Boston a novel
“No, no, Uncle Henry, it’s an old story to us, we have been a
scandal for so long that we shall miss it. At least I shall--Joe
will be relieved, because at heart he is an old-fashioned Virginia
gentleman--look at him blushing!”
Yes, Joe was blushing! It made him cross as the devil that Betty
insisted upon placarding their love affairs before the family.
He knew why she did it, of course--she was determined not to be
ashamed of what she was doing--she would not let them put her on the
defensive--her love was just as true as if it had been blessed by a
clergyman. But all the same, no man likes to be made to blush!
Henry Cabot Winters behaved with the extreme of gallantry. “Permit me
to offer my congratulations,” he said, and held out his hand to the
bridegroom. The family solidarity was going to be preserved, in spite
of everything!
Cornelia had her Bolshevik granddaughter in her arms, and was weeping
on her shoulder in orthodox family fashion. Betty too had tears
shining in her eyes--a reaction from the strain they had just been
under. Women, who have been but a short time emancipated, do not defy
and insult the mighty males of their clan without terrific inner
disturbances. They wouldn’t admit it, of course; they would pretend
they were crying over the end of a trial marriage! “There, there,
Grannie!” said the trial bride. “Our scandal is over, and it wasn’t
half as bad as you imagined. Joe and I have had all our domestic
quarrels in advance, so we can have the fun of a wedding without any of
the grief.”
XII
The marriage of Elizabeth Thornwell Alvin to Joseph Jefferson Randall
did not take place in Trinity Church in the City of Boston, and
there were no little flower-girls strewing roses in the aisles, nor
bridesmaids with large drooping hats, companioned by stern-faced ushers
from Harvard. Not all the influence of the Thornwells could have
persuaded the rector of Trinity to marry a man who had allowed his
former wife to divorce him without that scandal which Episcopal Church
ordinances require; neither would the rebel Betty have consented to be
made into what she called a “holy show.”
The event took place in what was known as the “Community Church,”
a gathering place of eccentric persons who worshiped the ideal of
brotherhood embodied in the personality of “Comrade Jesus.” As this
ancient Hebrew agitator had been born in a stable, his followers had
purchased an old garage on Beacon Hill, and made it over with whitewash
and lively red and blue paint, with stairs going up the side, and
a gallery running all the way round, leading to offices from which
spiritual dynamite was mailed out to the indignant respectability of
the Back Bay. The pastor was a new style Christian with a sense of
humor, willing to marry a young couple whose scandals did not conform
to canon law.
So, on a warm afternoon of early autumn there appeared several
automobiles in front of Number 6 Byron Street, and there entered Betty
and Joe and Cornelia, with half a dozen other rebels old and young, and
as many wide-awake and observant young men, who came to make certain
that a member of their profession did not marry the daughter of the
most powerful banker in town without a proper front page send-off.
Some of them carried black boxes, and the “Red” bride and groom were
lined up with the “Pink” pastor in the center, and there was a clicking
of shutters, and a cry of “Once more, please!” A distressing scene
to relatives of the bride, who had come in a vain effort to confer
respectability upon the occasion.
An extraordinary moment for the Community Church: the president of the
Pilgrim National Bank and his wife in attendance, dressed exactly as
if for a real wedding, and holding themselves sternly erect, unaware
of the existence of newspaper photographers. Also the older sister of
the bride, Mrs. Priscilla Alvin Shaw, descending carefully from her
motor car, clad in the voluminous garment known as a “maternity gown.”
Also Aunt Clara Scatterbridge--without even having been invited, but
determined to do her part to maintain family solidarity, and hush
the voice of scandal. This wedding, while unorthodox and unesthetic,
was legal; so the horrible black shadow would be lifted from the
Thornwells! No more poison-pen letters, no more whispers in Back Bay
drawing-rooms! The escutcheon would be wiped clean--and the family was
so relieved, it would accept any kind of performance, in any kind of
made-over garage.
The bridegroom being a newspaper man, his colleagues would be loyal to
him; those who happened to know that he had had a former wife, would
not mention it. They would “play up” the note of social drama--the
press agent of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense marrying into the sacred
Brahmin caste! The young couple were going to spend their honeymoon
in a factory, getting first-hand information as to the lives of
the workers; the daughter of the most powerful banker in Boston had
actually got a job in a paper-box factory, at a little less than two
dollars a day, and promised to live on it for a year!
When the reporters actually got upon the scene, and witnessed the big
shiny limousine of the Alvins, with a chauffeur in uniform, and an
equipage equally costly for the bride’s sister, and yet another for an
aunt--only then did they realize the explosive power of the story. This
wasn’t merely a local story, this was an “A.P. story”! The reporter for
the Hearst paper had an inspiration: it was a “sociological marriage”!
A Hearst reporter would not hesitate to tackle Jehovah himself, if he
could get into heaven; so he walked up to the great banker and asked
him for a comment upon his daughter’s honeymoon. The haughty Rupert
looked straight over the young ruffian’s head--he was tall enough to
do that. But alas, the mother of the bride, being less trained in the
wiles of “Hearst men,” committed the mistake of opening her mouth. “Mr.
