SEASON OF '74-'75.
To open this season the stock company were brought into requisition again and played up to the 5th of September. On the 7th and 8th Howarth's Hibernica, a panoramic show with specialties filled in the time. The Vokeses returned on the 9th and filled out the remainder of the week, making ten nights and two matinees they got in during the heated term which was sufficient proof of their popularity. Close on their heels came the Hoskins-Darrell combination, consisting of William Hoskins, his wife, Fannie Colville, George Darrell and his wife. They were supported by the stock company and played from the 14th to the 23rd inclusive. Hoskins was an English actor of great and varied experience, and in high comedy roles was greatly admired. He was a man of sixty years of age and had been in Australia for a good many years. His wife, Fannie Colville, was very much his junior, in fact, it was a May and December alliance and apparently bore the usual kind of fruit. Fanny was not a great actress but was very pretty and attractive, in fact, too much so to prove comfortable to her much senior lord and master. The Darrells were clever and talented. The combination proved fairly successful. They toured about the country for a year or so and then returned to Australia with more experience than money, wiser if not richer. They wooed content in their former home.
The October conference approaching, the stock company were put in rehearsal for some suitable plays and the "Royal Marrionettes" were put in as an additional attraction for the conference season and continued for nine nights from October 5th to the 13th inclusive. The Marrionettes proved to be highly amusing and interesting entertainment and combined with the efforts of the stock company in drama gave the conference visitors the worth of their money and replenished the treasury to a considerable extent.
The next attraction also worked in conjunction with the stock company. This was Laura Honey Stevenson (now Mrs. Church), a lady of some celebrity as a reader. She was assisted in her entertainments by a brilliant young baritone singer, Mr. John McKenzie, whose singing proved to be quite taking and this conjunction lasted for eight nights.
It was during this last engagement that there occurred quite an exodus from the Salt Lake Stock company to John Piper's theatre at Virginia City, Nevada. Mr. J. A. Sawtelle and wife and daughter, a girl of twelve or fourteen years, Miss Adams (Mrs. Kiskadden), her daughter Maude, now two years old, accompanied by Mr. Kiskadden, Miss Carrie Cogswell-Carter with her son Lincoln J., then about ten years of age, and the writer went to Virginia City, all with the exception of Mr. Kiskadden and the children being under engagement to play with Piper for the ensuing season. There is much of interest connected with this exodus from Salt Lake. It materially weakened the stock forces, taking away the leading man, Mr. Sawtelle, the leading heavy (the writer), and leading juvenile lady, Miss Adams, and Miss Cogswell, the principal heavy woman; but their places were filled in a little while and the stock pushed along in the same old way.
The combination system, however, was now gaining ground and the stock companies throughout the country began to suffer correspondingly, their engagements becoming more and more intermittent as the traveling combination became more numerous.
At the opening of the season of '74 and '75 there were so many combinations booked that the managers of the Salt Lake Theatre could not offer the stock company a season's engagement, but only brief periodical engagements between the dates of the various combinations. It was in consequence of this that the above mentioned members of the company took a season's engagement with Mr. Piper of Virginia City. The Comstock was booming in those days and the theatre ran every night, Sundays included. At the close of the Piper season, Miss Adams went to San Francisco taking Maudie with her. There they made their home; Mr. Kiskadden having preceded them there and obtained a good situation as a bookkeeper with the firm of Park & Lacy. Mrs. Kiskadden played occasional engagements at the San Francisco theatres and there in due time little Maude made her first voluntary appearance on the stage, her first appearance which occurred at the Salt Lake Theatre when she was yet in long clothes, having been an involuntary one in which her feelings or inclinations were not consulted.
The writer's stay in Virginia City was brief. Receiving an offer from James A. Herne, who was managing stage at the Bush Street, San Francisco for Tom Maguire, and being anxious to visit the Golden Gate city, I got Mr. Piper to honorably release me by showing him how he could get along without me and save my salary. So, after playing a week at Sacramento during the State fair, I left the Piper company and went to San Francisco by steamboat which was running opposition to the railroad, giving very low rates—only fifty cents from Sacramento to San Francisco. Mr. Kiskadden, who had been with his wife and baby Maude since leaving Salt Lake, decided to take advantage of this low excursion rate on the steamer and go to San Francisco also in the search of a situation. "Jim," as he was familiarly called, was always ready for a little sport in the way of a game of cards or billiards, so as soon as the boat got under way, he got into a game of cards with some kindred spirits and although a crack player and usually a winner, on this occasion he lost every cent he had moreover he likewise lost his hat, a nice new summer one he had recently purchased. The wind was blowing strong upstream and a sudden puff took his hat into the river, leaving "Jim" bareheaded and dead broke; not a very desirable plight to be in going a stranger into a strange city. Moreover, to add to his discomfort, he was wearing a summer suit and as we approached San Francisco the weather was cold and foggy, and "Jim's" clothes were decidedly unseasonable when we reached our destination. Fortunately he had his trunk along and as soon as he got located he effected a change of costume, but he was in a dilemma for money to live on till he could find a job and he appealed to me to lend him a certain sum, which I was unable to do, having barely enough to see me through till I would have a week's salary due, but I let him have enough for immediate necessities, and he was not long in finding friends and a good situation.
My engagement at the Bush Street did not last very long. The house was doing a struggling business when I went there. Emerson's minstrels just across the street were doing a phenomenal business, turning people away every night, while "Jim" Herne at the head of a good company, was playing to very meager houses. "Zoe the Cuban Sylph" was the reigning star when I opened there and my opening part was an Indian—Conanchet, chief of the Naragansetts, in the "Wept of the Wishton Wish."
The Bush Street theatre season ended rather ingloriously soon after the New Year holiday. I had on the very morning preceding our closing night, received a telegram from Mr. Piper of Virginia City, offering me the leading business for the remainder of the season, but declined it, believing the Bush would struggle along. That night we had a new piece on, "The Circus Queen," and it proved such a failure that Tom Maguire decided to close, which he did without any previous notice, so the entire company were out of a job. Next morning I lost no time wiring to Piper to know if the engagement was still open to me and in a few hours I had received the agreeable answer "yes" and took the train the same day for Virginia City. I had been there about three weeks when I met T. B. H. Stenhouse, who was there writing up the Comstock mines for the New York Herald. He said to me, "They need you in Salt Lake badly; why don't you wire them? Katherine Rogers opens there Monday night for a two weeks' engagement and they have no competent leading man to support her." "Well," I said, "they know where I am. If they want me why don't they wire me?" "Will you go," said he, "if I wire for you and get you the engagement?" "Yes," I replied, "I shall be glad to go, for I am tired of this." So he went right off and wired, and the next day I left for home, but did not arrive in time to open with Miss Rogers in the opening bill, but got in on the second night and played throughout the rest of the engagement.