"Miss Cushman and Her Sister"

If the remaining years of Charlotte's contract with Simpson and Price could teach her valuable lessons, only time would tell if her profits would include more money. Good sense might recommend that she tackle willingly every role the managers assigned, the present varied use of her talents might seem to promise the future she wanted, but for herself a deeper truth was made plain. In stock companies, even the best ones, walking ladies took most of their gains in experience.

At home where idleness hung heavy on Susan's hands, Charlotte suggested a new interest to speed the months until March. Too awkward now to assist with the household chores, Susan could help Charlotte learn her new roles. Throughout the winter, a new camaraderie developed between them. Feeding Charlotte her lines, Susan discovered in herself a real flare for reading, a born sense of phrasing that injected new excitement into the study routine. On the fourth of March, 1838, Susan Merriman gave birth to a healthy boy. She named the infant Edwin Charles, though Charlotte promptly nicknamed him Bub. In the fatherless household, the baby's arrival brought the three women an immediate joy, but their uncertainty tempered into a long-range concern that was not always best for the boy. Three mothers were more than any child needed.

In May, Forrest returned to the Park, ready to overwhelm his audience again in a new comedy, Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons. In the play the proud Pauline Deschapelles has rejected various suitors, including a former Marquis. Resenting the slight, Beauseant persuades Claude Melnotte, son of Pauline's old gardener, to masquerade as a Prince and trick the girl into marriage. After the wedding, remorse overcomes the young husband; he confesses the ruse to Pauline and has the marriage annulled. The rest of the play gives Pauline ample opportunity to prove that she really loves Claude. At the end, they remarry.

With Forrest as Claude, Charlotte had little to do as his mother, but she made the part "interesting and prominent."¹ Walt Whitman was deeply impressed: Charlotte put "more genius"² into her Widow Melnotte than any number of foreign stars could hope to inject.

A few weeks later, The Lady of Lyons served her better. On June 10, when one of the loveliest English actresses ever seen in America, Ellen Tree, came to the Park to play Pauline, Charlotte was again the mother. But by the twenty-eighth, she had gained enough support from Simpson and Price to attempt Forrest's own role as Claude. A fine house received her Claude "exceedingly well." The Spirit of the Times would not swear that Forrest and Ellen Tree had ever set off louder applause.³

Charlotte began the new season in August 1838 as Hero in Woman's Wit. The Spirit hailed "the exquisite taste" of her performance: Miss Cushman's rapid advance would surprise no person aware of the "unwearied assiduity with which she has devoted herself to the cultivation of her talents." Her prospects were "brilliant."⁴ Gratifying words indeed to begin a new season. At home, her mother and Susan were well, little Bub flourished in the circle of maternal attention, and Charlotte herself had never felt more secure.

In the maturity her busy years were bringing, Charlotte was discovering the normal price success exacts from the professional artist. Striving to win, he seldom knows total victory in a subjective medium like acting. No matter how skilled he may be, he cannot always please the multitude. A case in point was James Gordon Bennett's complaints in the Herald: If Miss Cushman ever hoped to become a really popular actress, she must alter her style, rid herself of a general looseness, a "helter skelter, random, devil-may-care manner on stage." Said Bennett, "She plays with her part, but she does not play it."⁵

While the comment provoked her, it gave little help. To her knowledge, she had no particular style, no mannerisms or tricks, no hollow gestures or stock expressions. She was playing too many roles to use any stock technique. Still, Bennett's word was a thing to consider, especially in light of her growing hopes not only to merit New York stardom but eventually to storm the gates of London.

Truly, no one could hope to please everyone. The day Bennett took her to task in the Herald, Porter eased her pain in the Spirit: "It is characteristic of Miss Cushman to give herself to the study of her parts, however beneath her rank, with all industry." Whether barmaid or chambermaid, heroine or clown, she played her parts with "care and fidelity." Her constant study was bringing her "increasing excellence and popularity." Ahead of her surely lay substantial rewards, "a high salary and good benefits."⁶

Charlotte was not the first or the last to find the critics a puzzling lot, no matter how inept they might be. Unable to please them all, too busy to worry, she redoubled her efforts. Audience acclaim was, after all, the truest reward, and when the acclaim was like that shouted by a vigorous young reporter from Brooklyn, she took heart. "Who has seen her Evadne, in The Bridal, but acknowledged the towering grandeur of her genius!" wrote Walt Whitman. "In the simple utterance of her shrieking 'yes! yes! yes!' as she swings down to her brother's feet, was one of the greatest triumphs of the histrionic art, ever achieved!" For young Whitman, "in the twinkling of an eye--in the utterance of a word--was developed the total revolution of a mighty and guilty mind--from pride, defiance, anger, and rioting guilt, to an utterly crushed state of fear, remorse, and conscious vileness!" He could swear he would never forget "the surpassing beauty of that performance!"⁷

Throughout the fall of 1838 and into the winter, as her success at the Park continued, Charlotte sensed a growing disquiet in Susan. With Nelson Merriman out of Susan's life forever, there was little to fear on that score. The girl had no obligation to him, no compulsion to go back to him should he ever appear. Susan's dissatisfaction finally came out in a serious talk. As a mother with a child's needs on her hands, she could accept no more charity from Charlotte. She must begin to pay her own way.

