Gordon and I had the privilege of seeing Charlotte Cushman when, no
longer able to act in the plays in which she had so distinguished
herself, she gave a reading at one of the large halls in New York. She
was infirm, less from age than a malady which was consuming her. I found
an immense audience assembled in her honor. There were no more seats, no
more standing room. She had no assistants, no support. A chair behind a
small table was all the _mise en scène_, and here, dressed in a matronly
gown of black silk and lace, the great tragedienne seated herself.
Her gray hair was rolled back _à la Pompadour_ from her broad, high
forehead, and beneath black brows her eye kindled as she glanced over
the fine audience. As she described it afterward, "a modest farewell
reading blossomed into a brilliant testimonial."
After our enthusiastic response to her graceful greeting, she said
simply: "Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read—I trust for your pleasure,
surely for mine," laying her hand upon her heart—"from the second scene
in the third act of 'Henry the Eighth.'"
It so happened there had been, incident upon her appearance, a
remarkable discussion in some of the journals of the day. The wise
ones, the elect, had paused in their speculations as to the authorship
of Shakespeare's plays, or the Letters of Junius, or the enlightenment
of the nations by certain rearrangement of periods in Hamlet's immortal
soliloquy, and had cast an eye of scrutiny upon Wolsey's magnificent
monologue. To _nous autres_ it seems clear enough as it is—but who
are we that we should know the heart hidden under a red robe? They
gravely opined that the _king_, not _God_, was meant in the lines, "Had
I but served my God with half the zeal," etc. Without doubt Charlotte
Cushman was aware of this remarkable discussion. A good many backs were
straightened to "attention" as she reached the noble words:—
"... O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, HE would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies."
She pointed upward as she uttered reverently the word "HE."
From this, after a brief pause—she did not leave her seat all
evening—she passed to "Much Ado about Nothing." Never was there such a
Dogberry, bursting with arrogance and ignorance. Mrs. Maloney, on the
Chinese question, followed, dismissing, with inimitable impudence, the
mistress who had just shown her the door. Then she became the loyal,
spirited, wildly sweet Kentucky girl and her blue-grass horse, Kentucky
Belle,—utterly charming, both of them,—concluding with "Molly Carew," In
this she was tremendous. The policemen at the door came in to listen;
the applause was loud and long. "Molly Carew," forsooth! What is there
in "Molly Carew"? What in the entreaty to take off her bonnet lest she
cost her lover, as he declares, "the loss of me wanderin' soul," to
bring down the house? What in the indignant summing up that she had
better be careful; "you'll feel mighty queer when you see me weddin'
mairching down the street an' yersilf not in it"?
I soon found out how much there was in Molly Carew _per se_ with no
Charlotte Cushman to interpret! I happened to have Samuel Lover's poems,
and when I reached home, I took the book from the library shelves and
summoned the children to listen to the funniest thing they had ever
heard in all their lives. "I warn you," said I, "you'll half kill
yourselves laughing."
I read "Molly Carew." Round eyes opened wider in astonishment as I
proceeded. There was not a smile; not the faintest glimmer of mirth.
Dead silence was broken by a polite "Is that all? Thank you, mamma,"
as they escaped. Oh, genius, gift of the gods! Who can measure it?
Who, not born to it, can hope to win it! Who can attain even a faraway
imitation of it! How it can clothe and glorify the simplest ideas! How
it transfigured Charlotte Cushman—haggard and gray from keen physical
suffering, knowing well that her hour was at hand! What noble restraint
in her selections, ignoring pain and sorrow, denying herself the tribute
of sympathy, bidding us good night with a smile on her lips and words
demanding an answering smile on ours!
To remember Charlotte Cushman is to recall Madame Helena
Modjeska—totally different, certainly not inferior. I met her in society
in New York. Her beautiful face, her tender, sensitive mouth, and the
"far-away look of her eyes, as though she were thinking of the wrongs
of Poland," are never to be forgotten. And the splendor of her genius! I
saw her as Ophelia to Edwin Booth's Hamlet. "You are as good as a Greek
chorus, my lord,"—she in a Savonarola chair, he on a _fauteuil_ at her
feet. I saw her also as Queen Catherine. I think she impressed all who
knew her as a most sad woman. But is not melancholy the prerogative of
genius? I, for one, never knew a man or woman of genius, real genius,
who was merry. Madame Modjeska made melancholy beautiful.
She was once the guest of a lady who had gathered together a number of
choice spirits in her honor. One of them, forgotten of her good angel,
asked, "How do you like our country, madame!"
"Oh," spreading out her hands to signify empty space, and speaking in
a weary tone, "Oh! It is _all_—_all_ one great level."
"Ah, but," said her hostess, "patience! I shall introduce you by and by
to a little hill."
An introduction followed, and at the close of the evening Madame
Modjeska, pressing the hand of her hostess at parting, said with
feeling:—
"Ah, madame! _She_ was one great mountain!"
[Illustration: HELENA MODJESKA.]
