TEMPERANCE AND THE THEATRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MARITIMES

Mark Blagrave

The Temperance Movement in the nineteenth century Maritime provinces encouraged both playwrights and actors to develop their talents by means of Temperance Soirées and Temperance-sponsored theatrical societies. The texts of two extant soirées from Halifax in the 1850s - John Sparrow Thompson's Cadets of Temperance: Entertainment for the Christmas Holidays and the anonymous Harvest Queen's Coronation - are examined, as are some of the amateur efforts of temperance-sponsored playwright John Louis Carleton of Saint John.

Le mouvement de Tempérance aux provinces maritimes du 19^e siècle encouragea tant acteurs qu'écrivains dramatiques à développer leurs talents par le moyen des Soirées de tempérance et des societés théâtrales parrainées par le mouvement. Les textes de deux telles soirées donées à Halifax aux années 1850 - Cadets of Temperance: Entertainment for the Christmas Holidays par John Sparrow Thompson, et l'anonyme Harvest Queen's Coronation sont examines ici, aussi bien que quelques-uns des écrits de John Louis Carleton, écrivain parrainé par le mouvement de Tempérance à Saint-Jean.

The lively tradition of theatre in the nineteenth century Maritimes owed a large debt in an unlikely quarter. The Temperance Movement, which might easily have been expected to lump theatre with other worldly pleasures to be abjured, in fact encouraged both playwrights and actors to ply their respective talents. Throughout the Maritimes, total abstinence societies presented their arguments and proselytized through a series of entertainments known as temperance soirées in public halls. As well, they sponsored their members in the formation of subsidiary dramatic clubs. In this strategy of adopting the means of pleasant persuasion, Maritime temperance societies were like their British and American counterparts. Advocates of temperance in Britain had found early in their campaign that in order to compete with the public house they had to provide 'counter-recreations'; and so elements of Music Hall (the adjunct of the tavern) were adapted to spread the teetotal gospel.¹ In the United States, too, teetotaldom used the vehicle of popular entertainment not only in such famous temperance dramas as The Drunkard and Ten Nights in a Barroom, but also in regular olio evenings sponsored by the continent-wide network of the Sons of Temperance organization.

The temperance soirée, as it developed in the Maritimes, was an occasional and publicly-performed outgrowth of the typical provision in a temperance society's constitution that

at each meeting a programme of Literary and Musical Exercises shall be carried out, for which purpose a list shall be taken at the preceding meeting of members volunteering for Speeches, Debates, Essays, Readings, Recitations, Dialogues, Vocal and Instrumental Music.²

Two soirées from mid-century Halifax have survived in printed form: John Sparrow Thompson's Cadets of Temperance. Entertainment for the Christmas Holidays, and Scenes and Dialogues, entitled Harvest Queen's Coronation. ³ That they were part of an ongoing series of such entertainments is suggested by a remark in the Nova Scotian of 3 January 1853. Responding to an announcement that the juveniles of the Cold Water Army were about to perform The Cottage of Contentment (by the author of Harvest Queen's Coronation), the writer observed that 'these cheap and innocent amusements are getting to be very popular in this city'. A review in the Nova Scotian of 31 January 1853 records that this entertainment was played 'before a crowded and admiring audience'.

No doubt, the popularity of the temperance soirées was ensured by the enormous general popularity of the movement at mid-century. It must equally have been assisted by the large numbers of participants in the presentation, all of whom could be relied upon to attract friends and relatives. Both of the extant soirées allow for an opening procession involving all members of the presenting groups. In Cadets, the major speaking roles could be sustained by a core group of fourteen actors (assuming the doubling of two characters who appear in Part One but not in Part Two of the entertainment). The large guard of the Cadets of Temperance called for in the closing masque of the piece in effect serves as part of the scenery. Harvest Queen's Coronation requires more than a score of speaking actors, as well as attendants and spectators. Female figures in both entertainments, including the title role of the latter one, remain mute - suggesting that all participants were in fact members of the exclusively male temperance organizations.

The texts of the two soirées reveal two distinct attitudes toward their respective audiences. The opening address of the Cadets describes its motive as being 'that of contributing to the audience's welfare and happiness', and, later, 'to present that in which young persons may find something suitable to their years, calculated to amuse and instruct, to reprove errors, and encourage desires to be good and happy. ... ' (pp 3-4) Its chief thrust is missionary in nature, and its chief concern, benefit to the audience. By contrast, Harvest Queen's Coronation is introduced thus:

... our object this evening, is to occupy an hour in a way which may be productive of improvement to ourselves, of some advantage to the cause of Temperance, and, we hope, of some pleasure to you. (p 3)

There is no mention here of education or improvement of the audience, except for the incidental hope that the cause of temperance might be furthered. The chief benefit is to be to the performing group, who will be improved by the activity itself.

