See Note to Frontispiece, page 185.
Robbery Under Law
OR
The Battle of the Millionaires
A PLAY
IN THREE ACTS AND THREE SCENES
TIME, 1887
TREATING OF THE ADVENTURES OF
THE AUTHOR OF
"WHO'S LOONBY NOW?"
BY
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER
AUTHOR OF
SCORPIO
SUNDAY'S COMPLIMENTS TO SOCIETY WOMEN.
"We're always hearing about poor girls who go wrong, and sell them
selves to the Devil, and tempt men into sin. If you believe what some folks
say, you'd think it was only the six-dollar-a-week factory girl that filled
the joints, and wrecked the homes, and lured away mothers' darlings. As a
matter of fact, some of the most dangerous women, some of the most un
principled sirens, are to be found among the daughters of the rich; women
who will lie for money, steal for money, wear the scarlet letter for money
murder for money." William Sunday.
SECOND EDITION
PALMETTO PRESS
Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN.
TWO DOLLARS
COPYRIGHT
PALMETTO PRESS
1915.
1315*
PROLOOUE
Since finishing the play : ''Robbery Under Law," last Fall,
the undersigned has written another play found herewith,
entitled: "The Hazard Of The Die," a three act play in
blank verse treating of the conspiracy of Catiline during the
last days of the Roman Republic.
A word of explanation is germane to the matter in hand.
Upon finishing "Robbery Under Law," this last Fall, the
writer sent it to a friend a lady upon a large New York
daily paper. She in turn sent it to another lady a friend
of hers with the request that she bring the play to the at
tention t)f her friend's a large New York theatrical man
ager's play-reader. The letter below is an exact transcript of
the letter of the undersigned to lady number two.
In closing this introduction to an introduction so to
speak it might be observed that the length of the first play
a thing which can be remedied by a blue pencil and judicious
and experienced cutting, without in the least interfering with
the action of the drama the length has been retained even
added to since the letter below was written in order to serve
as a sort of propaganda towards the cause of Lunacy Law re
form, to which the writer has sacrificed the past eighteen
years of his life come March 13, 1915. All the characters
with the exception of the heroine's which is entirely an im
aginary one having been photographed actually so to speak
from life; and all the actions of all the characters bar the
heroine's having been practically copies from court records
as is indicated in the subjoined letter. To that end the writer
has left his comments unpruned, upon the abominable laws,
and the even more abominable administration of said laws, by
the New York Courts, both State and Federal, set forth in
"Robbery Under Law."f
|The object being to put before the papers the deadly disease
eating the fibre of our body-politic in vicious tLunacy Legislation
obtaining in 40 per cent, of the States of the United States; as
"Damaged Goods" put before the papers and public the deadly
disease eating the flesh of alas! but too many of the peoples of
the earth.
PROLOGUE
Charles Rcade's brilliant and powerful novel: "Very
Hard Cash," of some fifty or more years ago, revolutionized
the treatment of prisoners behind the bars of English Insane
Asylums. It is far too much to expect the same result from
"Robbery Under Law," but for what it is worth as a photo
graphic exposition of cold, hard, every-day facts, in our al
legedly humane, and civilized, and upright community of
the United States it is hereby launched upon the perilous
sea of literature.
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER,
"The Merry Mills,"
Cobham,
Albemarle County,
Virginia.
December 21, 1914.
Richmond, Virginia,
October 24, 1914.
Miss ,
New York, N. Y.
My dear Miss
My letter from "The Merry Mills," Cobham. Va., and
yours with the play to Miss - , of the 'New York
' '(naming that lady's newspaper), which she for
warded with the play to Virginia, crossed. My letter in
formed you that I had decided upon publishing the play in
book form, before producing same. Yours informed ">e
through Miss - , of its rejection by your play-re\ t der.
"For this relief much thanks" as Hamlet observes.
Nothing could be more timely, a propos, or pleasant to me
than said rejection. The reason being, that the reasons for
same given by the reader are so amusing when viewed in
connection with the stubborn facts in the premises that the
rejection becomes a literary asset of the first water to me;
and shall be printed sinking of course, out of courtesy to
Miss - - and yourself the name of the managers in
volved.
You see it's this way. Practically all the characters, and
all the scenes, in the play, are from life.
PROLOGUE iii
This being so, the words of your reader: "far-fetched
and sensational in plot" become highly interesting. The
first Act is taken bodily characters and action from life.
This is the Act in which the shooting and death of one
of the characters occurs.
The proof of my statement is that said Act is merely the
gist of my deposition on the witness stand in the case of
Chaloner against the New York ''Evening Post" for $100,000
damages for libel in printing that I killed John Gillard, the
English wife-beater after the coroner's jury had found that
he met his death by a pistol in the hands of Gillard and
Chaloner, while Chaloner was, in good faith, trying to pre
vent Gillard from shooting his Gillard's wife.
So much for the "far fetched and sensational plot" of
Act I.
Act II is a thinly disguised statement of cold, hard
facts bar only the love-motive, which is entirely imaginary.
Scene I, of Act III, is almost verbatim, and actually from
life! Scene II, Act III, is practically so. Scene III, Act
III, is largely so. The only main differences being that
the fight with the "Bloomingdale" keeper took place in
my cell at "Bloomingdale," instead of in the wood at
"Bloomingdale": and, also, that I escaped from "Blooming-
dale" by flight unaided by support from outside that insti
tution outside the Insane Asylum as in the play.
Lord Byron wrote: "Truth is stranger than fiction."
Messrs. 's play-reader surely endorses that re-
ma of his experienced and brilliant lordship.
The play-reader continues: "This so-called play is
lengthy and diffuse." On the edge of the manuscript I
was at pains to write at the middle of Act II: "This should
be cut about two-thirds from here on." And in the same
place in Act III, I wrote: "This should be cut about three-
quarters from here on." So you see your play-reader and I
are in accord about it's being "diffuse in dialogue."
I did not cut for the solitary reason that I am not
experienced in catering to public taste as is a manager and
therefore he would be in a far stronger position than would
I. I merely exposed my Psychological wares for him to se-
i\r PROLOGUE
lect from the public at last beginning to take a keen in
terest in that mysterious department of science. The amounts
I named could have been cut from the play without the least
injury to the action, though not to the Psychological value of
it as a study in the very latest and farthest advanced realms
of Mediumship. Since that is what I am a Medium in the
language of the late Professor William James, of Harvard
of whom you have doubtless heard.
In my sensational trial at Charlottesville, Virginia, No
vember 6, 1901, his opinion declaring me sane and also a
Medium, largely helped to win me the recovery of my good
name from the stigma cast upon it by the perjured arrest
and incarceration of myself in "Bloomingdale" as a maniac.
by my avaricious and unnatural brothers and sisters, who
lusted after my million and a half of real estate on Manhat
tan Island though each was a millionaire in his, or her. own
right. Professor James' words were: "Mr. Chaloner is of a
strongly 'mediumistic,' or 'psychic' temperament." I am no
spiritualist. Far from it. I denounce spiritualism as a fake ; and
charge all my interesting Psychological phenomena such as
trances and trance-like states to Psychology and nothing
else. Hence the "so-called play" deals with the most ad
vanced outposts of the great subject of Psychology.
This being the fact, the statement of your reader : "there
is nothing in the story that is worth considering," becomes
highly interesting. Which interest is accentuated by the
following closing and crowning climax of criticism upon the
part of your reader : "the behaviour of all the characters being
highly unconvincing under all cirmimxtances" Might I be
permitted to add "in particular that of the late John Gil-
lard, deceased."
So much the roof and crown of things is this last gem
of your reader, that I cannot and will not resist the temp
tation to appropriate this "Rajah's Ruby" of critical insight,
culture, and artistic and dramatic penetration and experience,
as follows: I have some two or three days ago completed a
very brief Prologue: and had sent it with the duplicate
manuscript I had of the play to the publishers who are
bringing out: "Robbery Under Law" in book form. I had
PROLOGUE
feared that the Prologue was too brief. Therefore it is with
pleasure that I add to it the admirably succinct, and yet com
prehensive, synopsis of "R. TJ. L.", rendered by your reader
at the top of the report thereon, together with his verbatim
entire hostile critique thereof, followed by my reply thereto,
in the shape of this letter to you, with, of course, your name
sunk; by way of comment and explanation to the critics who
will have "Robbery Under Law" before them in book form
before long. In this ivay I shall find out if Truth is so much
stranger than Fiction that it cannot and shall not compete
with Fiction in things theatrical.
Thanking you for your courtesy in the premises, believe
me, Very sincerely yours,
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER.
P. S. You will pardon the length of this letter when
you consider that it is my new Prologue and unless I write
it to you I can't truthfully say that I did as I shall in the
Prologue.
J. A. C.
Author's address
Read September 30th, 1914. (C. E. W.)
"Robbery Under Law";
or "The Battle of The Millionaires."
Play in Three Acts.
By
This requires three scenes and sixteen characters.
Hugh Stutfield, of Virginia and New York, a millionaire Art
Patron and Writer on Law, has an enemy in James Lawless, also a
millionaire, who conspires with his relatives to get him out of the
way.
Hugh and Lawless are rivals for the hand of Viola Cariston, and
fearing that he has little chance of winning her from the Virginian,
Lawless determines to resort to any means rather than lose her.
Constantia and Winston Blettermole, cousins of Hugh's, are bit
terly* jealous of him, and as they are the next heirs to his millions
if he does not marry, they listen readily to the criminal suggestions
of Lawless and his lawyer, Spink. Although Hugh has a certain clair
voyant sense which warns him of trouble, they manage to have him
shut up in an Asylum as a dangerous lunatic. From this place he
eventally makes his escape and by wit and courage gets the better of
his persecutors.
This so-called play is a lengthy and far-fetched narrative, very
sensational in plot and diffuse in dialogue.
The speeches are almost all pages in length and the authors are
apparently quite ignorant of the form in which plays are written.
There is nothing in the story which is worth considering the
behavior of all the characters being highly unconvincing under all
circumstances.
PROLOGUE
It is but fair to state that lady number two's play-reader
had not the remotest idea as to the identity of the author of
'Robbery Under Law." For he says in his critique. ; 'the
authors are."
Finally he is presumably unfamiliar with the stirring
cycle of events which for the past eighteen years has
been whirling around the head of "Who's Looney Now?"
INSET
To
"ROBBERY UNDER LAW"
JM : \m LI :ss ROMANCE.
Chorus loquitwr.
In Memoriam "THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH."
Thou think'st perchance Romance is dead and gone
That Science cold hath laid her fiery ghost
But glance within and thou'lt be told not one
But deeds of derring-do a serried host.
The Poetry of Business herein gleams
The sparkling projects of her darkling womb
And Death doth shed her shimmering moonbeam gleams
Athwart the ghostly portal of the Tomb.
Love lifts her radiant head and waves her hand ;
Whereat fell Rivalry doth draw his knife
Psychology then in the game takes hand,
And saves the hero in his howr of strife!
In short we show that Mystery to-day
Is as mysterious as she's been for aye.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
OR
The Battle of the Millionaires
A Play in Three Acts and Three Scenes.
Dramatis Personae.
HUGH STUTFIELD of "Rokeby," Albemarle County, Virginia,
and New York. Millionaire Art Patron and Law
Writer. 30 years old. In love with Viola.
JAMES LAWLESS, of New York. Millionaire man-about-town.
30 years old. Rival of Stutfield, and his enemy.
Rejected suitor of Viola.
WINSTON BLETTERMOLE, of New York, millionaire. Cousin
and heir-at-law of Stutfield, and his bitter enemy.
30 years old.
BELISARIUS P. SPINK, of the New York County Bar. Family
lawyer of both Lawless and Blettermole. Learned
but unscrupulous practitioner. Hatches the plot to
have Stutfield basely declared insane to rid Lawless
of a rival in love, and enable Blettermole to obtain
control of his five million dollar estate. Known to
his intimates as "B. P.," since he frowns upon the
juxtaposition of such names as "Belisarius" and
"Spink." 50 years old, but wonderfully preserved.
CAPTAIN CARISTON, "F. F. V." and ex- Confederate Cavalry
Officer under Stuart in the army of Northern Vir
ginia. Since the war exiled himself to the coal fields
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
of West Virginia for twenty years, and as a result is
now worth half a million. Father of Viola, his only
child. About 50 years old.
AJLBERT WEDGE. Inventor. In employ of Stutfield, about 30
years old.
JOHN BULLARD. English machinist, 32 years old.
New York alienists. Employed by Lawless
^ T. and Blettermole to visit Stutfield in New York
-T) i under false pretenses, garble his statements
and falsely testify as to his insanity. Fifty-
five and fifty-eight, respectively.
"Bosco." Stutfield's negro body-servant.
"WASH." Negro butler at "Elsinore," the three thousand
acre plantation of Captain Cariston in Albemarle
County.
PAT SLJGO. Keeper at "Fairdale" Insane Asylum. In
charge of Stutfield. 25 years old.
VIOLA CARISTON. Daughter of Captain Cariston. of "Elsi
nore." In love with Stutfield. 25 years old.
CONSTANTIA BLETTERMOLE. Wife of Winston Blettermole.
Viola's best friend. 28 years old.
MRS. BULLARD. Wife of John Bullard. 30 years old.
MONA BULLARD. Eight year old daughter of Mrs. Bullard
TIME, 1887.
PLACE, VIRGINIA AND NEW YORK.
tAllas Rumdumbagore, a falsely alleged Parsee fire-worshipper
from Bombay.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
ACT I.
THE HAND or DESTINY.
The Dining Room at "Eokeby," Albemarle County, Vir
ginia, Stutfield's 400 acre estate. Three P. M., March 15th.
1887.
ACT II.
WEAVING THE PLOT.
The Drawing Room at "Elsinore," Captain Cariston's
3,000 acre plantation. Five miles from "Rokeby." Four
P. M., March 18th, 1887.
ACT III.
COUNTERPLOT.
SCENE I.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE LABYRINTH.
Stutfield's bedroom in his suite at the Hotel Kensington,
15th Street and 5th Avenue. Six-thirty P. M., April 12th.
1887.
SCENE II.
THE LABYRINTH.
Stutfield's cell in "Fairdale" Insane Asylum. Time:
Afternoon, three months later.
The wood at "Fairdale" Insane. Asylum. Time: After
noon. Three weeks later.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
THE HAND OF DESTINY.
ACT I. Dining Room at "Rokeby," Albemarle County, Vir
ginia.
(Stutfield, alone, dressed in riding costume cut-away-
coat, breeches and gaiters sitting at table in centre of stage.
Stutfield is a man five feet ten and three-quarter inches high, of
athletic build and weighs a hundred and fifty-four. His fea
tures are strong and regular. Eyes dark grey, hair thick and
curly and such dark brown as to appear black. He is clean
shaved. He smiles as readily as he frowns. Luncheon over,
except fruit. "Bosco," a powerful negro servant, enters and
hands Stutfield a letter, on a silver salver).
"Bosco": "From Miss Cariston. Sir. The groom brought
it and left."
(Servant retires. Stutfield opens letter, and reads.)
Stutfield. (Reading)
"Elsinore,"
March thirteenth, 1887.
"Dearest Hugh:
This is the twelfth letter I have ever, ever written you.
my dear, and yet I am in the same state of uncertainty as re
gards accepting you as I was when I sat down to write the
first. Why is this? Why can't I make up my mind? You
satisfy my mental concept of a man, you satisfy my moral
concept, and my physical. You are blue-blooded. You are
rich. You are in the prime of life. You are a cosmopoli
tan a Londoner, a Parisian, and a New Yorker, as much as
you are a Virginian born, if not raised in the dear old State.
Why cannot I say, 'Come to me, and take me.' You who are
a metaphysician and a philosopher will probably say because
I do not know my own mind. But my dear, dear friend, the
tabulating of I shan't say all and sundry, but certainly
several of your attractive qualities in this letter, gainsays
that hypothesis, does it not, Hugh? I do wish I could screw
myself up to the stickinsr-place and say, 'Come.' But I can
not. I feel, Hugh, darling, that I am doing you a great
wrong in keeping you hanging in the offing like this that I
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 6
am keeping some nobler woman than myself away from you.
away from your charm, away from your manliness, away
from your high ideality and true Christian manhood. You
see, dear, I do know you pretty well for having known you
for so short a while barely three months after all, do I
not, darling? But try as I may, I simply cannot bring my
self to say 'Yes.' When I first saw you at that ball in New
York last January the 'Patriarchs' I had a feeling that
you were my mate. That may sound strangely but you know
I am a strange creature. That may sound unmaidenly but,
my darling, you know, at all events, I am not that. Yes,
Hugh, I felt that you were my mate, my man, my defender,
and champion against 'the thorns and crosses of the world'
as our Shakspeare says. You don't know how my heart went
out to you how it beat under my corsage you see, dear, I
am frank I do not conceal your attraction for me and yet
and yet . But there I know my vacillation irritates you,
dear, so I shall stop, with a prayer for guidance to that God
Whom we both so firmly believe in, and trust.
Your friend,
VIOLA CARISTON."
(Upon reading letter Stutfield says:) "What wouldn't I
give to be able to win that girl!"
(Leans head on hand, elbow on table and gazes into fire
at right. After a moment) :
"I'd give anything anything anything an honorable
man could to win her." (Pause) "A girl like that needs
the imagination touched needs something that appeals to
the imagination to turn the trick. And what in G d's
name can appeal to a young girl's imagination in these drab-
colored, hum-drum piping days of peace! Nothing !" (A
pause. Sighs.) "Well, there's nothing to do for it but wait
waiting in a case like the present doesn't spoil anything,
doesn't endanger anything 'Patience and shuffle the cards
patience and shuffle the cards' (The negro, Bosco, enters
and says:)
"Miss Cariston, Sir, and a strange lady is outside in
Miss Cariston's runabout and Miss Cariston want to know
if yo' can see her and the lady for a few minutes."
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield: "Miss Cariston !"
Bosco: "Yes, Suh."
Stutfield: "Certainly, I'll go out at once."
(Enter Viola and Mrs. Bullard, and an eight-year-old
daughter. Viola Cariston is five feet eight inches in height,
of full but graceful figure. Has dazzling white skin with
two patches of colour in her cheeks. Her eyes are a red-
brown, so dark as to appear almost black. Her hair which is
very abundant and naturally wavy is a dark copper colour
almost black. She has a face of wining sweetness, shadowed
by a seriousness a gravity which makes her smile a rare
one.
Mrs. Bullard is an attractive, well mannered, lower-mid
dle class woman, modestly, but tastefully dressed.
Mona is a child of unusual attractiveness and refinement :
dressed with extreme care by her mother.)
Viola : "I came in uninvited, Hugh as you see but the
matter is marked 'Urgent' and ceremony must go to the wall.
Permit me to make you known to Mrs. John Bullard, late
of England. I come in the role of a damsel-errant, succour
ing distressed womanhood nothing else, you may well im
agine, could have induced me to invade the bachelor quarters
of Mr. Hugh Stutfield, of 'Rokeby' and New York."
(Stutfield, who has risen and crossed the stage to door
at left by which they entered only door in the room bows
politely but coldly to Mrs. Bullard, who returns the salute
quietly).
Stutfield: "One moment, Miss Cariston permit me.
Bosco, clear the table. Then tell Miss Cariston's groom to
take the horse to the stable but not unharness on account
of the cold." (Bosco bows, and with great alacrity, skill and
noiselessness places the plate and fruit-dish upon a tray no
cloth on the table, which is mahogany with fruit knife and
glass, and the table is cleared. He then disappears).
Stutfield: "Won't you ladies and the little girl please
seat yourselves before the fire and warm?" (Bringing up
two chairs. The little girl on the way to mount her mother's
lap spys an old Nile green velvet, Rugby School, England,
football cap of Stutfield's, on the table, and exclaims) :
Mona : "My, what a pretty cap !"
ROBBERY UNDER ],AW
Stutfield: "Yes, young lady, rather Oriental, is it not?
That (holding it up) Miss Cariston, is a souvenir of my hard-
fought battles on the football field at Rugby Tom Brown's
Rugy where I was full-back for my team. I wear it only
about the house and only in winter and only in going
through the halls because as you may have noticed
though hot water is laid on here I never use anything but the
open wood fires, and therefore the hall-ways are cold. (Leav
ing the cap in the child's hands) .
Viola: "Mr. Stutfield, this lady met me as I was driv
ing home from a Ladies' Auxiliary meeting at Grace church.
She was on foot, accompanied by her little girl. She stopped
me and asked if I knew the way to Mr. Hugh Stutfield's. I
replied that I did. She then asked me if I would mind driv
ing her there, as she had business of importance which would
not brook delay. I willingly consented. As soon as she was
seated she said that she would like to speak to me privately.
I thereupon told Griffith the boy to get down and walk
ahead of the horse "
Stutfield: "Pardon my interruption, but I shall give
myself the pleasure of saying a general ever! You made
Master Griffith walk ahead of the horse. There's where your
generalship which you will bear me out I've always insisted
on, you inherited from your warlike sire there's where your
generalship came in, and made its rare presence felt ninety
women out of a hundred and ninety men even would have
allowed Master Griffith to walk behind and overhear you, or
anywhere he pleased, so long as he did walk."
Viola : "Merci. But no more interruptions, if you
please particularly upon such exceedingly trifling provoca
tion the matter in hand, Mr. Stutfield, is of the very gravest
possible importance/"
(Stutfield, who has at first smiled and bowed, now looks
grave and says) :
Stutfield: "A thousand pardons I shall not offend
again."
Viola: "Mrs. Bullard then told me one of the most
heart-rending stories I have ever heard, of marital unhappi-
ness. I should preface my remarks by saying that I have
known of her and her husband and little girl ever since they
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
arrived here some weeks ago Mrs. Bullard, you will pardon
my speaking frankly but the situation demands speed
Mrs. Bullard: "Certainly, Miss, pray suit yourself. I
only hope and pray you get it all explained to the gentle
man before my husband finds I've left home and follows me
here he is a wonderfully strong man and fast walker
thinks nothing of walking twenty miles in a day in his busi
ness of repairing clocks and sewing-machines in the country
and when he comes I don't like to think what may happen
Stutfield: "Pray don't be alarmed, Mrs. Bullard Oh !
I'm offending again I'm interrupting but with your per
mission, Miss Cariston, I'll interrupt just long enough and for
the specific purpose of quieting the lady's fears."
Viola: "You have my full permission (with a smile)
to interrupt as often as you wish for so praiseworthy and
humanitarian a cause."
Stutfield: (Bowing and smiling) "I was about to ob
serve to this lady that she need not be concerned about what
will happen, so far, at least, as she is concerned, as I trust
I am capable of protecting women who have been driven by
stress of weather to 'Rokeby' 'any port in a storm,' you
know, Miss Cariston."
Viola : " 'Any port in a storm,' Mr. Stutfield, and now
please be quiet and permit me to finish my preface to Mrs.
Bullard 's most terrible and dramatic story." (Stutfield
smiles and bows. He is sitting at the head of the table).
"Mrs. Bullard is known as a quiet, respectable, God-fearing
woman. Her husband is regarded as a dangerous character.
He threatened to brain his first employer here with an axe
whereupon he was, very naturally, discharged. The dispute
was a trivial one about just where Mrs. Bullard's hens were
to be allowed to roam in search of food. Thereupon, they
left, and hired their present little house about two miles from
here, and he endeavored to support himself by mending ma
chinery of a light nature, such as Mrs. Bullard has just de
scribed. He is said to be a wonderful hand at that sort of
thing and has been able to get all the work there is to get of
that sort in this farming community, which, however, is far
from much, and scarcely sufficient to meet their daily ex
penses. Mrs. Bullard says her husband is a perfectly sober
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
man and he is known to be very industrious. At this point,
Mrs. Bullard can best take up the tale."
Mrs. Bullard: "Well, sir, my husband is a wife-beater
of the very worst description. Last night he beat me over
the shoulders and back with a poker gave me about a dozen
very severe blows with a small iron poker he generally uses a
poker because anything less strong than iron would break
under the force of his blows. He is always very careful not
to strike me about the head or face, where the marks could be
seen. He always hits me where the marks will not be seen.
He has been beating me off and on now for a year or more.
I have left him twice and gone to my relatives who are well
to do. Each time I forgave him and returned. I shall do so
no more. He will kill me one of these days if I don't leave
him. Last night he beat me dreadfully, and for no cause.
It isn't as though I didn't make him a good and faithful
wife, or didn't make him comfortable at home didn't cook
his meals properly, and have everything neat and tidy about
the home. For I do all these things
Viola: "Excuse me, Mrs. Bullard, but why on earth
does he beat you ?"
Mrs. Bullard : "To vent his spite, Miss to ease his feel
ings. He has awful ugly moods sometimes when he's sullen
and won't speak a word. He's not a great talker anyway,
but when he gets into one of those moods, he won't say a
word it's just a look and a blow just a look and a blow
and once he's begun he seems to get more and more fond of it,
and so gives me a dozen or more blows. It's the same with
little Mona here." (Pointing to the child on her lap). "He'll
strike her as quick as me in one of those moods but he never
takes anything to her as he does to me never uses a poker or
a pair of tongs as he does with me he seems to realize that
it might kill her. He never drinks nor has anything to do
with other women or other men, for that matter. He's
hard working but he doesn't care the snap of his finger for
me, nor for Mona here. He's never kissed the child since she
was born. He's a cruel man cruel to animals. He beat our
cow so with a poker one day that one of the neighbors said
she'd have him arrested if he did that again. I don't want
you to think, Miss, that I'm running him down for he has
10 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
some good points. He's a good husband except in two
points he doesn't love me, and he likes to beat me saving
those two things he's as correct and proper a man as one
could find hard working and honest."
Stutfield: "Is he perfectly right in his mind?''
Mrs. Bullard: "Perfectly, sir, no man with a harder
head on his shoulders, or a harder heart below his shoulders,
was ever born in England. We lived in Liverpool. He is a
railway engineer, and .good at any skilled work, most. We
came to this country a few months ago to better ourselves
he's not saving. I don't know what he does with the money,
he never smokes, drinks, nor gambles, but he never has any
laid aside. He first went to work in the Locomotive Works
in Richmond, and gave first-rate satisfaction but they laid
off about fifty or a hundred hands a few weeks ago and he
was among them. Miss Cariston has told you the rest. Now,
what I want, sir, is this. I'm told you are a lawyer and a
very kind-hearted gentleman the friend of the poor and af
flicted. Now, I came over here for protection from my hus
band, and to find out from you if I can get a divorce from
him in this country for wife-beating. I'm perfectly willing
to stay, with my little girl, at one of your married white
farmer's, and do anything in the way of sewing I used to
support myself with my needle in the old country before I
was married "
Stutfield : "Pardon me, how long have you been mar
ried?"
Mrs. Bullard : "Ten years. Mona is eight years old. I
am willing to do anything in the way of sewing you may
wish, by way of return for my board and lodging. Of course,
if you get a divorce for me I cannot repay you for I haven't
a dollar on earth. I had a little property when he married
me one thousand pounds five thousand dollars of your
money that's why he married me but he squandered it all-
made me compelled me to turn it over to him and then
squandered it
Stutfield : "You are completely under his thumb par
don my bluntness. Mrs. Bullard you are dominated and over
mastered by your husband, are you not? Besides being physi-
rallv afraid of him franklv in terror of vour life."
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 11
Mrs. Bullard: "Yes, sir."
Stutfield: "You are of a somewhat weak and yielding
disposition, are you not, Madam? Somewhat 'peace at any
price, even at that of a beating are you not? Pardon my
professional frankness, but if I am to have anything to do
with your case there must be no mincing of words between
us."
Mrs. Billiard: "Yes, sir. I suppose I am. I dislike a
row worse than anything in the world."
Stutfield: "Even worse than a beating?"
Mrs. Bullard: "I used to, but I do so no longer. Last
night's beating finished it for me. I'd rather risk death
rather risk death itself than see him come at me with iron
in his hands again "
Mona : "O ! sir, father beat mother dreadful last night.
It was as she was undressing and her back was all black and
blue and bloody after it."
Viola : "You poor child ! I declare, it's an outrageous
shame ! What a monster that man must be. Mr. Stutfield,
I do hope you can protect this poor woman and free her
from her awful bonds it would be a really charitable, Chris
tian act, of the first magnitude."
Stutfield: "I promise you to do both, provided the Vir
ginia law gives cruelty as a ground for divorce. If you will
permit me, I'll go into the library and consult my authori
ties. I shall not be gone long, and shall always be within
call. You know I am not a member of the Virginia bar, but
of the bar of New York, and am therefore not familiar with
the law here.
Viola : "You are excused, Mr. Stutfield."
Mona: "Oh! What a nice, kind gentleman."
Mrs. Bullard : "Hush, my child, he may hear you."
Mona: "Suppose he does, Mother, what 's the harm?"
Mrs. Bullard: "He would think you, perhaps, a pert
little girl."
Mona: "I don't think he would Mother he don't look
that way."
Viola : "You are right, my child, he wouldn't misunder
stand but I don't want you to think that I am finding fault
with your mamma."
12 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Mona: "Oh! No, Miss, I couldn't think that, for my
Mamma is a lovely Mamma so kind and sweet to me I only
wish my Papa was I hate Papa" (stamping her foot she
had meantime got down from her mother's lap and was stand
ing between the two women).
Mrs. Bullard : "Sh ! Sh ! Mona, you must not use such
language about your Father. I had to tell the gentleman all
about it, or he wouldn't know what to do, but that's no ex
cuse for you to act like a badly brought up little girl
(Enter Stutfield)
Stutfield: "It's all right, I'm glad to say Virginia's
all right. Cruelty is ground for divorce in this grand old
State."
Viola: "Oh! I'm so relieved."
Mrs. Bullard: "Thank God! n
Stutfield: "Now, Mrs. Bullard, this is what I am pre
pared to do. I'll put you up free of charge with my head
farmer, who has a wife and a little girl just j r our age, young
lady," (turning and smiling and waving his hand to Mona).
"It will put some roses in your pretty cheeks to get some of
the eggs and buttermilk off of this four hundred acre dairy
farm"
Mona: "I love buttermilk."
Stutfield: "You shall have enough of it to swim in if
you like, my child. To resume. Mrs. Bullard, I'll turn your
case over to be charged to my account, to my own lawyer in
Charlottesville fourteen miles from here the county seat
the home of Jefferson. Fancy wife-beating taking place
within a few miles of Monticello, Miss Cariston!"
Viola: "It's infamous!"
Stutfield: "I'll of course, charge you nothing for it.
Furthermore, this is confidential, ladies as I do not I am a
member of the New York bar though of Virginia origin
carry my heart on my sleeve, hence my caution. I put in
practice my religion. 'Bear ye one another's burdens.' hence
my proposition to act as if it were / who wanted the divorce
Miss Cariston as though it were / that wanted the divorce
Miss Cariston
Viola: "I heard you quite distinctly the first time you
made the observation, Mr. Stutfield."
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 13
Stutfield: "Thank you, Miss Cariston. To resume, I
shall, furthermore, Mrs. Bullard, pay your return passage to
Liverpool, first class, on a safe and comfortable line, running
every two weeks from Norfolk, and give you enough money
besides to make you comfortable from now until you land in
Liverpool, and leave you some over."
Mrs. Bullard : "I am sure the Lord will bless you for
all your goodness to a helpless woman and her little girl in
a strange land "
Stutfield: "I devoutly hope He will. And now, ladies,
please make yourselves at home while I give a few orders."
(Exit. Picking up the cap and holding it in his hand as he
exits).
Mrs. Bullard : "I am sure, Miss, I cannot ever thank you
sufficiently for bringing me to this kind gentleman. The Lord
surely has raised up a helper for us in the hour of need."
Viola: "He surely has, Mrs. Bullard; and Mr. Stut
field will carry out to the precise letter everything he has
promised."
(At this moment the door opens softly and John Bullard
glides into the room. There is a seven-foot Japanese screen
ten feet long, running alongside the whole length of the table,
completely shutting off the door, and several feet of the room
on either side. The door is in the middle of the room. Bul
lard is a powerfully built man, of medium height, with sandy
hair, a sweeping military moustache of the same color and
light blue eyes, dressed plainly, but neatly, in blue serge
clothes a sack suit with heavy brogans, such as working-
men wear, on his feet. His linen is clean, and his necktie
neatly tied in a small bow. The door is to the right, directly
opposite the fire-place, before which the women are seated.
Bullard swiftly but noiselessly despite his heavy shoes
glides round the edge of the screen between it and the audi
ence. Mona sees him first, and utters a little cry).
Mona: "Oh, Mother! There 's Father!"
Bullard: "Yes, you little brat, I've tracked you 'ere at
last, and your fine, dutiful Parent ha ! ha ! I've a little ac
count to settle with you. Madam, when I gets you 'ome
Mrs. Bullard: "You'll never do that"
Bullard: "Never do that, and why not, pray?"
14 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Mrs. Bullard: "Because I'm never going to your home
any more. You've beaten me once too often, Mr. Bullard.
The worm has turned at last. I go home with you no more."
Bullard: "Well, we'll see about that you may rest as
sured, Madam, we'll see about that. In the meantime 'ow
do you propose to live and where do you propose to live?"
Mrs. Bullard: "I propose to live at the head farmer's
here he has a wife and little girl, and take in sewing to
support myself."
Bullard: "Oh! You do, do you? A pretty notion that
a very pretty notion, indeed. Well, I'll have none of it, so
come along now, come along now !"
Mrs. Bullard: "I'll do no such thing."
(Bullard has been standing at the foot of the table, half
facing the audience, and facing the women. He thereupon
darts forward and seizes a pair of tongs at the right of the
fire-place, and raises them to strike his wife. She so soon
as he darts forward hastily retreats with Mona by the hand,
to a recess at the left of the fire-place between it and the
audience where there is a large, closed wood-box. She kneels
down by this with Mona under her. protecting the child, and
her head bowed, awaiting Bullard's blows. Meantime Viola
has darted toward the door and opening it screams).
Viola: "Hugh, Help! Help!"
(Bullard begins to rain blows upon his wife's head. She
has very heavy black hair, done up in a coil on top of her
head. This saves her life. At the second cry for help Stut-
field's voice is heard shouting).
Stutfield: "All right. I'm coming!"
(Bullard pays no attention to Stutfield's voice. Soon the
sound of Stutfield's feet is heard, and followed by Viola he
dashes into the room and hisses).
Stutfield : "Wife-beater ! "
(Stutfield darts round the end of the screen, rushes at
Bullard and seizes him by the collar, jerks him away from
his wife, and pinions him against the wall in the corner, by
the throat. Stutfield's left hand on Bullard's throat. Bnllard
has the tongs still in his right hand. A tug of war then en
sues between Stntfield and Bullard. Stutfield trying to keep
him pinned to the wall so that he cannot swing the tongs.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 15
Bullard trying to push Stutfield from him so that he can
land a knock-down blow on top of Stutfield's head. Stut
field has the Nile green and silver velvet Rugby School,
England, football cap on his head on entering, and it is on
during the struggle. Gradually Bullard pushes Stutfield
away, and getting him far enough off for a half-arm blow,
swings the tongs and knocks Stutfield down. Viola screams
once, but stands her ground a few feet behind Stutfield. As
he falls, she darts forward, and bends over his head, spread
ing out her arms saying).
Viola: "Strike me, you bully you can't hit him when
he's down!"
(Bullard sneers silently and disregarding Viola watches
the unconscious Stutfield attentively. In about two seconds
from the time Viola spoke, Stutfield opens his eyes, and be
fore either Viola or Bullard know, is on his feet and crouch
ing to spring once more at Bullard's throat. They watch one
another silently for a few seconds. Then Stutfield advances
straight at Bullard's throat with left arm outstretched stiff,
to its fullest extent. He has hardly made two strides when
Bullard brings down the tongs full on top of his head which
still has the heavy velvet cap on, with a silver knob the size
of an acorn of silver wire on the top. This knob saves his
life. It and the velvet break the force of the blow. Stut
field drops insensible in his tracks. Once more, Viola screams,
and once more stretches her arms over the prostrate Stut
field saying).
Viola : "Kill me, if you like, but you shan't touch him."
Bullard: (Sneering). "Your feller, eh? Well, I fancy
I done for 'im that time. 7> n 'im, interfering in my family
affairs! Now, I've got a little bone to pick with this lady."
(Bullard moves towards the still crouching but silent
woman save for her low moans when he struck her, and
frightened sobs from the little child. Just before he reaches
her. Viola gives a piercing scream, and cries out immediately
thereafter).
Viola: "Help! Murder!"
Bosco: (In low tones from the corner of the screen
the same round which Stutfield charged at Bullard). "I'se
here. Miss. I'se here, Miss. Bosco here. Bosco '11 do him
16 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
watch Bosco! Lawd-Gawd! Is dat Mr. Stutfield layin'
there? Your murderin' villain!"
(With that. Bosco crouches like a tiger and springs upon
Bullard from behind, bringing Bullard down flat on his back
under him. By this time Stutfield has come to, and risen
to his feet).
Viola: (In a low tone). "Are you hurt, my darling?"
Stutfield: (In the same low voice). "No, my dearest
darling, not a bit. You precious child ! It took the threat
of death of my death to melt your frozen bosom. Do you
love me?"
Viola: "Yes, my hero. I do."
Stutfield: "Thank God then, for those two blows! You
saved the day though, dearie. As I went off into my two
sleeps your sweet, bell-like voice was ringing in my ears like
a silver trumpet-call, sounding the charge ! And by Gad ! my
black Bosco heard your bugle and "made good." Look at the
black rascal holding that murderous villain down."
I hereby crown you Queen of Love and Beauty of this
tournament this modern Ashby-de-la-Zouche of 'Ivanhoe' "
(Kissing her hand. Viola blushing, smiles, and half with
draws her hand hastily glancing towards Mrs. Bullard and
child, who, however, are too intent watching the group in
the corner just vacated by themselves to pay any attention
to the lovers. Seeing that there is no danger of being ob
served, she relinquishes her hand to Stutfield. and bowin-i.
smiling, says)
Viola : "The Queen of Love and Beauty accepts the
glorious crown placed upon her unworthy head, by thy glori
ous hand Sir Knight of 'Rokeby.' Whose head-dress sug
gests the oriental pomp of the dauntless, but ruthless Sir
Brian de Bois Guilbert: and whose character that of the
stainless Wilfred of Ivanhoe."
Stutfield : "My adored darling" (kissing her hand once
more) "You make me the proudest and happiest of men."
(Mrs. Bullard has risen, and with Mona has seated her
self as before. She is dishevelled, her hair hanging about
her waist, but no blood visible from the cuts afterward found
in her scalp, and no wounds on her face. The child is un
touched).
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Viola: "How do you do, now, my poor woman?"
Mrs. Bullard : "Oh ! It was dreadful but he didn't
break my skull, my hair saved that. The negro came just in
time, though, for my hair was all that saved it, and that WOF
falling the last strands under the last blow, Mr. Stutfield,
came into the struggle on. How are you sir?"
Stutfield: "Very well, thank you. I'm delighted there
are no bones broken. I can assure you of your divorce 7
Madam with such witnesses to such an act, you could almost
I say almost get a divorce from Rome herself. How's the
little girl?"
Mrs. Bullard : "She's quite untouched, Sir. I knelt over
her."
Stutfield: "I saw that you did my brave woman I
saw that you did. You are a noble, self-sacrificing Mother.
Now. ladies, watch me direct the manoevres on the field of
battle with my heavy Numidian cavalry to use a bold meta
phor. Bosco!"
Bosco: "Yes, Suh."
Stutfield : "Let the dog up, and as soon as he rises take
the old hold you know what I mean the hold I've always
told you to aim for."
Bosco: "Yes, Suh."
Stutfield : "And hold it till death do you part."
Bosco: "Yes, Suh."
Stutfield : Now watch him close and strike him a knock
out blow on the point of the jaw if he tries any tricks in ris
ing but don't strike him unless he does. If he rises quietly,
simply get the old hold."
Bosco: "Yes, Suh."
(Bosco with right fist clenched and drawn back to strike,
rises crouchingly. Bullard rises slowly but warily. Bosco
makes a feint at him as Bullard gets his feet, and half turns
away from Bosco. This is the latter's chance. He, quick as
a flash, jumps behind Bullard and throws both arms round
him from behind, pinioning Bullard's arms to his sides. Bui-
lard's forearms are free, but not his arms. Bosco's head is
on Bullard's right shoulder, right next his face. Bosco's arms
are wrapped completely round Bullard. They whirl and
wrestle for some moments in silence. Suddenly, Stutfield
18 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
whips out a .32 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver from his hip-
pocket, and lets it hang down, pointing to the floor, his finger
on the trigger).
Stutfield : "Pray, don't be concerned at the sight of this
little gun, ladies. I haven't the remotest idea of employing
it not the remotest but Bullard is a notoriously powerful
man. He is I hear known to have carried a railroad tie
always a job for two strong men on his shoulders, and put it
in place alone in the road-bed. So it doesn't do to take too
many chances with a gentleman of his strength of arm and
weakness of morality. Now, Mr. Bullard, a word in your
alabaster ear. You've heard what I said, because your ears
are open, and you very well know your own interests, or at
least what appear to you to be your own interests. I have
the determination presently to have you bound, hand and
foot, warmly wrapped in blankets, and laid in a bed of straw,
in the bottom of my four-mule wagon, and under an armed
escort of my hands who'll blow the top of your head off if
you attempt to escape haul you to Charlottesville, and turn
you over to the sheriff. I shall then institute proceedings in
Mrs. Bullard's behalf for a divorce, on the ground of cruelty.
Meantime, you'll have been tried, and condemned and sent to
the penitentiary for a term of years for attempted assault to
kill not only upon Mrs. Bullard, but upon my unworthy
self. Meantime, Mrs. Bullard will have secured her divorce
and with Mona will have sailed to England at my expense.
That is the programme that awaits you, Mr. John Bullard."
(During this speech Stutfield has inadvertently drawn
nearer Bullard than is discreet. For, all of a sudden, the
latter thrusts forth his left hand and seizes the pistol by the
butt and Stutfield's hand at the same time, fumbling with
the butt in order to prize it out of Stutfield's hand, pointing
the pistol and Stutfield's hand at one and the same time full
at Mrs. Bullard's face. Stutfield instantly swings the pistol
back by exerting all his force, and throwing his body into
the swing. They are now standing against the wood-box
the pistol pointing past Bullard's head, into the abutting
chimney. Bosco holds Bullard motionless. A duel to the
death is in progress a wrist-duel, so to speak, between Stut
field and Bullard. Suddenly Stutfield says) :
19
Stutfield: "I see your fingers, Bullard, like a tarantula's
legs, stalking down the pistol barrel. I see your little game.
It 's this : to work your way down the barrel till your thumb
is inside the trigger-guard of this self-cocker. Then push
the barrel in one of two directions, either towards Mrs. Bul
lard, or, over backwards into my face. Whenever the muz
zle has reached whichever of the positions you aim at, you
will then press your thumb against my trigger-finger and
explode the piece and if your aim is as good as your gall in
meditating such a piece of impertinence to put it somewhat
mildly Mrs. Bullard or myself will drop dead. You will
then wrench the pistol out of my dead hand and kill Bosco,
and then Mrs. Bullard, and then Miss Cariston, and lastly,
your little daughter, and then jump for the woods and hope to
make good your "get-away." That 's your little programme.
But there 's one little difficulty in putting the same into exe
cution namely, that I'm your master when it comes to wrists.
Of course, you don't know it, but I'm an expert fencer with
both right and left hands, and nothing so steels the wrist, so
strengthens and hardens it while keeping the 'muscle flexible,
as fencing. You are stronger than I am at a tug of war.
You won the push of war when I tried to pin you against
that wall. You've won two rounds of this fight. I won the
first when I frustrated your attempt to murder your wife be
fore my eyes, and pulled you off your prey you won the next
two with a knock-down to your credit in each round so it
now stands, first round, Stutfield's. Second round, Bullard's.
Third round, Bullard's. Fourth and last round, (about to be)
Stutfield's."
(At that very instant the pistol explodes, and Bullard
leaps into the air, a dead man.)
Viola: ll My God! Hugh are you hurt, darling?"
Stutfield: "No, darling."
(Bosco lets Bullard softly down on his back).
Bosco: "He dade."
Stutfield: (Gravely). "Yes, Bosco. 'He dade'."
End of Act I. Scene I.
20 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
"THE WEAVING OF THE PLOT."
ACT II. SCENE I.
Time : Four days later, 4 P. M.
i
t
(Drawing-room at "Elsinore." This room has door and
fire-place facing each other to right and left of stage. Win
dow in wall opposite stage opens onto conservatory. Sofa
between door and fire-place. James Lawless, in morning
suit tall, portly, good looking; about 30, blond, light blue
eyes, heavy blonde moustache. Discovered reading a news
paper, seated on sofa).
Lawless: "New York 'Herald.' March 17th, 1887, yes
terday's paper, eh? 'Millionaire Law- Writer and Art Pa
tron acquitted of killing John Bnllard. Hugh Stutfield. of
'Rokeby,' Albemarle County, Virginia, was freed of the re
sponsibility for the death of John Bullard, the English wife-
beater, who met his death in a struggle with Stutfield over
the possession of a revolver. It was brought out at the in
quest held in the dining-room at 'Rokeby' that Stutfield was
in the habit of carrying a revolver in the house but not out
of doors owing to the loneliness of the situation of 'Rokeby'
and the fact that he slept entirely alone in the house not
another human being in it not even a servant and the con
sequent danger of a burglar's slipping into the house at any
time and waylaying its rich owner, caused him therefore to
have the weapon on when Bullard invaded his home. Cor
oner's jury compliments millionaire on courage he showed in
voluntarily risking his life in a hand-to-hand struggle with
the fiend, instead of drawing the revolver and forcing him
under pain of death to desist from beating his wife or
summoning the powerful negro body-servant, "Bosco," who
subsequently appeared and mastered Bullard called to the
scene by the screams of Miss Cariston. who had met and car
ried in her runabout to 'Rokeby' Mrs. Bullard and her little
eight-year-old daughter, Mona, fleeing from Bullard and on
her way to 'Rokeby' to ask legal advice concerning divorce
and temporary protection. Widow lodged with millionaire's
married head-farmer. So soon as recovered from severe scalp-
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 21
wounds inflicted by her husband physician had to take three
stitches in her scalp will be returned to her brothers who are
well-to-do hotel keepers in Liverpool at expense of Law-
Writer. Heavy velvet Eugby football cap which Stutfield
used to wear when full-back on his team at Rugby School,
in England, saves his life. Verdict of jury : 'We, the jury, of
inquest, sitting on the body of John Bullard, find that he
came to his death by a bullet from a revolver in the hands of
himself and Hugh Stutfield, while the latter was, in good
faith, attempting to prevent Bullard from shooting his, Bui-
lard's wife.' r (Laying aside newspaper).
"The usual romantic fustian so dear to the heart
of the City Editor. But this farcical episode has a de
cidedly dangerous side to it for my hopes. Viola is a girl
who can only be reached through the imagination. Pve tried
every other way and found an icy barrier like that guarding
the Antarctic pole. This ridiculous flash-in-the-pan, fire
works at Stutfield's may just 'do the business' for me put a
spoke in my wheel and ruin my chances with the only girl I
ever saw for whose possession I would sacrifice the rights and
privileges of a bachelor life. It was most fortunate that I
foresaw possible complications in the return to his native
heath of Stutfield, after years of foreign wanderings, last
January, and his consequent propinquity to my fair inamor-
-ata. Fortunate, indeed, that I carried my cares concerning
disposing of a devilishly disagreeable factor in the situation
to my father-confessor in law if not religion Belisarius
P. Spink, attorney and counsellor at the New York bar, and
about the slickest rascal but at the same time, about the
most deeply learned lawyer practising in any court on Man
hattan Island. Belisarius unfolded a plot to me about as
damnably black and foul as Hell itself ever held short of
actual assassination. Hardened as I am in the ways of the
world as a man-about-town in New York, with practically
unlimited means for the purchase of the pleasures of the ap
petite no matter which appetite or what appetite sooner
or later is bound to become none the less, the plot unfolded
to my far from virgin ears and developed before my far from
virgin eyes, I am frank to say, appalled me. But necessity
knows no law. Hence I snatched at the straw held out to my
22 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
drowning hopes of having Viola by fair means. Hence. I
am here to weave the final meshes of that plot which shall
forever free me from fear of competition from Stutfield.
And yet at times something, something resembling my old
college friend and visitant, Robert E. Morse, R. E. Morse
remorse visits me, and stands at the foot of my bed and
looks at me as I awake of a morning, as he used to do after a
night with the boys in my college days at Harvard but life
is short, and a man has but one life to live, so I decided to
face Robert E. Morse himself before IM forego the delights
awaiting me in the arms of Miss Viola Cariston, whom I have
been assiduously pursuing for orte calendar year "
(Enter negro servant, with telegram on tray).
Servant: "A telegram for Mr. James Lawless, Suh, and
a message from Miss Viola, Suh, sayin' that her horse done
cast a shoe on her ride this afternoon, and she won't be back
tell sundown. She's waitin' at 'Airly' de Miss Peytons 1
place, tell de nearest blacksmith shoe her horse."
Lawless: "Thank you, Wash. Here 's a quarter for
you."
Servant: "Thank you, Sufi."
(Exit servant).
Lawless: (Opening telegram and reading)
"Hot Springs, Virginia, March 18th, 1887.
James Lawless, 'Elsinore,' Cobham, Va.
Blettermole, Mrs. Blettermole and self arrive on his pri
vate car at Cobham about 4 P. M. to-day. Have instructed
local storekeeper to have conveyance ready to carry us to
'Elsinore' immediately without troubling Captain Cariston
to send for us he can send us back after our conference.
Blettermole enthusiastic over plan. M<n]<iri><' winced sharply
at first but the benefits accruing to the children brought her
round. I put forward that line of thought and won the day.
Congratulations.
B. P. SPINK."
"So far, so good." (Pulling out his watch). "They
should be here now. I'm glad Viola is detained. It will give
me ample time to conclude this little business here and now.''
(Voices are heard in hall. Enter Winston Blettermole,
dressed in sack suit of very light, rough gray, dittoes almost
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 23
white with a rainbow-hued tie, tied in a bow. He is about
medium height and wears a brown beard, trimmed to a short
point French fashion and closely clipped at sides. His hair
is brushed straight off his forehead without a part. Bletter-
mole's eyes are brown. He is about thirty, and good looking,
with a good, trim figure. Without being in the least ner
vous Blettermole gesticulates gracefully and frequently. Con-
stantia Blettermole is a tall, elegant woman, with light gray
eyes and brown hair, and pale skin. Dressed in the mode of
the day. Her voice is what the French call trainante, and
has a peculiar drawl, not unattractive.
Spink is a man of fifty, splendidly preserved. Not a gray
hair in his jet black, thick head of hair, which is straight,
and parted on the side. His features are regular, but some
what sharp, and are accompanied by an expression of ex
treme shrewdness and coldness. His eyes are so dark as to
be almost black. He is dressed in a travelling suit of dark
brown dittoes a sack suit. His voice is hard and cold. He
never makes a gesture under any conceivable circumstances.
He speaks somewhat slowly and enunciates each word with
marked distinctness. Blettermole enters, followed closely by
his wife, and at some little distance by Spink. Lawless rises
and moves to meet them).
Lawless : "Welcome to 'Elsinore,' " my fair friend (bow
ing and shaking hands with Constantia) and you, too, Win
ston (shaking hands with him) and you, my guide, phil
osopher and friend (shaking hands with Spink).
Constantia : "As fond of 'Hamlet' as ever, James, I see."
Lawless : "Quite."
Blettermole: "Well, Jim, how goes it, old man, down
here in these bucolic wilds?"
Lawless : "Fairly well, thank you, Winston, fairly well."
Spink: "How doth my very good friend and respected
client?"
Lawless: "Fairly well, thank you. B. P., fairly well."
Spink: "I'm glad to hear that, for our affairs wag ex
ceeding well."
Blettermole: "Yes, by Jove, Jim, that 's a great scheme
of B. P.'s. It's the best I've heard yet for putting out of the
running that devil. Stutfield."
24 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Spink: "Caution proclaims a lower tone, my most re
spected client, and co-conspirator in this most deep plot."
Constantia: "Oh! Mr. Spink, please don't use such
words before me, at all events. You see, I am young at this
sort of thing, and it shocks me horribly/'
Spink: "Pardon, madam, my gaucherie. We limbs of
the law are apt to be brutally frank, when we are not beauti
fully vague, nebulous and dim in our meaning."
Constantia : "Nothing, so help me heaven, could induce
me to take a hand in a thing of this sort but the children's
interests. When I think of those innocent lambs at home, and
the wolves that prowl around the palaces of the rich unless
the rich have more than a million to call upon in case of
need I feel my mother's heart steel itself, and become deaf
to all interests but those of my lambs. I feel that I am pro
tecting them from the wolves every time I add a hundred
thousand onto the share each of my five chicks will inherit
from Winston and me you see, it takes a good, round sum of
money to go round and leave a hundred thousand dollars in
each dear little lap on its way. Hugh Stutfield I personally
always liked. He always struck me as a singularly mag
netic, a singularly forceful personality, besides being, of
course, what no one can very well deny when they claim to
be in touch with the times and therefore know his record his
monumental law book on Trial-by-Jury a law-writer of
renown."
Spink: "Pardon my interruption. Madam, constitu
tional law is certainly widely and learnedly discussed therein,
but the subject of the book is: 'The Absolute Rights of the
Individual,' a subject dear to the heart of that great lumin
ary of our great profession, Sir William Blackstone. author
of the immortal 'Commentaries Upon The English Common
Law.' "
Constantia: "Thank you, Mr. Spink, for setting me
rieht and his nationwide plan for the application of Xn-
poleon Bonaparte's Prix de Rome his system of foreign
scholarships for the cultivation of painting, sculpture, archi
tecture, music the voice of both women and men. as well as
the piano and violin and finally, the art of acting to which
he subscribed so heavily himself all these things show the
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 25
brains and character of Hugh Stutfield. But, much as I appre
ciate the attributes of head and heart of Mr. Stutfield, they
wither and fade into insignificance beside the interests of my
offspring, who will, each of them get about a million by in
heriting Mr. Stutfield's property of about five millions."
Spink: "Spoken like Cornelia, the Mother of the Grac
chi, Madam Cornelia, that flower of Roman matrons, who,
when asked where her jewels were by a lady calling upon her,
and showing Cornelia her priceless gems replied, 'Here are
my jewels,' pointing to her two sons later, by their fame,
worthy of such a Mother."
Constantia : ''Thank you, Mr. Spink, you have a happy
faculty of bridging the 'dark backward and abysm of time'
of the immortal Bard of Avon, separating the tawdry pres
ent from the purple splendors of imperial Rome."
Blettermole: "Constantia, you make me sick with your
forever holding up the debauched epoch of Rome to the dis
advantage of our day, which you very well know is the very
topmost height civilization has yet reached."
Constantia: "Winston, you very well know, my dear,
that there were epochs and emperors of Imperial Rome which
were quite as marked for their law and order as our own
more enlightened days. For instance, one of the greatest his
torians that ever lived, maintained that the golden age of
the world or rather that which most approached that de
lightful period was the age of the Roman Emperors known
as the Antonines of which one was a philosopher and up
right man, who, from his acts and thoughts might well have
been a follower of the Founder of Christianity, namely, Mar
cus Aurelius the historian was Gibbon, author of that
mighty work 'The Decline and Fall.' r
Spink: "Mrs. Blettermole spiked your guns there, my
bellicose and pushful client."
Blettermole: "Oh! Constantia is pretty apt to be cor
rect in whatever she says or does, B. P., I'll admit that. Only
it does bore me to hear her mount her Roman and Greek
hobbies."
Constantia : "Winston, you are a mere boy when it
comes to anything outside the realm of sport ; or the certainly
26 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
classic and literary, but very narrow vein of literature you
favor with your very difficile and eclectic regard."
Blettermole : "Well, Constantia, let's let the matter
drop, and get down to that plot of 13. P.'s. You are aware
that I am not much on head-work. I'd rather walk a mile
than think a minute '
Spink: "A shameful confession, wittily put, my re
spected client, most shameful, and for a man of your nat
ural wit and strength of repartee."
Blettermole: "Drop your taify, Spink, and get down to
business. I caught Lawless yawning behind his hand a min
ute ago."
Spink: "So be it. I shall, as Julius Caesar says, plunge
in medias res into the midst of things, without more ado.
The plot is precisely this. The laws of New York State and
those of about forty per cent, of the rest of the States of this
grand and enlightened Union, lead the world with the pos
sible exception of England for rascality, ignorance, and vice
upon one important but rarely worked vein of human activity.
I allude to Insanity. Only those 'in the know' those, I mean,
who live in large cities and happen to have property thav
needs a lawyer's care, and also happen to have a lawyer who
happens to be in touch with the dark and tortuous ways of Lu
nacy Legislation the world over, as well as this nation over
only those far from numerous individuals may be said to be
'in the know' in regard to Lunacy Law. I happen to l>e very
much 'in the know.' Since I, Belisarius P. Spink, attorney
and counsellor, am the man at the helm of the Steering Com
mittee that guides all Legislation in Lunacy matters in Albany
touching Lunacy Legislation. The great Private Lunatic
A-ylums honey-combing the State of which 'Fairdale.' falsely
so-called for its real name is 'The Omnium Hospitr.l' with
hospital and offices on a side street, just west of Fifth Ave
nue 'Fairdale' is the flower and pearl, of course, are not in
business for the health of the owners and directors quite the
contrary, I do assure you. Well, now, what happens when n
powerful interest, which makes hundreds of thousands out of
the public yearly, gets its various heads together why.
that which happens when railroads steam or traction are in
the same juxtaposition there is something doing at Albany
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 27
by way of Manipulated Legislation in order to strengthen any
weak spots in the lines of battle so to speak or to reach
out and develop reach out after new business. So said in
terests keep an organization at Albany, which has its finger
on the pulse of any and all legislation taking place, or even
most remotely threatening to take place, concerning Lunacy
Legislation at Albany. Furthermore, the steering-committee
keeps in touch with the State Lunacy Commission at Albany
a body consisting of a physician, a lawyer and a layman,,
who have practically supreme power over the said chain of
Private Lunatic Asylums honeycombing the Empire State.
For instance : the Lunacy Commission has the duty to inspect
the Private Lunatic Asylums and visit each and every inmate
of either sex, and satisfy itself that he or she is properly con
fined as a lunatic. Also, the said Commission in Lunacy is
expected to set free a man or woman who recovers his or her
sanity after a certain amount of confinement. How honestly
and faithfully the said Commission does its work is vividly
illustrated by two instances to go no farther afield. The
head of the said State Commission in Lunacy, who is always
the physician on the board, was caught by the Governor of
the State of New York at bribe-taking from the heads of said
Private Lunatic Asylums or certain heads, at least. The plan
of the Doctor was ingenious. He didn't do so dull a thing as
take a money-bribe the money might have been marked, you
know, or the stub of the cheque tell-tale in its nature he did
no such dull thing. What he did was to ask these gentlemen
to subscribe to a certain snug number of shares of stock in
a gold mine he owned out in Utah. The ratiocination in the
premises is fairly obvious. The Doctor did not want his gold
mine inspected too closely by holders of its stock any more
than the heads of said Private Lunatic Asylums desired their
gold mines, their Private Lunatic Asylums, inspected too close
ly by the Doctor. The Governor promptly removed the head
of the State Lunacy Commission at Albany, from office we
having, at the time, a Governor who was actually, honestly
interested in pure politics politics that were pure I desire
to imply. The second and last instance of the strength of
the honesty and fidelity to duty of this all-powerful Com
mission is aptly illustrated as follows. A poor devil when
28 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
I say 'poor devil,' I desire to be understood as alluding to :i
millionaire inmate of 'Fairdale,' who had the Devilish poor
luck to run foul of the man at the helm of the Steering Com
mittee of the private Lunatic Asylum Trust your humble ser
vant Belisarius P. Spink this aforesaid poor devil f had,
in the course of the four years he spent at Tairdale,' before
he died there, been visited but once by the said Lunacy Com
mission, and, upon that occasion by only one member of the
said Commission. I hope I have said enough to intimate to
this select and distinguished audience, that a man once in
carcerated in 'Fairdale' has about as much chance of ever
drawing a free breath of air again as though he were in
carcerated in Hell "
Constantia : "You surely have, Mr. Spink, you make me
shudder. Of all the places on earth that fill me with dread,
that place is a lunatic asylum. A person would be safer and
more sympathetically entouree if she were surrounded by
drunkards in all the horrid and various stages of intoxica
tion."
Lawless: (Aside to Spink). "B. P., be on your guard.
You have painted the situation so strongly that Mrs. Bletter-
mole's feminine susceptibilities have taken alarm. Beware
lest you destroy your own handiwork by the eloquence of your
pictorial powers.
Spink: (Aside to Lawless). "The point is admirably
taken. I am so utterly unused to take women into con
sideration except as play-things that it's next to impos
sible for me to take them seriously. I shall amend
the complaint." (Aloud). "Of course, you must make allow
ance for my professional habit of exaggerating the points in
my favor, and minimizing those opposed Mrs. Blettermole.
I do not intend to convey that there is really the slightest
similarity between a Private Lunatic Asylum and Hades. Far
from it. Nothing could be more luxurious than the grounds,
say. of 'Fairdale.' Expensive hot-house plants are set out
everywhere along the border of the closely cropped sward
looking more like one of the stately homes of England than a
tThe author is the "poor devil" referred to. Only once was he
visited by the Lunacy Commission in four years' incarceration.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 29
place for the amelioration of the physical and mental condi
tion of those unfortunates whose minds are clouded."
Constantia: "Mr. Spink, you surely are a lawyer. You
surely are an advocate "
Blettermole : "An advocate ! I should say he was an
advocate. Ha! Ha! An advocate!. Why, doesn't he belong
to the Church of the Holy Advocate on Fifth Avenue, New
York, a recent million dollar edifice built almost entirely by
subscriptions from members of the legal profession of New
York City, not forgetting that conglomeration and .galaxy of
legal talent, the New York City Bar Association and isn't
he the Senior Warden of the Vestry of that most sacrosanct
congregation which Vestry is composed entirely of law
yers? Advocate! I should say Spink was an advocate!"
Spink: "A-hem, A-hem. My dear Mr. Blettermole,
permit me to observe, that I have been forced more than once,
in the course of our business relations, to curb your bounding
wit when directed against my religious proclivities. My re
ligion is something entirely aside and apart from my work "
Blettermole: "I should say it was!"
Spink: "Be good enough to permit me to conclude. As
I was about to observe, my religion is something quite apart
from my work and I cannot permit even a client for whom,
socially, and otherwise, I have so profound a regard as I
entertain for Mr. Winston Blettermole and his charming
wife one of the reigning queens of the Four Hundred to
make light of the most serious the most sacred thing to me
on earth "
Blettermole: "Pardon me, Spink. I shall not offend
again."
Spink: "To conclude rapidly my plan for the perma
nent, forcible retirement for life into obscurity, of that vig
orous and gifted personality, Mr. Hugh Stutfield, of Vir
ginia and New York. My scheme will sequester Stutfield,
sequestrate his entire estate, and to cap the delicious climax
one of the law partners of one of the most prominent mem
bers of the Board of Governors so-called of 'Fairdale' Pri
vate Insane Asylum, shall, by the act of a certain New York
Supreme Court Judge, whose ear I have as we lawyers say
be appointed the sequestrator of Stutfield's superb estate of
30 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
some five million dollars, while brother Stutfield is wearing
out his vitality and indignation behind the bars of 'Fairdale'
on a charge of being a dangerous lunatic a maniac with sui
cidal and homicidal tendencies said charges to be preferred
by the gentlemen here present Mr. Winston Blettermole and
Mr. James Lawless the former, as his nearest blood-relative
and heir-at-law, the latter as his 'best friend,' as we term it
in law "
Lawless: "Permit a momentary interruption of your
most interesting and instructive dissertation, Mr. Spink but
the idea of my being under any conceivable circumstances
the 'best friend' or any kind of a friend to the tenth degree
removed, if there is such a thing of Mr. Hugh Stutfield,
is far from bad. Indeed, very far from bad."
Spink: "I agree with you absolutely, there, Mr. Law
less. But the law, you know, does not inquire too curiously.
The law, you know for a lawyer who really understands its
profound principles and is not a mere case-chaser a mere
authority-hunter, but stands upon and defends before more
or less unlearned and superficial judges while there are noble
exceptions as the vast majority of judges undoubtedly are
defends and stands upon the eternal principles of the law
for such a lawyer the law is the most marvellous engine for
achieving objects, contrary to the law contrary to equity
contrary to justice, and contrary even to common sense,
conceived by a mind less dazzling than that o\f his
Majesty 'himself. Fortunately for the peace of society, there
are very few such lawyers, and therefore the power /or ill of
the law is a closed book to the slothful, ignorant, ambition-
less gamblers who make up the rank and fie of my august
profession men for whom I have about as much respect as
a wolf has for a herd of sheep."
Lawless: "The New York City Bar Association would
be highly edified, my distinguished counsel, at your above
obiter dicta"
Spink: "Ah, my distinguished client, you are very right
there very right there. But you should differentiate and ut
terly bar apart as much so as sheep from goats my remarks
before that dignified as=embla<re. the New York City Bar As
sociation, and and my millionaire clients about to engage in a
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 31
war with a brother millionaire who for audacity and fertility
of resource is a foeman worthy of our steel."
Constantia: "Bravo! Mr. Spink. You fire my imagina
tion this is the Age of Gold if not the Golden Age and it
is right that in such an age, millionaires the historical heirs
of the Barons of old should war upon one another. I shall
assuage the qualms of my conscience by murmuring to my
self 'All's fair in love and war 7 and The Beetle af the Mil
lionaires is now on!"
Spink: "Brava! My fair client. Brava!" (Aside to
Lawless) . "Gad ! That was a lucky shot of mine she's ours
from now on mark my words we'll have no more backing
and filling upon Constantia Blettermore's part but, on the
contrary, the iron will and inflexible purpose of a Lady Mac
beth." "
Lawless : "By Jove ! I believe you're right. My f elicita
tions."
Spink: (Aloud). "There's nothing more to be un
folded of this most warlike and romantic mediaeval plot
not another solitary word. Trust me to look to the details
it would take off the cream from your interest, Mrs. Bletter-
mole, were you to know it all on the very brink of the in
ception of hostilities. No. Be advised, and permit me to de
velop my work before your eyes as though you were a spec
tator in a theatre who was unaware of the turnings and
windings of the sufficiently tortuous and devious plot upon
the boards."
Constantia: "The only objection I see to your deeply
laid and superbly prepared plot, Mr. Spink, is its absurdity."
Spink: "Pardon me, I do not quite catch that."
Constantia: "The only objection I see to your deeply
laid and superbly prepared plot is its absurdity."
Spink: "You amaze me, Madam. My plot absurd f 1
Constantia: "The most absurd I ever heard, to be as
sound and thoroughly prepared outside of its absurdity."
Spink: "Please oblige me, Madam, by naming a few of
the absurdities."
Constantia: "With pleasure. First, no man in the
United States I except no one has given such infallible
proof of reasoning power of the highest order as has Mr.
32 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield, in his legal work before referred to. One of the
leading lawyers in New York said to me: 'Mrs. Blettermole,
your cousin has revived the Lost Art of Reasoning in his dis
quisition on the right to trial by jury as the sine qua non, the
essence of due process of law as laid down in the Constitu
tion of the United States and supported by Blackstone and
Magna Charta : it is the most masterly piece of pure, scientific,
syllogistic, Aristotelian reasoning ever put forth by a citizen
of the United States, since the United States existed. There
is not a Professor of Logic in any University in the United
States to-day or anywhere else on earth to-day, for that
matter who could carry pure argument to the Andean, the
Himilayan heights of Thought he has, for the reason indicated
above, he has revived a Lost Art in a word, the Aristotelian
Method, once the glory of the Universities is now
swept aside in the speed of modern mechanical con
trivances, and THOUGHT, which rules the world,
is forced to take a back seat. The Admirable
Crichton could have done it. and Professors of Logic
at Padua, Cordova, and the Sorbonne could have done it. for
they were trained to use that marvellous scientific guide and
only guide to correct Logical Reasoning in their daily work
whereas not a man on earth to-day thinks of opening a Text-
Book on Logic from the day he secures his sheepskin the day
he gets his diploma. The consequence is th(tt Judges are the
laughing stork of Logicians. Thus. A Judge dare not and
never does, unless compelled by practice or statute to do
BO give a reason for his opinion. The reason is as follows.
The following instance is cited in Jevon's Higher Logic. A
certain wary old English Judge spoke as follows to a
lawyer just appointed by the Crown to a judicial position in
Jamaica : 'My friend never by any chance do you dare
to state a reason for your opinion. For the following rea
son. Your opinion may very possibly, even probably, will be
right whereas your reason for giving it will invariably be
wrong.' Rather droll comment by a man like Jevons the
author of the modern Text-Book in use in all Universitise em
ploying English, on both sides the Atlantic. This fatal flaw
in modern education this he used too strong a word for me
to repeat abominable slaughter of the Aristotelian Method
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 33
of Reasoning, is the cause of ninety per cent, of the ignorant
and fallacious, vain and foppish opinions from the American
Bench I except only the Supreme Court of the United
States.' Thus spoke the lawyer.
Spink: "Powerfully put, my fair client with your per
mission, Mr. Blettermole my fair Portia. And I say 'Amen'
to both premises, namely, that Mr. Stutfield is a Logician with
out a peer in the United States to-day, and that the average
American Judge is a Sophist without a peer in the United
States to-day. But what has that to do with the case? It
i* no more essential or necessary that a man should be In-sane
in order to imprison him for life on a charge of Insanity, in
forty per cent, of the States and Territories of the United
States to-day, than it is that he should have red hair that
he should l)e red-headed"
Constantia: "In that extraordinary event, I have noth
ing farther to say except 'So be it' with, .of course, the con
sent of these gentlemen."
Blettermole : "O. K. for me."
Lawless: "I agree, provided one sole thing. You know,
Blettermole, that the only reason I came into this thing was
to free my field of the only dangerous rival to Viola Caris-
ton's hand that has ever entered it namely, Stutfield. Your
secret is safe with me; and if the condition I now am about
to name is not fulfilled, and I am forced to withdraw, all
you will have to do will be to hunt up another 'best friend'
from among Stutfield's worst enemies to take my place, and
the trick will be turned. Don't look so black, Blettermole.
And you, Spink, reserve your sarcastic smile till you hear.
Perhaps my condition will prove no barrier, but by Gad ! an
added incentive to my zeal to join with you to the bitter end.
I shall propose once more to Miss Cariston upon her return
this afternoon she's expected any moment now. If she ac
cepts me which is damnably pardon me that slip of the
tongue, Constantia doubtful I withdraw. If not, I'm with
you to the death.
Blettermole: "Agreed."
Constantia : "Agreed."
Spink: "Agreed."
Lawless: "Many thanks. Now there's going to be no
34 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Romeo and Juliet business about my venture in the Field of
Love- presumably in a few minutes. I'm neither in the
mood for Romeo's part, nor is there occasion. Romeo's part
will very well keep. I shall make occasion to see Miss Caris-
ton privately upon her return from riding and promptly pro
pose. Whereupon, she will either refuse or accept me. I've
been there before she does not dilly dally over the cere
mony of decapitating rejected suitors
Constantia : "Viola is a dear girl, and my very best and
sweetest and one of my oldest girl friends on earth; I'd
have you understand, James, and I cannot and will not per
mit even a breath against her."
Lawless: "My dear Constantia, I hadn't the faintest
idea of breathing so much as a syllable against the woman I'm
risking my soul for if I have a soul, which at times I very
much doubt "
Constantia: "You stand excused."
Lawless: "If she accepts me, all well and good. Mr.
Spink can hunt up another 'best friend.' If she refuses, I re
turn with you in your car to-night, and hostilities begin to
morrow in the offices of Belisarius P. Spink. Esq., attorney
and counsellor, Wall street, New York. I shall deputize you,
Constantia, as my fair ambassadress with Miss Cariston I
trust to your woman's tact to get her to me, and keep Cap
tain Cariston off, and herd these men in the library for the
five minutes necessary for me to learn my preliminary fate
for my real fate will not be in issue until Stutfield has been
put out of the way then I shall lay siege to her hand in
true style."
Constantia: "With pleasure. James. And whatever the
prayers of a poor, sinful, temptation-tossed mother like me,
are worth are at your disposal."
Lawless: "I thank you, Constantia, from my heart."
(Kisses her hand).
(The light has been gradually lowering till it is now
dusk. Spink goes to the fireplace and pokes the logs. A
bright blaze bursts up. As he does so, the door opens and in
walks Viola, followed by Captain Cariston, in riding cos
tume. He is a rather tall, slender man with grizzled mous
tache and imperial short imperial with acquiline features
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 35
and erect, military but courteous, but non-pompous, non-
exaggerated bearing. Viola is dressed in a ball gown in the
style of 1887. In other words decolletee but without the un
sightly and hypocritical gauze fringe or, so to speak, panta
lets which nowadays shroud the outline of the bust as
though it were a shameful thing: while throwing into relief
the armpits and navel or, at the very least, near-navel of the
lady. We are Pro-Allies to the last degree, in the present
European unpleasantness; but we do earnestly wish that bet
ter men may be spared, and that German bullets may find
a lodgment in the degraded and degenerate carcasses, as re
gards taste in female apparel, at least, of Paul Poiret and
the rest of his Pirate Crew the balance of the randy French
men who bedeck our dames; so that they make a man-about-
town think of a group of soiled doves, "sitting for company"
in the parlour of a "sporting-house," upon glimpsing, a bevy
of society maidens and matrons at the opera, or other social
function, nowadays.)
Viola: "Connie!"
Constantia: "Viola!"
(They hurriedly move towards each other and embrace
affectionately. )
Viola: "I slipped this dress on to save dressing twice,
after my ride with Papa since I'm booked to a ball at the
Country Club to-night."
Constantia: "How well you're looking, dear. I haven't
seen you since the Patriarch's in January "
Captain Cariston : (After shaking hands with the men,
and later, Mrs. Blettermole) . "How d'ye do, gentlemen. De
lighted to welcome you to 'Elsinore.' How do you do, Mr.
Lawless, and you, Mr. Blettermole?"
Lawless : "Permit me to introduce to you a legal friend
of mine, Mr. Belisarius P. Spink, of the Metropolitan bar."
(Captain Cariston and Spink shake hands).
Constantia: "Now I want you to show me once more,
and particularly Mr. Spink, those old Shakspeares you have
the folio edition that has been in your family for ages "
Captain Cariston: "With pleasure."
(They start out, and Lawless catches Viola's eye and
makes a slight motion with his right hand the others all
36 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
studiously avoid looking at Viola and Lawless. She under
stands and says)
Viola: "Mr. Lawless and I will join you in the library."
(So soon as the door closes, Lawless says gravely, as he
leads Viola towards the sofa the room is still only lit by
fire-light).
Lawless: "Viola, I seized this opportunity because I
am called to New York to-night, on Blettermole's car
Viola: "Why, James, I thought you were going to be
with us for several days longer, and dance with me at the
ball to-night."
Lawless : "I may dance with you, after all I may throw
up this vitally important or rather very almost vitally
important matter. It all rests with you."
Viola: (Gravely). "I trust, James, that it is in my
power to grant what you desire "
Lawless: "It is utterly and absolutely so."
Viola: (Unconsciously drawing slightly away from
him). "Let me hear it."
Lawless: "Your hand."
Viola : "Oh ! James, I am so sorry you know how
much I admire your brilliant mind, and cool, calm person
ality. But. as I have told you once before, a man of your
temperament can never be my husband."
Lawless: "And why my temperament?"
Viola: "Not to be too pointed, because you are too cool
and off-hand, and utterly unenthusiastic not. to be perfectly
fascinating to many, many women which a little bird has
told me you have been and still are but out of the question
for poor little me. You see. I am so constituted I must have
enthusiasm in a man \Voila tout"
Lawless: "If that's all you want, I can be as enthusi
astic as the freshest tyro in the Bowers of Love you ever
dreamed of."
Viola: "But in that very unusual event, James, you
would be acting."
Lawless: "So be it. I take my conge. Do not think I
part in anger. I firmly believe I shall win you in time.
Good night, and for the present good-bye, Viola, good-bye.
With your permission, may I kiss your hand ?"
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 37
Viola : "Certainly, James. You know I will always care
for you as. and value you as one of my most valued friends."
Lawless: (Kissing Viola's hand) "May the Gods forbid!"
(They leave the room together. The door opens shortly
thereafter and enter Stutfield, in evening dress, with a pair
of saddle-bags over his arm. Stands leaning on mantel
piece).
Stutfield : "As close a shave as I care to experience !
Phew ! As soon as I drove in on one side of the oval before
the house, the Blettermole gang and that crafty rascally but
deeply learned shyster, Belisarius P. Spink, Esq., attorney
and counsellor and pillar of the bar of Manhattan Island,
with his hopeful client, that cold-blooded rogue and delicate
debauchee, Mr. James Lawless, multi-millionaire, drove out
on the other. A close shave, indeed. The moon came out
from behind a cloud and shone full in their faces in the open
carriage they saw me, and I saw them "
(Door opens, and Viola enters).
Viola: "Hugh! You here?"
Stutfield: "Yes, darling. I slipped into the house after
the others left, and slipped a quarter into Wash's hands to
keep 'mum,' and get you in here at once by hook or crook "
Viola : "Oh ! I see now the cause of Wash's mysterious
looks and words. He said: 'Miss Vi, Mr. Lawless tol' me
befo' he leff to ax you partickler, Miss, to go in de drawin'
room an stan' befo' de fire for a minute, tell you foun' a note
he leff for you under de clock on de mantelpiece ' ' :
Stutfield: "Good for Wash he 's got the imagination
of a darkey, all right. Now, dearie, just slip out and see the
Captain and tell him I have important business with you,
that won't brook delay and will not long detain you from
dinner possibly dinner's not impending immediately "
Viola : "It is not."
Stutfield: "Good! I'll only detain you about fifteen or
twenty minutes."
Viola: "Then you must stop to dinner, and go to the
ball with us after."
Stutfield: "Delighted provided you will honour me
with a dance in fact the majority of them."
Viola : "With pleasure."
449014
38 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield: "Now that I've protected my lines as they
say in military parlance I'll do what I've not had time to do
before." (A pause).
Viola: "And what might that be, my dear Hugh?"
Stutfield: "That might be almost anything speaking
by and large but it happens to be but one thing and that
is kiss you, my precious sweetheart." (They embrace).
