Fates and Traitors (13 page)

“I suppose he wants me to tell Edwin,” Asia said dubiously after reading his letter aloud to Mother and Rosalie, and felt heat rise in her cheeks when they exchanged a knowing look. Clarke was
not
courting her—and if he thought he was, he had better stop it.

•   •   •

A
t the end of the summer, fourteen-year-old Wilkes and twelve-year-old Joseph too left home, enrolling as cadets at St. Timothy's Hall in Catonsville, a military academy established during the Mexican War to educate future generations of officers and soldiers. St. Timothy's counted the sons of some of Maryland's finest families among its pupils, with the expectation that they would become the next leaders of business and government. Mother's cheeks had flushed with pride when the acceptance letters had come, and before he set off on tour, Father had embraced them both and told them he was certain they would bring honor to the Booth name.

Wilkes was proud of his steel-gray cadet's uniform, but although Asia admitted he looked dashing in it, she found the academy's twenty-four-page rule book, with its emphasis on order, discipline, and obedience to authority, severe and intimidating. “I'll enjoy the challenge, a taste of the soldier's life,” Wilkes assured her. “Maybe I'll become a general, like George Washington. Wouldn't that have made Grandfather proud?”

In mid-September Wilkes and Joseph set out from Baltimore on a thirteen-mile train ride to Catonsville, but soon, Wilkes's letters home
hinted at deep displeasure with the strict military regimen he had been so eager to experience. A clanging bell jolted the cadets awake every morning at half past five o'clock, spurring them to leap from bed, form an orderly line, and march off to the washroom, where they scrubbed their hands and faces in a common trough of frigid water. Dried and dressed, they then marched to the classroom for exercises in penmanship and mental arithmetic, and only afterward were they permitted to assemble in the dining hall and quell their growling stomachs with breakfast. Military drills in accordance to the United States Army's infantry manual and classes in religious studies rounded out the day, until the cadets dropped into their beds at twilight, too exhausted for mischief. Before dawn the next morning, the wearing routine began anew, with only Wednesday and Sunday afternoons off to give them a much-needed respite.

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” Wilkes wrote cryptically, as if he believed his letters were opened and read before being posted.

With rising dread, Asia feared that it was only a matter of time until Wilkes either escaped his prison or rebelled against his jailers. Joseph would fare well enough—in fact, the academy might be the making of him—but Wilkes's expansive, joyous nature was not meant to be constricted to military regimen and rule. If not for his new friends, with whom he formed bonds of affinity forged in hardship, she doubted that Wilkes could endure the term. Asia was not surprised to learn that the same charisma that inspired affection and admiration at home would draw his fellow cadets to him, especially in such a harsh and unloving environment. His cheerfulness, affability, generosity, and zest for life must have offered the other lonely, homesick boys a light of hope in a very dark place.

Trusting that his new friends would sustain Wilkes when she could not, Asia fervently hoped that her brother's strict taskmasters would not bludgeon all the fine qualities she loved best out of him and fill him up with military pomp and nonsense.

•   •   •

A
s autumn passed, letters home from California became even more worrisome than those from St. Timothy's. Despite positive reviews and appreciative audiences, the tour was not succeeding as June had
promised and Father had expected. In Sacramento, torrential rains had forced gold prospecting to a halt, the swollen river had flooded the city, and the muddy streets had become impassable mires. Theatres closed, supplies dwindled, expenses soared, and even the plainest food became scarce. Miserable and weary, Father resolved to return to Baltimore immediately, and since he had not yet earned the fortune June had promised, he demanded that his son pay the difference from his own purse—two thousand dollars, or nearly every penny June had to his name.

Soon thereafter, June wrote that they had returned to San Francisco as soon as the road had become passable. June had gone home to Miss Harriet Mace and his job as stage manager of the Jenny Lind. Edwin, adamantly refusing to serve as his father's attendant any longer, had joined a group of traveling players in a wild scheme to perform for the laborers in the distant mining camps in the Sierras. Before parting company, the brothers had put their father aboard a steamer to Panama City with his trunks packed full of costumes, a collection of seashells he had gathered on a Mexican beach, and a great many bags of gold dust, his earnings from the tour as well as the payment he had extracted from June.

