The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes BoothTownsend, George Alfred
History
The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth
Townsend, George Alfred
Assassins -- United States -- Biography; Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Assassination
None of the printed pictures that I have seen do justice to Booth. Some
of the _cartes de visite_ get him very nearly. He had one of the finest
vital heads I have ever seen. In fact, he was one of the best exponents
of vital beauty I have ever met. By this I refer to physical beauty in
the Medician sense--health, shapeliness, power in beautiful poise, and
seemingly more powerful in repose than in energy. His hands and feet
were sizable, not small, and his legs were stout and muscular, but
inclined to bow like his father's. From the waist up he was a perfect
man; his chest being full and broad, his shoulders gently sloping, and
his arms as white as alabaster, but hard as marble. Over these, upon a
neck which was its proper column, rose the cornice of a fine Doric face,
spare at the jaws and not anywhere over-ripe, but seamed with a nose of
Roman model, the only relic of his half-Jewish parentage, which gave
decision to the thoughtfully stern sweep of two direct, dark eyes,
meaning to woman snare, and to man a search warrant, while the lofty
square forehead and square brows were crowned with a weight of curling
jetty hair, like a rich Corinthian capital. His profile was eagleish,
and afar his countenance was haughty. He seemed throat full of
introspections, ambitious self-examinings, eye-strides into the future,
as if it withheld him something to which he had a right. I have since
wondered whether this moody demeanor did not come of a guilty spirit,
but all the Booths look so.
Wilkes spoke to me in Washington for the first time three weeks before
the murder. His address was winning as a girl's, rising in effect not
from what he said, but from how he said it. It was magnetic, and I can
describe it therefore by its effects alone. I seemed, when he had
spoken, to lean toward this man. His attitude spoke to me; with as easy
familiarity as I ever observed he drew rear and conversed. The talk was
on so trite things that it did not lie a second in the head, but when I
left him it was with the feeling that a most agreeable fellow had passed
by.
The next time the name of Wilkes Booth recurred to me was like the
pistol shot he had fired. The right hand I had shaken murdered the
father of the country.
Booth was not graceful with his feet, although his ordinary walk was
pleasant enough. But his arms were put to artistic uses; not the baser
ones like boxing, but all sorts of fencing, manual practice, and the
handling of weapons.
In his dress, he was neat without being particular. Almost any clothes
could fit him; but he had nothing of the exquisite about him; his
neckties and all such matters were good without being gaudy. Nature had
done much for him. In this beautiful palace an outlaw had builded his
fire, and slept, and plotted, and dreamed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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