CHAPTER XI.

THE ILLUSIONS OF THE STAGE.

A person can gain an idea of the extent of stage decorations and the possibility of scenic illusions in the old English theatre by reading a description of the theatre as it existed in its poverty of costume and bareness of paint in the Elizabethan era. Rousseau has left a description of the Paris Opera House as he saw it and it will be found interesting to all who are acquainted with the methods and the absolute magnitude of the theatre of the present day. It must be remembered, however, when considering the smallness of the stage described by Rousseau, that it was blocked up on both sides, as was the early English stage, by the aristocratic section of the audience, who sat in rows by the side of the singers while the plebeian music lovers stood up in the pit. It was in exactly the same condition as the English stage, when actors and actresses were interrupted and even insulted by their lordly patrons;--as when Mrs. Bellamy one evening as she passed across the stage at Dublin was kissed upon the neck by a Mr. St. Leger, whose ears the actress boxed there and then; Lord Chesterfield rose in his box on this occasion and applauded; the entire audience followed his example and at the end of the performance St. Leger was obliged by the viceroy to make a public apology to the actress.

"Imagine," writes Rousseau about the Paris Opera, "an inclosure fifteen feet broad, and long in proportion; this inclosure is the theatre. On its two sides are placed at intervals screens, on which are curiously painted the objects which the scene is about to represent. At the back of the inclosure hangs a great curtain, painted in like manner, and nearly always pierced and torn, that it may represent at a little distance gulfs on the earth or holes in the sky. Every one who passes behind this stage, or touches the curtain, produces a sort of earthquake, which has a double effect. The sky is made of certain bluish rags, suspended from poles, or from cords, as linen may be seen hung out to dry in any washerwoman's yard. The sun, for it is seen here sometimes, is a lighted torch in a lantern. The cars of the gods and goddesses are composed of four rafters, secured and hung on a thick rope in the form of a swing or see-saw; between the rafters is a coarse plank, on which the gods sit down, and in front hangs a piece of coarse cloth, well dirtied, which acts the part of clouds for the magnificent car. One may see toward the bottom of the machine two or three foul candles, badly snuffed, which, while the greater personage dementedly presents himself swinging in his see-saw, fumigate him with incense worthy of his dignity. The agitated sea is composed of long angular lanterns of cloth and blue pasteboard, strung on parallel spits, which are turned by little blackguard boys. The thunder is a heavy cart, rolled over an arch, and is not the least agreeable instrument heard at our opera. The flashes of lightning are made of pinches of resin thrown on a flame, and the thunder is a cracker at the end of a fuse. The theatre is, moreover, furnished with little square traps, which opening at the end, announce that the demons are about to issue from their cave. When they have to rise into the air, little demons of stuffed brown cloth are substituted for them, or sometimes real chimney-sweeps, who swing about suspended on ropes, till they are majestically lost in the rags of which I have spoken."

This sad condition of theatrical illusions cannot be regarded otherwise than strange when it is recorded that decorations were of a higher order in the reign of Louis XIV. Saint-Evremond is authority for the statement that the sun and moon were so well represented at the French opera during this period that the ambassador of Guinea, who assisted at one of the performances, was decoyed into leaning forward in his box and religiously saluting the orbs. Had Rousseau lived to the present day, the wonders and mysteries of our stage would have made his great heart leap within him. Modern art and modern mechanism have brought stage representations so close to nature that the scenes seem to be small sections, either of country or city, mountain or vale, lifted from the face of the world and placed in all their beauty at the stage-end of the theatre. Managers do not fear to go to any length in mounting plays properly, and there is nothing in the outer world that defies reproduction in the mimic sphere. Steam is freely used; fire rages fiercely through folds of inflammable canvas; the lightnings flash; Hendrick Hudson and his men roll nine-pins in the Catskills, and the low rumble of the thunder, as the balls rattle down from crag to crag, is distinctly heard by the audience; poor, demented old _Lear_ cries to the winds to crack and blow their cheeks, and they do so to his full satisfaction; there is genuine rain in the shipwreck scene of "The Hearts of Oak;" a plentiful fall of the beautiful snow for "The Two Orphans;" a perfect reproduction of a mountain rivulet for "The Danites;" steamboat and railroad explosions of a realistic character in everything; an almost horizonless sea for the great raft scene in "The World;" and gorgeous coloring, rich furniture, choice bric-a-brac, rare paintings and the Lord only knows what, for the thousand and one melodramatic and society plays that are now flooding the stage. Then there are gems apparently rich enough to have come from the treasuries of Khedive or Sultan, and robes so redolent of royalty in color and material that the female portion of the audience is almost driven to distraction in admiring and coveting them. Little does the average lady patron of the theatre imagine that the finery she covets is often the product of the artiste's own needle, and that the gaiety and glory of an actress's career--with hundreds of admirers pouring diamonds into her lap, and hundreds of others feasting upon her charms, while many hang with reverence upon the words that fall from her lips--is but the merest of dreams; and that the sister whose professional successes cause her to look upon the stage as a place of pleasure only, may live in a tenement surrounded by a poor family to whose support her life-efforts are devoted; that she has few admirers; that she is pure as the fairest and purest woman in private life, and that her only sacrifice is made to the art which she loves and to which she has consecrated herself.

There are but few who have not an exaggerated idea of the value of everything they see upon the stage. It is true that many actresses are rich enough to wear diamond necklaces, and to otherwise sprinkle their persons with brilliants of the first water; but it is equally true that many others are poor, and that the gems they wear come from the cheap stock of articles kept in the theatrical property-room. An amusing story is told by Olive Logan, who was an actress, about the false value placed upon stage jewels.

"While I was fulfilling a round of theatrical engagements in the South, during the war," says Miss Logan, "I was compelled by 'military necessity,' to pack up my jewels and send them to Cincinnati. Of course there were a number of stage trinkets in the bag as well as some little jewelry of real value, but as it happened a fabulous idea had got afloat of the value of my little trinkets, and I was offered large sums for the carpet sack, 'just as it stood,' after I had packed it to send it to Cincinnati.

"'I'll give you ten thousand dollars for it without opening,' said one gentleman; 'I want those ear-rings for my wife?'

"'No,' I answered, 'no; those things were given me in France, and I shouldn't like to part with them.'

"'Are the ear-rings in here?'"

"'Yes,' I answered.

"'And the bracelet?'"

"'Yes.'"

"'Fifteen thousand--will you?'"

"'No, no,' I answered, and the matter ended. I couldn't help laughing, for truly I might have made a sharp bargain if I had wished. Somebody would have been sold, and that somebody not myself. I returned to Cincinnati after my trip to Nashville, and there found my effects awaiting me in good order. One day in the Burnet House I was accosted by a pleasant-looking gentleman, who informed me that he had taken charge of the bag from Louisville to Cincinnati.

"'Did not Mr. ---- send it by express?' I asked.

"'No. I was coming up, and he thought it best to entrust it to me.'

"'I'm very much obliged to you,' I said.

"'Indeed, you have cause to be,' he said, good-naturedly. 'I give you my word it's the last time I'll have on my mind the charge of fifty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds.'"

After an English lady of rank returned from the continent, she found her trunk robbed of its jewels. Detectives traced the jewels to a London pawnshop, where they had been sold for $5. The thieves were arrested, and when one of them was asked why he had been so foolish as to sell nearly one hundred thousand dollars' worth of diamonds for $5, he answered: "Why, yer honor, we never thought for a minute as how they were real jewels; we just thought the lady was some play-actor woman, and that the whole lot wasn't worth but a few shillings."

The trinkets are no more deceptive than are many other means employed to astonish and gladden the public. The production of thunder, the simulation of rain-fall, the fictitious roaring of winds, and the multiplication of suns, moons and stars are among the numerous illusions that give to the theatre that marvellous charm under whose spell thousands are nightly placed and held. In the olden times these effects were produced in a simple and by no means mystifying manner, but late years have made them so perfect in their application that none but the initiated can even begin to think out the solution of the wondrous effects in which the stage now abounds. A new effect, such as the enormous stretch of sea and sky to be found in "The World," is something that dramatic authors and stage mechanics are always seeking after and are glad to find. The revolving tower in "The Shaughran" was a puzzle to everybody. Now there are hundreds of effects of this kind with folding and vanishing scenes that are even more wonderful than Boucicault's tower. Viewed from the wings the simplicity of the means employed to produce these effects makes them absolutely laughable. They shall be explained in this chapter.

Thunder-storms are common efforts at realism, and they are sometimes simulated in a way that makes them appear to fall very little short of nature. The earliest style of stage thunder was effected by vigorously shaking a piece of sheet iron which made a rattling and ear-disturbing noise. Even now when a show is "on the road" and a hall without the usual first-class accessories must be used, the audience, and the actor too, must be satisfied with sheet-iron thunder. The modern invention is known as the thunder-drum, and it stands over the prompter's desk where it can be easily reached by a long stick with a thick, soft padding at the end--similar to the sticks used in beating bass-drums. The thunder-drum consists of a calf-skin tightly drawn over the top of a box frame. With this instrument the low rumbling of distant thunder or the long roll of the elemental disturbance may be attained, and, following the sharp rattling of the shaken sheet of iron and the flash of ignited magnesium an effect is produced that completely awes the simple citizen who knows nothing of the mechanism of the stage.

The prompter, too, who by the way is a most responsible person among the individuals who populate the mimic world, has control of the rain machine. This is a wooden cylinder, about two feet in diameter, and four or five feet long. It is filled with dried peas which rattle against wooden teeth in its inside surface, as the machine, which is in the "flies," is operated by a belt running down to the prompter's desk. This reminds me that I have used the expression "flies" several times without explaining what is meant. The "flies" is a term used to designate the scenery and spaces above the stage, and as there is a great deal of it, it has as much importance in a theatrical sense as any other part of the back of the house. Well, to resume the explanation, the prompter has the rain machine in the "flies" fully under control and can turn out any kind of a rain-storm the play may require; if a swirl of the aqueous downpour is needed,--such a manifestation of wrathy lachrymoseness as you find in a storm that at intervals beats mercilessly against your windows and the side of your house,--one good, strong, sharp pull at the rope will effect it. Less atrocious efforts of the elements may be obtained with a slighter exertion of muscle at the rope or belt. The wind machine is a very necessary adjunct of these storm effects, and it is to be found in every large theatre, furnishing "a nipping and an eager air" or one of those howling blasts that make night desolate and day disastrous. The wind machine may be moved to any part of the stage. Sometimes it is behind the door of a hut through which snow is fiercely driven, and at other times it may be in the side scenes, or any locality to which or through which the storm is rushing. It is an awful funny thing to the man at the wind machine to think of the cold chill he sends down the back of the sensitive play-goer as the wind whistles across the scene in which poor blind _Louise_, in the "Two Orphans," figures, or that scene in "Ours" where _Lord Shendryn_ is at the mercy of the pitiless storm. The wind that makes the warm blood frigid under such circumstances is very easily constructed. A cylinder from which extend paddles is set in a suitable frame and above its top is stretched a piece of grosgrain silk. The silk is stationary, but the cylinder and paddles are operated by means of a crank and sometimes by a "crank." Swift motion produces woeful gusts of the windy article, and a steady blast may be duplicated by patiently working the machine. When the property-man is driven to the necessity of providing rain and wind in theatrical districts that do not boast of modern appliances he obtains a rain effect by rolling bird-shot over brown paper that has been pasted around a hoop, and the wind is raised by swinging around a heavy piece of gas-hose. This kind of thing is called "faking" the wind or rain.

