During the month of February, 1895, there was
a tremendous surge of activity in Hamilton’s music circles.
A locally-written operetta was to be
performed at the Grand Opera House with the purpose of raising funds for the
charitable work of the Ladies’ Benevolent Society.
On February 11, 1895, a reporter from
the Hamilton Spectator was permitted to attend a rehearsal of the comic
operetta, Ptarmigan – music by J. E. P. Aldous, libretto by J. N. McIlwraith
(better known by her pen name Jean Newton.)
The reporter, although realizing that
the under-rehearsed musicians were still unfamiliar with the score, was still
delighted by Mr. Aldous’ compositions:
“It is far and away the best music of
a similar character that has been composed by a Hamiltonian – perhaps it would
not be an exaggeration to say by a Canadian.”
Even the members of the cast applauded
the score at the end of the rehearsal. The choruses of the second act were
especially popular with the Spectator representative:
“There are some that will surely be
whistled, a consummation which the average modern composer might say was
devotedly to be desired.”
Mr. Aldous cleverly incorporated some
well-known melodies into his score. As the cast of characters included some
members of Hamilton’s volunteer militia unit, the Thirteenth Battalion, the
theme of the unit, written by Captain Young, was used.
The song’s first verse highlighted the
type of patriotism dealt with in the libretto :
“In the days of yore, the men
of Gore,
Show’d pluck and valour bold,
At Stoney Creek and Lundy’s Lane,
The story we’’ have told.
The land they left us, then we’ll guard,
And show that lapse of years
Can find the muscle to fight as hard
In the 13th battalion.
Then hurrah! Hurrah! For the scarlet coat,
And hurrah for the rifle true:
Hurrah for the colours we’ll ne’er desert,
The Red, the White and the Blue.”
Jean Newton McIlwraith, daughter of
prominent coal dealer and noted ornithologist Thomas McIlwraith was a writer of
some renown locally and Ptamigan was her first attempt at comic opera:
“As a writer of flowing verse that can
easily be turned to good account by the composer, Miss McIlwraith is
proficient, and her remarkable talent in this line will be recognized by
everyone who knows that the libretto of Ptarmigan is her first attempt at
versification.”
The plot of the libretto was intricate
and the cast of characters large in number so that the basic point of her play
was lost to many in the audience.
Ptarmigan, “an unconscious villain, in
love with Maple Leaf,” had recently returned from the United States where he
had gone to seek employment. Ptarmigan had even seriously considered becoming
an American citizen, but decided to return to Canada.
The operetta opens on a wintry
landscape, near a toboggan slide, under a light snowfall.
Members of the Snow Shoe Club enter and begin
the play with a song:
“All hail to the season that hides the ground
“Neath a comforter deep of snow!
With our snow shoes on we can tramp around
The fields and forests where health is found,
And merrily sing as we go.
“Now gather around our gay bonfire,
And whatever else we do,
In this bracing air, let us all conspire
To sing a song, while the flames leap higher,
To the trusty old snow shoe.”
Ptarmigan rushes on stage and is
recognized by some of the snow shoers who “welcome him back to Canadian soil.”
Right
behind Ptarmigan are his pursuers, Al. Louette and Cornbeau, who denounce him
with accusations of disloyalty to Canada.
The snow shoers react to the
accusations by saying to Ptarmigan :
“We’ve been told of your perfidity
just in time! We’ll lynch you here without more delay. You’ll hang by the neck
till you’re dead as day.”
Just as Ptarmigan was about to be
strung up, a sound of sleigh bells is heard and the ladies enter, prompting the
snow shoers to say:
“Good gracious! The ladies! They’d
think it awfully ungentlemanly of us to proceed with this operation before
them.”
The ladies come stage singing a chorus
of praise to the exhilarating sport of tobogganing:
“Here we are – all of us – plain ones
and beautiful,
Sober and gay,
Stupid and wise.
When there’s tobogganing, e’en the most
dutiful
Can’t stay away,
Hither she hies.
Sleigh riding pleases the best of our quality;
Skating we love,
Hockey we’ve tried;
But when we seek for the essence of
jollity,
Give us a shove
Down a long slide.”
Ptarmigan, who had meanwhile been tied
to a tree out of the ladies’ sight, then sang a song lamenting his predicament:
“So this is then a sample of Canadian
hospitality;
In my unhappy case it will soon end in a
fatality.
Of all the scrapes I’ve got into in many years
of travelling,
I’ve never been in one that was beyond my wits
unraveling;
That snow shoe club seemed most unlike
committing an atrocity,
But here I am, tied hand and foot, witness to
its ferocity.”
Maple Leaf, “an athletic Canadienne, in love
with her country,” and Bob o’Link, “of the Bank of Montreal, also in love with
Maple Leaf,” had become separated from the tobogganing party, and happened by
chance to discover Ptarmigan tied to a tree.
At that moment, two more characters make
their first appearance, Wis-Ka-Tjan, “the Canadian Jay – an Indian,” and
Hepatica, “representing the Herald – a ‘New Woman.’ ”
Hepatica is training Wis-Ka-Tjan to sell
newspapers and, at the same time, is on the trail of a desperate criminal
reputed to be at large in the area.
Bob o’Link asks Hepatica “why should you – a
lady seek the society of one of whom you know to be a desperate criminal?”
Hepatica answered the question in song:
“My name’s Heptica – don’t laugh,
And
writing’s my profession,
I’m
working on the Herald staff,
But
pardon this digression.”
The lady reporter then set out to interview
Ptarmigan :
“now then, you may as well save time by
making a clean breast of it right away, for I’ll get it out of you if I have to
sit here all night.”
Ptarmigan’s response to her inquiry was as
follows:
“Well, mawn, I was just hopin,’ as you’re
being one of them newspaper ladies who know everything, that you’d be able to
tell me what I done.”
A group of ladies enter to save Ptarmigan,
accompanied with “Blue Belle,” a wealthy widow of literary tastes, in love with
Browning.
The widow says to the prisoner:
“You dear old fellow! Don’t tremble any more.
You are quite safe with us. We will never see the humblest wretch abused, for
we all belong to the National Council of Women.”
A company of volunteer militiamen of the
Thirteenth Battalion enter and crowd around Ptarmigan while Robin, “a muscular
musician, in love with Trillium,” denounces the prisoner:
“Ah, there he is, the shameless fallen
creature,
Whose
presence doth pollute the air,
Of
this fair Canada of ours.
“You ask what he has done? I’ll tell his
story,
Although
the tale corrupts my wholesome tongue,
We all
know him of old, but never more he
Shall
be our guest, nor join our friends among.
“He left his father’s house for sake of money
–
Alas
! His crime will turn from you into Fates –
Lower
he sank, until, the trait’rous one, he
Signed
papers to be fused into the States.”
Bob o’Link then came to Ptarmigan’s rescue
with a “vice-regal dispensation.” The Governor-General’s order would save him
from execution but he must be banished from Canada, and, as noted in the
libretto “to make his subjection more complete, he must agree, six months
after, to marry an American girl.”
“String me up!” cried Ptarmigan when he heard
the order, vowing that he would never marry anyone but a true Canadian girl:”
“I am honest, not poor, but of this, I am
sure
If
I’m jined to a girl over there in the States,
I
should never be able to keep up her table,
Her
theatres, party gowns, hacks, chocolates.”
At the end of Act One, the dilemma of what to
do with the traitorous Ptarmigan was solved by imprisoning him in the Ice
Palace:
“Where you will shiver and shake and sneeze
Until,
Oh Monster of Vice!
As
solid as Ottawa rock you’ll freeze,
Within
our Palace of Ice.”
On opening night, the audience was so pleased
that between the first and second acts, there were calls of “author, author,”
from the applauding theatregoers. Mr.
Aldous rose to take a few bows, but Miss McIlwraith would not come out before the
public, pleading that she had too much work to do getting ready for the second
act.
Act Two, set in Madame Blue Belle’s drawing
room to which the toboggan party had adjourned for dancing, began with
Hepatica, the Herald reporter, introducing Monsieur Purple Martin, a great
Canadian painter, to the assembled. The artist was actually Ptarmigan in
disguise.
The ladies, whose knowledge of Canadian art
was challenged by Hepatica, overwhelmingly declared their admiration for the
work of Monsieur Martin:
“Our
citizen who paints
We place among the saints,
He never has complaints
Of
any local strictures.
“Before
his canvas dries,
One with the other vies
To seize the honoured prize.
We
buy up all his pictures!”
