“Dear Peter:—
“[E. D.] Price and Fred [Belasco] have been ‘kicking’ about the vile cigars in San Francisco, so I am sending you a few weeds that ought to be better than the Barbary Coast perfectos. Sorry I can’t deliver them in person, but I cannot get away this year; so when you are smoking them think of your old Four-o’clock-in-the-morning-pie-chum. Heavens, my dear Peter, I often think of those dear old days! They were struggling days for us, to be sure, but sometimes I feel that, at least as far as I am concerned, they were the happiest ones of life. Ambition is a hard, hard master, and from the moment when I left ’Frisco it has been constant work-work-work with me, morning-noon-and-night—winter and summer! I don’t think I have had half-a-dozen hours to myself in all that time, and to make my lot easier, away off here in the East, I am surrounded by that inartistic, low-lived Theatrical Syndicate, which for some reason or other,—certainly not justly for anything I have done,—has waged a relentless war against me. And since I cannot with honor play in Syndicate houses I am sending my stars and productions anywhere that I can find a roof to cover them. So far they have not crushed me, as they said they would, for the public and the press throughout the country have stood by me, and as long as I continue to deserve their sympathies and friendship I shall be victorious. In this combine against me, my dear Peter, are Al. Hayman and the Frohmans, to whom you know I have given the best years of my life, helping to make fame and fortune for them. Of course, with Charles Frohman it is jealousy: Daniel Frohman resents not being able to get my plays for nothing: with the Syndicate it is because they feared I was getting a little too strong for them. But you knew me as a boy—in fact, we were boys together—and no one in the world knows better than you how I can struggle with privation and adversity. I shall never surrender to this crowd: never—not even if I am obliged to return to ’Frisco and do chores about a theatre as you saw me do in the long, long ago.
“Well, I have written more than I intended to, telling you my troubles, but I shall make it a rule to send you a line now and then and let you know all the good and cheerful news of the East. I would give a finger to be able to drop in on you at this moment for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie in the little old restaurant, if it is still in existence, and to have an old-time heart-to-heart talk. But I hope it won’t be very long before I can do this. Hurrah! God bless you!
“Faithfully,
“David Belasco.”
(Peter Robertson to David Belasco, in New York.)
“Bohemian Club, San Francisco, Calif.,
“May 9, 1904.
“My dear Dave:—
“I shall smoke the cigars to your continued success. I was glad to hear from you; but I don’t sympathize in the least with your suffering from hard work. I did sympathize much more with you in the days when you worked,—often quite as hard and got no salary!—‘faking’ plays for Maguire, at the Baldwin. You would never be happy, anyway, if you hadn’t your head full of schemes, and were not constantly producing. Your work has achieved a great success, and work that has success behind it and success before it is life at its best. There is nothing so hard as work that has failure to pull it backward and the prospect of failure to push it back.
“I, too, think of the old days of coffee and cake; they were pleasant, after all; if I had lived much beyond them since they would still be pleasant to recall. However, my life goes on in its even tenor, and I make myself as comfortable as possible, though I do feel something like an old, worn-out hack—so many years I have gone the same old round. Still, I have not quite given up hope of better fortune.
“Go on and make your name and fortune greater than ever, and don’t work yourself up over any Syndicates. They need you more than you do them.—My regards to Mrs. Belasco and the family, and Fred and Price.