PASSION'S SLAVES AND VICTIMS.
_A Matter of Untold History--The Terrible Machinery of the Law as a
Means of Persecution--Edwin James's Rascality_.
Our practice has furnished many illustrations of Thackeray's shrewd
remark, that "Most men have sailed near the dangerous isles of the
Sirens at some time of their lives, and some have come away thence
wanting a strait-waistcoat." The following is a case in point, which
occurred in the time of the Tweed _regime_. The position, wealth and
influence of the somewhat mature Lothario, backed by the more or less
corrupt judiciary of those days, prevented the ventilation of this most
remarkable and sensational scandal of our times in the newspapers. Begun
as a piquant flirtation, the intimacy, so far as the principal actor was
concerned, traversed all the stages between bliss and rapture on the one
side, and fear and remorse on the other--between garlands of roses and
the iron link, forging a clanking manacle of the past. A man of
singularly graceful presence and attractive mien; a leading member of
the bar, whose Corinthian taste and princely hospitality nominated him
as a fitting host of the Queen of England's eldest son, when he visited
this city; a prominent figure in the returning board that conferred the
Presidency on Hayes; and finally his country's representative at a
leading European court; he now sleeps the sleep which sooner or later
comes to all--to victim as well as to victimizer.
It was about sundown of a beautiful evening in the early autumn of 1865,
that the aristocratic lawyer first beheld the lady with whom he was to
become so insanely infatuated. But slightly advanced in the thirties,
the widow of a leading officer of the Confederate Army Medical Staff,
and formerly a leading Baltimore belle, she was a fascinating and
beautiful woman, when meeting the lawyer that evening on Fifth avenue,
near Delmonico's old place, she met Fate. It seems to have been a mutual
infatuation--a case of love at first sight, and in a moment of delirium,
under an impulse which was perhaps uncontrollable, she sacrificed her
virtue and her self-respect.
The story of her infatuation reads like the distempered dream of an
opium-eater. It was a case of fervent love on both sides. They met on
the avenue, looked, spoke and, without more ado, proceeded to
Delmonico's to sup. The amour thus begun soon assumed a romantic
intensity. When she left the city, he dispatched ridiculously "spoony"
telegrams to her in Baltimore, and in his daily letters indulged in a
maudlin sentimentality that might have inspired the envy of a sighing
Strephon in his teens.
During the summer of 1866, while his wife was in the country, he brought
his Baltimore inamoretta to New York, and established her in his
splendid mansion on the Avenue. With an impudence and infatuation
perfectly astounding in so shrewd a man, he took no pains to conceal his
conquest. Jauntily would he pace down Broadway with her on his arm in
the morning, and in the evening she would be in waiting to accompany him
home.
Tidings of this open _liaison_ reached the lawyer's wife in her retreat
among the Vermont hills, and she promptly came to New York and dislodged
the mistress _pro tem_. Relatives of the infatuated widow also appeared
at this juncture and strongly urged her to conquer her mad infatuation,
while a like appeal was made to the lawyer. But he was deaf to reason.
He refused to give up his idol, and the widow declared her intention, to
use her own language, "of sticking to him as long as he had a button on
his coat."
Time sped on. The lawyer's passion began to be exhausted, and the
unending insistence of her's began to excite his repugnance. As Ouida
happily remarked, "A woman who is ice to his fire, is less pain to a man
than the woman who is fire to his ice." There is hope for him in the
one, but only a dreary despair in the other. In the latter part of 1867,
the lawyer began to realize the force of this philosophy. The amorous
widow was then boarding at the Metropolitan Hotel, and he began to take
the initiatory steps to be rid of her. After two years of madness,
during which she had sacrificed the respect of every relative she had,
including her own daughter, a pretty girl in her teens, it was hardly
likely that he would evince the moral courage to declare openly and
straightforward to her that their relations must end. On the contrary,
he invoked the aid of three lawyers--two of them her own cousins, the
other bearing an historic name--to kidnap and spirit her out of the
city. First they forcibly conveyed her to police headquarters. Then, in
spite of tears and protestations, she was kept all night in a dark room.
