Francis Neilson

Francis Neilson (born Francis Butters, 26 January 1867, Birkenhead, England; died 13 April 1961, Port Washington, Long Island, New York) was a British-born American actor, playwright, stage director, political figure, and author. Born in Claughton Road, Birkenhead, the eldest of nine siblings, he was the son of Francis Turley Butters, a restaurant keeper of Shropshire origin, and Isabella Neilson Hume, a Scottish woman from Dundee. He attended the Liverpool Institute for Boys before leaving school at fourteen. He relocated to the United States at eighteen, arriving in New York City, where he worked as a longshoreman, a laborer in Central Park, and in clerical positions. An encounter with an African-American man named Johnson, who held a college degree yet was employed as a porter, prompted Neilson's deep interest in education and led him to the writings of Henry George, whose ideas he would champion for the rest of his life.

Neilson's theatrical career encompassed acting, directing, and playwriting across both sides of the Atlantic. His Broadway credits include appearances in Secret Service and A Butterfly on the Wheel, the latter of which he also wrote. He supplied Victor Herbert with a libretto for Prince Ananias, commissioned by the theater company The Bostonians, which debuted in 1894. The Internet Broadway Database records him as director of The Little Princess in January 1903, staged first at the Criterion Theatre and subsequently at the Savoy Theatre. In New York he befriended conductor Anton Seidl, who brought him to Germany and introduced him to Richard Wagner's family in Bayreuth. That connection drew Neilson back to London, where he served as a stage director for Charles Frohman at the Duke of York's Theatre. In 1900 he was invited to direct the national opera at Covent Garden, which he reorganized entirely. The first production mounted there under his direction was Puccini's Tosca, with Puccini himself present at the theatre. That meeting led Neilson to invite Puccini to a private performance of Madame Butterfly at the Duke of York's Theatre. Puccini subsequently asked Neilson to direct the opera at La Scala in Milan, though other commitments prevented this from occurring.

In politics, Neilson stood unsuccessfully for the Newport Division of Shropshire in 1906, losing to Conservative incumbent William Kenyon-Slaney by 176 votes, and was again unsuccessful in the 1908 Newport by-election. He was elected Member of Parliament for Hyde in Cheshire in 1910. During his time in Parliament he was acquainted with Prime Ministers Asquith and Lloyd George and was active in the Land Values Movement. He resigned his seat in 1916, his pacifist convictions placing him in conflict with the prosecution of the First World War.

Neilson returned to the United States, becoming a citizen in 1921. In 1917 he married Helen Swift, an heiress of the Swift Meat Packing Business and widow of Edward Morris, President of Morris and Company. Together they contributed to numerous institutions, including the University of Chicago, Ripon College, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Archaeological Institute of America, Liverpool Cathedral, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His first marriage, to Catherine O'Gorman, had produced two daughters: Isabel, a sculptor who in 1932 married Prince Hermann of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and became Countess of Ostheim, and Marion, who married Captain Hugh Melville of Sam Browne's Cavalry.

As an author, Neilson produced more than sixty books, plays, opera librettos, and articles. His antiwar volume How Diplomats Make War, published in 1915, went through multiple printings and translations. Between 1920 and 1924 he co-edited the journal of opinion and literary criticism The Freeman. His two-volume autobiography, My Life in Two Worlds, appeared in 1952. His final book, From Ur to Nazareth, published in 1960, was completed with the assistance of his literary secretary, K. Phyllis Evans, after Neilson had lost his sight.

Neilson was a benefactor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to which he donated antiquities and several paintings, including A Winter Carnival in a Small Flemish Town, Portrait of a Man, Possibly George Frederick Handel, and The Pelkus Gate near Utrecht. Helen Swift Neilson bequeathed to the museum Rembrandt's Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan, for which she had paid $250,000 in 1930, as well as Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Pechell. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts received John Singer Sargent's painting A Capriote. In 1935, as President of the Chicago Chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America, Neilson organized and endowed an archaeological expedition to the Near East in coordination with the University of Liverpool, with archaeologist John Garstang leading excavations at the port of Mersin in southern Turkey. Liverpool Cathedral received a collection of organ and choral works he sponsored, and the cathedral organ bears his name. The Francis Neilson Trust, founded on 6 October 1949, supports music education and choristers at the cathedral. Neilson died at the age of ninety-four and was cremated, with his remains interred at Liverpool Cathedral.