ON THE FLOATING PALACE.
The day after the farewell benefit of Mitchell I was engaged by Dr.
Spaulding, the veteran manager, whose old quarrel with Dan Rice has made
him famous to the lovers of the circus. He was then fitting out the
Floating Palace for its voyage on the Western and Southern rivers.
The Floating Palace was a great boat built expressly for show purposes.
It was towed from place to place by a steamer called the James Raymond.
The Palace contained a museum with all the usual concomitants of
“Invisible Ladies,” stuffed giraffes, puppet-dancing, &c., &c. The
Raymond contained, besides the dining-hall and state-rooms of the
employees, a concert-saloon fitted up with great elegance and
convenience, and called the “Ridotto.” In this latter I was engaged, in
conjunction with “a full band of minstrels,” to do my jig and wench
dances.
The two boats left Cincinnati with nearly a hundred souls on board, that
being the necessary complement of the vast establishment. We were bound
for Pittsburg, where we were to give our first exhibition; purposing to
stop afterward, on our way down, at all the towns and landings along the
Ohio. Everything went well on our way up the river till we came within
about twenty miles of Wheeling, Va., when the Raymond stuck fast on a
sand-bar.
It was thought best for the people to be transferred to the Palace, so
as to lighten the steamer and let her work off. When, accordingly, we
had all huddled into the museum, our lines were cast off and our anchor
let go; but we were carried half a mile down stream before the anchor
caught. Here, all day, from the decks of the Palace we could watch the
futile efforts of the Raymond to get off the bar. The only provision for
the inner man, on board of our craft, was a drinking-saloon, which was
of very little comfort to the numerous ladies of the party, to say the
least. Toward night we became exceedingly hungry, but no relief was sent
us from the steamer.
One Riesse, an obese bass-singer, who was a terrible gourmand, and who
had been for the last five hours raving about the decks in a pitiable
manner, rushed suddenly out upon the guard, about eight o’clock,
declaring that he saw a boat-load of provisions coming from the Raymond.
A shout of joy now went up from the famished people that shook the
stuffed giraffes and wax-works in their glass cases.
It was a boat, indeed; but it contained simply the captain, mate, and
pilot, who had come all that way after their evening bitters at the
drinking-saloon. They expressed themselves very sorry for us, and were
confident that they could now get the steamer off the bar. This liquid
stimulus was all that had been needed from the first.
With this mild assurance for a foundation to our hopes of relief, they
took their departure, and we waited on and on through the long night.
Riesse, the bass-singer, never slept a wink, or allowed many others to
sleep; his hungry voice, like a loon’s on some solitary lake, breaking
in upon the stillness where and when it was least expected. Wrapped in
the veritable cloak of the great Pacha Mohammed Ali, I drowsed through
the latter part of the night, crouched down between the glass apartments
of the waxen Tam O’Shanter and the Twelve Apostles.
In the morning there were several more steamers aground in the
neighborhood, but no better prospect of the Raymond’s getting clear. We
were finally taken off to her in small boats, and allowed to break our
long fast.
Instead of rising, the river fell, and we were left almost a week on dry
land. Our provisions giving out, it was thought best for the performers
to be taken up to Wheeling by a little stern-wheeler that happened to
come along. At that city we gave several exhibitions in Washington Hall.
Proceeding thence down the river, on the stern-wheeler, to play at the
towns along till we should be overtaken by the Palace and the Raymond,
we passed those unfortunate boats, still laboring to free themselves,
and were greeted with hearty cheers by the people on board. One night
the river rose suddenly, and in a day or so we were overtaken by the
whole establishment, at Marietta, Ohio.
The purposed trip to Pittsburg was abandoned. We commenced our voyage
down the river, exhibiting in the afternoon and evening, and sometimes
in the morning, at two, and often three towns or landings in a day.
It needed not this excess of its labors to tire me of the showman’s
life. Several months before I had begun to doubt whether a great
negro-minstrel was a more enviable man than a great senator or author.
As these doubts grew on me, I purchased some school-books, and betook
myself to study every day, devouring, in the intervals of arithmetic and
grammar, the contents of every work of biography and poetry that I could
lay hands on.
The novelty and excitement of this odd life, indeed, were wearing away.
