The actor spent one or two nights at Queen’s. He “personified the handsome debonair gentleman, dressed to perfection, and had a charming manner,” said Queen’s youngest son, Billy. His granddaughter Mary, nineteen, thought Booth was the handsomest man she had ever seen.61 Booth spun fiction on his oil investments for the family, informing the impoverished Thompson “that he had made a good deal of money out of those operations.” When the talk turned to the war, Booth was adamant in his hatred of Lincoln. He produced a newspaper clipping containing the lyrics of a Copperhead song contrasting the happy prewar period with the dreary present. “Then and Now” could be sung to the tune of the spiritual “Kingdom Coming.” Booth knew the melody and hummed it for Mary, who picked out the tune on the piano. Their combined talents provided an impromptu entertainment. When Mary, as an octogenarian in the 1920s, recounted the evening for a grandson, her eyes filled with tears at the memory of the ill-fated guest.
The text of the song had appeared during the recent presidential campaign.62 One can see why its identification of Lincoln with a host of wartime controversies so appealed to Booth. The election may have been over, but the issues it raised, such as Booth’s fear of a Lincoln dictatorship, lived on. Two stanzas show the purport of “Then and Now.”
Time was, we had our free discussion
With the press, the tongue, the pen,
Nor had we learned to ape the Russian
With his spies and dungeons, then;
But now, unless one sings the praises
Of the Lincoln-Stanton crew,
Some Bastille yawns as quick as blazes,
And the poor soul’s lost to view!
There’s no more liberty,
Our rights are all a sham,
And this must be the kingdom’s coming
In the days of Abraham!
We love the War, and all are burning
For the cause we hold so dear,
That conscript-wheels are kept a-turning
In the country far and near;
Our taxes and our debt are bigger
Than we are likely soon to pay,
But Ab’rm wants to free the nigger,
And we let him have his way;
Our chance for Liberty
Is hardly worth a d——n,
But there’s a nigger kingdom coming.
And the king is Abraham!
Booth wished to accomplish two important things on his visit. He needed to purchase horses for his men to ride, and he needed to know the roads leading to the Potomac and the landings on the river from which crossings into Virginia might be made. Unfortunately neither Queen nor Thompson could be much help. A native of Georgia, Thompson was relatively new to Charles County, while Queen, at seventy-five, was inactive and in uncertain health.
The problem was taken care of on Sunday, November 13, when Booth accompanied Queen and Thompson to St. Mary’s Church near Bryantown. As was customary, a group of men gathered just in front of the church door to talk before the service. Among them was Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, an intelligent-looking man with a high forehead, thinning hair, blue eyes, and reddish mustache and beard. An 1856 graduate of the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, the thirty-year-old Mudd was a married farmer with four young children. He was described by those who knew him as everything from “a man of most exemplary character, peaceful, upright, kind and obedient to the laws” to “an ill-balanced man of very slight force of character and but little moral courage.” Two Mudd family slaves informed federal authorities that the doctor fed and hid Southern soldiers, delivered contraband mail, secreted weapons, and assisted in attempting to carry both slaves and free persons of color into Confederate lines for enforced service to the rebel army. Although never a soldier, he was resolutely pro-Southern in his views, fueled (just as in the case of Booth) by a hatred of abolitionists. Mudd wrote early in the war to the Catholic intellectual Orestes Brownson, “The North, on account of its pride, shortsightedness, hypocrisy, and mock phylanthropy [sic], has caused the destruction of one of the most glorious nations upon the face of the Earth.”63
Since Mudd was a communicant of St. Peter’s Church near his home in the country, his presence at St. Mary’s that morning seems prearranged. At any rate, Thompson introduced the doctor to Booth, and they spoke.64 Controversy has flourished over the years about the nature of Mudd’s involvement with Booth. Subsequent events make it plain that Mudd was ready to help. It might take time to arrange, but the doctor could also connect Booth to a level of operative beyond that of mere Southern sympathizer. Within the next several weeks Mudd would introduce him to Thomas Harbin and John H. Surratt, two resourceful Confederate agents whose appetite for danger matched his own.
