Show Boat

by Edna Ferber

  There were few theatrical booking offices in Chicago and these were of doubtful reputation. Magnolia knew nothing of their location, though she thought, vaguely, that they probably would be somewhere in the vicinity of Clark, Madison, Randolph. She was wise enough in the ways of the theatre to realize that these shoddy agencies could do little for her. She had heard Ravenal speak of the variety houses and museums on State Street and Clark and Madison. The word “vaudeville” was just coming into use. In company with her husband she had even visited Kohl & Middleton’s Museum—that smoke-filled comfortable shabby variety house on Clark, where the admission was ten cents. It had been during that first Chicago trip, before Kim’s birth. Women seldom were seen in the audience, but Ravenal, for some reason, had wanted her to get a glimpse of this form of theatrical entertainment. Here Weber and Fields had played for fifteen dollars a week. Here you saw the funny Irishman, Eddie Foy; and May Howard had sung and danced.

  “They’ll probably build big expensive theatres some day for variety shows,” Ravenal had predicted.

  The performance was, Magnolia thought, much like that given as the concert after the evening’s bill on the Cotton Blossom. “A whole evening of that?” she said. Years later the Masonic Temple Roof was opened for vaudeville.

  “There!” Ravenal had triumphantly exclaimed. “What did I tell you! Some of those people get three and four hundred a week, and even more.” Here the juggling Agoust family threw plates and lighted lamps and tables and chairs and ended by keeping aloft a whole dinner service and parlour suite, with lamps, soup tureens, and plush chairs passing each other affably in midair without mishap. Jessie Bartlett Davis sang, sentimentally, Tuh-rue LOVE, That’s The Simple Charm That Opens Every Woman’s Heart.

  At the other end of the scale were the all-night restaurants with a stage at the rear where the waiters did an occasional song and dance, or where some amateur tried to prove his talent. Between these were two or three variety shows of decent enough reputation though frequented by the sporting world of Chicago. Chief of these was Jopper’s Varieties, a basement theatre on Wabash supposed to be copied after the Criterion in London. There was a restaurant on the ground floor. A flight of marble steps led down to the underground auditorium. Here new acts were sometimes tried out. Lillian Russell, it was said, had got her first hearing at Jopper’s. For some reason, Magnolia had her mind fixed on this place. She made straight for it, probably as unbusinesslike a performer as ever presented herself for a hearing. It was now well on toward mid-afternoon. Already the early December dusk was gathering, aided by the Chicago smoke and the lake fog. Her fright at Hetty Chilson’s door was as nothing compared to the sickening fear that filled her now. She was physically and nervously exhausted. The false energy of the morning had vanished. She tried to goad herself into fresh courage by thoughts of Kim at the convent; of Parthy’s impending visitation. As she approached the place on Wabash she resolved not to pass it, weakly. If she passed it but once she never would have the bravery to turn and go in. She and Ravenal had driven by many times on their way to the South Side races. It was in this block. It was four doors away. It was here. She wheeled stiffly, like a soldier, and went in. The restaurant was dark and deserted. One dim light showed at the far end. The tablecloths were white patches in the grayness. But a yellow path of light flowed up the stairway that led to the basement, and she heard the sound of a piano. She descended the swimming marble steps, aware of the most alarming sensation in her legs—rather, of no sensation in them. It was as though no solid structure of bone and flesh and muscle lay in the region between her faltering feet and her pounding heart.

  There was a red-carpeted foyer; a little ticket window; the doors of the auditorium stood open. She put out a hand, blindly, to steady herself against the door jamb. She looked into the theatre; the badly lighted empty theatre, with its rows and rows of vacant seats; its stage at the far end, the curtain half raised, the set a crudely painted interior. As she looked there came over her—flowed over her like balm—a feeling of security, of peace, of home-coming. Here were accustomed surroundings. Here were the very sights and smells and sounds she knew best. Those men with their hats on the backs of their heads and their cigars waggling comfortably and their feet on the chair in front of them might have been Schultzy, Frank, Ralph, Pa Means. Evidently a song was being tried out in rehearsal. The man at the piano was hammering it and speaking the words in a voice as hoarse and unmusical as a boat whistle coming through the fog. It was a coon song full of mah babys and choo-choos and Alabam’s.

  Magnolia waited quietly until he had come to a full stop.

  A thin pale young man in a striped shirt and a surprising gray derby who had been sitting with his wooden kitchen chair tipped up against the proscenium now brought his chair down on all fours.

  “You was with Haverly’s, you say?”

  “I cer’nly was. Ask Jim. Ask Sam. Ask anybody.”

  “Well, go back to ’em is what I say. If you ever was more than a singin’ waiter then I’m new to the show business.” He took his coat from where it lay on top of the piano. “That’s all for to-day, ain’t it, Jo?” He addressed a large huddle whose thick shoulders and round head could just be seen above the back of a second-row centre seat. The fat huddle rose and stretched and yawned, and grunted an affirmative.

  Magnolia came swiftly down the aisle. She looked up at the thin young man; he stared at her across the footlight gutter.

  “Will you let me try some songs?” she said.

  “Who’re you?” demanded the young man.

  “My name is Magnolia Ravenal.”

  “Never heard of it. What do you do?”

  “I sing. I sing Negro songs with a banjo.”

  “All right,” said the thin young man, resignedly. “Get out your banjo and sing us one.”

  “I haven’t got one.”

  “Haven’t got one what?”

  “One—a banjo.”

  “Well, you said you—didn’ you just say you sung nigger songs with a banjo!”

  “I haven’t got it with me. Isn’t there one?” Actually, until this moment, she had not given the banjo a thought. She looked about her in the orchestra pit.

  “Well, for God’s sakes!” said the gray derby.

  The hoarse-voiced singer who had just met with rebuff and who was shrugging himself into a shabby overcoat now showed himself a knight. He took an instrument case from the piano top. “Here,” he said. “Take mine, sister.”

  Magnolia looked to left, to right. “There.” The fat man in the second row jerked a thumb toward the right stage box back of which was the stage door. Magnolia passed swiftly up the aisle; was on the stage. She was quite at ease, relaxed, at home. She seated herself in one of the deal chairs; crossed her knees.

  “Take your hat off,” commanded the pasty young man.

  She removed her veil and hat. A sallow big-eyed young woman, too thin, in a well-made suit and a modish rather crumpled shirtwaist and nothing of the look of the stage about her. She thumbed the instrument again. She remembered something dimly, dimly, far, far back; far back and yet very recent; this morning. “Don’t smile too often. But if you ever want anything …”

  She smiled. The thin young man did not appear overwhelmed. She threw back her head then as Jo had taught her, half closed her eyes, tapped time with the right foot, smartly. Imitative in this, she managed, too, to get into her voice that soft and husky Negro quality which for years she had heard on river boats, bayous, landings. I got a wings. You got a wings. All God’s chillun got a wings.

  “Sing another,” said the old young man. She sang the one she had always liked best.

  “Go down, Moses,

  ’Way down in Egypt land,

  Tell ole Pharaoh,

  To let my people go.”

  Husky, mournful, melodious voice. Tapping foot. Rolling eye.

  Silence.

  “What kind of a coon song do you call that?” inquired the gray derby.

 
“Why, it’s a Negro melody—they sing them in the South.”

  “Sounds like a church hymn to me.” He paused. His pale shrewd eyes searched her face. “You a nigger?”

  The unaccustomed red surged into Magnolia’s cheeks, dyed her forehead, her throat, painfully. “No, I’m not a—nigger.”

  “Well, you cer’nly sing like one. Voice and—I don’t know—way you sing. Ain’t that right, Jo?”

  “Cer’nly is,” agreed Jo.

  The young man appeared a trifle embarrassed, which made him look all the younger. Years later, in New York, Kim was to know him as one of the most powerful theatrical producers of his day. And he was to say to Kim, “Ravenal, h’m? Why, say, I knew your mother when she was better-looking than you’ll ever be. And smart! Say, she tried to sell me a coon song turn down in Jopper’s in the old days, long before your time. I thought they were hymns and wouldn’t touch them. Seems they’re hot stuff now. Spirituals, they call them. You hear ’em in every show on Broadway. ’S fact! Got to go to church to get away from ’em. Well, live and learn’s what I say.”

  It was through this shrewd, tough, stage-wise boy that Magnolia had her chance. He did not understand or like her Negro folk songs then, but he did recognize the quality she possessed. And it was due to this precociousness in him that Magnolia, a little more than a year later, was singing American coon songs in the Masonic Roof bill, her name on the programme with those of Cissie Loftus and Marshall Wilder and the Four Cohans.

  But now she stood up, the scarlet receding from her face, leaving it paler than before. Silently she handed the husky singer his banjo; tried to murmur a word of thanks; choked. She put on her hat, adjusted her veil.

  “Here, wait a minute, sister. No offense. I’ve seen ’em lighter’n you. Your voice sounds like a—ain’t that the truth, Jo?” Actually distressed, he appealed again to his unloquacious ally in the third row.

  “Sure does,” agreed Jo.

  The unfortunate hoarse-voiced man who had loaned her the banjo now departed. He seemed to bear no rancour. Magnolia, seeing this, tried again to smile on the theory that, if he could be game, then so, too, could she. And this time, it was the real Magnolia Ravenal smile of which the newspapers made much in the years to come. The ravishing Ravenal smile, they said (someone having considered that alliterative phrase rather neat).

  Seeing it now the young showman exclaimed, without too much elegance, “Lookit that, Jo!” Then, to Magnolia: “Listen, sister. You won’t get far with those. Your songs are too much like church tunes, see? They’re for a funeral, not a theaytre. And that’s a fact. But I like the way you got of singing them. How about singing me a real coon song? You know. Hello, Mah Baby! or something like that.”

  “I don’t know any. These are the only songs I know.”

  “Well, for——! Listen. You learn some real coon songs and come back, see, in a week. Here. Try these over at home, see.” He selected some song sheets from the accommodating piano top. She took them, numbly.

  She was again in the cold moist winter street. Quite dark now. She walked over to State Street and took a northbound car. The door of their room on the third floor was locked, and when she had opened it she felt that the room was empty. Not empty merely; deserted. Before she had lighted the gas jet she had an icy feeling of desolation, of impending and piled-up tragedy at the close of a day that already toppled with it. Her gaze went straight to the dresser.

  An envelope was there. Her name on it in Ravenal’s neat delicate hand. Magnolia. Darling, I am going away for a few weeks … return when your mother is gone … or send for you … six hundred dollars for you on shelf under clock … Kim … convent … enough … weeks … darling … love … best … always …

  She never saw him again.

  She must have been a little light-headed by this time, for certainly no deserted wife in her right senses would have followed the course that Magnolia Ravenal now took. She read the note again, her lips forming some of the words aloud. She walked to the little painted shelf over the wash stand. Six hundred. That was right. Six hundred. Perhaps this really belonged to that woman, too. She couldn’t go there again. Even if it did, she couldn’t go there again.

  She left the room, the gas flaring. She hurried down Clark Street, going a few blocks south. Into one of the pawnshops. That was nothing new. The man actually greeted her by name. “Good-evening, Mrs. Ravenal. And what can I do for you?”

  “A banjo.”

  “What?”

  “I want to buy a banjo.”

  She bargained for it, shrewdly. When she tendered a hundred-dollar bill in payment the man’s face fell. “Oh, now, Mrs. Ravenal, I gave you that special price because you——”

  “I’ll go somewhere else.”

  She got it. Hurried back with it. Into her room again. She had not even locked the door. Five of the six one-hundred-dollar bills lay as she had tossed them on the dresser. A little crazy, certainly. Years, years afterward she actually could relate the fantastic demoniac events of this day that had begun at four in the morning and ended almost twenty hours later. It made a very good story, dramatic, humorous, tragic. Kim’s crowd thought it was wonderful.

  She took off her veil and hat and jacket. Her black hair lay in loose limp ugly loops about her face. She opened one of the sheets of music—Whose Black Baby Are You?—and propped it up against the centre section of the old-fashioned dresser. She crossed her knees. Cradled the banjo. One foot tapped the time rhythmically. An hour. Two hours.

  A knock at the door. The landlady, twelve hours fustier than she had been that morning. “It ain’t me, Mis’ Ravenal, but Downstairs says she can’t sleep for the noise. She’s that sickly one. She says she pounded but you didn’t——”

  “I’ll stop. I didn’t hear her. I’m sorry.”

  “For me you could go on all night.” The landlady leaned bulkily and sociably against the door. “I’m crazy about music. I never knew you was musical.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Magnolia. “Very.”

  XVIII

  I WAS educated,” began Kim Ravenal, studying her reflection in the mirror, and deftly placing a dab of rouge on either ear lobe, “in Chicago, by the dear Sisters there in St. Agatha’s Convent.”

  She then had the grace to snigger, knowing well what the young second assistant dramatic critic would say to that. She was being interviewed in her dressing room at the Booth between the second and third acts of Needles and Pins. She had opened in this English comedy in October. Now it was April. Her play before this had run a year. Her play before that had run two years. Her play—well, there was nothing new to be said in an interview with Kim Ravenal, no matter how young or how dramatic the interviewer. There was, therefore, a touch of mischievous malice in this trite statement of hers. She knew what the bright young man would say in protest.

  He said it. He said: “Oh, now, Pete’s sake, Miss Ravenal! Quit kidding.”

  “But I was. I can’t help it. I was! Ask my mother. Ask my husband. Ask anybody. Educated by the dear Sisters in the con——”

  “Oh, I know it! So does everybody else who reads the papers. And you know as well as I do that that educated-in-a-convent stuff is rubber-stamp. It ceased to be readable publicity when Mrs. Siddons was a gal. Now be reasonable. Kaufman wants a bright piece about you for the Sunday page.”

  “All right. You ask intelligent questions and I’ll answer them.” Kim then leaned forward to peer intently at her own reflection in the dressing-room mirror with its brilliant border of amber lights. She reached for the rabbit’s foot and applied to her cheeks that nervous and redundant film of rouge which means that the next curtain is four minutes away.

  He was a very cagey New York second assistant dramatic critic, who did not confine his talents to second-assistant dramatic criticism. The pages of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker (locally known as the Fly Papers) frequently accepted first (assistant dramatic) aid from his pen. And, naturally, he had written one of those expressionistic plays so
daringly different that three intrepid managers had decided not to put it on after all. Embittered, the second assistant dramatic critic threatened sardonically to get a production through the ruse of taking up residence in Prague or Budapest, changing his name to Capek or Vajda, and sending his manuscript back to New York as a foreign play for them to fight over.

  Though she had now known New York for many years, there were phases of its theatrical life that still puzzled Kim’s mother, Magnolia Ravenal; and this was one of them. “The critics all seem to write plays,” she complained. “It makes the life of a successful actress like Kim so complicated. And the actors and actresses all lecture on the Trend of the Modern Drama at League Luncheons given at the Astor. I went to one once, with Kim. Blue voile ladies from Englewood. In my day critics criticized and actors acted.”