At the start of 1863 John was at the top of his game. Even Edwin had to admit his brother was a star. In late January, Edwin and Mary were living outside of Boston in Dorchester, near enough to be in the audience at the Boston Museum to see John in The Apostate. It was the first time Edwin had seen John act since the Marshall Theatre. “He played Pescara—a bloody villain of the deepest red . . . my brother presented him—not undone, but rare enough for the most fastidious ‘beef eater’. . . he is full of true grit,” said Edwin, “I am delighted with him.”1
Mary Devlin had a more distanced take on John’s performance. The audience liked him, but he “lacked character,” she opined, “he can’t transform himself.” His combat scenes were “strictly gladiatorial.” The audience was more delighted with the muscles in his arms than his acting.2
A month later, Mary Devlin was dead.
She had come down with a cold in early February when she had gone to see John at the Boston Museum. The cold turned into pneumonia, fatally complicated by the venereal infection she had contracted from Edwin, a consequence of his libertine days.3 Edwin arrived from New York too late to be at Mary’s bedside when she passed.
When he received a telegram from Edwin about Mary, John cancelled his scheduled opening at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia to attend her funeral.
A week later John opened at the Arch Street Theatre on March 2, 1863. He was anxious to prove he was no longer the stripling who forgot his character’s name at the same theatre four years earlier.4 He was also happy to be in Philadelphia where he could visit Asia at her house on Race Street and play with her two toddlers, Dolly and Eddie. John “lays on the floor and rolls over with them like a child,” Asia wrote Jean Anderson. He “laughs outrageously at me for having babies—to think that our Asia should be a mother.”5
Asia was pregnant with her third child when John was visiting. Her two babies were the dearest little playthings imaginable, she wrote Jean, but confided she was “sorry to be in such a strait again. Don’t be in a hurry to turn a lover into a husband,” she moped.6 John hoped Asia would name her new baby, if a boy, after him. Adrienne Clarke, a girl, was born May 23, 1863.
John was beginning to think of new ways to make money. Deciding one such way was to invest in real estate, he sent Joe Simmonds, his friend at the Merchants Bank in Boston, a draft for $1,500. The money was for a down payment in bidding for shares of the Boston Power Water Company, a company selling development property on Commonwealth Avenue. Simmonds was able to get the property for him for a little more than $8,000.7
John’s next booking was at the Holliday Street Theatre in Baltimore with Alice Gray as his leading lady. John would see Alice again and would carry her photo in his pocket when he died. Initially, however, there wasn’t any romance between them. After Baltimore John headed to Grover’s Theatre in Washington. The advertisement for his opening on April 11, 1863, hailed him as “the pride of the American people—the youngest tragedian in the world—a star of the first magnitude—son of the great Junius Brutus Booth—brother and artistic rival of Edwin Booth.”8 The accolades of the previous months continued. The Washington National Intelligencer called his performance in Richard III “inspired: He played not from the stage, but from the soul and his soul is inspired with genius.”9
British actor Charles Wyndham, one of John’s supporting cast, also saw the genius in him. Like many others, he was especially struck by John’s looks.
Picture to yourself Adonis, with high forehead, ascetic face corrected by rather full lips, sweeping black hair, a figure of perfect youthful proportions and the most wonderful black eyes in the world. Such was John Wilkes Booth. . . .He was the idol of women. They would rave of him, his voice, his hair, his eyes. Small wonder, for he was fascinating.10
None of the newspapers mentioned it, but a growth in John’s neck had grown so large it was not only painful but also beginning to show above the collar line of his theatrical costumes. John’s manager, Matthew Canning, said the growth “made a bad impression.” Canning made an appointment for John with Dr. Frederick May, a prominent Washington surgeon.11
Booth wanted it removed, said Dr. May, but was concerned the operation would prevent him from fulfilling his engagement. May reassured John if he “would be careful not to make any violent efforts,” it would not be a problem.
“Then do it,” John said.
“Young man, this is no trifling matter,” Dr. May replied. “You will have to come back when I have an assistant here.”
“Cut it out right now,” John demanded, “Canning . . . will be your assistant.” John was in no mood for argument. He sat down on a chair, leaned his head back, and exposed his neck.
“Now cut away,” he said.
Canning came close to fainting at the first cut. “Black blood gushed out,” said Canning. It seemed as if Dr. May took John’s neck partly off. “Booth did not move,” said Canning, “but his skin turned as white as the wall.”
Just as Dr. May was complimenting Canning about his being a remarkable assistant for holding up at the sight of so much blood, Canning’s stomach “gave way.” His legs buckled, and he crumpled onto to the floor. Fainting from blood loss, John tumbled out of his chair and onto the floor beside him. After Canning regained consciousness, Dr. May chided him that he wasn’t as much of an assistant as he had thought.12
Days later, after both men had recovered, John joked that the bullet that had lain in his body from the time Canning shot him in Columbus years before had “worked [itself] up from somewhere in the muscles [of his thigh] to his throat.”13
John was very sensitive about the tumor. He did not want anyone to know the scar on his neck was due to an ailment. He asked Dr. May to say he had removed a bullet instead of a tumor if anyone asked.
The next day, when John wrote to his friend Joe, he kept up the deception. “Am far from well,” he said. “Have a hole in my neck you could run your fist in. The doctor had a hunt for my bullet.”14 He told David Herold, one of the conspirators he later enlisted in his plot to kill Lincoln, the same lie when they first met.15
John was back in Dr. May’s office a few weeks later to have the wound re-stitched. He had ignored Dr. May’s admonition to avoid physical contact. His leading lady had embraced him with such force, he told Dr. May, that she had popped the wound open again.16
When he recalled John’s visit years later, Dr. May identified the actress who had embraced him so hard as Charlotte Cushman, but it wasn’t Charlotte Cushman. She was not in Washington at the time.
The actress who squeezed him so hard was either Effie Germon or Alice Gray. After his engagement at the Grover’s Theatre was over, John had leased the Washington Theatre for two weeks starting April 27, 1863, and had hired both Effie and Alice as his leading ladies for the makeshift company he managed to cobble together. (The Washington Theatre didn’t have a permanent manager or stock company. Instead it was leased by various managers for short-term engagements.) Effie had been his leading lady at Grover’s Theatre; Alice had been his leading lady at the Holliday Street Theatre just prior to coming to Washington. John had both their photos in his pocket when he died.