On May 12, 1862, Booth’s Boston debut, thirteen-year-old Frank Stanwood passed under the large white-globed lights that lit Tremont Street and threaded his way up the stairs to a balcony seat. “All the dramatic interest of the city centered at the house on that calm spring evening,” noted the Boston Latin School student, “and the curtain rose upon an audience as large as the house could hold. Every seat was occupied as well as the aisles and every spot from which a glimpse of the stage could be obtained.” Even members of the company who would appear late in the play or in the afterpiece came out to watch from behind the gallery seats. William Warren, the beloved Boston comedian, stood among them. This assembly had great expectations, and tension in the auditorium was so palpable that Stanwood realized “that the hero of the evening must gain either a great triumph or an ignominious defeat.”
When act 1, scene 2 commenced, there was a pause and then Booth entered downstage to the audience’s right. It might be better said that he appeared there, thought Stanwood, for “he possessed an ability to glide on and off the scene with an incomprehensible movement.” The star’s arms were crossed. In them he carried a sword. The front of the house erupted in applause and shouts, which continued for several minutes. Booth acknowledged the ovation with a bow and began: “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” His voice was firm, his tone even, and “it did not take long to convince those before him that he and not they ruled the situation. His rage, sarcasm, and blasphemous defiance seemed to make his fellow artists shrink away from him without the necessity of assuming a horror they did not feel. Richard’s jests [were] more terrible than other men’s imprecations.”69
There had been whispers along the rows as to what Booth would do in the last act. “For once rumor fell short of fact,” recalled the youngster. “The combat was truly terrific.” Bostonians were not given the traditional “one up, two down” duel. Center stage and close to the footlights, Booth fought furiously with William H. Whalley, “a very tough and very big man.” Their combat no sooner began than Whalley broke Booth’s sword close to the handle. Picking up the blade from the stage floor, Booth fought on with it to waves of applause. “The clash of steel was almost continuous. Sparks flew from the blades,” observed the actor William H. Crane. “Most actors who have been through Richard up to that scene are willing to die after a few exchanges. But not so John Wilkes. The audience began to fear that either or both of the contestants might receive injury. Even the boys in the gallery squirmed.”70
“It was decidedly a crescendo performance,” honored by two curtain calls, wrote Stanwood, “and there was in it this much, at least, of the great artist, that he conveyed to his auditors a sense of on-coming doom and a belief there was to be no halting or falling off until ‘the spark of life went out upon the field of Bosworth.’ After witnessing a great number of performances of the tragedy, no occasion can be recalled when it was so effectively given as on that May evening.”
For his two weeks in Boston, concluding May 23, Booth presented a more varied menu than he had in New York. He gave them three Richards, two Romeos, two Charles de Moor (The Robbers), and single nights of Hamlet, Pescara (The Apostate), Claude Melnotte (The Lady of Lyons), and the title character in The Stranger. “Booth won great favor,” recalled Crane, “drawing the largest audience ever assembled within the walls of the Museum.” A critic for the Evening Transcript wrote, “There are strong indications of genius in his acting. He is perhaps the most promising young actor on the American stage.”71 “W.F.P.” in the Clipper agreed, writing, “Young Booth created a very favorable impression during his visit. He is one of the ‘coming men.’ ”72 “X.Y.Z.” declared, “With him the present is full of merit, the future big with promise. He has in no way mistaken his profession.”73
Boston was a theater-savvy city, however, and Booth did not escape the critics unscathed. Most found some flaw in his work, and one of them delivered a real punch to the gut that called into question Booth’s basic understanding of his business. Howard Malcolm Ticknor was a poet whose father ran Ticknor and Fields, the publishers of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Dickens. Well centered in the Boston arts scene, he was an expert on the voice, as he made clear.
“In what does he fail?” Ticknor asked. “Principally in knowledge of himself—of his resources, how to husband and how to use them. He is apparently entirely ignorant of the main principles of elocution. We mean the nature and proper treatment of the voice. He ignores the fundamental principle of all vocal study and exercise—that the chest, and not the throat or mouth, should supply the sound necessary for singing or speaking.” Grunts and groans were no substitute for proper modulation. Furthermore, Booth’s enunciation, ranging from gratingly southern to Cockney, was inelegant, and he had a proclivity to a nasal quality. Ticknor concluded, “These are not trivial faults, and to point them out is not necessarily carping criticism.”74
It is difficult to know what to make of this opinion. A critic like Ticknor might identify an actor’s salient strength or weakness, but surely he would have much company in doing it, especially in so important an area as the voice. Yet few writers made such observations. Most were highly positive about the actor’s vocal assets. “X.Y.Z.” said that Booth “has a voice very much like Edwin’s—the same smooth, silvery tone, with no nasal twang, no mouthing of words, no disposition to rant.” T. Allston Brown of the Clipper asserted that “Booth had a musically full and rich voice of rare compass and modulation.” Indiana congressman Albert G. Porter, a noted student of rhetoric, heard “a clear, ringing voice of good range and compass, of rich and melodious tone, singularly free from rant.” And Isaac G. Reed felt “his voice equaled in its melody that of Forrest,” the highest sort of praise.75
Ticknor’s fellow critic R. M. Field spoke for a wider audience. Writing in the Boston Post, the most popular daily newspaper in New England, Field said that “Booth has laid a firm, substantial, enduring foundation for a brilliant Boston reputation. There are crudities here and there which time alone can soften, and faults of elocution which it is impossible to get the better of in a day. The towering reputation of his father and elder brother is [also] rather a disadvantage. But we see genius blossoming into beautiful flower, surmounting difficulties which only veterans in years gone by could overcome, and we have no stomach whatever for a host of your ifs and buts. We accept John Wilkes Booth most joyfully as a gift which the patrons of the stage cannot prize too highly or encourage too generously.”76
between mid-october 1861 and the end of June 1862 Booth gave 163 performances in eleven cities. This included a Christmas-night play and appearances every Saturday. In need of a break, he returned to the old homestead in Maryland.
Tudor Hall, put up for rent when the family left in 1857, had been occupied only intermittently. The house was drab and musty and the fields untended. Weeds had overtaken the flower beds, and wood had been stolen from the property. “The grounds and whole place wear a look of desolation that would lead you to suppose an army had passed over it,” wrote a visitor. The old cabin where Booth was born was on its way to ruin. A leaking roof dumped water on the second floor, where mildewed books and a damp theatrical wardrobe were left to rot. Ann Hall, the longtime family servant, kept an eye on the premises, but Ann, now widowed, and her children could hardly take proper care of such a large farm, and the place had an unwholesome energy that Adam Badeau sensed on a visit. “I can readily imagine how the brain might become disturbed in the midst of these suggestive garments and weapons and memories,” he wrote.
In this forlorn setting Booth spent much of the summer of 1862. Here he raged. His rehearsals for the fall season had an unsettling level of violence. His ravings and brandishing of weapons frightened Ann. Booth’s family worried about him, too, notably “his talking and muttering to himself.” He displayed a “rattling, nervous, incoherent manner” and a mind that might fly off in any direction. Said Ann’s son Joe: “Mr. John rode wild
and hollered and thought there was people when you couldn’t see nobody.”77
At least “John Stone” was diverting company. That was the name that Herman Stump assumed during his Canadian exile. Injured in a sword fight, the Bel Air lawyer was permitted by federal authorities to return to Maryland in February on promise of good behavior. His homecoming represented no change of opinion, of course. Stump merely joined the anti-Lincoln opposition known as the Copperheads. Oakington, his estate, was a handsome stone manor house with sweeping views of the Chesapeake Bay, and Booth visited regularly. As headstrong younger sons in large families, the men were well matched. They hunted, fished, and caroused together. Politically they were peas in a pod.78
On September 4, 1862, the rebel army crossed into Maryland. Confederate columns marched into Frederick, sixty miles west of Bel Air, and scouting parties ventured even closer to Westminster. The Baltimore area shuddered with excitement and anxiety, while Southerners like Booth were thrilled. Robert Hanna, the Bel Air hotelkeeper, knew Booth was a daredevil, but he could hardly believe what the actor did at the time. He climbed atop a tower of barrels where no sane man would have thought of going. Taking a knife, Booth cut letters out of a large circus poster and arranged his own message: “Jeff is coming!” The gaping citizenry broke out in applause and laughter.79
“This place must be nearer the pure, unadulterated Secession article than can be found in the extreme South,” wrote a New York Tribune correspondent who spoke to Hanna. Jefferson Davis never appeared, as the Confederate army was rebuffed at Antietam on September 17 and withdrew into Virginia.
