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
[Illustration: 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,
[Illustration:
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
[Illustration:
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.