The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 28, 1902, Page 22

22 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, SE » i — SUCCESS OR THE FAILURE OF SYMPHONY CONCERT IS5 NOT TOLD BY By Blanche i OU want my opinion on the symphony question—and you don't think that the last word has been sald?’ Mr. Steindorff gayly inquired the other morning at the Tivoll, where I had gone to catch the busy leader after Te- hea He is an extraordinary person Steindorff. A rehearsal of four had just ended. He has gone hours through many weeks of such rehearsals —with the skittish prima donna and the fretful tenor to placate, and the whole choral and orchestral work to oversee, and wi rmances, lessons and little extras like park bands to attend to; yet Mr. Steindorff seemed fit and ready for my or any other worlds e symphonic amen the popular di- will tell you the ‘failvre’ of the in San Francisco. In 1 is the wrong tion. The con- i on the financial 3 that they have led” is ow ignorance purpose and of the history other cities. recently - | | | GATE MONEY. Partington. * PRIMA DONNA WHO WILL BE HEARD DURING FORTHCOMING GRAND OPERA SEASON, P - . 2 at season with a deficit of her Mr. Scheel nor the concerts, n ge yet again = £48 3 ural regret learned to pay their s general er how it was ong-established Steindorff re- taste is formed even given at a burg Symphony Or- i is not self- nt, imperti- st accom- have fafled to orfl agreed; then and the odd part t did, in some amazing Califor- s not an easy matter to erts. There are spe- | rocks ahead, that | tle to do with the afore- 1 lack of success of the con- in the way is that given in the afternoon, musicians being almost all ed in the evening. This, s most men from at-| the concerts; and many women gymphony lovers also. Again, the large e attending such affairs —our series | year, with only fifty-five men in | the orchestra, cost $700 each, over and | above hall rent and advertising—necessi- , tates 2 high admission price, and that | again interferes with the attendance. certs. they the otherw SUNBURN TAN FR ECKLES PREVENTS “PON-SETTA" is nature's 1 - 1 er—a skin food and powu:.e:::‘:i‘;:— | h-nleu;n and u:;'l’?nuu;u. . While scting < an impereeptivle powder 1t softens | preserves Lhe skin. iia | “FPON-SETTA™ hever spolis dries | Send Cc for samp'e. P‘Il\fl.-:r 50c. ! your druggist does not keep it ask him to getit for you Asita Cream and Toilet Co. | Los Angeles, Cal | | There are a few good people, however, There are too many good and cheap shows in town to compete against—in the | e of the symphony habit. Lack of | iation for the symphony is, of | cours the bottom of it. The prices | would count little if the love were here, | and people would make time to attend. | The difficulty, of course, is to create the | taste.” “Are the musicians willing to do their | 7’ 1 aske ’ the conductor said heart- | have done everything that could be expected of them. They cannot be blamed for asking a return for their services—and maybe a little more than would be demanded for a regular concert series. We cannot guarantee so many concerts, so many rehearsals and so much pay at the end of them, and these things do interfere with their teaching and the rest. No, the musiclans—good fellows!— 3 a symphony orchestra largely on faith and with an unselfish desire to ben- efit their art. Of course, it is their living. The ultimate reward is certain, doubtless, but it is a long time coming round usually. “In Victor Herbert's orchestra every man is engaged for the whole season, at a regular salary, for which Mr. Herbert is free to call upon them to rehearse at midnight if he should so choose. The | musician is not dependent upon teaching, upon theatrical work, or upon cafe con- certs, as here, but those are ideal condi- tions. “How is it that every little German vil- lage, even if there are only 20,000 people in it, can have its symphony concerts?” -1 inquired. “The German theaters are subsidized, almost without exception,” Mr. Stein- dorff replied, “and the theater orchestra is expected to take part in symphony con- certs. Salaries are different, by the way. A chore man here gets as much as the concertmeister of the orchestra of the Court Theater at Dessau, my own town. He has the royal sum of $25 a month for his services. This goes on all the year, however, whether he works or does not, and the honor counts, of course.” “And now Mr. Steindorff, what is our Tivoli conductor going to do about the symphony concerts this year? Try again?” I asked. “'And again, and again, and again,” sald the conductor, “until a von Bulow or a Scheel comes along to do the work. We must have symphony music, and though I do not claim to be a von Bulow, I—well, I give something that is much better than no symphony at all, as you have often been good enough to say.” I did not find it necessary, by the way, to assure our old zvmphony leader that Mr. Frederick Zech’s opinions on some phases of the question, as given last Sunday in these | columns, were Mr. Zech’s, not mine. who have so mistaken me; and who also forget that as an intending laborer in the fleld, one moreover with some experience behind him, Mr. Zech has a right to his convictions. “After the grand opera season is ov-r we shall begin rehearsals for a serles of three concerts,” the conductor explained, “‘what you might call ‘novelty’ concerts, s at each of them an important new work will be given. At the first concert Edward McDowell may possibly be heard, in one of his own concertos; a McDowell symphony also to form part of the pro- gramme. The ‘Heldenleben' of Strauss— great work!—will come in the second con- cert, and I hope a Bruckner symphony {n the third. The concerts will not be given until after the New Year, and the Tivoli will be the place,” ““The financial end?” “I have already almost all the neces- sary subscriptions promised,” the con- ductor comfortably concluded. THE SAN FRANCISCEO JOHN D. SPRECKELS, Proprietor. CALL. Adcress Communications to W. 5. LEAKE, Manager SUNDAY Publication Office. WHY REPUBLICAN PARTY SHOULD WIN. ANDIDATE LANE has said in a recent speech, in effect, that his election as Governor will not affect the general policy of the Government or the industrial headway of the country. He clothed this in the euphemism that “the plagues of Egypt were not visited on Oregon and Washington for electing Democratic Governors.” Mr. Lane is a very intelligent gentleman, and is not licking in powers of persuasion, nor in the inclination to use them as a lure to Republican votes. But an analysis of the foregoing state- ment, used to induce a feeling that it is safe to elect him because his election will not disturb ex- isting - conditions and will therefore be safe, proves it to be an acknowledgment that the people cannot safely change at the polls anything that will bring upon them what he calls the “plagues of Egypt.” He unwittingly admits that the plagues are held in check by some power that may be overturned by the ballot, and then they will be let loose. . Those plagues are not in the form of frogs, murrain, hail and grasshoppers. The country endured them so recently that they are keenly remembered as consisting of a' bankrupt treasury, imperiled public credit, closed factories, failing banks, labor without employment, work- ingmen fed at public souphouses, gold flowing away to Europe to pay a foreign debt, a scant table and ragged clothes for American wage-earners, and an industrial paralysis, mercantile failures, private credit sagged, and widespread distress, apprehension and disorder. It is true that these plagues have not returned and cursed Oregon and Washington because the party that led the country’s exodus out of those conditions has been wisely kept on guard. Mr. Lane knows per- fectly well that his clection would be taken as a sign that the plagues were coming back. He knows, but does not say, that California would suffer more than almost any other State from a change in her political control, because of her commanding position and her primacy of this coast. His election would imply carelessness and indifference to conditions that have effected her industrial and financial regeneration, and it would shock and shatter the safeguards of prosperity throughout the Union. There is in the election of Governor the same reason for Republican success that pervades the whole political situation. The Republican party should carry California from Governor down, because it is now, and is likely to continue, the country’s insurance against financial reaction. The Republican party has given the country a sound currency, secured by the gold standard, and has made the laborer’s dollar the best in the world, the equal in the market of the dollar of the rich. This sound money policy has so reduced our foreign. debt that we are not in danger of a drain of gold to inflate the currency of Europe and make nioney scarce at home. It has made us a creditor instead of a debtor nation, and American gold goes abroad now to buy the bonds of the German and British. empires, to build railroads in London, to take over foreign steamship lines and turn the profits of their operation into American pockets. : Who wants to change this? Who .wants to put the country back to the dark days of 1893-97, when all the remedy Mr. Lane’s party had for a bad currency was to make it worse? Those who want that particular plague again should vote for Mr. Lane. The Republican party joined sound money to sound protection. It was mindful of the industries of California. It instituted the beet sugar production, lifted - raisins, oranges, lumber, and all the products of our soil, streams and forests out of penury to plenty and good prices. It stimulated ship-building here, opened our closed factories, fired our cold furnaces, put the pulse of life back into our dead engines, and has given such an impulse to all industry that the demand for labor has outrun the supply. Workingmen, instead of dividing one day’s work among sev- eral, are now getting more pay for overtime than they got before for the regular hours, and they are all so busy earning wages paid to them in gold that they can’t quit to listen to Mr. Lane’s speeches, and he has to go to them and declaim while they empty the full dinner-pail at the noon lunch. While his party was in power they had time to listen to speeches. They had nothing else to do. In those days Mr. Lane could have seen them in 2 hall any hour of the day or evening. The mills were closed, the factories silent, the dinner-pail empty. They could have listened to his persuasive oratory, which would not fill their bellies nor clothe their backs. The Republican party took them off the pauper list'and restored them to the payroll, and now Mr. Lane has to go to the workshops to find them, and persuade them that his election is safe, because he can’t change the conditions that have made the demand for labor outrun the supply. But he knows, and all ~men know, that his election will be at once taken as the expression of a desire to go back to the crude experiments and the pinch, famine, failures, bankruptcies and souphouse of 1893-97. His party held the theory, and advocated it, that the poor needed a different money from the rich; that the wage-earner should be paid in money that would buy him only a half-dollar’s worth of necessaries for every nominal dollar. His party held that gold was the rich man’s money, and that the rich were therefore alone entitled to money that would buy a hundred cents’ worth of necessaries for every nominal dollar. - The Republican party has estored the country’s industry, made its banks safe, its merchants solvent, made the universal employment of labor necessary, increased its wages and compelled their payment in 100-cent dollars. What fault has Mr. Lane to find with this situation? How can he better it? Why should the people risk a change merely to gratify his ambition to be Governor of California? In his next speech will he define the plagues of Egypt and tell why they have not fallen upon Oregon and Washington as the result of electing Democratic Governors? charities EQUINOCTIAL STORMS. NE of the cherished convictions of the average man concerning the orderly recur- rence of natural events is that of the coming of equinoctial storms. Every man likes to say to his neighbor in the.fall and in the spring, “We shall have equinoctials very soon.” The autumnal equinox and the vernal equinox bring that satisfaction to thou- sands of weather prophets, and the faith of man has been constant in the belief that the predic- tions would be verified. Now comes an expert in the weather business who mocks and gibes at this venerable bit of “popular science.” He says there are no equinoctial storms. According to the almanac-makers the sun crossed the plane of the equator at 6:55 on the evening of September 23, and on the day preceding that event the Philadelphia Record sent down to the weather bureau in that city to inquire concerning storm probabilities. To the inquirer the weather man said: “Nothing doing in equinoctials last night. Equinoctial storms have gone away with Santa Claus, the old man who rang the Liberty Bell and Hamlet’s father. Superstition, my boy, superstition.” When the persistent inquirer reminded the expert that there had teen rains the night before in twenty-seven towns according to the report of the bureau