Morning journal and courier., 1889-02-07
THE LATE MRS. FIsKR.

I A Tribute To Her Memory-Some o1 Her Characteristics. Concerning the late Mrs. Fiske, the dra. | matist, whose remains were inferred in Hart. | ford yesterday, and whose mother, also g Hartford lady, died this week also, the | New York Evening Sun of last night says The instinct of camaraderie was very strong in her. Her life was story of good | fellowship, thoughtlessness, impulsiveness ] and generosity. She did not in her person ! ality quite suggest the woman of romance, yet her career WAS all romance, and much of ! it may not now be told. No female writer for the press was ever better known among I the rank and file of the theatrical army. She ! was their advocate always, though their | cause was not always justified by law or
 logic.
 Much that has been hastily written of her early life is inaccurate. She was born Feb. 13, 1887. It is perhaps true that she ran l away from her Hartford home to join Dan certain that before she was 20 she had made her debut on the stage of the old museum in Troy as dancer. She met Charles Kemble Fox, the low comedian, while she was trav- cling with dramatic company in the East. The brother of Americas best clown and the young Hartford girl had a short courtship and long before the '50s ended they were wed. In the true style of that day they combined their talents, and while he cut comedy capers, she danced and did Irish characters in male attire, sporting shillaleh
 and filling knee brooches.
 When Charles Fox went to stage manage the Old Bewery for his brother in '62 Mary
 Fox found new labor and plenty of it. Her
 pen was fertile and fadile, and it was put to
 work for the delight of the sturdy patrons of
 the Bowery. Nor WAS she novice at writ
 ing even then. For the New York Clipper,
 as early as 1858, she had written a number
 of serial stories, on of them ('Dick Darling'0
 attracting much attention.
 For the veteran Ned James, Sportsman, 8
 few years later, under the signature of Satan
 nella," she did dramatic criticism, wrote
 rhymes and manufactured sketches with un-
 tiring emery At the Old Bowery Fox found her
 plays useful at least. They were of course Fireman's Dog" (Jan. 4, 1864 and "The Rag Woman and Her Dog"-afford by their titles an excellent index of the Bowery taste of that era. For four years afterwa1d, or as long as the Fox brothers dominated things at the Bowery, her pen was never idle.
 Her separation from Fox (who afterward briefly married Kate Dennin); her marriage to Zeno Burnham (who is yet in this city); her work as correspondent under the initials s'M H. B." and her third marriage to Ste- phen Fiske, then manager for Augustin Daly at the Fifth avenue theater, have already been recalled in most of her obit- biographies. Twelve years ago she held in her arms her first and only child, Stephen Fiske, jr., now dead.
 It has been widely published that she once managed the Old Bowery and that besides writing it's plays she acted in them. She did neither. Her New York stage appearances had been limited to 8 brief engagement in the stock at Laura Keene's Varieties. Save "Aunt" Louisa Eldridge and Mrs. Ponisi, few of Mary Fiske's earlier friends survive her. Mrs. Eldridge and she were as sisters during a period of 30 years. Her death removes al- most the last member of that gay family of Bohemia which quarter of century ago in cluded Ada Clare, Harry Clspp, Ned Wilkins and Fitz-James O'Brien. She was also the faithful friend and one of the staunchest ad- mirers of that ill-fated genius, Adah Isaacs Meukeu,