On a visit to his family in Philadelphia the actor looked up Matthew Canning, the manager of Booth’s 1860 southern tour. Canning had been trapped in Montgomery, Alabama, when the war commenced. Departing for the North, he lost his property and was able to get away with only three thousand dollars in unenthusiastically accepted Confederate bonds for everything.39
Now working as a theatrical agent, Canning proposed to take Booth as a client and find engagements for him.40 He could place Booth in New York, an idea with much appeal. “As all good Jews look towards Jerusalem for the realization of their fondest hopes, so do the actors of England sigh for a London engagement, the actors of America turn to New York as their Mecca,” wrote Fawcett.41 Success there, and the acquisition of what the journalist Junius Henri Browne termed “a metropolitan reputation,” assured acceptance in the provinces.42 Canning contacted the managers Samuel Colville, J. Lewis Baker, and George Ryer, all California friends of June. They were unwrapping a new theater, named the Mary Provost Theatre for Colville’s wife, on Broadway near Broome. Their idea was “introducing stars who had made a reputation throughout the West and South but were unable to obtain a hearing at the older and so-called legitimate houses.” They had heard good things about Booth, deemed him a strong draw, and offered him a chance. “He snapped readily at the opportunity,” recalled J. J. McCloskey, one of the Mary Provost company.43 Edward L. Tilton, who had just played the heavy at the Holliday with Booth, and Mary Ann Farren, who did the leading lady business there, would come along with him. Together the trio formed an experienced team.
John hired his brother Joe as an assistant. This was a mistake. “Joe was brimful of romantic, dreamy, unpractical ideas,” wrote their mutual friend William Howell. “He was a builder of air castles, an indolent young fellow who was always hoping for something out of the usual routine of events to turn up for his special benefit.”44 Joe had been a medical student in Charleston when the war broke out. Swept up by events, he served on the medical staff of Confederate forces attacking Fort Sumter. Returning north, he showed Howell a trunk full of shell fragments, musket balls, splintered bones, and skulls—a combination of military trophies and deposit from his studies. War fever raged, and Joe decided to become a Union officer. Rumor was that when he heard the guns at Fort Henry on February 6, 1862, he deserted.45
Joe returned home moody and anxious. “I was troubled in mind and worried,” he would say, and he lapsed into a bout of what his doctors labeled as melancholy insanity. To escape his mother’s incessant babying, Joe left with John for New York, only to discover that he was expected to work hard. On the cusp of a professional breakthrough, John was charging hard and had no time for a gloomy woe-is-me. “If Wilkes was not cut out for an actor,” Joe complained to his friend Edward Westall, “he should have been a merchant for he is a regular money-grabber.” After one bitter argument over business, Joe walked out. In fact, he vanished. John grew frantic, worried that Joe might commit suicide. He searched Manhattan for him, visiting police stations to leave Joe’s photo and plead for help.
He would learn that Joe, with money from their mother and some of John’s own dollars that Joe considered his due, sailed for Europe to join Edwin. Eventually the younger brother traveled on to Australia and finally to California, where June got him a job delivering letters for Wells Fargo in San Francisco. Despite the trouble between them, John reached out, writing him letters of encouragement, and “Joseph always manifested more affection for his brother Wilkes than for any other member of the family,” said Westall. “He thought more highly of Wilkes than either of his other brothers.”46
on the morning of March 17, 1862, the cast at the Mary Provost Theatre were awaiting the arrival of the star when one player said, “I am an old man in the business and have seen and played with some of the greatest tragedians. But in all my long years of professional experience, this young man Wilkes Booth is the first actor that ever knocked me off my pins, upset and completely left me without a word to say! Yes, sir, an old actor like me that you would suppose an earthquake could not move was tongue-tied, unable to speak his lines.”47
There was a stir behind the actors, and Baker was heard to say to someone, “Oh, not waiting long. You are on time.”
