The Fantastic City

We were a pleasure-loving people in the old city, which was really so young that it seems absurd to call it old. But I mean, always, old in contradistinction to the new city built after 1906; and by pleasure-loving, I hasten to state, I mean nothing in the Babylonian manner, but a love for the lightness and sparkle of life. San Francisco has always adored a fiesta, a celebration of any sort. The original effervescence of pioneer days never altogether departed. Chinatown and the Italian Quarter seemed perpetually en fête, and even the streets of dives and dance-halls along the Barbary Coast were irrepressibly gay; never dark and devious like the slums of London or New York. A 'wide-open' town in miners' parlance meant just that, and anything wide open cannot at the same time be dark and devious. The Barbary Coast covered a few blocks along Pacific and Jackson Streets on the outskirts of Chinatown, where one-story frame buildings housed saloons and dancehalls with a few cheap variety houses. It was all mild enough as slums go in seaport cities.

In our love of gayety we filled the theaters. It was still the grand period of the stage and the grand players, many of them, came to California, where generous patronage repaid them for the long voyage. My memories of the theater in these years are a brilliant tapestry of many figures against backgrounds of old castles, sylvan scenes, and Roman orums. Booth's slim, black velvet Hamlet; the whimsical Rip Van Winkle of Joseph Jefferson; Clara Morris, lachrymose and appealing with a white camellia in her flowing hair; Matilda Heron, a more beautiful Camille who in her last days nearly starved to death; and lovely Adelaide Neilson. All these are in the pattern, and a hundred others: One figure of superlative, polished dandyism, deft and dapper, stepping with light, pointed steps; Billy Emerson singing 'Moriarity.'

'The ladies all sigh as I go by,
"Are you there, Moriar-i-tee?"'

A figure that the Chase portrait of Whistler in the Metropolitan Museum of New York always recalled to me.

Most vivid of all, the glowing presence of Ristori. It must have been in the early eighties that the Italian tragedienne came to the California Theater, an elderly woman then, but with the fire of her genius still flaming. One understood how in younger days she rivaled Rachel in Paris. With what power and depth of sympathy she played Marie Antoinette! I lived through scenes with the unhappy Queen herself, although Ristori spoke the lines in Italian, and I understood no more than a word here and there; the scene where she gathered her little son in her arms and swept across the stage to fling window-curtains aside and face the mob that was crying, 'Down with the Austrian!' the scene of her farewell to the King in prison on the eve of his execution; and her going forth to her own death. I wept quite helplessly through them all, and even now have not forgotten my grief. She was a magnificent old actress: Marchesa di Capronica in private life. One of her daughters was lady-in-waiting to the late Queen of Italy.

It may be that these grand old players would seem hopelessly archaic today; stilted and amusing to irreverent youth. But I cannot think so. Times have changed, it is true, and with them many things, including what might be called the mental or psychological technique of art. Moderns feel and express their art differently, but the fundamental spark must be the same — the essential flash of genius.

The opening of the California Theater, 'modern in every detail,' which Ralston built for Barrett and McCullough in '69, was a grand gala occasion; an evening of light and color, laces and flowers, as I look back at it. The city's wealth, beauty, and fashion were all there, the ladies in light silks with flittering fans and their hair done in the new mode with long 'Follow-me-lad' curls over one shoulder — an audience of 'carriage folk.' Those who did not own clarence or barouche commandeered public hacks for the evening, and they rolled up Bush Street from Kearney, the horses' hoofs clattering on cobble-stones. The lobby with its mirrors fairly glittered with elated people assembling, long silk skirts sweeping the tessellated marble floor; and the elegant Barrett, in full evening regalia, stood smiling like a host welcoming his guests.

The play was 'Money,' from Bulwer-Lytton's novel, with John McCullough and Marie Gordon as Alfred Evelyn and Clara Douglas. But before the curtain rose on the first act, Barrett stepped from the wings and read a dedicatory address written by Bret Harte. The friendship of these two men endured many years and Harte was among those who applauded 'Larry' from the boxes that night.

Marie Gordon was the wife of John T. Raymond, the Colonel Sellers of later seasons, who made a hit that night in 'Money' with the minor rôle of Graves, and was ever afterwards a favorite in San Francisco. She was pretty and gentle and had excellent taste in dress. One would never have taken her for an actress off the stage, since her gowns were quiet and she used neither paint nor powder. Ladies, of course, never used paint then, and even powder was disapproved. Very well I recall the excuses offered by a Southern friend when I found her powdering her nose one day. 'We all use it in the South,' she told me, elaborately casual. 'It's the warm climate; makes our faces shine, so we just use co'n-starch powder and never think a thing about it.'

