Facing a Major Decision

The difficult days at the Park had seen no love lost between them, but in justice to Macready's skill as an artist--and recognizing a salable idea--Charlotte penned her sentiments for the press. Her poem in the Anglo-American saluted the worthy artist, if not the prickly man:

Macready, if my muse seem all too tame,
To sketch aright the thoughts I would reveal,
Let not the heart be censured, for the blame
That hand may not indite the half I feel;
For, as I write, across my memory steal
The seasons when I in thy conquests shared
And know how vain, yet earnest was the zeal
With which I strove, although all unprepared.
To compass the proud, my wild ambition dared.
Long after thou hast left us, men will speak
Of thine all matchless skill, thy well stored mind
As kindling memories about them break
The spells, which erring prejudice would wind;
Then will thy name be in all hearts enshrined
Thy genius well-remembered; and thy name
Placed among those wonderous teachers of mankind,
Who ever may a world's high reverence claim
And e'en midst change of time be still revered the same.¹

Irksome as she found the man, honesty forced her to admit publicly that her contact with the difficult Englishman had opened to her "a mine of depth and power,"² though speaking practically, it seemed to have done little else. Back in Philadelphia, she wrote a troubled letter to Chippendale describing the incredible aftermath of her run with Macready: "I am more closely quartered in money matters than I have been in the last two years--They did not pay me at all at the Park and I have not had a cent since my return . . . I am almost crazy--no salaries paid here for four weeks."³ When Macready concluded his American tour, he took back to England the magnificent trove of $30,000. Charlotte could not dispute the rumor that the actor's name should be spelled "Magreedy."⁴ Such were the wages of stardom.

To eke out pennies, she sold more poems. Magazines and papers like The Ladies' Companion, The Knickerbocker, The New World, and Graham's published her verses on subjects ranging as widely as the recent death of Henry Ware, Jr., her old minister at Second Church; Oliver Cromwell at the coffin of Charles I; and the austere Shakers she had visited near Albany.

Backstage, in the rare interludes when Macready had relaxed his arrogance, Charlotte had mentioned the increasing woes of Fanny Kemble, blaming Pierce's "fickleness and infidelity."⁵ But Macready had talked with the incorrigible Fanny in Philadelphia: "I have seen enough to satisfy me there has been enough at home to drive a loving heart from home," he told his diary.

Now Fanny poured out her marital griefs to Charlotte. "I was coming to see you today as your appearance in church on Sunday made me aware of your return to town. Your good wishes are not lost, for such prayers are twice blessed and the kindness and consideration you show for me will, I hope, be repaid to you a thousand fold at your need, which I sincerely hope may never be such as mine. Thank you thank you for your sweet flowers. They are the only bright things which will belong to this birthday of mine except the thought that one year more of trial and difficulty is past."⁶

Throughout the spring of 1844, Charlotte did her utmost to come to Fanny's aid, siding completely with her in the bitterness infecting the Butler household. In letters and notes that passed between them, Charlotte offered her help, for in staid Philadelphia, before Fanny could hope to divorce Pierce Butler and retain custody of her daughters, she would have to present full proof of his infidelities. Charlotte volunteered to collect the evidence. The correspondence divulged no details as to the means, but a firm contradictory note now entered Fanny's letters. To Charlotte, any recourse was worth considering, but Fanny felt otherwise. "I have very little doubt that I understand what you would advise, but there is but one means by which I am to be helped and that is by proving of evidence such as would furnish me with a plea for a divorce in the event of Mr. Butler's taking my children from me."⁷

Later, Fanny was even firmer. "From the tenor of my last two notes to you you must have perceived that I had entirely given up all expectations of arriving at the evidence which you have so positively held out to me as within your power to obtain for some time past. I supposed such evidence would be obtained without an extraordinary difficulty. I am now perfectly convinced of the contrary and have only one request more to make of you, which is that you will from this time forth consider that I no longer desire or authorize you to pursue the enquiry for me."⁸ Still later, "I wrote to you, as I now again write to request that you will give up all further efforts in my behalf. What will become of my affairs I do not know, but I am well satisfied that neither you nor I have any power of altering them for the better."⁹

As Fanny well knew, evidence of Pierce's adultery must be "specific and incontrovertible," and she was equally sure, long before Charlotte ceased her efforts, that such evidence was not easy to locate. In the end, Fanny thanked Charlotte for her goodwill, but goodwill could not produce the necessary facts, and she concluded that there was no chance whatever for her by legal proceedings, "and illegal ones I dare not take."¹⁰

The offer of help that began as a gesture of friendship on Charlotte's part finally became a bone of contention that broke up the friendship. Hurt and impatient, Charlotte forced herself to sit idly by while Pierce Butler squeezed Fanny out of the marriage and proceeded to sue her for desertion.¹¹ When Fanny's household disintegrated and custody of her daughters went to their father, the feeling remained strong in Charlotte, justifiably or not, that Fanny had rejected her offer of help from some basic mistrust--or, just as unthinkably, from some appalling unconcern for family solidarity. The wound would be slow to heal.

