THE PERFORMER SOCIALLY.
In his social relations a performer, like many another great man or
woman, is liable to mistakes of head and heart. It is a pretty generally
known fact, for instance, that the most famous tenor of our day is so
careful of his gloves as to fly into a towering rage with any lady who
touches them with more than her finger-tips, in the most impassioned
duets. And a very celebrated _prima donna_ who takes the world captive
as much by the exceeding loveliness of her person and manner as by her
wonderful voice, is in the habit of beating her maid abominably two or
three times a week.
It would, indeed, be an acute analysis which should determine just what
it is in the higher walks of music that makes the lives of its special
votaries so strikingly inharmonious. He or she who has known of an
operatic company wherein the four leading persons were on speaking
terms with one another, off the stage, has known a remarkable fact in
the history of that peculiar class.
Of these, and of the dramatic profession proper, I would perhaps have no
right to speak here, were it not for the fact that, in my time at least,
there was a sort of fraternity among all people who appeared before
foot-lights. I do not know whether the members of cork-opera associate
with the better class of actors at this day; but I think they do not. I
would venture to assert, however, that among the lower orders of actors,
minstrels, and circus-riders there ever will be such a spirit of
bohemianism--such a touch of hearty, reckless good-nature--as will
always make their whole world kin.
Indeed, an honest old professional friend of mine, whom I met last
winter, spoke of lecturing as “the show-business.” There may have been
more or less of truth in his remark. This, at least, is no time or place
to discuss the question. But there was, indubitably, in this extending
of the right hand of fellowship from the side show to the lyceum, a fine
illustration of the catholic spirit which links the “profession”
together.
Jealousy may be set down as the chief failing of the whole race, high or
low. I have known men, whose names have made some noise in the world, to
measure with straws the comparative sizes of the letters in which they
were announced on a poster. But among minstrels, especially, a thorough
wordliness and boon-companionship enable them generally to be civil to
one another, whatsoever their private feelings.
An old showman, at last, comes to look upon the quiet ways of ordinary
life with that same kind of longing, romantic interest with which a
certain species of imaginative youth are always looking upon the
impossible glory of travelling with a show. A droll sighing for rural
pursuits seems to be the most common form taken by the romance of your
veteran itinerant. Yet, oddly enough, there is scarcely any one whom he
holds, personally, in such ridiculous contempt as he does the honest
farmer.
The vow which the old sailor in the forecastle is forever making to go
to sea no more, is rarely remembered over three days on land. And so it
is with the cognate ideal which floats in the queer imagination of the
old showman. I never knew but three or four who attained anything like
the realization of their romantic purpose. Daniel Emmet--the author, I
believe, of “Old Dan Tucker,” “Jordan,” and many of the best known of
the earlier negro-melodies--did, toward the close of his life, so far
reach the fleeting object of his bucolic ambition as to have a large,
well-filled chicken-coop in the back yard of a rented house, in the
suburbs of a great city.
This sentimental regard for nature was vented by the members of the
first companies with which I travelled in fishing and camping parties
along the borders of the inland lakes. They would swallow most execrable
amateur cooking during the day, but a night with beetles and mosquitoes
would, as a general thing, drive them back willing captives into the
arms of effete civilization.
On the Floating Palace, Nature seemed to have taken us so closely to her
bosom, in the wild lapse of those majestic rivers, that the romantic
instinct of the oldest showman expressed itself oftenest in lazy
expeditions to trap mocking-birds, or in listlessly dropping a line into
the stream for cat-fish and soft-shelled turtles.
The ladies of the profession are sometimes given to gossip and
backbiting in as great a degree at least as are the gentlemen. Jealousy
may be as rife on a Mississippi show-boat as in the antechamber of any
court in Europe. I have known a _danseuse_ to furnish boys with
clandestine bouquets to throw on the stage when she appeared; not that
she cared at all for the praise or blame of the audience, but that she
_did_ care to crush a cleverer rival.
In our company on board the Palace and the Raymond we had strange
contrasts in human nature. It would happen, for instance, that the man
who could not sleep without snoring would be placed in the same
state-room with the man who could not sleep within hearing of the most
distant snore. The man who could not eat pork was seated at table just
opposite the man who doted on it. We had one gentleman--the fleshy
bass-singer already mentioned--who spent all his leisure in catching
mocking-birds; and another, who passed his spare hours in contriving new
and undiscoverable ways of letting these birds escape from the cages.
There were on board ladies who had seen more prosperous days, when they
were the chief attractions at the theatres of London, Paris, and New
York,--according to their own stories; other ladies who had never
associated with such vulgar people before; other ladies who hoped they
would die if they did not leave the company at the very next landing,
but never left; and yet other ladies, I am rejoiced to add, who were
lovely in nature and deed,--kind mothers and faithful wives, whose
strength of character and ready cheerfulness tended as far as possible
to restore the social equilibrium.
In the course of the long association grotesque friendships sprang up.
The man who played the bass-drum was the bosom companion of the man who
had charge of the machine for making the gas which supplied the two
boats. The pretty man of the establishment, he who played the chimes on
the top of the museum and the piano in the concert-room,--at present, a
popular composer at St. Louis,--this young gentleman, who broke all the
hearts of the country girls that came into the show, was the inseparable
friend of the pilot,--a great, gruff, warm-hearted fellow, who steered
the Raymond from the corners of his eyes and swore terribly at snags.
The man who dusted down Tam O’Shanter and the Twelve Apostles in wax,
and had especial care of the stuffed birds, giraffes, and alligators,
was on most intimate terms with the cook.
The youngest of the ladies who hoped to die if they didn’t go ashore at
the next landing and never went,--or died either, for that
matter,--well, she was, or pretended to be, desperately in love with the
treasurer of the company, a thin, irascible old fellow with a bald head.
On the arrival of another _danseuse_ in the company, the two dancers,
who were before deadly enemies, became sworn friends and confidantes,
united in their jealousy and hatred of the new-comer. The lady who was
loudest in proclaiming that she had never before associated with such
low people as the performers on board of these boats seemed to enjoy
herself most, and indeed spent most of her time in the society of
Bridget, the Irish laundry-woman of the establishment, who on one
occasion, after excessive stimulus, came very near hanging herself
overboard to dry, instead of a calico dress.
As a general thing, however, the ladies, performers, and crew of our
boats were not so quarrelsome as I have seen a set of cabin passengers
on a sea voyage between America and Europe, or especially on the three
weeks’ passage to or from California. When I consider that there were so
many of us together in this narrow compass for nearly a year, it seems
to me strange indeed that there was not more bad blood excited.
* * * * *
Madame Olinza was, I believe, the name of the Polish lady who walked on
a tight-rope from the floor of one end of the museum up to the roof of
the farthest gallery. This kind of perilous ascension and suspension was
something new in the country then. It was before the time of Blondin,
and Madame used to produce a great sensation.
Now it may be interesting to the general reader to learn that this
tight-rope walker was one of the most exemplary, domestic little bodies
imaginable. She and her husband had a large state-room on the upper deck
of the Raymond, and she was always there with her child when released
from her public duties.
One afternoon the nurse happened to bring the child into the museum when
Madame Olinza was on the rope; and out of the vast audience that little
face was recognized by the fond mother, and her attention so distracted
that she lost her balance, dropped her pole, and fell.
Catching the rope with her hands, however, in time to break her fall,
she escaped fortunately without the least injury; but ever after that
her child was kept out of the audience while she was on the rope.