THE LIFE OF
DAVID BELASCO
VOLUME ONE

THE RECENT
WORKS OF WILLIAM WINTER

Other Days., Being Chronicles and Memories of The Stage (1908).

Old Friends., Being Literary Recollections of Other Days (1909).

Poems (Definitive Edition—1909).

Life and Art of Richard Mansfield (Two Volumes—1910).

Shakespeare’s England (Revised and Augmented—1910).

Gray Days and Gold (Revised and Augmented—1911).

Over the Border (Scotch Companion to Above—1911).

Shakespeare on the Stage,—First Series: 1911. I. “Shakespeare Spells Ruin.” II. King Richard III. III. The Merchant of Venice. IV. Othello. V. Hamlet. VI. Macbeth. VII. King Henry VIII.

Shakespeare on the Stage,—Second Series: 1915. I. Twelfth Night. II. Romeo and Juliet. III. As You Like It. IV. King Lear. V. The Taming of the Shrew. VI. Julius Cæsar.

Shakespeare on the Stage,—Third Series: 1916. I. Cymbeline. II. Love’s Labor’s Lost. III. Coriolanus. IV. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. V. King Henry IV.,—First and Second Parts. VI. The Merry Wives of Windsor. VII. Antony and Cleopatra. VIII. King John.

Lives of the Players:—I. Tyrone Power (1912).

The Wallet of Time, Containing Personal, Biographical, and Critical Reminiscence of the American Theatre (Two Volumes—1913).

Vagrant Memories, Being Further Recollections of Other Days (1915).

The Life of David Belasco (Two Volumes—1918).

DAVID BELASCO

“If he come not, then the play is marred!”
—Shakespeare

From a portrait by the Misses Selby, New York.
Author’s Collection.

THE LIFE
OF
DAVID BELASCO

BY
WILLIAM WINTER
(1836-1917)
“He, being dead, yet speaketh.”
VOLUME ONE
New York
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1918

Copyright, 1918, by
JEFFERSON WINTER
All Rights Reserved
TO
THE MEMORY OF
REINA MARTIN BELASCO
This Memoir of Her Son
DAVID BELASCO
Actor, Dramatist, and Manager,
Whom She Dearly Loved
And by Whom She Was Idolized,
Is Reverently Dedicated
By the Stranger Who Has Written It,
Hoping Thereby to Honor and Commemorate
Genius, Courage, Industry, Enterprise, and Energy,
Exemplified in a Useful and Beneficent Life,
In the Service of
The Theatre

If Heaven to souls that dwell in bliss can show
The fate of those they love and leave behind,
She, in that Heaven, may be glad to know
Her son was honored with his human kind.

“Each petty hand
Can steer a ship becalm’d, but he that will
Govern and carry her to her ends must know
His tides, his currents, how to shift his sails,
What she will bear in foul, what in fair, weathers,
What her springs are, her leaks and how to stop ’em,
What strands, what shelves, what rocks, do threaten her,
The forces and the nature of all winds,
Gusts, storms, and tempests, when her keel ploughs hell
And deck knocks heaven, THEN to manage her
Becomes the name and office of a Pilot!”
—BEN JONSON, IN “CATILINE.”

CONTENTS
The Life of David Belasco—Volume One

ILLUSTRATIONS.
Volume One.

PREFACE

My father’s plan of The Life of David Belasco was communicated, in detail, by him to me. He realized that whenever he might die he was certain to leave much work undone. He hoped and expected, however, to live long enough to complete this book. It was in his mind to the very end. The last entry in his “Journal” refers to it: “June. Saturday, 2. Cloudy and gloomy. Worked all day on the Memoir.” He spoke of it often during his agonized final illness. The last words he ever wrote are a part of it. I have, as well as I could, finished it for him, according to his plan, because I know that he wished me to do so.

This book was planned by Mr. Winter in 1913, as part of a comprehensive record of the American Stage which he purposed to write. Other kindred projects which he then had in view and on which he labored much include revised and augmented editions of his Life and Art of Edwin Booth and Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson; joint biographies of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, and an encyclopedical work to be called Alms for Oblivion, in which he intended to gather a vast mass of miscellaneous material relative to the Theatre. He also had in contemplation a Life of Augustin Daly, but he abandoned it because his friend the late Joseph Francis Daly (Augustin’s brother) had undertaken and in large part written a biography of that great theatrical manager and extraordinary man. All those projects languished because of lack of money: such books as those by William Winter issued since 1908 are, in every way, so costly to make that little commercial profit can be derived from them.

David Belasco, however, is the most conspicuous figure in the contemporary Theatre: his career has been long, picturesque, adventurous, and brilliant: “the present eye praises the present object,” and it was deemed certain that an authentic Life of that singular, romantic person would prove remunerative as well as interesting, instructive, and valuable. In September, 1913, accordingly,—soon after Mr. Winter’s The Wallet of Time had been brought out,—I was, as his agent, easily able to make for him very advantageous arrangements for the publication of such a work,—first to be passed through a prominent magazine, as a serial, and then to be issued in book form. Mr. Winter was much pleased and encouraged by this arrangement, and he had begun to gather and shape material for The Life of David Belasco when announcement was made that Mr. Belasco was writing and would presently publish, in Hearst’s Magazine, an Autobiography. My father had met with a similar experience in 1893, when Jefferson’s Autobiography, published as a serial in The Century, forestalled his authoritative Life of that great actor, rendering it, monetarily, almost profitless, and, therefore, he deemed it wise to lay aside this book.

Belasco’s The Story of My Life was published in Hearst’s Magazine, March, 1914, to December, 1915,—but, though it preëmpted the magazine field and made a work therein by my father impossible, it proved wholly inadequate and unreliable as a biography. In September, 1916, however,—soon after Shakespeare on the Stage—Third Series had been published,—Mr. Winter decided that the time was propitious for him to take up again the present Memoir, and, his publishers agreeing with him, he engaged to do so. He was then ill and weak; but he earnestly desired to work till the last, to be always doing, to overcome every obstacle by the force of his indomitable will, and, whatever he might suffer, never to yield or break under the pressure of adverse circumstance or the burden of age.

About the end of October, 1916, accordingly, he began the actual writing of this Memoir, and, although repeatedly urged by me to desist, he continued in it almost to the last day of his life. “I might better be dead,” he once exclaimed, “than to sit idle! I must go on: I must work at something: if it were not at this, it would be at something else. Moreover, I will not be beaten by anything: I will make this book the best thing of the kind I have ever yet done.”

If he had lived he would have done so; but his spirit was greater than his strength. When death came to him unconnected sections of this book, amounting to about three-fifths of the matter contained in Volume One and about one-third of that contained in Volume Two, were in type, awaiting his revision. Much of the remainder was in manuscript—some parts of it practically completed, some of it more or less roughly drafted. My task has been, substantially, to supply some dates, to fill some blanks, and to edit, coördinate, and join the material left by my father. That task I have performed with reverence and care, and if the errors and defects in this work—which I hope are few—be recognized as mine, and the merits and beauties in it—which I know to be many—be recognized as his, then the responsibility of authorship will be rightly divided.

Mr. Winter was of many moods,—and, when possible, he wrought at his writing as he felt inclined. That is the reason why some passages in this book which stand near to its close were finished and polished by him, while others, much earlier, were left incomplete or isolated. The subject of The Theatrical Syndicate, for example, was thoroughly familiar to him, and he wrote the section devoted to that subject in intervals of his restudy of “The Return of Peter Grimm,” a play about which he had written, for this book, little but rough notes when the end came (I have, herein, reprinted his criticism of that play previously recorded in another place). The last passage in the text on which he worked is that treating of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” He brought the revised manuscript of that passage to me on the afternoon of June 2 and asked me to type it for him, saying: “I like the earnestness of it, and if you will make a fair copy for me I will go over it once more in the morning and dismiss it: I am too tired to go on to-day.” On June 3, 4, and 5, although suffering acutely, he insisted on rising, each day, and attempted to work, but was unable to do so. On the morning of June 5 he was forced to take to his bed. That was the beginning of the end.

My father died on June 30, 1917. The direct cause of his death was uræmic poisoning, sequent on angina pectoris. His personal reticence was extreme; he disliked strangers about him and depended on me; it was, therefore, my very great privilege to wait on and nurse him in his final sickness. His suffering was indescribable and was exceeded only by his invariable patience and gentleness. The last thing he ever wrote was the Dedication of this book. At about eleven o’clock on the night of June 9 he endeavored to compose himself to sleep. I sat at the door of his bedroom until about midnight, when, as it was obvious that he could not sleep and that he was in terrible distress, I went to him. The next two hours were specially hard: there is little that can be done in such circumstances but to hope for the release of death. Anybody who has seen and heard the piteous restlessness and the dreadful, strangulated breathing characteristic of such a condition as my father’s then was is not likely to forget them. At about two o’clock in the morning, his breathing and his pulse both being so bad that I believed he was then to die, he asked to be helped out of bed into a chair. I lifted him into one, and, after a little while, he asked, with much difficulty, “Is there paper—pencil, here?” Supposing that he wished to write some request or message that he was not able to speak, I immediately gave him a pad of paper and a pencil. He sat for a few minutes with them in his lap, gathering his strength. Then he took them up and slowly, painfully, wrote the Dedication of this book, all except the four lines of verse with which it ends. He made a mark beneath the text and wrote there “Four lines of verse—not finished yet.” A while later he seemed to grow easier and presently asked to be got back to bed. The next day, June 10, in the forenoon, he asked me to help him to dress, which I did: it was the last time he ever had his clothes on. He read for a little while in one of his favorite books, Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,”—the passage relative to the execution of Dr. Dodd. He presently spoke to me, in his old, gentle, whimsical way, of “the touching resignation shown in Johnson’s letter to the fact that Dodd was going to be hanged.” Then, after an interval of acute and dreadful distress, he spoke of his illness. He said: “It is my principle to go on. I felt that I was going to die last night,—that’s why I wrote the Dedication to the ’Belasco.’ I feared I should die before I could complete that work and the three other books I have undertaken. But my principle is to go on: to hold on, till the end—and then, still hold on! I do not mean to break. But I am very sick.” Soon afterward he became so weak that it was necessary to get his clothes off and lift him back to bed. In the afternoon he roused himself again,—rising above the tide of poison which was slowly submerging him, as visibly as a drowning man rises in water,—and asked for the Dedication, which I had typewritten. He sat up in bed and revised it, as it now stands, and then added the four lines of verse. Although he had been suffering horribly for days he made but one mistake in writing the Dedication: he wrote “useless” instead of “useful“—and was much vexed with himself for doing so. In the last line of the verse he first wrote “boy”; in the evening he changed that word to “son.”

Among the manuscript notes left by my father I have found the beginning of a Preface to this book, which I think it desirable to print here because it gives in his words some intimation of his purpose and feeling in undertaking the writing of it:

David Belasco is the leading theatrical manager in the United States; the manager from whom it is reasonable to expect that the most of achievement can proceed that will be advantageous to the Stage, as an institution, and to the welfare of the Public to which that institution is essential and precious. I have long believed that a truthful, comprehensive, minute narrative of his career,—which has been one of much vicissitude and interest,—ought to be written now, while he is still living and working, when perhaps it may augment his prosperity, cheer his mind, and stimulate his ambition to undertake new tasks and gain new honors. In that belief I have written this book, not as a panegyric, but as a Memoir.

IN MEMORIAM

“Earthly Fame
Is fortune’s frail dependent; yet there lives
A Judge, who, as man claims by merit, gives:
To whose all-pondering mind a noble aim,
Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed;
In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed.”
—Wordsworth

photograph by I. Almstaedt, Staten Island.
Son of Jefferson Winter.

David Belasco and William Winter were friends for thirty-odd years. They did not always agree as to the course which should be followed in theatrical management; but their disagreements on that subject, such as they were, never estranged them nor lessened their mutual sympathetic understanding, respect, and regard. Belasco, undoubtedly, is what my father called him, “the last of the real managers,” the heir of all the theatric ages in America that have been led by Dunlap, Caldwell, Gilfert, Wood, the Wallacks, Booth, McCullough, Ford, Palmer, and Daly, and it is fitting that his Life should have been written by the one man in all the world best qualified to perform the task. Belasco’s feeling about the matter, at once modest and appreciative, is shown in a letter from which I quote the following:

(David Belasco to William Winter.)

October 18, 1916.

My dear William Winter:—

I am greatly honored to know that you are really going to write the history of my life! I will not say “It is an honor that I dreamed not of,” because I have dreamed of it. But I never thought you would really undertake it. Of course I will, as you ask, very gladly do anything and everything I can to assist you.

But though my life has not been altogether an easy or uneventful one, in all sincerity I can hardly think of it as worthy of your brilliant pen. Yet you know how I have always looked up to you, and so you will know how much this means to me and how much I appreciate it. And because “I hold every man a debtor to his profession” I am more than delighted that you think the public will be interested in the life of a theatrical manager,—and that manager me. If only I had been able to do all that I wanted to, then there would have been a career worthy even of your pen.

It pleases me so much whenever there comes a real, worthwhile tribute to the profession I adore—the Stage! It is great and wonderful to think that my name is to be written in the records of the American Theatre by you: that hereafter the name of Belasco (just a stroller from California in the dear old days of the pioneers) will be found written by you along with the names of those who made our Theatre possible as well as great. I mean the men and women who gave my profession of their best—long, arduous, weary years of hard, hard work, at the sacrifice of personal comfort; who studied and toiled and played their parts uncomplainingly night after night in the changing bills; the friends who were never too tired to learn something; who lived simply and poorly and yet had the courage to marry and bring up their children and give the Stage a new generation; the friends who found joy in the few hours they held sacred in the home—often a barren room or two. Beautiful! Those are the boys and girls I love—our pioneers. What pathetic figures—what noble examples many of them were! Such men and women I reverence—I salute them! And I thank you for the compliment you pay me, as a humble follower of the Theatre, when you write my name with theirs.... We must meet soon and have good, long talks about the golden days in California,—my California. Facts I can give you: exact dates I will not promise. I have never kept a “Diary.”... As far as I possibly can I will make my convenience to suit yours....

Faithfully,
David Belasco.

Many readers may suppose, because Belasco is still living and at the zenith of his career, that it was an easy task to compile and arrange a complete record of his life. The truth is far otherwise. There was once a vast amount of invaluable material for such a record,—comprising a copy of every programme in which his name appeared from 1871 to the end of the theatrical season of 1897-’98, together with every important article about him or his work in the same period, several scores of photographs of him in dramatic characters and many hundreds of interesting letters. But that unique collection, the property and pride of his mother, was destroyed in the great San Francisco earthquake-fire, April 18, 1906; and his dubiosity about exact dates proved to be more than justified. The comprehensive and authoritative Chronology of Belasco’s life which is included in this Memoir is, therefore, chiefly the product of Mr. Winter’s indefatigable, patient original research and labor: such parts of it as were not made by him were made entirely according to his plan and by his direction, specifying the sources of information to be consulted. And I would specially emphasize the fact that wherever this Memoir may be found to differ from, or conflict with, other accounts of Belasco’s career those other accounts are erroneous.

The letters which appear in this Memoir were all selected by my father,—excepting a few of his, toward the end, which I have inserted. Mr. Winter requested Belasco to chose from his collection such letters as he would permit to be used, but received from him a reply in which he writes:

... I would be glad to go through my letters for you, as you requested, if I could; but the fact is I am so over-worked just now that I simply can’t take the time to do it. I am, therefore, sending over to you eight or nine old letter-books of mine and two boxes of old letters. I really don’t know what is in them (for I haven’t looked at them for years), but I hope you will be able to find something useful and such as you want among them. If not, let me know and I will send over some more. All the other material you ask for in the list which Jefferson left at the theatre last week was destroyed in the [San Francisco] fire.... I don’t believe there are twelve pictures of me “in character” in existence. I had dozens made when I was young, but I don’t know of anybody who has any to-day, except my wife. She has a set of, I think, six, which I will ask her to lend us....

In assembling originals for pictorial illustration of this work I have been specially aided by Mr. Belasco, who has not only loaned me everything in his own collection for which I have asked but has also obtained for my use many photographs in the Albert Davis Collection, as well as the six very interesting and now, I believe, unique pictures of him, preserved by Mrs. Belasco, in the characters of Hamlet, Marc Antony, King Louis the Eleventh, Uncle Tom, Fagin, and Robert Macaire. For photographs of members of the Theatrical Syndicate I am indebted to my father’s friend and mine, Louis V. De Foe, Esq., of New York. My father was not altogether satisfied with the illustrations of his other books: every effort has been made to embellish this one as nearly as possible in the manner in which he would have had it done.

On behalf of my father and in accordance with a written note found among his papers I would here make grateful acknowledgment of the courtesy of Mr. Belasco’s sister, Mrs. Sarah Mayer; his brother, Mr. Frederick Belasco, and his nephew, Mr. E. B. Mayer, all of San Francisco, who endeavored to answer many inquiries by Mr. Winter and who were able to provide some necessary corroboration of details. Also, I would make acknowledgment of the obliging kindness shown him by the late James Louis Gillis (1857-1917), Librarian of the California State Library at Sacramento, and by his assistants, unknown, who searched for Mr. Winter various old California newspaper files which, otherwise, might have remained inaccessible.

For myself, I owe thanks to Mr. Gillis’ successor as State Librarian of California, Milton J. Ferguson, Esq.; to William Seymour, Esq., to James A. Madison, Esq., and to the several members of Mr. Belasco’s personal staff,—all of whom have assisted me in verifying for my father casts of plays long ago forgotten and in supplying or verifying dates. I wish, also, to thank Captain Joseph H. Coit, formerly Vice-President and manager of Moffat, Yard & Company,—now, I believe, on service somewhere in France,—without whose coöperation this work, perhaps, might not have been undertaken.

To Mr. Belasco I owe a debt of lasting gratitude—not only for his unquestioning, instant compliance with every request I have ventured to make of him, but far more for his simple, hearty sympathy in affliction and his great personal kindness, which is not less valued because I know that, primarily, it has been inspired by his reverence and affection for my father.

The Indices to this work I am chiefly responsible for. They have been prepared on the model of others made under my father’s direction and in large part by him: many of the biographical facts given in them were set down for the purpose by him. I trust that they will be found accurate and useful.

The delay in publishing this work has been due in part to ill-health which compelled me long to neglect it; in part to technical and mechanical difficulties and mischances in its manufacture. I surmise that notwithstanding the great care which has been exercised some minor errors and slips will be found to have crept into this edition:[A] if any are observed I shall be glad to have them brought to my attention in order that they may be corrected in future issues.

Jefferson Winter.

46 Winter Avenue, New Brighton,
Staten Island, New York.
June 30, 1918.

THE LIFE OF DAVID BELASCO.

ANCESTRY AND BIRTH.

David Belasco, one of the most singular, characteristic, picturesque, and influential persons who have participated in the theatrical movement in America, is descended from an old Portuguese Hebrew family (the name of which was originally pronounced “Valasco”), members of which emigrated from Portugal to England in the reign of the Portuguese King Emanuel the First (1495-1521), at one time in which reign the Jews in Portugal were cruelly persecuted, so that all of them who could do so fled from that country. His father, Humphrey Abraham Belasco, was a native of England, born in London, December 26, 1830. His mother, whose maiden name was Reina Martin, was also of English nativity, born in London, April 24, 1830. Both were Jews. They were poor and their social position was humble. The father’s occupation was that of a harlequin. He was proficient in his calling and he pursued it successfully at various London theatres, but he did not find it remunerative. He wished to improve his condition, and affected, as many others were, by the “gold fever,”—which broke out and soon became epidemic after the discoveries of gold in California (1842-1848), and was almost everywhere acute during 1849 and the early fifties,—he determined to seek his fortune in that apparent Eldorado. This determination was approved by his wife, who, like himself, was a person of strong character and adventurous spirit, and, accordingly, in 1852-’53, they voyaged, in a sailing vessel, to Aspinwall (now Colon), crossed the isthmus to Panama, and went thence, by another sailing vessel, to San Francisco, California, arriving there almost destitute. Their first lodging was in a house, long ago destroyed, in Howard Street, where, in a room in a cellar, July 25, 1853, occurred the birth of their first child, David Belasco, the subject of this Memoir.

BOYHOOD IN BRITISH COLUMBIA.

The residence of those adventurers in San Francisco continued for several years, Humphrey Belasco keeping a general shop and moderately prospering as a tradesman, but about the beginning of 1858 they migrated (travelling by sailing vessel) to the coast town of Victoria, then a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company,—later (1862)

From an old photograph. _{Belasco’s Collection.}

THE INFANT BELASCO AND HIS PARENTS, 1854

Inscription:

“Father and Mother and Me—during my first starring engagement.—D. B.”

incorporated a city. There Humphrey Belasco continued in business, as a dealer in tobacco, fur, and other commodities, trading with miners and Indian hunters and trappers, and also he dabbled in real estate speculation and took part in mining operations, joining a party that explored the Cariboo Mines region. He was not fortunate in his real estate and mining ventures, nor did he specially prosper in trade,—though, as Macaulay says of Richardson, the novelist, “he kept his shop and his shop kept him.[B]” Humphrey Belasco is mentioned, in a record of that place, as keeping a tobacco shop there, in Yates Street, in 1862. He remained in Victoria for about seven years, and there three of his children were born: Israel, July 25, 1861; Frederick, June 25, 1862, and Walter, January 1, 1864. The elder Belasco was a social favorite, and so considerable was his popularity that he was more than once asked to accept public office,—a distinction which he declined. He is remembered as a modest, lovable person, genial in feeling and manner, a pleasant companion and a clever entertainer in the privacy of his home, and as having been specially fond of quietude.

In Victoria much of David’s childhood was passed. From his mother, who was intellectual, imaginative, romantic, and of a peculiarly amiable disposition, he received the rudiments of education: she taught him neatness, self-respect, industry, and the importance of acquiring knowledge. I have heard him speak of her, with deep emotion, as the friend from whom he had derived those lessons of courage, energy, perseverance, and arduous labor that have guided him through life. He was early sent to a school called the Colonial, in Victoria, conducted by an Irishman named Burr, remembered as a person whose temper was violent and whose discipline was harsh. Later, he attended a school called the Collegiate, conducted by T. C. Woods, a clergyman. When about seven years old he attracted the attention of a kindly Roman Catholic priest, Father —— McGuire, then aged eighty-six, who perceived in him uncommon intelligence and precocious talent, and who presently proposed to his parents that the boy should dwell under his care in a monastery and be educated. Strenuous objection to that arrangement was at first made by David’s father, sturdily Jewish and strictly orthodox in his religious views; but the mother, more liberal in opinion and more sagaciously provident of the future, assented, and her persuasions, coincident with the wish of the lad himself, eventually prevailed against the paternal scruples. In the monastery David remained about two and a half years, supervised by Father McGuire, and he made good progress in various studies. The effect of the training to which he was there subjected was exceedingly beneficial: ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church have long been eminent for scholarship and for efficiency in the education of youth: their influence endured, and it is visible in David Belasco’s habits of thought, use of mental powers, tireless labor, persistent purpose to excel, and likewise in his unconscious demeanor, and even in his attire. It would have been better for the boy if he had remained longer in the monastic cell and under the guidance of his benevolent protector, but he had inherited a gypsy temperament and a roving propensity, he became discontented with seclusion, and suddenly, without special cause and without explanation, he fled from the monastery and joined a wandering circus, with which he travelled. In that association he was taught to ride horses “bareback” and to perform as a miniature clown. A serious illness presently befell him and, being disabled, he was left in a country town, where he would have died but for the benevolent care of a clown, Walter Kingsley by name, who remained with him,—obtaining a scanty subsistence by clowning and singing in the streets, for whatever charity might bestow,—and nursed him through a malignant fever, only himself to be stricken with it, and to die, just as the boy became convalescent. Meantime Humphrey Belasco, having contrived to trace his fugitive son, came to his rescue and carried him back to Victoria, to a loving mother’s care and to his life at school.

EARLY PROCLIVITY FOR THE THEATRE.

It was about this time, 1862-’63, that David’s strong inclination for theatrical pursuits became specially manifest. His mother was fond of poetry, and she, and also his school teachers, had taught him to memorize and recite verses. His parents, the father having been a professional harlequin (one of David’s uncles, his namesake, it should be mentioned, was the admired English actor David James [1839-1893], and the whole family was histrionical), naturally sought the Theatre and affiliated as much as they could with whatever players came to Victoria or were resident there as members of the local stock company. David had been “carried on,” at the Victoria Theatre Royal, as Cora’s Child, in “Pizarro,”—that once famous play,

From an old photograph. The Albert Davis Collection.

JULIA DEAN (HAYNE)

adapted from Augustus Frederick Ferdinand von Kotzebue’s “Die Spanier in Peru,” and rewritten by Sheridan. That incident probably occurred when the talented and beautiful Julia Dean (1830-1868), in the season of 1857-’58, first acted in Victoria,—“Pizarro” having been in her repertory and Cora one of the parts in which she was distinguished. In June, 1856, Julia Dean was lessee of the American Theatre, San Francisco; she made several tours in Pacific Coast towns. Belasco remembers having played the boy, William, in “East Lynne,” with her, but that appearance must have occurred later, because “East Lynne,” as a novel, was not published till 1861, and it was not launched earlier as a play. Julia Dean returned to the East in 1858, but made at least one subsequent tour of the Western States.

MEMORIES OF JULIA DEAN.

Belasco’s random recollections of the actors with whom he was brought in contact while in California and other parts of the West are those of a youthful enthusiast, generally injudicious, frequently incorrect, sometimes informative, always indicative of amiability. Julia Dean, who held little David in her arms when he was a child, and with whom he appeared in boyhood, remains to this day an object of his homage. She was one of the best actresses of her time. I saw her first at the Boston Museum, in 1854, as Julia, in “The Hunchback,” later in other characters, and was charmed by her exquisite beauty and her winning personality. I saw her for the last time, in New York, in July, 1867, at the Broadway Theatre (the house which had been Wallack’s Lyceum), where she was playing,—with peculiar skill and fine effect,—Laura Fairlie and Anne Catherick, in “The Woman in White.” She was a scion of a theatrical family. Her maternal grandfather, Samuel Drake (1772-1847), an English actor, was highly esteemed on our Stage a hundred years ago. Her mother, Julia Drake (first Mrs. Thomas Fosdick, later Mrs. Edmund Dean), was a favorite in the theatres of the West and was accounted exceptionally brilliant. Julia Dean went on the stage (1845) at Louisville, Kentucky, made her first appearance in New York in 1846, at the old Bowery Theatre, and continued in practice of her art till the end of her life. She was lovely in person and not less lovely in character. Her figure was tall and slender, her complexion fair, her hair chestnut-brown, her voice sweet, her movement graceful, and she had sparkling hazel eyes. The existing portraits of her give no adequate reflection of her beauty. In acting, her intelligence was faultless, her demeanor natural, her feeling intense. Her every action seemed spontaneous. Her imagination was quick, she possessed power and authority, and she could thrill her audience with fine bursts of passion,—as notably she did in the Fifth Act of “The Hunchback”; but, as I recall her, she enticed chiefly by her intrinsic loveliness. Her performance of Knowles’s Julia was perfection. She played many exacting parts,—such as Bianca, in “Fazio”; Mrs. Haller, in “The Stranger”; Margaret Elmore, in “Love’s Sacrifice”; Griseldis, and Adrienne Lecouvreur. She was the primary Norma, in Epes Sargent’s “Priestess,” which was first acted in Boston, and she was the primary Leonor, in George Henry Boker’s tragedy of “Leonor de Guzman,” first produced at the original Broadway Theatre, New York, April 25, 1854. Whatever she did was earnestly done. Her soul was in her art, and she never permitted anything to degrade it. A marriage contracted (1855) with Dr. Arthur Hayne,—son of Robert Young Hayne, United States Senator from South Carolina, whose semi-seditious advocacy of “State Rights” prompted Daniel Webster’s great oration in the Senate (1830),—resulted unhappily, somewhat embittering her mind and impairing the bloom of her artistic style. She obtained a divorce and (1866) became the wife of James Cooper. She died suddenly, in childbirth, March 6, 1868. At her funeral, two days later, at Christ Church, Fifth Avenue and Thirty-first Street, New York, the service was performed by Rev. Ferdinand Cartwright Ewer (1826-1883), a noted Episcopalian ritualist, who in early life had been a dramatic critic,—one of competent intelligence, good judgment, and considerate candor,—associated with the newspaper press of San Francisco, had known her in the season of her California triumphs, and well knew her worth both as actress and woman.