edwin returned to the united states in August 1862, with Molly and their baby daughter, Edwina. The delicately built wife was pregnant, so the family moved into a large two-story house in the Boston suburb of Dorchester, and Molly went under the care of Dr. Erasmus Miller, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. Dr. Miller could do little for her, however. Over the course of the winter Molly wasted away from an inflammation of the bowels. Acting in New York, Edwin drank to divert himself from worry. “Ned at his old wild ways again,” Asia complained to Jean Anderson. When Molly’s friend Lucy Pry lectured Edwin about his behavior, he laughed in her face and made silly remarks, or so the aptly named Miss Pry informed their circle. “Already half a spirit,” as Julia Ward Howe phrased it, Molly died on February 21, 1863.80
Edwin, who failed to make it to his wife’s deathbed in time, was filled with sorrow and self-loathing. “The shock almost unbalanced his mind,” recalled Badeau. “He was crushed and saw no hope, no reason for living.” John, who was scheduled to commence an engagement at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, worried his brother might commit suicide.81 Postponing his appearance, John hurried north with Asia’s husband, Clarke, to join his mother in Boston and attempt to comfort the widower. At the funeral service held in the chapel of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge he stood beside Edwin as the older brother, his long coat over his arm, slumped against a column. Despite political differences between them, “he was devotedly attached to his brother,” recalled John T. Ford.82
Booth commenced his run at the Arch on March 2. This was the theater where he had begun his professional career six years earlier, but William Wheatley, his first boss, was long gone, and Louisa Lane Drew held the lease. Drew was matriarch of a theatrical dynasty even more extended than the Booths, being the grandmother of film and stage stars Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore. A versatile artist, the Duchess, as she was known to her company, was an excellent manager as well.83 The actress and author Rose Eytinge described Drew’s theatre as “without exception, the best-conducted, cleanest, most orderly and most all-around comfortable theatre that I ever acted in.”84 A consummate professional, Drew expected the best of anyone who stepped on her stage, be they stock or star. Actors knew a storm was brewing when she donned a certain red paisley shawl and began to pace.85
The shawl was out for Booth. He had risen too far too fast, in her opinion. Since the Arch had to cater to a wide variety of taste, from Shakespeare to rustic comedy to spectacle play, she brought him in to sell tickets. Still, “Mrs. Drew did not take very kindly to the idea of his coming to her theatre and appearing in a leading role,” recalled the actor Stuart Robson. For his part, continued Robson, “Booth, like all of us, had the greatest respect and fear of Mrs. Drew,” noted for her slashing sense of humor.
During rehearsal the Duchess decided to rattle Booth by pretending to look to him for advice and suggestions.
“Where do you want me to stand, Mr. Booth?” the veteran actor asked with mock sweetness.
Hesitant to give direction to a grand lady of the theater, the twenty-four-year-old stammered, “Why—er—where—er—ever you have been accustomed to, Mrs. Drew.”
“Mr. Forrest,” she continued, “used to want me to stand here, but not all great actors agree, Mr. Booth.”
“Well, you might—” he stuttered.
“Yes?” the Duchess asked in a tone of false excitement.
“Come here —”
“Yes, yes?” she continued breathlessly.
“A—a—and if you—”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes?”
