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

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.