Linda M. Peake
Theatrical activity in Prince Edward Island can be dated to 1800 when the Charlotte-Town Amateur Theatre opened. Throughout the century, dramatic entertainment flourished in local performances, with professional touring companies arriving from the 1880s on. During the last two decades of the century, a group of theatre people seeking a retreat from the pressures of a New York winter season purchased land and founded the Fortune Bay Actor's Colony.
L'activite théâtricale en l'Ile de Prince Edward peut être dater à 1800 quand le Charlottetown Amateur Theatre est ouvert. Pendant le siècle divertissement de théâtre à fleurir dans les spectacles locales, avec les compagnies de voyage professionnelles, arrivant de 1800. Pendant les dernières de dixiène d'années de siècle, un groupe de gênes de théâtre cherchant une retraite à partir de les pressions de la saison l'hiver en New York, à acheté et à fondé la Fortune Bay Actor's Colony.
When one thinks of Prince Edward Island, three things generally come to mind: potatoes, tourists and Anne of Green Gables. Each has brought world-wide recognition to the Island. Although this is a modern day view, each has its own reflection in history.
Agriculture has been the backbone of P.E.I's economy since its earliest settlers farmed the fertile soil. Tourism developed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century when improved transportation made communication with other provinces and the eastern seaboard of the United States more accessible. And theatre -the Island is as rich in its theatrical past as its land is fertile.
Theatrical activity in Prince Edward Island can be dated, with some degree of certainty, as early as 1800. The first advertisement for the Charlotte-Town Amateur Theatre appears in the Prince Edward Island Gazette 26 November 1817 and announces the opening of the season with Raising the Wind and Fortune's Frolic. The theatre is handsomely decorated and is reportedly larger than the previous season:
... the Boxes are made to contain about two hundred persons, the Stage Boxes are reserved for the Manager and Performers - the Pit is necessarily small, and to ensure as select an audience as possible, the Gallery is not to be opened during this season, the front of the Stage and Orchestra are neatly decorated, - the Paintings of Thalia and Melpomene, and other emblematic Figures are placed on each side of the Stage, and in front of the Proscenium is a transparent Painting representing the figure of Fame holding a Medallion containing a likeness of the Godfather of our Island, His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, with the figures of Britania and the British Lion underneath. The scenery for the most part is entirely new - in short the tout ensemble is handsomely arranged, well fitted up, and in all respects appropriately adapted for the purpose.1
The company of Amateurs seek to provide entertainment during the
long winter months. They aim 'with Innocence and Mirth to beguile a Winter's
night away - to shoot folly as it flies, and laugh their hearers into virtue's
cause.'2
It is advised that 'if grumblers; there are, we recommend them to peruse
the motto which the Theatre has adopted of - "Pause before you Blame." ' 3
The motto is aptly chosen for, during its thirty years in existence, the
Charlotte-Town Amateur Theatre is frequently met with severe criticism,
notably by the Church. Nevertheless, the company is well patronized by
a public that is hungry for a winter night's entertainment.
The common criticism is that the theatre is a corrupter of morals. One such criticism appears in the press in 1822 in an article entitled 'A Serious Address to the Frequenters of Theatre' and is written by a Clergyman of the Church of England who compares theatre to an 'infectious fatal distemper.' 4 In the 'Theatre', he writes, 'vice is set off with every charm by which it can be adorned, and virtue, at least piety, is often represented in a ridiculous light so as to prejudice young minds against it.' 5
In response to such criticism the moral merits of the drama are defended, often as inclusions in notices of forthcoming productions or in reviews. The support of the drama is a public duty believes one writer who concludes his review of the Charlotte-Town Amateur Theatre's production of The Count of Narbonne on 27 March, 1821, as follows:
Independent of the moral lessons which are there so charmingly and artfully introduced ... the very recital of those lessons promote the study not only of history but of eloquence, and an emulation in just accent and ease of delivery highly necessary in the youthful and the mature - an emulation which has pervaded in all the refined countries from the days of Thespis and AEschylus to the present hour. 6
The most productive season for the Amateur company was 1819 - 1820,
opening in December with three performances of Colman's John Bull and
the after-piece Doctor's Last Examination and closing in April,
having presented a total of ten performances of seven different plays including,
besides John Bull, Isaac Pocock's The Miller and His Men, Raising
the Wind, Speed the Plough, Sheridan's The Rivals and Romeo
and Juliet. The theatre's other most active years were 1828 to 1830.
