  One of the associations of Belasco’s professional life much prized by him is that with the lovely woman and great actress Adelaide Neilson. Miss Neilson first appeared in San Francisco, March 10, 1874, at the California Theatre, acting Juliet,—of which part she was the best representative who has been seen within the last sixty years. During her engagement at the California, which lasted till March 30, and in the course of which she acted When Belasco was re-employed at the Baldwin Miss Neilson was acting there, in the second week of her farewell engagement, which began on June 8. On July 17 that engagement closed, and one of the brightest yet saddest of theatrical careers came to an end. Belasco, always closely attentive to his stage duties, never depended on anybody but himself to give the signals for raising and lowering the curtain, and, on that night, he “rang down” on the last performance Adelaide Neilson ever gave. The bill was the Balcony Scene, from “Romeo and Juliet,” and the play of “Amy Robsart.” In the course of the performance Belasco, after the THE BLACK PEARL. “Like other stars of the day, Miss Neilson expressed a desire to give every member of her company a memento. I was waiting at the green-room door to escort her to the hotel, when she called me into her dressing-room. ’You are so weird and mysterious, and perhaps I may never see you again. Look over those things and choose something for yourself.’ On her dressing-room table she had piled all her wonderful jewels, a fortune of immense value. I remember that her maid, a little deformed woman, stood by me as I hesitated. ’Yes, to bring you luck,’ she replied and there was a faint chuckle in her throat. Rubies, diamonds, emeralds—they dazzled my eyes. I finally reached forward and picked a black pearl. I said, ’I’ll take this.’ Miss Neilson’s face turned white, and she closed her eyes. ’Oh, David, why do you ask for that?’ she cried, and I dropped it as though I had done an evil thing. ’I’m superstitious,’ she confessed. ’My trunk is full of nails, horseshoes, and the luckiest thing of all is that little black pearl. I dislike “When she left on the morrow she made me promise that if I ever visited London I would seek her out, but that was the last I saw of Adelaide Neilson. She had gone no farther than Reno when she wrote me, sending me a little package in which was buried the black pearl. ’I cannot get your voice out of my mind,’ she wrote. Six months afterwards she died in a little French village. She had returned tired and dusty to the inn from a ramble in the leafy lanes of Normandy, and, drinking a glass of ice-cold milk, was suddenly dead in an hour. [She died in less than one month—August 15, 1880, at a chÂlet, in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, becoming ill while driving.—W. W.] “Of course I had told my family the incident, and one afternoon, while I was out, my mother went to my room, and, for fear of ill-luck pursuing me, destroyed the black pearl. Such incidents have been put into plays and audiences have laughed over the improbability, but here’s an indisputable fact. Charge it to the long arm of coincidence, if you will, but in my own career I have met so many occurrences that are stranger than fiction that I cannot doubt the workings of coincidence any longer. “Often during this engagement she had spoken of Mr. William Winter in terms of gratitude and respect, and that the sentiment must have been mutual we have ample verification in his many valuable books. From these MISS NEILSON’S GOOD INFLUENCE. Adelaide Neilson, whatever may have been the errors of her early life, was intrinsically a noble woman, and any man might well be proud to have gained her kindly interest. In the often abused art of acting, to pass, as she did, from the girlish glee and artless merriment of Viola to the romantic, passion-touched, tremulous entrancement of Juliet, thence to the ripe womanhood of Imogen, and finally to the grandeur of Isabella, is to fill the imagination with an ideal of all that is excellent in woman and all that makes her the angel of man’s existence and the chief grace and glory of the world. All acting is illusion: “the best in this kind are but shadows.” Yet she who could thus fill up the measure of ideal beauty surely possessed glorious elements. Much for her own sake is this actress remembered—much, also, for the ever “bright imaginings” she prompted and the high thoughts that her influence inspired and justified as to woman’s nature. As the poet bore in his heart the distant, dying song of the reaper, “long after “The very first Of human life must spring from woman’s breast; Your first small words are taught you from her lips; Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs Breathed out in woman’s hearing.” |
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