  The gentle Goldsmith, commenting on a meanness in human nature which causes little minds to envy and disparage the achievements of large ones, remarked that “There are a set of men called Photograph by White. Belasco’s Collection. DAVID WARFIELD AS PETER GRIMM, IN “THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM” answerers of books, who take upon themselves to watch the republic of letters and distribute reputation by the sheet: they somewhat resemble the eunuchs in a seraglio, who are incapable of giving pleasure themselves and hinder those that would.” Such emasculated perverters of the function of criticism,—scribblers bloated with envy engendered by conscious intellectual impotence,—flourish more or less in all periods; they are peculiarly prosperous in this one, and their envious malice is employed with at least as much industry in the “answering” and defaming of dramatists and actors as in the “answering” of books. Before Belasco had produced “Peter Grimm” in New York and almost in the hour of his personal bereavement, a representative specimen of that wretched brotherhood, itching to detract from the achievement of an author whom he could not hope ever to approach, published the false statement that Belasco was only part author of that play. Among the papers loaned to me by Belasco is a copy of the following letter, which I print here because the misrepresentation alluded to has been several times iterated and the refutation of it should be placed on record: (Belasco to a Quidnunc.) “Belasco Theatre, New York, “In your article in the current ‘————’ there is a misstatement which I should be much obliged to you if you would rectify, as it places both Mr. Cecil De Mille and myself in a false light. “Your article states that Mr. Cecil De Mille is my ‘collaborator’ in Mr. Warfield’s new play, ‘The Return of Peter Grimm.’ I am not aware whether you saw the play when it was presented in Boston, Chicago and Pittsburg last season. If you did so, however, you must remember that on the play bill I gave full credit to Mr. De Mille for an idea—WHICH I PURCHASED FROM HIM AND PAID VERY HANDSOMELY FOR. As for the play—in its construction, its dialogue, its plot and its characterizations—the play is mine and MINE ONLY. “Mr. De Mille, I know well, will be the first person to verify this statement of mine, and in view of the fact that my play has not yet been presented in New York—and may possibly prove a failure there—I think it is only fair that I should be held exclusively responsible for my own work....” |
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