America in England: A Theatrical Retrospect. 87 Gladiator." Forrest's reputation had so far preceded him that on making his entrée the house "rose at him" and gave three hearty cheers. Subsequently his Macbeth, Richard, and Othello sufficed to establish his reputation as a tragedian of the first water; and the Garrick club, in graceful confirmation of the verdict of the press, gave a dinner in his honour, at which Charles Kemble and Macready were both present. Retracing his steps homeward in August, 1837, Forrest did not appear in London again until the February of 1845, what time his illustrious compatriot, Charlotte Cushman, was also winning laurels in the metropolis. For some reason or other it became hinted about by stage-door gossips at this juncture that Macready had grown jealous of his robustious American rival. Forrest was foolish enough to swallow all this, and firmly believed that Macready had sent his satellites to the theatre to hiss him, had subsidised the press to ruin his professional reputation, and, worst of all, had induced Bulwer to refuse him the right to appear in the English tragedian's great parts of Claude Melnotte and Richelieu. Nothing, of course, could have been more absurd; but the impression weighed in Forrest's mind with lamentable results. As ill-luck would have it the American tragedian happened to visit the Edinburgh theatre when Macready was playing Hamlet there, and relieved his pent-up feelings by a prolonged hiss when the star delivered the line: They are coming to the play, I must be idle. Forrest, it appears, professed to take exception to the appropriateness of Macready's action in driving pell-mell across the stage several times, meanwhile flourishing his handkerchief triumphantly aloft. Hamlet took the measure of his opponent, and then defiantly repeated this morsel of stage business. The incident found its way into the papers, some of which, in censuring Forrest for his ungenerous attitude, evoked a reply from that gentleman defending the right of any spectator (much more such a skilled critic as one of his own profession) to express his enjoyment or dissatisfaction at the performance. He denied that personal animus had given breath to the famous hiss, and gave it as his opinion that "Mr. Macready's fancy dance" in "Hamlet" was a desecration of the poet. Would that this miserable squabble had ended there! But, sad to say, the bitter feeling thus engendered assumed the dimensions of an international dispute, and culminated in the Astor Place Opera House riot o May, 1849, when thirty innocent beings lost their lives, and Macready himself had a narrow escape. It is pleasant to know that profes sional relations are not strained to such a pitch nowadays. If the petty jealousies of these dead and gone histrions must be chronicled let us dull the picture by placing side by side with it the generous rivalry of an Irving and a Booth. T. D., popularly known as "Jim Crow," Rice, who in his early days had been a journeyman carver in Cherry Street, New York, is identified as the first nigger vocalist who ever set foot on English soil. While acting at a Western American theatre Rice had happened to hear a grotesque negro sing "Jump, Jim Crow," in a back street, and the quaintness of the ditty, allied to the laughterprovoking nature of the intermittent flip-flap, induced him to make a study of the tatterdemalion droll with a view of reproducing him on the stage. The result was the whimsical character-sketch that captured two continents. Rice's English début took place at the Surrey in November, 1836. In the height of his popularity at the East-end, Davidge, the manager, generously permitted him to transfer his services to the Adelphi, under Yates, where he gave a negro impersonation in a farcical burletta by Leman Rede, called "A Flight to America; or, Twelve Hours in New York." Here he met with unprecedented success, and performed through the entire season of twenty-one weeks. For a long period he appeared at the Adelphi and Pavilion theatres on the same nights, and in so doing had, according to an ingenious statistician, travelled considerably over a thousand miles. Arguing from the fact that this engagement lasted 126 nights the same misdirected individual pointed out that, as Rice generally received five encores at every rendering of "Jim Crow," he must have sung that immortal ditty in England alone about 1,300 times. The modern aphorism that English actors go to America to make money, Americans to England to spend it in search of reputation, has no very remote application. Rice's profits for one season alone amounted to something like £1,100. Little wonder that, after a hurried visit to his native land, he returned to the Adelphi in November, 1838, where he sang "Such a gettin' upstairs" with great acceptance. His last appearance at this theatre was made in the nigger opera of "Bone Squash Diablo," in October, 1839. The pioneer of negro minstrelsy in Europe, Rice's fame had almost evaporated before Christy Dumbletons or the Moore and Burgess came into vogue. What a change in the spirit of the scene in the swift flight of forty years! In 1836 a single performer, with little versatility to boast of, draws all London for a season; in 1880 forty skilled Mastodon minstrels, with a marvellously diversified programme, and backed up by pictorial printing that turns the streets into a vast picture gallery, have their work cut out for them to attract large audiences at Her Majesty's. The success of Hackett and Rice in London naturally brought imitators in their train. Thus we find George Handel, otherwise Yankee, Hill giving delineations of Transatlantic peculiarities at the Haymarket and Strand theatres in 1838. Not so much esteemed as Hackett, Hill was reckoned a tolerable exponent of strongly marked comic types. In the capacity of Yankee impersonator he was succeeded in London by Dan Marble, whose pretensions to favour were speedily snuffed out by the superior abilities of Josh Silsbee. In Rice's train in 1840 came E. R. Harper, a vocal comedian who appeared with slight success in London and the provinces in "The Free Nigger of New York" and "The Court Jester." Returning to more legitimate artists, we find Miss Matilda Heron giving a musical entertainment from Longfellow's "Hiawatha" at › Covent Garden in 1844. This excellent actress returned to London eight years afterwards, and performed at Drury Lane, under E. T. Smith, in an unobtrusive manner during the season of 1852-53. In September, 1844, an American tragedian, named J. Hudson Kirby, began an engagement at the Royal Victoria Theatre, and was immediately claimed by Mrs. Davidge, of the Surrey, on the plea of prior articles of agreement. A