Touring the Antebellum South with an English Opera Company

Anton Reiff's Riverboat Travel Journal

Michael Burden

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807174463
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

The diary of Anton Reiff Jr. (c. 1830–1916) is one of only a handful of primary sources to offer a firsthand account of antebellum riverboat travel in the American South. The Pyne and Harrison Opera Troupe, a company run by English sisters Susan and Louisa Pyne and their business partner, tenor William Harrison, hired Reiff, then freelancing in New York, to serve as musical director and conductor for the company's American itinerary. The grueling tour began in November 1855 in Boston and then proceeded to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, where, after a three-week engagement, the company boarded a paddle steamer bound for New Orleans. It was at that point that Reiff started to keep his diary. Diligently transcribed and annotated by Michael Burden, Reiff's diary presents an extraordinarily rare view of life with a foreign opera company as it traveled the country by river and rail. Surprisingly, Reiff comments little on the Pyne-Harrison performances themselves, although he does visit the theaters in the river towns, including New Orleans, where he spends evenings both at the French Opera and at the Gaiety. Instead, Reiff focuses his attention on other passengers, on the mechanics of the journey, on the landscape, and on events he encounters, including the 1856 Mardi Gras and the unveiling of the statue of Andrew Jackson in New Orleans's Jackson Square.Reiff is clearly captivated by the river towns and their residents, including the enslaved, whom he encountered whenever the boat tied up. Running throughout the journal is a thread of anxiety, for, apart from the typical dangers of a river trip, the winter of 1855–1856 was one of the coldest of the century, and the steamer had difficulties with river ice. Historians have used Reiff's journal as source material, but until now the entire text, which is archived in Louisiana State University's Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library, has only been available in its original state. As a primary source, the published journal will have broad appeal to historians and other readers interested in antebellum riverboat travel, highbrow entertainment, and the people and places of the South.

SCENES IN THE BACK WOODS

The company had been playing at the Louisville Theatre, Louisville, Kentucky, for the week starting 31 December 1855, and had given their usual fare of The Crown Diamonds, Maritana, The Daughter of the Regiment, Fra Diavolo, and The Bohemian Girl. The last performance they gave before the diary opens was Louisa Pyne’s benefit performance of La Sonnambula on 5 January. The company then embarked on the steamer Thomas Swann,1 bound for New Orleans, at which point Reiff’s diary opens.

TUESDAY JANUARY 8th OHIO RIVER, BELOW LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

[1] The ice getting very thick. Last night men were engaged repairing our wheel which had been broken badly, also the paddle box.2

Today two steamers passed going up the “T. C. Twichell”3 and the “Tecumoba”4 it is quite an event for a vessel to pass the passengers rush out to see it as eagerly as if it was at sea.

After shoving through the ice till about twelve o’clock we stopped again tied the vessel to a tree in the forest, and on the river’s bank, about twenty-­two miles below Evansville at a place called Diamond Island Bend, Henderson County, Kentucky.5

Figure 2. Interior of the Main Cabin of the Steamboat Princess, 1861. The type and layout of the accommodation of the Princess on some pre–Civil War paddlewheelers can be seen in this painting. The Princess, built in about 1855 in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the steamer that raced the Thomas Swann, in which Reiff was traveling out of New Orleans on the evening of 26 February 1856.

After dinner (as the sachem of the “American Exploring Company”)6 I suggested we should explore the wilderness to which we had arrived. We started ashore, the ground was covered with snow about an inch in depth the bank is about twenty feet high and precipitous. Nothing but a magnificent forest to be seen. The trees very large—saw the trunk of one lying just on the shore which seems upon a rough guess (they call me Yankee7 here, so I am privileged to guess) to be about forty feet in circumference. Two immense sycamores looked not only astonishing large but exceeding picturesque. [2] After walking about half a mile we came to a corn field and three log cabins made of logs and clay—a rude sort of chimney at back—I bolted in immediately, my companions following—where I found a perfect Aunt Chloe,8 a Negress slave called Aunt Polly, a young nigger about twenty, her son, and a frightened dog who no doubt thinking us ruffians so he gently retired behind the door.

The cabin was rude in the extreme; two beds but made cheerful by an immense fire in the capacious fireplace which contained about a half a load of wood (Cannous’ load in N.Y.).9 We duly appreciated the fire. Aunt Polly after biding us welcome, insisted upon “something coming out dar” which demand being reiterated two or three times, produced a large black head from under the bed, which she rapped with some considerable force with a good-sized stick. We found the head belonged to her next son (the brother of the first one we saw) about eighteen in years. He scrambled from under the bed and got out of the door in a wonderful expeditious manner, accelerated no doubt by the stick in his mother’s hand—it was very amusing to us, but evidently no fun to the nigger. [3] We had scarcely been here half an hour ’ere a white lady (the mistress of Aunt Polly) came in and invited us into her cabin where was her sister a young lady named Mary and her husband. Their names were Mr and Mrs Rankins, Mary’s name being the same. She was evidently very glad to see three Single Gentlemen. She asked us almost immediately if we were married! We arrived here at twelve, and at three we knew the Rankins familiarly enough for them to call us by our christian names.10 We returned to our vessel—in fact, our home for how long, heaven only knows.

During the afternoon a steamer came up the river and hauled in about two hundred feet above us.11 Any quantity of gambling going on board the vessel.12 Even the Pynes & Harrison, Stretton and Captain Tilghman,13 set down to a game—in the Ladies’ Cabin.

During the evening a dance was got up, a fiddler and a guitarist being on board. They are awful dancers. I was in fact made Floor Master and entered upon the labours of my new role with all proper dignity.14 Turned in about one o’clock. Dreamt Father was dead—awoke and found that his son was nearly so—from extreme cold;15 the thermometer was at my feet about two hundred below zero. [5]16

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 9th OHIO RIVER

Very cold; thermometer 10 below zero. Called upon Rankins with Atherton & Horncastle then walked up the river road about a mile and a quarter. Stopped to a much more dignified looking cabin, where was a lady named Clay, a distant relative of Henry Clay17—her brother who was (we measured with a rule) six feet two and a half inches, but he was not as tall as the man whom I borrowed a hose from yesterday, and he says he’s “nothin’ to some folks around haar.” We returned by a circuitous route through the forest which is filled with most magnificent birds, one especially being entirely red—absolutely beautiful. Many of the passengers are out hunting—there is plenty of deer, birds, possum, squirrel, &c. There are droves of pigs—they call them wild pigs, as they live continually in the forest.

Hounds are used to bring them in. We walked through the forest—about four miles—it was certainly a beautiful walk—the trees are very large and abounding in wild grape vines.

During the evening the “Stars” sang some glees—dancing, political discussions, card playing, story-telling, &c., filled up the balance of the evening. [6]

THURSDAY JANUARY 10th OHIO RIVER

Cold; five degrees less than yesterday. Frank Boudinot yesterday afternoon went to Rankins; they enquired particularly about Tony and George.18

We went there during the afternoon they gave us some hickory nuts very large ones, we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations and Credits
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on the Edition
• Introduction
• The Pyne and Harrison Troupe
• SCENES IN THE BACK WOODS
• Selected Bibliography
• Index