The Book of Philadelphia
By Robert Shackleton
©1918
The Penn Publishing Company
Philadelphia
Chapter XII
SOME ACTORS AND AUTHORS
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MONG the monuments and memorials of a city are to be
included not only material evidences, but things impalpable, intangible,
permanent associations, triumphs of mental achievement which the nation or
world does not forget. A song, for example, may be a memorial quite as much as
a building; and “Hail; Columbia!" is such a monument for Philadelphia. For
in 1798, when war was threatening between our country and France, and we were
aflame with patriotism, Joseph Hopkinson, a lawyer of this city, was asked by
an actor named Fox to compose some patriotic words for the tune which had
become known as the "President's March," and Hopkinson did so,
writing the lines in a fever of inspiration. The tune was the present tune for
"Hail, Columbia!" and when Hopkinson's “Hail Columbia!" words
were first sung with it the audience went wild with joy and the song swept the
country on an immense wave of popularity.
The excellent and fiery "Sheridan's Ride"
was
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also the work of a Philadelphian, Thomas Buchanan Read;
although he was temporarily away from Quaker influence, in Cincinnati, when he
wrote it. The critical mind of Philadelphia holds itself aloof from the poem,
willing rather to allow some degree of merit to his "Brickmaker,"
which no one but a Philadelphian has ever read. Philadelphia, and indeed
Pennsylvania, love to place on pedestals authors or works that are elsewhere
little known. A recent book by a former governor, Pennypacker, declares, for
example, in regard to Bayard Taylor, whose home was but a few miles from
Philadelphia, that "It is a grave question whether the ‘Scarlet Letter' of
Hawthorne or the ‘Story of Kennett' by Taylor holds the higher rank among
American novels." And on the next page he states, with approval, that some
sonnets about the local Susquehanna region have been soberly likened to the
work of Anacreon and Shakespeare. One can only think of the loyal Scotchman
who, claiming the greatest writers for Scotland, asserted that even Shakespeare
was a Scotchman, and, when pressed for proof, exclaimed, "Look at his
style, mon!"
Some years age "Trilby" gave new life and
immense vogue to the old English ballad of "Ben Bolt"; but it is an
English ballad only in having as its author Thomas Dunn English, who was an
American in spite of his name and was born here in Philadelphia; and although,
in the course of a long life spent in writing, he never wrote another line that
is remembered, he did not need to do so; to
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write one song that is known all over the earth is
achievement sufficient.
In the always interesting "Table Talk" of
Samuel Rogers he tells of his first meeting with Shelley. The great poet called
on the banker-poet and, introducing himself, asked for a loan. It was not for
himself, he explained, though he would give his personal bond for it; it was
for Leigh Hunt. But the rich Rogers refused, and writes down his refusal as
calmly as if refusing money to such a man as Shelley on behalf of the author of
the noble "Abou Ben Adhem" were a more commonplace of life.
Poor Leigh Hunt—"kind Hunt," as Keats terms
him in one of his sonnets—was born in an atmosphere of pitiful poverty, and
poverty remained the atmosphere of most of his life, even when Dickens was
cruelly assailing him under the guise of Harold Skimpole. And Leigh Hunt was
almost a Philadelphian; in fact, he would have been had it not been for
Philadelphians!
For his father was Isaac Hunt, an attorney of this
city, and his mother was also of this city and of excellent connections. But
with the approach of the Revolutionary War, Isaac Hunt remained a Loyalist.
Before me lies a thin little book, a pathetic little book, browned and yellowed
with age, printed in Philadelphia in 1775, with Isaac Hunt's name bravely on
the title-page, and bravely beginning: "The jealousies which at present
unhappily subsist between Great Britain and her colonies,
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render a discourse on this subject delicate and
hazardous"; and continuing with such statements as: "It is easy to
believe, Great Britain will not tamely give up her right of regulating the
trade of her colonies." That was indeed a "delicate and
hazardous" kind of book to write, and although there was a great deal of
pro-British feeling in the city, it gradually vanished in the course of the
war. A great deal of it vanished, in an extremely unhappy way, when General
Clinton evacuated the city after having taken over the command from Howe, who
had done little but give opportunities for gay parties and dances and for a
great deal of display of their love for red coats on the part of the young
women, of whom General Knox wrote that "they love a red coat dearly."
