San Francisco is likely soon to be inflicted with a new stage “celebrity” from which it might well be spared. 

Mrs. John Martin, who prevented the production of Margaret Mather’s version of “Cymbeline” on Monday night by causing be arrest of her leading man, E. J. Henley, on a trumpery charge, made her first appearance on the metropolitan stage this afternoon and later announced her intention of permitting San Franciscans to pronounce upon her abilities and charms.

“Since I was 12 years old,” said Mrs. John Martin today, at the close of a matinée at the Murray Hill Theater, “I have been trying to get on the stage. Before today I have acted only in Hornellsville, Elmira and Port Jervis, but it’s in the blood and I cannot help it.”

Mrs. Martin admits to 46, so it took thirty-four years for her to get before an audience of about forty people. She sat on the stage at the close of the play as the actors stepped up and received their salaries. After this distribution she said the matinée had cost her $6OO, in addition to the third of a century she had been struggling to reach the heights she attained today.

The performance was given in aid of the Cuban sick and wounded, and somebody said that a few more affairs of the kind would destroy all sympathy for the Cuban cause.

Mrs. Martin acted in a translation of the elder Dumas’ “Antony.” She called it “Adele,” and as it was acted first many years ago, probably Mrs. Martin selected it at that early age in which she first felt the dramatic afflatus. The play has aged, but it is younger today than Mrs. Martin. She has grown bulky and unwieldy.

The role of an unfaithful wife is a part she tried to act, and it is as passionate and feverish in its nature as that of the illegitimate hero of the play. Mrs. Martin is destitute of the slightest qualification for the stage. Most women who undertake what she did today have at least the advantage of youth. Mrs. Martin had not even this advantage. She had only one thing in her favor, and that was stolid assurance which nothing could ruffle.

She walked through the play like a woman in her sleep; the expression of her face never changed; the tones of her voice were invariable. She was curiously chalked and powdered until she looked like a resurrected cadaver. She was attired in a series of costumes so stale in fashion that it looked like a figure out of Godey’s Lady’s Book of the Old Time.

She appeared under all circumstances with bare neck and arms, whether she was going out for a drink or merely going from one town to another to escape her lover. Most of the time, the spectators found the exhibition pitiable, but there were moments in which it was too overwhelmingly amusing to be relieved with anything but thought.

One of these moments came when Mrs. Martin, as the distressed heroine, fainted and fell to the stage. The boards shook under her. When she began to struggle to clamber to her feet again, it was a spectacle unequaled since the Lockhart elephants retired from New York’s view.

But Mrs. Martin rarely did anything so animated during the afternoon. She simply moved clumsily through four acts, talking in a conversational monotone, which rose or fell under no stress of emotion.

She stabbed herself at the close of the play and repeated the fall, which is accomplished in such an easy, gradual way that no part of her anatomy is likely to be bruised. No safe was ever lowered from a sixteenth story window with greater precautions.

Mrs. Martin said she had expected to be arrested by E. J. Henley, and had made all arrangements to give bonds and be released. She said she would continue to act the play in San Francisco, and would like to appear here for the benefit of the poor of New York. But she is unwilling to pay the expenses again.