At an age when most boys were roughhousing with one another, John’s father, Junius Brutus Booth, was in an English courtroom being sued for paternity.1 A neighbor’s maid in the Bloomsbury district where the Booth family lived had been fired for her obvious indiscretion and had charged him “with that ‘deed of darkness,’ which her situation could no longer conceal.”2
Richard Booth, Junius’s lawyer father,3 was dumbfounded over his son’s sexual precociousness. As his son’s legal guardian, he was liable for paternity damages and contested the accusation. Donning his black gown and powdered horsehair wig, he grasped his thirteen-year-old’s hand and led him into the London court. If the judges saw his son as a boy not yet out of puberty, they might not believe it possible for him to have fathered a child. But the judges were not swayed by Junius’s youthful appearance. The girl surely knew the father of her child, they said. Richard was ordered to pay the maid £30 (enough to live on for about a year in 1810) “in expiation of his son’s delinquency.”
Desperate to find a way to keep Junius too busy to tomcat, Richard apprenticed his son to one profession after another. Junius had no interest in any of them.4 At sixteen, he was back in court in another paternity suit.5 This time the complainant was a servant in his father’s home. Once again, Richard was ordered to pay child support.6
Junius’s favorite preoccupation was also responsible for his discovering the profession that would make him famous. The eureka moment came in October 1813 at London’s Covent Garden Theatre.7
During the day, Covent Garden was a vegetable and flower market. At night, its gardens, pubs, coffee houses, and theatres were London’s sex Mecca. “All the prostitutes in the kingdom had picked upon that blessed neighborhood for general rendezvous,” said a Londoner who knew what he was talking about.8 On that October night, Junius was at the Covent Garden Theatre to pick up one of the prostitutes who plied her trade in the theatre’s lobby and saloon. Not finding one to his liking—or, more likely, one he could afford—and with nothing else to do, Junius bought a ticket for Othello.
Until then, Junius had never heard of Othello.9 But he became instantly star-struck. He was determined to join the glamorous world of the stage.
Like other unknowns, Junius’s first acting parts were with amateur theatre groups. Eventually he landed a paying job in a minor role with the Jonas-Penley Company, a small troupe that played in the dock towns in and around London.10 In August 1814, the Jonas-Penley Company departed for a brief tour in Holland and Belgium. In Belgium, Junius rented a room at the house of widowed hatmaker Madame Agatha Delannoy.
During his three-month stay at Madame Delannoy’s, Junius had ample time to become chummy with her four daughters, especially twenty-two-year-old Marie Christine Adelaide. Adelaide (the name she went by) was captivated by the young actor’s looks and charisma. She was not particularly attractive, but she was charming and educated. When it was time for Junius’s company to go on to his next scheduled engagement, Adelaide told him she was pregnant. Junius said he would marry her.
There was a hitch. Adelaide was Catholic. Junius was Protestant. For a Catholic to wed a Protestant, either Junius would have to convert (which he would not do), or they had to receive a dispensation from the Catholic Church. Adelaide had two choices: she could stay in Brussels and bear the shame of having a child out of wedlock, or she could run off with Junius.11
Several weeks after their elopement, probably at Adelaide’s urging, Junius wrote to her mother from Ostend on the Belgium coast to make amends. Madame Delannoy wrote back she would give them her blessing if Junius returned to Brussels, married in a Catholic church, and gave up his acting career for a job with more security. In fact, she said she had already lined one up for him.
Calling her “Madame and Dear Friend,” Junius wrote back he was delighted she had found him a job. Disingenuously, he said he would like to live in Brussels and did not care that much about money. “I embrace you with all my heart. Also my uncle and my future sisters-in-law,” he wrote, adding, “I believe you are angry, but there is no cause for it.”12
Junius never had any serious intention of taking Madame Delannoy’s offer. Two weeks later, he and Adelaide left for England.
Richard was not at all happy to have Junius and his pregnant, foreign lover move in with him.13 After all the pent-up anger and disappointment drained out of him, Richard let them stay on the condition they find jobs and marry as soon as possible. Adelaide went to work at a millinery. Junius found jobs in theatres in Brighton and other towns outside London.
With the little money they managed to save, Junius and Adelaide wed on May 8, 1815, at a local church. Several days later, Adelaide wrote her mother that she was married and “the happiest of women . . . getting as fat as a great beast.” To assure her mother she was not a “fallen woman,” she enclosed a copy of her marriage certificate.14 Their first child, a girl, was born five months later but died in infancy.
Junius’s big break as an actor came by accident in September 1816. Edmund Kean, one of the most raved about actors of his day,15 was slated to appear in Brighton. When he failed to show up as scheduled, theatre manager Thomas Trotter panicked and called Junius to fill in. Junius hypnotized the audience with his large, piercing, blue-gray eyes; melodious voice; dramatic pauses; and rapid change of facial expressions. When the play ended, the audience enthusiastically applauded the newcomer.
Some wealthy patrons of the Covent Garden Theatre happened to be vacationing in Brighton at the time. When they returned to London, they told friends about the extraordinary newcomer who was just as good as Kean. Curious to see the fledgling actor on stage themselves, they used their influence to have Junius hired for a “trial night” in February 1817.
Sally Booth, the Covent Garden Theatre’s leading actress, worried the upstart with the same name as hers would be an embarrassment. During rehearsal, she pulled Junius aside and asked him to tack an “e” on the end of his name. That way no one would think they were related.16
Sally Booth needn’t have worried. The next day, Junius woke up to learn he was London’s newest star.17 In four years, he had gone from sitting in the Covent Garden Theatre’s audience to being its star performer. An anonymous author was so impressed by Junius that he wrote a book-length biography of the new star.18
Relying on his Covent Garden fame, Junius began to demand and receive bigger paydays for his appearances outside London, sometimes earning five times more than his Covent Garden receipts.19 Despite his being away from London most of the time, he managed to father another child with Adelaide in 1818. Richard Junius Booth was born on January 21, 1819. Junius named him Richard after his father and Junius after himself. Years later, young Richard would turn Junius’s life upside down.
As Junius’s increasing fame spread beyond England, he began receiving invitations from abroad and left England with Thomas Flynn, his best friend, for an engagement at the English Theatre in Amsterdam.
A few days after Junius’s first appearance, the theatre’s manager received a note from Prince William of Orange saying he would like to see the young actor he had heard so much about. On the night arranged for the command performance, Junius was nowhere to be found. Panic-stricken, the manager sent Flynn to fetch him. Flynn could not find Junius that night or the next day and stopped searching. Fellow actors speculated Junius been drinking and had fallen into the canal and drowned. A few days later Flynn was playing billiards in a saloon when he heard a familiar voice coming from the backroom. He opened the door to see Junius cavorting with two prostitutes.
Tongue-lashed, Junius became contrite. At a hastily arranged, new command performance of Macbeth, he apologized to the prince and begged his forgiveness. He had been “studying Dutch under the tuition of two interesting demoiselles,” he explained. They were teaching him the “vernacular of the country,” and he had lost all track of time. Amused by Junius’s euphemism, the prince nodded acceptance of the apology and sat back to watch the play.20
Young Junius Brutus Booth around the time he met Mary Ann Holmes. Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library.
Junius was back in London in the autumn of 1820, poised to be London’s foremost actor and even greater than his rival, Edmund Kean. Strolling to the theatre for rehearsal, he was smitten by an eighteen-year-old girl selling flowers outside the theatre.21
Mary Ann Holmes was ten years younger than Adelaide and much prettier. She had soft brown eyes, glossy black curls, full lips, and a pale oval face.22 Years later, their daughter Asia penciled an “X” next to a day in October 1820 in her father’s date book with the following note: “The night mother first saw my father.”23
Junius was twenty-four at the time, six years older than Mary Ann, and in the prime of life. He had a high, wide forehead, a narrow chin, high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, dark curly hair, muscular arms, and expressive eyes.24 There was no need to introduce himself. By then he was one of London’s most recognizable actors.
Mary Ann Holmes daguerreotype photo. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
The 1820s were an era of free love among England’s intellectuals. Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley deserted his wife and ran off with sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin, who would later write Frankenstein. Shelley’s close friend and fellow poet Lord George Gordon Byron was rumored to have had affairs with hundreds of women. Byron’s poems were “abjured by married men and read in secret by their wives.” Critics railed at his “‘cuckoo strain’ of adultery.”25 Byron was amused by such comments. “The reading or non-reading of a book,” he chuckled, “will never keep down a single petticoat.”26
Mary Ann was an only child of devout Anglican parents who raised flowers at their plant nursery. They were simple people. Mary Ann could read and write, but there was little to read other than the Bible at home. When Junius gave her a calf-bound set of Byron’s collected works, she was thrilled with anticipation of what was on their pages. At night she would take one of the books from under her bed, where she had hidden them, and read it at her window by moonlight along with Junius’s passionate letters, telling her she was his “own soul” and he was “your worshipper.”27
Mary Ann was swept off her feet.
Mary Ann knew Junius was married when she agreed to run off with him. She could not imagine a more exciting life than being with him. There was another reason: she was pregnant. She wouldn’t be able to hide her condition from her “very religious and severe” parents much longer.28
Junius had a more mundane reason for getting Mary Ann out of London. If his adultery were discovered, the scandal would torpedo his career. Adelaide would sue him for divorce. He was facing not only ignominy but also debtor’s prison.
Junius had no qualms about deserting his family, but it was not so for Mary Ann. For a girl raised in a religious home, to run away and live unmarried was much harder. Junius assuaged her guilt by arranging a makeshift wedding at the home of Mrs. Chambers, one of the patrons who had used her influence to get Junius a trial night at the Covent Garden Theatre and who became close friends with him afterwards. Mrs. Chambers was sympathetic to the couple’s plight; she had also deserted a spouse for someone else.29 As part of the make-believe, she had an unofficial marriage license created for the couple.30 After the private January 1821 wedding, Mary Ann went home to gather her things. Among the few possessions she took with her was the set of Byron’s works Junius had given her. Meanwhile, Junius went home to Adelaide. He lied and told her he had lost his audiences and was going to America to revitalize his career and their finances.
Adelaide pleaded to go with him. Junius shook his head. Their son Richard was “too young for the voyage,” he said.31 He promised he would send her £50 or more a year, depending on how successful his venture became. Years later, when Adelaide found out Junius had another family, she demanded more. Much more.
When Mary Ann did not come home that night, her mother became frantic. Going through what was left of Mary Ann’s belongings, she found thirty-three letters from Junius (amounting to almost three a day).32 The only one party to Junius’s plans beforehand was his father, Richard. How he reacted can be imagined. A few days later, Richard called on Mary Ann’s parents to tell them their daughter had eloped with his son to America.33
While on their honeymoon, Junius took time to write to theatre managers in the United States for bookings. When he received a reply from Charles Gilbert, the manager of Richmond’s Marshall Theatre, promising a two-week contract starting on July 6, 1821, Junius told Mary Ann to pack their trunks and get ready to leave on the first ship to Virginia.