Her screams and entreaties might have moved a heart of stone, but they
were unavailing. In the morning she saw Superintendent Kennedy, and
demanded the cause of the outrage. He informed her that she had been
brought there on a charge of being insane about the lawyer. A physician
was summoned, and by his direction, after he had submitted her to an
examination, she was sent back to her hotel. During the same afternoon,
the lawyer called and emphatically denied having had any hand in her
contemplated imprisonment, and secured her release, conveniently
imputing the conspiracy to the jealousy of his wife.
Meantime, however, the lawyer and his fellow-accomplices of the law were
plotting to get the wretched woman placed in some private asylum.
Bloomingdale and Flushing asylums were full, and as she continued to
follow her whilom lover and importune him to visit her, he found it
politic and convenient to renew his attentions and to feign a revival of
his passion. In a certain sense, he was to be pitied. Love of this kind
begins as a gift; but a woman of this temperament does not leave it so.
She promptly turned it into a debt, and the more she loved the debtor,
the more oppressively and inexorably did she extort the uttermost penny
from him. About this time she was introduced to an eminent medical
specialist in mental diseases, who, by some inexplicable means, was
induced to give a certificate of her insanity. Then her cousins took her
before a justice, and swore that she was an indigent lunatic, upon which
showing the court issued an order of committal to an asylum. A few days
before her contemplated abduction, the lawyer induced her to board at
the Astor House, and on the morning of February 26, 1868, he being
engaged in the Federal court, while she was leisurely sauntering along
Broadway looking for him, as was her wont, she was suddenly seized by
three hired ruffians, hustled into a carriage, gagged and driven rapidly
up-town to Central Park, when the bandage was removed from her mouth.
For four mortal hours she was driven about the park in the company of
her brutal captors, and afterward placed on board the afternoon train
for Albany at the old Hudson River depot. "All along the road," as she
subsequently told the writer, "I implored the conductor to furnish me
with paper and pencil so that I might telegraph to New York, but it was
only when we reached the end of the journey that he did so. I gave him
money to pay for the dispatch, but he probably never sent it. When I
reached Utica I was placed in a pretty bad ward, and when the physician,
Dr. Kellogg, saw me he went and reported to Dr. Gray, the director of
the place. When he came up he said I must not be treated so, and I was
at once removed to the well ward; I remained there two weeks, when I was
discharged." Yes, she was discharged, and was received with crocodile
congratulations by the lawyer and one of her lawyer cousins, and
triumphantly, as it were, transported back to New York.
She was now placed in elegant apartments in the Hoffman House, and her
lawyer lover resumed his visits as formerly. During the summer she went
to the country at his expense, and when, in September, 1868, she
returned to the city, he finally ceased to visit her. She was frantic
with disappointment, and her insane infatuation led her into all manner
of indelicate demonstrations. She dogged him in the streets; she
followed him into court and interrupted him in his pleadings. Sometimes
she sat on the stoop of his elegant mansion all night. Once she dressed
herself as a soldier, and tried to gain access to him. Frequently she
waylaid him, and sunk upon the pavement in real or assumed paroxysmal
fits when he approached. There were other demonstrations that no decent
pen could describe, except in a medical book for purposes of science.
Naturally the unfortunate lawyer was driven to the brink of desperation,
and at this time he never went out of doors without being accompanied by
two detectives to protect him from her indelicate approaches.
On November 16, 1868, he caused her to be arrested for disorderly
conduct and thrown into the Tombs. The lawyer with the historic name
appeared against her, and, to use her own language, "without any
examination, I was committed by Judge Dowling." Her gentle bearing and
lady-like address again stood her good stead, however, and in a few days
she was released.
