THE FATE OF THE SERENADERS.
We now started on our travels, staying from one night to a week in a
city, according to its size, stopping always at the best hotels, and
leading the merriest of lives generally. I had the additional glory of
being stared at as the youthful prodigy by day, and of having more than
my share of applause, accompanied sometimes with quarter-dollars,
bestowed on me at night.
There are probably many who will yet remember to have seen their cities
thoroughly posted and plastered with the glaring announcement, in
gigantic red letters, that “The Metropolitan Serenaders” were “coming.”
That was our company, and in that golden age of minstrelsy our coming
was an event of some importance. It certainly seemed so to the
management; for on our arrival it was furthermore announced in large
sky-blue letters, on all the prominent vacant buildings, and on all the
low-tariff or free-trading board fences, that “The Metropolitan
Serenaders” had “come.”
Nor was this all. As soon as our property-boxes were unpacked, our
portraits in most gorgeous colored daguerreotypes were suspended about
the entrance to the hall where we were to perform, and about the
reading-rooms of the principal hotels. Bad as these unquestionably were,
they were the very perfection of that style of art in those days; and
thus it happened that those even who came upon our pictures to scoff,
remained to admire.
In addition, there was a collective and general--I may say, very
general--representation of ourselves on canvas, suspended across the
principal street; we being attired, for that pictorial occasion only, in
green dress-coats and in pantaloons of the same shade as our lips, which
were of a very brilliant and unnatural pink.
I was sometimes astonished at the stupidity of the common public, who
would frequently, as I stood among them, in graceful incognito, point
out on this superb water-color the picture of the guitar-player, and
decide in my hearing that he must be meant for the “Juvenile
Phenomenon.” Now this guitar-player was in reality the longest,
lankest, and by all odds the homeliest man in the company; and how the
public should ever mistake him for me, the only original “Juvenile
Phenomenon,” was more than I could understand.
Looking back dimly through my memory at this picture, and aided as I am
in my criticism by a recent interview with the venerable artist himself,
I am led to conclude now, that he had idealized and etherealized the
form of that tallest and ugliest of guitar-players. As represented on
the canvas, “touching his light guitar,” with his eyes turned upward in
a Sapphic ecstasy, there was something so gigantically heroic in the
spirit of his action, or in the blunder of the painter, that his body
seemed in comparison to weigh but a scant ninety pounds, and all that
was earthly in his appearance was, it must be owned, strikingly
diminutive and phenomenal.
Notwithstanding the annoyance caused me by the mistake of the common
public in the matter of identity, I do not wish to be unjust to our
artist. He is still living, at Cincinnati, a gray-haired man, supporting
a large family by the honorable exercise of his brush; though of late
years he has confined himself mostly, he assures me, to the more
materialistic and lucrative branch of his profession,--house and sign
painting, namely.
With regard to the picture in question, he said, the last time I saw
him, that in it he had made an attempt, if he remembered correctly, to
throw an ideal halo of high art about some of the portraits; that the
tall guitar-player was a special instance wherein this treatment seemed
necessary; and that, in all his artistic experience, he had never since
come across a man that would stand so much foreshortening.
The latter part of the old painter’s speech about the guitar-player was
in a different tone of voice altogether, and in words which, from their
queer pathos, I think I am reporting verbatim.
“Poor ----!” he said, calling my old comrade by name; “he has long since
gone to his account. I suppose we must all go sooner or later.” Then,
after a meditative pause, the old fellow continued: “No man is homely, I
guess, in heaven, or too long and bony for good proportion. They say,
too, that there’s progression up there. He died more than ten years ago.
Maybe he’s now improving his talent by playing on a golden harp. He
wasn’t much of a guitar-player down here, but no matter.”
* * * * *
There was in our troupe a remarkable character by the name of Frank
Lynch, who played the tambourine and banjo. He and the celebrated
Diamond had been in their youth among the first and greatest of dancers.
Too portly now to endure sustained effort with his feet, he was yet an
excellent instructor; and I was constantly under his training.
He taught me, in addition to the legitimate sleights of our calling, to
aid him in a droll way he had of amusing himself at the expense of the
general public. He initiated me into the mysteries of beating the rolls
and drags on the snare-drum; and then it was our custom of a summer
afternoon to steal away to the top of the hotel, or more generally to
the roof of the hall where we were to exhibit. Placing ourselves so that
we could observe the passers-by on the street, without being observed by
them, Lynch would strike up a tune on the fife and I would accompany him
on the drum; and, straightway, the whole thoroughfare for a block or so
in each direction would keep time to our music.
It was our delight to set our people all a going faster or slower, at
our will. Curious persons would sometimes look about them, puzzled, to
see where the music came from; but, failing in that, they almost
invariably marched on to some brisk or melancholy measure, as it chanced
to be our mood at the moment. Any one who may doubt this statement has
but to observe the foot-passengers the next time he or she hears a band
of music playing on the street.
It would sometimes happen, however, that our notice would be attracted
by the peculiar walk of an individual who had so little music in his
soul that we could not bring him into step. In that case we would
perform Mohammed’s miracle of the mountain, by accommodating our fife
and drum to his particular gait, and bring the rest of the street into
the same pace.
If we saw an elderly gentleman or lady, Lynch would immediately launch
forth into the well-known “limping tune” of the old man in the
pantomime, and, as sure as fate, our venerable actor or actress below
would keep time. The conventional air which heralds in Columbine on the
Christmas boards was also brought into requisition, with most
remarkable effect, when we caught sight of a young lady or bevy of young
ladies, promenading beneath us in spruce toilet.
