From a drawing by a French painter
From their pages, then, I propose to assemble here a group of passages relating first to stage folk, and then to others, and, since these records so largely explain themselves, to burden them as lightly as possible with explanations. Slender as certain of the entries are, each contributes something to a recovery of the time and of the persons that graced it.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, says his biographer, used to declare in his later years, “Though I am not genuine Boston, I am Boston-plated.” His intimate relation with Boston began in 1865, through the publication of a “Blue and Gold” edition of his poems by the firm of which Fields was a member, and the beginning of his editorship of “Every Saturday,” an illustrated journal issued under the same auspices. His range of acquaintance before that time was such that when the “plating” process began,—it was really more like a transmutation of metals,—he sometimes served as a sympathetic link between his new Boston and his old New York. It was in New York, only a few weeks after the assassination of Lincoln, that Aldrich appears in the diary, fresh from seeing his friend, Edwin Booth.
May 3, 1865.—An hour before we went to tea, Aldrich came to see us. He said he and Launt Thompson were staying with Edwin Booth alternate nights during this season of sorrow; that it was “all right between himself and the lady he was about to marry.” Then he described to us the first night while Booth was plunged in agony. He said the gas was left burning low and the bed stood in the corner, just where he lay sleepless, looking at a fearfully good crayon portrait of Wilkes Booth which glared at him over the gas. Launt Thompson started with the mother from New York for Philadelphia, where she was going to join her daughter the day that John Wilkes was shot, and an extra containing the news was brought them by a newsboy as they stepped on the ferry-boat. The old woman would have the paper. “He was her ‘Johnny’ after all,” said T. B. A.
Friday.—Have seen a lady who knows the person to whom Booth is engaged—said that her letter telling him she was true passed his letter of relinquishment on its way to Philadelphia. She thinks these two women have saved Booth. “I have been loved too well,” he said once....
Aldrich said we should not have been more astonished to hear he himself had done the terrible deed than he was to know Wilkes Booth had done it. “He was so gentle, gentler than I, and very handsome—a slight, beautiful figure,” and (as he described the face, it was the Greek Antinous kind of beauty there) I could not but reflect how the deed may deform the man. Nobody said he was beautiful after he was dead, but they laid a cloth upon the face and said how dreadful. It has been a strange experience to come among the people who know the family. I hoped I should be spared this, but the soul of good in things evil God means we should all see.
Sunday, May 7.—A radiant day. Went to hear Dr. Bellows—a grand discourse. After service sat in his drawing-room and talked and then walked together.... He too has been to see Edwin Booth. The poor fellow said to him, “Ah! if it had been a fellow like myself who had done this dreadful deed, the world would not have wondered—but Johnny!!”
Wednesday, January 3, 1866.—Dined with the Grahams and went to see Booth upon the occasion of his reappearance. The unmoved sadness of the young man and the unceasing plaudits of the house, half filled with his friends, were impressive and made it an occasion not to be forgotten.
Facsimile note from Booth to Mrs. Fields