Blond, goateed, nattily dressed, and sporting diamonds, Matthew W. Canning was in New York in July, hiring stock actors and stars for the 1860–1861 season at theatres he had leased in the Deep South.1 The previous seasons he had done well and he anticipated having another profitable season. Two of John’s friends from the Marshall Theatre, Samuel Knapp Chester and John Albaugh, had already signed on with Canning. When Booth met up with them in New York at the time of Edwin’s wedding, they told him Canning was hiring.2
John already knew Canning. They had first met in 1857 when John was starting out at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia. Canning was then treasurer of the rival National Theater.3 Good-natured, though easily “riled” when his patience was tried, Canning was aware John had not been a stellar performer at the Arch. He had mixed feelings about hiring him, especially when John said he was looking for a job as a star, not a stock actor. A stock actor was “a good actor and a poor fool” journalist George Townsend jibed, whereas a star was “an advertisement in tights, who grows rich and corrupts the public taste.”4
Before leaving on his honeymoon, Edwin had spoken to Canning about giving John a start as a star.5 Canning was noncommittal. He was in business to make money, not do favors. The New York Clipper praised him as “one of those managers who know how to manage.”6 Canning never paid a bill before carefully scrutinizing it.7
Regardless of how many tickets they sold, managers took all the risks. They paid for leasing a theatre, for renovations,8 the salaries for their stock actors and theatre staff, their transportation, any advertising and printing, scenery, wardrobe supplies, gas bills and candles, city taxes, and license fees to playwrights for using their plays. All that was in addition to what they paid the stars.9
Managers could only hope to make money by hiring quality stock actors and stars. Reputations filled seats. Managers who agreed to arrange and promote the career of an unproven actor as a star was gambling their time and investment would pay off.10 Canning was a manager, not a gambler.
John did not have a reputation as a star, but he had a famous name. Canning told Edwin he might hire his brother on the basis of his name, which he knew “would draw me money.”11 Canning told John he would feature him as a “stock star” for six weeks. He would give him star billing and a benefit once a week. He would not give him a star’s percentage of the profits.12
John agreed except for Canning using his full name. He insisted on being billed as “Mr. John Wilkes,” or “J. B. Wilkes.” Canning agreed, having already thought of a way to honor his agreement and still use the Booth name to fill seats. He billed John as “Mr. John Wilkes” but added,” brother of Edwin Booth, the eminent young tragedian.” Canning’s advertisement in Alabama’s Montgomery Advertiser for his company’s upcoming appearance in Montgomery left nothing to speculation: “Perhaps some little explanation might be deemed necessary in regard to Mr. John Wilkes. He is a brother of the eminent young tragedian [Edwin], but to avoid confounding their names, and thereby creating misunderstanding among theatre goers, he has consented to be known simply as John Wilkes.”13
Prior to opening in Montgomery, Canning leased the Temperance Hall Theatre in Columbus, Georgia, while renovations at the Montgomery Theatre were still going on. Columbus, located on the Chattahoochee River, with a population of about 9,000, was the largest manufacturing town south of Richmond and a major railroad and shipping center in the South. As the city prospered, it became part of a Charleston-Savannah-Columbus-Montgomery-New Orleans theatre circuit. Temperance Hall Theatre, built in 1849, was one of four theatres in the city and its largest.14
The troupe opened in Columbus on October 1, 1860, with John as Romeo (the first time he had ever played the part) and Mary Mitchell, Maggie’s sister, as the company’s leading lady, in the role of Juliet.15 When John stepped onto the stage, he was enthusiastically applauded.
Canning need not have worried that John did not have a reputation. He did—not as an actor, but as a Southern hero. Everyone with “intense Southern feeling,” should applaud Mr. Wilkes, the Columbus Daily Times editorialized, for having been among the first to “defend Southern honor and Southern homes” against John Brown’s invasion.16 The following night “there was an unusually large proportion of ladies” in the audience.17
Although he played Romeo to Mary’s Juliet on stage, there is no hint of John’s ever becoming romantically involved with Mary Mitchell offstage. Even had John been interested, an accident short-circuited whatever relationship they might have had. On October 12, during the last week of his appearance in Columbus, John was shot.
Accounts vary about how.18 Canning said it happened like this: He entered the bedroom he and John shared to take a nap, his gun still in his pocket. (“Everyone carried weapons down in that country, and so did I.”) As he was resting, Canning felt John taking the gun out of his pocket, but he was too tired to bother to stop him. John wanted to show off how good a shot he was, Canning continued. He aimed the gun at a mark on a wall and fired. Despite his reputation for being a crack shot, he missed.
Canning claimed he jumped up and tried to grab his gun back, but John held on. He said he wanted another shot, intent on proving his skill. Reluctantly, Canning handed him a second cartridge. The gun was rusted and the cartridge wouldn’t fit easily. After managing to load it, John continued scraping away rust from the opened hammer when it snapped down and the gun fired. The ball lodged in Booth’s thigh, Canning said. The bullet barely missed the femoral artery and came within inches of turning him into an eunuch. For a variety of reasons, Canning’s story is unlikely.19 The more plausible explanation is that the two men tussled for possession of the gun and Canning accidently shot him.
John spent most of the remaining week of the tour in his hotel room recuperating. He was still in Columbus when the company opened in Montgomery on October 22 to a packed house. The program opened with the company singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”20 It would be one of the last times the anthem would be heard in Alabama for many years.21 John caught up with the troupe a few days later but wasn’t strong enough to go back on stage until seventeen days after his accident.
Montgomery was a small, quiet town of about 9,000 before the war. Located on a large bend in the Alabama River, it was major depot for tobacco, rice, corn, and cotton (over a million bales were shipped from its wharf in 1860). Destined to be the first capital of the Confederate States of America, it was not a major entertainment center, but its theatre was still on the circuit of various concert artists and minstrel troupes that played the South.22
John’s six-week contract with Canning ran out on November 3, 1860. He could have gone back north, but he did not have enough money to pay for passage home. In an undated letter written from the Exchange Hotel to a woman he only addressed as “Dear Miss,” John thanked her for something she had done for him. He would have liked to remunerate her, he said, but “to use the language of the day . . . I am very hard up.”23
The Exchange Hotel where he was staying was Montgomery’s most elegant residence. If he didn’t have money to leave Montgomery, he wouldn’t have had money to pay for a room for an extended stay. The “Dear Miss,” likely had given him enough to pay his bill and then some. In the meantime, he filled in his evenings playing without a contract opposite touring stars Canning had hired, and his nights with other “dear misses” and prostitutes.
The first of the touring stars to appear at the Montgomery that season was Kate Bateman. John played Romeo to Kate’s Juliet. Kate’s father, Hezekiah Bateman, her chaperone and biggest fan, thought John was an outstanding Romeo and brought out the best in his daughter. They were so good together, he talked to John about him touring England with his daughter.24
Kate was overjoyed at the prospect of co-starring in England with such “a beautiful creature—you couldn’t help admiring him—so amiable, so sweet, so sympathetic.”25
The tour never came off. A “trifle” ended any further thought about Kate touring with John.26 The “trifle” was Papa Bateman’s learning that John was spending his nights with Louise Wooster, an eighteen-year-old prostitute. When Kate’s Montgomery engagement ended, Papa Bateman made sure his daughter never had anything to do with John Booth again. John was just as glad. In the same “Dear Miss” letter, John alluded to his parting of the ways with Kate’s father, “Thank God I am not yet a Bateman,” he wrote, “and may I never be.”27