Debut in New York

Like young Elkanah when he set out for Boston in 1782 to seek his fortune, his daughter Charlotte set out in 1836 for New York, a city now numbering 270,000. To her credit she had intellect, experience, and, compared to her father, a much brighter claim toward fame. Arriving in New York, she suffered no doubts; her mission was as clear as it had been since the St. Charles' roaring acclaim had rescued her from the brink of despair and had launched her forth with new hope. With a confidence wholly unlike her vague uncertainties when she first made her way up its streets in 1833, Charlotte arrived in Manhattan knowing exactly what she wanted to find. With the Bee's printed assurance that the sheer blaze of her talents had already conquered the most blasé of foes, she felt fully ready for the best New York could offer. She sent a quick note to Edmund Simpson, manager of the Park Theatre.

Overlooking a broad, tree-lined expanse, Simpson's playhouse was the second Park Theatre to stand on the site. Since 1821 it had carried on a tradition of excellence established in 1798. Behind the arches of its tall classic façade, the Park accommodated 2,500 spectators, an encouraging fact to one who had just made her mark in a house nearly twice as large. In addition to its excellent stock company, the Park regularly presented top foreign stars. Charles and Fanny Kemble had first appeared here in 1832. Tyrone Power, Charles Kean, Charles Mathews and his wife had all added their names to the long list of talents that the Park, over the years, had presented to the New World. Surely, if a newspaper's good report and a girl's bounding confidence meant anything, Simpson could soon add Charlotte's name to his fabled list.

In 1836 Edmund Simpson stood at the height of his long career at the famous theatre. An able actor, Simpson worked skillfully behind the scenes, running the theatre's business and locating and encouraging new talent. But although he constantly sought new faces, and although Charlotte's confidence gave her courage to seek him out, neither fact turned the immediate trick with Simpson. Her brief success in New Orleans, much as it interested him, could not open his doors. To Charlotte's note, Simpson returned a courteous, if disappointing, reply: Would Miss Cushman care to give him a chance to observe her work? He would be pleased to offer her a chance to act on trial.

To Charlotte, flush with her Southern victory, Simpson's reply seemed, in her words, "a great slight"; his attitude was insulting. Surely with the plaudits still ringing in her ears, she might have expected a warmer reception than this.¹

Broader experience would have given her better counsel. But in her first brush with reality in New York, Charlotte now read a note from Thomas Hamblin, manager of the Park's inferior rival, the American Theatre, popularly called the Bowery. On the strength of a word from James Barton, himself just arrived from the South, Hamblin had sought out Barton's young protégée to ask if he might watch her rehearse. If Miss Cushman were as able as her patron insisted, Hamblin believed he could make her a favorite.

Charlotte moved more quickly than wisdom dictated. Simpson had not rejected her; as a businessman he had merely appeared less eager than she had wished. Too new to the ways of job hunting, she ignored the obvious advantage of having any place at the Park, with its excellent acting school, over a top position in a second-rate house like the Bowery. She dispatched a note to Hamblin at the Bowery: Miss Cushman would be pleased to discuss his terms.

Hamblin's Bowery dated from 1826; for a time, its 3,500 seats had made it the largest theatre in America; in scope and elegance it had outshone the Park. But time and the English actor who had managed it since 1830 had brought changes. Under Hamblin, the Bowery had come to deserve its nickname, "The Bowery Slaughter House," from its round of bloody, thundering spectacles. Hamblin brought to his work a strong sense of fair play and a business acumen surprisingly good for a former comedian at Drury Lane, though his flashing eyes scarcely suggested his kindly nature.² At her tryout for Hamblin, Charlotte moved to stage center to run through scenes from Macbeth, Rowe's Jane Shore, and Kotzebue's The Stranger, poised from her days at the St. Charles.

Hamblin watched and listened. The girl's choice of cuttings proved she had range. Her resonant voice could carry to the highest seats in his house. Most important of all, she had "presence," that indefinable quality every manager hoped to find in a new actor. She had a vividness that might pay off in any number of ways before audiences that always demanded display and color. And the girl's face, for all its lack of beauty, took on a kind of splendor during the strongly passionate reading, an incandescence far more impressive on stage than beauty alone; her awkward body quivered with a passion almost electric.³ In no sense had Barton overstated the case; he had hardly suggested the girl's remarkable gift. When she had finished her demonstration, Hamblin summoned her to him. Would Miss Cushman accept a three-year contract?

