CONSIDER THE ELEPHANT

NEW REVIEW ON KINDLE

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:35:00 +0000

Meticulously well researched and wonderfully written; historically accurate yet containing all of the elements of (true) high drama. Experiencing Consider the Elephant is like savoring dark chocolate in a world of imitation cocoa. I wish I could see this brought (intact) to the big screen or HBO. Aram Schefrin has captured everything; the times, the people, the events. Simply a marvelous work of story telling. Bravo Mr. Schefrin!

A NEW REVIEW - BY MORNINGSTAR - AT KINDLE

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:53:00 +0000

A NEW REVIEW AT ITUNES

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:22:00 +0000

CONSIDER THE ELEPHANT Aram Schefrin Category: Literature Free Rating: Excellent Historical Fiction. Well researched, well written, and well performed. This, like all of Schefrin's work available on iTunes is fantastic and fascinating. Highly recommended.

NOW AN E-BOOK!

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:54:00 +0000

Consider The Elephant is now available as an e-book for your PDA or cell phone at Mobipocket. com and for the Kindle at Amazon.

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington

CHAPTER ONE

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:57:00 +0000

boomp3.com

Sorry, he writes me … “Sorry, Ned. They probably think you are in it straight up to your eyeballs …”

Sorry?! The shite – my brother! – has ruined me! They have canceled my run at the Boston Theater – banned me in Boston, so to speak, from a very loving venue; and I’ve had to tell them I’m grateful for it, and d-mmit, maybe I am. I might have been dragged down from the stage and torn limb from limb, even by those who adored me – they nearly lynched June in Cincinnati, he had to hide for three days in his hotel room! Or if not, they’d have set up such howlings and hissings, or, at the least, shown me cruel, twisted faces, full of such awful hate – and I am not used to such horrible things; nobody ought to bear it.

I was to play The Iron Chest – Sir Edward Mortimer, one of Papa’s roles. And I would have come to that line of his: “Where is my honor now?” And, Christ, they would have answered me! “You haven’t a shred of it left, Booth!”

I honestly do not believe I will ever work again!

What he’s done to me, and our brother June, and Asia, and oh! God! Mother! And that kind man, that honored soul – Abe, the snuffed-out goodness … Did Wilkes not remember Papa’s words: “A robber of life can never give back what he has wantonly taken …” “Every death,” Papa said, “its own avenger breeds.” I don’t know if that was his, or if he read it up somewhere … nobody’s words were safe around Papa, he captured everything, with him it was half the time what he said, and the other half how he said it … but Papa loved life, all life, every life … there wasn’t a d—ned religion Papa didn’t give his faith to … How did Wilkes dare it? I don’t understand. How in God’s name did he dare it?

Our sister Asia was at home in Philadelphia, already in the throes of a bad day – one of the many she had at that time, she was carrying twin foeti – on the Saturday morning, April 15, the day after Good Friday of 1865. She was wrapped in her bed in a rose duvet, her black hair floating over multiple levels of pillows, the white of their cases stark against the red moiré walls of her bedroom. From time to time she would touch her belly under her swollen breasts, prodding for various heartbeats, her own plus two.

Her husband Jack was in his dressing room, smearing his toffee-tinted beard with lilac shaving soap and slopping it with water from a porcelain jug, grateful again this morning that a comedian can get good use out of an imperfect face. He did not hear the newspaper, tossed by the usual boy, smack into the porch steps with a thwack like the sound of a birch on a behind. But Asia did, and as she was bored, she threw off the covers, got herself up and, clutching on to the handrail, went down the stairs to get it.

She opened the door and stepped out to the stoop, bent with sighs to pick up the journal, the babies churning within her; then stepped back through the door and pushed it shut. With more sighs, she turned and trudged down the center hall to ascend the stairs and return to the unwelcome bed, absently at the same time undoing the paper the newsboy had knotted into itself. The headline was huge. She read it, hardly meaning to. Then she started screaming and did not stop.

Jack ran out, terrified, nearly stumbling on the rug in the hall and tumbling down the steps. Below him, Asia was on her hands and knees, her gown fallen open, her belly unslung, her thin nose flared like an eagle’s beak, the newspaper under her elbows. Her meager mouth was stuck open, and such a sequence of shrieks and moans came out of it.

Jack rushed a wire to my house in New York, at 28 East Nineteenth Street. I happened to be in Boston then, as I’ve said, but Mother was keeping the house up with my sister Rosalie and taking care of my daughter Edwina, who was only two years old at the time and did not travel with me. Mother already knew about Wilkes, of course, before the telegram came; the New York papers were quick with the news, which, on the caw of the newshawk, ripped down the streets like grapeshot and rattled the city’s windows. Any other woman, learning what Mother learned that day, would have been prostrated. But Mother is so strong, so disciplined. There was only the slightest palsy as she absorbed, on top of her son’s treachery, her daughter’s mental collapse. Then she quickly made do for Edwina with the help of a neighbor lady, neatly packed a carrying case and another for Rosalie, and cabbed to the Hudson ferry, sailed to Jersey City, went to the railway depot and caught the cars to Philadelphia.

When she arrived, she found that Jack had gotten Asia to bed, though she flopped about it dangerously. Mother rescued Asia’s mind, and most likely her life as well. But Asia has always been prone to melancholies, whether with reason or no; and we do not know if she will ever come out of this despair.

On that miserable morning, my valet James came into my hotel room and woke me. It is very hard always for me to sleep; when I am awakened I am liable, without knowing I am doing it, to throw at whoever stirs me whatever is at hand, and James had standing orders never to cut short my rest. I was furious with him. I demanded he tell me what he meant by it. “Oh Massa Edwin,” he moaned, “you never could guess what has happened! The President has been shot and oh, Massa Edwin, I fear Wilkes has done it!”

James has been known, from time to time, to … misunderstand. I wouldn’t believe a word of it, til he handed me the newspaper. And then the bells began to toll, and every note of them told me things would never be the same.

I did not go to Philadelphia – I was not known there, and I did not feel I would be safe there in these circumstances. No, that is an awful lie – it makes me a wretched coward. Jack and I owned a playhouse there, called the Walnut Street. Philadelphia was a theater town, nearly as much as Boston. The tradition was old, and sanctified, not glitterish like New York. Edwin Forrest lived there, and everyone else came through. I had played there many times. I was known very well in that city.

And I was betrothed then to a Philadelphia girl. We were to be married in September – that is, the September just now past. I can’t describe her - I mean, I won’t. I do not want you to know her. She was the first I’ve cared for since my wife Mollie died, and she loved little Edwina – it seemed – almost as much as I. Had I gone to Philadelphia, she’d have come to see me, and the thing I wanted most was to keep her clear of this.

And there is also the fact that I am not the consoling sort.

No. I absquatulated from Boston, to New York by the midnight train. The skulking I did reminded me of that which Old Abe had done when he’d sneaked into Baltimore en route to his first inauguration. They would have killed him in Baltimore, if they had gotten their hands on him; and I was certain they would have harmed me, too, on either end of my trainride.

When I climbed my front stairs and opened the door, all the gaslights were on, though the dawn was then breaking and one could see well enough by its light. At some time during the night, Adam had let my friends in; he had guessed I would run out of Boston, though I hadn’t let him know. They milled, in their formal best, in the foyer, the parlor, my kitchen. They had appropriated the whiskey that I kept – for guests, as I tell myself – hidden in the bookshelves which lined my study walls. They looked as though they had come from seeing the worst play on Broadway.

They put their arms around me. They suffocated me. They said it was impossible that Wilkes could have done this thing – but I was as certain it was true, and that he had, as if it had struck me on the head. I couldn’t speak; if I ventured a word, it climbed up the scale to a screech. I know my eyes were bloodshot and wild; black things flickered in jagged patterns at the edges of my sight. They thought I verged on losing my mind, and maybe they were right. Adam wouldn’t leave me alone when I staggered off to try to sleep. He lay in my room, in the other bed, under Wilkes’ portrait, which I stared at for hours, unable to catch a hint of oblivion.

But our brother Junius went to Asia’s – and Jack would not let him in!

“A Booth in my house might cause talk.” That is what Jack told June, as he stood with his arms folded and a dark scowl on his face before the two mahogany doors that led from the outside into the hall.

June stood there dumbfounded. “You already have a Booth in your house. Three of them, now that I think on it.” He meant Asia, and Mother, and Rosalie, whom mother had taken with her because she could not be left alone.

“No one would believe these women could have played a part in this thing.”

“But they would believe that I did.”

“And perhaps they would be right.”

“And of course if I am suspect, so are you, for harboring me.”

“You have got it, June,” said Jack. But Asia brushed her husband aside and pulled June into the house. She seemed to have regained a hold on herself, and a hold on Jack as well.

“I never liked Wilkes,” Jack snarled as he carried in June’s bags. “Do you know the bastard tried to choke me when I said something down on the South?”

“Yes, Jack, we know,” Asia sighed as she gave her brother a hug. She was wearing Jack’s bath robe, big enough to contain her ponderous belly. “He didn’t care for you much, you know. He tried to stop me from marrying you.”

“Really! The bastard. What did he say?”

“A number of things that were true.”

At that, June told me later, Asia broke down. She slumped into our brother’s arms and wailed: “Oh God! June! Can you believe it? Is it possible?”

“I don’t know,” June mumbled, making his own tears. “They say they have proof. He was seen.”

“Oh God. My sweet little brother. The other half of my soul.”

June swept Asia off her feet and carried her into the parlor (Jack resented him for it.) Mother was sitting there stiffly in a green plush high-backed chair. “Papa loved Wilkes so,” Mother spoke up, with a touching smile on her lips. “When your baby brother Henry Byron died, it broke Papa up. He was playing Richard the Third, I think, I don’t remember where. When somebody brought him the news, he rushed off the stage, jumped on his horse and whipped it home with the sword he used in Richard. By the time he arrived, I had already entombed the child. He took the baby out of the vault and brought him into our bed. Even though he hated death, I think he longed for his own. Then I had Wilkes. A life had been given for the life that was taken. Papa spoiled Wilkes rotten for joy.”

“That was a waste of affection,” Jack smirked.

Asia turned on him, claws out. “Cut out that talk, or be gone!”

“I’m tired,” June soughed, “and this isn’t helping my ragged state of mind. If it’s all right with you, Asia, and Mother, I’d like to go to sleep.” Asia nodded, and led him up to a second-floor room on the southern wall of the house. June, caked with railroad smudge, tumbled onto the bed. Asia gazed at him fondly, then turned and left him alone. Back in the parlor, she and Mother sat up all night long, sipping draughts from a whistling teapot, trading a syllable now and then. Nobody said a word to Jack, so he went to bed by himself. Rosalie, as always, was ill, and played no part in this.

Wilkes was Mother’s favorite – at least, among the boys. With June and me gone to California and out of her life so early, Wilkes and Asia had buoyed her up after Papa died.

Asia was so mercurial – bloody bright, and willful, and often angry with everyone. Wilkes believed she had Jewish blood, since she thought so much of revenge. She was not pretty enough, she thought. She looked Quaker – she looked severe – sharp-nosed, blanched, with her somber ebony hair. Sometimes she wished for a lover, sometimes she yearned for a convent. And she had no faith in people – except for Mother and Wilkes.

Wilkes, though, was always adorable, so boyish and confiding. Perhaps a little rattle-brained, but not excessively so. But do you know what Mother said when she learned about this thing? “If it is true, let him shoot himself. Let him not live to be hanged.”

In the morning, Asia had rebounded enough to cook a breakfast of eggs. She set the mahogany table with her best Sevres porcelain, in the room with the bluish wallpaper with white and pink camellias. Jack came down first, in a foul mood; he didn’t speak, just loaded himself into a dining chair and decimated eggs, spreading the morning’s newspaper over half the table. When June appeared, he looked as though he’d been sat upon by a moose. His face and body were collapsed on themselves; he was hardly able to move. He sat down and filled a coffee cup. Two lumps and an eighth inch of cream splashed a thimbleful into the saucer.

“What news?” he asked.

Jack was barely civil. “The paper says certain important arrests have been made in the capital, at a boarding house on H Street. However, they don’t say who.”

June looked up. “Do you think they’ve got Wilkes?”

“If they had, I am sure they’d have said so.”

June lost himself in pondering, then seemed to steel himself. “I am going to send word to the United States Marshal that I’m here in Philadelphia.”

“Oh no, you’re not!” Jack exploded, slamming his fist on the table top til the coffee dyed the linens. “I told you I didn’t want nobody to know you were in this house!”

“If I don’t, and they find me out, it will look as if I’ve been hiding.”

“That is what you’re doing, isn’t it? Well, dammit, you better stay hid!”

Asia was calm about it, though her anger seeped through her pores. She stood behind June and pressed her hands into the tops of his shoulders. “I don’t want June to run the risk. Send a man to the marshal now.”

“You’re all trying to destroy me!” Jack snapped, but he scraped his chair back roughly, went up and dressed himself properly and called for a messenger. Not an hour later, there was a knock at the door. It was the United States marshal, and with him the chief of police. They looked doleful in black, and what could be seen of their lips – they affected huge moustaches – was set in a bitten line.

“Is this the home of John Clarke?” the Federal marshal asked.

“That’s me,” Jack said, fawning. “I’m the one who sent for you.”

“May we come in?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Jack led them into the dining room. Mother had come down; by then there was little left of the eggs.

“This is my wife, Asia,” Jack said, pointing my sister out. Asia introduced Mother and June, and the marshal’s eyes went wide.

“You are Junius Brutus Booth the younger?” he asked. June admitted he was. “It’s an honor, sir,” the marshal grinned. “I saw your Daddy perform once. Lawdy, he was a corker!” The marshal made himself comfortable on one of the Chippendale chairs. “There’s a story they tell about him in Philly, don’t know if you’ve heard it. I guess your Daddy was pretty much of a drunk towards the end of his time.” The marshal expected denials, but no one offered any. “Well, the manager of one of our theaters got sick and tired of him not showing up, so he locked him in his hotel room to keep him from getting a sheet or two to the wind. Well, your Daddy bribed a bellboy to stand outside his door and hold a saucer of brandy up to the godd—n keyhole. Booth had a little clay pipe. He stuck it through the keyhole, turned it upside down, then he dipped the bowl in the brandy and sucked it all right up. Ever hear that one, son?”

June advised as he hadn’t – although there wasn’t a story about Papa that we had been allowed to remain ignorant of.

Now the marshal turned his eyes on Jack, and suddenly they flashed. “Are you the comedian John Sleeper Clarke?”

“He is,” June cut in drily. “Except his real name’s John Clarke Sleeper. He changed it to get ahead.”

“He’s the funniest man I ever saw!”

“Not around here, he isn’t.”

“Why don’t you shut up, June?” Jack cracked. “I can speak for myself.”

The marshal was still marveling. “I just didn’t recognize you, sir, without your bright red hair! I saw you at the Walnut Street – you own it, do you not? Whenever you came out in that dress and put those plates of food down on the chairs where we knew there was folks going to sit, and then forgot all about ‘em, I just about peed my pants! Oh. Beggin’ your pardon, ladies,” he said, abashed, and curbed his enthusiasm.

“He did that act this morning,” June said. “I d—ned near sat in it myself, and I didn’t find it funny.”

Jack retorted: “That’s because you’ve got no sense of humor.”

“No,” June snickered, “that’s because you weren’t wearing a dress.”

The marshal rose abruptly up, and everyone came to attention. “I have never in my life been in such distinguished company; so it saddens me to tell you that I have to search this house.”

Now Asia and Jack were on their feet. “Is it certain my brother’s done it?”

“Seems so, Ma’am. As the man who shot the President was running from Ford’s Theater, he bumped into the orchestra leader, and stabbed at him with a knife. This fellow recognized your brother, Ma’am, as did several actors. A fellow named Arnold’s been arrested, and done a lot of talking. We’ve got another fellow too, name of Atzerodt. We’ve also got some tips that have given us a fair idea where your brother’s gone.”

“Where?” blurted Asia, desperate.

The marshal looked at her pityingly. “I can’t tell you that, Ma’am. Now, about that search …”

“There’s nothing here, marshal,” Jack yelled. “I haven’t seen him a long time, and he never came here much.” The marshal was moving up the stairs that led to the second floor, the police chief discreetly behind him. Jack raced to the foot of the steps and shouted after them: “I am and I have always been entirely loyal to the United States Government. I have no sympathy with man or woman of rebellious principles.”

The marshal stopped, and turned around. “Even if you are related?”

“Particularly then, because I feel myself betrayed.”

“And do you feel betrayed by this Mr. Booth?” He indicated Junius.

“No, not exactly,” Jack mewled. “I haven’t seen much of him, either.”

For June, this was the final straw. He barked and threw down his napkin, then jumped up from the table and ran up the stairs, elbowing the marshal aside, practically knocking him down. At the summit, he made a whipping turn and stalked into his bedroom. Everyone heard the twist of the key in the lock of the bedroom door. It wasn’t smart, but he did it. Well – that is June.

The marshal spent several hours in the house, Asia told me later, searching through every inch of the place, including Junius’ room. While watching the marshal rummage, she realized that he had somehow overlooked to ask her to open their safe. It was a room of stone and iron leading off the foyer, with a heavy door and another inside, made of iron, and barred. Suddenly she remembered that Wilkes had left her an envelope when he was in town, and that she had put it in the safe. From that moment she was on tenterhooks, til the marshal said goodbye. Five minutes later, the safe was open and Wilkes’ envelope out. The sole word written on it was “Asia.” She opened it, and looked inside. Then she called the family to come quick, and went to the dining room.

When everyone had reappeared, she opened up the envelope and spread its contents on the table. There were bonds in a packet, U. S. 5-20's and Philadelphia sixes, which Wilkes had signed over, most to June, some to Rosalie, and an assignment to June of a lease of land in Franklin, Pennsylvania.

"The oil land," June exclaimed, studying the deed. "Why would he sign it over to me? He thought it would make his fortune."

"Oh, God." Asia lay her head in her hands. "He knew he was going to do it."

“When did he leave these?" June was obviously disturbed.

"He was here in November," Asia said. "He left an envelope then. He said there were certain stocks in it, and he felt he should leave it with me for safekeeping since he had to perform out West. He came again in February, and took something out of it."

“He's been planning it that long, then. No, I am not surprised."

"What do you mean, June?" Mother crackled. "You expected this?"

"Oh, Mother, you know since the war began he has been monomaniacal on the South. Ned wouldn't even discuss it with him, thought it a waste of time. I tried a hundred times to talk him around. I told him the war was a family quarrel which would be patched up in a few years. I begged him to stay out of it. He told me he was going to, due to a promise he made to Mother. Did he make you a promise, Mother?"

"Yes, he did.”

"But I couldn't get him to change his views, or even listen to mine. We almost came to blows one day, and we never discussed it again."

Jack was impatient with family chat. "Let's see what else was in there."

Asia picked up a letter addressed to "Dearest Beloved Mother." Mother took it from Asia's hand, and her own began to tremble. "It's dated last November," she said. She was reading it to herself.

"For God's sake, Mother!" Asia howled. "Tell us what it says." Mother gathered herself so as to keep the warble out of her voice, and began to read it out.

"Heaven knows how deerly I love you, and may our kind Father in Heaven (if only for the sake of my love) watch over, comfort and protect you. May he soffen the blow of my departure, granting you peace and happiness for meny, meny years to come. God ever bless you."

At that, she paused, and put the letter down, til she managed with a tremendous sigh to hold her tears away.

"I have always endeavored to be a good and dutyful son. I would wish to die sooner than give you pain. But though I owe you all, there is another duty, a noble duty, for the sake of liberty and humanity, that is due to my country."

"What duty? What country?" Jack stormed. "He's a godd--ned traitor!" Everyone else just gaped at him, so he cut it off right there.

"For four years I have lived, I may say, a slave in the North (favored, it's true, but no less hateful to me), not daring to express my thoughts or sentiments, even in my own home…"

June snorted. "He had no trouble expressing his sentiments, not that I'm aware of. He told everyone he met."

"If you are not quiet, June," Mother begged, "I shall not be able to finish.”

“Knowing the vile and savage acts commited on my countrymen, I have cursed my willful idelness, and deemed myself a coward and despised my own existence. For four years I have borne it, mostly for your sake, and for you alone have I struggled to fight off this desire to be gone, but it seems that uncontrollable fate, moving me for its ends, takes me from you, dear Mother, to do what work I can. I care not for the censure of the North, just so I have your forgiveness, and I feel I may hope for it, even though we disagree.

“I have not a single selfish motive to spur me on to this - nothing save the sacred duty I feel I owe the cause I love, the cause of liberty and justice. So should I meet the worst, I can say God's will be done, and bless him for not permitting me to outlive our dear bought freedom. Bear it patiently, dear Mother, and think at the best life is short, and not at all times happy. But I feel that we shall meet again. Your loving son will never cease to pray for such a joy. With never ending devotion, your afectionate son, John."

Mother said no more. She soon left the table, went to her room. Asia could hear her sobbing.

There was another letter, too, addressed "To Whom It May Concern." In it Wilkes wrote what his motives were - or what he thought they were. It told us much, though he said it better ... but I am ahead of myself.

No one had any further to say - except, of course, Jack.

"All the theater folk in town are getting together this afternoon. They call it an indignation meeting. They're going to express their outrage at the shooting of the President."

"How unique of them," said June.

"June, I want you to go with me. I can't afford not to be there."

"Theater people," June laughed, "are like Jews. They're convinced that whenever something goes wrong, bad things will happen to all of them, because they're a little queer."

"Will you go with me?" Jack insisted.

"No, I won't." June was flat, flaccid. "If I did they would not let me in."

"I can't go alone."

"Why not? Afraid?"

"I wouldn't know what to say."

"Don't go then, Jack."

Jack didn't.

He was out of the house the next morning when June staggered down from his room. He hadn't said where he was bound. Asia assumed he had driven downtown to check on the Walnut Street Theater. God knew, in these conditions, whether it still stood. But Jack looked guilty when he returned; he would not meet her eye. Asia knew what that look meant. She asked him where he had been.

Jack was rough. His cheeks turned red. "I brought Wilkes' letters to the marshal." Asia's jaw near dislocated, that’s how far it dropped.

"My God, Jack - those were private!"

"Really?" Jack sputtered. "Which one of us was 'To Whom It May Concern'?"

“Why did you do that?" Asia groaned. "Have you any excuse?"

"The letter to Mother spelled it out that the family wasn't involved."

"And it - and the other - were in our house! What do you think they'll think?" Asia sat hard on the first hall step, not easy for one in her state. “One of the things Wilkes said about you was that you hadn't any sense."

"I gave him his start in acting!" Jack shrilled. "Is that how he repaid me? I've got ten times his money, and ten times his crowds! In New York they say I'm the best low comedian in America!"

"Yes, Jack," said June, strolling by, "but you still haven't got any sense." June walked to the front door, and opened it. "I thought so," he muttered. "Look."

All of the house's environs were engorged with officers, and the marshal and the chief of police were standing on the stoop. The marshal tipped his hat to Asia, then put his hands on June. They took him away, while Asia shrieked. The next day they came for Jack.

Asia was wretched, frantic. Mother insisted I come. I packed a bag, stepped out my front door and found my house surrounded.

I panicked, I admit it. I didn't know what they'd thought I'd done, or thought I was going to do. I suddenly found I could not take another step away. I turned, ran inside and slammed the door. I pulled the velvet curtains shut; I would not turn on the gas. I barely moved a foot in the place, for fear an errant board would squeak and they'd think I was up to no good. For over a week I did not look out any of the windows. At night I lurked in a dark so thick I couldn't see my hand. A constant stream of messengers called, to bring notes from me to faithful friends, and notes from them to me. Mine were begging for advice; theirs were offering it. All of this mail was opened and read by Federal officers. I felt as if these government men were living inside my mind.

I'm ashamed now of what I did then, when I think of Asia, left nearly alone, not knowing when June or Jack would return, or if they ever would, not knowing whether for the rest of her life she would spend a moment away from the sheriff they had put in her house, who never left her side. At least he was kind about it, she said; he offered to let his wife do the duty, so the intrusions would be less forbidding, but Asia said the last thing she wanted around was a chattering female. They had wanted to take her to prison, too, but her doctor said it would not be safe if she were forced to travel, and so they had made her a prisoner in her home. I wrote to her sometimes twice a day, trying to comfort her, but I, as I said, am not good at it - and was not much soothed myself.

On one of these nights, a man who worked for Jack came to Asia's door. He was old, a porter of sorts from another time when wigs were still powdered with talc, and, though he was not infirm, he steadied himself on the table in the hall, keeping his eyes down and away, and his face was pale and working. She knew, without his telling her, what he had come to say.

"Is it over?" she asked.

"Yes, madam.”

"Taken?"

"Yes."

"Dead?"

"Yes." He threw up his arms as sobs closed his throat, turned and went out the way he had come, closing the door behind him. More graceful than she usually was, Asia folded down to the floor, where she lay with her face to the wall, muttering: "Oh, thank God!"

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Check these links for more information:

A biography of Edwin Booth
Another biography
A bibliography on Edwin Booth

Go to Chapter 2

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington

CHAPTER TWO

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:15:00 +0000

boomp3.com

The Philadelphia newspapers wrote that Asia had gone mad and been put away at the West Philadelphia asylum. That was the least of the lies that were told about us. Another man who worked for Jack told Asia he'd gone to see Jack in prison in Washington, and that Jack had said he desired a divorce as his only way to salvation. That wasn't true, the man was a spy or some sort of maniac, but by then Asia had begun to think it wasn't a bad idea. The nurse she'd hired to care for her refused to enter her home. As did many of her so-called friends. Even her doctor balked. "There is no solidity in love," Asia wrote me, "and no truth in friendship." I would not be surprised if, when she wrote those words, she had me in her mind.

And then one night I woke to find a constable at my door. I sent James to open it; he was handed a subpoena. I had to go to Washington to talk to the police!

I was scared; I did not want to leave my house; I didn't want to be grilled. I knew I would stumble over my words, and convict myself - of something! - without comprehending it. But I had no choice - I was fairly tagged, I was "It" as we used to play - so I called up a hansom and caught the cars to take me to the capital. The first smack of daylight in over a week turned my legs to ambergris. James had to hold me erect until I boarded the train.

What a miserable city Washington is, even in April when the catalpa trees throw out their papery white flowers. Great mansions stand beside shanties - not unlike New York, I admit, and pigs and geese wander the streets like dogs in my city too. But the fraud of Washington City is that it was supposedly built on some master plan, and no one seems to remember it. Or remembers, but does not care. The public buildings and many homes were swaddled in black crepe, alongside the transparencies still hung for Lee's surrender - "Victory brings Peace," "Stand by the Flag," "God Wills we remain United."

I arrived at a two story building on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue, across from Willard's Hotel on the corner of Fourteenth Street. The north side of the Avenue is a fashionable address, but the south side is pocked with boarding houses, bordellos and saloons - H-l divided from Heaven by a boulevard of mud, temptations in full display from the south-facing windows of Willard's. No reputable person would let himself be seen on the wrong side of the street, except the men of Lafayette Baker's Federal Police, whose headquarters, to which I was to report, had been slipped between a whorehouse and a rat-and-dog enterprise.

I was escorted into a windowless room by a coterie of men whose pants did not match their jackets and whose hair stuck out of trilbies like clumps of meadow grass - except for Lafayette Baker himself, who was slim and slick, muffled his face in a heavy brown beard and stared at me with jagged gray eyes with the clear intent to jolt me. The room was oddly decorous - rather nicely papered in a calm striped pattern, not at all the appearance a torture chamber ought to present. Their questions were less subtle, but no rubber hose was used. I told them I knew little of Wilkes; that for years I'd had nothing to do with him. A hundred fifty witnesses could have been called to prove me false, but at the end of the afternoon I was told that I could go. What I didn't know was whether it was a temporary reprieve. Mightn't they think better of it, come get me and put me away?

June had asked me, by messenger, to visit him in prison. Even then I faltered, not wanting to come to know the place. But I did screw up my courage and go to the jail to see him, paying my nickel to find a place on a horsedrawn car. How utterly surreal it was to ride in this white-and-cream-colored coach - its seats made of silk, its windows stained glass in sashes of fine cherry wood shielded with delicate poplar blinds and white damask curtains, like an elegant New York parlor or the rectory of a church - as it rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue through herds of mules and cattle, rattling trains of military wagons and racing high-toned phaetons, the appalling fetor of fish stalls, the murk of the swamp and Tiber Creek, on which floated like lily pads the corpses of horses and cats. Behind the avenue's shacks and huts were the city's only sewers, which had a habit of backing up into the cellars and shops, the stink blown up by the high winds that whistled down this road, as we passed the houses of Congress and came to the Old Capitol Prison.

The prison took up a city block at the corner of First and A. It was a three-story brick building, with chimneys at every corner; the first story exterior was whitewashed, as all prisons seemed to be, though the higher floors showed peeling red brick; and the windows of the weather beaten entranceway, under a ramshackle tin awning, were smashed and opaque with dirt. The building had housed the Congress after the British burned the Capitol in the War of 1812. After that it had been a boarding house for Washington notables, including - once - Abraham Lincoln. Now the second-floor room where the Senators had convened was slashed into five small cells, each with triple-stacked bunks and a single crumbling washstand. There were eighteen or twenty prisoners in each of these filthy rooms. They brought June out to talk to me in a chamber a floor below. He wasn't wearing manacles; June said they'd spared him that.

I was amazed to see that June did not look very much worse for wear. "I have my meals brought to my cell from Whitney's restaurant on A Street," he laughed. "Mrs. Whitney is quite a chef; I believe I've put on weight."

"I expected to see a wraith," I said.

"Well, you very well might have. They feed the others poorly - just rice and fatty meat, though the bread's very good, for some reason; and they only get thirty minutes to swallow the garbage down. The worst of it is, the mess hall is next to the hospital facility; between the stinks of the food and the gangrene, I don't know how they eat at all."

"Are you sleeping well, June?"

"The beds are made up with months-old straw, and they're filled with various vermin. You learn quick enough if you want to sleep, you do it on the floor. My cellmates, though, have been very kind. They asked me what I was in for; when I told them, they made me their King. You know who they keep in this prison, don't you? Blockade-runners and spies. Wilkes is a hero here, brother Ned. Therefore, so am I. Though there's no shortage of folks in here who were supposedly in on it."

"You mean this was not just Wilkes' craziness?"

"Honestly, Ned, I don't know."

"Have they told you the charges against you yet?" June leaned back in his chair and smiled.

"It seems I wrote Wilkes, not long ago, and spoke about his oil business. They tell me now this was some sort of code referring to the conspiracy."

"What conspiracy?"

"I told you, I don't know."

"Is that all they've got?"

June looked at me oddly. "Do you doubt me, brother?"

"Don't be a fool!"

"Yes. That is all they've got."

"Have you seen Jack?"

June looked surprised. "What do you mean? Is he here?"

"They took him the day after they took you."

"God. I had no idea." June looked exhausted, then brightened a bit. "That's a pretty good joke, isn't it. Them suspecting him."

"I should say so," I giggled, "since Wilkes despised his guts."

"You know Wilkes is dead."

"Yes, of course." We didn't speak for a moment. "God, I'm sorry, June."

"Sorry for what? That I'm in here and you, somehow, are not?"

His sudden anger struck me hard. "That wasn't exactly my choice!"

"I suppose so," June muttered.

"Do you doubt me, brother?"

''No,'' he sighed finally, "I don't." He lay his head down on the table that separated us. "We must use philosophy, Edwin. It's a mere matter of time. "

It wasn't til the end of May that the authorities decided Jack knew nothing. Most of that time they'd kept him alone, had not let him speak to anyone or even see a newspaper. Jack was not self-sufficient; it must have driven him crazy. Then they'd put him in together with June, a man who adores his solitude and was busy reading Spencer, and who told me that after several days he wished they'd hanged Jack for treason. Then they let Jack go, but held onto June, and June was finally afraid; there seemed no reason to keep him and not Jack, unless they thought he was guilty, and June could think of nothing except that someone had framed him up.

June's fears were not unreasonable. The times were wild and rumorous. It was said they had attempted the life of the Secretary of State, who'd survived because a metal brace on his head and neck, installed when he'd been tossed from a runaway carriage, had thwarted the killer's blade. They had tried to kill General Grant, and Vice President Johnson. Eight people - one a woman - had been formally charged with the death of the President. Hundreds more had been questioned. Some of them knew June. The prosecutors noised it about that the plot had been laid in Richmond by the Confederate cabinet, and overseen by their agents in Ontario and Quebec. Anyone - particularly in Washington, where secessionists were legion - might have some connection to someone who was suspected. And, for the moment, what anyone said was taken seriously.

It was Asia who finally got June out of jail. She had Philadelphia Republican friends; they traveled down to Washington and wangled his release. They brought him to Philadelphia, back to Asia's house. I had arrived there as well, by then, and we all stayed there, together. Neither June nor I heard another word from the Federal government. The sheriff was gone from Asia's house. We were finally able to breathe.

Philadelphia in June is much too hot; its red brick row houses suck in the sun like drying kilns and pump it back into the night. Anyone who can afford to, leaves to catch a bit of breeze. For us, that was a mercy; people let us alone.

The trial of the eight was under way, and under constant discussion. No one else had been charged as yet, and no one seemed likely to be. June had gone to San Francisco. Had not been heard from since. I should have been going, too, to New York, but I lingered in Philadelphia, afraid to confront my own abode, my friends, my former life. There was nothing but pain in New York for me now, and I had brought enough of that in my bags to Philadelphia.

On one of those sweaty unsleepable nights when heatwaves rose from the pavements, as Asia, Mother and myself fanned ourselves on the whitewashed stoop - Jack had taken to saloon life, and rarely joined the group - a youngish boy ambled up Race Street and stopped just beyond my feet. He was blonde and bright-eyed, a country boy from the well-scrubbed look of him, all cleaned up in his Sunday best for a visit to the city.

"Would you be Edwin Booth?" he asked, tugging at his cap. I admitted I was, though I was more than reluctant to do it.

"My name is Richard Garrett," he said. "Your brother was shot on my father's farm. Do you think I could come in?" We jumped up, of course, and took him inside, trying not to let emotion get the best of courtesy.

"I come all the way on the cars by myself," he exclaimed as he stood in the foyer.

Mother smiled and patted his hand. "You're a brave boy. Are you hungry?"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm hungry. But I ain't so brave. Lots of boys done more than me when the War was on."

I looked at him and it struck me: here was my first Confederate. This boy was of the race of men Wilkes had murdered for. And I might have done the same for this boy, if it would have done him good.

Mother put up a plate of sandwich meats, and we took seats in the parlor. Asia had grown very still, and a little tremor was fluttering over Mother's cheek. I encouraged the boy to eat and to tell us everything. He lay several slices of roast beef on bread, took a bite and spoke.

"My family has a farm in Virginia, just across the Rappahannock River," he said. "Over down the Bowling Green road, three miles from Port Royal. It's a nice place, you know. And the Yankees didn't do nothing bad to it."

"We're glad to hear it," Asia smiled.

"So it’s still the way it was. Well, me and Pa and my brother Jack and my other brother William was working the two front fields. We mostly grow tobacco. We was throwin' seed in the rows. There's a real long path from the road to our house, but from where we was in the fields that day we saw three horses coming south, heading for Bowling Green. There was two men aboard two of the nags, and one man on the other.

“Then the horses stopped in front of our gate; the man who was on the horse alone raised his hat and waved it. Then one of the horses went off down the road, and the other two come through the gate and up the drive to the house.

"My Pa saw that, and we quit our seedin' and went up on our porch. It's on a little rise, you know, between a couple of creeks. As the horses came close, we could see that the men who were sharing a horse were Johnnies …”

“Johnnies?” Mother queried.

“Johnny Rebs. Confederate soldier boys.”