But Susan was soon to discover, as her mother had years before, that jobs for women were still not easy to find. And what were her capabilities? Suddenly inspired, Charlotte suggested that Susan herself attempt a stage career. In the practice sessions at home, feeding Charlotte her lines, the girl had already revealed a certain talent. Charlotte could coach her, could guide whatever real gifts might become clear in directed study. Captivated, Susan set immediately to work on the promptbooks Charlotte brought home, imagining the day when she herself, at stage center, might reap applause.

To date, the public could agree that Charlotte had already made three roles particularly her own: Romeo, Lady Macbeth, and Meg Merrilies. They had become hers the minute she first appeared in them. She soon added a fourth to her list.

Dickens' new novel, Oliver Twist, had scarcely hit American bookstalls before Simpson and Price had a dramatized version ready. The plight of an appealing orphan seemed surefire at the box office, especially against such disreputable types as the evil Fagin, the Artful Dodger, Bill Sykes, and his companion, the ragged, uncouth Nancy.

All along, Charlotte had found Edmund Simpson completely amicable, but in Stephen Price she had found a puzzling antagonist. She was not alone in her troubles; to a man, the Park's actors knew Price as a boastful, greedy opportunist.⁸ Sooner or later, the whole company had come into conflict with him. When Charlotte's own strong convictions stood up to him, sparks flew.

Near the first of February, 1839, Price announced his casting for Oliver Twist, the play to be ready in a week. The disreputable Nancy fell to Charlotte. She dared not show her fury at being assigned so sordid a role; the mere thought of it repelled her. But against Price's ill will, she knew she was helpless. "I dared not refuse, nor even remonstrate, for I knew he wished to provoke me to break my engagement."⁹ Her only choice was to make the best of the matter, to try to outwit Price's determined attacks against her. The problem called for strong measures, for in spite of its crudity Charlotte saw in the role a spark of pathos. Immediately, she devised a plan.

She made it clear to Mary Eliza that she must be gone a few days. Before leaving, she admonished Susan to keep up her study, to be ready for the day when she could seek an audition with Simpson. She then put on her most nondescript clothes and picked her way through the dingy streets to the notorious Five Points, fit slum for a Fagin's gang. In a miserable den called "Mother Hennessey's," which catered to prostitutes and bums, she rented a room.

Next morning, she wandered the filth-littered streets, listening intently to the raucous voices and street cries, watching the shifty faces, eager to catch every feature of poverty and hunger. One old hag, resenting Charlotte's interest, tried to attack her. When another old woman became violently ill in a saloon, Charlotte took her to Mother Hennessey's and cared for her until the woman died in the night. Before breathing her last, she gave Charlotte all of her possessions, a ragged bonnet, her threadbare dress, and her shoes. Next morning Charlotte packed the items in a tattered basket, scratched through a trash heap until she located a large rusty key, then made her way back to the theatre.¹⁰

Small wonder, perhaps, that the play that opened on February 7, 1839, elicited an almost terrible fascination. Dickens' scene and his people had been translated exactly to the stage, "in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid misery of their lives . . . forever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of life, with the great black ghastly gallows closing up their prospect, turn them where they might."¹¹ The despicable Nancy lacked all refinement. In every ugly detail she was the wretched women Charlotte had observed in Five Points, though through her acting Nancy the creature became a fully realized human being.

When Peter Richings as Sykes said, "A dolly-mop, eh, Fagin? And here she comes with a bonnet, apron, basket, and street-door key complete," Charlotte entered, swinging her great rusty key. While her lines called for her simply to cross and signal to Oliver, she moved stealthily around the crowd, crossed the stage, then recrossed, shot a look of sympathy at Oliver, thrust her tongue in her cheek, and then exited.