In 1828 seven performances were given, including the mounting of five new
pieces and revivals of The Jew and the Doctor and Raising the
Wind from previous years. Other plays were: Moliere's The Miser,
Spectre Bridegroom, Turn Out and The Padlock. One production
was cancelled due to the death of a prominent member of the company, Captain
Andrew W. Pemberton of the Rifle Brigade, who had been an active member
of the Amateur Theatre while stationed in Charlotte-Town. His involvement
is the first substantial indication of the Garrison's connection with local
theatre.
The Amateurs often staged their plays in buildings that were far from adequate. Comfortable facilities did not exist until the Temperance Hall was built in 1851. The building most often fitted up for performance was a house on Sydney Street, owned by Samuel May Williams. The lengthy delays during the performance of Mrs. Centlivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife and The Mock Doctor, on September 1 1823, are accounted for by one of the actors:
In order to leave all possible room on the stage, the space left behind is so limited as not to admit of dressing rooms, or persons to assist in dressing; the actresses dress in the next house; each male performer dresses in whatever place he can find room for his trunk. 7
This lack of backstage facilities also accounts for the late hour
at which the performance began. 'The performers generally go to the Theatre
ready dressed, and as they are not much in the habit of sporting close
carriages,
they are obliged to pop through the town in the dark.' 8
(Note that the newspaper advertized. 'Doors open at half past Six. Curtain
drawn up precisely at Seven o'clock.') 9
The year 1830 commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the Charlotte-Town Amateur Theatre which opened its season with a special programme of Kotzebue's The Birth-Day and the ballad farce The Devil to Pay, concluding the evening with a Ballet of Action. A special prologue was written for the occasion. It makes reference to the beginning of the theatre, the prejudice against the players, and closes with a mournful remembrance of the loss of Captain Pemberton:
Time flies - we reckon almost thirty years
Since first our Stage beat up for volunteers:
'Gainst prejudice our force was then directed,
And public smiles declared we were protected.
Tho' few friends here bore witness to that sight,
It's two first vetrans appear to-night.
Oh, to our number could we add one more!
He, whom our tributary tears deplore...*
The wounded soldier - languishing - decayed -
Here toiled - and here his classic taste displayed:
'Twas life's last flash - the awful scene we mourn,
Whilst friendship's drooping chaplet decks his urn! 10
The anniversary year also marks the decline of the Amateur company.
With the exception of a single year, 1841, the years between 1831 and 1866
appear theatrically barren. If, indeed, the company did exist, there is
no evidence in the press.
A new Charlottetown Amateur Dramatic Club was formed in 1866 and produced two or three entertainments annually at St. Andrew's Hall until 1870. Their first ambitious season saw productions in February, April and June of The Merchant of Venice, Morton's Box and Cox, Fortune's Frolic, Hamlet, The People's Lawyer and A Pretty Piece of Business, all under the able direction of Mrs. Wentworth Stevenson. Trained in England as an actress and music teacher, Mrs. Stevenson was the instrumental force behind the Dramatic Club. After her retirement in 1870, the only known performances of the decade are between 1874 and 1876 when two plays a year were mounted.
Joining forces with Mrs. Stevenson in 1868 were H.W. Vinnicombe and Samuel N. Earle who, for the rest of the century, continued to contribute their talents to innumerable musical, dramatic and operatic entertainments. Mr. Earle was musical director for many of the Dramatic Club's productions. Also, he directed the annual Oddfellow's Natal Day Entertainments, most notably their H.M.S. Pinafore, first presented in 1885, again in spring 1890 and then in January 1895. Mr. Vinnicombe's orchestra supplied the music for many local concerts and productions, including the 1890 Pinafore, and, was in regular attendance at the Opera House (opened in 1893). Both Earle and Vinnicombe, on occasion, supplied musical accompaniment for touring companies such as the Nannery & Lindley Company, 1880, and the Boston Comedy Company in 1893.
