  No visit to Toronto in my early days was complete unless you had an evening at the Royal or, to give it its full title, the Royal Lyceum, on the south side of King between Bay and York. This theatre was not the first to be built in the city. Its immediate predecessor, if I am rightly informed, was on the south side of King between Bay and Yonge. Here Denman Thompson, McKee Rankin, and Cool Burgess got their start. All became famous on the American stage. Cool, by the way, was one of the best of the earlier burnt cork artists, his Nicodemus Johnson being irresistibly funny. He began as a local song and dance performer, lending added humor to his terpsichorean efforts by reason of the length of his feet, which, it is hardly necessary to say, were artificially prolonged. Soon his fame spread throughout the States, and he is said to have literally coined money there. Report has it that when brother workers adjourned from the theatre to blow in their earnings in liquid refreshments or card games, Cool went to his bed and his money went home. So that, in his advanced years, when the stage had lost its charm for him or vice versa, he was a well-to-do citizen of Toronto, enjoying a life of ease. Denman Thompson created “The Old Homestead,” from which he made a barrel of money. His play was the precursor of “Way Down East,” which is now playing to fine houses in a movie in New York. The Royal was made famous by the Holmans who managed it and played in it for years. The family was highly talented and exceedingly well balanced from the point of view either of the drama or the opera. There were two girls, Sally and Julia, who sang like nightingales, and two brothers, Alf and Ben, also singers and actors of more than average ability. The former one was also a rattling snare-drummer. Mrs. Holman, the mother, was an accomplished pianist, and an all-round musician. At first the Holmans played the stock dramas with Sally as leading lady, and Alf as the heavy villain. But ultimately they went into opera and made a success of the venture. A night at the Royal certainly was a treat for the boys. The house was not at all gorgeous, nor was it outrageously clean. The mastication of tobacco, a popular method of enjoyment in those days, gave the floors, particularly in the gallery where the twenty-five centers assembled, a pattern and an odor not to be experienced in the modern theatres, where chewing gum is employed and indiscriminately parked. How the habits of the people have changed! TORONTO TO-DAY. The beginning of the performance was heralded by the appearance of a “supe” who amidst cheers lighted with a taper the gas jets which provided the foot-lights. Then, Mrs. Holman, wearing a comfortable white woollen shawl, squeezed through the musicians’ trap door and made the piano lead the modest orchestra in the tunes appropriate to the occasion. Up went the green baize curtain a few minutes later, and the play was on. Applause for Sally and Julia was continuous and well-deserved. Hushed during the intermissions when the male section of the audience adjourned to the nearby bars for the purpose of acquiring fresh inspiration, it broke out with renewed vigor when the performance was resumed. Old-timers will remember, too, that the celebrated bass singer, Crane, of Robson and Crane, made his dÉbut with the Holmans. Fire brought the business of the Royal to a standstill and the Holmans gave summer performances, either in the pavilion of the Horticultural Gardens, or in a temporary structure on Front street, just west of the Queen’s. Since then the Royal has been rebuilt and burned again. After the second burning it stayed burned, and the business of catering to the public in a dramatic or operatic way passed to the Grand, which was managed for years by Mrs. Morrison, whose husband, Dan Morrison, had edited the Colonist. They had good bills at the Grand. Once when Sir Henry Irving was there it was given out that the distinguished tragedian required the assistance of a body of young men to play the part of soldiers in one of his Shakesperean plays. The boys volunteered by the hundred. They were going to see Sir Henry at close quarters and on the cheap. When the great night came they were assembled in the basement, uniformed, and provided with pikes—machine guns not having been invented at that period in which they were engaging in war. After a long wait for Act 3, scene something or other, they were marched upstairs and hustled across the stage a few times, yelling as instructed. Then the door of the basement opened and they descended to disrobe and make for the street without once having cast eyes on Sir Henry, and without seeing a fragment of the play. The contrast between the theatrical equipment of Toronto in my early days and now is really marvellous. Then there was one struggling theatre. Now there are three devoted to the legitimate, four given up to vaudeville, two to burlesque, fifteen huge picture houses, and a host of small moving picture places too numerous to count. The city certainly loves pleasure. |
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