RESPONSES TO THEATRE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY SAINT JOHN

Mary Elizabeth Smith

This paper examines the class and background of the initiators, sponsors and audiences of the theatre in nineteenth century Saint John. The first two categories were filled by and large with members of the elite professional and merchant classes, while the audience varied greatly with the theatre, the year, the company and the play. Repertoire is discussed briefly as is the effect of economic fluctuation on the fortunes of the theatre.

Cet exposé examine la classe et les antécédents des initiateurs, des personnes offrant leur patronage et de l'assistance dans le domaine du théâtre de la ville de Saint John au dix-neuvième siècle. Généralement, était comprise dans les deux premières catégories l'élite professionnelle et bourgeoise de la ville, tandis que la composition de l'assistance varait beaucoup selon l'année, le théâtre, la compagnie et la pièce présentée. Il parle aussi, brièvement, du répertoire ainsi que de l'effet des fluctuations économiques sur le sort du théâtre.

It will come as no surprise that the initiators and promoters of theatre in Saint John throughout the whole of the nineteenth century were, almost without exception, members of the segment of society sometimes termed the elite. They consisted of professional people and merchants whose position in society gave them influence and whose occupations provided financial rewards sufficient for them to wield it. Theatre would not have come to Saint John as early as 1789 had not the sons of the province's Loyalist founding fathers, responding to the cultural heritage received from their families and, in at least some instances, from schooling in Britain, taken matters into their own hands by establishing an amateur company which they named, synonomously with the room in Mallard's Tavern that housed it, the Saint John Theatre.

In the earliest years, those prior to 1828, the initiators of theatre and the actors in it were almost invariably the same persons. Most of them were young, of Loyalist or pre-Loyalist stock, with the occasional son of a Scottish merchant. ¹ Varying in age from seventeen to late twenties, lawyers or merchants in training, or newly launched in those careers, they represented the educated segment of the population as well as the group with time for leisure pursuits. The more senior members of the community gave passive support as audience and as facilitators. That they welcomed the presence of theatre in their midst is clear from the permissions granted by Lt. Thomas Mallard for the use of his hall in 1789 and 1795, and by the City Council in 1801 for refitting space in City Hall to make it suitable for theatrical performance. Further indications exist in Charles McPherson's lease of the hall in his Exchange Coffee House in 1799 to the first professional artists to visit the city, and in Ralph Munson Jarvis' rental of the hall he leased from Daniel Green to another company of professionals in 1817. Despite the fact that Loyalist values held all the arts in high regard, and despite the fact that Jonathan Sewell, the father of one of the earliest New Brunswick thespians, had written a political play entitled The Americans Roused, in a Cure for the Spleen (New York: James Rivington, 1775) prior to the American Revolution, no one beyond the age of thirty seems to have found the time (even if he had the inclination) to participate directly in promotion of the theatrical art; presumably the older members of the community were sufficiently occupied, initially, with survival and, increasingly, with the other tenet of Loyalist values, commerce.

From 1828, as professionals visited the city more frequently and for longer periods the kind of support called forth from the community altered. Whereas the initiative action of the early period was, for instance, a response to a theatrical vacuum, the energies of those citizens who brought about the erection of the Academy of Music in the early 1870s were a response to crowded houses in flourishing summer seasons at James Lanergan's Dramatic Lyceum. Throughout the century there was always a group of citizens, as well as a few particularly dedicated individuals, who attempted to meet the need of the moment as they perceived it. In 1880, for instance, after the Great Fire had robbed Saint John of all places of entertainment but the inadequate Mechanics Institute, and when the change to travelling companies from resident ones made booking of companies a larger administrative task, a group of concerned citizens banded together as the Micawber Club to assume management of the Institute. Five years later, the Irving Club temporarily relieved them of their responsibilities. In this difficult decade three different citizen groups put forward proposals for a palace of culture to replace the elegant Academy of Music. Although internal squabbling among the Saint John Oratorio Society, the St Cecilia Society, and the businessmen who favoured the site ultimately chosen for the new Opera House hindered progress by dividing effort, nevertheless the involvement of all three is reflective of the broadly felt need. The hunger for culture and for the social prestige that accompanied it in a city that looked especially to Boston as a model, and never to Halifax or other Canadian cities, was the same that in 1856 had prompted some of Saint John's citizens to encourage Bostonian James West Lanergan to establish a theatre in their midst.

