CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH

I recall the Popularity and too Early Death of Edwin Adams.

I hear many tales of the insolence of stars--of their overbearing manners, and their injustice to "little people," as the term goes; but personally I have seen almost nothing of it. In the old days stars were generally patient and courteous in their manners to the supporting companies.

Among the stars whose coming was always hailed with joy was Edwin Adams, he of the golden voice, he who should have prayed with fervor, both day and night: "Oh, God! protect me from my friends!" He was so popular with men, they sought him out, they followed him, and they generally expressed their liking through the medium of food and drink. Like every other sturdy man that's worth his salt, he could stand off an enemy, but he was as weak as water in the hands of a friend, and thus it came about that he often stood in slippery places, and though he fell again and again, yet was he forgiven as often as he sinned, and heartily welcomed back the next season, so great was his power to charm.

He was not handsome, he was not heroic in form, but there was such dash and go, such sincerity and naturalness in all his work, that whether he was love-making or fighting, singing or dying, he convinced you he was the character's self, whether that character was the demented victim of the _Bastille_, young _Rover_ in "Wild Oats," or that most gallant gentleman _Mercutio_, in which no greater ever strode than that of Edwin Adams. His buoyancy of spirit, his unconquerable gayety made it seem but natural his passion for jesting should go with him to the very grave. Many a fine _Mercutio_ gives:

"----a plague o' both your houses!"

with a resentful bitterness that implies blame to _Romeo_ for his "taking off," which would be a most cruel legacy of grief and remorse to leave to his young friend--but Adams was that brave _Mercutio_:

"That gallant spirit that aspired the clouds, Which too untimely here did scorn the earth."

and whose last quips, coming faintly across paling lips, expressed still good-natured fun, and so:

"----a plague o' both your houses!"

but no blame at all.

His grace of movement and his superb voice were his greatest gifts. Most stars had one rather short play which they reserved for Saturday nights, that they might be able to catch their night train _en route_ for the next engagement; so it happened that Mr. Adams, having bravely held temptation from him during the first five nights, generally yielded to the endearments of his friends by the sixth, and was most anyone but himself when he came to dress for the performance of a play most suggestively named: "The Drunkard." It was a painful and a humiliating sight to see him wavering uncertainly in the entrance. All brightness, intelligence, and high endeavor extinguished by liquor's murky fog. His apologies were humble and evidently sincere, but the sad memory was one not to be forgotten.

I had just married, and we were in San Francisco. I was rehearsing for my engagement there. The papers said Mr. Adams had arrived from Australia and had been carried on a stretcher to a hotel, where, with his devoted wife by his side, he lay dying. A big lump rose in my throat, tears filled my eyes. I asked my husband, who had greatly admired the actor, and who was glad to pay him any courtesy or service possible, to call, leave cards, and if he saw Mrs. Adams, which was improbable, to try to coax her out for a drive, if but for half an hour, and to deliver a message of remembrance and sympathy from me to her husband. To his surprise, he was admitted by the dying man's desire to his room, where the worn, weary, self-contained, ever gently smiling wife sat and, like an automaton, fanned hour by hour, softly, steadily fanned breath between those parched lips, that whispered a gracious message of congratulation and thanks.

Mrs. Adams never left him, scarce took her eyes from him. Poor wife! who knew she could hold him but a few hours longer.

My husband was deeply moved, and when he tried to describe to me that wasted frame--those helpless hands, whose faintly twitching fingers could no longer pluck at the folded sheet, my mind obstinately refused to accept the picture, and instead, through a blur of tears, I saw him as on that last morning, when in his prime, strong and gentle, at his rehearsal of "Enoch Arden," he said to me: "I am disappointed to the very heart, Clara, that you are not my _Annie Lee_."

He took his hat off, he drew his hand across his eyes. "I can't find her," he said, with that touch of pathos that made his voice irresistible; "no, I have not found her yet--they are not innocent and brave! They are bouncing, buxom creatures or they are whimpering little milk-sops. They are never fisher-maidens, flower-pure, yet strong as the salt of the sea! She loved them both, Clara, yet she was no more weak nor bad than when, with childish lips, she innocently promised to be 'a little wife to both' the angry lads--to Philip and young Enoch! Now your eyes are sea-eyes, and your voice--oh, I am disappointed! I thought I should find my _Annie_ here!"

And so I see him now as I think with tender sorrow of the actor who was so strong and yet so weak--dear Ned Adams!

