Ida Lewis began acting at the age of 11, in 1879, when she played the part of Gamora in The Honeymoon in some amateur theatricals in her own home.

Upon her return in 1885 she joined a repertoire company in California, playing the leading female roles in a number of modern plays, among them the Galley Slave, Called Back, Two Orphans, Woman Against Woman, Captain Swift, Colleen Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue, Jim the Penman, The Silver King, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Still Alarm, Peril, Divorce, and The Private Secretary.

Later that year she went to England,[3] where she made her London debut on February 1, 1895,[5] as leading woman, next to Ellen Terry, in Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre.

She played Elaine in King Arthur; Sophia in Olivia; Queen Anne in Richard III; Rosamond in Becket; and Imogene in Cymbeline, the last said to be her greatest role.

On October 14, 1897, she presented a dramatization of Mrs Burnett's novel, A Lady of Quality, herself taking the role of Clorinda Wildairs, and fully justifying her right to appear as a star.

[7] At Covington, Kentucky, on February 23, 1898, Julia Arthur (née Ida Lewis) married Benjamin Pierce Cheney Jr., only son of the wealthy Boston expressman, whose country estate is now the Elm Bank Horticulture Center.

With her growing success on stage in America, Julia Arthur was offered a chance to perform in the fledgling motion picture industry.

She appeared in her first silent film – Barbara Frietchie: The Story of a Patriotic American Woman – in 1908 with Vitagraph Studios under director J. Stuart Blackton.

Benjamin P. Cheney Jr., died near Kingman, Arizona, on June 10, 1942[3] – ironically, alongside the tracks of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, of which he had once been a director.