Fates and Traitors

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Suddenly six young cavaliers burst onto the stage—and Asia seized her mother’s hand as she spotted Wilkes among them. She recognized elements of his grand costume from their father’s magnificent wardrobe—the fine silk hose and velvet shoes, the snug black tunic he had worn as Hamlet.

  “There never was a tale more full of horror,” one of the cavaliers declared ominously. “There never was a deed more black and damning!”

  Then Wilkes stepped forward. “Aye, a dark and bloody deed,” he intoned, “perpetrated by some malicious demon, who revels in blood and crime!”

  Unaware that she had been holding her breath, Asia exhaled softly and settled back into her seat. Her brother had delivered his first line well, with strength and clarity. Though he had always found learning a part an arduous labor, once he memorized something, he knew it forever—and to her enormous relief, he apparently knew this one.

  Finally able to relax, Asia lost herself in the story as it unfolded amid the vibrant spectacle of Carnival. Strolling among the revelers was the duchess of Ferrara, the beautiful, powerful, and ruthless Lucretia Borgia. Clad in a low-cut gown lavishly embellished with jewels, her identity concealed behind a mask, she had come to Venice seeking her long-lost son, Gennaro, whom she had sent away as an infant twenty years before to protect him from her enemies. Wilkes portrayed Ascanio Petrucca, Gennaro’s best friend and comrade in arms.

  At a fatal moment, in her distraction and anguish, Lucretia allowed her mask to slip—and the cavaliers immediately recognized her. A thrill of shock and apprehension ran through the audience as the angry young soldiers surrounded her, swords drawn. She fell to her knees, weeping, tearing her hair, and begging for mercy.

  “Madam,” the first cavalier snarled, leaning toward her, “I am Maffio Orsini, brother to the duke of Gravinia, whom you caused to be stabbed in his dungeon!”

  “Madam,” a second declared, drawing closer, “I am Jeppo Liveretto, brother of Liveretto Vittelli, whom your ruffians strangled while he slept!”

  Then Ascanio Petrucca stepped forward. “Madam, I—” Wilkes’s voice shook. “I am Pondolfo Pet— Pedolfio Pat— Pantuchio Ped— Dammit, what am I?”

  The audience burst into laughter—except for the Booth ladies, who gasped in dismay.

  The actress playing Lucretia knelt in supplication before the vengeful cavaliers, her climactic moment spoiled. The players carried on as if unaware of the roar of laughter washing over them—all the actors, save one. Wilkes turned to face the audience, grinned ruefully in acknowledgment of his mistake and their merriment, and joined in the laughter.

  “No, John,” Asia heard her mother murmur. “Carry on, carry on.”

  He could not have heard her, but he promptly fell back into character and joined the other actors as they struggled to restore the play to its proper course. But the suspenseful mood had been shattered. Through once-riveting scenes that now seemed ridiculous, the play limped toward its tragic climax and the mercifully swift drop of the curtain.

  While tepid applause and laughter and impolite imitations of Wilkes’s stammer rang out all around them, Asia clapped with such fierce determination that her palms smarted. The rest of the audience rose and made to depart, but Asia, her mother, and Rosalie remained in their seats as if they had every reason to expect a curtain call.

  But of course none was forthcoming. “Poor John,” said Mother, rising from her seat.

  “If not for that one mistake,” said Asia spiritedly, “it would have been an excellent performance.”

  Rosalie too stood. “I wonder what Edwin will say.”

  Asia felt a catch in her throat imagining Edwin’s reaction to news of his brother’s disastrous performance. Oh, poor John indeed. The gleeful viciousness of the newspaper reviews would seem a gentle rebuke compared to Edwin’s wrath.

  Clarke kindly said nothing of Wilkes’s appalling blunder when he arrived to escort the Booth ladies to their hotel, but his expression of consternation spoke volumes. “John Wilkes looked well on the stage,” he told Asia as they parted company. “He showed moments of true talent, and he’ll improve with experience. Every player has a performance like this in his past. Before you know it, this night will be no more than a memory, a comic story he’ll bring out every once in a while to amuse friends and to encourage the new supes.”

