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,

“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?’”

About the end of November Belasco left Maguire’s employment and took a place as assistant stage manager, prompter, and general helper under Charles R. Thorne, Sr., who, on December 13, opened Thorne’s Palace Theatre (it had previously been Wilson’s Amphitheatre), at the corner of Montgomery and Market Streets, San Francisco. That engagement lasted for about three weeks—Thorne closing his theatre on December 31, without warning. Belasco’s delight in acquiring experience was gratified in this venture, but it was not otherwise profitable to him, as Thorne was unable to pay more than a small part of his salary. Besides discharging his other duties Belasco acted, in this engagement, Santo, in “Gaspardo; or, The Three Banished Men of Milan”; Signor Meteo, in “The Miser’s Daughter,” and Gilbert Gates, in “The Dawn of Freedom.” “The Fool’s Revenge,”—Thorne as Bertuccio and Kate Denin as Fiordelisa,—“The Forty Thieves,” “Who Killed Cock Robin?” and “Faustus, a Romantic Spectacle,” were also produced, and, in one capacity or another, Belasco took part in all those productions; but I have not been able to find programmes. On January 7, 1876, the house was reopened, as the Palace Theatre, under the management of Col. J. H. Wood, presenting Frank Jones, in “The Black Hand; or, The Lost Will,” in which Belasco performed as Bob, a Policeman. Jones’ engagement lasted for about three weeks: thereafter Belasco drifted back into the employment of Maguire.