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 enough 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.