_The delay in publishing this work has been due in part to ill-health which compelled me long to neglect it; in part to technical and mechanical difficulties and mischances in its manufacture. I surmise that notwithstanding the great care which has been exercised some minor errors and slips will be found to have crept into this edition:[A] if any are observed I shall be glad to have them brought to my attention in order that they may be corrected in future issues._ JEFFERSON WINTER. 46 Winter Avenue, New Brighton, Staten Island, New York. June 30, 1918. THE LIFE OF DAVID BELASCO. ANCESTRY AND BIRTH. David Belasco, one of the most singular, characteristic, picturesque, and influential persons who have participated in the theatrical movement in America, is descended from an old Portuguese Hebrew family (the name of which was originally pronounced “Valasco”), members of which emigrated from Portugal to England in the reign of the Portuguese King Emanuel the First (1495-1521), at one time in which reign the Jews in Portugal were cruelly persecuted, so that all of them who could do so fled from that country. His father, Humphrey Abraham Belasco, was a native of England, born in London, December 26, 1830. His mother, whose maiden name was Reina Martin, was also of English nativity, born in London, April 24, 1830. Both were Jews. They were poor and their social position was humble. The father’s occupation was that of a harlequin. He was proficient in his calling and he pursued it successfully at various London theatres, but he did not find it remunerative. He wished to improve his condition, and affected, as many others were, by the “gold fever,”--which broke out and soon became epidemic after the discoveries of gold in California (1842-1848), and was almost everywhere acute during 1849 and the early fifties,--he determined to seek his fortune in that apparent Eldorado. This determination was approved by his wife, who, like himself, was a person of strong character and adventurous spirit, and, accordingly, in 1852-’53, they voyaged, in a sailing vessel, to Aspinwall (now Colon), crossed the isthmus to Panama, and went thence, by another sailing vessel, to San Francisco, California, arriving there almost destitute. Their first lodging was in a house, long ago destroyed, in Howard Street, where, in a room in a cellar, July 25, 1853, occurred the birth of their first child, David Belasco, the subject of this Memoir. BOYHOOD IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. The residence of those adventurers in San Francisco continued for several years, Humphrey Belasco keeping a general shop and moderately prospering as a tradesman, but about the beginning of 1858 they migrated (travelling by sailing vessel) to the coast town of Victoria, then a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company,--later (1862) [Illustration: From an old photograph. Belasco’s Collection.