Unfortunately, we have no record of the membership of the Micawber Club or the Irving Club. The stated purpose of the former, however, to bring to the city only dramatic and musical entertainments of the best calibre, as the club that inspired it was perceived to do for Bangor, ² hints that its members probably were, like the amateur thespians who honoured the Lanergans with a benefit performance in 1861, 'members of the first families in our city - gentlemen who gave to the learned professions grace and dignity, and who emerged from the busy haunts of trade and commerce, from the lawyers office, the abodes of Esculapius, from the highest social circles'. ³ Certainly the known supporters of both the Academy of Music and the Opera House answer this description. Doctors, lawyers, ships' brokers, proprietors of the leading hotels, druggists, taverners, stationers, and merchants of all kinds, they were a varied group of people who shared a common spirit of participation in community affairs. ⁴ In 1872, the year of the Academy's opening, director Dr George E.S. Keator was treasurer of both the New Brunswick Medical Society and the Natural History Society, while Dr James T. Stevens was president of the New Brunswick Medical Society as, in 1889, was Dr George Hetherington, one of the directors of the Opera House. Mayor A. Chipman Smith was, in 1872, a director of both the Victoria Hotel Company and the Victoria Skating Club and, later, a commissioner of the General Public Hospital. Since immigration had long since changed the character of the city from its Loyalist beginnings, the ethnic and religious backgrounds of the group were mixed. In 1880, broker Howard D. Troop was a trustee of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church and stationer John McMillan of St Stephen's Presbyterian Church, ⁵ while taverner T.L. Coughlan was, in 1872, vice-president of the St Patrick's Society. Merchant Alfred 0. Skinner, first president of the Saint John Opera House Company, served a term as vice-president of the St Andrew's Curling Club, while building-inspector Michael W. Maher, one of his directors, took a turn as trustee of the Irish Friendly Society. ⁶

The participatory action of some men in particular spoke dedication and enthusiasm for the theatre over long periods of time. F. P. Robinson, Drs George Keator and James Stevens, and barrister James T. Macshane, members of the cast that performed Othello on the stage of the Dramatic Lyceum as a tribute to the Lanergans in 1861, were, ten years later, helping to bring the Academy of Music to birth (Robinson owned the property on which the Academy was constructed). Similarly, it is difficult to imagine that the Opera House could have opened its doors in 1891 or have survived into the twentieth century without the unflagging determination of president A.0. Skinner and of John F. Dockrill who, with his brother Robert, had given the land behind their store for a site.

Outside the norm stand two of Saint John's facilitators of theatre, both Irish from a working-class background. Perhaps Joseph Hopley's interest in the drama was only commercial and not love of the art, for he owned the circus that in 1828 was remodelled to become Saint John's principal entertainment hall until 1845. He operated it, together with the Golden Ball Inn next door, leasing it to one company after another, never being able to make it a financially profitable venture, and at one time having to be rescued from bankruptcy by merchant Thomas Millidge. ⁷ William Nannary, though, was inspired by the performances he witnessed at Lanergan's Lyceum in the 1850s and 1860s to forsake his occupation as a dry-goods clerk in favour of increasingly responsible involvement with the professional stage. His boundless energy and belief in the theatre can be credited with saving the Academy of Music from doom through bankruptcy as soon as it opened its doors, with bringing companies to the burned-out city under his management in 1878 and thus setting in motion the restoration of cultural life, with initiating and stimulating the campaign for an Academy of Music in Halifax, and with attempting the first Maritime theatre 'chain' composed of companies functioning simultaneously in Halifax and Saint John. ⁸ Nannary could not have succeeded without the financial backing of his social superiors, not could they have without his willingness for, until his own coalition with E.A. McDowell, outside managers could not be found for an Academy of Music which might quickly have become a white elephant.

