Lincoln's Assassin

by J F Pennington

  Still, if I had chosen a different course, or, softly, a different art, what forces might have driven me yet to fulfill what must be met as destiny?

  ***

  I never listened well. How many memories of unfinished conclusions crowd the conversations of my past? A point begun by a friend or confidante ending in my own words. How frustrated I would have been to talk with me.

  When first advised of my faults I thought of them as nothing, nor could think of them at all. Could not see them. She saw them. I did not. They were then faults only to her. Thereby hers not mine. I did not doubt what she saw, only how. Denied the weight with which she had endowed them.

  An unseemly habit, an ill-chosen moment or word, the repetition of a particular phrase, the half-echo of another for emphasis—very theatrical. But for emphasis. As such, what did it matter? But it mattered to her.

  Slowly I began to note those very habits in myself. Became aware how often, indeed, they were performed. That bothered me. They were not merely habits. They were habitude.

  Worse was when I began to take note of them in others. Nor could I be as impartial or forgiving of theirs as I had been of my own. Could not manufacture rationale so readily for another as myself.

  How horribly they stammered, repeated, imbued with quasi-drama. How crude were their manners, customs. How shallow their very thoughts. Yet were all those negative attributes in fact only mine—re-examined and redirected.

  There is nothing like the feeling of making someone happy. Even at the risk of being made unhappy in return. To risk and offer all for the chance of applause.

  I would do anything to make her happy. Still, what would be right? What would be so easy, so perfect for me that performing it for her would be the same as for myself? Sharing it. If only such a thing existed. I would do anything for her.

  And so I began to change my patterns, even knowing it annoyed me more. Was it for her or myself? Were there truths in her accounts, enough to warrant change? Was she the first, even my sister notwithstanding, to truly see and judge me for the needed change? What could I know for certain? What at all?

  Here I had been so confused, by her, by myself, by there not being nor never having been anyone else, that I made my mind to do all and none. Prepare the change, yet not proceed. Acknowledge the faults, yet not amend. Determine the method, yet defer the means. Until somehow there was certainty.

  I looked for certainty. Hoped for it. Prayed for it. Waited for it.

  All I got was complication. Confusion. Compounding of my desperate state. My love, my career, my country too rocked and teetered and looked to wreck. What could I do? What would I not do—for her? What ever had I denied?

  Or was I not already victorious? Won by the plain devil and dissembling looks. For would not Satan be a woman if that woman would deign to share her throne of evil?

  Or was she just the liquid in a pliant spoon of appeasement?

  ***

  Tuesday, January 12, 1864. St. Louis.

  Evening. The dressing rooms of Ben DeBar’s Theater. The walls of the room are hung with mirrors and tapestried with newspaper pages of theatrical reviews. She wears a pale green dress with yellow trim.

  He dons make-up as Richard III and asks Ella, “So, what do you think of St. Louis?”

  “What can I think? We spent the first two days in the hotel room.”

  He smiles, then changes humor—of a sudden.

  “Where is it?”

  He paces from one side of the dressing room to the other, searching and re-searching every corner, every drawer, shelf and trunk.

  “Where is my hump?”

  She sits in his chair, back to the make-up mirror, arms folded into her lap with the innocent anticipation of an expectant mother. Rising, she says, “In fact, my darling, there is something I must tell you. And now may be as good the time as any other.”

  Turning side-to-side to admire herself in his dressing mirror, she has his character’s shoulder-hump pad stuffed under the bodice of her dress.

  “What do you think?” she smiles.

  He smiles too. A nervousness pits his desires against abilities and needs.

  “I wish you would not look at me like that.”

  “What do you mean?” she says with her eyes alone.

  “So, we are in love. We are lovers. Of a sort. What of it? What more could we be? Do you think the two of us could live out of a single trunk? It would most certainly not work.”

  Those same importunate eyes fill half with tears.

  “And that would be only the beginning. You mean to ask if I think you would be beautiful while carrying our child? Fine. After the child was born? And then, the rest?

  “What of your brother?” she murmured finally, chin thrust forward.

  “What of him? Would you serve him up for comparison? I am not my brother. His wife Mary could not live with his wealth alone. And what is now to become of little Edwina?

  “Is that the life you want? Do you not believe the stories I told of my own youth? The father I never knew?

  “Well, here is something I never did tell. Never told anyone. Not even Edwin knows. My father never married my mother. Not really. He could not. He was already married. Had a wife and a son in England when he came to this country as part of a theatrical tour.

  “And never went back.

  “Now, I am not saying I would do the same, only wonder how many other wives and children he might have had. He certainly did not spend all his time at Tudor Hall with us. And what time there was he spent snoring in between bottles.”

  My own affliction weighed heavily upon me and I thought to tell her then or never.

  “It doesn’t have to be like that!” she cried. “You’re different. And I’m different.”

  “Am I?”

  I wanted to weep a little, too, just to look at her.

  “You are,” I agree. “That much I know. I am afraid that is all I know for certain. Except—”

  I could not continue. Only held her where she lay stretched uncomfortably along the divan.

  ***

  “What will you do?” she taunted. “What is an actor without his voice?”

