Edwin Booth - Later Life

Later Life

Booth was married to Mary Devlin from 1860 to 1863, the year of her death. They had one daughter, Edwina, born on December 9, 1861, in London, England. He later remarried, wedding his acting partner, Mary McVicker in 1869, and becoming a widower again in 1881.

In 1869, Edwin acquired his brother John's body after repeatedly writing to President Andrew Johnson begging for it. Johnson finally released the remains, and Edwin had them buried, unmarked, in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

In 1888 Booth founded the Players' Club, for actors and others associated with the arts, and dedicated his home on Gramercy Park to it. His bedroom in the Club has been kept untouched since his death. His final performance was, fittingly, in his signature role of Hamlet, in 1891 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Booth died in 1893 at the Players', and was buried next to his first wife at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Read more about this topic:  Edwin Booth

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    “A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.”
    —Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)

    “The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)