[Walter M. Leman, Playing the Comstock in 1863-1864, from Memories of an Old Actor (1886)]

 

CHAPTER XIV.

Washoe—Virginia City—Zephyrs—Opening Address—Silted Mines—A Narrow Escape—The Sanitary Fund—Grant and Pemberton—Sacramento—Mr. Albert Hart—Adak Isaacs Menken—Lake Tahoe—The Big Trout—Mr. S. Irwin—A Mormon Bishop—The Hawaiian Islands—Honolulu — Ada Clare — The Royal Yacht — Volcano of Kilauea—Hilo—The Pic-Nic—Native Bathing--Dramatic Reading—Honolulu—King Kalakaua—The Hula-hula.

            OUR prosperous season terminated about the middle of April, and on the twenty-second of that month we crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Carson City, via Placerville, over the grade that Hank Monk made historic when he let out the lines over his six-in-hand, and assured Horace Greeley that if he'd " hold on " he'd have him in Placerville " on time."

            At Carson, Silver City and Gold Hill we filled up the time until the 10th of May, when we got into Virginia City. This was in the flush times of the " Comstock," and the wild town on the slope of Mount Davidson was crowded with men who were there to make their fortune—or had

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made it, in " feet." From the edge of Carson Valley, up through Silver City and Gold Hill, over the ridge between the latter place and Virginia, where sometimes the " Washoe Zephyrs" blew with sufficient strength to overturn a stagecoach, along the whole line of the city to far north of the Ophir Mine, was, or was supposed to be, one vast repository of gold and silver, and from North, South, East and West the seekers for wealth had come to get it.

            The wonderful produce of the " Gould and Curry," the " Imperial," the " Ophir" and other leads that had then been opened, had made men wild, and holes in the ground were dug and " salted" and new " leads" discovered every day, which, with all their "dips, spurs and angles," were put on the market ; and men with mining " shares" in their pocket representing a value of $50,000 would frequently borrow four bits, if another equally wealthy friend had it to lend, to get a dinner at the restaurant. It was the commencement of the wild game of speculation which, at a later day, was transferred to San Francisco, making a few rich and beggaring thousands.

            Our first performances were given in a hall, the name of which I forget, and we had powerful rivals in the minstrel and hurdy-gurdy establishments. But a fair patronage was secured. The ground had been obtained for the erection of

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a new theatre, which was commenced soon after our arrival, by Mr. Thomas Maguire, and rapidly hurried to completion. Our company formed the nucleus of a new organization, which was filled by additions from the Bay City, and on the evening of July 2d, 1863, the new theatre was opened with Bulwer's Comedy of " Money," preceded by an opening address by Walter M. Leman, spoken by Mrs. Julia Dean Hayne.

            In speaking of that first night, the Territorial Enterprise said : " There was scarcely space to move throughout the theatre, it was so densely filled. A strong wind blew during a portion of the evening and there was considerable agitation visible in the fairer portion of the audience; the most decided sensation of the evening was that produced on Mrs. Hayne—by a mild shower of gravel-stones, which rained upon the building. Large as was the audience, its magnitude was surpassed by its beauty and manliness. Well, we'll just bet, that if there's a marriageable actress in the company with winning graces and matrimonial inclinations, she never goes over the mountains unwedded." I append a few lines from my opening address, as a " memory" of the drama on the Comstock :

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            Where the Sierra's rugged mountains show

            Their peaks aloft—amid the drifted snow,

            Skirting the vale, where Carson's placid stream

            Flows onward to the desert—where the gleam

            Of God's own sunlight shines in fervid power

            On rocks of gold, and hills of glittering ore;

            Where thunder-smitten mountains lift on high

            Their rifted battlements against the sky.

            In this fresh clime, a youthful empire springs

            To life and vigor upon freedom's wings,

            Nevada !—soon her starry gem to set

            Upon our Union's glittering Coronet.

*           *           *           *           *

            Amidst her rocky hills, of verdure shorn

            A young and gay metropolis is born   

            Sudden as from the brain of mighty Jove

            Minerva sprang—or, as the Queen of Love

            Rose blushing from the Adriatic Sea

            In beauty radiant and in fancy free;

            And here is reared a rich and gorgeous dome

            Of taste, the temple and the muses home,

            And here, obedient to Thespian laws,

            We stand to-night to plead with you our cause.

