Part 8

Before Charles Frohman became the busiest man and Napoleon of the dramatic stage, he used to affiliate frequently with the Lambs’ Club, of which he was a member. One day the Lambs gave what they call their “washing,” otherwise their summer treat or picnic, at an island in the sound owned by Lester Wallack. At high tide boats could land passengers on the island, and in the morning the Lambs were safely landed. But at night the steamer which brought us was anchored out about a half mile from the shore. When the entertainment was at an end, the members had to be rowed in small boats to the steamer. The oarsman of the boat I was in was a large, corpulent chap. The passengers consisted of Charles Frohman, also a heavy weight, George Fawcett and myself, making three men and a half. This weighed the boat down to almost within an inch of the water, and coupled with the fact that neither Mr. Frohman, Mr. Fawcett nor myself could swim, I fully expected it would be our last sail, but we reached the steamer in safety. One little false move on the part of either of us would have caused the head of the Dramatic Syndicate, an excellent actor and “Merrily Yours” to be busy—for a moment or two, in “Davy Jones’s Locker.”

Augustus Pitou tells a suggestive story of the unexpected. Late at night he asked for a barber at a hotel. It was “after hours,” but after much delay one appeared and asked as a favor of Mr. Pitou if he would kindly lie on the lounge and let him shave him in a horizontal position. Mr. Pitou consented. The touch was so gentle he fell asleep. When he awoke and felt of his chin he said:

“That’s the gentlest shave I have ever had.”

“Well, sir, you are the first live man I have ever shaved.”

The man was an undertaker’s barber!

Nat Goodwin tells how Billy Mannering, a brilliant old time negro comedian, sprang the unexpected on a hotel proprietor. The company was having hard luck on one night stands. Country hotels were as bad in those days as now—even worse. The boys were eating breakfast one morning when Bill came down late and said:

“Boys, how is it? About the same as all the rest of the hotels?”

“Yes, Billy.”

In came the proprietor and said: “Good-morning, gentlemen.”

Billy asked: “Who are you?”

“I’m the proprietor, sir.”

“So you’re the proprietor! Do you know you are a brave man? If I were you, I would live out in the woods, and not come near the hotel. I would be afraid to face my boarders.”

“How’s that? Are not the beds all right?”

“Yes, but we can’t eat our beds. Still, you have two things here that can’t be improved on.”

“What are they?” asked the proprietor, filling out his chest.

“Why, your pepper and salt.”

I played the unexpected on several people aboard a certain ocean steamship, on which my friend Perugini was a passenger. Several of the ladies on board became enamored of “Handsome Jack,” and were very anxious to be introduced to him. They made me their confidant, but Perry was not much of a “masher” and did not care to meet them. At this time, he had an affliction of which I am glad to say he has been cured; he was deaf. One morning I rapped on his stateroom door, and getting no response, I concluded I would run the risk and go in. There he lay, sound asleep. His valet had preceded me, and everything looked as neat and cozy as could be. Perry did not hear me, no matter what noise I made. I went on deck, found four of the young ladies and said:

“Now’s your chance to meet Perugini; just follow me.” They accompanied me and all four looked in at the door, but were afraid to go in.

“Oh, don’t he look lovely,” said one.

“Isn’t he charming—I could just hug him!” said another. I went in; as he did not hear me they took courage and one by one they stole in and got near to Perugini. I slipped toward the door and quickly closed it. The girls were too frightened even to cry out. Then I took hold of Jack and gave him a shake that awakened him. Poor Jack! He was more frightened than the four girls put together. All I got out of him when he and I got on deck was,

“Oh, Marsh! How could you?”

Kyrle Bellew was a passenger on the same steamer. My acquaintance with Mr. Bellew is a most pleasant one, so I know he will forgive me if I detail this little joke, which, like all my jokes, was played in good nature.

On the ship he wore a yachting cap and a full yachting costume, including a big cord around his neck, to which was attached a telescope. In the evening he would walk up to the side of the steamer, pull out this glass full-length, gaze out on the ocean at some distant ship, close it and again walk down the deck, posing in an effective manner, seemingly unconscious of the amusement he afforded the other passengers. In a burlesque spirit I arranged, as best I could, an imitation of him. I got a seaman’s trousers, blouse and hat, and extemporized a sort of wig as like to my friend’s as possible; to a piece of rope about my neck I attached a Belfast beer bottle. At a safe distance I walked up and down the deck and gave the passengers the benefit of my burlesque. I don’t believe Bellew ever saw me. If he had, I fear it would have been my finish; still, I think he would have enjoyed the practical joke afterward.

Even a book-canvasser can be floored by the unexpected. James Whitcomb Riley tells of an insinuating member of this profession who rang the bell of a handsome residence and when a specially aggressive looking servant opened the door he asked politely:

“Is the lady in?”

“What do ye mane?” the girl asked. “I’d have ye know we’re all ladies in this house!”

In another part of this book I have referred to entertainments I gave at an insane asylum—a place where the unexpected should be the rule, to the performer. But at the Bloomingdale Asylum I once saw it work the other way, and to an extent that was pathetic all round. Among the inmates were Scanlon and Kernell—two men who had thousands of times delighted great audiences with song and joke. I knew of their presence but how they would look or feel I had no means of imagining.

One of my assistants for the occasion was Miss Cynthia Rogers of Toledo, Ohio. The programme was not printed, nor arranged in detail, so we were in ignorance as to what songs had been selected. Miss Rogers “went on” dressed as an Irish lad, beginning in a copy of Scanlon’s familiar make-up, the most popular song of his own composition, “Mollie O.”

Everybody looked at Scanlon. His face was suddenly aglow with interest. His lips followed, word by word, the course of the melody. He raised one hand and motioned as if he were directing the music. At the close of the first verse, when the building shook with applause, he smiled happily. He was living his triumphs over at that minute, oblivious to his surroundings. He was impatient for the next verse; he followed the words intently; his face was flushed, the old inspiration showed in his eyes, and when the applause broke forth again he laughed and bowed his head.

“Did you see that man?” Miss Rogers asked me a second later. “Did you ever see such an expression? Who is he—that young man yonder, with his head bowed?”

“Why, I thought you must have known,” I replied. “That’s Scanlon.”

“Scanlon the actor?”

“Yes. The author of your song.”

Miss Rogers was tearfully uncertain, as she went on to respond to an encore, whether she had done right or wrong. She sang “In It” and the “Latch Key in the Door.” Then Scanlon was brought back to us and Miss Rogers was introduced to him.

“I want to thank you,” he said simply. “I felt as I used to, you know. Some day I will sing it again. You are very pretty and you sing well.”

If there was one man in the audience blind to the pathos of the scene which had just occurred it was Harry Kernell, the comedian. He had looked on quietly, his face impassive, his hands clasped loosely over one knee. He smiled when Scanlon came back to the seat just in front of him; then his face became fixed and vacant as before.

Kernell raised his face again as his wife who had been sitting beside him, left her seat. He seemed to have forgotten her, and to be hearing nothing and seeing nothing, when I announced the next number on the programme.

“We have a pleasant surprise for you,” I said, smiling in anticipation. “Mrs. Kernell is here; she came up to see her husband, my old friend, and we wouldn’t let her refuse to sing for you.”

But Kernell did not look up until his wife, Queenie Vassar, began singing. The little woman watched him tenderly. The poor fellow understood. After that, no lover could have been more appreciative than he was. It was the one voice in all the world that could move him. Scanlon turned and whispered to him, but Kernell’s soul was in the song. Quickly he looked ten years younger than he does ordinarily. He seemed grateful for the applause, and eager for another song, and another, so Mrs. Kernell sang “Peggy Cline,” “Sligo” and “The Bowery.”

After that Kernell sat still and gloomy. The spell was broken that had made him young. The deep lines came back on his face, his shoulders stooped and he was an old man again, listless and helpless. One could hardly imagine him the man that scattered sunshine so royally, laughing his way to fame, building his triumphs on the happiness he gave to others.

Miss Claude Rogers played a mandolin solo of her own composing with “Il Trovatore” for an encore. Later she played again, and was encored repeatedly. As for me, I had as difficult an audience as ever confronted a humorist, or any other sort of speaker, but the success was complete and the fun was contagious. It was curious to see how an audience, of so many different states of mind, could be affected by humor and music. I have had far less appreciative audiences among sane people, and have been at my wits’ end to rouse them. Here is a story that tells how Digby Bell once roused a cold audience without giving offense; it proved the biggest hit of his act. He recently had to deal with a particularly frigid audience, and the best of his jokes met with but indifferent success. There happened to be a little flag fastened on one side of the stage, and the humorist, after delivering his last joke ineffectually, ran over, gravely pulled the banner down to half-mast and made his exit. The audience appreciated the sarcastic proceeding, and applauded him till he was obliged to give them a little additional entertainment, and this time he had no need to complain of their appreciation.

XII

SUNSHINE IN SHADY PLACES

On Blackwell’s Island.—Snakes and Snake Charmers.—Insane People as Audiences.—A Poorhouse That was a Large House.—I am Well Known by Another Profession.—Criminals are not Fools.—Some Pathetic Experiences.—The Largest Fee I Ever Received.

