The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1915-10-05
ROMANTIC CAREER
OF FORTUNES TOY
NEVER HAS A WOMAN CROWDED
INTO A BRIEF span OF LIFE
MORE EXPERIENCES.
SHEgWAS A PERPETUAL ENIGMA

Into and Out of Matrimony.
Thou art fair in the fearless old
fashion,
And thy limbs are as melodies yet
When these are gone by with their
glories
What shall rest of thee then, what
remain?
o Mystic and Sombre Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.
Nearly half a century has gone
since Adah Isaacs Menken's great
heart was stilled in her beautiful
body; but her memory is enshrined
in the haunting beauty of Swim
burne's verses, as in the hearts of
some still living whose privilege it
was to know her in the glorious
prime of her loveliness.
lowered with the heart of child
and the brain of a clever man Adah
was as much the mystery and mar
vel of her own age as Of ours-a
human enigma as perplexing as she
was fascinating. Scnolar and slave
of the senses, poetess and free liver,
she would leave he homage of Swim
burne and Theophile Gautier for the
coarse companioinship of prize fight
ers and tavern loungers.
A Perpetual Enigma.
At one moment she would dazzle
the world by the brilliance of her in
tellect; the next she would shock it
by her fragrant defiance of decorum.
With the Hottest ideals or love and
consistency she changed her husbands
as lightly as she changed her gowns;
and though she lived in a shower of
gold she died a pauper in a Paris at
tic. But through all her inconsist-
encies she remained the same adora-
BILE woman, reaping from high and
low rich harvests of homage and af-
lection.
Never, surely, has woman crowded
into a brief span of life more varied
and romantic experience. The child
of struggling parents of New Orleans,
Adah lost no time in embarking On
her adventurous life career. We see
her, a child of 8, dancing and sing
ing her pretty way into all hearts on
the vaudeville stage, filling her wild
owed mothers purse with we'll earn
ed dollars, and spending her few leis-
ure hours in studying four languages
and translating Homer's Iliad.
From state to state she made her
triumphant progress, turning heads
everywhere by her witcheries. At
Havana, where she sang and danced
in the cafes chantants, she was hail
ed as Queen of the Plaza" gold and
jewels were showered into her lap,
and the youth of Cuba flocked to her
feet like moths to a candle-t1ame.
And it was here that Adah gave her
heart to the first of her many hus-
bands, "a nobody who treated her
cruelty before abandoning her"
Bride of an Indian Chief.
But Adah was no girl to break her
heart over any man, and we soon find
her back in the states, varying the
editing of a newspaper with the man
agement of a ranch, an occupation
which she found more risky than
profitable One day her ranch was
raided by rowing Indians, her cattle
were killed, and she herself was car
ried off q prisoner, to become the
bride of the chief of the tribe. Three
months of life in a native village fol-
lowed before she galloped away, car
rying a merry face and a light heart
to Texas, where we find her teaching
languages in a girls school and writ
ing her first volume of poems.
Undaunted by her experiences Of
the altar we soon see her wearing
bridal veil for one Menken, a hand
some Jewish composer, who is said to
have been the only man she ever
really loved, and whose name she
carried to her grave. A brief period
of happiness followed, with journal
istic work, more stage triumphs, and
sculpture to fill her days, until Adah,
wearying of her dark-eyed husband
as she wearied of all others, left him
to give her hand (for the fourth
time) to John G. Heenan, the worlds
most famous "bruiser, then fresh
from his world-famOus encounter
with Tom Sayers.
But the man of mighty muscle
proved no more able to hold the elus-
i've Adah than his predecessors, and
within a short time we see her wear
ing bridal fnery first for Orpheus
Kerr, the clever satirist of the Amer
lean civil war, then for James Bar
clay, a well-gilded stock broker, who,
after squandering his gold on her for
three infatuated months washed his
hands of her in the divorce court.
Thus merrily did Adah dance her
way into and out of matrimony and
sip the varied sweets of life, carry
ing a smiling face to each new adj
venture and finding no true satisfac-
ton in any of them, as she confesses
in those pathetic lines of her;
Ny heritage is to live within
The marts of pleasure and of pain,
yet be
No willing worshipper at either
shrine;
To think and speak and act, not for
my pleasure
But others-Fortune' toy
And yet no woman ever drank