THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF THE “BOOKER TROUPE.”
The two gentlemen with whom I left Pittsburg accompanied me to Toledo,
where Mr. Booker set to work to get up another company. It was not long
till we heard of Lynch at Cincinnati in search of an engagement, and he
was accordingly sent for. Mr. Edwin Deaves, also a member of the defunct
“Serenaders,”--and now, by the way, a gray-haired wood-engraver and
scenic artist at San Francisco,--was brought from some other place, and
the “Booker Troupe” set out on its travels.
This company prided itself on its sobriety and gentlemanly conduct. It
was the business of the four other members to keep poor Lynch straight,
and if, in the endeavor, some of them occasionally fell themselves, it
was put down to the reckless good-fellowship of the merry veteran, and
hushed up as expeditiously as possible.
There were so few of us that we could afford to go to smaller towns than
the other troupe had ever visited. It was deemed a good advertisement,
as well as in some metaphysical way conducive to the _morale_ of the
company, to dress as nearly alike as we could when off the stage. This
had the effect, as will be readily understood, of pointing me out more
prominently than ever as the juvenile prodigy whose portrait and assumed
name were plastered about over the walls of the towns and cities through
which we took our triumphal march.
The first part of our performances we gave with white faces, and I had
so improved my opportunities that I was now able to appear as the Scotch
girl in plaid petticoats, who executes the inevitable Highland Fling in
such exhibitions. By practising in my room through many tedious days, I
learned to knock and spin and toss about the tambourine on the end of my
forefinger; and, having rehearsed a budget of stale jokes, I was
promoted to be one of the “end-men” in the first part of the negro
performances.
Lynch, who could do anything, from a solo on the penny trumpet to an
obligato on the double-bass, was at the same time advanced to play the
second violin, as this made more music and helped fill up the stage.
In addition to my jig, I now appeared in all sorts of _pas de deux_,
took the principal lady part in negro ballets, and danced “Lucy Long.” I
am told that I looked the wench admirably. Indeed, I have always
considered it a substantiation of this fact, rather than an evidence of
his maudlin condition, that a year or so subsequently a planter in one
of the Southern States insisted on purchasing me from the door-tender,
at one of our exhibitions. The price he offered and the earnestness and
apparent good faith in which he offered it were so flattering that I
have always regretted the necessity in which the door-tender at last
considered himself, of kicking that planter down stairs.
* * * * *
The “Booker Troupe” wandered all over the Western country, travelling at
all hours of night and day and in all manner of conveyances, from the
best to the worst. The life was so exciting, and I was so young, that I
was probably as happy as an itinerant mortal can be in this world of
belated railway-trains, steamboat explosions and collisions, and runaway
stage-horses.
In the smaller cities and towns we would sometimes, “by particular
request,” end up the evening with a ball. While we were washing the
burnt cork from our faces, the ushers would remove the seats, and for a
certain fee those ladies and gentlemen who delighted in the dance were
readmitted to the hall. Then the four adults of the troupe, attired in
their very best “citizens’ dress,” as they called it, would discourse
music for the dancers.
My musical incompetency was at these times a signal advantage to me, for
I was left free to go into society. I danced a great deal and with
considerable _éclat_, on such occasions. My salary, which increased
gradually with my progress in the “profession,” was at this period
squandered almost entirely upon my back. I was under the impression that
my importation of metropolitan cuts and fashions into those provincial
places was something altogether killing. My jewelry, if I remember well,
was just simply astonishing for a boy of my age.
From these towns where we had dancing-parties I always went away with
love-affairs on my hands. The amount of gold rings which I exchanged
with young ladies between the ages of eleven and thirteen years was, to
say the least, extraordinary.
Sunday in a small city is generally a heavy day with your minstrel. He
writes to his wife, if he has any, or, if he has none, he practises
solos on the bass-viol or some other instrument that ought never to be
played solo, or yawns or lounges about the common room of the company. I
used to pass these days, I am sorry to say, in replying to voluminous,
ill-spelt correspondence from young persons with whom I had danced, a
week or so back; and if I happened to have a flame in the same town, I
would go to church with the very reprehensible motive of seeing her, or
walking home with her.
I ought to have known that this was highly improper conduct, even if the
simple appearance of a negro-minstrel at church had not almost
invariably produced great scandal to the congregation. I am glad,
however, to be able to add that my toilet and behavior in such places
were always scrupulously careful.