Bob o’Link confides to Hepatica his love for
Maple Leaf and his concern because of her infatuation with the cultured
painter.
Bob o’Link pleaded with Hepatica to take the
artist away:
“Surely the very heart hasn’t been squeezed
out of you in the Press? Take this long-haired lion back to his lair, or Maple
Leaf is lost to me.”
Hepatica tells Bob o’Link that she could
easily save his relationship with Maple Leaf because “nothing is impossible to
the New Woman!”
Hepatica then tells Bob o’Link that she had
disguised Ptarmigan as the Great Canadian Painter. When asked why she had given
the traitor another chance, Hepatica said :
“I did it for copy, of course. I’ve a column
and a half for our morning edition on Ptarmigan’s escape. None of the other
papers will hear of it until tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, Ptarmigan tries to win Maple
Leaf’s promise of marriage:
“Love me again! The bird from whom I’m named,
Each
season changes color – so do you!
The
trees and birds to nature’s laws are true,
Of
being turncoats they are not ashamed.”
The patriotic Maple Leaf would not even
consider marrying anyone but a Canadian :
“The only love that’s worthy of my heart,
Is one
which man has no part,
No
rival need she fear,
My
country dear.”
Bob o’Link then discloses the true identity
of Monsieur Le Purple Martin, “the Great Canadian Painter,” Thus revealed,
Ptarmigan is seized. He accuses those who call him an enemy of Canada as being
hypocrites:
“Do you never read anything or play anything
that isn’t written by a Canadian? Do you never borrow ideas from the States,
nor wear anything that is made there? Do you never smuggle boots from Buffalo?”
Just as Ptarmigan is about to be strung up
once again, Hepatica steps in and says:
“The strongest power in Canada has come to
the rescue – the power before which every party, sect and creed must bow – THE
PRESS.”
When asked to explain herself, Hepatica
answers:
“Have you been brought up that you don’t know
that the newspapers try and sentence every criminal out of court? We pronounce
Ptarmigan Not Guilty!”
Declaring that Ptarmigan was not guilty by
reason of insanity, Hepatica argues that it was impossible that someone in
complete possession of their faculties could want “to become amalgamated with the mobocracy
upon our southern boundary.”
Ptarmigan agreed to tear up his
naturalization papers, after which a chorus comprising Trillium, Hepatica, Bob
o’Link and Robin sing to him :
“The
rest of your life
Endeavor
to make amends
For
what you have been.
If
true to our Queen
We’ll
all of us be your friends.
“So
here is an end to strife
You’ll
join our volunteers,
And
ever decline
To
cross the line,
For
Ptarmigan then, three cheers.”
The forgiven Ptarmigan immediately asked
Maple Leaf to be his wife but she declined:
“If I ever saw you look melancholy – at
spring cleaning time, for example – I’d imagine you were longing to be like my
carpets – over the line!”
Maple Leaf, leaving Ptarmigan all alone,
choses Bob o’Link as her future husband. Hepatica then proposes that Ptarmigan
come with her to take the place of the Indian she had been teaching to sell papers
on the street:
“I must have the raw material, and, next to the Noble Red Man, the naturalized
American citizen is the nearest approach to the primeval specimen to be found
upon our Western Hemisphere.”
The play ends with the full chorus singing a
song of reconciliation:
“You may come from the land of Leather and
cakes,
You
may be a native of Chilli,
Your
parents may live beside Italy’s lakes,
Peradventure
you’ve even been silly
Enough
to be born
In
the country we scorn,
If now
you will join our party,
We’ll
make you a friend. To you we extend
A
Canadian greeting most hearty.”
The Herald review of Ptarmgan’s opening night
was generally favorable:
The composer has cleverly introduced snatches
of patriotic airs here and there through the opera; but, apart from these,
there are reminiscent strains, as might be expected in this age, when, by
mathematical calculation, it has been discovered that a really new melody
cannot be written.”
The Spectator, in reviewing the first
performance of Ptarmigan, pointed out “the amusing misconception” of many
people as to the point of the operetta, “to judge from published criticisms and
private conversations, the notion seems to prevail that a spirit of intense
patriotism is manifested in the work.”
On the contrary, the writer was attempting to
good-naturedly “poke fun at the extravagant and aggressive Canadianism,” feeling
that “patriotic spirit sometimes carries Canadianism to ridiculous extremes and
that therefore it is a legitimate subject for satire.”
