Hear the Distant Applause! Six Great Ladies of the American Theatre by Marguerite Vance, 1963

"Don't be afraid of failure; be afraid of petty success...Be afraid of that long, long death which means compromise with your best." -Maude Adams

She was not a pretty child, the girl with the little , pointed nose and pale, straight hair,, and eyes the color of gray-green sea water. But she was graceful as a kitten, and her smile-on those rare occasions when she displayed it-held an elfin twinkle that was enchanting.

Her name was Maude Kiskadden. Her pretty mother, Asenath Ann Adams, was born to Julia Ann Banker Adams and Barnabas Lothrop Adams shortly after they reached Salt Lake City with Brigham Young's Mormons. Brigham Young was a believer in the theatre as a cultural medium, and when Emmeline, his favorite wife, chose eight-year-old Asenath Ann Adams to play children's parts at the Social Hall in Salt Lake City, she launched a vigorous career. From the time she was fourteen, Annie Adams played leading roles in the Mormon stock company. Years later she loved to tell how Brigham Young had watched her, enjoying the play from a great armchair.

Annie must have been a lovely creature, and she was still in her teens when James Kiskadden, a handsome young Scotch-Irishman from Montana, came to Salt Lake City. He was fun loving and lighthearted, and he found employment in his brother's bank as irksome as he found billiards, fine horses, and the theatre fascinating. Having once seen Annie Adams on the stage, he had to see her again-and again. They were married and went to San Francisco on their wedding trip. A momentous trip it was, for they were aboard the first train to make the run through to the Coast and saw the historic meeting of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific engines at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

The Kiskaddens were a courageous young couple, so much in love, so sure that life held great things for them. However, their first joy at the birth of twin sons was soon dashed by the death of both babies. Then a little girl was born, whom they named Maude. Soon after her birth they moved to Virginia City, Nevada.

James Kiskadden, for all his good looks and charm, had a hard time making ends meet. He worked some of the time in his brother's bank in Salt Lake City, but supplemented his salary by driving mule teams between Denver and Pueblo, in Southern Colorado. His wife went back to work in the theatre, playing in Virginia City and San Francisco, and little Maude went with her. This does not mean that the family was always separated. James Kiskadden was immensely proud of his wife's acting ability and took a house in San Francisco so that they could give their child a real home life.

This was the era when child actors were used in many performances. And from the time she was a toddler, little Maude played a variety of parts, loving them all. At the age of six she was taking a keen interest in her salary and in the anticipated run of the play. In later life money meant little to her, and in retrospect her childhood interest in it caused her great amusement.

Her father's determination that she should start her formal schooling was a major obstacle to her otherwise idyllic days on the stage, both as an actor and as an eager spectator in the wings.

'But I'd not have you making a little goose of yourself by going on the stage, Mauddie," James Kiskadden pointed out. "Your mama's the one to win the laurels, but you start learning your two by two's."

However, little Maude had a will of her own. And her love for the theatre was as much a part of her being as her rare, bubbling laughter or the piping voice with which she sang the favorite popular songs of the day, songs such as "Somebody's Coming When The Dew Drops Fall" and "Pretty as a Picture." She was accustomed to the company of grownups and the courtly manners of the gentlemen of the theatre, and once when she was only seven she unbraided a young uncle who met her on the street and neglected to tip his hat.

Annie Kiskadden understood her child's preoccupation with the life of the stage and saw no harm in letting lessons slide, at least for the time being. However, when Maude was ten she was packed off to Salt Lake City to live with her grandmother and attend Salt Lake Collegiate Institute. Because of her theatrical background, she was advanced and opinionated in her thinking, and became at once a problem pupil. In reading of her school days, one searches futilely for the undercurrents that might have changed this self-willed little girl into the gentle, unassuming young woman who became one of the world's most beloved actresses.

Maude was about eleven when her father died, and it is possible that his admonition some years earlier, "Don't be a goose," may have had an effect on her. or being taken out of school after only two years and given serious parts to play may have wakened her, rather brutally, to the realization of her own unimportance at that time.