Booth strode forward on the darkened stage. “The foot and border lights were suddenly turned up and revealed a face and form not easily described or forgotten,” recalled McCloskey. “You have seen a high-mettled racer with his sleek skin and eyes of unusual brilliancy, charging under a restless innocence to be doing something. It is the only living thing I could liken him to.”
A chance reference to the latest war news ignited a debate among the actors. McCloskey was pro-Southern, as was Jim Collier, the muscle man with whom Booth acted in Richmond. Tilton favored the North. The men began to argue over military arrests in Maryland. Words grew hot, tempers short, “and when the denunciation of [Lincoln and Seward] reached fever heat, Booth, who had been listening to it at the back of the stage, strode down trembling with rage and ashy pale and quivering like an aspen leaf.”
“It is a damnable outrage,” shouted Booth, referring to the federal suppression of Maryland.
Baker cut him off. “We will have no more of this. Let us get along with the rehearsal,” Baker said. “Pardon me, Mr. Booth. The stage is no place for political discussions.”
Booth bowed to Baker, forced a smile, and responded, “I quite agree with you, sir. Let us proceed with the rehearsal.”
The star commenced work abruptly, eager to get past the incident. McCloskey watched him closely and concluded “the encomiums passed upon him by the old actor were not in the least exaggerated. Reading entirely new to us—he gave. Business never thought of by the oldest stager—he introduced.” Booth was very particular in telling those around him not to be frightened by the passion with which he would act that evening. “He might, he said with a smile, throw a little more fire into the part than at rehearsal.” Booth issued the caution, McCloskey believed, because he knew his own strength.
Opening night found a packed house for Richard III, with hundreds of would-be patrons turned away at the door. The critic for the Herald, the city’s leading newspaper, fought his way inside and watched Booth deliver a performance of great maturity and extraordinary self-possession, as he informed his readers the following morning. “In the last act he created a veritable sensation. He seemed Richard himself. Mr. Booth’s Richard Third ought to crowd the theatre for a month.”48 Onstage, McCloskey thought, “whether it was in the gentle wooing of Lady Ann, the hypocrisy of the king, or the malignant joy at Buckingham’s capture down to the fight and death of the tyrant, originality was stamped all over and through the performance. It was a terrible picture.”
Booth had warned Collier to take care in the fight scenes, and the brawny player took offense at the remark. He shot a look back at Booth that seemed to say, “You have been frightening everybody tonight. Try it on me.”
“A dreadful lay. Here’s to decide it,” Booth’s Richard cried out as he pitched into Collier.
McCloskey recalled, “The shower of blows came furious from Richard’s sword. Now was Collier’s turn and bravely did he return them. With renewed strength Richard rained blows upon blows so fast that the athletic Jim began to wince as if to say, ‘How long is this going to last?’ ” Undaunted, Collier recovered. Grasping his sword with both hands, he pounded back. At length Richard was mortally wounded, and after lamenting that with his death the world was no longer his stage, he expired.
When the curtain fell, the other actors milled about, but Booth lay motionless on the boards. Only his hard breathing revealed he was still alive. “Could it be possible this was the man who only a few moments before nobody could withstand in his fury—now a limp mass of exhausted nature, his nerves all unstrung and whom a child might conquer?” wondered McCloskey. Booth might remain prostrate five or ten minutes “before he recovered strength or even full consciousness.”49
Collier enjo
yed better roles after Ned Tilton suffered an accident on Friday, March 21, 1862. In a fight with Booth near the footlights Tilton stepped off the stage and fell into the orchestra pit. The musicians retrieved him from among the drums and fiddles and lifted him back up. Sword in his left hand, he gamely resumed the fight to cheers from the house. It was later discovered that Tilton had broken his shoulder (or possibly his arm). The actor told a colleague that he believed that Booth, wielding a double-handed broadsword weighting seven pounds, knocked him off the stage. If true, it was a serious indictment of the star.50
This incident caused a great deal of talk at the time, wrote T. Allston Brown, a New York Clipper reporter, and even more after the assassination.51 It was offered as evidence of Booth’s malicious nature. Heedless of another’s safety, he injured a fellow performer in order to demonstrate his own prowess as a fencer. John T. Ford clipped and saved an account written a quarter century after the event that expressed this view: “Booth made a wild lunge at Tilton, forced him over the footlights, and fairly hurled him into the orchestra. Then he madly tried to kill his fallen foe, amid the shrieks of the ladies and the shouts of some of the men in the audience who now began to dread a tragedy in earnest.”52
McCloskey, the only cast member to leave an account of the evening, saw something quite different. Tilton was a large and powerfully built man capable of delivering blows as well as taking them. He was one of the best fencers in the business.53 He had practical experience dueling with Booth in Baltimore. That night, however, “nothing could withstand the trip-hammer blows of Richard,” McCloskey felt. “Watching for his head’s protection, [Tilton] was too unmindful of his heels.” In an instant he was on his back in the orchestra. The accidental nature of the mishap was confirmed by critic Brown, a friend and biographer of Tilton, who stated that the actor “accidently stepped off the stage, dislocating his shoulder, which was the groundwork of the story about Booth’s getting so excited that he knocked him off.”
In 1890 the novelist John Paul Bocock wrote an essay on stage dueling for the Boston Herald. Bocock believed that “the most realistic stage duel of this generation was fought between John Wilkes Booth and Tom Connor at DeBar’s in St. Louis. The audience rose to its feet night after night in an agony of suspense as first Richmond and then Richard would be driven at swords’ points over the footlights. [They] would try, it seemed, to cleave each other to the chin. Fire would fly from their broad blades as sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil. Both men were athletes and [played] for the love of the fight, pure and simple.” Booth’s routine was single and double primes (fencing parries with the blade down and to the side and the wrist pronated), followed by ups and downs, circles, shoulder blows, and a thrilling snake-like crawl upon one knee from upstage center to downstage left.54 As realistic as the combat appeared, however, “ ‘Connor and Booth were both faking,’ ” an old hand explained to Bocock. Stage duels were not free-for-alls. They were rehearsed. Each night before they went on, Booth and Connor discussed who would be driven where.
“Wilkes, it’s your night,” Connor would say.
“Why, Tom, you miserable rascal, I went off first last night, and then I’ve got to get killed,” Booth responded. “You’ll have to make that break yourself and mind you do it well, too!”55
Despite stories that later emerged, Booth was not insensitive to the safety of other actors. When things went wrong, he was duly distressed. Once his blade came perilously close to Charles Krone, slicing out the back of that actor’s velvet armhole coat. Krone carried on, giving King Henry’s dying speech. Thinking that he had stabbed him, Booth stood nearby and asked Krone repeatedly in a low voice if he was hurt. Booth was trembling in alarm. “When the curtain fell, he raised me. I knew not whether I had been hurt or not but a brief examination revealed that a small hole in the cloak had been the only damage done, at which he was highly delighted.”56
His two weeks extended for a third, Booth continued at the Mary Provost Theatre through early April 1862. The public wanted Richard III, and he gave it to them, playing the title role eleven times in eighteen appearances. Edwin’s friend William Winter thought John “raw and crude and much given to boisterous declamation and violent demeanor.”57 The public was more receptive. Charles B. Seymour in the New York Times found “his presence intellectually impressive, his delivery natural and unstrained, his perception of character clear and vigorous. We cannot name a better Richard.” The Times and Messenger thought “his intellectual appreciation of the part is somewhat wonderful for so young an actor. It is acknowledged to be without a rival upon the American stage.” The Tribune was less enthusiastic, although its review acknowledged his abilities and the fact that he was still fighting the cold he had brought with him from Baltimore. Booth’s Charles de Moor in The Robbers was also well received. The star was called before the curtain repeatedly by sustained applause. At the end of the second act he received several floral tributes from the audience. As Shylock, however, critics thought he failed. “He neither looks, conceives nor acts the character in a style to increase his reputation or satisfy his audience,” wrote the Herald. “Youth is an excellent apology for so unfinished a rendition, but none for offering it to the public.” In general his New York engagement concluded with much critical encouragement and back-patting. “The public have had an opportunity to witness the efforts of a genius who acts without being an actor,” declared the Evening Express. It went on to announce that Booth had indeed earned his “metropolitan reputation,” employing the phrase as if it were handing over a tangible gift. The World agreed and stated the obvious: “This gentleman has in an incredibly short space of time become a general favorite with playgoers.”58
