by Roy Lewis
But Carlos Rudio was a great survivor. He was one of the first men ever to escape that hellish prison. I met him briefly in London later, when he made his way there, married, and set himself up as a teacher of languages, but he soon left for America. There he reinvented himself as Charles Di Rudio and was drafted into the army and then seconded into the Intelligence Service.
Now we were to be reunited – as secret agents under the direction of Colonel Lafayette Baker.
I met Di Rudio a week later. He had changed little since first we met back in 1848; his thick, swept-back hair was a little greyer now and he sported a carefully groomed imperial beard, perhaps in emulation of the man he had tried to murder in 1858. He was a small, enthusiastic, urgent, slim-hipped man with somewhat elfin features and sharp eyes but he was as garrulous as ever; we talked over old revolutionary times, he told me yet again about his escape from Devil’s Island – it had been a different story each time – and he even confided in me that he was really an Italian count, not just a low-life Italian assassin. We finally discussed how we were to commence our undercover operations for Colonel Baker.
And so it began. I had already gained a certain reputation in the Five Points as a sporting man; now, in the company of the acknowledged would-be political assassin, the man who had thrown a bomb at Napoleon III in Rue Pelletier, my reputation was enhanced. I had always claimed to be a man of the people, I had fought aristocratic oppression in England and suffered for it, I had defended the runaway slave Anderson and was now seen as the friend and companion of the famous escapee from Devil’s Island.
There was initial suspicion, of course, but the lodges of the Clan na Gael were manned with simple, uneducated men whose one bond was a common desire to free the ‘ould country’ from the yoke of English oppression. So we were gradually accepted at the fringes of their drunken, noisy gatherings, Di Rudio and I, we were seen as Jolly Fellows; we were with them when they enjoyed raucous drinking sessions and sang patriotic songs and tickled the waitress girls who edged their half-naked way among the beer-stained tables. We were surrounded by Irishmen: the immigrants – who now in America amounted to probably one and a half million – had flooded into the Five Points and Hell’s Kitchen, nourishing their hatred of the English by stories of mass graves, evictions, cruel landlords, and starving peasants; we drank with them loudly to the damnation of England. And they came to tolerate our presence, if not accept us completely.
We drank, and sang, and roared out slogans as lustily as our companions. And we learned almost nothing of note.
Colonel Baker was largely correct in his views: Stanton was concerning himself unnecessarily. He was not alone. The gin-soaked Attorney General of Canada, John McDonald, he certainly feared an Irish-American invasion of Canada, and protested loudly about the activities of American agents who acted as crimps to get young Canadians to enlist in the Union Army. McDonald set up patrols on the frontier to prevent such activities, but as to invasion, well, in New York at least, it was all just talk. A few years later, of course, in 1866 there was indeed an invasion attempt. It involved seven hundred men planting the Irish flag on Canadian soil before scurrying back over the border. It was a mere hiccup of glory.
But for the moment, I took my $100 a month, reported back to Colonel Lafayette Baker and learned precisely nothing.
While my troubles at home multiplied.
I could not, because of the nature of my work for Colonel Baker, tell Marianne why I was spending so much time in the Five Points, Satan’s Circus and Hell’s Kitchen. I tried using my associate editorship with the Clipper to explain away my frequent nocturnal absences, but the story wore thin. She was becoming more and more difficult. And soon the amatory enthusiasm that had so surprised me in the early days of our marriage began to cool. Experimentation ended. Nocturnal couplings became infrequent. And finally, the bedroom door was coldly barred.
It took two unforeseen events to bring matters to such a head. And two women.
The first was a certain Mrs Abigail Grimshaw. Charlie Dickens tended to describe the character of his fictional protagonists by the names he assigned them: indeed, when he caricatured me in A Tale of Two Cities he named the character as Mr Stryver, which was apposite enough. I always worked hard, and I always strove for the highest office. Well, Mrs Grimshaw lived up to her name. She was a determined, thin-lipped woman of decided opinions and she held a narrowly dark view of the world. Tall, thin, flat-bosomed, voluminously black-skirted and black-bonneted she had a severe tone, a tightly-strapped chest, granite jaw and an iron-hard disposition. Moreover, she had a Mission. Or rather, two Missions.
The first one was the astonishing task of trying to persuade the populace of the Five Points to give up the evils of alcoholic drink; the second was to bring to an end the disgraceful use of women in Hell’s Kitchen. Temperance and an end to prostitution! In the most notorious sink-hole in America!
You can imagine where she thought I fitted into this scenario.
She was coldly belligerent towards me from the beginning. Marianne and I had met her shortly after our arrival in New York when we were on our ‘slumming’ expedition to the Five Points. She was a formidable leader of the American Female Moral Reform Society. On that first occasion, as we made our way past the wooden hovels on the north side of Paradise Square, she regaled us with a discourse on the importance of the Society work, handing out tracts, reading Bible passages on the streets to the morally degenerate Irish and opium-soaked Chinese immigrants, and urging those who entered brothels to refrain and repent.
I’ve no doubt she saw me as a supporter of the kind of excesses which she abominated. Though I always suspected she held that view of every man she met. There had been a Mr Grimshaw, I understand, but he lived in India. He’d got as far away from her as he could, I guessed. Anyway, as our little cortege progressed that day from Baxter Street to Bottle Alley and viewed the crazily leaning wooden tenements at Baxter Street and the gap-toothed slatterns in the rubbish-strewn alleyways, she maintained an interminable tirade.
‘These hovels, windowless and destitute, house the most degraded of tenants! They are almost all Irish immigrants sleeping here in the most filthy and miserable conditions: fifteen sleeping in one room! You can imagine the depths of depravity to which they sink! They come from the estates of your Lord Lansdowne,’ she averred, fixing me with a gleaming, furious eye as though the aristocrat and I had been personal friends, ‘and Lord Palmerston, who has shipped out his unwelcome tenants to die in these hovels, far away from his gaze! There are young women here who profess to make a living by picking curled hair out of public garbage barrels but I know they nightly make themselves available to brutal, depraved, degraded men of the most despicable character.’
I began to direct my attention elsewhere as she continued, only picking up occasional comments such as ‘damp and filthy cellars . . . wretched bunks and hideous beds . . . infernal holes . . . horrid stench . . . pestilential nuisance . . . crimes too horrible to name. . . .’ So I failed to pay much regard to her other outpourings. Unfortunately, Marianne did. That evening she informed me she had decided to join Mrs Grimshaw in her Moral Reform endeavours. She intended helping her at the House of Industry and Mission, and to give of her time – and money – to support destitute, fallen women.
Now this was all very laudable, but I was not happy at her giving her money away – except to me, that is. Also, there was a certain irony in the situation, which she herself very quickly pointed out. She was going to spend time doing good works in the Five Points out of a sense of moral outrage. I, on the other hand, was prowling the same streets with different motives.
I protested, of course: I could not tell her about my work for Colonel Baker so I reiterated that I was merely doing work for the Clipper, I was writing about the poverty among the destitute even as I described sporting and theatrical events. But Marianne, I discovered, was not easily persuaded. And the bedroom door began to close night after night.
She spen
t more and more time with Mrs Grimshaw. I was trying to drum up legal business at my office on Broadway and in the evenings joining Charles Di Rudio at various Irish-frequented concert saloons and gin palaces in the Five Points: our regular haunts, I recall, were Monroe Hall and Niblo’s Theatre – particularly because of their proximity to opium dens and cheap, Irish-owned saloons. But Mrs Grimshaw’s influence became even more malign and Marianne more tight-lipped in her confrontations with me. In desperation I finally committed an egregious error, which was to rebound upon me later with devastating consequences to my legal career in New York.
We were in our private suite in the Albemarle Hotel and Marianne was in a vengeful mood, while her daughter Blanche sat in a corner of the room with cool, watchful eyes.
‘It’s all the fault of the Irish Catholics and the Jews,’ Marianne hissed. ‘The immigrants come over from Dublin and think nothing of establishing themselves by taking advantage of later arrivals, skinning them of all they possess, debauching young girls, sending urchins on the streets to beg, prostituting the women so the husbands can purchase grog! Our Moral Reform movement seeks to bring this to an end and to save young children from the pernicious influences of the Catholic Church. This is why the Reverend Pease has begun a campaign to remove young Irish children from their dissolute parents and place them with Methodist families outside the city!’
This was the first I had heard of the Reverend Lewis Pease and his misguided efforts to drag Irish children from their families and the church of their fathers.
‘That’s probably an illegal activity,’ I protested weakly.
‘As illegal as it apparently is to preach in the street of the evils of drink!’ Marianne countered with the fiery enthusiasm of a convert. ‘Are you aware that this afternoon Mr Pease was actually arrested for preaching temperance in Mott Street? He was surrounded by an angry crowd of Catholics—’
Outside Bridget McCarty’s whorehouse, I guessed.
‘—and when the police arrived, the Reverend Pease was arrested! For preaching!’ She was silent for a few angry moments, her breast heaving, her eyes flashing fury. ‘This cannot be allowed to happen! Edwin . . . you must do something!’
I held up a warning hand. ‘Marianne, one cannot merely walk into a case like this without proper instruction. Mr Pease may well have consulted a lawyer already—’
‘Mrs Grimshaw tells me he has not! What can be done, Edwin?’
I sighed. ‘Well, clearly a writ of habeas corpus could be produced and a demand made for his release, at least on bail. And in this city, I understand getting bail is like being acquitted, because the dockets get filed, the bail is never produced—’
‘So you must do it,’ she exclaimed enthusiastically and embraced me with something of the old fervour. Blanche sniffed and left the room and I . . . well, for the sake of peace I agreed to represent the Reverend Mr Pease.
It was a bad mistake on my part, though I was not to know it at the time.
I don’t imagine, Joe, you ever had occasion to enter the police courts of New York when you lived in the city with your mother. She’d have kept you away from such dangers. But the fact is that I was aware that I had all the qualities for successful interventions in the police courts: justice there leaned heavily on stage presence, theatrical performances, and the bail system. Superior oral skills were the key, and I possessed such skills. And as I’ve mentioned, the bail system was a sham. The police courts were nothing more than unregulated commercial enterprises riddled with corruption and abuse. They reeked of intimidation, bribery and political influence. And the police-court judges were usually former policemen or firemen who obtained their positions by political influence and barefaced bribery: they had no legal qualifications but were merely pothouse politicians supported by Tammany Hall Democrats.
So I advised Marianne to put up whatever bail would be necessary – she would never have to pay it – and advised Mrs Grimshaw to get her Mission to pay out certain sweeteners to Democrat aldermen while I obtained a writ of habeas corpus. And it worked. The Reverend Pease was discharged after my impassioned speech, and no further proceedings were put in place. And I suppose had things gone no further all might yet have proceeded smoothly enough. But Mrs Grimshaw appeared again a week later to seek my further assistance with regard to Mr Pease. This time it was as a result of the Methodist minister’s high-handedness – albeit well meant – in once more dragging two young girls from their drunken, disreputable Five Points Catholic parents and placing them with a good Protestant family in New Jersey. Pease was hauled into the police court again and I was persuaded once again to defend him. This time it was to no avail, since despite my advice he refused to return the children to their parents. He was incarcerated in the Tombs, that monstrous, notorious, Egyptian-pillared prison, so I had to make swift application to the Supreme Court for his release.
My application was successful: in a matter of days, the Supreme Court held that the locking-up of the Reverend Pease was illegal on a technical ground. Such a charge could be adjudicated upon only by three justices, not one. The minister was to be released immediately. The police-court justice who had committed Pease to the Tombs was humiliated by this reverse and I saw in his eyes that mine was a name he would remember.
And his name was one I had cause to remember well, later, when our paths crossed again: the police court justice that day was Matthew Brennan, former fireman, ex-police captain, pothouse politician and the darling of Tammany Hall.