broadsheet war ensued, bringing the subject of the dispute into sudden notoriety. After a prosperous tour in the provinces in such characters as Claude Melnotte, Sir Giles Overreach, and the Carpenter of Rouen, Hudson Kirby re-appeared in the metropolis at the City of London Theatre. With all the qualities of a good actor, save perseverance, carelessness and prodigality soon proved his ruin. Poor Kirby! After leaving the City of London, he speedily lost caste, had to act in the lowest saloons for a bare living, and eventually died in abject poverty. The celebrated comedian William Warren made but one appearance in England, and that more by accident than design. Happening, while quite a young man, to take a pleasure trip to Europe in 1845, he was induced by a friend to take part in a benefit at the Strand Theatre, and on that occasion played Con Gormley in Cornelius Logan's farce of "The Vermonter." Quite a different kind of début was that of Charlotte Cushman, who, after some difficulty, made her bow in London during the same year. At the age of twenty-seven, with the pinnacle of her ambition attained in her native land, this remarkable actress had fearlessly set sail for England, with the one stern purpose in view of storming the fortress of British critical opinion. Keeping the resolution to herself, the Cushman arrived in London unheralded by a single paragraph. The path might be steep and thorny, but toil would render triumph all the sweeter. This idea of winning renown by legitimate work without drawing on a ready-made reputation, dominated her every action. Living frugally, she took obscure lodgings in Covent Garden, spent the bulk of her time dancing attendance upon Messieurs the theatrical managers, and for her pains was by one and all coldly repulsed. Off the stage, the God-given genius of this superb actress failed to make itself apparent in the person of a woman who, sooth to say, was not cast in fascinating mould, having physical qualities bordering on the masculine. But, as events afterwards demonstrated, Laurent, of Covent Garden, to take one example, lost a clear £5,000 by refusing her proffered services at the ridiculous salary of £8 per week. Returning to London after an unsuccessful attempt in Paris to get an engagement there with an English company, Charlotte grew more resolute than ever, equipped herself with new letters of introduction, and once more waited upon Maddox, the little Hebrew manager of the Princess's Theatre. Equally chilling was her second reception. "Repulsed, but not conquered," writes George Vandenhoff, with authority, in his "Reminiscences," "she rose to depart; but, as she reached the door, she turned round and exclaimed: 'I know I have enemies in this country, but-and here she cast herself upon her knees and raised her clasped hands aloft-'so help me, God! I'll defeat them.' She uttered this with the energy of Lady Macbeth and the prophetic spirit of Meg Merrilies. Hullo!' said Maddox to himself, 's'help me! she's got de shtuff in her!' and he gave her an appearance, and afterwards an engagement in his theatre." The engagement was at £20 a week, and Maddox cleared some £5,000 by the transaction. Wisely for herself, Charlotte Cushman elected to make her début unaided by the dubious attractions of Edwin Forrest, whose popularity in London had, to his intense mortification, very palpably waned. Subsequently, after her passage, unscathed, through the fiery ordeal, she acted once or twice with her stentorian compatriot; but not for long, as Forrest was too much annoyed by his equivocal reception to permit of his taking a secondary position. It was, then, on the 14th of February, 1845, that her debut took place in the forceful character of Bianca in Milman's "Fazio." Despite a grave voice and a somewhat uncouth presence, which were soon lost sight of in the intensity of the impersonation, the actress gained. quick command of the sympathies of her audience, and time after time evoked regular hurricanes of applause. Amid the chit-chat America in England: A Theatrical Retrospect. 91 about town respecting the new star, the prevailing topic seemed to be her remarkable resemblance, in voice, manner, and deportment, to Macready. Partly due to the circumstance that she had become infected with Macready's style while acting with him in America, this resemblance was heightened by the fact that her profile was a genuine travesty of the tragedian's-more especially in regard to the prolongation of chin. It will be remembered that a similar likeness existed between Garrick and Mrs. Cibber, who might have passed for brother and sister. Remaining in England until 1840, Charlotte Cushman left the Princess's and transferred her services to the Haymarket, where she played Meg Merrilies in "Guy Mannering on Tuesday, June 30, 1846, and achieved one of the greatest hits of the century. Essentially a creation, as the text of the play suggested nothing very definite, this vivid impersonation differed materially from the Meg Merrilies of Sir Walter Scott, and yet harmonised quite as readily with the other elements of the story. Notwithstanding that Miss Cushman's voice was at fault in not carrying out the semblance of old age presented by her picturesque make-up, there was a smooth completeness in the unrestrained nature of her pantomimic action that outweighed all minor deficiencies. In this instance a trifling melodramatic rôle had been invested with all the merits of a lofty tragic character simply through the transcendent genius of the exponent. Uncertain in tragedy, oftentimes ludicrous in comedy when least intended, eccentric melodrama was certainly the Cushman's forte. Amongst those who supported Charlotte Cushman and Macready at the Princess's in 1845, some mention must be made of John Gilbert, afterwards recognised as America's finest interpreter of old comedy. After considerable histrionic experiences in Boston, Gilbert had journeyed to Europe with the intention of studying his art in London and Paris. Hence his engagement at the Princess's. After Charlotte Cushman's desertion, Maddox sought to replace her by another American actress, a Miss Virginia Monier, who appeared as Mrs. Haller and proved a success of esteem. A finished actress, this new comer, but the strings that worked the puppet were rather too plainly shown. She was accused of not feeling her part, of playing by the book of arithmetic and subjugating natural impulse in favour of rigorous exactitude in the tones of her voice and the positions of her body. Returning homewards in 1850, it was not to be expected that Charlotte Cushman could remain away for long from the scene of her greatest triumphs. So far from being marked by the comparative |