JAMES LEWIS AS SYNTAX, IN “CINDERELLA AT SCHOOL.”

In short, he sees so much that is beyond the comprehension of the ordinary play-goer, that for thirty years he has been left in absolute retirement in that Forrest Home for good old plays which is styled French’s Minor Drama.

One of Brougham’s last burlesque productions was his Much Ado About a Merchant of Venice, presented March 8, 1869, at the little theatre on Twenty-fourth Street, New York, which has since borne so many names, and now, rebuilt, is known as the Madison Square. He played Shylock, Miss Effie Germon Lorenzo, and Mrs. J. J. Prior Portia. This was his final effort at theatrical management. He appeared in Pocahontas as late as 1876, but Shylock was his last original burlesque part which is worthy of serious mention.

Francis Talfourd’s Shylock; or, The Merchant of Venice Preserved, a Jerusalem Hearty Joke, is a much older production than Brougham’s travesty of the same play, with which it should not be confounded. Frederic Robson was the original Shylock in London, Tom Johnstone in New York (at Burton’s, October 9, 1853). M. W. Leffingwell gave an admirable performance of Talfourd’s Shylock in September, 1867, on the stage of this same little Twenty-fourth Street theatre, assisted by Miss Lina Edwin as Jessica. Mr. Leffingwell was a very versatile actor although he excelled in burlesque and broadly extravagant parts. He will be remembered as Romeo Jaffier Jenkins, in Too Much for Good Nature, and in travesties of Cinderella and Fra Diavolo. In the last absurdity, as Beppo, made up in very clever imitation of Forrest as the Gladiator, and enormously padded, he strutted about the stage for many moments, entirely unconscious of a large carving-fork stuck into the sawdust which formed the calf of his gladiatorial leg. His look of agony and his roar of anguish—perfect reflections of Forrest’s voice and action—when his attention was called to his physical suffering, made one of the most ludicrous scenes in the whole history of American burlesque. Mr. Forrest is said to have remarked of a lithograph of Leffingwell in this part, that while the portrait of himself was not so bad, the characteristics were somewhat exaggerated! Leffingwell was, no doubt, the original of the full length, life-sized effigy of Forrest which serves as the sign for a cigar store on one of the leading thoroughfares of New York to-day.

GEORGE L. FOX AS HAMLET.

Madame Tostée, in 1867, with the Grand Duchess, and Miss Lydia Thompson, the next season, with Ixion—although neither of these can be considered American burlesques—gave new life to burlesque in America; and for a number of years burlesque was rampant upon the American stage; many leading comedians of later days, who will hardly be associated with that style of performance by the theatre-goers of the present generation, devoting themselves to travestie and extravaganza. Among the most successful of these may be mentioned William J. Florence, Stuart Robson, James Lewis, and Harry Beckett. The last gentleman was exceedingly comic, and at the same time always refined and artistic in such parts as Minerva in Ixion, Hassarac in The Forty Thieves, the Widow Twankey in Aladdin, Maid Marian in Robin Hood, and Queen Elizabeth in Kenilworth long before he became the established low comedian of Mr. Lester Wallack’s company, and won such well-merited popularity by his clever representations of characters as divergent as Tony Lumpkin, Harvey Duff, in The Shaughraun, and Mark Meddle.

In January, 1869, Mr. and Mrs. Florence played an engagement of extravaganza at Wood’s Museum—now Daly’s Theatre—on Broadway, near Thirtieth Street, presenting The Field of the Cloth of Gold, in which Mr. Florence assumed the character of Francis First, Louis Mestayer Henry Eighth, Mrs. Florence Lady Constance, Miss Lillie Eldridge La Sieur de Boissy, and Miss Rose Massey (her first appearance in America) Lord Darnley. The feature of this performance, naturally, was the grand tournament upon the plain between Ardres and Guisnes, in which the rival monarchs fought for the international championship with boxing gloves in the roped arena, and according to the rules of the prize-ring, the police finally breaking up the match and carrying both combatants into the ignominious lockup. Older play-goers will remember Mr. Florence years before this as Eily O’Conner, in a burlesque of The Colleen Bawn, and as Beppo “a very Heavy Villain of the Bowery Drama in Kirby’s days,” in Fra Diavolo, Mrs. Florence making a marvellous Danny Mann in the former piece.

While Mr. Florence was taking gross liberties with the personality of Francis First at Wood’s, Mr. Lewis was doing cruel injustice to the character of Lucretia Borgia at the Waverley Theatre, 720 Broadway, under the management of Miss Elise Holt, who played Gennaro. The palace of the Borgias was “set” as a modern apothecary’s shop, where poison was sold in large or small quantities, and Mr. Lewis excited roars of laughter as a quack doctress, with great capabilities of advertising herself and her nostrums. During the same engagement Mr. Lewis played Rebecca in Ivanhoe, and Œnone in Paris; but he joined Mr. Daly’s company a few months later, and the legitimate has since marked him for its own.

LYDIA THOMPSON AS SINDBAD.

At the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and afterwards at Wallack’s, in this same summer of 1869, Stuart Robson made a great hit as Captain Crosstree, in F. C. Burnand’s travesty of Black-eyed Susan, a part originally played in this country during the previous season by Mark Smith. Mr. Robson had the support of Harry Pearson as Doggrass, of Miss Kitty Blanchard as William, and of Miss Mary Cary as Susan. The entertainment, as a whole, was unusually good, full of exquisite drollery and grotesque fancy, although Captain Crosstree eclipsed every other feature. His “make up” was a marvel of absurdity, his naturally slight figure was literally blown to an enormous size, the contrast between his immense physical rotundity and his thin, inimitably squeaky little voice being exceedingly ludicrous.

During this season the Lydia Thompson troupe was in the full tide of its success; William Horace Lingard and Miss Alice Dunning were playing Pluto and Orpheus in New York; every negro minstrel and variety performer was burlesquing some person or some thing every night in the week, and opera-bouffe had taken possession of half of the theatres in the land.

WILLIAM H. CRANE AS LE BLANC, IN EVANGELINE.

The most successful burlesque of those times, and the entertainment which is most fresh in the memory, was “The New Version of Shakspere’s Masterpiece of Hamlet, as arranged by T. C. De Leon, of Mobile, for George L. Fox,” and first presented in New York at the Olympic (formerly Laura Keene’s) Theatre, on Broadway, February 14, 1870. Although not an improvement upon the original acting version of the tragedy, it was an improvement upon the general run of burlesques of its generation; it did not depend upon lime-lights or upon anatomical display, and it did not harrow up the young blood of its auditors by its horrible plays upon unoffending words. It followed the text of Shakspere closely enough to preserve the plot of the story; it contained, as well, a great deal that was ludicrous and bright, and it never sank into imbecility or indelicacy, which is saying much for a burlesque. Mr. Fox, one of the few really funny men of his day upon the American stage, was at his best in this travesty of Hamlet. Quite out of the line of the pantomimic clown by which he is now remembered, it was as supremely absurd, as expressed upon his face and in his action, as was his Humpty Dumpty. It was perhaps more a burlesque of Edwin Booth—after whom in the character he played and dressed—than of Hamlet, and probably no one enjoyed this more thoroughly, or laughed at it more heartily, than did Mr. Booth himself. While Fox at times was wonderfully like Booth in attitude, look, and voice, he would suddenly assume the accent and expression of Fechter, whom he counterfeited admirably, and again give a most intense passage in the wonderfully deep tones of Studley, at the Bowery. To see Mr. Fox pacing the platform before the Castle of Elsinore, protected against the eager and the nipping air of the night by a fur cap and collar, and with mittens and arctic overshoes, over the traditional costume of Hamlet; to see the woful melancholy of his face as he spoke the most absurd of lines; to watch the horror expressed upon his countenance when the Ghost appeared; to hear his familiar conversation with that Ghost, and his untraditional profanity when commanded by the Ghost to “swear”—all expressed, now in the style of Fechter, now of Studley, now of Booth—was as thoroughly and ridiculously enjoyable as any piece of acting our stage has seen since Burton and Mitchell were at their funniest, so many years before. He was startling in his recommendation of a brewery as a place of refuge for Ophelia, and in the church-yard his “business” was new and quite original, particularly the apostrophe to the skull of Yorick, who, he seemed to think, was laughing now on the wrong side of his face. Fox was one of the earliest Hamlets to realize that the skull even of a jester, when it has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years, is not a pleasant object to touch or smell, although very interesting in itself to point a moral, or for its association’s sake; and the expression of his face, as he threw the skull of the dead jester at the quick head of the First Grave-digger, was more suggestive to the close observer of the base uses to which we may all return than any “Alas, poor Yorick!” ever uttered.

