Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  In Gotham Douglas won a new champion, Greeley and his New York Tribune, and no honor ever commended a man less to his own party faithful. What a scurrying of politicians in those years! To be or not to be, that was their question, and to hell with what was nobler: whether to feed now at Buchanan’s trough and retire fat, or to go lean to Charleston in 1860 and try to make Douglas president. For his part, Fernando Wood yielded the domination of Tammany to a man named Tweed, and set up “the true Democracy” at Mozart Hall. He was laughed at and lauded by turns as he took his little band of followers to State conventions, to party caucuses, and sometimes lost his faithful there, but never lost his faith.

  Through it all Vinnie spoke no louder than his vote and a “siccum” to Stephen Farrell, for he was the man these ill times prospered. He put his Douglas paper solid behind the Reform mayor and went himself to work that terrible winter of depression on the Commission for the Poor. Not once did he ask a man’s politics, only the number of his dependents. Once appointed to the job by the Mayor, Farrell bludgeoned the City Council into allotting more funds, and demanded of Albany that since they took to themselves the administration of Central Park, they provide immediate funds for its development. He got what he sought, and men trooped uptown by the thousands to the park excavations, to the opening of new streets north of Forty-second. Suddenly even his silence found in his favor, his, whose eloquence couldn’t find a verdict in a New York courtroom: he declined to attend an extravagant ball proposed to raise funds for the poor, and soon it was quoted about as his saying, “But suppose I should come to the feast without a wedding garment?” And Stephen could not remember saying it at all.

  “Oh, he might’ve said it all right,” Delia concluded. “I never knew another man whose guarantee of success was him not makin’ money at it. It’s the truth, Vinnie. Look at his career. Not that I mind of course, him not makin’ money. If I was goin’ to marry for money it wouldn’t’ve been an Irishman, as papa says. “Whenever papa gets sentimental he says ‘I’m glad I provided for my little girl so’s she could marry a man of her own choosin’…’ though I don’t know what’s goin’ to happen in our family now, Mr. Douglas takin’ a stand against us. An’ I don’t suppose you like Mr. Douglas any better for it than we do. Do you, Vinnie?”

  Vinnie admitted that he was not yet converted to Douglas although he admired his courage.

  “Courage, fie!” Delia said. “If it was courage he had he’d be helpin’ poor old Mr. Buchanan fight for Southern rights. Why his own wife is a Southern lady, an’ I haven’t heard tell of her settin’ free her darkies.”

  Vinnie squeezed Priscilla’s hand. Very often they sat hand in hand listening to Delia’s monologues. It was better than Mrs. Kemble’s readings, Priscilla said. And the Farrell house was their favorite meeting place. Sometimes they took Jem for a walk between them and nothing gave them such pleasure as some matron’s exclamation: “What a lovely child you have!”

  “What more could be asked of a man’s courage,” Vinnie said, meaning it lightly, “than that he disagree with his wife?”

  “There’s some men get positive pleasure out of it, and they know they can’t lose. Even when they’re wrong they’re right by virtue of them bein’ their own special sex. And I don’t mean my Stephen…” Delia fingered the folds of her gown in one of the rare pauses in her conversation. “I know it hurts him to disagree with me. Sometimes now when I’m alone so much I can’t help thinkin’ how far round he had to come to get where he is today. And it was all to get round me without hurtin’ me. And in the end maybe it’ll be me hurtin’ him. I never was anything except what I am now, and I don’t guess I ever will be, ’cause he didn’t try to change me. It’s a terrible thing, my dears—and you are dear to me, both of you, closer than kin—it’s a terrible wicked thing to let outside folks’ opinions of somebody you love get inside you. I almost feel ashamed now when I hear people praisin’ him, the same people I know looked down their stabbin’ noses at him. And I don’t think I ever heard Stephen say a bad word about any man.”

  Vinnie was reminded of something Stephen had said that New Year’s Day and told it now. “‘If I were to be a good advocate,’ he said, ‘I should never defend the evil that a man did, but I should often defend men who did evil.’”

  “That’s him,” Delia said. “That’s him and no other.”

  Vinnie came close again then to liking Delia and Priscilla had long since been won thoroughly to Stephen. With her engagement to Vinnie, she had won a woman’s stature in her father’s house. She was no longer strictured by the nonsense contrived to evidence a maiden’s marriageability. She was for example, besides her study of painting, permitted to work three days a week in the poor wards, an enterprise which in her uncommitted sisters would have seemed immodest despite the company of the Mission Ladies. Stephen sometimes looked in upon the Five Points Mission, and one day he had come when Priscilla was near despair. Her problem was a very old one, or as old in New York as the famine emigration from Ireland: Irish distrust of non-Catholic endeavor. “Two dear little girls, Stephen, and their mother came in here and cuffed them out. I wanted to kill her. Really, that’s how I felt. They’re so bright, and her stupid prejudice!” Stephen stood, his arms folded, a little frown on his brow while he smiled. (The women all thought him enormously handsome.) “Do you know where they live?” he asked. “I do.” “Then shall we have a try, you and I, at getting them back?” He had gone with her then to Doyer Street, up a foul hallway to a back room with but one window, and that half-stuffed with rags. He sat down on the edge of the bed while the little girls hid in a corner and peeked out now and then at Priscilla. Their mother was huddled over a pile of sewing at the window. He talked on about nothing special until suddenly the woman asked him if he was Irish. “I am,” Stephen said, “and so is Miss Taylor’s fiancé. He and I came over on the same boat.” And soon they were talking of what the crossing was like ten years before, and the difference Castle Garden made now in the immigrants’ landing. “Och,” said the woman, “if we could live half as decent as they’re landin’ us, we wouldn’t be destroyin’ ourselves and our childer’.” And soon she poured out the tale of her life, and gave back to Priscilla the daily care of the two girls and the promise to send them to school.

  That Stephen was Irish was soon made the most of, and in circles beyond the poor missions. At first he resisted his welcome to Tammany, but at Douglas’ urging sat down in their council. Having won over Lincoln at home and returned to the Senate, the Little Giant must now save his party, yea, the country itself from Seward’s “Irrepressible Conflict” and Lincoln’s “House Divided.” Douglas for president in 1860!

  Rally the New York Democracy! Fête again brave Ireland’s sons! Plumb ancient history and turn out the contemporary vote. Remember the men of ’48, Ireland’s exiles, America’s boon. Whatever was said in ’48 to their damnation, in ’59 was unsaid. Better Red than Black Republicans, and sure most of them now were a faded pink. And wasn’t a new clan rising in the nick of politic time? Not a ward politician that couldn’t spell “Fenian” however hard put he was in the lettering of his own name.

  Stephen avowed the primacy of his American citizenship and declined office in the Fenian Convention. But who went up while he hung back, and took the chair as well as the Irish Brotherhood oath? Aye, Dennis Lavery. Now there was a true revolutionary. Ireland, Ireland, you are saved! Fear England’s heel no longer, perched safe on America’s toe!

  But through the quick days and the long, long nights, what was all this to Vinnie compared to Coke and to Story, to statutes and codes, to writs of dower, of entry, possession, of mandamus, goddamus! Let me try and be tried! More than his life, his happiness, waited that first day in court.

  7

  “NEVER ARGUE A CAUSE which best argues itself.”

  Vinnie could not remember the occasion on which Mr. Grisholm had made the remark, but over and over again he had thought of it in the last few hours. He was convinced tha
t his client was innocent of the charge for which he was brought to trial in General Sessions Court, October term, 1859, the willful murder of his wife.

  Never had Vinnie carried a burden such as this, and so casually thrust upon him: “I think you had better take this one, Dunne,” as though Grisholm had asked him to pick up some papers on his way downtown. What sleep he found at night was worse than none, tortured with dreams of guilt, with visions of himself the defendant, and the sad, despairing eyes of the accused accusing him. What good to this man to say to him tomorrow, I did my best, if that best was worse than no defense? What right had Grisholm under heaven to commend a man’s life into a boy’s keeping when little more than his sage presence at the counsel’s table might save the accused? A boy’s keeping? At twenty-five, a boy? Oh God, God, make me a man. Give me at least a manly disguise. Let Stephen be right in his promise that I shall find resources sufficient to my need.

  “If I may suggest to youthful counsel…” the prosecutor had said in the beginning in a mere matter of court procedure, and at every opportunity since he had suggested that Vinnie’s youth made him naive of such infamy as the defendant was guilty, and Vinnie thought his own sole point with the jury had come in his retort: “It would seem that the esteemed prosecutor has reached the age of suspicion. I cannot but wonder what condition he recognizes as the absence of guilt in any man. Is there none of us here, gentlemen, in the state of grace?”

  The assistant district attorney was now cross examining the defendant. Throughout his trial the man had maintained not only his innocence of his wife’s murder, but his ignorance of her unfaithfulness to him. By the sheer number of the witnesses he called to testify to this infidelity, the prosecutor had made seem ridiculous this claim of ignorance. Yet as Vinnie listened to the snapping of cross examination, his subconscious was again visited by the phrase: never argue a cause which best argues itself.

  “…And do you expect the jury to believe that knowing your wife was unfaithful, that she was having illicit relations with another man, do you expect us to believe you would still have stayed the bloody hand?”

  “I object, your honor! Furthermore, if your honor pleases, I wish to enter a motion for the dismissal of the charges against my client.” To the last cause he would ever defend, Vinnie would not know where the impulse, the surety, the courage for that instant came from.

  “On what grounds, Counselor?” the judge asked, barely lifting his chin from his breast. But the jury had come tensely alert.

  “May it please your honor, the State’s case rests on proof beyond doubt that my client had knowledge of his wife’s illicit relations. If your honor will graciously refer to the written brief, the charge is explicit, and now my worthy colleague himself admits the prosecution’s doubt of that necessary premise to his case. Hear those words again, your honor: ‘Do you expect the jury to believe that, knowing your wife’s illicit relations, you would still—would still have stayed the hand…”

  “The bloody hand,” the prosecutor interposed sarcastically.

  “May I submit that too, to be a cause in conjecture?” Vinnie snapped.

  The judge gaveled the courtroom into silence and recessed the court for ten minutes while he considered the motion.

  How quickly it was all over, the case dismissed, the jury discharged. Vinnie himself sat a moment as much stunned as his client, and the murmur of the next court business rose about him. Afterwards, the prosecutor admitted that in that doubtful approach, he had gambled on Vinnie’s inexperience. The Law, a game of chance, Vinnie thought, with a man’s life hanging, perhaps on the thread of his counsel’s concentration. God have mercy on me for having arrogated to myself such responsibility.

  Vinnie discovered then to his surprise that Grisholm himself had been in the courtroom. He confessed to having had no doubt of the outcome, shaking Vinnie’s hand, and the realization came slowly to the younger man, that the experienced lawyer had carefully selected a first court case for him. It must have been settled in his mind when he accepted the retainer for the firm. “Truly, sir,” Vinnie asked, “did you know just where the break would come?”

  Grisholm looked at his watch. “Not to the precise moment,” he said.

  “Thank you very much, sir,” Vinnie said.

  “Now,” said Grisholm, “you will begin to learn the Law. Practice is the only teacher. Ah…I have a message for you. John Taylor would have you stop at his office on your way down. I believe he said a matter of a contract to be settled? Something to do with his daughter? Does he hold a promissory on you, Dunne?”

  “No, sir,” Vinnie said, grinning, “but I hold his.”

  “Make a settlement then, lad. Make a settlement.”

  No conveyance on the streets of New York was quick enough for Vinnie’s travel. He ran the eight blocks to Wall Street. Both Alex and Mr. Taylor came with outstretched hands to meet him when he reached their office.

  Vinnie and Priscilla were married in the chapel of St. Paul’s on Thanksgiving Day of 1859.

