The Marsh Children, although generally announced by that name on the
bills, were not members of one family, nor were they Marshes. George and
Mary, brother and sister, and both of them said to have been less than
eight years of age when they came here first, were in private life Master
and Miss Guerineau--while the other leading lady, Louisa Marsh, was
properly Miss McLaughlin. The entire company was composed of children. As
they died--and the mortality among them was remarkable--or as they grew
too large for the troupe, their places were filled by other precocious
infants, engaged by their clever manager in his strollings from town to
town. Among the members of the company at different times were Miss Ada
Webb, Miss Fanny Berkley, Miss Ada and Miss Minnie Monk, and Louis
Aldrich, all of whom, if not great, subsequently, in their profession, are
still not unknown to fame. Unlike the Batemans, however, none of the Marsh
Juveniles ever became stars of more than common magnitude, and none of
them are shining very brilliantly on the stage to-day. George Marsh, the
low comedian, was very clever in his way, although not original in his
impersonations. His powers of imitation were marvellous, and his Toodles,
a miniature copy of Burton's Toodles, in which all of the business and
many of the gags--even to the profanity at the mention of Thompson--were
retained, was almost as funny in its uproariousness as was Burton's
Toodles itself, and certainly better than many of the imitations that have
been seen since Burton's day. Little Mary Marsh was an uncommonly
attractive child, bright-eyed, graceful, fresh, and fair. The boy between
eight and fifteen in her audiences who did not succumb to her loveliness
was only fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. Her name was to be found
written in some copy-book, her face sketched in some drawing-book in the
male department of every school in New York, and in the average
schoolboy's mind she was associated in some romantic way with all of the
good and beautiful women of his history or his mythology; she inhabited
all the salubrious and balmy isles in his geography; she was dreamed of in
his philosophy; and one particular lad, who is now more than old enough to
pay the school bills of boys of his own, when asked, in a chemistry class,
by the master, "What is the symbol and equivalent of potassium?" answered,
absently, but without hesitation, "Mary Marsh!"
The passion the child inspired in the breasts of her adorers was a pure
one, and, except in the neglect of a prosy lesson or two, it did no harm.
Her memory is still kept green in the hearts of many practical men of
to-day, who unblushingly confess to a filling of their boyish eyes and a
quivering of their boyish lips when the sad story of her untimely and
dreadful death was told here. While playing in one of the Southern cities,
her dress took fire from the footlights and she was fatally burned,
living but an hour or two after the accident occurred.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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