Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

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Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Page 12

by Alford, Terry


  Booth was restless and broke. Anxious for something better, he stirred the family in his behalf. Mary Devlin thought of Joe Jefferson, “Old Phil’s” predecessor as stage manager of the Marshall. Though Jefferson was not in management at the time, she believed he could procure Booth a better engagement.138 Jefferson agreed to look into the matter and write Booth about it. On April 14, 1860, the actor received $64.58 from the Commonwealth of Virginia for his service at Charlestown.139 It was timely money. Richmond was expensive, particularly for a young man inattentive to dollars, and Booth generally lived beyond his means. James Pilgrim thought him extravagant: “He gave no thought to money and was constantly in debt.”140

  Booth’s benefit, shared with James W. Collier, was held on May 31, 1860, the last night of the season. The Enquirer promoted the pair, annoyed that the management had not given each actor his own individual night. “Our stock company has not been appreciated, even by Manager Kunkel, as they ought to have been. Then, again, ’tis with a manager as with a merchant. He is ‘boss’ and gets the lion’s share, while the poor actor or the poor clerk, jogging along like horses going ’round and ’round at a mill, come out in the evening exactly where they go on in the morning.” Since “half the stars that come here are humbugs,” the newspaper continued, the public should support these local artists. “Pray do, reader, encourage them. They are good actors and good fellows, too.” By way of advice to Booth for his big night, “we would say, ‘a little more grape, Captain Bragg,’—that is, have a little more confidence.”141

  The house was well filled for the evening. Booth and Collier took roles in three plays. They opened with the action-packed fifth act of Richard III. Booth as Richard and the red-faced Collier, an athlete and boxer, as Richmond provided an excellent fight scene. The Son of Malta and My Fellow Clerk followed. The Enquirer was satisfied. “Booth has proved, as we always thought he one day would, that he inherits no small share of his father’s genius, but he has never had sufficient confidence in himself to show it. On Thursday night, however, he got over that to a considerable extent, and his success was proportionate, as was manifested by the hearty and sincere applause bestowed on him. But Booth is young in years, and as he grows older he will gather more pluck, and pluck more laurels.”142

  Booth’s two years in Richmond were ended, and he decided to move on. While his immediate future was uncertain, his progress as an actor had been substantial.143 “He was become very popular in the South,” wrote Asia. “Yet he sadly felt in need of a less enthusiastic school.”144 The challenge again was his father. The actress Kate Reignolds believed that the memory of a theatrical generation lasted no more than ten years.145 For truly great performers like Junius Brutus Booth Sr., that number seems too low. The memory of the elder Booth loomed large in Richmond, the city where his American career commenced. Friends of the son were often family friends. Thomas P. August, colonel of the 1st Regiment, for example, had signed a petition imploring the management to forgive the father a drunken episode in 1850 and restore him to the stage. Miles Phillips and other acquaintances signed, too.146 If these friends loved the son, John feared they loved him for his father’s sake.

  James Pilgrim bought an earful when he trespassed on these feelings. Doling out advice, Pilgrim echoed the counsel given by Harry Langdon the previous year and suggested that the young man drop the name Wilkes and play as a son of the elder Booth.

  “Damn my father’s name!” Booth exclaimed.147

  His ambition remained intense. “When next you hear of me, I will be famous,” Booth told Mary Bella. He slipped onto the little girl’s finger a gold ring with the word Regard in blue enamel on it. It was his farewell present.148 Booth left her home, as he did Richmond itself, in some esteem.149 “Indeed, it would have been strange had it been otherwise,” wrote the actor Francis Wilson, a friend of Edwin’s who wrote a biography of John. “He was in absolute sympathy and harmony with his surroundings.”150 Richmond had become an ideal city to him. Here he had been reborn socially and professionally. He was fond of saying that to these years he dated his nativity.151

