Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 37, Number 19, 27 November 1911 — Page 8

PAGE EIGHT.

THE RICHMOND PALLADIUM AND SUX-TELEGBAII, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1911

LOCAL MAN CANNOT TELL MONEY VALUE

Nute Abrams, Bright, Industrious Workman, Has an Odd Affliction.

THE PECULIAR PSYCHOLOGY OF THE "CUE"

Parts Learned by Pages Which Sometimes Float ually Before the Vision Some Interesting Reminiscences of Kyrle Bellew.

Vis-

Tbere la a man in this city who is perfectly sane, who is industrious, works every day, can read and write, but absolutely cannot tell one piece of money trom another. Neither can he tell a paper bill of one denomination from another, even though the amount of the bill is printed in comparltively large numbers of the bill. His wife is the "banker" of his house. Nute Abrams, 1622 North G street, is the man who bears this unique distinction. Abrams is a good workman and is Intelligent.

When he gets his pay envelope from the Wayne works he takes it home to his wife, who is an invalid. She opens it and counts the money to see that It Is all there. If she wants any provisions, she glveB her husband the exact amount of money which they will cost. If she wants to pay the Insurance, the butchers' bill, the rent, or anything else, her husband is given the exact amount of money and pays the debt. Abrams Is probably the only man In this part of the country who Is so afflicted. Even foreigners who immigrate to this country learn the value of the different pieces of money within a short time after their arrival. .Abrams Is at a loss to explain the Jcause of his peculiar affliction.

MUSIC

(Continued from Page Five.)

'blow his horn. He might, if put under oath, admit privately that perhaps he does know a few things (he trained a Richmond Chorus four years ago to give the Brahm's Requiem, with the accompaniment of the Thomas orchestra, establishing himself at one stroke with those musicians as a chorus master of rare powers, and also a conductor of unusual authority) and he will admit that a symphony seems to him something worth while. But in place of urging folks to work with him, he simply works so quietly and in such a friendly mood, that even the Commercial club caught the infection and bought these instruments, undertook the May festivals, and supports his work with a true enthusiasm, but without any particular offervecence, in a kind "all in-the-day's-work" sort of way. Such is Earhart's way of working. Thus it happens that here in Richmond the advancing wave of musical intelligence and enthusiasm Is fri orchestra and for great choral rouble. Richmond is a kind of piano town, perhaps I ought to say a piano forte town, for they do make a lot of tl em the Starr Piano company. They make a player piano which, if I may believe, the circulars of the company, is about "the best ever;" they go farther, they

wish you to prove it. So they buy player rolls, and donate by the hundred to the public library for circulation. The librarian tells me that they circulate the rolls very freely indeed. They have somewhere about a thousand rolls for the greatest music there is. And the high school boys and girls carry home the rolls and study the pieces as great music, the same being part of their work. Hence the high school students graduate from a musical atmosphere; and these young orchestral players not only know their own parts, but have a definite idea of the compositions as a whole. But for piano playing. In the ordinary sense of the word, 1 doubt whether Richmond is a star stunner. At any rate the musical study club finds It difficult to get players who in "taking lessons" upon the piano have also "studied music," and can play music. And the same is written all over, across and through the one small alleged music store they have here where music is celebrated mainly by Its absence. Naturally I wondered with myself whether this total absence of any sheet music appertaining to what I had been accustomed in Chicago to know as "Music" might be a case arising out of the state of mind, Which the Saturday Review hoped for; "When everybody would know so much that they would be afraid to play before anybody else." But this would not explain the absence of individual atudy in tone-poetry. I pass it along. "Music stores in Richmond" properly speaking, they are none. All this has emitted to speak of the chorus of 250 voices, the adult chorus which sang Brahms' "Requiem," "St. Paul," "Elijah," and last year Verdi's Masoni "Requiem." These, quite naturally are singers who but lately were high school pupils, where they learned to study music as "she" is studied by musicians; where also they learned to sing refined, Christian music, such as musicians love; and learned definitely precisely why musicians love it. One little side light I noted last year when here which pleased me. It was a stormy night to rehearse "Elijah." About one hundred and seventy-five were there out of the full force, and some thirty younger players in the orchestra, with their parts, meaning to find out where and how they came in. It was this purely personal love of the music which pleased me. This situation looks to me like a real education In music. To have

young people graduate from the high school with so fine a feeling for music and for what it stands, that not even a large college wil be able to brutalize it and bury It under the Philistinism of the average American college professor; Is not this something worth while? and la It not worth while to find an American orchestra rooted in the very soil where It flourishes? It

i Mr. Bernard Fairfax, of the "Dear

Old Billy" company, which played here recently and who wae here last season with Kyrle Bellew, in "Raffles," in a convernation gave some interesting psychological or physiological data acting has on the actor. Strangely enough many actors are, after a fashion, mere automatons that is, so far as the play itself is concerned. They lrtiow nothing of the text save that of their own particular role. The public vaguely knows that one actor gives another his "cue," but just in what that cue consists is not exactly known to the uninitiated. The actor listens for this cue like a telegraph operator listens, for his

particular call. In the mass of sound it is plainly distinguishable. It rings out like a bell. That is, in its perfect working. But, not infrequently, cues go amiss with consequent confusion. The last word of the preceding speech, so far as the conversational end of it is concerned, is the usual handle with which the following speech is wielded.

