Death and the Running Patterer by Robin Adair

Author:Robin Adair
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Murder, Historical, Mystery & Detective, Murder - Investigation, Crime, Fiction, Sydney (N.S.W.), Investigation, Mystery fiction, Historical fiction, General
ISBN: 9780425237038
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 2010-12-07T05:30:05.655790+00:00

—Francis Quarles, Emblems (1635)

AT THE THEATER LATER THAT EVENING, MR. BARNETT LEVEY reassured a rather breathless Nicodemus Dunne: “Rest easy, dear sir, it’s not over until the fat lady sings!”

The patterer was puzzled by this remark but did not comment. A late reading of news to a demanding but well-paying patron had made the young man late (although happily not too late) for that evening’s performance at the Sydney Amateur Theater, which was noisily crowded.

Dunne knew Mr. Levey well; at thirty, he was much the same age as the patterer and he was the brother of Solomon, the partner of Mr. Cooper in the Waterloo Stores. Solomon was a successful Emancipist, freed after having been transported for seven years for stealing ninety pounds of tea (a charge he still denied). Barnett Levey, on the other hand, was the colony’s first free Jewish settler. Dunne belatedly realized that he could have sought him out in his quest for the meaning of zuzim.

The general merchant, builder, banker, grain merchant and bookseller was a busy businessman, but his true love was his theater—at which he wore many hats: owner, entrepreneur, often master of ceremonies, even performer of comic songs. And, of course, he oversaw the sale of drink in the bar of his Royal Hotel, which fronted his business and the theater.

As he entered the auditorium that night, the patterer reflected that, strictly speaking, there should have been no one there at all. Technically, the theater did not exist, for Governor Darling had so far refused to give Levey a license for his playhouse. But the diminutive, rotund young man defiantly mounted his theatricals as “at homes,” “divertissements” or “concerts,” legitimately part of the Royal Hotel’s entertainments. Tonight’s performances had, for instance, been announced as an “olio,” an approximation of the Spanish word olla, meaning “stew” or “hotpot.”

In actual fact, Levey’s rift with Darling ran deeper than a simple disagreement over greasepaint and scenery. When Levey had proudly erected his Colchester Warehouse in George Street, with the architectural help of Mr. Francis Greenway, he had added a windmill to the top story.

If the governor was not impressed, the populace loved the confrontation. Tear it down, Darling ordered. Levey refused and pointedly had the freeman’s friend, Mr. William Charles Wentworth, write a letter on his behalf. It informed His Excellency that Levey would demolish his windmill when the government pulled down its own nearby. Stalemate.

As a safeguard against official sanction, Levey called his theater “amateur.” Similarly, he took no money at the door. But Mr. Levey did accept bookings at five shillings for box seats and three shillings in the pit.

As far as the patterer was concerned, a Theater Royal existed in everything except name. Barnett Levey had told him that the pit and boxes could accommodate 700 people, while the stage had, in the entrepreneur’s words, “a due quantity of trapdoors for entrance and exit of the usual number of ghosts for the grave of Hamlet.”

There had been theaters in Sydney before, of course.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.