“It seems to me that when people think about brothers at all, they think about sibling rivalry,” says George Colt, author of the new book “Brothers” (Scribner). And why wouldn’t they? It’s a story as old as Cain and Abel.
“I found it shocking,” Colt writes, “that the first fraternal relationship in the Bible — the very first brothers, we were led to believe, from the very first family on earth — ended in murder.”
For the record, Colt sympathized with Cain: Abel was a one-upper, an epic brownnoser, too concerned with whether authority figures liked him — much as Colt suspected himself to be as a young boy, qualities that he did not, even at such a young age, admire in himself.
“The Bible’s lessons were unmistakable,” he writes. “Brothers compete for the attention of their parents and for the attention of their symbolic parent, God.”
Colt, the middle of three boys, has long been fascinated by the dynamic among brothers, who tend to be more contentious and rivalrous with each other than sisters, or brothers and sisters.
Colt’s case studies bear that out. Among them: a brother who assassinates a president (John Wilkes and Edwin Booth), or is being groomed to become one at your expense (Joe and Jack Kennedy) or whelps out abuse over decades (John Harvey and cereal magnate Will Kellogg) — these are things that would break most bonds. What’s most fascinating about each of these cracked relationships, however, is the desire, most often on the part of the wounded brother, to understand what went wrong, to try to work out any way in which they might broach some reconciliation with their wayward brother.
In these cases, it’s often in vain.
“There’s a lot more written about sisters than brothers, about their bonding and closeness,” Colt says. “What was a little sad to me is how many sets of brothers that are rivalrous don’t end up forging a bond.”
Not only that: there are a number of famous brothers, Colt points out, who embark on starkly divergent paths: Al and Vincenzo Capone (gangster; law enforcement), Jimmy and Billy Carter (president; drunk), Bill and Roger Clinton (president; drinking problem), John and Moses brown (slave trader; abolitionist), Melvin and Huey Newton (professor; Black Panther).
“Paradoxically,” Colt writes, “the longer they live together, the more different siblings become.”
And there may be no greater example of this than the most famous brothers born of a conflict known as one that pitted “brother against brother”: the Civil War.
THE BOOTHS
Sharing parents doesn’t make you the same
John (left) tortured younger brother Will, but regretted it in a death-bed apology. (AP)
Joe (right) was groomed to become president, but could never escape the valor of his younger brother. (Getty Images)
Edwin Booth was the most acclaimed stage actor in America; his younger brother, John, not quite as good but considered the 19th century version of People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”
Colt quotes an admirer: “Picture yourself Adonis, with high forehead, ascetic face corrected by rather full lips, sweeping black hair, a figure of perfect youthful proportions and the most wonderful black eyes in the world.” And that from a fellow actor.
Though Edwin was the far more gifted, the brothers were exceptionally close, disagreeing only on one matter: Edwin was for the preservation of the Union; John, as we well know, was not. It was this difference alone that caused a profound rift in their relationship, and it was this that Colt found most compelling: How could two people who grew up in the same family be so vastly, intractably different?
The answer, it turns out, is one that modern psychology has unearthed: All siblings grow up in different “micro-environments.” The way each child is parented, disciplined, loved, encouraged or discouraged, tended to or ignored — these things vary so wildly from child to child that research has found people have as little similarity with strangers as their own siblings.
Colt cites the work of David Lykken, a behavioral scientist who compares the genetic composition of siblings to “people who receive the same telephone numbers arranged in a different sequence. Just as those telephone numbers, when dialed, will result in entirely different connections, genes that have been scrambled will express themselves in widely different personalities.”
Add in a confluence of external influences — from different teachers to friends to parents themselves, who despite their best efforts raise each child differently — and it’s not hard to see why two siblings could pass for strangers. As Colt writes, “In effect, each child grows up in a different family.”
In the case of the Booths, John, the youngest, was the favorite: spoiled, entitled and never reprimanded, let alone punished. He ditched school, got drunk, shot cats. Edwin, five years older than John, was the dutiful eldest child, forced to drop out of school at 13 to follow his father — also an acclaimed actor, but one known for being a drunk and most likely insane — around the country.
Later, it was Edwin who saw promise in John, who got him cast in supporting roles in the Shakespearean tragedies in which Edwin always starred: “Hamlet,” “Richard III,” “Othello.”
The Civil War tore them apart.
“If it were not for mother,” John told their sister, “I would not enter Edwin’s house.”
At the time, Edwin and John were both in rehearsals for a production of “Julius Caesar” in New York City, John now actively, silently plotting against Abraham Lincoln.
Nevertheless, when Edwin learned that Lincoln had been shot by an assassin who was reported to have shouted “Sic semper tyrannis!” while flourishing a dagger, he knew it was John, who had one key flaw as an actor: overselling the moment.
Edwin became a recluse, sitting wordlessly in his Manhattan apartment, buying an ad in the newspaper to express his abject sorrow and mortification. He testified against his brother. He went on to perform in nearly every state but chose never again to visit or work in Washington, DC. Though Edwin was castigated by the New York Herald for daring to return to the stage less than a year after the assassination (he needed the money), on opening night the crowd lept to its feet and showered him with applause. Still, he never broke free of his shame.
And he never broke free of John. When Edwin died in 1899 in his room above the Players Club, which he founded, on Gramercy Park, his daughter was at his bedside. There was only one photograph of any of Edwin’s siblings on his end table, and that was of John.
THE KELLOGGS
‘Stockholm syndrome’ of violent sibling rivalry
These brothers, born shortly after the Civil War, “are less well-known,” Colt says. “But it fascinated me that they could have worked together for 20 years and been so rivalrous.”
John was the 10th and Will the 12th of 14 children, born eight years apart to Seventh-day Adventists. Artistically inclined, John showed no interest in school and dropped out at the age of 10 to work in his father’s broom factory. He was, however, a voracious reader and a stern taskmaster, bossing Will around — not just at the factory but at home. John made Will (considered dim by his parents and teachers) shine his shoes. John would warm his cold feet on Will’s back. If Will displeased his older brother, John beat him up.
“Sibling rivalry may push people to greatness,” Colt writes. “It may also do great damage.”
He cites a 2006 study of 2,000 children between 2 and 17; 35% of them reported that they’d been physically assaulted by a sibling within the past year. Yet Colt also notes that symbolic fratricide occurs far more often than actual fratricide.
When, well into adulthood, John asked Will to come work for him, Will said yes. John’s business? He founded and ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Mich.
Without an office for 10 years nor a job title for his entire tenure, Will did everything from bookkeeping to managing his brother’s ancillary businesses (health foods, exercise equipment). When John needed Will to take dictation, it was usually while John rode his bike and Will ran beside him. He was denied even a week’s vacation for the first seven years of employment. Just as when they were children, John would make Will shine his shoes and sometimes give him a shave. Despite this workload, Will made so little money he was often in debt.
Of all his many and weighty tasks, there was one at which Will excelled: concocting, at his brother’s behest, nut-and-grain-based health foods. In the mid-1890s, in the basement of his brother’s sanitarium, Will Kellogg invented the first breakfast cereal with flakes, and when John refused to acknowledge the viability of the product, Will, in a fury, quit.
Will went on to become a cereal magnate; by the 1930s, his company was worth $5.7 million ($66 billion in today’s dollars).
The brothers spent the next 20 years suing each other. They would occasionally approach a delicate peace, but it was never substantial and always collapsed. They had their last falling out when John was 90, Will 82. John was decompensating, and the board of his sanitarium wanted him out; Will tried to convince John to retire, and when that didn’t work, Will attempted a coup.
They sued each other again, but before the judge could rule, John died in his sleep.
For all the famous falling-outs Colt references — the late painter Lucian Freud, for example, didn’t speak to his brother Clement for 50 years, either over a childhood race or a gambling debt, no one knows for sure — most attempt some form of reconciliation. It’s usually impending mortality — illness, injury, old age — that prompts the attempt.
Before John passed away, he’d written Will a seven-page letter of apology, which he’d asked his secretary to deliver well before his death. “I earnestly desire to make amends for any wrong or injustice of any sort I have done to you,” he wrote.
The brothers were not to have a final peace; John’s secretary never delivered the letter to Will, who did not learn of its existence until five years after his brother’s death. The secretary, Colt says, “thought the letter would portray John in a bad light.”
The KENNEDYS
The destiny of birth order — upended
‘The most rivalrous people ever,” Colt says. “The line of succession with the Kennedys was every bit as rigid as that for the English throne.”
Colt notes that “differential treatment of siblings according to birth order has been culturally sanctioned, even institutionalized, for much of recorded history.”
Research has shown that firstborns typically learn to walk and talk faster than later-borns, are smarter and more ambitious and tend toward leadership positions. Second-borns tend to be more adaptable and open to experience, yet they also may find themselves in deep competition with the eldest. Last-borns toggle the poles of being spoiled yet sometimes forgotten (Ted Kennedy, youngest of nine, was adored by his parents yet often left to fend for himself).
Joe, the eldest child, was being groomed to become the first Catholic president by patriarch Joe Sr., and so convinced were their parents of Joe’s innate superiority that when second-eldest Jack tested higher on an IQ test — in the third grade — they insisted there must have been an error.
John, dispirited, made an active choice to go the other way — to become, in Colt’s words, “a rogue and a rebel.” It did nothing to douse the brothers’ intense rivalry, and their physical fights were so vicious that Bobby would fly up the stairs and attempt to shield his sisters from what was going on below. Yet they could be fiercely protective of each other — when Jack watched Joe fall behind during a sailboat race, he cut the gunner off in his motorboat, ensuring Joe’s win.
It was a philosophy that had been drilled into the Kennedys from he time they were children. “We want winners,” Joe Kennedy declared, often and obstreperously. “We don’t want losers around here.”
The rivalry between Joe and Jack extended into adulthood, and when Jack distinguished himself as a war hero — dragging his badly injured machinist to shore by his teeth after his boat, PT-109, was sunk in the Pacific — it was more than Joe could handle.
At a later celebration thrown in Hyannisport, Joe had actually deluded himself that the hero about to be toasted was not his brother but Joe himself, and when Jack was singled out, he fled to his room in tears and frustration.
It was this moment, many historians believe, that spurred Joe to outshine his younger brother in the theater of war. In 1944, he usurped another Navy pilot to take on what, in retrospect, seems a suicide mission, well known to be one of the most dangerous bombing attempts of the war. The plane exploded mid-flight, killing Kennedy and his co-pilot.
Jack never wanted to be president, but as the second in line, the task fell to him. He never got over the loss of his brother, and the specter of Joe hung over his entire presidency.
“Now,” Jack famously said, “I’m in a competition I can’t win.”