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Creator of Compromise: William Henry Sedley Smith and the Boston Museum's Uncle Tom's Cabin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Edward Kahn
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Extract

The notoriety of the two most popular antebellum stage versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin naturally has led theatre historians to examine both the adaptation choices and their political intentions, continuing a debate which began in earnest on 7 November 1853. On that day the Henry J. Conway adaptation opened at P. T. Bamum's American Museum in New York, entering into direct competition with the version by George Aiken, at that time in the fourth month of its run across town. Barnum aggressively promoted the Conway text as “the only just and sensible Dramatic version of Stowe's book,” despite such changes as a rewritten happy ending and the use of minstrel humor and music. Incensed abolitionist critics countered by dubbing the Conway adaptation “pro-South,” a label which still remains in use, especially in comparisons of the Conway and Aiken texts.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , November 2000 , pp. 71 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2000

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References

1. Explorations of dramatizations of Stowe's novel include Rosemarie Bank, K., Theatre Culture in America, 1825–1860 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 147–151Google Scholar; Gossett, Thomas F., Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985), 260–283Google Scholar; Lott, Eric, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 211–233Google Scholar: McConachie, Bruce. “Out of the Kitchen and Into the Marketplace: Normalizing Uncle Tom's Cabin for the Antebellum Stage.” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 3 (Winter 1991): 5–28Google Scholar; Mason, Jeffrey D.. Melodrama and the Myth of America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 89–126Google Scholar; Senelick, Laurence, The Age and Stage of George L. Fox (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1888). 59–70Google Scholar; and Toll, Robert, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 88–97Google Scholar.

2. The first New York run of the Aiken version opened on 18 July 1853 at Purdy's National Theatre. For the sake of identification I continue to use the designation “the Conway.” although such a phrase ignores the important authorial contributions of others.

3. New York Daily Tribune, 16 November 1853. 1.

4. Aiken's adaptation schedule gave him little time to be creative in transferring the novel to the stage. He is said to have been given only one week to create his original four act drama of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which took the story up to Eva's death. The second installment of the script, which Aiken may have completed at a more leisurely pace, deviates far more from Stowe's original than the first part of his dramatization. See Moody, Richard, Dramas from the American Theatre 1762–1909 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press), 352Google Scholar.

5. New York Daily Tribune, 15 November 1853, 7.

6. The Liberator, 16 December 1853, 198.

7. Playbills, Boston Museum, Boston Public Library/Rare Books Department. Courtesy of the Trustees.

8. Bruce McConachie writes that he “acts on humanitarian principles throughout.” McConachie, Bruce A., Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820–1870 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), 180Google Scholar. For examples of Partyside's minstrelsy see Lott, Love and Theft, 222.

9. Ryan, Kate, Old Boston Museum Days (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1915), 130Google Scholar.

10. New York Daily Tribune, 16 November 1853, 1.

11. New York Daily Tribune, 17 November 1853, 5–6. The letter was signed with the pseudonym “Justice.”

12. William Henry Sedley Smith diary, 1852–1854, 13 March 1852 and 20 November 1852, Boston Public Library/Rare Books Department. Courtesy of the Trustees.

13. Boston, Daily Evening Transcript, 16 November 1852Google Scholar; Boston, Daily Bee, 17 November 1852Google Scholar.

14. Playbills, Boston Museum.

15. Clipping, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library.

16. Smith diary, 21 January 1853. Keach played the part of George Harris in Uncle Tom's Cabin, though the benefit did not entail another performance of the Conway script.

17. McConachie, Melodramatic Formations, 174—5.

18. H. J. Conway to Moses Kimball, 1 June 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball, Boston Athenæum Library, quoted in McConachie, Bruce A., “H. J. Conway's Dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Previously Unpublished Letter,” Theatre Journal 34 (May 1982): 150–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. Conway to Kimball, 17 November 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball, Boston Athenaæum Library

20. Ireland, Joseph N., Records of the New York Stage (New York: Benjamin Blom. 1866), 2:667Google Scholar.

21. Conway to Kimball, 1 June 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball, quoted in McConachie, “H. J. Conway's Dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin,” 151. McConachie notes (p. 154) that “Kimball's ‘Jappanese’ idea of Uncle Tom's Cabin probably reveals the legacy of the freak-show approach to museum theatre in Kimball's thinking.”

22. Ibid.

23. For a summary of Webster's Seventh of March speech, see Rhodes, John Ford, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1896), 1:144–56.Google Scholar

24. Lader, Lawrence, The Bold Brahmins: New England's War Against Slavery (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1961), 174Google Scholar.

25. Ibid., 172. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier agreed; he wrote William Lloyd Garrison, “[T]hanks for the Fugitive Slave Law!… for it gave occasion for ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin!’”John Greenleaf Whittier to William Lloyd Garrison, May 1852. The Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier. edited by Pickard, John B.. 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1975), 2:191Google Scholar. as quoted in Gossett, Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, 165.

26. “Founder of Boston Museum: Notable Events in the Long and Active Career of Moses Kimball,” Boston Evening Transcript, 21 February 1895, 6.

27. Dennett, Andrea Stulman, Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997), 55Google Scholar.

28. Smith diary, 12 November 1852.

29. Boston, Daily Evening Transcript, 16 November 1852Google Scholar.

30. Smith diary, 15 and 16 November 1852. Smith lists the rehearsal of Tuesday morning, 16 November, as “Cutting of U. Tom.” A comparison of playbills from 15 November and 17 November shows that only one incident was completely removed, a portion of act one, scene six titled “The Kidnappers and their Dogs.” Changes must have involved the shortening and tightening of other scenes as well.

31. Smith diary, 14 and 15 May 1852.

32. Conway to Kimball, 2 March 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball.

33. Smith diary, 22 February 1852. The playbills for The Enchanted Harp do not credit an author.

34. Conway to Kimball, 7 August 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball.

35. Conway to Kimball, 12 October 1852 and 17 November 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball.

36. Conway to Kimball, 1 June 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball, quoted in McConachie, “H. J. Conway's Dramatization,” 152–3.

37. Conway to Kimball, 2 March 1852, Letters to Moses Kimball. The 12 October 1852 letter also offered two plays to Kimball, including “one entitled The Last Nail, or the Drunkard's Vision—the Scene laid in Sleepy Hollow immortalized by Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle—and on the Banks of the Hudson—on a Temperance subject.”

38. Smith diary. For example, on 4 December 1852, after recovering from the bout that necessitated his replacement in the Uncle Tom's Cabin cast. Smith wrote, “with trembling fingers, but a most profound repentance, &, with God's help! Most sincere and Firm resolve from this day. I will never taste anything that can intoxicate.”

39. McConachie also hypothesizes that the comic characters of Adolph, “a Mulatto valet.” and a “Quadroon Lady's Maid,” who appear in the playbill but not in Conway's letter, may have been added by Smith.

40. The next most prominent characters are Eliza and Eva. who are both mentioned five times in the opening night playbill synopsis. After the 6 December addition of Eva's song to the playbill, Eva is mentioned six times.

41. One example is “Penetrate in rayther [sic] a salubrious condition— ‘It clouds the brain, it makes you shake ginerally [sic], and about the legs particularly.’”Playbill, Boston Museum, 15 November 1852, Act 2, Scene 6.

42. At the same time Partyside was moved to the top of the second column. Eliza was also moved to the top of the third. Mr. Shelby remained at the head of the first column.

43. Smith, W. H., The Drunkard; or The Fallen Saved (New York: Samuel French, 1847), 42.Google Scholar

44. Smith diary. The fact that Smith had to ask Kimball to darken the theatre reflects Kimball's animosity towards Webster.

45. McConachie, “Out of the Kitchen and into the Marketplace.” 20–21.

46. Smith diary, 20 November 1852.

47. Boston Daily Atlas, 16 November 1852; Boston Daily Courier. 16 November 1852; Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 16 November 1852; Boston Daily Bee, 17 November 1852; Boston Post, 19 November 1852; and Boston Herald, 17 November 1852.

48. Boston, Daily Commonwealth, 16 November 1852. 2Google Scholar.

49. Boston Herald, 20 November 1852. 4. The phrase appears in an anecdote about a “lot of dark colored, measly looking pears” being advertised as “Uncle Tom's Pears,” an example of how the character figured prominently in Boston during this period.

50. Boston, Daily Evening Transcript, 6 December 1852. 2Google Scholar.

51. The Liberator, 24 December 1852, 205.

52. Ibid. Pillsbury ends his letter with “Vive la agitation!”