“Really?” asked Joseph, awestruck.
“Yes, really.” Grinning, June reached across the table to tousle his younger brother’s hair, but then he sat back and fixed an expectant gaze upon Father. “The people of San Francisco and Sacramento yearn for entertainment of the highest quality. They would pay generously to see the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth.”
June explained that he had been hired as the stage manager for the new Jenny Lind Theatre in Portsmouth Square, a magnificent, beautifully appointed playhouse with seating for two thousand. For months, his partners—and every theatergoer who learned who his father was—had begged him to persuade the celebrated thespian to tour California. “You could earn a fortune, Father, more than enough to justify the long journey.”
“The long, very difficult, and very dangerous journey, I think you mean,” said Mother.
“You flatter me, son,” said Father, his expressive brow furrowing, “but lately I’ve contemplated retirement, not undertaking the most arduous tour of my career.”
“All the more reason to seize this opportunity to reap great profits before you pack away your costumes for good,” said June. “Just think how eagerly audiences will fill the theatres—and how handsomely they’ll reward you—if they believe this may be their last chance to see you perform.” He turned to Edwin. “You’ll earn a fortune too. You’ll have your pick of roles, as many and as varied as you could possibly want.”
“What if I don’t want any roles?” Edwin’s dark eyes revealed a deep unhappiness, the set of his jaw a mutinous determination. “What if I don’t want to go?”
“Yes, Junius, what of that?” said Mother. “Edwin is eighteen. He’s served you faithfully for six years. Shouldn’t he be permitted to resume his education, if he wishes?”
“If Edwin doesn’t want to join the tour, he needn’t,” said June. “I’m happy to serve as Father’s escort, valet, dresser—whatever he needs.”
“In that case,” said Father, avoiding his wife’s eye, “I’d be a fool not to consider it.”
In the days that followed, Asia often came upon her parents conferring in strained whispers, her father enumerating their many financial concerns, her mother anxiously reminding him of the hardships and dangers of travel. Whether her father wore down her mother or simply overruled her, Asia did not know, but before long Father announced his decision: He would seek fortune and acclaim in California, June would escort him, and Edwin would remain behind to resume his long-neglected education.
In late June, Junius Brutus Booth Senior and Junior departed for New York, stopping along the way at Milton Academy to bid farewell to Wilkes. In their absence, Edwin seemed to brighten by the hour. He and Mother animatedly discussed enrolling him in school in the fall, and perhaps engaging a tutor in the meantime to fill the gaps in his education and spare him embarrassment. Edwin had such a quick, shrewd mind that Asia had no doubt he would soon make up for the years of neglect.
Thus it was a shock to them all a few days later when her father’s telegram threw Edwin’s fledgling plans into disarray. Immediately upon arriving in New York, Father’s courage had fled, replaced by overwhelming loneliness and apprehension. June was loyal and amiable, but Edwin knew their father’s quirks and routines, his preferences and fears, and had proven himself adept at anticipating and sorting out problems before the great thespian knew anything was amiss. Father begged Edwin to join him before their steamer left for Panama, or he could not possibly go to California.
Asia felt a pang of sympathy as all hope drained from her brother’s expression. “You don’t have to go,” she told him as he read the telegram a second time. Mother, her eyes filling with tears, wordlessly nodded.
“If I don’t,” he replied dully, “the tour will be canceled.”
“Then let it be canceled,” Asia said.
“We can’t afford that. We all know it.”
“Oh, Edwin,” Mother lamented, sinking into a chair. “I had hoped to spare you this.”
“Never mind.” Woodenly, Edwin bent to kiss her forehead. “I’m not my father’s favorite, but at least I know he needs me.”
After telegraphing his assent to Father and June, Edwin quickly packed for the journey with help from his mother and sisters. Mother assembled a wardrobe suitable for the tropical climate—two straw hats to protect him from the intense sun and heavy rains, several linen shirts and trousers, and sturdy boots for the hike over the isthmus. “I’ve packed a few of your costumes too,” she told him on the morning of his departure, her voice trembling. “You’ll surely be asked to perform your usual roles in Richard III and Othello.”