Maude's first parts were with a stock company playing in the small towns of California, the gold-mining towns, where audiences were anything but reticent, and where Maude Adams-she had taken her mother's name in the theatre-was made sharply aware of any faults in her performance. Nothing she did seemed right. Her voice, her gestures, her entrances and exits were received with undisguised criticism. Even so, when she was fifteen she was given a leading part in a comedy. Her hopes soared. Not that she liked comedy; she detested it-only the classic, the tragic roles pleased her. Nevertheless this was the leading woman's part and could not be underestimated. Maude worked hard, did her best, but even her mother admitted that she was very poor in the role. unsure of herself, self-conscious, she stumbled through he part at each performance, wondering what had become of her self-confidence.

To add to her discomfort, Charles Frohman arrived in San Francisco, and Annie Adams, eager for the approval of a prominent manager, took her thoroughly crestfallen child to see him. Appraisal had been wanted and it was forthcoming. Mr. Frohman listened while Maude read speeches she had selected from several parts, and shook his head.

I have nothing for your little girl at the present, Mrs. Adams," he said, "and if she hopes to appear in New York for auditions she most lose that western ‘r' in her diction. It would condemn her instantly."

Humbled, feeling reprimanded and all but ridiculed, mother and daughter trudged home. Here was real discouragement! Maude walked around the house practicing "motheh," "floweh," "watch" -r's dropping and disappearing forever from her diction.

Then an eastern company playing The Paymaster came to San Francisco, and on its return to New York, by what strange misjudgment in casting one can only wonder, Maude was given the part of the heroine. So Annie Adams and her daughter, aged fifteen, left for New York. There were one-night performances along the way, and by the time the company finally arrived in New York management realized that its young leading lady was not quite adequate to act her part before a cosmopolitan audience. Maude found herself demoted to a very minor role.

Here again was blighting discouragement, but with wisdom beyond her years she was learning from each obstacle. Sensibly, she admitted to herself that she had been straining at parts far too old for her, that she had an apprenticeship to serve before she could hope for stardom. As though her prudence had won her an award, she learned of a part calling for a young girl in E.H. Southern production of Lord Chumley in Boston. She and her mother left for Boston immediately.

Mr. Sothern took his profession very seriously, so seriously that members of his cast, though devoted to him personally, stood in awe at his insistence upon perfection in every actor's work, regardless of the minute size of the part. He was not even thirty, this man of great talent, yet he had the wisdom and depth of observation of a man twice his age.

At the moment-it was the last week of the Boston engagement-he was looking for someone to replace Dora Leslie in the part of Jessie Deane. It was a small part, but a good one, and as Mr. Sothern interview the applicants he thought again and again of the thin girl, one of the first to apply, with the delicate high cheekbones and the gray-green eyes wide spaced in a piquant little face. She assured him with disarming candor that she could do justice to the part if only he would let her try. Her name, she said, was Adams-Miss Maude Adams.

Something about her wistful earnestness appealed to Sothern, and he asked her to return to his office and read for him. There was a quality here, an inner childlike radiance, unclouded and guileless, which he found most attractive.

At the Hollis Street Theatre in Boston on November 19, 1888, Miss Adams played her first really significant role in Lord Chumley. As she was a replacement, no notice was taken of her by the press. But weeks later, when the company was on tour, the Peoria Journal burst into print with the following: "Maude Adams is as pretty a soubrette as one can see in an afternoon promenade-a sweet and tender blossom on the dramatic tree." To both Maude and her mother it was an accolade.

Mr. Sothern took an almost paternal interest in the members of his company, especially in those who showed definite talent. Maude Adams was one of these, and she tells an amusing story of how Mr. Sothern helped her correct a serious weakness in her acting. Her stage laughter was not convincing; it was brittle, shallow, and lacking in depth.

On a Sunday morning when the company was entraining for New York from Oakland, California, Maude and a Mrs. Selten, another member of the company, were waiting for their cab in front of the hotel. Suddenly, around the corner Mr. Sothern arrived in an open carriage, also bound for the railway station. When he saw them, he got out and invited the two women, the one not yet seventeen, to join him. Scarcely were they seated when he turned to Maude, smiling:

'You know, my dear Miss Adams, he said cordially, "you really need some lessons in laughter and I am going to give you one while we drive to the station. I've been watching for just this opportunity. Oh, I promise you it will be quite painless," he added, as he saw her shrink into her corner and the color stain her face. "Now listen to the horses' hoofs. Now take a deep breath, listening to the rhythm of the hoof beats and say with me, ‘ha-ha-ha,' keeping time with the horses. Now try it! Fine! Excellent! Faster, driver! Ha-ha-ha and ha-ha-ha, and faster yet!

Just what the Oakland pedestrians thought, on that quite Sunday morning, as an open carriage rolled through its streets with two of its occupants shouting with laughter we do not know. But Maude Adams never again lacked a deep musical laugh when a role called for it, and doubtless the memory of that Sunday morning helped make her laughter so deliciously infectious.

At the end of the run of Lord Chumley in 1888, Maude returned to New York and played for a short time in the comedies of Charles H. Hoyt. Then she went to see Charles Frohman who was just laughing his first stock company; and he must have approved of her diction now, for he gave her a place in the company.

Two noted men in the world of the theatre and of literature were instrumental in shaping the career of Maude Adams. One was Charles Frohman, under whose management she acted from 1890 until his death on May 7, 1915. The other was James M. Barrie, the renowned English writer.

During her year with the Frohman stock company Maude played leading roles with Henry Miller in such old favorites as All the Comforts of Home, My Geraldine, and Diplomacy. But after two seasons Frohman, watching her growing stature as an actress and her maturing beauty as a woman, felt the time had come for advancement. He placed her in John Drew's company. Here was unmatched training for a beginner.

John Drew, while a perfectionist in his work, was an exponent of the value of the unexpected on the stage. In other words, his cast had to be constantly on the alert for interpolations, baffling little intrusions of unrehearsed business, which called for quick thinking. Maude Adams, her frail, quicksilver being perfectly attuned to the unexpected, seldom, if ever, missed an extemporaneous cue. The press was quick to evaluate her work, and one of her earliest notices followed her performance in The Masked Ball when John Drew waxed mischievous. It read: "Miss Adam's exceedingly delicate and delightfully humorous treatment of a trying role was a revelation. It was just touch and go whether one scene ruined the play or not, where to punish her husband she was to appear drunk and yet be a gentlewoman. Miss Adams achieved this feat so successfully that the applause lasted a full two minutes. That one scene stamped her as a comedienne of the first water. And her scenes of tenderness, her alternate raillery and contrition, were rendered with a delightfully delicate touch."

Again, of The Imprudent Young Couple, a particularly caustic critic had this to say: "Miss Maude Adams is a delicious young actress. Her delicate discrimination and exceptional felicity in utterance, in manner and appearance had a great deal to do with the success of the evening."

Praise and admiration rose in volume through the seasons, and Maude Adams in sincere wonder never ceased to marvel at the growing chorus of adulation that was being heaped upon her. But daily, she gave more of herself to her work. The superficial little miss of twelve had disappeared into the shadow of the lovely young woman.

So five years passed, and it was on an autumn evening in 1897 that James M. Barrie slipped into a seat at the Empire Theatre in New York to see the play Rosemary starring John Drew. Playing opposite Mr. Drew was someone named Maude Adams. She must be good, though Barrie, ruffling through his program., or she wouldn't be playing the part. The house lights dimmed; the curtain rose. Frohman had been urging Barrie to make a play of his novel, The Little Minister,, but Barrie demurred because he could find no one suitable for the part of Babbie. Now as he watched Rosemary unfold, and found himself being enchanted whenever Maude Adams stepped on the stage, he kept saying to himself, "Behold, my Babbie."

The play was written, and on September 27, 1897, it opened at the Empire. Maude Adams was now a star. Naturally elated at her success, she nevertheless regretted having to give up her association with John Drew. His lovely young niece, Ethel Barrymore, had appeared in some of the plays, trying her wings in the theatre, and she and Maude had become friends. It was hard to break away. However, once her part in The Little Minister was perfected and she had submerged herself in the character of Babbie, her spirits began to soar and by curtain time on opening night she was ready to concede her good fortune.

Oddly enough, the first reviews of The Little Minister were mixed. One paper said: "Miss Adams will be a better Babbie in a week hence. She was clearly nervous." Another declared "Her personal charm was never more potent and she was satisfying to the most exacting taste."

Nevertheless, the play continued to run to packed houses, and at its there hundredth performance in New York, Mr. Frohman presented every woman in the audience with an American beauty rose. Two seasons, 1898-1899, were spent on tour with the play, and the thousandth performance was on Valentine's Day in 1905. In 1934, The Little Minister was broadcast over the radio.

There are many amusing stories told about the long run of the play. it chanced to be playing in New Haven on a day that Yale beat Harvard in football, and the house was filled with rollicking young men bent on making the most of the evening. Yale's school color is blue, and one of Maude's lines was; "Do you lie me in this bonnet? Perhaps the other goes better with the cloak? But blue is my color."

She was somewhat prepared for a lusty shout from the audience at the word "blue" but not for the thunderous bedlam of yelling, whistling, and stamping that broke out the moment she spoke the word. It was impossible to continue with the play until the high-spirited victors could shout no more.

During the long run of The Little Minister,, Mr. Frohman thought to relive the monotony for the cast by producing Romeo and Juliet. Maude must have smiled a little smile of frustration when she heard his plan. She had always wanted to play tragedy. it seemed so much more romantic to her young imagination, and in the last decade of the nineteenth century, at least among conservative theatergoers, comedy was considered not in quite as good taste as the tragic or classical drama. Once her mother had warned her sensibly: "Child, look at your profile in the mirror. With a turned-up nose like that, how can you expect to play tragedy?"

Well, one cannot be blamed for hoping, and with such a variety of comedies already to her credit Maude Adams never quite abandoned the hope that one day she would be asked to act in a tragedy and so prove her versatility. Romeo and Juliet seemed the perfect answer. Then came the blow; Mr. Frohman did not want a tragic Juliet! One might as well demand that rivers run uphill! But Maude Adams demonstrated the full scope of her ability; she gave Mr. Frohman exactly the Juliet he wanted-gay, artless, ingenuous, yet capable of profound depths of feeling.

When the play opened in New York in may 1909, the critics were largely complimentary. one ended his lengthy review with this final paragraph: "It is finely emotional and intensely appealing on its tragic side, although the element of deep pathos is substituted for moving force. It is the Juliet of a comedienne equipped with wonderful range of power.

In Boston, where it played next, a critic said: "The stage has waited for Miss Adams to give to Juliet a sense of humor-and yet there is plenty of warrant for it in the text. It met with critical appreciation.

Some of the critics were caustic, tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic. Said the most influential of them all, William Winter: "Many schoolgirls with little practice would play the part just as well-and would be just as like it...Much of the part was whispered and much of it as bleated. The personality cannot readily be described, but perhaps it may not be unfairly indicated as that of an intellectual young lady from Boston, competent in the mathematics and intent on teaching pedagogy." This must have been bitter criticism to take, and reading it Maude Adams must have decided then and there that tragedy was not for her.

Maude had never been robust, and the strain of the past year had made inroads on her health; so when spring came she went to Europe for a change of air and scene. While in England she was to have her first meeting with James M. Barrie. They had written to each other, and in one letter, after the opening of The Little Minister, Barrie had sent a Christmas greeting to her: "I only wish I could come in person to tell you how I delight in your success and to see the delicious things you do with Babbie of which many tell me with enthusiasm. But I can picture a great deal of it, have been able to do so ever since I saw you in Rosemary when both my wife an I reveled in your playing. We were so sorry not to meet you then, and it is a regret that goes on growing. We are in hopes of your coming over her to see us, and we shall be made unhappy if you don't come and stay with us. Will you?"

Now she was to meet him. First, however, she was to go to Paris to see the great Sarah Bernhardt in Rostand's play about Napoleon's son, The King of Rome, L'Aiglon. Maude was to play in the English translation of the play the following autumn. No sooner had she reached Paris and read the newspaper accounts of Madame Bernhardt's performances than sheer terror overcame her. She knew that if she saw the great Bernhardt play L'Aiglon she never would have the courage to play it herself.

