Maude Adams by Acton Davies

This is a 1901 book about Maude Adams that is rather difficult to find. This part will only be the text; the pictures from the book are the separate play pages or in the misc. picture section.

Part First

SOMEWHERE out in Salt Lake City there exists to this day-if it hasn't been broken-an old-fashioned china meat platter which nowadays could be sold for its weight in gold. It was on this platter, about twenty-nine years ago, that Maude Adams made her first appearance on any stage. Far from being a piece de resistance in those days, Miss Adams' debut was considered of such slight importance that even her name did not figure on the programme. Indeed, had it not been for the fact that a rival infantile artist., who when not engaged on the stage was immersed in the interesting occupation of cutting her first tooth, succumbed at a crucial moment to a combined attack of temper and colic, Miss Adams' debut would in all probability have been postponed indefinitely, - or at all events until she had attained to the dignity of short skirts or possibly a pigtail.

At the time of Miss Adams' debut she was nine months old to a day. Her father., Mr. Kiscadden was engaged in business in Salt Lake City, and his wife, the actress Annie Adams.- was at that time the principal character actress of the stock company in Salt Lake. Miss Maude was an obstreperous sort of an infant with a marked partiality for her mother's society, so in order that the baby might be as near her as possible Mrs. Adams used to carry her to her dressing room at the theatre every night. The other members of the company, men and women alike, were her impromptu nurses, and as the bills were changed very frequently and rehearsals were almost incessant., little. Miss Maudie spent more of the first year of her life in the theatre than she did in her own home. In the dressing-room which her mother shared with one of the other actresses, Maudie lay in a stage cradle watching in mute amazement while her mother metamorphosed herself with the aid of wigs and grease paint into a series of characters which during the course of a season would vary all the way from the "Queen" in Hamlet to " Sairey Gamp."

It was the fashion in those days to end the night's performance with a roaring farce. On the night of her impromptu debut the manager had announced a comic piece in two scenes called The Lost Child. Mrs. Adams was cast for one of the leading roles in it. The first scene had passed off very successfully, and the baby - a salaried member of the company who played all the roles, both masculine and feminine, which were under a year old-had scored quite a hit. But no sooner was the infant removed from the stage than it set up a most unearthly yell. It was one of those weird consecutive wails which, to a mother's ear, mean either a pin or a wakeful night. After investigation had proven that a pin had nothing to do with it, the mother, turning to the stage manager in sheer despair, exclaimed "The play is done for. When she once gets started crying like that she never thinks of stopping under two hours."

" But, good Heavens! We'll have to gag her. The play must go on somehow," cried the stage manager." the audience knows what's coming. They've seen the play before, and if we don't bring that youngster in on a platter, why, they'll pull down the house." "why not try Maudie ? " said Mrs. Adams,, coming to the rescue. "She's down in my dressing-room, and as I am on the stage with her I 'm sure she'll good."

And she was good -so good, in fact that her rival that very night received her two weeks' notice, and for the remainder of that season all the infant roes were played by little Miss Kiscadden.

The principal cause of the hit which Miss Maudie made with the audience that night was the fact that the original baby who had appeared in the first scene was only six weeks old, while Maude, with her additional seven and a half months' growth, on her appearance disclosed the startling phenomenon that the youngster had increased a good twenty pounds in weight inside of fifteen minutes.

At the age of two Miss Adams closed the first epoch of her stage career. Too large to play baby roes effectively any longer, there was nothing for the young actress to do except rest on her laurels and wait until she was able to talk distinctly. During the following three years the child traveled with her mother to several of the Western cities where the company appeared. The greater part of her time was spent behind the scenes of the theatre, - indeed., it was there that she learnt her letters, - but no opportunity to act offered itself until the little girl had attained her fifth birthday.

Mr. and Mrs. Kiscadden had settled in San Francisco at that time, and Mrs. Adams -as Mrs. Kiscadden was always known upon the stage -was playing in the support of J. K. Emmett. The child in the play had proved unsatisfactory, and one night as the Kiscaddens, sat at dinner Mrs. Adams threw a small thunderbolt into the family circle by remarking to her husband, -" Look here, dear, Mr. Emmett wants to know if you won't let Maudie go on and play that child's part."

" Most certainly not," replied Mr. Kiscadden. , She's my only daughter, and I've no intention of letting her go on the stage and make a fool of herself."

Maude, who had listened with all her ears to this conversation, suddenly threw down her knife and fork and exclaimed, "Father,- I would like to go on the stage, and Maudie will not make a fool of herself."

That settled the matter. Mr. Kiscadden finally gave his consent, and the following week, in a pair of tiny knickerbockers, Miss Maude Adams made her second stage appearance. She played the small boy, Little Schneider. She had nearly a hundred lines to speak in the play, but she memorized them in a couple of days, and on the first night was so completely letter perfect that Mr. Emmett congratulated her. There was one scene which worried her very much, however. In one act she had to be tied on a water-wheel, and unless she screamed at a certain instant the whole effect of the act would have been ruined. This fact was duly impressed on Maude by her mother at rehearsal, and Mrs. Adams in telling the story of that first performance says: " wish you could have seen Maudie that night. She was simply wriggling with excitement. It was all I could do to keep her in my dressing-room until the cue came for her to go on. She was most critical about her make-up, and after I had darkened her eyelashes and rouged her cheeks she turned to me very seriously and said, Muffer, are you sure I've got louge enough on ?' Just before the curtain went up I made her repeat her first-act lines to me. She had learned them like a parrot, to be sure, but she spoke them like a true little actress. I had explained the story of the play to her very carefully, and she seemed to grasp perfectly the important part which she was to play in the plot. The one thing that we were all nervous about was that mill wheel scene. I stood in the wings and watched her all through the first act. She really did splendidly. When the mill-wheel scene came I was on the stage too, and as the critical moment came nearer and nearer Maudie would whisper every other moment, ' Mufer, must I scweam now?'

"Maude made a genuine success in Fritz, - so big a one, in fact, that Mr. Emmett began to bill her on the programme as "Little Maudie", and it was by that name that she was known out West throughout her career as a child actress. After her engagement with Mr. Emmett Maudie was engaged to play a child's part in A Celebrated Case. Most of her scenes in that production were played with Miss Belle Douglas, who was cast for a very important part. In order to be prepared for any emergency, Miss Doug lass memorized Maudie's lines as well as her own. When Maudie discovered this she was highly indignant, and exclaimed, "You needn't fret about me; I'm all right.' And later, when she was on the stage, Miss Doug lass afterwards told me that the child kept pinching her ears and whispering, "Don't boffer about me. If you get stuck I'll help you.'

