Her generosity

“Children most often enjoyed the fruits of her financial generosity. Maude staged benefit performances for orphanages; she gave blocks of tickets to schools and to organizations representing disadvantaged boys and sgirls; and she insisted that the price of gallery seats not exceed fifty cents so that interested young folk could afford to attend the theatre. But the needy in general, regardles of age and social rank, became her beneficiaries. Maude opened her purse for individuals afflicted by illness, destitution, or personal tragedy, and for groups of citizens victimized by natural disasters. ...she always carried out her charities either privately or anonymously” (Maude Adams, an American Idol: True Womanhood Triumphant in the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Theatre, doctoral thesis, 1984, Eileen Karen Kuehnl)

“Maude Adams, however, is simply adored. The American public loves her because she is Maude Adams. Were her gifts more numerous, her capacity of wider range, it is to be questioned whether her fame would shine at so white a glow. We do not love the great, we stand in awe of them. Just why the American public should cherish Maude Adams above all other actresses is not easily answered. It may be because she embodies to a high degree the ideal of Puritan womanhood: a religious devotion to the aims of one's life, a stern, uncompromising sense of all that is involved in the word duty.” Clippings from Quality Street, Nov. 1901, source unknown.

“Why all this aloofness and mystery, in America's most popular actress? The answer is simple, when you know it, and rather pathetic...It is that this valiant spirit in a frail and delicate body gives about nine-tenths of itself as a willing sacrifice to the great public, on evenings and matinees; and the remaining tenth is devoted not so much to her own pleasure as to restoring the wear and tear of past performances and replenishing the stock of enthusiasm and ideals for those to come.” Cosmopolitan, January, 1913




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