BEHIND THE SCENES.
My first experiences behind the scenes were in a small, dark cellar,
owned by a man who is now a member of the Missouri Legislature,
and where daily and nightly a select company of would-be Ethiopian
comedians of tender age gave performances to small crowds of children
each of whom had paid an admission fee in pins or corks--for we valued
the corks highly as a necessary portion of our stock in trade; we
charred many a one to blacken our faces and treasured them as if they
were worth their weight in gold. Our stage was roughly constructed
of boards laid upon barrels; bagging material hung around the rear
and sides of the stage to shut in the mysteries of the remarkable
dressing-room we had, and an old gray cloth and blanket formed the
curtain which parted in the middle in the manner of the stage curtains
of the Elizabethan age. Bits of candles were our foot-lights and the
audience, made up of boys and girls, were satisfied to sit for hours
on rude benches stretched across the width of the cellar. We played
nothing but black-face pieces, and as they were not taken from books,
but were the memories of sketches we had seen in some pretentious
theatrical resort, they were, of course, short and entirely crude. No
member of that little band has risen to greatness in the theatrical
profession, but I think every one of them now living looks back fondly
to the triumphs of our cellar career. To me that rude stage and its
gunny-bag surroundings were more interesting and full of mystery than
have been any of the wonderful and beautiful temples of Thespis which I
have since entered; and I think when I played the part of _Ephraim_ in
some ludicrous sketch, and in response to the old man's cries from the
stage, "Ephraim! Ephraim! say boy, whar is you?" and I got up suddenly
in the rear of the audience and shouted back, "Hyar I is, boss!"--when
this supreme moment arrived, and the crowd looked back surprised and
laughed, the glow of conscious pride and artistic power that filled
my heart was as genuinely agreeable as the thunders of applause that
greet Booth or John McCullough when their admirers call them before the
curtain after a great act.
[Illustration: JOHN W. M'CULLOUGH.]
I have only a dim recollection of my first introduction to the
professional stage. The fairy spectacle of "Cherry and Fair Star" was
running at a local theatre, with Robert McWade, of recent Rip Van
Winkle fame, and Miss Wallace in the cast. By some good or bad fortune
I happened to be loitering in the neighborhood of the back door of
the theatre, when the captain of the supers called me and hired me at
twenty-five cents a night to go on as imp in one of the spectacular
scenes. I was on hand promptly, and shall never forget my wonder and
astonishment at getting a first glimpse of the secrets of the stage.
It was almost pitch dark when the back door was entered, and there
was nothing in the place at all suggestive of the glamour that the
foot-lights throw upon the scene. Huge clouds of black canvas rose
upon all sides, and men and boys in the dirtiest of workday clothes
were the only persons met. The noise of hammer and saw rose on various
sides, and it seemed as if the stage had not been one-half prepared
for the play that the curtain would ring up on within an hour. The
dressing-room in which fifty or sixty boys were arraying themselves
looked like the interior of a costume establishment after a cyclone
had passed through it. But when all were dressed, and the fairies and
the goblins assembled in the "wings," and the foot-lights were turned
up and the orchestra outside was rattling through some inspiring
air, the small boy in impish raiment was immediately wrapt into a
seventh heaven of delight. There was a multitude of girls in very
low-necked and short dresses with glowing flesh-colored tights that
seemed such inadequate covering for the rounded limbs that blushing was
inevitable. The bright colors in their cheeks, the blackly outlined
eyes and the blonde wigs added to the interest of the new charms.
Every bit of glorious color in the gorgeous scenery appeared to flash
out amid the flood of light. I ran against every variety of demon
that was ever known to M. D. Conway, and was pushed out of the way
of a hundred persons only to find myself obstructing somebody else's
progress. The magnificent revelations of that night filled me with awe
and astonishment for many a week afterward. It was the only night I
appeared as an imp, for I had accepted the engagement without parental
knowledge or consent, and when they learned of my success they at once
put a decided and impressive veto upon any further efforts in the
direction of the professional stage.
That first experience was not, of course, as abundant in opportunities
for observation as later experiences have been. The world behind the
foot-lights--the mimic world as it is called--is a realm of the most
startling and pleasing kind. Not only is there food for wonder in
what the eye falls upon, but the people who furnish the fun for the
world are often among themselves as prolific of pleasantry as if they
expected the applause of a full house to follow their jokes. They say
and do the strangest things, and for a visitor who is investigating
the mysteries of their surroundings, often make the time as lively and
the surroundings as enjoyable as it is possible for really clever and
good-natured people to do. The best time to go behind the scenes is
during the engagement of a burlesque or comic opera company, and I
will introduce the reader to a happy crowd of this kind that I once
found myself in.