“I see.”

“They was both in butternut and they had their kepis on. But the other fellow alone on his horse was wearing a black slouch hat. He had a kind of dress suit on; he was carrying something big. When they came up further I saw that he was freighting a pair of crutches, and he only had one boot on, and it went up to his hip.

"The two Johnnies rode right up to Pa; the other man lagged behind. Both of the Johnnies lifted their hats, and one of them spoke to Pa. "'I suppose you hardly remember me.'

"'No, sir,’ Pa says, 'I do not.'

"'My father is Mr. Robert Jett, from Westmoreland County.’ Well, I'd known who he was anyway, even if Pa had not.

"Pa lights up - Mr. Jett's a good friend. 'Good Lord, I didn't know you! How have you been, boy? And how in H-l is your father?'

"'I guess he's all right. I ain't seen him yet. I'm headin' home for the first time now since I left Appomattox.'

"'You were there when Lee surrendered?'

"'I was there, but I didn't see it. I saw Marse Robert, though, when he come back. He had to tell us boys what he done, and he didn't like to do it.'

"'I couldn't believe it!' Pa exclaimed. 'Just givin' up like that!'

"'Aw, he had no choice. The Yankees had us bottled.'

"'But d-n the thing, it didn't even flicker, just went right out!"

"'Well, I weren't much for fightin' to the death. Maybe we could've beat 'em, I don't really know. They must grow them Yankees on trees up there. More we kill, the more there is. More guns we take, the more they make. Just wasn't any end to 'em, and we was gettin' tired. Anyway, sir, if you don't mind, I don't want to discuss it.'

'''Sorry.’ Pa shakes his head. 'I guess I understand.'

'''This here's Ruggles,' Jett said next, introducing the soldier behind him. 'And that back there is James Boyd.' The man who was alone on his horse tipped his hat to Pa. 'He got hurt at the seige of Petersburg. You can see he's in some pain.' Well, yeah, you could see it; his face was pinched up and he moaned when the animal moved.

"'Mr. Garrett, me and Ruggles, we gotta get on, but Boyd there is too bad to travel. Could you take him in for a day or two until he's fit to ride?'

"Pa said nothin'. I know what he's thinkin'. We got Ma and my aunt and my sisters here, and we don't know this man. On the other hand, he's a wounded soldier - how can we turn him away? Pa was a Rebel - still is. I mean, Pa didn't go to war, because of us kids and the women. But he would've, wished he could've. Hope you don't mind my sayin' that, but I don't apologize."

"We understand," Mother told him. "We wouldn't ask you to."

"Well, Pa let him stay," the boy went on, "he asked us to help Boyd down. Me, Jack and William took his crutches first; then we reached up and took a holt of him, on his good leg and his waist. We almost had to pull him off, and he screamed when his foot touched the ground. Ruggles climbed onto Boyd's horse, and he and Jett took off.

"'What's wrong with your leg?' Pa said to Boyd.

"'It's broken above the ankle. I've been pushing down in the stirrup for days. I think it's getting worse.'

"We handed Boyd his crutches, and helped him to the veranda. Pa brought out a chair and a pillow, and sat him down, and asked him if there was anything we could get him to ease him some.

"Boyd said: ‘To tell you the truth, I'm tired, and it isn't easy to talk. Would you mind if I just sat here a while and tried to catch a nap?'

"'Course not. You boys leave him alone.' And Boyd fell asleep right away. Pa went in to tell Ma the doin's, and to warn her to take care."

Boyd slept in the chair until suppertime, the boy went on. Now and again, one of the Garretts would go and have a look, Aunt Lucinda particularly; she couldn't remember ever having seen such a beautiful man. He wasn't having a peaceful sleep; he twitched, and he barked like a beagle. When he did, she would reach out to touch him, and then pull her hand away.

Mrs. Garrett put on the supper and sent her husband out to ask Mr. Boyd if he felt like he could eat. Mr. Boyd said no, he couldn't, so young Richard and Jack picked him up and more or less carried him up the stairs into their own bedroom. They took off his clothes and laid him out, and got a better peek at him. "He was the best lookin' fellow I ever seen - dark black moustache, silky-like, and sort of curly black hair. I don't know how to explain it; I just thought he was elegant, even with all that scraggly dark beard he was after growin'. On the web of the thumb of his left hand was the initials 'J.W.B.' Either he or somebody'd wrote it there some time in India ink. His hands were white and trimmed up nice; the skin was really soft. One thing I knew, he weren't no workin' fella like we'uns is."

In the morning, Mr. Garrett went up to help Boyd out of bed. Mrs. Garrett had put out hominy, but her houseguest still wouldn't eat. The day was bright and the sun was warm, and all the grass was new - sweet-smelling fresh-cut timothy, alfalfa, clover weed. Boyd sniffed at the air, then asked the boys to help him walk out to an apple tree and lay down underneath it. They put him where he wanted to be, and he stayed until almost noon. Apple blossoms drifted down and landed on his face; he didn't even brush them off, just left them where they lay. Every once in a while he'd turn his head down and take a deep breath of the earth. I knew Wilkes used to do that all the time; he called it "burrowing."

The little kids - more Garretts - stood off for a while, but in time they grew bold. Soon they were gathered around like Lilliputians around Gulliver. Boyd woke up, and smiled at them, and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a brass compass, coated in places with candle wax. Then Boyd brought out a pocket knife, and told the kids to come closer, enchanting them with the shivering needle which moved as he dragged the point of the knife over the compass glass.

Boyd asked if they wanted a story. Well, of course, they did. "There was a man," Boyd began, "who decided that he would kill himself, and do you know how he would do it?"

They all said "No," and giggled. Kill himself? Who'd do that?

"By jumping off the Capitol in Washington." Everybody gasped. "So he went to the top of the Capitol, and then he just took off. He put his arms way out to the side, just as if he was a bird; but he wasn't a bird, was he, and so he started to fall. And right about then it came to him that he didn't want to die. Now you may think this perception arrived a little bit too late. But the fellow managed to save himself; and how do you think he did it?"

They racked their little callow brains. Nobody could guess.

"Well, he flapped his hands and he pedaled his feet and flew backwards onto the roof. But don't you try it, children. I am not so sure it works."

It was time for lunch, so Mr. Garrett sent Richard out to get Boyd. When the two of them came to the kitchen, Boyd saw the map on the wall, of the Southron Confederacy. He stared at it; then he asked Richard if he wouldn't mind getting it down. Richard pulled out the tacks and spread the map on the kitchen's oak-planked floor. Boyd stacked his crutches against the wall, then he leaned on a chair and got into a kneel, keeping his hurt leg stiff. Richard watched as Boyd marked a route on the map - Port Royal to Norfolk, to Charleston, to Savannah, to Galveston. He asked Boyd where he was headed. Boyd said Mexico.

Lunch had been set on the table by then, so Richard helped Boyd erect himself and walked him to a seat. Nobody spoke for five minutes or so, busy stuffing themselves, except Aunt Lucinda didn't eat - she was making eyes at Boyd.

"Did you hear that Lincoln's been shot?" William said, breaking the hush.

"I heard it," said Garrett. "I think it's horseshit some straggler dreamed up."

"No, Pa." Jack Garrett shook his head. "It's true. It’s in the papers."

Mrs. Garrett reached a whip arm over and slapped Jack on the head. "Don't you speak with your mouth full, Mr. Jack Garrett!"

Jack blushed and choked down his collards. "An actor shot him - Booth - not Edwin, I think it was his brother. They put a price on his head, too - a hundred thousand dollars. That man had better not come this way. I'd like that money 'bout now."

Boyd seemed attentive, where he hadn't been before. He leaned over, close to Jack. "Would you really do that, Jack?" he asked. "Betray the man who shot Lincoln?"

"Well, he better not tempt me," Jack laughed, pointing his fork at Boyd. "Because right now I haven't a cent in the whole d--n world."

Mrs. Garrett was trying to understand why the fellow had done it. "I mean, there wasn't no purpose to it, not any more."

"You know these actors," Boyd grinned. "Anything for a role." Then the little girl, Cora, spit black-eyed peas all over her highty chair. Boyd picked up his napkin, leaned over and wiped her off. "How's that, my blue-eyed pet? It's better to be clean."

After lunch Ruggles returned, bringing two other men. One was a soldier and the other was said to be David Harris, Boyd's cousin. When the soldiers rode off, Harris stayed and ambled over to Boyd, who was laying in the grass again, scraping up cuttings and holding them up to drift down onto his cheeks. Mr. Garrett went over, with questions. Harris explained who he was.

"Well, I don't believe you, nor I don't believe Mr. Boyd neither." Garrett was stern, and a little cold. He addressed himself to Boyd. "When I went up to your room this morning, I took a look at your hands. You were still asleep, but your hands were over the top of the counterpane. Altogether your skin is awful smooth, and it don't look to me from your color like you been out in the sun atall. So I don't know how you could've been on the lines at Petersburg."

Boyd looked up, then he laid an index finger across his lips. "If I were you, Mr. Garrett, I wouldn't ask any more."

Garrett froze, then walked away; that was not what he'd hoped to hear.

A sudden clatter rose down at the gate, and Ruggles and the other boy came galloping back up the driveway and rode over to Harris and Boyd. Garrett was too far away by then to hear what they were saying, and did not think it prudent for him to interrupt.

"Well, boys," Boyd asked the Johnnies. "What’s in the wind?"

"Port Royal's full of Yankees. They're lookin' for John Wilkes Booth. The fellow that shot the president. You know," Jett said, touching Boyd's hand. "J.W.B."

Wilkes looked down. Then he looked up, slowly. "What are you going to do?"

Ruggles chuckled. "You mean, like are we going to claim the reward money?"

"Yes. That's what I mean."

"Naw. We wouldn't do that. But you'd best get your asses into them woods, because they'll be comin' here." Ruggles pointed to a stand of pines at the edge of the Garrett farm. "There's lots of ravines. You'll never be found. You'd best lose no time."

Wilkes nodded. "I'll do as you say. God bless you boys for who you are. Now scat," he said, flipping a wrist; "it wouldn't do for you fellows to be found in my company."

The soldiers leaned down from the horses' withers and stretched down their hands to shake Wilkes'; then they neck-reined the animals quickly and scampered down the drive.

Harris helped Wilkes up and to the house, where Wilkes asked Richard to run upstairs and bring his pistols down. When Richard got them, Wilkes and Harris went off to the piney woods. Harris had a Spencer repeating carbine. No one had seen it before.

It wasn't five minutes till Yankee cavalry came down the road, riding in sloppy formation in the direction of Bowling Green. Richard thought for sure they'd stop, but they continued on. After half an hour, the outlaws came out of the trees.

The Garretts were friendly no longer. Jack Garrett had taken charge. "What is going on here?" he said. "Just who are you people?"

Harris said: "I'll tell you the truth."

"You d-n well better."

"Over in Maryland the other day the two of us got on a spree; we had a row with some soldiers."

"What kind of row?" Jack demanded to know. It was Wilkes who answered him.

"We thought they were going to force us to take an oath of allegiance to the Union."

"We shot at them," Harris picked it up. "I guess we must have hit one."

Jack scoffed. "Naw, that’s bullshit. They ain't going to send a cavalry unit after people like that." He drew himself up and mustered ail the authority he could. "I don't know who you are, or what you done, but you gotta leave this farm."

Wilkes tried to stare him out of it, but Jack would not give in. Wilkes shrugged: "We're going to Fredericksburg to catch the railroad south. Will you rent us a horse and wagon?"

"No. How will we get it back?"

"You could drive us to Guiney's station ...we could catch a train from there."

"You're crazy. No. I ain't going with you." Jack was giving stare for stare, but now Wilkes made him blink. "There's a black man near here," Jack finally said. "He'll likely take you down there if you pay him well enough."

"Do you think ten dollars would do it?"

"I'd say that's just about right."

Wilkes pulled a tenner out of his pocket, and handed it to Jack. Jack nodded, went out and saddled up to ride to the black man's place. When he came back, it was getting dark. The black man had not been home.

Wilkes sighed when he heard the news. "Are you going to toss us out?"

Jack thought about it - wanted to, but somehow couldn't do it. "You leave early in the morning. You can sleep in the barn tonight."

Harris – that wasn’t his real name; it was David Herold - was petulant; he was ready to pick a fight. But Wilkes said no, we'll do what they say, and they went out back of the cattle shed, past the sugar cane mill. The barn was filled with furniture put there for safekeeping by Garrett's neighbors when the War began. There was room enough in it, nevertheless, for two men to bed down. Herold piled up tobacco debris, and they settled in for the night.

The Garretts, though, were still troubled. Wilkes had asked for their horses and wagon, and they had turned him down. They could think of no reason not to suspect that Wilkes would steal them that night. So Jack and William crept out to the barn and padlocked the only door. Just to be double sure of Wilkes, Jack and William slept that night in a corncrib near the barn. Young Richard decided to join them, and curled up in there, too. There was a footling yellow moon; the night was sallow, saffron. Edges were blurry, the centers were gone, nothing was what it seemed; and all that one could contemplate was in the peripheral vision.

“About two o'clock," young Garrett said, "I heard the dogs start barkin'. I looked out of the corncrib, and I saw Union cavalry, and some men not in uniform, sneakin' up to the front of the house. They got the house surrounded, and Willie Jett was with 'em. One of the Yankees got off his horse and knocked on our front door. Pa came out; they grabbed holt of him, and this fellow who wasn't in uniform started bawling at Pa. 'Where have you got the murderers of President Lincoln hid?' Pa said he didn't know piss-all 'bout that - though by now he surely did.

"'Two men were seen ...'

'"Oh, those fellows. They went off into the woods. I didn't know what they done, understand.’

"'Yes, sir. Whereabouts in the woods?'

"Then one of the Yankees seen Jack and me and William in the shuck house. He come right over and pulled me out by the ear.

'''Is it them?' yells the other fellow.

'''Not unless the killer's an eleven year old boy.'

'''Well, I bet he knows where they are.'

"Papa starts talkin' again, but the fellow who was tormentin' Pa calls out for a rope. He says if Pa don't tell the truth he'll hang him on the spot. I'm really sorry, sir, I am, but I was 'bout scared to piss my pants and the holt on my ear really hurt. I just blurt out the men was in the barn. I can tell you my Pa done whipped my butt for opening my mouth.

“The soldiers made me open the lock, and go into the barn. They shut the door behind me and I think they held it closed. Booth was lying there awake; I told him what was happening. He looked at me with those huge black eyes and long, long lashes, like maybe a girl you'd just kissed who hadn't wanted you to. 'It seems you have betrayed me, sir.' His voice was awful sad. 'If you don't get yourself out of this barn, I'm going to have to shoot you.' Say what? I looked in those eyes again, and they weren't so pretty now. And I knew he'd do it, forgettin' that I was only a little kid.

"Then the man out of uniform yelled in to Booth: 'Give your arms to the boy! If you don't, we'll have a bonfire and a real shootin' match!' What he meant was, he would burn down the barn. He sounded like he'd enjoy it. I was yellin' at him to get me out, this man is going to kill me! I pushed on the door, but it wouldn't move; my feet were just scuffin' tobacco. The fellow said I couldn't come out unless I brought Booth's guns. I looked at Booth and he just laughed, so I hollered again I couldn't get them and to let me out of there quick. I was shoving the door with all my muscle and suddenly they opened it and I fell out like a sack of rice. To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd get out of that barn alive."

Richard then noticed a man piling hay in a crack in the backside wall of the barn. Wilkes saw him, too, apparently; he warned the man if he kept it up he would put a bullet through him. The fellow jumped back, but he stayed near the hay. Then Wilkes and Herold went at it.

Herold was doing some shouting, and Wilkes' tone was mean. "Go, go, you d--ned coward," he sneered. "I wouldn't have you with me. Oh, captain!" he called in a voice the boy said was dripping with contempt. "There's a man in here who wishes to surrender himself to you." The soldiers heard Herold mewling right behind the door.

The fellow said they'd let Herold out if he brought the weapons with him. Herold said: "I ain't got any."

The fellow barked: "Hand them out!"

Wilkes yelled back: "I own these arms, and I may have to use them on you."

The soldiers talked, and finally, they did let Herold out - they opened the door and grabbed his hands and yanked him into the yard. They pinioned his arms and legs with chains and dragged him off to a locust tree whose trunk they fixed him to. They left him. crucified, whimpering, and returned their attention to Wilkes.

I had once played Shylock in a tobacco barn, not too far from Port Royal. So I knew that tobacco cures by air, the slats of the barns are set wide apart, and one can see through the walls. They were catching fleeting glimpses of Wilkes, not enough to know what he was doing. "Tell me who you are!" Wilkes yelled out. "It's possible you might be friends."

"Makes no difference who we are."

"Well, I didn't expect amici, signore. And who do you think I am?"

The fellow stamped his foot in disgust. "We know who you are, and we want you. We have fifty well-armed men out here. You will not get away."

Wilkes chuckled a bit; they heard him clear. "Captain, 'tis a hard case, I swear. I'm lame, you know. Give a lame man a chance. Draw up your men twenty yards from here and I'll fight your whole command."

Suddenly the moon grew bright and they got a good look at him. He was near the door, on one crutch; he had a revolver in one hand and a carbine in the other.

"We're not here to fight, Booth," the fellow said. "We want you alive."

"I'll bet you do." Wilkes was chortling. "Well, give me a minute to think on it."

"All right. We'll give you two." A minimal cloud rolled over the moon, and Wilkes could no longer be seen.

"I've had half a dozen chances to shoot you," Wilkes laughed. "I have a bead drawn on you now, but I don't want to kill you. You look like an honorable man. Give me similar deference, eh? Withdraw your men from the doorway. Let's have it out, you and I. Code duello - choose your weapon, as long as it's one I have."

Wilkes had charmed the Federal; he couldn't help but grin. "Can't do it, Booth, much as I'd love to. Come out or we'll fire the barn."

When Wilkes spoke next, his voice was deep, and the syllables rang like chimes, as if he were speaking to history, not to the men surrounding the barn. He may have gone outside himself, as Papa had done many times. Or he may have been playing a role. Either way, I can imagine him, his eyes shooting out red sparks and his body coiled like a rattler. "Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me! One more stain on the glorious banner! What else should I have expected?"

"Just then I smelt smoke," young Garrett said. "Someone had fired the hay. All of a sudden the barn's insides turned incredibly bright. I could see your brother, inside the door. He picked up a table, I guess to throw it to try to block the flames, but by then the fire had gone to the roof and crossed to the other side."

The boy stopped talking; he looked at Mother, and then across to Asia. "Ladies, you Yanks have treated me fine. I didn't expect you would. I'm glad to tell you everything, but I don't know as you really want to hear the rest of this."

"Go on," Asia said. Mother nodded. Then both sat utterly still.

Wilkes stood near the doorway, inside an arc of fire. Then he threw down his crutch and his carbine, stretched out his revolver arm and bounded toward the door. There was a shot, and Wilkes pitched forward, face down, onto the earth. Nobody saw where the shot came from. At first, they thought he'd fired it They raced into the barn and dragged him out and laid him under a tree. He'd been struck in the back of his neck, they saw; it had cut the spinal cord. They realized there was no way Wilkes could have shot himself.

Wilkes couldn't move. He struggled to talk. "Tell mother ... tell mother ..." - he fainted. The heat from the fire was so extreme that they couldn't stay where they were. They carried him down to the Garrett's porch. Mrs. Garrett brought a straw mattress out; they doubled it up for better support and laid him down against it. Jack Garrett, too, had gone into the house, and had wet a cloth with brandy. He laid the cloth on Wilkes' mouth. Wilkes tried to mutter something. The Federal put his ear to Wilkes' lips; then he popped back up with a smile.

"What did he say?" Mrs. Garrett asked.

"He said it was very good brandy."

Now Wilkes was saying something else; the officer leaned down again. “No, Booth,” he answered, "I won't finish you. We don't want you dead."

Wilkes' head rolled til the side of his face touched the portico floor. A moment later he came back around, but his breath was labored and his tongue had begun to loll out of his mouth. One more time he tried to talk, and the officer bent down to hear him, then straightened up and looked down at Wilkes. "Don't worry, Booth, I will."

The Yankees went into his pockets; they pulled out everything: a fistful of pine shavings, probably for starting a fire; a dirty hanky, a pipe and matches, a bill of exchange from the Montreal branch of an Ontario bank; a scarf pin, a pocket knife, keys. A brown leather-bound appointment book with a red leather lining. Photographs of women in a pouch on the back of the book.

Wilkes asked to be turned face down to the ground. The officer obliged. Wilkes drew in a deep sniff of the earth, then asked to be turned back around.

"Aunt Lucinda was sobbing," the young boy said. "She ran inside and brought out another cloth she had soaked in water. She knelt down and wiped his face and smoothed back his hair. Booth conveyed by his eyes to the Yankee that he wished him to raise up his hands. It was dawn by then; he could see his hands, if he could see at all. I heard him say 'Useless. Useless.' He never said nothing else. Much as I worked it over, I don't know what he meant by that.

"They brought in a doctor; it was too late, There wasn't nothing to do. Your brother died around seven o'clock. I seen him blow out his last breath. Aunt Lucinda cut a lock of his hair. I don't know what she done with it."

The boy turned to Mother, and took her hand. "Ma'am, the Yankee told me what your son had whispered to him. ‘Tell Mother I died for my country. I did what I thought was right.'"

"Thank you." Mother squeezed his hand. Then she looked away.

The boy reached into a pocket and pulled out an envelope. "A couple days after it happened," he said, "after the fire cooled down, we went into the barn to dig out the ashes and clean the whole mess up. I was shoveling out the charcoal, and the shovel come up with this."

He handed me the envelope. It was thick, and scorched - soot covered my hands when I picked it up. On the front was written: "To Edwin Booth." The envelope was sealed.

"You didn't open it.”

"People's mail is private. We uns don't do things like that."

I carefully chivvied the envelope open. Inside it were pages torn from an 1864 appointment book. The writing was labored and sloppy, but it was Wilkes'.

"I went to your house in New York," the boy said. "They told me you were here. I figured there's some things in there you really want to know."

1 fanned the packet of papers, scanning the paragraphs. "Yes, son," I answered him, "I do believe there are.”

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Check these links for more information:

The official report of the capture and death of John Wilkes Booth
Harper's Weekly
A cavalryman's account
Booth's final hours

Go to Chapter 3

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison

CHAPTER THREE

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:29:00 +0000

boomp3.com

THE remarkable thing is not," Wilkes writes, "that we've equaled Papa's success. The remarkable thing, I think, is that all of us have tried to.

"You could have been a banker - because you are so somber. (What has been done to you, brother, that you never laugh? I never got to ask you that - probably never would have. God knows you wouldnt have ansered me - even if you know.) Or you could have been a cabinetmaker, as Papa wanted you to. June - well, I dont know exactly what June might have become. I could have been a salesman - well, I am a salesman, arent I, a salesman of myself, and that is not one of your talents, though God knows you've managed without it, quite well enough.

“And yet it ocurred to none of us to do anything but act. I have known the sons of doctors who are revulsed by the sight of blood. I have known the sons of lawyers who are repelled by conflict. Yet we all revel in speech, in gesture, in the family trade which consists of being someone else entirely. Notwithstanding that we above all are handicapped for the craft, scince Papa's art in tres partes divisa est amongst us. You have his touch, his timing, his mind. June - well, I dont know what June's got - maybe his cynicism. And I have Papa's life, his heart. I have his arogance.

"Which one of us, do you suppose, has the best chance at succeeding? June had more years in the craft, and more years at Papa's side to soak up all that brilliance. But it seems to me June lacks the fire. I dont think he cares any more. So perhaps it is you - you had your time with Papa on tour, though Papa once told me all you could do was play "Old Zip Coon” on the banjo.

“I was too young when Papa died. What I learned from him soaked through the skin; I never saw him act. I suppose how old I was didnt matter - he never wanted any of us to go upon the stage, and I dont believe he gave you any more help than he did me. Still, I believe I have the spark; I think I could have topped you all, if I hadnt been so distractable.

"Do you think Papa went mad? Do you think we shall, as well? Not I, of course - I havent the time. June always thought he would. He said that's why he is careful never to do anything on impulse. I should be watchful, if I were you. If you find yourself stopping off at a fire to help man the hand pumps instead of attending to your waiting audience, which you've completely forgotten, well, perhaps you’ll find in that sort of thing the joy that Papa did.

“They’ll say I was mad, as they said Papa was, that my inheritance got the better of me; and Herold, Powell, Atzerodt, just a klatch of madmen. But I tell you this: of those involved, they will never catch the half.

“1’ve been thinking lately how life would have been if they hadnt elected Lincoln. I believe I'd have gathered mountains of cash, and spent it all on myself - and on Mother, I'd have given her evrything she ever conceived of wanting. I'd be feted and dined until I was too old to handle a fork. No, that's just talk – I’m babbling now, I’m in a lot of pain. I always knew I would not live out the years that nature gives us. I supposed I'd be shot by a lover, or a lover's fiance. I imagined that fun would kill me, whatever that fun might be. I was wrong; this isnt fun. There's a great deal of pleasure in it, though, which I will explain.

“But consider the elephant, if you will. It has a hundred years to live, and it walks with lumbering steps. Consider then the mayflie - it lives just a day, and it beats its wings a thousand times a minute. Perspective is the key to this - to the mayflie its day is exactly the same as the elephant's hundred years, i.e., it is the time of its life, and it does not count the hours. In its lifetime the mayflie will beat its wings as oft as the elephant will plod in its allotted span. So – since I was convinced my life’s length was closer to mayflie than elephant, I've been moving rather faster than the average fellow does. Life is so short, and the world is so beautiful. Just to breathe is delicious!"

Wilkes was a good actor - he hadn't, like me, absorbed the technique, but he was right, he had Papa's force. It was always there.

After Papa died, Mother had tied Wilkes down to the farm Papa had leased years before when he'd fled from England with Mother, leaving behind his Belgian wife and his young son Richard. As Mother told it, Papa had had a scandalous reputation; his father's housemaid in London had brought him to court for bastardy, and when he’d eloped with the Belgian, she was pregnant, too.

Mother was a flower girl, nineteen years old the day that Papa talked her bloomers off. He quickly got her enceinte with June, and shortly afterward realized he wanted to stay with her. He took her on tour to Madeira, and there he decided it might be best if they didn't go back to England. They landed in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1821.

The farm was out in the pine woods twenty miles north of Baltimore. Papa believed, Mother said, it was better she wasn't seen, since he was not anonymous and word might get back to England. He'd told his wife where he was going, it seems, but not why and with whom. Mother told me once: "What I didn't know was that he was sending her money, and promises of reunion. But I don't mind the money, and as for the promises, he never meant them. We were each other's one true love. Nothing could tear us apart."

He kept Mother out there on the farm for all of twenty-five years, except twice when they went to England and Papa toured the Continent. He took Mother and June and Rosalie and hid them at Kings Row, Pentonville, deep in a part of London no one ever saw. He spent some time with his Belgian wife, and she never knew they were there.

Then my half-brother Richard got lonesome for Pa, so he came to the States to see him. Papa was touring at the time; he signed Richard on as his valet to get him out of Baltimore so he wouldn't find out about us. Richard was with him for three years, until someone talked and Richard learned he was not Papa's only child. Desperate, he ran away, and wrote his Mama to come. She was a persistent bitch - the first time she shipped out of England, the vessel sank. She dried off and took another.

Her timing was regrettable. Papa had just decided to take Mother out of the woods; he had bought us a town house on North Exeter Street in Baltimore. When Adelaide (the wife) arrived, Papa was out on tour. She decided not to go after him. She'd let him make the money, and take him down when he came home. So Mother became her target. Neither Mother nor Baltimore had known til then all the synonyms for "whore," and it was the first we children knew we were what is known as "bastards." She drove us out of the city, and followed us to the farm. We had five long years of that, til she'd lived in Maryland long enough to qualify for divorce. It was over in April of '51. Papa and Mother were finally married one month later, on Wilkes's thirteenth birthday.

By '54, June and I were living in California, and Wilkes had become the man of the house and tied, as I've said, to the farm. He gave it his best, but tired, as he said, of "torturing grain out of the ground." June and I were beginning careers on the stage in San Francisco, and Wilkes was impatient - he always was - to get his own train on the track.

In his off hours, he haunted the Charles Street Theater in downtown Baltimore. He offered to sweep the floors and such, made an awful pest of himself, but as he was his father's son, he was tolerated. It was the summer of 1855. Wilkes was seventeen years old, and in love with everything.

He finally got the gumption to ask the theater manager to let him try to act. He had practiced his gestures in mirrors. He'd speechified out in the woods. He was ready, he swore. He begged for a chance. The manager looked at him down his nose and mumbled a comment the essence of which was: "when pigs fly!"

But one night, in Richard the Third, the man playing Richmond went ill. There were no understudies then, and Wilkes knew the role - or thought he did - from hearing me rehearse it when I was still on the farm. The manager had no choice but to put Wilkes in the part. The performance was a benefit for Jack Sleeper Clarke. Wilkes hadn't come to despise Clarke yet; if he had, he would still have done it.

It was in Richard the Third that Papa had first conquered the stage - twice, in fact, first in London and afterward in the States. And it was Richard Papa was supposed to play at the National Theater in New York City, the night he'd refused to go on the stage, or even leave his room. He had told me to play it, and I had. My first major role. I had been seventeen as well, but in love with nothing, then.

The hot late August night fell, and the crowd appeared in droves, come to see Wilkes, the little son of Junius Brutus Booth. Wilkes peeked out the curtain and smelled the stink of the unwashed.

Now, Richmond does not appear in the play until very near the end, so for all that time Wilkes stood in the wings getting more and more agog. Came his scene, he entered "with drums and colors," with Oxford, Blunt, Herbert: "Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends..." and what was the rest of it? Oxford hissed the lines out, and Wilkes picked up the thread... "have we marched on without impediment ... the wretched, bloody and usurping boar ..." and lost it again... and Oxford hissed, and on Wilkes went, and on and on and ON. Now it was merely main effort to get through this awful thing and to do so he shrieked and waved his arms and ran back and forth across the stage with Oxford trying to catch him, and hissing each third line ... til it came in the end to the sword fight and Wilkes was frantic and energized and whacked at Richard and knocked him down until he was surely dead and Wilkes had the final speech, God help him, twenty seven lines long, managed to finish most of them and heaved a sigh so deep it nearly dropped him and the audience inflated its lungs and boo'd him off the stage.

Nobody gave Wilkes succor after that fiasco, but when he'd caught his breath again it struck him (I know the feeling): that glorious, glorious sentiment of utter happiness. And all he thought about after that was getting back on the stage.

It wasn't til Jack began courting Asia that Wilkes got a second chance. I suppose that's not a fair accounting - Jack had been courting Asia since he was ten years old, but only in 1857 did I talk her into hearing him. Wilkes thought Jack was an idiot, and I could tell from Asia's expressions when Jack was around or being discussed that she thought pretty much the same. But Jack was becoming a great success as a low comedian. I recognized his talent - it was his genre I couldn't accept. Still, I thought he was earnest, and likely to keep Asia well. He wouldn't light any fires, I supposed, but fires were dangerous things. Wilkes told Asia, when Jack proposed, that he thought Jack was using the Booths - and her - as steppingstones to the stage. The truth was, though, Wilkes was using Jack - it wasn't hard to do.

When Jack got control of the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia, Wilkes started to bother him. Jack is easily botherable - he'd rather accommodate than fight, and Wilkes was assiduous. So he took Wilkes into the company he'd established at the Arch. He paid Wilkes eight dollars a week. Wilkes thought it was quite a lot.

Wilkes debuted in Sheridan Knowles' The Wife, as a courier. It was August again, a year later, another blistering night. He only had four little lines - "Here comes the Duke!" was one. I'm afraid he got so excited that he failed to get them straight. Things went on for months like that; Wilkes would get out there and could not move, couldn't put out a word. The others would have to ad-lib around him just to get to the end. In three months, they did eighty-six plays. Wilkes couldn't remember all that!

Then came Lucretia Borgia; Wilkes had been assigned the role of Petruchio Pandolfo. He invited a certain young lady to come with whom he was .. engrossed. He was gorgeous in his costume. But that was the best of him. He had to introduce himself ... introduce his character. "Madame," he spoke, "I am Pondolfio Pet... Pedolfio Pat... Pantuchio Ped ... What the H-l is my name?"

The audience went hysterical, as if he'd been flatulent, and the next night in Moore's The Gamester, they broke into gales of laughter whenever Wilkes appeared. He didn't finish the role that night - the manager cut it out. But the crickets called him "promising" - which the manager said meant they hoped he'd promise to give up acting forever.

Then, in May, Charlotte Cushman came to the Arch Street Theater. It was the first of Cushman's farewell tours; every once in a while she would decide to quit and do nothing, like society ladies. Like every other resident troupe, the Arch Street's company played support to visiting stars as often as they could be had. It was they who brought in the houses that kept the company going. And Cushman was the highest drawing actress of her time.

The first night they played The Stranger; it wasn't very good. But when someone told Cushman afterward that Wilkes was Papa's son, she studied him with great concern, then quickly snatched him aside. Pushing his shoulders from behind, she bustled him into the green room (the room was not green, but soot-stained beige, but that is what these communal preparation rooms are called). Cushman hauled up her hemline with two strands of cord - dress elevators, they called them then, they don't use them anymore - took a seat on the leather settee, and sat Wilkes across from her.

"Oh, you poor boy!" she cried, patting her cheeks with a hanky. "You'll be measured against your father, you know. What a burden to bear!"

Wilkes said he thought he had talent, and might amount to something.

"Have you any idea what you'll need to succeed in this hideous business?" Cushman knew he didn't. Father never told him much, and I'd told him nothing at all.

"I am an ugly woman," she said. And that was the God's honest truth. She looked like an English bulldog blown up to the size of a bull. "But if I am required to play pretty, you'll believe I am Venus herself. And that I can do because I can will myself to believe it true, and once I believe it, those who watch are just as convinced as I. That's why I am known world-wide as the genius of the age."

"I see," said Wilkes.

"You don't see at all. You couldn't possibly. You haven't suffered; you're too young. You need to suffer, boy." She put on a tortured expression, which was how she played despair, and the hanky ascended to her eye to catch a wayward tear.

"My father went bankrupt when I was thirteen; my Mama took in boarders, and I had to work in the kitchens of men who had been my father's friends. It was beastly, it was demeaning. I swore I'd get away. And I always knew I was meant to play a great role in this world.

"I went to New York, and played at the Park - the Park Theater, you know - little parts, supernumerary roles, just what you're doing now. Soon I was good enough to take on 'walking lady' parts." The "walking lady" was a troupe's principal supporting actress.

"And then I went to London, and made myself a star, the greatest creature in the greatest city in the entire civilized world!" She sat back and folded her hands in her lap, very pleased with herself.

"In those days, your father's days, theaters were rowdy. We'd give them a five-act tragedy plus an afterpiece, plus songs and dances and animal acts and acrobats and freaks. We couldn't dim the house lights then; the crowd would attend to what they liked, and talk over what they didn't. That is, if they didn't bark like dogs or throw apples and vegetables. They would actually turn their backs on us if we did something improper. While up in the highest balcony girls were screwing men for cash.

"The sets were flimsy, the costumes skimpy. Actors didn't move around - they all belonged to the Teapot School, they'd stand in one place with one hand on a hip and the other curved in the air. Your father, you know, was one of the first to break with that tradition.

"The only way to get to the crowd was to catch them with your voice. A preacher could catch them, a senator - we had to do the same. That's why, little Booth, I have them from the first word I emit.

"Your brother Ned, now," she went on, "I thought he was too refined. He didn't emote in the usual way, didn't honk like Edwin Forrest. He spoke sometimes on the stage as he would have in a parlor. We played Macbeth together once, and I didn't like Ned's style. 'Remember,' I told him, 'Macbeth is the grandfather of all the Bowery villains. The audience knows the role by heart. They have expectations.'" She was silent a moment, and then she laughed in a howling sort of way.

"You know the scene in which Lady Macbeth drives her husband to kill Duncan? We were in the midst of it, and I was powerful. 'I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me. But I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums...'" Cushman was blasting at Wilkes now, shaking with furious wrath ... '''and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this!'

"Well, Ned stood there and stared at me, and then he said, so soft: 'Why don't you kill him yourself, Charlotte? You're a great deal bigger than I am.' Oh! Ha ha! Ha ha ha!" All of her shook as she chuckled.

"But I came to see ..." she snapped a finger ... "that Ned was the one who was right. It is not enough to throw yourself around the stage and hoot at the audience. You must pierce the mind of the character; you must crawl inside the skull. You must put him across as what he is. And he may be still as death.

"We play Macbeth tomorrow." She rose up in a mountainous mass of velvet and crinolines. "Watch me, boy. See how I do it. Learn a little from me."

The next night she spun out Lady Macbeth. She didn't rant, she didn't rave. She prowled the stage like a tiger. "I told you," he writes, "what she said about you. Your comment was: ‘She loves women.’”

Cushman loved women. She lived with one. She dressed like a man sometimes. When she wished to, she could sound like one. In London she played Romeo once, to her sister's Juliet. The Londoners were intrigued with it; they said it was highly erotic. She was, as she said, a great actress. But somewhat overblown.

At the end of the season, the last of June, the Arch dropped Wilkes from its cast. He returned to Baltimore, to the farm, and moped, distraught, for the summer, while a certain girl, on account of Wilkes, paid a visit of a surgical sort to a doctor in the woods. (We didn't know of it, then. He did. He had to pay for it.)

Mother wrote and told me he was disconsolate. I was booked for a run in Baltimore, at the Holliday Street Theater, at the end of the coming August, the beginning of the season of '58-'59. I was going to put on Richard the Third, and I thought I might get a look at Wilkes, his Richmond to my Richard.

When I arrived at Mother's farm, he nearly knocked me down. "Thank you, Ned! Thank you so much! You've saved me from despair!"

"No," I said, smiling a bit, "I think I shall throw you into it."

"What?"

"If you're going to play in my company, you'll have to take my direction."

"Of course!"

"Therefore, tell me, Wilkes - what is Richmond's role?"

"He kills King Richard!"

"Why?"
"Why? Because Richard is a tyrant!"

"What does Richmond say, Wilkes?"

He looked at me, then he shook his head. "I don't remember."

"You have to learn to study. Do you like Shakespeare?"

"Of course I do. Everyone does. Most of all Richard the Third."

"Richard the Third isn't Shakespeare, Wilkes. It's Colley Cibber's bosh."

"What?"

"What everyone thinks is Shakespeare's play was written by Colley Cibber. A hundred and fifty years ago, Cibber decided the Bard was too cerebral for the mob. So he took out the complex, the introspective, and put in the blood and thunder. Richard the Third's not just Richard the Third; he's Henry the Fourth, and the Fifth, and the Sixth, snippets of Shakespeare's other plays, gobs out of Cibber's head. His version has been played in America since 1751 - in fact it was the first Shakespearean drama performed in New York City. Richard doesn't die on stage in the original version, you know - depriving a million average actors of their most glorious scene. I'm going to get rid of Cibber soon - go back to the Avon script."

"But the crowds adore it," Wilkes protested. "It's very entertaining."

"Minstrels are entertaining. So are concert saloons. Theater is theater because it involves the mind."

"I am sorry to say it," he writes, "but even in blue-nosed Boston, you were quite wrong about that.

“1 wasnt so bad as Richmond, was I, that night in Baltimore. But you - Great God! We all knew - we had read your press - the world thought you were brilliant; even the uncharitable admitted you would be, soon. But to experience it face to face - it was overwelming! You were such a quiet little mouse. Always terrified of girls, so cold to strangers, afraid to ride a trolley because somebody might recognize you and expect you to say hello. And you were quiet on stage, too, you never made a fuss of things, never raised your voice, your pace was so deliborate. And yet when I stepped in to face you and looked into your eyes... What purpose you threw out of them, what incredible command!

"So subtel you were, how each word was perfect and flowed into the next! What you did with your intonation, cadence, emphasis! You were small, and still, and in the swordfight I nearly battered you into the floor - but your Richard was the incarnation of malevolence! You had me speechless, for a bit, almost paralyzed - but somehow I pulled it together. You have to give me credit. I didnt miss a line. "

Wilkes was not so good that night that John Ford, who owned the theater, was inspired to hire him on. But I spoke to Ford, and the next day he called Wilkes into his office. "Well, now, Wilkes," Ford said. "I've got a partner named George Kunkel at the Old Marshall Theater in Richmond. He's willing to give you a try as a supe. Are you interested?"

Wilkes tried to hide his epiphany, but it was a physical thing, such as I have experienced in some women's company. And that was the beginning. It led direct to the end.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 4

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber

CHAPTER FOUR

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 18:50:00 +0000

boomp3.com

"Well, what do you think of it?" George Kunkel was touring Wilkes through the Old Marshall Theater. A half hour before, Wilkes had stepped down from the cars at the Virginia Central depot at the eastern end of Broad Street and caught a cab to the playhouse, at Broad and Seventh Streets, not far from the Capitol of the State of Virginia.

Wilkes thought it was magnificent. Four stone columns rose at the entrance four stories high, and there were five great white doors leading in from the street to the lobby. The auditorium was larger than any he had seen, its boxes and balconies laid with gold-leaf filigree. The stage was deep, and very high, with red velvet curtains; it sloped down to the orchestra pit with its green baize chairs. The scenery from a dozen productions was stacked at the backstage wall; half-dozen backdrops hung from the flies, and inky black curtains hid the wings from view from the front of the house.

"Right here," Kunkel said with a touch of reverence, "your father played his first role after coming over from England. And your brother Edwin started here, too, when he came back from the West. If you're a chip off the block, we're expecting great things from you."

They performed over a hundred plays in a nine month season, two a night, every night excepting Sunday, each night lasting five hours, from seven o'clock til midnight. Some weeks they played fourteen shows, none of them repeated. Sometimes they didn't know what they were playing until they saw the posters. While Monday night's sets were cleared away, Tuesday night's parts were given out, in plays they may never have seen before, or heard of, for that matter.

On Tuesday, they'd rehearse their scenes from nine in the morning til five, then put on the performance, then receive the next night's scripts, and so on day after day, and the only time to study lines was while wolfing down a meal, or in the hours just before dawn, or winging it while waiting offstage for their entrance cues. All of it no different from what we all went through. My God, it was a miserable life - but we were in love with it.

The leading man was Harry Langdon, a fellow I knew well, a cynical, dyspeptic ex-roué long slipped off the peak of his prime. He was tall and thin, with a skeleton face and deep-set bloodshot eyes. He ran a slipshod rehearsal, seemingly bored with it, but the ballet girls were so euphoric that Wilkes was energized.

Their first play was to be Town and Country; or, Which is Best? It was a lightweight piece of fluff, and Wilkes hadn't many lines, so he got through the rehearsal without a major gaffe. When he went down to the green room to retrieve his coat, he found Langdon sitting there. It was not that Langdon had business there then; he had found a comfortable spot and didn't want to leave it.

"J. B. Wilkes, is that your name?"

"Yes, sir," Wilkes said, deferentially.

"But you're Booth's boy, Ned's brother. Why not use your real moniker?"

“Because I don't want to shame my brother, in case I don't work out."

Langdon said, languidly: "Admirable. Where do you reside?" Wilkes had taken a room at the Broad Street Hotel. It was two blocks from the theater, on the corner of Broad and Ninth. "I live in a boarding house," Langdon said. "Why don't you room with me?"

It seemed a brilliant idea to Wilkes. He said he would do it, gladly. He thought Langdon might mentor him, and he could save money, too. Langdon leisurely lifted himself out of the sagging settee. "Well, then, J.B. Wilkes. Shall we get your bags?"

The Broad Street Hotel was a drummer's inn; the lobby was less than inviting, but its bar, even at this late hour, was humming with vertebrate life. "Pay your bill," Langdon ordered Wilkes. "I'll be in the saloon."

By the time Wilkes returned, Langdon was on his second bourbon and water. A glass of the same sat on the bar in a space reserved for Wilkes. "Your Pa practically lived in this bar when he was in town. His daily consumption of bourbon would have floated a battleship. I was a supe then, just like you. Bourbon's one of the things he taught me, and I’d be unappreciative not to return the favor. Drink up, boy. A votre sante. After a while it tastes good."

Bourbon tasted dreadful to Wilkes, but he had developed a fondness for V.S.O.P. brandy. When he ordered a snifter, Langdon looked at him as if he'd declared himself Nellie. "This is the South, J.B. When in Rome, et al. Ned wouldn't have bourbon either, there's something wrong with you boys.

"I saw your Pa when he debuted here, playing Richard the Third." Langdon lifted his tumbler and toasted himself in the mirror behind the bar. "He makes his entrance casual, sort of ambling down to the footlights, and he stands there and for I don't know how long he doesn't say a word. When he finally does get going, he ain't any ball of fire. The first two acts that night, it was like he was asleep. 'Course we didn't know that was how the great ones did it then - conserved their energy, like, til the point appeared. We'd been told Booth was remarkable, so we figured this couldn't be Booth. But then came the sword fight - and Lord, Lord, Lord!

"I played Richmond against him once. When the fight came on, his eyes got mean and he started to beat at me with that blade til I thought he was going to butcher me. He backs me behind the scenery, then he chases me out the stage door, down the alley behind the theater, all the time slashing at me, all the way down Broad Street to the lobby of this here hotel. When he sees the bourbon behind the bar, he remembers who he is - Junius Booth the actor, and not King Richard the Third. He gives me a sort of sheepish smile and pats me on the shoulder, orders hisself an anti-fogmatic and tosses it down.

“When we get back to the theater, the audience is still there. They've waited a half an hour for him to come back and finish it. Jesus, your Pa was bizarre, son, but he had a hold on them." Langdon sat there shaking his head; then he called for another glass.

At the end of the mahogany bar a squabble was heating up. Langdon swiveled and caught a look, then turned back with a smirk. There were three men engaged in the contretemps. Wilkes asked who they were.

"Just a boodle of F.F.V.'s."

"Who?"

"First Families of Virginia. The biggest toads in the puddle. The taller one, the elegant dude, name is Jennings Wise. He's the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, and also the governor's son. The middle-sized one with the hot blood is John Moncure Daniel - he edits the Examiner, the other local rag. The one who looks like an Irishman, that's John Botts. He used to be a Congressman, and he hates the other two. From the quality of the palaver 1'd guess they were talking politics. If they are, we ought to get out of here because like as not in about five minutes Jennings will call for pistols." Langdon threw down the last of his drink. "Let's depart this doggery."

The crowd at the Old Marshall's opening night was the largest they'd had for years. When the curtain rang down, the ballet girls skittered to their dressing room; and even Langdon, donning an elegant kit, let slip some enthusiasm. "Put on your finery. Johnnie. You're going to meet Society."

The home of Dr. James Beal was up the hill on Clay Street, a large and tasteful Federal house, white with ebony shutters. The doctor's wife's hair was black and her eyes were a startling blue, and when she met them at her door she seemed to shine all over. She welcomed them with a gracious air when the company arrived in a gaggle, en masse, in a straggling block-long crowd, and ushered them into her parlor, where their audience awaited. A gentleman took each soubrette's arm, and a lady each of the men; and before Wilkes knew it, it was as if he had known these people all his life.

The Richmond ladies were dressed to the nines, most in copies of Paris fashions shipped down from New York. Their gowns were extravagant: tulle, organdy, velvet in shades of red. Their skirts were nearly six feet around, supported by cage crinolines with narrow steel hoops; so they tended to crowd each other a bit, which led to short-lived huffs. Their waists were the de rigeur eighteen inches, or at least appeared to be, though every so often one of the women would crumple onto a sofa, struggling to catch her breath. The men were in claret or mulberry, or the occasional pale grey. "Baltimore was a genteel city," Wilkes writes, "but as far as true gentility goes, Richmond was the top."

They were led in to dinner, buffet style, after which they circulated, and Wilkes began to notice then that many women, married or otherwise, part of the company or Richmond belles, were watching him intensely as he moved about the room. The braver of them came up to Wilkes and chattered coquettish compliments, each of them followed by a pealing crystalline laugh. The bravest of all took up his hand and put a folded paper in it.

Mrs. Beal kept an eye on all of that; when the men adjourned to the smoking room, she sought Wilkes out and took his arm and compelled him to follow suit. Italian shotguns and British sabers hung from the green damasked walls. Bookshelves were filled with medical texts and red-bound folios, and above the mantel a mirror reflected brown studded leather chairs in which no one bothered to sit.

Jennings Wise was there, and John Daniel and a goodly number of others. Dr. Beal was a decorous, quiet man, in a modest pearl gray suit. He introduced Langdon and Wilkes around; everyone was most courteous, but there were other things on their minds.

“Botts is a moron!" Daniel spouted. "The South will surely secede." Jennings Wise added "Hear! Hear!" There seemed to be general agreement. Then Dr. Beal struck a pose by the mantel, and asked Daniel: "Why?"

"They leave us no choice - you know that, John!" Daniel was absolute. "They will not accept the Dred Scott decision. They refuse to allow us to bring our servants into the new Western territories. They will not enforce the laws that require the return of runaway slaves. The d-ned Abolitionist traitors are stirring up insurrections! And these new God-blast Republicans believe their horse manure!"

“No one has done anything yet to threaten the institution." Beal was calm in the face of Daniel's fast-rising cholor.

"Have they not? They intend to outlaw us in our own country!"

"They believe that slavery is wrong. I agree with them..."

"We know you do," Jennings Wise pitched in, not entirely kindly. All of Richmond, apparently, knew that Beal was not, as they coded it, "sound upon the goose" - that is, firm on the right side of the slavery question.

"But no one proposes to disallow slavery in this state."

"William Garrison?" Wise howled. "Wendell Phillips? John Hale?"
"I venture to say, Jennings, you pay the Abolitionists more attention than they do at the North. A Northerner's greatest terror is that a nigger will sleep with his wife. They think slavery is unChristian, but they don't want the moaks around. They will never move against us; they will never go after your slaves. "

"And suppose, for example," Daniels cut in, "I decide to go to Nebraska."

Beal laughed. "That is about as likely as a kangaroo on the moon."

"But suppose I do - they tell me I'm welcome, but I can't bring my property."

"The law says you can, unless and until the territory votes free-state."

"The law says so now," Jennings retorted, "but for how long will that be?"

Beal drew in a deep breath; he had had this discussion before. "Unless and until it changes, Jennings, there is no cause for the South to secede."

“We can't live in a country which does not respect our rights!"

Beal withdrew himself from the debate. No one's mind would be changed. When the party broke up, Langdon and Wilkes were the last left with Beal in the smoking room. For the first time, Dr. Beal took a seat; he lit a cigar and crossed his legs, and looked at them interestedly.

"Where are you from, Mr. Wilkes?" Beal asked. Maryland, Wilkes told him. "And you, Mr. Langdon?” Harry explained he’d grown up in Pennsylvania. “Well, you, Mr. Wilkes, understand all this, since you’ve been raised among slaves. But I’d like to know, Mr. Langdon, how you see it all.”

“I hate slavery,” Harry said. “The Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal.”

“It doesn't say, though, does it, that Negroes are men."

“Oh, Doctor, come on now," Langdon scoffed. "You're right, we don't like Negroes.. We don't want them coming north. But they are men beyond question, and they have the right to be free."

"Of course. Thomas Jefferson said as much. But Jefferson never freed his slaves. Why not, do you suppose?"

"I've never been able to fathom that," Harry Langdon admitted.

"Jefferson knew that slaves harbored great deep rage – and rightly so, for what had been done to them. He thought if we kept them down in slavery, some day they would rise, and as he put it, if they did God would not be on our side. But set them free and the prejudices and resentments that result will lead to a war between races that would likely destroy us all. Jefferson felt it was safer to keep the blacks reined in. But he, unlike my colleagues, did not make the claim that slavery was the proper state of things.

“If you ask any man of the planter class, he'll tell you that the institution is morally right and socially desirable. He'll tell you the slaves are treated well, that their masters care for their welfare. He'll say that slavery's better for them than turning them loose to compete against renters and immigrants for their bread."

Wilkes said that he would agree with that. Papa had treated our rented slaves as if they were part of the family - they ate at our table, and if they were sick they got the best of care. And he'd seen the house slaves of Richmond, in homes and out on the street. They dressed in the latest fashion; they were skilled at their work, and trusted, unless they got uppity. Some of these planters cared more for their slaves than they did for their own kin. If the blacks weren't allowed on the street at night, unless they had a pass, how much of a burden was it to them? They had a pretty good life.

"Yes, they have, Mr. Booth," Beal agreed. "But you haven't seen the field hands. Kindnesses toward the household staff do not apply to them. They are the problem, but they were not until twenty-five or so years ago, when cotton became our crop. You don't need slaves for tobacco, though they come in handy, but you can't harvest cotton without hundreds of hands to pick it. Now we claim that what's required is ethically justified. But if cotton hadn't come along, we might have freed our slaves a long time ago.

"The South has been fortunate all these years that, except for a few churchish maniacs, the North didn't care about slaves. They just took our cotton and sent us clothes, and we let each other alone. But that began to change after we won the Mexican war. All the land we took in that war was open to anyone. We brought our slaves to the territories, and men from the North who went there as well were forced to confront their consciences. They realized they could not accept the state of slavery. But it's not just a matter of morals, Langdon. There's more to it than that.

"The presidency of this country - in fact, the political power - has been in the hands of Southernors for most of the nation's life. But that’s beginning to change. The North's population is growing faster - you have all the immigrants from Ireland and Germany - and you are industrializing, your economy is on fire. Most of the things we need these days we have to get from you. We're swaddled in Northern muslin as babes, we live surrounded with Northern delights, then we're borne to the grave in a Northern rig and dug in with a Northern spade. Even the cotton depends on you, since it's financed from New York. And the Northwest territories are more likely to join with you than with us. Their climate's no good for cotton; they'll come into the Union free states.

"I think you Northerners are feeling your oats, you resent our patrician airs. I think if things continue as they are, you'll render the South a backwater inside of twenty years. I think the future is yours, Langdon, and it scares us all to H--l. And that's why Wise and Daniel, whether they know it or not, insist we get out of the Union - to hold onto whatever power they have before it is too late."

"And you, sir?" Langdon asked Beal. "What do you think of all this?"

Beal leaned back, drew on the cigar, then let out a cloud of smoke. "If to survive we have no choice, then Virginia should go out."

Wilkes unfolded the note a beautiful woman had slipped to him. Her proposition was interesting. He thought he might look her up.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 5

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel

CHAPTER FIVE

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 19:12:00 +0000

boomp3.com

Maggie Mitchell arrived at the Marshall in a whirlwind of boxes and trunks. She was twenty-one, Wilkes' age; she was short and ravishing, her red hair cascading down the back of her amber organdy gown. She was America's musical comedy star, renowned for Fanchon, the Cricket. She overwhelmed Richmond's resident troupe at nine a.m.

Her pieces - Margot the Poultry Dealer, and Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish - were light and flimsy vehicles for her frenzied singing and dancing. Rehearsal was quick, since most of the stage business belonged to her.

When they finished, she gave Wilkes a protracted regard. "You. Come to my dressing room."

"Shut the door behind you," she said, once there, and began to pull off her clothes.

"I uh think I ought to study my lines... "

"You're pretty. Don't think."

Mitchell monopolized Wilkes’ time while she was in town, though the line of young women outside the stage door calling out for him grew longer by the day. When Maggie left, Wilkes turned his attention to the prettier soubrettes, and then to the women of Richmond whose first words to Wilkes were always the same: "My God, you are beautiful!"

He warned them - not the ballet girls, they already knew. But the others - the ones who sent bouquets - he told them he felt no affection for them, though a sufficient desire. He was a man of the world, he said, to whom all women grew fulsome. Go home, and beware of actors; they're to be seen, not known. If, thereafter, a girl persisted, she got what she asked him for.

It was not only the women who had begun to seek him out. Men who had seen him or heard of him - no doubt from their daughters or wives - or met him at a dinner to which a woman had seen to it that he'd been invited, themselves began to welcome Wilkes to their clubs and into their homes. Their manner was always gracious and kind; they talked about cotton, hounds, horses, guns, then moved on to more weighty things: loyalty, honor, personal courage, the values that made up the Code of their class, which they called "the chivalry." There was an easiness about these men, born of their certainty of themselves and their preeminence. But God help you if you crossed them – their tempers were sharp and close to the skin, and Wilkes learned to be careful of which woman's smile he returned.

"When you came to Richmond to star with us, I was more comftable there than you, even though you were the star, and had been there many times. Of course, you were always all-overish, never at home anywhere. You weren't meant to be happy. Not in this earthly life.

"You chose to open with Richard, and asked for me as your Richmond, and I got another chance to marvel at your work. You would speek, then be silent, then pour words out; your gestures were weak, indecisive, you made me feel sorry for Richard, that grade A son of a bitch! When I fought you, as we had rehearsed it, you collapsed under my blows, you lay on your side and thrust up at me, keeping me away, then struggled to get yourself upright again and nearly drove me off. When I killed you, you staggered, then brought yourself up til you seemed to be ten feet tall; then you crumbled as if you were made of sand and perished at my feet.

"They hurrahed you to the rafters, you took twenty curtain calls. You came and pulled me out of the troup, you led me down to the footlights, you put your arm around me, and you turned to the audience and you said: 'I think he’s done well, dont you?' The audience was shrieking: 'Yes! Yes!' I was humiliated!”

Oh, God. I remember it. Wilkes had stomped off the stage so ferociously he might have broken the boards. I'd had no idea what was wrong; the thing had gone quite well. He was steaming in the dressing room, throwing his clothes around. When I clapped his back - an expression of pride - he winced and turned away, and he would not say a word to me, til I finally let him be.

When the last of the cast had dressed and gone, I hung back. I liked those quiet moments alone, letting the role flow out of me, so that I would not go out into the world uncertain of who I was, and of whether that man on the street was a foe or just a pedestrian. The loss of the night's illusion was always a heart-rending thing, but better than to retain it and lose touch with the real, even if truth were flat and fantasy much the better place.

I had nearly purged Richard from my soul - oh, he was an awful man, but so very much alive - when Wilkes, his face nearly purple with rage, threw open the dressing room door. He stalked to a spot in front of me and put his fist in my face.

"I have done well in this town, and done it on my own! And you make me seem an inferior boy who needs his family's help! I may never be as good as you, or even as good as June. But don't you do that again, Ned, or I won't talk to you!"

I spluttered... I hadn't realized... of course... I saw his point... he was right to be angry ... it was thoughtless of me ... and Wilkes, of course, forgave me, since I was so miserable.

The next day, we did Hamlet, whom I have always loved. Though the world takes him for a madman, I play it as madness in craft - the vengeful charade of a civilized knight, clear-headed and purposeful. Wilkes said I was Hamlet, there was no difference between us. As things have turned out, I think that is more true of him than of me; but on the stage it is more true of me, insofar as when I am on the stage, I am who I am not, while Wilkes, on stage or off it, was always only himself. I was "unshaken by any passion," Wilkes said, but there, he got it wrong. I’ve been shaken hard by passion. I want no more of it.

But there was in the play this night a sweetness I had not felt before. I played every sequence back in my head, and could not put my finger on it. In what scene had it struck me? What line? I could think of none. Then I closed my eyes, and I saw what it was. It was Ophelia's face.

I have nothing kind to say to Ophelia. I brutalize her mind. Yet she prays for me: "Help him, sweet heavens!" As I play it, I do not look at her then, and yet this night I did, and I saw in her eyes the nearest that one can come to angelic love. Was she playing it, or feeling it? I had to find that out.

Wilkes was again his frolicsome self after the curtain fell. I caught up with him on the exit stairs. "The Ophelia? Who was she?"

Her name was Mary Devlin, he said. People called her Mollie. She was nineteen years old, in his opinion thin, not pretty, not much of an actress. Her nose was a bit too grand for her face, he said, and her upper lip somewhat overhung, which made for a simper in serious moods, though a rather charming smile.

"I know," I laughed, "but somehow or other she seems to have gotten to me."

"Have her!" he crowed. "No woman here is going to turn you down."

"I don't want to have her."

"Nor do I. Let’s go find better stuff!"

But I didn't go hunting with Wilkes that night. In the morning, I sought Mary out, and for the rest of my time in Richmond, I was with her whenever I could be. One week later, I let Wilkes know that we were going to be married.

"What! I don't understand you! The most delectable women are chasing you everywhere you go! There are men who would sell their souls to the Devil for a tenth of what you've been offered, not just here but everywhere, New York, New Orleans, Boston! They send you poems, flowers, gifts, they invite you into their boudoirs or invite themselves into yours, and you care nothing for any of them! You take no advantage, you have no experience, if you're not a virgin then you are surely the next worst thing. How can you pass these riches by? D--n it, Ned, you've earned them! Why would you even consider sinking yourself into a marriage now?"

"Little you know of the truth," I said. He didn't know the half.

When news had reached Maryland in '49 of the gold strikes in California, June had been packed and on his way, barely saying goodbye. I don't believe June wanted wealth; he certainly never got it. I'd like to think he deserted to get out of Papa's shadow; he'd been Papa's chaperone on the road, and the duty gave him fits. But the truth of it is, I'm afraid, June ran away from his wife and child with a girl named Harriet Mace.

I had to assume June's duties. I was taken out of boarding school to travel around the country with Papa and keep him off the drink. I never returned to school again. There is too much I don't know.

It was H-l keeping Papa controllable. Genius is obstinate. I never knew when he'd disappear, what night I would spend with him pacing the street without a word being said; whom he'd attack, whom he'd hurt, when he would hurt himself; when he would sit at the top of the flies and cock-a-doodle-do; when he would enter a pawnshop and sell himself for a drink; when he'd run naked into a storm howling passages from Lear, or come near to strangling Desdemona when he played Othello.

One night on a ship heading south to Charleston he passed the place where a friend of his had jumped overboard and drowned. I was careless that night; I thought there was nothing much he could possibly do. We were staring out at the millions of stars when suddenly Papa climbed over the rail and plunged into the sea. It seems he had a message he had to deliver to his friend. Thank God they fished him out and he never got to transmit it.

But I loved Papa, and I learned from him. The public believed he became, in his mind, the characters he played, as a result of some strange witchery or ecstatic intuition. His voice, they said, invaded you; it could glide through the mind like a current of light, full of beauty and meaning. That was Papa, when he was good. Sometimes he was not. But when he was, it was art, not passion that made them feel as they did. Papa usually knew who he was, though sometimes I wasn't sure. Even his mad freaks, some of them, were the product of his craft. It was the ones that were not that unnerved me.

Against his better judgment, he let me play some roles. I was not allowed to watch from the wings when I was not on stage. But I was allowed to listen. The voice, Papa told me, the sound of the voice, that was everything. It was the voice, and the eyes.

June was acting in mining camps, doing passably well. Miners threw nuggets onto the stage when they liked what they had seen. By now, San Francisco was burgeoning, filling with both the better and lesser sorts of humanity, and June decided a serious theater was what the city required. He rented a house called the Jenny Lind, and he wrote to Papa and asked him to come and put some Shakespeare on. Papa was up for anything, and the way June puffed the prospects, the money sounded good.

So we schoonered out of Chesapeake Bay, down through the Straits of Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico to dock at New Orleans, where we mixed for a jumbled day or two with a flood of rough-cut western types and Deep South ne'er-do-wells. From there we caught a steamer to the eastern coast of Panama, offloading by canoes to a port called Aspinwall.

In all my life I had never seen or dreamed of such a place. There was only one street to speak of, though tents and leantos and cane huts were hid in the thick jungle on the very edge of town. Little brown men in thatched straw hats wandered out of the grog shops onto the muddy street long enough to sell a drug or a woman, or steal a pocketbook.

They had plenty of likely customers. The town was full of adventurers, gamblers, second sons of nobility and scions of bankrupt fathers, bail jumpers, criminals and good American boys, all struggling to scout out porters to lead them across the Panama isthmus. It was slow going to get out of there; and while they were stuck in Aspinwall, checked into the filthy "Astor House" or the Central City Hotel, sharing a bed with a scruffy stranger soaked in rancid sweat if they had a bed at all, there was nothing to do but drink, and by one o'clock in the afternoon oblivion was a blessing. And the longer they stayed, the more the heat thrupped the gumption out of them, til they didn't care, some of them, about anything at all. Papa was inclined that way. I had to keep after him.

I found us two berths on a bungo, a boat made out of a hollowed log about twenty feet in length. We huddled on burlap sacksful of roots while natives not far from savages poled us up the black Chagres River, full of cannibal fish. Every several hours a flood of rain pounded on our heads, sending brown rivulets off the banks like wriggling anacondas. Should you wish to leave the bungo, you sank into mud to your neck. We were on that vessel for three long days, while the half-nude crew sang "Camptown Races" over and over and over.

When we reached the village of Cruces, we traded for the rent of two mules and set off on a journey of twenty miles through overgrown jungle on cobblestone tracks laid out years before by the Spaniards, whose reason to come to this devilish place I couldn't comprehend. The road was worn into deep holes, filled with water and old ooze that flew up each time a hoof set down, covering us with slime. The air stank of corruption, vegetable decay, which concentrated in green bogs that fluoresced when the sun went down. We spent nights stretched out on wine casks, with pistols in our hands, unable to sleep for the snoring of some and the fear of those who were not, and the shrieks and cackles of birds and monkeys, the slithering of bugs and the hiss of the natives' machete blades whipped along sharpening strops, until we reached Panama City and saw the Pacific Ocean. We'd been told it was a golden sea, but it looked just like the Atlantic, and I didn't give a d-n.

Panama City, which sat on the beach, was the better (and worse) for Americans who had set up businesses there, but the old city was rotting, and grass grew in the plazas. Our hotel was a tent of twelve feet square; the accommodations in toto were three cots, one table, two plates, two knives and an odd assortment of forks. The Missouri puke who "ran" the place had a smile which never left his lips and which somehow expressed everything from threat to delirium. His features were sunburned and fetid; he looked as if he'd been boiled like a teabag for a month. I never felt safe; I was cursing June and his miserable idea. I swore if I came out alive I would beat him to a pulp.

There was typhoid in Panama City; there was cholera, yellow fever. Men fled to the beaches for clean air, and squatted there on a patch of sand til the infrequent packet came up the coast and the war began for a ticket or berth on the route to California. It was Papa who got us aboard a ship, by force of either good acting or true insanity, to be penned up like hogs against other passengers who leaned over the rails and gave up the wormy biscuits and moldy bread which was all we had to eat.

The currents pulled the ship out to sea; there was no convincing me at the time that we were not bound for Japan. But the course curved east and eventually we rejoined the coast of Mexico, lusting for the bananas we saw scattered on the beach. Past San Bias, and Mazatlan, and Baja California, all naked rock and cactus under a wavering haze of heat. And then we began to see green grass; the northwestern trade winds cooled us down, and we crept into San Francisco Bay, a thatch of empty masts.

Some were eager to get to the hills; some, like us, were scared to death of what we'd find out there. But everyone hustled for picks and shovels and pans and cooking gear, scrambled down the ratlines and into the launches and onto the bustling wharves. San Francisco was a half-baked place; there were blocks of good brick buildings, and others where one found shabby shanties full of lice and rats. There were thousands of transients passing through, heading east to the Sierra. San Francisco was therefore Shangri La for haberdashers and whores.

June met us on the docks, looking San Franciscan, his hair down to his shoulders and his clothes covered with dust. He lived, with the other actors in town, on the Cliff on Telegraph Hill. He hadn't room for Papa and me, what with Harriet and all, so we took a two-room house on stilts in the midst of a plot of sand hills. You could reach it only by way of a ladder that led to a door in the floor. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods. Chinese laborers lived nearby, and beat on gongs all night. June refused to visit; to call us to rehearsal, he had somebody blow a bugle.

June opened our run with Richard the Third. There was a shortage of players, so Papa cast me as Richmond, just as, later, I cast Wilkes. Papa coached me in the role, which he wouldn't often do, but he wasn't patient with me as I struggled with the part. I came to the line: "The weary sun has made a golden set." Simple enough, it seemed to me. A statement of mundane fact.

"That won't do!" Papa scoffed, stamping his foot on the boards. "Come come come, boy! Do that again!"

I did it again, no better. Who cared about that line?

"For God's sake!" Papa roared. "Where does the d-ned sun set?"

"It sets, I suspect, in the west," I said.

"Well, show it then! Point to it! Nod your head! Do something!" By the time we got to performance night, even the blind and deaf in the crowd knew where the sun had gone down.

We did not make any money, though. San Franciscans were much too busy mining the gold or the miners to pass an idle evening. Papa had two alternatives: find a saloon, or go home. First he chose the former; then he chose the latter. When he said he'd be going, I packed my bags, but before I had gathered up everything, Papa shambled into my room and parked himself on the bed. "Do you want to act?" he asked me.

"I can't think of anything else."

He smiled. "Then you stay, and get started. I can get home alone."

Papa set off on the return trip, on the route we had taken out. I kissed him goodbye; I told him I loved him; I said I ought to go with him to make sure all things went right. He wouldn't hear of any of that. So I let him go. The year was 1852. It was the last I saw of him.

I joined a troupe of players heading up the Sacramento Valley into the Sierras – classical tenors, circus freaks, steamboat actors, barroom queens. At Marysville or Downieville, Jackass Gulch or Shirt-Tail Bend or Cock-Tail Canyon, we'd pound on drums and beat on bells like medieval clowns to announce our performance that night in tents, or over the hardware store, on a stage of pushed-up pool tables or sawhorsed boards. We played minstrel shows, The Marble Heart, The Lady of the Camellias, or The San Francisco Fire Boy or The Patagonian Ape.

The Shakespeare was the most dangerous. Some of the miners knew the lines, and if one of us were to mess one up, they shot their guns at the stage. Worse, some of them didn't understand that the characters weren't real; they thought it was Iago they saw, and they hated him so much and so quick they decided, in their liberal way, to fill him full of holes. I developed quite a talent for leaping into the wings. If they liked us, though, they'd throw fifty-cent pieces or Mexican silver dollars, and I soon developed an elegant way of scrambling to pocket them.

After the evening's labors, it was off to the saloons. There was drinking to do, or wagering, or roughing up a girl. For a fee in most of the rumholes one could rip the clothes off a woman, take her upstairs to a little room and do whatever one pleased. Sometimes the women were willing; some were insatiable. I saw women make love to women, women make love to dogs. I saw girls fall stunned off barstools, mickey'd insensible, dragged down into the basement and had by thirty men. They were given half of the profit of this involuntary work.

And I loved every bit of it, and I took more than my share. I thrust as far into women as their bodies, or mine, allowed, and they egged me on, they took hold of me and shoved me deeper and deeper 'til I found myself in a universe I've never been able to flee.

At eighteen I was a drunkard, at twenty a libertine. I'd start with the booze and from there I never knew where I would go. When I'd slept it off, I was desperate, I was overcome with remorse. I'd swear I'd never do it again, but sin was in me and it consumed me while it was shut up close, so when another night fell I let it out, and it seemed to rage and bum each night more fiercely than the last. And I began to realize I was born to be a horror.

I was in a place called Grass Valley when the snow began to fall, and kept on until it smothered the tents and engulfed the groggeries til naught but the smoke from a stovepipe gave their existence away. We were short of food and firewood, but never short of "love". More than ever I crawled inside the women to warm myself in their heat.

