Part 14

Chapter 143,965 wordsPublic domain

At the apex of his inflated prosperity Haverly invaded Germany with his mastodonic organization; and one result of his visit was probably still further to confuse the Teutonic misinformation about the American type, which seems often to be a curious composite photograph of the red men of Cooper, the black men of Mrs. Stowe, and the white men of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. And it was reported at the time that another and more immediate result of this rash foray beyond the boundaries of the English-speaking race was that Haverly was, for a while, in danger of arrest by the police for a fraudulent attempt to deceive the German public, because he was pretending to present a company of _negro_ minstrels, whereas his performers were actually white men!

It should be recorded that while the vogue lasted, there did come into existence sundry troops of minstrels whose members were all of them actually colored men, altho they conformed to the convention set by those whom they were imitating and conscientiously disguised themselves with burnt cork, to achieve the sable uniformity temporarily attained by the ordinary negro minstrels. Perhaps the most obvious parallel of the blacking up of veritable colored men to follow the example of the white men who pretended to imitate the negro is to be found in the original performance of 'As You Like It,' on the Elizabethan stage, when the shaven boy-actor who impersonated Rosalind disguised himself as a lad, and then had to pretend to Orlando that he was a girl.

For the decline and fall of negro-minstrelsy it is easy to find more than one sufficient explanation. First of all, it may have been due to its failure to devote itself lovingly to the representation of the many peculiarities of the negro himself. Second, it is possible that negro-minstrelsy had an inherent and inevitable disqualification for enduring popularity, in that it was exclusively masculine and necessarily deprived of the potent attractiveness exerted by the members of the more fascinating sex. And in the third place, its program was rather limited and monotonous, and therefore negro-minstrelsy could not long withstand the competition of the music-hall, of the variety-show, and of the comic musical pieces, which satisfied more amply the exactly similar taste of the public for broad fun commingled with song and dance.

Whatever the precise cause may be, there is no denying that negro-minstrelsy is on the verge of extinction, however much we may bewail the fact. It failed to accomplish its true purpose, and it is disappearing, leaving behind it little that is worthy of preservation except a few of its songs. This, at least, it has to its credit--that it gave Stephen Collins Foster the chance to produce his simple melodies. Perhaps we might even venture to assert that the existence of negro-minstrelsy is justified by a single one of these songs--by 'Old Folks at Home,' which has a wailing melancholy and an unaffected pathos, lacking in the earlier and more saccharine 'Home, Sweet Home,' which the English composer, Bishop, based on an old Sicilian tune. After Foster came Root and Work, and 'My Old Kentucky Home' was succeeded by 'Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,' and by 'Marching thru Georgia'--which last lyric now shares its popularity only with 'Dixie' as a musical relic of the Civil War.

It would be pleasant to know whether it was one of Foster's songs, and which one it may have been that once touched the tender heart of Thackeray. "I heard a humorous balladist not long since," the novelist recorded, "a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultra Ethiopian complexion, who performed a negro ballad that I confess moistened these spectacles in a most unexpected manner. They have gazed at dozens of tragedy-queens dying on the stage and expiring in appropriate blank verse, and I never wanted to wipe them. They have looked up, with deep respect be it said, at many scores of clergymen without being dimmed, and behold! a vagabond with a corked face and a banjo, sings a little song, strikes a wild note, which sets the heart thrilling with happy pity."

(1912.)

XIV

THE UTILITY OF THE VARIETY-SHOW

In an advertisement issued by one of the huge department stores of New York not long ago, the assertion was made that the house had on sale "all the new novelties." A purist in language might be moved to protest that this proclamation was plainly tautological, because it is the essential quality of every novelty to be new. But even a purist in language, if he happens also to be an honest observer of things as they are, would be forced to admit that his supercilious cavil had only a superficial justification, since, as a matter of fact, there are many novelties which are not new, and which, indeed, are venerably ancient. It was Solomon, superabundantly married, and therefore in an excellent position to acquire wisdom, who declared that there is nothing new under the sun. Wireless telegraphy is only a development of the signaling by beacon-fires, which was practised by the Greeks and which they employed to convey immediately to Greece the glad tidings of the fall of Troy; and moving-pictures are only an ingenious amplification of the zoetrope of our childhood.

The amusement-parks which sprang up all over the United States in the early part of the twentieth century, in imitation of those at Coney Island, bear an undeniable resemblance to the Foire Saint Laurent and to the other fairs of Paris in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even the loud-voiced crier who proclaims the merits of the several side-shows, and who is now known as a "barker," bears a name which is only a translation of that given to his forbears two hundred years ago in France--_aboyeur_.

The so-called cabaret-shows, prevalent in the larger cities of the United States in the winter of 1911-1912, were hailed as the very latest form of amusement, combining as they did the solid pleasures of the table with the ethereal delights of song-and-dance; and yet Froissart is a witness that something very like the cabaret-show was known in the Middle Ages, and Gibbon has recorded its existence nearly a thousand years earlier, at the court of Theodoric. Indeed, the Romans, and the Greeks before them, had employed performers of one sort or another to relieve the monotony of their banquets. Gaditanian dancers were popular thruout the wide realm of Rome, almost two thousand years before Carmencita came from Cadiz to warble and caper at midnight in the studios of American painters, just before and just after the guests had enjoyed the refreshments provided by their artistic hosts.

As the cabaret-show is only another form of the well-known "vaudeville supper," it must be relegated to the class of novelties which are not new. And vaudeville itself is only the long familiar variety-show. It may now be called by a new name, and many of those who do not look behind a label may accept it as a new thing; nevertheless it is very old, indeed. The name "vaudeville" is an absurd misnomer, like so many other terms due to our habit of careless borrowing from other tongues. In French _vaudeville_ originally designated a kind of topical song, bristling with pointed gibes at the follies of the moment; and then in time it took on another meaning, when it was used to describe a light and lively farce interspersed with occasional lyrics set to old-fashioned tunes. It is impossible to say just how and why this French word, which had two distinct meanings in its own language, should have been imported into English to characterize improperly a form of amusement which we had long known by the admirably exact name of variety-show. The French themselves call their own type of variety-show, at which refreshments are served, a _cafe-concert_. Their nickname for it is a _beuglant_, a place where there is "howling"--which seems to imply that they do not expect too much melody from the singers, who appear at these performances. In England an establishment of this kind is called a music-hall; and it was more than half a century ago that Planche described their blatant lyrics set to brazen tunes as "most music-hall, most melancholy."

Whatever its name may be in the different parts of the world, the entertainment is much the same. The most frequent item on the program is the comic song, often accompanied by a rudimentary dance. Sometimes it is in the martial staccato of Paulus's 'En revenant de la revue' which boosted General Boulanger into a furious but fleeting political popularity. Sometimes it is the coonful melody of 'Under the Bamboo Tree' or 'Dinah, the Moon am Shining.' Sometimes it is an almost epileptic lyric, like 'Tarara-boom-de-ay.' Sometimes a singer of a more delicate art, like Yvette Guilbert, ventures upon songs of a more subtly sentimental appeal. There may be a swift succession of solos, male singers and female alternating, those of the most fame appearing latest, as is the practise in the first part of the Parisian open-air _cafe-chantant_, the Alcazar or the Ambassadeurs. There may be duets or trios or quartets, serious or comic, decorously unadorned or diversified by dancing. There may be songs to be interpreted by half a dozen performers, accompanied by more or less dramatic action, like the 'Mulligan Guards,' which was the simple germ wherefrom sprouted the long series of more and more elaborate Harrigan and Hart plays, delineating with keen insight and with sympathetic humor the manifold aspects of tenement-house life in New York, and possessing a rich flavor of fun curiously akin to that which amuses us in the plays wherein Plautus had sketched the tenement-house life in Rome two thousand years ago.

While the song and the song-and-dance and the song-and-parade may be the staple of the entertainment, the variety-show justifies its name by the medley of other exhibitions it presents. It delights in the dance unaccompanied by the song; and in some of the English music-halls, the Alhambra and the Empire in London, the ballet is the foremost attraction, providing an opportunity for the display of her dainty art to so exquisite a dancer as Mlle. Genee. In New York it is now a refuge for the waifs and strays of vanishing negro-minstrelsy. It is ready to welcome the wandering conjurer and the strolling juggler. It extends its hospitality to the acrobat, single or in groups, throwing flipflaps on the stage, flying thru the air on a trapeze or diving into the water in a tank. It acts as host to the trainer of performing animals, dogs and cats, seals and elephants. It lends its stage to the puppet-show performer, to the sidewalk conversationalist, and to the ventriloquist, with his pair of stolid figures seemingly seated uncomfortably on his knees and actually supported by his hands, while his adroit fingers manipulate their mechanical mouths.

Of late, the variety-show has accepted the aid of the exhibitors of moving-pictures, just as the exhibitors of moving-pictures have invoked the casual assistance of song-and-dance teams and of other vaudeville performers to relieve the strain on the eyes of their spectators. And the introduction of the cinematograph, or the bioscope, or whatever it may be called, is, perhaps, the only real novelty in our latter-day variety-show. All the other performers are presenting feats of a kind known to our remote ancestors, even if these feats are now more skilfully presented. Animals were put thru their paces hundreds of years ago; and performing dogs and educated bears figure frequently in the illuminations which decorate many a medieval manuscript. There were tight-rope dancers in Alexandria and in Byzantium; there were contortionists in Rome and in Greece, and the flexibility of these latter is preserved for us in the vase-paintings which have been replevined from the ashes of Pompeii and the lava of Herculaneum. Quintillian tells us of the wonderful feats of certain performers on the stage in his day, "with balls, and of other jugglers whose dexterity is such that one might suppose the things which they throw from them to return of their own accord, and to fly wheresoever they are commanded." The art of modern magic has enlarged its boundaries by the aid of the modern sciences of mechanics and physics, but elementary sleights-of-hand were known to a remote antiquity, and savages always had their medicine-men and their marabouts, workers of primitive wonders to strike awe into the souls of their unsophisticated beholders. The variety-show may have the variety it vaunts itself as possessing; but to novelty it can lay little claim.

The constituent elements of the variety-show as we know it to-day have existed since a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary--to use the old legal phrase. The appeal of almost every one of these elements and of the variety-show as a whole is ever to the eye and to the ear, to the senses rather than to the emotions; and to the intellect it appeals even more infrequently. Its primary purpose is to afford a kaleidoscopic succession of contrasted amusements for the benefit of those who are easily satisfied by glitter of spectacle, by incessant movement, and by violent music. It is the ideal entertainment for that redoubtable entity, the Tired Business Man, who checks his brains with his overcoat, and who resents having to witness anything in the theater which might make him think. Not only does the variety-show flourish because it is exactly adjusted to the unintellectual and purely sensational likings of the Tired Business Man and to the similar tastes of his fit mate, who is fatigued because her life is idle and empty, but for his benefit also, and for hers the summer song-show and the alleged "comic opera" and the misnamed "review" have been called into existence. Indeed, it is obvious enough that most of our summer song-shows and many of our "comic operas" and "reviews" are, in reality, only more or less disguised variety-shows.

With facts as they are, there is never any excuse for quarreling. The Tired Business Man is a fact; and it is only fair that what he demands shall be supplied by caterers to the cravings of the populace. But even tho his name is legion, the Tired Business Man is to be accepted only with contemptuous toleration. He is to be endured only so long as he does not insist on imposing his likings upon others who have a more delicate perception, and who are willing to bring their brains with them when they take their places in the theater. Even in the variety-show which seems often to exist only for the pleasure of those who still linger in what one of George Eliot's wise characters aptly called "a puerile state of culture," nevertheless, we can now and again discover signs of a longing for something less void of purpose than mere spectacle. For example, it was in a variety-show that Mr. Belasco's finely imaginative dramatization of Mr. Long's 'Madame Butterfly' was set before the American public several years prior to its being adorned by the pathetic music of Puccini for the benefit of opera-goers.

In fact, it is well to remember that the _opera comique_ of the French had its humble origin in the theater of the Parisian fairs, where also we can discover the rude beginnings of that crude form of melodrama which Victor Hugo lifted into literature in 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Bias,' casting the cloth-of-gold of his splendid lyricism over the arbitrarily articulated skeleton of his violent action. It was an old negro-minstrel act, representing the rehearsal of an amateur band, that the Hanlon-Lees borrowed to amplify into a rough-and-tumble pantomime for performance in a variety-show in Paris; and this knockabout sketch proved to be the stepping-stone which enabled them soon to achieve the fantastic eccentricity of their 'Voyage en Suisse,' performed in real theaters, first in Paris and then in New York, to the joy of all who could appreciate the perfection of their art as pantomimists. And, once again, it was in a variety-show of the lowest class that Denman Thompson first appeared as 'Josh Whitcomb Among the Female Bathers,' a vulgar episode of indelicate humor, wherein, however, was contained the germ of that perennially popular play, the 'Old Homestead,' which gave a pure pleasure to countless thousands of theater-goers, season after season, for at least a quarter of a century.

When we look back over the long annals of the variety-show we cannot escape the conclusion that here is its real opportunity, its true function, and its necessary justification. For the most part, it supplies a purely sensational amusement for the unthinking; and yet it is continually serving as a nursery for the actual theater. It is thus seen to be a proving ground for the seeds of widely different dramatic species--_opera comique_ and melodrama in France, the _ballet d'action_ in England, the rural play in the United States. It is not always conscious of its possibilities, nor does it always improve them to best advantage. Normally it provides an entertainment appealing mainly to the senses, often empty, and often unsatisfying because of its monotony. But on occasion it is capable of grasping at higher things, and of encouraging artists who will sooner or later outgrow its limitations and transfer their activities to the theaters wherein audiences are more eager for veracity of character portrayal.

III

On one side the variety-show intersects the ring of the circus and the curving line of the First Part of negro-minstrelsy, while on the other it impinges on the sphere of the more literary drama. Its existence is evidence that the show business is always the show business, no matter how manifold and dissimilar its manifestations may seem to be. The men and women who have grown up in the regular theaters are a little inclined to be scornfully jealous of the less highly esteemed performers in the variety-show, even if they themselves are occasionally tempted by the lure of high pay for hard work to condescend to vaudeville engagements. No doubt, the bill of fare set before us more often than not in the variety-show justifies this attitude on the part of the high priests of the more legitimate drama; yet they ought to be broad-minded enough to recognize merit wherever it may be found. The late John Gilbert, best of Sir Peter Teazles, and of Sir Anthony Absolutes, was not a little provoked by the praise bestowed upon Harrigan and Hart and their associates by Mr. Howells and by other critics of the acted drama, who relished the peculiar flavor of 'Squatter Sovereignty' and its companion plays. Gilbert was puzzled to discover any reason why any criticism whould be wasted on pieces which pretended to be little more than variety-show sketches. But Joseph Jefferson, a far more versatile comedian than John Gilbert, was swift to discern merit, and he was wholly free from toplofty condescension toward other forms of the histrionic art than that in which he was himself pre-eminent--perhaps, because in his youth he had often appeared as a burlesque actor, an experience which he gladly admitted to have been very valuable to him. After Jefferson had gone to see one of the nondescript pieces at Weber and Fields's music-hall, joyous spectacles commingled of song and dance, of eccentric character and of sheer fun, he was loud in his praise of the histrionic art displayed here and there in the course of the performance, declaring without hesitation that one episode, in which the two managers took part, was simply the finest piece of comic acting he had seen that whole winter. Probably the ordinary playgoers, who had flocked to be amused by this loose-jointed piece, took a somewhat apologetic attitude toward the pleasure they had received; and probably they supposed that their pleasure at the entertainment offered to them was due mainly to the pervading bustle and dazzle of the kaleidoscopic show. But Jefferson had a keener insight into the practise of the art he adorned; and he recognized at once the sheer histrionic skill which lent the illusion of life to the fantastic impossibility of the humorous situation.

Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have been surprised if he had learned that an American university professor of dramatic literature, whenever he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of Aristophanes, was in the habit of sending his whole class to Weber and Fields that his students might see for themselves the nearest modern analog to the robust fantasies of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes was a many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation he must be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist of contemporary fads and foibles he must be compared with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure and simple, as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke unexpected laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an undeniable likeness to the adroit devisers of the hodgepodge of humorous episodes represented with contagious humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous pieces which used to be produced by the two performers who devote themselves to the dislocation of the English language were outgrowths of the variety-show, from which, indeed, the two performers themselves were graduates.

It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of opportunities for artistic development to ambitious performers, and its own spontaneous generation of dramatic forms capable of being lifted into literature--it is this aspect of the variety-show which would be emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to narrate its long and involved history. That no one has yet written a history of the variety-show is as surprising as that no one has yet written a history of negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are accessible and abundant, since there are already richly documented accounts of the fairs of Paris and of London, in which the variety-show flourished centuries ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls as they now exist and of the French _cafe-concerts_. The historian will also be aided by the various treatises on the ballet, and on the circus, and on the puppet-show, with all of which forms of entertainment the variety-show has always had intimate relations.

It may be that the future historian will be moved to point out the superficial likeness between the variety-show and the Sunday issues of certain American newspapers. These Sunday newspapers are really magazines--that is to say, they occupy a position midway between journalism and literature, just as the variety-show occupies a position midway between the circus and the theater. The magazine pages of these Sunday newspapers set before their readers a very variegated bill of fare; they provide photographs of recent events--which are the equivalent of the moving-pictures of the variety-show; they contain short-stories--which are, in narrative, what the brief plays of the variety-show are in dialog and action; they abound in anecdotes and in comic sayings--which are closely akin to the utterances of the sidewalk conversationalists of the variety-show. And the variety-show itself is like journalism, in that it is a modern combination of elements of the remotest antiquity, for altho the actual newspaper is only two or three centuries old, there were always channels by which news was conveyed to the eager public. The men of Athens nearly two thousand years ago were glad to hear and to tell some new thing, and their wants were supplied, even if there was in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages no organization faintly anticipating the marvelous machinery for collecting and distributing information possessed by the newspapers of the twentieth century.

(1912.)

THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC