VARIEGATED EXPERIENCES.
It has not been possible to elicit an entirely satisfactory account of Belasco’s career in the period extending from October 18, 1873, to about the end of February, 1876. In particular, it has been impossible, notwithstanding most earnest efforts, to establish the sequence of incidents of his experience in Virginia City. Nevertheless, much that occurred during the period indicated, nearly two and one-half years, has been ascertained beyond question, and such gaps as occur in the records have been supplied by reasonable surmise. He fulfilled, in all, five engagements in Virginia City, and three, if not four, of them were antecedent to “the fire” which, in 1875, devastated that mountain resort of licence and crime. Among the actors with whom he was most closely associated in Piper’s stock company were A. D. Billings, George Giddens, Sydney Cowell (Mrs. Giddens), George Hinckley (uncle of Blanche Bates), and Annie Adams (Mrs. Kiskaden, 1849-1916), mother of Miss Maude Adams. The period of his first employment there was a trying one and during it he broke down, became seriously ill, and was lodged for a time in the home of Piper, where his illness was augmented by a distressing experience with an unfortunate demented woman, the wife of Piper. Recalling that ordeal, he has said: “Her husband, naturally, felt loath to send his wife to the Insane Asylum in Stockton, so he had some rooms padded and arranged as comfortably as possible for her in his own house. I was ill there for three weeks, and my room, unhappily, was within calling distance of Mrs. Piper’s. During the long nights I could hear her groaning and crying out,—not a very encouraging atmosphere for one who was himself suffering, and more from ’nerves’ than anything else. Then one gray dawn I awoke to find Mrs. Piper standing at the foot of my bed. Apparently she was as sane as any one, and she expressed great solicitude as to my condition. It seemed to me an eternity as she stood there, though in reality it was only about five minutes. Suddenly her mood changed. ’I’m going to kill some one,’ she screamed, and made a lunge for me. But, luckily, her keeper, who had heard her, came in and restrained her, and we calmed her down and got her back to her own rooms.”
Belasco’s financial debt to Piper must have been paid or compounded on or about March 1, 1874, and his engagement in Virginia City terminated. On March 10, that year, he certainly was employed as a super, at the California Theatre, on the occasion of Adelaide Neilson’s first appearance in San Francisco. The play was “Romeo and Juliet”: Lewis Morrison acted Romeo and Barton Hill Mercutio. Miss Neilson’s engagement (during which she played Rosalind, Lady Teazle, Julia, in “The Hunchback,” and Pauline, in “The Lady of Lyons,” as well as Juliet) ended on March 30: Belasco, whose admiration for that great actress was extreme, contrived to be employed at the California Theatre during the whole of it. On April 4, following, “the Entire Lingard Combination” appeared at the Opera House (so designated) in an English version of Feuillet’s “La Tentation,” and on April 6 John T. Raymond acted at the California Theatre as Hector Placide, in Boucicault’s version of the same play, called “Led Astray.” Both those representations were seen by Belasco.
On April 23 Raymond, at the California, produced, for the first time, a stage synopsis made by Gilbert S. Densmore, of “The Gilded Age,” by Samuel L. Clemens and Charles Dudley Warner. Writing of it, Belasco says: “While that play was building Densmore talked it all over with me. As it was originally written it was in five long acts and had in it a curious medley of melodrama.... When the script was eventually read to him [Raymond], all the comment he made, with a few of those choice expletives which he knew so well how to choose, was that he hated all courtroom scenes, except those in ’The Merchant of Venice’ and in Boucicault’s ’The Heart of Midlothian.’... It was in this frame of mind that he was finally persuaded to try ’The Gilded Age.’ Of course, the play needed a lot of re-writing, and I don’t believe any one really thought it would be successful. It was put on as a try-out because the man was in such sore need of a vehicle, and, like so many other plays which are produced as makeshifts, it soared its way into instant popularity. It was not by any means a wonderful play in itself, it was merely another instance of the personality of the player being fitted to the part, and in the rôle [sic] of Colonel Mulberry Sellers John T. Raymond found himself and, incidentally, fame and fortune.”
That is not altogether an accurate account of the dramatic genesis of “The Gilded Age.” Densmore’s adaptation of the book was piratical, and Clemens, hearing of it, protested vigorously, by telegraph, against continuance of its presentment. It was acted only once in San Francisco, in 1874. Densmore finally arranged to sell his stage version to Clemens, and that author himself made a dramatization of the novel. Writing about it, to William Dean Howells, he says:
“I worked a month on my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday. I believe it will go. The newspapers have been complimentary. It is simply a setting for one character, Colonel Sellers. As a play I guess it will not bear critical assault in force.” In another letter Clemens says: “I entirely rewrote the play three separate and distinct times. I had expected to use little of his [Densmore’s] language and but little of his plot. I do not think there are now twenty sentences of Mr. Densmore’s in the play, but I used so much of his plot that I wrote and told him I should pay him about as much more as I had already paid him in case the play proved a success....”—Albert Bigelow Paine’s “Mark Twain, a Biography.” Volume I., pp. 517-18.
On November 3, 1874, Raymond published the following letter:
(From John T. Raymond to “The New York Sun.”)
“The Park Theatre, [New York].
“November 2, 1874.