Modest Father! Surely Father’s Richard was a triumph. In fact, in London, Father has never ceased to be compared unfavorably to Kean. Rosalie would have known this, but Edwin doesn’t and wouldn’t believe it if he did. No role is so completely Father’s own as that of the murdering and murdered king. Over the course of his long career, he will play Richard 579 times.
This story has been changed from earlier renditions, less by Father’s artistry and more by context. When orange peels were the worst missiles being thrown, Father could make this story quite funny. But now it plays against the backdrop of the Astor Place riot in New York, a class war disguised as a disagreement over who was the better Shakespearean actor—the British William Charles Macready, representing the upper crust, or the American Edwin (for whom Edwin is named) Forrest, the workingman’s choice. The melee left some twenty to thirty people dead; no one knows the number with certainty. Scores more were injured. Many were bystanders, some children, shot by soldiers firing randomly into the crowd. Macready was forced to escape in disguise while Forrest’s followers tried but failed to burn down the hated Astor Place Opera House, built so that wealthy theater lovers wouldn’t have to mingle with the lower classes.
The parts that used to be funny no longer seem so. No one mentions the riot, but there is a long silence in which each man attends to his own glass. When Garrett speaks again, he appears to have changed the subject. “Did you ever see Ira Aldridge act?” he asks.
“The African? No,” Father says.
“I saw him play Othello at Covent Garden. He was glorious. And the audience knew it, if the critics did not.”
Suddenly Edwin is having trouble following the conversation.
An African? As Othello? He must have misheard.
“Kean was a great admirer of Aldridge,” Garrett says, so he hasn’t changed the subject after all. Clearly, despite Father’s story, Garrett remains a great admirer of Kean’s and wants Father to know this. “Do you know what Coleridge, the poet, said about Kean? Coleridge said that watching Kean act was like reading Shakespeare by lightning flashes.”
“No, I never heard that before.” Father’s voice is mild and possibly only Edwin hears the sarcasm. Because everyone has heard that and if there were an exception, it would not be Father. Two days ago, on the street, a man had told Father that the weather was very fine. Father had fallen to his knees. “Your powers of observation astonish me,” he’d said. “Fine weather indeed. And you the one to notice! I bow before you, sir.” His tone then had been much the same.
Father begins the arduous task of standing up. “The hour grows late,” he says although late is long over and early has come round again.
One of the younger men fetches Father his coat. “Edmund Kean’s son Charles is also a fine actor,” he says. “Which of your sons will take up your mantle, Mr. Booth?”
A long moment passes. Father says nothing, but after he puts his arm through the sleeve of his coat, his hand lands on Edwin’s shoulder. If Edmund Kean has a son who acts, then by God, Junius Brutus Booth will have the same.
* * *
—
Edwin and his father walk back to their hotel together. The night has turned chilly. The streets are mostly deserted, the lamps dark, the moon down, the birds silent in the trees, the crickets silent in the grass. Edwin is so tired that walking is an effort, but so giddy with Father’s sudden approval, he thinks he’ll never be able to sleep. He shivers, which might be the cold and might be excitement. Father’s hand rests again on his shoulder, but this is just to stay upright. Edwin notices for the first time that he’s grown taller than his father.
Father seems to be regretting his earlier criticism of Kean. He tells Edwin now that no human being could equal Kean for the expression of jealousy or despair. Then he says that Edwin is to take the role of Tressel when Father next plays Richard III. Not the bit-part/no-lines Tressel that Shakespeare wrote—no, they are performing Colley Cibber’s adaptation, which everyone in America so prefers, being considerably shorter and bloodier. In Cibber’s version, the princes are murdered right there on the stage.
In Cibber’s version, Tressel comes from the battle at Tewkesbury to tell King Henry, in several long, impassioned speeches, how his son has been killed at the hands of crooked Richard, Clarence, and the rest. Edwin only prays that his father will remember this offer come morning.
Later, in a letter home, Edwin will say that the actor meant to play the part was also the prompter and, finding his dual roles too demanding, he asked Edwin at the last minute to take his place. In this telling, his father knows nothing about it until Edwin visits his dressing room, already in costume and paint. This is a story that will collect details over the years the way a room collects dust.
The truth is that Father is not bringing in the audiences he once did. Despite Edwin’s efforts, his father often performs drunk, which sometimes angers the audience so much they get up and leave—a shame, as Father usually sobers and improves as the play proceeds.
So casting Edwin is a novelty act—the son debuting on the same stage as his famous father. It’s hoped this gambit will increase ticket sales.
But one can only debut once. “How did you do?” his father asks when Edwin returns to the dressing room.
“Well, I think,” Edwin says.
Few in the audience agree. His performance was said to be lacking in emotion and understanding. Also nearly inaudible.
* * *
—
Over the next year, Edwin appears onstage only seven more times but the roles he’s given grow in length and importance. He begins to play the handsome young men—Cassio in Othello, Wilford in The Iron Chest, Laertes in Hamlet. Women in the street no longer tell him to go home to his mother. Now they tell him to come inside.
Sometime during this period, in pursuit of dreamless sleep, Edwin begins to drink.
Lincoln: Fathers and Sons
Eat, Mary, for we must live.
—Abraham Lincoln, February 1850
In February of 1850, little Edward Baker Lincoln, the second son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln, dies of pulmonary tuberculosis just short of his fourth birthday. He has been gravely ill for months. “We miss him very much,” Lincoln writes in agonized understatement.
A third son, William Wallace, is born in December of the same year. Less than a month later, in January of 1851, Lincoln’s father dies. Since leaving the family home at the age of twenty-one, Lincoln has mostly heard from his father only when money is needed. His primary interaction has been to grudgingly provide it. Now he receives three letters in rapid succession informing him that death is imminent. He only responds to the third when chastised for his silence. He writes to his stepbrother: “Say to him that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant.” He encourages his father to think of the joyful reunion he will soon have with those who’ve gone before.
He does not attend the funeral.
* * *
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