The different educational purposes of the soirées explain several discrepancies of structure evident in them. Benefit to the audience may be secured by 'telling'; benefit to the performer is dependent on 'doing'. Consequently, Cadets exhibits considerably less plot than is to be found in Harvest Queen's Coronation. The former entertainment devotes its first half to a conversation on Christmas customs held among a Haligonian, an Englishman, a German, and a Norwegian; and its second to a masque depicting Father Christmas and the Seasons. The latter entertainment, following a prologue devoted to the procession of, and addresses by, the Juveniles of the Cold Water Army, presents five scenes in which the male villagers of Oldstyle prepare for, duly elect, and crown their Harvest Queen. 'Sub-plots' are provided by a travelling showman who provides a monarchical history lesson and a taverner who is converted to the cause of total abstinence. The piece ends with a scene similar in pageantry to that ending Thompson's: Harvest Queen is attended by Springday, Summernoon, and Wintereven.

In addition to a greater concern with plot, Harvest Queen's Coronation also makes more use of dialogue to convey its message than does Cadets. Where the latter continually reminds its audience of its educational intent by addressing it directly, the former integrates messages into dialogue spoken by one actor to another. While such a technique has obvious advantages for increasing the subtlety of message, its use here is most interesting because it underlines the desire to benefit performers first.

This desire is also evident in Harvest Queen's Coronation's comparatively greater allowance for the hazard of performance. Where Thompson prints the entire texts even of such familiar songs as 'Rule Brittania' and the National Anthem, the anonymous author of Harvest Queen's Coronation simply notes, for example, that Charles Mackay's 'The Good Time Coming' should be sung at a certain juncture.⁴ Moreover, Harvest Queen's Coronation exhibits several 'trials of activity and skill and study' in its final scene. While the victors in unseen manly sports and of a riddling contest are, of necessity, decided in advance, the reciters of verses and the contestants in a geography contest are left to compete for laurels at the time of performance. The participants on stage are in these cases equally in suspense with the members of the audience.

While it is clear that the two soirées respectively were aimed at benefitting two different groups, they shared a common belief in the moral nature of the benefit sought. The young participants in the recitation contest of Harvest Queen's Coronation are advised:

Respect yourself, and commit nothing to the memory which would be discreditable to taste and moral character; - respect the writers to whose thoughts you lend voice, - and in deliberation, distinctness, and chaste emotion, let their fine fancies be duly given by your expression. Reflect the sentiments which are deserving of repetition, truly, as the smooth lake reflects the bower on its borders. (pp 29-30)

A similarly high standard of content is sought by Cadets, as the opening address indicates:

Our entertainment is not intended to affect you like a show, which excites a momentary pleasure and is then forgotten; but rather like a summer evening's landscape, wherein the setting sun, the gilding clouds, the whispering breeze ... not only communicate pleasure, but at the same time lead the heart,

'Mid earth and skies and wood and waterfall,
To him, whose boundless goodness made them all. (p 4)

Thompson's contempt of the 'momentary pleasures' of 'a show' is consistent with the policy of the Directors of the Halifax Temperance Hall at mid-century. In the 1850's they were to refuse E.A. Sothern, later of Lord Dundreary fame, the right to perform there; and it was not until 1868 that T.C. Howard, manager of the Olympic Company from Boston, won approval to upgrade the Temperance Hall for theatrical purposes.⁵ Harvest Queen's Coronation, with its greater emphasis on action and its (admittedly safe) allowances for the hazard of performance, obviously took a less hard line on the merits of 'a show'. Neither entertainment was prepared to forego altogether the elements of music, spectacle, and in the one case plot and character, that make a 'show'.

The proliferation of such melodramas as Ten Nights in a Barroom and The Drunkard in the nineteenth century demonstrate that the Temperance Movement generally was quick to recognize the potential of the popular theatre for broadcasting its message. In the Maritimes, these plays were often left to productions by visiting professionals or by local amateur groups that held no particular brief for the cause. Mention of temperance in locally-written plays of the period is seldom, and then sometimes scornful. William Murdoch's closet Fireside Drama (1876) contains a scene wherein two young men are converted to teetotaldom, but in the end their elders discount efforts to 'turn the country a' upside down / Wi' teetotal notions' and drink a hearty bumper.⁶John Hunter Duvar's A Chance Father (1894) is equally unwilling to preach total abstinence.⁷ When the hero of this piece visits a slum and provides its tenants with financial help, he seeks not to reform them, but merely says, 'as a friend I would venture to suggest a cent's worth of bread to all that sack'. One locally-written and produced drama that did take temperance seriously, John Louis Carleton's In One Night, has not, unfortunately, survived in printed form.⁸

Where the Temperance Movement in the nineteenth century Maritimes had its most lasting effect upon theatre in the region was neither in the production of the soirées themselves nor in its infrequent productions of temperance plays. Instead, it was in the Movement's encouragement of amateur productions of plays that were often completely unrelated to the cause.

