69. On The Road with John Drew

Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of Adventures in Theater History. 

Today, I'm going to share with you another book that I found. I came across this book while looking for something else, as one often does. A familiar name popped up and that was John Drew. And of course, I always think about the Drew family and the Barrymore family.

It was a little book - It's called A Splendid Gypsy: John Drew by Peggy Wood. It was published by EP Dutton and Company in New York in the year 1928. It's a very small book. It's only about four inches by six inches. I can hold it in the palm of my hand, and it's only about, well, 60 pages long. 

(And may I just add here that when I’m using the term “gypsy,” I’m using it in its theatrical sense. It’s not meant as a slur upon the Romani people. That’s not how Peggy Wood uses it in the book, and that’s not how I’m using it here.)

So, it's not a long book to read, but it's a very interesting book, because it's about the life of the theater on tour. It's about the very last tour that the distinguished Broadway actor John Drew took, in 1927, with the production of a play called Trelawny of the “Wells.”

Now, if you know your English farce, you know that Sir Arthur Pinero wrote Trelawny of the “Wells” in 1898. It's a backstage play about a melodrama actress who falls in love with a young man and leaves the stage to live with his family. She finds the family very dull and conservative and decides to go back onto the stage, but she realizes that now she's lost that sort of passionate manner that made her such a star in the melodrama. And she can only act in more realistic drawing room comedies. So it's a play that's kind of about Theater History.

Meanwhile, her fiance has left, and he's become a star on the stage. Complications ensue. It has a cast of about a dozen people. It's a very, you know, drawing room comedy of the old English style. It was a big hit in New York in 1898, and it remained, in fact, in the general repertoire well up into the 1970s, when it was produced on Broadway.

Well, John Drew, as you may remember, made his debut at the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia in his mother's company in a play called Cool as a Cucumber. He soon left his mother's company and went to New York, and he was for a long time the star of Augustine Daly’s company, along with the great Ada Rehan - who had also gotten her start with Mrs. John Drew in Philadelphia. And even after Ada Rehan and Augustine Daly left the scene, John Drew continued as one of the stars on Broadway. Every year, he was in some distinguished comedy or drawing room piece - never a tragedian, really - but he was the Grand Old Man of American theater.

And when the next generation of his family came along, that is, the Barrymores: Ethel and John and Lionel, he was the grand old man. He was their uncle, and always showing them the right way. And he ushered Ethel into working with Charles Frohman, the great producer who had always been his producer, and then Charles Frohman shepherded Ethel Barrymore through the beginning of her career. We'll talk about that later, when we talk more about the Barrymores someday.

To my mind, the Barrymores are less of a Philadelphia family by the time they get to be famous. Ethel and John and Lionel grew up in Philadelphia, true - but they left at a fairly young age and they never really came back. They would come back to bury members of their family in Philadelphia, but they never lived there again. But they always knew that Philadelphia represented “home base.” It had very, very strong associations with their dear Mummum - even though she died in New York. They brought her back to Philadelphia for the funeral service and the burial . . .  anyway . . . 

Trelawny of the “Wells” was being produced on Broadway, and by this point John Drew is 73 years old. He'd been in the business for a long time. But he was ready to do one more last go. So, he's going to play the part of the old father in this play, along with  . . . now this is what's amazing . . . along with Blanche Whiffen. Blanche Whiffen had been in the original company of Trelawny of the “Wells”. And in fact this Trelawny of the “Wells” was billed as an “All-Star company” with John Drew, Peggy Wood, J.M. Kerrigan, Helen Gahagan (who later becomes Helen Gahagan Douglas). Other names that no one wouldn't know any more, but they were very big in their day. 

It was a fun cast - and if you're going to revive what was then, you know, a 25-26 year-old play, this was a great group to do it with. They ran for six weeks in New York in January and February, and then they decided to take the company on tour. And everyone wondered what old Mr. John Drew [would do] (“Is he going to go off on tour?) And by God, he did. 

And that is what this little book is about. It's written by Peggy Wood. Now, Peggy Wood, right? - you know her! You've seen her! She had a long career in the theater - not particularly distinguished. But you know her because she was the Mother Superior in The Sound of Music. Yes, her final screen appearance was the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. But, back in 1927, she was still a young actress, and she was asked to replace the lead actress Pauline Lord, who had played the role on Broadway, because she didn't want to go off on tour.

So at the end of this tour - the reason this tour became famous - is that at the end of the tour John Drew got sick and died. He ended up dying in San Francisco and they brought his body back to Philadelphia, where it was buried in Mount Vernon Cemetery. 

So what I'm going to do: I'm going to read you this entire book, with some elisions. Not everything in the book is still fascinating to us today, after all. But it has very interesting passages. It tells us about what life was like on the road. And it tells us what it was like for John Drew to come back for the last time to Philadelphia, where he played the Garrick Theatre. 

There's a headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer from April 5th of 1927, it says: “Stars Shine in Old Trelawny: Big Parade: Celebrities Appear in Wonderful Revival of Pinero Play - Capacity House absorbed in well-known story. High praise for its presentation.” And it begins: “Trelawny of the “Wells,” a play and four acts by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, was revived at the Garrick Theatre last night by George C. Tyler, under the direction of William Seymour, the cast: Wilton McKaye, Henrietta Crosman, Otto Kruger, John E. Kellerd, Rollo Peters, Estelle Winwood, Helen Gahagan, Peggy Wood, J.M. Kerrigan, and John Drew Jr. (and of course they call him John Drew junior because John Drew senior, although he'd been dead now for 70 years, was still a known quality in Philadelphia).

And the review . . . let me just read the notices from the Philadelphia paper . . .  It says “George C Tyler's big parade of theatrical. Celebrities last night passed in review of a capacity audience at the Garrick Theatre and “Trelawny of the Wells” lived and breathed again. In the glittering array were big stars and little stars, old stars and young stars of greater magnitude and lesser - sufficient in number to provide electrical emblazonment for a score of Broadway playhouses. Some of them entered unheralded and unrecognized of such were O.P. Heggie and Otto Kruger, so excellent were their makeups. Others came into roars of applause, among them John Drew, Mrs. Mifen, Helen Gahagan and Peggy Wood, to contrast two of the older and two of the younger of the cast. But there were also hectic hallos of greeting for Wilton Lackaye and Lawrence D’Orsay and Henrietta Crossman and Effie Shannon. Pinero's little comedy of actor folk has had several notable revivals, but none of them before with a cast of such artistic wealth and swank.”

“And how they played it from oldest to youngest, from greater star to lesser star, they swept into it and played it gloriously to the hilt. It was all very thrilling. Every one was individually and earnestly working as a cog in the machine to make Trelawney the fragrant memory it always will be after last night.”

Well, so obviously a fun night in the theater. So, let's go back now, to the beginning of this tour and I'll begin with Peggy Wood's own narration - there's a Foreword, and then there is the main body of the book. So here we go: A Splendid Gypsy, John Drew.
__________________________

This book does not pretend to be a life or history of John Drew, for the author is hardly equipped for that delightful task, but makes its bow bashfully as a record of the great actor’s last Grand Tour of the country. That tour over a route so familiar to him and so strange to the younger generation of the theater, to whom The Road is a prehistoric thing, mentioned mainly by books and members of the Players Club.

So many people living along the line of our coast-to-coast tour wanted to know how it felt to travel around the country with all those stars. How old Mrs. Whiffen really was, and what Mr. Drew was like close-to, that it became almost imperative in self-defense to write the answers out where all could read. Thus the lives and wanderings of the “Trelawny of the Wells” Company found their way into print. 

That this record became in the writing more and more of a log of Mr. Drew's company is why it is called “A Splendid Gypsy” and not something else. And perhaps you, dear reader, if you were one of those who wanted to know what he was like, may find something in it to give you a small idea of how he looked to one who was fortunate enough to be a member of that company. The parts about the rest of us, skip if you care to. We shan't feel a bit hurt. But wherever you see the name of John Drew jump out of the page as you cast a cursory eye over this little book, do stop and read. He is gone - and we shall look long and far before we see his like again. But perhaps a phrase or a paragraph here may help to keep his memory green with you. And if you never saw him at all, perhaps these pages may convey a little of the flavor of his personality or a sense of his art. 

Yet how can I presume any words of mine could succeed in either of these lofty missions? No, the best thing is to leave it to your taste and tender mercies. Here is what happened during the last engagement of John Drew, the Dean of the American Theatre, the last of the theater’s Golden Age, when glamour was glamour - here it is. I hope you will like it.

Peggy Wood, Springdale, CT, November 1927.

I had heard tales of All-Star Productions before. Wolf stories of old-timers hogging scenes, while the youngsters didn't dare peep, for fear of hurting the older actors' feelings; terrible rows over dressing rooms and scenes, or who was to have which drawing-room on trains. So it was with some trepidation I took Miss Pauline Lord's place as Imogen Parrot in the revival of Trelawny of the Wells when it left for the gala tour, after seven tremendously prosperous weeks at the New Amsterdam Theatre last spring. 

Six weeks was at first to constitute the tour, ending in Chicago's Easter Week. “But,” said Mr. Tyler, “I have just had a great idea, and if Mr. Drew and Mrs. Whiffen agree, we may do a whirlwind tour to California and back by the middle of June, sweeping across the whole country.”

“Do you think they will consider undertaking such a trip?” I asked.

“Well,” he chuckled, “I was afraid to give a Washington's Birthday Matinee for fear it might be too much for them. But of all the company, they alone protested and we played it. Now, they may be game for this.” 

As Mr. Drew was 73 and Mrs. Whiffin 82, this tour sounded pretty formidable, in spite of the assurance of a private compartment car, which we were to use as a hotel on wheels during the one night stands. But I reckoned without two regular troupers, to whom the click of the trunks of a transcontinental train was as sugar and cream to a bowl of cereal. “California, Seattle, Vancouver - why not?” they said. So, bookings were arranged, and on March 21st, we ushered in our famous tour and the vernal season in Boston. 

It was a real New England spring Day: snow and sleet. All the cast concerned in the scenes with me were called to rehearse, for I was to enter the play that night and in spite of the weather, they were there. They must have cussed me out privately, but they were all there, and I had my first taste of the real teamwork and un-ostentation of the “Greatest Aggregation of Stars ever Assembled.” 

My interpretation differed considerably from Miss Lord’s, and they had been accustomed to her for many weeks, and never once did they show annoyance of what must have been disturbing to them - difference in pace and volume and characterization - and all the little things so thoroughly upsetting in a smooth running play. 

Mr. Drew sat at the prompt table watching me during that final rehearsal. And that I seemed to win his approbation gave me courage to face the ordeal of casting myself into that group of personalities big enough to clash - but to clash in such a way as to strike fire in the performance.

It was then and there I got the feeling that this was no ordinary All Star spring revival. This was an All Star cast, yes, but topped and headed by John Drew. Somehow it was his company, not by any assumption of extra authority. On the contrary, he made a point of being only one of the cast. Not because he had been the head of his own companies for so many years that the throne was the proper place for him, for there were others there who held that right in years and distinguished service. Not because he was called the “Dean of American actors” by the press everywhere, but because of an indefinable something which drew to itself homage, admiration, humility, the recognition of greatness.

I remember years ago, William Sampson, the incomparable father in the first year and a fine character who had been at Daly’s with John Drew and Otto Rehan, said to me” “A lot of people considered John Drew mostly as a sartorial delight and tell you they'd rather see him draw on a glove than any other actor play Hamlet? Let me tell you, my lady, you get on that stage with him and see how much more there is to it than drawing on a glove”

And a fat chance of my ever doing that, I sighed. But the gods were kinder to me than I dared hope for. They fixed it so my play would flop in time for me to join Trelawney to occupy that delightful position. I therefore had occasion to recall Billy Sampson’s remark many times.

Among the younger crowd, we found ourselves marveling, perhaps more than the older members of the cast, who were long ago made familiar with that effortless, vibrant voice - so seemingly slurred in diction, yet so bitingly clear, even to the last row of the house. That intuitive yet sharply intelligent timing, which made his points. That ever changing, it never varying method of attack, always newly colored, with some Drew arriere-pensee, yet ever the same characterization - prismatic in the changing light, yet clear as crystal. Eric Dressler, playing Arthur Gower, told me the second act was always a joy to him, in spite of the fact he thought Arthur a dreadful sap, because of Mr. Drew's performance each night. And he found he waited nightly for the chill which involuntarily went down his spine, when old Sir William Gower ordered his grandson to the library for a bad quarter of an hour, with an ominous: “Now.” 

