BARNSTORMING
As soon as I had recovered from my illness, I began hunting for a job.
I had already decided on a newspaper career and I went to Chicago with
the hope of finding employment as a reporter. Not one of the editors
appeared eager to grab me. One offered me a job as office boy.
The only one who listened to me seriously was the venerable Wilbur F.
Storey, one of the greatest editors of his day. He was proprietor of
the liveliest and most enterprising newspaper in the West, the Chicago
_Times_, then at the top notch of its popularity. The day I called
on him, there had appeared in the _Times_ the most blatantly
sensational headline that was ever printed in a respectable newspaper.
It was the talk of the town. Over an account of a hanging, in big,
black type, was: “JERKED TO JESUS.”
When I entered Mr. Storey’s sanctum he was tilted back in a big
swivel chair, his long legs stretched across the top of his desk. I
imagine that he was gloating over the sensation that shocking headline
had created. He was chuckling and smiling and his bony fingers were
clutching his snow-white whiskers.
No one was ever more gracious to me. I told him my story and of my
ambition to become a reporter. He even read the clipping I showed him
of _An Autobiography of a Hotel Office Chair_. He asked a lot of
questions but in the end said that a boy of sixteen, no matter how
bright he might be, was too young and inexperienced to undertake a
reporter’s job in a big city.
“Go back to your home town or some other small city and get a few years
of practical training,” he said, “and when you have done this come to
me again. Don’t get discouraged. I am sure you have got good stuff in
you and the grit to win success.”
And the editor who was threatened with tar and feathers at the time
of the Civil War and who was once publicly horsewhipped by an irate
burlesque actress, put his arm about me and walked with me to the
elevator. It was the last time I ever spoke to him, though a few years
later I was city editor of the great newspaper he created.
I went back to the town where my parents lived, determined to follow
the advice Mr. Storey had given me, but I discovered that it was easier
for him to tell me what to do than it was for me to do it. Neither of
the grouchy old editors of the two daily newspapers in my home town
were sufficiently impressed with my youthful enthusiasm to give me a
chance to develop the talent that was screaming for an outlet. Even the
news items I wrote for them didn’t mollify their crabbedness. I offered
to work three months on trial without pay, but they were mercilessly
unyielding to the eloquence of my appeals, gruffly telling me to go to
school and wait until I was grown up before venturing to break into
journalism.
Journalism! How I grew to detest that much abused word. Every
brainless mutt I ever met in a newspaper office described himself as a
“journalist.” The real men, the men who knew news, knew how to get it
and knew how to write it, preferred to be known as newspaper men. One
never hears a star reporter along Park Row speak of journalism.
In our town there had been one of those mushroom insurance companies
that suddenly spring into existence, collect all the money in sight and
then blow up. This particular company had gone into bankruptcy and the
sheriff was selling at auction what was left of the wreck. Among its
effects were a printing press and a fairly complete outfit. I happened
along, chirped a low bid and down came the auctioneer’s hammer. It
was mine. Nearly all of my savings went to pay for it. I got a dray
to cart it to our home and mother gave me two large rooms on an upper
floor in which to establish a printing office. I remember making myself
unpopular with the rest of the family by scrubbing inky type in the
bathtub.
I worked most of that night putting my print shop in shape and the
next day I printed business cards and circulars, announcing that I
was prepared to do all kinds of commercial printing at prices much
lower than any competitor. I got as many orders as I could fill by
soliciting among merchants and family friends and my printing business
grew so fast that I had to work day and night to keep up. To gratify
my ambition to write, I began publishing a monthly magazine for boys
and girls which I called _Our Compliments_. I wrote nearly
every line in it, set all of the type and did the presswork.
_Our Compliments_ became a flourishing publication, even if it
did make a dent in the earnings of my printing business. Many of the
budding geniuses of that period afterward entered the swelling ranks
of professional newspaper writers and authors. We amateurs exchanged
publications and got to know each other. I conceived the idea of
forming an association of amateur editors, appointed myself secretary,
issued elaborate invitations to a convention and the Western Amateur
Press Association came into existence. We elected Alex Dingwall
president, the same “Sandy” Dingwall who became famous and rich as a
theatrical manager in New York, was much loved and died not long ago,
leaving nearly a million dollars and almost as many mourners.
