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The Boston Atlas for October 18, 1841, carried at the top of its front page the following notice:

Mrs. Mowatt’s Recitations.—The public are invited this evening by the advertisement of Mrs. Mowatt’s performance, to an entertainment of a somewhat novel character, and one which we have no doubt will be interesting, not chiefly from its novelty, but from its adaptations to gratify a refined taste. It consists of reading and recitations in poetry, with introductory remarks upon the respective pieces, by a lady who is most respectably recommended, for her eminent literary acquirements, and for those accomplishments which are most highly esteemed in fashionable society. We learn that she resorts to this employment of her talents and acquirements with a view to rendering them productive of pecuniary emolument, in consequence of reverses to which her family has been subjected.—There is no more laudable object to which the talents of an accomplished woman can be devoted than this, and we trust that she will meet with sympathy and encouragement in it, from those who are best capable of appreciating both the motive, and the success of her courageous effort. This we understand is her first public effort, and although it is made among strangers, we hope it will not be the less kindly met and rewarded. The following is handed to us as a specimen of the lady’s poetical talent:

TIME

by Anna Cora Mowatt

Nay rail not at Time, though a tyrant be he

And say not he cometh, colossal in might,

Our beauty to ravish, put pleasure to flight,

And pluck away friends, e’en as leaves from the tree;

And say not Love’s torch, which like Vesta’s should burn,

The cold breath of Time soon to ashes will turn.

(A second stanza informs us that Time is a robber of youth and beauty but also a bringer of wisdom.)

Though cares then should gather, as pleasures fleet by,

Though Time from thy features, the charms steal away,

He’ll dim too mine eye lest it see them decay,

And sorrows we’ve shared, love, knit closer love’s tie;

Then I’ll laugh at old Time, and at all he can do,

For he’ll rob me in vain, if he leave me but you.

This effort by the fair authoress of Pelayo was nicely calculated to engage the Transcendental spirit. Its merits as poetry need no comment (greater writers than Anna Cora had written worse), but the sentiment was clear. The young lady from New York knew where to lay the emphasis so far as Boston was concerned. Youth and beauty were all well enough, and rumor, which had preceded the lady, credited her with both; but it was manifestly Mind which summoned listeners to the Masonic Temple.

Thanks to Epes Sargent, not only the Atlas but the Transcript, the Bee and other Boston papers noted the coming attraction in a dignified and friendly way. Sargent’s letters to his friends had also produced results. When James and Lily arrived at the hotel they found numerous letters, cards and even bouquets to welcome them. Judge Story wrote a very encouraging note and Mr. Longfellow, the poet, expressed regret that illness prevented him from calling personally.

The day before the début Lily went to the Masonic Temple to rehearse. There was a chill in the great empty hall, and as she mounted the rostrum the rows of vacant seats seemed to stare at her with disapproval. Her heart began to throb violently and when she advanced to the edge of the platform to try her voice, she could scarcely utter a sound. Only James and an old doorkeeper were present, which made the place seem even bigger and emptier. Lily began to speak, but she could hardly hear herself. The words came in gasps, with no semblance of proper intonation. She grew sick at heart, for she could do nothing to fight off the fear that threatened to paralyze her. Again and again she tried to recite, selecting first one poem and then another from the program in the hope of finding some passage which would lift her out of the depths of hopelessness into which she was slipping deeper every moment. But it was no use. Finally, when she could control her trembling legs no longer, she sat down on the steps of the rostrum, sunk in despair. She was too miserable to weep.

The old doorkeeper was the first to speak. “You’re only a bit nervous,” he said kindly, “you’ll get over that. I’ve seen great speakers look just as pale and frightened as you do now when they got on this stand here—but they soon warmed up.”

But Lily felt that nothing would ever warm her again. She had staked everything on this venture. In imagination she had pictured the whole situation over and over, with perfect confidence. Now that she was faced with the reality—the reality of doing what no lady in America had ever done before—she was consumed with self-mistrust. All she could think of, was what failure would mean. She could hear the whispered comments of her sometime friends, the “whatever-made-you-think-you-could-do-its,” the “I-told-you-sos.”