She now consulted the late James T. Brady, the greatest lawyer who ever
practiced at the American bar, and after listening carefully to her
statement, he promised to see her "righted." Pending legal action that
eminent advocate died, and in the beginning of February, 1869, she took
the opinion of Edwin James, the English barrister, and a suit was
immediately instituted against her whilom lawyer lover in the Court of
Common Pleas, damages being laid at $100,000. When the defendant
received notice of the suit he hastened to see Mr. James, and during
several conversations offered any reasonable compromise to procure a
stay of proceedings. The lady's version of the suit and the subsequent
negotiations is as follows: "The suit was never placed on the calendar.
It was arranged with Mr. James to allow the case to proceed a certain
length and then obtain a release. Mr. James got no retainer, but took my
case on speculation, with the understanding that he was to have one
thousand dollars at the end of the suit, if there were any proceeds from
the same. He continuously urged me to go to Europe with my daughter for
two years, and they would advance the money; but I declined. An order
was obtained by the defendant's lawyer to examine me; whereupon Mr.
James advised me to leave the city in order to avoid the examination. On
my return Mr. James advised me to release the suit on the payment of a
certain sum by the defendant, he, the defendant, at the same time to
make an apology for what he had done and to express regret for my
sufferings."
Accordingly, on May 27, 1868, she wrote a letter by advice of her
counsel, authorizing him to withdraw the suit on these conditions, and
early in June she signed a "general release," professing afterwards to
be entirely ignorant of the nature of the instrument. Indeed the unhappy
woman cared more for an expression of regret from her enslaver than for
any pecuniary solace, and she received no money, although her lawyer
did, when the general release was signed. When she discovered the nature
of the instrument she was extremely indignant and demanded from Mr.
James the telegrams and letters in his possession which had been sent to
her by her worshiper in the heyday of their passion. The lawyer
hesitated and delayed, and finally, being pressed by a friend and
kinsman of the unhappy lady, said, "I won't give them up unless I have
an order from the court." Subsequently he claimed that he had destroyed
these tell-tale documents, and that the "general release" authorized the
proceedings.
She now consulted another law firm, but her case came to nothing, and
meantime her former adorer, now grown fiercely hostile, instituted
proceedings in the Supreme Court, for the purpose of procuring a
perpetual injunction to forever restrain her from harassing him with
such suits. This was in 1870, in the early days of March, when the
writer saw her last, and conversed with her on her wrongs. Her picture
lives in his recollection yet: The soft, large brown eyes, half sad and
half voluptuous in their tenderness; the soft, pleading face, with a
refinement--even a sort of nobleness--that had outlived the sacrifice of
her virtue and reputation. To the last she was a lady of extreme
sweetness of manner, and a fascinating and interesting conversationalist.
Another notable man, now also a member of the "great majority"--a
renowned Shakespearean critic, author and censor in the domain of
_belles-lettres_--brought great trouble and humiliation upon himself by
an amour with a ridiculously plain-looking and by no means young woman.
He had naturally, perhaps, a _penchant_ in that direction, for on the
appearance of the Lydia Thompson troupe of original British blondes in
this city, he wrought himself into a fervor of passionate folly over the
statuesque Markham, and designated her in his Erosian outpourings as
"she of the vocal velvet voice." There may have been some excuse for
this passing delirium, and many others were touched by it, Pauline
Markham was a singularly beautiful girl, and she never looked so well as
when she sang; it sent warmth into her lips and took the hardness from
her face. But the lady with whom he became involved in a scrape, with
the attendant litigation, payment of damages, danger of publicity and
total ruin of reputation in the exclusive places where his character was
respected and his judgment esteemed, was in every respect different from
the lady of burlesque opera. Bitterly did he regret his follies, for the
facts were given to a newspaper famous for its sensations, and the great
_litterateur_ was compelled literally to go down on his marrow bones to
induce the editor to withhold the particulars of his seduction of the
lady from publication. The sword of Damocles was suspended for weeks,
during which the high-toned censor's condition was sometimes pitiable to
see. His entreaties finally carried the point, and the case became one
of those scandals of the existence of which the public never dreams.