itself, the reply was: i it had rained a little longer and just a little stronger we would have had one-tenth of an inch “of rain, but we only had .08, and that had nothing to do with your equidiurnal, as the Greeks put it before they woke up.” So all the annual reports of death and disaster following on land and sea by reason of the sweep of the equinoctial storms go the way of old romances. Our one consolation is that the shattering of this ancient lore does not affect California. We never bragged on our equinoctial storms. California weather is ever gentle. Let the Easterners howl about their lost faith. We shall go on serenely picking fruit and listening to the voices ofgently pleading candidates, care- less alike of storm or equinox. Those who have thought the Sultan of Turkey a fool may now revise their judgment, for according to a report from Constantinople the Sultan, finding that Said Pasha was becoming so popular as to be formidable, did not order his execution nor force him into retirement, but made + him Grand Vizier without money to pay salaries, and now the promoted favorite is the most abused man in the Levant. . LR e The damage done by the recent forest fires in the north is estimated to have reaclied the amount of $2,000,000 in Western Washington alone, and still the people hesitate to assume the expense of a comprehensive system of forest protection. Evidently the man who said “The burned child dreads the fire” didn’t know how childish grown children are. 7 —_— Be not cast down by present storms. Live through the “fights” of the campaign and you will have a chance to enjoy the mild play of the football games. —_— ‘ From all colleges in the country comes a report that the freshman class is the largest ever known, and we may hear later on that it is also the freshest. - --SEPTEMBER 28, 1902 | Ve aaaisaiansesgiuns e Matket and Thicd, S, £ e e Em— ABSENCE OF STAGE STRUT ACCOUNTS FOR MUCH OF By Gu ACTOR STODDART’S CHARM. isard. -+ 4 Dr. Pangloss in EAR old Stoddart!” That is what J. H. Stoddart’s fel- low-players all call him, | what every one who comes within his kindly sphere in- | voluntarily dubs the fine old gentleman. | I had the honor of a chat with him the | other morning, and came away myself | saying ‘“‘dear old Stoddart!" like all the | rest. It is perhaps his delicately courte- | ous manner, the fine, unhurried ease of a leisurely yvesterday, that steals so grate- fuily into one's consciousness; or again | the sweet tolerance, quiet humor and gentle dignity with which Mr. Stoddart’ mild blue eyes look out upon his sur roundings. And there is a simple whole- someness about the old actor’s atmos- phere, like that of .rain-washed heather, | or the nutty toothsomeness of his native | [ ocat cake, that refreshes exceedingly. The smell of paint is far, far away. Not Lachlan Campbell himself seems a more unactory sort of person than J. H. Stod- dart in his home, and possibly this ab- sence of the strut, of the center-of-the- stage stripe, accounts for much of Mr. Stoddart’s peculiar charm. It was in a pretty, sunny room of his hotel that I found ‘“dear old Stoddart,” with his daughter, Miss Stoddart, who is | now making a long-promised visit here. “Come in, come in and sit down,” he | said, drawing out a big chair for me. | *‘My daughter here helps me to remember | things; you may find something of inter- | est in an old man’s memories—mostly | about people I have known, not so much my own career,” he modestly added. Much like himself in appearance is Stoddart's Lachlan Campbell, the same thin, silvery hair, strongly marked square face, and bold features. But there is no sternness in his large, blue eyes, and the dumb, inarticulate gesture of the Scotch peasant—so wonderfully pictared in his Lachlan Campbell—does not belong to the actor in propria persona. “But it's aboot yersel, ken,” I ventured. “‘Oh, after that—" laughed Burns' coun- tryman. “You take me for a Scot, of course. Well, I am, though I happened to be born in Yorkshire, England. But my father was an itinerant Scotch actor, | and shortly after I was born we went to Glasgow, where he acted and did odd things about the theater. As soon as we were old enough my brother Bob and I took children’s parts. A rare school it was, for all the big players, Macready, Cushman, Helen Faucit and the rest of them, used to come and ‘star,’ as they call it now. When we were too old for chil- dren’s parts, Bob and I wandered off to