Part 4 (1/2)
They read selections from _Richelieu_ and _The Stranger_, as well as the quarrel scene from _Julius Caesar_, singing during the evening (with blackened faces) a number of negro melodies, ”using appropriate dialogue”--as Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke records in the memoir of her brother--”and accompanying their vocal attempts with the somewhat inharmonious banjo and bones.” Mrs. Clarke reprints the programme of this performance, and pictures the distress of the young tragedians when they discovered, on arriving in the town, that the simon-pure negro they had employed as an advance agent had in every instance posted their bills upsidedown.
Mr. Booth, during his first San Francisco engagement, appeared more than once in the character of what was then termed a ”Dandy n.i.g.g.e.r;” and he remembers that his father, ”some time in the forties,” played Sam Johnson in _Bone Squash_ at the Front Street Theatre, Baltimore, for the benefit of an old theatrical acquaintance, and played it with great applause.
Lawrence Barrett's negro parts, in the beginning of his career, were George Harris and Uncle Tom himself, in a dramatization of Mrs. Stowe's famous tale.
[Ill.u.s.tration: RALPH KEELER.]
Among the stage negroes of later years, whom the world is not accustomed to a.s.sociate with that profession, Ralph Keeler is one of the most prominent. His ”Three Years a Negro Minstrel,” first published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1869, and afterwards elaborated in his _Vagabond Adventures_, is very entertaining and instructive reading, and gives an excellent idea of the wandering minstrel life of that period. He began his career at Toledo, Ohio, when he was not more than eleven years of age; and under the management of the celebrated Mr. Booker, the subject of the once famous song, ”Meet Johnny Booker on the Bowling-green,” he ”danced 'Juba'” in small canton-flannel knee-breeches (familiarly known as pants) cheap lace, tarnished gold tinsel, a corked face, and a woolly wig, to the great gratification of the Toledans, who for several months, with pardonable pride, hailed him as their own particular infant phenomenon. At the close of his first engagement he received what was termed a ”rousing benefit,” the entire proceeds of which, as was the custom of the time, going into the pockets of his enterprising managers. During his short although distinguished professional life he was a.s.sociated with such artists as ”Frank” Lynch, ”Mike” Mitch.e.l.l, ”Dave” Reed, and ”Professor”
Lowe, the balloonist, and he was even offered a position in E. P.
Christy's company in New York--the highest compliment which could then be paid to budding talent. Keeler, a brilliant but eccentric writer, whose _Vagabond Adventures_ is too good, in its way, to be forgotten so soon, was a man of decided mark as a journalist. He went to Cuba in 1873 as special correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, and suddenly and absolutely disappeared. He is supposed to have been murdered and thrown into the sea.
[Ill.u.s.tration: P. T. BARNUM.]
Lynch, when Keeler first knew him, had declined into the fat and slippered end man, too gross to dance, who ordinarily played the tambourine and the banjo, but who could, and not infrequently did, perform everything in the orchestra, from a solo on the penny trumpet to an obligato on the double-ba.s.s. He had been a.s.sociated as a boy, in 1839 or 1840, under Barnum's management, with ”Jack” Diamond, who was ”the best representative of Ethiopian break-downs” in his day, and, according to P. T. Barnum, the prototype of the many performers of that sort who have entertained the public ever since. Lynch a.s.serted that he and Barnum had appeared together in black faces; and Mr. Barnum, in his _Autobiography_, called Mr. Lynch ”an orphan vagabond” whom he had picked up on the road; neither statement seeming to be entirely true. Lynch was his own worst enemy, and, like so many of his kind, he died in poverty and obscurity, his most perfect ”break-down” being his own!
It is a melancholy fact that George Holland joined Christy and Wood's minstrels in 1857, playing female characters in a blackened face, and dividing with George Christy the honors of a short season. He returned to Wallack's Theatre in 1858. This is a page in dramatic history which old play-goers do not like to read.
The name of John B. Gough, the temperance orator, occurs occasionally in the reminiscences of old minstrels. He certainly did appear upon the stage as a comic singer in New York and elsewhere during his early and dissipated youth, and even gave exhibitions of ventriloquism and the like in low bar-rooms for the sake of the few pennies he could gather to keep himself in liquor, as he himself describes; but there is no hint in his _Autobiography_ of his ever having appeared in a blackened face, and his theatrical life, if it may be so called, was very short.
Joseph Jefferson, the third and present bearer of that honored name, was unquestionably the youngest actor who ever made his mark with a piece of burnt cork. The story of his first appearance is told by William Winter in his volume ent.i.tled _The Jeffersons_. Coming from a family of actors, the boy, as was natural, was reared amid theatrical surroundings, and when only four years of age--in 1833--he was brought upon the stage by Thomas D. Rice himself, on a benefit occasion at the Was.h.i.+ngton Theatre. Little Joe, blackened and arrayed precisely like his senior, was carried onto the stage in a bag upon the shoulders of the shambling Ethiopian, and emptied from it with the appropriate couplet,
”Ladies and gentlemen, I'd have you for to know I's got a little darky here to jump Jim Crow.”
Mrs. John Drew, who was present, says that the boy instantly a.s.sumed the exact att.i.tude of Jim Crow Rice, and sang and danced in imitation of his sable companion, a perfect miniature likeness of that long, ungainly, grotesque, and exceedingly droll comedian.
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN B. GOUGH.]
