“But they have not,” said Mama as she took her husband’s hand. “They have not, and they shall not.”
It was a decisive victory, the only outcome that allowed for the preservation of the Union, but in the days that followed, the Hales’ rejoicing was restrained, not only because of Papa’s circumstances, but because they were well aware that peace and the restoration of the Union would not come until the war was won.
After supper one evening, the family retired to their suite on the second floor, but just as her father fit the key in the lock, Lucy realized that she had left her reticule in the dining room. “Would you like me to come with you?” her mother asked.
“There’s no need,” Lucy said as she turned to go. “I won’t be but a moment.”
Gathering up her skirts, she hurried downstairs as quickly as decorum permitted. When she inquired at the dining room, the maître d’hôtel told her he had found the small beaded bag beneath her chair and had left it with the front desk clerk. Lucy thanked him and went to claim it, but she halted abruptly a few paces from her destination, transfixed by the sight of a handsome gentleman signing the guest book. She recognized him at once, as any devotee of the theatre surely would—the dark, silky locks tumbling rakishly over a strong brow; the perfectly sculpted chin, the broad chest and strong shoulders; the alabaster skin; the full, expressive mouth. Even his slightly bowed legs were endearing, emphasizing a slender waist, a strong arm. Elegantly attired in trousers of dark gray, a close-fitting black coat, a wine-colored waistcoat, and a gray silk cravat, John Wilkes Booth was the perfect embodiment of masculine beauty, precisely as she remembered from the last time she had seen him perform.
She had stood transfixed and gazing at the actor too long; the clerk glanced up and smiled inquiringly. “May I be of some assistance, Miss Hale?”
Steadying herself with a quick breath, Lucy nodded and returned his smile as she approached the desk. “Yes, please. My reticule wandered off, but the maître d’hôtel assures me you have corralled it here.”
At the sound of her voice, Mr. Booth had turned to smile politely her way, but she did not meet his eye. Her heart was pounding too fast, and she found herself terrified of his searching gaze, certain it would detect the sudden, overwhelming intensity of her emotion.
“Certainly, Miss Hale,” the clerk replied. “It’s locked in the safe. I’ll retrieve it for you at once.”
With that the clerk deserted her, disappearing into a back room and leaving her alone with the famous thespian. She sensed Mr. Booth studying her and she felt heat rise in her cheeks. Should she nod politely? Give him her hand? Seize his hand in both of hers and babble profusely about how much she admired his work? She fervently wished her mother were with her, and yet she was equally glad she had come downstairs alone.
“Forgive me for presuming upon so slender a thread of our acquaintance,” said Mr. Booth unexpectedly, his voice rich, full, and thrilling. “But you are Miss Lucy Hale, are you not?”
She inclined her head but still could not look directly at him. “I am, sir.”
“I thought so. I confess, Miss Hale, you have caught me in a moment of utter consternation, and I know not how to proceed.”
Surprise compelled her, at last, to meet his gaze. “How so, Mr. Booth?”
“Ah! Then you do recognize me. That makes everything so much easier.”
Charmed, intrigued, she felt herself smiling. “What makes what easier? Pray enlighten me.”
“I meant only this—when I heard the clerk speak your name, and I recognized you, I found myself torn between politeness and propriety. Surely I ought to thank the young lady who has fortuitously appeared at my side for the lovely bouquet of flowers she sent me a year ago, but custom demands that I not address her until we are properly introduced, and yet there is no one here to perform that duty. I was at war with myself, thinking that I ought to speak, knowing that I must not.” He shook his head, his brow furrowing in amusement and feigned helplessness. “What is a well-meaning gentleman to do when confronted with such a thorny thicket of tangled obligations?”
“Apparently you found your way through it.”
“Indeed, yes, and without tearing my coat or losing my hat.” He peered at her, his smile broadening. “You are the Miss Lucy Hale who sent flowers to my dressing room at the Washington Theatre in May of last year?”
