American Brutus

by Michael W. Kauffman

  He was also eccentric. Critics called him “the mad tragedian” and delighted in telling stories of his eccentric behavior. Sometimes he would fail to appear for a performance and would be found hours later roaming the woods in costume, and not the least bit inclined to account for himself. Other times he would snap out of a part momentarily just to return a taunt from the audience. It was great fun to guess what he might do next, and the prospect of a “mad freak” was undoubtedly a major draw. A few people thought that perhaps his peculiarities resulted from his use of cigars, but then again, he was also fond of liquor.10

  Was he faking it? Like the young Prince Hamlet, he leaves us to wonder. One hometown critic was sure he had figured Booth out, and he was not amused:

  Is this man a maniac? or is he not more a fool than a madman? On Monday he was announced to appear at the Holliday street [Theatre] as Pescara; but when the hour of performance arrived, the little eccentric was returned non est. “Booth is a genius,” is the cry, and he has heard it reiterated so often that he imagines his vagaries will be overlooked; [but] the trick has become stale; the “gaggery” won’t do; this affectation of madness may be a “good point” sometimes, but to make a business of it is disgusting.11

  If indeed it was an affectation, Junius Booth carried it to the extreme. Mary Ann once discovered him in the act of hanging himself, and cut him down just in time. Realizing what he had done, he burst into tears and exclaimed, “My God! My God! what could have come over me?” Whatever it was, it was compounded by physical illness and the rigors of life on the road.12

  Booth abhorred killing, and counseled his children to avoid it. In his household, even the insects were spared. “You should never kill a fly,” he told his children; “they are scavengers, and cleanse the air of many impurities which no doubt is the cause of sickness. There is some medicinal quality in flies, or animals would not eat them; also in spiders, for birds, particularly caged birds, seek to get them.” His physician, Dr. James Rush, noted that even his own family found his views obnoxious. “This fellow I say in his mad humanity, will not eat meat forsooth because it encourages acts of su fering to animals,” he wrote incredulously.13

  This “mad humanity” extended throughout the human race. He regarded all people as equals, and would share his meals and his quarters with anyone in need. He even risked the life of his daughter Asia to grant the dying wish of a local slave girl who had asked to see her one last time. And this at a time when any deference at all to a slave was considered evidence of insanity.14

  His philosophical outlook was a family legacy. Booth’s forebears had always been radicals, and for that, some had been exiled from Portugal generations before. But even in London they had lived as outcasts. They claimed a family connection to John Wilkes, “the agitator,” whose story is one of unflinching hostility to the power of government. In the 1770s John Wilkes waged a fearless war against George III. He was expelled from Parliament three times, outlawed once, imprisoned twice, and exiled to Paris for more than three years. When the House of Commons rebuffed his return to politics, supporters made “Wilkes and Liberty!” their rallying cry. They elected him Lord Mayor of London, and he used his office as a platform to support American independence. Prime Minister William Gladstone would later say that the name of John Wilkes “must be enrolled among the greatest champions of English freedom.” 15

  By Junius Booth’s time, that outlook translated to a form of populism. Once in America, he became a friend of Sam Houston’s and Andrew Jackson’s, and he occasionally visited “Old Hickory” at his home in Nashville. When critics began to see the once-popular Democrat as an autocrat— “King Andrew,” they called him—Booth joined his opposition. In a private letter to the president, he wrote:

  Brown’s Hotel, Philadelphia

  July 4th, 1835

  You damn’d old Scoundrel if you don’t sign the pardon of your fellow men now under sentence of Death De Ruiz & De Soto, I will cut your throat whilst you are sleeping. I wrote to you repeated Cautions so look out or damn you I’ll have you burnt at the Stake in the City of Washington.

  Your Master

  Junius Brutus Booth

  You know me! Look out!16

  Though Jackson undoubtedly took the letter as a joke, he did commute the death sentences of Francisco DeRuiz and Bernardo DeSoto in a famous case of piracy. For what it is worth, all five defendants not mentioned in Booth’s letter were hanged.

