Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/250

 370 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS EDWIN BOOTH* By Clarence Cook (1833-1893) T he great actor who world furnished. has lately left the in his own remarkable character and shining career, a striking excep- tion to the popular tradition that men of genius are the fathers of ordinary sons. The father of Edwin Booth was in his time one of the glories of the English and American stage ; but, even in his case the strict rule wavered, for his father, though not a genius, was yet a man of excep- tional character ; one who marked out a clear path for himself in the world, and walked in it to the end. How far back the line of the family can be traced, or what was its origin, we do not know ; but it has lately been said that the family was of Hebrew extraction, and came into England from Spain, where it had been known by the Spanish name, Cabana. The branch of the family that left Spain to live in England translated the name into the language of their new home, and from " Cabana," a shepherd's cabin, made the English equivalent, Booth. However it may have been in this case, it was quite in the order of things that this change of name should be made. It has been done everywhere in Europe since very early times, and is doing to-day in this country by new com- ers from all parts of the old world. The first of the Booths we read of in England was a silversmith, living in Bloomsbury, London, in the latter half of the last century. He had a son, Richard, who was bred to the law, but who was so imbued with the republican ideas rife at the time that he actually came to America to fight in the cause of Independence ! He was taken prisoner, and carried back to England, where, not without some struggles, he again applied himself to the practice of the law, and in time made a fortune. He did not, however, forget America, and we are told that he had, hanging in his house, a portrait of Washington, which he expected all his visitors to salute. • One of the ways in which the republicans of that time showed where their sym- pathies lay, was in naming their children after the heroes of Greece and Rome ; and accordingly we find Richard Booth calling his eldest son, Junius Brutus
 * Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.