Knives Out! Where are Lady Meux’s daggers?

The Stuyvesant Theatre, New York, 1909. Here was a special room. To some, it was an office or study, to others, a workshop. This was the lair of the famed American theatrical impresario David Belasco, a man sometimes known as The Bishop of Broadway, due to his peculiar habit of dressing in the clothes of a cleric, dog collar and all. He worked here twelve to fourteen hours a day.

The room was full of stage relics: a spear, staffs, and mace used by Edwin Booth in Richard III; the scales and knife of Shylock, the sword of Brutus, and the cape of Don Caesar. There was an old dagger, once owned by Thomas Salvini, who used it as the weapon in Othello. It was presented to Belasco by in 1886 after Salvini’s appearance with Booth at the Academy of Music in New York. A silver-mounted dagger, a gift from Adelaide Neilson; medallions of Shakespeare and Lord Byron; a powder puff used by John McCullough in the Californian theatre, San Francisco; a sword presented by Mrs. D, P. Bowers to Belasco and carried by him on stage in San Francisco.

On the walls were old playbills, some from the Theatre Royal in London, dating back to 1764; others from the John Street Theatre in New York, dating from 1784 to 1788.

And there were two daggers used by the French tragedienne, Rachel, in Medea. Both were presented to Belasco by Lady Valerie Meux, of Theobald’s Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire.

Lady Meux and David Belasco met in London in 1900 where the American showman was staging his adaptation of the play Zara at the Garrick Theatre. Lady Meux was trying to persuade Belasco to sack his star and give her protégée, Mrs. Cora Urquhart Potter, one of the first American society women to become a stage actress, the leading role.

Belasco would have none of it. Lady Meux even tried to bribe him by building the 'finest playhouse in the land' if he agreed.

"Of course, Belasaco said later, "her offer had a tempting sound, but nothing could have induced me to accept it. Not only would I not consider deserting Mrs. Carter (his star), but I knew that Mrs. Potter would never give up the social world for hard work on the stage. And also I knew that within a year, perhaps less, Lady Meux would have grown tired of her fancy and my position would have been intolerable. I wanted a theatre in London ... but not one tied up in apron springs."

Was Lady Meux's gift of the knives to Belasco part of her efforts to persuade Belasco to sack his star?

Perhaps we will never know. But where are they now?

American theatrical impresario David Belasco, the 'Bishop of Broadway', photographed in 1909

Sources: The Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, 21st November 1909; Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mademoiselle-Rachel