On the way back to the hotel, she was too unhappy even to heed James’s efforts to console her. How preposterous it all was! and to all their other misfortunes disgrace would now be added. When they were in their rooms again and she saw the calling-cards and the flowers, a fresh wave of horror swept over her. Nothing could be undone: she was irrevocably committed.

At this instant, when she might at last have given way to tears, a knock came at the door and an envelope was handed in. When she saw the inscription and recognized the handwriting, her fingers trembled so that she could hardly break the seal. It was the long-awaited answer to her letter to Samuel Ogden. For a few seconds she could not bear to read the words he had written. In the state of her feelings, she knew that if her father should reproach her all would indeed be lost. But the first sentence set her mind at rest, and as she hurriedly skimmed the beloved script her spirits began to rise. Papa not only did not disapprove, he congratulated his little girl with all his heart for her splendid courage. He had not the slightest doubt that she would have a great success; who better than he knew her exceptional talents? But more important than talent was the purpose behind the venture. To seek independently to overcome adverse fortune—to strive by one’s own efforts to save hearth and home—was so noble a motive for action that no one knowing the circumstances could possibly reproach her or fail to rally to her support.

Almost at once Samuel Ogden’s prediction was proved correct. The only person with whom Anna Cora was personally acquainted in Boston was Mrs. Joshua Bates, wife of the Boston financier and partner of the London banking firm of Baring Brothers. Anna Cora had met Mrs. Bates in Paris two years before. It had been a pleasant though purely social connection. They had frequented the same salons and had met from time to time at Ambassador Cass’s. When she had decided to come to Boston, Anna Cora, in some hesitation, had written to Mrs. Bates. At most she had expected a mere courteous acknowledgment. It was more than a happy surprise when, shortly after she had read her father’s letter, a hotel attendant announced that Mrs. Bates had come to call.

“I had known her merely as a woman of fashion, chasing the butterfly of pleasure, even as I was doing, in Parisian salons, but now that I had a more earnest, a higher pursuit ... she came to me in her true guise.”

In her true guise Mrs. Bates took Anna Cora—figuratively at least though probably literally, for it was a custom of the times—to her bosom. She was not only full of admiration for the undertaking, but she made it seem that Boston was indeed fortunate to have been chosen for the début. She was confident of its success, and promised that all her friends would come to the recital. This was reassuring, for it was obvious that Mrs. Bates, whether chasing the butterfly of pleasure or engaged in good works, could exert pressure where and when it was needed. In this case she went to work with a will. As a token of good faith Mrs. Bates herself took a hundred tickets for the first reading. Well might Anna Cora record, “I was strengthened and cheered by her untiring kindness; her hearty enthusiasm gave me new faith in my own success. Beyond price, at that moment was such a friend; and the impetus which she gave to my first efforts had their effect upon my entire career.”

Papa’s letter and Mrs. Bates’s more tangible encouragement were all Anna Cora needed to bolster her waning resolution.

The day of days dawned bright and fair. Having regained her composure, Anna Cora was determined now to let nothing disturb it. She stayed secluded in her room throughout the day, while the flow of cards (doubtless stimulated by Mrs. Bates) was handled by James.

When evening came she was still calm. She dressed herself with great care and without haste. Knowing advisors had insisted she wear her most elaborate toilette and all her jewels; people would expect a certain effect. On the latter point Anna Cora was in agreement, but she had her own ideas about the kind of effect. If she appealed to the Boston audience it would be on their own terms. She had promised an evening of intellectual and esthetic pleasure, governed by refinement and taste. Also she was a lady in reduced circumstances, a fact which called for a certain sartorial decorum. Accordingly she wore a simple white muslin dress, with a white rose in her hair and another at her bosom. With her pale face and large dark blue eyes, she looked younger than her twenty-three years. The vestal muslin added still further to her youthful appearance. Nothing could have enhanced her air of innocence, which was genuine; but the white roses—in lieu of diamonds—gave her a look of other-worldliness which Bostonians must have approved.