We marveled too, and adored his running fire of sotto voce comment throughout the play, mostly caustic, usually witty, yet never interfering with his playing: The weather, the audience, the town, the idiosyncrasies of his fellow artists. Whether or not Lawrence D’Orsay would get a hand in his first speech, how he felt - all these were woven into an amusing lining of the garment he showed to the footlights.

Effie Shannon used to say his comments while supposedly asleep under a newspaper, used to tax her control to the point of explosion. To those actors who take themselves, their moods and their art so seriously on the stage, what a shock he would have been! But after all, it is only those who can walk up to an art and pull its nose, who really have any mastery of it.

Boston took to us so kindly, we were forced to give an extra matinee - a taste of many to come on our tour, as far as Minneapolis, we were reminded, there once more that it was not for nothing we often got mail on our tour,addressed “Care of John Drew's company.” For, bill the names as they might - in equal sized type - his personality and his greatness towered over all in the minds of the public as well as in our own. 

In one of the towns in the Middle West, two elderly women asked at the box office if “Mr. Drew was being starred there that night?” They were told Mr. Drew was one of the many stars in the cast, but he was to be in the play there, yes. That was what they meant. He was playing there, therefore he was starred. As for others, it didn't matter! 

From Boston, we journeyed to Washington. Not, however, in our private compartment car. On this trip, I discovered the D’Orsays, Mr. and Missus, traveled with their entire family: a canary bird, which they had brought all the way from England.

Their arrival at the station, in fact, at any station, any time along the tour caused quite a flurry. It took them, as always, the form of a procession: First came a redcap, staggering under many English kit bags. Then Mrs. D’Orsay and the bird - and about ten feet back of her, Mr. D’Orsay, with a bouquet of flowers. And from the early spring tulips of Saint Louis - our farthest south - to the golden Scotch broom of Vancouver, he was never without his shower bouquet at a railway station.

In Washington, President Mrs. Coolidge came to our opening with their son, and the president astounded us by upsetting all the traditions. He both laughed and applauded. Later, the story went round that Mister Drew saw him next day, and was greeted with these words: “Well, Mr. Drew, I never expected to see you again!”

Here Mr. Drew was persuaded by resident photographers to sit for some new pictures and among his other activities, including special matinees and much social life, he managed to find time to do so. As soon as the proofs came, he surprised me - by sending them to my dressing room, asking me to show them to Helen Gahagan, and between us to decide which we thought the best-looking.

We were, of course, touched and charmed at his request, and chose several, one of which we assured him made him look quite the jeune premier. “That's the one we'll have then,” he replied, beaming at the phrase.

And weeks later in Vancouver, on the last day he played on any stage, he sent me one of the jeune premier - his latest photograph. He telephoned in the morning, with his usual thoughtfulness, to see whether my trunks had gone or not. If not, and I had room for it, he would send it down by his valet. You may imagine how I treasure it. 

But to return to Washington - which by the way, the house manager wanted us to do, for we played to the staggering sum of $45,000 there that week - all the world turned out to see us, and Mr. Drew had to make a curtain speech each night. How deftly he handled those curtain calls, judging just how many he'd give before capitulating with the speech. You in the audience - he made you work for that speech! The stage manager waited for his signal before bringing the curtains up and down. Mr. Drew never tried to run up a large tally for the office report, but waited until he could. Keep an audience no longer making them do the insisting and finally giving in. Then quietly, not in the vibrant voice of the old Vice Chancellor, but in a more gentle tone, he would acknowledge with dignity the plaudits of the people. He disliked speeches and was always embarrassed about them, although he must have made a million more or less in his career. But he usually gave some charming variant of his thanks for their appreciation, saying “No matter how hard he might try to scale the heights of eloquence, the sum and substance of it all would be from my colleagues and myself simply: We thank you.” 

We used to wait in the wings to hear him every night, never tiring of seeing and hearing him handle an audience, never once thinking perhaps someone else might make the speech some time. It was his due and his place as head of the company. For we, more and more, acknowledge that place to him each day of our association. 

Washington filled our houses with many older folks, some of whom the manager said he hadn't seen in his theater for ten years. And as for Boston, her famous “Gray Heads” were out in full force. But Mrs. Whiffen - “the Rock of Gibraltar,” our stage manager called her, never did she miss a cue or fumble the lines, never varied in the amount of energy she gave to each scene. She was never too tired to run - Yes, run! - across the stage in the first act to throw open a window and look out on an Imaginary Imogen and parrot standing on the doorstep below, while Imogen In The Flesh stood in the wings, a little moist about the eyes, always, at the sight of that tiny figure in its hoop skirts and old-fashioned bonnet trotting across the stage so gayly, and yet so indomitably indestructible by Time. 

Her exit in Act Three, swinging her skirts in haughty disdain, never failed to get a hearty hand in a gentle “oh!” from the audience, which was eloquent of the quick tears and laughter in the eyes and hearts of all who saw her. A wave of tenderness welled over the footlights towards that little soul, so dear, so true. So brave, playing every night at 82, with a youth that is unquenchable.

“Whiffy” was Mr. Drew's name for her, and at the end of the third act, he always called her out for her bows with him, with a “Come on Whiffy! And those two. hand in hand, received the roars of applause. 

Our next stand, Philadelphia, was just the plain “hanging up on hooks” you read about. We felt like Sonny, George White’s Scandals, and Lulu Belle all rolled into one so far as business went. Four matinees that week - two of them regular, and two extra! Our manager had asked Mr. Drew if he could stand it.

“And why not? I'm a young man. I can, if Whiffy can!” Whiffy could, and did.

Here Mr. Drew was in his hometown, playing again in the city where he had begun his career, fifty-four years before, in Cool as a Cucumber at his mother's theater on Arch Street. 

In his curtain speech that night, he made a graceful gesture to that memory. “Here, where first I tried my ‘prenticed hand,” we heard him say, as we hung over the balcony rails outside our dressing room, to listen to the thunders of applause for him. It crashed through the auditorium of the old Garrick, and rumbled backstage. 

Before leaving Philadelphia, I'd like to add that Mr. Drew told me he was staying over on Sunday to go out to see his grandniece, Miss Ethel Barrymore Colt, perform in a school function. “For,” he said, smiling, “They all tell me she's pretty good!” 

Baltimore, our next stop, gave us a taste of the Spring we were to follow to the Pacific Northwest, keeping pace with the tulips and lilacs as they bloomed their way North. I have always wanted to make an epicurean journey, following the strawberry season, from the Gulf to Canada. The Grand Tour didn't exactly follow that ambition, but I can truthfully say I've had enough asparagus, for once. 

One thing, though, could not be escaped: autographs. Droves of schoolgirls with memory books, old timers with programs of the first “Trelawney” cast, stage-door men with autographs of Fanny Davenport, Booth and Bernhardt, theater enthusiasts with elaborate scrapbooks, bound copies of the play all open for us, please, to “sign our names, if it wouldn't be too much trouble!” One woman proudly told us she had 450 autographs, including seven presidents, and that shaking hands with all of them. Our hands had to be shaken too. 

Once, during the supper scene, a piece of bread bounced off the stage into the lap of a man sitting directly in front of the footlights -for the orchestra had been removed to make room for extra chairs - and Mr. Lakaye said aloud, wearily: “Tell him to send it round, and we'll autograph it.” 

Pittsburgh was our next stand before Chicago, but nothing of importance occurred there except for a record-breaking matinee - $6000, I think it was. It was Easter morning when our compartment car, which took us from there across the country, pulled into Chicago. 

Chicago met us with a thrilling first night audience. All our friends turned up in regiments. There was a Drama League luncheon for all of us. Clubs feted Mr. Drew. There were extra matinees and crowds of standees. It was truly a gala week. The town itself is an exhilarating place anyway. For all its smoke and dirt, somehow it is the one city in America truly thrilling - deliberately making itself beautiful, a woman decking herself out in buildings and parks and boulevards, stretching voluptuously to watch her trailing train of golden sequins along the lake. 

