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Orleans much public interest and even enthusiasm, and with the prestige of this success Miss Cushman returned to the North and sought an engagement in New-York. Hamblin gave her an opening at the Bowery, and her first appearance was effected there. This portion of her life was much fretted with various kinds of trouble; and——not to pause, upon matters that are trivial now——it may be said, in summary comment, that she had to make her way against many obstacles, and that she gained no victory without hard fighting. On April 23, 1837, she appeared at the National Theater, under the management of James H. Hackett, in the character of Romeo; and it was during this engagement——namely, on the 8th of May, 1837——that she first acted Meg Merrilies. In the Fall of that year she was enrolled as a member of the dramatic company at the Park Theater, where she acted many parts——notably those of Goneril, Emilia, and Gertrude, with Forrest——and where she made a remarkable hit, as Nancy, in "Oliver Twist." From this house she went to Philadelphia, where for a time she was the manager of the Walnut Street Theater. In 1844, when Macready came, for the second time, to the Park, she was engaged, at his special request, to coöperate with him; and her success at that time was such as materially enhanced her reputation. It led, also, to one of the most important steps of her life, since it inspired her with the resolve to conquer a name on the English stage.

Miss Cushman went to London in 1845. Mr. Forrest was acting at the Princess's Theater, and an opportunity was obtained of effecting her appearance there. She made the plunge as Bianca, in "Fazio;" and though coldly received during the first two acts, she aroused, in act third, a prodigious enthusiasm. The personation was, in fact, a splendid triumph of mind and fire, and Miss Cushman was at once acknowledged as an actress who, in a certain class of characters, had no superior in England. Her engagement at the Princess's Theater was continued through eighty-four nights, and she afterward made the British provincial tour with extraordinary success. In 1850 she returned to America, and was thereafter seen in many cities by great assemblages of admiring spectators. In New-York she appeared at Brougham's Lyceum, at the Astor Place Opera House, and at the old Broadway Theater. Her name and her fortune had now been made, and on May 15, 1852, at the Broadway, she received a benefit and took a formal farewell of the American stage. Her second visit to England ensued; and upon her return she reappeared in this city, at Burton's New Theater, as Bianca, and afterward made the tour of the provinces. This period of professional exertion lasted from September 28, 1857, to July 6, 1858, when she again took leave of the American public. It was during this engagement that she first enacted Cardinal Wolsey, giving an embodiment which has long been ranked with great cotemporary impersonations of Shakespearean character.

It is not difficult to understand——(when we consider that Miss Cushman was a woman of weird genius, somber imagination, great sensibility, and celibate condition; that she had been victorious by force rather than by sweetness; that for her conscientious mind and highly nervous organization the practice of the dramatic art was terribly earnest; and that frequently she was the victim of disease)——in what way she often came to believe that the limit of her labor was reached, that the end of her life was near, and that her retirement from the public view was needful. With natures that see widely and feel deeply, such despondent views of personal destiny and worldly affairs are not unusual. Thackeray, long before he wrote "The Newcomes," said of himself that his work was done and he should accomplish no more. In the several farewells that she

[[torn page]] ble head and reverend face indicated such a vitality as it seemed impossible that death could conquer. To the last she was an image of majesty. The pain that consumed her suffering body could never quell her royal spirit. She could look back upon a good life; she was sustained by religious faith; she felt upon her gray hair the spotless crown of honor; she met death, as she had met life, a victor; and she has passed from the world with all the radiance of her glory about her—like sunset from a mountain peak, that vanishes at once into the heavens.

The greatness of Charlotte Cushman was that of an exceptional because grand and striking personality, combined with extraordinary power to embody the highest ideals of majesty, pathos, and appalling anguish. She was not a great actress merely, but she was a great woman. She did not possess the dramatic faculty apart from other faculties, and conquer by that alone; but, having that faculty, in almost unlimited fullness, she poured forth through its channel such resources of character, intellect, moral strength, soul, and personal magnetism as marked her for a genius of the first order while they made her an irresistible force in art. When she came upon the stage she filled it with the weirdness and the brilliant vitality of her presence. Every movement that she made was winningly characteristic. Her least gesture was eloquence. Her voice, which was soft or silvery or deep or mellow accordingly as emotion affected it, used now and then to tremble and partly to break, with tones that were pathetic beyond description. These were denotements of the fiery soul that smoldered beneath her grave exterior and gave iridescence to every form of art that she embodied. Sometimes her whole being seemed to become petrified in a silent suspense more thrilling than any action—as if her imagination were suddenly enthralled by the tumult and awe of its own vast perceptions. It made no difference that, especially of late years, her person was somewhat bulky and cumbrous, that her countenance was homely, and that some of her mannerisms were mannish. The commanding character, the authentic charm of genius, the lofty individuality——strange, weird, sweet, and fascinating——was victorious all the same.

As an actress Miss Cushman was best in tragedy, whether lurid or pathetic, and in somber melodrama. Theatrical history will, probably, associate her name more intimately with Meg Merrilies than with any other character. This production was unique. It embodied physical misery, wandering reason, delirious imagination, and the wasted tenderness of a loving but broken heart; and it was tinted with the most graphic colors of romance. The art method by which it was projected was peculiar in this—that it disregarded probability and addressed itself to the imaginative perception. When Meg Merrilies sprang forth in the moonlight and stood, with towering figure and extended arms, tense, rigid and terrible beautiful, glaring on the form of Henry Bertram, the spectator saw a creature of the ideal world and not of earth. This conception may have been in the brain of Sir Walter Scott: it was never on his page. Miss Cushman could give free rein to her frenzy in this character, and that was why she loved it and excelled in it, and was able by means of it to reveal herself so amply and distinctly to the public mind. What she thus revealed was a power of passionate emotion as swift as the lightning and as wild as the gale——an individuality fraught with pathos, romance, tenderness, grandeur, the deep knowledge of grief and the royal strength of endurance. Her Meg Merrilies was not her greatest work, but it was her most startling and effective one, because it was the sudden and brilliant illumination of her being.