DRAMATIC MAGAZINES.
Notes on the stage and criticism of the drama had frequently been given place in the Port Folio, and Brown's Literary Magazine had published a farcical account of a "Theatrical Campaign" by Dick Buckram (Vol. I, p. 222), but the first magazine in America that attempted to take the theatre for its province was the Theatrical Censor, By a Citizen, first published in Philadelphia, December 9, 1805, and continued until November 17, 1806.
It was succeeded by the Theatrical Censor and Critical Miscellany, by Gregory Gryphon, Esq., Philadelphia, Saturday, October 11, 1806. Both these periodicals were issued during the theatrical season only, and the latter one was published in the interest of the theatres of Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston. It was published on Saturdays, and made sixteen pages octavo.
The second Theatrical Censor was followed by the Thespian Mirror, in New York, edited by John Howard Payne, then a youth of fourteen years. Still later came the Boston Magazine and the Polyanthus.
Matthew Carey introduced the third theatrical journal to the Philadelphians. It was the Thespian Monitor and Dramatick Miscellany, by Barnaby Bangbar, Esq. (1809). It was begun Saturday, November 25, 1809. There is but a single issue of this publication in the British Museum, and its contents are almost entirely biographical. This copy was the property of John Howard Payne.
In 1810 Samuel T. Bradford was the most enterprising publisher in Philadelphia. With his partner, Inskeep, he printed in 1812 the Port Folio. With the same partner he issued in January, 1810, the Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor. The editor was Stephen Cullen Carpenter, an Irishman, who had entered the East India service, where he remained fourteen years, retired with the rank of major, and returned to England. He wrote political pamphlets at the commencement of the French Revolution, and was made reporter of Debates in Commons by Edmund Burke. He reported the trial of Hastings, and came to America about 1800, and edited a magazine in South Carolina until he was engaged by Bradford and Inskeep to conduct the Mirror of Taste.
The magazine was of small octavo size, each number contained about one hundred pages, and was illustrated with a fine portrait of an actor or actress. The regular performances at the theatres were criticised with a good deal of pungency and acumen. It is said in the preface that "London boasts several periodical publications founded on the Drama alone. In America there has not yet been one of that description." In January, 1811, the magazine changed hands, and was published by Thomas Barton Zantzinger & Co., in the Shakespeare Buildings at Sixth and Chestnut Streets.
At the close of the first year of the magazine a dramatic event occurred that caused unusual excitement in Philadelphia, and led to important consequences. The great tragedian, George Frederick Cooke, whom Edmund Kean pronounced "the greatest of all actors, Garrick alone excepted," arrived in New York and appeared on 21st October, 1810, as Richard III before two thousand spectators in the Park Theatre.
It was then that he requested the great audience to stand while "God Save the King" should be played, and during the storm that followed calmly took snuff until the audience acceded to his demand.
From New York he proceeded to Philadelphia. No such acting had been seen in America. The excitement among play-going people was extraordinary. "He was to play Richard on a Monday night, and on Sunday evening the steps of the theatre were covered with groups of porters, and other men of the lower orders, prepared to spend the night there, that they might have the first chance of taking places in the boxes. I saw some take their hats off and put on night-caps. At ten o'clock the next morning the door was opened to them, and at that time the street in front of the theatre was impassable. When the rush took place, I saw a man spring up and catch hold of the iron which supported a lamp on one side of the door, by which he raised himself so as to run over the heads of the crowd into the theatre. Some of these fellows were hired by gentlemen to secure places, and others took boxes on speculation, sure of selling them at double or treble the regular prices. When the time came for opening the doors in the evening, the crowd was so tumultuous that it was evident there was little certainty that the holders of box tickets would obtain their places, and for ladies the attempt would be dangerous. A placard was therefore displayed, stating that all persons who had tickets would be admitted at the stage door before the front doors were opened. This notice soon drew such a crowd to the back of the theatre that when Cooke arrived he could not get in. He was on foot with Dunlap, one of the New York managers, and he was obliged to make himself known before he could be got through the press. 'I am like the man going to be hanged,' he said, 'who told the crowd they would have no fun unless they made way for him.'"