REMOVAL TO SAN FRANCISCO.

Young David Belasco was frequently utilized for infantile and juvenile parts at the Victoria Theatre. In 1864, when Charles Kean, in his farewell “tour round the world,” filled a short engagement there, the lad appeared as the little Duke of York, in “King Richard III.” His age was then eleven, but he was diminutive and therefore he suited that part. During Kean’s engagement he also appeared as a super in “Pauline.” About 1865 Humphrey Belasco, his fortunes not improving as he had hoped, removed his family from Victoria and established residence in San Francisco, where he opened a fruit

From photographs by Brady. The Albert Davis Collection.

“THE KEANS”

Charles John Kean Ellen Tree, Mrs. Kean
(1811-1868) (1805-1880)

Taken during their last American tour, 1864-’65, soon after Belasco appeared with them in “King Richard III”

shop, fraternized with players at the theatres, gaining friends and popularity, and where he spent the rest of his life. David was sent to the Lincoln Grammar School, which for some time he continued to attend. There he was studious, and there, in particular, he was trained in elocution,—that art having been specially esteemed by his teachers. Among the persons who, at various times, instructed him in elocution were Dr. Ira G. Hoitt, Miss—— James, Professor Ebenezer Knowlton, and Miss “Nelly” Holbrook, once an actress of distinction (she figures among the oldtime female players of Hamlet and Romeo), mother of the contemporary actor (1917) Holbrook Blinn. The boy’s talent for declamation had been quickly perceived, and a judicious endeavor was made to foster and develop it. Among the poems he was taught to recite, and which, in the esteem of his teachers, he recited well, were “The Vagabonds,” by John Townsend Trowbridge; “The Maniac,” by Matthew Gregory Lewis; “Curfew Must Not Ring To-night,” by Rosa Hartwick Thorpe, and “Bernardo del Carpio,” by Felicia Hemans. Those poems were well chosen for the purpose in view, because each of them contains a dramatic element propitious to a declaimer.

GLIMPSES OF BOYHOOD.

At one time, in his boyhood, at Victoria, Belasco was adopted by the local Fire Department as “a mascot,” and when parades of the firemen occurred,—the hook and ladder vehicle being drawn with ropes by the men,—the little lad either walked at the head of the line or rode, perched high upon the wagon, arrayed in a red shirt, black trousers and boots, and a fire-helmet. After removing, with his parents, from Victoria to San Francisco, he was sent to a school called the Fourth Street, and it was from there that he went to the Lincoln. He took the honors for penmanship, being assigned to keep the school “rolls,” and sometimes his “compositions” were framed and hung in the halls, for the edification of other pupils. There, also, he was awarded a gold medal, as being the best reader and performer of Tragedy,—a prize which he pawned for the benefit of the family,—while his chum, James O. Barrows, obtained a silver medal for special cleverness in Comedy. As a schoolboy he was particularly fond of reading “dime novels,” which, for convenience of surreptitious perusal, he customarily concealed in his boots. For some time after their return to San Francisco the Belascos dwelt in a house in Harrison Street; later, they resided in Louisa Street.

The first play, apparently, that David wrote was concocted later, after the family had removed to No. 174 Clara Street, and was entitled “Jim Black; or, The Regulator’s Revenge!” Another of his early pieces of dramatic writing (and, perhaps, it may have been the first) was called “The Roll of the Drum.” Belasco is very positive that he wrote this soon after the death of Abraham Lincoln (April 15, 1865),—at which time he was less than twelve years old. His recollection regarding this may be correct; there is no doubt that he was an extraordinarily precocious child, and such children do, sometimes, write astonishing compositions even at an earlier age than twelve. Belasco is equally positive that his play, while it was, at various times, acted outside of San Francisco, was never played in that city. A play of the same name was performed, by Mme. Methua-Scheller and associates, at Maguire’s Opera House, for the benefit of “Sue” Robinson, on November 26, 1869, announced as “The new military drama”; this was not Belasco’s play, but one wholly different from it. Belasco’s custom, as a lad, was to keep a table by his bedside, with writing materials, candle and matches upon it, in order to note at once any idea that might occur to him as likely to be of service in his theatrical work, and he was often rewarded for this precaution. In all my study of theatrical history I have not encountered a person more downright daft, more completely saturated in every fibre of his being, with passion for the Stage and things dramatical than was young David Belasco.

SCHOOL DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO.

The following extract from a letter dated December 25, 1916, addressed to Belasco by one of his schoolmates, E. F. Lennon, Esqr., now (1917) City Clerk of Red Bluff, Tehama County, California, provides a glimpse of him as a schoolboy in San Francisco:

“ ... We drifted away from each other in old ’Frisco, in the early seventies, and chance has kept us distant from each other.... You and I lived near each other, in the old days,—you in Louisa Street, I, a block away, in Shipley. We went to the old Lincoln School and travelled through the same grades ... and in them all we were together. Do you remember when you and I started a Circulating Library, in your home? You had quite a collection of books and I had a number also, and we put them on shelves in your house. Not long after a fire came along and destroyed our good intentions.... We also had our theatrical performances, in the basement of my home, when the price of admission was a gunny-sack or a beer bottle. You were the star actor and our presentations were often attended by the grown-ups.... I remember when Queen Emma, of the Hawaiian Islands, visited our school, and the entire body of students were marched upstairs to the big hall to see and entertain her. You recited your famous selection, “The Madman” [Lewis’s “The Maniac”]. Another pupil and myself did a little better than the bunch: I think the other boy’s name was Moore. He and I kissed the Queen, and it was the talk of the school for some time. She took the kisses all right, and we got a lecture for our audacity, and perhaps a licking....”

HARD TIMES IN EARLY DAYS.

The removal of the Belasco family from Victoria to San Francisco was not attended by material prosperity, and for several years the family suffered the pinch of poverty. Young David keenly felt the necessity of helping his parents, and by every means in his power he tried to do so. His conduct, in those troublous years, as it has been made known to me, not only in conversations with himself, but in communications by his surviving relatives, provides a remarkable example of filial devotion. As a lad, in Victoria, he had shown surprising facility in learning the Indian language and frequently had acted as interpreter for Indians who traded with his father; also, he had manifested that lively and shrewd propensity for trading which is peculiar to the Jew. As a lad, in San Francisco, while attending school as often as possible, he regularly remained at home, after the morning session, every Friday, in order to assist his mother in washing clothes for the family, a labor which, being then of low stature, he could perform only by standing on a large box, thus being enabled to reach into the washtub. He would also help his mother in the drudgery of the kitchen, and then often do for her the necessary household marketing for the coming week; and he would make up, every week, the records and accounts of his father’s business in the shop. When neither at school nor occupied at home he would seek and perform any odd piece of work by which a trifle might be earned. He was by nature a book-lover and acquisitive of information: he had access to several public libraries, but he craved ownership of books, and from time to time he earned a little money for the purchase of them by recitations, sometimes given in the homes of his friends, sometimes at church entertainments, sometimes at Irish-American Hall and other similar places. For each of such recitations he received two dollars, and on some nights he recited two, three, or four times. As he grew older, especially after 1868, his efforts to obtain employment at theatres grew more and more constant, and, as already said, they were occasionally successful. His activities, indeed, were such that it is a wonder his health was not permanently impaired,—but he was possessed of exceptional vitality, which happily has endured. Once he worked for a while as a chore-boy in a cigar store and factory, where he washed windows, scrubbed floors, and rendered whatever menial service was required, opening the place at morning and closing it at evening. That was a hard experience, but it led to something better, because the keeper of the cigar-shop, taking note of him and his ways, procured for him a better situation, which for some time he held, in a bookstore. There he had access to many books, and he eagerly improved every opportunity of reading. A chief recreation of his consisted in haunting the wharves, gazing at the ships, and musing and wondering about the strange tropical lands from which they came and to which presently they would sail away.

THE SENTIMENTAL STOWAWAY.

There was one singular consequence of Belasco’s interest in ships and his somewhat extravagant and sentimental fancy which is worth special record. The tragedian John McCullough used frequently to recite, with pathetic effect, a ballad, once widely known, by Arthur Matthison (1826-1883), called “The Little Hero,”—originally named “The Stowaway,” and first published in “Watson’s Art Journal,” New York. The earliest record I have been able to find of McCullough’s delivery of this ballad in San Francisco states that he recited it on the occasion of a performance given for the benefit of Lorraine Rogers, director of the California Theatre, on November 30, 1869. Then or, perhaps, earlier (since McCullough was in San Francisco as early as 1866) Belasco heard him, and his febrile fancy, already superheated by excessive reading of morbid sensation stories, was so fired by the recitation that he felt impelled to submit himself to a similar experience. In his “Story” he gives the following account of his adventure as a Stowaway:

“The story of ’The Little Hero’ related the adventures of a stowaway who was discovered in his hiding-place by the sailors when they were in mid-ocean, and the lad was forced to work, and was beaten and starved into the bargain. As a boy I had read a like tale, which had so stirred my imagination that I used to dream of it by night, and in my spare time by day I would wander along the wharves to gaze at the shipping. How it happened I don’t quite know, but my feet led me on board a boat and, simply as an experiment, I hid myself. Then a rash notion came into my head! Suppose I stayed where I was and put into practice what the poem had so graphically described! For thirty hours I crouched behind my sable bulwark, and after interminable sailing it seemed to me about time that I was discovered, so I made myself visible. I was dragged up on

JOHN MC CULLOUGH

“This was the noblest Roman of them all!”
—Julius Caesar

Photograph by Sarony.
Author’s Collection.

deck with no tender touch, and there the analogy between the little hero and myself vanished. The captain of the schooner was a friend of my father’s. ’Aren’t you Humphrey’s boy?’ he asked, and I was obliged to confess to my identity. ’Take him downstairs and wash him,’ the captain ordered, for contact with the coal had made me look like a blackamoor; despite my protestations that this was not the correct treatment for a stowaway, I was taken below. ’Give him something to eat,’ he called after us, but I was as obdurate as a militant suffragette in the matter of food. Later on, when I was ’swabbed down,’ I was taken on deck again, where I was obliged to tell the captain my story, and the reasons for my escapade. ’I’ll be blazed if I lick you as you seem to want!’ said he. I was reciting the story to the queer group gathered about me, when I suddenly realized that my old enemy seasickness was creeping over me. ’Let me scrub the floor,’ I pleaded. ’They always do.’ At first they laughingly refused, but presently, to humor me, I was put to work on a brass rail that needed shining. However, the smell of the oil polish hastened my catastrophe. I was put to bed and very glad to be there. From Vancouver I was shipped home, where I found my mother rejoiced to get me back. She was not so perturbed as she might have been, because the poor lady was used to my ’disappearances’ in search of adventure and the romantic. She always knew that I was doing something or other to gain new impressions, and her heart was wonderfully attuned to mine.”

A BOHEMIAN INTERLUDE.

Belasco left school in June, 1871. In August, 1878, he married. It has been impossible to fix precise dates for some of his proceedings within that period of about two years and three months. Though he steadily, if at first slowly, progressed, and though specific records of his doings become more and more frequent as the years pass in review, it is not until about 1876-’79 that they are numerous. During all, or almost all, of the period indicated (1871-1879),—more so in the earlier part than in the later,—he was a nomadic bohemian. At first he often roamed the streets at night and would visit the saloons and low “dives” which abounded in San Francisco, and recite before the rough frequenters of those resorts,—sometimes giving “The Maniac,” sometimes “Bernardo del Carpio,” sometimes “shockers” of his own composition (things which he wrote with facility, on any current topic that attracted his attention), and gather whatever money might be thrown to him by those unruly but often liberal auditors. On a Sunday he was sometimes fortunate enough to earn as much as ten or twelve dollars by his recitals. Another means of gain that he employed was the expedient of volunteer press reporting. He would visit every gambling “den,” opium “joint,” hospital, and police-station to which he could obtain access (the morgue was one of his familiar resorts), and write brief stories of whatever scenes and occurrences he might observe, to be sold to any newspaper that would pay for them,—when he was lucky enough to make a sale. In talking to me about his youthful days, as he has done in the course of a friendly acquaintance extending over many years, he has particularly dwelt on the intense, often morbid, and quite irresistible interest which, in early life, he felt in everything extraordinary, emotional, sensational, dramatic,—everything that might be called phenomenal. “As a young fellow,” he once said to me, “I visited the scene of every murder that I heard of—and they were many. I knew every infamous and dangerous place in San Francisco. Once I tried to interfere between a blackguard and his woman, whom he was abusing, and I got a bullet along the forehead for my trouble: I have the scar of it to this day. It was freely predicted that I would end in state’s prison, probably on the gallows. Only my dear mother seemed to understand me. My adventures and wanderings (’Wandering Feet,’ she used to call me) worried her, which I grieve to think of now, but she always took my part. ’Davy is all right,’ she used to say; ’leave him alone; he’s only curious about life, and wants to see everything with those big, dark eyes of his.’ She was right; and, if I didn’t see everything, I saw a good deal.”

The miscellaneous knowledge that young Belasco accumulated in observation of “the seamy side” of life by night, in one of the most vicious, turbulent, and perilous cities in the world,—which San Francisco certainly was, in his juvenile time,—was of much use to him when, later, he became employed as a hack-writer of sensation melodramas, in the theatres of that city and other cities of the West.

