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JOHN DREW
-
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​
John
Drew

E灣
​-
。。
。
JOHN
DREW
-
出
​,
By 16
EDWARD A. DITHMAR
.
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​特产
​KELL
fi
作主
​學校
​看哪​,
本書
​“华人
​长
​七
​台
​,
「
在
​ILLUSTRATED
-
-
-
-
-
-
NEW YORK • FREDERICK A.
STOKES COMPANY · Publishers
强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强
​Copyright, 1900, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
SECOND EDITION
The University Press
Cambridge, U.S.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS
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​I 2
John Drew (Photogravure) . Frontispiece
Mrs. John Drew as Mrs. Malaprop in Page
“The Rivals” . . . . . . . 4
Josephine Baker as Moya in “The
Shaughraun” . . . . . .
John Drew as the Adjutant in “The
Passing Regiment” . . . . . . 12
With Ada Rehan as Eric Thorndyke
and Kate Verity in “The Squire” .
With Ada Rehan as Mr. and Mrs.
Ford in «The Merry Wives of
Windsor” . . . . . . . . 20
As Belleville in “ The Country Girl” 24
As Captain Plume in “ The Recruit-
ing Officer” . . . . . . . . 28
As Petruchio in “The Taming of the
Shrew” . . . ; . . . . . 32
With Ada Rehan as Howell Everett
and Val Osprey in “ The Railroad of
Love” . . . . . . . . . . 36
As Orlando in “As You Like It ” . 42
With Ada Rehan as Young Mirabel
and Oriana in “ The Inconstant” . 48
ILLUSTRATIONS
John Drew as Charles Surface in “The Page
School for Scandal” . . . . .
As the King of Navarre in Love's
Labour's Lost” i . . . . .
As Robin Hood in “The Foresters”
With Maude Adams as Ossian and
Miriam in “Butterflies” . . . .
As Viscount Clivebrooke in « The
Bauble Shop” . . . . . . .
As Mr. Kilroy in “The Squire of
Dames” . . . . . . . . . .
With Maude Adams as Sir Jasper
and Dolly in “Rosemary” . . .
As the Comte de Candale in “A
Marriage of Convenience” ...
As Sir Christopher Deering in “The
Liars” . . . . . . . . 102
With Blanche Burton as Sir Christo-
pher Deering and Mrs. Ebernoe in
“ The Liars” . . . . . . . 108
With Ida Conquest and Arthur By-
ron in “The Tyranny of Tears” . 114
With Frank Lamb and Arthur Byron
in “The Tyranny of Tears” . . 120
Miss Ethel Barrymore . . . . . 126
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​YOHN DREW
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​den Part First

TNTIL very lately John
Drew had been for years
the most approved repre-
sentative on our dramatic stage of
gay, volatile young gentlemen, and
in this present hour, more because
of the accidents of the play market,
I believe, than for any signs of the
flight of years in his appearance or
his demeanour, he is accepted as the
type of polite man of the world,
the social philosopher, never too
strenuously philosophical, the cour-
tier, the wit, the diplomatist, just
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​7 O H N DR EW
TT
at the threshold of the middle
years. Mr. Drew is, perhaps, the
most essentially “modern” of all
our actors. His elegance is the
elegance of a chapter of Henry
James, rather than that of a scene
by Congreve. He has acted with
admirable skill in the “old come-
dies," and with rare eloquence in
plays of Shakespeare ; but in the
public mind he has been most
closely associated with plays of the
passing hour, and the moods and
manners of the immediate present.
He is, in the popular phrase, “ un-
theatrical.” It is felt that he takes
the manners of polite society from
the drawing-room directly to the
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​OHN DREW
stage. Yet Mr. Drew is one of a
comparatively few prominent actors
of this day who were actually born
to the stage. He is of the third
generation of a theatrical family ;
both of his parents were actors,
and so were their parents. He
began his theatrical career at the
age of nineteen years, and served
an apprenticeship in the stock com-
pany of the Arch Street Theatre
in Philadelphia, nearly two years
York.
I can recall vividly the impression
I received, in 1875, of the young
actor who made his first appearance,
February 15th of that year, at the
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​Y OHN DREW
Fifth Avenue Theatre in the taking
rôle of Bob Ruggles in The Big
Bonanza, a comedy in which the
plot and characterisation of the
German “ Ultimo," by Von Moser,
were adapted as closely as possible to
an American environment. Rug-
gles was a glib but well-meaning
youth who met a nice girl on her
way home from boarding school,
helped her out of some trifling pre-
dicament on the railroad, and there-
after paid successful court to her ;
an easy-going, gracefully graceless,
light-hearted, inconsequential sort
of chap, with a saving sense of
humour to restrain the follies of
passion and lend piquant effect to

MRS. JOIN DREW
As Mrs. Malaprop in "The Rivals."
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​4 O H N DREW
his harmless gallantries. In fact,
Ruggles was a typical “ light com-
edy” part of the era, then declin-
ing, when “lines” were strictly
observed and the parts in plays
were “cast ” by the stage managers
almost as a matter of course. As a
light comedian, in the hour which
was still Lester Wallack's, when,
too, the polished assurance and brisk
patter of Mathews were vividly re-
membered, young John Drew had
many deficiencies. Lightness of
touch in any branch of art is not
easily acquired, and Drew reached
fame by no royal road.
In The Big Bonanza we all liked
him, because his was a personality
ME
OHN DREW
new and pleasing, because he was
unaffected and gentlemanly; and
some of us saw a promise of some-
thing better in his work. Yet the
old stagers did not hesitate to say
(they never hesitate to say anything
cruel about young actors), that he
“made nothing at all” of his op-
portunities. He scarcely " played
up” to the experienced Fanny
Davenport in his love scenes with
her, to be sure, yet he had indi-
viduality, and he walked the stage
with the ease of one born to it.
Drew remained at the Fifth Avenue
Theatre more than two years, until
its manager, the late Augustin Daly,
suddenly gave up the lease at the
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​JOHN DREW
very beginning of the theatre sea-
son of 1877–8, and probably in the
interval he made some sort of pro-
gress toward popularity, but the
company was numerous, and the
manager autocratic. Mr. Daly ob-
served no “lines” in casting his
plays, and although the youth from
Philadelphia began in a “ light |
comedy” rôle, half a dozen more
experienced actors would have been
delighted to get, yet he did not fig-
ure conspicuously as a light come-
dian in the distributions generally.
Low comedy “ character” parts,
walking gentlemen and utilities
(chiefly the last-named), fell thickly
to his share, and he was accounted
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​• Y OHN DREW
reasonably harmless in most of
them. His Dudley Smooth, in
1876, seemed to me an uncom-
monly clever piece of work, but I
suppose the veterans of that time
considered that it lacked depth and
weight. I liked him very much
as the rattle-brained youngster,
Thorsby Gyll, in Pique, which he
played with really buoyant effect,
but the performance did not set
the town ablaze.
Young Drew's “recognition,” prop-
erly, was to be deferred till he grew
artistically strong enough to bear
success. He had two years of
varied experiences, some of them
picturesque, as a travelling actor

JOSEPHINE BAKER
As Moya in "The Shaughraun."
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​JOHN DREW
before his opportunity came. In
the earliest weeks of Daly's Thea-
tre, weeks of uphill labor, which
called into exercise all its man-
ager's strength of purpose and in-
domitable courage, Mr. Drew did
not figure very brilliantly in the
company, but along in November
Mr. Daly gave him a small lecture
and a good part.
“I gave you Bob Ruggles," he
said, “and you did nothing with
it; I wrote Thorsby Gyll expressly
for you, and you did nothing to
speak of with that. Here's your
last chance. Make a hit in this, and
I'll advance you in my company.
Fail, and I'm done with you.”
2
7 OHN DREW
Emphatic words, but the great man-
ager had a way of using such words
and of meaning what he said, and
just that kind of heroic treatment
did worlds of good to many a young
actor who had the good, fortune to
serve under his sway. I do not
think that Drew had been neglect-
ful of his duty that autumn. ' Not
many good parts had gone his way,
to be sure, but I well remember
how clearly he denoted the few ap-
preciable traits of the Rev. Harry
Duncan, the mild young clergy-
man, in a few performances of
Daly's Divorce, put on as a stop
gap, and the manliness and dramatic
force of his acting of Arnold Brink-
10
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​4 O H N D REW
worth in a single performance of
the dramatisation of Wilkie Col-
lins's Man and Wife. Still he was
duly humble and grateful, and I can
testify from personal observation
that he took his lesson seriously
to heart, and worked as he never
worked before in mastering his
new part. He spent hours locked
in his room, long after he had
learnt the words, piecing together
significant bits of illustrative busi-
ness, harmonising in his mind the
details of action settled upon at
rehearsal. His reward came in
the boisterous applause bestowed
upon his alert, humorous, grace-
ful acting in the new play, An
II
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​Y OHN DR EW
Arabian Night, November 29,
1879.
His character was Alexander Sprin-
kle, a young married man oppressed
by a formidable mother-in-law, who,
in the most innocent mood imagin-
able, occasionally seeks adventure
in the manner of that renowned
Caliph of Bagdad whose glory is.
celebrated by Scheherazade. Mr.
Drew has acted many better parts
in a similar vein since that night
of his first notable triumph ; toward
the close of his long and memo-
rable engagement at Daly's, he took
up the same rôle under a different
name, in Sydney Grundy's much
more compact version of the same
I 2

