By the winter of 1836 Charlotte was so busy she struggled to keep up with her family’s lives, and she missed Augustus. She paid for his school, room, and board but rarely got to see him. Her typical day included morning rehearsal, evening performance, and dinner with friends—which now included some of the powerful Albanians who regularly came to her shows. Usually getting home around midnight, she stayed up later studying lines, sometimes with just a few hours to learn a new role before rehearsal the next day.
Rehearsals are an actor’s school, and Charlotte always tried to excel, but the process was still new to her. She was confronted every day with the theatre’s foreign language, a maze of new words—downstage (toward the front), upstage (toward the back), stage left (the audience’s right), stage right (the audience’s left), carmine (rouge), scrim (a thin screen at the back of the stage), cork (burnt cork to darken the actor’s skin), and a hundred others—that allowed the actors, craftsmen, and stagehands to communicate quickly and efficiently. It was like being on Long Wharf again, listening to sailors speaking of keels and crosswinds.
She also had to learn to manage her salary and negotiate her own contracts. An inexperienced actor could find her salary whittled away by fines if she wasn’t careful. If she stayed too long getting her makeup on in the green room and missed her cue, she would be fined, and fined again for coming late to rehearsal or failing to be “off book” (having her lines memorized) along with the actors around her. Charlotte was confronted every day by the fact that she knew far less than the other actors and had to work doubly hard to prove herself. It made her long for Augustus, who always made her feel secure and at home. In the few hours she had to herself, she responded to Augustus’s adoring, ardent letters.
“My Dear Darling Sister,” Augustus wrote to her on February 19, 1837, “I am sending you a (play)bill for an exhibition we are going to have next Friday evening.” He clearly missed her, too. Still, he was making friends. At eleven years old, Augustus took after Charlotte in his personality. He was funny, intelligent, and friendly. Though Charlotte’s moods and health sometimes suffered from overwork, Augustus was healthy and happy. Charlotte longed to have him by her side, but she hoped the separation would be short-lived. Though normally exceptionally careful with money, she bought Augustus a lavish gift. She took some of her earnings and went to the horse-trader to pick out a horse for him. Then she went to the tailors and ordered him a little riding jacket, cut out of bright blue wool. He could go riding as soon as the weather warmed.
Springtime was dreary, with cold rain and frost still hard in the ground, but Charlotte was feeling optimistic. She had almost made enough money to take Augustus out of school and move the whole family back to New York. There, she hoped to try again at the prestigious Park Theatre.
One day in early April 1837, Charlotte heard someone knocking at her door and was surprised to find a messenger holding a telegram. She opened it, and read with horror that Augustus was dead. “The ground liquified under me,” she would later write. “I felt the waters go over my soul.” Her horror deepened when she learned he had died after falling from the horse she had so lovingly picked out for him.
After Augustus’s death, Charlotte fell into a deep depression. Although mentally and physically exhausted she had to continue performing almost nightly despite her grief. It was a distraction, but her heart was no longer in it. The vision that kept her ambition alive was of her family together again, safe and happy as they had been before her father left. But she felt she’d failed to keep Augustus safe, and she blamed herself for giving him the very instrument of his death.
In her misery she asked God what kind of sign this was meant to be. Should she give up or push on through her grief? The answer came in the form it nearly always did—an emergency that pressed her into service.
Susan Cushman, Charlotte’s sister, had been living with half siblings who seemed to pay little attention to her, their needy relation. Susan was fifteen—pretty and penniless. She soon caught the eye of Nelson Merriman, a man more than fifty years older than her. Though Susan did not encourage him, Merriman wrote to Mary Eliza suggesting that he adopt Susan as his daughter so she could inherit his fortune when he died. When Mary Eliza refused, he proposed marriage to Susan instead. “I am on my deathbed,” he swore, claiming he only wanted to be Susan’s benefactor. Finally, Mary Eliza agreed, believing she was securing her daughter’s future. Charlotte, who was busy preparing to debut her Romeo, was too distracted to realize the significance of her mother’s decision, and merely expressed her disgust that Mary Eliza would allow Susan to marry someone she did not love. What she didn’t know was that Merriman was also a fraud.
A few weeks later, Charlotte and her mother packed their things and returned to Manhattan. Work would be a welcome distraction from grief, but Charlotte still mourned, remembering the child-brother she once rocked in her lap. Packed in her suitcase was Augustus’s last letter and his little blue riding jacket. She would bring these with her wherever she went.
chapter six Gypsy Queen
