From an old photograph. Belasco’s Collection.
pay. I acted many parts in my first seasons ’on the road’--among them _Raphael_, in ’The Marble Heart’; _Mr. Toodle_, in the farce of ’The Toodles’; _Robert Macaire_; _Hamlet_; _Uncle Tom_; _Modus_, in ’The Hunchback’; _Marc Antony_, in ’Julius Cæsar’; _Dolly Spanker_, in ’London Assurance’; _Mercutio_, and scores of others I can’t instantly call to mind.”
After considerable of the nomadic experience thus indicated, Belasco, returning to San Francisco, obtained, through his friend McCabe, an engagement in the company of Annie Pixley (Mrs. Robert Fulford, 1858-1893), remembered for her performance of _M’liss_, in a rough melodrama, by Clay M. Greene, remotely based on Bret Harte’s tenderly human and touching story bearing that name. For Annie Pixley he made a serviceable domestic drama on the basis of Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden” (which poem had been published in 1864), and he acted in it, with her, as _Philip Ray_. That subject had been brought on the stage in a play by Mme. Julie de Marguerittes (1814-1866), in which Edwin Adams gained renown as the unhappy, heroic _Enoch_. For his play on the subject Belasco received from Fulford $25. Later, he figured as an itinerant peddler, frequenting fairs at various towns in the neighborhood of San Francisco. In this character his attire comprised a black coat and trousers, a “stovepipe” hat, and a wig and whiskers. “I used to buy goods on credit,” he told me, “and take them along; then I would get a soap-box or a barrel on the lot, or perhaps on a corner, and recite until I had a crowd, and then work attention ’round to my goods, which I generally managed to sell out.”
Belasco, in his youth, entertained an admiration that was almost idolatrous for Walter Montgomery, an American actor who, coming from Australia, played in California when the boy was about seventeen years old. His spirit of emulation was fired by the extraordinary efforts which were put forth by that fine player to signalize the close of his engagement in San Francisco. On the night of June 17, 1870, supported by Barrett, McCullough, and the California Theatre stock company, Montgomery acted _Shylock_, _Romeo_, _King John_, _Hotspur_, _Hamlet_, _Benedick_ and _King Louis the Eleventh_, in selected scenes from seven plays. On the next night he acted _Marc Antony_, in a revival of “Julius Cæsar,”--that being his last appearance in California as an actor. On June 20 and 21 the California Theatre was devoted to “Walter Montgomery in His Celebrated Royal Recitals.” This was his programme on the first night: