Petite – indeed, elfin–Lotta projected a winsome, appealing innocence and a girlish charm even in her mature years. Ada Isaacs Menken’s attraction, like that of Lola Montez, was explicitly erotic. The first years of her career playing romanic heroines-were undistinguished. In the early 1860s, however, she exploited the scandalous dissolution of her bigamous marriage to a noted pugilist by assuming the role of the Cossack Prince Mazeppa in the popular hippodrome (equestrian melodrama) Mazeppa; or, The Wild Horse of Tartary, adapted from a heroic poem by Lord Byron. The play had often been presented, but never with a woman in the title role. The dramatic high point of the play occurs when Mazeppa is lashed naked to a real horse which then gallops across the stage. For the scene, Menken wore only a form-hugging, flesh-colored body suit that made her appear nude. It was a sensational effect. For almost a decade Menken toured Mazeppa and a few other melodramas which exhibited her physical and personal allure. She was especially popular in male-dominated San Francisco where she played almost continuously for a season before touring the booming silver mining camps of western Nevada. Her West coast sojourn earned her over fifty thousand dollars, an enormous sum for the time. Offstage, Menken wrote poetry, sculpted, and reportedly spoke five languages. Her lifestyle was often deliberately unconventional. In San Francisco, for example, she dressed in men’s clothes, smoked cigars, and visited various saloons and variety halls in the company of journalist-humorist Artemus Ward. Among her friends and admirers were Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, George Sand, Alexander Dumas (peer), and Charles Dickens. After her premature death (from peritonitis), many other actresses would play Mazeppa, but none would achieve her fame
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Sam and Menken had a falling out.
May 17, 1867 in New York Sam writes west news from New York City. Sam was touring with his lecture series.
“A newspaper friend has been showing me some photographs, taken in Paris, of Alexandre Dumas, the novelist, and Adah Isaacs Menken, the poor woman who has got so much money, but not any clothes. In one of them Dumas is sitting down, with head thrown back, and great, gross face, rippled with smiles, and Adah is leaning on his shoulder, and just beaming on him like a moon – beaming on him with the expression of a moon that is no better than it ought to be. In another picture, the eminent mulatto is in his shirt-sleeves, and Adah has her head on his breast, and arms clasping his neck, and this time she is beaming up at him – beaming up at him in a way which is destructive of all moral principle. On the backs of these photographs is written, in French:
“To my dearest love,
“A. DUMAS.”
And Menken’s note accompanying the pictures betrays that she is extravagantly well pleased with the photographer for publishing and selling thousands and thousands of these pictures to the Parisian public. She knows the value of keeping herself before the world in new and startling situations.
Somehow I begin to regard Menken’s conduct as questionable, occasionally. She has a passion for connecting herself with distinguished people, and then discarding them as soon as the world has grown reconciled to the novelty of it and stopped talking about it. Heenan suited her caprice well enough for a while, and then he had to vacate; the same was Orpheus C. Kerr’s experience; and the same was the Davenport Brother’s; and the same was the experience of some less notorious favorites of hers. And now comes the great Mulatto in the Iron Mask, and he is high chief for the present. But can he hold his position against all comers? Would he stand any chance against a real live gorilla from the wilds of Africa? I don’t know. Menken is mighty shaky. Menken can’t resist a splendid new astonisher. Menken is a good hearted, free-handed, charitable soul – a woman who does white deeds enough, kindly Christian deeds enough, every day of her life to blot out a swarming multitude of sins; but, Heaven help us, what desperate chances she takes on her reputation!
The latest news is that Dumas is prosecuting the photographer for publishing those pictures, but may be that is only a regular part of the sensation programme. These photographs are to be reproduced here.
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Adah Menken toured the United States performing in “Mazeppa”
Only having played minor roles until 1861 (in 7.) and always driven by her enormous desire for public recognition, Adah, when being offered the role of the main character in “Mazeppa” in New York the same year, decided not to play it in the traditional way but in a much more daring manner (in 5.). The play which is also called “The Wild Horse of Tartary” is a melodrama based on a poem by Lord Byron (in 7.). The climax of the play is a scene in which the Tartar Mazeppa is “stripped of his clothes by his captors and bound to the back of a wild horse” (in 5.) galloping through the set consisting of papier-maché cliffs. At the dramatic end of the wild ride, the horse and its horseman jump over the cliffs and disappear in the clouds in the back of the stage. The traditional way of performing this scene had been by using a stuffed dummy (in 5.) but Adah insisted on playing the scene herself (in 5.). This apparently dangerous act as well as the fact that Adah appeared to be – but not actually being – nude, made her an “overnight sensation” (in 7.). The press from then on called her the “naked lady” (in 4.) or even the “Frenzy of Frisco” (in 1.).