“They sent Father alone?” Asia exclaimed, taking the letter from her mother to read it for herself.

“They couldn't have.” Mother shook her head in disbelief and sank into a chair. “They shouldn't have.”

“But why didn't Edwin seize the opportunity to come home? He never wanted to go on this tour. Why join a group of traveling players in the wilderness when he could have seen Father safely home and then given up the stage once and for all?”

“Perhaps because Edwin knows no other trade, and believes it's too late to pursue his education.” Mother shook her head, her expression clouded with regret and worry. “Perhaps because, although he took to the stage reluctantly, he's discovered that he's an extraordinarily gifted actor, and he has accepted his fate willingly.”

“He could have brought Father home and accepted his fate in Baltimore,” said Asia sharply, but in reply, her mother only sighed.

So commenced another torturous period of anxious waiting, broken by an alarming letter from a stranger, a wealthy Texan who had
encountered Father at the port of Chagres on the Caribbean coast of the Isthmus of Panama. Somewhere between San Francisco and Chagres, Father had been robbed of every last sack of gold and had been stranded, penniless and distressed, with no means to continue his journey. The kindhearted Texan explained that upon recognizing the famous tragedian, he had been moved by Father's plight, had paid his fare, and had seen him safely aboard a steamer to New Orleans.

At this Mother broke down in tears, but she quickly composed herself and sent off a flurry of letters to theatre friends in the Southern port city, imploring them to watch for her husband's ship and look after him upon his arrival. And then, days later, good news at last—Father wrote from New Orleans to say that he had been engaged at the St. Charles Theatre. He expected to receive more than one thousand dollars for a week of performances, after which he would take a steamer to Cincinnati, and from there he would board a train home to Baltimore.

Mother paced and wrung her hands. “Perhaps I should travel to New Orleans and escort him safely home.”

“It would do no good,” said Asia. “Even if you left today, by the time you'd arrive, Father would have already left. You'd pass somewhere on the Mississippi and never know it.”

On the last day of November, Mother received a telegram from another stranger, the captain of the Mississippi riverboat
J. S. Chenoweth
. Her husband was gravely ill, the captain had tersely reported from Louisville, and she must meet the ship at its next destination.

Swiftly, Asia and Rosalie helped their mother pack a satchel with enough clothing for a few days as well as cordials and medicines. Alone, Mother set out on the next train for Cincinnati, leaving her daughters at home to await word as patiently as they could. “Mother will nurse Father back to health in due time,” Asia assured Rosalie, who replied with a bleak, silent look, full of doubt.

Asia hastened to prepare a sickroom, but her activity was cut short by a telegram from Mother in Cincinnati.

Father had died of dysentery on the riverboat before the captain had wired Mother to meet him, before the steamer had even put in at Louisville. In truth, Mother had been summoned to retrieve her husband's remains.

•   •   •

F
or three days Father lay in state in the parlor, the walls draped with mourning white, the portraits and mirrors covered, all adornments removed except a marble bust of Shakespeare, which seemed to gaze down upon the late tragedian through the thick glass plate in the coffin lid with sorrow and regret, willing him to rise. Truly, he looked to Asia as if he might heed the Bard's silent plea, for when the iron coffin had been brought into the house, her father's noble visage had appeared so lifelike, so uncorrupted, that she dared hope he yet lived.

“Darling, I'm so sorry,” her mother had choked through her heavy black veil, her voice broken and shaking, “but it is useless. He is lost to us.”

Mother had reached for her, but Asia had eluded her grasp and, half-blinded by tears, had gone running for the doctor to rouse her father from what she hoped was merely a state of deep unconsciousness. But of course the doctor could do nothing for them, nothing but confirm that the great, beloved man was truly gone.

