CHAPTER IX.

THE PERFORMER SOCIALLY.

In his social relations a performer, like many another great man or woman, is liable to mistakes of head and heart. It is a pretty generally known fact, for instance, that the most famous tenor of our day is so careful of his gloves as to fly into a towering rage with any lady who touches them with more than her finger-tips, in the most impassioned duets. And a very celebrated _prima donna_ who takes the world captive as much by the exceeding loveliness of her person and manner as by her wonderful voice, is in the habit of beating her maid abominably two or three times a week.

It would, indeed, be an acute analysis which should determine just what it is in the higher walks of music that makes the lives of its special votaries so strikingly inharmonious. He or she who has known of an operatic company wherein the four leading persons were on speaking terms with one another, off the stage, has known a remarkable fact in the history of that peculiar class.

Of these, and of the dramatic profession proper, I would perhaps have no right to speak here, were it not for the fact that, in my time at least, there was a sort of fraternity among all people who appeared before foot-lights. I do not know whether the members of cork-opera associate with the better class of actors at this day; but I think they do not. I would venture to assert, however, that among the lower orders of actors, minstrels, and circus-riders there ever will be such a spirit of bohemianism--such a touch of hearty, reckless good-nature--as will always make their whole world kin.

Indeed, an honest old professional friend of mine, whom I met last winter, spoke of lecturing as “the show-business.” There may have been more or less of truth in his remark. This, at least, is no time or place to discuss the question. But there was, indubitably, in this extending of the right hand of fellowship from the side show to the lyceum, a fine illustration of the catholic spirit which links the “profession” together.

Jealousy may be set down as the chief failing of the whole race, high or low. I have known men, whose names have made some noise in the world, to measure with straws the comparative sizes of the letters in which they were announced on a poster. But among minstrels, especially, a thorough wordliness and boon-companionship enable them generally to be civil to one another, whatsoever their private feelings.

An old showman, at last, comes to look upon the quiet ways of ordinary life with that same kind of longing, romantic interest with which a certain species of imaginative youth are always looking upon the impossible glory of travelling with a show. A droll sighing for rural pursuits seems to be the most common form taken by the romance of your veteran itinerant. Yet, oddly enough, there is scarcely any one whom he holds, personally, in such ridiculous contempt as he does the honest farmer.

The vow which the old sailor in the forecastle is forever making to go to sea no more, is rarely remembered over three days on land. And so it is with the cognate ideal which floats in the queer imagination of the old showman. I never knew but three or four who attained anything like the realization of their romantic purpose. Daniel Emmet--the author, I believe, of “Old Dan Tucker,” “Jordan,” and many of the best known of the earlier negro-melodies--did, toward the close of his life, so far reach the fleeting object of his bucolic ambition as to have a large, well-filled chicken-coop in the back yard of a rented house, in the suburbs of a great city.

This sentimental regard for nature was vented by the members of the first companies with which I travelled in fishing and camping parties along the borders of the inland lakes. They would swallow most execrable amateur cooking during the day, but a night with beetles and mosquitoes would, as a general thing, drive them back willing captives into the arms of effete civilization.

On the Floating Palace, Nature seemed to have taken us so closely to her bosom, in the wild lapse of those majestic rivers, that the romantic instinct of the oldest showman expressed itself oftenest in lazy expeditions to trap mocking-birds, or in listlessly dropping a line into the stream for cat-fish and soft-shelled turtles.

The ladies of the profession are sometimes given to gossip and backbiting in as great a degree at least as are the gentlemen. Jealousy may be as rife on a Mississippi show-boat as in the antechamber of any court in Europe. I have known a _danseuse_ to furnish boys with clandestine bouquets to throw on the stage when she appeared; not that she cared at all for the praise or blame of the audience, but that she _did_ care to crush a cleverer rival.

In our company on board the Palace and the Raymond we had strange contrasts in human nature. It would happen, for instance, that the man who could not sleep without snoring would be placed in the same state-room with the man who could not sleep within hearing of the most distant snore. The man who could not eat pork was seated at table just opposite the man who doted on it. We had one gentleman--the fleshy bass-singer already mentioned--who spent all his leisure in catching mocking-birds; and another, who passed his spare hours in contriving new and undiscoverable ways of letting these birds escape from the cages.

There were on board ladies who had seen more prosperous days, when they were the chief attractions at the theatres of London, Paris, and New York,--according to their own stories; other ladies who had never associated with such vulgar people before; other ladies who hoped they would die if they did not leave the company at the very next landing, but never left; and yet other ladies, I am rejoiced to add, who were lovely in nature and deed,--kind mothers and faithful wives, whose strength of character and ready cheerfulness tended as far as possible to restore the social equilibrium.

In the course of the long association grotesque friendships sprang up. The man who played the bass-drum was the bosom companion of the man who had charge of the machine for making the gas which supplied the two boats. The pretty man of the establishment, he who played the chimes on the top of the museum and the piano in the concert-room,--at present, a popular composer at St. Louis,--this young gentleman, who broke all the hearts of the country girls that came into the show, was the inseparable friend of the pilot,--a great, gruff, warm-hearted fellow, who steered the Raymond from the corners of his eyes and swore terribly at snags. The man who dusted down Tam O’Shanter and the Twelve Apostles in wax, and had especial care of the stuffed birds, giraffes, and alligators, was on most intimate terms with the cook.

The youngest of the ladies who hoped to die if they didn’t go ashore at the next landing and never went,--or died either, for that matter,--well, she was, or pretended to be, desperately in love with the treasurer of the company, a thin, irascible old fellow with a bald head. On the arrival of another _danseuse_ in the company, the two dancers, who were before deadly enemies, became sworn friends and confidantes, united in their jealousy and hatred of the new-comer. The lady who was loudest in proclaiming that she had never before associated with such low people as the performers on board of these boats seemed to enjoy herself most, and indeed spent most of her time in the society of Bridget, the Irish laundry-woman of the establishment, who on one occasion, after excessive stimulus, came very near hanging herself overboard to dry, instead of a calico dress.

As a general thing, however, the ladies, performers, and crew of our boats were not so quarrelsome as I have seen a set of cabin passengers on a sea voyage between America and Europe, or especially on the three weeks’ passage to or from California. When I consider that there were so many of us together in this narrow compass for nearly a year, it seems to me strange indeed that there was not more bad blood excited.

* * * * *

Madame Olinza was, I believe, the name of the Polish lady who walked on a tight-rope from the floor of one end of the museum up to the roof of the farthest gallery. This kind of perilous ascension and suspension was something new in the country then. It was before the time of Blondin, and Madame used to produce a great sensation.

Now it may be interesting to the general reader to learn that this tight-rope walker was one of the most exemplary, domestic little bodies imaginable. She and her husband had a large state-room on the upper deck of the Raymond, and she was always there with her child when released from her public duties.

One afternoon the nurse happened to bring the child into the museum when Madame Olinza was on the rope; and out of the vast audience that little face was recognized by the fond mother, and her attention so distracted that she lost her balance, dropped her pole, and fell.

Catching the rope with her hands, however, in time to break her fall, she escaped fortunately without the least injury; but ever after that her child was kept out of the audience while she was on the rope.