“Like other stars of the day, Miss Neilson expressed a desire to give every member of her company a memento. I was waiting at the green-room door to escort her to the hotel, when she called me into her dressing-room. ’You are so weird and mysterious, and perhaps I may never see you again. Look over those things and choose something for yourself.’ On her dressing-room table she had piled all her wonderful jewels, a fortune of immense value. I remember that her maid, a little deformed woman, stood by me as I hesitated. ’Yes, to bring you luck,’ she replied and there was a faint chuckle in her throat. Rubies, diamonds, emeralds—they dazzled my eyes. I finally reached forward and picked a black pearl. I said, ’I’ll take this.’ Miss Neilson’s face turned white, and she closed her eyes. ’Oh, David, why do you ask for that?’ she cried, and I dropped it as though I had done an evil thing. ’I’m superstitious,’ she confessed. ’My trunk is full of nails, horseshoes, and the luckiest thing of all is that little black pearl. I dislike to refuse you anything, but I know you will understand.’ I hastily selected a small emerald, and with a feeling almost of temerity I left the room. All during the farewell supper that followed she would bring the conversation back to the strangeness of my choice, until I thought she would never cease, and just on my account. ’If I gave up that pearl, I shouldn’t live a month. Some one told me that, and I believe it,’ she said.
“When she left on the morrow she made me promise that if I ever visited London I would seek her out, but that was the last I saw of Adelaide Neilson. She had gone no farther than Reno when she wrote me, sending me a little package in which was buried the black pearl. ’I cannot get your voice out of my mind,’ she wrote. Six months afterwards she died in a little French village. She had returned tired and dusty to the inn from a ramble in the leafy lanes of Normandy, and, drinking a glass of ice-cold milk, was suddenly dead in an hour. [She died in less than one month—August 15, 1880, at a châlet, in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, becoming ill while driving.—W. W.]
“Of course I had told my family the incident, and one afternoon, while I was out, my mother went to my room, and, for fear of ill-luck pursuing me, destroyed the black pearl. Such incidents have been put into plays and audiences have laughed over the improbability, but here’s an indisputable fact. Charge it to the long arm of coincidence, if you will, but in my own career I have met so many occurrences that are stranger than fiction that I cannot doubt the workings of coincidence any longer.
“Often during this engagement she had spoken of Mr. William Winter in terms of gratitude and respect, and that the sentiment must have been mutual we have ample verification in his many valuable books. From these pages we of to-day are able to recreate once more the golden art of the greatest Juliet of all times. ’Dear William Winter,’ I remember hearing her say, ’how much I have to thank him for help and advice!’”
MISS NEILSON’S GOOD INFLUENCE.
Adelaide Neilson, whatever may have been the errors of her early life, was intrinsically a noble woman, and any man might well be proud to have gained her kindly interest. In the often abused art of acting, to pass, as she did, from the girlish glee and artless merriment of Viola to the romantic, passion-touched, tremulous entrancement of Juliet, thence to the ripe womanhood of Imogen, and finally to the grandeur of Isabella, is to fill the imagination with an ideal of all that is excellent in woman and all that makes her the angel of man’s existence and the chief grace and glory of the world. All acting is illusion: “the best in this kind are but shadows.” Yet she who could thus fill up the measure of ideal beauty surely possessed glorious elements. Much for her own sake is this actress remembered—much, also, for the ever “bright imaginings” she prompted and the high thoughts that her influence inspired and justified as to woman’s nature. As the poet bore in his heart the distant, dying song of the reaper, “long after it was heard no more,” so and with such feeling is her acting treasured in memory. Woman, for her sake and the sake of what she interpreted, has ever been, by those who saw and knew her, more highly prized and reverenced,—a beneficent result the value of which cannot be overstated. As Byron wrote:
“The very first
Of human life must spring from woman’s breast;
Your first small words are taught you from her lips;
Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs
Breathed out in woman’s hearing.”
“PAUL ARNIFF.”
During Miss Neilson’s engagement at the Baldwin Belasco’s indefatigible industry had been bestowed on a play, modelled on “The Danicheffs,”—a drama on a Russian subject which had been produced at the Union Square Theatre, New York, February 5, 1877. His play, named “Paul Arniff; or, The Love of a Serf,” was derived in part from “The Black Doctor,” and was announced as “founded on one of the very best pieces ever produced at the Porte St. Martin Theatre, Paris.” It was not remarkable, being a loosely constructed melodrama,—some portions of which were well devised and