Quite apart from their commitment to teetotaldom, Maritime temperance societies were devoted to supplying their members with other social benefits of a surprisingly broad nature. As well as providing unemployment and burial insurance cooperatives for their members, the societies sought to become schools of science and of the fine and useful arts. Most temperance halls were equipped with libraries and lecture auditoria, and most societies, as already noted, provided for literary and musical exercises at their meetings. The subject matter for these exercises, however, was not prescribed, and it is evident that considerable latitude was taken. Subjects for debate at the meetings of one Nova Scotian division of the Sons of Temperance, for instance, included such questions as whether pulpit or bar offered a greater field of eloquence, whether man was made by natural abilities or surroundings, and whether women should get the vote.⁹ Similar latitude was in turn granted to the amateur dramatic societies that developed out of the temperance societies.

These amateur dramatic societies tended to preserve the traditional sexual boundaries of the temperance society. Active all-male temperance societies in Saint John, for example, included the Father Mathew Association, the Immaculate Conception Cadets of Temperance, and the St. Patrick's Total Abstinence Society, and each of these produced plays, usually with all-male casts, although female guests did occasionally appear in later years. In such cases as the Immaculate Conception Cadets of Temperance, it appears that the whole society participated in theatricals. The Father Mathew Association, on the other hand, operated in a different fashion. It duly constituted under its aegis a distinct Dramatic Society which was run by its own slate of officers. That this "splinter group" maintained close ties with the main body is apparent in the fact that its first production under the Presidency of J.J. Ryan was a play by Father Mathew Association President John Louis Carleton; and both Ryan and Carleton played roles in it.¹⁰

Not surprisingly, when such groups as the dramatic societies of the Irish Catholic temperance societies congregated, they discovered that they held far more in common than simply the cause of temperance. As a consequence, the Immaculate Conception Cadets of Temperance could as happily produce such plays as H.T. Craven's melodrama of the revenge of a woman scorned, Coals of Fire, and the devotional play The Family of Martyrs (21 January and 17 March 1880, respectively) as one aimed at recruiting teetotallers. Similarly, the first production by the newly-formed Father Mathew Association Dramatic Society in March 1884 was Carleton's Irish melodrama More Sinned Against than Sinning. This political play about contemporary events in Ireland contains a kidnapping plot that is foiled by one Teddy O'Neill (the ever-popular stage Irishman) in the guise of an old whisky woman. Any connection with temperance is, at best, tenuous. Far from subordinating the theatre to the cause of temperance, such societies as the Father Mathew Association were clearly interested in expanding the repertoire of local amateur performers and in encouraging local writers.

John Louis Carleton, one of the most prolific, and certainly the most performed, of Maritime playwrights grew up theatrically inside the Temperance Movement. He was a member of the Immaculate Conception Cadets of Temperance when they presented Coals of Fire and The Family of Martyrs in 1880. He was, as has been noted, President of the Father Mathew Association when it formed its Dramatic Society and when it produced his More Sinned Against than Sinning. The first performance of this play in Saint John took place in St. Malachi's Hall, which served as a kind of Catholic community centre for the city. This was a three storey brick structure, opened in 1878, which housed school rooms, meeting rooms, and an auditorium.¹¹ Despite the evident lack of theatrical equipment in the Hall's auditorium, the production was apparently carried by the quality of its acting.¹² The technical aspects of production were likely better served by the second Saint John production of the play by the F.M.A. Dramatic Society at the newly equipped Mechanics' Institute Theatre.¹³ Improvements to this theatre when Carleton and company encountered it included the installation of a new proscenium screen, relocation of the gas lighting board backstage, alterations of the scene-changing apparatus, and painting of new scenery by William Gill of New York.¹⁴ In such surroundings, the amateurs of the temperance society stood to learn a great deal.

It is clear that Carleton himself was already thoroughly conversant with the technical aspects of theatre. The edition of More Sinned Against than Sinning printed by De Witt of New York in 1883 illustrates the extent of his theatrical vocabulary. The stage directions demonstrate a familiarity with traditions of blocking (particularly with a mind to setting up tableaux to end scenes), techniques of setting (wings in grooves) and the management of 'points'. That these are Carleton's own and not entirely the work of a New York editor is suggested by his privately printed edition of a later play, Hildebrand (1903), which displays equal care in the detailing of stage effects: ¹⁵

Rotundo interior set in 4. Platform, 2 feet high, following curve of setting, 2 feet distant, extending from R to L. 3, surmounted by balustrade, except in C., wbere steps lead up to it. At C., back, a large bow window looking into garden. Doors R.C., L.C., R.1 and 2, and L. 2.