A little desperate, she left for London. And what a welcome awaited her at the Barries'! Forever after, she knew that James M. Barrie would hold the inspiration for her finest work, just as she knew that Charles Frohman would always be its motivating force. When she left London to take the boat train she felt she had known the Barries all her life.

Until now Maude Adams had not permitted herself the luxury of nerves when opening in a new play. Nervous she was occasionally, but it was only the nervousness natural to any exciting occasion in which one played a major part. She had little patience with mediocrity, and she gave her best at all times and approached opening nights with a modicum of uneasiness. But with the opening of L'Aiglon Maude Adams faced a peculiarly trying situation. Sarah Bernhardt was opening in New York in the French version of the play at the very time she was opening in the English translation. She, Maude Adams, and the "Divine Sarah," acting in the same play at the same time in the same city!

On opening night, Maude heard her cue and walked out before the footlights in such as state of nervousness that her first lines were almost inaudible. Then something of the Scotch-Irish spirit of the Kiskaddens stirred in her; she lifted her head high, thrust out her delicate chin, and spoke with the imperious dignity of the King of Rome. With that quick upswing of confidence her performance took on warmth and color, and the final curtain fell to a standing ovation. The following morning, one of the critics wrote:

"Bernahrdt's L'Aiglon lacks the celestial fire that glows in Rostand's creation, and which an American actress, with not a tithe of the Frenchwoman's force and finesse, has been able to impart to her own representation of the character. I had resolved to refrain rigidly from impertinent comparison in this critique; but the amazement with which I saw how Maude Adams has grasped the heart and soul of the Duc de Reichstadt, and how the essence of the poet's conception has eluded Bernhardt vanquished my scruples. I asset that in the one quality that makes for true greatness in acting, the L'Aiglon of Maude Adams surpasses that of Sarah Bernhardt as the stars surpass the moon."

Another added: "Pride in an American actress makes it pleasant as well as just to say that her representation of the ill-fated young duke is better than Sarah Bernahardt's."

Yet in her joy at having achieved high honors, Maude Adams refused to listen to comparisons that were derogatory to Madame Bernhardt. "She is beyond criticism," she said.

Maude bought an English-style basement house at 22 East Forty-first Street in New York City-it is gone now, replaced by a towering, pencil-like building-and her she saw the few friends she really loved. No one could have been further from the accepted conception of an actress offstage. Her life, when she was not working, was very close to that of a recluse. She touched romance only in terms of a role to be played; romance was not for her. She was never seen at parties or galas of any sort-she had to conserve her physical strength, and her natural shyness made it difficult for her to face crowds. On the other hand, Maude was a profligate spender of money, time, and strength when she heard of anyone in need, anyone worried, or in trouble of any kind. The very opposite of gregarious, she was, nevertheless, interested in the life of everyone with whom she came in contact. Her thoughtfulness became a legend in the theatre, and she was known frequently to have raised the pitifully low salaries of the "extras," paying the difference from her own purse.

In the winter of 1904-1905, Maude was stricken with acute appendicitis and was operated on hat her New York home in the spring. As soon as she was able, she began to read the play Peter Pan, which Barrie always maintained she alone had inspired It had had quite a successful run in London with Miss Nina Boucicault playing Peter, and now Barrie was insisting that Frohman launch it in New York with Maude Adams as Peter.

"It opened a new world to me, the beautiful world of children. My childhood and girlhood had been spent with older people, and children had always been rather terrifying to me. When one met the eyes of the little things, it was like facing the Day of Judgment. Children remained an enigma to me until, when I was a woman grown, Peter gave me open sesame; for whether I understood children or not, they understood Peter."

After such a slow beginning, once the play caught the imagination of the American public it had a tremendous success. Today, grandparents, looking back nostalgically to their own joy in it and to their believe in Peter, might paraphrase the little boy who wrote thus to Peter:

"Dear Peter:

"Can you come to lunch next Thursday? Brother says bring Tinker. I believe in fairies. Now be sure and come to lunch. We will have chocolate ice cream. I like you better than any boy I ever saw. I am so glad Wendy got well. I live at 255 West 99th Street. You can fly here easily and not pay carfare. Please answer right away. I talk of you all the time. Come Thursday. With love."

