An American Comes to London

In her long talks with Rosalie, in all her efforts to leave the family comfortable, Charlotte had buried her sadness at parting under a brimming confidence. But events of the last few days--her disappointing farewells, the small cash they had brought, Macready's rudeness--had eaten away at her certainty. Suddenly, her calm assurance vanished.

Her first day out of New York, she "rested in bed all day, part of the time asleep. The rest crying, Oh God how miserable I am. My thoughts of home, instead of bringing me comfort at the recollection of the love borne to me, rendering me only more wretched that I had left, as it were, comfort at home for uncertainty, perhaps unkindness--at all events, no friends. My constant exclamation, Why did I leave home."¹

Reading helped, but then thoughts of Rosalie poured over her, "Such wretched thoughts that it were better if I could not think . . . I hear her sigh for her absent friend. I feel almost her arms about me and then weep again, till I almost wish I could sleep away 6 months." The weather only made matters worse; a squall had sprung up when they cleared the Narrows, and no one could predict how long the blowing might continue or how severe it might become.

Conditions below were no help. During the slow days that followed, she stayed on deck as long as the light lasted, then went "with an aching heart and an irresistible dread" of the night to come to her berth in a cubbyhole awash with bilge water and bad air.

In the daily misery of nausea, of fear of the days ahead, of loneliness, "The one bright spot of my existence, the one hope that bids me toil on" was her certainty of Rosalie's affection. "Shall I ever make sufficient money to have her with me always? . . . Only my God can know how dear, how very dear she is to me."

Again and again, on the ever-tilting decks of the Garrick, she reproved herself. Why had she not contented herself with "moderate competency" at home, instead of inviting "this frightful uncertainty, this longing doubt which at last may end in disappointment, and which from the ridiculous prejudice of most of the audience I am going to is more than probable?"

Five days at sea, she still could not eat. When Sallie forced her, she managed a toasted cracker and tea. On the seventh, she forced down a mutton chop and sat up on deck until seven, chatting with Captain Trask and Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, some newlyweds from Troy. But rough weather and sudden nausea sent her below again.

Later, in a sudden burst of sunshine, she made her way back on deck and spent some time talking with Mrs. Bliss, an amiable little Presbyterian and not too rigid, "and whether she means it as a compliment I do not know, but she said that she thought that people in my profession were very different from what she finds in me." When night came on, she felt able to accept an invitation to dine with the Captain, "a true upright intelligent Yankee, generous in principle and straightforward in action."

But by Friday the 8th of November, the weather had turned. "Cloudy and stormy, blowing very hard from the east." Unable to stand the terrible rocking in her stateroom, she had just taken a seat near the wheelhouse when a great wave, breaking over the side, washed "seat and me and two sailors entirely over to the other side of the ship, and but for the rolling up of that side we should have gone over." Blinded by the water, she thought she was overboard. "No more than I expected."² "I never was so frightened in my life, nor, even when overboard off Long Wharf, more wet."³

In calmer weather, she picked up the book Sully had given her, but soon threw down "the most stupidly uninteresting book" she had ever tried to "wander" through. In Martin Chuzzlewit Dickens had pulled no punches. Two summers before, irritated by America's cool concern for an international copyright, he had written to Marryat his intention of giving "the eagle a poke under his fifth rib."⁴ And reading the book, when a character suggests the American eagle should be drawn "like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam, for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity, like an Ostrich, for putting its head in the mud and thinking nobody sees it,"⁵ cities that had wined and dined the young Mr. Dickens raised an agonized cry. "All Yankee-doodledom blazed up like one universal soda bottle,"⁶ reported Thomas Carlyle. For Charlotte, reading beyond the first few pages had only strengthened her fears. What kind of reception might she expect in a country that could write and relish such libel?

