Edwin Booth

“ Edwin Booth, I never saw the former when he was not burning with excitement over some production he had in mind, if not yet in rehearsal. Even in his sleep he saw perfect pictures of scenery not yet painted, just as before "Ganalon" he used to dream of sharp lance and gay pennon moving in serried ranks, of long lines of nobles and gentlemen who wore the Cross of the Crusader.
His friends were among the highest of God's Aristocracy of Brains—'twas odd that sculptors, artists, poets, thinkers should strike hands with so "cold" a man and call him friend! ”

“ That the homely, tender-hearted "Father Abraham," rare combination of courage, justice, and humanity, died at an actor's hand will be a grief, a horror, and a shame to the profession forever—yet I cannot believe that John Wilkes Booth was "the leader of a band of bloody conspirators!"
Who shall draw a line and say: here genius ends and madness begins? There was that touch of "strangeness." In Edwin Booth it was a profound melancholy; in John it was an exaggeration of spirit, almost a wildness. There was the natural vanity of the actor, too, who craves a dramatic situation in real life. ”

“ It is insidious to find no higher incentive than appreciation, but on the stage this is the first and last motive; and as Edwin Booth made his success in the North and remained steadfast, Wilkes Booth was most truly applauded in the South, and became rebel. A false emotion of gratitude, as well as an impulse of mingled waywardness and gratitude, set John Wilkes's face from the first toward the North, and he burned to make his name a part of history, cried into fame by the applauses of the South. ”

“ No one can truly understand Edwin Booth's acting without seeing it. He has studied his heroes so profoundly, analyzed their characters so subtly, and entered so heartily into sympathy with them, that he has, become able, by the aid of his wonderful genius, to entirely discard his own personality, and assume theirs at will. ”

“ Just as the name of Junius Brutus Booth is inseparably associated with Richard III., so the name of Edwin Booth is inseparably associated with Hamlet. In October, 1852, the father and son parted for the last time. The California period of Edwin Booth's professional career lasted from the summer of 1852 till the autumn of 1856, and included a trip to Australia. The young actor at first played parts of all kinds, and he had a severe experience of poverty and hardship. ”

“ Well, anyhow, you'll leave me Owen?"
In the mood in which she went to sleep that night, there was no premonition of conquest. The tide of her life sank low. It was impossible for her to succeed—she, a little country girl, of five feet nine. She looked at her bulk as it showed under the quilts. How small a thing she was to be set over against the mighty city.
And yet Napoleon was less than she. And Patti and Edwin Booth were not so large. The life of a great actor, like Edwin Booth, a singer, like Patti, interested her deeply. She wondered that they could do things like other people. ”

“ Booth, against whom calumny has had no word to say, now resides with her daughters in Nineteenth street, New-York. John S. Clarke dwells in princely style in Philadelphia, with the daughter whom he married; he is the business partner of Edwin Booth, and they are likely to become as powerful managers as they have been successful "stars." Edwin Booth, who is said to have the most perfect physical head in America, and whom the ladies call the beau ideal of the melancholy Dane, dwells also on Nineteenth street. He has acquired a fortune, and is, without doubt, a frankly loyal gentleman. ”

“ Edwin Booth continued to act with his father for more than two years after the advent at the Boston Museum. His first appearance on the New York stage was on 27 Sept., 1850, at the National theatre, Chatham street, as Wilford. At the same theatre, in 1851, his father being ill, he suddenly and promptly took the place of the elder tragedian, and for the first time in his life enacted Richard III. This effort, remarkably successful for a comparative novice, was hailed as the indication of great talent and as the augury of a brilliant future. ”

“ I remembered saying to Zulime as we came away: "America need not despair of her art so long as she has two such personalities as Edward MacDowell and Frank Norris."
Edwin Booth's daughter, Mrs. Grossman, who was living at this time in a handsome apartment on Eighteenth Street, was one of those who liked my wife, and an invitation to take tea with her produced in me a singular and sudden reversal to boyish timidity, for to me she had almost the quality of royalty. ”