JOHN DREW
As the Adjutant in "The Passing Regiment."
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​Y OHN DREW
German play which, like the origi-
nal of The Big Bonanza, was written
by Von Moser. But that was the
night that “made him quite,"
though I fancy he would not have
been “ undone ” if the popular ver-
dict had been against his perform-
ance. His inborn talent would
have told in time. An Arabian
Night had the first considerable
run of that first season at Daly's,
and John Drew's was the most
distinguished personal success in its
performance. From that time on
he was an actor to be reckoned
with. From that time the good
qualities in his acting never lacked
appreciation in as large measure as
13
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​YO H N DR EW
the best of actors can hope for.
He had passed safely through his
apprenticeship, and was, hencefor-
ward, until he deliberately became
a star, a “ leading man,” though
Mr. Daly discountenanced even
the empty forms of “ lines” of
work among his actors.
It is necessary, before proceeding
further with this record of his
career, to put down some of the
particulars of his origin and his
novitiate. He was born in Phila-
delphia in November, 1853, and was
educated in that city at the Protes-
tant Episcopal Academy. He was
fitted for entrance to a university,
but, instead, after a short trip abroad,
14
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​YOHN DREW
went upon the stage to earn his
own living in the theatre so long
managed by his mother, known in
her later years as the inimitable
Mrs. Malaprop of Mr. Jefferson's
condensation of The Rivals. In
his two seasons of service at the
Arch Street Theatre, young John
Drew pretended to be divers and
many persons for the entertain-
ment of Philadelphians. Officious
Cousin Crummy in Betsy Baker,
Mr. Hornblower in The Laughing
Hyena, and a dozen or more similar
secondary rôles in old farces fell
to his share. He was sentimental
Adolph de Courtroy in The Captain
of the Watch, wicked but penitent
15
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​YO H N 'DREW
Captain Crosstree in Jerrold's Black
Eyed Susan, Dolly Spanker in
London Assurance, insulted Gaspar
in The Lady of Lyons, — “Oh,
Melnotte, a blow !” – bashful
Cousin Modus in The Hunchback,
and the County Paris in Romeo and
Fuliet, the last three rôles in the
support of the renowned Adelaide
Neilson, then the loveliest Pauline
Deschappelles, Julia and Juliet of
the stage.
Mr. Daly went to Philadelphia to
see a new play called Women of the
Day which was acted at the Arch
Street Theatre in the winter of
1874–5. There was a dearth of
good new plays and this piece,
16

JOHN DREW AND ADA REHAN
As Eric Thorndyke and Kate Verity in "The Squire.”
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​YOHN DREW
written by a member of Mrs.
Drew's company, Charles H. Mor-
ton, who had been the original
actor of the title rôle in The Black
Crook, was better than some others.
Daly bought it and produced it in
his beautiful New York house, with
a distribution which would not have
been amiss in the The School for
Scandal. But the play is not re-
membered now for that reason, or
for the crisp humour of James
Lewis, as the light-hearted young
husband, the mellow fun of Dav-
idge, as a story-telling physician, or
the voluble delivery by Miss Daven-
port of a description of a new frock
which was actually its most memo-
pes
17
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​Y OHN DREW
rable passage, but for the fact that
it served as a stepping-stone in the
career of John Drew. He acted
in Philadelphia the rôle of Major
Alfred Steele, taken in New York
by Lewis, and the visiting manager
from the metropolis was more
favourably impressed by his display
of rudimentary ability than were
the famous London manager who
went to Portsmouth to see Miss
Henrietta Petowker, and saw also
the Infant Phenomenon, and that
other historic impresario who sat
in a box to observe the effect of
Old Bows's training upon Miss
Fotheringay, impressed by what
they saw. For Mr. Drew was en-
18
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​YOHN DREW
gaged forthwith for a place in the
splendid company of the Fifth
Avenue Theatre.
The Big Bonanza filled out the re-
mainder of that season of 1874-5
at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and
the young recruit acted volatile
Bob until nearly midsummer. The
next season, as a compensation for
the monotony of his work in this,
he was cast for many and all kinds
of parts. He had the small rôle
of Freddy Carter in a revival of
Bronson Howard's farcical Saratoga
at the beginning of the term, and
soon afterward Mr. Daly tempo-
rarily gave up his theatre and the
services of his company to the
19
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​Y OHN DREW
reintroduction to the New York
stage of Edwin Booth, who had
retired for a while after his pecu-
niary failure at Booth’s Theatre,
and had sustained severe injury
also in a runaway accident, the
report of which had helped to
greatly increase the show of public
sympathy with him. This engage-
ment under the management of
Augustin Daly, was important in
the history of the foremost Ameri-
can tragedian of his epoch, and it
was not wholly unimportant in the
career of John Drew. Not very
much praise fell to the youngster's
share for his perfectly well-meant
efforts in Shakespeare's plays, I sup-
20

JOHN DREW AND ADA REHAN
As Mr. and Mrs. Ford in "The Merry Wives of Windsor."
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​YO H N DR EW
pose, but the experience was cer-
tainly valuable to him. Mr. Daly
induced Mr. Booth to take up a new
rôle, Richard II., the last new char-
acter, as I remember, that Booth
studied. His portrayal of the hes-
itating Plantagenet was one of his
most eloquent and most pathetic
performances, but the people never
warmed to it. The play is, unques-
tionably, dry and cold, and after 1878
Booth dropped the victim of Boling=
broke from his repertory. In his
first performance of the rôle, the
character of Sir Pierce of Exton, the
obscure gentleman whose duty it
was to wickedly kill the imprisoned
King, was carried in a sufficiently
21
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​OHN DREW
LRT
workmanlike manner by John
Drew. In Lear, the young actor
appeared briefly and modestly as the
King of France; while in Bulwer's
Richelieu, he was earnest young
François, to whom there is no such
word as fail. He also appeared as
Francis in The Stranger. In Hamlet,
which was, of course, the most con-
spicuous play in the great tragedian's
repertory, I am not sure whether
his character was Rosencranz or
Guildenstern. My own record
says one, Mr. Drew's memory says
the other ; but he is not sure of his
memory, and treats the matter in
a reprehensibly light-hearted way,
intimating that he does not care.
22

JOHN DREW
As Belleville in "The Country Girl."
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​Y O H N DR EW
This sort of carelessness is painful
to the theatrical biographer.. It is
quite clear that Mr. Drew could
not have doubled the courtiers,
because they are always on the
stage together. On the other
hand, I am not sure, in the cir-
cumstances, of my record, and
playbills, in such minor matters,
are very misleading historical
documents.
Another star engagement at the
Fifth Avenue Theatre that season
was that of Clara Morris, who had
made her fame at the first Fifth
Avenue Theatre, under Daly's
management, a few years before.
She appeared, without securing
12
23
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​JOHN DREW
much public support, in a new
version of Daly's adaptation of
Mosenthal's “ Deborah” called
The New Leah, and Mr. Drew
was the supposedly amusing village
barber and surgeon. Pique, a drama
in five acts, founded partly on a
story by Florence Marryat called
“Her Lord and Master," and
partly on a chapter in “ Les Misé-
rables," was produced December 14,
1875, and held the stage till the
roses of 1876 were in bloom. In
this Drew's Thorsby Gyll was the
companion and adviser in mischief
of a red-headed youth named Sam-
my Dymple impersonated by James
Lewis. Thorsby was just a New
24
Y OHN DREW
York lad of that particular epoch,
concerned not too deeply in the
workings of a decidedly melodra-
matic plot, and involved in a mild
little romance with a happy end-
ing. Pique was a drama of inci-
dent, and its interest, too, was
largely pictorial. Mr. Drew was
a comparatively unimportant young
actor among a dozen players of
large experience and established
repute; but, as I have said, I treas-
ure a very pleasant remembrance
of the spirit and humour of his
performance.
The part was a boon to him after
his experience in some of the minor
rôles of Shakespearean plays, to give
25
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​Y OHN DREW
anything like the proper tone to
which he then lacked presence
and the tact and command of tra-
ditions the older actors possessed.
Nothing is more likely to take the
vanity out of a youngster who has
enjoyed a few little triumphs in
easy, colloquial rôles of modern
comedy, than an old-fashioned,
rather hap-hazard course of Shake-
speare. To be dignified, personable,
and interesting while trying to be
a courtier of Elsinore or a baron
of England, after two or three per-
functory rehearsals, and clad in
things out of the stock wardrobe,
is almost impossible. The pro-
ductions of poetical drama at the
26
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​7 O H N DR EW
Fifth Avenue Theatre in Mr.
Booth's engagement were not pre-
pared in the careful and expensive
manner of Mr. Daly's later revivals
at Daly's Theatre. The customary
allowances had to be made for
haste and frequent changes of bill.
If the subordinate actors knew
their parts, little more was required
of them. You may be sure that
Drew always knew his part. But
when Thorsby Gyll came to him,
he was the very youth, even though
he may have missed possible bits
of “ business” and shades of comic
meaning that a more experienced
comedian would have given to the
performance.
27
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​JOHN DREW
Among the young actor's profes-
sional associates in this stage of his
career were several players of great
distinction.' James Lewis had not
yet reached the zenith of his fame,
or done nearly his best work, but he
had few equals in broad comedy;
while the company of the Fifth
Avenue Theatre also included rare
old William Davidge; Frank Har-
denbergh, a “character actor” of
wide range; John Brougham, then
nearing the close of his brilliant
career ; Charles Fisher, Owen Faw-
cett, Louis James, Daniel H. Har-
kins, who quite lately has been a
conspicuous member of Mr. Drew's
own supporting company; beauti-
28

JOHN DREW
As Captain Plume in "The Recruiting Officer."
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​7 OHN DREW
ful, bird-like Sara Jewett, Mrs. Gil-
bert, and Fanny Davenport, whose
power as a melodramatic actress was
just beginning to be felt. She long
retained Pique in her repertory after
she became a star, because of the
chances for showy acting, acting of
the loud, vigorous, and strongly pic-
torial sort, that tells best in melo-
drama, the rôle of the heroine,
Mabel Renfrew gave her. Miss
Davenport, almost from the begin-
ning of her career, and she was an
actress at the tender age of twelve,
had been regarded as a comédienne
exclusively, and she had even made
a notable little hit as Lady Gay
Spanker in London Assurance be-
29
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​7 OHN DR EW
fore she was fairly out of her teens.
She had in her earlier years many
qualifications for comedy. The
sparkling laugh, which is insepar-
able from the rôle of the coquette
in the old plays, and the trick of
which seems to have eluded most
of the contemporary actresses, per-
haps because elegant coquetry has
gone out of fashion in comedy, she
could do to perfection. But as she
grew older, lightness was not a char-
acteristic of her work, and her
powers of expression developed to-
ward the sterner emotions. Posi-
tively the most graphic, forcible,
and moving piece of acting she
ever did was in the third act of
30
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​7 O H N DR EW
La Tosca, the scene of Mario's
torture.
John Brougham was a benevolent
and loquacious old family physician
in Pique. The part offered few
opportunities, but Brougham's day
was nearly done. He had a “bene-
fit, one of the old-fashioned “ be-
speak " sort that spring, when he
acted his old part of jovial Murphy
Maguire in The Serious Family.
John Drew appeared in that once
familiar play as Frank Vincent, who
is but a “ walking gentleman,"
who is humbler than a landscape
painter; and he was also one of the
chorus of Indians, Opodildoc, I be-
lieve, but that does not matter, in
31
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​7 O H N D REW
Brougham’s burlesque play called
Pocohontas, which was also in the
bill. There were a number of other
similar special performances that
season, all given afternoons, because
Pique held the stage uninterruptedly
at night, and Drew had something to
do in each of them. He acted the
polite gambler, Dudley Smooth, in
Bulwer's Money, for the first time
at Harkins's benefit matinée; while
at James Lewis's he appeared as
Tootle, in a forgotten comedy by
H. J. Byron called Weak Women,
in which the popular beneficiary, as
Captain Ginger, had a character he
liked, one, in fact, he saw and felt
himself in. This play had never
32

