When I had a studio in New York I had as next-door neighbor an artist who was scene painter to the company in which Charlotte used to play at the old Park Theatre, and the stories he told me of her in that connection were terrible.  My friend had never dared to speak of her openly, and only did so to me with a caution that if what he told me got to Miss Cushman’s ears she was quite capable of silencing him in the most effective manner.  I am of opinion that he judged her correctly, for she must have been a tiger when her passions were aroused, capable of anything, and I was careful never to give her more serious cause of offense than the doing of my official duty.  Over those whom she chose to fascinate, she had an extraordinary power, and I have known young women who were so completely under her control as to be unable to escape from it when they found out her real nature except by flight.

If she had been beautiful she might have set the social world topsy-turvy.  I think she was the cleverest woman I ever knew.  Her tact was extraordinary, and she never failed to impress the visitors to Rome with her sincerity and benevolence, though she really possessed neither of those qualities.  She was an immense illustration of a maxim of Dante Rossetti to the effect that artists had nothing to do with morality.  She was always on the stage—­in the most familiar act and in the presence of strangers she never lost sight of the footlights, and the best acting I ever saw her in was in private and in the representation of some comedy or tragedy of her own interests.  She played with a marvelous power one part, and all others were but variations of that or failures—­it was not art which dominated her, but the simulation of nature, and that her own, which is not the same thing as art, as we all ought to know.

Between herself and the sculptor Rogers, who was, in his way, as clever as she, there was an implacable war, veiled by the ordinary forms of civility, which both were careful never to break over.  Miss Cushman had begun her career as a singer, but, her voice failing, she had to be content to remain on the stage of the theatre; but she always retained a certain dramatic quality of voice, and, within a very limited register, she sang with great power and pathos.  Two of her favorite songs were Kingsley’s “The Sands of Dee” and the “Three Fishermen,” which, as she sang them, rarely failed to affect those who heard them for the first time to tears.  Rogers was an admirable mimic and sang those songs with such a close rendering of the voice and manner (for Miss Cushman’s voice was rather that of a man than one belonging to her own sex), with just a touch of burlesque, that he brought out roars of laughter; and when the two cordial enemies met in society somebody was sure to ask Rogers to sing “The Sands of Dee,” which he did with good will, and Miss Cushman was obliged, to her intense anger, to applaud the caricature of her best performance.  It was cruel, but he was merciless, and spared no exaggeration of her voice, her dramatic manner, and a way she had of sprawling over the piano, producing an ensemble which made it impossible to hear her again in the same songs without a disposition to laugh.