Peter became the friend of the thousands of children who saw the play; and though several gifted artists have played his part through the years, none has quite achieved the indescribable amalgam of little-boy earthiness and spirituality that made up the fairy-child Peter as Maude Adams portrayed him. Straight from Never, Never Land, her Peter was as real to the children who saw him as the postman or the butcher's boy. Of course he was real!

If Maude needed proof of this kind of blind loyalty she had it, following a matinee performance early in the play's first season. She was leaving the theatre by the stage door, wearing her street clothes, when a small boy came rushing toward her, his mother in pursuit. When he came abreast of Maude, he stopped in his tracks and sobbed wildly as he pointed, crying, "But that's not Peter Pan! That's just a lady." Then he looked closer, awe and despairing incredulity dried his tears. "There is no Peter Pan, is there?" he said. Maude could only hurry into her carriage, wondering unhappily as she drove away if one could ever restore a child's lost faith. From that day forward, she made it a practice while playing Peter Pan never to leave the theatre immediately after the play on matinee days.

Maude's mother had retired from the stage in 1906, much against her will. The redoubtable Annie Adams wrote to her daughter that "rest is rust," and she found living quietly in Salk Lake City with her own aged mother a very rusty business indeed.

Though Maude Adams took care to keep her circle of intimates small, in so full a life as hers there were bound to be people to whom she was deeply devoted. Two of her closest associates-and space does not permit more-were Miss Louis Boynton, her secretary-companion and Mrs. Phyllis Robbins, her biographer. It was Miss Boynton who raised the barricade when interlopers threatened, who planned itineraries, arranged meetings, worked beside Maude when sudden revisions on scripts were necessary, and traveled with her to the far parts of the world.

Miss Robbins, who first met Maude in 1900 following a matinee performance of The Little Minister, became her closest friend, and the two spent many happy days at each other's country houses, as well as at Miss Robbin's Boston home on Commonwealth Avenue. The theatre would owe much to Miss Robbins for her excellent biography of her life-long friend.

The years 1908-1909 were filled with experiment. Both Harvard and Yale were to see her in plays at their own auditoriums. In June 1908, Maude played Twelfth Night in Harvard's Sander's Theatre, and in April 1909, she took Barrie's inimitable What Every Woman Knows to Yale for a performance before it opened at the Empire Theatre in New York later in the year.

In June of 1909 Maude Adams accomplished what must always be acknowledged as the supreme work of her career. Using the enormous Harvard Stadium, she played Joan of Arc with a big company, out in the open air. This was not only a test of her acting ability in holding the attention of her audience at such tremendous distances, but also of the carrying power of her voice, normally soft and so often criticized by William Winter. That her success was overwhelming was attested by all the newspaper reviews.

In 1913, Barrie wrote the satirical The Legend of Leonora and sent it to Maude Adams to read. The play had not been popular in London; indeed, so absurd was the satire that it was roundly booed. However played by Maude Adams it won nothing but high praise in eastern cities where she toured in it. Here again was an acid test of acting, charm, and personality; a test glowingly passed. As one critic put it: "There is much in the play for which to raise our voice in thanks. And not the least for the exquisitely appealing acting of Miss Adams, who never played with finer touches of delicate and ingratiating humor, or richer glimpses of real womanliness and tenderness, so that the general adoration seems the most natural thing imaginable."

On Christmas Day, 1916, Maude Adams opened at the Empire Theatre in New York in the last play Barrie was destined to write for her, A Kiss for Cinderella. It was an instant hit. Alexander Woolcott said of it: "Maude Adams is utterly winsome, so dauntless and gently pathetic that she breaks your heart." Years later she gave to the Museum of the City of New York the "emerald and diamond" tiara she wore in the play.

She loved quiet and peace, and early in her career, while traveling in France, she had visited an Augustinian convent in Tours and had loved it. In 1915 and 1916, years which held much sorrow for her, she turned to the life of the convent for comfort-Miss Boynton arranged for Maude, who was not a Roman Catholic, to be received as a guest at the Cenacle of St. Regis at West 140th Street, in New York City.

