John Durang: Man of the American Stage By Lynn Matluck Brooks

for the acts, to set the mood and obscure machinery noise. In his first mention of his employer’s performances in Philadelphia, Durang remarked that they were “all bad enough” (12), but that judgment was based on later sophistication. At the time Durang encountered them, these displays were not only captivating, but they served as training for his theatrical craft.

Independent for the first time, Durang found friends in his hours free from performing. One new friend studied with “Mr Turnner, dancing master” (14). William Turner, an established Boston musician, fencing teacher and dancing master, served genteel families, including that of President Holyoke of Harvard University.⁵³ Turner advertised that he stayed up-to-date, studying periodically in London. At Turner’s academy, Durang particularly enjoyed attending the large mixed-sex classes, which may have served as a model much later for Durang’s dancing academies. He wrote, “I learned at once his method and the dances then in vogue. I saw the master’s boast lay principally in hornpipes, for he would have his best hornpipe dancer dress’d in a neat sailor’s dress.” Durang had studied the hornpipe with Mr. Roussell, and the sailor suit would soon become his hornpipe costume. Because his friend was also interested in the hornpipe, Durang taught the boy steps he had learned previously, “in return of friendship.”

Durang also toured battle sites in Boston, such as Bunker Hill and Charlestown, enjoyed the marketplace filled with “fine beef, fish in plenty, loads of poultry” (14–15), and visited the Catholic congregation. “They where assembled in a very small place to worship God, but to my great satisfaction they have since built an elegant large chaple” (15).⁵⁴ Before leaving Boston, he “took a parting glass of red wine” with a friend at a tavern under the Brattle Street Church, then led by the former patriot leader, Reverend Samuel Cooper.

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Then, Durang was homeward bound. Stepping off the carriage in Philadelphia, he met an old schoolmate. (What school they attended is not mentioned.) This encounter “revived my spirits,” Durang wrote,