JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH (1796-1852)



William Winter on "The Elder Booth" from Shadows of the Stage, Second Series. 1894:

"The life of Junius Brutus Booth was full of incident, and yet,-aside from occurrences within his mind, on the theatre of his intellectual and spiritual experience,-it did not comprise any important events. He lived a few months more than fifty-six years. He was born in S. Pancras Parish, London, May 1, 1776, and he died on board of a steamboat, in the Mississippi river, November 30, 1852. His grandfather, John Booth, was a silversmith. His grandmother, Elizabeth Wilkes, was a relative of that able demagogue, Wilkes the Agitator. His father, Richard Booth, was a lawyer, and a Briton who, believing in "Wilkes and Liberty," also reverenced the character of Washington-a different man from the member for Middlesex. Junius was well educated, and he early showed a taste for literature and the arts. His first essays at the practical business of life were experimental. He tried printing; he tried the British navy; he tried painting and sculpture; and he tried the law; but all these trials came to nothing. At last he hit upon the right vocation and became an actor. That was in 1813 and he remained on the stage from that time till h\the end of his days, a period of thirty-nine years; so that he had a professional career lasting four l\years longer than that of Garrick and ten years longer than that of Kean.

"He began modestly, as Campillo, in Tobin's fine comedy of The Honeymoon., December 13, 1813 at Deptford\, at a salary of one pound a week. Then for three years he led the life of a strolling player-a life which to a hardy youth of seventeen must have been a pleasant one, more especially as it involved a trip to the Continent. On of the first writers whose favourable opinion he attracted was the malignant Anthony Pasquin (Dr. Thomas Williams),who gave him advice, in a small way, characteristic of the man. Booth's first appearance was made in his novitiate, when he came forth, at Covent Garden, as Silvius, in As You Like It, and when Miss Sally Booth, who was one of the players there, considerably suggested that he should add e to his name, so that her name might not be disgraced by implied association or relationship with him. After that he took to the provinces again, and presently, at Brighton, an accidental opportunity arrived for him to win exceptional distinction. Edmund Kean had been announced , to play Sir Giles Overreach, but he did not come, and Booth was assigned as a substitute for the famous actor-then in the prosperous morning of his enormous success. It was a perilous ordeal, but the young aspirant passed it with honour, and the tide of his fortunes began to rise. On February 12, 1817, he was allowed a trial night at Covent Garden, as Richard III, and he acted there with such splendid ability that the adherents of Kean, and even Kean himself, presently became alarmed at the apparition of so dangerous a rival.

"Many pages have been written about the troubles which thereupon ensued betwixt Covent Garden and Drury Lane. It seems certain that an effort was made, in which Kean was an active participant, to lure Booth away from the former theatre, to engage him at the latter, to make him act with Kean, at a disadvantage to himself, and then finally to shelve him. To some extent the scheme succeeded. Booth, never a worldly-wise person, was only in his twenty-first year at that time and he fell an easy prey to the wiles of his enemies. He could not obtain the salary that he wanted at Covent Garden; he was under no contract; he was adroitly tempted by kean, who personally called on him; and so he went to Drury Lane, and came out there as Iago, to Kean's Othello, February 20, 1817; but, presently, as soon as he ascertained the significance of Kean's sudden friendship, he made his peace with Covent Garden and went back. A riot followed, and kean's friends in the capacity of "wolves," distinguished themselves by;much belligerent vociferation, so that Booth, for a time, was put to silence. But all the uproar by and by subsided, and Booth continued to act at Covent Garden, and elsewhere in London. The most that can be said, in just censure of his conduct in that business, is that he acted with irresolution and the weakness of inexperience. But he is not the only young man that ever made a mistake; and the graver fault was theirs who perplexed and misled him. His subsequent career in Great Britain was comprised within four years, in the course of which time he appeared in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, and other cities. In the spring of 1820, he acted King Lear at Covent Garden, with success, and in the summer of the same year he appeared in a round of plays, with Kean, at Drury Lane. On January 18, 1821, he was married to Miss Mary Anne Holmes, and in company with his wife, after a visit to France and to the Island of Madeira, he came to America, landing at Norfolk, Va., on June 30, that year. The rest of his life was passed in America, although he visited England, and acted there, in 1825-27, and again in 1836. A notable incident of the first of those visits was his absolute reconciliation with Kean: "He has been quite ill and looks wretchedly," Booth wrote at the time; "I passed an hour with him, last night, at his quarters, and reconciled our ancient misunderstanding."

Booth's first appearance on the American stage was made, July 6, 1821, at Richmond, Virginia as Richard III; his last at the St. Charles Theatre, New Orleans, November 1852, as Sir Edward Mortimer and John Lump. Between those extremes lies the story of his American career. It was one of brilliancy and waywardness, attended by many stirring triumphs, darkened by errors of human frailty, but rewarded with a moderate competence of wealth, and rounded by a noble professional fame. The details of it are the details of numerous engagements in various cities. In New York, Booth was conspicuously associated with the old Park Theatre, the Bowery, and the National; in Boston, with the Tremont, the Federal, and the Museum; in both cities, and indeed throughout the United States, he was a prodigious favourite. He never remained long in one place and he seldom assumed business responsibilities. He was once stage-manager for Caldwell, at the Camp, in New Orleans, and he leased and managed for awhile the Adelphi, in Baltimore. In England, he had acted with Kean; in America he acted with Cooper and Forrest; ;and in certain directions he surpassed them all. At New Orleans, in 1828, he acted Orestes, in the French language and with a French company, and he did that with such brilliancy and such tremendous force of passion that he was hailed, by a French audience, as another Talma.

"Almost immediately after Booth's arrival in America he bought a farm at Belair, Harford County, Maryland, in a wooded, romantic solitude, far from the abodes of men, and that hermitage he made his headquarters, emerging, from time to time, to dazzle and astonish mankind upon the stage, and straightway escaping again into his retreat. On that domain he forbade the use of animal food, and he would permit no living creature--not even a reptile--to be killed. Ten children were born to him of whom Edwin was the seventh. He loved his children with a passionate devotion; but his mode of rearing them was as eccentric as his management of his won wonderful faculties. He wished them to till the ground and to learn mechanical trades, and he counted education, such as he himself had received, superfluous and useless. He loved to work in the earth, to watch growing plants, to have the companionship of trees, and to listen to the sounds of the forest. At certain periods, and especially after death had bereaved him of two of his children, under pitiful circumstances, he was the victim of dark moods, in which his reason became unsettled, and in which his actions were strange and fantastic, weird or comical, or absolutely and palpably insane. Many stories are told of his vagrant wanderings in the woods; his long walks from city to city; his midnight rides in the dress of Richard or Hamlet; his capricious treatment of audiences; his funeral ceremonials over dead animals and birds; his compassionate sympathy with vagabonds; his mysterious disappearances; his moody reveries; his inequality as an actor; his fitful industry; his strange fluctuations between a cosmopolitan fellowship with mankind and a Timon-like isolation; his power to read even the Lord's Prayer in such a way as to convulse his hearers with pathetic emotion; and his terrific outbursts of ferocious passion upon the stage, which made his associates tremble for their lives. Once, after playing Cassius perfectly during the first three acts, he suddenly entered, for the fourth, walking airily on the tips of his toes. Once he went through the whole performance of Pierre in a whisper, only raising his voice at the last to remark, with placid satisfaction, "We have deceived the Senate." On still another occasion he felt it necessary to scrape the ham out of some sandwiches that had been provided for his repast, just before he went on to act Shylock. There is no end to illustrative incidents of that kind. The reminiscences of old actors and playgoers have preserved scores of such traits, and among them, no doubt, many fictions. Booth was a wild, strange being, as mysterious and as grand as "The Ancient Mariner," which of all poems he loved best, and which is an apt emblem of his haunted spirit.

"Booth's detractors--and, of course, he had them--did not hesitate to accuse him of simulating eccentricity. One of the old theatrical writers says it, in so many words. No sillier calumny was ever uttered. The honesty of his life, the agony of his sufferings, and the revelation that he made, in his acting, of the depths of human misery, answer and dispose of it forever. No enemy ever ventured to impute to him, living or dead, a dishonourable action. He promoted no public scandal. He brought no disgrace upon his profession. He had no professional animosities. He persecuted nobody. He was just and kind in the relations of domestic and social life. He wore the laurels of a unique and unparalleled fame with more than the modesty and simplicity of a child. The public loved him, and when he died the news brought tears to the eyes of thousands. Rufus Choate himself a great genius and most competent to understand such a nature, spoke the general feeling of that hour, when he exclaimed, "There are no more actors."