During the theatrically dry decade of the '70s Literary and Musical Entertainments grew in abundance. The majority of these concerts were directed by Samuel Earle or H.W. Vinnicombe. The over-abundance of this form of entertainment prompted 'an Old Stager' to write a letter to the editor of the Examiner in which he bitterly complains about the lack of talent in the participants of these concerts. 'The so-called literary and musical entertainments,' he claims, 'are almost played out' in Charlottetown. 'Why not try something in the dramatic line for a change?' He suggests: 'We have several "stage struck" would-be actors and actresses in our midst, who, from all accounts, seem determined to make names for themselves in the theatrical world.'11
A reply by a 'Young Stager' suggests the cause for the inferior entertainments being 'played out': 'gentlemen of "Old Stager's" calibre have in reality "wearied audiences" with their "miserable attempts."' He proceeds: 'Well do I remember "Old Stager's" first appearance on the public platform as a 'would-be' vocalist .... Position - a dying duck in a fit. Voice - between the croak of a bullfrog and the bray of a jackass.' The 'Young Stager' closes his letter with a fatal blow:
... if 'Old Stager, again appears in print, his friends will never again take up a collection to pay his debts. One night in 'Harvie's Brig' is a night too many. Always remember that 'foreigners' must not try to play upon poor benighted Islanders too much.12
Musical and Literary Concerts continued to thrive, however, most
certainly to the delight of 'Old Stager', local theatre was revived in
the 1880s. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, theatrical
activity flourished. These were economically and socially wealthy years.
After the completion of the Island's railway, amateur groups began touring
their own province. At least three local companies existed in Charlottetown
alone, each producing plays with increasing regularity. The Union Dramatic
Club (later the B.I.S. Dramatic Club and the Lyceum Comedy Company), founded
about 1885, gave to Prince Edward Island its first production of New Brunswick
playwright John Louis Carleton's play More Sinned Against than Sinning.
It
was staged, with the after piece Should This Meet the Eye at the
Academy of Music on the 6th and 9th April and was remounted the following
year in Surnmerside on St. Patrick's Day. It also became the opening bill
for the Lyceum Theatre (Benevolent Irish Society Hall, Prince Street) on
26 April 1886. Plays were given annually on St. Patrick's Day, under the
auspices of the B.I.S. and, for the most part, have continued to the present
day.
A second company, the Dramatic Club of St. Dunstan's College began in the 1890s. Their 1893 production of More Sinned Against than Sinning, along with the farce Joe Simpson's Double, played in Souris, in eastern P.E.I. the 13 April, and in Charlottetown at the Lyceum the 17 April before going to the western end of the Island to open Mischouche Hall on 28 April. The St. Dunstan 'Saints' annually staged spring plays in Charlottetown during the nineties, and into the twentieth century, often touring them to Surnmerside or Souris.
The grand opening of the Masonic Temple Opera House, 31 October 1893 created yet another Charlottetown Dramatic Club. Under the direction of Mr. Percy Pope, with music by Vinnicombe's Orchestra, the Opera House opened with Scribe's The Russian Honeymoon and the farce The Judge's Decision. In February 1894, this company officially formed under the management of Mr. W.C. Whitlock, a local actor of eight years experience on the professional stage in Canada and the United States. The Club presented two or three plays annually, under the direction of Mr. Whitlock and musical director Mr. Vinnicombe. Whitlock, besides directing and performing in the Dramatic Club plays, found time for an occasional appearance with visiting companies. In 1895 he played in D'Ennery's The Two Orphans with the Nelville & Darley English Comedy Company. He appeared in Lindley Company plays in 1896 and directed the stage proceedings for a Halifax Dramatic Company's production in Charlottetown that same year.
Local theatre developed along with the nineteenth century. The increase in population, an improved economy and the building of roads and railways were all important to its evolution. Perhaps the latter, the improved transportation system, is the most important factor in the development of touring companies. Communication with the mainland provinces was a haphazardous affair for Prince Edward Island. Travel within the province was difficult enough until the railway was built in 1871. The steamer service to the mainland was irregular throughout the first seventy-five years of the century. Regular and frequent visits to the Island by touring companies did not exist until the eighties. Even then, they would leave by November and not return until April or May. A winter crossing of the Northumberland Strait could only be done by ice boat until the first ice breaker was introduced in 1876.
Touring companies arrived by two routes. If they were coming from Halifax, Nova Scotia, they would travel through Truro to Pictou by rail or coach, then catch the steamer from Pictou to Charlottetown. Companies from Boston might sail to Saint John, New Brunswick, then on by rail to Shediac. Steamers sailed from Shediac to both Summerside, at the western end of Prince Edward Island, and to Charlottetown.
One of the first touring companies to appear in P.E.I., a dramatic corps under actor-manager H.W. Preston, arrived in Charlottetown in August 1844 and attempted to perform in Mr James MacDonnel's building in Queen Square. The performance was unsuccessful; they were met, not with the famous Island hospitality, but with stones. The performance was stopped when a crowd of boys 'to the tune of about two hundred,' gathered outside, shouting, yelling and throwing stones until nearly every window in the front was broken. The company and its audience fled out the back.13 Mr Preston's Company never returned to Prince Edward Island.