McCullough was not good in a play like 'Money.' Classic tragedy was his forte. Modern rôles cramped him, and his voice was too heavy and booming in stage drawing-rooms. Yet I am forgetting an occasion when he read the part of one of Shakespeare's women in tones perfectly modulated to its demands. It was at the Ben Holladay home after a stag dinner for Barrett and McCullough; Mrs. Holladay had asked me to come in to help her entertain the men when they left the dining-room. It was a lovely party for me, the only woman guest of the evening. I sat on a sofa beside Judge Hoffman and went into gales of laughter at his nonsense. This happy soul had, strange to say, become the city's most popular pallbearer, a distinction unsought and desperately unprized, but there seemed nothing Judge Hoffman could do to escape it. It had reached a point where the first person a bereaved family thought of was Judge Hoffman, and at one funeral after another he served, totally unable to refuse a request from grief-stricken relatives to participate in final honors for the departed.

While we sat there on the sofa, some one asked Mr. Barrett to read, and the actor amiably consented. We heard his mellifluous tones addressing our hostess, 'May I have a Bible, Mrs. Holladay?'

'Oh, my hat!' groaned Judge Hoffman in a whispered groan. 'He's going to read the burial service!' This he did. Relentless Fate had pursued Judge Hoffman. Barrett turned to that part of Second Corinthians used at funerals and the too familiar lines came to the pallbearer on the sofa. But so perfectly were they read in the marvelous voice, with such quiet restraint of feeling, that for once he must have enjoyed them. Barrett's voice had a quality not to be resisted, the most moving voice I ever heard in speech.

There followed the pièce de résistance of the evening. In their conventional black broadcloth, with no other background than long lace curtains at the end of the rooms, Barrett and McCullough gave the 'Closet Scene' from 'Hamlet' with McCullough reciting the lines of the Queen. Incredibly fine it was, and it held the company gathered in the parlor spellbound as in a darkened theater.

The Holladay house on the crest of Holladay's Hill was a landmark for many years, one of the few old mansions to survive the fire of 1906. To reach it from Van Ness Avenue, one climbed a long, broken flight of wooden steps on the steep hillside, or, preferably, drove around to the easy western slope where a carriage-way led to the house. It was painted white, and the reception-rooms were charming in the manner of the sixties, with long French windows and draped lace curtains, long oval gilt mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and pale carpets with great medallions of roses. Small marbles — parlor statuary — were set here and there on gilded pedestals and paintings in gilt frames hung on the walls. Steel engravings might invade the parlor in this prevailing scheme of home decoration, but never bronzes, which stood about in halls and libraries where marbles rarely ventured.

From the cupola of the Holladay house one looked out over the Golden Gate and bay to glimpse the Pacific, and landward, to count six counties if so minded; Marin, to the north across the strait, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and the County of San Francisco, in a sweeping circle. It was a marvelous view which Adolph Spreckels coveted when he built his stone palace near by on Washington Street, on a site which was second choice, but which still offers six counties. The City of Glorious Vistas should be San Francisco's second name.

Ben Holladay, who found a place in the annals of the West as owner of the famous 'Overland Stage' line, was an original character. With his longish white hair he looked like a patriarch of the Old Testament, but he was a shrewd business man who had started life as a stage-driver in Oregon and eventually owned most of the stage lines in the Northwest. With all the plutocratic prominence that came to him, his manners never changed. They were always 'early Oregon' — forthright, a little rough, but commanding respect. Mrs. Holladay was charming, and, in spite of her husband's scorn for them, cultivated the social graces. Her two young daughters she took abroad to be educated, and both married Europeans, one, the Count de Pourtalès, and the other, Baron de Boussière. After the weddings they all came home for a visit in order that the two husbands might meet their father-in-law. But old Ben Holladay had no taste for titles. He betook himself to the wilds of Oregon and there remained for the duration of the visit. It was quite a visitation, nevertheless. Mrs. Holladay brought the young people across the continent in a private car, and with them two friends, Mrs. Eben Wright and Mrs. David Torrence, of Boston. They all stopped at the Palace Hotel and were indefatigably wined and dined by the local beau monde.