Mrs. Whiffen said, “Oh, how different it is from the first time I saw this city. My dear, I arrived in this town three weeks after the fire!”

I gasped. Not the Chicago Fire?, I thought. Frantically I cast my mind about, for dates - a hopeless task for me - 1860?, no, that was the civil war . . .  and she was still speaking. “. . . and I said to the cab man, I said, how on Earth can you find your way? It was nothing but chaos in every direction. No streets, nothing!” 

Was it 1871? That was it - Mrs. O'Leary's cow! I felt a strange, arresting thing happening to me. As if time had said: “Oh, wait a minute”, and it laid a hand on my shoulder. This woman - this living quick-speaking bright-eyed person before me, had stepped through the still warm cinders of the Chicago Fire. As a grown woman and was here telling me about it. 

On leaving Chicago, we turned our car toward the flood district so as to get as far as South of Saint Louis and then zigzag our way back and forth in the Middle W for two weeks of one night stand. That was the uninteresting part of the trip. Dull, hot and in spots not too good as to business. 

From Milwaukee, we again doubled on our tracks, but this time it was really Westward, Ho! Our next stops being Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Almost none of the younger crowds so recent in theater experience had been that far West, for the road in the past few years had been pretty slim picking, and Minnesota is a long way from Broadway. But the older members of the cast  were well acquainted in all of the big and little cities, where for years they had stood ‘em up. Effie Shannon and Henrietta Crossman were greeted by the welcoming applause of people who had been seeing them for years. John Kelliher and Wilton Lakaye were vociferously hailed as old friends, no matter where they went. As for Mr. Drew, everywhere, people all turned out to see him. 

It was that first performance in Minneapolis, [that] I heard Mr. Drew say to Mrs. Whiffen, as he came round backstage for his cue: “Whiffy, I did an old man trick today. I wrenched my knee as I stepped out of the car. It hurts like the devil. And I creak when I sit down. Makes me furious to limp like this.” 

Mrs. Whiffen was all bird-like concern and full of remedies, which he promised to apply. Next day he complained a little more. As he came across stage I noticed he was shaking in a chill. The theater was damp and cold and he was dressing in the property room - for there was no other place but the cellar - and I feared he had caught cold. But he assured me later he was quite all right. 

Next day we set off on our longest jump West, to Spokane. We hoped Louise Drew, who joined us in Milwaukee to be with her father, would solve the dilemma. At stops such as Billings, Montana and other transcontinental watering places. We got out to stretch our legs, cast, crew and the D’Orsay bird. Mr. Drew visited up and down the car, calling on Mrs. Whiffin, as was his custom on every jump and stopping for a word with each of us. Once he got out to stretch his knee, which was still bothering him and held his wrist up to the healing sunlight. For he said it also pained him. “Now all this is nonsense”, he added. “I never had rheumatism in my life.” 

The next day in Spokane. We were disturbed to hear it had taken three people to assist him from his cab. On questioning him that night, he admitted he felt pretty achy. Then, characteristically, he grinned and added “I shan't have to assume my old man walked for Sir William tonight!” He always bent his knees a little to simulate the walk of a very old gentleman. At Seattle, Bee Drew, as she is affectionately called by all, overrode her father's opposition and called the doctor. And that night, Uncle John told Whiffy, as he waited for his entrance in the third act: “Doctor says it's acute arthritis, and that time I thought I wrenched my knee was really a twinge. That's what Ethel had, you know.” By Ethel, he meant Miss Barrymore. 

We were all concerned and relieved to hear a nurse had been engaged to give him treatment. Gallant gentleman that he was, he was as much perturbed to find old Mrs. Whiffen had to walk up a flight of stairs to her dressing room. The theater wouldn't run the elevator except for trunks, of course, and insisted he must change with her, in spite of his bad knee. 

It was here we decided to have a company party on our free Sunday in Victoria, British Columbia, and put up a message on the call board to that effect. Mrs Whiffen was the first to say she'd come. But Mr. Drew, after advice, decided he'd better rest for the Monday performance. 

