Booth's Theatre

1869-1875

When the personal acquaintance of Edwin Booth and William Winter began is uncertain. Winter saw Booth act for the first time on April 20, 1857, at the Boston Theatre as Sir Giles Overreach in Philip Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts. They probably met when Booth returned to Boston the next year. Booth's earliest extant letter to Winter is the following hastily written cryptic note, possibly in reference to a personal dresser and a hotel.

1. Baltimore, July 29, 1859

Thanks for your advice — I have made the first offer — think it reasonable — hope he'll take it — as I must stay at the finest hotels his board would be heavy to have him with me.

Can't you give me some items about the 'Royal'?

Between this letter and the next a decade passed. But Booth and Winter probably met occasionally during this period if they did not correspond. They were undoubtedly acquainted. They shared mutual friends and Mrs. Winter had played Katherine to Booth's Petruchio at the Winter Garden in 1866 (see Letter 3, fn. 7). In a letter to Jervis McEntee, late in 1868, however, Booth mentions that Winter is among the critics "who do not know me personally."

This same letter to McEntee suggests some of the circumstances which may have motivated Booth to write Winter once again. Booth asked McEntee to ask Launt Thompson, who lived in the same studio building, to contact Winter and explain to him the "villainy of that d — d rascal Stuart." This Stuart was William Stuart, Booth's former friend and partner at the Winter Garden, who, after Booth terminated their partnership, had returned to his former career as a "yellow" journalist and was now attacking Booth in the press as he had once attacked Edwin Forrest. To McEntee Booth wrote: "Stuart is black at the core and will kill himself in time, but he can spit venom yet and should be hanged." Booth was afraid that Stuart would damage his reputation with the more respectable New York critics, among whom, he wrote, "Winter ranks first." With his new theatre about to open Booth desperately desired to retain the good opinion of these critics not because, as he wrote, "I fear their ill — but my good will towards them demands it."

In this context of magnanimous good will, Booth wrote to Winter a few days after the opening of Booth's Theatre, February 3, 1869. At first it seems an astonishing letter from an actor to a critic. Booth is offering Winter financial assistance so that he can become a member of the Century Club! Booth was a member of the club and Winter had been elected in 1866, but had been unable to afford the $100 initiation fee and the $36 annual dues, so that he had never been officially installed.

Winter's integrity as a critic and as a man was n