The applause at the end is thunderous. Asia claps until her palms sting. The Booths come back and come back again. They step forward individually. The applause for John is louder than that for Edwin or June. The Booths step forward together. They raise their hands towards their mother in her box and she, too, is applauded. The next day’s reviews will liken her to Cornelia, the Roman mother whose sons were her jewels. How proud she must be, the papers will say, with such jewels as these. No one will note how badly things went for Cornelia’s sons. Or that she also had daughters.

Two events mar the evening’s end, though Asia only hears of them the next day. William Stuart, the stage manager, is responsible for both. Stuart is the personification of bonhomie. Also of duplicity. First, he neglects to invite John or June to the after party. By the time Edwin realizes, June has already left, escorting Asia and Mother home. He begs John to come. An oversight, Edwin says. Please come.

But John leaves. William Stuart has never liked him and the feeling is mutual. He pretends to believe that Edwin is not behind this insult.

On the following evening, Edwin is due to begin a run as Hamlet. Stuart has posted the playbills all over the lobby. booth, they say. Edwin finds Stuart to object. “There are three Booths.”

“After your Hamlet, there will only be one,” Stuart tells him. In any event it’s too late. John and June have already seen them.

—

In 1867, the uninsured Winter Garden will be destroyed by fire, along with all the carefully commissioned sets and costumes. Edwin’s wardrobe alone is valued at sixty thousand dollars and all of it ash. “It gets me out of my contract with Stuart,” Edwin will say. “I won’t complain.”

—

From the newsboys that night, they learn that the fire in the Lafarge Hotel next to the theater was set by a Confederate agent. From the newspaper next morning, they learn it was only one of nineteen fires set that night in a plot to overwhelm the fire department and burn New York City to the ground. As a plot it was better in theory than execution. All nineteen fires were easily extinguished.

Next morning, while Edwin sleeps in after his late night, Asia, June, and John take the children out front to play in the snow. June and John pelt each other with snowballs. The children demand a snowman.

As they comply, June and John talk about last night’s performance. No one says so, but Asia feels an undercurrent of resentment that when all three are onstage together, Edwin is understood to be the star, even when John gets most of the applause, even when June is the novelty on the New York stage where Edwin is a fixture.