Bringing Down the Colonel

by Patricia Miller

  On this day, about twenty women, young and middle-aged, had seated themselves at several benches near the front of the courtroom and were waiting expectantly for the proceedings to begin; one woman clutched a pair of opera glasses. As soon as the court was gaveled to order, however, Bradley turned to the marshal and said, “Mr. Marshal, I wish you to request these ladies to vacate their seats.” With that the marshal intoned, “All ladies not witnesses in this case must leave the court room.” They filed out, according to a reporter from the Evening Star, “with flushed faces … downcast eyes and an embarrassed manner.”

  With decorum thus restored, men immediately filled the open seats and the first witness was called. Claude de La Roche Francis took the stand. He gave his residence as New York City, where he said he was studying law. Ever since his name appeared on the witnesses list, Breckinridge had been pushing Jennie to find out who he was and what he would say. Mr. Francis, or “Frawncis” as he pronounced it, turned out to be a smooth-faced, bespectacled young man in a silk top hat and a purple-fur-lined overcoat. He said he had been in Washington last winter and had become acquainted with Miss Pollard when she lived at the home of his friend Mrs. Thomas, where he called several times a week. He said he frequently saw Breckinridge there with Madeline. On one occasion, he entered the drawing room, he said, and “Col. Breckinridge was holding Miss Pollard’s hand and appeared to be leaving.” He made to excuse himself, but Madeline insisted on introducing him to Breckinridge. Francis told her he recently had the pleasure of meeting the colonel at a reception at the Mexican legation with Mrs. Louise Wing. After he left the room, he heard Breckinridge tell Madeline he was worried that Francis might mention his attentions to her to Wing. Later Madeline told him that “it was Col. Breckinridge’s desire that he should say nothing about [their] engagement.”

  Another time, he said Madeline broke down in tears because she said she feared that Breckinridge wouldn’t keep his engagement with her because she had heard he was engaged to Wing. He said he told her there were many other “good and distinguished men in the world besides Mr. Breckinridge,” but she told him that he had been “particularly good and kind to her and had shown her devoted attention.”

  The next witness was Dr. Tabor Johnson, who testified that on May 24 of last year he had been called to see Madeline at her boardinghouse on H Street because she was miscarrying a fetus that he estimated to be a month or two old. He confirmed he had seen a number of telegrams and letters in her room signed by Breckinridge regarding arrangements for her to go to a sanatorium for her confinement. On cross-examination, Stoll asked the question that was on everyone’s mind: whether the miscarriage had been “brought about by artificial means.” Johnson said that “it might have been … as any one might, but there was no reason to believe that such was the case in this instance.”

  Johnson was followed by Dr. Mary Parsons, “a sensible looking woman of 45, in nice furs and respectable,” who said she had been a physician in Washington for twenty years. She testified that she had attended Pollard when her second child was born in the winter of 1888 at a lying-in home on Second Street. She said a male child was born on February 3 and placed in the local Protestant foundling asylum. Jere Wilson, who had taken over the questioning from Carlisle, asked if she knew what had become of the baby. She said she had seen the baby once at the asylum and then in April at “an undertaker’s.” At the mention of her dead baby, Madeline moaned and threw herself forward, sobbing and shaking convulsively. “Oh, my God, pity me,” she cried over and over. When Miss Ellis couldn’t calm her, she was half led, half carried from the now-silent courtroom. As she crossed the threshold, she fainted and was caught by one of the bailiffs. After Madeline had been carried out, Dr. Parsons said she had seen Madeline and Breckinridge on the street together several times after the baby was born and that on Madeline’s instruction she gave Breckinridge the bill for her services, which he paid.

  With the witnesses done for the day, the lawyers turned to arguing over procedural issues. They had been sparring all day, and there was a barely suppressed energy crackling beneath the dry legal arguments. In the morning, Stoll had pulled a stunt with the disputed set of Washington Irving books that Madeline claimed she gave to the Norwood Asylum. Stoll had taken possession of the books after his visit there, but Judge Bradley had ordered them turned over to Madeline’s lawyers for examination. Stoll brought the books, but had them done up in brown-paper wrapping, saying it was per Bradley’s order, and suggested that Madeline be required to describe the books before they were released. Bradley said he made no such ruling and ordered the books turned over to Wilson.