A few days later Hamblin's agent brought her the contract. Dated to begin on July 30, it guaranteed a salary of $20 per week for the first year, $30 per week for the second, and $40 for the third. She could keep one-third of all moneys received the nights of her benefits. Subject to her Bowery schedule, she might act at other theatres as well; her salary would continue. Her first run at the Bowery would cover the month of September. To bind the matter, since Miss Cushman was under age, she must supply the name of a person to whom it could be drawn.⁴

Once Mary Eliza signed the contract, Charlotte could look confidently ahead, professionally and legally committed to a life shaped to her talents. Without further dreaming, she could aspire now to a long life of action on a field more joyful than any other. If New Orleans saw her artistic birth, New York would see her hope's fulfillment.

Immediately, Charlotte wrote home her good news. Since the boardinghouse had never brought more than a bare subsistence, why should her mother continue the struggle? Why not break up the household and move with the children to New York? Charlie could find some sort of job in a store, Mary Eliza could manage the house, and they could all live splendidly on Charlotte's small salary. In the Bowery section near the theatre, she found herself temporary quarters.

To fill her days until the family arrived, she set to work on her costumes. More accurately, she busied herself with plans, for in her costumes centered a problem. Typically, the contract made no mention of wardrobe; she was to supply her dresses and accessories. This much she knew. But here in this aloof city, where she knew almost no one (the Judds would be no help at all), how could a beginner stand the stupendous cost?

Costumes and their part in production costs spell one of the major differences between the theatre of Charlotte's youth and that of a later age. Producers would eventually note that in any man's reasons for attending a theatre the beauty and interest of the costumes figured importantly. The effect of a play was partly its visual impact. In time the budget to dress the actors would become the concern of a show's producer. But such a change would come too late for Charlotte's good at the Bowery. At Hamblin's house, one assumed that the actor's performance outweighed his garbed appearance--so long as his clothes suggested the character.

But the high cost of the trip from New Orleans and her present living expenses left Charlotte no money to buy them. When she approached Hamblin hesitantly and told him her problem, he offered a hand. He would supply her the necessary costumes; she could repay him at $5 per week. She borrowed enough money to dress the characters she had demonstrated at her audition. To stretch her wardrobe further, she searched through a street of secondhand shops near the Bowery for odds and ends she could afford. She picked up a few lengths of bright-colored silks, a skein of gold thread, and some trinkets, until she had collected a great bundle of useful articles.⁵

By mid-August when the family arrived, she had an eye on a job for Charlie; she also had her lines fully in hand. Things were off to a splendid beginning. Susan would remain in Boston with Elkanah's older daughter, Isabella, until Mary Eliza could be sure that the move was sound. And little Augustus--Charlotte had not realized how much she had missed him until she saw him bounding down out of the coach, his cap flying, his arms spread wide, crying her name.

Experience had already taught her that life seldom moved steadily forward, that prudence sometimes demanded an alternate plan. The strain of seeing the family established, the pressure of learning lines for a full month of one-night appearances had built up so much by late August that she decided one morning to drop everything and take a long walk in the country. Walking had always released her tensions in Boston. But this time she overextended her energies. By mid-afternoon she found herself in the village of Harlem, five or six miles from home, aware only now that she was nearly exhausted. For young men driving gigs or sulkies, the jaunt up to Harlem through wooded fields and farmsteads was a popular sport; in the cool of the evening they could cover the distance "along the north avenue" at incredible speeds up to twenty miles an hour. But in the August heat, covering the distance on foot was another matter. She staggered home, sick with a blinding headache, high fever, and chills.

Her illness became a three-week bout with "rheumatic fever." Reading about herself in the New York papers gave her pale comfort: "The Bowery has opened with a fine corps dramatique: . . . we are promised a young lady, whose first appearance was made in opera, but who is said to evince a most magnificent talent for 'the muse that the gifted Siddons wooed.' This is Miss Cushman."⁶ Horace Greeley's New Yorker noted that Charlotte Cushman would soon make her debut before the Bowery's patrons, "a candidate for a portion of their favor, which . . . cannot be too lavishly bestowed; for in addition to her professional merits, she has many private virtues which need only to be known, to give her strong claims" to community respect. Miss Cushman should become "a general favorite."⁷ And the Spirit of the Times was equally encouraging. "There is a Miss Cushman coming out here, who is said really to possess considerable talent. We shall see, as she is engaged for three years."⁸ To share the billing in the course of the season would be "no less a magnet than Ann Waring," Mr. Blakeley, the Harrisons, Mrs. Herring, and Mr. Cony's dogs, Hector and Bruin. "We had some hopes," sighed the Spirit, "of the Park and the National until we heard Hector and Bruin were engaged at the Bowery."

But flattering newspaper words, plus the dubious support of a pair of trick dogs, were little help while her fever continued to rage. She had to get well; she must manage somehow to appear on stage; her run would expire in four weeks. Every day missed was a day's income lost. Other actors were booked for the period beyond; to make her mark any time soon in New York, she had to take her place on the boards. When someone brought her word of a new treatment for fever, a course of medicated vapor baths, Charlotte leaped, however weakly, at the chance to try it. She could see little to lose.

Within a week, she was back on her feet, strong enough to run through a short rehearsal, to give a final touch to her Lady Macbeth costume, to stand ready--almost too late--for her opening night in New York. Only one of her contracted four weeks remained. If success in the theatre was largely a matter of talent and luck, it was also partly a matter of nerves, basic health, and unflagging optimism. She needed them all in the short, nervous hours that preceded her debut.

The glittering building Charlotte entered Monday evening, September 12, 1836, was an imposing structure, a complex hall in a "fireproof" exterior stuccoed to resemble marble. On its square, classic front, massive Corinthian columns and lanterns towered over the sidewalk and the short flight of steps approaching its doors. Above its elegant entrance soared a colossal carved eagle, measuring twenty-five feet between the tips of its gilded wings.

But the Bowery's cool, Greek-revival appearance hardly suggested the tenor of shows that rattled its rafters inside. Charlotte's Lady Macbeth was an appropriate choice for a Bowery debut. Her reading could splash all the blood, could volley all the thunder anyone within its hearing demanded. Tonight, she was the same, hard-driving, unsubtle power she had been in New Orleans, though now, in spite of her nerves, she was far from a naïve beginner. Hamblin himself played Macbeth, with the beautiful Ann Waring as Lady Macduff. Her beauty might have foretold a long career, but the plain-featured Charlotte Cushman was slated for the brighter future. No direct word appeared in print against Charlotte's appearance, but the press made much of Ann Waring's abounding grace, her delicate movements, the charm of this "very attractive young lady."⁹

Charlotte would learn to accept in print a blatant fact. In a profession that worshipped physical beauty, she could never hope to see her own looks receive any praise. She would make her impression, instead, with whatever force she possessed and the organ tones of a matchless voice, the power of a mind sure of itself on stage.

Sweeping through her debut, an almost sexless embodiment of will determined to push Macbeth toward his dreams, she would make her mark with talent--she must leave to other hands the spells a beauty could weave. If Hamblin's Macbeth demurred in the plan to murder Duncan, Charlotte's Lady Macbeth, first cousin to a Medea, lashed him forward. In spite of her recent illness, the energy she unlocked suggested she could drag, or lift, the broken-down Macbeth from the stage, could "pitch into him" with her clenched hands and muscular arms, could replace her words with blows.¹⁰

While this Lady Macbeth lacked the polish it would later acquire, Charlotte forcefully depicted a blind obsession steadily building its strategy. Later critics might praise the "deep, thrilling, pitiless tones" of her voice, the "wild, roving, inspired glances" of her eyes as she invoked the angels of crime, but her first Bowery audience recognized in the vigorous newcomer a magnetic authority, able with voice and slashing gesture, "with the horror of her infernal purpose, fiend-driven and inspired of hell," to chill a listener's blood. The echoing reaction caused the Spirit of the Times to herald the arrival of this "Boston girl" and wish "her success with all our hearts."¹¹

As she later recalled, "I succeeded beyond my expectations and those of the manager,"¹² an understatement of the fears and physical weakness that had plagued her during the long weeks preceding the debut. Now with her final curtain, she could relax a little. She had broken the ice confronting a newcomer, and if the applause meant anything, she had carried the day in the one city in all America where victory most counted. For once, she could relax in the knowledge that affairs for the Cushmans now shone with a radiance.

The following night, September 13, she played two other characters, Mrs. Haller in The Stranger and Helen Macgregor in Rob Roy, women vastly different from her Lady Macbeth. On Saturday, September 17, she was Patrick in The Poor Soldier and Alicia in Jane Shore with the beautiful Ann Waring. She had entered the contracted routine of a professional career. By the end of her grueling first week at the Bowery, although her hopes were high at her New York reception, her energies were correspondingly low; she fell prey again to chills and fever. Too honest to take home the wardrobe she had not fully paid for, she left it locked safely away at the theatre. With the little strength she had left, she staggered home again to meet Mary Eliza's grave concern.

The following Wednesday, September 21, Ann Waring suffered serious injury in a fall from a high platform. And the next evening during a performance of Lafitte, The Pirate of the Gulf, fatal calamity struck the house itself. Hamblin had spent $5,000 on this production; he had filled his stage with a large cast, brilliant scenery, broad action and noise, the rattle and fire of muskets, even a cannon's blast, but his attention to authenticity spelled his downfall. Perhaps from a spark in the shooting, a fire broke out early the next morning. Immediately it tore through the vast interior; a passerby saw flames already eating through the building's roof. When the firemen arrived, the Bowery was one seething mass; above the flames and ashes, the gilded eagle soared for a time, then crashed in a great shower of sparks. Firemen rushed in all directions with axes and futile buckets of water, while a hundred Bowery employees stood helpless as their goods dissolved in flames--musicians lamenting their instruments, carpenters their tools, actors their costumes and properties. In an hour, nothing remained of the Bowery but steaming embers and its proud Corinthian columns. The "fireproof" exterior had gone down in flames.¹³

In that hour, more than a famous theatre had fallen. Sick in her bed, Charlotte learned of her own bitter loss: her costumes with the bill against them still unpaid, her three-year contract, her family's immediate hopes. All had vanished in the smoke and ashes.

In times of calamity, Mary Eliza was hardly a woman to record her thoughts. As a person, she emerges only indirectly through reference in Charlotte's own writings, but the early morning when the frantic cries brought word of the Bowery's burning, she could hardly have kept herself from Puritan speculation. Back in Boston, she had counseled her daughter as best she could; she had pointed out patiently the risks Charlotte ran in choosing a stage career. While she had scarcely feared so literal a downfall as this for the girl, she was not surprised. To enjoy the theatre was not to ignore its pitfalls. The fire was a judgment. Throughout America, theatres often succumbed to flames. On this same site, two Bowery Theatres had gone down in fire. Twice now, Charlotte had suffered dire setbacks, the loss of a singing voice, the loss of a legal contract. How much more clearly could one expect God to speak? Was it not time now for Charlotte to redirect her ambitions, time for them all to return to Boston?

Charlotte could not easily shrug off her mother's argument. In despair she could admit that doors opened and doors closed as signs of God's perfect will. Her talent had been recognized in the city where talent was appreciated. But in God's judgment was her acting talent the merest delusion? Was she to throttle her ambition in some pale compromise with ease and comfort, some mindless return to the simple sphere of her childhood, to lead a conventional life empty of any excitement but satisfactory, perhaps, in other ways?

With the Bowery's end, the complications had become too great. Years later a friend would report a statement Charlotte made at this time. If Charley or someone else "had come forward then and offered me a home I would gladly have accepted, and would have led my life untroubled by ambitious dreams, unsuspecting of the divine afflatus within me."¹⁴

One wonders. By now she had already discovered the "divine afflatus." Already she was fully certain of her own genius. For all the comfort she might take in the knowledge that Charley Wiggin was waiting in Boston, she could not, for reasons related to honesty, go back to him. In her dawning awareness about many things in her makeup, she could hardly give Charley the domestic devotion he needed; she could not offer him the fully committed heart and body that marriage required.

Just now, whatever the future held for her genius lay buried under the Bowery's smoking ruins. She could only pray that time would open another lead.