It was on Sunday, January 3, 1904, four days after the fire, that the members of the "Mr. Bluebeard" company turned their faces homeward, for to all players New York is "home." Just before the train started a plain white box was put on board the baggage car. It contained all that was mortal of Nellie Reed, the sprightly little girl who had delighted scores of thousands by her mid-air flights from the stage at each performance.
It was her last railroad "jump." Poor little thing, still in her early teens, she closed her earthly career with the close of the show, and went back "home" with it! If the future has for her any further flights they will be of celestial character, and not through the agency of an invisible wire such as guided her above the heads of Iroquois theater audiences and which was at first thought to have interfered with the fall of the curtain and to have been directly responsible for the appalling holocaust.
It was a sad departure. Nearly 150 persons comprised the "Mr. Bluebeard" party, and nearly as many more took the trip from "The Billionaire" company, also owned by the same management. Only a day or two before the fire that closed the "Bluebeard" show death had laid its hand heavily upon "The Billionaire," playing at the Illinois theater only a few blocks distant. "The Billionaire" himself died—big, rollicking Jerome Sykes, who made famous the part "Foxy Quiller" and the opera of that name and who a few years ago made such a hit as the fat boy in "An American Beauty" that he outshone Lillian Russell, its star. Sykes contracted a cold at a Christmas celebration for the members of the two companies and when he died the production died with him.
So with the Iroquois catastrophe there were two big, obviously successful, companies wiped out of the theatrical world at one blow and without notice. The members of each had half a week's salary due; that was their all. It was promptly paid and with that and their tickets all set forth in the happy possession of their baggage, many through the charity of Mrs. Armour.
All—not quite! There were two members of "The Billionaire" who did not make the last "jump," two who were in the audience at the Iroquois and perished in the maelstrom of flame and smoke. The curtain had been rung down for them forever. They, at least, would know no more of pitiful quests for engagements, of wearying rehearsal and momentary, superficial conquest. They had played their last stand.
"This is the saddest day of my life," declared one of the chorus members in the presence of the writer. "Here I am, 1,000 miles from home, no prospects of another engagement this season, and only $5 in the world."
"I have less than you," said a frail appearing girl, with tears in her eyes. "I lost my savings, $22, in the fire, and I have only $3 to go home with."
"It is the life of the stage," said a matronly wardrobe woman. "The poor girls are penniless, and if the injured were left hind it would be as charity patients. The responsibility of the managers of the show ceases when the production is closed. I know many of these girls are without sufficient money to pay for a week's lodging, and it is a sad outlook for some of them this winter."
And the wardrobe woman told the truth—it was merely a striking example, a pitiful vicissitude of "the life of the stage."