I saw and recorded the first performance of “May Blossom.” The play was then exceedingly well acted. Georgia Cayvan (1858-1906), personating the heroine, gained the first decisive success of her career. That actress, a handsome brunette, was fortunate in person and in temperament. Her figure was lithe, her face was brilliantly expressive, her voice was rich and sweet, she possessed uncommon sensibility, and she could be, at will, ingenuously demure, artlessly girlish, authoritatively stern, or fervently passionate. She attained distinction among American actresses of “emotional” drama and was long and rightly a favorite on our Stage. As May Blossom she was first the lovely, simple, charming girl, and later the grave, tranquil wife and mother. In the expression of mental conflict she was, for a time, artificial in method, using the well-worn, commonplace expedients of reeling, staggering, and clutching at furniture; but she reformed that altogether, and her capability of intense passion in repose was clearly indicated: the character was developed and truly impersonated. Among her associates in the representation were Joseph Wheelock, Sr. (183[8?]-1908), and William J. LeMoyne (1831-1905), both actors of signal ability, now forgotten or only dimly remembered. Wheelock, in his early day, was a favorite Romeo. LeMoyne was an actor of rare talent and remarkable versatility. His impersonations of eccentric, humorous, peppery old gentlemen were among the finest and most amusing that our Stage has known. In this play he personated Unca Bartlett, a benevolent, affectionate, whimsical rural clergyman. I
Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.
GEORGIA CAYVAN
About 1884, when she acted in “May Blossom”
recall a somewhat painful incident of the first night of “May Blossom,” which should be recorded as indicative of its author’s peculiar constitution. Belasco had made arduous efforts in preparing the play for the stage and also during the performance of it, and when, after the last curtain, he was called and constrained to thank his enthusiastic audience, he could hardly speak, and after saying a few words he fainted. This collapse, genuine and, to a hypersensitive person, natural, was, by some observers, cruelly derided as affectation. Many persons, fortunately for themselves superior to trepidation, seem incapable of understanding as genuine the “fears and scruples” which sometimes overwhelm others: I remember once, at a banquet, in Boston, to Dr. Holmes, noting with surprise the impatience with which my table neighbor, Colonel Higginson, gazing at Holmes,—who was trembling with excitement in view of what he had to do,—said to me: “What’s he worried about! He has only to read some verses!” Many years after the first presentment of “May Blossom,” which it was my privilege to hail, the next morning, in “The New York Tribune,” as the best new play which had, up to that time, been produced at the Madison Square Theatre, Belasco said to me: “Your verdict meant everything to me,—more, during the first week or two, than the public approval. Bronson Howard’s recognition of my work in improving ’Young Mrs. Winthrop’ and your support of my ’May Blossom’ did more to help me break the iron ring I was shut up in in New York than everything else put together!”
The prosperity of “May Blossom” much facilitated the progress of Belasco toward the attainment of his ambitious object, which was the control of a high-class theatre in New York; but he was yet to meet with disappointments and hardships and to undergo many trials. The venomous practice of stigmatizing him as a plagiarist, which has long prevailed, began almost coincidentally with the success of “May Blossom.” It should here be mentioned again that this play was transformed by him from an earlier play of his, called “Sylvia’s Lovers,” written about 187(5?), and first produced, in that year, at Piper’s Opera House, in Virginia City. When he had prepared it in a new and definitive form for presentment at the Madison Square Theatre he showed the manuscript to Howard P. Taylor, a writer for “The New York Dramatic Mirror,” at that time edited by Harrison Grey Fiske, and consulted him as a reputed expert relative to historical details of the Civil War. That person had offered to the managers of the Madison Square Theatre a play called “Caprice” (produced August 11, 1884, at the New Park Theatre, New York, by John A. Stevens and the author, in partnership—Minnie Maddern, now Mrs. Fiske, being the star), which those managers rejected. After “May Blossom” had been successfully presented, Taylor accused Belasco of having caused the Mallory brothers to reject “Caprice,” and also with having stolen ideas from that play,—which, as stage manager and adviser of the Madison Square Theatre, he had seen,—and used them in “May Blossom.” Belasco urgently requested him to make the accusation in court, but Taylor, though he long and maliciously persisted in publishing his defamatory charge, would never bring the matter to a legal test. On the occasion of the 1000th performance of “May Blossom,” at a dinner given by Daniel Frohman and “Harry” Miner, in celebration of the event, Harrison Grey Fiske, who, at his own request, had been included among the speakers, stated that he felt he had a duty to perform in tendering an apology for the unfounded accusations repeatedly made by Taylor, in “The Dramatic Mirror,” impugning the integrity of Belasco as an author and a man.
This was the original cast of “May Blossom,” at the Madison Square: