Father’s reception is magnificent. A man in a plaid waistcoat lifts his top hat in an extravagant gesture. “Welcome the greatest actor in America!” he shouts as Father comes down the gangplank. The man leads the crowd in a cheer, as if conducting an orchestra.
Edwin follows, raising his eyes to the hills, past the shacks and mansions, all the way up to where white clouds coast across the sky. He turns to see the island of Alcatraz, all stone and scrub, the impossibly long-winged pelicans riding the air in great circles above it. The next thing he hears is his own name. “Welcome Edwin Booth! The most beautiful man in the city!”
There is no overstating how startled Edwin is by this. Startled first to be noticed at all. Startled second to be identified as beautiful. He’s been petted by women in the companies. He’s been told he’s pretty by women in the streets. This feels different. He’s both pleased and appalled.
He’s eighteen years old and California will soon make him, by his own accounting, a drunk and a libertine. About this period, he will later write: “Sin was in me, and it consumed me while it was shut up so close; so I let it out and it seemed to rage and burn more fiercely than ever.”
San Francisco has everything he needs—women and drink at a price he can afford, theaters and roles to play, and June. Especially June. He never establishes the closeness to this brother that he has with Rosalie, Asia, Johnny, and even Joe. But June took charge of Father while they crossed the Isthmus. He can keep right on doing that. Edwin’s been sprung.
“Father doesn’t care about me,” Edwin tells June. “Never has.” He sheds those years of watchfulness like a snake shedding a skin. He doesn’t recognize himself.
Now he’s the one who shows up to rehearsals inebriated and unprepared. Now Father is the one stewing and scolding. A visible tension crackles between the two, evident to the whole company, who find Edwin sullen and rebellious. He’s to play the part of Richmond—the weary sun has made a golden set—and Father is impatient with his lethargy. “Point to the setting sun,” Father says. “Don’t just mouth your lines. Do something!”
Edwin throws his hand mockingly into the air. There. “When can we go out?” he asks. “I want to see the city.” June sides with Father. Edwin, he says, must get serious. He’s not a genius like their father. He’s not so talented he needn’t work.
Once being an actor was the thing Edwin wanted most in the world. Now he acts because it’s all he knows. Perhaps if he hadn’t spent those formative years with Father, he would, like most adolescents, have tried on this personality and that until he found the one that fit best. He might have learned to be comfortable in the role of Edwin Booth. Instead, Edwin has come to prefer being someone, anyone else.
Traveling with Father has been his burden, but also his apprenticeship. He’s learned, better than anyone, that for a few magical moments, you trade in bad food, bad beds, and bad times.
Still, there are magical moments. Edwin knows that, too.
* * *
—
The money June predicted doesn’t materialize. Early critics are kind—The San Francisco Daily Herald describes Father as “a splendid ruin,” “magnificent even in decay.” But as the tour continues—up to Sacramento, where floods close the theaters and the heat is unbearable, and back to San Francisco, where he performs so drunk that he falls onstage repeatedly—the reviews sour. Father lasts two months. He’s brought in no money, but still demands payment in full from June, an exorbitant sum that all but wipes June out. He leaves San Francisco one foggy morning with heavy pockets and bad feelings on all sides.
Edwin doesn’t go with him. He’s never been allowed to be an irresponsible young man before and he’s gotten a taste for it. If June can stay in California, why not Edwin? He goes with his father, through a wispy fog, as far as the gangplank, terrified, almost certain that at the last minute, Father will refuse to board without him. Sure enough, there is some fuss about the baggage that makes his heart stop. Father asks a deckhand to carry his trunks. The man says that he won’t. “I’m no flunky,” he says.
“Then what are you, sir?” Father asks.
“A thief.”
In an instant, Father is in character, his favorite character—Bertram from the play with the same name. “Take my hand, then, sir,” he shouts, “for I’m a pirate.”
This makes the deckhand laugh, clasp Father’s arm, and haul him in. He hoists Father’s trunk into the air, balances it on one shoulder, leads Father below deck. The ship is called the Independence.
Soon Father reappears at the rail. Fit and flush, he stands with his hand raised as the ship steams away, quickly disappearing into the fog. Edwin stays until Father has vanished. He’s left with such a strange feeling, as if he’s forgotten something he should have remembered, but doesn’t know what it is. This feeling will last the rest of his life.
xvii
Edwin thinks he now has something he’s long wanted, a tomorrow unformed and unknown, and then another after that, and then another, all entirely his to choose. It’s exhilarating. It’s terrifying. It’s something only an eighteen-year-old could believe in.
He joins a troupe managed by two British newlyweds—Dan and Emma Waller—and sets off with them for the mining camps. His father’s friend Old Spudge travels with him. The Waller Company has respectable actors and big plans. But it’s a rung or two below what Father would find acceptable, a rung or two below what Edwin is used to. The Waller Company is not so grand they won’t do a tableau of the Bear Flag Revolt with a live bear. But it suits Edwin not to be compared to Father while he’s still learning his trade.
His sullenness left when his father did. He’s ready for anything, wild to have the sort of adventures he’ll live to regret.
The company plays in Yuba City, Nevada City, Hangtown, Grass Valley, Rough and Ready, Red Dog, and Shirt-tail Bend. There are two unmarried women in the troupe, both only slightly older than Edwin, but they make it clear that they prefer each other’s company to his. The Wallers behave like newlyweds, a level of cooing Edwin feels they are too old—well into their thirties!—and too British to indulge in. He spends most of his time with Old Spudge.
Edwin works hard to perform well. He has moments of particular triumph. In Grass Valley, his Iago is so persuasive that one drunken miner draws a gun and shoots, shouting at Edwin, “You’re a sneaking no-account cur and you’ll get what’s coming to you!” Edwin dives to the stage along with the rest of the cast, and the play only continues when everyone in the audience has voluntarily disarmed.
His father left in October. In November Edwin turned nineteen, and now it’s late December. The company arrives in Downieville, a town of fifteen hotels and twice as many saloons. Downieville sits at the fork of the Downie and Yuba Rivers, the mountains cupped like hands around it. The trail in is too steep for carts or wagons. Only the horses can manage it.
In the spring, the sound of rushing water would have been deafening. In December, ice has narrowed and muted the rivers. Edwin shakes the horseback out of his legs by walking down to the banks with Old Spudge. The air is icy, the sky low. Edwin pulls his hands into his sleeves to warm them.