Sin in the Second City

by Karen Abbott

  The years didn’t so much slip by Vic Shaw as rear up and assault her. Roy Jones divorced her to marry one of her whores, and Vic Shaw had many more “chickens” but never another husband. She began using dope. Her eyes grew emptier; her body, fuller; her mind, smaller. She turned to bootlegging during Prohibition, still keeping in touch with old friends like Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin, and making new ones, like Al Capone.

  Vic Shaw stood trial for a drug charge and was sent to federal prison in Dallas, Texas. Paroled two years into her five-year sentence owing to a “bad heart”—the Everleigh sisters would have appreciated the poetic justice—Chicago’s oldest and longest-working madam returned to her city claiming she’d found Jesus.

  But true redemption remained elusive. Outside the Prairie Avenue mansion, she hung a temperamental electric sign that blinked TRANSIENT HOTEL. The men she now welcomed didn’t notice the scrolling iron gate, the gently carved stairways, the sleek cherry paneling and mantels, but merely staggered in and reminded her of what she no longer was.

  “I can’t stand to see the people who come here now,” she said in 1949, “after all the wonderful people this house once had.”

  She stopped bothering to dress in the morning and conducted her business while reclining on her bed, wearing a faded blue satin nightgown, barking orders to a black maid named Precious and two housemen, Montgomery and Will. One morning in 1949, when a journalist and photographer came for an interview, she jumped up, horrified.

  “My God! A man!” she said. “Give me a few minutes, chicken.”

  “She waddled her 207 pounds over to the dressing table,” the Tribune reported, “put on a ‘new face’ complete with pancake makeup, lipstick, eye shadow, and two pats of Chanel No. 5 behind her ears; stuck a jeweled comb in her white, upswept hair-do; rose theatrically to all of her fat 5 feet 2, and with dramatic gestures ordered ‘Precious’ to ‘send the man in!’”

  “Charmed, indeed,” she cooed in greeting, and released a mournful sigh. “It’s pitiful, in my line, to grow old, you know.” She told the reporter that she was seventy.

  When Vic Shaw died two years later, in November 1951, it became clear she had succeeded in outdoing the Everleigh sisters in at least one aspect of her life. Whereas Minna and Ada bumped back their ages by twelve years, Vic Shaw regressed nearly twenty. Born in 1862—two years before Ada—she was eighty-nine when she left the Prairie Avenue mansion for good.

  Minna and Ada sold their West Side home in Chicago and moved to the Upper West Side in New York. On the morning of their arrival, a procession of vans lined up outside the elegant brownstone at 20 W. 71st Street, and neighbors peered from windows to watch the movers carrying piece by curious piece: statues of Greek gods, an entire library’s worth of books, lush tapestries and silk curtains, wall-size oil paintings of Rubenesque models showing their naughty parts, two marble-inlaid brass beds, a golden piano that shined up everything in its path.

  Who were these two refined old ladies, walking every morning together along Central Park, arm in arm, heads nearly touching, their whispered conversation broken occasionally by a shot of raucous laughter? The loud one said her name was Minna Lester; the quiet one, Ada Lester. They kept to themselves, but, if pressed, mentioned their “former plantation home in the South.” Over time, after passing some unspoken test, a neighbor was invited for a visit. Another joined soon after, and another, and another. Gloved servants presented steaming cups of fragrant tea and little cakes on silver platters. They read from Browning and Kipling, and called themselves the Lester Poetry Circle.

  Soon, as the neighbors hoped they would, the mysterious Lester sisters opened up about their past. Oh, those nude paintings? The collection of racy books? Don’t mind all of that—these were their beloved grandfather’s things. He struck gold in California in 1849 and left them all of his valued possessions, including the risqué ones, and being two sentimental old saps, they just couldn’t bear to let them go. Please, take no offense….

  Over the years, old friends stopped by, bringing pockets of Chicago along with them. On July 13, 1928, Charles Washburn rang the brownstone’s bell; it was the first time he’d seen the sisters since they’d left the Levee. Minna answered the door, wearing $100,000 worth of jewelry and that inimitable smile. It was her sixty-second birthday, but she wouldn’t admit to being a minute over fifty. She asked her boy—one of her all-time favorites—how he was.

  “If you’re all decked out to impress me,” Washburn said, nodding at the diamonds, “you can take them off.”

  “I just want you to know I still have them,” Minna replied.

  She had dismissed the servants for the day, then called her poetry circle friends and asked them not to visit. Lighting a perfumed cigarette, she led Washburn through the house, asked him if anything looked familiar. It did. There was the statue of Apollo reaching for Daphne, the wood stairway that spiraled upward to the boudoirs, Ada’s prized gold piano. Not the Everleigh Club, exactly, but a snapshot of its ghost.

  “How come your poetry circle doesn’t suspect?” Washburn asked. “All this gold leaf…those nudes on the walls. Don’t they ask questions?”

  “Can we help it if an ancestor was a gold miner and we inherited these priceless antiques?” Minna said. “What the hell, I don’t smoke when the circle meets. They don’t suspect a thing.”

  There were further deaths and disappointments: Their father passed in 1915; much of their fortune disappeared in the Crash of 1929; and in 1933, the Everleigh Club, no longer sumptuous within, was razed to a heap of bricks and plaster. It was depressing, enduring its destruction for a second time, but Washburn kept his promise, visiting every year on Minna’s birthday, drinking champagne in their parlor, taking out all the pretty memories for just an hour or two.

  In the early 1940s, Theodore Dreiser and Edgar Lee Masters called Endicott 2-9970 and picked up the sisters, and four American legends spent a night cruising around New York, remembering Colonel MacDuff waving his chicken leg, and the way the butterflies gathered around the fountain in the Turkish Room, struggling to learn the differences between Dowson and Longfellow. A nice young writer named Irving Wallace became a pen pal in 1946, and he would never know how much the sisters appreciated his calls and letters, the questions that prompted them to try on all their old skins, and marvel that they still fit.

  But the end was coming, and Minna was too practical not to herald it. “Someday,” she said during one of her conversations with Wallace, “if I no longer have any money, if I’m broke, rather than let them put us in some old ladies’ home, I’ll turn on the gas in this house.”

  She never had to do that, but on July 13, 1948—her eighty-second birthday in real years—Minna wasn’t able to welcome Charles Washburn for his annual visit. He came, instead, to see her at Park West Hospital. “She seemed like my own grandmother,” he noted, and leaned in close to hear her whisper. She told him she hoped she would meet some of her favorite actors in heaven, and then returned to Chicago one last time.

  “We never hurt anybody, did we?” she asked again and again. “We never robbed widows, and we made no false representations, did we? Any crimes they attributed to us were the outcries of jealousy. We tried to get along honestly. Our business was unholy, but everybody accepted it. What of it?”

  Minna died on September 16, 1948, in her hospital bed. No one witnessed that fierce spirit leave the little gray lady it lived inside. Ada was stuck home with a broken leg, and had to say her good-byes all alone.

  The surviving sister organized an auction of the paintings and statues and priceless family “heirlooms.” Charles Washburn bought the $15,000 golden piano for $90 but later discarded it, on the advice of his friends, because it seemed to bring bad luck. Ada followed Minna on January 6, 1960, dying at the home of a nephew in Charlottesville, Virginia, weeks short of her ninety-sixth birthday. Maybe those twelve long years without her little sister grew kinder over time; maybe the memory of Minna bloomed full and rich eno
ugh to fill some of that ugly, empty space, and do justice to the person she had been. But in December 1948, only three months after that dark day, Ada sat down and took out a stack of holiday greeting cards.

  “Best Wishes for a Happy New Year,” they read, the words scrolling around a cheery print of a bubbling champagne glass. She thought for a moment, and then signed: “New Years Eve 1948. We are wishing for you a Happy and Prosperous 1949. From our Family to yours—Cordially Aida and Minna Lester,” deciding there was room in their lives for one more lie, and this one the loveliest of them all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The publishing process is as terrifying as it is exhilarating, especially for a first-time author, and I am eternally grateful to my editor, Julia Cheiffetz, for accompanying me on the ride. Her keen critical eye improved every page, her jokes in the margins provided much-needed comic relief, and her commitment and support were unstinting. My deepest thanks to the entire team at Random House: Gina Centrello, Tom Perry, Jack Perry, Daniel Menaker, Jennifer Hershey, Sally Marvin, David Underwood, Jane von Mehren, Benjamin Dreyer, Steve Messina, publicity gurus Barbara Fillon and Megan Fishmann, Lynn Buckley, Bridget Piekarz, and all of the reps who worked to get this book into readers’ hands. My book couldn’t have found a better home.