Theatre would never have been able to survive commercially in Saint John if, for audience, it had had to depend solely on the class whose purse strings sheltered it, for that class was, for most of the nineteenth century, a small though influential group. In 1871, for instance, a demographic study showed the largest single occupational group in the city to be that of the common labourer.⁹ Two-thirds of the population studied owned no land, with property being concentrated mainly in the hands of a small elite group of English Anglican physicians, merchants, and lawyers. The largest ethnic group was Irish (most of them poor), followed by the English and the Scots. Nevertheless, newspaper reviews of all periods habitually described the audiences as 'fashionable', 'respectable', even 'the most respectable part of the community', a 'distinguished patronage'.

That appears to have been an apt description of the audience for the amateur performances to 1820. This is not surprising. Performances were well attended for the same reason as high school halls are filled today; that is, the young actors found support from their relatives and friends - Loyalist sons attracted Loyalist parents to witness the results of their rehearsals. Ward Chipman, Solicitor-General of New Brunswick, witnessed the second dramatic performance in the province on 2 March 1789; presumably he also watched the plays in City Hall in the winter of 1801 when his son was one of the players. ¹⁰ Though Edward Winslow, former Muster Master General of the Loyalist Regiments and currently member of the Council, and Munson Jarvis, leading merchant, are the only other playgoers from this earliest amateur period identified by name, it is not unreasonable to postulate that, at various times Jonathan Sewell, Hon George Leonard, James Putnam, Amos Botsford, James Peters, William Simonds, and sundry other influential parents and supporters would have been present. ¹¹ The theatres themselves, whether Mallard's, the City Hall, or the Drury Lane, were preserves of the higher echelons of society; perhaps this was especially true of the Drury Lane (the first building to be used solely as a theatre), which stood in the fashionable district of York Point where many of the city's leading citizens resided.

It would appear that comparable encouragement did not exist for the earliest professional companies, that of the Marriotts in 1799 and of Price in 1817. Neither company could afford to stay long in Saint John; both found a better response in Halifax - and the fact that the Halifax Theatre was generally in trouble at this time unless heavily supported by the garrison gives some idea of the minimal financial reward there can have been in Saint John. It is unclear whether the population base of those who might have been expected to patronize the theatre was insufficiently large or whether patronage was lacking even in that group, that is, whether the merchant and professional audiences attended the amateur performances primarily to encourage the art form or their offspring. By the time Price came in 1817 the children and grandchildren of the original Loyalists would not have been exposed to as much (if any) professional theatre as their parents had before the Revolution. As well, even before 1820 the population base of the city was being altered by immigration from Ireland and Scotland. Thus, though the potential audience of 1820 was, as it had been in the 1790s, from the middle and higher classes, its cultural background was different.

Elite elements were conspicuously absent from the audience at Hopley's Theatre between 1828 and 1833. Certain reasons for this are readily at hand. First there is Joseph Hopley's own lower class Irish background, which would have alienated the sophisticated upper classes who already resented the presence of poor, unskilled, and Catholic Irishmen in their city. They were unlikely to have accepted entertainment provided by him as adequate to their sense of social fitness. Moreover, the attendance of rowdy youth and of poor working class families (most certainly Irish) would have prohibited the appearance of the more genteel. To make matters worse, the converted circus was located outside the city centre on rocky, uneven Union Street near the jail, the poorhouse, and the morgue - an area where the fashion conscious would not naturally go - and the drafty building was badly constructed, its hard backless benches anything but comfortable.

