Asia doesn’t say so, but she worries that he lacks some essential understanding of the text, something that came quite naturally to Edwin, even as a young boy. John has a beautiful voice, but whether his emphases and inflections are right or wrong, neither he nor Asia can tell. He needs a teacher such as he imagines Father was to Edwin.
Even his physical gifts cause him concern. He worries that he’s too solid and square for the quicksilver Romeo, too jerky and stiff for the graceful Hamlet. One day, he comes to Asia’s bedroom. The sun is coming through the window, but pale and wan. Asia’s at the little desk, writing letters, her fingers stiff with cold. John amuses himself by putting on her petticoat, her shawl. He stands in front of the mirror. He says, “？‘The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?’？”
Asia turns around in her seat. He holds out his hands to her imploringly. “？‘What, will these hands ne’er be clean? Here’s the smell of the blood still . . .’？”
He pauses and Asia supplies the prompt. “？‘All the perfumes of Arabia . . .’？”
“？‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,’？” he says. “Don’t I make a lovely Lady Macbeth?”
He decides to go further. He takes Asia’s old blue gingham and her newest bonnet and disappears. When he returns, he’s fully rigged. He walks back and forth in front of her, his hoop swinging side to side, until she’s helpless with laughter. He looks at himself in the mirror again. “What will you give me if none of the farmhands recognizes me?”
“Oh, please don’t!” she says. “We give the neighbors enough to talk about,” but she’s too late. She stays at her desk, watching his figure from her bedroom as, wrapped in Rosalie’s cloak, he heads over the frosty lane towards the barn.
He returns a quarter of an hour later. She hears him down in the kitchen with Ann and Nancy Hall. There is shrieking and laughter and she hears bold little Nancy ordering him to undress. “Undress right now, Master John,” she says. “Undress and wear your own clothes!”
By the time he returns to Asia’s room, he’s enormously pleased with himself. “Everyone I passed,” he says, “raised his hat to me. All greeted me with the respect due such an elegant lady.” His confidence is hugely raised by the successful experiment. Maybe he can take on the light, skip-about parts, after all.
* * *
—
In August of 1855, John returns midday from an overnight visit to Baltimore. Asia is out with a basket, gathering the glossy black dewberries so that Ann Hall can make a jam. Nancy Hall is helping by holding the thorny branches to the side with a large stick so that Asia doesn’t get pricked while Elizabeth Hall pouts that she is too old enough to help. They are surrounded by spotted dogs and farm cats and more children from the cabins.
The spotted dogs see John first, riding in on Cola. They begin to howl with the excitement of his arrival. The children swarm about his horse’s hoofs. He holds up a bag of candy, flings its contents. “Get it before the dogs do,” he tells the children and the melee commences.
John dismounts and comes to Asia. He takes her basket, reaches over to brush some stray hair from her face. “Guess what I’ve gone and done,” he says. She can see how pleased he is.
“It’s something wonderful,” she says. “But I can’t guess what.”
“Last night, I played the role of Richmond at the Charles Street Theater.”
When Mother is told, she’s not so pleased. Edwin started small and worked his way up to the major roles. He earned his place. While June, when green, had found that companies would hire him on the basis of his name alone. It’s a smart business move for them. If a Booth commands the stage, people will pay to see that. If he stumbles, proves talentless, people will pay to see that, too. Mother says, as gently as she can, that John is unseasoned and unready.
The night John appeared was the only night in which the theater was filled. A capacity crowd had hissed John’s performance. The air of triumph Asia detected was the best acting John had managed. Mother was right. He’d been exploited for his name and the man who did this was Edwin’s good friend Sleeper Clarke.
It all made John remember how, years ago when he was only eight, Sleeper and Edwin had taken the role of Richard away from him and offered him Richmond. He remembered their arrogance, their thirteen-year-old bossiness.
Yesterday, he’d been grateful to Sleeper for giving him his chance. Sleeper’s been practically family for as long as John can remember. He wants to believe in his good intentions. The fault is John’s own, his own dreams, his own vanity. Getting above himself. He says nothing to Asia. The next time Sleeper asks, he says no.
xiv
Asia turns twenty. It’s an occasion for a good scrubbing of the soul. What has she done in the past year on behalf of heaven? Has she avoided becoming what she most fears—scrupulous, prudish, judging, and cold-hearted? Has she instead been what she most wishes—generous, merciful, a kindly old maid? How can she do better? What lies ahead?
“I fear the unfolded page,” she writes to Jean. “Promise you’ll always love me.”
xv
Letters arrive from Edwin with such adventures! Pirates boarded his ship near Samoa, trying unsuccessfully to seize the wheel and run it aground on the coral reefs. There was a mutiny in which the traveling players were forced to defend the captain with their counterfeit swords and wooden guns.
After a successful run in Sydney, the troop moved on to Melbourne, where Edwin celebrated his twenty-first birthday in a manner his letters do not recount. In fact, quite, quite drunk, he attempted to fly the American flag at his hotel, while loudly castigating the British Empire. This roused the Australians to such a pitch of patriotism that they refused to come and see him act. In one drunken spree, Edwin destroyed the whole Australian tour.
Laura Keene, all too familiar with such behavior, fleeing a drunken husband of her own, never forgives him. Eliding the cause, Edwin’s letters admit to the rift. He writes that he’s “suffering Keenely” as a result. He parts from her and sails on to Hawaii, where he performs Richard III for King Kamehameha, who had once seen his father in the same role.
John can hardly bear to read these letters, so great is his envy. He’s desperate to protect his captain from a mutiny—he’s better with a sword than Edwin is by miles. Meanwhile, the situation on the farm is desperate. No one since the Hagan debacle has leased the fields. No one has ever teased a good crop of grain from them. In the winter of 1855, the Booths begin to slowly starve.
* * *
—
Asia is always tired and always cold. She feels brittle and breakable. Her hair loses its gloss, she suffers from constipation, and she understands that nourishing food would cure all of this, but the larder has little of that. Then the cows go dry. Only one continues to yield, but her milk is pink in color, which makes Asia remember how Herne the Hunter comes in his hoofs and horns, shaking his chain, and making the milch-kine yield blood. “There is nothing,” John says, “that Shakespeare didn’t anticipate.”
Snow blankets the woods and fields in higher and higher drifts. The world is hushed. The water doesn’t flow, the birds don’t sing. Only the sound of the thawing and the freezing again. Only the sound of icicles dripping from the tree branches and eaves and windows. Only the wind.