BEFORE THE FOOT-LIGHTS.
There are people who patronize the theatre who do not go there simply
to see the play or to be pleased by the players, and whose interest in
the stage is more than double discounted by the interest they manifest
in and towards the audience. The "masher" makes it a market in which
to display his fascinations and call upon the susceptible fraction of
femininity to inspect and avail themselves of his heart-breaking and
soul-wasting wares. Whether he modestly takes his stand in the rear of
the auditorium, overcoat on arm and stove-pipe hat gracefully poised
upon the thumb of his left hand, while, with polished opera-glass, he
sweeps the sea of variegated millinery and obtrusive-hued cosmetics,
or bravely hangs up his charms to view on the front row of the dress
circle, or prominently displays them in a proscenium box, he is ever
the same offensive and shameless barber-and-tailor-shop decoration,
moved by a wild ambition to attract and hold feminine attention,
and always attaining to a degree of notoriety among the masculine
theatre-goers that keeps him overwhelmed with contempt, and causes
him to be as readily recognized as if he had a tag tied to his back
or spread across his vest front, declaring him to be a fisher after
femininity. When the "masher" takes the shape of the young blood,
whose short and tightly-fighting coat is matched by the shallowness of
the crown of his straight-brimmed hat, and whose eye-glasses straddle
his nose as gracefully as his twenty-five-cent cane is carried in his
hand, and this irresistible combination of attractions is thrust upon
the audience from a box opening, the acme of the lady-killing art is
reached and if all the world does not admire the effective tableau it
must be because all the world is unappreciative and the "masher" stands
on an æsthetic plane to which the rest of mankind cannot hope to aspire.
[Illustration: THE "MASHER."]
But the "masher" is only a fraction of the class of amusement patrons
to which attention has been called in the opening sentence of this
chapter. Apart from the people who deem it their duty to come tramping
into the theatre while the performance is going on, and whose coming
is followed by a triumphal flourish of banging seats, and the heaving
footbeats of hurrying ushers, to the intense disgust of all who
care to hear the first act of the play, there are others who have a
hundred ways of annoying an audience, and who make a very effectual
use of their gifts in this direction. There is the member of the
"profesh,"--the gaseous advance agent, or the bloviate business
manager, the actor "up a stump," or the "super" who has played the
part of a silent but spectacular lictor with John McCullough or Tom
Keene, and who sits in the rear of the house, but sufficiently forward
to be distinctly heard by people in the dress circle, criticising
the mannerisms of the ladies or gentlemen on the stage and "guying"
everybody in the cast from the star down to the frightened and
stiff-kneed little ballet girl whom an inscrutable Providence has
allowed to wander in upon the scene occasionally, to say, "Yes, mum,"
or "No, mum." The leisurely but loud professional who thus disports
himself must necessarily enjoy a large share of the audience's
attention, and the more of this he attracts the more he is encouraged
to be extravagant in his criticisms and unreserved in his elocution.
He sometimes must dispute the title to obstreperous obtrusiveness
with some liquor-laden auditor who has succeeded in passing the
door-keeper only to find that the heat of the house has accelerated
his inebriation and given freedom and license to his tongue until the
"bouncer" lifts him out of his seat by the collar and deposits him in
a reflective and emetic mood on the curbstone in front of the theatre.
Then, too, a crowd of friends sometimes get together in the parquette,
who begin a conversation before the first curtain rises and keep it
going on in careless and annoying tones until the final flourish of
the orchestra arrives with the dimming of the lights as the audience
files out. But if the loud members of the "profesh," the interjective
inebriate, and the crowd of communicative friends are not on hand
to furnish diversion for the folks who are trying to follow what is
going forward on the stage, there is one other never-failing source of
distraction and annoyance--the giddy and gushing usher. It is safe to
bet that just when the most pathetic passage of a play is reached, or
the tragedian is singing smallest, a few ushers will throw themselves
hastily together in the lobby and hold a mass meeting long and loud
enough to be taken for a November night political meeting, if there
were only a stake wagon and a few Chinese lanterns strewn around.
Indeed, the usher seems to assume that he is a sort of safety-valve
through which a disturbance must break out now and then to offset
the quiet of the audience. If the usher isn't plying his fiendish
proclivity, some bald-headed man in the parquette is sure to throw his
skating rink over the back of the seat, and, with shining brow turned
up towards the sun-burner in the dome, mouth rounded out like the base
of a cupola and nostrils working like a suction pump, his beautiful
snore will rise above the wildest roar of the orchestra and drown the
mellifluous racket of the big bass drum, until some friendly hand
disturbs the dreamer, and the "or-g-g-g-g-g-g-g!" that rushes up his
nostrils, down his throat and out through his ears, is thus gently and
perhaps only temporarily interrupted. The enthusiast--the man who is
carried away by the spirit of the scene--is also a source of annoyance,
and when he signifies from the balcony his willingness to take a hand
in what is being enacted on the stage, damning the villain heartily,
and, like the sailor of old, openly sympathizing with femininity in
distress, he first becomes a target for the gallery boys' gutter-wit
and finally a prey to the inexorable "bouncer," who roams around the
upper tiers of every theatre and unceremoniously dumps disturbers down
stairs. Last, but by no means least, in the distracting and disturbing
features at theatrical performances is the peanut cruncher. He is
the most cold-blooded and least excusable of all the annoyances with
which amusement patrons are afflicted. He wraps his teeth around the
roasted goober, utterly reckless of the distress he is stirring up in
the bosoms of those around him, and he grinds and smacks and continues
to crunch, stopping occasionally to charge his dental quartz-crusher
anew, and always beginning on the latest goober with the greatest
ferocity, while he seems to make it go ten times further, as far as
time and agony are concerned, than any of its predecessors. All the
other disturbance consequent upon attending a play are petty, compared
with peanut-crunching, and it is the opinion of the writer that a law
should be passed at once, making it a felony for any banana-stand or
hand-cart man to sell peanuts to citizens who are on their way to the
theatre. If such a law were passed, and if it were not a dead letter,
the people whose backbones feel as if they were being fondled by a
circular saw every time they hear the rustling of a goober-shell, would
flop right down on their knees and renew their confidence in the wisdom
of Providence.
The young men and the old men, too, who go out "between acts" to hold
spirit seances with neighboring bar-keepers, while the orchestra is
playing a Strauss waltz or a medley of comic opera numbers for the
solace of the lovely ladies they have left behind them, are a greater
nuisance to the audience of a first-class theatre than one would
imagine. In nine cases out of ten, the man who goes out to see another
man, as the saying is, has his seat in the middle of a row, so that
it is necessary for him to make trouble for ten or a dozen persons
before he can reach the aisle. He tramples on ladies' dresses, comes
into collision with their knees, and sends a thrill of pain to the
utmost ends of the roots of every man's corn he treads on. The same
thing is repeated on the way back to his seat, and there are bitter
mutterings, a great deal of subdued or smothered profanity, and fierce,
rebuking looks flash from beneath the beautiful bonnets of the females.
It doesn't seem to affect the nuisance any, however, for he does the
same thing over every act, and at each repetition increases to the
damage he does and the commotion he creates. Then, to make bad worse,
he manages to surround himself with a distillery odor that assails
feminine nostrils in a most offensive manner, and that will not suffer
itself to be concealed or tempered by the chewing of coffee-grounds,
cloves, or orange-peel. I witnessed the discomfiture of a young man of
this kind, one night, and the scene was a very funny one. He occupied
a seat in the orchestra, in the centre of a row of seats principally
filled with ladies. As the curtain went down the young man determined
to go over and have a look through the saloon opposite. Unwilling to
incommode the ladies in the least, the young man, with Chesterfieldian
grace, elevated a pedal extremity over the back of his chair, with
the intention of going out through the aisle behind. Unfortunately he
stepped between the seat and the back, the movable seat flew up, and
the thirsty young man was left astride of the chair in a decidedly
uncomfortable position. By this time the gallery gods had marked
him for their victim. They hooted, whistled, cat-called, and made
slang remarks about straddling the "ragged edge," to his evident
discomfiture. In vain he attempted to disengage his No. 10's. The rest
of the audience became interested, and opera-glasses were directed
toward the blushing young man. The feminine giggles in his neighborhood
rendered him frantic; laughter and uproar were becoming general, when a
good-natured individual kindly assisted him to escape from his awkward
position. Amid "thunders of applause" he disappeared.
The ladies, too, sometimes contribute largely to the annoyance of
an audience. They are, as everybody knows, inveterate talkers, and
insist on saying almost as much during a performance as the players
say. Their criticism of the toilets of friends and of strangers also,
is loud-sweeping and usually denunciatory, and they have a style of
pillorying their victims in speech that is decidedly heartless, yet
refreshing. But all the faults of loud and untamed talk might have been
forgiven had they not introduced the tremendous big hats which rise
high above their heads and stick far out from their ears completely
shutting off a view of the stage from the persons immediately in the
rear. Strong men have shed tears to find themselves conquered by these
big hats; they have tried to peep around them, and have stood tip-toed
on their chairs to have a glance over the tops of the millinery
structures, but in vain. The hats were too much for them. In a mild,
æsthetic way the ladies' big hats rank among the greatest plagues that
have ever visited the modern play-house.
[Illustration: THE BIG HAT.]
I was in the Grand Opera House at St. Louis, one evening, sitting in
seat No. 3, row B, centre section, parquette circle. Before the play
began two ladies, one dressed in black silk with a white satin jacket
and black beaver hat, with long sweeping feather, and the other plainly
dressed in black cashmere, with a "Sensation" hat and tassel on, came
in and took seats 1 and 2 in row A, same section. Prior to settling
down in their places, they looked inquiringly around the rear of the
theatre, one remarking to the other as they plumped down in the chairs,
"I suppose they haven't got here yet." Seats three and four adjoining
them were vacant. The ladies had come unattended. After they had
arranged themselves the lady with the beaver hat drew out a letter and
held it up to the light so that the reporter could read it. It had a
cut of one of the principal hotels at the top and was note-paper from
that establishment. It said:--
TO MAMIE AND SADIE: Your note of to-day received. We like your
style and enclose two seats for Grand Opera House to-night, where
we hope to meet you both and make your acquaintance.
