CHAPTER IV.
THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF THE “BOOKER TROUPE.”
THE two gentlemen with whom I left Pittsburg accompanied me to Toledo, where Mr. Booker set to work to get up another company. It was not long till we heard of Lynch at Cincinnati in search of an engagement, and he was accordingly sent for. Mr. Edwin Deaves, also a member of the defunct “Serenaders,”—and now, by the way, a gray-haired wood-engraver and scenic artist at San Francisco,—was brought from some other place, and the “Booker Troupe” set out on its travels.
This company prided itself on its sobriety and gentlemanly conduct. It was the business of the four other members to keep poor Lynch straight, and if, in the endeavor, some of them occasionally fell themselves, it was put down to the reckless good-fellowship of the merry veteran, and hushed up as expeditiously as possible.
There were so few of us that we could afford to go to smaller towns than the other troupe had ever visited. It was deemed a good advertisement, as well as in some metaphysical way conducive to the morale of the company, to dress as nearly alike as we could when off the stage. This had the effect, as will be readily understood, of pointing me out more prominently than ever as the juvenile prodigy whose portrait and assumed name were plastered about over the walls of the towns and cities through which we took our triumphal march.
The first part of our performances we gave with white faces, and I had so improved my opportunities that I was now able to appear as the Scotch girl in plaid petticoats, who executes the inevitable Highland Fling in such exhibitions. By practising in my room through many tedious days, I learned to knock and spin and toss about the tambourine on the end of my forefinger; and, having rehearsed a budget of stale jokes, I was promoted to be one of the “end-men” in the first part of the negro performances.
Lynch, who could do anything, from a solo on the penny trumpet to an obligato on the double-bass, was at the same time advanced to play the second violin, as this made more music and helped fill up the stage.
In addition to my jig, I now appeared in all sorts of pas de deux, took the principal lady part in negro ballets, and danced “Lucy Long.” I am told that I looked the wench admirably. Indeed, I have always considered it a substantiation of this fact, rather than an evidence of his maudlin condition, that a year or so subsequently a planter in one of the Southern States insisted on purchasing me from the door-tender, at one of our exhibitions. The price he offered and the earnestness and apparent good faith in which he offered it were so flattering that I have always regretted the necessity in which the door-tender at last considered himself, of kicking that planter down stairs.
The “Booker Troupe” wandered all over the Western country, travelling at all hours of night and day and in all manner of conveyances, from the best to the worst. The life was so exciting, and I was so young, that I was probably as happy as an itinerant mortal can be in this world of belated railway-trains, steamboat explosions and collisions, and runaway stage-horses.
In the smaller cities and towns we would sometimes, “by particular request,” end up the evening with a ball. While we were washing the burnt cork from our faces, the ushers would remove the seats, and for a certain fee those ladies and gentlemen who delighted in the dance were readmitted to the hall. Then the four adults of the troupe, attired in their very best “citizens’ dress,” as they called it, would discourse music for the dancers.
My musical incompetency was at these times a signal advantage to me, for I was left free to go into society. I danced a great deal and with considerable éclat, on such occasions. My salary, which increased gradually with my progress in the “profession,” was at this period squandered almost entirely upon my back. I was under the impression that my importation of metropolitan cuts and fashions into those provincial places was something altogether killing. My jewelry, if I remember well, was just simply astonishing for a boy of my age.