"The Queen, My Lord, Is Dead"

Valiantly, Charlotte filled her December days reading and, when she felt able, writing a stream of letters about her health and her never-flagging interests beyond her walls. Mostly, she wrote in her lap, half reclining in front of Charles Dickens' pier glass. In her good moments, her handwriting flowed with the old firm strokes and swirls; in others, it sprawled dully over the page, half-formed and hazed in some fierce clutch of pain.

Her comfort and the weather permitting, she went for short drives, once out of curiosity to a seance in Dover Street conducted by Mrs. Walker, who would falsely advertise herself later as "Miss Cushman's chosen medium." But such ventures were difficult, and Charlotte tried more and more to content herself with the visitors that came crowding to her.

Jamie and Annie Fields came often, and one afternoon Lowell brought along Lord Houghton, now making his first tour of the United States. Charlotte and Dickie Milnes and Lowell filled their quiet talk with recollections of people they had known in London and Rome, though Dickie had grown so deaf that talking with him was an effort. "I have been so glad to have the opportunity to talk of you," Charlotte wrote Lanier after the visit, "though sooth to say the English hide is like that of a rhinoceros, and nothing penetrates far that they do not learn in early days in college."¹ Milnes read her copies of "Corn" and "The Symphony" and promised to write her his impressions of them, then astonished Charlotte by asking in Lowell's presence "Why, Whittier or Longfellow or 'you fellows' . . . don't write something in the American dialect!!" Since English critics had always made much of Lowell's Biglow Papers, the question seemed stupid or forgetful, to say the least.

Milnes' reference to Whitman dismayed her even more. Leaves of Grass was such a "notable and true book," so full of "bold natural truth," said Dickie, that it was strange that Americans did nothing "but jibe and jeer at their one great poet, Whitman."² Indignant that anyone could consider Whitman "great," Charlotte stabbed her letter to Sidney with a string of irate exclamation points. How could the same breath mention a crude sensibility like Whitman and an exquisite artist like Lanier?

Charlotte might have tempered her hostility toward Whitman if she had thought again about the long support he had always given her, the fact that he had seen "everything probably that she ever did." Years later, Whitman declared that some aspects of her acting might have been faulty--her Meg Merrilies, for example, had been "too muchly much, as the boys say." But at its best, Charlotte Cushman's acting was "great" and Charlotte was "a great woman--always a great woman," said the poet, "a genius."³

But such conversational forays as these with Lowell and Lord Houghton were far from enough to lift Charlotte's burden of distress. Dr. Thornton continued hopeful; by New Year's Day, he promised, "you shall be free from all great pain."⁴ But weak and tremulous, her appetite gone for everything but brandy and water, Charlotte was "altogether forlorn," though by some skill retained from the stage, she managed to convince her visitors that she was comfortable. For long periods she sparkled brilliantly; then when quick discomfort suddenly gripped her, a cloud gathered behind her eyes. At such times, she held her posture, her chin lifted imperceptibly, and only Emma, recognizing the sign, knew that Charlotte was suffering. Her eyes filling with tears, Emma found the effect "infinitely touching."

Yet when Thornton insisted that visitors be kept out at times when his patient needed rest, Charlotte would have none of it. "I am more a lover of my kind than most people; hence I must see people, and it is useless to attempt to box me up. I cannot be saved in this respect, and it is folly to try."⁵

One day the talk turned to theatre. "You are now alone in your art--your fame has no competitor," someone commented. "Where," he asked, "shall we find an equal to succeed you?" Charlotte replied instantly, "Nobody is indispensable. Madame Janauschek is my equal, and besides she is younger and so handsome."⁶

But as word spread through Boston and across the country that Charlotte was rapidly failing, publishers debated the notion that she was dispensable. They beseeched her while there was still time to prepare some record of her life. "What a pity," one columnist suggested, "that this wonderful woman, who, during her forty years of professional life, has seen everything, and known everybody worth seeing and knowing, contemporaneous with her, should have delayed the work so long."⁷ But Charlotte continued to ignore all the pleas. Autobiography was out of her line, and even if modesty had let her consider it, there was no time to make an attempt.

As Christmas approached, Charlotte knew that going home to the Villa was out of the question, and that letting the family come here was equally unthinkable. If she could not be properly merry, she would stay here. In her letter to Emma Crow on Christmas Eve, she was unusually frank. "I grieve for you, dear, more than for myself, though I am a dreadful baby over my pain." At this season especially, her suffering must be causing a comparable pain in all the family, "but the hard places must come in our lives, and perhaps we should not know how to enjoy the pleasures, but for the corresponding glooms." They must all keep up a good heart. "You are loved and thought of as you would be, and that must give you courage for the battle which is before you as before us all!"⁸

When Emma Stebbins could force herself to leave Charlotte, she rushed out into Tremont Street for a brisk walk to Brimstone Corner and the Common. But the traffic in the icy streets and the vigor of life rushing past the shop windows disturbed her, and she hurried back inside. Charlotte's rooms bulged with flowers. Harvey Parker sent up a great branch of English mistletoe which she doled out in high humor to her friends. The little boys in Newport had made gifts for her. "Nino's bookmark, so beautifully embroidered, and my darling big boy's [Wayman's] beautiful letter and bookmark," she wrote. The foot-muff from Ned and the handsome headdress from Emma Crow delighted her, though "it is too beautiful for such suffering as mine." And Lanier's letter on New Year's Day touched her almost too deeply.

If this New Year that approaches you (more happy than I, who cannot) did but know you as well as I (more happy than he, who does not) he would strew his days about you even as white apple-blossoms and his nights as blue-black heart's-ease; for then he should be your true faithful-serving lover--as am I --and should desire--as I do--that the general pelting of time might become to you only a tender rain of such flowers as foretell fruit and of such as make tranquil beds.

But though I cannot teach this same New Year to be the servant of my fair wishes, I can persuade him to be the bearer of them; and I trust he and these words will come to you together; giving you such report, and so freshly from my heart, as shall confirm to you that my message, though greatly briefer than my love, is yet greatly longer than I would the interval were, which stands betwixt you and your often-longing,
S.L.⁹

Replying on January 3, 1876, Charlotte wondered if any other man in the world had ever written such a letter. "I don't believe it possible and in saying this, which was my first word, through tears, after reading it, all the faith and belief in my heart were expressed."¹⁰ Had Lanier seen the appalling reaction in England to Browning's latest efforts? The critics were tearing him limb from limb. Had he heard of the lovely things they were doing for Carlyle in London to honor his eightieth birthday? Gold medals had come from Edinburgh University and from a host of distinguished artists and statesmen.

Reading the January Atlantic, Charlotte found momentary distraction from her pain in a Mark Twain article, "A Literary Nightmare." Tongue-in-cheek, Twain wrote that lately a certain popular jingle had kept him awake night after night until he had passed it on to a friend.

Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
 
CHORUS:
Punch brothers! Punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

That friend in turn had lost sleep until he too had passed it on. "Why did I write this article?" Twain concluded. To warn "you, reader, if you should come across the . . . merciless rhymes, to avoid them--avoid them as you would a pestilence!"

Charlotte tripped the catchy little words on her tongue, but soon, in spite of Thornton's hearty insistence, she busied herself again with plans for her funeral. A request from Lanier brought a brief change in her thoughts. Would "Cushla" write a letter to introduce him to Edwin Booth? In her shaky hand, Charlotte commended Lanier to the actor. "I am too ill to write, and yet I make an effort to send you this word, because I wish to present to your acquaintance what will grow to your friendship--my dearly valued friend, Mr. Sidney Lanier." In him, Booth would find "great cultivation, great refinement of manner, and a knightly soul." To Booth, she added a personal word. "If it should so chance, by God's will that I never see you again, I have made you, here, the sweetest bequest known to your true friend, Charlotte Cushman."¹¹

