I have before alluded to one of the most erratic and brilliant women who ever figured in New York, Adah Isaacs Menken. But there is one story about her which I have not yet told, but which is worth the tellin’, as it shows how opportunities come to people.
Menken had just ceased to be Menken; that is, she had just got an Indiana divorce from her first hubby, Alexander Menken, a musician, and so, a free woman and a very pretty one then, she took to studyin’ paintin’ and statuary, under an artist by the name of Jones; but she soon tired of art, and determined to act–act on the stage–for which she had always had a hankerin’.
She wanted, of course, to play Juliets and Shakespearean parts–every woman begins that way–and thought for a while that she was intended for the original of Juliet; but no manager would listen to her for a moment. Then one day she picked up a copy of Byron’s poems and read Mazeppa, and looked at a picture of Mazeppa, tied to a wild horse, rushin’ along.
Menken was struck with the idea that she would look very well, half-naked, on horseback, and on this point she found a manager to agree with her. Within less than six weeks from the time this Mazeppa idea struck her she carried it out. She first tried to get a chance on a regular salary, and offered to play for a small sum. The manager had been doin’ very badly, and was afraid that if he offered her even a small salary, he would have to pay it sooner or later, and so declined. Then she offered to take her percentage as “a star,” and that the manager agreed to.
He was willing to “star” her on a chance, no matter how bad an actress she might prove, but he wasn’t willin’ to risk payin’ her a dollar as a stock actress. It is sometimes, therefore, you see, easier to get to be “a star” than it is to get into “the stock.”
Well, just because business had been frightfully bad and just because the manager hadn’t any capital, and just because he was afraid she couldn’t act at all, the manager gave Adah Isaacs her openin’ as a star, and “Mazeppa” was settled upon as the openin’ piece.
Well, the next thing in order was to get a horse to play Mazeppa on; but horses were scarcer than actresses. A really good horse couldn’t be hired; his owner thought too much of him to hire him out, and the debutante was reduced to despair.
But just as the bad luck of the manager had turned out to be Menken’s good luck as a star, so now the not bein’ able to hire a good horse proved Menken’s salvation. She got hold of an old hack horse, a played-out old nag, and trained him. She put him through a circus every day for two hours or so after the regular rehearsal. She fired pistols off at his ears all the time; bothered him; forced him to run at his top speed; worried the life out of the animal generally, so that he was in a state of constant “mad.”
Had he been really a high-spirited animal this sort of trainin’ would have ruined him, or killed the woman who undertook to ride him. But bein’ the kind of animal he was, it was just the sort of discipline he wanted, and proved very effectual.
The night came for Menken to make her first appearance as Mazeppa, and there was a very small house. But she had sent notes to most of the critics, and had previously given ‘em “taffy.”
So the press men turned out in force, and the curtain went up on “Mazeppa” before a lot of newspaper men, most of ‘em prepared to be friendly.
Menken didn’t know her lines, but then she made up lines instead, and above all, she looked very handsome and voluptuous. The small audience made a big noise in the way of applaudin’, and the hack horse did his part perfect. She had mixed gunpowder and whiskey in his feed that day, and so he came on the stage quite excited.
And when he heard the music of the orchestra and the applause of the audience, and saw the glare of the footlights, the old hack was highly exhilarated, and when Mazeppa got on his back he fairly ran off, as well as up, “the runs” which made “the rocky steep.” If he had been a genuine Tartar, he couldn’t have done any better, probably wouldn’t have done half so well.
The horse made the hit of the evenin’, and he and Mazeppa were called out together. The play was decided a success, and before the end of the week Menken as Mazeppa was town-talk.
All because she couldn’t get a manager to engage her as a stock actress; because the theatre she played in was on its last legs; and because she couldn’t get a good horse and had to be content with a poor one. Three reasons which would have ordinarily proved a woman’s ruin, in this case proved her salvation. Such is life and luck.
There was another woman quite as handsome and as sensational as Menken here in New York. Her name on the stage was Josephine D’Orme. Her family name is said to have been Ordy, and she is reputed to have been the daughter of a Hungarian count.
