| Gilbert and Sullivan Online Exhibit Details | ||||
 | ||||
| [Unidentified correspondent "Will".] Autograph letter signed. To unidentified recipient "George". New York State Senate, June 14, 1879. Four pages, small 8vo. A detailed letter describing Pinafore-mania in Albany, New York. [Page 2] "....Albany is sorely afflicted--got it the worst way! Pinafore-- Oh my! I am so disgusted with that phrase "Hardly ever etc." I feel like shooting every one I hear use it--"HMS" is ... | ||||
| [Page 3] getting to be a worse eyesore on the bill boards than "Hop Bitters." It wasn’t enough to have a travelling company bring it here every other week, so Loyd....gets up a company of his own....then Theo Mosher he has a fearful attack of the fever and gets up a different company—then the epidemic strikes one McGoldrick up in Limerick and he gets up a company...and calls it the "North Albany Pinafore Co." These three companies each bring it out in the city about once a week and the rest of the time they inflict the neighboring villages...There must be something done or all Albany will be lost....I guess the Penitentiary is the only place [Page 4] in Albany where it has not been brought out, and some that they have "sent up" recently from the city have become so frantic over it that solitary confinement is found necessary. A child ten years old can play any of the Pinafore airs on St. Peter’s chimes while it takes four stout men to play any common church tune--the hammers refusing to work on anything but Pinafore. Pianos, by merely walking across the floor are jarred enough to rattle a whole Pinafore air out of them without touching the keyboard. The Telephone Co. have found it almost impossible to use their wires in the city, and some talk of closing up their office till the fever dies out, the wires are loaded with Pinafore---one wire broke over in Beaver St., and one of "Little Buttercup’s" songs spilled all over the roof, and the slack wire curled up into these letters "H.M.S."---Oh, it’s terrible--worse than yellow fever..." | ||||
|
Harold Kanthor Collection of Gilbert & Sullivan |
||||
| Pages/Images | ||||
    | ||||
| Back to the Exhibit | ||||