While John was making his escape from Ford’s Theatre, Effie Germon was on stage at Grover’s Theatre five blocks away, singing “Sherman Has Marched to the Sea.”1 George Wren was waiting in the wings about to go on when manager C. D. Hess came running over “with a face like death.” “Lincoln has just been shot in his box at Ford’s,” Hess blurted. Without thinking, Wren’s first reaction was “John Booth did it.”2
Inside the theatre, the audience panicked. Everyone rushed toward the doors, assuming the Confederates were attacking the city. Someone else shouted it was a ruse concocted by pickpockets to get people crashing into each other so that they wouldn’t feel their wallets being lifted as they rushed out the doors. Reassured, they headed back to their seats only to be told seconds later that it was true.
Like everyone else, Effie scrambled to leave the theatre. Unlike the actors and actresses at Ford’s Theatre, she wasn’t detained or suspected of involvement in the assassination. Since the theaters were all closed afterwards, there was nothing for her to do but leave for her home at 1129 Race Street in Philadelphia where she was living at the time with her mother. By coincidence, her house was about a block away from John’s sister’s Asia’s home at 1021 Race Street.
Effie could not have known John had her photo in his pocket when he died, but her memories of John were still vivid, and she felt she had to send Asia some words of consolation and an offer to help if needed.3 Other than Effie, none of John’s acting friends contacted his family to express their condolences. Asia said she treasured that small token of kindness.4
By 1866, Effie was a celebrated actress in her own right. Two songwriters named dance tunes after her, expecting that name recognition would boost sales.5 Sculptor Constantino Brumid used her image as the model for Columbia, the maiden sitting to Washington’s left in his painting The Apotheosis of Washington (1865) in the rotunda of the Capitol.6
Effie decided to stay in Philadelphia at the Walnut Street Theater, at that time jointly managed by John’s brother Edwin and Asia’s husband John Sleeper Clarke.7 The Spirit of the Times said she was “a decided improvement on the soubrettes of the present day with whom we have been afflicted, and combined with a beautiful face and figure, has a sweet, clear voice, which adds materially to her attractions.”8 She stayed until 1869 when she left for New York as the star at Wallack’s Lyceum Theater and married minstrel Nelson “Nelse” Seymour. The “doll-faced actress’s” rollicking performances drew sell-out audiences.9
Effie landed in the middle of a minor international ruckus when a young man, identified only as a “certain scion of English nobility,” became infatuated with her. Night after night he sent her expensive gifts, including priceless heirloom jewels. The impetuous “scion’s” family pressured the British government to get them back. Effie could not have been more surprised when England’s minister to Washington rapped on her door to negotiate for their return. Effie agreed to give back the heirlooms in return for their value, dollar for dollar, in other gems.10
Effie and Seymour had been living together for a year when Seymour read in a newspaper that Carlo Patti, Effie’s former husband, was returning to the United States from France with his new wife, opera singer Nully Pierls.11 Despite Effie’s having divorced Carlo, his coming to New York unsettled Seymour and he divorced Effie.
A few years later, Effie married again. Her third husband was a musician, known to history only as “Mr. Smith.” Smith died less than a year later, but they were married long enough for Effie to have her first child, a boy about whom nothing is known except for her naming him Harold.12 Effie’s fourth husband was minstrel Charles F. Gibbons. Like many theatrical couples, they were seldom together. While Effie remained in New York, Gibbons travelled the country and worked for many years in San Francisco before returning to New York.13
Effie Germon “beyond the boundaries of her bodice” before going on the Banting diet. Courtesy of New York Public Library, Billy Rose Division.
Now in her late forties, Effie had “grown beyond the boundaries of her bodice.”14 Her weight (the news media called it “superfluidity of the flesh”) was becoming a career crisis. She decided to try and lose weight on the “Banting diet,”15 a new, low-carb fad, and her attempted weight loss drew national attention.
After relating the success story of Fanny Davenport (another portly actress), the New York Daily Times reported how Effie Germon, “the charming soubrette of Wallack’s theatre,” was doing on the Banting system. She suffered from hunger and thirst and often felt weak. Instead of losing weight, Effie put on more pounds. “Stouter and stouter did I grow on that till I was obliged to give it up, so that of late I do nothing but take all the exercise I can, and that seems to keep me about the same weight from year to year.”16 In all likelihood, Effie had been cheating.
Now “thoroughly matronly,” Effie resigned herself to her weight and its inevitable typecasting. As the “corpulent grandmother” in Our Baby, Effie was “faithful to reality.”17
Effie Germon at age sixty. “I feel as young as I did at thirty,” but “I know my time has passed.” Courtesy of New York Public Library, Billy Rose Division.
Despite her matronly appearance, Effie was still a vibrant woman, but her marriages were less so. Husband number four, Charles Gibbons, died in 1881.18 Marriage to husband number five, actor Albert Roberts, lasted three years. Her sixth and last marriage was to a man named Fiske. It is unknown how long that lasted.19
In 1905, at sixty years of age and retired, Effie told an interviewer, “They say I’m too short for grandes dames, and of course I know my time has passed for soubrettes, although I feel as young as I did at thirty.” She would have liked to continue working, she said, but no one would hire her.20 Her last appearance on stage was in 1907 with Ethel Barrymore.
Effie spent her remaining years at the Actor’s Fund Home on Staten Island until her death in 1914 at age sixty-eight. Although she had once been a very wealthy woman, she had lost (or been cheated out of) her wealth and died penniless.21