On the fifteenth, on a sensibly steady deck again, she could stand up, ready to shake her fist--and her seventy letters of introduction-- at all her fears. Lines from Browning's "Paracelsus" penciled into her diary gave her courage:

What though
It be so?--if indeed the strong desire
Eclipse the aim in me?--if splendor break
Upon the outset of my path alone,
And duskest shade succeed? What fairer seal
Shall I require to my authentic mission
Than this fierce energy?--this instinct striving
Because its nature is to strive? . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart!

In place of despair, determination flamed anew: she would write her name beside the fabled Sarah Siddons'.

As the ship neared the Irish coast, the fog thickened again, and the English on board began "smacking their lips as if they recognized the taste of their own native air, off here three hundred miles from their homes." She could understand their eagerness. "If I was within 1,000 miles of Philadelphia, I am sure I should imagine that I could scent Philadelphia air." But if this was a fair specimen of English weather, "Great Heavens, what a state of density I shall constantly be in."

For the next two days the white mist persisted, but Charlotte was too busy writing to notice. Soon, she could dispatch letters home from Liverpool. "Sallie has been a great comfort to me. . . . So far, I am very glad I have taken her."⁷

And then, on Monday morning, November 19, a shout went up. She laid down her pen, rushed up on deck. Close alongside, brown against the murky sky, were the Welsh mountains "that I have heard so much about, in plays so often acted upon." Greatly relieved, she could scarcely imagine that, after all this way, she would be in England by nightfall.

Once in the warm Adelphi hotel, the letters waiting for Charlotte put her at ease. Oddly, Macready had sent down three times to see if she had arrived. Edward Stirling wanted to know her terms for a short run at Covent Garden; Benjamin Webster offered her an engagement at the Haymarket after Christmas. But Macready was most insistent. Since his arrival from America, he had assembled a troupe to act briefly in Paris; Miss Cushman must join him immediately. James Barton, her old mentor, had sent word that he would help her in any way, that in spite of a crippling illness he now managed a theatre here in the West Country. Suddenly bewildered, she sent off a note to Barton asking for counsel.

Could she trust Macready? She would rest a few days in Liverpool, then decide. Barton warned her to beware. She wrote Macready accordingly; he wrote back, annoyed. She replied and then received "a letter quite ill-tempered, saying I was taking an irrevocable step." Next morning, Macready's agent arrived from London and tried to persuade her. But she stood firm. Prudence suggested that any plan beyond this point demanded the most careful attention to every angle, though it was heartening to know that opportunities stood open. "I suppose I may make some friends," she wrote her mother. "Kiss dear Bub for me and tell him when his Aunty comes home she will buy him beautiful presents, so he must not forget her."

In the meantime, Sallie could see to the only needs she had at the moment. She could amuse herself whenever the weather lifted by watching the people of Liverpool stream past her window, many wearing respirators against the greasy smoke and fog, curious characters that might have come straight out of Dickens. She could stroll the cobblestoned walks and brush against the crowds in the ferry boats, sensing a new dimension of life she saw suspended in the stolid faces she passed.

Americans knew nothing about tragedy. It had no place in their national scheme, because they had never experienced it. To them fearing death seemed little more than a temporary ignorance, a blindness that would disappear as the logical mind studied the faults in man from which an obsession with death sprang. But here Charlotte observed a more sedate manner, an acceptance of things, of the world as God made it for man to inhabit as best he could, brightening it, spicing it, leavening it with whatever skills he had, but never expecting to alter its ineluctable cycle of life and death and life rekindled again. Charlotte looked at the pinched, sun-banished faces of Liverpool and observed a quiet acceptance of this fact.

She could enjoy further good talk before the grate with the Blisses, who urged her to come with them for a week's journey north to the Scottish Highlands; in case anything prevented her acting later in Scotland, it would be a pity to miss seeing Edinburgh. When Old Tarkington, who used to keep door at the Walnut, appeared at her hotel with a cheery welcome to England, she decided to leave Sallie with him and his wife and go.

Their coach sloshed through the ruts between high dark hedges roping the gentle swell of Lancashire, past Manchester with its church "over 700 years old," past Glasgow's iron foundries, through the bleak Scottish hills to Edinburgh. To a veteran Lady Macbeth, coming to Scotland was a little like coming home. Edinburgh was a mass of "tall, ancient houses, heaped densely together,"⁸ a magnificent sweep of great trees and gardens, grim stone, Holyrood House, bright woolen kilts, and fishwives in short blue shawls shouldering large dripping baskets.

Almost prayerfully, Charlotte sought out the Theatre Royal where Siddons had made her debut, where John Philip Kemble and Edmund Kean had played, and gazed up respectfully at Sir Walter Scott's marble statue in its Gothic tower on Prince's Street.

As she had hoped, her letters to people in Scotland took her among some of the "wealthiest and most delightful" hosts, who drove her about with liveried coachmen and footmen to incredible country seats, ancient halls with roaring fires on the hearths, park-like green slopes with stone walls, dotted with long-haired cattle and sheep. "I never was among people who were so kind."⁹

En route to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she thrilled to the sudden blast of a hunting horn when a fox, a baying streak of white hounds, and red coats and black bowler hats bounded past. The vivid scene might have been a hand-tinted print by John Leech, an illustration straight from the sporting pages of the Spirit of the Times. At Yorkminster she heard the boys' choir chant the service "splendidly." And relaxing in her hotel, she saw in the papers that Macready had met with some small accident "which prevents his going to Paris as soon as he expected, ha! ha!"

Back in Liverpool, she found people equally kind. "I am engaged three deep when I come back here to stay any time." She had not dreamed of such splendor or elegance of manner, "and by the very right kind of people to make me in every way respected well." At the theatre she saw Ellen Tree, dreadfully fallen off except for a few stage tricks--Susan acted with far more spirit. If Macready's pet, Helen Faucit, was no better in London, Charlotte suddenly felt she had less to fear.

For sixty-two cents she bought a copy of a new London comedy that could do wonders for Susan at home, "if she only has the courage." Susan must show it to Blake, point out the fine part in it for him, and "don't let him take the book away," lest he copy it and assign somebody else to the role. If Blake liked the play, Susan could be the original Lady Alice in America, "which will be as good as Lady Gay was for me," and she must insist that Charlie was to have full rights to copy the parts and sell them to the other actors. If Blake would not meet such terms, Susan must offer the play to Burton, "as I promised him, so don't let him know how they came." To her mother, she had advice about Susan: "Don't let her be at all frightened at any original part she gets and make her throw dash into everything she does."

For Friday, December 6, she made a diary notation: "Left at 11 for London, passing through Birmingham. Country seemed beautifully cultivated, but now very desolate and dreary. No season for travelling, was very cold and uncomfortable. Arrived in London at 9, drove to my lodgings, very cold, had tea, went to bed after folding and sealing letters of introduction. Slept very cold," the old fears and depressions of the voyage suddenly heavy upon her.

Martin Chuzzlewit had freshly affirmed her awareness that, in British thinking, being American did not clearly mean blessed. It was no comfort now to recall that people from her distant part of the world were still ranked here, in the main, as priggish upstarts battering gauchely at the front doors of the world when the proper approach suggested hat in hand at the service entrance. She could recall the New York Globe's quoting an amused English opinion in 1842: there were only four ways to think about Americans--as typical youth affecting manhood, as young John Bull working with his coat off, as a child growing too fast for his strength, as a safety valve for European monarchy. Life really began when one had arrived on a more sober plane of maturity, when one discovered that urge and drive and hot-bloodedness were only means to greater capacities. Americans knew only the means.

