Great Bastards of History

by Juré Fiorillo

  Helmeted Turkish infantry move across the desert to confront British and Arab allies. Well-equipped and German-trained, Turks were frequently outflanked by Arab hit-and-run tactics. Getty Images

  The capture of Aqaba was the turning point of the Arab Revolt—and the beginning of the Lawrence legend.

  BETRAYAL

  In September 1917, a new British commander, Edmund Allenby, arrived in the Middle East from the Western Front, where he had been nicknamed “the Bull” for his formidable presence and forceful offensive tactics. Unlike his predecessor, he quickly accepted Lawrence and his Arab irregulars. They formed the right flank of Allenby’s army as the British moved northward toward Damascus. By Christmas 1917 they had taken Jerusalem, and in September 1918 Lawrence and the Arabs triumphantly rode into Damascus at Allenby’s side to accept the Turkish surrender. Although the war officially continued until November, it effectively ended in the Middle East with the fall of Damascus.

  Lawrence felt betrayed by the ending. He had convinced Faişal and the other Arab leaders that they were fighting for their own freedom, not on behalf of imperial powers. Instead, at the Versailles peace conference, where Lawrence sat at Faişal’s side as his adviser, the Middle East was carved up between Britain and France, under the guise of League of Nations mandates. Despite its Arab population, Palestine was set aside as a homeland for the Jews.

  Lawrence was maddened by the results. He went back to Oxford to write a memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He collaborated with the American journalist Lowell Thomas on Thomas’s book, With Lawrence in Arabia. The book sold five million copies and made him an international celebrity. To avoid the spotlight he signed up for the Royal Air Force under the name “John Hume Ross.” Aircraftman Ross served nearly a year before his true identity was revealed.

  Instead of the bicycles of his boyhood, he took up motorcycling, roaring around the narrow roads in the Oxfordshire hills. On May 13, 1935, returning from a post office errand, he came over a rise to see two young delivery boys on bicycles ahead. He swerved, clipped one, and spilled to the ground, his head heavily hitting the pavement. He lay in a coma for six days and died on May 19, aged forty-six. His father had died of pneumonia while “T. E.” was attending the Versailles peace conference, but his mother outlived all five sons, dying in 1951 at the age of ninety-eight. He was buried two days after his death, amid elaborate mourning. Winston Churchill read the eulogy for the illegitimate youth who had made a name for himself half a world away, declaring:

  “We shall never see his like again … His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war. It will live in the legends of Arabia.”

  CHAPTER 13

  BILLIE HOLIDAY

  HOW A PARENTLESS AND POVERTY-STRICKEN CHILD BECAME A JAZZ LEGEND

  1915–1959

  BILLIE HOLIDAY’S CHILDHOOD WAS MARKED BY PARENTAL REJECTION, HARDSHIP, A SUCCESSION OF CARETAKERS, AND PROSTITUTION. YET, HOLIDAY EVENTUALLY CHANNELED HER PAIN AND SORROW INTO SONG TO EMERGE AS ONE OF THE GREATEST JAZZ SINGERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

  ALICE DEAN COUNTED OUT A HANDFUL OF COINS FOR HER YOUNGEST employee, twelve-year-old Billie Holiday. The madam of a Baltimore brothel, Dean had hired the girl to help keep her “sporting house” clean. She also sent Billie out to pick up groceries and various sundries for the women who worked in the brothel.

  Billie’s work was done, but the girl refused to accept her pay, gently dropping the coins back into Dean’s hand. The madam was confused. Dean had a collection of jazz records in the parlor, along with a wind-up Victrola. In lieu of her pay, Billie asked if she could stay for a while in the parlor, playing Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith records. Amused by the girl’s request, and happy to save on a salary, Dean agreed. Billie retired to the parlor, where she sat, wide-eyed, on the floor, listening raptly to Armstrong’s freewheeling skat and Smith’s honeyed voice. Billie fell in love with the music, and with the way it made her feel.

  Years later, she recalled, “Sometimes the record would make me so sad I’d cry up a storm. Other times the damn record would make me so happy I’d forget about how much hard-earned money the session in the parlor was costing me.”

  While still a child, Billie Holiday experienced more hardships than many do in a lifetime. She was raped, sent to reform school, turned tricks in a brothel, and served time in New York workhouse. Holiday channeled her pain into her music.

  From the time she was an infant, Holiday was shuttled between households, raised by a revolving cast of relatives. Her mother worked frequently and took jobs out of state; her father spent much of the year touring with a band and showed little interest in her. Holiday channeled the pain of a life filled with rejection, loneliness, despair, and yearning into her music. Her voice could touch—and break—the hearts of those who heard her sing. Filled with sorrow and longing, it was a voice born from a hardscrabble life and the trauma of illegitimacy.

  FROM THE TIME SHE WAS AN INFANT, HOLIDAY WAS SHUTTLED BETWEEN HOUSEHOLDS, RAISED BY A REVOLVING CAST OF RELATIVES.

  She moved frequently; she made friends, but had to leave them behind when her mother uprooted her to another neighborhood. Billie became a loner, playing in the street by herself, or working to help support her mother. She babysat for neighbors, scrubbed steps, and ran errands for money. “Always working at some job or another, I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids,” she recalled as an adult.

  All her life, she searched for love, and for a father figure to protect and shelter her from a cold, hard world. Her pain is palpable in all her songs, especially the last one she wrote. In “Left Alone,” Holiday notes:

  Maybe fate has let him pass me by

  Or perhaps we’ll meet before I die.

  Hearts will open, but until then,

  I’m left alone, all alone.

  A LEGACY OF ILLEGITIMACY

  In 1915 Sara “Sadie” Harris was nineteen years old and single when she gave birth to the child who would go on to become one of the most celebrated singers in history. Harris herself had been an illegitimate child. Her father, Charles Fagan, abandoned her when she was an infant. He spurned her mother, Sussie Harris, and married another woman when Harris was a toddler. His new wife did her best to keep the child out of Fagan’s life. His parents and siblings were equally cold to Sadie and Sussie, whom they considered low class.

  The rejection by her father and his family was extremely painful for Sadie. She yearned for his acceptance and support. When her father converted to Catholicism, Harris followed suit, in an effort to draw closer to him. Fagan worked a variety of jobs, including operating an elevator. His diligence allowed him and his wife to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. Harris and her mother, however, struggled to eke out a living. It was a pattern Harris would repeat with her own daughter.

  Harris was working as a maid in Baltimore when she met Clarence Holiday, a sixteen-year-old grocery delivery boy who was training to become a musician. Harris was short and pretty; Holiday was young and handsome and had no intention of settling down. Years later, he would brag about “stealing” Harris’s virginity. The relationship resulted in pregnancy.

  Shortly afterward, Harris secured transportation employment that took her to Philadelphia. At the time, it was common for wealthy white Northern families to pay Southern black women transportation fees and a salary to work in their homes as domestic servants. It wasn’t long before Harris’s pregnancy began to show. Her employers promptly fired her and ordered her to vacate the premises. Homeless, unwed, and pregnant, Harris brokered a deal with Philadelphia General Hospital. In exchange for cleaning the floors and washing the windows, she was given a bed and obstetric care.

  On April 7, 1915, Harris gave birth to a daughter. She named her Eleanora—a name the child would trade for Billie. Weeks later, Harris shipped the baby off to live with her half-sister Eva and her new husband, Robert Miller, back in Baltimore. They in turn handed Billie off to Miller’s mother, Martha. It was Martha Miller who raised the future j
azz singer for the first years of her life. Clarence Holiday stopped by a few times to visit his daughter, but the young man, still in his teens, was more interested in pursuing a musical career than being a father. When World War I broke out, he was drafted and sent oversees for two years.

