Hamlin Garland: A Life

9. Table Rapper, 1890-92

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'./&·/( While Garland was busily at work establishing himself as a writer of fiction, he was equally engaged in attempting to alter the course of American drama, seeking to substitute contemporary issues and realistic characters for the clichéd conventions of melodrama. His friendship with the Hernes had introduced him to a number of actors, theater owners, and other drama enthusiasts, and as these friendship deepened he worked steadily on a number of play manuscripts as he simultaneously drafted fiction. On June 10, 1890, just three weeks before Garland published Under the Wheel in the July 1890 Arena, the Massachusetts Legislature erupted in a scandal that provided Garland with the plot and theme of “A Member of the Third House,” his second attempt to bring his dramatic ideas before an audience. George F. Williams, the House representative from Delham, accused the West End Street Railway Company of using “unethical practices in an attempt to gain a franchise for an elevated street railway in Boston.”1 Williams alleged that the company ’s lobby—the “third house” of the play—engaged in bribery and coercion of Senate members, and he accused one Senator Fassett of taking a bribe. Fassett denied the accusation and promptly demanded that an investigation be launched into the matter. Garland sat in on the hearings and apparently decided that the scandal—with its charges of corruption and profiteering—was the perfect subject for a radical play, for he copyrighted the title “A Member of the Third House: An American Play of To-Day” eight days after Williams levied his charges. By the end of the month the investigative committee had determined that, while the lobby had exerted pressure, it had not spent money to corrupt any legisla- table rapper 149 tor, and on July 1 the bill granting the West End franchise passed. Garland, however, did not accept the committee’s findings and reversed its judgment in his play, which parallels the events of the scandal but alters the conclusion so that the accused senator (Ward in the play) confesses that he had been willing to take a bribe. His admission prompts the defeat of the bill, a rout of the lobbyists, and the suicide of the president of the railroad. With “A Member of the Third House,” Garland hoped to show Bostonians what a modern realistic play looks like: its subject was drawn from the headlines, so it was unabashedly contemporary; then, too, the issue itself mattered. While the melodramas and comedies currently on the stage offered familiar situations and always reaffirmed that all was right with the world, real life didn’t work that way, and his play would show that, in his hands, drama could move people to action. The trick was to treat the matter convincingly while also rousing people’s ire. When he completed the play in August, he sent it to Flower, who shared his reform sentiments and had written in May to tell Garland that he thought free dramatic performances had enormous potential to make poor people “happy while they were being stimulated to think and also brought to touch with the best sentiments of the day.”2 Flower stayed up half the night reading the play and wrote its author on September 3, “I think it is immense; one of the finest dramatic creations I have ever read.” But he was wary of the legal implications of publishing a play that followed events so closely “because you graphically portray so many individuals that will be readily recognized, then passing from that without changing your characters you picture individuals which in the first part of the play are well known personages as being criminals.” He therefore advised consulting an attorney about liability.3 The lawyer Flower consulted advised against publication, and Garland had no luck persuading a dramatic manager to produce his play. But so committed was he to the “truth” of his dramatic convictions that he decided to invest his own money in staging a dramatic reading of the play, hoping that a positive reception would persuade balky managers. He hired Chickering Hall, a second-floor 150 table rapper recital room of a piano manufacturer, and on October 30, 1890, he staged an “author’s reading,” charging fifty cents per ticket for the privilege of hearing his play. Even for this lone reading he toned down the play, writing Howells that he...