Fates and Traitors (16 page)

In time he committed to memory the parts of Caesar, Marcus Antonius, and Brutus from
Julius Caesar
, although Asia wondered if he ever truly understood the play, for he delivered his lines as if Brutus were the hero of the drama. “Brutus is an honorable man,” Wilkes argued whenever she tried to convince him otherwise. “Even Marcus Antonius says so.”

“He is speaking ironically,” said Asia. “He doesn't really mean it.”

“His words are true regardless,” said Wilkes. “Brutus is the only character in the entire tragedy who puts the good of Rome before himself. He sacrificed his life and his fortune to bring down a tyrant. He was the George Washington of his day.”

“I don't think so, and neither did Shakespeare.” Asia paged through the script until she came to the proper scene in the second act. “Think of what Artemidorus said when he tried to warn Caesar about the plot against him. ‘If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayst live. If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.' Traitors, Wilkes, not patriots.”

“But those are the words of a man loyal to Caesar. You can't take that on faith. I'm sure King George the Third and all his Tories denounced Washington as a traitor too.”

Vexed, Asia cited other excerpts from the text, but when her brother refused to be persuaded, she wearily suggested they move on to
Richard III
, where there could be no mistaking the true villain of the piece.

Next they turned to
The Merchant of Venice
, a remarkable portion of which Wilkes remembered from his school days, but when Asia encouraged him to take on
Romeo and Juliet
, he shook his head, dubious. “I could never be a nimble skip-about like Romeo. I'm too square and solid.”

“Study Mercutio, then,” Asia proposed, although she profoundly disagreed with her brother's assessment. Wilkes was limber and graceful, and he seemed to acquire more admirers among the fairer sex with each passing month. She could well imagine ladies filling theatres to watch him portray the tragic hero of a star-crossed romance.

But her enthusiasm for her scheme faltered when she came upon him practicing alone in the forest when he thought himself unobserved, shouting Shakespeare's masterfully crafted speeches, his phrasing all wrong, his emphases draining all sense and meaning from the lines. Whereas Edwin possessed an instinctive, intuitive grasp of Shakespeare's language, Wilkes seemed to understand it no better than he had as a schoolboy.

Wilkes required a master teacher to guide him if he ever hoped to become half the thespian their father had been. Asia's hubris shamed her. She possessed no more than a schoolgirl's comprehension of Shakespeare and an infrequent observer's understanding of the stage. How had she ever imagined herself capable of preparing Wilkes to take up their father's mantle?

Although she hid her increasing dismay, forcing smiles and offering constant encouragement, Wilkes gradually became aware of his
deficiencies. “What hope do I have of achieving success on the stage?” he lamented as they abandoned their books one afternoon in early spring to go riding through the pale green, rain-soaked forest. “Buried here, torturing the grain out of the ground for daily bread, what chance have I of ever studying elocution or declamation?”

“We'll find a way,” she assured him. “Your voice is a beautiful instrument, with perfect music in it. You need only a master teacher to prune, cultivate, subdue, and encourage.”

“Oh, only that?” he retorted, disappointment and embarrassment giving that perfect instrument an edge. Earlier that day, a bundle of letters from Edwin had arrived all the way from the South Pacific, where he had gone on tour with the renowned British actress Laura Keene. He had performed to great acclaim for British colonists in Sydney, Australia, and for King Kamehameha IV in the lovely island village of Honolulu. Theatre critics around the world hailed him in glowing reviews as a worthy successor to the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth, dismissing June with faint praise and disregarding his other children entirely.

It was not in Wilkes's nature to endure being overshadowed by any man, even a beloved brother. Mother had been unable to hire a tenant farmer in the spring, and all summer, while Joe Hall and the hired hands attempted to raise crops in their increasingly unproductive fields, Wilkes kept to his studies, redoubling his efforts to master Shakespeare's soliloquies, the art of costumes and makeup, stage fighting, and dancing.

One afternoon in the middle of August, Asia was gathering mayapples and dewberries in a shady grove when she heard horse hooves upon the road, announcing Wilkes's return from a brief visit to Baltimore. Wilkes's smile gladdened her heart as he approached, brought the gleaming black stallion to a halt, and swiftly dismounted. “Well, Mother Bunch, guess what I've done,” he crowed. “I made my first appearance on the stage yesterday evening, one night only, but with my name in great capitals on the playbill.”