  Then in the afternoon, one of Madeline’s lawyers, William Johnson, who was Carlisle’s partner, accused the defense of “chicanery” over their efforts to suppress some of the Kentucky depositions. According to Johnson, when he showed up in Lexington to take the depositions of several critical witnesses—including Sarah Guess, who owned the Lexington assignation house where Madeline claimed Breckinridge deflowered her—all the notaries in town made themselves scarce, saying they feared reprisals from Breckinridge, so the depositions had to be postponed. Then, when a notary was secured and Johnson gave the defense counsel notice of the rescheduled depositions, Charles Stoll and Desha Breckinridge, who took the depositions in Cincinnati, suddenly claimed they weren’t authorized to represent Breckinridge. Johnson said such “insolence” shouldn’t be allowed to stand. When he finished speaking, Shelby rose to object, but Bradley adjourned the court before he could do so.

  All the attorneys spilled into a small lobby leading to the hallway, everyone hot and prickly. Johnson was just behind Shelby, who spun to face him. “You have used language which is insulting to me, and I demand satisfaction,” Shelby said to the younger man. “Well sir,” replied Johnson. At that, Shelby slapped him across the face hard enough to knock his hat off. Breckinridge rushed between them as the lawyers began jostling each other. He put his hand on Calderon Carlisle’s shoulder. “Take it off,” Carlisle warned, as Desha rushed up from behind and caught Carlisle with his fist just behind his ear, sending his head jerking skyward. “Who struck me?” Carlisle demanded, as bailiffs took ahold of Shelby and Desha. Bradley stormed in and said their conduct was disgraceful, and he would deal with them in the morning.

  That evening, Breckinridge’s team gathered at his home, triumphant that Shelby’s honor as a gentleman had been avenged, even though many attorneys present thought Johnson’s accusations justified. To the reporters who stopped by, however, they expressed regret about the incident. Desha had already written an apologetic note to Carlisle, explaining that he mistakenly thought he was assaulting his father, and Carlisle had replied that he would let the judge deal with the incident.

  There was another matter, however, that the team was anxiously huddled over out of earshot of the press. O. O. Stealey of the Courier-Journal had been poking around the Breckinridge-Wing marriage ever since he had been tipped off the previous week that Carlisle had sent to Louisville for a copy of the marriage certificate. What he had discovered was a bombshell: Breckinridge had secretly married Louise Wing in New York City some two and a half months before their marriage in Preston Scott’s front parlor.

  Stealey had asked Breckinridge to confirm the rumor, intending on breaking the story in the morning. Breckinridge refused to comment, but was now scrambling to rectify yet another secret that threatened to sink not only him but also his already fragile wife. The fact was, the Reverend John Paxton, an old friend, had performed a marriage ceremony for Breckinridge and Louise in his home on April 29 with Paxton’s wife and her niece as witnesses. At Breckinridge’s request, the reverend hadn’t filed the marriage certificate with the New York City health department. Knowing it was now just a matter of time before the suppressed marriage was revealed, Breckinridge telegrammed Paxton and told him to register the marriage and authorized him to make a statement to the press. Now, he could only wait for the fallout.

  * * *


  The revelation of the secret marriage sheds further, painful insight into Louise’s mental breakdown. Why the rushed marriage, especially when Breckinridge already had so many irons in the fire and when in a matter of months, with the one-year anniversary of Issa’s passing, they could have been joyfully married with the Breckinridge children in attendance? A secret marriage was of no use in deterring Madeline; only a public marriage would do that.

  One hint comes from a note Louise sent to Breckinridge in March: “I shall always cherish this Thursday, March 9 for bringing the dearest news,” she wrote to him. Had she just found out about a surprise, late-life pregnancy? She didn’t have any children and the news may well have been welcomed, despite the obvious dilemma it posed. A quick marriage before anyone knew would solve the problem. She even says in the letter that a friend commented on her looking “tired and pale.”

