G. to Frederick Douglass, April 9, 1856

From Frederick Douglass' Paper.

FROM OUR CINCINNATI CORRESPONDENT.

DEAR SIR:—I had the pleasure last evening of listening a second time to Mrs. Webb, in her beautiful character as a Shakespearian reader. She read, in Wiswell's new Hall, the Maniac, the School for Scandal, from the Twelfth Night, Hamlet's Soliloquy, an Irish Dialogue, the title of which I did not learn, and Uncle Tom—poor old Uncle Tom, as dramatized by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. She is as good a "Paddy" as ever lived, and if she would betake herself to the stage, her fame in a twelvemonth would only be equalled by the Julia Dean Haynes, and the Florences of our day. Her voice is clear, sonorous, and as sweet as a garden of flowers; and the smile which ever plays over her expressive face, when love and joy is excited, is enough to cause a fellow to pay fifty cents to see if not to hear her. Indeed she possesses a great versatility of talent, and no where is it seen so well as in her incomparable representation of the drama of Uncle Tom. Now she personates "Master George," now Legree, the "Border Ruffian," or nigger trader, now Eva, the dear little soul who seems to have been an heiress of Heaven, now Sambo and Quimbo, and Dinah, the genuine "darkies," now Tom, with his broken dialect, his emaciated countenance, his plaintive voice,—Tom, the best man (since the days of our Saviour) that ever walked or breathed upon the earth, and I sometimes question after all whether he is not a myth.

And last, though not least of all, that very odd, very eccentric, child of nature, Topsy, who on a certain occasion, "Laws! I's nothin but a nigger, no ways." The last scene was peculiarly effecting and sublime, and I shall never forget the impress it made upon my soul. Tom is represented as dying, from the cruelty of his oppressor, and the angel Eva in trying to put in him the light, but he dies, and as the curtain fell, and the gentle artiste retired from the platform, not a few around me were baptized in tears.

In the School for Scandal and Uncle Tom, she excels, and I doubt whether there be an actress on the American stage that can surpass her in their rendition of those two characters.

Her readings differ from Miss Logan and Mrs. McCready in this particular: they are very chaste and refined, especially Miss Logan, and seem better adapted to the refined scholar and the well-bred gentleman. Mrs. Webb, while she violates no rule of the schools, enters into the letter and spirit of the author, and while she reads, you fancy that the author himself is before you. But Mrs. Webb is a colored woman, and this is a crime in America. Our antislavery friends have not purged themselves of the miserable prejudices of caste in Cincinnati, and will not give encouragement to enterprises among colored people, however laudable or praiseworthy they may be. This is much to be regretted, but it is nevertheless a fact, a fixed fact. I counted six white persons to hear her on the first evening, (exclusive of the musicians and the press) and twenty-five or thirty on the last, and the remainder of the audience was made up of the colored elite, and the fashionable dead heads and bon tons of our city.

No justifiable excuse can be given for this cold treatment from those who claim to be our especial friends and well wishers. Mrs. Webb had been well spoken of by the Eastern press, and was advertised in all our dailies at least one week prior to her Reading, and posters placarded on every corner of the street, but she did not draw the Abolitionists, alias the Republicans of this city. I might regard it as a blunder, but they have treated us so before, and unless a Saul of Tarsus gets in among them, they will treat us so again.

Professor George B. Vashon lectured before the Colored Men's Library Association, on the past, present, and future prospects of Hayti, but they would not come out, neither would they come to hear Dr. Pennington, nor the talented and eloquent Wm. H. Day. Perhaps this may be all right enough in the main, but what encouragement has a colored person to rise above a boot black, a dish washer, or a waiter. Indeed the prejudice against the free people of color in the North, when they essay to be the equals of the whites, is actually more exclusive than it is in the South.

In Baltimore the Black Swan met with a warm reception from slaveholders; in Cincinnati, Mrs. Webb, the accomplished artiste, met with the cold shoulder from the Abolitionists. But why complain?

Yours,

G.

CINCINNATI, April 9th, 1856.