It was the beginning of a long, happy association. At the convent she spent many weekends, and she gave many gifts to the nuns. The flowers, which were sent to her every day in huge quantities, were immediately transferred to the Cenacle; a beautiful organ was given for the auditorium; a heat lamp was sent to a partially paralyzed man who worked in the kitchen. The generous gifts multiplied through the months, and culminated in 1921 with her gift to the nuns of her beautiful estate at Lake Ronkonkoma on Long Island for a novitiate and retreat house. Through the years that followed, her interest in the convent and its work did not lag. Young novices taking their first vows were sent American beauty roses. To neighborhood children who had run at a Convent garden party she sent souvenirs of delicate medals from Tiffany's The convent became her second home.

The sudden death of Charles Frohman, who was aboard the Lusitania when the ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in World War I, was a paralyzing shock to Maude Adams. To her Charles Frohman had been a person who always could be counted upon to right the knottiest problems in a production. More than that, he had been her close friend and counselor, and suddenly to find him gone this was staggering. Added to this overwhelming loss came the deaths of both her grandmother and mother in Salt Lake City. What a refuge the Cenacle was!

She never permitted herself to be morbid, and soon she was on tour with A Kiss for Cinderella, Peter Pan, and The Little Minister. She had never been busier; and with American's entry into World War I, her projects multiplied. Late in 1918, influenza laid her low. When she recovered-and her convalescence was long and discouraging-she looked forward to commencing work on Mary Rose, the new play by Barrie. However, her contract terms were not satisfactory to the new management of Charles Frohman, Inc, and Miss Ruth Chatterton played the part of Mary Rose.

Maude Adams had become interested in theatre lighting and in 1921 she went to the General Electric laboratories in Schnecetady to learn what she could about color processes for lighting the stage and for motion pictures. After her retirement from the theatre she was sometimes consulted about problems of stage lighting.

In 1931 she played in The Merchant of Venice in Cleveland, Boston and Newark, and in 1934 she did considerable radio broadcasting, reciting excerpts from Peter Pan, The Little Minister, and several other of her best-known roles.

The year 1934 was to see her last appearance on the stage when, having finished a summer tour through Main, new Hampshire and Vermont, she played Twelfth Night for one performance at Dennis, Massachusetts. Maude Adams was now sixty-two years old, yet she gave to the part of Maria the elfin, childlike quality which had struck the first spark in her fame forty-six years earlier, when a Peoria critic had called her "a sweet and tender blossom on the dramatic tree." Now a New England reviewer wrote: "How she manages this is her own secret; how she conveys this youngness is all the more amazing since she makes no effort to hide her years."

A great career in the theatre was ended. There remained the warm afterglow of late afternoon to be filled with a new and exhilarating work-teaching-which continued to the end of her life.

In the summer of 1937 James M. Barrie died of pneumonia. Of the triumvirate she alone remained, and fate, as though determined to take her mind from her loss, intervened in an unexpected way. The president of Stephens College at Columbia, Missouri, invited he to star a department of acting there. Her first reaction was completely negative. She suddenly felt far removed from the theatre and everything pertaining to it. besides, the very thought of a department of acting struck her as futile. So many girls longed to act; so few had innate ability.

Then she began to evaluate the study of the drama-the vistas of beauty, the awareness of emotions hitherto unacknowledged that it brought. In the end she accepted, and for thirteen years she gave to Stephens College students an education in all phases of the stage seldom equaled anywhere. Her lectures were simple, succinct, and deeply inspiring. Naturally, the girls adored her. She ended he work at Stephens during the 1949-1950 school year.

Her beloved companion, Louise Boynton, died suddenly in 1951 at their summer home at Tannersville, New York. Two years later, on a summer day, Maude Adams lay down on the sofa in her old-fashioned country parlor and quietly fell asleep. All her life everything she did was done with an elfin hush, and she accomplished this, her final exit, without fanfare. She was buried beside Miss Boynton at Ronkonkoma.

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