Adah Isaacs Menken

A carte-de-visite portrait of the actress Adah Isaacs Menken (1825-1868).

She died in Paris on 10 August 1868. The following text is her obituary from an English newspaper:

'Yesterday afternoon the well known Adah Isaacs Menken - after having suffered severely for many weeks from disease of the lungs - quietly passed away without mental or physical pain, at half-past two, at her hotel in Paris, in the presence of two or three friends. According to her own statement, made some months ago when she was delivering a lecture, she was born in New Orleans in the spring of 1844. Her father Ricardo Fuertos, a Spanish Jew, was a merchant in that city. Her mother was a native of Bordeaux. Her maiden name was Dolores Adios Feurtos. By the death of her father she was left an orphan at the age of two, and then was taken by her mother to Cuba, where she was brought up in the family of a rich planter. By and bye [sic] her mother died, and finally her benefactor, leaving her, then aged 13, the bulk of his estate. A suit was initiated in the law courts by the heir-at-law, and the will was set aside. Left utterly unprovided for she turned her attention to the stage, and at the age of 14 came out at a theatre in New Orleans, her native city, as a dancer. Her success was flattering in the extreme, and for upwards of a year she continued this vocation, appearing in the principal theatres in the Southern States, and once in Havannah, where she again experienced ill-treatment at the hands of the possessors of her benefactors property. Afterwards she aspired to higher walks of the drama, and played [...] many other parts in tragedy and serious drama, with more or less success.

'About this time she married Mr John Isaac Menken, and thus, changing her second name Adios to the English Adah, acquired the name she has borne till her death. Before the American war broke out she again married, this time Mr Robert H. Newill, of the New York Saturday Mercury. [...] This alliance, like one or two others which it is still less pleasant to dwell upon, was ill-assorted, and speedily resulted in separation and divorce. She seems to have followed the axiom laid down in words she often spoke jestingly, "It is well to marry young and, if possible, often."

'At the commencement of the civil war she evinced strong Southern sympathies, and on one occasion, when acting at Pittsburgh, she was arrested on a charge of rebellious conduct, and actually imprisoned, with some barbarity for 30 days, when she was sent under guard to Louisville. The offence was, that seeing three men who looked like Southerners in distress at the hotel in Pittsburgh, she sent some bottles of wine to them accompanied by her card, bearing in pencil these words, "To the health of Jeff. Davis."

'After this affair she came to England and played a wonderfully successful engagement at Astley's; then to the provinces, and finally to the Continent, where, except for a few months last winter, she has lived ever since, making Paris her home. Had she been spared life and health she would have played at the Chatelet, in a new drama called Theodorus, written by M. Henri Rochefort, the clever journalist and editor of La Lanterne.

'Throughout her life she professed the Jewish creed, and only a few months ago expressed a strong wish to be buried according to its customs, with nothing to mark her resting place beyond a plain piece of wood with the words, "Thou knowest."

'Few women have been more maligned, few are among us of so noble a heart and so generous a nature. She was known well by but few, but those few will always retain a pleasant remembrance of her, and ever have a tender thought and a kind word for the memory of Adah Isaacs Menken' (London Evening Standard, 11 August 1868, paragraphs added).

Photographed by Charles Reutlinger of Paris.