In 1833 the famous, glamorous singer Mary Ann Wood arrived in Boston. She checked in to the Tremont House, a high-class residential hotel near the Tremont Theatre. Wood was in town to perform in Mozart’s comic opera The Marriage of Figaro, and she and Charlotte rehearsed at the same studio.
Wood was exactly who sixteen-year-old Charlotte dreamed of becoming: a world-famous opera singer with a trunk full of beautiful costumes, a woman who had parlayed her talent into fame and a successful artistic career. Wood also had taken the radical step of suing her first husband—successfully—for divorce in her native Scotland, and was now remarried with a young child. It was nearly impossible for a woman to get a divorce, and the very subject was taboo. And yet the divorce had not hurt her career. In fact, Wood had earned a fortune singing throughout Europe, a fortune she hoped to increase on her first American tour. She traveled with her husband, Joseph Wood, also a singer. When they reached a new city, they cast their supporting roles with local performers. When Wood said she was looking for a female singer to accompany her someone suggested Charlotte and she invited her to audition. It was the kind of opportunity that could turn a former choir girl into a star.
Charlotte began to prepare for her audition with Mrs. Wood, propelled not only by the promise of fame but by the determination to save her family from ruin. It was a difficult task. She had never been to a theatre outside Boston, had never heard Rossini’s Cinderella in Paris, or felt the heat from the oil lamps illuminating the cavernous La Scala in Milan. She was thoroughly unlike the glamorous divas, with their pulchritude and their jewels. Assessing her looks, Charlotte stated frankly, “I am not beautiful.” Talent would have to carry her, but her talent was still raw and untested. She had never even performed outside of church.
With her family’s fate hanging over her, Charlotte arrived at the Tremont boardinghouse and nervously found Mrs. Wood’s room. When she knocked, Wood opened the door wearing her usual fine silk gown, her luxuriant black hair cascading in tendrils over her shoulders. The difference was stark. Charlotte was tall and raw-boned, and wore her hair parted in the middle and looped over her ears, an old-fashioned style that emphasized her wide-set eyes and heavy, square jaw.
Throughout Charlotte’s audition Mrs. Wood was quiet, her delicate oval face inscrutable. After the last, soaring note died away, she simply got up and left the room. Charlotte waited uncomfortably in the elegant parlor until Wood returned with her husband, Joseph. Mrs. Wood asked if Charlotte would sing the song again.
Charlotte sang again. When she finished, both Mr. and Mrs. Wood jumped to their feet, clapping ecstatically. They assured her she had done very well and, as Charlotte later told her mother, “that such a voice, properly cultivated would lead me to any height of fortune I coveted.”
On the evening of the show, Charlotte performed for Boston’s elite as well as her family and friends. The show was a success, and newspapers raved not just about Mrs. Wood but Miss Cushman, the local girl whose voice would surely make her a star.
But just as important as Charlotte’s talent was her innate ability to draw people in. She was warm, enthusiastic, and a devilishly hard worker. Wood admired her and they became friends, though Charlotte developed an unrequited, Labrador-like crush that lasted long after Wood left Boston. Before she left, however, Wood introduced Charlotte to a local manager and singing coach named James Maeder. Maeder, too, saw Charlotte’s potential as a singer and invited her to study with him. When she explained that she couldn’t pay, Maeder and his wife agreed to let Charlotte work off her lessons in trade as their maid.
James Maeder’s wife was the somewhat notorious Clara Fischer Maeder. Clara was a diva, a former child star who boasted that she had been acting since the age of six. She had played Richard III—hilariously, in a fake mustache—at twelve. Clara had made a fortune in her youth, but her extravagant tastes meant that the Maeders, with all their airs, were often broke.
Charlotte trained with Mr. Maeder and cleaned his house for three years. Finally, in late 1835, when she was nineteen, he cast her in a supporting role alongside his wife in Mozart’s comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. Though she was naturally a contralto, she sang soprano as the Countess Almaviva, a role at the very peak and precipice of her natural range. She did well at first, and when Mr. and Mrs. Maeder decided to bring The Marriage of Figaro to New Orleans, where the couple had theatrical connections, they asked Charlotte to come with them. She had never traveled outside of New England and never left her mother’s side. But she was ready.
chapter three Transformation
The water of the Mississippi was a thick, dark cloak sweeping solemnly aside as the steamship moved inexorably south. On board, Charlotte could feel the river hurrying them forward, and her thoughts raced even faster. She filled the many long, boring hours reading the kinds of books that might fill in the gaps in her education, which had ended at thirteen. Charlotte had never been out of New England and did not want to seem uncultured. New Orleans was said to be more European than American, a mixture of French, Spanish, and British influences. It seemed both thrilling and terrifying. Some called it “the City of Gomorrah” or “Southern Babylon” because prostitution was tolerated and because the Port of New Orleans was a key point in the southern slave trade.
As they came closer, Charlotte saw a
