1. Harry Watkins, Diary (hereafter HWD), vols. 9 and 10, Papers of the Skinner Family (hereafter SFP), 1874–1979, MS Thr 857, Box 17, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Naomi J. Stubbs and I have edited Watkins's extensive diary for publication in print and online: A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor, ed. Hughes, Amy E. and Stubbs, Naomi J. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more information about our project, visit www.harrywatkinsdiary.org. Text from HWD quoted in this article has been edited by Stubbs and me; mainly, we have updated punctuation and spelling in order to enhance readability.

2. HWD, vol. 10, 6 November 1852; Skinner, Maud and Skinner, Otis, One Man in His Time: The Adventures of H. Watkins, Strolling Player, 1845–1863, from His Journal (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938), 139–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. HWD, vol. 10, 2 July 1853.

4. Some of the many theatre historians who have quoted or cited Watkins's diary as transcribed in Skinner and Skinner's One Man in His Time include Archer, Stephen M., Junius Brutus Booth: Theatrical Prometheus (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Dudden, Faye E., Women in the American Theatre: Actresses and Audiences, 1790–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Frick, John W., Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Mason, Jeffrey D., Melodrama and the Myth of America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; McArthur, Benjamin, The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; McConachie, Bruce A., Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820–1870 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Senelick, Laurence, The Age and Stage of George L. Fox, 1825–1877 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Tufts University, 1988)Google Scholar; and Vey, Shauna, Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre: The Work of the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

5. Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (1963; New York: Vintage Books, 1966)Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., “History from Below” (1966), in The Essential E. P. Thompson, ed. Thompson, Dorothy (New York: New Press, 2001), 481–9Google Scholar; Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John, and Tedeschi, Anne (1976; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar; Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1991)Google Scholar; Augst, Thomas, The Clerk's Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

6. Miller, Derek, “Average Broadway,” Theatre Journal 68.4 (2016): 529–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation at 529. Savran, David, Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Caplan, Debra, Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brian Eugenio Herrera, “The Problem of Virginia Calhoun; or, Staking Some Middle Ground for the Middlebrow,” paper presented at the 2015 American Society for Theatre Research conference (6 November 2015), and Starring Miss Virginia Calhoun (in progress). In addition, see Theatre Survey’s special issue on microhistory: 55.1 (January 2014), curated by Peter A. Davis.

7. It is also part of my monograph in progress, An Actor's Tale: Theatre, Culture, and Everyday Life in Nineteenth-Century US America, which draws on Watkins's diary and other archival materials to offer an “alternative history” of nineteenth-century US theatre culture centered on workaday labor.

8. Bernstein, Robin, “Scriptive Things,” in Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 69–91Google Scholar; Cabranes-Grant, Leo, From Scenarios to Networks: Performing the Intercultural in Colonial Mexico (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Monks, Aiofe, “Collecting Ghosts: Actors, Anecdotes and Objects at the Theatre,” Contemporary Theatre Review 23.2 (2013): 146–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Performing Objects and Theatrical Things, ed. Schweitzer, Marlis and Zerdy, Joanne (Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sofer, Andrew, The Stage Life of Props (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the work of Begley, Varun, Hodgdon, Barbara, Monks, , Ridout, Nicholas, and Sofer, in Theatre Journal 64.3 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a special issue on theatre and material culture edited by Ric Knowles. For more on how objects become “things” in cultural production, see Brown, Bill, A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Offer, Avner, “The Economy of Regard,” in The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 75–99Google Scholar. Building on anthropological theories of gift economies and drawing on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Offer argues that regard—which he defines as “an attitude of approbation [that] needs to be communicated” (77, emphasis in original)—serves as a powerful engine of gift giving because it “endow[s] the gift exchange with credibility” (82). In his view, a gift not only materializes but also authenticates the giver's positive feelings about the recipient. The communication of approbation was the central purpose of testimonials, gift presentations, “call-outs,” and other performances of praise in nineteenth-century theatres; as such, I argue that these rituals illuminate how people who gather and perform at theatres, whether in the past or the present, participate in an economy of regard. For another example of how Offer's theory illuminates theatrical spectatorship, see Keefe, John, “A Spectatorial Dramaturgy; or, The Spectator Enters the (Ethical) Frame,” Performing Ethos 1.1 (2010): 35–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Butsch, Richard, The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Quoting writers and literary figures who complained about the undisciplined behavior of theatregoers, Butsch argues that working-class spectators’ rowdiness “was a rejection of the respectability that the middle class were forging at the same time to distinguish themselves from the working class” (47).