I was on my back on a pallet of straw; a young girl was working my flesh with her mouth while I sought her sex with my fingers, when the concierge - we gave him that honorable name - knocked upon my door. Somehow a courier had come through, with news - he regretted to have to say - that Papa had died on a riverboat. He'd never made it home.

Oh God! If I had any sanity left, I lost it in that moment. If I had only gone with him ... I should never have let him go alone ... Papa couldn't be alone, he couldn't trust himself … I turned the girl over viciously and drove myself into her...

For four years 1 wandered around the mines in the hills of California. I would play a night and leave a town and hours later the theater would tumble down in flames. It happened over and over again. They said I was a dark angel, a courier from H-l. They would gather at the City limits and bar me from entering, dangling a rope from a cottonwood to fortify the point. In the end I had no place to go; so I went home.

The Devil is still in me. I cannot drive him off. But I have found enough honor in my soul to stay away from those stagedoor morsels who offer themselves to me. I'd spend myself in actresses who were eager to let me sow in them without thinking of what they might reap; but I can't corrupt an innocent. The Devil allows me that grace.
Mollie was a holy thing. I saw the light in her, and I knew if I were to have Salvation, she was my only chance. I never told Wilkes any of this. It wasn't his business, was it.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 6

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell

CHAPTER SIX

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:57:00 +0000

boomp3.com

Asia was a lovely bride, but not a happy one. I had never thought she loved Jack Clarke, but the only man Asia had ever loved, she could never marry. I didn't think love mattered to her, as long as she was secure.

But in the light of my own love, I realized I was wrong. She went through the motions docilely, but even she had dreams. When out in the garden of Mother's home I announced my betrothal to Mary, Asia let loose the fury I had met many times before.

"You're going to marry that actress?”

"Yes," I beamed. "I am."

Asia turned her back on me. "I detest and despise the woman!"

"B-but, Asia - you haven't met her ..."

"I won't! Nothing can induce me to condescend to her level!"

"What level is that, Asia?" I was angry now but, as usual, no one else would know it.

"An actress level, and from what I hear she's not even second rate. A boldfaced girl who can strut before a nightly audience, who can allow men of all kinds to caress and court her in a business way."

"I'm one of those men," I growled. "So was Papa. So is Wilkes."

Asia built up a head of steam. "She wants your money, and she wants your name. Her family are Irish, aren't they? You'll have to support them, no doubt."

"Have you something against the Irish, Asia?"

“I have something against white trash! That you'd throw yourself away so lightly is enough to break my heart. So help me, Ned, if you marry her I will cut you out of my life!"

Wilkes would have brought his sister around. I was devastated. I had always said – and intended - that I would never marry an actress, but I meant by that the corrupted girls that I had always known. Mollie was different - perfect .. or was I deluding myself? Could Asia be right? Was it possible that Mollie had lived the theater life and not been ravaged by it? Could any woman who craved the stage not be inherently low? Could I trust my own judgment and instincts? They had nearly wrecked me, once.

Worst of all was my awesome fear of disappointing Asia. To us, the family was all - and had always been. Family was to be counted on, trusted, honored, obeyed. Nothing was to stand in the way of our love and concern for each other. I wrangled with Asia, got nowhere. She never weakened. I did. As Wilkes and I packed our bags and prepared to return to Richmond, I knew I would have to let Mollie go, if I could find the strength.

Mollie's face was aglow when we appeared at the next rehearsal. For four hours of torture I ran the troupe through the five acts of King Lear. Not my normal considerate self, I abused them unmercifully, til by the finis even the men were cringing with every line. Mollie knew something awful was happening. She hoped she could help me through it. She knew my history well by then - I had told her everything - and she was convinced I was once again leaping off a precipice into a woeful sea. She was right, of course. That's what I did. And d-ned near drowned in it.

"What's wrong, my darling?" she asked me when she found me, later, in the green room alone. I told her it was over. She begged to know what the reason was. Every explanation I tried to make crashed on its own absurdity. In the end, all I could tell her was that I had had second thoughts. The answer was not enough for her. "Just go," I mumbled. "I've no excuse. Just go. Just leave me be."

She drew herself up and stalked away. She closed the door behind her. I heard her sobs, and running feet in the hall. Moments later, Wilkes turned the knob, walked in and sat beside me. "You told her. I'm sorry. It must have been horrible."

"You saw her?"

"Yes."

"Will she be all right?"

"I don't think so, Ned."

We sat in silence side by side on the green room's stained settee, both of us leaning on our knees and holding our heads in our hands. Then I reached out and pulled him close with an arm around his shoulder. "I leave here three days from now. I don't know when I'll see you again. And I love you very much. So I've decided to give you a benefit. We're scheduled to play Othello. I'll take the role of Iago. You'll take the lead."

Wilkes was astonished - and rightly so. A benefit was a performance from which the actor to be benefited received most of the dividends. Well-chosen and well-negotiated, the profit from one benefit might equal a third of a whole year's earnings. With myself in the cast, Wilkes would do well. And this would be his first lead. This was the proof of my love for him. He couldn't have asked for more.

"Don't flatter yourself," I laughed as he spluttered thanks. "I find the part of Othello a great provocation to drink. And bill yourself by your real name, Wilkes. You needn't fear any longer bringing disrepute on me."

Wilkes wasn't ready to play The Moor. Nobody thought he could. But for the first time, he stood on the stage as John Wilkes Booth, and his Richmond friends were uproarious for their own devil boy.

Mollie left Richmond that morning. The next day, so did I.

Wilkes completed the season and went home to Baltimore. In the fall, Kunkel brought him back to play another year; a wise decision since by that time Wilkes had become a draw. Harry Langdon was gone, but otherwise things were the same; women still sent him roses, and people opened their homes. He took a room to himself that fall, in the Powhatan Hotel. He needed to keep his privacy - because he rarely spent nights alone.
In October, when Maggie Mitchell came in for another two week run, she checked into the Powhatan, and straightaway sent for Wilkes. "Shall we pick it up where we left it?" She pulled her hat pins out of her hair and tossed them at him like darts. There were gowns and shawls and underthings strewn all over the floor. He remembered her deliciously, in and out of these.

"All right," he laughed, "but not all the time. I have other engagements now."

“Fine," she cracked, "but don't bring anything back that I don't want.”

Her rehearsals were called for nine a.m., and she was usually prompt, but there was a
morning in the midst of the month on which she did not appear. The troupe waited in the theater, going through their lines, until after noon Maggie sprinted in, her green eyes smoldering and her skirts whipping around her feet as she whirled to center stage.

"The d--ned Abolitionists! Have you heard the news? They have taken the arsenal at Harper's Ferry! Somebody's cut the telegraph wires! Niggers are killing their masters all over Virginia and Maryland! They've called up the militia! All Holy H-l's broke loose!"

The women were rooted in their tracks, too terrified to move, while the men grabbed up their coats and hats and tore through the exit door. Some of their families owned slaves; some lived in country Virginia, where the danger of insurrection was immediately real. Maggie had said the wires were down, but Wilkes was not thinking clearly; panicked for Mother, he followed them out and raced to the telegraph office, leaving Maggie Mitchell alone, savoring her effect.

The rumor was false; the lines were intact, so Wilkes sent a wire to Mother to inquire if she were safe. It would be many hours, he knew, before a courier would even attempt to go out to Mother's farm, so he scurried to Dr. Beal's house to find out what he could, since nothing occurred in Virginia without the doctor's knowing it.

"It’s over," Beal told him as he led him into his smoking room. John Daniel was there, and an old, thin man with gray hair to his shoulders and a hawk's sharp eyes and nose. He was Edmund Ruffin, the doctor said, a Virginia farmer whose writings on agriculture were widely known. He had ridden into town from his plantation on the James. He was sitting in an armchair, hands perched on his knees. "A few of the terrorists have been shot; they've trapped the rest in the arsenal's engine house, they're trying to take them alive."

"They were going to arm the slaves," Daniel snarled. "They called them into rebellion."

Beal shrugged. "Unfortunately for them, the niggers couldn't be bothered."

Ruffin chuckled: "Wisht they had. That would have started things. But ain't none of my slaves even heard of this fella John Brown."

"Have they risen in Maryland?" Wilkes squawked.

"No. That wasn't true." Dr. Beal poured snifters of brandy, and handed them around.
Daniel asked: "Where's Jennings?" as Beal slipped into a chair.

“He shipped out this morning with the Blues, headed for Harper's Ferry. They got as far as Washington when they found out the thing was done. They turned around; I expect they'll be back some time later tonight."

Daniel jumped up and clapped his hand on the mantelpiece. “Do you know who put up the cash for this raid? Those god-d-ned Boston bastards!"

"Sure they did," Ruffin said easily, "but so far we can't prove it."

"The proof will come, I know it!"

"Don't need it," Ruffin asserted. "Ain't nobody who won't believe the North is behind this thing. It brings back all the bad memories of the mess in Henrico County, and the Nat Turner business twenty-some years ago. It's every Southerner's nightmare, ain't it - niggers with knives and guns? And the Yankees are behind it? I tell y'all, won't be long." Ruffin sat back with a satisfied grin. However long, and whatever for, he could wait.

Maggie lay panting, late that night, stretched on Wilkes' bedlinens, skirts to her chin, her toes in the bowl of the washstand he had placed alongside the brass spittoon at the foot of the narrow bed. She had been greatly exercised, in every sense of the word. Wilkes lay beside her, easy now, being in better condition.

"Dammit, Johnnie," Maggie growled, "I think you are trying to kill me."

"Oh, now, darling," he laughed, "I merely attempt to oblige."

"Well, it's better to die in passion than have your throat slit by a nigger." Maggie had not done away with the mood which had struck her that afternoon. "Those Abolitionists, Johnnie. They mean to do us in!"

Her vehemence bewildered Wilkes. "You've lived in Manhattan all your life. Who do you mean by 'us'?"

"I'm Irish, love. The Irish don't like niggers. They don't bother me personally, except that they're lazy and stupid and I don't like them sharing my air. But my father works in a factory, building Steinway's pianos. He don't want free niggers to come to New York and price him out of his job.

"Besides" - she had flipped down her skirts and was now arranging her coif - "New York is more of a Southern city than even Richmond is. I will bet you if the South secedes, New York City goes with it. Do you know how much money the South owes New York because of the cotton trade? If there's war, and the South doesn't pay, there'll be hundreds of merchants leaping from the balconies over Broadway. And if the South lost her slaves, there'd be grass growing on Wall Street. Importing slaves from Africa's been banned for fifty years; most all of the slaves you can get down here are American born. But you go down to Sweet's Restaurant at the corner of Fulton and South, you can buy yourself ‘black ivory' fresh off the African coast. One of the ships they come in on belongs to the New York Yacht Club. The rest are owned by high-toned people who wouldn't want it known. But I know," she giggled, "because they're not as high-toned as they pretend."

Maggie got up and straightened her clothes, preparing herself to leave. She kissed Wilkes' cheek and sashayed to the door - but she lingered there. "The thing is, for me, Johnnie, I truly love the South. These Southron people are nice to me, not like those New York hoity-toits or the Boston Brahmin bitches who look at me down their noses."

"Ned's asked me to come to Boston, to perform for two or three days."

"You go up there." She slid through the door. "You'll see what I mean."

Wilkes found Boston cold, in every way, as in fact it is. The brown brick buildings are dark and somber, and the sky is a dun palette; the sun goes down too early, and no one who doesn't know you will give you the time of day. I'd asked him to meet me at the Howard Athenaeum. He found the place bleak and brooding, and he couldn't imagine anything light or gay inside its walls. I led him in. He was stunned to find that it was a theater.

I laughed. "Well, they can't call it that, or the Puritans won't come. It has to be called a library, or a Museum of Fine Arts, so they can say it's educational, or morally uplifting. The local preachers get in for free. Bloody hypocrites. They know what they're coming for, they just refuse to admit it."

For the full five acts of our Richard the Third, the audience stared at us; at the end of the play they clapped their hands in a fastidious way. I told Wilkes that, for Boston, their reaction was a rave. He said he wished he were in Richmond, where when they love you they let you know.

After the play, we were taken to a home on Beacon Hill. It was stuffed to the gills with plumped furniture; heavy drapes kept out the air, and the punch they served with cookies was bluenosed, spirit-free. John Brown was the common topic - in fact, the only one. The state of Virginia had just announced they would try him for the Harper's Ferry raid, and no doubt hang him thereafter. You could hear the bells of Boston banging out paeans for Brown, over pews crammed with hysterical crowds praying for his soul. The preachers proclaimed Brown's gallows-to-be "as glorious as the Cross!"; they trumpeted their hopes for the success of future slave insurrections. And the talk in the uppity drawing room was very much the same.

Wilkes choked on these sentiments, but they didn't bother me, except for the intensity with which they were expressed. Papa had had slaves, but not owned them. He had rented them from the neighbors, and felt some guilt about it, but not enough to stop. I am in Papa's place on this. I believe in human freedom, but I do not work for it.

I had brought Adam with me from New York to help me socialize. Adam swam in these waters; he was completely at ease. Wilkes had kept himself by my side, fidgety, but Adam was busy circulating. From time to time I had heard his laugh - a sort of half-choked yelp - from across the room in the midst of one or another soberly-clad assembly. Now, though, he was elbowing his way through the crowd to me like a ship cutting through an ice pack, or, as Wilkes later put it, The Charge of the Light Brigade.

He was thin and pale, with bright red hair which looked somehow like a peruke and wasn't shaped like anything one would commonly see. He wore glasses and a tight black coat, under which his shoulders slumped. In one light, Adam looked like an accountant's clerk, in another light, like a minor bawd in Louie the Sixteenth's court.

"Oh Ned," Adam hissed through a wicked grin, "I suppose I shouldn't tell you this - how will you take it, I wonder - but I've just heard that Mollie's in Boston ..."

"What!"

"In Cushman's company! Yes, and she's going to marry a lawyer, and I am just so thrilled!"

Wilkes whispered to me: "You know this man?"

"This is Adam Badeau," I said. "He's a bon vivant. He writes for the New York papers."

"And Ned is my prince!" Adam pronounced, "the man I love best in the world! And now you'll have to forget her, won't you?" he stage-whispered to me. "I could have killed you, honestly, Ned, if you'd gone through with it. When I heard about her, I wished to God I had never seen you. Do you know what it's like" - he threw this at Wilkes, not so quietly now - "to be buried alive in someone else you depend on for your happiness? And I would have had to traipse about in that woman's wake waiting for an occasional crumb of Ned's affection! When he could spare a moment or a thought now and then!" Adam paused and studied Wilkes. "By the way, who are you?”

'This is my brother," I cut in. "Would you give us a moment, Ad?"

Adam was desolate, for a bit, then brightened and let me go. "Of course, of course! I shall mingle more! Stay a god, my prince!"

After Adam was gone, Wilkes asked: “What in the name of Christ is that?”

"Just a friend. He helps me with my work." And suddenly I began to weep, and the heaving sobs grew deeper until I couldn't breathe. 1'd been standing for weeks on the edge of the world. Her name had tossed me over it.

"Oh God, Wilkes, I can't ... I - I won't accept that she's lost to me! Oh, God. Oh Jesus! What have I done!" I was smothering! Gasping, I shoved myself through the crowd and went out without my coat. I stood on the sidewalk a moment or two, fighting to catch my wind, and then I remembered Cushman's address - she had grown up in Boston, and had a mansion nearby. Without thinking to do it, I started to run, coursing up Beacon Hill's twisting streets, finding my way by instinct to a place I had never been.

Cushman didn't stay here much - it was one of her many homes. It was well kept up, though, as Charlotte was, fenced by wrought iron and secured by a nail-headed brass-hinged oaken door. I struck the knocker. The butler came; the door was slightly ajar. "Can I help ..." was all he got to say before I knocked him to the floor.

"Where is she? Where's Charlotte? Where's Mary?" I bawled.

"Help! Police!" he whooped.

"That won't be necessary, Charles." Cushman was standing in the hall in a robe of moiré silk, her graying hair askew. She looked like all three of the witches in her version of Macbeth. "Good to see you, Ned," she smiled. "Though you should have sent 'round your carte."

"Where's Mary?"

"Not here. She doesn't live here. But now that you've breached my battlements, would you care to have a chair?"

"What are you doing with Mary?" The butler slowly picked himself up and walked away bobbing his head.

"You didn't want her, Ned. Well - I did."

"For what? For your Juliet? If you've played your Sapphic games with her, Charlotte, I swear I'll cut out your heart!"

"Now, Ned," she sighed, "that isn't kind. She may have cried on my shoulder some, but I didn't push the point. I wanted her for my company. She's a charming little thing."

"And who is this lawyer she's marrying?" I had closed the distance to her, and was backing her up the stairs.

"A Back Bay fellow, with money. You rejected the poor girl. He treats her very well."

The simple truth she told me drained the fight out of me. I plunked myself into a foyer chair; my face and my shoulders sagged. "But I can't live without her, Charlotte!"

"I'm afraid you'll have to." Cushman descended several steps, drew near and took my hand. "Let me get you a snifter of brandy. You're as pallid as Banquo's ghost." I took the drink. I shouldn't have. It opened the old closed door.

When Wilkes returned to Richmond, he found it delirious - consumed by an angry ecstasy of joyous anticipation. The North was berserk Abolitionist. The South was crazed for secession. At Beal's, John Botts was trying to hold down the lid of a simmering pot. "The South cannot secede without the consent of the rest of the Union!"

"Rot!" Jennings Wise exploded. "It's our constitutional right! We didn't give up our sovereignty when we bonded with the Union! We gave the government in Washington no power to coerce us! Whenever we want to be rid of it, we have only to write the words! There would never have been a Union at all if any state, North or South, had imagined that the Federal government would ever attempt to keep it in by force!"
"There's no need for secession, Jennings! They will not take our slaves! They are only ranting, the same as you!"

"You call what Brown did ranting?”

"Oh, Brown, Brown! Holy Brown! I think you people arranged the whole thing to push us out of the Union!"

"Meet me with pistols!" Jennings shrieked. "Tomorrow morning at dawn!"

"Why bother, for God's sake? We'll never hit each other."

John Daniels leapt in; he was, as always, irate. "Why do they care about slavery? Suppose - just for argument's sake - it's a sin, as they say it is. We're the ones who are answerable to God for it. Not they! And thank God that they have no slaves, which they would if they could make it pay. If the Abolitionists had the lash, they’d lay it on double thick!"

"It is not about slavery," Jennings insisted. "It's about domination!"

"About both!" retorted Daniels. "It comes to the same d-n thing! What right have they to opinions that threaten our Southern way of life? That kind of talk is treason; it has to be stamped to death! We're hanging Brown for attempting what these people are calling for. Let them throw away their principles! Or else be hushed forever!"

Dr. Beal had sat quietly by while the argument heightened. Now he threw into the fray the thought he had been mulling. "The thing is, Daniels, I believe - and you believed it, and Jennings, too - that the Union and our democracy are the last best hope of earth."

"That was before the North decided to build an empire on our backs!"

"If democracy fails in America, I'm afraid it will be the last the world will see of it.”

Daniels was at Beal, and on him, nearly nose to nose. "This is no democracy if we have no voice! If we're crushed under their heel! If they want to keep the Union, let them prove - with deeds! - that we shall have the rights we are entitled to. Otherwise we take leave of them. To stay in the Union as it is, is only asking for trouble. "

Botts sadly shook his head. "We'll have civil war."

"Maybe," Wise snapped, "though I doubt it. They can talk in favor of niggers, but I don't think they'll die for them."

"There are times when peace is a burden," said Daniels, calmer but still afire. "When treason is weighing in the scale, it is time to throw out our gentler natures, and call on pride, justice and revenge to replace the nobler passions."

Beal chuckled. "That sounds to me like tomorrow's editorial."

"Blood and justice, dammit! It's time to act, not to think! All argument has been exhausted. I don't want to hear any more!"

"But what's the rush?" Dr. Beal inquired. "Why not wait until something happens?"

Jennings Wise was incredulous. "John Brown didn't happen? Til when should I wait, doctor? Til my niggers apply the torch to my house and the knife to the throats of my family?"

"I don't expect there'll be more of that. John Brown is a lunatic."

The point did not impress Daniel. "There are lunatics aplenty in New England. And other semi-civilized brutes who can't be reasoned with."

Wilkes, for the first time, entered the fray, blaring energetically that he knew a boy whose father had been murdered by his slaves. The niggers had run out of Maryland, to Christiana, Pennsylvania. When the father went out after them, the niggers had shot him down. The killers were tried for treason, but a Pennsylvania jury had allowed them to go free. So Jennings was right – give them an inch...

Wise studied Wilkes with new interest, until Beal distracted him. "Why not hold off until next year - until the next election? If any man wins who is not prepared to protect slave property, I'd have to agree that would be sufficient cause to leave the Union. "

Suddenly Edmund Ruffin spoke. His tranquility was startling. "That's a good idea, doctor. We can talk all the war we like, but we're hardly ready to fight one. Howsomever, we will be, by the next inauguration." Ruffin smiled. He could wait. He knew what was going to happen.

When life makes better theater than the theaters make life; when real people, unrehearsed, speak better lines than actors; when real passions - love, hate, war - make Shakespeare's kings look tame, the streets and smoking rooms are full and the playhouses are empty. Only a few tickets had been sold for that night's performance of Smike, an inferior dramatization of Nicholas Nickleby. But outside the Marshall Theater swelled a hubbub of greetings, laughs and cheers, salutes and wagon wheels. The local militia, the Blues and the Grays, were gathering to board the cars of the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, whose line ran down the middle of Broad Street, passing the theater. They were going west to Charles Town for the hanging of John Brown.

Wilkes dropped his prompt book and ran to the door. "I had never seen such excitement! History was happening; the fever, the fervor, the lust for the fire, the hot blood of anticipation, the clash of passions, the drama! was boiling in this scene. I was damned if I'd turn and go back inside and try to pretend these things!"

He walked up to a baggage car and hoisted himself aboard. Two militia boys were in the car, guarding their company's gear - poor white trash, not chivalry; rugged stony-faced boys. "Y'all can't come on this train," one said.

"Why not?"

"Y'all ain't in the Grays."

But the other fellow elbowed him. "He's Booth, the actor - ain't yuh?"

"I am.”

"Aw, come on," he urged his pal, "let him come along. Gonna be a long journey; he mought keep us'n amused!"

"Well ..." said the first, thinking it through, a slow but thorough procedure. "I spec' we can hide y'all, suh, if y' get y' a uniform."

"Where can I buy one?" Wilkes inquired.

"Too late. But I got an idee." He began to pull off his jacket, and the other one took off his hat. They fit Wilkes barely, as his fit them; but they made three sloppy soldiers, and Wilkes was on his way.

"Who's gonna play your part tonight, ifn y'all be goin' to Charles Town?"

"Well, I don't know, sir," Wilkes guffawed, "and I don't care."

The train rolled north through Ashland and past Hanover Junction, Spotsylvania Court House, Fredericksburg, til they reached the line's end at Acquia Creek, on the south bank of the Potomac. There they boarded a steamer and headed north past Alexandria and Washington, then west up the wide, slow river to the town of Harper's Ferry which crept up the side of a little hill like a covering of moss.

They marched through the lower reaches of town, past the arsenal engine house where Brown had made his stand, past Hall's Rifle Works (which Brown had held) up Shenandoah Road; and then southbound on a meandering path to the little village of Charles Town. Brown's execution would take place there, rather than Harper's Ferry. It was thought to be more defensible against the expected Northern mob.

The Grays fell out in the center of town and put up their sleeping tents. And then commenced the jamboree, a regular soiree. A notable Richmond beer hall had sent barrels of lager and sandwiches - Swiss cheese, black bread and Sicilian sardines. They were finished off with good cigars, and then the games began - foot races, base ball, tigerish poker, or examinations of sidearms, or just good palaver. Some of the soldiers knew of Wilkes, and when they lit the campfires in the late November chill, they begged him for a bit of Othello or Richard or Richelieu. Wilkes, in an expansive mood, once started could not be stopped; but no one was planning to get any sleep – who knew if the Yankees would try something, tomorrow they might be dead, or at least they'd have shot some Yankees. They'd sleep when they got back home.

The Yankees did not materialize, but that didn't dampen spirits. In the morning, the Grays were marched through town and into the stone-walled courtyard where Brown would meet his fate. They were thirty feet from the gallows, with the Richmond Blues to their left. Wilkes saw Jennings Wise in the ranks of the Blues; they saluted each other. To Wilkes' right were the student cadets of the Virginia Military Academy, and with them, in one of their uniforms, was the old man, Edmund Ruffin. He gave Wilkes a grin, the meaning of which was: Good for us! We're here!

The waxing sound of wagon wheels over a rutted road brought the boys to stillness, and Brown was carted in. He was sitting on his coffin; his hands and feet were bound. They untied his feet and helped him to stand and climb down out of the wagon, then took him up the gallows stairs to stand under the noose. His face looked old; he had no lips and the skin beneath his eyes was pouched, but there wasn't a trace of gray in his dark brown hair. Nor did he show a hint of fear as he waited for the end. He stood there composed and dignified. They gave him a chance to speak.

For a moment he stared out, brighteyed. "There's an eternity behind," he began, "and an eternity before, and this little speck in the center is comparatively a minute."

Then he stretched to full height and glowered down, looking like Moses giving the law; and Wilkes thought of Papa. He would have loved this role.

"I warned you," Brown thundered, "to fear God. You have not obeyed. God raised me to free the black man. What I have done was His will. You think I have failed, but I have not. After me comes the deluge which will sweep away your temple! I will punish this land for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity! I will end the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the haughty ruthless! I should also like to remind you," he said, now with a bit of a smile, "that I'm worth a lot more hanged than I ever was alive."

A wave of respect flowed back to him from the watching crowd. No one believed a word he said; but the South would honor a man like that, who did what he had to do. Then they hooded him, and fitted the noose; and suddenly the trap dropped with a hideous bang. Brown fell; he tightened his hands. The skin on his arms turned blue. Wilkes felt the blood drain from his own head, and a snugness in his neck.

"Ain't that something." The soldier who spoke gazed at the gibbet in awe.

"Christ!" Wilkes whispered back to him. "Where can I get a drink?"

The ride back to Richmond was quiet. Death was death, no matter whose. Kunkel was pacing in front of the Marshall when Wilkes climbed down to the street. "You're fired!" he yelled. "You ingrate! You abandoned me!" Fifty Grays corralled him, and convinced him to change his mind.

That night, the audience boosted Wilkes for helping to hang John Brown. He took the ovation cheerily - but he thought it unrefined.

The troupe played a hundred and fifty nights, everything from The Bottle Imp to Horse-Shoe Robinson. By May, Wilkes knew his apprenticeship was coming to a close. If he were ever to reach for stardom, he would have to strike out on his own.

Kunkel made a great furrow-browed demonstration of doubts. "Are you sure you're ready, Wilkes?" It was really rather touching - and even a bit sincere.

"Shall we test me?" Wilkes grinned. "Let’s suppose we add another day. Suppose we put on Richard the Third, and suppose I play the lead."

Kunkel was, as Wilkes knew he'd be, transfigured by the suggestion. He had premiered two Booths in that starring role. To do it again with a third ... he couldn't speak, just bobbed his head as if it were jerked by a string.

“I struggled to find a way to portray a character like Richard - a hideously ugly man, 'deform'd, unfinish'd' - bitter. Ned, you know I'm a playful soul - a worshiper of life. I had never hated anyone. I could not hold a grudge. Nothing bad or sad had happened to me from which I could draw self-pity. I had been deprived of nothing I had ever hungered for. I have never had a dark side. There is nothing of Richard in me."

Wilkes played him as he imagined him - hunched into the role of the humpbacked king, rubbing his hands in sardonic glee like a bent Uriah Heep, crawling across the stage like a snake flicking out his tongue. "Plots I have laid, inductions dangerous, by drunken prophecies ..."

"And they said if they hadn't known it was me, they'd have thought it was Papa up there.”

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Check these links for more information:

More on John Brown
The raid on Harper's Ferry

Go to Chapter 7

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin

CHAPTER SEVEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 04:30:00 +0000

boomp3.com

I married Mollie in New York in the summer of 1860. Adam Badeau was my best man; he blubbered through most of the ceremony, but managed to hand me the rings, and then bubbled around Delmonico's (which was still downtown back then, at Broadway and Chambers Street) bewildering the wedding guests, downing buckets of Veuve Clicquot and bullying the kitchen staff on the proper preparation of the coquille de faisan. The party was made up of friends from New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. None of my family deigned to come, except for brother Wilkes.

It was Wilkes who had made the effort that had led to this blissful day - not because he wished it, but because Adam had asked him to. "It kills me to do it," Adam had written to Wilkes four months before, no doubt tearing out clumps of hair as he touched the pen to the page, "but I must request that you intervene with Mollie on Ned's behalf. He won't go out, he sits in his room and nurses a bottle of gin. He looks like H--I, he's going wild and I don't know what else to do. I adore your brother passionately; so (or 'but', I'm not sure which) if she is the source of his happiness, I have to bring them together. I know you know her; she'll listen to you. And I think she still loves him.”

Wilkes' note - whatever it said - dismayed Mollie so much that she quit Cushman's troupe on a half hour' s notice and caught the next cars to New York. She found me, in my dressing room, in a state to which I'd hoped I would never sink again. Had she waited even one more day, I might not have recognized her. To say I was glad to see her is ... well, I was very pleased. I began to cry, and so did she - we soaked each other with tears. She seized my bottle and tossed it away. She held my hand; she kissed away the stains on my blackened heart; somehow, she corked the genie that shares my brain with me. I'd had enough wits about me to ask her to marry me. She had said she would, if I meant it. I had said I would die if she didn't. I had meant it literally.

We had given Adam a free hand with the placement of the guests; he had an unerring instinct for who would talk to whom. He seated Wilkes in the chair to my left, and himself at the table's end where he beamed and fussed with the centerpiece like somebody's maiden aunt. Wilkes couldn't keep his eyes off Adam; every gesture startled him, physically jerked him back. Finally, he couldn't contain himself. He drove an elbow into my rib. "Ned, what do you have with that... person?"

"Who?"

"That ...person! Adam Badeau!"

"It bothers you, does it - the way he is?"

"He gives me the willies," he said.

"You remember, Wilkes - I never finished school. This acting life, this traveling has brought me into a world I wasn't trained to understand. Adam's a writer, a cultured man. He worships the spark of genius; he says he sees it in me. He teaches me. He brings me things, pictures of other actors' work, biographies and such. We go to salons where they talk about art and music and philosophy; I haven't got a word to put in, but I learn by listening. We study my roles together, we dig into them for meaning. And I tell him how I feel when I feel so bad I can't tell you.

"He annoys me sometimes, with his 'muchness.' He's jealous; he gets out of hand. But there's a usefulness to me in his femininity. He naturally conceives of our art as refined and thoughtful, as women can be, but combined with the strut and thunder that marks a man on the stage. I see what he likes; he tells me why; and I endeavor to do it. Gracious women are beginning to go to the theater now, alone, since the nymphs de Pave have been chased from the balcony. The sports will likely follow the whores to the concert saloons and the model shows, and the theater will return to the great classic themes. I don't suggest you trail me, Wilkes. You have to be true to yourself. But that's the way I'm going, and I think I have got it right."

Wilkes dipped his spoon in the turtle soup. We did not discuss Adam again.

Mollie and I set up housekeeping at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, at the corner of 23rd Street, just off Madison Square. The hotel, which had only just been built, was the best the city offered. Six stories high, it was all of white marble, and had six hundred rooms. Our suite of parlor, bedchamber, dressing and private bathing room(!) was on the topmost floor, giving on a view much sought after since the new vertical railroad had erased the need to climb five sets of stairs.
Wilkes stayed with us for several days, and a number of other guests did too, since they'd never seen New York. Wilkes would wander off on his own, returning goggle-eyed. "Ned, it isn't fair of you to keep this town to yourself."

So we took them all down Broadway, Wilkes staying just ahead within earshot of our comments, the others close behind us, craning their necks like geese. We led them along the Ladies Mile, between Twenty Third and Fourteenth, to gape at the windows full of gowns, organdy, grenadine, brocade silks in magentas and fuchsia. They strolled through fashionable Union Square's lawns amid sparkling fountains, and stared up at the Clarendon Hotel, rumored to have the grandest bathtubs in New York City. I pointed out people on benches, young girls and older men. They're actresses, I explained to Wilkes, cutting deals with producers. They call it the slave market. The girls leaned forward earnestly; the men leaned the other way. Whether a hand was shaken or kissed showed the kind of arrangement they struck.

At the corner of the square was Napoleon Sarony's studio, where actors posed in costume, with props, in front of painted backdrops for the daguerreotypes they'd circulate for the purpose of selling themselves. Cartes de visite were coming into fashion at the time; soon it would be impossible to call at a home on Fifth Avenue without having sent one around, and Sarony was getting busy taking shots of modish folk. And there were the secret sessions, making sensual prints of opulent whores who handed them out to passersby or left them in hotel lobbies, and once in a while a tableau vivant of nude ladies down from Westchester, which their doctor or lawyer husbands would never know about.

To the south was the theater district. Lester Wallack's, at Thirteenth Street,. was the northernmost of the houses. Near Bleecker Street was Pfaff's Cafe, at number 645. It stayed open late, serving coffees and wines and rich German lagers. Greenwich Village was truly a village then, with tiny cabins and cottages. At this time of year the fevers struck, and New Yorkers would rent these little homes or put up tents on vacant lots to live in the open air.

New York draws little distinction between rumholes, stripteases, playhouses, high-toned shops and grand hotels. It is all called entertainment, and is thrown together on Broadway, cheek by jowl.

Laura Keene's theater was just below Bleecker Street. At Houston Street are the Gaiety and Harry Hill's Concert Saloon, once just liquor establishments but now providers of leg shows and voluptuous serving girls. Then Tiffany's, just north of Prince Street, in its white Italianate manse; the brownstone Metropolitan Hotel at Prince, with its sky parlors from which women could primly watch the passing scene; Niblo's Theater, right next door; the immense and brilliant St. Nicholas Hotel at the northwest comer of Broome, from the roof of which fly American flags as big as the average house, and where every room is heated by hot air piped in from a central furnace and liveried servants escort the guests into the dining room; and a block below it, Mechanic's Hall, home of Bryant's Minstrels, where "Dixie's Land" was first performed only a year before. At Grand Street are the cast iron quarters of Lord & Taylor's shop, whose windows are lit up at night to seduce the girls still out. Doormen in blue uniforms at Arnold, Constable open the doors of broughams that come careering down Canal.

Scattered throughout were the billiard rooms and the working men's saloons like Bill Poole's Bank Exchange and Johnnie Lyng's Sportsmen's Headquarters, spilling out crowds of Bowery b'hoys in soaplocks and stovepipe hats, German younkers in checked suits, lrish jackeens in the uniforms of their volunteer fire companies - red shirt, black tie and high-heeled calfskin boots. And a block to either side of Broadway, on Mercer and Crosby Streets from Houston down to Canal, were brothel after brothel, for the ultimate merriment. I did not point these out to our guests, but Wilkes was aware of them - alerted by his nose, perhaps, or the occasional exquisite young girl in a low-cut short-sleeved dress who wandered down the side streets, coyly dragging her foot.

And then there was Broadway its own self, not the least of the show, the awnings of the retail stores each beside the next like a string of pearls. The clatter of horse hooves was deafening on the pavement of Belgian block, and the rattle of drays and rockaways, four-horse buses (the "Yellow Birds") and liveried Victorias went on all day and night. One could not walk the sidewalks casually; one pushed one's way, or sidewinded, through throngs of well-dressed gentlemen and ladies and loud-mouthed costumed rowdies.

Matt Canning lit up a cigar, and Mollie insisted vehemently that he cross the street and continue down the east side sidewalk, since the west side was the ladies' side and cigars were not allowed. Canning took his life in his hands traversing the avenue - in the mesh of late afternoon traffic it might take a half an hour - then carefully checked his bootheels for horse, dog or pig manure.

Mollie and Adam herded us into Stewart's Department Store, with its marble facade, Corinthian pillars and fifteen plate glass windows. Inside was a huge, circular skylighted court where everything one could possibly want was laid out on polished mahogany counters and Tuckahoe marble shelves. Each item was firmly priced, from twenty cent shirtwaists to camel's hair shawls at a thousand dollars per. Women in mink or sable coats, or amber velvet cloaks, snapped luxuries off the racks, not knowing - nor would they have cared - that most of these products were cut and sewn on Stewart's second floor by girls paid fifty cents a week who supplemented their income by walking Mercer Street.

Taylor's Ice Cream Parlor, at Franklin Street, was one of the few New York restaurants which served unescorted ladies. Over three thousand of them a day gathered to trade their joys and woes - the useless, bungling parlor maid, the double-crossing spouse, the gardener whose muscles rippled under his overalls - over doses of Taylor's rich pleasures: praline, chocolate, vanilla. Mollie, Adam, Wilkes and I chose one of a hundred white marble tables and ordered caramel sundaes in glasses twelve inches tall. Our other guests fell into nearby seats, heads and feet exhausted; I promised them we would call for hacks and not walk back to the hotel.

"Tired?" I asked Wilkes. "Seen enough? Or are you ready for more?"

"No, I'm not tired. But it's hard to believe Yankees have this much fun."

"Do you want to stay? You're welcome to." Wilkes' intended to leave the next morning. He was going back to Baltimore, but from there he had no plans.

"I would, but I have business to do. I've got to get some bookings. "

"How are you going to do that?"

"How do you do it, Ned?"

"You need a manager, Wilkes," I said.

"I don't know anyone."

"Go talk to Matthew Canning. He's sitting over there."

Canning was with the Philadelphia crowd, bolting something flooded with chocolate and topped with pistachio nuts. His suit was tight, his goatee was blonde and his cuffs were pinned with diamonds. Except that he was obsessively neat, it would have been impossible to guess that this overly-ornate sharpster was a Philadelphia lawyer.

Wilkes approached him, bent over him and pointed back at me. Canning looked over, I gave him a nod. "Well," he told Wilkes, "I guess I could do something for you."

"What would that be?" Wilkes asked him.

"Oh. I could make you a star. "

Wilkes frowned. "I can do that myself."

"Not without me, you can't." Canning explained that he'd find Wilkes work, negotiate the contracts, make his arrangements and guarantee that he was paid what was due, all for the reasonable compensation of ten per cent of the gross. Since Wilkes was already known in the South, Canning figured that’s where they'd begin. "Any questions?"

"No. You're hired. "

"You'll never regret it," he grinned.

True to his word, by the end of the month Canning had booked Wilkes to Columbus, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama, each for a run of three weeks. When the summer wound down in Baltimore, Wilkes went on the road.

Til then, Wilkes had played in great theater towns - Philadelphia, Richmond, Boston. Columbus came as a shock to him. Every effort had been spared to make the playhouse presentable, and the same could be said of Cook's Hotel where he was obliged to stay. Both were tumbledown ramshackle, and so was the audience. Wilkes had to lay on the melodrama to catch them up in the play.

In Richmond Wilkes had had little parts in all of the grand pieces that made up a tragedian's oeuvre. He chose from them, now - wisely, he thought - the roles that suited him best: Richard, of course, and Romeo; Pescara in The Apostate; Charles De Moor in The Robbers; Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons; the duel roles of Phidias and Raphael in The Marble Heart. He even opted to challenge me in the title role of Hamlet, but he didn't get to play the Dane because Canning came to Columbus to make certain Wilkes was paid, strolling into Wilkes' hotel room with a derringer in his hand.

"This place is disgusting!"

"You put me here!"

"You should have seen the alternatives. Believe me, this is top shelf!" Canning scanned the bedchamber's horsehair chairs, afraid to touch down his bottom for what might come up to meet him, and finally perched on, the bed.

"What are you doing with that pistol, Canning?" Wilkes shook his head.

This is hillbilly country," Canning blared. "These folks look dangerous to me, and I've got to carry cash."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"I haven't yet."

"Then please put it away."

Canning peered intently into every corner of the room. No one was lurking, and he decided he was safe for the moment. All his pockets were stuffed with papers; he was searching for somewhere to put the gun when his finger strayed to the trigger. The room went black with powder smoke. The ball found its way to Wilkes' thigh. A fountain of blood surged out of the wound, and Wilkes crumpled to the floor.

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" Canning moaned. "Holy Mother of God!" He was frozen in position with both hands over his mouth.

"Get a towel and a doctor!" Wilkes screamed. "Don't just stand there, Canning!"

Canning fled. The leg swelled up. The pain became intense. Wilkes meandered through his repertoire, thinking which of his roles, if any, could be played by a one-legged man, and whether sympathy was an adequate replacement for adulation.

The doctor who came was old and withered, dressed entirely in black. From the look of him, he had the potential to profit thrice from Wilkes' woe – if he couldn't save Wilkes, he could lay him out, and say the appropriate prayers. The doctor and Canning lifted Wilkes and laid him on the bed. The doctor reached into his satchel. "This is going to hurt."

Wilkes forced himself to watch the man, expecting to see a saw. But he brought out a probe, and with two deft moves he popped the bullet out. Then he cleaned up the wound and bandaged it.

"Sir, do I get to keep my leg?"

"I can take it off," the doctor grumped, "but I see no reason to. Stay off it, though, at least a week. If you don't it won't heal right. "

"He can't do that!" Canning squealed. "He's got to play tomorrow! He's got to play every night this week. If he don't, we'll lose a fortune. "

"It's his leg, ain't it," the doctor replied. "Nobody's talking to you."

When the company left for Montgomery, Wilkes was still stuck abed. But halt or lame, he was dogged to make it to Alabama. Canning pushed him, and he needed to work, but what drove Wilkes to Montgomery was that Mitchell would be there.

Montgomery rose on steep bluffs from the Alabama River. Main Street, a sweeping boulevard faced with two and three story brick commercial constructions, ran from the river inland up a series of hills packed with Federal homes on neat, shady streets all to way to the Greek Revival Capitol which loomed above it all. It was nothing like Columbus. It was the South Wilkes loved.

Wilkes took the stage in Montgomery on the first day of November, in the role of Duke Pescara, one of Papa's favorites. The city was in chaos over the coming Presidential election, yet Wilkes soon had the same adoring crowds he'd come to expect in Richmond, and the ladies were very kindly disposed, and disposed of, one by one.

Mitchell and Wilkes renewed their acquaintance on the night of November 5. All he wanted to do was linger in bed, and he limped as well as he could by then to get her sympathy. But the fire that was in Maggie that night was not the fire of love. Tomorrow they'd know the next President, and tonight the Prince of Fire Eaters would speak at the Capitol. Maggie was flushed and lubricious, but it was for William Lowndes Yancey.

Yancey had been a Congressman - now was not much of anything except a man of certain principles, who considered his raison d'etre to be to put every man in the South in mind of the wrongs done him by the North. He was said to be a silver-tongued devil, and Maggie wouldn't make clear to Wilkes whether it was the tongue or the words that came off it that compelled her to go to see him. But Wilkes knew something of silver tongues; so he said they'd go, and they'd see.

Maggie fairly ran through the park grass toward the Capitol steps. Yancey was on the portico, with a cheering throng below, lighting themselves and Yancey's stance with a thousand smoking firebrands. He was handsome, with a square head and a well-developed arm, but also ordinary. He didn't strike a pose. When the crowd began to chant his name, he put out his hand for quiet. Dignified, courteous, without threat or bluster, Yancey sent his voice rolling over Montgomery.

"We are at the precipice," he boomed. "The very edge. Tomorrow we will know what the future holds for us. I do not want to see the Union break, that I swear to you. I have loved this Union, which has prospered all of us. But now ours are the institutions which are at stake. Ours is the peace that is to be destroyed. Ours is the property that is to be taken. Ours is the honor that is at risk – the honor of children, the honor of families, the lives perhaps of all - which rest upon what course the Union may choose to take tomorrow."

"Yes!" they shouted. "Hear hear!” Yancey didn't raise his voice, yet now its timbre enriched itself as he laid out his demands.

"There is no power anywhere to limit slavery in the territories. The territories are the common property of the several states; a citizen of any state may take his property into the territories, whether it be a horse, a slave or a piece of crockery. To deny us this right is to deny the South the equal protection of laws. The Federal government must protect the rights of the minority of southern slave-owners from the free state majority; the Constitution requires it. It must enforce the fugitive slave laws; the Constitution impels it. And it must not deny us the right to take our slaves into the territories; the Constitution commands it!

"But I fear these requirements shall not be met, that our rights shall not be preserved." He was quieter still, yet he had his hand on the souls of all of them. "For I fear Mr. Lincoln will win this contest on the morrow, and if he does, the Northern people will have elected a president for the sole purpose of aggression on Southern rights - and that is a declaration of war, my friends, nothing more nor less. The Potomac will be crimsoned in gore, and Washington paved ten fathoms deep in mangled human bodies before the South submits to such humiliation and degredation! Government rests on the consent of the governed - and we do not consent! This Union cannot subsist one day after Lincoln is sworn as president - if God, in his infinite wisdom, should permit him to live that long. Make no mistake about it, the Union will be dissolved. You cannot have the Union without the Constitution! The one without the other is a rotten, dead thing!

"The North doesn't believe us. They think it's all a bluff Let me assure them, this thing will happen, and worse besides, if they force it. We did not press this issue; we did not even raise it. All we wish from the North is good will, and to be let alone!"

Yancey drew toward his finale in a voice that was near to a moan. "God be my witness that I love peace; I would give my all to maintain it. But the South wants justice," he thundered then, raising his hands to God. "She has waited long. She will wait no longer! She shall make her own equity!"

The crowd exploded, tossing their hats and their torches into the air, and bore Yancey off on their shoulders, down through the center of town.

"My Lord," Maggie marveled, "don't you wish you could speak like that!"

"Well, now, there's a compliment, Maggie!" Wilkes laughed. "I believe I do."

“Do or don't, no matter. Your crowd doesn't come to listen to you. They come to look at your legs. "

"That's not true!"

"No, not entirely. But that's only because they have no idea what is lurking between them."

The image which rushed into both their minds changed the order of things. Maggie redirected her passion. "Mmm, Johnnie .. let's go home." Politics, Wilkes discovered then, makes wonderful bedfellows.

The act began at ecstasy and concluded at delirium. Afterward, spent, laying back on her pillow, Maggie was lost in thought. Then she turned, rose up on her elbows, and put her face above his.

"Where are you going, Johnnie?"

"Hmm?" Wilkes was half asleep. "Nowhere. Staying here."

"If the South secedes, and there's a war, which way will you go?"

"You know which way," he murmured.

"To the South."

"To Richmond. Are you coming?"

Maggie looked down with an impish grin. "You wouldn't be talking marriage, John ..."

"No," Wilkes laughed, "I wouldn't."

"It will break my heart to do it," she said, "but I'm going to the North ..."

Wilkes couldn't believe she'd said it. "You hate it in the North!"

Maggie sighed. "No, I don't hate it. I'm just happier at the South. But the money's in the North, Johnnie, for people who do what we do."

"I don't need money."

"Tell me that four years from now, after you've actually got some."

"The Northern boys won't fight for the niggers. They'll take a few licks from the Southrons, and that will finish that. The South will win and we'll be able to go wherever we like."

"I hope you're right," she said doubtfully. "But I know the North better than you do. I think it will be a goodly while before I play the South again. So you watch what I do tomorrow night on my second curtain call.”

“Are you sure you’re going to get one?”

She chuckled. “I always do.”

She ran on stage with the Stars and Stripes and laid it on the floor. Then the orchestra struck up “Dixie’s Land,” and Maggie sang it for all she was worth, clog-dancing ferociously on the flag as the audience roared their glee, until it was scuffed and shredded and finally came apart. “You will remember me!” she cried.

I don’t doubt they did.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

More on Delmonico's

Go to Chapter 8

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels

CHAPTER EIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:11:00 +0000

boomp3.com

Mollie gave up her own career, as she was directed to do - not so much by me, as by the rules of Society. But even for married women, restrained as they may be, New York has fascinations that other cities don't. She studied French with a little man who had come from the Emperor's court. She took up the piano and the guitar, with serious intent. She toured the museums with Adam; she read the books he gave her. He escorted her to the theater when I was playing in town, taught her how to critique what I’d done and how to tell me about it.

He knew he was grooming his replacement. There were days when he cut her dead. But I told him I'd always love him; he seemed satisfied with that. He would lounge with us on the bearskin rug in front of the parlor fireside and talk about just about everything, sometimes all night long.

In December I was finishing my first long run in New York, four weeks at the Winter Garden, at the corner of Broadway and Bond. At the same time, Edwin Forrest had been playing at Niblo's Theater. He'd been Papa's great Shakespearean rival, when I was a boy. Papa had so esteemed him that he'd given me his name. Forrest had won the rivalry by default of Papa's death and had been considered, after that, America's greatest tragedian.

He took my run as a challenge – which it was. Forrest had Papa's energy - many who didn't know better thought the two alike - but he hadn't Papa's thoughtfulness. Forrest's was the muscular school; the brawny art, his crickets called it, the biceps aesthetics. The shape of his arm or the curve of his calf brought people to the theater, though half of them didn't know it and the other half wouldn't confess it. As for me, I was quieter than either Papa or he.

It was no easy thing to put on plays that Forrest had claimed for his own at the same time that he was performing them just a few blocks away - even though he had been retired for ten years, and had only just made a "comeback." For people who'd grown up watching him, his style was what acting should be. But tastes were changing; there was interest now in more thoughtful theater, and those who were in tune with it came to watch me work.

I had no interest in politics then, no comprehension of it. I had Mollie, my savior, and Adam, my guide, and I had my art. They were all that I had time, passion or perseverance for. But there was no avoiding other affairs in the winter of 1860. South Carolina had gathered her skirts and skipped out of the Union.

When the family gathered for Christmas at Asia's in Philadelphia, Wilkes and Mother and Rosalie stayed at a boarding house, while Mollie and I rented a cottage nearby, on Chestnut Street. I had sworn I would not subject my wife to my sister's vicious tongue, though Mollie insisted she could take whatever Asia gave.

On Christmas Eve we trudged the few blocks through a light scuffle of snow. The doorposts and the lintel of Asia's home were garlanded with fir; candles twinkled in the streetside windows, and we could see a soaring fire throwing undulating shadows on the red parlor walls.

Philadelphia was in some ways a Southern metropolis. It thought of itself as the link between the North and the Border States. Many of its merchants made their profits in trade with the South. Though Lincoln carried the city, it was not with the votes of these men; they were losing Southern business, and terrified of worse. The mayor had called for a public rally at Independence Hall. Wilkes and Asia had gone to it. They had just returned.

"Ten thousand people were there!" Asia thrilled. She linked arms with Wilkes and Irish jigged around the dining table. Wilkes had been showing a puppyish affection for the South. But Asia was nearly rabid on the subject of "Old Ape." "That oaf! That fanatic imbecile! That low, cunning clown! Blows his nose through his fingers! His neck rises out of his collar like a week-old celery-stalk!"

"An Abolitionist tried to speak," Asia giggled; "they ran him out! They conceded every Southern point! They said these attacks on the owners of slaves were inconsistent with the spirit of kindness and brotherhood."

As a matter of logic, the concept was bewildering. "I assume," I said, "they believe that slavery is in keeping with that spirit?"

"No nig's my brother," Wilkes piped in. "My brothers are in the South."

"The 'nigs' are in the South, Wilkes..."

"You know what I mean!"

Asia, because she was Asia, could not shut it down. "Niggers already think they're free since 'Massa Linkum's 'lection.' I've heard from friends in Baltimore, they've had to use the whip. If there's a war, it's Lincoln's fault. He's driven the South away."

Wilkes laughed. "There won't be much of a war. Those boys from New York and Boston don't know the mean end of a gun."

"I wouldn't be sure of that," I said. "I wouldn't be sure at all."

"The war will be short," Asia sneered, "with only one casualty." She took a chair at the table, and beckoned us to come near. "I'm not supposed to tell you this. Swear you won't repeat it." Wilkes was easy, and I swore, too, though I shouldn't have.

"When Lincoln comes through Baltimore on his way to Washington ..." And then she said the most heinous thing I had ever heard.

We all knew that Lincoln's train, coming from Harrisburg, would arrive at the Calvert Street station in the north of Baltimore. From there his car would be pulled by horses down the length of Pratt Street - passing without his knowing it the slave pens near Howard Street - to Camden Station where it would be joined to a train for the capital.

It was planned to mob him on Pratt Street, and shoot him at close range. He would have no soldier escort - there were no troops nearby. The police and the Baltimore marshal, George Kane, were central to the plot. The Southernors would take Washington, and put one of their own in power. Secret militias were already drilling in the district. There need be no secession. Only a coup d'etat.

It sounded insane. No President had ever been killed in office. That was a European thing we'd won our freedom from. Even the most dishonorable men would not have considered it, once. But one could no longer deal with slavery with restraint. Whether the Abolitionists or the men of the South were the first to take leave of reason was itself an argument that could lead to the shedding of blood. There had been fights, and canings, on the floor of the Senate. Vengeful oaths were being sworn in fields and secret rooms.

The last two elections in Baltimore had been settled with knives and clubs. No matter what the issue, this method was preferred. The Blood Tubs and the Plug Uglies, drunken brawlers of the Know-Nothing creed, had stocked up in the Causeway saloons and cobblestoned soon-to-be ex-President Buchanan when he'd come through the city four years before on the way to his swearing-in.

Nor was there mercy to be found among Baltimore's upper classes. There was more culture in Baltimore then, more genuine refinement, than one could find in Boston, which esteemed its breeding so. But there was a violent undertone to Baltimore's gentility, a queasy sense that propriety was no more than a coat of paint, or a concept which could wiggle depending on whom one were dealing with. Maryland was a slave state; they were Southernors, after all.

"Where did you hear of this, Asia?"

"Maryland friends of mine."

"You can trust me," I said. I regret it now. I should have exposed this thing. "But I urge you, sister, to guard your tongue. And have no part in this!"

Asia snapped: "I am not stupid. I only repeat what I'm told."

"You should report it ..."

"Report it?! I hope the monkey dies!"

Then Wilkes, on Christmas Day, gave me a second shock. Militia companies were forming to defend Maryland after she seceded which, it was commonly believed, was only a matter of time. The Yankees would lose Washington; they'd likely take their anger out on a goodly part of the state. Wilkes was going to Baltimore. He said he couldn't live with himself if he were not part of it.

Mother took the news silently, gazing puzzledly at Wilkes. Then she bowed her head, studied her hands and looked back at his face. "Promise me you won't fight."

Wilkes spluttered: "Mother, I must ..."

"I couldn't bear to lose you, son. Swear to me you won't."

"But, Mother ..."

"I want you to swear it, John. If you honor me."

Wilkes worked his jaw a moment or two; then, angrily, he swore. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief - even Wilkes, I thought.

The day after Christmas, we were all at Asia's when Canning came by to report. Wilkes had gone outside for air, and met him on the stoop.

"What have you got for me, Canning?"

"Rochester and Albany."

"Where are they?"

"They're in New York State. Up in the snow belt, Johnnie, where it's godd--n cold."
Wilkes snorted “Oh no, I'm not going there. I hate the cold. I hate the North. I hate New England, are these in New England?"

"No, but they might as well be."

"Then cancel them. I will not go. Book me where it's warm."

Canning sighed and plopped himself on the lower step. "Listen here, Johnnie - the Southern houses aren't booking. They're wrapped up in politics. No one goes to those theaters - they may have to shut their doors. Number two: if I send you down there, you may never come back, and I'll never get my percentage, and that wouldn't do, now, would it. Besides, the South isn't good for you, you're learning all the wrong things. They don't care what you do; good or bad, they adore you. You could do Richard in Tonkinese, they'd hurrah every bloody word. You need to go to the North, sir; they'll tell you the truth up there. Unless all you want to be is some kind of music-hall Romeo."

Wilkes fussed, but he went to Rochester - and hated it. The temperature stayed below freezing, and although Wilkes knew that cheery wood fires burned in many a home, they did not kindle kindliness toward him, and no one invited him in. On the other hand, Wilkes did find several warming consolations. His houses were full, and he was earning a hundred dollars a night. The crickets were kind – they said he was faultless, a credit to his name. But best of all were the full-breasted, raven-haired brace of Irving twins whom Canning had hired as female leads, thinking that he would earn Wilkes' gratitude.

For several days, neither girl succumbed; they seemed to be made of steel. But then Romeo kissed Juliet in the fifth scene of Act One. Juliet sighed. "Then have my lips the sin that they have took."

And Romeo said: "Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again," and he put his lips to hers, and now Juliet's tongue forced Romeo's lips and rolled around his mouth. The kiss went on rather longer than it was expected to do, and the audience got to see something one wasn't supposed to see on the stage.

"You kiss by the book," Juliet moaned, her cheeks a bright shade of red.

"Which one are you?" Wilkes panted.

She whimpered: "Henrietta."

"I shall see you later ..."

"Sooner, I should hope!" And from that day on, Wilkes was as warm as toast in frigidy Rochester.

Henrietta fell helpless in love, and therefore made mistakes. She developed the habit of taking Wilkes' hand and dragging him where she wished. Her smile became a constant, the more so when sprayed over everyone who passed when she was beside him. She told him, whenever it struck her, how blissful she was with him, and asked him thirty times a day whether he felt the same. Considering how shipwrecked Wilkes was in her sex, you will know what he said.

It was a weepy sketch she presented when it was time for them to part. She had an engagement somewhere; Wilkes was off to Albany. She made him swear to call for her; she expected a permanent role in his life, the kind which necessitates rings. Well, one lies to seduce a woman; one lies to get rid of her. In between, there is not much occasion to tell such women the truth.

In Albany, Wilkes' leading lady was not amenable, and he was cold and miserable in his room at the Stanwix Hotel. The town was red brick, as the hotel was, and the lobby was narrow and small; I had been there, too, and what I recalled of it was a slightly nauseous green.

The first night Wilkes played Romeo; the second night, Pescara. It was in that performance that he was dealt his second physical wound.

Duke Pescara has a dagger fight. He is stabbed in the heart. He makes the most of his agony, then he falls and dies. In the course of crumpling and croaking this night, Wilkes somehow dropped his blade and then landed, "dead," on top of it, and it drove itself two inches into the skin under his arm.

The doctors thought it would take a month to get him back on the boards, but in less than a week he was in his doublet and putting on Richard the Third. The Richmond thought he was safe that night, with Wilkes's right arm bound to his side. He didn't know, did he, Wilkes, what you could do with your left!

“Earlier that evening, I'd been outside the theater counting the entering crowd when Honest Ape and his plump-pigeon wife passed by on the way to the Delavan House. He'd got a better hotel than I, but nothing to chere about. He was as ugly as Asia had said he was, with an undertaker’s pallor, and barely acknowledged the swamp-Yankee throng on the sidewalk chering him on. I could have shot him, had I a gun - just leaned into the carriage. But other men were to see to that. It never occurred to me. "

From Albany, Canning sent Wilkes to what Wilkes called "Portland Bloody Maine!" He couldn't see how his reputation was going to spread to the world, or at least to New York and to Boston, from a codfishing emporium or the hall of a local Grange. From then on, he vowed, he would only go where he wanted to.

He sent a wire to Canning concluding their arrangement. He would handle his own affairs from thence. He didn't see how he could do much worse. A nor'easter blew in so much snow that Canning would not bestir himself to come to Portland and argue. That's how you escape from lawyers: You go where they will not.

While Wilkes sat out the storm until he could flee New England, South Carolina trained her guns on the walls of a fort on an island in the middle of Charleston Bay. The Yankees held it, and wouldn't leave, and the shooting war began. The Virginian Edmund Ruffin fired the first cannon shot. The shell shook Virginia, blasted her loose. Three days later, she seceded. Mississippi had already gone out, as had Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. The Confederate Congressional Convention had met and elected Jefferson Davis. Wilkes had a brand new homeland, though he was far from it, for the nonce.

Wilkes was ready to leave for Baltimore when a wire came from Albany. By popular insistence, he was invited to return. The thought of spending more time in that town was no temptation to Wilkes; he had visions of passing his life there and dying a local legend after playing Macbeth in the Catskills for sixty-seven years. But the manager had been clever, he'd hired Henrietta Irving. Well, what harm could there be in visiting Albany one more time?

In the lobby of the Stanwix, she launched herself with a broad-jump from a red and blue Turkey carpet and flew six feet trusting that he'd catch her on her descent. Honor compelled him to do it, or at least his fear of a scene, but Henrietta was a big girl and it was not managed with grace. Then her arm hooked his, like two links in a chain, and she towed him into the dining room. He knew then that the relationship had not much time to run; but until the appropriate moment, there would be some glorious nights.

At their last show, she was edgy, though she managed all her cues. Wilkes thanked the cast and the two of them went back to his little room. On a whim Wilkes asked the night clerk to bring up Courvoisier, and was no less than astonished when he actually did.

Henrietta didn't normally drink, but this night she poured herself glass after glass, barely pausing to breathe. What followed was not teetering, but liberated ardor. In one fell swoop, she tore off her clothes, then she leapt on the bed and stood stock-still like a New York model artist in a tableau vivant of a luxurious Venus coming out of the sea - one arm thrown up, hoisting half her bosom to her chin, and the other fanned over what some wag has called the fertile delta. Then she collapsed on the covers, opened her legs and began a voluptuous pulsing, as if she were rolling in the waves that she had risen from.

She received him three times, and roiled him til the linens were sweated through. Wilkes drifted off to sleep for an hour. She woke him, touching his cheek. "Johnnie ...?"

"Hmm?"

"Have you thought ..."

"What is it, my dear?"

"Have you given any thought to when .. when our wedding might be?"

"Wedding?" he laughed. "Wedding? I never said I would marry you." The response was merciless, he knew, but he was sleepy, and startled. The words had just come out.

She snapped back as if he'd bitten her. "But you said you loved me!"

"Of course I did, Henrietta - because you asked me to."

Her eyes were suddenly huge grey pools, and her lower lip was fluttering. "You didn't mean it?"

"Oh, I suppose I love you, in a way."

"What way?"

"I've just shown you that."

She jumped out of bed, snatched up her clothes to hide her private parts. "You have used me badly!" she sobbed.

"No, I've used you rather well."

"You've tampered with my affections!"

Wilkes was now awake enough to have been kind, but her innocence - probably real, despite her licentiousness - had begun to gnaw on his nerves. "You're an actress, Henrietta. You know how the game is played."

She bent and stepped into her crinolines, and her breasts hung huge, and Wilkes very nearly regretted what he knew he had to do. Not bothering to put on the rest of her clothes, she covered her chest with her taffeta dress and stomped to the doorway noisily, standing just inside it. Wilkes got himself up and went to her, to show her some respect. The next thing he knew she was on her knees, grabbing at his leg.

"I can't live without you, Johnnie! I beg you - stay with me!"

He leaned down to touch the top of her head. "Darling, I can't do that." He picked her up and kissed her cheek. "Be a good girl, now, and go."

But ''No!'' she wailed. "I shall stay right here until you change your mind!"

And as quick as he'd come to pity her, just that quickly the feeling was gone. "Well, then," he said, "if that is the case, you'll be staying alone."

Wilkes put on his pants, boots and blouse, and headed for the door. He tried to ease past Henrietta, but she blocked his way. He shoved her roughly aside. With a screech of utter wretchedness, she reached for Pescara's dagger which Wilkes had left unsheathed on a table near the door. She picked it up and raised it high and drove it down toward his heart. Wilkes threw up his arm to deflect the blow, and the blade sliced the limb from elbow to shoulder, then slipped up and cut his cheek.

Her mouth and her grey eyes opened wide. She uttered a tiny moan. Then she reached for the knob, threw open the door and scampered into the hall. Her room was a few doors down from his; she disappeared into it. There she lay on her bed and stabbed herself, though not very seriously.

Wilkes stood in his doorway dumbstruck, growing dizzy from loss of blood, and then it struck him: Enough of this foolishness! Three times now he'd nearly been killed in this idiot's career. It was April, a meaningless label where the winter lingered on, but the laurels were leafed in Maryland, and the sap rose in the South. Virginia was out of the Union. Soon Maryland would follow. He threw his things in his steamer trunk, and went to find real life.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

The Baltimore plot to assassinate Lincoln
Attack on Fort Sumter

Go to Chapter 9

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving

CHAPTER NINE

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:38:00 +0000

boomp3.com

Michael O'Laughlen lived across from Mother on North Exeter Street. Wilkes had gone to school with him some years back, J.M Smith's, in the neighborhood; though Wilkes had been closer in age to Michael's brother William, he and Michael, through family, had come to know each other. He hadn't seen much of O'Laughlen since, but in town it was known to those who cared that O'Laughlen was sound on the goose, and likely to be connected to the people Wilkes wanted to meet.

Wilkes found him at the masonry yard; he was a plasterer. Michael was a little, good-looking boy; people thought he resembled Wilkes, except for his eyes and the tuft of hair he wore under his lower lip. He was working a crenellated pattern, most likely a ceiling border. He put down his trowel and put out a hand coated with liquid mud. "Hey, Billy, long time. Didn't expect to see you.” They had called Wilkes "Billy Bowlegs" at school - I am not certain why.

"Mike, old boyo, I need your help."

"What kind of help would that be?" He had put his hands back in the plaster, and his attention, too.

O'Laughlen was shanty Irish, not the sort to be embraced by the family of Junius Booth. All of us bridged the social lines when we were outside of Baltimore, but inside that city those lines lived and breathed - they were the rules of life. O'Laughlen assumed that was why, for years, Wilkes had not crossed the street to visit - and I must say that in that belief he was probably justified.

"I want to get into the fight, Mike. I figured you might know..."

"You gotta be careful, Billy. You keep your voice down. You ain't been here. You don't know what's goin' on."

"All right," Wilkes said. "Then tell me."

O'Laughlen looked up and fixed Wilkes a moment with hard blue eyes. Then he wiped his hands on his apron. "Come on. You can buy me a drink."

The bars on the Causeway were seedy pits below seedier bagnios. I knew them well - I had put in my hours on the long strip of street that hid in a murky overcast even at bright summer noon. A long oak bar ran down the length of the Acorn Club; there were tables in shadowy corners and everywhere men in overalls who'd have scared Wilkes to death if he hadn't the pleasure of Michael's company. From behind a door at the end of the room emerged a cacophony of squawks. "Cockfights back there, Billy," Mike grinned, "if you're a bettin' man."

Mike strode to the bar, ordered two whiskeys and brought them back to a table. He pulled up a chair, and Wilkes put another as close to Mike as he could. "Aw, you can talk in here," Mike said, "loud as you fucking like. There's Federal spies all over town, but they don't last long at the Acorn.

"Tell me, John, do you know what happened on Pratt Street a few weeks ago?" All he knew, Wilkes answered, was what he'd read in the Albany paper. "Aw, they wouldn't print the truth. Here's how it came about."

They were going to kill Lincoln when he came through town on his way to Washington. They were going to seize the Capitol. Just as Asia had said. When the President's special three-car train pulled into Calvert Street Station, fifteen thousand toughs armed with bricks, bottles and stones flooded onto the platform screaming: "Let's have Old Ape out!" The cops were there, and Marshal Kane, and they didn't do anything. At the core of the mob were six serious men armed with pistols and knives. O'Laughlen knew who they were, but was not about to tell Wilkes.

"But he wasn’t there," O'Laughlen snarled. The President wasn't there, though he'd left his family on board to face the hooligans. He'd sneaked in alone on the passenger cars at five o'clock in the morning, dressed in a Scotchman's hat and kilt, that's what the papers said. And he'd sneaked back out on the B&O and nobody had known a thing. When the mob found out, they were ready to put the torch to the whole shebang. That's when Marshal Kane stepped in - he didn't want women and children hurt, there was no point to it now.

When Lincoln arrived in Washington, he learned he had only six hundred troops he could put his confidence in, and four times that number were still in town getting ready to go to the South. "We could have taken Washington, but we weren't organized. Oh, d-n," O'Laughlen sighed, "we missed a H-l of a chance!"

The President quickly sent a call for volunteers to the North. These troops had to come through Baltimore, just as Lincoln had. "We figured we'd rough 'em up a bit. Maybe more than that. Give them Yanks the idea that they ought not to enlist."

The first soldiers through were from Pennsylvania. They were untrained, and unarmed. They were hit with rocks and bottles as soon as they got to Bolton Depot. The next were Massachusetts boys. They did have arms with them, and when provoked, they used them. A number of people were killed. Nothing was accomplished - after that, the soldiers were sent on ships to Annapolis, then marched to Washington. They no longer came through Baltimore - but they did come.

"So we got a little more serious. First thing, we cut the telegraph wires, then we burned the railroad bridges and tore up the tracks to the North. We were flying Confederate flags by then, saw 'em everywhere. Then General Butler - they call him 'Beast' - put Yankee troops up on Federal Hill. We are an occupied city, Billy. Any man who talks for secession winds up in the calaboose, and he don't get out of there ever, he don't get no trial.

"To get to my ultimate point, friend, Maryland ain’t gonna secede. The Governor's against it. So's the House of Delegates. Any politician who's for it, that fat bald bastard Beast Butler snatches him, locks him up in Boston, throws away the key. So - maybe you ought to make other plans. There'll be no fightin' here."

Wilkes knew there was more to it. Men of the Southron persuasion didn't give up so easily. "Well, Mike, I know you," he laughed. "What plans have you made?"

O'Laughlen studied Wilkes thoroughly. To tell Wilkes what he had already done was dangerous enough. To tell him what he was going to do ... but whatever he saw in Wilkes' eyes was enough to satisfy him. "I joined the First Maryland Cavalry. They're going to smuggle us south."

"Then that's what I want to do. How do I get it done?"

"You haven't touched that whiskey. Mind if I tuck it away?" Wilkes told him to be his guest.

Mike snatched it and tossed it down. "Pay the check, Billy. Then we'll take a walk."

He led Wilkes to Emmerich's shoe shop, in a basement on South Gay Street. The only window was black with soot; it allowed no light inside. The front room was tiny, or maybe not, full as it was from floor to roof with piles of scuffed-through rumpled boots and shelves of labeled lasts.

At his bench under a green shaded lamp sat Christian Emmerich, his mouth full of nails and his hands stained with black and brown shoe dies. He saw O'Laughlen and nodded his head toward a curtained doorway behind him. O'Laughlen brushed the curtain aside. On a wooden chair, surrounded by a mountain of leather and string, was a sturdy man with a huge moustache. Mike said he was Marshal Kane.

Kane's cold black eyes peered up at Wilkes from under a thatch of black curls. "This is John Wilkes Booth," O'Laughlen explained.

"I know who he is."

O'Laughlen told Kane what Wilkes had in mind. The marshal scowled: "Talk to Emmerich. Or Mr. Ferrandini - he's the barber at Barnum's Hotel. I can't help you. I'm clearing out. I’ve already been arrested once. I'm going South in the morning."

Wilkes was going to protest, but the hint of menace in the room made him think better of it. He thanked Kane, Mike opened the curtain and the two of them turned to go. "One moment," Kane said from behind them. "Close that curtain, Mike."

"You're an actor, Booth, aren't you?" Kane went on. "Travel quite a bit? You've a sister in Philadelphia, and a brother in New York. Am I right on that?"

"You are."

"We have friends in many places. Among them the cities I mention. You could be very helpful, Booth. Gypsying as you do."

"Sir?"