Touring companies were scarce until 1869. Prior to that Charlottetown had only two visits by the Heron Family (1852 and 1855); the Fiske Company in July 1867; General Tom Thumb's Troupe and Howard's Olympic Theatre both in July 1868.
On 11 May 1869, after an eight month tour of the provinces, the Wilson & Clarke Provincial Boston Theatre opened for a five week engagement at the Market Hall. Under actor-managers George E. Wilson and C.H. Clarke, the company presented, among other plays, The Gipsey Queen, Miralda or The Yankee in Cuba, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and The Streets of Boston.
Late in the summer of 1870, Boston's Wilson & Clarke Co., after a seven week tour in Newfoundland, set sail in the brigantine Ten Sisters for the six day journey to Charlottetown. Head winds and frequent dead calms prolonged the crossing. On the eleventh day at sea, just hours from their destination, they were struck by hurricane winds. The vessel was driven ashore at South Lake, East Point, P.E.I. Though all the twenty one passengers were rescued, the loss for the company was great. Their theatrical cargo, 'some thirty or more trunks, filled with valuable wardrobe,' and 'sets of scenery, etc., were wholly or in part destroyed.' 14 The shipwrecked company salvaged what they could before proceeding to Souris, where, in a warehouse placed at their free disposal, they gave a performance before completing the trip to Charlottetown. 15 The company played a month at the Market Hall and a week in Surnmerside before leaving the province in late October. During their stay Wilson and Clarke gave a benefit performance to the director of the local Dramatic Club, Mrs Wentworth Stevenson, just prior to her retirement. She appeared with the company in the role of Nelly O'Neill in Buckstone's The Green Bushes. The Wilson & Clarke Company, never returned to Prince Edward Island. It was an ill fated company, for, during a tour of the Maritime provinces in 1872, Wilson and Clarke went bankrupt while in Newfoundland and permanently disbanded.
Many other short lived companies visited P.E.I. One such company - short-lived, not because of disasters met with while touring, but, one suspects, due to its inferior quality - was the Lewis-Potosky Folies Dramatique. Advertising themselves as a first-class company from New York and Boston Theatres, they played the Market Hall for one week in June, 1880. They presented the play Our Folks, written by the company's actor-manager Charles B. McGinnis, along with his own version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The company received no reviews for their Charlottetown appearance but did rate a vivid account after a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 7 October, in Crapaud, a village some twenty miles west of Charlottetown.
The play, it is reported, 'requires 17 people for a proper representation, and in the States colored vocalists, etc., are added to give fragrance to the dramatic bouquet.' 16 The Lewis-Potosky Company had only five actors and the doubling of parts mystified its audience. The scenery, or lack of it, 'did not assist the illusion.' 17 Poor Eva went to heaven on two chairs draped with a table cloth. Uncle Tom's 'dusky hue prevented any mistake as to his identity.' 18 However, he was impersonated by the organist, and 'owing to the exigencies of the play desiring music, could not die outright on stage, as usual, but, crawled off in fearful agony, and played his own death scene in the wings.' 19 The account of Legree's death scene is equally amusing:
(Legree) received a butcher knife of collosal dimensions under the arm, spasmodically winced, convulsed, twisted - fell with terrible force, died all over the stage - revivified himself by degrees - exclaimed, alas! I am wounded mortally, writhered off like the pontiferous serpent, and by the extraordinary vicillation of the back curtain it was easily seen he was rushing to the opposite side to let down the scene which should cover his gory death. 20
Little Portia Albee is granted a word of praise for 'working hard
and achieving success' in her duel role as Topsy and Eva which, is much
to her credit, as Topsy and Eva generally have scenes together. 21
The review concludes, 'Give this company credit, for they have achieved
what would be deemed dramatically impossible .... and Crapaud may be jubilant,
as it has seen Uncle Tom.' 22
Needless to say, Crapaud did not see Uncle Tom's Cabin in all its splendor as did the Charlottetown audience when, in 1887, Abbey's Double Mammoth Uncle Tom's Cabin Company played the Lyceum. This company boasted to be the only double company in existence, complete with two Brass Bands; one white, one black, two funny, mirth provoking Topsys, two comical, ludicrous musical Marks, a pack of ferocious, man-hunting bloodhounds, genuine South Carolina jubilee Singers and Plantation Troubeclors and, Leon, the aesthetic trained donkey.23 However, by 1887, the audience were connoisseurs of Uncle Tom's Cabin productions and viewed this one as wretchedly performed. There was only one Topsy, not two as advertized, and 'she was an inferior article.' 24 'Taken all in all the Company compares favorably with the worst that has ever visited the city.' 25 Many more noteworthy and reputable companies included P.E.I. on their touring circuits. The very successful Boston Comedy Company ranks highly among them. The company's first tour to the province was in 1875. It returned in 1883 under the actor-manager H. Price Webber. His wife and leading lady, Edwina Gray, had been with the ill fated, shipwrecked Wilson & Clarke Company. The Boston Comedy Company was one of the most regular and well patronized to play in Charlottetown. Between 1883 and 1900 the company returned regularly to Charlottetown and Surnmerside, staying a week or two at a time, presenting a standard repertoire of melodrama including: Mrs Henry Wood's East Lynne, Pratt's Ten Nights in a Bar Room, Campbell's The White Slave, The Gypsey Queen, Boucicault's The Octoroon, or Daly's Under the Gaslight.
