From photo by F. Gutekunst.
Copyright by F. Gutekunst, Philadelphia.

There were several children, and three 257 of the sons became actors. I asked him whether he was the favorite, but he said no: his father always preferred John Wilkes. Yet Edwin had the greatest influence with the tragedian when the gloomy fits came on, and followed him many a night through the streets to see that he got no harm. He could prevail on him to act when no other could, and often told me of his attempts to direct their wanderings so that they might reach the stage-door in time. He himself was melancholy and moody, and lived very much in the imagination. It must have been a strange spectacle—this erratic genius and his anxious child, both slightly formed, with the same wonderful piercing eyes, stumbling about the streets at dark, the boy trying to persuade the father, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing altogether.

The story of Edwin’s first appearance on any stage has often been told. It was as Tressel to his father’s Richard III. He was not yet sixteen and received no encouragement nor sign of approval from his strangely constituted parent, but a little later the two were walking in Broadway, when they met a Mr. Conway, an English actor well known to play-goers of the last generation. Booth stopped to talk, and Conway, who was pompous in speech, inquired rather elaborately:

“Upon which of your sons do you intend to confer your mantle?”

The great player did not reply in words, but laid his hand on Edwin’s head with a sort of solemnity, perhaps suggested by Conway’s tone. The lad attached little significance to the action at the moment, but afterward felt certain that his father meant all that the gesture implied. I asked him how old he was when this occurred. “Only a stripling,” he said, “about as high as the top of that candle,” and he pointed to the mantelpiece.

“Why,” I exclaimed, “you are not as high as that now.”

“Ah! but I wore a hat,” he replied; “and my father had to reach up to put his hand on me. I was taller than he.”

He first played Richard III. at the old Chatham Street Theatre in New York, as a substitute for his father, who either could not be found or refused to act. When the manager learned this fact he said to Edwin: “Then you must play Richard.” The lad, just seventeen, was naturally unwilling, but he knew the text from having heard his father so often in the part, and their figures were not unlike. The assistants dressed him in his father’s clothes, and he made up his face as like as possible to the great actor in Richard III. The audience was surprised when he appeared, but allowed him to go on, and he must have played with a certain degree of power, for he was called out at the end of the first act, and went through the entire exacting tragedy. When the play was over he hastened home and found his father, who offered neither comment nor inquiry. In this way the strange pair went on, leading a life as curious as any of the mimic ones they portrayed on the stage; for Edwin now played at times, even in prominent parts, but made no especial mark, being dwarfed, of course, by his father’s superlative ability.

In 1852 they went to California, but the wayward elder remained only a few months, then suddenly returned to the Atlantic States, leaving Edwin behind with his brother Junius, also an actor of some prominence. The brothers played together occasionally, but the times were rough and their success was small. Edwin was soon reduced to the hard straits of a strolling player’s life: borrowing a few dollars now and then, walking hungry through mountain snows, living sometimes in a ranch, sometimes on the pittance of a stock-actor’s salary, but sometimes making a hit, drawing crowded houses and filling his purse for a while.

In November, 1852, he got word of the death of his father, a terrible blow to him, whose relations with the great actor were so peculiar. Throughout his life he retained the liveliest memories of his father’s character and presence. He liked to talk of him, and spent hours with me describing the peculiarities that left so profound an impression on him. But though he saw their strangeness, the reverent tone in 258 which he told of them was always marked.