Omaha daily bee., 1911-01-29
Young
Mansfield
His Fathers Son

James oDonnell Bennett writes thus Of
George Gibbs Mansfield, the son Of the
late Richard Mansfield:
! When a boy of 70 years, who has never
appeared before the public, is given half a
! dozen pages in an influential and judicl-
ously edited magazine his destiny mani
testify is the stage. Such command at sc
tender an age of the sources Of publicity
settles his fate. No manager will over
! look so precocious practitioner in the diff
ficult art of getting known.
! They used to say that Richard Mansfield
had a genius for publicity. In the later
years of his life he used TO resent the inn
putation But, granting that he had a very
keen appreciation of the value of headlines
and half-tones and used them valiantly as
convenient means to his large ends his
most florid conception of publicity pales be-
fore the achievement that crowns the
twelfth year Of his son, George Gibbs Mans
field.
This youth, not long since a school boy at
Vevey the town in the canton Of Vaud
where Rousseau laid the scene Of La Nou-
velle Heloise is not in the least preoccu-
pied about what the world is thinking Of
him, though by all accounts he thinks a
great deal about the world. He is an ex-
ceptionarly alert child, imaginative, highly
gifted, quick to learn, willful. proud, tender,
impulsive and intensely temperamental.
If he were the heir apparent to a throne
the American Magazine could not present
him more intimately or with more distin-
guished consideration than II does in the
six pages-including a full-page portrait
that It gives him in it's number for Feb
ruary
Gibbs volunteer press agent is Miss Anna
H. Branch, an intimate OF the Mansfield
family, who plainly loves the boy and has
upon occasion been ruled and hectored and
entranced by him Just as his father ruled
and hectored and entranced people he loved.
Miss Branch has known Gibbs Mansfield
since he was a baby. When he was years
old this happened
Must you go?'' he said to her, when She
a guest at the Mansfields was about to
leave what she calls that enchanted
threshold" Then dear Anna, II you must
go, / will throw this rug before you that
your going may be easy"
This the 5-year-old Raleigh proceed to
do while l progressed in glory Truly, this
child has the bearing Of a Beau Brummel,"
And again;
Gibbs, what time does the party begin?"
w men you COME anna the party VIII
begin" he replied, in his deep and ineffably
courteous voice.
That grave and gracious bass Did ever
any child possess so marvellous an organ?"
For seven years he has been composing
little dramas and acting in them. He can
sketch we'll enough to make graceful illus
trations for his letters, plays the violin
and reads everything ne can lay his hands
m a hnV ha ha
TAN and rugged. His countenance has the
delicacy OF his mothers. Otherwise he Is
all his fathers boy Detail after detail
that Miss Branch gives reads almost I'M
cannily TO those who knew that puissant
and original genius At the school in
Vevey they called Gibbs Don Quixote be-
cause OF his ardor in convincing himself
that wholly fanciful adventures were ter,
ribly or beautifully real, as the case might
be Spies lurked in the shadows OF the
pastry shop and beneath the stones in the
passageway beyond secret treasures was
buried. He could not pass the place with
out a shudder. He would sing the Jungle
Book songs in "a deep, unchildlike voice"
songs that he had set TO "an eerie music
OF his own" In the evening he would
dramatize the events of the day or aga.n
would enact bits out Of Shakespeare.
Il remember" says Miss Branch, lone
strange drama composed and acted by him
self when he was s. in which he was a pill
grim struggling 10 the promised land. 1
remember his lamentatlon and unchildlike
cries 10 heaven. The room was dark with
winter twilight and it was really thrilling
when. as he flung himself in prayer before
the safe stil closed. hs clsvsrly turned On