by Paul Mroczka
Henry Clay Barnabee as the Sheriff of Nottingham, from the cover of his autobiography My Wanderings (Chapple Publishing Co., Ltd., 1913)
Henry Clay Barnabee graced the American musical stage for close to 50 years, earning the title, “the Dean of Comic Opera.” That was over a century ago—the comedian and manager’s star has since dimmed.
About 15 years ago, I learned about Barnabee from Sherman Pridham, then director of the Portsmouth Public Library. He described an extensive private theatre collection that had been sitting dormant in the library’s third-floor attic for over 50 years. I was interested, but four years passed before I ventured up the winding staircase.
In 1992, I was looking for a dissertation topic. A large collection of virtually untouched primary source material was enticing. I plunged into the collection and about a year later I found my way out. I had discovered a career, a life and a man perfectly preserved within the pages of 21 scrapbooks and 24 photo albums.
Organized by year, each scrapbook contained hundreds of documents. In these books, I entered into the private life of a man who was known and loved by the American public. Programs, reviews, route slips, telegrams, calling cards and photographs were all carefully and lovingly mounted on well-preserved pages.
Textbooks contained very little on Barnabee. Much of what I knew about him came from reading his autobiography, My Wanderings, two articles on his career and a few paragraphs in Gerald Bordman’s American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle. Barnabee spent about 25 years as a dry goods salesman before going into the theatre. An amateur singer, he was told by a doctor that the cure for his chronic stomach upset was to “get out” more. That was his cue to quit the dry goods business and become a professional performer.
Barnabee was one of the first actor/managers to encourage American composers and librettists to create original operettas, spurred on by the popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s British operettas. When he transformed his first company, the Boston Ideals, into the Bostonians, Barnabee decided that operetta written by native composers and librettists was essential. The Bostonians premiered operettas written by some of America’s foremost composers, including Victor Herbert, John Phillip Sousa and Reginald De Koven. They produced the first successful operetta written by Americans—Harry B. Smith and De Koven’s Robin Hood.
The library’s collection also revealed a more personal side—about Barnabee, his wife, Clara, and the couple’s daily lives as the mother and father of a large theatre company.
Reviews, interviews and magazine features illustrated the rise and fall of a theatre company maintained by a conscientious, courteous and caring man. The Bostonians lived their lives on the road from September to May, playing from New York to San Francisco and from Butte to Kansas City. Weeks would be spent in a large city such as Chicago where the company would rehearse a new operetta all day and perform another from their repertoire at night.
Photographs of the stars of the company—Jessie Bartlett Davis, W.H. MacDonald, George B. Frothingham, Eugene Cowles, Tom Karl and Alice Nielsen—inscribed with loving messages to Barnabee and his wife, created a gallery of some of the finest musical talent of the day.
The pictures documenting Barnabee’s comic technique, the roles he played and his public image as a manager, showed him as proper, fun loving and tasteful—assuring the public a Bostonians’ production would be appropriate family entertainment.
Barnabee had also documented his early career as a concert and Lyceum performer. Programs noted the names of his five-person touring company, Barnabee Concert Troupe, each one’s place in the evening’s program and all encore numbers carefully recorded in Barnabee’s handwriting.
Those who have written about Barnabee note that he sang his signature comic song, a patter number entitled The Cork Leg, from the beginning of his career. He claimed to have sung it over 5,000 times. In his autobiography the performer notes that he first performed the song at a music festival in Concord, N.H., but gives no date.
I was determined to find the date. To me, the exact time he began performing the song was important. It was his first big break as a comic singer. If it was in 1865, at the beginning of his professional career, as Bordman and the others understood him to mean, then it meant that he had found success quickly.
Barnabee kept detailed records of every encore and new song he introduced, and carefully dated every program. Over the course of two days I studied the programs on every page of the first four scrapbooks. Unconvinced of Barnabee’s accuracy in his autobiography, I decided to carefully read each program, including all of the performer’s notes, to find the one that first listed The Cork Leg.
During the second day, in scrapbook number four, I found the program for the New Hampshire State Music Festival in Concord. Penciled on the side were the words “The Cork Leg.” It was January 12, 1871—a full six years and about 400 performances into his career. It had taken him years of trial and error, experimenting with many different songs, to finally discover the comic piece that he could make his own.
The Cork Leg tells the story of a prosperous Rotterdam merchant, Mynheer Von Clam, who, after breaking his leg and having it amputated by an overzealous surgeon, has it replaced with a steam driven “leg of cork.” Von Clam’s new leg soon malfunctions and the merchant begins uncontrollably bounding about Europe. Eventually he dies, but the leg does not and continues on its merry way with Von Clam’s skeleton attached. The song was comic and clearly modern—this was the age of the steam engine and huge machines. People were fascinated by both the power and danger of the massive inventions that defined the second half of the 19th century. Here Barnabee showed his understanding of contemporary tastes, issues and concerns.
His signature role was the self-important Sheriff of Nottingham (performed over 1,900 times) in Robin Hood. The collection contains a short book, never published, which describes a photo exhibit of Barnabee’s roles. The display was housed at the library some time around the turn of the century. Barnabee’s ownership and affinity for the role are clear when he writes:
This picture represents the original and—“all rights reserved—” only Sheriff of Nottingham of the Opera Robin Hood, he of the “eagle eye and massive brain.” This picture is taken as he first appears to announce himself—his greatness, his slyness, his cleverness, his genius, his awe inspiring glance, the punishments awarded to plebeians and evil doers, and those who refused to “bow low” assured them that he “never yet had made one mistake” but would “like to for variety’s sake.” [sic]
Nuggets such as these, which put a person’s career and life in perspective, can only be found in primary source documents such as the thousands in the Barnabee Collection. There are orts to be discovered in other theatre collections, but they offer just three or four random pieces in the Barnabee puzzle.
The collection reveals something else, as well: a 50-year marriage of support and love between Henry Clay Barnabee and his wife, Clara. In pictures, in feature articles, in every scrapbook that she helped create and preserve is the essence of their relationship. She was his confidant, his dresser, his organizer. Clara was his silent but essential partner.
There is one missing document that I’d very much like to see. Barnabee and his wife were part of a very exclusive group that met and dined with some of the most famous people of the century. Clara had a keepsake, a tablecloth that was signed by just about everyone, including Mark Twain, P.T. Barnum, Buffalo Bill Cody, Lillian Russell and Joseph Jefferson.
Were the signatures dated? Were there personal notes? Where did Twain or Barnum or Russell decide to sign? Perhaps the table cover was accidentally destroyed or lost or stolen. Sometimes what is missing is as interesting as what exists.
Playwright and director Paul Mroczka is associate professor of theatre at Plymouth State University. He received his B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College, his M.F.A. from Brandeis University and his Ph.D. from Tufts University. Mroczka’s plays have been performed at New York’s La MaMa La Galleria, Nat Horne Theatre and Manhattan Punchline Theatre, among others.