“I am she,” Lucy admitted, very much embarrassed. How she wished, too late, that she had heeded Lizzie’s warnings to constrain the expression of her appreciation to applause! “Please forgive me my girlish impetuosity. I was—overcome with admiration for your portrayal of Charles de Moor. I had seen The Robbers before, but never had the villain seemed so startling and terrible and yet wonderful—strong and passionate, and yet tender and penitent. You were astonishing, absolutely brilliant—” She caught herself. “If I may say so, Mr. Booth.”
“You may indeed say so, as often as you like. It may surprise you, but I encourage such talk.”
She laughed, still embarrassed, but feeling a bit relieved as well. “A note would have sufficed, I suppose.”
“Perhaps, but ink on a page is too dull and plain to properly represent the loveliness of the sender. Flowers suit her much better.”
Lucy rarely found herself at a loss for a witty reply, but Mr. Booth’s ineffable charm rendered her lightheaded and tongue-tied. “Will the people of Washington City be so fortunate as to enjoy another one of your performances soon?”
“Alas, they will not, unless they’re clever enough to find themselves in New York City at the end of the month.”
As Mr. Booth resumed signing the register and set down the pen, Lucy’s heart inexplicably plummeted. “Then you will not be staying long enough to perform in Washington?”
“Not this time. I’m traveling on other business. My only upcoming engagement is at the Winter Garden in Manhattan, a performance of Julius Caesar with my elder brothers for the benefit of the Shakespeare monument to be erected in Central Park. Junius will portray Cassius, Edwin Brutus, and I Mark Antony. This will be the first time the three of us have appeared onstage together.”
“How wonderful.” Lucy did not know Junius, but she had seen Edwin Booth perform several times. She agreed with the general consensus that he was the greatest tragedian of the day, but John Wilkes was by far the more handsome of the two. “Such a momentous occasion. I’m sure you’ll have a sell-out crowd. Dare we hope for a repeat performance here in the capital?”
Mr. Booth shook his head. “Unfortunately, I think not. It was no small feat to arrange our conflicting schedules to allow even this single night’s engagement.”
“What a shame,” she lamented. “I should love to see the three sons of the great Junius Brutus Booth perform Shakespeare onstage together.”
“Perhaps you shall,” he said, as if struck by sudden inspiration. “If you wouldn’t find the train ride to New York objectionable, I could arrange for tickets to be held at the box office for you.”
For a moment she could only blink at him, astounded. “That is very generous of you, Mr. Booth,” she managed to say, “however, I couldn’t possibly—”
“Do forgive me, Miss Hale,” he said, his dark eyes endearingly concerned. “You must think me terribly forward. By tickets, I meant four—for you, and your parents, and your sister.”
“Of course,” Lucy murmured, both relieved and disappointed. Of course Mr. Booth had not intended to invite her to New York City alone to watch him perform. For a fleeting moment she imagined sitting in the audience with her family at the Winter Garden, delighting in the performance of the three celebrated Booth brothers, applauding as John Wilkes took his bows, warming to a smile that was meant for her alone—but then she imagined her mother’s eyebrows raising as she learned of the invitation; her parents exchanging a long, knowing, skeptical look; Lizzie regarding her with astonishment and shaking her he
ad in dismay.
Her parents would consider the invitation entirely improper. Their families did not know each other, and they hailed from vastly different worlds. Senators did not see actors socially, and neither did their daughters.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Booth,” Lucy told him with feeling. “I would very much like to accept, but my family is obliged to remain in the capital for the foreseeable future. I cannot tell you how sorry I am that I won’t be able to witness what I’m sure will be a magnificent production.”
“I’m sorry too,” he replied affably, but something in his expression told her that he knew the real reason she had declined. “But perhaps our paths will cross again someday, and I can give you my own, utterly biased review.”
In spite of her distress, she smiled. “I do hope so.”