[Illustration: BELLE HOWITT IN "BLACK CROOK."]
In 1879 the Kiralfys brought out their spectacular burlesque entitled
"A Trip to the Moon," and I had the pleasure, during its run, of
dropping in behind the scenes of a Western theatre one night to have
a peep at the pictures there presented. Now, the moon is something
like two hundred and eighty thousand miles from here--that is the one
reputed to be made of green cheese, and having phases as numerous
as the occasions that ring the April skies with rainbows. But the
Kiralfys' moon was in another firmament, shining out amid stars that,
when they wink their twinkling eyes or shuffle their shining feet, as
they do frequently, the celestial shiners have got to put on their
cloud ulsters, and sit down while the lachrymose eyes of the heavens
give up their tears. That is why it was raining torrents the night
I went behind the scenes with Mr. Bolossy Kiralfy. As I went in the
back door _Prof. Microscope_, one of the funny characters in the play,
brushed by with a telescope under his arm that was large enough to put
Lord Ross's famous spy-glass into its vest pocket, if it had one. The
moon to which the trip was to be made was not so far as two hundred and
eighty thousand miles by a half block or so, but it was a very funny
world, full of gaslight and laughter, and with the most mirthful sports
imaginable on its glowing surface. I was inclined somewhat to lunar
ways, and thinking like a great many other credulous mortals, that the
trans-atmospheric trip was really made in a cartridge-built coach that
was fired out of a huge mortar at the rate of about eighteen thousand
six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds miles a minute, had fully
made up my mind to ride on the roof or cow-catcher of the concern, at
whatever risks to life and limb space might abound in. I expected to
find something like a solid space-annihilating Columbiad behind the
scenes, but I was somewhat mistaken.
Just before the curtain was rung up I found myself in the midst of
the fairy world upon which the brilliancy of the foot-light falls.
While the curtain was still down, and before the gasman had opened
the floodgates of splendor, the place was dark; not pitch dark, but
pretty dark, compared with the brilliancy that shown in, over, and
around its space a few minutes later. And then its intricacies, pieces
of scenery here, various properties there, and sections of everything
and anything scattered anywhere and everywhere, made a fellow feel as
if the place was darker than it really was. Glittering and glowing as
the stage appears before the foot-lights; wonderfully romantic as are
its shades and lights, its love and laughter; and astounding as are
its scenic effects; its area and surroundings are terribly realistic
when the foot-lights are left behind, and the "business" of a play is
once laid bare. Here the sighs of love-sick maidens and the spooning
of gilt-edged but uncourageous wooers, the tears of injured innocence
and the self-gratulations of hard-hearted villains who still pursue the
flying female, the prattle of young mouths and the mumblings of "old
men" and "old women," are lost with the departed scenes of the play in
the unceasing desire of the actors to get back into their proper social
and friendly relations to each other, and, once the prompter's book is
closed, stage talk and stage manner are under metaphoric lock and key,
and romance is for a while at an end.
[Illustration: JNO. A. STEVENS.]
On opera bouffe or burlesque nights, however, a great deal of the
stage charm clings to the characters even when off the stage, and one
is compelled to be interested in the grotesqueness of those to be met
in the side scenes--the odd and often pretty creatures who stand,
sit, lie or lean around in the "wings" at their own sweet leisure and
pleasure. There is something so indescribably funny in the costumes,
in the facial make-up, and all that, of the happy opera-bouffer or
festive burlesquer, that the eye follows a quaint character through
the scenes with the same inalienable interest as that with which the
small boy hovers around the heels of an Italian with a hand-organ and a
monkey. The eye, however, must not, cannot linger or languish long upon
a single one of these walking wardrobes. There is a moving panorama
constantly in front of the surprised vision, and before an electric
flash could photograph one single individual in his droll toggery there
would be a dozen or more "shassaying" before the camera.
There was leaning against one of the "wings" a _naive_ and sprightly
piece of feminine beauty, set off in the handsomest and most enticing
manner in the world by a well-rounded, gracefully curved pair of pink
tights, a white satin surtout and mantelet, plentifully besprent with
glittering braid and flashing beads, dainty silk slippers that would
have made a Chinese princess weep with envy, and a jaunty white hat to
match. She was, of course, to figure as the charming little hero of
the evening, if burlesques can be said to have such things as heroes.
A doughty old chap, with bristling hair and a porcupine moustache,
was standing by talking to little pink tights. He was gotten up like
a circus poster in forty colors, with a plentiful array of red on his
head and legs and a sort of sickly-looking, rainbow-sandwich built
about his body. Red, blue and black streaks straying over his features
made it appear as if he might have been assigned the role of an ogre
and was accustomed to nightly look around for his fair companion to
make a meal of her. I immediately made friends with the comic horror
and the little lady in pink tights and learned who and what they were.
The latter was (in the play, of course) a nobby young blood known as
_Prince Caprice_, personated by Miss Alice Harrison; the red-legged
comedian was _King Pin_, the young _Prince's_ funny father and Mr.
Louis Harrison was hidden under the remarkable royal disguise.
"Well, when are we going to start for the moon?" I asked,
good-humoredly.
"In a few fleeting moments," was the regal dough-belly's reply.
"And are all these folks going into the projectile?" pointing to the
crowd of curious characters passing and repassing us.
"Not if the court knows herself and she thinks she does," put in the
_Prince_, pertly; "only the _King_, _Prof. Microscope_ and myself ride
in the cab."
_Prof. Microscope_ was a long, scrawny fellow. He was twirling a
shaggy moustache and buzzing a handsome and not at all bashful ballet
girl at the same time, a short distance away. He was gotten up in a
blue-striped, swallow-tail coat, long enough, if the _Professor_ cared
about lending or renting it out, to be used for a streamer on the City
Hall flagstaff, and short enough in the back to have the waist-buttons
constantly challenging the collar to a prize fight or wrestling
match. Very tight black pants, a luxuriantly frilled shirt front,
fluted cuffs, and white hair allowed to grow to the length worn by
Buffalo Bill, completed his outfit. When I was introduced to him, the
_Professor_ swore by the bones of Copernicus's grandmother on a volume
of patent office reports that he was the sole originator and engineer
of the only direct moon line, and he'd bet his boots or eat his hat
that it never took more than fifteen minutes to make the trip.
"You see," said _King Pin_, "that _Microscope_ is a queer fellow--not a
coney man, you mind."
"Although," said the _Prince_, "he now and then casts his lot on the
turn of the die."
[Illustration: LILLIE WEST.]
"Yes, his lot of last year's clothing," the jolly _King_ remarked, "on
the turn of the dyer."
This effort resulted in six of the supers, who were gotten up in
voluminous dominoes with elaborate, but inexpensive, pasteboard
trimmings, and who were within hearing distance, falling stiff and
stark to the stage.
"Does this kind of thing occur often?" I inquired.
"Oh," growled the _Professor_, "that gag was stuffed and on exhibition
at the Centennial. It was found in an Indian mound near Memphis, and is
old."
And so the talk went on for a while, when up went the curtain and _King
Pin_ leaping on the stage amidst the laughter and plaudits of the
house, told how the pretty _Prince Caprice_ had tired of mundane things
and was heavily sighing for the fountain-head of the lambent silvery
moonlight. _Microscope_, who was at the head of the Royal College
of Astronomers, was besought to do something to aid the _Prince_ in
accomplishing the journey to Merrie Moonland, and in a neat speech
unfolded his plans for a grand dynamo-etherial line that would speedily
carry the _Prince_ to the wished-for happy Land of Luna.
[Illustration: PAULINE MARKHAM.]
Then came the glorious moment when the flight moonwards was to be
made. I hurried around to the prompter's side of the stage where I saw
the mouth of the huge cannon gaping, and got there as they were about
to fire it. Imagine my surprise to find the extraordinary piece of
ordnance made entirely of pasteboard, a substance that a few grains of
gunpowder would blow into as many pieces as the leaves of Vallambrosia.
Still the passengers were to be fired out of this contrivance, and I
felt that if they and the cannon could stand it, it was none of my
business. It had all been explained to the audience, that _King Pin_,
_Prince Caprice_ and _Prof. Microscope_ were the only three persons
to be given seats in the cartridge-cab in which the wonderful journey
was to be made. The question therefore naturally arose, what was
to become of the multitude of characters that crowded the "wings."
There were "supers" in black, yellow and mottled dominoes with high
_papier-maché_ casques, and huge ear-trimmings that reminded one of the
flaps that decorate the sides of a Chicago girl's head, or the sails of
a lake lumberman. There were star-gazers with zodiacal garments and tin
telescopes, all set off by great pairs of soda-bottle-lens eye-glasses,
that gave them the air of a Secchi, or somebody else of astronomical
aspect. There were guards who shouldered tooth brushes made entirely
of wood, with index hands surmounting the tops of their chapeaux and
serving to indicate that their intellects had gone moon-hunting; and
there were other creatures, among them, horrible genii, who started for
the moon by some short route across lots and got there long before the
regular excursionists.
