Authors: Clarissa Ross
“I don’t agree,” she said. “I feel that they will need escape more than ever. And we can offer it to them!” It was fortunate that P.T. Barnum agreed.
By the time they’d been playing a few months Fanny had established herself as a Washington favorite. Crowds flocked to see her, even including the lank President Lincoln and his wife. And more and more blue army uniforms could be seen among the patrons. It was not unusual for fully half of the males in the theatre to be in uniform of one kind or another.
Peter had managed to pick up several plays with
a war background and these were proving most popular. One of them,
The Girl From Richmond
, gave her an excellent role as a petite Southern girl turned Northern spy when she fell in love with a Northern officer. The play was offered on a regular basis in their repertory.
One night during a dramatic scene when she was cornered by a Southern officer who suspected her, a voice rang out from somewhere in the orchestra section, “Long live the Confederacy!” There was at least a mild disruption with parts of them taking the North’s side and many standing up for her.
Somehow the audience was quieted and the play went on, but whenever there were moments of high crisis the Union or Yankee shouts would come back. Fanny was relieved when the curtain fell for the final time after several calls.
Turning to Peter who had taken the applause at her side, she said, “I don’t know what to think! I wonder if we dare go on with a war play. The audience seems inclined to take sides.”
Peter looked angry. “If only that fool in the orchestra hadn’t began shouting for the South none of what followed would have happened.”
Still in her costume and make-up, she looked up at him, “You think not?”
“I’m certain of it,” he said. “We’ll not take off the play.” And with that he had taken her by the arm and led her backstage to the iron steps leading to the dressing rooms.
One of the luxuries of her success in Washington was a personal maid and dresser, a huge black woman named Gloria. The woman was fond of Fanny and liked nothing better than to mother her. When Fanny entered her dressing room on this late evening, Gloria was there waiting to help her change for the journey back to their hotel.
Fanny sat down before the big make-up mirror and studied herself in the glass. “How tired I look,” she worried. “Even with my make-up on.”
Gloria’s big black fingers were already unbuttoning her dress. The woman said, “Because you works too hard, Miz Fanny!”
“I work hard because I must,” Fanny said, rising and stepping out of the dress which Gloria took away to hang neatly for the next performance.
Fanny then skillfully extracted some cocoa butter from a jar and smeared it on her face. When her was covered with the greasy mess she fumbled for a towel and began to wipe it off. She worked carefully until every area of her lovely face was clean. Then she sat staring at herself as she sat in her shift without make-up of any sort.
The door to her dressing room suddenly was flung open and she turned expecting it was Peter storming in with some ideas because of the interruptions of the noisy audience early in the evening. But it was not Peter! It was another man in evening dress, wearing a cloak and sporting a dashing, black mustache. It took her only a moment longer to recognize him as the handsome, fiery John Wilkes Booth!
“My dear Fanny!” Booth cried dramatically and took her in his arms.
Before she could even manage a protest he was kissing her fervently, then holding her a little away from him, he went on, “I have only just heard! I arrived in Washington tonight to hear you were playing here and that David was dead!”
She said, “That happened some while back.”
“I missed the news, I swear,” the handsome John said, studying her with those burning eyes. “At last you are free to be mine!”
“Please!” she protested but he silenced her protests by pressing his lips to hers more passionately.
Fanny became faintly aware of two additional happenings. The maid, Gloria, screamed in the background and a male voice uttered a frightening oath. At the sound of the oath the handsome John Wilkes Booth released her and turned to see who had spoken so strongly.
It was an irate Peter Cortez, fully dressed for the street in gray jacket and trousers, tophat in hand. He glared at the intruding Booth and exclaimed, “May I ask what you are doing here in Miss Cornish’s dressing room?”
John Wilkes Booth was in no way intimidated.
He faced the angry Cortez and demanded, “By what right do you ask me such a question?”
Cortez looked startled, then angrily said, “The lady in question is under my protection!”
“You are wrong, sir,” John Wilkes Booth snapped back. “From this moment on she shall look to me as guide and protector!”
Peter Cortez seemed thunderstruck. He was not used to being opposed and he had not any true rival for her favors. He turned to her and reproachfully said, “You are not even fully dressed, yet you consort in this stranger’s arms! Would you kindly explain?”
“There is nothing to explain,” she said, thinking it was like a bad comedy. “Mr. Booth has just come to Washington and has not seen me for a long while. He came to visit me and since he is impulsive by nature he did not consider the awkwardness of the moment!”
Peter looked even more angry. “Are you encouraging him?”
She was beginning to be angry herself. She felt that Peter was behaving in a stupid male fashion and should show his confidence in her. She was the woman he had asked to marry. Surely he could trust her in such a simple situation.
She said, “I’m neither encouraging or discouraging him. I’m merely telling you the facts!”
“Bravo!” John Wilkes Booth clapped his hands and laughed at her anger. He told Peter, “Now, I suggest you be the gentleman and leave us to our privacy.”
Peter was plainly aghast. “Very well,” he exclaimed. “I leave you both to good riddance!”
He stomped out of the dressing room. A stricken Gloria stood by the door nervously watching after him.
Fanny told the maid, “I will not need you any further tonight, Gloria. You may go!”
Gloria came back and picked up her street dress and held it out for her to slip into. Fanny took the dress from her and in a curt tone said, “You will leave, Gloria!” The black woman did as she was told and closed the door after her.
“Damn, I enjoyed that!” John Booth said and he took the dress from Fanny’s hands and held it up with a smile. “Let me for once be dresser to a true beauty!”
She sighed and let him help her on with the dress and button it up the back. Then she turned to him with, “You know you have caused me great trouble tonight?”
“I?” he said innocently.
“Don’t pretend you’re not aware of it,” she went on with a hint of the anger she had offered Peter.
The handsome actor smiled and stroked his mustache. “That is a churlish fellow! He ought to know better than burst in on your privacy! Also, he gave you very weak support in the play!”
Her eyebrows lifted. “You saw the play?”
“I was in the audience for all of it. I would not disturb you before the end came. I am a professional.”
She stared at him. “Then it was you called out and caused the disturbance?”
“I spoke for the South once during the evening, if that is what you mean,” he said airily.
Fanny looked at the tall, cloaked man with disbelief. “You almost ruined the performance for us. The audience were hard to keep in hand from that moment on!”
He made an easy gesture. “You are too sensitive! Feelings are bound to run high while this cursed war goes on! We have tricked and betrayed Jefferson Davis to lead his people into war in the hope of decimating them! But the South will rise triumphant!”
She sank down on the bench by her make-up mirror and gazed up at him in consternation. “I hoped that the years might tame you a little. They haven’t!”
He smiled at her. “Then who respects a tamed beast?”
She shook her head. “Peter is very important to me. You have caused hard feelings between us.”
“Only if he is a fool,” Booth said. “And it does not matter in any case. I told you years ago that I wanted to make you mine. I will look after you now that fate has ordained that you should be free!”
She listened scarcely knowing what to say. Then she managed, “You forget that Peter Cortez is my leading man. Would you be willing to take his place if he deserts me in a rage?”
“I’ll wire Barnum tonight that I’m ready to take on his roles,” the dramatic John announced.
“You are truly larger than life,” she sighed. “I had forgotten. I shall have to get used to you again. Where have you been?”
“In my beloved South and in the West and most recently in New York. Edwin is in England and Junius in California and the stage is mine in this part of the world. Already I’m being hailed as more suited to fill my later father’s shoes than Edwin!”
“You are a fine actor,” she agreed. “But you spoil it all with your excesses.”
“Excess is the key to my acting,” he ranted. “I have been touring in
The Apostate
. We opened in Montgomery, Alabama, and have moved Northward. The critics have universally hailed my acting as Pescara to be filled with fury and horror. And in Albany a group of spiritualists came out with a statement that my father’s troubled spirit must be hovering over me! What do you say to that?”
“I say you should learn to control your temper off the stage however useful it may be to you when on,” she said.
John Wilkes Booth strode back and forth in the gaslight dressing room, bubbling with anger. “This damned Lincoln! A rail-splitter pretending to be King! I was in Albany when he was on his way to Washington for his inauguration. The man is a monster!”
“Many think him a Saint!”
“The more fools they!” he said, swinging around on her angrily.
She rose and told him firmly, “l do not wish to become involved in your American politics or the war. I am an English woman.”
“You are here and you will be involved,” he said, melodramatically pointing a finger at her.
“If you are so loyal to the South why do you not remain there and join the Confederate army?”
Booth looked startled for a moment and had no reply. Then he spoke in a less intense tone, saying, “For two reasons, I stay in the North chiefly because it is where I must earn my reputation as an actor to become
the
Booth! It is the only way I can wrest my father’s fame from Edwin. And my other purpose is by remaining here I may be able to help the Southern cause.”
“Not by making wild statements in theatres!” she told him scornfully.
“Do not be deceived,” he said. “That also has its place. But more importantly as an actor I’m allowed to move between North and South. That gives me the opportunity of doing important services for the cause I do admire.”
She did not stop to analyze this then but later she was to think much about it. Instead she wearily reached for her cloak with its hood attached and flung it over her shoulders. She said, “I’m tired. I must go back to my hotel.”
“Forgive me for going on so and asking you nothing about yourself and your own affairs,” he apologized.
Fanny’s smile was thin. “You are obviously so wrapped up in John Wilkes Booth you have little thought for anything or anyone else.”
“Not true!” he protested. “I want to know more about you.” He halted before her as if to take her in his arms again. And in a softer tone he said, “You cannot doubt I adore you?”
She sighed. “Incorrigible! I have a dreadful headache. You may escort me to my hotel if you like or let me find my own way.”
“I shall get you a carriage,” he insisted, following her out of the dressing room.
“It is only a short walk,” she said. “I do not need a carriage.”
“I will be at your side,” he said.
She made her way down the iron steps and stood for a moment watching the stage crew changing the set for the next afternoon’s performance. Then she said goodnight to the elderly stage door man and stepped outside. John was at her side as he’d promised.
The night had turned cool and a land fog had fallen over the great city as a result of the clash of daylight heat and this marked change of temperature.
They strolled slowly along the murky street of the war torn capitol. Occasionally they passed a gas lamp which gave an eerie yellow glow for a short distance showing the minute particles of moisture flowing by. Every so often a carriage would come clattering along the cobble-stoned street, its driver outlined against the fog by the lantern at his side. And stray figures of the night suddenly materialized out of the dark shadows and passed them by.
Fanny was enjoying the company of the temporarily silent and subdued John Booth to his usual gregarious self. And she realized that she and the actor had much in common, both were dedicated to the stage and ambitious. Peter Cortez had no such dedication as a rich, young man. He pretended great interest to please her. But she was not deceived into thinking he would ever be as serious about his acting as she was about hers.
One of the reasons she had held back from marrying him was because she feared that once she was his wife he might ask her to give up the stage. There was no reason why either of them would have to work if she married him. He was wealthy enough, by his own account, to look after them for the balance of their lives.