Melbourne MacDowell, in the last remnants of the faded glory cast upon him by Fanny Davenport, was about to tread the sacred stage of the old Grand Opera House, putting on a repertoire of the Sudermann and Sardou dramas.
Frank Bacon, always my kind adviser, suggested I should try my luck with this aggregation. So I trotted merrily down, wandered through dark alleyways, terribly thrilled, for Henry Irving had come this same way and I was walking where once he had walked.
I was to appear as a boy servant in “Fedora.” I remember only one scene. It was in a sort of court room with a civil officer sitting high and mighty and calm and unperturbed on a high stool behind a high desk. I entered the room and timidly approached the desk. A deep stern voice that seemed to rise from some dark depths shouted at me, “At what hour did your master leave Blu Bla?”
I shivered and shook and finally stammered out the answer, and was mighty glad when the scene was over.
Heavens! Who was this person, anyhow?
His name, I soon learned, was Griffith—Lawrence Griffith—I never could abide that “Lawrence”! Though, as it turned out afterward, our married life might have been dull without that Christian name as a perpetual resource for argument.
Afterward, to my great joy, Mr. Griffith confided to me that he had taken the name “Lawrence” only for the stage. His real name was “David,” “David Wark,” but he was going to keep that name dark until he was a big success in the world, and famous. And as yet he didn’t know, although he seemed very lackadaisical about it, I thought, whether he’d be great as an actor, stage director, grand opera star, poet, playwright, or novelist.
I wasn’t the only one who thought he might have become a great singer. Once a New York critic reviewing a première of one of David Griffith’s motion pictures, said: “The most interesting feature of Mr. Griffith’s openings is to hear his wonderful voice.”
“Lawrence” condescended to a little conversation now and then. He was quite encouraging at times. Said I had wonderful eyes for the stage and if I ever went to New York and got in right, I’d get jobs “on my eyes.” (Sounded very funny—getting a job “on one’s eyes.”) Advised me never to get married if I expected to stay on the stage. Told me about the big New York actors: Leslie Carter, who had just been doing DuBarry; and David Belasco, and what a wonderful producer he was; and dainty Maude Adams; and brilliant Mrs. Fiske; and Charles Frohman; and Richard Mansfield in “Monsieur Beaucaire”; and Broadway; and Mrs. Fernandez’s wonderful agency; and how John Drew got his first wonderful job through her agency at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week!
I was eager to learn more of the big theatrical world three thousand miles away. I invited Mr. Griffith out home to lunch one day. A new world soon opened up for me—the South. The first Southerner I’d ever met was Mr. Griffith. I had known of the South only from my school history; but the one I had studied didn’t tell of Colonel Jacob Wark Griffith, David’s father, who fought under Stonewall Jackson in the Civil War, and was called “Thunder Jake” because of his roaring voice. He owned lots of negroes, gambled, and loved Shakespeare. There was big “Sister Mattie” who taught her little brother his lessons and who, out on the little front stoop, just before bedtime, did her best to answer all the questions the inquisitive boy would ask about the stars and other wonders.