Edwin and his manager arrive in New York. Uncle Ben’s promotional playbills lean heavily on the genius of the father born again in the son. He pushes Edwin to open with Richard III, Father’s most iconic role. Edwin’s instinct for his first night had been A New Way to Pay Old Debts, but he yields to Uncle Ben’s persuasion.

This is a mistake. Even those critics who never saw his father perform accuse him of superficial imitation. His voice is too nasal, his performance too halting. He has everything his father had, Walt Whitman says, excepting guts.

Edwin’s Lear, his Sir Giles Overreach, his Shylock and Richelieu find better reception and his booking is extended a week. Still, he feels discouraged. He’s getting little sleep as Uncle Ben shares his room, snoring loudly and arrhythmically through the night until Edwin, on the point of desperation, pours himself a drink and follows it with another. The spring weather turns bad—rain, wind, and an unseasonal chill. Perhaps this is why the theaters remain half full, the audiences torpid. But Father would surely have overcome the challenges of a small spring squall.

In the middle of his second week, two letters are delivered to Edwin. He’s recently risen, but wishing he were still in bed. His toast is burnt. There is a sour, stale taste in his mouth and a headache knocking dully about in his skull. He takes a sip of tea, which turns out to be cold.

One of the letters is from his mother. He opens the other. It’s from the critic Adam Badeau. Edwin knows Badeau by reputation. He publishes erudite essays on art under the pen name the Vagabond. He’s terribly sophisticated.

Badeau has sent Edwin his recent review. It begins:

I have been several times, of late, to see the young genius who is playing at Burton’s theatre . . .

The review does not suggest that Edwin has no faults. His acting is described as undeveloped, plastic, and chaotic. He sometimes mars the musicality of his voice by slurring his lines. But this is only to be expected in one so young. What is not expected—the moments of complete transcendence. These are the moments a critic like Badeau lives for. Everything wrong can be easily fixed. What’s right is beyond instruction. There is no Rubicon Edwin cannot cross with work and study. The review includes the usual paean to Edwin’s eyes.

A note accompanies the review. Badeau would like to meet while Edwin is in New York. Edwin need only name the time.

Edwin sets the letter aside and opens his mother’s. June has written Mother to say that he’s run out of money and Mother is writing Edwin to be sure that he has that same information. Hattie may be expecting again. June’s letter is unclear on this point.