The Truth About Booth?

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Agnes Booth, that is.

Last night, I was … as is my wont … researching in ancient texts, trying to track down the history of a burlesque blonde who went by the name of ‘Belle Land’. A very minor character in the world of the theatre, but sometime a member of Lydia Thompson’s celebrated ‘British Blondes’.

Well, I got more than I bargained for. For, to cut the shaggy edges off the tale, Belle turned out to be a sister to someone who was indeed celebrated in the Victorian theatre world: ‘Agnes Land’, by any other name, who made a fine career on the American stage under the surname of her second husband, the well-known actor Junius Brutus Booth.

So, I thought, where one finds little Agnes one should find little Belle, so with the skilled aid of my friend Allister, of Melbourne, Vic, I went a-looking. Why Allister? Because Agnes always said she was born in Sydney, Australia. Why do I say ‘said’? Because doubt has been thrown upon the fact, notably by Mr Pat N Ryan in a book on Notable American Women and therefrom delicately compounded on wikipedia. Et al.

Now, theatrical personalities of the Victorian age, like those of today, were inclined to invent histories for themselves, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found Agnes being (as it turned out) fairly accurate. [Marian] Agnes Land Rookes, was recorded as the daughter of one John Land Rookes of Powderham, Devon (x 19 November 1814) and his wife Sarah Keeble Salter (b Brown St, Marylebone 20 October 1811), and at least the third child from that marriage (Bristol 28 February 1837), after sisters Fanny Eliza (Bristol x 28 December 1838) and Isabel[la] (b Exeter 11 January 1840). But I do wonder… This from the Bristol press of 24 June 1837 .... ah! maybe it's Fanny ...

Now we get to the biographists and their funny seeming contradictions. Agnes has been said to be the daughter of an army man, born during his posting in Australia. I say, prove it. I can find no actual confirmation that John L Rookes ever left England. And Captain? Er. He was articled as a lawyer’s clerk but mostly just dubbed himself a ‘gentleman’. 'Esquire'. And one capable of fathering a child in three months. His younger brother, Charles [Cecil], bought himself a commission in 1842 and had a colourful military career in New Zealand's Maori wars ... but John ...?

Much nearer to vraisemblable fact is the alternative tale that Sarah emigrated in 1843, with her parents and Agnes’s older sister(s), and that Rookes died before he could join them. Yes, Sarah (and Richard and Rebekah) Salter did emigrate, with her two older daughters, as above, and her third daughter was apparently born in October of that year. Australian records are hard to trace at this time. That one is still to be paper-proven.

But nobody died. The pregnant Sarah and her family were, it seems, simply walking out on Mr Rookes Esq and getting away to the other side of the world. I wonder why. Anyway, John Rookes remarried one Sophia Elizabeth Nicol, daughter of a Devonshire Reverend and Professor of Hebrew, became secretary to the Seaton Gas and Coke Company, and had a sheaf of other Esq children before his death in 1867 (20 May). Sarah changed her life more drastically: she also remarried, but had no more children, and launched what I presume was a new career, as an Australian actress.

However...

It is a puzzlement to me that I can find none of these people in the 1841 British census. There are J L Rookes's mother (d 20 January 1860) and sister, at Cumberland Cottage, Elysian Fields, Sidmouth. With two children, Charles (3) and Isabella (1). But the children's surname is Fellowes. They are the children of J L's sister Frances Mary.  Sigh. So some time between the birth of Bella in Exeter and that of Agnes in Sydney our Rookeses left England and/or split up ...

Oddly, I cannot equally find any record of the family’s arrival in Australia. However, I see a 'Mr Richard Salter of Montpelier' in Bristol in February 1838, then I spot ‘Richard Salter of Sydney’ fined for skipping jury duty in 1844, and ‘Richard Salter, grocer’ going bankrupt in 1847. And finally a Richard Salter (aged 70) of 26 Union Street ‘many years the confidential clerk to Mr J G Waller, wine merchant’ dying in the same city in June 1854. Oh heck, don't say he was the Richard Salter of Bristol 'clerk to Messrs Miles, Jarford and Battersby, bankers', aged 53, jailed for 3 years in 1838 for forgery, and fraud to the extent of £7000.  

Rebekah née Keeble (m 1809, d 28 September 1869) seems to have been the daughter of a protestant clergyman. She had three Salter sons -- Richard, John, Jeremiah ... oh cripes ... Jeremiah Montague Salter ('accountant for Henry Nowlan of Muswellbrook' in 1844) jailed at Darlinghurst in 1870 for embezzlement ... Sarah's youngest brother .. 