JOHN DREW
As Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew.”
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​7 OHN DREW
been seen in New York before, and
it has never been repeated, but it
had been briefly in the repertory of
Mr. Daly's players when they
visited San Francisco the previous
summer.
As You Like It was given for Miss
Davenport’s “ bespeak," with her
distinguished father, E. L. Daven-
port, as Jaques, Lawrence Barrett
as Orlando, William Castle, then
probably the most popular tenor in
English opera, as Amiens, Davidge
as Touchstone, and Miss Davenport,
of course, as Rosalind. The record
I have at hand says that Drew was
Lebeau, the polite courtier of the
usurping Duke. But he distinctly
3
33
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​YO H N D REW
T
remembers that he came on in the
last scene as young Jaques du Bois,
to deliver that trying explanatory
speech which has proved a stum-
bling block to so many novices,
because he recalls that both Daven-
port and Barrett spoke kind words
to him about the way he got through
with it. “They would do that, of
course,” he modestly adds. Prob-
ably he “doubled” the parts. His
last new rôle that season was Cap-
tain Vivid in the old farce of The
Siamese Twins, which was in the bill
for the benefit of the business man-
ager, Stephen Fiske.
The next season that accomplished
actor, Charles Coghlan, made his
34
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​7 OHN DREW
first appearance in America as a
member of Mr. Daly's company.
The play was Money, and his por-
trayal of Alfred Evelyn was the last
of any striking merit and was also
one of the best the old stagers
of that epoch had ever seen. Bul-
wer's Money belongs to a past age,
as surely as Addison's Cato and mad
Nat Lee's Rival Queens. Indeed, it
held the stage long after its hour of
departure had struck, because Eve-
lyn was always a character in comedy
tragedians, and “heavy” men liked
to fancy they could act, and the
piece had so many other long parts
encrusted with theatrical traditions,
and associated with famous actors.
35
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​4 OHN DR EW
In my memory there has been no
better performance of Bulwer's
stilted piece in New York than this
in which the sentiment of Evelyn
was so tastefully denoted by Cogh-
lan, and his priggishness so deli-
cately and even agreeably expressed;
while Davidge was the most amus-
ing of Sir Johns, and Fisher the
mellowest Mr. Graves of his day;
while Brougham acted Stout, and
Drew was really a satisfying Dudley
Smooth.
The young actor was “out of the
bill” a great deal this season. He
had a sick spell, and there were no
parts for him in some of the plays.
In a comedy called Blue Glass, in
36

JOHN DREW AND ADA REHAN
As Howell Everett and Val Osprey in “The Railroad of
Love."
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​JOHN DREW
recognition of one of the silly fads
of the hour, he appeared as Regi-
nald Haven, but the part was noth-
ing, and the piece lasted only a few
nights. This was another of Mr.
Daly's adaptations of German farces,
but one that did not score. In a
few performances of The Lady of
Lyons, he acted Glavis, and he had
the rôle of Noirtier in a melodrama
called The Princess Royal, which
was put on very elaborately, but did
not last long. Late in the season
Adelaide Neilson appeared at the
Fifth Avenue Theatre as a star, and
Mr. Drew then had some more of
that desirable journeyman expe-
rience in Shakespeare as he is acted.
37
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​Y OHN DR EW
To be sure, he had the much coveted
rôle of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, in
Twelfth Night; but as William
Winter wrote of his performance, in
his notice of Miss Neilson's Viola,
that it was “well-meant, but entirely
mistaken," it is not likely that he
gained much fame from that. I
remember him as an equally well-
meaning Cloten in Cymbeline, and
what a dreadful part Cloten is, to
be sure! Drew was quite as good
as the gentleman who tried to por-
tray the barbarity and folly of that
ancient Briton in the late Margaret
Mather's very beautiful production
of Cymbeline, though not quite as
much the man pictorially as Wil-
38
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​YOHN DREW
· liam F. Owen, whom I remember
to have seen act Cloten to the
Imogen of Helena Modjeska. But
Cloten, Pisanio, Iachimo (that fine
old Bowery actor, Studley), Post-
humus (eloquent Eben Plympton)
were of small moment, for the
Imogen was all in all. Imogen
was the rarest and sweetest por-
trayal of Adelaide Neilson. There
has been no Imogen since fit to
compare with hers, which repre-
sented the perfect flower of her
genius and art. Cleopatra was to
have been her next rôle, and she
would have been the greatest Cleo-
patra of all theatrical history, but
she died too soon.
17
39
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​YOH N D REW
Early in the next season Mr. Daly's
tenancy of the Fifth Avenue Thea-
tre, which stood on the site of the
present house bearing that name,
but was not nearly as comfortable
or commodious, ended abruptly. It
had been unfortunate in the very
beginning, with Albery's mistakenly
named comedy, Fortune, which ran
five consecutive nights and then
was heard no more; and the only
plays which had long runs in the
four years were The Big Bonanza
and Pique, the only two in which
young John Drew was actually con-
spicuous. So it may truly be said
that he was identified with the best
fortunes of the house. When the
40
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​.
Y OHN DR EW
first Fifth Avenue Theatre, the
dainty little house of the rose
pink auditorium, burned, after the
matinée New Year's Day, 1873,
Daly was prosperous; but he had
big undertakings on hand, and
much money was needed to tem-
porarily establish his large com-
pany, while the Gilseys were
building the new house at Twenty-
eighth Street, and to carry on his
expensive side issue of resplendent
spectacle at the Grand Opera
House. He once told me that
he began operations at the new
Fifth Avenue Theatre thirty thou-
WI
his efforts, and it could never be
41
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​Y O H N DR EW
said of him in those days that he
adhered blindly to any one policy
in the face of certain failure, he
was unable to recuperate. His rent
was the biggest in town, and the
season of 1876—7 was bad almost
beyond precedent. For some
weeks after the terrible destruc-
tion of human life in the burning
of the Brooklyn Theatre, Decem-
ber 5, 1876, all the plays were
given to empty benches. To
cap the climax, the rent was in-
creased at the beginning of the
new season.
An adaptation of the French melo-
drama, “ Les Compagnons de la
Truelle,” called The Dark City,
42

JOHN DREW
As Orlando in "As You Like It."
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​7 OHN DR EW
was elaborately mounted Septem-
ber 4th, and all the members of the
company had more or less suitable
rôles. The name of Drew's char-
acter was Tommy Kipps. Seem-
ingly, however, no one wanted to
see a play called The Dark City,
and after a week of disaster, Mr.
Daly threw over the lease and
started out upon the road, with
Fanny Davenport as his star, and
most of the actors engaged for the
Fifth Avenue Theatre in her sup-
port. Miss Davenport had filled
starring engagements in some of
the larger cities in the two previ-
ous years, out of the New York
season, and already had a follow-
43
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​7 OHN DREW
ing. In this tour, which included
an engagement at Booth's Theatre
in New York, and lasted until well
along in the spring, Mr. Drew
acted Thorsby Gyll in Pique, Syl-
vius in As You Like It, Sir Benja-
min Backbite in The School for
Scandal, and Sebastian in Twelfth
Night. Mr. Daly sacrificed his
extensive collection of theatrical
and other books to pay his debts,
and paid a hundred cents on the
dollar. After a short rest he went
abroad for the first time to study
European drama, as an adapter of
which he had large European fame,
in its own abiding places. He was
forty years old, and before him lay
44
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​YOHN DREW
many prosperous years of royal
endeavour.
John Drew, looking for an engage-
ment away from “the Governor,"
found one in the company his
brother-in-law and his sister, Mr.
and Mrs. Barrymore, were organis-
ing, with Mr. and Mrs. Frederick
Warde and Mr. and Mrs. Majeroni,
to perform Diplomacy, Clement Scott
and B. C. Stephenson's adaptation
of Sardou's Dora, which had been
prodigiously successful at Wallack's,
with Lester Wallack and H. J.
Montague as the brothers, and Rose
Coghlan as the perfumed adven-
turess, and must be regarded as
one of the most successful and
45
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​YOHN DREW
typical plays of the last quarter of
the nineteenth century. The dis-
tribution which this travelling com-
pany was enabled to give to the
play was really exceptionally strong.
Warde was Henry and Barrymore,
Julian Beauclerc; Georgie Drew
Barrymore, Dora; the Majeronis,
capable Italian actors who had
learned to talk English, if not to
understand it, Count Orloff and
Countess Zicka.
Mrs. Majeroni’s English speech
was very agreeable and distinct, but
her lack of comprehension of the
language was amusingly illustrated
once when she was acting in
Camille in Brooklyn. In Margue-
40
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​JOHN DREW
TIT
rite Gautier's scene with her mon-
eyed admirer, in Act II., he asks her
how much she owes. The answer
is, “ Thirty thousand francs,” which
is supposed to slightly shock Cree-
sus; but the fair Camille replied
instead, “Thirty francs," and went
on with her part industriously, quite
unconscious of the amazement of
the audience.
In Diplomacy, Mr. Drew was Algie
Fairfax. The company started
well with good “notices," and the
best wishes of all their friends; but
the vast machinery of the modern
combination system had not been
perfected then and the names of
Barrymore, Majeroni, and Warde
47
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​7 OHN DREW
TY
were not, indeed, names to conjure
with, though pertaining to esti-
mable and comely young persons.
As the subject of this biographical
sketch blithely expresses it, “ Busi-
ness was very bad, so Warde and
Barrymore decided to halve it, and
split the company in two.” The
Barrymores, accompanied by Drew,
with Ben Porter, an old fashioned
actor of some repute, and Ellen
Cummins for Henry Beauclerc and
the Countess, went southward. In
Texas, late that season of 1878-9,
Miss Cummins, Porter, Drew, and
Barrymore were making a poor and
hasty meal in a railroad restaurant.
James Currie, a statesman of that
48