He thanked her sincerely but without enthusiasm, and Asia grieved to see that the old look of haunted misery had already returned to his eyes.
Edwin reached New York in time to board the steamer and set out for Panama with his father and elder brother. And then there was nothing for those left behind to do but wait, anxious and apprehensive, for word that the men had reached their destination safely. News came sparsely and sporadically, so they learned well after the fact that the travelers had reached the warm azure waters of the Florida Keys, that their ship had put in at Jamaica and Cuba to take on more coal, that the vessel had arrived at the Isthmus of Panama. It seemed to Asia that she and her mother and Rosalie held their breaths during the interminable, anxious days while the men traveled by canoe up the Chagres River, winding through the lush, perilous rain forest to Gorgona, where they would journey on through rocky, mountainous terrain on foot and by pack mule. Even when word came that the travelers had reached Panama City, the family back at home could not breathe a sigh of relief, for cholera was epidemic in the city, and the men were obliged to isolate themselves in a hotel room to avoid contagion until the steamship California arrived to transport them a fortnight’s journey north up the coast of Mexico and California.
Only after Asia, Mother, and Rosalie learned that the California had arrived safely at San Francisco on July 28, and that their loved ones were in good health and high spirits, did the unrelenting tension ease. Two days later, Father opened his tour at the Jenny Lind Theatre in the role of Sir Edward Mortimer in The Iron Chest to admiring reviews. After a fortnight in San Francisco, they moved on to the American Theatre in Sacramento, where Father would have a brief engagement before venturing farther inland to towns and settlements closer to the gold fields.
In the meantime, life in Baltimore went on as ever, infinitely less exciting than Asia imagined the California tour to be. Wilkes came home from school for the summer recess, which was wonderful, but with Tudor Hall still under construction and the old cabin occupied by Joe and Ann Hall and their children, the Booths could not withdraw to the comfort and peaceful solitude of their country estate for the summer. The only scandal worth writing to California about was that Edwin’s friend John Clarke Sleeper, who had been studying law at his mother’s insistence, had abandoned his books to become an actor, commencing his new career with a regular engagement at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. He wrote Asia an odd, abrupt letter in which he told her he had changed his name to John Clarke, because no actor wanted to be considered a sleeper on the stage, but Asia should continue to call him Clarke, as she had since she was fourteen.
“I suppose he wants me to tell Edwin,” Asia said dubiously after reading his letter aloud to Mother and Rosalie, and felt heat rise in her cheeks when they exchanged a knowing look. Clarke was not courting her—and if he thought he was, he had better stop it.
• • •
At the end of the summer, fourteen-year-old Wilkes and twelve-year-old Joseph too left home, enrolling as cadets at St. Timothy’s Hall in Catonsville, a military academy established during the Mexican War to educate future generations of officers and soldiers. St. Timothy’s counted the sons of some of Maryland’s finest families among its pupils, with the expectation that they would become the next leaders
of business and government. Mother’s cheeks had flushed with pride when the acceptance letters had come, and before he set off on tour, Father had embraced them both and told them he was certain they would bring honor to the Booth name.
Wilkes was proud of his steel-gray cadet’s uniform, but although Asia admitted he looked dashing in it, she found the academy’s twenty-four-page rule book, with its emphasis on order, discipline, and obedience to authority, severe and intimidating. “I’ll enjoy the challenge, a taste of the soldier’s life,” Wilkes assured her. “Maybe I’ll become a general, like George Washington. Wouldn’t that have made Grandfather proud?”
