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THE OLD THEATRE.¹

Into any veracious sketch of the route we are sketching, there ought to enter, and form a good constituent part thereof, something about the Bowery Theatre—the Old Bowery, as, even after its coming up new from frequent destructions by fire, it has long been called. Indeed, there might be made, not only one sketch, but a good-sized and very interesting volume, exclusively devoted to this dramatic temple.

My first personal knowledge of the Bowery Theatre was about twenty-seven or eight years ago, when I was a lad of fifteen.

FIVE OR SIX LUSTRUMS SINCE.

Just before that period, after a dreary season of depression and just keeping of heads above water, the fortunes of the Bowery were suddenly raised by the bringing out of the thrilling melodrama of "Jonathan Bradford, or the Murder at the Roadside Inn," which filled the house week after week, and had an astonishing and long, long run.² This started the Bowery on a career of prosperity that continued for fifteen or twenty years.

"The Golden Farmer" was another very successful piece, a season or two afterwards.³ (But this last drew better at the little Franklin Theatre,⁴ down in the square—on account of the real genius of the acting in it of William and John Sefton.)⁵

Then there was "MazepppaMazeppa" (then span-new and well-played), with Gale and a well-trained young horse.⁶ Also, "The Last Days of Pompeii," a capital melodrama.⁷ In this, Hamblin⁸ was great as Arbaces the Egyptian, Ingersoll⁹ as a gladiator, Thorne¹⁰ as a young Pompeian noble, and Mrs. Flynn¹¹ as Nydia, a blind flower girl. These, and other new and successful pieces, and the regular routine of Shakspearean plays, &c., ranged through four or five years, after the production of "Jonathan Bradford."

HOBBLEDEHOY RECOLLECTIONS.

All these are among my hobbledehoy dramatic reminiscences. I saw them all from the time I was fourteen till seventeen or eighteen. At first, I remember, I used to go with other boys, my pals; but I afterward preferred to go alone, I was so absorbed in the performance, and disliked any one to distract my attention. Let me confess how I crammed all that range of time as an insatiable romance-devourer (from a circulating library) and a perpetual theatre-goer. But it was very pleasant. Illusions of youth! Dreams of a child of the Bowery!

I used to go early and get a good seat in the pit. It was no such pit as it afterwards became, although the Bowery always showed more democracy and better animal specimens than the Park Theatre (with which house I was perfectly familiar).¹² The dark green curtain before me—that curtain of curious stuff, like Chinese crape! What a mimic world of heroes and heroines, and loves, and murders, and plots, and hopes, and all which swells and pants in a hobblehoy's​ imagination, that same curtain signified and formed a wall to by-and-by make way for! It used to go up (for I noticed every little thing) with quick and graceful leaps, like the hopping of a rabbit—and to come down at the end of the play like a quick green waterfall. It always gave me an odd delight to see the manner of this curtain's motion. I liked it better than the heavy, slow, dignified rolling up or down of the painted canvas of the Park, which I remember used to strike the stage always with a bounce—ridiculous, like some recalling jolt or nudge, after the pathetic conclusion of tragedy.

BOOTH'S RICHARD (IN HIS PRIME).

I recollect with vivid distinctness, somewhere along this time, one of old Booth's performances—his great Richard—on a night that formed an era in the experience of theatre-goers, for years afterwards, and indeed down to this day.¹³ For you may yet hear that night spoken of among the elder New Yorkers, and some of the best specimens of them, too; for the capacious house was crowded (it was Tom Flynn's benefit) with an audience of as good men as the city could turn out.

The prices of the Bowery were then seventy-five cents to the boxes, and thirty-seven to the pit. It was a favorite resort for young New York, of a somewhat different type from the young New York of the present day.

Booth at that period was in his pride and prime. He was irregular, it is true; that is, he did not always act with sustained perfection, from beginning to end of the play—for he had strange moods and caprices, and followed them. But when the elements were propitious, and he gave the audience what he was capable of throughout, you saw and heard something to be remembered for your lifetime, and to give you new standards, and the highest ones, of art. And it was such a performance, that took place here at the Old Bowery, some twenty-four or five years ago (or a trifle more or less).

I had a good seat in the middle of the pit. The audience was electric—just the kind to call out a great actor's best. He was well supported.