In 1828 and again in 1830, ticket prices were lowered to accommodate the less affluent. The original prices of 5s. for a box and 2s. 6d. for the pit were the same amounts that had bought admittance to the Drury Lane Theatre in 1809, admittedly a more prosperous time. In 1828 these were reduced to 3s.9d. for a box and 2s. for the pit (with children under the age of twelve gaining entrance for half price). Even so, if the City Gazette can be believed, these prices were beyond the means of some who nevertheless paid them; on one occasion at least, that paper's informant spotted a man who denied ability to recompense his creditors entering the theatre with his wife and daughter. Thus the Gazette's editor, the Reverend Alexander McLeod, who in any case opposed the theatre on moral grounds, was prompted to fret: 'If it be a downright act of injustice, in every man who cannot in proper time discharge his just debts, and who subjects his creditor to mortification and loss, to spend his money on going to the Theatre; what are we to say of persons whose salaries are scarcely sufficient to furnish them with necessaries in a decent way, - what are we to say of minors, children and apprentices, who have no source of income; how are they to get money to buy tickets? We ask parents, masters and guardians to answer this question'. ¹²

Hissing, stamping, and general rowdyism, both at the doors and within, were apparently normal behaviour and an annoyance to the whole neighbourhood. ¹³ The poor construction of the Theatre itself abetted disorder, by enabling troublemakers to enter illegally. As one writer commented, 'the boys who could not always get money to purchase tickets to enter by the front door would frequently enter by the rear and climb up, unobserved, and take their seats gratis'. ¹⁴ They would occupy the poorly lighted space directly under the boxes, taking advantage of the darkness to row without detection. In 1829 Hopley made some attempt to correct the noise problems by alterations to the structure designed to prevent persons from occupying the troublesome space under the boxes and by hiring an officer to enforce proper order. Reports such as this in the Weekly Chronicle suggest, however, that the enforcement officers did not treat their responsibility with undue seriousness:

 
We think the order, as well as the respectability of the house, would be improved, by keeping the constables, who are paid for their attendance, in their proper station, i.e. at the doors. We last night saw two of those knights of the mace .... sitting on the front seats of the parquette, with their hats on, and their heels on the back of the orchestra, luxuriating in a most un-'oriental fashion'. ¹⁵

During the residence of companies managed by W. S. Deverna and Henry W. Preston between 1838 and 1841, the respectability of Hopley's increased some. Both made the legitimate drama important, and Preston brought name stars John Vandenhoff, Junius Brutus Booth, and James Hackett as drawing cards. Attempts were made to alleviate suspicions and to entice a sophisticated patronage by emphasis in advertisements and reviews on the respectability and fashionableness of those in attendance. The presence of Lieutenant Governor John Harvey in 1839 and 1840 must have helped in this. Nevertheless, the disturbing elements were never entirely obliterated and one is inclined towards some sympathy with this endorsement of Lanergan in 1857:

We have never had a good or respectable theatre until now. The attempts that have been made here from time to time have been of a low rowdy character; and people at length became disgusted with anything that savoured of theatrical representations. ¹⁶

The writer may or may not have remembered the brief existence of the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1845, whose name is indicative of the social status and ethnic background of the group who were its support, and whose very existence is evidence that there still existed an enterprising elite with a will to create a more acceptable theatre than Hopley's.

James West Lanergan succeeded better than anyone in giving the theatre an air of respectability. Decorum, order, and good taste were hallmarks of his management. Of course the gods were still in evidence, but greatly subdued; the people who might have been among the rowdies at Hopley's were on their best behaviour at the Lyceum, which seemed to confer an aura of gentility on all who entered. Lanergan himself was recognized as a civic-minded man who was even on one occasion an unsuccessful candidate for alderman. Thus he had the approval of those who controlled the city's business and government, while at the same time remaining popular with the masses. On 24 June 1865, the True Humorist printed an amusing but revealing parody of its editor's evening at the Lyceum which is worth quoting from at length:

