ALL FOR LOVE AND MURDER: HENRIETTA IRVING
Henrietta Irving loved John Wilkes Booth. When John betrayed that love, she knifed him. Then she tried to kill herself.
Unlike many of the actresses John spent time with offstage, Henrietta was not attractive. In fact, she was rather plain looking. Her most distinctive feature was her long, wavy brunette hair. The most theatre critics could say about her by way of compliment was that she was tall (“commanding height”), had “bright eyes,” “aristocratic hands,” and had a “finely rounded” or, as one critic put it, a “queenly form.”1 It was a polite way of saying she was stout.
The affair began in Rochester, New York, in January 1861, just weeks after John left Montgomery. The “young American tragedian of great popularity” was appearing for the first time as a star at the Metropolitan Theatre. Henrietta was his co-star. Her sister, Marie, had a lesser supporting role. Although John and Henrietta were both billed as stars, the Booth name was the draw. Evenings were spent on stage at the Metropolitan; nights were spent at the Osburn House hotel where John and the Irving sisters each had rooms.2
A “finely rounded” Henrietta Irving. Courtesy of Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Their first play together was Romeo and Juliet. At twenty-three, John could still have passed for a believable teenage Romeo. At twenty-eight, Henrietta was stretching it. Still, when the play ended, the actors received a warm applause from the audience.3
It was only supposed to be a week’s engagement for John, but the rest of the week went so well that Wellington Meech, the Metropolitan’s manager, kept him on for a second week. Elsewhere audience attendance had fallen off because of the “present disturbed state of the country,”4 but John and Henrietta were playing to “full and crowded houses.”5 It was the beginning of their near fatal romance.
Henrietta was born in New Bedford, New York in 1833, “of parents in good circumstances.”6 At eighteen, she became stage-struck after visiting New York and made up her mind to be an actress. She moved to New York and paid for acting lessons. When she thought she was ready for a stage career, she bribed Rufus Blake, manager of the Broadway Theatre, $18 to give her an audition. Blake took the money and gave her a tryout, but didn’t hire her. Her voice, he said, was too weak for Broadway. “You have youth, beauty and money,” he said by way of consolation. “Work hard and in time you will become an actress.”7
Henrietta was nothing if not determined. Three years later, in September 1855, she had her stage debut at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia8 where Charles Walter Couldock9 was the company’s lead stock actor. After the Walnut Street Theatre was taken over the next season by an opera company, Couldock left to go out west. Henrietta asked if he would take her with him. Talk to my wife, Couldock judiciously told her. Mrs. Couldock agreed, provided Henrietta pay her as chaperone, and pay Couldock $100 a month as mentor. Henrietta travelled with Couldock for two seasons. She never begrudged the arrangement.10
By 1857 she had come into her own as an actress. During a performance in St. Paul, Minnesota, a “gallant Chippewa Indian named Nam-tam-ab, or Great Blower,” was so taken with her that he came on to the stage and presented her with a diamond ring.11 A short time later, her time with Couldock ended. In the wake of the financial panic of 1857, when many of the country’s theaters closed, Couldock left to join Laura Keene’s company in New York. Henrietta was on her own.12 With no other prospects, she signed on as the featured star with William Henderson’s stock company in Rock Island, about 200 miles west of Chicago.
Rock Island was too small a community to have a theatre of its own. The “theatre” was the town’s City Hall that Henderson rented for $4 a night. There were no reserved seats inside the capacity 600-chair room. Admission was 11 cents, but audiences were enthusiastic enough for Henderson to book the makeshift theatre for six months, with a performance every night except Sunday.13
Henrietta bided her time in Rock Island until the financial panic ended the following year. By the summer of 1858, as theatres were back in business, Henrietta headed back to Chicago. In July “Miss Henrietta Irving” appeared in the starring role in the Chicago production of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.14
After her Chicago engagement, Henrietta toured that part of the country15 until November 1859 when she headed east for appearances in Troy, New York. By then her sister Marie wanted to try an acting career. In December 1859, Henrietta arranged for Marie to have her debut with the Troy Theatre Company.16 It was a decision Henrietta would come to regret.
In January 1861, Henrietta headed to Rochester to co-star with John Wilkes Booth. As was common among actors and actresses, John and Henrietta reprised their evening stage roles of Romeo and Juliet at night in their hotel rooms. For John, it was any port in a storm. “Love without esteem,” was how journalist George Alfred Townsend described John’s feelings for Henrietta.17 Henrietta believed their affair was much more serious.
John’s engagement in Rochester ended on February 2, 1861. He stayed on another week, then left Rochester and checked into Albany’s posh six-story Stanwix Hall Hotel, for his upcoming appearance at the Gayety Theatre. Henrietta and her sister Marie stayed in Rochester for another week to finish their own engagement. They were next scheduled at the Gayety, but not until March 18. With little else to do, they left for the Stanwix.
John was scheduled to play Romeo during his first night and Pescara in The Apostate, two roles he would play over and over in his career. The advertisement for The Apostate was supposed to read “Re-appearance of the Great Tragedian.” The printer left the “T” off “Tragedian.” Instead, the advertisement ironically read “Re-appearance of the Great ragedian.”18 Two days later, in his role as Pescara, the “Great ragedian” came close to killing himself.
The Apostate is about a love triangle that takes place in Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century. At the end, Pescara commits suicide alongside the lady love interest by stabbing himself. During this climactic scene, John’s knife was supposed to fall harmlessly on to the stage. Instead, when it hit the floor it opened. When John fell in his death swoon, the knife cut a deep, three-inch gash in his right armpit. Fortunately, a doctor in the audience was able to staunch the bleeding. After he stitched and bandaged the wound, John left for his hotel to recover.19
By happenstance, president-elect Lincoln, on his way to Washington for his inauguration, arrived in Albany on February 18, 1861, the same day John had recuperated enough from his wound to go back on stage.
Lincoln’s arrival was welcomed by a large parade down Broadway past the Stanwix Hall Hotel on the way to the capitol. Not everyone in the crowd was cheering. Albany and the surrounding county had not voted for Lincoln in the 1860 election and its mayor and state governor were both Democrats.20 Those supporting Lincoln strung a banner across the street with a simple message: “Welcome to the Capital of the Empire State—No More Compromises.”21 Like everywhere else, Albany sensed the country was on the brink of civil war. “Faces were pale with anticipation of what was about to come . . . . Blood was at fever heat.”22
The Delevan hotel where Lincoln was staying was just a short block from the Stanwix. Even if John had had murder in his heart by then, his injured right arm, his firing arm, was taped to his side.
In another of the strange coincidences of history, two of the invited guests at the reception for the Lincolns that night, Clara Harris and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone, were also Lincoln’s guests the night John murdered Lincoln.
While Harris and Rathbone and Albany’s other elites were hobnobbing with Lincoln, John was steaming. Although the war had not yet started, seven Southern states had seceded after Lincoln, the “black Republican” was elected. John had become, to use a modern term, “radicalized” for the Southern cause.
The day Lincoln arrived in Albany, John was overheard at the Stanwix condemning Lincoln for trying to persuade the Southern states that had seceded to return to the Union. Just a few months earlier in Montgomery, John had been opposed to the dissolution of the country. Over the Christmas holidays he had begun to think differently. Now that the South had seceded, he vocally supported secession. When the manager of the Gayety was informed about John’s outspoken views, he asked J. C. Cuyler, the theater’s treasurer, to talk to him about being more discreet. His star’s “violent secessionist” talk could hurt ticket sales.
As soon as Cuyler stepped into the hotel the next morning, he could hear John arguing with two of the other hotel guests. Heading off what might have turned into a brawl, Cuyler pulled John aside, saying he had some important business to discuss. Behind closed doors, Cuyler cautioned him. If he did not tone down his inflammatory outbursts, Cuyler told him he would not only forgo his engagement, he would be made to leave Albany. And not peaceably.23
John chafed. “Is not this a Democratic city?” he challenged.
“Democratic? yes; disunion, no!” Cuyler shot back.24
John meant Democrat with a capital “D.” Since Albany and the surrounding county had not voted for Lincoln in the 1860 election, John assumed he was not alone in voicing his feelings about Lincoln.
Chastised, John managed to keep his feelings under control for the rest of his time in Albany and remained a popular star at the Gayety—so much so that the manager asked him to stay another week. However, John had committed himself to appear in Portland, Maine, starting March 18, at Bill English’s Deering House Theatre for the next two weeks. He promised to return to Albany for another week once his Portland engagement ended. That promise almost cost him his life.
By coincidence or design, Helen and Lucille Western, English’s stepdaughters, were John’s co-stars in Portland. English was confident that with John and the popular “Star Sisters” on the same stage, all the seats would be filled.
John had not seen either Helen or Lucille since Richmond a year earlier, when he had been merely a stock actor. Now he was the show’s headliner. Both sisters were eager to play opposite the virile star.
Bill English knew his audiences. Despite early spring snowstorms, the Deering House Theatre was packed each night to see the flamboyant John Wilkes Booth as Romeo and the “beautiful” and “favorite” seventeen-year-old Helen Western as Juliet. Few would have disagreed with Portland native Nathan Gould that Helen was “one of the handsomest women” ever seen on stage.25
John thought so too. Since he was not expected back in Albany for another two weeks, he volunteered to be the lead male actor for Mrs. Mary Ann Farren, the Deering’s next star. Evenings were spent with Mrs. Farren; nights with Helen. There was another reason John was not in a hurry to leave Portland. After being with the beautiful Helen Western, John had lost whatever interest he had had in returning to Henrietta.
The two weeks John stayed in Portland coincided with the breakup of the “Star Sisters.” No one ever said why they split up. The timing of their breakup was too much of a coincidence not to have involved John. Helen and Lucille had been at each other’s throats for a long time, and they did not hide their enmity for one another.
Despite Lucille’s being married to James Mead, she was jealous John had chosen Helen over her. It was no contest: “The inspired irregularity of Lucille’s face was no match for Helen’s perfect and unblemished beauty.”26 There would be other men to fight over, but in the meantime, their career as a sister act was at an end.
The “Unblemished beauty” of Helen Western (left) and the “inspired irregularity” of her sister Lucille Western (right) in later years. Courtesy of New York Public Library, Billy Rose Collection.
John was still in Portland on April 12, 1861, when the breaking news about Fort Sumter flashed across the telegraph lines. The aftershock from Charleston’s batteries was felt all across the country. A “great eagle scream for war” echoed in every city and hamlet, North and South. In Portland a massive pro-Union demonstration materialized in Market Square outside the Deering House Theatre.
The rally galled John. He was especially irate at the Portland Advertiser’s enthusiastic support for the demonstration. A week later, he was even more angered hearing about a bloody riot in Baltimore on April 19.
Following the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers to quash the insurrection. Every state, including slave states that had not joined the Confederacy, were assigned their specific quotas. Some states, like Tennessee, seceded in response. Border slave states like Maryland were divided in their loyalties. Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city, was very Southern in its outlook and had major financial ties with the South, but large numbers of its people were also loyal to the Union. During the next few days, the city was on edge. Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks tried to muffle the tension by refusing to send any troops out of the state except to defend Washington.
Massachusetts was the first Northern state to send troops to defend Washington. On the morning of April 19, a train carrying the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment pulled into a Baltimore depot on its way to Washington. As the cars passed, a pro-Southern mob surrounded the Northern troops and began shouting insults. As the mob grew, rocks replaced insults, and shots were fired. The beleaguered troops fired back. When order was restored, twenty citizens and four soldiers lay dead on bloodstained Pratt Street.27
John was distraught at what he saw as the invasion of his hometown. When he left Portland the next day he was in a foul mood and departed without paying his bills. The Portland Advertiser bristled that Mr. Booth lacked “the requisites of a gentleman. He was extremely liberal in his offers and not sparing of promises. . . .to cut the story short, we have not seen the color of the gentleman’s money.”28
When John returned to Albany, the Stars and Stripes were everywhere as a show of support for the Union and a protest against the bombardment of Fort Sumter. As he rode from the train station to the Stanwix Hall Hotel, the foul mood he had been in when he left Portland returned.
John’s return engagement at the Gayety with his co-star, Henrietta Irving, opened Monday April 22, 1861. Six days later, Henrietta knifed him.
The attack was reported across the country.29 The earliest version appeared in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Sunday, May 5, 1861: “Miss Henrietta Irving—one of the Irving sisters. . . .entered the room of J. W. Booth. . . .attacked him with a dirk, cutting his face badly. She did not, however, succeed in inflicting a mortal wound. Failing in this she retired to her own room and stabbed herself. Again she failed in her destructive purpose. . . .the cause of this singular proceeding was attributed to jealousy or misunderstanding.”30
The Louisville Courier-Journal added some additional details. It began its story with an eye-catching headline, “All for Love and Murder: Miss Henrietta Irving, well known as an actress in Buffalo, entered the room of J. Wilkes Booth, at Stanwix Hall, Albany, last Friday [incorrectly dating it May 3] and attacked him with a dirk. . . . she retired to her own room and stabbed herself, not bad enough to ‘go dead,’ however. The cause was disappointed affection, or some little affair of that sort.”31 Other papers reprinted the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer’s report with minor details added for local color.32
Modern retellings have added invented spice, such as claiming Henrietta’s mind was clouded by “an alcoholic fog” from drinking heavily in John’s hotel after that night’s performance. When John told her he didn’t love her, “despite the fact that their relationship had progressed to carnal knowledge,” she lunged at him with a knife.33
It was not quite like that. John didn’t have a change of heart; he simply had a change of interest. Henrietta was nothing more to John than a plaything, his “temporary mistress.” All that week Henrietta had sensed John was two-timing her. When she saw him coming out of her sister Marie’s room, she was livid. Seething with jealousy and furious at his betrayal, she ran into her room, grabbed a knife, and burst into his room.
John’s face was his fortune. She aimed to disfigure it. John saw the knife coming at his face. He threw up his arm in time to ward off the fatal attack, but still received a gash on his forehead from the upward thrust. Henrietta did not wait to see if he were badly hurt. She ran back to her own room and plunged the knife into her body.34
Henrietta did not die from her suicide attempt and she was never charged with attempted murder. Either John did not press charges because he felt remorse at deceiving her, or the police accepted Henrietta’s explanation that John had tampered with her affections. For whatever reason, Henrietta was never arrested.
John did nothing to console her. John “took his women as he took his brandy, in long careless draughts, and tossed the empties on a refuse heap.”35 He bandaged his head, packed his costumes in his theatrical trunk, and left for Philadelphia to rest and recuperate at his mother’s home. Fortunately for him, the gash was near his hairline and he was able to hide the scar by covering it with his hair.36
A few weeks later John was in Baltimore, the “headquarters” for out-of-work actors at the dawn of the war, and ran into Bill Howell, an old friend from his days at the Arch Street Theatre. Howell noticed the scar on John’s forehead and asked about it. “It’s a wound from a knife inflicted by an infatuated, jealous and angry girl,” John said matter-of-factly.37
As soon as she was able, Henrietta left for Milwaukee where she had been warmly greeted when she had toured out west. It was far enough away from Albany for her to avoid gossip-hungry newspapers, and a place to recover from her self-inflicted injury and the psychological trauma she suffered.38 She never spoke of the incident to anyone and there is no mention of John in her autobiography.39