The Return of Peter Grimm by David Belasco (classic reads .TXT) 📕

be true to them'."

One will have to give Mr. Belasco this credit, that whatever he is, he is _it_ to the bent of his powers. Had he lived in Elizabeth's day, he would have been an Elizabethan heart and soul. But his habit is formed as a producer, and he conforms the "new" art to this habit as completely as Reinhardt Reinhardtized the morality play, "Everyman," or Von Hofmannsthal Teutonized "Elektra."

"The Return of Peter Grimm" has been chosen for the present collection. It represents a Belasco interest and conviction greater than are to be found in any of his other plays. While there are no specific claims made for the fact that_ PETER _materializes after his death, it is written with plausibility and great care. The psychic phenomena are treated as though real, and our sympathy for_ PETER _when he returns is a human sympathy for the inability of a spirit to get his message across. The theme is not etherealized; one does not see through a mist dimly. There was not even an attempt, in the stage production of the piece, which occurred at the Belasco Theatre, New York, on October 17, 1911, to use the "trick" of gauze and queer lights; there was only one supreme thing done--to make the audience feel that_ PETER _was on a plane far removed from the physical, by the ease and naturalness with which he slipped past objects, looked through people, and was unheeded by those whom he most wanted to influence. The remarkable unity of idea sustained by Mr. Belasco as manager, and by Mr. Warfield as actor, was largely instrumental in making the play a triumph. The playwright did not attempt to create supernatural mood; he did not resort to natural tricks such as Maeterlinck used in "L'Intruse," or as Mansfield employed in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." He reduced what to us seems, at the present moment, a complicated explanation of a psychic condition to its simple terms, and there was nothing strange to the eye or unusual in the situation. One cannot approach the theme of the psychic without a personal concern. Sardou's "Spiritisme" was the culmination of years of investigation; the subject was one with which Belasco likewise has had much to do during the past years.

It is a privilege to be able to publish "Peter Grimm." Thus far not many of the Belasco plays are available in reading form. "May Blossom" and "Madame Butterfly" are the only ones. "Peter Grimm" has been novelized--in the day, now fortunately past, when a play was novelized in preference to perpetuating its legitimate form. And excerpts from the dialogue have been used. But this is the first time the complete text has appeared and it has been carefully edited by the author himself. In addition to which Mr. Belasco has written the following account of "Peter's" evolution, to be used in this edition.

The play, "The Return of Peter Grimm," is an expression in dramatic form of my ideas on a subject which I have pondered over since boyhood: "Can the dead come back?" _Peter Grimm_ did come back. At the same time, I inserted a note in my program to say that I advanced no positive opinion; that the treatment of the play allowed the audience to believe that it had actually seen _Peter_, or that he had not been seen but existed merely in the minds of the characters on the stage. Spiritualists from all over the country flocked to see "The Return of Peter Grimm," and I have heard that it gave comfort to many. It was a difficult theme, and more than once I was tempted to give it up. But since it has given relief to those who have loved and lost, it was not written in vain. Victorian Sardou dealt with the same subject, but he did not show the return of the dead; instead, he delivered a spirit message by means of knocking on a table. His play was not a success, and I was warned by my friends to let the subject alone; but it is a subject that I never can or never have let alone; yet I never went to a medium in my life--could not bring myself to do it. My dead must come to me, and have come to me--or so I believe.

The return of the dead is the eternal riddle of the living. Although mediums have been exposed since the beginning of time, and so-called "spiritualism" has fallen into disrepute over and over again, it emerges triumphantly in spite of charlatans, and once more becomes the theme of the hour.

The subject first interested me when, as a boy, I read a story in which the dead "foretold dangers to loved ones." My mother had "premonitions" which were very remarkable, and I was convinced, at the time, that the dead gave these messages to her. She personally could not account for them. I probably owe my life to one of my mother's premonitions. I was going on a steamboat excursion with my school friends, when my mother had a strong presentiment of danger, and begged me not to go. She gave in to my entreaties, however, much against her will. Just as the boat was about to leave the pier, a vision of her pale face and tear-filled eyes came to me. I heard her voice repeating, "I wish you would not go, Davy." The influence was so strong that I dashed down the gang-plank as it was being pulled in. The boat met with disaster, and many of the children were killed or wounded. These premonitions have also come to me, but I do not believe as I did when a boy that they are warnings from the dead, although I cannot explain them, and they are never wrong; the message is always very clear.

