chapter eight: First Love
Sully threw out his first painting of Charlotte: Thomas Sully, Diary. New York Public Library Rare Books and Manuscripts Archive.
Inside the front cover: Charlotte Cushman, Diary, Columbia University Butler Library Rare Books and Manuscripts.
Charlotte thought marriage between men and women was foolish: Letters between Charlotte Cushman and Helen Hunt Jackson, Colorado College archive.
“bold and impulsive”: Cushman, Diary.
She paid $100 for the ticket: Ibid.
“imagination unchecked”: Cushman, Diary.
“I have always said that time’l show”: Charlotte Cushman to Mary Eliza Cushman, March 2, 1845, Charlotte Cushman Papers, Library of Congress.
“more wretched”: Cushman, Diary.
Charlotte had to rush to Sallie’s room: Ibid.
“glaringly beautiful”: Ibid.
chapter nine: Enemies Abroad
“Whether she means it as a compliment or not”: Cushman, Diary.
“quite ill-tempered”: Charlotte Cushman to Mary Eliza Cushman, December 2, 1844, Charlotte Cushman Papers, Library of Congress.
Charlote and Sallie moved into modest rooms in Convent Garden: “Some Recollections of the Princess Theatre,” Gentleman’s Magazine vol. 262, 69, https://books.google.com/books?id=tkc3AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=%22charlotte+cushman%22+fell+on+her+knees+london+theatre+manager&source=bl&ots=uoULdvTpnQ&sig=qtKfzvnzrQgN8ISYANRKfvPvtw8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF1IaBq73cAhVRMawKHYbtB-IQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22charlotte%20cushman%22%20fell%20on%2her%20knees%20london%20theatre%20manager&f=false.
At the theatre, Maddox invited her into his office: George Vandenhoff, Leaves from an Actor’s Note-Book (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1860), 186–87.
Maddox recognized at once the energy of Lady Macbeth: Ibid., 213.
“looking very well and is in very good spirits”: Charles Cushman to Mary Eliza Cushman, London, May 1, 1845, Library of Congress, Charlotte Cushman Papers.
Forrest had made his debut in a female role: Bordman, Oxford Companion to American Theatre, 268–69.
“iron repose, perfect precision of method”: William Winter, quoted in William Rounesville Alger, Life of Edwin Forrest, American Tragedian Vol. 2 (New York: J. B. Lippincott & Company, 1877), 651.
“It was something worse than ridiculous”: “Princess Theatre,” Guardian and the Observer, February 24, 1845.
“emptiness of ambition”: Ibid.
One dissenting observer: Vandenhoff, Leaves from an Actor’s Note-Book.
“don’t like Americans in the newspapers”: Charlotte Cushman to Mary Eliza Cushman, March 28, 1845, Library of Congress, Charlotte Cushman Papers.
“brilliant and triumphant success”: Ibid.
“I have not slept for three nights and look like a ghost”: Charlotte Cushman to Mary Eliza Cushman, April 17, 1845, Library of Congress, Charlotte Cushman Papers.
chapter ten: Lady Romeo
“a mess of dialogue from [Garrick’s] own pen”: “Miss Cushman and Miss S. Cushman,” Observer, January 4, 1846.
“in no uncertain terms the difficulty”: Quoted in Lisa Merrill, “Charlotte Cushman,” in Jameson, Cowden Clarke, Kemble, Cushman: Great Shakespeareans, Ed. Gail Marshall, Volume VII, Chapter 4 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 141.
Macready sent Charlotte a dagger from one of his own performances: Celia Laquau, “The Macready Dagger,” 1892, unpublished manuscript, Folger Shakespeare Library.
“disclosed that ardent, passionate disposition”: “Haymarket Theatre: The Misses Cushman as Romeo and Juliet,” Scotsman, January 3, 1846. In the same newspaper is a report that references Hamlet in talking about brain disease as one of the worst ailments “flesh is heir to.”
“the bend of the knee, slight sneer of the lip”: Quoted in Merrill, “Charlotte Cushman.”
Charlotte was a convincing swordsman: New York Daily Tribune, November 9, 1860.
“The character of Romeo is one which every man of sentiment takes to himself”: Quoted in Merrill, When Romeo Was a Woman.
“the vivifying spark”: “Haymarket Theatre: The Misses Cushman.”
“entered well into the character”: George Rowell, Queen Victoria Goes to the Theatre (London: P. Elek, 1978), 74. Quoted in Merrill, “Charlotte Cushman,” as a footnote.
“most remarkable pieces of acting ever witnessed”: Pittsburgh Morning Post, April 22, 1858, 3.
“lovemaking, as practiced by the other sex”: Mercury (Liverpool), January 18, 1847. Quoted in Merrill, “Charlotte Cushman,” 155.
Knowles was steeped in Shakespeare: Robin O. Warren, Women on Southern Stages 1800–1865: Performance, Gender and Identity in a Golden Age of American Theater (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016).
Charlotte reminded him of the famous British tragedian: Manchester Guardian, May 20, 1846.
“Charlotte’s was a character”: “The Misses Cushman,” Musical World, October 10, 1846.
“all in a blaze of enthusiasm”: Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Brent E. Kisner, ed. The Carlyle Letters Online [CLO] (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007–2016).
Charlotte sent a copy of Eliza’s poems: Geraldine Jewsbury to Charlotte Cushman, nd, Library of Congress, Charlotte Cushman Papers. Quoted in Merrill, When Romeo Was a Woman, 151.
“If you ever quarrel”: Ibid.
She searched Charlotte’s face: Eliza Cook, “To Charlotte Cushman: On Seeing Her Play Bianca in Milman’s Tragedy of Fazio,” in Poems (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1861). Detail about Eliza growing ill from breakup with Charlotte is quoted in Merrill, When Romeo Was a Woman.
“Darling,” she wrote to a young actress: Charlotte Cushman to “Dearest,” Newcastle on Tyne, December 9, 1845, Library of Congress, Charlotte Cushman Papers. Merrill’s research points to a woman named Sarah Anderson as the recipient of the letter.
“I ought to answer immediately”: Charles Dickens to William Charles Macready, June 29, 1848, Morgan Library and Museum, Rare Books and Manuscripts.
“sell her soul”: Merrill, When Romeo Was a Woman, 159.
chapter eleven: The Greatest American Actress
“I have had a very interesting American visitor”: Quoted in Henry Chorley, Letters of Mary Russell Mitford (London: Second Series, RB Bentley, 1872), Vol. 1, 220.
“What a wonderful creature Miss Cushman is”: Thomas Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson 1846–1906 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921).
“Of course the mother [meant] to intimidate me and mine”: Charlotte Cushman to Benjamin Webster, January 31, nd, Folger Shakespeare Library.
criticizing the “stupid farces”: Charlotte Cushman to John Perry, October 14, 1847, New York Public Library, MSS Main.
“You seem to have no stars”: Ibid.
“I purpose coming to America in August next”: Ibid.
“a clear half the house each night”: Quoted in Merrill, Romeo Was a Woman, 163.
“I forgot to tell you that we met Miss Cushman”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Arabella Barrett, October 22, 1852, New York Public Library, MSS Main. Quoted in Robert Browning, Dearest Isa: Robert Browning’s Letters to Isa Blagden, Ed. Eric McAleer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), 26.
“the greatest American Actress”: Daily Morning Post (Pittsburgh), August 10, 1849.
competing performances of Macbeth: Nigel Cliff, The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama and Death in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Random House, 2007).
If it was, as some said, a restaging of the Revolutionary War: Bruce McConachie, quoted in “The Astor Place Riot: Shakespeare
