Year: 1869

Eighteen entertainments, more or less, mu-
sical or dramatic, are advertised in the HERALD,
here at what seems almost midsummer for play
goers; and in the same number is announced
the death of Ferdinand Palmo, the little,
quiet, yellow, old man, whose youth and hope
and enthusiasm had passed away many, many
years before any of our present theatres, save
only the Bowery, were built. How unmerciful
disaster followed that altogether kindly spirit,
who, blending the merchant and the artist
and true Italian In both-mingled music and
confectionery with such bewildering propor-
tions in his career! How the buffet of fortune
had softened him, too! Not that he was ever
other than gentle hammered man, as remem-
bered by those who slipped coffee and played
dominoes at his little marble tables and listened
to the music that made his establishment, in
all decent senses, forerunner Of the concert
hail. Talking of his little marble tables. &C.,
how much better it might have been for morals
and manners If refreshment establishments in
our midst had, in their growth, taken the type
of the cafe in Palmos style rather than the
type of the "bar" from the Western steamboat
landing. This fire and fall back plan is just
test Of who can stand longest his devotion to
our social vice; but the other plan, bringing
together men likely to have something to say,
gave them chance to say 1t, and wreathed
the bowl with flowers of soul. Men Of the
right sort met at Palmo's. We wot of the time
when journalist of this town, who has lived
to be famous as a maker of the most fearful
jokes, sat at one of Palmo's tables and slipped
his pleasant glass with two associates. One Of
the two was fiddler in the orchestra, the
other was the present Emperor Of France.


Palmo cannot be compared to Columbus,
although both were Italians, for he did not dis
cover this country with respect to Italian
opera. Nay, if we speak chronologically, he
came even late in its history, for so brilliant
name as that of Maria Garcia goes nineteen
years earlier In the story-goes with financial
collapse, too, for even the power and splendor
of the future Malbran In Desdemona and Gin
derella did not prevent the failure of her
fathers venture to this barbaric shore. Could
not all the wrecks with which that operatic
coast was strewn have warned the speculative
spirit of the caterer to more material tastesf He
had generous devotion in him, and some cool
calculation, too. He had made fortunes
enough to believe that he was aI5g galIin@
jflius, and, perhaps he thought that he was to
reap the harvest prepared by all those losses
in their education of public taste. II was
fatal error to him, for his grand enterprise Of
the opera in Chambers street was his ruin;
yet the city reaped some advantage in a hand
some theatre. Its contemporaries were tho
Park, the National, or Chatham, the Bowery
and the old OIympic-that is, Mitchells.
In those days there were still private
residences in Wall street, and the ele-
CANT neighborhood of St. Johns Park, now
overlooked by Commodore Vanderbilts brass
odge-podge, was the equivalent Of the modern
Murray Hill People went to vauxhaii Gar
den In the Bowery on holidays, instead Of
going to Jones Wood-vauxhall Garden, in
one corner of which now stands the Astor
.-orarv. There was another earden-yeas