For many years the late Cornelius Vanderbilt paid me a regular salary to visit a lot of charitable institutions,—the Almshouse, the Penitentiary, the Newsboys’ Lodging House and a number of other places, where laughter was not part of the regular daily exercises and was therefore valued most highly. One of the places frequently visited was the Insane Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, and I was often invited to lunch with the Superintendent. A harmless patient, who was employed as waiter, was at times quite amusing through her faculty for seeing people where none existed. She would often stop and argue indignantly with some one whom she imagined was in her way, and to see how with a tray of dishes in her hands she scolded the empty air, was first very funny and afterward creepingly uncanny. Once she imagined that one of these annoying people had climbed upon the table, and she attacked him so savagely with a broom that we had to have a new set of dishes and goblets.

One night a severe storm compelled me to remain at the Asylum. My friend the house-surgeon gave me a comfortable room, near the wing where the more violent patients were confined. In the middle of the night, one of these began to rave and scream; his appeals for help were pitiful. I put my head out of my door and asked an attendant what was the matter.

“He’s seeing snakes,” was the reply, “but he’ll be all right in a few minutes.” Just then the man informed the neighborhood of a new misfortune, by shouting,

“For God’s sake come to me quick. There’s a woman in my room!” Again he became quiet and the attendant said,

“It’s all right now.”

“Yes,” I replied: “she must have been a snake charmer.”

I always found insane audiences very appreciative. Probably the majority of them were “out of their head” on one subject only. Certainly their enjoyment of song and pantomime was very keen, and their interest in my exhibitions of ventriloquism was quite pathetic. Whenever I threw my voice in a certain direction, some of them would look under chairs and tables, in search of the supposed person who was talking. The poor creatures took such hold of my sympathies that I exerted myself to amuse them optically, for the eye is the surest route to the wits. I would, while on the platform, make quickly different articles of colored paper and give them to the patients, whose pleasure was as childlike as it was sincere.

On one of my visits I was startled by coming face to face with a notice which read “Almshouse wagon reserved for Marshall P. Wilder and party from 12 to 4.” On inquiry I learned that this wagon was a Pooh Bah among vehicles, serving by turns as patrol wagon, ambulance and hearse, so it took some jollying of myself to ward off gruesome imaginings and keep my risibilities in working order.

At one of the Almshouse entertainments at which the room was packed, I said, “This is the first time I ever knew a poor house to be such a large house,” and the audience “caught on” as quick as a flash.

The only painful experience of my years as an entertainer among the public institutions was at the Home for Consumptives, at Fordham. The patients were cheerful and spirited, as consumptives always are, and they seemed to enjoy my jokes mightily, but laughter usually brought on violent fits of coughing, so I would have to wait from five to ten minutes after a joke, before I dared venture another.

I always recall with pleasure a visit to Elmira, where I had the brightest and most responsive audience of my whole career. It was at the State Reformatory, and there were three or four thousand prisoners in the audience. Mr. Brockway, the Superintendent, said he would like me to talk about ten minutes, and asked kindly if that would be too long to talk continuously. Before I appeared he said to the boys,

“We have with us this evening Mr. Marshall P. Wilder. How many of you know him?”

Fully three-quarters of that great assemblage raised their hands. It was quite flattering to be so well known in a “profession” as cautious and exclusive as theirs. I found my audience so quick, appreciative and responsive that instead of restricting myself to ten minutes, I learned afterward that I had talked an hour and thirty-five minutes!

It may be argued by some skeptics that these boys and young men, being prisoners, were grateful for any entertainment that would break the monotony of their daily routine, but I prefer to believe their appreciation was due entirely to their native cleverness. It takes brains to place and accomplish anything, whether legal or illegal, and prisoners of the class that is sent to the Reformatory have proved their ability to think, or they would not be there. There are thousands of clever men who are good, and of good men who are stupid, but among criminals the rule is not reversible, for I have yet to see a criminal who is a fool.

I met many interesting and pathetic personalities while engaged in the institutions. One old man in the Home for Incurables was so badly paralyzed, that he could move only his hands, and these but a few inches. He would lie all day on his back, with his hands on his chest, holding a little switch broken from a peach-tree, with which he would gently scratch his face and head. This was his only occupation and pleasure; it was also the limit of his ability to move. Yet this pitiable old man was always smiling and happy; he would have repelled the idea that he was unfortunate, for he was constantly recounting his blessings and comforts—his bed, his food, his kindly attention, and not the least of all, his little peach-twig.

Another interesting case in the same Home was a feeble minded boy—almost an imbecile. His physical development was perfect; he was healthy and very strong, yet his vacant eyes, dropped jaw and frontal expression of head indicated plainly a sad lack of wits. He was gentle and tractable and devoted to the matron, who by demonstration had taught him how to be useful in many ways. His strength was utilized in moving helpless patients from bed to chairs, or vice versa, and he had been taught to change the beds and do other work in the men’s ward as neatly as a woman.