Yours sincerely,
GEORGE AND HARRY.
Just as the orchestra began the overture in walked two gentlemen whom
the usher showed to the vacant seats in row A. One of the men was
tall, bald, portly and rather good-looking and well dressed; he had a
sandy moustache, and what hair was left on his head was reddish, crisp,
and curly. He was probably forty-five years old. His companion was
probably not more than twenty-one, tall, thin, dark-complexioned, with
but a semblance of a moustache. The ladies smiled as the gentlemen took
their places. The men looked at each other, winked, and laughed. When
the two were seated, the bald-headed man made a close and evidently
satisfactory scrutiny of the ladies, and catching the eye of the one in
the beaver hat, the two exchanged smiles--not broad, committal grins,
but soft smiles of mutual recognition. The second lady only dared to
look sideways now and then. The second gentleman, who sat next to the
ladies, was rather shy and kept his hand up to his face from beginning
to end of the play. It was evident this was the first time the
quartette had met, and it was evident also that they had made up their
minds to act with all due decorum while in the theatre. Smiles were now
and then exchanged, but no words were spoken. Once one of the ladies
sent her programme to the bald man, who had none. During the third act
of the play the baldhead began writing short notes which the lady in
the beaver hat answered affirmatively with a nod of her head. When the
show was over the two ladies went around one street, the two men around
another, and they met in the middle of the block opposite the theatre.
There was a brief conversation in which a great deal of tittering was
heard, and then the quartette proceeded to a quiet restaurant of the
most questionable reputation and took one of the private supper-rooms,
which are at the disposal of people whose visit to the establishment is
not by any means for the sole purpose of drinking and eating, but has a
broad and very unmistakable suggestion of immorality in it.
[Illustration: GEORGE AND HARRY.]
[Illustration: LOUISE MONTAGUE.]
The key to the whole affair can be found in the following
advertisement, published in the _Globe-Democrat_ of the preceding
Sunday:--
PERSONAL.--Two gentlemen of middle age and means desire to become
acquainted with two vivacious, fun-loving young ladies who like to go
to the theatre. Address George and Harry, this office.
[Illustration: MAUD BRANSCOMB.]
George and Harry had received an answer to this advertisement from
"Mamie and Sadie," and, just to meet and become acquainted with them,
had purchased the four seats in row A, centre section, Grand Opera
House, making the theatre their place of assignation. "Mamie and Sadie"
were by no means the innocent and unsophisticated creatures they seemed
to be. One of them was the wife of a travelling man who was necessarily
away from home ten months in a year; the other was _nymph du pave_--a
street-walker--who scoured the principal thoroughfares at night for
victims to carry to her "furnished room," and who had been educated up
to the "personal" racket by the lonely and wayward young wife of the
commercial drummer.
So much for the noisy, otherwise obtrusive phases of the subject. The
ladies who go to the theatre to display themselves, to flash their
jewels and flaunt their silks and laces in the faces of the community,
have become so accustomed to the general run of theatrical attractions
that they are really no longer spectators, and may be justly classed
among the distracting agencies in the audience. Their mission is a
"mashing" one to a certain extent, but it is "mashing" of a vain and by
no means harmful character. Other ladies are seen in the dress circle
and the boxes who do not disguise the fact that they have come to the
theatre to fascinate the too, too yielding men. At the matinees there
are women of questionable repute who unblushingly advertise their
calling and who must be set down as a feature most objectionable to the
respectable portion of any community. They behave themselves as far
as words or actions go, but their mere presence in the play-house is
an annoyance that refined and elegant people cannot tolerate. That is
all about them. Now for the very worst practices that are occasionally
noted in theatres, and that the managers know very little if anything
about,--the women who are there for nefarious purposes, and the men
who have other ideas than gratifying their vanity or merely making
heart-conquests. It is a notorious and flagrant fact that fast women
use the theatre as places of assignation, wherein they meet old and
make new acquaintances, and it is equally notorious that men whose
whole energy seems bent to the distruction of innocent girlhood make it
a rendezvous for the purpose of selecting and snaring their victims.
It is perfectly safe to assume that the cunning and sinful pair fleeced
George and Harry before they got through with them.
The very same evening my attention was called by a young lady to a
thinly-bearded, spectacled, sickly-looking middle-aged man who sat in
the next seat to the lady, and who, she complained, had stepped on her
foot several times and in other ways tried to attract her attention and
get her into a conversation. I at once recognized the fellow as one of
an unscrupulous set who pored over big ledgers in the Court-House, and
gave the greater portion of their time to discussions concerning female
friends of ill-repute, and to boasting of the ruin they had brought or
were about to bring to some innocent young girl.
The same man was in the habit of buying single seats in the dress
circle and visited the theatre frequently. He represents a class of
venerable, but iniquitous fellows who make a practice of mixing in
among the ladies, in the hope of scraping an occasional acquaintance,
and who have no good intention in desiring to extend the circle of
their female friends. They should be kept out of every respectable
place of amusement.
[Illustration: SELINA DOLARO.]