The Nannery Company arrived in Charlottetown in July 1879, after a successful season in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Among the cast was Ida Van Courtland who returned the following spring with the Lindley Opera and Comedy Company. Also a member of Lindley's Company at that time was Albert Tavernier. In 1882 both Tavernier and Van Courtland, now Mrs Tavernier, headed the Tavernier-Lewis Company. Lewis is none other than Horace Lewis of the Lewis-Potosky Folies Dramatique. Both he and little Portia Albee joined Lindley after the production of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Crapaud.
Lindley's Company enjoyed what is perhaps the longest engagement of any troupe in Prince Edward Island during the nineteenth century. In 1880 the company opened on 27 April and ran continually to the 17 May. They played Nova Scotia throughout the month of June but returned in mid-July to the Market Hall, now billed as Nannery & Lindley Company.
Prior to a performance of Hamlet, Mr Nannery stepped before the curtain and explained the difficulties of producing a first-class play in Charlottetown 'for want of a proper hall ... and briefly but forcibly urged the erection of a small Opera House.' 26 As a theatre manager himself - he had interests in both the Academy of Music in Saint John, New Brunswick, and in Halifax, Nova Scotia - he offered to assist in the erection of a building which, he estimated, could be done for $15,000. 27 He believed that if an Opera House were built:
first-class companies visiting Halifax and St. John would include Charlottetown in their circuits, and the taste of people would be elevated by the frequent representation of the works of the best authors.28
Over the next decade Mr Nannery's speculation was to be proved correct.
However, it was not Nannery, but Harry Lindley who was instrumental in
opening the first proper theatre in Charlottetown. In his theatrical memoirs,
Merely
Players, Lindley describes what it was like to perform H.M.S. Pinafore
in
the Market Hall:
[It was] redolent of beef and ungodly savours, and, as it was summer, flies of varied dimensions and colors. No performance ever drew as large a house, and probably never will. The scenic effects were limited, and the auditorium, although unlimited, as to quantity, was bestial in quality. 29
Lindley saw a good opportunity and, with a cash capital of fifty
cents, lots of promises and loans from money lenders, 30
he leased the old Athenaeum, (previously the Temperance Hall which closed
in 1869) and supervised its transformation into the Academy of Music. The
theatre Lindley created was luxurious after the Market Hall. The stage
was enlarged, raked and furnished with traps. A proscenium was constructed
and a system of flats, wings and boarders replaced the old drop scenery.
The auditorium held six hundred; the orchestra, two hundred; the parquette,
two hundred; and two hundred and fifty in the horseshoe shaped gallery.
There were five stage boxes each holding six people. The prices were set
at: gallery 25¢, parquette 35¢, orchestra 50¢ and boxes
$5. 31
The Academy of Music's grand opening was 30 August 1880. Plays were presented nightly, except Sunday, by a company comprised of Lindley's own company members and some local talent. Audiences at first filled the theatre but, as winter approached and the programme became redundant, attendance thinned considerably. Before closing the season, Lindley publicized that in an afterpiece, he would expose the secret rites of the Masons. A publicity stunt that would surely guarantee a full house. His ploy worked - the house was filled on 10 November by angry members of the local Lodge. Lindley describes the event.