But his chief duty, and one at which he excelled, was to act as baker for the institution. The matron had taught him, and he had followed her method so faithfully that every day he dropped a little flour on the floor and then wiped it up; the matron had chanced to this “aside” in the first lesson, so it was impossible to convince the boy that this was not a necessary detail of bread-making. His bread was delicious too; he made thirty-six loaves every day in a triple oven holding three pans of twelve loaves each, and never had a failure. Being exact in every way, his success was always assured.

One old woman, who might have been admitted to this admirable home, refused to enter it; she said she preferred the Almshouse. She had been wealthy in her youth but, through unbridled extravagance, had been reduced to poverty so dire, that for years she had eked out a miserable existence by selling newspapers. When she became too ill and feeble to do even this, it was suggested that she should enter the Home for Incurables, but she refused, saying that she would go to no private institution, but to the poorhouse, which, when she was rich, she had helped to maintain. A charitable gentleman who would have helped her, and to whom she expressed her desire, assured her that she should have her choice in the matter, foolish though it was. She asked him if instead of being conveyed in the almshouse wagon, she might be moved in some other way; her would-be benefactor assured her she should go in his own carriage, and he himself would be her escort. He invited me to accompany them, I having already met the old woman and been interested in her. At the appointed time we called for her and as she stepped into the carriage she was visibly elated by the thought of once more going through the streets in a manner like that of her wealthy days. She had dressed for the occasion in style truly wonderful. Her bonnet, though of startling construction, commanded attention by its antiquity; a rag of a camel’s hair shawl was pinned tightly across her narrow chest; a black silk reticule hung from one thin arm, which was encased in a long suede glove, boasting the special advantage of leaving her fingers free while her other hand was covered with a lace mitt of antique fashion.

During the drive she sat stiffly erect, gazed with scorn at people who were merely walking, and occasionally dropped a stiff, formal speech, after the manner of polite conversation in her youthful days. When we had almost reached our destination, she said to my friend her escort:

“For your extreme kindness to me, I should like to bestow upon you a slight remembrance, something saved from the beautiful things I once owned.” She put her hand into her reticule and we expected to see a trinket such as women prize, but she pulled out a pistol and apparently leveled it at my friend. We gasped, instantly convinced that she had lost the tiny bit of sanity that was left to her, but in a second we saw that she was presenting it to, not at, him. It was a pretty toy with a pearl handle and inlaid with silver, but, like herself, rusty and dilapidated. It was her last bit of elegance and all the poor creature had to offer in token of her gratitude.

A touching feature of this Home was the manner of furnishing the rooms for the pay patients. When the wing for this class of inmates was built it was believed that a long time would elapse before there would be money enough in the treasury to furnish the rooms. A kind hearted woman who visited the house weekly with donations of snuff, tobacco and candy conceived a clever plan. She had just lost her mother, in whose name she presented the entire furnishings of her mother’s room to the Home. Word of this got abroad; other people followed her example and in a short time the entire wing was furnished in similar manner; so now the visitor to the home sees a wing of four stories, the halls lined with doors on each of which is a brass plate engraved with the name of the person who furnished the room in memory of parent, brother, sister or child.

This is an appropriate place in my story to tell of the largest fee I ever received for entertaining, for although the giver was not heartily interested in a public institution, he was _en route_ for one.

I was traveling in the West and looking about the railway car for a friend, an acquaintance or even some one with whom I might scrape acquaintance, for I don’t enjoy being alone a long time, when I saw, in one end of the car, an officer with a prisoner. It did not take long to see that the prisoner was handcuffed, his feet were shackled to the bottom of the seat, and behind him were two guards with revolvers in hand. Evidently the prisoner was of some consequence, although he looked like a mere boy. He sat with bowed head and a hopeless look on his white face. His eyes, which in so young a man ought to have been bright and merry, were downcast and full of gloom.

I ventured over to the party and soon recognized one of the guards, as a man I had seen in a similar capacity at the Elmira Reformatory. In reply to my questions about the prisoner, he told me that the youth had been brought on extradition proceedings from England, after evading capture a long time. His crime had been peculiarly atrocious and he was now being taken to Kansas City for trial.

I was sorry for the officer and guards, as well as for the prisoner, for there can’t be much that’s cheery in hunting down and manacling a fellow man, no matter how bad he may be. Besides, they looked about as uncomfortable as the prisoner, so I got off a joke or two to brace them up. Soon the prisoner raised his head and manifested a trace of interest. Then I asked if I might try some card tricks on them. Of course I might; it’s hard to find a man so troubled, that he won’t forget his misery a moment or two over a card trick.