When Clinton went to New York, several thousands of Philadelphians, who had
become known as frank British sympathizers, and who had never thought it possible
that the British could so fail, left the city also, many of them on boats
convoyed by the English fleet—and sad tales have been told of their sorrowfully
looking back at their city while the ships lay becalmed—and the others, with
baggage and household possessions, with the bulk of the army, who went
overland.
But the father of Leigh Hunt did not leave his home
voluntarily. To leave would mean hopeless disaster in the loss not only of home
but of a way of support. He would fain have stayed. But he was not permitted to
live down his unfortunate outspokenness. One day a mob went to his house, and
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carried him off in a cart to be tarred and feathered,
stopping at corner after corner to gather additions to their number; and poor Hunt
tried to make a little speech at each such stopping place thanking them for not
doing worse to him than giving blows and missiles and violent epithets, and
hoping, to himself, that their terrible mood would change. It is a terrible and
pathetic picture; and when they were through with him he could only flee,
absolutely penniless, with his wife, to England; and there, in the year
following the treaty of peace, Leigh Hunt was born to his inheritance of
poverty, instead of into the condition of Philadelphia comfort which should
naturally have been his.
A still more interesting British literary connection
with Philadelphia is that which associates this city with Walter Scott, and it
came about through the visit to Abbotsford of Washington Irving. For the two
men liked each other, and had long walks and talks together, and one day, as
they strode over the heather near the superb Eildons, the subject of Jews
arose, and Irving told Scott of a rich young Jewess of Philadelphia, Rebecca
Gratz, who was singularly beautiful, who had loved and been loved by a
Christian, but who would not marry out of her sect, and had therefore devoted
her life and her wealth to works of charity. Irving spoke with profound feeling
of the unusual beauty and unusual qualities of Rebecca Gratz; he knew her
because she had been the close friend of the young woman, Matilda Hoffman, whom
he was to have married,
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but who had died; and Scott was deeply impressed—so
deeply, that when, shortly afterwards, he wrote "Ivanhoe," he described
one of the sweetest a finest characters in all fiction, Rebecca of York, from
Irving's description of Rebecca of Philadelphia.
Philadelphians love to set forth the fact that here
were written two of the most notable literary achievements of the world, the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, both of
them remarkable for fine literary quality, for precision of statement, for
lucid presentation of facts, for logical arrangement. But it is possible, so it
has been unkindly suggested, that they do not always remember that neither of
these important productions was written by a Philadelphian. But to any one who
may make such a suggestion it may with justice be said that at any rate the
"Autobiography" of Franklin, one of the few great autobiographies of
the world, was written by a Philadelphian, and also his "Poor
Richard" and other world-famous works. And in regard to Franklin there is
a story that I think is very little known.
Stopping one evening at an inn in Amiens, on his way
to London, after the war was over, Franklin was told, an hour or so after his
arrival, that the English historian, Gibbon, he of the "Roman
Empire," had just arrived, on his way to his home in Lausanne. So Franklin
sent his compliments to Gibbon and suggested that they take advantage of this
opportunity to become acquainted. To which Gibbon sent the reply that, much
though he should appre-
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ciate the privilege of meeting Doctor Franklin, the
scholar, and eminent man of science, he must regretfully decline to meet him,
as he had stood for rebellion against Great Britain. Whereas Franklin sent the
reply that when Mr. Gibbon, following his present work, should come to the
writing of "The Decline and Fall of the British
Empire," he would be able to acquire considerable information, not
elsewhere attainable, by applying to himself, Doctor Franklin.
