Bayfield was born John St. Clair Roberts on 2 August 1875 in
Cheltenham, England, the son of George Bayfield Roberts, an Oxford-educated country parson, and his wife Ida, the eldest of three illegitimate daughters of
Edward Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough, a prominent politician and
Governor-General of India in the years preceding the
Indian Mutiny. St. Clair's maternal great-grandfather was
Lord Chief Justice of England. With a fine voice and physical presence, he became involved in amateur theatricals, leading eventually to his joining a professional company touring Australia. His diary of time spent in Melbourne is included in the "Bayfield Archive" preserved at
Lincoln Center,
New York. He next acted with a company headed by the impresario William Ben Greet, who abandoned his cast to penury in a remote corner of the United States. That led to the establishment of
Actors’ Equity, of which Bayfield was a founding member. His subsequent stage career involved regular appearances on
Broadway for several decades, usually in works by British playwrights. In 1909, he began a vague "common law" relationship with amateur operatic soprano
Florence Foster Jenkins, seven years his senior, that lasted the remainder of her life. The couple lived for many years in an apartment on
37th Street in Manhattan, New York. Bayfield joined the
Ben Greet Players in a revival of
Twelfth Night that took the troupe to 56
Pennsylvania towns in 65 days during the summer of 1914. Also in the group was
Sydney Greenstreet. Bayfield lived with Jenkins and managed her career for 36 years. After Jenkins' death in 1944, he married a piano teacher, Kathleen Weatherley, in 1945. They lived in
Larchmont, New York, where he died in 1967. ==Achievements==