The amusements of the Washington of this time were, for the most part, crude. The theater featured players scarcely celebrated in their own day, and most of the plays presented have happily been long since forgotten. Even these were interspersed with songs and farce acts. In 1820 the Washington Theater had been built, and hither, at long intervals, came celebrated artists, but they came “like angels, few and far between.” From his rustic retreat in Maryland the elder Booth, half mad, all genius, occasionally emerged to curdle the blood of the statesmen and their families with his intense interpretations of the Shakesperian tragedies. From a Booth night Jackson was seldom absent. But of all the artists who played in the capital none created such a furor as Fanny Kemble. The elder statesmen were captivated by her art and charm. John Marshall and Justice Story were regular attendants, and the Chief Justice was lustily cheered as he entered the box. When she played Mrs. Haller in “The Stranger,” and the audience was moved to tears, “the Chief Justice shed them in common with the younger eyes.”[65] Inspiring audiences--those of the Thirties, with Marshall, Jackson, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun in the boxes or the pit. Great, not only in genius, but in their fresh capacity to enjoy, and when one of the most learned Justices of the Supreme Court could be moved to poesy in paying tribute to an actress’s art.[66] But even with a Kemble playing, the haughty little country capital refused to abandon its parties, and we have the record of a New Yorker finding “Fanny Kemble in the Washington Theater like a canary bird in a mouse trap,” leaving the theater in the midst of a performance to attend “a delightful party at Mrs. Tayloe’s,” where he “met many distinguished people and all the Washington belles.”[67] In those days the theater-goer purchased his tickets between ten and one o’clock, and the doors were thrown open at six, with the curtain rising promptly at seven. For the usual performances the boxes were seventy-five cents, the pit twenty-five. When the rain converted the streets into ribbons of sticky black mud, or the bitter cold made an invitation to the people from the “magnificent distances” unprofitable, the papers would announce a postponement, with an explanation.[68] The pleasure-seekers were not restricted, however, to the players of the Washington Theater, and occasionally a show would appear advertising “the Great Anaconda of Java,” and the “Boa Constrictor of Ceylon,” both “so docile that the most timid lady or child may view them with safety and pleasure.”[69] Such were the amusements offered for the entertainment of Jackson, Webster, Marshall, Calhoun, and Clay.