One might believe Lausanne itself to be responsible
for much or British self-consciousness, for there comes the thought of the
famous Charles Kemble there, so jealous of his own importance that he actually
disliked to hear the one familiar question of the place, "How does Mont
Blanc look this morning?" for it so ignored himself.
When Kemble came to America with his daughter, Fanny
Kemble, Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote of their first appearance together, and
referred enthusiastically to the daughter's "dark, flashing eye" and
her "brunette shin"; a typographical blunder still remembered because
of the importance of both the writer and the person written about.
What a family of stagefolk the Kembles were! For
there were Roger Kemble and John Mitchell Kemble, and the Charles Kemble who
was jealous of Mont Blanc, and that George Kemble who attained the unique
distinction of becoming fat enough to play Falstaff without the aid of padding,
and there was the mighty Mrs. Siddons who was Sarah Kemble Siddons, and there
was the Adelaide Kemble Sartoris
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whose son married the daughter of President Grant, and
the Elizabeth Kemble Whitloch whose playing in Philadelphia won the approbation
and attendance of President Washington, and there was Fanny Kemble, who became
a Philadelphian by marrying Pierce Butler, grandson of the Senator Butler who
had built the great mansion which long since became the home of the
Philadelphia Club.
It was not a happy marriage. Washington Irving, so
she herself has narrated, guardedly cautioned her against it, and, in a spirit
which she was large-minded enough to appreciate, warned her not to be a
"creaking door," that being, he explained, a wife whose querulousness
would be as nerve-racking as a door that constantly creaked. But she creaked;
and there at length came divorce.
When Thackeray was here, he made a point of calling
on Pierce Butler, hoping to get news of the children, for Fanny, the mother,
then in London, but Butler probably surmised his object, for he would neither
speak a word of the children nor show them, and Thackeray did not wish to make
direct request or inquiry, and so he could only report failure.
Thackeray got his inspiration and his material, in
America, for "The Virginians"; and how greatly he would have been
interested to know that a Philadelphian, a grandson of his friend Fanny Kemble,
was to win wide literary fame, and especially with "The Virginian!"
Thackeray wrote, of Philadelphia, that he found
"very good and kind friends" here, "very tender
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hearted and friendly"; and he writes that
"the prettiest girl in Philadelphia, poor soul, has read ‘Vanity Fair'
twelve times. "He gives her "a great big compliment about her good
looks" and then sets down a gibe at her pronunciation in replying to the
compliment: this, not from ill will toward the girl, but because he was nettled
by the criticism of Philadelphia newspapers regarding his own pronunciation,
which in some respects was London Cockney rather than English, and had such
oddities as the persistent dropping of the "g" in words ending with
that letter.
Quite the oddest thing connected with his Philadelphia
visit was his casually making the statement, apparently apropos of nothing in
particular, in a letter written from this city to Mrs. Brookfield, that "I
can't live without the tenderness of some woman"!
Thackeray could not help being rude in America, but
the manners and atmosphere of Philadelphia checked him. It was at a city other
than Philadelphia that he boasted, at a dinner given to him, that he had
himself given a dinner in New York which cost him four pounds a plate, adding
that considerable of the expense was for wines, which turned out to be quite
ordinary after all: "About such as we are drinking here to-night."
And it was not to a Philadelphia woman that he said, when she expressed her
gratification that he had asked for an introduction, that it was because he had
heard of her as "the gayest woman in the South": but I think
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that more than
one Philadelphia woman would have been capable of her swift and sweet retort:
"Oh, Mr. Thackeray, you must not believe everything you hear! I actually
heard that you were a gentleman!" a retort which piqued and pleased the
big man mightily.