Booth was enormously embarrassed.86
Clarke had had a recent engagement with Mrs. Drew that lasted sixty consecutive nights. Booth had no illusions of such success. The day before his opening—a dull rainy day that suited his mood—Booth wrote to his friend Simonds that he didn’t expect much success as the city theaters contained empty benches each night.87 The forecast was apt. The winter travel to Boston had given him another cold; his voice had a husky quality that interfered with its clearness and melody. The audience could tell that he struggled to make his points.88
To compound his challenges, Edwin Forrest was playing at the New Chestnut Street Theatre a fifteen-minute walk away. It made little sense for a rising star to compete with a setting one for the drama market, particularly in the latter’s home city. Booth had the utmost regard for Forrest, touted by the Clipper as the greatest living tragedian and successor to the elder Booth, but the aging giant did not return the feeling. He came over to see Booth “try to act” and left disgusted. Some months later, when Forrest’s Iago was ill, Ford suggested that Booth fill in. “Forrest ripped out a frightful oath,” recalled a friend, “and said he would not ‘tread the boards with the G—— d—— spad.’ ”89
Booth won at least one friend in the city, however. Mrs. Drew had told ten-year-old Roland Reed that his Cyrano-like nose would make his fortune. So the boy, later a famous comedian, sat night after night faithfully tending the stage door. One evening as Booth left the theater, he looked closely at the slightly built child, as if noticing him for the first time, “and seeing what a small boy I was for such a position, turned back and shook hands with me.” As Booth walked away, Roley found a dollar in his hand.90
Booth was fond of children, perhaps because he was childlike himself in some ways. In Clarke and Asia’s grand home on Race Street he frolicked with his niece Dolly, age three, and nephew Edwin, age two. “He lays on the floor and rolls over with them like a child,” the sister wrote Jean Anderson. “John laughs outrageously at me for having babies—he can’t realize it, he says—to think that our Asia should be a mother.”91
While Booth’s Confederate sympathies were not displayed at the Arch, it was a different matter around his sister’s house. “He expressed himself bitterly against the North,” Asia wrote. “ ‘So help me holy God!’ he told her, ‘my soul, life, and possessions are for the South.’ ”92 One day Clarke began to lambast the rebels. Booth listened sullenly, frowning and drumming his fingers. But when his brother-in-law added personal insults about Jefferson Davis, Booth erupted. He leapt forward like a maniac onto Clarke, caught him by the throat, and swung him from side to side like a rag doll. Bystanders attempted to intervene but could not pry Booth loose. Slowly the actor recovered his senses, paused, and threw the funny-man back into his seat. As Clarke gasped for breath, B
ooth stood dramatically over him, threatening, “Never, if you value your life, speak in that way of a man and a cause I hold sacred!”93
The star’s Philadelphia appearances generated mixed reviews. “Without having Edwin’s culture and grace, Mr. Booth has far more action, more life, and, we are inclined to think, more natural genius. He is a good actor and may become a great one,” thought the Philadelphia Press. The North American Gazette disagreed, declaring Booth’s engagement an unequivocal failure. The Arch’s expanse of empty red plush-velvet seats proved it.94 Even Mrs. Drew, with her terms of $175 off the top each night before Booth saw his first dollar, struggled to make money.95 And there were times when “Mr. Booth’s abominably bad acting must have [made it] extremely unpleasant for Mrs. Drew” to share the stage with him. “We are positive were his name Smith or Mulligan instead of Booth, he would be booed off the stage.”
Little wonder Booth was ready to move on. When June later acted in Philadelphia, John wrote him, “I don’t know how the Phila. papers will use you, but if they are as kind to you as to me, why god help you say I.”96
the war broke some but made others. Leonard Grover of Springwater, New York, was a college dropout who toured the country in the prewar years producing amateur musical entertainments. He first noticed Booth during the latter’s days at the Marshall and thought him an exceptional actor. Grover operated one of the principal theaters in Washington as rival to John T. Ford, and Booth was now a star. When Booth asked for an engagement, Grover readily agreed. The manager believed in kismet, and this proved it. “What is written is written,” said Grover.97
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 18