Ingersoll played Richmond. (What middle-aged New Yorker, of the east side of the town, but remembers young, manly yet, boyish Ingersoll—Hamblin's pet? And how he used to play such parts as Pythias, to Forrest's Damon? and the brother of Spartacus, in the "Gladiator?" and Cassius, in "Julius Caesar?" For such were the plays, and finely sustained, that we used to go and see at the Old Bowery.)

Charley Thorne, who was then young and strong, and rosy and full of fire, played Tressel. The character has but one speech—but that's a tip-top chance. I am not sure but it was Thorne's debut in New York. At any rate, I remember that in that speech, to the old king in the garden, he came upon the audience, and apparently upon the actors too, like a sudden revelation—he threw into it the power of an avalanche, and very great pathos. I recollect the audience rewarded him with two distinct rounds of applause; and from that moment he was in the front rank of the Bowery favorites.

Of Booth himself, from beginning to end, he not only seized and awed the crowded houses, but all the performers, without exception. It was one of those achievements of acting, in a certain sense, too good and too powerful for the ordinary reward of hand-clapping or bravos of applause. The dream-scene, the night before the battle, the fight with Richmond, and the fierce and demoniac death, were all incomparable.

A hundred times since, off and on, in one place or another, I have met persons who were there—who saw Booth's great Richard, on the occasion of Tom Flynn's benefit; and upon comparing notes I have found that the acting of the man that night produced the same ineradicable impression upon them all. And some of them had seen the greatest actors of the British or Continental theatres.

COMPARISONS, ETC.

I went to see the old man's son, Wilkes,¹⁴ play his Richard, during the engagement a month or so ago at Mary Provost's theatre, having heard the said Wilkes' acting praised.¹⁵ It is about as much like his father's, as the wax bust of Henry Clay, in the window down near Howard street, a few blocks below the theatre, is like the genuine orator in the Capitol, when his best electricity was flashing alive in him and out of him.

From what I have gleaned of old stage-frequenters, here and abroad, I have made up my mind that in a comparison of J. B. Booth and Edmund Kean,¹⁶ the advantage of the latter mainly was that he was almost uniformly good; but that Booth, with his fitful flashes, though soaring very high, often failed to keep up to his own mark. Yet, at times, at rare times, Booth probably played beyond all actors that ever lived.

TOM HAMBLIN.

One little paragraph must be specially devoted to him. He was best in such characters as Coriolanus, for instance. He was of the Kemble school,¹⁷ and his large size, good build, and classic physiognomy, told greatly, of course, in all his performances. His fortunes in his management ranged through the usual ups and downs, but as a favorite actor with the public Hamblin held out well to the last. But a little while before his death, at quite an advanced age, he played a very successful and drawing engagement.

JOHN R. SCOTT.¹⁸

There are many, and good judges, too, who always preferred Scott to Forrest. They resembled each other in physique and in style of acting; but Scott had, in the sentimental passages, a more winning voice and more magnetism with his audience.

Perhaps some old frequenter of the Bowery will remember Scott, some twenty-five years ago, in a piece called "The Sledge-Driver,"¹⁹ the scene laid in Russia, and the plot somewhat like that of "The Lady of Lyons."²⁰ It was full of manly tenderness, and Scott acted it always to admiration. He was tip-top also in nautical characters.

OTHER PERFORMERS.

Among others that I recall of the Bowery in those times are, among the women, Mrs. Pritchard (with her unsurpassed Lady Macbeth, and her Margaret in "La Tour de Nesle");²¹ Mrs. McLean,²² Mrs. Herring,²³ Miss Woodhull,²⁴ and the plentiful-sized Mrs. Stickney;²⁵ and among men, Jackson (afterward manager), George Jones, &c.

I see I have so far forgotten to mention Miss Medina, the authoress, whose pieces were always good and successful, and who was afterwards the second Mrs. Hamblin.²⁶ Then there was Mrs. Shaw.²⁷

FAREWELL, OLD BOWERY!

But nearly all I have named are dead, and the old theatre seems, these current days and nights, to sulk and mourn for them. I went by there the other night, and it was all gloomy enough. No more crowds around, no gas-clusters beaming down light in showered plenty, no more prosperous peanut stands.

So farewell, Old Bowery Theatre; and, for our next, let us take in hand the "German element," namely lager bier, and the scenes and persons clustering round it.