She came to America under the management of Max Maretzak, as a member of the celebrated Grisi-Mario troupe. She had a remarkably good voice, and was a superb lookin’ woman. She made the biggest kind of a hit. A great many preferred her to Grisi herself, bein’ younger and handsomer.
One of the directors of the Academy of Music fell in love with her at first sight, and stayed in love with her long enough to spend about fifty thousand dollars on her. He abandoned his family for a while, and couldn’t exist out of her sight. He followed her about and made himself town-talk, all of which, of course, made her for a while more popular than ever.
The director became so infatuated over her that he seriously contemplated givin’ up his family and business here and goin’ round the world with his idol. But he didn’t carry out his intentions, for she didn’t permit him to carry ‘em out, for two reasons.
In the first place, had he done so he would have been a comparatively poor man, and such a woman as Josephine D’Orme had no use for comparatively poor men. In the second place, Josephine D’Orme had some human natural good feeling about her after all, and she took compassion on the infatuated director’s wife and daughter, who appealed to her one day in person.
The two women, closely veiled, called at her hotel, and before they could be prevented had forced ‘emselves into her room. There they fell on their knees and implored the beautiful adventuress to save the husband and father from himself and herself. They told her that this man was all the world to them, though he was only one of the many fools to her, and with tears in their eyes they besought her to have mercy on him and on them.
It was a touchin’ scene; though of course there were none to witness it then, and it was not known to have taken place till long years afterwards. Josephine’s heart melted, and she promised never to exchange words with the director again.
She kept her word. He called that afternoon, but she refused to see him. He called that night; called the next day; kept on callin’, but never had an interview with her, and at last she left New York without his knowledge.
She went to Havana and Mexico, and then to San Francisco, makin’ quite a stir wherever she went. She retained her good looks for some time and her splendid voice, but she got more and more extravagant and dissipated. She became addicted to drinkin’, and swallowed wine in wonderful quantities.
At first she drank only in private, when not singin’ or actin’. But in course of time she appeared on the stage drunk, and that ruined her professionally.
She sank lower and lower, till she became a confirmed hard drinker. “The beautiful drunkard” they called her. From wine she took to drinkin’ spirits, and acquired a taste for gin. Then one day she met with a railway accident and was crippled for life. This prevented her from ever appearin’ on the stage again, drunk or sober.
She went about on crutches, a drunken, despairin’ cripple, and from limpin’ and drinkin’ she fell to swearin’ and beggin’, cursin’ like an Arab, but more from misery than blasphemy, and beggin’ from those who had known her in better days–especially from her theatrical and musical associates.
On salary days she would be seeing hangin’ round the theatre doors, beggin’ a little money from the artists just paid off, and seldom beggin’ in vain.
At last and old friend of hers–a woman, who took pity on her–exerted herself and obtained for the poor wreck a place in a beer saloon to play the piano from eight o’clock till midnight. For a while the experiment succeeded. People dropped into the place to see the rare sight of an ex-Italian opera prima donna playin’ on the cracked piano of a beer saloon. But the novelty wore off, and in a few nights more the piano player got swillin’ so much beer that she was discharged.
Then her friend got her another place in another saloon, where they let her drink as much as she wanted to and play when and what she could, only gettin’ even by paying her very irregularly. While in this place she made the greatest mistake of all the many mistakes of her life by fallin’ in with a loafer by the name of Bower, a man whom in her early life she wouldn’t have allowed to enter her presence, save to make her fire or do her chores.
But now the poor thing made his fire, and did his chores, and waited on him like his slave, as she was, and handed over her money to him, when she got it, and was beaten by the cowardly rascal every night.
Till one night, when she was found dead in her garret room–dead in her rags on a bed of straw on a carpetless floor. The doctor examined her and said that she had died of rum. But there were marks of violence on her body, which led to the suspicion that Bower beat her in one of his sullen fits to death.
At any rate, she died drunk, and was buried like a dog. And that was the end of a woman who had once been the idol of the New York Academy of Music and the pet of one of its directors.
[Editor’s Notes: Along with The Black Crook, Menken’s Mazeppa was one of the landmark productions of 19th century American theater.
The source for the column’s biography was her obituary, first published after her June, 1881 death in the San Francisco Chronicle. However, the Chronicle obituary gives much more detail, and is worth highlighting:]
