People who knew Horace Greeley, and people who didn’t, will probably be alike surprised to learn that Horace at one time took a considerable interest in theatrical matters, and was deeply though platonically attached to an actress.
When a practical printer, a typo, Greeley belonged to a Thespian society and two or three times appeared in minor parts. One of these performances was given in an old barn out of town, and an amusin’ incident occurred.
A rude stage was erected and still ruder attempts at scenery were introduced. In the first piece it was necessary to have a big tree, and the stage manager complied with this condition by bringin’ in and planting into the earth a pretty big tree, which, of course, answered the purposes first rate, and was hugely admired during the first piece. But the stage manager hadn’t calculated on the second piece, which had to have a prison cell scene and what was supposed to be a fashionable parlor. When the time came for the parlor scene, the chairs, sofas, table, etc., intended for the parlor were all ready, but there was the tree. They couldn’t get rid of the tree. It had taken several men and boys a long while to get it there, and it would take several men and boys to move it away again, and there wasn’t time to spare. So the tree had to remain, and the curious spectacle was presented of an interior and exterior combined. A sofa and a lookin’ glass, and what were intended for curtains, all arranged around a big, spreadin’ tree, which completely spoiled the illusion.
Greeley was particularly mad at this, and blesssed the tree in his peculiar way. Finally it came time for the prison cell scene, which was supposed to be located way down “in the deepest dungeon of the castle moat.” The absurdity of havin’ a big tree in such a place as this, especially as the desperate prisoner would only have to climb the tree to escape, struck Horace verily forcibly, and at last he resolved to get rid of the tree in his own way. “Keep ‘em playing in the parlor as long as you can,” he said to the stage manager, “and give me a saw.” So the stage manager got Horace a big saw and told the actors in the parlor scene to do some “funny business” to lengthen out the piece. Meanwhile Horace Greeley took the saw and got under the stage. Then he applied his saw to the tree and cut away at it do it all his might and main, just as hard as he afterwards chopped trees at his home at Chappaqua, till the trunk of the tree was cut in two. Then the upper part was removed, right in sight of the audience, the stage manager and actors, and the prison cell was at last disclosed, to Greeley’s entire satisfaction, without the tree.
This was probably the first tree Horace Greeley ever cut down, and it seems very odd that it should have been cut down inside of a theatre.
Greeley, when setting type for some long dead and forgotten New York papers, used to attend the theatre–the old Park or the old Bowery, or the Richmond Hill Theatre–on “orders” from the proprietors of the papers. Sometimes these “orders” were given in part payment of wages due.
The first time Horace ever went to a New York theatre was at the old Bowery, where they were playin’ “William Tell.” Miss Mestayer was then playin’ the son of Tell, and Greeley took a shine to her at once. He applauded her (or him) every time he or she appeared; and in fact he went wild over the play generally. There wasn’t much of an audience, and the theatre was very cold, the night bein’ a freezin’ one and the theatre stove not bein’ adequate to the weather. But Greeley kept himself warm by applaudin’. So the play passed off with a great deal of enthusiasm.
The Richmond Hill Theatre stood at the corner of Varick and Charlton streets, right where Aaron Burr’s great country seat had been twenty years before. It was a small theatre, and had never been very popular, so the printers generally got their “orders” for the Richmond Hill Theatre, and generally got ‘em for a Saturday night.
For, perhaps, nothin’ shows more plainly the difference between old New York and new New York, between then and now, than the simple fact that that in Greeley’s time Saturday night, which is now the very best theatre night, the night on which no “orders” or “passes” are received, was then the very poorest theatre night of all the week–the night when the theatre managers were glad to give “passes” and take in “orders” to help fill their houses.
So every Saturday night young Horace Greeley used to go to the Richmond Hill Theatre. One day he wanted an order for the theatre, and he went and asked the proprietor of his paper where he was “settin’ type” for one. The proprietor was busy, but told Horace to write out an order for two and he would sign it. So Horace wrote out what he intended to be in order for two, and the proprietor signed it.
But when that order was presented at the door of the Richmond Hill Theatre there was trouble. Bein’ written in Horace’s peculiar scrawl–that scrawl of his which afterwards drove so many printers crazy–nobody around in the theatre could make out what the words in the body of the “order” meant. The newspaper proprietor’s signature was all right, that was plain enough, but what on earth had he signed to? That was the question which nobody could answer. Was it a receipt, or a bill, or a love letter, or a challenge, or a washin’ list? It looked as much like one as it did another and like any one of ‘em quite as much like an “order” for two admissions. After passin’ the slip round, the theatre people finally took Greeley’s explanation, and “passed in” two on the strength of it. But Greeley never wrote out any more orders for that theatre.
Mr. and Mrs. Russell were managing the Richmond Hill Theatre then and Mrs. Duff was playin’ in Shakespearean parts for $30 a week. Greeley years afterwards said that no woman in America ever played the Lady Macbeth as well as this Mrs. Duff, at $5 a performance.
But the actress Greeley liked the best of any woman he ever saw, the actress he praised in his papers and books as much as he could–which wasn’t very much–and whom he never forgot till his dyin’ day was a Naomi Vincent.
This lady, after a brief career on the stage, married Tom Hamblin, and shortly after her marriage died. Greeley saw her act about ten times, and only met her off the stage once, and then by accident; but he loved her in his platonic, philosophical way, and always thought and said that she was the finest actress he had ever seen or ever expected to see.
He thought her eyes the sweetest eyes in the world, and he said that her walk was perfection; she had a graceful, dignified step that Greeley used to rave about.
He never forgot her, and not long before he died her name, though she had been buried years and years agone, and had been forgotten even by actors and actresses, was on his lips. Pure, pretty Naomi Vincent was the romance of Horace Greeley’s life.
[Editor’s notes: The above column is one of several that the Harry Hill’s Gotham writers devoted to Horace Greeley, the founder and long-time editor of the New York Tribune. Greeley was perhaps the most notable newspaperman of 19th century New York City, and used his editorial powers to promote his mix of political progressivism with conservative habits, eschewing alcohol, gambling, and meat-eating.
Greeley died in 1872, a decade before these columns appeared. Though several of the Harry Hill columns poke holes at Greeley’s personal conduct, they also acknowledge his importance to the city’s history. This column, for instance, suggests that Greeley had a secret love for an actress; but Greeley was married for forty years, and was so distraught by his wife’s passing that he died a week after her.]