Throughout the play she dominated her scenes; the sympathy was hers as much as Oliver's. To one observer, Charlotte put "pages of despair into the simple act of battering her ragged old hat on a nail in the wall, sitting down, rocking to and fro, and biting the tip off a stick."¹² Dickens' abandoned outcast, a girl who might have remained a tigress of the slums, became in Charlotte's portrayal a feminine sensibility blotted and trampled by human cruelty, slowly discovering a sense of honor and decency.¹³

Part of the trick was the costume. The tattered hat, the shredded apron, the dirt-colored shawl, the disheveled dress, the red boots--all were spoils of her visit to Five Points. But the acting was also an import from the seething, festering streets nearby. Charlotte had seen Nancy's counterparts on every corner. It was no difficult trick to suggest the girl's bitter hopelessness when she tries to defend Oliver against Fagin and Sykes:

Nancy: Let him be then, or I shall put that mark on some of you that will bring me to the gallows before my time!
Sykes: You're a nice 'un--to take up the humane and genteel side!--a pretty subject for the child to make a friend!
Nancy: God help me! I am--I am; and I wish I had died in the streets before I had lent a hand in bringing him to where he is. Ah me! he's a thief from this night forth--and isn't that enough without more cruelty?
Fagin: Civil words.
Nancy: Civil words, Fagin! Do you deserve 'em from me? Who taught me to pilfer and to steal, when I was a child not half so old as this? You! I have been in the trade and in your service twelve years since, and you know it, well--you know you do!
Fagin: And if you have, it is your living.
Nancy: Ah! it is--it is my living! And the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home! And you're the wretch who drove me to 'em long ago, and that'll keep me there till I die.

Brandishing her stick, Nancy rushes at Fagin, but Sykes grabs her and squeezes her so tightly she faints, while hatred and horror play in her face.¹⁴

In Nancy's final scene, Charlotte took the character to its pathetic limit. Sykes enters the dark bedroom, determined to punish her for plotting against Fagin and himself.

Nancy: It is you! I am so glad.
Sykes: It is. Get up!
Nancy: You've put out the light; but no matter, the day is beginning to dawn, and I'll open the window.
Sykes: Let it be! There's light enough for what I've got to do. (Seizing her arm and dragging her to center)
Nancy: Oh! Tell me what I've done--I--I won't scream or cry; but speak to me and tell me what I've done.
Sykes: You know! You were watched tonight, and every word was heard!
Nancy: Then spare my life, for the love of heaven, as I spared yours! (Clinging to him) You cannot have the heart to kill me! I will not lose my hold! You cannot throw me off! Oh, stop before you spill my blood! I have been true to you--upon my guilty soul! . . . I will hold you till you kiss me and forgive.

Sykes drags her off the stage, then a scream is heard, then a fall, and Sykes reenters, pale and trembling. "There is blood upon these hands and she is dead." The next instant, Charlotte dragged herself back into view. Keeping her face away from the audience, calling pitifully to Sykes, begging him to kiss her and forgive, she sounded "as if she spoke through blood."¹⁵

The Spirit had raves for Charlotte's "inimitable truth and great power" as Nancy. "She makes it the most effective character in the play."¹⁶ In spite of her fears about the repulsive part, wholly against Stephen Price's intentions, Charlotte's Nancy became an immediate hit. Walt Whitman labeled the reality of her acting "appalling," the most "intense acting ever felt on the Park boards."¹⁷ And as late as thirteen years afterward, Francis Wemyss, the Philadelphia theatre manager, still recalled her Nancy's "powerful impression." She repeated the role sixteen times that season. And to Charles Dickens' regret, sourly complaining that he never made a farthing from a stage version of his books, Charlotte's Nancy established an American theatre vogue for Dickens.

Dates in the record vary, but within a few nights excitement again hit the Cushman household. With a successful audition behind her, Susan Cushman made her stage debut as Laura to Charlotte's Montaldo in Epes Sargent's play, The Genoese.¹⁸ For Charlotte, the preceding weeks had conjured up her frenzied days in New Orleans, when she had labored and prayed with Barton. Like her sister, Susan was a quick study, though here their resemblance ended. Susan's gentleness fitted her for roles Charlotte could never consider, the supple, romantic ingenues requiring the grace she herself lacked. And that fact would save trouble. Booked in the same company, the sisters need never compete for the same roles.

If Susan's debut set off no volcano of cheers, the Park's regulars found in this "pretty" Cushman ample talent for an acting career. At home, new happiness reigned. At last the sixteen-year-old mother could venture out of her shell. A contracted professional, she could peg her sights toward building a life for herself and her child, on a starting salary of $12 a week.

Charlotte's keenly honed memory, one of the many acting tools she developed during these busy years at the Park, gave her a happy lift in September 1839, when John Howard Payne came to call. She confessed her debt to her eminent visitor; now, fourteen years after her self-conscious tongue had loosened while reading aloud Payne's lines from Brutus at school, she could credit the course of her life to that simple schoolroom exercise. The joy she had discovered that day in words clearly pronounced and projected had never left her.

The time had come for repayment. Just now Payne had a playwright's interest in Texas; its recent struggles had fired his imagination. He had finished a Texas play; he was working on a Texas novel. The Banished Son, he wrote after the meeting, "is now entirely in the rough, and requires remodelling throughout; but you will make out the story. I purpose making Texas the scene of refuge and making the villains some of the Mexican marauders there." It should make a popular play.¹⁹

Payne had Charlotte in mind for one of its derring-do roles. The Texas subject should brighten its appeal. Charlotte recognized the flattery in Payne's visit; the friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb had come to solicit her help. His song, "Home Sweet Home," had long been famous; his Brutus was one of the most arresting plays yet written by an American. But Payne had his difficulties. Without the help of an established actor or a "foreign stamp of approval" on his work, no American playwright stood much chance of finding his works succeed at the box office. His only real chance at profit lay in making a direct sale to a manager or being commissioned to write a vehicle for a star.

Payne had brought four unproduced plays to Charlotte. Might he have her reaction? Did they stand a chance with Simpson and Price? "They are trusted to you in perfect confidence; and under a reliance that no one else will be permitted to see them."²⁰

Payne was correct that a Texas subject brightened a play's appeal. For more than ten years, "G.T.T." soaped on a man's front window fully explained his sudden absence; he had "sloped," "Gone to Texas" to seek his fortune or escape the law. Reports filtered back to the States playing up these Texans as renegades, frontier braggarts who might settle down one day and become civilized men, but present evidence for such was scant. Too busy fighting the wilderness, the Texans cared little for critical opinion. Translated onto the stage, who could say just how popular Payne's Banished Son might become, with Charlotte Cushman playing the lead?

Next day, Charlotte returned three of Payne's manuscripts with "thanks for the pleasure they have afforded me." She would keep the fourth a day or so longer, "but would not allow the day to pass without making a part of my promise good."²¹ Whatever help Charlotte managed to give the eminent Payne, his visit marked a progress in her own career. If "theatre" meant "actors" in the public mind, Payne sought her help as an actor whose light shone with increasing brilliance.

It occurred to her late in the season to seek advice about her own ambitions. After a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, probably the first time Charlotte played Queen Katharine, she asked William Chapman, Lord Sands in the play, what chance she might have at success in England. A man of many talents, Chapman had just returned from a career in England and on the Mississippi showboats. His opinion would be based on solid experience.

Chapman's reply was immediate. "Extraordinary gifts" like hers were wasted in the "trivial" parts Simpson repeatedly gave her; by all means, Charlotte should go to London and let her talents be known.²²

Chapman's advice needed thinking. At twenty-three she could dream, but an actual voyage to London and a debut before an English audience required something more. In New York a walking lady's salary might keep body and soul together, but it could hardly do more--certainly not cover the cost of an ocean voyage, however practical the investment might be. She could begin her plans now, but time must give her guidance. Meanwhile, with whatever help she could offer, Susan had a name to establish, and she herself must appear to her best advantage on occasions like July 5, 1839, the day the playbills announced, "The President of the United States will honor the theatre with his presence this evening."

From a flag-draped box the President's party watched Charlotte rollick through an important new role, Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal. With the country's shaky finances, with his popularity hitting a new low almost daily, Martin Van Buren needed entertainment. Charlotte's Lady Teazle brought the President momentary relief from his cares, for unlike the rural belle imitating the haughty Lady Sneer and Mrs. Candour whom Miss Abington had created at Drury Lane in 1777, Charlotte made the part "fresh and hoydenish." The President applauded her pouting and quarreling, her wheedling and coaxing Sir Peter.²³ Her success in the part and Van Buren's delighted responses brought her many new admirers.

Susan's own acting, some two weeks later, confirmed all opinions that the younger Cushman possessed no mean talent herself. With Charlotte as Emilia and George Vandenhoff as Othello, she charmed the audience with her fragile, almost willowy, Desdemona. At the curtain, Charlotte and Susan returned to stage center and, in a low-sweeping bow, acknowledged the applause together. Throughout the 1839-40 season the sisters regularly appeared in the same plays.

If the playbills caused trouble between them, there was no sign of it. In the heavy black letters tacked on the Park's front doors, "Miss Cushman" always meant Charlotte; Susan was "Her sister." If the younger of Mary Eliza's daughters resented this second billing, she had more important things on her mind. Stardom might be vital to a burning talent like Charlotte's, applause an indispensable element, but for Susan, now that she had qualified for the work, her best reward was the steady income it brought to the household on Frankfurt Street.