But the corps de ballet! It was everything but a beauty. If there
is anything likely to strike a theatre-goer as ludicrous, it is an
awkward squad of over-grown girls, with gauze-garnished limbs and
dissipated-looking blonde wigs. A precocious ballet-debutante is a
bit of Dead-Sea fruit shot backward off Terpsichore's head, and if
the bullet does not lay Terpsichore herself out in a first-class
undertaker's style it is because Terpsichore happens to be in terribly
good luck. These reflections were suggested by a sight of the
intermingling danseuses that kept pretty well in the rear of the stage.
You could tell the height to which each one could safely fling her foot
on looking at her. The girl who was making her first appearance had not
yet gotten over her splayfootedness, and every time she took a peep
at the audience and began to realize the airiness of her costume and
gawkiness of her manners, her knees knocked together fast enough to
keep a few notes ahead of her chattering teeth. And her dress! there
was nothing marvellous about it--nothing that would carry a person off
into the ideal financial realms of a national debt. It was powerfully
plain with a stiff and provoking effort at showiness. The next line,
who also may be classed as figurantes, are plainly to be distinguished
by their natty air of sauciness and a noticeable clipping-off of the
super-abundant clothing that encumbers the latest additions to the
corps. The coryphees, though, are radiant in glittering, close-fitting
silver mail, and there is acquired grace in their actions, and a
high haughtiness in the toss of their heads. The premieres everybody
understands and recognizes, who has once seen them pirouette on their
toes or slam around in a wild ecstasy of dancing delight that would
give anybody else a vertigo and lead to numerous and possibly serious
dislocations. Well, all these were whispering or prattling together,
in the way of the scene-shifters, who went around reckless of their
language, with sleeves rolled up and anxious faces and questioning
eyes turned upon all whom they encountered there. It struck me, as I
gazed upon this almost naked and highly interesting ballet, that if the
moon had no atmosphere, as those who know best claim, the costumes of
these gay and giddy girls were airy enough to stock it with a pretty
extensive and healthy one. Out of this jumble of scenery and from the
midst of these jostling characters the start was made for the moon.
There was no carriage, no cartridge, no load in the cannon. Her trip as
a trip was a most undisguised and diaphanous fraud. While _King Pin_,
the _Prince_, the _Professor_, and the rest were arranging themselves
in a happy tableau behind the second "flat" bang! went a gun fired by
one of the supers, across the stage flew several "dummies" or stuffed
figures in the direction of the roof, the scene opened and lo the jolly
crowd were in Moonland. _King Pin_, _Prince Caprice_ and _Microscope_
were there together, as fresh and fair as if they were accustomed
to making two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand-mile trips. The monarch
of the moon, _King Kosmos_ (W. A. Mestayer), after having summoned
his retinue of Selenites--the same long-robed, pillow-stomached and
pasteboard-eared crew who had died behind the scenes a few minutes
before from an over-stroke of punning--and having things explained to
everybody's satisfaction, came forward and fell on the several necks
of the terrestrial visitors, was punched in the paunch, by the _King_,
enough times to set all the Moonites into roars of laughter, and then
they all joined in stretching their necks and rasping their throats in
a welcoming chorus to their guests.
[Illustration: ADAH ISAAC MENKEN.]
It was unfortunate for the visitors that _King Kosmos_ had a beautiful
little princess of a daughter called _Fantasia_ (Miss Gracie Plaisted),
with a voice that rippled and rolled in music, earthly as the bulbul's
notes and celestial as the songs of the spheres; and, of course,
foolish little _Caprice_ had to go and fall in love with her and sing
innumerable sweet songs to her, all of which only got poor old _Pin_
and his friends into all sorts of trouble. This they finally managed
to get out of by returning to mother earth in a gorgeously-appointed
flying ship, as grand as Cleopatra's galley. Before decamping, however,
Moonland was visited in every part, and its gardens of silver-tinged
foliage, its crystal palaces, that made pale Luna's light more
brilliant still, its icy mountains with mass of frostage, in and
about which the ballet wound in the graceful rhythm of "Les Flocons de
Niege," were all taken in, and notwithstanding an occasional hitch in
getting the panorama around, everything in this new and gleaming sphere
was really glorious for a first-night visit.
[Illustration: MILLIE LA FONTE.]