On Monday evening after dinner (we dine at 6 o'clock, P.M.) we ordered John - that is, our groom - to get ready our carryall, which bears our emblazened crest upon it, into which, that is into the carryall, we instructed him to harness up our full-blooded Arabian steeds, and to bring the same around to the hall door of our palatial residence at half-past seven o'clock, with William, our footman, whom we had instructed to make extra preparations at his toilet, and equip himself in his best livery. These directions were followed out to the letter, and at the hour appointed, in company with our 'better half' and her dear little poodle dog Fan, we set out for the Lyceum, first of all making a circuit of the city.... One or two cracks of the whip, then, and a few revolutions of our chariot's wheels, brought us directly in front of this popular resort, when immediately we were surrounded by at least five hundred little boys and girls, who with one voice exclaimed: 'Make way for the Editor of the Humorist, - take me in, if you please, sir.' Our first thoughts were those of pity that so many of the members of the rag family should be permitted to run wild without the price of a ticket in their pockets, and such an abundance of exemplary mothers in our community who know how to sew, and so many Dorcas Societies in connection with our philantrophic (sic) missionary organizations; but upon second consideration, we were convinced, from the number of patches, dislocated and undone, which we observed, that good mothers' fingers were already worn out, and that the only hope for many in the crowd was a Reformatory where each individual one would be compelled to learn the tailor's trade. We had no sooner alighted than Mr. Harrington brushed aside the gaping throng, and kindly assisted LADY HUMORIST and her dog through the entrance to the stairs which leads to the fashionable department of this happy retreat; in this operation the obliging Constable was closely followed and watched by ourselves. We had arrived a little too early, which afforded us an opportunity of casting our eyes around to drink in the general appearance of the building.... Among the many pleasing incidents of that evening was the fact that we found our surroundings to be made up of the elite and respectable portions of society. The dread of mixing with the vulgar and profane had, previously, caused much anxiety in the mind of LADY HUMORIST, which we are happy to say was dispelled when she found herself in the society of Railway Commissioners, Apothecaries, embrio Mayors and members of the Government. Previous to the performance commencing, and while the orchestra was discoursing sweet music from favorite masters, which lent an air of enchantment to the scene around us, we embraced the opportunity of visiting the Parquette, which in olden time, when Hopley's Theatre was in full blast, was called the 'pit', and which we found well filled with the lower order of the community, such as Insurance Brokers from Rocky Hill, Aldermen and Councillors, South Wharf Huxters, Shoemakers and Bankers. After spending an agreeable chat with an influential member of the Government, we hurried back to the Dress Circle to look after the interests of our good lady and her poodle. We had scarcely been seated when the curtain was raised and Bulwer's great Comedy of 'Money' was commenced.

A more serious and typical encomium appears in the same paper on 6 July 1867:

The week just closing has been the most successful of the season. Crowds of gay, orderly and intelligent persons have nightly flocked to this deservedly popular place of amusement.... Mr. Lanergan, whose success in breaking down the prejudices which heretofore existed in the community against the legitimate drama, is now we are happy to say, reaping the reward of his untiring industry and good judgement.... The order and decorum which prevail from the commencement to the end of the play are marked characteristics; and show, more than anything else, the high intellectual and moral character of the audience. We think the demands of the age now are, that Mr. Lanergan should 'lengthen his stakes' - pull down his establishment and build greater, and fix himself here permanently, to reap, at all seasons of the year, the benefits to which he is justly entitled, and which a grateful public is ready to accord.

Lanergan's success spurred the expansion and diversification of theatre in the city. Riding high on the tide came the addition of the Academy of Music and the much less opulent Bishop's Opera House (later known as Lee's Opera House), so that from 1872 until the Great Fire of 1877 that consumed two-thirds of the city, Saint John possessed three theatres each able to hold approximately one thousand persons. Most of the time they operated separately, thus providing nearly continuous year-round entertainment, but for much of 1874 they operated simultaneously, competing for audiences. The Academy, with its four boxes constructed on either side of the stage so that occupants of any of the four could have an unobstructed view of the rest of the audience, catered at least partially to those who visited the theatre as much to be seen there as to see, and to those who wished to behold drama that partook of the latest trends. Bishop's, or Lee's, provided a new option in that its offerings consisted of variety entertainment, including dramatic sketches. Lanergan's Lyceum continued as usual until 1875, though losing out both to the more elegant and comfortable Academy and to the less refined and certainly no more comfortable variety house. In order for all three houses to function, they must have drawn their audiences from a wide segment of the population. It would be overly simplistic, I think, to suggest that all the elite went to the Academy while the labourers frequented Lee's, though the proportions probably tended in those directions. The entertainments at Lee's regularly received complimentary reviews from the press and regular recommendation for their good taste. The most one can say is that theatre in this period had clearly won a response from all classes and that the rowdiness associated with it 30-40 years previously had disappeared.