The writer of these lines was Charles Robert Leslie, who, on the night in question, occupied a place in the flies, and from that aerial station "first saw George Frederick Cooke, the best Richard since Garrick, and who has not been surpassed even by Edmund Kean" (Autobiography of C. R. Leslie, p. 18). Soon after this memorable night Leslie made a likeness of Cooke which attracted Bradford's attention, and a fund was speedily raised by subscription to enable the young artist to study painting two years in Europe. Armed with letters to English artists, Leslie sailed from New York on the 11th of November, 1811, in company with Mr. Inskeep. So slight a circumstance gained for him an introduction into the great world of West and Allston, and Landseer and Fuseli, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and gave to England and the world the treasures of the Vernon and the Sheepshank's collections.
In the preface to the Mirror of Taste (Vol. IV) the editors recognize the importance to them of the visit of Cooke. The magazine "rose into estimation just at that singular crisis when a great theatrical character unexpectedly visiting this country held a new light to the stage, and, pointing out the true dramatic representation, opened to our people a new train of thought, gave to the public mind a new spring, and imparted an impulse before unfelt, with a just and elegant direction to the general taste, roused the feelings and perceptions from listlessness and sloth, and infused into the best bosoms of the nation a generous spirit, which gave new life to the arts, quickened them into action and effect, called forth the infant genius of a Leslie to the public view, and bade breathing portraits start from the canvas of a Sully."[19]
The father of Charles Robert Leslie was Robert Leslie, who had been a watchmaker at Elktown, Md., and had removed to Philadelphia in 1786. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and a friend of Rush and Barton and Wistar and Physick. It was while residing in London that Charles Robert was born, October 19, 1794. An elder sister, Eliza, was born in 1787 in Philadelphia. She won a prize for a story, "Mrs. Washington Potts," in Godey's Lady's Book, and afterwards edited the Gift, an annual, and Miss Leslie's Magazine, a monthly publication (1843).
Blackwood's Magazine in 1824 congratulated America on C. R. Leslie's success. He never lost his profound respect and affection for Samuel Bradford, and named his second son after him. In the second year (1813) of Leslie's residence in London, Washington Allston's health became seriously affected, and he resolved to visit Bristol. Coleridge, who was affectionately attached to Allston, followed him thither. "The house was so full," writes Leslie, in his autobiographical recollections, "that the poet was obliged to share a double-bedded room with me. We were kept up late in consequence of the critical condition of Allston, and when we retired Coleridge, seeing a copy of Knickerbocker's History of New York which I had brought with me, lying on the table, took it up and began reading. I went to bed, and think he must have sat up the greater part of the night, for the next day he had nearly got through Knickerbocker. This was many years before it was published in England, and the work was, of course, entirely new to him. He was delighted with it" (p. 23).
The Analectic.—Washington Irving, who had met Allston in Rome in 1804, and who was for a time almost swerved from his literary purpose by his desire to become a painter, and with whose first literary triumph Coleridge thus became familiar, was also a Philadelphia editor. In 1809 E. Bronson and others began to print upon their Lorenzo press The Select Reviews and Spirit of the Foreign Magazines, edited by Samuel Ewing. The magazine was bought by Moses Thomas, in 1812, who changed its name to the Analectic. Irving was its editor in 1813-14. He contributed to it some of the essays of the "Sketch Book," "Traits of Indian Character," and "Philip of Pokanoket." He reviewed Robert Treat Paine, E. C. Holland, Paulding and Lord Byron, and wrote for it biographies of Lawrence, Burrows, Perry and Porter.[20]
Paulding and Verplanck wrote for the magazine, signing their articles "P." and "V."
William Darlington (1782-1863), Pennsylvanian, after whom was named the Darlingtonica California (a species of pitcher-plant), went to India as ship's surgeon in 1806, and published in the Analectic Magazine a sketch of his voyage called "Letters from Calcutta."
The Analectic contains a number of valuable portraits. The first lithograph ever made in America is in this magazine for July 1819. It represents a woodland scene—a flowing stream and a single house upon the bank. It was made by Bass Otis, who followed the suggestions of Judge Cooper and Dr. Brown, of Alabama. The drawing was made upon a stone from Munich, presented to the American Philosophical Society by Mr. Thomas Dobson, of Philadelphia. The Analectic Magazine was finally converted into the Literary Gazette and died one year later (December, 1821).[21]