Both Barrett and McCullough were favorites in society, but McCullough's taste was more for the Bohemia then becoming part of San Francisco life, the circle of artists, actors, and writers who founded the Bohemian Club in rooms over the California Market. Harry Edwards, of the California Stock Company, was one of the founders. For Barrett and McCullough had formed a stock company at the new theater, which, remote as it was from dramatic centers, rated scarcely second to the old Boston Museum Company. It specialized in tragedy, and now that I think of it, we had, in our zest for life, a singular taste for tragedy in the theater. The unhappy ending was popular. Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Virginius, Romeo and Juliet were old friends whose loves and deaths we witnessed many times. We were familiar with ancient kings and followed their misfortunes to final catastrophe with fine enjoyment. Charles Kean brought us a malevolent Louis XI. King Henry VI was played by a young Thespian from Australia, George Rignold, who had a flashing eye and a kingly stride. Barry Sullivan presented Richard III with histrionic fervor. In his company were two young men destined to shine in comedy, Louis James and William H. Crane. James was a rare Sir Lucius O'Trigger to Joseph Jefferson's Bob Acres in 'The Rivals.' This old comedy, with Jefferson and Florence, and the forever incomparable Mrs. John Drew as Mrs. Malaprop, so blandly complacent in her linguistic errors, is altogether my most delightful memory of the theater.

These two distinguished Thespians, Barrett and McCullough, were much identified with San Francisco life in the 'Old California' days. They took the keenest interest in a charity performance of 'Rosedale,' given at their theater by society amateurs, so called, and gave hours of their time coaching the players in their parts. 'Rosedale' was one of the favorites of the stock company's repertory, and General W. H. L. Barnes, who arranged the amateur performance, chose it for interesting comparisons that might be made with the professional production, principally, I fancy, for the comparison of his own acting of the hero with that of Barrett in the rôle. Barrett coached him indefatigably and the result was a triumph of reproduction. General Barnes was a conspicuous figure in those days, a brilliant lawyer and gallant officer of the National Guard, slightly ostentatious, but public-spirited and progressive. One of his chief concerns was the Mercantile Library, and it was to raise funds for this institution that he planned the production of 'Rosedale.' Tickets were sold at five dollars apiece, an unprecedented price then, and the theater was filled. It was a Red-Letter night, with all the delightful effervescence that belongs to a gala occasion; flowers over the footlights, bouquets tossed from boxes, speeches and applause. The amateurs really did cover themselves with glory.

General Barnes had another happy inspiration to relieve the Library's financial strees — the 'Mercantile Library Lottery,' which was a joyous success. Thousands of tickets were sold, every one talked of it and bought more tickets, and in the end, after prizes were paid, the Library found itself free of debt.

The 'Old California' had always an air, like a house where only happy people have lived. Something about it made any evening there a gala, if it was only one of tickets for two to see 'Dundreary' Sothern.

Half a dozen years after the fatal night at Ford's Theater in Washington, Sothern brought 'Our American Cousin' across the Continent. It was while watching a performance of this comedy that Lincoln was assassinated by Wilkes Booth. I fancy it was many weeks before Sothern felt the comedy of Dundreary again, but when he played it at the California, he was irresistibly absurd, and from the first night won San Francisco's hilarious endorsement. The character was that of a witless English lord with monocle and 'weepers,' renamed for him 'Dundreary whiskers,' and a profound but imbecile seriousness in all things.

Sothern, himself, was droll as Dundreary in his own way. We rejoiced in his friendship but there is left only a general memory of his absurd, inconsequential wit. I do recall that Mr. McCullough said one evening at a dinner party that I had influenced him to engage Sothern for the California, and how pleasantly important I felt. Once when we met somewhere I had spoken of the English actor then delighting New York and asked why the California management had not called him west. There was the question of a very high salary, and Mr. McCullough's doubt that San Francisco would respond to the comedy of Dundreary, he told me.

'But of course it will,' I answered. 'Everyone has heard of Sothern's Dundreary and he would fill the theater for weeks.' And pondering this oracular utterance, McCullough had been moved to arrange the Dundreary season. Or so he assured me.