The city's chief centre of amusement following the Great Fire of 1877, the Mechanics' Institute, had a mixed reputation, sometimes fashionable and sometimes not, varying both with the year and the company. From newspaper reports of the occupation of the gallery by 'ill-mannerly persons and such as may happen to be under the influence of liquor', ¹⁷ and from reports of persons who habitually took more than their share of room on the unpadded benches, one can readily see that not all the post-fire patrons were refined in manners, whatever their social status. Attendance in the Institute can never have been undiluted pleasure at the best of times. Narrow aisles and inadequate entrances made waiting and jostling inevitable. The building was dark and smokey from the stoves which still left the temperature low in winter and from the inadequate ventilation system. The seats were uncomfortable, the stage smallish and badly equipped.

The audience at the Saint John Opera House, too, was composed of both elite and common people of the city, even though the Telegraph's description of the theatre's opening night in September 1891 concentrated on the element that the Evening Gazette said appeared in evening dress:
 

When the hour for opening came, there was an unwonted throng of the elite and commonalty of St. John gathered along both sides of Union Street, and pressing about the grand entrance to the new temple of the muses.... The electric lights made bright the entrance hall and all within; it was a convenience to have one's wraps and umbrella taken in charge by polite attendants, and there were general expressions of approval on all hands as ushers conducted the host of patrons to their seats. Everything moved smoothly and with order and precision till the main auditorium, balcony and gallery - rising like Medea's gardens, terrace above terrace - were adorned with a multitude of happy, expectant faces and rich toilettes. Every one took a survey of the interior and its appointments, and during the process nods and smiles of recognition innumerable were exchanged.... While thus engaged, enjoying the comfortable sittings and their convenient appliances for the bestowal of extra incombrances, the members of the orchestra filed into their places and were greeted with a rattling cheer in which the voices of the gods joined heartily with the hand clapping of ordinary mortals below. Then the opening strains of the national anthem rolled through the building and the loyal audience rose to their feet. Applause followed in no stinted measure. ¹⁸

In reality, the gallery was often more filled than the orchestra pit, and the patronage of the gods could not only determine the repertoire but also a company's success or failure. Actors, of course, frequently appreciated the gods, for their spontaneous and honest response spoke more than the artificiality of the culturally fashion-conscious. ¹⁹

Whatever the composition of the audience, the newspapers tell us consistently throughout the century that the pieces preferred were those that were 'free from vulgarity'. When H. W. Preston delivered his address on the opening of his Histrionic Society Theatre in Fredericton in 1844, he acknowledged this:

In keeping with this, too, in 1857 Lanergan was congratulated on his choice of W. H. Smith's The Drunkard, a moral drama in which 'the miseries consequent on a life of intemperance and debauchery are so faithfully and graphically portrayed that the effect cannot be otherwise than beneficial'. ²¹ Taking another point of view, Mary Odell's occasional prologue to a performance of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer in 1801 made pleasure the first requisite of entertainment: '...Though with sage instructions plays are fraught;/ you come to be amused, not to be taught'. ²² The optimum combination is indicated in the Morning News' commendation of Tobin's A Honey Moon; or How to Rule a Wife as 'a feast of fun and a high toned lesson in morality'. ²³