In letters
innumerable he writes of the money he is making by his readings. In one letter,
written from Philadelphia, he estimates that he has been reading at the rate of
a pound a minute. In another letter, to another friend, also written from this
city, he declares that he has made, two thousand pounds since landing in
America. He seldom ceases to write greedily of money, except to speak of some
woman's good looks. He admires a young girl at one of his Philadelphia
readings. "Lord! Lord! How pretty she was! There are hundreds of such
everywhere, airy looking little beings."
In a long
letter from Baltimore in 1853 (how often one is made to wonder how the men of
the past, without stenographers and typewriters, could write such an infinite
number of infinitely long letters!), he takes up the formal summary of our
three largest cities of his time. "I think I like them all mighty well.
They seem to me not so civilized as our London, but more so than Manchester and
Liverpool." He has found at Boston "a very good literary company
indeed." The society of New York is "the simplest and most unpretentious."
Then he is just going to give the last word on Philadelphia when the letter is
interrupted; and when it is
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taken up again
and completed, in Washington, he has forgotten about Philadelphia and goes on
with other subjects instead.
Getting to
Washington from Philadelphia, even so recently as that, was by no means the
easy, matter that it is to-day; at least it was not when Dickens first made the
journey, ten years before the visit of Thackeray; for Dickens went by boat to
Wilmington, thence by train to Harve de Grace, there he crossed the Susquehanna
by ferry, thence he continued to Washington by rail.
The mention of
Dickens and Philadelphia is remindful that he thought and wrote little of the
city except as to its prisons. On his first visit he stayed at the United
States Hotel, long since vanished, and found on leaving that in the bill was a
charge for not only the time of his actual stay but for the full week before
his arrival, because he had arranged in advance to be there sooner. At this
hotel, too, was enacted a scene such as he describes in "Martin
Chuzzlewit"; for a great public reception unsuspectingly surprised him,
and his arm was nearly torn off by a line of thousands of volunteer
handshakers. He was guest of honor, too, in Philadelphia, at a reception, or
ball where, the ladies importuning for a lock of hair for each of them, and he
refusing from an aversion to baldness, at his age, they bribed a waiter, got
hold of the Dickens hat, and pulled off all the nap in little pieces to keep as
souvenirs.
It was between
the times of the Dickens and Thackeray visits that, in 1845, there came to
Phila-
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delphia a
writer whose hat-nap was perfectly safe here; it was James Russell Lowell, and
he had recently married (his first romance, not his second), and although in
time the Lowell house, Elmwood, in Cambridge, with some wealth, would come by
inheritance, he aimed first to make an independent position away from home, so
as to be able to return conqueringly, when he should return, to Boston and Cambridge.
But
Philadelphia did not precisely welcome Lowell. Had he gone as a visitor it
would have been different, but he went, apparently, with intent to become a
resident, and so he was considered critically and left pretty much alone. The
two made no social impression, because they boarded delightfully but modestly
in the house mentioned in a previous chapter, at Fourth and Arch streets,
"in a little chamber on the third story, quite low enough to be an attic,
so that we feel classical in our environment; and we have one of the sweetest
and most motherly of Quaker women to anticipate all our wants, and make us
comfortable outwardly as we are blessed inwardly," as Mrs. Lowell wrote. A
further pleasant touch comes from Lowell himself, as to "the little room in
the third story (back), with white muslin curtains trimmed with
evergreens." The house still stands; but the "Passing of the
Third-Floor Back" came within the short period of five months.
Lowell was
very much of a social entity in Boston, where "the Cabots speak only to
Lowells, and the Lowells—speak only to God": but here he was no-
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body in
particular. Oddly, too, he made the unforgivable social blunder of choosing to
live north of Market Street. He had written some charming verse, but that did
not help him here; it is possible that, had he been a Pennsylvanian, he would
have been compared to Anacreon and Shakespeare; but as it was he was merely
offered five dollars for an editorial, every two weeks, for the Pennsylvania Freeman, with the editorial privilege—which
was exercised!—of rejection: in addition, he accepted an offer to write, for a
New York publication, the Broadway
Journal, a column or so a week at the same rate that the editor was paying
Edgar Allan Poe: one dollar a column! Mrs. Lowell did what she could, by
translating, for an infinitesimal sum, a few of the poems of Uhland. So the
couple very soon heeded the call of Cambridge. Lowell, while here, wrote of
some long since forgotten Philadelphian named Elwyn, that "he is somewhat literary
for Philadelphia"; which caustic phrase would make it seem that there
could be no particular grief on his part in parting from the city. And, too, it
would seem that he and his wife were united in the feeling that an expected new
edition of Lowell should appear in Cambridge.
The unhappy
Edgar Allan Poe was happy for a time in Philadelphia, for he was assistant
editor of Graham's Magazine for
practically three years, up to 1842, and for that time he and his wife had
enough to eat. Graham's had every
writer of any prominence. In this Philadelphia magazine appeared work
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by Longfellow,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hawthorne, J. Fenimore Cooper—the list is amazing.
Graham boasted that some of the numbers cost him $1500 for the authors alone,
Cooper being the most highly paid. Poe, when he quitted the editorship and
became a contributor, received the rich remuneration of four dollars a page.
Poe's
necessities, and his varying income, caused him to shift his home now and then,
but for the best part of his Philadelphia living he and his wife occupied a
little cottage which stood against a large house at what is now 530 North
Seventh Street, at the corner of Brandywine.
The house
against which his tiny cottage leaned is still there; and Poe would have been
amused could he have seen the sign on the front of the building across the way,
for it is, "Philadelphia Society of Free Letts"; whatever that may
mean; and indeed, to avoid misunderstanding it is translated into,
"Filadelfijus Brihwo Latwju Beedriba." Poe would have, written a
whimsical mystery tale about this place of mysteriously whimsical words.
Mayne Reid,
shortly to become the famous Captain Mayne Reid, seems to have been their
principal visitor and friend; It that time a struggling Philadelphia
journalist, he was shortly to win his military title in the Mexican War, after
which he hurried to Europe to fight alongside or Kossuth, only to find the
fighting over; on which he settled in London and began to write the books that
so fascinated boys of every age. And the finest thing in his career was
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his devotion
to the Poes, when he was a Philadelphian.
Tradition
tells of a wealth of flowers at the Poe cottage, of a tiny garden and a
chambering vine, and of Poe's wife, so weak and wistful, playing on the harp;
and I was glad to find a tree there which may actually have sheltered the Poes,
and the general character of the immediate neighborhood not; greatly changed,
with much of neatness, and with quite a number of houses still there which were
neighboring houses to the poet's cottage.
Another poet
with a connection with Philadelphia was, ”Tom" Moore, who was in American
in 1804 and went about; extensively, getting even to what was in that day the
wilderness or Lake Erie. But it was, as he wrote at, Philadelphia that he
"passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States
afforded me," the rest of the United States being, to quote his own words
further, but a "melancholy, heartless waste." On leaving the city he
wrote some pleasant lines in regard to his impressions, ending with:
|
“The
stranger is gone—but he will not forget, When at home he shall talk of the toils he
has known, To tell, with a sigh, what endearments he
met, As he stray’d by the wave of the Schuylkill
along.” |
In Fairmount
Park is preserved an old cottage which is called "Tom Moore's cottage,”
but with no particular reason, except that, in the course of his stay of ten
days in the city, he was once in a while
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within the
limits of what is now the park, and visited at the mansion known as Belmont. This cottage was at that time the
home of an Aunt Cornelia, who, washed clothes and sold ginger cakes and spruce beer,
and it may also have been a casual meeting-place.
The subject of
poets is remindful that Philadelphia may claim, as her own, Walt Whitman, for although
his home was in Camden, that city is directly across the Delaware from
Philadelphia, and is essentially part of the big city. Of Whitman, Philadelphia
may on the whole be proud. He was not an unintelligible poet, and he was
certainly not the "good" gray poet, but now and then he sounded a
fresh strong note. When he wrote of great men he expressed himself in great
lines. Grant was a man of the mighty days—and equal to the days";
Washington was "E'en in defeat defeated not"; and as to Lincoln, his
"Captain, my Captain! is nobly unforgettable.
He lived at 328
Mickle Street, and Hamlin Garland, pilgriming thither, about 1890, describes
the home as one in which a very destitute mechanic might be living; as he
mounted the stair to Whitman's room on the second floor Garland's sense of resentment
increased, for there was not a particle of beauty or distinction or grace.
Whitman himself, a majestic old man, was seated in an armchair, with a broad
Quaker hat on his head; he was spotlessly clean, as to his clothes and himself,
and Garland found him a placid optimist.
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The typical
Philadelphian is likely to feel a fine sense of certainty. One of the historical
writers of the city—there are several so it may be any one of them—was telling
me of which he was engaged which was to cover a period which, as I knew, is
notable for the conflict of authorities.
I made some obvious remark regarding the difficulties he had set himself
to surmount; he only replies, calmly: "There will be no difficulties. I
shall merely write it all just as it was"; than which the Recording Angel
could say no more.
Before me lies
a set of books written by that eminent Philadelphia, Doctor Benjamin Rush, and
published in Philadelphia in 1794. The publisher is one Dobson, "at the
Stone-House, No. 41 South Second Street," and at the close is a list of
other books published by Dodson, with their prices; and ever were there prices
so bewilderingly odd. Pope's "Essay on Man" cost thirteen cents and
Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" fourteen; Percival's "Moral
Tales" cost sixty-seven cents and Chesterfield's "Advice to his
Son" fifty cents; Charlotte Smith's "Elegiac Sonnets" could be
acquired for the moderate sum of fourteen cents, but Taplin's "Farriery"
was two dollars and twenty-five cents, while at the same time Winchester's “Dialogues
on Universal Salvation" cost sixty-two and a half cents. And thus the
revel of oddity goes on. There is no dollar sign used in the list. There is no
period after the dollars, with the cents following decimally. Dobson's only way
of expressing
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dollars was by
the abbreviation dolls." and for cents the word "cents" had to
be spelled out, and, therefore to represent both dollars and cents in a price
it was necessary to use the awkward form, "2 dolls. and 50 cents."
It is a
pleasure to know that Münchausen was
in Philadelphia in Revolutionary days. To be sure, Münchausens are with all armies and in all wars, and their
stories often appear in the solemn guise of official reports; but a Münchausen was literally here, a Hessian officer, and I like
to think that he was probably the son of that Baron Münchausen who won fame by his delightful exaggerations. The
famous baron was born in 1720, and was a soldier of fortune who fought in
Russia and Turkey, therefore he could easily, from the dates, have been the
father of the Münchausen, the
Hessian soldier of fortune; who fought in America and was for a time located in
Philadelphia. And I set it down as an interesting hypothesis.
Richard
Harding Davis, war-correspondent, short-story writer and novelist, was a
Philadelphia by birth, his father being an editor and his mother being Rebecca Harding
Davis, well-known some years ago; as a short-story writer; well-known, that is,
outside of Philadelphia, for here she was known as the wife of the editor, just as I noticed in New Orleans, some years
ago, when another Mrs. Davis, M. E. M. Davis, had similarly won appreciation
throughout the country as a short-story writer, that in her home city she was
scarcely known
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except as the
wife of Mr. Davis of the Picayune.
The home of the Philadelphia Davis family was on South 21st Street, near
Locust.
When Davis, as
correspondent, was in Cardenas in Cuba, he was told that the American Consul
there had been a correspondent in the Franco-Prussian War, so he asked the consul
if he had chanced to meet a correspondent of that war, a German student named Hans,
of whom Archibald Forbes, the most famous war correspondent, had made special
mention. The consul smiled. "I’m the man," he said; "only, I was
never a German, and my name is not Hans, as Forbes had it, but Hance, and I was
born and raised in your own city of Philadelphia."
In the days of
the old horse cars, in Philadelphia, Richard Harding Davis, then a mere boy,
one day stumbled over the gouty foot of a fellow passenger, evoking a wild
storm of picturesquely passionate profanity. The man with the gout was the
actor Forrest: himself a Philadelphian, having been born here in 1806; he made
his home here, died here in 1872, and was buried in St. Paul's, on South Third
Street, having left his fortune for the establishment of the Edwin Forrest
Home, for actors and actresses, aged and indigent.
In St.
Petersburg—for it was not then Petrograd—Forrest met a follow Philadelphian,
Dallas, the United States Minister to Russia, and Dallas told him that he was
much bothered by an American who actually wanted to meet the, Czar; an
uncouth-looking American, so he described him, over six feet in
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height and
carrying a cane that was really a club. A few days later Forrest found his
fellow-townsman in a state of petrified amazement: Dallas had just been to see
the Czar, and had found there the uncouth American, actually sitting in close
imperial conversation! Worse than that, the man had actually greeted Dallas
with a condescending nod and the words, "How d'ye do, Squire? I'm here!"
The man—whose name unfortunately was not recorded—had managed to let the Czar
know that he could give him ideas regarding military and other matters, and the
Czar was so pleased with him that he made him a favorite at court, with one of
the court carriages for his exclusive use.
Forrest's
first appearance was, as a boy, at what was then the new Walnut Street Theater;
now the "old" theater, for it has passed the century mark, and is the
oldest Philadelphia theater still standing. It is only a decrepit memento of
the past, shabbily bedizened for melodrama; but in its amplitude and
proportions, in its low-standing, frontal pillars, it is remindful of its
dignified past. Forrest's last Philadelphia appearance was also at this
theater. In all, the great ones of a century of the stage have appeared here,
with even Sarah Bernhardt among those of recent, years. The wonderful Rachel—what
a sense of somber greatness is evoked by the mention of her name!—got her death
here, for a draughty dressing room gave her a desperate cold, from which she
could not recover, and she hurried back to her beloved France only to die.
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The old
Academy of Music, on Broad Street, of dignified appearance and excellent
acoustic properties, is still a place where excellent music is given; and it
has fine traditions of the music and musicians of many years.
During the
Revolution, the city's theater was a large and ugly building on South Street;
thus located, at what was then the edge of the city, because there was a good
deal of criticism of any theater at all. The British officers interested themselves
deeply in the theater, and at times they even appeared on the stage as actors.
This theater was burned, not long after the building of the theater on Walnut
Street, but meanwhile it had afforded theatrical entertainment to President
Washington himself as well as to a great number of other distinguished people
during Presidential residence here. One wonders if Washington knew that some of
the scenery at which he looked was painted by Major André! There was a still earlier theater than that on South
Street, and here, in 1749, "Cato" was given, this being, as a recent
book on Philadelphia by a Philadelphian expresses it, with delightfully unconscious
humor, "the first Shakespearean representation in America”;—Shakespearean!
Joseph
Jefferson was born in Philadelphia, and John Drew was born in Philadelphia, and
the parent Drews were long residents of this city, as actors and managers; and
to Mrs. Drew came both fame and the love of the public.
In spite of
the city's important theatrical associa-
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tions, or perhaps on account of them, Philadelphia has at times seemed arbitrary in her judgments,
and has not always followed that of other large cities; and from here the great
Mansfield wrote to a friend in New York that he was on the point of inserting
an advertisement in the papers which should read:
“Mr. Richard Mansfield is sorry to disturb
the inhabitants of Philadelphia, but he begs to announce that he appears every
evening as King Richard III.”
[The Academy
of Music]