I do not know whether it is quite seemly in me to tell of it, but during
the past winter I had occasion to lecture in a town which had once been
the scene of one of these erotic exploits; and there were sitting in a
row on a front seat in the audience not only the quondam heroine and the
gentleman who has for many years been her husband, but her father and
mother, and, worst of all, that brother of hers who intercepted our
letters and who had threatened profanely to “punch” my “head.” Now,
although our attachment had been of the most harmlessly juvenile kind,
the reader will imagine my embarrassment when I had the honor of an
introduction to this whole family, and when the past was talked over by
them in the most ruthlessly philosophical manner.
* * * * *
At a certain county-seat in Michigan the “Booker Troupe” had a
remarkable bout with a moral editor. There must be many persons in that
county, especially of the legal fraternity, who yet remember at least
the catastrophe of the strange affair. This is the way it happened, as
nearly as I can recall it:--
There were two weekly papers published in that town at the time. Our
agent had given our advertisement to one of these papers, and the other
without authority had copied it. When the bills were brought to be paid,
that of the paper which had printed our advertisement without warrant
was about three times as much as the regular price, or as the other
paper had charged. To Mr. Booker’s remonstrance it was answered that the
exorbitant bill must be paid, that shows were immoral things anyway, and
that it was the purpose of that particular weekly newspaper to put them
down. This was the moral editor who spoke.
Mr. Booker offered him the same amount that the other paper had charged,
and bluntly refused to give a cent more. The moral editor would not take
a cent less than his first charges, and, in default of immediate
payment, would get out an attachment.
Now the constable, in common with most of the citizens, sympathized with
Mr. Booker. In fact, the red nose and generally dissipated air of the
moral editor made decidedly against the honesty of his intentions as a
missionary of reform. And thus it happened, by some intentional delay in
the making out of the papers, that the constable and the creditor
arrived at the station to attach our baggage just at the time when it
was all carefully stowed away in the baggage-car, and when the train was
moving off with us on board.
The editor in great rage, notwithstanding his mission as moral censor,
indulged in a great deal of profanity, by way of making it the better
understood that he would follow us to the ends of the earth,--as soon as
he could get the proper warrant made out.
Our next stopping-place was a brisk little town which chanced to be in
the same county. We exhibited there and slipped away to our next point
on a midnight train, leaving Mr. Booker behind to encounter the
attachment, which, from private advices, we were led to expect the
following morning. The officer accosted Mr. Booker as he was getting on
the train, and asked him if an old weather-beaten valise which he
carried in his hand was his. It was; and that was all the baggage he had
with him, the rest having gone on, of course, with us by the night
train.
With imposing formality the old weather-beaten valise was attached. The
key was also given up, I do not know whether to the officer or to a
lawyer who had come up from the county-seat to advise us in the matter.
The lawyer then and there, in the presence of the officer and of the
interested spectators, was intrusted formally with the case, and, Mr.
Booker joining us in a few hours thereafter, we proceeded unmolested on
our travels.
The justice and the counsel on both sides seem to have entered into the
affair with the design of getting all the sport they could out of it. On
the day of the trial the court-room was thronged. In the absence of
witnesses for the defence, and I suppose also by collusion, the case
went against the “Booker Troupe.” The editor, who was of course present,
was in great glee.
At this stage of the proceedings it has been related--I know not how
truly--the Justice arose, and in the most solemn manner spoke of the
case as peculiarly aggressive on the part of a company of itinerant
showmen; and inasmuch as their fellow-citizen had taken it upon himself,
single-handed, to drive this growing evil out of the land, therefore the
magistrate ordered, although it was a little informal, that the
constable without further delay, which had in the tardy course of
justice been too long already, should in the presence of that court open
the valise and proceed to the sale of its contents.
The face of the moral editor is reported to have beamed more brightly
than ever at this stage of his triumph.
With much pomp and circumstance the key was produced, and the ragged
valise brought forward and opened. As nearly as I can remember, from
having been present at the packing, and from an account of the affair
sent to us afterward, the constable then began with grave deliberation
to draw forth from that discouraged old portmanteau the following
articles, to wit:--
1 large brick,
1 quart of beans,
1 silk hat, without rim or lining,
3 lbs. potatoes,--which latter had sprouted in the delays of justice,
1 old boot,
1 letter of congratulation to the moral editor,--which was read in open
court,--
And, worst of all, 1 life-size wood-cut representation of Mr. Booker
himself, with an old valise in one hand and a superannuated umbrella in
the other, as he was wont to appear in his wonderful plantation act of
“The Smoke-house Reel.”
During the slow exposure of each of these articles, one after the other,
there was some attempt to keep order in court, but by the time the last
one was reached even the attempt was abandoned. The scene became
uproarious, and the court was adjourned.
The moral editor never heard the last of it. He was forced to sell out
his reformatory newspaper and leave the town.
