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The Portsmouth Music Scene |
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Ada Ward
Imagine, if you will, Emma Watson announcing that she was giving up acting for religion – well, that level of shock was felt when Ada Ward, an actress at the height of her fame, did just that in 1897. Lauded for her stagecraft, the Portsmouth-born performer was sought after by companies in the UK, the US and especially in Australia. Her depiction of Lady Isabel in the hugely popular melodrama, East Lynne, was considered the definitive performance. But she gave it all up to join the Salvation Army.
Ada had attended a meeting at the Lake Road barracks in January where she described a vision of Christ appearing before her. After seeing out her contract in March with a final performance of the Forger's Wife at the Prince's Theatre, also in Lake Road, Ada presented all her theatrical goods to the stage company and donned the Salvation Army uniform.
The descriptions of her life Ada gave were sometimes contradictory or seemingly embellished. Although believed to be Portsmouth born, she described her childhood as being firstly in Dublin and then in a convent school in Paris. This time was either deadly dull or the best education possible depending on the interview. She then said she was an ambulance driver during the siege of Paris before taking up acting. Her first husband was an apparent rogue who robbed her blind and her second died from a fever in South Africa.
Her maiden sermon after her conversion was in Portsmouth on the same day she retired from the stage and was standing room only. The Army regarded Ada as a literal Godsend - using her to evangelise around the globe - but within a decade the relationship was strained. Ada resented that she was kept at a low level in the Army despite her evangelical success ministering to packed congregations.
Ada had berated her former acting colleagues about the immorality of the stage in an address in Portsmouth in 1899 and was roundly booed. But in 1912, back in Australia, she reported a complete break with the Salvation Army and a return to acting, describing the Army leaders as 'Pharisees and hypocrites' who lived well off the backs of those like her. She also felt she was never accepted fully because of her stage background.
Little is known about Ada after this time. She never regained the fame she enjoyed in the late 19th Century and died in obscurity.
Ward was twice married, divorcing one husband and outliving the second, a fellow member of the theatre company she was in, who sadly died of fever in South Africa while she was fulfilling engagements in Australia.
Over the course of a career of 20 years, she played many emotional parts, though her best role was generally believed to be that of "Lady Isabel", in East Lynne.
There is also a suggestion that she was born in Dublin
Maybe she was one of these?
Births Mar 1863 WARD Ada Adelaide Portsea 2b 438
  
 Brisbane 18-4-1897 --------------- NZ TRUTH ISSUE 99, 11 MAY 1907, PAGE 7 |