A flirt, is what Asia thinks, but good-hearted and obviously smitten. Asia won’t risk opposing another of Edwin’s choices. If she makes him happy, then Asia has no objection. Edwina should have a mother. It will probably work out very well.
Edwin’s old friend and new enemy Elizabeth Stoddard is not so generous. Having written passionate odes to Mary’s death and Edwin’s grief, having called him a noble soul and sensitive genius, she feels she’s been made a fool. She writes that she pities the woman he marries next, whomever she is, as Edwin is incapable of fidelity and sincere feeling. Only when drunk, she says, did he manage to be even half a man.
* * *
—
Around this same time, Edwin has a curious adventure. He’s in the depot in Jersey City, waiting for the train to Philadelphia, when he sees a young man inadvertently jostled off the platform into the space between two moving train cars. Edwin is able to grab the young man by the collar of his coat and hoist him back to safety before there is any injury.
The young man recognizes him. “Thank you, Mr. Booth,” he says, with a bit of an awestruck stammer. “That was a narrow escape.”
“Not at all,” Edwin tells him and then his train arrives and he boards it. It wasn’t, Edwin thinks, really a narrow escape as the train was moving so slowly. He gives the matter no further thought.
xi
In late November, the Booths are all back in New York again. The three brothers are to appear together at Edwin’s Winter Garden Theatre in Julius Caesar. This has been long scheduled, but after the Great Fight, Asia worried John would back out.
It’s to be a one-night-only event, a benefit performance. All profits will go to a fund to raise a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park. They’ve never all been onstage together before. They never will be again.
Asia comes to the brownstone, bringing her three children, Dolly, Eddy, and Adrienne, and returning June’s daughter, Molly, after an extended visit. Molly’s little cousins are mesmerized by her. Those who can walk follow her everywhere—raids on the kitchen and rampages about the house. It’s lucky they’re no longer at the Putnam place. The potential damage to Washington Irving’s desk is dreadful to contemplate.
John arrives soon after. He and Edwin do their best to avoid open warfare. From John’s perspective, there’s plenty of cause. Lincoln recently won reelection, the first president to do so since Andrew Jackson in 1832. Never in John’s lifetime have eight whole years been given to any one president. It’s unnatural. It’s a monarchy.
Adam Badeau, now fully recovered, has been promoted to Grant’s staff and is helping Grant conduct the Siege of Petersburg. This is very close to John’s beloved Richmond and a poor thank-you for John’s kindness to him.
And Edwin has taken the best part for himself.
He will be Brutus. June will be Cassius, and John, Mark Antony. Edwin Varrey, from the original cast of Laura Keene’s Our American Cousin, is playing Caesar.
This is the event of the season. The theater sells out instantly, some seats, having sold for the unheard-of price of five dollars, are scalped for as much as twenty. Several policemen are on duty to handle the crowd before the doors open. It’s all too much for Rosalie, who takes one look, says she feels ill, and goes straight back home in the carriage.
Asia has a seat in the orchestra. The theater is stifling, especially coming in from the New York November. People are crammed into every available space, some sitting, many standing, and Asia has to force her way forward, her cheeks burning.
She struggles out of her coat, so crushed on both sides that she strikes the hat off the elderly woman next to her when she shakes her arm out of her sleeve. While apologizing, she identifies herself as the Booth sister. It has the desired effect. “Oh, my dear, we’re just so excited about this evening,” the woman says. She’s wearing choking amounts of lilac perfume.
Mother is seated above in a private box. Asia can’t see her face, but there is her glove on the rail. The theater darkens and the play begins. The woman next to her is whispering and Asia is just about to ask her to stop when she does. Her brothers come onstage in the second scene, strolling in together. The play pauses as the audience shouts and claps. If only Father could have been here. He could have played Caesar.
John has shaved his mustache just for the performance. “He looks like a young god,” Asia overhears someone behind her say, someone with a strong Southern accent. She wonders if Edwin is feeling the challenge of comparison. At the end of the first act, her three brothers emerge from behind the curtain. They bow to the audience. They bow to their mother. The bravos are deafening.
Act 2 begins. Scene 2. Caesar’s House. Varrey has only just told the audience that a coward dies many times before his death when fire engines are heard outside. Although more than a year has passed since the riots, they’re in no way forgotten. The people around Asia begin to stir uneasily. No one can leave quickly, it’s much too crowded. Asia stands to look towards the door and when that doesn’t work, she climbs onto her chair. She can see a scrum at the back, like a school of fish trying to force its way through too narrow a channel. The smell of smoke penetrates the lilac.
The woman next to her has risen and is standing in front of Asia’s seat, blocking her from getting down. Onstage, Varrey steps forward. “Please stay calm,” he says. “All is well,” but how can he know that? “Please! Keep to your seats.” More people in Asia’s row are pushing past her into the crowded aisle.
“Please let me down,” she asks the top of the top hat now standing in her way. “I have to help my mother.” She has a vague plan to go onto the stage instead of towards the doors, find her brothers, exit with them. But Mother is in the wrong direction. She remembers Father talking about a long-ago theater fire in Richmond. Nearly a hundred people killed, most of them in the boxes and above as the cheap seats were nearer the doors.
The crush at the back has turned to pandemonium. Asia can see this clearly from her high vantage point, the shoving, the shouting. A theater critic is knocked to the ground and writes later of the forest of legs, the trampled furs and hats. Edwin joins Varrey on the stage. “There is no fire,” he shouts. “There is no fire.” His voice is loud enough in a silent theater. Not loud enough for this one. Asia thinks she’s the only one to hear him.
A man runs onstage with a large flat piece of scenery—a Roman column. On the back he’s written in enormous red letters Edwin’s exact words—There is no fire. He hoists it above his head. “Oi, Oi!” he shouts.