All audiences at last looked alike to me, as all lecture-goers do to Dr.
Holmes. They laughed at the same places in the performance, applauded at
the same place, and looked inane or interested at the same place, day
after day, week after week, and month after month.
I became gradually indifferent to their applause, or only noticed when
it failed at the usual step or pantomime. Then succeeded a sort of
contempt for audiences, and, at last, a positive hatred of them and
myself. I noticed, or thought I noticed, that their faces wore the same
vacant expression whether their eyes were staring at me or the stuffed
giraffes or the dancing puppets of the museum.
* * * * *
Nevertheless the days, and nights too, on the Palace were eventful ones.
Some unexpected thing was always happening to the boats, or to the
performers, or to the audiences. An occasional struggle with the town
authorities would add spice to our life. What made these squabbles
particularly interesting was that they never resulted twice alike. The
one that caused us the most merriment, and, consequently, dwells best in
my memory, occurred on the Ohio, at West Columbia, Va.
Certain authorities at that ambitious little town had agreed with our
agent that our license should be the sum of two dollars and fifty cents,
which was merely reasonable in those days, so innocent of our later
improvements in taxation. But when we had opened our doors to the vast
multitude on the banks, certain others of the authorities became
suddenly impressed with the idea that the agreement with the agent was
based on too cheap a plan, and demanded twenty-five dollars or the
shows could not go on.
Our manager strenuously refused, but offered at last to compromise
rather than have any further trouble, tendering twelve dollars and a
half. The authorities persisted in their unreasonable demand, and said,
with still greater flourish of constables, &c. that the shows should not
go on.
It was the work of about ten minutes to cast off the lines and float
down stream a few rods, just outside the limits of the corporation; and
the shows did go on, without paying any license at all, and to
overflowing and sympathizing audiences.
Shortly after, at another little town in Kentucky, a runaway couple came
into the museum, bringing the squire with them; and right in front of
the glass case where a stuffed hyena and a hilarious alligator, also
stuffed, exchanged perpetual smiles at each other,--which, of course,
were intended by the taxidermist as looks of ferocity,--and while a
barrel-organ was playing a lively dance for the puppets, this runaway
young couple was married.
A brother of the lady arrived on the scene just too late to prevent the
nuptials. The only means of revenge he could think of was to get
abominably drunk, and raise a disturbance in the concert-room that
afternoon. It must have been a memorable day with that particular
family, for the young gentleman was roundly whipped for his share in the
wedding ceremonies.
The row, however, became general. That was the momentous occasion when
Governor Dorr, entering the arena by a side door, announced with some
emphasis that he wanted it understood he had something to say in that
fight. He was standing on a seat by the door when he commenced this
speech. It was never ended, at least to his satisfaction. He had just
begun his exordium as reported, when some stalwart Kentuckian knocked
him clear through the door.
With remarkable presence of mind the Governor picked up his hat as if he
had merely happened to drop it on the guard of the boat, and walked
quietly off to his state-room, leaving the regular ushers to restore
order.
If I have not before mentioned Dorr’s presence on the Palace, it has
been because I have been trying to explain in my puzzled memory how he
came there, and what was the line of his duties. I should have put him
down at once as the literary gentleman of the establishment, were it not
for the fact that we had another who manifestly filled that office.
I allude to the gentleman who edited the daily paper which was printed
in the museum and distributed gratuitously to its patrons. This man was
the founder and for a long time the editor of one of the best-known and
most influential journals now published in the Union. The wreck of a
fine scholar and a graphic writer, who had been the associate of some of
the highest and best of our land, it was a melancholy sight to see him
industriously printing his little paper before the stolid, curious
people who thronged about his stand.
At the same stand gingerbread and brilliant-colored candies and lemonade
were dispensed,--pale red lemonade, which seemed, as one might say,
continually beholding its maker, and only half succeeding in its attempt
to blush. Poor old fellow! the labor of his hands and brain was, as I
have remarked, distributed gratuitously. The lemonade was sold for five
cents a glass.
This thought, if it ever occurred to him, could have had little force,
for his philosophy taught him to accept every situation unmurmuringly.
He had but one argument to establish his theory of fate, and he was
never weary of repeating it. When any passing philanthropist would
grapple with him and endeavor to show him that he ought to be very
miserable, he would tell this story.