Sarah herself shows up next in 1848, marrying the son of the respected but recently late Major Charles Thomas Smeathman, coroner, to wit Mr Henry Osborn[e] Green Smeathman ‘gentleman’. And clerk. And then in 1852 … on the stage ‘after an absence of four years’! So what, then, was she calling herself on the stage in the 1840s?

And is she the Mrs H Smeathman who is running Parker’s Family Hotel in York Street in 1855? Yes ... but only for a matter of months ...

The disbelieving Mr McKay says he can see no sign of Agnes on the colonial stage. Well, he didn’t look very hard. In March 1856, ‘Miss Marian Agnes’ can be seen, alongside mother, in Azael at the Royal Victoria. At the Lyceum, in 1856, we have Mrs Smeathman, Miss I Smeathman and Miss Agness. In 1857, mother is managing a troupe featuring both daughters at the Queen’s in Maitland where ‘the dramatic performances will be frequently diversified by singing, [and] by the dancing of Miss Agness’ (French hornpipe)'; Mrs, Bella and Aggie (sic) are subsequently to be seen at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, and then at Hobart (‘Miss Agnes Smeathman made her debut between the pieces in ‘a National Dance’). Agnes – from the start, the attraction of the family – then became a fixture at Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre, until on 5 November 1858 she took one last Benefit, and she and Bella sailed for California and what would indeed turn out to be fame and fortune.

The San Francisco shiplists confirm the arrival, in February 1859, of the William Kirschner from Newcastle, bearing, in cabin class, Mrs Smeathman and Misses Elizabeth (oops) and Agnes Smeathman. Step-papa must have joined them later. And the biogger who assures us that the girls made their debut dancing at Maguire’s Opera House in 1858 clearly got his dates wrong.

Between Newcastle and California the Misses Smeathman had, however, had a name change. They had become the Misses Land. I would guess that it is Agnes (‘Miss Land’) playing the title-role in Maguire's pantomime Don Juan, opposite Sydney’s Andrew Torning, and Laurette to his Jocko, in October 1859, dancing in The Naiad Queen at Christmas and then, as Miss A Land, playing with the Nelson Family in Captain Charlotte. Miss I Land starts to appear on bills in April 1860, but in a more modest capacity.

Agnes Booth

Agnes was on a fast track upwards. She rose to leading lady status, married (11 February 1861) – in spite of shriek of ‘prior claim’ from Milwaukee -- the ‘famous English actor’ (he was neither) Harry Alonzo Green, who died soon after (22 January 1862), and then his colleague J B Booth … and the rest is history.

Belle stumbled. When the girls came to California they took lodgings in a boarding house run by one Mrs Sarah Coles. They can be seen there in the 1860s census. Mama and step-papa were living elsewhere. Anyway, Belle attracted the attention of a well-off local (married) businessman, Charles Hosmer (1815-1889), and the result was a small Nellie (1864) and a small George (1866). Belle’s career in the theatre trickled on fairly unenthusiastically until both it and she died. Unnoticed.

Belle Land

As for the Smeathmans … papa actually got the best final notices of all. He switched from being a clerk to being a cleric and, as the Rev H O G Smeathman, set forth to proselytise the Navajo Indians. But the Navajo didn’t wish to be proselytised and, one fine day in 1864, they put a terminal bullet through the Revs head.

Sarah ended her days living in Manchester, Mass, with the Booths, and died there 27 April 1890, while Fanny (Mrs J Fred J Lincker) stayed, to the end, in Australia where she died 1 October 1906. Agnes outlasted them all. Bad Jeremiah went to New Zealand till things cooled off ...

I should add that Agnes became, in Boston, 4 February 1885, a wife once more. She married John B Schoeffel, theatre producer, and the transcription of her marriage certificate gives her father's name as John L Brooks, her mother as Sarah Brooks ... I assume this is a VSE for Rookes ... and says she was born in Sydney, Australia. Her gravestone, in Manchester by Sea, Mass is less forthcoming. But I see a record claiming 'born Sydney 4 October 1843'.

So there we are. Most of the tops and tails of the tales of the Rookes girls: one who became famous, one who had a long and comfy Australian life, and one who sinned and suffered. But who strutted her stuff, nevertheless, as a ‘British Blonde’.