"——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.