In the retiring-room of the Temple the Mowatts found a number of well-wishers, principally gentlemen, who felt especially protective towards the lovely stranger. There was some anxiety on their faces. The Temple, they informed Anna Cora encouragingly, was thronged “with one of the most fashionable audiences ever assembled within its walls.” They entreated her to retain her self-possession. They urged this in such earnest terms that she might well have been frightened out of her wits; only fortunately her mind was on the details of the program and she scarcely heard what was said.

At seven o’clock the gentlemen departed, with the injunction that she not keep the audience waiting. “Bostonians dislike nothing more!” On this helpful note Anna Cora, accompanied by James, made her way to the foot of the stairs leading up to the rostrum. There James left her and took his seat in the front row. She mounted the steps, turned to the sea of faces and curtsied. The audience burst into a storm of applause. Half-stunned, Anna Cora curtsied again. Another storm. When she lifted the book from which she was to read there was still more applause. Although, as she said later, she felt as if she could scarcely have been “more unconscious in a state of complete inanition,” the audience was determinedly enthusiastic.

Then she began to read. In a thin, half-choked voice came the opening words of The Lay of the Last Minstrel:

The way was long, the wind was cold ...

Never had that line been delivered more feelingly! The audience listened with rapt attention, unaware that the opening effect was due less to art than to stage-fright. Glancing up from her page and seeing the look of unmistakable enthrallment on every face, Anna Cora’s self-possession suddenly returned. People were actually enjoying it! With each succeeding stanza her voice grew stronger; and when she reached the climactic

Breathes there the man with soul so dead ...

she was no longer a touching young lady reduced by circumstance to display in public a talent hitherto exercised only in the home; she was an artist.

Indeed she was the creator of a new art, which soon was to sweep the country and for half a century would be the delight of American audiences, as well as the support of innumerable gentlewomen in reduced circumstances or otherwise. The first lady elocutionist had appeared in the United States, and not until the twentieth century had run for more than two decades, and Chautauqua had had its rise and decline, would her voice be silent in the land.

The second and third night audiences were as large and as delighted as that which had come to the début. After the first awful moments, Anna Cora was completely self-assured. It was as though she were reading to a very large group of pleasantly indulgent friends. Even though she knew that she read extremely well, she was also aware that the enthusiasm of Boston was less for her artistry than for herself. The spirit of chivalry, evinced by the group of gentlemen who had met her on the opening night, characterized the Boston public as a whole—at least the masculine part of it. E. P. Whipple, a young literary light of the city, summed it up when he told her, during the first intermission that evening, “There is not a man in the Temple that wouldn’t fight for you!”

If she was elated by her success, Anna Cora could have wished that the Boston press, at least, had been a little more precise in its comments on her reading. The newspapers teemed with notices, “but they were eulogiums, not critiques.” And though Anna Cora left the city with the satisfaction of having made an impression of a sort unparalleled there before by one of her sex, she was not really certain it was all due to her art.

Generous Boston would have paid gladly for another series of readings, but Anna Cora was determined now to push on to further fields. Until she had braved New York, she could not feel justified in the course she had taken. If she really had something on which to base a career, she would find out in New York—where people would not only be less likely to understand her motives, but where the appreciation of art was less keen than in Boston. If she really had power to move men—and, she hoped, women—New York was the place to prove it.

Meanwhile, in a one-night stand at Providence, she received most literal evidence of her abilities. One number on her program was the piece by Epes Sargent written especially for her, entitled The Missing Ship. This work had a topical interest; it was inspired by an event which had created great public excitement a short time before. The steamer President, largest and finest packet in the North Atlantic service, had sailed from New York early in March, 1841, was sighted by another ship on March 13th, and was never heard from again. Though shipwrecks were not uncommon still, it was unusual that a vessel should meet its doom in the most frequented ship lane, with no indication of what had happened. Surmises were rife. Although a violent storm was reported at the time of the President’s disappearance, it was certain that she could have weathered this. The assumption was that the ship had either struck an iceberg or caught fire.

Sargent, who was after all a successful journalist, treated both conjectures with a free hand. And Anna Cora made the most of all the details. The poem (which the historian fain would leave to merciful oblivion) begins thus:

God speed the noble President!

A gallant boat is she,

As ever entered harbor

Or crossed a stormy sea.

Then follows a description of the splendid spectacle made by the ship as she sailed out of New York Harbor, her guns saluting, on the way back to England and a welcome by a proud citizenry (she was a British ship):

Alas ye watchers by the strand,

Weeks, months have rolled away,

But where, where is the President?

And why is this delay?

It is difficult in the perspective of more than a hundred years to reconstruct the art by which this specimen of inanity was made moving to an audience which after all possessed some literary tradition. Yet move it did, as the sequel shows, when Anna Cora read it.

Through three more stanzas the poet develops his picture as fancy dwells on the various possibilities of disaster. Was it an iceberg that loomed before the helmsman’s eyes—too late to be avoided—or was it fire bursting without warning from within that soon engulfed the hapless vessel? Both alternatives are given in lurid detail; but of what use, asks the poet, are these conjectures?

No answer cometh from the deep

To tell the tale we dread;

No messenger of weal or woe

Returneth from the dead; ...

Did the recitalist on the Providence platform detect some strange disturbance in the rear of the auditorium as she reached this point? If so, the impetus of emotion would not have permitted a halt until the last sad note was sounded.

But faith looks up through tears, and sees,

From earthly haven driven,

Those lost ones meet in fairer realms

Where storms reach not—in Heaven.

With upturned eyes and lifted hands Anna Cora finished the reading. There was a moment of deep silence while the audience recovered its stricken senses. And then, before the applause could burst forth, there was a wild high shriek from somewhere in the back of the house. This was followed by another and still another. The startled performer gazed anxiously in the direction of the sound, and noted a sudden rising of gentlemen in the back row. The next instant she saw a female figure, gesturing frantically, being conveyed from the hall, while the shrieks mounted higher and higher.

It was some time before Anna Cora learned exactly what had happened. When it became known that the cause of the disturbance was a female auditor, of such delicate sensibilities that she had been reduced to hysterics by the reading of the poem, Anna Cora was sympathetic but not dissatisfied. Here indeed was incontrovertible proof of her dramatic powers! As for Mr. Sargent’s poem, “it proved one of the most valuable in my repertoire for it never failed to impress an audience.”

The Mowatts went straight from Providence to New York, but they did not return to Melrose. Despite the fact that Anna Cora’s “pecuniary emoluments” from the Boston and Providence readings had been eminently satisfactory—she had realized more than a thousand dollars from the four appearances—they were not enough to stave off foreclosure of the mortgage on Melrose. Perhaps it was just as well. Although she would always treasure the memory of the happy years in Flatbush, the house and all it represented marked a point in her life to which she could not return. In after years she always said she had decided to become a public reader because there was literally nothing else she could do. But having once tasted the freedom of the new life, never again would she have been satisfied with the normal confined existence of most women of her day, not even as mistress of Melrose.

The Mowatts took up residence at the new Astor House on Broadway at Park Place. Unrivalled in magnificence by any other hostelry in the world, it had been built by John Jacob Astor as a civic enterprise and a monument to himself. It was typical of the Astor genius that he should have realized both these aims and at the same time developed a highly lucrative investment. The hotel had been completed five years before James and Lily moved there, and was the last word in luxury. It had piped water, supplied from its own wells, in all the bedrooms, and there were baths on every floor. The building soared to a height of six stories and was a source of lyrical ecstasy to men like N. P. Willis, New York’s fashionable newspaper columnist, who also lived in it. “To those who inhabit the upper stories of this great caravanserai,” wrote Willis in Godey’s for May, 1843, “the hotel must seem but the ground floor of the stars—the Astor a corruption of ad astra.”