Now I made a false step; I became an actor. That is, my name was
printed on playbills as an actor, but if there are any alive who ever
saw me on the stage, I am sure they will back me up when I declare that
I never was an actor.
At the time I was editing _Our Compliments_ and running a
printing business on a small scale, I had a young friend who was
sadly stage-struck. In appearance he was not unlike pictures of Edwin
Booth in his younger days. Conscious of the resemblance, he wore his
hair long and wavy, soaked it with oil and brushed it back so as to
give prominence to his forehead. He affected a serious and thoughtful
expression of countenance, like the famous tragedian he idolized, and
looked the highbrow he fancied himself to be. He always wore a long
frock coat and enormously high collar. I can picture him now as he
paced solemnly through the streets of the town with corrugated brow and
downcast eyes, one hand thrust into the opening of his coat, the other
drawn behind his back, with fingers twitching convulsively.
A strange character was Rodney, though beneath his studied eccentricity
was a heart of gold. He set about organizing an amateur dramatic club
and invited me to join. I protested that I knew nothing about acting,
that in all my life the only plays I had witnessed were _Uncle Tom’s
Cabin_ and _The Gypsy Queen_. He suggested a trip to Chicago
to see Lawrence Barrett in _Richelieu_. We went and I fell. It
was wonderful. Before reaching the end of our journey I had promised
to take part in the performance Rodney was getting up of _Ten Nights
in a Barroom_. I was to be Willie, who gets killed by a gambler.
Rehearsals were soon under way, directed by the public librarian, once
a professional actor. The performance was given for a popular charity
and the opera house was packed. There was a storm of applause when the
gambler killed me. I suspected that it was because I was such a bad
actor, but I was flatteringly mentioned in the newspapers and some of
my friends said I ought to go on the stage.
Rodney was so elated with the success of our performance that he
decided to get up another. This was more pretentious, two professionals
from Chicago playing the leading characters. They were the Lords--Louie
and James--who traveled extensively through the Western states with
a company of which Louie was the star and her husband the manager.
She was a versatile actress who played every range of character from
Lady Macbeth to Topsy. They were organizing for a tour of the West and
invited Rodney and me to join them. Louie painted an alluring picture
of the life of a traveling thespian, so we signed contracts for a tour
of forty weeks and were enrolled as professional “barnstormers.”
And barnstorming it was in all that the word implies. The Lords
were pioneers on what was then the Western frontier, playing in the
principal towns of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and most of the
mining camps of Colorado and Montana. In those days few of the Western
towns boasted of a theater, so we carried our own scenery and gave
many of our performances in courthouses, public schools, and vacant
stores, borrowing lumber as we went along to build a raised platform on
which we presented our plays. The reserved seats were chairs carried
from the dining-room of hotels, but the ordinary seats were planks
strung across cracker boxes and nail kegs. We actors built the stage,
hung the scenery, arranged the seats and carried up the baggage. When
this labor was done we distributed playbills throughout the town. In
the evening we acted as ushers until time to go behind the curtain to
make ourselves up for the performance.
We usually stayed a week in a town, for railway travel was expensive
and trains uncertain. Sometimes we would get away from the railways
and travel across country by team, we actors perched on a truckload
of trunks and scenery, the ladies going ahead with the manager in
carriages. The hotels were mostly primitive and often they were so
crowded that eight actors would be compelled to sleep in four beds that
had been crowded into one small room, standing on our beds to dress
and performing our toilets in a public washroom.
Our repertoire was extensive, for we never gave a play twice in the
same town. We did _Richard III_, _Lady of Lyons_, _East Lynne_, _Damon
and Pythias_, _Lucretia Borgia_, _Macbeth_, _Rip Van Winkle_, _Hidden
Hand_, _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ and many more. There was nothing in dramatic
literature that our manager was too modest to attempt. The numerical
strength of his company never stayed his ambition. If there were not
enough actors to play the different characters, some of us had to play
two or three. I have seen the armies of Richard and Richmond assault
each other in terrific combat when both armies numbered seven men and a
girl, the latter dressed in armor and wearing a bushy beard.