Inside the church the actor sat in the Queen family pew as Father John T. Gaitley of County Galway, Ireland, said the Mass.65 Booth had reason to feel satisfied. He had come into Charles County like an apparition, thought a contemporary, with no companions or acquaintances.66 He could depart in confidence, having crossed a threshold. From this point on his conspiracy assumed momentum.
returning to new york, Booth took part in one of the most celebrated theatrical events of his generation. To mark 1864 as the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth, Edwin, John, and June had agreed to play Julius Caesar as a benefit for a fund to erect a statue of the Bard in Central Park. Originally scheduled for July, their performance “did not take place on account of J. Wilkes’ absence hunting up oil-wells in Pennsylvania,” Edwin wrote a friend.67 Rescheduled for August, it was postponed a second time due to hot weather and the absence of the fashionable crowd who were at the beaches. The play was at last slated for Friday, November 25, at the Winter Garden, a theater where Edwin, Clarke, and William Stuart were co-lessees and -managers.68 Although relations with Edwin continued strained, John had promised to do the benefit and kept his word.
Great interest attended the announcement of this performance. For one thing, Julius Caesar was seldom presented in New York. Critics believed it was more effective to read than to produce onstage and accordingly ranked it below Hamlet or Othello as an acting play.69 Julius Caesar also lacked strongly interesting female parts. But it was wonderfully written and had powerful male roles if actors of quality could be found to fill them. The fact that three brothers, sons of a famous father and fine actors in their own right, would take the leads seemed inspired, as did the fact that this would be the first—and only—time they performed together.
Stuart beat the drum: “Junius Brutus—Edwin—John Wilkes—have come forward with cheerful alacrity to do honor to the immortal bard, from whose works the genius of their father caught its inspiration, and of many of those greatest creations he was the best and noblest illustration the stage has ever seen.”70 “What a cast!” declared Henry Clapp, dramatic critic of the New York Leader, “the three best tragedians in the land, and brothers at that, and sons by psychological as well as genealogical descent, all brought together on one stage and in one play! What wonder the town is excited.”71 Ticket prices reflected it. A seat in the family circle went from twenty-five cents to one dollar, in the dress-circle and parquet from fifty cents to a dollar and a half, and in the orchestra from one to five dollars. Aware these were stiff prices, Stuart begged potential playgoers to remember “that in addition to the value they receive in intellectual enjoyment, they are contributing to a great national work and not to the personal advantage of any individual.”
Stuart, known for a quick tongue that earned him the hatred of Edwin Forrest, was a large and enterprising Irishman with a genius for promotion. He entered theatrical management in 1856 and soon joined Edwin and Clarke at the Winter Garden.72 Stuart ran the theater in a manner that reflected his own hospitable nature, “taking rehearsals the easiest probably of any manager that ever lived,” thought the gossip Harry Hill, while committing the sacrilege of allowing individuals unconnected with the theater to lounge in the greenroom during performances. At Stuart’s Winter Garden “there was no s
tage discipline whatever.”73
John disliked Stuart, and the manager returned the feeling. In fact, Stuart held all actors in contempt, thought Edwin’s friend William Winter. John’s problem, Stuart believed, was that his “early education had been entirely neglected, and he really had no conception of character, but sailed in for strong points.” Edwin was the rising star, and Stuart had signed on for the ascent. “Edwin was head and shoulders, as an actor, above the other two,” said the manager.74
Stuart found John and June fencing when he came around to hand out parts. Edwin, the brothers could see, would play Brutus, the central character in the play, with June as Cassius and John as Mark Antony. “Give me the part,” snapped John, snatching the script from Stuart. Suspicious how his role might be cut, he studied the text for a full ten minutes. “I will play that fellow,” he said finally. The manager thought that John and June were unwarrantably jealous of their brother. The pair knew, however, that Stuart was Edwin’s man. Edwin was scheduled to commence an engagement of Hamlet the evening following the benefit. When Stuart informed him the advertisements would read simply “Booth as Hamlet!” Edwin protested that there were three Booths. The manager replied that there would be only one in the public mind when Hamlet closed.75
The house doors opened that evening at 7:15 p.m. “So great was the crowd,” wrote the critic T. Allston Brown, caught up in the throng, “that a strong force of police had to be sent for to preserve order and force every one back into a line.”76 The theater filled quickly, including five extra rows of orchestra seats run back into the parquet. Well before the eight o’clock curtain, “there was not a seat to be had in the house for love or money.” Well, maybe for money. Ten to twenty dollars was being offered for any seat, one hundred for a box.77 “The theatre was crowded to suffocation, people standing in every available space,” recalled Asia, who herself was relegated to standing room.78 Great excitement prevailed. “It was a very large, cultivated, and critical audience,” wrote one playgoer, the dress circle filled “with proper people and handsome women, the parquette and orchestra stalls with Boothites, Shakspere [sic] men, artists, authors, actors, the men of taste of the city generally, and bohemians, of course, without number.”79 Brown, savvy veteran of the theatrical world, recalled, “When the curtain rose, there was an audience of over two thousand persons present, composed of the elite of the city, and one of the most intelligent I have ever seen in any theatre.”
