, Henry Byron, in London, of
small-pox. This grievous loss was, however, to be made up to him by
his son, Edwin, in whom he was to find the counterpart of himself,
softened, refined, ennobled, while between father and son was to grow
a strong attachment, a bond of mutual affection to last as long as
life should endure.

Edwin Thomas Booth was born at Bel Air, Maryland, November 12, 1833.
He was named Edwin, after his father's friend, Edwin Forrest, and
Thomas, after Thomas Flynn, the actor, whom the elder Booth had known
intimately in London. His son dropped the name of Thomas, later in
life, and was only known to the public by the name of Edwin Booth.
Owing to his father's wandering life Edwin had few advantages of
education, but he made the most of his opportunities, and indeed was a
student of good letters all his life, turning the light of all he
learned from books and experience upon his art. His youth is described
as reticent, and marked by a strong individuality, with a deep
sympathy for his father, early manifested; his father, a much
enduring, suffering man, strongly in need of sympathy, knowing to
repay it, too, in kind.

Edwin Booth made his first appearance on the stage in 1849 at the
Boston Museum in the youthful part of Tressil, in Colley Cibber's
version of Shakespeare's "Richard III." It had been against his
father's wishes that he had adopted the stage as a profession; but,
as his father had done in a like case before him he persevered, and
soon had the satisfaction of convincing his parent that he had decided
wisely. He did not at once come to New York after his success in
Boston, but went to Providence and to Philadelphia, acting Cassio in
"Othello," and Wilford in the "Iron Chest," a part he soon made his
own and in which he made his first appearance in New York, playing at
the National Theatre in Chatham Street, in 1850. The next year he
played Richard III. for the first time, taking the part unexpectedly
to fill the place of his father, who was suddenly ill. In 1852 he went
out with his father to San Francisco, where his brother, Junius Brutus
Booth, Jr., was the manager of a theatre; and the father and his two
sons acted together. At Sacramento, we are told that the incident
occurred which led Edwin Booth to think of acting Hamlet, a part which
was to become as closely associated with his name as that of Richard
III. was with his father. He was dressed for the part of Jaffier in
Otway's play, "