During the following season Maudie was six then - she appeared with B. J. Murphy in a play called Out to Nurse. By this time the young lady had become quite a stickler in stage affairs. Like any other youngster with a healthy appetite, she cordially despised those Barmecide feasts known as stage banquets. Frequently, when from the wings she used to watch me acting in some play in which there was an elaborate dinner or supper scene, she used to say to me when I came off the stage, 'Yes., muffer, but they didn't give you nuffin real to eat.' Of course stage banquets in those days had not reached their present state of realism., so you couldn't blame Maudie for feeling a trifle disappointed. But her first opportunity to express her sentiments on this matter came during the run of Out to Nurse. Mr. Murphy was tremendously fond of the child, and used to pet and indulge her in loads of ways. In one scene Maudie had to bring on a pitcher of beer to Mr. Murphy and some other members of the company, the pitcher had always been filled with cold tea,-that dreadful dose which passes muster on the stage for anything in the liquid line from sparkling champagne to deadly poison,-but with the little girl's adventure began a new regime.

Maudie would not stand for that cold-tea business at all. She went to Mr. Murphy and told him solemnly but most emphatically that unless she could bring in real beer in the pitcher she wouldn't play the part at all. I can almost hear Mr. Murphy laughing at her yet! He was immensely tickled at the serious way in which she had made her complaint.

"Now that's the sort of a leading lady I like to have! ' he exclaimed.-'She wants real beer and she shall have real beer.' ,,And real beer they did have at every performance after that. Although," laughingly added Mrs. Adams in telling this story, "for the benefit of the many W. C. T. U. admirers that my daughter has to-day I want to state quite clearly that she did not drink any of the beer. I saw to that. But the others did,, and enjoyed it mightily after their long cold-tea drought; and every night when they came to the toast one or another of the actors would wink at Maudie and repeat, "Ere 's to yer,' under their breath."

While "Little Maudie " was about seven and the reigning child actress of the Pacific Slope, she fell by chance under the management of that greatest of all American stage managers, David Belasco. Probably no one with the exception of Mrs. Adams is in a position to speak with so much authority on the actress's baby career. "I can remember the first time I ever saw Maudie," said Mr. Belasco. "I was the stage manager of the Baldwin then: James A. Herne and I were playing there together, and in most of our plays there was usually a child's part. Annie Adams I had known for some years then as one of the best character actresses of the West., but my first remembrance of the present Maude Adams is of a spindle-legged little girl, unusually thin and tall for her age, with a funny little pigtail and one of the quaintest little faces you ever saw. In those days I don't think even her mother, who doted on that child as I have never known a mother to dote before,-I don't think even she considered Maudie pretty in those days. But even in her babyhood there was a magnetism about the child, -some traces even then of that wonderfully sweet and charming personality which was to prove such a tremendous advantage to her in the later years. The child., in short, was a born artist: she had temperament. She could act and grasp the meaning of a part long before she was able to read. When we were beginning rehearsals of a new play at the Baldwin I would take Maudie on my knee and bit by bit would explain to her the meaning of the part she had to play. I can see her now, with her little spindle legs almost touching the floor, her tiny face, none too clean, perhaps, peering up into mine, and those wise eyes of hers drinking in every word. I soon learned to know that it was no use to confine myself to a description of her own work : until I had told the whole story of the play to Maudie, and treated her almost as seriously as if she were our leading star, she would pay no attention. She was serious-minded in her own childish way even in those days, and once she realized that you were treating her seriously there was nothing that that child would not try to do. But first, mind you, she had to know the story of the play and all about it. When the parts were given out to the company, Mrs. Adams was always letter perfect in Maudie's lines long before she attempted to learn her own. Then bit by bit, while they were together in the dressing-room, on the street cars, or at their home, Mrs. Adams would teach the child her part. She had a good memory, and made what we of the stage call I a wonderfully quick study.' But to-day I never see Maude Adams on the stage without a picture rising up before me of that patient, hardworking, self-sacrificing mother of hers drilling the child in one of her parts. Stage people, with all their faults, are probably the warmest-hearted in the world., but never in all my long experience have I seen an instance of such unselfish, idolizing devotion as Mrs. Adams displayed for her little girl. Of course it's the most natural thing in the world for any mother to love her child, but Mrs. Adams' love was something quite out of the common. We were all mighty poor in those times., and there was many a week in those San Francisco days when the ghost refused to walk, and a good many of us went hungry in consequence. But in spite of the hardships and privations which we all faced together, there never was a millionaire's daughter more zealously guarded, more tenderly nurtured, than Maudie Adams was by her mother. No sacrifice was too great for her to make. Many and many a night, after the long performances and perhaps a whole morning's rehearsals, I have seen Mrs. Adams sitting up till daylight working over some new little gown for Maudie. I mean it in all seriousness when I say that whatever Maude Adams has become to-day she owes entirely to her mother.

One of the biggest successes the child scored under my management was as little Chrystal in a play called Chums, which I had adapted from an old English play called 'The Mariner's Compass.' James A. Herne played the leading role in it, and later on, when we parted company, he played in another version of the play called Hearts of Oak. But the character of Chrystal figured in both versions; in fact, from the time Maude Adams created the role it became one of the most vital parts of the play. Chums, in short, scored an immense success, and 'Little Maudie' for the time being was the heroine of the town. But those spindle legs of the child had a most unholy way of growing, and at last there came a bitter, never-to-be-forgotten day when 'Little Maudie'-literally 'little' no longer - was too big to play children's parts any more. Her mother sent her to school, and I never laid eyes on I Little Maudie' again until some six or seven years later. I had started on my career in New York then, and dropped into a theatre one night to see Duncan B. Harrison. in The Paymaster. And there, sure enough, was 'Little Maudie' now developed into a charming young girl and billed as 'Miss Maude Adams.'

Her part in the play was rather an important one, and I saw at once that there was the making of a charming actress in her. If I remember right, Charles Frohman saw her in this same performance and felt as I did. At all events, some time later, when he was organizing a a stock company to play Men and Women, we both thought of her for one of the ingénues. But then, that wasn't so much credit to us, either, for by that time Miss Adams had already been discovered and engaged by Charles Hoyt, and had played with great success at the Bijou in A Midnight Bell."

But to return for just one moment to that performance of The Paymaster. There was one scene in the play where Miss Adams was thrown into a tank of real water and had to be rescued by the hero. I should explain that Maude was now quite as tall as her mother, and that they looked remarkably alike. When I saw that tank scene coming along I said to myself, 'I'll bet you Annie Adams will never let Maudie jump into that tank.' And sure enough, when the climax came, I, being up to all the tricks of the stage, saw that it was Mrs. Adams who took the plunge, not Maude. Ah! ' said I to myself, that's the same old Annie Adams; and afterwards, when I went behind to say ' how de do' to them both, Mrs. Adams exclaimed at once, "Why, of course it was me that jumped in the tank; do you think for an instant that I would allow Maudie to run the risk of catching her death of cold ?

Part Second

MAUDE ADAMS finished her career as a child actress at the age of ten., and for four years she studied in the Presbyterian Collegiate Institute at Salt Lake City, her old home. Her stage training as a child had made her not only a "quick study" in the matter of theatrical roles but in her lessons as well. At fourteen she had accomplished so much that she was within a year of graduating, but one day,, succumbing to a fit of combined home, stage, and mother sickness, she wrote to her mother begging her return to her return to her old work. Mrs., Adams has that letter today.

"It's no use my studying any more, mother," she wrote. "In fact, it 's all nonsense unless I'm to go into literature or am to be a teacher. But I want to go on the stage again, so that I may be with you."

That letter was too much for Mrs. Adams; she succumbed to its entreaties: the girl left school and returned to her mother. But the stage life she was so anxious to begin again she found to be quite another story from what it had been small way; Maude Adams now found herself a mere nonentity, to her professional friends merely "Annie Adams' daughter," a nonentity very young and very crude, with all her work lying before her. And it was hard and bitter work at that. The mother's standing as an actress could do little more for her at first than to secure for her some temporary engagements as an extra girl. But the girl's mind, always of a serious trend., set to work in earnest. She studied, she watched, she learned many parts. All that her mother knew of the art of acting had been taught to the girl already, and in the meantime there was nothing to be done but bide her chance, and gain meanwhile that bitterest of all fruits-experience. Mrs. Adams' faith in her girl's future never wavered for an instant. Theatrical affairs in the West had reached a very low ebb : the eyes of every Western actor and actress were then turned, as always, towards the Thespian's Mecca - New York.

Finally, mother and daughter reached there, and Maude Adams secured her first Eastern engagement in The Paymaster a melodrama which was put on for a run at the Star. After that for a very short time she played small parts in E. H. Sothern's company, and then came her first real metropolitan opportunity,-Charles Hoyt engaged her to create the role of the young schoolmistress in Midnight Bell. The play was a great success at the Bijou and enjoyed a long run, but in looking through the newspaper reviews of the performance the fact is apparent that the public found out and appreciated Maude Adams as an artist long before the critics did. A number of the reviewers made no mention of her performance; others dismissed her with a complimentary line. Her role in the play, after all, was a subordinate one; but somehow or other that indefinable charm of personality that has done more to make Maude Adams the popular idol that she is to-day than all her technique and grace and cleverness, began to exert its spell over her audiences. In a few days, in all parts of the town, at the clubs, in the bar-rooms,, on the street cars, people began to ask each other, "Have you seen that new little girl in Hoyt's play at the Bijou? She's sweet."

Midnight Bell was the most tender and one of the cleverest plays which the late Charles Hoyt ever turned out, but it is no injustice., either to its author or the other members of the cast,, to say that to hundreds of playgoers the one memory of that performance is Maude Adams' portrayal of the young New England girl. She had hit the theatrical bull's-eye squarely, and scored One.

At the end of the run of Midnight Bell, -or rather, at the conclusion of its New York engagement, for, as a matter of fact, the piece is running yet, - Miss Adams found herself face to face with a very serious proposition. She had to choose between two offers. Her success in his farce comedy had so delighted Mr. Hoyt that he was practically willing to let her name her own terms if she would sign a five years' contract with him. It was a fascinating offer from one point of view: it meant lots of money; but farce comedy held little charm for the girl who had set her heart and fixed her ambition on far more serious work. On the other hand., there was a more moderate offer from Charles Frohman, who was then getting ready to found his stock company at the Twenty-Third Street Theatre. The first piece was to be Men and Women, a play by De Mille and her old friend,, David Belasco. There was a small part in it for her, Mr. Frohman said,, and later on there would be others. The girl never hesitated for a moment: then and there she turned her back upon farce comedy for ever, and she and Charles Frohman that morning signed a contract that has extended to this day. Charles Frohman, although at that time he had not acquired one-tenth of the immense power and influence in theatrical affairs which he exerts to-day, was already known as a manager of remarkable astuteness; but it is safe to say that neither he nor Miss Adams, in their wildest and most ambitious dreams, realized what a huge amount of fame and fortune the signing of that piece of paper meant to both of them: for waiving Miss Adams' claims as an artist entirely aside, it is an accepted fact to-day that, regarded merely as a business proposition, a drawing card, no American star, however much greater her histrionic powers might be, has ever had so tremendous and widespread a popularity as Maude Adams enjoys in the United States to-day. In many communities this popularity has amounted almost to a mania, which blinds her audiences absolutely to her faults and grossly exaggerates even her greatest charms. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of playgoers in New York and all the other American cities to-day who would accept little Miss Adams seriously-aye, and enthusiastically, too-if she attempted to play Lady Macbeth. This much is certain, however, that when he signed that contract Mr. Frohman realized that in Maude Adams he had gained an uncommonly clever actress. He said so at the time, and later on when he picked her out to be his new star, John Drew's leading woman, and still later when he chose that she should be sent out as a star on her own account, he persisted in the face of the most active opposition from all his would-be counselors and real friends that he knew what he was about and was going to make her the most popular star in the theatrical firmament.

He was wise enough not to push her, to the front too soon. He placed her in the stock company, where the training of Belasco did worlds for her artistic development. In his first play, Men and Women, she had a small part, which counted for very little against the superior roles which fell to the share of Miss Sydney Armstrong and Miss Odette Tyler. In the next, Belasco and De Mille play, however she had better luck. Belasco had taken her measure, and Frohman had been particular in asking that the new play should contain a role which would give her an opportunity. The result was Nell, the lame girl, in The Lost Paradise, a charming role, which showed for the first time what Miss Adams could do in the way of pathos. Meanwhile, Charles Frohman had been reaching out in other directions,, and one fine morning the town awoke to read the announcement that John Drew had at last forsworn his -eighteen years' allegiance to the Daly standard, and had gone over to the enemy -which, in Daly's Theatre, meant Charles Frohman with a large C and a capital F. Then came the almost equally important question, Who would be John Drew's leading woman? To the playgoers of ten years ago who had seen Mr. Drew making perpetual stage love to Miss Ada Rehan for twelve full seasons it was almost impossible to imagine another woman attempting to usurp her place, and quite preposterous to conceive of any actress equaling her in that capacity. So, finally, when the announcement came that Mr. Frohman had selected Maude Adams to support Drew, there was an almost universal cry of: "What, that little thing! Oh. how absurd! What tommy rot!

Finally, the first night came October 3, 1892, a night which, as Trilby would say, ought to be marked with a white stone. It probably is in Miss Adams' memory. The theatre was Palmer's, the play The Masked Ball, an adaptation from the French by Clyde Fitch; the house was jammed to the doors by all the old Daly clientele who had come to stand or fall with Drew in this his first venture outside the Daly fold. John Drew was a success., and so was the play, but -tell it not in Gath ! -a hit was scored that night which was greater than both of theirs rolled together. Maude Adams scored that hit. Mr. Drew had a good part, and he played it admirably. In fact, his performance that night established conclusively his right to be a star. But it was not to John Drew that the biggest opportunity came that night. The following paragraph, clipped from one of the criticisms of The Masked Ball the following day, fully explains the situation. This article said : "*But the great situation of the play does not fall to Mr. Drew's share. Miss Maude Adams, a young actress who until last evening had only been seen in minor roles, fairly shared the honours with Mr. Drew. Her performance was a revelation. There is one scene in the second act where in order to punish her husband for some antenuptial remarks of his she has to pretend that she is drunk. It was just touch and go whether this scene ruined the play or not. It would have been hard to devise a more crucial test for an actress of even the widest experience and the greatest skill. In order to carry off this scene successfully it was necessary for the wife to appear to be drunk and yet be a gentlewoman at the same time.

Miss Adams achieved this feat, achieved it so successfully that the applause lasted for a full two minutes after she made her exit. If Miss Adams had done nothing else throughout the entire play than that one scene it would have stamped her as a comedienne of the first water. But her scenes of tenderness were equally good, and her alternate raillery and contrition for her artifice in the final scene were rendered with a delightfully delicate touch."

Maude Adams' drunken scene was as great a topic of conversation in '92 as Irene Van Brugh's sensational performance of Sophie Fulgarney " in The Gay Lord Quex has been in 1901. The almost insurmountable difficulties which the part offered only served to make Miss Adams' triumph all the greater.

To sum the matter up, Maude Adams found herself enjoying the double distinction of being the youngest leading lady on the boards and the only actress who had been promoted to the galaxy of theatrical celebrities because she didn't keep 'sober.

The tipsy act, which excited the admiration of the critics on the first night of the performance, with its dainty and ludicrous mimicry, its delicate but irresistible drollery, was a more dangerous and difficult tubing to do than is apparent to the careless observer. The spectacle of a drunken woman on the stage is revolting and coarse to a degree, and offensive to the good taste of a cultured audience. But this woman is a lady of grace and refinement, young and beautiful, and in reality not tipsy at all, but acting the part to punish her husband, who, previous to their marriage, to intercept the advances of another aspirant to her hand, had in his anxiety warned off the other suitor by declaring that the lady had inherited an appetite for intoxicants from her father,, a most worthy and temperate man.

The kindly fate which caters to the farce dramatist brings the old suitor and the wife together at a masked ball to which she has gone without her husband's knowledge,, and in company with a respectable but easily influenced old party, her husband's partner, -whose wife, too, is in ignorance of his attendance at the masked revel, but suspicious from finding his pockets filled with confetti, and jealous of the young wife. To add to the comical predicament and perplexity of the play, of course the old suitor tells the wife of her husband's accusation, and she resolves to revenge herself by appearing to be the victim of the vice of which he has accused her.

It is upon the scene following the revelation of the suitor to the husband that he has met the wife, the pretty "Susanne," at the ball, and when the older woman, Madame Poulet, is endeavoring to obtain satisfactory explanation of her husband's conduct, which he is endeavoring not to give, that the tipsy wife comes reeling out of her dressing-room with her salubrious: "Good-morning, Paul! Hello, Paulie ! " and,, with a little lurch and uncertain and dizzy steps, approaches the irate Madame Poulet with the deliciously funny : "Ah, Madame Foulet! Your husband is a nice man, isn't he ? A very n-nice man ; but he can't d-dance very well. I think he has too many f-feet." Then, turning to her horrified husband with a maudlin and vacant smile, she adds, "Ah ! but he holds you so well!"

"Where were you last night?" demands the furious husband.

"Why, really," with a careless little laugh, ,I -I don't know! " It is a risky question, and she realizes it., and, slurring her answer, she reels,, sways, and sinks into a chair with a funny and puzzled "I think I'll have to sit down -a minute."

The delicate and slight physique of the actress, the small and spiritual face framed in fair hair, the low, sweet voice and pretty English accent, above all the tacit understanding which the actress establishes between herself and her audience that she isn't really intoxicated., the mischievous delight she manages to convey to them at the despair of her husband, and the success of her scheme of revenge all unite in saving the comical mimicry of inebriety from the slightest approach to coarseness.

The daintiness of her roguishness was emphasized, too, by a soft and simple gown of pink brocade, overhung with floating draperies of chiffon and girdled beneath the bust in Directoire fashion.

She carried a single long-stemmed flower in her hand, waving it about with aimless grace, and when at the close of the scene she exclaimed, "You don't know how I want a d-drink of water," with a last little sick and dizzy glide and a desperate effort to right herself, the storm of applause breaks out. "It wasn't easy to do," said Miss Adams in an interview at the time.

You see, I couldn't get tipsy myself to make my conception of the part, for when you are really intoxicated you don't know how you don't know how you do feel, and can't remember what you do at all afterward, - at least, so the gentlemen say. And I didn't dare to study the part from really tipsy women, because I would overdo it then and shock people.