Next morning, outside her window at the Maurice Hotel in Covent Garden, Charlotte took her first long look at the city of all her hopes--pushcarts and fruit stalls, mounds of bright flowers and cheeses aswirl among the early morning traffic and hawking cries of London's major market, heavy lories pulled by the thundering hooves of great Clydesdales, bent figures shouldering sides of meat and crates of oranges, and here and there ragged old women cowering in doorways, hands outstretched for a farthing. In the distance, under a pale winter sun, soared the grimy white dome of St. Paul's.

Away from Covent Garden, the streets widened and straightened, pushcarts and fruit gave way to gleaming shop fronts and heavy doorways bright with polished brass. The row of mansions along Picadilly facing the Green Park immediately reminded one of the Beacon Street houses along Boston Common, except for their size and grandeur. To Bostonian eyes, the Park itself was much like the Common, except for its lack of spreading elms, the pleasant slope down from the State House, and the far-off country view.

But even Boston had no Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, one vast sweep of paths among groves of trees, and certainly no Buckingham Palace, the great gray stone façade visible through the trees and iron grating. Away from its parks, however, London was mostly a tangle of noisy, crooked streets, a gigantic cluster of chimney pots and dingy red brick and yellow stone gasping for air and sunlight.

More to the point, Charlotte had not come to London for sightseeing. At a red box on the corner, she posted her London letters, then returned to her room to gather her thoughts. The thing she most wanted was a starring engagement, if only a night or two, in a bill that would prove to London the stuff she knew she had in her.

But despite the favorable notices she sent them, neither Stirling at Covent Garden or Webster at the Haymarket could offer her such a prominent chance. When J. M. Maddox at the Princess's in Oxford Street responded the same, she thought of Macready's summons to Paris. For more than a week she bided her time, accepted some invitations extended in reply to her letters, then convinced herself that out of her dwindling funds the cost of a trip to Paris might be a wise investment. Acting there with Macready might help open these obdurate English doors.

By the nineteenth, she had braved the choppy waters of the Channel aboard a small Folkestone packet, passed a night at Boulogne and, through the small windows of a clumsy diligence, seen Normandy's countryside flow by. Traveling twenty-four straight hours, she arrived via the Porte St. Denis in Paris.

She took her time about notifying Macready. She would see first the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, Notre Dame crowded among the tall jut-fronted houses and turrets on its island, the noisy Place de la Concorde and the spot where the guillotine had stood, and the Jardin des Plantes. Outside the walls, she would climb the crooked streets of Montmartre. She would stroll through the hooded booths along both sides of the Pont Neuf. And then at the Salle Ventadour she would confront the wily Macready.

It was not a happy time for Macready. His Paris run had gone fitfully. Parisians following his Shakespeare with libretti failed to give him the unbridled applause he needed. Worse, most of the critics were devoting their praise to Helen Faucit, whose tall, queenly beauty was immediately effective in Paris, even though her English remained unintelligible. In calmer times Macready himself might write poems to the "dove-like softness"¹⁰ of Helen Faucit's eyes, but true to form, he could not tolerate her as a rival.

Macready immediately welcomed Charlotte as the replacement-- or competition--he most needed for the tall dark lady who dared to reap an undue portion of the applause. But Charlotte soon guessed his motives. When Macready made clear his plans, she remembered Barton's advice. The matter had to be weighed. She already knew the glamour of Helen's name among the English. The brightest name on the British stage was hardly a proper person to challenge boldly so early in her campaign. Faucit was not only an attractive actress; she was highly popular in British society, a favorite person as well as a favorite star. To replace her in Macready's company was to risk casting herself in a most unfavorable light. She thanked Mr. Macready, but she could not accept his offer.

She made her way back to London, wiser to the ways of London theatrics, newly resolved to begin in earnest the round of calls that would lead, if all went well, to a London debut under her own name. The days ahead were crucial. She would accept no engagement not likely to bring her full, individual recognition. Her trip to London had come at too high a price to settle for anything less. In the meantime, she and Sallie could subsist on a mutton chop a day and whatever stale muffins they could afford.