The house was full and Masonry was the after-piece, but anyway the preceding play dragged. Everybody seemed as though they were waiting to club somebody, but we reached their object at last. Curtain drew up on a smart individual (self) talking in a street to a hayseed. Smart individual tries to be funny. (No smiles.) Finally comes to 'Hecuba.' 'Do you want to be a mason?' (Few hisses.) 'Yes!' 'All right; come on and get the first degree.' (Louder hisses.) Flats drew off, and there was the first degree - goat, compass, globes, big eye and all. I gave the apprentice the introductory lecture; then followed his initiation, down sliding platforms, &c., and in the midst of a solemn obligation he was walked over a trap and disappeared midst red fire and detonators. This was too much for the masons, who had monopolized the gallery. They chuckled, roared.... 32
The following day Lindley made a quiet exit from Charlottetown.
He left the province on one of the last regular steamer runs before winter,
supposedly for a short season in Pictou, Nova Scotia. Harry Lindley left
much behind him: a Lodge full of pacified Masons, the provinces first fine
theatre and most probably some unpaid debts. His initial cash investment
of fifty cents had brought little in monetary returns yet it multiplied
the cultural wealth of the province. It was 1897 before Lindley returned
to P.E.I. His Academy of Music had undergone more transformations. It had
housed most of the touring companies until the Lyceum opened in 1886; it
became both a billiard hall and the Army Gospel Hall in 1887; underwent
renovations in 1889 and became the Philharmonic Hall.
One fascinating aspect of Prince Edward Island's theatrical history occurs far from Charlottetown, its centre of activity, and is perhaps more the direct result of tourism than the building of theatres. An actor, exhausted after a bustling Broadway season, reportedly read a brochure advertizing P.E.I.'s health resorts, white beaches and idyllic surroundings.33 Convinced he had discovered paradise, he bought land and returned each summer, bringing with him fellow actors and friends.
Fortune Bay, a quiet, pastoral community at the Eastern end of the Island became a Thespian camping ground. It was a perfect retreat for these actors, actresses and writers of the American stage who required the renewal of peace and tranquility. During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of this one, the Actor's Colony added unusual spice and life to the community. Who were these Thespians whose presence added to the folklore of the Island?
Charles Francis Coghlan, actor and playwright, was the founder of the colony. Coghlan had studied in Paris, performed in London and made his American debut in 1876 in Bulwer-Lytton's Money at Daly's New York theatre. 34 He was the author of five plays: Enemies, A Quiet Rubber, Citizen Pierre, Lady Barter, and The Royal Box. The latter two were written at Fortune Bay. He acted with such noted stars as Minnie Maddern, Lilly Langtry, Johnston Forbes- Robertson and Mrs Patrick Campbell. In the 1880s he was Lilly Langtry's leading man. During the 1886-87 season he played opposite Langtry in his own play Enemies. At the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, in 1897, they starred in his adaptation of a French play The Royal Box.35 Coghlan also wrote for, and performed with his equally famous sister Rose Coghlan who, after her American debut in 1872, worked mainly at Wallack's Theatre. 36 There she appeared in such roles as Rosalind in As You Like It, Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal and the Player Queen in Edwin Booth's Hamlet. Rose Coghlan also became a frequent summer visitor to the colony.
Other core members of the Fortune Bay Colony were Charles P. Flockton, Charles Stevenson and Charles Kent. Flockton built his summer home next to Coghlan's on Abel's Cape (named after the infamous land agent who was sent out to P.E.I. to collect the unpopular land tax and was shot by irate Islanders.) Flockton, 'Flocky' as he was known to his friends, was a sociable man who gathered around him many of his fellow actors. He would sail his schooner, 'Stroller', to Halifax and transport his friends back to the Cape for a holiday of fishing, sailing and sometimes the getting up of a show. During one summer alone his guests included Billy Royston, Herbert Millweed, Harry Roberts and Cuthbert Cooper, all members of Mrs Leslie Carter's company. Other regular guests included members of David Belasco's company: John Glendenning, Frank Holland and Jessie Millards. 37
Augustus Pitou, the great American impresario, became a regular inhabitant of the colony. He married Charles Coghlan's eighteen year old daughter Gertrude, after her disastrous marriage to Rex Cameron, the son of a local pastor. (Dorothy Cameron, Gertrude's daughter by her first marriage, became a well-known actress in New York.)
Charles Stevenson and his wife Kate Claxton, purchased a cottage near Dingwell's Mill. (The mill is the setting of Elmer Harris's play Johnny Belinda.) Stevenson was a member of Wallack's Theatre before he became actor-manager of his wife's company which toured Canada in 1880, 1884, 1885 and 1903.
