Preface
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Not long after I had written the opening scene of what would become Lincoln’s Daughter I began casting about for what to include in the wide frame of a story still under construction. Two new books had come into my possession—I say that as if they had a life of their own, but, no, I bought these two books deliberately. One, The Complete Works of John Wilkes Booth, a collection of letters, a speech or two, the draft of a book. Such a strange title, as though he were more writer than actor. The second, A Sister’s Memoir, a book which had been bowdlerized in the 1930s and came years later had been published by a southern state university press, by Asia Booth Clarke, the sister of John Wilkes Booth. It’s an affectionate book by the loving sister, living in England. It has a awkward history: kept secret from her husband, the leading comic actor of his day on the London stage, a man who did not want to hear the name of his infamous brother-in-law mentioned in his home; a book secretly left in the possession of Asia Clarke’s daughter, and passed down to a friend of the family.
I found myself reading about the Booth family, a family at least as great in theatrical history as the Barrymores. Reading is a dangerous activity for a writer. What you read can rub off on what you’re writing. Which is what happened. I would weave in the story of the assassin, or would-be assassin of Abraham Lincoln into my story. I wrote several scenes which might pique the interest of the reader, who would ask, I wonder what this is doing here—how will it fit into the story of Sarah, Joan, Will and the others?
I also was reading a massive biography of Walt Whitman, and that worked its way in too. Perhaps he might become his own character as the story progressed. Like a blind man, I was feeling my way along. But, as will happen when the Muses are on your side of the playing field, I forgot about my Mary Ann Holmes Booth chapters and rattled on to the end—I think I hear a Model-T Tin Lizzie lodged in my metaphor.
Suddenly, I was near the end of my story. I looked over the chapters I had written and spotted the several chapters, not from the 1960s or the 1830s but the 1860s. I could cut them, the Alexander-the-Great solution to the Gordien Knot. I was reluctant to perform such surgery. Instead I wrote the scene right at the end, where Will goes into the old schoolhouse. I confess I love that scene: Will wondering what John Wilkes Booth’s mother is doing here in 1834, and knowing she was there and not a phantasm. Mary Ann Holmes Booth thinking she must be dreaming; and so, sturdy woman that she is, she walks out of the scene and back to her bedroom in New York City. I can still see her determined strides carrying her eastward. In the scene that follows, from Will’s point of view, the question comes up about the woman they saw with Will.
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