Charlotte Cushman was born on July 23, 1816, and she died on February 12, 1876. Boston was the place of her birth and of her death. She lived till her sixtieth year and she was for forty years an actress. Her youth was one of poverty and the early years of her professional career were full of labour, trouble, heart-ache, and conflict. The name of Cushman signifies "cross-bearer," and certainly Charlotte Cushman did indeed bear the cross, long before and long after, she wore the crown. At first she was a vocalist, but, having broken her voice by misusing it, she was compelled to quit the lyric and adopt the dramatic stage, and when nineteen years old she came out, at New Orleans, as Lady Macbeth. After that she removed to New York and for the next seven years she battled with adverse fortune in the theatres of that city and of Albany and Philadelphia. From 1837 to 1840 she was under engagement at the old Park as walking lady and for general utility business. "I became aware," she wrote, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast. This was the way that I would henceforth learn mine."
Her first remarkable hits were made in Emilia, Meg Merrilies, and Nancy--the latter in _Oliver Twist_. But it was not till she met with Macready that the day of her deliverance from drudgery really dawned. They acted together in New York in 1842 and 1843, and in Boston in 1844, and in the autumn of the latter year Miss Cushman went to England, where, after much effort, she obtained an opening in London, at the Princess's, and in 1845 made her memorable success as Bianca. "Since the first appearance of Edmund Kean, in 1814," said a London journal of that time, "never has there been such a _début_ on the stage of an English theatre." Her engagement lasted eighty-four nights (it was an engagement to act with Edwin Forrest), and she recorded its result in a letter to her mother, saying: "All my successes put together since I have been upon the stage would not come near my success in London, and I only wanted some one of you here to enjoy it with me, to make it complete." She acted Bianca, Emilia, Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Haller, and Rosalind. A prosperous provincial tour followed, and then, in December, 1845, she came out at the Haymarket, as Romeo, her sister Susan appearing as Juliet. Her stay abroad lasted till the end of the summer of 1849, and to that period belongs her great achievement as Queen Katharine.