Photograph by Sarony. Author’s Collection.
AUGUSTIN DALY, ABOUT 1870-’75
plays and he has co-labored with other authors in the writing of many more. He has exerted a powerful influence upon the Stage in every part of our country. He has battled successfully against the iniquitous Theatrical Trust and in a great measure contributed to the curtailment of its oppressive power. He has developed and made efficient several stars who, without his assistance, would never have gained the prominence which, with it, they have attained. He has established and now (1917) maintains one of the finest theatres in the world. To have done all this,—to have raised himself from indigence and obscurity to honorable distinction and actual leadership in an intellectual calling, to have made his way by force of character, native talent, indomitable resolution, patient, continuous, indefatigable labor; to have borne, with unshaken fortitude, hardships, trials, disappointment, enmity, and calumny, and to have risen above all the vicissitudes of fortune,—this surely is to have shown the steadfast man of the old Roman poet and to have merited the reward of prosperity and the laurel of fame. His eminence in his vocation, accordingly, and the obligation to him of the Theatre and the Public do not require the claim of imaginary achievements to enhance his reputation. There never was any need that he should have claimed that he had introduced a new style of acting. I do not doubt, judging from what I have read of his many impersonations, that Betterton, who performed on the London stage more than two hundred years ago, could and did exemplify “quiet acting” as thoroughly as John Mason does, performing on the New York stage to-day. Changes, modifications of all kinds, have occurred, many varieties of personality have been exhibited, in many varieties of speech and bearing, but the radical, structural change in method that has been effected, the change from extravagance and elaborate artifice to refined simplicity, has not been wrought by any one person but by many persons, actuated by the same influences that have changed the physical investiture of the Theatre, and by the advance of intelligence, sense, and taste. It is peculiarly deplorable that the authority of Belasco should even seem to sustain such carping criticasters as I have indicated (writers who, ignorant of theatrical history and, apparently, of much else, seek to exalt the Present by impudent disparagement of the Past), because many of that tribe have, recently, taken to publishing idle and stupid detraction of Belasco himself, on the ground that he is “unprogressive” and belongs to “the old fashion.” He has done more by a single production such as “The Darling of the Gods” than the whole swarm of his detractors has ever done, or ever will do, in a lifetime of scribbling, and his name will live as a beacon of achievement, in life as well as in the Theatre, generations after they are all vanished and forgotten, like wind-blown dust.
CONCERNING MATTERS OF FACT.
Genest, in his exceedingly valuable “Account” of the Theatre in Great Britain,—a work to which every later writer on the subject finds himself more or less indebted and which ought to be reprinted,—sagely remarks that “In giving an account of the Stage a good story may sometimes be admitted on slender authority, but where mere matters of fact are concerned the history of the Stage ought to be written with the same accuracy as the history of England.” The attainment of accuracy, however, exacts scrupulous attention, ceaseless vigilance, patient inquiry, and hard work, and only a few writers about the Stage have ever taken the trouble to be thorough and exact. I had expected that Belasco’s “Story” could be depended upon in every particular and that it would prove of invaluable aid in writing this Memoir. I do not doubt that he designed it to be literally true, but, as a conscientious biographer, I am compelled to mention its errors of fact, and I deem it my duty to specify and correct some of them, as an act of justice alike to him and to his, and my, readers.
Belasco, as I have ascertained and stated, was born not in 1858 or 1859, as various accounts of him have declared, but in 1853. He has himself affirmed that in 1865, in San Francisco, he walked in a funeral procession expressive of the public grief for the death of Abraham Lincoln and at that time wrote a play, on the tragic and pathetic fate of that illustrious American, expositive of his views of the motives of Lincoln’s murderer. If we were to accredit the dates which are given as authentic in various published sketches of his life,—which appear to have been formally sanctioned,—we should find him to have reached only to the age of five years and nine months when he walked in that procession and wrote that play; we should find him,—according to such wild statements,—when he acted, in Victoria, with Julia Dean and Charles Kean, performing with those distinguished players about three years after both of them had died; we should admire him when, before the age of eleven, he was critically estimating the histrionic style of Walter Montgomery; and when, between the ages of thirteen and fourteen, he was giving counsel, which Raymond the comedian had solicited, relative to the play of “The Gilded Age,” and also as acting as amanuensis to Dion Boucicault. He states that Lawrence Barrett loved John McCullough “like his son.” Barrett, born in 1838, was six years younger than McCullough, born in 1832, and he could not have viewed that stalwart comrade with anything like a paternal—or a filial—feeling. In fact, though they dwelt in amicable association as managers and actors (it would have been hard for anybody to dwell in association with McCullough in any other way), there was no special affection between them, as I personally know. Belasco’s statement that McCullough was at one time Forrest’s dresser is incorrect. He admired Forrest and he imitated him (until the veteran gruffly told him to leave off “making a damned fool” of himself by so doing), but he never was Forrest’s servant or lackey. Belasco says that Barrett’s first appearance as Cassius, in “Julius Cæsar,” was made in 1870, in San Francisco, and that he “hated” the part and wished to play Antony, but could not because it was Walter Montgomery’s part,—the fact being that he played Cassius for the first time about 1855, when he was about seventeen years old, at the Metropolitan Theatre, Detroit; that he loved the part; that his affinity with it was very strong, and that he esteemed it, as what indeed it is, the moving impulse of the whole tragedy. Barrett first played Cassius in San Francisco March 9, 1869, at the California Theatre, Edwards acting Antony; that is, about one year before Montgomery visited San Francisco. I have talked with Barrett for hours and hours about acting, and especially about the play of “Julius Cæsar,” but I never heard him speak with enthusiasm about the part of Marc Antony, or express any desire to act that part, though he thoroughly understood it and knew its value. Another of Belasco’s mistaken assertions is the assurance that Walter Montgomery,—who acted Antony with Barrett as Cassius and McCullough as Brutus,—was enamoured of an actress named Rose Massey; that he (Belasco) witnessed their first encounter, on the stage of the California Theatre, when Montgomery was smitten speechless at the sight of the young woman; that he soon married her; and that, after a quarrel with her, he committed suicide, aboard a ship bound for England. Inquiry would have corrected his memory. Poor Montgomery (a genial fellow and a fine actor) was easily and often enamoured: as was said of the poet Heine, “His heart was a good deal broken in the course of his life.” Rose Massey was an ordinarily pretty woman, one of the many devotees of the Blonde Troupe