In mid-September Wilkes and Joseph set out from Baltimore on a thirteen-mile train ride to Catonsville, but soon, Wilkes’s letters home hinted at deep displeasure with the strict military regimen he had been so eager to experience. A clanging bell jolted the cadets awake every morning at half past five o’clock, spurring them to leap from bed, form an orderly line, and march off to the washroom, where they scrubbed their hands and faces in a common trough of frigid water. Dried and dressed, they then marched to the classroom for exercises in penmanship and mental arithmetic, and only afterward were they permitted to assemble in the dining hall and quell their growling stomachs with breakfast. Military drills in accordance to the United States Army’s infantry manual and classes in religious studies rounded out the day, until the cadets dropped into their beds at twilight, too exhausted for mischief. Before dawn the next morning, the wearing routine began anew, with only Wednesday and Sunday afternoons off to give them a much-needed respite.
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” Wilkes wrote cryptically, as if he believed his letters were opened and read before being posted.
With rising dread, Asia feared that it was only a matter of time until Wilkes either escaped his prison or rebelled against his jailers. Joseph would fare well enough—in fact, the academy might be the making of him—but Wilkes’s expansive, joyous nature was not meant to be constricted to military regimen and rule. If not for his new friends, with whom he formed bonds of affinity forged in hardship, she doubted that Wilkes could endure the term. Asia was not surprised to learn that the same charisma that inspired affection and admiration at home would draw his fellow cadets to him, especially in such a harsh and unloving environment. His cheerfulness, affability, generosity, and zest for life must have offered the other lonely, homesick boys a light of hope in a very dark place.
Trusting that his new friends would sustain Wilkes when she could not, Asia fervently hoped that her brother’s strict taskmasters would not bludgeon all the fine qualities she loved best out of him and fill him up with military pomp and nonsense.
• • •
As autumn passed, letters home from California became even more worrisome than those from St. Timothy’s. Despite positive reviews and appreciative audiences, the tour was not succeeding as June had promised and Father had expected. In Sacramento, torrential rains had forced gold prospecting to a halt, the swollen river had flooded the city, and the muddy streets had become impassable mires. Theatres closed, supplies dwindled, expenses soared, and even the plainest food became scarce. Miserable and weary, Father resolved to return to Baltimore immediately, and since he had not yet earned the fortune June had promised, he demanded that his son pay the difference from his own purse—two thousand dollars, or nearly every penny June had to his name.
Soon thereafter, June wrote that they had returned to San Francisco as soon as the road had become passable. June had gone home to Miss Harriet Mace and his job as stage manager of the Jenny Lind. Edwin, adamantly refusing to serve as his father’s attendant any longer, had joined a group of traveling players in a wild scheme to perform for the laborers in the distant mining camps in the Sierras. Before parting company, the brothers had put their father aboard a steamer to Panama City with his trunks packed full of costumes, a collection of seashells he had gathered on a Mexican beach, and a great many bags of gold dust, his earnings from the tour as well as the payment he had extracted from June.
“They sent Father alone?” Asia exclaimed, taking the letter from her mother to read it for herself.
“They couldn’t have.” Mother shook her head in disbelief and sank into a chair. “They shouldn’t have.”
“But why didn’t Edwin seize the opportunity to come home? He never wanted to go on this tour. Why join a group of traveling players in the wilderness when he could have seen Father safely home and then given up the stage once and for all?”
“Perhaps because Edwin knows no other trade, and believes it’s too late to pursue his education.” Mother shook her head, her expression clouded with regret and worry. “Perhaps because, although he took to the stage reluctantly, he’s discovered that he’s an extraordinarily gifted actor, and he has accepted his fate willingly.”
“He could have brought Father home and accepted his fate in Baltimore,” said Asia sharply, but in reply, her mother only sighed.
So commenced another torturous period of anxious waiting, broken by an alarming letter from a stranger, a wealthy Texan who had encountered Father at the port of Chagres on the Caribbean coast of the Isthmus of Panama. Somewhere between San Francisco and Chagres, Father had been robbed of every last sack of gold and had been stranded, penniless and distressed, with no means to continue his journey. The kindhearted Texan explained that upon recognizing the famous tragedian, he had been moved by Father’s plight, had paid his fare, and had seen him safely aboard a steamer to New Orleans.