"Now, darling, please post the pickets with the Captain
so that we shall not be interrupted."
Viola: "I sha'nt be a moment, Hugh."
(Stutfield sits down and gazes thoughtfully at the saddle
bags).
Stutfield: "One hundred thousand two hundred thou
sand"
(Enter Viola).
Viola : "It's all right, darling. Papa's immersed in some
papers connected with his live-stock you know this is a three
thousand acre stock farm, and he raises beef for the Northern
market we have very fine corn and grazing land blue
grass and it's his delight. He won't budge till we go to him."
Stutfield: "Good. Now my angel darling " (kissing
both her hands and putting his arm around her and
taking both her hands in his left as they seat them
selves on the sofa) "what I am about to say sounds
more like the Arabian Nights or Monte Cristo and 'The
World is MineT with that supremely good romantic actor.
James O'Neil, in the role, than anything you ever heard of
in modern life. I should like nothing better than to sit here
and fondle and caress your lovely, bewitching self for the
next twenty minutes. But I have matters more unattractive,
but now that I'm your accepted suitor, and the engage
ment known only to you and me, and to be announced
shortly more important. It is this. You know that I am
a student ever since my Columbia University days in old New
York, of Psychology and fExperimental Psychology at that.
Now I am going to tell you a secret. I am what they call,
tThe statements concerning Experimental Psychology found above
are taken almost verbatim from the "Statement by Dr. Horatio Curti*
Wood. Deo. 1O, 19OO," found on pages 68-73, inclusive, of "Four Yearn
Behind the nar* of Rloomlnfrdale," Dr. Wood being one of the Plaintiff's
alienists in the case of Chaloner against Sherman, being at said date Pro
fessor of Nervous Diseases in the University of Pennsylvania.
ROBBERY UNDER LA/W 39
vulgarly, a Clairvoyant the sort of thing generally, if not
always of your charming sex nearly always women you
see advertised in the Sunday 'Herald' and even week day
'Herald' not to say 'World,' 'Sun,' 'Tribune,' 'American,'
'Globe, and 'Telegraph' to name but a handful of the big
New York dailies. I've never been to one, but I know people
who have I don't believe in them if they were bona fide
clairvoyants they'd make more money on their own account
than pretending to mind other peoples' business for them. To
resume. Not a human being knows of this faculty of mine
but you. For one reason because I've been investigating it
secretly until I could produce results worth while giving to
the scientific world in book form you know that I am a
Master of Arts as well as a Bachelor of Arts "
Viola: "I knew that, Hugh."
Stutfield: "I've been at work on this thing for three
years and am only at the outer door of the mysteries of the
human mind the normal human mind. I cannot go into a
trance or even a trance-like state as yet such as these Clair
voyants do they don't go to sleep, but lie back in a chair and
in a dreamy, slow voice speak at the instigation of their Sub-
consciousness. I can't do that as yet. But I may do so in
time. What I can do is just this, and that is why I am here
contrary to all the rules of Hoyle, with a rival in the house
or I thought was here when I came but I was bound to see
you but alone, of course so it made no difference to me
whether Lothario Lawless my nick-name for him whether
the gay Lothario were here or no. Now here's the point.
I've got Intuitions or Premonitions down to so fine a point
finer than those recorded in any of the scientific works on
Psychology, even including The Society for Psychical Re
search of England, of which Professor William James, Pro
fessor of Psychology at Harvard was once President, as well as
Arthur Balfour, late Premier of Great Britain, and Sir Wil
liam Crookes, inventor of Crookes' Tubes without which there
would be no X-Ray I've got it down so fine that I can tell
for twenty-four hours in advance whether I am going to have
good luck, bad luck, or 'nothing doing' good or bad. Now,
this is done thus. When I wake in the morning I take ac
count of stock the instant I recover consciousness. I ask my-
40 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
self how I feel I don't mean physically for I'm a very
moderate, careful liver and always wake up feeling physi
cally the same O. K. that is to say but how I feel as
regards my spirits am I depressed exhilarated or neither
one nor the other, just a flat calm. If I feel exhilarated
three years carefully kept written record proves that I will
surely have good news that day in the next twenty-four
hours a favorable telegram or letter will surely arrive, or a
messenger will bear me a favorable message. If I feel de
pressed it is just as sure as 'eggs is eggs' that a bad letter or
wire will arrive : if neither hilarity nor depression, that noth
ing will arrive and I may take a day off from business. I
have been working this rabbit-foot in my large and multi
farious business affairs to the Queen, her most gracious Maj
esty's taste, for the past year or more. My brother Directors
on Boards wondered why I pursued so bold or on occasion
so wisely cautious a course, fighting for the control of each
and every Board I am on, and invariably achieving that de
sired end. But I did not oblige them by informing them.
Now, on waking this morning I was most extraordinarily de
pressed. You know, my darling, no man on earth has more
cause for heartfelt joy than your devoted and proud accepted
lover."
Viola: ''Dear Hugh!" (He kisses her).
Stutfield : "So I acted accordingly. Now, I am not able
to foretell as yet the future, for more than twenty-four
hours. Nor am I able as yet to foretell a solitary detail there
of beyond the fact that something good is going to occur
something bad is going to occur or, lastly, that nothing is go
ing to occur good or bad in my personal, private affairs for
the ensuing twenty-four hours. I, of course, before going to bed
the night before, know whether I have cause to wake up this,
that, or the other way, next day depressed, exhilarated, or
neither but that, of course "cuts no ice" whatever. It is en
tirely outside and beyond known and recognized causes for
exhilaration, depression or stagnation in my affairs, that these
premonitions or intuitions work. / can by them foretell, pro
phesy, or what you will, with mathematical accuracy the
accuracy of a ship's barometer, which foretells within twenty-
four hours the approach of the hurricane, or the change of
41
the hurricane into fair weather regarding storm, favoring
gale, or calm, in my private affairs. In a word, I am a hu
man barometer, as regards one sole thing namely my own
personal affairs and only one of three aspects of them, name
ly, success, threatened difficulty, or 'nothing doing, Mr. Stut-
field, to-day.' That is the mysterious and highly valuable in
formation telegraphed me so to speak on waking from a
distance of time twenty-four hours removed from my waking
hour by my Subconscious-ness. An extremely useful asset I
have found it, Miss Cariston and I hereby go on record and
stake my reputation as an embryo ^Clairvoyant that the time
will come when you will admit that I did well to follow the
promptings of my Subconsriousness and bring these saddle
bags here to-night absolutely outside and beyond the reach
of any judge for I can well imagine contingencies when it
would pay me to go to jail for contempt of court for an ex
tended period, rather than divulge the whereabouts of so
tempting a thing as their contents."
Viola: "Do they contain Aladdin's Lamp, Hugh?"
Stutfield: "Something very like it, my child. Now to
wind this weird talk up. Here's how I act on my Premoni
tions. On waking, I take instant account of stock as to my
feelings. If exhilarated, I push sharply all plans of action
made before going to sleep the previous night. If depressed,
I ride for a fall, pull in my horns, fight a rear-guard action.
close reef my sails or even prepare to scud under bare pol~-
before the storm. Now if it so happens that I have no im
mediate plan of action I carefully scan my personal horizon
and see where ill chance might injure me. Instantly, like a
ship in a storm I make for port with whatever might be in
jured by ill fortune. That's why I'm here so hastily to
night. I have here the tidy sum of two million two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars," (touching the saddle-bags with
his foot), "in these good old saddle-bags, twenty -two hun
dred thousand dollars in Government bonds and the balance
in cash fifty thousand dollars in cash in one thousand dol
lar bank notes, neatly tied in packets of ten thousand dollars
each."
Viola: "Hugh!"
42 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield: "A fact, my darling. Now give me a sweet
kiss. A kiss for two million and a quarter "
Viola: (Putting up her lips, quietly). "There. Now
why is all this money here?"
Stutfield: "I prefaced this interview by saying you
will remember my darling," (kissing her two hands, still held
in his left while his right arm still encircles her waist) ''that
it smacked of Monte Cristo and the Arabian Nights."
(Viola smilingly bows assent).
Viola : "I was somewhat struck by that remark, my darl
ing, and am therefore not so overwhelmed with surprise at
the contents of those saddle-bags as I most assuredly other
wise would have been."
Stutfield: So far, so good. The reason for this extra
ordinary act is this. This is the result of a sale I have just
put through of a patent I bought for about sixty thousand
dollars, some five years ago. I saw the possibilities in it. It's
what they call a 'basic patent,' which means an elementary
new principle in mechanical devices, as the original sewing-
machine invented by Howe was a basic patent. If proper
ly covered it could not be got round by any improvement
whatever for the seventeen years of life patents have to run.
Any improvement on a basic patent can only be used by
paying a royalty to the inventor. Well, I met the inventor
an honest, amusingly shrewd and original real genius all
basic inventors are geniuses and backed him to develop the
patent which then looked about as much like the compact,
graceful thing a man can now carry in his waistcoat pocket,
as a mowing machine looks like a lawn tennis racquet. It
was cumbersomeness, complexity, and clumsiness itself. But,
pardon my saying so, I am something of a judge of my fel
low man, and spotted Albert Wedge of 'Up State' New
York ns an original genius, and therefore capable of devel
oping the patent sufficiently to sell. My friends some not
all thought I was a damn fool excuse me. Viola, that slip
ped out-
Viola : "You are excused, my dear."
Stutfield: "A thousand thanks. Some of my friends
thought I was a fool to blow in sixty thousand dollars on an
undeveloped patent. I stuck to it for five mortal years, and
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 43
spent the sixty thousand in developing it, and, at last was
rewarded by Wedge's out-Wedging himself and producing
something so supremely simple, cheap and easy to make, so
light, and of so small compass and of about as wide a market
demand as the world holds, namely, an attachment for the
sewing-machine by which the needle is threaded by a pressure
of the foot"
Viola: "The needle threaded with one's foot." (Laugh
ing).
Stutfield: "Precisely it's an open-eyed needle with at
slot, and the thread is pushed into the slot by a simple con
trivance every time the needle enters the goods and is released-
from the thread the instant it leaves the goods ; thus the bore
of threading the needle and the expense of breaking needles
by bending them, by inadvertently pulling the goods from,
under the pressure-bar, is entirely obviated since the needle
is never in the goods. I owned ninety per cent, of the stock of
the company buying the patent to develop. So after five
years of the most fearful care and constant anxiety, I have
turned my sixty thousand dollars into two millions and a
quarter not bad for a young fellow spending most of his
time in Paris, and pushing Wedge by flying visits and con
stant letters and cablegrams. Wedge's genius pulled me
through saved the day and my sixty thousand and I now
take care of him for life. Of course, like all inventors, he
had sold his interest early before I got hold of him and
for a song."
Viola: "I should say, indeed, not at all bad, Hugh, for
a young fellow."
Stutfield : "Thank you my dear. Only a few days ago a
London syndicate bought the entire world-rights of the pat
ent for five hundred thousand pounds, or two million five hun
dred thousand dollars. They handed me that amount which
I converted pro tem into Government Bonds, after deduct
ing ten per cent, or a quarter of a million dollars for the
other stockholders in the patent and paying the same over
to them and placed the two million and a quarter in my fire
proof safe at 'Rokeby' to await investment; and, mark you r
darling, be meanwhile quite out of the highly improbable
but possible reach of absconding bank presidents."
44 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Viola: "It certainly sounds like the Arabian Nights."
Stutfield: ''With this difference, my darling. It's no
dream; but two million and a quarter of the good 'long-
green.' "
(Viola laughs merrily and he kisses her on the lips. He
then goes on)
Stutfield: "I had sold forty thousand dollars worth of
the Self -Threading Sewing-Machine attachments, in the first
six months the mechanism in its final perfected form by
Wedge was ready for the market. We booked and filled
forty thousand dollars worth of orders, at five dollars an or
der, five dollars a Self -Threader, within six months last past.
These sales were made without going outside of New York
City. A sewing-machine drummer or sewing-machine repairer
was given a grip-sack full of 1 S. TVs Self -Threaders and
turned loose on New York. They are as simple to attach to
the sewing-machine as any other attachment. Hence they
went like hot cakes forty thousand dollars culled, reaped,
garnered, out of hard old New York, inside of six months,
and not one dollar for advertising agents, traveling expenses,
or even salary. We gave them fifty per cent on the first
twenty-five 'S. T.V each sold, and twenty-five per cent, there
after. It was on the strength of this marvellous showing, and
the basic nature of my patents I'd girdled the world widv)
scope and reach of patents I'd girdled the world literally
girdled the world with 'S. T.' patents it was on the strength
of the quick spot cash sales of 'S. T.', the strength of her pat
ents, and the reach thereof that clinched the deal with the
big British Syndicate. That's capitalized at ten million
dollars, and is going to make things hum. My darling, I de
spise a man that exaggerates a man that exaggerates is sim
ply a more or less good-natured non-malicious, but none the
less, liar. So I shall recapitulate the countries in which 'S. T.'
is covered by patents. The whole of Europe down
to so small a country as Belgium and Switzerland. All of
South America, Central America, and Mexico except Pat
agonia, where they produce ostriches but not patents. In
dia, China and Japan, New Zealand, Australia and South
Africa winding up with Canada and the United States."
Viola: "A comprehensive purview of the world, surely,
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 45
my dear Hugh it revives one's knowledge of geography to
go over the list of S. T.' "
Stutfield: "It surely does, my dearie. The handful of
other stockholders were amazed at the scope, and the thou
sands of dollars it required yearly to keep patents alive
throughout the world, but they were confident of my business
judgment, and now are rewarded. Now, to wind up this un
usual interview, and go in to dinner. My reason for doing
this extraordinary thing bringing two and a quarter mil
lions in securities and cash to you by night, in a pair of sad
dle-bags, in Government bonds and bills is briefly as follows.
My property is divided into three divisions. When I say that I
ignore for the moment the saddle-bags and their interesting
contents. Division One is the largest. It lies in New York.
In New York real estate all on Manhattan Island, and all
choice, picked parcels of land. There is but one exception to
this that is a 362 acre villa site on the Hudson, opposite the
Catskills, in the township of Rhinebeck. The loveliest and
lordliest view of mountain and river on earth it dwarfs the
magic Rhine even. That has no house but a farm-house on it.
My father bought it years ago. All the rest of my property
is on Manhattan Island. It amounts to one and a half mil
lion dollars. Of this, one million is in fee simple is mine
out and out. The balance is about half real estate and half
gilt-edged securities the balance is in trust, and, in the event
of my death without issue, goes to my dearly beloved cousin,
Winston Blettermole, the only relative I have. Division Two
and Division Three are almost exactly equal in value. Divi
sion two, consists of five hundred thousand dollars worth of
real estate and water-power rights on the Roanoke river in
eastern North Carolina. This is a property with an enor
mous prospective value when the South comes into her own
that is, becomes the cotton manufacturing centre of the
United States. This place is the extreme northern limit of
the cotton belt, so no one can cut in between us and the
Northern markets. Also, besides having two competing rail
roads the Atlantic Coast Line and the Seaboard Air Line
which salutary fact assures low freight rates it is within
five miles five miles below us. on the Roanoke of water
transportation on the Roanoke to Norfolk via the Dismal
46 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Swamp canal and thence to Europe. Cotton grows up to
the very doors of the mills there, is ginned on the spot, and
carried into the mills."
Viola : "It must be a wonderful sight to see cotton first
grow before your eves, and then turn before your eyes into
cloth."
Stutfield : "It is highly interesting. But the great thing
about it is the water power, which does away entirely with
the necessity of coal; and besides saving an enormous num
ber of thousand dollars per annum in coal, puts the manu
facturer beyond the reach of slow delivery of coal, during
strikes."
Viola: "I had no idea you were such a variegated man-
of-affairs, Hugh. I knew you were of professional, legal and
literary, and publicist bent, but that you were a man-of -af
fairs of such world-wide scope, I had not the vaguest idea."
Stutfield: "Very probably, my dear. I've always kept
my business affairs pretty strictly to myself. Lastly, Division
Three consists of gilt-edged securities to the extent
of half a million, tucked a.way in several large, deep,
and commodious safe-deposit boxes, in the vaults of
the leading Trust company in Richmond. When I
say gilt-edged, I desire to qualify that statement to
the following extent. I do not mean high-priced
securities, so near par or so far above it, as to loudly pro
claim that they have seen their best days, by which I mean
their days of vigorous growth. In a word, securities which
are now at or about at the top notch. I've no particle of
use for such no use on earth. Marshall Field a merchant
prince for whom I have a high regard, and whom I know
personally Marshall Field, of Chicago than whom an hon-
ester, 'whiter,' business man never breathed quite different
from certain other of our hundred million dollar million
aires for that's Marshall Field's figure a hundred mil
lionMarshall Field once said to me after dinner: 'Stutfield,
the stocks you've just mentioned are too high-priced for me
I can't afford to buy them. Tin not a rich enough man to be
able to afford to own such stocks. The stocks I buy are stocks
that are sound, but are around thirty or thereabouts have
never been any higher and have, therefore some 'come out'
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 47
to them some growth some development. Some day, they'll
reach 75 or 100. Then I'll sell them and buy other stock at
say thirty or thereabouts.' I took my cue from Marshall
Field and carefully invested half a million taking several
years to do it in vigorous young stocks so to speak and
therefore the half million in my vaults in Richmond, bids
fair to be a million or more one of these days. That makes a
million and a half in New York; a half million in North
Carolina, and a half million in Eichmond, Virginia that 's
two millions and a half. Now we come to the milk in the
cocoanut the two and a quarter millions in these saddle
bags, and just why they are in these saddle-bags. Here 's
the very simple if very unusual reason, my darling. For
the present I want the two million and a quarter I have just
brought into this room (slowly) where no court order
can reach it. The law is a queer thing. In the hands of
learned and honest judges it is next to the actual personal
presence of Jehovah of God Almighty on earth for good,
for the good it brings about. But, on the other hand, with
ignorant, self-indulgent, or dishonest judges, it is one of the
cruellest, wickedest and most Hellish instruments in the whole
armoury of Hell. Now, when I met you on horseback yester
day afternoon followed by your groom you told me in
answer to my question that you had a large safe of your
very own that no one but you knew the combination of, I
mean for the safekeeping of your splendid Stradivarius
violin upon which I desire to hear you play one of these
days for I heard in New York that your tone and execution
are really remarkable quite professional, in fact "
Viola: "If that's so. Hugh, it's the result of my two
years with Mamma and Papa in Paris, just before I came
out two years under the great French master Vieuxtemps."
Stutfield: "I was told, my dearie, that it is literally
true that your playing has a passion and strength joined to
a delicacy and feeling which appears to join the two sexes as
you play, and give masculine force and feminine tenderness."
Viola : "Again, I have only to say, my dear Hugh, if
that is so thank my great master."
Stutfield : "To resume. Now I want to get into that big
safe not personally but two million and a quarter of me
48 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
to do that, I shall have to ask you to take the Strad. out and
sleep with it alongside you, so that in case of fire you can
escape with it that's the only possible danger in this quiet,
peaceful section of Virginia, not thieves but and that dan
ger no greater than anywhere else in the county fire.*'
Viola: "I shall, with pleasure."
Stutfield: "Many thanks, indeed, my dear, for I know
how you value that violin. Here is my will and one or two
other important papers in the same envelope. In my will I
have left you the income of these two million and a quarter.
The balance of my property bar the half million in New
York goes to Educational Institutions when my estate
vests., upon your death that is to say and another, who
with you form what is called in law the cestuiquitrusts the
two people at whose death property left in trust vests or is
turned over to the heirs. I want no receipt from you, my
darling. I only want you to keep this money till I can have
time to invest it in something in neither New York, Virginia.
nor North Carolina, so that I may have an entirely new set
of courts ruling the money for the Judges are our Rulers
our modern Kings, my dear, whatever fustian-talk ignorant
politicians may vamp up about this being a Republic. The
courts can defend or destroy your property, and I want to
have as large and varied a line of judges bossing my goods
as my property is large and varied. Verbum sap a word
to the wise."
Viola: (Smiling). "You, a distinguished law-writer,
appear to look upon the judges much as a criminal might
you appear, my dear Hugh, to be afraid of them."
Stutfield: "Because as a law-writer I know their igno
rance. I am afraid of them, my darling of their ignorance,
their dishonesty, or their favoritism or prejudice. How many
judges have a college education ? It varys in different sec
tions. In New York, for instance about 33 1-3 per cent., at
a rough estimate ! In other words an educated client or suitor
has to lay his case before an inferior "counsellor"; or an in
ferior garbed in ermine and throned on a bench. Should said
rule, developed further on; namely, that a judge must possess
not only a, College education, but the only possible receipt so
to speak for possessing same to-wit the degree of Bachelor
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 49
of Arts ever become general it will work havoc with such a
college say as our own University of Virginia founded by
our own, Albemarle County, Thomas Jefferson himself ! For in
that splendid institution of learning the short-sighted, selfish
and cruel rule exists by which every degree given by the Uni
versity is practically an honour degree by which I mean
the percentage required to get the degree is almost as great
as the percentage required by such universities as Columbia
and Harvard to obtain an honour degree. This is all wrong.
There should be an honour degree and a degree for the gen
tleman of leisure or professional man not after honours, but
after a degree from, his Alma Mater. The consequence is that
the percentage of men who have matriculated at the Univer-
s 'tty f Virginia and get degrees is about the smallest in 'the
country. The average student of the University of Virginia
never dreams of taking a degree! If my rule comes to pass
no lawyer would ever think of going to the University of Vir
ginia for a college education, but to the fine Colleges of Wil
liam and Mary, and Washington and Lee, of the same State.
The term, 'learned judge' is in every sycophantic lawyer's
mouth and yet the infernal rascals know that they lie when
they use the term because why ? Because Judges are bar the
rarest exceptions never learned they are as ignorant of the
law in the case as any shyster law r yer that ever bluffed a fee.
Until what time? Why until the lawyers have taught them
what the law in each given case is by their opposing briefs!
The judge is a mere student, a mere law-student to the law
yer, who instructs his honour in the premises. I'll tell
you all that the so-called "learned judge" dwindles down to
and that is a good guesser the most respected judge among
lawyers is he who can guess best. The best judge is the best
guesser! The judge who oftenest guesses right which side
has the law with them, as shown by that side's lawyer's
brief is the most respected judge in the legal community's
purview. The wise remarks you read in judges' opinions, as
well as the learned cases cited, are bodily copied verbatim from
one or other o>f 'the lawyers' briefs! This sounds strange but
it is true. I am divulging a professional secret in lifting this
sombre veil. No man should be elevated to the Bench who
has not received a college education from a reputable incor-
50 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
porated college. Lawyers may he admitted to the har on a
mere common or high school education, but not so men who
have the power of life or death, and the fearful responsibility
of holding the scales governing property. These men should
boast as fine an education as the Civilization and culture of
the nation affords, then would the slogan 'Learned Judge*
be true."
Viola: "I thoroughly agree with you, Hugh."
(Stutfield bows his acknowledgments).
Stutfield : "Any lawyer who ever hopes to qualify him
self for the august office of judge should be forced to acquire
a college education by which I mean the degree of Bache
lor of Arts. As aforesaid as about at a rough guess one-
third of the legal profession has the Bench as the goal of
their professional ambitions, consequently, about one-third
of the legal profession of practising lawyers will be well edu
cated as well educated as their clients for instance! No
man could hare a more profound admiration and respect for
the mighty office of judge, than your devoted lover, my darl
ing Jehovah Jah was a judge Abraham that 'mighty man
of valour' when pleading for the lost inhabitants of Sodom,
exclaims: 'Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?' or
words to that effect. Jesus Christ was a lawyer. He is
called 'Our Advocate with the Father,' or words to said ef
fect. As the Judaic law was a canon or religious law the law
of the Rabbis, the law of Moses Christ in arguing with the
Rabbis and Scribes who were lawyers, had to be proved
himself to be a lawyer of the highest learning and dialectic
and forensic skill. Therefore nothing could be higher than
the august professions of Judge and Advocate ! It ?.<? the
damnable prostitution of these God-like offices to-day, which
disgusts, dismays and appalls me. Instead of a judge being
selected because he towers above his brother lawyers for the
logic displayed in his briefs, and the uprightness of his con
duct of a case the absence of chicanery, mendacity, or as is
but alas! too often the case flat perjury upon the part of his
witnesses industriously trained therein after having been
deeply suborned by himself instead of that a judge is a
'good fellow,' a 'good sort.' a 'popular man in the profes-
'sion: always kotowing as lawyers always do to a brother
ROBBERY UNDER LA<W 51
lawyer, always hat in hand to one another, and always crawl
ing on their bellies to the court to the judge and cringing
before him. Instead of being an honour to his profession the
modern judge is but too often a man who "stands-in" with the
machine and has a powerful political pull and "stands-in"
in New York with the malodorous boss of Tammany Hall
who at a breath can unmake any judge of the New York Su
preme Court, as by said bosses' breath said judge was made.
It is this damnable state of things which makes me despair of
the future of this country and see our government burn up
as a scroll in the fires of the Day of Doom. The people are
gradually awaking to the chicanery, tyranny, and dishonesty
of the Bench ! Labour, particularly, has it's 'red right eye'
on the courts, and their iniquitous injunctions; and labour,
will have to be reckoned with when the battle of Armaged
don, for the United States, dawns. I am in favour of the
Initiative, Referendum and Recall of Judges, but not of the
Recall of Judicial decisions. Because law is as much above
the heads of laymen to steer a course safely and justly
through, as is astronomy. We must always have judges,
and the people cannot be judges as to reversing and re
calling Judicial decrees. Where would the right of
life and of property go if a decision made one day,
could be recalled by what amounts to a mob, so far only as
law is technically concerned could be recalled by a mob
the next? No: Judges must be recalled for misconduct: but
not their opinions. The subject of Logic which is the compass
by which only a judge steers his course where two legal au
thorities conflict, where two decisions by former judges upon
the point then up before him for decision conflict the study
of Logic needs a National Professional revival. Provided a
judge is a sound Logician which means a man trained in the
intricacies of the Aristotelian Syllogism, which means again
a College-bred manf and, a College-bred man only he can be
almost infalliby trusted to give a just and learned decision.
For the opposing lawyers have hunted up the law governing
the case in their briefs. So all he has to do is to balance the au
thorities and see on which side the weight of authority lies
tA man possessing the degree of A. B. from an incorporated
College of repute.
62 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
and where authorities conflict as aforesaid steer his course
by the compass the pole star of the Aristotelian Syllogism.
There's no word in English oftener in a lawyer's or judge" 1 *
mouth than the word ''logicj than the words 'logical? ''illogi
cal] 'fallacious,' 1 fallacy*! And yet, there's no book le*s often
in the hands of judge or lawyer than a Text Book on Logic!
by which alone the intricate rules of that mighty science may
be kept fresh: by which rules alone the highest reasoning is
guided and kept right, as the sextant guides the mariner by
showing the position of the sun. Logic to-day is a joke! a
dead dog! a stinking carcass floating down a canal. Hence
the damnably unjust, ignorant, and dishonest opinions of but
too many of the judges of this fair land both State and Fed
eral. Logic should be revived as it was in the Middle Ages
so that a judge may stand on his own feet when authorities
conflict. No candidate for a judgeship should be permitted to
mount the bench until he had proved himself by briefs of his
in litigated cases, that he was a Logician of the first rank
and the burden of proof would be on him to show that he
actually wrote each brief. If an illogical, fallacious or ig
norant brief could be thrown up at him from the past years of
his professional work it should disbench him. All briefs should
be filed under control of a special court officer that is to
say all those of lawyers who put themselves in line for ju
dicial honours and upon these briefs would the professional
record of the candidate for judicial preferment be based. A
crooked or fallacious brief would ipKo facto disqualify him
for the bench. He would have to draw his own briefs and
every brief he had ever drawn would have to be filed, as well
as the opponents' 1 brief! Ha ! Ha ! My dearie, it makes me
laugh when I think of the wry faces such a rule would cause
among the suave followers of Ananias, who form so large
a part of my august profession ! What a salutary effect it
would have upon brief-drawing to know that the foul birds
of lying briefs of per jury -punctured briefs would surely
come home to roost one of these days, when the question of
the ermine came to be considered! Hence courts would scru
tinize briefs of non-candidates for the ermine, far more care
fully for lies, perjuries and follies than those of candidates-
for-the-ermine. Gradually the people would get to employ
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 53
candidates for the ermine lawyers qualified to write 'C. F. E.'
after their names for the above reason and so by the time
the Millennium dawns we should have in America, a highly
educated, and, outwardly, at least, upright Bar and ditto
Bench. If some such thing does not take place, this coun
try will, and will rightly be placed forever under martial
law, by the Military Dictator of the United States, which our
aforesaid Armageddon is bound to produce. Who wouldn't
rather have one big Boss, one Oliver Cromwell one grand
Boss of genius than the ten thousand vulgar-born, ignorant,
piffling, plug-uglies that boss the United States to-day?
Pardon my professional zeal, darling only a d n fool!
Permit me to briefly enumerate our rulers. AVe have in every
County in the United States to-day in the country: the Pre
cinct Boss, the District Boss, the County Boss. In the city the
Ward Boss, the District Boss, the City BovSS, the Boss. Fin
ally the State Boss! As Herbert Spencer said in effect,
when he held the mirror up to the people of this great and
mighty nation, on his recent visit to us of a few years ago,
* Republic is the most ideal form of government, but it is the
most difficult to live up to; for it expects every man to do his
duty without coercion, or the fear of death^ or jail before his
eyes; and that's something that the delectable race of man
flatly refuses to do." 1 Hence, instead of being the best form, a
Republic is practically the foulest, most corrupt and tyranni
cal form of government possible. You know that it's a by
word for ingratitude!"
Viola: "I sadly do, my dear Hugh."
Stutfield: "You are an inspiring auditor my darling
but I must hurry on. This question o\f reform of Bench and
Bar is the question of the cancer eating the heart out of the
country of Washington and John Marshall. To resume and
conclude. This is the motto of a Republic, 'What's every
body's business is nobody's business.' So there you are ! So
after the rottenness which reeks to Heaven from the United
States, has brought down the purifying flames that did the
business for Sodom and Gomorrah the two prototypes of
the cities of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia figura
tively speaking, all this, of course, regarding the flames and
the bloodiest revolution the world has ever seen has ensued
64 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
between the forces of Labour on one hand, and Capital, sup
ported by the Bench, the Bar, and the Churches, on the other;
in which Labour will eventually win, by means of the acces
sion to her side of the great mass of the people, who stand
betwixt and between and a compromise has resulted not
between Labour and Capital, far from it that fight's to a fin
ish! but a compromise between Labour and the said vast body
of neutrals. After the thunder, and the smoke, and the blood
of the aforesaid Armageddon shall have cleared away l a new
heaven and a new earth' again strictly figuratively will
appear; and the folly and vice, now only too frequently en
throned on the Bench will be forever done away! Pardon
the length of this dissertation, darling, but something solid
was needed to support the extraordinary spectacle of a Law-
Writer's standing in dread and horror of the courts, and
scheming to get as long a line of judges strung out along
his property as might be ! In the desperate hope of finding a
learned or an honest one or by a miracle almost both
learned and honest in the lot!"
Viola: "Br-r-r! My dear Hugh, you make me feel cold
all over! It's like listening to a page from Carlyle's French
Revolution, to hear you sum up the virtues of the American
Bench and Bar."
Stutfield: "I don't wonder at your chill. The French
Revolution is what is going to repeat itself in this country.
/ am no prophet, but I am a student of History r and as such
I judge the Future by the Past. Some duffers say, 'How can
there be a revolution in a country where the majority rules?'
The Fools! That's just it! Suppose the majority is no
larger than the 'majority' that differentiated the followers of
Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden! And suppose
the so-called 'minority' prefers to fight to remaining a tech
nical 'minority' what then? Armageddon!"
Viola: "You make me shiver, but I'm afraid you may
be right."
Stutfield: "Thank you, my darling, for giving me the
benefit of the doubt. Nobody dislikes the idea of blood
shed, wounds and death more than your humble servant: but
History shows that that is the only avenue possible to funda
mental political and judicial change. There are noble ex-
ROBBERY UNDER I, AW 55
ceptions to the dark rule I have laid down exceptions
among lawyers and exceptions among judges but alas! my
dearie they are few and far. There are noble exceptions,
~but they are few and jar. To resume and wind up. I may
invest in a half dozen different States. No Virginia Judge
or any other judge, for that matter can rule on these two
million and a quarter I now hand you."
'(Raising saddle-bags and handing to Viola, who places
them on the floor before her, touching her feet.)
"For / no longer have them you have them but nobody
does, or will, or can since torture is abolished in court
procedure know that valuable fact. The future is ominous
of war in my affairs. Blettermole lusts after my prop
erty only less fiercely than he does after my life. He
actually hates me with a fifteenth century Benvenuto Cellini
hatred it's laughable, but a fact. I could never understand
it he's always attracted me he's a charming man super
ficially, at least and goodness knows, I've never injured
'him one's not generally given to injuring people who are
attractive to one."
Viola : "I can unravel that mystery, my dear."
Stutfield: "Can you. darling? Well, you will set at
rest a care that has been disturbing me for years and years."
Viola: "You know, Constantsa's almost my most inti
mate and beloved girl friend. She was in Paris finishing her
musical education you know she is a remarkably talented
pianist "
Stutfield: "I do. But her playing to me is cold fin
ished, but cold like herself, in fact."
Viola : "Well, Constantia attracted me by the extreme
artistic, literary and musical bent of her really unusual mind
beside her refined and charming personality. I saw her
constantly during those two years. We, with Papa and
Mamma used to go to the Franqais every Saturday night
when the plays were not too dreadfully risque other nights,
we were at work on our instruments, she the piano, I the
violin, for we each worked about eight hours a day except
Saturdays and Sundays, during those two years allowing
two hours for outdoor exercise daily. The consequence was
that when she married, she confided in me and I do not think
56 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
I am betraying that confidence in saying what I am about
to now. She said to me once: 'Viola, I am sometimes con
cerned about the hatred Winston has for Hugh Stutfield. It
is the most intense and persistent thing in his cool, indiffer
ent, charming, inconsequential temperament. It's absolutely
ferocious! I've questioned him, and questioned him upon it,
but in vain. His answers are always unsatisfactory and
vague. At last I am compelled to believe that it springs from
jealousy. Years ago, when they were boys at College dif
ferent Colleges different Universities Hugh got in without
conditions and achieved his College career and subsequent de
grees without one, although he had to work like a Trojan to
do so for the Classics and Mathematics always came hard
to him; whereas Winston, who had a natural talent for Lan
guages, and to whom Mathematics came easier than to Hugh,
got conditions upon entering Harvard, got new conditions
each year he was there and finally in order to get rid
of them, had actually to take five years to complete the four
years' course. This was a case of the hare and the tortoise.
Winston neglected his superior talent for Languages, for
Latin and Greek, as well as for Algebra, Geometry and Trig
onometry, and suffered severely thereby. Hugh Stutfield, on
the other hand, toiled and won. Now, strange as it may
seem, this boyish incident has been the fo-ns et origo, the
fountain and source, of a growing animosity in manhood's
years."
Stutfield : "Lord ! Is that the only reason for his Renais
sance hatred of me. Well, great oaks from little acorns spring
sure enough! Now. to conclude. Lawless desires my disap
pearance, owing to his being a suitor for your hand. Beli-
sarius P. Spink knows more law than any man in the United
States, and has less scruple than any lawyer, yet outside the
bars. Behind Blettermole and Lawless are their millions,
and behind their millions, is Belisarius P. Spink like Beli-
sarius of old the great general of the Roman Emperor Jus
tinian ready to lead their massed cohorts their ready mil
lions to any goal they may select. A powerful combina
tion not to say, a dangerous one you must admit."
Viola: "Hugh, you frighten me!"
Stutfield : "Do not be alarmed. I am my own Beli-
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 67
sarius my own lawyer and I'll back myself against
or any other lawyer in or out of shoe leather. Second. I'm
not a pauper by any means." (Kicking the saddle-bags).
Third. I'm so near being a Clairvoyant a Prophet in the
modern sense that there's absolutely nothing funny in it.
Fit back my Subconseiousness to warn me of all their damna
ble plots in time to prepare against them, and in the end
frustrate them. Now, my angel, will you take my will, my
private papers, and my two million and a quarter, and prom
ise me that you will neither admit you have them, nor sur
render them to anyone without a written order from me?"
Viola: "Certainly, Hugh, I will accept this grave re
sponsibility if you desire it. Shall I inform my father?"
Stutfield; "Not for the present. I have the highest re
gard for Captain Cariston's war record, and business record,
since the war, by which he made half a million in a twenty
years' exile in the wilds of the West Virginia coal fields,
exiling himself to that wilderness in order that you and
your Mother his only kin might live here at 'Elsinore' in
comfort meanwhile, and be independent for life at the end
of his twenty years in Siberia. He achieved his end, and
now has the sturdy sum of a round half million salted down,
in improving real estate in Richmond and Atlanta. But the
very fact that he is such a sound and yet bold business man,
makes me shy at putting him in touch with this highly un
usual performance to-night."
Viola: "As you prefer, Hugh, dear: it's true that he
does not yet know of our engagement." (Smiling). "He has
hardly had time to learn of it."
Stutfield: "A thousand thanks. Then you promise me
that you will neither admit you have my will, private papers,
and two million and a quarter, nor surrender them to any
one without a written order from me?"
Viola: "I do, Hugh. And now, one word with you. I
have had a frightful dream. Last night I seemed to be stand
ing on the edge of a broad, moonlit stream with you at my
side. Suddenly a large, funereal looking barge draped in black
appeared. Three ancient women resembling the Three Fates
stood on the deck. Before them facing you stood a man in
antique armor. As the barge approached a most terrific shout
58 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
as of a mighty host smote the air, and the figure on the
barge drew his sword and saluted you. I felt you straighten
yourself. I then glanced at you, and found to my surprise,
that you, too, were in antique Roman or Greek armor. So
soon as the man saluted you, you returned his salute with
your sword; whereupon, a second appalling shout as of a
mighty host, smote the air. The barge reached us. You
turned and said: 'Viola, I go, but I return.' Thereupon, you
mounted the deck, and disappeared. It frightened me hor
ribly I'm not in the least superstitious and disbelieve in
dreams; but I never had one so vivid as that."
Stutfield: "My darling, I'm a fatalist. I believe that
whatever is to be will be to the fall of a cock-sparrow."
Viola: "I share that belief, largely."
Stutfield: "Let that belief buoy you, my darling, until
we are one." (Embraces her).
End of Act II.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 59
IN THE SHADOW OF THE LABYRINTH.
ACT III. SCENE I.
Stutfield's suite in the Hotel Kensington, 15th Street and
Fifth Avenue. Stutfield in bed. Bed head to right of stage.
Small room. Door to right leading into drawing-room.
Door to left leading into bath-room. Window at foot of bed.
No fireplace in room heated by a flue. Bureau between win
dow and bath-room door. Time, one month later, April (12th y
1887, 6 :30 P. M. Stutfield wears a green sack coat, though in
bed ; as curtain goes up. a man, Dr. Barkus, enters. Weather
is cold. Backward spring, snow on the ground. Barkus above
medium height, strongly knit. About 55, grayish hair, slight
ly bald. Sharp, keen face; very cold. Wears glasses. Light
gray eyes, square cut beard, turning white. Stutfield is read
ing a morning paper as he enters. Barkus affects a solicitous
air, and approaches bed with both hands extended and close
together. He has black frock coat on overcoat and hat left
in drawing-room).
Barkus : "Ah ! my dear Mr. Stutfield, I am so distressed
to see you thus. I met Mr. Blight in the lobby on my way
into the hotel, and he told me that you were ailing "
Stutfield : "Blight's far too fresh. I've only got a
slight cold, Doctor. The only reason I go to bed for a cold
is that I inherit a tendency to pneumonia both my Parents
died of it, my Mother in perfect health, and with a magni
ficent constitution at thirty-four .and my Father ditto at
fifty-two within two years of her. I have lungs like one
of my registered Jersey bulls but like my bull, am suscep
tible to pneumonia to the scourge of the strong up here
in New York with its treacherous humid climate/'
Barkus: "You appear to be quite learned in the care of
the human frame."
Stutfield : "Oh ! I don't know every man's his own
physician or a fool at forty, .you know I'm just thirty, but
I like to be ahead of the game in such an important factor
in the game, as life and death."
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Barkus: (Frowning). "You can hardly expect a physi
cian to subscribe to that alleged maxim, Mr. Stutfield."
Stutfield: "No, scarcely. You gentlemen would practi
cally starve to death if there were not so many millions of
fools. For men and women under forty of normal health
are rarely under the weather, whereas those over, you may
almost say, are always so, now and then to commit a bull-
through their abominable, fool-carelessness. The average man
takes more care of his horse or dog than of himself and
this through no spirit of unselfish devotion far from it
but from a fool spirit of carelessness and laziness."
Barkus: "Permit me to observe that you are somewhat
severe upon your fellow man. But I am not here to bandy
'words with you, Sir."
Stutfield: "You are very correct."
Barkus: "Now our Oriental friend, Rumdumbagore,
"will be here shortly and prepared to assist at the proposed
interesting experience of observing you enter a trance. Per
mit me to inquire your opinion on the distinguished Parsee,
Rumdumbagore ?"
Stutfield: "To be perfectly frank. I think he's about the
biggest faker I ever saw his name should me Rumdum-
/flkore."
Barkus: "Again, I must observe that you are some
what severe upon your fellowman."
Stutfield: "Why, the jargon the man talks is enough to
turn one against him. It sounds precisely as though he had
spent a number of years in the French colony in McDougal
Street, and caught the French way of pronouncing 'th' and
rsaying 'zat' for c that ;' and had then gone to Mulberry Street
and resided among our Italian citizens long enough to learn
how to clip the end off of a word, as, for example, to clip
'banana' into 'banan' and 'money' into 'mon'; and finally
wound up in the neighborhood of Tattersall's, or some other
Horse Exchange, and learned from the Cockney grooms how
to decapitate the letter 'H'. "
Barkus: "But, my dear Mr. Stutfield, I was at pains
to inform you prior to the first two visits to you of Mr. Rum
dumbagore and myself, two or three days subsequent to
your arrival here, about two weeks ago from the South, with
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 61
your intimate friend, Mr. Blight, the distinguished New
York sculptor, who suggested to you that you permit my
self, as a dabbler in oriental trances and trance-like states.
and Mr. Rumdumbagore, who knows all about them coming
direct from India, to lecture upon that very subject before
learned societies throughout the United States suggested
that you permit us to observe you enter a trance,
since he had walked in on you as you were first
learning how to do so at 'Rokeby' and suggested your
coming on to New York and getting some Psychologist who
was more familiar with trances and trance-like states than
yourself, to advise with you about them, and act as your as
sistant in carrying on your most interesting investigations
in this mysterious domain of the brain. Upon your con
senting to both Mr. Blight's propositions. I was introduced to
you by him, and in turn introduced you to the distinguished
Orientalist who expressed himself as interested in your inves
tigations, and willing to assist for one or two seances before
leaving for Chicago to lecture before the faculty of the Uni
versity of that city I was at pains to inform you that Mr.
Rumdumbagore had had the misfortune to be first initiated
into the mysteries of English pronunciation so difficult to
the subtle oriental tongue when a child in Bombay by an
Italian nurse w T ho had married an Englishman, after being
first divorced from a French dentist. The Englishman was
not high type he was a coachman and born within the sound
of Bow bells hence he hadn't art 'h' in his head. The re
sult is the unfortunate, somewhat polyglot patois, somewhat
mixed accent of our distinguished friend."
Stutfield : "Your explanation, Doctor, is as unusual as
is the appearance, aspect, and actions of Brother Rumdum
bagore."
Barkus: "You are as suspicious of men as most law
yers, my distinguished patient."
Stutfield : "Permit me to observe that I'm not your pa
tient, nor am I suspicious bv nature. But I am not a damn
fool."
Barkus: "Well. I hear his voice in the hallway, and
shall usher him in."
Stutfield: "Prav do." (So soon as the door is closed
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
and he is alone, aloud, meditatively). "This is a very rum
state of affairs here. I can't quite make it out. Blight has
always been a close friend of mine and one in whom I've al
ways had the utmost confidence. He walked in on me at
'Rokeby,' as Dr. Barkus remarked, just as I was in the very
act of pushing my investigations of Institutions into the
Trance form, mentioned in my last talk with Viola, as em
ployed by Trance-Mediums or Clairvoyants. Spiritualism I
despise and utterly disbelieve in as the haunt of fakers and
cheats; but undoubtedly the Trance, or Trance-like slate, is
the work shop, in which to experiment in the mysteries of
the human brain. For instance, Hypnotism is the direct re
sult of a state closely allied to that of the Trance, but differs
from it in that while consciousness is clouded or entirely
submerged in the Hypnotic Trance, in the Mediumistic or
Glairvoyant-trance, nothing of the sort occurs. In a Trance
or Trance-like state I am as normal and keenly alive as
when eating breakfast. Therefore I am willing to go
through the d d bore of entering the Trance or Trance-
like state before witnesses since my Subconsciousness in
forms me that it will not operate the Trance or Trance-
like state for me in relation to my business affairs
unless I enter it twice before scientific men. Otherwise I
can't get the Hloomiri 1 perizhin 1 Trance to operate. For oper
ate it without the co-operation of one's Subconsciousness is an
impossibility. Blettermole may be at the bottom of this. He
is my inveterate enemy, and would stop at nothing. What
his object can be, I fail to see, but I shall without hesitation
allow him all the scope he wants, for I understand that this
is a law-abiding community this fair City of New York
and therefore the law can redress any injuries I may sustain
in pushing legitimate, scientific experiments to a conclusion."
(Enter Dr. Barkus and Rumdumbagore. The latter is a
tall, stout man, dressed in a black frock coat, waistcoat and
trousers, high collar and dark fcur-in-hand tie. The only
thing out of the way about his costume is a turban, of large
dimensions, and snowy whiteness, wound round the top of
his head. His skin is a dark olive, and he wears a heavy black
moustache. His motions are slow and pompous and so is his
intonation. He bows with oriental depth to Stutfield stand-
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
ing on the threshold, bringing both palms towards his mid
dle. Stutfield carelessly returns the salute and says) :
Stutfield" 'Day, gentlemen."
Rumdumbagore : " 'Ow does my young f rien' find 'e
zelf to-day? I trus' zat ze indizbozish iz not acute?"
Stutfield: (Smiling pleasantly). "No, 'ze indizpozizh
iz not acute
Rumdumbagore : "Ah ! My young f rien' mock me."
Stutfield: "Your young 'frien' is tickled to death over
your accent, my learned Sir 'zat's all ''zafs all"
Barkus: "Mr. Stutfield, we will proceed to go into the
trance, if you please, and cut short this unseemly ridicule of
my learned friend who suffers through no fault of his own "
Stutfield : "No, by Jove, it was no fault of his own, but
of that much married Italian-French-Cockney-English-nurse
eh?"
Barkus: "I beg of you to proceed to enter the trance."
Stutfield: "Very well, Doctor. But I should very much
like to know why our learned friend wears that turban on his
head, right here in New York."
Barkus: "Mr. Rumdumbagore is a very devout follower
of his cult fire-worshipping the Parsees, you know, are
Persian Fire-worshippers refugees who, centuries ago,
were expelled from their native land by the sword of the
Prophet the conquering Mahommedan and sought and ob
tained asylum in India. They worship fire still. Now as to
just why he wears a turban here in New York. Mr. Rum
dumbagore is under a vow he is a very devout Parsee
never to appear in public without a turban no matter where
he may be until India is rid of British rule."
Stutfield : "Ah ! ha ! A patriot ! I had no least inkling
that so rare a fire as unselfish, unpolitical, patriotism burned
within that brawny bosom. Now for the experiment. What
goes on inside the head during a trance how it is operated
is shrouded in mystery so jar as Science knows at present
as deeply shrouded as the nature of electricity or the cause
of the X-ray outwardly, however nothing could be simpler.
You cannot detect the slightest difference in me physically
when in a trance, or when out of a trance except im- my
language. I need not warn scientists of your standing that
64 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
I am no more responsible for Trance-utterances than for sleep-
talk talking in my sleep to which it is closely allied all
Trances being merely a form of Somnambulism or Sleep-Walk
ing. The first hint I gave of being what is vulgarly called a
Medium was when I was a child, by Sleep-Walking. That has
passed off with the lapse of time and taken on the rarer phase
of Trances and Trance-like states. From the moment I say:
'Here goes!' I'm wholly irresponsible for my utterances.
'Here goes!' 'Hugh Stutfield, you are in the hands of the
Philistines. These hoary old rogues are bought, body and
soul, by certain persons. Who or what said persons are I re
fuse to say. But be not concerned. Your destiny like that
of every man, woman and child on earth was fore-ordained
from the beginning. Nothing these two bloody-minded, soul
less, sordid, old reprobates can do or say, can alter or change
your destiny one jot or tittle they are necessary that your
destiny may be fulfilled. Proceed as though they did not
exist, and know that in the end you will triumph over these
two disgraces to the Medical Profession to the noble Art of
Healing, and those back of them. I say no more. Farewell.'
Well, gentlemen, what do you think of the trance?"
Barkus: "Infamous! Infamous! The most absurd and
slanderous utterance I ever heard."
Rumdumbagore : "My young frien' it grieve my 'eart
to 'ear you zay zuch zings it grieve my 'eart. But in my
'eart ze deep warm 'eart of an Oriental I know it is not
you zat zay zuch zings it is not you but ze trance, ze trance.
Zo nudding 'ard, no 'ard veeling rests in my great warm
Oriental 'eart towards zee, towards zee. My young frien', I
take my leave. May ze spirit of ze great founder of our
Faith, Zoroaster, ze great Zarathustra 'imzelv, 'oo shed ze
light of 'iz countenance over ze land of ze Medes and ze Per
sians one thousand years before ze Christian era, watch over
and guard your steps in zis wicked but populous city."
Stutfield: "Amen to that, my learned fire-eater beg
pardon fire-worshipper Amen to that."
(With a profound salaam Rumdumbagore leaves, fol
lowed by Barkus, who merely bows slightly. The door has
hardly closed before heavy footsteps are heard in the hall-
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 65
way, and there is a loud knock at the door of Stutfield's
bed-room).
Stutfield : "Come in."
(The door opens and Barkus and Rumdumbagore ap
pear at the head of three burly, rough looking men).
Barkus: "You must get up. Resistance is useless as
you see, and dress and follow me. You are insane."
Stutfield: (With a sarcastic smile). "On what
grounds?"
Barkus: "On the grounds of what you said when in a
Trance, or Trance-like state just now."
Stutfield: "But I was at pains to explain to you, only
a few minutes ago, that that was not my mentality talking,
but my Subconsciousness."
Barkus: "I'm quite well aware of that."
Stutfield: "Who's back of these proceedings?"
Barkus: "Mr. Winston Blettermole and Mr. James
Lawless."
Stutfield : "Ah ! My two worst enemies. Well, gentle
men, what do you propose to do about it?"
Barkus: "Propose to do? Why, that you obey my or
ders."
Stutfield: "You haven't brought enough men with you,
Doc."
Barkus: "Seize him!"
(The men dash towards Stutfield. There is a small table
with a pile of large, heavy books on it at his bedhead, which
prevents direct attack, so they come round that and are about
to spring upon him the head of the bed is towards the door
of the drawing-room when Stutfield whips out a revolver
from under his pillow and says sharply) :
Stutfield: "Hands up, you blackguards, hands up!"
(The roughs at once obey. Barkus and Rumdumbagore,
who are standing at the foot of the bed, shrink away from
the pistol).
"Now then, you bloody villains you East Side thugs
and mid-night assassins, make tracks out of here or I'll fill
you full of lead."
(It is now dark and the electric light has been turned on
for some time. The roughs leave hurriedly).
66 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield: "Now then you two promising specimens of
medical rascality for of course, you're a brace of alienists
in disguise, lying as fast as you can open your dirty mouths
now then, you two apostles of perjury and crime, why
shouldn't I put a bullet into each of you and rid the world of
two such human hyenas? Come pull yourselves together
and answer me that. First throw up your hands you, too,
Rumdum."
Barkus: (Clearing his throat and 'showing all signs of
fear after swiftly throwing up his hands Rumdumbagore
does the same). "I trust, my dear Mr. Stutfield, that you
will not take any unfair advantage of me."
Stutfield: "No, I never take an unfair advantage of
any man. But I shall particularly well see to it that you
don't succeed in taking an unfair advantage of me. I'd have
you understand that I hold a license to carry a pistol in New
York."
Barkus:- "What are you willing to do?"
Stutfield : "I am willing to discuss this interesting situ
ation with you to-morrow, say, at 3 P. M."
Barkus: "But how do I know that you're not going to
run away?"
Stutfield: (Bursting out laughing). "Run away! That's
something I'm not in the habit of doing."
Barkiis: "In that event, I'll be very glad to meet you
to-morrow at 3 P. M."
Stutfield: "So be it. And now you may permit your
hands to assume a normal position, and retire."
(Both leave rather hurriedly. As soon as the door
closes)
Stutfield : "Well, here's a how de do, sure enough !
Viola's dream has come true!"
End of Act III. Scene I.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 67
THE LABYRINTH.
ACT III. SCENE II.
Time : Three months later. July 12th, 1887, 4 P. M.
(Stutfield's cell in 'Fairdale.' A dark, gloomy, small
room with heavily-barred, small windows. Room scantily and
barely furnished. An engraving or two on the wall; a small
dressing-table with mirror, washstand, and some common
chairs. Stutfield in bed, dressed in a striped blue and white
flannel outing jacket, with no tie on, over a silk gauze under
shirt. The bed is brown wood, and has a canopy over it in
the shape of a mosquito-netting on four slender rods. By
his bedhead is a table, covered with ponderous books. He has
just finished a letter as the curtain rises. There are three
doors to the cell; one leading to his keeper's adjoining cell,
and one to a bath-room, and one to the hall. He begins to
read the letter he has just written in blue pencil)
Stutfield: (Reading hastily, and with frequent glances at
the door). "My own darling Viola: It seems ages since I've
seen your sweet face, and heard your silvery voice, buried
alive as I have been for a quarter of a year amid dangerous
lunatics, even maniacs. This is how it all happened. Blet-
termole and Lawless put their heads together, and one as my
nearest blood relation, and the other as my 'best friend' signed
and swore to a Petition saying that I was insane, and dan
gerously so. They were evidently steered by Belisarius P.
Spink, who is the lawyer of both Blcttermole and Lawless,
for the game has been worked to the Queen's taste from the
start not a blunder anywhere except that crime is always
a blunder in the long run, and both Lawless and Blettermole
have rendered themselves liable to a term at hard labor at
Sing Sing for perjury. So far, so good. Now I shall de
scribe how I come to be here, flat on my back. Before doing
so, knowing your sweet solicitude for my health, I shall
touch briefly upon that. I never was better in my life. I
once overworked and consulted a specialist on overwork and
the preventive and cure thereof. He said: 'Lie down for
68 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four and rest your spine,
which is the trunk-line of the nervous system, and exercise
for the other two hours not severely, but lightly even for
much less than two hours if you feel disinclined for any
cause not slothful in its origin.' So I stay in bed, for
twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four. I even take my
three meals in bed, and after luncheon walk for the greater
part of two hours this walk is, of course, with a strapping
six-foot, fighting, Irish keeper come in, bathe, and go back to
bed. I sleep for at least nine hours. The balance of the time
I keep my mind constantly occupied by reading five daily New
York morning papers, and two daily evening papers from
first page to last, including the most amusing of the ads,
and some of the ads. are distinctly amusing. I find that
nothing taJtes one out of oneself so easily, so without effort of
thought or brain work of any description, as newspaper
reading. It is like eating the lightest, flimsiest kind of pastry
in place of solid food. I do not refer to the editorials when
I say no effort of thought or brain is needed to master the
contents of a newspaper. Editorials do necessarily excite
thought the only question is as to the nature of the thought
thus excited. I find that in the vast majority of cases the
nature of the thought thus excited is amusement. But amuse
ment is enlivening and restful for the human mind in the
extraordinary situation in which I find myself, looked upon,
and treated and spoken of to my face, as being a hopelessly,
insane dangerous maniac ! I often wonder if I am not dream
ing, and pinch myself until I am convinced that I am awake.
So you see, anything that can minister to a mind so situ
ated is surely to be classed with poppy and mandragora and
'all the drowsy syrups of the East' as a first aid to the in
jured by the illegal and vicious laws of this great State,
touching Lunacy Procedure. You know, my darling, that my
Mother was born and bred in New York, and that I was
reared here, and largely educated here, therefore it is natuml
that I should feel the strong affection for this great and
beautiful city which I do. It is not with the people of New
York City or New York State I have a quarrel on account
of these Lunacy Laws, but with the rich rascals high in the
councils of the Four Hundred, who make money out of
ROBBEUY UNDER LAW 69
them. Now you are prepared to hear how I came here. First
and foremost, I desire to state, my precious darling, that it
is through no lack of strategy or generalship upon my part
that I am here. I had the situation entirely in my hand in
New York, from the simple fact that I had had the foresight
to make use of my license to carry a revovlver in New York,
by having it under my pillow when they tried to overpower
me by sending three strong-arm men into my room at the
Kensington after dark to carry me off. There was a sinis
ter purpose lurking behind the act, namely, their desire to
make me catch my death of cold by hauling me out of a sick
bed to dress and take a cold drive in a cab to the train, and
, colder one after the hot train from the White Plains sta
tion here, there being snow on the ground. But I decided to.
so to speak, go as a lamb to the slaughter; or to play 1 detective,
and get an insight into the working of this gilded Hell,
'Fairdale ; ' from the inside, in order that I may devote my
life to wiping infamous Lunacy Laws off of the Statute Books
of about half of the States and Territories of the Union,
founded by George Washington and safeguarded by Abra
ham Lincoln. That was my wish and aim, in risking my life
coming here. For I could easily have walked down the fire-
escape from my window and got away, had I cared to do so.
But liberty to me is as sweet as life, and I am willing to risk
my life to insure liberty for the rest of my countrymen and
country-women unable to fight for it, in this labyrinth, from
the fact that they are not professional fighters that is to say.
lawyers. Now, I shall wind this long letter up by saying that
It will be handed Captain Cariston addressed to him by a
man I have complete confidence in, the inventor of the Self-
Threading Sewing Machine Attachment, that brought me so
much money his name is Albert Wedge. He is still in my
employ because I promised to support him for life, so soon
as I sold the mechanism. I promised him twenty-five hun
dred dollars a year for life, besides a present of twenty thou
sand dollars. I have had no chance to pay him more than a
portion of the first year's allowance. He is let through the
lines here because before surrendering to the police they sent
to take me next day from the Kensin-gton Barkus, one of
the Doctors in the plot lied and broke his word and instead of
70 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
coming sent a brace of plain-clothesmen from police head
quarters in Mulberry street I had sent a wire to Wedge at
his place at Allendale, New Jersey, to come in the first thing
in the morning. This Wedge promptly did. Whereupon I
told him the situation and that if he ever expected to put
his hands on that twenty thousand dollars he must co-operate
with me, and get me a lawyer to bring habeas corpus pro
ceedings to get me out. Well, my dear, what do you sup
pose, Wedge supported by full credentials from me has
been utterly unable to get a solitary New York lawyer to
take my case and bring the habeas corpus proceedings ! They
hem and haw 7 but do nothing. The authorities* here know
that Wedge may try to get counsel for me, but will you be
lieve it, so sure are they of their position that they are in
different, knowing that he will not be able to get a lawyer in
New York with the courage to take my case. They hold
back for three reasons. First: Because of the old maxim,
'Give a dog a bad name and hang him.' Being once inside a
Madhouse I am supposed by the intelligent public to be mad.
No matter what crimes and villainies were perpetrated to
falsely put me there. Second : New York lawyers shy at
the case because of fear of Blettermole and Lawless. Bletter-
mole is a millionaire several times over, and Lawless is a
multi-millionaire has at least seven millions at a safe esti
mate. They are afraid of the serried ten millions opposed to
me. Third : New York lawyers shy at the case because
they are afraid of antagonizing the powerful array of pluto
crats on the Board of Governors as it is pompously termed
of this Bastile of the Four Hundred, where is buried alive
for life any member of the Four Hundred who has had a
falling out with his family or next of kin. The most power
ful men in Finance, Law and Society are gathered together on
the Board of this Private Insane Asylum in ord-er to overawe
the New Xork <Cownty Bar. So here is what I propose
to do. Wedge is absolutely devoted to my interests.
He is a bachelor alone in the world and entirely de
pendent upon me for the means to carry on his experiments
and like all inventors, he is never happy except when
inventing. So he is willing to risk State's prison to
get me out of here. I am willing to risk my
life to get out of here, and here is what I propose. Wedge
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 71
comes up about once a fortnight. He is due to-day. I'll give
him this. He has money enough to pay Tiis way to Virginia.
So soon as you have read this letter, read it to your Father.
I am enclosing this sealed and addressed to you in one to
Captain Cariston, briefly stating that the bearer is an in
ventor in my employ and patentee of the Self Threading
Sewing Machine Attachment and has access to me is thor
oughly trustworthy and able to shed light on my present
predicament. Then, please ask him to do as follows. I do
not intend to stay here until I go crazy from my health break
ing down. I'd much prefer to die with my boots on attempt
ing like an American citizen worthy the name of an Ameri
can citizen to escape. Or if I should be forced to kill a
keeper in my dash for liberty, and the jury went back on
American love of freedom and sent me to the electric chair, I
would much prefer that quick and easy death to lingering
here for years. There is no warrant in law for this out
rage against an American citizen. Now a man would be per
fectly justified in killing a 'Black-Hander' who held him in
perpetual life imprisonment as I am being illegally held for
a five thousand two hundred dollar yearly ransom not
counting extras and making his escape. Further argument
in support of my contention would be a work of supereroga
tion. I hope and believe it will be unnecessary to put Pat
Sligo out of business permanently, but the Law-Giver, Moses
himself, had less warrant in Law or Equity I highly approve
of Moses's noble act, mind you but Moses the Law-Giver
had less warrant in Law and Equity for killing that Egyptian
task-master, than I would have in killing Pat Sligo when he
bars with his bulky carcass my road to freedom and any
American who disagrees with that sentiment is unworthy of
the spirit of the founder of this mighty Republic. ''Blood
will tell] is an old and true maxim. My blood is Revolution
ary to the last drop. I am related by blood to three lead
ing Generals in the Revolution. First: General Nathaniel
Greene the second greatest General on the American side
after Washington. Second: General Marion, of South
Carolina, known as the 'Swamp Fox.' Third: General
John Armstrong, author of the "Newburgh Letters." Not only
American Revolutionary blood runs in my veins, but French
72 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Revolutionary blood I'm not descended from her for she
died a maid on the scaffold under the guillotine but I am re
lated by blood to Charlotte de Corday, the slayer of one of
the bloodiest villains who ever disgraced the earth, namely,
Marat, of the Bloody Triumverate, Danton, Robespierre and
Marat. Now you way well imagine how such blood would
brook such treatment as I have received for three months, and
am intended to receive for life. As Charlotte de Corday
struck a blow that forever freed France from Marat, with u
simple dinner knife, so I propose to strike a blow that shall
forever free Lunacy Legislation in the United States of the
crime masquerading under the guise of law therein. The
blow possibly may land me on the scaffold as it did her, but
not if American Judges and American Juries have a spark
of the spirit of '76 in their veins. But, however, that may
be, whether I mount the scaffold or not, Lunacy Law will be
brought before the rulers of this country the people in a
way so plain and striking that they will be more than apt
speaking guardedly to set their house in order and give a
man, accused of lunacy as fair a run for his money, as fair a
trial before a Judge and Jury in open Court as is now given a
man accused of burglary, rape, or murder. I dislike to go
over such gruesome things with you, but it is essentially neces
sary for you and Captain Cariston to know just what I am
prepared to do in the event of your not rescuing me. I have
the means of killing the brawniest, bravest keeper in 'Fair-
dale' on me now it's always on me when I have my jacket
on and otherwise it's always within arm's reach, in the right
hand pocket of my sack coat, folded up on a chair by the
head of my bed, and between it and the wall. This is some
thing as providentially mine as was the jaw-bone found by
Samson, for I picked this up one day when walking with
my keeper. This something is a horse-shoe. I picked it up
this way. I spied it ahead of us. He did not. So I dropped
slightly behind as we approached the horse-shoe and swiftly
stooped and slipped it into my right-hand sack coat pocket
without his noticing me. It is wrapped up I washed it in
my bath tub that night, after he'd gone to bed, and I heard
him snoring in the next cell which opens into mine it is
wrapped up in a handkerchief to hide it. Now with this, I
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 73
could first break the leg, and, as he fell forward, fracture the
skull of any man that ever lived, including Goliath of Gath.
So you see that even here in the jaws of death and Hell I
am not so helpless as I might appear on a cursory view.
Now I don't want to make anybody die a violent death nor do
I care to. So I shall not draw my horse-shoe and 'Strike for
your altars and your fires, Strike for the green graves of your
Sires, God and your native land,' as Fitz-Green Halleck puts
it in 'Marco Bozzaris' unless you, my sweetheart, through
your gallant father are unable to rescue me. So here goes for
the plan of campaign to culminate in my gaol-delivery. Put
him in touch with everything I've told you and my being se
cretly engaged to you, and also that you hold certain funds of
mine. Then give him enough money out of the war-chest to
cover the following items: Twenty-five hundred dollars for
Wedge. Twenty-five hundred dollars each for three ex-Con
federate veterans not too old to shoot straight, with the prom
ise that upon placing me upon Virginia soil the amount will
be doubled. Twelve hundred and fifty dollars for the owner
of a Norfolk, Virginia, ocean-going-tug, with the promise
that the amount will be doubled upon his return with me,
dead or alive, to any point on the Virginia coast. Twenty-
five hundred dollars for a Connecticut farmer just over the
line from Westchester County in which White Plains is who
is a boyhood-friend of Wedge, and is well to do, and often ha*
Wedge to spend the summer with him free of charge. This
man is of old Revolutionary stock is a descendant, on the
female side, of General Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame
'Old Put,' as he was affectionately dubbed by his troops and
is proud of it. He is outraged at my predicament and has
pledged himself to transport any four men I bring to New
Rochelle just opposite here, on Long Island Sound to
gether with Wedge and myself, in a light, closed, three-seated
wagon closed by curtains only so as not to attract attention
by the crowd behind a pair of powerful seventeen and a half
hand standard bred trotting stallions, that he has so broken
that they travel amicably in harness, inside half an hour
from the boundary wall of 'Fairdale,' on the Marmaroneck
Avenue road, a beautiful stretch of eight miles of macadam
ized road running flat as a plate from 'Fairdale' to Long
74 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Island Sound he has pledged himself or forfeit the prize-
money of twenty-five hundred dollars to do this inside thirty
minutes. Now I propose that the Captain lead this rescue
party himself. He was Captain of Squadron A, First Vir
ginia Cavalry, in the Army of Northern Virginia, under
Stuart. Let him pick three of his most dare-devil troopers
and lead them to the charge against the trespassers on the
rights of a Virginia citizen. Once we get into the wagon we
are safe, for nothing can touch us. There's no car line of
any kind along Marmaroneck Avenue and so nothing can
touch us, or head us. Now here is how I propose to join
forces with your father. Wedge will act as scout to your
father and his men from the time they disembark from the
ocean-going-tug off New Rochelle, and enter the closed
wagon, till the time we join forces; so I need say no more, as
I shall put him Wedge au courant with what a certain
deeply devout, fire-worshipping friend of mine of whom
a whole lot anon when I have you in my arms once
more, my precious darling, "after this cruel war is over" your
dream you see, came true, and I now am about to return to
you Wedge will to-day be put ecu courant with what a pro
foundly learned and deeply pious fire-worshipper I know,
would term 'the situaish/ N. B. Ask your father to have
half a dozen Winchester rifles and plenty of ammunition on
board in case we should be held up by a police boat when
passing New York. It's not likely that that will happen,
but I take no chances in war. Also be sure that each of his
men has on a belt of cartridges and a forty-four Colt re
volver not in view of course and to bring me mine the
ivory-handled forty-four at the head of my bed at 'Rokeby,'
with its belt of cartridges. The chances are a hundred to one
against a contretemps against blood-shed once I join forces
with the rescuing party. I propose to put my husky keeper,
Pat Sligo a six-foot, one hundred and ninety pound Hiber
nian, down and out, in the lonely wood at 'Fairdale.' whither
I shall invite him to escort me on a walk. I shall not by
any means kill him, or use the horseshoe at all though I
shall have it as ever in my pocket but I shall put him down
and out, and then join the rescuers on the edge of the wood.
As a matter of pride I propose to leave no more trace no
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 75
more trail after putting Pat Sligo down and out no more
clue to the direction of my change of base than if the earth
had swallowed me. As I have shown, I come of a long line
of military ancestors and the only reason I didn't enter the
army was because there was no prospect of war in my time,
hence my remark about its being a matter of pride military
pride soldierly self-respect to leave no more trace of my
change of base than if the earth had swallowed me. Also, it
might make it disagreeable for the Connecticut farmer if it
got out that he aided in the escape. He is not a resident of
New York nor a citizen of New York since he is both of
Connecticut, but the local authorities might trump up or
attempt to trump up trouble for him the next time he
crossed the New York State line. It would, of course, be im
possible to achieve this desired end of complete mystery re
garding my movements South in any other way than I have
outlined namely, my personally putting unaided, unwit
nessed, and alone Pat Sligo down and out. Naturally I
would prefer the dramatic coup of having the Captain ap
pear, accompanied by his men, who would, at a word from
him, draw and hold him up. But tempting as that is to my
dramatic sense it is utterly out of the question and not to
be considered for a moment for reasons stated. I propose
about three weeks from now, as the time for pulling off the
big event. Till then, may God bless and comfort you, my
sweet child, and prosper our plans and thwart those of the
enemy.
Your devoted
HUGH."
Stutfield: (Sealing the addressed envelope into which
he has put the letter). "Phew! The longest letter I ever
wrote, I verily believe."
(Noise of voices approaching. Stutfield hastily conceals
the letter in his inside coat pocket. The door of the next cell
opens and Albert Wedge enters, followed by Pat Sligo.
Wedge is a small, thin man. with a sharp, shrewd, face, clean-
shaved honest-looking with his shrewdness and neatly
dressed. He has a way of turning his head on one side when
listening to a person, and before replying to a question de
manding any thought he expels his breath violently and pre-
76 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
faces all his remarks with "Well, I don't know!" or "Well!
That may be !" or "Well! Let me see !" He expels his breath on
the word, "Well" Sligo is a powerful, forbidding-looking
Irishman with beetling brows. His head is bullet-shaped, and
hair cropped short like a convict's. He has a short, thick
neck. He is dressed in the regulation 'Fairdale' uniform,
dark navy blue suit with brass buttons. He swings the door
open with a flourish and says in low gutteral tones) :
Sligo: "Walk in."
(Sligo glares at Stutfield sullenly. Stutfield looks at
him carelessly and says) :
Stutfield: "Ah, Pat!"
(Sligo merely growls and says nothing. He goes out,
slamming the door after him. Stutfield smiles significantly
as he watches Sligo disappear, and then turns to Wedge and
says) :
Stutfield: "Have a chair, Wedge."
(Wedge seats himself. Stutfield then pulls out the let
ter and says in a low voice : Stage Direction Stutfield speaks
rapidly all through this scene with frequent glances at the
door of Sligo's cell}.
Stutfield: "For Captain Cariston. 'Elsinore,' Cobham,
Va. on the Chesapeake & Ohio Eailway, ten hours from New
York, Wedge. You are to please start at once. You need not
remain at 'Elsinore' more than a few hours. Your train
leaves Jersey City at eight A. M.. and reaches Cobham at
about six P. M. Send the following wire the night before
you start to-night, that is I presume you can get off to
morrow
Wedge: (lin a low voice as he pockets the letter").
"Ye-e-s. I did want to take about a week to work round a
snag that's turned up in my patent hydraulic pump
Stutfield : "Of course, you did, my good Wedge and of
course, you ever will if it isn't one thing it's another with
you artists and poets in power and steel and electricity you
inventors but. my good friend, Wedge, if you don't get my
affairs started, you'll run out of money the last quarterly
payment I made you on your allowance is pretty nearly used
up. I should say what?"
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 77
Wedge: ^WeUf Come to think on't, yes, 'tis. Pll start
to-morrow"
Stutfield: "Good. Send this wire on reaching New
York, from New York not Allendale: 'Captain Cariston,
'Elsinore', Cobham, Va. Shall arrive for a few hours at six
to-morrow. Please have me met. (Signed) A friend of H.
S.' I'll write it out for you." (Does so, and hands it to
Wedge, who. after scrutinizing it, carefully pockets it).
Stutfield: "Can you make it out?"
Wedge: "Well/ Yes, I guess so."
Stutfield: "Good. Now pay strict attention to what 1
am about to say. I am going to clinch with that offer of
your Connecticut farmer friend General Israel Putnam's de
scendant and promise him twenty-five hundred dollars for
meeting my party of rescuers at New Eochelle and driving
them to the Marmaroneck side of 'Fairdale,' and waiting for
them on the edge of the 'Fairdale' wood, and then driving
them back to whence they came. He will receive half of that
sum the moment the Captain and his men enter the wagon, and
the balance just before they leave it with me, on the edge of
Long Island Sound. Then he can make tracks for the Con
necticut line. An ocean-going tug will bring Captain Caris
ton and three reliable men men who can be depended upon
to stand by one at a pinch from Norfolk. They will bring
you with them, so your party will be 'all present or accounted
for' as they say in the army when you present yourself to me
prepared to make the get-a-way. You will take the Old Do
minion Line to Norfolk from New York, a day or so before
the tug will be ready to put out for New York from Nor
folk. You will keep in close touch with Captain Cariston
meantime. He is a rich man and a very old friend of mine,
besides being a neighbor so he will be my banker till 1
triumph and turn the tables on these gilded thieves who are
attempting to rob and civilly murder me, by making me pay
one hundred dollars a week, not counting extras, for this cell,
a bath-room, and the cell you entered by, which is my keep
er's. I've been here three months and twelve hundred dol
lars of my good 'long green' have found their reluctant way
into the yawning insatiate coffers of 'Fairdale.' r
Wedsre: "It 's a d n shame."
78 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield: "You 're very right, Wedge. To resume.
Captain Cariston spent twenty years in the West Virginia
Coal Fields, after the war, and, as a result, is worth a good
half million to-day. He will be my banker and will pay
you twenty-five hundred dollars, for your next year's allow
ance in advance so soon as you land me in Virginia you'll
put your hands on the twenty thousand I promised you, so
soon as I got my price from the London Syndicate for your
marvellous attachment for the sewing machine. Now here
are final instructions. First: You are, upon seeing Captain
Cariston, and answering any and all questions perfectly
frankly, he may put to you he knows I'm locked up on a
charge of insanity it got out a few days after I was rail
roaded here you are to tell Captain Cariston that I've in
structed you to put yourself under his orders, and carry them
out to the letter knowing that my life and your happiness in
this world depend on my successful escape. That I put him
in command of the rescuing force. He is a veteran Cavalry
Officer and completely capable of assuming the grave respon
sibility in the premises. That I put myself entirely in his
hands until we join forces when I shall assume command.
Second, and last, the means by which I am going to join
forces with the rescuing party. I happened to find out by
accident that the keepers here never hit an inmate they
choke him into insensibility and then put him into a strait-
jacket. I saw Pat Sligo do it to a prisoner a short time
ago. Now, since then I've been doing a good deal of think
ing about throats, and half-Nelsons and strangle-holds. They
call this the " 'Fairdale' hold" among the keepers the hold
Pat Sligo worked on the patient. It consists in clasping the
hands round the man's neck till they overlap at the back of
his neck and pressing one thumb on top of the other and both
on his windpipe until he loses consciousness. Now, look here"
(slipping the horse-shoe under the bed-clothes and pulling off
his coat and disclosing a pink silk undershirt, cut low, and
with short sleeves) "you see I'm blessed my nature with some
thing of a neck I wear a number sixteen collar, and yet I
only weigh a hundred and fifty-four. You see these mus
cles standing out there at the base of the neck like, some
what, like speaking figuratively girders? And the walls of
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 79
my throat and my windpipe are proportionately strong
well, I'm staking my chances of escape on the strength of
those muscles. Thus. I propose to provoke Pat Sligo to a
physical encounter he won't need much provocation do you
think he will, Wedge ? How does that proposition strike your
scientific mechanical mind?"
Wedge: (After a pause. After turning his head in
a so-to-speak bird-like way, first on one side, and then, after
another pause, on the other, and exploding his breath on the
word, "Well!").
Wedge: "Well\ I should say Pat Sligo was not a very
difficult proposition to provoke."
Stutfield: "I am fully of your mind, Wedge, and glad
of it. Now Pat Sligo is a more powerful man, speaking gen
erally, than I am and weighs fully forty pounds more.
But there are two of my assets more powerful than Pat Sli-
go's one is my wrists, and the other is my neck. I've exam
ined Pat's neck carefully and frequently for the past week
or so ever since I was made cognizant of the existence of the
' 'Fairdale' Strangle Hold' with a view to choking him pretty
nearly to death, by the application of this same hold. Now
Pat's neck has no such supporting muscles as mine. It's
thick and burly but lacks the power mine exhibits under ex
amination. So when it comes to an attack, it resolves itself
so to speak into a question of penetration in naval warfare;
the strength of the neck standing tor our armor-plates and
our grip for the weight of our metal the calibre and num
ber of our guns. In weight of metalin guns he is prob
ably my superior but in armour I am his master and can af
ford to let him fire the first broadside, without a solitary shot
till then. I shall provoke the assault and he will at once
spring at my throat. I shall, of course, withstand his spring
I am an old football full-back and so soon as he is preoccu
pied lacing his fingers round my throat and windpipe, I shall
sail into his windpipe, and unless I am very much mistaken
in my calculations I shall choke him almost to death in
short order. When Pat Sligo goes off into a dreamless sleep
the knottiest portion of the problem obtrudes its head. What's
to be done with him on waking up, which he may do any
time and long before I can make my get-a-way secure ? Upon
80 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
that knotty point I have put hours of my best thought, and
have solved it to my entire satisfaction if not to Pat's. I
have observed from my wide reading that men bound with
ropes invariably work their way out of their bonds in time.
It therefore occurred to me to get you, Wedge, to whom
steel is a medium as malleable as wax speaking figurative
ly for you're an experienced inventive genius for all that
you are only about thirty years old to make the following,
what I shall term Quietus, namely, what I shall call the
Union Handcuff-Footcuff-Gag-Blindfold-and-Ear-Muffler, to
prevent the party's saying anything, seeing anything, doing
anything, or hearing the footsteps of those about him, or
their voices. I propose that you make this you can easily do
it in ten days or less thus. Get a pair of handcuffs. Make
a pair of footcuffs to slip over the ankles. Next, join them
with a strong but light chain, like a dog chain so that when
a man is both hand-and-foot-cuffed, his hands cannot be
raised above his waist in order to prevent him from "mon
keying" with the rest of the paraphernalia. Next, a light
steel band about an inch wide to go over the top of the head,
under the chin, across the mouth, and stopping at the ears as
it passes on its way to the back of the head where it is se
curely padlocked. It will look something like a diver's hel
met without the solidity. The gag is to be made of iron so
he can't bite through it, and is to be inserted between the lips
so as to rest upon the tongue. The mufflers across the ears
are to be shaped the wool on the inside of this iron band
like a miniature peg top so that they will press onto the ear
and into the ear cavity. The last point to be considered is
what's to become of him when thus trussed up for keeps, and
good and all ! That, too, I've put some of my very best thought
upon with the following result. A strong dog chain will be
drawn tightly about his waist and padlocked behind. Final
ly, another stout chain will connect with that and encircle a
noble oak under which I propose to fight for liberty. Bring
these things in a hand-bag. They don't consider you worth
considtering they say you are an inventor and 'therefore
haven't got good, sense' and therefore there is no danger in
letting you come to me and go as you please "
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 81
Wedge: "Is that so. Mr. Stutfield ! They think 1
haven't got good sense?"
Stutfield : "I assure you. Wedge, it is literally true."
Wedge: "Well! I'm not sorry it looks as though there
was going to be a chance for me to show 'em whether I have
good sense or not."
Stutfield: "Well said, Wedge. Now for the wind up.
If they should ask to see what's in the bag, open and show
them; and say it's a patent handcuff you've just made, and
have brought it up to induce me to promote it for you.
(Wedge smiles and nods assent). I'm a wary general. I'll
risk my life as I've suggested but 1 take absolutely no un
necessary risks, and leave absolutely no point unguarded no
matter how unlikely, no matter how remote. Now, as I've
said, this is the loneliest spot around here this wood of
'Fairdale,' so lonely that none of the inmates are ever taken
there, bar myself they have such sublime confidence in the
brawn of Pat Sligo that they break all rules in his favor, and
take any and all chances with me. Now I've mentioned the
general rule to you. The exception, however, may occur, and
a party not patients but of visitors or keepers off duty
might intrude upon us. If this should take place before the
fight it will be plain sailing the fight is postponed till they
go. If, however, they should happen along while the fight
is on, or just after I've won and am applying the 'Quietus' it
would be awkward, and might lead to serious consequences.
In this event, I'll blow the silver whistle I have on my gold
key-chain three times at once the Captain and his men
who will be within ear-shot, as the woods are only about three
hundred yards deep to the Marmaroneck road here at once
the Captain and his men will charge with drawn revolvers
to our support. They will then 'hold up' the newcomers and
leave Pat in statu quo whatever that may be even at lib
erty for the newcomers can sound the alarm as well as he.
We will all then dash for the wagon which will be entirely
hidden from them by the trees and be well on our victorious
road before they can gather an armed force strong enough to
pursue. No keepers will be sent on the job. but the White
Plains police and there's nothing in White Plains can catch
us with fifteen minutes' start, and besides this we shall have
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
a full three-quarters of an hour to our credit long before they
can send messengers to police headquarters for the village is
a full mile from 'Fairdale.' So you see, we are absolutely,
mathematically certain to get away scot free. If all goes
well, I propose steaming past New York to save the hundred
or more miles it would mean to clear the opposite end of
Long Island the end furthest from New York but if we
are discovered before leaving 'Fairdale' I shall insist on that,
as otherwise we should surely be met by a cordon of police
boats, barring our passage between New York and Brook
lyn, which would mean a naval battle I propose to avoid, if
possible. So as soon as I say 'Wedge, it 's time you were
going,' you will bid me good-bye and leave. But you will
not go far. You will hide behind the nearest tree at a safe
distance. So soon as you are on your way Vll 'provoke Sligo
to a trial of strength. I might add that if I should find that
I have underestimated the strength of his neck, and can't
choke him, Vll draw my horseshoe and quietly break his leg.
Well then truss him up in the 'Quietus' and he can rest on
the bench at the foot of the tree; but trussed to the tree, and
gagged and blinded, and ear-muffled he'll be in any event.
This is only August, and the weather is mild and they'll find
him inside of an hour or so after dark, and send for a black
smith and file him loose. If, however, as I anticipate, I have
no difficulty in choking him you will return as soon as you
see him fall, and help truss him up. You will then slip down
and summon the Captain and his men, as I am chaining him
to the tree, as that will save time I need your help though in
applying the gag, blinder and mufflers. How does that
strike you, Wedge?"
Wedge: "Well! Come to think of it, it ain't half a bad
scheme and to tell you the truth, I'm d n glad of a chance
to show these fellers whether I have good sense or not I'll
be goin'
(A piercing, blood-curdling shriek rends the air, followed
by low moans. The voice of Pat Sligo is heard in the hall).
Sligo: "I'll teach you to speak disrespectful of the Gov
ernors of 'Fairdale.' '
(Followed by a low moan and then silence, and the voice
of Sligo is heard)
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 83
Sligo: "That settled his hash, I guess he'll come to in
a minute or two, Tim."
(To another keeper whose footsteps are heard approach
ing)
"I only give him a taste of the old hold
(Wedge, who has looked decidedly alarmed at the dis
turbance, and drawn closer to Stutfield, and the latter, regard
one another. Stutfield smiles easily and says in a low tone)
Stutfield: "'The old hold' eh? the old "Fairdale'
strangle-hold' ! Well, Sligo, this little episode will strengthen
my clutch on your windpipe at our next encounter."
End of Act III, Scene II.
THE RESCUE.
ACT III. SCENE III.
(Three weeks are supposed to elapse between Scenes II
and III.)
(The wood at "Fairdale." Time, 3:30 P. M. Stutfield
Wedge and Sligo. Former dressed in flannels trousers and
coat, blue and white stripe. Outing shirt, white, with light
blue four-in-hand tie in the low collar. Leather belt support
ing trousers no waistcoat and gold keyring chain running
into right trousers' pocket. The right coat pocket is seen to
bulge slightly with the bulk of the horseshoe. He wears a
flat straw hat with black ribbon, and white canvas shoes, pipe
clayed. He and Wedge are seated on a rustic bench under
the big oak spoken of by Stutfield. Wedge looks highly
pleased but rather flushed from excitement. He has a small
grip-sack in his right hand. Pat Sligo is sitting out of ear
shot on another rustic bench under another oak. There are
one or more other of these circular or otherwise, benches in
the opening in the wood here, which is filled with large old
oaks, and is gloomy and sombre in appearance. Stutfield has
just said with a meaning smile, "Wedge, it's time you were
84 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
goin," and the latter has promptly risen to take his leave,
when Stutfield suddenly raises his head, and his face darkens,
as he says in a low tone)
Stutfield: "The unexpected is about to happen, Wedge.
but not the unprepared against. Prepare for serious even
tualities, and remember that you are independent for life if
you stand by me at this crisis which cannot I don't care who
in H 1 it is who's coming help going our way."
Wedge: "I'll stand by you, Mr. Stutfield to the bitter
end and show 'em whether I've got good sense or not."
Stutfield: "Bravo, Wedge! Now prepare to receive the
enemy."
(No sound has as yet reached the audience, but now the
distant, muffled sound of voices and footsteps is heard ap
proaching. Pat Sligo draws swiftly up to Stutfield and
places himself at his right elbow. Stutfield and Wedge both
remain seated. Wedge taking his cue from Stutfield and
every now and then glancing at him. Soon the approaching
party come into view. It consists of Winston Blettermole,
Constantia Blettermole, James Lawless, Belisarius P. Spink,
Dr. Barkus and Dr. Nein. They move forward rather rap
idly until within about ten feet, and then cautiously scatter
away from Stutfield's neighborhood to adjacent seats. Stut
field views them with an absolutely inscrutable face. Wedge,
to whom are unknown all the newcomers, glances at them in
quiringly and from them to Stutfield, who looks straight
ahead of him. The Blettermoles and Lawless have seated
themselves under one tree. The alienists under another.
Spink alone holds his ground, and sneeringly addresses Stut-
field)-
Spink: "Well my distinguished friend, how do you find
the salubrious air of Westchester County comports with your
superb constitution ?"
(Stutfield continues to gaze ahead of him utterly oblivi
ous of Spink).
Spink: "Ah! Still refractory ?till recalcitrant, I see.
Well, my distinguished brother member of the Bar of New
York, we shall shortly break that haughty spirit of yours.
We propose putting into play a new force. We propose hav
ing you declared an incompetent person by reason of insanity.
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 85
by a Sheriff's Jury, who shall never lay eyes on you, and by a
Commission-In-Lunacy made up of a lawyer, an alienist and
a layman, all and sundry of which shall be of our own choos
ing of course, not outwardly, but actually. You will not be
able to see the jury, for we shall have certificates made out
by physicians here that it would injure you be deleterious to
you to be exposed to the excitement of a court room. You
will, therefore, be tried in absentia in your absence and
condemned in your absence and we shall have the naming
of the Committee to whose control your entire estate shall be
handed over during your life-time, as well as to whose tender
keeping you will be consigned for life or, if he dies before
you, to a successor appointed at our instigation, as in the first
instance. Your home shall be sold over your head the old
home of your ancestors 'Rokeby' I have half a mind to buy
it myself '
Constantia: "Mr. Spink, I will not permit this sort of
thing to continue any longer. I forbid you, upon pain of my
anger of never speaking to you again to continue to torture
Mr. Stutfield."
Spink: "Permit me, madam, to observe that I am sim
ply stating, without ornament or embellishment in the least
degree what is shortly to happen as the result of our numer
ous conferences at all of which, my dear madam, all we
have had the distinguished honor of your presence. 'Rokeby'
will most certainly be sold, because it will fetch a
superb figure having been the home of so distinguished a
man as Mr. Hugh Stutfield and I want hereby to inform
you that the Committee of the person and estate of an in
competent is a very practical, a very unfeeling party indeed
it is questionable even, whether a corporation has not even
a corporation has not more soul."
Constantia: "But notwithstanding the sad fact that
these things must be, I do not propose to stand by and see
Mr. Stutfield tortured by hearing of them."
Spink : "Ah ! Indeed. Then I am to understand that
you prefer that Mr. Stutfield should wake up to the news in
the papers some morning that First: he has been declared a
hopeless incompetent: and Second-, that 'Rokeby' has been
sold by his 'Committee;' and Third: that B. P. Spink your
86 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
servant, madam to command has bought the handsome and
historic estate. It occurs to me that my poor, blunt way
smacks more of kindness to our distinguished friend than
your more refined silence."
Stutfield: "Belisarius P. Spink" (in icy cold tones, and
looking straight ahead of him) "you are a profound lawyer
a profound logician and a profound rogue."
Spink: "Mr. Stutfield, your language is highly unpar
liamentary, to say the least."
Stutfield : "Admitted."
Spink: "Pray, sir, on what grounds do you base your
most injurious asseveration?"
Stutfield: "Upon the grounds, Primo: Your general
reputation, in and out of the profession. Secundo: Your
hand in this most felonious afi'air."
Constantia: "My dear Hugh, I cannot permit such lan
guage to be directed at anything with which I have been
even indirectly connected, and therefore take my leave."
Stutfield: "Well played, Constantia, you retire just in
time."
Spink: "But before we go, permit me to observe that
we have out-manouvered you."
Stutfield : "Apparently, and jusqu 'ici just at present
yes."
Spink: "'Apparently and just at present,' why. my
dear, sir, you talk as though you still had some hope left."
Stutfield : " 'While there's life there's hope,' Mr. Spink."
Spink: "I admit amazement at hearing so banal, so
commonplace a sentiment from the lips of so distinguished a
law-writer as Mr. Hugh Stutfield."
Stutfield: "You are liable to get a greater dose of
amazement even, than that, before long, a little bird has told
me."
Spink: "Indeed! And what kind or variety of bird
might that be, may I ask, that has been so unwarrantably lo
quacious?"
Stutfield: "A sparrow."
Spink: "A sparrow! The meanest, most contemptible
the most damnable pardon that slip, my fair client" (bow
ing to Constantia) "bird known to the feathered kingdom
87
you must be hard pushed for companions if a sparrow is the
best you can do."
Stutfield: "I am hard pushed I freely admit that a
sparrow is the only companion I have at 'Fairdale.' They're
the only birds seen or heard here I've not even seen a crow
since I arrived here."
Constantia: "Poor Hugh" (sighing) "I am so sorry
for I know of old, how fond you are of all birds but spar
rows."
Stutfield: "Yes, Constantia, my fate should appeal, al
most, to a heart of stone."
Constantia: "My dear Hugh, you don't insinuate that
my poor mother's heart is one of stone."
Stutfield: "Not for your children, my charming rela
tive but the upper edge of the nether millstone is as velvet
for softness compared to your heart where their financial in
terests are concerned."
Constantia: "O!"
Blettermole : "Unless you were a prisoner I .would not
permit you to employ such terms to Mrs. Blettermole un-
chastised."
Stutfield: "Chastisement from your hands, my little
friend, is a proposition my little fop freighted with hu
mour "
Blettermole: (Starting up angrily). "I'll allow no man
to use such language to me."
Lawless: (Laying a strongly restraining hand on his
arm). "You forget yourself."
Blettermole: (In a surly tone, and reseating himself).
"Thank you for the hint the dog's impertinence angered
me."
Stutfield: "Lawless, I am obliged to you for saving me
the trouble of a scene. Before bidding you farewell, I might
observe that I am not surprised to find you in such company.
Your career is not unknown to me, of course, and the climax
of it is worthy of its previous devious courses."
Lawless: "Do you mean to insinuate, Stutfield, that I
was ever engaged in a transaction in the slightest degree un
savoury ?"
88 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield: "In affairs of the heart, yes very un
savoury."
Lawless: "Affairs of the heart are not for discussion in
mixed company, and before strangers, I would have you im-
derstand."
Stutfield: "Generally speaking, yes: but not under these
unusual circumstances, when men and women in the fierce
blow-pipe of temptation, show the true colour of their souls
or what passes for souls in their case, at least."
Lawless: "Spare us a discussion trenching upon that
fugitive and nebulous quantity, the soul."
Stutfield: "By all means, but it is sometimes necessary
to name the unpopular even despised thing, in order to be
coherent."
Lawless: "You appear to have a rather inferior opinion
of me."
Stutfield: "Frankly, I have."
Lawless: "That will be a sorrow which I shall carry to
my grave."
Stutfield : "It has not been without its uses tho' your
ahem! ahem interesting record and reputation with wo
men and girls in your own walk of life and below
Lawless: "Pardon my once more reminding you of the
inviolability among gentlemen, that is to say of affairs of
the heart."
Stutfield : "But in war all is grist that comes to the mill
of a satirist. And a satirist I have become"
Lawless : "Indeed ! "
Stutfield: "Fact! It was a case of 'root hog or die';
tear or be torn. So I tore. I'll give you a specimen of my
newly discovered vein before this interview closes, and leave
it to your sophisticated judgment in things literary, as well
as things artistic, as to whether my output is pure gold or
pure dross. Meantime, a final word in the legal ear of my
astute adversary, Belisarius P. Spink. The time has come
to lift the veil. He intimated a little while ago, that he had
out-mano3uvred me. To this I finally reply (His face
lighting up with triumph, and slapping his right thigh, exult-
ingly) : "By G d. I've beaten you!"
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 89
Spink: (Uneasily). "How "s that I didn't quite catch
that?"
Stutfield: (Smiling broadly). "I observed that I had
beaten you."
Spink: "May I be permitted to inquire how?"
Stutfield: "Certainly. My Subconsciousness put it into
my head to a-hem ! Constantia, my dear, prepare yourself
for the bitterest disappointment of your bright and happy
life I know your weakness your ambitious aims for those
ahem ! pardon my Saxon for those whelps of yours "
Blettermole: "You ruffian!"
Stutfield: "It's all in a lifetime, Blettermole, all in a
lifetime. To resume. I know, Constantia, that you and Blet
termole lust after my five millions. Very well, then, prepare
to take your medicine. My Subconsciousness put it into my
head, not a thousand years ago, to mark you now good
people mark you now bury ha ! ha ! bury possibly in
moisture-proof oilskin wrappers, padlocked in a stout tin
chest the two and a quarter millions obtained from the sale
of 'S. TV Ah ! I see your fair cheek pales, my fair friend"
(pointing exultingly at Constantia, who shrinks, cowering
before him. She clasps her hands, drawing them to her bosom,
and murmurs)
Constantia: "My children!"
Stutfield: "Yes, Constantia, your children are the cause
of your risking your soul in this foul, dastardly plot, and
after all your children lose"
Blettermole : ' (Aside ) . "Hell's fire /"
Stutfield: "I buried it, possibly, by the sad sea wave,
possibly by moonlight at midnight, alone to do so would
comport with what Mr. Lawless considers my romantic rub
bish"
Lawless: "T admit, Stutfield, you have achieved a mas
ter-stroke here, manipulating the mysterious Subliminal Fac
ulty of the mind quite romantic, I must confess, and mes
compliments."
Stutfield : " 'Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed.'
But this is not all. I was at pains to write that night from
the Kensington, and post by a trustworthy hand, two letters.
One to my learned and experienced and honest North Caro-
90 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
lina Counsel. One to my ditto Virginia Counsel; informing
them, briefly, of the outrage on law and the Constitution of
the United States, perpetrated upon me by virtue of the New
York alleged Law on Lunacy, and instructing them to fight
conjointly, any and all efforts to obtain control of my prop
erty in those States by any and all parties, working under a
decree-in-lunacy from New York and to mark this, Laic-
less ~bring fraud charges charges of perjury against the
two Petitioners in the Lunacy Proceedings against me "
(Lawless pales and shrinks. Blettermole pales and starts
back. Spink moves uneasily. Barkus and Nein glance at
each other anxiously).
"Messrs. Winston Blettermole and James Lawless, mil
lionaires, and my worst enemies in the world. So
my very good friends, your very humble servant is
about to play the role of Samson in the Temple
of the Philistines you've wounded me. but I've /*?"'//< ' 7
your reputations as honest men not to say, gentlemen, and
blasted your nefarious scheme at robbery under law of my
property for no Virginia nor North Carolina Court will, for
one moment, countenance such nefarious practices in Lunacy
as are, alas! of weekly occurence in the great State of New
York. So, my fair Constantia, instead of stealing a cool five
million for your promising offspring, I've turned the tables on
you and your co-conspirators, so that in place of five millions
you must be content with a paltry million and a half. I'm
sorry for you from my soul I am, Constantia, for the mil
lion and a half comes high comes at the price of the repu
tations of every man and woman here present."
(After a pause). "But you must know that the
misery and wretchedness which you have subjected me to
for three long months and propose to subject me to for life
have struck the rock of my nature, and verse has gushed
forth satirical verse, for the most part, but not entirely so
so that, once out of here. / have a weapon with H'h'f-h to
square accounts with any man or any woman who has ever
injured me. I shall close this interview by reciting a sonnet.
Shakspearian strictlv in form that is to sny. the English
and not the Italian sonnet-form directly inspired by the
actions of each one of you people, male and female, here.
ROBBERY UNDER LA/W 91
Thereafter I shall never lay eyes on any of you again but I
shall spread your fame not to say infamy from one quar
ter of this great continent to the other:
A SATIRIST'S SALUTATORY.
The nameless .folly of the human race
Its Hellish selfishness and trackless guile
Make me ashamed at sight of human face
That stamping ground for treachery and wile.
The smirking smile of callow, empty youth
The ripe pomposity of hoary age
The shaded gleam of manhood's lustful tooth
Each plays its part upon its petty stage.
Seduction, lying, thieving, each in turn
A murder here and there and then a rape
Each needing only that temptation burn
And hold fair chance of ultimate escape.
Exceptions to said rule exist, "'tis true
No such exception doth exist in you.
(Stutfield looks at different individuals as he recites the
lines by heart. He looks at Constantia when he says "lying";
at Spink and Blettermole from one to the other, and lingers
on the word "thieving"; at Lawless on "seduction"; at Blet
termole on "callow, empty youth"; at Barkus and Nein on
"the ripe pomposity of hoary age"; at Lawless on "man
hood's lustful tooth"; at Spink on "a murder here and
there"; at Lawless on "and then a rape"; and ends up the
closing couplet towards Constantia Blettermole with a smile
and a bow. The sonnet has told. Each has winced when
looked at. Blettermole springs to his feet and attempts to
rush upon Stutfield at the conclusion, but Lawless a far
more powerful man instantly and forcibly restrains him.
Stutfield regards the manoevre with smiling indifference).
Lawless: "Mr. Stutfield, we take our leave of you.
Chivalry forces me to admit that out of your woes you have
forced a trenchant weapon indeed, but frankness insists that
you will never be able to wield it against your enemies, since
vou will never eet out of here."
92 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
Stutfield: "Thank you, Mr. Lawless, for your chivalrous
compliment. You are a foeman worthy of my satiric steel.
And now, gentlemen, permit me to bring this interview to a
close with the request that I see the face of all of you no
more. Constantia, I have this to say to you in parting. You
are a devout Christian, are you not?"
Constantia: "I trust so, Hugh."
Stutfield: "So far, so good. I therefore hereby invite
you to meet me before the 'Great White Throne'."
Constantia: "With pleasure, Hugh."
Stutfield: "Adieu."
(Blettermole casts a look of the most malevolent hatred
at Stutfield as he leaves, and turns to glower at him over his
shoulder. Stutfield ignores him but watches Constantia with
a half smile of amused interest. She somewhat shrinks un
der it, and hastily retreats with Blettermole. Lawless care
lessly glances towards Stutfield, and half waves his hand to
him, as though involuntarily. Stutfield ignores him. Spink
looks keenly at Stutfield and shakes his head in a dissatisfied
way as he moves off. Barkus glances keenly at Stutfield, and
then turns and walks rapidly off. Nein avoids Stutfield's di
rection and ponderously moves away. So soon as the last
foot- fall has died away Stutfield smilingly turns to Wedge)
Stutfield: "Wedge, it's time you were going."
(Wedge, who has been glancing awkwardly, first from
one person, then to the next, during the entire conversation,
pulls himself together, and says) :
Wedge: "Well! Good-bye, Mr. Stutfield."
(Wedge nods towards Pat Sligo, who ignores him ut
terly).
Stutfield: (Pleasantly). "Good night, Wedge."
(Wedge hastily disappears in the same direction as the
others. Sligo has removed himself to his former tree so soon
as the party of visitors disappeared. Stutfield yawns, looks
at his watch and stretches himself. Removes his hat and
slowly rises. As he does so, his right side is turned towards
the audience, away from Sligo. It is seen that he hastily
slips his right hand into his right side pocket and assures
himself that the horseshoe is secure. He then says, in stern,
peremptory tones)
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 93
Stutfield: "Pat Sligo, come here!"
(Sligo, unused to such tones, starts and hastily rises and
glowers at Stutfield. He approaches Stutfield slowly and
sullenly. He says slowly) :
Sligo: "Look a-here, my fine young sprig, don't you
talk to me like that or you'll get something you don't bargain
for."
Stutfield: "The Devil, you say! Well, my fine husky
proposition from the County Down, I propose 'taking a fall'
out of you, here and now."
Sligo: "You propose taking a fall out of me. Ho! Ho!
I could break you between my thumb and middle finger."
Stutfield : "The Devil you say ! Well, you might as well
set about doing it then, because unless you break me, I'm go
ing to 'take a fall' out of you."
Sligo: "If you say that again I'll take you at your word,
and give you what's coming to you, and I'll tell Dr. Bear you
tried to get away, and first attacked mee-self."
Stutfield: "I've no doubt you're a fine, lurid liar when
it suits your books."
Sligo: "You call me a liar?"
Stutfield : "Yes."
Sligo: "Then take what's comin' to ye."
(As he sa3 T s this, Stutfield is seen by the audience, to
throw his right leg far behind him and half crouch as though
to sustain a shock, but his arms are hanging at rest at his
side. Instantly Sligo springs at his throat with the roar of
a wild beast, his fingers locking themselves round Stutfield's
neck. Stutfield sways backward under the onset but recov
ers himself. Instantly Stutfield stretches forward and takes
precisely the same hold on Sligo's neck. They wrestle and
sway all over the stage, Sligo grinning with rage and show
ing all his teeth, his face distorted with passion and breath
ing or rather panting through his drawn lips, like a run
ning dog. Stutfield, with face sternly set, but calm. It is
gradually seen that Sligo is getting concerned at the imper-
viousness to pressure of Stutfield's neck. Up to now, Stut
field has contented himself with wrestling and pushing
give and take about the stage. He has only firmly held
Sligo has not attempted to choke him. Now, however, a
94 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
change comes over Stutfield's face. It suddenly becomes
fierce. He hisses) :
Stutfield: "Now, you murderous ruffian, I'm going to
give you what you gave that harmless gentleman on my
floor, three weeks ago. Pat Sligo, I'm your master!
I've got a more powerful throat than you you can't
prevent my speaking. Now this is what I am going to do as
sure as I have my hands on your throat and my thumbs on
your windpipe. Pm going to choke you almost to death, you
bloody, murderous brute, and then Pm going to escape. So
here goes! One!" (As he says that he presses Sligo 's wind
pipe and the latter emits a strangling sound). "Two!"
(Stutfield presses again and again Sligo emits a strangling
sound). "Three!" (He appears to literally spring upon Sli
go in spite of the other's powerful extended arms, and almost
shouts the word "Three" as Sligo emits a third and last
strangling sound and then closes his eyes and falls back inert.
The moment this occurs, Wedge, who has been stealthily ap
proaching, taking advantage of all the cover the wood af
fords, and springing with unexpected agility from behind tree-
trunk to tree-trunk, and is now up to the combatants, springs
briskly into view with the "Quietus." Union, Handcuff-Foot-
Cuff, etc., its bright steel bands and chains gleaming in
the rays of the now declining sun).
Wedge: "You done that fine, Mr. Stutfield it done me
good to see it. Now watch me lock him up for the night, and
before he wakes up I'll put the gag on so's he can't holler."
Stutfield: "Good idea, Wedge. I'll hold his head up.
Don't cut his lip as you prize his teeth open with the end of
that iron gag. //<?' in an absolute, dead faint I surely
trust he'll come to you can witness that he attacked me that
way first "
Wedge: "Yes. sir; I was watchin' you from behind a
tree."
Stutfield: "In any event we'll act as though he were
coming to. Now I'll hold his head just as you direct you're
bossing this part of the job."
Wedge: "He's coming to! See his legs kick!"
Pat Sligo: "What the H 1!"
Stutfield: "Jam the gag into his mouth!"
ROBBERY UNDER LAW 95
Wedge: (Doing so). "O.K."
Stutfield: "I'll slip on the nippers and footcuffs while
you do that." (Stutfield swiftly slips on handcuffs and then
foot-manacles. Sligo struggles futily after these are in place).
"There ! There 's no more kick coming from Pat now. So
call out your orders, Wedge, and as they say in the Orient
in the far home of Rumdumbagore 'To 'ear is to obey.' r
Wedge: "Hold his head higher off the ground so that I
can get the control-band that connects with the gag-piece and
ear mufflers into place at the back of his head. The blind
ers slip into place by putting the other two into the correct
position. I think I'll patent this. Now wait till I see if the
front attachment is O. K. That's right now I'll lock it."
(Does so).
Stutfield: "Give me the key."
Wedge: "Here it is."
Stutfield: "Thanks." (Slips it into his right trouser's
pocket) .
Wedge: (Viewing that part of his work with profound
satisfaction). "There! That settles his saying anything, see
ing anything, or hearing anything, till someone gets a black
smith and files through that there two-inch steel control-band
that blacksmith will earn his money, and not get much sleep
this night for I was partickler to choose chilled-steel for
the control-band. Pll teach 'em whether Pve good sense
or not. There now ! The head's all right. Ill let you
clamp the belt-chain round him pull it good and tight so he
can't wriggle through it. Here's the cable-chain to fasten to
the belt-chain then take a hitch with the cable-chain round
the tree. Now, Mr. Stutfield, I'm off to get the Captain and
his men."
Stutfield: "Very well, Wedge, so do."
(Stutfield then lugs Sligo struggling fiercely but ut
terly ineffectually and utterly noiselessly except for the
fierce hissing gasps of his breath through the gag gasps not
to catch his breath for he can breathe perfectly, but in his
effort to talk low, muffled, gutteral growls, also accompany
his gasps Stutfield then lugs Sligo to his feet and stands
him up and pushes and drags him several yards to the oak
the fight began under. He then pushes Sligo unceremoni-
96 ROBBERY UNDER LAW
ously into position but comfortably onto the circular bench,
and then secures the belt-chain about his waist pulling it
so tight that Sligo grunts, then locks it and slips the key into
the same right-hand trousers pocket. He then runs the cable-
chain under the belt-chain and takes a hitch with the cable-
chain round the tree the big central oak. He then locks the
cable-chain, and slips the key into the aforesaid pocket. He
then steps back, and views the spectacle. He smiles and
says) :
Stutfield: "Ha! ha! Pat." (Waving his hand to him).
"I know you can't hear me or see me but I can't help that."
(Stutfield goes close to Sligo and attempts, but without
success, to prize the left ear-muffler slightly away from his
ear) : "Wedge has done his work well you can':
budge that muffler without bringing Pat's head along with
it." (After casting a piercing glance at every quarter of the
compass) "This is the loneliest spot in Westchester County.
So there's no fear in speaking aloud so long as Mr. Patrick
Sligo is the only one to overhear so here goes:" (Raising his
voice somewhat, and putting his mouth close to Sligo's left
ear). "Ta! ta ! Pat, I'll meet you in a better world where
the Lunacy Laws, presumably, are more legal and equitable
than in New York just at present. So long, Pat! Be good
to yourself." (With great deliberation and pausing between
each word) WHO'S LOONEY NOW?"
(Hasty footsteps with a military beat are now heard in
the wood and Captain Cariston appears followed, in single file,
by three men, of tall, martial bearing, wearing soft, black felt
hats the same Captain Cariston wears, dressed, all four,
in gray sack-suits resembling Confederate gray. The men
are all grizzled, but wear moustaches only. Stutfield instant
ly turns, and gives a half military salute to Captain Cariston
who returns it, with a correct, stiff military salute. The men
halt and form a line left-dress towards the Captain and
stand at "attention" looking straight ahead of them. No one
speaks. Captain Cariston turns to the man nearest him
and motions to him. The latter steps forward, and. from un
der a yellow rain-coat over his arm, produces a .44 calibre,
ivory-handled, Colt revolver and full belt of cartridges, and
passes them to Stutfield. whose face lights up, and who smiles
97
exultingly as his hand reaches the weapon, and he instantly
straps on the belt his sack coat is cut low enough to com
pletely hide the muzzle of the pistol. As soon as Stutfield
buckles on the weapon and raises his eyes to Captain Caris-
ton in front of him the latter raises his right fore-finger and
points having attracted Stutfield's attention to his own left
side, lifting his coat-flap and disclosing a .44 calibre Colt re
volver and belt of cartridges, similar to Stutfield's except
that the other revolver has a wooden handle instead of ivory
Stutfield gravely bows his head in sign of approval. Captain
Cariston then turns to his men and raises his right fore
finger. He then points to his revolver and makes a sharp up
ward gesture away from it. The three men promptly with
their left hands simultaneously lift the left flaps of their
sack coats, and disclose revolvers and cartridge belts, similar
in every particular to the Captain's. Just at this moment a
light step is heard, and Viola Cariston, dressed in a dark
green travelling dress of the period, appears. The Captain
frowns. The three men preserve their stern, impassive, set
expression. Stutfield's face lights up with joy as he springs
towards her but utters no word. She says nothing, but bur
ies her head on his breast, and bursts into silent weeping, as he
folds her in his arms, and rests her head on his shoulder, and
pats her back as a Mother does a sobbing child. He does not
offer to kiss her, nor she him. He has stood thus for about
half a minute, during which time Viola has been shaken with
utterly noiseless sobs and has not raised her head when Cap
tain Cariston frowns again, and pulls out his watch, and hast
ily stepping up to Viola, takes her gently by the left arm and
leads her away as he does so, she puts her face in the hollow
of her right arm and so screens it from the audience and
everyone else. Her sobs have nearly ceased. The Captain
slowly and tenderly leads her away. Stutfield falls in si
lently behind. The others fall in after him. in Indian file,
and silently file into the wood to the right and disappear.)
End of Robbery Under Law.
EPILOGUE
To
"ROBBERY UNDER LAW"
Chorus loquitur.
The Muse will now conduct thee to a time
The counterpart of ours for lust of gold.
The counterpart of ours for every crime
That in the Rogue his Calendar is told.
But one great virtue hath this older day
The time of Catiline and antique Rome
Men had the nerve their hands Vth 1 game to play
Free from Hypocrisy's vile nasal drone.
Minus said change, man's nature shows no change
From time of Catiline to time of now ;
And in these pages the Muse hath her range
Fro' th' Vale of Love to th' Alpine heights of Woe!
Truth is her motto truth to History
And truth to human nature too pardie!
A PLAY IN THREE ACTS
TIME
The Last Days of the Roman Republic
BY
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER
AUTHOR OF
SCORPIO
PROLOGUE
To
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE.
Chorus loquitur.
THE HEIR OF SHAKSPEARE.
The grand Mario vian line is surely mine
'Tis Marlowe's heir we are more than Shakspeare's
But Shakspeare's Psychology is mine my mine!
For th' rest we're Marlowe plus our riper years.
Thus th' English drama's incarnate in me
Of its two Prophets we the mantle wear
Shakspeare's knowledge of man therein you see
Whilst Marlowe's thunder fills the ambient air.
With Marlowe's passion doth fill up our cup
Of his heroic mould our heroes be
While Passion's cup our heroines fill up
The truth of this the d dest fool may see.
"Deep calleth unto deep" within our plays
And Marlowe's lightning on Shakspeare's moonlight plays.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
A Drama in Three Acts.
Dramatis Personae.
Lucius SERGIUS CATILINE, Plead of the Conspiracy to over
throw the Roman Republic.
CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, Candidate for Pon-
tifex Maximus.
MARCUS CRASSUS, The richest Roman of
Antiquity.
MARCUS CORNELIUS LENTULUS, Patrician,
Praetor (Chief Justice] of Rome.
Conspirators with
Catiline.
CAIUS CETHEGUS, Patrician.
CAIUS SULLA, Patrician, nephew of the
Dictator Sulla.
QUINTUS CURIUS, Patrician.
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Consul.
CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS, The great Roman lyric Poet.
CAIUS SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS, Known to modern times as Sal-
lust" Roman Historian, Author of "The Conspiracy
of Catiline."
PUBLIUS CLODIUS, Patrician, Democratic Politician; Organizer
and Leader af a Band of Gladiators with which he
terrorizes his Political Rivals.
TITUS ANNIUS MILO, Patrician, Republican or Senatorial-poli
tician; Organizer and Leader of a Band of Gladiator*
in Opposition to Clodius.
SPARTACUS, Lieutenant of Clodiu^ Band.
VETTIUS, A JSpy in the pay of ^Cicero.
A SOOTHSAYER.
AURELIA ORESTILLA, Wife of Catiline.
CLODIA, Sister of Clodius, Mistress of 'Catullus.
FULVIA, Mistress of Quintus Curius.
SENATORS, CITIZENS, GLADIATORS AND SOLDIERS.
TIME: The last days of the Eoman Republic.
PLACE: Rome.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
ACT I. SCENE I.
A Seclud.ed Street In Rome.
Time: Forenoon.
Enter Catiline alone, dressed in a toga.
Cat: Now by the Gods I'll do a deed of blood
That certes shall trump my fame to the world's end.
That shall the name of Catiline surround
With nimbus dread of horror, and black death,
With divine cloud of rapine and revenge,
That knows no equal this side Phlegethon!
Methinks I see the city now aflame
This haughty city, this proud conquering Rome.
Who sets her foot upon wide-breathing earth
And bids the world yield tribute to her lust.
Ha ! Thou great harlot I shall make thee writhe
Squirm and contort thyself in Hellish pain
When once my plans swift ripening gather head.
Then let the haughty Senators beware
Those iron fools who know no law but gain
Whose daily thought and daily care are but
How t' cause their crop of sesterce to increase
To see two coin where was but one before.
My purpose is to seize the government
Snatch her grand reins from out the feeble hands
Of Cicero, that old wife in man's garb.
That self-sufficient upstart with a tongue
A silver tongue I'll grant but only tongue
Sans heart, sans eyes, sans skill sans all but tongue.
A bigger coward never walked abroad
Than that same smug-faced parvenu-poltroon.
Some lusty spirits have I now in train
Caesar that easy bold voluptuary
Whose heart's as cold as his dark lusts are hot
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Whose breath is power no matter how come by
Whose morals are as easy as his ways.
Suave, smooth, polite, e'er cordial Caesar is,
An easy-going, smooth, good-natured man
But o' th' share o' th' spoil his must the lion's be.
But master ne'er hath met this Catiline.
Fierce Caius Cethegus that soul of steel !
Ne'er saw I yet a firmer heart than his
Danger's the trumpet that doth rouse his soul !
And Sulla brother might be to Cethegus
So firm his spirit and so sure his soul
The brightest jewels in my carcanet
A ruby and a diamond they gleam !
Mark Crassus cometh next into our ken.
A cold and calculating business-man
Whose every thought is for his money-bags.
But these same money-bags do have their use
When 't comes to paying troops to win our cause.
Next a bold spirit Quintus Curius
Of proud ancestry and of courage high
But curst mercurial and giv'n to talk.
But if Adversity can steel the soul
And burn out weakness in the fires of woe
No man should be more firm than Curius.
Last the slow-moving haughty Lentulus.
The weakest blade in all my armoury
But great his station and grand his mighty gens
Cornelian Sulla's own my late great chief's,
With such a galaxy of jewels rare
I'll deck my diadem of Lord of Rome
Hist ! Who comes here followed by martial tramp ?
Enter Clodius Fully Armed at the Head o\f his Band of
Gladiators, also Fully Armed with Sword and Shield.
Well met bold son of Mars, well met. I say. And you
stout fellows (Making a Militant Salute to the Gladi
ators who, Drawing Swords and Saluting Catiline.
form a Line of Battle across the Stave and Stand at
"Attention" with Drawn Swords} bid ye welcome,
too.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Clod.: My Catiline, how wags the world with thee?
Cat.: E'en passing well, bold Clodius, passing well.
Clod. : 'Tis well. Hast any news to tender me to-day ?
Cat. : None, Clodius, none. The times with me are dull.
Clod. : Ha ! Say you so. Methought that Catiline
Ne'er rested day or night from plot or scheme pardie.
Cat.: Than Catiline is no man more maligned
Believe me Clodius, none not one sole one.
Clod.: Well, I must jog for Milo is agog.
His band doth prowl the Forum, so I'm told.
Cat.: Be cautious how you clash with that same man.
Your band's too precious to be risked in brawl.
Clod.: We know our worth eh soldiers?
Gladiators: (Clashing their Swords against their Shields]
That we do !
Cat. : I'll jog with you my home you know's hard by.
(Catiline and Clodius put themselves at the Head of the
Band and exeunt).
ACT I. SCENE II.
Garden In The House Of Catullus.
Time: Afternoon. About Sunset. Same Day.
Clodia Reclining on a Couch under an Arbour Embow
ered in Roses to the right of the stage, Catullus Kneeling by
her Side.
Catul.: My sweetest girl my soul doth lone: for thee,
As longs the winter for the summer's sun.
Clo. : For shame my lusty Cains for shame now
Thou knowest that thou liest when thou speak'st,
For I full well do know thy truant mind
And how thou soarest like a bird of prey
E'er spying out some victim from on high,
Thou know'st that I speak truth thou know'st I do.
Catul.: Clodia, my darling, how cans't thou torture me?
How cans't thou turn the knife within the wound
Which thy sweet beauty makes within my heart?
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Clo. : Because, my Gains, it doth pleasure me
To see thy precious face distraught with woe.
You must remember that I female am,
And therefore pain and pleasure e'er go hand in hand.
Pain starts the pleasure, pleasure stops the pain
What one begins the other stops withal
Provided always that sweet love is there;
Sweet love, that high priest of all mystery,
That magic solvent which dissolves all doubts,
All fears all shudderings o' th' fearful soul.
So kiss me, Caius, kiss me and forget
That e'er thy Clodia dared to ruffle thee.
Catul. : (Embracing and Leaning Over Her}
Ah! Clodia, darling, thou dost fire my soul
With all the joys and pangs that Ecstacy
E'er .gathered in her hand to terrify,
And joy the lovers who did worship her.
Clo.: Dear Caius, my heart bleeds to tear thee thus,
To tear thy generous and fiery soul,
That I may hear thy poet's words gush forth
Like drops of blood from out thy tortured heart,
But trust me, Caius, I do love thee so,
That didst thou guess the sum thou'dst happy be.
So kiss me, darling, and forgive me sweet.
Catul. : Kiss thee, my love ! Would that the rest of life
Did but consist of kissing thy rich lips,
Those lips, that like the petals of the rose,
Unfold upon the impress of the sun.
(Kisses her}.
Clo. : My Caius, thou dost make me almost wish
That I were maid once more and free to wed.
You start. Perchance you wonder at my words,
Perchance you wonder that I do not yearn
To be a maid once more and know no more
Of Love and her sweet mysteries divine,
Than did your Clodia ere she married was.
You men do know no more of a sweet maiden's thoughts
Of a sweet maiden gently nurtured, nobly raised,
Than men do know what the Immortals think
Of what vast thoughts do pass thro' Jove's great brain,
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Or enter the calm mind of Juno queen
Of all the heavenly host Olympus-ward.
No Caius, man's gross mind can never guess,
The vague dim thoughts that paint a maiden's dream,
Her dream of Love of Love and Mystery
The mystery of Passion and the pangs
That hover o'er the door that bars the heart !
You men being but men guess not the things
That make up love in a pure maiden's soul;
Such being so you wonder why I wish
To be a maid of innocence once more
Instead of what I am, a Roman's wife,
And at the time a Roman poet's love.
A Roman wife in these degenerate days
When the Republic staggers to her fall
Must needs have lovers or be bored withal
Unless that husband mayhap be a man
Who towers to the height of Catiline,
That giant schemer in affairs of State,
And dare-devil gambler in affairs of death!
A man like Catiline of his great mold
Might well amuse whimseyist-mooded maid
That e'er exchanged a snood for matron's garb
Catul. : Ha ! There you stab, Clodia, to the heart,
I have been patient witness that I have
I let you name that fiend and held my peace,
But now I cry you mercy. Hold ! Enough.
Clo. : Fiend ! And for what! For putting his just rights
Of life and death upon his son in force ?
The law allows that he's sole judge of that.
Well now let's glimpse the son. A sullen lout,
Mulish and obstinate as Spanish mule,
Timid withal, and sure to bring disgrace
Upon the noble name of Catiline if 'd lived.
Cold hearted, churlish, dull and weak he was
As ever yet saw I in man's shape stand.
How Catiline e'er FathereM such a clown
The God's in their omniscience only know.
Aurelia Orestilla, Catiline
Did love. His wife being dead he wooed her.
THE HAZARD OP THE DIE
Aurelia proud and haughty as her name
Exalted as her rank, high as her wealth,
Despised the prospect of such incubus
And frankly told bold Catiline her views
Either his son must go or his love-suit.
A recent quarrel one of many brawls
Twixt brilliant parent and most brutish son
Furnished the impulse needed for the deed
And the earth closed over that dark episode.
I grant you it sounds hard, hard as the name
Of Roman ever stood before the world.
But law is law, and law backs Catiline.
Catul. : So help me Mercury ! My Clodia
Ne'er heard I yet a pleader at the bar,
I bar not one! Not Julius Caesar aye!
Nor great Hortensius, nor Cicero,
Not Marcus Tullius, the voice of Rome,
Ne'er heard I orator to equal thee
In daring, in audacity and skill
At championing a case most desperate.
Clo. : The cause is not so desperate as it sounds.
The law that gives the Parent right of life
And death o'er his own offspring that is desperate
As desperate a law as e'er was born
In the foul purlieus of the human heart.
But I must leave thee my Valerius
And to my stolid husband haste me home.
Catul. : 'Tis well my sweet since Cicero doth come
Accompanied by suave Sallustius
To consult with me o'er some recent things
Which each within his separate domain
Of letters hath achieved by his Muse.
Clo.: Farewell and Venus keep thee till we meet again.
Catul. : (Embracing her as she rises and moves off the stage}-
Farewell my heart to Jove I thee commend.
(Exit Clodia).
(Taking a Roll of Manuscript \from a Small Table near)-
Let me now seize the few swift bits of time
That vet remain ere mentor Cicero
10 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
And smooth Sallustius Crispus shall appear.
(Plunges into the Manuscript after Seating Himself on
the Empty Couch.
Enter Cicero and Caius Sallustius Crispus, Preceded by
Lictors Bearing Fasces. Catullus Rises and Greets
each ^Cordially. Each Seats Himself on a Chair and
P*ulls out a Manuscript from the Folds of his Toga.
Catullus After the Couch has been Declined by
Each Seats Himself upon Same).
Cic. : My worthy poet how inspires the Muse?
Catul. : My stern mentor the Muse hath gracious been.
Cic.: Prithee salute us with Her music then.
Catul.: Right gladly master mine. Lend now thine ear.
To MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.
"Marcus Tullius, most eloquent of the race
Of Romulus, of all that are, that have been
And that shall be in future years, Catullus
Thanks you heartily, Catullus the worst
Of poets as much the worst of poets
As you are the best of all advocates."!
Cic. : 'Tis well. "Best of all advocates," is well
That line doth paint thy master and thy friend.
That little gem I'll carry to my grave
Hand me 't Catullus an you love me now !
(Hands Manuscript to Cicero who Smilingly Peruses
it).
Catul.: Thine Eloquence hath won thee that small meed
Of praise from thy victorious client
Through thy force of oratory thy strength
Which won his cause which thou didst champion.
Sal.: My Catullus that little gem doth shine
Like diamond upon finger of a king.
Prithee indite me one as brilliant in its gleam.
Catul.: With all my heart. Sallustius mark thee now
(Taking a set of Writing Tablets and Stylus out of a
<fold of his Toga and After a Moment's Thought Writ
ing)
tPoem actually written by Catullus to Cicero upon the occasion
of the latter's winning a law suit for him. Translation found in
Bonn's Library.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 11
To CAIUS SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS.
"As Cicero doth wield a champion's tongue
The tongue of orator and advocate
/So o'er Sallusts' door is victor's garland hung
As the historian of Rome's mighty State."
Sal.: (Starting up and Grasping the Tablets}.
By Bacchus my Catullus that is fine!
As fine a ring hath that as rich a tone
As divine Homer's own wave-echoing roar!
Cic. : He doth not flatter thee I do assert,
As judge of letters I that judgment give.
Catul. : (Bowing his acknowledgments}.
As favour now I crave a specimen
Of what his Muse hath given to each one
Since last we did foregather in this place.
Sal. : Let mighty Cicero be first in this.
Cic.: Agreed, Sallustius, I'll e'en now begin.
(Cicero Unfolds the Roll he had Taken from his Toga
on Entering and Reads}
EPITAPH FOR THE TOMB OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.
"Here lies the dust of Rome's protecting tongue,
Tongue of Marcus Tullius Cicero;
Whose accents firm did guide the Ship of State
Amidst the perils of these darksome days.
Bold were its accents as his heart was firm,
Calm and undaunted midst a sea of fears !
A Roman he of antique mold indeed,
Who set the fashion of a nobler day."
Sal. : As true as modest ! Modest 'tis as true.
Catul.: (Aside}. Modest! Ha! (Aloud}. Simplicity itself
spoke there!
Give me a man who spurns a flattering tongue,
Give me that man I'll name him Cicero !
(Cicero Bows ^Complacently. Sallust Glances Furtively
at Catullus to Discover Whether the Latter is Jok
ing or not. Catullus Preserves a Sphinx-like Coun
tenance, and Gravely Continues.}
Our mighty master's soul abhors such things
His Roman virtue tramples on conceit!
12 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Catul. : (Aware that Sallust is Watching Him, and to Throw
Dust in His Eyes, Catullus Breaks off Sud
denly and Turning and Looking Sallust
Straight in the Eye with a Sternly Straight
Face, says] :
Sallustius Crispus render up the spoil
That thy most mighty Muse vouchsafed to thee.
(Sallust Bowing and Unfolding the Roll he had
taken jrom his Toga reads] :
Lucius SERGIUS CATILINE.
f "Lucius Catiline was a man of noble birth, and
of eminent mental and personal endowments;
but of a vicious and depraved disposition. His
delight from his youth, had been in civil com
motions, bloodshed, robbery and sedition; and
in such scenes he had spent his early years. His
constitution could endure hunger, want of
sleep, and cold, to a degree surpassing belief.
His mind was daring, subtle, versatile, capable
of pretending or dissembling whatever he
wished. "ff
tSallust's The Conspiracy of Catiline. (Translation found in
Bonn's Library.)
ttThe preceding year had been marked by the appearance of a
man destined to an infamous notoriety, L. Sergius Catilina, familiar
to all under the name of Catiline.
For some time after the death of Sulla the weariness and desire
of repose which always follows revolutionary movements had dis
posed all men to acquiesce in the rule established by the Dictator.
But more than one class of persons found themselves ill at ease. The
families proscribed by Sulla cherished the thought that they might
recover what they had lost, and the enthusiasm displayed when Caesar
restored the trophies of Marius revealed to the Senate the numbers
and the reviving hopes of their political enemies. Besides, there were
a vast number of persons, formerly attached to Sulla, who shared
their discontent. The Dictator left all real power in the hands of a
few great families. His own creatures were allowed to amass money,
but remained without political power; and soon after his death they
found themselves reduced to obscurity. With the recklessness of men
who had become suddenly rich, they had squandered their fortunes
as lightly as they had won them. These men were for the most part
soldiers, and ready for any violence. They only wanted chiefs. These
chiefs they found among the profligate members of noble families,
who like themselves, were excluded from the counsels of the re
spectable, though narrow-minded men, who composed the Senate and
administered the government. These were the young nobles, effeminate
13
Cic. : I must confess scant justice you him do.
A mighty soul hath Catiline in truth,
Loyal to friends unto the very death
A stranger too to pettiness in ought
To meanness or hypocrisy a foe.
Kemember his wild youth in Sulla's day
When blood did flow like water through Rome's
streets,
When bloodshed was the trade of all who lived.
The times do make the man. Bear that in mind.
Sal.: Tis true, great master. What you say is true.
My Muse did draw the long bow in those lines.
Catul. : Permit me to dissent. I praise thy Muse.
Cic. : Enough of this, the time draws on apace,
And I must hence upon affairs of State.
Catul. : Farewell great master till we meet again.
Cic. : Farewell.
Sal.: (To Catullus) -
Farewell, most eloquent of poet-kings.
Catul. : Farewell.
(Exeunt] .
and debauched, reckless of blood, of whom Cicero speaks with horror.
Of these adventurers Catiline was the most remarkable. He be
longed to an old Patrician Gens. A beautiful and profligate lady, by
name Aurelia Orestilla, refused his proffered hand because he had a
grown-up son by a former marriage ; this son speedily ceased to live.
Notwithstanding his crimes, the personal qualities of Catiline gave
him great ascendency over all who came in contact with him. His
strength and activity were such, that he was superior to the soldiers
at their own exercises, and could encounter skilled gladiators with
their own weapons. His manners were frank, and he was never known
to desert Ms friends. By qualities so nearly resembling virtues, it
is not strange that he deceived many, and obtained mastery over
more. He had already served as Praetor in the city, had then be
come Governor of the Province of Africa. The Students Rome
(A History of Rome) By Henry G. Liddell, D. D., Dean of Christ
Church, Oxford.
14 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
ACT I. SCENE III.
The House of Catiline.
Time: Dark. Same Day.
Catiline Discovered Reclining upon a Couch after
JSupper. Aurelia Orestilla on Another Couch,
Across the Table, opposite him.
Cat. "Aurelia I grow weary of the world,
Come twine thy tendril fingers in my hair.
Aurel. : (Rising and Kneeling Down at the Head of hi*
Couch and Gently Stroking his Forehead and
Head)
My Sergius, tell thy sweetheart what is wrong,
What goes amiss amidst thy profound plans?
Cat.: I fear me some rash tongue may spoil the game,
Some babbler to his mistress spring the trap,
Ere I have gathered in its iron jaws,
The purse-proud Senators I angle for.
On Quintus Curius I look askance.
That gamester-profligate would stake his soul
To satisfy that cormorant Fulvia.
An did she e'en but guess a plot is on
She'd worm it from him e'er the break of day!
Aurel. : My Sergius, permit me to observe
That for a man of your vast generalship
A puzzle-riddle like unto the Sphinx'
Is set by sight of that man 'midst thy schemes!
A man whose levity doth battle strong,
To gain the mastery o'er his impudence,
Who prates as glibly of his secret things
As he doth babble those entrusted him.
My lord, I wonder in mine inmost soul
Of what you thought when thou didst harbour him.
Cat.: Aurelia, thou speak'st well. I blundered there.
Tis thus it came about. When the plot was young,
And I had not five names to count upon,
Quintus Curius approached me for a loan.
His straits and insults at the Senate's hands
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 16
Which expelled him when it itself was worse
Held names more black than Quintus Curius'
Did deeply touch my heart. Besides he's brave,
Marcus Curius Dentatus' blood's in him
The breed the rugged Pyrrhus did confront
And for the time at least hate made him stern.
Methought his deadly wrongs at the Senate's hands
Had nerved his soul forever 'gainst those men
That hate would tie his tongue, ballast his mind,
And make him worthy of our company.
Aurel. : I pray the Gods, my Sergius, it be so.
Cat. : ( Sighing )
No earthly interest could divert his mind,
His every earthly interest is with us
Power, revenge, wealth, fame, and ease and all
That makes this weary world a paradise,
(Taking her Hand and Stroking it}.
When there be added to it thy sweet love.
Aurel.: Dear, my lord, I thank thee for that little word
That love crept in with thy dark mind aflame
With doubt, and wrestling strong 'gainst treachery
Within thy ranks, and yet sweet love crept in.
Cat. : Thou art the star that lightens my dark life
Aurelia. Thy sweet face, thy beauty glorious,
Shed o'er my tragic life a ray serene
That makes life worth the struggle and the pain
That it hath ever been to Catiline.
(Knocking heard).
Who knocks?
Slave: (Entering and b&wing).
My lord, six men close-muffled, with their faces hid
In their toga-folds, who will not give their names.
Cat.: (Aside to Aurelia)
The numbers's right 'tis the Conspirators.
Aurel.: (Aside to Catiline)
My lord, had you not best be sure I fear
Cat.: (Smilingly, aside)
16 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Assassination? There be no six in Rome,
E'en gladiators dare that contract sign.f
tTHE DEATH OF CATILINE.
tCatiline, when he saw that he was surrounded by mountains and
by hostile forces, that his schemes in the city had been unsuccessful,
and that there was no hope either of escape or of succour, thinking
it best, in such circumstances, to try the fortune of a battle, resolved
upon engaging, as speedily as possible, with Antonius. Having, there
fore, assembled his troops, he addressed them in the following manner:
LVIII. "I am well aware soldiers, that words cannot inspire
courage; and that a spiritless army cannot be rendered active, or a
timid army valiant, by the speech of its commander. Whatever courage
is in the heart of a man, whether from nature or from habit, so much
will be shown by him in the field; and on him whom neither glory
nor danger can move, exhortation is bestowed in vain; for the terror
in his breast stops his ears.
"I have called you together, however, to give you a few instruc
tions, and to explain to you, at the same time, my reasons for the
course which I have adopted
"Whithersoever we would go, we must open a passage with our
swords. I conjure you, therefore, to maintain a brave and resolute
spirit; and to remember, when you advance to battle, that on your
own right hands depend (In dextris portare, "That you carry in your
right hands") riches, honour, and glory, with the enjoyment of your
liberty and of your country. If we conquer, all will be safe; we shall
have provisions in abundance; and the colonies and corporate towns
will open their gates to us. But if we lose the victory through want
of courage, those same places will turn against us; for neither place
nor friend will protect him whom his arms have not protected."
"We might, with the utmost ignominy, have passed the rest of our
days in exile. Some of you, after losing your property, might have
waited at Rome for assistance from others. But because such a life,
to men of spirit, was disgusting and unendurable, you resolved upon
your present course. If you wish to quit it, you must exert all your
resolution, for none but conquerors have exchanged war for peace. To
hope for safety in flight, when you have turned away from the enemy
the arms by which the body is defended, is indeed madness. In battle,
those whd are most afraid are always in most danger; but courage
is equivalent to a rampart.
"When I contemplate you, soldiers, and when I consider your
past exploits, a strong hope of victory animates me. Your spirit, your
age, your valour, give me confidence; to say nothing of necessity,
which makes even cowards brave. To prevent the numbers of the
enemy from surrounding us, our confined situation is sufficient. But
should fortune be unjust to your valour, take care not to lose your
lives unavenged; take care not to be taken and butchered like cattle,
rather than, fighting like men, to leave your enemies a bloody and
mournful victory."
LDL When he had thus spoken, he ordered, after a short delay,
the signal for battle to be sounded, and led down his troops, in regu
lar order, to the level ground. Having then sent away the horses of
all the cavalry, in order to increase the men's courage by making
their danger equal, he himself, on foot, drew up his troops suitably
to their numbers and the nature of the ground.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Aurel. : (Regaining her usual calm air}
I know thy prowess and I fear no more
Thou hast recalled the fame of Catiline.
(Catiline rises and \Conducts Her to the Door, Kiss
ing her Hand as he Leaves Her.}
(To slave} : You may admit the men.
Slave: I go, my lord.
(Exit)
As a plain stretched between the mountains on the left, with a
rugged rock on the right, he placed eight cohorts in front, and sta
tioned the rest of his force, in close* order, in the rear.
LK. When he had made a complete survey, he gave the signal
with the trumpet, and ordered the cohorts to advance slowly. The
army of the enemy followed his example; and when they approached
BO near that the action could he commenced by the light-armed troops,
both sides, with a loud shout, rushed together in a furious charge.
They, threw aside their missiles, and fought only with their swords.
The veterans, calling to mind their deeds of old, engaged; fiercely in
the closest combat. The enemy made an obstinate resistance; and
both sides contended with the utmost fury, Catiline during this time,
was exerting himself with his light troops in the front, sustaining
such as were pressed, substituting fresh men for the wounded, attend
ing to every exigency, charging in person, wounding many an enemy,
and performing at once the duties of a valiant -soldier and a skilful
general.
Manlius and the Faesulan, sword in hand, were among the first
that fell; and Catiline, when he saw his army routed, and himself left
with a few supporters, remembering his birth and former dignity,
rushed into the thickest of the enemy, where he was slain, fighting to
the last.
LXI. When the battle was over, it was plainly seen what bold
ness, and what energy of spirit, had prevailed throughout the army
of Catiline; for, almost everywhere, every soldier, after yielding up
\is breath, covered with his] corpse the spot which he had occupied
when alive. A few, indeed, whom the praetorian cohort had dispersed,
had fallen somewhat differently, but all with wounds in front. Catiline
himself was found, far in advance of his men, among the deadl bodies
of the enemy; he was not quite breathless, and still expressed in his
countenance the fierceness" of spirit which he had shown during his
life. Of his whole army, neither in the battle nor in flight, was any
free-born citizen made prisoner, for they had spared their own lives
no more than those of the enemy.
Nor did the army of the Roman people obtain a joyful or blood
less victory; for all their bravest men were either killed in the battle,
or left the field severely wounded.
The Conspiracy of Catiline Sallust (Bohn's Library)-
18
Cat: Now for a wizard's eye to plumb the souls
Of these six men who hold my life in fee !
(Enter Julius Caesar, Marcus Crassus, Marcus Cor
nelius Lentulus, Caius Cethegus, Caius Sulla, and
Quintus Curius, All Closely Muffled).
Will ye have couches brought?
Caes. : A chair for me a curule magistracy !
Cras. : \
Ceth.: /
Sul ' S ^ curu ^ e cna i r f r all 'twill suit us all.
Cur.:
Lent.: Not me, no chair was ever built suits me.
Cat.: Take then the couch. I'll bear thee company.
(The Conspirators seat themselves upon Ivory
Chairs Inlaid ivith G*old, standing against the
walls. Lentulus reclining slowly upon the couch
recently occupied by Aurelia. Catiline says:
"Bring wine." The slave makes an obeisance,
disappears and almost immediately reappears
bearing an Amphora, which he places upon the
table before Catiline. He is followed by seven
other brawny slaves each bearing a large Silver
Goblet in his right hand, while in his left he
bears an Earthen-Ware Vessel filed with
water. This each slave sets by the side of the
Goblet before each man at table. The Major-
Domo, or first slave, then marshals his men and
awaits orders from Catiline. Catiline observing
them, silently dismisses them with a wave of the
hand. So soon as the door closes the Conspira
tors discover their features. Catiline rises and
goes the rounds of the table warmly grasping
both hands of each Conspirator as he greets him.
As he grasps those of Quintus Curius he gazes
intently into his eyes with concentrated penetra
tion. Curius returns the gaze frankly and un
abashed. Catiline renews the pressure of his
hands on those of the former and suppresses
swiftly a rising sigh of relief. He then resumes
hi$ place at the table.
19
Rising and saluting -first Caesar, then Crassus,
then Lentulus, then Cethegus, then Sulla, and
then Curius, turns to Caesar, and says)
Prithee, be master of the feast to-night.
Caes. : Right gladly, Sergius, shall I take that post.
(Catiline thereupon pushes the Amphora until it
JStops b&fore Caesar's chair. Catiline then re
clines and Caesar, after pouring out about half
a Goblet of wine from the Amphora and misting
it one-half with water from the Vessel for that
purpose by Ms place, takes the Goblet in both
hands and says before draining the up]
"I pour libation for the feast to-night."
(Immediately thereafter each Conspirator rises and
walks with his Goblet to Caesar's side, who takes
the Goblet and fills it half full o\f wine. Each
Conspirator thereupon regains his seat and pours
in the proportion of water his taste suggests to
dilute the wine generally about one-half the
amount of water that his Goblet held of wine.
Caesar having replenished his Goblet as before,
and diluted same, he and all the Conspirators rise
and hold their Goblets extended in both hands
elevated before them to the full stretch of the
arms. Caesar then says solemnly)
As master of this solemn feast to-night,
I pour libation in the name of all
Unto the God we now invoke dread Mars.
(All Solemnly Drain their Goblets, Replenish them
as before, and, now that the Religious Ceremo
nies so to speak have been Performed, each
Helps Himself Rising 'for that Purpose from
the Mighty Amphora as his needs suggest and
Without Further Formality. Upon their Re
gaining their Respective Seats after Caesar's Du
ties as Master o\f the Feast had been Discharged,
Catiline once more Rises and Says)
Cat.: My noble friends our matters move apace.
Our bold lieutenant, Caius Manlius
Racked by our stern ally the Faesulan
20 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Hath Faesulse and all Etruria
Ready to burst in flame upon our sign;
But yesterday a letter reached me
From this bold spirit bearing this good news.
(Murmurs of Approval from the Conspirators).
Two Legions full hath he, and fully armed,
Of ancient complement six thousand men
Each ten cohorts six hundred men doth boast.
No army's to be found in Italy
Save only ours under stout Manlius.
Slow Pompey in the East would have no time
To balk our soldiers ere the prize were won.
Fair Fortune smiles. The sacred eagle screams,
(Pointing first to Caesar and then to a Silver Eagle
on Top of an Old Roman Standard of the Le
gions with an Altar of Marble built about its
Base, Standing at the Head o\f the Room.)
The eagle that thine Uncle Marius
Did lead against the Cimbri and Teutons
And there did give him glorius victory.
All's ready in the field. Here only here
Here in old Rome there's much remains to do.
That much is dark. That much d-oth chill the blood,
E"*en mine, who, as a youth, called Sulla, lord,
And therefore took part in the massacres
That made run purple all the streets of Rome
I see you move uneasy in your seats.
Caes. : Bold Catiline, thy words precurse grim things.
Cat. : What if they do, no bolder gambler's here
Amidst this chosen band slow culled by me,
From Rome's most daring spirits and her best
Her bluest-blooded men of high renown,
Who worship Fortune and none other God
Save Mars and Mercury from time to time
As their occasions turn towards war or gold
No bolder gambler's found amongst this band
Of chosen spirits for a high emprise
A band that boasts e'en Caius Cethegus
(Pointing at Cethegus).
No bolder spirit can be found than Caesar's.
21
Caes. : Ye do me honour, mighty Catiline,
Thou before whom Rome cowers to a man !
Save this most worthy company here met,
(Smiling and Looking About him).
Whom no three gladiators in all Rome
Dare face in the arena sword to sword;
Whom no three soldiers dare draw sword against.
Cat. : You do me honour Caesar. To proceed.
Ye know the time is ripe to do great deeds
Great deeds are born in blood ye all know that.
(The Conspirators all Solemnly Bow in Assent] .
As blood doth mark man's coming in this world,
As man doth leave his Mother clothed in blood,
So mighty deeds do leave dread Action's womb
Glitt'ring and dripping o'er with ruby blood.
Ye know that life in Rome to-day doth hang
Uncertain-wayward as a weathercock.
Ye know that property hath hold as frail
Since property dependeth on the law,
And law for utterance depends on man,
On a base judge, whom you or I may buy;
Provided, only, we^ve his price withal
My good friend, Crassus, why that crafty smile?
Cras. : Because you speak from knowledge, Catiline.
Cat. : What if I do, friend Crossus minor, thou
Hast bought a score of judges to my one
For the best reason that this world doth hold
You had th' occasion and you had the cash
Ceth. : He had you there, Mark Crassus had you there !
(Laughing. All Join in the Laugh But Crassus,
who Says Nothing and Looks Gloomy.}
Cat. : Thy gloomy looks speak louder than could words
T' unfold the goodly sums you've sunk in courts,
To show blind Justice the right way to go.
But pardon me, my worthy Senator,
And take no offence from my friendly words.
We all are bound like brothers to a cause,
And each will bear from others brothers all!
Caes.: Well said, my Catiline, friend Crassus here
Harbours no umbrage in his valiant breast.
22
Cras. : Caesar thou sayest well. I did but muse
Upon investments that I have in hand,
The name of money starts me like a hound
To plunge upon the slot and track to lair.
Cat. : 'Tis well. Indictment 'gainst vile Rome I now re
sume.
Ye know that the Republic is no more.
Her for good or ill Marius did kill,
Sulla thereafter held her funeral.
Caes. : Well put and true. My uncle, Marius,
Was not sole cause of this sad state of things,
Great Sulla bears the burden half and half.
Sul. ; ril share the onus of my uncle's act,
Nought did he do that I do not approve.
Caes.: My good friend, Sulla, no offence is meant,
Those deeds are buried in oblivion;
We nephews should not quarrel o'er the parts
That our great forbears played in history.
Cur.: No more then I at this late date should slur
Greece because Dentatus, my grim ancestor,
Did shake the phalanx rugged Pyrrhus led.
Cat.: Well spoken, Curiusf I now resume
Lent. : Not till I say that 'twixt these men I stand
Twixt Caesar and my kinsman, Sulla, here
As stands a Father 'twixt his own true sons.
No man for the Dictator holds more pride
Than doth Marcus Cornelius Lentulus;
But for our Caesar here, none hath more love
Than this descendant of the Scipios.
Sul.: Cousin, ne'er fear for me. No grudge e'er lurked
Within that care-free chest a Sulla's breast
Caesar my hand in token of my love.
(Extending his hand in Caesar's direction across
the table).
Caes.: (Starting up from, his chair and grasping it)
And mine my Sulla of tny amity.
Cat. (Smiling happily)
The mighty waves that recent threatened foam,
Have now i' th' ocean's bosom found their home.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 23
Cur.: (Laughing good humouredly]
Affairs wag well when dire stern Catiline
Doth offer incense to the magic Nine.
Cat. : As I have said, the only rub is here,
And to rub that rub out, my noble friends,
Will call for hectacomb of Senators!
(The Entire Body of Conspirators except Catiline
Start. Instantly Each Conspirator Becomes Seri
ous, and Emotions Running from Fear to Horror
Sweep Over the Various Faces. Catiline Calm
ly, But Penetratingly, Regards First One Face
Until He Has Noted ifs Aspect Then Passing
on to the Next. In This Way He has Inspected
the Entire Group of Conspirators Before a Word
is Uttered, and the Only Sound has been the
Deep Tense Breathing of the Conspirators as
Catiline's Words Gradually Become Clear to
Them; Or Here and There a Profound Sigh.
Finally, After He Has Inspected and Dissected
the Thoughts and Emotions of Each of the Con
spirators, And After Waiting to See // Any One
of Them \Cares to Break the Stern Silence, And
Upon Finding that No One Showed the Slightest
Inclination So To Do, Catiline Begins Slowly, in
Low Tones, Freighted With Deep Feeling]
Think not mine august friends and colleagues high,
Think not ye nobles of world-conquering Rome
Coparceners with me in this Conspiracy
That to this awful pass I lightly came.
No ! Not till o'er the Mountains of Despair
My flinty way I'd trod did I it reach.
Ye know full well that no Republic stands.
'Tis not in human nature that it should
That it should stand just simply this demands
Each citizen must strive for th' public good.
And when did man e'er strive for ought but gold,
For place or power or for passion's love?
Hence, in Republics every place is sold;
Hence in Republics each court's the man above.
Under an Empire on the other hand,
24 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Th' Imperator chooses for the common good.
Since the Republic's wealth's his to command;
Nought tempts him to do ought, but what he should.
Heaven's an Empire ruled by God the King,
What's good for Gods, for men is no mean thing!
Ceth: Bravo! bold Catiline, the Muses now
Inspire thee to lead our minds aright!
The diadem full well becomes thy brow,
For thy brow this golden circlet blazing bright!
(Carried away by impetuosity, instantly Cethegus
starts up and darting across the room seizes a
Golden Chaplet of Laurel Leaves Wrought in
Gold Hanging about the Neck of the Silver
Eagle on the Altar Aforesaid. And places Same
Upon the Brow of Catiline, Who preserves a
Face as Pale as Marble and as Inscrutable All
With the Exception of Caesar and Crassus
Spring to Their Feet and Shout)
Ceth.: )
Lent.: i Ave Catilina Imperator!
Sul. : ' Hail Catiline our mighty Emperor!
Cur.:
Cat.: My friends, this honour almost strikes me dumb,
(Smiling sarcastically).
As dumb as Julius Caesar or Mark Crassus there.
Permit me to observe never had I
Or ghost or shadow of a thought of this.
Ceth.: Nor I I pledge my word. The Muses spoke!
Caes. : (Aside In Profound. Meditation).
The idea's strange but it doth like me well.
This damned Republic bores me to the bone
Costs more to buy the votes of Democrats
Than my supporters earn in one full year.
And 'neath a Monarchy talents do thrive.
Which an ingrate Republic starves to death.
I'll back my talents and I'll take my chance!
(Musing)
Catiline's no sons and older is than I
(After a pause)
Why should not Caesar succeed Catiline
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 25
By Mars Pll risk the Hazard of the Die!
' (Aloud Jumping to his Feet and Shouting]
All hail our Emperor, great Catiline!
Pardon my silence but the thought was new.
Caesar, I welcome thee amongst the men
The Inner Circle that shall rule Eome's state.
But still there lags Mark Crassus on the stage.
Halting to mount our stage and rule the world !
(Aside]
This likes me not. / would be emperor,
(After a pause}
But then my property would be more safe
Under an Empire and I near the King.
And who can tell the turn of Fortune's wheel!
Catiline's no heir and he might die (With a covert
smile] who knows (Musing]
With Catiline dead then Crassus might be King!
(Aloud. Rising to his feet]
Hail Catiline Imperator! Hail our King!
(Smiling quietly]
Good Crassus, thy adherence I accept,
And trust thy pause hath cleared thy mind of doubt.
It hath my chief it hath upon my soul.
Firm do I stand for thy advancement high.
And swift as high ! (Seizing a Goblet Filling and
Draining it] By Bacchus swift as high!
(All Save Catiline Filling and Drinking]
By Bacchus, swift as high!
Mine august friends brief words but yet remain.
Here is the schedule of our actions dread.
Ye know the Senate are mere business-men
Intent on gain and little else beside.
And with them Liberty is but a name
To catch the voter at the polls withal
And merely something that one buys and sells.
Ye know the fate they would accord to us
Did they but know our intents here to-night.
Therefore give them the fate they^d hand to us
Death is that fate, and death's the fate for them!
26
(All the Conspirators slowly bow their heads in
assent).
The Marian and Sullan massacres
(Smiling sarcastically}
Afford the precedent the lawyers ask,
Afford the "precedent" that Cicero
That flat old woman-masquerade of man
Is always harping in the Senate House.
Now no more would I kill than needs must be
To seize the government and work our will.
The plan is this. The Senate doth convene
Two days from now. 'Tis then the deed's t' be done.
Clodius' gladiators with most of us
Shall with the Senate work what Fate decrees.
The other two with certain chosen men
Reserves of Clodius' band tall fellows all
Shall fire the city at some dozen spots
Wide separate and where the flames can be
Easy confined by rasing houses near.
This to prevent the people taking sides
For or against us in the Senate fray.
For their mercurial and shallow minds
Will be so taken by the sight of flames
That they will run like unto scared dogs
To hear the fire crackle V the air!
As our friend Crassus hath the most at stake
By way of property in this our Rome.
He with our Caesar shall this work command.
(Handing Sheet of Parchment to the guest nearest
him to be passed to Crassus sitting with Caesar
at the other end of the table}.
Here are the stations where the fires start.
Now since affairs of men are on the lap
Of the high Gods touching their fate on earth
The Gods alone know what th' outcome will be.
Hence I ne'er chances take unless I must.
Therefore give ear Caesar and Crassus there
Who now intently study the schediile
In case th' affray at th' Senate House goes wrong
27
We count on thy strong aid to pull us through
The straits and shallows that will then ensue.
Ye must be friends at court the Senate House
And with the people plead our cause with strength.
Therefore see to it that ye are not seen
About the fires when the flames begin.
Entrust that to your freedmen tried and true,
Whilst ye from out deep shadows breath commands.
Your freedmen, too, must see that they're not seen.
But as you through them work through strange
deputies.
Our deed once done, bold Manlius moves on Rome,
And with his legions awes the Capital.
All Italy will rise then as one man
For what this side of Hell weighs with success!
Nought, noble Catiline, nought on my word,
(Looking about him}
I'd like to glimpse a sight of Pompey's face,
When he first hears we've mastered Italy.
I'd like to meet that pompous cold "new man"
That servant of the Senate their smug slave
In shock of battle at a legion's head !
(Turning towards Catiline)
Thy plot's as perfect as a summer's day
Spent on the slopes of purple Apennine,
I'm all impatience for the game to start
> And I ! And I ! And I ! All we the same.
Much would I like to see the game begin,
The plot doth please me well so simple, too !
To my mind nought could better this same plot,
(Pointing to Schedule he has ~been Studying, on
which the Fire-Stations are set down)
The stations chosen are the best in Rome,
No buildings of importance on the list
And few of serious value to be found;
None, by the way, impinge my property.
(Catiline and the others smile discreetly).
28 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Cat.: And now, friends, one last word before we part.
Be ever armed from this night on sans fail !
Beneath your toga port a strong cuirass,
Wear sword at side beneath your togas, too,
Thus those who'd harm us shall most surely rue.
Caes. : A counsel sage my chief I must confess
So Roman am I that to carry arms
Within the confines of our ancient Rome
Arms aye and armour ne'er'd occur to me.
Cras. : Th' advice is good. I've done both more than once.
Cat.: In breaking up our conference now, friends
Till next we meet at time and place I'll send
Pour a libation now to Victory,
And as we do it face the eagle there.
(The same Solemn Ceremony that began the Con
ference is repeated, Caesar Officiating and as
they Simultaneously first Extend at Arms
Length, and then Drain their Goblets it is in
the Direction of the Silver Eagle on the Altar}.
ACT II. SCENE I.
The House Of Cicero.
Time: Next Day. Morning.
(Library in Cicero's House. Cicero engaged in
Writing Seated at a Table. Lounging nearby
are Catullus and Sallust each glancing over a
Roll of Manuscript in his hand. A Spy in the
Pay of Cicero, one Vettius, is standing at a Dis
tance from the Group in an Attitude af Obsequi
ous Attention].
Cic. : My worthy Vettius hast ought to say
In this grave matter against any else?
Vet.: So please the Consul yes one other man
But he's so high-placed I do fear to ope
My lips upon a theme so dangerous.
29
Cic. : Good Vettius, speak out and know no fear,
Know that the Consul Cicero's thy friend,
Under my aegis thou may's! safely speak.
Vet. : If that be so I now shall ope my mouth,
But warn your worship that surprise is near.
Cic.: (Smiling complacently]
Surprise is something I do never feel,
My mighty station renders me immune.
Vet. : The name dread Consul then I'll now impart,
'Tis Caius Julius Caesar no man less.
'(Cicero shrinks Back with every Sign of Panic
Painted on his Features. Catullus and Sallust
Drop their Manuscripts onto the Floor in their
Amazement, Recalled from their Reading l>y the
name of Caesar).
Cic.: By all the Gods! Did mine ears hear aright,
Didst thou just utter Julius Caesar's name?
Vet. : I did, great Consul, and I must again
If the same question thou dost put to me.
Catul. : Great master, why permit this wretched thing
To soil our friends, the aristocracy?
To Catiline, and Sulla, Lentulus,
And Cethegus, and Curius, he now
Dares to bring in the mighty Julian gens,
Methought the gens Cornelian might suffice.
Cic. : My worthy pupil you must permit me
To hold the tiller of the Ship of State.
When thou art Consul thou may'st then essay
The task you lightly offer to take on.
(Sallust Conceals a Smile while Catullus Angrily
Picks up his \Manuscript and Prepares to Leave).
Pardon my frankness, mv most gifted friend,
I spoke more pointedly than I had mind.