These end words, so to speak, are the accents of the play. They recur with as regular a beat as the musical motif in an orchestral presentation. They are a sort of linguistic ladder upon which the various roles mount to a climatic summit. The printed page of an actor's part, from which he commits it to memory, shows nothing but paragraphs containing the former, alternated with these end words, so that, until rehearsal, the actor may have no possible comprehension of the thing as a whole. The continuous and absorbing study of this page, says Mr. Fairfax, produces a sort of replica of the page on the brain which floats almost visibly be

fore the eyes so that, under the stress of a first presentation it becomes an obession, and the actor might be said to visualize his break into the conversational action. Stage fright is, too, as incomprehen

sible in its manifestations, as it is seemingly easy to explain. Great actors often are affected as badly with stage fright, especially on the opening night of a new play, as the veriest amateur. One celebrity, it is stated, had to have himself locked into his dressingroom to keep from running away. Another was violently affected with nausea. The physical effects of stage fright are one of its most serious phases, for the. reaction naturally causes a mental relaxation that is inimical to artistic coherence. There are many things about the presentation of a play from the other Bide of the footlights not understood by the audience, especially as the latter affects the former. In farce, in instance, it is very hard to play to a small audience pushed back under the balcony on the first floor and seated in the rear of the upper house. The actor does not like to project his missies into space, to fire at random. The more intimate the actor becomes with his audience, without seeming to do so for that intimacy which is forced and familiar and made obvious, is as obnoxious as it is unrelated to legitimate theatrical presentation the more stimulus is injected into the action, so that the psychological effect the audience has on the actor is quite as evident as that the latter has upon the audience. Very dear to the heart of the thespian is some slight dramatic effect achieved through a theatric subtlety not recognized as such by those "out in front." Not recognized in its machinery its technical working. In "Dear Old Billy," in instance, where the latter, upon being told that his ward's father is dead, having been

killed by a taxicab and his response.

Mr. Fairfax was an admirer of the

personality and the theatric art of Kyrle Bellew, whose death a few weeks since was referred to at length !

here. Kyrle Bellew was very devout, said Mr. Fairfax. A Catholic and something of a mystic, he was profoundly affected by the spiritual ministrations of the church and, also, a devoted attender upon its services rising early to attend mass when on tour, although to do so was something of a discomfort. Kyrle's sister, his only living relative, is a sister in an English convent, by the way. Bellew's turn for mysticism was manifested by an interest in and an investigation of oriental philosophies and cults, and also in those mysterious magician's performances which have mystified the world. Bellew, as stated here before, was exceedingly clever with card tricks, said Mr. Fairfax. He liked nothing better than to amuse himself with these when alone and to astonish his friends with their presentation, and one of his most successful forms of

entertainment was accomplished in this manner.

Bellew was a great gentleman, said Mr. Fairfax. ""The latter told of an incident which illustrated this and also his exquisite courtesy and consideration. An awkward boy attached to a theatre in which Mr. Bellew was appearing, came to Mr. Bellew's apartments but was much abashed to find a number of other persons there. His confusion was evident and distressing, but this Bellew seemed not to notice in the least. The great actor greeted the boy as an honored guest, took him under his special social protection, showed him about the rooms, filled with works of art and curios, explaining and talking easily, until the boy's embarrassment vanished. This was the more amiable on the part of Bellew since the apartments were filled with notables and celebri

ties and a less tactful host would possibly have left the boy to his own devices but not so the actor, whose social diplomacy was as apparent as his faistronic. Kyrle Bellew always possessed a fascination for women and his romances were many, although, like

other magnetic personalities, much be-

fore the public, he was bored with

mucn unsougnt ana unwelcome aauiation of this sort. His secretary took charge, said Mr. Fairfax, of this one-aided amatory correspondence, but although he was bombarded by his feminine admirers, who cared more for his personality than his art, he was never cynical in his expressions about this phase of his theatrical activities nor in his attitude toward women. For he was, as said Mr. Fairfax, always the great, the beautiful gentleman. A fine chivalry of spirit, as well as of conduct, so rare as to command

an obesiance of respect and admiration. Mr. Bellew, it is said, was very much in love with his artistic feminine confrere, with whom he played for long, Mrs. James Brown Potter, but however that may be, or to whom he may have paid his allegiance, he was a sad and lonely man. As anachronistic as it may seem to the public, it is true, says Mr. Fairfax, that the love of, and for, home obtains among theatrical people. The constant travel, the shifting about hurrldly from place to place, month after month, becomes nauseatingly wearisome and irksome, and the actor longs for nothing more than a permanent abode. This was not absent in Bellew and his death "in harness" far away from his own English home "home" only

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thos is merely for the purpose of j Uvity- ,or- otherwise, he was homeless achieving a farcical effect by the re- possessed a pathos poignant and

ply of the ward to the following ques-1 reaams

tion: "When did it happen?" "Just an hour after the taxi-cab hit him." On both occasions of the play's presentation here, the theatrical ruse "worked," for the audience, instantly stilled by the pathetic manner in which the old man received the news of his friend's death, bursts into laughter over the Incongruousness of the reply.

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E7B

so to as.