“ Every one has commended Henry Irving's kindly courtesy in inviting Edwin Booth to come and play with him at the Lyceum Theater. Booth was having a wretched season at the Princess's, which was when he went there a theater on the down-grade, and under a thoroughly commercial management. The great American actor, through much domestic trouble and bereavement, had more or less "given up" things. ”

“ Never in my life have I attempted to hold an audience as I tried to hold them. I am certain that they saw nothing but Edwin Booth until I had turned them around and backed them down the stairway again.”
In connecting me with the Forbes-Robertson family Mr. Booth’s thoughts would often wander to painting and he once told me how Sargent did the portrait which hangs in the club. As I remember, he sat for it in several places until one day Sargent asked him to have a look at it and say what he thought. ”

“ The race is goin' on, 'n' Edwin Booth is layin' down to it right. A piece of scenery either falls under his feet or else jims the machine, I never knows which, anyhow, all of a sudden the hoss gets real footin'. Bingo! We're on our way like we're shot out of a gun. We go through all the scenery on that side 'n' Edwin Booth does a flop when he hits the brick wall at the end of the stage. The ole hound ain't even scratched. I ain't hurt neither.
"The curtain rings down 'n' De Mott comes a-lopin' to where I'm gettin' a painted grand-stand off of Edwin Booth's front legs. ”

“ My first tragedy was “The Iron Chest”, with Edwin Booth in the part of Edward Mortimer. I have seen most of the great actors of my time, and I have never seen one who equaled Booth, in tragedy, comedy, or melodrama.
“I do remember an apothecary—and hereabouts he dwells!”
Orlando Tompkins, the intimate friend of Booth, kept an apothecary shop at the corner of West and Washington streets, close by the Boston Theater. Booth was then the matinée idol; and the young ladies, who wrote him poems and letters, often left them at the apothecary’s, where he usually dropped in after the play. ”

“ Well the brain of America appreciates the stage. It is but a few months since the culture and distinction of Boston nightly crowded a small and inferior theatre, to witness the personations of the young genius who is destined at no distant day to rival the proudest names of the drama. The most brilliant successes Edwin Booth has yet achieved have been achieved in Boston; scholars and wits and poets and professors crowd the boxes when he plays; women of talent write poems in his praise and publish them in the "Atlantic Monthly"; professors of Harvard College send him congratulatory letters ”

“ In the summer of 1852 he accompanied his father to San Francisco, where his elder brother, J. B. Booth, Jr., had already established himself as an actor and a theatrical manager, and where the three now acted in company. Other cities were visited by them, and the elder Booth remained in California for about three months. One night, at Sacramento, seeing Edwin dressed for Jaffier in “Venice Preserved,” he said to him: “You look like Hamlet; why don't you play it?” ”

“ The congregation worshipped first in a house at No. 48 East Twenty-fourth Street, in 1850. The present building was opened in 1856. Lester Wallack was buried from this church, as were Dion Boucicault, Edwin Booth, and a host of others. In the church is a memorial window to the memory of Edwin Booth, which was unveiled in 1898. It represents a mediæval histrionic student, his gaze fixed on a mask in his hand. Below the figure is the favorite quotation of Booth, from "Henry II": "As [Pg 195] one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing ”

“ Ellsler, who had been on terms of friendship with the elder Booth, was delighted with the promise of his work. He greatly admired Edwin's intellectual power, his artistic care, but "John," he cried, "has more of the old man's power in one performance than Edwin can show in a year. He has the fire, the dash, the touch of strangeness. He often produces unstudied effects at night. ”

“ Junius Brutus Booth must have been an extraordinary person off the stage; erratic almost to insanity, gloomy, given to fits of passion, but full of warm affections; a man with a temper almost uncontrollable, yet more often morose than violent, who refused to play, even when announced, unless he was in the vein, and walked the streets for hours after acting, and sometimes before. His wife for years accompanied him to the theatre, acting as dresser, and Edwin was taken with them. ”

