Finally arriving in London, Charlotte and Sallie moved into modest rooms in Covent Garden, and lived simply, proud they could make “a pound of mutton last three days.” Charlotte went out every day to look for work, introducing herself to all the important theatre managers, who rejected her. She discovered that success in America not only carried little weight here but also might work against her, as the British were suspicious of American tastes.
When Charlotte heard that J. M. Maddox was looking for actors for the Princess Theatre, and that he had recently hired an American, Edwin Forrest, she put her letters of reference in her purse and went to see him.
At the theatre, Maddox invited her into his office, where he sat surrounded by portraits and mementos of the most famous British actors of the age, including Charlotte’s former costars Junius Booth and William Macready. Charlotte showed Maddox her references and clippings of her best reviews, but he, too, said no. He even suggested she might be too ugly to be an actress. Charlotte gathered her papers and started to leave but turned again in the doorway, fixing Maddox with the furious stare of Meg Merrilies. Falling to her knees, she looked up, raising a fist: “I know I have enemies in this country,” she thundered in a voice cracking with emotion, “so help me—I’ll defeat them!”
Maddox recognized at once the energy of Lady Macbeth and Meg’s “prophetic spirit.” “Hello,” said Maddox to himself, “so help me, she’s got the stuff in her.” She was hired.
Maddox was known to be a difficult manager, a strong negotiator, and “obstinate” in anything to do with business. Even his star actors had to wheedle for a pay raise, causing some, like the actor George Vandenhoff, to call Maddox—who was Jewish and spoke with a strong Yiddish accent—a “Shylock.” Charlotte, however, respected Maddox’s toughness and knew she was also a strong negotiator. When her brother Charles joined her in London in May 1845, he reported to Mary Eliza that Charlotte was “looking very well and is in very good spirits. Actually she is surrounded by friends who consider her the beau ideal of everything that is great… pleading a case of Mr Maddox: in the open [air], energizes her in an extraordinary manner.” Maddox in turn respected her vitality and stubbornness, two qualities she shared with her new American costar, Edwin Forrest.
If Charlotte was at a disadvantage because of her looks, Forrest had risen to fame thanks to his. As a youth, Forrest had made his debut in a female role, when the actress playing a captive odalisque suddenly fell ill. But he grew up, and up, and up, reaching a height of five-foot-ten, taller than most men, and so thickly muscled he was described as “the Farnese Hercules,” after the famous statue. “Sardonically handsome,” he wore his long dark hair swept back; bushy sideburns nicknamed muttonchops framed his face, and he chose costumes that exposed his strong and shapely arms and legs.
As an actor, however, his reviews were mixed. The American critic William Winter described Forrest as an actor with “iron repose, perfect precision of method, immense physical force, capacity for leonine banter, fiery ferocity and occasional felicity of elocution.” But critics sometimes complained of his “stentorian” tone, more lecturing than levitating, and unclear pronunciation that made Shakespeare difficult to understand. He had tremendous power, however, and was “utterly unselfish” with his energy onstage. His brawn at times overwhelmed his brains, making him look like some “vast animal bewildered by a grain of genius.”
Still, Forrest was America’s darling, the most famous actor they had yet produced. He had performed in Europe once before, and rumors of his success helped him make a fortune when he returned to America. Charlotte suspected, however, that Forrest’s manager had paid audiences and critics to make Forrest seem more successful than he was.
Charlotte had negotiated with Maddox to let her play Romeo if she first played Lady Macbeth opposite Forrest. Maddox clearly expected the two Americans to have good chemistry, but he was wrong. The Forrest/Cushman Macbeth opened to mixed reviews. Forrest’s Macbeth seemed strangely milquetoast, cowed by Charlotte’s energetic Lady Macbeth. The more she pushed the less he resisted; even his tone was subdued. “It was something worse than ridiculous,” a critic wrote, “to hear a man in such a great part as Macbeth—the sport of passion—the agent of supernatural powers—speak as cooly and easily as if his conversation were not upon treason and destiny, but upon the state of the weather.” Another critic called Forrest’s performance “the most unsatisfactory, the most inconclusive performance… known to the higher drama of this country.” Londoners were unimpressed by Forrest’s brawn and scandalized by his pronunciation. In a culture where caste and accent were synonymous, Forrest’s American-ese made him sound—unforgivably—like a laborer pretending to be a king.
Though Charlotte was furious at Forrest for what she perceived as laziness, her own performance was surprisingly well received. Critics thought she feelingly evoked the “emptiness of ambition” and the “agony of gratified desire.” One dissenting observer was so startled by her physical strength he wondered whether Charlotte might haul off and hit her husband, but generally London reviewers thought she was one of the best Lady Macbeths they had ever seen and crowned her the new Sarah Siddons. Charlotte thought that, considering the English “don’t like Americans in the newspapers,” she had done well.
The news of Charlotte’s success quickly crossed the Atlantic to her home country, much to Walt Whitman’s annoyance—he chastised Americans for failing to recognize her greatness sooner and was annoyed that the British seemed to be trying to claim her as their own. “Charlotte Cushman is no ‘second Siddons,’ ” he retorted in a column for the Brooklyn Eagle, “she is herself, and that is far, far better!” Furthermore, she was “ahead of any player that ever yet trod the stage. Fanny Kemble, Ellen Tree, Miss Phillips, &c.—Macready, Kean, Kemble &c.—all had, or have, their
