Lay of the Last Minstrel
Picture Lloyd struggling down the steps of the War Department. Picture a purse of gold, the spoils of a great gamble. The day Lloyd got the money his victory over the Yankee government was complete. Totten and Lloyd’s well-orchestrated fraud, the additional witnesses—the straw men paid to lie—resulted in the fog of deceptions that duped federal officials. Lloyd would, in all probability, justify the imposture. Hadn’t some of his own Confederate countrymen repeatedly accused him of being a Yankee spy? Hadn’t he been hunted, arrested, and suffered, nearly dying in their keep? So when he came back from his war he would have reasoned that it was right that he should pose as the very thing they’d accused him of: Lincoln’s personal secret agent. Now Lloyd was the proud owner of almost $3,500 in gold, not greenbacks, a less stable currency that could only be converted into gold “at a set ratio determined by Wall Street speculation.”412
When the average Union soldier earned roughly sixteen dollars a month, the two hundred dollars Lloyd claimed President Lincoln promised him monthly for his purported perilous service stood in marked contrast. By 1865 the cost of the war had ballooned from one and a half million dollars a day to over three million obtained by taxing US citizens as early as 1861 with the Revenue Act. The rest was obtained through import tariffs, corporate donations, and other private sources. Now, after four long years, the government coffers were drained. With claims abounding there was little if anything to spare for the man they believed spied for the late, lamented president.
But there Lloyd was, with the starch, though not the strut, for strutting would have been impossible given his infirmity, ironically, newly minted, no longer broke, in the enemy’s capital city on a crisp autumn day. Soon he would no doubt find his accomplices and small son. With his former financial state blindingly spare, perhaps he had made his way to one of the boardinghouses that dotted the city—brick and wood-framed humble places—where six dollars a week bought food and board. They had waited for this day. But the spoils of his war wouldn’t last very long at all given Lloyd’s profligate ways. Worse, he couldn’t keep all the gold for himself. He’d have to portion out some of it out. Totten had to have his share and the “witnesses” had to be paid off, though it seems that Lloyd never told Totten he’d gotten over a thousand more than he should have gotten after E. D. Townsend adjusted the amount for inflation. Lloyd would have to pay Boyd. If he didn’t, given Boyd’s explosive nature, his clerk might expose them all, or worse. He’d have to provide for Virginia and Clarence. He owed them. Mostly, he owed her. Through all the degradation, through his most fearful days, she’d stood by him; lied for him, stayed married to him, and now was likely helping him stand and walk. Little Clarence had seen his father incarcerated, sick, and hopeless. And Nellie Dooley, who’d also lied obediently, he’d have to give her something.413
If he and his entourage went off for a celebration, into the streets of the changed and changing city, they couldn’t help but see the parade of the First District Colored Regiment, a brass band and drum corps accompanying them with much pomp as they marched “down F. Street from Campbell Hospital” on their way to the Executive Mansion, where they would parade before President Andrew Johnson. Just that day, the Evening Star reported Johnson saying, “this was a white man’s country and always would be.” At the reviewing stand, their commander Colonel John Holman, along with much of the cheering black population of Washington City, heard the president thank the troops of the Colored Regiment for their twenty-six months of service in the field, then warned them not to “lead a life of idleness” now that they were free.414
For Lloyd and others like him, there was a new order, new rules, a new country, not his own. Not ever his own again.
Despite Lloyd’s victory, Washington City was not a good place for him to remain. It was again in turmoil as Joseph Holt was prosecuting the war-crimes trial of Henry Hartmann Wirz at the Court of Claims room in the Capitol. The keeper of the Andersonville Prison death camp where more than thirteen thousand Union soldiers had perished was “scorned, loathed, despised, hated by all men and women,” the New York Times and Boston Advertiser correspondent reported. It was impossible not to be riveted by hundreds of horrific accounts of suffering and death that permeated the papers as survivors of the camp came forward, some wanting to pronounce a death sentence and “shoot the miserable creature” themselves. The specter of the noose, the sure knowing that Wirz would hang, must have haunted Alvin Lloyd. The horrors of that Savannah prison, the screams of the slaves and the taunts of his jailors—you should hang, Yankee bastard—and the bullets that almost killed him in Mobile were not that far away—the stuff of nightmares.
Word on the street had it that Holt was still seeking more evidence from Charles Dunham, and paying him out of War Department funds in his obsessive drive to bring all Confederate authorities to trial. If Holt or Stanton questioned, found new evidence—or worse—and found Lloyd’s claim utterly bogus, he might well be tried for defrauding the government. A treasonable offense. Totten may well have urged Lloyd away. Not all the money was won but Totten had other claims. This crooked lot, this crooked claim might have weighed heavy on him. Or not.
Sometime over the next ten days Lloyd would leave the city.