  My throat was not sore but my mouth was dry and my voice nearly absent now for the better part of a week. I had called off the first week of my performances in St. Louis to spend time with her, giving as excuse my weak voice. Apparently the actor inside me had not realized it was a ruse and convinced my body I was indeed sick. The same thing had happened to me when playing the truant as a boy, each and every time I made excuses of not feeling well—the every time my excuse became prophesy.

  “Perhaps I shall become a great playwright,” I said with a rasping grate.

  “Ah yes, as your father? And who has heard—may I ask—of a single one of his plays?”

  “I produced Ugolino myself at the Boston Museum two years ago. But of course, you are right. Still, I think I can make a go at it. I must.”

  “You cannot write.”

  I stepped to the dressing table where I kept a decanter of cognac. It was my acceptable diversion, the one I openly indulged when she was about. This time it was not as accepted.

  “Or just pour yourself another drink and forget all,” she chided. “I’ll have one too.” Then added, “You will surely never match your brother’s career. No matter how many times you criticize his skill as too academic. For all of your passion, his academic skill appears to have outlived yours.”

  “Perhaps you are with the wrong brother,” I croaked, numbly.

  “Ah yes, there!” she scoffed. “To hear you speak now I would have been better off with your younger brother Joseph. As profoundly dull as would be the life of a surgeon’s wife, yet would there be some stability. And whatever insecurities and doubts he may have about himself, he surely would not trust less such a love as mine.”

  Scene IV

  And yet I was once like this beautiful snow!

  Ella stayed with me through the end of the St. Louis run a
nd left for home as I went on, first to Louisville, then Nashville, finally Cleveland—the three-theater chain of a certain and successful Mr. Wood.

  One night near the end of the Cleveland engagement I was met by a pair of friends in the black walnut lobby of the Neill House, where I had been staying as I started out onto the stone veranda for some air. The theater manager, John A. Ellsler, and Thomas Y. Mears, a gambler and former prizefighter, were if nothing else a very theatrical pair. They invited me to a local saloon for drinks, and though I understood I might be the one to pay, I chose to go.

  “I have been thinking about going into business,” I suggested shortly after our arrival, their boisterous laughter yielding suddenly to quiet astonishment.

  “The theater is our business!” bellowed the elder Ellsler.

  “And a very fine business, indeed!” rang in a supportive Mears as their brandy glasses toasted again to the repetition of the word “Indeed."

  They laughed.

  “What kind of ‘business’ did you have in mind?” continued Ellsler, with a less belligerent, almost reflective tone.

  “I don’t know,” I answered bluntly. “But I have heard of great advantages being made in the Pennsylvania oil fields. Perhaps there is a way toward fortune there.”

  “Oil?” spat Mears. “How changed our companion has become since he has been seen in the company of a certain senator’s daughter,” and being sure he had my eye. “Yes, Lutz has told me about her. Do not forget that her father is one of the most trusted members in the government of that man upon whom you have continually vowed vengeance.”

  “I care no longer for such matters. Let politicians concern themselves with politics and soldiers fight wars. We must needs concern ourselves with our own wellbeing. You both know I have had recently to cancel several engagements because of the worsening condition of my voice, last year alone rescheduling a dozen-and–a-half performances. And it is only getting worse.”

  “Is that your excuse for last month’s absences?” poked Mears with a laugh and a jibe toward Ellsler.

  “That is my business. What I am talking about is something else altogether. I am losing my instrument.”

  “It is only temporary,” assured Ellsler.

  “Possibly,” I stared directly at him, avoiding Mears altogether. “Nonetheless, how long can I continue with the demands our profession makes? How long can any of us?”

  “Oil?” he replied as if he heard it for the first time, had no idea of my insinuation, or simply did not care. “Not much to it is there, Johnnie? Not for one who has so much of the power that your brother Edwin lacks. You have the fire of your father, the dash, the touch of strangeness. I mean that as a compliment.”

  “And that is the way I will take it.”

  Mears nodded, then gestured grandly. “We could do with something a bit more lively; something with a deal of drama.”

  “Then let us call our venture the Dramatic Oil Company,” said Ellsler with a raised glass and unmistakable support.

  And it seemed done.

  ***

  1863. New York City.

  THE ACTOR visits the home of his successful OLDER BROTHER, single father of a two-year-old daughter. Their MOTHER has been living there since the death of the brother’s wife the previous February.

  “Is it impossible for you to favor any choice I make?” shouts the young man.

  “It is impossible for me to understand why my own flesh should constantly speak out against our nation and its duly elected government. It is scandalous. I very nearly have to disavow your very existence.”

  “Only tell them that I have inherited our father’s madness.”

  “I do.”

  “Yes, I am most assured of it. But this has nothing to do with politics. It is business. I thought you would be pleased that I might not much longer taint the family’s reputation in theatrical circles.”

  “Should I be? Yes, I suppose so. Still, forgive me, brother, but I do not trust your motives—or your associates. I have not been able to do so since you donned Confederate gray to journey to Harper’s Ferry for the hanging of a great man.”

  “On that, anyway, we can agree. Brown was surely that. A lunatic, but a great man—and one of conviction. I have more respect for him and his methods than for the rest of your Union and its government combined. Still, it seems rather odd the rest of you could one day condemn his murderous ways and the next hold him up as if his actions deserved papal canonization.”

  “I am sure it is no less distressing than finding you are one day incarcerated for damning the Union and the next day released upon the word of an oath of allegiance—only to hear continued rumors of your incessant tirades and treasonous speeches, as well as drunken midnight recitals of Bonnie Blue Flag. Even to the point that you have reportedly threatened the president with death.”

  “I only said that I can see no more appropriate an end for a tyrant. If he is such, let it be so!”

  He storms out, leaving mother, brother and niece alone in the room.

  “Why can’t my sons be brothers?” opines the soft-spoken woman.

  “Why, indeed?” cants the brother glancing at his daughter. “I love my brother, yet I fear for him. He is so impulsive, so passionate, too passionate—on and off the stage. I do not trust the friends he has, the reasons for his sudden decision—and I shall do my best to bring him back into the arms and care of his family.”

  The mother smiles. Pleased with this declaration, she is yet obviously worried.

  ***

  Time. Place.

  “Business?” remarks the actor to his love. “‘How, but well, Signior? How, but well?’”

  They both laugh as they sit amid a large haystack in the amber light of a lantern hanging from a high rafter.

  “There is time enough to speak of such things. Not now, not now. For now, let lips do what hands do, my love—and hands do as they will.” He grins, takes her strongly into his arms. “Soon you will be the wealthiest woman in Washington, and the envy of all its society.”

  “I shouldn’t care if we had no money at all and slept for eternity on the threshing floor of a tobacco shed, that we could be together,” she returns with a fire reflected in her auburn hair. She plays at the small ringlets behind his ear, quoting Sheridan, “‘Throughout the world—I’ll fasten to thy fate, I’ll perish with thee; I stand upon the brink of destiny, and see the deep descent that gapes beneath. Oh, since I cannot save thee from the gulf, from the steep verge I’ll leap with thee along, cling to thy heart and grasp thee with my ruin!’” Then, adding softly in her own words, “I’ll be yours forever. For a universe, and more!”

  They kiss.

  Strophe

  We had so very much in common, she and I. So proud, so different from them all. Yet always trying, still, to have such prescriptions as were theirs. A haunting quality, initiated in dreams, and found ever-after patrolling the nights and idling days, an amity not easily won, the less easily lost once it had conquered, fragility of spirit that seemed to contradict the strength of heart that showed itself always first.

  If we had not been destined to love, we were yet made to dream of being lovers, and anguish and question and suffer some part of that love until some miracle, some simple effect, which neither of us could devise nor providentially produce of accident, should bring us together or force us apart. Still, we had neither power nor faith to understand, only weakness to accept, if quietly and with denial.

  ***

  In February 1864, during an engagement at Wood’s Theater in Cincinnati, the real threat to my career made itself once again manifest. I was scheduled to play the part of Richard in Colley Cibber’s acting version of Richard III opposite Mrs. Chanrau’s Lady Anne, but convinced Mr. Wood to allow us to mount Othello instead. For this I took not the lead but the lesser if considerably more savory role of Iago, due to the condition in my throat. It was at its worst, to date. I knew the reason for its aggravation—knew it was not the malingering suspecte
d by some, still could not act on my insight. As well, I thought, am I not better suited to play the role of the consummate villain?

  Mr. Shewell was pleased with his promoted exchange to the title role, yet Mrs. Chanrau’s Desdemona seemed to suffer when trying to convince her king she would not indeed rather have been the bride of his first minister. Nonetheless, the show was a success, and the season rolled on. I, the wild, instinctive colt, continued to plunge headlong and heedless. For all the time I had scolded my Cola for just such a blunder down a shale-strewn slope, I was no wiser when they were my four feet that longed to stretch their sinew and comprehended no reasoned rhyme that they should not.

  The next stop at that year’s circuit was the St. Charles Theater in New Orleans. On the Friday of the second week there we did an afternoon benefit in which I played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and that night began as Petruchio in Katherine and Petruchio, an adaptation by David Garrick of The Taming of the Shrew. Halfway through the second act, Mrs. C. F. Walters, as Katherine, asked, “Who knows not where a wasp doth wear his sting?” I had no answer. Petruchio had a ready retort, but I had none. My voice was gone.

  I passed the next three nights in my room, the rain tracing its familiar pattern on the thin hotel windows. Ella cared for me as she could, the performances cancelled through Tuesday. I cannot begin to explain how she did not know or come to know of my dependence, only that she did not. It was, I imagine, one more aspect of her gentle naïveté, one more indication that indeed we were not suited to each other. Not if I could carry on in my own little world as if she did not exist. And there was certainly no room for her in the world of my addiction. Oh, there was room for her in my life, yet truly not in my world.

  I suppose if I had then been a smoker or a needle user, there would have been less chance, if any, to conceal my preference, even from her. Ingestion through the nose was relatively traceless, however, and she only once or twice questioned my habit of walking away into a hidden corner or other room for a moment before returning outwardly unchanged, if completely refreshed.