BELASCO’S EARLIEST ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE THEATRE IN SAN FRANCISCO

It is not possible to furnish an entirely full, clear, chronological account of Belasco’s earliest relations with the Theatre in San Francisco. Various current sketches of his career which I have examined either give no details as to this part of it, or make assertions about it which I have ascertained to be incorrect. The subject is not explicitly treated in his autobiographical fragment, “The Story of My Life,” a formless, rambling narrative, obviously, to a discerning reader, evolved from discursive memory, without consultation of records or necessary specification of dates or verification of statements, and which I have found to be, in many essential particulars, inaccurate. Few persons possess an absolutely trustworthy memory of dates,

From an old photograph. Belasco’s Collection.

BELASCO’S PARENTS

Humphrey Abraham, and Reina Martin, Belasco, About 1865

and Belasco is not one of them. His recollections of his boyhood and specially of his early association with the Theatre in San Francisco are sometimes interesting and in a general way authentic, and certainly they are believed by him to be invariably correct; but careful research of San Francisco newspapers of the period implicated, and of other records, discovers that frequently they are hazy, confused, and erroneous. “He who has not made the experiment,” says Dr. Johnson, “or is not accustomed to require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness of imagery.” How much more must the lapse of many years take from memory! According to Belasco’s recollection, his first formal appearance on the San Francisco Stage was made while he was yet a pupil at the Lincoln Grammar School in that city, when Mary Wells (Mrs. Richard Stœples, 1829-1878) was (as he alleges) filling an engagement at the Metropolitan Theatre, in a play called “The Lioness of Nubia.” Mary Wells was an English actress, well known and much respected on the New York Stage about fifty years ago. She made her first appearance in this country at Albany, in 1850, and in 1856 she appeared at Laura Keene’s Theatre, New York, as Mme. Deschapelles, in “The Lady of Lyons.” She did not figure as a star: her “line” was old women: there is no record of her appearance at the Metropolitan Theatre, nor of her appearance anywhere in San Francisco, until April 4, 1874, when she acted with “The Lingard Combination,” at the Opera House (opened as Shiels’ Opera House), playing Mme. Dumesnil, in an English translation of Octave Feuillet’s “La Tentation.” There is, moreover, no play entitled “The Lioness of Nubia.” There is, however, a play called “The Lion of Nubia,” and there was an actress, of the soubrette order, named Minnie Wells, who appeared in that play at the Metropolitan Theatre, December 16, 1872, acting the central part, Harry Trueheart. The play was billed as “The Great Eastern Sensational Military Drama, ’The Lion of Nubia,’ introducing Banjo Solos, Banjo Duets,” etc. This play was thus advertised in San Francisco newspapers, December 16 to 22, 1872. John R. Woodard and Frank Rea, both of whom Belasco specifies as having been in the performance he supposes to have been given by “Mary Wells,” were members of the company supporting Minnie Wells at the Metropolitan in December, 1872, and it was with the latter and in “The Lion of Nubia” that Belasco made the appearance which he has misremembered and inadvertently misstated in his published “Story.” The part that he played, Lieutenant Victor, was practically that of a super. He was billed on that occasion as “Walter Kingsley,” the name of the circus clown who had befriended him in his childhood. It was a common expedient of the time for actors to adopt names not theirs when embarking on a theatrical career, and it pleased Belasco, for no special reason beyond a boyish whim, to do likewise. He used the name of Walter Kingsley for a little while, but his doing so distressed his mother and therefore he presently dropped it and wisely reverted to his own. In the early records that I have found it generally appears as “D. Belasco,” and often various superfluous initials are inserted through compositors’ errors. Belasco’s account of the appearance with Miss Wells, as given to me, specifies that he had one line to speak, which was “Perhaps the stress of the weather has driven them further up the coast”; that his schoolmates, in large number, were in the gallery; that his appearance was hailed by them with applause; that they clamorously demanded he should recite “The Maniac”; that their boisterous behavior interrupted the performance and annoyed the actress, and that she caused Woodard to discharge him.

It certainly is true that Belasco was carried on the stage, in childhood, at Victoria, that later he there “went on” for the little Duke of York, in “King Richard III.,” with Charles Kean,—as previously mentioned,—and that he made informal appearances, as declaimer and as super, in the theatres of San Francisco, while yet a schoolboy,—all those juvenile essays being cumulative toward his final embarkation on the career of actor, dramatist, and theatrical manager: thus, on December 20, 1868, he participated in a public entertainment, given at Lincoln Hall, by pupils of the Lincoln Grammar School, reciting “The Banishment of Catiline” and “The Maniac” (the latter a recitation he was often called on to make and with which, at one time or another, he won several prizes); in the “Catiline” recital he appeared in a costume comprising his father’s underdrawers and undershirt and a toga of cheap cloth. On November 24, 1869, he appeared, for a night or two, with Mme. Marie Methua-Scheller (18—-1878), at Maguire’s Opera House, as one of the newsboys, in Augustin Daly’s “Under the Gas-Light,” and in the course of that performance he played on a banjo and danced: on November 27 he “went on,” at the same theatre, as an Indian Brave, in a presentment by Joseph Proctor (1816-1897) of “The Jibbenainosay.” “I was much too small,” he told me, “but Proctor kept me because I gave such fine warwhoops.” On March 17, 1871, at the Metropolitan Theatre, he assumed the character of an Indian Chieftain, in “Professor Hager’s Great Historical Allegory and Tableaux, ’The Great Republic,’” which prodigy was performed by a company of “more than 400 young ladies and gentlemen” of various schools in the city, and for the benefit of those schools: it was several times exhibited: in the Second Part thereof he personated War. On June 2, following, he figured prominently in “competitive declamations” given at Platt’s Hall, by pupils of the Lincoln School, and also in an amateur theatrical performance, on the same occasion, appearing as High-flyer Nightshade, in “The Freedom of the Press.” Hager’s “The Great Republic” was a pleasing entertainment of its kind, and, after the close of the Lincoln School, Hager arranged to give it in Sacramento, and obtained permission to take with him to that city young Belasco and his friend, James O. Barrows, who were considered the bright particular stars of the performance. They appeared there, in the “Allegory,” April 15, 1871, “for the benefit of the Howard Association.” “I consider Professor Hager to have been my first manager,” says Belasco,—why, I do not know.

On August 23, 1869, Lotta (Charlotte Crabtree, whom John Brougham described as “the dramatic cocktail”) acted, for the first time in San Francisco, Fire-Fly, in a play of the same name by Edmund Falconer, based on Ouida’s novel of “Under Two Flags.” She was, then and later, exceedingly popular in it. Belasco and other stage-smitten youths organized an amateur theatrical association, called, in honor of the elfin Lotta, “The Fire-Fly Social and Dramatic Club.” As a member of that association Belasco played several parts. On June 22, 1871, he appeared with other fire-flies, at Turnverein Hall (Bush Street, near Powell), in—— Sutter’s drama of “A Life’s Revenge; or, Two Loves for One Heart,”—acting Fournechet, Minister of Finance. “The San Francisco Figaro,” noting this entertainment (the fifth given by the “Fire-Flies”), remarked, “Among those who will take part in its representation is David Belasco, his first appearance in leading business”; and in a review of the performance a critical writer in the same paper recorded that “David Belasco displayed much power.”

AN EARLY FRIEND.—W. H. SEDLEY-SMITH.

Soon after the opening of the California Theatre (1869) Belasco, who attended every theatrical performance to which he could gain admission, had the good fortune to meet John McCullough, and, pleasing

From an old photograph. Author’s Collection.

WILLIAM HENRY SEDLEY-SMITH

that genial actor, he was from time to time employed to hear him say the words of parts which he was committing to memory. In this way, by McCullough’s favor, he was enabled to see many performances at the California, sometimes from a gallery seat, sometimes from the stage, and in this way, also, he chanced to make another auspicious acquaintance, that of the sterling old actor William Henry Sedley-Smith, who took a strong fancy to Belasco, perceiving his native ability, talked with him, became genuinely interested in the romantic, enthusiastic lad, and gave him valuable advice, encouragement, and assistance.

To the present generation of playgoers that veteran actor has ceased to be even a name (the present generation of playgoers being, according to my observation of it, specially remarkable for its vast and comprehensive ignorance of theatrical history), but in other years his name was one to conjure with, and to the few persons extant who cherish memories of our Stage in the eighteen-fifties it recalls a delightful reality. There are players whose individuality is so vital, so redolent of strength and joy, that the idea of death is never associated with them. Like great poetic thoughts, they enjoy an immortal youth in the imagination, and to hear that they are dead is to suffer the shock of something seeming strange and unnatural as well as grimly sad. Such an actor was Sedley-Smith. Robust, rosy, stately, with a rich, ringing voice, a merry laugh, and a free and noble courtesy of demeanor, he lives in my remembrance as a perfect incarnation of generous life,—glad in its strength and diffusive of gladness and strength all around him. His talents were versatile. He played all parts well and in some he was superlatively excellent. There has been no Sir Oliver Surface on the modern Stage to be compared with his. It came upon the duplicity and foul sentimentalism of the scheming Joseph like a burst of sunshine on a dirty fog, and the gladness that it inspired in the breast of the sympathetic spectator was of the kind that brings tears into the eyes. The man who inspired the personation was felt to be genuine—a type of nature’s nobility. His Old Dornton, in “The Road to Ruin,” was a stately, pathetic type of character, animated by what seems, after all, the best of human emotions,—paternal love. He could impart an impressive dignity even to the fur-trimmed anguish of the sequestered Stranger.

Sedley-Smith’s professional career covered a period of more than fifty years. He began at the foot of the ladder and he mounted to a pinnacle of solid excellence and sound repute. He was born, December 4, 1806, near Montgomery, in Wales. His father was an officer in the British Army and was killed in battle in one of the engagements, under Wellington, of the Peninsular War. His father’s brother, also a soldier, fought at Waterloo, was twice wounded there, and became a Knight Commander of the Bath. It will be seen that this actor had an ancestry of courage and breeding. He was a posthumous child, and the widowed mother married again,—thus, unwittingly, imposing on her boy the misfortune of an unhappy home. The stepfather and the child were soon at variance. One day, the lad being only fourteen years old, a contention occurred between them, which ended in his being locked into his chamber. At night he got out of a window and escaped, leaving home forever. To earn his living he joined a company of strolling players, and to avoid detection and recapture he adopted the name of Smith, by which name he was ever after professionally known, though in private affairs he used his true name, Sedley.

The early part of his career was full of vicissitude and trouble. He was not one of those dreamers who think themselves commissioned to clutch at a grasp that proficiency in a most difficult art which scarcely rewards even the faithful and loving labor of a lifetime. He chose to learn his profession by study and work—and he did so. His first appearance on the stage was made at Shrewsbury, and some of his earlier successes were gained at Glasgow. He came to America in 1827 and appeared at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, as Jeremy Diddler, in “Raising the Wind.” His most valuable repute was won in Boston, where he first appeared in 1828, at the Tremont Theatre, as Rolando, in “The Honeymoon.” In 1836 he managed Pelby’s National Theatre in that city, and from 1843 to 1860 he was stage manager of the Boston Museum. He married, shortly after his arrival in America, Miss Eliza Riddle (1808?-1861), in her time one of the most sparkling, bewitching, and popular performers of Comedy that our Stage has known. His first performance in New York occurred at the Chatham Street Theatre, November 3, 1840, when he acted Edgar to the King Lear of Junius Brutus Booth. The public also saw him at that time as Laertes, Gratiano, and Marc Antony. His last professional appearance in New York was made at the Winter Garden, May 6, 1865, for the benefit of his daughter, Mary Sedley, known to contemporary playgoers as Mrs. Sol. Smith. Later, he went to San Francisco, where he immediately became a favorite—and he deserved his favor and his fame, because his art was intellectual, truthful, conscientious, significant with thought and purpose, and warm with emotion. He

Courtesy Miss Blanche Bates. The Albert Davis Collection.
MRS. FRANK MARK BATES SALLIE HINCKLEY

From old photographs

died, in San Francisco, January 17, 1872, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, leaving no work undone that he could do and therefore ending in the fulness of time. He was acquainted with grief, but there was one sorrow he escaped,—he never knew “how dull it is to pause.”

It is obvious that no influence could have been more helpful to the eager, ingenuous, stage-struck Belasco than that of this sturdy, experienced, grand old actor and director, attracted and pleased by the fervor of a schoolboy seeking ingress to the Theatre. Belasco’s assurance that he wrote a good hand when he was a boy, however difficult that may be to believe now, is correct (I have independently ascertained that he took a prize for penmanship at the Lincoln School), and Smith,—who was stage manager of the California Theatre,—gave him odd pieces of work to do making fair copies of prompt-books of plays produced at the California, and also, from time to time, employed him to “go on” in the mobs, crowds, etc. To him Belasco confided his ambition to act Hamlet, Iago, and romantic characters, and by him he was advised to throw away ambition of that kind, physical exility making his success improbable (“you would need to be a head taller,” the veteran assured him), and to devote himself to what are termed “character parts” (miscalled by that designation, every part being a character part: “eccentric” is the quality really meant) and the study of stage management. If Smith had lived a little longer Belasco probably would have had better opportunity at the California Theatre, but the old man died before the youth had been more than about six months embarked on his professional theatrical career. Nevertheless, he owes much to the instruction and advice of that wise and kind friend.

ADOPTION OF THE STAGE.