The theatrical literacy made possible by the temperance societies prepared some members for careers beyond the Maritimes. Carleton's brother William, also a member of Saint John temperance societies, parlayed his training in Saint John into a successful career as a director, chiefly of musicals, with Klaw and Erlanger in New York. His productions included 1492, San Toy, and The Pink Lady. ¹⁶[sic]

While William Carleton's success in the field of production is rather the exception than the rule, the far-flung popularity of John Carleton's work provides a weightier instance of the positive influence of the Temperance Movement on the developing drama of the nineteenth century Maritimes. The suitability of More Sinned Against than Sinning to the talents and resources of amateur dramatic societies, coupled with the wide circulation of the products of its American publishers, afforded the play several productions beyond Carleton's native Saint John. Places as far distant as Butte, Montana, are known to have witnessed performances of the play.¹⁷ It was played in Upper Canada in the eighties and nineties - at Kingston and Toronto.¹⁸ Closer to home, Prince Edward Islanders mounted several productions of the piece, chiefly under the auspices of Irish Societies and Roman Catholic Schools.¹⁹ In February of 1903 an amateur company in Bangor, Maine, was reported to have scored its greatest triumph in the, by then, twenty year old play.²⁰

The writing of More Sinned Against than Sinning represents a major moment in the history of Maritime theatre, and it was achieved within the milieu of temperance society theatricals. These theatricals were a significant force in encouraging local amateur performers and broadening the local repertoire. The temperance soirées, although they might abjure the intent, at least made use of the conditions of 'a show', and thereby planted in audience and performers alike an appetite for more.

TEMPERANCE AND THE THEATRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MARITIMES

Mark Blagrave

1 See BRIAN HARRISON Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England 1815-1872 Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971, pp 129 and 326
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2 Constitution and Rules of the Father Mathew Association Saint John: Herald Office, 1877, p 20
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3 JOHN SPARROW THOMPSON Cadets of Temperance. An Entertainment for the Christmas Holidays Halifax: James Bowes and Son, 1852 and ANON Scenes and Dialogues, entitled: Harvest Queen's Coronation Halifax: Alex J. Ritchie, 1854
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4 Scenes and Dialogues, entitled: Harvest Queen's Coronation p 25
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5 See J. L. BEST The Post-Confederation Theatres of Halifax University of New Brunswick: M.A. Thesis, 1972, pp 17, 31, 34
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6 Murdoch's play appeared as part of the volume Discursory Ruminations, A Fireside Drama &c &c Saint John: H. Chubb and Co, 1876. See especially pp 89-90, 94-96, 102
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7 This is available only in a manuscript dated 1894 and held by the Public Archives of Prince Edward Island. The quotation is from p 86
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8 See MARY ELIZABETH SMITH, Too Soon the Curtain Fell Fredericton: Brunswick Press, 1981, pp 167 and 169
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9 See WILLIAM MARSHALL BISHOP, A Way of Learning Outside the Schools in Nineteenth Century Nova Scotia Halifax: Nova Scotia Public Archives, 1974, especially pp 27, 49, 53-54, 61
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10 The play was More Sinned Against than Sinning. A list of the dramatis personae of this production is supplied in the Saint John Globe 18 March 1884 p 2
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11 St. Malachi's Hall was built on a site occupied by St. Malachi's Chapel until 1877, and now occupied by St. Malachy's School. A picture is printed in the Saint John Evening Times Globe 6 February 1950, p 11
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12 The Weekly Freeman 21 March 1884, p 3 lauds the acting, comparing it favourably with that of professionals
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13 See Saint John Globe 18 March 1885, p 2
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14 See Annual Reports of the Mechanics' Institute of Saint John, N.B. 1880-81; 1881-82; 1883-84 Saint John: J. & A. McMillan, and Saint John Sun 2 November 1882, p 3 and 29 December 1882, p 2
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15 JOHN LOUIS CARLETON, Hildebrand Saint John: Author, 1903, p 5
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16 See Saint John Globe 17 June 1913 for an account of William Carleton's career to that date
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17 See M.E. SMITH, p 168
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18 Performances occurred in Kingston 1 September 1885 and 6 November 1885. See LESLIE O'DELL, Theatrical Events in Kingston, Ontario: 1879-1897 University of Toronto: Doctoral Thesis, 1982, Vol III, pp 11, 98, 99, and 263. The dramatic society of St. Michael's College produced the play on 6 December 1889 in Toronto - see ANTON WAGNER, ed, The Brock Bibliography of Published Canadian Plays in English Toronto: Playwrights Press, 1980, p 19
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19 LINDA PEAKE, 'Establishing a Theatrical Tradition: Prince Edward Island, 1800-1900', Theatre History in Canada 2, no. 2 (Fall 1981) p 121
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20 See Saint John Sun 20 February 1903, p 2.
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