'LONDON STAGE NEWS
'London, July 12 [1913] . . .
'Maud Allan, who, some four or five years ago, astonished and charmed London by her bare-footed dancing at the Palace theatre, recently returned from a long tour in South Africa. She has just taken a twenty-year lease of a wing of the Baptist college in Regent's park, where, in an enormous mirrored hall, she practises her art four hours every day. There are some, of course, who question whether this college can at the present moment be quite the place for a minister's son, but Maud assures me that, because of the arrangement of the grounds, she seldom sees any of the students. When she lived in London before, she rented an apartment in Ridgmount Gardens, on the outskirts of the Bloomsbury district. Maud, however, became so popular socially that she soon found her quarters much too small for the entertaining she was called upon to do, and her new home is the realization of her long cherished plans. She has filled the house with hundreds of interesting presents that have been showered upon her by society with a capital ''S.''
'Strangely enough, though she made her first big success in London, and played for fourteen months at the Palace theatre, she has not been seen here since. Many of us had hoped that on her return from South Africa, she would play again in London. But the truth of the matter is that there are few, if any, managers willing to pay the salary she now demands, despite the fact that she is a sure draw. When she first came to the Palace theatre, she received, I believe, about $125 a week, and when she left, she refused an offer from Klaw and Erlanger of over $1,000 a week for a tour in the United States. Now she is preparing for a tour on the continent.'
(Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Saturday, 26 July 1913, Literary, Churches, Music section, p. 4e)
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