“Perhaps we could read the play together, and I could attempt to re-create the performance for you.” Somewhat ruefully, he added, “If you would like that, and if the absence of my brothers doesn’t make the idea less appealing.”
“I would like that very much, with or without your brothers.”
At that moment, the clerk emerged from the back room with her reticule, which she accepted with her thanks. She offered Mr. Booth her hand in parting, he made an elegant bow over it, and she hurried off, heart pounding, wishing—or nearly so—that for just one day, she could be the sort of bold young woman who would have accepted his invitation.
• • •
Something—embarrassment, perhaps, or a girlish desire to keep the memory all to herself, to savor in private—kept her from telling anyone about her encounter with the famous actor. For several days thereafter, she looked for Mr. Booth surreptitiously whenever she strolled through the hotel’s public rooms, but to her disappointment, she did not see him again.
She assumed he had concluded his business in the capital and had moved on to New York to meet his brothers, so when her father almost bumped into Mr. Booth one evening as he was entering the dining room and they were going out, surprise struck her with almost physical force, an electric thrill running from head to heart and to all her extremities like a frantic signal on a telegraph wire.
“I beg your pardon,” Mr. Booth said to her father, bowing and stepping aside to allow them to pass.
“Not at all,” Papa replied as he bowed in return and led his wife and daughters from the dining room. Lucy inclined her head slightly to Mr. Booth as she passed by, and to her astonishment, he winked back.
“Excuse me, sir,” Mr. Booth called after them as they proceeded toward the staircase, as if he had only then recognized Papa. “Are you not Senator Hale of New Hampshire?”
Papa paused and acknowledged that he was. After the two gentlemen introduced themselves, and Mr. Booth had commended Papa for his vote on a particularly obscure piece of mining rights legislation, Papa introduced his ladies to Mr. Booth. When Lucy gave him her hand—his palm was more calloused and rough than she expected of an actor—she tried to regard him sternly, silently reproaching him for deceiving her father. Mr. Booth’s eyes twinkled with such mischievous merriment that she could not keep up the pretense, and she smiled in return.
Now they had been formally introduced, and by her father, no less. If they met in public again, there was no point of etiquette forbidding Mr. Booth from striking up a conversation with her, if he wanted to.
Lucy and her family saw Mr. Booth again the following morning at breakfast, but her father was eager for his coffee so they did not pause to chat but only exchanged a few pleasantries in passing. And then, just as suddenly as before, Mr. Booth vanished. Lucy could not imagine what business kept him traveling to and from Washington City if he were not performing, but since his absence denied her any more chance meetings in the hotel, she had no opportunity to ask.
She searched for him in the papers instead. On November 24, the New York Herald rewarded her diligence with an announcement of the Booth brothers’ upcoming production of Julius Caesar, which, the reporter proclaimed, “ought to be chronicled as a great event in the history of drama in this city.” Junius and John Wilkes Booth were less familiar to New York playgoers than their brother, but “they are spoken of as worthy associates of Mr. Edwin Booth, so well and so favorably known here.” The piece concluded with a glowing declaration that read as both praise and challenge: “If there is any real taste for a great and pure dramatic entertainment in this city, the house will be one of the most densely crowded ever seen.”
It surely would be, Lucy thought, muffling a sigh of regret, and she could have been there, an admiring and keenly interested witness to theatre history.
The day after the historic performance, the Hales settled down to share the morning papers after breakfast, their usual practice when the Senate was in recess. Lucy hoped to find a brief mention of Mr. Booth, but she had barely begun to scan the headlines when Lizzie gasped in alarm. “Last night the rebels tried to burn New York City,” she exclaimed.