After casting about for possible locales, he decided on Philadelphia, the second-largest city in the country, an anti-slavery, abolitionist haven that had given more than one hundred thousand men to the war and had lost twenty thousand, whose manic steel and anthracite coal industry built the rails, locomotives, and weaponry that helped sustain the Union. Now it was “a center for veterans’ organizations, such as the Loyal Legion and the Grand Army of the Republic,” providing “projects, activities, pensions and initiatives for the widows and orphans.”415
It was there in Philadelphia, on October 31, that William Alvin Lloyd arrived at the grand Girard House Hotel, on Chestnut below 9th Street. During the war the hotel had been commandeered as a uniform factory and hospital. Now it once again catered to a wealthy set. “W.A. Lloyd of Washington, DC,” the Philadelphia Public Ledger noted, was a guest. He’d come to start up the guide again. It was a success once. Just before and during the war, his readers loved his pro-Southern, accusatory editorials, the beautiful lithographs, and if he couldn’t always pay the advertisers, well, he’d find a way this time. Or not. It was a smart little publication once and it would be again, though not as incendiary. Lloyd would find a new voice, new readers. A new audience. He’d use his money to make more money. He’d need new equipment, a new rotary printing press, the finest with six cylinders and good young assistants who’d do the lifting and the fitting, the inking and the type setting, the rolling of the boards on paper. Good, heavy paper. Or he would rent space in a building that housed printers and the equipment would be at the ready. He would sell the ads and glad-hand as before. And as for Boyd, he hadn’t rotted in a prison, been threatened with hanging. He deserved a pittance. Or nothing. Perhaps his new city of Philadelphia fortified him, made him less afraid of his former underling’s wrath. To hell with Boyd.
Lloyd found a place where he could get a good deal renting space in the Franklin Buildings, a five-story structure in Franklin Square on Sixth Street, near Arch. Printing offices, bookbinders, and all manner of publications were well established there. Here, he would breathe new life into his long defunct guide, now to be called W. Alvin Lloyd’s Rail Road Guide. No more steamboats. No more catering to and cajoling his southern countrymen. No more incendiary editorials. The country was at peace now; why shouldn’t he be as well? On December 23, the Illustrated New Age gave a list of hotel arrivals: “Mrs. Colonel [he’d dubbed himself a colonel] Lloyd and fam., NY.” They would have Christmas together. And they had money, at last.
Lloyd was between Philadelphia and Baltimore constantly over the next several months, traveling, soliciting ads, and on occasion, as he was wont to do, cheating customers. His brother, J. T., aglow with the prospect of a completely virgin territory, was doing the same thing in England. Alphabetical Boyd was still involved with Alvin, waiting with ever-growing anger and frustration for his long-promised cut, which never came. But somehow, now, in his new high-wire state, Alvin did not seem to fear the wrath of Boyd, or if he did, he banished it, as he was wont to banish all things unpleasant, perilous, or threatening, until something or someone cracked the fragile ice he skated on in those days of reinvention.
Nor did a share of the profits ever come for the young Baltimorean named Charles T. Harvey, who had been hired by Lloyd to sell space in the guide and was owed five hundred dollars in commissions, but it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going to get it. And though Alvin ignored the warning signs that his two young associates were plotting against him, they were.
On January 30, 1866, T.H.S. Boyd was arrested in Baltimore, “charged with embezzlement and also with forging a check . . . in the name of Wm. S. [sic] Lloyd . . . for fifty dollars on the National Mechanics Bank.” After an examination “before Justice Spicer,” he was bound over to the Grand Jury. On February 17 he was formally charged with “passing a counterfeit check on the Mechanics Bank,” as well as the forgery of Lloyd’s name. His bail was set at two thousand dollars.416
And as he and his boss were apparently bonded at the bone, and almost unbreakable, with Lloyd’s help, Boyd beat the rap. On February 27, he, Alvin, and a mysterious lady named Miss Marston all arrived at the American Hotel, across from the Philadelphia State House.417
On March 14, 1866, after Alvin Lloyd left room 4½ at the hotel to go soliciting again, Alphabetical Boyd and Charles Harvey—Alphabetical with his ever-present huge Bowie knife stuck in his belt—took the opportunity to break into Lloyd’s trunk, rooting for money. They found two hundred dollars, as well as jewelry and some very compromising papers. The mayor of Philadelphia issued a warrant for their arrest. And so they were. “Two young men formerly clerks in the establishment of William A. Lloyd . . . charged with stealing money, jewelry and valuable papers from the trunk of William A. Lloyd.”418
Lloyd’s papers were later found in Boyd’s trunk when he was caught. Locked up in either trunk, these papers were sheer powder kegs and it is a wonder that Lloyd hadn’t destroyed them. If they fell into the hands of the Washington City authorities he’d defrauded, he would be exposed. And arrested. The documents likely forged by Boyd were in Alvin’s keep—a catalogue of Rebel correspondence and a fake commission as a colonel. The purpose of this double charade was the stuff of recklessness, and within it, the stink of treason. Among the documents was “a letter from Jefferson Davis to ‘Colonel’ Lloyd relative to the best manner of depreciating the Federal currency, passes from Lloyd to General Winder, letters from prominent rebels, maps, his commission as a colonel in the Rebel army, etc.” Would that Lloyd had truly been made a colonel, dashing about the South in a dress uniform studded with epaulets. And his jailors would never have seen his face, or starved him or sickened him. The rank, the lost glory, was a fantasy; forged, stolen, found, and reclaimed. And kept. That was madness.419
There were more details reported about the robbery. When “Colonel Lloyd of the government service,” as the Philadelphia North American wrote, “got back to the American, and found what had happened to his trunk, he was around at the Mayor’s office within moments.” Alphabetical and Harvey were in jail for a couple of weeks. “One paper found in Mr. Boyd’s trunk purporting to bear the signature of ‘Colonel Lloyd’ was pronounced to be a forgery.” Finally, Charles Harvey was discharged, but Boyd was booked for forgery, larceny, and carrying a concealed deadly weapon. (That would be his enormous Bowie knife.) However as a reflection of the bizarre Lloyd-Boyd dance, he was rescued by his employer and given a sum of money to buy his way out of jail.420
Charles T. Harvey wasn’t so well taken care of; in fact, he wasn’t taken care of at all, and on May 15, 1866, he wrote a very damaging letter to Secretary Stanton about his former employer, who had moved out of the American and was now living with his family at the Continental Hotel, one of the country’s best, a grand, fine place. Newly and joyously profligate, the Lloyds enjoyed the hotel’s grandeur, just as president-elect Abraham Lincoln had on February 23, 1861, on the way to his inaugural. To get to their rooms they would have to climb “a freestanding stairway from the lobby to the second floor, and a one hundred and sixty–foot second-floor promenade that opened to a second-floor balcony,” and walk along the inlaid marble floors.421
While Alvin was fulfilling his promise of luxury evermore, Stanton received Charles T. Harvey’s letter. It was so damaging, and its repercussions were so great, at least for a time.