Something about Booth would always puzzle Manhattan know-it-all Isaac G. Reed, however. With good reviews and popular favor, why did the actor not take a subsequent engagement in the city? Why did he never return to New York? Writing thirty years later about the young star, Reed reflected, “He was probably the handsomest actor ever seen on the New York boards, gifted not only with beauty of features but of expression. It is very rarely that good-lookers among actors are man-like but Wilkes Booth was a ‘manly man.’ His form was simply perfection, his manners winning yet dignified, his dark eyes were twin souls, his voice was music. Had Booth been true to himself and remained in New York, he would have made a bigger hit here than was ever made either by his father before him or his brother after him.” And yet, continued Reed, the actor’s appearance at the Mary Provost Theatre “was, strange to say, the only engagement ever played by Booth in New York.”59
Reed understood the importance of the city. Its population was almost four times that of Baltimore, five times that of St. Louis, and seven times that of Chicago. Additionally, tens of thousands of strangers visited the city daily, many seeking amusement. “There is incalculable advantage in gaining favor here,” wrote Browne, a student of city life, “and the advantage is not merely apparent. It is actual.” Gold lined the city’s canyons. As Edwin told his fellow actor Barton Hill, “I must play in New York.”60
Did Edwin intend to own Manhattan? “Edwin, as is well known, has always been opposed to any kind of rivalry,” wrote a critic. “He always wants the fat for himself.”61 According to one story, when John came on as a star, Edwin decided to divide the country.62 He would take the North, June the West, and John the South. But if there ever was such a plan, which is doubtful, the arrangement was untenable by 1862. The war forced actors, like other citizens, to make critical choices. Since his family lived in Philadelphia, John came north. “He by no means sought to place himself in opposition to Edwin,” wrote Asia. “He never wanted to try to rival Edwin.” The older brother was “an inspired machine,” John said.63 But it seemed unreasonable for Edwin to monopolize the most lucrative market in the nation when he was off seeking a London reputation.
Edwin’s unhappiness with John crossed the Atlantic, and it frayed the bonds between them. “It was the first wearing away of family af
fection,” lamented Asia.64 Dutifully, John withdrew. Except for two days across the river at Brooklyn’s Academy of Music in 1863 and one benefit evening at the Winter Garden in 1864, John kept away from the Manhattan stages as if they were cursed. Before long Edwin sailed for home to fence his property more properly. Since June had lost Edwin’s savings in a California mining speculation, he had to borrow money for his return trip to the United States—from John.65
the coveted Boston invitation came from Edward F. Keach. A native of Baltimore, the highly capable Keach was an actor-manager like DeBar. Autocratic and high-strung as a boss, he was popular as a player and notable for the thick black sideburns, cascading down to his collar, that he wore in every part from Caesar to Romeo.66 His theater’s odd name—the Boston Museum—came from the fact that the owner, Moses Kimball, a veteran showman, had a collection of a half-million curiosities on the first floor and a wax statuary on the second. These exhibits made the place respectable for those who, for moral reasons, did not wish to be considered theatergoers. If their steps led them to the auditorium on floor three, “they could visit it without a blush,” laughed the actress Kate Ryan.67
Tea with Boston literati before his opening found Booth anxious about the challenges before him, such as adjusting his voice to the acoustics of a new house and performing with a new cast. But at least the Museum was a fine hall with a wonderfully professional company. Booth was most concerned with and perhaps a bit frightened of opening with Richard III in a city whose audiences could be cuttingly critical. “Still, he believed he could bring out whatever power was in him better in Richard and make a better first impression.” The young actor’s modesty in the face of these difficulties created a favorable first impression.68
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 17
