The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-03-05
UNION SQUARE THEATER.
A LOOK AT MR.. PALMER'S WON
DERFUL SCRAP BOOK.

Giving a History of this Celebrat ed
PLAY House-How He Secured the
Manuscript of the 1.-TWO Orphans"
New YORK, March 3.-The Union Square
Theater is to day historical and thing of
ehe past 1t had long ago changed its char
acter, as it were, and as the theater giving
title to that unrivaled company which,
headed by the late Charles r. Thorne, trav-
eled far a field from New York and won
laurels everywhere, had ceased to be as
effectuslly as though the flames which
greedily devoured it had burst out when
six years ago A. NJ. Palmer laid down
the sceptre of management. Unlike
its fellows, however, the old Union
Square Theatre will not pass away
altogether unrecorded. The theatrical
historian of New York when he comes
to it in its place will find ready to his hand
an unequaled amount of literary material
and general information. 1t was only day
or two before the fire occurred that | was
sitting with Mr. Palmer now the manager
of the Madison Square Theater, in his com
Portable and capacious private office, the
walls of which are hung with the pictures
collected by poor Barley Campbell, and
now in Mr.. Palmer's possession, " hen my
attention was attracted by a pile of enOr
NOUS books in one corner. They
looked like books at first glance,
but when | examined the seeming foli0S
somewhat closer | found they were
piles of loose leaves of symmetrical size aud
shape gathered for safe keeping in neatly
fashioned cardboard portfolios. Each port
folio-and there were fourteel Of them
contained some $50 or 200 leaves a little
more than IS inches long and IL inches wide,
.
portfolio to be about inches thick.
Mr.. Palmer observed the direction of
my curious glances and laughingly re-
marked:
THAT is what am afraid my friends in
secret call 'Palmer's Folly Though they
would not, | am sure, apply such title to
it even in jest did they know the pleasure it
has been to me for the last eight years"
|, of course, wanted to know more, and
partly from Mr.. Palmer's good natured &C
count and partly from my own scrutiny |
found out good deal about these mystsri-
Gus portfolios. Some eight or nine years
ago Mr.. Palmer who was then famous as
the manager of the old Union Square Thea
ter, determined to gatherttogether in accessi-
BILE form all the material lie could relative
to the history of that then most popular of
theaters. Much of it he had at his hand, but
still more of it had to be sought out and la
boriously gathered together. Programmes,
newspaper criticisms and cuttings bearing
on the theater in more or less remote de-
gree. portraits of actors, of authors, bog-
raphieS, copies of such plays presented as
have been printed-all these and many 9TH
ers go to form the material
Only week ago Mr.. Palmer's agent Sc
cured for many dollars the programme of
benefit performance once given at Union
Squire, for which he has been looking all
this time, though the date of the benefit it
self was as late as 1876.
So much for the matter now for the man
ner of this curious collection. Each pro-
gramme, portrait, be it Autograph engrav-
ing or photograph, and each newspaper
excerpt is carefully "inlaid as it is termed,
on a sheet of drawing paper the exact size
of the book. lnlaying is an art held
in high esteem by Eibliomanacs and
such rs practice the iconoclastic
habit Of ''extra-illustrating." It is
effected in one or two ways. Either the
picture or newspaper clipping is split i'll two
a process requiring peculiar skill and then
parted on the dra wing paper, so that it
scarcely projects above the surface, or a
square hole a little smaller than the object
TO be inlaid Is cut in the paper, and the
edges only of the former are pared down so
that when it is parted over the aperture the
overlapping of its edges is hardly percepti-
bic. There are two men in New York who
have attained prominence as inlayers, and
TO one OF these Mr. Palmer has paid many
thousands of dollars for his work on the
Union Square Theater records.
NOT THE LEAST INTERESTING PORTION
of this magnum opis consists in the autobi-
ographies of actors and actresses in their
own handwriting which Mr. Palmer has Sc
cured for this particular purpose. Such
names as Kate ClaXton, Charles r. Thorne,
.Jr, Dion Bouccault Mckee Rankin, Clara
Morris, John Parcelle, f. F. Mackay, Agnes
Booth, Charles Coghlan, Maud Harrison,
Fanny Morant and a score of others which
here find place will occur to the playgoer,
and, as it may readily be imagined the
stories of their lives written by themselves
cannot fail to be of interest
Turn over the leaves of volumes almost
at random and ones attention is at once en-
chained. Here is bill of the variety per-
Torrance which, when sheridan Shook first
built the theater away back in 1871, was all
that was given on the stage. 1t will be re-
membered that the first manager was Robert
Butler, and that as variety theater the
venture was far from successful Here are
the programmes of the Alice Oates Opera
Company which filled in the summer
months of 1872, and here we strike
higher game in the programme of
the first night of Agnes with which
the history of the Union Square as a
stock theater begins. 1t was on Sept.
z, 1879, that the piece was presented and
A. M. Palmer's first essay in management
made. Before this he had been librarian of
the Mercantile Library, and his experience
in the theatrical business was absolutely
mill. But Shook had confidence in him, and
as it turned out it was not misplaced.
"Agnes" was the play Sardou wrote to
order for Agnes Ethel, now Mrs. Tracy,
and it is proof Of the French dramatist's
skill and intuition that while Miss Ethel
was extraordinarily successful in the piece
no one else has ever been able TO make it
go either in French or English She had,
by the way. the assistance of Fecther, who
was then playing in New York, in the
adaptation and alteration of the play
We turn over the leaves and come by
and-by in the following season TO the an
nouncements of new play by Dion Bouci-
cault, adapted from the French especially
for this company" This was Lied Astray,"
which helped 10 make the fortunes of the
house for the storm of contradictory news
paper criticism it evoked landed it in the
pleasant places of immensely profitable
business, the average receipts during its
long run being over 81 900 night. II is
perhaps worth mentioning that Boucicault
was DESTROYS Of the play being announced
as original, but with commendable honesty
and prud, nee Mr.. Palmer reSolutely in
sisted on announcing it frankly as an adapta-