“Sir, one Wm. A. Lloyd has a claim against the Government for Secret Service, part of which . . . he had already recovered. I understand he is about to make an effort to collect the balance.”
And then came the bombshell: “This Wm A. Lloyd is a notorious scoundrel. . . . I have every reason to believe his claim upon the Government to be false and utterly without foundation.” Harvey explains how he has come to know this.
“A young man by name Thomas H.S. Boyd who has been confidential clerk for Mr Lloyd for the past six years, informed me that Mr. Lloyd had committed a fraud upon the Government by false representation and forgery of deceased officers’ names.” Harvey said that Lloyd, Boyd, his wife, and nurse were “his principal actors in the fraud” and that the witnesses Boyd named were paid to swear falsely. “He [Boyd] further informed me that Mr. Lloyd had promised him half of the money produced by the claim, and that he now refused to satisfy his promise. Therefore he intended to make a full confession to you.” And if Alvin, dining nightly in splendor at the Continental, had known of Harvey’s letter, this betrayal by a lowly clerk would have enraged him, threatened him, likely ruined him. Of course he had not seen Harvey’s letter. Had he, the second portion would have relieved him temporarily. Lloyd usually won, no matter the means employed.
Harvey revealed that Lloyd had persuaded Boyd to return to his employ. For money, of course, and for the promise of money, he would not expose the Lloyd fraud.
“This leads me to believe that Mr. Lloyd has agreed to his former terms,” Harvey writes, “especially as I understand he [Lloyd] is making arrangements to collect balance of his claim.” Finally Harvey offered his help to Stanton. “In investigating this affair, I will cheerfully inform your agents of any further particulars in my power, should you desire it. I can give you satisfactory references as to my character. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, Charles T. Harvey, No. 11 South Street.”
And there it was: the whole canard. While Harvey’s letter made its way across the ranks for proper consideration, Lloyd soldiered on. He would never tell the truth of his supposed service to the Union government. Not then. Not ever.422
When Lloyd’s Railroad Guide (Vol. xiii) finally came out in June 1866, the Illustrated New Age called it a “useful and valuable publication, interspersed with fine engravings,” crediting Colonel Lloyd with “taking an active part in the trials of the last four years.” Was this the beginning of a public revelation on Lloyd’s part or a tease, these “trials”? If he dropped a hint or two of his wartime activities to the newspapers as he pressed them to promote and review his Railroad Guide, it was just a hint, a nudge and a wink, nothing more.423
The Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette was even more acclamatory, comparing Lloyd’s guide with the “best and fullest published in any city.” Admiring the steel plate engravings, the forty pages of ads, and the “number of pages devoted to humorous matter . . . a decided improvement upon the earlier issues,” the Gazette called the guide a way to “extend the influence of Philadelphia.”424
Alvin continued to put the guide out on a monthly basis from Philadelphia at 202 South 9th Street. In October, his last edition had come out and he hadn’t seen true profits. He’d been too profligate. The hotel bills—the life of a swell he’d longed to lead again and was marvelously leading—broke him. Again. And if the time for a guide like his had passed—and even the popular Appleton’s Guide, the go-to for travelers, was becoming less essential—he was defeated. He could not compete. As for his brother, J. T., he was roaming the northeast as a mapmaker and well-known bilker and though he would have sympathized with Alvin’s plight, he’d problems of his own, as he was always one step ahead of the police.
So again, in his desperation, Alvin huddled with himself. But instead of fading, folding, and dying, he revived.
Was it the memory of applause, the seduction of applause, the din of applause? The old songs that he’d heard when he was still young and whole, and the hot August night in Louisville when the tambo, bones, and banjos, bewitched him. Now he would return to that life, reclaim it and himself. Again. But could he perform? Surely now, unless he were to advertise himself as a lame but game manager, and that would be a freak show, he must summon strength and find his way back to his old ways as the high-stepping showman he once was. He would make it big again or die in the try.
And so it was in January 1867 that W. Alvin Lloyd put together a new mammoth incarnation of his old touring show, despite warnings of a possible countrywide financial crisis, one that would be particularly hard on the entertainment world. The immense cost of the Civil War, the rebuilding and retooling of industry, coupled with independent, unschooled banking firms flooding the marketplace. And after all, wasn’t entertainment a luxury? “Managers of traveling troupes are trimming their sails to meet the gale,” the Daily Cleveland Herald reported. “In the main, the business is on the decline, and but few managers of traveling troupes, however wealthy they may be, have the nerve to face the impending storm.”425
But an impending storm, whether from warnings in the press or in the dark skies that preceded the fierce gales of his childhood—the devil winds that sent steamboats toppling on the Ohio, and the floods that followed—does not appear to have bothered him. Or he did not let it bother him. Alvin proudly announced his reincarnation. The Springfield Republican called him “the popular manager of olden times.” Well, the olden times would be new again. He’d see to that. This troupe was to be called Lloyd & Bidaux’s Minstrels, named to cash in on the ever-growing fame of Gustave Bidaux, the French baritone who had been with Lloyd’s Minstrels just before the Civil War, and who would now be one of the stars of this new enterprise.426
As he’d done before, Alvin assembled all the best available talent of the day, both musical and vocal, no expense spared. He promised them all huge salaries and if he doubted he could always pay them, never mind. He was back on top, signing minstrels, instructing the advance men, and picturing the money that would come rolling in. A stellar band they were. Happy Cal Wagner, a southerner from Mobile, was “Tambo.” Charley Reynolds was “Bones.” Happy Cal and Charley were two of the three celebrated comedians with this troupe. The third was the famous Johnny Booker, the former little Sam Roberts, Alvin’s stepbrother, the Louisville boy who’d come to town with his mother. Johnny Booker was now an established minstrel with his very own popular and much sung ditty.
I went down de back ob de fiel’
A black snake cotch me by de heel
I cut my dus’, I run my best
Run my head in a hornet’s nest
Oh, do, Mr Booker, do!
Oh, do, Johnny Booker, do.427
There are variations on this song, of course, and one of them is reputedly heard in Gone With the Wind. Way back when, Johnny Booker’s mother had married Thomas G., the drunken tailor. But he was still Sam Roberts back then, a little kid, and would spend a lot of time with Alvin at the Marion House, which Mrs. Lloyd ran. From there it was a change of name, and a year or two after Alvin had joined the minstrel world, Johnny Booker followed his stepbrother into the game, becoming one of the early minstrel comedians and managers. In the early days he made famous a few songs that had great vogue, “Meet Johnny Booker at the Bowling Green,” and “Johnny Booker, Help Dis Nigger.” By early 1852 he was already a celebrated comic star vocalist and over the next fifteen years would play with all the greats in the business, including being a member of Lloyd’s new troupe in 1867.428
Luminaries like Bill Delehanty and Tom Hengler, the world-renowned clog dancers, had earlier that month played their last event together as a team, freeing them up for Alvin’s minstrels. The quartette consisted of M. Ainsley Scott, H. J. Jackson, Ed Seymour, and Monsieur Gustave Bidaux. There were, among others, James Koehl, the “wonderful flageolet [a small flutelike woodwind] soloist,” and his brother Jake.
Also along were J. B. Murphy, the famous composer and author, the interlocutor, or master of ceremonies of the show; and Harry Stanwood, the Canadian banjoist. Charley Currier was the business agent, and Charles Wilkinson the advance agent for the troupe. Virginia Lloyd was with her husband as he reclaimed his former status. Imagine this young woman—the war years not that far behind her—with a child and a husband she cared for in spite of all his agonies that came to be her agonies. The very steel of her as she tended to him on the nights when he ached all over and could barely stand, or brought him home after he’d assaulted a man for a perceived insult, for something he thought he heard. In this Lloyd incarnation, Virginia was a fixed star. And Alvin, remarkably, was growing stronger, or at least seemed to be transfused with energy. The survivor, the boy in him, the little Louisville boy who’d cut cloth and become a man of dubious cloth, was made new.429
Lloyd & Bidaux’s Minstrels opened on Friday evening, February 1, 1867, at the Concert Hall in Danbury, Connecticut. The hall was jammed, and hundreds were turned away at the door. The New York Clipper praised Lloyd-the-man and his marvelous troupe: “An entertainment complimentary to that gentleman’s tact and business qualifications for organizing the company,” noting he was known for his “uniform kindness” to the company during the organization, proclaiming it the “best performance ever given in Danbury.” This reclaimed world, this extraordinary passage in the life of W. Alvin Lloyd, the kaleidoscope through which these days gleamed, glory days he’d never dreamed to see again were back, sparkling anew. And on it went. At each stop there was praise, glorious, unending praise.430
The next night they played at Franklin Hall in Bridgeport—a small concert and lecture venue—to a “two hundred and seventy five dollar house,” where on that very corner, in the church that abutted the hall, when little more than a child, Virginia had married Alvin Lloyd.431
To publicize the opening of his show, Alvin had a set of playbills “engraved and printed in colors, a set of bills . . . which for the beauty of execution can hardly be excelled,” the New York Clipper raved, wishing them “a decided success.” All afternoon and evening it poured down with rain in Bridgeport, but, notwithstanding, people were again turned away.432
Then on they went to Hartford. “The great troupe of the age . . . the Monarchs of Minstrelsy,” the Springfield Republican raved. But as in Bridgeport, the hall was too small to hold the numbers who came to see the show. Next up, the townsfolk of Springfield, worked up to a fever pitch by reading the ads, flocked to the new Music Hall in their town.433
On to New York, to concert halls packed with cheering audiences, blazing through cities: Albany, Troy, Utica, Syracuse, Oswego, Geneva, with master of ceremonies W. Alvin Lloyd heading the cast list, as usual, the crowd hugely in tune, the papers raving. By March 2, Charlie Wilkinson had been dismissed as advance agent, and Tom Warhurst was brought aboard in that capacity. In an ad, Alvin warned people that as from February 12, no business dealings that anyone had with Wilkinson on behalf of the troupe were valid. This was a typical scam played by a practiced scammer. The advance man would arrange not only the bookings, but the press as well. This meant that Lloyd & Bidaux’s Minstrels were not responsible for any debts that Charley might have accrued since that date. Yes, it was legal, as long as you put the ad in the paper, disclaiming your man’s actions. That way, you didn’t have to pay for any ads after that date. Just like the ad-grabbing scams of old when Alvin was a publisher. In the meantime, Charley Wilkinson was paid off and went on his merry way.434