Of course the Astor was very expensive, but it was comfortable and highly respectable. Indeed it had a considerable clientele of New York’s best families, who when the hotel opened had simply sold their houses and moved in—unable to resist the temptation of baths, steam heat, and lavish gas illumination. For Lily and James, living at the Astor was undoubtedly a lift to morale. It provided them with an atmosphere of luxury and associations with their own kind, with at the same time a touch of Bohemianism. The Park Theatre was close at hand, as was Florence’s Oyster House where the world of fashion mingled with the literati. Nearby was the bowling alley at the Masonic Hall: a favorite resort of the sporting element, and so luxurious in its appointments as to resemble “a chamber of Aladdin’s build.”

On November 18, 1841, Anna Cora gave the first of a series of readings at the Stuyvesant Institute. The house as might be expected was full, with a goodly representation from the Mowatts’ extensive acquaintance. For indignation at Mrs. Mowatt’s conduct had not stifled curiosity.

Anna Cora had been prepared for this attitude on the part of their friends; she had steeled herself to it even before the Boston venture. But it was worse than she had expected. In the eyes of her own circle she had suddenly become nothing less than a freak, and completely shameless. It was inconceivable that the wife of James Mowatt and the daughter of Samuel Ogden should be reduced to such an extremity that she must exhibit herself publicly for money. There was obviously something wrong with Anna Mowatt, and people, many of whom had been close friends, met her after the first reading with averted faces.

In such an atmosphere it was difficult for Anna Cora to do her best, no matter how she struggled. Nevertheless she went bravely through the engagements at the Stuyvesant Institute, which were well attended and attracted flattering attention from the press.

Philip Hone, a leading citizen and later mayor of New York, was present at the début. In his diary, which has something to say about nearly everything that happened in the city in the forties, there is this note:

November 18, Having nothing better to do this evening I went over the way to the Stuyvesant Institute to hear Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt recite poetry. This lady is the daughter of Samuel G. Ogden, young and genteel in appearance, and handsome for aught I know, for a black curtain of curls hanging down the side of her face, like an unsightly wig of an English judge or barrister, concealed her features from all except those who were immediately in front of her. A vile fashion.

Hone, a man of taste and humane sympathies, might have been expected to offer some comment on the reading itself. The slight air of disdain with which he records merely Anna Cora’s appearance typifies the attitude of most of the Ogden-Mowatt circle at this time.

The strain of preparing the programs and of the actual readings, and the gulf which had now been created between the Mowatts and so many of their former friends had their effects on Anna Cora’s health. She had not been able to shake off a cold which she had caught earlier in the winter, and this, added to her general state of exhaustion, completely drained her strength. Shortly before the last recital at the Stuyvesant Institute she collapsed, and the few friends who remained close to her despaired of her life. Yet sheer determination, as was so often to prove the case, pulled her through. In December she staggered to her feet and with a heavy shawl around her thin shoulders gave a reading, many times postponed, before the Rutgers Institute for Young Ladies. The atmosphere here was different from the patronizing air of the Stuyvesant Institute audiences. “The hall was filled with an assemblage of lovely-looking young girls, and their evident enjoyment inspired me to read with more energy and feeling than I had done since my nights in Boston. The effort caused me a relapse of some weeks.”

It was just over a month later that Anna Cora resumed the career which seemed already nipped in the bud. The Evening Post for January 13 supplies the record:

Mrs. Mowatt’s Readings.—This lady appeared on Wednesday evening after a month’s indisposition, and she far surpassed all her previous performances. She was not the reciter, but the poet herself, conceiving anew all the Bard’s conceptions, which gained additional force and brilliancy from her mind and feeling, and portraying his passions and emotions with an intensity and vividness which carried the coldest reader captive. Byron’s dream was given in a manner perfectly new and original, and we may add in one at least equal to any we have ever heard. The Brothers was a masterpiece; the expression of intense agony and horror depicted on the face of Mrs. Mowatt, at the sight of the dead brother seemed reflected on that of a large part of the audience; and The Missing Ship, by one of our own poets, was electrifying; The Fall of Babylon, also by an American poet, evinced a power and volume of voice which we would have pronounced it impossible for so young and delicate a being to possess.... The very modesty of her appearance, and her abandonment to her subjects, are calculated to impress the audience with a fear of disturbing her with clamorous applause.

This notice reflects the general tone of the New York press when it now said anything about Mrs. Mowatt. The January readings were given at the Society Library. Every appearance found the hall crowded with eager and demonstrative spectators. No matter what her own acquaintances might think of her, New York as a whole had taken her to its heart. Regardless of the quality of many of her selections (of which the less said the better), there is no doubt that Anna Cora Mowatt was creating a public for poetry with her art as a reader. If this seems an insignificant art to us, that is because we really know nothing about it and judge it by the vapid elocution of a later tradition. Anna Cora’s audiences may have been emotionally less complicated than people of the present day (which is debatable); but the fact that she could stir them to depths of feeling which they had seldom experienced is indicative of a great gift.

Since Anna Cora was completely self-taught there were naturally flaws in her performances. However, judging from the newspaper accounts there was steady improvement throughout the winter of 1841-42. This meant that despite the wretched state of her health she was constantly working to perfect her art.

But it was a bitter struggle. The wagging tongues would not leave her alone. Some of the newspapers refused to criticize her work at all, devoting themselves entirely to a condemnation of Anna Cora personally. They accused her of setting a precedent which if followed by other women would lead to the dissolution of the home and a general relaxation of moral standards. In an article in The Ladies’ Companion she was denounced in scathing terms. It was bad enough that Mrs. Mowatt should read poetry in public, but that she should do so before mixed audiences seemed nothing less than depravity. If she must read let her do so before audiences of her own sex—leaving the gentlemen outside, presumably, with the canes and umbrellas; a notion which Anna Cora found rather amusing.

On the other hand there were many encouraging voices. J. W. S. Hows, a leading New York dramatic critic and authority on elocution, heard her and wrote a letter to her full of high praise. Perhaps the greatest tribute of all came from Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, a leader of the New York literati, friend of Poe, and a poetess highly esteemed by all readers of the ladies’ magazines. In chaste lyrics Mrs. Osgood pronounced her judgment:

TO ANNA CORA MOWATT

(on hearing her read)

Ne’er heed them, Cora, dear,

The carping few, who say

Thou leavest woman’s holier sphere

For light and vain display.

Mrs. Osgood, like others, had gone to Anna Cora’s readings expecting to see “a being bold who braved the wide world’s blame.” Instead,

A being young and fair,

In purest white arrayed,

With timid grace tripped down the stair

Half eager, half afraid!

As on the misty height

Soft blushes young Aurora,

She dawned upon our dazzled sight,

Our graceful, modest Cora!

The loveliest hair of gold

That ever woman braided,

In glossy ringlets, richly rolled,

Brow, neck and bosom shaded.

She dwells on Anna Cora’s modest attire, and the beauty of soul—“more than mortal”—which looked out of her pure blue eyes. She notes the profound hush that came over the audience when Anna Cora spoke and:

That voice of wondrous music gushed

Now soft as murmuring dove—

Now calm in proud disdain—

Now wild with joyous power—

Indignant now—as pleasure, pain

Or anger ruled the hour.

High in the listener’s soul

In tune each passion swells;

We weep, we smile, ’neath her control,

As ’neath a fairy’s spells.