Papa had been reading letters in an armchair by the window, but he quickly set them aside as Lizzie and Lucy took turns reading aloud the shocking reports. At about nine o’clock the previous night, blazes had broken out almost simultaneously at the St. James Hotel, Barnum’s Museum, and the St. Nicholas Hotel. Then, over the next three hours, flames had erupted and had burst through upper windows of the Metropolitan Hotel, Lovejoy’s Hotel, and the Lafarge House—which shared a building with the Winter Garden Theatre. At midnight five more hotels as well as several other buildings suddenly caught fire. Thankfully, the blazes had been extinguished before the structures could be badly damaged, and no lives had been lost. Afterward, investigators concluded that dozens of Confederate agents, many of them “importations from Richmond, Petersburg, and Canada,” had stolen into the city Friday morning carrying in their luggage jars of phosphorous and turpentine. They had checked into rooms at the various hotels, had soaked the beds and blankets with combustible liquids, and had ignited them with Lucifers matches.
“How frightened the people of New York must be to discover that rebel spies have infiltrated their city,” said Lizzie shakily.
“My dear, it’s entirely possible that some of the arsonists have lived among them all the while, as their neighbors and friends, and continue to do so,” said Papa carefully, as if not wishing to frighten them. “Confederate sympathizers lurk in every Northern city, and only the most brazen announce themselves.”
“I find their choice of targets even more disturbing than their secrecy,” said Mama, a deep crease of worry appearing between her brows. “Why attempt to burn hotels and theatres rather than factories and warehouses, unless the purpose is to take civilian lives rather than to destroy military resources?”
Lucy shuddered, imagining women and children shrieking in pain as they fled the tall buildings of New York City, their clothing engulfed in flames. No lives had been lost, she reminded herself as she searched the columns for any other mention of the Winter Garden. Then, at last, a small notice caught her eye: The performance of Julius Caesar had been briefly interrupted when a gentleman seated in the dress circle had observed firemen arriving to extinguish the flames at the Lafarge House. He had told the ladies in his company that the theatre was on fire, his remark had been overheard, and as the alarm spread, nearly everyone in the audience rose at once to flee. At that moment an inspector with the Metropolitan Police, who happened to be present for the show, had called out, “It is only a drunken man. Keep your seats.” His deception had quelled the rising panic and had no doubt saved many lives by preventing a general stampede for the exits, and the play had continued without further disruption.
Lucy was greatly relieved to know that Mr. Booth and his brothers had not been harmed, but it was not until the following Wednesday that she learned that their historic performance had been a resounding success despite the alarming interruption. “The audience was fairly carried by storm from the first entrance of t
he three brothers side by side in their respective parts,” the New York Herald reported. “Brutus was individualized with great force and distinctness—Cassius was brought out equally well—and if there was a lack of real personality given to Mark Antony, the fault was rather in the part than in the actor.”
Indignant, Lucy winced at the slight to Mr. John Wilkes Booth, but she decided that she could hardly trust the opinion of a reporter who could not spell the character’s name correctly.
She was glad to see that the National Intelligencer appreciated the talents of all three of the Booth brothers equally. Asserting that the production was “unprecedented in the records of the drama,” the writer praised each of the brothers Booth by name, declaring, “Never, even on the British stage, to our knowledge, have artists of such merit, as on this occasion, been associated in any one tragedy of the Great Dramatist.” The reporter went on to lament that a production of such elevated artistic merit had not taken place in “this large, refined, and intelligent city of Washington, the capital of a great nation, combining as it does a class of people as critical as any in America.” Lucy wholeheartedly shared in his disappointment.
But that very evening, she discovered that the quality of Washington theatricals might affect her very little in the months ahead. After considering his options, her father had decided to muster support among his Republican friends in the Senate to petition President Lincoln to appoint him Minister to France.
• • •
Lucy absorbed her father’s announcement with a curious mixture of excitement and regret. Although Papa’s appointment was by no means certain, Lucy and Lizzie promptly began studying French, a language they had learned at boarding school but had used only rarely in the years since. The idea of living in Paris as the daughter of a high-ranking diplomat—the parties they would enjoy, the fascinating people they would meet, the fashions, the museums—delighted Lucy beyond measure, and yet Washington had recently acquired a fascination all its own, thanks to a certain actor who occasionally made it his home.
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