Late March saw them in Sandusky, and then at the Young Men’s Hall in Detroit. “Much credit is due to manager Lloyd and his gentlemanly ushers for the manner in which they endeavored to make the audience comfortable, and obtain seats for as many as possible,” the Detroit Free Press said. “In fact, the manager seems to leave nothing undone to elevate the character of the business in which he is engaged, and no expense is spared to make the entertainment first-class.” They loved Gustave Bidaux singing “My Boy, How Can I See You Die,” the anguished tale of a mother who’d lost her son to the war, and guffawed when Cal Wagner performed his comic song, “The Wandering Irishman,” a parody of a tippling, dancing fellow. The whole performance, according to the paper, contained almost none of the “objectionable features of Negro minstrelsy,” meaning that the stereotypes, the plantation ditties that made audiences roar with laughter, were frequently replaced by mournful songs of love and loss, songs redolent of post-war agonies and immeasurable grief. And because blacks were emancipated and slavery was dead, the images of the cheerful or wily Negro outwitting or submitting to the master were fading away. In the North, at least. But for the audiences of the ruined South, still clinging to and denying that the old ways were forever gone, the Jumping Jim Crows and Zip Coon characters were as popular as ever.435
On March 26 and 27, Lloyd’s troupe played Turner’s Opera House in Dayton, Ohio, and on the twenty-eighth opened at the Opera House in Columbus, Ohio, for a two-night run. Large and opulent, the houses hosted the greatest tenors of the day and of course—for rollicking nights of music and mirth—minstrels! The audiences were immense, and the newspapers did nothing but rave. “Artistic genius,” waxed the Daily Ohio Statesman. “What could be more magnificent,” they added, “than the ballads of Bidaux and Jackson, and the bass solo of Ainsley Scott?” On the first night, Mr. Jackson sang “Kathleen Mavourneen,” a lament for a lost darling, a mavourneen. “Kathleen, mavourneen, the grey dawn is breaking, The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill. The lark from her light wing the bright dew is shaking, Kathleen, mavourneen, what! Slumbering still?” The following night the demand was so great that Jackson sang it again. Cal Wagner and Charley Reynolds brought the house down in fits of laughter with their “Jimmy, Let’s Go Home.” On the second night, Tom Hengler was too ill to appear, so his act “Southern Flirtation” had to be substituted with Bill Delehanty, who “gave us as fine a specimen of bone playing as we remember ever to have witnessed.” One of the finest afterpieces ever presented before a Columbus audience was the seriocomic operetta, “Old Shady’s Visit,” arranged by Johnny Booker. “There is no doubt but that Lloyd & Bideaux’s are in all particulars, the finest troupe now traveling. They will return here on or about the 10th of April,” reported the Statesman. The receipts for the two nights amounted to $1,119.20.
On April Fool’s Day they arrived in Cincinnati in grand style, for a five-night and two-afternoon engagement with much ballyhoo, a la Barnum. “A chariot, drawn by gaily caparisoned horses, and containing Lloyd’s excellent brass band, paraded the streets,” informing all they passed that Lloyd & Bidaux’s Minstrels would be performing that night at Mozart Hall. The Mozart was crammed with an “appreciative and fashionable audience. Over two thousand tickets were sold, a profitable return to the managers,” that is, Mr. Lloyd.436
At the Mozart, at least—and even generally speaking—the doors would open at seven-thirty in the evening and the show would begin at eight. Admission was fifty cents if you wanted to be in the parquette dress circle, or thirty-five cents for the gallery. On Wednesday and Saturday there were well-advertised family social matinees, commencing at two in the afternoon. Again, the papers, which would in those days review each performance, raved. A big emphasis was placed on how acceptable the show was for ladies and children. Other minstrel troupes may have been vulgar, but Lloyd’s show was clean. And fun. Suitable for the whole family. Perhaps this was a bit of redemption, as Virginia and Clarence were with him and it did not seem that Alvin was straying, jolted by the realization that perhaps for the first time in his adult life he did not or could not stray.437
Saturday, April 6, was not only the last night of Lloyd & Bidaux’s Minstrels in Cincinnati, it was the last night for Bidaux—period. Lloyd posted notices in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer and the Cleveland Leader papers of April 6 through April 19: Among the announcements for his minstrels was this: “Gustave Bidaux has been discharged from my employ, for practices too disgusting to mention, and is no longer in any way connected with my company. W. Alvin Lloyd.” Practices too disgusting to mention? What might he have done? Likely it was just the old scam, with a paid-off Bidaux going away. The name of the company was immediately changed to Lloyd’s Minstrels.438
The minstrels stayed in Cincinnati for a few days, while Alvin and advance man Tom Warhurst went up to Columbus to pave the way for next week’s performance. One of Tom’s chores was to drop into the offices of the Daily Ohio Statesman on April 6 and pitch the editorial staff. That and a display ad went a long way toward favorable press: “Col. Lloyd’s management of the auditorium is perfect and complete, and deserves more than a passing notice.” The Statesman wouldn’t be so happy when the troupe failed to pay their advertising bill.
During this time, one of Alvin’s excesses would play its part in the demise of the company. Happy Cal had a performance all the way up in Cleveland, and, amid much publicity, Alvin hired a private train for him. However, the $110 had to come from somewhere, and it duly came out of the company’s wages budget.439 That was the day, April 10, that W. A. Lloyd was meant to be in court in Cincinnati for assault and battery. There is no record of whom he assaulted. The case was continued until the following morning, with no resolution apparent. Perhaps Alvin bought his way out of this, too.440 By then the troupe was in Columbus, with their Monster Brass Band, for “positively one night only” at the Opera House. “No ordinary troupe could have called together so many people on so foul a night,” reported the Statesman the following day. The paper lamented that the singing was not so good as on their previous visit, and they missed the sweet voice of Jackson, and the deep, sweet tones of Ainsley Scott, and the cheery face of Johnny Booker. They were touched by “Little Barefoot,” the bathetic tale of a poor child driven to beg in the streets. “Mister! Please give me a penny, for I’ve not got any Pa . . .” But the most popular act of the evening was Cal Wagner in his huge elephant suit and his lumbering dance around the stage. From there, on to bigger turns as a man, not a beast, Cal went to Cleveland, Ohio.441
Still in Ohio, Alvin’s troupe was on to Zanesville, Newark, Cleveland, and Toledo, and then into Jackson, Michigan. By late April they were back in the northeast, replaying scenes of their earlier triumphs—Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, Springfield, New Haven, Hartford. Standing room only, and the papers were still raving—not one black cloud in the press.442
But on May 29, 1867, in Newport, they disbanded and rested. Surely Alvin needed to stop, to gain strength and bask in this greatest of great tours. The New York Herald of June 2 reports that Colonel Alvin W. Lloyd, the successful proprietor of Lloyd’s Minstrels, with Happy Cal Wagner, J.B. Murphy, Major S.B. Filkins, and Lt. W. Preston [i.e., Billy Preston, of the company] were luxuriating at Newport, and that Col. Lloyd was reorganizing his troupe preparatory to inaugurating the coming season.
On June 19 they were due to appear in New Haven, but the performance was canceled due to a “difficulty” between Lloyd and two of his comedians. Six days later, Andrew Johnson, the president of the United States, was in New Haven. Pickpockets abounded. One of the victims was “Col. Lloyd, who had a $690 gold watch stolen.” Again, they canceled a scheduled performance, this time at Syracuse on June 29.443
They were at Clarendon Hall, Ashtabula, Ohio, on the night of July 6, then in Cleveland again for a two-night run, July 9 and 10, at Brainard Hall. From there it was on to Union Hall, in Jackson, Michigan, on July 18. Then it was Toledo on July 21, and the following day they arrived in Adrian, Michigan. That morning Alvin and Virginia ran off with the money, leaving the company stranded, unable to get out of town. An appeal was published in the local paper to get the unlucky minstrel troupe train fare, and a special benefit was given at the hall. The receipts amounted to twenty-eight dollars. Not much, even in those days.444
For the next month or so, the press all over the country had a field day with the runaway Lloyd, the “precious rascal” and “unmitigated scoundrel,” who had once “been in the service of the Union.” The Fremont Journal (Ohio) of August 9 added a new twist: “He was a rebel agent at Washington during the war.”445
The newspaper in Lockport, New York, reported the story and remarkably came to Alvin’s defense, adding, “Col. Lloyd and his troupe are well known in this city, having given several entertainments here, and so far as the swindling of printers is concerned we can say that he paid his bills promptly in Lockport at each visit.”446
But to make matters worse, one of the creditors found Alvin’s trunk at the American Express office in Adrian and had it seized for debt. When Officer Hines opened the trunk, he found the compromising contents that Alphabetical Boyd and Charles Harvey had found earlier in Philadelphia. The papers itemized the contents, branding him “as not only a scoundrel but a sneaking spy and rebel.”447
As the news storm was raging, Alvin was in St. Louis announcing he was about to come out with yet another issue of the Railroad Guide. Bigger, better than ever before. After his six-week tear through the city, he fled, “after receiving several thousand dollars from merchants for advertisements which were to be put in a new railroad guide he professed to be about to publish, but hasn’t published yet.” And then, the Syracuse Daily Courier huffed, “This Lloyd is a scamp if one half is true that is reported of him. Wonder where he thinks he will go, when he shakes off his mortal coil, if he cheats the printer.”448 If the mortal coil, or the dreaded noose, was tightening, Alvin was surely at his final mile. And then he wasn’t. He headed back to Baltimore, to the Union Hotel.
There are time lapses and Alvin is obscured until May and June of 1868, when two events happened in Washington. First, Edwin Stanton resigned as secretary of war, and, three weeks later, the Special Claims Commission, which had been set up in 1866 to deal with war claims of all types, changed its name to the Board of Claims, and now fell under the presidency of Major General James Allen Hardie, assistant inspector general. This would have a major impact on the Lloyds.
But was Alvin in these missing months regrouping, exhausted, atoning? Not likely. He was again working with his brother, J. T. It was for Alvin his last stab at a career: A play. A Foul Play: a foolish, overdone piece that after much chicanery and shenanigans made Alvin and J. T. Lloyd Broadway producers. As Alvin was then pretty broke, and had five hefty judgments against him remaining unsatisfied within the legal system, it was J. T. who put up the money, or at least the promise of money. He himself had at that very moment in time a whopping sixty-five judgments, as a clerk of court’s investigation would shortly discover. Together the two brothers were looking down the barrel at a total of more than twenty-six thousand dollars in court problems. And that was just in New York City.449 On Monday evening, August 3, 1868, Foul Play opened at the New York Theatre. Right from the beginning people stayed away in droves. So, for want of paying customers, the Lloyds tried to fill the house with shills, or “deadheads” as they were known, to occupy the seats. In spite of this, the theater was never more than half-filled, and the brothers continued to paper the house.450 While all this was happening, on the afternoon of the twenty-first of August, 1868, Alvin was walking up Broadway and had just reached the New York Hotel when he ran into fellow minstrel kings Dan Bryant, Bill Newcomb, and that long drink of water Nelse Seymour. On a good day, Nelse would swing a leg over your head, just to let you know how short you were, but today wasn’t one of those days. Friendly immediately turned unfriendly and Dan horsewhipped Alvin up and down Broadway.451
The press savored the news of Alvin’s whipping. For example, the Rochester Daily Union of September 1, 1868, reports this: “Dan Bryant and Colonel Alvin Lloyd of the New York Theatre were the principal actors in a supplementary act of ‘Foul Play’ near the New York Hotel on Wednesday last. A horsewhip is said to have been the most flourishing attraction in the dramas as here enacted, and the ever popular Dan succeeded, as usual, in walking off with all the honors.” The horsewhipping, the shock to the system of an already frail man, likely contributed to Alvin’s rapid and final decline.
