A Pirate of Parts

Richard Neville

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• Publié par: mosor
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 68
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Pirate of Parts, by Richard Neville This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: A Pirate of Parts Author: Richard Neville Release Date: September 14, 2008 [EBook #26612] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PIRATE OF PARTS *** Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) A Pirate of Parts By RICHARD NEVILLE NEW YORK THE N EALE PUBLISHING C OMPANY 1913 All rights reserved "One man in his time plays many parts." —SHAKESPEARE "All the worlds' a stage And all the men and women merely players" To my sister, Mrs. Mary Hughes, who for years has been associated with several of the most notable presentations on the American stage and with many of the most prominent and talented of American players, both male and female. "BILL OF THE PLAY" I.—Is all our company here?—Shakespeare II.—What stories I'll tell when my sojerin' is o'er.—Lever III.—Come all ye warmheart'd countrymen I pray you will draw near.—Old Ballad IV.—Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of ground. —Shakespeare V.—I would rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.—John Boyle O'Reilly VI.—What strange things we see and what queer things we do.—Modern Song VII.—He employs his fancy in his narrative and keep his recollections for his wit.—Richard Brindsley Sheridan VIII.—Every one shall offer according to what he hath.—Deut. IX.—One man in his time plays many parts.—Shakespeare X.—Originality is nothing more than judicious imitation.—Voltaire XI.—All places that the eye of heaven visits are happy havens.—Shakespeare XII.—There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.—Shakespeare XIII.—Life is mostly froth and bubble.—The Hill XIV.—Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time.—Shakespeare XV.—Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day. —Shakespeare XVI.—A new way to pay old debts. XVII.—The actors are at hand.—Shakespeare XVIII.—Twinkle, twinkle little star.—Nursery Rhymes XIX.—Experience is a great teacher—the events of life its chapters.—Sainte Beuve XX.—I am not an imposter that proclaim myself against the level of my aim. —Shakespeare XXI.—I'll view the town, peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings. —Shakespeare XXII.—Is this world and all the life upon it a farce or vaudeville.—Geo. Elliott XXIII.—All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. —Shakespeare XXIV.—There's nothing to be got nowadays, unless thou can'st fish for it. —Shakespeare XXV.—Joy danced with Mirth, a gay fantastic crowd.—Collins XXVI.—Say not "Good Night," but in some brighter clime bid me "Good Morning."—Barbauld A Pirate of Parts CHAPTER I "Is all our company here?" —MIDSUMMER N IGHT'S D REAM. Yes, he was a strolling player pure and simple. He was an actor by profession, and jack of all trades through necessity. He could play any part from Macbeth to the hind leg of an elephant, equally well or bad, as the case might be. What he did not know about a theatre was not worth knowing; what he could not do about a playhouse was not worth doing—provided you took his word for it. From this it might be inferred he was a useful man, but he was not. He had a queer way of doing things he ought not to do, and of leaving undone things he should have done. Good nature, however, was his chief quality. He bubbled over with it. Under the most trying circumstances he never lost his temper. He laughed his way through life, apparently without care. Yet he was a man of family, and those who were dependent upon him were not neglected, for his little ones were uppermost in his heart. Acting was his legitimate calling, but he would attempt anything to turn an honest penny. In turn he had been sailor, engineer, pilot, painter, manager, lecturer, bartender, soldier, author, clown, pantaloon, and a brass band. To preach a sermon would disconcert him as little as to undertake to navigate a balloon. He could get away with a pint of Jersey lightning, and under its stimulating influence address a blue ribbon temperance meeting on the pernicious effects of rum. Where he was born no one could tell. He claimed laughingly that it was so long since he was first produced he had lost track of the date. A friend of his maintained that he was bred in the blue grass region, he was such an admirable judge of whisky. On that score he might as well have been born in the County Galway as in the state of Kentucky. He had a voluminous shock of red hair; his name was Handy, and no one ever thought of addressing him otherwise, even on the slightest acquaintance. When he had an engagement he was poorer than when he was out of a job. He was a daisy of the chronic impecunious variety. The summer of —'7 was a hard season with actors, and as Handy was one of the guild he suffered like the rest of his calling. He was not so fortunate as to have country relatives with whom he might visit and spend a brief vacation down on the old farm, so he had to bestir himself to hit upon some scheme or other to bridge over the so-called dog days. He pondered over the matter, and finally determined to organize a company to work the towns along the Long Island Sound coast. Most men would have shrunk from an undertaking of this character without the necessary capital to embark in the venture. Handy, however, was not an individual of that type. He was a man of great natural and economical resources, when put to the test. Moreover, he had a friend who was the owner of a good-sized canvas tent; was on familiar terms with another who was the proud possessor of a fairly good-sized sailing craft; his credit at the printer's was good for twenty or twenty-five dollars, and in addition he had eleven dollars in hard cash in his inside pocket. What more could an enterprising man, with energy to burn, desire? On the Rialto Handy picked up seven good men and true, who, like himself, had many a time and oft fretted their brief hour upon the stage—and possibly will again,—who were willing to embark their fame and fortune in the venture. They knew Handy was a sailor bold, and so long as they had an angel in the shape of a vessel to perform the transportation part of the scheme without being compelled to count railroad ties, in case of ill luck, sailing was good enough for them. Besides, time was no object, for they had plenty of it to spare. They were all actors like Handy himself. The stories they could unfold of barnstorming in country towns in years gone by would fill a volume as bulky as a census report. Moreover, they could turn their talents to any line of business and double, treble, quintuple parts as easily as talk. They were players of the old stock school. One of the company played a cornet badly enough to compel the inhabitants of any civilized town to take to the woods until he had made his departure; another was a flutist of uncertain qualifications, while a third could rasp a little on the violin; and as for Handy himself, he could tackle any other instrument that might be necessary to make up a band; but playing the drum,—the bass drum,—or the cymbals, was his specialty. A company was accordingly organized, the day of departure fixed, the printing got out—and the printer "hung up." The vessel was anchored off Staten Island, and was provisioned with one keg of beer, a good-sized box of hardtack, a jar of Vesey Street pickles, a Washington Street ham, five large loaves and all the fishes in the bay. The company, after some preliminary preparations, boarded the Gem of the Ocean , for such was the pretentious name of the unpretentious craft that was to carry Cæsar and his fortunes. Perhaps Handy's own description of the first night's adventure might prove more interesting than if given by another. CHAPTER II "What stories I'll tell when my sojerin is o'er." —LEVER. "Well, sir, you see," said Handy some weeks after in relating the adventure to a friend, "we had previously determined to start from Staten Island, when one of the company got it into his head that we might show on the island for 'one night only,' and make a little something into the bargain. Besides, he reasoned, all first-class companies nowadays adopt that plan of breaking in their people. Some cynical individuals describe this first night operation as 'trying it on the dog,' but as that is a vulgar way of putting it we'll let it pass. We turned the matter over in our minds, and almost unanimously agreed that it was too near the city to make the attempt, but the strong arguments of Smith prevailed—he was the one who first advocated it—and we therefore resolved to set up our tent and present 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' with an unparalleled cast from the California Theatre. "You must remember we desired to have the company hail from a point as far distant as possible from New York, and we could hardly have gone further or we would have slid right plumb off the continent. But we told no lie about the company being unparalleled. No, sir. You couldn't match it for money. It was what might be legitimately considered a 'star cast company.' "One of the company was a dwarf. That was lucky, or we would have been stuck for a Little Eva. So the dwarf was cast for Eva; and he doubled up and served as an ice floe, with a painted soap box on his back to represent a floating cake of ice in the flight scene. He played the ice floe much better than he did Eva. But that's neither here nor there now, as he got through with both. What's more, he's alive to-day to tell the tale. Between ourselves, he was the oddest looking Eva—and the toughest one, too, for t