Part 19 (2/2)
”They were quite orderly in their behaviour,” I suggested
”Which is why I suspect them. That Kenner woman, Hobbs, the baker, the others of their set--they're not thinking people; I dare say they never consider social problems seriously. And you may have noticed that they announce an amateur minstrel performance for a week hence.
I'm quite convinced that they mean to be vulgar to the last extreme--there has been so much talk of the behaviour of the wretched Floud, a fellow who really has no place in our modern civilization. He should be compelled to remain on his ranche.”
And indeed these suspicions proved to be only too well founded. That which followed was so atrociously personal that in any country but America we could have had an action against them. As Mr.
Belknap-Jackson so bitterly said when all was over, ”Our boasted liberty has degenerated into license.”
It is best told in a few words, this affair of the minstrel performance, which I understood was to be an entertainment wherein the partic.i.p.ants darkened themselves to resemble blackamoors. Naturally, I did not attend, it being agreed that the best people should signify their disapproval by staying away, but the disgraceful affair was recounted to me in all its details by more than one of the large audience that a.s.sembled. In the so-called ”grand first part” there seemed to have been little that was flagrantly insulting to us, although in their exchange of conundrums, which is a peculiar feature of this form of entertainment, certain names were bandied about with a freedom that boded no good.
It was in the after-piece that the poltroons gave free play to their vilest fancies. Our piece having been announced as ”Ghosts; a Drama for Thinking People,” this part was ent.i.tled on their programme, ”Gloats; a Dram for Drinking People,” a transposition that should perhaps suffice to show the dreadful lengths to which they went; yet I feel that the thing should be set down in full.
The stage was set as our own had been, but it would scarce be credited that the Kenner woman in male attire had made herself up in a curiously accurate resemblance to Belknap-Jackson as he had rendered the part of Oswald, copying not alone his wig, moustache, and fas.h.i.+on of speech, but appearing in a golfing suit which was recognized by those present as actually belonging to him.
Nor was this the worst, for the fellow Hobbs had copied my own dress and make-up and persisted in speaking in an exaggerated manner alleged to resemble mine. This, of course, was the most shocking bad taste, and while it was quite to have been expected of Hobbs, I was indeed rather surprised that the entire a.s.sembly did not leave the auditorium in disgust the moment they perceived his base intention. But it was Cousin Egbert whom they had chosen to rag most unmercifully, and they were not long in displaying their clumsy attempts at humour.
As the curtain went up they were searching for him, affecting to be unconscious of the presence of their audience, and declaring that the play couldn't go on without him. ”Have you tried all the saloons?”
asked one, to which another responded, ”Yes, and he's been in all of them, but now he has fled. The sheriff has put bloodhounds on his trail and promises to have him here, dead or alive.”
”Then while we are waiting,” declared the character supposed to represent myself, ”I will tell you a wheeze,” whereupon both the female characters fell to their knees shrieking, ”Not that! My G.o.d, not that!” while Oswald sneered viciously and muttered, ”Serves me right for leaving Boston.”
To show the infamy of the thing, I must here explain that at several social gatherings, in an effort which I still believe was praiseworthy, I had told an excellent wheeze which runs: ”Have you heard the story of the three holes in the ground?” I mean to say, I would ask this in an interested manner, as if I were about to relate the anecdote, and upon being answered ”No!” I would exclaim with mock seriousness, ”Well! Well! Well!” This had gone rippingly almost quite every time I had favoured a company with it, hardly any one of my hearers failing to get the joke at a second telling. I mean to say, the three holes in the ground being three ”Wells!” uttered in rapid succession.
Of course if one doesn't see it at once, or finds it a bit subtle, it's quite silly to attempt to explain it, because logically there is no adequate explanation. It is merely a bit of nonsense, and that's quite all to it. But these boors now fell upon it with their coa.r.s.e humour, the fellow Hobbs pretending to get it all wrong by asking if they had heard the story about the three wells and the others replying: ”No, tell us the hole thing,” which made utter nonsense of it, whereupon they all began to cry, ”Well! well! well!” at each other until interrupted by a terrific noise in the wings, which was followed by the entrance of the supposed Cousin Egbert, a part enacted by the cab-driver who had conveyed us from the station the day of our arrival. Dragged on he was by the sheriff and two of the town constables, the latter being armed with fowling-pieces and the sheriff holding two large dogs in leash. The character himself was heavily manacled and madly rattled his chains, his face being disguised to resemble Cousin Egbert's after the beard had been adjusted.
