GARDENS AND GHOSTS AND PETER GRIMM
by Kathleen Huber

David Belasco, in his introduction to The Return of Peter Grimm, gives credit for the original idea to his friend Cecil B. DeMille.  It concerned a rumor that the psychologist William James had made a compact with a scientist friend, promising that whichever one of them died first would try to come back and make contact from the spirit world.

This idea certainly appears in Peter Grimm, but once Peter actually “returns,” his fierce determination to make himself heard has very little to do with his compact with Dr. MacPherson, and everything to do with seeking to right some seriously pig-headed mistakes he made just before his death – mistakes which could spell the end of his beloved centuries-old family business, and destroy the happiness of the person he cares most about in the world.

Ghosts are a tricky species to bring onto a stage. The paterfamilias of all stage ghosts, Prince Hamlet’s deceased Dad, is always regarded as a character fraught with peril – Should he be frightening? Heartbreaking? Solid? Ethereal? Attempts to go too far with stylization or special effects can kill the scene (which triggers all the ensuing action). Sometimes simpler is better – The most important thing being to capture is a meeting between a father and a son who misses him terribly.

Belasco, as he began to work with the idea of a ghost as the central character, was determined to avoid anything clichéd or (god forbid) absurd about Peter Grimm’s presence. He resolved that Peter should be seen in great detail in his “earthly life,” and wanted “to create around the living Peter an atmosphere of memories,” a world already rooted in the past, in tradition and a specific culture, and to make him “one who had loved life and lived in the midst of growing things.”  He set the play among the Dutch nurseries and botanical gardens of upstate New York, which began with the first settlements in 1700. Thus Grimm’s gardens have been in his family for centuries, founded by Dutch immigrants who had brought with them their vast knowledge of horticulture, especially the nurturing of flowers.  Belasco also loved ghost legends like The Flying Dutchman and our own Rip Van Winkle (who has his own fateful meeting with the ghost of Henrik Hudson), so the New York Dutch setting served all purposes.

Conveniently, the modern Spiritualist Movement was also born in upstate New York in 1848, with the “spirit rappings” of the famous (or infamous) Fox Sisters. This informally-structured religion, which flourished between 1848 and the 1920s, centers on two core beliefs – that the afterlife is not static, but one in which spirits evolve; and that contact with souls of the dead is possible through human mediums or “sensitives.” The movement was deeply individualistic, and many of its adherents were active in the causes of anti-slavery and women’s suffrage.  Many famous names of the period were associated with spiritualism, including Sir William Crookes (inventor of the cathode ray tube), the astronomer Camille Flammarion, Marie Curie, James Fennimore Cooper, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and of course William James (brother of Henry, author of  the great American ghost story, The Turn of the Screw) whose promise to attempt a “return from the grave” (as related by Cecil B. DeMille)  seems to have inspired Belasco to write Peter Grimm.

There continues to be some controversy (encouraged by DeMille’s famous daughter Agnes), as to how much of Peter Grimm should be credited to Belasco and how much to her father. Cecil B. himself, however, never claimed any further credit for the play, and remained on the friendliest of terms with Belasco throughout his life. Only their ghosts know the full story.

Belasco originally included a séance scene in Peter Grimm, but decided that it lacked subtlety, and preferred Peter to “return” in a much simpler manner. He also insisted that Peter’s ghost may be taken either as an actual spirit, or as a figure present only in the subconscious memories, longings and guilts of the various characters. Discarding the professional medium, Belasco brought into the story the small boy, Willem, whose origins are crucial to the plotline, and who is the “sensitive” being with whom the spectral Peter can communicate. As the recent film The Sixth Sense demonstrates, this idea has had considerable staying power of its own.

So welcome to Peter Grimm’s Botanic Gardens, and to the fascinating people who live and work in and around them.  “For the few,” wrote Belasco, “Peter’s presence will embody the theory of the survival of persistent personal energy.”  As he very well knew, this lovely play would – at least for a couple of hours – make that appealing idea seem tantalizingly possible to far more than just a few.