"Besides, I am not really drunken in the piece. no, I must study it as a sober woman trying to act intoxicated, and yet never deceiving my audience for a minute as to the truth. So I thought over it, dreamed over it, acted it out before the mirror over and over for weeks entirely through my imagination. Indeed, you might call the whole business a flight of tipsy imagination.

"For really, you know, it is not at all like me,, though I am fond of comedy. My old friends wonder at it. One of the ladies of the Southern company said to me, Why, whatever has gotten into you ? You never used to touch a drop with us!' and I told her I had gone to the demnition bow-wows and was tipsy every night now."

In the same interview Miss Adams, in speaking of herself, said:-"I made my first appearance on the stage at nine months old. Was I sober? Yes, exceedingly sober and dignified, they say. I can't quite remember. A little later,, before I was five, I played child parts with Emmett, and then they put me at school in a Presbyterian college. I stayed until I was fourteen; then I came back to the stage again, to have my dreams cruelly disturbed, my hopes dashed.

"The stage I loved would have nothing to do with me. I was too old for child parts, too young for mature parts. I was tall and small and thin, - haven't quite gotten over that yet, - and I was hopelessly bashful. Mrs. Sothern, who played child parts with me, interested Mr. Sothern in me after a while. He invited me out to dinner with them once., I remember. I couldn't speak a word, I was so diffident. I think'he was disgusted, but afterward he helped me. Really, the first lines I had given to me were written in for me,, and when my cue came I couldn't make a sound, so the rest went on without me. But I believe the only way to study for the stage is on the stage. If I had gone to school as they wanted me to until now., I couldn't bend myself to the life as I do now. I would have been formed, you see. There are no schools of acting here to study in like those of France. You don't get the practical work in our schools., and it is very hard now to get a dramatic education on the stage. Opportunities are accidents., and even when they come, runs are so long that versatility is not easy to attain. We need a school of acting here very much, but it must be a theatre, not a college. You see, with the practical work of the stage for a foundation you can study those other things yourself I am working like an undergraduate at French, and learning to play on the harp. I mean to introduce it in a play sometime. Mr. De Mille said when I could play the harp he would write the scene. Ah, but I had a beautiful scene all dreamed out!-a young man looking love at me over that hollow place in the top, -the slope, you know. But when my teacher came he told me I was sitting at the wrong end of the harp, and away went my scene. I study plays all the time, too, Shakespeare first, -not that I ever intend to play tragedy, but he's the standard,-and other plays I read and study, too, make scenes., and put myself in situations."

So great was the success of The Masked Ball that nearly eighteen months elapsed before Mr. Drew found it necessary to produce another play. This time it was a light comedy by Henry Guy Carleton called Butterflies. Miss Adam's nominally played the leading part in it, but it was a dreadfully conventional part, which offered her no real opportunity, and the play had been so constructed that the soubrette role, played most excellently by Miss Olive May, carried off all the honours. During the next season Miss Adams scored heavily by her exquisite performance of Jessie in Henry Arthur Jones' play, The Bauble Shop. In The Bauble Shop Lord Clivebrooke, the young leader of the House of Commons, meets Jessie Keber., a toy maker's daughter. At the outset his intentions towards her are not honourable. He visits her at night in her father's shop, but as the purity of the girl's nature reveals itself to him it shames him. He decides to leave her alone. On the night of their last meeting they are discovered by Stoach, the leader of the opposition. A bill with regard to public morality is to be introduced into the House by Clivebrooke on the following day. Stoach declares that he will brand Clivebrooke as a libertine before all the House unless he agrees to withdraw the bill. Clivebrooke refuses. The next act takes place in the lobby of the House. Stoach circulates the report with regard to Clivebrooke. Clivebrooke's father and his constituents hurry to the room to hear his denial. Clivebrooke is unable to deny that he was in the toy shop, but declares his intention of making the girl his wife. There was one scene in this play where Jessie described to her father the beautiful home that her lover, Clivebrooke, is making for her in which Miss Adams fairly excelled. From the mad raillery of Suzanne in The Masked Ball to the simplicity and pathos of Jessie Keber was a wide artistic leap, but Miss Adams accomplished it most successfully.

The following season John Drew produced another play by Henry Guy Carleton, - That Imprudent Young Couple. It was a failure, but it gave Miss Adams another chance to do clever work in a new role. Indeed., Miss Adams had good reason to congratulate herself on this occasion,, for she and Mr. Frank Lamb,- who played the butler, were the only members of the company who escaped from the critics with whole skins. One New York reviewer wrote on the following day: "The story is old, the plot is uninteresting, and the part of the hero is an exceptionally fine specimen of the genus Cad. The character of the young wife is scarcely a degree better than that of the husband, and that Miss Adams was able to interest her audience at all last night was due entirely to the charm of her own personality. It is good to see that the remarkable success which has come to this young actress in the last three years has not turned her head. Her work is still exceptional in its daintiness and its simplicity.

Her work has grown in many ways during the past year. At present Miss Adams is easily the most accomplished and womanly artist of all the younger actresses. She has found the short cut which leads from laughter into tears, and although last night she had only one chance to show her power in this respect in a neatly worded little homily on the poverty of the genteel poor, she availed herself of it. All the honors-such as they were - of last night's performance belonged to Miss Adams."

It was found necessary to make a change of bill at once, and Christopher, Jr., a rollicking little comedy by Madeleine Lucette Ryley, which Mr. Drew had produced on the road during the previous season, but which he had feared was not quite strong enough to endure a New York run,, was substituted for The Imprudent Young Couple. The change was a great success, and the little comedy set the whole town laughing. There was one scene in this play which I have always thought the most beautiful piece of acting that Maude Adams had ever done. I saw the play for the first time the season previous to its run at the Empire over in that gaunt old mausoleum of a theatre, the Columbia,, in Brooklyn, where Mr. Drew was quietly, to quote the vernacular, "trying it on the dog." The details of the plot have escaped my memory, but that one little episode stands out as clear as day. In this scene, Miss Adams, broken-hearted at the prospect of a long parting from her lover, sits down at the piano and sings for him at his request. The song was Torti's "Good-bye." She struggled through those first lines,

"Falling leaf on fading tree,

Lines of white on a sullen sea,

Shadows rising - "

and then gradually, note by note., her voice began to fail a little; a lump crept into one's own throat from sheer sympathy, and then with a sudden crash and a sob down went her head upon the music rack, and actress and audience wept metaphorically on each other's shoulders.

