Volume 1 — TEMPERAMENTAL SYMPATHY.—EARLY READING: “THE LOW SUN MAKES THE COLOR.”

In his youth Belasco was an omnivorous reader (as he continues to be), but his favorite reading was that of History, and among historical characters that specially enthralled his imagination was Mary, Queen o’ Scots. Indeed, he has, in conversation, given me the impression that, from an early age, his mind has been deeply interested in the study of those famous women of history whose conduct of life is shown to have been governed by their appetites and passions. That taste seems morbid, but it is readily explicable. Such women have been, are, and always will be a direct spring of tense, dramatic, romantic situations and tragic events, and sometimes their experience involves incidents and culminates in catastrophes which make a strong appeal to persons who possess, as Belasco does, a highly emotional temperament. Queen Guinevere, in Tennyson’s pathetic “Idyl,” remarks that “the low sun makes the color.” Such women as Malcolm’s Queen Margaret of Scotland or Mme. Roland, probably, would be viewed by Belasco with merely languid respect or indifference. Such a woman as Navarre’s Marguerite de Valois, or Queen Catherine the Second of Russia, or the irresistible siren Barbara Villiers, or that all-conquering captivator Arabella Stuart,—whose image lives, perpetual, in sculpture and, as Brittania, on the coins of Great Britain,—would, on the contrary, provide for him an exceedingly interesting study. It is not, therefore, altogether surprising that when Belasco had established Mrs. Leslie Carter as a successful star it pleased him to select for public illustration in a drama one of the most depraved and dissolute feminine characters that hang on the fringes of history,—the shameless hussy who, about 145 years ago, was picked out of the streets of Paris, and under the auspices of the most notorious titled blackguard of his time wedded to a complaisant degenerate, in order that she might succeed Mme. Pompadour as the mistress of King Louis the Fifteenth of France. Marie Jeanne Becu (1746-1793), who began life in Paris as a milliner, became a courtesan, under the name of Mlle. Lange, was later a lure for a gambling house, then, ennobled as the “Countess du Barry,” was installed as the mistress of the corrupt King Louis the Fifteenth,—whom practically she ruled for five years,—and finally was slaughtered in the Reign of Terror, is the theme of one of the most pictorial, popular, and successful of Belasco’s plays. His selection of a story of that remarkable female’s adventures for dramatic exploitation was not, however, wholly spontaneous. In 1899, aware that a successor to the torrid termagant of the Paris music-halls would presently be required for Mrs. Carter’s use, he began to cast about for a play with a central character suited to her personality and method. Not finding anything which he deemed satisfactory in the numerous dramas, old as well as new, by many authors, which he examined, he began, regretfully, to contemplate the necessity of writing one to fit his star,—regretfully, because he was weary and would have been glad to avoid adding the labor of authorship to that of business and stage management. His election had practically fallen on Queen Elizabeth as the central figure to be shown, when he abruptly determined to visit England, partly in faint hope of finding there a drama which would serve his end; more with intent to refresh his mind by change and travel and to stimulate himself to his new task by visiting all the places associated with the life and reign of Elizabeth. He sailed from New York on June 14, 1899. Soon after he arrived in London an American playbroker, Miss Elisabeth Marbury, communicated to him that “she had a great idea for a part for Mrs. Carter.” Belasco, entertaining a high opinion of Miss Marbury’s judgment and rejoiced at the sudden prospect of escaping the labor of authorship, immediately went to see her, at Versailles, in France, and there was informed that the French poet M. Jean Richepin “proposed to write a play founded on the life of du Barry.” The appended account of what followed has been written by Belasco, and it provides explicit information on a subject that at one time was disputed with acrimony in the newspaper press and occupied much of the attention of the theatre-going public: