Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  Beulah and Belva weren’t the only women being tried for murder that year, but Maurine made them the embodiment of the whole kit and caboodle. Flappers and jazz babies, the modern woman asserting herself.

  In most cases, it was more like some wife who was sick of being beaten up by her husband. But Beulah and Belva were different. After all, they’d shot their lovers. “Not good to mix gin and guns,” Belva told me that day when I took her picture.

  The Seneca let me shoot in low light, so I was able to photograph Beulah stretched out on her bunk, reading a magazine framed by the bars of her cell.

  I caught Belva with her head in her hands.

  Maurine did go on to write her play, and made her heroines Irish. She called it Chicago, and it did okay on Broadway. Then Cecil B. DeMille made a movie of it. Only, in his version, Roxie suffers—whereas, in real life, Beulah got off.

  Maurine liked the photographs I did. “Good,” she said. “They look forlorn and remorseful,” and told me she’d be willing to work with me again on a story. “See if you can get some tips from Ed Kelly. Some contractor who’s getting paid three times what the job’s worth, and spending all his money on a floozy. You know what I mean.”

  And I’d said to her, “What about a feature on how Ed’s trying to save the Palace of Fine Arts?” The other members of the South Park Board were determined to tear down the only building left of the White City so proudly built for our 1893 World’s Fair. But Ed was fighting back, though he was losing.

  “The demolition’s contract has been awarded,” I told Maurine.

  “Somebody’s getting a kickback from the wreckers,” she said.

  “Ed asked them would Paris tear down the Eiffel Tower? But he was outvoted.”

  “You might have something,” Maurine said. “The Chicago women’s clubs are trying to save the building, and getting nowhere. Not one politician is willing to put an ounce of clout behind them. Do you think Ed would join the ladies?”

  “Oh yes. As a kid, Ed spent every spare minute watching them build the Fair. That’s why he’s an engineer. He’ll get involved—no problem.”

  “The wife of Potter Palmer II and Ed Kelly. The beauty and the beast. Let’s try.”

  * * *

  “Jesus, Nonie, I couldn’t meet Maurine Watkins in Henrici’s,” Ed said to me that night at home.

  “Why not?”

  “The word would go around that I was leaking a story to her.”

  “Why not at the building itself?”

  The next evening we were waiting on the steps of the Palace of Fine Arts. The only structure left of the 1893 Fair. It had lived on a bit as the Field Museum of Natural History, exhibiting artifacts from the Fair. But then, Marshall Field had built a brand-spanking-new building for his collection closer to downtown. And now the poor Palace was crumbling.

  “Think about it, Nonie,” Ed said. “Chicago beat out every other city, even New York, to host the celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s landing. And then we were a year late. Opened in 1893, not 1892. A lesson there, Nonie. If you make something happen, people forget how you got it done.”

  I walked over to one of the tall white columns. “Chicagoans do have nerve,” I said. “Imagine creating a whole world in, what, three years?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Remember how I haunted this place during construction? Mostly Irishmen on the crews, and ready enough to explain what they were doing to an interested kid. I remember this fellow called Disney, from King’s County in the middle of Ireland, said the place would be Tír na nÓg, a real fairyland. That people would visit over and over. And he was right.”

  “Hard workers, the Irish,” I said. “No matter how people slander us.”

  “We built America,” Ed said. “Canals, railroads, skyscrapers, highways. It was the Irish above all who did the work.” He waved his hand at the empty park. “These sixty acres were covered with the grandest buildings. Exhibitions from every state, and most countries.”

  “And the Ferris wheel. Don’t forget the Ferris wheel,” I said.

  “Such a feat of engineering. Ten stories high. ‘Make no small plans.’ I heard Daniel Burnham himself say that.”

  “Sad that it’s come to this,” I said. I pointed to the vines growing around the columns. Weeds were breaking through the cement steps. The whole building was gray and dingy. Paint peeling and half the roof gone.

  We climbed the broken stairs as a small roadster came bumping over the grass and stopped right below us.

  “What a dump,” Maurine said as she came up to us on the steps. “This place is not worth saving.”

  “It is,” Ed said.

  “How you doing, Ed?” Maurine asked.

  “Very well, Miss Watkins,” Ed replied. “I think it would be wrong to give up and destroy the building. But it’ll cost some money to restore it.”

  “Millions. But then you fellows are good at getting bond issues through,” Maurine said.

  “There’s private investment, too. Julius Rosenwald’s interested.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. I heard he’s got some nutty idea about a science museum. Why would a city interested in women murderers want to learn about science?” she asked.

  “You might be surprised,” Ed said.

  “What did P. T. Barnum say? No one ever went broke underestimating the American public,” she said.

  “You’re very cynical, Miss Watkins.”

  “But she’s not,” I said. “She can do the sob sister stuff as well as anybody.”

  Maurine laughed. “Alright, get that little peashooter out.” I held up the Seneca.

  “The light’s great,” I said. “Do you want Ed standing next to the pillar?”

  “Hang on,” Maurine said. And just then a chauffeured Daimler pulled up behind Maurine’s little car. A woman got out.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ed said. “It’s Mrs. Potter Palmer.”

  “Always punctual,” Maurine said.

  She was a tall woman with a pleasant face, dressed in a bright blue suit, her skirt below the knees, and her hair dressed in a kind of semi-bob. No flapper, but not an old fogey either. Ed and Mrs. Palmer stood together looking up at the derelict building. A bit of sunlight washed over the white pillars, settling on the two of them.

  Nice.

  “I’ve got the shot,” I said to Maurine, but she was looking away. Then I heard a motor. Not an automobile engine, more like the sound of a locomotive.

  A bulldozer grunted its way toward us. Big, painted a shiny yellow. Black smoke poured out of the tailpipe.

  “The driver is going to crash into the building,” Mrs. Palmer shouted. She ran right into the bulldozer’s path. Ed moved fast. I thought he would pull her away, but instead he stood next to Mrs. Palmer. Both of them waved their arms, shouting, “Stop! Stop!”

  “Get the picture. Shoot that!” Maurine yelled at me. And I did. Ed and Mrs. Palmer confronted the bulldozer.

  As the big machine moved ever closer I kept snapping pictures.

  Less than two feet between the bulldozer and Ed and Mrs. Palmer when the driver finally stopped. Turned off the motor. He climbed down from the cab. Started shouting at Ed.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you? You want to get killed?” the man yelled.

  “You idiot,” Ed yelled back. “What are you doing?”

  “My job,” the man said, “Adams Demolition. We’re pulling this wreck down.”

  “You have no authority,” Ed said.

  “My boss told me to bust a wall or two. Get things going. Once a job’s started, it’s hard to stop.”

  “I’m Ed Kelly of the South Park Board. We never authorized this.”

  “Somebody did.”

  “Get out of here until I figure out what’s going on,” Ed said.

  “Screw you,” the fellow said.

  Ed moved forward. “Listen, pal. I don’t want any unpleasantness in front of these ladies, but…”

  Ed had the fellow by about fifty pou
nds and five inches. The guy grumbled and turned around.

  “Admirable, Mr. Kelly,” Mrs. Potter Palmer said as Ed walked her to the Daimler.

  “What luck,” I said to Maurine, “that the bulldozer came along just as Mrs. Potter Palmer arrived.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” she said. “Who do you think called Adams Demolition? Now,” she said. “Those photographs better be good.”

  * * *

  And they were, thank God. Mabel Sykes let me use her darkroom, and I worked on the prints, turning each photograph into a dramatic contest between good (Ed and Mrs. Potter Palmer), framed in light, and evil (the bulldozer), dark and ominous.

  Maurine got the story on the front page. “Park Board Member Ed Kelly Joins Women’s Clubs in Battle to Save Our Heritage,” said the headline, spread out over the three-column photograph.

  Maurine wrote, in her usual snappy style, about the society dame and the big redheaded Irishman. She quoted Mrs. Potter Palmer II as saying: “Women are taking our place in public life. This grand building will be bulldozed over our dead bodies.” And she told me my picture sold the story.

  “Great to portray a millionaire society woman as a damsel in distress. Ed is the big Irish galoot, the corrupt pol, who grows a conscience because of her.”

  “And she’s not Irish? Right?” I said.

  “Can’t be. Do you think anyone would have paid attention to Jane Addams, if her name was Jane O’Toole, or Jane Lipinski? She’d be just another immigrant woman bellyaching. But Jane’s a blue blood. Could have had an easy life. Instead she’s working in the slums. Lady Bountiful. A kind of melodrama. People like that.”

  “So you tell people what they already think they know?”

  “Got it in one, Nora. Of course the details matter. And the picture.”

  Ed loved the story, but still didn’t know if he could get the board to vote to save the building. The Republicans on the board had given Adams the demolition contract, and he was screaming bloody murder. Ed’s only hope was if George Brennan, the Democratic boss, could rally some opposition.

  An interesting man, Brennan. He’d been a coal miner in Braidwood, south of the city, and lost a leg. He got a job teaching the miners’ children, moved to Chicago and became a power in the Democratic Party. But, as Ed explained to me, there was no unity in the party.

  “So many factions. The Irish fighting among ourselves, and then the Poles, Czechs, Bohemians, and Jews each with a candidate they want to run for alderman, and everyone’s looking for a share of the patronage jobs.”

  “But our campaign is working,” I said to him. I pointed to the piles of letters on his desk. We were in his office, three days after the story broke.

  Chicago might be rushing forward into the future, but the past held memories we all shared. Almost everyone in the city older than forty had visited the World’s Fair, remembered the fun of the midway, where a tribe of Moroccan Bedouins danced next to the wild animal shows, and Buffalo Bill’s extravaganza played four times a day.

  Every country had an exhibit. Granny Honora brought all of her grandchildren to the Irish village, hoping to awaken in us a love for the language and traditions of Ireland. I remember Granny Honora saying that if we Irish lost our language and the old stories, we’d lose ourselves.

  But I must say the corned beef and cabbage in Mrs. Hart’s Donegal Castle, complete with entertainment, had been more popular than the display of ancient manuscripts, and it was the Ferris wheel that had captivated us.

  How many families such as ours had ridden up the top as night fell and thousands of lights outlined the White City? How could we destroy the last souvenir of that time?

  “I’m going to see Brennan this afternoon,” Ed said.

  “Let me come,” I said. “We’ll take the letters you got, and the ones the Tribune received.”

  “Well, not many Democrats read the Tribune,” he said.

  “What about the ten thousand signatures Mrs. Potter Palmer and the other women have collected?” I said.

  “Not much compared to the five million voters in Chicago, Nora. But come with me if you want.”

  * * *

  “The South Park Commissioners should respond to the will of the people, George,” Ed concluded, after what I thought was a very good presentation. Ed had shown him the letters, and I brought a blown-up copy of the confrontation-with-the-bulldozer photograph.

  We sat in Brennan’s office, and he hadn’t said one word beyond “Good afternoon.” But now he looked up. “Ed, you’re wasting your time with those society suffragettes,” Brennan said. “None of them will ever vote Democratic. They’ll do what their rich Republican husbands tell them to.”

  Not much of the Braidwood coal miner left in this well-dressed man. Hard to believe that he was from a place where I’d seen men walking bent in the streets, their faces streaked with black. Down in the mines before sunrise, and not home until after sunset.

  “You can’t assume these women don’t have minds of their own,” I said. “They’re fed up with Thompson and Capone, and if the Democrats really get behind this effort, who knows?”

  Brennan looked at me. “So you’re a political expert?”

  “I’m not, but I am a woman, and I’ve got common sense. Ed may not be a politician, Mr. Brennan, but he’s a builder. This building could inspire Chicago kids today, the way the White City did us. How does destroying a symbol of hope help anybody?” I said.

  “Where’d she come from?” Brennan asked Ed.

  “Bridgeport,” Ed said. “But she’s got a point. Why not take the high road?”

  “Well, it’s a road without a lot of traffic,” Brennan said.

  “Listen, George,” Ed said. “The renovation could be done mostly with private money.”

  “Ed,” Brennan said, “I just don’t see what’s in it for us. That building is rotting away, but the land is worth a fortune. I’ve got ten guys lined up with plans for apartment buildings, stores.”

  “Plenty of other places for that kind of development,” Ed said.

  “What’s Payne’s position?” Brennan asked Ed. The president of the board, a fellow named John Barton Payne, was a Democrat. But not exactly one of us. Born someplace in Virginia, he’d lived in Chicago as a young man, become a lawyer and a judge, then left the city for Washington. A member of Wilson’s cabinet and later head of the Red Cross, he’d started an art museum in Richmond. No sharp elbows.

  A figurehead, I supposed. Seventy years old, in office for twelve years since 1911, and probably happy enough to go along with the majority. I wouldn’t have said Mr. Barton Payne was looking for backhanders from demolition companies, but he wasn’t about to stand up to the fellows who were.

  The South Park Board were all for tearing down the Fine Arts building and dug their heels in even more after the newspaper articles. How dare Ed go behind their back to the press. Not a gentlemanly thing to do, Payne had told him.

  “Neither is destroying Chicago’s heritage,” Ed had responded. But Payne wouldn’t budge. George Brennan agreed there was nothing for Ed to do but run against Payne for president, which meant getting some of the Republicans on the board to support him.

  “Take care of a Republican and he becomes a Democrat,” Ed said. “Or at least he’s willing to deal.”

  And deal they must have, because a few weeks later, Ed was elected president of the South Park Board. The first thing he did was ask the Chicago voters to approve an eight-million-dollar bond issue in order to rescue and restore the Palace of Fine Arts. And it passed. Overwhelmingly.

  “All thanks to you, Nora,” Ed said to me the day the returns came in.

  “Not really, Ed. Maurine and I might have gotten the ball rolling, but, dear God, the maneuvering you fellows have to do to make something happen.”

  “Well didn’t Bismarck say that politics is the art of the possible?” Ed said.

  “I don’t know how much art’s in it, but I suppose that other saying, ‘The end jus
tifies the means,’ is true,” I said.

  “Yes,” Ed said. “Though I sometimes wonder, Nora. I really do.”

  No fun in a victory that isn’t shared, I thought. I wished Ed had a wife to pat him on the back. Ed and I were close, and I was grateful to be living with him, Aunt Nelly, and Ed Junior in that big Hyde Park house—but Ed needed to marry again and I had just the woman for him. His Mary had died five years ago, and enough time had passed. She would have wanted Ed to find someone.

  Get Ed settled. See the Kelly kids through to the summer. Save the money I had started making working with Mabel and Maurine. Then I could think about returning to Paris and, from there, go to Ireland to find Peter Keeley’s grave. Confront the pain, accept his death, and find some peace, as Ag had said. But first Ed needed a wife, and I had just the candidate. I wrote to Margaret Noll Kirk, the woman I’d nursed with in France who was living alone in Kansas City now that her mother had died, and invited her to visit me in Chicago.

  She arrived in the middle of February. Nearly six years since I had seen her. Though she hadn’t changed much. “Contained” is the word I always associated with her. Even her hair behaved. Molded to her head. The waves just so. Not like my flyaway bob.

  A woman made to wear elegant clothes, Madame Simone had said, delighted to sell Margaret the copies she made of the great couturiers. Though Margaret herself went around the corner to Rue St. Honoré to buy from Coco Chanel. And it was a Chanel suit she wore now. The skirt well below her knees. Nothing of the flapper about Margaret.

  Aunt Nelly took to her right away. After all, Margaret had an Irish mother and a German father, just as Aunt Nelly did. And Ed—well, not smitten, exactly. No boyish leap of the heart, but I could tell that he saw in Margaret what I had. A good woman who’d faced her own hardships—her mother dead, her brother killed in the war—and had come through. Of course, the fact that she was attractive helped. But I really think they connected on a deeper level. After a week in Chicago, during which Ed drove Margaret to every one of his construction projects, a match seemed obvious. But then, Margaret insisted on telling Ed about her two marriages. She’d asked me to come to Ed’s study. Moral support, she explained. He sat at his desk as she explained how she’d been wed at age fifteen to a man who had a house that could accommodate her mother and brother, at a time when her family had no place to live. The union had not lasted. “He had our marriage annulled because I couldn’t … well…”