That huge theatre was almost empty that night, but for all that the small audience fairly got up on its hind legs and fired salvoes after salvos of applause at the actress. The run of Christopher,Jr, at the Empire lasted until the following February, when Mr. Drew moved to the Garrick and presented an adaptation by R. C. Carton of Dumas fils' 'L'Ami des Femmes."

In its English dress it was known as The Squire of Dames. There was a very effective part for Mr. Drew in it, but Miss Adams, cast for the role of a rather flippant and heartless young society matron, came as close to scoring a failure as she ever did in her life. It was not her fault; she was miscast, that was all, and all the women theatergoers, with whom Maude Adams had already become a mania of the first water, laid the entire blame for the tiny fiasco upon a dress which Miss Adams wore in the principal scene. Poor luckless frock! How the fashion writers and women's departments did tear that unfortunate garment to pieces ! Miss Adams has since laughingly explained that she never could understand what there was about the gown to call forth such a volley of onslaughts, but, as a matter of fact., the women who went there to dote and gloat over their favorite actress were disappointed at not finding her in as good a role as usual, and, consequently,, their sense of justice and loyalty not permitting them to "roast " the actress, they had relieved their feelings by taking away the character of her frock.

Early in the following September Mr. Drew produced Rosemary, and Maude Adams' popularity grew suddenly from a fad into a furor. Mr. Drew scored a notable success as Sir Jasper, but it was Maude Adams' Dorothy Cruickshank that made the great success.

As for the play, it was charming. As sweet and wholesome as the little plant whose name it bears, Rosemary triumphed unconditionally. Messrs. Louis N. Parker and Murray Carson had turned out a remarkable piece of stagecraft. It was a love story pure and simple, and yet it was more than that. In dialogue and action it was high comedy of the first water. There was not a superfluous phrase nor a strained situation in it., and children might take their grandmothers to see it without fear of the slightest blush. The play opens in the wet. Miss Dorothy Cruickshank and Master William Westwood, an eloping couple, aged eighteen and twenty, have come to grief in the mud. Their chaise has broken down. Sir Jasper Thorndyke, outside of whose gate the accident has occurred, comes to their rescue. He puts them up for the night the boy in the Pink room, the girl in the Blue. Later a blustering sea captain and his wife also take refuge from the storm, and it isn't until they are also safely installed for the night that Sir Jasper realizes that they are the parents of the would-be bride. His first real glimpse of the little girl comes early in the morning, when she comes ski ping into the breakfast room with her arms full of flowers just plucked from the garden. She flits about the room, looping up the curtains, placing a flower here and there., and before he is aware of it the middle-aged bachelor finds himself head over ears in love. The girl tells him all about her great love for William, and then asks him to please call her Dolly. The irate parents, to whom William is an unknown quantity, meet the lad in the garden and take a great fancy to him, supposing, of course, that he is Sir Jasper's son. Sir Jasper, by the exercise of a little diplomacy at the breakfast table,, induces the old people to consent to the marriage of the youngsters, and the act ends by the whole party starting for London on Sir Jasper's coach, where they intend to kill two birds with one stone,-see the young queen's coronation and get the children spliced in proper form. But in London Sir Jasper meets his Waterloo. Dolly, all unconsciously, has wound herself about his heart. A word from him and William's chances of matrimony would be blown sky-high.

The boy is furious with jealousy. He reproaches Dolly and demands possession of her diary, in which the girl has written her impressions of her coaching trip. Dolly refuses indignantly. William decamps, and the little girl in despair appeals to Sir Jasper. She reads him an extract about the beautiful day and the beautiful time and the beautiful things which Sir Jasper has said to her.

"There!" she exclaims , triumphantly. "William has no cause to be angry. There's nothing about him in that."

It is all that Sir Jasper can do to keep from taking the little girl in his arms. She tears the leaves out of her diary and hands them to him. "I don't mind showing them to you," she tells him naively, "because you don't care."

Sir Jasper finds the boy and a reconciliation is effected, but in the meantime the Queen's procession has passed their windows and not one of them has seen it. As the girl and her boy lover start away, Dolly places a sprig of rosemary in Sir Jasper's hand. - ,This is for remembrance."

A moment later the landlord of the house comes rushing in, and Sir Jasper buys the house from him on the spot. "his house henceforth shall be a shrine to me., a holy place."

The last act shows the same room on the day of the Queen's jubilee. Sir Jasper, lame and toothless, hobbles in. As he rings for his servant a piece of the old wainscoting falls down, and from the ruins he picks up a leaf of yellow paper. Through his glasses Sir Jasper recognizes that the word beautiful is written on it several times. Then he remembers the little girl who wrote it. What was her name? Ah! yes, he remembers now. It was Dolly.

In spite of the effectiveness of this final scene Rosemary would be a better play if it ended with the third act. As it stands at present, it seems to signify merely "a dream and a forgetting." This scene must always remain an open question. Some liked it, many others did not. If Miss Maude Adams had played Dolly five years before, when she first became Mr. Drew's leading woman, she would have been credited with giving a lifelike impersonation of an ingenuous little girl. But coming at this stage of Miss Adams' career, this impersonation of hers meant far more.

It meant that she had become a consummate artist. Never for one instant did Miss Adams forget that she was playing the part of an absolutely ingenuous girl. Exquisite is the only word which properly describes her work.

So great was Miss Adams' success in Rosemary that her manager, Mr. Charles Frohman, decided that the time was now ripe for Miss Adams to come out as a star. J. M. Barrie,, author of "The -Little Minister, was on a visit to this country that winter, and he, Miss Adams., and Mr. Frohman had many consultations with regard to the advisability of turning his novel into a play. The contract was signed, and early in the following summer the manuscript of his new play was delivered to Mr. Frohman. Both he and Miss Adams were so charmed with it that they immediately selected it to be the play in which Miss Adams should make her stellar debut. After a week of preliminary performances in Washington, Miss Adams made her first metropolitan appearance as a star at the Empire Theatre, September 28, I897-The Little Minister proved more than a success. It was a double-barreled hit, a two-ply triumph, in which Maude Adams as an artist and J. M. Barrie as a playwright shared almost equally. if Miss Adams lives to be one hundred, and if in time to come her repertory extends from Little Eva to Lady Macbeth, she will never forget the rousing New York welcome which was given her at the Empire that night. As for the star-well,, if Miss Adams had appeared in the worst play that was ever penned in the American Dramatists' Club she would have been royally welcomed. That welcome was in fact a case of "That's for remembrance." The cropper which a bad play might have brought her would have been postponed.

