A great attraction in Boston, way back in the fifties, was Anna Cora Mowatt. Her engagements were always very successful, the theatre being crowded with fashionable and intelligent audiences. Mrs. Mowatt was not a great actress. Delicacy was her most marked characteristic. “A subdued earnestness of manner, a soft musical voice, a winning witchery of enunciation, and indeed an almost perfect combination of beauty, grace, and refinement fitted her for a class of characters in which other actresses were incapable of excelling.” Mrs. Mowatt was born at Bordeaux, France, during the temporary residence there of her parents about 1820. She married very young, and for a short time enjoyed every luxury that wealth could purchase. Her husband’s bankruptcy drove her to the stage, where she made her first appearance at the Park Theatre as Pauline, in “Lady of Lyons,” June 13, 1845. Her engagements here in Boston were played at the Howard Athenæum, then under the management of Mr. Wyzeman Marshall, who still lives, and can be seen upon the principal streets of Boston almost daily. The “houses” were very large, tickets being sold at public auction. At the termination of her engagement she was serenaded at the hotel, and throughout the country she met with the same flattering reception. Mrs. Mowatt’s favorite roles were Viola, Rosalind, and Parthenia, characters now fresh in the public mind, made so by Miss Julia Marlowe. Mrs. Mowatt made her last appearance on the stage at Niblo’s Theatre, N. Y., on the 3d of June, 1854. On the 7th of that month she became the wife of W. F. Ritchie. Mrs. Ritchie died in Paris a few years since, where she was much regretted by the social circle of which she was the admired star.
In 1852, at the National Theatre, which was situated on Portland Street, Charlotte Cushman commenced her farewell to the stage in the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet.” Charlotte Cushman was now at the summit of her art. She was universally allowed to be the greatest tragedienne of the day. And this recognition was due to her fine genius. She owed nothing to artifice or meretricious attraction. Nothing was left to chance, for the indomitable spirit and zealousness with which she had sustained herself under adverse circumstances had done not a little to elevate her in the regard of her countrymen and admirers. This was the first of a series of “farewell engagements,” inaugurated by Miss Cushman, and continued to her real and positive farewell in 1875.
I have always had an objection to ladies personating Romeo, but I waived that feeling in favor of Miss Cushman. Her personation of Romeo was beautiful and even pathetic. The passionate grief of young Montague in the third act was subdued by a tearful pathos. Nothing could surpass her reading of the character: it was a triumph, and in a word it would be difficult to conceive anything more grand than this impersonation. It is difficult to conceive a character more highly dramatic or more impassioned than that of Lady Macbeth. The conflicts, emotions, and power of the ambitious queen were portrayed with a truth, a grandeur of effect, unequalled since by any actress. Miss Cushman’s impersonation of Meg Merriles was one of the finest illustrations of originality the stage ever witnessed. There was no effort to resemble the character. She entered the stage the character itself, transposed into the situation, excited by hope and fear, breathing the life and the spirit of the being she represented. In my opinion, when Charlotte Cushman died, so did Meg Merriles, and it will be many a day before the old gipsy queen will produce that indescribable effect upon an audience, as in the days of Cushman. At the Boston Theatre, June 2, 1858, Miss Cushman as Romeo, her farewell to the stage. At the same theatre, in 1860, another farewell, Miss Cushman as Romeo, who with the aid of Mrs. Barrow as Juliet, John Gilbert as Friar Laurence, and Mrs. John Gilbert as the nurse, made up a very strong cast. Here, at the Howard Athenæum in 1861, then under the management of that talented actor (who, by the way, was the best Hamlet I ever saw,) Edgar L. Davenport, Miss Cushman was announced April 11, 1861, positively her last night in Boston, when Romeo and Juliet was given with a remarkable cast. E. L. Davenport was the Mercutio, John Gilbert the Friar, John McCullough, Tybalt, Frank Hardenbergh, Prince Esculus, Dan Setchell, Peter, W. J. Le Moyne, Capulet, Miss Josephine Orton (a very brilliant actress, and now the wife of Benj. E. Woolf, of the Saturday Evening Gazette), Juliet, Mrs. John Gilbert as the nurse (she had no superior in this role), and Charlotte Cushman as Romeo, truly a fine array of talent, all of whom have passed away with the exception of Miss Orton and Mr. Le Moyne. This was Miss Cushman’s last performance of Romeo in Boston. In the spring of 1875, Miss Cushman played another farewell engagement, which proved in truth a reality. It was at the Globe Theatre, and Saturday, May 15, 1875, was announced as Miss Cushman’s farewell to the stage. Macbeth was the play, with Miss Cushman as Lady Macbeth. As an event worth remembering, I give the complete cast:—
| Macbeth | D. W. Waller |
| Macduff | G. B. Waldron |
| Banquo | Chas. Fyffe |
| Malcolm | Lin Harris |
| Duncan | James Dunn |
| Physician | C. Pierson |
| Drunken Porter | E. Coleman |
| Rosse | S. Clarke |
| Seyter | G. Conner |
| Sergeant | John Connor |
| Donaldbain | Miss Wilkes |
| 1st Witch | E. Coleman |
| 2d Witch | Mrs. A. Hayes |
| 3d Witch | J. H. Connor |
| Gentlewoman | Miss Athena |
A most inefficient company, exceedingly weak in the masculine department, while the actresses were barely tolerable. The highest anticipations of a brilliant engagement had been indulged in by the management, and bitter was their disappointment, and great the chagrin of Miss Cushman to find that this “positively farewell engagement” failed to create anything of a furore. The public had been so often deceived by these announcements, that they failed to respond to the box office. In this special performance of “Macbeth,” Miss Cushman was hailed with prolonged acclamations. Old admirers were there who still recollected her when she was the greatest ornament of the stage. Younger ones assembled to catch the last rays of a genius which had filled Europe and America with its splendor. The former sought this memory of days gone by, the latter came to pay deference to the verdict of a previous generation. At the close of the performance Miss Cushman was called to the footlights, there to receive the tribute due to her name and fame from the not over large audience. The spectacle was interesting, yet it was melancholy, not to say painful, to all who could feel with true artistic sympathy. Her last appearance was soon forgotten in the turmoil of dramatic events, but her name still gleams with traditional lustre in the annals of dramatic fame. Miss Cushman never again appeared in Boston, for on the 18th day of February, 1876, she breathed her last at the Parker House, Boston. Her funeral took place at King’s Chapel, in presence of a large concourse of people, and her body rests in Mount Auburn. Miss Cushman was a very wealthy woman, but her generosities were not numerous; even the little Cushman school, named in her honor, was forgotten in her will. Her relatives (nephews and nieces) reside, I believe, in Newport, R. I., and are the sole possessors of her large estate. I omitted to mention that Charlotte Cushman’s last appearance in public was as a reader in Easton, Penn., June 2, 1875.
THE MICROSCOPE FROM A MEDICAL, MEDICO-LEGAL, AND LEGAL POINT OF VIEW.
BY FREDERICK GAERTNER, A. M., M. D.