The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-02-16
BOARDING WITH SUPES.
HOW CHORUS GIRLS AND BARN
sTORMERS LIVE.

dOu5e-Il9 mystery "a N--S - =
Jacket-Cynthia Lsonard's Little
Supper-Life OF Chorus Girl
,Copw.glfl
NEW YORK, Feb. 81 never knew there
were so many actors IN New York until
went to board with the supes.
It's 6 o'clock and dinner time at Mrs.
Thompson's boarding house devoted TO the
chorus. concert-hal singers, and super
numeraries generally. The house has lately
come into notoriety as the boarding place
of Clara Chester BInns, the London concert
hall singer, whose case TO prove herself the
wife of G. W. Laderer-the theatrical
agent who recently eloped with the daugh-
ter of a Fifth avenus millionaire-has 50
amused the police courts. Having been
accepted as a boarder, and told that the
charges are 40 cents for dinner or fourteen
tickets for So, l pick my way through hall
pI ed with trunks into a dinlng-rOom where
several tables are sDread and men and
women are seated. These persons are mem
bers of companies playing IN the city, or
else they are stuck here-that is, out of a
job-or they are just arrived per steamer,
on route to other cities.
Vainly trying to decipher the badly
written and superfluous bill of fare, raise
nv ewes to encounter on the wall opposite
large engraving of Da Niecis' The Last
Supper" Surely, thought, this betokens
piOus household and a cultured one But
u voice tsrudely across this sober thought.
'Ah, therel Nov. therew
1t proceeds from the prettiest girl in the
room. and this proves to be her method of
calling the waiter
The exclamation and not the picture |
find to be the keynote of the culture, and
the appearance of the company find to be
in harmony with the discourse. There IS on
them the common expression which results
from the same habits of life. and this
expression is now cOsmopolltanlsm, born
of constant travel, which sits oddly on per-
sons who are evidently of very ordinary
origin, who, if not in this occupation would
be plodding in quiet work as seamstresses,
porters, and statesmen. Aming no other
assemblage of the same origin could be
heard such snatchej of conversation as
there
81 met Blank in Melbourne the other
day
Don't you wish you'd a-went to Monte
video with us!'
THAT was a snap we had in Dublin, " and
so on.
The conversation is confined entirely to
play matters. and apparently 10 these people
the world is all stage. the women were
dress on every occasion when dlned with
them. may say that the approved dinner
costume of the ladies' at Mrs. ThOmpSOn's
is a wrapper. Another astonishing thing
about the women is the largeness of the
eyes, suggesting the false proportions of a
French doll 1t proves to be due to paint
and bellldonna
As the dinner proceeds, Miss-or Mrs
Clara Chester Binns, having exhausted her
N
sisls-with a resignation doubtless born of
the recollection that she will find some aid
To digestion up-stairs-and rises, pressing
i to her service the parrot, who has hitherto
sat quietly on the back of his arm chair.
makes a tour of the room in a song and
dance act. The bird objects vociferously
and violently, and in the struggle lands
with both feet in a dish of pickles The
pretty girl opposite me who has been ogling
the old man beside me, now gets up and
goes out. She can be heard on the stairs
singing 81 wish l were danseuse." while
the elderly man is leaning over to the man
next to him, and saying in stage whisper:
"a thing of beauty Is a joy forever, chi"
But the landlady is gradually dominating
the conversation. She is saying: ''To my
mind, since poor John Mccullough died,
there has been no one to take his place like
Wilson Barrett" The expression ''poor
John Mccullough Is common among stage
employees, and he must be called the first
saint in their calendar. And now Mrs.
Thompson rises TO the vacant space between
the tables and gives al imitation
of Barrett as "Claudian." The calico
wrapper she wears, being unconfined by
a beit and minus several buttons, is
readily manipulated to suggest a Roman
toga, and Mrs. Thompson makes the most
of her opportunities. The result is a bur-
lesque which would bring down any house.
Having finished, she makes a graceful exit,
amidst applause, and returns, but only. to
tell me that l may pay 40 cents to her ma
This pecunlary matter arranged, she fol-
lows the pretty girl upstairs to prepare for
an evening out, while her destination is
revealed by the man beside me, who con-
fides to his masculine neighbor in another
stage whisper that he is going to take ''the
old lady to the theater and to snug little
supper afterward."
New York has an endless number of
boarding houses devoted exclusively to this
rank of the profession, but not all have the
tone of this one. A certain per cent. of the
women in this grade of stage service are
fast, but fast women do not preponderate
as they do abroad, where the members Of
some companies are hired to ogle the men
in the front rows, and Their ability in this
direction made the test of their eligibility.
We are not so naughty as London vet, by
good deal, aud no reputable American
manager stipulates for this accomplishment.
Another small per cent. of our chorus live
with their parents, do stage work to
earn pocket money or to train their
voices; but the majority are
mere drudges without ambition but
reputable, who have adopted this means of
livelihood rather than the alternative of
one more meagrely paid. These last form
the tone in most of the boarding houses. |
have been in many of them where nothing
savored of the vicious except the table
manners and food For the last. how any
mortal can work, much less preserve health
and beauty, on such fare, | really cannot
understand; for the first, the greatest
marvel that came under my observation
was the metamorphosis Of a glittering
Amazon out of the shabbily-dressed girl
who put her own knife in the butter plate,
and an impressive statue of a throned king
out of the ill-mannered fellow who but an
hour before was picking his teeth with a
fork
At dinner in one of these houses a man
and wife sitting where they faced me, stared
at me persistently, ana when put on my
cloak in the hall the man was there, and he
followed me into the street. "May l walk
along with you to the theaterF he said
Seeing that had an attendant waiting on
the curb stone and resented his petition, be
said, ALPHABETICALLY, that he had met me in
Chicago at the time of that jacket mystery
at Mrs. Blanks. but he supposed
l.