Tudor Hall

[L Verge]

I received the latest issue of the Booth History Spotlight, the newsletter for the Junius B. Booth Society and Tudor Hall, this weekend, and there are two, interesting articles in it. One is on the experiences of Edwin Booth in the California gold fields.

However, the one that I enjoyed most was a sampling of letters written by Junius, Sr.'s first wife, Mary Christine Adelaide Delannoy Booth. Looking beyond the great talent of this patriarch of a theater dynasty, I have often thought that, if I had been Mary Ann Holmes, I would have packed up my brood and headed back to England! His shenanigans would have done me in.

While I knew the story of the first Mrs. Booth, I used to shrug her off as somewhat of a shrew to pull the tricks she did upon arriving in Baltimore. I now look at her with a bit more respect for having been deserted and left to raise a child in the days where women received little help.

Junius Brutus Booth, Sr. may well have been a theatrical genius, but in my mind, he was also totally self-absorbed and did not care one iota for either wife or the numerous progeny he produced. Do we classify him as a Mad Genius or Drunken Skunk?