The rest of the cast all accepted. It was to be a Dutch treat, of course, and we planned a simple party. We knew the tour would be too soon over, now. That San Francisco and Los Angeles would be full of friends claiming the time and attention of us all that we never have another good chance really to get together. And as I have remarked, we were all friends, and we were even all speaking to one another. 

But here the first shadow of approaching tragedy reached us. It was my fate to be the unwilling witness to its onslaught. Coming downstairs for a scene in the third act, my maid maneuvering the great red taffeta hoops around the sharp corners. I arrived at the stage floor and glanced in at the open door of Mr. Drew's dressing room, where he was always to be seen, reading, for he had a long wait off stage. 

But this time my heart stood still. For as I looked, I saw that his paper was sliding from his lap and he himself was slipping unconscious to the floor. 

Emmett, his valet, rushed to the tap for water and then back again, trying to keep Mr. Drew from falling. Quickly, I turned and sent my maid for aromatic spirits of ammonia, but Estelle Winwood's maid, who was just back of us, ran like lightning to her room, a flight nearer - and was back quickly with ammonia and camper. I ran backstage and sent for Mr. Kiraly, our manager, for I knew Mr. Drew had an entrance in ten minutes and if he couldn't make it, somebody would have to tell the audience why. And I found the stage manager and we caught Emmett off for Bee, the Doctor and Peter Heggie - who was to play Sir William in case of Mr. Drew's illness. 

By this time he had regained consciousness and asked the maid what she was doing there. And where was Emmett? Quickly, she answered: she had sent Emmett out for news of the fight, didn't he remember? (It was the night of the Sharkey-Maloney fight.) “Oh, oh, yes, yes,” he said. “Who won?” 

My own entrance curtailed any further activities on my part, and I went on - weak in the knees, thinking of everything but my lines. Would Mr. Kiraly be in the wings in time to go on, and announce the news to the audience? Or would they bring down the curtain? At last, my exit came and I stumbled off. I ran towards the dressing room. They had found Bee, who was getting the doctor. Mr. Kiraly was in the doorway, and Mr. Drew was dressed and on his way to play his scene!

Dumbfounded at his recovery, his indomitable willpower to go on, we listened to his lines come almost as strong as usual. We feared to look. He was sustaining himself against the table with a shaking hand, but that voice did not shake, nor did he lose a line. Silently we looked at one another, long looks, and turned our eyes away, not daring to speak. He finished the performance as usual. 

Next day he was much, much better and scoffed at his sickness. So we made our boat trip to Victoria Light heartedly. That voyage was like a weekend excursion. We were as excited as if we were setting off for Japan. But our landing and first sight of Victoria itself, I shall never forget. By the time we had run out of adjectives, our private room and dinner were ready, and we corralled the rest of the gypsies. Bee Drew left us, saying she would love to come, but that she was going to dine upstairs with her father in about 10 minutes. 

Later, she called me on the phone and said, “Papa wants to know if you can have two extra places laid without any trouble. He wants to come to the party.” Could we? Well, rather! And rousing cheers greeted his appearance. We knew how he loved to party - and Bee whispered to us. “He just couldn't bear to miss this one.” 

So with John Drew at the head of our table, and Mrs. Whiffen at the foot, twenty of us sat down to dinner - for the manager and even the boy who sold programs were there. Kruger brought his portable phonograph and we danced. Mrs. Whiffen, too. We laughed, we told stories, we talked shop. We were show folks among our own. “Gypsies,” Pinero calls us. It is a very happy memory.

In Vancouver, Mr. Drew was much improved in spirit, although somewhat feebler in body. Once more, he began to kid during the performance. Once more, he waggled his lower jaw at us off-stage and with seeming ferocity, warning us under his breath to look out for “that old man wubber-jaw.” Business was rotten, but we didn't care. Our Uncle John was better. 

We played but three performances there, and during the third, word went round that Mister Drew couldn't play. The next three days in Portland, but would go on to San Francisco, have the abscessed teeth that were poisoning him out and opened in San Francisco with us. We were so relieved to have him take this rest, and O.P. Heggie was most willing to take the burden of Sir William off his shoulders. 

