Joe was the one who went to Washington to identify John’s body, Edwin having been rejected as too recognizable and June still in prison. John had been sewn inside two horse blankets, a thing no one tells Mother.

It then takes Edwin four years to get the body released from the Old Penitentiary, where it’s been warehoused. President Johnson finally agrees to turn him over on condition that no gravestone ever mark him. None does. Still, everyone knows where he is. He’s buried beside his father in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

Rosalie succeeds at last in moving Frederick, Mary Ann, and Elizabeth to the same plot. They are mostly together there now—not Henry, buried in England, not Edwin, buried in Boston with Mary, and not June, buried with his third wife in Manchester-by-the-Sea, but all the rest. For once, Joe isn’t the one left out.

—

Asia left us her books. Rosalie left nothing but a few lines in the stories of her siblings. Edwin left the Players, a club and home for actors in which he lived the last years of his life.

He lasts long enough to see his style of naturalism become unnatural—too mannered, too formal, fossilized.

He dies on June 7th, 1893, at the age of fifty-nine. His funeral is held on June 9th. Joe, his only surviving sibling, is there and three of his nephews, along with his daughter, Edwina, and her husband. Joe Jefferson, Mary Devlin’s old guardian, attends though he’s been ill and looks it. New York’s judges and politicians and clergymen.

Artists and actors. So many actors.

At nine a.m. a huge floral tribute arrives with this banner: From brother actors of England. We all loved him. It wasn’t true in 1861. In 1893, it was. Good night, sweet prince.

The New York Times describes it as the most remarkable funeral ever held in New York City. Hundreds of men and women gather on the sidewalks outside the Players and around Gramercy Park to watch as his coffin is taken into the church, all of them reminiscing about how, on this night or that, they themselves were there to see the legendary Edwin Booth take the stage.

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