Our success with "Nathan Hale" was tremendous. For Maxine it was nothing short of a triumph. And during the season I signed a contract with Fitch for another play to follow it. He turned out "The Cowboy and the Lady." Neither Max nor I fancied our characters and although we did big business with the play we were most uncomfortable in our rÔles. It failed miserably in London—where they recognize the real value of plays!

I think it was the summer of 1898 (but what difference does it make?) that I met Henry V. Esmond, the author-actor and a very clever young man. In any event it was in London and at the time of the failure of "The Cowboy and the Lady." He asked me how I would like a play founded on Thackery's poem "When We Were Twenty-One." I thought the idea immense and told him so. We made a contract for the play on the spot and six weeks later he delivered the manuscript!

Max and I were both delighted with it. We brought it back with us in the Fall but instead of producing it in New York immediately we revived "The Cowboy and the Lady." Poor as that play was it absolutely refused to play to bad business! I kept it on until about the middle of the season and took it off with a nineteen-hundred-dollar-house begging me to keep it going!

"When We Were Twenty-One" made the biggest and the most nearly instantaneous hit of any play I ever produced. It was a gold mine for me. But there is little I could say about it that any of you, dear readers, can't anticipate. I might say only that I never played the rÔle I liked best in the play!

It was along about this time that I made a production of "The Merchant of Venice." And it was a production! And, although it was not so advertised, it was as nearly an "all-star" cast as many of the revivals of late years have been—if not more so! For four weeks my characterization of Shylock seemed to please the public and certainly attracted large audiences in spite of the fact that the critics in New York roasted my performance to a fare-ye-well. For one reason or another the critics have always resented me except as a comedian!

My next production was "The Altar of Friendship" which had been a failure with John Mason in the leading rÔle. He had made a great personal success and the play had received splendid notices but the public stayed away. When the late Jacob Litt consigned the production to the storehouse I opened negotiations with him, bought the property and put it on. It proved to be one of the biggest money-makers Maxine and I ever had! But Maxine's bee for starring alone came buzzing by and deafened her to the tinkle of the box office receipts. It finally stung me and our professional partnership came to an end. "The Altar of Friendship" was our last joint vehicle.

"The Usurper" was my first production after our separation. It made a big hit on the road but failed in New York. I left Gotham at the end of two weeks and went to Boston where we did a tremendous week, continuing on for the rest of the season to splendid business.

It was during this time that Klaw & Erlanger approached me with an offer to open their new New Amsterdam Theatre. The bill was to be "A Midsummer Night's Dream," my rÔle Bottom. It sounded good to me and I accepted. Erlanger gave it a most lavish production and announced it for a long run. The opening house was $2700! But the next night the receipts dropped to $1100. I have always believed it was due to insufficient advertising and to the fact that the theatre was new and in a strange locality (in those days Forty-second Street west of Seventh Avenue was strange—theatrically!).

Erlanger was much annoyed. He was not very keen for Shakespeare anyway. In his disappointment he rashly determined to end our engagement in three weeks. I argued and pleaded in vain. I could not make him see it was madness deliberately to kill all chances of our making any money on the road. And to quit in three weeks in New York was admission of failure beyond dispute.

It didn't take long for the trouble to start. Within a fortnight Alan Dale got in his choicest work. An illustrated page in the Hearst Sunday paper showed Maxine, costumed to represent Florence Nightingale, standing Juno-like with outstretched hands as if she might be Charity—or perhaps Hope! Below her was a caricature of Arthur Byron who had just failed in a play called "Major AndrÉ." Maxine had moved into the Savoy Theatre as Byron was forced out. He was pictured running up a hill with a valise in his hand, saying, "She saved me, Nat!" I was down in the lower left hand corner at the back door of a theatre in a beseeching attitude. Out of my mouth issued these words: "Won't you please come in, Max?"

That alleged comic picture settled our road business once and for all. To make matters worse, if that were possible, Klaw & Erlanger acted on Dale's suggestion and insisted on Maxine's following my engagement at the New Amsterdam. I knew this was the last straw and fatal to whatever chances we might have had otherwise and I asked to be let out then and there. But Erlanger insisted that we go to Boston.

