1851 is a busy year for the Booth family.
In January, in Boston, Father makes the papers again for one of his mad freaks and Edwin is helpless to prevent it. Father has awakened in an agitated state and by the time the evening show begins, Edwin is already exhausted. The play is, once again, Richard III, and Father performs with competence, but sometime during the final act he completely loses his wits. Exiting the stage, he finds his way blocked by a young woman named Hannah Crouse. Crouse is an extremely large girl, circus large, and makes a living exhibiting herself. She’s come to the theater to see the genius of Junius Booth.
Encountering her in the stairwell, Father believes she’s an apparition. He jabs her with Richard’s sword to confirm this. When she screams, he attacks, calling her a demon, shouting for her to defend herself. It takes two stagehands to restrain him, which happens, fortunately, before real damage can be done to the terrified girl. Edwin is sent the next day with an apology and an invitation to another show. Crouse accepts neither.
The papers love everything about this story. It’s reported locally and picked up nationally, Crouse’s Christian name inadvertently becoming Anna in the telling. Edwin thinks that Mother will be mortified, but Mother has her own problems. In Baltimore, the local papers have finally taken notice of Adelaide Booth.
* * *
—
In February, Adelaide files for divorce, accusing Junius of a twenty-nine-year habit of adulterous intercourse. To the disgraceful act of desertion, she writes, he added the insult of a large number of illegitimate children whom he persists in supporting.
Father is shocked when he learns she’s gone through with this. He’d thought the princely sum already paid her had settled things. He’s been largely able to ignore Adelaide. Few bring up his bigamy to his face. Edwin, too, has been traveling inside that courteous bubble, unaware that those at home have been less lucky.
In Baltimore, Adelaide’s harassment had continued unabated. The illegitimacy of the Booth children is now a published fact along with “the dissoluteness of the father and the shame of the mother.” Mother takes the abuse stoically, moving quietly on whenever and wherever Adelaide appears.
But on the streets, in the neighborhoods, at his school, Johnny defends them all with his fists. He could use Edwin’s help, but Edwin is off larking about with Father and wouldn’t be any good in a fight even if he were home.
This also happens in February: June’s wife, Clementina DeBar, the dancer and comedienne, has June and a seventeen-year-old actress named Harriet Mace arrested as they leave the theater. They are accused of the crime of “being entirely too familiar.” June is charged with adultery, Harriet with fornication. June’s bail is four hundred dollars. Harriet’s is fifty. No one in the family speaks of it. They remain on good terms with Clementina, who comes to call whenever she’s in the area.
* * *
—
In March, Johnny visits a gypsy encampment, seven covered wagons and a tent, in a field near his school. The field is full of pussytoes in first bloom and knee-high Indian grass. Three beautiful red horses lift their heads to stare at him. Chickens scatter. Pigs grunt. Black pots hang over cooking fires. Skirts and trousers hang over bushes. A small girl with braids so long she could sit on them stares from inside a wagon.
A man in a battered hat takes his pipe from his mouth to nod at him. He points to the tent with the stem, blows a long stream of smoke into the air.
The palmist is tiny and old, her hair all gone to seed, her blouse soiled at the collar and cuffs. Her hands are rough, her eyes bloodshot, one front tooth is gone. A key hangs from a chain around her neck, a key so large and heavy looking, Johnny wonders it doesn’t unbalance her. Nothing in the tent would require such a key and he wonders about that, too.
The palmist looks at Johnny’s hand for a long time before speaking. As soon as he leaves her, he writes down, word for word, what she said. Memorizing speeches has never come as easy to him as to the other sons of Junius Booth, but this one is hard to forget.
Ah, you’ve a bad hand; the lines all cris-cras. It’s full enough of sorrow. Full of trouble. Trouble in plenty, everywhere I look. You’ll break hearts, they’ll be nothing to you. You’ll die young and leave plenty to mourn you, many to love you, too, but you’ll be rich, generous, and free with your money. You’re born under an unlucky star. You’ve got in your hand a thundering crowd of enemies—not one friend—you’ll make a bad end, and have plenty to love you afterwards. You’ll have a fast life—short, but a grand one. Now, young sir, I’ve never seen a worse hand, and I wish I hadn’t seen it, but every word I’ve told is true by the signs.
He reads this later to Rosalie and Asia. “I asked if she really expected me to pay her for this, but she took the money all right.”
His sisters rush to reassure him. “What tittle,” Asia says. “Sheep bleatings,” says Rosalie. They honestly don’t believe in this prophecy, but they feel sorry for him all the same. I wouldn’t want to get that fortune, they each secretly think, as if Johnny’s fate is entirely his own and nothing to do with them.
“She said I’d better become a missionary. She said she was glad not to be a young girl or she’d follow my pretty face anywhere,” Johnny says.
He carries the paper with her words on his person for a long time. At least it will be grand, he tells himself.
* * *
—
In April, the divorce is granted, with Father conceding that all of Adelaide’s accusations are true.
Also April. Father is performing in New York City. Waking from a nap, he refuses to go to the theater and be Richard III yet again. “You do it,” he tells Edwin. “I’m sick of it.”
Lacking an alternative, the manager sends Edwin onstage in his father’s hump, his father’s outsized costume. No warning has been given the audience, whose applause falls away into a puzzled silence. Edwin begins tentatively. He tries to imitate his father’s inflections, his gestures. To his horror, his boots squeak loudly on the wood planks. The audience laughs.