Boston a novel
“So we enter now into a Park the name of which I already forget,
but the beauty of it, I will never forget anymore. If I were poet
and know the meter, I would write a song of it in third rhyme.
(Italian, terza rima). I am not a poet, but neither so profane to
disturbing such splendor with my poor ink. The concerned officer
point to me a big brick building, saying ‘It is the Fine Arts
Museum.’ He point many other buildings saying that they are almost
all a private schools. I was, then regretting to have only a pair
of eyes, able to look in one direction alone. I observe everything,
the trees, the bushes, the grass, the rocks, and the brook along
the way on which I was raptured. The drops of dew look like pearls;
the sky reflects himself in the waters of the brook, and let one
think that it is bottomless.”
VII
Nicola Sacco had been for more than three years a victim of the law’s
delay. He had spent all but an hour or two each day in a cell with
nothing to do, and the strain of it was affecting his mind. He could
not understand why persons who espoused his cause should look for
justice to one old man who hated him and was determined to have his
life. He could not understand why this one old man should need years to
decide matters about which his mind was made up in advance. He could
not understand why the money of the anarchist movement should be wasted
upon futilities. Brooding thus, he became morose, like a dog chained
up; he suspected every one who came near him, he would not sign any
more legal papers; presently he would not write letters, nor leave his
cell, nor speak to any one.
Cornelia would travel to Dedham to test her social prestige upon
the “chief officer,” as he was called, to obtain some amelioration
of the harsh prison régime. The chief officer was large, stout,
superannuated, and Cornelia, seeking to win his favor, had to listen to
long discourses concerning his diet; he was centered upon “reducing,”
and talked about it in more intimate detail than even Clara Thornwell
Scatterbridge. He would keep an old lady standing while he enumerated
the pounds he had managed to take off by this method and that; and the
next time she came, he would forget what he had told her, and tell it
again. “Would you believe that I used to weigh two hundred and sixty?”
This man who could not keep from eating too much would take a tin plate
of cold food, with two slices of bread on top--a narrow plate, made
especially to go between the bars of a cell--and if the prisoner in
the cage complained of monotony and failed to eat the food, the chief
officer would discourse for another hour to his visitors: these men
were worth nothing, the more you did for them the less grateful they
were. When Cornelia went away, he would grumble to the other officers
about rich women who came “butting in on prisons,” spoiling the
inmates, insisting on new things that nobody had ever heard of before.
“Gosh, if that old hen would mind her own business!”
Some friends of this old gentleman insisted to Cornelia that he was
well-meaning, and trying to do his duty as he saw it. But to her he
seemed the embodiment of that mountainous, colossal, insensitive
stupidity which was in authority throughout the world--which indeed
seemed to be the very nature of authority. Several years ago there had
been a legislative investigation of county institutions, and a severe
arraignment of conditions; but the county graft-rings had been able to
block every move, and nothing had been done.
Sacco was more of a problem than the average prisoner. He could not
work in the plant which made shoes for the prisoners, because he was
such a swift worker, he cleaned up everything in sight; moreover,
another prisoner had attacked him, hating him as a “Red” and an
atheist. He could not work in the carpenter shop, because he was a
“murderer,” not to be trusted with tools. Kitchen work was barred for
the same reason. In short, there was nothing for him but twenty-two
hours a day in a cell; so he became frantic, and at half-past one
o’clock in the morning leaped from his cot and began to pound his head
against a chair, in an effort to dash out his brains. He succeeded in
cutting four gashes in his scalp, which a surgeon had to sew up. Then
Nick declared what he called a “hungry strike,” and for thirty-three
days he did not touch food.
The chief officer was not allowed to do anything about it--so he
understood the law; if a wop didn’t want to eat, nobody had a right to
make him eat. It was good anarchist doctrine, and Cornelia discovered
that many members of the defense committee agreed with it. The Italians
were convinced that there was no hope of saving Nick from the chair,
and according to their philosophy, a man had a right to end his life
if he wanted to. If he did so, the agony would be over, and the cause
would have a good martyr.
There was a hearing due on one of the motions for a new trial; one of
those interminable farces that occurred every month or two, whenever a
motion was made, a new affidavit submitted, an argument heard. Every
such time the miniature army would go into action, and the two wops
would be brought in and locked in the cage; Judge Thayer would enter
with a rustle of black silk robes, and the bailiff would pound with
his wand and repeat his formula, beginning, “Hear ye! Hear ye!” The
judge would sit down, and have another chance to pour out his withering
contempt upon the prisoners and their counsel.
But during the “hungry strike,” the sheriff refused to take the
responsibility of moving Sacco from the jail to the court-house. What
was to be done? Fred Moore had an office assigned to him, across the
hall from the court-room; and there was a terrible scene--the lawyer
maintaining his intention of going before the judge with a motion to
determine Sacco’s sanity, and the anarchists arguing, denouncing,
threatening, clamoring for the prisoner’s right to decide his own
fate, without the intervention of aliens, enemies, traitors and spies.