  4

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  THE UNION AS IT WAS

  edwin booth and mary devlin were married in New York City on the afternoon of Saturday, July 7, 1860. The simple wedding took place at the home of the Reverend Samuel Osgood, one of the nation’s leading Unitarian ministers.1 Brown-eyed, brown-haired Molly, as Edwin called her, was an actress who retired from the stage to become his wife. She was lovely, affectionate, and intelligent, thought Sam Chester, and the couple blessed with love at first sight.2 Asia despised her, calling the bride “a deep designing artful actress, a bold-faced woman who can strut before a nightly audience, a poor obscure girl, the lowest Irish class.”3 She did not attend the ceremony, nor did Mary Ann, Rose, or Joseph. John was the only family member present, a gesture of brotherly solidarity and affection that impressed his friends.4 The younger brother joined a small wedding party composed of Adam Badeau, Mary’s sister Catherine, and her husband, Henry Magonigle. When the ceremony was over, John threw his arms around his brother’s neck and kissed him.5 Years later, when their friend Ned Alfriend brought up the topic of the assassination, Edwin pressed his lips together and said, “I could not approve what he did, but he was my brother!” The latter words were uttered with great emotion.6

  Edwin’s happiness secured, the brothers looked to John’s future through an association with Matthew W. Canning. A good-natured Philadelphian with thin brown hair, mustache, and goatee, Canning was an attorney who had abandoned the law for the stage.7 He acted briefly before turning to management. When John Wilkes Booth commenced his career at the Arch in 1857, Canning was treasurer of the rival National Theatre. He had an army of friends in the profession, and Booth became one of them. During the actor’s Richmond years Canning had been busy establishing theatrical connections in the Deep South. Profits were smaller there than in the North, but general opinion felt “the Southern cities are usually safe cheeses,”8 and Canning developed a circuit with Montgomery, Alabama, as his hub of operations. He seemed to prosper. Certainly no one looked more successful. Elegantly dressed and dripping diamonds, Canning was the most fashionable man imaginable.

  “Edwin Booth asked me to give his brother Wilkes a start,” recalled Canning. The manager was intrigued. Edwin had done well reviving the Booth name on a Southern tour the preceding year. But Edwin was a star. John, though able in support and a favorite in Richmond, was young and entirely unproven at the head of a bill. The manager agreed to take the younger brother on the condition that John would be given the opportunity to star for six weeks, with a benefit each Friday, but he would be paid stock wages only. “He was not, strictly speaking, a star,” Canning explained. “He was a member of my stock company and played as a star, but of course he did not get the profits a star would receive.” Canning claimed in an 1886 interview that he had one additional requirement of his fledgling. “I made it a point with Edwin that he should play under his family name. It would draw me money,” he said candidly.9 When Booth began his appearances for Canning, he ignored the demand and continued playing under the name of Wilkes. Canning gave no indication that this caused friction between them. The pair remained friendly, and from this time on Canning was identified with Booth in the public mind.

  Canning’s company had talent. John W. Albaugh was its stage manager and male lead. A Baltimorean like Booth, he had worked for the Kunkel-Ford partnership in that city, sharing Booth’s hotel room on occasions when he helped out in Richmond. Booth and Albaugh were rivals for the unofficial title of handsomest young actor of the day. Albaugh’s future wife, Mary Mitchell, was Canning’s leading lady. Half-sister of Maggie Mitchell, Mary had just divorced the Marshall’s Jim Collier, whom she discovered making visits to a New York City house of prostitution.10 James Lewis and James M. Ward provided talent in comic and character roles. The Irish-born Ward performed often with Booth during the latter’s career, once before Lincoln. Finally,
Sam Chester signed on as leading heavy. “He is a particular friend of mine,” Booth explained to Canning.11 Youth marked this troupe. Booth, Albaugh, Lewis, Ward, and Chester were in their early twenties, and Canning was scarcely older.

