Edwin Booth — What Makes Us Truly Important?

Acting Is for Man's True Importance

Aesthetic Realism taught me that art, including the art of acting, makes us truly important. In his great lecture "Aesthetic Realism as Beauty: Acting," Mr. Siegel said:

Th[e] possibility of loving the world that we have through acting is much worthy of study...Everybody wants to be himself, and that means being other things besides himself. And in order to be other things besides ourself, we must put aside our self while still having it. As we do this, whether we go on the stage or not, we honor the principle of acting.

Edwin Booth first acted with his father in Shakespeare's Richard II, at the age of sixteen. From then on father and son acted together frequently, but in 1852 Junius Booth died. Edwin was despondent for months. Then he began to act on his own and soon he became popular. Booth was dashing and thoughtful. Eleanor Ruggles writes:

People wheeled in their tracks for a sight of him tearing to rehearsal...on a high, white horse...he had a mass of black hair and a face like a cameo.

At twenty-three Edwin Booth met the sixteen year old actress Mary Devlin as they played Romeo and Juliet. Mary Devlin saw something very fine in him, and encouraged him to be serious in a new way. Years later their daughter Edwina wrote: "He has told me that she was always his severest, and therefore his kindest critic." I respect this in Mary Devlin. She worked with her husband to come to a style of acting truthful to who he was. She once wrote to him:

You must not forget to tell me of your studies; they interest me alike with the movements of your heart. Dear Edwin, I will never allow you to droop for a single moment; for I know the power that dwells within your eye.

Mary Devlin and Edwin Booth were married in 1860 on West 11th Street in New York City. Unknowingly, like men and women everywhere, they had two purposes in their marriage, which only Aesthetic Realism explains—one, a true care for the world that showed in their seriousness about acting. But they also used each other to be exclusive and superior to people. Eleanor Ruggles writes that "the young couple held the world at arm's length."

I also think Booth used his wife's devotion to feel he didn't need to know her, to see her feelings as important. I am tremendously grateful for questions Class Chairman, Ellen Reiss, so kindly has asked me in Aesthetic Realism classes, such as: "Do you want to know a woman for the means of knowing yourself, or getting as much approval as possible?" "Do you want a woman to be as good as she can be or serve you in some way?"

My purpose was the second—I wanted a woman to make me the most important thing and this made me mean, which I regret. I am so grateful to Miss Reiss and Aesthetic Realism for what I am learning about love, what it means to really care for a woman—to have good will. And it makes me so happy to continue learning in my nine-year marriage to Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman. I feel important trying to know who Meryl is, learning from her straight and humorous criticism of me, studying together in classes with Miss Reiss where we learn about ourselves and the world. Aesthetic Realism is beautiful sanity about what makes a person important and love, and I want men and women everywhere to know it.

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