Of Mitchell himself I can recollect little more than that he was a jovial, easy sort of fellow personally, and that he was, as his scenic biographer would have said, “a first-rate Ethiopian artist.” Scandal had it that this same biographer, who was, it must be remembered, his business manager and partner, did risk the earnings of Mr. Mitchell’s minstrels in hazardous back-rooms, and thus precipitated a catastrophe which the want of harmony among the members would sooner or later have brought upon the troupe.
In the absence of positive knowledge on the subject, I would not like to say how true or false this rumor was. This much only I will vouch for: we were advertised to perform in some city of Southern Ohio, and, going down to the depot with our big and little boxes, green-baize bags and fiddle-cases, we were startled with the announcement that there was no money in the treasury to pay our way out of Cincinnati.
I remember that the veteran German violinist, scratching his wig,—which I need hardly say he had lived to recover,—and squeezing his violin under his arm, remarked, when he heard this piece of news, “Well, den de gombany ish bust!”
And, in point of fact, that veteran violinist was right.
I was afterward one of the volunteers at the grand complimentary benefit given to Mitchell at Cincinnati, with the proceeds of which he was sent out to California to join his friends Birch and Backus.
Mitchell, poor fellow, like Lynch and Sliter and so many of my old associates in the cork-opera, has passed away, let us hope to a quieter stage, beyond the double-dealing of managers and the contumely of publicans.
An old showman is, in truth, a being sui generis. You rarely meet one who will not tell you he has been twenty-two years in the show business. He always talks in hyperbole, uses adjectives for adverbs, and arranges all the minor incidents of his life, as well as his conversation, in the most dramatic forms. He is often a better friend to others than to himself; he is not naturally worse than the majority of men, but has more temptation. A good negro-minstrel would, in any other profession, be an Admirable Crichton in respect to morals.
While acknowledging with pride that I met in this calling some who deserved even such praise, it is due to the truth to state also that I have known many and many a poor fellow who was, in the language of Addison,—
“Reduced, like Hannibal, to seek relief
From court to court, and wander up and down,
A vagabond in Afric.”