  I’m fortunate to have the brilliant Simon Lipskar as my agent. We met late in the game, but he immediately earned my respect and my trust; every writer should have such a skilled and enthusiastic advocate. Thanks, also, to Anna Ghosh and Russ Galen for their valuable time, input, and hard work on behalf of this book.

  Steven Wallace swooped into my life like a benevolent fairy godfather. I’m grateful for his tireless efforts on my behalf, and for his humor and friendship. Lunch is always on me.

  During the long process of researching this book I depended on the assistance, generosity, and kindness of numerous people. Debbie Vaughan, researcher extraordinaire at the Chicago History Museum, supported this project from the beginning and answered a million questions along the way. Rob Medina, also of the Chicago History Museum, patiently—and quickly—processed several requests for photographs. Gerald W. Fauth III, trustee of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cemetery, where the Everleighs are buried, painstakingly helped me piece together the sisters’ early years. William Diment and Evelyn Diment provided information about the Simms family lineage and spoke candidly about their famous ancestors. Amy Wallace and David Wallechinsky helped me track down their father’s correspondence, and Hilary Masters shared his father’s memories of the Everleigh sisters. Esteemed Chicago historian Ann Keating offered to fact-check a few crucial passages. David J. Langum sent me several obscure journals, offered sharp insights about the reformers and their motives, and hooked me up with a great photo of an Everleigh butterfly. Graham Garfield schooled me on the finer points of Chicago’s El system. Amy Fitch made my trip to the Rockefeller Archive Center an absolute pleasure. Becky Kennedy and Barbara White, the two-woman crew at the Atlanta Fulton Public Library’s interlibrary loan department, handled my many requests with efficiency and grace.

  Much love to the members of my Atlanta writing group, Joshilyn Jackson and Anna Schachner, two immensely gifted writers, discerning critics, and invaluable friends. They kicked this book (and me) along on a daily basis, and made a die-hard Yankee girl feel entirely at home.

  I would have quit years ago were it not for my online writing group, who in short order became four of the most vital people in my universe. Sara Gruen read several versions of this book, let me rant, made me laugh, and fed me her famous martinis (huge thanks also to Bob, Benjamin, Thomas, and Daniel for their hospitality toward “Cam’ryn”). Maureen Ogle took time out from her own work to help me with research, and was always there to pick me up and dust me off. Carrie Kabak encouraged me from the beginning and cheered me on throughout. Maggie Dana has a wicked sense of humor and an incredibly big heart.

  My friends and family offered editorial advice, a place to crash, and camaraderie, and otherwise supported me and this book in countless ways. The amazing team of Gilbert King and Nick Barose lugged equipment across New York City in a torrential downpour and spent a day taking my picture. Elisa Ludwig gave an astute critique of this book and talked me off the ledge at regular intervals. Melisa Monastero knows all and loves me anyway. Renée Rosen is my sounding board and an absolute doll. Jennifer Fales and Greg Morris put me up (and put up with me) during several visits to Chicago. Susan Keyock always shows me a good time. Thanks also to the Trollops, Gayle McCool, Mary Agnew, Laura and Erik and Nate Kutina, Gwen Dittmar, Roberta Livingston, Meenoo Mishra, Maija Pelly, Kelly Pattillo, Jill Patrick, and all the folks at Backspace.

  Kathy Abbott helped me double-dip on interlibrary loans, accompanied me on a few trips to Chicago at her own expense, and never once complained when I made her stay until the library closed. Anne Scarborough gave me holy-water blessings and scrumptious potica. Ron Abbott picked me up from the Philly airport at ungodly hours. Paul Abbott, John Sabatina, and Mark Sabatina coddled me and toughened me up in equal measure. Judy Sabatina is still the Queen of Hearts. Sandy Kahler is unequivocally the kindest human being I know.

  Chuck Kahler, my sweetheart and greatest champion, should remind me every day how lucky I am to have him.

  And finally, to the great, inimitable city of Chicago: Thank you for having so many fabulous old secrets, and for being so willing to share them.