Charles Kent was one of the most colourful members of the Actor's Colony. He was an actor, writer, avid fisherman and tall story teller. (The latter two were his summer occupations.) He claimed to have discovered Captain Kidd's treasure while fishing off Abel's Cape and - like the four-pounder that got away - lost it. His story may not be too far-fetched. Folk tales mingle well with fact in the romantic atmosphere of the Actor's Colony. Kent wrote about his discovery in The Prince Edward Island Magazine and Reginald Carrington, the stage name of Reg Short, a fellow member of the colony, relates an incident of fortune hunting in a chapter from his autobiography. 38 Many a pick and shovel are said to have been left on the shore by discouraged fortune hunters. It is perhaps this that gives Fortune Bay its name.
Charles Kent also wrote affectionately about his friends and their summer retreat:
Although isolated from the world and scrapping for our living, we do not vegetate .... The arts are not neglected, either, and an evening 'at home' is a sight worthy of Dickens. (I always feel like Ham Pegotty.) But to see Warwick with his banjo accompaning Roberts on the tin whistle - that he plays beautifully - relieved by Flockton on the zither, Millward and myself playing pipes - loaded with queer Island tobacco - all dressed in sweaters and rubber boots or slip-shod slippers, while the logs crackle in the open fireplaces - it's a sight that would delight the late James A. Herne. 39
Life in the colony was not always idyllic. Carrington wrote of one
summer during which they were 'confronted with a situation which might
even have daunted such an aggregation as the Swiss Family Robinson.' 40
This was the summer of 1899, the year C.P. Flockton brought to Fortune
Bay 'a galaxy of fame and beauty known as the C.P. Flockton Comedy Company.'
41
Money and food were scarce and Flockton's credit at the local store had
been exhausted. The company fed on what fish the actors themselves could
catch, flounder speared at low tide and sea gull eggs. Hope of more fruitful
times came when the Company played to a capacity house in Souris. The entertainment
consisted of 'cornet solos; banjo duets; sketches; songs; monologues and
last, but by no means least, a new contraption, styled cinematograph.'
42
The decline and fall of the Flockton Comedy Company began after four one night stands, all unprofitable, followed by an engagement in Charlottetown which Carrington describes as their Waterloo:
Our first night's performance in that delightful little city realized some thirty dollars. Of the entertainment itself let us be charitable and preserve a discreet silence.... The audience however did enjoy one good hearty laugh. Again the cinematograph rose to the occasion.... A train projected on the screen dashed on in great style, indeed it would have been perfect had the picture not been upside down. Oh yes, it got a laugh, but also I fear, was instrumental in handing the coup de grace to the Flockton Comedy Company. Yet in spite of this fiasco, nine optimists or philanthropists paid admission the following evening. Then we touched bottom, not even a stray dog in front of the house. It was curtains for the Flockton Comedy Company. All that could be done was to return its members to their homes. But how?43
A repeat performance in Souris and a mortgage on Flockton's property
paid for the company's steamer tickets to Boston. However, the tickets
did not include 'such trivial items as meals ... but for the kindness of
the S.S. Halifax's stewards our returning Thespians would have been without
food during the entire journey.' 44
Carrington was not on board the steamer. He and a friend, to whom he refers
as Harry K., both elected to remain in Fortune Bay for the winter.
Some of the members of the Actor's Colony eventually took up permanent residency in Fortune Bay. Mr and Mrs (Short) Carrington retired to their home at the Bay. Henry Warwick-Kelvey, of the Amelia Bingham Company, and his Swedish wife Elsa, an actress who was a model for Charles Dana Gibson's famous Gibson Girls photographs, along with their close friend Cuthbert Cooper, are all buried in the vicinity of Fortune Bay.
It had been the expressed wishes of both Charles Coghlan and C.P. Flockton to be buried in Prince Edward Island. Charles Coghlan died in Galveston, Texas, 27 November 1899, while on tour with his daughter in his play The Royal Box. He was buried in that city. But the West Indies Hurricane and the Great Galveston Flood did not let him rest in peace.
Here a legend begins. During the flood, Coghlan's coffin was torn loose, carried out to sea and providentially borne back to the shore of P.E.I. His coffin drifted eastward, from Galveston to the Gulf Stream, which in turn carried it fifteen hundred miles to the north, until the tide bore it into the Gulf of St. Lawrence where it came ashore not far from his home. The story has appeared in Ripley's Believe It Or Not and in Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson's A Player Under Three Reigns. Lilly Langtry relates the story in The Days I Knew adding 'the singular happening to his remains was predicted for him by a crystal-gazer while he was a young man!' 45The Theatre magazine adds this note to the legend: 'On his last departure from the Island, Coghlan said, "I will return come hell and high water." And kept his word.'46 Legend dies hard.
