Lincoln, the unknown

206 •LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNhim in a hotel room, and then tried to commit suicide; and themorning after Booth shot Lincoln, another of his sweethearts,Ella Turner, an inmate of a Washington "parlor house," was sodistressed to learn that her lover had turned murderer and fledthe city,that she clasped his picture to her heart, took chloroform,and lay down to die.But did this flood of female adulation bring happiness toBooth? Very little, for his triumphs were confined almost whollyto the less discriminating audiences of the hinterland, whilethere was gnawing at his heart a passionate ambition to win theplaudits of the metropolitan centers.But New York critics thought poorly of him, and in Philadelphiahe was hooted off the stage.This was galling, for other members of the Booth family werefamous on the stage. For well-nigh a third of a century, hisfather, Junius Brutus Booth, had been a theatrical star of thefirst magnitude. His Shakesperian interpretations were the talkof the nation. No one else in the history of the American stagehad ever won such extraordinary popularity. And the old manBooth had reared his favorite son, John Wilkes, to believe thathe was to be the greatest of the Booths.But the truth is that John Wilkes Booth possessed very littletalent, and he didn't make the most of the trifling amount hedid have. He was good-looking and spoiled and lazy, and herefused to bore himself with study. Instead, he spent his youthfuldays on horseback, dashing through the woods of the Marylandfarm, spouting heroic speeches to the treesand squirrels,and jabbing the air with an old army lance that had been usedin the Mexican War.Old Junius Brutus Booth never permitted meat to be servedat the family table, and he taught his sons that it was wrong tokill any living thing—even a rattlesnake. But John Wilkes evidentlywas not seriously restrained by his father's philosophy.He liked to shoot and destroy. Sometimes he banged away withhis gun at the cats and hound dogs belonging to the slaves, andonce he killed a sow owned by a neighbor.Later he became an oyster pirate in Chesapeake Bay, thenan actor. Now, at twenty-six, he was a favorite of gushing highschoolgirls, but, in his own eyes, he was a failure. And besides,he was bitterly jealous, for he saw his elder brother, Edwin,achieving the very renown that he himself so passionately desired.