By September 15, Alvin was admitting in the press that the play was losing money, and “wished it in hell before he had anything to do with it.” He thought Foul Play was the “poorest and trashiest piece that was ever put on the stage.”452 After much cheating, fighting, and drear theatrical politics, Alvin and J. T. left the theater world, forever.
J. T. went back to bilking the British, but in person this time rather than through agents. He and Ella and the kids took a ship for Liverpool and returned to New York the day after Christmas, with a new addition to the family—young Florence.453
If an announcement caught Alvin’s eye, he would have seen his errant clerk had moved far away from him, beyond him. The item was about Professor Allen Ryan, a magnetic lecturer and orator from Ohio. In early 1869, Master Rolla Ryan, “a wonderful boy orator,” was traveling in Cincinnati with his father, Professor Allen Ryan, and “T.H.S. Boyd, manager.”454
Now failure stalked Alvin once again. Weakened, despondent, he went back to Washington City, back to the War Department, where three years before he’d stumbled down the marble steps clutching the bag of gold. This time, surely the last time, for he was so very tired, he begged an audience with the secretary of war. Was he not justly entitled to this money and might the secretary send his request to Major General James A. Hardie, the assistant inspector general, managing a new Board of Claims?
December 8, 1868,
W. Alvin Lloyd verbally requests that his claim for compensation for services rendered as spy or special agent be re-examined. The Secretary of War directs that the claim be re-examined, and reported upon by the Board of claims.455
On December 10, 1868, the board referred to the assistant adjutant general for the paper in the case, and other information the department might have, or have heard. This letter was received on December 11, 1868.
That day, E. D. Townsend, of the adjutant general’s office in Washington, wrote of the large amount he’d paid Lloyd:
Respectfully returned to Major General Hardie, President Board of claims, together with the previous papers on file in this office in the matter of the claim of W. Alvin Lloyd. On the 10th of October 1865, in accordance with the order of the Secretary of War, I paid out of a special fund in my hands the sum of $3427.20, which was the value on that day of $2380—in Gold, being amount of expenses incurred by Lloyd in the South. It was the opinion of the Secretary of War at the time that this was all the War Department was authorized to award, and that the claimant should, for further relief, be turned over to Congress, or the Court of Claims, where the proofs adduced in support of his claim could be subjected to tests which the Executive branch of the Govt had no power to apply.”
Townsend then goes on to quote Stanton’s letter of October 9, 1865, directing the amount to be paid. And he has the Charles T. Harvey letter in hand. He is obviously suspicious.
Attention is respectfully called to the accompanying letter from Charles T. Harvey, received since the above amount was paid, which throws discredit upon the claim of Mr. Lloyd, and which it is deemed should be carefully investigated in connection with the claim. Inasmuch as there is no fund under the control of the Department from which a claim of this nature and of such a magnitude could be allowed, it is respectfully submitted to the Secretary of War that no further action should be taken in the matter and that the claimant should present his claim either before Congress or the Court of Claims. E.D. Townsend, Asst. Adjutant General.456
On December 21, 1868, Major General James A. Hardie of the Board of Claims sent the incredibly damaging Harvey letter to General Stewart Van Vliet, deputy quartermaster general, in Baltimore, asking him if he would be kind enough to investigate Harvey’s character. Van Vliet went to work, and early the following year would report back to Major General Hardie.
It was all too much, the waiting, taking this great chance, and by then, Alvin was too sick to continue this new claim so Virginia had to do it for him. He was near death, or so it seemed, in the apartment he shared with Virginia and Clarence at 202 West 24th Street, New York City, a low-rise building at the corner of Seventh Avenue. As his wife hovered over him, and if he asked for forgiveness, it was for everything: For a life, a selfish life, pocked with lies, betrayals, and more lies. But Virginia would not let him die alone.
While Lloyd lay dying, the investigation of Charles Harvey had begun.
“Deputy Quartermaster General’s office, Baltimore, Md. Jany. 4, 1869. Stewart Van Vliet, Deputy QM Gen. Brevet Major General, US Army.” Van Vliet was writing to General Hardie.
General, I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 21st ult., in reference to the standing of Chas. T. Harvey of this city [Baltimore], who has made serious charges against one Wm A. Lloyd, who has a claim before the Court of Claims. I have seen Mr. Harvey & have made enquiries about him & my impression is that he is a person whose statements can be relied on. It appears that Lloyd was engaged in selling Rail Road Guide Books & that Harvey was employed by Lloyd to sell them & which so employed, he (Lloyd) swindled Harvey, according to the latter’s statement, out of $500. Hence Harvey’s hostility. Harvey obtained most of this information concerning Lloyd from one Boyd, who was a private clerk of Lloyd’s. A year or two ago, Lloyd figured quite extensively in the Police Gazette, when his portrait was given to the public, as well as a brief history, which latter was anything but flattering. I would suggest that Mr. Harvey be called before the Board of Claims. I return herewith his letter. Very respectfully, Yr Obt svt, Stewart Van Vliet, Deputy QM Gen.457
Unfortunately, this Police Gazette portrait and brief history that Van Vliet describes is a myth, concocted by Harvey. Van Vliet never corroborated it. He couldn’t have, as it doesn’t exist.
