—
On this particular night, J. H. Stoddart, the actor playing Buckingham, declares both performances splendid. “I shall never forget the fight between Richard and Richmond in the last act, an encounter which was terrible in its savage realism,” he says.
That fight ran so long and was rendered with such ferocity that certain members of the audience feared they were about to witness actual and serious injury. Certain members like Rosalie.
Edwin
xii
Edwin’s career benefits from a lucky advantage with regard to timing. Back in 1853, only a year after Father’s death, the legendary tragedian Edwin Forrest retired from the stage. Forrest had gained early notice through his popular Indian roles, particularly the last of the Wampanoags; shot to notoriety by rudely hissing William Macready as he played Macbeth, a feud that later culminated in the deadly Astor Opera House riot; responded to the exposure of his own infidelities by accusing his wife of the same (she claimed he had mistaken a phrenology examination for love-making); brutally whipped one of the men he held responsible for the destruction of his marriage, a man in such ill health he was utterly unable to defend himself; sued his wife for divorce in a six-week trial the public followed avidly and which he eventually lost; and then lost a later suit for the assault. He was tired.
His absence left an opening Edwin was able to exploit—the old greats dead or gone—and only Edwin at the gate. If this opening was mere luck, the use Edwin made of it was the product of hard work and careful planning, not all of it his own. Two other people—Adam Badeau and Mary Devlin—devoted themselves to Edwin’s advancement.
Adam Badeau:
Since that encouraging review back in his first New York run, Edwin and Badeau have grown close. Adam refers to them as Romeo and Vagabond, Edwin calls them Ned and Ad. Adam is older than Edwin by only two years, but he’s better educated, more sophisticated, better connected, and smarter. He’s a short man, as is Edwin, but stout and ruddy where Edwin is thin and pale. He wears glasses. His clothes show the kind of subdued taste that only money can buy. His offer to mentor Edwin is eagerly accepted. Soon Edwin is studying French and Latin for elocution, history and philosophy for interpretation.
“You know he’s in love with you,” Uncle Ben tells Edwin and Edwin does know this. Adam often complains of Edwin’s emotional distance, his coldness, as if Adam has a right to something different. Sometimes this makes Edwin uncomfortable. Sometimes he loves Adam right back.
The two spend hours discussing the state of the theater. The old ranting, referred to now as the Bowery style, remains popular in the cheap seats, but the upper classes want subtlety. “No acting is great which pleases only a single class,” Adam tells Edwin. “The gods of the gallery are as good critics as the blues of the boxes.” Still, the professionals, including Badeau, are working to transform the popular taste. Sometimes people have to be taught to want what they should want.
The war will intensify the growing preference for suppressed over expressed emotion, especially when the suppression comes with evident (though delicately played) struggle.
Badeau admires innovation. He longs to see something new. This desire is, in and of itself, innovative. For years, actors have been applauded for imitation. Every part, however old now, had once debuted with the author there to provide guidance. The less things change over the generations, the closer a performance comes to the wellspring, the true quill. Shakespeare as directed by Shakespeare.
As rewritten by Cibber. Adam and Edwin begin to put more of Shakespeare’s own lines back into his plays. This, too, is innovative.
Adam takes Edwin to libraries and museums to research costumes. They read plays together, stopping to analyze who the character is at each moment, how he develops over the course of the play, and how a quiet line might be read to convey this.
In the old style, actors were evaluated on their delivery of the big speeches, the ones the audience knew and were waiting for. This was called making the points. Reviewing Edwin’s Hamlet, a later critic will write, “From first to last, he not only does not make points where points are usually made, but he does not make a point at all.”
* * *
—
In the summer of 1858, Ned and Ad, Romeo and Vagabond, take a trip to Tudor Hall, which has stood empty since the Booths returned to Baltimore. This trip is Adam’s idea. Edwin will show him the farm where he grew up. He’ll share stories of his childhood and his famous father. Adam will turn the whole thing into an essay for Noah’s Sunday Times. It will feed the public appetite for backstage stories about actors. It will remind readers who Edwin’s father is. It will solidify his position as a rising star.
Their departure is delayed by Mother’s insistence on serving Adam breakfast and keeping him talking around the table. Keeping Adam talking is the world’s easiest task. “We have a long drive ahead,” Edwin says finally, as if his family doesn’t know exactly how long it takes to get to Bel Air. Even that doesn’t bring the gab to a close. Edwin swallows his annoyance with his third cup of coffee.
They don’t get on the road until noon and then they encounter a series of further delays. A harness breaks and has to be knotted together with shoelaces. A wheel gets stuck in a puddle and Edwin must hand the reins to Adam, by far the better dressed of the two, and leap down, add his shoulder to the work of the horses. Now his boots are muddy as well as laceless. Edwin begins to feel that the whole trip has been a mistake, as if he cannot run faster than the earth turns and will end farther from his destination than he began.
But when one of the horses loses a shoe, the whole adventure tips to comedy. What can they do but laugh? “A farrier, a farrier, my kingdom for a farrier,” Edwin says. The sun is hot and high and the horses’ backs show dark streaks of sweat. Edwin’s shirt is damp and soiled.
When they drive at last through the trees on the long approach to the house, the temperature drops. In that coolness, Edwin feels his welcome. “Your foot is on your native heath,” he hears his father say. These woods, these streams are home to him.