STUART ROBSON AS CAPTAIN CROSSTREE.

Hamlet at the Olympic was played for ten consecutive weeks. The general cast was not particularly strong or remarkable, except in the Ophelia of Miss Belle Howett. She was serious, and surprisingly effective in the mad scene, and often the superior of many of the representatives of Ophelia in the original tragedy, who unwittingly have burlesqued what the burlesque actress, perhaps as unwittingly, played conscientiously and well.

The travesty of Hamlet by Mr. Fox is dwelt upon particularly here as being in many respects one of the best the American stage has ever seen, and as giving the present writer an opportunity of paying just tribute to the memory of an actor who, like so many of his professional brethren, was never properly appreciated during his life, and who never before—not even in William Winter’s usually complete Brief Chronicles—has received more than a passing notice in the long records of the stage he did so much to adorn.

George L. Fox was not always the clown and pantomimist of the Humpty Dumpty absurdity in which he is now remembered. He excelled in burlesque, as his Hamlet and Richelieu and Macbeth have shown. As a Shaksperean comedian his Bottom ranks among the best within the memory of men still living, while in standard low comedy, melodramatic, and even in tragedy parts, he had no little experience and some decided success. He made his first appearance in 1830 at the Tremont Street Theatre, in Boston, when he was but five years of age. The play was The Children of the Alps, and the occasion a benefit to Charles Kean. He played Phineas Fletcher, in the drama of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, during its famous run of so many nights at the National Theatre, New York, in 1853-54. He excelled as Mark Meddle, as Trip, as Jacques Strop, in Robert Macaire, as Tom Tape, in Sketches in India, as Box, as Cox, and as Sundown Bowse, in Horizon.

HARRY HUNTER AS THE LONE FISHERMAN.

Bottom was his most finished and artistic assumption, Hamlet probably his most amusing, and Humpty Dumpty his most successful. He played the latter part some fifteen hundred times in New York and elsewhere. It was the last part he ever attempted to play, and only as a clown does he exist in the minds of the men of to-day who think of him at all. He first appeared in New York at the National Theatre, in 1850; he was last seen at Booth’s Theatre on the 25th of November, 1875—the saddest clown who ever chalked his face. After twenty years of constant, faithful service as public jester—shattered in health, broken in spirit, shaken in mind—he disappeared forever from public view. Alas, poor Yorick!

One of the most popular as well as the longest lived of the contemporary burlesques is Evangeline, in the construction or reconstruction of which Mr. Brougham is known to have had a share. As a travesty upon a purely American subject, originally treated, of course, in all seriousness by an illustrious American, Mr. Longfellow, and at the suggestion of an American equally illustrious, Mr. Hawthorne, Evangeline may surely claim to be an aboriginal production; it merits its success, and with a certain degree of national pride it may be recorded here that it has been repeated upon the American stage over five thousand times. In it, at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, in Twenty-eighth Street, New York, during the summer of 1877, Miss Eliza Weathersby, as Gabrielle, made a pleasant impression, William H. Crane appeared as Le Blanc, George H. Knight gave a series of wonderful imitations of the Hero of New Orleans, N. C. Goodwin came prominently before the public, and Harry Hunter, although not the original in the part, created a decided sensation as the Lone Fisherman, one of the drollest dramatic conceptions of modern times. He had no connection whatever with the play, had not a word to say, was entirely unnoticed by his fellow-players, paid no attention to anybody, but was always present—the first to enter, the last to leave every scene. With his ridiculous costume, his palm-leaf fan, his fishing-rod, his camp-stool, he pervaded everything, was ever prominent, never obtrusive, and exceedingly mirth-provoking. It may be added that Henry Dixey, whose Adonis is one of the best of modern burlesque performances, made, during the long run of Evangeline, his New York début as the fore-legs of the heifer!