Charlotte's old hostility to Booth was behind her now. The actor had borne his own share of troubles, his losing Mary Devlin, his standing up to the horrors of kinship to John Wilkes, his suffering a bitter marriage to Mary McVicker--after these, he fully deserved her sympathy. Yet, even now, if he counted her a personal friend, he could not have grieved for her approaching end. Of late, he had confided to William Winter his thoughts on dying. Life was little more than a scratch, a temporary ill, to be cured by that "dear old doctor, Death--who gives us a life more healthful, and enduring than all the physicians, temporal or spiritual, can give."¹²

By January 11, she was ready. "What little I can have remaining to me of life after I am cured--if in God's wisdom I am to be cured--cannot be worth what I have suffered."¹³ Thornton's treatment had culminated; only a few days more should show, he said, a remarkable difference. But in her heart, Charlotte knew that one's feelings in matters like this were sometimes as certain as science. "Ah, please His infinite mercy that if I am ever well again, will we not be happy and good, and love him more and more day by day?"¹⁴

On the thirteenth, William Winter came up from New York bringing a friend, John McCullough, who managed theatres in California. The morning was frigid, but Charlotte received her visitors in a room flooded with sunshine. The face Winter saw was pale, its flesh was drawn taut over the bones, but the blue eyes shone with a luster like "the spectral light of another world."¹⁵ Discussing her illness, Charlotte declared vehemently that she would not die of cancer. "If I thought I had to perish in that way I would not endure it--I would myself end my life."

Leaving, Winter looked back at her for a moment. With her head held high, she was, he wrote later, "the image of majesty."¹⁶

On February 12, Charlotte ventured with Sallie into the hall for a brief stroll. Chilly drafts flowed along the floors in streams, and one of these caused her to take cold. Within a few minutes she was sneezing, and she bade Sallie help her back into bed. Too weak to fight off infection, she had a raging fever by nightfall.

The pneumonia was almost painless. Next day, Charlotte was able to write John McCullough, partly to apologize for not being able to see him when he called again at her rooms, partly to [seek] again, after so many efforts, to arrange a journey to the Far West. "I wanted to ask you if next Nov. or Dec. were engaged at your theatre in California. I hope to be able to get well and go there."¹⁷

That letter, dated February 13, 1876, typified in a sense the hundreds that had flowed from her pen. The last she wrote, it voiced her hopes for a new season, her faith in a possible cure, the chance for more travel.

On February 16, Lanier's sonnet "To Charlotte Cushman" appeared in the March Lippincott's. Without her knowledge, Lanier had sent it to the printer: he had hoped it would be a pleasant surprise, but she never saw it.

Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
So in this night of art thy soul doth show
Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky
(Each star must o'er a strenuous orbit fly),
Full calm thine image in our love doth lie,
A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity.
So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene--
Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen!

In her bed, between bouts of coughing, Charlotte bade Sallie bring her the antique ring someone had given her in Rome. It was a jacinth, with tragic and comic masks cut in intaglio. When the time came, she said, Emma must see that Sidney Lanier received it.¹⁸ Through the long hours she remained lucid, as mentally bright as if her body were unaffected. The night of the seventeenth she asked Emma to read her Lowell's poem, "Columbus," a work she had long enjoyed for its strong rolling rhythm. In the dim light, when Emma stumbled over a phrase, Charlotte supplied it from memory. "Endurance is the crowning quality," she said thickly, "And patience all the passion of great hearts," then relaxed as Emma continued.

These are their stay, and when the leaden world
Sets its hard face against their fateful thought,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The inspired soul but flings his patience in,
And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe,
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief,
One soul against the flesh of all mankind. . . .

Some hours before dawn on Friday, February 18, Dr. Thornton alerted Ned and Emma Crow who had rushed up from Newport. Lamentably, he told them, his efforts could not arrest pneumonia. A little before seven, Charlotte roused momentarily. Through dull eyes, she recognized the faces circled around her: Sallie, and Emma, and Emma Crow. Quietly, Ned bent down and offered her a sip from her cup. "Come, Auntie," he said, "here is your milk punch." A flicker of amusement played for a moment across her face. "Punch, brothers," she said, half audibly, "punch with care."¹⁹ Then she fell into a deep sleep. She died at ten minutes past nine.