However much new talent fears a critical press, during these early years Charlotte needed more perceptive appraisal than New York papers usually gave. From the start, William T. Porter's Spirit of the Times had ranked among her most loyal supporters. In 1838 Porter had trumpeted the word, "We cordially congratulate herself and friends upon the brilliant prospects before her."²⁴ Porter's goodwill was heartening, but a person striving constantly to improve found little help in such comments.

His notice on March 1840 was more to the point. Porter confessed his reluctance to fault anyone so "ambitious to excel," but the sooner Miss Cushman, an actress of decided talent, learned that force and command did not solely depend on violent gesture and angry tone, the sooner she would achieve "the perfection for which she strives." As Mary Stuart, she had "over-acted." The towering Queen had been leveled to "something between a scold and a vixen."²⁵ Let her not misunderstand; his rebukes were meant in all kindness, but Miss Cushman must remedy a serious defect which had increased along with her "confessedly superior" powers.

The reprimand brought no joy, but she could agree she had much to learn. Throughout the spring, as she and Susan continued to appear almost nightly, she maintained a firmer control. They were Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor on April 23; they were Gertrude and Ophelia on the twenty-fourth; their benefit with Charles Kean in Macbeth on May 8 brought one of the best houses of the season. Porter published his satisfaction; the size of the crowd was "a most deserving and eloquent tribute" to the talented sisters.²⁶

Back in April, when Simpson announced Kean's forthcoming run at the Park, the greenroom had tingled with suppressed excitement. The son of the fabled Edmund would undoubtedly shed a luster recalling his father's brilliance. Though few in America had forgotten the great Edmund's arrogance on his tour in the 1820s, few debated his rank as one of the world's superstars. His arresting looks, his carriage, his magnetism had made him a legend. His son Charles was expected to fill his shoes.

Unfortunately, young Charles possessed hardly a diluted version of his father's gifts. Charlotte gave him her utmost support as Goneril, but she found little brilliance in the man. His acting was filled with calculated effort; his voice had a peculiar rasp and nasal huskiness. In spite of Kean's limitations, Charlotte brought much credit to herself in his presence. James Parton, as a child, saw her Goneril to Kean's Lear and "hated her--making no distinction between her and the part she played."²⁷ After only four nights at the Park, Kean succumbed to severe laryngitis and moved on to Boston where further calamity befell. He was standing in the wings ready to enter, when a counterweight fell from the flies and killed a man standing on the spot Kean had just vacated, spattering the actor with blood.²⁸

Near the season's end, a question arose. After three years of service to Simpson, Charlotte was certain she was worth more than the $20 guaranteed in her contract. And she was no less certain that Susan deserved a raise. What increase for them did Simpson have in mind? She would expect $5 more for herself and at least a token increase for Susan. Simpson debated: Miss Cushman must realize that these perilous times made box office receipts unpredictable. But to Charlotte, perilous times were the soundest argument why good service deserved reward. After a heated argument Simpson stood firm at $20 for Charlotte, $12 for Susan. Outraged, the Cushman sisters decided not to rejoin the niggardly Simpson in the fall.

August 12, 1840, was Charlotte's final night at the Park. Taking her bows, she could look back proudly, if wearily, on a period of almost total growth--in spite of Simpson's tight-fisted control of her income. That earlier August when she had first moved into the focal point of these footlights, she had been a fledgling with everything to gain in a top professional company. But now, if she had not yet achieved real fame, she had become an artist. She had kept her ambitions clear. In three years at the Park she had played more than 120 different roles, ranging from leads to the humblest, unnamed faces.

Practicing her art, she had learned a practical lesson. Never again would she humbly submit to a manager's every dictation. At the Park, if she had sometimes "over-acted," she had often been overworked. She had been foolish to make herself so generally useful. And while her compliance had attracted Simpson's healthy regard, the fact had not weighted her pocket. She had discovered that Simpson and Price, like any practical managers of the time, kept useful people down, "lest they should feel their own strength" and oblige their employers to hire two or three people instead of one--or else pay that one more money.²⁹

Appreciation by others was partly the value one placed on oneself. Confident of her gifts, fully aware that her work at the Park had accounted for more than its share of customers, she resolved now never again to undersell her own wares. If leaving the Park made her worth "painfully apparent" to Simpson, he had no one to blame but himself. She left Simpson's company now to become leading lady at W. E. Burton's new National Theatre in Philadelphia, a chance at last to plant her banners on the highest ramparts of her profession.