Volume 1 — “BARON RUDOLPH” AND GEORGE S. KNIGHT.

The continuous, energetic, productive industry of Belasco is further signified by the fact that during the interval between “The Highest Bidder” and “The Wife” (May to November, 1887) he found time to do an important piece of work in association with Bronson Howard. That author had, several years earlier, written a play for Mr. and Mrs. William J. Florence, called “Only a Tramp.” Mrs. Florence was not satisfied with the part, Nellie Dashwood, designed for her, and the Florences, accordingly, rejected the play. In 1886 it was bought from Howard by George S. Knight (George Washington Sloan,—1850-1892), who chanced to meet Howard in London and to whom it was offered.

The play of “Baron Rudolph” (or “Rudolph,” as, finally, it was denominated) is not a distinctive or important one, but it contains, chiefly as the result of Belasco’s revision (it was earlier acted in New York, as Howard left it, so this statement rests on direct comparison), effective elements of comedy and some amusing incidents and fluent dialogue. Knight was a competent comedian,—nothing more: he lacked personal magnetism, delicacy, and the rare and precious faculty of taste.

The story of the play is trite and it is artificial; it belongs to the category typified by “Struck Oil,” in which James C. Williamson and his wife, “Maggie” Moore, were widely successful, many years ago, gaining a fortune with it. It depicts the vicissitudes and sufferings of a kind and loving, though weak and imprudent man, Rudolph, and of his wife and child. Rudolph, who has been prosperous, is pitifully poor, and his wife and their child are on the verge of starvation. The husband returns, slightly intoxicated, to their squalid abode, and the wife, stung to bitter resentment, leaves him, taking their child, and intent to earn a living by her own labor. In this purpose she succeeds, and after an interval of about two years she obtains a divorce from Rudolph,—who, meantime, has become a gin-sodden “tramp,” abject and wretched,—and she weds a swindling scoundrel, the secret agent of Rudolph’s ruin. That specious villain is detected, apprehended, and exposed as a forger, in the moment of the wretched Rudolph’s accession to a fortune and a baronetcy, in Germany, and then a scene of recognition and reconciliation ensues,—containing possibilities of pathetic effect,—between the wretched father, “only a tramp,” and his daughter. This story is jumbled with the wooing of a sprightly widow, named Nellie Dashwood, a sort of Mrs. General Gilflory (in “The Mighty Dollar”); an attempted burglary; a secondary story about two very young lovers, and a tedious tangle of literal detail and “outward flourishes.”

Persons who care to observe how disruption wrought by poverty, suffering, and weakness, in the home of an affectionate husband, wife and child, can be treated with poignant dramatic effect should study the old play of “Belphegor; or, The Mountebank,”—in which, as Belphegor, Charles Dillon gave one of the most beautiful and touching performances it has ever been my fortune to see. The triumphant use of such material can also be studied in the late Charles Klein’s “The Music Master,” as augmented, rectified, and produced by Belasco, with David Warfield in its central part, Herr von Barwig. When revived, as altered and amended by Belasco, “Rudolph” was handsomely set on the stage, but Knight’s method of dressing and acting the principal part ruined any chance of success which it might have had.

Knight became infatuated with the part of the Tramp, and he produced “Rudolph,” for the first time, in the Fall of 1886, at the Academy of Music, Cleveland. In 1887 Howard rewrote the play—receiving, as I understood, $3,000 for doing so,—and it was then produced at Hull, England, with Knight and his wife as stars, supported by members of Wilson Barrett’s company, from the Princess’ Theatre, London. In its revised form it was called “Baron Rudolph.” Knight was still dissatisfied with the structure of it, and, returning to America, desired that Howard should again revise it, but this Howard was unable to do, being preoccupied with labor on “The Henrietta,” for Robson and Crane (that play was produced for the first time at the Union Square Theatre, September 26, 1887), but, at his request, Belasco undertook a second revision. “My object,” he said, “was to do the work as nearly as possible in Howard’s way, and I must have succeeded pretty well, because when I took the script to him he said: ’You’ve caught my style, exactly!’ And he would not allow the piece to be produced as ’By Bronson Howard’; he insisted that I should have public credit as a co-author.” In its final form it bore Howard’s second title, “Baron Rudolph,” and, under the direction of Charles Frohman, representing Knight, and the stage management of Belasco, it was produced at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, New York, on October 24, 1887. “There was the chance for an immense popular success and a fortune in the piece,” Belasco said to me, “but Knight threw it all away. He insisted on making-up’ Rudolph, the tramp, in such a literal, dirty, repulsive manner that, in the recognition scene where the girl learns he is her father and has to embrace and kiss him, the audience, instead of being sympathetic, was disgusted. We argued and entreated with Knight: I told him, over and over and over, what would happen. But he couldn’t, or he wouldn’t, see it—and it happened!” The play failed, utterly; it was kept on the stage for four weeks and then withdrawn. Knight, first and last, lost a modest fortune on that play, and its ultimate failure broke him down. He and his wife went on a tour, after ending their engagement at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, in an early success of theirs, a farce called “Over the Garden Wall,” but Knight’s brain was affected; within a few months he suffered a shock of paralysis, and, on July 14, 1892, after much suffering, he died, in Philadelphia. During his illness he was maintained and cared for, with exemplary devotion, by his wife.

This was the cast of “Baron Rudolph,” at the Fourteenth Street Theatre:

RudolphGeorge S. Knight.

WhetworthFrank Carlyle.

RhodaCarrie Turner.

OwenLin Hurst.

SheriffFrank Colfax.

ErnestineJane Stuart.

General MetcalfCharles Bowser.

Judge MerryboneM. A. Kennedy.

Geoffrey BrownHenry Woodruff.

AllenGeorge D. Fawcett.

Nellie Dashwood Mrs. George S. Knight.