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Briefly, the play was withdrawn.
Our mother says: “This was, I think, the greatest ‘let down’ that I ever experienced.
It affected me seriously for some days, after which I determined to attempt nothing more for the stage.”
She never forgot the play nor her bitter disappointment.
Many memories cluster about the gracious figure of Edwin Booth.
He came often — for so shy and retiring a man — to the Chestnut Street house.
We children all worshipped at his shrine; the elder girls worked his initials on the under side of the chair in which he once sat, which was thereafter like no other chair; the younger ones gazed in round-eyed admiration, but the great man had eyes for one only of us all. We gave a party for him, and Beacon Street came in force to meet the brilliant young actor.
Alas! the brilliant young actor, after the briefest and shyest of greetings to the company, retired into a corner with eightyearold Maud, where he sat on the floor making dolls and rabbits out of his pocket handkerchief!
This recalls an oft-quoted anecdote of the time.
Our mother wished Charles Sumner to see and know Booth.
One evening when the Senator was at the house, she told him of her wish.
The next day she writes in her Journal: “Sumner to tea. Made a rude speech on being asked to meet Booth.
Said: ‘I don't know that I should care to meet him. I have outlived my interest in individuals.’
Fortunately, God Almighty had not, by last accounts, got so far.”
Sumner was told of this in her presence.
“What a ”
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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