Belasco’s actual adoption of the dramatic calling as a means of livelihood, as nearly as the fact can be determined, occurred on July 10, 1871, near the close of his eighteenth year, when he acted a minor part in a play called “Help,” by Frederick G—— Marsden, which was presented with Joseph Murphy (1832-1915) in its central part. This actor had been for some time a favorite minstrel and variety performer in San Francisco, generally billed as “Joe” Murphy (his real name was Donnelly), and had made his first appearance in this play of “Help,” May 8, 1871, at Wood’s Museum, New York, acting Ned Daly, an Irish comedy character, shown under several aliases and in various amusing and otherwise effective situations. Murphy’s professional associates at the Metropolitan, among whom Belasco was thus launched upon actual theatrical employment, were John R. Woodard, J. H. Hardie, J. C. McGuire, W. C. Dudley, Frank Rea, H. Swift, George Hinckley, R. A. Wilson, J. H. Vinson, Mrs. F. M. Bates (mother of that fine actress Blanche Bates, so widely and rightly popular in our time), Mrs. Frank Rea, Sallie A. Hinckley, Carrie Lipsis, Jennie Mandeville, Susie Soulé, and Ada Shattuck. Belasco, at first, was a super, but later he was provided with a few words. His school days had now come to an end, and from the time of his appearance in “Help” he continued, irregularly but persistently, and at last successfully, in the service of the Theatre.

BELASCO’S THEATRICAL NOVITIATE.

Belasco believes that soon after his appearance with Murphy, in “Help,” he was associated with the Chapman Sisters, but he is again mistaken. Murphy was at the Metropolitan in July, 1872. There is no record of an appearance of the Chapman Sisters there between that time and March 5, 1873, on which latter date a “Grand Re-Opening of the Metropolitan Theatre” occurred, under the direction of John Woodard. That “re-opening” was announced thus:

“The want of a People’s Theatre having long been felt in this community, the management has determined to present their patrons a First Class Theatre with First Class Stars and a First Class Company, with prices of admission placed within the reach of all.

“The Talented and Beautiful Chapman Sisters will appear in [H. J.] Byron’s splendid burlesque, ’Little Don Giovanni; or, Leperello and the Stone Statue.’ Performance to begin with ’Ici on Parle Français.’”

Belasco was a member of the Metropolitan Company at that time, having appeared five days earlier, in a performance by way of “A Grand Complimentary Benefit to Marian Mordaunt,” with, among others, Alice Harrison, D. C. Anderson, Owen Marlowe, James C. Williamson, Henry Edwards, Henry Courtaine, John Woodard, and Charles E. Allen,—those players having been assembled from several companies. The bill included “A Morning Call,” “The Colleen Bawn,” and the First and Second acts of “Darling.” Belasco, on the occasion

From old photographs. Belasco’s Collection.

THE CHAPMAN SISTERS

Ella Chapman Blanche Chapman

of that benefit, played Peter Bowbells, in “The Illustrious Stranger.” In the opening bill of the Chapman Sisters, “Little Don Giovanni,” Belasco acted the First Policeman. Other plays in which the Chapmans appeared during that engagement were “Checkmate,” March 21; “Schermerhorn’s Boy,” April 2; “The Wonderful Scamp; or, Aladdin No. 2,” and “The Statue Lover,” April 3; “Pluto,” April 15; and “The Beauty and the Brigands.” In those plays Belasco acted, respectively, Strale, Reuben, the Genius of the Ring, Peter True, the First Fury, and Mateo, the Landlord. “A Kiss in the Dark” and “A Happy Pair” were also played at the Metropolitan at this time, and probably he appeared in them, but I have not found specification of his doing so. The Chapman Sisters, Blanche and Ella, were daughters of an English actor, Henry Chapman (1822-1865), and were handsome and proficient players of burlesque. One of their most successful vehicles was “The Gold Demon.” Belasco appeared in it with them (March 18, 1873), as Prince Saucilita, and made up and played in imitation of a local eccentricity, known as “Emperor” Norton. His performance, practically a caricature, was considered clever and it elicited considerable commendation. “The Figaro” critic wrote of him: “D. Belasco took the house by storm with his make-up for ’Emperor’ Norton, which was quite a feature of the piece.” Actors have often exhibited theatrical travesties of anomalous individuals: Samuel Foote (1720-1777), on the old English Stage, frequently did so: sometimes such exhibitions have proved attractive to the public and largely remunerative: generally they are trivial and contemptible. Thomas D. Rice (1808-1860), the actor who carried Joseph Jefferson, as a child, upon the stage, in 1833,—the first time he was ever seen there,—gained wealth and popularity by copying the grotesque behavior of an old negro named “Jim” Crow, who had been a slave and who was well known to residents of Louisville, Kentucky, about 1828-’29. Edwin Booth, in his novitiate, made a “hit” in San Francisco, about 1852-’53, by imitating a local notoriety named Plume. It did not, however, in his case, lead on to fortune,—nor did it in that of young Belasco as “Emperor” Norton. His remuneration was, for a long time, extremely small. While employed at the Metropolitan Theatre he earned six dollars a week, extra, by copying sets of the “parts” of plays, for the use of actors,—work done after the performance at night. “I wrote a beautiful hand in those days,” he told me; “almost like engraved script,—though perhaps you won’t believe it now.”

A THEATRICAL VAGABOND.

Belasco was fortunate in his early days in an acquaintance with an actor and theatrical agent, James H. McCabe, who loaned him many old plays, which he studied, and also with R. M. Edwards, a representative in San Francisco of Samuel French, the New York publisher of French’s Standard Drama, etc., who provided him with opportunity to augment his knowledge of theatrical publications and of plays in manuscript. McCabe sometimes procured professional employment for him, but his occupation was consistently desultory. He traversed the Pacific Coast, to and fro, during several years, with various bands of vagabond players, gleaning a precarious subsistence in a wild and often dangerous country, going south into Lower California and into Mexico, and going north to Seattle and to the home of his childhood, Victoria. Sometimes he ventured into the mountain settlements and mining camps of the inland country, travelling by stage when it was possible to do so, by wagon when he and his associates were lucky enough to have one, often on horseback or muleback, oftener on foot, performing in all sorts of places and glad and grateful for anything he could earn. His account of that period, as he has related it to me, is quite as replete with vicissitude, hardship, squalor, toil, romance, and misery as are the narratives over which the theatrical student muses, marvels, and saddens when reading the “Memoirs of Tate Wilkinson,” Ryley’s “Itinerant,” Charlotte Charke’s miserable narrative, or the story of Edmund Kean. “Many a time,” Belasco has told me, “I’ve marched into town, banging a big drum or tooting a cornet. We used to play in any place we could hire or get into,—a hall, a big dining room, an empty barn; anywhere! I spent much of my second season on the stage (if it can be called ’on the stage’) roaming the country, and in that way got my first experience as a stage manager,—which meant being responsible for everything; and in the years that followed I had many another such engagement. I’ve interviewed an angry sheriff ’many a time and oft’ (the sheriffs generally owned the places we played in), or an angrier hotel-keeper, when we couldn’t pay our board. I’ve been locked up because I couldn’t pay a dollar or two for food and a bed; I’ve washed dishes and served as a waiter; I’ve done pretty much everything, working off such debts; and sometimes I’ve had the exciting pleasure of running away, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, before the hotel-keeper got ’on’ that we hadn’t money enough to

From an old photograph. Belasco’s Collection.

DAVID BELASCO

About 1873-’75

pay. I acted many parts in my first seasons ’on the road’—among them Raphael, in ’The Marble Heart’; Mr. Toodle, in the farce of ’The Toodles’; Robert Macaire; Hamlet; Uncle Tom; Modus, in ’The Hunchback’; Marc Antony, in ’Julius Cæsar’; Dolly Spanker, in ’London Assurance’; Mercutio, and scores of others I can’t instantly call to mind.”

After considerable of the nomadic experience thus indicated, Belasco, returning to San Francisco, obtained, through his friend McCabe, an engagement in the company of Annie Pixley (Mrs. Robert Fulford, 1858-1893), remembered for her performance of M’liss, in a rough melodrama, by Clay M. Greene, remotely based on Bret Harte’s tenderly human and touching story bearing that name. For Annie Pixley he made a serviceable domestic drama on the basis of Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden” (which poem had been published in 1864), and he acted in it, with her, as Philip Ray. That subject had been brought on the stage in a play by Mme. Julie de Marguerittes (1814-1866), in which Edwin Adams gained renown as the unhappy, heroic Enoch. For his play on the subject Belasco received from Fulford $25. Later, he figured as an itinerant peddler, frequenting fairs at various towns in the neighborhood of San Francisco. In this character his attire comprised a black coat and trousers, a “stovepipe” hat, and a wig and whiskers. “I used to buy goods on credit,” he told me, “and take them along; then I would get a soap-box or a barrel on the lot, or perhaps on a corner, and recite until I had a crowd, and then work attention ’round to my goods, which I generally managed to sell out.”

EMULATION OF WALTER MONTGOMERY.

Belasco, in his youth, entertained an admiration that was almost idolatrous for Walter Montgomery, an American actor who, coming from Australia, played in California when the boy was about seventeen years old. His spirit of emulation was fired by the extraordinary efforts which were put forth by that fine player to signalize the close of his engagement in San Francisco. On the night of June 17, 1870, supported by Barrett, McCullough, and the California Theatre stock company, Montgomery acted Shylock, Romeo, King John, Hotspur, Hamlet, Benedick and King Louis the Eleventh, in selected scenes from seven plays. On the next night he acted Marc Antony, in a revival of “Julius Cæsar,”—that being his last appearance in California as an actor. On June 20 and 21 the California Theatre was devoted to “Walter Montgomery in His Celebrated Royal Recitals.” This was his programme on the first night:

On the second night he gave:

As soon as possible after seeing Montgomery’s remarkable display of talent and versatility Belasco began to give public recitals, arranged in general upon the model of Montgomery’s, though varied to suit his own requirements. Chief among his selections were “The Vagabonds,” “The Maniac,” “Curfew Must Not Ring To-night,” “Bernardo del Carpio,” Hubert’s scene with Prince Arthur, from “King John”; Marc Antony’s Oration, and Hamlet’s Soliloquy on Death. He also gave imitations of various actors well known to the California public.

A ROMANTIC COURTSHIP.—MARRIAGE.

In the latter part of 1870 or early in 1871, while giving recitations at Platt’s Hall and elsewhere in San Francisco, his attention was attracted by an exceptionally handsome girl,—whom he has described as one “all compact of sweetness,”—who occupied a front seat on every occasion of his appearance. This young lady (she was little more than a child, being then only fifteen years old) was Miss Cecilia Loverich. After some time he was fortunate enough to obtain an introduction to her, at a private house where he had been engaged to give some recitations, and the acquaintance thus formed, and earnestly pursued by the romantic youth, soon ripened into a serious attachment. “I was nobody,” said Belasco to me, “and she was a beauty, of wealthy family, and,—young as she was,—already much followed. I did not have much hope at first; but I didn’t despair altogether, either. If I was only a struggling

CECILIA LOVERICH. MRS. DAVID BELASCO

From a photograph.
Belasco’s Collection.

beginner on the stage, a sort of strolling spouter, still she found my performances worth coming to see, over and over again!” The lover’s suit was not impaired by the fact that presently he suffered a serious physical injury, the rupture of a vein in one of his feet, which took a course so unfavorable there was danger that amputation would be necessary: a dark-haired, pale, dreamy-eyed, romantic youth sometimes becomes more than usually interesting to a gentle, compassionate young woman when he is hurt and suffering. Although incapacitated for several weeks, during which time Miss Loverich paid him many delicate attentions, Belasco finally recovered, after a minor operation,—though, from his account of this episode, I surmise he came near dying under an anæsthetic. For a while he was compelled to use crutches, but ultimately he resumed his professional labor. The marriage of David Belasco and Cecilia Loverich was solemnized, August 26, 1873, at the home of his parents, No. 174 Clara Street, San Francisco,—Rabbi Neustader performing the ceremony. At that time the actor was employed at Shiels’ Opera House: during about a year after their marriage his wife travelled with him on some of his various barnstorming expeditions—and that was the happiest experience of his life.

The engagement of the Chapman Sisters at the Metropolitan Theatre was ended on April 27, 1873, with a representation of “Cinderella” (produced there April 23),—in which Belasco probably participated,—that being the last regular theatrical performance given there. During several weeks immediately sequent to that event Belasco travelled with the Chapman Sisters, under the management of Woodard, playing in Sacramento (May 3) and in many other California and Pacific Coast cities and towns. By about the middle of June, however, he had returned to San Francisco; and, not being able to obtain immediate employment in the theatres, he worked for about two months as amanuensis for an old actor, James H. Le Roy, who had turned his attention to playwrighting. On June 30 Belasco was present at the opening of Shiels’ Opera House (afterward the Opera House, Gray’s Opera House, etc.), when Bella Pateman (1844-1908) made her first appearance in San Francisco,—acting Mariana, in “The Wife,” with Frank Roche as Julian St. Pierre and A. D. Billings as Antonio. “They did three or four more plays at Shiels’,—‘The Marble Heart,’ ’The Lady of Lyons,’ and other well-worn old pieces,”—so Belasco has said to me; “but the business was light and they needed a novelty. I had mentioned Wilkie Collins’ ’The New Magdalen’ [published that year] to Le Roy as containing good material for a play and he had bought a copy of the book and begun to make a dramatization. He told Miss Pateman about it and when she agreed that it would make a fine play for her he hastened his work, dictating to me, and it was brought out soon afterward.” Le Roy’s “dramatization” of Collins’ novel was produced at Shiels’ Opera House on July 14, 1873, and it was the first, or one of the first, stage adaptations of the story to be acted in America: piratical versions of it eventually became so numerous that, at one time, they could be bought for $10! Collins, in the disgraceful state of American copyright law at that time, was helpless to prevent what he designated, in writing to me, as the “larcenous appropriation of my poor ’Magdalen.’” As illustrating the practical value of priority in such matters and an injury often inflicted on authorship, it is significant to recall that Le Roy’s scissored version of the novel and Miss Pateman’s performance in it were much preferred, in San Francisco, to the drama made by Collins, as it was acted there, at the California Theatre, by Carlotta Leclercq (1838-1893), September 22, 1873.—This was the cast of the principal parts at Shiels’:

Writing about the production of Le Roy’s “larcenous appropriation,” Belasco has said: “When it was ready it represented a week of pasting, cutting, and putting together.... It proved to be one of the greatest successes San Francisco ever had.... As for the actress, Bella Pateman, she was a wonderful woman of tears, always emotionally true, and she became the idol of the hour, for her Mercy Merrick showed her to be an artist of great worth.” Miss Pateman was an accomplished actress (her professional merit was much extolled in conversation with me by both Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett), and she became an exceptional public favorite in San Francisco. Her first engagement in that city continued until August 16, and, after July 14, it was devoted on all but four nights to repetitions of “The New Magdalen.”

