Miss Raymond's method was capitally illustrated in the song "I thought
that he had Money in the Bank," which was introduced in "The Rogers
Brothers in Wall Street" during the season of 1899-1900. Her dialect was
by no means extraordinary. It had not the darky softness and twang,
which one finds for instance so faithfully reproduced by Artie Hall.
Miss Raymond, however, got a curious comic effect by twisting her words
out of the corner of her mouth in a manner indescribable, by hunching up
her shoulders, one a little higher than the other, thrusting her head
forward, crooking her elbows, and letting her hands hang loose and
lifeless as if they had been broken at the wrists.
After seeing Miss Raymond's inimitable Dutch woman, I carried away the
impression that she herself inclined toward embonpoint,--that she was
grossly notoriously fat, in fact. Later observations, however, have
caused me to revise that impression. Miss Raymond is not fat, merely
comfortably plump. She is a decided brunette with rather irregular
features, but features none the less attractive for that, snapping
black eyes that seem always to sparkle with irrepressible merriment, and
an inexhaustible amount of vivacity. Vivacity may, indeed, be said to be
her specialty. It is always in evidence, and yet it never runs riot and
it never becomes wearisome.
Miss Raymond has been a vaudeville feature for the past twelve years.
She made her first appearance with Rice and Barton's company, and
afterward played two years with Harry Williams's Own Company. Her next
appearance was in the soubrette part in "Bill's Boot," in which Joe J.
Sullivan starred. She then joined Irwin Brothers' Company, in which she
sang with great success. She spent several weeks in the Howard Athenaeum
Company when it was under James J. Armstrong's management, and finished
the season with Fields and Hanson.
Miss Raymond was specially engaged to play the soubrette role in Bolivar
in Donnelly and Girard's "The Rainmakers." Those popular stars declared
that the part had never been so well done as it was by Miss Raymond, but
she was obliged to retire at the end of the season on account of
illness. During the summer she appeared on the roof gardens and in the
continuous houses. She joined Tony Pastor's company in the early fall,
and played a season of fifteen weeks with that organization, meeting
with great success.
When the Rogers Brothers began starring with "The Reign of Error" in the
fall of 1898, she was made a prominent feature of their company, and she
continued with them as their leading support the following season in
"The Rogers Brothers in Wall Street."
She is also the wife of one of the brothers, though whether of Max or
Gus I never can remember.
CHAPTER XXI
PAULINE HALL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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