  Tears of gratitude sprang to Asia’s eyes as she thanked him.

  Later, when Wilkes finally joined them at the hotel for a late supper, his manner was chagrined, yet astonishingly sanguine. “Tomorrow night when I play Dawson in The Gamester, all will be forgiven,” he said. “It’s a choice part, one of the villains. I’ve no doubt I’ll win over the audience with my splendid costume.”

  “Perhaps you should endeavor to win them over with your splendid performance,” said Asia, but Wilkes merely laughed and told her not to worry.

  But the following evening, the moment Dawson appeared upon the stage, the audience erupted in hoots of laughter, hisses, and mock applause. As the derisive whistles and taunts drowned out the dialogue, Asia watched with rising alarm as her brother stood rooted in place, dumbstruck and dismayed. As the uproar swelled, Wilkes came to his senses and hurried offstage. Only then did the audience settle down and allow the play to continue.

  And continue it did—without Dawson, the villain who was supposed to lead the title character into ruin. Wilkes never again emerged from backstage—whether by his own volition or at the manager’s command, Asia could only guess—obliging the other actors to improvise around his absence.

  Afterward, when Wilkes met his mother and sisters at the hotel, he was subdued, embarrassed, and sparking with anger. The company had pulled him from the play, he complained. If it had been up to him, he would have persisted, and eventually the audience would have allowed him to perform. Compounding his humiliation, he had been so certain of his triumph that he had invited a particularly charming young lady to the performance. “Though after tonight,” he grumbled, “I don’t expect she’ll allow me to call on her again.”

  Asia thought he should be more concerned with his career than his prospects with the young lady, but she said nothing rather than contribute to his misery.

  The following morning, the Booth ladies returned to Baltimore on the first train, leaving Wilkes to carry on, somehow, for the rest of the season. To Asia’s relief, Clarke’s reports confirmed Wilkes’s cheerful claims in letters home that although his pride suffered and his fellow players were greatly annoyed with him, the manager continued to cast him in small but necessary roles, and the disasters of February were not repeated.

  Mother was not reassured. “I think he wishes he had chosen another profession,” she confided to her daughters in early April, “but he won’t acknowledge it.”

  As for Edwin, whatever admonishments or encouragement he might have sent to Wilkes through the post, neither brother ever told.

  As the theatre season drew to a close, Wilkes announced that he was leaving the Arch Street Theatre Company. Clarke tried to talk him out of it, but after the final performance in June, Wilkes packed his trunks and returned to Baltimore. “Next season I’ll seek my fortune in the South, in Richmond or here in Baltimore,” he told Asia, smiling, brimming with confidence.

  She remembered then that once he had confided to her his wish to become a Southern actor, beloved of the Southern people whom he so admired, yet some undercurrent of restless dissatisfaction in his manner compelled her to take Clarke aside the next time he called and ply him with questions.

  “I can’t speak ill of your brother,” said Clarke, “not to you.”

  “If we are to remain friends,” she said, resting her hand on his forearm, “and I do hope we are friends, you must always speak the truth to me, whether it be good or ill.”

  Reluctantly, Clarke admitted that the Arch Street Theatre Company had accepted Wilkes’s resignation with relief and great sat
isfaction. “The players expected a son of Junius Brutus Booth to take the profession more seriously,” he said. “John Wilkes often seemed lazy, disrespectful, unwilling to put in the work required. He was careless rather than earnest, with none of the humility a director expects from his supes. Some of the players—not I—say he has an overblown sense of his own talent and feels entitled to plum roles he hasn’t really earned. He resists criticism and carries himself as if confident that his good looks and last name are enough to guarantee success, with no real effort required on his part.”

  Heartsick, Asia inhaled deeply to steady herself. “Thank you for telling me this, however much it pains us both. Wilkes never would have said a word.”

  “I wish I had happier news to share.” Clarke hesitated. “There is one thing more, but it’s sordid, and maybe I shouldn’t—”

  “Tell me. I need to know everything.”

