In the Hawaiian Islands, my father described a very frightening experience he had. It was at Kilauea, a volcano resembling a saucer hollowed out in a broad plain. With a guide and some friends, he had walked about two miles to get a better look at the crater. The guide cautioned that it was dangerous and they should not go any closer but Pop was determined to get a better view and continued to climb alone to the top. As he neared the edge he could see the lava heaving and churning. He almost ran all the way going back down!
Shortly after there was an eruption and many houses on the mountainside were destroyed. Kilauea was a very active volcano in 1919 and 1920.
So from Honolulu this trip took them to Yokohama, Tokyo, and Kobe in Japan and Shanghai, China.
It was in Shanghai that my Mother found a small restaurant next to the theatre that served delicious hot chocolate. It was really sort of a dive, but she and others in the company kept going back for the hot chocolate. Then one night someone took a good look at what they were drinking. What they thought was thick chocolate, floating on top of the cups, were really ants!
The tour continued on to Tientsin, Pekin, Tsingtau, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore. Where they stayed at the Raffles Hotel, then Batavia, Sourabaya, Rangoon, Calcutta and Australia.
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There was a slight delay for my Mother in Sourabaya, Java, where another son was born, William Herr Jansen, December 31st, 1911.
Pop had gone on ahead with the show, then complications developed for Mom. Her doctor spoke only Dutch and the “amah” (nurse) who looked after Dolly and Al did not speak English.
Pop sent back a man who worked for him, someone he thought to be trustworthy, of course. This man was given the additional money his wife needed and instructions to buy her tickets and bring her and the children on to Rangoon. Instead he ran out, leaving her stranded. No money, no tickets. Mom telegraphed Pop and a month later was able to rejoin him.
Mom worried all of Bill’s life that having been born in Java, a Dutch Colony, he could be conscripted for military duty, as all Dutch subjects were, when he was eighteen.
So the passport issued to my father (one passport for the whole family) always stated that all the children were born in the United States. In those days, evidently the officials did not ask for birth certificates. Traveling so much, I used to wonder how my Mother managed to be in Chicago for even four deliveries!
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Together again they continued on to India and then Sydney, Australia, where they played a month at the Criterion Theatre, following the great actor, Henry Irving. Then on to New Zealand.
It was about this time that Jansen thought he looked too young. He began powdering his hair white when making up. This caused some perplexity when he returned to Australia in 1932. People looked at his white hair and said, “He must be ninety years old! He had white hair when he was here twenty years ago.”
Pop did not trust banks and believed the best place to invest money (next to the show) was in diamonds. By this time Morn had several large dinner rings. Pop rarely bought them at jewelers. The word got around that he liked diamonds and people with salable jewelry would come backstage, so he was able to make some exceptional buys.
When Dolly was about sixteen, Pop called her into his dressing room one night and asked which she would rather have, a fur coat or a diamond ring? She said a ring! And of course there just happened to be someone there with jewelry to sell so she made her own choice.
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The only time I remember him going to a jewelry store was in Turin, Italy, and he bought Mom a seven and a half carat solitaire and a very tiny diamond ring for me, I was thirteen. He also bought a dinner ring with eight diamonds, he said he was going to have made into a stick-pin for his tie. But when I was seventeen, he gave that one to me.
On one of their trips Mom gave her rings to her mother-in-law for safekeeping. But Grandma Jansen lost them. For months she searched frantically but they were not to be found and Mom was resigned and did not expect to see her jewelry again.
A few more weeks went by and one evening Grandma said she was going to do a “magic act.” With a little hand waving, she pulled the rings out of a rag bag where she had hidden and then forgotten them!
After that Mom kept her rings with her and they proved to be a good investment on those occasions when we would be in some financial difficulty and a “hock” shop was near. But she always redeemed them. There was one time when she pawned them just for safekeeping. She left them in Berlin, Germany, rather than take them to Russia with her.
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The show played Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin in New Zealand and then back to Australia, Sydney, Brisbane and the huge Town Hall in Melbourne. Adelaide, Perth, Kalgoorlie then returned to the Orient. This time including the Island of Sumatra.
When in Singapore on September Fourth [1914], the city was put under martial law – World War 1. All the theatres were closed and every activity came to a standstill. With much difficulty, passage was booked on a Spanish ship to take the show to Manila.
While there, Pop met a man who introduced himself as Charles Inglis, saying he was a salesman for Armour and Company. They spent many hours together, Pop unaware that they were being shadowed by secret police. Then one day Inglis disappeared. Four weeks later [Nov. 6, 1914] newspaper headlines read, “Famous German Spy Shot in the Tower of London.” His real name was [Carl] Hans Lody. Because of this association, my father later learned that he had been kept under surveillance for some time.
Manila suffered one of the worst floods in its history with considerable property damage, while they were there [in 1914] and again there were delays in booking passage. Finally an American ship was available to take the show to Hong Kong. Then Shanghai, back to Japan and Honolulu. From there to San Francisco, arriving on New Year’s Day 1915.