JOHN DREW AND ADA REHAN
As Young Mirabel and Oriana in "The Inconstant."
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​7 OHN DREW
neighbourhood, paid his addresses,
without waiting for the formality
of an introduction, to the lady, and
her companions remonstrated with
him. Being in his most chivalrous
and statesmanlike mood, Mr. Currie
replied in the renowned Texan
fashion. Porter was killed, Barry-
more wounded, and the tour of
Diplomacy ended by brief but effec-
tual Civil War.
4
49
A
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​4 OHN DREW
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​Lem Part Second

MTTHESE years I have dwelt
upon, perhaps with too
great persistency, were
not the most interesting in the
career of a renowned actor, but
they were of the utmost impor-
tance to him. In them he served
his apprenticeship in the art in
which he became a master-work-
man. They included four years
of stock company duty, two of
them in an old fashioned company
of the typical sort, with a change
of bill every week and the “ lines.”
rigidly observed, two more in the
50
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​4 O H N D REW
service of the most autocratic, orig-
inal, and artistic manager of the
metropolis in his day, under the
strictest discipline. They included
tours over the whole country, from
Bostonto San Francisco, from De-
troit to Galveston. When they
were finished, the young man could
feel that he knew much of the
seamy side of an actor's life. He
could say, with poor Tom Wrench,
in Trelawny, that he had had his full
share of parts that were very seri-
ous and very little. Yet it must
be admitted that he had enjoyed
many advantages denied to most
beginners. As the son of the man-
ager of the theatre, and bearing a
51
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​7 O H N D R E W
name long honoured in theatricals,
he enjoyed a certain distinction in
the Philadelphia company; while
in New York he began almost at
the top of the ladder instead of on
the traditional lower round. First
and last, however, he had his full
allowance of apprentice work, and
it was not as a favoured and over-
praised darling of fortune that he
entered the troupe organised by
Augustin Daly in the summer of
1879, to begin his new career at
the theatre which was to become
honoured all over the English-
speaking world as Daly's.
Returning from his visit to England,
France, and Germany in the spring
52
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​Y OHN DREW
of that year, Mr. Daly had made a
tentative experiment in theatricals
by producing his own version of
Zola's L'Assommoir at the old play-
house called the Olympic, which
an earlier generation had esteemed
as Laura Keene’s, and which had for
some time been regarded as super-
fluous. This playhouse was cleaned
and painted, and L'Assommoir was
performed in it a few weeks. The
incident would have been forgotten
but for the connection with it of
the fortunes of Ada Rehan, who
had a small part in the Zola play,
and, in an emergency, took a more
important rôle, and enjoyed a small
but memorable triumph. This led
53
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​7 O H N DR EW
to her engagement for the company
at the new theatre on the site of
Banvard's and Wood's Museums,
and her long association with John
Drew. In the history of the
American stage, the names of these
two dramatic artists are inseparably
linked.
The dominating idea of Mr. Daly
when he began in the remodelled
and redecorated house at Broadway
and Thirtieth Street seemed to be
to cater to the public liking for
light musical comedy which had
been stimulated by Pinafore, the
success of which as popular enter-
tainment has been equalled by
very few stage plays. His opening
1
54

JOHN DREW
As Charles Surface in "The School for Scandal."
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​JOHN DREW
bill comprised a little comedy called
Love's Young Dream and a musical
farce taken from the French “Ni-
niche,” called Newport. In the
first of these Miss Rehan, whose
place in the troupe was subordinate
to that of Catharine Lewis, a sing-
ing comédienne, and of no more
importance than that of May Field-
ing, another songstress, Mabel Jor-
dạn, and some half dozen others,
L
uncertain lady who appeared in
the scene clad unbecomingly in a
bathing costume. In Newport, Mr.
Drew acted Tom Sanderson, a
bathing master, who in the course
of the proceedings donned female
55
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​OHN D REW
attire and assumed an Irish brogue.
Despite the pleasing appearance of
the house and the manager's elo-
quent announcements of his wares,
the public stayed away from Daly's
Theatre in the first few weeks of
its existence with great unanimity.
Divorce, which had run all through
a long season at the first Fifth
Avenue Theatre, was put on for a
stop-gap, and in this Mr. Drew's
acting of the meek young clergy-
man, who was nevertheless a manly
and self-reliant fellow, was excel-
lent. In Bronson Howard's Wives,
a showy “costume” piece, manu-
factured by squeezing together
scenes and incidents taken from
56
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​| 7 O H N D R E W
two comedies of Moliere, “ L'École
des Maris” and “L'École des
Femmes," with a hint, too, of
“Les Femmes Savantes," Drew's
rôle, a thankless one, was Chry-
salde, and Miss Rehan was also dis-
advantageously placed. In this
entertainment Miss Lewis lent her
attractive comic opera manner to
the character of Agnes, Harry Lacy
played Horace gracefully and well,
while those two fine old veterans,
Fisher and Davidge, were quite at
home as Arnolphe and Sganarelle.
The fortunes of the new theatre,
however, were not soundly estab-
lished by Wives. A series of spe-
cial matinées, for the purpose of
5.7
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​OHN DREW
testing the abilities of the younger
members of the company, were
given early in the season. Drew,
as I have said, was admirably placed
as loyal young Arnold Brinkworth
in Daly's dramatisation of Wilkie
Collins's Man and Wife, in which
Lewis's place as Sir Patrick Lundie
was taken by Charles Leclercq, and
Mrs. Charles Poole acted the dumb
housekeeper, a picturesque rôle in
which Mrs. Gilbert had triumphed.
Those two estimable artists, whose
names are as closely associated with
the best achievements of Augustin
Daly as those of Drew and Miss Re-
han, were then members of a troupe
managed by Henry E. Abbey.
2
EL
- 58
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​JOHN DREW
With An Arabian Night, John
Drew's hour of triumph had struck
at last. The lively comedy had a
smart run, and there was much talk
in town about the briskness, grace,
and humour of the young comedian's
denotement of the shifts and per-
plexities of the imaginative husband
in his encounters with a watchful
mother-in-law, impersonated spir-
itedly by Mrs. Poole. Catharine
Lewis was the fascinating circus
rider, and Charles Leclercq her
protector, the “strong man; "while
Miss Rehan had another quite hope-
less rôle, as the ingénue with the
make-believe toothache. When
An Arabian Night had run its
59
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​Y OHN DREW
course, the stage of Daly's was
held for many weeks by a musical
burletta or operetta from the Ger-
man of Genee, called The Royal
Middy, in which Mr. Drew had no
part; but the last fortnight of the
season was made notable by the
first appearance together, in those
“opposite” rôles which they so
long and brilliantly sustained on
that stage, of Miss Rehan and
Mr. Drew. The play was another
adaptation from the German, with
the characters and plot fitted in an
American scene, entitled The Way
We Live. Miss Rehan was a
lovely young matron who de-
voted all her time to fashionable
60

JOHN DREW
As the King of Navarre in "Love's Labour's Lost."
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​7 O H N DR EW
charities. Mr. Drew was her
young husband, whose home was
cheerless and neglected because
of his wife's devotion to the pa-
gan and the poor. After a
few very simple complications a
sufficiently plausible and happy
dénouement was reached. To tell
the truth, The Way We Live was
not much of a play, and some
of its humour was insufferably
juvenile; but in the rôle of the
young wife Miss Rehan finally
revealed her fitness for the work
that then lay plainly before her,
and Mr. Drew gave new evi-
dence of his ability as a “ lead-
ing” actor.
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​Y OHN DREW
T
Miss Rehan had acted charmingly
as Lou Ten Eyck, Miss Daven-
port's original character, in the
brief revival of Divorce, and had
shown uncommon power and a
comprehension of dramatic effect
in the role of the outcast, Ruth
Tredgett (also “ created” on the
American stage by Miss Daven-
port) in Gilbert's Charity. In The
Way We Live, however, her best
abilities were indicated. The most
significant scene in this comedy,
though, was performed, without
Miss Rehan's aid, by a child, a
music-box, and Mr. Drew. The
husband returned from business late,
just as his wife was starting for a
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​4 OHN DREW
charitable dinner party where the
needs of unconverted savages were
to be discussed between the courses.
After the wife had gone, the ser-
vants slipped off surreptitiously, and
the father clumsily but tenderly fed
the little boy, and then held him
in his arms while the music-box
ironically played “Home, Sweet
Home.” These German comedies
were always made a bit too magnifi-
cent pictorially at Daly’s. Obvi-
ously, in this case, the German
playwright had treated of lower
middle class life, a humble mer-
chant's ménage with one maid of
all work. The scenic picture in
the adaptation was a splendid room
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​Y O H N D R E W
in a mansion in which a veritable
retinue of servants would have been
needed. But the domestic moral
was still potent, and the scene
was remarkably well done by Mr.
Drew.
The comedian at this stage of his
career was a slender, agile young
man with mobile features and the
springy motion of a well-trained
athlete. He allowed himself few
idle moments, and when not study-
ing or rehearsing a part (and Mr.
Daly always had a new play in
rehearsal), he rode, fenced, boxed,
and studied music and languages.
He had come to a lively understand-
ing of the seriousness of an actor's
LP
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​7 OHN D RE W
life, of the need of keeping one's
physical and mental faculties in
trim. Already he was beginning
to be known, in a small way, as
a man whose taste in dress was
worth heeding. As an actor, he was
buoyant, unaffected, and entirely
competent in the light rôles that
had thus far fallen to his share,
though the notes of tenderness and
fervor he has since struck so surely
were still a trifle beyond his reach.
Mr. Drew was married, in the
spring of 1880, to Miss Josephine
Baker, daughter of Lewis Baker,
an actor of renown, who died on
the very day his future son-in-law
made his first appearance on the
7
.
65
5
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stage, March, 1873, and his wife,
Alexina Fisher, an actress of skill
and repute. The Bakers were a
theatrical family as renowned as the
Drews, and Miss Josephine Baker
had been an actress a little while
before her marriage. Compara-
tively young “old stagers” may
remember her as a remarkably
pretty and taking girl in the first
performances of My Awful Dad
at Wallack's. In the second
season of the Florences in Ben
Woolf's comic piece called The
Mighty Dollar, she was Libbie, -
“Libbie Dear," as the vivacious
Mrs. Gilflory called her young
companion.
66