*           *           *           *           *

            The " mild shower of gravel stones," of which the Enterprise speaks, not only produced a "sensation " upon Mrs. Hayne, but upon every one in the house ; I am sure it did upon me. When the " Washoe Zephyr," sweeping up the cañon, " rained " that stony artillery upon the rear of the new building, which creaked in the tempest like a ship at sea, I thought for a moment that the opening and closing of " Maguire's New

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Opera House " would occur on the same evening, but it was reserved for the usual fate, which befel it years after ; it went up in a cloud of fire, and took a good portion of the city along with it.

            Virginia City was rather a wild " metropolis " in those days—" new discoveries " were reported every day, and speculation ran mad. There were two stock boards in operation, and it was only necessary to dig a hole, " salt " it a little, and put the " shares " on the market to become a capitalist or a beggar in four-and-twenty hours, dependent upon whether one bought or sold. Some of the sharps dug a hole upon the top of Mount Davidson, and within a day or two elegantly engraved shares of the " Mina del Alta," the mine on the mountain, were put on the board. Speculation on the " green cloth " of battle was also at its height, and the " tiger " walked abroad night and day. Law and order had the " best hand," as the sporting gentlemen allowed ; but still, it was thought a dull week when there had not been one or two " men for breakfast." I have found by experience, that a quiet man can get along very well, generally—even in a stormy community, by minding his own business—yet, sometimes it is risky to be in the vicinity of the unsettled spirits. I will mention an instance. I was living at " Wimmer's Virginia House." Wimmer was an old San Franciscan whom I had

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long known, was a popular landlord, and his lodging-house was the best in the city ; he set no table. My room was one of many on either side of a hall, beneath which was a large saloon on the ground floor, where, when day drifted far into night, and men with angry antagonisms (for it was the time of civil war), met together, each one with a pistol in his hip-pocket, a sharp word was often followed with a sharp report. My custom was to go home from the play and quietly up to bed, which having done, one evening, as I sat on the edge of my couch undressing, with my head leaning forward, up through the floor came a pistol bullet, just grazing my ear, and buried itself in the ceiling of the room. I heard a rapid step in the corridor, and Wimmer pale as a sheet burst into my room, with " My God, Leman, are you alive ? " I was, but I was undoubtedly quite as pale as Wimmer. He told me that he had been trying in vain to compose the angry disputants, and when the pistol was fired, knowing the position of my room and bed, he feared the worst. I didn't sleep very well during the rest of that night.

            The antagonistic feelings engendered by civil strife were very bitter in Virginia City at that time, but the Union spirit was greatly in predominance. A big meeting was held in the Opera House on one afternoon, where, in less

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than an hour, $5,275 were subscribed for the sanitary fund, and the historic " sack of flour " was sold and resold, producing, I don't know how many, but very many thousand dollars. I, myself, had the pleasure of owning that sack of flour for about three minutes.

            I was in acquaintanceship and on friendly relations with gentlemen, from whom, in political sentiment, I was as far as are the poles, apart. On one occasion, one of these friends met me as I entered the hotel, saying, with a satisfied tone, " Leman, old boy, I'm sorry to hurt your feelings, but we've got great news from Vicksburg, and Pemberton has knocked h—l's bells out of Grant's wheel-houses." Within five days the truth came, and meeting my secesh friend, I said, " Mr. —, old boy, I'm sorry to hurt your feelings, but we've got great news from Vicksburg, and Grant has knocked h—l's bells out of Pemberton's wheel-houses."

            In that era of sectional bitterness, happily now passed away, the utterance of disloyal sentiments was painfully prevalent, and spoken as they were in favor of men who upheld the " Patriarchal Institution," which claimed the right to manacle men because their skins were black, aroused in me the same feelings which caused me to reflect, when I saw the bright mulatto boy fettered for no crime, on the deck of the Mississippi steamer,

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and the poor old negro toiling in chains on the plains of Chalmette, and again I reflected on the so-called " Patriarchal Institution " which made our Declaration of Independence a living lie in the face of all the world, and felt that it did not perish from the land an hour too soon.

