Edwin disappears to wash up, and he’s gone so long, Asia worries suddenly that he won’t return, that she dreamt the whole thing. But then he’s back, his hair and face still damp. She feels so tight with excitement and expectation she can hardly breathe. Edwin was always her favorite! How had she forgotten that?
Finally, he opens his trunks. He shows them first a resolution, printed on parchment, passed by the California legislature, declaring him to be one of the state’s great treasures. The state of California, this resolution says, is now generously sharing him with the rest of the country.
He’s brought sugar and a large spiraled shell from Hawaii, puzzle boxes from San Francisco’s Chinatown and Mexican chaps for John and Joe. A necklace for Rosalie with a green stone shaped like the crescent moon. A silver bracelet for Asia, which she immediately snaps onto her wrist, shaking her arms to see it glitter in the lamplight. Embroidered scarves for all the women, including Ann Hall.
To Mother, he gives the proceeds of his final San Francisco performances, a series of benefits and farewells including his first performance ever of King Lear (the Tate adaptation in which Cordelia survives and triumphs). He’s earned the nearly unbelievable sum of twenty thousand dollars, much of it in gold. He gives Mother his purse and it’s so heavy it falls through her hands. Mother begins to sob.
She’s worn herself out, worn herself to the bone, waiting for him to rescue them. Asia hears her long, jagged exhale, as if, ever since Father died, she’s been holding her breath and only now can she breathe again.
When Mother cries, Rosalie does the same. Asia feels that the sun has stepped out of the sky and into the Booth parlor. Edwin’s shining so brightly, her eyes water when she looks at him. It takes her a moment to understand that she, too, is crying.
* * *
—
At twenty-two (nearly twenty-three) Edwin is now in charge. He moves the family back to Baltimore, where he begins almost immediately to perform at the Front Street Theatre. He takes on many of his father’s old roles, appearing before the audiences that knew his father best. Perhaps he hasn’t yet attained his father’s genius. No one cares, they love him so. He plays to packed houses.
* * *
—
In July 1857, the following ad will appear in the Bel Air Southern Aegis.
FOR RENT—the splendid and well-known residence of the late J. B. Booth, in Harford County, about three miles from Bel Air, on the road leading to Churchville. This place will be rented to a good tenant if immediate application be made. There is 180 acres of land, 80 of which is arable. John Booth, Baltimore, Md.
No Booth will ever live on Father’s farm again.
BOOK FOUR
The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight;—I mean the harlot Slavery.
—Charles Sumner
Four years have passed since the Booths last lived in Baltimore. In many ways, the city is the same. The O’Laughlens still live across the street; the little Struthoff grocery is still next door. The parlor in which Father’s body once lay is still wallpapered in flocked yellow, lace curtains at the window, green shutters outside. Pigs still wander at will and remain a contentious political issue. Are they a public menace? Or are they public servants, keeping the streets free of garbage with their omnivorous ways? Visitors from England find them charming, a touch of the Old World, the fairy-tale village here, in a city sometimes referred to as Mobtown.
Because in other ways, Baltimore has changed. The Cock Robins, the Gumballs, and the Neversweats have grown-up and become the Calithumpians, the Rip Raps, the Plug Uglies, the Blood Tubs, the Rosebuds, and so many more. Streetlights have been installed all over the city and that soft glow now drifts in the windows at night, dimming the stars, and puddling on the floors. These streetlights are intended to reduce the danger of being abroad after dark. Forty-two lamplighters have been hired and they are almost never beaten and robbed as they go about their work.
Since the municipal elections of 1854, the anti-immigration American Party, the party of the secretive Know-Nothings, has been in charge of the city. Their agenda includes reforming the police, improving the water supply, and staying in power. These all require muscle, but especially the last. In polling places controlled by the gangs, only members of the party are allowed to cast a ballot. Others may try on pain of death.
The presidential election of 1856 happens mere days after the Booths return. Kansas remains awash in blood and Senator Sumner has been almost killed in a beating on the Senate floor, and still the level of violence in Baltimore shocks the country. Hours of riot and mayhem leave some thirty people dead, another three hundred injured. The O’Laughlens, coming with raisin cakes to welcome the Booths back, warn them to stay inside on Election Day.
Which is what they do. After all, only Edwin is eligible to vote and he’s no Know-Nothing.
When the election is over, the first-ever presidential candidate for the new Republican Party, John C. Frémont, has been defeated despite carrying most of the North. Democrat James Buchanan sweeps the South and Frémont’s own state of California. The American Party nominee, ex-president, ex-Whig Millard Fillmore, takes only one state. That state is Maryland.
* * *
—
Fillmore has one supporter in the Lincoln household. Not Lincoln, himself—of course, Lincoln supported Frémont. But Mary Todd Lincoln writes to her half-sister, “My weak woman’s heart was too Southern in feeling to sympathise with any but Fillmore. I have always been a great admirer of his, he made so good a President & is so just a man & feels the necessity of keeping foreigners, within bounds. If some of you Kentuckians, had to deal with the ‘wild Irish,’ as we housekeepers are sometimes called upon to do, the South would certainly elect Mr. Fillmore next time . . .”
She is anxious that Lincoln not be mistaken for an abolitionist. Nothing could be further from the truth, she says.
* * *
—
One year later, Baltimore braces for another municipal election. This time the rioting is mostly contained in the Eighth Ward—that Irish and German district known as Limerick—though some of it spills over into the Fifth and a number of Plug Uglies and Rip Raps travel into DC to menace the voters there.