In the long run, Charlotte's concern for Fanny Butler receded into the background of her joy with the Sullys. On January 7, 1844, her diary noted: "Went to church. F. B. not there. . . . Went tonight to see Sully. Sully told me what F. B. said of my acting. It is much to be praised by her."¹² She kept up her daily visits with Rosalie, and when a January acting tour through New England developed, she mailed a steady stream of letters back to South Fifth Street.

The tour itself was a chore to be gotten through as quickly as possible. In Providence, the resident company, a "miserable half starved" lot, was so drunken and ignorant that, playing with them, she wanted to laugh one minute, cry the next. The one bright note of her stay there was a Mrs. Church she saw at dinner. "The loveliest woman I ever looked upon . . . such eyes, such hair, such eyebrows, mouth, nose, chin . . . What a lucky thing I am not of the other sex, for a heavy mortgage would have been made upon her from this hour. As it was, it almost deprived me of appetite for my dinner."¹³

Before she left Providence, she could agree with some of Fanny Kemble's and Macready's strictures against the profession. She had to fight the manager for the paltry sum coming to her. Appearing on stage with such churlish people as these, she felt a deep despondency. "What poor fools we are, what dolts, we sip of the lees of degraded humanity in preference to the eternal rest of the grave." When Fanny had expressed disgust at all of it, "how unjust I was."

By February, she was acting again at the Walnut, happy that The Democratic Review had taken her long poem, "The Poor Debtor." In March, Rosalie brought her a miniature she had painted of Fanny Kemble, and Macready, in a gentlemanly mood, wrote from Mobile to thank her for her poem about him in the Anglo-American. "You preserve the insect in amber."¹⁴

In May, when letters from Macready urged her to support him again at the Park, she swallowed her dislike of the man and took the train for New York. En route to rehearsals, she lost her purse with $23 in it, a major calamity. But compliments from Macready and, surprisingly, a Lady Macbeth performance he thoroughly approved brightened her spirits. When he again advised her to go to England to act for an audience whose opinion really mattered, she listened carefully. Her poem, "There Is a God" surely expressed her elation when it appeared in Graham's in June. Back home for another brief stint at the Walnut, where she played Aldabella in Fazio on June 14, she filled her days with happy visits to the Sullys.

The matter of going to England was a subject to discuss with Rosalie. During the late summer, Charlotte debated all the pros and cons involved in the journey, the cost involved, the separation from this closest friend of her heart. She could not possibly finance the trip out of her earnings, much less leave any reserve at home against family emergencies. Still, she could not ignore Macready's advice. At twenty-eight, she knew full well that, for all her good work with stars like Forrest and Macready, only a name and fame made in London would ever bring her full stardom and a commensurate salary at home.

At last, she made up her mind to go. To gather her courage, she gave up her place at Clover Hill and turned over all her books, her cardinal, and her folios of music to Rosalie. Seated with Rosalie on the upstairs sofa in the house on Fifth Street, Charlotte gave her a ring and a bracelet, pledging through tears her eternal fidelity.¹⁵

She dried her tears with thoughts of England. Lavish as the idea sounded, it occurred to her that she would need a personal maid. In the new country--if luck smiled on her--there would be a constant round of arrangements to make, appointments to keep. There would be no Mary Eliza to maintain any household routine. The Negro girl she finally located was, at fourteen, the personal aide she needed; Sallie Mercer's "anxious forehead," her "conscientious eyebrows" promised the kind of help she required. When she told her she planned to take her to England, the girl delightedly agreed, though her mother complained bitterly for a time, frightened, like Mary Eliza, lest she never see her daughter again. And privately, Charlotte's own fears of the voyage and the uncertain events to follow gave her no peace.

About Sallie herself, she had little doubt. Her good sense and intelligence could handle complicated instructions. "Dear Sallie," Charlotte could write, "Give the enclosed letter to Mr. Charles and ask him to put it in the Post Office before afternoon. Ask him to take Mr. Budd's note to his boarding house before 2 o'clock. You take the note to Mr. Thayer over to his house. Then go to Mrs. Oat and tell her to go down to Sully's with a linen lining to fit Miss Blanche to a habit waist. Tell her she must make her figure which is a bad one look first rate with lots of padding, and she is to say Miss Cushman sent her and then she must be fitted. Tell Mrs. Oat to go this morning if possible and I will settle with her for it. I want my blue wrapper and my belt. Get my things ready to take to Baltimore on Sunday afternoon. I do not know that I shall be in until Sunday morning. I wonder if Mrs. Oat could fit me on Sunday morning. If she can't, never mind. Never mind sending my habit out. Put some clean cuffs in it and have it clean for Baltimore.