Owen Fawcett, who took the role of Second Plebeian, wrote that no actor of note wished to be discovered onstage as the curtain rose. He preferred an entrance in order to secure a reception from the audience.80 Julius Caesar provided the brothers with a fine opportunity along that line. In act 1 Cassius, Brutus, and Antony came on side by side in a dramatic joint entrance. A torrent of applause greeted the trio. Asia stated, “The eldest [was] powerfully built and handsome as an antique Roman; Edwin, with his magnetic fire and graceful dignity; and John Wilkes, in the perfection of youthful beauty.” John had shaved off his mustache for the performance. “Our Wilkes looks like a young god,” Asia overheard someone say. The brothers paused and bowed to Mary Ann, who sat in a private box. It was a proud moment for their mother, one of the grandest in her difficult life.81
The performance, interrupted frequently by applause and curtain calls, proceeded smoothly until the second scene of act 2. Edwin Varrey’s Caesar was delivering the lines “Cowards die many times before their death/The valiant never taste of death but once” when a commotion was heard at the rear of the theater.82 The immense audience stirred.
Incredibly, a Confederate agent from Canada was attempting to set the adjoining Lafarge House on fire. It was part of a plot to destroy the principal hotels of the city and bring to New York a share of the wartime terror that Southern towns were feeling. John T. Ashbrook, a rebel lieutenant from Kentucky, set a fire in his third-story room just over the entrance of the theater.83 Ashbrook fled, and hotel employees extinguished the flames. Nevertheless, with their bells ringing, fire engines arrived as summoned, their lanterns gleaming up and down Broadway. Firemen burst into the Lafarge House, dragging their pipes and hose and shouting orders. “Several of them with hose in hand came rushing pell-mell into the vestibule of the theatre,” recalled Brown. The smell of smoke penetrated the Winter Garden.
“Fire! Fire!” shouted someone in the rear of the theater. “The great audience rose to its feet as one man,” Charles Walcot, the play’s Octavius, remembered. They did not know that the danger was over, but they were well aware that the Winter Garden was too crowded to permit a rapid exit. “The wildest confusion, amounting to a panic, pervaded the vast audience,” wrote Frank Kernan, a fireman on the scene.84
Varrey stepped forward and urged the audience to remain calm, shouting what could only have been his hope that all was perfectly safe. Edwin hurried onstage to repeat the assurance. From the orchestra seats Police Inspector James Leonard attempted to pacify the crowd, while Judge John H. McCunn sought to quell the dress circle.
Heedless, hundreds rushed for the doors. Shouts and screams ripped the air. The crowd pushed the critic Brown, standing near the parquet exit, into the lobby, then hurried him forward, then knocked him flat. There he “saw several magnificent dresses completely stripped from ladies, also bonnets and fur lying underfoot. For several minutes the scene beggared description,” he wrote. The danger now was that “hundreds of others would have followed to choke the passage-ways and crush each other to death.”