Once when sickness and desertion had reduced our company to seven,
I played Uncle Tom and three white characters, blacking my face and
washing back to white as occasion required. I wasn’t eighteen. Little
Eva was nearly thirty and a mother. I met her years afterward in New
York. She had become a star at a Broadway theater, but she didn’t look
a year older than when she sat on my knee in a Colorado mining camp and
lisped wistfully: “Uncle Tom, sing to me of the angels bright.”
After two seasons with the Lords I went with them to the Black Hills,
where we played all winter in the opera house that had just been
erected in Deadwood. It was then the liveliest mining town in the
country. Fortune seekers were flocking from every direction. Vast
wealth was being dug from the gold mines and enormous smelters were
being worked day and night, converting the ore into bullion. Everybody
had plenty of money and spent it freely. The miners patronized our
theater to the limit of its seating capacity and were enthusiastic in
their appreciation.
I recall the night “Calamity Jane,” a notorious female desperado, came
to see us play _East Lynne_. She and “Arkansaw Bill,” equally
famous as a bandit and stage robber, occupied front seats. Behind them
sat Seth Bullock, afterward an intimate friend of Colonel Roosevelt.
“Calamity” was dolled up for the occasion in corduroy suit and
sombrero and appeared to be particularly vain of her green kid gloves.
She was not a fascinating lady. As soon as she was comfortably settled
in her seat she bit a chunk from a plug of tobacco and chewed as
industriously as any miner throughout the evening.
She and her escort clapped their hands in noisy appreciation until
Lady Isabel eloped with Sir Francis and then “Calamity” showed her
disapproval of the erring wife’s conduct by marching down to the
footlights and squirting a stream of tobacco juice over the front of
Lady Isabel’s pink satin evening gown. There came very near being a
rough-house when the curtain was lowered and Mr. Lord began to voice
a protest over the indignity to his wife. Trouble was avoided by the
lady desperado tossing a handful of gold coin over the footlights to
pay for the gown she had so ruthlessly desecrated. Throughout the
remainder of the performance she chewed her cud in courteous silence.
“Arkansaw Bill” was killed a week afterward when he and his band of
ruffians raided the little frontier town that is now the capital of
South Dakota. I read not long ago that “Calamity” lived to be a very
old woman. She raised enough deviltry to have deserved hanging a dozen
times.
As the season drew to a close Johnny Rodgers, manager of the opera
house, engaged me for another season. The Lords were not to remain.
In the spring the manager started for Chicago to secure new talent,
expecting to return in two weeks. At the end of that time he was still
snow-bound at the end of the stage route, nearly two hundred miles to
the eastward, waiting for the railway to be opened for traffic. The
next we heard of him he had been drowned. Impatient to get to Chicago
and complete his mission, he had ventured on a long voyage down the
Missouri River in a frail skiff, hoping to reach Sioux City and get
a train at that point for Chicago. His only companion was an Indian.
The river was choked with ice and the skiff was crushed and sunk. The
Indian alone escaped. There was a lot of speculation at the time as
to whether the Indian might not have made ’way with the venturesome
manager, who had a large amount of money in a belt around his waist.
His body was never found.
When the news of the drowning came, I sat up all night with a
hysterical widow and in the morning awoke to a realization of my own
predicament, for I was a long way from home, with no opportunity to
obtain theatrical employment and but few dollars in my pocket. The fare
to Chicago was more than a hundred dollars and the walking was bad. The
mayor met me that day and said he had been talking with some of the
citizens and they were desirous of raising a purse to send me home. I
declined the proffered charity and went to a newspaper office in search
of work, got a job setting type and in ten minutes had my coat off and
sleeves rolled up.
I didn’t have to earn my bread by setting type more than a couple of
weeks, for the editor was summoned East by a death in his family and
the publisher asked me to fill the chair until the editor returned. I
held the job for six months, earning enough to take me to Chicago in
the drawing-room of a Pullman, the only accommodation available when
I reached a railroad, after traveling two days and nights across an
alkali desert, riding the entire distance on top of a stagecoach under
a blistering August sun. Never was anyone more cruelly sunburned. The
journey was made in response to a telegram, offering me an engagement
as leading man with a company that was organizing to support a woman
star on a tour of the West. Why a manager should send to the far-away
Black Hills for an actor, had me puzzled until I found my old friend
Rodney was in the company and knew that it was through him that I had
been called. That season I essayed such trivial roles as Romeo and
Claude Melnotte and Armand Duval. Ye gods! as my mind flits back to
those days when I was a trouper, I marvel how I ever escaped the hook.