Another American had recently visited Paris. Edwin Forrest had sought an interview with Macready to arrange an appearance with his Paris company, but for reasons never explained, Macready's manager had blocked the interview, and Forrest had left Paris highly incensed, blaming the rebuff on Macready.¹¹ Now in London, contracted for a run at the Princess's Theatre, Forrest sought out Charlotte to support him, beginning with Emilia in Othello. "I cannot begin with Emilia,"¹² she replied.

Forrest's plan was attractive, but in the attention centering on him, she herself would lose. When the headstrong actor urged the matter, she as strongly declined.

When the Princess's manager added his own petitions to Forrest's, she stood firm. Rumor had already reached her about Maddox. Though he put on good shows, honesty was hardly one of his long suits; among the profession he was notorious for his tricky dealings. Forewarned, she would appear with Forrest only if she could make an independent London debut in a play of her own choice one night before.

Forrest at last saw a shrewd advantage in timing Charlotte's appearance ahead of his own. American financial troubles and the Oregon Question had recently created serious anti-American feeling, and London could vent its spleen on the unsuspecting Miss Cushman before he risked his own skin.

To Maddox, however, the large-boned actress seemed almost ludicrous. Politically excited or no, who would pay to see such an ugly unknown? He stood firm.

A London doctor, a friend of Dickens, who had heard about Charlotte, urged J. H. Siddons, editor of a drama paper, to meet "a promising American actress of the highest type." When Charlotte admitted the editor to her rooms, her intelligence and good humor struck him immediately. Despite her large brow and strong jaw, this young woman could indeed be a new asset on the London stage. Wishing her well, he went straight to Maddox. "You villain," cried Siddons. "We have just seen a lady who will be a bright particular star in the cloudy firmament over which you preside." Maddox must sign this Miss Cushman before Webster or somebody else discovered her.

But Maddox countered, "She's not good looking." "You're a fool, Maddox. You must give her a trial." Siddons himself would guarantee that critics from the important papers covered the debut.

Next day Charlotte came to Maddox's office, armed with letters likely to change his mind. Still--as George Vandenhoff recounted the story--"the little Hebrew was obdurate as Shylock."¹³ The time had come for desperate measures. Rising to leave, Charlotte suddenly knew that she must give Maddox a full taste of her real acting skill. Reaching the door, she turned. "I know I have enemies in this country; but . . . ." She cast herself on her knees and, raising a clenched fist, cried, "so help me! I'll defeat them!" uttering this with all the passion and energy she had ever poured into Lady Macbeth. As Maddox later reported, at this point he said to himself, "Helho! s'help me! she's got de shtuff in her!" And he watched her thoughtfully as she gathered her skirts and swept out his door.

Early next morning, low in spirit, fearing she had overplayed her last hand, she saw Sallie standing at the window, then watched as the girl turned and a smile broke on her face. Sallie beckoned her to the glass. Below, walking up and down, collar turned up against the chill, was Maddox, too early to call, apparently killing time until he could decently knock. Charlotte relaxed. "He is anxious. I can make my own terms."¹⁴

The chance to debut at the Princess's brought a special advantage. Named to honor Victoria before she became Queen, the Princess's was one of London's smaller, more intimate houses, a late arrival in the surge of new theatres that in 1843 had ended the Drury Lane-Covent Garden monopoly as the only legitimate theatres in London. Under their control, acting in the huge drafty houses had become stereotyped into great sweeping gestures and ringing tones, characterizations painted in only the most vivid colorings. For a newcomer, a debut in one of these "national" houses would have been doubly difficult, doubly traumatic before the endless dark sea of faces.

At the Princess's, actors could play to a more human scale, to an audience framed in a Louis XIV decor. Three tiers of white and gold boxes surrounded a pit set with benches. An air of lightness and whimsy sprang from the lilting scrolls, the gilt and red tassels that made the Princess's not only one of the best designed, but also one of the most beautiful theatres in Europe.