* * * * *
We were on our way east from Chicago, exhibiting at the towns along the
line of the Michigan Central Railroad, when Ephraim came to us. Ephraim
was one of the most comical specimens of the negro species. We were
playing at Marshall, Michigan, when he introduced himself to our notice
by bringing water into the dressing-room, blacking our boots, and in
other ways making himself useful.
He had the blackest face, largest mouth, and whitest teeth imaginable.
He said there was nothing in the world which he would like so well as to
travel with a show. What could he do? Why, he could fetch water, black
our boots, and take care of our baggage. We assured him that we could
not afford to have a servant travel with us. Ephraim rejoined that he
did not want any pay; he just wanted to go with the show. We told him it
was simply impossible; and Ephraim went away, as we thought,
discouraged.
The next morning, as we were getting into the railway-car, whom should
we discover there before us but Ephraim, with his baggage under his
arm,--a glazed travelling-bag of so attenuated an appearance that it
could not possibly have had anything in it but its lining. To the
question as to whither he was bound he replied, “Why, bless you, I’s
goin’ wid de show.” Again he was told that it could not be, and made to
get out of the car.
This occurrence gave Mr. Lynch the theme for a long series of stories
about people he had met, who were what he called “show-struck”; and with
these narratives our time was beguiled till we reached the town at which
we were to perform that night. As we walked out towards the baggage-car,
what was our surprise to see Ephraim there, picking out and piling up
our trunks, and bestowing sundry loud and expressive epithets upon the
baggage-master, who had let a property-box fall upon the platform.
I think we laughed louder now than we had at any of Mr. Lynch’s stories.
Ephraim deigned not to notice us or our mirth, but, having picked out
the baggage that went to the hall where we were to exhibit, he called a
dray and rode away with it.
He made himself of great use during our stay in that place, in return
for which his slight hotel expenses were paid; but he was told
positively that he could go no farther. We knew that he had no money,
yet did not dare to give him any, lest he should be enabled to follow us
to the next town. So, when we came to go away, we expressed our regrets
to the ingenuous darky, and once more bade him good by. He disappeared
in the crowd, and the train moved off.
When we arrived at the next town, however, there again was Ephraim, at
the baggage-car, giving his stentorian commands about our trunks and
properties, and taking not the least notice of the surprise depicted on
our faces.
The discharge and mysterious reappearance of Ephraim occurred in about
the same manner at every town along the road until we reached Detroit.
We never could find out how he got from place to place on the cars; but
where our baggage was, there was Ephraim also. We had to succumb. His
persistency and faithfulness and perfect good-nature carried the point;
and he became a regular _attaché_ of the “Booker Troupe.”
The story of the fights and beatings that poor Ephraim sustained in his
jealous care of our luggage would alone make a long chapter. He was
always at fisticuffs with the Irish porters of the hotels. On one
occasion, when remonstrated with for his excessive pugnacity, Ephraim
explained himself in this way: “For one slam of a trunk I gen’lly speaks
to a man; for two slams I calls him a thief; and when it comes to three
slams, den dere’s gwine to be somebody knocked down. Now you heered me!”
On our arrival at the hotel in Detroit we observed that the porter was
an Irishman, and were really surprised that he and Ephraim did not
quarrel in handling the baggage,--an anomaly which was satisfactorily
explained to us afterward, by the fact that the porter had lately come
to this country, and was, moreover, only about half witted. Now Ephraim
was in the habit of taking his meals in the kitchens, and of sleeping in
whatever attic was assigned him. On our first night in Detroit he had
been sent into the servants’ chamber, somewhere in the topmost part of
the hotel. Ephraim ascended, disrobed himself, and, with his usual
recklessness, got into the first of the many beds he saw in the large
room.
At twelve o’clock, when his watch was over, the Irish porter also
proceeded to the same apartment, with the purpose of retiring. Opening
the door, he discovered by the dim gaslight something dark on the pillow
of his own bed. This brought all his Old-World superstition into play in
a moment. Going as much nearer as he dared, he saw that it was a black
head, and, believing firmly that the Devil was black, he was sure that
the Devil was in his bed.
The affrighted porter gave an unearthly yelp, at which Ephraim started
up in terror. Whereupon the Irishman seized one of the negro’s boots
from the floor by the foot of the bed, and fell to beating the supposed
Devil over the head with all his might. The attack was so sudden that
Ephraim never thought of defence, but, springing to his feet, fled
precipitately down the six flights of stairs, out into the middle of the
street, crying, “Watch, watch!” at the top of his voice. Here a
policeman came along, and took poor Ephraim off to the station-house
just as he was, and in spite of all his protestations of innocence.
The next morning Mr. Booker carried his clothes to the unfortunate
negro, and brought him back to the hotel.