Volume 1 — “LORD CHUMLEY” AND E. H. SOTHERN.

During the early part of 1888 Belasco did some work as a teacher of acting, bestowing, at the request of Daniel Frohman, special attention on instruction of Mrs. James G. Blaine, Jr. (Mary Nevin), a person of social influence—and therefore potentially valuable to the management of the Lyceum Theatre—whose aspirations for a theatrical career were terminated by serious illness. Toward Spring the necessity of executing the commission to write a new play for the use of Sothern, at the Lyceum, compelled Belasco to lay aside all other labor, and, about March-April, in company with De Mille, he repaired to Echo Lake, and there, after trying and rejecting many dramatic schemes, the co-mates in authorship finally hit upon one to their liking. By about July 1 (1888) they had practically completed a new play, entitled “Lord Chumley,” and they returned to New York in order that Belasco might put it into rehearsal. In doing this he had to confront an unexpected difficulty: Sothern, who had expressed himself as satisfied on reading the scenario of the play, did not like the part of Chumley in the finished work and, as Mr. Frohman informed the disgruntled authors, was averse to undertaking it. Belasco writes of this: “‘But the character’s Sothern,’ I said; ’every look, gesture, and exclamation fits him like a glove!’... Of course, it was the old story all over again; an actor never knows what is best suited to him.” The latter notion is, I think, extravagant: for every instance wherein an actor has made a notable success in playing a part against his judgment and will a dozen could be cited wherein the actor has known his powers and made his distinctive success by following his own judgment in selection of the part to be played. “You are mistaken,” Charles Burke told a friend, who had exclaimed to him, in a burst of admiration, “You don’t know what a good actor you are!”, “I know exactly what a good actor I am, and exactly what I can do on the stage.” Sothern, as his later career has shown, cherished ambition to act parts of a very different character from Chumley, but, fortunately for all concerned, he consented to undertake that part, after Belasco had expounded it to him; the rehearsals were carried on with diligence and, on August 21, 1888, “Lord Chumley” was produced, for the first time anywhere, at the Lyceum Theatre.

The play of “Lord Chumley” is a mosaic of many old dramatic situations, culled from various earlier plays, revamped and intercalated so as to make a sequent story, and it can rightly be designated a comedy, tinged with melodrama and farce. Chumley is a young English lord, a gentleman by nature as well as birth; simple, generous, sincere, intrepid, and acute, but hampered by shyness, an impediment in his speech, and a superficial aspect of inanity. He impoverishes himself in order to serve a friend, Hugh Butterworth, an imprudent young fellow, an officer in the British Army, who is being victimized by a specious French rascal. This malignant person wishes to wed the officer’s sister, Miranda, and by threatening to ruin that young man’s reputation has extorted from her a promise of marriage. The lady is beloved by Chumley, who intervenes and prevents the marriage, incidentally vindicating himself in her opinion: she has at first believed him to be a fool and later a blackguard, but she ends by perceiving his intrinsically fine character and reciprocating his love. In the course of his variegated experience he contrives to make himself misunderstood in attempting to tell his troubles to a sympathetic spinster; he dwells without repining in the squalor of a miserable lodging, to which his generous self-impoverishment has reduced him; he confronts a desperate burglar in the dark and, armed only with a cigarette-holder shaped like a pistol, he fools, cows, and overcomes him; he exhibits astounding physical prowess in conflict with a burly antagonist, and he displays amazing mental acuteness in penetrating and defeating the malevolent purposes of a villain.

Belasco, writing of himself and his co-worker De Mille, says: “For a month we talked over Sothern’s play without a single idea. At this time [1887-’88] pistol cigarette-holders came into fashion. I bought one in the village [near Echo Lake] to amuse the De Mille children, but forgot to take it out of my hip pocket. The next day as De Mille and I were out walking in the snow I leaned against a tree, drew the toy pistol from my pocket, and called out: ’Stand and deliver,’ and in a flash the foolish situation gave us the first idea for what was afterward called ’Chumley.’ We used this serio-comic situation in our Second Act, where Chumley holds a real thief at bay with his cigarette-case.” That, no doubt, is a correct account of the “first idea”; others came from Belasco’s ample store of recollections. Chumley, as a character, is a remote variant of the elder Sothern’s Dundreary, superimposed on H. J. Byron’s Sir Simon Simple, in “Not Such a Fool as He Looks,”—which was written for Charles Mathews. In the development of the plot in which he is implicated and the treatment of the character there is much reminiscence—touches of John Mildmay, in his scene with Captain Hawksley, in “Still Waters Run Deep”; of Harry Jasper, in “A Bachelor of Arts”; of Sir Bashful Constant, Arthur Chilton, Mr. Toots, and, in particular, Eliott Gray, in his scene with Myles McKenna, in “Rosedale.” All the situations indicated have long been used as common property. The merit of the play consists in the effectiveness with which those situations are employed and in the bright, fluent, and generally telling dialogue with which they are interfused. Chumley is an extremely long part. Sothern’s performance was exceptionally good, and it was received by public and press with copious approbation. The success of the play was unequivocal: it held the stage till November 11. On November 13 Pinero’s “Sweet Lavender” succeeded it, but with the production of that excellent drama at the Lyceum Belasco had, practically, nothing to do: “Sweet Lavender” was sent to New York from London and was “put on” in exact accordance with the prompt-copy as prepared by the author when making Edward Terry’s presentment of it.

This was the original cast of “Lord Chumley,” at the Lyceum:

Adam ButterworthC. B. Bishop.

Lieut. Hugh ButterworthFrank Carlyle.

Gasper Le SageHerbert Archer.

Tommy TuckerRowland Buckstone.

Blink BankGeorge Backus.

WinterbottomA. W. Gregory.

EleanorBelle Archer.

Jessie DeaneDora Leslie.

Lady Alexander BarkerFannie Addison.

MegEtta Hawkins.

MirandaRosa Stark.

Lord George Cholmondeley (known as “Chumley”)E. H. Sothern.