But The Little Minister was not a bad play; that's the beauty of it. Technically, it defies almost every stage tradition, but when a man like Barrie handles the reins., that is more a relief than otherwise,, and there is a freshness and a wit and spontaneity to it that made it to every class of playgoers an unmitigated delight.

Whether his work be a novel or a play, Barrie possesses the God-given knack of touching things with spirit light. This little play has a plot scarcely wider than your little finger, and yet it teems with romance, and there is more real comedy in it than has been shown in all the comic productions in a year. The most ardent admirer of the novel can not find fault with Mr. Barrie for the manner in which he has turned it into a play, nor could Mr. Frohman be criticized for the manner in which he had cast it. The plot of the play wanders far afield from the novel, but the characters are all there, Lady Babbie, Gavin Dishart, and all the prominent citizens of Thrums.

Rarely had a star been born under more auspicious circumstances. Miss Adams threw her whole soul into her work in this role. And well she might, for Lady Babbie was a part after her own heart. She is simply a little devil who loves a joke even more than she loves her lover, but Barrie had contrived two or three serious little scenes in the midst of the fun, which shows that after all the Lady Babbie is deeper than she seems. It is a pity, though, that Mr. Barrie chose to end his play so flippantly. There is no necessity for it. After collecting all the ingredients for a charmingly sentimental ending he brings in a splash of broad comedy which almost robs the finale of its charm.

But there is no use in analyzing The Little Minister. One likes it almost as much for its faults as for its virtues. All that it is necessary to state is that between them Maude Adams, J. M. Barrie, and Charles Frohman had formed a solid syndicate of success.

With that performance at the Empire began one of the most remarkable successes in theatrical history. North, South, East, and West Miss Adams played Lady Babbie after she had concluded her extraordinarily successful New York run. Sunday-schools cried for her, and clergymen of all denominations flocked to see her play. The fact that in Rosemary and The Bauble Shop she had done far more artistic and difficult work than anything she did in Barrie's pretty play went for nothing. From the four corners of the United States of America the verdict of the playgoers seemed universal : there was only one thing greater than The Little Minister., and that was little Maude Adams. Children, corsets., and cigars were named after her, -as a matter of fact I know a ten-year old child in Bridgeport, Connecticut, who has thirteen dolls, and every one of them bears the same identical name, Maude Adams, and how their owner ever identifies them Heaven alone knows. Instead of letting her success turn her head completely, Miss Adams, realizing that she was in for a very long siege of the Barrie play, as the public would not permit her to act anything else, began to study Shakespeare in earnest. By the end of the second season of The Little Minister she had mastered the role of Juliet, and Mr. Frohman decided to engage a special company and produce Romeo and Juliet in all the leading cities during the month of May. Mr. William Faversham played Romeo., Mr. J. K. Hackett Mercutio, while that sterling old-time actress, Mrs. D. G. Jones., gave a superb performance of the Nurse. The opening performance took place at the Empire early in May. The house was crowded, the enthusiasm intense, and, all things considered, Miss Adams emerged from the ordeal far more successfully than any of her best friends imagined that she would. She was wise enough to realize that for her to attempt to play Juliet in the traditional manner would be absolutely suicidal, so she threw traditions to the winds and made Juliet a. simple, girlish creature of infinite charm. It was the master-stroke of a very clever woman, - an actress who knew her own artistic shortcomings too well to expose them. As a literal matter of fact, her personalization of Juliet made some of the love scenes take on a new significance, for many, that they had never had before ; it was a treat in itself to see a genuinely young Juliet, in the first place ; as a general rule the average actress never attempts the role until she has arrived at those years of professional experience where she is transiently forty, or at least permanently twenty-nine. The youthful charm of Miss Adams' Juliet, in short., made many champions for her, but her lack of elocutionary training damned her with the more punctilious of the old-school critics. In New York she was treated with far more consideration than in other cities. The experiment was a great financial success, however,, and the following September Miss Adams returned to the treadmill with all the more zest for her temporary excursion into Shakespeare. But the following season Miss Adams soared even higher yet, and in L'.Aiglon, although this great role shows her limitations as no other part has ever done, it must be honestly admitted that she has added greatly to her artistic fame. To say that she has grasped the possibilities of this part even now, when she has been playing it for several months, would be absurd ; her physical powers could not reach them, although her readings show clearly that she has fully grasped the meaning of the part. When, six weeks after Miss Adams' appearance at the Knickerbocker, Sarah Bernhardt appeared in L'Aiglon at the Garden, it was inevitable that comparisons would be made. They were-but it is unnecessary to enter into that subject here. Miss Adams is still playing L'Aiglon to crowded houses. Madame Bernhardt has had a disastrous season through the West.

At the Academy of Music in Baltimore Maude Adams made her first appearance in L'Aigion. She scored an honest and legitimate success; a success, however, which, in the very nature of things, was subordinate to the success of the play itself. For somehow the reports from Paris, enthusiastic as they had been with regard to Bernhardt's performance of the play, seem scarcely to have done Edmond Rostand's work justice. Even Parisians themselves admitted that as played in Paris it was too drawn out, too talky-talky, as it were. In the adaptation which Louis Parker, supplemented by Edward Rose, had made, the pathos of the play has been preserved., while its action has been strengthened so successfully that the interest never lags. With all its superfluities of verbiage cut away, this play in its English version stands out clean-cut, tremendous., like a star. It is no exaggeration to say that one has to look back to Hamlet to find its peer in the matter of histrionic possibilities. There are scenes which are so great in themselves that while only one, or perhaps two, actresses in the world could realize their possibilities, still from the very strength of the scenes no actress of fair ability could fail in them.