Am I wandering again? No, I don’t think so. Well, yes, I did say that there were two women who more or less destroyed my marriage. Mrs Grimshaw, as I’ve explained, in her turning of Marianne’s mind and inclinations. The other? Ah well, that was the lady whom I’ve already mentioned to you, Joe my boy. You’ll have heard of her. The sensation of the New World and the Old. The actress who took New York and London by storm. The woman who fascinated Bret Harte and Mark Twain, took Swinburne and Alexandre Dumas as lovers, who married John C. Heenan – among others – bigamously, and who made her name by riding a horse on the stage, apparently in a state of bare-arsed nudity. That’s right, the Dangerous Lady, the Queen of the Plaza, the Naked Lady, the Enchanting Rebel . . . in a word, Mazeppa.
3
How did I get involved with her? Well, partly it sprang from my employment by Colonel Lafayette Baker.
‘The woman is suspected of Confederate sympathies,’ he explained to me. ‘We need to find out whom she associates with, and whether she has been secretly passing funds – she earns an enormous amount for her performances on stage, I believe – passing funds to Confederate agents in Virginia, while expressing anti-Lincoln sentiments in private dinner engagements. I believe you have already made her acquaintance.’
I had. I say it was partly Baker’s suggestion that led me into the association that followed, but I must admit it was not the only reason. No, the other reason was that I had been totally overwhelmed when I made the acquaintance of the actress with the mysterious background – was she of Irish-Cuban origin, a former whore and naked dancer, a woman who had once fought off Red Indians, the actress who had charmed the bohemian crowd at Pfaff’s including the homoerotic poet Walt Whitman? Gossip swirled around her. What matter? All I need say is that when I first saw her I thought she was the most exciting woman I had ever met
That meeting took place in the offices of the New York Clipper.
I recall the day well.
I had gone to the building housing the Clipper and had a brief conversation with John C. Heenan, who was sitting in Frank Queen’s office and seemed delighted to meet me again. Queen was a chubby, excitable little man who was a wild enthusiast for the Noble Art and Heenan and I regaled him with our account of Heenan’s battle with Tom Sayers and laughed together when we discussed the famous occasion when I had acted for him over the title-belt business. But when Frank Queen was informed that Miss Adah Menken was below and wishing to see the Clipper editor, he bounced up with alacrity, but Heenan turned q
uite white. He grabbed Frank Queen’s arm and begged to be let out of the building, moustache bristling with alarm, by way of a back entrance. The man who claimed to be the pugilistic champion of the world had neither nerve nor desire to see the woman who had married him bigamously. I, on the other hand, was intrigued.
Heenan left, I stayed, and Adah swept into the cluttered office of the editor.
She was not a tall woman but her figure was beautifully proportioned. She possessed large, dark, startling eyes and a full, crimson mouth and that day she wore a simple, dark velvet Byronic dress. Her hair was cut short, a daring fashion for the time, and to my amazement, after Frank Queen introduced us, she took out a cigarillo, lit it and calmly smoked it during our conversation. I can’t recall, I am ashamed to say, the content of that conversation for that first twenty minutes: I think it was largely about her imminent assault upon the New York theatre world. She was to appear at the Broadway Theatre in her role of Mazeppa. ‘You know,’ she teased me, ‘the naked hussy on horseback!’
I was entranced: I had never met such a vibrant woman. She also, surprisingly, seemed attracted to me, a corpulent lawyer/sporting writer in his fifties, while she was in her mid-twenties, sensationally beautiful and the toast of the West Coast. But, looking back, I came to realize it was merely a manner she had cultivated: she tended to ‘collect’ admirers.
Still, I reacted eagerly to her flirtatious invitation to escort her to the theatre that night. We weren’t alone, of course: the famous American poet Walt Whitman turned up – equally dazzled, it seemed, in spite of his penchant for young boys – and we three dined at Pfaff’s where she further amazed me by consuming a dish of raw clams, thick chicken soup, a hearty steak and a dish of compote of fruits. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, as after such an enormous meal she then requested that Charlie Pfaff also prepare a turkey sandwich to sustain her during the play’s intermission!