Thomas D. Rice is generally conceded to have been the founder of Ethiopian minstrelsy. Although, as has been seen, it did not originate with him, he made it popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and his image deserves an honored niche in its cathedral. The history of ”Jim Crow” Rice, as he was affectionately called for many years, has been written by many scribes and in many different ways, the most complete and most truthful account, perhaps, being that of Edmon S. Conner, who described in the columns of the New York _Times_, June 5, 1881, what he saw and remembered of the birth of Jim Crow. Mr. Conner was a member of the company at the Columbia Street Theatre, Cincinnati, in 1828-29, when he first met Rice, ”doing little negro bits” between the acts at that house, notably a sketch he had studied from life in Louisville the preceding summer. Back of the Louisville theatre was a livery-stable kept by a man named Crow. The actors could look into the stable-yard from the windows of their dressing-rooms, and were fond of watching the movements of an old and decrepit slave who was employed by the proprietor to do all sorts of odd jobs. As was the custom among the negroes, he had a.s.sumed his master's name, and called himself Jim Crow. He was very much deformed--the right shoulder was drawn up high, and the left leg was stiff and crooked at the knee, which gave him a painful but at the same time ludicrous limp. He was in the habit of crooning a queer old tune, to which he had applied words of his own. At the end of each verse he gave a peculiar step, ”rocking de heel” in the manner since so general among the many generations of his imitators; and these were the words of his refrain:
”Wheel about, turn about, Do jis so, An' ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: RICE AS JIM CROW.]
Rice closely watched this unconscious performer, and recognized in him a character entirely new to the stage. He wrote a number of verses, quickened and slightly changed the air, made up exactly like the original, and appeared before a Louisville audience, which, as Mr. Conner says, ”went mad with delight,” recalling him on the first night at least twenty times. And so Jim Crow jumped into fame and something that looks almost like immortality. ”Sol” Smith says that the character was first seen in a piece by Solon Robinson, called _The Rifle_, and that he, Smith, ”helped Rice a little in fixing the tune.”
Other cities besides Louisville claim Jim Crow. Francis Courtney Wemyss, in his _Autobiography_, says he was a native of Pittsburg, whose name was Jim Cuff; while Robert P. Nevin, in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for November, 1867, declares that the original was a negro stage-driver of Cincinnati, and that Pittsburg was the scene of Rice's first appearance in the part--a local negro there, whose professional career was confined to holding his mouth open for pennies thrown to him on the docks and the streets, furnis.h.i.+ng the wardrobe for the initial performance.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THOMAS D. RICE.]
Rice was born in the Seventh Ward of New York in 1808. He was a supernumerary at the Park Theatre, where ”Sam” Cowell remembered him in _Bombastes Furioso_ attracting so much attention by his eccentricities that Hilson and Barnes, the leading characters in the cast, made a formal complaint, and had him dismissed from the company Cowell; adding that this man, whose name did not even appear in the bills, was the only actor on the stage whom the audience seemed to notice. Cowell also describes him in Cincinnati, in 1829, as a very una.s.suming modest young man, who wore ”a very queer hat, very much pointed down before and behind, and very much c.o.c.ked on one side.” He went to England in 1836, where he met with great success, laid the foundation of a very comfortable fortune, and professionally he was the Buffalo Bill of the London of half a century ago. Mr. Ireland, speaking of his popularity in this country, says that he drew more money to the Bowery Theatre than any other performer in the same period of time.
Rice was the author of many of his own farces, notably _Bone Squash_ and _The Virginia Mummy_, and he was the veritable originator of the _genus_ known to the stage as the ”dandy darky,” represented particularly in his creations of ”Dandy Jim of Caroline” and ”Spruce Pink.” He died in 1860, never having forfeited the respect of the public or the good-will of his fellow-men.
[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES ROBERTS.]
There were many lithographed and a few engraved portraits of Rice made during the years of his great popularity, a number of which are still preserved. In Mr. McKee's collection he is to be seen dancing ”Jim Crow”
in English as well as in American prints--as ”Gumbo Chaff,” on a flat-boat, and, in character, singing the songs ”A Long Time Ago” and ”Such a Gettin' Up-stairs.” In the same collection, among prints of George Dimond and other half-remembered clog-dancers and singers, is a portrait of John N. Smith as ”Jim Along Josey,” on a sheet of music published by Firth & Hall in 1840; and, more curious and rare than any of these, upon a musical composition, ”on which copyright was secured according to law October 7, 1824,” is a picture of Mr. Roberts singing ”Ma.s.sa George Was.h.i.+ngton and Ma.s.sa Lafayette” in a Continental uniform and with a blackened face. This would make James Roberts, a Scottish vocalist, who died in 1833, the senior of Jim Crow by a number of years.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE WAs.h.i.+NGTON DIXON.]
George Was.h.i.+ngton Dixon, whose very name is now almost forgotten, also preceded Rice in this cla.s.s of entertainment, but without Rice's talent, and with nothing like Rice's success. He sang ”Coal Black Rose” and ”The Long-tailed Blue” at the old amphitheatre in North Pearl Street, Albany, as early as 1827, and he claimed to have been the author of ”Old Zip c.o.o.n,” which he sang for Allen's benefit in Philadelphia in 1834. He became notorious as a ”filibuster” at the time of the troubles in Yucatan, and he made himself particularly offensive to a large portion of the community as the editor of a scurrilous paper called the _Polyanthus_, published in New York. He was caned, shot at, imprisoned for libel, and finally forced to leave the city. He died in the Charity Hospital, New Orleans, in 1861.
Mr. White says that in early days negro songs were sung from the backs of horses in the sawdust ring; that Robert Farrell, ”a circus actor,” was the original ”Zip c.o.o.n,” and that the first colored gentleman to wear ”The Long-tailed Blue” was Barney Burns, who broke his neck on a vaulting board in Cincinnati in 1838. When the historians disagree in this confusing way, who can possibly decide?
[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. DIXON AS ZIP c.o.o.n.]
Rice very naturally had many imitators, and Jim Crow wheeled about the country with considerable success, particularly when the original was in other lands. In the collection of Mr. Moreau is a bill of ”The Theatre”