The fact which seems to suggest the elder Booth, if not to define him, as an actor, is that he was heedless and imperfect as an artist, but electrical and fascinating as a man. He would, for example, when acting Macbeth, deliberately go to the wing and get a broadsword with which to fight the final battle, and would do that in full view of the audience--just as Ristori, when acting Lady Macbeth, would carry her husband's letter to the side and throw it away. He did not care, when acting Richard whether he wore an old dressing gown or a royal robe, and he heeded little where other persons entered or stood, so that they got on and were somewhere. His acting had no touch of the finish of Macready. But the soul that he poured into it was awful and terrible: the face, the hands, the posture, the movement, all was incarnate eloquence; and when the lightning of the blue-gray eyes flashed, and the magnificent voice gave out its deep thunder-roll, or pealed forth its sonorous trumpet-notes, the hearts of his hearers were swept away as on the wings of a tempest. Each tone and each action was then absolutely right. Even his marvelous elocution, which brought out the subtle meaning of every sound in every syllable, seemed inspired,--such and so great was the vitality which a glorious imagination, thoroughly aroused, could strike out of a deep and passionate heart. He played many parts: there is descriptive record of him in about twenty of the greatest: but probably he was at his best in Richard III, Sir Giles Overreach*, Sir Edward Mortimer, Iago, and Shylock. Edmund Kean excelled in depicting misery and awakening passion. To him belonged such parts as Othello and the Stranger. Booth's peculiar grandeur was in the region of the supernatural and the terrible."

Junius Brutus Booth and Edwin, 1849

For many years, young Edwin Booth accompanied his father on the road, watching, observing, baby-sitting the tempestuous genius through his many moods and antic dispositions. Otis Skinner records what may have been a typical episode:

"...there is a remembered narrative of a night at an ancient hostelry in Boston. It was a far from salubrious inn, the bedrooms of the Booths being located over odoriferous stables which the elder contended were beneficial to one's health. They were almost devoid of air and ventilation.

"Returning one night after an exceptionally trying performance, J. B. said he couldn't rest and decided to go out to stroll about the streets. In this he met a violent objection from his son. He offered to sing and play for him; he exhausted every topic he could contrive, but the elder was obdurate.

"I won't stay here. I'm suffocating," he declared.

"You are not going out , father," replied Edwin.

The pair stood angrily facing each other, the big, powerfully-built father, and the fragile young son.

"You sha'n't go out," repeated Edwin.

Then, without another word the old lion turned and bolted into the dark closet adjoining his bedroom, locking the door behind him.l There was a long silence; rappings, coaxings, threats and pleadings were o f no avail, not a word came from beyond the locked door. Edwin was in dreadful distress fearing his father might suffocate in that airless room. His fears grew until he was about to run for help, when the door was thrust open; the father stood glaring at the young captor, who waited his next move, not daring to break the silence.

Then striding across the room the elder calmly and deliberately undressed and went to bed."

Of this remarkable father-son relationship, Edwin Booth's close friend and biographer, William Winter said:

"Between them there existed from the first a profound and fervent, though silent and undemonstrative sympathy. As Edwin grew up his close companionship seemed more and more to be needed and desired b the parent. ... As a boy, he is represented to have been grave beyond his years, observant, thoughtful, and rather melancholy, but wise in knowledge of his surroundings, and strong in reticence and self-poise. He was accustomed to accompany his father as attendant and dresser, but in fact he was the chosen monitor and guardian of that wild genius, and possessed more influence over him than was exercised by any other person. This association, operating upon hereditary talent, wrought its inevitable consequence in making Edwin Booth an actor. The strange life that he saw and led--a life in which fictitious emotions, imaginative influences, and every-dayt trivialities are so singularly blended--exerted its customary charm upon a youthful, sensitive, and irrepressible nature, at once luring him towards the stage, and preparing him for his profession.

Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. the youngest of the Booth Brothers was never as successful or infamous as his two older brothers.

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