            The season closed in the latter part of September, and I re-crossed the mountains by the grade (the name of which I now forget), but I remember that it led by the edge of the beautiful little Donner Lake, where, in the early California days, the wretched, snowed-in party perished one by one, the bodies of the dead feeding those who survived, and was in San Francisco, at the "Opera House," until the last week in December, when I again found myself with our old friend Buchanan, in Sacramento.

            On February 16th, the " Millionaire " was played for the author's benefit, to a crowded house. " Marston," by Mr. Charles Pope, "Emily Larcelles," by Miss Virginia Buchanan, and " Swift," by Mr. Albert Hart. Mr. Hart was a well-known citizen of Sacramento, and had, in his early days, some experience of theatrical life. He appeared to advantage on this occasion. He has been in political life since then, having filled successively the offices of Governor's Secretary, State Librarian, and, I believe, Pension Agent. Mr. Hart still lives in Sacramento.

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            I again crossed the Sierras, for a second season in Virginia City, where the theatre opened on the second of March, 1864, and during that period made the acquaintance of one of the remarkable women of the day—Adah Isaacs Menken. She was a thorough Bohemian, possessed wonderful beauty of face and form, and with these, accomplished triumphs which her indifferent stage ability would never have achieved. She was a rattle-brained, good-natured adventuress, born of Jewish parents, somewhere in the Southern States. The conventionalities of society were quite disregarded by the " Menken," and she smoked and rode astride, and gambled with a freedom that was delightful to the men on the Comstock, who hailed her arrival with joy, for they adopted her at once as " one of 'em." " Mazeppa," " not over-dressed, nor wholly bare," but nearly so, was in her element with these men, for she had the faculty of adaptation to all kinds of men, and after the nightly exposure of the "Tartar Prince," " naked to the pitiless storm," and the eager eyes of admiring miners, she might be found in T. P—'s, or some saloon where the red and white chips passed merrily from hand to hand, and where she said she went because T. P played a " square game."

            Miss Menken played nothing else but " Mazeppa "— if I except the part of " Katharine

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Kloper," in the musical trifle of "Lola Montez," but this was feeble to the last degree—and faro, which she played with skill and success.

            The career of the " Menken " was almost as remarkable as that of her great predecessor, Lola: Her first husband was John C. Heenan, the pugilist, then she captured Orpheus C. Kerr, and left him for a California gambler, with whom she went to Europe. When on the Continent, she was familiar with Dickens, Dumas and Swinburne, and boasted that "beginning with a prizefighter, she would end with a prince," reversing Lola's course, who began with a king and ended with a miner, and she came very near succeeding. Fair and false, and fast and faithless, her soul might possibly have gone to heaven—as she said it would—through the " gates of Paris," if it could have got out of that gay city, where her body lies buried beneath a monument inscribed with, " Thou Knowest ;" unsatisfactory as to its meaning, which nobody knows.

            Adah Isaacs Menken is a vivid " memory " of the drama on the Comstock, as is also T. P—, in whose saloon she used to fight the tiger. T. P— was a man of daring personal

courage, and was, I think, a civil officer at the time. Subsequently, in an encounter so common in those days among men of his class, after receiving a mortal wound, while his life-blood was

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ebbing rapidly away, he had the desperate determination to raise himself on his elbow and shoot his slayer dead ; both were buried together.

            On the evening of May i3th, the writer was tendered a complimentary testimonial benefit when the " School for Scandal " was acted. "Charles Surface," Mr. Charles Pope ; " Lady Teazle," Mrs. Charles Pope ; " Sir Peter Teazle," Mr. Walter M. Leman. The house was brim-full, which, perhaps, is the pleasantest among my "memories " of the Drama on the Comstock.

            On the conclusion of the season, Mr. Charles Pope and myself resolved to spend a day or two at Lake Tahoe and catch trout, before we recrossed the mountains from the land of sagebrush to California, the land of fruit and flowers; in pursuance of which plan we took the stage over into Lake Valley, and put up at the old tavern near the lake shore ; I forget the name of the house, for it was nearly a quarter of a century ago. I remember it was one of those comfortable old roomy log houses, with a fireplace in the great bar-room large enough to hold a whole load of wood ; and the flaming logs were piled upon the fire with reckless profusion.

