For eight dollars a week, Wilkes Booth, at the age of twenty-two, contracted with William Wheatley to play in any piece or part for which he might be cast, and to appear every day at rehearsal. He had to play the Courier in Sheridan Knowles's "Wife" on his first night, with five or ten little speeches to make; but such was his nervousness that he blundered continually, and quite balked the piece. Soon afterward he undertook the part of one of the Venetian comrades in Hugo's "Lucretia Borgia," and was to have said in his turn—
"Madame, I am Petruchio Pandolfo;" instead of which he exclaimed:
"Madame, I am Pondolfio Pet—, Pedolfio Pat—, Pantuchio Ped—; damn it? what am I?"
The audience roared, and Booth, though full of chagrin, was compelled to laugh with them.
The very next night he was to play Dawson, an important part in Moore's tragedy of "The Gamester." He had bought a new dress to wear on this night, and made abundant preparation to do himself honor. He therefore invited a lady whom he knew to visit the theater, and witness his triumph. But at the instant of his appearance on the stage, the audience, remembering the Petruchio Pandolfo of the previous night, burst into laughter, hisses, and mock applause, so that he was struck dumb, and stood rigid, with nothing whatever to say. Mr. John Dolman, to whose Stukely has played, was compelled, therefore, to strike Dawson entirely out of the piece.
These occurrences nettled Booth, who protested that he studied faithfully but that his want of confidence ruined him. Mr. Fredericks the stage manager made constant complaints of Booth, who by the way, did not play under his full name, but as Mr. J. Wilkes—and he bore the general reputation of having no promise, and being a careless fellow. He associated freely with such of the subordinate actors as he liked; but being, through Clarke, then a rising favourite, of better connections, might, had he chosen, advanced himself socially, if not artistically. Clarke was to have a benefit one evening, and to enact, among other things, a mock Richard III., to which he allowed Wilkes Booth to play a real Richmond. On this occasion, for the first time, Booth showed some energy, and obtain some applause. But, in general, he was stumbling and worthless I myself remember, on three consecutive nights, hearing him trip up and receive suppressed hisses. He lacked enterprise; other young actors, instead of waiting to be given better parts, committed them to memory, in the hope that their real interpreter might not come to hand. Among these I recall John McCullough, who afterwards became quite a celebrated actor. He was getting, if I correctly remember, only six dollars a week, while Booth obtained eight. Yet Wilkes Booth seemed too slow or indifferent to get on the weather side of such chances. He still held the part of third walking gentleman, and the third is always the first to be walked off in case of strait, as was Wilkes Booth. He did not survive forty weeks engagement, nor make above three hundred dollars in all that time. The Kellers arrived; they cut down the company, and they dispensed with Wilkes Booth. He is remembered in Philadelphia by his failure as in the world by his crime.
About this time a manager named Kunkle gave Booth a salary of twenty dollars a week to go to the Richmond Theater. There he played a higher order of parts, and played them better, Winning applauses from the easy provincial cities, and taking, as everywhere the ladies by storm. I have never wondered why many actors were strongly predisposed toward the South. There, their social status is nine times as big as with us. The hospitable, lounging, buzzing character of the southerner is entirely consonant with the cosmopolitanism of the stage, and that easy "hang-up-your-hatativeness," which is the rule and the demand in Thespianship. We place actors outside of society, and execrate them because they are there. The South took them into affable fellowship, and was not ruined by it, but beloved by the fraternity. Booth played two seasons in Richmond, and left in some esteem.
When the John Brown raid occured, Booth left the Richmond Theater for the scene of strife in a picked company with which he had affiliated for some time. From his connection with the militia on this occasion he was wont to trace his fealty to Virginia. He was a non-commissioned officer, and remained at Charleston till after the execution, visiting the old pike man in jail, and his company was selected to form guard around the scaffold when John Brown went, white-haired, to his account. There may be in this a consolation for the canonizers of the first arm-bearer between the sections, that one whose unit swelled the host to crush out that brave old life, took from the scene inspiration enough to slay a merciful President in his unsuspecting leisure. Booth never referred to John Brown's death in bravado; possibly at that gallows began some such terrible purpose as he afterward consummated.
It was close upon the beginning of the war when Booth resolved to transform himself from a stock actor to a "star." As many will read this who do not understand such distinctions, let me preface it by explaining that a "star" is an actor who belongs to no one theater, but travels from each to all, playing a few weeks at a time, and sustained in his chief character by the regular or stock actors. A stock actor is a good actor, and a poor fool. A star is an advertisement in tights, who grows rich and corrupts the public taste. Booth was a star, and being so, had an agent. The agent is a trumpeter who goes on before, writing the impartial notices which you see in the editorial columns of country papers and counting noses at the theater doors. Booth's agent was one Matthew Canning, an exploded Philadelphia lawyer, who took to managing by passing the bar, and J. Wilkes no longer, but our country's rising tragedian. J. Wilkes Booth, opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in his father's consecrated part of Richard III. It was very different work between receiving eight dollars a week and getting half the gross proceeds of every performance. Booth kept northward when his engagement was done, playing in many cities such parts as Romeo, the Corsican Brothers, and Raphael in the "Marble Heart;" in all of these he gained applause, and his journey eastward, ending in eastern cities like Providence, Portland, and Boston was a long success, in part deserved. In Boston he received especial commendation for his enactment of Richard.
I have looked over this play, his best and favorite one, to see how closely the career of the crookback he so often delineated resembled his own.