JOHN DREW
As Robin Hood in "The Foresters."
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​7 O H N D REW
Prosperity settled upon Daly's
Theatre in its second season, al-
though the manager's policy was
still somewhat confused by his
lingering desire to establish, as it
seemed, a new school of musical
comedy. In the occasional musi-
cal pieces, Mr. Drew had no parts.
Tiote, a Mexican piece that nobody
who does not treasure a collection
of playbills can remember, and
Our First Families, a farce by
Edgar Fawcett which was very
well meant but hopelessly barren
of new ideas, were early new plays
of the autumn of 1880, in which
Mr. Drew had characters. But
presently, in Needles and Pins, he
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​7 OHN DREW
and Miss Rehan were playing vis-
à-vis again to some good purpose,
and Mrs. Gilbert and James Lewis,
who had now rejoined their old
manager to remain with him until
death did them part, were keeping
them good company. This was
the first of the comedies from the
German in which the renowned
quartet appeared together. Miss
Rehan was a mischievous miss in
her teens, and John Drew the esti-
mable, but merely human, young
lawyer whom her fresh charms
had captivated. Mrs. Gilbert was
a belated heroine of romance with
long yellow pigtails down her coy
back, and Mr. Lewis was the pre-
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​JOHN DREW
cipitate but elderly and bald-
headed bachelor who wooed her.
I have no remembrance of the
plot of Needles and Pins. It was
a formless thing, with a burden-
some subplot and some superfluous
sentimentality, and it was found to
have grown very old and feeble in
a very short time, after the manner
of anæmic plays, when acted at one
of the fashionable Daly subscrip-
tion performances of later years.
But it contained some enjoyable
comic scenes for the quartet, and
it had a good run. It had the
appreciable merit of being “a Daly
play,” unlike plays seen elsewhere.
In the fall and winter of 1881–2,
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7 O H N
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both Qụits, from the German, in
which Mr. Drew had a colourless
rôle as Bob Cayses, and Mr. Faw-
cett's Americans Abroad, in which
he appeared as Charlie Wilks, failed
to draw, and Mr. Daly fell back
upon a “costume" play,—an adap-
tation of “La Jeunesse de Louis
XIV.” by the elder Dumas, enti-
tled Royal Youth. This had a mod-
erately good run, but not much is
remembered of it except that a ribald
reviewer asserted that Mr. Drew,
impersonating the “ grand mon-
arch” in his youth, resembled
“ Buffalo Bill in Pantalettes.”
Drew recalls this rebuke cheer-
fully. He could always afford to
70
YOHN DREW
take lightly the few gibes critical
humourists inflicted upon him.
Along in that season, The Passing
Regiment, another comedy with a
German original, gave the light
comedian a fairly good part, though
not one of any distinctive quality,
as the young adjutant. Mr. Daly
strained probability a great deal in
adapting this military romance to
an American environment, and
making the basis of the plot a visit
to a fashionable country place of a
crack militia regiment, instead of
the forcible quartering on a town
of a detachment of Government
troops. Nothing at all like some
of the happenings depicted in the
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translated play ever occurred on
American soil, but the piece was
acted briskly and well, and was cor-
dially received. After its run, an
English version of Sardou's unsavory
“Odette," somewhat doctored and
expurgated to the weakening of its
purpose, gave Miss Rehan an oppor-
tunity in an “emotional ” rôle, for
which as yet she lacked a sufficient
measure of experienced skill. In
this Mr. Drew played Greek Cho-
rus in the rôle of amiable, talka-
tive Philippe. This sombre piece
did not seem to fit well into the
repertory of Daly's, yet the next
season's first new play, The Squire
by Arthur W. Pinero, which made
72

JOHN DREW AND MAUDE ADAMS
As Ossian and Miriam in "Butterflies.”
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​YOHN DREW
a notable hit, was even more per-
sistently serious than Sardou's rather
superficial study of social life in
France before the era of divorce.
In The Squire, the story of which
resembled Hardy's “ Far From the
Madding Crowd,” though Pinero
insisted that he had never read that
novel, Miss Rehan was an inter-
esting Kate Verity, while Mr. Drew
acted with sufficient fervour the
character of her impetuous lover,
Lieutenant Eric Thorndyke. Mr.
Lewis as Gunnion, and Mr. Fisher
as the Mad Parson, equally shared
the honours with the principals.
This season, January 15, 1883, the
first of the series of old comedy
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​YOHN DREW
revivals occurred. The play was
Cibber's She Would and She Would
Not, written in imitation of the
Spanish comedy of Intrigue, and
much shortened and expurgated for
modern use. In this Mr. Drew's
well-composed and uncommonly
well-sustained portrayal of the fre-
quently baffled yet finally trium-
phant lover, Don Philip, was always
associated with the sprightly Hypo-
lita of Miss Rehan. She never
appeared as Cibber's masquerading
heroine after Drew left the com-
pany to become a star. Each year
the piece was revived for a few per-
formances, the increased dexterity
and grace of both portrayals was
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​7 O H N D R EW
noted. Miss Rehan's Hypolita, at
first, was frequently strained and
hysterical. The rôle is exception-
ally difficult for a young actress, as
Hypolita “strikes twelve ” in the
very beginning, and keeps going
in the most buoyant spirits until the
very end. The performance gained
greatly in both discretion and flu-
ency of utterance, in freedom of
movement, and in plausibility of
action. It came to rank well
among Miss Rehan's best achieve-
ments. Don Philip, the discom-
fited cavalier, is not nearly so
grateful a rôle. He is nearly
always in the wrong; while the
madcap who has donned male
75
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​JOHN D.REW
attire, seemingly to pay court to
his fiancée, but really to prevent
the marriage, and get Philip for
herself, triumphs in every climax
save one, and that when she has
all but gained her end and is
ready to capitulate. There was a
nice feeling for the antique spirit of
the old comedy in Mr. Drew's por-
trayal of this pseudo-Spanish cava-
lier, but it had also the modern
touch of the humourist who views
ancient manners with a purged
vision.
She Would and She Would Not gave
way, February 24th, to the long suc-
cessful Seven-Twenty-Eight, after-
ward acted in the English tours
76
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​Y OHN DREW
of the company under its sub-title
of Casting a Boomerang. This was
one of the brightest of Daly's
adaptations from the German, and
it survived many revivals. Court-
ney Corliss, however, was merely
a nice, quick-witted young man of
that particular hour in New York,
and the part gave to Mr. Drew no
more new fame than attaches to
the actor of a rôle in a particu-
larly successful and much talked
of play. Similar rôles were Harry
Latimer in Dollars and Sense, the
comedy, of the same general quality
and the same nativity, which
opened the season of 1883–4, and
Tom Crayon, the artist, in the less
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​7 O H N DR EW
successful piece called Red Letter
Nights. The last named farce, it
was nothing better, did not long
survive; but a romping scene in it,
in which Miss Rehan sang and
danced « Jenny O'Jones," was
transferred to Dollars and Sense,
which remained some years in the
company's repertory. The old
comedy revival of this season was
Garrick's adaptation of Wycherley's
quite impossible “ Country Wife,”
called The Country Girl, still further
altered by Mr. Daly, with a part
of the best of Miss Prue's scenes
in Congreve's “Love for Love"
written in. This still retains its
place in Miss Rehan’s repertory,
78

JOHN DREW
As Viscount Clivebrook in "The Bauble Shop."
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​Y OHN DR EW
and her fairly matchless portrayal
of Peggy Thrift was mated, while
Drew remained at Daly's, with his
own capital portrayal of adroit
Belleville, in which dignity and
grace of deportment were always
cleverly combined with a mere
hint, by way of spice, of latent
devilishness left over, perhaps, from
Wycherley and the naughty comedy
of the Restoration.
Before the Daly company began
their next term in New York, they
made their first appearance in Lon-
don in the little playhouse called
Toole's Theatre, July 19, 1884, in
Seven-Twenty-Eight, and the two
old comedies, Cibber's and Gar-
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​O H N DR EW
rick’s, forming their repertory.
Two years later, they went abroad
again, acting in London, at the
Strand Theatre, and in Edinburgh,
Dublin, Paris, Hamburg, and Ber-
lin. Again in 1888, and again in
comedians acted in London, in the
later year at the Lyceum Theatre,
when they first appeared in As You
Like It. These trips abroad con-
tinued several years longer, and cul-
minated in the building of Daly's
Theatre, Leicester Square. They
gave Mr. Drew a certain assured
standing as a dramatic artist in the
minds of English and foreign play-
goers; they introduced him to a
80
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​Y OHN DREW
large circle of acquaintances in the
home and club life of London ; but
he acted no new rôles abroad, as
the company produced its new plays
first in its theatre in New York, and
a further chronicle of the doings
of Mr. Daly's comedians abroad is
not within the purpose of this
volume.
In the autumn of 1884, some new
recruits joined the company, in-
cluding Miss Edith Kingdon and
Mr. Otis Skinner, who were both
brilliantly successful at Daly's.
Miss Virginia Dreher, who acted
second parts to Miss Rehan, had
been enlisted a year or so before.
Mr. Frederick Bond was also a
6 6
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​Y OHN DREW
new member of this season. Mr.
Drew's associates now included,
also, his veteran friends, Charles
Fisher, James Lewis, and Mrs. Gil-
bert and droll and nimble William
Gilbert, who for some years was a
popular favourite in eccentric and
fantastical characters.
May Irwin, since widely renowned
as a humourist of variety farce, and
one of the regenerators of the
1
company then, and new recruits
were added from time to time in
the next few years. The veteran
George Clarke, who had been so
conspicuous at the Fifth Avenue
Theatre, his skill ripened and de-
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​Y O H N DR EW
veloped by much and varied expe-
rience, rejoined Mr. Daly. Kitty
Cheatham, Phæbe Russell, Isabel
Irving, Jean Gordon, Sydney Her-
bert, Herbert Gresham, and Charles
Wheatleigh were associates of Mr.
Drew during much of his service
under the Daly banner. In the
years that the sextet of leaders
comprised Drew and Ada Rehan,
Skinner and Virginia Dreher, Lewis
and Mrs. Gilbert, the troupe was
absolutely at its best so far as fitness
and harmony of the personnel were
concerned. From the time of the
desertion of the first of them,
though the director's energy, dis-
cipline, and inventiveness did not
-
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​YOHN DREW
em
fail him for many years, the com-
pany's repute began to wane.
Paul Impulse, in a transformed
German piece called, after a time-
honoured custom of Yale Univer-
sity, The Wooden Spoon, was Mr.
Drew's first part this season of
1884-5, and his second (Novem-
ber 25th) was Sydney Austin in
Love on Crutches, a little comedy,
little in its subject and the manner
of treating it, rather than its length,
which still survives in the repertory
of Miss Rehan. Austin has written
anonymously a sentimental novel,
and his wife Annis, dissatisfied
with her domestic surroundings,
and yearning for a higher, freer
84

