But it wasn’t.

After two months on the road we received our two weeks’ notice. For half Mr. Griffith’s salary, Mr. Dixon had engaged another leading man, who, he felt, would adequately serve the cause. So, sad at heart and not so wealthy, we returned to the merry little whirl of life in the theatrical metropolis of the U. S. A. We had one asset—the play. Good thing we had not frivoled away those precious summer weeks in seeking cooling breezes by Coney’s coral strand!

Late that fall my husband played a small part in a production of “Salome” at the Astor Theatre under Edward Ellsner’s direction. Mr. Ellsner was looking for a play for Pauline Frederick. Mr. Griffith suggested his play and Mr. Ellsner was sufficiently interested to arrange for a reading for Miss Frederick and her mother. They liked it; so did Mr. Ellsner; and so the play was sent on to Mr. James K. Hackett, Miss Frederick’s manager at that time.

It was Christmas eve—our first. Three thousand miles from home, lonesome, broke.

In the busy marts of dramatic commerce poor little “D” was dashing hither and yon with his first-born. Even on this day before Christmas he was on the job. The festive holiday meal I had prepared was quite ready. There were some things to be grateful for: each other, the comfortable two rooms, and the typewriter. The hamburger steak was all set, the gravy made, and the potatoes with their jackets on, à la California camp style, were a-steaming. The little five-cent baker’s pie was warming in the oven and the pint bottle of beer was cooling in the snow on the window ledge. And some one all mine was coming.

We sat down to dinner. Couldn’t put the plates on the table right side up these days, it seemed. Had no recollection of having turned my plate over. Turned it right side up again.

I wished people wouldn’t be silly. I supposed this was a verse about Christmas. But why the mystery? Wonderingly, I opened the folded slip of paper. Funny looking poetry. Funny look on D’s face. What was this anyhow? Looked like an old-fashioned rent receipt. But it didn’t say “Received from ——.” It said “Pay to ——,” “Pay to the order of David W. Griffith seven hundred dollars,” and it was signed “James K. Hackett.”

“Oh no, you haven’t sold the play!”

Yes, it was sold; the check represented a little advance royalty. And were the play a success we would receive a stipulated percentage of the weekly gross. (I’ve forgotten the scale.)

Oh, kind and generous Mr. Hackett!

Isn’t it funny how calm one can be in the big moments of life? But I couldn’t grasp it. Christmas eve and all! An honest-to-God check on an honest-to-God bank for seven hundred whole dollars. Was there that much money in the whole world?

Now came wonderful days—no financial worry and no job-hunting. True, we realized the seven hundred would not last indefinitely. But to accept a job and not be in New York when rehearsals for the play were called, was an idea not to be entertained. So, to feel right about the interim of inactivity, David wrote yards of poetry and several short stories. And John A. Sleicher of Leslie’s Weekly paid the princely sum of six dollars for a poem called “The Wild Duck.”

A bunch of stuff was sent off to McClure’s, which Mr. McClure said appealed to him very much—though not enough for publication. He’d like to see more of Mr. Griffith’s work.

And the Cosmopolitan, then under Perriton Maxwell’s editorship, bought “From Morning Until Night” for seventy-five dollars. Things were looking up.

In Norfolk, Va., a Centennial was to be held in celebration of the landing on Southern soil of the first of the F. F. V.’s, and a play commemorating the event had been written around Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. Mr. Griffith accepted a part in it. The six weeks’ engagement would help out until the rehearsals of his own play were called. But Pocahontas’s financial aid must have been somewhat stingy according to the letter my husband wrote me in New York. We had felt we couldn’t afford my railroad fare to Norfolk and my maintenance there. It was our first separation.

And this the letter:

Pocahontas flivvered out in three weeks. But as Shakespeare says, “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” While Mr. Griffith was away, I found time to make myself a new dress. In a reckless moment I had paid a dollar deposit on some green silk dress material at Macy’s, which at a later and wealthier moment I had redeemed. So now I rented a sewing machine and sewed like mad to get the dress done, for I could afford only one dollar-and-a-half weekly rental on the old Wheeler and Wilson.

By the time “A Fool and A Girl” was to open in Washington, D. C., there was just enough cold cash left for railroad fare there. Klaw and Erlanger produced the play under Mr. Duane’s direction, and Mr. Hackett came on to rehearsals in Washington. Fannie Ward and Jack Deane played the leading parts. Here they met and their romance began, and according to latest accounts it is still thriving. Alison Skipworth of “The Torch Bearers” and other successes, was a member of the cast.

The notices were not the best nor the worst. They are interesting to-day, for they show how time has ambled apace since October, 1907. Said Hector Fuller, the critic:

One week in Washington and one in Baltimore saw on its jolly way to the storehouse the wicked Bull Pup Café and the Hop Fields, etc.

And so back to New York.

In the Sixth Avenue “L” with our little suitcases, we sat, a picture of woe and misery. In the Sixth Avenue “L,” for not even a dollar was to be wasted on a taxi. But when the door to our own two rooms was closed, and, alone together, we faced our wrecked hopes, it wasn’t so awful. Familiar objects seemed to try and comfort us. After all, it was a little home, and better than a park bench; and the Century Dictionary—of which some day we would be complete owners, maybe—and the Underwood, all our own—spoke to us reassuringly.

I do not recall that any job materialized that winter, but something must have happened to sustain us. Perhaps the belated receipt of those few hundred dollars of mine that were on deposit at the German Savings Bank at the time of the Disaster in San Francisco.

To offset what might have been a non-productive winter, Mr. Griffith wrote “War,” a pretentious affair of the American Revolution, which Henry Miller would have produced had it been less expensive. “War” had meant a lot of work. For weeks previous to the writing, we had repaired daily to the Astor Library where we copied soldiers’ diaries and letters and read histories of the period until sufficiently imbued with the spirit of 1776. “War” is still in the manuscript stage with the exception of the Valley Forge bits which came to life in Mr. Griffith’s film “America”; for Mr. Griffith turned to the spectacle very early in his career, though he little dreamed then of the medium in which he was to record the great drama of the American Revolution.

We met Perriton Maxwell again. Extended and accepted dinner invitations. Our dinner was a near-tragedy. Before the banquet had advanced to the salad stage, I had to take my little gold bracelet to a neighboring “Uncle.” The antique furniture necessitated placards which my husband posted conspicuously. For instance, on the sofa—“Do not sit here; the springs are weak.” On a decrepit gate-legged table—“Don’t lean; the legs are loose.”

At the Maxwells’ dinner our host gathered several young literati who he thought might become interested in Mr. Griffith and his literary efforts. Vivian M. Moses, then editor of Good Housekeeping and now Publicity Manager for The Fox Films, was one, as was Jules E. Goodman, the playwright. But a “litry” career for Mr. Griffith seemed foredoomed. A poem now and then, and an occasional story sold, was too fragile sustenance for permanency. Some sort of steady job would have to be found, and the “litry” come in as a side-line.

David Griffith was ready for any line of activity that would bring in money, so that he could write plays. He always had some idea in his inventive mind, such as non-puncturable tires, or harnessing the ocean waves. In the mornings, on waking, he would lie in bed and work out plots for dramas, scene bits, or even mechanical ideas. After an hour of apparent semi-consciousness, his head motionless on the pillow, he would greet the day with “I hate to see her die in the third act”; or, “I wonder if that meat dish could be canned!” meaning, could a dish he had invented and cooked—a triumph of culinary art—be made a commercial proposition as a tinned food, like Armour’s or Van Camp’s beans and corned beef.

Pretty good field of activity, canned eats, and might have made David W. Griffith more money than canned drama!