Charles Flockton died while performing in San Francisco and his ashes were brought back to Prince Edward Island, at his own request. Later a monument, made of sandstone from the cliff at Abel's Cape, was erected and a sundial placed upon it. The plaque bears this inscription: 'The Passing Shadow Marks Another Hour of Absence. Erected in Memory of a Loyal Friend and Faithful Servant by Mrs Leslie Carter and David Belasco.'
The Actor's Colony at Fortune Bay did not die with these fascinating men of the theatre. Its spirit has survived to the present day. Elmer Harris began spending summers in Fortune Bay around 1915. There he conceived and wrote the play Johnny Belinda. (The Charlottetown Summer Festival has twice produced it as a musical.) The real Belinda McDonald would have been known to the younger members of the colony. Her father Black McDonald operated the grist mill near which Charles Stevenson lived. The summer home of Elmer Harris was owned, during the mid-1970s, by the actress Colleen Dewhurst. And only a few miles from Fortune Bay the playwright David French wrote Leaving Home.
The Actor's Colony is only one part of a tradition. Theatre in Prince Edward Island is not a modern phenomenon born with the Charlottetown Festival and Anne of Green Gables. The tradition began with the nineteenth century and the first productions of the Charlotte-Town Amateur Theatre; tradition outlives Lindley's Academy of Music and continues to shine over Flockton's sandstone monument at Abel's Cape. The Charlottetown Festival and Anne of Green Gables both, are built on a foundation of rich theatrical history.
NotesESTABLISHING A THEATRICAL TRADITION: PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, 1800 - 1900.
Linda M. Peake
1 Prince Edward Island Gazette 26 November 1817
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2 Ibid
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3 Ibid
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4 Prince Edward Island Gazette 26 January 1822,
reprinted from The Methodist Magazine 1818
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5 Ibid
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6 Prince Edward Island Gazette 31 March 1821
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7 Prince Edward Island Register 6 September 1823
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8 Ibid
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9 Prince Edward Island Register 30 August 1823
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10 Prince Edward Island Register 23 February
1830. The late Capt Pemberton of the Rifle Brigade, himself a first-rate
performer who instilled no small portion of his enthusiasm for the drama
into those around him, died here in 1828.
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11 Examiner 18 December 1878
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12 Examiner 24 December 1878
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13 Prince Edward Islander 23 August 1844
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14 Examiner 18 August 1870
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15 Ibid
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16 Examiner 9 August 1880
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17 Ibid
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18 Ibid
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19 Ibid
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20 Ibid
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21 Ibid
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22 Ibid
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23 Examiner 28 May 1887
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24 Examiner 4 June 1887
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25 Ibid
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26 Examiner 17 July 1880
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27 Ibid
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28 Ibid
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29 HARRY LINDLEY, Merely Players Toronto: Luella
Lindley, The Toronto News Company, 1894, p90
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30 Ibid pp89-90
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31 Examiner 18 August 1880 and 19 August 1880
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32 LINDLEY pp 90-91
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33 GEORGE LEARD files, Prince Edward Island Public
Archives
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34 ARTHUR HORNBLOW, The Theatre in America vol.III
Benjamin Blom: New York, 1965 revised, p196
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35 Ibid p 196
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36 Ibid p 194
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37 GEORGE LEARD files
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38 CHARLES KENT, 'Kidd's Treasure', The Prince Edward
Island Magazine vol.III, December 1901, pp 339-345 Reginald Carrington,
'Thespians in Arcady,' chapter III the only surviving chapter of his unpublished
autobiography, pp. 29-31. Courtesy of Mr. Floyd MacKenzie, Fortune Bay
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39 CHARLES KENT, 'In Summer Places', The Prince
Edward Island Magazine, vol IV, p 275
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40 CARRINGTON, p 26
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41 Ibid p 22
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42 Ibid p 32
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43 Ibid p 33
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44 Ibid p 33
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45 LILLY LANGTRY, The Days I Knew London: Hutchinson
& Company, 1925, p 200
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46 LLOYD M. GRAHAM, 'The Floating Coffin', The Atlantic
Advocate, January, 1962, p 47
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