From Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 2 June 1935, by George Seibel.
Crossing the bridge from the South Side to
Smithfield Street, I saw there were no windows in the Monongahela House.
it was like a statue of history without eyes. for the Monongahela, oldest
of our big hotels, has seen many chapters of history--including a
theatrical history.
There was a time when every great actor who came to Pittsburgh from
Broadway or abroad was a guest of this caravanserai. Among its guests
during my time were President Grant, Mark Twain, James G. Blaine, Grover
Cleveland, William McKinley, Bill Nye, Henry Ward Beecher and Robert G.
Ingersoll. But to me the hotel will always be an immortal memory because
in its lobby I met the first great actor I had ever seen face to face. It
was Lawrence Barrett.
Edwin Booth stopped there, too, and I have seen the pair of them walking
along Smithfield Street after a matinee, stopping at a confectionery
store near Diamond to buy cream puffs. Yes, Hamlet and Cassius ate cream
puffs!
The Cross of Shylock
My meeting with Barrett was closer than a street encounter. He had been
playing "The
Merchant of Venice" at old Library Hall, then one of
Pittsburgh's two leading theaters. On the sleeve of his Jewish gabardine
he wore an embroidered cross. How did this pillar of the synagogue in
Venice come to wear the Christian symbol on his sleeve? I was sent with a
letter asking a solution to the mystery.
The letter was sent up to Lawrence Barrett's room, and a little later a
bellboy took me to the second floor. When I got to the head of the
staircase Barrett emerged from his room and talked to me for about five
minutes.
It was like an interview with the Equator or the Zodiac, for Lawrence
Barrett to me was a greater man than Napoleon and Gen. Grant. He had a
majestic head with a thin halo of silver hair; his dark eyes, deeply
sunken, burned with fiery luster; his voice was low and musical as he
explained about the cross on Shylock's sleeve.
Law for the Jews
In Venice, it appears, there was a law which compelled the Jews to wear
this symbol in order to humiliate and insult them. It was a pleasant
little way of expressing the Venetian idea of Christian love. Lawrence
Barrett, making studies for the production delved into Venetian lore and
learned about this law. So he put the cross upon his sleeve, just as the
real Shylock would have had to do on the Rialto.
I thought of that meeting when I saw the windows were gone from the
Monongahela House. Through those windows Lawrence Barrett and Edwin Booth
must have watched the boats upon the river and
the street lamps winking from Mt. Washington.
Among the great actresses who stopped at the Monongahela House were
Modjeska, Margaret Mather, Lilly Langtry, Clara Morris, Annie Pixley,
Fanny Davenport and Mary Anderson.
Fanny Davenport, who died years ago, was the finest of our American
tragediennes, though born in London. Among her first appearances on the
stage she played the child in "Metamora" with Ediwn Forrest. Her only
rival was Modjeska, born in Poland, and an exile because of her husband's
patriotism. When she first came to America she took up chicken farming in
California, but soon she was the foremost actress on the American stage.
Mary Anderson had a very short and very brilliant stage career and is
still living in England.
Register of Fame
All those famous player queens stopped at the Monongahela House, and so
did Kate Claxton, who could have gone on forever playing "The Two
Orphans." So did "Lotta," the best-beloved soubrette of her time, who
made more money than any other actress on the American stage, and must
have been worth at least four million dollars when she died.
Maggie Mitchell was another popular darling who used to stop at the Monon
when she came to play "Franchon the Cricket." That play was as popular as
"The Count of Monte Cristo," played by James O'Neill. Two other players
had roles they could not get rid of--J. K. Emmet as "Fritz, Our German
Cousin," and Frank Mayo as "Davy Crocket." Both were often guests at the
Monongahela House, and so was Joe Jefferson, the beloved Rip.
Stars
across the Sea
All the great foreign stars who visited
Pittsburgh stopped at this hotel. During the first week of January in
1886 Tommaso Salvini was a guest. He was probably the greatest Othello
that ever lived.
Henry Irving did not visit Pittsburgh on his first American tour, but was
a guest at the Monon during Christmas week of 1884. I think it was in
this hotel, that Christmas Day, that Ellen Terry produced her famous
Christmas pudding which she had smuggled over from England, and when
everybody was feelng happy they discovered it couldn't be eaten because
it tasted of camphor. The maid had packed it with the furs, presumably to
keep out the moths.
Perhaps the greatest celebrity of all that ever slept under this roof was
Adelina Patti. Her golden voice had earned her millions before she
retired to a castle in Wales. Patti's only rival, Christine Nilsson, the
Swedish nightingale, also stopped at the Monon; so did Minnie Hauk and
Maria Materna, two other darlings of the opera. Emma Abbott stoppped
there several times. She sang grand opera in English, and a few years
later stopped for a long long time under a different Pittsburgh
roof--when she died she was creamted here, and her ashes reposed for many
years in the crematory, with no one to claim them.
Celebrities of all kinds stopped at the Monon,
among them such diverse
personages as Dwight L. Moody and Buffalo Bill, the Rev. T. DeWitt
Talmage and the agnostic Bob
Ingersoll.
The old hostelry was often visited by opposites--for instance, soon after
General Tom Thumb and his wife, it entertained Chang the Chinese giant.
Some of the people who stopped there were eminent in ways we do not
appreciate any more. Jules Levy was the great cornet virtuoso; his only
rival was Liberati. Today who would go to a cornet concert?
He Was Always Good
Thomas E. Keene always stopped at the Monongahela House, so did John
McCullough. Keene wass the hero of the gallery gods, though a few
preferred Fred Warde, who died a few months ago. Warde also used to stop
at the Monon, as did Louis James, another famous Shakespearean. Among
comedians, besides Joe Jefferson, there were Robson and Crane, the "Two
Dromios," and Nat Goodwin, who could have been greatest of them all.