  Junius’s father, Richard, was deeply committed to the fight against tyranny, but was held in check by family obligations. Still, there was no mistaking his commitment. He even named his sons in the republican tradition. Junius Brutus Booth was named for “Junius,” a writer of political tracts who inspired generations of anti-monarchists, and for the Brutuses, who established, and later tried to save, the Roman republic. Algernon Sydney Booth was named for a man who died for conspiring to kill Charles II. In his declining years in America, when Richard was asked to name a grandson, he drew once more from political history. He named the child John Wilkes Booth.17

  Life on The Farm was often difficult, especially when Junius was away on tour. So the Booths rented a house in the Old Town section of Baltimore, where they spent the cooler months of every year. For John Wilkes, urban life offered excitement and an education in itself. The city was then at the peak of its industrial might. The telegraph was revolutionizing the American way of life, and railroads had just brought half the continent suddenly within reach. The new, locally produced “family flour” was much in demand throughout the world, and it helped make this metropolis a hub of international trade. The 1840s were a prosperous time, and for a young boy growing up here, it must have seemed that Baltimore was the most important place on earth.18

  In 1845, when John Wilkes was seven, Junius bought a house on Exeter Street, near Fayette Street. By all accounts, the neighborhood was heterogeneous but close-knit. Children added vitality to the place, and John Wilkes had plenty of friends his age. He was especially close to Billy and Mike O’Laughlen, who lived on High Street. They were the best of friends, and even when the Booths were out at The Farm, the O’Laughlens stayed in touch by mail or visits. 19

  Against their father’s wishes, the Booth boys dreamed of a career on the stage, and insisted on making Junius’s world a part of their own. They engaged in amateur theatricals with their friends, and charged an admission price of one cent. Patrons were usually other children, but they were invited to bring their parents, who were charged twice as much. Stage properties and costumes were “borrowed” from neighboring families, and local parents furnished animals—sometimes unknowingly—for the occasional equestrian scene.

  Edwin and John Wilkes Booth ran the show, but local boys John Sleeper and Henry Stuart were fixtures in the company as well. Edwin preferred the comical parts, and could play the banjo. Sleeper would play the villain, lurking and leering and gliding about in a long black cloak and top hat. Theirs was a traveling company of sorts, and they had to make do wherever they could. They might play at the boardinghouse of Theodore Hamilton’s mother, or in a stable on South Street, or the cellar of a house on Lovely Lane. Their enthusiasm for show business was already evident, and each of them would grow up to be a famous actor.20

  Junius Jr. was the first to take up the call. After traveling as his father’s dresser, “June” took an apprenticeship in Boston and became involved with a woman in the stock company. Though Clementina DeBar was thirteen years older than he, she followed him to New York, and they were married there. The elder Booth’s first grandchild, Blanche, was born in April 1844.21

  Junius and Mary Ann valued education, and for several years they sent John Wilkes and his younger brother, Joseph, to the Bel Air Academy. Eventually John Wilkes moved on to the new Milton Academy, a college preparatory school north of Baltimore. The school’s Quaker headmaster, John Emerson Lamb, taught the classics in a pastoral setting. Most students boarded there, and were expected to exhibit “a pleasant and obliging dispos
ition” at all times. The schedule was demanding and required an almost constant attention to academic pursuits.22

  Milton Academy students were expected to read and recite from the works of Herodotus, Cicero, Tacitus, Horace, and Livy. Though not specifically mentioned in their literature, one other writer must have figured largely in the curriculum as well: John Milton, the poet. Milton was an ardent opponent of tyranny, and wrote “A Defence of the People of England” when his countrymen were criticized for executing their king. He argued that tyrannical rulers might justly be put to death, and cited Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Bucer, and Pareus, among others who shared that view. It would be surprising, indeed, if Headmaster Lamb had left him out of the program.23

  John Wilkes approached his studies enthusiastically. As his sister Asia recalled, “He possessed a tenacious rather than an intuitive intelligence like his brothers. He had great power of concentration, and he never let go a subject once broached until he had mastered it or proved its barrenness.” He took great pleasure in testing the powers of his mind. At an early age, he memorized Byron’s Giaour, an epic poem that filled his head with stories of the classic hero: an alienated man, inheriting his love of freedom, and fighting against all odds to save his homeland from tyranny and oppression. Asia claimed that years later her brother could still recite all thirteen hundred lines from memory. One suspects its political lessons persisted as well.24

