A CHILD AMID THE THEATER
One evening, toward the close of the 'sixties, a plump, rosy-cheeked lad in his eighth year stood enthralled in the gallery of the old Niblo's Garden down on lower Broadway in New York. Far below him on the stage "The Black Crook"—the extravaganza that held all New York—unfolded itself in fascinating glitter and feminine loveliness. Deaf to his brother's entreaties to leave, and risking a parental scolding and worse, the boy remained transfixed until the final curtain. When he reached home he was not in the least disturbed by the uproar his absence had caused. Quite the contrary. His face beamed, his eyes shone. All he could say was:
"I have seen a play. It's wonderful!"
The boy was Charles Frohman, and such was his first actual experience in the theater—the institution that he was to dominate in later years with far-flung authority.
To write of the beginnings of his life is to become almost immediately the historian of some phase of amusement. He came from a family in whom the love of mimic art was as innate as the desire for sustenance.
About his parents was the glamour of a romance as tender as any he disclosed to delighted audiences in the world of make-believe. His father, Henry Frohman, was both idealist and dreamer. Born on the pleasant countryside that encircles the town of Darmstadt in Germany, he grew up amid an appreciation of the best in German literature. He was a buoyant and imaginative boy who preferred reading plays to poring over tiresome school-books.
One day he went for a walk in the woods. He passed a young girl of rare and appealing beauty. Their eyes met; they paused a moment, irresistibly drawn to each other. Then they went their separate ways. He inquired her name and found that she was Barbara Strauss and lived not far away. He sought an introduction, but before it could be brought about he left home to make his fortune in the New World.
He was eighteen when he stepped down the gang-plank of a steamer in New York in 1845. He had mastered no trade; he was practically without friends, so he took to the task which so many of his co-religionists had found profitable. He invested his modest financial nest-egg in a supply of dry goods and notions and, shouldering a pack, started up the Hudson Valley to peddle his wares.
Henry Frohman had a magnetic and fascinating personality. A ready story was always on his lips; a smile shone constantly on his face. It was said of him that he could hypnotize the most unresponsive housewife into buying articles she never needed. Up and down the highways he trudged, unmindful of wind, rain, or hardship.
New York was his headquarters. There was his home and there he replenished his stocks. He made friends quickly. With them he often went to the German theater. On one of these occasions he heard of a family named Strauss that had just arrived from Germany. They had been shipwrecked near the Azores, had endured many trials, and had lost everything but their lives.