"There are many things the South will need that she does not manufacture - medicines, for example, if the fighting is prolonged. Our friends will be seeking ways to bring these items across the lines. If you'd stay in the North, you could be of use. That would be worth far more to us than your shoulder behind a gun."

"I see."

"It will be risky. If you're caught, you could be tried as a spy. Or they could simply shoot you, or hang you... "

"I do understand."

Kane stood. "Will you wait then, Mr. Booth, until we call on you?"

Wilkes didn't waver a second. "Yes, I will."

"We'll know where to find you. And Mike, I think you'll be hearing soon about what we have discussed. "

"I want you to know," Wilkes spoke up, "this is very important to me. I have good friends in Richmond ..."

Kane held up his hand and turned away. "I don't care to know about that."

Popcorn summer lay down on Mother's farm in early June, a Fourth of July sort of season of high grass and fireflies. On his back in the sorghum field, listening to peepers and slave serenades, Wilkes lost his ambition, and all sense of recent unhappiness and anticipations. He wanted nothing more than to be under the sun, hot and cozy and indolent, moving slowly or not at all to make the long days longer - until, in the middle of July, rumors runneled through Maryland of a battle in Manassas, Virginia, on a rivulet called Bull Run. It put paid to the lackadaisical Wilkes. Hopeful that the war was won, he hitched up Mother's buggy and drove to Baltimore.

"Don't you ever come here, Booth, unless I send for you!" Emmerich's face was placid, but his tone was cantankerous. "This ain't a social club, and the game ain't whist!"

"Sorry," Wilkes said. "Won't do it again."

"What the H-l do you want?"

"News..."

""This ain't a newspaper," the cobbler snapped.

"There's been a fight "

Emmerich resisted it, but nevertheless a little smile tugged up on his lips. "Kicked their asses. The Yankees broke. Half the Union army's in the Georgetown bars drinking to forget."

The Rebels were only twenty miles from an undefended capital! "Are we marching on Washington?"

"S-t." The shoemaker picked up a half-finished boot and threw it against the wall. "General Beauregard says he can't get his army to move. Them boys think the war's over, they want to go on home."

"But it would be over if..."

"That's not my job. Nor yours. Don't bother me with 'if.’" Emmerich walked across his shop and picked up the boot he'd thrown. He took it back to his cobbling bench, picked up a hammer and sited a handful of nails between his lips like a conjurer's hand of cards. Obviously he would not speak. Wilkes concluded he was dismissed.

"There's a package in Philadelphia. Get it and bring it to me." Wilkes gaped at Emmerich; he hadn't dropped a nail. Emmerich reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. "Memorize the address. Leave the paper here."

"What's in the package?"

"What you need is to lose the habit of asking questions, Booth. If we want you to ask any questions, we'll tell you what, when and who."

It was three o'clock in the morning when Wilkes knocked on Asia's door. He'd sent word ahead to expect him. Asia had waited up. He was wearing a shabby, worn black slouch hat, an equally tattered coat and hip-high riding boots from the tops of which peeped the butts of Remington .44' s. Wilkes was good with a pistol. He could lay a whiskey bottle on its side, step back and fire through the neck of the bottle and shatter only its bottom.

As the door was opened Wilkes slipped inside, then eased it shut behind him. Asia hugged him soulfully, as she always did when she saw him. "Did you ride all the way from Baltimore?"

"No. I took the cars. Where's Jack?"

"In bed."

"Asleep?"

"I hope. What are you doing here, Johnnie? And why are you dressed like that?"

Wilkes tossed off his hat and laid a package swaddled in the Philadelphia Enquirer on the table in the foyer. "It's better you don't know that, sis."

Asia gave him her narrow-eyed glare. "Then I think it's best that I do." She put two knuckles astride Wilkes' nose and pulled him into the parlor. It was something she'd done to him for years, a sisterly sort of menace.

Wilkes popped himself free. "I'm not supposed ..."

"If you're putting Jack and me at risk, I'd like to know what it is." Wilkes sat on the sofa and spilled it all. That was inevitable. "Aha! I knew it!" Asia grinned. "What's in the package?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, you dangerous boy! But be careful," she warned. "I know two women they're holding now in the Old Capitol Prison, arrested for smuggling quinine. One is from Philadelphia, and the other's from Maryland."

"Thanks for the caution, sis," Wilkes said. "I'll sleep on this couch, if you don't mind." She stooped and plumped its pillows. "I'll leave before Jack rises. I'd rather he didn't know I've come."

"So would I, Johnnie. I suppose I ought to kiss you goodbye right now." Asia pecked his cheek, and hugged his neck, then drew him in even tighter. She was happy with Wilkes, and terrified, and alive for a fleeting moment.

"You may be seeing me often," he said.

"Oh, I hope I do."

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Battle of Bull Run

Go to Chapter 10

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run

CHAPTER TEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 21:17:00 +0000

boomp3.com

New York City had panicked even before Bull Run, when the Southern states had disavowed their debts to our merchants and banks. Then the President banned all trade with the South. The economy crashed, prices dove, and even New York's secessionists spoke up for war. It had been just three years since the big crash of 1857. The recovery was real, but fragile. No one cared how the thing turned out; they just wanted the whole mess over with, and business back to normal.

After Bull Run, no one believed that the war would be over quickly unless the Rebels won it; and that became the common hope in New York City. Soon, though, the Union needed ships, and they built them in New York. It needed cattle to feed the troops; they came in from the West through New York. It needed grain to feed the stock, and so much wheat rolled in to town that there was enough to export to Europe. Business exploded; the city relaxed, and except for a few unrepentant knaves, it declared itself for the North.

It was Adam who taught me all of this, just before he left. We'd been working late at my hotel. The city's noise had long since hushed, and Mollie had gone to bed. I was reading “Great Expectations;” it was serialized in Harper's; Adam was standing across the room, looking out over Fifth Avenue. "You must follow the news," he said, "to know the mood of your house. But ... I can't help you anymore. You'll have to do it alone."

"What?"

He was wringing his hands, his head was bowed, and he wouldn't look at me. "Oh, Ned, I've enlisted."

"You've what? Ad - why?"

"I can't abide human bondage, love. You know that, I've told you that. Other, of course, than this wonderful enslavement of me by you."

"But, Jesus! Ad ..."

"A friend has got me a place on the staff of some fellow, General Grant. He's out in the West. His headquarters are in Cairo, Illinois I think they pronounce it Kayro, for God's sake, the ignorant Midwestern dolts... I know you think I'm abandoning you ..."

"Ad, you could be killed!"

"Anyone could be killed, these days. It's something I have to do."

"But have you the temperament for this ?"

Adam chuckled. "Oh, who knows? In all of that great big army there must be somebody else like me!"

"Come here," I said, and I held out my arms. Adam rushed into them, weeping. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, Ned ..."

I stroked his hair and then held him off and wiped away his tears. "Don't be ridiculous, Ad."

"Oh, never that!" he grinned. "But I have one last bit of advice for you. I don't know if you want to hear it from Monsieur le traitre Badeau."

"Of course I do.”

''New York is at your feet, Ned. Your triumph is unreserved. You're making a fortune, but don't forget, you still have more to learn."

"And where shall I learn it, Ad? I thought it would be from you."

"Go to Europe. Study there. Consummate yourself. Aim higher than the rim of the dollar. Or you won't know who you are anymore. And I will not worship you." He picked up his hat. It was almost dawn. He swaggered quickly toward the door, then he turned around. "Stay a god, my prince!" he smiled. And he blew me a delicate kiss.

It was fall, and Wilkes hadn't heard from Emmerich again. There was no fighting - it was as if the war had been forgotten. Wilkes remembered, as the circuit of the sun ran lower in the sky, that he was supposed to be an actor. Therefore, with nothing better to do, he had better act.

A bit of work brought him business in a westbound line from New York State, where he had left it off. Buffalo and Detroit were fair, somewhat larger than Albany, somewhat more urbane. But it was in Cincinnati that he found Maggie Mitchell again.

"I have wenched, Ned, often and well. She is my one regret.”

It was not just she, but the city too, that made him feel at home. Cincinnati is a Southern town, trapped on the wrong side of a river. Wilkes heard warm secessionist sentiments in the lobby of his hotel. Lincoln and Congress had freed the slaves in the District of Columbia; the anger was Baltimorean, or even Richmondesque. And the blockade of the Southern ports was having its effects. You could not buy a drink in Richmond, he heard, for all the tea in China. Wilkes imagined his friends: bone dry and fit to kill.

The wind off the river lifted her skirts and blew her hair back like a flag as Maggie and Wilkes leaned on the fence at the city steamboat wharf and watched gingerbread stern-wheelers puff black smoke as their boilers stirred for the trip down the Ohio. A quick left turn at Illinois and they entered the Mississippi, though they no longer went to New Orleans, or any seceded state.

"That's Kentucky," Maggie said, pointing across the river: "All we'd need is a ferry boat, and we could be back in the South."

"But I will be!" Wilkes laughed. "My next engagement is in Louisville. Care to come along?"

"Oh, Johnnie, would I! But I have to go back to New York."

"Too bad. Now that I've found you again."

Maggie stood on tiptoe and took a bite of his lips. "But how would you like," she said, eyes twinkling, "to star in New York City? I could arrange it, Johnnie. I have a friend, Mary Provost. Have you heard of her?" Wilkes had. She had been a great success in New York and had lately been touring Europe as well as Australia. "She's returned to New York," Maggie said. "She's rented Wallack's Theater. She's going to put on a season, and she's looking for a star."

"And she would hire me?”

"Why not?"

Wilkes scoffed. "New York is Ned's city, Maggie. They'd hoot me off the stage!"

"That is nonsense, Johnnie," she said. "Come here. Put your hands on me." Wilkes spun her in and took hold of her hips, and Maggie wiggled her glee. "Forrest is still immense in New York. And you are his natural heir. Ned is all mind, and you are all matter. They will love you in New York." She moved his hands to between her legs. "This is where I want them, love. Remember, your genius is physical. Make the most of it!"

Later that night, he did.

Louisville, like Baltimore, was jammed with Yankee troops, who occupied the north of Kentucky while the Confederates held the south. Wilkes had only two days to get there, and two days to get from there to St. Louis, another Southern city under Federal control. Wilkes played in both of these towns to crowds of bluebelly soldiers, scowling behind the curtain, revealing his contempt. And then two days again to get to Chicago and rehearse that company. This was the life of the traveling star, as Wilkes began to learn - long nights on uncomfortable trains, awful food at rest stops, miserable hotels, all for the chance to work with actors with ... well ... spotty skills. But he loved the pace. He thrived on it. He'd take the stage with two hours sleep and no complaints. He was better at it than I was. The life devoured me.

He was amazed to find that Chicago was built almost entirely of wood. Even the streets were paved with pine blocks, and the sidewalks fashioned of planks. He quickly learned that Lincoln's rough ways were the norm for the Westerner. That didn't excuse the President; Wilkes still thought him a boob and a boor who should have stayed in Illinois with his ill-bred peers rather than inflict himself on the mannerly East.

Like everything else in Chicago, the McVickers Theater was big. It could hold over two thousand people; it rose two balconies high, and the stage was more than large enough to accommodate a circus. Wilkes ran through Richard unshaved and unwashed, having had time for neither.

He was toweling his face - he had put a lot into Richard's fight with Richmond - when a short fat man interrupted him. His brown hair fled the top of his skull in thirty different directions; he wore bottle-bottom glasses and garters on his sleeves. "I'm Raufer," he said, "the scenery man. I want to show you my toys."

Wilkes waved him off. "Not now, Mr. Raufer, I'm rather tired ..."

"I might use 'em tonight." Now Wilkes had to follow him, to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Raufer led Wilkes to the back of the house and up a set of stairs from the lobby to the rear of the family circle, the topmost balcony; then down an aisle to the first row of seats, next to a black machine. "Have a seat," he said, and then shouted "Lights!" The house went completely dark. Then from the stage Wilkes heard a voice: "To be ... or not to be ..." and suddenly the source of the voice - and nothing else on the stage - appeared in the most magnificent light that Wilkes had ever seen.

The light came from the odd machine next to him, a powerful beam that revealed to Wilkes that air was not empty, as he'd supposed, but full of dancing things. The man on stage moved out of the light; Raufer swung the apparatus around, and the brilliance caught the actor again, and now held him wherever he went.

"My God, Mr. Raufer! What is it?"

"New thing. Calcium lamp. Directs an oxyhydrogen flame on a cylinder of lime. Can make the beam wider, if you want." Raufer twisted a knob and the dazzling ray flooded the whole of the stage. "Colors, too." He turned a wheel in front of the gadget's lens and the stage glowed green, then acquamarine, then a devilish red. Then he made another adjustment, and the house was dark again. "Well, that's that, Mr. Booth. What do you think of it?"

What did he think? It was marvelous! That light so heightened the sense of awe that a man on stage could create a mood while doing nothing at all!

"Got a few other little items, too," Raufer said, "if you'd like to see 'em."

"Oh my Lord, Raufer. Show me everything!"

Raufer opened a window for Wilkes into another world. Some of what Wilkes saw was known in the East, but never combined or used in the way that Raufer used them. Wilkes couldn't contain himself. "Raufer, you're a genius!"

"Oh," Raufer giggled, "no. I didn't invent 'em. Just tweaked 'em a bit."

"We'll use them! What can we use tonight?"

"House!" Raufer called, and the gas jets in the orchestra sprang to life. "I'll give you the big light tonight, Mr. Booth. We ought to plan the rest."

Wilkes smiled. "Tonight, after the show. Don't count on any sleep."

"I never count on sleep, Mr. Booth. If it comes, it comes."

“That night I came on the stage in darkness, and I began in it: 'Now is the winter of our discontent ... made glorious summer ... - and on those words it was summer, bright as a June midday! And I knew I would go to New York. Ned - and take it away from you.”

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 11

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant

CHAPTER ELEVEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 14:02:00 +0000

boomp3.com

Only the work lights were on at Wallack's Theater at nine o'clock in the morning. The company Mrs. Provost had assembled waited expectantly. They knew the works they'd be putting on - Richard, Hamlet, Macbeth - but they knew nothing at all of Wilkes, except that he was my brother. The usual actor's grapevine offered little news: he was ravishing, high-spirited and politically dangerous. Mary Provost had no answers; she had never seen Wilkes work. The air of mystery heightened everyone's expectations. It was truly brilliant drama, and it hadn't even begun.

Wilkes had been in New York three days, but nobody had seen him. They had seen Raufer, whom Wilkes had persuaded to come along on his promise to send him back to Chicago as soon as it was possible, since Raufer didn't like to travel or leave his family. Raufer had been in the theater practically twenty-four hours a day, working in the carpenter shop - he wouldn't let the stagehands in – and aligning and positioning a drayload of items Wilkes had shipped in from Baltimore, where they had played a week to test the production effects. The Baltimore crowds, disposed to be friendly to the hometown boy, responded wildly to Wilkes' direction and each of Raufer's tricks. Mother saw his Richard the Third, came backstage and hugged him. She said Papa would have been thrilled ... no stunned ... no - absolutely jealous. Except for a few little last minute "tweaks," they knew they had done it well.

Wilkes stayed away from Emmerich's, as he'd been ordered to, but he did cross the street to O'Laughlen's. Mike was out of town, he was told. He wouldn't be back for some time.

Wilkes' anticipation of New York was almost feverish, not least because he was, as he thought, invading my territory. The press had developed a habit of comparing him to me, most of the time unfavorably. He had expected that. But the constant repetition of "good, but not Edwin" had set his teeth on edge. I was away in Europe, or I would have felt it then. His ticket sales had been excellent, so good in fact that Wilkes believed they thought it was me they'd be seeing. Mrs. Provost had advertised heavily - still, Wilkes might have been right.

Now suddenly the footlights and the border lamps came up, and there he was, at center stage, in a velvet-trimmed black overcoat and red velvet vest, black kid gloves, black silk hat and silver-headed cane. His figure was perfect; he moved with such grace. He was sleek and edgy, a race horse impetuous for the starting gate. His black eyes were impassioned and unnaturally bright.

He strode down to the orchestra and was introduced to the cast. He shook their hands, learned a little about them, made them feel more at ease. Then he clapped his hands twice and leaped onto the stage. "All right. Let's begin!" And they found themselves playing Richard as they never had before.

Wilkes was brisk with instructions. He was precise on every line. "No, no, read it this way, please"... "Stand there when you say that phrase" ... "There's a bit of business - follow me" ..."Clarence, they're going to murder you; try to keep that in mind" ... "My dear Lady Anne, I have killed your father and your husband and now propose to make love to you. Can you show us a bit more outrage, please! Or does this sort of thing happen often?"

They were startled by splashes of colored light striking the flats and drops. They were asked to play scenes behind the flats. Since they didn't have the view from the house, Wilkes had to explain: when Raufer's spotlights flooded down, the flats became transparent and they could be clearly seen. There were cutaway sets and sliding panels, and ploys with lights and mirrors. The ghosts that appeared to Richard flickered in otherworldly blue. And the final fight with Richmond - well, that was beyond belief.

The Richmond that night was E.J. Tilton, a journeyman actor - I knew him - capable enough. He had played the role several times before, but never against a swordsman with Wilkes' potency. "Come on hard!" Wilkes snarled at him as the slashing sabers led them from pre-arranged mark to mark. "Harder, Tilton! Come on hot! Hot, old fellow! Faster!"

When it was over, the cast were so bedazzled that no one could speak. Wilkes smiled as he seized a towel and wiped the steam from his face. "You've done very well. I warn you, though, I may throw a little more fire into it tonight. You particularly, Tilton - take care. But whatever happens, don't be afraid. I haven't killed anyone yet." He dismissed them with a wave of his hand, and called to the back of the house: "Raufer! Are you there, sir?"

"I am here, Mr. Booth," came a hollow voice from the very last row of seats.

"Raufer, I've got an idea for the scenes at Bosworth Field! We can paint the camp on the stage left flat running off to the distance; we put Richard's tent upstage left and paint archers on the stage right flat extending in line of battle. Carrying out that line I draw down right of stage ... you follow?"

"Yes, Mr. Booth, I do."

"Good! Can you have that ready tonight?" Raufer only grunted.

Wilkes always peeked through the curtain when the house was full - not to learn, but to jolt himself, to boost his vitality. He was surely jolted this night. The war had created a new crop of the wealthy in New York, men who made - often poorly - what the military required. The shoddy aristocracy had broken down ancient concepts of poise, and Café Society had overwhelmed quiet respectability. They were louder, not as temperate, no less sure of their brilliance nor arrogant about it, but delighted to discharge the new sociable duty of noising it about.

Fresh from the cotillion dinner at the ballroom of Delmonico's, now situated at Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, sated on truffle-stuffed partridge and overmuch Moët, the brand-new creme de la curdled creme had come to the play in bright velvet coats, upper tendom b'hoys, criss-crossed with golden watchchains, their women's chignons shimmering with gold and silver dust, every stitch of clothing from Paris down to the underthings, and shouted to friends ten aisles away: Isn't life just grand?

As he stood taking in this pageantry, arms were thrown around Wilkes' neck, and breasts pressed into his back. "You did this," he whispered, well knowing who it was.

The green of her eyes was replicated in Maggie's emerald gown, worn for the occasion – it was Saint Patrick's day. She lowered her arms and squeezed him. "Bad luck! Break a leg! And save a little vigor," she grinned, "for later on tonight."

Wilkes had never put more into anything than he did into that performance. It built like a tornado, out of a thousand wisps of wind. Through all the snide betrayals and curses and calculated deaths, Wilkes was twisted and vicious and pitiless until at the very peak of the storm, the fatal duel with Richmond, he defended his life ferociously, drove poor Tilton to the edge of the stage and - lamentably - over it. Tilton, dumbfounded, was airborne, then plunged into the seats onto the lap of an elderly woman whose bones he nearly broke.

It took him awhile to climb back up, while the audience held its breath - though on the whole they thought it was just another planned effect. When he tried to lift his sword, Tilton learned that his shoulder had been disarranged, but Wilkes was possessed, didn't see it, kept on driving him until Tilton caught Wilkes in a clinch, groaning: "For God's sake, Johnnie, die! Die! If you don't, I shall!" Richard did die, in a puddle of red shot down by Raufer's light, but at the appointed time and place. Tilton barely survived.

When the curtain rang down there was, for the moment, not a sound in the house. And then pandemonium! Madness! Screaming, hooting, choral bravos, leaping over seats, the overwhelming sentiment being: Yes! This is what we deserve! They pelted Wilkes with roses when he took his curtain calls and a hundred women slipped loose of their husbands and gathered at the stage door, in hopes of a touch or a word.

There was no less insanity backstage when they grasped the span of the triumph – a rampage of hugging and kissing, a deluge of compliments. Wilkes played blasé, but Maggie knew he was busting out of his pants. When he'd shed Richard's robes, wiped off the paint and put on his elegant duds, she gathered the cast and pushed them through the blockade of stage door nymphs who trailed the pack down Broadway, shouting Wilkes' name. "You'll have to go to Sarony's," she laughed. "These women are going to want to slip your picture between their sheets."

She had rented a George IV phaeton, since this was a special night. They climbed aboard, threw back the tops and Maggie grabbed up the reins and whip and shot the horses quickly ahead, all that for a grand entrance at Pfaffs, just a few blocks away.

Charlie Pfaff's cafe was a bierstübe - laurel and steins hung from splintering rafters, tawny lagers on tap, a setting for oompah's and wieners. But in the back was a vaulted cave filled with long trestle tables, and that, she explained, was where everyone went to wait for the reviews. That den that night - every night - was occupied by a bizarre mélange of New York's Bohemians: painters with fingers and beards and hair colored ochre and sapphire, writers with tortured grimaces and black-bagged eyes (and of course the nubile sorts that slept with these geniuses), some whose talents had been acknowledged, some who hadn't any, dandies, pickpockets, salts of the earth, all downing brew by the bucketful and howling out Offenbach melodies and theories as perverse as any a madman could dream up.

Maggie knew every one of them - some, Wilkes assumed, rather well; or perhaps the familiarity was a sort of local patois. In any event, she was smooched and snuggled and pawed in intimate places; she'd submit to the process briefly, then elbow the quaint offender away and sidestep to another. Meanwhile, Louis Gottschalk, back from Paris and Berlioz's tutelage, was at the piano underscoring the fête; Carlotta Patti sang along (Gottschalk was working with her then at Niblo's Theater), and Brignoli joined in, and Kellogg, and the Menken (the beautiful tragic muse) and Maretzek and Strakosch, all of whom were themselves awaiting the crickets' sentiments.

When Maggie rejoined Wilkes' company, a shambling fellow trailed her. He was fat, which explained his ruddy face; his eyelids slumped and his long white beard straggled at the ends, though the rest of him was fastidious, pink and thoroughly scrubbed. He wore working men's dress: grey overalls and a white field worker's blouse, topped with a wide-brimmed planter's hat which he did not doff indoors. All in all, he looked like a poet, which is what he was - "the poet of goodness and wickedness," as he styled himself, neither of which sustained him, so that he was forced to review Broadway plays for the pro-Southern Brooklyn Eagle if no one had been shot on Joralemon Street or knifed at Brighton Beach.

"Where were you tonight, Maggie?" he cried. "We can't account for you!"

“I went to see Mr. Booth," she said.

"Really? So did I." His eyes flicked over Wilkes' company, and he gave them a cursory nod. It was clear he hadn't the foggiest idea who they were.

"What did you think, Walt?" Maggie asked.

"Think?"

"Think of the play."

"Think of the play? Is there anything new to be said about Richard the Third? What you mean is, what did I think of Booth."

"Well?"

Whitman was hinting he wanted to sit with stuttering bends of the knees, but no one wanted to give up his place and there weren't any free. Confounded, he stood behind one poor boy, reached both arms out to the tabletop and leaned in til the boy was pressed between Whitman's gut and the sharp edge of the table. "He's a queer sort," he crackled, “got strange ways. He'll take some getting used to. But now and then he showed brilliance. I liked him, I suppose."

"More than his brother?" cooed Maggie.

Whitman leaned in further, and pretzeled the miserable kid. "His brother has everything but guts - he's a man of bright parts, interesting, you can enjoy what he does, but he isn't of the first class - not anywhere near. Neither of them match the father. Oh, he was something, that man!" This bit of excitement nearly put paid to the wretched boy's neck. "I never saw an actor who could make more of the hush or wait, and hold the audience in a half-delicious, half-irritating suspense. No one else could give such a sting to hauteur or the taunt. I never heard from any other such perfect vocalization, without trenching on mere melody, which is, as we know, the province of music. This Wilkes is about as much like his Pa as an ashtray is to a tea set. But I'll give him this - he's got his father's diabolic eyes! And you, Maggie dear - your opinion is?"

"I'll bet he's good in bed."

"Well, do let me know if he is, dear. I might try him out myself!"

In two seconds more, Wilkes might have had Mr. Whitman by the throat, but someone yelled "Papers!" down at the bar, and the semi-squashed youngster - he'd played Tressel that night - rammed his head into Whitman's belly, sending him staggering back, and went down and got the journals, which Maggie snatched away. "I'll read them to you, Johnnie. Just the affectionate parts..."

"No. Read it all." Wilkes hardened himself for the blow to his self-esteem.

Maggie picked up the New York Herald. "Ah!" she said. "Here it is. 'Mr. Booth is a star of real magnitude and singular, tho fitful, brilliancy.'"

"Fitful?"

"Shall I read the rest?"

"Oh, go on," Wilkes groaned.

'''He displayed unmistakable evidence of an original talent, often crude in its conception, true, and somewhat inconsistent, but still he is developing great future promise. There is the stuff in him of a first class tragedian, if he chooses to correct the extravagances which, we fear, have been more or less confirmed by the undiscriminating applause of country audiences. '"

Wilkes bowed his head. "I'm ruined."

"Wait, Johnnie. It goes on. 'Mr. Booth undertook no small task when he attempted to act a character in which his father was famous, and which his brother Edwin plays so well, but the result justifies the undertaking. As Edwin in face, form and voice and style resembles the elder Booth, so the debutante last evening at first is almost a copy of Edwin.’"

"We're nothing alike at all!"

"'But' - the best comes last - 'but in the fourth and fifth acts, J. Wilkes Booth is much more like his father than his brother. In the last act he created a veritable sensation. His face blackened and smeared with blood, he seemed to be Richard himself; and his combat with Richmond was a masterpiece. His conception and rendition are most mature, his self-possession extraordinary.'"

"Well, that's better," Wilkes sighed, "but still not very good."

"Let's see what the Spirit of the Times has to say." Maggie picked up that august daily - another pro-Southron rag - and thumbed for the article. "Ah." She folded back the page. '''In person he is very like his brother Edwin, though considerably stouter.'"

"Stouter!"

"'He has a fine presence, but lacks in grace and dignity of carriage - a slight fault, a country habit ...'"

"A hillbilly idiosyncrasy!"

" ... that will soon wear away under the influence of city experience. His soliloquies are full of restless gesture, and declamation of doubtful propriety in artistic view. .'”

"Oh, God," he sighed.

"'But then it is Gloster all over; no one would suspect that uneasy villain of wasting time in smoothly spoken sentences. He culminates in a whirlwind, hurrying the spectator along to a climax unequaled in thrilling effect by any Richard that I have seen, not excepting the father himself.'"

"He says I am better than Papa?"

"Yes!"

Wilkes was suddenly bemused. "That isn't bad at all."

"Throw these crotchets out, love," Maggie beamed. "Your audience says you're a star!"

The boy who had butted Walt Whitman forgot, the next night in the green room, a well-raveled copy of the New York Sporting Whip. It listed every whorehouse in town, and told you what you could find there. Wilkes picked it up and thumbed it. One could get French love at Miss Mitchell's, down on Sullivan Street. Mrs. Rush's place on Howard Street was a haunt for Philadelphians. Clara Gordon's on Mercer Street served only Southern gentlemen. One needed an invitation there - but he would not, not now.

Her drawing room was a Richmond salon, quiet, luxuriant. The steam-hot climate counterfeited Virginia in July. Mrs. Gordon accommodated Wilkes with her fey plantation manners, a rich, buttery brandy smash and a vigorous cigar. She made him a bath of oysters to ease the bruises all over his body, the visible evidence of his throwing himself all around the stage; and the drawl of the little blonde he chose soothed him like summer rain. She didn't want his money at first, but Wilkes intended to stay the night, and she couldn't afford the loss. He came back again, and then again. He had Mitchell, when she was available. But without the girl at Mrs. Gordon's, Wilkes was unable to sleep.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 12

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman

CHAPTER TWELVE

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 15:48:00 +0000

boomp3.com

No one was sleeping much those days. Mollie's four-month pregnancy was full of late night antics - she was hot, she was cold, her breasts hurt, she wanted a rub or a fish and chips in a greasy newspaper cone. France and Italy, Adam had said, was where the culture was. But we had gone to London, where the doctors spoke our tongue.

I went to King's Row, Pentonville; Bloomsbury, Queen Street, where my grandfather practiced law before he threw up the soliciting and joined us in Maryland; St. Pancras Parish, where Papa was born in 1796. Neither in these places nor anywhere else did I find any trace of Papa. Only one ancient man, the desk clerk at our Belgravia hotel, had memories of forty years before when Edmund Kean had the Drury Lane and Papa had Covent Garden, and their partisans fought with cudgels over which of them was the better.

I went to the Bow Street Market, too. There were girls there, in the flower stalls, beautiful little buoyant things smelling of lilies and jasmine, who, I am sure, deserved the best but would never have Mother's luck.

As the baby grew, Mollie weakened. Six months gone, she was practically imprisoned in her bed. But she was well cared for, with nurses and maids and the best of British medicine; so she cheerily pushed me to take an engagement of several months which I'd been offered at the Theater Royal in Haymarket. You can look down from that stage, she said, and see what your father saw.

It was something, of course, to play Shakespeare in his own land, but it was not what it could have been. At the time, London was caught up in a French Shakespearean actor - as impossible a concept as a Cockney who knew how to cook. The frog played the Dane as if he were a haberdashery man, shaking hands with everyone, rattling through his soliloquies like problems in metaphysics, an ordinary little man, always talking talking talking... "Oh, zat zis too too soleed flesh ..." Oh, it was absurd!

But the Frenchman was a sensation. I couldn't play Hamlet against him. And it was worse than that. One would think that after eighty-six years the British would have gotten used to the loss of America. Well, it may be that they were accustomed, but they were not reconciled. It rankled, still, and so when the United States Navy put a shot over the bow of the Trent, an English merchantman; stopped her, boarded her and seized from her deck two Rebels sent to convince the Queen to recognize the Confederacy, the British were primed for a showdown, and declared it an act of war.

Eight thousand lobsterbacks were put aboard England's ships of the line and dispatched to Canada to protect the border, the Prime Minister said, from a bobbed and cropped United States which might be looking to supplant its loss with a few Canadian provinces. And there were men in America, I hear, who wanted to do just that; but it was England, truth be told, that was drooling at possibilities, envisioning what it might regain of what had been lost long ago.

So I didn't take it personally that I was hissed whenever I took the stage. By the fourth or fifth night I had come to be grateful that the British were slightly more decorous than they'd been in Papa's time, and I was not compelled to leave the boards with a varnish of tomato. But if this were what my father saw, I fathomed why he fled.

There was no point to going on with it, and Mollie's delivery was nigh, so I surrendered to the inevitable and gave her all my time. She was terribly drawn and wan by then; she could barely mount the strength to smile, and I thought I might be losing her, that I'd sewn in her some incubus that was sucking her life away, a slip of bitter vengeance, the curse of my early life, that would take my delight and joy from me when it entered the world with a grin. When her water broke on a raw December morning - why do I bother to mention "raw"; when is England not? - her attending team of nurses and midwives banished me to the hallway, where I paced while Mollie screamed, and no one there to comfort me, until I heard for the first time my daughter Edwina's yowl. I ran in, and she was beautiful. Mollie was sweated but peaceful, and I knew she would be all right.

The midwives chuckled and tried to place the baby in my arms, but I was afraid I'd break her, or worse, transmit through my fingers the thing that haunted me, from which, I could see from her loveliness, she'd been born blessedly free. But when she'd grown enough to have a crib, I hung the Stars and Stripes on the wall just above her head so that she - and her nurses - would know that she was not an English child.

We did go to France for a brief tour, but by then we were terribly homesick and the travel was bad for the babe. And so we boarded a ship for home - but not to return to New York. Mollie was still delicate, she was constantly exhausted and she suffered from headaches which struck her often for several days at a time. She trusted Boston doctors - they were pre-eminent - and New York was no place to bring up a child in a proper healthful way. We bought a house in Dorchester, and shipped up our things from New York. So I was in Boston when Wilkes came and achieved his greatest triumph.

The crowds he drew were the largest in Boston's history. Nor was it a bastard throng, like the mongrel New York hordes; it was Brahmin, purest Boston, as bright and as stiff as ever. And every night when he was done, they hooted, they howled, they stamped their feet until he appeared for a curtain call, then another, then another.

And the women! the even-tempered sex, Boston's straitlaced, respectable females - my God, they were mad for him! Floods of cultured, well-raised girls spilled out into Tremont Street and followed him into the common and wherever else he went. Women whose world was circumscribed, and did not include the theater, were no less enthralled by Wilkes - though they had never seen him work! Waitresses fought to serve him, brought him double portions. Maids made his bed twelve times a day, in the hopes of once finding him in it.

I was glad for him, but it baffled me: how had he turned forever unflappable Boston on its ear? Clara Morris, an old friend, was in the supporting cast. I asked her, as a woman, to decipher this thing for me.

"He's your brother, Ned," she chortled. "One would think you'd understand."

"I - I do, I suppose," I stuttered, "but I hadn't expected this!"

"His head, his neck," Clara sighed, "how they ascend from his shoulders! The ivory pallor of his skin, the inky blackness of his hair, the heavy lids of his glowing eyes - he turns me into a poet, Ned. Ridiculous, isn't it. And that flash of teeth behind his moustache... He's the first man I would call beautiful. They're in love with him."

Mollie understood it. "But they don't know him, Mollie!"

"They just have to look."

"That's a shallow kind of love ..."

"Ob, Ned," she smiled. “To be thrilled to the depths of one's soul by a man - the way that you thrill me - that is not a trifling thing. Most women never have it, or if they do, it's quickly gone. Since these women do not know Wilkes, he cannot ruin it. If they could make love with him just one time, and never see him again, they'd have a perfect romance to keep, even if just in memory – and memory, for most, is the only place where the perfect lover lives."

From that triumph on, the course Wilkes took lodged him deep in memory - not as the perfect lover, but as the perfect fiend.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

The Trent affair

Go to Chapter 13

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman, edmund kean, drury lane, covent garden

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:14:00 +0000

boomp3.com

The real war began in the spring of 1862, when General McClellan boarded a Union army on ships at Alexandria and sent them down the Chesapeake Bay to the Virginia port of Norfolk. They marched from there toward the northwest along the peninsula between the York and the James Rivers, through Yorktown and Williamsburg to within six miles of the outskirts of Richmond.

The Rebels attacked them at Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, Malvern Hill. Each time the Yankees mauled the Secesh, and yet each time McClellan retreated, believing (incorrectly) that the Rebels were too strong, until in the early days of July he encamped at Harrison's Landing on the bank of the river James. He was far away from Richmond, almost out of the war. No one could comprehend it. Even now, it makes no sense.

Thousands of wounded Southrons were freighted into Richmond. Houses became hospitals, and belles who had claimed to be delicate reddened their hands in surgeries where arms and legs littered the floors. Supplies were horribly lacking, and so it was that Emmerich had sent an urgent message for Wilkes to a decent hotel in Louisville, where Wilkes was concluding his season. Now Wilkes ranged between Mrs. Gordon's, or Mrs. Leverett's whorehouse (another Southron haunt on the east side of Lauren Street) and Philadelphia and Baltimore, carrying little bundles of needed contraband. He often slept on Asia's couch. Jack never learned of it.

