She’s also seeing more of Edwin, hearing his adventures and triumphs. She’s desperate to return to the old intimacy they once had when he was the brother she loved the most. Mary’s been dead for months. There’s no reason the rift should continue.

But Sleeper is always about, behaving as if Edwin has come to see him. When Sleeper leaves the house, Edwin usually goes along. They are planning on purchasing a third theater in Boston. They are full of plans. “I can’t give Edwina back her mother,” Edwin says. “But I can make her an heiress.”

Although he talks of money, Asia can see that the Winter Garden is a labor of love. For too long, the New York audiences have been fed the thin gruel of Laura Keene’s melodramas when they need the hearty nutrition of Shakespeare. Edwin’s planning to do Hamlet, and the theater is undergoing a long and expensive renovation, scenery and costumes commissioned by real artists, floating footlights, velvet seats, until it becomes the perfect setting, from tip to toe, from greenroom to gallery. Sleeper is mostly focused on the Walnut. The Winter Garden is for Edwin. Neither suggests including John in these profitable ventures.

—

As Edwin rises, John sinks. He is drinking heavily, fighting with people in saloons, whorehouses, and onstage. He’s getting a reputation as volatile and violent, and it’s harder for him to get bookings. There are several actors, Edwin Forrest among them, who refuse to perform with him.

He takes a tour to Leavenworth, Kansas, in the middle of winter and is trapped by a blizzard on his way back East. Forced to travel for four days by horse-drawn sleigh through frostbite weather, he becomes seriously ill. In Louisville, Kentucky, he collapses mid-performance.

He recovers, but his general condition is weakened. Specifically, he’s left with a persistent bronchitis, which some are whispering will mean the end of his stage career. It’s possible that, though he can still manage a single performance, his voice will never again survive the night after night after night. I’ll be fine either way, he tells Asia. The theater has never mattered to him the way it does to Edwin. Besides, he can make more money elsewhere. He’s started his own enterprise—the Dramatic Oil Company—and is buying up oil wells.

—

Asia should have known it would be Edwin to raise the Booth name again. Look at him, the coveted guest of the most consequential men in Washington, admired by the president himself.

Look at her, married to his business partner and closest friend. She begins to make frequent visits to the house in New York, intent on reestablishing her own centrality in the family. She’s a Booth through and through and no one should forget it. It’s insupportable that Rosalie should know more about family matters than she does.

ix