Then a moment later, those playing in scenes with him began to come off looking serious and saying. Mr. Drew was wretched tonight, worse than ever. He had started the performance in his old spirit, but his wrists were swelling visibly and rapidly, and he seemed suddenly to grow old and thin and gray before our eyes. Each speech was harder, more effort, slower, as if he gathered his forces from far off and took a long time to marshall them - till we’d break in and take the burden of the speech from him. Our hearts said: “Yes. Save him.” Our heads didn't dare. He was King and Captain. Who were we to intrude? He was so weak. We felt as if we were holding him up with our eyes alone -that if we took them away for an instant, he would fall. 

Anxiously, we rang up on the fourth act, playing as quickly as we could to get him home to bed, helping him in all the little ways we knew, loving him. He did not raise his eyes now from the floor, and played as if by reflex. 

“Effortless,” indeed. There was no strength now for any effort. That voice still cut through bitingly to the last row. His technique carried him through the words and the motions of the part he loved. Perhaps we showed our concern to the audience, I don't know. I hardly know anything about that performance, except that picture of Kerrrigan coming off, fighting back the tears, crying, “It's . .  it's too much!” 

At one dramatic moment, Mr. Drew's exit in the middle of the act, “Obleege me with your arm, sir,” says Sir William to Wrench. “I'll go to my box” - and goes off stage. 

There was never applause on this exit that I can remember. But on that night, as he moved slowly off into the haloing light of a 1000-watt lamp, my heart said to me: “Be still. You're seeing John Drew make his last exit.” 

The audience must have felt it, too. For an electric something seemed to pass through it, hushing it for a long moment. Then came a thundering round of applause, as if they were saying: “Well done, Sir. Hail, and farewell.”

That was his last performance on any stage. And though I didn't hear it, he did not leave without a flicker of his old self, sick as he was. For Eric Dressler, much nearer to him than I, told me he heard him add: “I'll go to my box, sir. My wooden box!” 

The next day, on the train, he was again better, and sputtering against his enforced lay-off. “Here I am,” he raged, “incapacitated, a sick man - and look at her!” He pointed an accusing finger at Mrs. Whiffen, fresh as a cricket. 

We left him at the station in Portland, where he changed trains to go on to San Francisco. 

And that was the last any of us saw of John Drew. For when we arrived in San Francisco, we found, contrary to our hopes, that he would not be able to open with us. John Kelliher made the announcement to the audience, adding that we expected to have him back again during the week. 

But things took a more serious turn. The septic poisons had attacked his heart. He was running a high temperature and we - none of us - were allowed to see him. O.P. Heggie carried on as Sir William - for as Mr. Drew said: “The show must go on.” Heggie gave a delightful performance but was utterly miserable playing the part. 

What happened from then on is somehow of little moment. The Grand Tour was over. Mr. Drew did not rejoin us, and it was with heavy heart that we went on to Los Angeles without him. The handwriting was on the wall. We all read it clearly. 

There had been talk of additional weeks in Chicago and Cleveland after the stated tour, but these were now canceled. A great many of the cast wanted to take them over cooperatively, but what was the use? The head and mainstay was not there, and we might say we were an “All Star cast” till we were blue. The fact remained that we were Mr. Drew's company. And proudly I shall bear that title all my days. 

I shall always remember that it was my privilege to get on that stage with him. As Billy Sampson said in this, his last tour, this sweep of the country from Boston to Vancouver, flinging in a last gesture, broad as those he used on the stage. A fine farewell, in one of the great performances of the American Theater. 

Anxiously, we scanned the papers each day, dreading the inevitable news which has come now, as I write. 

I know each one of us, of that company, has let those tragic words fall slowly to his lap, and with dimmed eyes look back over these past weeks. 

I can hear Mattie, the property man, now saying: “I've been with him all, and I tell you, John Drew's got class. There's a real guy.” And George, the electrician, who had been with him for years (I suspect he got his passion for shirts from Mr. Drew). I can see him shake his head in sorrow: “John Drew is gone. When shall we see his like again?”

A great actor, a fine friend, a gallant gentleman. And, in the words of Sir William Gower describing Kean, the idol of his youth, those words we heard him say so many times: “He was a Splendid Gypsy!” 

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And that's the end of Peggy Wood's little book about John Drew. 

Thank you for coming along with us on another Adventure in Theater History: Philadelphia!