Belasco’s association with Le Roy brought him into contact with persons influential in management of Shiels’ Opera House and he was fortunate enough to be engaged as a member of a stock company which was organized to succeed Miss Pateman there. The first star to appear with that company was Joseph Murphy, in a revival, made August 18, of

“Maum Cre,” which held the stage for one week and in which Belasco acted the small part of Bloater. On August 25, the night before his wedding, he played with Murphy as Bob Rackett, in “Help,” and on September 1 as Baldwin, in “Ireland and America.” Murphy’s engagement ended September 7. The next night Frederick Lyster made his first appearance at Shiels’ (of which A. M. Gray had become “sole proprietor”) in “The Rising Moon,” and I believe that Belasco played in it, though I have not found a record of his doing so. On September 10 Laura Alberta was the star, in “Out at Sea,” Belasco playing with her as Harvey. During the next six weeks he acted at Shiels’—personating Sambo, in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and Major Hershner, in “Twice Saved; or, Bertha the Midget,” with Miss Alberta; Spada, in “The Woman in Red,” with Fanny Cathcart, and Darley, in “Dark Deeds,” with Miss Cathcart and George Darrell. Other plays presented at Shiels’ during the period indicated include “More Blunders Than One,” “Little Katy; or, The Hot Corn Girl,” “The Stage Struck Chamber-Maid,” “Man and Wife” (Darrell’s version), “The Mexican Tigress,” and “Evenings at Home.” It is probable that Belasco appeared in all or most of those plays, but I have not been able to find programmes or other records showing that he did so. On October 18 he participated in a benefit for James Dunbar at Gray’s Opera House (that name was first used on October 3), playing Mons. Voyage, in the Third Act of “Ireland As It Was.”

THEATRICAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA CITY.

After his employment at Gray’s Opera House Belasco obtained an engagement with John Piper and joined the theatrical company maintained by that manager at Piper’s Opera House, Virginia City, Nevada, at that time one of the most disorderly, dissolute, and disreputable towns in the United States. This “Opera House” was built by Maguire, in 1863, and did not become known as “Piper’s” till several years later. It was utilized for all kinds of public meetings, social and political, as well as for theatrical performances, and, judging from the history of Nevada, was, in early days, most noted as the scene of prize pugilistic combats. Piper, who was not only a speculative manager, but also a hotel-keeper, seems likewise to have been a shrewd, hard, unscrupulous person, not, however, devoid of rough kindness. By way of keeping his theatrical company well in hand he pursued the ingenious method of permitting its members to run into debt to him, to the amount of $1,500, and then withholding their salaries, thus, practically, making them prisoners till they had worked off the debt. Charges for everything were extortionate in Virginia City in that period, and Piper readily succeeded in entangling his actors, and he made it exceedingly difficult for them to extricate themselves. “I tried to run away from him,” said Belasco, telling me this story, “but got no further than Reno, where the sheriff, a ’pal’ of his, took me in charge and ’returned’ me for the debt!” In Virginia City he saw much more of that lawlessness, recklessness, and savagery which had already colored his thoughts and served to direct his mind into the lurid realm of sensation melodrama. There, also, he renewed acquaintance with various actors of prominence whom he had previously met in the course of his wanderings, and there he became associated with other performers, then or afterward distinguished. He acted many parts under Piper’s management, among them Buddicombe, in “Our American Cousin,” when Edward A. Sothern, as Lord Dundreary, was the star, and Don Cæsar, in John Westland Marston’s “Donna Diana” (published 1863), a drama based on a Spanish original by Augustin Moreto (1618-1661), which was presented by the once famous Mrs. David P—— Bowers (1830-1895), an actress of great ability and charm, whom persons who saw her in her best days do not forget. Belasco remembers having acted with her, either at Virginia City or elsewhere in the West, as Maffeo Orsini, in “Lucretia Borgia”; Charles Oakley, in “The Jealous Wife”; Richard Hare, in “East Lynne,” and a Page, in “Mary Stuart,” and I have heard him speak of her with an ardor of admiration which I can well understand, and with deep gratitude for kindness shown him in the time of his necessitous youth.

DION BOUCICAULT AND KATHARINE RODGERS.

Another eminent actor whom he met for the first time at Piper’s Opera House,—according to his recollection, in the Winter of 1873,—was Dion Boucicault (1822?-1890), who appears to have noticed him as a youth of talent and promise and to have treated him with favor. Boucicault could ingratiate himself with almost any person, when he chose to do so, and,—whenever they may have met,—he readily won the admiration of young Belasco, who closely studied his acting and the mechanism of his plays, and whose work, as a dramatist and a manager, has been, in a great degree, moulded by his abiding influence. Boucicault,

Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.

MRS. D. P. BOWERS

while in Virginia City, employed Belasco as an amanuensis, and (according to Belasco’s recollection) incidentally dictated to him a part of the drama of “Led Astray,” a fabric which he was then “conveying” from a French original, “La Tentation,” by Octave Feuillet (1821-1890). That play was first presented in New York, at the Union Square Theatre, December 6, 1873, with Rose Eytinge and Charles Robert Thorne, Jr., in the leading parts. Another important player with whom Belasco became professionally associated in Virginia City was Katharine Rodgers, a remarkably clever actress and fascinating as a woman, who had gained reputation on the English Stage and who came to America with Boucicault and for some time acted under his direction, in “Mimi,”—a play that he made for her use, out of “La Vie de Bohème,”—and in other plays, winning much popularity. This performer had been the wife of James Rodgers (1826-1890), a genial, respected English actor, long associated with the theatres of Manchester and Birmingham.

CONFLICTIVE TESTIMONY.

I have made scrupulous inquiry relative to Belasco’s first meeting with Boucicault (an event the exact date of which, since it profoundly influenced his career, ought to be established), and, although the former is positive that his memory of the occurrence is correct, I have become convinced that he has much confused the time and circumstances. The process of such misremembrances as this of Belasco’s is neither unusual nor difficult to understand. From 1873 to 1883 his life was feverish with activity. During that period he certainly met Boucicault, in Virginia City, and was there associated with him, as amanuensis. When “La Tentation” and Boucicault’s version of that play, called “Led Astray,” were acted in San Francisco (April, 1874), Belasco saw them, and, like many other persons associated with the Theatre, he heard much of the disputation which eddied round them. Years later, remembering his association with Boucicault, in Virginia City, the mistaken impression found lodgment in his mind that it was “Led Astray” on which the elder playwright was at work when they became acquainted, and, by repetition and elaboration, that erroneous belief has become fixed. To my objection that it is absolutely impossible that Boucicault could have dictated to him “Led Astray” Belasco’s reply, several times iterated, is, in effect, that Boucicault was working on the play “long before” it was produced in New York and that, whether possible or not, he is “very positive” Boucicault did dictate it to him, in Virginia City, during a blizzard. It would not be just to Belasco, he being sure that his recollection of this affair is absolutely accurate, to assert that it is wholly incorrect without giving his explicit statement of the incidents. Therefore, I quote it here, from his “Story”:

“When Boucicault reached Virginia City, he was under contract to deliver a play to A. M. Palmer, of New York. ’Led Astray’ was its title. But his writing hand was so knotted with gout that he could scarcely hold a pen. Boucicault was noted for being a very secretive man. He would never have a secretary because he feared such a man might learn too much of his methods of work. He was in the habit of saying: ’I can’t write a line when I dictate. I think better when I have a pen in my hand.’

“But now he had to have assistance to finish ’Led Astray.’ At this time I had some slight reputation as a stage manager and author. In those days everything was cut and dried, and the actor’s positions were as determined as those of the pawns on a chess-board. But whenever an opportunity offered itself, I would introduce something less rigorous in the way of action, much to the disgust of the older players. Boucicault must have heard of my revolutionary methods, for he sent me a message to come and see him and have a chat with him. With much perturbation, I went to his hotel and knocked on his door.

“‘They tell me you write plays,’ he began. Then followed question after question. He tested my handwriting, he commented on certain stage business he had heard me suggest the day before; then he said abruptly:

“‘I want you to take dictation for me,—I’m writing a play for the Union Square Theatre,—you have probably heard of the manager, A. M. Palmer,—at one time a librarian, but now giving Lester Wallack and Augustin Daly a race for their lives. I hope, young man, you can keep a secret; you strike me as being “still water.” Whatever you see, I want you to forget.’

“So I sat at a table, took my coat off and began Act One of ’Led Astray.’ Boucicault lay propped up with pillows, before a blazing fire, a glass of hot whisky beside him. It was not long before I found out that he was the terror of the whole house. If there was the slightest noise below stairs or in the street, he would raise such a hubbub until it stopped that I had never heard the like of before.

“Whenever he came to a part of the dialogue requiring Irish, I noticed how easily his dictation flowed. When he reached a dramatic situation, he acted it out as well as his crippled condition would allow. One thing I noticed particularly: he always held a newspaper in his hand and gave furtive glances at something behind it I was not supposed to see. I was determined, however, to know just what he was concealing from me.

“The opportunity came one morning when he was called out of the room. Before he went, I noted how careful he was to place a newspaper so that it completely hid the thing under it. I went quickly to the table, and, turning over the pages, I found a French book, ’La Tentation,’ from which the entire plot of ’Led Astray’ was taken. In those days, authors did not credit the original source from which they adapted. But Boucicault was more than an adapter—he was a brilliant and indefatigable slave, resting neither night

Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.

DION BOUCICAULT

“The Master of the Revels”

nor day. There is no doubt that even though he adapted,—in accordance with the custom of the time,—he added to the original source, making everything he touched distinctly his own. He left everything better than he found it; his pen was often inspired, and in spite of his many traducers, he was the greatest genius of our Theatre at that time. Boucicault was a master craftsman....”

I am inclined to the opinion that the play of which Boucicault actually did dictate a part to Belasco, during the early days of their acquaintance, in Virginia City, is, perhaps, “Forbidden Fruit,”—which was derived from a French original, and which was first produced at Wallack’s Theatre, October 3, 1876: it is, however, to be remembered that there is an Irish character,—a kind of Sir Lucius O’Trigger-turned-blackguard, who is designated Major O’Hara,—in “Led Astray.” Nevertheless, as to Belasco’s reminiscence of the writing of that play, I am convinced that, though interesting, it is wholly apocryphal; the following is a summary of my reasons for so believing:

Belasco did not make his first appearance with Minnie Wells, at the Metropolitan Theatre, San Francisco, until December 16, 1872, and, of course, his meeting with Boucicault could not have preceded that date. Boucicault, moreover, and his wife, the beautiful Agnes Robertson, were absent from this country, according to my records, for about twelve years preceding 1872. In the Fall of that year they returned to America, and, on September 23, they reappeared together, at Booth’s Theatre, New York, in “Arrah-na-Pogue.” They acted there until November 16, and then made a tour through various cities of the country, but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, they did not go west of St. Louis, Missouri. Boucicault reappeared in New York, at Booth’s Theatre, March 17, 1873, acting, for the first time anywhere, Daddy O’Dowd, of which part he gave truly a great impersonation and on which he had been at work during all his tour. His engagement at Booth’s lasted until May 10. From that date to the latter part of August Boucicault was in New York,—except when he visited the ingratiating but false-hearted William Stuart (Edmund C. O’Flaherty, 1821-1886), at New London, Connecticut. During that period he was actively engaged on many projects,—the completion, rehearsal, and presentment of “Mora,” which was brought out at Wallack’s Theatre, June 3, and of “Mimi,” produced there on July 1; the writing of other plays, and business negotiations relative to the building and opening of Stuart’s Park Theatre, which, originally, was intended for his use. (Stuart, after many postponements, opened it, April 15, 1874, presenting Charles Fechter in “Love’s Penance.”) On August 28, 1873, Boucicault began an engagement at Wallack’s Theatre, acting in “Kerry” and “Used Up.” A few days later he broke down and went to New London to rest. On September 16, that year, in company with me, among others, he attended the first performance in America given by Tommaso Salvini: I talked with him there—at the Academy of Music. On December 6, 1873, his “Led Astray” was produced, for the first time anywhere, at the Union Square Theatre, New York. I was present, and I saw and heard Boucicault, when he was called before the curtain, and, writing in “The New York Tribune,” in the course of a review of the performance, I recorded the following comment:

... The drama comes from the French of Octave Feuillet, and it was translated by Mr. Boucicault. Whoever wishes to see with what an assured step clever authorship can walk on ticklish ground may behold the imposing spectacle at the Union Square Theatre. Mr. Boucicault was called before the curtain on Saturday night by vociferous applause, both at the end of the Third Act and at the end of the play, and in the speech which finally he made he told his auditors to give at least two-thirds of the credit for whatever pleasure they had received to his friend Octave Feuillet. Mr. Boucicault was also understood to say something about a projected revival of Legitimate Drama. We were not aware of its demise. And, even if it were dead, we fail to perceive how Mr. Boucicault could manage to effect its resuscitation by the translating of French plays of very doubtful propriety. It is to be remembered, though, that Mr. Boucicault is an Irish gentleman and loves his joke.... In this we perceive Mr. Boucicault’s preëminent skill. Nevertheless, the appearance of Octave Feuillet’s name upon the playbill would be noted with satisfaction. Mr. Boucicault should be aware that, by lapses of this kind, he arms his detractors and is unjust to himself....

Boucicault made his first appearance in San Francisco, at the California Theatre, on January 19, 1874 (the bill was “Boucicault in California,”—a weak sketch written for the occasion,—“Kerry,” and “Jones’s Baby”), and he arrived in that city, a few days earlier, not from Virginia City, but from Canada.

