Plymouth memories of an octogenarianDavis, William T. (William Thomas)
History
Plymouth memories of an octogenarian
Davis, William T. (William Thomas)
Plymouth (Mass.) -- History
The next part she sang under the Maeders was Lucy Bertram in
“Guy Mannering,” and thus she was early brought into association
with the dramatization, in which she became famous. Being shortly
afterwards engaged to sing in English operas in New Orleans, she made
a sea voyage to that city, during which, as I have always heard,
she lost her voice in consequence of the change of climate. Rev. J.
Henry Wiggin, whose family were acquainted with the Cushmans at the
Northend, and to whom I am indebted for many of the facts in this
notice, attributes the loss of voice to the overstraining to which
she subjected it after her arrival in New Orleans. Further effort
as a singer was of course hopeless, and returning to New York she
served three years as a stock actor in the old Park Theatre, under
Manager Simpson. It is unnecessary to follow her distinguished
career further than to speak of one passage in it, which came under
my direct notice. During the winter of 1843 and 1844, which I spent
in Philadelphia, she was the lessee and manager of the Chestnut
Street Theatre, where I saw her repeatedly in Macbeth, Julia in the
Hunchback, Juliana in the Honeymoon, Queen Katherine, Meg Merrilies,
Oberon, Bianca in Milman’s Fazio; Lady Gay Sparker, Shylock and
Beatrice. In 1847 I saw her at the Haymarket Theatre in London, and
I remember how my patriotism was stirred by the rapturous applause
her acting elicited. During the Philadelphia winter, to which I have
alluded, Miss Cushman, with her father and a brother, whom she was
educating at the Pennsylvania Medical School, was a regular attendant
morning and evening, at the Unitarian Church, of which Rev. Dr.
Furness was pastor.
Miss Cushman had a younger sister, Susan, whose beauty presented a
marked contrast to her own masculine plainness. In early life Susan
married at the Northend a tailor by the name of Merriman, after whose
death Charlotte introduced her to the stage, and as Romeo to Susan’s
Juliet, played Romeo and Juliet in London one hundred nights. On the
9th of March, 1848, Susan married in Liverpool Dr. James S. Muspratt,
Professor of Chemistry, in that city, and died there May 10, 1859.
Charlotte Cushman died in Boston, February 18, 1876, and was buried
from King’s Chapel on Washington’s birthday.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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