The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

4pp., 8vo (298 x 178 mm), folds, some very minor toning, minor corner losses.

In part: "I expect John home some day this week, he tells me he has done well - the last week in Boston was very good. Clarke took us last night to the new theatre, saw [Edwin] Forrest play the Booker of Bogota. The house is very neat and plain and was crowded, I think you would like to act in it if you saw it...I'm glad Mary is better..."

The present letter was written while Edwin Booth was performing at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York for an engagement that began on 9 February 1863. The "Mary" referred to here was Edwin's wife, who was stricken by pneumonia at the time and so remained behind in Boston. Though for a time she seemed to recover, on 19 February she suffered a sudden relapse and died the next day. The family rallied around him as a result, with John canceling an engagement of his own to be at his brother's side. Edwin, deep in the throes of alcoholism at the time, had been drunk at the moment of his wife's death and blamed himself for not having been sober and at her side; he would never again touch a drop of alcohol for the rest of his life.