  Milton Academy was an island of serenity in a turbulent world. The volcanic issue of slavery had the rest of the nation embroiled in debate. As Webster, Clay, and Calhoun reached the peak of their oratorical powers, a new voice was heard among them—a weak and raspy voice, to be sure, but one whose message would change the direction of American politics. It was the voice of William H. Seward, freshman Whig senator from New York. In March 1850, Seward came out against compromise in any form as “radically wrong and essentially vicious.” Slavery, he said, was doomed. Though the Constitution was devoted “to union, to justice, to defence, to welfare, and to liberty,” there was “a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes.”

  A higher law. To many, the concept seemed to justify an open defiance of the new Fugitive Slave Law, which required the help of all citizens in returning escaped slaves to their masters. Though Seward did not mean to stoke the flames of abolition, his words emboldened anti-slavery partisans who put conscience above the law. As they saw it, they were casting off an evil system in obedience to the service of a moral ideal.25

  The law met its first major test when John Wilkes Booth was still at Milton Academy. In September 1851, a Maryland farmer named Edward Gorsuch applied for federal help in arresting some slaves who had fled to the village of Christiana, Pennsylvania. Gorsuch believed they had stolen some of his grain, and with a U.S. marshal and others, he set out to bring them back to Maryland. Warned of their approach, abolitionists and former slaves met them with armed resistance. Gorsuch was killed, his son was wounded, and the others were sent fleeing for their lives.

  The so-called Christiana Riot divided the nation along sectional lines. From the South came demands for the swift and severe punishment of those responsible. From the North came applause for the attack, and outrage that federal laws favored slave catchers and kidnappers of free blacks. The New York Times voiced a common opinion. “Our chief regret in this matter,” said one editorial, “grows out of the fact that men who believe in the ‘higher law’ . . . are not more numerous than they are.” Seward’s phrase was becoming a rallying cry for abolition.

  John Wilkes Booth found the Christiana story hard to ignore. The Gorsuch farm was just a short walk from Milton Academy, and one of the boys was a friend and schoolmate.26

  ON NOVEMBER 16, 1846, the steamship Great Western arrived in New York from Liverpool. On board was Marie Christine Adelaide Delannoy, or, as she preferred to call herself, Mrs. Junius Brutus Booth. She had ostensibly come to America to see her son, Richard, who was teaching Greek and Latin in Baltimore. But it was really Junius that she intended to waylay, and he was playing in New York. As she wrote her sister, “I shall wait until he comes to Baltimore, and as soon as he arrives my lawyer will fall on his back like a bomb.” Junius had deserted her and their son a quarter-century before, when he came to America with Mary Ann.27

  Junius Booth should have expected this sooner or later. He had eloped with Mlle. Delannoy while boarding at her mother’s house in Brussels back in 1815. They were married in London and had two children, one surviving infancy. But by 1821, a lovely dark-haired woman had caught his eye, and the rest of his world ceased to exist. Mary Ann Holmes sold flowers outside the Covent Garden Theatre in London. She was infatuated with the young actor, and they courted in secret. In January 1821 they disappeared in the night, bound for America. Friends said that Robert Holmes searched his daughter’s room and found ninety-three letters from Booth and a dark lantern. The old man died of a broken heart.28

  Adelaide had been living on payments from Junius, and that had seemed sufficient. But then her son came to America and learned of Booth’s wealth and success. His letters home brought Adelaide to Baltimore in a fighting mood. Passing by the house on Exeter Street, she looked around for “any one of that set,” and eventually she found them. Neighbors spoke of loud, drunken tirades directed at Mary Ann. It was a painful situation for the children, who could only stand by and watch their mother be publicly humiliated. They had seen a marriage certificate verifying that their parents had been wed on January 18, 1821. Apparently, though, that ceremony was a theatrical production.29