Amusement seekers in the metropolis will remember with pleasure Willie Edouin, Mrs. James Oates, and scores of other burlesque actors, excellent in many ways, whom it will not be possible even to mention here. N. C. Goodwin burlesqued a burlesque at Harrigan and Hart’s first theatre, when he played Captain Stuart Robson-Crosstree to the Dame Hadley of Mr. Harrigan and the Black-eyed Susan of Mr. Hart; at the same house G. K. Fortescue played Lousqueeze to Mr. Hart’s Hungry-Yet and Mr. Harrigan’s Pierre, in a play styled The Two Awfuls. The San Francisco Minstrels at the same time presented The Four Orphans and the Big Banana, a burlesque upon two dramas of great popularity and no little merit.

FRANCIS WILSON IN THE “OOLAH.”

The subject of American burlesque can hardly be dismissed here without some brief allusion to a number of very clever parodies seen of late years upon the amateur stage. The poets of the various college associations have turned their muse in the direction of travesty, and with considerable success; one of the best and most popular of the entertainments of the Hasty Pudding Club, the Dido and Æneas of Owen Wister, the grandson of Fanny Kemble, being a production worthy of professional talent. John K. Bangs has written for amateur companies Katherine, The Story of the Shrew, and Mephistopheles, a Profanation. In the first the tamer of Shakspere finds the tables turned, and is himself tamed; while in the latter Faust’s mother-in-law, the good fairy of the piece, outwits the evil genius and frustrates his designs; a power of invention on the part of Mr. Bangs which proves him to be, perhaps, the only true son of the Father of Burlesque, Hipponax himself.

MR. JEFFERSON AND MRS. WOOD IN “IVANHOE.”

But to return to the “palmy days of burlesque,” before the period of opera-bouffe, and the coming of the English blondes. When stock companies were the rule, and Mitchell and Burton controlled the stock, singing and dancing were as much a part of every actor’s education as elocution and gesture; and it was not considered beneath the dignity of the Rip Van Winkle or the Hamlet of one night to travesty parts equally serious the next. Mr. Booth, early in his career, appeared in such entertainments as Blue Beard; and Mr. Jefferson was enormously popular as Beppo, Hiawatha, Pan (in Midas), the Tycoon, and Mazeppa—old play-bills recording his appearance as Granby Gag to the Jenny Lind of Mrs. John Wood, “with his original grape-vine twist and burlesque break-down.” His performance of Mazeppa at the Winter Garden in 1861 is still a pleasant memory in many minds. In it he sang “his celebrated aria, ‘The Victim of Despair’”; and his daring act upon the bare back of the wild rocking-horse of the toy-shops was, perhaps, the most remarkable performance of its kind ever witnessed by a danger-loving public. During his several engagements at the Winter Garden Mr. Jefferson was supported by Mrs. John Wood (particularly as Ivanhoe to his Sir Brian), one of the best burlesque actresses our stage has known. Her Pocahontas was never excelled. She played it at Niblo’s to the Powhatan of Mark Smith in March, 1872; and almost her last appearance upon the New York stage was made at the Grand Opera-house in November of the same year, in John Brougham’s burlesque King Carrot, when that humorist remarked, although not of Mrs. Wood, that he was supported by vegetable “supes.”

JAMES T. POWERS AS BRIOLET, IN “THE MARQUIS.”