  “Canning’s Dramatic Company” opened its tour at Temperance Hall in Columbus, Georgia, on October 1, 1860. Booth and Mitchell took the title roles in Romeo and Juliet. The beau monde of Columbus attended, a large number of whom were debutantes.12 One wonders how well Mitchell, a single parent nearing thirty and recovering from a painful divorce, played Juliet, a thirteen-year-old girl in the blush of first love. Equally curious is the question of whether Booth, while closer in age to the youthful Romeo, played the part with a mustache. Except in a pair of photographs taken in November 1864, every likeness commonly agreed upon as that of Booth shows the actor with one.13 Booth had other concerns, however. “I can never be a nimble skip-about like Romeo,” he confided to Asia. “I am too square and solid.”14 Nevertheless, his performance was well received. A critic for the Daily Sun made allowance for the fact that he was portraying the character for the first time and, while pointing out that John was not as experienced an actor as Edwin, felt he “bids fair soon to equal him. He has all the promise and in personal appearance is handsome and prepossessing.”

  Ably backed by the company, Booth undertook a new lead character each night for six nights a week. Notable among his roles in this demanding schedule were Pescara in The Apostate, Phidias in The Marble Heart, Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, and Richard in Richard III. These plays in time became the most popular and successful pieces in his repertoire. Such major parts required Booth to study assiduously, and he did. “He works hard,” reported the New York Clipper.15

  On Friday, October 12, Booth and Albaugh were with Canning in a room at Cook’s Hotel in Columbus when a pistol shot rang out. Canning had shot Booth! The bullet struck the actor in the thigh and, traveling downward, lodged in the upper leg. The wound looked grave. “We thought he would die,” recalled the manager. Dr. Francis A. Stanford was summoned. The physician, who fortunately was one of the best-trained doctors in Georgia, examined the patient and found that the bullet had “escaped the important [blood] vessels lying near its course.” In other words it missed the femoral artery, a wound that might have killed him in minutes. Booth was seriously injured, but his life was not in immediate danger. Unwilling to risk the complications of surgery, Dr. Stanford left the ball in the leg. He dressed the wound and put the actor to bed.16

  All accounts agree the shooting was accidental, but there were conflicting stories told as to what actually occurred. In an 1865 biographical sketch of Booth that he prepared, Canning wrote simply that he shot Booth by accident.17 Twenty years later, in an interview with George Alfred Townsend, Canning elaborated, putting the blame for the incident on Booth. Canning recalled that he had been exhausted that day and went to his room to rest. Booth saw him and said, “Now, you must let me nurse you. You are fagged out.” Replying that he needed only sleep, Canning lay down on his bed. He had a pistol in his pocket. “Everybody carried weapons down in that country, and so did I.” Noticing it, “Booth yielded to his passion for arms, and he drew it out of my pocket.” Canning then claimed that Booth pointed the pistol at a mark on an opposite wall and fired it right there in the room. The manager sprang up and protested, but Booth insisted on firing again to prove his marksmanship. The pistol being rusty, it was difficult to fit a new cartridge. Canning claimed that as he held the pistol, Booth took a knife to scrape it and the cartridge clean. “While in the act of doing it,” he alleged, “down came the lock in my hand and discharged the pistol,” wounding Booth.

  Albaugh remembered the incident quite differently. It was about an hour before curtain on the night of Booth’s weekly benefit. Hamlet was announced, and Booth and Albaugh were practicing their lines in the former’s room. Suddenly Canning appeared at the door with a pistol in his hand. In a teasing temper, he had every manager’s fantasy in mind. He announced playfully to the actors that he was there to shoot them. According to Frank P. O’Brien, the assistant scenic artist, Booth caught the good-humored spirit of the remark, and the two began to tussle. Each claimed to be the stronger, but who was? They wrestled, and as the manager threw Booth onto the bed, the pistol accidently discharged.18

  This mishap, however caused, proved costly. A painful convalescence followed, occupying nearly half the time Canning had promised Booth. The show went on in his absence. Albaugh played Hamlet that night, earned a curtain call, and continued creditably in Booth’s subsequent pieces. He was a quick study who, when he forgot his lines, could improvise in the style of a play’s dialogue so skillfully that only the other actors were aware of what was happening.19 Canning, having nearly killed his protégé, paid the invalid’s debts when they moved on to Montgomery.20 His generosity was only fair, but it was also characteristic. Alex Johnston, Canning’s brother-in-law, said the manager coined money in Georgia and Alabama, “but like all of his kind he gave it away.”21

