Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection.
_John Sternhold_ Charles L. Harris. _Montague Flash_ G. C. Boniface. _Charles Saxe_ Cyril Scott. _Osiah Gregg_ J. W. Hague. _Postman_ F. Waldo Parker. _Ruth_ Augusta Raymond. _Alice Sternhold_ Lilian Richardson. _Aunt Dorothy_ Ernestine Floyd.
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.”