11. “Amusements,” Cleveland Daily Herald, 24 January 1874, 4. Also published in Spirit of the Times, 31 January 1874, quoted in Grossman, Barbara Wallace, A Spectacle of Suffering: Clara Morris on the American Stage (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 114Google Scholar.

12. HWD, vol. 10, 4 April 1853.

13. “Local Items,” Williamsburgh Daily Times, 14 January 1853, 2. Officials in the town of Williamsburg dropped the “h” in the city's name in 1853, but the local newspaper retained the “h” for some time, and Watkins writes “Williamsburgh” throughout his diary. (Stubbs and I have updated Watkins's spelling for clarity; see note 1.)

14. See, for example, “Gough's Temperance Lecture,” Williamsburgh Daily Times, 24 January 1853, 2; and “St. John's Minstrels,” Williamsburgh Daily Times, 26 January 1853, 2.

15. HWD, vol. 10, 21 February and 23–4 February 1853. According to Skinner and Skinner, “The lessee, Kemp, was inspired with the notion of wooing the inhabitants from their custom of traveling to Manhattan for their dramatic entertainment… . Even in those days New York's bright gas lights were too dazzling to be resisted by the Brooklyn moths when they could fly over in a few minutes on the ferry to the enchanted town” (147).

16. HWD, vol. 10, 25 February 1853.

17. Ibid., 26 February 1853.

18. Ibid., 23 April 1853.

19. Ibid., 19 May 1853.

20. Ibid., 23 May 1853.

21. Ibid., 2 July 1853 (emphasis in original); “L.I.” refers to Long Island. When Watkins revisited his diary late in life, he removed the page where he wrote his original account of the sword presentation and inserted a revised account, thereby transforming his narrative from record into anecdote. The entry begins on an original manuscript page written contemporaneously, then continues onto a new page (made of different paper) beginning with the text “effective, if not eloquent, terms.” The handwriting on the new page matches that on documents written by Watkins in the 1880s. An error involving duplicated words in the 3 July 1853 entry (the phrase “when here before” is repeated accidentally, then crossed out) suggests that Watkins may have transcribed parts of the original entry onto the new page. Even so, there is strong evidence that Watkins made changes to his initial account. At the end of the new page, three entries (5–7 July 1853) are consolidated into one, which is something Watkins never does; and the text at the beginning of the following page (probably, the end of the original entry for 7 July 1853) has been scratched out. After this redaction, the diary continues unaltered for a time. So, we must approach his story cautiously, because he might have integrated faulty memories or introduced new information in the later rendition. But as Jacky Bratton argues, anecdotes provide valuable information about theatrical communities, despite errors or hyperbole they might include. She asserts that anecdotes “may be understood not simply as the vehicle of more or less dubious or provable facts, but as a process of identity-formation that extends beyond individuals to the group or community to which they belong” (New Readings in Theatre History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 102Google Scholar). Indeed, I believe that Watkins's revisions and addenda are red flags calling our attention to what mattered most to him, his fellow actors, and his audiences.

22. Either the subscribers or Watkins himself made a mistake about which of Worth's swords served as the model. Watkins writes in his diary that it was “a facsi[mile of a sword] presented by the State of New York to General Worth, for his services during the Mexican War.” But New York State gave a sword to Worth in 1835—more than a decade before the US–Mexican War—in recognition of his achievements during the War of 1812. Worth also received presentation swords from the US president, as per a resolution by Congress (1847); the State of Louisiana (1847); and the citizens of Hudson and Kinderhook in Columbia County, NY (1848). The Worth family gave these and other swords to the New York State Library for safekeeping and exhibition, but they were almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1911. The remnants were either returned to Worth's descendants or discarded. Catalogue of the Museum of Flags, Trophies and Relics Relating to the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Present Rebellion (New York: Charles O. Jones, 1864), 23–4Google Scholar, https://books.google.com/books?id=FoYvAAAAYAAJ, accessed 8 August 2017; “Speech of John Van Buren, on the Occasion of the Funeral Solemnities of General Worth, General Duncan, and Major Gates,” Evening Post [New York, NY], 16 November 1849, 1Google Scholar; University of the State of New York, Annual Report of the Education Department (Albany: New York State Education Department, 1912)Google Scholar, 938, 971, and 979, https://books.google.com/books?id=x3egAAAAMAAJ, accessed 8 August 2017.