  Holiday returned to the United States in 1919 and resumed his musical training. He got booked by a touring band and left Baltimore. The following year, Harris, now back in Baltimore, married Philip Gough. Billie went to live with the couple. She thrived in the family atmosphere. “I was happy for a little bit,” Billie later recalled. The happiness came to an end three years later. “He was a good stepdaddy to me as long as he lived, which was only for a little while,” Billie said. In fact, Gough did not die, but deserted Sadie and her child. It is unclear whether Billie knew the truth. In any case, she was left without a father figure once again.

  REFORM SCHOOL AND RECORDS

  Harris, as she would do throughout Billie’s childhood, left town and left the girl in the care of Martha Miller. Billie was fond Miller, whom she called “grandmother,” but she missed her parents terribly, and feeling unwanted, she began to act out. The child skipped school, used foul language, and shoplifted socks and trinkets from a local five-and-dime store. Billie “was neglected by her mother,” her cousin Evelyn recalled. “She left her all the time and that was the problem. The child had an attitude, I guess from being neglected.”

  Clarence Holiday saw the child a few times a year, on those occasions when his band played in Baltimore. Billie adored him, but Clarence, an up and coming jazz guitarist, seemed indifferent to his daughter. Billie began skipping school on a regular basis when she was eight years old.

  Truant officer Anna Dawson pleaded with the girl to attend school, explaining that she was headed for trouble. Her attempts to reform Billie failed. Despite her intervention on Billie’s behalf, the child was ordered to juvenile court, where a judge, noting her absentee parents, declared her “a minor without proper care and guardianship.” She was sent to the House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, an institution run by the Catholic Church. The constant supervision and regular routine had a good effect on the young girl. Billie grew close to one of the nuns working at the institution. Sister Margaret Touhe was a caring woman who encouraged Billie to complete her studies, and more significantly, to sing for her classmates. It was while at Good Shepherd that Billie was baptized. “She was so happy, poor child,” recalled a Good Shepherd staff member. “She was in there with the rest of the girls, all of them in white dresses and veils; she was grinning from ear to ear … the Sisters gave her Mary rosary beads. She was so tickled.”

  Nine months later, in October 1925, Billie was released into Harris’s care. Forced to support herself and her daughter, the single mother resumed her pattern of leaving Billie with relatives and friends of the family. Lacking real supervision, the child dropped out of the fifth grade; it was the highest level of education she would complete. “School never appealed to me,” she said years later.

  In the winter of 1926, Harris was back in town. She and Billie lived together in an apartment in a rundown section of Baltimore. On Christmas Eve, 1926, Harris returned home, after a night on the town with a boyfriend, to find her neighbor Wilbert Rich sexually assaulting eleven-year-old Billie. She called the police. Rich was arrested and sentenced to a mere three months in jail. Billie, however, was sent back to the House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, where she was ordered to remain until she was twenty-one. Although it was obviously unfair for the court to punish the victim, Billie would most likely have received better care under the guardianship of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Harris visited her father Charles Fagan and managed to enlist his help (and >financial support) in obtaining a lawyer for Billie. The child was released back into her care in February 1927.

  Billie Holiday’s poise and penchant for feathers, flowers, and finery inspired her close friend, musician Lester Young, to nickname her “Lady Day.” Redferns / Getty Images

  Harris ran a restaurant out of their apartment, where she served home-cooked beans, collard greens, and pigs’ feet to some of the city’s more colorful residents. Her customers, who arrived at all hours, included hustlers, musicians, entertainers, and various ne’er-do-wells. It was here that Billie met up with Alice Dean, the madam of a local brothel. Dean hired Billie to scrub the steps of the brothel and run errands. Billie was big for her age; she was a pretty girl, and already well developed. She looked several years older than she was.

  Biographers speculate that Billie may have done more than run errands for Dean. Some contend that the twelve-year-old worked as a “pretty baby,” a very young prostitute who appealed to customers with a predilection for pre-teen girls. Holiday was busted for prostitution several times in her life, the first arrest occurring when she was fourteen.