Sothern's original San Francisco engagement was prolonged and repeated, and during the last one I was present on the sad afternoon of Edwin Adams' farewell. Adams, a greatly loved member of the California company, had returned from a trip to Australia undertaken for his health, far gone in consumption. He longed to go to his old home in Philadelphia, and to enable him to make the trip, the farewell benefit performance was given. The play was Robertson's 'Home' in which he had acted many times the part of Col. White. That afternoon Sothern played the rôle. At the close of the performance the curtain rose again to reveal Adams seated in an arm-chair on the stage, looking very ill and wasted. Near him stood Sothern and McCullough. They both made speeches and then, from his chair, Adams said a few words expressing a gallant hope of returning to act again for his friends. I saw him watch the curtain descend amid flowers and applause. A few weeks later he died in Philadelphia.

Mary Anderson was a girl of seventeen when, in 1876, she made her San Francisco début as Parthenia. She was even then extraordinarily beautiful, with a rich contralto speaking voice. I never saw her act after her art matured, although once long afterward I saw her again in a theater. It was in New York when Maude Adams made her first appearance as Juliet at the Empire Theater, and the Juliet of other years applauded from a box. She was Madame de Navarro then, visiting New York from her English home, and a guest in the Vanderbilt box that night. Word of her presence soon passed through the audience, and one's eyes turned often from the stage to the beautiful, mobile face, tense with interest, in the box. She sat with her classic profile to the house, as lovely to look at as she had been in her girlhood. When Miss Adams and the Romeo, William Faversham, took their bows, she clapped with smiling delight.

Maude Adams was an excellent Juliet, I thought, with more of the wistful, elusive quality of youth than other Juliets commonly captured. But she never pleased the critics. Faversham, I liked better than most Romeos. One of Miss Adams's gowns made a deep impression on me as Ristori's laces had while I wept over Marie Antoinette — my feminine sense of the sartorial subconsciously alert. It was a long robe of creamy Irish lace thickly studded with turquoise to make it fall in heavy, graceful lines. No other daughter of the Capulets had such a dress.

But of all the Juliets I remember leaning over stage balconies, none was so bewitching as Adelaide Neilson, none so moving in the later scenes. She was at the height of her fame when she came to San Francisco in '77, a short while before her sudden death in Paris. It was a brilliant engagement of adulation and applause. We gave a very personal admiration to our stage favorites in that ingenuous age. To meet one was an adventure. Exciting, then, to receive a card in the mail one morning, to meet Miss Neilson at Mrs. John Faull's! I went in my best bonnet. She was entrancing at close range, vivid, sparkling, talking of her stage parts when she was questioned. Yes, she wept real tears, always. Her purple Isabella costume in 'Measure for Measure' was ruined by them and had to be often renewed. She was happy over the San Francisco conquest, and laughed much and lightly. A blue velvet hat on her very blonde head, when other women young and old wore bonnets tied under the chin, distinguished her costume. When news of her death so soon afterward shocked play-goers everywhere, I was glad to have this radiant memory of her.

Playing with Neilson that season was a romantic young actor named Henry Montague, first of the matinée idols. He wore his thick brown hair parted at one side and swept back from a noble brow, with two locks brought forward to form a hook on either temple, and before he knew it, the young man had set a feminine fashion. We wore 'Montague curls' for years. Poor handsome Henry Montague died in San Francisco the following summer when he had come again from New York to play Armand Duval to the robust Camille of Maud Granger. He was stricken with a sudden hemorrhage in his rooms at the Palace Hotel, where he passed away in a few hours.

While there were still kings in Hawaii, royalty sometimes came to call, sailing across the Pacific with a dusky retinue. Kalakaua's first visit in '74 was memorable. He arrived as guest on the United States warship Benicia with Minister Pierce, American Envoy to Hawaii, and there were floral arches, bands, and parades to welcome him, with balls and banquets to follow. I am not sure it was during this visit that a grand ball was given for the King at Mechanics' Pavilion, but I do recall of this ball much preliminary discussion, disagreement, and concern over the order of precedence for civic dignitaries and the ritual for royal presentations. In the end, however, it all went off very well.

It was during the first visit that an enterprising manager arranged a concert in Pacific Hall and gained the King's consent to be present. This fact he widely advertised and, of course, it drew a crowd. By eight o'clock Pacific Hall was filled, but the royal armchair conspicuously placed remained empty. At half-past eight it was still very empty, and a distracted manager stepped to the platform. He begged the audience to be patient and announced that he had sent emissaries to fetch the King — dead or alive, no doubt, although this he left to inference. Presently the King arrived and made his way down the aisle to long overdue applause, and we all settled back to consider the concert.

His Majesty was good-looking in a dark brown way, and had dignity in spite of his short, rotund figure. He wore a uniform in the nineteenth-century European fashion for kings, and a pair of luxuriant black side-whiskers flaring away from his pleasant brown face.