  By April, telegrams were flying back and forth between Breckinridge and Louise every few days. Preston was apparently concerned about the relationship and pressing for a face-to-face meeting with Breckinridge. The well-connected doctor may have heard rumors from Louisville or Lexington about Madeline and Willie and, possibly, about a long-ago carriage ride in Cincinnati. As the Kentucky Leader reported shortly after Madeline’s suit was filed, it had “revived much of the gossip that had been current at various times regarding” she and Breckinridge. “Long before the congressman’s wife died there was more or less talk about their intimacy,” it noted in a stunningly frank tidbit. Louise cabled Willie on April 24 that she and Preston awaited him “impatiently.” Apparently the meeting didn’t take place, because four days later, one day before their secret wedding, Louise wired to Breckinridge in Philadelphia: “Preston very unhappy will come to NY.”

  By early May, Louise was sequestered in Atlantic City. The excuse Breckinridge later would give for her departure from Washington, and the hasty wedding, was that she was ill and her brother had recommended that she go east, while he needed to go west. He was hardly setting out cross-country in a covered wagon, however—only traveling through the southeast, lecturing for a few weeks, on what was an excellent and efficient network of trains. Preston cabled Breckinridge in Tennessee from Atlantic City, saying that he should send a telegram to Louise “every day without fail unless stronger,” suggesting that her mental state was fragile. On May 14, two weeks after they had been married, Breckinridge wrote to Preston telling him that he intended to marry Louise: “That I should love and wish to marry Louise—your sister—will seem to you most rational. That she should consent to be my wife secures my future.” He wrote that it was their “pleasure to confide this to you—asking you for the present to hold it a secret” until he could break the news to his children.

  Louise was pleased, dashing off a note to Breckinridge that she liked his “manly letter” to her brother. Now she was in the position of having to lie to her brother, pretending that she wasn’t Mrs. W.C.P. Breckinridge and, most likely, hiding a pregnancy. On May 18, Louise wrote to “My Husband” that she was ill and under a doctor’s care; she speaks of a “want of sleep and peace of mind,” and says that while she loves him, she fears she has become a “millstone” around his neck. On June 1 she cables, “Can’t endure this alone,” and seems desperate to see him. Did she have a miscarriage? By the time they are married in Louisville, she clearly isn’t pregnant, and given her age and the stress she was under, a miscarriage wasn’t unlikely.

  Despite frantic letters and telegrams, Breckinridge still didn’t come to her. He was, of course, also juggling Madeline, who was very definitely pregnant, and who also expected to be the next Mrs. Breckinridge. In her suit, Madeline asserted that Breckinridge had proposed dealing with her pregnancy through “the solemnization of a secret marriage to take place May 31” in New York. Apparently this was Breckinridge’s go-to answer on such occasions, but it was Wing who had the social clout to ensure it happened.

  On June 9, Louise arrived “exhausted” at the Midland Hotel in Kansas City, planning to meet up with Breckinridge. He didn’t come; at this point, he probably didn’t want to be seen with either woman in any city, as the comings and goings of well-known men from the busy downtown hotels that served as political and business hubs were regularly chronicled in the newspapers. As he lamented in one of his letters to Major Moore, “I pay the penalty of public life by having any reference to me published all over the country.”

  Louise cabled her brother: “Too weak [to] return home alone.” Preston brought her to Cincinnati, where she finally met Breckinridge on June 15 at the Grand Hotel, where they took separate, but adjoining, rooms to preserve the fiction that they were unmarried, staying until June 17. The following day, rumors of Breckinridge’s engagement to Pollard appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. At least one of Breckinridge’s acquaintances, a sharp-eyed judge, noticed his name, and Wing’s below it, in the hotel register, although it was so scribbled he wasn’t sure it was Breckinridge’s “until I happened to meet him in one of the hallways,” as he told the Enquirer. The judge thought it a “remarkable blunder” by a man who should have known better, as it subjected Wing “to the tongue of scandal.” Had rumors of their arrival in town and their thinly disguised liaison sparked the gossip regarding his engagement to Madeline, which, in turn, forced Breckinridge’s denials and set Madeline on the path that resulted in the suit?

  Regardless, once her honor had been called into question by publication of rumors of the Breckinridge-Pollard engagement, Louise went immediately to her brother’s home in Louisville. On July 1, she cabled to Breckinridge in Lexington that Preston wanted to see him that afternoon. Two weeks later, they were publicly married. A friend who was with Louise remembered her “nervous manner” on the day she was married. The friend told the Courier-Journal, a week after the secret marriage was revealed, “I am convinced she began to realize that she had been deceived. Col. Breckinridge vowed even then by all the saints that he hardly knew Miss Pollard.” Less than a month later, Louise would learn just how well her new husband knew Miss Pollard.