The agreement Charlotte reached with Maddox starred her as Bianca in Milman's Fazio the night of February 13, 1845, followed by a limited run with Forrest at seven pounds ($35) per night. The single night without Forrest would give her a chance to display her own talent without risk of being overshadowed by anyone else. To celebrate the bargain, she and Sallie went to the French Theatre to see Queen Victoria in one of her rare theatre attendances. "Saw lots of Lords and Ladies and the Duke of Cambridge go to the Queen's box."¹⁵

Charlotte's contemporaries saw an irony in the play that she, the descendant of old Robert Cushman, chose for an English debut. A mixture of guilty lust and miserly intrigue, Fazio was the work of a respected clergyman, Henry Hart Milman, lately an Oxford Don and soon to be Dean of St. Paul's. For an actress to sway an audience, to prove her high pitch of feeling, the role of Bianca offered exceptional opportunity; each of her scenes is "a passionate explosion."¹⁶

But there were difficulties involved. The morning of the thirteenth, when Charlotte arrived on time for rehearsal, she found the company had already started, totally indifferent to her success, the actor assigned to play opposite her being the least concerned of the lot. And the costumes and scenery disappointed her greatly, shabby makeshifts and cast-offs from a dozen plays. When she complained, Maddox asked in some ill humor if she expected to set the world afire.

Now was no time, however, to moon over slights; she had concerns more vital than any ill will or indifference in the cast. As evening approached, her nerves tightened; her throat contracted in sudden hoarseness. At the last minute, at Sallie's urging, she rushed out to have a doctor "burn" her throat with nitric acid to relax the pain. And then it was time to go to the theatre.

London had known Milman's play for years, critics considered it old-fashioned, but Charlotte was determined to give it new luster, though the quickening fear that swept over her as she made her way to the dressing room suddenly left her amazed at her temerity in daring any such madness in this jaded city, a London that had already seen in Mrs. Siddons and scores of other performers the best of all possible acting. What could she offer them now, except a quaint, American accent and a kind of naïve eagerness?

During the overture, Sallie brought the disturbing word that the chilly house was still nearly empty. When the curtain finally rose, Charlotte's nervous view of her first London audience was a scatter of listless faces and rows of empty black benches in the pit.¹⁷

In the Wilman story, Bianca and Fazio live in a small house in Verona where Fazio tirelessly experiments hoping to find the trick of changing iron to gold. When a rich miser stumbles into their garden and dies, Fazio steals his keys, rushes to his home, appropriates his money, then reports that he has found the secret. Hearing the news, Aldabella, "a proud loose wanton," appears, flirts with Fazio and finally seduces him. Bianca notes a change in her husband, but realizes the truth only slowly. Enraged and jealous, she notifies the Duke of the real source of her husband's wealth. The Duke throws Fazio into prison. Though Bianca has assumed that Fazio will be freed once he has restored the money, the Duke sentences him to die. Wild with remorse, Bianca pleads with her friends to intercede with the Duke; she buries her pride and begs Aldabella for help. But Aldabella, aware now that Fazio's wealth was a hoax, only laughs. Crazed and grief-stricken, powerless to aid her foolish husband, Bianca dies of a broken heart.

As a vehicle, Fazio had already served Charlotte well. As Aldabella in August 1839 at the Park, she had excited "rapturous" applause; to the Spirit of the Times her "magnificent" energy clearly explained Aldabella's fascination with the weak-minded alchemist. Could she create a similar rapture tonight as the suffering wife?

Skeptical eyes in the audience watched the unknown American feel her way into her role. During the early scenes varied opinions registered: Miss Cushman was an actress "of a somewhat round and capacious face, of a somewhat masculine figure, and of a grave voice."¹⁸ Miss Cushman had a nose that compared to Macready's and a "voice nearly as deep."¹⁹ If this Miss Cushman was as notable an American player as rumor and the playbills reported, why was she hiding her light under Milman's threadbare play? In spite of her "brilliant and expressive eyes," Miss Cushman, in sum, had little to offer the London stage.

