Doubtless he inherited the dramatic genius and some of the temperament of his parent. He was not so wildly passionate on the stage, and his temper was never so uncontrollable, but his brooding melancholy, the sensitiveness of his nature, the depth of his affections, the quaint humor so strange in a tragic actor, his vivid imagination—many, indeed, of his especial gifts and faults—were unquestionably transmitted with his blood by him who was at once the author of his physical being and the begetter of his genius. The likeness extended to feature and gesture. I have a picture of the father given me by the son, which might easily be taken for one of Edwin in Richard III.; and older play-goers always declared that in the great tragic scenes the son recalled, in tone and look and power, the peculiar magnetic quality that made the elder so remarkable. I have thought sometimes that the awful bursts of passion of his younger days were more effective even than the elaborate manner of his later art. He told me more than once that his life-long friend and comrade, Joseph Jefferson, often warned him against refining away his power, and thought the classic finish hardly compensated for the natural intensity which it replaced.
His feeling for his father certainly added to the power of his performance of Hamlet. His greatest scenes in this tragedy were those with the ghost, and when Booth addressed the shade, and exclaimed:
“I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, Father, royal Dane,”
there was a pathos in the word “father” which those who ever heard him utter it must recall. He dropped on one knee as he spoke it, and bowed his head, not in terror, but in awe and love, and tender memory of the past; he had a feeling that he was actually in the presence of that weird shade whom he had known on earth, and he was not afraid.
The fatherless son remained in California, playing with varied success, sometimes as leading-man with Miss Heron, Laura Keene, or Mrs. Forrest Sinclair, sometimes as a star, sometimes in the stock company of those days, taking any part to which he was assigned. The experience was doubtless valuable to him, and he acknowledged that he owed to it much of his ease on the stage, his familiarity with the business, his self-possession under all circumstances, and his readiness in emergencies.
During his stay on the Pacific Coast he once visited the Sandwich Islands, and with an impromptu company gave a few performances. He had great trouble in announcing his plays, for the boys who were employed to post the bills ate up all the paste; but the houses were full, and the audience included the king. The court, however, was in mourning, and His Majesty could not be seen in front, so a chair was draped with theatrical robes behind the scenes, and there the real king applauded the mimic one in “Richard III.” The throne was needed for the coronation scene, and Kamehameha kindly abdicated for that occasion. In 1851 young Booth, as he was now called, returned to the Eastern States and played in Baltimore, Richmond, Boston—everywhere with great success. He was at once recognized as the dramatic descendant of his father, and the future head of the American stage.
In May, 1857, he entered upon his first engagement in New York, and on one of the earlier nights I strolled into the theatre while he was playing Richard III. I had seen his name in the bills, but he was heralded as the “Hope of the Living Drama,” and I had no great expectations from such an announcement. But I was struck at once with his dramatic fire, his grace, his expressive eye and mobile mouth, his natural elocution, and the decided genius he displayed. I remember even now, after the lapse of thirty-six years, the prodigious effect in the fourth act, when Richard exclaims:
“What do they in the North
When they should serve their sovereign in the West?”