by Jack Finney
People who knew Harvey Burdell said that while he was quick to excited anger, it seldom lasted long; and he continued taking his meals at Mrs. Cunningham's table. What happened about the note I don't know.
Mrs. Cunningham was tougher. Demis Hubbard showed up again, asking to be allowed back, and Mrs. Cunningham turned her down. As for Sophronia Stevens, one night Emma Cunningham sent a message to Sophronia's husband saying Dr. Burdell wanted to see him right away, right now. Stevens didn't believe it. He knew Burdell well, and there was no conceivable reason for such a message. Besides, he was sixty-seven, and wasn't going anywhere at night; he was afraid of garroters.
These were street robbers who grabbed pedestrians around the neck from behind, holding them half-strangled and helpless—sometimes killing them in the process—while a confederate or confederates robbed them. Our name for them, of course, is muggers; and most people were afraid of them. George Templeton Strong, in his famous diary of his life in New York, says, in 1857: "An epidemic of crime this winter. 'Garroting' stories abound…. A man was attacked the other afternoon at his own shop door in the Third Avenue…. Most of my friends are investing in revolvers and carry them about at night, and if I expected to have a great deal of late street-walking off Broadway, I think I should make the like provision…."
Stevens did go to number 31 the next morning, was brought into the back parlor, by Tom Callahan, I expect—the Doctor's newest boy-of-all-work—and "I had only just taken my seat," Stevens said, "when a lady came in, took a seat near me, and called me by name. She said she had sent for me, not Dr. Burdell." Emma Cunningham then told Stevens that his wife was carrying on with Dr. Burdell, and also accused Mrs. Stevens of "filching money from me, and making use of Dr. Burdell to deposit it in some bank for her. I told her I would think of the matter, and see her again," but he didn't. "I thought it was all out of whole cloth, and considered she had great nerve. I thought she wanted to make a tool of me by working up my feelings against Dr. Burdell. I thought her motive was to ruin Dr. Burdell's character and get possession of his money."
So he didn't go back, and: "On the Saturday following a gentleman called and wanted to see me. He said his business was from Mrs. Cunningham; he said she had sent him to ask me to come up and see her. He said he was her counsel. He had got her, he said, out of some pretty serious scrapes. I took a chair, and sat down beside him, and asked him if he knew what her business was with me. He said he did not know particularly. I asked him if he knew nothing about it. He represented that she was a wonderful, persevering, smart woman, and always accomplished all she undertook. He said she had money, and plenty of men around her who never failed her." This inexplicable nonsense, just as Stevens recalled it, is typical of the weirdness that so often tinged things Emma Cunningham had a hand in. "He said [his name] was Van Dolan," Stevens continued, "that he was a lawyer, and that his office was at Number 118 Chambers Street." But when he'd left, Stevens couldn't find any "Van Dolan" listed in the city directory as "lawyer," and when he "went down to Chambers Street next day," he "could not find such a name, or any such office; it appeared to be stores."
So Stevens didn't go see Mrs. Cunningham. "I did not know but what some scheme or plot might have been laid for me," he said. "Such curious things take place in this city, that I am a little cautious."
A few days later when he went to Harvey Burdell and told him all this, the Doctor replied that nothing had gone on between him and Sophronia; he had only removed a small tumor or obstruction from her eye. Since Cyrenius knew this was why she'd gone to Dr. Burdell—accounting, I expect, for the tinted glasses and veil—he believed him; believed him anyway, as an old friend. So while Sophronia Stevens, like Demis Hubbard and Lucy Ann Williams, quit coming to 31 Bond, Emma Cunningham had actually messed up once more.
And the Doctor at last quit her table, taking his meals here at the LaFarge House. I can't date this photograph, but I doubt that it's as early as 1856. Still, change in the last century came more slowly than now, and possibly Harvey Burdell could have recognized this as the tree-lined Broadway and the hotel, in the old New York of low buildings, to which he now walked three times every day for "breakfast, dinner, and supper," the proprietor said. The LaFarge advertised its location as on Broadway "directly opposite Bond Street," so I believe the cross street in the middle distance is Bond, and Burdell's house, therefore, around its corner to the left, a short walk away.