  “There was some talk that he had another reason to leave Philadelphia in haste. A girl living at his boardinghouse revealed that she . . . that she is in a delicate condition. Rumor has it that Wilkes is responsible, and that he was obliged to pay a considerable sum of money to the family to compensate her for her shame and ruin.”

  “Oh my.” Asia pressed a hand to her heart, lightheaded with dismay. Wilkes had always admired the ladies and enjoyed their admiration in turn, but this . . . Oh, would that he had been more careful, more discreet. “Tell me, does the offended party know my brother as J. B. Wilkes, or as the son of Junius Brutus Booth?”

  Immediately her cheeks burned with shame that her first question had been about the status of the Booth family name rather than the health of the mother and child, but to her relief, she saw no rebuke in Clarke’s eyes, only sympathy. “I don’t think anyone was ever deceived by your brother’s alias,” he said.

  She nodded. If the sordid tale was true, the money for the ruined girl must have come from Edwin. Wilkes did not have it, and he would never diminish himself in their mother’s eyes by appealing to her in such circumstances.

  “Asia—” Suddenly Clarke took her other hand. “Forgive me. I would not have hurt you for the world.”

  “You would have hurt me far more had you concealed the truth from me,” she assured him frankly. “If there is ever anything about my brother I ought to know, you must promise to tell me, however delicate the subject may be.”

  As he vowed to do so, she thought that she would seem ungrateful if she snatched her hand away, so she let him hold it awhile longer.

  • • •

  Wilkes spent most of the summer of 1858 playing billiards in pool halls in downtown Baltimore, wielding the cue with such natural grace and athleticism that he soon earned a reputation as a master. He won nearly every game, earning enough so that he did not have to go hat in hand to Edwin, begging for loans to cover his expenses—fine clothes, meals at taverns with friends, brandy, cigars. Mother confessed to her daughters that she was torn between pride and chagrin, impressed by his skill, glad for his small measure of financial independence, but dismayed that he had not found a more prestigious outlet for his talents.

  Late August found Wilkes in Richmond, Virginia, where Edwin had secured him a position with the Dramatic Star Company, the resident troupe of the renowned Marshall Theatre. As a supernumerary he stood to take in $440 for the season, substantially more than he had earned in Philadelphia, but still less than what Edwin earned in a single week. As the season opened, Wilkes was cast in minor speaking roles in the first two productions—a test of his abilities, he surmised, and after the mishaps in Philadelphia he could hardly blame the managers for insisting upon that.

  In his letters home, he confided to Asia that despite a few early stumbles, the theatergoers of Richmond had embraced him warmly. “They love me for our father’s sake,” he wrote. “My physical resemblance to our beloved Parent fills them with affection and nostalgia. No one is fooled by the billing ‘J. B. Wilkes’ on posters and programs. I heard my name—Booth—called out, one or two nights, and my likeness to Father was mentioned in the papers.”

  Wilkes was pleasantly surprised to discover that the citizens of Richmond were equally hospitable and congenial outside the theatre. “Whereas the people of the North place actors outside of society and shun their company,” he marveled, “Southerners take us into affable friendship.” He was welcome everywhere, he wrote proudly, and was often invited to dine with gentlemen and to call on admiring ladies.

  Asia was happy that he had found friends, and she was very relieved indeed that experience and hard work had at last brought to fruition the talent he had shown as a schoolboy, but she was dismayed by how readily he had adopted the manners and prejudices of the South. In startling contradiction of their father’s egalitarian and abolitionist beliefs, Wilkes often noted approvingly Richmond’s strictly regimented distinctions between the white race and the colored. “Here in Richmond, I see every day proof that slavery affords the greatest happiness of master & man,” he wrote on one occasion. “The North, and even Maryland, has much to learn from this City but of course they are too proud to study.”

