Newport News

Villa Cushman, Newport, RI

QUEEN CARLOTTA: 

“Oh you beloved glorious vital woman! How you triumph and conquer; no wonder we who may love you as we do—with the love we have for women & the love we have for men, set into one love [unlike?] all others. My Queen Carlotta – I do not believe you will come to Newport”

-Letter from High Society fan to Actress Charlotte Cushman

https://www.archivalgossip.com/collection/items/show/207

Queen Carlotta (Charlotte Cushman) was a transgender actor/ess in the mid 19th century who played Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and Lady Macbeth. Channeling men and becoming men, acting on the stage of the rich and elite on both sides of the Atlantic. In the pit,  the hotel and factory workers of the time would bring their children.

Carlotta was rubbing elbows with some of the high-society of Aquidneck island, and built a “cottage”  on the corner of Catherine St. and Newport ave.