Comes now the most important event in that period of my life. On the
fourth day of November, 1879, I was married, six days after I became
twenty-one. She was the sweetest, the truest, the most lovable woman I
have ever known; full of fun and the joy of living; bright, witty, and
entertaining. All who knew her loved her. She was a woman’s woman,
a zealous champion of her sex, with none of the petty jealousies and
envies with which some women are afflicted. I never once heard her
speak unkindly of any of her associates. She was ever my best and
most dependable friend, my comforter in disappointments and worries,
patiently indulgent toward my weaknesses, proud of whatever success
came to me and with an abiding faith in my ability. In all our
thirty-nine years of married life she never wavered in her devotion,
though many times I must have strained her love almost to the breaking.
When I did right she encouraged me; when I did wrong she forgave and
kept on loving me.
We met in the parlor of a Chicago hotel. The card I sent to another was
given to her by a careless bell boy. There were mutual explanations
and she smilingly withdrew. We accidentally met again a week later. I
was in a long line of ticket buyers that led to the box office of a
theater. A lady in front of me dropped a purse and I picked it up and
restored it. There was a smile of recognition when she saw that I was
the one to whose card she had responded. Weeks went by and again we
met, this time in the breakfast-room of a hotel in Iowa. I had arrived
late the night before to join a theatrical company. When I went down to
a late breakfast there was but one person in the room. It was the same
lady. Fate!
She motioned me to a seat at her table. We were to be with the same
company. It was her first season. She had been a teacher of elocution
she told me, and had turned to the stage through advice of theatrical
friends. She was afraid she wasn’t going to like it, for already there
had been some things about stage life that grated harshly. We tarried
long at our first meal. I made up my mind that she was a young woman of
unusual refinement and intelligence and personally very attractive. She
had received an excellent education and it was only an unexpected twist
of fortune that had made it necessary for her to earn a livelihood.
That night I carried her bag to the theater and I carried it back to
the hotel after the performance. In a little town in the West, some
months later, I persuaded her to become my wife. She always claimed
that I tricked her into marriage. She didn’t come down to breakfast one
morning and I rapped on her door to ascertain the reason, thinking she
might have overslept. She had been ill nearly all night, she told me,
so I brought her some medicine and advised her to remain quiet for a
few hours. That afternoon, while playing billiards with our manager, a
strange impulse came to me and I put the cue back in the rack without
finishing the game.
“What’s up?” asked the manager, surprised at my quitting so abruptly.
“I’m going to be married.”
There was an understanding between Nellie and me that we would get
married at the close of our theatrical season, providing our affections
didn’t wane. I was sure of myself, but I wasn’t of her.
Accompanied by the manager I went to the home of an Episcopal clergyman
and arranged for a wedding in his house at five o’clock. It was then
four and I hadn’t asked the bride. I arranged with the manager to be
at the clergyman’s house with his wife to give the bride away and to
act as witnesses. Then I called on the bride. She was feeling better
and consented to go with me for a short walk. I walked her to the
rectory and coaxed her to go in with me. Even then she didn’t suspect,
but when she was in the house and found our manager and his wife there
in their Sunday clothes and the clergyman in official robe, she saw the
trap I had sprung, but she played her part of the game and came out
with a marriage certificate tightly clutched in her hand. What seemed
to bother her most was that she wore a black dress.
“Black is an evil omen for a bride,” she whispered to me on our way
back to the hotel. The manager had ordered the wedding supper and we
toasted my bride with the first champagne I ever drank.
The theatrical company had a disastrous tour and ended so ingloriously
that we were left stranded a long way from home, our salaries far in
arrears. My bride and I returned to Chicago on our trunks, the railroad
company furnishing transportation and holding our baggage until
redeemed. I borrowed the money to reclaim our trunks, settled my wife
in a hotel and started out to look for work, all in one day.
My first thought was to try for a newspaper job and when I went home
to dinner that evening I was a reporter on the Chicago _Tribune_.
At the end of my first week I drew the smallest pay of any reporter
on the staff; at the end of my last week, four years later, when I
left to become city editor of the Chicago _Times_, I was the
_Tribune’s_ highest salaried reporter.