Our company numbered one hundred and fifty people! Our weekly expenses were $6,000!

Arrived in Boston I strolled into the Hollis Street Theatre where we were to open. There wasn't a soul on Hollis Street as I turned the corner from Washington Street. It was noon and I had expected to see a line extending half way to the corner. I found the treasurer in the box office smoking a cigarette. After the usual salutations I inquired casually if we were sold out.

"Pipe that rack," quoth the treasurer laconically as he indicated a forest of tickets arranged on a board.

"Are all those tickets for to-night?" I asked.

"Uh huh," grunted the treasurer and took a deep inhale of his cigarette.

We opened to less than $600. The performance made such a tremendous hit that we were sold out the last three performances of the week and the following week saw never an empty seat at any performance—and for all that we made no money! From Boston we went to Brooklyn where our opening house was $400. (Florence Nightingale was working her influence!) We played to gradually increasing business—but not enough to cover expenses—during the rest of the week. The next (and last) stand was Newark where we opened to $200! Again business increased with every performance but again we had a losing week. Then it was I insisted on closing. Florence Nightingale was an advance agent no attraction could hope to win out against. Thus Newark saw the last of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

And this is the record of a play which drew in two performances in one day more than $5,000! The day was the last Saturday of our three-weeks' run at the New Amsterdam!

Following this fiasco I entered into a contract with Charles Frohman under which we produced "Beauty and the Barge," by Jacobs, the English playwright. It should have run a year. It failed dismally. I knew it would after witnessing the dress rehearsal. David Warfield, Frohman and I sat out front at that rehearsal, my part being read so I could get an idea of the ensembles. I discovered my two ingenues might have been taken from the Forest Home! My two light comedians were so light I am sure they could have walked on water! An old man character insisted on hitting the hard stage with his cane—supposed to be a garden! I begged Frohman to postpone the opening. These five people had a twenty-two-minute scene before I came on. Warfield agreed with me.

A friend of Frohman's had come in meantime. He insisted that my "marvelous" acting would carry the play.

"Marvelous acting be damned!" I cried. "No human being could succeed with such incompetent surroundings."

I was voted down, however, and the next night we opened at the Lyceum Theatre. The play was dead before I made my entrance, a score of men leaving the house in the first fifteen minutes. My dressing-room was within five feet of the stage and I could hear every sound, from front and back. It wrung my heart as I heard the delicate, pretty little scenes I had worshipped when I had seen Cyril Maude's company play it in London just torn all to pieces! Point after point went for nothing. All the humor disappeared. It was awful!

Finally came my cue and I went on. My reception was vociferous and brought me out of my slough of despair. I even got a scene call after I made my exit. But the play was doomed. Afterwards I commiserated with Mr. Jacobs in London and told him it was only the acting that was to blame for its failure to run two years. It ran two weeks.

"Wolfville," Clyde Fitch's dramatization of those excellent short stories by Alfred Henry Lewis, was my next production. This time it was not the fault of the actors. Fitch was to blame. He had taken all of Lewis' characters and then tried to write an original story around them. Fitch couldn't touch Lewis when it came to Western types—or stories. Again, before the first performance, I told Frohman we would fail—and we did, the piece dying at the end of six weeks.

Frohman was at a loss to provide me with another play. He suggested that I take a steamship and see the first performances of two plays which he controlled, "Dr. Quick's Patient" and "The Alabaster Staircase." The latter was written by Captain Marshall of England who wrote "The Second in Command." John Hare was to enact the leading rÔle. It looked good to me and I jumped across. My trip saved me two more failures as each of this pair of plays lasted just one week. Instead of either of them I brought back a manuscript of a comedy called "What Would a Gentleman Do?"—which proved as big a failure as any I ever had! Next I produced "The Master Hand" by a Mr. Fleming—whew! what a flivver! (The play, of course!)

But before I increase this list further let me hark back to matters more personal if no less gloomy!

Chapter LVIII