That burlesque “came natural” to Mr. Jefferson is shown in the wonderful successes of his half-brother, Charles Burke, in burlesque parts. Mr. Burke’s admirers, even at the end of thirty-five years, still speak enthusiastically of his comic Iago, of his Clod Meddlenot (in The Lady of the Lions), of his Mr. MacGreedy (Mr. Macready), of his Kazrac (in Aladdin), and of his Met-a-roarer, in which he gave absurd imitations of Mr. Forrest as the Last of the Wampanoags.

CHARLES BURKE AS KAZRAC, IN “ALADDIN.”

No history of American burlesque could be complete without some mention of the name of Daniel Setchell. His Leah the Forsook, and Mark Smith’s Madeline are remembered as pleasantly in New York as his Macbeth and Edwin Adams’s Macduff are remembered in Boston. William H. Crane places the Macduff of Adams—he dressed in the volunteer uniform of the first year of the war, and read lines ridiculous beyond measure with all of the magnificent effect his wonderful voice and perfect elocution could give them—as the finest piece of burlesque acting it has ever been his good-fortune to see. But the stories told by the old comedians of the extravagant comedy performances of their contemporaries in other days, if they could be collected here, would extend this chapter far beyond the limits of becoming space.

N. C. GOODWIN IN “LITTLE JACK SHEPPARD.”

DE WOLF HOPPER AS JULIET, AND MARSHALL P. WILDER AS ROMEO.

Whether the burlesque of the present is comparable with the burlesque of the past is an open question, much debated. Mr. Wilson in the Oolah, Mr. Hopper as Juliet, Mr. Powers in The Marquis, Mr. Goodwin in Little Jack Sheppard, Mr. Burgess as the Widow Bedott—if she can be considered a burlesque part—and other men and women who burlesque women and men and things to-day, are, without question, very clever performers; the laughs they raise are as hearty and prolonged as any which paid tribute to the talents of the comedians who went before them; and it is unjust, perhaps, to judge them by high standards which live only in the memory, and grow higher as distance lends enchantment to their view. As Lawrence Barrett has said, “the actor is a sculptor who carves his image in snow.” The burlesque which has melted from our sight seems to us, as we look back at it, to be purer and cleaner than the frozen burlesque upon which the sun as yet has made no impression; and the figure of Pocahontas, gone with the lost arts, seems more beautiful than the Evangeline of the modern school. When the Adonis of the present counterfeits the deep tragedian he is guilty of imitation, and of clever imitation, but nothing more; when he represents the clerk in the country store he gives an admirable piece of comedy acting; but he never rises to the sublime heights of Columbus, as Columbus is remembered by those who saw him before Hoolah Goolah was born.

If American burlesque did not die with John Brougham, it has hardly yet recovered from the shock of his death; and he certainly deserves a colossal statue in its Pantheon.

HENRY E. DIXEY AS THE COUNTRY GIRL, IN “ADONIS.”

ACT IV.
INFANT PHENOMENA OF AMERICA.

INFANT PHENOMENA OF AMERICA.

While the “Grand Spectacle of the Black Crook” was enjoying its fourth successful run at Niblo’s Garden, New York, in the season of 1873, a precociously bright little musician of some six or seven years of age, so advertised in the bills, and to all appearances no older, preternaturally large in head and small in person, won the affection and the sympathy of all those who witnessed his performances. During his very short career he was one of the chief attractions of that attractive variety show, for the Black Crook in its later years was nothing more than a variety entertainment; and when, so soon after the close of his engagement here, the news of his death came from Boston, few of the established favorites of many years have been so sincerely mourned as was this unfortunate little James G. Speaight.

Scarcely larger than the violin he carried, dressed in a bright court suit of blue satin, with powdered wig and silken hose and buckled shoes, like a prince in a fairy tale, he seemed the slightest mite of a performer who ever stood behind the foot-lights. His hands were scarcely big enough to grasp his instrument; his arms and his legs were not so thick as his bow; a bit of rosin thrown at him would have knocked him down; and he could have been packed away comfortably in the case of his own fiddle. As a musician he certainly was phenomenal. It was said of him that when only four years of age, and after a single hearing, he could play by ear the most difficult and complicated of musical compositions, and that he could remember an air as soon as he could utter an articulate sound. Before he was five years old he was sole performer at concerts given under his father’s management in some of the provincial towns of England; and when he first appeared in this country he not only played solos upon his violin, displaying decided genius and technical skill, but he conducted the large orchestra standing on a pile of music-books in the chair of the leader, that he might be seen of the musicians he led.

MUNRICO DENGREMONT.

The grace and ease of the little artist, his enthusiasm and vivacity, could not fail to interest and amuse his audiences, while at the same time it saddened the most thoughtful of them, who realized how unnatural and how cruel to the child the whole proceeding must of necessity be. That he was passionately fond of his art there could be no doubt, or that he lived only in and for it, and in the excitement and applause his public appearances brought him; but that his indulgence of his passion without proper restraint was the cause of the snapping of the strings of his little life, and of the wreck of what might have been a brilliant professional career, was plainly manifest to every physician, and to every mother who saw and heard and pitied him.

Until within a very few months of his death he played only by ear. When he began to learn his notes, and to comprehend the immensity of music as a science, and the magnificent future it promised him, his devotion to study, his ambition, and his own active mind were more than his feeble frame could endure, and his brief candle was suddenly extinguished. At the close of this run of the Black Crook, December 6, 1873, he was taken to Boston, where he played in the Naiad Queen, and led the orchestra of the Boston Theatre until the night of the 11th of January, 1874. After the matinée and evening performance of that date he was heard by his father to murmur in his troubled sleep, “O God, can you make room for a little fellow like me?” and he was found dead by his father at daybreak. With no sins of his own to answer for, surely the prayer was heard; and the coming of that little child was not forbidden.

The few musical prodigies who have succeeded Master Speaight in this country have been blessed, happily, with stronger constitutions or with wiser guardians; and Munrico Dengremont, Josef Hofman, and Otto Hegner, so far at least, have found the rest they need before it is too late. The little Dengremont, a violinist, began his professional life at the age of eight, and in 1875. He came of musical people, he had studied hard, and as a phenomenon he was very successful. He first appeared in New York in 1881, when he was fourteen years of age, but he seems to have produced nothing, and to have done nothing since he went back to Europe some years ago.

The infant musician who of late years attracted the greatest attention in this country, next to the “Child Violinist” noticed in the opening of this chapter, was unquestionably Josef Hofman; and he appealed particularly to a class of the community so high in the social scale, according to its own ideas, that it repudiated Niblo’s Garden and the Black Crook as vulgar. It never heard of little Speaight until it heard of his death, and it knows nothing of him now, perhaps, except as the mythical hero of charming and sympathetic poems written in his memory by Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Austin Dobson.

JOSEF HOFMAN.

Hofman was born in Cracow, in 1877. His mother was an opera-singer, his father a teacher of music. The child had a piano of his own before he was five years of age, and in six months he had acquired the principles of musical composition, and had written an original mazourka. He made his first public appearance at a charity concert when he was six; at eight he played at a public concert at Berlin; and at ten he was drawing enormous crowds to the largest theatre in New York. He was the subject of more attention and of more newspaper notice, perhaps, than any musical child who ever lived. Saint-Saëns, the French composer, is said to have declared that he had nothing more to learn in music, that everything in him was music; and Rubinstein is said to have pronounced him the greatest wonder of the present age. All of this would have turned a bigger head than his; but notwithstanding his remarkable genius he was always a boy, who found relief in toy steamers and in tin soldiers; and his parents were sensible enough and humane enough to shut up his piano, and to sacrifice their ambition for the good of their son. He is devoting his youth to natural study, and his public career is still before him.