Yours, Charlotte."¹⁶

But training an intelligent maid was only one of a thousand details to solve before she could sail. There remained the question of money, cash enough for the voyage and for the time she must wait in London for income. She sent letters asking for loans. "I have been for a long time," she wrote one prospect, "hoping and wishing to go to England," to study under some of the great masters, since "it will be putting me in the way of making much money when I return to this country, for the support of my family who have for many years been dependent upon my weekly stipend." If Mr. Gregg could lend her 100 pounds, he would put her "in the way of future affluence."¹⁷ In Boston, Colley Grattan cheered her efforts but begged her to consider England only a training ground and not be discouraged if it fell short of her hopes.

Playing with Macready again in September in New York and Philadelphia reaffirmed another reason for wishing to triumph in England. Macready's British arrogance was not lost on his audiences. "Looked at the papers--the coarse vulgar wretches that are the editors!" he told his diary. "How my inmost soul sickens with loathing at them, the vulgar brutes. An American editor is a creature per se--agh!"¹⁸ That arrogance was no less apparent to Charlotte. If her plans succeeded, one day she could dispense with such annoyances and claim for herself a billing at least equal to his--and a salary greater than the $50 per week she had so far received.¹⁹

During this final run in Philadelphia, she nurtured a further reason for going to England, one not easily voiced. Edwin Forrest had chosen to play at the Walnut at the same time Macready was holding forth at the Arch. If the two bombastic egos were not frankly competing against each other on some vague patriotic, political grounds, Philadelphia audiences soon saw in their performances a challenge to their national pride.

The English Macready versus the American Forrest became almost a battle cry, though in his curtain speech Macready gracefully thanked his audience for the warm reception, in spite of "some unworthy attempts that have been made to excite against me and my countrymen engaged in this profession on the plea of being foreigners."²⁰

The speech was courteous, but for all her debt to Macready, Charlotte acknowledged a private determination to prove the full weight of her talents to the blasé country whose disdain for things American Macready made painfully real. Unlike many Americans, she had not made a project out of collecting the slurs and slights that England steadily volleyed across the Atlantic. But if she felt no hostility toward Britain, she felt no particular love either. Going to England might make her famous; it might make her rich--and it might open England's eyes.

Still the disciple of Emerson, convinced like him that America had humbled herself too long in praise of Europe's tired muses, she saw her course clearly. After "farewell" performances in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, leaving her audiences firmly assured of her genius, hopefully reaping enough cash to finance most of the cost of the voyage, she would then head determinedly east. She would prove once and for all that talent could flourish west of the Atlantic as well as along the complacent banks of the Thames.

En route with Macready to Boston on September 28, 1844, Charlotte pumped him for all possible information and insights. At the Melodeon Theatre she appeared with him for three weeks in a series of plays she hoped would fully display her superior range: Queen Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, Goneril, and Emilia. Before the brightest lights of Boston--Charles Sumner, Longfellow, Lowell, Joseph Story, and Daniel Webster--she did her best to show what a Boston girl could do alongside London's Macready.

Critically, Boston approved. It found her Emilia "a new revelation." Her withering contempt for Iago, her "grandeur of tone," almost buried Macready's Othello. The audience recalled her with cheers.²¹

On the twelfth of October, before her announced good-bye to Boston, she wrote Macready her thanks for his encouragement, for the model he had been in her work. On the fifteenth she attended his farewell party to the one American city he liked, and she looked forward confidently to the next evening when Macready would assist at her benefit. With him in the cast she could pocket a sizable sum for herself. But with evening, word came that the wily Macready had already sailed for England.²²

His absence spoiled the house she had needed. Whatever explained his sudden departure, the support she had given Macready throughout the run should have reaped a better harvest, though one familiar with Macready's temperament could guess that applause for his leading lady had wounded his jealous pride. Her farewell to Boston might have been a "bumper"; Boston might have seen the event as a turning point in the career of a native daughter and bid her Godspeed. Instead, Charlotte said good-bye to a half-empty house. Aggrieved at the slight, outraged at Macready's shabby dismissal, she left Boston the next morning with a mere pittance in her purse, consoled only by the packet of letters from Boston friends to introduce her in England.