If we make due allowance for Mrs. Osgood’s uncontrollable tendency to gush, these verses give us an idea of Anna Cora’s charm and physical appearance. It may appear in one instance that the demands of rhyme take precedence over cold fact. “The loveliest hair of gold” is not in accord with Philip Hone’s “black curtain of curls,” or with the dark hair shown in the various portraits. However, Mrs. Osgood first saw Anna Cora late in the winter of 1841-42; and her description may be accurate, since all references after this time specify that Anna Cora had light, or light auburn hair. From this one gathers that sometime during this first season a change in color took place—not wholly the work of nature. This in itself would have been no cause for alarm to Anna Cora’s friends. Dyed hair was common enough in the 1840’s. It was as usual for a lady to alter the shade of her tresses as the contours of her torso. Any good cook-book of the time told her just how to go about it. The fact that Anna Cora was abandoned by the world of fashion did not mean that she herself had ceased to be fashionable. Henceforth in this chronicle she will be blonde.

Despite Anna Cora’s success on the platform, the winter of 1841-42 must have been wretched for the Mowatts. We do not know that Samuel Ogden contributed more to the support of his daughter and son-in-law than hearty words of encouragement. It seems unlikely that he did, for in after-references to this time, Anna Cora makes clear that their financial situation was most precarious. If she struggled through readings between bouts of illness, it was not wholly in the interest of art. The bills at the Astor House had to be paid, and Anna Cora was the one who paid them.

Although her work suffered from frequent interruptions, it attracted ever wider notice. By the end of the year half a dozen ladies were launched on careers as elocutionists throughout the Union. One of these advertised “Readings and Recitations in the Style of Mrs. Mowatt.” Anna Cora was particularly interested in this unknown disciple, and had her health permitted she would have traveled some distance to hear the lady; for, as she tells us, “I was rather curious to get an idea of my own style.”

One occurrence must be noted for its reference to the future. A reading at the Society Library was attended by a gentleman described as “one of the managers of the Park theatre.” This gentleman, through an intermediary, made Anna Cora a highly lucrative offer to go on the stage. The offer was spurned with great indignation. The very fact that it should have been made must have added fuel to the fires of humiliation already consuming Anna Cora. To be thought even susceptible of becoming an actress! Necessity had driven her far—but not that far.

The unnamed representative of the Park theatre was not one of the managers, but the sole manager and lessee of the theatre—none other than Mr. Simpson, the “gentlemanly” neighbor of childhood days. Anna Cora may not have been aware of this fact, for her distress at the suggestion probably deafened her to all details. However, by 1841 Stephen Price, who had been co-manager of the Park with Simpson, was dead. Simpson was therefore in sole command; and that particular season he was having very rough sailing. As far as that goes, it was a bad season for everybody. The depression launched by Jackson’s bank reforms in 1837 was still running its course. In New York there was real suffering, and this was reflected in the theatre. The season had begun well enough in September. At the Park, Charlotte Cushman had drawn good houses as Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and later in the fall had had another successful week as Lady Teazle to the Sir Peter of Henry Placide. “Jim Crow” Rice (the original black-face comedian) had returned from triumphs abroad, and had brought cash to Simpson’s till with his plantation antics. Yankee Hill had also done well in his ever-popular impersonations of “native” American types, and there had been a truly dazzling success with Boucicault’s London Assurance, in which Charlotte Cushman had again figured. But these were momentary flashes. The day of the long run was still far off, and an occasional good week was not enough to offset the bleak intervals when the house was almost empty. Furthermore one of Simpson’s greatest successes of the season had almost ruined him, paradoxically. This was the engagement of the terpsichorean divinity Fanny Elssler, who could pack a house like nobody else and fill her own pocket-book proportionately. Simpson had had to guarantee her $5438 for her engagement, and because of a miscalculation on his part, had lost more than $2000 on the deal.

Faced by imminent bankruptcy, it is small wonder that Simpson by mid-winter was casting about desperately for an attraction that would fill the Park without too great an initial investment. Mrs. Mowatt’s extraordinary success, not only as a charming personality but as a woman with undeniable dramatic gifts, must have suggested ideas. The stir caused by her daring venture had a distinct publicity value, and this added to her genuine attainments made her seem the answer to his prayers. But the prayers were vain; Simpson was left to struggle as best he could.

Meanwhile Anna Cora had new struggles of her own.