the club's first attempt at an operatic
performance, and it was prepared with great care. I suppose I am
to-day the only survivor among those who took part, and it is a sombre
pleasure to recall the old-time frolic. The great promoter of the
undertaking was Theodore Lyman, able and forceful afterward as
soldier, scientist, and congressman, who died prematurely; but the
music and details were arranged by Joseph C. Heywood, later a devout
Catholic, ending his career in Rome as Chamberlain of Pope Leo XIII.
In the cast Heywood was King Arthur and Lyman, general of the army.
There were besides, a throng of warriors, lords, and ladies wonderful
to behold. The costumes were elaborate. Old trunks and attics of our
friends were ransacked for ancient finery and appointments that might
be made to serve. Provision was made for thrilling stage effects,
chief among them a marvellous cow which at a critical moment swallowed
Tom Thumb, and then with much eructation worked out painfully on the
bass-viol, belched him forth as if discharged from a catapult. The
music was an adaptation of popular airs, operatic and otherwise, to
the words of Fielding, and was fairly good, rendered as it was by
fresh young voices and an orchestra whose members played in the
Pierian Sodality. The merriment of the lines was more robust than
delicate, but with some pruning it passed. The bill of announcement,
which was hung up in the Pudding room, and which possibly is still
preserved, was very elaborately and handsomely designed, and I think
was the work of Alexander Agassiz, who had much skill of that kind.
The performers were all strenuous and some capable, but the hit of the
evening was Phillips Brooks, who personated the giantess Glumdalca to
perfection. He was then nineteen, and had reached his full stature.
He was attired in flowing skirts and befitting bodice, and wore a
towering head-dress of feather dusters or something similar, which
swept the ceiling as he strode. I had been cast originally for the
Queen, but it was afterwards judged that I had special qualifications
for the part of Princess. Like the youths in Comus, my unrazored lips
in those days were as smooth as Hebe's, and I had a slenderness that
was quite in keeping. Dressed in an old brocade gown, an heirloom from
the century before, with a lofty white wig, and proper patches upon my
pink cheeks, I essayed the role of _une belle dame sans merci_.
Brooks and I were rivals for the affection