Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/324

 316 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. land. She was always glad, in the days of her prosperity, to recall the period of poverty and anxiety which preceded her great success in England, when she was living in the vast, strange city of London, with no companion save her faithful maid, Sallie Mercer, with no present prospect of an engagement, and with almost no money. The strictest, severest economy was necessary ; and she used to relate with great amusement and no small pride the ingenious shifts to which she and Sallie were driven in matters of housekeeping, and how they both rejoiced over an occa- sional invitation to dine out. Sallie herself bears wit- ness to their straitened circumstances. " Miss Cushman lived on a mutton-chop a day," she once said, " and I always bought the baker's dozen of muffins for the sake of the extra one, and we ate them all, no matter how stale they were ; and we never suffered from want of appetite in those days." In spite of all their economies, things went from bad to worse, and Miss Cushman was actually reduced to her last sovereign, when Mr. Maddox, the manager of the Princess Theatre, came to secure her. Sallie, the devoted and acute (whom Miss Cushman had first engaged on account of what she called her " conscientious eyebrows "), was on the look-out, as usual, and descried him walking up and down the street upon the opposite side of the way, too e.arly in the morning for a call. " He is anxious," said Miss Cushman joyfully, when this was reported to her. " I ean make my own terms ! " She did so, and her de*but took place shortly afterward, her r61e being Bianca, in Milman's tragedy of Fazio. Her success was complete and dazzling. The London Times of the next day said of it : " The early part of the play affords no criterion of what an actress can do ; but from the instant where she suspects that her husband's affections are wavering, and