JOHN DREW
As Mr. Kilroy in "The Squire of Dames."
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​O H N DR EW
existence, has entered into a corre-
spondence with the anonymous
author, using a pseudonym herself,
Thus the spectacle is presented of
a young husband and wife, believing
themselves unhappily married, and
conducting a secret correspondence
with each other, through a third
person, in the belief that they have
“found their affinities.” Of course,
the happy ending of this whimsi-
cal romance is inevitably in sight
from the first; but there is no lack
of animation in the play, though
it requires the daintiest sort of
treatment in the performance.
This it received at Daly's in those
early days, when the well poised,
85
7 O H N DR EW
yet sufficiently sentimental husband,
the dissatisfied young wife, the
common friends with a little ro-
mance of their own, and the old
couple involved so comically in
the proceedings, were acted by
Drew and Miss Rehan, Miss
Kingdon and Skinner, Mrs. Gilbert
and Mr. Lewis.
Drew's old comedy rôle this season
was Farquhar's Captain Plume,
associated with the fame of Wilks,
Garrick, Elliston, and many other
renowned actors. He looked par-
ticularly well in his Marlborough
soldier clothes, and bore himself
with a keen sense of the antique
humour of the Restoration com-
- 86
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​4 OHN DREW
edy; but the spirit of The Recruit-
ing Officer, alas, had fled long before
Daly tried to revive it. Gay Jack
Mulberry, telling fortunes on the
cards with Nisbe, helping future
father-in-law Babbage with his
play, hobnobbing with Mr. Snap,
the peripatetic theatrical manager,
was his next part in modern light
comedy from the German. A
Night Of, produced in March,
1885, easily ran the season out,
and bore many revivals; but it
was never better played, excepting
in the one character of Snap, the
actor, who was fairly recreated
and made to live and breathe, late
in the history of Daly's, long after
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​Y OHN DREW
Mr. Drew had become a star, by
Henry Dixey.
The next term Drew took up the
character of Colonel Lukyn, the
middle-aged soldier and man of
affairs, in The Magistrate by Pinero,
and his portrayal of this rôle, far
out of his ordinary line, was happily
conceived, polished in execution,
delightfully humorous in compo-
sition, and well sustained. His
acting as Ford in The Merry Wives
of Windsor (January 14, 1886) was
correct in form, graceful in bearing,
though scarcely formidable in its
expression of passion; but the pro-
duction of the mirthful Nancy &
Co., Daly's clever version of Julius
88
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​Y OHN DREW
Rosen's “He Pursues His Runa-
way Wife,” less than a month later,
gave him an admirable opportunity
in his accustomed field of light com-
edy. This, in spite of its obvious
caricature of life, always seemed to
me the very best of the lighter and
more farcical pieces in the Daly
repertory. There is a touch of
poetry in it, missing in all the
others, and it has a perceptible
emotional lift in the last act. Mr.
Drew always gave due force to the
broadly comic scenes of Keefe
O'Keefe, the young dramatist whose
collaboration with wilful Nancy
Brasher gets him into a peck of
trouble, without sacrificing ele-
1
89
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​Y OHN DREW
gance and grace in bearing and
diction.
Brandagee, in After Business Hours
(October 5, 1886), was not a bad
sort of a part. The comedy was
by Blumenthal, and it lacked vital-
ity, and only one scene played by
Lewis, Drew, and Miss Rehan,
counted for very much. In Love
in Harness, which followed, though,
Drew had a congenial and effective
rôle as Frederick Urquhart, the
young husband of a frivolous wife.
At that stage of his career he had
done nothing better than his act-
ing in the vivacious “quarrel”
scenes of this comedy, which was
an adaptation of “Le Bonheur
90

JOHN DREW AND MAUDE ADAMS
As Sir Jasper and Dolly in "Rosemary."
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​JOHN DREW
Conjugal” by Albin Valabregue.
There was an undercurrent of ear-
nestness in his acting that height-
ened the humorous effect. In one
episode he pictured a paroxysm of
jealous rage in a manner that would
have done credit to the actor of
Ben Jonson's Kitely. He took
still another step upward and for-
ward when (January 18, 1887)
Mr. Daly put forward The Taming
of the Shrew, Induction and all,
and marked pleasantly an epoch
in Shakespearean revivals. This
was in every respect a superb work
of dramatic art, and will always be
remembered to the credit of the
American stage. Miss Rehan’s
SI
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​Y OHN DR EW
Katharine has since been her fore-
most rôle. She is Katharine, and she
fairly recreated the Shrew Shake-
peare found in Elizabethan drama
and illumined with the touch of
his own mighty genius. Associated
with this portrayal, in her earliest
and best performances, was the
picturesque, sufficiently forcible,
graceful, humorous Petruchio of
John Drew, -- a lover as well as a
wife-tamer, a philosopher as well
as a jester.
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​# OHN DREW
do Part Third

A S bilious Major Tarver, in
7 Pinero's ingenious and
I witty comic play called
Dandy Dick, in the autumn of
1887, Mr. Drew exhibited again,
though briefly, for the frequenters
of Daly's did not care much for
the piece, his talent in the compo-
sition of eccentric character and
his powers of broadly humorous
expression. The personage seems
to have been suggested by current
fiction and the fun of the rôle bor-
ders on caricature. When Dandy
Dick was recently revived in Lon-
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​7 OHN DREW
1
don, complaint was made that some
of its characterisation was sadly old-
fashioned and extravagant. Cari-
cature does not wear well, but
when the play was new, Major
Tarver seemed a delightfully droll
fellow. He belonged exactly to
that hour. Restricted by popular
demand, as it seems, to a narrow
line of characters calling for small
display of versatility, Mr. Drew has
yet, in these later y.ears of his suc-
cessful career, lent all possible
variety to his impersonations. In
the era in which his father won
renown, he would have acted a
wider range of parts. Petruchio
and Benedick, Mirabel and Don
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​7 O H N D REW
Philip, would still have been in
his repertory, but he might, for a
change, have taken up the part of
Trapanti, in which the elder Drew
excelled, and which Mr. Lewis
acted so amusingly according to his
lights. He might, occasionally,
have acted Melancholy Jaques,
to contrast with his eloquent
Orlando, while a comedian of his
intellectual equipment and person-
ality might fairly recreate the rôle
of Touchstone, - that philosopher
in motley, who has latterly been
turned over altogether to the low
comedy man.
After the cynicism of Dandy Dick
that autumn, came the sentiment of
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​Y OHN DREW
The Railroad of Love, taken from
“ Goldfische,” by Rosen. This
comedy, which had but little
verity as a picture of possible hap-
penings in American society, was
nevertheless received with enthu-
siasm and held the stage some
months. Drew was Lieutenant
Howell Everett and Miss Rehan
was Val Osprey. Many other good
actors were in the cast, and the
plot was complex enough to give
them fairly interesting and impor-
tant parts, but these two, as usual,
were the central figures. She was
a widow, lovely and experienced
in coquetry; he was an irresistible
young army officer, expert in the
96

JOHN DREW
As the Comte de Candale in "A Marriage of Convenience."
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​JOHN DREW
subtle arts of the lady-killer. They
had met briefly before, but the gen-
tleman did not immediately rec-
ognise the lady when they were
introduced at Miss Van Ryker's ball.
She remembered him vividly, how-
ever, and could not suppress her
smiles when she recalled him in
the act of captivating two simple
little fräuleins in a German railway
carriage. They flirted, of course.
He employed all his arts, but she
outwitted him. Then chance, or
Cupid, favoured him, and she was
defeated. It was at first a merry
war of wit and mock sentiment, but
before two days had passed they
were desperately in love. Then,
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​JOHN DREW
before they fully understood each
other, that venomous reptile, Jeal-
ousy, had crept across their flower-
strewn path, and when it had
slinked out of sight again, the
woman had written a letter that
had to be recalled before he knew
of its existence and she was at her
wit’s end to accomplish this pur-
pose. There was a scene, then, full
of passion and hysterical emotion,
which lifted the comedy far above
the level of frivolous entertainment.
The picture of Drew and Miss
Rehan exchanging soft words from
either side of a half-open boudoir
door remains vividly in the memory
of folks who saw The Railroad of
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​7 O H N D REW
Love when it was a new play.
The scene, too, in which Drew, as
the blind slave of Love, sat obedi-
ently and patiently bending over
an embroidery frame and bungling
the stitches, “one, two, three,
four, cross,” was novel and taking.
Drew portrayed the young Lieu-
tenant in a graceful and easy man-
ner exactly fitting the character,
and in the serious passages revealed
the strength of an inherently noble
nature.
As the “spotted and inconstant”
Demetrius in the elaborate and
costly production of A Midsummer
Night's Dream (January 31, 1889),
Drew was as picturesque, ardent,
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​YOHN DR EW
and gallant as need be and seemed
to get as far as possible away from
his usual manner. Then, as always,
his reading of the verse was fluent
and correct and governed by a per-
fect sense of melody. In the next
Fall his portrayal of Adolphus
Doubledot in The Lottery of Love
at Daly's was coincident with
Constant Coquelin's acting of the
French equivalent in the original
piece by MM. Bisson and Mars,
“Les Surprises du Divorce,” at
Palmer's across the street. Neither
comedian advanced an artistic step
because of this rôle, but both acted
with excellent humour and vivacity,
and there were many intelligent
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​Y OHN DREW
theatre-goers who actually preferred
the lighter, daintier touch of Drew
to the broad, rather violent manner
which the various-voiced Coquelin
found suitable to this extravagant
farce. In this season John Drew
acted Young Mirabel to the lovely
Oriana of Miss Rehan. It seems
all but impossible to galvanise the
though I fancy that in this particu-
lar hour something might be done
with his mellow masterwork, The
Beaux' Stratagem. The Inconstant,
like so many other famous old
plays, contains only one vitally
strong situation, and that in the
very last scene. But Drew's por-
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​Y OHN DR EW
trayal of the scapegrace of the era of
Queen Anne was of quite uncom-
mon pictorial and dramatic interest,
and at that time, next after his
Petruchio, his most successful ven-
ture in the field of romantic com-
edy. He presented Mirabel as a
blithesome and elegant fellow, full
of sentiment which his idea of manly
honour impels him to conceal.
Clive, Lord Ravenstoke, in a flat
and tedious but splendidly mounted
play from the German called An
International Match, that winter,
showed the growth of the come-
dian's skill in depicting the per-
fect breeding and savoir faire of
a man of the fashionable world.
102