When real water is used on the stage to simulate rain, as in the first act of the "Hearts of Oak," or "Oaken Hearts," as they at one time tried to call a pirated edition of it, the effect is obtained by carrying water to the stage lofts, during the day, where it remains in a tank connected with a long piece of perforated pipe, back of the proscenium border, and stretching across the stage. At night when the proper time arrives the water is allowed to run into the pipe, from which it of course falls in numerous small streams upon a rubber tarpaulin that has been stretched below to receive it. So too in mountain rivulets with "real water," as in "The Danites," a tank in the loft must be filled daily with water to supply the nightly scene. In all instances of this sort the effect is quite realistic, and never fails to meet with a hearty appreciation by the audience.

The snow-storm is also usually a pleasing stage picture, and is brought about in a most simple manner. White paper is cut into very small pieces, which are carefully treasured by the property-man, whose duty it is to see to everything of this kind in and around the stage, and who regards the manufacture of a snow-storm as a very slow and tedious piece of work. When the snow is ready it is placed in what is called the snow-box, a long narrow affair with slats on the bottom leaving room enough for the pieces of paper to sift through, when the box is given a swaying motion. The contrivance is swung over the stage by means of two ropes, and is operated by a third leading to one side of the stage. When the chilled heroine comes upon the scene amid a terrible fall of snow and draws her thin garments tightly over her shoulder, while she shivers, the snow-box up above is swinging to and fro, and the white flakes are only bits of paper frauds that the property-man or an assistant will carefully sweep up after the scene or act, to do duty again the following night and for many a night to come.

The snow-storm and the other illusions described above are only a fraction of the things the property-man has to look after and keep in order. He has charge of everything upon the stage and is responsible for everything except the scenery. When a play is running that requires handsome appointments, it is his business to provide. Within the past decade or so of years it has become the custom to borrow expensive furniture from generous local dealers who are often satisfied with the simple and easy remuneration of a line or two acknowledging the loan, in the programme; or a certain price is paid for the use of the furniture during the run of the play; or the set is purchased outright from the dealer and repurchased by him at a reduction when the theatre is done with it. Nearly all theatres, however, are supplied with suitably handsome furniture for an ordinary society play, and it is only when gorgeousness is aimed at that managers are obliged to borrow. Pistols, knives, helmets, lances, battle-axes, canes, cigars, money, pocket-books, the vial from which Juliet takes the fatal draught, the marble or majolica pedestals, the rich vases, sunflowers such as are used in the æsthetic play of "The Colonel," the paste-board ham, the tin cups, or cut glasses that the characters drink from, fire-place, mantel, and looking-glass--these, and many other articles the property-man furnishes the players, either placing the stationary fixtures on the stage, or sending the call-boy to the performers with the articles they require. The check-book that the rich banker draws from his pocket when he hands $100,000, more or less, over to somebody else in the play, the quill or pen he writes the check with, and the bottle out of which he dips the imaginary ink, all come from the property-room, and go back to it again after the act is over. A list of the articles required for a play is furnished the property-man when a play is to be put on, and these articles he must have when the prompter calls or sends for them. Sometimes the property-man forgets, and then there is trouble in the camp. It is related that having forgotten to provide a Juliet with her vial of poison, in time, the article being called for as the actress was about to go on the stage, the property-man snatched up the first thing that looked like a vial that he got his eyes on. It was a bottle from the prompter's desk, and when Juliet placed the awful draught to her lips and took a pull at the bottle, she discovered to her horror that she had swallowed a dose of ink. The actress, who tells the story herself in her autobiography, said, she wanted to "swallow a sheet of blotting-paper," when she made the inky discovery.

I find in Miss Logan's book from which I have before quoted in this chapter, the following funny inventory of properties furnished a new lessee of the Drury Lane Theatre, London: "Spirits of wine, for flames and apparitions, £12 2_s._; three and one-half bottles of lightning, £--; one snow-storm, of finest French paper, 3_s._; two snow-storms of common French paper, 2_s._; complete sea, with twelve long waves, slightly damaged, £1 10_s._; eighteen clouds, with black edges, in good order, 12_s._, 6_d._; rainbow, slightly faded, 2_s._; an assortment of French clouds, flashes of lightning and thunder-bolts, 15_s._; a new moon, slightly tarnished, 15_s._; imperial mantle, made for Cyrus, and subsequently worn by Julius Cæsar and Henry VIII., 10_s._; Othello's handkerchief, 6_d._; six arm-chairs and six flower-plots, which dance country dances, £2." The same author adds another quotation that gives a better idea of the quantity and character of the property-man's possessions, saying:--

"He has charge of all the movables and has to exercise the greatest ingenuity in getting them up. His province is to preserve the canvas water from getting wet, keep the sun's disk clear and the moon from getting torn; he manufactures thunder on sheet iron, or from parchment stretched drum-like on a frame; he prepares boxes of dried peas for rain and wind, and huge watchman's rattles for the crash of falling towers. He has under his charge demijohns for the fall of concealed china in cupboards; speaking trumpets to imitate the growl of ferocious wild beasts; penny whistles for the 'cricket on the hearth;' powdered rosin for lightning flashes, where gas is not used; rose pink, for the blood of patriots; money, cut out of tin; finely cut bits of paper for fatal snow-storms; ten-pin balls, for the distant mutterings of a storm; bags of gold containing bits of broken glass and pebbles, to imitate the musical ring of coin; balls of cotton wadding for apple dumplings; links of sausages, made of painted flannel; sumptuous boquets of papier mache; block-tin rings with painted beads puttied in for royal signets; crowns of Dutch gilding lined with red ferret; broomstick handles cut up for truncheons for command; brooms themselves for witches to ride; branches of cedar for Birnam wood; dredging boxes of flour for the fate-desponding lovers; vermilion to tip the noses of jolly landlords; pieces of rattan silvered over for fairy wands; leaden watches, for gold repeaters; dog-chains for the necks of knighthood, and tin spurs for its heels; armor made of leather, and shields of wood; fans for ladies to coquet behind; quizzing-glasses, for exquisites to ogle with; legs of mutton, hams, loaves of bread and plum-puddings, all cut from canvas, and stuffed with sawdust; together with all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of a dramatic display. Such is the property-man of a theatre. He bears his honors meekly; he mixes molasses and water for wine and darkens it a little shade for brandy; is always busy behind the scenes, but is seldom seen, unless it is to clear the stage, and then what a shower of yells and hisses does he receive from the galleries! The thoughtless gods cry 'Supe! Supe!' which if intended for an abbreviation of superior or superfine, may be opposite, but in no other view of the case. What would a theatre be without a property-man? A world without a sun * * * Kings would be truncheonless and crownless; brigands without spoils; old men without canes and powder; Harlequin without his hat; Macduff without his leafy screen; theatres would close--there would be no tragedy, no comedy, no farce without him. Jove in his chair was never more potent than he. An actor might, and often does get along without the words of his part, but not without the properties. What strange quandaries have we seen the Garricks and Siddonses of our stage get into when the property-man lapsed in his duty! We have seen Romeo distracted because the bottle of poison was not to be found; Virginius tear his hair because the butcher's knife was not ready on the shambles; Baillie Nicol Jarvie nonplussed because there was no red-hot poker to singe the Tartan fladdie with; Macbeth frowning because the Eighth Apparition did not bear a glass to show him any more; William Tell in agony because there was no small apple for Gesler to pick; the First Murderer in distress because there was no blood for his face ready; Hecate fuming like a hellcat because her car did not mount easily; Richard the Third grinding his teeth because the clink of hammers closing rivets up was forgotten; Hamlet brought up all standing because there was no goblet to drink the poison from, and Othello stabbing Iago with a candlestick because he had no other sword of Spain, the Ebro's temper, to do the deed with. So, the property-man is no insignificant personage--he is the mainspring which sets all the work in motion; and an actor had better have a bad epitaph when dead than his ill will while living."