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Booth:A Quick History “As animals in a pack hasten after their sovereign,” wrote one costar,“so we followed him.” He was, after all,“a Beau Brummell, but robust” in the eyes of one reviewer. The ninth child, the favorite, he chose his father’s profession and with his swashbuckling style became America’s matinee idol. A quick wit and adroit horseman, he insisted on stage swordplay so violent he was often wounded and bore many scars, though not all critics were impressed with his elocution. Nonetheless, when he stepped out limping as Richard or blackfaced for the Moor, his anthracite eyes in the limelight flashed like Mesmer’s, and ladies in the front row swooned. He held his liquor well and guaranteed good box office from St. Louis to Boston, but while he flourished during the war, his views on slavery grew more fiery, and he was not one to hold his tongue about how “King Lincoln” was a tyrant. History casts him as misfit, but he rode a crest of success until Gettysburg, a prosperous celebrity, though his love of the Confederacy led him to anger and brandy. After Lee’s surrender he saw everything as theater and tragedy. He never 33 1SMITH_pages.qxd 8/13/07 10:44 AM Page 33 understood why even the Southern press turned on him after his brash act. Even that last morning he deemed himself a wounded angel in the blazing barn. Brutus was his model, and on his deathbed he begged his mother be spared the details. He was twenty-six. After a hasty autopsy, he was buried under a dungeon, but for decades acquaintances claimed to meet him in Hong Kong, Paris, or the brothels of New Orleans, while an effigy alleged to be his mummy toured the country in sideshows billed as Remains of the Villainous Assassin. Bad luck— ruin or fire—followed every owner of that grisly display, but the crowds came, rain or shine. They stood in line for hours and whispered, appalled, as they waited to pay. 34 1SMITH_pages.qxd 8/13/07 10:44 AM Page 34 ...

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