  8

  “GENTLEMEN, GENTLEMEN, YER PERLITE attention, please! And ladies…Ye’re all of yers ladies, now aren’t you, dearies? The night’s entertainment’s about to commence. There’ll be no service at the bar, and no leavin’ yer tables. Tonight’s drammer—Mrs. Margaret Stuart, our own Peg, as the b’hoys call her—in Please, M’Lord Stop Teasling. Snuff out yer candles, mates!”

  The squeak of the pulleys pierced through the whistles and stamping, and Peg stepped upon the six-foot platform called a stage and waited for Lord Teasling. Not a footlight shone beneath her, but brighter than any footlights were the faces of the young gentlemen of the press, the newsboys allowed in for the play at two-penny a head but no selling. They sat cross-legged on the floor and would cheer her every point, God bless ’em.

  She commenced in the best formal style, her language exquisite, and strangers in the house groaned audibly until hissed down. The newsies’ faces were rapt, tense, their eyes popping with expectation.

  “Ah, m’lord, but do you remember? Do you remember the little brook, bubbling up you said, like your darling’s laughter? Do you remember the heather we plucked, and oh, the blue, blue bluebells? You took my hand in yours…and said to me, ‘Now will you?’ And pulled me down in that damn fool thistle!” The boys let out a howl. Peg lifted her skirt and gave the mute lover a kick that sent him sprawling and off, his shilling earned for the night. Then she came forward and sang: “He promised me a bed of down and bedded me down in the thistle.”

  Such was the drama now claiming the talents of Mrs. Stuart. The buffoonery was born of a Bowery audience’s impatience. They groaned even under her Kate until she turned Kate gallus. So with the help of a drunken scribbler, she tuned her repertoire to a dance hall ear, and starred amongst the lowly. For a while she had clung to one straight piece a night, but that was gone now, too, except once in a while as on this night, when someone grew sentimental about having seen her a few years past. He was slightly drunk but a gentleman, and Peg accepted his hospitality when her stint was done.

  “Give us a bit from Shakespeare,” he would say. “Listen, all!” And a few at the bar would attend and Peg would forget herself, forget the blaring music and the dance against which she spoke, her benefactor cupping his ear to hear her better.

  “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” he said, and wiped the tears from his eyes. “Drink up, and give us another.”

  Harry, who owned the house, came down to make conversation with them, and just for an instant laid the palm of his hand over the top of Peg’s glass.

  “I’ll have one more tonight,” said Peg, “for I’ve yet to dance at a wedding.”

  “One here then,” said Harry into her ear, and then he brushed its lobe with his lips. “But you know where you’re welcome to drink your fill.”

  Peg drew away from him. “I wonder whatever I did with the invitation. Ah, well, no matter. I’m afraid by now I’m a little late…Still

  ‘The bird of dawning
singeth all night long.

  ‘And then they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;

  ‘The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

  ‘No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm

  ‘So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.’”

  “Beautiful, whatever it is,” said her host.

  “It was meant for Christmas,” said Peg, “but will do as well for Thanksgiving.” She lifted her glass: “To your long life and overflowing heart, sir.”

  “Wait till you see her kick when the drink rises in her,” said a man at the next table.

  Peg looked at him over her shoulder, thinking on the words not meant for her ear. “I once kicked a man to the moon,” she said menacingly, “and he’s up there now laughing fit to bust.”

  “Easy, Peg,” said Harry, his hand working soothingly upon her shoulder. “He didn’t mean a thing.”

  “Nor do you to me, proud Harry,” Peg said, shrugging off his waxy hand and getting to her feet. She stood a moment, holding fast to the bar, striving for a look of great, hard dignity, and the lines she wanted to go with it:

  “‘Oh Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth!

  ‘I better brook the loss of brittle life

  ‘Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;

  ‘They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh:

  ‘But thought’s the slave of life, and life’s time’s fool…’

  “And I’ve forgot the rest which doesn’t mean a thing to anyone here, or there or anywhere—but me. It means a deal to me, Peg Stuart. So keep your crawling hands for the backsides of your whores, and remember I’m a lady.”