”Here he is!” exclaimed the supposed sheriff; ”the dogs ran him into the third hole left by the well-diggers, and we lured him out by making a noise like sour dough.” During this speech, I am told, the character snarled continuously and tried to bite his captors. At this the woman, who had so deplorably uns.e.xed herself for the character of Mr. Belknap-Jackson as he had played Oswald, approached the prisoner and smartly drew forth a handful of his beard which she stuffed into a pipe and proceeded to smoke, after which they pretended that the play went on. But no more than a few speeches had been uttered when the supposed Cousin Egbert eluded his captors and, emitting a loud shriek of horror, leaped headlong through the window at the back of the stage, his disappearance being followed by the sounds of breaking gla.s.s as he was supposed to fall to the street below.
”How lovely!” exclaimed the mimic Oswald. ”Perhaps he has broken both his legs so he can't run off any more,” at which the fellow Hobbs remarked in his affected tones: ”That sort of thing would never do with us.”
This I learned aroused much laughter, the idea being that the remark had been one which I am supposed to make in private life, though I dare say I have never uttered anything remotely like it.
”The fellow is quite impossible,” continued the spurious Oswald, with a doubtless rather clever imitation of Mr. Belknap-Jackson's manner.
”If he is killed, feed him to the goldfish and let one of the dogs read his part. We must get along with this play. Now, then. 'Ah! why did I ever leave Boston where every one is nice and proper?'” To which his supposed mother replied with feigned emotion: ”It was because of your father, my poor boy. Ah, what I had to endure through those years when he cursed and spoke disrespectfully of our city. 'Scissors and white ap.r.o.ns,' he would cry out, 'Why is Boston?' But I bore it all for your sake, and now you, too, are smoking--you will go the same way.”
”But promise me, mother,” returns Oswald, ”promise me if I ever get dusty in the garret, that Lord Algy here will tell me one of his funny wheezes and put me out of pain. You could not bear to hear me knocking Boston as poor father did. And I feel it coming--already my mother-in-law has bluffed me into admitting that Red Gap has a right to be on the same map with Boston if it's a big map.”
And this was the coa.r.s.ely wretched buffoonery that refined people were expected to sit through! Yet worse followed, for at their climax, the mimic Oswald having gone quite off his head, the Hobbs person, still with the preposterous affectation of taking me off in speech and manner, was persuaded by the stricken mother to sing. ”Sing that dear old plantation melody from London,” she cried, ”so that my poor boy may know there are worse things than death.” And all this witless piffle because of a quite natural misunderstanding of mine.
I have before referred to what I supposed was an American plantation melody which I had heard a black sing at Brighton, meaning one of the English blacks who colour themselves for the purpose, but on reciting the lines at an evening affair, when the American folksongs were under discussion, I was told that it could hardly have been written by an American at all, but doubtless by one of our own composers who had taken too little trouble with his facts. I mean to say, the song as I had it, betrayed misapprehensions both of a geographical and faunal nature, but I am certain that no one thought the worse of me for having been deceived, and I had supposed the thing forgotten. Yet now what did I hear but that a garbled version of this song had been supposedly sung by myself, the Hobbs person meantime mincing across the stage and gesturing with a monocle which he had somehow procured, the words being quite simply:
”Away down south in Michigan, Where I was a slave, so happy and so gay, 'Twas there I mowed the cotton and the cane.
I used to hunt the elephants, the tigers, and giraffes, And the alligators at the break of day.
But the blooming Injuns prowled about my cabin every night, So I'd take me down my banjo and I'd play, And I'd sing a little song and I'd make them dance with glee, On the banks of the Ohio far away.”
I mean to say, there was nothing to make a dust about even if the song were not of a true American origin, yet I was told that the creature who sang it received hearty applause and even responded to an encore.
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