Part 4 (2/2)
(the Park), dated May 4, 1833, in which Mr. Blakeley was announced to sing the ”Comic Extravaganza of Jim Crow” between the comedy of _Laugh When You Can_, in which he played Costly, and the melodrama of _The Floating Beacon_, and preceded by ”Signora Adelaide Ferrero in a new ballet dance ent.i.tled 'The Festival of Bacchus';” the entertainments in those days being varied and long. Thomas H. Blakeley was a popular representative of what are called ”second old men,” Mr. Ireland p.r.o.nouncing him the best Sulky, Rowley, and Humphrey Dobbin ever seen on the New York stage: and the fact that such a man should have appeared at a leading theatre, between the acts, in plantation dress and with blackened face, shows better than anything else, perhaps, the respectable position held by the negro minstrel half a century ago.
Mr. White, so frequently quoted here, is an old minstrel who was part and parcel of what he has more than once described in the public press, and upon his authority the following account of the first _band_ of negro minstrels is given. It was organized in the boarding-house of a Mrs.
Brooks, in Catherine Street, New York, late in the winter of 1842, and it consisted of ”Dan” Emmett, ”Frank” Brower, ”Billy” Whitlock, and ”d.i.c.k”
Pelham--the name of the really great negro minstrel being always shortened in this familiar way. According to Mr. White, they made their first appearance in public, for Pelham's benefit, at the Chatham Theatre, New York, on the 17th of February, 1843; later they went to other cities, and even to Europe. This statement was verified by a fragment of autobiography of William Whitlock, given to the New York _Clipper_ by his daughter, Mrs.
Edwin Adams, at the time of Whitlock's death. It is worth quoting here in full, although it contains no dates: ”The organization of the minstrels I claim to be my own idea, and it cannot be blotted out. One day I asked Dan Emmett, who was in New York at the time, to practise the fiddle and the banjo with me at his boarding-house in Catherine Street. We went down there, and when we had practised Frank Brower called in by accident. He listened to our music, charmed to his soul[!]. I told him to join with the bones, which he did. Presently d.i.c.k Pelham came in, also by accident, and looked amazed. I asked him to procure a tambourine, and make one of the party, and he went out and got one. After practising for a while we went to the old resort of the circus crowd--the 'Branch,' in the Bowery--with our instruments, and in Bartlett's billiard-room performed for the first time as the Virginia Minstrels. A programme was made out, and the first time we appeared upon the stage before an audience was for the benefit of Pelham at the Chatham Theatre. The house was crammed and jammed with our friends; and d.i.c.k, of course, put ducats in his purse.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: DANIEL EMMETT.]
Emmett, describing this scene, places the time ”in the spring of 1843,”
and says that they were all of them ”end men, and all interlocutors.” They sang songs, played their instruments, danced jigs, singly and doubly, and ”did 'The Essence of Old Virginia' and the 'Lucy Long Walk Around.'”
Emmett remained upon the minstrel stage for many years; he was a member of the Bryant troupe from 1858 to 1865, and he was the composer of many popular songs, including ”Old Dan Tucker,” ”Boatman's Dance,” ”Walk Along, John,” ”Early in the Mornin',” and, according to some authorities, he was the author of ”Dixie,” which afterwards became the war-song of the South.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES WHITE.]