She made a quick farewell to Philadelphia in The School for Scandal, playing to an audience little better than Boston's. She said goodbye to the friends she had made during her busy years since 1840, to the actors at the Walnut and the Chestnut and the Arch, to W. R. Blake, whom she still could not like, and to Annie Brewster. Rosalie and Sully himself would see her off in New York. For her sheaf of introductory letters, W. E. Burton wrote a statement commending her to Benjamin Webster, manager of London's Haymarket Theatre, calling her "undoubtedly the best breeches figure in America."²³

In the desk she had recently moved back to the house on Eighth Street, she left a supply of writing papers. Her mother and Susan must write her often and not worry about the high cost of overseas postage. They must write small, and if they paid the fee as far as Boston, she would pay the balance due on all letters forwarded. At the last minute, Charlie and his mother decided to go with her to New York, Charlie to look for a better job, now that Charlotte's leaving Philadelphia ended one good reason for staying. Susan stood solemn, on the brink of tears, holding six-year-old Bub tightly in hand, while Charlotte spelled out her plans to send back any good play scripts she could acquire, with the hope that Susan could do something really good with them for herself at the theatre. Charlotte knelt quickly and whispered something into Bub's ear about bringing him lots of presents. From the grimy train windows she took a last look at Philadelphia's familiar red bricks and white towers.

Once in New York she sought out an erratic old star. Could Junius Booth advise her about making a name in England? Booth was direct: Never play Nancy. It was a great part, one of her best, and she had made it. But she must never act it in London. "It will give you a vulgar dash you will never get over."²⁴ If she determined to follow Booth's advice, she would not scrap the whole invention either. Perhaps in London she could salvage some of the business and reuse it as Meg.

For her New York farewell on the twenty-fifth at the Park, Simpson booked Vandenhoff to play Benedick to her Beatrice, but like her other farewells, the house was disappointingly small. Little went right with the performance. In her nervousness, in her chagrin at the empty seats staring up at her, Charlotte garbled an entire scene. Coming off, she cried, "For heaven's sake, what have I been doing?" Vandenhoff answered: "Knocking the fourth and fifth acts together."²⁵

And the box office dampened her spirits. Of the total $416.75, she and Vandenhoff could share only after $200, and she had to pay Vandenhoff $12.50 outright. In her diary she called it "scandalous swindling," though the Spirit next morning rallied her hopes a little. "This lady is about to visit England in a professional tour, which her varied talents must render lucrative. No actress can claim higher standing among the performers of America."²⁶

If that were true, she could only conclude that American audiences had a poor way of showing it. On that note, she was ready to sail. Mostly through loans, she had amassed $600 in cash; she had arranged a letter of credit for $200 more as a hedge against failure and had paid $150 for tickets for herself and Sallie.²⁷

On Saturday morning, October 26, still smarting from her poor send-off, she said good-bye at the hotel to Sully, who gave her a copy of Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit to read on the voyage and told her her visit to England would make her proud of America. And then it was time to part with Rosalie--"on whom my soul doats," she told her diary--smiling through tears but suddenly remembering to press into her hand a penciled admonition to keep her spirits up, the months would pass quickly if they pointed their thoughts toward the joyous reunion to follow her London triumph.

Down at the busy East River dock, the family cried more tears than she wanted; it was plain to them all that, for all her wisdom in wishing to seek her fortune abroad, uncounted risks lay between this day and the distant time they could hope to see her again. And their recent loss of Uncle Augustus to these same waves lay like a stone at the bottom of their hearts. Charlotte tried to allay their fears, in spite of the deep dread that suddenly overcame her.

Mary Eliza broke free momentarily, remembering the apples she had brought to ward off Charlotte's seasickness. And then she and Sallie were up the plank of the steamboat that would take them out to the Narrows to board ship for England. If omens meant anything, she had chosen her vessel well, a 1,000 ton sailing packet named the Garrick, sister ship to the Siddons.

Vandenhoff's reports about the Garrick shored up her courage as she and Sallie stepped onto the ship's creaking deck. His westward passage in September two years before had been "thirty days of calm, dreamy enjoyment," the ship had skimmed the waves like a swan, while he had casually leafed a novel.

The deck under Charlotte's feet tilted suddenly, and the long ragged line of Staten Island began falling away. The happy shouts from the other passengers only deepened her own despair. When she peered over the side, the same gray water that had frightened her in the fall off Long Wharf frowned up evilly. Too late to change her mind, she could only stand miserably at the rail, already "wretched" with the "memory of all that I had left, pouring upon me words of regret at the steps I had taken and, although not feeling the effects of the sea, still my mind firmly made up come what delights might, I never would take another voyage from home."²⁸

She stayed on deck until seven, numb to the cold, oblivious to the first call to supper, bracing herself against the endless roll. At last, unable to stand, suddenly ill, she went below to a frightened Sallie and the musty stateroom, with Longfellow's "Hyperion" lines beating a rhythm in her head: "Look not mournfully into the past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth into the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart."²⁹