From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a YankeeSimmons, Edward
General
From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee
Simmons, Edward
Artists -- Biography
He was a man who felt keenly, both mentally and physically. He hated to
be touched by anyone and loathed to be buttonholed. I remember a
well-known writer of fiction, who had the extraordinary capacity for
doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, eagerly presenting Mr. Booth
with a playbill of the performance of the night at Ford’s Theater. He
simply arose and went to bed, as he always did on such occasions.
Something of the same kind happened quite by accident when Booth was
visiting at Nutley, the home of Laurence Hutton, secretary of The
Players and an old friend of the actor’s. Booth had retired for the
night, when Hutton remembered with horror that at the foot of the bed
and in full view upon the wall was one of those same playbills. He knew
that if Booth saw it he would pack his bag and silently depart. What to
do he did not know. Finally, waiting until he hoped Booth was asleep, he
stole upstairs, crept into the room, and carried off the bill.
This sensitiveness about his family was not due entirely to the
unfortunate occurrence of Lincoln’s assassination, for it was shown in
various ways. One evening a man, who had become a member of The Players
by presenting the club with a second folio of Shakespeare, brought a
friend in as a guest and presented him to Mr. Booth.
“Why, Mr. Booth,” were the friend’s first words, “I saw your father
play. I was in the theater in St. Louis when, as Hamlet, he drove
Laertes off the stage and out into the alleyway.”
I saw Booth’s eyes grow dark and ominous, and, rising, he said:
“Sir, I do not doubt that you _think_ you saw that, but of course you
did not. That incident never took place. It has been told to me as
having happened in four or five different cities in this Union. Good
night, sir.” And he was off to bed.
Booth was a superman and showed it in many ways, but there is just one
incident which he told me, himself, that proves him one in my eyes. When
I see another man’s mind working, I compare it with my own, and when I
see that mind doing things that my own could never do, I realize there
are grades of mentality that I do not understand and cannot reach; so I
bow down and worship. I do not remember how the subject of religion ever
arose between us, but he said that the Booths had always been
superstitious folk and that he himself had at one time been almost a
convinced spiritualist. Having made up his mind on the subject, he was
talking to his friend Kellar, the magician. Kellar explained to him how
all the wonderful miracles were worked at the seances and then performed
before Booth’s very eyes, tricks more wonderful than any he had seen
done in the spiritualistic meetings. All of these Kellar explained also.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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