Volume 1 — WANING FORTUNES AT THE BALDWIN.

Adelaide Neilson’s farewell season at the Baldwin Theatre (during which it was guaranteed that she should receive not less than $500 a performance) was almost the last notably remunerative engagement filled there during Maguire’s tenancy of that house. Indeed, theatrically, “the most high and palmy state” of San Francisco was passed, and the history of the Baldwin, and of the stock company at that theatre, for the two years which followed (July, 1880, to July, 1882), is one of anxious striving, strenuous endeavor, often brilliant achievement, public indifference, defeated hopes, declining fortunes, fitful renewals of prosperity quickly followed by periods in which bad business grew always a little worse, and ultimate failure and disintegration. When Belasco began his effort to rehabilitate and reëstablish himself there, “playing mostly bits,” as he expressed it to me, James H. Vinson and Robert Eberle were, officially, in charge of the stage and, though he did much, if not most, of the actual labor of stage management, his services were not publicly acknowledged. For reasons of business expediency, therefore, he, for a time, reverted to use of the name of Walter Kingsley, which appears in various programmes. After a few weeks, however, Eberle withdrew from the stage, devoting himself to business affairs of the theatre, and Belasco soon worked back into his former place as director and playwright. His “Paul Arniff” was followed, July 26, by the first presentment of a drama, taken from the French, entitled “Deception,” by Samuel W. Piercy, who personated the chief character in it, Raoul de Ligniers. Later, that play, renamed “The Legion of Honor,” was presented by Piercy in many cities of our country: it was brought out at the Park Theatre, New York, on November 9, 1880. That capital actor Frederic de Belleville, coming from Australia, made his first appearance in America when it was acted at the Baldwin. “Deception” was followed, August 9, by “An Orphan of the State” (known to our Eastern Stage as “A Child of the State”), and, on August 16, by the first appearance of John T. Malone, who performed as Richelieu,—Barton Hill playing De Mauprat. Belasco greatly liked Malone and, in his “Story,” gives this glimpse of him: