Their Meteoric Career in Paris, Berlin, and Buda-Pesth — Noble Idiots Blow Out Their Brains Tor Them—Hearst's and Pulitzer's Indecent Pictures.
I use the term " suicidal " as above advisedly. By that I do not mean that the little Barrison sisters have any intention of committing suicide themselves. For it is my observation that the more worthless a woman, the more tenaciously she clings to life. But I call them ''suicidal" because their manager and brother-in-law ostentatiously bills them as the cause of several suicides in Europe.
The little Barrison sisters have been alternately presented by Europe to America, by America to Europe, and by Europe back to America again. Like the seven cities which repudiated Homer when he was a beggar, several continents seem disinclined to harbor these young ladies. In America they are called Europeans, and in Europe they are called Americans. It would be rather hard to tell what they are, but their infancy and childhood were spent in America, and they may be looked upon as gutter-flowers of New York.
The five Barrison sisters were born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and came here as little children. Their father was a drunken umbrella maker. They made their debut on the stage in 1891, when De Wolf Hopper was running the so-called opera of " Wang," which had a great success in New York and ran through the entire summer season. Those who saw it will remember the little Barrisons as being the most brazen of that very brazen lot of chorus-girls. In 1893, William Fleron, who was then with Pearl Eytinge, took them up. He married the eldest, Lona, and has since acted as husband, manager, and brother-in-law to the five. Their names are Lona, Sophia, Inger, Olga, and Gertrude. Lona, the eldest, is twenty-six, and the youngest, Gertrude, is sixteen. Sister Ethel has been added to the lot since they left America, but Ethel belongs to another litter.
When William Fleron married the Barrison sisters, he took them abroad, after a brief season at Koster & Bial's. Shortly afterwards, echoes of their remarkable career began to hark back from Europe, and New York was pained to hear that it had allowed such wicked little sisters to escape from this very wicked city. The first sensation they caused was the elopement of Sister Sophia from Berlin with Count Willie Bernstorff, scion of a noble Prussian family. Count Willie and Sophia fled to London, and tried to get married. But it was necessary to get the indorsement of the German Embassy before the marriage could be legal, and the embassy cabled the Bernstorffs in Berlin. As a result, Count Willie's elder brother rushed over to London, and succeeded in plucking him from the grasp of the greedy little Barrison. She succeeded, however, in extorting a large sum of money from the family before she told Count Willie that she did not love him.
Another victim of the sisters was Count von Wedel, a young officer of a swell Berlin regiment and also of noble family. He spent all his money, went into debt, pawned his jewelry, and it is even rumored that he stole some jewelry from other members of the family to satisfy the insatiable demands of his particular little Barrison. This attracted the attention of Emperor William, and, on investigating the matter, he found that all the officers of the Berlin garrison were crazy about the little Barrisons. The emperor settled the matter in short order by expelling them at once from his capital.
From Berlin the Barrisons went to Paris. There they attracted but little attention, as young ladies who have nothing but wickedness and visible underwear are a drug in Paris. One can see more wickedness there in a day than almost anywhere else in a week, and as for feminine underwear, the display of that at the theatres, at the cafe concerts, and at the students' balls, is so lavish that it makes one wonder why some of these high-kicking young women do not wear their intimate garments on the outside. Therefore the Barrisons had only a success of esteem in Paris— a success which prevailed principally in the journals, and not in the box-office. But the Parisian journalists did not fail to chronicle all the movements of the little Barrisons, and a well-known chronicler thus wrote one day about the managerial brother-in-law. ,( Mr. Fleron is the pearl of husbands. I saw him two days ago at the Folies-Bergeres. He was looking after his brood. He examined to see if the stockings of Gertrude fitted well, and if the skirts of Sophia puffed out properly. Everything went to perfection; the skirts of Sophia acquitted themselves of their duties; the stockings of Gertrude did not show a wrinkle." The French journalist was right in ascribing importance to these functions of Mr. Fleron, for the stockings and skirts of the little Barrison sisters seem to be their chief stock in trade.