The little Hegner, the latest prodigy, made his first appearance in America in 1889, when he was twelve years of age; and he, too, came of a musical family. Like the Hofman infant, the piano is his instrument, and those who know music speak enthusiastically of his “phrasing,” of his “interpretations,” of his “striking perceptions of musical form,” and the like. All of these children have been compared with Mozart and Liszt, who are, no doubt, innocently responsible for most of the infant musical wonders who have been born since they themselves began, as babies, to perform marvels. There has been but one Mozart, and but one Liszt; and the yet unwritten history of their lives will show whether these lads of the present would not have grown up to be greater artists and happier men if they had in their youth played foot-ball instead of fiddles, and had paid more attention to muscle than to music.

Between the musical wonder and the theatrical wonder there is this distinction: the baby musician never plays baby tunes, the infant actor almost always plays child’s parts. Little Cordelia Howard, as Eva, many years ago, and Elsie Leslie and Thomas Russell, alternating in the character of Little Lord Fauntleroy last season, were doing very remarkable things in a charmingly natural way; but if they had attempted to play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth they would only have done what the musical prodigies are doing when they attempt Mendelssohn’s D Minor Concerto or a mazourka by Chopin. The little actors are certainly the more rational, the more tolerable, and the more patiently to be endured.

OTTO HEGNER.

Of the class of prodigies represented by Mr. and Mrs. Stratton (“Tom Thumb” and Lavinia Warren), “Major” Stevens, “Commodore” Nutt, “Blind Tom,” “Japanese Tommy,” and the “Two-headed Nightingale,” all of whom were publicly exhibited in their childhood here, it is hardly necessary to speak. They were certainly Infant Phenomena, but neither as infants nor as phenomena do they come within the proper scope of the present chapter; and they occupy the same position in regard to the drama that the armless youth who cuts paper pictures with his toes occupies in regard to pictorial art.

In no case is the Infant Phenomenon upon the stage—thespian, terpsichorean, harmonical, gymnastic, or abnormal—to be encouraged or admired. How much of a nuisance the average prodigy is to his audiences all habitual theatre-goers can tell; how much of a nuisance he is to his fellow-players Nicholas Nickleby has effectively shown; and what a bitter burden he is likely to become to himself, his own experience—if he lives to have experience—will certainly prove. Loved by the gods—of the gallery—the Phenomenon (happily for the Phenomenon, perhaps, certainly happily for his profession) dies, as a rule, young.

He does not educate the masses; he does not advance art; he does nothing which it is the high aim of the legitimate actor to do; he does not even amuse. He merely displays precocity that is likely to sap his very life; he probably supports a family at an age when he needs all of the protection and support that can be given him; and, if he does not meet a premature death, he rarely, very rarely, fulfils anything like the promise of his youth.

The career of Master Betty, the “Infant Roscius,” of the early part of this century, and unquestionably the most remarkable and successful Phenomenon in the whole history of the stage, is ample proof of this. Born in England, in 1791, he made his theatrical début in Dublin in 1803, and he at once sprang into a popularity, there and wherever he appeared, which seemed to know no limits.

The excitement he created was marvellous. People were crushed in their efforts to enter the theatres in which he played. The receipts at the box-offices were considered fabulous in those days. His own fortune was made in a single season. Lords and ladies, and peers of the realm, were among his enthusiastic admirers. Royal dukes were proud to call him friend, and the Prince of Wales entertained him regally at Carlton House. He was pronounced greater than Garrick himself in Garrick’s own parts; he was petted and praised, and almost idolized, by an entire country; and even Parliament itself, on a motion made by Mr. Pitt, adjourned to see the “Infant Roscius” play Hamlet at Drury Lane; than which no higher compliment could have been paid by England to mortal man!

ELSIE LESLIE.

This mania over the boy actor continued for two or three seasons, when his popularity by degrees decreased, and he retired from the stage to enter the University of Cambridge. In 1812, however, he returned to the profession a young man of twenty-one, but his prestige was gone. He did not draw in London; in the provinces he was regarded as nothing but a fair stock actor; and when he was a little more than thirty years of age he retired entirely into private life. He died in London, August 24, 1874, a man of eighty-three, having outlived his glory by at least fifty years. If such was the lot of the most marvellous of prodigies, what better fate can the managers of the lesser juvenile stars expect for their child wonders?