  * * *

  On Tuesday morning, Bradley scolded the attorneys for yesterday’s scrum in the vestibule, but said he would overlook it as it happened after adjournment. He also condemned “entirely reprehensible” reports that the defense had come to court armed, which prompted each attorney to stand in turn and empty his pockets to prove he was unarmed. Nonetheless, Bradley ruled in the defense’s favor regarding the disputed deposition of Sarah Guess, saying that it couldn’t be admitted under an obscure statute that banned typewritten depositions.

  The trial resumed, and for the next two days Pollard’s attorneys presented their evidence that Madeline had given birth to her first child in Cincinnati in the spring of 1885. The deposition of Dr. Street was read attesting that she had attended a woman who called herself Monica Burgoyne at the Norwood Asylum, but that she didn’t recognize Pollard as that woman. The deposition of Dr. Perry was read identifying Madeline as a Louise Wilson, a “poor unfortunate girl from Kentucky” who was referred to a practice she shared with Dr. Buchanan by Dr. Street after supposedly suffering a miscarriage. Buchanan testified in person that she treated Madeline in the summer of 1885—at “the height of the strawberry season”—after she came from the Norwood Asylum and that she estimated she had given birth about ten weeks prior. On cross-examination, Stoll seemed determined to suggest there was some kind of “intimacy” between Buchanan and Street, asking Buchanan about her marriage and divorce, and how often she saw Street and the living arrangements of the women physicians.

  Sister Cecilia, the nun who had been in charge of Norwood in 1885 and had been brought in from Pueblo, Colorado, to testify, confirmed there was a patient there who was visited by Dr. Street. She also said the patient had given her a set of Washington Irving books, and while she couldn’t identify Pollard as that woman, she noted that two patients at the asylum at that time were veiled, as Madeline said she was.

  With Sarah Guess’s d
eposition disqualified, Madeline’s lawyers brought Guess to Washington in person. She was the first witness to appear on Thursday morning. She said that she had been born a slave in Alabama around 1838 and had lived in New Orleans and Louisville before coming to Lexington and buying a cottage on Short Street. She said she had known Breckinridge for years. She said Breckinridge first brought “Miss Madeline” to her home about ten years ago around dusk on a Friday evening in August and asked her to keep her until Monday. She said she thought Madeline was about seventeen or eighteen and looked like a schoolgirl. “She had on a dress up to her shoe tops, and I said that she was too…” Before she could say “young,” Stoll objected and she was cut off.

  Guess said Breckinridge left and came back later in the evening and remained in the front bedroom with Madeline until about eleven o’clock. When he left, she said, Madeline was “undressed and in bed.” He came again on Saturday night and then on Sunday night, each time “putting his arms about her and kissing her” when he returned. On Monday morning, she remembered getting Madeline an early breakfast so she could get to the train station to meet Rhodes.

  After that first visit, Guess said Breckinridge brought Madeline back about a year later and then “about fifty times” over a period of three years and that sometimes she or someone else would see her back to Mrs. Ketchum’s boardinghouse. She said that after the scandal broke, Breckinridge visited her and “said he didn’t want me to have anything to say about the case.” He also wanted to know if Colonel Swope had ever been to her house with Madeline, which she said he hadn’t. She said she told him that Madeline “loved him and trusted him fully and that he ought to be good to her.”

  When she was asked if Madeline had ever been to her house before she came with Breckinridge, Guess said that she hadn’t. When asked if Breckinridge had been there previously, she answered, “Yes, sir.” Shelby objected, and his objection was sustained, but not before the jury heard the answer. On cross-examination, Shelby asked her how long she had run an assignation house, and she said for nineteen years but not in the last six. He asked her about Ed Farrell, the lawyer who had taken her deposition in Lexington and accompanied her to Washington, and she said she had known him since he was a young man. He seemed very interested in her travel and lodging arrangements and asked if she was being paid, and she said she was receiving $1.50 a day for her time, as well as her travel expenses. The sight of the dignified former slave, dressed all in black, in a black bonnet, testifying to the sexual perfidy of an esteemed ex-Confederate officer was remarkable—“the negress reproved to his face the Congressman who brought a schoolgirl there,” said Gath.