  Adelaide established a residence in Maryland, then sought a divorce. Her petition, filed in 1851, read like a tabloid scandal sheet rendered in legalese. Junius contested nothing, and the court affixed its approval. On May 10—John Wilkes Booth’s thirteenth birthday—Junius and Mary Ann Booth were finally legally married.30

  For John Wilkes, this episode did more than stigmatize his family. It challenged his legacy as a Booth. He was proud of that name, and had come to define himself as the son of the great tragedian. Being an adolescent, he was especially keen to establish himself and his place in the world. The scandal made him determined to reclaim his legacy and put it beyond dispute. He would defend the family honor, follow his family profession, and adopt the family politics. As if to confirm his identity once and for all, he pricked his initials in permanent India ink onto the back of his hand.31

  THE MARITAL SCANDAL must have weighed heavily on Junius’s mind, and soon after his divorce became final, he turned his attention to plans for a quiet, simple life with Mary Ann. He decided to replace the old log house near Bel Air with a fine new home. From a book of designs he chose a charming two-story, eight-room cottage in a neo-Gothic style. Built on a cruciform plan, it had a massive central chimney, a full-width front portico, steeply pitched gables, and diamond-pane windows. They would call the place Tudor Hall, after Henry Tudor, the Earl of Richmond and slayer of King Richard III. James Johnson Gifford, architect of the Holliday Street Theatre, would supervise the construction.32

  By that time, two of the boys were already on their own. Edwin had tried his hand at acting, but a disastrous start forced him off the stage to serve as his father’s dresser. Gradually he earned a second chance, playing minor roles when he could get them. Junius Jr. had been successful as an actor, but showed more talent as a manager. After leaving his wife and daughter for another actress, he moved to San Francisco to manage the Jenny Lind Theatre. In the summer of 1851, he persuaded his father to commit himself to an engagement there.

  Before Junius left, though, he had to arrange for the education of his other sons. John Wilkes and Joe had both completed the course of study at Milton Academy. They had learned the basics, the classics, and the social graces. But with their father going on tour, they needed to be under close supervision in a strict school. Junius enrolled them at St. Timothy’s Hall, a prestigious military academy in Catonsville, near B
altimore.

  With each application for enrollment, St. Timothy’s sent a twenty-four-page book of warnings and exhortations about the importance of discipline. These regulations would make the school “an institution of strict discipline, of good morals, and, by the grace of God, a religious home for the young.” Only the best boys would be admitted, and as soon as they arrived, they belonged to the school. Parents would just have to trust the rector in the exercise of his own “parental discretion.”33

  The rector was Rev. Libertus Van Bokkelen, an Episcopal priest and transplanted New Yorker who had observed and studied the best educational systems of Europe. Though his school operated under the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the dominant theme was military training. It was chartered in the midst of the Mexican War—the first conflict fought under the leadership of West Point graduates. Suddenly a military education was perceived as the road to social and political prominence, and military academies flourished. Some of Maryland’s leading families sent their sons to St. Timothy’s. 34

  Milton Academy had encouraged a love of poetry and an obliging disposition. What St. Timothy’s required was a white-hot lust for order. Students were fitted out in the gray uniforms of infantry soldiers and drilled in accordance with the U.S. Army’s infantry manual. Their days were long and strictly regimented, with only two breaks in the course of the week. 35

  There were plenty of hardships, but no matter what was thrown at him, John Wilkes Booth not only endured, but throve. He had charisma and an ingratiating manner that made him popular among his fellow cadets, who called him “Billy Bowlegs” after the celebrated Seminole chief.

  An anonymous schoolmate, writing in 1878, described Booth as having “one of the most lively and cheerful dispositions; was kind, generous and affectionate in his nature, with an admiration of his father and his abilities that amounted almost to idolatry.” Though Booth revered his father, few things mattered more now than the acceptance of his peers. That’s why his placement at St. Timothy’s had been so important to his parents. In Baltimore, street gangs like the Blood Tubs and the Plug-Uglies were giving the city a reputation for mob violence. At least St. Timothy’s would place the Booth brothers with a better sort of people.