The Mapleson Memoirs, 1848-1888, vol IIMapleson, James Henry
History
The Mapleson Memoirs, 1848-1888, vol II
Mapleson, James Henry
Opera -- England -- London; Opera -- United States
When an attachment has once been obtained the order of attachment can be
sent on by telegraph to be enforced, wherever the person against whom it
has been granted possesses property. On the other hand, as a
counterbalancing advantage, a manager may pledge his receipts by
telegraph, and one man may at any time send money to another by the same
means at quite a nominal charge. Deposit the money at a telegraph
office, and the clerk telegraphs to the office of the place where your
correspondent is staying that a sum equal in amount to the one deposited
is to be forthwith paid. Our post-office orders are issued at usurious
rates, and within limited hours. One cannot, however, but foresee the
day when we shall be reasonable enough in this, as in so many other
matters of practical life, to imitate the Americans.
It was absolutely necessary for me at the last moment to part with a
certain amount of jewellery, and this I contrived to do without, I
hope, attracting too much attention. I was spared the annoyance of
seeing the details of each separate sale recorded in the newspapers.
I calculated that the losses caused to me by Ravelli's preposterous
conduct amounted to at least 10,000 dollars. At some of the cities along
the great line of railway, where I had engaged to give performances, I
was unable, having lost the dates that had been fixed, to get others;
and at one city, where the manager gave me another date, he stopped the
whole of the receipts; which he said were due to him as damages for the
injury done to him by not performing on the evening originally
appointed.
On the morning of our departure--our escape, I may say--from the city
where, a year before, we had been so prosperous, and whence I had borne
away not a small, but a very considerable fortune, I was awakened about
one o'clock in the morning by a Chinaman, a negro, and several Italian
choristers, all crying out for money. But I satisfied every claim before
I left; and I was more astonished than delighted to find myself
complimented on having done so by one of the San Francisco papers, in
which it was pointed out that I could easily have saved myself the
trouble and pain in which I had been involved by taking a ticket and
travelling eastward on my own account, leaving the Company to take care
of themselves in the Californian capital.
I was not in a position to give gratuities to all who, in my opinion,
deserved them. But John O'Molloy, the gasman of the Opera-house, had
stood by me manfully in all my troubles; and I could not leave without
making him a small present. In doing so I rendered the poor fellow a
truly tragic service; inasmuch as, for the sake of the twenty-five
dollar note which I gave him, he was the same evening robbed and
murdered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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