One of the young officers of the Benicia, who was delegated to accompany Kalakaua to Washington that year, was Lieutenant Whiting. After he became a distinguished Admiral of the Pacific Fleet, he married Miss Etta Afong, of Honolulu, the pretty, piquant daughter of a Chinese merchant whose wife was Hawaiian. There were several Afong sisters. Two married American officers, and all received generous dowries from old Afong, who had made millions in the Islands. Mrs. Whiting lived in San Francisco for a time, an interesting and dainty little figure in the social scene.

King Kalakaua was destined to die at last in the Royal Suite of the Palace named in his honor. He was stricken with pneumonia when returning from a trip to Washington, and died after a few days' illness. People gathered on the hills to watch the funeral ship sail out the Golden Gate, taking him home with flags at halfmast. A touch of symbolism in the scene — the wide gateway opening to the ocean, and the little ship sailing out, made it deeply impressive.

Queen Kapiolani and Princess Liliokalani, afterward the deposed Queen Lil, arrived in '87 on their way to attend Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, and there was great interest in their presence at the Palace Hotel. Nob Hill, entertaining them, was surprised to find their golden-brown beauty set off by very modish gowns. Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson's daughter, Isobel Osbourne Strong, then living in Honolulu, had designed them, we were told, and the ladies wore them gracefully enough. Who could be entirely graceful in the heavy puffed polonaise skirts, tie-backs, and whale-boned basques of that day?

For the Queen's amusement, Senator John F. Miller, then Collector of the Port in San Francisco, commandeered the revenue cutter Shubrick for a 'water frolic.' Points of interest about the bay were few, but we cruised among the islands, stopped at a Chinese fishing village redolent of shrimps that were spread in great bamboo trays to dry, and called at Alcatraz, where Major Darling did the honors.

Governor and Mrs. Pacheco were old friends of the Hawaiian royalties, an inherited friendship of the Governor's whose Spanish forbears had trading relations with the Islands. Mrs. Pacheco I recall as one of the wittiest of San Francisco women. She once wrote a farce-comedy, 'Incog,' which had a great success in New York when Charles Dickson played it.

More interesting than Hawaiian royalty was a stout, florid gentleman, short of stature, but with a certain manner of unobtrusive importance, who came from his ranch near San José for visits to the Occidental Hotel. We often saw him dining there with members of his family. The first time, he had attracted my interest, and I asked Major Hooper about him — the Major was the urbane host of the hotel. He was General Ord, I learned, said to be a cousin of Queen Victoria, which, in truth, he was, and so like her he might have been her brother; of the House of Hanover by all his lineaments.

Large blue pop-eyes like the Queen's were an inheritance from his grandfather, George IV of England; for he was the son of James Ord, who was a son of the fourth George by his morganatic marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert. James Ord had been sent to America in his childhood to be raised by the Ord family of Baltimore, whose name he took. General Ord, of San Francisco, was the son of this James Ord's American marriage. One heard very little about him. The family lived quietly at the ranch and preferred that their visits at the hotel should pass unremarked. But the old gentleman's unusual aspect inevitably excited curiosity, and the story of his ancestry was soon widely known. Yet he made few social contacts. I never saw him save in the devoted circle of his relatives, who treated him always with great deference.

Early in the present century the Ords came into public notice on two continents when Mrs. Fitzherbert's royal marriage was definitely established in England and the American family received a fortune from the Crown. Old General Ord had then gone on his way into eternity.

Through the eighties and nineties the Baldwin Theater had an important place in the city's life. It was part of the Baldwin Hotel Building at Market and Powell Streets, owned by Lucky Baldwin, who had won his name on the race-track. With a certain 1880 elegance of crimson plush and gilded trimmings, the Baldwin had an attractive, intimate warmth. The dress circle was raised above the orchestra circle, and in its long first row people 'dressed' as they did in the boxes, which gave brightness to the house. First nights were fashionable events. Visiting stars and stock companies would be welcomed with flowers and 'bravos' by an audience in evening clothes, laces and fine feathers — quite literally; for women often wore plumed hats perched high on their heads throughout a performance. One's view of the stage in those days was likely to be, and generally was, over an intervening hedge of millinery.

Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Company with Georgia Cayvan came every summer from New York; Daly's, with John Drew and Ada Rehan; the Empire Company, young Eddie Sothern as Lord Cholmondeley, Mansfield playing Baron Chevrial dying at a banquet table while he raised his glass in a toast, with a realism fairly gruesome; Modjeska, who gave 'As You Like It,' with Maurice Barrymore as Orlando vanquishing the great Muldoon himself. These are a few who cross my memory of first nights at the Baldwin.

Modjeska's American début I recall at the 'Old California' long before, when she spoke English very brokenly, but acted with an authentic power that assured her success. She was the most appealing of all Camilles, and how many Camilles there were! Only Juliet rivaled La Dame aux Camellias as a favored rôle of all fair Thespians. San Francisco had then an interesting colony of Polish émigrés who welcomed Modjeska and her husband, Count Bozenta, when they came from their farming adventure in the South. Dr. Pawlicki, distinguished and brilliant, was their friend; and Sienkiewicz, who was to become the famous author of 'Quo Vadis,' had come with them from Poland. And there was my father's old friend, Captain Bielawski, ex-officer of engineers who was a draughtsman in the United States Land Office for years.

Edwin Booth played his last San Francisco engagement at the Baldwin, and I found his Hamlet as thrilling as in younger years. The poetry of his acting was a deathless quality. By that time San Francisco recalled that the great actor had once lived in a cottage out on the Mission Dolores Road, back in the eighteen-fifties when he came as a boy to California with his father; and he was welcomed with proprietary affection. His rooms at the Palace Hotel were kept filled with fresh flowers.

Fanny Davenport brought a gorgeous Cleopatra to the Baldwin with young Melbourne MacDowell to play Marc Antony. They were married soon afterward, and Fanny Davenport died before her happiness and beauty waned. She was handsome, rather than beautiful, with the well-rounded, slightly heavy pulchritude then admired.

Sparkling Rosina Vokes brought her English burlesque company, and sang, 'No matter what you do if your heart be true, and his heart was true to Poll.' She was dying of consumption on her last visit, but few of her audience could have guessed it, she played still with so much verve. Rosina Vokes was the most gifted of the famous Vokes family of the English stage, the wife of an English artist, Cecil Clay, who accompanied her on this tour. He would sit in an upper-tier box at the Baldwin through every performance, watching her with anxious, troubled eyes. It was all he could do. Her insistence on playing was not to be overcome, so he just trailed about with her until she was forced to give up. Actors do seem to have a courage peculiar to their calling. Georgie Drew Barrymore played with sparkle and lightness long after her health was broken. She died of consumption in Santa Barbara.

Lillian Russell sang at the Baldwin in her golden youth and wore a pink chiffon frock in 'La Cigale,' with a ruffled rose chiffon hat on her shining hair, to make a picture I remember. And there was the strangely lovely Mrs. James Brown Potter who came sailing through the Golden Gate from the Orient, one year, with her leading man, Kyrle Bellew. They were touring the world, playing anywhere from Capetown to Bombay and Honolulu, and so to San Francisco. This was several years after the Bishop's daughter-in-law had shocked Newport by reciting ''Ostler Joe' in a drawing-room, and then turned her back on the social tempest to go on the stage. Meanwhile, she had learned to act and proved an interesting Juliet to Kyrle Bellew's impassioned Romeo. She was singularly beautiful with her pale, delicately chiseled face, long dark eyes, and hair like burnished bronze with copper lights. In one act of 'Charlotte Corday' she wore a scarf of luminous emerald silk which had been especially dyed and woven for her in India. The effect against her pale beauty and gorgeous hair was a rare color study. Mrs. Potter's parents, Colonel and Mrs. Urquhart, had come from New Orleans and were living in Oakland, then — quiet, retiring people who must have looked upon this temperamental daughter as a lovely changeling.

Less beautiful than Mrs. Potter's, but more appealing, was Julia Marlowe's Juliet. Her husband, Robert Taber, was the Romeo. They were both very young and had just been married, and the romance delighted sentimental play-goers at the Baldwin.

There was a shining 'first night' when Georgia Cayvan wore her glass dress, and every one was eager to see this sartorial triumph in spun glass, which had been made in Bohemia for the World's Fair at Chicago and there exhibited before the actress acquired it. The fabric was delicately brittle, shimmering as crusted snow in sunlight, but flexible enough to be fashioned into an eight-gored skirt and modishly tight bodice with many glass ribbon bows. Gracefully and gingerly Miss Cayvan wore it in 'The Charity Ball.' I've wondered often what became of it — if eventually she broke it.