by John Jakes
Although Margaret had been sick in bed with a spring cold at the time, Eleanor remembered that her father had felt it necessary to fib about where they were going. A travel lecture, he said. Eleanor too had been sick the night before the excursion, though for another reason. Sheer excitement.
Even today, she could vividly recall the evening. Booth’s Theater had three stone towers. A flag bearing the name of the establishment flew from the central one. She’d never seen anything more magnificent, especially with the calcium lights playing over the exterior.
Gideon had purchased the most expensive seats—a front box—and to reach it they had to climb the impressive main staircase. Halfway up, they paused before the marble bust of the celebrated actor who had trained three sons to carry on the family tradition. Gideon explained that in his day, Junius Brutus Booth had been famous all over the world. Eleanor’s eyes were huge as she gripped her father’s hand and hung on every word.
Booth Senior had been afflicted with a fondness for liquor, Gideon said. And he suffered from mental instability. Perhaps that explained why one of his sons, John Wilkes, had committed a terrible act of murder at Ford’s Theater down in Washington. Still, Eleanor had never beheld such a noble countenance as she saw on that pedestal.
Nor had she ever seen or heard anything that made her spine prickle the way Edwin Booth’s performance did.
As Antony, he hit his peak when he denounced the traitors. He punctuated his oration with an abrupt leap from the rostrum. The startling bit of business made the audience gasp. When the speech was over, Booth got an ovation.
The magical images of the towers, the flying flag, the staircase, the painted scenery, Booth’s burning eyes and spellbinding personality all blended together to form one shining memory which Eleanor treasured like a gem.
She couldn’t forget the aftermath, either: the screaming match four days later. Searching her father’s coat pockets on some pretext or other, Margaret had found a crumpled playbill, and had confronted him with it.
From that birthday came Eleanor’s fascination with all things theatrical. Her father had never again taken her to a performance, because Margaret was so adamantly opposed to it. The upper tiers of New York playhouses now had liquor bars, and Margaret claimed the denizens of the galleries were all licentious sots. A strange accusation to come from one addicted to mysterious “tonics,” Eleanor thought. But she didn’t argue the point.
Her friend Charlie Whittaker had attended the theater dozens of times. He gleefully admitted to having sat right up there among those gallery denizens. And yes, they did do sinful, hair-raising things during a performance, though he wouldn’t reveal specifics. But of course, he concluded with a worldly shrug, only the performances and not the morality of the players or the audiences mattered.
Enforced isolation from the theaters only heightened Eleanor’s interest. At Miss Holsham’s she asked to be assigned Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies, then other dramatic classics, as extra reading in literature. In 1874 she’d devoted a good many weeks to thinking about her future, and had finally decided she would study to become an actress.
She began practicing a variety of parts, declaiming them for Will or for her mirror until her mother found and confiscated each playbook, as she’d done this week with Lear. Then Charlie, who was the older brother of one of her classmates at Miss Holsham’s, would buy her another with money Eleanor provided from her allowance.
She really wished she could understand the basis for her mother’s objections. Margaret didn’t deny she’d enjoyed plays as a young woman. Eleanor often asked herself whether Margaret’s change of heart could have something to do with Eleanor’s own paternal grandmother—Gideon’s mother—Fan Kent of Virginia, and her second husband.
After bearing three sons and then divorcing their abolitionist father—Grandpa Jephtha, the cigar-smoking minister Eleanor remembered dimly—Fan had remarried. She’d wed a Southern actor named Edward Lamont. Eleanor had heard Papa discuss Lamont once or twice. But not in detail, and never with a smile. Lamont had died during the war. Papa never said how. Had there been tragic circumstances which had somehow influenced her mother? Eleanor supposed she’d never know. She usually had nerve when the occasion required it, but she’d never have enough nerve to ask Margaret about Lamont.
Still, there was an actor in the family, if only by marriage. She could take that as an encouraging sign.
