Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/237

 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 861 Otherwise, she did not add to her repertory. For many years she led the life of a "star," fulfilling hrief engagements here and there, appearing now for a term in London, and now travelling through the provinces, playing some half a dozen characters over and over again. Of these Lady Macbeth, Queen Katherine, and Meg Merrilies were perhaps the most frequently demanded. Her fame and fortune she always dated from the immediate recognition she obtained upon her first performance in London. But she made frequent visits to America ; in- deed, she crossed the Atlantic " upward of sixteen times," says her biographer, in 1854 she took a house in Bolton Row, Mayfair, "where for some years she dispensed the most charming and genial hospitality," and, notably, entertained Ristori on her first visit to England in 1856. Several winters she passed in Rome, occupying apartments in the Via Gregoriana, where she cordially received a host of friends and visitors of all nations. In 1859 she was called to England by her sister's fatal illness ; in 1 866 she was again summoned to England to at- tend the death-bed of her mother. In i860 she was playing in all the chief cities of America. Three years later she again visited America, her chief object being to act for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission, and aid the sick and wounded victims of the civil war. During the late years of her life she appeared before the public more as a dramatic reader than as an actress. There were long inter- vals between her theatrical engagements ; she seemed to quit her profession only to return to it after an interval with renewed appetite, and she incurred re- proaches because of the frequency of her farewells, and the doubt that prevailed as to whether her "last appearances " were really to be the " very last" It was not until 1874, however, that she took final leave of the New York stage, amid extraordinary enthusiasm, with many poetic and other ceremonies. She was the subject of addresses in prose and verse. Mr. Bryant, after an elo- quent speech, tendered her a laurel wreath bound with white ribbon resting upon a purple velvet cushion, with a suitable inscription embroidered in golden letters; a torchbearers' procession escorted her from the theatre to her hotel ; she was serenaded at midnight, and in her honor Fifth Avenue blazed with fireworks. After this came farewells to Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities, and to these succeeded readings all over the country. It is to be said, however, that incessant work had become a necessity with her, not because of its pecuniary results, but as a means of obtaining mental relief or comparative forgetfulness for a season. During the last five or six years of her life she was afflicted with an incurable and agonizing malady. Under most painful conditions she toiled unceasingly, moving rapidly from place to place, and passing days and nights in railway jour- neys. In a letter to a friend, she writes : "I do get so dreadfully depressed about myself, and all things seem so hopeless to me at those times, that I pray God to take me quickly at any moment, so that I may not torture those I love by letting them see my pain. But when the dark hour passes, and I try to for- get by constant occupation that I have such a load near my heart, then it is not so bad." She died almost painlessly at last on February 18, 1876. Charlotte Cushman may assuredly be accounted an actress of genius in right