But in the quiet, early scenes, Charlotte had little to do. The audience took no more than a passing interest in Fazio's experiments. During the first interval, disheartened by the patter of applause, she slumped at her mirror while Sallie fussed with her drapery, straightened the tow-colored braids, and tried to find words of cheer.

In the next scenes, after Fazio had taken the miser's money and begun his illicit affair, Charlotte sensed a rising excitement in the audience. When Bianca understands at last the change in Fazio, she felt her face flash a sudden "horrible enlightenment"²⁰ that began registering on the silence beyond the footlights.

"Fazio, thou hast seen Aldabella!"

In the pit, Westland Marston saw Charlotte's acting at this moment take on an almost religious devotion, a passion that suddenly fired the whole play. Bianca's jealousy became an "electric explosion." Pleading with Fazio not to see Aldabella again, ranging from bitter hatred to tender love, she seemed totally absorbed in each emotion. More and more earnest, speaking more and more quickly, she built up the feeling that if reason failed, her volley of words might thunder Fazio to his senses. Her breast rising and falling as though ready to burst, Charlotte seemed the enraged embodiment of despair.²¹

In the next scene, begging Aldabella to intercede with the Duke, Bianca raised trembling hands, burying her pride in a tearful plea for kindness, then sank huddled under Aldabella's scorn, "the abject degradation of a proud heart naturally strong," suffering disgrace to wipe clean the slate of her guilt.²²

In the trial scene, pleading for Fazio's life, Bianca's repeated words "Giraldi Fazio, Giraldi Fazio" came out stern and remorseless at first, but melted as grief changed them into a "tremblingly sweet refrain."²³ When she learned that Fazio must die, she threw herself at his feet, imploring forgiveness. The audience tension that had been building during this crucial scene suddenly welled up and broke loose in a storm of applause.

Charlotte's electrical effects were not merely a matter of acting. At the end of the scene, she felt herself so completely overcome with the passion of the scene and with sheer nervous agitation that she could only lie still for a time, too weak and disturbed to respond to the ringing "bravos" that burst over her. When she finally gathered her strength, she rose and beheld an ovation. Hats and handkerchiefs filled the air, roaring cheers rocked the Princess's from pit to topmost gallery, from aisles to whiskey seats. Applauding men stood on the benches; those in the boxes waved and shouted. In a sudden wave of relief, she knew that her English career was assured.²⁴

When the frenzied ovation finally allowed her to leave the stage, Charlotte rushed past her fellow actors in the greenroom, now clapping their own acclaim. Upstairs, she fell through her dressing room door to Sallie's elated, "You've got 'em, missus, you've got 'em."²⁵

Acting the prison scene was child's play now. When Bianca promises Fazio she will forgive Aldabella, though too numb to grasp his meaning until the death bell rouses her, the audience saw Charlotte stand suddenly rigid, staring unconscious into emptiness. When Fazio spoke a last grim word, Bianca gave no sign. When the guards led him away, she stood tensely immobile. Then as the ringing finally registered, she looked around in slowly returning sanity, comprehending now the full impact of her loss. Leaving the scene, she seemed neither to walk nor crawl; an invisible hand seemed to draw her into a "bottomless gulf of despair."

Rushing to the Palace to confront Aldabella with the terrible news, Bianca seemed a maniac turned loose in the Duke's ballroom, teeth clenched, hair flying.

Crying the words, shredding her tumbled locks, rubbing her temples, Bianca seemed to be trying to exorcise "the agony of a demented brain."²⁶ Pressing her heart, Bianca sank to the floor, a dying heap. The scattered house exploded.

Gathering her drapery about her, Charlotte rose to take the cheers and bouquets, assured like Browning that God "ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart." After this night, could any grief ever challenge her joy in having found her place?