This mark you, is no slur upon Miss Adams' work, for she accomplished marvels. The great scenes, to be sure, lay far, far beyond her, but she brought out the pathos of the life of this poor little eaglet of Napoleon's with so much delicacy and tenderness and, in some instances, power, that she carried her audience completely away with her. In the early scenes she so completely fascinated the audience by her own personality that when the great scenes came she had her hearers completely in her power. The strength of the situation swept her along, and it wasn't until the next morning, over their ham and eggs, in perfectly cold blood, that they began to realize how much greater the play was than the actress. At the same time it must be conceded that in this play Miss Adams scored the great success of her career. With all her shortcomings, her work in L'Aiglon was immeasurably superior to her work in either Barrie's Little Minister or as Shakespeare's Juliet.

But at the same time neither all the king's horses nor all the king's men can ever make this clever little actress encompass the full possibilities of this great role.

She was at her best in the opening act. Here, Bernhardt herself did not surpass her. In the scene where the old tutor attempts to give her a history lesson not at all in accordance with the facts, but entirely in accordance with the orders of her Austrian guardian, Miss Adams was superb. She played this scene with a combination of raillery, wit, and satire which carried all before her. The black garment she wore in this act made her look ghastly - exactly the poor, frail little consumptive she was intended to be. In some of her later scenes she overworked her cough so much that it reminded one of a second-rate Camille. But in her performance of that first act there was no flaw. Her first great test, however, came in the second act, where Prince Metternich drags the young Duke before the mirror and bids him look upon the puny, sickly, effeminate face of his father's son. L'Aiglon snatches the lamp from the Prince's hand and smashes the mirror into fragments. Miss Adams played this scene most cleverly, but the strength of the stage business made it seem almost great.

In the third act Rostand, the playwright, could not help her much. The fancy dress ball at Sch6nbrunn is at its height, and under the park trees the hapless lad learns for the first time the depths of his mother's infamy. There was no well-managed climax to assist Miss Adams here. She had to rely entirely upon her facial by-play and her elocution. Both were unequal to this great task. It was in this scene that Miss Adams' performance reached its lowest ebb. To be sure, the next act, on the battlefield of Wagram, where the voices of the thousands that Napoleon had slain arose to haunt him, L'Aiglon lay immeasurably beyond the little artist's reach, but at the same time the scene was so terrific in itself that it brought Miss Adams enthusiastic curtain calls. In the closing act, the death scene, her acting was entirely conventional, and she lost a great deal of the grip which she had upon her audience throughout the earlier part of the play.

In short, to sum her performance up, Miss Adams accomplished a great many more wonders than any rational person dreamed she was capable of. But at the same time she did not realize the possibilities of L'Aiglon. And after that first performance, when she finally got to bed, tired out after a great night's work finely done, Miss Adams must have easily found it in her heart to say, "God bless M. Rostand, Mr. Frohman, and all my stage managers." For Mr. Charles Frohman had laid himself out upon the production, and all the intricacies of Rostand lines and stage business had been so admirably handled by Stage Manager Humphries that Miss Adams' task had been made easier for her a hundredfold.

It was in his amours that Miss Adams' L'Aiglon was at its weakest. The young Duke's passion for Fannie Elssler had all the ardour of water mixed with milk. . After she shed the funeral garb of the first act Miss Adams looked uncommonly well. The white uniform became her., and her costumes were so neatly cut that they made her at times look almost sturdy.

Mr. Parker's adaptation had been admirably done, but there was one great flaw in it. Indeed, this change deprived the play in one sense of a great deal of its natural strength : L'Aiglon from first to last was made an entirely sympathetic role. This is all wrong.

In the French play, one of the strongest hits is scored when Rostand demonstrates that his poor little Eaglet, beating hopelessly against the bars of his physical cage, is not only an inflamed enthusiast., but, when put to the crucial test, is also an arrant coward. This little wing-clipped eaglet, this bird in a gilded cage which Miss Adams presents, is always pathetic, always thoroughly lovable, but one has to strain both his ear and his imagination to hear him passionately railing against both his fate and his cage.

Miss Adams had attempted a daring feat and carried it through, if not with the greatest honours, at least successfully. She had fairly earned every ounce of the applause.

While there is no actress on the stage whose personality appeals more directly to her audiences, Miss Adams throughout her grown-up stage career has drawn the line very distinctly between her stage career and her private life. She glories in the fact that there is scarcely a woman on the stage about whom less is known. After her great success in the The Little Minister Miss Adams invested part of her earnings in a charming old homestead and farm down on Long Island. Here the greater part of her leisure time is spent. The place is just near enough to town to enable her to run down whenever the spirit moves her during the week, and all her Sundays are spent there whenever she happens to be playing in or anywhere near New York. Another favourite resort of hers is Anteora, and during her holidays she is a well-known figure in the little literary colony there. But Miss Adams before all else is a working woman and a student. As a lioness she positively refuses to either growl or shine. She loves horses and rides uncommonly well; she has a fine library, and spends a great deal of her time there. In short- she lives the life of any other rational, hard-working artist who realizes the demands which her profession makes upon her, and is wise enough to husband her strength. Two or three times a year ridiculously exaggerated reports about her health are published, but they have become such an old and exploded story that neither she nor her manager ever take the trouble to deny them any more.

Miss Adams probably is not nearly so robust as Mr. John L. Sullivan, but any woman who can play L'Aiglon seven times a week cannot be very much of an invalid. Some years after her success in The Masked Ball, Miss Adams was interviewed. She expressed her opinion at that time upon the question of publicity, and from what I have seen of her work since then and,, better still, by what I have not seen about her in the newspapers, I venture to say that Miss Adams is still of the same opinion. At that time Miss Adams said: -"Yes. I am very much interested in my work. It is a good profession for a woman. There is no limit to what she can do if she has talent and is willing to work and wait; and as for the temptations - well, are they not everywhere outside the protection of the home circle?

"I haven't had much experience. I have no theories and systems of exercise and dressing and bathing .to interest people with, or rather I have beautiful theories, but I don't live up to them. I ride horseback and walk, and am ever so much stronger than I look. " I don't see, anyway, why an actress must give her personality to the world, though it seems to be expected, and those who curiously investigate her private life are not always careful how they use their information. I haven't very decided opinions on the great questions of the day, but there's one thing I don't believe in,, and that is woman's rights.

"I think the men have taken pretty good care of us all these years, and I don't see what is the matter with letting them keep it up. Any woman half-way clever can make the men do just as she wants to have them,, and at the same time keep them thinking they are having their own way, -and what more would she have?"

Two reviews of the book

The Portsmouth Herald, Dec. 4, 1901

The Post Standard, Nov. 9, 1901


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