Behind the stage the scenic artists were at work. “With a huge brush and lightning strokes [they were] painting on a piece of canvas ten feet high, in letters that could have been read for a mile, ‘THERE IS NO FIRE. IT HAS ALREADY BEEN EXTINGUISHED.’ ” The sign, its letters wet and glistening before the footlights, reassured many in the audience. Meanwhile Inspector Leonard and a squad of police took charge of the exits and enforced order. Leonard, a heroic former “fire-laddie” himself, yelled at the top of his voice that there was no fire. “IT IS ONLY A DRUNKEN MAN!” he roared. “KEEP YOUR SEATS!” Leonard’s words “produced the effect of a cup of ice water poured into a boiling cauldron.” The cry was repeated through the house, and the panic began to subside, the audience slowly composing itself and drifting back to its seats. In thirty minutes the entire excitement passed, and the performance was able to resume.
John’s most celebrated scene followed in act 3. He delivered Mark Antony’s funeral oration. Journalists alleged immediately after the assassination that he interpolated into the play the expression “Sic semper tyrannis,” the motto of Virginia, which he would later make memorable.85
“I heard the words plainly,” said the economist Alexander Del Mar. He turned to Judge McCunn, who sat on his right, and asked if the lines were in Shakespeare. The judge whispered that it was an acceptable emendation of the text.86
Varrey later recalled an amusing story of the Forum scene. As John commenced his oration over Varrey’s prostrate body, he came down to the bier and suddenly stuck his fingers into Varrey’s ribs.87
“Don’t!” Varrey gasped under his breath. Varrey, playing Caesar for the first time, was understandably nervous, and John decided to have some fun with him. Playfully and out of sight of the audience, John tickled him. As discreetly as possible Varrey hitched up his knees for protection and whispered, “If you don’t stop, I’ll have to get up and walk off stage.” Varrey recounted this episode in an interview in 1900, adding, “That would have been a funny sight—to see a dead man walk away from his own funeral.” The joke enjoyed, John stopped.
At the play’s end “the three brothers stood side by side, again and again, before the curtain, to receive the lavish applause of the audience mingled with waving of handkerchiefs and every mark of enthusiasm,” wrote their adoring sister. Walcot believed John “carried off the honors of the occasion,” and even Stuart acknowledged that he garnered the largest share of applause. Critics spread their praise equitably. The Times reported that John poss
essed “an elan and fire which at times fairly electrifies the audience and whirls them along with him.” The Tribune lauded Edwin, while Brown in the Clipper raved for June.
An unfortunate misunderstanding marred the conclusion of the evening. Stuart arranged a postplay reception in “the Barracks,” his parlor over the stage, a celebrated scene of many good times—but neglected to invite June and John. The former had already left the Winter Garden to escort Mary Ann home. Edwin, learning of the oversight, sent Jim Brown, his black valet and dresser, to find John and request that he join the party. Chagrined at what he considered to be an intentional slight, John left the theater.88
The unpleasantness continued at breakfast the following morning. The topic of the arson plot came up, and John “justified the deed as an act of war in retaliation for Union atrocities in the Shenandoah Valley.” Edwin and June disagreed, and a heated argument ensued. John grew infuriated with the pair and expressed anew his fear of a Lincoln dictatorship.89
The brothers patched it up sufficiently by Sunday, November 27, to go together with the artist Rufus Wright to be photographed in their Julius Caesar costumes. June had commissioned Wright, who painted portraits of Stanton and Seward, “to paint a picture of the three as they appeared in this play.”90 They were posed in the scene from act 3 in which Antony offers his hand to the scowling Cassius while Brutus, expostulating with his fellow assassin, lays his hand on Cassius’s shoulder.91
Two photographs were taken at Jeremiah Gurney’s gallery on Broadway, the only known pictures showing the brothers together. The sons secured Wright’s promise to guard the negatives, authorizing only a single print from each for his use. The painting was intended as a gift for their mother. Wright did not complete the commission but later would present the photograph to Mary Ann as a memento.
Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 26