On February 18, 1869, Virginia Lloyd wrote her first letter to General John M. Schofield, the secretary of war. In case Schofield was not aware of the particulars, Virginia filled him in. It seems that Alvin, in his extreme incapacitation, made this intrepid young woman his amanuensis.
Mrs Lloyd craves the indulgence of the Honorable Secretary of War, and begs to inform him, inasmuch as General Hardee [sic] in his note, written by your instructions, says, “Mr Lloyd’s claim has not yet been decided upon by the Board of Claims.” She is fearful there has been some mistake made, as it has been before the Board of Claims, and been decided upon by Judge Holt, and about one third of the amount paid by Mr Stanton, then Sec of War.
Virginia stresses that Lloyd’s expenses are outstanding and reiterates Holt’s decision was that
. . . the full amount should be paid, and it was left with Mr Stanton, who did not like to take the responsibility of paying the whole amount, but did pay Mr. Lloyd the amount he had expended out of his own private means while in prison, and informed him he would take his salary under consideration.
There the affair has rested since 1865.
Now, General, why should the Government pay part of a just claim, and not the whole of it? It must be all right, or all wrong? The claim is in Adjutant Townsend’s office. The case has been thoroughly acted upon, and only needs your decision, General, to be paid. Regret exceedingly having to annoy you so very much, but Mr Lloyd’s severe illness prevents him attending to business himself. It is but a small matter, and I firmly rely, General, upon your giving the case your immediate attention, and beg you will communicate with me here that I may not be compelled to leave my suffering husband. President Johnson has informed Mr Lloyd he would pay the claim in a moment, if he had the power to do so, but he had no means wherefrom to draw. An early answer, General, will be expected by Yours Most Respectfully, Virginia V Lloyd.458
A few weeks later, after being ignored, there came a new, even more desperate plea, “Midnight. New York. March 8th, 1869.”
Midnight; as if the darkness, the hour, like a fire bell in the night, might deserve a fast response. Virginia reminds Schofield that it has been a week since she’s last written:
I fear his [Schofield’s] valuable time has been so engrossed with business of, to him, greater moment, that he has forgotten my petition. Our physician has informed me Mr. Lloyd should be taken South now, while he has a little strength to go, for, sinking as fast as he is with quick consumption, he will, in a very short time, be unable to be moved at all.
Only Schofield can spare her husband, she says.
I would not annoy you, General, but Mr. Lloyd, having been particularly unfortunate in business, and his protracted illness, compels me to ask you for the amount the Government is indebted to him, and I beg of you, as you value the life of one dear to you, do not let my poor husband die, when, by ordering his claim paid, you can, with God’s help, prolong his life, for the Doctor says if he gets to Florida, he may live some time. He watches the mail so eagerly each day, and with each disappointment grows perceptibly worse. It is so very hard, General Schofield, to see him suffer so, for that which belongs to him. He asked me a moment since if I thought Genl Schofield would ordered [sic] his money paid, or whether he would have to lay here and die. I try to cheer him, and keep him hopeful, for I feel “God is with the right”—and it is right—all honest debts should be paid, and I beg you by every endearing tie you have on earth, do this deed of justice, for you are invested with the power.
And now Virginia is begging and audaciously composing Schofield’s hoped-for reply.
Let me cheer my suffering husband with the announcement “Genl Schofield has ordered your claim paid, and you shall start immediately South,” and may God bless and prosper you and yours through life shall be the daily prayer of myself and of one who at best is not very long for this world, my loved and honorable husband. Relying upon, and firmly trusting in, you I am, with Great Respect, Virginia V Lloyd.
Schofield never answered. On March 10, Dr. Sylvanus S. Mulford, a former prominent Union army surgeon during the war, visited Alvin for the last time. And if he were conscious, one of the last faces he would see would be that of a Yankee.
Over the next week, the great game, the great errant dazzle that was the life of William Alvin Lloyd, was sputtering to a close.
A montage: There is an older man on crutches, one leg twisted under him. Next, a shadowed face peers though thick prison bars.
In the background: A calliope pumps and whistles the strains of My Old Kentucky Home.
Frozen mid-leap, ragged, bewigged leaping in the air—Jim Crow grins. A minstrel troupe raises their tambos, bones, banjos, and accordions. Toasting, perhaps, saluting Alvin Lloyd, or are they aiming pistols at him?
Women, many women, very young, bejeweled and beribboned, pose together in sunlight.
A boy huddled by a lamppost in the streets of Butchertown, thick smoke from brewery vats obscuring his face.
A pair of small, calloused hands stained with dyes, held up to frame.
Cue a moist summer wind blowing from the Ohio. Cue the darkness.
It was March 17, 1869.
Lloyd’s death certificate states the primary cause of his demise was “Phetrisis [sic] Pulmonalis,” a wasting and deadly lung disease: tuberculosis. The secondary cause was “tuberculous [sic] Diarrhea.” His bowl was rotting away. An agony.459
Virginia buried him two days later, in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx. It was a two-grave lot—NW1883, Section 16, in the Spring Lake Plot. The lot was owned by Virginia V. Lloyd. However, only one person would ever be buried in it—William Alvin Lloyd.
His fraud remained undetected. The rest of the claim, unpaid. But there was more to come of it. Much more. It was not over. It was not.