In late August, the Rebels won Second Bull Run and Lee invaded Maryland, setting off panic in Philadelphia and calls for rounds of bracers in the bars of Baltimore. At Sharpsburg, at Antietam Creek, thirty-five men per minute were shot for twelve unrelenting hours, til McClellan drove Lee back across the Potomac, into Virginia. Now Richmond knew the truth about war, as did almost every town. Wilkes, that summer, never ceased his urgent peregrination.

It was cold, rain and mud that stopped the fight in the early days. Discomfort was still an issue then. Things weren't desperate. When the battlefields shut for the winter months, Wilkes went back to the stage. His New York and Boston triumphs had tripled his asking price. He was sought after almost everywhere; the money was rolling in. He was earning so much that he had begun to think about investments, inquiring after some parcels of land in Boston, on Commonwealth Avenue. What he intended to do with them, I will never know. Despite his recent reception, I doubt he wanted to live there.

It was time for me, too, to go back to work. I'd been booked, long before, to a fairly long run at the Winter Garden. But I feared it - my English disaster had led me to doubt myself, and I didn't know what it meant to me that Wilkes had done well in New York. Our styles were so different – I couldn't conceive that both could be popular. Until one has it, success appears as solid as a rock. But it's glass - it's mist, it's fragile, one sees, when one holds it in one's hand.

Mollie knew I was hesitant. She was feeling very much better now, and ready to brace me again, so it was planned she would come to New York and stay for the first few weeks.

I shook when I took the stage the first night. The house was so still, and that was not the theatergoer's habit. Were they bored? Uncomprehending? I thought I was leaving them cold. And then, at the end, first a splash, then a headlong torrent of hammering hands - they were on their feet, exploding.

Old friends - and new - engulfed me backstage, telling me I'd matured, I was perfect, there had never been anyone better. I was so relieved - so exuberant - that for the first time in my life I was able to talk to strangers. And from that intercourse grew invitations to galas and soirees – the kinds of gatherings I had once needed Adam to arrange. I might still spend an evening at Professor Botta's salon on West Thirty-seventh, talking to Ralph Waldo Emerson or Adelaide Ristori or Horace Greeley or Beecher or Julia Ward Howe, or argue with Susan B. Anthony about the merits of the marital state at the Cary sisters' old-fashioned house on East Twentieth Street.

But the settings for these affairs were no longer just private homes - they were public now, at Delmonico's or the Century Club, or the like. There were suppers, and always alcohol, and I found myself more frequently accepting a drink or two. They relaxed me, they loosened my tongue - they helped me hold my own.

Mollie's eyebrows notched up each time I wrapped my hand round a glass, but there seemed to be no consequence other than delight. She stayed longer than she wanted to, gauging my state of mind, but finally she convinced herself that I was under control. New York was more, now, than she was up to. She went home.

The parties went on into winter. I went back to Boston for Christmas, and played a short run there. Mollie did not detect any cracks in my aplomb - nor did she catch me spiking the eggnog from a little silver flask. I went back to New York in February, and picked up where I'd left it. I hadn't any idea I was about to go round the bend.

One evening at Delmonico's - a particularly glittering night - I was holding forth on Mazeppa, a melodrama adapted from a poem by Lord Byron, in which Adah Isaacs Menken, a well-constructed girl, had ridden across the New Bowery's stage strapped, half-nude, to a horse. I was actually holding forth! How remarkable! I had just made a very erudite point - though on that particular topic, erudition was of no use - and to celebrate it, I called the waiter and ordered a jigger of scotch. When he returned I reached for it, but the man who was sitting next to me - a temperate fellow in sober black whom I didn't know - snatched the drink off the tray.

"What are you doing?" I snapped at him.

"You have had too many."

"Am I falling down? Am I sloppy?" I snarled, grabbing at the glass.

"You are sitting, thank God," he answered, keeping the liquor at bay, "so we'll have to wait until later to find out if you can stand. As for sloppy, that you are - more so every day."

"I'm fine!" I barked. "Or will be once you hand me back that drink!"

"You flubbed a third of your lines tonight. The audience was aware... "

"Am I the authority out there, sir? Or are they? I have given my life to these great roles! I am not an entertainer! I reveal the soul of a masterpiece! I instruct! And they think it incumbent upon themselves to let me see they approve! They drag me out for curtain calls so that I may rejoice that in their good nature I have delighted them! It is impertinent, sir! I am appalled!"

"Your friends are becoming concerned ..."

"What for? I can never do anything wrong! I trip in the middle of Richard the Third and fall flat on my ass, and the audience applauds it! They think it's something I've planned, and the papers the next morning call it 'wonderful art'!"

"The papers this morning said they had never seen Shakespeare so massacred."

"They're entitled to their opinion! As I am to that drink!" I reached again for the tempting glass; he turned the jigger in his hand, and poured it out on the floor. I think I could have clobbered him, had it occurred to me.

I began to have all-night company. Someone was always in my house, people I barely knew or if I knew them, and maybe I did, I didn't remember them. I had never asked for their fellowship, but since I wasn't sleeping much I found it enjoyable. Now I could argue all day and all night. They usually let me win. Someone seemed to be always hanging around my dressing room. I let them see my privates. They never showed me theirs. And someone was always tugging my arm when I left the theater bent on following a pretty skirt headed for Mercer Street. Some of these men are now close friends. And one night, it was Wilkes.

"What are you doing here, brother?" I asked. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I've just been in Boston," Wilkes replied. "Mollie asked me to stop."

"In Boston? Were you working, Wilkes? Did you conquer again?"

"Ah, my goose hangs high, Ned - long may she wave."

"Good! Why don't we follow that girl, and see which one of us she fucks. Unless the Boston chickens dried you up. I myself am far from depleted!"

"Don't you want to hear about Mollie?"

"What about Mollie?"

"She's ill."

He'd been staying with her in Boston, he said - considering her fragile health, she didn't like to be alone - and when it was time for him to leave she'd arranged for a girl from Boston to keep her company. She had taken the trolley into town to meet the girl and retrieve her. It had started to snow just as Mollie went out, and as she was coming home the air was an opaque sheet of white and the wind off the ocean blew crystals of ice down the neck of her coat. The trolley was an hour late, and the station afforded no shelter. When Mollie reached our doorstep, she was soaked and frozen through.

She was shivering so when she came through the door that her legs were like bands of rubber; great heaving gulps of air slipped past her rattling teeth, and she constantly readjusted her arms to hug every part of herself "Oh, God!" she squeaked. "I feel as if I should never be warm again!"

Wilkes and her friend took her up to bed. The Boston girl undressed her. Even plowed under stacks of blankets and piles of comforters, Mollie's skin was turning blue, and the whole bed shook with her quaking. The doctor had come. He said it would prove to be no more than a cold, and a few days in bed would see her through it. When Wilkes left she was better. "I think she was getting over it. Or I never would have gone. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks had color. I think she'll be all right."

"Thank you for telling me, Wilkes," I said. "Now, about getting laid ..."

We did not get laid - or I did not; what Wilkes did I don't know. A few days later he had to leave. He seemed hesitant about it, but the Arch Street Theater awaited him, and God knows what other business.

I had finally gotten off to sleep on the morning of February the 18th - blessedly alone for the first time in several weeks - when a puff of cold air touched my cheek and startled me wide awake. The bedroom window was shut, I saw; coal embers still glowed in the fireplace. I thought I must have imagined it - and then I felt it again, and I fancied that I heard Mollie's voice, far, far away, saying: "Come to me, my darling, I'm nearly froze to death."

I needed a drink. That's what it was. I needed the hair of the dog. Panicked, I scooped up my dressing gown and ran downstairs to the hiding place, undiscovered all these nights by my well-intentioned keepers. I heard nothing more that day, or the next, except in the form of letters: one from Mollie, who only said she was bothered by pain at night, and the doctor's note saying he didn't expect her to get worse. With a little help from my better friend - the one who lived in a bottle – I forgot the cold touch, and the colder voice. I forgot about everything.

In two nights more came Richard the Third. At the third act intermission, I had fled to my dressing room for another pull at the calming jug, when the call boy brought me a telegram. I didn't look at it. At the fourth act break, I found two more propped on the makeup table, but I felt too good, too hazily good, to tolerate interruption, so I didn't open either of them. I'd already forgotten the first.

I had scraped off my paint - carelessly - after the final curtain. I was planning a raid on Crosby Street when the manager entered the dressing room with another wire in hand. "Mr. Booth ..." I waved him off. "No, sir, a doctor sent this to me, and you are going to hear it." He read out the wire in the flavorless vein of the semi-literate. '''Why doesn't Booth answer? He must come at once.'''

"What in H-l is he talking about? Answer what?" I mumbled.

"Those." The manager pointed to the earlier evening's mail.

I opened the first one languidly. Then I sprinted through the others, fumbling frantically with the glue that sealed the envelopes. Mollie was sick with pneumonia, she might not last the night. She had heard from friends of my state of mind; she had wanted to come and hold me. She had begged the doctor to keep her alive until I came to her.

Oh God. Oh God. "Please, get me to the train!"

"I'll call your friends," the manager said.

"Anyone! Anyone!"

They came with a gurney, my new friends, to take me to the station. "I don't want to go like this," I cried. "Get me sobered up!" They took me home, and gorged me with more coffee than I could stand. I wanted a drink, I began to shake, but my mind was coming clear.

"What time is the train?"

"Midnight," they said.

"D--n you all, look at the clock! My God, we've missed it! What time is the next?"

There would be no train to Boston until seven o'clock in the morning. They urged me to sleep. But who could? One minute I knew she would be all right; the next I was hopeless with grief. I was at the window a thousand times, looking up at the sliver of sky which is all Manhattan allows you for the slightest blanching of black to gray over Brooklyn to the east. It was February, though, and so still jet when the hack took us down to Union Square, where we boarded the northbound cars of the New York and Harlem Railroad.

In the growing dawn the buildings flashed by along Fourth Avenue, a web of washlines bridging them, pendant with dirty gray linens; then the swelling hills of upper Manhattan, a patchwork of bantam farms; across the Harlem to Riverdale, Yonkers, Mamaroneck, Rye on the New York and New Haven. If I turned my head to the window, Mollie's face would form on the glass out of smoke or crystals - a dead face, white/blue, eyes closed, lids slack, mouth composed, unhappy. Some sort of white cloth was tied around her neck and chin. I saw her distinctly, over and over - a dozen times at least.

At Boston a friend brought a carriage. He looked so low that I would have known it was over from seeing him. But I didn't need to learn it from him. I already knew. Not a word was uttered on the long ride to the house in Dorchester. I was peaceful when I saw her, arranged on our bed with a linen wrap fastened around her neck. I chased all the others out of the room. I stared at her for hours. I didn't tell her anything. She didn't speak to me.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

The Peninsula campaign

Go to Chapter 14

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman, edmund kean, drury lane, covent garden, mazeppa

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:16:00 +0000

boomp3.com

Wilkes closed up the Arch Street Theater and came to Mollie's funeral. I staggered when they lowered her coffin into the frosted grave; I would have collapsed if it weren't for Wilkes' iron grip on my arm. He didn't have to say anything. I knew how badly he felt.

I let no one into the Dorchester house for the week I remained in it, excepting Wilkes, who stayed with me, practicing the maxim: Never Leave Edwin Alone. The subject of Mollie didn't come up; Wilkes was afraid to set me off, and I wanted to pause on the downward slide I knew was certain to follow. I never told Wilkes that, in the night, Mollie had come to me.

I studied Wilkes then, to distract myself, as I hadn't for some time. There was something different about him; at first I couldn't see what it was, but when he began to unburden himself, it suddenly occurred to me that he had lost his boyishness. There was a sadness to him - and an edge of ferocious anger I had never seen before.

He was nursing a Napoleon, huddled in an armchair with his arms around his knees. "I'm sick of the road - the wretched hotels, the trains, the coaches, the miserable casts they give me. I've had enough of it."

"You've only just become a star. Isn't this premature?"

"I want to stay in one place, with a resident company." That was every actor's dream – to park yourself in a theater and let the audience come to you.

"Where are you thinking of doing it?"

"The capital. Washington."

I would never have guessed that was where he'd go. "It's hardly a theater town."

"There's an available house," he scowled. "I'm investing my money. If I go wrong, I won't starve to death.”

"Wilkes," I asked him quietly, "why are you so angry?"

He looked up, his eyes unfocused - then they narrowed and shot out sparks. "The Original Gorilla has turned the niggers loose!"

It was the Emancipation Proclamation he was talking about. It had become law on the past New Year's Day; it supposedly freed the slaves in any state then in rebellion. But it hadn't freed them in Maryland, or anywhere in the Union. "That'll be next," Wilkes snorted. "Just you wait and see."

"What's been done is of no consequence, Wilkes. One can hardly free slaves in territories one does not control."

"You're right. He cannot free them. But he can make them think they are free." He spoke with a deadly intensity that truly frightened me. "How long before they're slaughtering Southern women in their beds?" He slammed his fists into the chair arms. "Ned, I'll tell you this: the man who kills that baboon will be revered in America!"

"Does any of this have to do," I said, dreading the possible answer, "with the fact that you're considering moving to Washington?"

"No," he said. "It's coincidence." Possibly it was.

I sold the house in Dorchester, rented a brownstone in Manhattan at 107 East Seventeenth Street from Putnam, the publisher. Adam had missed the funeral - they were fighting in Tennessee - but he'd got himself leave, and he stood with me the first time I twisted the key in the lock. He was handsome in his uniform. I hugged him and we cried.

"She made that house in Dorchester something to be loved," I sobbed. "But I had to leave it, Ad. She just wasn't there anymore."

"I knooow, Ned ..."

"No, you don't. Even after she'd passed away, she had been in the house. I’d seen her, felt her, heard her every minute of the day, but always over my shoulder, I never could comer her. Then one night she came to me; she stood at the foot of our bed. She was all in white, as she should have been. She was clear-edged and distinct. She spoke, but I couldn't make it out, though I held my breath. She was doleful, Ad. Horrible. I could see she hated me."

"No! Ned! She never could!" The thought of it staggered him.

"She's right to hate me, Ad," I moaned, kneeling at his feet. "The son of a bitch who drank away the last hours of her life. Her love was too deep, too holy for a selfish beast like me. I haven't seen her since that night. I've tried everything to reach her. I hold her clothing in my hands, and everything she'd touched. But she won't come back. I know she won't. She doesn't want to see me."

He reached out a hand and rested it on my shoulder, near my neck. "Maybe you imagined her. Maybe they don't come back ...:"

I stood, and began to walk the room. "I've never believed there was anywhere for them to come back from. But Ad, I know it, she was there Promise me, if you die first, and you can come back, you will. I have to know if it's possible. I'll do it for you, if it's me."

"Oh, Jesus, Ned - the truth is I think I'd rather you did not."

"And tell her I need to see her!" I wept. "God, I want to be dead! Or mad - I might see her in madness... they say madmen see such things. Do you know what terrifies me? When I think of Papa, it doesn't hurt, and I can't remember his face. Great God, Ad, do you think that will happen with Mollie? That I'll live long enough that she becomes a misty recollection, a piteous dream of happiness I had when I was young? Christ, spare me that!”

"You'll never forget her, Ned," he smiled. And I never have - not a detail, not a moment; it all remains with me.

Adam stayed in my house for a month. In those fits of despondency which might come on me at any time of day, he would walk me back to quietude. But he needn't have feared for me. I had given up the alcohol. I have never touched it since. And I never seriously thought of taking my own life, though the prospect seemed appealing, if it brought me to Mollie again.

Adam and I became adept at meeting the baby's needs. Adam shrank from the dirtier jobs, but he loved to shove the spoon in her mouth and watch her lick her lips. In the end, we decided that I would serve quite well, thank you, as a papa - though the baby's sweetness saddened me, reminding me of Mollie. "But you'll need to find a nurse," Adam said, "when you go back to work."

"Work?" I laughed. "I'm not going back. My work is a farce. All I am is a monkey, nothing more."

"And my work?" Adam shrilled. "Liberating your genius? Does that mean nothing also? Am I a monkey too?"

"If you're a monkey," I chuckled, "it has nothing to do with me."

"If you are serious, Ned, I'll have nothing to say to you." He had in his hand the baby's food, and he threw it, in pique, against the wall, a pea-green slithering mess.

I shook my head and clucked at him. "Well, then, those are your last words, and I will treasure them. But understand, no one else will give a tinker's d-n. Now, I will not clean up what you've just done. Do your usual fastidious best."

For the next two days, whatever we did, Adam wouldn't speak. We might sit across from each other, reading or doing nothing, and not a word was said, except that from time to time he would call me a fool, and I'd respond: "That's right."

In these hours of silence, broken only by our caring for Edwina, I began to hear - faintly at first - disembodied voices. Day or night, awake or asleep, I might be dreaming or thinking and find my mind's flow interrupted by a babble of sounds that might have been a tongue I didn't know. The voices were male and female; they were shouting at me. They could have been Turks or Portagees, but I thought I had caught enough of their tone to recognize Mollie, and Papa, and I was becoming desperate to know what they had to say. I had heard of a woman in the Tenderloin who claimed she spoke to the dead. I mentioned this to Adam. "Oh, Laura Edmonds - I know her! The Astors and the Belmonts use her to talk to their ancestors. They claim some of their finest deals were suggested by the deceased!"

"Do you think she could find Mollie for me? Or tell me, at least, who it is who is trying to get through?"

"I think she's a fake and a fraud, Ned, but where's the harm in trying?"

"Would I have to go to the Tenderloin?"

"Oh, no. She'll come to you."

Two nights later, we gathered six friends and fed them rather well, then cleared the debris from the dining table and asked them to stay where they were. At nine o'clock Laura Edmonds walked in, looking anything but a medium. She was young - in her middle twenties, I'd guess – and dressed in the latest fashion; her manner was brisk and businesslike as she circled the table, giving her hand to the gentlemen, bussing the ladies' cheeks. In the group, it seemed, she was quite well known, and considered, if not an oracle, an entertaining girl.

I expected she'd have the lights turned down, but it seems she works a la mode. She merely asked us to clear a place, and directly sat down at it, then re-ordered the sequence of dinner guests, placing Adam on my left.

"Are there any preparations ..." I asked.

"No, none," she said. "All that is required is that the circle link by hands." This technical detail apparently had been known to everyone else, who already were squeezing the digits of the persons on either side.

On the moment I covered Adam's hand, I felt his fingers jerk. I looked at him; his eyebrows were trying to climb to the top of his head. "What is it?" I whispered.

"Don't know," he grimaced. "I've never felt it before." And then his arm began to shake, with increasing rapidity, until it moved so fast that all you could see of his fingers was a blur, and the scope of the oscillations grew until Adam was banging his hand on the table two or three times a second, continuing until blood began flying off his fingertips.

"Christ! Is it a spirit?" he howled.

''No,'' said Miss Edmonds calmly. "I believe it is Mr. Booth."

"What?!"

"He appears to have more than the normal amount of psychic energy." She was gazing at me avidly. "I think we must meet again."

"For God's sake!" Adam screeched. "Make him let go of me!"

"If I let go, I won't find Mollie!"

"Release him, please," Laura Edmonds smiled. "I've already heard from her."

I dropped Adam's hand and entreated her: "Please, miss - what did she say?"

"Six words, Mr. Booth," she answered. "'Don't worry. I love you. Act.'"

"I expected," said Adam later that night, his hand carbolicked and wrapped, "she'd add a few words to those six."

"Mollie?"

"As you believe."

"What words?"

"'Ned, it's all right if you sleep with Laura Edmonds.'”

"What!"

"That is clearly Laura's intention. Everyone noticed it."

"You wretched faggot! You are ridiculous!"

"Oh, Ned," he sighed, "do you really believe that woman heard from Mollie?"

"I choose to believe it, Ad. And I'm going back to the stage."

For a moment his mouth hung open, until he finally piped: "Well, God bless Laura Edmonds! She can do miracles!"

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 15

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman, edmund kean, drury lane, covent garden, mazeppa

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:35:00 +0000

boomp3.com

I opened, as you remember, Ned, in April of 1863 at Grover's Theater in Washington. I was billed as "The Son of Junius Booth and Artistic Rival of Edwin." And I was your artistic rival, Ned, and, by some lights, your better. But after I acheved that, it didn't matter much.

“As you said, Washington is hardly a theater town, by which you meant one with a graceful audience with half a brain amongst them. It's filthy, befitting its purposes. It stinks, befitting its business. It has public buildings with holes in their rooves, only halfway built, and likewise a half-built monument, like a mutilated dick.

"Still in all, they loved me. They mobbed the theater; stood in the aisles. Adored evrything I did. I'd expanded on some of Raufer's tricks ... well, you should have seen them. Had a new costume for Richard, too - a long purple velvet blouse loaded up with "jewels" and a fur-trimmed tunic without any sleeves. They're gone now, they're moldering at the bottom of the sea. Oh, well. I won't be needing them. But they were beautiful.

"I was well-known in town inside of a week, both in the higher circles and in the bars along Rum Row. Most of those were bluebelly haunts, though all of them had signs up reading NOTHING SOLD TO SOLDIERS. But some of the establishments catered to the Secesh, who know each other by the eyes, and will buy you a drink without a word and trust the sentiment.

“The old Washington Theater, at the corner of Eleventh and C, was unoccupied then, and deserved to be. It was stained with a flood of tobacco juice and crusted with peanut shells. The ladies' sections in Washington do not mark chivalry; for a woman of any delicacy, they're a matter of self-preservation. But I rented it, and borrowed some of the better hands from Grover's, rehearsed them the best I could in a week, and opened on April 21h with a standing room only crowd.

"The first night's play was Richard again -I'd begin evry run with Richard by then, it had come to be expected. I was just about to take the stage when an usher hurried into the wings and told me, all afluster, that the Ape was in the house. There'd been no fuss - no guards, no ovation, no "Hail to the Chief' - he came to the theaters regularly, so it wasn't much surprising, and evryone knew him personaly since it was his habit once a week to open the White House to anyone who felt like paying a call. In Richmond, Jeff Davis was venerated; the Ape was just one of the boys.

"I walked out alone, as the role requires, for the opening lines. I looked up and there he was, still on his feat, waving to friends, in the first row of the balcony. He was dressed all in black – black stovepipe hat, black frock coat, pants, shoes, cape, all black but his white hands and his ugly warty face - eight feet tall and even more stark next to his dumpling wife, who was blessing the house like a chubby study of Queen Marie Antoinette. And it came to me, Ned, that he looked what he was, the goddamned Angel of Death, who had only to point his finger to send a soul to Hell.

"I was hardly into the character when it struck me the lines I was uttering were fair descriptions of him - "... am not shap 'd for sportive tricks ... I that am rudely stamped ... curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature...” My God, he was all of that! And then, that the character was him - " ... determined to prove a villain ... plots have I laid, inductions dangerous ... “ The play was about him.

"I tell you, Ned, I have never felt so disjointed on the stage, on the one hand playing him, on the other hating him, and so hating myself. And I was carried along, out of control, until the lines in Act Four, Scene Two, where Richard condemns the young princes, and it all became too much for me, this jumble of conflictions, and I pointed up at the Ape and I roared: 'I wish the bastard dead ... ' - yes, I made the word singular - 'and I would have it suddenly performed.'"

A sharp, ragged catch of the breath came up from the crowd, and around the hall fingers crept into pockets and hardened on pistol triggers. It was as if Wilkes had thrown them all into a crack in time. Nothing moved for what seemed to them like an eternity - Wilkes frozen staring at Lincoln, Lincoln flinching away, his wife with her mouth locked into an "O" and both hands in the air. It was only a second or two, of course; then Wilkes dropped into the following lines and the play rolled on to its customary violent conclusion. At the end the audience pounded their hands and shrieked for Wilkes to the tune of six curtain calls. Wilkes knew they were not really with him. It was only their relief.

It was his custom, after shows, assuming the weather was good, to take a stroll near the theater and see who followed him. Some girl would hang on longer than most, and make a brazen approach. Whoever she was, she'd be obliged before much time had passed.

This night he went down C Street towards Harvey's Oyster House. There were no gas lights in Washington then, except on Pennsylvania, and C Street was dangerous dark, considering the flotsam on which one might trip, or the jetsam carrying knives or saps who were everywhere in that town. The crowd had left off chasing Wilkes after half a block - and it was not a woman who caught his arm and brought him to a stop.

Wilkes seized the man's hand, whirled him around and studied him. He looked to be about twenty. He was skinny, with stringy sandy hair receded from his forehead; his black eyes were set deep in his head, just above a good-sized nose which surmounted a moustache full on the ends, but sparsish over the lips, all of these mounted near cheeks so sunken as nearly to be cadaverous. On his hands were a pair of fine kid gloves; on his legs were matching leggings. Just visible under his jacket were a brace of Colt revolvers tucked into the belt that was holding up his pants. "I'm just back from Richmond," the fellow said. "I have regards from your friends."

Startled, Wilkes challenged: "Your name?"

"John Surratt."

"And how is it you were in Richmond, sir?"

"I'm a courier, Mr. Booth. Like you - but I cross the border."

Wilkes studied the eyes, which were lively and bright, and decided to pursue it. The two shook hands and commenced to walk down C Street to Eleventh, and then to Pennsylvania. On the corner, Harvey's poured yellow light into the avenue.

Harvey's was a serious eating establishment, frequented only by men, so there was no commotion when Wilkes strode in, and that was to his liking. The bistro is narrow and brightly lit; there wasn't a single open space along the one hundred foot serving bar where gentlemen, some of them elegant, stood, bibbed and bellied up, catching themselves (in the looking glass on the wall behind the counter) slurping the Chesapeake catch of the day that Harvey's boats, at no little risk, had brought in under the heavy guns of Confederate batteries bristling along the Potomac's Virginia shore. Wilkes and Surratt would not have sat at the bar even had there been a place; they selected a back table, the better to talk unlistened to.

"What friends have sent their regards?" Wilkes asked. A moustachio'd server smelling of brine brought them two steaming bowls. "Wine!" Wilkes called as the man spun on his heels.

“Certainly, gentlemen."

"Dr. Beal particularly," Surratt replied. "But everyone is well - except for a few."

"Who?"

"They arrested John Botts and threw him in jail when martial law was declared. They tossed him out of Virginia. No one knows where he is."

For Botts, Wilkes had no sympathies. "I knew he would be a traitor."

"And Jennings Wise is dead," said Surratt. "Took a bullet at Roanoke Island." That was sad news, but acceptable of a man of the chivalry.

Wilkes mentioned several distaff names. "You're missed," Surratt said, smiling. "But things are hard in Richmond."

"What do you mean?" Wilkes asked. "What things?" The waiter brought a montrachet. Wilkes didn't care for it.

"The Yankees have sealed off the ports on the Gulf, and most of the Atlantic coast. What little gets through costs ten times what it did before the war. And they're drafting all the farmers. There's no food, Mr. Booth. There were bread riots in Richmond last month, women begging on streetcorners. "

What an awful waste of grace, Wilkes thought. A literal crying shame.

"Of course, your friends aren't suffering - not like that. They give starvation parties – music and dancing and dress-up, but no food served. They want to feel what it's like to be deprived for two or three hours." Surratt pushed his bowl aside, screwing up his lips. He stood at his seat and stretched himself "There's something I have to do tonight. Why don't you come along?"

So they walked down to the Capitol, and then up Delaware Avenue. From Pennsylvania Avenue a racket wafted north. But Delaware was a busy street, though the crowds of walkers seemed furtive, as if they were slinking en masse. As Wilkes and Surratt were swallowed up in the midst of this purposeful throng, Wilkes saw that the women were sugar girls, garish and hardened and half-nude, and the men were shillelagh redheads or black Irish b'hoys in sack suits over pantaloons and flower-brocaded waistcoats, all headed into the city to take it for what it was worth - and it was worth a lot in those days, with all the soldier-boy pockets full and their family jewels unspent.

Surratt approached a pretty girl with enormous pointed bosoms. She smiled when she saw him coming. She had almost all of her teeth.

"Is it a f-k or a suck yer after havin', m'darlin'?" she chirped.

"I'll have a little of what's in those." He pointed to her breasts.

"Yer wants to suckle me, little boy?"

"I do, if what's in them things is what I think it is." Surratt reached out to the nearer teat; she wheeled and drew it away, but he flicked it with a finger. The sound it made was "clink." "What's in the falsies, sugar? Bathtub Sneaky Pete?"

"I'm goin' downtown to sell it," she laughed. "I can't pull the bung just yet. But I'll give you a swig of my pussy, if y' can get it liquefied!"

''No, thanks," he chuckled.

"No bother," she said, and swiveled south down Delaware. "Perhaps another time."

Surratt and Wilkes crossed a wooden bridge over foetid Tiber Creek into a warren of hovels and garbage heaps, tarpaper shacks and tin-roofed dugouts, out of the back sides of which brown streams of God knew what ran a few feet to a running sewer filled with unmentionables. There were streets, or alleys, in this place, but none of them had a name. They were in Swampoodle. Wilkes had heard of it. Without Surratt, Wilkes knew, he would never get out alive.

Surratt knew where he was going, lifting his feet and placing them down on the tidier patches of earth til they came to a shack about five feet high that looked like a nesting place for a gaggle of nasty dwarves. The lintel was so low to the ground that Wilkes doubled up to go through it, expecting to find at the other end either a toothless bearded hag or a man with flax in his ears.

But once in the door they were warmly greeted by a fellow of obvious health, six feet tall, spine straight, eyes a peculiar blue. Surratt and the man shook hands, and whatever Surratt had held in his fist went into Blue Eyes' pocket. Blue Eyes nodded and entered a room behind a linen curtain, returning a moment later with a package wrapped in cloth. He handed the package to Surratt, who tucked it into his blouse. Surratt touched his finger to the brim of his hat, and signaled Wilkes to leave. Not a single word had been spoken. Yet many things had been said.

Wilkes had seen similar parcels. "He gave you ether, yes?"

Surratt nodded "For Chancellorsville. A lot of legs coming off."

"How do you get it to Richmond?" Wilkes asked.

"Sorry. I can't say." Surratt tugged his hat down over his eyes, and began the same sort of hopping he'd committed coming in. '"Tell you what. I leave in a day or two. I'll take you part of the way."

Wilkes surrendered two days of his run to an Italian opera troupe, and on the Wednesday, May the 6th, he set out with John Surratt. They met at the foot of Eleventh Street, near the Navy Yard, and crossed the wooden Navy Yard Bridge over the Potomac's Eastern Branch to Uniontown, Maryland. The sultry summer's drenching haze was beginning to make itself known, and Wilkes' rented fleabitten gray was frothing at a trot.

Across the span, the road turned right and over Good Hope Hill past the forts that defended the capital, south and east, through the Maryland counties of Prince Georges and Prince Charles to the hamlet of T.B., four or five weathered houses and barns, population fifteen, and then a few more miles to Surrattsville.

Surrattsville was less of a town than T.B. - in fact, it consisted of just the farm John's parents had put together out of two-hundred-eighty-some acres of scrubby tobacco fields. The only reasons it had a name were that it sat at a crossroads on the primary route from Baltimore to the village of Port Tobacco, and because it was ennobled by a post office inside the house - only a board and some pigeonholes, just an excuse for the neighbors to drop by the bar behind it which, along with the dining room, served the occasional overnight guest who'd traveled as far as he was able on that particular day. The post office, bar and hostelry all produced positive nets, and so - though you wouldn't know it from the appearance of the house, which had once been white and was two stories high, the grounds barely covered by grass and shrubs and littered with wagon wheels - the Surratts were managing very well, including the peaches and vegetables which John would take up to Washington to sell to restaurateurs, giving him an excuse to come to the capital now and again.

John's father was dead, though he was at hand, planted under a tree. His mother, Mary, was forty years old; judging from the remains, Wilkes thought, she had once been a pretty girl. She was cordial enough in greeting him, putting out her hand, but although she flicked her gray eyes from his hat to his boots, it was clear to Wilkes that she had no idea who he was. Her daughter, on the other hand, made no bones about being smitten.

Anna Surratt was twenty-two, a year or so older than her brother. She shared his notable features: thin nose, thin lips, slight chin, a forehead like a poster board and light brown hair. But she didn't share his coolness; she was giggly and abashed. She couldn't bear to look at Wilkes; a moment after their hands touched, she skittered into the dining room, from which there emitted, shortly on, a decent rendition of "Captain Jinks" played on a sour piano.

There were other men around besides John, though John’s brother Isaac, he explained, was with the Rebs in Texas. Louis Weichmann was John's close friend, and the master of St. Matthews School for Boys on Eighteenth Street in D.C. The two had met at St. Charles College in Howard City, Maryland. The school was a seminary; the boys were intended to be clergy. "Well, I didn't think so," Weichmann laughed over the Surratt's noon meal. "I wanted to be a druggist. It was Mother who wanted the priest." Neither had felt the calling; they'd quit a year before. But they'd stayed in touch; John would visit Louis when he was in Washington, and from time to time invite him down to spend a few days at Surrattsville.

The other guest, David Herold, had not mastered eating utensils; Mrs. Surratt's chicken pot pie was all over him and his place. He had not doffed at table the flattened chapeau he affected to wear, nor had he cut his hair nor shaved of late, though the whiskers he sprouted were weak little things which needed little attention. His face was yellowed, and spangled with freckles on his cheeks and nose. His eyes were always nearly closed, and his mouth was always open, since, though he had nothing to say, he was always saying it.

His mother lived on Eighth Street, he said, though nobody had asked. His father, who'd worked at the Navy Store, had died the year before when Herold was twenty years old, and quite specifically separated Davy from his estate. To punish his dad, Davy had quit his job at Thompson's Pharmacy, across the street from the White House at Fifteenth and Pennsylvania, forcing his father, dead or no, to carry him by draining the cash from his mother and his sisters, who doted on Davy Boy. All he did, or talked about, was hunting in Lower Maryland, and sometimes in Virginia, even after the war had begun. That was how he had met Surratt, shooting on Mary's land. The best that could be said of him was that he never drank. But the other vices ran rampant, whenever he could afford them.

After supper, Surratt led Wilkes out back to the reeking chicken house and fed the flock while Wilkes held his nose. "Do those fellows know... "

"No, they don't," Surratt cut in, "and they never will. Both of them are Rebels at heart, but I don't trust their mouths. Davy's just a simpleton - hasn't a nasty bone. But Weichmann would sell his mother out if the price was right." Belying his face, which was wide and uncluttered, with earnest open eyes.

"He remains your friend?"

"I like him," he laughed. "I have plenty of friends I don't trust. You never know who you'll need." He scattered the last of the feed to the hens. "Are you ready to move on?"

Wilkes said goodbye to Mrs. Surratt - Anna did not appear, and Herold was showing Weichmann where the partridges hid themselves. They led their horses out of the yard; reaching the road, they mounted up and trotted toward Port Tobacco. Wilkes was wary, unable to stop himself thinking of what they carried, but Surratt looked as innocent as the priest he'd almost been.

"Where is it?" Wilkes asked.

"Where is what?"

"What you're taking to Richmond."

Surratt chuckled. "Here and there. For example, here." He took his right leg out of the stirrup and perched his boot on his pommel, then twisted the heel and pulled out of it an undetectable drawer, inside of which were folded papers, and dollars in U.S. gold. "Or here." He twirled a metal button on his jacket cuff. The top screwed off, and beneath it were tiny photographs. "Or there." He reached into his saddlebag and brought out a leather-clad book, a biography, Wilkes noted, of poor dead John Brown. The inner pages were hollowed out, and the package they'd gotten in Swampoodle nestled in the gap.

"You tell me you get away with this?" Wilkes could not believe it.

