Those Booth Horses Again -

[L Verge]

I just have to relate a personal story in retaliation to the comment about how easy it is to shake off dried mud. We are talking mud stuck to 19th-century wool - not polyester. Back in the 1970s, my husband and I did battle reenactments. While my husband was a corporal, I refused to be anything but an officer's wife; so I generally bounced around in full, hoop regalia.

However, it always seemed to rain at some point on the May weekends that we did The Battle of New Market, Virginia. This was always a very popular event because it was one where we were allowed to do our thing on the original battlefield - and we were honoring the memory of the VMI cadets who were called out to go into the battle. Having learned my lesson of the rain and the mud from so many vehicles and cannon wheels to boot, I decided to forego being an officer's lady one year.

I actually wore one of my grandmother's plain, brown, wool skirts ca. WWI and a white shirt and shawl. I stayed in camp and did what the distaff side does in portraying the female side of the war. Throughout the day, my skirts got wetter and heavier and muddier. The coup de gras came when we had to struggle through ankle deep mud to get to the field where cars were parked. Those who had given up and left early left the rest of us with nothing but a sea of mud. RVs became stuck, pick-ups kept revving their motors until they were axle deep, and eventually area farmers came with heavy tractors to assist. By the time we got home, my skirt was caked-on mud up to my knees. It had even seeped through to my petticoats.

Despite the skirt's age, I stripped it off and left it on the carport overnight. The next day, I tried everything I could think of to scrape, beat, brush, and curse the mud off that skirt. Yes, several layers of it came off (a stiff hairbrush worked best), but I finally gave up and decided to take it to the dry cleaners.

I walked into the cleaners, laid the skirt on the counter, and explained the situation. Do you know what I was told? "Go home and get the mud out. Then bring it back and we'll see what we can do."

I am assuming that Booth's coat and slacks and boots would have been in similar shape, if he had been thrown to the ground and rolled on by a horse. If so, Mrs. Mudd had a mess on her nice sofa, across her ingrain carpet (if they had such carpet), and down her upstairs hall to the front bedroom.