CHAPTER IX.

CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.

BY LILIAN WHITING.

Charlotte Cushman's Childhood - Her Remarkable Imitative Faculty - First Appearance on the Stage-A Scanty Stage Wardrobe- A Friend in Need -An Amusing Experience-The Struggle for Fame - Macready's Sympathy and Influence- First Visit to Europe-"Waiting in the Shadow"-Début in London-A Brilliant Triumph-Her Ability Recognized at Last in her Native Land-Glimpse of her Life in RomeUnfaltering Patriotism - Her Munificent Gift to the Sanitary Commission -The Culmination of her Power-A Notable Dramatic Triumph - Her Farewell to the Stage- Address of William Cullen Bryant-Miss Cushman's Response-Her Illness, Death, and Last Resting-Place.

N attempting any interpretation of the artist, it is in the inner life that we must seek the clue. Thoughts are his events, and creations are his only real achievements. Genius controls its possessor, and life becomes a journey under sealed orders, advancing less by development than by crises of surprises and revelations. The proverbial unrest of genius is the result of this law.

That divine fruition of creative power which we call Art is the result of intricate elements. Into its forces enter inherited instincts, the rude powers of material necessity, and those invisible but potent tides of spiritual life. Yet back of these, and defying all analysis, is always the elusive force, the element of the unknown. In studying the life of Miss Cushman, this great fact of the elusive force that defies analysis emphasizes itself to us. In vain we seek its source in her parentage or in the external circumstances of her life.

Charlotte Saunders Cushman was born in Richmond street, in Boston, July 23, 1816. She died at the Parker House, in Boston, February 18, 1876, in the nation's centennial year. In the sixty years between these dates a wonderful life was lived. A girl born into humble and primitive conditions goes forth and conquers a world.

She was the daughter of Elkanah and Mary Eliza (Babbit) Cushman. Her father was born in Plymouth. Left an orphan at the age of thirteen, he walked to Boston in search of employment and began the conscious struggle of life. He established himself in business as a merchant on Long Wharf, but when Charlotte was thirteen years of age he met with such reverses as impelled her, child as she was, to consider how she could rely on herself. Hereditary instincts were strong forces within her. For generations back, on the part of both parents, her ancestors had been exceptional for industry, energy, and piety.

It is believed that Robert Cushman, the founder of the family in America, born about 1580, preached the first sermon in New England, and it was he to whom Governor Bradford alludes as "the right hand of the Adventurers, who for divers years has managed all our business with them to our great advantage." Elkanah Cushman, the father of Charlotte, was the seventh generation in descent from Robert Cushman, and the fifth bearing the name of Elkanah. The Babbit family, too, were honorably known. The maternal grandfather and great-grandfather of Charlotte Cushman were graduates of Harvard University. Her grandmother Babbit (born Mary Saunders) was gifted with a remarkable degree of the imitative faculty, and this gift Charlotte inherited to an extent that made her, as a child, un enfant terrible, and which in later years imparted an added vitality to her dramatic power.

Of her childhood Miss Cushman herself said: "Imitation was a prevailing trait with me. On one occasion, when Henry Ware, pastor of the old Boston Meeting-House, was taking tea with my mother, he sat at table talking, with his

chin resting in his two hands, and his elbows on the table. I was suddenly startled by my mother exclaiming, 'Charlotte, take your elbows off the table and your chin out of your hands; it is not a pretty position for a young lady!' I was sitting in exact imitation of the parson, even assuming the expression of his face."

In early youth Charlotte's special gift appeared to be music. She received in it careful cultivation. She sang in church choirs, and a few years later, about 1834-35, when Mrs. Wood came first to sing in Boston, and inquiries being made for a contralto singer to support her, Miss Cushman was recommended. The result of a trial was satisfactory, and both Mr. and Mrs. Wood assured her that she had a fortune in her voice if properly cultivated for the lyric stage. She became a pupil of James G. Mäeder, and under his instruction made her first appearance in the role of Countess Almaviva, in the "Marriage of Figaro," at the Tremont Theatre. Following this she went to New Orleans and sang, when, almost without warning, her voice failed. This marked the second of those distinct crises which one traces in studying critically the life of this remarkable woman, and which suggest the changes to which Emerson refers as those that break up the currents of life, but which are advertisements of a nature where law is growth.

To Charlotte Cushman each of these successive crises of life came as the stepping-stone to larger experiences, till of them she might well have said:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!
As the swift seasons roll;

Leave thy low vaulted past,

Let each new temple, statelier than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown cell by life's unresting sea.

But it was reserved for the insight that results from experience to enter into the profound truth of these lines.