The opinions regarding the actual danger of Adah’s performance deviated from each other, but all critics agreed in that Adah’s costume was very risqué (in 1.). Reports of what exactly Adah wore during her performances range from a short Greek skirt to tight-fitting cotton underwear, as for example observed by a member of the audience in Virginia City (in 1.). Also, there are differing reports regarding the horse Adah rode. It was described as a gigantic bay horse, a vivacious black horse or even as a gentle mare which would stroll across the stage towards a hidden trainer who lured the mare with some sugar cubes (in 1.).
When Adah went to Virginia City in 1863 in order to perform there, the whole town celebrated this event and the local fire brigade serenaded her after her arrival (in 1.). According to Brown (in 1.), three reporters of the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia had planned to deride Adah Menken in their articles. They had seen posters all over town announcing Adah’s performance, but in their opinion she could be nothing but a circus performer. Among those three reporters was Mark Twain and things turned out quite different – soon after the performance had started, Adah had conquered the hearts of those three cynic journalists already, especially Mark Twain’s. His very enthusiastic critique about Adah’s performance was printed in many newspapers all over the country. When Mark Twain visited Adah in her hotel room, he found her sitting at a table, drinking champagne and feeding her lap-dog with sugar cubes drenched in spirits (in 1.). Brown states that Twain was so charmed by Adah’s personality that he showed her some of his manuscripts and asked for her opinion. Besides that, he wrote a mystery poem about Adah’s lovely hands.
With very few exceptions, the public was captivated by Adah and adored her. The gold diggers in Virginia City, for example, gave her a gold ingot worth 2000 dollars and named a street as well as a mine after her (in 1.). One evening, Adah allegedly claimed that she could box as well as any man – since she had at a time been married to a boxer – and would box against anyone willing to give it a try. It is said that she knocked out a gold digger in the second round (in 1.).
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She was born Adah Bertha Theodore in New Orleans to a French Creole mother and a Free Negro father, Auguste Theodore. She danced as a child in New Orleans, Havana and Texas. Eventually she worked in San Francisco. Menken was known for her poetry and painting, though both were poorly received. In 1859 she appeared on Broadway in the play “The French Spy. Once again, her work was not highly regarded by the critics. The New York Times described her as ‘the worst actress on Broadway’. The Observer said “she is delightfully unhampered by the shackles of talent”.
She converted to Judaism and married a Jewish musician, Alexander Isaac Menken. The commentators continued to be cynical, saying that a marriage to a rich husband was the only way to sustain a flagging (acting) career. The marriage to Alex Menken was short-lived. Alex Menken separated from and later divorced Adah, though she remained committed to Judaism her entire life. She had four marriages in the space of seven years. Her second husband was John C. Heenan, the American prizefighter. As she had not yet secured a legally recognised divorce from Alex Menken, Adah Menken was accused of bigamy. At the time, John Heenan was one of the most famous and popular figures in America, particularly on the east coast and especially in New York, his home town. The press were quick to point this out as they continued to accuse her of marrying solely to maintain her celebrity status. However, everyone that knew her well said that she genuinely loved the gregarious and outgoing Heenan.
The marriage lasted less than a year. By the time Heenan left to fight in England in January 1860, the couple were estranged. Heenan’s popularity would increase dramatically because of his fight with the English champion. The Washington Post described him as the most famous man in America. Menken would bill herself as ‘Mrs. Heenan’ throughout 1860, despite protestations from Heenan’s entourage (though not Heenan himself). There is no doubt that the productions Menken appeared in benefitted from Menken’s use of her married name.
In 1860-61, she contributed a series of poems to the New York Sunday Mercury, as well as a glowing piece praising Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass in 1860 as “centuries ahead of his contemporaries”.[1][2][3]
She played “Mister Bones,” a minstrel character, and impersonated Edwin Booth as Hamlet and Richelieu. She performed with Blondin, a Niagara Falls tightrope walker. Her provocative stage performance, strapped to a horse bareback, wearing only tights in Mazeppa,[4] helped establish her reputation as a scandalous figure. On August 24, 1863, the master of San Francisco theater, Tom McGuire presented Mazeppa with Miss Menken. She later became Mrs. Robert Henry Newell (better known by his writing pseudonym Orpheus C. Kerr).[5] Even later she became Mrs. James Barkley. The probable facts of her life were not established until 1938.
