Booth's Horse Fell....

[John Fazio]

Everyone:

Booth could tell Herold, John Lloyd, Dr. Mudd and anyone else who would listen that he broke his leg when his horse fell on him or he was thrown from the horse or whatever, but there was one person he could not tell that story, not if he wished to preserve his credibility, which was absolutely critical to him. That person, of course, was his diary. He could peddle his cover story to everyone else, because they had not witnessed his awkward fall to the stage ("striking on his heels & falling backward"), his erratic walk across the stage ("like the hopping of a bull frog"), his mad exit from the back door of the theater ("hopped out of the theater") and his mounting of his bay mare ("after having some difficulty in mounting"). But he could not lie to his diary, because too many people in the theater had witnessed these things and they and everyone they spoke to after the event would therefore have known he was lying, thereby casting doubt on everything else he had written, which would have been a disaster for him. To his diary, therefore, he told the truth, namely "In jumping broke my leg".

John