Before the war which cut me off from every pleasure demanding leisure
and a little money, I heard the elder Booth in "Hamlet"—and I must
confess he was rather a wheezy Hamlet in his old age. In Brooklyn the
circumstances of my life forbade my indulging my passion for music and
the enjoyment of a good play, but we had tickets for gallery seats to
see Edwin Booth when Madame Modjeska played with him. Afterward we saw
him in "The Fool's Revenge," and I remember being quite carried away
and oblivious of everything except his splendid acting, until the calm
voice of my son recalled me, "Don't you think, mamma, you had better sit
down?" I spent a summer at Narragansett in the same hotel with Mr. Booth
when he was resting his weary brain. He had a hooded chair placed in a
corner of a veranda overlooking the sea, and there alone and in silence
he spent most of his time. His devoted daughter ministered to him and
carefully protected him from intrusion. At certain conditions of the
tide the sands of the Narragansett beach emit a weird, faint, singing
sound as the waves recede from them,—moaning, as it were, because they
are left behind. These sounds could not be heard by every ear. Some
eager listeners never could hear them. I used to wonder if Edwin Booth
did, and wish I could ask him what they said to him. I might even tell
him what they said to me! But his "Edwina" watched him jealously, and
we respected his evident prostration of mind and spirit. His place at
table was near mine. A moonlight smile would steal over his face when
his two grandchildren, rosy little tots, came to him at dessert for a
bit of sweet from the hand whose slightest gesture had once been able to
move a multitude. The next time he was brought vividly before us we were
in a great assembly of his friends, listening to Mr. Parke Godwin,—his
friend and ours,—as he told of the sun whose rise, whose splendid noon,
and whose setting we were ever to remember.
In the autumn of 1882 our old Southern friend, General R. D. Lilley,
visited New York in the interests of Washington and Lee University.
Colonel Mapleson, with Adelina Patti, Nicolini, and the famous
_danseuse_, Cavalassi, had just arrived for a brilliant season at
the Metropolitan Opera House. General Lilley sent me a letter from
Colonel Mapleson,—which lies before me,—in which he offered "a grand
entertainment to be given about the 3d of March for the endowment of
scholarships in Washington and Lee University, in which entertainment
the leading artists of the opera would appear," and asked for a
committee of ladies to act in concert with him.
General Lilley was in a quandary. He knew no New York ladies. No more
did I. But finally he won his way into the good graces of the widow
of Governor Dix and mother of the Rev. Morgan Dix, who granted her
drawing-room for our meetings, and doubtless consulted her own visiting
list to find patronesses. When, at the general's earnest prayer, I went
over to the first meeting, I found a noble band of women all enthusiasm
over the project. I was a stranger in New York, and but dimly recognized
the names on the committee with my own: Mrs. John Dix, Mrs. August
Belmont, Mrs. William M. Evarts, Mrs. Francis R. Rives, Mrs. John Jay,
Mrs. (Commodore) Vanderbilt, Mrs. Vincenzo Botta, Mrs. Henry Clews,
Mrs. James Brown Potter, Mrs. Winfield S. Hancock, and others, about
fifty in all! I can now easily understand that this committee had but
to _will_ a thing, and if it were not accomplished, the fault would not
lie in their lack of potentiality. They had but to say the word. Means,
overflowing means, and generous patronage would be assured.
Colonel Mapleson met with us at our meetings, which Mrs. Dix made
delightful. We had animated discussions over Mrs. Dix's tea-cups,
and adopted fine resolutions. Patti, the colonel assured us, would
sing,—certainly,—but she needed a vast deal of coaxing and mock
entreaty. Then every day Nicolini—whom she had recently married—wrote
us a letter presenting some difficulty which we must settle. The flowers
we ordered were beyond compare—to Arditi, the orchestra leader, a large
music scroll in white flowers, and upon this ground the first bars of
his "Il bacio" in blue violets. To the witch Cavalassi we voted a floral
slipper, to Colonel Mapleson a silken banner of Stars and Stripes. What,
alas! could we do for Patti? Could _any_thing be enough? At last we sent
for Colonel Mapleson. "Ladies," he said, "this will be your easiest
task. Come to the opera-house with bouquets in your hands or corsage,
tied with cords you have taken from your fans, and throw them to her,
impulsively. There's nothing she so dotes on as to run all over the
stage and pick up flowers, affect intense surprise at each new bouquet,
press them to her heart, and be utterly overcome at last as she runs
away."
All this was done, I learned, for I was not there to see! Colonel
Mapleson, however, did not forget me. He sent me the monogram cut in
gold of Washington and Lee University, and I often wear it as a souvenir
of my charming hours with good Mrs. Dix and her friends.
When I came to the city to live, I found that Dr. Dix, his lovely
mother, and many of the ladies of our committee still remembered me.
This was not the last time we were together in a benevolent enterprise,
nor the last time Patti honored me. Childish as were the little arts
attributed to her by Colonel Mapleson, she could give evidence of a big
warm heart on occasion!