From Paris the little Barrisons went to Buda-Pesth. There they created a sensation very similar to that they made in Berlin. There, too, they had a victim. Count Arthur Pallavicini was a member of a noble Hungarian family, young, handsome, and popular. He fell in love with Ethel Barrison, and after discovering that she was false to him (how could he ever suspect that she was not, I wonder?), he shot himself. A photograph of Ethel Barrison was clutched in his left hand, and a slip of paper lay on the table, whereon was written a request that she come and kiss him in his coffin.
Mr. Fleron never loses a tip. Miss Ethel Barrison went to the funeral, clad in deep mourning, and weeping bitterly. That night the theatre was crowded to the doors.
With this halo of suicide and wickedness about them, it is needless to state that the return of the little Barrisons to their semi-native land has been an event—that is to say, a newspaper event. Mr. Hearst and Mr. Pulitzer—the two great men who direct the newspaper destinies of this town had their offices keyed up to the highest pitch awaiting the advent of the little Barrisons. When the Havel arrived the other day, battalions and phalanxes of artists and reporters awaited her. The little Barrisons were all interviewed, en masse and singly, and pictures of them printed on entire pages by these two enterprising newspapers, the World and the Journal.
Mr. Hearst is easily first, however. Realizing at once the vital part of the Barrisons' arrival, he printed a gigantic picture of the Barrison ladies' legs—and nothing else—extending clear across an entire page of that invaluable family newspaper, the Journal. It is true there were other pictures in other parts of his paper, but this row of ten legs, with merely a fringe of underwear above them, and no other indication as to which particular Barrison each particular pair of legs belonged to, was indeed a journalistic triumph. It is true that elsewhere Mr. Hearst devoted an entire page to pictures of Miss Lona Barrison undressing herself, which she certainly does very thoroughly. But as a matter of journalistic pride, this can not compare with Mr. Hearst's achievement in printing the ten Barrison legs across his front page as large as life.
It is but fair to both Mr. Hearst and Mr. Pulitzer to say that while they printed these pictures, they both of them were much shocked. Mr. Hearst headed his life-like study of legs with this heading: "The Five Wicked Barrison Sisters Startle New York, The Shocking Trail of Both Ruin and Scandal They Have Left Behind Them in Europe." And at the lop of another page, Mr. Hearst has eight successive pictures, showing the gradual progress of Miss Lona Barrison from a dude with an overcoat to a young woman " mit nodings on," as Hans Breitman says. Over the salacious pictures on his page, emanating from the giddy Mr. Hearst, occur lines of the sternest morality, coming from the puritanic Mr. Hearst. "Has Public Taste Sunk To This Degrading Level?" asks the moral Mr. Hearst. " If the New York Theatre-Goers Unblushingly Flock To See A Vulgar Young Woman Undress Herself On The Stage, What May We Expect Next?" asks the chaste Mr. Hearst. It is true that immediately beneath occur most minute pictures of the vulgar young woman undressing herself. But the sternest moralist could find nothing to cavil at in the large headings which I have just quoted.
In order to take the curse off his pictures, Mr. Hearst further prints an interview with Dr. Parkhurst, in which the doctor says : "Laughter at dirty fun means demoralization of the worst kind." There is also an interview with Mrs. Charlotte Smith, the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in which she says :
"I never saw an exhibition in any theatre more suggestive, lewd, and indecent. The whole aim of these women seemed to be to excite, the base emotions of the audience. Their dresses had been constructed with this one object in view, and all their motions were simply vicious and libidinous. Before the curtain went up the ten legs of these Barrisons could be seen under the edge of the curtain, indecently twisting and wriggling. This was designed to whet the appetite of the spectators. The elder Barrison girl undressed on the stage, and gave an exhibition on horseback that was even more disgraceful than that of her sisters.
But vulgar as the exhibition itself was, the pictures in these papers were even more vulgar. It is hard to say at what these papers would draw the line. I am informed that since the Journal and the World have been running a race in salacious pictures, the sales of Mr. Richard K. Fox's Police Gazette have fallen off heavily in New York city.
New York, October 12, 1896. Flaneur.
(The Argonaut 26. oktober 1896).
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