She went to perform in Paris, France and was romanced by Alexandre Dumas, père. She went to London, England, and was wooed by Charles Reade, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Tom Hood, and became a friend to Charles Dickens. Rosetti is said to have offered her ten pounds to seduce Swinburne away from his fetish for flagellation, but that after six weeks she admitted defeat and returned the money.[6][7]
Later, in ill health, she wrote to a friend, “I am lost to art and life. Yet, when all is said and done, have I not at my age tasted more of life than most women who live to be a hundred? It is fair, then, that I should go where old people go.” She died at the age of thirty-three in Paris, France in 1868 and is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse.
Much of the information pertaining to Menken’s racial and religious background has been questioned in more recent historical biography, particularly in Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
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MENKEN, Adah Isaacs, actress, b. near New Orleans, La., 15 June,1835; died in Paris, 10 Aug., 1868. Her father was a Spanish Jew, andher mother a native of Bordeaux. Her maiden name was Dolores AdiosFuertes. When seven years of age she made a successful appearance as adancer with her sister Josephine. During her early career on the stageshe mastered French and Spanish, and visited Havana, where she becamepopular, and was known as the “Queen of the Plaza.” After playing inTexas and Mexico she returned to New Orleans, retired from the stage,and published a volume of poems entitled “Memories,” over the signatureof “Indigena.” While in Galveston, in 1856, she married AlexanderIsaacs Menken, a musician, from whom she was subsequently divorced inNashville, Tenn. Returning to the stage, she appeared at the Varietiestheatre in New Orleans during the season of 1858. After playing inLouisville and Cincinnati, and as leading lady on the southern circuit,she entered a studio in Columbus, Ohio, for the purpose of studyingsculpture. On 3 April, 1859, she married in New York city John C.Heenan, the pugilist, but in 1862 was divorced from him by an Indianacourt. She made her first appearance in New York city in June, 1859,played there in 1860, travelled throughout the west and south as anactress, and returned to New York, where she married Robert H. Newell.She sailed for California in July, 1863, went to England in thefollowing year, and was immediately engaged at Astley’s theatre,London, where she played her favorite character, Mazeppa. In 1865 shewas divorced from Newell. In 1866 she again visited New York, repeatingher personation of Mazeppa, but terminated her engagement abruptly andmade a brief tour through the west. On 21 Aug., 1866, she married JamesBarclay, at her residence in New York city, and the same year againsailed for England. She died in the Jewish faith, and her remains restin Montparnasse cemetery. On her tomb, at her request, were engravedthe words “Thou Knowest.” While in London she published “Infelicia,” avolume of poems (1867).
References
1. Sentilles, Renée M. Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the birth of American celebrity (2003) (ISBN 978-0-521-82070-7)
2. Haralson, Eric L. Encyclopedia of American poetry: The nineteenth century, 194-96 (1998) (ISBN 978-1-57958-008-7)
3. Alcaro, Marion Walker. Walt Whitman’s Mrs. G: a biography of Anne Gilchrist, p.129-30 (1991)(ISBN 978-0-8386-3381-6)
4. Chinoy, Helen Krich & Jenkins, Linda Walsh (eds). Women in American theatre, “Adah Isaacs Menken in Mazeppa” by Lois Adler, p. 72-78, (3rd ed. 2006)(ISBN 1-55936-263-4)
5. Newell, Robert Henry, American national biography: Supplement, Issue 2, p.406-07 (2005) (ISBN 978-0-19-522202-9)
6. Jean Overton Fuller, “Swinburne, a critical biography (1968) p.163
7. Archie Burnett (ed.), “The letters of A.E. Housman, Volume 1”, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-19-818496-4, p.399
• Bloom, Harold (2007). The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer through Robert Frost. New York: Harper Perennial. p. 716. ISBN 978-0-06-054042-5.
• Diamond, Michael (2003). Victorian Sensation. Anthem Press. pp. 268–271. ISBN 978-1-84331-150-8.
• Dickson, Samuel (1955). Tales of Old San Francisco. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0488-5.
• Lloyd, Alan (1977). The great prize fight. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-29780-1.
• Wright, Alan (1994). Tom Sayers : the last great bare-knuckle champion. Sussex, England: Book Guild. ISBN 0-86332-929-2.