  On its final night in Columbus the company staged a benefit for Booth. The Daily Sun reported that although he was still too feeble to take part in any performance, Booth came to the theater. “Curiosity to see the rising young tragedian and sympathy for his late misfortune” drew the largest audience in two weeks. Halfway through the entertainment Booth made his way onstage and recited Mark Antony’s oration over the body of Caesar from Shakespeare. His pain and weakness were evident to observers, but Booth’s voice was finely controlled and his presentation well received.22

  The company departed for Alabama the following morning, but it was several days before Dr. Stanford permitted Booth to follow. He rejoined the troupe in Montgomery on October 23. A new building had been constructed there over the course of the summer at the cost of forty-five thousand dollars. African American slave women carried bricks for the walls on specially designed hods so fitted to their heads as to allow each person to carry ten bricks at a time up to the masons.23 Canning leased the second floor of their handiwork, put carpenters, painters, and upholsterers to work, and brought in decorations from New York. The result was a splendid playhouse with seats for up to two thousand people.24 The theater’s festive opening found Booth still sidelined, however, and Albaugh continued as star. Booth’s wound was a serious matter. He was suffering its effects two months later when Asia saw him in Philadelphia.25 Booth did not recover fully from the accident until February 1861.26 Canning recalled that it “left a large scar on his person, not to be mistaken.”27

  Booth’s final week with Canning commenced with The Apostate on October 29. One critic noted that, while it was evident that Booth was not back to normal, “his performance still stamps him as a chip off the old block and was received by the large audience with outbursts of applause.” A positive review in the Weekly Post also made a family comparison: “Mr. Wilkes is a young man of very fine appearance, resembling very much his talented brother Edwin Booth. True, his manner is not so graceful, his voice is not so full; nor his pronunciation so distinct as that of his brother, but this may be attributed to his limited practice rather than to any inferiority of ability.”28 Hamlet and Richard III relined Canning’s pockets, “his large theater full from pit to dome.” Booth drew no individual notice in either play from city newspapers. They did announce that in Romeo and Juliet “Mr. John Wilkes was all that could be desired. His rendition was received with applause and approbation by the large number present.”29

  Overall, Booth’s Montgomery reviews were mixed, and there is no evidence that his reception in the Deep South was so flattering that it sparked in him an uncritical love of the region. James Pilgrim claimed he played only tolerably, and Canning chose not to renew his engagement.30 Pilgrim, the agent for J. B. Roberts, a tragedian playing many of the same parts as Booth, was not a neutral observer, however. James Lewis stated that Booth enjoyed tremendous success in Montgomery.31 One wonders if they saw the same man perform. “He played a highly succ
essful engagement,” wrote Canning in a statement that may be considered authoritative.32 “It is a mistake, however, to say that he was chiefly a favorite in the Southern States,” Canning cautioned. “They did not take to him down there as much as they [later] did in the West and in the North.”

  Lewis, Canning’s witty low comedian, maintained in an 1875 interview that U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi saw Booth play in Montgomery.33 Davis sat quietly in the audience “like a grey wolf, and with a solemn sort of manner.” This is the sole occasion on which they are placed together by a credible witness—if Lewis were not mistaken. Davis’s whereabouts are well documented for this period. He had a series of speaking engagements in Mississippi during the week of Booth’s Alabama performances and returned to Washington, D.C., by November 27, 1860. Davis’s usual route north was not through Montgomery but by a more expeditious way through Memphis.34 It is probable, as Lewis also stated, that Booth played before Georgia senator Robert Toombs and former Alabama congressman William L. Yancey, two fiery advocates of Southern independence. Yancey lived in Montgomery, and Toombs was in town to speak at the time. That Davis saw or knew Booth is doubtful.

 

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