Wound not thy master by departure now,
But stay this subject out and then pray give
Advice unto thy friend in this sore strait.
(Catullus bows Silently and Resumes his Reading.
Sallust has already Picked Up his Manuscript
and is Immersed therein).
30 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
What proof, good Vettius, hast thou in hand
To offer in support of this grave charge.
Vet.: The same great Consul that I first did give
In support of my theme conspiracy
To-wit, the letter dropped by Quintus Curius,
Bearing the names I just did give to thee
Letter addressed to Lucius Catiline
Asking that Catiline would straightway set
Opposite each name of each conspirator
The office and reward he'd give to him
When victory did crown their scheme 'gainst Rome.
This letter I most strangely have mislaid
But trust securely to recover it.
Meantime I brought your worship this great news
Protected by thy pledge of secrecy.
Cic. : What was the tone of this same letter, friend,
Was't threatening-hostile or mere friendly chaff?
Vet.: Twas far from hostile and 'twas far from chaff.
It merely stated that he'd like to know
"If time permitted the great Catiline"
And so forth what I did just state to thee.
There's one more name, your worship, on the list,
I'll give if thou'lt protect mine humble self.
Cic.: Speak without fear, my worthy Vettius.
Vet.: Once more I warn thy worship 'gainst surprise.
Cic. : How often, Vettius, must I tell thee
The Consul is a stranger to surprise.
(Catullus and Sallust Exchange Smiles, but Re
main Silent).
Vet.: Then mighty Consul Crassus is the man
The richest soul the sun doth shine upon.
(Catullus and Sallust Start back in Amazement
and both burst out in Shouts of Derisive Laugh
ter. Cicero Turns Pale and Shrinks Back into
his Chair in Surprise and Fear. Nothing is
Heard for some moment* but the Shouts of
Laughter of the Poet and the Historian. Pres
ently Catullus Says}
Catul. : Mehercule! But this thinsr bursts the bounds
Of reason and all probability !
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 31
Mark Crassus, who of all men on this earth
Is int'rested in order and calm peace
Through his vast holdings and his serried wealth
To be mixed up in a conspiracy
With men like Catiline and Cethegus
Desperate spirits of a former day
When Sulla ruled the world and ruled by blood !
Cic. : Good Vettius, I now shall bid thee go.
Strive to recover that lost letter, friend,
And also strive as thou dost ever do
To bring rne gossip of the high and low.
Meantime no word of this to anyone.
(Vettius bows in Cringing Fashion and Slinks off
Pursued by the Contemptuous Looks af Catullus
and Sallust. He has Scarcely Disappeared be
fore Female Voices are Heard and Fulvia, Ac
companied by her Maid, enters Hurriedly, Pre
ceded by an Expostulating Slave).
Ful.: (To the Slave) -
The Consul I will see and instantly!
(To Cicero )
Marcus Tullius I come on things of State
And beg thy private ear immediately.
(Catullus and Sallust Exchange Amused Glances,
Bow to Cicero and the Lady who Smilingly Ac
knowledges their Salute and Withdraw. Cicero
Shows Fulvia to a Chair and then Resumes his
Seat. The Maid Remains Standing}.
I have no time to waste in social words,
A sword suspends above the Commonwealth!
(Cicero Shivers and Turns Pale}.
I see thy manly cheek doth bear the hue,
' ( Smiling S areas tically } .
That bespeaks interest in the words I say.
(Cicero Reddens, but says Nothing}.
I shall be brief for time doth press amain.
(After a Pause and with Embarrassment}.
Thou knows't I am the friend of Cnrius.
(Cicero bows}.
Last night he did return at dead of night
32
In mood most haughty and imperious;
Ne'er saw I him in mood like that before.
He said that I had better mind my ways,
And treat him with the requisite respect,
"Or my fair head would leave my shoulders swift"
Cic. : Ha ! Said he so ! Thy news amazeth me.
Ful. : Not half so much as it did amaze me
I tell thee, Consul, mine hair stood on end!
And then a frolic humour took him straight,
(Blushing and with Embarrassment).
He petted me and fondled me with zeal.
When he had done he said, "My pretty dove.
Who oft is like the eagle in her rage.
If thou art complaisant and good to me
Mountains and seas on thee I shall bestow
Seas in whose depths lurk pearls of orient
That in their lustre the sunset surpass!"
Cic.: Ha! Thy news in truth sounds strange and ominous.
Ful. : "Ominous," sayest thou ! Now mark me well.
Feeling that something was afoot I set
In motion all my woman's arts of guile
Played on his passions, fed his vanity,
Jostled his jealousy till he did writhe
And roar aloud in anguish and in rage!
I then did melt and fall into his arms.
This turned the trick, and he gave up his soul!
Told of a plot the like of ivhich hath ne'er
Not since our town of Rome was first laid out
So help me Venus, been contrived by man!
(Cicero Shudders).
Tis nothing short of make a demon King !
Raise to the purple that fiend Catiline!
Cic. (Cicero Falls Back in his Chair. Raises his Hands
to Heaven, and Murmurs Faintly}
May all the Gods protect our city Home,
And ward the dangers that do now impend !
Great Father Jove defend the Capitol
From this most monstrous man. this man of blood,
Th' embodied incarnation of all crime !
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 33
Ful. : (Sneeringly)
Pray hard, pray Consul, but do not pray too long
For this man Catiline doth not waste time;
And when he strikes death follows in a trice!
(Cicero Recovers his -Composure with Difficulty,
/Swallowing /Several Times, and Moistening his
Dry Lips with Ms Tongue. Finally he Braces
Himself in his Chair, and Assuming an Air of
Fortitude, Says somewhat Falteringly)
Cic. : Pray Fulvia, tell all that thou dost know.
Ful. : Briefly, 'tis this. This arch-fiend Catiline
Hath knit a plot whose meshes are so strong
That not one man who once is caught therein
Hath any hope this side th' Elysian Fields!
He with fierce Cethegus and Lentulus,
With Caius Sulla and now mark these names
With Julius Caesar and Mark Crassus, too,
Have formed a plan to seize th' Imperium,
To seize all power and vest it in themselves.
How't 's to be done, or when, or by whose aid,
I have not yet found out. My man waxed sleepy
Ere he got to that, and nought that I could do
(Blushing and Hesitating}.
Could interest him just turned his back and slept.
To-day his mood was changed, and not one word,
By hook or crook, could I coax out of him.
Cic.: One word, fair Fulvia, before you go,
Have you and Curius e'er fallen out?
P ul. : Have we f all'n out ! Have we e^er fallen out !
Why Cicero, if thou didst know the times
We have f all'n out thou'dst shake thy sides with
mirth.
Cic.: And might I ask the reason for these wars,
The reasons for these merry combatings?
Ful.: The reason, Consul, was that I did lack
The means to make life joyous and jocund
I did lack gold and know that vile lack still.
Twas lack of that drove Joy from out the doors
Of Quintus Curius and let Grief in.
34
I threatened him I'd leave him presently
Unless he did the needful coin supply
For all my wants as gently nurtured girl.
This made him mad almost near turned his brain!
For he doth love me in his careless way
He swore he'd find the means to hold my love
And money did pour in straightway 'tis true
Borrowed presumably from Catiline,
Since these two have been friends for long years past.
Cic. : I see, my girl. Twas love of thy fair face
Which thou didst warn him nought but gold could
hold-
Did drive thy lover to plunge deep in crime.
This thing hath happed before. It is not new.
Now here's my plan. I'll keep thee stocked with
gold-
Gold, mind you, taken from the Treasury
By me, as Consul on affairs of State
Provided thou wilt keep me swift informed
Of each and every move of Catiline's.
Ful. : But what if Curius' lips are ever dumb,
If he won't talk, what then am I to do?
Cic. : Leave that to chance. His lips miwt loose sometimes,
But if they don't thy stipend cut in two
Shall reach thee, surely, every ninety days
Till I have rid the earth of Catiline.
Ful.: An earnest of that stipend give me now,
Not "cut in two" but lusty vigorous.
(Cicero Hands her a Purse of Gold which she
Empties out on the Table Listening to the Ring
of the Coin}.
That gold rings true. I'll take this and start in
To be thy worthy spy, great Cicero.
Before I go one word. No harm must fall
Upon the careless head of Curius.
Cic.: Agreed. I'll save him when the trouble doth begin.
Ful. : Farewell.
(Exit Fulvia. Enter Slave}.
Cic. : Farewell.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Slave: Milo and band of gladiators stand
Awaiting orders from thy mighty self.
Cic.: Bid them come in. (Exit Slave}. Now, brother
Clodius
Great High Priest of the Bona Dea, thou
I'll scan an engine that shall pull thee down.
(Enter Milo in Full Armour with Drawn Sword
and Shield Followed by Ms Band of Gladiators
Similarly Equipped. Milo Salutes Cicero Si
lently. His Band does the same and Stand at
Attention Behind Milo).
Mil. : I come, my lord, thy bidding to obey.
Cic. : Welcome, stout Milo, and thy worthy band.
(Aside]
By Mars the sight of these same brawny men
Doth rouse my spirits from the drooping point.
Methinks 'twould firm my heart and soul to see
Sword counter sword in thrust and stroke and foin.
(Aloud]
Good Milo, prithee, show me specimen
Of thy band's tactics at the martial game.
Mil. : With pleasure, mighty Consul.
(Turning to Gladiators who, at a Motion of His
Hand, Separate into Two Groups Facing Each
Other with Swords Drawn and Ready to Spring
at One Another.} Men! Lay on! (The Gladi
ators Dash Upon One Another and Fight All
Over the Room; Being Careful, However, Not to
Touch Anything but each Other's Swords,
Shields and Armour Avoiding Carefully the
Unarmed Portions of the Body. After Some
Few Minutes of this Cicero exclaims}
Cic.: Enough, my trusty fellows. Hold! Enough!
(The Gladiators Instantly Lower their Swords and
Panting Deeply from their recent exertions, But
with Faces Absolutely Immobile and Impassive,
resume their former line and Come to Attention}.
Ha ! Milo in these days these doubtful days,
When no man knows who's for or 'gainst the State,
It doth one good to have such sturdy men
36 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Men who at thrust and foin are nonpareil
Armed at one's beck to tread sedition down.
(Milo bows his acknowledgments).
I summoned thee to say that thou must hold
Thy band in readiness by day and night.
No more shall I say now there is no need,
But hold your fellows armed and 'neath thine eye.
Mil.: I shall, great Consul, and take joy thereby.
O ! That I might with Clodius meet in broil.
O! That our men might clash together in war's
shock.
Cic. : Mayhap thou'lt have thy wish. And now farewell,
I prithee give this purse unto thy men.
(Hands Milo a Well-Filled Purse).
Mil.: (Taking purse)
I thank thee, Consul, for thy graciousness.
(Turning to Gladiators)
Salute the Consul, men, before we go.
(Gladiators Draw their Swords and Shout with
One Accord)
Glad. : Long live our Consul ! Long live Cicero.
(At a motion from Milo they then Form a Column
and March Of the Stage Followed by him. He
Salutes Cicero with his Sword in Silence as he
Marches Past.
Exeunt) .
ACT II. SCENE II.
Apartments Of Aurelia Orestilla : In The House Of Catiline.'
Time: Same Day. Late Afternoon.
Aurel: (Alone, sitting Lost in Thought. Tier Head Lean
ing on her Hand)
My heart misgives me lest my Sergius
Hath risked his happiness upon a die.
His plans move smoothly and his mind is calm.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIB 37
But with so many knowing of the plot
Which is to turn this city upside down
And with this mighty city turns the world
A danger always lurks of leakage dread.
How I'm to stem that tide no one can say.
I stand at Catiline's right hand in all he does,
And never let a moment slip me by
Without a word of caution on that head.
He is the most supremest plotter e^er
Did set his brain to scheme upon this earth!
But lacking mighty wealth and the long train
Of followers that tread the heels of wealth
His choice of aids at first was limited.
(After a pause}
Beshrew me how y I dread vain Curius!
Storm centre he of danger to this plot;
I would give half my wealth vast as that is
Were Quintus Curius not of the band.
(Sighs deeply. A Maid enters Hastily}.
Maid: The lady Clodia, doth wait below
Who says her tidings will not brook delay.
Aurel. : Conduct her hither with what speed ye may ;
'(Exit Maid.}
My soul misgives me and my blood grows cold,
My woman's instinct tells me something's wrong.
(Enter Clodia).
My Clodia, my thanks for coming here,
Thy presence breaks a brooding fit I had.
(They embrace warmly}.
Clo. : Dearest Aurelia, my heart bleeds for thee,
The news I bring is of the very worst !
Aurel. : (Starting but then Immediately Recovering her
usual Haughty Calm}
The world we live in is a world of Chance,
Men are but footballs for the foot of Fate;
Hence, who hunts happiness doth take a chance
That black Death strikes at either soon or late.
Hence am T ever ready for the worst,
And smile upon the evils the Gods send.
38
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Clo. : 'Tis well, my dearest, thy philosophy
Is of so high a cast, so stoical
That standing on the brink of the Unknown,
It yet preserves thy beauty all serene.
My news is this. I'll give it in few words
The plot is out.
(Aurelia at first does Not Move a Muscle. Present
ly a Disdainful Smile Slowly Spreads over her
\(J<alm Face}
You seem incredulous.
Aurel. : My dearest friend a bit more explicit be
Clo. : You play your cards well, my Aurelia fair.
Aurel.: What next, my dear, might I be bold to ask?
Clo.: Why simply this. Catullus my good friend
(Blushing and Smiling)
Was present at the Consul Cicero's
When Vettius a spy Catullus hates f
Came in and said he r d news of high import.
The Consul bid Catullus to remain,
And Sallust. too for both had called on him
So both did hear this plot most marvellous !
Brief, Catiline hath joined to him a band
Of men, the most illustrious in Rome,
Including Caesar, Crassus, Lentulus,
Cains Sulla, Curius and Cethegus
That last the fiercest man that walks to-day,
Save only one whose name I shall not say
A letter dropped by Curius was the clue
That fell into the hands of Vettius.
(At the name of Curius, Aurelia's Face Pales
Slightly, But No Other Sign of Emotion is Vis
ible}.
Letter from Curius to Catiline,
fTo you, stinking Vettius, if to any one, may be applied what Is
said to babblers and fools. With that tongue of yours you may wipe
cow-keepers' shoes and nastier things yet. if you have occasion.
If you wish utterly to destroy us all, Vettius, open your mouth;
you will affect your purpose to a certainty.
Catullus.
(From the Poems of Catullus. Translation found in Bohn's
Library.)
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 39
Asking his chief what honours would be named
For each upon achieving their great scheme,
And to set th' honours opposite each name
Of each conspirator upon the list
He did enclose. Nought else was there therein
As to when, how, or where the plot would burst,
Or just precisely what the plot would be.
Aurel. : (After a Pause}
Clodia, I know that thou, dear, art my friend,
But ere I comment on thy most strange news,
I wish to search thy heart a little while.
Clo. : My heart's an open book to thee. my friend
The dearest friend I have of our own sex.
Thou knou^st and few there be who do not guess
That I do love Catullus heart and soul.
My stolid husband sole doth nought suspect.
You know our Parents did arrange this match
Which was as far from love-match as the poles.
Wealth wished to add to wealth and that was all
'Twos marriage of two fortunes, not two 'hearts,
And when a man does that he takes his chance.
Aurel. : ( Smilingly A ffectionately )
My Clodia, thy fate did ever touch
My happy heart happy in Catiline,
The most misjudged and maligned man
That walks the streets of our Imperial Rome!
A heart of gold hath he true to his friends.
True as the steel of his e'er ready sword,
Frank as the sunlight as a lion brave
Such is my King such Sergius Catiline!
Clo. : Aurelia did I not Valerius love
With my whole soul excluding thought of all
The race of men that walk this teeming earth
I tell thee, dear, I would love Catiline
His mighty soul, his leonine dread heart
That smiles in scorn upon a world of foes;
His general's mind that doth combine the threads
And strands of action and their subtle cause,
Their moving impulses and passions dark
That make the world the cauldron that it is,
40 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Seething and bubbling with wees, joys and death.
With infamy and virtue intermixed
Like wine and water in a vessel dark
Then holds these combined strands within his hand
And drives his chariot to the victor's goal!
Such is thy lover such is Catiline.
Aurel. : (Aurelia Falls on her Neck and. Buries her Face
on her Breast}.
My darling, thy sweet words unman my soul.
And weakness becomes not the wife of Catiline.
(Recovering her Composure}.
Minerva guided thee in thy grand words
With which thou didst describe my Catiline
A double purpose did these dear words fill.
I'd said that I did wish to search thine heart,
And thy true heart, my Clodia, did respond
Unto my unspoke question in thy words.
I wished to know the motive prompted thee
T' incur the wrath of thy Valerius
Should he e'er know that thou'st revealed to me
The accusation of vile Vettius
That dog in human shape that mangy cur,
Who snaps in secret at the heels o' th' great.
(They Seat themselves Side by Side on a Couch}.
Clo. : (Embracing her}
Before I go I have two things to say.
Valerius did not impart to me
The news I've given it got I by chance
Twas thus. A week ago I my pet sparrow lostf
A darling bird that nestled in my breast.
III. tLAMENT FOR THE DEATH OF CLODIA'S SPARROW.
Lament, O Loves and desires, and every man of refinement! My
girl'a sparrow is dead, my girl's pet sparrow, which she loved more
than her own eyes; for It was a honeyed darling, and knew its mis
tress as well as my girl herself knew her Mother; nor did It ever
depart from her breast, but hopping about now hither, now thither,
would chirp ever more to Its mistress only. Now does It go along the
gloomy path to that region whence no one can return. Malediction
to you! cruel glooms of Orcus, that devour all fair things; such a
pretty sparrow! On your account my girl's eyes are now red and
swollen with weeping.
Catullus.
From the Poems of Catullus, ibid.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 41
Fed from my hand and was my heart's delight.
I wept its death and was most deep cast down.
Valerius did visit us that day
And swore by all the Gods he'd write a lay
That would preserve my sparrow for all time,
And send it fluttering down the centuries!
He thereon named to-day to read the lay
Said he would have it ready by that time.
So when he came to-day to read his song
His little lyric to my tiny bird
(Laughing and Blushing}.
My husband being out I hung on him,
Clasping my hands about his rosy neck.
As I did so a parchment did slip out
His toga's folds, and fell upon the floor.
Neither observed it. But when he began
To read his charming little funeral hymn
Upon my darling little feathered friend,
My eye did spy it unperceived by him.
My woman's native curiosity
Did pique me till all unperceived by him
I'd mastered it and all of its contents
Whilst he, oblivious to ought beside
Was testing the numbers of his funeral hymn
Drumming with his slim fingers, line by line,
To see the quantities were safe and sound.
So soon as I did grasp what it contained
A digest of the plot as I've told you
With list of the conspirators alleged
I burst upon him for such calumny !
He then explained the whole as I've told you,
And urged me secrecy upon my life,
Saying that Cicero had all intent
To push this serious matter to a head.
The last thing I must tell you is just this.
Valerius told me that before they left,
Who should appear in haste but Fulvia !
(Aurelia Starts Away from Clodia and Turns Pale
but Kemains Calm] .
What she did sav or whv she came's not known.
42 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
And now my sweet Aurelia, I must go.
(They Embrace}.
Aurel. : And may the Gods reward thee for this call.
(Exit Clodia).
Now by the Gods that babbler Curius
Hath told his leman everything he knows !
Would I had thrust a dagger in his heart
When last he crossed this threshold would I had!
O ! Gods what can I do to fend this woe
And drive this deadly danger from my house.
Minerva! Goddess! Who from front of Jove
(Kneeling before a Marble Bust o\f Minerva on a
Marble Pedestal, and Extending her Hands To
wards the Goddess in an Attitude of Passionate
/Supplication) .
Lept fully armed to rule this furious world
Guide thou my actions from this moment on,
Inspire my heart with words for Catiline,
Words that shall make his fiery nature heed,
Words that may make his reckless spirit safe.
(Catiline's Step heard Without).
(Starting and Rising Hastily}
Inspire me, Goddess, for I hear his tread.
Cat.: (Enter Catiline. He Embraces her and Gazes
Down Into Her Eyes with his Arms About her).
By all the Gods Aurelia. thou art fair!
The fairest thing e'er was of woman kind.
Aurel. : My Sergius, a dreadful piece of news
I have for thee thou Captain of my soul.
Cat. : (Starting Angrily and Involuntarily Dropping his
Hand upon his Sword Hilt, Concealed beneath
his Toga}
Now woe to him who causeth thee this woe!
Aurel. : That man is Curius he hath told all.
Cat. : (Springing Backwards Three Feet in a Bound, and
Glaring Savagely at her}
What! What sayest thou, Aurelia ! What is this.
Aurel.: In one brief word. Clodia hath just left
Give me thy pledge that nothing thou'lt reveal
Of what I am about to tell to thee.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIB 43
Cat.: I pledge the honour of the Sergii.
Aurel. : Tis well. Catullus recent called on Cicero,
There Vettius appeared re letter found
Which Curius had dropped addressed to thee.
Written by Curius to thee to find
What honours would be 'portioned to the band
When Fortune should reward your enterprise
With list of the conspirators enclosed
That opposite each name his gain might stand.
Nought else was there. And no particulars.
But something far more sinister than that
Doth show its villain head and that is this:
Ere he did leave dame Fulvia did arrive
Panting with haste to say that she had news
The Consul's ear must catch without delay.
My Sergius, you now have all the threads
Of this dark counterplot within thy hand.
Cat.: (After a Pause, Dr diving Near once more, Em
bracing Her, Looking Down at Her as he
Speaks]
My most wise darling! Where could Catiline
Find an adviser like to thee on earth !
Thy soul prophetic spotted Curius
As the one danger-point in my whole scheme,
And now that danger-point hath burst in flame.
Aurel.: (Slowly releasing herself)
My noble Sergius ! Danger moves thee not.
Thy lips are full as fiery as though
You played the lover for the foremost time,
And stood with me in some dim country lane
Far from this Hell this Rome and free from care.
Instead of which yon on Vesuvius stand.
And that great crater rocks beneath thy feet !
So help me Venus I do love thee so,
That if thou diest I would rather die
Than live alone without my Catiline!
Cat.: Aurelia. never say those words again.
Thy happiness doth tower in my mind,
As tower above the plain the Apennines.
If I should lose the cast of these great dice
44 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
In which I throw for th' Empire of the world
If I do lose my fame will be so great
That under it may rest thy widowhood
As rests a traveller 'neath a desert palm
When all Sahara blisters in the sun.
My fame will be so dread and dark a thing
Brave men will shrink fro' th' name of Catiline.
For never yet had gambler such a stake
As I do throw for in Imperial Rome!
And if I lose, my end will be so dread.
So many victims shall devour my sword
That round my corse a human hecatomb
Of Roman soldiers shall lie stark in death.
So cheer thee up my Rose of Beauty's bloom
So cheer thee up. and kiss thy Catiline.
(Aurelia who has Buried Her Head on his Breast
Since he Began to Speak of His Death, and has
been Sobbing Silently, Dries her Eyes and Rais
ing Them to his Says)
Aurel. : My hero thou hast steeled my very soul!
Till I am worthy to be called thy wife
Till History shall say, "There was a spouse
Worthy to be the bride of Catiline!"
Cat: If anything could make me despise death
More than I do by nature and by will.
Twould be the sight of thy heroic soul,
(Embraces her. Releasing her}.
Now darling to of set this counterplot.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 45
ACT III. SCENE I.
A Secluded Street Near The Senate House.
Time: Morning. An Hour Before Noon The Next Day.
(Enter Curius and Fulvia).
Ful. : May all the Gods preserve me from such speed!
Had I the heels of feathered Mercury,
Had I his feather-tipped and flying heels
Upon my honour I'd not fly so fast!
Good Curius : I prithee, pity take,
Upon a member of the weaker sex.
Cur. : ( Gloo-mily )
The weaker ! By the Gods the stronger sex.
Look what a thing thou'st made of me a dog,
A traitor and betrayer of my friend.
So help me. Mars. I've more than half a mind
To end thy life and then take my life, too.
Fu 1. : ( A I armed }
Sweet Quintus. for past love's sake, say not so.
You know I love thee if I do love gold.
My husband squandered all my dowry all!
In living riotous in wild debauch,
And when the Gods in anger at his deeds
Did take him off and rid me of his weight
What was poor I a widow lone to do,
But make a living by her lover's aid.
Thou knowest I was born to gentle ways,
Was gently nurtured am a noble's child :
Hence luxury became my vital breath
And sans my luxuries I'd choke to death.
Thou knowest I was ever true to thee.
Cur.: (Gloomily}
That I admit that thou wast ever true.
Ful. : Jove bless thee for that word, my Quintus, dear !
So thou dost see. my darling, that the Fates
Dread Lachesis, Chlotho and Atropos
Did shoot a woof betwixt my life- web's warp
That as ye lawyers say spelled "nolle pros."
46 THE HAZARD OF THE DIB
Cur.: Myself I do despise. And I shall fly
From thee and Rome, and home, and every man,
And in a spot where no man shall me know
Spend in seclusion the balance of life's span.
Ful. : (Alarmed}
Thou'dst leave me sole in this cold world alone!
Cur.: The crafty Cicero will pension thee
As much you've said he did insinuate.
And you have friends i' th' Senate relatives,
Nobles, who'd shelter thee most willingly
I do not say will glut thy cormorant's greed
For jewels, satins, silks and luxuries
As I have done. Now Fulvia do I go,
My traveling carriage waits and I depart.
Ful.: (Bursting into tears}
Great Juno, save me! Is it thus we part!
Cur.: (Coldly and sadly}
Fulvia, in me you see a man that's dead
Sans hope of resurrection in this world.
My manhood I did slay unwittingly
When I divulged the plot thanks to thy wiles ;
Who played upon my passions of a man
As an attractive woman only can
Till -first I lost my head and then my soul,
Till I lost this world and all hope o' th' next.
Now nothing's left but exile or self-death
But suicide which counter to my times
Counter to Rome's traditions I dislike.
Ful.: (Sadly}-
Quintus, forgive me, ere we part for aye,
Let me one kiss implant on thy cold brow
And tell me as I do so you forgive.
Cur.: (Rousing himself from the Apathy Which has
been Steadily Increasing During the Dialogue}
Willingly, my Fulvia, most willingly.
(They Embrace. Her Presence Overcoming his
Lethargy So that he Sloirly Takes Tier in His
Arms and Kisses Her on the Lips Saying}
May all the Gods protect thee my poor girl.
(They Separate in Silence and Sadness Each Go-
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
ing Slowly Different Ways and With Bowed
Heads]
(Exeunt).
(Enter Catiline Accompanied by the Entire Band
of Conspirators Except Curius, Followed by Clo-
dius At the Head of his Gladiators).
Cat.: (Raising his hand]
Here now we halt and hold our council brief.
(The Column Comes to a Stand. Turning to Clod-
ius)
Divide thy band, bold Clodius, in two.
Command one portion and the other give
Unto the most deep trusted of thy men.
Then take position at each head 6' th' street
And let none enter it on pain of death.
Ciod. : Tis well, my Catiline. Bold Spartacus!
(Calling a Powerful and Battle- Scarred Veteran
Gladiator to him)
Divide the band and take half to thyself
The other I take and this street we'll hold
Against all citizens as trespassers
Upon the ground defended by our swords.
Spart. : Right gladly, chief, thy bidding will I do.
Tis many a day since my swcrd hath drunk blood.
I only hope that Milo and his men
May have the luck to turn their heads this way
Clod. : By all the Gods I echo that same wish!
What would I not give up to have that fight
With crafty Milo who eludeth me
Caes. : ( L aughing )
Clodius whispered 'tis that Cicero
Hath Milo and his men so close mewed up
Around his person as his body-guard
That they are almost wild for exercise!
That like Numidian lions they do roar
And with their thunders make the welkin ring!
Clou. : Would I could ring my chimes upon his sconce
And wipe the score out that between us is.
Cat: Thou'rt likely, Clodius, to have thy wish.
For by a spy I keep near Cicero
48 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Word's come to me that Milo and his band
Will be deep hidden in the Senate house
Waiting a blast to be by bugle blown
By one of ? s henchmen in the Senate hid
When Cicero doth think the proper time
To apprehend me and my friends hath come.
'(The Conspirators Start in Surprise But Without
the Slightest Sign of Fear, and Draw Closer and
in a Circle Around Catiline, who Smiles in Tri
umph on Seeing that his Friends Draw Closer to
him Rather Than Away from him At the New*
of this New and Startling Danger) .
Caes. : (Smiling)
By Mars the sport bids fair to be most brisk.
Cat.: It doth bold Caesar and with a vengeance, too.
Clod. : Now by the Gods thy most, most happy news
Jumps to my brain like rich Falernian !
Spnrt. : By Mars, my chief ', but look upon thy men
Thou'lt see the wine hath sprung from thee to them!
(A Stir Followed By a Low Deep Murmur of Ap
proval is Noticeable Among the Gladiators, mani/
of whom Involuntarily Drop their Hands on
their Sword Hilts Some Even Half Drawing
their Swords. Soon the Murmur Rises to a Roar
and the Men Draw their Swords and Shout
Raising the Following Battle-Chant Or Hymn
To Mars)-
Glad.: A Clodius! A Clodius! A Clodius!
Mars is our Master to Mars sole we bow
Mars is our God the only God we know.
Lead us to battle and we^ll show thee hoir
Our swords do mete out havoc and "fierce woe!
Cat.: Bravo! Brave war dogs! Bravo! Dogs of war
Who's backed by thee with Fortune will go far.
(Turning to Clodius)
Withdraw thy men. time presses, Clodius.
Pass through the lines one who'll my signet show.
Clod. : Tis well. T go.
(The Two Bands March off in Opposite Directions.
Catiline's Face is Pale as Death and his Brows
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 49
are Knit in a Characteristic Frown of the Think
er and Man- of -Action When The Two Are
Rarely Combined Which Was His Through
Life And Clung To Him In Death Being Im
planted On his Brow Upon the Occasion Of His
Taking Of}.
Cat.: My faithful friends the time hath come to part.
Caes.: How "part" great Catiline the die not thrown!
Cat. : Thou sayest well, bold Caesar, 'tis not thrown.
But from our dread dice-box fall the dice of Death
Now that a traitor hath divulged our plans.
I briefly have already short made known
The facts and cause of Curius' treachery.
Ceth. : I had attacked him but I could not find
Or hide or hair or any trace of him.
Cat.: A spy I've had upon him since his crime
Informs me he will instantly leave Rome.
Ceth. : Let us arrest him and cut off his head.
Cat.: I'd thought of that until I found that he
Was prey to a most deadly melancholy
Which preys upon his heart and tortures him,
As vultures on God-like Prometheus once
In the olden day at Jove's command did prey
Tearing his liver and devouring same
Because from Heav'n he brought down fire to man,
And from a savage made him civilized.
So Curius to th' vultures of the Gods
Th' avenging Deities the Erinyes
The Furies fell the fierce Eumenides
Tisiphone, Alecto, Megaera
And the three Fates this traitor I consign.
Sul. : And I acclaim thou dost sumpremely well.
The gens Cornelian hath ever been
The servitors of Fate trusting therein.
Lent. : My kinsman's words are sound as they are true.
I highly do commend thee, Catiline.
Caes.: My chief. I praise thy high philosophy.
Tho' I do stand for th' office of Chief Priest
For Pontifex Maximus stand as candidate
50 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Religion weighs not overmuch with me.
To my mind all the world is ruled by Chance.
So to my mind divine Philosophy
Doth take religion's place as comforter.
I praise thy stoical indifference
Unto this action base of Curius.
Cat. : There you mistake me, Caesar, by my soul!
'Tis not indifference that prompts to this
For Curius I'd slay with mine own hand
If tracking him could bring me to his den
Did I not know that he doth suffer Hell.
Ceth. : If that be so, I'll say I'm satisfied.
Cras. : If that be so or not, I do now move
That we take instant steps to clear the air
Of foul the dangers hovering overhead.
Lent. : No point of order yet was ever made
Since order e'er was known to mortal man
Of more precise and perfect excellence
Than this same point friend Crassus just now made.
Cat.: (Smiling Sarcastically, looking At Crassus and
Lentulus).
My worthy friends, fear not thy sacred skins
Run slightest risk from this same moment on.
Cras ' 1
T " K How's that! '(Pricking up their Ears Eagerly}.
Cras.: I yearn thy point, great Catiline, to catch.
Cat.: (Smiling broadly]
The point is simply this. That from now on
The brunt o ? th' danger's borne by three men sole,
(Crassus and Lentulus Start with Pleased Surprise.
Caesar Starts Angrily and Looking at Cati
line Exclaims)
Caes. : Upon my life that deep amazeth me!
Cat.: I thought as much, bold Caesar. Hear me out.
The whole complexion of the plot is changed
Now that the other side doth know our hand.
The plot was triune ere this thing occurred,
The Senate, this teeming City and the field
The field where Manlius and his legions be.
The first two now eliminate do stand.
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE fcl
One only now remains and that's the field.
No act of violence doth now impend
So far as our side is concerned at least
Within the confines of this city's walls.
Heading my legions I shall march on Rome.
But one thing still remains. Face Cicero,
Who in the Senate will this very day
Attack me as the head of this deep plot.
I shall reply and scorn his paltry proofs
The word of Vettius that sneaking cur
And possibly a letter from the man
The Fates have ta'en in hand from Curius
To me re honours, giving all your names
Of which you know but stating nothing strictly
Treasonable the wording is too vague.
Nothing from Curius bears actual weight
Since he hath fled and therefore doth confess
Himself afraid to face me with his words.
Now nought of danger can come from said proofs
They're far too slight and vague-chimerical.
The only harm they do is balk our plot
And put the Senators upon their guard.
And therefore force us to now take the field.
But if ought goes amiss we should straight have
Pleaders at court friends 'mongst the Senators,
And none so high among the Senate stand
As Caesar, Lentulus and Crassus here.
(All Bow Assent But Caesar, who Still Shows
High Dissatisfaction at the Programme}.
Now Caesar is the youngest of us here;
I have no sons and none expect to have,
Therefore to me bold Caesar shall be heir
And wear the diadem which ye me gave.
Only meantime it must not e'er appear
That Caesar's to succeed me in this thing
Until on victory I the garland wear,
And Eome doth openly applaud me King.
Till then our paths full separate should be
As tho' in common nothing we did have.
52 TUB HAZARD OF THE DIE
So if the chance should come he may save me,
And if not that, our common cause may save.
Fro" 1 th" 1 wreck of the Republic I aspire
To raise the fabric grand of Rome's Empire!
Ceth: \
Sul. : v (With a joyous shout)
Lent. : J
Hail, Caesar, heir to Catiline, our King!
Hail Caesar. Imperator ! Emperor !
Caes. : (Amazed and the Prey to Emotion, Shrinks Back
ward. Swiftly he Recovers Himself and Kneels
Before Catiline, Placing Catiline's Hand Upon
His Caesar's Head, Whereupon a Fresh Shout
Breaks out. Still Kneeling
Great Catiline, to thy will do I bow.
Cat.: Rise. Caesar, heir to my Imperial hope.
(Aside to Caesar]
Be on thy guard 'gainst Crassus see he mopes.
(Enter a Venerable Old Man, of Respectable Ap
pearance, and Being Dressed As Though on a
Journey and Bearing the Staff of a Traveller.
He Approaches the Group Slowly and With Dig
nity, Saluting Them he Says)
Sooth.: Which is Lucius Sergius Catiline?
His signet I possess, and here it is:
(Showing a Signet Ring).
Received by me in my Etruscan home
By messenger bidding me to straightway come
And tell the fortune of Catiline at Rome.
Cat.: Thou art the Etruscan Soothsayer. I see,
And gladly do I welcome thee to Rome.
Speak freely now my fortune 'fore these friends.
Sooth.: First let me draw a circle on the ground
My soul to buttress from all worldly things.
(Draws a Circle On the Ground With his Staff).
I enter now the realm of Destiny,
(Entering the Circle).
And by my humble lips will speak the Fates
Lachesis, and Clotho, Atropos the Three
If to their sacred minds it seemeth well
THE HAZARD OF THE DIB 53
The future at this time t' reveal to me
They who all things know in Earth, in Heaven, in
Hell.
(After a Brief Pause During Which He stands in
an Erect but Easy Attitude, his Grossed Hands
Resting on the Top of his Staff)
I feel the current coursing thro' my blood;
/ feel the dread that precedes Atropos,
Therefore the Fates I find in friendly mood;
Hence waves of deep emotion my soul toss.
/ now begin the Fate of Catiline.
Ha! What is this I feel! The pang of death?
To feel 'tis that I sadly must incline
For hardly do I draw my struggling breath.
(Catiline Starts Slightly and Then Smiles Grimly.
The Others Regard Him with Sympathetic In
terest Except Crassus, Who Appears Sullen and
Lost in Thought. The Soothsayer continues)
The shock of battle shortly doth impend
When blood will flow like water in the Spring
But vast beginnings start from this sad end,
A mighty Empire shortly shall up-spring.
(Catiline and Caesar start Violently; Catiline
Raises His Head, Smiling Proudly. The Sooth
sayer Pauses, Then Goes On)
No more the Fates will give, no word will come
Wait as I may, no answer is vouchsafed.
So now I turn towards my Etruscan home.
Trusting at my scant words thou art not chafed.
Hail Catiline the F,ather of a State
Whose power's vast! Whose sunsetting is late.
Ceth. : \
Caes. : (All except Catiline and Crassus Shout in Uni-
Lent. : . i son).
Sol:
Hail! Catiline, our King and Emperor!
The Soothsayers'' words true are to the core.
Cat. : My valiant friends, I thank thee from the heart.
The time is up ! Or live or die we start.
'(Handing the Soothsayer a Heavy Purse of Gold
54 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
and Taking the Signet Ring in Exchange, Say-
Take this, my friend, you've performed well thy part
And proved a master of thy most dread Art.
My death you've presaged, and to death I go,
But by the Gods I'm joyous sans all care
Happy as bridegroom full as free from woe
But of my jocund sword let foe beware
For from my blood, an Empire vast will spring
Ruling the world o'ershadowing the earth
And dying thus, thus Death doth crown me King.
So of Imperial honour there's no dearth.
I dedicate myself to th' Infernal Gods
(Smiling grimly}.
That in the coming fight should give me odds.
My Cethegus my right hand in this thing,
My fiery Cethegus bring up the men;
(Exit Cethegus).
Sulla, thou art my left as tried as true.
(Sulla Bows Proudly. Upon the Approach of the
Gladiators Catiline says)
Bold Clodius hold in reserve thy band
Hard by the Senate House in sound of blast
From bugle 'neath my toga, 'thwart my back.
Three blasts upon that bugle blown will bring
Thee and thy comrades to my aid pell mell!
Clod. : It will, my lord. And swift as tiger's spring.
Cat.: (Smiling Proudly)
'Tis well. And now one last word ere we go.
Caesar and Lentulus and Crassus, too,
Must hold yourselves aloof from ought that comes.
To men of brains no further need of talk.
(All Three Boic Assent. Caesar Reluctantly).
Your hands, all three our compact stern to bind
(Caesar and Lentulus >Clasp His Hand Warmly.
Crassus Coldly).
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 55
ACT III. SCENE II.
The Senate House.
(Caesar, accompanied by Lentulus and Crassus, enters the
Senate House by one door; while Catiline, accompanied by
Cethegus and Sulla, enters by another. The Gladiators under
the command of Clodius and Spartacus remain at the extreme
end of the street in which the council is held, hidden from
view in the shrubbery of a garden. The street-head is within
a stone's throw of the Senate House. The Senate has been in
session for some time when the Conspirators enter, and Cicero
is just concluding an attack upon Catiline with the following
words: "Conscript Fathers, I have said enough to show every
Senator that the author of this colossal and utterly unheard
of conspiracy both as regards its scope and the daring neces
sary to put it into execution having proved himself accord
ing to my eloquent words before you all just now a villain
and criminal of the worst and most hardened type is worthy
of nothing short of death. I therefore hereby cast my vote for
his execution." Catiline reaches his seat during the lull that
follows these words. Having done so he rises and says he
desires to say a few words in answer to the heavy charge just
lodged against a Roman Senator. He then goes on to attack
the evidence adduced by Cicero, and winds up with the fol
lowing remark: "It ill becomes a 'new man' like Cicero a
man without any claim to birth or lineage to attack one of
the proudest names in Rome." He then resumes his seat.
Whereupon Caesar rises and says that death is too severe a
punishment in the premises, and that confiscation of property
and imprisonment in some provincial town should suffice.
Lentulus follows to the same effect. Crassus holds his peace
and sits sullenly in his chair, absorbed in thought. Presently
a shout is heard, and Milo, at the head of his Gladiators,
enters and makes straight for Catiline. At once Catiline,
Cethegus and Sulla who sit on his right and left with a
wave of their arms, discard their togas and appear in
complete armour, with swords at their sides. A cry of sur
prise and alarm is immediately thereupon raised by the Sen
ate, headed by Cicero. Meantime Milo and his men begin
56 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
circling about the three Conspirators. Caesar at this mo
ment darts from his seat and rushing past the intervening
Senators, throws himself in front of Catiline and between him
and Milo, shouting out: "Back Milo, or thy life shall forfeit
be." Catiline, seizing the moment of respite this diversion
gave him, raises the bugle suspended on a gold chain over
'his shoulder and under his arm to his lips and blows three
terrific blasts in quick succession. Instantly there is an an
swering deep-throated yell from Clodius' band. At sound of
this, Milo instantly turns and gives a few orders, in a low
tone to his men, who face about and in the direction of the
shout, and form in close order. Hardly have they done so
before Clodius appears at the double-quick, sword in hand
and shield on arm, charging into the Senate Chamber with
Spartacus at his elbow, followed by his infuriated band of
Gladiators. At sight of them Milo's band raises a yell of
rage and defiance which shakes the Senate House, which is
followed by one fully as vindictive upon the part of Clodius'
band. Hardly has this yell died away when Catiline raises
a shout of such blood-curdling ferocity and hist for blood,
that every face in the Senate is turned upon him. Hardly
have the sounds ceased to rush from his lips before following
them he followed closely by Cethegus and Sulla sword in
hand dashes into the thick of Milo ? s band taking them in
the rear. Two hardy gladiators fall dead in their tracks at
the first two strokes of his sword. The head of a third falls
from his shoulders and bounds onto the marble floor of the
Senate at the third stroke of Catiline's eager sword. Mean
time Cethegus has killed his man with a skillfully aimed
thrust, and Sulla has lopped off close at the shoulder the
right arm the sword arm of his opponent. The blood curd
ling yells, of the now fiercely fighting, and closely joined, bands
of Gladiators, are something terrible to hear. The fortunes
of war are steadily veering toward Catiline and Clodius, who
have Milo's band between them, when a shrill bugle blast
is heard, and a whole Cohort of Roman soldiers which had
been secretly summoned to the City by Cicero overnight en
ters and advances at the charge upon the rear of Clodius and
his men. There is no way of escape possible. Clodius
shouts: "Let each stout Gladiator see that two Roman sol-
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE 57
diers as guard of honour go; to bear him company across the
Styx!" A terrific yell from the still numerous and vigorous
band of Clodius follows, over which the mastiff-like roar of
Spartacus can be readily distinguished. Thereupon Cati
line raises his clarion voice once more shouting: "The doom
of the Republic now doth sound! My blood-dripped sword-
strokes beating out her knell!" With these words his sword
whirls like a Catherine wheel, Gladiators' arms and heads
skipping off its edge like apples from a butcher's knife. Sud
denly his foot slips in a pool of blood of his own shedding.
Instantly a gigantic Gladiator from the forests of Germany,
his tow-colored hair dripping with blood from, a glancing
stroke of Catiline's sword which had carried away his left
scalp and left ear, darts upon him and pierces his neck. It
is the Teuton's last act on earth, for Cethegus, springing
upon him, severs his head from his body with the words,
"Die, thou Barbarian beast, for this foul act !" But the soldiers
have by now surrounded Clodius and his men. The Prefectf
is fighting hand to hand with Clodius, who is pushing
him hard, when a Legionary, slipping under Clodius' guard as
he was thus engaged, pierces his arm-pit. Before he can
withdraw his sword Spartacus, with the yell of a de
mon, springs upon him, and drives his sword up to the hilt
between his teeth, who in turn is pierced by the Prefect's
swift turning sword. All fall with wounds in front,
and each accounts for at least two of the Legionaries. Milo's
band of whom only half a dozen including Milo practi
cally hors de combat from wounds remain, are all dan
gerously wounded, but are able to make front against Sulla
and Cethegus, who fight on, utterly undismayed at the cer
tain death hanging over them, as well as utterly oblivious to
theii now rapidly bleeding and numerous wounds. Suddenly
Cethegus cries: "Sulla, I die; stand o'er me till I pass." At
these words Sulla throws the protection of his shieldft over
him, whirling his sword in every direction and thus holding
the approaching six wounded gladiators at bay. No sooner
does Caesar see this than he leaps over the corpses that
tThe officer commanding the Cohort.
ttHe as well as Catiline and Cethegus having immediately mas
tered the shields of the first foes slain.
58 THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
surround Catiline and, seizing sword and shield from
Catiline's hand, shouts to the six Gladiators: "Back on your
lives, I kill the first man moves!" The Prefect brings
his frightfully mauled Cohort to "attention" ; the six wounded
Gladiators wipe their bloody brows on the backs of their gory
hands, and all is, for a moment, silent in the Senate House.
Suddenly Cethegus crawls towards Catiline. On reaching
him he finds to his surprise he is still breathing. Catiline,
at his last gasp, opens his fierce eyes on Cethegus and mur
muring, "Aurelia," expires. Whereupon the heroic Cethegus
himself in the agonies of death murmurs in his death-cold
ear Caesar lowering his ear to catch the message of a dying
man to a dead one:
"Peace, mighty spirit, Caesar 11 be thine heir
And carry out thy purpose found a throne/
Upon the ruins of this rotten State."
(Dies).
Caes. : (Reverently closing the eyes of Cethegus and Cati
line)
Yes, fiery spirit. Rest.
(The End).
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE S9
EPILOGUE
To
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE.
Chorus loquitwr.
Fair reader, this grim play scarce but begins
A chain of plays that equals Shakspeare's length.
In saying this think not the Chorus sins
We know our productivity and strength.
Plays in blank verse wherein all History
From most remotest times to Shakspeare's day
Before which date History's mystery
After which date there's scarcely ought to say
Plays in blank verse wherein the action dread
Of mighty men that held the world in awe
Shall by the Muse in varied hues be spread
With loves of women of beauty past all flaw!
Prove now the tests we in the rear accord
See spear of Shakspeare and fierce Marlowe's sword, f
tAn analysis of their fame: by Professor George Saintsbury, and
the late John Addington Symonds, respectively.
THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO
AND
THE MUSES
SHAKESPEARE AND BLANK VERSE.
"A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY"t
by
GEORGE SAINTSBUBY,
Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature
At the University of Edinburgh.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
"In the foregoing survey of Shakespeare's plays I have given some
general idea of the way in which the operation of the various agencies
shows itself, with (as far as possible) the order of their succession.
Really, though chronological illustration is interesting and corrobora
tive, it is in a way superfluous, because we can see without it how
the employment of them would grow on the hands of such an artist.
Of deliberate experimenting with any or all of them there would
probably not be very much ; the man who wrote 'Rebellion lay in his
way, and he found it,' has dispensed us from any such vain imagina
tion. These things lay in his way ; and he found them, and made the
most of them. That 'most' also has been illustrated freely. But it
is perhaps desirable to give it an account of something the same kind
as that which has been given to the style which was its matrix and
crude form. The completed Shakespearian blank verse, as we see it
maturing in the later early, and middle plays, and matured in the four
great tragedies and in Antony and, Cleopatra, preserves the iambic
decasyllabic as norm inviolably ; never instals any other, and makes
everything that it admits hold of that. But the strict minimum is
infinitely varied, and, even when kept, is entirely stripped of its
monotonous and stable character, and made to understand that it must
be Protean in itself, and ready to enter into infinite combinations
with its neighbors. The great agency in this, beyond all doubt, is
the manipulation of the pause. Not that Shakespeare is, as some have
vainly thought, to be scanned by 'staves' staves 'knapped,' as the
good old Biblical word has it, almost as bluntly as the old alliterative
verses themselves. The futility of this notion is shown, in a way
tVol. II, pp. 48-56 and p. 65.
62
which makes it wonderful that it should ever have been entertained
by anybody, in the fact that a very large proportion of Shakespeare's
lines have no real pause at all, are 'staves' of themselves, and hardly
even that, so unbroken is the rhythmical current of the adjacent lines
from and into them. This doing away with the middle and end
pause alike is at least as important as the variation of the middle,
and, in fact, is but an extension of it.
The normal blank-verse line of the origins, as Shakespeare took
it over from Surrey, Sackville, and even the Wits, was a strict
'decasyllabon' of five iambics, with a caesura somewhat carefully ob
served about the middle, and self-inclosed in a manner not easy to
make plain by individual examples, or by any process of overt analysis,
but sensible to any ear of the slightest delicacy when a few specimens
have been read. It sometimes admitted a sort of redundance or 'weak
ending,' not merely in words which were really then monosyllables,
like 'heaven,' but in those which were trochaic-tipped with a very
short final syllable, like 'glory.' This license, however, did not in the
least affect its general structure. It by no means always concluded
with even a comma (though it mostly did so) ; but the grammatical
running on did not in the least interfere with the metrical snapping
off. It tolerated pretty strong stops in the middle of the line, but
these also (so much stronger was the obsession of line-integrity) did
not interfere with the sunk ditch of the line-end. Thus, even when,
as in the great passages of Peele and Marlowe, the unity of thought
and imagination made the paragraph quite poetically distinct, this
paragraph was never a real verse-period of the larger kind ; there was
no composition in the purely rhythmical and metrical conception of
the verse. To put the thing extremely-extravagantly, some would say
the delivery of this paragraph to a person who did not understand
the language would have conveyed to him the idea of some dozen or
sixteen verses, individually perhaps melodious, but not regimented, not
worked into any kind of symphony. This sort of blank verse we find
in all the writers named above exclusively, with the exceptions (and
others, of course), also noted above, in Marlowe and his mates, when
the rough strife of poetry bursts its way through the iron gates of
metre. We find it also in Titus Andronicus, in the Comedy of Errors,
in Love's Labour Lost in the early rehandled 'Histories,' and elsewhere
in Shakespeare himself.
But, as partly noted, there are certain features even in this rigid
and early model which are at war with the self-contained single line
and the merely cumulative batch of lines. They may be kept under
as long as the poet's chief aim is to secure his decasyllabon, to keep
it from doggerel on the one hand, and, on the other, to make it
independent of the warning bell of rhyme at the end. But when prac
tice, in himself to speak and in his readers to hear, has made the
blank decasyllabic effect familiar when it need not be strictly uniform
in order to obtain recognition these features assert themselves. The
first of these probably, and the most insidious, but also the most revo-
63
lutionary, is the redundant syllable. It is of an ancient house ; we
had ourselves fif teeners before we had fourteeners, and in all prosodies
from Greek downwards there has been a tendency to regard the last
place in a line as a place of license and liberty. It is curiously unas
suming; in words (to keep the same examples) not merely like 'heaven,'
but like 'glory', it is a sort of 'breath' only, something that you do not
count, but just smuggle in with its companion. Yet, as we shall see
presently, it is a very Trojan Horse in reality. Then there is a stop,
full or other, in the middle of the line. This also is innocent-seeming.
What is it but a mere grammatical emphasising of the caesura, itself,
recognized of Gascoigne and all good people long before the first of
the Wits had trodden or supplied the stage? Next probably but it
need hardly be said that I stand not upon the order comes the inter
mixture of rhyme, a thing which the greatest blank verse will frown
upon, but which is so likely as a relapse, so convenient as a 'cue-tip,'
so pleasant to the as yet unaccustomed ear of the groundlings ; and
which, be it remembered, almost necessitates a sort of junction between
two lines, though it may favour the closing of the couplets. All these
things are apparently compatible certainly found with the stiffest
of the drumming decasyllabons, yet secret solvents of their stiffness.
Other things, still not ostensibly revolutionary, next suggest them
selves. We have seen in the last volume, that mediaeval poets, whether
through inexpertness or by experiment, and fifteenth-century poets
through clumsiness, largely curtailed or extended the normal length of
the line; that there are Alexandrines even in Chaucer, while a point
to which the Renaissance was likely to pay more attention there are
undoubtedly incomplete lines in Virgil. Why not avail oneself of these
licenses? Even Marlowe had done so now and then. Why not? But
if you do. your sacred integer of ten syllables is rudely touched. Once
more, again, you have recognized, and had formally recognized for
you, the duty of making a sort of fold or crease in each verse at the
fourth, fifth, or neighboring syllable. It is inconvenient, as well as
monotonous always to do it at the same place; yet, when you begin
to vary that place, is not the structure of the line troubled, though
beneficently so? And is there not somehow a kind of rhythmic con
spiracy in the successive lines where you vary it? Then, too, there
comes the power of words. Important or beautiful words, adjusted,
spaced, accumulated, give brilliancy, splendour, weight to the line. But
the line is so short. Why cut the necklace into lengths? Why not
make the stars constellations? And, lastly, there is the trisyllabic foot.
I trust I may repeat (after the not of course unanimous but fairly
general acknowledgment of critics, that the preceding volume has
made something of a case for it) that the trisyllabic foot is ubiquitous
in English verse from 1200 to 1500, and that nothing but the reaction
from the anarchy of doggerel brought about later, the partial and only
partial reprobation thereof. But there is no need to have recourse to
this, though from the historical point of view it cannot be omitted. In
blank verse, and especially in dramatic blank verse when once the
64
practitioner has got rid of his fear of losing the guide-rope, if he step
out of the strict iamb it must, in English appear. It does appear;
and with it disappears the mere rub-a-dub of the decasyllabon.
THE PAUSE.
In arranging the pause at any syllable from first to ninth, and at
no syllable at all, not even tenth he is helped infinitely by that dis
tribution of the weight of words, rather after the fashion of quick
silver in a reed than of leaden bracelets fastened at intervals around
a stick, which has been more than once referred to. Nobody has ap
proached Shakespeare Tennyson has perhaps coine nearest, for Mil
ton's verse is too uniformly stately for comparison in this mastery of
poetical conjuring with word and line, a mastery of which he had
more than a glimpse as early as Romeo and Juliet, and of which he
gave the final and perfect display in The Tempest. The lines rise, fall,
sweep, wave, dart straight forward, are arrested in mid-air, insinuate
themselves in serpentine fashion as if in sword play with an invisible
adversary.
But these effects of weight, lightness, pungency, arresting power,
and so forth, are at least partly caused are certainly assisted im
mensely by two other things, the redundant ending and the trisyllabic
foot. The first chiefly gives variety; the second variety and flexibility
as nothing else could do; while variety again is lent by the shortened
fragment verses and the elongated Alexandrines and fourteeners, or
by verses with several trisyllabic feet in them. How these various
devices may be made to subserve particular effects of meaning, shades
of passion, and the like, need not be much dwelt on. This is a form
of prosodic study which has always commended itself to the multitude
as much as, perhaps almost more than, it should. But as to the way
in which the use of the trisyllabic foot grew, I have a theory which
is doubtless not new, but about which I have not seen much written.
THE TRISYLLABIC FOOT AND ITS REVIVAL,
It has been observed before, that, according to the principles of
this book, 'extra-metrical' syllables, anywhere but at tne end or middle
of the verse, are a confession, as the case may be, of impotence on
the part of the poet if they exist, of the critic, if they are supposed
to exist. And no great admiration has been hinted of the extra -metrical
syllable at the middle in any case. I believe, however, that at this
critical moment in the history of blank verse and, through the influence
of this on rhyme, in the history of English poetry generally, the mis
take or laches of indulging in this internal excrescence brought about
a great good. A large, a very large number of lines could be pointed
out where such a syllable is almost undoubtedly intended by the poet
(supposing he thought about it at all) as a license of the kind, and
not to be carried on to the other half of the line. As sucn, the effect
is almost always ugly; it can only be admired by those persons (with
whom the present writer most heartily differs, though he has been
65
confused with them) who think that an irregularity must be an im
provement, that a mole must be a beauty, that discord must be har
monious. But such an ear as Shakespeare's could not fail to perceive
that this ugliness could be turned into a beauty by simply effecting
the connection, and fusing the derelict syllable with the following
iamb to make an harmonious anapaest. And this, I have myself
not the slightest doubt, was, in his and other cases, the actual genesis
(whether consciously and deliberately carried out does not, once more,
in the least matter) of the revived trisyllabic foot which Gascoigne
has bewailed as dead. And so the discord was made harmonious ; the
mole did become a beauty ; and the irregularity was the foundation
of the larger and nobler Rule. The process, in fact, is one of the
best examples of that operation of growth and life to which the people
who say that the ballad writers never thought about contending for
the liberty of this very trisyllable foot itself, seem insensible. I do
not know whether the wind thinks about blowing or the flower about
growing, but I know that they blow and grow.
THE REDUNDANT SYLLABLE.
The use at the end of the syllable, redundant or extra-metrical
if we must have the word, though to me extra-metre is no metre
has a different history. At the middle it is very rarely a beauty ;
perhaps never, unless it can be 'carried over' as just described. At the
end it is often beautiful ; and, whether beauty or not, is almost inevi
table now and then, and most useful constantly. Further, it is a
most powerful and important instrument of variation a natural link
or remedy against line-isolation far-descended as has been said, and
of other excellent differences. But it is something of a Delilah who
was herself apparently of a good Philistine family, and is known to
have had exceptional attractions as a person. Indeed, the parable
or parallel works out with remarkable exactness ; for it is a very con
siderable time before Delilah takes away Samson's strength, and the
means whereby she does so are mysterious. It can hardly be said
(though one may feel a vague sense of danger) that in Shakespeare's
own probably latest plays, where he indulges himself with the re
dundant line, Samson is anything but Samson still. There are pas
sages on passages in Beaumont and Fletcher themselves notably that
magnificent piece in The False One, which is one of the purplest
patches in the coat of Elizabethan drama wnere the hendecasyllable
has it nearly all its own way, with no harm and much good. But
Delilah is still Delilah; and she is too much for Samson the verse if
not the verse-smith at last.
ENJAMBMENT.
N
She takes indeed two forms : for much the same as has been said
of the redundant syllable may be said of enjambment or overlapping.
This, indeed, is rather the special Delilah of the couplet than of blank
verse, but each kind has to be very wary when it visits the vale of
66
Sorek in this manner also. Opportunity of delight and occasion for
display of power as it is to the verse that keeps itself strong and
wide awake, overlapping is a place of slipping, and may be a pit
of destruction, to the loose-girt and careless versifier. And it has, in
common with redundancy and with the use of trisyllabic feet, the
special danger that it is perfectly easy to do badly. Anybody as soon
as these devices are once recognised, can practice them after a fashion,
and everybody proceeds to do so. Whence come things for tears.
THE MORPHOLOGY AND BIOLOGY OF BLANK VEBSE.
But the offence is his by whom the offence cometh ; and Shakes
peare in his complete work showed that there was no necessity of
offence at all, while there was the possibility (and in his case the
accomplishment) of infinite beauty. Foolish things have, no doubt,
been said in fact they are not unfrequently said at the present mo
ment as to the superiority of blank verse to rhyme; and we shall
have to deal with them, and with those from Milton downwards who
have been and are guilty of them, as they occur. At present it is
sufficient to point out, first, that the misvaluation is merely a case
of the common inability to like two good things without putting them
into unjust balances and weighing them against each other with un
stamped weights. Secondly, that, for this purpose and that, blank
verse is not superior to rhyme but demonstrably inferior. It will not
do at least it has not done for strict lyric, as the moderate success
even of Campion or Collins, and the failure of almost everybody else,
have well shown. It is a great question whether it is not a very
dangerous medium even for long narrative poems. But for short narra
tives; for short descriptive, reflective, didactic, and other pieces of
various kinds ; and for every kind of drama, or even partially dramatic
matter, it is, in English, the predestined medium, hammered out at
first by a full generation and more of partly unsuccessful, never more
than partly successful, pioneers and journeymen, chipped into per
fect form by the master Shakespeare, in prooably not half a genera
tion longer. Its extraordinary and unique success in English for
German blank verse, good as it can be, is far inferior, especially in
variety and music; and I know no thirdsman that deserves to rank
is probably due to the fact that our language, though perhaps singly
accented, is not singly emphasized ; that it provides a large number
of sufficient resting-places for the voice, but does not require (or,
except as an exception, allow) long dwelling on any. The way in
which not merely the French but almost all continental nations hurry
over half-a-dozen or a dozen syllables, and then plunge on the sue
ceeding one with a volley of exploding and shrapnel-like emphasis,
utterly ruins blank verse, whether as articulately delivered, or as
read with) that inarticulate but exactly proportioned following of
actual delivery which is necessary for prosodic appreciation. It is one
of the worst faults of the stress or accent or beat-system, as op
posed to the foot, that it vulgarises and impoverishes this great metre,
67
where the unstressed syllables are not less important than the stressed,
It is essential to blank verse that no part of it should be killed, and
none brought into convulsive and galvanic activity ; otherwise the
delicate and complicated or simple ana yet substantial melody is
jarred and jangled out of all tune and time. Yet what infinite variety
of time and tune can be got out of it not by 'getting up stairs' on
the instrument, and flinging oneself down again, but by evoking the
infinite variety of its tones Shakespeare, Milton, Thomson, Shelley,
Tennyson, Browning, have shown us. But the greatest of these, and
the first, and the master of all the rest in even the details and pe
culiarities in which each is himself a master, is Shakespeare. Pp, 59-
61.
THE SONNETS.
Very different is it with the Sonnets. We are, of course, free
here from the self-sought obsessions in respect of subject or object
which beset so many students of the marvelous compositions. It is
enough for us that they exist, and that Mere's references show that
at any rate some of them existed at a pretty early period of Shakes
peare's career, while the general not 01 course quite universal
equality of the model makes it very unnecessary to disturb ourselves
with the futile inquiry whether any, and if so which, of them were
not or might not have been handed about among his private friends
before 1598. Here the poet has a medium which is absolutely con
genial to him, and with which, as with blank verse, he can do any
thing he likes. With his usual sagacity he chooses the English form,
and prefers its extremest variety that of the three quatrains and
couplet, without any interlacing rhyme. Nevertheless he gives the full
sonnet effect not merely by the distribution (which he does not
always observe, though he often does) of octave and sestet subject,
but very mainly by that same extraordinary symphonising of the
prosodic effects of individual and batched verses, which was his secret
in blank verse itself. // it seem surprising that so difficult and subtle
a medium should be mastered so early, let it be remembered that the
single-line mould, properly used, is by no means ttnsuitable to the son
net, the effect of which is definitely cumulative. We have no certain
or even probable sonnets of Marlowe's, for the three coarse but fairly
vigorous ones by 'Ignoto,' usually printed with his works, are very
unlikely to be his. But if he had" written any he would not have had
to alter his mode of line much in itself. He would, however, have
had to adjust it relatively, as he seldom did, and as Shakespeare began
to do from the first, by weighting it variously, by applying what we
have called the 'quicksilver' touch.
It is by this combmed cumulative and diversifying effect, this
beating up against the wind as it were, that the ordinary and extra
ordinary 'toicer' of these sonnets is produced; and this tower is to
some readers their great and inexhaustible charm. No matter what
the subject is, the 'man right fair' or 'the woman coloured ill,' the
68
incidents of daily joy and chagrin, or those illimitable meditations
on life and love and thought at large which eternise the more ephe
meral things the process, prosodic and poetic, is more or less the
same, though carefully kept from monotony. In the very first lines
there is the spread and beating of the wing; the flight rises till the
end of the douzain, when it stoops or sinks quietly to the close in
the couplet. The intermediate devices by which this effect is pro
duced are, as always with Shakespeare, hard to particularise. Here,
as in the kindred region of pure style, he has so little mannerism,
that it is easier to apprehend than to analyse his manner. It may
be a coincidence, or it may not, that in a very large proportion of
the openings what we may call a bastard caesura, or ending of a
word without much metrical scission at the third syllable, precedes
a strictly metrical one at the fourth. Another point is that, through
out, full stops or their equivalents in mid-line are extremely rare, a-nd
even at the end not common, till the twelfth, so that the run of the
whole is uninterrupted, though its rhythm is constantly diversified.
Redundant syllables are very rare, except where, as in Ixxxvii., they
are accumulated with evident purpose. The trisyllabic foot, though
used with wonderful effect sometimes, is used very sparingly. On the
whole Shakespeare seems here to have had for his object, or at any
rate to have achieved as his effect, the varying of the line with as
little as possible breach or ruffling of it. He allows himself a tlash
or blaze of summer lightning now and then, but no fussing with con
tinual crackers. All the prosodic handling is subdued to give that
steady passionate musing that 'emotion recollected in tranquillity'
which is characteristic of the best sonnets, and of his more than almost
of any others. Of mere 'sports,' such /is the octo-syllabic cxlv., it is
hardly necessary to speak. P. 65.
But, luckily, all these things are well known, and our not too
abundant space should be saved for others that are not quite so. Let
it suffice to say, in conclusion, that, blank verse or song, sonnet or
stanza, Shakespeare achieves everything that he touches ; that he foots
it everywhere with perfect featness; and that he always does foot
it His harmonies and melodies are reducible to the nicely constructed
and regularly equivalenced group; not to the haphazard and blunder
ing accent scheme. They are independent of music, though quite will
ing to unite with it. They require no fantastic laws of sound to ex
plain them. The poet simply puts his hand into the exhaustless lucky-
bag of English Words, and arranges them trochee and iamb and ana
paest regularly, spondee and dactyl and even tribrach when he chooses
at his pleasure and for ours.
69
SHAKESPEARE'S PREDECESSORS.
IN THE
ENGLISH DRAMA"t
By
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS,
Author of
'Studies of Greek Poets' 'Renaissance In Italy' 'Sketches in Italy
and Greece,' etc.
Marlowe has been styled, and not unjustly styled, the father of
English dramatic poetry. When we reflect on the conditions of the
stage before lie produced 'Tamburlaine,' and consider the state in
which he left it after the appearance of 'Edward II.,' we shall be able
to estimate his true right to this title. Art, like Nature, does not move
by sudden leaps and bounds. It required a slow elaboration of divers
elements, the formation of a public able to take interest in dramatic
exhibitions, the determination of the national taste toward the ro
mantic rather than the classic type of art, and all the other circum
stances which have been dwelt upon in the preceding studies, to ren
der Marlowe's advent as decisive as it proved. Before he began to write,
various dramatic species had been essayed with more or less success.
Comedies modelled in form upon the types of Plautus and Terence;
tragedies conceived in the spirit of Seneca ; chronicles rudely arranged
in scenes for representation ; dramatised novels and tales of private
life ; Court comedies of compliment and allegory ; had succeeded to
the religious Miracles and ethical Moralities. There was plenty of
productive energy, plenty of enthusiasm and activity. Theatres con
tinued to spring up, and acting came to rank among the recognised
professions. But this activity was still chaotic. None could say where
or whether the germ of a great national art existed. To us, students
of the past, it is indeed clear enough in what direction lay the real
life of the drama ; but this was not apparent to contemporaries.
Scholars despised the shows of mingled bloodshed and buffoonery in
which the populace delighted. The people had no taste for dry and
formal disquisitions in the style of 'Gorboduc.' The blank verse of
Sackville and Hughes rang hollow : the prose of Lyly was affected ;
the rhyming couplets of the popular theatre interfered with dialogue
and free development of character. The public itself was divided in
its tastes and instincts ; the mob inclining to mere drolleries and merri
ments upon the stage, the better vulgar to formalities and studied
imitations. A powerful body of sober citizens, by no means wholly
' composed of Puritans and ascetics, regarded all forms of dramatic art
with undisguised hostility. Meanwhile, no really great poet had arisen
to stamp the tendencies of either Court or town with the authentic
seal of genius. There seemed a danger lest the fortunes of the stage
in England should be lost between the prejudices of a literary class,
t Pages 585, et seq.
70
the puerile and lifeless pastimes of the multitude, and the disfavour
of conservative moralists. From this peril Marlowe saved the Eng
lish drama. Amid the chaos of conflicting elements he discerned the
true and living germ of art, and set its growth beyond all risks of
accident by his achievement.
When, therefore, we style Marlowe the father and founder of
English dramatic poetry, we mean that he perceived the capacities
for noble art inherent in the Romantic Drama, and proved its adapta
tion to high purpose by his practice. Out of confusion he brought
order, following the clue of his own genius through a labyrinth of
dim unmastered possibilities. Like all great craftsmen, he worked by
selection and exclusion on the whole mass of material ready to his
hand; and his instinct in this double process is the proof of his
originality. He adopted the romantic drama in lieu of the classic,
the popular instead of the literary type. But he saw that the right
formal vehicle, blank verse, had been suggested by the school which
he rejected. Rhyme, the earlier metre of the romantic drama, had
to be abandoned. Blank verse, the metre of the pedants, had to be
accepted. To employ blank verse in the romantic drama was the first
step in his revolution. But this was only the first step. Both form
and matter had alike to be transfigured. And it was precisely in
this transfiguration of the right dramatic metre, in this transfiguration
of the right dramatic stuff, that Marlowe showed himself a creative
poet. What we call the English, or the Elizabethan, or better per
haps the Shakesperian Drama, came into existence by this double
process. Marlowe found the public stage abandoned to aimless
trivialities, but abounding in the rich life of the nation, and with the
sympathies of the people firmly enlisted on the side of its romantic
presentation. He introduced a new class of heroic subjects, eminently
fitted for dramatic handling. He moulded characters, and formed a
vigorous conception of the parts they had to play. Under his touch
the dialogue moved with spirit; men and women spoke and acted
with the energy and spontaneity of nature. He found the blank verse
of the literary school monotonous, tame, nerveless, without life or
movement. But he had the tact to understand its vast capacities, so
vastly wider than its makers had divined, so immeasurably more
elastic than the rhymes for which he substituted its sonorous cadence.
Marlowe, first of Englishmen, perceived how noble was the instrument
he handled, how well adapted to the closest reasoning, the sharpest
epigram, the loftiest flight of poetry, the subtlest music, and the most
luxuriant debauch of fancy. Touched by his hands the thing became
an organ capable of rolling thunders and of whispering sighs, of mov
ing with pompous volubility or gliding like a silvery stream, of blow
ing trumpet-blasts to battle or sounding the soft secrets of a lover's
heart I do not assert that Marlowe made it discourse music of so
many moods. But what he did with it, unlocked the secrets of the
verse, and taught successors how to play upon its hundred stops. He
found it what Greene calls a 'drumming decasyllabon.' Each line
71
stood alone, formed after the same model, ending with a strongly
accented monosyllable. Marlowe varied the pauses in its rhythm ; com
bined the structure of succeeding verses into periods; altered the in
cidence of accent in many divers forms and left the metre fit to be
the vehicle of Shakspere's or Milton's thought. Compared with
either of those greatest poets, Marlowe, as a versifier, lacks indeed
variety of cadence, and palls our sense of melody by emphatic magnilo
quence. The pomp of his 'mighty line' tends to monotony ; nor was
he quite sure in his employment of the instrument which he discovered
and divined. The finest bursts of metrical music in his dramas seem
often the results of momentary inspiration rather than the studied
style of a deliberate artist.
This adaptation of blank verse to the romantic drama, this blend
ing of classic form with popular material, and the specific heightening
of both form and matter by the application of poetic genius to the
task, constitutes Marlowe's claims to be styled the father and the
founder of our stage. We are so accustomed to Shakspere that it
is not easy to estimate the full importance of his predecessor's revolu
tion. Once again, therefore, let us try to bear in mind the three card
inal points of Marlowe's originality. In the first place, he saw that
the romantic drama, the drama of the public theatres, had a great
future before it. In the second place, he saw that the playwrights of
the classic school had discovered the right dramatic metre. In the
third place, he raised both matter and metre, the subjects of the ro
mantic and the verse of the classic school, to heights as yet unappre-
hended in his days. Into both he breathed the breath of life; heroic,
poetic, artistic, vivid with the spirit of Ms age. From the chaotic
and conflicting elements around him he drew forth the unity of Eng
lish Drama, and produced the thing which was to be so great, is
still so perfect.
Marlowe was fully aware of his object. The few and seemingly
negligent lines which serve as prologue to 'Tamburlaine,' written prob
ably when he was a youth of twenty-two, set forth his purpose in
plain terms:
From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We'll lead you to the stately tent of war;
Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
Threatening the world, with high astounding terms,
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.
In other words, Marlowe undertakes to wean the public from its
drolleries and merriments. He advertises a metre hitherto unused
upon the popular stage. He promises an entertainment in which heroic
actions shall be displayed with the pomp of a new style. The
puerilities of clownage are to retire into the second place. Yet the
essential feature of the romantic drama, its power to fascinate and
please a public audience, is not to be abandoned.
72
The Importance of Blank Verse in the history of English poetry,
especially dramatic poetry, is so great that Marlowe's innovations in the
use of it demand a somewhat lengthy introduction, in order that their
scope may be understood.
The single line, or unit, in a blank verse period is a line of nor
mally five accents, of which the final accent falls on the last syllable,
or, if that syllable be not definitely accented, is supplied by the closing
pause. It consists frequently, but by no means invariably, of ten
syllables. It has usually, but not inevitably, a more or less discern-
able pause, falling after the fourth or the sixth syllable. Out of
these determinations, it is possible to make or to select a typical line
the normal line of English heroic rhythm. And for this purpose we
can do no better than choose the one indicated by Johnson from
Milton :
Love lights his lamp, and waves his purple wing.
Here it will be noticed we get five accents regularly falling on the
second syllable of each foot, and a pause marked at the end of the
fourth syllable. Such a line may be termed the ideal line of English
heroic prosody ; and it is our business to keep its scheme somewhere,
in however shadowy a shape, present to our mind, in order to appre
ciate and judge the almost innumerable declensions from the type
which constitute the variety and beauty of tue metre in the handling
of great masters.
This line, which has become the standard metre of serious English
poetry in epic, story, idyll, satire, drama, elegy, and meditative lyric,
had been used from early times anterior to its application to blank
verse. Chaucer and his followers employed it in the couplet and rime
royal; Surrey, Wyatt, and Sidney in the sonnet; Spencer in the stanzas
of the 'Faery Queen.' But in the hands of these masters, and applied
to these purposes, the verse w r as still subservient to rhyme. Surrey,
in his translation of the 'Aeneid,' was the first poet who attempted
to free the measure from this servitude. It is supposed that, in mak
ing his experiment, he followed Italian models. The Italian heroic
verse, a line of five accents, but commonly of eleven syllables, and
not distinguished by a normal pause, had undergone a similar tran
sition from rhymed to unrhymed usage. Employed at first in the terza
rima of Dante, the ottava rima of Boccaccio, the sonnet of Petrarch,
it had been emancipated from rhyme by Trissino, Rucellai, and
Alamanni, writers of tragic, epic, and didactic poems. Among the
Italians the transformed measure acquired the name of versi sciolti,
or verse freed from rhyme.
Surrey is presumed to have imitated the example of these poets
when he attempted what we call Blank Verse verse, that is, where the
rhymes are blank or vacant.
At the same time we may profitably bear in mind that the dram
atic poets with whose work we have to deal, deliberately sought to
adapt their versification to Greek, Latin, and Italian rules of prosody,
73
as these had then been imperfectly analysed. On the Old English stock
they grafted slips of artful growth imported from their classic and
Italian studies. The developed blank verse of the Elizabethan age is,
therefore, a hybrid between a native rhythm and an antique metre.
Unless we grasp this fact we shall miss some of the specific beauties
of a measure which, without ceasing to be native and accentual, adopted
qualities of rhetoric and movement from the Attic stage, the Latin
epic, and the Italian imitators of the classic style.
Since blank verse is an accentual rhythm, it lends itself with
great effect to emphasis for emphasis is only enforced accent. The
facility with which it can be written, the monotony to which it is
peculiarly liable in the hands of a weak versifier, justify, nay, almost
necessitate, daring variations in its structure; and these variations
assist rhetorical effects. In the absence of rhyme one line can be
linked to another without injury, and periods may be formed, like
those of prose, in which phrase balances phrase, and the music of
language is drawn through sequences of mutually helpful verses. The
pause and stop, which are important elements in English prosody, add
another element of variety, by allowing each line to be broken in
more than one place, and enabling a skilful craftsman to open and
close periods of rhythmic melody at several points in the structure.
Reviewing these qualities of English blank verse, we shall perceive
that it is an eminently dramatic metre. Its facility and rapid move
ment bring it into close relation to the speech of common life, and
impose no shackling limitations upon dialogue. At the same time the
fixed element of rhythm raises it above colloquial language, and ren
ders even abrupt transitions from the pedestrian to the impassioned
style of poetry both natural and easy. The emphasis on which it
mainly relies for variety of music, gives scope to rhetoric. By shift
ing the incidence of accent, a playwright not only animates his verse
and produces agreeable changes in the rhythm ; but he also marks the
meaning of his words, and yields opportunities for subtly modulated
declamation to the actor. The same end is gained by altering the
pauses, on which a very wide scale of oratorical effects can be touched.
When Johnson complained that Milton's method of versification
'changes the measures of a poet to the periods of a declaimer,' he laid
his finger on that quality of blank verse which is certainly a gain
to the Drama, whatever may be thought about its value for the epic.
The true and only way of appreciating the melody of good blank verse
is to declaim it, observing how the changes in the rhythm obey the
poet's meaning, and enforce the rhetoric he had in view. Blank verse
is, in fact, the nearest of all poetical measures to prose; yet it does
not sacrifice the specific note of verse, which is the maintenance of
one selected rhythm, satisfying the ear by repetition, and charming
it by variety within the compass of its formal limitations.
Marlowe, with the instinct of genius, observed these advantages
of the unrhynied heroic measure, and with the faculty of a great
artist he solved the problem of rendering it the supreme instrument
74
of tragic poetry. Instead of the improver he may almost be called
the creator of blank verse; for the mere omission of rhyme in the
metre of his predecessors did not suffice to constitute what we now un
derstand by blank verse. He found the heroic line monotonous, mono
syllabic, divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate shorts and
longs. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by
a syllable, sometimes deficient, and animated by unexpected emphases
and changes in the pause. He found It a clumsy and mistaken imita
tion of the classical iambic; he restored it to its birthright as a
native English rhythm. He found no sequence of concatenated lines
or attempt at periods one verse followed another in isolation, and
all were made after the same insipid model. He grouped his lines
according to the sense, allowing the thought contained in his words
to dominate their form, and carrying the melody through several verses
linked together by rhetorical modulations. His metre did not pre
serve one unalterable type, but assumed diversity of cadences, the
beauty of which depended on their adaptation to the current of his
ideas. By these means he produced the double effect of unity and
contrast ; maintained the fixed march of his chosen rhythm ; and yet,
by alteration in the pauses, speed, and grouping of the syllables, by
changes in emphasis and accent, he made one measure represent a
thousand. His blank verse might be compared to music, which de
mands regular rhythm, but, by the employment of phrase, induces a
higher kind of melody to rise above the common and despotic beat
of time.
Bad writers of blank verse, like Marlowe's predecessors,
or like those who in all periods have been deficient in plastic
energy and power of harmonious adaptation, sacrifice the poetry
of expression, the force of rhetoric, to the mechanism of
their art. Metre with them becomes a mere framework, ceases
to be the organic body of a vivifying thought. And bad
critics praise them for the very faults of tameness and monotony,
which they miscall regularity of numbers. These faults, annoying
enough to a good ear in stanzas and rhymed couplets, are absolutely
insufferable in blank verse, which relies for melodious effect upon
its elasticity and pliability of cadence, and which is only saved from
insipidity by licenses interpretative of the poet's sense and demanded
by his rhetoric.
The creation of our tragic metre was not Marlowe's only benefit
conferred upon the stage. This was indeed but the form correspond
ing to the new dramatic method which he also introduced. He first
taught the art of designing tragedies on a grand scale, displaying unity
of action, unity of character, and unity of interest. Before his day
plays had been pageants or versified tales, arranged in scenes, and en
livened with 'such conceits as clownage keeps In pay.' He first pro
duced dramas worthy of that august title. Before his day it might
have been reckoned doubtful whether the rules and precedents of
the Latin theatre would not determine the style of tragic composition
75
in England as in Italy. After the appearance of "Tamburlaine,' it
was impossible for a dramatist to attract the public by any play which
had not in it some portion of the spirit and the pith of that decisive
work. * * *
It was the central fire of Marlowe's genius which hardened that
dull and shapeless matrix of English dramatic poetry, and rendered
it capable of crystallising flawless and light-darting gems. When we
remember that Marlowe, born in the same year as Shakspere, died
at the early age of twenty-nine, while Shakspere's genius was still,
so far as the public was concerned, almost a potentiality ; when we
reflect upon the life which Marlowe had to lead among companions of
debauch in London, and further estimate the degradation of the art
he raised so high, we are forced to place him among the most original
creative poets of the world. His actual achievement may be judgecj
imperfect, unequal, immature, and limited. Yet nothing lower than
the highest rank can be claimed for one who did so much, in a space
of time so short, and under conditions so unfavourable. What Shaks
pere would have been without Marlowe, how his far more puissant
hand and wonder-working brain would have moulded English Drama
without Marlowe, cannot even be surmised. What alone is obvious
to every student is that Shakspere deigned from the first to tread in
Marlowe's footsteps, that Shakspere at the last completed and de
veloped to the utmost that national embryo of art which Marlowe
drew forth from the womb of darkness, anarchy, and incoherence. * * *
And yet, such is the nature of Marlowe's work, that it impera
tively indicates a leading motive, irresistibly suggests a catch-word.
This leading motive which pervades his poetry may be defined as
L' Amour de 1'Impossible the love or lust of unattainable things ; be
yond the reach of physical force, of sensual faculty, of mastering will ;
but not beyond the scope of man's inordinate desire, man's infinite ca
pacity for happiness, man's ever-craving thirst for beauty, power, and"
knowledge. * * *
Let us fix the nature of this leading motive by some salient pass
ages from Marlowe's dramas. I take the rudest and the crudest first.
In the 'Massacre at Paris' the Duke of Guise should not properly
have been displayed as more than what world-history reveals to us
a formidable rival of the House of Valois on the throne, a bloody
and unscrupulous foe of the Huguenot faction. But the spirit of Mar
lowe entering into the unwieldly carcass he has framed for this great
schemer, breathes these words:
Oft have I levelled, and at last have learned
That peril is the chiefest way to happiness
And resolution honour's fairest aim.
What glory is there in a common good,
That hangs for every peasant to achieve?
That like I best, that flies beyond my reach.
The central passion which inspires Marlowe and all the characters
of Marlowe's coinage finds utterance here. The Guise seeks happiness
76
through peril ; finds honour only in a fierce resolve ; flings common
felicity to the winds; strains at the flying object of desire beyond his
grasp. Then he turns to the definite point of his ambition :
Set me to scale the high pyramides,
And thereon set the diadem of France;
I'll either rend it with my nails to nought,
Or mount the top with my aspiring wings,
Although my downfall be the deepest hell. * * *
This, as I have said, is the barest, nakedest exhibition of Mar
lowe's leading motive. He framed one character in which the desire
of absolute power is paramount; this is Tamburlaine. When the shep
herd-hero is confronted with the vanquished king of Persia, he pours
himself forth in a monologue which voices Marlowe through the pup
pet's lips :
The thirst of reign and sweetness of a crown,
That caused the eldest son of heavenly Ops
To thrust his doting father from his chair.
And place himself in the empyreal heaven,
Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state,
What better precedent than mighty Jove?
Nature, that frarn'd us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds;
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres.
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
It is Nature herself, says Tamburlaine, who placed a warfare of the
elements within the frame of man ; she spurs him onward by an in
born need toward empire. It is our souls, uncircumscribed by cosmic
circumstances, free to weigh planets in their courses and embrace the
universe with thought, that compel men to stake their all on the
most perilous of fortune's hazards. In this speech the poet, who
framed Tamburlaine, identifies himself with his creation, forgets the
person he has made, and utters through his mouth the poetry of his
desire for the illimitable.
There was a side-blow aimed at knowledge in this diatribe of
Tamburlaine on power. See how Faustus answers, abyss calling to
abyss from the same abysmal depth of the creator's mind :
77
Divinity, adieu!
These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly
Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O ! what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, and omnipotence,
Is promised to the studious artisan !
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command : emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces ;
But his dominion that succeeds in this,
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man ;
A sound magician is a demigod :
Here tire my brains, to gain a deity.
On the ordinary paths of learning, logic, philosophy, physic, law, di
vinity, Faustus finds himself cramped, tied to dry rules, confined
within the circle of diurnal occupations. These things may be done
for services of man's common needs; but there lies or he divines there
lies beyond the reach of all such vulgar and trivial ways, a far
more hazardous path, a path which by assiduous study and emperil-
ment of self shall lead to empires. * * *
Descending from the high imaginative region in which Faustus
moves, travelling back from the dim realms of Ind, where Tambur-
laine defies the Fates, reaching England under the reign of our second
Edward, we find the same chord touched in Marlowe's Mortimer.
Upon the point of death, checkmated and flung like the Guise 'to
deepest hell,' he still maintains the old indomitable note, the key
note of the leading motive:
Base Fortune, now I see that in thy wheel
There is a point, to which when men aspire
They tumble headlong down : that point I touch'd,
And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher,
Why should I grieve at my declining fall?
Farewell, fair queen : weep not for Mortimer,
That scorns the world, and, as a traveler,
Goes to discover countries yet unknown.
I have pursued the leading motive, applied the catch-word, through
many examples bearing on the theme of power. It remains to select one
passage in which the same lust for the impossible shall be exhibited
when Marlowe turns his thought to beauty. Xenocrate, the love of
Tamburlaine. is absent and unhappy. The Tartar chief is left alone to
vent his passion in soliloquy. At first he dwells upon the causes of her
sorrow, with such 'lyrical interbreathings' as this, evoked from the recol
lection of her
78
Shining face,
Where Beauty, mother to the muses, sits
And comments volumes with her ivory pen.
Gradually he passes into that vein of meditation, which allows the poet's
inspiration to transpire. Then Marlowe speaks, and shows in memo
rable lines that beauty has, no less than power, her own impossible, for
which he thirsted :
What is beauty, sayeth my sufferings, then?
If all the pens that ever poets held
Had fed the feeling of their master's thoughts.
And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,
Their minds and muses on admired themes ;
If all the heavenly quintessence they still
From their immortal flowers of poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit ;
If these had made one poem's period,
And all combined in beauty's worthiness,
Yet should there hover in their restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the last,
Which into words no virtue can digest.
The impossible beauty, on which Tamburlaine here meditates, is beauty
eluding the poet and the artist in their highest flight; that apple top
most on the topmost bough, which the gatherers have not overlooked,
but leave perforce, because they strove in vain to reach it It is always
this beauty, inflaming the artist's rather than the lover's soul, which
Marlowe celebrates. He has written no drama of love ; and even In
'Hero and Leander,' that divinest dithyramb in praise of sensual beauty,
the poet moves in a hyperuranian region, from which he contemplates
with eyes of equal adoration all the species of terrestrial loveliness.
The tender emotions and the sentiment of love were alien to Marlowe's
temper. It may even be doubted whether sexual pleasures had any very
powerful attraction for his nature. To such, we think, he gave his
cruder, poetry-exhausted moments. When he evoked the thought of
women to tempt Doctor Faustus, he touched this bass-chord of carnal
desire with the hand of a poet-painter rather than a sensualist :
Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the queen of love.
Yet it was in no Platonic mood that he set those mighty sails of bis
imagination to the breeze upon the sea of Beauty. That thirst for the
impossible, when once applied to things of sense and loveliness, is a
lust and longing after the abstraction of all beauties, the self of sense,
the quintessence of pleasures. This is, of course, the meaning of Fans-
79
tus' address to Helen, summoned from the ghosts as the last tangible
reality of beauty, to give comfort to his conscience-laden soul :
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. ( Kisses her)
Her lips suck forth my soul : see where it flies !
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele ;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour !
The same triumphant sense of having conquered the unconquerable, and
enjoyed the final gust of pleasure in things deemed impossible for men,
emerges in another speech of Faustus :
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander's love and Oenon's death?
And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephistophilis?
When Xenocrate is dying Tamburlaine pours forth a monody, which,
however misplaced on his lips, gives Marlowe scope to sing the nuptial
hymn of beauty unapproachable, withdrawn from 'loathsome earth,' re
turning to her native station in the heavens. There, and there only,
says the poet, shall the spirit mate with loveliness and be at peace in
her embrace :
Now walk the angels on the walls of heaven,
As sentinels to warn the immortal souls
To entertain the divine Xenocrate * * *
The cherubins and holy seraphins,
That sing and play before the King of kings,
Use all their voices and their instruments
To entertain divine Xenocrate;
And in this sweet and curious harmony,
The god that tunes this music to our souls
Holds out his hand in highest majesty
To entertain divine Xenocrate.
Then let some holy trance convey my thoughts
Up to the palace of the empyreal heaven,
That this my life may be as short to me
As are the days of sweet Xenocrate.
80
In this rapturous and spiritual marriage-song, which celebrates the
assumption or apotheosis of pure beauty, the master bends his mighty
line to uses of lyric poetry, as though a theme so far above the reach
of words demanded singing * * *
In dealing with Marlowe, it is Impossible to separate the poet from
the dramatist, the man from bis creations. His personality does not
retire, like Shakspere's, behind the work of art into impenetrable mys
tery. Rather, like Byron, but with a truer faculty for dramatic pre
sentation than Byron possessed, he inspires the principal characters of
his tragedies with the ardour, the ambition, the audacity of his own
restless genius. Tamburlaine, who defies heaven, and harnesses kings
arid princes of the East to his chariot, who ascends his throne upon
the necks of prostrate emperors, and burns a city for his consort's fune
ral pyre, embodies the insolence of his creator's spirit. At the same
time, in this haughty and aspiring shepherd the historic Tartar chief
is firmly rendered visible. Through Tamburlaine's wild will and imper
turbable reliance upon destiny, the brute instincts of savage tribes
yearning after change, pursuing conquest and spreading desolation with
the irresistible impulse of a herd of bisons marching to their fields of
salt, emerge into self -consciousness. Marlowe has traced the v portrait
with a bold hand, filling its details in with broad and liberal touches:
Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned,
Like his desires, lift upward and divine ;
So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit,
Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear
Old Atlas's burden * * *
Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion,
Thirsting with sovereignty and love of arms;
His lofty brows in folds do figure death,
And in their smoothness amity and life ;
About them hangs a knot of amber hair, ,
Wrapped in curls, as fierce Achilles' was,
On which the breath of heaven delights to play,
Making it dance in wanton majesty ;
His arms and fingers, long and sinewy,
Betokening valour and excess of strength;
In every part proportioned like the man
Should make the world subdued to Tamburlaine.
This is the picture drawn of him at the beginning of his fortunes by
a generous enemy. There is a magnetism in the presence of the man.
A Persian captain, commissioned to overawe and trample down his
pride, no sooner sees Tamburlaine than he falls a victim to his influence:
His looks do menace heaven and dare the gods ;
His fiery eyes are fixed upon the earth,
As if he now designed some stratagem,
Or meant to pierce Avernus' darksome vaults,
To pull the triple-headed dog from hell.
81
Tamburlaine, on his side, favoursi the manly bearing of his foe, and
bids him welcome with such words as bind the captain to his cause :
Forsake thy king, and do but join with me,
And we will triumph over all the world.
I hold the fates bound fast in iron chains,
And with my hand turn Fortune's wheel about.
Such confidence is contagious, imposing, as Napoleon's belief in his star
imposed, and working out its own accomplishment. His most powerful
opponents recognise the spell, and are cowed by it :
Some powers divine, or else infernal, mixed
Their angry seeds at his conception;
For he was never sprung of human race,
Since with the spirit of his fearful pride
He dares so doubtlessly resolve of rule,
And by profession be ambitious.
ALI BABA
AND
THE FORTY THIEVES
A ROMANCE IN HIGH LIFE IN NEW YORK SHOWING HOW
THE VENDETTA IS OPERATED ON FIFTH AVENUE..
The Society of the New York Hospital,
White Plains,
New York,
July 3d, 1897.
Hon. Micajah Woods, t
Commonwealth's Attorney,
Charlottesville,
Virginia.
My Dear Captain: You will possibly be surprised to hear that I
am not abroad, as is generally thought; but am confined without due
process of law, in a New York private Insane Asylum, whither I was
brought by force against my expressed will; having been arrested by
two officers in plain clothes on an order from a Judge of the Supreme
Court of the State of New York.
You will pardon the length of this letter when I say that I wish
to employ you as assistant counsel in co-operation with Senator John
W. Daniel.t as leading counsel, in a habeas corpus proceedings which
I wish instituted without delay.
I enclose a certified copy of my Commitment Papers, which I sug
gest that you defer reading until you have finished this letter, as they
are a tissue of perjuries from beginning to end, and this letter will
point out and prove the said perjuries in their order.
Before going into the Commitment Papers I shall give you a short
account of what led to my present predicament.
I have been on unfriendly terms with my family my brothers
and sisters for a long time.
It is not necessary to go into the causes which led to this state
of affairs, except to say that they are partly business and partly tem
peramental. The line of demarcation began nine years ago and has
gradually extended ever since. The climax of unpleasantness was
tSince deceased.
83
reached last October. My youngest sister was then married, and I was
to have "given her away." Ill health prevented my presence at the
wedding. I had been confined to my bed in my home, "The Merry
Mills," Cobham, Albemarle County, Virginia, for several days before
its date, and was in bed at the time. The wedding took place at my
sister's home on the Hudson River. I sent a note by a special mes
senger, explaining my inability to be present, and also bearing a hand
some present from myself to the bride.
The messenger arrived at my sister's home the day before the
wedding. As there were four other brothers of the bride present at
the wedding, I felt that my absence would throw no difficulty in the
way of "giving her away."
It seems that my absence from that wedding was one of the main
causes of my present incarceration in a madhouse.
About a month later one of my sisters with whom I was on better
terms than with my other brothers and sisters while lunching with
me during one of my business trips to New York, said touching my
absence from the wedding, that the family, including my brothers and
sisters, were not put out at my absence from the wedding they simply
considered me crazy.
I did not pay much attention to this thinking it a species of joke,
to which I had grown accustomed from years of hearing. For when
ever, in the course of an argument with any of my brothers or sisters
I said anything whicL they found difficult to combat, their usual reply
was, "You're crazy."
You must excuse my touching upon such a seemingly unimportant
matter, but in crime nothing is unimportant, and you will see before
finishing this letter that a crime has been committed against the lib
erty and the reason of a citizen of the sovereign State of Virginia
myself.
The next complication of the already severely strained relations
between ' the family" and myself occurred in December last. I was
still detained in New York on the business trip before alluded to. At
a Directors' Meeting of the Roanoke Rapids Power Co., of Roanoke
Rapids, North Carolina, held in New York last December, a most vio
lent altercation arose between my brother, Mr. Winthrop Astor Chan-
ler and myself. The upshot of it was that he wrote me a letter next
day refusing to speak to me or to have any further communication
with me except in writing or through third parties. As this brother
had struck me some years ago, and had quarrelled violently with me
frequently since, the above communication did not surprise me. Mr.
Winthrop Astor Chanler is one year my junior, and was director with
me in the Roanoke Rapids Power Company.
I accepted his proposition and sent a representative next day to
say to him that I did so. I also notified him that I should send a
representative to go over the books of my father's estate, of which he
was an executor. This estate has furnished but two accountings in
84
ten years. I do not suspect my brothers of wilful mismanagement, but
I do suspect the lawyers whom they employ to do the work of invest
ment, etc., for them, of investments which are more to their own in
terests than that of the said estate. My brother agreed to my propo
sition and I thought no more about it.
About this time I returned to my home in Virginia. I had
arranged my business affairs before leaving so as to allow me to take
at least two months rest.
I must tell you that for some years I have been carrying on in
vestigations in Esoteric Buddhism. You must not imagine from this
that I am not a Christian; for I am a communicant in the Episcopal
Church.
My investigations were entirely scientific in their nature and
totally free from any tinge of religion. They supposed a state of mind
open to impressions and free from prejudices. I am not going to bore
you with a lecture on Esoteric Buddhism, and shall dismiss the sub
ject. In the latter part of February last I received a telegram from
my friend, Mr. Stanford White, proposing to visit me in company with
a mutual friend. As I was on rather unfriendly terms with Mr. White
at the time, owing to an abusive letter he had recently written me,
I did not look forward to a visit from him with pleasure. I therefore
sent him a telegram to say that I was not well enough to see him. A
few days later Mr. White walked in on me in company with a physi
cian. I shall not attempt to picture my surprise. Let it suffice to say
that I was struck dumb.
Mr. White hastily excused his intrusion and implored me to accom
pany him to New York for a "plunge in the metropolitan whirl." As
I had some business which needed my attention in New York I con
sented.
I stopped at the Hotel Kensington, 15th Street and 5th Avenue,
where I have been in the habit of putting up on my business trips to
New York. A day or so after my arrival, and while immersed in my
business affairs, the physician who had accompanied Mr. White to
"The Merry Mills" presented himself in my rooms followed by a
stranger, whom he introduced as an oculist.
The reason he gave for breaking in on my privacy was the in
tense desire on the part of his friend, the Oculist, to examine my eyes.
I might say here incidentally that during my rest at home in
Virginia my eyes had undergone rather a remarkable change. Their
color having changed from brown to gray. I shall resume that sub
ject later, and shall merely say that after criticising Dr. E. F., the
physician who had accompanied Mr. White to my home in Virginia,
rather severely for bringing a stranger into my rooms without asking
permission, I allowed Dr. Moses Allen Starr, the Oculist, to examine
my eyes. Dr. Starr took a lense from his pocket and asking me to go
to the light examined my eyes attentively, he unhesitatingly pro
nounced them gray in color.
85
I may as well re-open the subject of the change of color of my
eyes.
You may have noticed that my eyes were light brown. I say "may
have," for that assumes two things; first, that you are free from that
not unusual affection, color blindness; second, that you have the rather
unusual powers of observation demanded by my assumption that you
noticed my eyes at all.
At all events they were light brown. The extraneous and corrobo
rative eveidence of this fact is the description of Bering's eyes, on
page 39 of the latest edition of "The Quick or The Dead," which I en
close, having been sketched from me. I allude to the features of
course, the occurrences in the book being entirely imaginary. I have
the Princess Troubetzkoy's word for this : It is also a matter of almost
common knowledge: The New York "World" having published an
article on the Princess Trotibetzkoy, in February, 1896 if I remember
rightly which quoted as descriptive of me the passage above referred
to on page 39 of, "The Quick or The Dead"; and the writer of the said
article vouched for its correctness as a description of my personal ap
pearance, in the article itself. You will observe that Bering's eyes
are described as "the color of Autumn pools in sunlight." I need not
say to a Virginian that the color of Autumn pools in sunlight is brown,
a sparkling or bright brown. The pools meant are the deep quiet
places in streams into which the dead leaves fall covering the bottom
and giving a dark brown appearnce to the water, which is lightened
or brightened 1 when the sun plays upon the pool.t
Bo much for what the color of my eyes was before they chango-1.
Their color now is dark gray. As authority for this statement I have
the testimony of every physician who has examined them and there
Excerpt from an article appearing in the New York "Sun" of
August 17, 1904:
"In 1888 he (John Armstrong Chaloner) was married to Amelie
Rives, and he was said to be the hero of her book, "The Quick or the
Bead." Seven year later proceedings for divorce were begun on the
ground of incompatibility of temperament. Immediately after the
divorce was granted Mrs. Chaloner married Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy,
the artist."
tTo Whom It May Concern:
I, the undersigned, have been asked by mutual friends to say
whether the statements in the New York "World" in the early part of
the year 1896, and in the New York "Sun" in August, 1904, to the
effect thnt the leading male character in "The Quick or the Bead"
was sketched from Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner are correct, say that
the statements are correct. By that I mean that the physical descrip
tion of Bering was a correct, even an exact description of Mr. Chaloner
in the year 1895. I do not wish to be misunderstood in this regard.
I do not wish to be understood as saying that the words and actions
of Bering were those of Mr. Chaloner. For the words and actions of
Bering were wholly imaginary.
86
have been three besides that of subordinates in this establishment
whose opinion, as to the color of my eyes, I have asked. You must
excuse my dilating upon so seemingly unimportant a subject as the
color of my eyes; but I assure you it is far from unimportant in this
case, for the first count in the indictment against my reason, in the
Commitment Papers, made by the "Medical Examiners in Lunacy," is
to the effect that I am insane, because I say that my eyes have changed
color; both said Medical Examiners in Lunacy having freely admitted
that my eyes are undeniably gray. Apparently they hope to prove that
gray has always been the color of my eyes.
The next step in the proceeding^ was a nocturnal visit from Dr.
Moses Allen Starr, the Oculist, accompanied by another doctor, whom
I had never seen, and two unknown men. Dr. Starr pushed his way
into my rooms followed by the strange doctor unannounced. The two
unknown men remained outside my door. He then briefly informed
me that he (Dr. Starr) was a Professor of Nervous Diseases in a New
York College and that I was insane. He went on to say that he had
come to take me away he omitted to state where immediately that
I must get up at once (I was in bed at the time) that resistance on
my part would be useless as there was another doctor the said
strange doctor in the next room besides two other men the said un
known men outside the door.
It is not necessary to repeat my reply. I shall simply say that I
very quietly, but at the same time effectively, refused to obey Dr.
Starr's orders. I finally succeeded in convincing Dr. Starr without
the slightest show of force that he had not brought enough men with
him to carry me off that night.
The next afternoon two policemen, in plain clothes, presented
themselves at my hotel with the Commitment Papers, a certified copy
Furthermore, I have been asked by the same mutual friends to
explain just what color I meant to convey by the term as applied to
the color of Dering's eyes "Autumn pools." I meant by this expres
sion the color brown. The iris of Mr. Chaloner's eyes was in 1895 en
tirely brown.
Witness the following signature and seal this 21st day of February,
1905.
AMELIE TROUBETZKOY. (Seal.)
State of Virginia :
County of Albemarle : to-wit.
I, H. W. Wood, a Notary Public in and for the County of Albe
marle, in the State of Virginia, do certify that Amelie Troubetzkoy,
whose name is signed to the foregoing writing, bearing date on the
21st day of February, 1905, has acknowledged the same before me in
my county aforesaid.
Given under my hand this 21st day of February. 1005.
H. W. WOOD, N. P.
My term expires April 15, 1908.
87
of which I enclose. I accompanied them without unnecessary discus
sion to this Private Insane Asylum.
Before going into the Commitment Papers, I shall briefly touch
on my life here for the past four months. I was brought here the
13th of March. Since that time I have been in solitary confinement,
in a two-roomed cell. A keeper sleeps in one of the rooms of my
cell, and he is always with me. When I take exercise in the Asylum
grounds the keeper accompanies me. My razors were seized on the
ground that it was "a rule of the Institution." The consequence was
that I had to be shaved by the Asylum barber, which caused me not
only inconvenience but hardship, since my beard is thick and my skin
is thin and no barber has been able to shave me without causing a
violent irritation of the skin, a condition which is always absent when
I shave myself.
You must excuse the above apparently trivial incident, but you
will appreciate the annoyance it is to be shaved by the Asylum barber,
when I tell you, that his shaving raised such a rash on my neck that
POLICE DESCRIPTION OF PLAINTIFF.t
An article to the following effect appeared in a New York City
newspaper early in 1901: "The mystery shrouding the fate of John
Armstrong Chaloner, who on Thanksgiving Eve, 1900, escaped from
Bloomingdale Asylum, is as thick as ever. From time to time, as
a dead tramp is fished up in some outlying pond of Hoboken or Jersey
City, a rumor is started that the body of the young millionaire has
been found. The following is the police description of him sent out
with the general alarm that was sent out shortly after Mr. Chaloner's
escape :
" 'Height five feet ten and three-quarter inches ; weight about one
hundred and seventy pounds ; face clean shaved ; hair dark and curly,
worn rather long ; eyes dark gray ; regular, classic features. Holds
himself erect, walks with a swinging stride, and carries a cane. He
was dressed as follows : Black fedora hat, navy-blue melton overcoat,
dark green sack coat and waistcoat, steel gray trousers, black satin
four-in-hand tie with large gray pearl stickpin.'
"When will they catch up with him is the question. The police of
all the cities in the country are on the watch, while sleuths men
trained to hunt down men are seeking the man with the weak mind."
^Richmond, Virginia, February 24, 1915.
Time has treated "Who's Looney Now?"lightly; in spite of his
incessant legal conflicts, and more of less turbulent career. The above
police description of "Who's Looney Now?" would exactly describe him
today: for his hair is as dark and plentiful as ever, and his weight no
greater than in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and one. He
redity is probably responsible for said state of things. The long line
of martial ancestors from which "Who's Looney Now?" is descended
makes itself felt on the maxim "blood will tell." And hence fighting
is "Who's Looney Now'sf" delight fighting in a good cause: such as
fighting for Lunacy Law reform- against the criminal lethargy of the
great American people: and the embittered and venomously bitter
opposition of the press, supported by the Legal Profession both Bar
and Bench State and Federal in iNew York situate.
88
I have limited his operations to twice a week; thus giving the inflam
mation time to subside to begin afresh on the next shave.
You know, from my having had the pleasure of dining at your
bouse, that I am limited to a very abstemious diet, that I am practi
cally a vegetarian.
You also probably know that I ride a great deal on horseback.
It is, in fact, my favorite and only form of outdoor exercise. You
can well imagine the deleterious effect upon my health, resultant from
a combination of bad cooking, poor food and total deprivation of horse
back exercise. Of the cooking I shall simply say that the Asylum
cooks cannot even bake bread, though they daily attempt it. So that
I have been forced to buy crackers to avoid the violent indigestion
the half-baked bread causes me. Of the food I shall simply saj that
it has been so bad that I have come down to a daily diet of baked
potatoes, lettuce, fruit and crackers in order to avoid eating food
which either is badly cooked, adulterated or decayed.
In the meantime I am living in a Madhouse. Every "patient" in
the building in which I am imprisoned is hopelessly insane. At times
some of them become violently, homicidally, insane, when, after yells
and struggles with keepers, and a siege in a straight-jacket, they are
forcibly removed to another ward. Since my arrival two patients
were removed from this building for having become "violent," as they
call it here.
Nothing prevents a patient from becoming homicidally insane
at any time. In one of such fits of frenzy the lunatic might take it
into his head to walk into my cell and attack me. The cell doors are
unlocked, and although there is a keeper on watch on my floor, he
is not always there. To give me warning of the approach of prowling
maniacs I put a table against my door at night.
This will give you an idea of my surroundings. I think that you
will agree with me that they are calculated to drive a man inane.
When you add to these "surroundings" the active and sustained efforts
of the resident doctors to talk me into becoming insane by declaring
to my face that I am insane, and attempting to argue me into admit
ting that I am; when you consider this, you will, I think, conclude
that I have my nerves and will-power under effective control in being
able to remain sane.
So much for my life for the last four months. This is the first
opportunity which I have had for posting a letter unbeknown to the
authorities here. The rule is that all letters and telegrams must be
sent through the authorities here, who have the legal right to suppress
or forward to "The Commission in Lunacy" at Albany, who have again
the legal right to suppress and destroy them. You can readily under
stand that I would not send a letter under such conditions. Hence
my having to wait four months to write to you and ask your aid.
The next thing to be considered is the Commitment Papers. I
shall only touch upon that briefly for it speaks for itself.
89
In the first place the Commitment Papers give my residence as
"Hotel Kensington,! New York City." This is false, as my residence
since 1895 has been "The Merry Mills," Cobham, Albemarle County,
Virginia. Trow's Directory of New York City gives my residence
Virginia. In Trow's Directory for July, 1896, to July, 1897, you will
find "J. A. Chaloner, Lawyer, 120 Broadway, H. Va." "H" stands for
House, i. e, home, residence, and "Va." of course stands for Virginia.
I have never practised law in New York, but have been a silent
partner in the law firm of "Chaloner, Maxwell and Philip, 120 Broad
way," which firm name you will find a few places below my own in
Trow's Directory of the above date.
There can be no doubt about my residence's being in Virginia, for
in 1895 I went to the Commissioner of Taxes' Office in the Stewart
Building, corner Broadway and Chambers Street, and myself wrote, at
his request, in the Tax Book a full description of my residence. It
is, of course, there yet. It is to the effect that I was interested in a
law firm in New York, but that I did not personally practise law in
New York, as the business I had charge of was a manufacturing one in
Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and that my home, "The Merry
Mills," where I lived, was at Cobham, Virginia. The- object of the
above visit was to fix the amount of my personal tax in New York.
The amount fixed was $2,500 (twenty-five hundred dollars). This
took place in 1895, and neither the amount nor my address has since
been changed.
Moreover, no better evidence as to my residence's being in Vir
ginia could be asked than is offered by the sworn testimony of the
t John R. Bland, Cash Capital, $1,700,000. Geo. R. Callis,
President. Secretary-Treasurer.
The United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company,
Baltimore, Md.
Andrew Freedman,
Vice-President. ,
Sylvester J. O' Sullivan,
Manager.
66 Liberty Street, New York, March 14, 1905.
Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner,
"The Merry Mills,"
Cobham, Va.
My Dear Chaloner:
In reply to your letter requesting my views regarding your alleged
former residence at the Hotel Kensington, Fifth Avenue and Fif
teenth Street, Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, in 1896 and
1897, I beg to state as follows:
I was proprietor of that hotel from April 1, 1894, to April, 1897.
I do not think you ever stopped there prior to my assuming control
of it. I do believe you came there solely on my account. You never
were in any sense a resident guest of that hotel. You never were any
other than a transient guest. You never engaged rooms there other
than by the day. Your visits there were infrequent, yet I believe you
stopped there every time you came to New York while I conducted
90
three petitioners (my brothers, Messrs. Winthrop Astor Chanler, Lewis
Stuyvesant Chanler and ). Page
3, lines 141 and 142 of the Commitment Papers, where they declare:
"Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner has, for several months, while at his
home in Virginia": this should settle any doubt about my residence.
It might be well to state before going any further, the probable
causes which led to the said brothers' wishing to see me declared in
sane and confined in an Insane Asylum.
You will remember that abusive letter written me immediately
after the Directors' Meeting of the Roanoke Rapids Power Company
in December last by this same brother, Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler,
in which he refused to speak to me or have anything further to do
with me except by letter or third parties. You will also remember
that I accepted his terms and informed him that I would have the
books of my Father's Estate, of which he was an Executor, examined.
You must know that there are two Executors of my Father's Estate.
One of them is Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler and the other is Mr. Lewis
Stuyvesant Chanler. These two gentlemen, who are equally to blame
for what I am compelled to believe is innocent but palpable misman
agement of my Father's Estate, join hands in petitioning for my in
carceration in an Insane Asylum before I had the opportunity to in
vestigate their mismanagement but two accountings of their manage
ment of the said Estate having been rendered in ten years.
Furthermore. As I have told you there has for years past been no
love lost between my family and myself. When affection is absent
and business interests are present it behooves a careful man to look
about him, and see, in seeking for the solution of an obscure action,
whether or not it could have been to the parties' business interests
to do an otherwise incomprehensibly malicious thing.
that hotel. As a rule, you came on each year to the Horse Show,
and on those visits you, of course, spent the week said show was in
progress, and I believe on one, or possibly two occasions, your visit
at that season was prolonged to several weeks. Other than the Horse
Show week mentioned above, my recollection is that you did not come
to that hotel more than once or twice a year, and on some of these
visits your stay was only for a day or two.
I well remember having several prolonged conversations with you
about some large enterprises you had on hand in North Carolina, and
that almost the entire year of 1895 was spent by you in the South in
the conduct of said enterprises.
You were at the Kensington during the Horse Show week in No
vember, 1896, and left there for the South in December. You returned
again in February of 1897 and left in March. Of course, I could not
recollect the exact dates of your arrival and departure on those visits.
but I again repeat in the strongest terms possible that you never were
at any time, to my knowledge, a resident guest of that hotel, but were
always looked upon by myself and all the attaches of the hotel as n
transient guest.
Very truly yours,
SYLVESTER J. O'SULLIVAN.t
t Since deceased.
91
The business end of the present situation throws a bright light
upon it.
Under my Father's Will I enjoy an eighth of the income of his
Estate during my life. At my death without issue my said share
reverts to his Estate. Should I leave issue my said share would go
to said issue. It is therefore evidently to the business interests of my
family to prevent my marrying by locking me up for life in an Insane
Asylum, if possible, and if that is not possible the next best step
towards safe-guarding their business interests is to throw, if possible
an insurmountable obstacle in the way of my marrying. No more
insurmountable obstacle in the way of marriage could be imagined
than insanity.
Granting that I get out of this Asylum the stigma of having been
confined in it would stick to me through life. You need not necessarily
infer from this that I have any intentions of marrying, only I like to
retain tbe privilege of the option.
Further. There is every human probability that, were I to be
confined in these surroundings long enough, my mental and physical
forces would succumb to the hideous moral strain and confinement.
When this took place my family would be appointed a commission to
administer my Estate. I being by that time a bona fide instead of
what I am at present a bogus-maniac. I have an estate which bids
fair to be very valuable in time. Certain portions of that estate are
represented by large stockholdings in the United Industrial Company
and the Roanoke Rapids Power Company. These said holdings could
be sold to third parties, with the understanding that they were to be
bought back at a certain figure, by one or more of my brothers or
sisters, who already hold stock in the said companies, and who
I know would like to increase their holdings once the said "family
commission" for my estate came into being.
Furthermore. Nothing would be easier than to break my will
on the ground of insanity, now that I have been declared insane and
confined as an insane person in an Insane Asylum: that my family
would make every effort to break my will I make no doubt. For two
reasons. First because of their unfriendly attitude toward me for
years past. Second because they are in a position to know that I have
left all of them out of my will, except onet sister and that strictly
confidentially my largest legatee is the University of Virginia for
which, on account of its own character and that of Thomas Jefferson,
I have a high admiration.
Furthermore. The United Industrial Company of which I am the
controlling stockholder, and of which I was a Director last December,
held its annual meeting for the election of officers for the ensuing
year, the first week in January last. My brother, Mr. Winthrop Astor
tNoTE. Since writing above said sister has been left out of said
will, owing to her attitude in the present controversy.
92
Chanler, had been elected by my votes, as President of the said Com
pany the preceding year at a salary of $2,000.00 per annum. After
receiving the abusive letter before alluded to, from him last December,
I decided to elect myself President of the United Industrial Company
in his place. His said letter to me having specifically stated that he
would not speak to me again or hold any communication with me
except by letter or third parties, had rendered it a business impossi
bility for me to elect, as President of a Company, a man who was not
on speaking terms with myself: who besides being the controlling
stockholder was one of the Board of Directors.
I had it delicately conveyed to Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler by
third parties, some days before the election, that it would be as well
for him to resign his Presidency of, as well as his membership on, the
Board of Directors, of the United Industrial Company. This he prompt
ly did, and at the ensuing election in January, '97, I, voting by proxy,
for I was at home in Virginia at the time, elected myself President
of the United Industrial Company in his place, together with a Board
of Directors of my own choosing, to whom I had previously conveyed
enough stock in the Company to render them eligible under the Law
to hold office.
It might be well for you to bear in mind that the above revolu
tionary and delicate stock manipulation was conceived and carried out
by an alleged maniac. For the conception of the above plan took
place on receipt of Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler's said abusive letter,
about the middle of December last, and the carrying out occurred in
January of '97. Whereas my present attack of alleged insanity began,
according to the Commitment Papers, in November, 1896.
Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler is heavily interested in the United
Industrial Company. The said Company's factory is situated in the
town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. He has put $50,000.00 into
the said Company. Finding himself checkmated, as described, he,
apparently out of revenge and interest in his stock, set about to get
the control of the said Company, and thereby of his said stock out of
my hands. It was a desperate game, but $50,000.00 is a large stake.
It is necessary for me to make a short digression here in order to
give you all the threads of the plot.
Mr. Stanford White again comes on the stage. He had intimated
to me last February in New York, through a third party, that he
thought I should take an extended rest from business, and that it
would give him great pleasure if I were to make him and Mr. Saint
Gaudens the distinguished sculptor and a friend of mine and Mr.
White's most intimate friend my powers of attorney to transact all
my business and look after all my affairs.
Here was the spectacle of two rich, successful, and eminent men
willing to take upon themselves all the work and worry of my affairs
for friendship's sake. I was touched. I thought that there might
be something behind all this, but I did not impute selfish motives to
either of them.
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I declined the services of Mr. Saint Gaudens but accepted those
of Mr. Stanford White. My reason for so doing was that business
was extremely dull, and I thought that if Mr. White wanted to help
me run my affairs there would be no harm in letting him do so, I
being able to revoke the power of attorney at any time and being able
to supervise his work meanwhile. So I gave him a limited power of
attorney.
I also at his request resigned from the Board of Directors of the
Roanoke Rapids Power Company to make room for Mr. White on that
Board. Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler's presence on said Board would
have made the transaction of business difficult owing to his disinclina
tion to talk to me, whereas Mr. White is one of his closest friends.
I also resigned from the Presidency of the United Industrial Com
pany, Mr. White thereby becoming a Director of the said Company
and one of my previously chosen Directors being elected to fill my
place as President.
All this having been arranged I was about to return to Virginia
to await the arrival of "the McKinley wave of prosperity" when I
was arrested and brought here.
As I said it appears that my brother wished to prevent my mak
ing use of the power I had attained in the United Industrial Company
by locking me up in an Insane Asylum. He achieved his end.
Lastly I hold a note of the United Industrial Company for about
$14,000 (fourteen thousand dollars) ; this note is past due. It would
greatly embarrass Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler were I to demand its
payment. How much has the fear that I would do so had to do with
his locking me up? The said amount of the note was advanced by me
to the said Company. He owns $50,000 (fifty thousand dollars) worth
of the said Company's stock, and others of my immediate family own
about $25,000 (twenty -five thousand dollars) worth of the same stock.
It would pay them to join forces and repay me their pro rata share
of my overdue advance to said Company, rather than have said note
go to protest and legal proceedings ensue.
Cheapest of all however is to lock me up out of reach of "protest."
I think I have given you enough of the business end of this con
spiracy for you to see clearly that it was to my brothers', Messrs.
Winthrop Astor Chanler and Lewis Stuyvesant 'Chanler (the Co-
Trustees of my Father's Estate) interest, as well as to that of my
whole family, that I should disappear for an indefinite period. Add to
their business interests the strong personal interest of jealousy and
dislike and you have a powerful working incentive.
We may now resume the perusal of the Commitment Papers. You
will remark that the three Petitioners, Messrs. Winthrop Astor Chan
ler, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler and , swear that
the acts alleged to have been committed by me in Virginia and in
New York are of their own knowledge. For you will note on Page 4
of the Commitment Papers line 165 to line 168 "Winthrop A. Chanler,
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Lewis S. Chanler and being duly sworn, depose and
say: that they have read the foregoing petition and know the contents
thereof, and that the same is true to the knowledge of deponents except
as to the matters therein stated, to be alleged on information and
belief."
As there are no "matters therein stated to be alleged on informa
tion and belief" the matters therein alleged must therefore all be "true
to the knowledge of deponents"; in swearing that the said matters
were "true to the knowledge of deponents" the said deponents Messrs.
Winthrop A. Chanler, Lewis S. Chanler and perjured
themselves; for not one of the said deponents has ever crossed the
threshold of my "home in Virginia," where part of the alleged acts
are sworn by said deponents to have been committed; and not one of
the said deponents saw me later in New York where the remainder
of the said alleged acts are sworn by said deponents to have been com
mitted.
One of these said deponents, Mr. Lewis S. Chanler, was in Europe
just prior to the 10th of March, but having sailed from England on a
cable's notice, reached New York in time to swear on March 10th to
alleged acts committed by me while he was abroad or on the ocean.
The said deponent I have not seen since 1894.
The said deponent Mr. Winthrop A. Chanler I have not seen since
that Directors' Meeting about the middle of December, 1896.
So much for the veracity of the three Petitioners Messrs. Winthrop
A. Chanler, Lewis S. Chanler and .
Now let us examine that of the two "Medical Examiners in Lu
nacy" namely: Dr. Moses Allen Starr (for our friend the Oculist turns
out to be an Examiner in Lunacy) and Dr. E. F. If you turn to page 5
of the Commitment Papers, you will see under the caption "Certificate
of Lunacy" and on line 200 "Patient resides at Hotel Kensington, New
York, County of New York;" and now turn to page 7 of the Commit
ment Papers and on lines 275, 276 and 279, you will find, "that the
facts stated and information contained in this Certificate are true to
the best of my knowledge and belief;" then follow the signatures of
M. Allen Starr, M. D. and E. F., M. D. and then line 279: "severally
subscribed and sworn to." Doctors M. Allen Starr and E. F. therefore,
swore that to the best of their knowledge and belief I resided at the
Hotel Kensington, New York, notwithstanding the fact that my said
brothers and , the said Petitioners, swore of their own
knowledge that my residence was in Virginia their words were cf.,
lines 141 and 142, "Mr. J. A. Chaloner has for several months while
at his home in Virginia" and also notwithstanding the fact that Dr.
E. F. found me at my "home in Virginia" when he presented himself
there in company with Mr. Stanford White last February; and Dr. M.
Allen Starr was aware of the said visit, on the part of Dr. E. F. to
my "home in Virginia:" said visit having been touched on before Dr.
M. Allen Starr in my presence. There could, therefore, have been no
95
possible doubt in either Dr. E. F.'s or Dr. M. Allen Starr's mind about
my residence being in Virginia. On top of their knowledge as above
described, and on top of the corroboration of it in Trow's Directory
(which they probably consulted, for touching my occupation they say
on line 202 "occupation Lawyer") which gives my residence Virginia,
on top of, and in spite of, all this, both Dr. M. Allen Starr and Dr. E.
F. swore that to the best of their knowledge and belief I reside at the
Hotel Kensington. This looks to me like perjury. How does it strike
you?
At all events it is so remarkable a divergence, as sworn testimony,
from the sworn testimony, on the same subject, on the part of the
said Petitioners that it badly needs investigation.
The remainder of the statements in the Commitment Papers both
on the part of the said Petitioners, and on that of the said Medical
Examiners in Lunacy, is on a par with the above instances of false
swearing.
On the maxim "False in one thing false in all" it becomes un
necessary for me to take up your time to deny the false allegations on
the part of the said Petitioners and on that of the said Medical Ex
aminers in Lunacy, as "they drag their slow length along."
I shall content myself in making a general denial to all allegations
which go to show me of unsound mind.
Such trifling allegations as that I have limited myself to a peculiar
diet, or that I have secluded myself, or that I burnt my hand (in an
experiment by the way), I demur to.
I also demur to the allegation that I frequently went into a
"trance-like state." This was done in the presence of Drs. Moses Allen
Starr and E. F. and at their request in order that they might note
the action of a trance-like state. Their request to me was based on
purely scientific grounds and I granted it on the same grounds. There
was never any question of Medical advice. Drs. E. F. and Moses Allen
Starr each pretended interest in the trance-like states, and Dr. Moses
Allen Starr pretended to some knowledge of same.
You will remember that I said that I had for some years been
carrying on investigations in Esoteric Buddhism. The said trance-
like state is one of the means I from time to time employ to that end.
As I said before I am not going to bore you with a lecture on Esoteric
Buddhism, and shall drop the subject with the remark that I have not
injured myself nor anybody else by my said investigations. ,
To all allegations to the effect, or tending thereto in the remotest
degree, that I have a delusion or delusions of any kind or description
I make an unequivocal denial.
The allegations that I have exposed myself to cold, neglected or
injured myself, I unequivocally deny.
The allegation that I threaten people I unequivocally deny.
The allegation that I was emaciating I unequivocally deny.
The allegation that I was confined in an Institution for the Insane
96
In New Paris, France, I unequivocally deny. "New Paris'" is a remark
ably ignorant clerical error.
I unequivocally deny each of the following allegations which for
brevity I shall designate by the numbered line they fall on. Namely.
Line 142 from the word "Been" to "Manner;" line 144 from the words
"he has" to the end of line 150, inclusive; line 187 to line 191, inclusive.
Line 205 to line 212, inclusive. Line 215 and line 216, with the excep
tion of 'is armed": the very natural fact that I had a revolver in my
room, which I always travel with, was twisted until it was distorted
into "is armed." Line 218 and line 219. Line 244 to line 249, inclusive,
except that I maintain that my eyes have changed from brown to gray.
Line 252 to line 2.61, inclusive, except that I frequently went into a
trance-like state at the request of Drs. Moses Allen Starr and E. F.
and that I sometimes talked French when in the trance-like state.
Line 262 to line 264, inclusive. Lines 269, 270, 271. Line 273 and line
274. The valet in question denied to me in my cell the foregoing alle
gation in the following inelegant but explicit language to-wit: "I didn't
describe no gradual development of no delusion for I didn't see none."
I demur to line 272 which says: "He has become suspicious of friends,
has secluded himself," on the ground that I showed keen instinct in
suspecting my friends. My friends so called family and friends ran
me in here. Had I been more suspicious of friends I should not be
in the hole which I occupy at present.
I think that you will agree with me that the frequently occurring
word "line" in the foregoing paragraphs should read "lie."
So much for the allegations of the said Petitioners and said Medi
cal Examiners in Lunacy against my reason. Now let us see how far
the allegations of the Honorable Henry A. Gildersleeve, Justice of the
Supreme Court of the State of New York, that I am a maniac, with
suicidal as well as homicidal tendencies the only conclusion to be
drawn from his allegations remember the said Honorable Justice has
never laid eyes on me, line 187 to line 191, inclusive, and line 345 and
line 346 let us see how far said allegations have been borne out by
the facts which have transpired since my arrest March 13th.
I made no resistance to the Police who arrested me at the Hotel
Kensington and brought me here. I gave them cigars and we smoked
and chatted amicably together on the way here.
During the four months that I have been imprisoned here I have
not committed a single act which in the remotest degree resembled
either violence or insanity. I have threatened nobody during that
time. I have frequently warned the authorities here that I would seek
legal redress for the false imprisonment that I was undergoing, and
that I would hold them legally responsible for their share in it.
The above statement is borne out by each of my keepers one is
on duty with me when the other is off duty one of whom has been
eleven years a keeper in Insane Asylums and the other has been three
years in this Institution. Their duty is to sleep in my cell and be
97
with me and watch me when I am awake, and report daily to the Au
thorities here all that I do or say of any nature whatever. These
reports are then taken down in writing by the Authorities and are
known as "charts." It is on these "charts" that the progress or retro
gression of a "patient's" condition is based. The Authorities the
doctors i. e. may see the "patient" for five or ten minutes each day,
the keeper sees the patient fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. It is
in fact the keepers, who are expert trained nurses, and not the doctors
who understand the most about the character, habits, and mind of the
patient, in the ratio of fifteen hours to ten minutes per day of diagnosis
and attention. Neither of my keepers has ever seen me do or heard
me say anything which was in the least irrational or unbalanced.
Each of them considers me as sane as any man and they are willing
to so testify.
Why do the doctors here not discharge me as sane? Why did
they not discharge me as sane after a week or two of observation?
Because the duty of the doctors in the pay of this Private Insane
Asylum appears to be to hold anybody placed here, whether sane or
otherwise, long enough for the owners of this Asylum to make a good
profit out of him or her. Times are hard. It is not every day in the
week that the proprietors of this Asylum can capture a prisoner who
can be made to pay $100 (one hundred dollars) a week ransom until
released. As you see by the statement on the cover of the Commit
ment Papers that is the exorbitant sum I am forced to pay in exchange
for a two-roomed cell, a keeper whose salary is not over thirty dollars
a month with board and lodging and baked potatoes. There is no
reduction here; I am forced to pay for what I don't want, whether I
reject it or otherwise.
You can readily grasp the threads of this daring conspiracy from
your intimate knowledge of the ways of criminals, gathered from your
long and successful pursuit of them as Commonwealth's Attorney.
It is not necessary therefore for me to point them out to you.
Let it suffice to say that the ground work of the Commitment
Paper is an amalgam of avarice, malice, and mendacity.
That the only truthful statements in the Commitment Papers are
such as in no wise reflect on my reason or sanity. That I was accused
by persons who were not in a position to know whereof they not
merely spoke but duly swore. That these said accusers the said
Petitioners were all and severally on bad terms with me, and had
been so for years. That it was to the unmistakable business interests
of two of the said accusers Messrs. Winthrop Astor Chanler and Lewis
Stuyvesant Chanler that I should be disfranchised, as an insane person,
of my property as well as of my liberty.
That having had a sharp altercation with Dr. E. F. for bring
ing Dr. Moses Allen Starr into my rooms without warning or per
mission, to spy on me in company with himself as the result proved,
which altercation was the basis for a second one with Dr. Moses
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Allen Starr on the general topic of the morality of the Medical pro
fession: in the discussion of which topic I showed such unexpected
knowledge of the habits of many members of the Medical profession
that Dr. Moses Allen Starr, after vainly endeavoring to discover the
source of my information, earnestly requested me to change the sub
ject: that having had, as I say, a distinct altercation with each of
the said doctors who later were metamorphosed into the said Medical
Examiners in Lunacy the motive of the said followers of the Healing
Art, in wishing to see their late antagonist declared a maniac, is not
far to seek. I might say that I have not the faintest tinge of prejudice
against surgeons as well as such physicians as are both skillful and
honest That there are numbers of physicians who are neither one
nor the other it has been my fortune to discover. The proof of the
above lack of prejudice against physicians is, that I have spent money
in giving aid to deserving Medical students to complete their education.
The motive which led the Honorable Henry A. Gildersleere,
Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York to overlook the
grave discrepancy displayed in the Commitment Papers in the spec
tacle afforded by two conflicting sworn statements on the same sub
ject namely, the sworn statement of the said Petitioners as to my
home's being in Virginia followed by the sworn statement of the said
Medical Examiners in Lunacy as to my home's being in Hotel Kensing
ton, New York the motive which led the Honorable Justice to permit
the said spectacle to pass unchallenged, I shall leave you to surmise.
This Institution is very rich.
The motive which led the said Honorable Justice to dispense with
"personal service" on a merely ex parte statement, I shall leave you to
surmise.
The motive which led the said Honorable Justice to omit to direct
"substituted service" clearly the alternative, when personal service is
dispensed with, as implied by the law which reads: "the judge to
whom the application (for Commitment to an Insane Asylum) is to
be made, may dispense with such personal service, or may direct sub-
tituted service to be made upon some person to be designated by him."
Cf. printed cover of the Commitment Papers containing the said law
lines 53 to 55: the motive which led the said Honorable Justice to
the above omission I shall leave you to surmise.
You will note, on studying the extracts from Chapter 545 of the
laws of 1896 given on the cover of the Commitment Papers the
tortuousness thereof. For instance take Section 62. The said section
contradicts itself. It says line 49 and line 50: "notice of such applica
tion (for Commitment to an Insane Asylum) shall be served person
ally, at least one day before making such application upon the person
alleged to be insane."
That is no more than fair is it? Somebody takes it into his
or her head or pretends to take the notion into his or her head,
99
for certain reasons, that you are crazy. It seems fair that you should be
allowed to confront your accuser a common murderer has that privi
lege and be heard in defence to his or her allegations, before being
summarily arrested like a malefactor, as I have been and put behind
bars without a trial for an indefinite period, perchance for life. Well
the above wholesome specimen of boasted Anglo-Saxon justice, law,
freedom, etc., is at once wiped out and rendered utterly nugatory by
what follows on lines 53 to 55, inclusive. After the above bold bluff at
justice after saying "notice of such application (for Commitment to
an Insane Asylum) shall be served personally, at least one day before
making such application, upon the person alleged to be insane"' the
law dodges justice and sneaks out at the following carefully prepared
loophole line 53 to line 55, inclusive: 'the judge to whom the (said)
application is to be made may dispense with such personal service."
The judge has it all his own way. Get at the right judge and it's plain
sailing. There are two explanations of the above law. One, that it is
the outcome of manipulated legislation at Albany by Corporations
dealing in bogus maniacs, who wish, to legislate in order to continue
the said monopoly in maniacs, which the laws of the State of New
York at present foster and support.
The other explanation, for the above iniquitous law's smirching
the Statute Books of the "Empire State," is that it is the product of
the late Republican Legislature.
In other words a citizen of the State of New York can be con
demned, and imprisoned without a hearing. All that is required to
deprive a citizen of the "Empire State" of his liberty, is, one or two
false witnesses, two dishonest doctors, and a judge who can swallow
conflicting sworn statements without a qualm. No defence is allowed
to the accused.
This is truly the "Empire State." I sometimes wonder, as I
look through the bars of my cell, how such things can be, outside the
Russian Empire State.
Fortunately for myself, however, I am no longer a citizen of the
"Empire State," but am and have been since 1895 a citizen of the
Sovereign State of Virginia; which title to sovereignty I propose to
see Virginia make good by rescuing me, recapturing me as it were
from the neighboring and supposedly friendly State of New York, by
calling on the arm of the Federal courts.
An interesting question this, and one in which, it may be shown,
that the Doctrine of State's Rights rests for support upon Centraliza
tion, and that when one sovereign State steals the citizen of another
sovereign State, and thereby the money accruing from his personal
taxes, the robbed State may call upon the common residuary of all
extraneous sovereign rights, the central government, to demand resti
tution from the robber State.
So much for the equity surrounding my present predicament.
Now let us glance at the law. You will readily comprehend with
100
what meagre means towards forming an opinion I am at present sur
rounded.
The sum total of my law library consists of the Constitution of
the United States, in the back of a dictionary, and selections from *
list of legal maxims in the same book. The Constitution of the United
States says Article III. Section 2: "The judicial power (of the Federal
Courts) shall extend to controversies between citizens of another State
to controversies between citizens of different States." I am a citizen
of Virginia. Should I have a controversy with the State of New
York, the controversy being between a State and a citizen of another
State, the Federal courts could alone have jurisdiction over the contro
versy.
The question of a man's sanity, covering as it does his liberty, and
his property, is surely a controversy of the first importance.
I therefore having had my sanity attacked by a State court (the
Supreme Court of the State of New York), have a controversy with
the State of New York. Said controversy must be tried, therefore, in
the Federal Courts.
Furthermore, I have had my sanity attacked by Drs. Moses Allen
Starr and E. F. They being citizens of the State of New York, and
I being a citizen of Virginia said controversy must be tried, therefore,
in the Federal courts.
Furthermore, I have had my sanity attacked by Messrs. Winthrop
Astor Chanler, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler and . I
being a citizen of the State of Virginia and they, the Messrs. Winthrop
Astor Chanler and Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler being citizens of the
State of New York, and being a citizen of the
State of Massachusetts, said controversy must be tried, therefore, in
the Federal courts.
Furthermore, I have been restrained of my liberty by "The Society
of The New York Hospital," the legal title of the corporation which
owns the Asylum in which I am at present confined.
The said corporation being a New York concern, and I being a
citizen of Virginia said controversy must be tried, therefore, in the
Federal courts.
The above actions are for the future. For the present all I ask
is liberty.
It is not necessary for me to tell you how to proceed to attain
that end. I will only caution you in closing not to write or telegraph
me, or mention me to a living soul, save Senator Daniel (to whom
of course you will show this letter) anything connected with me or
my whereabouts. It has been given out by certain interested parties
that I am in Europe (I find that that is the stock term used when a
man is sent here). Let it be so considered as long as possible.
Speed is essential, for I have been given to understand, that, when
my unknown term of imprisonment here is ended, I am to be shipped
to Europe. As to what point I was not informed; most probably to
101
an English private Insane Asylum. That would probably do the busi
ness for me, as there they are even more brutal in their treatment of
patients than here.
Above all I warn you and Senator Daniel to be on your guard
against all the doctors here. For they are all of them as smooth
spoken and deceptive in their manner as any set of confidence men
you ever encountered.
The name of the Superintendent is Dr. Samuel B. Lyon, the
Asylum is commonly called "Bloomingdale" but that is merely a
fancy name. Its legal title is "The Society of The New York Hospital,"
a private corporation having its offices and Hospital on 15th St., a few
doors west of Fifth Avenue, New York.
As you may gather from my letter I mean war.
No compromise with any man, or institution, which has been in
the remotest degree connected with this rascally conspiracy.
Listen to nobody who 1 endorses what has been done.
The more friendship such a man professes for me, the more pro
found should be your distrust for him.
The manner of proceeding to procure the writ of habeas corpus I
leave entirely in Senator Daniel's and your hands.
Speed and secrecy are the watch-words. The moment it leaked
out that any effort was being made for my release, that moment would
probably end my imprisonment here and begin it in a closed carriage,
on my way by night, bound and gagged to Long Island Sound eight
miles off where a private tug boat would convey me to an ocean
Steamer at New York, or a sailing vessel bound around "the Horn."
I can assure you that outlawed as I am, my position is one of con
siderable uncertainty not to say danger.
It is unnecessary for me to say that nothing but the most unex
pected and dire necessity could induce me to go before a sheriff's jury,
the usual manner in the State of New York of carrying out a habeas
corpus proceedings for a man who has been declared insane by a judge.
I object to this for three reasons.
First: Because it is not the right way to go about it. I am not
a citizen of the State of New York and therefore the sheriff's jury
does not apply to my case.
Second: Because I do not desire the notoriety consequent thereon.
Third: Because my family are most anxious that I should go be
fore a sheriff's jury, in the desperate hope that the said jury would
believe what they, and the doctors said about me. In which case the
jury would pronounce me insane, and hand me over to the custody of
my family, who could then apply for and receive into their hands my
property and the management thereof under the name of a commission.
The above line of action (going before the sheriff's jury) has
already been suggested to me by an emissary of my family, who told
me that that was the only way for me to get out hoping thereby
that I would choose it.
102
The best way, it seems to me, would be to have Senator Daniel
and yourself go before the Attorney General in Washington, and have
him issue an order to the United States District Attorney in New
York City, to go before a Federal judge in New York City with Senator
Daniel and yourself, and procure from said Federal judge a writ of
habeas corpus, on the double ground that I am not insane show por
tions of this letter to the judge as proof of my sanity, on the maxim
"To write is to act," if I write sanely I act sanely and that if I
were insane the actions should have been begun in a Federal and not
in a State court, owing to my being a citizen of Virginia, and not of
New York, and that my Commitment by a State Court is therefore
illegal and must be set aside.
I merely mention this, with the full knowledge of its being owing
to the circumstances a horse-back opinion.
I don't dwell on the irregularity of the commitment the conflict
ing sworn statements the suggestions of fraud the fact that the
name of the institution, in which I am, is therein given as "Blooming-
dale Asylum," whereas the Commitment Papers distinctly state under
it, on line 156: "it is essential that the official title of the institution
should be correctly inserted," and whereas the official title of said in
stitution is not "Bloomingdale Asylum," but "The Society of The New
York Hospital." The same irregularity is repeated on the cover of
the Commitment Papers, where the title of the said institution is
again given as "Bloomingdale Asylum." These, with the rest of the
legal aspects of the case, I leave entirely in Senator Daniel's and your
experienced hands.
If necessary, let a Federal judge examine into my sanity for a
change. Examination at the hands of a distinguished and honest man
is the last thing that I would avoid.
If necessary, let us begin de novo, only in a legal, equitable, and
honest manner. No more dishonest doctors, no more Star Chamber
judges, no more summary arrests. We are not in Cuba nor, as! yet,
in the State of New York does martial law prevail.
As I am allowed no money I haven't seen a dollar bill in
months and as I am not allowed to communicate with my New York
office, I am unable to send you and Senator Daniel cheques for re
tainers and disbursements. So I must ask you to explain the situation
to the Senator and tell him that I must ask him to charge all travel
ing expenses and disbursements to my account until I am liberated.
The same I request of you. I hope before many days to see Sena
tor Daniel and yourself enter the door of my cell, accompanied by an
officer bearing a writ of habeas corpus from a Federal court.
Faithfully yours,
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER.
P. S. Please bring this letter with you as a resume of my case.
J. A. C.
103
State of Virginia,
County of Albemarle,
I, Micajah Woods, Commonwealth's Attorney for Albemarle County,
Virginia, being duly sworn depose and say that I received the appended
letter addressed to me, under date July 3, 1897, in October, 1897, that
the said letter is in the handwriting of John Armstrong Chaloner and
signed by John Armstrong Chaloner.
MICAJAH WOODS.
Sworn to before me this 12th day of July, 1905.
JOHN W. FISHBTJRNE,
Notary Public for the County of Albemarle, in the State of Virginia.
John W. Fishburne, Notary Public,
Albemarle County, Virginia.
My term of office expires September 19th, 1906.
County of Albemarle,
State of Virginia,
to wit:
I, W. L. Maupin, Clerk of the Circuit Court of the County of Albe-
raarle in the 'State of Virginia, the same being a Court of Record, do
certify that John W. Fishburne, whose genuine signature is affixed
t<j the foregoing and annexed certificate was at the time of signing the
same a Notary Public in and for the County and State aforesaid duly
commissioned and qualified according to law and authorized to take
proof and acknowledgment of Deeds and other instruments of writing.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the
seal of said Court this 12th day of July, 1905.
W. L. MAUPIN,
Clerk.
(Seal of Virginia.)
His commission expires 19th day of Sept., 1906.
"FOUR YEARS BEHIND THE BARS OF BLOOMINGDALE."
PAGE 36.
Upon plaintiff's arrest and incarceration upon the said false charge
of lunacy March 13, 1897, in The Society of The New York Hospital,
falsely called "Bloomingdale," at White Plains, Westchester county,
New York, plaintiff at once attempted to procure counsel for his trial
in open court. In all said attempts plaintiff was foiled from the fact
104
that he was a prisoner under the strictest surveillance. Finally, on
or about the 13th of October, 1897, plaintiff did manage to get a letter
out without the knowledge of the hospital authorities. Said letter
was to a lawyer in Virginia requesting him to employ another lawyer
and together to institute habeas corpus proceedings for plaintiff's
release. For the reason that on the old adage, "give a dog a bad name
and hang him," said lawyer was like all other lawyers whom plaintiff
wrote to from White Plains with the said view. Said lawyer felt
doubtful about taking the case of a man declared insane by relatives.
The consequence was that said lawyer did nothing in said matter
beyond writing plaintiff a very friendly letter by the same party who
had conveyed plaintiff's said letter to said lawyer. Plaintiff therefore
resigned himself to an apparently desperate situation, waiting for
something of which he might avail himself to turn up. Plaintiff thus
waited for nearly two years from the time he wrote said letter, which
was on July 3, 1897, for he had to wait from July to October for an
opportunity to get said letter out without the knowledge of the hos
pital authorities. In the early summer of 1899 plaintiff put in a
request to the Superintendent of The Society of The New York Hos
pital, at White Plains, for permission to walk outside of the asylum
grounds unaccompanied by a keeper as heretofore. Plaintiff's conduct
had, during the more than two years of his stay at White Plains, been
so exemplary and docile that the said Superintendent granted plain
tiff's said request. At this time plaintiff was suffering from a nervous
affection of the spine, brought on by the fearful nervous strain
of his surroundings reinforced by the fearful, nervous strain of
waiting, without hope of help from without, in a mad-house cell for
over two years. Plaintiff had been confined to his bed by said com
plaint for weeks at a time. Upon receiving permission to walk out
alone plaintiff attempted to do so, but after a few such attempts his
said nervous affection of the spine returned with increased force,
which again put plaintiff upon his back. There plaintiff remained
for some months. At the end of said time plaintiff once more resumed
his said walks. Plaintiff was very careful not to overexert himself in
his precarious condition of health, and for some months limited his
walks to a little over a mile per day. Gradually plaintiff's health im
proved, and gradually he extended the distance of his daily walks, until
by January, 1900, plaintiff was able without fatigue to do twelve miles
on foot in three hours. Plaintiff thereupon prepared to carry out a
plan he had had in mind when he put in his said application for permis
sion to walk out alone. Said plan was to choose a post office as far
away from White Plains as possible, but not too far to admit of his
walking there and back inside of three hours. Plaintiff selected a
post office six miles off, and also at the same time selected an alias,
under which to receive his mail without a probability of any of the
said hospital peoples' finding out that plaintiff was breaking one of
the most rigidly enforced rules of said asylum, to-wit, that no letters,
105
telegrams, or telephone messages may go out without having been first
read and approved by the said hospital authorities. In January, 1900,
plaintiff wrote to the said Virginia lawyer, explaining the situation
and that all replies should be addressed to plaintiff under said alias
at said post office. To said letter plaintiff got no reply. Plaintiff
waited until the latter part of February, 1900, when he again wrote
to said Virginia lawyer. To said letter said lawyer replied under date
of March 20, 1900, in a most friendly manner, saying, among other
things. "It is certain that some prominent friend of yours in New
York could serve you more efficiently than I could, as I am a stranger
to the people there and not familiar with the New York procedure in
such cases. I would suggest that you communicate with ;
he is an old friend of yours, on the ground, and familiar with the
influences that would have to be exercised to restore you to liberty,
and the exercise of your rights."
To said letter plaintiff replied under date of March 26, 1900, of
which the following is an excerpt, to-wit. "Yours of March 20th to
hand. I am very much obliged to you for replying to my previous
note so promptly. I fully comprehend the difficulties surrounding your
position. The gentleman you suggested that I should employ in my
case is unavailable. I have, however, other lawyers in view. I had
just written one of them in relation to my case and made an appoint
ment for our meeting secretly. You will readily understand the im
portance to me, and my case, of my letter to you dated July 3, 1897,
and its enclosures, to-wit: a certified copy of my Commitment Papers,
arid a page from I have a rough pencil copy of said
letter, but it is not in shape for ready reference or easy legible read
ing. As this letter contains a complete and exhaustive history of my
case, written when the events were fresh in my mind you will easily
see its importance to me in giving a complete succinct recital of the
events which led to my arrest, and what followed, to my lawyers. I
therefore enclose a special delivery stamp, which is almost as sure as
a register stamp, to ensure the safe arrival of the aforesaid documents,
which are of vital importance to myself."
To said letter said lawyer replied under date of March 30, 1900:
"My Dear Friend, Yours received. I have mailed to you this morn
ing the documents you wished. The paper you wrote is clear, strong,
and logical, and would be of immense service to your friends and
attorneys in New York. I do earnestly hope your efforts to secure
relief will be successful. You must let me know the progress you
make in this line, and advise me of the name or names of your New
York attorneys and at the proper time, if I can possibly leave here, I
will go on and confer and co-operate with them."
This was the last plaintiff heard from said Virginia lawyer. The
latter part of March, 1900, plaintiff wrote to a New York City lawyer
proposing to engage him in plaintiff's case in co-operation with a
second New York lawyer of great prominence. Plaintiff also enclosed
106
in his letter to said first New York lawyer plaintiff's long letter to
said Virginia lawyer (dated July 3, 1897), and the certified copy of
the Commitment Papers. Said first New York lawyer replied to
plaintiff's said letter as follows, under date of April 7, 1900: "Long
letter and papers received. The matter is receiving attention, and I
will let you hear from me as soon as possible."
Plaintiff waited until May 12, 1900, without hearing anything
further from said first New York lawyer. On that date plaintiff wrote
a polite note to said first New York lawyer to the effect that, if for
any reason, said second New York lawyer was unable or unwilling to
co-operate with said first New York lawyer on plaintiff's case, that in
that event said first New York lawyer was to g.et the "long letter and
papers" from said second New York lawyer and offer the case to a
third prominent New York lawyer. To said letter said first New
York lawyer replied under date of May 14, 1900, as follows, to-wit:
"Yours of May 12 just received, and I must apologize for keeping you
in suspense, but for the past week I have been under the weather and
have been unable to attend to anything. But your affairs have not
been forgotten, and I am doing exactly what you asked me to do. I
have had a long talk with (said second New York lawyer)
and he now has your papers, and has had them for some time. He is
a very busy man, and he promised me he would give this matter his
most careful attention. I will do my best to have an interview with
him this week, and will write you immediately."
This said note was the last plaintiff ever got from said first New
York lawyer. After waiting in vain till the latter part of May, 1900,
to hear from said first New York lawyer plaintiff wrote on May 24,
1900, to an old friend of plaintiff's, and also a friend of said second
New York lawyer. It was in fact, said friend who, years previous,
had introduced plaintiff to said second New York lawyer at the club.
Plaintiff only met said second New York lawyer on this occasion. In
plaintiff's said note to said friend of May 24, 1900, plaintiff proposed
to said friend to call on said second New York lawyer, and use his
good offices to get said second New York lawyer to bring plaintiff's
case to court as quickly as possible. Plaintiff was under the impres
sion at that time that said second New York lawyer was at work
upon his (plaintiffs) case. Since said friend would be in a position
to assure himself on that matter, one way or the other, plaintiff in
writing to said friend, May 24, 1900, spoke of said second New York
lawyer's having taken his case as an accomplished fact. The follow
ing note is said friend's reply to plaintiffs aforesaid note, to-wit: "New
York, May 30, 1900. Your esteemed favor of the 24th ult. was duly re
ceived. I cheerfully accept your proposition and shall devote myself to
its fulfillment as shall best be deemed advisable from time to time, as
events may be developed. Nothing can be accomplished by undue
haste everything by patience and serenity. Those with whom I am
to confer and advise are fully alive to the situation, rest confident
upon that. I have never failed you heretofore, and shall not now.
Be of good cheer, and believe nothing will be neglected toward the
end in view." Plaintiff naturally inferred from the said note that
said friend had seen said second New York lawyer, and that said
second New York lawyer was diligently at work upon plaintiff's case.
Weeks rolled by and no word came either from said second New
York lawyer or said friend. Plaintiff then wrote direct to said second
New York lawyer a brief and polite note asking point blank, but
politely, whether or not said second New York lawyer was engaged
upon plaintiff's case. To this note said second New York lawyer made
no reply whatever. Plaintiff has since learned, upon incontrovertible
evidence, that said note from plaintiff was duly received by said second
New York lawyer, however. Plaintiff did not write again to said
second New York lawyer, nor did plaintiff think it worth while to
notify said friend of plaintiff's of said note to said second New York
lawyer. By the middle of October, 1900, plaintiff's patience began to
wear. Said second New York lawyer kept silent. But since plaintiff
had said friend on guard, so to speak, watching said second New
York lawyer, plaintiff, who had perfect faith in the friendship for
himself on the part of said friend felt sure that, strange as said
second New York lawyer's silence seemed, there was some good reason
for it. But, as has been said, plaintiff's patience began to wane to
wards the end of October, 1900. Plaintiff thereupon wrote to said
friend and asked him point blank whether or not he knew whether
or not said second New York lawyer had taken plaintiff's case. The
following extract from said friend's reply lifted a veil from plaintiffs
eyes. The said extract is all of said friend's said note, which is
relevant. Said extract, to-wit: "New York, Oct. 2:0, 1900. I do not
know for a fact whether (said second New York lawyer)
has, or has not, undertaken your case. I had concluded from your
letter that he had, and in my conversations with him since that time
looked upon him as your counsel. For weeks I have not seen that
gentleman, and all efforts to have a talk with him in your behalf
have been fruitless and of no avail." Plaintiff thereupon wrote to said
friend for further information, said friend's reply to which contains
the following extract, to-wit: "New York, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 1900.
Again I have to report that I have not seen or heard from our friend
(said second New York lawyer). It seems incredible to me. You
are sure, are you, that you have not written anything he might have
taken exception to? On that, I take it, he is punctilious to a degree.
But this is all at random, and as though in a fog." Thereupon plaintiff
wrote said friend informing him of plaintiff's note to said second
New York lawyer, before referred to, asking said second New York
lawyer point blank, but politely, if said second New York lawyer had
taken plaintiff's case or not. Plaintiff further asked said friend if
said second New York lawyer had ever mentioned said note to him.
To this question the following is an extract from said friend's reply,
108
to-wit: "New York, November 4, 1900. At no time did the distin
guished counsel (said second New York lawyer) ever say, or intimate,
he had received a letter from you. The query was wholly mine, reach
ing out through a maze of ignorance to arrive at a conclusion." Plain
tiff received one or two more notes from said friend, all showing said
friend's inability to reach or hear from said second New York lawyer.
Plaintiff was more than ever convinced of the truth of the said
adage, "Give a dog a bad name and hang him." However, plaintiff
decided to make one last effort at getting counsel from New York,
failing which he determined to escape. Plaintiff therefore wrote to a
third New York lawyer, whom he had known intimately in the past,
asking said third New York lawyer to meet him at a point sufficiently
distant from White Plains to insure said conference being free from
interruption. Said third New York lawyer promptly responded and
said conference took place. Said third New York lawyer was as
friendly as possible; but the upshot of it was that said third New
York lawyer proved to be about as averse as had the other New York
lawyers shown themselves to be to taking plaintiff's case. Plaintiff
thereupon decided to escape next day, and, after borrowing ten dollars
from said third New York lawyer, did so.
PRESS STATEMENT.
by
PLAINTIFF'S ATTORNEYS, SEPT. 20, 1901.
The appearance at Louisa Court House, Virginia, to-day of at
torneys in a civil proceeding in behalf of Mr. John Armstrong Chal-
oner, with reference to certain property in that County in which he is
interested, being likely to revive or to originate sensational newspaper
stories about him, his attorneys, who are Senator Daniel and his law
partner, Mr. Frederick W. Harper, of Lynchburg, (Virginia), Hon.
Mica jab. Woods, Commonwealth's Attorney for Albemarle County, of
Charlottesville (Virginia), Hon. Armistead C. Gordon, City Attorney,
of Staunton (Virginia), and Hon. Augustus VanWyck, of New York,
have deemed it advisable, with Mr. Chaloner's approval, to give to
the press the following statement:
On the 13th day of March, 1897, Mr. Chaloner, then a citizen of
Albemarle County, Virginia, visiting in New York City, was committed
to "Bloomingdale Asylum" at White Plains, N. Y., on an order of a
judge of the Supreme Court of New York. On Thanksgiving Eve 1900,
after numerous fruitless efforts to secure legal counsel, having man
aged to borrow from a friend a few dollars, he escaped from the
Asylum, and went to Philadelphia. There, under the guise of an
attorney representing a client, he submitted his case to a distinguished
109
neurologist, and upon the latter's expressions of willingness to assume
charge of his alleged client, disclosed his identity. In older to afford
the neurologist ample time and opportunity for observation, Mr. Chal-
oner, of his own motion and without compulsion, repaired to a private
sanitarium in Philadelphia, under the charge of this doctor, and re
mained under his personal supervision there for six months. During
this time a number of eminent alienists, neurologists and psychologists
were called in consultation and the records of the proceedings in
Louisa County disclose the unanimous opinion of all these experts as
to Mr. Chaloner's sanity.
Later, having placed himself in touch with his counsel by corres
pondence, he came to Virginia and lived at Lynchburg up to a short
time ago, when he returned to his home County of Albemarle where
he now is, and where proceedings have been instituted under the Vir
ginia statutes to demonstrate before a Court of competent jurisdiction,
and in an affirmative manner, his entire sanity.
Mr. Chaloner, who since his escape from "Bloomingdale" has been
believed by many persons to be dead, [See Police description of plain
tiff, Page 87] and by many others to be living abroad, is the picture of
vigorous physical health; while his sound mentality is vouched for by
such eminent scientists as Dr. William James, Professor of Psychology
at Harvard University, Dr. H. C. Wood, Professor of Nervous Diseases
in the University of Pennsylvania; Professor Joseph Jastrow, head
of the Psychological Department of the University of Wisconsin and
President of the American Psychological Association; and by other
prominent alienists and neurologists.
Mr. Chaloner's commitment and confinement in New York grew
out of his necessary seclusion of himself for a long period of time in
the study of Experimental Psychology, a field of science that has re
ceived a tremendous impulse of development in the past few years, and
in which those who are competent to judge, award Mr. Chaloner the
encomium of having made a very interesting; discovery. In a book
ho is about to publish entitled, "The X-Faculty A Short Study in
Advanced Experimental Psychology," his scientific investigations are
fully set forth.
It will doubtless please the many friends of Mr. Chaloner in Vir
ginia and elsewhere to know of his sound condition of mind and body,
which is vouched for, as disclosed to them by personal contact and
through frequent correspondence during recent months, by all of his
counsel,
(Signed) DANIEL & HARPER,
MICAJAH WOODS,
ARMISTEAD C. GORDON,
Attorneys.
110
THE OHANIiER-FAMIL,Y LETTERS.
We shall lastly introduce five letters corroborative of plaintiff's
statement in said letter to said Micajah Woods under date July 3, 1897.
to the effect that there had been bad blood between plaintiff and plain
tiff's said family (brothers and sisters) for years, and that the line
of demarcation had been drawn in 1888, etc. etc.
"Rokeby,"
Barrytown, N. Y., June 23rd, 1888.
(To John Armstrong Chaloner.)
Dearest Brog: Many thanks for your delightful letter flowing
with metaphorical milk and honey.
I am so glad you are so happy, dear old boy, and that you find
the dreadful marriage state not such a bugbear after all. I congratu
late you with all my heart on your winning such a fair and noble
prize in the life race, seeing how richly you deserve all happiness
that may come to you. Now I am going to speak quite frankly about
a matter which has been exercising us all a good deal, and whose
nature you seem entirely unconscious of. Far be it from me to throw
the slightest cloud across your sunshine, though in the present state
of the thermometer a cloud would be rather a grateful change for the
heat is oppressive, but I don't think you realize in the least how
very keenly we all felt your treating us as if we were mere outsiders
to be classed with reporters and other noxious aand inquisitive bipeds.
The news of your marriage was known to hundreds of people
before it reached us. Aunt Caroline Astor was here on Thursday
afternoon and said: "Well I hear Archie is being married" We
naturally poohpoohed the thing as a newspaper story. The next day
the "Herald," "Times" etc., confirmed the fait accompli, not until
Monday did we get any news from Virginia and in the meantime, as
it happened, we had a stream of visitors who could none of tiiein
fail to be surprised at our being left so totally in the dark.
Naturally we felt very much hurt at such neglect, poor Alida has
cried her eyes out several times feeling that you do not care for her,
the boys are all vexed and affronted. Wintie and I try to make the
best of the matter, but for several days we could not trust ourselves
to speak of it. Your announcement that you will stay in Virginia all
summer, read aloud at table last night reopened the wound, poor
Bunch's tears rolled down her cheeks into her strawberries. I think
you ought to try to come up for a week at least, before the girls sail.
I assure you the thing; is worth the sacrifice. The world which you
seem to care about a good deal as who does not has got hold of
the idea that your family is not overpleased with your marriage,
nothing as you know could be falser than this, but it is you who have
given it this impression, it rests with you to efface it. You know
Ill
without any telling you how warm your welcome would be here and
I think you owe it to yourselves as well as to us, to let us see you
here.
Think it over well, remember how much weight and stress you
always lay on duties to your family. I say no more, fearing you take
me already for a tiresome old lecturer. Please understand that I
write because I think it is best you should know how the land lies
about Rokeby, and show you how you may make a difference, I won't
say for your whole future but certainly for several months of it by
your present movements, in the whole feeling of the family. Mr.
Bostwick has just returned from Baltimore, quite worn out with dodg
ing questions as to why none of the family were present, etc., etc.,
and he told Wintie last night that you ought really to know how the
farmers and people about here are talking at your not coming; up nor
having had any one down. The only way, you see, to do away with
all these false impressions is for you to come up here as soon as pos
sible.
This is not a case for quibbling arguments about insignificant
"side issues," you have got yourself into this false position and you
owe it to your wife and her future relations to the family to get
yourself out of it. Use your own judgment as regards telling Amelie
about all this, she has had enough worries and should be spared
as much as possible. Give her my love Wintie joins me and says
he won't trust himself to talk any more on the subject. Very affec
tionately,
DAISY.
Alida sends love to you both also give Margaret love from us all.
(From Winthrop Astor Chanler.)
"Rokeby,"
Barrytown, N. Y., June 19th.
My >ear Margaret: I have been waiting until I could control
my temper before answering your letter.
If ever two people deserved a good spanking, those two are Brog
and you. Of course you were but as putty in his hands, and backed
him up in his absurd mysteries but still your own common sense, If
no other feeling, should have told you that he was quite wrong in
acting as he did. Now I suppose you are wondering what I am driving
at. Wait a bit until I tell you a story.
A detachment of the British Army in India was on the march.
An officer was very anxious to know whether the army was to halt
the next day and asked one of the staff officers, who had once been a
friend of his, about it. "I really do not know the intentions of the
General" was the reply. Then says the Chronicler, "Returning to his
tent disgusted with the airs of his former companion he was met by
112
his servant with the information that the army was to halt the next
day. "Where did you learn that?" said the officer "Major M's (the
staff officer) washerman tells me." So Major M. could tell his washer
man that he might take advantage of the halt to blanch his linen, but
he could not communicate it to an old friend; although from the situa
tion of the army it mattered not, in a military point of view, if the
fact were known from one end of India to the other." Just read,
mark, learn, etc., this parable and I think you will see how the cap
fits. You could write to Mr. Morris and tell him to be sure the "d"
was 1 left out of his name, etc., etc. and yet you could not send one
line or word to any member of your family so that we could drink
the bride's health. As it happened Archie's alleged telegram never
reached us.
Alida at "Tranquility" and all of us at "Rokeby" heard it from
an outsider and the daily papers. Of course Brog, like Sir Andrew
Aguecheek will have fifty "exquisite reasons" for it all. He always
has. It won't make much difference now what he says. It is all over
the country that not a single member of his family knew he was going
to be married so soon. That don't look well does it? I am glad he is
where he is so much appreciated for his stock is below par up here.
I cabled the news to Bess lest she too should hear through the papers.
Alida wrote me a piteous letter to-day asking for news What news
can I give her? That you leave Va. in a week? Another little point
for you and Brog to digest at your leisure is this. The outcome of
his sublime and fatuous predilection for mystery is that as your name
was only in one paper the great majority for whom he poses think
that no member of his family was present at his wedding. You can
draw your inferences.
This is all I am going to say on the subject except that it is use
less to tell Amelie anything about it. She has nothing to do with it,
and need not be made uncomfortable. Yours,
W.
(From Winthrop Astor Chanler.)
"Rokeby,"
Barrytown, N. Y., June 22nd, 1888.
My Dear Margaret: On our return from Albany to-day, where
we had dined and spent the night with Mrs. Pruyn, I found your long
letter.
Your reasons for not letting us know are precisely what we all
supposed them to have been. Of course we all knew perfectly well
that you wanted to send us word and that Archie would not let you.
When you say that you did not consider it proper for you to discuss
the matter with and differ from, him we disagree with you entirely.
It was your business to fight any such proceeding on his part with all
113
your might. Particularly so when you thoroughly realized how -we
would feel as you say you did. In fact every word in your letter and
in Brog's to Daisy goes to confirm us in our opinion. The Rives had
a perfect right to wait till after the wedding before cabling to the Ool.
if they wished. They had plenty of relatives in the house to back
them up in anything they chose to do if the Herald is to be believed.
Besides there are a half dozen ways in which Brog could have let us
know the day before if he had wished. He could have written or
telegraphed in French. As soon as he had had his interview with
the Herald reporter he could have sent us word. The whole trouble
is that he apparently looked upon the family in the same light as the
public with a strong preference for the public. I am not going to
discuss the matter any further as regards the disagreeable position
he has seen fit to put us all in and its result in the eyes of the world
of whom he seems to stand in such dread. Nor am I going; to discuss
the utter fizzle of his attempt at secrecy. I will simply say that he
has done the very thing of all others he should have not done under
the circumstances and that he has hurt the feelings of his entire
connection on this side of the water in a way that though they may
say nothing, yet will make them show it for a long time to come. In
the most important epoch of his life he has made a fool of himself and
hurt his wife in the eyes of the public. You can show him both my
letters on condition that he does not tell his wife about the contents
more than is necessary. I will write to him as soon as I can talk of
something else.
Yours,
W.
P. S. Remember I want you to show both my letters to Brog.
You ean leave the matter of repetition to his own judgment.
(From Winthrop Astor Chanler to John Armstrong Chaloner.)
"Rokeby,"
Barrytown, N. Y., June 21st, 1888.
Dear Brog: Just a line from an outsider to disturb the perfect
bliss of Armida's garden. Ask for and read the two letters I have
written to Margaret in the name of the Rokebyites and use your own
judgment about repeating the contents. Love to Armida We don't
want any cuttings from the Herald or any other of your friends the
Journalists.
Yours,
W.
P. S. The weather here is very warm, 93 in the shade to-day I
wonder if you wouldn't find it cool in spite of the thermometer.
114
(From John Armstrong Chaloner to Winthrop Astor Chanler.)
"Castle Hill,"
Albemarle County, Virginia, June 27th, 1888.
Dear Wintie: I have received your note of June 21st, and I shall
want an apology from you in writing, before anything further can
pass between us.
Yours,
J. A. C.
Now as regards the corroborating evidence concerning the veracity
of plaintiff's statements in the above letter to Hon. Micajah Woods
under date of July 3, 1897.
We shall lastly introduce a letter written to plaintiff under
plaintiff's then alias of John Childe while plaintiff was in hiding from
the New York and Pennsylvania police at the said private sanatorium
in Philadelphia, by the late Hon. James Lindsay Gordon, then one of
the assistant District Attorneys of New York City where he died, and
recently in 1904 one of the Assistant Corporation Counsel of the
same.
"District Attorney's Office.
City & County of New York.
May 6th, 1901.
John Childe, Esq., Phila,, Pa.
My Dear C.: I have your letter of the 5th inst. but this is the
first moment I have had to answer it, having been engaged in Court
all day in the trial of cases.
I remember very distinctly the meeting; to which you refer, of the
Directors of the R. P. Co.* in your room in the Hotel Kensington in
December, 1896, and the altercation of a violent character which then
occurred between you and your brother Mr. W. A. C. (Mr. Winthrop
Astor Chanler) an altercation which reached the verge of becoming
a physical one, you rising from the bed in which you had been previ
ously lying, and you and he simultaneously approaching each other
In a threatening manner. I do not after the lapse of so long a time,
recall the exact point at issue between you, but I do recall that
on being appealed to by you, I agreed to the correctness of your
position. I think it was the next day or the day thereafter you
showed me a letter from him in which he said, in effect (of course
I do not recall the language) that he could have no further com
munication with you except in writing or through third parties.
*Roanoke Rapids Power Company.
115
My recollection is that you sent him a reply to the effect that you
accepted that situation; anl either in that letter or another one about
the same time by me, you notified him that you would send a repre
sentative to examine the accounts of your Father's estate of which
he was one of the executors. To the latter proposition he verbally to
me at once acquiesced. Subsequently at your request I employed an
expert accountant who examined the books and made a report which
was either given you or Mr. S. W. who held your power of attorney.
I do not now remember which.
Subsequently to the Kensington Hotel meeting, Mr. W. A. C. resigned
his presidency and membership on the Directory of the U. I. Co.* and
you were elected in his place. I was at that meeting elected a Director
on that Board by proxies of your stock a position which I some time
ago resigned, transferring my share of stock to who I believe
was elected Director in my stead tho' of this I am not sure. I re
signed as it was practically impossible owing to the tremendous pres
sure of my official duties to attend to the Directorship of the U. I. I
have now I think, briefly epitomized the business transactions of that
particular period so far as I can remember such business transactions.
In so far as your relations with the members of your family
(brothers and sisters) were concerned, of course my knowledge was
derived from you. I was on the most intimate social and business
footing with you and there were few things you concealed from me.
You had, on various occasions before the transactions hereinbefore
referred to, spoken to me about them and that your relations with
them were not friendly. My recollection is that on one or two occa
sions I rather argued the matter with you, stating that I thought you
must be mistaken, but you persisted in the assertion that you knew
what you were talking about and that you knew that your family
were unfriendly to you.
I have written this hurriedly because I desire to have it reach
you at once, as you seem to desire it as soon as possible. It may be
proper to add that if your family were unfriendly toward you, of
which it is not necessary for me to express an opinion, I would natu
rally not be the person to whom such unfriendliness would be ex
pressed, occupying as I did the intimate relation, with you to which
I have referred.
With the very kindest regards and best wishes for your good
health, Faithfully yours,
JAMES LINDSAY GORDON.
I remember being with you when you met Mr. W. A. C.t in the
station at Jersey City and remember your telling me afterwards that
you and he had a violent quarrel on the train going South.
J. L. G."
*United Industrial Company.
tCol. William Astor Chanler.
116
A perusal of the above proves plaintiffs assertion touching the
aforesaid meeting of the Board of Directors of the Roanoke Rapids
Power Company at plaintiff's said rooms at said Hotel Kensington,
15th Street and 5th Avenue, New York City, in December, 1896. A
perusal of the above letter also proves the falsity of the charge that
plaintiff was insane from November, 1896, since no Board of Directors
would think of holding a business meeting in the rooms of a dangerous
maniac such as plaintiff is pictured at said time of said meeting in
said Commitment Papers as being. A perusal of the above letter also
proves plaintiff's assertion touching the aforesaid violent altercation
arising thereat between plaintiff and plaintiff's said brother, Mr. Win-
throp Astor Chanler; and also that plaintiff's position in said alterca
tion was a correct one: and also all in said assertions of plaintiff
touching the subsequent consequences of said altercation to wit. (a)
Plaintiff's said assertion touching the letter written plaintiff by said
Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler breaking off all social relations with
plaintiff except in writing or through third parties, (b) Plaintiff's
said assertion touching plaintiff's acceptance of the said situation in
a letter, saying also that plaintiff would send a representative to ex
amine the accounts of plaintiffs said Father's Estate of which said
Estate said Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler was one of the Executors;
and also said Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler's acceptance of said propo
sition, (c) Plaintiff's said assertion touching said Mr. Winthrop
Astor Chanler's said resignation from the Presidency of, and mem
bership on the Directory of the said United Industrial Company, (d)
Plaintiff's said assertion touching plaintiff's election to the Presidency
of the said United Industrial Company; together with plaintiff's elec
tion^ by proxies of plaintiff's stock, of a new Directory in the said
United Industrial Company of plaintiff's own choosing.
A perusal of the above letter also proves plaintiff's assertion
touching the unfriendly relations obtaining between plaintiff and
plaintiff's said family (brothers and sisters) ; for although, as Mr.
Gordon points out, said Gordon would not be likely seeing the most
intimate social and business footing existing between said Gordon
and plaintiff to be the person to whom such unfriendliness would
be expressed by said family, yet said Gordon admits that plaintiff had,
on various occasions before the transactions hereinbefore referred to,
spoken to said Gordon about said family, and that plaintiff had said
to said Gordon that plaintiff's relations with said family, were not
friendly. It should hardly be necessary to state that the correctness
of plaintiff's said judgment, regarding the secret and concealed hos
tility from public view of plaintiff's said family towards plaintiff is
pretty effectively proved by a member of said family, said brother or
plaintiff, said Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler's said violent altercation,
which reached the verge of becoming a physical one, at said meeting
of said Directory of said Roanoke Rapids Power Company at plaintiff's
said rooms at said Hotel Kensington, in December, 1896.
117
The late Hon. James Lindsay Gordon, above referred to, was
the brother of the Hon. Armistead Churchill Gordon, of Staunton, Vir
ginia, now Rector of the Board of Visitors of the University of Vir
ginia, and the brilliant and well-known writer of Southern stories in
the magazines.
The News and Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina, October 18, 1906.
"FOUR YEARS IN BL.OOMINGDALE"
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER'S BOOK ON DETENTION
AS A LUNATIC.
Readers of the News and Observer will recall the mysterious sen
sation occasioned ten years ago by the incarceration in "Bloomingdale"
asylum, in New York, and the subsequent escape of John Armstrong
Chaloner, the wealthy Virginian and member of the New York bar.
For four months the friends of Mr. Chaloner supposed that he
was away taking a trip for his health. For weeks after his escape
and return to his State of Virginia newspaper speculation was rife as
to the causes which led up to tiie imprisonment. He was subsequently
declared sane in an action tried in the courts of Virginia, and was
adjudged competent to manage his own affairs. Beyond the fact that
he had brought actions against persons, however, the matter has since
fallen away from public attention and has in many respects remained
ever since a mystery.
Mr. Chaloner is especially known in the South by reason of his
marriage to Amelie Rives, the brilliant Virginia novelist, whose book,
"The Quick or the Dead," created a national furore at the time of its
publication, and by reason of the fact that it was through his money
and initiative largely, and Major T. L. Emry, that the water power
at Roanoke Rapids, in North Carolina, was first developed.
Through the publication of a book by Mr. Chaloner, which is now
on the Palmetto Press, of Roanoke Rapids, the News and Observer
is able to give an exclusive statement of the complete story, as stated
by Mr. Chaloner of the events leading to his commitment to the asylum,
the circumstances under which he was arrested in New York and
railroaded to "Bloomingdale" and the sensational details of his four
years's stay there as a prisoner practically ex-communicado from the
world, from March 13th, 1897, until Thanksgiving day eve, 1900. when
he effected his escape and successfully eluded the police who were
searching for him in every large city in response to a general alarm.
The title of the book is "Four Years Behind the Bars of 'Bloom
ingdale' ; or the Bankruptcy of Law in New York."
118
STANFORD WHITE SUGGESTS A PLUNGE
As detailed by Mr. Chaloner, he was induced in March, 1887, to
leave his country place, Merry Mills, in Virginia, and go to New York
by Stanford White, who was recently killed on the roof of Madison
Square Garden by Harry Thaw. Mr. Chaloner states that he had had
much trouble with his family in a social and business way, the first
on account of his having engaged in psychological studies and in
vestigation into Esoteric Buddhism, and the second by reason of his
having ousted his brother, Winthrop Astor Chanler, from the presi
dency of the United Industrial Company of Roanoke Rapids, which
Mr. Chaloner controlled. He alleges that his incarceration in the
asylum was brought about by his brother for the reasons stated, and
for the purpose of gaining control of his property. Referring to the
visit paid him by Stanford White, to his home in Virginia, Mr. Chal
oner declares that he had written Mr. White that he could not see
him, but that the latter nevertheless appeared at his home in com
pany with a physician and invited him to go to New York for "a
plunge in the Metropolitan whirl." Mr. Chaloner consented and went
to the Hotel Kensington, where he engaged rooms.
Later the doctor, whose name is not given, but who is described
as "B. F.," and Mr. White insisted that Mr. Chaloner should put him
self in a trance-like state, an accomplishment he says that he has ac
quired as the result of his studies in Esoteric Buddhism. Mr. Chal
oner complied, and later the doctor returned with Dr. Moses Allen
Starr, a famous New York alienist, who was introduced as an opulist
and, by request of the physician was permitted by Mr. Chaloner to
examine his eyes.
RAILROADED TO "BLOOMINGDALE."
After having examined his eyes, Mr. Chaloner states that Dr. Moses
Starr afterwards came to his room at night, after he had retired, with
three other men and commanded him to go with him, as resistance
would be useless. Mr. Chaloner states that he refused to go and "con
vinced" Dr. Starr that he did not have force enough with him to
make him go. The next day there came to the hotel plain-clothes
policemen with commitment papers, and by them Mr. Chaloner was
taken to the asylum.
From the letter written to Captain Woods is taken the following
description by Mr. Chaloner of his stay in "Bloomingdale" :
"Before going into the commitment papers. I shall briefly touch
on my life here for the past four months. I was brought here the
13th of March. Since that time I have been in solitary confinement
in a two-roomed cell. A keeper sleeps in one of the rooms of my
cell, and he is always with me. When I take exercise in the asylum
grounds the keeper accompanies me. My razors were seized on the
ground that it was a 'rule of the institution.' The consequence was
I had to be shaved by the asylum barber, which caused not only in-
119
convenience, but hardship, since my beard is thick and my skin is thin,
and no barber has been able to shave me without causing a violent irri
tation of the skin, a condition which is always absent when I shave
myself.
"You must excuse the above apparently trivial incident, but you
will appreciate the annoyance it is to be shaved by the asylum barber,
when I tell you that his shaving raised such a rash on my neck that
I have limited his operations to twice a week, thus giving the inflam
mation time to subside-^to begin afresh on the next shave.
"You know, from my having had the pleasure of dining at your
house, that I am limited to a very abstemious diet, that! I am prac
tically a vegetarian.
"You also know that I ride a great deal on horseback. It is, in
fact, my favorite and only form of outdoor exercise. You can well
imagine the deleterious effect upon my health resultant from a com
bination of bad cooking, poor food and total deprivation of horseback
exercise. Of the cooking I have simply to say that the asylum cooks
cannot even bake bread, though they daily attempt it. So that I have
been forced to buy crackers to avoid the violent indigestion the half-
baked bread causes me. Of the food I will simply say that it has
been so bad that I have come down to a daily diet of baked potatoes,
lettuce, fruit and crackers in order to avoid eating food which is
either badly cooked, adulterated or decayed.
"In the meantime I am living in a madhouse. Every 'patient' in
the building in which I am imprisoned is hopelessly insane. At times
some of them became violently, homicidally, insane, when, after yells
and struggles with keepers and a siege in a strait-jacket, they are
forcibly removed to another ward. Since my arrival two patients
tvere removed from this building for having become 'violent,' as they
call it here.
"Nothing prevents a patient from becoming homicidally insane at
any time. In one of such fits of frenzy the lunatic might take it
into his head to walk into my cell and attack me. The cell-doors
are unlocked, and, although there is a keeper on watch on my floor,
he is not always there. To give me warning of the approach of
prowling maniacs I put a table against my door at night.
"This will give you an idea of my surroundings. I think that you
wil} agree with me that they are calculated to drive a man insane.
When you add to these 'surroundings' the active and sustained efforts
of the resident doctors to talk me into becoming insane by declaring
to my face that I am insane, and attempting to argue me into admit-
ing that I am; when you consider this, you will, I think, conclude
that I have my nerves and will-power under effective control in being
able to remain sane.
"So much for my life for the last four months. This is the first
opportunity which I have had for posting a letter unbeknown to the
authorities here. The rule is that all letters and telegrams must be
sent through the authorities here, who have the legal right to suppress
120
or forward to 'The Commission in Lunacy' at Albany, who have again
the legal right to suppress and destroy them. You can readily under
stand that I would not send a letter under such conditions. Hence
my having to wait four months to write to you and ask your aid."
BLOODED CONSPIRATORS' ALLEGED MOTIVE.
The petitioners upon whose affidavits the commitment papers
against Mr. Chaloner were secured were Winthrop Astor Chanler, Louis
Stuyvesant Chauler, and - . The first two named
were the executors of the estate of Mr. Chaloner's father, to which,
under the terms of the will, he is entitled to an annual income of
one-eighth of the total income.
With reference to the will, Mr. Chaloner wrote Captain Woods :
"At my death without issue my said share reverts to the estate.
Should I leave issue my said share would go to said issue. It Is
therefore evidently to the business interests of my family to prevent
my marrying by locking me up for life in an insane asylum, if possible,
and if that is not possible, the next best step towards safeguarding
their business interests is to throw, if possible, an insurmountable
obstacle in the way of my marrying. No more insurmountable obstacle
in the way of marriage could be imagined than insanity."
Of marrying again, however, he says:
"Granting that I get out of this asylum, the stigma of having
been confined in it would stick to me through life. You need not
necessarily infer that I have any intentions of marrying, only I like
to retain the privilege of the option."
Other motives alleged are the desire to control the business in
terests of Mr. Chaloner, and a spirit of revenge on the part of Win
throp Chanler.
PROPERTY IN TRUSTEE'S HANDS.
Mr. Chaloner, since his escape, has started proceedings in New
York against T. T. Sherman, who, by a decree of the court, has been
placed in charge of Mr. Chaloner's property. He alleges that this Mr.
T. T. Sherman was paid twenty thousand dollars out of his estate, and
that the expenses of his stay in "Bloomingdale" amounted to twenty
thousand dollars additional, which has been charged against his
estate. His purpose in writing the book he declares to be to call the
attention of a judge to the action of his relatives.
is "BLOOMINGDALE" A SNARE?
The book goes fully into the methods and workings of "Blooming-
dale," which Mr. Chaloner asserts is not a charitable asylum in any
sense; but run under the protection of the "Society of the New York
Hospital," and that it receives only sufficient charity patients to avoid
the payment of taxes. Its purpose, he allows, is to hold :m<i lcc<'i>
wealthy men, whose families desire to be rid of them.
121
The extent to which the horror of his situation had worked upon
Mr. Chaloner is disclosed in his injunction: to Captain Woods in his
letter :
"Speed is essential, for I have been given to understand that when
my unknown term of imprisonment here is ended I am to be shipped
to Europe. As to what point I was not informed; most probably to
an English private insane asylum.
"Speed and secrecy are the watchwords. The moment it leaked
out that any effort was being made for my release, that moment would
probably end my imprisonment here and begin it in a closed carriage,
on my way by night bound and gagged to Long Island Sound eight
miles off where a private tugboat would tonvey me to an ocean
steamer at New York, or a sailing vessel bound round 'The Horn.'
I can assure you that outlawed as I am, my position is one of con
siderable uncertainty not to say danger."
A PERIL, TO THE EICH.
The book, on account both of its character and its revelations, and
on account of the social standing of Mr. Chaloner and the sensation
created when his commitment first became known, will create profound
interest all over the country. It shows, if its detailed circumstantial
allegations are to be believed, that the rich in New York 'are in more
danger from the avarice of unscrupulous relatives than the poorest
man from unjust accusation and the failure of justice. His story is
fraught with romance and mystery.
AUTHOR OF DISTINGUISHED ANCESTRY.
As stated, Mr. Chaloner, formerly a citizen of Virginia, where he
still frequently resides at his four hundred-acre estate, "Merry Mills,"
is now a citizen of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. He is a mixture
of distinguished Southern and Dutch ancestry, and his blood is such
as to warrant that he will make an unrelenting fight for what he
conceives to be his rights and against injustice. His paternal grand
father, a personal friend of Calhoun, left Charleston, South Carolina,
where his forbears had steadily resided since about 1710, when they
first left Wales for the New World, about twenty years before the
war between the States, came to New York to live, and married into
the New York branch of the Winthrop family. The first of that
family to come to this country was John Winthrop, first Governor
of Massachusetts. This marriage also connected the Chanlers with
Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam, now
New York. In Charleston, the Chanlers had always been members
of one of the three learned professions the Church, the Law, or
Medicine. The author's father married Miss Margaret Astor Ward,
granddaughter of the late William B. Astor. This connected the
Chanlers with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe the author's grand-aunt and,
further back, considerably, with General John Armstrong, of the
122
Revolution, author of "The Newburgh Addresses," and also, through
the Wards, with General Marion, of South Carolina, of the Revolution,
Known as the "Swamp Fox," and also with General Greene, of the
Revolution. Lastly, the Marion connection relates the author collat
erally not lineally, for she never married to no less a personage
than Charlotte Corday, the slayer of the murderous Marat General
Marion's people being French Huguenots.
For some time, while awaiting the results of litigation, Mr. Chal-
oner has been residing on his Virginia estate, engaged in literary
work.
The World, New York, November 11, 1906.
STOP THIKF! GIVE ME MY MILLION!
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE STORY OF JOHN ARMSTRONG
CHALONER, FORMER HUSBAND OF THE PRINCESS
TROUBETZKOY, WHO IS LEGALLY SANE IN VIR
GINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA, LEGALLY INSANE
IN NEW YORK, AND WHO WRITES A START
LING NARRATIVE OF HIS STRUGGLES
FOR LIBERTY AND AN INHERI
TANCE.
Can a man be sane in one State and insane in another?
So it would seem. But John Armstrong Chaloner, cousin of the
Astors, one time chum of the late Stanford White; lawyer, college
graduate, student of psychics and ex-husband of that brilliant woman,
Amelie Rives, now the Princess Troubetzkoy, is not going to take such
a decision as final.
His case comes up in the Federal Courts here in New York. Mr.
Chaloner, who has a fortune of largely over $1,000,000, wants to get
control of it But the courts of New York say he is insane and not
competent. His legal residence is in the State of North Carolina.
And there, as in Virginia, the courts have decided that he Is
perfectly sane and able to manage his estate.
There are forty-five States in the Union. Mr. Chaloner can visit
forty-four of them without the slightest danger to his personal liberty.
But should he set his foot in the sovereign State of New York he will
promptly be clapped into a lunatic asylum, because he is still held
to be mentally incompetent. Dr. Lyon, of "Bloomingdale," has testified
that Mr. Chaloner is a paranoiac. Dr. Austin Flint, Dr. Carlos F.
McDonald and Dr. Moses A. Starr, have given it as their opinion
that Mr. Chaloner is hopelessly insane.
And Dr. J. Madison Taylor, Dr. Thomson Jay Hudson and Dr.
H. C. Wood have pronounced him absolutely sane and possessed of a
brilliant intellect
123
It will be a desperate legal battle. Mr. Chaloner has retained
the best of counsel. So has the custodian of his one million dollars
or two, T. T. Sherman, who says he is insane. It is very much like
Charles Reade's "Very Hard Cash" all over again.
TO PROVE PSYCHIC GIFTS ABE NOT INSANITY.
It will be more than a legal fight. It will be a trial in which
a man who has delved deep into psychic phenomena will try to prove
that he is not insane just because he knows something more than the
mere everyday things of life. Because a man is possessed of an
X-faculty, a sub-consciousness with a psychic development, Mr. Chal
oner contends, does not prove him mentally incompetent Because he
has solved the mystery of "graphic automatism" does not prove him
a lunatic.
One might search fiction high and low for a case like this one in
real life.
It is one of the most remarkable stories of modern times. Here
is a man of independent means, a man of affairs, a brilliant writer,
an ardent sportsman, a clever raconteur, sent to "Bloomingdale," ad
judged hopelessly insane "progressive," the physicians called his case.
There he stays for nearly four years. He knows it is hopeless
to protest. There he is, behind the bars, gone from the world for
ever. He dreams of freedom by night; by day he ponders over the
problem of getting it. He knows that to be violent would see the
end of his hopes ; he acquiesces in every thing his keepers order,
without a word of protest. It is the careful working of a mind bent
on accomplishing its object freedom !
He waits his time. He gets the trust of every one about him.
He does meekly everything that he is bidden everything except ad
mit to the doctors that he is insane. He gets permission to take
walks without a keeper. He makes his daily jaunts farther and far
ther away, deliberately practicing the art of covering great distances
in a short time. He finds a post office where he may receive letters
under an assumed name, because nothing may reach him at the asylum
until it has been scrutinized. In this way he manages to borrow
$10 this man with an income of $40,000 a year.
And now what does he do?
One day he does not return from his daily walk. No, he has
walked well and far he has taken a train to New York from an
obscure railroad station miles distant from White Plains, where
Bloomingdale now is. By nightfall he is safe in Philadelphia.
Does he go into paroxysms of impotent rage at those who incar
cerated him, as do many of the insane when they escape? Does he
try to kill those whom he might imagine responsible for his sufferings?
Does he break out in incoherent ravings against fancied evils?
No. He goes straightway to a sanitarium in Philadelphia. He
states his case calmly to the physician in charge and asks to be put
124
under scientific observation. ^After six month's voluntary confinement
there the physicians tell him that he is perfectly sane and has al
ways been so. He is not even now content. He goes to another
institution and goes through the same voluntary process all over again.
Once more the physicians tell Mr. Chaloner he is well-balanced. Then
suddenly he appears at his old home, Merry Mills, Cobharn, Virginia,
where he has stayed to this day, master of his estate, as at Roanoke
Rapids, North Carolina.
GIVEN UP AS DEAD.
Meanwhile his family and his friends had given him up for dead.
Thousands of dollars had been spent in trying to find him. Finally it
was said that he was gone forever. No one guessed that the quiet,
rather punctilious Mr. John Childe, in the Philadeplhia sanitarium,
was the missing John Armstrong Chaloner, cousin of Waldorf Astor.
Once safely home, this so-called lunatic retained counsel. The
matter of his sanity was brought up in the Virginia courts and then
and there John Armstrong Chaloner was pronounced sane and com
petent. But the greater part of his fortune was here in New York
State, and here it is on record that John Armstrong Chaloner is a
hopeless lunatic. Should he come here, he would be deprived of his
liberty. And that is why he is suing in the United States Court in
the hope of winning back his inheritance and his standing as a man
of sound mind.
And why was John Armstrong Chaloner, Columbia University,
'83, called insane?
Because he was possessed of the power of "graphic automatism"
and had developed his X-faculty type of subconsciousness was taken
as evidence of insanity.
Yet some of the most prominent psychological writers discuss this
X-faculty in all seriousness and admit that there is such a thing as
"graphic automatism." And all of this is told in a remarkable book,
which Mr. Chaloner has just published.
He calls it "Four Years Behind the Bars of Bloomingdale, or
The Bankruptcy of Law In New York." In it he is extremely bitter.
He calls "Bloomingdale" "The Bastile of the 400," and asserts very
positively that it is an easy matter to put any one behind the bars
forever as insane, just as Reade contended in his "Very Hard Cash."
John Armstrong Chaloner first came into the public eye when he
married Amelie Rives, who wrote that brilliant story, "The Quick or
the Dead," in which is told the old love of a beautiful widow for her
dead husband and her newer love for another man in the flesh. Jock
Bering, the hero, was Chaloner. As she described him :
"There was the same curling brown hair above a square, strong-
modelled forehead; eyes the color of autumn pools in sunlight; the de
termined yet delicate jut of the nose; the pleasing unevenness in
the crowded, white teeth ; the fine jaw, which had that curve from
ear to tip like the prow of a cutter."
125
Her marriage to young Mr. Chaloner only added to the book's
popularity. She was beautiful, impetuous. Soon their friends came
to realize that there was nothing in common between the grave,
polished, rather mystic, New Yorker and the gifted Virginia girl.
There was a divorce, which the husband did not contest, upon
the ground of incompatibility, and the Mrs. Chaloner that was mar
ried Prince Troubetzkoy, whom she met abroad.
The book that he has written as his plea to be counted sane con
tains 500 pages. In it many New Yorkers are mentioned few of them
favorably.
MR. CHALONEB'S OPINION OF PEOPLE.
"The more I know men the more I admire dogs," is the way Mr.
Chaloner opens his book, quoting from Voltaire.
And here is the way he begins :
"The law in the State of New York, both State law and Federal
law, has reached a point of impotency whereat an innocent man is
about to be deprived of valuable property against his expressed will,
and the law, both State and national, is impotent to save him."
He refers to Mr. Hearst, and to Stanford White, whom he ac
cuses of luring him to "Bloomingdale," as follows :
"A prominent party now running for a prominent political position
is adversely commented upon between the boards of said book. Lastly
in this particular connection. A certain prominent party recently
shot to death is also commented upon between the boards of said
book, whereas the trial of said prominent party's slayer comes up
in the New York Supreme Court in a few weeks that is to say, in
the fall or winter of 1907, these lines being actually penned Sep
tember 29, 1906."
The book recites with bitterness what the writer calls the in
justice of the proceedings leading up to the judgment of the New
York Courts, and to his incarceration in "Bloomingdale."
Of "Bloomingdale," he says:
"We shall now point but not with pride, as a member of over
twenty years' standing of the New York bar to the fact that we
have been robbed, so to speak, of twenty thousand dollars by the
Society of the New York Hospital, falsely known as 'Bloomingdale.'
"Here we have twenty thousand dollars taken from an innocent
and sane man by the long arm of the law, or what at present passes
for law in the 'Empire State' of New York."
How Stanford White got him to "Bloomingdale" is told in this
wise:
From a letter written while behind the bars by Mr. John Arm
strong Chaloner, to a brother lawyer outside and smuggled out of
"Bloomingdale" :
126
"HOW I WAS TAKEN TO BLOOMINGDALE. "
"I received a telegram from my friend, Mr. Stanford White, pro
posing to visit me in company with a mutual friend. As I was on
rather unfriendly terms with Mr. White at the time, owing to an
abusive letter he had recently written me, I did not look forward
to a visit from him with pleasure. I therefore sent him a telegram
to say that I was not well enough to see him. A few days later Mr.
White walked in on me, in company with a physician. I shall not
attempt to picture my surprise. Let it suffice to say that I was struck
dumb.
"Mr. White hastily excused his intrusion and implored me to ac
company him to New York for a 'plunge in the Metropolitan whirl.'
As I had some business which needed my attention in New York, I
consented."
Of New York law, he says:
"This is truly the 'Empire State.' I sometimes wonder, as I look
through the bars of my cell, how such things can be, outside the
Russian 'Empire State.'
"Fortunately for myself, however, I am no longer a citizen of
the 'Empire State,' but am and have been since 1895, a citizen of the
sovereign State of Virginia, which title to sovereignty I propose to
see Virginia make good by rescuing me."
Of gome other prominent gentlemen:
"Plaintiff is far from being a pauper and therefore has no need
of more money, plaintiff holding that a million is enough for any
man, but not holding that the size of fortunes should be limited by
law, but the manner of accumulating same should be so severely safe
guarded and shepherded by law that such thieves in sheep's clothing
as Ambassador Joseph H. Choate, Senior, and Elbridge T. Gerry, and
Francis Lagrade Stetson and the rest of the Forty Thieves of Bloom-
ingdale would now be serving life sentences in Sing Sing.
"Graphic automatism" he defines thus :
"In a word, the writing is, as the name implies, automatic. So
far but so far only as conscious thought, i. e., conscious mental
action is concerned, the hand does the writing without the help of
the head. In other words, it is as though one had a magic pen
or pencil, since a pencil is smoother and easier to operate than a
pen that started out to write so soon as the operator took it into
his or her hand.
GRAPHIC AUTOMATISM DESCRIBED.
"The operator has no more inkling of what the next word will
be before the said magic pen has written same than the onlooker.
"All the operator has to do is to hold the pen firmly in the
fingers, dip same into the ink, and see the said graphic automatism."
127
"BLOOMINGDALE" "A BUSINESS PROPOSITION."
He produces authorities who are quoted as saying that "graphic
automatism" is a well recognized phenomenon, and that his trances
were not signs of insanity.
And of "Bloomingdale" thus:
" 'Bloomingdale,' it may as well be admitted, first as last, is run
purely for money, purely on business principles, and not on charitable
ones. Every 'patient' within its walls is a 'pay patient,' and as high,
a 'pay patient' as the parties putting him or her there can be squeezed
into making it.
"The exceptions to this ironclad rule are a handful of pauper
lunatics from Westchester County, who are taken in free for the
purpose of dodging the county taxes on the large and valuable real
estate and tenements possessed by the Society of the New York Hos
pital in the city of White Plains.
"A candidate for a 'certificate of lunacy' is requested by his mas
ters therein the said examining doctors to stand up and then de
liberately throw himself off his balance by putting his feet so close
together, toes and heels touching, that one's equilibrium is menaced.
He is then commanded to extend his arms to their fullest extent,
hands outspread, palms upward and close together. He is then ordered
to open his mouth, put out his tongue and shut his eyes.
"If he does not fall down on the spot he is lucky. It is while
in the above described preposterous position that the physical observa
tions of the examiners is taken."
Thus John Armstrong Chaloner presents his case. He will know
his verdict soon.
The Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, October 17, 1906.
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHAIA)NER SPEAKS.
MAKES SENSATIONAL ADDRESS BEFORE FRIENDS AND
ADHERENTS AT ROANOKE RAPIDS.
Was Entrapped By White.
WELDON, North Carolina, October 16. John Armstrong Chaloner
formerly of New York, after a silence of nine years, made a sensa
tional speech last night at Roanoke Rapids, the town he helped to
build and in the development of which he was one of the chief pro
moters. He spoke in the public school hall, and his appearance upon
the rostrum was the signal for a tempestuous storm of applause from
the people of the town, who crowded the building to the doors. Mr.
128
Chaloner was the picture of health and appeared in fine spirits. He
was dressed in a black twilled cutaway coat, steel blue trousers, high
turnover collar, black and red silk four-in-hand tie, with a gray pearl
stickpin, patent leather lace shoes.
Before beginning his speech he removed his dark blue melton over
coat, high derby hat, and laid aside his gloves and walking stick, it
being the identical yellow Malacca silver-headed cane he walked out
of prison and from behind "Bloomingdale" bars with.
Mr. Chaloner said that what he had to say was a fearful comment
upon human nature, and particularly upon that class of human nature
known as high society.
He said he had been a victim of about as cold-blooded and mer
cenary a plot as had ever been heard of. He spoke with warmth and
flashing eye when he said that he was lured to New York by false
friends and placed in "Bloomingdale" asylum.
Mr. Chaloner said the courts of Albemarle County, Virginia, had
adjudged him sane and capable of managing and taking care of his
own property rights, and he reached a lofty stage of eloquence when
he declared that he would make a strong and persistent effort to estab
lish to the world the just judgment of the Virginia courts.
Mr. Chaloner charged that on evidence a plot had been hatched
by certain individuals high in the directorate of the Roanoke Rapids
Power Company to assess the stock of the company at 50 cents on
the dollar and freeze out stockholders who could not or would not
pay the assessment.
He said that he was the largest stockholder by 1,000 shares, owning
3,500 shares. "By some mysterious hocus-pocus," he said, "a referee
is appointed to sit on my case who is so peculiar as to object to an
investment of my surplus income to pay this assessment on my Roa
noke Rapids Power Company stock, although the committee and guard
ian ad \ litem, appointed by the New York courts to protect my in
terests, highly approved and eloquently plead for the protection of
this valuable stock, particularly as the assessment amounts to only
about $17,000, and there are over $50,000 of accumulated income in
the hands of the committee."
A GOOD SPEAK EB.
Mr. Chaloner spoke for about two hours. He is greatly beloved
at Roanoke Rapids, and it would be hard for a New York court to
convince the people of that town that John Armstrong Chaloner is not
in full possession of every mental faculty, and thefr verdict is that
he is as sane and as sound in body and mind as any man who dares
charge to the contrary.
Mr. Chaloner's enunciation is peculiarly distinct, and his voice has
a penetrating quality, which would enable him to fill the largest hall
without apparent effort, and his voice was as free from huskiness at
the end of an hour's sustained speaking as when he began.
129
Ex-Mayor Treacy introduced Mr. Chaloner, as the best friend Roa-
noke Rapids ever had.
Mr. Chaloner announced his subject as "The Crime, the Cause
and the Consequence."
Mr. Chaloner said : "I was lured to New York from my then home,
'The Merry Mills,' Cobham, Va., in February, 1897, by my supposed
friend, but alas! as the sequel shows, false friend, the late Mr. Stan
ford White.
"Now, no one can regret having to touch upon the character of
a dead man more than myself, but unfortunately for the character
of the dead man, he is so intimately woven into the web of my
notorious case that it is impossible to describe the one without de
scribing the other.
MYSTERIOUS.
"There is something almost mysterious in the cause of the cold
ness that gradually crept over the warmth of our friendship, which
dated back to 1892. There was no known to me cause for it, except
that he seemed gradually to side with my hostile family against me.
"As I said, I was lured from my then home by Mr. Stanford
White. Mr. White implored me to 'take a plunge in the metropolitan
whirl' of New York, and purely to oblige him I accepted.
"By this emphatically is not meant a plunge behind the foot
lights. At said time, more than ten years ago, Mr. Stanford White
studiously eschewed the footlights.
"When I got to New York a doctor who had accompanied Mr.
White to my then home, 'The Merry Mills,' Virginia, brought another
man into my rooms at the Hotel Kensington, without asking my per
mission. This unknown doctor began to lie as soon as he opened his
mouth. This unknown doctor had the face to say that he was an
oculist, who was anxious to examine my eyes. What was my surprise
to find later on that said alleged oculist was what is called in New
York a medical examiner in lunacy. A few days later said 'oculist'
dropped in after dark of a cold March night, with snow on the ground
and I in bed, and briefly informed me that I was crazy. I laughed
in his face. He told me to get up and follow him out of doors. He
did not condescend to say where. He concluded by saying that re
sistance was useless, since he had another doctor in the next room
and two men outside my door. To cut a long story short, I notified
him that he had made a mistake in his calculations and had not
brought enough men to carry me off that night. He at once agreed
with me. Next day two policemen in plain clothes presented them
selves, and I finally, after reflection, decided to accompany them to
'Bloomingdale,' falsely so-called, lunatic asylum at White Plains, New
York. I shall simply say that it is impossible to describe the horrors
of a madhouse, and shall, therefore, not attempt it. After standing
about as much as I could of it, I decided to escape, and by good
fortune did so.
130
LEARNED CRIMINOLOGY.
"As you all know, or have heard, this town was practically built
by convict labor I don't mean the houses, but the source of this
town's prosperity: the water-power plant, so skillfully prospected, and
so brilliantly achieved by my good friend, Major Thomas L. Emry.
Well, I was in command of a gang of about fifty or sixty out of about
eighty-five convicts making brick. I used to work them hard all day, and
then frequently spend my evenings chatting with them in the big cell,
and making my chat interesting by rather frequent gifts of water
melons in summer and tobacco in winter. In this way I gained the
convicts' confidence and there were some tough propositions among
them, from burglars to others. Gradually I began to pump them and
to get onto their little criminal ways. Finally I became an expert
criminal in experience, not act. Well, when I found myself behind
the bars of 'Bloomingdale' for life, I smiled a somewhat sarcastic
smile, as I said to myself, 'I'm too expert a convict to be kept for
life behind any bars.' To cut this section of the story, it was by
applying the science of criminology, which I had learned in the prison
pen at Roanoke Rapids, that I finally, after nearly four years of wait
ing for a proper opportunity for putting my said scientific knowledge
into operation, escaped.
"Police and detectives were put on my trail, but as I had left no
trail, said gentlemen never got me.
"Since the triumphant vindication of my sanity and competency
in the County Court of Albemarle County, Virginia, November 6th,
1901, I have been steadily working upon my case against said falsely
alleged 'committee,' said T. T. Sherman. As you know, I am a law
yer. I was forced to draw my own brief because lawyers I approached
did not care to spend the time or trouble to brief more than enough
points to put me in possession of my property.
A DISGRACE.
"The laws on lunacy procedure in the State of New York are a
disgrace to the civilization of that wealthy and populous State. The
laws on lunacy procedure in the State of New York are a disgrace
to any place less notoriously bad than Hades. Said law permits a
man to be deprived of his liberty and practically of his property for
life without notice of any proceedings being under way against his
reason, and without an opportunity to appear and be heard in his
own defense. Such a state of things is startling, indeed. Such a
state of things is sufficiently startling to startle me out of any and
all desire to set foot inside the infernal regions of New York without
a pass out of Hell. As a lawyer, I am truly disgusted at such a
state of affairs, and as a lawyer have I shown said state of affairs
surely up in a book recently written by me, and to be published in a
few days under the following title: 'Four Years Behind the Bars
of "Bloomingdale" : or The Bankruptcy of Law in New York,' by John
131
Armstrong Chaloner ; A. B., A. M., member of the bar of New York. A
human document based upon the following court documents ; the pro
ceedings of 1897 and 1899 in New York; the proceedings of 1901 in
Virginia, and the proceedings of 1905 in North Carolina.
"Just here I shall say that the courts of North Carolina have
openly acknowledged my sanity and competency by permitting me to
bring suit before them.
WANTS A CLEAN RECORD.
"I wish to have a clean record mentally and as a sane man be
fore the world and my friends here. I am proud of your friendly
feelings to me, and therefore I want to clear my skirts by coming up
here and speaking of the veiled facts in this case, and to give you
an idea of whether 'I can come in out of the rain or not,' and of
the necessity of my drawing the veil aside and throwing the broad
glare of the calcium on this matter, for if I do not bring this thing
to the attention of the press, I may lose my stock in forty-eight hours,
for all I know. When this book of mine comes out all the proof
and I have got it will be forthcoming. And I give you my word
of honor as a man that I can substantiate everything the plot, etc.,
to get this stock.
NEW YORK POLITICS.
"But Mr. Chanler is not the only Democratic candidate who will
bo more or less affected by the disclosures of my, alas! notorious case.
Now, I approach this subject with caution, for the reason that the
gentleman I am about to name is supposed to be a great friend of
the workingman, and is supposed to be an inveterate enemy of all
illegal law, of all bad tyrannical law of any nature or kind. Now,
I have been forced or rather I have not been forced, but I took the
opportunity, to test the sincerity of this very prominent and very
wealthy gentleman, whom I shall shortly name. I was the friend of
Mr. Arthur Brisbane, the right-hand man, and, many men say, the
brains of William Randolph Hearst, candidate for Governor of New
York.
"Now, I went on to say that what I wrote to Mr. Hearst for was
this, that I had unfortunately had difficulty with various lawyers whom
I had employed, because I found, for various reasons, that they were
less interested in the purifying of the laws than they were in con
necting with their fees, and, therefore, I was forced to write my own
brief.
LAWYERS "TURNED HIM DOWN."
"When I came to these lawyers and said that I desired this brief
so that the outrageous lunacy laws of New York should be forever
purged, they looked at me good and hard and "turned me down."
Then I set to work with the greatest disrust of my ability and wrote
132
my own brief, which took me two years to do. I found that with
other lawyers, difficulties arose which led to a divorce between myself
and the said other lawyers, so that I stand alone in this great case
great not only on account of the money, there being over a million
dollars involved but because of the fundamental points of law in
volved therein, and I don't propose for any reason under heaven to
give up my fight to prevent sane men and women from being de
prived of their liberty and practically of their property for life by
the iniquitous laws of New York, and i am sorry to say, of several
other States, of which I am proud to say that North Carolina does
not form a part, the lunacy laws of North Carolina being excellent.
I wanted to have the brief plead by other lawyers, prominent in New
York, but, finding that that could not be done, I then mentioned to
Mr. Hearst that I would be extremely obliged if he would get me a
lawyer. Now I was, so to speak, playing the Devil with one Wil
liam Randolph Hearst, in other words, I was playing the role of the
Devil as described in the New Testament; I was tempting Brother
Hearst to see if he was gold or merely dross when it came to giving
up money in a cause which did not at once increase the circulation
c % f bis papers or push his political fortunes. So to trap Brother Hearst
I gave him a chance to show if there was 'a nigger in the fence'
of stinginess : I gave him the chance to put up a fee for my law
yer by saying, in effect, I should be obliged if he would advance the
fee for this lawyer whom he would be good enough to find for me
against my note of hand at 6 per cent., payable when my case should
be finally determined.
DISGUSTED AND SAD.
"I am disgusted, I am sad, over finding another fallen political
angel. I had hoped Mr. Hearst was as good as the face he puts on ;
that he was generous and interested in abolishing bad laws, and I
hoped to be able to prove that Mr. Hearst was so disgusted with any
law that was not just and like 'Jeffersonian Democracy' and 'Lincoln
Republicanism' that he would strain every nerve in assisting in purify
ing the lunacy laws of New York through the medium of the news
papers with which he blows his own horn; but I was disgusted when
I found that he did not care a rap for justice or liberty or anything
else that does not redound to the circulation of the papers of Mr.
William Randolph Hearst, or the advancement of his political fortunes.
Now, I am well aware of what I may bring on my head for my little
talk on this subject to-night, and I am perfectly prepared to 'stand
the racket' in any shape that it may come. I felt that here was an
opportunity to test the man; I felt that if he was as philanthropic
and as public-spirited and intolerant of bad laws as he professed to
be, he would take hold of this matter of the reformation of the lunacy
laws.
"I set a trap for him, and he fell into it headfirst. I admire some
things he has done, from fighting the franchise-grabbers to giving soup
133
tickets, because nobody could be more opposed to trusts than your
humble servant, myself; but I do believe in regularity in Democratic
political methods, and I am now speaking to Southern men, and there
are no men who are more regular in their political methods than the
representatives of this glorious South, in which I have made my home,
and I therefore disapprove of the crooked methods by which he se
cured the nomination for Governor of New York, by nothing less than
theft by unseating legally elected delegates in sufficient numbers to
make up the deficit to his nefarious ends.
"The above concludes the political end of this speech, and that ig
the consequence I had in mind when I selected as the title of this
speech, 'The Crime, the Cause and the ^Consequence.' "
Mr. Chaloner reached Weldon at 2 o'clock this morning and boarded
a north-bound train for Cobham, Va.
The Roanoke News, Weldon, North Carolina, October 18, 1906.
CHALONER ON THE WAR PATH.
MAN WHO WALKED OUT OF BLOOMINGDALE DETERMINED
TO MAKE A STRONG FIGHT FOR HIS RIGHTS.
Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner, formerly of New York, but since
July 13th, 1905, a legal resident of Roanoke Rapids, after a silence
fit nine years, made a strong and sensational speech at Roanoke Rapids
Monday night. Mr. Chaloner appeared in perfect health and fine
spirits and looked every inch capable of managing his property rights.
Mr. Chaloner, in speaking of his four years in "Bloomingdale" asylum,
said he had been the victim of as cold-blooded and mercenary a plot
as had ever been heard of. He spoke with feeling of how he had
been lured to New York by false friends and placed in "Blooming-
dale" asylum and of his sensational escape. Mr. Chaloner said the
courts of Albemarle County, Virginia, had adjudged him sane and
sound of mind, capable of taking care of his own property rights, and
with forceful language he assured the people of the town he helped
to build that he intended to make a strong and persistent fight to
establish to all the world the truth of the Virginia courts as to his
perfect sanity..
Mr. Chaloner spoke of his book, soon to be published, in which he
will tell of his four years behind the bars of "Bloomingdale," or the
bankruptcy of the law in New York.
Said that there was evidence that a plot had been hatched by
certain individuals, high in the directorate of the Roanoke Rapids
Power Company to assess the stock of the company at 50 cents on
the dollar and freeze out holders who could not, or would not, pay
134
the assessment. Said he was the largest stockholder by 1,000 shares.
"By some mysterious hocus-pocus a referee is appointed to sit on
my case who is so peculiar as to object to an investment of my surplus
income to pay said assessment on my stock, although the committee and
guardian ad litem, appointed by the New York courts to protect my
interests, highly approved and eloquently plead for the protection of
this valuable stock, particularly as the assessment amounts to only
about $17,000, and there are over $50,000 of accumulated income in
the hands of the committee with which to meet this assessment."
Mr. Chaloner spoke for about two hours. He was one of the chief
promoters and builders of Roanoke Rapids, and for a long time this
man who has over $1,000,000 in his own right, lived in a modest
cottage in the town he loves, and where he is still held in the highest
esteem by the good people of that place, who believe in his sanity
and his capability to manage his own affairs as much as they do in
their hope of salvation hereafter.
The News-Leader, Richmond, Virginia, October 15, 1906.
CHALONER ON THE WAR PATH.
HAS WRITTEN A BOOK AND WILL BEGIN ACTIVE OPERATIONS
IMMEDIATELY.
Hero of Famous Break from Lunatic Asylum.
Former Husband of Amelie Rives, and Member of Famous New York
Family Resumes His Fight for His Property.
After several years of silence, John Armstrong Chaloner is about
to come to the front again with publications and legal proceedings
which are likely to be sensational. He announces that he has in
press and will begin to distribute the latter part of this week a book
of 500 pages, which is said by those who have seen it to be a marvel.
It will be remembered that Mr. Chaloner is a member of a very
old and wealthy New York family, and a descendant of the original
Astor. He has about a million in his own right, but a number of
years ago was incarcerated in the "Blooiningdale" asylum in New York
State as a lunatic. After four years of confinement he escaped in most
sensationa 1 circumstances and disappeared, finally reappearing sud
denly in Albemarle County, this State, where he married Amelie
Rives, the author of "The Quick or the Dead, : ' from whom he was
afterwards divorced and who now is Princess Troubetzkoy.
Mr. Chaloner is a lawyer by profession and has devoted himself
the last five years to acquiring a wonderful fund of information and
precedent on lunacy laws of the world, giving special attention to
135
those of New York, under which he insists that any sane man whose
relatives desire to obtain possession or control of his property can be
railroaded into an asylum and shut in indefinitely: The title of the
book is :
Four Years Behind the Bars
of "Bloomingdale,"
or
The Bankruptcy of Law in New York,
by
John Armstrong Chaloner, A. B., A. M.,
Member of the Bar of New York.
On the back of the volume is the inscription:
A Human Document:
Based upon the following Court documents : Proceedings of 1897
and 1899 in New York; Proceedings of 1901 in Virginia, and the
Proceedings in 1905 in North Carolina.
The volume is issued by the Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N.
C., and is dated "North Carolina, 1906."
Mr. Chaloner is in the extraordinary and probably unprecedented
position of being officially and legally a lunatic in his own State of
New York, unable to return there without danger of arrest and in
carceration, and deprived of the control of his own property, which is
in the hands of a committee, while in Virginia and North Carolina
and elsewhere he is a free man, going and coming as he pleases and
regarded as fully competent to manage his affairs according to the
formal judgments of the court. He has property in both these States,
and especially large interests at Roanoke Rapids, N. C., of which he
was one of the founders. To-night or to-morrow night he will de
liver a public address to the people of that town in the school-house
or the Baptist church. He made a speech several months ago, but
this time he goes by special invitation, and his speech will be care
fully prepared in advance.
The book he has written and published is said to consist almost
entirely of extracts from official records, court judgments and pro
ceedings, etc. He asserts to his friends that from these documents
he will prove some of the leading lawyers of the New York bar
have been guilty of the most atrocius deceit and cruelty and of con
spiracy against his liberty and property ; and that he will show fur
ther that some distinguished citizens have been guilty of flat perjury,
having contradicted themselves exactly. He will give the details
of his escape from "Bloomingdale," which have not been published
heretofore. He attacks the management and methods of that instruc
tion fiercely and insists that it is living under an alias and doing
business with false pretenses.
136
Mr. Chaloner's book and his renewed personal activity are taken
to mean that after long preparation he has enlisted for a strenuous
and active warfare against the lunacy laws of New York especially,
against those who have been instrumental in having him declared a
lunatic and incompetent, and for the recovery of his property into 'his
own keeping and the judicial confirmation of his competency and rigiit
to manage it. Incidentally he proposes to show that advantage has
been taken of him while he was supposed to be helpless, and that
the property has been so managed and handled as to pile up expenses
against it and deprive him of a considerable part of his income.
THE PRISON HOUSE
PREFACE
To "Hard Cash," by Charles Reade, D. C. L.
Boston:
Dana, Estes & Company,
Publishers.
"Hard Cash," like "The Cloister and the Hearth," is a matter-of-
fact romance; that is, a fiction built on truths; and these truths have
been gathered by long, severe, systematic labor from a multitude of
volumes, pamphlets, journals, reports, manuscript narratives, letters
and living people, whom I have sought out, examined, and cross-exam
ined, to get at the truth on each main topic I have striven to handle.
The mad-house scenes have been picked out by certain disinter
ested gentlemen who keep private asylums, and periodicals to puff
them; and have been met with bold denials of public facts and with
timid personalities, and a little easy cant about Sensationt Novelists;
but in reality those passages have been written on the same system
as the nautical, legal, and other scenes; the best evidence has been
ransacked; and a large portion of this evidence I shall be happy to
show at my house to any brother writer who is disinterested, and really
cares enough for truth and humanity to walk or ride a mile in pur
suit of them.
CHARLES READE.
6 Bolton Row, Mayfair, December 5, 1863.
CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE FIRST EDITION OF
"HARD CASH."
PRIVATE ASYLUMS.
To the Editor of the Daily News:
Sir, When a writer of sensation romances makes a heroine push
a superfluous husband into a well, or set a house on fire, in order to
get rid of disagreeable testimony, we smile over the highly-seasoned
tThis slang term is not quite accurate as applied to me. With
out sensation there can be no interest ; but my plan is to mix a little
character and a little philosophy with the sensational element.
138
dish, but do not think it necessary to apply the warning to ourselves,
and for the future avoid sitting on the edge of a draw-well, or having
any but fireproof libraries. But when we read, as in the novel "Very
Hard Cash," now publishing in "All the Year Round," that any man
may, at any moment, be consigned to a fate which to a sane man would
be worse than death, and that not by the single act of any of our Lady
Audleys, or other interesting criminals, but as part of a regular organ
ized system, in all compliance with the laws of the land when we
read this a thrill of terror goes through the public mind. If what Mr.
Charles Reade says be possible, who is safef Allow me, as one thor
oughly conversant with the working of the law of lunacy, to reassure
the minds of your readers by informing them that it is not possible.
So many are the checks and securities with which the legislature has
most properly surrounded the person of an alleged lunatic; so vigilant,
patient, and so zealous in the discharge of their duties are the Com
missioners in Lunacy and the officially appointed visitors of the asy
lums that any one (not a sensation writer) imagining that these
checks and securities could be evaded, these visitors hoodwinked in
the way the author describes, would himself be a fit subject for a com
mission de lunatico inquirendo.
So far from commissioners and visitors being put off with any
"formula" such as the author quotes, (page 3) and believing any
body rather than the patient himself, the exact contrary is the
fact, and very properly so. In my own cause, Earl Nelson, Viscount
Folkestone, General Buckley, M. P., the Rev. Charles Grove, and
Mr. Martin Coats, and in other asylums magistrates of equal intelli
gence and high standing fill the office of visitors; and never in any
case do they refuse a private interview to any patient asking it. In
these interviews no interference of any doctors or attendants, or any
"formula" is possible, and the visitors will l-'sten even to the most in
coherent ravings if there appears to be the slightest clew to be gath
ered from them to any real grievance. I say nothing of the terrible
slander cast upon a body of professional men to which I am proud to
belong. There is no redress for that. There are certain offences with
which no court of law can deal; offences against decency, good taste,
and truth, which can be brought before no tribunal but that of public
opinion. I would only challenge Mr. Reade, in conclusion, if he has
the slightest grounds for any belief in the possibility of the incidents
he has put in print, to state those grounds. Let him quote his case,
and openly and fearlessly declare when and where such atrocities
occurred. I do not ask for one in all points resembling that which
he has published; but one that furnishes even the slightest excuse for
such a libellous attack upon those medical men who, like myself, prac
tice in lunacy.
I am, etc.,
J. S. BUSHNAN, M. D.
Laverstock House Asylum, Salisbury.
139
page 4) PRIVATE ASYLUMS.
To the Editor of the Daily News:
Sir, My attention is drawn to a letter written to you by J. S.
Bushnan, M. D., to vent a little natural irritation on the author of
"Very Hard Cash," and lull the public back into the false security
from which that work is calculated to rouse them.
I pass by his personalities in silence; but when he tells you, in
the round-about style of his tribe, that "Very Hard Cash" rests on no
basis of fact; that sane persons cannot possibly be incarcerated or de
tained under our Lunacy Acts; that the gentlemen who pay an asylum
four flying visits a year know all that passes in it the odd three hun
dred and sixty-one days, and are never outwitted and humbugged on
the spot; that no interference of doctors or attendants between visitor
and patient, and no formulae of cant and deception are possible within
the walls of a mad-house this is to play too hard upon the credulity
of the public, and the forgetfulness of the press. I beg to contradict
all and every one of his general statements more courteously, I trust,
than he has contradicted me, but quite as seriously and positively. Dr.
Bushnan knows neither the subject he is writing of, nor the man he
is writing at. In matters of lunacy I am not only a novelist; I am
alsp that humble citizen who, not long ago, with the aid of the press,
protected a sane man who had been falsely imprisoned in a private
lunatic asylum; hindered his recapture, showed him his legal remedy,
fed, clothed, and kept him for twelve months with the aid of one true-
hearted friend, during all which time a great functionary, though, paid
many thousands a year to do what I was doing at my own expense
justice did all he could to defeat justice, and break the poor suitor's
back (page 5) and perpetuate his stigma by tyrannically postponing,
and postponing, and postponing, and postponing his trial to please
the defendant. At last this great procrastinator retired, and so,
that worst enemy of justice, "the postponement swindle," died, and
by it's death trial by jury rose again from the dead, even for an
alleged lunatic. Well, sir, no sooner did we get him before thirteen
honest men in the light of day, than this youth whom the mad doc
tors had declared and still declare insane, whom two homuncules, com
missioners in lunacy, had twice visited in the asylum, and conversed
with, and done nothing whatever towards his liberation stood up
eight hours in the witness-box, was examined, cross-examined, bad
gered; yet calm, self-possessed, and so manifestly sane that the de
fendant resigned the contest, and compounded the inevitable damages,
giving us a verdict, the costs, fifty pounds cash, and an annuity of one
hundred pounds a year.
All this, says Dr. Bushnan, is impossible.
I closely examined this youth as to his fellow-patients, and, as he
could minutely describe the illusions of the insane ones, I find it hard
140
to doubt his positive statement that two patients in that same house
were perfectly sane.
Of course, the main event I have related made some noise; real
and alleged lunatics heard there was a Quixotic ass in this island who
would, in his unguarded moments, give away justice at his own ex
pense instead of selling it for so many thousands a year and not de
livering the article; and I was inundated with letters and petitions,
and opened a vein of private research by which the readers of "Hard
Cash" will profit; all except Dr. Bushnan. A lady called on me and
asked me to get her sister out of a private asylum, assuring me she
was sane, and giving me proofs. Having observed that to get out of
an asylum you must first be out of it, I cudgelled my brains, (page 6)
and split this prisoner in half; I drew up a little document author
izing a certain sharp attorney to proceed in law or equity for her
relief; and sent her sister into the asylum to get it signed by the
prisoner. She did sign it, and thus armed, her other self, the attor
ney, being, outside the asylum, was listened to, though a deaf ear had
always been turned to her. After a correspondence, which has served
me as a model in the current number of "Hard Cash," after, in vain,
suggesting her discharge to the parties pecuniarily interested in de
taining her, the board actually plucked up courage and discharged her
themselves. We all saw her often after this, and were hours in her
company. She was perfectly sane, as sane as I am, and much saner
than some of the mad doctors are at this hour, as time will show.
This case opened another vein of research, and my detective staff was
swelled by a respectable ex-attendant (female) who gave me the names
of two or three sane ladies at that time in durance vilest to her knowl
edge. Three years after the supposed date of Alfred Hardie's impossible
incarceration came the flagrant case of Matthew v. Harty, some of whose
delicious incidents have been used in "Hard Cash," and will be con
tradicted by humbugs and condemned as improbable by gulls; at least
I venture to hope so. The defendant was one of that immaculate class,
to criticize some of whom, if I understand Dr. Bushnan aright, is to
libel the whole body; and the plaintiff was a distinguished young
scholar in Dublin. Defendant enticed him into a mad-house, and there
left him in a common flagged cell; but to amuse his irrational mind,
lent him what? Peter Parley, or Dr. Littlewit's conjectures about the
intellect of Hamlet? Oh, dear! no; "Stack's Optics," "Lloyd's Me
chanical Philosophy," "Brinkley's Astronomy," Cicero de Offlciis," and
"Stock's Lucian."
(page 7) Enter the official inspector; is appealed to, admits his
sanity, promises to liberate him, and with that promise dismisses the
matter from his official mind, and goes his way contented. This was
sworn to and not contradicted. Then comes Dr. Harty and urges him
to confession in these memorable words, sworn to, and not contradicted.
"Your safety will consist in acknowledging you are insane, and your
sanity will appear by admitting your insanity." Matthew saw the
141
hook, and declined the bait. Now there was in this asylum a boy
called Hoolahan, whose young mind had not been poisoned, and whose
naked eye was as yet undimmed by the spectacles of cant and preju
dice. So he saw at a glance Matthew was sane, and, not being paid
a thousand a year to pity him, pitied him.
Hoolahan took a letter to Matthew's colleg;e chum. In that letter
Matthew poured out his wrongs and his distress. But suppose it
should be intercepted? Matthew provided against this contingency;
he couched his letter in Ciceronian Latin, humbly conceiving that this
language would puzzle the doctors as much as the Latin in their pre
scriptions would puzzle Cicero. Mr. Hall got the letter, and not being
paid to protect alleged lunatics, took the matter up in earnest, and
so frightened Dr. Harty that he discharged Matthew at once; and said,
"Now, don't you be induced to bother me about this trifle; I'm an old
man, and going to die almost immediately." On this Matthew took the
alarm, and served a writ on him without loss of time. The cause came
on, and was urged and defended with equal forensic ability. But evi
dence decides cases, and the plaintiff's evidence was overpowering.
Then the defendant, despairing of a verdict, bethought him how he
might lower the inevitable damages; he instructed his counsel to re
veal that "the young man who was now prosecuting him to (pag,e 8)
death was his own illegitimate son."
At this revelation, ably and feelingly introduced by Counsellor
Martly, the sensation was, of course, immense, and being in Ire
land, a gallery came down just then and the coup de theatre was per
fect. Many tears were shed; the public was moved; the plaintiff still
more so. For it is not often that a man, who has passed for an orphan
all his life, can plant a writ and reap a parent. "Japhet in Search of a
Father" should have wandered about serving writs. The jury either
saw that the relationship was irrelevant in a question so broad and
civic, or else they were fathers of another stamp, and disapproved of
tender parents who disown their offspring for twenty-four years, and
then lock them up for mad, and only claim kindred in court to miti
gate damages. At all events they found for Mr. Matthew, with dam
ages one thousand pounds.
All this, says Dr. Bushnan, was utterly impossible. Well, the im
possibility in question disguised itself as fact, and went through the
hollow form of taking place, upon the llth, 12th, and 13th December,
1851, and the myth is recorded in the journals, and the authorized re
port by Elrington, jun., and W. P. Carr, barrister at law, is published
in what may be an air bubble, but looks like a pamphlet by M'Glashan,
50 Upper Sackville street, Dublin. But I rely mainly on the private
cases, which a large correspondence with strangers, and searching in
quiry amongst my acquaintances, have revealed to me; unfortunately
these are nearly always accompanied with a stipulation of secrecy; so
terrible, so ineradicable, is the stigma. Hall v. Semple clearly adds
its mite of proof that certificates of insanity are still given recklessly;
142
but to show you how strong I am, I do not rely at all on disputable
cases like Nottldge, Ruck, and Leech; though in the two latter of these
cases the press leaned strongly against the insanity of the prisoners,
and surely the press is less open to prejudice in this matter than Dr.
Bushnan is, who dates his confident conjectures from a madhouse,
(page 9) It seems I have related in "Hard Cash" that in one asylum
(not Dr. Wycherley's), when Alfred Hardy went to complain to a
visitor, a keeper interfered and said, "Take care, sir, he is dangerous."
And this I then and there call a formula, one out of many.
"Dreamer," says Dr. Bushnan, "there are no such things as formulae
in madhouses; and no interference between patient and inspector is
possible, for there are none in my asylum, and therefore there can be
none in any other." Oh, logic of psychologicals!
Mr. Drummond, in a debate on lunacy, testified as follows: "Now
the honorable gentleman had remarked that it was very easy for per
sons in these establishments who had a complaint to make to make it.
Was it really so? (Hear, hear.) He thought otherwise. He could
only say that, whenever he had visited an asylum and went up to a
lunatic who had stated that he had a ground of complaint, some keeper
immediately evinced an unusual interest in his personal welfare, and
cautioned him, saying, 'Take care, sir! he is a very dangerous man.'
(Hear.) The length of this letter, which, after all, but skims the mat
ter, arises out of the importance of the subject, and the nature of all
argument based on evidence. It takes but a few lines to make many
bold assertions, and to challenge Mr. Reade to prove them false. But
the Readian proofs cannot be so compressed. "Plus negabit in una
hora unus doctor, quam centum, docti in centum annis probaverint."
I conclude by begging you to find space for the following extract
from a respectable journal. I have many such extracts in my London
house: this one is a fair representative of the press, and of its con
victions and expressions at the time when it issued: Extract "Here
are two cases (Mrs. Turner and Mr. Leach): We have before us
the particulars of a third, but we are not, unfortunately, in a condi
tion to publish the names. Suffice it to say that an unfortunate
(page 10) gentleman who had been suffering from bodily disorder,
which finally affected his brain, but who was not mad, was incarce
rated in one of those horrid dens which are called private lunatic
asylums, and there confined for months. By his own account he was
treated with the greatest cruelty, strapped down to a bed with broad
bands of webbing, and kept there until it was supposed he was dying.
The result we will state in the sufferer's own words: "My back, from
lying in one constrained posture, was a mass of ulcerated and slough
ing sores; my right hand was swollen enormously, and useless; and
two fingers of the left hand were permanently contracted, and the
joints destroyed. I also lost several front teeth." Thisi poor man at
last obtained his liberty, and applied to the commissioners for redress.
Their letter in reply is now before us. The commissioners merely say
143
that, although they do not in any degree impugn the integrity of the
complainant's statements, they are not of the opinion that inquiry
would answer any good purpose. They add, however, that, "in order
to mark their opinion on the subject they have granted Mr
a license provisionally for the limited period of four months only, and
that the renewal will depend upon the condition and management of
his establisment being entirely satisfactory in the meantime." (As if
any great criminal would not undertake to behave better or more cau
tiously if, after detecting him by a miracle, we were weak enough to
bribe him to more skillful hypocrisy by the promise of immunity.)
Poor consolation this for all the misery the wretched sufferer had un
dergone. Here, then, are three cases following one upon the other in
rapid succession. How many remain behind of which we know noth
ing? The fact would appear to be that under existing arrangements
(page 11) any English man or woman may, without much difficulty,
be. incarcerated in a private lunatic asylum when not deprived of
reason. If actually deprived of reason when first confined patients
may be retained in duress when their cure is perfected, and they ought
to Ve released.
I am, etc.,
THE AUTHOR OF "VERY HARD CASH."
Magdalen College, Oxford, October 23, 1863.
To this letter I hear Dr. Bushnan has replied down in the country.
By this, and by his not sending me a copy, may I not infer he prefers
having it all his own way in the neighborhood of his asylum to en
countering me again before the nation?
The extract above quoted is, I believe, from the Times, and was
accompanied by an admirable letter of three columns, thus entitled:
LUNATIC ASYLUMS AND THE LUNACY LAW.
(By a Physician.)
This honest inquirers should read, and also the newspaper reports
of false imprisonment and cruelty, during the last twelve years, and
the contemporaneous comments of the press, before deciding to over
rate my imaginative powers, and underrate my sincerity, and my
patient, laborious industry.
In January, 1870, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette drew attention
to the fact that several lunatics had died of broken ribs in varous asy
lums, and that the attendants had furnished no credible solution of the
mystery. This elicited the following letter from the author of "Hard
Cash" :
How LUNATICS' RIBS GET BROKEN.
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette:
Sir, The Pall Mall Gazette, January 15, deals with an important
question, "the treatment of lunatics," and inquiries, inter alia, how
144
(page 12 )> Santa Nistri came to have his breastbone and eight ribs
fractured at Hanwell; and how other patients have died at the same
place of similar injuries; and how William Wilson came to have
twelve ribs broken the other day at the Lancaster County Asylum.
The question is grave; the more so, that, by every principle of statis
tics, scores of ribs must be broken, one or two at a time, and nobody
the wiser, under a system which rises periodically to such high figures
of pulverization, and so lets in the faint light of an occasional inquest,
conducted by credulity in a very atmosphere of mendacity. I have
precise information, applicable to these recent cases, but not derived
from them, and ask leave to relate the steps by which the truth came
to me.
On the 2d January, 1851, Barnes, a lunatic, died at Peckham
House, with an arm and four ribs broken. The people of the asylum
stuck manfully together, and agreed to know nothing about it; and
Justice would have been baffled entirely, but for Donnelly, an insane
patient he revealed that Hill, a keeper, had broken the man's bones.
Hill was tried at the Central Criminal Court, and convicted of man
slaughter on Donnelly's sole evidence, the people of the asylum main
taining an obdurate silence to the end. About 1858, I think, a lunatic
patient died suddenly, with his breastbone and eight ribs broken, which
figures please compare with Santa Nistri's. As it had taken a keeper
to break the five bones of Barnes, nobody believed that accident had
broken the nine bones of Seeker; that, I think, was the victim's name;
but this time the people of the asylum had it all their own way; they
stuck manfully together, stifled truth, and baffled justice. (See the
Ninth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, p. 25.) Late in July,
1858, there was a ball at Colney Hatch. The press were invited, and
came back singing the praises of that blessed retreat What order!
(page IS) What gayety! What non-restraint!
fortunatos nimium sua si bona no-Tint lunaticos.
Next week or so Owen Swift, one of the patients in that blest
retreat, died of the following injuries: breastbone and eleven ribs
broken, liver ruptured. Varney, a patient whose evidence reads like
that of a very clear-headed gentleman if you compare it with the doc
tor's that follows it deposed to this effect: Thursday, at dinner-time,
Swift was in good health and spirits and more voluble than Slater,
one of the keepers, approved. Slater said, "Hold your noise." Swift
babbled on. Slater threw the poor man down, and dragged him into
the padded room, which room then resounded for several minutes
with "a great noise of knocking and bumping about" and with the
sufferer's cries of agony till these last were choked, and there was
silence. Swift was not seen again till Saturday morning; and then,
in presence of Varney, he accused Slater to his face of having mal
treated him, and made his words good by dying that night or the very
next morning. This evidence was borne out by the state of the body
fractured sternum, and eleven fractured ribs), and not rebutted by
145
any direct, or, indeed, rational testimony. Yet the accused was set
free. But the press and the country took the decision ill. A Mid
dlesex; magistrate wrote to the Times, August 21, 1860, to remon
strate, and drew attention to a previous idiotic verdict in a similar
case. And whereas the medical man of the establishment had
assisted to clear the homicide by his own ignorance of how bones can
be broken wholesale without proportionate bruises or flesh wounds,
a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph enlightened his professional
ignorance on that head, and gave the public the only adequate solution
of Owen Swift's death, which had been either spoken or written up
that day.
(page 14) That one adequate solution was the true one.
Daily Telegraph, August 8, 1860. Time, 1862. Place, Hanwell.
Matthew Geoghegan, a patient, refused to go to bed. Jones, a keeper,
threw him down, and kicked him several times; then got a stick and
beat him; then he got a fire-shovel and beat him; then jumped on his
body; then walked up and down his body; of which various injuries
the man died, not immediately, but yet so speedily that the cuts and
bruises were still there to show what had killed him. Bone, a brick
layer, and eye-witness of the homicide, swore to the above facts. Linch,
Bone's laborer, another eye-witness, swore to the same facts. The
resident engineer swore that Bone and Linch were both true men.
Dr. Jepson had found the man with bruises, one of which, on his
abdomen, had been caused by the heel of a boot. Per contra, a doctor
was found to swear as follows: "I swear that I think he died of pleuro-
pneumonia. I swear that / don't know whether his external injuries
contributed to his death." And upon this, though no pleuro-pneumonia
could be shown in the mutilated body, though Bone and Linch, disin
terested witnesses, deposed to plain facts, and the doctor merely de
livered a wild and improbable conjecture, and then swore to his own
ignorance on the point in doubt, if doubt there could be; yet this
jury, with their eyes to confirm what their ears heard sworn, and
their ears to confirm what their eyes saw written on the mangled
corpse, actually delivered the following verdict:
"Deceased died after receiving certain injuries from external vio
lence but whether the death was occasioned by natural causes, or by
such violence there was not sufficient evidence to show." They then
relieved their consciences in the drollest way. They turned round on
Bone and Linch, and reprimanded them severely for not having inter
fered to prevent the cruelty, which they themselves were shielding
in the present and fostering in the futrue by as direct a lie as ever
(page 15) twelve honest men delivered.
Suppose the bricklayer and his man had replied, "Why, look
ye, gentlemen; we came into the madhouse to lay bricks, not to do
justice. But you came into the madhouse to do justice. We should
have lost our bread if we had interfered; but you could have afforded
to play the men and didn't." I enclose herewith the evidence of the
146
bricklayers, and the sworn conjectures of the doctor, in re Ocoghegan;
also the evidence of the doctor, and of the comparatively clear-headed
lunatic in re Sicift. About this time my researches into the abuses
of private asyla (which abuses are quite distinct from the subject in
hand) brought me into contact with multifarious facts, and with a
higher class of evidence than the official inquirers permit themselves
to hear. They rely too much on medical attendants and other servants
of an asylum, whose interest it is to veil ugly truths and sprinkle
hells with rose-water. I, on the contrary, examined a number of ex-
patients who had never been too mad to observe, and ex-attendants,
male and female, who had gone into other lines of life, and could
now afford to reveal the secrets of those dark places. The ex-keepers
were all agreed in this that the keepers know how to break a patient's
bones without bruising the skin; and that the doctors have been duped
again and again by them. To put it in my own words, the bent knees,
big bluntish bones, and clothed, can be applied with terrible force,
yet not leave their mark upon the skin of the victim. The refractory
patient is thrown down and the keeper walks up and down him on his
knees, and even jumps on his body, knees downwards, until he is
completely cowed. Should a bone or two be broken in this process, it
does not much matter to the keeper; a lunatic complaining of internal
injury is not listened to. He is a being so full of illusions that nobody-
believes in any unseen injury he prates about.
(page 16) In these words, sir, you have the key to the death of
Barnes, of Seeker, if that was the man's name; and of other victims
recorded by the commissioners, of Nistri, and of William Wilson, at
Lancaster.
I hope this last inquiry has not been weakly abandoned. It is a
very shocking thing that both brute force and traditional cunning
should be employed against persons of weak understanding, and that
they should be so often massacred, so seldom avenged. Something
might be done if the people of Lancashire would take the matter seri
ously. The first thing they should do is to inquire whether the keeper
who killed a stunted imbecile by internal injuries in the Lancaster
Asylum, May, 1863, is still in that asylum. See Public Opinion, No
vember 19, 1863. The next step is to realize and act upon the two fol
lowing maxims:
First, it is the sure sign of a fool to accept an inadequate solution
of undeniable facts.
Secondly, to advance an inadequate solution of facts so indis
putable as twelve broken ribs is a sign either of guilt or guilty con
nivance. Honest men in Lancashire should inquire who first put
forward some stupid, impudent falsehood to account for the twelve
broken ribs of Wilson. The first liar was probably the homicide, or
an accomplice. Just to prove the importance I attach to this inquiry,
permit me, through your columns, to offer a reward of a hundred
pounds to any person or persons who will give such evidence as may
147
lead to the conviction, of the person or persons who have killed William
Wilson, by kneeling on him, by walking knees downwards upon him,
and jumping knees downwards upon him. It is interest that closes
men's mouths in these dark places. We must employ the same instru
ment to open them; it is our only chance.
I am, sirs, yours very faithfully,
CHARLES READE.
2 Albert Terrace, Knightsbridge,
January 17, 1870.
ALADDIN AND HIS WON
DERFUL LAMP
BIOGRAPHICAL.
Wood, Horatio urtis, M. D., born Philadelphia, Jan. 13, 1841.
Graduate M. D. University of Pennsylvania, 1862; Professor Botany,
1860-76; Professor Therapeutics since 1876; also, since 1875 Clinical
Professor Diseases of the Nervous System University of Pennsylvania;
has written numerous scientific treatises: Editor, 1870-73, of "New
Remedies" ; Editor, 1873-80, Philadelphia "Medical Times" ; since
1884 Editor Therapeutic Gazette; also edited United States Dispen
sary; Author of "Materia Medica and Therapeutic" ; "Brain Work and
Over Work" ; "Nervous Diseases and their Diagnosis" ; "Thermic
Fever, or Sunstroke" ; "The Algae of North America" (Smithsonian
Contributions) ; "The Phalangidae of the United States" ; "Researches
Upon American Hemp," etc. Member of National Academy of Sciences
since 1879. Address: 1925 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.
From Who's Who in America.
(Statement by Dr. Horatio Curtis Wood.)
December 10th, 1900.
Dictated by Dr. H. C. Wood, in the presence of Mr. Childe.t
"John Armstrong Chaloner graduated from Columbia College in
1883, with the degree of B. A.; in 1884, received degree of M. A.;
studied for M. A., psychology and philosophy especially; admitted to
the New York Bar in 1885; married in 1888; divorced in 1895, after
a long period of disagreement and coolness; divorce given on the
ground of incompatibility.
Very active business man. Always kept up to some extent hts
interest in psychology. In 1893 first noticed what he calls "premoni
tions"; meaning by that, that after thinking over a subject over night,
mapping out a course of action, he would wake up in the morning
with a feeling of exhilaration, of depression, or of indifference. When
exhilarated always found his plan was judicious and things went well;
tPlaintiff's, John Armstrong Chaloner's, alias in Philadelphia.
Since the police were on plaintiff's track at said time great caution
had to be employed to shield plaintiff's identity.
149
when depressed found it always wise to modify to a greater or less
degree his plan of action; indifference meant there was going, to be
nothing of interest that day. Also when he had made uo plans would
have similar feelings; and found the feeling of exhilaration preceded
a day of good fortune, of depression a day of things going wrong;
indifference meant just indifference.
Latter part of December, 1896, accidentally discovered that at cer
tain times and conditions, if he would take a pencil in his hand it
would write without his making conscious effort or giving direction.
At times the pencil would write nonsense. (Mr. Chaloner explains:)
"This 'nonsense' was not incoherent in the slightest degree; grammar
was correct; sense always perfectly plain; only the 'nonsense' referred
to impossible statements and alleged prophecies about me. At other
times the writing would refer to business or other personal matters,
and give judgment and reasons which were sound and often borne
out in fruits. At one time, Mr. Chaloner, to test the accuracy of this
judgment, speculated under the direction of the writing in a small
way in Wall Street; (Mr. Chaloner) 'A few hundred dollars" with
successful result. Never did this again. (Mr. Chaloner) "Never
would it suggest speculation again." Shortly after the development
of "graphic automatism" (words first used by Mr. Chaloner himself),
Mr. Chaloner found that he at times could talk in the same way, his
vocal utterances being unconnected with conscious cerebration. The
following is Mr. 'Chaloner's statement as to the way in which he first
passed into the condition which he terms "Napoleonic trance." (Of
his own accord, Mr. Chaloner, has denominated previous to any inter
view with me, this faculty of vocal or graphic automatism as "X-
Faculty.") Mr. Chaloner states as follows:
"In communicating with my "X-Faculty" by means of vocal
automatism which is also one of my trance-like states, I was informed
by my "X-Faculty" that it would like me to go into a Napoleonic
trance. It gave me to understand that I would represent the death of
Napoleon Bonaparte by so doing, and that ray features, when my eyes
were closed, and face, would resemble strongly those of the dead Napo
leon Bonaparte. This was in February, 1897, upon or shortly after
my arrival at the Hotel Kensington, New York City. My "X-Faculty"
did not tell me what to do in order to produce the so-called Napoleonic
trance; it merely informed me that when the time came it would in
struct me what to do to produce the said trance. The distinguished
sculptor, Saint Gaudens, calling at the Hotel Kensington, shortly after
my arrival, while I was in bed, in the evening my "X-Faculty" gave
me to understand without Mr. Saint Gaudens knowing it, that it would
be the proper time for me to enter the Napoleonic trance. I asked
Mr. Saint Gaudens if he would like to see me enter a trance; I was
interested myself from a scientific point of view to know just what I
would do in a trance, never having entered one before. I was also
interested to know if the prognostications of the "X-Faculty" regard-
150
Ing my face and features strongly resembling those of Napoleon Bona
parte in death were accurate or false.
Mr. Saint Gaudens expressed keen interest in seeing me in a
trance. I then took, under the direction of my "X-Faculty" a small
hand mirror, which I used for shaving, in both my hands, and holding
it rigidly extended above my head stared at my eyes for several mo
ments without any result. I did not know but what the experiment
was about to prove abortive and ridiculous; it was one of the most
daring experiments I ever entered for that reason. After a minute
or two of complete passivity and rigidity, for the first time in my life
I experienced the entrance to a trance. It is excessively interesting
as an experience. The first symptoms I had of the entering therein
were slow, deep breaths, utterly involuntary on my part; these gradu
ally increased in force and frequency until they resembled what I im
agine are death gasps, by which I mean a man dying and gasping for
breath.
(In reply to a question from Dr. Wood, as to whether he had ever
seen a man die gasping, Mr. Chaloner, said he had not. Mem. from
Dr. Wood, that the description is not accurate.)
These gasps continued in frequency and force to increase, and my
mouth to distend, and remain open, stretched open to its fullest extent.
This continued for several moments, I should judge ten, though I
have no means of judging, simply guess. At the end of the supposed
ten minutes, my hands slowly placed the mirror on the bed, my eyes
closed, and the Napoleonic death-trance, so-called by my "X-Faculty,"
had begun. Of course I cannot judge, having my eyes shut, of the te-
semblance of my features and face under the above described circum
stances to those of Napoleon Barnaparte in death; all I know is from
the remarks of the persons who have witnessed this Napoleonic death-
trance, so-called, to wit: Mr. Saint Gaudens asked me to desist, said
it was very affecting, that he was unaccustomed to a trance, and
asked me not to enter it again in his presence.
(Question by Dr. Wood: Were you conscious during this time?
Answer: Entirely conscious during all this time.)
A few days later, I mentioned this occurrence to Mr. Stanford
White and Dr. E. F. when they were both visiting me. They expressed
a desire to see me under the so-called Napoleonic trance. I did so
under the same conditions as before Mr. Saint Gaudens. When I en
tered the death-trance, while my eyes were closed, Mr. White was so
affected by the trance that he acted as though he were literally in the
presence of death, whispering in a reverential tone to Dr. E. F., "It
is exactly like Napoleon's death-mask, I have the photograph of it at
home." I afterwards asked Mr. White if he had made that remark
to Dr. E. F., and he admitted it frankly.
151
(Question by Dr. Wood: How do you come out of these trances?
Answer: By effort of conscious will.)
These were the only occasions upon which I entered the Napole
onic death-trance, so-called, with one exception. The exception was
in the early Summer of 1899, when at the request of Drs. Austin
Flint, Sen. and Carlos MacDonald, I entered the Napoleonic death-
trance, so-called. After I had entered the death-trance I heard Dr.
Austin Flint, Sen., say in a low tone to Dr. Carlos MacDonald, "Come
around to the side and see the profile." Dr. Austin Flint, Sen., seemed
somewhat affected by the death-trance, for after making the above re
mark he stepped hastily to the bed, and patting me on the knee, said,
"Come out of it, come out of it; you can, cannot you?"
(Question by Dr. Wood: When you want to come out you do
something? Answer: When I want to come out of the trance it re
quires some act on my part.)
Questions by Dr. Wood, and answers by Mr. Chaloner.
W. Do you believe that the results of the action of the "X-Fac-
ulty" are due to the presence of any kind of a spirit, or to spiritual
influence in you?
C. No.
W. Do you believe there was anything supernatural in this?
C. No.
W. Do you believe that the judgments delivered are infallible?
C. No.
W. Do you believe that you have in these conditions the power of
prophecy beyond rational forejudgment.
C. No.
W. In using the word "automatism" as a name, was it or was it
not your thought that these results were due to a spontaneous effort
of intellectual faculties, independent of the will and consciousness?
I do not know if you understand what I mean.
C. I understand what you mean. Independent in this way only;
that they cannot be necessarily voluntarily initiated by an act of will
on my part, but they can be instantly arrested by anJ act of will on
my part.
(Answers to the above questions in no way prompted.)
Voluntarily, without question, Mr. Chaloner says that since he
studied psychology at Columbia great strides have been made in the
experimental section of psychology and in the nomenclature thereof;
and the phrases and terms of modern psychology are almost totally
unknown to him, for the reason that he has not studied Psychology
since leaving the College. "All my work in Psychology has been from
Nature's book, and not from printed matter. The two terms "vocal
152
automatism" and "graphic automatism" I have taken bodily from
Professor Flournoy's book entitled "From India to the Planet Mars."
I will say Incidentally that I agree almost entirely with Professor
Flournoy In his conclusion touching the "Medium" Helene Smith,
whose trances are described in, the book "From India to the Planet
Mars." In other words I am anti-spiritualistic. I do not believe in
spiritualism. As a Christian I am a communicant of the Episcopal
Church I believe in the existence of spirits but In another world;
and I disbelieve absolutely that there is any communication whatso
ever, direct or indirect, between living human beings and disembodied
spirits In this world."
Mr. Chaloner's divorce was preceded for some years by a progres
sively Increasing estrangement from hisi wife, which grew out of in
compatibility of temper and ways. This estrangement dated back to
the Fall of 1890, when he left Mrs. Chaloner in Europe, she being
unwell, whilst he came back to New York to found the "Paris Prize
Fund." The divorce was asked for by his wife and not resisted by
himself; and never since has he visited or tried to visit, or followed,
or in any way tried to communicate with the former Mrs. Chaloner,
and has no desire so to do.
BIOGRAPHICAL.
Jastrow, Joseph. Professor of Psychology In the University of
Wisconsin since 1888; born Warsaw, Poland, January 30, 1863; gradu
ate University of Pennsylvania, 1882; A. M., 1885; Ph. D., Johns Hop
kins, 1886; Fellow in Psychology 1885-6; in charge of the Psychologi
cal section World's Columbian Exposition, 1893; Author of various
psychological subjects in leading magazines and of the book "Fact and
Fiction in Psychology." Address: Madison, Wisconsin.
From "Who's Who in America."
A PRELIMINARY OPINION SUBMITTED BY JOSEPH
JASTROW, PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, WITH REFERENCE
TO THE CASE OF MR. CHALONER.
SUBMITTED AT THE REQUEST OF JONES, CARSON
AND BEEBER, ATTORNEYS IN THE CITY OF PHILA
DELPHIA,
PRELIMINARY.
I am requested to submit an opinion in regard to the status, espe
cially in relation to mental normality, of certain activities presented
by Mr. Chaloner and of his attitude towards and his views concerning
these manifestations. For the just interpretation of this opinion, it is
153
to be carefully borne In mind that the determination of a State of
insanity, or of mental irresponsibility or incapacity, is only to be
reached by capable experts on the basis of a specific examination
which shall set forth the symptoms, indications, and description of
the particular form of mental derangement found in any given case.
That task belongs primarily to experts in other branches of knowledge
than that which I profess. My opinion as a psychologist is desired
in regard to the significance and interpretation of certain mental
peculiarities of the kind exhibited by Mr. Chaloner, and especially in
regard to the measure and the manner in which such peculiarities
may be pronounced to be manifestations of a normal mental activity.
Mr. Chaloner according to his own account and in conformity with
the evidence which has been submitted to me, exercises a form of
automatic activity known as "Automatic Writing," and by some
writers called "graphic automatism." He is able to produce, and ap
parently almost any time at request, a form of writing in which his
intentional and usual control and direction participate to a reduced
extent, and may be almost absent. Such automatic writing is a well
recognized phenomenon occurring not rarely but yet unusually, and
finds it place among a series of psychological activities, which are in
large part of a complex, co-ordinated and reasoned type, but which
are none the less not the intentional expression of the ordinary fully
conscious thought. Even so common an experience as the unsuccess
ful attempt to recall a name, which suddenly comes to mind when the
search has been apparently dismissed, may be regarded as the product
of an automatic activity; for it is a result which we fail to reach in
tentionally but was worked out by some processes of which we are
not fully conscious and cannot deliberately direct. If under such
circumstances it were possible for an individual frequently to succeed
in recalling the name by allowing his hand to write as it would, with
out exercising a direct guidance over its movements, it would be
evident that the intelligence and the entire mental equipment that is
represented in such automatic writing is the same as that of the indi
vidual's normal personality. That part of our mental machinery by
which we succeed, though not by a direct effort, in recalling the sought
for name, is obviously a part of our normal mental endowment.
The degree to which there exists such a possibility of permitting
the less voluntary and conscious operations of our minds to express
themselves in writing or otherwise, varies considerably among differ
ent individuals, as does also the degree of automatism or removal
from intentional control characteristic of such expressions. The power
to produce occasionally or frequently consistent and reasoned expres
sions by automatic writing, when considered in reference to the public
at large, cannot be said to be a usual one, but is not to be regarded as
a presumptive concomitant or indication of a mentally impaired or
diseased condition. Professor James of Harvard University (Prin
ciples of Psychology, 1890, Vol. 1, p. 393), adopting for the sake of
154
convenience the term "Mediumistic possession" to indicate the kind
of activity here under consideration; says: that "the susceptibility to
it in some form is by no means an uncommon gift in persons who
have no other obvious nervous anomaly. The phenomena are very
intricate, and are just beginning to be studied in a proper scientific
way. The lowest phase of mediumship is automatic writing, and the
lowest grade of that is when the Subject knows what words are coming,
but feels impelled to write them as if from without." (The words
medium," "mediumship," "mediumistic possession" are here used, as
also by Mr. Chaloner, not in acceptance of any belief in the theory
with which the name originated, but simply as a convenient and in
telligent mode of referring to the phenomena.) I interpret this state
ment to mean that automatic writing is a less serious and less unusual
divergence from the ordinary relations obtaining between our inten
tional and our automatic expressions than other forms of automatism,
and furthermore, that this divergence is slightest when the subject's
normal consciousness participates to a considerable extent in what is be
ing written. Mr. Chaloner's automatic writing would accordingly be re
garded as of the type that diverges least from the usual; for according
to his account he can at command check or stop the writing; although
he cannot always initiate it, but must try and observe whether the
hand will write or not. Moreover, he is entirely conscious of what he
is writing, and the ordinary spectator would see nothing to distinguish
between his normal and his automatic writing. It should also be noted
that, in conformity with experience in other case, the automatic
writing of Mr. Chaloner did not appear at once in a fluent and per
fected form, but was developed as the result of training and repetition
extending over several years. My observation thus led me to conclude
that Mr. Chaloner's automatic writing is the expression of a mental
condition differing only in a very slight degree, and not in an easily
recognizable manner, from his ordinary normal condition or the
waking conscious condition of any normal individual. The expressions
of his automatic writing are consistent with, as indeed they are
hardly less than, the expressions of his normal mentality just as our
characters and our views in dreams are for most persons consistent
with, though at times diverging from, the character and views of
waking thought.
Further opinions in support of the normal status of automatic
writing are as follows: The Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology
(edited by Professor Baldwin of Princeton University, 1901), says
under the term Automatic Writing: "The name given to a form of
writing that is recorded without the complete and conscious co-opera
tion of the individual who writes. It is an elaborate and consequently
less usual form of automatic movement which seems to be associated
with obscure functional diseases of the nervous system (hysteria,
etc.): but also occurs in persons who are healthy and entirely normal,
but perhaps gifted with sensitive nervous organizations." Professor
155
Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania (Popular Science Monthly,
XLIX., 189, p. 509) says: "Automatic writing is an exceedingly com
mon phenomenon," and endorses the view that the degree of au
tomatism is of minor order when the writing is involuntary, but
depends upon the subject's consciousness.
Professor Patrick, of the University of Iowa, clearly implies that
the phenomenon is of frequent occurrence in normal persons by the
following statement. (The Psychological Review, 1898, V., p. 5-59):
"The thorough study of simple cases of automatic writing and of all
forms of automatism in normal, healthy subjects is wholly practicable
in the laboratory and certainly desirable." He further writes, "If we
compare a simple case of automatic writing such as may be found in
one of almost any company of school girls," etc.
Professor Binet, of the University of Paris ("Alterations of per
sonality," Translation, 1896, p. 189) writes: "The interest of the phe
nomenon is still further increased by the frequency with which it
occurs with spiritists and with normal subjects." And again: "In
this way, as I have said before, the phenomena of automatic writing
can be demonstrated with people who are non-hysterical; it is the
exaggeration of the phenomenon that is peculiar to hysteria."
Furthermore, experiments in automatic writing have been made
upon normal subjects, in part upon university students, at Harvard
University, the University of Iowa, the University of Pennsylvania,
and probably elsewhere.
I am accordingly of the opinion that the phenomena of automatic
writing as exhibited by Mr. Chaloner are not only consistent with, but
in the form exhibited by him, not prejudicial to a mental endowment
and capacity falling within the range of individual variations, ordi
narily included under the normal. I am of the opinion that this power
is to be looked upon as a mental peculiarity, which like many\ other
peculiarities, forms a part of the individual endowment, and enters
into the fundamental difference in organization between individuals.
That this and allied kinds of automatism, particularly in their more
marked and exaggerated forms occur most characteristically in hysteria
and other nervous disorders is made clear by a survey of the literature
of the topic. That in many cases of its occurrence in normal indi
viduals it is associated with a sensitive nervous organization, seems
almost equally well established.
Of the trance states which it appears Mr. Chaloner entered upon
a few isolated occasions some years ago, I can judg,e only from his
own description. I see no reason for viewing them in any other light
than the automatic writing that is as phenomena indicative of a
sensitive nervous organization finding their origin in the same obscure
individual peculiarities, which make one person a somnambulist and
another an automatic writer and a third a trance subject and lead to
the noii-occurrence of any of these phenomena in the great mass of
mankind. The trance state of the kind which Mr. Chaloner seems to
156
have exhibited is probably to be regarded as a deeper stage of au
tomatism, that is, as a more serious deviation from the relation ordi
narily pertaining, between the fully conscious and deliberate, and the
automatic mental activities, than is the case in the automatic writing;
and it was probably associated at the time with an irritable or fatigued
condition of the general nervous system.
With Mr. Chaloner's attitude towards these phenomena, his views
In regard to their origin and nature, and his opinion in regard to re
lated phenomena, such as the significance of vivid impressions and pre
sentments and the like, I have had opportunity to become acquainted
by extended conversation, and by the perusal of extracts from his
diary and from other sources. There is no widespread consensus
among psychologists in regard to the most plausible theory of explana
tion or mode of accounting in detail for such phenomena as automatic
writing; but there is a considerable preponderance of opinion in
regard to their general relations to the activities of the mind and their
dependence upon conditions of the nervous system; and I find that
Mr. Chaloner's views though couched in different language and ex
hibiting no special appreciation of the complexities of the problem,
are in their main trend quite compatible with the main trend of
current scientific opinion upon the subject. In some respects his views
would find endorsement in the recorded views of reputable writers
upon these subjects; and in some respects (allowing for differences of
expression and attitude, such as I should also have to take into con
sideration in a similar criticism of the views of some of my profes
sional colleagues) his views would be in accord with my own. Some
of the views expressed by Mr. Chaloner I am inclined to regard as
unwarranted by a close logical interpretation of the available data,
and as incompatible with the attitude towards these phenomena which
my own temperament and training and investigations lead me to
favor; but this criticism would also apl)ly to many professional psy
chologists occupying responsible positions; and the views to which I
refer are certainly shared by a considerable part of intelligent and
educated laymen whq have formed convictions upon subjects of this
type. In brief, I find Mr. Chaloner's attitude towards the psychological
phenomena of a somewhat unusual nature which he has observed in
himself to be in its general outlines a thoughtful and plausible one,
and in all respects, including those points which do not meet with
my personal endorsement, I have no hesitation in pronouncing his
opinions to fall well within the ordinary and normal range of diversity
of opinion current in such topics. Nor do I find in his attitude to
wards his opinions any characteristics which could not readily be dupli
cated among a miscellaneous group of normal, intelligent persons
of training, education and attainment compatible to those which Mr.
Chaloner enjoys.
With regard to other traits of mind or temperament which Mr.
Chaloner exhibits and which might be regarded as relevant to a dis-
157
cussion of the compatibility with normality of his psychological pecu
liarities, I am of the opinion tnat their interpretation may be most
justly reached in connection with an examination of his personal
history and of his recognition of the significant symptoms of mental
abnormality."
We shall now introduce the opinion of Dr. William James, Profes
sor of Psychology at Harvard.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
William James, Prof. Psychology, Harvard, since 1872; b. New
York, Jan. 11, 1842; ed. in private schools, and by tutors, and at Law
rence Scientific School, 1861-3; M. D. Harvard, 1870, (LL. D. Prince
ton; Ph. et Litt. D., Padua; Correspondent de 1'Institut, Paris);
Author Principles of Psychology (2 vols.) ; Psychology; Briefer Course;
The Will to Believe, and other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Apptd.
Gifford lecturer on natural religion, Univ. of Edinburgh, 1899-1901.
Address: Cambridge, Mass.
From "Who's Who in America."
(Dicated.)
(Statement of Dr. William James.t.)
Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 10, 1901.
At the request of Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner, I have examined
the following documents pertaining to his case:
1. His certificate of lunacy;
2. A distinguished neurologist's opinion.
3. John Armstrong Chaloner's letter of July 3rd, 1897, to Hon.
Micajah Woods.
4. Letter of Nov. 30th, 1900, to H. L. Carson.
6. Dr. Wood's account.
6. Prof. Jastrow's opinion.
7. Extract from John Armstrong Chaloner's Journal, etc.
8. Autobiographic account: "The X-Faculty" (Head 1).
9. "The X-Faculty" (Head 2).
t Since deceased.
158
My opinion (based on considerable familiarity with such phe
nomena) of the significance of the "automatisms" described in these
documents is as follows:
Graphic automatism is an extremely frequent phenomenon only
of late beginning to be studied with the care which it deserves. I
have a large collection of cases of it, and some of my best friends, of
superior sanity and mental power possess this faculty. It is impos
sible to deduce from its presence any conclusions whatever detrimental
to the sanity of the person who manifests it.
I do not happen at this moment to recall a single case of lunacy,
in which I have met with this as a symptom. The mental automatism,
or inner conversation with his "X-Faculty," described by Mr. Chaloner,
is a rarer kind of phenomenon though in my opinion, it is to be classed
under the same psychological head, of a part of the personality, usually
unconscious, making irruptions into the conscious part with results
of which the premises remain obscure or unknown.
The form of results, wherever automatism exists, seems to be a
matter of idiosyncrasy, being sometimes graphic, sometimes visual or
auditory, sometimes vocal and sometimes consisting in a mental or
verbal impression which the subject recognizes as differing in its
genesis from its usual thoughts.
In. "mediums" so-called these automatisms abound. Mr. Chalo
ner is evidently possessed, of a strongly "mediumistic" or "psychic"
temperament; but whereas most mediums promptly adopt the theory,
current in spiritualistic circles, that, these automatisms are due to
spirit-control, Mr. Chaloner, prepossessed against that hypothesis,
appears to have set to work systematically (and, as would appear
from his narrative, critically) to explore them and determine their
significance for himself. In this attempt he seems to me to deserve
nothing but praise. The only question is of the amount of judicious
ness shown in allowing the subject to absorb him so continuously.
The most injudicious act of which he is accused is the experiment with
fire. As described, its motivation was rational and its results interest
ing and but moderately harmful. It seems to me a monstrous claim
to say that a man may not make experiments, even as extreme as that,
upon his own person without putting his legal freedom in jeopardy.
The Napoleon experiment falls strictly within the limits of praise
worthy research.
Psychology would be more advanced, were there more subjects
of automatism ready to explore carefully their eccentric faculty. Al
though the medical profession is beginning to acquaint itself with
these phenomena, it is still lamentably ignorant. Specialists in insanity
in particular are ignorant, for in spiritualistic circles these automa
tisms are regarded as valuable gifts, to be encouraged rather than
checked, and asylum doctors hardly ever see them. When they do
see them they may interpret them as delusional insanity, with which
159
they are familiar, and a merely mediumistic subject may thus have
grievous injustice done him.
In delusional insanity there is also automatism, so "Paranoia"
so-called, and mediumship have elements in common. But for Para
noia to be diagnosed there must be no distinct alternation between
the primary and the "X" consciousness, and there must be marked
abnormal peculiarities in the case as well as intellectual delusion.
In Mr. Chaloner's case, there appears to have been complete alternation,
and there is no sign whatever of delusion in the documents written
by him which I have seen unless his belief that his eye-color has
changed be counted as a delusion. Of his normal peculiarities only
those who know him well can frame an opinion. A certain stiltedness of
diction in documents 8 and 9 of my list is due, as he explains, to their
automatic authorship. He doubtless wished to exhibit the rationality
of his "X-Faculty," and has successfully done so. But it might have
been wiser to submit a non-automatic autobiography. So far then
as the documents sent me acquaint me with the facts of the case, my
opinion of Mr. Chaloner is that he is intellectually sound. No evidence
to show his dangerousness to others or his inability to manage his
property has been shown me. In default of such evidence, further
treatment of him as a lunatic would seem a crime."
BIOGRAPHICAL.
Hudson, Thomson Jay. Psychological Author and lecturer. Born,
Windham, Ohio, Feb. 23, 1834. LL. D. St. John's College, Md. Ad
mitted to Bar 1857; practiced three years; author of "The Law of
Psychic Phenomena."
From "Who's Who in America.
To Whom It May Concern:
Soon after the retirement of John Armstrong Chaloner from the
Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane, I was requested by his friends
to visit him at his temporary retreat in Philadelphia with a view of
obtaining my opinion as to his sanity. In compliance with that request
I visited Philadelphia and had an interview with Mr. Chaloner lasting
several hours, during which I made the most careful observations of
which I was capable. I had previously been informed that his alleged
mental alienation was supposed, by those responsible for his detention
in the insane asylum, to be manifested in his mental attitude on the
subject of what is now known to science as Experimental Psychology.
Having myself been a close student of every phase of that science for
many years, and having observed the disastrous effects often result
ing from false beliefs on that subject, followed by abnormal practices
160
on the experimental side, I confess that I was not unprepared to find
in Mr. Chaloner almost any form or degree of mental alienation. Much
tc my gratitude, however, I found in him a gentleman of superior gen
eral education, culture and refinement, and a student of Experimental
Psychology on purely scientific lines, as I shall attempt to show here
inafter. Not, I hasten to say, that his deductions always agree with
my own; for they do not, but that his fundamental inductions are on
lines of scientifically demonstrable truth.
The salient features of the situation consists in the fact that he
has made an original and independent discovery of a most important
psychological fact. In fact, it may be said to be the fundamental fact
of psychological science, since all other facts of psychology sustain a
necessary relationship to it; and many of them are inexplicable in
the absence of a knowledge of the fundamental fact or principle, that
Mr. Chaloner discovered.
It is that man is endowed with a mental faculty or a congeries
of mental faculties and powers that lie below the threshold of normal
consciousness. I do not say that Mr. Chaloner was the first discoverer
of this fact; for I do not know the date of his discovery. But I have
every reason to believe that he was an original and independent dis
coverer. It is true that many eminent scientists have, within the last
decade, arrived at the same conclusion, each by his own methods of
investigation and experimentation. Most of them have made their ex
periments on others; but one of the remarkable features of Mr. Chaf-
oner's method of research is that his conclusions were based wholly
upon experiments made upon himself, together with an intelligent ob
servation of the workings of his own inner consciousness. The advan
tages of that method are obvious to any psychologist, providing the
experimenter has sufficient power of self-control to do the work in
telligently.
Another remarkable feature of Mr. Chaloner's case, considered
from a purely scientific point of view, is his conservatism or scientific
caution. Most of us who have become convinced of the existence of
the faculty in question have given it a name; and that name is more
or less expressive of it's author's theory of causation. Thus, the Lon
don Society for Psychical Research, by its late president, Mr. F. W. H.
Myers, has named it "The Subliminal Consciousness," as distinguished
from the Supraliminal, or normal consciousness. Prof. Boris Sidis
names it the "Sub-waking Self," for obvious reasons. Prof. R. Osgood
Mason, Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, calls it "the
Subliminal Self." Prof. Quackenbos, late of Columbia College, calls it,
indifferently, the "Sub-conscious mind," the "Subjective mind," the
"Unconscious mind," etc. Dr. Du Prel, a German scientist, designates
it "The Transcendental Ego." Other scientists, too numerous to men
tion, have adopted other designations for the same mysterious attri
bute of .man's mental organism. Each one has his own theory of
Causation; but each bases his own particular mental philosophy
largely upon the one salient fact, which no Intelligent psychologist
now denies; the existence of the faculty in every man's mental organ
ism. Mr. Chaloner, however, has exhibited the most commendable and
rare as it is commendable, caution and scientific conservatism in the
matter of terminology, by naming! it "The X-Faculty;" for the obvious
reason that "X" is the algebraic symbol for an "unknown quantity."
This, of course, implies no theory of causation whatever; but it does
denote the doubt of the scientist who realizes that he has not yet accu
mulated sufficient data to enable him to formulate a satisfactory hy
pothesis. This fact alone is sufficient to establish a prima facie case
of sanity; for the "cocksuredness" of the crank and the "infallibility"
of the insane philosopher are proverbial. In a word, the very an
tithesis of insanity is the cautious conservatism of the inductive sci
entist. It is true that a man may be insane on one subject and per
fectly sane on others. But when, as in this case, the subject-matter
upon which the alleged insanity is supposed to be manifested is iden
tical with that in which is exhibited the cautious conservatism of true
science, it is obvious that the two states of mind are incompatible,
and therefore impossible; for it involves a contradiction in terms.
Manifestly a man cannot be sane and insane at the same time on the
same subject; nor can the same attitude of mind on a given subject
constitute valid evidence for both sanity and insanity. For my part
I prefer to believe that scientific conservatism constitutes the best
possible evidence of perfect sanity.
It is, however, Mr. Chaloner's belief regarding the powers of the
"X-Faculty" that are held to constitute the best evidence of his mental
alienation. For instance, he has ascertained that when the "X-Faculty"
is allowed full play it is capable of performing various wonderful in
tellectual feats, far transcending the ability of the subject as mani
fested in his ordinary mental state, such as writing poetry, etc. This
is another of Mr. Chaloner's discoveries in psychical science. It was
doubtless original with him and the result of careful experimentation
upon himself. At any rate he has demonstrated the fact by the pro
duction of a large number of sonnets, some of them of unusual merit.
I have examined many of them, but am not prepared to say whether
they transcend his normal abilities, as I know nothing of his natural
capacity for 1 writing poetry, if he has any. He tells me that he has
none, which I can readily believe; for his experience is not unique.
As before remarked the "X-Faculty" is well recognized under various
designations by modern psychologists; and they have not failed to note
its phenomenal manifestations in not only poetry, but in music and 1
art. In fact, the wonderful intellectual feats which Mr. Chaloner mod
estly ascribes to the "X" or unknown faculty, is not a modern dis
covery. The old psychologists took note of them and speculated as
siduously thereon. Sir William Hamilton gives us many instances un
der the head of "latent memory;" and Abercrombie relates many won
derful cases as occurring under spontaneous "somnambulism." At that
162
time hypnotism was practically unknown to science; but in modern
times the same phenomena are reproduced artiflcally by means of ex
perimental hypnotism. Thus modern psychologists are not only able
to classify the facts with some degree of definiteness, but they have
learned the secret of controlling the "X-Faculty."
In technical language the faculty is controlled by "suggestion,"
which is but another way of stating what Mr. Chaoner has discovered
by experiment, that the subject can control it himself, and realizes that
the "X-Faculty" is a part of his own mental equipment. It is the
ignorance of this last mentioned fact that has led the laity into ascrib
ing it to spirits, demons, devils, "et hoc genus omne." It is note
worthy, and important to the appreciation of Mr. Chaloner's mental
soundness, that he is not only aware that the "X-Faculty" is a part of
man's mental make up, but he also knows that he can control its mani
festations at will.
This, in fact, is the most important factor in his case; for it is
not only demonstrative of his scientific acumen and his entire accord
with the trend of modern science, but it is a sure guaranty of con
tinued mental soundness on this question. Not that any particular
belief or opinion is, "per se," demonstrative of mental soundness, or
its opposite conclusive, or even presumptive evidence of sanity; but
that one's belief on this particular subject may, and often does, lead
to practices that result in mental alienation. Thus, an ignorant lay
man enters a spiritualistic circle and develops "mediumship," say in
the form of automatic writing; or, as Mr. Chaloner has more scien
tifically designated it, "graphic automatism." The layman's medium-
istic development is merely the development of the "X-Faculty." He
believes in spiritism, and all the members of his circle believe in spirit
ism, and this constitutes a "suggestion" to the "X-Intelligence," too
strong to be resisted, that the expected manifestations will come from
spirits. Being controlled by that dominant suggestion, it acts accord
ingly, the automatic writing which follows, purports to come from the
spirits suggested or called for.
Now the danger which is imminent in such a case arises from the
automatist's belief that he is controlled by an extraneous intelligence.
He believes it to be a superior intelligence, and hence yields himself
in passive obedience to its guidance. And it guides him just in accord
ance with his own characteristics, be they good or bad. If good, he
is comparatively safe; but if bad, and he is naturally not well belanced
mentally, he is in imminent danger of mental alienation. Our mad
houses are full of illustrative examples. Now this is but the result of
a belief that he is dominated by an extraneous, irresponsible agency
which it is impossible for him to resist or control.
It is obvious that Mr. Chaloner Is beset by no such danger.
He, too, has developed the "X-Faculty;" and it performs its in
tellectual feats by "graphic automatism." Thus far the parallel is
perfect. But he has studied the subject inductively scientifically;
163
and he knows that the "X-Faculty" is not an extraneous intelligence,
capable of dominating his whole mental and physical organism. He
has, by a series of experiments of the most remarkable character, and
conducted on the most exact scientific lines, demonstrated that the
"X-Faculty" is simply a heretofore submerged part of his own mental
organism, and that as such, it is under the domination of his own will
and reason. He has learned that he can cultivate its powers, control
its output, direct its energies, and restrain its eccentricities. Obvi
ously he is not insane, nor is he in any danger of insanity, on the
subject of the "X-Faculty;" and he is not held to be insane on any
other subject.
In conclusion I might truthfully remark that this is not the first
time in the history of advancing civilization that men have been im
prisoned for taking a step in advance of their age in scientific research.
But in justice to all concerned, it must be said that a legitimate par
allel cannot be drawn between this case and those of history, where
criminal prosecutions have been instituted against scientists who were
accused of subverting religion and blaspheming against the Deity by
seeking to place Creation in the custody of a law. This is not a crimi
nal prosecution, although it deprived Mr. Chaloner of his liberty just
as effectually as if he had been charged with high crimes and mis
demeanors. But it must not be forgotten that the phenomena produced
by the mental force which Mr. Chaloner has designated as the "X-
Faculty," has puzzled and appalled mankind since the dawn of creation.
It is the source of all the superstitions of all the ages of mankind.
Ignorance of its laws, nay, of its very existence as an attribute of the
human mind, has been the direct or indirect cause of the greater part
of the mental alienation, which has filled the insane asylums of the
civilized world. Hence it is that cautious and conservative people
view with alarm any attempt, on the part of their friends, to meddle
with any of its multiform phases of phenomena.
But the science of the last decade of the Nineteenth Century has
lifted the veil of mystery which has so long; enshrouded the "X-Fac
ulty," and shorn it of its power to harm those who have penetrated
the secret. It is axiomatic that when an ignorance of Nature's laws
leads one into danger, a knowledge of those laws will lead to safety.
This knowledge Mr. Chaloner possessed. But his friends who did not
share his information were not in a position to discriminate between
the insensate rashness of ignorance and the intelligent deliberations
of science, so long as the subject matter was the same. It would seem,
therefore, that Chaloner's imprisonment was due to the over-anxiety
and caution of friends who were not in a position to appreciate or
understand the real nature of his scientific investigations.
Of his perfect sanity I have no doubt whatever.
Respectfully submitted,
(Signed) THOMSON JAY HUDSON.
Detroit, Michigan,
Oct. 19, 1901.
164
Postscriptum.
After carefully re-reading my opinion in re the case of John Arm
strong Chaloner, it has occurred to me that possibly the opinion of
his friends regarding his sanity may have been formed from witness
ing his experiments upon himself in the development of the "X-Fac-
ulty." If so, a very erroneous opinion was almost inevitable, owing
to the eccentric character of the manifestations of the "X-Faculty" in
the early stages of its experimental development. This is well-known
to all experimental psychologists who develop the "X-Faculty" in their
subjects by means of hypnotism. Hypnotists, however, can easily regu
late the phenomenal manifestations by well-known means. But an
unrestrained hypnotized subject, acting, say, under the influence of a
false, or a grotesque suggestion, would inevitably be considered in
sane by any one not informed of the secret self; and had not there
fore, the benefit of a restraining of his mental condition.
Now, Mr. Chaloner, made his experiments upon himself; and had
not, therefore, the benefit of a restraining or regulating agency at his
side. Consequently, it is easy to see that in his early experiments, he
may have, accidentally or purposely, produced mental phenomena
that would be very alarming to those of his friends who were not in
the secret of his experimental research. In other words, he may have
occasionally surrendered himself temporarily to the dominance of the
"X-Faculty," for the purpose of studying its powers, its peculiarities,
and its limitations. In fact it would have been impossible for him to
thoroughly inform himself on all these points without experimenting
with every phase of the phenomena. That he did so experiment, and
that in the meantime he exercised the most remarkable powers of self-
control and reason when in his normal condition, is evidenced by the
logical and scientific character of his final conclusions regarding that
wonderful and mysterious faculty with which he was experimenting.
T. J. H.
(Richmond Virginian, August 12, 1912.)
HELL.
Chapter I.
The Call of Hell.
CHALONER TAKES TRIP INTO HADES, TALKS TO FRIEND.
While in Mediumistic Trance Receives Message From World Beyond.
HE, HIMSELF, DOES NOT BELIEVE WORD.
Warned by Friend Against Scoffing He Gives it Out for What it is
Worth.
With tne sensational announcement that he had recently held
converse with the spirit of a departed friend, now in Hell, and that
165
he was prepared to give to the world some insight into the conditions
existing in that unknown realm, John Armstrong Chaloner yesterday
gave to the Virginian the prepared interview with which he startled
the coterie of newspaper men whom he had invited to meet him yes
terday afternoon at Alexandria in order that he might outline the
nature of the campaign to which he proposes to devote his life and
fortune.
Mr. Chaloner made good his promise to explain his plans, for the
reformation of the lunacy laws, and then very gravely sprang the un
expected sensation. The alleged message from the spirit world was
transmitted by automatism to him while in an involuntary medium-
istic trance a few nights ago. The spirit which established communi
cation with him was that of Thomas Jefferson Miller, once a non
commissioned officer in the Confederate navy, a member of the Man
hattan Club, New York, and a personal and club friend of Mr. Chaloner's
prior to his incarceration in Bloomingdale Asylum.
Mr. Chaloner explained that he was an "O. K. medium," so pro
nounced by the late Professor James and others, as court records at
Charlottesville would show, and at the same time he was an unbeliever
in and a scoffer at spiritualism; in short, that his sub-consciousness,
or X-Faculty, as he terms it held communication with spirits against
his will. He said that the spirit of his old friend Miller had held
converse with him five years ago, and he took no notes of the message
because of his absolute lack of faith in spiritualism. He has no more
faith now than he had then, but he stated his belief that the "alleged
spirit message," as he termed it, should be given to the world on its
merits.
COPY OF LETTER
ADDKESSED TO A SCORE OR SO OF THE MEMBERS OF THE
PRESS OF WASHINGTON, D. C.
Release by wire. "The Merry Mills,"
Cobham,
Virginia.
August 2, 1912.
DEAR SIR:
On the 25th of last month I happened to pick up an "Illustrated
London News" of June 15th last, and saw under the headline "Science
Jottings," by Andrew Wilson, an article concerning reputed to cite
"So-called spiritualistic communications purporting to emanate from
the late Mr. W. T. Stead, who perished on the 'Titanic.' The result
as usual has been nil. What has been done is that certain 'mediums'
professed to put themselves in communication with the deceased jour
nalist. In their supposed trance state they assert that they received
messages from him. Anything more puerile than the supposed com
munications it has never been my lot to peruse. Mr. Stead is reported
166
to have told his friends that he was quite free, but not yet attuned
to the easy and perfect sending of messages. Later on it was hoped
things would improve in this respect. It is tolerably certain the vast
bulk of us have not so far lost our grip of common sense as to accept
such rubbish as evidence of another world's existence. Has there ever
been sent or given a 'spirit-message' which has laid before mankind any
great fact or truth connected with the hereafter? Has any 'spirit' re
vealed to us what all of us are devoutly anxious to know something
definite about namely, the nature of that after-state of being which
forms so prominent a feature of the Christian faith f You have igno
rant persons posing as 'mediums' publishing forth their ability to com
municate with the spirits of those who have gone before, and making
a travesty of certain of the most sacred of our emotions and beliefs.
Well may a writer in scathing terms speak of these people to whom
death has no sacredness, and who treat the great mysteries of the uni
verse as if they were trivialties of the first order: 'But when we come
to real instruction, reliable information, or profitable or valuable knowl
edge, Spiritualism is as barren as Sahara, as empty as a hollow gourd.'
We are reminded of the Mrs. Pipers, and other mediums whose per
formances, wonderful certainly, are still enveloped in a kind of mental
fog. At the very best, I repeat, neither Mrs. Piper nor any other me
dium has ever shed any light on any of the great problems of the after-
state, such as humanity has day by day to face." (Signed) Andrew
Wilson.
On pages 81-84 of "Four Years Behind the Bars of 'Blooming-
dale,' " written by me, in the Congressional Library, you will find that
so far back as October 10th, 1901, Professor Williamt James, of Har
vard, (now deceased), pronounced me a medium, in an opinion in
favor of my sanity, in my trial, on said subject of sanity before the
Albemarle County, Virginia, (now Circuit) Court, November 6th,
1901, and on file ever since in the Clerk's Ofllce of said court, in
Charlottesville, Virginia. Professor James went on to say page 83,
ibid "but whereas most mediums promptly adopt the theory current
in spiritualistic circles, Mr. Chaloner, prepossessed against that hy
pothesis, appears to have set to work systematically, and, as would
appear from his narrative" (by which "narrative" is meant a letter
from me together with certain specimens of graphic automatism
automatic writing made by me in a trance-like state and submitted
to him by mail for his opinion on the rationality of said trance-
writings) "critically, to explore them and determine their significance
for himself. In this attempt he seems to me to deserve nothing but
praise, The most injudicious act of which he is accused is the expe
riment with fire. As described, its motivation was rational and its
results interesting and but moderately harmful. It seems to me a
monstrous claim to say that a man may not make experiments, even
as extreme as that upon his own person without putting his legal free
dom in jeopardy. The Napoleon experiment falls strictly within the
167
limits of praiseworthy research. Psychology would be more advanced,
were there more subjects of Automatism (mediumship) ready to ex
plore carefully their eccentric faculty. Although the medical profes
sion is beginning to acquaint itself with these phenomena, it is still
lamentably ignorant, for in Spiritualistic circles these automatisms are
regarded as valuable gifts, to be encouraged rather than checked, and
asylum doctors hardly ever see them. Specialists in insanity are par
ticularly ignorant. When they do see them they may interpret them
as delusional insanity, with which they are familiar, and a merely
mediumistic subject may thus have grievous injustice done him. So
far then as the documents sent me acquaint me with the facts of the
case, my opinion of Mr. Chaloner is that he is intellectually sound.
No evidence to show his dangerousness to others or his inability to
manage his property has been shown me. In default of such evidence,
further treatment of him as a lunatic would seem a crime." (Signed)
William James, Cambridge, Mass., October 10th, 1901.
Since Professor James, who, by the way, besides being Professor of
Psychology at Harvard, was also a member of the medical profession,
having taken his M. D. degree at Harvard in 1870, practically discov
ered Mrs. Piper, the well-known medium aforesaid, of Boston, and also
discovered your humble servant as- a medium who doesn't believe in
Spiritualism, however, as shown above, and since so well known a
scientific writer as Andrew Wilson, who for years has handled the
scientific column for so great a paper as the "Illustrated London News"
speaks favorably of said Mrs. Piper as a medium, therefore it is not a
far cry to infer that I am "some punkins" of a medium myself to
put it somewhat jocularly. Such being the case it occurred to me
after reading said article in the "Illustrated London News" that it
might not be a bad idea to follow up a lead I had got from my
"X-Faculty" my term for the Sub-consciousness some years ago
when experimenting in Experimental Psychology by means of Vocal
Automatism. Said lead or tip was nothing; less than an alleged "spirit-
message," as Andrew Wilson callg it in said article, from a deceased
friend of mine, who had died a few years previously. Said "spirit-
message" was startling to a degree; and left strictly nothing to be
desired regarding an alleged revelation of life beyond the grave. Said
deceased friend! was about 80 years old at the time of his demise and
a prominent member, at said time, of a prominent New York Club. He
was my oldest and best friend. I had never suggested his communi
cating with me in the event of his death before mine for the excel
lent reason that I did not think such a thing possible.
Imagine then my surprise upon receiving per Vocal Automatism,
while in a trance-like state in which state I have for over fifteen years
carried on my investigations in Experimental Psychology imagine my
surprise upon getting a so-to-speak wireless message from Hell! For
that was where my friend said he was at said time.
I shall not attempt to picture my surprise; let it suffice to say that
my scientific curiosity was piqued.
168
Mr. Miller, for that is his name, went on to say that he knew that
I wouldn't believe him, but that, nevertheless, he was in Hell, and had
had rather a warm time of it for some years past to put it rather
mildly that the orthodox claims about Hell are strictly accurate and
minutely correct except that said claims fail to give a proper esti
mate of the heat and torture in vogue down there. He concluded by
saying that his head was bandaged at said time of communication
from the wounds he had received at his torture. That he was thank
ful to say he had "paid the piper" during the years of agony he had
spent in Hell, and was now free for all time from torment.
At said time I was engrossed in legal work, and did not have time
to repeat said experiment in Experimental Psychology. I left it
alone for years. Not till a few days ago when I read said article by
Andrew Wilson did it again occur to me to resume the experiment.
I have now fully completed the legal work which has absorbed me
for eleven years. My Petition for the Impeachment of Judge George
C. Holt.t for preventing my evidence from getting before the jury in
my recent trial of my case of Chaloner against Sherman, in the Fed
eral District Court, for the Southern District of New York, paints the
situation.
I am, therefore, free to resume the Psychological Experiments
that got me into so much unmerited legal trouble hinted at in Pro
fessor James's opinion fifteen years ago.
Andrew Wilson's article proves that there is a public international
demand for such an experiment as I proposed with the alleged spirit
of the deceased Mr. Miller.
I, therefore, a few hours ago, attempted to reopen communication
with Mr. Miller. This time since Vocal Automatism is much more
fatiguing to operate than Graphic Automatism I decided to employ the
latter; and* as a result, have about sixteen pages of legal cap filled
with automatic writing from the alleged spirit of my departed friend.
I propose to let you, and the other Members of the Press of Wash
ington, not all, by any means, but a selected group, see the first page
of above automatic writing, and have as much of the typed contents
of said sixteen-page alleged communication from Hell about ten
pages of typewiting as you care to take down as I read it off from
my signed typed statement, at seven o'clock next Sunday, the 4th
August, at Fleischmann's Hotel, Alexandria.
Very truly yours,
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER.
P. S. In putting "release by wire," at the top of this letter, I
mean that you gentlemen may release the story upon seeing me at
seven next Sunday evening.
tThe reason Chaloner did not oatoh up with Holt, J., and make
a, pretty good try at baffling his Honor before the Judiciary Com
mittee of the House of Representatives, on account of his Honour's
reprehensible act, aforesaid, was that, as it happened, there was an
unavoidable delay in bringing the impeachment proceedings, and con
sequently before they could be brought Judge Holt had resigned from
the Bench.
169
AUTHOR OP "WHO'S L.OONEY NOW?" GETS SPIRIT MESSAGE
FROM HADES FROM FRIEND WHO SAYS HE
IS THERE.
John Armstrong Chaloner Gives Interview Relative to Lunacy Laws,
and Describes Reception Room of His Satanic Majesty.
(Washington Herald, August 5, 1912.)
"John Armstrong Chaloner, famous for that immortal expression
of "Who's Looney Now?" former husband of Amelie Rives and brother
of Sheriff Bob Chanler, who married Lina Cavalieri, disclosed yester
day a message that he says he has received from the other world.
The message brings news of the physical characteristics of his
Satanic majesty and a description of Hades that at least has the merit
of being unique. The message received by Chaloner comes, he insists,
from Thomas Jefferson Miller, a former Confederate officer, and mem
ber of the Manhattan Club of New York City.
Chaloner, who was born "Chanler," and who changed his name
because of the alleged plot against him by his brother, "Sheriff Bob,"
of New York, and other relatives, summoned the newspaper corres
pondents across to the Virginia side of the Potomac because he "didn't
dare come north of the Old Dominion line."
Chaloner was adjudged insane in New York State, escaped from
Bloomingdale Asylum, and was then declared sane by the Virginia
courts. He is afraid that if he leaves Virginia he will be nabbed and
sent back to Bloomingdale.
"Last month," said the former husband of Amelie Rives, the
novelist, "I picked up a copy of an English illustrated paper and saw
therein an account of a supposed spirit communication with W. T.
Stead, who went down on the Titanic. The statement while essentially
puerile, attracted my attention because the late Prof. William James
had informed me at one time that I was a medium, although I do not
believe in spiritualism."
MESSAGE FBOM HELL.
Chaloner went on the say that he had summoned his art of
"graphic automatism," and had managed to get in touch with the
spirit of Thomas Jefferson Miller, with whom he had been friendly
when Miller was of this world.
"This," said Chaloner, was last Tuesday evening, "Miller, or
whatever force it was, immediately replied through my hand and
wrote a lengthy statement, answering my queries and giving much
information in regard to his present abode, which he said was Hell,
temporarily."
Here the brother-in-law of Lina Cavalieri read a sixteen-page
typewritten statement, giving in full the interview with the disem-
170
bodied spirit. It took eight hours for him to transcribe the message,
with short intervals for food and sleep. It was a mighty exhausting
business.
According to the message that Chaloner gives to the world, Hell
w \s a very bearable place and one which everybody must pass through.
Miller admitted to his former friend that he had been bad enough
on earth to merit more punishment than he had received, but con
sidered that his relief was probably due to the fact that he had had
"his share of Hell on earth, being a New Yorker with social standing
and no money."
SATAN RESEMBLES NAPOLEON.
The message handed out by Chaloner describes Satan as a man
of medium height, whose face is that of Napoleon Bonaparte at the
apex of his power, and whose habiliments were those of Michaelangelo's
statue, "The Thinker." His Satanic Majesty was seated on a throne
in the center of an immense audience chamber.
"The walls of this audience chamber," says the message recorded,
"are of rubies. The rubies are the size of ordinary building bricks,
and of the luster and fire of rubies known as pigeon blood. In place
of mortar binding the bricks and making a white line, we here have
diamonds as large as your thumb nail and of the purest water. To
soften and enrich the fiery effect of such splendor, the diamond line
is broken every few inches by several inches of sapphires, as blue as
the Mediterranean. The floor of the hall is of marble, that has the
marvelous quality of being capable of taking on the color of whatever
stands upon or flies over it. Thus, if a cherub flies over the floor
space, the marble at once becomes tinged with red. If, on the other
hand, a seraph crosses the space, the marble at once becomes of a
cerulean blue, like an Italian sky. The marble takes on these colors
from the armor and vestments of the mighty angels, which are scarlet
and blue, respectively."
BLOODHOUNDS SPOIL DREAM.
At this point, the message was interrupted by the baying of Mr.
Chaloner's bloodhounds outside, who, he thinks, sensed the subcon
scious communication. However, the roof, Chaloner learned, is of
crystal, so pure that the eye can pierce it.
At the end of the message, Chaloner himself records the following
notes: "Knocked off for breakfast. Bread and water."
Mr. Chaloner anticipated his coming from near Cobham, Va., by
writing a letter to the Washington correspondents and others, in
which he told them of a conversation he had held with Miller, who
had spoken to him in the early hours of the morning of July 31st last,
from Hell, and of conversations which they had had in the Manhattan
Club. This, he said, had convinced him that he could communicate
with the dead while in a "Napoleonic" death trance.
171
CHALONER READS STATEMENT.
This statement was read by Mr. Chaloner, and was a most remark
able affair. It embraced twelve and a fraction typewritten pages.
Mr. Chaloner stated that he wrote it in long hand while in a state of
subconsciousness. He declared that "he did not believe a damn word
of it," after he had completed its reading:
In order to accomplish his ends Mr. Chaloner said he would go
to Alexandria at various times and put his case as thoroughly before
the American people as did Zola in the Dreyfus case. "I am," he
said, "going to hammer on it and hammer on it, and talk them to
death and write them to death, and make it a common household
word throughout the forty-eight States and Territories of this Union.
I am going to bombard these gangsters of the '400' in New York until
I make them sick for what they have done." He declared that the
New York district courts would not give him justice until he had
created a popular sentiment for himself.
Mr. Chaloner characterized his case as a "blue blood" conspiracy.
He said John G. Milburn and Joseph H. Choate were so powerful that
no Federal judge of the lower courts would dare go against them. "I
am after public opinion to keep the judges straight," he said. He
made reference to his impeachment charges against Judge George C.
Holt, of New York, who, he said, had refused to permit a jury to hear
his affidavit begun in Charlottesville in October of last year, and ended
in January of the present year. He charged Judge Holt with being
"an insurrecto against the rules which govern all civilized courts."
NAME, NEW YOBK, STINKS.
Asked if he would go back to New York were he to gain his vic
tory, Mr. Chaloner declared he was indifferent to ever going there.
"I don't care," he said, "ever to set foot there again. It has got too
horrible an association of ideas for me. The name of New York
stinks to me for a place to live in. I have as much dread of the
wickedness there, not only on the East Side, but on Fifth Avenue, as
Russian Jews have of a murder car."
Mr. Chaloner denounced the lunacy laws of most of the States as
villainous. In Washington they were "bum." In Baltimore and Phila
delphia and New Jersey worse still, "and in New York they are simply
parallel with hell." He said he took his life in his hands when he
went to Washington recently and conferred with a Congressman about
Judge Holt's impeachment. It was his purpose, he said, to reform
these lunacy laws of the country in accordance with an oath he had
taken while a patient at Bloomingdale. He was fully prepared, he
said, to wear Congress and the public out "until I make one of them
ashamed of themselves for being parties to such a damnable state of
lawlessness, tyranny, and dishonesty which is rife to-day in nearly
50 per cent, of the States of the Union."
172
These laws, he held, would be a disgrace to the Congo under the
enlightened rule of the late King Leopold of Belgium.
Arriving at the office of the Alexandria Gazette building at a few
minutes after 4 o'clock Mr. Chaloner took exactly two hours and
twenty minutes to tell his story to the scribes. The story of his
alleged conversation with a deceased friend while in a state of sub-
conciousness was related after he had gotten through his other talk.
WEARS PLAIN, CLOTHES.
As soon as Mr. Chaloner reached the office in a carriage from the
union railway station, he entered and announced himself, after which
he began his work of bombarding the New York authorities for his
incarceration in Bloomingdale for a period of four years.
Mr. Chaloner talked with vim and at times he emphasized his
remarks upon his auditors by clapping his hands together.
Mr. Chaloner, for a millionaire, was not clad very pompously,
wearing but plain clothing. He wore a blue serge coat and waistcoat,
and dark trousers, and carried with him a light overcoat with velvet
collar, and he also had rubbers in a small suit case, the latter con
taining books which he has written. The nature of some of these
books was explained by him during the course of the interview. Before
sitting down he placed behind him a heavy looking black wallet which
he said was for his spine, he having suffered from spinal trouble as
a result of his incarceration in Bloomingdale. Mr. Chaloner used this
for a rest for his spine and then began to unfold his story.
In addition to the newspaper men was Prof. Helmut P. Holler,
President of the Washington Psychological Society, who had a confer
ence with Mr. Chaloner. At the conclusion of his interview Mr. Chal
oner left for Richmond.
"The walls are of rubies of the size of ordinary building bricks,
and of the lustre and fire of rubies known as pigeon blood. In place of
mortar binding the bricks and making a white line, we have diamonds
as large as your thumb-nail and of the purest water. To soften and
enrich the fiery effect of such splendor the diamond line is broken
every few inches by sapphires as blue as the Mediterranean. The floor
of the hall is of marble that has the marvelous quality of being capable
of taking on the color of whatever stands upon or flies over it. Thus,
if a cherub flies over the floor space, the marble at once becomes
tinged with red. If, on the other hand, a seraph crosses the space,
the marble at once becomes of a cerulean blue, like an Italian sky.
The marble takes on the colors from the armor and vestments of the
mighty angels, which are scarlet and blue, respectively."
173
HELL
"The volume is a wonderful work as books go, and its title repre
sents adequately its contents." Richmond "Neics Leader," October 28,
1912.
"This last work of Mr. Chaloner is literature.
John Milton has not got much in the way of word painting on
John Armstrong Chaloner and Thomas Jefferson Miller, when they
get together, over the long distance.
The author may rest assured that his book will be read."
Richmond Evening Journal, October 30, 1912.
A MESSAGE FROM HELL.
The Author of "Who's Looney Now" Writes a Red-Hot Book.
John Armstrong Chaloner has just written a book entitled "Hell,"
which he declares is an account of his study in graphic-automatism.
The book, which is dedicated to Dante, John Milton and John Bun-
yan, described as the author's "illustrious predecessors in this dread
domain," tells in weird and picturesque language the experiences in
Hell of one Miller, a former friend of the author, from whom Mr.
Chaloner received the messages by means of what he calls The X-
Faculty. Mr. Chaloner has opened up a new, if somewhat red-hot,
field of modern literature. Times-Dispatch, October 30, 1912.
A NEW VISION OF HELL.
Not a Bad Sort of Place at All, Accordinff to Mr. Chaloner.
It might be more reassuring for those interested in knowing what
sort of place is reserved for the wicked after death if John Arm
strong Chaloner had been permitted to describe more than merely
the Audience Chamber of his Satanic Majesty. The picture which he
gives us of this room, with its walls of rubies, diamonds and sap
phires, is attractive enough, yet doubt is allowed to linger as to the
furnishings and other appurtenances of the living-rooms of the
transient and permanent guests.
According to the message which Chaloner gives the world from
his former friend, the Infernal Regions would seem to be a very
tolerable place in which to live. At any rate, the precious stones
which ornament the Audience Chamber of the Prince of Darkness
would seem to give to that place very much the same aspect ascribed
to heaven, with its pearly gates and streets of gold.
The floor of marble that has the quality of taking on the color
of whatever stands upon or flies over it is another interesting touch
in the vision. With cherubs and seraphs flitting back and forth,
174
changing the color alternately to red and blue, a kaleidoscopic effect
is no doubt produced that would be worth going far to see.
It is disappointing not to be told more about this interesting
place. The glimpse Into the Audience Chamber, with Satan presiding
and looking like Napoleon Bonaparte at the apex of his power, cries
out for another and completer picture. But perhaps Mr. Chaloner
intends to give us this in time, even if he has to go there for it.
San Francisco (Gal.) Chronicle, August 6, 1912.
"John Armstrong Chaloner's vision of Hell, with an Audience
Chamber built of rubles, diamonds and sapphires, is quite different
from the picture Dante gave us. However, it may be a true one.
It would be Hell to see all these things and not be able to have
any of them."
VIA MB. CHAIX)NER.
Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner disarms the skeptical who would
pooh-pooh his revelation of Hell. Some one called the world over his
wires and said Satan looked like Napoleon Bonaparte, that his resi
dence was of marble, rubies and diamonds, and that the place would
be a relief to any man who had been trying to maintain a social
position in New York without money.
That's the message that came via Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner.
As a medium he is neither skeptical nor credulous. A genuine medium
is merely a cosmic telephone wire. Mr. Chaloner does not guarantee
the good faith of the person on the other end. He thinks it was
Thomas Jefferson Miller, but it may have been Artemus Ward, or
Mark Twain, or William James, who said he would send back a mes
sage if there were any way of doing it.
That Hell would have no terrors for a man who had been broke
in New York has been suspected confidently declared in some in
stances and if Mr. Chaloner's message is confirmation of the idea it
will cause no particular sensation. The most interesting part of the
revelation is that Satan looks like Napoleon. That explnins the notion
prevailing in Europe that the head devil was absent from his do
main about 1768 to 1821. Chicago (III.) Tribune, August 6, 1912.
THE PASSING SHOW.
According to a spirit message, John Armstrong Chaloner has re
ceived from a former friend on earth, "the walls of Hell are of
rubles the size of building bricks, and the lustre and fire of rubies
known as pigeon blood. In place of mortar binding the bricks and
making a white line, we have diamonds as large as your thumb-nail
and of the purest water. To soften and enrich the fiery effect of
such splendor the diamond line is broken every few inches by sap-
175
phires as blue as the Mediterranean." Persons who contemplate going
to the place which Chaloner has so prettily described, should take
with them a complete equipment of mining implements. New Orleans
(La.) States, August 8, 1912.
John Armstrong Chaloner claims to have communicated with a
New Yorker in Hell. Kindly note that "New Yorker." Columbia (S.
C.) State. New York Tribune, August 9, 1912.
John Armstrong Chaloner, always interesting and sometimes
unique, has learned that "Satan is a gentleman." H m : he has to
be to get away with it. New York Telegraph, August 6, 1912.
EDGAR SAJLTUS IN "VANITY FAIR."
NEW YORK, January, 1914.
To old New Yorkers there are a few left Fifth Avenue occasion
ally becomes a ghostly haunt of the departed. Among the latter is a
man who dematerialized and then reincarnated. Formerly known as
Chanler, now he is Chaloner. But, in the interim, he went not to
heaven but to Bloomingdale. And why not? Besides, any excursion
is valuable if it deepen your experience of, life. Now, here he is again
and very humanly in the shape of a document. Entitled Scorpio, it
is a shandigaff of prose and verse. Usually such things are inoffen
sive specimens of harmless literature. But not Scorpio. Richepin
wrote a breviary that was like an explosion of Roman candles. He
also wrote a hymnal that was so many doors slammed in your face.
Richepin, though a member of the French Academy, a membership
which usually is a patent of incapacity, had something to say and
knew how to say it. In piety and truculence this thing of Mr. Chal-
oner's equals Richepin's wares. In commenting on an earlier per
formance, a critic called the author a literary bruiser. Previously
the Supreme Court had adjudged him insane. Well, with entire defer
ence, it does seem a pity that there are not more lunatics like him
and also that on the buttered toast of our literature there is so little
anchovy paste.
HENRY BRINSLEY IN "VANITY FAIR."
NEW YORK, January, 1914.
I have been deeply moved recently by some verses of Mr. John
Armstrong Chaloner's, who has just published a slender volume of
sonnets called "Scorpio." The following lovely little lyric will tell its
own message without prosaic comment on my part.
176
DEATH.
When our appointed sands shall run their course,
When in life's brief hour-glass none doth remain,
When death's mysterious river we must cross,
The following thoughts may ease the Soul her pain:
Death the Ang,el is of all activity
The "open sesame" to action rare
The quick'ning of a new nativity
In a world which is as dreadful as it's fair.
The bones do rest, the dust doth rest. They rest.
But the Spirit that which sprang from God's bright Throne
The Spirit which His breath gives life and zest,
The Spirit thro' eternity goes on!
Tomb the portal is to Hell or Paradise
Purgatory is Hell and versa vice.
SCORPIO
(Sonnets)
BY JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER.
Keats has told us that "they shall be accounted poet-kings
who simply say the most heart-easing things?" It may well
be, therefore, that the author of the present volume of son
nets has no desire to be ranked among the poet-kings. For he
certainly does not come to us with heartsease in his hand. On
the contrary he prides himself on the fact that he is a hard
and terrible hitter. Indeed., he assures us that he has come
to the conclusion that you can put a wicked man "to sleep"
with a sonnet in pretty much the same way that a prize
fighter puts his opponent to sleep with a finished blow. And
not only does Mr. Chaloner believe in what we may term the
sonnetorial fist, but he believes also in whips and scorpions,
for the cover of his book is decorated with an angry-looking
seven-thonged scourge, and he dubs the whole effort "Scor
pio." So that when we look to the fair page itself we know
what to expect.
Nor are we disappointed. Mr. Chaloner goes to the opera.
Being a good poet, he immediately writes a sonnet about it,
the which, however, he calls "The Devil's Horseshoe." We
reproduce it for the benefit of all whom it may concern :
'A fecund sight for a philosopher
Rich as Golconda's mine in lessons rare
That gem-bedizen'd "horse-shoe" at th' Opera,
Replete with costly hags and matrons fair!
His votaresses doth Mammon there array,
His Amazonian Phalanx dread to face!
To Mammon there do they their homage pay!
Spang'ld with jewels, satins, silks and lace,
Crones whose old bosoms in their corsets creak;
Beldams whose slightest glance would fright a horse;
Ghouls when they speak one hears the grave-mole squeak
Their escorts parvenus of feature coarse,
A rich array of Luxury and Vice!
But, spite of them, the music's very nice.'
Here you have whips, scorpions, and a knockout blow
with a vengeance. The sonnet as a whole is not one which we
178
can approve from a technical or sentimental point of view,
but it has points. Henley might have plumed himself on that
line about the creaking corsets, and the last line, a tour de
force, in its way reminds us of the withering ironies of Byron.
It is only fair to Mr. Chaloner to add that not all his sonnets
are concerned with back-flaying, bosom-stinging, or general
thumping. Some of them show the tenderer emotions proper
to a poet. We like him best, however, in his character as
metrical bruiser. He is always on the side of the angels even
if he is frequently over vigorous; and his book is well worth
possessing. We gather that he has undergone personal trou
bles of no light or ordinary nature, and it is pleasant to
note that, despite these troubles, he still retains a sane and
reasonable outlook upon life, for when he likes he can be
quite pleasantly humorous instead of acridly bitter. The
Academy, London, August 8, 1908.
"THE PLAY'S THE THING 11
Hamlet
As a playwright the writer is well aware that nothing should be
set upon the boards which is not applicable to real life; by which is
meant, which might not have taken place in real life. We are well
aware that the happenings in "Robbery Under Law" are above the
level of the commonplace above the level of the ordinary
above the level of the humdrum. So far so good. But we have
submitted incontrovertible evidence in the shape of the opinions
of our celebrated specialists as well as in the shape of the letter
to Commonwealth's attorney Micajah Woods dated July 3, 1897
that the facts set forth in "Robbery Under Law" are facts which have
already occurred in real life in the case of CJialoner against Sherman,
and might occur in real life again any day.
As a historian author of that history of the inner workings of the
main-spring of Metropolitan life in New York, during the closing years
of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th centuries entitled "Four
Years Behind The Bars of 'Bloomingdale' Or The Bankruptcy Of Law
in New York" we are appalled at the attitude of the press of the
United States towards that now celebrated expose of life behind the
scenes in the so-called "Four Hundred." With the exception of the
New York "World," the New York "Tribune" and one other New York
paper, not a solitary! line appeared in reference to the startling dis
closures spread at large in the pages of "Four Years Behind The Bars,"
at the hands of the Metropolitan press. Not one solitary line. Lastly,
with the exception of the Raleigh, North Carolina, "News and Observer"
and the Richmond "News-Leader" and the Richmond "Evening Journal"
not a line appeared in criticism of said book south of Mason and
Dixon's line.
Such a statement is enough to make the spirit of George Washing
ton revisit the haunts of his former activities; and damn to Hell and
on down as Carlyle was wont to put it the degenerate ways of the
people now enjoying the glorious land won for them ~by his sword.
The amazingly amusing spectacle in this alleged "land of the free"
of a law abiding citizen who has proved himself an Art Patron to
the tune of establishing a hundred thousand dollar Scholarship;
from the income of which Art Students of both sexes are sent to
Europe to perfect their studies in all the branches of Art from Paint
ing to Music and the Stage following the lines of Napoleon's Prix de
Rome to which he himself gave two whole years of his life, crossed
the ocean four times, went as far West as Cincinnati and Chicago, and
as far South as New Orleans, and subscribed thirteen thousand dol-
180
lars the funny sight in this alleged "land of the free" of a man
like that, being arrested and locked up for life as a dangerous lunatic;
is enough to make a horse laugh, and make any citizen of this great
and glorious Republic capable of a moment's sustained thought outside
the national pursuit of the dollar, shake in his shoes for the future of
the United States. When said citizen delves deeper into the malodorous
mess known as Chaloner against Sherman he finds that all and sundry
charges against the plaintiff are perjuries pure and simple; upon
the part of relatives, either interested in getting him out of the way
for life, in order that they might enjoy his large and constantly grow
ing fortune at his death; or relatives who had quarrelled with him
and desired to see him in an undesirable situation.
We do not consider it necessary at this time to even hint at the
object the press of the United States had in attempting to smother
"Four Years Behind The Bars." That book was sent registered, to
some fifty or so leading newspapers from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and from the Lakes to the Gulf, with the aforesaid results. Right
here it might be said more in sorrow than in anger that the press
of the United States has ceased to represent the happenings of the day
throughout the United States. Instead it picks and chooses among
those happenings those which suit its editorial policy, its business
policy, its social "high-society" policy; and all other; facts it does its
damnedest to smother. And when smothering is out of the question, to
colour and otherwise distort. Such being the case we have utterly
and entirely ceased to expect fair play, or anything in the remotest
degree resembling decent treatment, or even honest truthful treatment,
at the hands of the press of the United States. We hasten to say
that there are quite a good many honourable exceptions to this rule,
but the vast majority of the American press is as we have pictured it,
towards the author of "Who's Looney Now?" and his variegated and
militant fortunes. Such being the case we have taken the following
formidable resolve, to wit, So soon as we have recovered our property
we shall start out on the road and with a good company, enact the role
of "Hugh Stutfield" in "Robbery Under Law." If we find the theatres
closed against us for the same reason that we find the newspapers
whatever that reason may be we shall follow the illustrious example
of Madame Sarah Bernhardt under the precise and identical circum
stances, and act in a tent! Having a million and a half of property
we are in a fairly strong position as regards carrying out to the letter
the above pushful programme. The first question that will present
itself to the reader will be "What kind of a fist) can 'Who's Looney
Now?' make at acting? Can he act?" To which we hasten to make
answer " 'Who's Looney Now?' undoubtedly can act." Thus. In the
first place, there is a good deal in heredity and environment at birth.
Now "Who's Looney Now" came within one ace of being born on the
stage of being actually born on the boards! The remarkable facts are
as follows, "Who's Looney Now's?" Mamma was very fond of the
181
Theatre. The night before "Who's Looney Now?" appeared in this
world "Who's Looney Now's?" Mamma was seized with a desire to
attend a theatrical performance that was taking place on the next
block from the house she was then visiting. This house was the Town
house of her Grandfather, the late William B. Astor in LaFayette
Place, New York, in the shadow of the Astor Library. "Who's Looney
Now's?" Papa humoured his wife's whim it being the first time such
a thing had occurred "Who's Looney Now?" being his Mamma's first
born and accompanied his wife to the Play House and the best box
therein. Before the play was over to cut a long story short "Who's
Looney Now's?" Mamma had to hurry home in order to avoid a most
sensational denouement.
Under the circumstances aforesaid it should not be surprising to
an open minded reader, that "Who's Looney Now?" has had from
earliest childhood a penchant for the stage. Such being the fact "Who's
Looney Now?" has always carried it locked in the inmost recesses of
his breast that provided circumstances were favorable to such a sen
sational and unusual thing he would one day go on the stage! With
this secret intent he has always avoided strenuously taking any active
part in that morgue for histrionic ability "Private Theatricals." Two
facts stand out in "Who's Looney Now's?" later years, indicating his
ability to make g,ood on the boards. The first fact indicates ability
in said line. The second fact indicates serious study along and in said
line. Fact number one is that "Who's Looney Now?" surprised and
delighted his Father his Mother being now dead by taking first prize
in Declamation at a Military Academy, by name, "St. John's School,"
Ossining-on-Hudson, New York; at the early age of thirteen out of a
school of seventy-five boys many of whom were four or five years
"Who's Looney Now's?" senior. Anyone who knows anything about
acting knows it's harder to be interesting on a naked platform against
a white-washed schoolroom's wall, than surrounded by all the sensu-
ousness and fairy glamour of the foot-lights.
Fact number two is that "Who's Looney Now?" devoted a whole
winter while an undergraduate at Columbia University in New York,
to taking lessons in gesture and intonation, the use of the throat and
lungs, from a professional in that line; whose business it was to train
professional actors that early day being long before Dramatic Acad
emies for fitting aspirants for the stage had been dreamed of. "Who's
Looney Now?" being a great admirer of Edwin Booth whom he knew
personally and considering him the greatest actor of his day, if not
of any day spent about four nights out of each week during Booth's
last and longest season at Booth's Theatre at 23rd Street and Sixth
Avenue during the same year that he was studying elocution profes
sionally and also sent his Dramatic Instructor aforesaid to the same
Theatre frequently supplying the Instructor with the necessary tick
ets. The next day "Who's Looney Now?" would read the soliloquies in
Hamlet and Richard III to the Instructor, rendering the same with
182
as nearly the same tone, accent, and inflection, as Booth had given
them the night, or nights, before. Now a study of the features of
"Who's Looney Now?" in the Frontispiece, followed by a comparison
of said features with those of Edwin Booth, will lead to a revelation
of the fact that there is somewhat more than a passing likeness be
tween the storm-tried face of "Who's Looney Now?" and that of Edwin
Booth. Lastly, in said connection. The tones of "Who's Looney
Now's?" voice so strongly resemble those of Edwin Booth that said
Dramatic Instructor remarked more than once to "Who's Looney Now?"
upon the latter's finishing, the opening speech of Richard III or the
"To be or not to be" of Hamlet "If you shut your eyes it sounds as
tho' Booth were in this room." When to the above serious active work
in the Dramatic Art is added the fact that, some years later, "Who's
Looney Now?" carried his Lares and Penates to Paris and set them up
in a house or private apartment of his own for five consecutive years;
during which time there was hardly a week elapsed without his going
to the Theatre Francois at least once, if not twice, as well as once
or twice each week to some other of the leading French Theatres,
it becomes palpable to the poorest observation that "Who's Looney
Now?" was "going some" to Theatres to school. All this time
"Who's Looney Now?" had the starry end in view, to one of
these days provided always and only that Fate should be pro
pitious that circumstances should point the way to that rugged and
daring path of toil and disappointment and severe work the starry
end in view to at the proper time have a dash on the boards. And all
this time therefore "Who's Looney Now?" was watching Coquelin
Aint, or Coquelin Jeune or Mounet-Sully at the Frangais for tips
and points and what not, for his own particular use at the proper
time French Dramatic Art being as much at the top of all Dramatic
Art to-day, as French Painting and Sculpture and Architecture are at
the topmost pinnacle of their respective branches of Art to-day.