23. McClinton, Katharine Morrison, Collecting American 19th Century Silver (New York: Scribner, 1968), 134Google Scholar. In general, craftsmen fabricated presentation swords to order and also offered stock designs. The maker of Watkins's sword is not mentioned in the actor's diary or in the Williamsburgh Daily Times.

24. I describe just a handful of gift presentations in this essay. But in autobiographies, newspapers, diaries, correspondence, and museum collections, I have come across dozens of gift presentations. Once you begin looking for them, they pop up everywhere. The wide variety of gifts given to theatre professionals during the nineteenth century include floral bouquets, arrangements, and displays; envelopes and “purses” containing $100 or more in cash or gold (sometimes tied into bouquets or baskets of flowers); silver items, such as cups, goblets, bowls, plates, pitchers, salvers, and lances; military badges; necklaces, bracelets, earrings, pins, and crowns; and pocket watches, watch chains, and watch seals.

25. “Appraised Valuation of the Furnishings of the Edwin Forrest Home ‘Springbrook,’ Holmesburg, PA” (1913), Edwin Forrest Home Records, 1792–1990 (Collection 3068), Box 34, Folder 14, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

26. Life of Edwin Booth (undated souvenir booklet), John and Carolyn Grossman Collection, File cabinet 5, Drawer 1, Box: “Ephemera (tickets, wax seals),” Winterthur Library, Winterthur, DE.

27. Newspaper editor Curtis Guild Sr. (1827–1911), a speaker at Cushman's farewell, collected letters, newspaper clippings, and other materials related to the presentation and pasted them into his personal copy of Clara Erskine Clement's Charlotte Cushman (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1882)Google Scholar; extraillustrated by Curtis Guild, Guild Library-Lg., Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA.

28. Gold pocket watch given to James E. Murdoch, Objects Collection, Harvard Theatre Collection.

29. Unsigned letter, Curatorial file, James Edward Murdoch Papers, 1822–1913, Harvard Theatre Collection.

30. John L. Magee, “Lola in Boston,” The Old Soldier, 1 April 1852, n.p. One or more of the small circles at Montez's feet might be coins, because sometimes gifts of money were enclosed in bouquets. For example, when actress Eliza Petrie was a member of Noah Ludlow and Sol Smith's stock company in St. Louis in 1837, she received a wreath containing $150 from a group of male admirers (Nicole Berkin, “Economies of Touring in American Theatre Culture, 1835–1861,” Ph.D. diss., Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2015, 56–7). And in 1857, the New York Clipper published a rumor that an actress in Troy, NY, had been thrown a bouquet with an envelope containing $200 (“Amusements,” New York Clipper, 3 January 1857, 294).

31. Mowatt [Ritchie], Anna Cora, Autobiography of an Actress; or, Eight Years on the Stage (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1854)Google Scholar, 262 (emphasis in original).

32. The Hand Book of the Sentiment and Poetry of Flowers (Boston: Saxton & Kelt, 1844)Google Scholar and Waterman's, Catharine H. Flora's Lexicon: An Interpretation of the Language and Sentiment of Flowers (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1854)Google Scholar advise that camellias mean “My destiny is in your hands” (16 and 51, respectively), whereas Seelye's, Charles W. The Language of Flowers and Floral Conversation, 4th ed. (Rochester, NY: Union & Advertiser Co., 1878), 108Google Scholar, indicates that white camellias mean “perfected loveliness.” For more on the language of flowers, see Seaton, Beverly, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995)Google Scholar.

