Both audiences and critics appreciated the way she interpreted Hamlet. A reviewer in the entertainment rag Amusements would later write that Charlotte “appreciates the influence of the supernatural upon [Hamlet’s] mind, she does not therefore, fall into the error of representing him as one who is merely playing a part… she enters into his melancholy.” Privately, Charlotte was herself melancholy, despite her success. Her love for Rose had deepened. It wasn’t enough to spend every day together; she wanted a household with Rose, even a family. Instead, in public she had to pretend that Rose was just a friend. Dressed as a young man, she stood as if naked before the audience, pleading, “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!”
As a result of her success as Hamlet, by Christmas Charlotte had almost saved enough money to go to London. Rose was supportive, and as a Christmas present she gave Charlotte a diary. Inside the front cover of the pocket-sized book was the phrase “for persons of business.” It was bound in bloodred cloth with marbled endpapers, and inside was a blank page for every day of the year, to record “interesting daily occurrences and future engagements.”
Although Charlotte confided her plans to Rose, she concealed them from her family as long as she could. Because she was the family breadwinner, all her earnings were meant to be committed to paying room and board for Mary Eliza, Susan, and Ned. Her brother Charles’s earnings as a salesclerk were only enough to support himself. Charlotte, as a “person of business,” took her responsibility seriously, recording every expenditure, from cabs to penny candy for her little nephew.
Still, since talking with Macready, she had kept back some of her money for herself, putting it away secretly for a transatlantic passage. Rose would not be joining her. Charlotte promised the trip would be only six months, assuming that by then she would know if she’d succeeded or failed.
To some extent, her success would depend not only on her own talent but on the social circles who could put her in contact with the right people. She was a fiercely devoted friend and correspondent, and despite the fact that she often wrote half a dozen letters a day (recording every one in her diary), most of her letters began with some form of apology for not having written sooner. Some of these friends, like Macready, were connected directly with the theatre world, but she also now had a large, devoted circle of women friends who promoted and supported one another.
Charlotte’s devotion as a friend did not mean she was uncritical, however, and marriages often got in the way of her friendships with other women. In Philadelphia, she had been overjoyed to meet the famous Fanny Kemble through a local circle of women artists there. Fanny had been her idol since childhood, a British actress who had overwhelmed audiences on both sides of the Atlantic with her tragic beauty. She allowed Charlotte into her inner circle, even confiding in Charlotte about her miserable life with her husband, Pierce Butler, a Southern gentleman she had married without knowing he owned a plantation worked by hundreds of slaves. Pierce’s cruelty had driven her to seek a divorce, but without proof of his infidelity she was trapped.
Charlotte had learned a few things from her friends in the Bowery: The only way Fanny could get a divorce was to catch Pierce Butler in the act. And the only way to do this would be to hire a woman willing to seduce Fanny’s husband and then bear witness against him in court. Thinking to help, Charlotte spoke about this idea to Fanny, who was horrified. Charlotte was thrust out of Fanny Kemble’s circle of intimates as quickly as she had been brought in.
Charlotte thought marriage between men and women was foolish. Though she believed it was a covenant with God, she also believed that very few women should enter into it. For most of her friends, marriage was not a love match but an economic necessity, or at least a confusing combination of the two. One “bold and impulsive” friend married a man Charlotte thought “narrow” and “strange” and lost her joie de vivre. It pained her that friends often shut her out once they were coupled. Charlotte and Rose had also discussed committing to each other in a kind of marriage ceremony, but Charlotte found herself distracted by other women. She felt herself possessed by one singer’s beautiful, expressive face, and in the diary Rose had given her, she noted other “exquisite” actresses she met in New York.
Charlotte was still traveling nearly every day between New York and Philadelphia, where she was finishing up her contract with the Walnut Street Theatre. In New York, she continued acting opposite Macready, who had promised to perform in a benefit to raise money for Charlotte’s trip to London. She had bought a ticket on a ship aptly named the Garrick, after a famous actor, and had very little left over. She paid $100 for the ticket, a large outlay considering that her mother’s board was $10 a month and that the exchange rate was more than five dollars to one pound. Most of her salary went to her family, and she had hired a maid. Sallie Mercer was an intelligent, literate, African-American girl of around fourteen. Sallie’s mother was hesitant to let her daughter travel to London, but Charlotte reassured her that she and Sallie would be safe.
As she neared her departure date, Charlotte began to have misgivings about leaving Rose and her family behind. She became ill and jumpy. Thankfully, the weather in New York was so terrible it made her eager to go. One morning Charlotte woke at 6 a.m. thinking someone
