On Her Not Being Married

“Miss Adams has never married. A friend of mine, who of course must remain unnamed, lived at the same boarding-house with her and her mother when they first came to New York. He was greatly attracted by her and paid her much attention, escorting her and her mother to the theatre and back every night. Miss Adams accepted his attentions in a frank, friendly way. But when matters had gone along a little while Mrs. Adams too opportunity to say to him, ' Mr.___, it's only fair to you that I should tell you you're wasting your time. Maudie'll never marry. She is too devoted to he art ever to think of such a thing.'” Ladies Home Journal, November 1903

“This determination to remain single had, in part, a rational basis. To begin with, Charles Frohman strictly forbade all his star actresses to marry. If Maude had defied that dictate, she would have sacrificed her business association with him, probably to the detriment of her future stage career. Furthermore, from her actress mother's experience in dealing with a less-than-supportive husband, Maude had learned about the inherent conflict between career and domestic life for a married woman. And her strong devotion to the theatre overruled any notion of giving up her work for the sake of becoming a home-bound wife.” “Maude instead former her intimate relationships exclusively with females. The two women with whom she successively shared her life and love in a monogamous way were Miss Lillian Florence and Miss Louise Boynton. Both ladies resided with Maude, officially employed as her secretary, but actually filling the unspecified job of closest friend and steady companion. Maude proably first met Lilliet in 1892, the year she debuted as John Drew's leading lady in The Masked Ball. (Lillie played Rose in that play) ...The young pair lived together until Lillie's premature death from a terminal illness in 1901, a grievous loss for Maude which left a void in her life since she “had been devoted to Miss Florence. (Maude Adams, an Intimate Portrait.) In 1905, Louise Boynton assumed Lillie's special place in Maude's private world and remained there for forty-six years, during which time she “dedicated herself to Miss Adams and won her lifelong love. (same source). When Louise's death finally severed the union, Maude laid her partner to rest alongside the place where she herself would be buried two years later.” (Maude Adams, an American Idol: True Womanhood Triumphant in the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Theatre, doctoral thesis, 1984, Eileen Karen Kuehnl)

“Greatness, as an actress, was never attributed to Miss Adams as it was to Bernhardt-she was never the 'actress' that Ada Rehan was-but the daughter of Annie Adams and James Kiskadden had something of a spiritual quality that made her appear universal. The rippling laugh, the lilting voice, the odd toss of the head-these were attributes that endeared her to playgoers. On the practical side, she was the theater's star with the greatest box-office power from the time of The Little Minister in 1897 until What Every Woman Knows, eleven years later.” Matinee Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Our Theater, War Morehouse, 1949

“Maude Adam's name was enough to pack theaters, and although she shunned both press and followers, her worshipers could not resist her soft, elusive charm. 'Only a few people penetrated the wall of air with which she surrounded herself,' wrote Broadway historian and critic Brooks Atkinson.” (The Sewing Circle: Sappho's Leading Ladies, Axel Madsen, 1995)

---