            Mr. Pope was, as I supposed, a skillful angler and anticipated a great deal of pleasure from the splendid " catch " on the morrow. I hadn't

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much confidence in my own abilities, for generally, when I went fishing, I got many bites and few fish ; but we were certain of a pleasant day on the lake, whether successful or not, and after breakfast the next morning, supplied with an ample lunch, we took seats in the boat, with trolling lines all prepared, and our boatman plying his oars, were soon out on the bosom of one of the loveliest sheets of water in our broad land. Pope had been anxious to get a bet on his catching the first fish, which I didn't want to take, but finally accepted—he lost the bet. We kept on, all earnestness, and presently I caught another, and after a little while a third. These were all small, which made Pope laugh, and declare that he didn't want any sardines, but he'd soon show me the kind he was fishing for. Our boatman slowly skulled the boat, with our lines extended perhaps a hundred feet or more, when suddenly came a pull at my line, as if a shark had taken the hook. The boatman told me to keep cool and haul steady and, all excitement, I succeeded in landing a beautiful trout, which seemed to me to be twice as large as any shad I ever bought in the Philadelphia fish-market. Charley looked on with interest and was as much excited as myself, for fear I should lose my noble prey, but when he was safe at the bottom of the boat, I think he began to feel chagrined at his ill-luck, but he put

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a good face on it and swore he'd " have the next big fellow." I think that I caught one more before lunch time, when we put into the little cove of Emerald Bay and enjoyed our meal and a cigar.

            Charley, certainly, was attended by ill luck. Up to this time he had not got a fish, although he had hooked several ; but the afternoon was to redeem his piscatorial reputation, and I hoped that it would, for I had a kind of guilty feeling, as if I were doing him a wrong by being so lucky. Well, we put out again on to the lake, and from that time up to the hour, when it was necessary to draw in our line and return to shore, Pope never caught one fish and I had got five or six more, for when we got to land and counted them, there were thirteen in all. Charley, certainly, took his ill fortune with great good nature, but said little or nothing to the inquiries of the men, who came to the beach, as we landed, and wanted to know who caught that big fellow. We had a hearty supper and adjourning to the bar, I went up to the Register, which lay on the counter, where visitors, in addition to their names, had added memoranda of their fishing experience, as thus—" May 25. J. J. and party, Sac. City, went fishing ; fine luck ; caught a dozen trout, one pretty large one,"—and turned over its leaves. I saw Charley looking at me, as

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if in wonder what I would write about our day's fishing, and taking the pen, I wrote thus after the name and date : " Went fishing with Mr. Pope ; had excellent luck ; caught one seven-pounder." After a moment or two Pope went up to the book, read what I had written and taking a pen, wrote underneath with a quizzical look at me before doing it : " Charles Pope went fishing with Mr. Leman ; had d---d bad luck ; caught nary pounder."

            That splendid trout was boxed up and sent to Mark Twain, for the delectation of the newspaper fellows of the Enterprise, with a letter from Charley Pope, and I fully believe that he told them he caught it ; if he did, I forgive him, as I trust he will forgive me for revealing his want of skill —(I beg pardon) his want of luck—the day that we went gypsying and fishing on Lake Tahoe, in the pleasant days of the long ago.

            I have sometimes thought that in returning to California from Nevada at that time, instead of going over into Utah, I made a mistake. Mr. Selden Irwin came to Virginia City during the season and played a few nights with us. He had been with his wife for some time in Salt Lake City, where he was quite a favorite ; indeed, I think he was the first professional player that reached that then isolated metropolis of the Saints.

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            Mr. Pope and his wife and myself had seriously entertained the idea of going from Virginia City to Salt Lake, and Irwin especially encouraged the scheme ; clapping me on the back, with enthusiasm he exclaimed : "Go by all means, go ! Leman, you are the very man they want—you'll be a Bishop in three months !" After some correspondence with Mr. Clason, Brigham's son-in-law, our plan was abandoned. Perhaps it was for the best, for with that Mormon Bishopric and the attendant harem of wives, I would hardly have survived to celebrate my golden wedding with one wife, which I did two years ago.