November 19 Tuesday – Sam gave a curtain speech at the P&P performance by the Children’s Educational Theatre, directed by Alice Minnie Herts. The New York Times, Nov. 20, p.9, reported on the event:
UPTOWN AUDIENCE AT CHILDREN’S PLAY
Society Folk, as Mark Twain’s Guests, See “The Prince and the Pauper.”
——— ——— ———
HOST’S SPEECH CUT SHORT
Miss Herts, Founder of the Theatre, Says the Object is to Develop Latent Dramatic Talent.
It was said last night that $25 was vainly offered in the course of he evening by some east side folk for a ticket of admission to the Children’s Theatre in the Educational Alliance Building, where Mark Twain was entertaining a host of guests, including Gov. Hughes and District Attorney Jerome, with a special performance of his “The Prince and the Pauper.”
The company was the regular one of the Children’s Theatre. Soon after 8 o’clock East Broadway and the intersecting block of Jefferson street seemed a Broadway in everything except the background and the white lights.
Cabs, coupes, automobiles, and carriages drove up to the Jefferson Street entrance and deposited many of the well-known residents of the town, men and women in evening dress, while footmen lined the lobby, exciting a quite respectful murmur from the crowd kept at a distance by alert policemen.
Of course, every one expected a speech from the author. In the entre-act Mr. Clemens came before the curtain. As he began some of those in the audience recalled that on a former occasion when he had attempted to speak, the play then being the same, he had been cut short in the midst of a story by the management. So these persons waited to see what would happen.
Mr. Clemens expressed the pleasure the occasion held for him. He said that as the ambassador of the children who played in the theatre and who usually made up its audiences, he had invited those present, “the hearts and the brains of New York,” to see the work done in the theatre.
“The Children’s Theatre is a great educational feature,” he said. “The time ought to come when a child’s theatre will be a part of every public school in the land. I am apt to be quite plain—”
At this point a muffled whistle sounded behind the lowered curtain.
“That whistle was the signal agreed upon that I should stop,” said Mr. Clemens, “and I have not yet started. I shall now do the especial thing that I am here to do. I introduce to you Miss Herts, the founder of the theatre.”
He led Miss A. Minnie Herts to the centre of the curtain line, and then stepped down into the orchestra.
Miss Herts spoke with fervor of the work being done in the theatre. She told how plays and scenery had been obtained from managers.
“Then we had no players,” she said, “so that we had to make them. There were a number of dramatic clubs of the district which had been hiring this very hall for their entertainments. Some young man would like to see himself as Hamlet, or wished to play in “The Bells and ‘Ghosts.’ He would gather about himself a little company of friends, sell the tickets to other admiring friends, and then give his performance. So we—”
The whistle that had checked Mr. Clemens now blew rather insistently. But Miss Herts, well intent upon her subject, paid no attention to it.
“The young people enter into the spirit of the thing fully,” she said. “The scene-shifter or member of the crown enters just as heartily into the performance as those who play the principal roles. And these young women and young men work the better for it in their department store or shop. They—”
Again the whistle.
“—have a fine spirit about it. We are endeavoring to develop the elemental dramatic impulse latent in every human being from the cradle to the grave.”
A final blast from the whistle, and Miss Herts bowed and retired.
The performance itself was fully up to the best standards of amateur acting. But there was about the stage management a deftness that was professional. The whole moved in obedience to routine stage discipline. The Governor, who entered while an act was in progress, and so escaped notice for the time, was in time to see the set of that act struck and another set in place.
None of the amateur actors and actresses faltered. If any or all of them had been unable to continue, their places could have been readily filled from the two complete casts waiting upstairs, known as the understudy and the emergency casts.
In addition to the Governor and the District Attorney some of those in the audience were President Eliot of Harvard , Andrew Carnegie, Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey M. Depew, Robert Collier, John Burroughs, Commissioner Bingham, Dan Beard, Richard Harding Davis, Mrs. John Drew, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, Dr. Thomas R. Slicer, Frederick A. Stokes, Hamilton W. Mabie, Brander Matthews, Morris K. Jesup, James J. Hill, John Bigelow, Poultney Bigelow, A. F. Eno, Walter Damrosch, Col. George Harvey, and Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Corey.
Note: See Scharnhorst, p.655-9 for an interview by Frederick Boyd Stevenson on the play, Brooklyn Eagle, news special Nov. 24, p.1; Also, see a first hand account by one of the players, MTJ 11.1 (Summer 1959): 4-5. Although not listed above, William Dean Howells is included in the audience by Alice Minnie Herts in the Dec. issue of Atlantic Monthly, p. 803 [Wells 27]. Zwick also included Samuel Guggenheim among the guests. He claims that “Twain spent many afternoons at the Theater doing routine office work” for the Children’s Theater, though he offers no dates or evidence and none has yet been found [“Mark Twain and the Children’s Theater” http://wenku.baidu.com].
Isabel Lyon’s journal: “Prince and Pauper” at East Side Theatre. / Miss Minnie Hertz Mrs. Emma Sheridan Frey [MTP TS 119].
Arthur Kellogg for Charities and the Commons wrote to Sam. “I enclose a copy of the press story sent out to over 750 newspapers asking their co-operation in reducing the hardships incidental to late Christmas shopping. The letter on pages three and four is the one which you kindly signed for us” [MTP]. Note: letters in the file.
John W. Loveland, attorney, NYC wrote to Sam. “I have observed in a recent issue of the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office certain trade-marks bearing your nom-de- plume of Mark Twain and showing your portrait…” If these were unauthorized, Loveland offered his legal services [MTP]. Note: Lyon wrote on the letter, “Answd. Nov. 21, ‘07”; see Nov. 14 by Fuller.
William Webb Sunderland, contractor, Danbury Conn. wrote to Sam acknowledging receipt of his check for $2,000. He added regret if Clemens would “in any way be annoyed by the present business conditions” (suspension by Knickerbocker), but that “these same conditions …make it impossible for us to carry accounts” [MTP]. Note: evidently Sam had delayed payments.