Far more than just “a novel about John Wilkes Booth,” “The Judges of the Secret Court” — haunting title — depicts the complex aftershock of the Lincoln assassination on a surprisingly large circle of people, including the various conspirators, the famous Booth family of actors and the Washington politicos who seize on the death of the president for their own purposes. Every one of these characters, even if he or she only appears for a paragraph or two, is conveyed with vivid, blazing life. For instance, Stacton sums up the care-worn Lincoln: “He was wistfully a little tired of doing his best to be the world’s father, when what he wanted, sometimes, was someone to bring him a shawl when he was cold.”
What most surprises about this “historical” novel is its urbane, mildly epigrammatic style. Stacton is never florid or old-fashioned. He writes with lean economy and speed, with what John Crowley in his superb introduction calls a “gripping cold attentiveness.” Even though most readers will know the general outlines of the events, Stacton keeps up the dramatic tension throughout: Will Booth manage to get away? Will the innocent, as well as the guilty, be hanged by a vengeful government?
Wilkes himself is depicted as a self-centered, spoiled mama’s boy, half dandy, half rake, an actor who looks upon his life as one constant performance. He has a theatrical hunger for fame, and no ethics, only manners. On the afternoon before the assassination, Booth briefly calls to mind his fiancee, Bessie Hale, the daughter of an ex-senator:
“Thinking of her, he made that little gesture, his favourite, which was habitual with him, a quick tugging at the handkerchief in his breast pocket, with head modestly downcast, like that of a white cockatoo preening itself. It went so perfectly with the single syllable ‘m’dear,’ which only actors seem able to pronounce. That syllable came out so naturally after some young miss had played the piano or paid a compliment: ‘M’dear, you have lovely shoulders: you play so well.’ ‘M’dear, you flatter me.’ He had been photographed making that gesture. It was his favourite photograph.”
Particularly proud of his crisp tailoring, this jumped-up Southern gentleman regularly studies the shiny leather of his boots, twirls the rowel of his spur. This vanity — a kind of hubris — neatly enough leads to his downfall: When the escaping Booth leaps to the stage from the presidential box, a spur catches in an overhanging flag, such that he lands awkwardly and breaks his leg.
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