A DYING ACTRESS ON THE STAGE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 14, 15 January 1876, Page 4

A DYING ACTRESS ON THE STAGE.

A New York correspondent says:— ■ Miss Charlotte Crampton, once the most popular of American actresses, died in Louisville a few days ago, of yellow jaundice, in her fifty-ninth year. Her life had been crowded with strange adventures, and her death was in harmony with her life. She died impiediately after playing the Queen in " Hamlet," and Mr McCullough, who was playing Hamlet with her, thus describes her last appearance—" Bhe was dying, nny, almost dead at the time. Her limbs were rigid, and her features so contracted that only the eyes and lips moved. Her disease made her face a dark saffron color; she looked almost as dusky as Othello, and her eyes, dilated and with something fearfully weird in their expression, positively froze one's blood. She had tv be led to the entrance, but once on the stage was completely herself, except for that dreadful rigidity which marked her in many respects as already dead. Yet not a line or even a word of the part did she miss. In this, her last appearance before her beloved footlights she was bb perfect in her lines as when in tbe prime of her career, only the mobility, the ease, the motion, were lacking, but these were things of the past, and had their being in the ful*. ness of that vital spark which was. fast ebbing away. When the last scene closed and she passed from the stage to the entrance, one of the ballet girls made a movement to assist her down the steps which led to the dressingrooms. The kindly offer was rejected with a dignified gesture, and with eyes fixed in death, features rigid, and limbs nearly paralysed, tbe once favorite actress slowly dragged herself from the theatre for ever."