Mr. White, according to a biographical sketch published in the New York _Clipper_, was born in 1821. He played the accordion--when he was too young to be held responsible for the offence--at Thalian Hall, in Grand Street, New York, as long ago as 1843, and the next year organized what he called ”'The Kitchen Minstrels' on the second floor of the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. The first floor was occupied by Tiffany, Young & Ellis, jewellers; the third by the renowned Ottignon as a gymnasium. Here, where the venerable Palmo had introduced to delighted audiences the Italian opera, and regaled them with fragrant Mocha coffee handed around by obsequious waiters, he first came most prominently before the public.... In 1846 he opened the Melodeon at 53 Bowery.” Here, as usual, there is a decided confusion of dates and of facts. _Valentine's Manual_ for 1865 says, ”Palmo's cafe, on the corner of Reade Street and Broadway, was a popular resort from 1835 to 1840, at which later period he abandoned his former occupation and erected the opera-house in Chambers Street, afterwards Burton's Theatre.” Joseph N. Ireland, in his _Records of the New York Stage_, published in 1867, says--and Mr. Ireland is usually correct--”The fourth attempt to introduce the Italian opera in New York, and the second to give it an individual local habitation, was this season [1843-44], made by Ferdinand Palmo, on the site long previously occupied by Stoppani's Arcade Baths, in Chambers Street (Nos. 39 and 41), and nearly opposite the centre of the building on the north end of the Park originally erected for the city almshouse, and afterwards used for various public offices.... Signor Palmo had been a popular and successful _restaurateur_ in Broadway between the hospital and Duane Street....
Palmo's Opera-house was first opened by its proprietor on the 3d of February, 1844”; while Charles T. Cook, of Tiffany & Co., who has been connected with that house for over forty years, shows by its records that Tiffany, Young & Ellis did not move to 271 Broadway, on the southwest corner of Chambers Street, until 1847, when they occupied the second floor as well as the first. That Sir Walter Raleigh, losing all confidence in the infallibility of human testimony, should have thrown the second part of his _History of the World_ into the flames is not to be wondered at!
Mr. White, nevertheless, was prominently before the public for many years as manager and performer; he was a.s.sociated with the ”Virginia Serenaders,” with ”The Ethiopian Operatic Brothers” (Operatic Brother Barney Williams playing the tambourine at one end of the line); with ”The Sable Sisters and Ethiopian Minstrels;” with ”The New York Minstrels,”
etc. He introduced ”Dan” Bryant to the public, and has done other good services in contributing to the healthful, harmless amus.e.m.e.nt of his fellow-men.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWIN P. CHRISTY.]
”Christy's Minstrels, organized in 1842,” was the legend for a number of years upon the bills and advertis.e.m.e.nts of the company of E. P. Christy.
This would give it precedence of the ”Virginia Minstrels” by a few months at least. When the matter was called to the attention of Mr. Emmett, many years later, he wrote from Chicago on the 1st of May, 1877, that after his own band had gone to Europe a number of similar entertainments were given in all parts of the country, and that Enam d.i.c.kinson, who had had some experience in that line in other companies, had trained Christy's troupe in Buffalo in all the business of the scenes, Mr. Emmett believing that Mr. Christy simply claimed, and with truth, that he was ”the first to harmonize and originate the present style of negro minstrelsy,” meaning the singing in concert and the introduction of the various acts, which were universally followed by other bands on both sides of the Atlantic, and which have led our English brethren to give to all Ethiopian entertainments the generic name of ”Christy Minstrels,” as they call all top-boots ”Wellingtons” and all policemen ”Bobbies.”
Christy's Minstrels proper began their metropolitan career at the hall of the Mechanics' Society, 472 Broadway, near Grand Street, early in 1846, and remained there until the summer of 1854, when Edwin P. Christy, the leader and founder of the company, retired from business. George Christy, who the year before had joined forces with Henry Wood at 444 Broadway, formerly Mitch.e.l.l's Olympic, took both halls after the abdication of the elder Christy, and rattled the bones at one establishment, ”Billy”
Birch, afterwards so popular in San Francisco and New York, cutting similar capers at the other, and each performer appearing at both houses on the same evening.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE CHRISTY.]
Edwin P. Christy died in May, 1862. George Harrington, known to the stage as George Christy, died in May, 1868; while in April of the latter year Mechanics' Hall, with which in the minds of so many old New-Yorkers they are both so pleasantly a.s.sociated, was entirely destroyed by fire, never to be rebuilt for minstrel uses.