At this Mother broke down in tears, but she quickly composed herself and sent off a flurry of letters to theatre friends in the Southern port city, imploring them to watch for her husband’s ship and look after him upon his arrival. And then, days later, good news at last—Father wrote from New Orleans to say that he had been engaged at the St. Charles Theatre. He expected to receive more than one thousand dollars for a week of performances, after which he would take a steamer to Cincinnati, and from there he would board a train home to Baltimore.
Mother paced and wrung her hands. “Perhaps I should travel to New Orleans and escort him safely home.”
“It would do no good,” said Asia. “Even if you left today, by the time you’d arrive, Father would have already left. You’d pass somewhere on the Mississippi and never know it.”
On the last day of November, Mother received a telegram from another stranger, the captain of the Mississippi riverboat J. S. Chenoweth. Her husband was gravely ill, the captain had tersely reported from Louisville, and she must meet the ship at its next destination.
Swiftly, Asia and Rosalie helped their mother pack a satchel with enough clothing for a few days as well as cordials and medicines. Alone, Mother set out on the next train for Cincinnati, leaving her daughters at home to await word as patiently as they could. “Mother will nurse Father back to health in due time,” Asia assured Rosalie, who replied with a bleak, silent look, full of doubt.
Asia hastened to prepare a sickroom, but her activity was cut short by a telegram from Mother in Cincinnati.
Father had died of dysentery on the riverboat before the captain had wired Mother to meet him, before the steamer had even put in at Louisville. In truth, Mother had been summoned to retrieve her husband’s remains.
• • •
For three days Father lay in state in the parlor, the walls draped with mourning white, the portraits and mirrors covered, all adornments removed except a marble bust of Shakespeare, which seemed to gaze down upon the late tragedian through the thick glass plate in the coffin lid with sorrow and regret, willing him to rise. Truly, he looked to Asia as if he might heed the Bard’s silent plea, for when the iron coffin had been brought into the house, her father’s noble visage had appeared so lifelike, so uncorrupted, that she dared hope he yet lived.
“Darling, I’m so sorry,” her mother had choked through her heavy black veil, her voice broken and shakin
g, “but it is useless. He is lost to us.”
Mother had reached for her, but Asia had eluded her grasp and, half-blinded by tears, had gone running for the doctor to rouse her father from what she hoped was merely a state of deep unconsciousness. But of course the doctor could do nothing for them, nothing but confirm that the great, beloved man was truly gone.
Wilkes and Joseph had been summoned home from school, and they joined their mother and their sisters in keeping vigil by their father’s catafalque as hundreds of citizens from every rank and station in life called to pay their respects—white and colored, theatre folk and theatre patrons, longtime friends and admiring strangers who had never exchanged a word with Father but revered him as the genius tragedian who had enthralled them from the stage.
June and Edwin were not among the family numbly thanking the callers for their prayers and good wishes. As soon as she returned home from Cincinnati, Mother had written to both absent sons in care of June, having no idea how to reach Edwin in the Sierra Nevada. She urged them not to come home for her sake but to remain in California to work and, with any luck, to earn their fortunes. “They will hear of their father’s death by other means before this sad letter reaches them,” she told Asia as she sealed it, her voice an aching, broken lament.
The thought of her distant brothers’ shock when they read of their father’s death in the papers pained Asia, but there was nothing to be done. The dreadful tidings spread with the lightning speed of the telegraph, drawing a shower of letters and telegrams of condolence upon the home at 62 Exeter Street. Newspapers in cities across the nation eulogized her father in the most somber, respectful phrases, declaring him without equal on the stage in life and immortal in death. Theatre folk from Boston to New Orleans vowed to wear black crepe on their left arms for thirty days in his honor. Poets composed memorial odes to his artistic brilliance, now lost to bereft audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. But knowledge of these and other tributes scarcely registered on hearts numb from sorrow and disbelief. Even as Asia gazed upon her father lying in repose, she could not believe that he was dead, that a mere disease could have quenched the inexhaustible fire of his genius.
Fates and Traitors Page 11