When Mr. Joseph Jefferson came to us I found his acting nothing less than a revelation. Here, in full perfection, was the style I had feebly, almost blindly been reaching for. This man, this poet of _comedy_, as he seemed to me, had so perfectly wedded nature to art that they were indeed one. Here again I found the immense value of "business" the most minute, the worth of restraint, if you had power to restrain, and learned that his perfect naturalness was the result of his exquisite art in cutting back and training nature's too great exuberance.

I was allowed to play _Meenie_, his daughter, in the play of "Rip Van Winkle," and my delight knew no bounds. He was very gentle and kind, he gave me pleasant words of praise for my work; he was very great, and--and his eyes were fine, and I approved of his chin, too, and I was, in fact, rapidly blending the actor and the man in one personality. In the last act, when kneeling at his feet, during our long wait upon the stage, I knelt and adored! and he--oh, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Jefferson, that I should say it, but _did_ you not hold my fingers unnecessarily close when you made some mild little remarks that were not in the play, but which filled my breast with quite outrageous joy, and pride--indeed, my crop of young affections, always rather a sparse growth, came very near being gathered into a small sheaf and laid at your feet.

Fortunately, I learned in time that there was an almost brand-new wife in the hotel next door, and I looked at him with big, reproachful eyes and kept my fingers to myself, and wisely put off the harvesting of my affections until some distant day.

Mind you, I was well within my rights in this matter. Girls always fall in love with stars--some fall in love with all of them, but that must be fatiguing; besides, as I said before, my affections were of such sparse growth they could not go round. Yet since I could honor thus but one star, I must say I look back with complete approval upon my early choice, and the shock to my heart did not prevent me from treasuring up some kindly words of advice from the artist-actor anent the making-up of eyes for the stage.

Said he to me one evening: "My girl, I want to speak to you about that 'make-up' you have on your eyes."

"Yes, sir?" I answered, interrogatively, feeling very hot and uncomfortable, "have I too much on?"

"Well, yes," he said, "I think you have, though you have much less than most women wear."

"Oh, yes," I hurriedly interposed, "there was a French dancer here who covered nearly a third of her eyelids with a broad blue-black band of pomatum, and she said----"

"Oh," he protested, "I know, she said it made the eyes large and lustrous, and as you see yourself in the glass it does seem to have that effect; but, by the way, what do you think of my eyes?"

And with truth and promptness, I made answer: "I think they're lovely."

My unexpected candor proved rather confusing, for for a moment he "Er-er-erd," and finally said: "I meant as a feature of acting, they are good acting eyes, aren't they? Well, you don't find _them_ made up, do you? Now listen to me, child, always be guided as far as possible by nature. When you make up your face, you get powder on your eyelashes, nature made them dark, so you are free to touch the lashes themselves with ink or pomade, but you should not paint a great band about your eye, with a long line added at the corner to rob it of every bit of expression. And now as to the beauty this lining is supposed to bring, some night when you have time I want you to try a little experiment. Make up your face carefully, darken your brows and the lashes of one eye; as to the other eye, you must load the lashes with black pomade, then draw a black line beneath the eye, and a broad line on its upper lid, and a final line out from the corner. The result will be an added lustre to the made-up eye, a seeming gain in brilliancy; but now, watching your reflection all the time, move slowly backward from the glass, and an odd thing will happen, that made-up eye will gradually grow smaller and smaller, until, at a distance much less than that of the auditorium, it will really look more like a round black hole than anything else, and will be absolutely without expression. You have an admirable stage eye--an actor's eye, sensitive, expressive, well opened, it's a pity to spoil it with a load of blacking."

And I said, gratefully: "I'll never do it again, sir," and I never have, first from respect to a great actor's opinion, and gratitude for his kindly interest, later having tried his experiment, from the conviction that he was right, and finally because my tears would have sent inky rivulets down my cheeks had I indulged in black-banded eyes. So in all these years of work, just once, in playing a tricky, treacherous, plotting female, that I felt should be a close-eyed, thin-lipped creature, I have painted and elongated my eyes, otherwise I have kept my promise "not to do it again."

I met Mr. Jefferson in Paris at that dreadful time when he was threatened with blindness, and I never shall forget his gentle patience, his marvelous courage. That was a day of real rejoicing to me, when the news came that his sight was saved. Blindness coming upon any man is a horror, but to a man who can see nature as Joseph Jefferson sees her it would have been an almost incredible cruelty.