The uproar became so great that the judge sent the bailiff to command
order. In the end Moore went ahead and made the motion, with Cornelia
standing behind him. For this neither of them was ever forgiven.
VIII
Examinations were made, and the prisoner adjudged insane, and committed
to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital--where they made short work of his
anarchistic right to commit suicide. They strapped him into a chair and
put a rubber tube up into his nose and down into his gullet, and poured
in some milk. It is a hideously painful experience, and rather than
undergo it again, Nick agreed to eat. After that he was committed to
the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminal Insane, where they were kind
to him; the doctors would listen while he set forth his principles,
and would agree that they were beautiful principles--as indeed they
were. Very soon Nick was strong again, and a “good fellow,” eager and
sociable. Outdoor work was given to him, and he did it gladly.
So now he was “cured,” and must go back to Dedham. But the physicians
refused to certify him unless he was to have occupation; so the chief
officer was induced to modify his time-honored régime. Nick was to do
basket-weaving, and three times a week a volunteer teacher was to come
and give him lessons. This was Mrs. Bang, a Danish lady, who taught
manual training to blue-blood children in private schools; she must
guard the dark secret, that she came three afternoons a week to visit
an anarchist atheist draft-dodger convicted of banditry and murder.
Mrs. Bang was one more problem in Sacco’s life. Why should a person
who was able to wear good clothes and drive about in an automobile,
take six long journeys a week, through a New England winter, to teach
anything to a prisoner without pay? It did not fit into the class-war
theory. But Mrs. Bang won his confidence--it was easier, because she
was a foreigner. Strange to say, she found that Nick loved America, and
wanted to live here. His wife talked about going back to Italy, but he
insisted that the children had a better chance in the new world. Page
Mr. Katzmann!
Nick made bags from twine, decorated with beads; he made an elaborate
tray of reeds, with flowers and butterflies. He developed a wish to
learn English, the better to take his lessons. So came letters, to Mrs.
Evans, to Mrs. Henderson, to Cornelia: letters in home-made spelling,
but otherwise clear and direct. For example, when Cornelia made a
present of clothing to his family:
“I remember a few years ago on our love day when I bought the first
lovely blue suit for my dear Rosina and that dear remembrance
still remains in my heart. That was the first day nineteen twelve
in Milford, Mass., the celebration day of the five martyrs of
Chicago, that in the mind of the humanity oppressed never will be
forget. So in morning May first nineteen twelve I dress up with my
new blue suit and I went over to see my dear Rosina and I asked
her father if he won’t let Rosina come with me in the city town to
buy something and he said yes. So in afternoon about one o’clock
we both us went in city town, and we went in a big store and we
bought a brown hat, a white underdress, a blue suit, one pair
brown stock, one pair brown shoes, and after she was all dress up,
I wish you could see Rosina, how nice she looked, while now the
sufferings of to-day had make her look like an old woman. But I
never was ambitious to buy her diamonds and so-so, but I always
bought everything that could be natural and usefull.
“Just now I am sitting alone always, but with me, in my soul, in my
heart, in my mind, are all immense legion of the noble and generous
friends and comrades. Here I say I’m sitting writing to you these
few lines; the sunlight it shines on my face and for a brief time
it is a relief to my soul, and it brightens my mind by looking at
the clear blue sky and the beautiful mother of nature.... I will
live for humanity and for the solidarity and for the fraternity and
for gratitude to all the friends and comrades who have worked for
Sacco and Vanzetti; and I will live for freedom and for justice
that is the justice of all of us.”
IX
From scenes in Dedham jail Cornelia would walk a few blocks to Dedham
court-house, and watch the male members of her family engaged in
wholesale respectable perjury. She saw Henry Cabot Winters, who had
spent his life harrowing other persons, and now for the first time was
toad instead of harrow. Every trace of the familiar ease and charm was
gone from Henry’s manner; he was exactly like any other witness telling
lies and getting caught; the perspiration appeared upon his forehead,
and had to be mopped away repeatedly. Under solemn oath he had declared
that on a certain date he had had no interest whatever in the concerns
of Jerry Walker; and then Jerry’s lawyer produced the charge-accounts
of Henry’s office, in which the great man and his subordinates kept a
record of the expenditure of their valuable time. On those pages Henry
was set down as having given a thousand dollars’ worth to the Jerry
Walker matter, and then five thousand more--it meant several days! He
had even gone so far as to open a separate account for time given to
the felt-business; he was starting to take it over, at a time when
the owner was resting serene in the promises of Rupert and the other
bankers, that he was to have three million dollars’ credit to handle
his war-contracts!
Jerry Walker’s lawyers produced the accounts of all his concerns,
and showed how prosperous they had been. They showed the complicated
series of moves whereby Henry Cabot Winters had made it impossible
for Jerry to get a dollar out of any of them. The lawyer had started