On a hot day I am afraid we were sometimes a trifle cruel in the way we
hurried up fleshy people. From our point of view on the roof, and
generally behind a shady chimney, the effect was, in truth, not unlike
that of a diorama. But especially was this the case when some stout old
gentleman, whom we had precipitated along a whole block at a very
lively, perspiring rate through a hot sun, would, as if melted or
absorbed in the white light, disappear suddenly from our gaze, as a
brisk and fiery execution of “The girl I left behind me” would carry him
steaming around a corner.
In short, our martial music was an endless amusement to us when time
hung heavy on the hands of the more dignified members of our company. By
some accident, I forget what, we lost our small drum, and were afterward
confined to a fife and a bass-drum. This, I think, only made the effect
of our music more ludicrous in developing the peculiarities of
individual pedestrians. Lynch seemed, I remember, more than ever
satisfied in this exigency, for he stoutly maintained that any two faces
are more alike than any two “gaits,” and that, for his part, he always
wanted the top of a house, a fife, and at least a bass-drum to read
character.
Lynch and I were together in another troupe afterward. I never knew him,
in all the time of our association, to talk ten minutes without telling
some story, and that always about something which had happened to him
personally in the show business. In the long nights, when we had to wait
for cars or steamboats, he would sit down, and, taking up one theme,
would string all his stories on that, and that alone, for hours. His
manner would make the merest commonplace amusing.
We had been together a year or more, I think, when Barnum’s
Autobiography came out. I shall never forget my comrade’s indignation
when he read that passage of the book which runs something in this way:
“Here I picked up one Francis Lynch, an orphan vagabond,” &c., &c. It
was really dangerous after that for a man to own, in his presence, to
having read the life of the great showman. Henceforth, Lynch omitted
all his stories about the time when he and P. T. Barnum used to black
their faces together.
Lynch professed to live in Boston, though he had not been there in
fifteen years. During all this time he had been earnestly trying to get
back to his home. He would often spend money enough in a night to take
him to Boston from almost any place in the broad Union, and back again,
and then lament his folly for the next week.
Once he left our company at Cleveland, Ohio, for the express purpose of
going back to Boston. Unfortunately a night intervened, and in the
middle of it the whole Weddell House was aroused from its slumbers by
poor Lynch, in the last stage of intoxication, vociferating at the top
of his lungs that he had been robbed of the money with which he was
going back to Boston.
By some means he had got hold of a lighted candle without a candlestick,
and with this he purposed to search the house. The clerks and porters
were called out of bed, and, led by Lynch with his flickering taper,
came in melancholy procession up the long stairs to the rooms occupied
by our troupe. Lynch insisted that we should all be searched,--a whim in
which, under the circumstances, we thought it best to humor him. This
having been done without finding his lost treasure, he bolted the doors
and proceeded to examine the surprised clerks and porters. Meeting with
the same ill success, he finally threw himself in despair upon his bed,
and wailed himself to sleep.
The next morning he found all the money which he had not spent in the
side pocket of his overcoat, where he had carelessly thrust it himself.
And his joy was so great at this, and his sorrow so lively when told
that he had searched us all, that he insisted on spending what money was
left to celebrate his good luck and the triumph of our honesty.
Lynch never got back to Boston. He died several years ago somewhere out
in the far West. Since then it has transpired that Barnum was wrong in
calling him an orphan, at least; for his father sought him a long time
before hearing of his death, to bestow upon the poor fellow a
considerable fortune that had been left him by some relative.
Johnny Booker was the stage-manager of the company with which I left
Toledo. Our first business-manager and proprietor was a noble-hearted
fellow, who has since distinguished himself as a colonel in the late
war; but the managership changed hands after a while, and we finally
arrived at Pittsburg. Here we played a week to poor houses, and, one
morning, awoke to find that our manager had decamped without paying our
hotel bills.
When this became known, through the papers or in some other way, the
landlord got out an attachment on our baggage. The troupe was disbanded,
of course. When, therefore, I desired to take my trunk and go home, the
hotel-keeper told me that I could do so as soon as I paid the bills of
the whole company. This was appalling.
After a great deal of wrangling, the landlord was convinced at last that
he could hold us responsible only for our individual indebtedness.
Accordingly Mr. Booker, Mr. Kneeland, a violinist, and myself were
allowed to pay our bills and depart with our baggage.
I never learned exactly how the greater part of the company escaped,
but it certainly could not have been by discharging their accounts; for
they were generally of that reckless disposition which scorns to have
any cash on hand, or to remember where it has been deposited.
The sentimental ballad-singer,--the one who was the most careful of his
scarfs, the set of his attire, and the combing and curling of his hair;
and who used to volunteer to stand at the door in the early part of the
evening, and pass programmes to the ladies as they came into the
hall,--this languishing fellow, I am sorry to say, was obliged to leave
his trunks and the greater part of his wardrobe behind him in the hands
of the inexorable landlord.
Frank Lynch had led this nomadic life so long that he never carried any
trunk with him. He had already sacrificed too much, he averred, to the
rapaciousness of hotel-keepers and the villany of fly-by-night managers.
He contented himself, therefore, with two champagne-baskets, one of
which, containing his stage wardrobe, always went directly to the hall
where we were to play, while the other, containing his linen, went to
the hotel, where, in company with the baggage of the whole troupe, it
excited no suspicion.
Whether or not Lynch left one of his champagne-baskets with the
Pittsburg landlord I cannot say. I am sure, however, when we met
afterward, I could not detect that his wardrobe had diminished in the
least. Indeed, there was this remarkable quality about the two
champagne-baskets, in which the convivial peripatetic may be said to
have lived, that their contents never seemed either to diminish or
increase.