Surratt kept his horse at an easy trot, his eyes cross-checking the road. "The detectives are fucking stupid. They never open that book."

There was no breeze on the Potomac when they reached it at Port Tobacco. The river eddies in coves here, and the still surface sprouts a crop of crud that blends in shade and consistency with the bank's swamp vegetation and reminds one of pterodactyls and iguanodons. The village, set amongst rolling hills covered with sycamores, is what one expects to find on a major river's backwater - a few once-magnificent homes from the days when tobacco was King in the South and George Washington was a visitor; otherwise, fisherman's huts, boat-builders, failure and drifting ambition, five hundred inhabitants, none of them worth a spit. But then Port Tobacco was full of sparks and smarter men than now, who sneaked things past the Union patrols and took them across on the ferry boat to Virginia's Northern Neck.

These men could be found at the Brawner House - there was nowhere else to stay. It was as rundown as everything else, with a squalid saloon in its basement, not only the paint but the wood itself decomposing in flakes and bubbles. There were always men leaning on the bar, whether night or day, more silent corned than sober but never talkative, drawing off their Guayaquil straws to swipe at the sweat on their necks.

They should have looked like the men in the pictures of Mosby's Rangers - lean, hard, like Surratt - but it took all kinds, apparently, to trick the Yankee patrols. There were men so fat Wilkes wouldn't have thought they could climb onto their barstools; there were men with half an arm or leg, or pieces of face shot off. Surratt was welcomed here quietly, as if he were at home.

Jim Brawner eyed Wilkes charily, but was soothed by Surratt's assurances that he was acceptable.

"Goin' over, Johnnie?" Jim asked. Surratt nodded he was. "Yanks are all over the Northern Neck. They're wearin' Confederate uniforms, claimin' they's wounded at Chancellorsville or some other f--kin' place. They been stealin' people's niggers and horses and gold watches, too. You move right on thoo to Richmond, boy, fast as you can scurry."

Jim was a Rebel agent; he knew what he said he knew. He didn't cross the river much, so his wisdom was secondhand, mostly passed across a whiskey in a drawling word or two. He remained in Port Tobacco, and when someone came through who was eagerly awaited across the river, he'd signal at night with a lantern from the high windows of the hotel, watching for the glimmer that proved his message had been received. For Surratt, though, he never signaled; Johnnie's crossings were routine.

Surratt knocked back his whiskey neat. "Far as you go, Mr. Booth," he said. "I can't take the risk of crossing over with you. Can you find your way back?" Wilkes thought he could. "I'll call when I'm in town."

"Regards to Jeff Davis, Johnnie," said Jim. And Wilkes saw Paradise.

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 16

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman, edmund kean, drury lane, covent garden, mazeppa, john surratt, chancellorsville, david herold, mosby's rangers

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 20:28:00 +0000

boomp3.com

When Surratt came back to Washington, though, he didn't call on Wilkes, because Wilkes had closed the theater and gone back on the road. Wilkes never had the head for managing large affairs. He was bored by theater details, such as who, besides him, got paid. The clamor for Wilkes across the country was noisier than ever, and the contracts they were offering him were richer by the week. So he packed himself with a grumble and hied himself to Chicago, where Raufer had concocted some gewgaws that would set a crowd on fire. And from there St. Louis, and Cleveland, and finally Buffalo where he played the season's last Richard in the middle of July.

General Lee was traveling, too. He had moved a huge Rebel force into the Shenandoah Valley. By mid-June, the head of his column had crossed the Potomac at Williamsport. By the end of the month, Longstreet and Hill were at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Lee, intending to come at Washington from the north, concentrated his army at the town of
Gettysburg.

The northeastern states were terrorized. The war was coming home. But the Yankees held Lee at Gettysburg, and after Pickett's horrible charge, drove him back to Virginia. As the straggling rear of Lee ' s army was scrambling out of Maryland, Wilkes arrived in New York City to spend some weeks with me.

He looked discontented, but otherwise well, and I was happy to see it; but I had little time to give to him then. Adam Badeau had been shot in the side during the siege of Vicksburg, where Grant had been struggling mightily to shut down the Mississippi. His Negro orderly, Hezekiah, had, since Adam demanded it, ferried him over a thousand miles to bring him to my house. Two corpsmen had carried him up to my bed, with Hezekiah a respectful - but watchful - two or three feet behind.

Adam's uniform stank of overwear and was crusted with blood and laudable pus, which seeped still through his bandages from the suppurating wound. I told him he'd been crazy to have himself shipped back East. He was pale, anemic, and certainly he was in considerable pain, but he still was Adam, and coughed a laugh. He just didn’t trust the surgeons, he said. He figured they’d kill him sure.

I expected Wilkes to be heartless – not just a Yank and a faggot but another nig in my house. But Adam's illness saddened him. Wilkes hated sickness; he thought it cruel, unlike death, which was acceptable as long as it was swift. When Adam, half-conscious, moaned in pain, Wilkes' eyes would water. Many times he relieved me of washing Adam's wound, bringing up the basin himself and shutting the door behind him, growling, as if the kindness he showed was embarrassing to him, "Just don't make me touch any other part of his body, Ned."

I never loved my brother more than I loved him then.

July 12 - the night was H--lish hot. A red glow rose over lower Manhattan as if the sun had been shot down to earth and was dying there. Adam was thrashing, out of his mind, torturing the bedclothes, sweat pouring over his eyebrows like a small Niagara Falls. The doctors, of course, came frequently, but they weren't reassuring.

I had nodded off in a chair by his bed, afraid to leave him alone. I was dreaming of hags, Macbeth's three sisters, and was startled awake by the rigor of a steely hand grasping my arm. Adam had suddenly come awake; the fever flicked in the pupils he earnestly fixed on me. He lifted his head up jerkily and ran his tongue on his lips. "Ned," he croaked, "you asked me once to do something if I died."

"I remember," I told him.

"I promise you, I will do it."

I looked at him, so earnest, and I tumbled into tears.

"I've had a revelation, Ned. I think I know where to find her."

"Wait a little, Ad," I sobbed. "I'd rather find her myself."

"Oh, but you're never going to die. You have so much to do!"

"As do you. Ad, you must fight to stay alive!"

"Ah," he sighed, laying back. "I shall try, my prince."

Then Adam seemed to rally. By the middle of the following day he had managed to eat some soup and provide us some caustic anecdotes about General Grant and hootch. Wilkes asked whether I needed him; I said no. In that case, he said, he might take a walk. I didn't see him leave.

About eight o'clock the front door slammed, and Wilkes ran up to the bedroom. "All H-l's broke loose!" he shouted. "Where is Hezekiah?"

"I believe he's here."

"He'd better be!" But he was not. We looked all over the house for him. Hezekiah was overwhelmed by New York City; he had never gone out before. We rushed out the door and hustled down Seventeenth Street to Broadway. I looked up the spacious avenue, and my God! what I saw!

Smoke lay across the highway with the stink of a battlefield, pocked like the sky of a foggy night with the pulsing glimmer of fires. The black miasma choked our lungs, filled our eyes with poison.

And then southbound down the avenue came an apparition with flailing arms and wildly pumping legs, mouth wide open to gulp the unspeakable air. Behind Hezekiah the smoke pulsed in gray-shaded waves, roiled by the bodies of thirty or forty hellions pounding after him.

When he reached us, Hezekiah had no strength left to stand. We caught him as he began to fall - and then ugly faces split the haze one after another, waving clubs and pool cues, yowling like a pack of dogs and encircling us as if we were three wounded deer. I believed we were done for, until Wilkes let go of the Negro and took a "stand-and-deliver" pose he used in certain melodramas, as Hezekiah crumpled to the pavement and fainted dead away.

"Gentlemen!" Wilkes cried in his full stage voice, laying on a Richmond accent. "Ah want y'all to know, this nigra heuh is my property. Ah will thank yuh not to injuh something as valuable as he. And if y' all owned anything worth a d-n, Ah'd do the same for y' all."

For a moment the rascals halted. There were weasling looks in their eyes. Then one growled a benediction - I heard "warrrborrrwarrr'" - and they lifted their shillelaghs and whirled them above their heads.

"Never fear," Wilkes whispered, "I am prepared." From his jacket pocket he drew a single-shot derringer and stuck it into the belly of a bright red man with a brick in his hat who Wilkes thought might command the respect of the other hooligans. "Now Ah know," he drawled, "y'all can kill us all in about a half a minute. But this fella is going with us, sure as y'all are born.'"

In mid twirl, then, the shillelaghs hung loose, as did the ruffians' lower jaws. Wilkes thumbed back the derringer's hammer and pushed the barrel forward until the little pistol disappeared into the folds of the red man's flesh. The red mick blinked, turned redder still, and worked his cheeks as if he held in the last clean air in the world. Then he blew out the breath, reached down and pushed the derringer's barrel away. "Good luck to yer, and Jeff Davis," he wheezed. "We don't mean yer no harm." And lo and behold, they backed away, and disappeared into the smoke.

"Remarkable performance," I puffed as I lugged down the street my half of the insensate Hezekiah.

"Your style of acting would not have served us well in the circumstance." I glanced at Wilkes, surprised to find him entirely serious. "If I had had an epee I would have dropped them all to their knees."

"How long have you had the gun?" I asked.

"Well, as you have seen, Ned, you just never know."

When Hezekiah came around, we locked him in the wine cellar, for his own protection, and waited to see what would happen in this awful turn of events.

I had known we were in for trouble, but not how bad it would be. Two days before, a new law had gone into effect. Every man aged twenty to thirty-five, and unmarried men to forty-five, were subject to a lottery. If their number came up, they'd be drafted to fight, unless they had three hundred dollars to buy a substitute. The people of New York's underclass resented the dollar bounty; mostly Irish and foreign born, and mostly Democrats, they believed this was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. They had heard of the victory at Gettysburg. They assumed the war would be over soon. They did not care to go.

This grievance overlay others which had been festering for years. Inflation had ruined the currency, but wages were only slightly up, and the poor couldn't make ends meet. No new housing was being built, the money going to factories which sprang up in lower Manhattan on lots created by knocking down buildings that housed the working class, who were living now in shantytowns north of Fiftieth Street, some of them in the Central Park, in caves and under rocks.

The lottery drawing was to be held at Third and Forty-sixth, an area of vacant lots and isolated buildings. A huge crowd gathered to witness it, but they weren't quite angry then; the lottery was half finished, and would be concluded two days hence. That night, though, Rebel agitators - rampant in New York - went into Five Points and the waterfront, stirring people up.

Five Points is Manhattan's Swampoodle, except - if possible - worse: older, dirtier, more depraved, its pleasures joyless and grim. It runs from Center to Orange Streets, from the East River to the Bowery. The most destitute workers and immigrants live in its narrow passages, sleeping in rooms with no furniture on straw, or shavings, or rags while rich boys, slumming, come in with their lives in their hands, gambling alongside cutthroats and dregs at Kit Burns' Sportsman's Hall or the basements of half-wrecked tenements under the notable whorehouses: the Diving Bell, the Swimming Bath, Cow Bay, Squeeze Gut Alley, where mother and daughter service their johns, each on one half of one bed.

The next day, Sunday, the Five Points gangs - the Dead Rabbits and the
Bowery Boys – came out of their lairs and set scattered fires in the lower Manhattan factories built where they'd once lived. That was the glow I'd seen from my window the night before.

On Monday, the day I have reached in this tale, a mob tore out of Five Points at six o' clock in the morning. They crossed to the West Side of town and split themselves in two, half of them moving up Eighth Avenue, the other half up Ninth, beating the bottoms of copper pans and calling out in the side streets for workers to lay down their implements and get in step with the mood, which was as ugly as the troglodytes who made up the mass of them.

At Fifty-ninth Street both groups, now considerably larger, turned eastbound, merged themselves and rendezvoused at Fifth. Gang leaders, Rebs and anarchists climbed up onto the boulders that mark the southern border of Central Park and cursed the war, the draft, the rich, Lincoln, the Republicans and the God d-ned niggers! who caught the worst of it.

It was nothing new that the low must find lower to feel better than. Some said it was the longshore strike, when the owners brought in black scabs to stevedore the ships, that set the blood lust off. But the Irish have a visceral antipathy to blacks; I deduce there's a phrenological bump on the pure-bred Irish skull which unleashes the urge to murder when a black comes into view. Add to that the dimly considered thought that if there were no niggers there would be no draft, and one begins to comprehend the rage that filled those streets.

The races had once cross-pollinated in the brothels of Five Points, but the Irish had driven the blacks out, except for a select few, like Pete Williams who owned Dickens Place, the best dance hall in town. The others now lived in African Grove, on Church between Duane and Anthony, or in Coontown or Negro Alley on the edge of Greenwich Village, or on Cherry, Water and Walnuts Streets by the East River docks in Knickerbocker mansions, now tenements and bagnios where white girls and black girls serviced come who may.

The speakers harangued until eight o' clock; then the mob moved south down Fifth and Sixth Avenues to Forty-seventh Street, turned east on Forty-seventh and stormed across to Third, one of the few macadamized roads, edged on both sides by bridle trails where the rich drove their four-in-hands. From there they turned south one block to the office of the draft. At the head of the crowd were the firemen of Engine Company 33, street brawlers like all of their breed, known as the Black Joke. One of their own had been drafted. They were going to save his hide.

There were only eight hundred police in town to hold back the mob, and most of the New York militias had been sent to Gettysburg. The coppers surrounded the draft office, clubs drawn, backs to the walls, as at ten thirty in the morning the lottery resumed. At that moment, from somewhere within the crowd, a shot was fired into the air, and a volley of bricks and paving stones was loosed at the draft office windows as The Black Joke rushed the door.

The police were able to hold them back, but only for a moment. Under the pressure of bodies, they retreated into the building while the draft officers scooted out the windows in the back. The mob pushed the police aside, til they too went out the windows, down into an alley, running toward Second Avenue. The Black Joke broke the lottery wheel, then set the building afire, and kept their loyal co-workers away with clubs and bowling pins. Within hours, an entire city block had been incinerated.

After that, it was open warfare. The mob shut down the horse cars on Second and Third Avenues. Should a private carriage try to get through, the crowd unhitched the carriage team and hauled out the occupants. All of the shops above Twentieth Street on the Upper East Side closed - some in sympathy with the mob, some for self-protection - except the saloons, which did land-office business lubricating the crowd.

Stacks of arms were stolen from the state armory at Twenty-first and Second; then the building was put to the torch, while another mob poured down Broadway to West Twenty-ninth, looting jewelry stores and hardware shops and bringing out the guns. Now well-armed, they stormed down Broadway, on the way firing the homes of rich Republicans. Negroes were dragged off streetcars and coaches near City Hall. Whoever was caught was hied to a lamppost and turned into human fruit, and following that the harpie consorts of these Hibernians drove knives into the bodies, poured lamp oil into the wounds, and set the oil afire, illuminating the jigs they danced, and the awful songs they sang. Civilization is very thin, just a skim of oil on the waters.

And so it went, for two more days, while Hezekiah was hidden, until troops came home from Gettysburg and put an end to it. With the sons of bitches back in their lairs, the smoke cleared, the stench blew off and the clouds streamed out of the moon like an ostrich fan.

Adam healed well; within two months he was back with General Grant. The theater season started up, and Wilkes and I returned to work, he on a tour of New England, myself with a long engagement, again at the Winter Garden. Odd, when I think of it, how the year is reversed for me now: fall is the time of beginning, spring is the time of death.

It was Hamlet I played that fall - but it was more Wilkes' Hamlet than mine. The crickets were not kind to me; the proper playing of Hamlet, they said, held no sensual excitements, no sensuous delight, no gorgeousness of color, no celerity of movement. Its ardor was only that of intense intellectuality. Precisely what I had taught them, no? For lo these many years. And I had ignored my principles and overdone the thing.

But what is an actor supposed to do when all the audience comprehends is physical sensation? When, if I play against my beliefs, they beat down my door?

I have badly misjudged women, though I should have known the truth. I believed they were ethereal, on a higher plane, thinking of things purely, led by the ideal. The truth is that what they want from Art is the sense of a hand meandering up their inner thigh. It is beauty and seduction that they expect from me. That's what Wilkes understood that I did not.

"What they want, Ned, is to dream of the things you would do to them if they let you. No matter how poised, how intelligent, that is what they want. And to tell you the truth, I agree with you - it is sickening. It is far too easy to take down their pants - literaly or otherwise - when one has the power we do.

"I am not a brilliant tragedian. I never had to be. A reviewer wrote of my Richard the Third: 'it is noisy, unpleasant and improbable, and should not be played before an audience of judgment and taste.' Well. I took him aside, and I said to him: 'You find me such an audience. and I will revise the role.' In the meantime, I fed them 'gross food,’ as another critic called it, because that is what they wanted, and what has made me rich. Plato is a long time dead, Greece a decrepit wreck. The philosopher of our era is John Sleeper Clarke, an idiot with a rubber mouth and a bright red wig."

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

New York City draft riots
More
More

Go to Chapter 17

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman, edmund kean, drury lane, covent garden, mazeppa, john surratt, chancellorsville, david herold, mosby's rangers, gettysburg, pickett's charge

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 21:16:00 +0000

boomp3.com

"Christmas in Leavenworth, Kansas, Ned! You cant imagine it! I know you have never been there, so let me describe it for you: it is an insignificant something in the middle of nothing at all. It has no reason to exist except to service the Yankee fort and the galoots who are manning it, and you can imagine what kind of soldiers they've left behind to hold off the Indians, when they need evry half-decent man to keep the Secesh away from their doors.

"It was bloody bitter cold, and such snow I'd never seen, up to the hubs, to the gunnels, Ned, of these Conestoga waggons, and sometimes to the rooves, whipping into your face like a million little knives. There were no women but wives around, and precious few of those, and they didn't remind me of anyone I'd any interest in. True,, there's a cathouse not far from the fort, but Jesus, Ned, if you call those whores "girls" you are speaking strictly biologickly. They were truley ugly, and didn't wash, and managed things by rote, and I worried for months after those few nights just what my money had bought.

"There's a library with no books in it - well, maybe three or four. There's a pool hall, but you chance your life walking into the place; I lost evry game I played, Ned, and did so with intent, scince you know that I am a pretty damned good hand with the billiard cue. The men are all drunk, and ought to be since there's nothing else to do and there's no other way of keeping warm that doesn't insinyuate lice. I was skunked myself all the time I was there, keeping the other actors out all night so as not to return to the Planters' House for the truley contemptible experience of having to share a bed with a man you've never met.

"Christmas Eve, Ned, they caroled me - oh, my poor, bruised ears! Then some fine, upstanding citizens had me to Christmas dinner. They fed me a hunk of buffalo, which was not all that bad except they poured on the pepper because they'd used up the season's salt. They surrounded it with vegtabels, but which ones I couldn't guess, they all tasted the same -like dog-chewed newsprint, or uncooked dough. Meanwhile the wind was hurling itself through the chinks in the walls, and children decked in popcorn wreaths were hurling themselves at the food. There was no kind of Christmas at the hotel, so I made the best of it, but when they proposed to have me in on New Year's Day, I said, with due apologies, I intended to be gone.

"You can envision my audience, what there was of it: six of the better class of folk and a mess of Germans and Irishmen who dont use the English language even when they are unsoused. Nine nights I played the place and God, they were duley grateful, scince I was the only carnival that had come through town for months. But I swore, though they loved me half to death, I would never come back again.

"I greeted the advent of 1864 in the family way - that is, our family's way, at the end of the army sutler's bar, overhanging a poker game. They say I performed Othello as a sort of Rastus show. I had a quite enjoyable night, though 1 cant recall it much, and I more or less missed the morning, awakening at noon. The steamboat up the Missouri River was due to leave at two. I had to be in St. Louis to open on January fourth. If I were going to make it, I had to be on that boat.

"I had arranged the day before for a teamster to take me to the pier, but on New Year's Day he was not to be found - sleeping it off, I suspected, but God only knew where. The sutler refilled my brandy flask, and so help me, Ned, I ran four miles through all that bloody snow, never stopped until I saw the steamboat ahead of me. 1 was breathing a sigh of profound relief when 1 realized my brandy flask had been dropped along the way. Well, I wasn't going without it; I might have froze to death.

"I wasn't going to run, either, all the way back to the fort, so I gave a man five dollars for the hire of a bareback mare, and I scooted back on my own tracks til I'd almost reached the post. I had just caught sight of my lovely flask lying in the snow when a waggon wheel drove over it and crushed it all to Hell. Murdered my very best friend, Mr. V.S.O.P. But I kissed him in extremis, pressed to my lips the snow over which he had spilled his noble blood; then I rode to the fort and snatched a bottle and headed back to the river. When I arrived, the boat was still there - or, in truth, still wasn't there; the ice on the river was so thick the boat couldn't reach the pier. I had to help them chop it that the boat might come to the shore. And after a sea of troubles, reached St. Joe a lifeless man.

"I was supposed to take the railroad from St. Joe east to Hannibal. But they said there were thirty foot drifts on the line and the cold was twenty below and the engines weren't running. There was no departing St. Joe. I put up at the Pacific House, which I dont care to describe except that it was in no way better than the dump at Leavenworth, and settled onto a barstool for a sip that led to a guzzle.

“Evry man in the bar but the barkeep and I had his eyes tucked under a huge slouch hat and the rest of him wrapped in a buffalo robe that reeked like any animal does when it's caught out in the wet. There was important money piled on the faro tables around the room; these men were trappers, they worked up the Missouri and the season had been good.

"Out of gratitude for the fact that not a one of them recognized me, I ponied up a round for the house, and followed with another. This largess opened the heart and the mouth of the usually taciturn barkeep, to the point that I felt he might answer a question if I had the nerve to ask. He might have been a good-looking man, to judge by his silhouette, except for the coating of hair and dirt which, I assumed, afforded him some protection from the cold.

“'Excuse me, sir,” I ventured, 'but do you know when the next train is due?’

“'Somewhere long about April, if the weather continues mild.'

"'You're not serious!'

“ 'I ain't funny. Ask any man in this bar.'

“ 'What do you do when the food runs out?'

“ 'Salt pork and hardtack. The soldiers bring it in.'

“ 'What do you do when the lamp oil runs out?'

"’Sleep, or sit in the dark.'

" 'What do you do when the booze runs out?'

" 'Tuck up in a woman.'

“ 'What if you haven't got one?'

“ 'Well, it's homicide or suicide, whichever you might fancy.'

"Stay til April? Che orrore! I saw no satisfaction in killing anyone but myself.

"I did 'tuck up' in a woman - a professional, of course, one of two who lived in the hotel and worked it floor by floor. I couldn't give you her name, because I never asked for it. She was a sweet, kind-hearted thing, dark-haired and thin in the leg. Whether it was that she loved her work, or responded well to me, her motion was inspiring - among the best I've known. I reserved her to my personal use, since I wasn't going to go outside and her company was delightful. I have learned, Ned - as had you, at one time - that a girl one pays for has no expectations, speaks only when she is spoken to, makes no demands, never cries, has no desire to change you, goes away when the mood is off and returns when the moment is right, and is cheaper in the long run than other relationships. And if she's accomplished in her art, she is all that one could want. The girl shared my ardor and languor; we drizzled each other with brandy, until my money ran out.

"I'd expected to be in St. Louis many days before, and paid well there in specie, so l'd felt no need to load my pockets going to Leavenworth. Now I'd spent on the girl, the hotel, some lousy food, the brandy. I hadn't a penny left. The girl said she'd be pleased to oblige me gratis, which comforted me greatly. But I had to eat, I needed a roof, and I had no doubt the innkeeper would chuck me into the storm if I couldn't settle my bill. Then fame came to my rescue. It has its advantages.

"Apparently the Mayor of this God-forsaken town had straggled into the hotel bar and realized who I was. I was warming myself between two sweet breasts when there came a knock at my door, which opened without any help from me, scince I'd forgotten to lock it. Fourteen men came into my room, not at all abashed; I would guess from the smile the whore delivered that she knew most of them well.

"They asked me to give a reading at a place called Corby's Hall. They'd had no entertainment since the middle of the summer, when a troupe of traveling acrobats from Hungary had come through. They would be very grateful, et cetera, et cetera. I could price the tickets how I chose, and keep the gate in toto.

"Well, I did it, Ned I stood on a stage in this barn of a hall, probably Elk or Moose, shivering in my Richard suit, my teeth banging together until I thought they might explode. I did a bit of The Merchant, a tad of Hamlet, 'The Shandon Bells,' half of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and, in view of the weather - ha, ha – Watson’s 'The Beautiful Snow.' I dont believe they understood a word of the performance, what with my voice quaking with cold and their own bodies shaking so that their underwear was rattling. But the gate was a hundred and fifty, and I was back in the black. It's very like what you did in your youth. We are brothers truley, Ned - and truley Papa's sons.

"Though she swore it didn't matter to her, I felt the whore's affections re-fired by my replenished cash position, and I was tempted to lay about and press myself a while longer against her Heart of Gold. But I had places to be, Ned, and a life I ought to live. If I had not then got out of bed, I'd probably still be there, caring about nothing, a stumblebum on the streets.

"I had learned that the train to Hannibal had been laid up at Breckenridge, sixty miles to the east of St. Joe, waiting for the thaw. There was a man with a country cutter who would drive me over to Breckenridge at a price of one hundred dollars. So, before I had spent it all, I kissed the Cyprian goodbye - true to her Code, she shed no tears, though I know she'll think of me kindly; I purchased a half-gallon jug of booze and a moth-eaten buffalo robe, climbed aboard the crumbling sleigh and set out eastward on what I'd been told was a journey of four days.

"Ned, the freeze was awesome. Nor the robe nor the booze brought relief. The wind shot over the edge of the plains and covered me with rime. The horses stumbled and kicked back ice in chunks the size of a cannonball, and if that weren't enough, three hours out the clouds closed in and it began to snow. I saw the drift ahead of us - it must have been fifty feet high; but the driver did not - he was whiteblind, and stewed to the gills as well. The sleigh hit the drift and over it went, sinking me into the powder, and I felt as if I were drowning until I could struggle up. I helped the driver right the sleigh and reattach the horses, but I was soaked through, and couldnt get warm. I knew I was going to be ill.

"We camped two nights on patches of ice under cottonwood groves - no shelter, no fire, nothing to eat but soda biscuits and jerky. After that I insisted we travel through, just stopping to rest the horses, which fed on the bark of the cottonwoods, scince the driver had brought no hay. On the third night the driving snow let up, and the moon rose, cool and pale. About one o’ clock in the morning, we took the horses out of harness in a wood on the bank of a stream. I lay back in the sleigh bed and uncorked the liquor jug while the driver softened the pemmican with blows of his pistol butt. When he'd rendered the jerky chewable, he handed me a piece. Behind him, on a snowbank, I saw the glint of moonlight flash in two yellow eyes.

"'What in the Hell is that ' I shrieked.

“’What is what? ' the driver said.

"'Behind you,' I stammered, ‘be..be..be ... ' as the eyes moved nearer his shoulder.

"The driver turned, and dropped the meat. 'Holy shit!' he muttered. 'That is a big damn wolf!'

"He waggled his arms at the great gray beast, but the wolf was unconcerned and made his unhurried way toward the two of us. I have seen wolves in dreams, Ned. They were never this big. The driver ran behind the sleigh, leaving the wolf a clear path straight to where I sat, and he come along it, two-foot, two-foot, walking as calm as a man with all the money in the world.

"Just before he got to me, he riffled back his lips; his canines were saffron/orange and as long as bowie knives. I stared at him, he stared at me. 1'd heard that if you stared at wolves, the have to drop their eyes. Either he wasn't a wolf, Ned, or the folk tale is a lie.

"He sort of laid his pads out straight and bent a bit at the knees, and then he sprang, he was after my throat, he was coming in high and hard, and just as his head rose over my legs I whacked him with the liquor pot right between the eyes! His flight took a sort of jog to my left and he tumbled in the air and landed on the runner and then in the snow to the side of the sleigh. Just laying there he let out a howl like the one I use in Richard, and a dozen animals howled right back from behind a ridge of blown snow thirty feet away!

"Well, that got the driver scampering! He scrambled on his knees to the woods and pulled the horses in. The wolf was struggling to get up as he hitched them to the sleigh; then the driver got in and whipped them up and they - at least as scared as I - got us the Hell on out of there at top velocity!

"Here is the final bit of it. We got to Breckenridge, and lo and behold, the train was there, facing toward St. Joe. The steam was up, but only to keep the crew and the passengers warm. I climbed up into the cabin to talk to the engineer. He said they were going nowhere until they could put a snowplow on the locomotive's prow. It seemed to me, I told him, that made a lot of sense if the train was heading westward, but they wouldn't need the plow if they backed the cars eastward to Hannibal.

"He snarled: 'We ain't goin' to Hannibal. We're goin’ west.'

"I drew out the little derringer and put the muzzle to his head. 'No,' I said, 'you're going east. You're going to Hannibal.'

"And I made it to St. Louis for the last four nights of my run."

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 18

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman, edmund kean, drury lane, covent garden, mazeppa, john surratt, chancellorsville, david herold, mosby's rangers, gettysburg, pickett's charge

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

noreply@blogger.com (Tweet Petite) — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 22:14:00 +0000

boomp3.com

In Louisville, two weeks later, Wilkes was playing Richelieu. He had dined that night with a local girl, and arrived at the theater late. By then, he was so out on his feet that he had to be lifted and led through the wings for his entrance to every scene. Midway through the play, as Wilkes stages it, he takes a seat in a high-backed throne and the character Marian de Lonne kneels at his feet and remains there until he bids her rise. Kittie Miles, playing De Lonne, knelt as she was bound to, but Wilkes never gave her the cue to stand. He had fallen asleep.

A sceneshifter grabbed a wooden brace, lay on stage in a hidden place and poked with it at Wilkes' foot, but the brace was too short to reach him. He tried another, and wobbled Wilkes' leg, but didn't wake him up. Desperate, Kittie rose unbidden, reached out and shook Wilkes' shoulder; then she repeated her last cue, stammering at her impudence. Wilkes' picked his head up slowly. "Wha's s' matter," muttered, "don't you know your lines?" Before she could answer, he'd drifted off to another round of sleep. The audience hissed and whistled, and the prompter brought down the curtain. Whereupon Wilkes ordered it brought back up, and played the scene to perfection.

They thought he was drunk in Louisville, but he wasn't. He was exhausted. Wilkes never got drunk in the legs, and I have never seen him stagger. He often fell asleep on stage when he wasn't part of the action, forcing others to shout their lines, or come close and cough in his ear, though he wasn't tolerant of anyone else guilty of the same, and was likely to throw a scenery wedge at a man who missed a cue.

He had caught a cold or a fever on the ride out of St. Joe. His voice was hoarse; it cracked on stage, a condition he never entirely shook for the rest of his acting career. Wilkes was a physical miracle, but he'd slid to the end of his rope. He hadn't the strength to do his work - and yet, somehow, he did it.

I can't say what drove Wilkes then to make a tour of the South. He may have been carrying contraband, or maybe he simply wanted to see what had become of the country he so professed to love. After Louisville came Nashville, then a diversion to Cincinnati, then a trip down the Mississippi from Grant's headquarters at Cairo on the C. W. Hollman to Memphis, then by way of the J.C. Swon to the city of New Orleans. All of these Confederate towns were under Yankee control since Grant had taken the river after the siege of Vicksburg.

New Orleans' St. Charles Theater, with its four great horseshoe balconies and garish chandeliers, had been closed in 1861 and only recently reopened. Papa had played his last play there, The Iron Chest, in French. And it has been my last play, too. I am certain of that.

The audience that faced Wilkes was the sort to give him fits - the shiny faces of freed slaves who expected Richard to pat Juba and plunk out a banjo tune; slick-haired Yankees with diamond stickpins making fortunes moving cotton into the Northern states; rough and unkind Union troops with the conqueror's swagger; collaborating Creoles or the old French aristocracy who'd managed to keep enough money together to pay the ticket price. It was bad enough to look out at them, but Wilkes' midnight walks among them under the iron-filigreed balconies of the Vieux Carré, in whose sawdust-floored bars and velveted bagnios he nestled night after night, were more than he could bear.

"Ned, if you could see it yourself, what this war has done to the South! Nothing that used to be is left! Nobody knows who he is anymore! Everything that was is gone to these carpetbaggers, these thieves, these crooks, the nigs, Ben Butler's goddamn troops - yes, the very same son of a bitch who tranquilized Baltimore. There are mobs in the streets in New Orleans, people are shot, no one cares! They dont even take the time to draw, they fire and make holes in their pockets! Bluebellies stopped me for singing 'The Bonnie Blue Flag' on Dauphine Street. I told them I didn't know I wasn't allowed to sing the song. But I did know, of course. It gratified me to sing it, at the top of my lungs.

"What is it going to take. Ned, to dry up this sea of blood? "

The war had become a sea of blood. General Grant had taken personal charge of the army in Virginia, and gone after General Lee in country called
The Wilderness. It was dense wood, thick underbrush, twelve miles wide and eight miles deep, broken only by brooks and ravines; there were no roads, no clearings. The Yankees stumbled through brambles and creepers, firing at whatever moved, a branch, a leaf, each other, unable to see for the powder smoke, setting the woods on fire and immolating the wounded. Seventeen thousand were lost in that fight, and nothing had been gained.

Other Union generals would have paused to lick their wounds. Not Grant - he moved to his left, toward Spotsylvania Court House, where for six days bodies fell in piles at the Bloody Angle. Then left again, to Topotomoy Creek, and one more time, toward Cold Harbor. Grant was making it perfectly clear he would spend as many lives as it took to bring the South to its knees.

"I was having lunch at Antoine's ... boudin, jambalaya ... A man came to my table and asked if he could sit. I said I'd sign an autograph, and then I'd like him to leave. He said he had something to tell me. I asked him what it was. He told me he was with Papa on the night he died.

"They were headed for Cincinnati, on a boat on the Mississippi. This gentleman played a few hands of cards with Papa the first night out. He was captivated by Papa - you know how it was. For the next three nights, though, Papa didn't come to the gaming room, so the fellow asked where his stateroom was and went looking for him.

"He found him in bed, covered with puke and ... what comes out the other end. Papa had drunk the river water, God knows why. The passenger called the porter and had the room cleared out. He sent word for a doctor, but there wasn't one on board, so he soaked a rag in brandy and put it to Papa's lips. Papa licked at it, then pushed it away. His jaws had locked, he could hardly speak, but the fellow believes Papa said: 'No more in this world.'

"The passenger stayed with Papa, reading to him from the Bible. It seemed to him Papa was paying rapt attention. He wanted to know if Papa would let him pray for him Papa's eyes teared up, he said; when he leaned down to smooth Papa’s pillow, Papa tried to hug him.

“Papa went two days later. The fellow had never left his side. At the last, Papa looked up at him, he had gotten his jaw apart and he bawled at the top of his lungs: ‘Pray! Pray! Pray!’”

Copyright 2005 Aram Schefrin

Go to Chapter 19

Tags: john wilkes booth, edwin booth, novel, fiction, consider the elephant, historical fiction, assassination, book, books, podcast, audiobook, abraham lincoln, civil war, asia booth, junius booth, philadelphia, john sleeper clarke, edwin forrest, richard the third, shakespeare, washington, old capitol prison, baltimore, charlotte cushman, colley cibber, richmond, jennings wise,john moncure daniel, maggie mitchell, othello, john brown, harper's ferry, richmond grays, edmund ruffin, adam badeau, delmonico's, fifth avenue hotel, william lowndes yancey, laura keene, pfaff's cafe, bryant's minstrels, fort sumter, henrietta irving, ben butler, bull run, general grant, louis gottschalk, carlotta patti, walt whitman, edmund kean, drury lane, covent garden, mazeppa, john surratt, chancellorsville, david herold, mosby's rangers, gettysburg, pickett's charge, the wilderness, spotsylvania court house, cold harbor