33. Mowatt, 415; “Local Matters,” The Sun (Baltimore), 25 December 1852, 1; “A Compliment to Mrs. Mowatt,” American & Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), 25 December 1852, 1. Mowatt states that the floral tribute and fawn came from the Fireman's Library Association, but that attribution does not appear in newspaper reports. The name of the association (spelled “Alamana” and “Alamanie” in the Sun and Advertiser, respectively) suggests that the men who organized the gift had ties to Germany, but it is unclear why they chose a fawn.

34. Grossman, 114; “Amusements,” Cleveland Daily Herald, 24 January 1874, 4; Annewalt, B. D., W. S. Robison & Co.’s Cleveland Directory, 1873–74 (Cleveland: W. S. Robison, 1873)Google Scholar, 52 and 536. The public showcase of the floral arrangement before the event suggests the subscribers believed the community would want to see the display prior to its presentation to Morris. It might have also served as an advertisement for Beaumont and Vaupel & Moore.

35. “Amusements,” New York Clipper, 8 May 1858, 23 (emphasis in original).

36. “Theatrical Record,” New York Clipper, 31 July 1858, 119.

37. “From the Republican Sentinel of This Morning,” New-York Evening Post, 10 January 1822, 2, reproduced in A Documentary History of the African Theatre, ed. Thompson, George A. Jr. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 86Google Scholar; White, Shane, Stories of Freedom in Black New York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 83–6Google Scholar. For more on Noah's and Price's interactions with Brown and the African Grove, see McAllister, Marvin, White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown's African and American Theater (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

38. HWD, vol. 2, 6 March 1847 (emphasis in original).

39. According to HWD, the benefit took place on 6 March 1847; the newspapers mention the silver cup on 9 March. “City Intelligence,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, 9 March 1847, 2. The New Orleans Weekly Tropic of 6 March 1847 does not mention the silver cup at all.

40. Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 20–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Barber, Joseph, Barber's American Book of Ready-Made Speeches; Containing Original Examples of Humorous and Serious Speeches (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1871), 9Google Scholar. Haney's, Jesse C. The Impromptu Speaker; or, What to Say When Called On (New York: J. Haney, 1872)Google Scholar also includes a section devoted exclusively to presentation speeches (56–64).

42. Tellingly, Barber's treatise includes two speeches and replies for sword presentations. One of them begins, “The most appropriate of all tokens of remembrance or gifts of honor that can be offered to a soldier is a sword” (16).

43. Kernan, J. Frank, Reminiscences of the Old Fire Laddies and Volunteer Fire Departments of New York and Brooklyn (New York: M. Crane, 1885)Google Scholar, 818, https://books.google.com/books?id=D2QEAAAAYAAJ, accessed 8 August 2017.

44. See, for example, Tremont Theatre (Boston, Mass.) Drama and Receipt Records, Dramatic Records of the Tremont Theatre, 1839 to 1841, MS Thr 751, Harvard Theatre Collection.

45. HWD, vol. 10, 7 June 1853; H. Watkins, “A Few Dramatic Remarks,” Williamsburgh Daily Times, 8 June 1853, 1.

46. HWD, vol. 7, 13 August 1850.

47. Stage properties, including dress swords, were among the most valuable assets in an actor's inventory. When US actor John Hodgkinson (1766–1805) died, his collection of props included at least eight swords. In 1851—two years before receiving the sword at the Odeon—Watkins purchased a sword, court-dress, chapeau, and buff pants (which could be worn when he played soldier roles) at an auction liquidating a deceased colonel's estate. “I bought the things very cheap,” he wrote happily in his diary. “The sword was a windfall to me, dress-swords being so scarce in this country.” In addition to their professional utility, such items offered a certain peace of mind, because when an actor fell on hard times, he could sell them. Estate inventory for John Hodgkinson (1806), Joseph Downs Collection of MSS and Printed Ephemera, Collection 61, Box 2 (Wills, inventories, and administration papers, 1636–1945), Winterthur Library; HWD, vol. 7, 1 February 1851.

48. The notion of social capital is most strongly associated with the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, but as David Halpern points out, the concept has been discussed by a wide range of thinkers, including Émile Durkheim, Adam Smith, Alexis de Toqueville, and Aristotle. Halpern, David, Social Capital (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 3–10Google Scholar.

49. After a successful benefit at John Bates's theatre in Cincinnati in 1854 (almost a year after receiving the sword at the Odeon), Watkins wrote in his diary, “I wish to give Bates a piece of my mind about certain things connected with this management of his Theatres, and the business of this week, having been unusually good, will give my words more weight” (HWD, vol. 11, 30 March 1854).

50. Mowatt, 325.

51. According to David L. Rinear, calling-out was a “venerable custom” that began in English theatres during the Restoration period; Rinear, Stage, Page, Scandals, and Vandals: William E. Burton and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 129. See also Butsch, 50–1.

52. For example, Watkins wrote after opening night of the 1849–50 season at Thorne's Beach Street Theatre in Boston, “On my entrance I was greeted with a fine reception, proving that I am a favorite, and if Thorne gives me a fair chance, I will be a still greater favorite ere the season closes” (HWD, vol. 5, 20 August 1849).

53. Barber, 10.

54. Property book, National Theatre (Boston), 1838, ms.fTh.12, Special Collections, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA.

55. HWD, vol. 11, 18 and 29 March 1854 (emphasis in original).

56. Playbill, National Theatre, 10 April 1854, Playbills and Programs from Theatres in the United States, 1800–1930 (Cincinnati, OH), TCS 68, Harvard Theatre Collection. See also Butsch, 59.

57. “Amusements,” New York Clipper, 13 December 1856, 270.

58. Cabranes-Grant, 21.

59. “Theatrical Record,” New York Clipper, 11 June 1858, 62.

60. See note 9.

61. Watkins writes that he personally paid for special bills and advertisements for his benefits not only to attract more people, but also to garner the press's favor. “The cost of advertising is nearly as muc[h] as an actor can reasonably expect to clear by his benefit,” Watkins wrote after a benefit at Purdy's National Theatre in 1851, “but were he not to advertise he would incur the ill will of the press, which would prove very injurious to his interests professionally, and so in the end, pecuniarily.” HWD, vol. 7, 14 June 1851.

62. HWD, vol. 4, 24 February 1849.

63. HWD, vol. 11, 30 March 1854.

64. Butsch, 14.

65. Ibid., 45; Carlson, Marvin, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 121–2Google Scholar. Some of today's nonprofit theatres and presenters are noteworthy exceptions to this rule, but in the commercial theatre, one-off modes of spectatorship dominate. Watkins's diary suggests that as a spectator, he, too, tended to patronize one or two specific theatres. During the summer of 1848, for example, when he was between engagements in New York City, he went to the Chatham Theatre almost every night—a venue favored by working-class men—dropping in at other theatres only if the Chatham was closed for repairs or if there was a special attraction elsewhere that interested him. It seems Watkins's second-choice venue was the Bowery Theatre, which also catered to working-class men (HWD, vol. 3, June–August 1848).

66. Butsch, 58.

67. Alexander H. Rice to Curtis Guild, 17 May 1875, in Clement, extraillustrated by Guild (see note 27). In his inventory of his library, Guild includes detailed descriptions of his extraillustrated volumes on actors, listing their estimated value as well as the materials he added to each volume. The care he invests in these descriptions suggests he was quite proud of them, and hoped they would bring a good price if sold. Curtis Guild, Book catalogue, Guild Family Papers, 1824–1946, MS. N-160, Box 1, Folder 10, Massachusetts Historical Society.

68. HWD, vol. 10, 10 May 1853 (emphasis in original).

69. Amy Lee to Maud Skinner, 22 April 1925, SFP, Box 25.

70. Register of guests, ca. 1893–1941, Collection 3068, Edwin Forrest Home Records, 1792–1990, Box 36, Folder 4, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; John E. Moran, 1920 United States Federal Census, Ancestry.com, www.ancestry.com/interactive/6061/4313459-01022, accessed 6 June 2017. As of the time of this writing, I have been unable to find documentary evidence regarding the familial relationship (if any) between Lee and Moran.