The career of Macready, a contemporary of Master Betty’s during his later efforts, as compared with that of the Phenomenon, shows in a marked degree the difference between the natural and the forced systems of dramatic education. Macready, after years of careful, conscientious study and training, went upon the stage a young man, but one mature in experience. By hard work he made his way up to the top of the ladder of professional fame, and he died full of years, honored as the most finished actor of his day in his own land. Betty, at whom as a child he had wondered, and whom as a young man he had supported, surviving him a month or two, was carried to his grave by a few personal friends, almost unnoticed by the world who at one time had worshipped his genius, but to whom for half a century he had been absolutely dead. Macready, a fixed star, shining brightly and bravely, gave a lasting, steady, truthful light. Betty, streaming like a meteor in the troubled air, eclipsing for a moment all of the planets in his course, plunged into a sea of oblivion and left only a ripple behind.

Two precocious youths, whose careers upon the American stage were not unlike that of Master Betty in England, were Master Payne and Master Burke. John Howard Payne is remembered now as the author of “Home Sweet Home”; he is almost forgotten as the writer of the tragedy of Brutus and some sixty other plays; and he is forgotten entirely as a very successful child actor in the highest range of parts. He made his début as Young Norval in Douglas at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1809, when he was but seventeen years of age. He was called “the favorite child of Thespis,” and his performance was declared to be exquisite, one enthusiastic gentleman giving fifty dollars for a single ticket at his benefit in Baltimore. He supported Miss O’Neill in the British provinces, and Mrs. Duff in New York; but as soon as he was billed as Mister Payne, not Master Payne, his popularity ceased, and, except as a playwright, the stage knew him no more.

CHARLES STRATTON (“TOM THUMB”).

Master Burke was a more unusual wonder, for he was a musical as well as a theatrical Phenomenon. Born in Ireland, Thomas Burke made his début in Cork as Tom Thumb, when he was five years of age. He made his first appearance in America at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1830, before he was twelve. Mr. Ireland preserves a list of characters he played, which includes Richard III., Shylock, Norval, Sir Abel Handy, Sir Giles Overreach, and Doctor Pangloss. He also led the orchestra in operatic overtures, played violin solos, and sung humorous songs; and “as a prodigy, both in music and the drama,” Mr. Ireland believes that “he has been unapproached by any child who has trodden the American stage.” As a man, he was considered one of the most perfect violinists of his time, and he was last heard here in public at the concerts of Jenny Lind, Jullien, and Thalberg, many years ago.

LAVINIA WARREN.

The cynical remark of Richard to the young Prince of Wales that “so wise so young, they say, do ne’er live long,” does not always apply to stage children. The Batemans, Miss Mary McVicker, Miss Matilda Heron, Miss Clara Fisher, Miss Jean Margaret Davenport (from whose early career Dickens is believed to have drawn the character of Miss Crummles), and other juvenile wonders, lived to achieve more enduring greatness as men and women than was ever thrust upon them in their childish days—while many of the present veterans in the profession were on the stage as actors before they were old enough to read or write. Miss Fanny Davenport and Miss Susan Denin made their dramatic débuts as children in The Stranger, Pizarro, Metamora, or other of the standard plays of their youth; Mr. Jefferson, at the age of six, engaged in a stage combat with broadswords with one Master Titus, at the Park Theatre, for the benefit of the latter young gentleman; and Madame Ristori, carried upon the stage in a basket at the age of two months, was at the age of four years playing children’s parts in her native Italy. Miss Lotta began her professional career a Phenomenon when eight years old; but Lotta, to be measured by no known dramatic rules, is an Infant Phenomenon still. Miss Mary Taylor, than whom no lady in her maturity enjoyed greater popularity in New York, sang as a child in concerts, and even before she reached her teens was a great favorite in the choruses of the National Theatre on Church Street, New York; and there are to-day, among collectors of such things, rare prints, highly prized, of Miss Adelaide Phillips and of Miss Mary Gannon as child wonders; the latter young lady having been an actress before she was three years old.