JOHN DREW
As Sir Christopher Deering in "The Liars."
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​JOHN DREW
I remember the acting of a little
scene, a mere excerpt of social rou-
tine, by Mrs. Gilbert and Drew,
that was positively exquisite in its
denotement of the manners of good
society. But this and many of his
other rôles in modern plays during
the remainder of his stay with “ the
Governor” were but trivial. The
Golden Widow, Sardou's unsavoury
“ Marquise," shorn of nearly all its
vicious meaning, gave him no chance
at all; while as Cousin Ned in The
Great Unknown (“ Die Beruhmte
Frau”), he was limited practically
to one charming scene of love-
making. Orlando fell to his share
(and his acting of the gallant,
17
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​Y O H N D R EW
TY
gentle lover largely increased his
repute among persons of artistic
discernment both here and in Lon-
don), December 17, 1889, and
along in that winter he appeared
as the young French advocate
whose pretty mother-in-law makes
much trouble for him innocently
in A Priceless Paragon, which was
taken from the “Belle Maman”
of Sardou and Raymond Deslandes.
In the recurrence of Von Moser's
Haroun al Raschid, this time in a
version by Sydney Grundy, the
same spring, he easily carried off
the honours again; but in New
Lamps for Old, a play by Jerome
Jerome that was not a play at all,
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​4 OHN DREW
the next October, he had nothing
to do worth doing. His best new
rôle in modern comedy this season
was Harry Rutherell in The Last
Word, which was a comedy of the
quality of The Railroad of Love.
Harry was the “woman hater"
of all sentimental romance, trans-
formed, of course, into a lover.
His old comedy rôle at this time
was Charles Surface in The School
for Scandal, January 21, 1891.
This portrayal was a revelation of
unexpected qualities in the equip-
ment of this fine comedian. So
much vivacity, so much sparkle, in
his denotement of high spirits were
scarcely expected of him. That
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​7 O H N DR EW
his Charles Surface should lack
neither the elegance of polite
breeding nor personal grace was
not surprising. His delivery of
Sheridan's text was expected to be
both precise and fluent, but the
freedom and dash of his acting
carried all before him and made
Charles, indeed, the hero of the
play. Since Lester Wallack's prime
there have come under my notice
only two impersonations of Charles
fit to compare with this; namely,
Charles Coghlan's and that of a
young actor who did not live to
reach the fulness of his powers,
Harry Hitchcock Murdoch, who
lost his life in the burning of the
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​7 O H N DR EW
Brooklyn Theatre. The charm of
Murdoch’s Charles, which would
have become an impersonation of
rare merit, was in its consistent buoy-
ancy rather than its elegance. His
volley of merry and infectious
laughter after the fall of the screen
still lingers in my ears. Coghlan
acted here with his customary re-
serve of force, while Drew's Charles
bore himself gaily but with an ob-
vious sense of the pity of Lady
Teazle's predicament. I am in-
clined to think that Murdoch’s was
the right, the Sheridan, reading of
the scene.
Late in the spring of 1891, Mr.
Drew acted the King of Navarre
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​Y OHN DR EW
in Mr. Daly's second revival of
Love's Labour's Lost, a play which
no other American manager ever
dared to touch. With its dainty
setting and some good acting, this
early satire of euphemism was to
me much more interesting than
The Merry Wives of Windsor ever
is in these days, except in Verdi's
musical setting, in which the Fal-
staff of Victor Maurel is the best
Falstaff this age has seen. But it
would be folly to consider the King
of Navarre an important rôle in the
career of a famous comedian. A
few nights of Pinero's delicate
humour in The Cabinet Minister,
which utterly failed of apprecia-
108

CHRISTOP
JOHN DREW AND BLANCHE BURTON
As Sir Christopher Deering and Mrs. Ebernoe in
"The Liars."
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​4 OHN DREW
tion, gave Drew small opportunity
in the rôle of young Valentine
White, but he found a more
taking character in Love in Tan-
dem, which was founded on “La
Vie à Deux” of MM. Bocage and
de Courcy. Richard Tompkinson
Dymond was an impossible fellow
who might easily have been made
intolerable. Drew made him com-
panionable and suggested humor-
ously the workings of a rather slow
mind. His last rôle at Daly's, in
the spring of 1892, was Robin
Hood in Lord Tennyson's dra-
matic poem called The Foresters.
Miss Rehan as Marian, Miss Cheat-
ham as Kate, with her lovely song
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​Y O H N DR EW
of the bee, Mr. Gresham as Little
John, had the most taking parts in
this. Mr. Drew's success was chiefly
that of tasteful elocution, correct
bearing, and a fine sense of pictorial
effect.
ITO
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​• 4 OHN DREW
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​den Part Fourth

ATR. DREW began his
:: work as a star actor
I ☺ under the management
of Charles Frohman, at Palmer's
Theatre, New York, October 3,
1892. His play was The Masked
Ball, adapted from the French of
Bisson by Mr. Clyde Fitch, not an
important piece or one whose inci-
dents remain vividly in the memory,
but one which served its purpose
well all through the comedian's
first tour with his own company.
There was a great and enthusiastic
crowd in the theatre that note-
III
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​Y O H N DR EW
worthy“ first night” to give the new
star a “send off," and no chronic
grumbler in the cause of dramatic
art could rationally protest against
the encouragement given to him.
The enthusiastic admiration of the
best sort of American playgoers
for Mr. Drew and his acting has
not diminished in the eight years
that have since elapsed. That
“ first night,” after the merry
penultimate climax of the Bisson
farce, the comedian was, of course,
summoned before the curtain. A
part of his modest speech is worth
a place in this permanent record of
his career :---
I I2
og gestione
een
Y OHN DR EW
“It is trite and hackneyed, perhaps, to
allude to a particular time as the proud-
est and happiest moment in one's life,
but if ever phrase were apt for an occa-
sion, I feel that particular one is befit-
ting this moment. This splendid
welcome accorded to me by you —
kind friends rather than spectators or
auditors, who have with your plaudits
and consideration encouraged me for so
many years in the past -- makes this,
indeed, a proud and happy moment for
me.
“ But I feel that all these plaudits and
this great greeting might not have been
for me had it not been for one who
taught me how to merit and deserve them
-- who from the beginning of my career
has watched and guided my steps,
smoothing the way to success for me,
Peer
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​7 O H N DREW
TY
1
Y
and encouraging me in moments of
trial and discouragement, and, in fine,
striving to make me worthy of this
honour to-night.
“I feel, too, that this poor and halting
tribute of the heart is little to offer
after the years of care and trouble he
has bestowed on me, but it is from the
heart, and I wish to offer it. I am glad,
too, to offer it before you,- his friends
as well as mine. I see that I need not
name him,- my friend and preceptor,
- Mr. Augustin Daly.”
In The Masked Ball that charming
young actress, Miss Maude Adams,
began an artistic association with
Mr. Drew which lasted nearly five
years. Her mock drunken scene, in
the rôle of Suzanne, the young wife
*114

JOHN DREW, IDA CONQUEST AND
ARTHUR BYRON
In "The Tyranny of Tears."
4 OHN DREW
of the scapegrace, bent on teaching
him a wholesome lesson, was exqui-
sitely delicate and humorous. As
Paul Blondet, Drew was again the
light comedy protagonist of a whole
school of farces, but the dexterity
and spirit of his acting were suf-
cient to make the conventional
matter effective. Of course, one
does not leave a performance of
farce of this quality with the feel-
ing of satisfaction engendered by a
performance of genuine comedy.
The afterglow is nothing. The
farce dies as the curtain falls. One
has laughed heartily and that is all.
Yet the choice of this purely comic
piece for the beginning of Drew's
1
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​Y O H N DR EW
CN
new venture was justified, and nearly
eighteen months elapsed before the
comedian required another play.
In the same theatre, February 6,
1894, he appeared as Frederick
Ossian in a slight comedy by Mr.
Henry Guy Carleton called Butter-
flies. In this the subject was Amer-
ican, and so, in every respect, was
the treatment of it. Frederick
Ossian was a heedless, well-bred
young man, suddenly sobered by
his realisation that the course of
true love does not run smooth
-- and by his tailor. He was in
love, and he was in debt. His
love seemed to be hopeless, and
he could not pay his debts. But
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​OHN DREW
presently he went to work, and
then his love was rewarded. Inci-
dentally he was shown to be
capable of forbearance and self-
sacrifice. This fragile piece was
still something much better than
horseplay farce, and it served the
comedian well for more than a
year. The triumph in it, in an
exceedingly grateful part, of Miss
Olive May was an incident which,
as contemporaneous stage history
goes, may fairly be called histori-
cal. Butterflies had been performed
by Drew and his company in other
cities before it was seen in New
York, and this was afterward the
case with other plays of his reper-
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​7 OHN DR EW
tory, but only the dates of the
metropolitan first performances are
given here.
A much graver, if not positively a
more serious work was The Bauble
Shop by Henry Arthur Jones, the
English playwright, which served
Mr. Drew so well the following
season. The argument in this was
that the private immoralities of a
statesman's life may be used by his
enemies to defeat and humiliate
him in public life, and the argu-
ment is unanswerable. The piece
seemed to hit the public fancy here
rather more surely than in London,
as its extravagances of detail were
not noticed on this side of the
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​7 O H N DR EW
Atlantic, where, for poetical pur-
poses, the tower of Westminster is
as far off as the minarets of Constan-
tinople or the Egyptian Pyramids.
The first half of the play was very -
interesting, while the second half
was not quite feeble and inconsis-
tent enough to ruin it. There was -
a great deal of merit in Mr. Drew's
portrayal of Viscount Clivebrook,
the leader of the party in power,
a cynical, brilliant statesman of
forty odd years, who rashly falls
in love with the daughter of a
drunken toy-maker. His acting X
was distinguished by dignity of
bearing, graceful vivacity, ner-
vous force, and an adequate meas-
.
119
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​LI
JOHN DREW
ure of dramatic power. Maude
Adams as the drunkard's innocent
daughter acted a rather conven-
tional rôle so well as to make it
seem lifelike, while Elsie de Wolfe,
J. E. Dodson, Arthur Byron, Harry
Harwood, and Frank Lamb, who
has been concerned in every play
in which Mr. Drew has starred,
lent efficient assistance. There were
no“ great moments” in The Bauble
Shop, however, and it contained at
least one positively repellent scene.
Mr. Drew's New York headquar-
ters had been transferred, by Mr.
Frohman, with the production
of Jones's drama from Palmer's to
the more modern and beautiful
120