The contemporaries and successors of the Christys were numerous and various. The air was full of their music, and dozens of halls in the city of New York alone echoed the patter of their clogged feet for years. Among the more famous of them the following may briefly be mentioned: Buckley's ”New Orleans Serenaders” were organized in 1843; they consisted of George Swayne, Frederick, and R. Bishop Buckley, and were very popular throughout the country. ”White's Serenaders” were at the Melodeon, 53 Bowery, perhaps as early as 1846, and certainly at White's Athenaeum, 585 Broadway, opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, as late as 1872. The Harrington Minstrels were at Palmo's Opera-house in 1847 or 1848. Bryant's Minstrels, as their old play-bills show, were organized in 1857, when they occupied Mechanics' Hall; they went to the Tammany Building on Fourteenth Street in 1868, were at 730 Broadway the next year, and opened the hall on Twenty-third Street near Sixth Avenue in 1870, where they remained until Dan Bryant, the last of his race, died in 1875. Wood's Minstrels were at 514 Broadway, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1862 and later. ”Sam”
Sharpley's Minstrels were at 201 Bowery in 1864. ”Tony” Pastor's troupe were in the same building in 1865, where they remained two years; they were upon the site of the Metropolitan Theatre--later Winter Garden--for a few seasons, and until they removed to their present cosey home near Tammany Hall. The San Francisco Minstrels were at 585 Broadway in 1865, and in 1874 went to the more familiar hall on Broadway, opposite the Sturtevant House, Budworth's Minstrels opened the Fifth Avenue Hall, where the Madison Square Theatre now stands, in 1866. Kelly and Leon, who were on Broadway on the site of Hope Chapel in 1867, where they were credited with having ”Africanized opera bouffe,” followed Budworth to the Twenty-fourth Street house. Besides these were the companies of Morris Brothers, of Cotton and Murphy and Cotton and Reed, of Hooley, of Haverly, of Dockstader, of Pelham, of Pierce, of Campbell, of Pell and Trowbridge, of Thatcher, Primrose and West, of Huntley, and of very many more, to say nothing of the bands of veritable negroes who have endeavored to imitate themselves in imitation of their white brethren in all parts of the land.
Brander Matthews, in an article on ”Negro Minstrelsy,” printed in the London _Sat.u.r.day Review_ in 1884, and afterwards published as one of the chapters of a volume of _Sat.u.r.day Review_ essays, ent.i.tled _The New Book of Sports_ (London, 1885), describes a ”minstrel show” given by the negro waiters of one of the large summer hotels in Saratoga a few summers before, in which, ”when the curtains were drawn aside, discovering a row of sable performers, it was perceived, to the great and abiding joy of the spectators, that the musicians were all of a uniform darkness of hue, and that they, genuine negroes as they were, had 'blackened up,' the more closely to resemble the professional negro minstrel.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE SWAYNE BUCKLEY.]
The dignified and imposing Mr. Johnston has sat during all these years in the centre of a long line of black comedians, which includes such artists as ”Eph” Horn, ”Dan” Neil, and ”Jerry” Bryant--whose real name was...o...b..ien--Charles H. Fox, ”Charley” White, George Christy, ”Nelse”
Seymour--Thomas Nelson Sanderson--the Buckleys, J. W. Raynor, Birch, Bernard, Wambold, Backus, ”Pony” Moore, ”Dan” Cotton, ”Bob” Hart, ”Cool”
White, ”Dan” Emmett, ”Dave” Reed, ”Matt” Peel, ”Ben” Gardner, Luke Schoolcraft, James H. Budworth, Kelly, Leon, ”Frank” Brower, S. C.
Campbell, ”Gus” Howard, ”Billy” Newcomb, ”Billy” Gray, Aynsley Cooke, ”Hughey” Dougherty, ”Tony” Hart, Unsworth, W. H. Delehanty, ”Sam” Devere, ”Add” Ryman, George Thatcher, ”Master Eugene,” ”Ricardo,” ”Andy” Leavitt, ”Sam” Sanford, ”Lew” Benedict, ”Harry” Bloodgood, ”Cal” Wagner, ”Ben”
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