My mother convinced me that the dead come back by coming to me at the time of her death--or so I believe. One night, after a long, hard rehearsal, I went to bed, worn out, and fell into a deep sleep. I was awakened by my mother, who stood in my bedroom and called to me. She seemed to be clothed in white. She repeated my name over and over--the name she called me in my boyhood: "Davy! Davy!" She told me not to grieve--that she was dying; that she _had_ to see me. I distinctly saw her and heard her speak.

She was in San Francisco at the time--I, in New York. After she passed out of the room, I roused my family and told what I had heard and seen. I said: "My mother is dead. I know she is dead;" but I could not convince my family that I had not been dreaming. I was very restless--could not sleep again. The next day (we were rehearsing "Zaza") I went out for luncheon during the recess with a member of my company. He was a very absent-minded man, and at the table he took a telegram from his pocket which he said he had forgotten to give me: it announced the death of my mother at the time I had seen her in my room. I am aware that this could be explained as thought transference, accompanied by a dream in which my mother appeared so life-like as to make me believe the dream real. This explanation, however, does not satisfy me. I am sure that I did see her. Other experiences of a kindred nature served to strengthen my belief in the naturalness of what we call the supernatural. I decided to write a play dealing with the return of the dead: so it followed that when I was in need of a new play for David Warfield, I chose this subject. Slight of figure, unworldly, simple in all his ways, Warfield was the very man to bring a message back from the other world. Warfield has always appeared to me as a character out of one of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He was, to my mind, the one man to impersonate a spirit and make it seem real. So my desire to write a play of the dead, and my belief in Warfield's artistry culminated in "The Return of Peter Grimm." The subject was very difficult, and the greatest problem confronting me was to preserve the illusion of a spirit while actually using a living person. The apparition of the ghost in "Hamlet" and in "Macbeth," the spirits who return to haunt _Richard III_, and other ghosts of the theatre convinced me that green lights and dark stages with spot-lights would not give the illusion necessary to this play. All other spirits have been visible to someone on the stage, but_ PETER _was visible to none, save the dog (who wagged his tail as his master returned from the next world) and to _Frederik_, the nephew, who was to see him but for a second._ PETER _was to be in the same room with the members of the household, and to come into close contact with them. They were to feel his influence without seeing him. He was to move among them, even appear to touch them, but they were to look past him or above him--never into his face. He must, of course, be visible to the audience. My problem, then, was to reveal a dead man worrying about his earthly home, trying to enlist the aid of anybody--everybody--to take his message. Certainly no writer ever chose a more difficult task; I must say that I was often very much discouraged, but something held me to the work in spite of myself. The choice of an occupation for my leading character was very limited. I gave_ PETER _various trades and professions, none of which seemed to suit the part, until I made him a quaint old Dutchman, a nursery-man who loved his garden and perennials--the flowers that pass away and return season after season. This gave a clue to his character; gave him the right to found his belief in immortality on the lessons learned in his garden.


"God does not send us strange flowers every year,
When the warm winds blow o'er the pleasant places,
The same fair flowers lift up the same fair faces.
The violet is here ...
It all comes back, the odour, grace and hue,
... it IS the THING WE KNEW.
So after the death winter it shall be," etc.


Against a background of budding trees, I placed the action of the play in the month of April; April with its swift transitions from bright sunlight to the darkness of passing clouds and showers. April weather furnished a natural reason for raising and lowering the lights--that the dead could come and go at will, seen or unseen. The passing rain-storms blended with the tears of those weeping for their loved ones. A man who comes back must not have a commonplace name--a name suggestive of comedy--and I think I must have read over every Dutch name that ever came out of Holland before I selected the name of "_Peter Grimm_." It was chosen because it suggested (to me) a stubborn old man with a sense of justice--whose spirit _would_ return to right a wrong and adjust his household affairs.

The stage setting was evolved after extreme care and thought. It was a mingling of the past and present. It was _Peter's_ sitting-room, with a mixture of furniture and family portraits and knick-knacks, each with an association of its own. It was such a room as would be dear to all old-fashioned, home-loving people--unlike a room of the present, from which every memento of parents and grand-parents would be banished in favour of strictly modern or antique formal furniture. In this