“Well, to make a long story short, I remained ‘cured’ only a short time—two weeks, I think it was.
“A nice letter from Miss Allen, saying that she would keep my understudy for me, enticed me to return when the company played in New York. I refused to give up again, although those first tears were not the only ones I had cause to shed during that long season.
“My reward came, however, for before the close of the theater year the girl whose rôle I understudied left the cast, and they gave me her part for the rest of the season. Miss Allen helped me herself to do justice to it—even to rehearsing me after matinée, when she must have been very tired.
“And it was in my beloved Boston, where I had first met her, that I played my first part, and in her company, only the theater was the old Boston Museum, not the Hollis Street.”
DANCED ON CHURCH STEPS.
Front of a Negro Place of Worship Was the Scene of Henry E. Dixey’s Preparation for the Stage.
“The steps of a colored church near where I lived was my practise-ground, and I was on the stage when I was eight.”
Thus spoke Henry E. Dixey, in his dressing-room at the Lyric, between the acts of “The Man on the Box,” in response to my question about his start in his stage career—a career that stands out more remarkably than the majority. After achieving a reputation in a burlesque with which his name became so closely identified that it was often used interchangeably with his own, he went into Daly’s theater and played Malvolio in “Twelfth Night,” in a fashion to cover himself with glory. He has scored high in the Gilbert & Sullivan operas, and is now a successful star in high-class comedy.
Dixey’s real name is Dixon. He was born in Boston on January 6, 1859. His parents had no connection with the theater, and had no idea that Harry’s predilection for dancing was going to lead him there. When very young he helped eke out the family income by becoming a cashboy in a dry-goods store but he wasn’t a shining success at it. The part he liked best was being sent on errands, which gave him an opportunity to collect cronies about him and practise fancy steps on his improvised stage in front of the African meeting-house, as aforesaid.