I think Harvey Burdell deserves some sympathy. He was always alone. Never, said the proprietor of the LaFarge, did he see anyone eating with Dr. Burdell. A friend, Alvah Blaisdell, when also asked whether anyone ever ate with the Doctor, said, "I don't think he had anybody … he was not the kind of man [to invite a friend to dinner]; he was too close…." So I see Harvey Burdell now, walking out of his house and over to the LaFarge each day to eat his silent meals, as a lonely man, afraid of marriage to Emma Cunningham or anyone else because afraid for his money; and beginning to be afraid of the strange, persistent woman he'd met at Saratoga Springs, who now had a lease on his house.
Afraid with reason: on October 10 Mrs. Cunningham returned to her lawyer, told him to go ahead and serve the Doctor with the already prepared summons charging rape, abortion, and breach of promise; and to draw up another to go along with it, charging slander in having accused her of stealing his note. On the day she so instructed her attorney, Harvey Burdell sat in his rooms and wrote:
"Cousin Demis: I received your letter two days since. You say you are ready to come to New York whenever I say the word. Mrs. Cunningham is about to take some steps to injure me, I think. Hold yourself in readiness to come to this city at a moment's warning. Perhaps I may go out after you, but if things go on quietly you had probably better stay where you are.
"… Mrs. C. has slandered you and Lucy of the worst kind….
"If I do not go to Sackett's Harbor in a few days I will send you some money. I am, in great haste,
"Yours, &c., Harvey Burdell."
A few days later he wrote: "Cousin Demis:… The trouble I expected with Mrs. Cunningham may not take place …" but he was wrong. On this same day a deputy sheriff, Hugh Crombie, arrived at 31 Bond, served Emma Cunningham's double summons, and arrested the Doctor. "Emma Augusta Cunningham vs. Harvey Burdell, Action for Breach of Promise, Order of Arrest and $6000 bond," the first was headed, and the second summons, for slander, called for another $6,000 to be posted. When he saw what the papers were, Burdell became "very excited," said Crombie, "and said the suits were to extract money from him. He distinctly repudiated [this is the deputy speaking: everyone seemed more literate then] the idea of making a promise to marry. He said she did steal the note from him…."
He settled the suits, though. And in a strange way. A friend signed a bail bond for him within an hour or so; and a week later Dr. Burdell signed an agreement with Emma Cunningham so peculiar I can't believe a lawyer drew it up. I wonder if they didn't work it out between them, and if he didn't outtalk her, because it read: "In consideration of settling the two suits now pending between Mrs. E. A. Cunningham and myself, I agree as follows:
"First, I agree to extend to Mrs. E. A. Cunningham and family my friendship through life;
"Second, I agree never to do or act in any manner to the disadvantage of Mrs. E. A. Cunningham;
"Third, in case I remain and occupy the house No. 31 Bond Street I now do, I will rent to Mrs. Cunningham the suites of rooms she now occupies 3rd floor, attic and basement at the rate of $800 a year."
Those first two provisions are so curious, and unlawyerlike in language, that I wonder—read them again; see what you think—if they may not be Emma Cunningham's almost pathetic attempt to define and make binding her idea of a husband's obligations, in the absence of marriage itself. And, third, to hang on to the home she had found. To me the document suggests compromise. If Emma Cunningham and her lawyer really did try to get money from him, this tightfisted man simply wouldn't give it; and if she'd hoped the threat of suits might force him to
marry her, that didn't work either. But the threat worried him. Crombie said: "He was afraid [the suits] would injure his business reputation if published. The matter seemed to trouble him greatly." For whatever reason, he signed the agreement. Maybe he thought its strange provisions would be unenforceable.
He was furious, though. When he and Emma Cunningham's lawyer, Thayer, showed up at the sheriff's office to notify him that a settlement had been reached and the suits withdrawn: "His tongue was going all the time," Crombie said, "to the effect that they had tried to extort money from him; that he would not marry any woman; and that he had taken her to houses of assignation, and paid her as he had done with other women."
