Edwin has just seen his first ghost. It won’t be his last.
xviii
All that night, Old Spudge sits with Edwin, patting his knee, while Edwin cries. The next morning, Edwin leaves the Waller Company without a word. He leaves Old Spudge sleeping in the parlor, his head fallen forward onto his chest, his feet on the ottoman, his sparse hair sticking up like a rooster’s comb.
The trip back to San Francisco proves almost as hard as the one in from Downieville. The horses all belong to the Wallers, so Edwin goes on foot again. It snows. It rains. When the sun comes out, he’s no better off, the light so bright against the snowdrifts as to burn his eyes. He’s always cold.
Every thought, every memory is painful; his mind exhausts itself looking for a place to land that doesn’t hurt. He took no money with him when he left. By the time he reaches Marysville, he hasn’t eaten in two days. He’s gaunt, sickly, and silent. People meeting him for the first time fear his mind is gone. Out of pity, they take up a collection, buy him food, a seat on the coach to Sacramento, and passage on from there. Edwin hardly notices these things happening to and around him.
June and Hattie are living as man and wife in a small house on the steep slope of Telegraph Hill. The kitchen overlooks the endless noise, motion, odor, and color of Portsmouth Square. Edwin arrives there in mid-January. He’s planning on going home to Baltimore. He imagines June will want to go home, too.
But June’s had more time to get used to the idea of Father dead and even when the news was fresh, it didn’t unmoor him in the same way. He’d promptly written his mother and also sent a letter after Edwin, a letter that never arrived. And then, that very night, June had returned to the stage.
He can see now that Edwin is not at his best, but only Hattie is genuinely alarmed for him. Hattie is eighteen, sensitive, and sympathetic. June is thirty-one, stolid and established. He claps Edwin on the back, says that Father wouldn’t want to see him this way. He then leaves for work. Hattie finds a shawl for Edwin’s shoulders, washes and patches his clothes, sits with him to make sure he eats three entire pieces of toast dripping with butter and drinks a cup of strong coffee. Her voice is commanding—sit down, drink this—but also gentle. The maternal behavior that Edwin found so objectionable in Panama, he now craves. He only worries that too much kindness will make him cry so hard he will never stop.
That evening, by candle, fire, and moonlight, June shares the details of Father’s death as he knows them. Shadows jump about the room. There’s a loud rain outside, and occasionally a drop falls through the chimney, lands with a hiss on the fire. Hattie reaches out and takes Edwin’s hand. Her skin is so much warmer than his. He wishes to take that warmth in, but fears the opposite is happening. Hattie’s hand cools as he holds it.
Everything he hears adds to Edwin’s pain. Father died on board the J. S. Chenoweth, never having made it back to Baltimore. Someone was with him at the end, but it wasn’t the son who’d been tasked with caring for him. It was a stranger, a young man named James Simpson. Simpson had recognized Father on deck earlier and then a few days later, noticed his absence. He’d made his way to Father’s cabin, where the smell of sickness was overpowering.
Simpson had the cabin and linens cleaned, sat by Father’s bed, and asked what else he could do. Father was already past coherence. “He spoke but I could understand nothing,” Simpson said. “Only that he had suffered a great deal and been exposed to much.” Simpson was holding his hand when he died. Father’s last words were “Pray, pray, pray.”
Later Edwin will learn more of those final weeks. At some point while re-crossing the Isthmus （and probably drunk）， Father had been robbed of all the money he’d made June give him. Penniless and disoriented, he’d gotten as far as New Orleans on the charity of strangers. There he’d taken an engagement at the St. Charles Theatre, where he performed over six nights and earned more than enough to get back to home. His reviews had been excellent, many noting his remarkable vigor and energy.
But sometime after boarding the Chenoweth, he’d fallen ill. He’d told no one, but remained in his cabin, drinking copious amounts of water drawn straight from the river. It may have been the water that killed him. It may have been the lack of prompt medical attention. Had Edwin been with him, he might very well have lived. Edwin certainly thinks so. He never forgives himself.
In spite of the raving and drunkenness, the violence and temper, the Booth children all adored their father. Edwin immediately rewrites his stories from the road. He insists, with no evidence, that on that night in New York when he first played Richard III, Father came secretly to watch, that he was proud of what he saw. Edwin deeply regrets telling June that Father never cared about him. So he wasn’t Father’s favorite? He was always the one Father needed and that should have mattered more.
At night, in search of sleep, Edwin loops through their final parting—how Father laughed and said he was a pirate, how the ship and his figure disappeared into the fog. He revises this memory, works it and works it, until it becomes a reluctant parting on his side. Until he can make himself believe that this really was the case, that these really were his feelings, he can’t fall asleep.
June has a letter from Mother, a letter written to the two of them, which he gives Edwin on the day after his arrival. Edwin takes it to the small attic he’s sleeping in. He wants to read it in private. He sits on the floor beneath the tiny window, where the light is best. His knees are bent, his back hard to the wall. The handwriting is his mother’s, but also not exactly. Edwin thinks her hand must have been shaking, the words themselves seem to shiver. This letter tells both of her boys not to come home. She writes that the funeral is already over, that the family will rent out the Baltimore house and move back to the farm. Her own desires, she says, are not to be considered. The boys must remain where they are and make the best of their opportunities.
There is one point on which Edwin is quite mistaken. He believes that his father died a wealthy man. Years will pass before anyone tells him otherwise.
It seems to Edwin that the casting-out, which began on the night Mother first told him he’d be traveling with Father, is now complete. They will bury Father without him. They will live on the farm without him. He feels certain that under similar circumstances, Johnny would have been told to come straight home.
But maybe Johnny wouldn’t have failed the family so disastrously. Mostly what Edwin finds in this letter is more evidence of his despicable selfishness. His own mother can’t bear to look at him. Hamlet was less guilty.
* * *
—
A few months before Father’s departure, Edwin had promised him to play Hamlet someday. Father thought he looked the part and that, a few years further into his career, with work and diligence, he might creditably carry it. June is certain that Edwin isn’t ready.
But keeping that promise is now the only thing Edwin can still do for his father. He nags and begs and barters until June gives in. On April 25th, 1853, he plays for the first time the role that will come to define him. He wears the somber costume, the dark tights, the short, black cloak. The somber demeanor comes easy. Old Spudge is there to cheer him on in the role of Polonius.