At the harbor, they can only reach the canoe that will take them out to their steamship on the backs of locals who’ve been paid fifty cents apiece to carry them through the tepid water. Edwin is larger than the man he rides, which embarrasses him. He boards the California, his clothes stiff with salt.

But after the Isthmus, the flea-infested ship feels like floating opulence. They dine on cold salmon, broths, and crusty breads. Father takes a seat under the skylights in the dining salon and hardly moves from it. He tells stories. He recites poems. He drinks. Edwin spends most of his time napping or eating, or staring from the deck at the dolphins following them up the coast, the wonderful arc of their leaping. “You will be amazed by San Francisco,” Hattie says, appearing suddenly at his side. The ocean air has turned her cheeks pink, her eyes bright. Edwin looks at her briefly, looks away. She is with June. They are in love.

The voyage lasts another seventeen days, but the hard part is over.

xvi

A crowd meets them when they dock in San Francisco, a crowd made up mostly, but not entirely, of theater folk. The harbor smells of bilge water, fish, and fried oysters, and the bay is filled with the ghostly, decaying ships Hattie told him about. The California noses in beside a ship from China, its decks packed with more men than you would think could fit below.

Father’s reception is magnificent. A man in a plaid waistcoat lifts his top hat in an extravagant gesture. “Welcome the greatest actor in America!” he shouts as Father comes down the gangplank. The man leads the crowd in a cheer, as if conducting an orchestra.

Edwin follows, raising his eyes to the hills, past the shacks and mansions, all the way up to where white clouds coast across the sky. He turns to see the island of Alcatraz, all stone and scrub, the impossibly long-winged pelicans riding the air in great circles above it. The next thing he hears is his own name. “Welcome Edwin Booth! The most beautiful man in the city!”

There is no overstating how startled Edwin is by this. Startled first to be noticed at all. Startled second to be identified as beautiful. He’s been petted by women in the companies. He’s been told he’s pretty by women in the streets. This feels different. He’s both pleased and appalled.

He’s eighteen years old and California will soon make him, by his own accounting, a drunk and a libertine. About this period, he will later write: “Sin was in me, and it consumed me while it was shut up so close; so I let it out and it seemed to rage and burn more fiercely than ever.”