  HARLEM NIGHTS

  Around 1929, Billie relocated to New York, where Harris was then living. Domestic work was one of the few areas of employment open to African American women at the time. Harris found work as maids for both of them. Billie wasn’t interested, declaring, “I ain’t gonna be no maid.” Instead, she went to work for legendary Harlem madam Florence Williams. This time Billie was certainly turning tricks. “In a matter of days, I had my chance to become a strictly twenty-dollar call girl. And I took it,” she recalled in her autobiography.

  She was just fourteen when she was arrested during a raid on the brothel. Harris lied in court about Billie’s age, telling the judge her daughter was twenty one to save her from being sent to a reformatory school. Billie was sentenced to 100 days in a workhouse on Blackwell’s Island (today known as Roosevelt Island), located in the East River of New York City.

  Upon her release, Billie began to search for work as a performer in one of the many nightclubs and speakeasies that populated Harlem. She was determined to make a living as a singer. She was also fortunate to be living in Harlem, home to a burgeoning and exciting music scene. Billie found work as a singer in a variety of nightclubs. In one of these, a club called Monette’s, Billie caught the eye—and ear—of record producer John Hammond.

  “She had an uncanny ear, an excellent memory for lyrics, and she sang with an exquisite sense of phrasing,” Hammond said. “I had found a star.” The country was in the midst of the Great Depression, and financially strapped record companies were unwilling, and unable, to take a chance on recording a new, unknown artist. Hammond was frustrated but convinced that Billie, “the best jazz singer” he had ever heard, was destined for musical success.

  THE BIRTH OF BILLIE HOLIDAY

  By then, Billie had taken on her now-famous first name. “My name, Eleanora, was too damn long for anyone to say,” she said. “Besides, I never liked it.” The screen actress Billie Dove inspired her new moniker. “I was crazy for her,” Holiday said. “I tried to do my hair like her and eventually I borrowed her name.” She also took her father’s surname, a bold move that earned his ire.

  As a featured guitarist and banjo player in the Fletcher Henderson band, Clarence Holiday frequently played clubs in Harlem. Billie sought him out, sometimes going to his shows. When money was tight, she would ask him for a handout. Financially, Holiday had been a deadbeat dad, leaving Harris to support their child on her own. He wasn’t inclined to part with his money now that Billie was a teenager, but only did so to get rid of her. He felt Billie was bad for his image and didn’t want her hanging around him. “Please, whatever you do, don’t call me Daddy in front of these people,” he told her. “I’m going to call you Daddy all night unless you give me some damn money for rent,” retorted Billie.

  John Hammond knew Clarence Holiday and was delighted to learn that the amazing new singer on the scene was his daughter. Holiday was less enthused, telling Hammond, “For Christ’s sake, don’t talk about Billie in front of all the guys,” he told him. “They’ll think I was old. She was something I stole when I was fourteen,” Holiday said. Years later, Hammond wrote, “I didn’t know
what ‘stole’ meant. I had never heard a parent referring to a child with so much contempt and horror. So I knew there was no relationship between them.”

  Establishments like the Cotton Club were immensely popular with wealthy white patrons who flocked to Harlem on weekends to listen to live music, usually performed by black artists.

  With Hammond’s help, Billie recorded her first song, “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law,” with the famed Benny Goodman orchestra. Goodman was impressed by Billie and hired her as a vocalist for his band. One of the first black singers to work with a white band, Billie broke racial barriers, and as a result gained many white fans, including actors Paul Muni and Charles Laughton. She went on to record with Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and Lester Young, a gifted sax player who christened her “Lady Day.” Billie nicknamed him the “Pres.” The two remained lifelong friends.

  In 1939, Billie Holiday recorded two of her best-known songs. “God Bless the Child,” which she also wrote, was inspired by her own childhood. The song, a paean to self-reliance, includes the lyrics “God bless the child that’s got his own/He just worry ’bout nothin’ cause he’s got his own.”