  Wilkes’s ebullience diminished somewhat in September, when Edwin swept into Richmond for a month-long engagement at the Marshall, a greatly revered star to his younger brother’s lowly supernumerary. Edwin stayed in the city’s finest hotel, employed a valet to tend to his costumes and serve his meals, and was given the theatre’s best private dressing room. As the visiting featured actor, Edwin selected the plays that would be performed, assigned the parts, and arranged the grueling rehearsal schedule, with the company eagerly leaping to obey his every command.

  One glorious performance followed another. Even Wilkes grudgingly acknowledged that the supporting actors marveled at Edwin’s brilliance and pushed themselves to equal his passion and subtlety. As enthralled audiences filled the theatre again and again, the managers reveled in astonishing profits and the critics fairly swooned with admiration. “Edwin Booth’s engagement is one of the most successful we have ever known here,” the Daily Richmond Examiner glowed. “The audiences are large and highly intelligent—the plays performed there are of the most elevated character—and the best order is maintained throughout the house. Mr. Booth’s playing commands the highest mark of admiration: silence. His exhibition of that terrible passion—Remorse—so difficult to counterfeit—produced almost breathless silence: a silence which was not broken at the close of the scene.”

  After Edwin moved on to Boston in mid-October, Wilkes’s letters took on a decidedly disgruntled tone. It vexed him to struggle incessantly in Edwin’s shadow, which fell over him no matter how many miles separated them. It was profoundly unfair that he had no teacher to help him learn his craft as Father had instructed Edwin throughout their many years as traveling companions, or a mentor to guide him and cast him in strong roles as June had done for Edwin in San Francisco. Always, always, everything was done for Edwin and denied Wilkes. “I am anxious to get on faster,” Wilkes complained in a letter home to his mother, who promptly beseeched Edwin to be more helpful to him.

  Asia was not sure if Edwin complied, but time and again, Clarke endeavored to help Wilkes advance in his profession. Asia had not forgotten how he endeared himself to her with his frank, forthright confidences regarding Wilkes’s departure from the Arch Street Theatre, and so when Edwin urged her to consider Clarke an acceptable suitor, she found her longstanding resistance wavering. She had known Clarke since childhood, and as Edwin and her mother often reminded her, he had become successful and wealthy. Asia had no independent fortune of her own, whereas sober, steadfast Clarke would be a good provider. And so the next time Edwin happened to mention his friend in conversation, Asia acknowledged that she had become quite fond of him. Within a week Clarke asked for her hand in marriage, and after weighing his proposal overnight, she consented.

  Mother rejoiced, Edwin fairly burst with happiness, and June telegraphed his congratulat
ions from California. Joseph, melancholic and pensive at eighteen, smiled fondly and wished her well, and Rosalie confessed that she would miss her desperately but understood that women had to marry if they could.

  Only Wilkes condemned the match, protesting in sharply worded, hastily scrawled letters from Richmond that Asia should not, must not allow Edwin to dispose of her as he pleased. “You must not bestow your Person upon someone who has not won your heart,” he declared. “This is no marriage of true minds. He is not equal to your intelligence, your brilliance, your wit. And what’s more you do not love him. This is plain to me and surely also to him.”

  Wilkes was not entirely mistaken. She did not love Clarke. She liked him well enough, but she knew she felt for him only a small fraction of the affection her mother had felt for her father and none of the passion. But hardship and heartbreak had taught Asia never to mistake passion for happiness. For most of her life, her fate had depended upon the fortunes of a mad genius—brilliant, impetuous, and utterly unreliable. She had adored her father, but the fact that Clarke was nothing like him added to his appeal. If she were to be perfectly honest, she had accepted his proposal to please Edwin and to assure her future security. With no other suitor contending for her hand, was that not reason enough?

  Wilkes adamantly insisted that it was not, and he implored her to reconsider even up to the very day of her wedding. Despite his profound disappointment, on April 28, 1859, he nonetheless traveled from Richmond to witness the ceremony at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore. After she and Clarke spoke their vows and exchanged rings and sealed their bond with a kiss, an enormous wave of relief swept over her, for the deed was done and could not be undone, and surely Wilkes would make his peace with her decision and belatedly give her his blessing.