Alvin makes it a rule not to be quoted in newspapers.” The reporter,
seizing his golden opportunity, explained, “I just wanted to know,
Mrs. Alvin, if your husband agrees with his daughter’s ideas on social
questions.” The great lady replied, haughtily, “My husband does not
agree with _any_ of his daughter’s ideas!” So, of course, the whole
town had a hilarious laugh next morning.
In fact, the story “took” so well that the word went forth to follow it
up. The reporters tracked the bride to the paper-box factory, and took
pictures of her at work. They tracked her to the little apartment where
the “sociological honeymoon” was to be passed, and published her in a
fifty-cent apron, frying her first supper of bacon and eggs; they gave
the price of all the ingredients, and a schedule of the “sociological
budget.” They interviewed the ardent young lady propagandist on every
subject with which her father could fail to agree: trial marriages,
love and freedom, birth control, social justice, the banking system,
capital and labor, the Lucy Stone League. Nor did they fail to call up
the palace on the North Shore, and ask if Mrs. Alvin would come to the
phone, and hear a summary of her daughter’s opinions, and say whether
her husband would agree with them!
XIII
One of the McAnarney brothers, attorneys for the defense, got into
conversation with old Mr. Ripley, the flag-saluting foreman of the
jury, and was told, quite casually, how this foreman had had revolver
cartridges, similar to the ones which had been found upon Sacco, and
how Ripley had marked them, and taken them into the jury room and shown
them to some of the jurors, comparing them with the exhibits of the
prosecution. A thrill of excitement ran through the Sacco-Vanzetti
defense; here, as in the Plymouth trial, was evidence improperly
introduced, never seen by the defense. As fate willed it, Ripley died
before his testimony could be taken. But the jurors were interviewed,
and several swore that they had seen the cartridges; also Ripley’s
widow had seen them.
It was the first of a series of motions for a new trial, which were to
entertain the friends of the defense for a period of six years. The
“Ripley motion,” and then the “Daley motion”--Daley being the friend of
Ripley’s, who told of the conversation at the railroad station, when
Ripley said that he was on the way to report for jury duty in the case
of a couple of “guinneys” accused of banditry, and, “Damn them, they
ought to hang anyhow.”
And then a letter from Frank Burke, the exhibitor of glass-blowing,
telling how he had run into Roy Gould, the salesman of shaving-paste.
The mystery of the man with the bullet-hole through his overcoat solved
at last! Gould had been up in Nova Scotia all this time; now he was in
Portland, Maine; and Fred Moore jumped onto a train, and the friends of
the defense got the greatest thrill yet. For it was just as they had
been told--Gould had been within five or ten feet of the bandit who was
supposed to be Sacco, and this bandit had fired at him and pierced his
overcoat. Gould came to Dedham jail and looked at Sacco, and said that
he had never seen him before, and that he bore no resemblance to the
bandit.
So the Boston papers broke into headlines, “New Evidence in Sacco
Case,” and hope sprang to life in every heart. Surely there would be a
new trial now! Surely it would not be possible to execute a man, when
it was known that evidence of such importance had been deliberately
withheld from the jury! For that was what had happened--the salesman
of shaving-paste had given his name to a police officer, and this
officer made affidavit that he had turned it in to both the local and
the state police. Captain Proctor had had it!
To ardent young radicals that seemed a scandal of major proportions,
and they proceeded to send out press items and to print leaflets and
mail circulars--only to discover that nobody was interested except
ardent young radicals. The great Commonwealth was content to leave the
matter to what it called “the orderly processes of law”--which meant
precisely this and nothing else: that affidavits would be typed out and
sworn to, and submitted in a motion to Judge Thayer, who would take
a year to study over them, and would then produce one of his famous
decisions, in which the defense position would be misrepresented, and
arguments of the defense would be met by answers to other arguments
which the defense had never thought of!
In this case the old judge’s decision was such as to cause people
to wonder whether his hatred had not driven him insane. He gave his
reason for denying the motion in the following words: “The affiant
(Gould) never saw Sacco, according to his affidavit, from April 15th,
1920, the day of the murder, until November 10, 1921, when he went to
Dedham jail at the request of Mr. Moore. In other words, the affiant
must have carried a correct mental photograph in his mind of Sacco for
practically eighteen months, when he only had a glance in which to
take this photograph on the day of the murder.” “Web” Thayer actually
wrote those words, and read them from the bench, and caused them to
be printed in the law-books--along with the affidavit of Gould, which
stated in the plainest possible words, not merely that Gould had not
seen Sacco on April 15th, 1920, but that Gould had never seen Sacco in
his life until the occasion when he saw him in Dedham jail, eighteen
months after the crime, and three months after the conviction!
XIV
And then the “Pelzer motion.” Louis Pelzer was the bewildered
Jewish shoe-worker, who had made such a spectacle of himself on the
witness-stand, claiming to identify Sacco upon seeing him many months
after the crime, and at the same time admitting under cross-examination
that he had lied to an investigator for the defense. Now Pelzer made