It had also occurred to Eleanor that the approval an audience expressed through applause was nothing less than a form of love. A very safe form. It was at once intense yet distant, without the potential for hurt that people evidently experienced when they fell in love with one another. The love that poured across footlights at the end of a play could be a highly acceptable substitute for romantic love, she’d decided. All the more reason to build a career on the stage.
Raindrops splattered against her cheeks, drawing her out of her reverie and making her aware of the congestion of carriages and delivery vehicles all around. She recognized Broadway, a little below Madison Square. They weren’t even close to Union Square, and it must be past four already. She’d never arrive in time!
The calash stopped frequently, Mills shouting at the stalled conveyances ahead. He wasn’t the only one. Dozens of other carriage and hack drivers filled the air with demands, pleas and oaths. The avenue was redolent with the odor of manure. At one point, a large heifer wandered between the stalled calash and a dray just ahead, the cow lowing and clanking her bell.
Eleanor fidgeted. Finally they got under way again. After being caught in three more hub-to-hub jams they reached Tenth Street, and the north entrance of A. T. Stewart and Company, the city’s best retail establishment.
I’ll find a boy to hold Pete, Mills said, “Then I’ll meet you right over by those doors. It’ll take me no more than five minutes.”
“Mills, if I delay one second longer, I’ll never get through the shopping list Mama gave me. You must let me go by myself.”
The coachman nearly fell off the seat. “By yourself? Why, Mrs. Kent’d flog me.”
She jumped down.
“She’ll never know if you don’t tell.”
“Now see here, I can’t—”
Eleanor had been rooting in her handbag. She had found a ten-cent piece. “Have a bucket of beer, Mr. Mills. You like beer, don’t you?” She knew he did; she smelled it on him often. She laid the coin on his knee. “Have a cool drink and I’ll meet you by this very same door when the store closes.”
Flabbergasted, Mills stared at the coin and then at the slender, dark-haired girl who in his opinion would be a genuine beauty when she grew to full womanhood. But she was also far too independent for her own good. Fancy inviting a grown man to have a growler of beer!
He craved the beer, right enough. But to have it purchased for him by a mere child—and one he was supposed to be looking after—
“No, Miss Eleanor, I absolutely cannot—”
Too late. She’d already whirled and raced across the sidewalk and vanished into Stewart’s. He snatched the dime off his knee so it wouldn’t fall and be lost in the gutter. He’d done all he could. And waste was a sin.
ii
Stewart’s dry goods store occupied an entire city block bounded by Ninth and Tenth Streets and Broadway and the Bowery, the extension of lower Fourth Avenue. Eleanor fought her way through the crowded aisles and reached one of the doorways on the Bowery side. She strained for a glimpse of Charlie Whittaker waiting in the vestibule. Suddenly she felt like crying.
He wasn’t there.
He’d gone ahead without her. She dashed a few tears from her eyes and stamped her foot. Crying was weak-kneed. And it certainly wasn’t fair to blame Charlie because she was so la—
She caught her breath. Charlie was outside! The crowds had hidden him. He was pacing up and down, alternately studying the sky and his handsome railroad watch.
“Charlie, here I am!” she cried as she rushed to him.
; “Well! I was just about to leave for the Academy. I’d come to the conclusion that your mother had penned you up again.”
Each sentence was declaimed rather than spoken, with breathy emphasis added in unexpected places and punctuation supplied by sweeping gestures. For Charlie Whittaker, age sixteen, every moment and every commonplace conversation was an opportunity to create drama.
Charlie was a soft, round boy with a pale skin, a likeable, cow-eyed face and cowlicked hair that refused to stay in place no matter how much Macassar oil he applied. He snatched Eleanor’s hand.
“Come along, for heaven’s sake, or the matinee will be over and Salvini gone before we get there. You’re so damned late, I shouldn’t tell you my good news.”
Man of the world that he was, Charlie frequently chose to jolt his sister’s schoolmate by employing selected profanities. He got the desired effect with his use of damned. Eleanor’s oval eyes grew huge.
Charlie played to that shock. “For heaven’s sake, Eleanor! What are you going to do when you take a role someday and it requires that you speak a curse word?”
“Women’s parts don’t require that, Charlie.”
“Just you wait. The way the playwrights are starting to treat modern subjects—it won’t be long.” He tugged her hand again, but she protested.
“I have to start on the shopping list before I go.”
“I’ll help you when we get back. Promise. Now come on!”
He sounded not merely dramatic but a trifle angry. Yet she hesitated.
Eleanor looked up to Charlie as someone far more experienced and knowledgeable. He was two years older—practically an adult—and his parents actually encouraged his interest in acting.
But Margaret would be furious if she failed to obtain all the items on the shopping list. She’d question Eleanor about the reason for the failure until Eleanor confessed. Eleanor had never been able to lie successfully. She knew it was wrong, and on the rare occasions when circumstances pushed her into trying it, her eyes and her red face always gave her away.
This time Charlie’s insistence won out over fear of her mother. They hurried north along the Bowery to Fourteenth, then turned east toward the looming façade of the Academy of Music in the next block. Eleanor was nearly out of breath, Charlie walked so fast. She finally remembered to ask, “What’s your good news? You said you had some.”
She could actually see his chest inflate. “Indeed I do. The Booth Association has accepted me for membership.”
“Oh, Charlie!” She squeezed his arm, overjoyed.
He turned pink. One thing in which Charlie Whittaker did not seem interested was familiarity with the opposite sex. It actually appeared to embarrass him. Generally, Eleanor was glad of that. She was with him often, and thus didn’t have to worry about him trying to drag her into fumbling embraces. On the other hand, his very predictability made him somewhat dull. Charlie never aroused those curious and shameful sensations the sight of other young men—perfect strangers!—could sometimes generate within her.
“I’m so happy for you, Charlie,” she went on. “When will you go to your first meeting?”
“Next Tuesday night.” He pointed north along a cross street where they paused. “The group rents Hutter Hall, just two blocks up Irving Place. I’ve only met the president and vice president. But if the others are just like them, it will be a grand group.”
“Did you ask about female members?”
“They have none.”
Eleanor uttered a tiny “Oh.”
“Don’t despair. They invite young ladies of talent to attend meetings and fill feminine roles. You’re welcome to come as my guest any time.”
It was the chance she’d longed for—entrée, however modest, into theatrical activities. She could barely contain her enthusiasm.
“Do you mean that, Charlie?”
“Most assuredly, young lady. You must come and read. And not merely something from the Bard, or those wheezy old Greeks. A modern role. Something by that fellow Ibsen, perhaps. The latest gossip from Norway says he’s all through writing poetic trash like Peer Gynt and is planning some totally new kind of drama that will scorch an audience right out of its seats. That’s what we want, eh?”
“Oh, yes.” Her eyes shone again. Then the corners of her mouth turned down. “But Mama would never let me go out on a weekday evening. Not the way she’s feeling lately.”
He was dismayed by her hurt expression. “Maybe she would, Eleanor. At any rate, you mustn’t give up. You have a first-class talent. And remember, people in the theater are free spirits. They’re not bound by the laws that shop girls and ribbon clerks have to obey. Free spirits can always find a way to escape from a cage.”
Smiling in an encouraging way, he flung his chubby arms around her and gave her a quick, brotherly hug. Charlie didn’t mind physical contact with a girl when he initiated it for purposes of friendship only. Eleanor was cheered by his reassurance, but she felt nothing else—certainly no excitement.
She was truly pleased for him, though. He’d gotten into one of the best amateur acting associations in New York. Small, but with a fine reputation. A great many such clubs flourished in rental quarters all over town. They usually restricted their membership to males. Their occasional productions were done with minimal scenery, or none at all, and were financed by members’ dues. Most of the associations were named in honor of popular actors.
Charlie pointed to the line of carriages at the Fourteenth Street curb in front of the Academy of Music. It had originally been constructed as an opera house, but New York wouldn’t support a full season of such heavy fare, so concerts and limited engagements by famous theatrical personalities were required to keep the auditorium lit.
“The hacks and carriages are already here,” Charlie said. “That means we arrived just in the nick. Follow me to the actors’ entrance. I know right where it is. I’ve been here a hundred times.”
The declaration was emphasized by a gesture that nearly knocked her hat off. Eleanor was sure Charlie had exaggerated. It was a forgivable fault, but she wondered whether it was common to most actors.
Excitement mounted within her as they crossed Irving Place. She glanced toward the main doors and noticed a boy of seventeen or eighteen watching her.
He had black hair, and one of the handsomest faces she’d ever seen. It was redeemed from prettiness by his cocky smile. He wore a duck jacket with the name of the hall stitched on the front; he’d been sweeping the walk with a cornhusk broom. Now he was inspecting her—and not merely her face. His gaze wandered down her throat to her breasts. What he saw, he approved.
The cocky smile spread warmth through her middle. It thrilled her and frightened her at the same time. But it really wasn’t polite of him to stare at a girl so brazenly. Probably he was a Latin, like the hot-blooded Tommaso Salvini.
The boy suddenly gave her a big wink. She gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked; he’d been looking elsewhere.
“Why—why”—the main doors of the Academy abruptly opened outward; the boy with the broom darted to one side as a rush of theatergoers emerged into the gray afternoon—“you were right about the time,” she finished in a lame way.
The boy was quickly hidden by the departing patrons. Many were scowling. Eleanor wasn’t surprised. The attraction at the Academy was a three-week run of Othello with the celebrated Italian tragedian, Salvini, in the title role.
The same production had been staged in ’73, and had caused a sensation. During the climactic murder scene, Salvini’s staging called for him to seize his leading lady, Signora Piamonti—no American actress would play Desdemona opposite him—hurl her on a low bed and fall on top of her, snorting and growling while she writhed beneath him. Every critic in town had been outraged. Charlie said the Tribune had called Salvini’s initial production “carnal,” and Eleanor knew the Union’s drama writer, William Dawes, had attacked the revival as “a degrading and unprincipled exhibition of unbridled l
ust performed solely for profit.” Naturally, with notices like that, both the first run and the revival had done turnaway business—though it was clear many members of the matinee audience had been angered by what they’d seen.
Charlie led her to a cul-de-sac behind the Academy. The actors’ door was at the end. The narrow space was already filled with well-wishers. And the crowd grew. All at once Eleanor realized she had nothing on which Signor Salvini might sign his name.
Charlie was better prepared. He’d brought an old handbill from Wallack’s Theater. He tore it in half and said he’d share his pencil.
“Here they are!” someone screamed. Eleanor thought she’d faint with excitement as the great actor emerged. He was incredibly good looking, with a mane of dark hair, deep-set eyes and a blazing white smile.
Salvini walked slowly and majestically down four steps into the throng of admirers. All of them were clapping and shouting his name. They began thrusting bits of paper and pencils at him. Eleanor got elbowed and stepped on. She didn’t care. She was mesmerized by the actor’s handsome face—so enraptured, she never noticed the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, or the bulge of fat at his waist when he swept his cloak back over his shoulder, the better to sign his name.
Despite Charlie’s appearance of softness, he was determined, nimble, and, on this occasion, ferociously strong. He elbowed the bellies and ribs of older men—and women—till he got the actor’s signature. Then, shrieking, “Take it, Eleanor! Give me yours!” he performed a miraculous exchange of papers in the surging crowd and secured a second signature for her.
None too soon, either. Salvini waved, abandoned twenty or thirty other autograph seekers and escaped into his carriage at the end of the cul-de-sac.
“Next to Edwin Booth’s performance, that was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever seen!” Eleanor clutched the signed scrap of handbill to her breast. “Thank you, Charlie. Thank you!”