In their remarks, both press and theatre management appear to be attempting to mould public taste as least as much as they reflect it and are not therefore reliable guides to actual taste. Although the ladies were reportedly pleased especially with such suitably refined comedies as She Stoops to Conquer, As You Like It, and David Garrick, the men could not be kept away from such 'naked art' as the balletic Black Crook (1867 and 1874) and the burlesque New Adamless Eve (1886), which was presented by Lilly Clay's all-female Gaiety Company. Of this type of entertainment, the New Dominion said condescendingly, 'ye gods' had full charge. ²⁴ Even Lanergan at times catered to the gods, as in 1862 when the Lyceum was filled for Joseph Proctor's presentations of Nick of the Woods and Outahlanchet, both frontier dramas, the first of which the Courier said had no merit and the second which, the Morning News asserted, was interesting only to theatre-goers who delighted 'in scalping knives, tomahawks, muskets, thunder, lightning, and blood'. ²⁵

From the time that the gentlemen amateurs performed Everyone Has His Fault in 1795 at Mallard's Tavern, only two years after its premier performance at Covent Garden, Saint John's theatre audiences demonstrated a desire to be up to date, and the repertoire shown them reflected the trends in the theatres of Britain and America. Lanergan took care to introduce a few of the lastest melodramas into his seasons of familiar material, and E. A. McDowell was the other manager who won particular praise for his introduction of new (usually sensational) pieces. By the 1840s a growing taste for music, dance, and spectacle can be readily discerned; it was a taste that persisted for the rest of the century, sometimes finding expression in entre acte pieces in a long evening at Lanergan's, in the separate variety entertainment at Lee's Opera House in the 1870s, and eventually in the inclusion of the variety elements in full length pieces such as Sidetracked, The Evil Eye, and Cole and Johnson's A Trip to Coontown that occupied the main stage at the Opera House in the 1890s. With this, of course, went a taste for comedy that reached its height in the 1880s and 90s. In 1896 the second highest box-office receipts were for Hoyt's A Trip to Chinatown (which only Lewis Morrison's production of the supernatural tale of Faust was able to surpass). In 1898 Broadhurst's side splitting What Happened to Jones? and Why Smith Left Home forced the orchestra from their seats to play behind the scenes or on the stage.

Seldom could a superstar be counted upon to fill a theatre on the strength of his reputation alone; rather, Saint John preferred to put its trust, when opportunity allowed, in managers (and in companies) with whom they were familiar. Hence they came to respect, and thus to support, J. W. Lanergan and later H. Price Webber, W. S. Harkins, and the Valentine Company whose four month season in 1899-1900 brought the nineteenth century to a close. E. A. McDowell won their affection as well, as to a lesser extent did W. H. Lytell with mammoth shows that sometimes required accommodation in the spacious Victoria Skating Rink. Unfamiliarity explains the prejudice against the first touring companies, a prejudice that Wilson and Clarke overcame in the late 1860s, and also explains the less-than-warranted reception of many one-time touring artists, such as Junius Brutus Booth in 1841, and later James O'Neill.

That the theatre held a position of importance in the society of nineteenth-century Saint John is clear, as it is clear that response to it came from all segments of society-even if impetus came from a small moneyed class. Of course some persons stayed away from the theatre on principle, either their own or someone else's; Rev G. M. Jarvis, for instance, rector of Saint John's Stone Church in the 1860s, would not allow his Sunday School teachers to attend. ²⁶ There is, however, no evidence that opposition, even in the heated arguments of Reverend Alexander McLeod's City Gazette in the early part of the century, served to limit the theatres' clients. If anything, the evidence is to the contrary. Many of the city's citizens were sufficiently stimulated by what they witnessed on stage to wish to emulate it, and thus twenty some amateur societies, not counting church societies, were active after the Drury Lane period. Sometimes they worked in co-operation with the professional theatre, as the Saint John Dramatic Club did with Lanergan; sometimes they filled in the gap when there was no professional theatre, as the Histrionic Society did in the 1840s; and sometimes they offered alternate entertainment, as so many societies did in the 1880s and 90s. Some of the amateurs were inspired sufficiently to make the stage their career. Some, like Margaret Anglin, J. L. Ashton and H. Price Webber became well known, while others, like William and Patrick Nannary, Grace Huntington, and Wallace Hopper were less so, and Ethel Mollison found it the route to meeting her millionaire husband in Australia.