For a moment Asia could only blink at him. “What do you mean?”

His laughter at her astonishment rang with merriment and pride. “Last night I played Richmond in
Richard III
at the Charles Street Theatre in Baltimore.”

His jubilant demeanor told her that he had passed the test of his debut, somehow. Relief made her lightheaded. “John Sleeper Clarke's theatre?”

“Indeed, and as you might have expected, Sleepy asked me to give you his best regards.” Wilkes threw her a mischievous smile and took her hand. “Come. Let's tell Mother and Rosalie together.”

Rosalie greeted the announcement of Wilkes's debut with raised eyebrows and a soft murmur of surprise, but their mother was greatly displeased. “Your first appearance on the stage is—premature,” she said, wringing her hands. “It grieves me to say this, darling, but you've been manipulated by unscrupulous people seeking notoriety and money by the use of your name.”

“That's not true,” Wilkes said, but Asia detected uncertainty in his voice.

“In the world of the theatre, the name Booth is synonymous with genius,” said Mother. “You're young and untrained—talented, yes, but unformed, unpolished. You cannot sacrifice your father's legacy to your own haste.”

“It's not Wilkes's fault that he's had no opportunity to learn from Father as June and Edwin did,” said Asia. “How else will he prepare if not by performing small parts in good theatres close to home?”

Mother fixed Asia with a gaze so piercing that Asia almost regretted speaking up in her brother's defense. “You're not wrong, but I doubt very much that news of this impetuous debut will please Edwin any more than it pleased me.”

The next morning, and without a word of complaint, Wilkes cheerfully resumed his theatrical studies, apparently undaunted by the indefinite postponement of his next appearance on the stage. Weeks passed before the post could deliver Edwin's reaction to Wilkes's debut to Tudor Hall. He admonished Wilkes for misrepresenting his performance as a triumph when Clarke and other trusted friends had described it as nothing short of a grave embarrassment. The proud Booth name upon the playbills had guaranteed a packed house, and before those hundreds of witnesses Wilkes had performed so badly that the audience had hissed him. “I have worked too hard to allow my raw, untrained brother to tarnish our father's legacy,” Edwin scolded in his familiar, elegant script. “If and when John Wilkes takes to the stage
again, he must do so under an alias so that he does not ruin the name of BOOTH.”

That was all their mother needed to know. “You may return to the stage when Edwin decides you are ready, and not one hour before,” she declared, and Wilkes had little choice but to obey.

•   •   •

I
n subsequent letters, Edwin promised that he would return home soon, perhaps as early as the following summer. He had become concerned that another actor would claim the title of the greatest living tragedian—his own rightful inheritance—if he did not return to the eastern United States “while Father's memory remained dear to the American heart.” In advance of his return, he hired a business manager, the theatrical agent Benjamin Baker, to promote his career back east by securing engagements for him in playhouses all along the Atlantic coast.

As the year flared with the brightness of autumn and faded into winter, Mother anticipated Edwin's return with anxious desperation. She had been unable to hire a tenant farmer the previous spring, and Joe Hall and the hired hands had failed to raise enough food to sustain the household through the winter. At her behest Wilkes drove their small herd of cattle to the livestock market and sold them for more than sixty dollars, but although they spent nearly all of it on provisions for the long, cold months ahead, the larder and cellar remained disconcertingly bare compared to years past.

Asia could not remember a season of such intense cold and heavy snows. Sometimes the drifts were so deep and the winds so frigid that the family could scarcely venture beyond the house and outbuildings. As their provisions failed, they upheld their strict vegetarian father's decree that no animals would be harmed on The Farm by poaching off their neighbors' acres instead. Wilkes trapped a wild-eyed possum, and caught a flurry of partridges, and once he shot a neighbor's turkey. “Every spring Woolsey's flock feeds off the grain scattered in our best field,” he said by way of an excuse. “And let's not forget his habit of moving our boundary marker by night. He's taken over such a large portion of our meadow that I probably took this turkey from land that is rightfully ours.”