“ He was excessively handsome, even physically finer than Edwin, but less intellectual in his manliness. I never saw him on the stage, but under Edwin’s roof I thought him very captivating, though not so thoroughly distinguished as his greater brother.
Two months later came the terrible event which plunged the nation, and especially the Booth family, into such awful sorrow. Edwin was playing in Boston, but at once gave up his engagement and returned to his home in New York. Numbers of the most eminent people hastened to assure him of their sympathy and their belief in his loyalty. ”

“ The form is taller than either that of the elder Booth or Kean, lithe, and disposed in symmetry; with broad shoulders, slender hips, and comely tapering limbs, all supple, and knit together with harmonious grace. We have mentioned personal fitness as a chief badge of the actor's peerage, and it is of one of the born nobility that we have to speak. Amongst those who have few bodily disadvantages to overcome, and who, it would seem, should glide into an assured position more easily than others climb, we may include our foremost American tragedian,—Edwin Thomas Booth. ”

“ Some time before she had talked to him in a Meeting, and urged him to get saved. The boy sat still and said nothing. ’Willie, I insist,’ said his mother at last. ’You must answer me. Will you give your heart to God or not? Yes or no?’
Willie looked up in her face steadily and answered back ‘No.’
Mrs. Booth said no more just then, but held on in faith and prayer, and some months later, to her unutterable thankfulness, she found him squeezed in among a number of other children at the penitent-form. He had, unasked, made his way there, and was weeping and confessing his sins with all his heart. ”

“ Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled around him, one by one, the cut-throats at whom his soul would have revolted, except that he had become, by resolve, a cut-throat in himself.
About this time certain gentlemen in Canada began to be unenviably known. ”

“ Booth’s faith and courage, for the first to volunteer were two old gentlemen, both over seventy years of age; and she had ten or twelve at the mercy-seat before the Meeting ended.
Writing from Portsmouth, she tells the same story of loneliness and victory:–
’You say, “How do you get on personally?” Oh, I never was so hampered for help in every way in all my life! The most able man I have keeps a milliner’s shop, and the one that opens for me generally is an overseer; so their attention is divided and the time limited. ”

“ Handing them to me he said, "you are riding a splendid horse. He is as tough as a pine knot. Now you ride back to the old Shawnee Indian's, have him feed your horse and get you all you want to eat; you can then ride to your father's by 2 o'clock to-night." He bade me good-by, saying, "I hope your folks will come out of this trouble without harm."
Poor Booth! We learned that the gray matter oozed from his brain the following October, in Johnson county, Missouri, he having been shot in the temple by the Youngers. ”

“ Let us be generous and acknowledge, now that it is too late to cheer his heart, that General Booth accomplished a work quite wonderful and quite splendid, a work unique in the records of the human race. Let us be frank and say that we ourselves could have done nothing like it. Let us forget our intellectual superiority, and, instead of criticising, endeavour to see as it stands before us, and as it really is, the immense marvel of his achievement. Our canons of taste, our notions of propriety, will change and cease to be. ”

“ It was not until one of the doctors abruptly stood out from the others, separate and distinct, that the cause of the hammering and the pounding became a definite enough thing for her to build air-castles upon.
Dr. Booth was very popular among the members of his Red Cross classes. Young—thirty-five or so—close-cropped mustache, tall and spare, with a tautness of manner and speech that betokened an over-supply of high-strung nerves held in rigorous control. And behind the curt, crisp bearing a fascinating inconsistency. ”

“ In one of his addresses, delivered during his visit to the United States, in February, 1895, General Booth said: "We have, with God's help, been able to carry our banner and hoist our flag in 45 different countries and colonies, and we are reaching out day by day. We have been able to create and bring into harmonious action, with self-supporting and self-guiding officers, something like 4,000 separate societies. We have been able to gather together something like 11,000 men and women, separated from their earthly affiliations, who have gone forth as leaders of this host." ”