There has been for some time a rumor floating around New York concernin’ the marriage of a young swell to a young actress. This rumor has been denied, but it has naturally called up some reminiscences in connection with the marriages, the adventures and the misadventures that really have taken place between society people here in New York and amusement people, and it suggests how often through matrimonial complications society women in New York have been forced upon the stage.
There is a little old man who comes into my place sometimes, a little dried-up, broken-down Frenchman, who, although to look at him you would never think it, was years and years ago, indirectly mixed up with an affair which in its time excited fashionable New York from Wall Street to Murray Hill. This little old Frenchman was some twenty-five or thirty years ago the friend and associate of a music teacher, a foreigner like himself, named De Wilhorst. This De Wilhorst was of good family and wasn’t bad lookin’, but he was as poor as Job’s turkey, after it was plucked; so he had to put his family and his pride in his pocket, and taught music for a livin’.
Among his pupils was a young lady named Withers, a pretty girl, and, although of Quaker stock, very fond of the opera. Her father was well off and she was allowed to have everythin’ in the world except her own way, which was the only thing she really insisted on havin’.
She took lessons in music of this De Wilhorst, for which old Withers paid liberally. She also took lessons in love from him, for which old Withers wouldn’t pay at all. As soon as he found out that De Wilhorst loved his daughter, he stopped the music lessons instantly; and as soon as he found that his daughter loved De Wilhorst he turned her out of doors.
What a time there was among “the upper ten” and the Quakers, especially the Quakers. Some made allowances for the young lady, and know how it was ‘emselves, but most of ‘em sided with society, and decided that it was too, too shockin’ly utter, or utterly shockin’, that a highly educated young lady should marry her music teacher, especially when he was a foreigner, and there were at least a hundred native born fools who stood ready to marry the young woman for the old man’s money.
But Cora Withers, who now became Cora De Wilhorst, didn’t care for the young fools nor the old fools of society either, but havin’ a good voice of her own, she turned it into dollars and cents. She went right to Newport, where all the fashionables she used to know were assembled in all their fuss and feathers, and gave a concert at Ocean House, sendin’ old man Withers a free ticket. The concert was a big “go,” every seat in the house was sold, and everybody confessed, when the concert was over, that they had got the worth of their money.
From that moment Cora had all the money and all the friends she wanted, because she had proved that she was independent of ‘em, and could get along without ‘em.
The next Winter she appeared in Italian opera in New York and Philadelphia. Being a Quaker prima donna, the old “broad brims” of the City of Brotherly Love looked upon her as a kind of pet monstrosity, a kind of eagle among hens, and made the most of her. She also sang a while in [Sigismond] Thalberg’s concerts.
Bye the bye, about Thalberg. People knew that he suddenly left his concert troupe in this country, although he was doin’ well, makin’ money hand over fist, and departed secretly on a steamer to Europe. But people didn’t know at the time just what the matter was, and guessed all sorts of things. But the real matter was a woman. What else ever is the matter with a man? It seems that Thalberg, who was a married man, had made love to a pretty girl in society here, and that her mother, a wealthy widow, had got to know of it. The mother of course, as in duty bound, raised old Nick, as only a widow knows how. She got a pistol, and practiced with it a little while, and then started off to find Thalberg, swearin’ she would shoot him on sight. Hearing this, Thalberg very sensibly determined not to give her a sight of or at him, and abandoned everything else, saved his carcass by puttin’ it on board an ocean steamer.
The widow followed the pianist across the Atlantic, but the widow, being a true American, didn’t like to risk any shootin’ exceptin’ on American soil, where she could get an American judge, American newspapers and American jury. So after a lot of circus the charges were put not into powder and ball, but dollars and cents–a great deal less bloody and a great deal more satisfactorily.
Another rich New York family had quite a sensation in it, years and years ago, about the opera and the connection of some of its members with the lyric stage, as they called it. I mean the family of [Herman] Thorn[e], the millionaire.
One of the Misses Thorne, like little Cora De Wilhorst, married against the old man’s will, and was cut out of the customary shillin’. And then, like the plucky and pretty Cora, the married Miss Thorne, who was now La Comptesse de Ferrussac, determined to go on the stage and sing for a livin’.
But Cora De Wilhorst had a fine voice, and Madame La Comptesse–the married Miss Thorne–hadn’t; and that made all the difference.
About the middle of January the married Miss Thorne appeared in I puritani as Elvira. There was a big house–all out of curiosity, of course; but the lady didn’t take and she was never more heard of as an opera singer. But young Thorne, her brother Alfred, married a genuine opera singer. She made quite a name as Clotilda Barilli. Altogether the old millionaire, CoI. Thorne, got all the music he wanted in his own family.
Writin’ of failures as opera singers, the biggest failure ever made in this line in New York was made by a rich society Jew, well known in New York as Charles Jacobs. He went abroad for a while, then came back with his name transmogrified into “signor Carlo Jacopi.” He got a highfalutin’ press agent, who believed in tall lyin’–beating Jimmy Morrissey all hollow.
This chap announced Signor Carlo Jacopi as confessedly the greatest tenor livin’–far surpassing [Giovanni Matteo de Candia] Mario himself. He also invented all sorts of paragraphs about the furore that had been created by Signor Carlo Jacopi in Paris, London, Vienna, Rome and Milan. The press chap managed these paragraphs very cleverly. He read up about each city, and got all about their opera houses “dead to rights,” and their leading musical newspapers. Then he set to work and wrote a paragraph in English, here in New York, all about this Signor Carlo Jacopi in Vienna, Milan, etc., bringin’ in all about the opera houses, etc, all O.K. Then he got this paragraph translated into German and credited to the leadin’ Vienna paper, etc., as if clipped right from it, and he had a lot more extracts printed in his programme and scattered all over the “brownstone front” parts of the city.
Everybody began to think that really Signor Carlo Jacopi, the American tenor was a “big Indian,” and no mistake, and the Academy of Music was crowded; “standing room only,” and ladies standin’. The American tenor was warmly welcomed, too, when he appeared, received a regular ovation, and until he opened his mouth was a regular hero. But as soon as he began to sing (!), lord! how astonished the audience was, and then how mad. Why, the fellow was an arrogant fraud, he couldn’t sing at all, his voice was a squeak, and now and then a grunt. The people soon commenced to hiss and to hoot, then they guyed him, and groaned him, and finally the great American tenor was driven from the stage.
Signor Carlo Jacopi did not bother New York again, but there was an Englishman once who came over to this country, and although he failed he wouldn’t accept his failure, but persisted in failin’, and then abusin’ the country because he had failed in it.
I mean Captain Murtin Price, as he called himself, although his right name, I believe, was Rhys Norton or Norton Rhys. He was announced with a big flourish as “England’s greatest amateur actor,” and big stress was laid upon the fact that he was “not a mere actor” but “an officer and a gentleman” belonging to “Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.” People didn’t think this style of announcing one’s self as in very good taste, but still there is no denyin’ that it increased people’s desire to go and see him.
Well, he made, as might be expected, a first-class failure, not a third-rate or second-rate tumble, but a first-class fall–he fell down from the top of the bottom of the ladder all at once. He couldn’t act at all.
Then he tried to pooh-pooh his failure; looked upon it as merely a good joke. He gave it out that he had merely come to this country for fun, merely as the result of a wager with some lords in London. He said he had made a bet that he could come over to New York, and could win by his talents (!) on the stage a certain sum of money in a certain time, and that in spite of his “flunk” he was goin’ to win the bet yet.
Some believed all this “chaff,” but most of the people, not being fools, set it down for just what it was, “an advertisin’ gag.”
Of course he didn’t win his bet, or make any money at all, and he went back to England again. But pretty soon he came to New York once more, and tried it all over again, failure and all. He brought his wife with him this time, who was a regular actress, called Catherine Lucette.
The couple took a small hall in Brooklyn, called it by some big name, and gave what they called “a drawin’ room entertainment.” But it didn’t “draw” anybody, so the small hall with the large name closed on “the double quick.” Then the wife took to acting a while at the Grand Opera House under Clifton Tayleure, while the husband took to writin’ letters abusin’ everybody in America.
He said in his letters that there was no good actor in the whole United States, and only one good actress, and she was his wife. As for the New York theatres, they were all rat holes or barns, and as for the managers, there were none. But somehow New York kept goin’ on with its theatres just as if there never had been such a person as Captain Morton Price, of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.
There have been a good many frauds and mean fellows in New York at different times, with handles to their names, counts and all that kidney, who have married women, and lived off ‘em as well as with ‘em, and fleeced ‘em and deserted ‘em at last. But one of the very meanest of this set of sharks had the high flown name of the Count de Marguerites, and was really a high-born though low-lived Frenchman, who was at one time a sort of hanger-on of Louis Napoleon.
He met in Paris a romantic girl called Julie de Granville, the daughter of a very smart French doctor. This girl knew a little of everythin’, and a good deal more than most men. She had knocked all around the world in an independent fashion of her own, and resembled in some respects that remarkably clever and queer woman, whom I have already mentioned several times, Adah Isaacs Menken.
This girl met this Count de Marguerites and fell wildly in love with him–not like a French woman but like an Italian, or a Creole, or an Indian–loved him madly, and married him.
The first French Republic didn’t take any stock in this fellow Marguerites and expelled him. Of course he came to New York, and of course his wife came with him. Being a nobleman, not a noble man, two mighty different things, the count couldn’t on any account do anything to support himself, so his lovin’ wife had to turn to and support herself and him, which she did in first-class style, for she was brimmin’ over with talents. She could act pretty well and sing pretty well, and write pretty well, and everybody liked her and helped her because she helped herself.
Time rolled on, and Louis Napoleon (the adventurer who made love to girls in Madame Mercier’s saloon in New York, as I have already mentioned) became the president of the French Republic and then Emperor. Napoleon, who never forgot his friends, recalled the Count de Marguerites at once. But the count, who didn’t resemble Napoleon, in this respect at least, forgot as soon as he got back to Paris, his best friend, his faithful wife, and, like a dog, went back on her. He discarded the very woman who for years had furnished his worthless self with all his bread and butter.
For a while his wife was wild with grief. Then she learned to despise the titled loafer and determined to use her own talents to support her own self. She went round the country givin’ readin’s and concerts, and did pretty well. Then she married again–married a writer named Foster, the one who wrote New York by Gaslight. About three or four years after I settled in New York she appeared here as Madame de Marguerites, as a lecturer. Then she went round the country with this lecture. Finally she settled down and Philadelphia and wrote for the papers.
Another count once tried to come it over in New York girl, but the New York girl came in at last “over him.” The New York girl I allude to was the daughter of Sam Ward, of this city, who afterwards became a Madame Guarabella [sic, de Guerbel], and made quite a hit abroad for a while as an opera singer, and has since made quite a stir in lawsuitin’ Moss and Wallack, and playin’ in “Forget-me-not.” Miss Ward was highly educated, and when she went to Paris was well received, both on her father’s account and her own. She appeared at the Grand Opera House, and the French and Americans present all joined in her praises. Among those warmest in her praise was a Russian count, who thought she had a fortune in her voice, and married her for that fortune, as a good part of his own property was already squandered.
But the count and his wife didn’t get along well together, and the wife’s mother saw through him at once, and fixed matters so that although he might live with, he couldn’t live on, her daughter. This didn’t suit the count at all, who hadn’t counted on bein’ made of no account by such a mother-in-law. So he left his American wife to take care of herself, and she did take care of herself–she and her mother between ‘em.
She “willed” to trick her faithless husband down, and she and her mother hunted the faithless one all over Europe. At last, they hunted him down at St. Petersburg.
The deserted wife put on her best bib and tucker–she and her mother–and they called upon the Emperor, the late Alexander. Alexander was very polite to ladies, so they easily got an audience, and then she told–she and her mother–the story of her wrong–and then she–she and her mother–shed tears and implored the Emperor for justice–and then the Emperor gave her justice and gave the count fits. His majesty sent for the runaway husband, gave him such a scoldin’ as only a Russian Emperor and an American mother-in-law can give, and then made him marry his wife over again, accordin’ to the forms and ceremonies of the Russian Church.
But after all the poor count had some consolation. His twice-made, or made over again mother-in-law, didn’t have any chance to scold him any more; for the Emperor, after remarryin’ him and givin’ his name and what was left of his money to his re-wedded bride, banished the count to Siberia.
[Editor’s notes: Genevieve de Guerbel, nee Ward, was not the daughter of Samuel “Sam” Cutler Ward, the famous lobbyist and dinner-giver. Her father was a different Sam Ward. The story of her remarriage under the command of the Czar is apparently true; in fact, there were stories that armed men were in the church to see it through. After her voice gave out, Genevieve Ward turned to acting, and had a long, successful career on the English stage.
The claim made by “Captain Morton Price” (real name Horton Rhys) that he went on stage in America on a bet, is detailed in his book, A Theatrical Trip for a Wager!: Through Canada and the United States, 1861.]