JOHN DREW, FRANK LAMB AND ARTHUR BYRON
In "The Tyranny of Tears."
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​7 OHN DR EW
Empire Theatre, and here he began
his next metropolitan engagement
in the following autumn, the play
being That Imprudent Young Couple,
by the author of “Butterflies,”
which Drew and his company had
tried in a rural theatre the previous
spring under the name of The Love
Knot. In this Mr. Carleton had
endeavoured to secure the same
effect of thistle-down lightness
he had produced in his former
comedy, but his material barely
served for one interesting act, and
the piece failed to draw. All the
same, it contained a scene for Mr.
Drew and Miss Adams in Act I.
which I like to remember, while its
I 21
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​7 O H N D REW
starting-point, the failure of John
Annesley to post two letters his
bride had entrusted to him, was a
promising beginning for light com-
edy. That Imprudent Young Couple,
however, soon gave place to Made-
line Lucette Ryley's amusing play,
an “actor's play” if there ever was
one, called Christopher, Fr., which
was chuck full of good situations
and bright dialogue, but defied life,
probability, and the laws of dra-
matic construction in every scene.
Both Mr. Drew and Miss Adams
had grateful rôles, and the other
members of the company were well
suited. Christopher, Jr., was first
acted at the Empire Theatre, Octo-
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​F OHN DREW
ber 7, 1895, but it had been in
the comedian's repertory the pre-
vious season and had received many
performances in other cities. For
that reason, another play was needed
immediately, and, January 20, 1896,
Mr. Drew began a midwinter en-
gagement at Palmer's, presenting
Richard C. Carton's smart adapta-
tion of “ L'Ami des Femmes,” by
Dumas fils, called The Squire of
Dames. Mr. Kilroy, the equiva-
lent of the French meddler with
pathological ideas, could have found
no better representative on our stage
than Drew, and his refinement and
personal humour made the adapta-
tion enjoyable, though Mr. Carton
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​Y OHN DREW
kept himself safely many miles
from the psycho-physiology of the
original author. In fact, smartly
written talk was the best feature of
The Squire of Dames, and its marital
and social problem, in the circum-
stances, happily went for nothing.
Rosemary, the following season,
introduced Mr. Drew once again
as a bachelor of forty odd reclaimed
from cynicism and roistering by
the power of love. Rosemary, by
L. N. Parker and Murray Carson,
was not a great or profound work,
not exceedingly witty or very well
made, but it was sweet and piquant
with a touch or two of genuine
feeling that caused sympathetic
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​4 OHN DR EW
throbs in the spectator's bosom.
No other actor of this hour could
have played Sir Jasper Thorndyke
so well as Drew, taking the por-
trayal as a whole. He was delight-
fully light and airy in the gay
passages, he was always essentially
the man of the world, he composed
with admirable skill the picture of
senility in the last act or epilogue.
Sir Jasper, in his middle years, fell
in with a pair of eloping lovers,
and presently gave his heart with-
out the asking to the girl, who was
very sweet and ingenuous and trusted
him implicitly. But, after a severe
struggle with his passion, Jasper
saw her happily united with Ensign
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​JOHN DREW
Westwood, her young lover, and
returned to his bachelor ways, to
live many years after Westwood
and his wife had departed this life,
and to find, by a strange accident,
a souvenir of his little romance with
Dolly, the day of the Queen's Jubi-
lee, in that very inn whither he had
taken her to see the Coronation
procession. Miss Adams, who was
then in her last year as a member
of Drew's company, had at that
time never appeared to better ad-
vantage than in the role of Dorothy
Cruickshank. In this play, too,
Mr. Drew's niece, Miss Ethel Barry-
more, who had borne a thankless
part in Mr. Carleton's piece the
126

MISS ETHEL BARRYMORE.
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​Y OHN DREW
year before, made her first little
hit in the character of a rustic
serving-maid.
In November, 1897, at the Empire
Theatre, Mr. Drew and his fellow-
actors presented themselves in a
sword and periwig comedy called A
Marriage of Convenience, adapted by
Sydney Grundy from “Un Mariage
sous Louis XV.” The play turned
out to be fragile but pretty, and
the performance was adroit and
graceful. The scenic setting, com-
prising a single interior, with
painted panels, and the ornate
gilding and furniture belonging
to the epoch represented, the
middle of the eighteenth century,
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​7OHN DREW
could not have been surpassed. In
the costuming no detail had been
omitted, from the cut of a brocade
coat to the fashion of a snuff-box
or the design of the silver embroi-
dery on the back of a glove. Pow-
der and patches, court swords and
cocked hats, elegant manners with
a hint of lamentable morals, -
those were the important concomi-
tants of A Marriage of Convenience.
There was scarcely more than one
grave speech in this play, which
was nearly all talk, like a comedy
of Congreve, which, by the way, it
sometimes resembled in form, if not
in substance. In the French origi-
nal the elder Dumas seems to have
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​7 OHN DR EW
used Marivaux as his model. Mr.
Drew embodied with all needful
dignity and buoyancy the young
Comte de Candale, who fell in
love with his young wife less
than three days after the wed-
ding, while Miss Isabel Irving,
making her first appearance as Mr,
Drew's leading actress, imperso-
nated the young Comtesse with
delightful charm. They had
often acted in the same plays at
Daly's, and she had played vis-
à-vis to him in the Cabinet
Minister. The inevitable waiting-
maid- the Dorine of French
classical comedy — was portrayed
with much facility of expression
9
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​Y OHN DREW
and a nice sense of pictorial effect
by Elsie de Wolfe.
Of less interest both pictorially and
dramatically was One Summer's Day,
a comedy, or rather a serio-comic
play, compounded not too cleverly
of the elements of farce, melodrama,
and comedy, by a young English
actor, Henry V. Esmond, who has
since won substantial recognition
as a playwright. In this Mr.
Drew acted Major Dick Rudyard,
a self-sacrificing bachelor, who is
consoled by the triumph of Love
for many grievances, at Wallack's
Theatre in February, 1898, but a
livelier piece was the one-act com-
edy by Theyre Smith, author of
TTY
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​7 O H N D REW.
“My Uncle's Will,” called Mrs.
Hilary Regrets, in which Mr. Drew
and Miss Adams appeared at a bene-
fit that winter and in which he
has since acted with Miss Irving.
This piece concerns the courting
of a pretty widow by a rather dense,
slow-thinking Irish physician. Mr.
Drew's brogue, though not often
put to use, was always as good as
John Brougham's.
The Drew play for the whole the-
atrical season of 1898-99 was The
Liars, a sparkling comedy by Henry
Arthur Jones, in which the come-
dian had a particularly good part as
the deus ex machina, the friend of
everybody, the preserver of family
YTYY
131
盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈盈
​YOHN DREW
honour, Sir Christopher Deering.
Sir Kit, take him for all in all, was a
capital fellow, cool-headed, sound-
hearted, practical, amiable, of ripe
and varied experience, endowed
with fine perceptions and good
taste. He had one telling speech
in the last act, - a speech full of
subtle changes of mood, though the
speaker was dominated throughout
by one earnest purpose, — which
must have been one of the longest
speeches in recent drama. In this
Sir Kit, who had been devoting his
time and ingenuity for four days
and four acts to a seemingly futile
attempt to prevent the elopement
of his closest friend with the silly
132
en ige og een en
een
Y O H N DR EW
young wife of a common acquaint-
ance, confronted the erring couple
in his apartment. The hour was
late, and Kit was getting ready to
start for Africa to rejoin his regi-
ment on the morrow. He was
packing his traps, and, moreover,
had just asked a charming woman
to be his wife. Wherefore he had
little time to spare, yet he took time,
not to harangue, not to moralise,
but merely to set before these two,
the heedless man of passion and the
vain woman, a few facts. Irony,
grim humour, and deep feeling were
all in this speech, and its delivery was
a superb example of technique.
Scarcely less effective was Drew's
133
强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强
​OH N D REW
acting in The Tyranny of Tears,
which was his play in the winter
of 1899-1900. This comedy by
Haddon Chambers was really more
noteworthy on the score of verity
than Jones's rather showier play;
and the study of the easy-going
husband, who had allowed his wife
to control his very conscience and
then had a difficult task to readjust
his domestic affairs on a common-
sense footing, was well within the
line of Drew's best parts. Parbury,
the novelist, like Deering, the sol-
dier, was essentially a man of this
very hour, this particular phase
of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. In
Chambers's comedy a notable tri-
134
强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强
​OHN DREW
umph was achieved also by an
actress who had not previously
appeared with Mr. Drew, Miss
Ida Conquest, who, as Hyacinth
Woodward, the novelist's amanu-
ensis, gave spirit and form to a
study of character new to the stage
and, indeed, to fiction. The saga-
cious butler, acted by Frank Lamb,
was another of the richly humor-
ous, plausible, artistically unobtru-
sive portrayals of eccentric servitors
which that actor had contributed
in the support of Mr. Drew. Mr.
Lamb, who, like his principal, be-
longs to an old theatrical family,
has long served as Mr. Drew's
stage manager.
1
135
强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强强
​7 O H N D REW
TY
Thus the chronicler must leave
Drew in the very prime of his
artistic career, still a young man
in appearance and feeling, still
ambitious and energetic. The
story of his doings on the stage
contains few exciting incidents,
and his lot has been cast in pleas-
ant places. His private life has
been happily uneventful. He is
a member of many clubs, and is
much sought in social life both in
New York and in London. He
has helped, in the beginning of
their dramatic careers, his nephew,
Lionel Barrymore, and his nieces,
Ethel Barrymore and Georgiana
Drew Mendum. His daughter,
136
7 OHN DREW
d
C
Louisa, contemplates adopting the
family calling and has already made
a purely tentative first appearance
in a small part. Mr. Drew has
met the chances of existence
bravely, has performed his duties
nobly, and has fairly won a high
place in the esteem and affection
of his contemporaries.
137_

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