Volume 2 — NEW ORLEANS.

AMERICAN THEATRE.

On Monday the 5th I attended rehearsal at the American Theatre, and was pleased to find it a large, well-proportioned house, with three rows of boxes, a pit, or parquette, as it is termed, subdivided as in the French Theatre: each seat is numbered, and, being taken at the box-office, is secured to the purchaser for any part of the evening. The company was a very tolerable one; and in the person of a nephew of Mr. W. Farren's, I found an adjunct of much importance to me—an excellent old man.

My next anxiety was about my audience, not its numbers, as I was assured every seat in the house was disposed of, and this as far as could be allowed, for every night I might perform; but I felt solicitous with respect to its character and composition, of which I had received very discouraging reports. I kept however my apprehensions to myself, resolved to do my best after my own fashion, and abide the result as I best might.

On Tuesday I made my début; and never was man more agreeably surprised than myself when, after making my bow, I for the first time took a rapid survey of the aspect of the house: the parquette and dress-boxes were almost exclusively filled by ladies, coiffées with the taste which distinguishes Frenchwomen in every country, and which becomes peculiarly striking here, where are to be seen the finest heads of dark hair in the world; many wore bonnets of the latest Parisian fashion, and all were more dressed than it is usual to be at theatres in America. This attention to costume on the part of the ladies, added to their occupying the pit, obliges the gentlemen to adopt a correspondent neatness; and hence it occurs that, when the New Orleans theatre is attended by the belles of the city, it presents decidedly the most elegant-looking auditory of this country.

For myself, I found them in manner equal to their appearance; a greater degree of repose and gentility of demeanour I never remember to have noticed in any mixed assembly of any place. So much for report, which informed me I should find the American house here filled by noisy planters from the up-country and boisterous Mississippi boatmen. Let me however add, that my personal friends assure me a class of families attend my performances that is but rarely seen within this theatre, which the creoles do not usually patronize; and that this extreme decorum and exclusive appearance are assured by the places being all secured by families.

This may in some sort be true; but at most can only apply to the parquette, dress, and private boxes; the mixed population is still here; and, after nightly observation, rendered acute by interest and anxiety, I must assert that, taken generally, I do not desire to meet an audience whose behaviour more decidedly justifies the terms respectable and intelligent.

The least prolonged tumult of approbation even is stilled by a word to order: and when it is considered that here are assembled the wildest and rudest specimens of the Western population, men owning no control except the laws, and not viewing these over submissively, and who admit of no arbiter elegantiarum or standard of fine breeding, it confers infinite credit on their innate good feeling, and that sense of propriety which here forms the sole check on their naturally somewhat uproarious jollity.

Let me add, that my first engagement was for twelve nights, four nights per week; that I, on my return from Natchez, acted a like number, with equal patronage; and that on no one night was I afforded an occasion of making an exception to the opinion I have above honestly recorded, certainly with greater pleasure, because in asserting the truth I feel I am at the same time performing an act of justice.

FRENCH THEATRE.

The Opera, or French Theatre, which I visited several times, is an exceedingly well-appointed, handsome place, with a company very superior to the American one, and having its pieces altogether better mounted. It is to this house the creole families chiefly resort, as well indeed as the American ladies of the best class, most of whom are good French scholars; and within this salle on any Sunday evening may be seen eyes as bright and forms as delicately proportioned as in la belle France itself.

The building, whereof this theatre forms a part only, is a very extensive one, having as a part of its establishment a large ball-room, with supper-rooms attached; and, in addition to this, a variety of hells, where gambling nourishes in full practice, from the salon where the wealthy Creole plays his five-hundred-dollar coup, to the obscure den where roulette does its work, with a pace slower but as sure, at the rate of half-dollar stakes. I have looked in on these places during the performances, and never without finding them full.

Such establishments, ruinous and detestable under whatever guise or in whatsoever place they are permitted, become doubly dangerous when placed under the same roof and carried on in obvious connexion with what should be at all times an innocent recreation, and which ought and might be one of a refined and moral tendency.

The scenes of desperation and distress which gambling yearly gave rise to in this place amongst a people whose temperament is peculiarly excitable, coupled with a recent and terrible exposée, have at length roused the legislature of Louisiana to release themselves from the stigma of owing any portion of their revenue to a tax which legalised this worst species of robbery and assassination. This very session I had the gratification of seeing a bill brought into the House, and promptly carried through it, making gambling felony, and subjecting its followers to corresponding punishment.

The French Theatre will henceforward, I hope for ever, be freed from the disgrace which such an association necessarily reflected upon the drama and all concerned with it.

I had the pleasure of meeting at a large dinner-party at my hospitable friend's, Col. D——'s, the gentleman who brought this bill into the House, and never did I drink to any man's health with more perfect sincerity: may he live to see his bill render gambling unknown in his country, and to be looked upon as its greatest benefactor!