The month following Ptarmigan’s first
perfomances, arrangements were made to put it on stage again. In view of those
upcoming performances, Miss McIlwraith, using her penname Jean Newton, wrote to
the Herald to clarify her motivations in writing Ptarmigan :
“The intensely patriotic tone of the opera
was suggested by the absence of such tone in colonial society, except in towns
such as Hamilton, where it is fostered by a Canadian Club.”
The writer emphasized the symbolism of the
names of the characters in the libretto :
“The male characters are all named for
Canadian birds, and three of the ladies from Canadian wild flowers, but it may
not be generally known that the significance of the title rests in the fact
that the ptarmigan is a game bird and a turncoat – brown in summer, white in
winter.”
The review in the Hamilton Times was also very complientary :
“For a
first night, it must be said that this new comic opera, the words of which were
furnished by a Hamilton lady, and the music by a Hamilton musician, the solo
singers, chorus and orchestra all belonging to Hamilton, was a decided success.
There was no hitch either in acting or singing.
“The first
chorus gave the audience a foretaste of something good coming after. The stage
setting, under Mr. Lucas’ direction, was excellent, and when the chorus came on
stage in their toboggan suits it was really a very pretty sight. It was, of
course, a winter scene, though with nothing more than the toboggan suits of the
carnival element in it. The patriotic Canadian element is strong throughout the
libretto, and the plot, small as it is, centres around the little hero who,
from being a Canadian, becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States, and,
getting tired of that republic, comes back to his native country and meets with
the detestation of his old comrades and acquaintances, as well as the usual
punishment meted on stage for such villainous conduct. While speaking of the
libretto as containing much of what is smart and clever, it is no deterrent to
say that the music rises far beyond it . The choruses throughout are bright and
crisp, without trace of vulgarity or even a tinge of plagiarism, while those
short bits which follow sometimes a solo and sometimes a quartette are
especially charming. The concerted numbers that call for special commendation
are the unaccompanied quartette in the first act, ‘See! Through the Pine Trees,’
the duet between Maple Leaf and Bob o’ Link, which was encored; the quartette
for ladies’ voices and chorus of girls, beginning with “The Love That We Love
in Our Later Life.”
“In
the second act, there is a captivating gavotte, twice played with orchestra, to
which Miss Beatrice Walker danced in a charming manner, and of course had to do
it all over again. A quartette for male voices behind the scenes, ‘Clouds With
Gentle Hand,’ is one of the finest things in the work and was well sung. But
the octette which comes before this, with a soprano obligato, sung by Mrs.
Campbell, and which is a praiseworthy bit of music fell flat because justice
was not done to it by the singers. Today, it may go better. Another quartette
towards the close of the opera, is that beginning with ‘The Rest of Your Mortal Life.’ And is worthy
of special attention. Taken altogether the music to this comic opera is way
above the average, not reckoning the amateur composers, and there are numbers
in it, some of which are mentioned above, which even Sir Arthur Sullivan, of
comic opera fame, would not find it easy to surpass. Of the principals there is
nothing to speak but praise. Mrs. Zimmerman sang and acted in her usual
attractive style, so did Mrs. Campbell, and Mrs. Lauder and Mrs. Aldous gave
evidence of talent which may prove useful in the future. Walter Robinson did
justice to the singing of his part, and W. Laidlaw surprised his friends by
singing better than he ever did before and by acting very well indeed. Mr. F.
Powis’ pantomimic action of the character of the Indian Wiskatjan afforded much
amusement. In an enterprise of this kind, little is generally known or said of
the work of the chorus , but to those on watch it is well-known that much time
and late hours are given voluntarily for oure love of the work. Wilfrid Lucas,
as ‘Ptarmigan’ had not much to do in the way of singing, but did that little well,
, barring a tendency to vibrato, which should be avoided. The orchestra with
Miss Findlay at the piano played very smoothly, with the exception of the
blatant clarinet. Mr. Aldous conducted with ease and comfort, apparently
relying with confidence on his forces. He also made a speech after the first
act, thanking the audience on behalf of himself and Miss McIlwraith, the writer
of the words, for the reception given to the work.
“The
opera will be repeated this afternoon and evening.
“During
the evening, bouquets were presented to Miss McIlwraith and Mr. Aldous, on
behalf of the Ladies’ Benevolent Society.”
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