Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/230

 356 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS make dolls' clothes, but she could manufacture their furniture — could do anything with tools. " I was very destructive to toys and clothes, tyrannical to brothers and sister, but very social, and a great favorite with other children. Imitation was a prevailing trait." The first play she ever saw was " Coriolanus," with Ma- cready in the leading part ; her second play was " The Gamester." She became noted in her school for her skill in reading aloud. Her competitors grumbled : " No wonder she can read ; she goes to the theatre ! " Until then she had been shy and reserved, not to say stupid, about reading aloud in school, afraid of the sound of her own voice, and unwilling to trust it ; but acquaintance with the theatre loosened her tongue, as she describes it, and gave opportunity and ex- pression to a faculty which became the ruling passion of her life. At home, as a child, she took part in an operetta founded upon the story of " Bluebeard," and played Selim, the lover, with great applause, in a large attic chamber of her father's house before an enthusiastic audience of young people. Elkanah Cushman had been for some years a successful merchant, a member of the firm of Topliffe & Cushman, Long Wharf, Boston. But failure befell him, " attributable," writes Charlotte Cushman's biographer, Miss Stebbins, "to the in- fidelity of those whom he trusted as supercargoes." The family removed from Boston to Charlestown. Charlotte was placed at a public school, remaining there until she was thirteen only. Elkanah Cushman died, leaving his widow and five children with very slender means. Mrs. Cushman opened a boarding-house in Boston, and struggled hard to ward off further misfortune. It was discovered that Charlotte possessed a noble voice of almost two registers, " a full contralto and almost a full soprano ; but the low voice was the natural one." The fortunes of the family seemed to rest upon the due cultivation of Charlotte's voice and upon her future as a singer. " My mother," she writes, "at great self-sacrifice gave me what opportunities for instruction she could obtain for me ; and then my father's friend, Mr. R. D. Shepherd, of Shepherdstown, Va., gave me two years of the best culture that could be obtained in Boston at that time, under John Pad- don, an English organist and teacher of singing." When the English singer, Mrs. Wood — better known, perhaps, as Miss Paton — visited Boston in 1835 or 1836, she needed the support of a contralto voice. Charlotte Cushman was sent for, and rehearsed duets with Mrs. Wood. The young beginner was advised to prepare herself for the operatic stage ; she was assured that such a voice would " lead her to any height of fortune she coveted." She became the articled pupil of Mr. Maeder, the husband of Clara Fisher, actress and vocalist, and the musical director of Mr. and Mrs. Wood. Instructed by Maeder, Miss Cushman under- took the parts of the Countess in "The Marriage of Figaro" and Lucy Bertram in the opera of "Guy Mannering." These were her first appearances upon the stage. Mrs. Maeder's voice was a contralto; it became necessary, therefore, to assign soprano parts to Miss Cushman. Undue stress was thus laid upon her upper notes. She was very young, and she felt the change of climate when she went on with the'Maeders to New Orleans. It is likely that her powers as a singer