confusing “will” and “shall”; and on Aug. 12
he furnished it two brief poetic translations, from Clement Marot and
Dante, neither of which is included in his collected works. Immediately
thereafter he set out on a trip to Boston, to bear to Richard H. Dana
also an offer from the _Evening Post_ of a permanent place on its
staff, which Dana, after some hesitation, refused. This trip was made
possible by Coleman’s renewed attention to the journal. The poet’s
absence gave the _Evening Post_ an opportunity to speak highly of
Bryant, whom it now considered a full staff-member. On Aug. 21–22 it
republished his poem “The Two Graves” from the _United States Review_,
writing of the accomplished author as one to whom, “by the general
assent of the enlightened portion of his countrymen
‘The lyre and laurels both are given
With all the trophies of triumphant day.’”