Adam Badeau is off in Louisiana, serving with Brigadier General Thomas Sherman. Edwin writes to Adam, and a bit defensively—“Cold steel & my warm blood don’t mingle well,” he says. He makes a joke of being too cowardly to be a soldier. In fact, the only thing on his mind is how a successful London season will accelerate his stardom.

Joe is in South Carolina at medical school when the first shots are fired at Fort Sumter. He manages to attach himself to one of the Confederate medical staffs working there and is wildly excited about it. When the battle ends, he deserts and travels to Baltimore.

He takes a room at the Barnum Hotel. Meeting the actor William Howell on the street, he invites him back, shows him a large, locked trunk. With an air of secrecy, he opens it. Inside are a great many grisly souvenirs from medical school and from Fort Sumter. Exploded shells, split rifle stocks, bits of skull and bone.

Howell will shortly be sharing a Baltimore room with John, the brother he far prefers.

—

John has friends among the Baltimore rioters and is outraged by the federal reaction. He and Howell fantasize about enlisting and rising to prominence within the Confederate ranks, but neither does anything of the sort.

John tells Howell that a victory gained simply through larger numbers and greater resources would be hollow, would be no victory at all. Such an outcome seems to him unsporting, insupportable, and therefore impossible.

If we are marked to die, we are enough

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more

is pretty much what John thinks.

Edwin

i

By the time Edwin and Mary leave for England, Mary is expecting. The sea journey is a trial. It hurts Edwin’s heart to see her rosy face gaunt, her appetite gone. He makes continual efforts to tempt her with one food after another, and she says that she likes being fussed over, but if he doesn’t stop right now, the contents of her stomach will soon be on the deck. Nevertheless, she writes her friends on arrival, assuring them that the ten-day journey was delightful.

In London, he finds rooms on the fashionable Bloomsbury Square, an area with trees and grasses, the street where the prominent politician Benjamin Disraeli had lived as a child. Still, the air is an oppressive mixture of smoke and fog. Edwin feels it in his throat; it makes him worry for his voice. An organ grinder chooses their corner for a daily butchering of some lovely tune. Carriages clatter up and down the street. It’s never quiet.