There were the Aldriches—Louis and Thomas Bailey—no relation, except Louis was named after the writer. As a boy he was very poor, did not know where he came from, only that he was called “Louis.” Having the job of running errands around a theater out west, he was accosted by the stage carpenter one day, who was a great admirer of the writing of Thomas Bailey.
“Your name from now on is Aldrich,” he said, “Louis Aldrich. Don’t forget it or you will catch the devil from me.”
Louis Aldrich it was, and when he had made his way in the world and was successful enough to go in the same society with Thomas Bailey, he had reached the goal that the carpenter had unwittingly marked for him. The poet always rather resented his existence, however.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote delightful verse and was a charming man, but little things sometimes irritated him greatly. I remember him coming into the club evidently as cross as two sticks. The publishers had had the “cheek” to refuse a poem of his. I asked why. “Oh, I suppose they found it too meter-icious.” And this was long before the days of free verse.
Louis Aldrich made a fortune from the play “My Pardner,” taken from the Bret Harte story called Tennessee’s Pardner.
When Louis Aldrich was chairman of the house committee of The Players, I saw him one noon standing at the door of the dining room, talking to Walter, the head waiter. Presently, in a loud voice, he said:
“Walter, what is the lunch to-day?”
“Pork chops and sausages, sir.”
“An insult to the house committee.”
Then later at the table: