Comedian Might Have Gone in for Tragedy
Had the Wind Not Blown His
Credentials Into a River.
According to a story current some years since, which may or may not be a
press-agent yarn, the only reason Francis Wilson is not a tragedian is
because a gust of wind blew into the Schuylkill his letter of introduction
to the late E.L. Davenport. Like Hopper, Wilson is a native of
Philadelphia, where he was born in 1854. The nimbleness of his legs sent
him to the stage, where he began as a clog-dancer with a minstrel troupe
in the farce, "The Virginia Mummy."
It was during this engagement that he conceived the ambition for the
legitimate and obtained from his manager the letter to Davenport, which
blew out of his hand as he was reading it on a bridge in Fairmount Park.
He claims he hadn't the courage to ask for another one, but struck out for
better things later on in a different direction. But this was after he had
formed a partnership with James Mackin, with whom he toured the country as
one of a song-and-dance team. The two played a long engagement in New York
with the San Francisco Minstrels at their "opera house," now the Princess
Theater.
Instructor in Fencing.
Around the Centennial year he returned to Philadelphia and set about
realizing his aspirations by obtaining an engagement in very small parts
at Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theater. This brought him in only ten
dollars a week against the fifty he had been getting for clog work. But he
made himself popular with the members of the company, and eked out his pay
by giving them lessons in fencing and boxing, arts in which he was
specially proficient. Indeed, he had just won in a contest, at what is now
Madison Square Garden, the title of amateur champion swordsman of America.
These friends in the Drew company aided him in obtaining better parts,
and the next year he was engaged as utility man at the Chestnut Street
Theater, which then had a stock company. A year with Annie Pixley and
another as the _Baron_ in "Our Goblins" brought him up to his engagement
as comedian by McCaull for the Casino troupe, where he made his notable
hit as _Cadeaux_, one of the two thieves in "Erminie."
It was but natural that his prodigious success should suggest the idea to
Wilson of striking out for himself. He had saved a great deal of money,
and the year after Hopper became a star Wilson launched out at the same
theater--the Broadway--in "The Oolah."
Snatched Victory from Defeat.
The curtain fell on what even the actors were forced to admit to
themselves and one another was a failure. Gloom thick as night pervaded
the region behind. For a while Wilson sat there with his head in his
hands; then his indomitable courage asserted itself, and he sprang up with
the exclamation:
"We have got to make this go. Let's get to work at it."
His company stood nobly by him. His leading woman, Marie Jansen, and the
other principals, begged him not to consider them in the alterations, but
to give the public more of himself. With much cutting and slashing of the
book and innumerable rehearsals, the thing was whipped into shape, and
turned out one of the successes of the season. It was followed the next
year by "The Merry Monarch," which placed Wilson securely on the throne he
continued to occupy until last year, when he decided to step down--or
rather up, as no doubt he would prefer to put it, from musical to straight
comedy.
Apropos of Wilson's beginnings, a well-known writer on dramatic topics was
"reminiscing" some time since, and recalled the wigging he had received in
his early days--along in '72 or '73--when he was a very young city editor
of the Buffalo _Evening Post_. He had gone to Dan Shelby's Terrace
Theater, and devoted considerable space the next day to praising the work
of two men who took part in the variety show there current, and it was for
this eulogy he had been called down by his chief. One of the men was
Denman Thompson, who was using "Uncle Josh" in its crude, one-act form;
the other was Francis Wilson, who was doubling song and dance with Jimmie
Mackin.