“There was a man,” he would say, “at work on a scaffold of a four-story
building in Cincinnati. The scaffolding gave way, and he fell those four
stories, and one besides, down into the cellar. Fifteen minutes
thereafter he was up again, uninjured, at his work. A week afterward he
was walking in front of Alf Burnett’s saloon, stepped on a
watermelon-rind, fell, broke his neck, and died instantly.”
The narrator would never vouchsafe any explanation. When his hearer,
making an application for himself, would accuse our philosopher of
fatalism, he would only smile good-naturedly, and go about his duties.
It must, indeed, have been a dull penetration that could see nothing
better in the old fellow’s story,--especially under the every-day
commentary of his uncomplaining life. And I am glad to say others put
this larger interpretation upon him and his philosophy, that his own
misfortunes had taught him, more than his story, the ways of God are
inscrutable; that He is all in all, and that, high or low, successful or
broken, we are all alike in His merciful hands.
Scarcely three years ago I saw my old friend for the last time. We met
in the street at San Francisco, where he then lived, and where he has
since died. How well he was known and loved there was in some measure
attested by the honorable manner of his burial.
There are few printers, at least, in the metropolis of the Pacific who
will not remember him, although they may have known nothing more of his
personal history than that he was the veteran _attaché_ of Calhoun’s
job-rooms. Whatever the straits to which his peculiar misfortune brought
him, he never lost that indescribable dignity and courtesy which were a
part of his heritage as a born gentleman.
Poor old John McCreary! he would have written a better obituary of me
than this, and published it in his Palace Journal, if I had chanced to
get knocked on the head in some of the riots and perilous fights which
we witnessed together at those lawless backwoods landings.
* * * * *
And this brings me back again to Governor Dorr, who was sore in the
face, and more especially in the feelings, for some time after his
disastrous attempt to reason with the excited spirits of that Kentucky
audience. He could not bear, with any degree of equanimity, the
slightest allusion to the day of the marriage in the museum.
I cannot remember exactly when the Governor left the Palace, or why, as
he was, I have already intimated, ever one of the company. I lean to the
opinion that the manager, or his right-hand man, the once famous Van
Orden of Dan Rice’s satirical song, kept him on board to be amused by
his conversation.
Except this amusing conversation, and a commendable regularity at meals,
I can think of no activity whatever on the part of the Governor while
with us,--save only that he did two things: the first was to get knocked
through the door of the concert-room, as before mentioned; and the
second was to write up for our daily newspaper, the Palace Journal, a
most brilliant account of the curiosities in the museum.
The picturesque joy with which, in that series of articles, he would
pursue the history of some bogus war-club through the hands and over the
heads of whole dynasties of savage kings; the sunny sea voyages upon
which he would send his adventurous rhetoric to far tropic islands after
some insignificant shell, which, perhaps, was in reality captured in the
neighborhood of Long Branch; the fearful and bloody deeds of midnight
assassins that he would group about some old rusty sheaf-knife, which
was curious only because it had been rusted to order by chemicals; and
then the melting tenderness in which his soul would go out in the heart
history of our wax figures,--especially of that stolid, blue-eyed lady
in excessive black lashes and pink cheeks, who had been bought with an
odd lot from an old collection at Albany, and attired in cheap gauze and
labelled “The Empress Josephine,”--these delightful arabesques of
invention and sentiment, and, in a word, any of the Governor’s fine
literary pyrotechnics may not be reproduced.
They have gone down with the last files of the Palace Journal, who
shall say in what Western Lethe? And yet I have the bad taste to own
that, for my own reading, I would rather come across that series of
descriptive articles now than upon the lost books of Livy.
The Governor fairly revelled in his work. Indeed, my last memory of him
is as I saw him, with his lead-pencil in his hand and indefinite
foolscap before him, sprawled out upon his stomach on the floor of the
museum, one forenoon when there was no exhibition. He was staring, in a
fine frenzy, straight into the distended mouth and merry glass eyes of
our stuffed alligator; in the act, no doubt, was the ecstatic Governor
of inventing and composing details of the heart-rending tragedy of the
last man swallowed by the smiling, convivial saurian before him.
And there I shall leave him.