Aberdeen—" **‘Aberdeen awa—" ‘“‘Aberdeen awa,” Stoddart nodded, “and we had there olir first experience of the real ‘Bonnie Brier Bush' Scotch sabbath. Bob was unpacking—we had just arrived on the Sunday—and he was whistling away to his heart’s content. He hadn't whistled much when our expectant land- verra kirk doors!” and we had to get ‘oot’ ‘Get oot 0’ my hoose, ye godless heathens, whustlin' your wark-a-day tunes at the very kirk doors!” and we had to get oot. But we met also with much lovely moth- erly hospitality on our tours through the small towns. The auid wives, always with a pipe in their mouths, used to like a clack with us, though they always began by saying: ‘Lord’s sake, laddles, do ye be- long to the theater? I misdoot me much | but ye could find a mair God-fearin' trade.’ The housewives would board us, buy food and cook it for us, and often as not at the week end would say when we asked for the bill: ‘Eh, laddies, I dinna thnik [ can chalrge ye onything for that.” ™ “How did the training come on under those conditions?” T asked. “‘Just the same,” continued the actor. “We played with the traveling stars, in the full legitimate repertoire. I well re- member playing with Macready. I had a line beginning, ‘Macbeth, Macbeth, Mac- beth, beware Macduff, the thane of Fife." The rehearsal was on, and I spouted my line. ‘Hold!" said Macready, not ‘MOc- beth, ‘MAcbeth!"—MAcbeth!” and I then learned that my pronunciation was not all it might te. We acted 1lve years in Scotland, then five years in Liverpool, and in 1854, at the age of I, I came over o New York. “In 1854 Wallack’s Theater was in its prime. It was much better managed than the English playhouses, and was devoted mostly to old comedies—‘She Stoops te Conquer,’ ‘As You Like It'—all the com. edy gems. 1 remember only one new play being given while I was there, ‘“Pocahon. tas,’ by John Brougham. It created quite a stir. We always ended up in those days with a roaring farce—you would perhaps call it tomfoclery now. But there was no comic opera of the late vrand—no vaude- ville, no burlesque, in those days, and we liked te send the audience home laugh- sir, I care to I slid In. ing. I remember Mr. Jefferson’s debut as ‘The Heir-at-Law,’ at Laura Keene's Theater. He finished up the performance with a rarce called “The Specter Bridegroom.” “But these farces were always well —fe % kd 1 ALCAZAR'S NEW LEADING JUVENILE WHO IS A CLEV- ER ACTOR. 1 P> * written, and often very clever, were they not?” I asked. “Quite so,” replied Mr. Stoddart. *Wal- lack’s was a fine school altogether. J. W. Wallack was the pinnacle of stage man- agers. They were very courteous in those days. ,Some of the younger men are a | little impatient now. I remember playing a very small part just at first, but there was an important little speech in it. Well, Wallack came up to me—no exposing one's weakness to other people—and said gently: ‘My boy, you will excuse me, but you'll take it from some one who has been longer at this trade than you? Let me read that little speech for you,’ and So on. It's much the best way. Actors are a queer, sentimental lot. Speak to them gently and you can have anything you want."” “And the actors really were better in those davs?” I asked. “I do not think there is an actor to-day who can touch one side of those playing then,” the old player said, and with eyes sparkling with lustrous memories, asked: ““Where will you find now a Cushman! a Keene! a Booth! a Forrest! There are plenty of good actors to-day, but no tran- scendent, pre-eminent genius, that com- peis a universal admiration.” — S ——— Frunes stuffed with apricots. Townsend’s.® ——— Townsend’s California Glace fruit and candies, 50c a pound, in artistic fire-etched boxes. A nice present for Eastern friends, 639 Market st., Palace Hotel building. * — Special information supplied to business houses and public men by the Press Clipping Bureau (Allen’s), 230 Cali- fornia street. Telephone Main 1042. e i e ' “Remember,” said the proverb-monger, “that the burnt child avoids the fire.” “Yes,” answered the sneerer, “but the burnt child has the satisfaction of pro: to the world that its family is still able to buy coal.”—Washington Star. Preserves J. ms and Jeliies are the most delicious of table treats. E Every jar is hermet cal nd i oy e S California’s sel cted fruit I you have acver trie! them Get a Ja-. They'rs fine. All Grocers. All Vasieties o Long Syrup Refining Co. San Francisco, Phone South 488,