Read What I Didn't See for Free Online

freedom.
    Before dawn on April 26, John Wilkes Booth was discovered in a barn in the Maryland swamps. A torch was thrown inside. The straw caught immediately, illuminating the scene as clearly as if he were onstage. “I saw him standing upright,” one Colonel Conger said later, “leaning on a crutch. He looked so like his brother Edwin I believed for a moment the whole pursuit to have been a mistake."
    * * * *
    Four:
    If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now...
    In the months that followed, Edwin could only leave the house at night. He walked for miles through the dark Boston streets, his hat pulled over his face. During the day, he hid in his house, writing letters of his own. He'd worked so hard to make the name of Booth respectable, he wrote. He repeated often the story of how he had once saved the life of Robert Lincoln on a train. At a friend's suggestion, to distract himself, he wrote an autobiography of his early childhood for his daughter to read, but then destroyed it before she could. He made several unsuccessful efforts, on his mother's behalf, to recover his brother's body. “I had such beautiful plans for the future,” he said. “All is ruin and ever will be."
    He was forced to Washington during the trial of the co-conspirators. The defense had planned to call him to attest to John Wilkes’ insanity, and also to the charismatic power he held over the minds of others. The lawyers interviewed Edwin for several hours and then decided not to put him on the stand. While he was in the capital, he visited his brother and brother-in-law, still in jail. His brother-in-law repeated his plan to divorce Asia. He wondered aloud at Edwin's freedom.
    "Those who have passed through such an ordeal,” Asia wrote, “if there are any such ... never relearn to trust in human nature, they never resume their old place in the world, and they forget only in death."
    Edwin thought he might go mad. He had a chronic piercing headache, frequent nightmares. His friends worried that he'd return to drink, and Tom Aldritch, one of the closest, moved into the house to keep him company. Edwin swore that he would never act again. It would be grotesque for any Booth to perform anywhere. The rest must be silence.
    * * * *
    Nine months passed. Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt were hanged as co-conspirators in the prison yard before a large, enthusiastic crowd. Junius Booth and John Sleeper Clarke were released. Though he never forgave her, Asia's husband did not ask for a divorce. Instead they retreated to England, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Edwin's continued requests for his brother's body continued to go unanswered. Within a very few months, the entire Booth family, none of whom were working, was deeply in debt.
    The bills mounted. The creditors pressed. “I don't know what will become of us,” his mother wrote to Edwin. “I don't see how we'll survive.” His mother, like his father, did not believe in subtlety.
    * * * *
    In January, 1866, the Winter Garden Theater in New York announced Edwin's return to the stage. “Will it be Julius Caesar ?” an outraged newspaper asked. “Will he perhaps, as would be fitting, play the assassin?"
    He would be playing Hamlet.
    Long before the performance, every ticket had sold. There would be such a crush as the Winter Garden had never seen before.
    On the night of the performance, some without tickets forced their way in as far as the lobby. The play began. From his dressing room, Edwin Booth knew when the ghost had made his entrance. Marcellus: Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again. And then Bernardo: In the same figure, like the king that's dead. Edwin couldn't actually hear the words. He recognized the lines from their stress and inflections. He knew the moment of them. He knew exactly how much time remained until he took his place for the second