Belasco, meantime, was not established in Virginia City between December, 1872, and October, 1873: on the contrary, during most, if not all, of that time he was actively engaged in San Francisco (see my Chronology of his life). He disappears, however, from all the San Francisco records which I have been able to unearth after October 18, 1873, and I am satisfied that he then went to Virginia City, and there, several months later, met both Boucicault and Katharine Rodgers, when they were journeying eastward: Miss Rodgers first acted in

From an old photograph. Belasco’s Collection.

KATHARINE RODGERS

San Francisco on February 3, 1874, at the California Theatre, in “Mimi.” It seems obvious that Boucicault could not have dictated “Led Astray” to Belasco, in Virginia City, at a time when neither of them was there, and after that play had been acted in New York. If any other theatrical antiquary, more fortunate than I, chances to possess authentic records that show Boucicault and Belasco in conjunction, in Virginia City, prior to about November 1, 1873, I should be glad to learn of them.

VARIEGATED EXPERIENCES.

It has not been possible to elicit an entirely satisfactory account of Belasco’s career in the period extending from October 18, 1873, to about the end of February, 1876. In particular, it has been impossible, notwithstanding most earnest efforts, to establish the sequence of incidents of his experience in Virginia City. Nevertheless, much that occurred during the period indicated, nearly two and one-half years, has been ascertained beyond question, and such gaps as occur in the records have been supplied by reasonable surmise. He fulfilled, in all, five engagements in Virginia City, and three, if not four, of them were antecedent to “the fire” which, in 1875, devastated that mountain resort of licence and crime. Among the actors with whom he was most closely associated in Piper’s stock company were A. D. Billings, George Giddens, Sydney Cowell (Mrs. Giddens), George Hinckley (uncle of Blanche Bates), and Annie Adams (Mrs. Kiskaden, 1849-1916), mother of Miss Maude Adams. The period of his first employment there was a trying one and during it he broke down, became seriously ill, and was lodged for a time in the home of Piper, where his illness was augmented by a distressing experience with an unfortunate demented woman, the wife of Piper. Recalling that ordeal, he has said: “Her husband, naturally, felt loath to send his wife to the Insane Asylum in Stockton, so he had some rooms padded and arranged as comfortably as possible for her in his own house. I was ill there for three weeks, and my room, unhappily, was within calling distance of Mrs. Piper’s. During the long nights I could hear her groaning and crying out,—not a very encouraging atmosphere for one who was himself suffering, and more from ’nerves’ than anything else. Then one gray dawn I awoke to find Mrs. Piper standing at the foot of my bed. Apparently she was as sane as any one, and she expressed great solicitude as to my condition. It seemed to me an eternity as she stood there, though in reality it was only about five minutes. Suddenly her mood changed. ’I’m going to kill some one,’ she screamed, and made a lunge for me. But, luckily, her keeper, who had heard her, came in and restrained her, and we calmed her down and got her back to her own rooms.”

Belasco’s financial debt to Piper must have been paid or compounded on or about March 1, 1874, and his engagement in Virginia City terminated. On March 10, that year, he certainly was employed as a super, at the California Theatre, on the occasion of Adelaide Neilson’s first appearance in San Francisco. The play was “Romeo and Juliet”: Lewis Morrison acted Romeo and Barton Hill Mercutio. Miss Neilson’s engagement (during which she played Rosalind, Lady Teazle, Julia, in “The Hunchback,” and Pauline, in “The Lady of Lyons,” as well as Juliet) ended on March 30: Belasco, whose admiration for that great actress was extreme, contrived to be employed at the California Theatre during the whole of it. On April 4, following, “the Entire Lingard Combination” appeared at the Opera House (so designated) in an English version of Feuillet’s “La Tentation,” and on April 6 John T. Raymond acted at the California Theatre as Hector Placide, in Boucicault’s version of the same play, called “Led Astray.” Both those representations were seen by Belasco.

On April 23 Raymond, at the California, produced, for the first time, a stage synopsis made by Gilbert S. Densmore, of “The Gilded Age,” by Samuel L. Clemens and Charles Dudley Warner. Writing of it, Belasco says: “While that play was building Densmore talked it all over with me. As it was originally written it was in five long acts and had in it a curious medley of melodrama.... When the script was eventually read to him [Raymond], all the comment he made, with a few of those choice expletives which he knew so well how to choose, was that he hated all courtroom scenes, except those in ’The Merchant of Venice’ and in Boucicault’s ’The Heart of Midlothian.’... It was in this frame of mind that he was finally persuaded to try ’The Gilded Age.’ Of course, the play needed a lot of re-writing, and I don’t believe any one really thought it would be successful. It was put on as a try-out because the man was in such sore need of a vehicle, and, like so many other plays which are produced as makeshifts, it soared its way into instant popularity. It was not by any means a wonderful play in itself, it was merely another instance of the personality of the player being fitted to the part, and in the rôle [sic] of Colonel Mulberry Sellers John T. Raymond found himself and, incidentally, fame and fortune.”

That is not altogether an accurate account of the dramatic genesis of “The Gilded Age.” Densmore’s adaptation of the book was piratical, and Clemens, hearing of it, protested vigorously, by telegraph, against continuance of its presentment. It was acted only once in San Francisco, in 1874. Densmore finally arranged to sell his stage version to Clemens, and that author himself made a dramatization of the novel. Writing about it, to William Dean Howells, he says:

“I worked a month on my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday. I believe it will go. The newspapers have been complimentary. It is simply a setting for one character, Colonel Sellers. As a play I guess it will not bear critical assault in force.” In another letter Clemens says: “I entirely rewrote the play three separate and distinct times. I had expected to use little of his [Densmore’s] language and but little of his plot. I do not think there are now twenty sentences of Mr. Densmore’s in the play, but I used so much of his plot that I wrote and told him I should pay him about as much more as I had already paid him in case the play proved a success....”—Albert Bigelow Paine’s “Mark Twain, a Biography.” Volume I., pp. 517-18.

On November 3, 1874, Raymond published the following letter:

(From John T. Raymond to “The New York Sun.”)

“The Park Theatre, [New York].
“November 2, 1874.

“To The Editor of ’The Sun’:
“Sir:—

“An article headed ’The Story of “The Gilded Age”’ in ’The Sun’ of this morning calls for a statement from me. The facts in the case are simply these: In April last I commenced an engagement in San Francisco. A few days after my arrival the manager of the theatre mentioned that Mr. Densmore, the dramatic critic of ’The Golden Era,’ had dramatized Mark Twain’s and Charles Warner’s novel of ’The Gilded Age,’ and would like to submit it to me. I read the play, and the character of Colonel Sellers impressed me so favorably that I consented to produce the piece the last week of my engagement. I did so, the play making a most pronounced hit. I then arranged with Mr. Densmore for the right to perform the play throughout the country. Upon my arrival in New York I heard that Mr. Clemens had telegraphed to San Francisco protesting against the play being performed, as he had reserved all rights in his copyright of ’The Gilded Age.’ I at once recognized Mr. Clemens’ claim, and wrote to Mr. Densmore to that effect. I then communicated with Clemens, with a view of having him write a play with Colonel Sellers as the chief character. While the negotiation was pending I received a letter from Mr. Densmore, requesting me to send the manuscript of his dramatization to Clemens, as he had purchased it, and that he (Clemens) had acted in a most liberal manner toward

From a photograph by Mora. Belasco’s Collection.

JOHN T. RAYMOND

(1836-1887)

him. I sent the manuscript to Mr. Clemens, but not until after he had finished his play and read it to me, not one line of Mr. Densmore’s dramatization being used in the present play, except that which was taken bodily from the novel of ’The Gilded Age.’ These are the facts in the premises. Mr. Densmore’s play was a most excellent one; the impression it made in San Francisco was of a most pronounced character, but in no way [?] does it resemble the present production, which is entirely the work of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain).

“Yours, &c.,
“John T. Raymond.”

Clemens’ “guess” as to the worth of his work as a play was short of the truth: it was of no consequence, possessed practically no merit whatever, except as a vehicle for the actor. [The character of Colonel Sellers is presented by the dramatist in only a few of the aspects available for its exposition and is attached to the play by only a slender thread. Raymond, nevertheless, by means of thorough personification, made the character so conspicuous that it dominated the whole action of the play. The common notion that words are indispensable to the expression of character is unfounded. Character shows itself in personality, which is the emanation of it, and which finds expression in countless ways with which words are not associated. Personality was the potent charm of Raymond’s embodiment of Colonel Sellers,—a personality compounded of vigorous animal spirits, quaintness, rich humor, amiability, recklessness, a chronic propensity for sport, a sensitive temperament, and an ingenuous mind. The actor made the character lovable not less than amusing, by the spontaneous suggestion of innate goodness and by various scarcely definable sweetly winning traits and ways. His grave inquiry as to the raw turnips, “Do you like the fruit?” was irresistibly droll. His buoyant, confident ejaculation,—closing each discourse on some visionary scheme of profit,—“There’s millions in it!” (which Raymond’s utterance made a byword throughout America) completely expressed the spirit of the sanguine speculator and was not less potently humorous because of a certain vague ruefulness in the tone of it. In acting Colonel Sellers Raymond did something that was new, did it in an individual way, was original without being bizarre, and, possessing the humor which is akin to pathos, he could cause the laugh that is close to the tear.—W.W. in “The Wallet of Time.”] “The Gilded Age” was first acted in New York, September 16, 1874, at the Park Theatre.

At about the time of the first San Francisco production of “The Gilded Age” Belasco appears to have been employed by William Horace Lingard, and it is practically certain that he was a member of Lingard’s company,—though I have not ascertained in what capacity,—on the occasion of “the grand opening of Maguire’s New Theatre” (which was the old Alhambra Theatre, rebuilt and altered), on May 4, when “Creatures of Impulse,” “Mr. and Mrs. Peter White,” and a miscellaneous entertainment were presented there.

During the summer of 1874 Belasco worked as a secretary and copyist for Barton Hill, at the California Theatre, and also he performed, in a minor position, as an actor, at Maguire’s New Theatre. He was thus associated with, among others, Sallie Hinckley, in a revival of “The New Magdalen”; Charles Fechter and Lizzie V. Price in a repertory which comprehended “Ruy Blas,” “Don Cæsar de Bazan,” “The Lady of Lyons,” “Hamlet,” and “Love’s Penance”; Miss Jeffreys-Lewis and Charles Edwards in “School,” Boucicault’s “The Willow Copse” and “The Unequal Match”; William J. Coggswell in “Nick o’ the Woods”; Samuel W. Piercy in “Hamlet,” and Charles Wheatleigh in a dramatization of “Notre Dame” and in other plays. For Piercy Belasco has ever cherished extreme admiration and a pitiful memory of his untimely death, which,—caused by smallpox,—befell, in Boston, in 1882. During the summer of 1874 Belasco also made various brief and unimportant “barnstorming” ventures in small towns and camps of California, Oregon, and Washington; likewise, he was associated, as stage director, with several groups of amateur actors in San Francisco. On August 31 a revival of Augustin Daly’s play of “Divorce” was effected at Maguire’s,—James A. Herne (his name billed without the “A.”) and Miss Jeffreys-Lewis playing the principal parts in it. Whether or not Belasco was then in the company at Maguire’s is uncertain, but I believe that he was. At any rate, when Mlle. Marie Zoe,—designated as “The Cuban Sylph,”—began an engagement there, September 14, in the course of which she appeared in “The French Spy,” “The Pretty Housebreaker,” “Nita; or, Woman’s Constancy” (and “Mazeppa”?), Belasco was employed to co-operate with her in sword combats on the stage: he also served Mlle. Zoe, during her stay in San Francisco, as a sort of secretary.

From October 1 to the latter part of December, 1874, Belasco continued in employment at Maguire’s New Theatre, officiating not only as an actor of small parts but as stage manager, as a hack playwright, and as secretary for Maguire. On October 12 he played the Dwarf (one of the Phantom Crew of Hendrick Hudson), in “Rip Van Winkle,” Herne personating Rip and Alice Vane appearing as Gertrude. On October 21 he participated in a representation of “The People’s Lawyer” (playing Lawyer Tripper?), in which Herne acted as Solon Shingle. On the next night “Alphonse” was acted at Maguire’s, but Belasco seems not to have been in the bill, because he is positive that he attended the first production in San Francisco, made that night at the California Theatre, of Frank Mayo’s dramatization of Charles Reade’s powerful and painful novel of “Griffith Gaunt.” “I made a version of that book,” Belasco has told me, “and it was a good one, as I remember it; but it passed out of my control soon after it was written: I sold it—to James McCabe, I think,—for a few dollars. I know it was much played in the interior [meaning the small towns of California, Nevada, etc.]. About the same time that I made my version of ’Griffith Gaunt,’—which, of course, was prompted by seeing Mayo’s,—we brought out a new play at Maguire’s, called ’Lady Madge,’ by J. H. Le Roy. I don’t recall what it was about. I remember that it was written expressly for Adele Leighton, a rich novice, and that I did some work on it for Le Roy and made him a clean script and set of the parts. Herne, Sydney Cowell, and Thomas Whiffen were in the cast.” “Lady Madge” was acted at Maguire’s November 3, and did not hold the stage for more than a week. On the 11th of that month a dramatization of Lever’s “Charles O’Malley,” made by Herne, was brought out, Herne appearing in it as Mickey Free and Sydney Cowell as Mary Brady. On November 16 Annette Ince and Ella Kemble acted at Maguire’s, supported by Herne and Whiffen, in “The Sphinx,” and on the 26th a notably successful revival was made of “Oliver Twist,”—a more or less rehashed version of the dramatic epitome of the novel which had been made known throughout our country by E. L. Davenport and James W. Wallack, the Younger, being used. Herne played Sikes; Annette Ince, Nancy; Ella Kemble, Rosa Maylie, and—— Lindsay, Fagin. On December 1 “Carlotta! Queen of the Arena” was brought out, with Miss Ince as Carlotta and Herne as Bambuno. I have been able to find only one other definite record of a performance at Maguire’s, prior to March 1, 1875; that record is of a presentment there of the old musical play of “The Enchantress,” on December 24, with Amy Bennett in the principal female part: Belasco directed the production (ostensibly under the stage management of Herne) and appeared in the prologue as Pietro and in the drama as Galeas. “I did a lot of hard work on ’The Enchantress’ for Miss Bennett’s appearance in it,—in fact, I rewrote most of the dialogue,” Belasco has declared to me.

RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS.—1875.

In Pinero’s capital farce of “The Magistrate” Mrs. Posket, solicitous to conceal her age, addresses to her friend Colonel Lukyn an earnest adjuration relative to an impending interview with her husband: “Don’t give him dates; keep anything like dates away from him!” Belasco’s aversion to fixed facts fully equals that of the distressed lady, though, in his case, it is temperamental instead of secretive. “The vagabond,” he writes, “always says ’at this time,’ whether it be to-day or to-morrow, and, like Omar, he ’lets the credit go.’ The incidents that now come to mind are a little confused as to their chronological order, but what does it matter, if the impression is true!” It “matters,” unfortunately, much,—because confusion and apparent contradiction which result from lack of accuracy and order sometimes tend to create an unjust belief that related incidents, actually authentic, are untrue. It has, moreover, rendered protracted and tedious almost beyond patience the work of compiling and arranging a clear, sequent, authoritative account of Belasco’s long and extraordinary career. I have ascertained divers particulars of his early experiences and alliances (verifying them as facts by diligent search and inquiry in many directions), which, however, I have not invariably been able to place in exact chronological order and which may conveniently be summarized here.

Perhaps the most important single event of the first decade of Belasco’s theatrical life was his employment in a responsible position at Baldwin’s Academy of Music. But during about a year and a half prior to his first engagement there, and also during about the same length of time subsequent to it, he gained much valuable knowledge, in association with various players, acting in “the lumber districts” of Oregon and Washington; in Victoria and Nevada, and in many California towns, including Oakland, Sacramento, Petaluma, Stockton, Marysville, San José, etc. Wandering stars, of varying magnitude, with whom he thus appeared include Sallie Hinckley and Mrs. Frank Mark Bates (respectively, aunt and mother of Blanche Bates), Amy Stone, Ellie Wilton, Charles R. Thorne, Sr., Mary Watson, Annie Pixley, Fanny Morgan Phelps, Frank I. Fayne, Gertrude Granville, Laura Alberta, Katie Pell, and the old California minstrel, “Jake” Wallace. With Miss Pell and Wallace he appeared in the smaller towns of California

and Nevada, and he has afforded me the following interesting bit of random recollection. “Wallace was held dear in every Western mining camp. He was a banjoist, and when the miners heard him coming down the road, singing the old ’49 songs, there used to be a general cry of ’Here comes Wallace!’ and work would stop for the day. In ’The Girl of the Golden West’ [1905] I introduced a character in memory of the ’Jake’ Wallace of long ago; I gave him the same name, made him sing the same songs, and enter the poker-saloon to be greeted in the same old hearty manner. When negotiations were under way between the great composer Puccini and myself for ’The Girl of the Golden West’ to be set to music, I took him to see a performance of the play. As we sat there, I could feel no perceptible enthusiasm from him until Jake Wallace came in, singing his ’49 songs. ’Ah!’ exclaimed Puccini, ’there is my theme at last!’”

Of Mrs. Bates and her ill-fated husband he gives this reminiscence: “Both Mrs. Bates and her husband were sterling actors [they were players of respectable talent, well trained in the Old School—W.W.]. Mrs. Bates was a slight little woman, full of romance and for the greater part of our acquaintance much given to melancholy. I look back on her prime, and I know of no actress who gave a more satisfactory interpretation of Camille than she did. Her Marie Antoinette was also very impressive. Mr. and Mrs. Bates soon left for Australia, but before they went, as a token of friendship, I was given many manuscript plays and costumes which the two would not need. Soon after Mr. Bates was mysteriously murdered. Many months passed, and I heard that Mrs. Bates was again in San Francisco, staying at the Occidental Hotel. So I called upon her. ’I only have Blanche to live for now,’ she said, and while we sat there she called for her little daughter to come to her. That was my first meeting with my future star. Thereafter little Blanche was put to school, and I went on the road with Mrs. Bates, playing Armand Duval to her Camille. Then I lost sight of her for some time until at last one day I was walking with ’Jimmie’ Barrows, when he began to tell me of a famous actress who was boarding at his house. ’Her name is Mrs. Bates,’ declared ’Jimmie,’ and when I went home with him I found my old friend again. Blanche had pulled out, like a fast growing flower, blithesome and gay; but her mother seemed to have parted with the last drop in the cup of her happiness, and during our entire tour showed the nervous strain she had experienced during the awful times in Australia. ’It is so difficult for me to go back to the different theatres and tread the stages we played on so often together,’ she would say. ’I seem to see Frank’s face everywhere, in the shadows of the wings and out in the cold empty spaces of the auditorium when we are rehearsing. I wonder who struck him down.’

“I felt a great sympathy for her, and she and I became almost like brother and sister. Never shall I forget those days and the long walks we used to take under skies that held all the warmth and splendor of southern Europe, along roads that wound their tree-embowered way through the hills to the little monastery nestling above. At night we could hear the ringing of far-away bells, and sometimes through the stilly air the sound of voices was wafted to us across the silence. In this atmosphere Mrs. Bates would sit and talk to me of the East, and I would dream dreams of things to be. There was a popular song of the time in San Francisco called ’Castles in the Air,’ and invariably our talks would end with a laugh and by my humming that tune.

“It was Mrs. Bates’ ambition to see Blanche doing literary work; for she did not want her to enter the theatrical profession, but later she said: ’I fear the child will go on the stage after all, and what is more, I feel that she is going to have a future. Perhaps, who knows, some day you may be able to do something for her,’ and I promised her that I would, if luck ever came my way.”

Writing to me about other actors of that far-off time, Belasco has mentioned: “I remember, with special pleasure and admiration, John E. Owens, though I don’t remember that I ever acted with him. He produced a play at the Bush Street Theatre [error: more probably at the California?], the name of which I have forgotten, but it was all about ’a barrel o’ apple sass’ [strange that Belasco should have forgotten the title,—“The People’s Lawyer,” sometimes billed as “Solon Shingle,”—because he several times acted in it, with Herne and others], and I was so impressed that I wrote a play for him, called ’The Yankee.’ Owens very kindly listened to my reading of it, but told me he had no intention of putting aside a long tried success. However, he liked some of the speeches in my piece and paid me $25 for them.”

“One of my most valued teachers,” he also writes, “was ’old man Thorne’ [Charles R. Thorne, Sr.]. I did much work for him as copyist, prompter, etc., and attended to all sorts of details,—hiring of wigs, arms, costumes, etc., for the minor parts and for supers in productions which he put on,—so that often he used to say to me, ’My dear Davie, I don’t know what I should do without you!’ Once, when Thorne produced ’King Richard III.,’ in a tent, in Howard Street, I took part and fought a sword combat with him on horseback. He was always very kind to me, taught me much and gave me pieces of wardrobe, feathers, belts, swords, &c. Another early favorite of mine was Mary Gladstane. I copied parts and scripts for her, at the Metropolitan and elsewhere, and whenever she played Mary Warner in San Francisco I cried over her performance so much that she was delighted and gave me a copy of the prompt book. There were no streetcars in those days, and often I walked with her to and from the theatre.”

Belasco was absent from San Francisco from about the middle of January, 1875, until the following May. A Miss Rogers, who had been a school teacher, who is described as having been “very beautiful,” and who became infected with ambition to shine as a dramatic luminary, obtained sufficient financial support to undertake a starring tour and Belasco was employed by her as an agent, stage manager, and actor. The tour appears to have begun, auspiciously, in (Portland?), Oregon, and to have been continued, with declining prosperity, in small towns along the Big Bear and Little Bear rivers. The repertory presented comprised “East Lynne,” “Camille,” “Frou-Frou,” etc., and “Robert Macaire.” “I always liked to play Macaire,” Belasco has told me, “and whenever I got a chance to make up a repertory I included that piece in it.” The tour lasted as long as the financial support was continued: then the company was ignominiously disbanded. Belasco and Miss Rogers, however, continued to act together for several weeks, presenting a number of one-act plays—such as “A Conjugal Lesson,” “A Happy Pair,” “Mr. and Mrs. Peter White,” etc.,—which require only two performers. Belasco also gave recitations. “One of my ’specialties,’” he has told me, “was ’The Antics of a Clown,’ in which I gave imitations of opera singers and ballet dancers—using a slack rope instead of a taut wire. I also gave imitations of all the well-known actors, and I had a ’ventriloquist act,’ with dummies. I made my own wigs and costumes and, altogether, I worked pretty hard for a living!”

On February 15, 1875, Augustin Daly produced his authorized adaptation of Gustav von Moser’s “Ultimo,” at the second Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, under the name—once known throughout our country—of “The Big Bonanza.” Its success was instant and extraordinary. R. H. Hooley, of Chicago, presently employed Bartley Campbell (1844-1888) to make another version of that play,

DAVID BELASCO AS ROBERT MACAIRE

Strop. Suppose he should wake?
Macaire. He won’t wake!

Photograph by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco.
Original loaned by Mrs. David Belasco.

“specially localized and adapted for San Francisco.” Campbell fulfilled his commission, passing several weeks in the Western metropolis in order to provide “local atmosphere.” Belasco was still “barnstorming” when he learned of the appearance of Hooley’s Comedy Company in San Francisco,—May 10, at the Opera House, in Campbell’s “Peril; or, Love at Long Branch,”—and he immediately ended his uncertain connection with Miss Rogers in order to return home, so that he might witness the performances of Hooley’s company and, if possible, become a member of it. “I was much impressed by the reputation of ’Hooley’s Combination,’” he writes in a note to me; “and I wanted particularly to see William H. Crane and M. A. Kennedy. Crane’s big, wholesome method made a great success, and the whole company was popular.” Belasco seems not to have reached home until about the end of the second week of the Hooley engagement: soon after that he contrived to obtain employment at the Opera House as assistant prompter and to play what used to be styled “small utility business.” His note to me continues: “Because I had played many big parts, out of town, some of my theatrical friends thought my willingness to do any work that would give me valuable experience was beneath my ’dignity’ and that I was thereby losing ’caste.’ I never saw it that way. ’Haven’t you any pride?’ they used to say; and I used to answer ’No, I expect to be obliged to spend a certain amount of time in the cellar before I’m allowed to walk into the parlor!’” And in conversation with me on this subject he has said, “Why, I would do anything in those days, to learn or get a chance: I once worked as a dresser for J. K. Emmet, because I couldn’t get into his company any other way,—but it wasn’t long before I was playing parts with him.”

In his “Story” Belasco mentions that Daly came to San Francisco at about the same time as Hooley and that when the latter brought out “Ultimo,” and Daly produced “The Big Bonanza,” “strange as it is to relate, the productions were almost equally successful.” That is an error: Hooley’s production was made on June 7 and, though distinctly inferior to Daly’s,—made on July 19,—priority had its usual effect and the wind was completely taken out of Daly’s sails: “The Big Bonanza” was acted in San Francisco by Daly’s company less than half-a-dozen times, while “Ultimo” was played for several weeks and also was several times revived.

Belasco’s relation with the Hooley company lasted until July (11?), on which date its season was ended at the Opera House,—a tour of Pacific Slope towns beginning the next week. Belasco, remaining in San Francisco, endeavored to attach himself to Daly’s company, but failed to do so,—partly, it is probable, because of his intimate connection with Maguire, who was both friendly to Hooley and inimical to Daly, whom he had striven to exclude from San Francisco by refusing to rent him a theatre. Daly, however, hired Platt’s Hall and, July 13, presented his company there, in “London Assurance,” so successfully that Maguire decided to withdraw his opposition and share the profits of success. Daly’s company, accordingly, was transferred to the Opera House on July 15, making its first appearance there in “Divorce,” with Belasco as one of the auditors.

During the remainder of 1875 Belasco labored in much the same desultory and precarious way. When no other employment could be procured by him he worked as a salesman in an outfitting shop. “One thing I did,” he gleefully relates, “for which I was much looked down upon—whenever I went into the country towns I peddled a ’patent medicine,’ as I called it; a gargle made from a receipt of my mother’s, and it was a good one, too; I know because I not only sold it but I used it! And I coaxed all my theatrical friends to use it and write testimonials for me.” His chief business, However, when not regularly engaged in the theatres, was the collection and compilation of a library of plays. Between 1875 and 1880 he prepared prompt books of almost every play that was successfully produced in San Francisco—altering and rearranging many of them,—and in frequent instances supplying them to travelling companies or stars. His friend Mrs. Bates, speaking to me (1903) about him and about the facility he developed as an adapter and playwright, said: “He was a marvel! In ’the old days’ I have known a star to give Belasco an outline of a plot, with three or four situations, on a Thursday night—and we acted the play on the next Monday!”

Among dramatizations that he made in this year, or the next, are “Bleak House,”—prompted by the success of Mme. Janauschek, who had presented a version at the California Theatre, June 7,—“David Copperfield,” “Dombey & Son,” “Struck Blind,” and “The New Magdalen.” The latter was a variant of Le Roy’s version, which he made for his friend Ellie Wilton, and which was first acted at the California on August 7, 1875. On the 27th of that month “Lost in London” was acted at Maguire’s New Theatre, according to a prompt book made by Belasco, and on the 30th Reade’s “Dora” was brought out there,—“under my stage direction,” says Belasco, and adds: “I also did some work on the [prompt] book, so as to make the part of Farmer Allen more suitable for James O’Neill.” On November 1 J. A. Sawtell made his first appearance in San Francisco, in one of Murphy’s many revivals of “Maum Cre.” “I recall that night, perfectly,” writes Belasco, “because I then first met Sawtell, with whom I afterward travelled in many capacities. When I produced ’The Girl of the Golden West’ (1905), Sawtell asked me for an engagement—just so he ’could be doing something,’ as he put it—and I remember that he came up to me on the stage one night and said: ‘“Davy,” I was a big star in California and you were my boy assistant; now here you are with your own theatre and I’m playing a small part in it! How did you do it?’”