Elizabeth Winslow, who was a short, fat woman with an amazing gift of
profanity and "known to the police" as "Queen Bess," is dead. According to
the coroner's report Queen Bess died suddenly in a Wabash Avenue rooming
house at the age of seventy.
Twenty-five years ago Queen Bess rented rooms and sold drinks according to
the easy-going ideas of that day. But there was something untouched by the
sordidness of her calling about this ample Rabelaisian woman. There was a
noise about Queen Bess lacking in her harpy contemporaries.
"Big-hearted Bess," the coppers used to call her, and "Queenie" was the
name her employees had for her. But to customers she was always Queen
Bess. In the district where Queen Bess functioned the gossip of the day
always prophesied dismally concerning her. She didn't save her money,
Queen Bess didn't. And the time would come when she'd realize what that
meant. And the idea of Queen Bess blowing in $5,000 for a tally-ho layout
to ride to the races in! Six horses and two drivers in yellow and blue
livery and girls all dressed like sore thumbs and the beribboned and
painted coach bouncing down the boulevard to Washington Park--a lot of
good that would do her in her old age!
But Queen Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town
as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing,
laughing--a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam
Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the
rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in
particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and
if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will wince the
worst--Queen Bess, of course, who will sit up in her grave and, fastening
a blazing eye on me, curse me out for every variety of fat-head and
imbecile known to her exhaustive calendar of epithets.
Nevertheless, in memory of the set of Oscar Wilde's works presented to my
roommate twelve years ago one Christmas morning by Queen Bess, and in
memory of the six world-famous oaths this great lady invented--here goes.
Let Bess roar in her grave. There's one thing she can't do and that's call
me a liar.
* * * * *
It was Thanksgiving day and years ago and my roommate Ned and I were
staring glumly over the roofs of the town.
"I've got an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner for both of us," said Ned.
"But I feel kind of doubtful about going."