By February everyone at Tudor Hall had fallen ill at least once for
the lack of nourishing food. From the last of her savings, Mother scraped together enough money to send Wilkes off to a distant farm to purchase a milch cow, but a treacherous storm struck soon after he departed. When he failed to return that evening as expected, Asia, Mother, and Rosalie waited up all night for him, too anxious to give voice to their deepest fears, which were relieved only after he arrived the next morning leading a stout black cow. He laughed and teased them for their worry, and only later did he admit that he had arrived at the Parker Lea farm nearly frozen, and had been taken into the house speechless and stumbling, half-asleep, then rubbed briskly and slapped awake, and restored by brandy and a warm bed.

Asia shivered with horror as Wilkes spun his harrowing tale, his smile and nonchalance belying how close he had come to freezing to death.

Eventually spring came, supplementing their meager diet with wild greens and the first early harvest of the garden—rhubarb, spinach, and ramps. The family watched for Edwin's letters and awaited his arrival with increasing desperation, but summer waxed and waned with no sign of him save occasional telegrams announcing that he was on his way.

“Mother waits for Edwin like Penelope for Odysseus,” grumbled Wilkes, a sting of jealousy in his voice, “as if he were a conquering hero, retuning home to save us from starvation and suffering.”

Asia refrained from confessing that she awaited Edwin in precisely the same way. The Booths at Tudor Hall needed rescue as badly as any heroine from Greek tragedy ever had.

It was mid-September when at last Edwin arrived. A crowd of awestruck country lads trailed after his stagecoach as it rattled along the road from Bel Air to The Farm, eager for a glimpse of the world traveler, the local boy who had set out for California four years before and had returned home a famous, and presumably wealthy, man.

When the coach halted in front of Tudor Hall and Edwin descended, Wilkes ran forward to embrace him, but Asia found herself rooted in place on the piazza, flanked by her mother and her sister. Edwin's long, black curls hung to his shoulders just as Asia remembered, and his dark eyes gleamed with the same bright intensity, but he strode up the path with a new poise and assurance. His clothes were
finely tailored from expensive wools and silks, his rich velvet cloak cut in the Spanish style, and his cravat adorned with a dazzling pin, a diamond set within an enormous gold nugget.

As Edwin approached the house, arm in arm with Wilkes, the country lads scrambled to take down his heavy trunks and haul them up to the house on their shoulders, marveling at their weight.

“Edwin, my boy,” Mother cried, holding out her arms to welcome him home.

Edwin beamed and hurried to embrace her, but as he did, his smile faded, his expression clouded with shock and bewilderment. Asia felt a sudden flush of shame as he took in their gaunt faces, their threadbare clothes. Mother had described their dire circumstances in letter after letter. Had Edwin assumed she exaggerated the depths of their misery?

“Mother,” Edwin murmured as he took her in her arms. “Dearest Mother. There are no words for how much I've missed you.”

Whatever illusions their reunion had dispelled, Edwin recovered his composure by the time he crossed the threshold of Tudor Hall. The trunks were carried in after him, the eager porters compensated for their labors and sent on their way. After the embraces and greetings and questions were done, scarce refreshments offered and graciously declined, the family learned that Edwin's trunks were filled with evidence of his triumphs in the West and the South Pacific—rapturous reviews clipped from San Francisco newspapers, playbills announcing engagements in Sydney, a proclamation passed by the California state legislature declaring Edwin Booth a treasure, a priceless gift the citizens of California would graciously share with the rest of the United States.

Mother glowed with pride as she beheld this vast array of evidence of his tremendous success, but she wept with joy when Edwin revealed one last treasure, securely fastened to his belt and concealed beneath his cloak—a purse heavy with gold.

•   •   •

I
n the aftermath of Edwin's homecoming, everything changed.

For the first time since Father's death, their bellies were comfortably full, their sleep untroubled by anxious dreams of a bleak and uncertain future. Edwin paid his mother's debts at the shops in Bel Air and settled Wilkes's tabs at the Traveler's Home tavern and Murphy's
Billiard Hall. He purchased new wardrobes for his mother and sisters and treated them to luxuries they had long done without—writing paper and ink, books and sheet music, plenty of coal, new lamps and an ample supply of oil to fill them. Mother smiled again, and when she delighted in Edwin's amusing stories of his adventures in the West and in the South Pacific, for he was careful to share only cheerful tales, ten years seemed to fall from her age.