That last sounds doubtful, to say the least. A Bond Street friend of his, Dr. W. R. Roberts, said, "When the Doctor was angry with a person, no matter whether he was relative, friend, or foe, he would say anything to injure them; he would be very friendly afterwards…." And a legal adviser of Burdell's, F. S. Sanxay (F. S. Sanxay: long gone, absolutely forgotten, until you and I momentarily evoke him again) said, "When the Doctor was angry at a person he was the most vituperative man I ever knew, and he did not hesitate to denounce in the most unmeasured terms any person whom he might imagine had injured him. He was quicktempered and violent. I have known him to speak in terms of praise for an individual, then denounce him, in a few days afterward, most bitterly, and then praise him again. He was very extravagant when praising or denouncing anyone; I never heard such bitter language used by anybody as he used toward his brother William and his near relatives." If this explains what Harvey Burdell said about Emma Cunningham to Deputy Crombie, then I think he comes off as a weak man: blustering, fearful, but with a weak man's stubbornness. Crombie was asked later, "Do you believe he ever thought of marrying her?" and he replied, "Marry her! Why, he'd sooner have committed suicide first."
When she read over her signed document, Emma Cunningham seems to have thought she'd detected a loophole in the provision by which the Doctor said he'd continue to rent her the rooms she and her family occupied. Maybe there was a loophole intended, because the first dozen words read: "In case I remain and occupy the house No. 31 Bond Street …" But in case he did not remain at 31 Bond, it does sound as though he might then be free of this obligation. For whatever reasons, Emma Cunningham took a pen, and simply crossed out the offending words.
But I don't see how this document could have seemed much of a victory for her; it says nothing, in actual fact, and it would be hard to think she didn't see that. If so, she'd failed and knew it: failed to marry Harvey Burdell by persuasion, and now through force, if that was the point of the threatened suits. Doesn't it seem that there's nothing else to try? It didn't to Emma Cunningham. She now devised an extraordinary plan to become Mrs. Harvey Burdell. And the second act, wild and strange, began—with the arrival at 31 Bond Street of a new and sinister figure.
2
This is the man: he said he came to 31 Bond in response to an ad saying he "could obtain room and board there." But I searched the New York Herald through many days preceding his arrival there—most such ads appeared in the Herald, they had virtually a monopoly on them; searched other papers, too, and found no such ad. I found quite a few for Bond Street rentals: at number 6 … number 27 … 47; but none for number 31, and I don't think I could have missed one. It might have been a blind ad; there were a few such. But I wonder if, in fact, Emma Cunningham never ran any such ad at all.
For Dr. Burdell came to suspect that these two already knew each other; suspected, in fact, that this was the mysterious "Van Dolan" who'd come to the Stevenses' house on his strange errand for Mrs. Cunningham. And Sophronia Stevens said the Doctor was right.
As so many people were doing in those early days of photography, this new arrival had had his portrait taken: by Meade Brothers. From that photo a Harper's Weekly artist drew the picture on the previous page. And from the same photo a Leslie's Newspaper artist drew this,
which I include to show how carefully these woodcut artists worked from photographs: two different men, working independently, yet see how closely this resembles the cut from Harper's. Just behind these old cuts, if you can manage to look through them, lies the actual camera image of the living man who walked up the stone steps of 31 Bond, and pulled the bell. More than one person who knew him described his eyes as peculiar, a shade too close, and I think that can be seen in both these portraits.
He stands waiting on the stoop: five feet six inches tall and of powerful frame, said someone who'd studied his appearance closely. "His complexion is tawny or bilious, hair light brown, soft and curly. The top of his head is bald…. He is pitted with the small-pox, and wears a heavy beard and mustache…. His eyes are light blue, and his nose has the Hebrew curve."
The front door was opened by the Doctor's work-boy, and Mrs. Cunningham summoned. She would then, I expect, have shown the caller through the house, opening the doors of available rooms; and now we get our first direct look inside 31 Bond Street.
This is the room he selected: on the third floor right next to the suite into which Mrs. Cunningham had moved from Demis's old room. The door there on the left, in fact, leads directly into Mrs. Cunningham's bedroom.
