Note D — EDWIN BOOTH.
Reading edition
Not Edwin Forrest Booth, as often and erroneously written. Our actor, born in November, 1833, derived his middle name from Thomas Flyn, the English comedian, his father's contemporary and friend. Edwin was the chosen companion of his father in the latter's tours throughout the United States, and was regarded by the old actor with a strange mixture of repulsion and sympathy,—the one evinced in lack of outward affection and encouragement, the other in a silent but undoubted appreciation of the son's promise. The boy, in turn, so fully understood the father's temperament, that a bond existed between the two. Whether to keep Edwin from the stage, or in caprice, the elder Booth at first rarely permitted the younger to see him act; but the son, attending the father to the theatre, would sit in the wings for hours, listening to the play, and having all its parts so indelibly impressed on him memory as to astonish his brother-actors in later years.