A Dangerous Woman

The world stage at any given moment is and remains brightly lit for some, for others it goes dark. Such was the case with Adah Issacs Menken (1835-1868) who was one of the nineteenth century's most famous and notorious performing artists and now is virtually a footnote. But not for long if Michael and Barbara Foster's new biography of their subject's "Life, Loves, and Scandals" finds its way into the general public.

Born to a Creole mother in Louisiana, she got her start riding bareback in a Texas circus, "married" five times - the second husband from whom she took her name and religion (Judaism), the third, a boxing champion, whose association helped launch her fame - before finding a role of a lifetime as a cross-dressing Prince, in the eponymous dramatization of Byron's Romantic hero, Mazeppa. The part required her to "climb a stage mountain strapped [scantily clad] to a runaway steed." This she did repeatedly for the better part of seven years across two continents, attracting wildly enthusiastic responses - which continually escalated - wherever she went.

She performed in an era when melodrama, quick change acts, and equestrian dramas were all the rage for theater audiences and she was on stage as a headliner for many of them before and after she struck it big. By all accounts she delivered an accomplished performance in the accepted manner of the day. These included sculpted stage views, attitudes, hand flourishes, and heightened emotions, articulated with a very beautiful voice. According to someone who met her, she spoke with "the softest, sweetest sound of an aeolian [sic] harp." The serious dramatic roles that she sought never came along, though; neither did the opportunity to establish her talent as a major writer.

The Fosters' account of her outsized life, which was ended prematurely by tuberculosis at the young age of 33, is a popular biography, bordering on a show-biz bio; that is to say, the authors fill up their bright canvas with contributions from several well known sources, a few lesser known works, some selected correspondence, and modern theorizing to make the case that The Menken was "America's Original Superstar." In addition to performing, she wrote poetry - some very bad early rhyming pieces and some (it seems to me) accomplished later prose-poems and mystical works. She hobnobbed with many very big names including Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Walt Whitman, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti on their way up and Charles Dickens, Algernon Swinburne, and Alexander Dumas (whose father was a man of color and a Napoleonic general) at their peak of fame. No account of this time would be complete without George Sand and we find her here also.

Certainly her celebrity is established and it seems that every special interest group wants to claim her as a member - feminist, African American, Jewish, Irish American, and Gay & Lesbian, to name a few. The authors cheerfully oblige all who view her as one of their own, providing whatever information in support on which they can lay their hands or conjecture. Her early years are murky, and the historical record is clouded by Adah's own reminiscences and those of her self-interested colleagues, but we can be willing to accept it all without detriment to her status or accomplishments.

The rush to capitalize on her name started early. Books came hot off the presses following her death, memoirs and fiction in which she lived on in the imagination, as well as séances where, with the aid of mediums, she lived on in the spirit. Hollywood has long taken note and A Dangerous Woman - code for prostitute - comes supplied with references to vehicles Tinseltown used to take advantage of her fame.

As is fitting for this subject, the authors are at their best when delineating the dramatic elements of Adah's life, especially where they are documented. The events surrounding the Heenan-Sayers world championship fight and Adah's tour and the historical accounts of the Wild West are vivid as they are informative. Less successful are the early years where they offer conjectures regarding her past or the later episodes where they speculate on her motivations and influences going forward. There are altogether too many sentences written in the conditional tense (may, might, probably, could have, etc.). And the use of an omniscient, overly familiar narrative voice in nonfiction popularized by Edmund Morris and Robert Woodward undermines the credibility, if not the rhythm of the narrative, which in this case should speak for itself. Particularly when it comes to sexuality, they are always on the scene. Also the writers display another modern tendency: to weigh Victorian morality using the scales of 20^th-21^st century. Who knows how our own moral norms will be called into question in the future?

Still, if you read critically you're likely to find a wealth of entertaining information at your fingertips. Always a quick study as an actor, Adah picked-up the parts of Poetic Muse, Hebrew Heroine, and a Boxer's Wife, along with a Prose Poet, Confederate Spy and the Cossack Prince and made them her own. She stormed through a cavalcade of "husbands" (there were no legal divorce records for the first two spouses, leading one wit to refer to her as a trigamist), male and female lovers and a boatload of money before giving up the ghost. There's an exciting tale, perhaps a tall tale at points, but a cautionary one in A Dangerous Life that was Adah's: Never get trapped in your roles. Lady Gaga, if you are reading these lines, take note!