John J. Eckel was the new lodger's name; said to have been a butcher, now a dealer in animal hides and fats; and he moved in with twenty-one caged canaries, a few of which H. W. Copcutt shows in his drawing of Eckel's room.
The bookcase beside the window in Eckel's bedroom opened up into a desk like this, and it also turned into a bed at night. John Eckel bought this useful piece soon after moving in, at the Crystal Palace, which stood in Bryant Park just behind the site of today's main Public Library. It was made of rosewood, a maid who admired it said.
Eckel was thirty-five, at least ten years younger than Harvey Burdell, and when he wanted to make the effort to appear so, he was sometimes described as handsome; except for the eyes. There were people who knew Eckel who said that he occasionally enjoyed disguising himself; and sometimes he dyed his graying whiskers black, and sometimes wore a toupee.
When he did, he looked like this, and I wonder if for Emma Cunningham he may not have been a welcome change from the increasingly morose and difficult owner of the house.
With the arrival of this man the cast at 31 Bond Street is almost complete, and the things that now began to happen concerning Dr. Burdell turned sinister.
Burdell felt it immediately. Eckel moved into 31 in mid-October, and in the same month Harvey Burdell ran into an acquaintance in the Crystal Palace. The two stood chatting. The man, "in the patent-carriage business," was exhibiting there, the Doctor politely said he'd like to ride in one of the carriages; and then, according to this mere acquaintance, "He said there was some damned cut-throat fellow about the house, and he did not like him."
When John Eckel had been at 31 Bond about two weeks, living with his twenty-one canaries directly beside Mrs. Cunningham's bedroom, something extraordinary happened; on October 28. Something downright weird, in fact, remarkable even by Mrs. Cunningham's standards. That afternoon, Dr. Samuel Parmly, a fifty-year-old dentist who lived across the street from number 31 Bond, glanced out his window and noticed a man dressing in the third-floor front room, he said, of number 31. This was Eckel's room. Leaving his house some minutes later, Parmly again glanced up at 31, from his own front stoop, and saw the same man, but "his appearance was changed, and the change gave me the impression that he was connected with the theatre, and was dressing himself for the stage." What especially struck Dr. Parmly, he said, was the man's greatly altered appearance about the head and face, "as if he had been transformed."
Somewhat later, between six and seven o'clock, getting dark, the doorbell of 573 Broadway rang; this was the home of Mrs. Sallenbach, a corset-maker, and her daughter, Emily. They didn't have a retail store but conducted the business on the second floor, living on the floor above. I don't know what the street floor was; a store, possibly, because the Metropolitan Hotel was directly across
the street. Emily ran downstairs to answer the bell; her mother seems not to have been home. She opened the street door—I see it as between two storefronts—and recognized a customer standing there, Mrs. Cunningham. Her daughter Augusta stood with her, and Mrs. Cunningham explained that they'd come to wait upstairs at the Sallenbachs', for a gentleman.
If this sounds odd, it didn't seem to appear so to Emily, who was seventeen. Mrs. Cunningham, she explained, "was a very friendly lady and often came to our house on business, and I didn't take anything bad by it." Emily took the two ladies upstairs to their "back parlor" on the third floor. It was nearly dark: "she had to light the gas as soon as she came in."
Mrs. Cunningham sat down, with Augusta, and suggested that Emily "go and do my home business," Emily said, "or whatever had to be done." But if this was a hint, Emily didn't realize it; she thought it would be rude to leave, she said, and declined. There was a piano in the room, and Mrs. Cunningham then asked Emily to play something for them. Which she did: "I sung a piece for her … a ballad."
For twenty minutes, she thought, Emily played as the two Cunningham women sat there under the flame of the gas jet listening: smiling, I suppose, perhaps nodding politely in time to the beat; you can imagine them softly applauding between pieces. And down on the street, if the heavy iron-wheeled traffic of wagons, carriages, and the little horse-drawn white-painted buses had slackened enough by now, pedestrians of that long-ago Broadway may have heard the sound of that piano and the young voice singing a ballad.