being
taken by the recipient. There was also a charge of five dollars for
the passport, which was to be renewed after a year. Charlotte was,
amongst her other qualities, avaricious, and though wealthy and
ostentatious she rebelled at expenditure which did not show, and when
it came time for her to leave Rome for the summer, and her passport
came for visa, I stopped it and notified her to take out a new one.
She refused, and confiding in the friendly personal relations which
had existed between her and Seward, she wrote to the department
protesting against my action and making formal complaint of my
discourtesy. Seward replied that I was obeying my orders and that the
passport must be taken and paid for. From that day war was open and
malignant. Of course I was interdicted from responding in any way to
her attacks, but I found them of no great importance; though when I
was sent to Crete, four years later, she had influence enough to get
her nephew appointed consul in succession.

In the years when Miss Cushman was on the stage I had understood her
pretty well, and, though she had done what was possible to give me a
good impression of her, I do not think I was ever much persuaded of
her goodness or surprised at the enmity she showed when I came into
collision with her interests. I think she possessed an utterly selfish
nature, was not at all scrupulous in the attainment of her purposes,
and was, in effect, that most dangerous member of society, a
strong-willed and large-brained woman without a vestige of principle.
She had a diabolical magnetism which in her best part, Meg Merrilies,
had a sensuous attraction I have never known so powerful in another
woman. Her Queen Katherine was a failure, and she could not play the
part of a refined woman, but into that of Meg Merrilies, an adaptation
of her own of Sir Walter Scott's novel, she put her whole nature--it
was her very self as far as she would let herself be seen.

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