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  Every girl who entered the “sporting life” did so intending to abandon her old one, and only in later years did the Everleigh sisters speak of their past—albeit, of course, in largely apocryphal terms. Minna never published her novel, Poets, Prophets and Gods (which purportedly included a chapter based on deceased sister Lula), and in 1938 she told Theodore Dreiser that she and Ada had written a book about their madam careers. This, too, went unpublished, but it’s curious that the sisters penned a book at all—or at least claimed to—considering the fact that Charles Washburn’s biography, Come into My Parlor, had been released two years earlier.

  “There have been three books written about the Everleigh sisters,” Minna told Irving Wallace in 1945. “One is Come into My Parlor. It should have been called The Club. Another is the Gem of the Prairie. And there is also Lords of the Levee. Most of all this is a bunch of untruths and lies. But Come into My Parlor is the best.”

  Minna’s creative interpretation of “untruths and lies” notwithstanding, she was right: of the three, Washburn’s book was the most complete and detailed account of the Scarlet Sisters and their times. (Gem of the Prairie— republished as The Gangs of Chicago—and Lords of the Levee devote considerably less space to the Everleighs.) Although Washburn’s biography is an invaluable resource—I could not have written this book without it—Come into My Parlor is slightly flawed as source material.

  For one thing, Washburn’s nonlinear style obscures the sequence of events and conversations; whenever possible, I checked his account against others to determine the most accurate chronology. Washburn’s work is also compromised by the fact that the author was close friends with—and very protective of—his subjects. He repeats the misinformation about their ages and upbringings (assuming he was privy to the truth in the first place) and omits certain crucial events altogether. There’s an entire chapter in Come into My Parlor devoted to Big Jim Colosimo, for instance, but no mention of his threatening the sisters’ lives during the final days of the war against the Levee. Likewise, the Chicago Daily Socialist’s 1909 attack on the sisters and their resulting trip to Europe are skipped altogether, but corroborated by one of Minna’s late interviews with Irving Wallace.

  Jane Addams declared in 1911 that “no great wrong has ever risen more clearly to the social consciousness of a generation than that of commercialized vice,” yet the national angst over the “social evil” has been overshadowed by other Progressive Era hallmarks: the push for women’s suffrage; Ida Tarbell’s scathing exposé of the Standard Oil Company; Carrie Nation and her r
enegade hatchet posse. (One historian suggests that the vice crusade’s “schizophrenic” nature is to blame; “admirable people” like Addams and Lillian Wald vied with “people who did not like sex.”) Luckily, the red-light district reformers believed both in their mission and in using publicity to achieve it, and documented their efforts—both legitimate and exaggerated—thoroughly.

  I spent three years researching this book and relied often on two local libraries. Emory University’s Woodruff Library has every issue of the purity journal The Philanthropist (and its successor, Vigilance) as well as an excellent women’s studies section containing many old and rare books about prostitution and white slavery. I first came across the Chicago Vice Commission report and the works of Ernest Bell and Clifford Roe at the University of Georgia’s main library, and spent many productive (if dizzying) hours there perusing Chicago Tribune archives on microfilm. A number of contemporary books and studies also proved immensely helpful: The Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff; Perry Duis’s Challenging Chicago; David J. Langum’s Crossing over the Line; Ruth Rosen’s The Last Sisterhood; Mark Thomas Connelly’s The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era; and Amy R. Lagler’s doctoral thesis, “For God’s Sake Do Something: White Slavery Narratives and Moral Panic in Turn-of-the-Century American Cities.”

  I hesitate to classify my numerous trips to Chicago as work. The people I met were unfailingly helpful, always willing to explain the intricacies of each El line or bus route (often more than once, thanks to my nonexistent sense of direction and utter lack of map skills). The city feels relentlessly vibrant and alive even inside the hushed research room of the Chicago History Museum or the basement of the gorgeous Harold Washington Public Library. At the latter I again logged countless hours in front of microfilm machines, cross-checking articles from the Tribune with those from a half dozen other prominent newspapers from the era (and becoming distracted, on occasion, by odd but charming glimpses of American popular culture at the turn of the last century: girls popped pills to gain weight; acne medicine not only promised to clear up “scabby crusts” but to produce a “new supply of rich, red blood” and a widespread fetish for “lovely arms” contests). The Harold Washington Library is as generous as it is stunning: every single photocopy was free. On several occasions I left the city with an extra suitcase, crammed full of research.