Wilkes and Joseph had been summoned home from school, and they joined their mother and their sisters in keeping vigil by their father's catafalque as hundreds of citizens from every rank and station in life called to pay their respects—white and colored, theatre folk and theatre patrons, longtime friends and admiring strangers who had never exchanged a word with Father but revered him as the genius tragedian who had enthralled them from the stage.

June and Edwin were not among the family numbly thanking the callers for their prayers and good wishes. As soon as she returned home from Cincinnati, Mother had written to both absent sons in care of June, having no idea how to reach Edwin in the Sierra Nevada. She urged them not to come home for her sake but to remain in California to work and, with any luck, to earn their fortunes. “They will hear of their father's death by other means before this sad letter reaches them,” she told Asia as she sealed it, her voice an aching, broken lament.

The thought of her distant brothers' shock when they read of their father's death in the papers pained Asia, but there was nothing to be done. The dreadful tidings spread with the lightning speed of the telegraph, drawing a shower of letters and telegrams of condolence upon the home at 62 Exeter Street. Newspapers in cities across the nation eulogized her father in the most somber, respectful phrases, declaring him without equal on the stage in life and immortal in death. Theatre
folk from Boston to New Orleans vowed to wear black crepe on their left arms for thirty days in his honor. Poets composed memorial odes to his artistic brilliance, now lost to bereft audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. But knowledge of these and other tributes scarcely registered on hearts numb from sorrow and disbelief. Even as Asia gazed upon her father lying in repose, she could not believe that he was dead, that a mere disease could have quenched the inexhaustible fire of his genius.

On the frigid afternoon of Saturday, December 11, Reverend Atkinson of Christ Church presided over Father's funeral services in the parlor, with the family, the Baltimore Dramatic Association, members of several Baltimore orchestras, and many friends in attendance. After the last benediction, the minister led the mourners in a slow procession upon a crunching blanket of icy snow while thick flakes whirled overhead, two miles through the city streets to Baltimore Cemetery. A band played a dirge composed in Father's honor as his coffin was ceremoniously interred in a mausoleum, awaiting burial when the ground thawed in the spring.

When the door clanged shut, Asia recoiled as if she had been struck, pressing her lips together to hold back a sob. All around her the crowd of mourners began to disperse, but she stood frozen in place, her gaze fixed upon the mausoleum.

“June and Edwin never should have let Father travel alone,” Wilkes muttered close to her ear. “They dumped him aboard that steamer as if he were a parcel and walked away. June I can almost forgive. His life, his home, his lady—they're all in California. But Edwin—” He shook his head, his eyes red-rimmed, his handsome face pale with outrage. “Edwin never should have left Father's side.”

“You can't blame our brothers. They couldn't have known Father would fall ill.”

“I never would have abandoned Father as they did,” Wilkes countered. “Would
you
have sent him on his way alone?”

Choking back sobs, Asia shook her head. They all knew their father, knew his weaknesses. Sending him on such a long journey unaccompanied was negligence and utter madness. But she could not condemn her absent brothers, knowing how bitterly they would condemn themselves when they learned of their fatal mistake.

“I can and do blame them.” Hands thrust into his coat pockets, Wilkes turned and strode away, but not before she heard him add, “Edwin most of all.”

•   •   •

S
oon thereafter, Wilkes and Joseph returned to St. Timothy's Hall, and to Asia it felt as if they had taken the last air and light and warmth of home with them.

In the days that followed, Asia helped her mother piece together the tragic story of Father's last days. From the testimony of his fellow passengers on the
J. S. Chenoweth
, they learned that on the steamer's first day on the river, the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth had been observed pacing in the salon, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed in deep thought. The next day, however, he was nowhere to be found. Inquiring after him, a gentleman named James Simpson had been informed by porters that he had retired to his berth, complaining of fever and lethargy. As the days passed and the celebrated actor did not emerge from his stateroom, Mr. Simpson grew ever more concerned, so he knocked on Father's door to offer assistance. To his dismay, Simpson discovered him alone and neglected, suffering terribly from dysentery, augmented by his inexplicable decision to quench his thirst by drinking deeply from the impure waters of the Mississippi when his symptoms had first appeared.