In the long range view, economy and culture are inevitably intertwined. The long gap between 1817 and 1828, which was nearly devoid of theatrical performance, cannot be blamed entirely on depressed conditions following 1826, for the gap stretched back to the time when the city, though growing in prosperity, had not a sufficient population to give consistent support to a theatre company. Moreover, following the sale of the Drury Lane Theatre in 1816, no satisfactory performance space was available. Likewise, the gap between 1846 and 1856 cannot be blamed entirely on poor economic conditions, for, following the burning of the Prince of Wales in 1845, no suitable space was available. Nevertheless, strains in the economy reflected themselves in the theatre ultimately, either in the reduction of ticket prices for adults, the introduction of half-price tickets for children under twelve, reductions in the number of weekly performances, concern for the competition from circuses, stress on the respectability of the audiences as an advertising ploy, and the occasional reference to empty benches, not to mention short seasons and the less frequent arrival of touring companies. Conversely, in prosperous 1856 the non-existence of a playing place was not for long an obstacle in the way of theatre. By that time the city's economic situation was favourable enough to persuade Bostonian J. W. Lanergan that he could safely invest his own capital in the building of a theatre. Once the theatre had established a firm hold, no economic vicissitudes could dislodge it, though its fortunes constantly fluctuated. Just prior to the turn of the twentieth century and corresponding to a revitalized economy there is, in fact, a theatre with renewed vigour (exemplified in the four month season of the Valentine Company in the winter and spring of 1899-1900), vigour that only the decline of the road and the advent of movies could sap.

RESPONSES TO THEATRE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY SAINT JOHN

Mary Elizabeth Smith

1 Names of the young actors are provided in my 'Theatre in Saint John: The First Thirty Years', Dalhousie Review, LIX (Spring 1979), pp 5-27 and in Too Soon the Curtain Fell: A History of Theatre in Saint John 1789-1900 (Fredericton: Brunswick Press, 1981).
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2 Telegraph 4 June 1880
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3 Progress 19 March 1892
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4 Directors of the Academy of Music in 1872 are listed in Acts of the General Assembly of Her Majesty's Province of New Brunswick, 1872 (Fredericton: Fenety, 1872), p 113; in the Daily News 6 May 1872 and in the Telegraph 8 May 1872. The Telegraph 19 February 1889 names the directors of the Opera House. The Saint John City Directories provide information about their occupations.
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5 Globe 3 June 1880
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6 Ibid 7 July 1880
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7 Saint John Registry Office L2,387; L2,542; S2,474
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8 William Nannary's role in the theatre of Atlantic Canada is described in Too Soon the Curtain Fell.
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9 DAVID ROBERTS, 'Social Structure in a Commercial City: Saint John, 1871',Urban History Review October 1974, pp 15-18
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10 Winslow Papers (microfilm reel 3, New Brunswick Museum), Ward Chipman to Winslow, March 3, 1789; Carleton County Historical Society, 'Excerpts from the Diary of John S. Ellegood, Saint John, January 4 -March 1801'.
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11 See my 'Theatre in Saint John: The First Thirty Years' for further identification of these gentlemen.
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12 City Gazette 18 June 1828
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13 Ibid 10 June 1829
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14 Times-Star 20 December 1926
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15 Weekly Chronicle 18 June 1841
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16 Morning News 17 August 1857
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17 Ibid 17 September and 12, 17 & 26 November 1856
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18 Telegraph 22 September 1891
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19 For example, see Metropolitan Toronto Library, Taverner Collection Box 8, P.A. Taverner to G.R. Sanderson, 9 May 1938.
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20 Loyalist 9 January 1845
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21 Courier 21 March 1857
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22 New Brunswick Museum, Odell Papers. Mary Odell was the daughter of Loyalist Jonathan Odell, Provincial Secretary.
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23 Morning News 9 July 1866
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24 New Dominion 24 August 1867 See also Morning News 21 August 1867.
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25 Courier 2 August 1862; Morning News 8 August 1862
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26 New Brunswick Museum, Jarvis Papers. Armstrong to Jarvis, February 21, 1863
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