Therefore "Who's Looney Now?" would mount the stage with a far
from unsophisticated attitude towards the stage. Now what would
"Who's Looney Now?" be required to do in his initial step the step
that breaks the ice Ic premier pas qui coute step upon mounting
the stage in "Robbery Under Law?" Why nothing more difficult than
copy the role he had CREATED IN REAL LIFEON THE STAGE
OF THE WORLD when he FOUGHT GILLARD IN THE DINING-
ROOM AT "MERRY MILLS" THAT MARCH AFTERNOON SIX
YEARS AGO; or when he HELD UP THE DOCTORS IN HIS SUITE
AT THE HOTEL KENSINGTON THREE TIMES AS MANY YEARS
AGO: or later when he FOUGHT HIS STRAPPING IRISH KEEPER
IN HIS CELL AT "BLOOM INGDALE" UNTIL THE LATTER BEL
LOWED "HELP" AT THE TOP OF HIS POWERFUL LUNGS SEVEN
TEEN YEARS AGO: or, lastly, WHEN HE ESCAPED. The above
"Bloomingdale" dates are reckoned from March 13, 1915. It should
not be very difficult for a man to copy himself.
183
If "Robbery Under Law" is a success "Who's Looney Now?" will
then venture on the role of "Catiline" in "The Hazard Of The Die."
Now what is the necessity forcing a millionaire like "Who's
Looney Now?" onto the stage? Why just this. The effort upon the
part of the consolidated American press to smother "Four Years Behind
The Bars" as aforesaid.
"Who's Looney Now?" is not the kind of man to permit a plan
he had devoted his entire time to furthering, fostering and pushing
for eighteen years to be smothered by the Press, or by any other aggre
gation of capital whatsoever. Since the Press are for motives best
known to themselves enthusiastically taking part in the thieves' game
of depriving "Who's Looney Now?" of his million and a half on the
perjured charge of insanity, why so much the worse for the American
press that's all.
"Who's Looney Now?" thanks the American Press for the excuse
for which he has waited all his life to go on the stage. It may not
at first appear what going on the stage has to do with smothering
"Who's Looney Now's?" more or less laudable efforts at reforming the
damnable Hell-begotten Lunacy Laws now disgracing New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, all New England and altogether forty per cent.
of the States of the United States. It has just this to do with it.
"Who's Looney Now?" is in his third year well on in his third year
as a successful public lecturer on that very subject Lunacy Law Re
form at the "Rex" Moving Picture Theatre, 7th and Broad Streets,
Richmond, Virginia. He lectured there twice a month from the first
week in September, 1912, until January or later in 1914, when he cut
his appearance down to the last Sunday night in each month in place
of two Sunday nights in the month. He has had so little difficulty in
attracting audiences to the "Rex," that after the first few months, 'way
back in 1912, he ceased to advertise his appearance; and since then
has not had to pay out so much as one dollar for advertising purposes.
Incidentally all this time "Who's Looney Now?" was training and
cultivating his voice for the stage. For this purpose no better spot
on earth than this same "Rex" Theatre could have been chosen for
strengthening the voice and enabling it to shout at top pitch for an
hour or more above a competitive and persistent roar. For along
Seventh Street runs a trolley line within some twelve or fifteen feet
or so of the stage. The sides of the "Rex" are open at the top for
ventilation. Hence "Who's Looney Now's?" voice has to compete with
and dominate the crash and roar of a trolley car: to which is to be
added the brazen clang of its bell. An hour and a quarter of this
sort of thing once a month for two years and ai half has given "Who's
Looney Now?" a pair of lungs ready and willing to compete with the
bellowings of the bull of Bashan itself! Therefore the intelligent
reader will gather that there has been a method lurking in the back
ground of "Who's Looney Now's?" three years' shouting at the "Rex"
to-wit: Voice and Lung Culture.
184
Having accounted for the hair on the outside, we shall now lift
the veil from the milk in the cocoanut and show what going on the
stage has to do with Lunacy Law reform.
THUS, The lectures at the "Rex" are free lectures. "Who's Looney
Now?" purposes to address the audiences after the fall of the curtain
in "Robbery Under Law," for ten minutes precisely: and put before
them in each city he plays in all through the United States the
black and foul stigma now staining the fair name of Law, Justice, and
Liberty in these United States in the name of Lunacy Law.
Furthermore. Each Sunday afternoon "Who's Looney Now?" will
hire the largest hall each city contains, and for two hours hold for*h
on the interesting topic of criminal lunacy legislation now masquerad
ing under the name of law- in 40 per cent, of the States of the Union.
These lectures will be of course free, and will be advertised a day
or so before in the local papers, or on bill boards and hoardings, as the
case may be.
"Who's Looney Now?" opines that he will draw a crowd. There
fore in time how long, it will take to arouse the American people
from their disgraceful their criminal lethargy in this matter God
only knows: but "Who's Looney Now?" is quite confident that before
he gets too old to shout or mount a platform the miracle will have
been enacted; and the American people will have risen to the situation,
wiped off the foul stain now upon their character as a law abiding,
law respecting, liberty loving people, and put it into their national
platforms that the foul farce now disgracing the Statute books of
about forty millions of Americans shall cease and determine, and that
a set of National Lunacy Laws shall be enacted which shall place
Lunacy Procedure on as secure and fair a basis as say, Bankruptcy.
185
NOTE TO FRONTISPIECE.
THE NEWS-LEADER, Richmond, Virginia.
More Daily Circulation Than Any Paper Published in Virginia.
October 5, 1911.
John Armstrong Chaloner,
"The Merry Mills,"
Cobham, Virginia.
Dear Sir : Permit me to make tardy recognition of the receipt
of your latest photographs, which were sent me several days ago by
Homeier and Clark. I thank you for them.
Under separate cover I am mailing to you a photograph of you
attired as Napoleon, made in this office by our artist, Mr. Criswell.
I trust you will pardon our taking the liberty of decapitating; you, but
we promise not to repeat the offense. For the dual reason that you
may care to have the picture, and that we may not have occasion
to use the picture again in view of the fact that we have a news
paper "cut" of it, I am presenting the likeness to you. With it I am.
sending you a copy of the News-Leader to show the connection in which
the picture was used.
As I remember, you sent to the Fair last year "The Sire of Dol-
gorouki" and said you would send the real "Dolgorouki" this year.
If you intend doing this, I would like to have a picture of his hig,hness.
Thanking you again for the photographs,
I am, yours very truly,
LOUIS A. MACMAHON.
Managing Editor.
The shock which the average reader will sustain at finding that
a newspaper editor and not "Who's Looney Now?" is responsible for
the above "real bargain furore" photograph to borrow the language
with which the writers for ladies fashion journals urge on their fair
readers to the fray incite them to fresh efforts at buying the shock
which the above "real bargain furore" photo will hand out to the aver
age reader as aforesaid, will be mitigated by knowing that the cause
of the whole trouble into which "Who's Looney Now?" was precipitated
like a projectile from a thirteen-inch gun, March 13th, 1897 and
fetched up standing in the cells of "Bloomingdale" without ever see
ing a judge or hearing that there was any question concerning his
sanity upon the cards the cause of said whole trouble is positively
and absolutely expressed in the following brief statement, made casu
ally to one or two close friends, namely: that it occurred to him that
Tie looked like Napoleon Bonaparte.
186
"Who's Looney Now?" is positively and literally accused of being
stark staring crazy because he happened to casually observe on one
occasion, possibly two occasions, to intimate male friends that he
thought he resembled Napoleon Bonaparte in appearance.
Here follows the cold, hard judicial proof of the above allegation,
taken from the Commitment Papers signed by Judge Henry A. Gilder-
sleeve, Justice of the New York Supreme Court, March 10th, 1897, and
attached to the Proceedings, in the New York Supreme Court, before a
sheriff's jury against John Armstrong Chaloner, in May, 1899. On
line 243 of said Commitment Papers are found the following words
sworn to by Medical-Examiner-in-Lunacy, Moses A. Starr, M. D., Pro
fessor of Nervous Diseases in Columbia University Medical School
upon which words "Who's Looney Now?" lost some $20,000, in one
hundred dollars per week for a two room cell and an Irish keeper at
"Bloomingdale" for nearly four years besides seventeen of the best
and ripest years of his earthly career "State what the patient ("Who's
Looney Now?") said, , if anything, in presence of the examiners."
While on line 245 are found these words, to-wit: ''That he resem
bles Napoleon, 1 " and when the reader remembers that said damning
charge against "Who's Looney Now's?" reason is introduced by the
following sinister words printed on line 242 of said Commitment
Papers, to-wit: "Facts indicating insanity personally observed by me,"
(said Moses A. Starr, M. D., Statutory-Medical-Examiner-In-Lunacy)
the gayety of nations is increased.
In the opening speech of Hon. Frederick A Ware, of counsel for
"Who's Looney Now?" at the trial of his cause ctlebre in February,
1912, Mr. Ware observed, to the jury, to the following effect: "Gentle
men of the jury, my client is accused by his accusers of being insane
because he happens to think he happens to look like Napoleon. Now we
shall show you a photograph of John Armstrong, Chaloner which will
make you gentlemen think the same way." Said "bargain furore"
photograph is the one referred to by Hon. Frederick A. Ware.
In presenting before the dazed gaze of the public said "Bargain
furore," we, therefore, are merely properly anticipating the rehearing
of "Who's Looney Now's?" cause ctlebre.
"THE SHAVING OF
SHAGPAT"
Registered. (Copy.)
"The Merry Mills," Cobham, Va.
March 19, 1915.
Joseph H. Choate, Jr., Esq.,
Evarts, Choate & Sherman,
60 Wall St., New York.
Dear Mr. Choate :
A letter just received from my New York counsel, Hon, Frederick
A. Ware, states that he saw your Mr. Kobb6 re the "Paris Prize"
matter. Mr. Ware writes : "The complaint is to ask for an Incorpora
tion as he says he thought you proposed doing originally. I asked
him about appointing you as one of the trustees; in that event, if
such an appointment and incorporation were agreeable to you. He
said that he thought that the present conditions would make that
unlikely, but thought that Mr. Choate might agree to your naming
a trustee, in your stead, all this assuming that you did not oppose
the incorporation."
Now I am going to be quite frank. I do oppose the incorpora
tion and for more than one reason. The "Paris Prize" was founded
by me from subscriptions raised by myself from prominent Art Pa
trons to which I myself subscribed thirteen thousand dollars in
1890 and added to later it was distinctly understood between the
donors aforesaid and myself, that there was to be no precipitancy of
incorporation. That the money was to be placed in a Trust Com
pany and there left until such time as it appeared advisable from
the experience gained by a considerable line of Paris Prize men hav
ing each spent five (5) years in the study of Painting first in Paris
later where he would.
That meantime I must have full control of the educational side
of the Prize and experiment as much as was found necessary along
the lines laid down in the original scheme of the "Paris Prize," given
by me to the New York Newspnpers in January, 1891, and widely
and prominently noticed by them and invariably strongly endorsed.
The funds, as aforesaid, were to be always until finally incor
porated in the hands of the United States Trust Company, Wall
Street. New York the Institution chosen by me as the strongest and
most conservative for the pvirpose in New York. The income was
to be expended as I might direct in consonance with the said scheme.
This was strictly carried out. I gathered the Jury of Artists to hold
188
the competitive examination which was to be the means of selecting
the Paris Prize-man or Paris Prize-woman to be sent abroad. The
thing worked to a charm. Without any more work than the above
on my part, the jury consisting of the Presidents of the Academy of
Design, Society of American Artists, American Water Colour Society
and Art Students League, as well as artists selected by them in addi
tion I am writing at haste and entirely from memory as I remember
it without any more red-tape, legal fuss and feathers verbosity and
the like, the jury quickly went to work and worked out its own sal
vation in short order. Bryson Burroughs was the winner of the
Prize, a student at the Art Students League as I remember it. He
at once received his first year's payment of ($900) nine hundred
dollars the Prize is nine hundred dollars a year for five (5) years,
paid in advance, and sailed for Paris. He stayed there five (5)
years yearly sending back work signed and examined by a local jury
of prominent French Artists, who met at the United States Embassy
at a lunch given them by the American Ambassador.
Puvis de Chavannes, Carolus Duran, Gerome, Benjamin Constant
and Dagnan Bouveret, formed the first Foreign Jury. Mr. Burroughs
proved such a successful painter that now, besides being an active
painter, he occupies the important post of Curator of Paintings at thp
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. So soon as he returned a
new "Paris Prize" examination was held and Lawton Parker was
chosen. He was a student at the Wm. M. Chase Art School as I re
member it. He remained five years in Paris, and his work regularly
inspected, as above described, and sent home, was uniformly satis
factory. At the end of the five (5) years instead of coming to America
he remained in France. In 1913 he startled the world of painting by
receiving the Gold Medal the First and Highest Award at the Paris
Salon, he being not only the first American for not even John Sargent
has ever received it, nor Whistler but the flrst foreigner the first
non-Frenchman to receive the Gold Medal since its creation! These
are the only two products of the "Paris Prize." Why this is thus,
you, my dear sir, know better than I. The money was all there for
holding the competitive examinations, and yet not a wheel was turned
nothing was done the "Paris Prize" was gently swathed in a wind
ing sheet, and, like the talent in the Bible buried in the ground to
await the resurrection or my demise. However, that is rather a
painful subject, for you gentlemen ranged on the other side, so we
shall not discuss it further.
However, that is no reason for giving the "Paris Prize" the "raw-
deal" you now propose In Incorporating it without the guiding hand
of her creator my humble self. The absurdity of the acts of the
law at times would make a horse laugh. Here is the creator of the
Prise refused a seat on the Board of Trustees, simply because he has
not yet had the opportunity to present his case in court before a court
that will recognize the rulings of the Supreme Court of the United
States in Windsor vs. McVeigh, 93 U. S. which says "notice" and
189
"opportunity" to appear and be heard are necessary in order that
the court of first instance get jurisdiction. However, I have no idea
of entering on a legal argument with you on paper. I look forward
with considerable gusto to doing that in my approaching brief on
appeal to the United States Supreme Court in Chal. agst. Sher.; on
which I am now at work. To resume. The "Paris Prize" has only
sent two (2) Prize-men abroad that is not a very long list of ex
perimental students, is it?
To a lawyer or as a business man it should be unnecessary to dilate
upon the risk of incorporating an Educational Scheme as new and
untried as the Paris Prize, until it had been tried out. So long as
the Financial End was in safe-keeping, everything was serene. Noth
ing could 'be surer than the United States Trust Company. The fifty
thousand dollars stands in the name of the "Paris Prize Fund," by
John Armstrong Chaloner, or some such caption, on the books of the
United States Trust Company. No power on earth could get a dollar
of that fund more than the income without a court order and no
one teas permitted to touch the income but myself, wJio receipted to
the said Trust Company for each annual payment or semi-annual
at this distance I don't care to say positively what the frequency of
payment was, more than that it was in advances not more than one
year or less than one-half year in advances to the Prize-man. I then
sent by draft the money to the "Paris Prize-man" in Paris, and turned
the vouchers among which was his receipt over to the U. S. T. Co.
where they are or should be to this day. What in the name of
the Devil and all his angels, my dear Sir, is the use of all this red
tape about incorporating the Fund while you "Stewards" to continue
the parable are so remiss in your duty that you refuse to take my
lead, refuse to follow the established honoured precedents of ten years
successful Art Education in Paris, as proved by the "brilliant careers
of the only two Prize-men you "Stewards" permitted, thro' your supine-
ness, and lack of regard for public education in Art and indifference
to philanthropic ends your minds and eyes, being so glued onto the
dollars and their sordid shape, that the object for which the Fifty
Thousand Dollars then years and years ago making up the Paris Prize
Fund now nearer Seventy-five Thousand dollars were raised, was
quite forgotten! Why didn't you get a move on your distinguished
selves and follow my lead in the case of Paris Prizemen Bryson Bur
roughs and Lawton Parker? There's a question for the jury indeed!
Therefore I do not propose to have all this undue haste mind you the
Prize has sent only 2 students to Paris thanks to you gentlemens'
sloth and indifference, aforesaid in incorporating when nothing calls
for the red tape and rigidity incorporation means at this stage of the
game, whereas the Educational side is left naked and bare. The Edu
cational side bear in mind is self-acting or was when I was at the
wheel in 1896 aforesaid.
The Educational Institutions in Art forming the Home jury are
still in existence or their successors and could come together as
190
readily as they did to elect Bryson Burroughs and Lawton Parker.
Bend your bounding energies to sending a needy but gifted American
Art Student to Paris, my dear sir, rather than in attempts at hide-
binding a thing as free as Art, and at the same time as safe as the
United States Trust Company with premature incorporation. Lastly :
Things are rather upset on the continent just at present. And from
my way of looking at it they will continue so, for at least two (2)
years. Therefore at that time when Chaloner agst. Sherman reaches
the United States Supreme Court on Appeal at that very time will
the Allies enter Berlin so mote it be there or thereabouts. There
after all will be serene on both sides of the Atlantic. You and your
friend Mr. Sherman, will be invited by the Federal Court to step
down and out, and take your long noses out of my affairs, and your
long fingers out of my well-lined coffers. Thereupon a new examina
tion for a Paris Prizeman can be held by the aforesaid Art Presidents,
and a Paris Prizeman will sail into a French port, as I sail into your
and Sherman's conduct of my affairs. In a word, now is about the
worst possible time ever since the French Revolution at least to
rehabilitate the "Paris Prize" in Paris, after the "black-eye" your mis
conduct aforesaid wilfully administered to this great and unique
scholarship the only self -supporting Art Scholarship for Painting in
the metropolis of the United States! So what's the matter, my dear
sir, with letting sleeping dog;s lie? You put the "Paris Prize" to sleep,
by your acts aforesaid why not let her sleep on? You put her to.
sleep for nine (9) calendar years (9) ! Is there anything in law or
equity against letting her sleep on for a short tioo more until my
resurrection from the dead you know you gentlemen rendered me
"civilly dead" and although / personally rose from my legal resting
place, my property lingers in the tomb my legal grave Novembei
6th, 1901, when the county court of Albemarle County, Va., this
County pronounced me sane and competent ; in place of what your
criminal proceedings in the New York Courts procured by and based*
upon, kidnapping, conspiracy and perjury basely libelled me with.
So, my good sir, pray let well enough alone. Show a little de
cency whether you happen to have any or not pretend to, for once,
and let well enough alone. Don't make a fool of yourself and ask the
court what to do with the piffling little remnant of income in the second
rate Trust Company, put there by the late Charles F. McKim the
partner of my good friend and stool-pigeon the late lamented Mr.
Stanford White don't do that pray the court to order the said pica
yune sum to be turned over to the "Paris Prize Fund" nmc in hand*
of the United States Trust Company where it belongs.
I shall oppose in the courts any other action than this, and fight
you through every court in New York, and then begin in the Federal
Court, and fight you clean up to the Supreme Court of the United
States. "Let us have peace."
Sincerely yours,
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER.
191
P. S. A word regarding the "Paris Prize Fund." The other
subscribers are a bagatelle alongside my subscription. Thus: I really
subscribed thirteen thousand plus twenty-five thousand Thus. My late
cousin, Henry Astor Carey, was dining with me one night at the
Somerset Club in Boston. An idea occurred to me. I said to him :
"Harry, you have been very generous to the "Paris Prize," you have
given more to it than any Art Patron I ever approached twice as
much in fact. Now, do one thing more. You're a millionaire and a
bachelor. We are both of us in the prime of life and healthy, and
you are younger than I. Now which ever one of us dies first leaves
twenty-five thousand dollars to the "Paris Prize Fund" of course
as it's not yet incorporated you must, to be legal leave it to me
"with the wish and hope that I pay it over to the 'Paris Prize Fund'
as soon as incorporated. I'll do the same." "Done with you," said
my generous cousin. The lawyer he had was one of your gang, Henry
Lewis Morris, familiarly known to the New York bar as "Hungry
Hank."
Carey went to him and said he wanted to change his will. "Hungry
Hanlc" staved it off until Carey died about May, 1893, and the money
was never left, because the new will was never made, thanks to
"Hungry Hank's" aforesaid unlawyerlike, to call it by no harsher term,
proceeding I told his brother the facts and he generously he could
well afford it, as he was a millionaire anyway, and Henry Astor
Carey's death doubled his million at the very least and he gener
ously made good, and paid me personally twenty-five thousand dol
lars in gilt edged bonds. So my foresight in thus discounting death
gambling on it, so to speak enables me to say that, in effect my real
subscription to the Paris Prize, the amount standing opposite my
name Henry Astor Carey's name is there also is my original dona
tion of thirteen thousand dollars, and said twenty-five thousand dol
lars, making thirty-eight thousand dollars. I differentiate thus be
tween the five thousand Henry Astor Carey subscribed himself, per
sonally, to the Fund, at its incipiency. That stands opposite his name
as his subscription pure and simple. But tnis twenty-five thousand
was not given by him, it was given by his brother, out of money left
by him, in accordance with an agreement made by me with him, prior
to his death. So you see all this talk about "the wishes of the other
subscribers to the Fund" t regarding the present conduct of the Fund
is very like piffle and poppycock, and about the weight of thistledown,
or as the very modest subscription of the multi-millionaires in the
game are to Henry Astor Carey's subscription of five thousand dol
lars, and the thirty-eight thousand dollar subscription of myself backed
by his ghost so to speak. Here are all the subscriptions 1 and amounts
in the order as given all made between November and Xmas, 1890.
tChoate had in a previous letter, in the matter, lugged in that
phrase by the ears. J. A. C.
192
The late Laura Astor Delano $ 1,000 00
Mrs. John J. Chapman 1,000 00
William Waldorf Astor 1,500 00
Henry Astor Carey (deceased) 5,000 00
The late William Astor 2,500 00
The late Cornelius Vanderbilt 2,500 00
$ 13,500 00
There were six subscribing Art Patrons besides myself. More
than half of them are dead. They gave $13,500, and I and the ghost
gave $38,500.
This list is made entirely from memory and without notes but it
is certainly all that was subscribed by other Art patrons. I may
have subscribed five hundred dollars, more or less, than thirteen thou
sand, or possibly rather more than that, but the essential thing is that
the above are all the other subscribers and subscriptions, besides my
self, and Carey's Ghost who, together the ghost and I subscribed
$38,000, or $38,500.
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER.
N. Y. Herald, January 26th, 1891.
"FOB THE BENEFIT OF AMERICAN ART."
A Notable Foreign Scholarship Scheme Practically Established.
Mr. Chaloner's Project.
. The Brooklyn Art Club Display and Various Shows By Painters.
An excellent scheme for the benefit of American Art has been*
elaborated and made actual by that energetic gentleman Mr. John
Armstrong Chaloner, a great-grandson of William B. Astor, and a
grandson of Mr. Sam Ward, who married Miss Amelie Rives, a lady
who to her reputation as a writer, has added in considerable degree
that of an Artist.
Mr. Chaloner, who returned from Europe at the end of November,
has raised in this city, being himself a substantial contributor, the
sum of $25,000 for the purpose of sending abroad for five years study
to return and teach at the close, an American Art student, who will
be allowed $900 yearly. The amount of the fund is to be paid at
the end of the first week in August, and the examination will be
held in the first week of next June. The fund under trustees will
193
be incorporated under the laws of the State, and the candidate is to
leave for Paris the first week in September.
Mr. Ohaloner has not alone raised all the money before he has
made his project public, but has enlisted in its favor, with accept
ances to serve on the Jury such men as Daniel Huntington, President
of the National Academy, Henry G. Marquand, President of the Metro
politan Museum of Art, William M. Chase, President of the Society
or American Artists, J. G. Brown, President of the American Water
Color Society, and E. D. French, President of the Art Students League.
Mr. Chaloner having made his scheme possible in New York has
since made tentatory efforts to the establishment of similar funds in
Chicago, Boston and Richmond, and has laid his project informally
from a National standpoint, before Secretary of State Blaine, who
has unofficially given it his sanction.
The idea is to send abroad a male or female student, who is
to study in any centre of Art selected by the jury, and study painting
pure and simple, and decorating. It is thought that such a student
should study abroad for five years, and it is calculated that the sum
already mentioned would amply suffice for his needs.
Mr. Chaloner naturally thinks that people will wonder why he
should start such a scheme, and as many people have asked him Ms
object, announces that he has become interested in the matter, as he
has for four years, guaranteed $1,000 a year to a young American
Artist abroad, and is to continue that agreement for six more years.
He says that the improvement of this artist when freed so largely
from financial cares, has been marked.
The fund is to be controlled by a Society consisting of or ap
pointed by the donors, and the candidate is to be chosen by Com
petitive Examination, in drawing, painting and composition, the jury
being chosen from the Art Association or associations of the city or
cities in which the fund or funds is or are raised.
The fund is to have two branches, the financial and the artistic,
each distinct. The latter branch in this city is to consist of the
Presidents of the Academy of Design, Society of American Artists,
American Water Color Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Art
Students League, and two Artists chosen by the Society of American
Artists, the Academy of Design, Art Students League and the American
Water Color Society, making a jury of thirteen.
Candidates must be twenty-one and residents or coming from the
State in which the fund is raised, the latter clause covering stu
dents already abroad. No one who has received a medal or mention
abroad will be eligible. Should the winner be financially able he or
she will receive the artistically valuable honor of being chosen, and
the money will go to the holder of the second place.
Every three months drawings, oils, decorations or compositions
signed by the Master are to be sent to the jury, and if the work
is not up to standard the jury may order an examination for a new
candidate at the end of the first year. Prolonged ill-health will re-
194
suit also in a new examination. The successful candidates are to
sign agreements to return and teach classes, to be selected by the
jury, gratis for two years. If no suitable candidate is chosen in any
one year the fund will be allowed to accumulate until a worthy can
didate is discovered.
The financial body of the fund is to consist of a Society of or
appointed by the donors and incorporated, the fund to be turned over
to a Trust Company.
It is hoped that in time the cities will increase the funds to
$60,000 thus enabling the sending of a student every year.
It is suggested to have a National jury, which is to be composed
of deputies from the Artistic branches to meet at least at the be
ginning, middle and end of five years. This Assembly is to have no
control over the local institutions, but is to have as an object the
holding of a National Salon, candidates being Jiors concours, and award
prizes to them and others, foreign or American.
Another suggestion is for an European Council, appointed by the
National Assembly, to yearly report progress of students to the Na
tional Assembly or to the local institutions. Examinations might, if
need be, be held abroad by the European Council.
The New York World, January 26, 1891.
AN ART STUDENTS FUND.
To Grive Foreign Training to Those Who Deserve It.
John Armstrong Chaloner's Scheme to Aid All Worthy Aspirants.
It is estimated that $900 a year will be needed for each student
and that a thorough course will cover five years twenty-five thou
sand dollars already subscribed for New York.
Following the agitation regarding an American Salon for which
plans are to be formulated at a meeting next Tuesday evening comes
another plan of equal interest and importance to American Art, the
idea of which originated with Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner, the
grandson of the late "Sam" Ward, who married Miss Amelie Rives,
the Virginia authoress. Mr. Chaloner, who, through his mother, for
merly Miss Ward, is a great-grandson of the late William B. Astor,
is a young man of education and property. While a student in the
Latin quarter in Paris in 1887, he became interested in a young fellow
American, an art student who was endeavoring to secure a professional
education in the gay capital with insufficient means. He decided to aid
the young man and this led to his taking a deep interest in the sub
ject of American Art students in Paris.
After much study of the matter and direct knowledge of the
195
privations to which inaiiy promising American Art students were sub
jected in their efforts to secure needed art education, Mr. Chaloner
determined to organize a scheme by which sufficient and proper finan
cial aid should be given to all deserving American students who might
wish to go to Paris hereafter to pursue their studies.
He estimated from his experience in the case of the student he
had aided that $900 a year would be needed to properly educate and
provide for the needs of each student and so last November he re
turned to America and after much thought and study, he devised
a plan which he proceeded to lay before a number of Art patrons
and connoisseurs, about twenty in all in this city.
This met with the approval and endorsement of these persons
and has resulted in the subscription of $25,000, which is a good nucleus
for a larger fund to be raised in this and other cities. The names
of the individual donors to this fund will be given when the money
is paid in the first week of August next. Among them are men
and women prominent in the art, social, business and literary worlds
of the metropolis.
Mr. Chaloner has in furtherance of his scheme visited Washington,
where he called on Secretary Elaine and secured his unofficial endorse
ment as a matter of National importance, and Chicago, where he has
interested several leading men in his plans. The matter has also
been laid before prominent gentlemen and ladies of Boston and Rich
mond, Va., with encouraging results.
Briefly outlined, Mr. Chaloner's plan is to raise a sufficient sum
of money to guarantee a five years course of study abroad to any Art
student from any city. Forty-five hundred dollars, or $900 a year is
considered sufficient for this purpose in each case. The fund sub
scribed for this purpose is to be held by a Society consisting of, or
appointed by the donors. The candidates are to be chosen by com
petitive examination in drawing, painting and composition under the
auspices of a jury chosen from the existing Academy or Academies
or Institutes of Art in each city. The fund in each city is entirely
distinct and separate from the similar fund in other cities and its
control is purely local.
The $25,000 subscribed in New York will be payable early in
August next, and the examination of candidates will take place here
early next June. The candidate who passes the examination will
leave for Paris early in September next.
The New York Fund will be placed under the management of an
organization to be incorporated under the title of the "Institution
of Art of New York," which is to be composed of two branches, the
artistic and the financial. The jury is to number thirteen, and will 1
be composed of the Presidents of the Academy of Design, Society
of American Artists, American Water Color Society, Metropolitan Mu
seum and Art Students League, and two artists to be selected re
spectively from the Society of American Artists, Academy of Design,
Art Students League, and American Water Color Society. This jury.
196
will pass on all candidates, decide to which foreign city the candi
date is to be sent, and transact all Art business. The competition is
to be open to women as well as men. The candidates must be twenty-
one years old, and must reside in or come from the State in which
any Institution of Art, which will be modelled upon that of New York
is situated. No person who has received a medal or honorable men
tion in any foreign Art exhibition will be eligible, and if any winning
candidate has sufficient means to be independent of the fund, he or
she will not receive any money, but will receive the title of "Winner
of the Paris Prize," or whatever title is selected while the person
holding second place in the competition will receive the $900 per an
num and his or her name will be bracketed with, but below that of
the winner of the prize. Both the winner and the second candidate
in this case are to return home and teach at the expiration of their
joint term.
Before receiving any money the successful candidate must agree
to send home every three months, drawings, and when sufficiently
advanced, oil studies, decorations or compositions signed by the Master
under whom he or she has worked to be passed upon by the jury of
the Institution from which he or she has come. If the work fall
below the standard required by the jury and the jury after warning
the candidate and assuring themselves that it is not a temporary
fluctuation in the work will notify the student that at the end of the
year a new examination will be held and a new candidate chosen.
This same rule will apply in case of ill-health.
Second The candidates will be required to sign a contract that he
or she, will, at the expiration of five years, return to his or her home
city and teach a class selected by the home jury, for a term of two
years, gratis. If no candidate is found worthy any year, none will
be sent abroad, and the fund will be allowed to accumulate until a
worthy candidate is discovered.
The financial branch of each Institution of Art will be composed
of the donors of the fund, and persons appointed by them, and will
transact all financial business. The fund will be invested by this
fcranch and deposited with a Trust Company. Sixty thousand dollars
has been placed as the sum which should be raised by each Institution
of Art, which at 5 per cent, will enable each to send a candidate
abroad every year. Mr. Chaloner also suggests a National Assembly, to
be composed of deputies elected by the first branches of each Institution
of Art, to meet at different cities in turn at the beginning, middle
and end of each term of five years at least. This Assembly will hold
National Exhibitions, in which the work of successful candidates will
be hors concours and award prizes to both native and foreign artists.
whose work is up to the required standard of admission. A European
Council is also suggested to be appointed by the National Assembly
and to report progress to the latter from year to year, or directly
to different Institutions of Art.
197
Editorial.
New York Daily Tribune, January 29th, 1891.
"Mr. John Armstrong Chaloner is meeting with success in promot
ing his plan to advance the interests of Art, by providing funds for
the education of Art students. The plan is a practical one, and has
received approval from high authorities.
Mr. Chaloner has interested many people here in his praiseworthy
undertaking, and will shortly visit Boston, Chicago and other cities,
in order to arouse their public-spirited citizens to the importance of
the work which he has at heart.
New York Tribune.
New York, Monday, January 26, 1891.
TO AID ART STUDENTS.
John Armstrong Chaloner Is Raising A Fund.
A plan to establish an institution for helping worthy young men
and women to gain a Parisian education.
The artists of America have found a champion in John Armstrong
Chaloner, a great-grand son of William B. Astor and a grandson of
"Sam" Ward. Mr. Chaloner is a young man who, although he de
clares that he is not an artist, is an enthusiast on the subject of
art, and especially American Art. His wife, who was Amelie Rives,
the novelist, is studying Art in Paris.
A few years ago while living in the Latin Quarter, in Paris, Mr.
Chaloner met a poor but talented American Art student, to whom
he guaranteed $1,000 a year for ten years to enable him to prosecute
his art studies freely. In helping this man the idea occurred to him
of raising a fund the income of which should be devoted to defraying
the expenses of American Artists while studying abroad, in case they
were unable to pay their own way.
Among the American residents of London and Paris he raised
$11,000, of which he contributed $2,500 himself. He then came to New
York and has organized a Society, which is to be incorporated under
the laws of this State by the name of the Institution of Art of New
York, unless some other name is decided upon previously. He has
also raised in this city $14,000, making a total fund of $25,000, which,
it is expected, will be further increased by voluntary contributions.
The institution of Art is to consist of two branches. The first to 4
be the artistic branch, and the second to be the financial branch. Each
branch will be absolutely separate and distinct from the other, and
198
while one will look after the artistic element, the other will simply
attend to the financial affairs of the institution.
There will also be a jury to examine candidates and pass upon
their work after they have been sent abroad and to determine the
details of their studies. The ex-officio members of this jury, which
will be under the control of the first branch will be the President of
the National Academy of Design, President of the Metropolitan Mu
seum of Art, President of the Art Students League, President of the
Society of American Artists, and the President of the American Water-
Color Society. The other members of the jury will consist of two
artists elected by each of the following: The National Academy of
Design, the Art Students League, the American Water Color Society
and the Society of American Artists.
The second branch will consist of members appointed by the con
tributors to the fund or their appointees, who will transact all the
financial business of the institution and control the fund. The fund
will be deposited with a trust company and only its income will be
used.
The competition for the Paris Fund, as it will be called, will be
open to women as well as men. The candidates must be twenty-one
years old, and as it is expected that institutions of art will be estab
lished in. all the principal cities in the country, they must live in
the State in which the institution which selects them is situated. No
person who has received a medal in any foreign art exhibition will
be eligible. If the candidate who passes the examination before the
jury has sufficient means not to need the income of the fund, he
will not receive money, but will have the title "Winner of the Paris
Prize," or whatever title is selected by the jury conferred upon him.
The winner of the second prize will receive the money.
A condition to which candidates must agree is that they must
send home every three months drawings, and later oil studies, decora
tions or compositions signed by the masters under whom they are
studying. If these samples of the work fall below the standard of the
jury, the jury, after warning them will inform the candidate that at
the end of the year a new examination must be held and a new can
didate selected, the same conditions will apply to those in ill health.
Candidates must sign a contract that at the end of five years abroad
they will return and teach an art class for two years for nothing.
Mr. Chaloner also suggests organizing a National Art Assembly, com
posed of delegates from all the proposed Institutions of art in the
country, which will be separate and distinct from one another, to
which assembly the work of the candidates will be submitted.
199
The New York World, January 29th, 1891.
TO FORM A "BEAUX ARTS."
A Development of Mr. Chaloner's Educational Scheme.
The success which crowned the efforts of John Armstrong Chaloner
of this city, in originating and perfecting the scheme for sending
American Art students abroad has encouraged him to develop the idea
further. He has long entertained the view that America was ripe
for the establishment of a genuine Beaux Arts, or system of educa
tion to embrace all the higher arts. Mr. Chaloner raised $25,000 in
25 days to enable American students in painting and drawing to
secure a competent education, as described in the World of Monday.
He is now confident of being able to duplicate this excellent work
so as to give the same facilities to students in acting, sculpture, archi
tecture, and vocal and instrumental music.
His ideas were brought down to a practical and simple basis be
fore he outlined the scheme to any of his friends, and have already
received enthusiastic endorsement. Edwin Booth, after careful ex
amination of Mr. Chaloner's plan, yesterday sent him the following
letter of cordial approval.
The Players,
16 Gramercy Park.
New York, January 28, 1891.
Dear Mr. Chaloner:
Your scheme is an excellent one. and tends towards the cultiva
tion of the actor. With the same end in view, I established Booth's
Theatre ; in the hope that it would become, in time, a training school
for the American actor. This failed through my business experience
being less than my professional. One of the advantages of your
plan is that the business part of it will be in the hands of business
men, and the artistic in the hands of artists.
I feel quite sure that the details of your plan can be arranged
so that the novice can receive here the requisite training to put him
or her in a position to begin their work on the stage.
Your suggestion is a good one that the novice, after receiving this
training should spend a year or two abroad stopping long enough in
the different capitals to familiarize himself with the methods of the
different continental schools.
Wishing the plan success, I am,
Yours truly,
EDWIN BOOTH.
In explanation of the details of his plan Mr. Chaloner said to
a World reporter who saw him yesterday :
"The Institution of Art," if no better name be found, is the en-
200
tering wedge of the Beaux Arts and Conservatoire, under an Ameri
can name in each city of the union, which approves the scheme and
is interested enough to establish an Institution of Art."
"How much money will it need?" "Not as much as you would
think," replied Mr. Chaloner. "Jour thousand five hundred dollars
guaranteed every five years is sufficient to send a new Art student
abroad every five years and maintain him or her there an equal period.
For permanency it would be better to subscribe the capital necessary
to produce this sum at 5 per cent interest. If this plan meets with
approval it is presumed that the capital, $18,000, will, in time, be
increased to $60,000, a capital sufficient at 5 per cent interest to send
one art student abroad and support him or her there for a term of
five years, and so to do this every 12 months. The same capital would
enable a student of either sex in any of the proposed branches of
Art to be sent abroad for the same length of time, and under prac
tically the same conditions. These branches of Art are included ;
sculpture, architecture, acting, and in music, the violin, the cello, the
piano, and the human voice. Other branches of Art in which the
public is interested may be added."
"How would this scheme operate?" "This," replied Mr. Chaloner,
"would in time give to every city which has an Institution of Art
a united Beaux Arts, and Conservatoire where these lines of Art
would be taught under management entirely individual and distinct
but parallel, having in view Art as a common end."
Mr. Chaloner is confident that this will supply u distinct want
and the success which he has already met with justifies him in the
belief that it will meet with hearty and substantial approval. He
will visit all of the principal cities in the country, and submit the
plan for consideration, the intent being that it shall be truly National
in its operation. Daniel Huntington, President of the Academy of
National Design, has written Mr. Chaloner, congratulating him upon
the success of his scheme to establish an Art Scholarship Fund, and
accepting the position of one of the jury of award. Letters to the
same effect have been received by Mr. Chaloner from President Henry
G. Marquand, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art President E. D.
French, of the Art Student's League, and President J. G. Brown, of
the American Water Color Society. All speak in enthusiastic com
mendation of the scheme. William M. Chase has also expressed his
approval in a characteristic letter, in which he says "the scheme is
a magnificent one." Augustus St. Gaudens, the sculptor has also writ
ten him, approving of the plan proposed. Mr. Chaloner will leave
for Boston on Friday.
201
IN RE JOSEPH H. CHOATE, JR., AND T. TITTLEBAT SHERMAN.
Having; received no reply to our above letter to Joseph H. Choate,
Jr., it becomes incumbent upon us to lift the veil a little higher over
his dark-lantern methods. To that end we print all that was written
by him in a letter dated February 8, 1915, to a member of our office
force upon the subject of the "Paris Prize Fund." In reading the
excerpt the observant reader will note the nasty sneer at the Prize
contained in the following phrase, to wit: "the so called Paris Prize
Fund." Why "so called"?
But sneering comes natural to Joseph H. Choate, Jr. It is in fact
bred in the bone from his hard featured Papa Joseph H. Choate, Sr.,
than whom a more cold-blooded, colder-hearted attorney never stared a
witness out of countenance on the stand.
But something far more sinister than a sneer which after all, Is
more a question of good taste and good breeding, good bringing up
and gentle forbears something more sinister than the underbreeding
displayed by Joseph H. Choate, Jr., is! at issue here. And that sinister
thing is nothing less than the practical admission on the evidence
of said following excerpt, and also on the evidence of Joseph H.
Choate's statement in his brief on appeal to the Federal Circuit Court
for the Southern District of New York (New York City) in Chalonvr
against Sherman that said promising offshoot of that promising old
party Joseph H. Choate, Sr., has made up his nefarious mind to nothing
less than appropriate the thirty-eight thousand five hundred dollars
subscribed by us, as above described, which now after more than
twenty years with interest added amounts to about seventy-five thou
sand dollars to what said Joseph H. Choate, Jr., jauntily describes
as "the so-called Paris Prize Fund." That is a startling remark to
apply even to a man living in a place like the city of New York
where the motto taking the place of "God Bless Our Home" over
pretty nearly every mantel-piece is "Get Rich. Honestly If You Can.
But Get Rich Anyway." We hasten to make good said startling re
mark by inserting herewith said excerpt.
Our distinguished adversary shows the cloven hoof unmistakably
in the sinister closing sentence of his remarkably frank letter, to wit:
"In such an action the Court can dispose of the Fund by directing its
return to the subscribers.
Said excerpt, to-wit :
"Mr. Sherman has recently been approached by representatives of
the Bankers Trust Company in which has been deposited from time
to time income from the so-called Paris Prize Fund. Some of these
deposits were made by Mr. St. Gaudens and Mr. McKim, both of whom
have of course died. The Trust Company desiring to have its responsi
bility in regard to this Fund defined and limited, insists that some
proceedings be taken to secure the appointment of a custodian or
trustee of the Fund in succession to the deceased, and states its in-
202
tention to bring such proceedings unless what it wants can be accom
plished otherwise. As the United States Trust Company also holds
part of the Fund, and as each of the two companies is interested in
only the portion held by it, no proceeding brought by either could
eettle all the questions involved. I have therefore advised Mr. Sher
man that the time has come for him to act upon the instructions con
tained in the order of the Appellate Division dated June 24, 1912, con
firming his annual account for the preceding year, and take steps to
ascertain the rights of the several parties interested in the Paris Prize
Fund and to secure the instructions of the Court as to its disposition.
For this purpose he proposes to bring an action to which the living
subscribers to the Fund, the representatives of those who have died,
the two Trust Companies, and Mr. Chaloner shall be parties. In such
an action the Court can dispose of the Fund either by carrying out
as nearly as may be its original purpose or by directing its return to
the subsribers.
Yours very truly,
JOSEPH H. CHOATE, JR."
Now, we have shown above that "Who's Looney Now?" subscribed
thirty-eight thousand, five hundred dollars $38,500 or at least he and
his generous cousin, Henry Astor Carey's ghost to "the socalled Paris
Prize Fund."t So far so good. Now it must be borne in mind that
Joseph H. Choate's side-partner in the proposed spoliation of the
largest Art Scholarship as above described in the City of New
York that said distinguished practitioner's side-partner in this dia
bolical plot against an Educational Fund, by New York legal practi
tioners namely that featherweight lawyer that dummy and block
head figure head, in the firm of Evarts, Choate and Sherman, to-wit:
Thomas Tittlebat Sherman is in the eye of the majestic brand of
bunco-law ruling the New York Courts, both State and Federal, in
the guise of Lunacy Procedure the actual "subscriber" of said thirty-
eight thousand five hundred dollars! For said Tittlebat Sherman is
the "committee" falsely so-called of "Who's Looney Now's person
and estate in the revered State of New York. Therefore anything
subscribed by "Who's Looney Now?" to the "Paris Prize Fund" would
in due course provided Choate and Sherman succeeded in "pulling
off" their "job," and "cracking" their way into the safe where now
repose the Funds of said Paris Prize therefore anything subscribed
by "Who's Looney Now?" to the Paris Prize Fund would, in due
course, find its way to the bottomless pockets of Choate and Sherman.
Now if Choate and Sherman were honest men instead of what they are
tBy an oversight caused by not having the books of the Paris
Prize Fund at hand two thousand dollars should be subtracted from
said amount and credited to Arthur Astor Carey who subscribed
said sum. Said amount now amounts after more than twenty years
with interest added to some seventy-five thousand dollars.
203
on the evidence safe-blowers of Educational Funds there would be no
serious harm accruing from the transfer of the thirty-eight thousand
five hundred to the bottomless pockets of the two distinguished
gentlemen aforesaid. But the ways of the Wall Street lawyers
are getting to be as crooked as the ways of Wall Street magnates
as base and vile as the John D. Rockefellers, William Rockefellers, and
the late lamented noble exponents of Christianity in business that
bluff old pirate, H. H. Rogers; and that undersized pirate E. H. Harri-
man not forgetting the Father of Wall Street crimes against the
public and stock-rigging, that smooth little a hundred and ten pound
vendor of mousetraps, the late lamented Jay Gould; of Delhi, Delaware
County, New York, now through the deodorization of time almost of
sainted memory. Therefore the transfer of the "Paris Prize Fund"
to the pockets of Choate and Sherman would mean the dissipation
of the said thirty-eight thousand five hundred dollars. The proof
of that grave charge? Here it is, writ large in the most mendacious,
inefficacious, self-damnatory purlieu of vicious and predatory sophistry
ever put forth by a lawyer not yet languishing behind the bars of
Sing Sing; or by a sophist since the days of the God-like Socrates him
self who sacrificed his life in unmasking sophists as Jesus Christ
sacrificed His divine life some hundreds of years later unmasking
Pharisees and hypocrites we allude to the said brief on appeal of
Choate.
Never, in our extended career of thirty years as a lawyer before
the New York County Bar have we met such a depraved production
emanating from a supposedly honest and reputable lawyer. Before
citing from said quagmire of mendacity aforesaid, we shall dally
with a sink as vile-smelling as itself, namely, the opening speech
of said distinguished gentleman, at the farcical miscarriage of jus
tice miscalled a trial, before ex-judge Holt of the Federal District
Court on Manhattan Island, in February, 1912. This citation
proves out of the malodorous mouth of Choate that we did perfectly
right to bring an action for trover and conversion against his side-
partner ISherman. For the said judge says and Choate hasn't the
effrontery to deny such an example of hornbook law from the bench
in the course of said trial page 56 of the transcript of Record thereof
to wit:
(By the Court) :
"This suit is brought against that committee for the conversion
of the property, on the theory that he has no right to retain it, it
having been demanded and that he has not given it over, which
amounts to a conversion."
Now, in the teeth of the above statement from the court itself,
that we were within our legal rights in bringing a suit for conver
sion, Choate has the depravity to attempt to take a shyster-advantage
of the nature of the suit brought and admits that he and Sherman are
about to attempt to appropriate our property. Hear him, and then
204
marvel at New York society which tolerates such a man; and also con
sider that sanctimonious dignified aggregation of questionable practi
tioners on their record In Wall Street supporting to a man the Trusts
against the people consider that cave of the winds, that emporium of
hot air the New York ity Bar Association, of which Choate Is an
honoured member. Choate says, page one, of his brief: "The relief de
manded In the action as in all actions for conversion, is not return of
the plaintiff-in-error's property to him, but a judgment for damages,
which would necessarily be measured by the value of the property now
in the committee's hands, and a judgment In favor of the plaintiff
would vest defendant, personally with title to the property in hand at
the time of the alleged conversion, at the same time charging him with
damages which would probably be much more or much less than the
property's present value.
The action can have no direct effect upon the very much larger
amount of property which has come into the committee's hands since
it was commenced." Did anybody ever hear the like? One would
suppose that no such thinng as the Maxim, "There is no wrong without
a remedy" existed, and had existed since the beginning of the Common
Law. One would suppose that only one cut and dried method for achiev
ing a given end existed in law. Lastly, one would suppose that the
hoary old and venerated maxim: "Equity follows the law," did not
exist. Let us hear Judge Holt from the bench on the subject once
more. Page 148, Transcript of Record. [The Court.] "I suppose Mr.
Sherman knows what property he has in hand. If the plaintiff is
entitled to recover at all, he is entitled to recover all he has, I take it."
In closing this appalling spectacle of the abysmal depravity of
the New York County Bar, we shall not refrain from observing that
the reformation of the Bar and Bench suggested by "Hugh Stutfield"-
not to mention the revolution hinted at by Mm receives added weight
thereby.
"Who's Looney Now?" has proved himself during a combat with
the State of New York and her courts of now in its nineteenth year
the possessor of that ancient military virtue presumably inherited
from his military ancestors known as fertility of resource.
For instance. Supposing that Choate and Sherman are able to
hoodwink and bamboozle the New York Courts both State and Fed
eral as they have been eminently successful in doing for nineteen
years there still remains the United States Supreme Court.t
Furthermore. Supposing them successful in that august quarter
there yet remains this salient fact. To wit: "Who's Looney Now?" is
the Paris Prize Fund: In the ratio of twenty-eight thousand five hun
dred, to thirteen thousand five hundred.! t The latter insignificant sum
tin which our appeal in Chaloner against Sherman was filed April
30, 1915.
ftOr as aforesaid with over twenty years' interest as about
seventy-five thousand dollars is to about twenty-five.
205
when compared with thirty-eight thousand five hundred is all that
was subscribed by outside Art Patronsftt the large sum represents
"Who's Looney Now's?" benefaction. So far so good. Now if a hood
winked and bamboozled Court or long chain of Courts both State
and Federal permits this scandal permits Choate and Sherman, for
their own nefarious dishonest and frankly thievish ends to disinte
grate and destroy the powerful Paris Prize Scholarship, and allow
Art Students to be robbed for the benefit of said two Wall Street
Attorneys, Choate and Sherman why in that amusing travesty of
justice this will take place. When "Who's Looney Now?" dislodges
the said distinguished gentlemen from their seat on his strong box, and
forces them to disgorge through the courts, their overcharges, and
sundry other little acts in financial matters then "Who's Looney
Now?" will announce in the papers that he is about to remove the
"Paris Prize Fund" from New York, on the ground, that said suc
cessful thievish assault on Educational Funds, has proved Gotham
an unhealthy locality for Educational Funds, and that he will set up
the Lares and Penates of the Paris Prize in Washington, D. C., where it
can be under the protection of the National Legislature rather than
under that of the New York Courts.
Thereupon he will add to the one hundred or two hundred thou
sand dollar damage suit he proposes to bring against the two chief
Petitioners, namely, Messrs. Winthrop Astor Chanler and Ex-Lieuten
ant Governor Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler the said thirty-eightj j f f
thousand five hundred scattered to the four winds of heaven by the
aforesaid sage action of the said Courts. The said one hundred and
fifty to two hundred thousand damage suit is merely to recover the
actual moneys disbursed by "Who's Looney Now?" in lawyer's, alien-
est's, neurologist's and psychologist's fees amounting roughly to some
fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars to which must be added the
twenty thousand dollars taken from "Who's Looney Now?" by "Bloom-
ingdale," the twenty thousand dollars paid Evarts, Choate and Sher
man for legal expenses, and the annual four thousand dollars taken
by those distinguished members of the Episcopal Church and of the
eminent Bishop Greer's See said Choate and Sherman from the well
lined coffers of "Who's Looney Now?" together with whatever other
actual disbursements not damages for loss of happiness or injury to
business interests through the near-criminal mismanagement of Choate
and Sherman but actual disbursements made by "Who's Looney Now?''
for moneys caused to be spent by him, and covered by vouchers and
receipts through the Hellish injustice and barbarous unnatural sordid
greed of said two Chanlers for his million and a half backed up by
\\\ Except the two thousand dollars subscribed by Arthur Astor
Carey aforesaid.
||f-f-Now amounting to about seventy-five thousand as above de
scribed.
206
their venomous viperish jealousy, spite and malice in which noble
aim said gentlemen were supported by the entire Chanler family, male
and female. We fancy no jury will refuse to do us the above bare
justice.
So in time like a Phoenix from its ashes will arise the "Paris
Prize."
Since writing the above and while "Robbery Under Law" is
going through the press the complaint of Thomas T. Sherman in re
the Paris Prize Fund has reached us, together with the reply so
earnestly desired by us from his attorney Joseph H. Choate, Jr. We
insert said complaint, followed by said reply.
In re THE PARIS PRIZE
NEW YORK SUPREME COURT.
COUNTY OF NEW YORK.
THOMAS T. SHERMAN, as Committee of the person
and property of John Armstrong Chaloner, etc.,
against
BANKERS TRUST COMPANY, and others,
Plaintiff,
Defendants.
Copy.
SUMMONS AND COMPLAINT.
EVARTS, CHOATE & SHERMAN,
Plaintiff's Attorneys,
60 Wall Street,
City of New York.
NEW YORK SUPREME COURT.
COUNTY OF NEW YORK.
Thomas T. Sherman, as Committee of the person and
property of John Armstrong Chaloner, an incompetent\
Person,
Plaintiff,
against
Bankers Trust Company, United States Trust Company
of New York, Elizabeth Winthrop Chapman, William
Waldorf Astor, Warren Delano, Junior, as surviving ex
ecutor of the will of Laura Astor Delano, deceased, Alice
G. Vanderbilt, William K. Vanderbilt, Alfred G. Vander- \
bilt, Reginald C. Vanderbilt and Chauncey M. Depew, as
surviving executors of the will of Cornelius Vanderbilt,
deceased, Arthur Astor Carey, individually and as execu
tor of the will of Henry R. A. Carey, deceased, James
R. Roosevelt and Douglas Robinson, as surviving execu
tors of the will of William Astor, deceased, and the At
torney General of the State of New York,
Defendants.
Summons
208
To the above named Defendants:
You are hereby summoned to answer the complaint in this action,
and to serve a copy of your answer on the plaintiff's attorneys within
twenty days after the service of this summons, exclusive of the day
of service; and in case of your failure to appear or answer, judgment
will be taken against you by default, for the relief demanded in the
complaint.
Dated, New York, April 8, 1915.
EVARTS, CHOATE & SHERMAN.
Attorneys for Plaintiff,
Office and Postoffice Address,
No. 60 Wall Street,
Borough of Manhattan,
City of New York, N. Y.
NEW YORK SUPREME COURT.
COUNTY OF NEW YORK.
Thomas T. Sherman, as Committee of the person and
propert
Person,
property of John Armstrong Chaloner, an incompetent
Plaintiff,
against
Bankers Trust Company, United States Trust Company
of New York, Elizabeth Winthrop Chapman, William
Waldorf Astor, Warren Delano, Junior, as surviving ex
ecutor of the will of Laura Astor Delano, deceased, Alice
G. Vanderbilt, William K. Vanderbilt, Alfred G. Vander- ) Complaint
bilt, Reginald C. Vanderbilt and Chauncey M. Depew, as
surviving executors of the will of Cornelius Vanderbilt,
deceased, Arthur Astor Carey, individually and as execu
tor of the will of Henry R. A. Carey, deceased, James
R. Roosevelt and Douglas Robinson, as surviving execu
tors of the will of William Astor, deceased, and the At
torney General of the State of New York,
Defendants.
Thomas T. Sherman, as Committee of the person and property of
John Armstrong Chaloner, an incompetent person, plaintiff in the
above entitled action, by Evarts, Choate & Sherman, his attorneys
therein, complains of the defendants in said action above named, and
thereupon states and alleges, upon information and belief, as follows:
First. Each of the defendants Bankers Trust Company and United
States Trust Company of New York is a domestic corporation.
Second. By order or judgment of this Court duly made and entered
in the office of the Clerk of the County of New York on June 23, 1899,
209
,upon inquisition duly had, the said John Armstrong Chaloner was
duly adjudged to be incompetent to manage himself or his property,
and Prescott Hall Butler was appointed Committee of his person and
property. The said Prescott Hall Butler duly qualified and acted as
such Committee until by order of this Court duly made and entered
on November 19, 19'01, in the office of said clerk, the resignation of
said Prescott Hall Butler as such Committee was accepted, and the
plaintiff herein was duly appointed, and he duly qualified as, and has
ever since been and now is, the Committee of the person and property
of the said John Armstrong Chaloner.
Third. In or about the year 1890, the said John Armstrong Chal
oner, for the purpose of encouraging and fostering the study of art
by men and women residing in the United iStates, by providing those
sufficiently qualified, and in need of such financial aid, with the means
of studying abroad, devised a plan or scheme as hereinafter set forth,
and declared the same, and thereupon and to that end he himself con
tributed the sum of $14,000 and obtained from other American art
patrons contributions as follows: From the defendant Arthur Astor
Carey, or from Henry R. A. Carey, since deceased, 327 shares of the
capital stock of the Morris and Essex Railroad Comapny, of the par
value of $16,350, t and from said Henry R. A. Carey the sum of $5,0<0<0;
from the defendant Elizabeth Winthrop Chapman, the sum of $1,000;
from Laura Astor Delano, since deceased, the sum of $1,000; from the
defendant, William Waldorf Astor, the sum of $1,500; from William
Astor, since deceased, the sum of $2,500; and from Cornelius Vander-
bilt, since deceased, the sum of $2,500. The sums of money so con
tributed, aggregating $27,500, he invested in $25,000 in amount at par
of the second mortgage five per cent, bonds of the Beech Creek Rail
road Company, and he thereupon deposited the said stock and bonds
with the defendant United States Trust Company of New York, in the
name of the "Paris Prize Fund," and made and delivered to the said
Trust Company a written statement to the effect that he had made
such deposit with it in the name of the "Paris Prize Fund," instead
of in his individual name, for the reason, that while he had full and
absblute control of said stock and bonds, and was responsible therefor,
he nevertheless preferred to keep them separate from his personal
account until he should feel justified in organizing a corporation for
the purpose of advancing his Art Scheme, when they would be trans
ferred to such corporation.
Fourth. The said plan or scheme, as conceived and declared by
Mr. Chaloner, and for the accomplishment of which the said contribu
tions were made, was to create a fund, and to invest the same, and
from the income thereof to establish a Prize, to be known as the "Paris
Prize," each Prize to consist of $4,500, paid at the rate of $900 a year
tBut so far above par as to be worth twenty-five thousand dol
lars. J. A. C.
210
for five years, or such other amount as should be determined upon
as proper, for the support of an art student In the study of drawing,
painting and decoration in Paris in France and other foreign art
centres; and also from such income to pay the expenses incident to
the carrying out of said plan and such amounts as might be advisable
for its promotion and success. The Prize was to be awarded by a
competent jury as the result of competition among the applicants, and
to be open alike to men and women, but only to those students really
in need of financial aid to carry on their art studies abroad. Each
student receiving the Prize was to be required to do at least two years'
work in Paris, after which, if he should so desire and the said jury
should consider him sufficiently advanced, he was to be permitted to
work elsewhere abroad. In order to secure the permanency of the said
plan a corporation was to be formed, to be named the "Paris Prize,"
for the purpose of executing the same, to which corporation the said
fund was to be transferred.
Fifth. The said fund was received and deposited by Mr. Chaloner
as aforesaid, subject to the charitable and educational trust as thus
generally declared. This meritorious and practically helpful charity
having been conceived by himself, and the contributions for the attain
ment thereof having been secured entirely by his own effort, it was
understood by the said contributors and by Mr. Chaloner that he held
the said fund as sole trustee, and with power, subject to the said trust,
to control the said fund, and himself in his discretion to decide upon
further details of said plan, and to apply the income of said fund in
accordance with such decision. Mr. Chaloner worked out the said
plan in further detail. He decided that it was advisable to establish
the Prize only in the City of New York, to be open, however, to any
American art student, without restriction as to residence, who should
not have received a Medal or Honorable Mention in any foreign Art
Exhibition or Salon, and that the Prize should be awarded every second
year, experience having proven that, until the standard of art study
in the United States should be raised, the supply of art students of
the strength demanded by the Prize was not large enough to warrant
the holding of an annual competition and sending an art student
abroad every year. He arranged for a preliminary competition, ten
candidates from such preliminary competition to be selected, by a
jury composed as hereinafter stated, for the final competition for the
said Paris Prize, and also for a monthly competition, the winner each
month to be awarded $25, the work submitted to consist alternately
of composition, drawing and painting, the object of which was to
raise the standard of the Paris Prize competitions, to which the
monthly competitions were to be the only avenue of entrance, as those
only who should win a prize or honorable mention in such monthly
competitions were to be eligible for the Paris Prize preliminary copeti-
tion, and with the further object of bringing together in monthly
tests the work of the representative students in the leading art schools
211
of the United States and to raise the standard in such art schools, and
to create and nourish an equal interest in composition, painting and
drawing. These monthly competitions were called by Mr. Chaloner
the "Paris Prize Concours," and they were to be decided by a jury
of competent artists who should consent to act. The jury designated
by Mr. Chaloner for the Paris Prize preliminary and final competitions
was to consist of the following persons:
The President of the National Academy of Design.
The President of the Society of American Artists.
The President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The President of the Art Students' League.
Three artists, members of the National Academy of Design, chosen
by said Academy.
Three artists, members of the Society of American Artists, chosen
by said Society.
One artist to represent the Pratt Institute.
Two artists to represent the Paris Prize.
If no candidate of sufficient ability, in the opinion of the jury,
should appear, no Prize was to be awarded that year, nor until the
next regular biennial competition. The work of the Prize winner in
Paris was to be supervised by an artist residing there, and the student
was to agree to send home to the jury, at the end of each year, speci
mens of his or her work signed by the master under whom he or she
had worked. If the work should fall below the standard required by
the jury, the jury should, after assuring themselves that it was not
merely a temporary fluctuation in the student's work, warn him or
her that unless the work should reach the required standard during
the following year, the Prize would then be withdrawn, and a new
competition held. The aforesaid details of the plan, as worked out
by Mr. Chaloner, are here stated as indicating an apparently wise
and practical way of carrying out the trust as generally declared as
aforesaid, and the possibility of executing it by a trustee or trustees
appointed by the Court, or by a corporation formed for that purpose
to which such trustee or trustees might convey the said trust prop
erty.
Sixth. In or about the month of February, 1897, the said John
Armstrong Chaloner executed and delivered to Stanford White and
Augustus St. Gaudens powers of attorney for the purpose of enabling
them to collect the income and dividends of the said trust fund, and to
apply them to the purposes of the said trust. Prior to said last men
tioned date Mr. Chaloner had applied certain of the income arising
from the said trust fund and further sums contributed by himself, for
the support of a student sent abroad in pursuance of said plan, and
there remained, in May, 1898, of the income derived from the said
stock and bonds and unexpended for the purposes of said trust, the
sum of $2,579.34 in the hands of said United States Trust Company,
and $218.77 in the hands of Chaloner and Philip, Mr. Chaloner's law
212
firm. By virtue of said powers of attorney the said Stanford White
or Augustus St. Gaudens collected said sums of income, and thereafter
deposited with The Mercantile Trust Company, in an account to the
credit of "Augustus St. Gaudens or Stanford White," the said sums,
and further interest and dividends derived from the said stock and
bonds, as follows:
May 6, 1897, said sum of $2,579 34
May 7, 1897, said sum of 218 77
April 14, 1898, interest for one year on said $25,000 Beech
Creek R. R. Co. 5% bonds collected by
United States Trust Co., less $75 commis
sions of said company 1,175 00
May 24, 1899, interest for one year on said bonds, collected
by United States Trust Co., less $75 com
missions of said company 1,175 00
July, 1897, dividends for eight years on said 327 shares
to ($50 each) of Morris and Essex R. R. Co.,
Jan., 1905, at 1% 9,156 00
Ang. 24, 1899, a deposit of cash received from John Arm
strong Chaloner 2 00
Total deposits $14,306 11
The said attorneys withdrew from said account for the support
of a student, one Lawton S. Parker, sent abroad pursuant to the said
trust plan, and for expenses of the said trust, certain sums as follows:
May 6, 1897, Lawton 8. Parker (draft) $ 450 00
Sep. 16, " " " " 450 00
Dec. 10, 1897, De Vinne & Co., for printing 10 20
May 16, 1898, Lawton S. Parker (draft) 450 00
Oct. 26, " " " " 450 00
May 23, 1899, " " " 450 00
Oct. 23, " " " " 450 00
Feb. 9, 1900, " " " 450 00
Sep. 22, " " " ' " 450 00
May 29, 1901, " " " 450 00
Total withdrawals $ 4,060 20
leaving a balance of cash in said account, exclusive of interest,
of $10,245 91
Thereafter, on June 19, 1905, the said Stanford White no longer
desiring to act at attorney as aforesaid, the said account in The Mer
cantile Trust Companp was transferred to the credit of "Augustus St.
Gaudens or Charles F. McKim." On September 10, 1907, the said
213
Mercantile Trust Company rendered to the plaintiff herein at his
request a statement of said account, which statement showed the
deposits therein and withdrawals therefrom to be as hereinbefore set
forth, and that said company had credited interest upon the balance
in said account, to September 10, 1907, in the amount of $ 1,712 25
and that the amount standing to the credit of said account
on September 10, 1907, was $11,958 16
The said Mercantile Trust Company was thereafter merged into
or consolidated with the defendant Bankers Trust Company, and the
said Bankers Trust Company received the said deposits and took over
the said account and assumed all of the obligations of the said Mer
cantile Trust Company in respect thereto. Each of the said Stanford
White, Augustus St. Gaudens and Charles F. McKim is now deceased.
No withdrawals have been made from said account except as herein
before set forth, and the said sum of $11,958.16, together with interest
at the rate allowed by the said companies upon deposits of like
amount, up to the time when the said deposits shall be withdrawn
by the person or persons authorized thereto by judgment of this
Court, is and will be due from the said Bankers Trust Company upon
the said account. The said Bankers Trust Company at the request
of the plaintiff herein, has stated to him that the balance of cash on
deposit with it to the credit of said account, with accrued interest to
December 31, 1914, amounts to $14,494.59.
Seventh. By virtue of said power of attorney, the said Stanford
White received from the Morris and Essex Railroad Company the
dividends at the rate of seven per cent, per annum declared by said
company on the said 327 shares of its capital stock, payable in July,
1905, and in January, 1906, amounting to $1,144.50, and delivered the
said sum to the plaintiff herein, and the said plaintiff in his name as
Committee as aforesaid, on January 16, 1906, deposited the said sum
of $1,144.50 to the credit of an account with The Farmers' Loan and
Trust Company, at interest, and received and holds a certificate for
such deposit, and the said sum, together with interest to the time when
the said deposit shall be withdrawn by the person or persons author
ized thereto by judgment of this Court; is and will be due from The
Farmers' Loan and Trust Company upon the said account.
Eighth. Since the said payment of January, 1906, no dividends
have been paid by the Morris and Essex Railroad Company upon the
said 327 shares of its capital stock, although dividends at the rate of
Iseven per cent, per annum have been in each year declared and are
payable upon the said shares of stock. The dividends declared upon
the said shares of stock and withheld by the said railroad company,
including the dividend payable in January, 1915, amount to $9,728.25,
and the said sum, together with such further dividends as may be de
clared and payable upon the said shares of stock, to the time when
the said dividends shall be paid to the person or persona authorized
thereto by judgment of this Court, is and will be due upon the said
shares of stock from the Morris and Essex Railroad Company.
214
Ninth. Since the aforesaid withdrawals by Stanford White and
Augustus St. Gaudens from the defendant United States Trust Com
pany, no withdrawals have been made from the said "Paris Prize
Fund" account, and the said United States Trust Company continues
to hold the said stock and bonds to the credit of the said account, and
to collect the interest on the said bonds as the same becomes payable,
and to credit interest upon the cash balance of said account. The
said stock and bonds, together with the interest so collected and
credited to the time when the said account shall be withdrawn by the
person or persons authorized thereto by judgment of this Court, less
the proper commissions for the collection of interest on said bonds, is
and will be due from the said United States Trust Company upon the
said account. The said United States Trust Company, at the request
of the plaintiff herein, stated to him on January 11, 1915, that the
cash balance to the credit of said account, in addition to said stock
and bonds, amounted to $21,898.13, bearing interest at the rate of two
and one-half per cent, per annum.t
Tenth. The said Laura Astor Delano died June 15, 1902, leaving a
will which was duly proved before and admitted to probate by the
Surrogates' Court of the County of New York, to which court juris
diction in that behalf appertained, and thereafter letters testamentary
under said will were duly issued by the said Surrogates' Court to the
defendant Warren Delano, Junior, and to others since deceased, and
the said Warren Delano, Junior, is the sole surviving executor of
said will.
Eleventh. The said Cornelius Vanderbilt died September 12, 1899,
leaving a will which was duly proved before and admitted to probate
by the Surrogates' Court of the County of New York, to which court
jurisdiction in that behalf appertained, and thereafter letters testa
mentary under said will were duly issued by the said Surrogates'
Court to Edward V. W. Rossiter, since deceased, and to the defendants
Alice G. Vanderbilt, William K. Vanderbilt, Alfred G. Vanderbilt, Reg
inald C. Vanderbilt and Chauncey M. Depew, who are the only sur
viving executors of said will.
Twelfth. The said Henry R. A. Carey died April 29, 1895, leaving
a will which was duly proved before and admitted to probate by the
Probate Court of the City of Newport in the State of Rhode Island, to
which court jurisdiction in that behalf appertained, and thereafter
letters testamentary under said will were duly issued by the said
Probate Court to the defndant Arthur Astor Carey, who is the sole
executor of said will.
Thirteenth. The said William Astor died April 25, 1892, leaving a
will which was duly proved before and admitted to probate by the
tAdding up the assets of the "Paris Prize Fund" will show that
said Fund amounted to some ninety-six thousand dollars on January
llth last. And by January llth next will amount to some hundred
thousand dollars. J. A. C.
215
Surrogates' Court of the County of New York, to which court juris
diction in that behalf appertained, and letters testamentary under
said will were duly issued by the said Surrogates' Court to the execu
tors named therein. Thereafter, in accordance with the provisions
of said will in that behalf, other executors thereof were duly appointed
and have acted as such, including the defendants James R. Roosevelt
and Douglas Robinson, who are the only surviving executors of said
Fourteenth. The Attorney General of the State of New York is
made a party to this action as representing the beneficiaries of said
trust, pursuant to the provisions of Section 12 of the Personal Prop
erty Law; and the contributors and the representatives of the deceased
contributors to said fund are made parties hereto for the purpose of
determining their rights, if any, in the said fund and the moneys de
rived therefrom, in the event that the said trust shall not be declared,
established or enforced.
Fifteenth. The said defendant Bankers Trust Company has re
cently called the attention of the plaintiff to the fact that the interest
on the moneys deposited with it as aforesaid is accumulating, and that
no person claims the right to withdraw the said deposits, and has
stated to the plaintiff that if he would not bring an action for the
appointment of a trustee or trustees authorized to receive the said
deposits, the said Trust Company would itself institute an action or
proceeding for the appointment of a trustee of the moneys due upon
the said account. The plaintiff herein, as Committee as aforesaid, has
annually filed as required by law his inventory and account in the
office of the Clerk of the County of New York, and has included in
said account a brief statement in respect to said "Paris Prize Fund,"
and a statement of the sum received by him and deposited with The
Farmers' Loan and Trust Company as aforesaid. Pursuant to an
order of the Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division of the Supreme
Court, First Department, dated February 28, 1911, and filed in the
office of the Clerk of said Appellate Division on March 3, 1911, by
which order Lyttleton Fox, Esq., was appointed Referee to examine
the inventories and accounts filed or required to be filed in the office
of the Clerk of the County of New York, in accordance with Section
2341 of the Code of Civil Procedure, by the Committees of the person
and property of incompetent persons, since the first day of February,
1910, and whereby he was also directed to examine the inventories
and accounts of such Committees filed or required to be filed during
the month of January in each year subsequent to the year 1898, in
the said County Clerk's office which had not previously been examined
or judicially settled, and to make his report upon said inventories
and accounts with his opinion in each case, the said Referee, after
a hearing upon and examination of the accounts of the plaintiff as
such Committee so filed as aforesaid on January 31, 1910, and on
January 31, 1911, covering the period from January 30, 1909, to Janu-
216
ary 31, 1911, by his report dated December 27, 1911, reported, among
other things, that the plaintiff herein, as Committee as aforesaid
"should be directed to take such immediate steps as he shall be advised
by counsel as proper and necessary for the purpose of ascertaining
the rights of the incompetent in the fund heretofore mentioned and
described as the 'Paris Prize Fund,' and in the income thereof, and
of reducing to possession such part, if any, of such fund and the in
come thereof, as shall be found to belong to the incompetent"; and
by order of the said Presiding Justice of said Appellate Division, dated
June 24, 1912, and filed in the office of the Clerk of said Appellate
Division on June 25, 1912, the said report of said Referee was in all
respects confirmed. The said fund and deposits and the dividends
due as aforesaid have for a long time been accumulating without use
either to the contributors or to the intended beneficiaries, and an
action or proceeding such as is contemplated by the Bankers Trust
Company for the appointment of a trustee of only such part of the
moneys as is deposited with said company, would not fully determine
the rights of the said contributors, nor the rights, powers and duties
of the plaintiff as Committee in respect to the said fund and income.
The plaintiff has advised with counsel as directed by said Referee's
report and the said order confirming the same, and he has been
advised that the said trust is probably valid as a charitable trust, and
that in order to determine the interest, if any, of the said incompetent,
and his own rights, powers and duties as Committee, in the premises,
he should institute this action for the purpose of having the said
trust established and enforced, if the same is enforcible, and of deter
mining the respective rights, if any, of the parties hereto, in the
premises.
Wherefore, the plaintiff demands judgment that the said trust be
judicially declared, established and enforced in accordance with the
aforesaid declaration of trust, or, with the consent of the survivors
of the said contributors, in such manner as in the judgment of the
Court will most effectually accomplish the general purpose for which
the said contributions were made, and that a trustee or trustees of
said trust be appointed, with power and authority to execute the said
trust and to receive, collect and hold the said fund, deposits, stock,
bonds, and the moneys and interest derived therefrom and due thereon
as aforesaid, and that title thereto be vested in the said trustee or
trustees subject to the trust as so declared; and that the said trustee
or trustees be authorized, empowered and directed, if and when he
or they shall deem it advisable, to cause a corporation to be formed
under the Membership Corporations Law for the purpose of exe
cuting said trust and for that purpose to select five or more per
sons to become incorporators of such corporation, who shall make,
acknowledge and file a certificate of incorporation thereof, according
to the provisions of law in that behalf, such certificate not to be
filed without the written approval of a justice of this Court en-
217
dorsed thereupon or annexed thereto, and to convey, transfer and
deliver the said trust property to such corporation; or if the said
trust be not so established and enforced, that the rights of the parties
hereto in and to the said fund and moneys, and the rights, powers
and duties of the plaintiff as Committee as aforesaid in respect thereto,
be determined, declared and adjudged; that the costs of the plaintiff
in this action be paid out of the said fund, and that the plaintiff have
such other or further judgment, order or relief in the premises as to
the Court may seem meet.
EVARTS, CHOATE & SHERMAN,
Attorneys for Plaintiff.
STATE OF NEW YOBK, |
County of New York, $ ss "
Thomas T. Sherman, being duly sworn, deposes and says: that
he is the plaintiff in the above-entitled action; that he has read the
foregoing complaint and knows the contents thereof, and that the
same is true to his own knowledge, except as to the matters therein
stated to be alleged on information and belief, and that as to those
matters he believes it to be true.
THOS. T. SHERMAN.
Sworn to before me this |
8th day of April, 1915. $
WM. R. MONTGOMERY,
Notary Public, Queens County,
Certificate filed in New York County.
EVARTS, CHOATE & SHERMAN. JOSEPH H. CHOATE,
Allen W. Evarts, Counsel.
Thomas T. Sherman,
Herbert J. Bickford,
Joseph H. Choate, Jr.
Cable Address "Evarts," New York.
Telephone 6890 Hanover.
60 WALL STREET, NEW YORK,
April 5, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner, Esq.,
Merry Mills,
Cobham, Virginia.
Dear Mr. Chaloner:
I have your letter of March 19th and will return the enclosures
in a short time.
218
I think you have misunderstood the situation. As you will see
from the complaint, a copy of which I enclose, the sole purpose of the
suit is to secure the carrying out of your plan as originally stated
by you.
I note that you consider the present an inappropriate time for
this proceeding but for the reasons stated in my letter of February
8th to Mr. Money.t it is necessary to proceed within a short time.
I have also considered your suggestion that the Court be asked
to order the Bankers Trust Company to turn the money over to the
United States Trust Company to be held with the rest of the fund. 1
am satisfied, however, that this could not be done in such a manner as
to dispose of the objections of the Bankers Trust Company.
Yours very truly,
JOSEPH H. CHOATE, JR.
J. H. C., JR.
(Copy.)
I
tThe member of our office force above referred to as having been,
written to in the premises by Joseph H. Choate, Jr.
BRER FOX AND BRER
RABBIT/'
An examination of the above two interesting documents sheds a
bright light upon the dark lantern methods of Messrs. Thomas T.
Sherman and his eminent legal adviser, Joseph H. Choate, Jr.
We shall first consider the Complaint.
The first thing that strikes the observer therein, is that the actual
value of the Morris and Essex stock is disguised, bp giving in its place
the par value thereof which par value is some nine thousand dollars
~below its actual value. This, naturally indicates a desire upon the
part of Messrs. Sherman and Choate to avoid stating the really form
idable sum represented by the Paris Prize which sum is jeopardized
by their aforesaid nefarious methods in the premises.
Furthermore said conclusion is strengthened by the fact that said
gentlemen studiously avoid stating the total value of the Prize which
is or will in six months by which time the interest thereon will have
accrued, thus be worth some one hundred thousand dollars.
The next thing that strikes the observer is that Messrs. Sherman
and Choate make haste to feather their nests at the very inception of
said nefarious game, by the following statement page 217 of said
complaint to wit: "that the costs of the plaintiff in this action be
paid out of the said fund."
This means a fat fee to Joseph H. Choate, Jr. a fee anywhere,
presumably, from one thousand dollars up for bringing this nefarious
"strike" suit.
The last thing that strikes the observer is that even Sherman
and Choate admit that the Paris Prize is a creditable performance
upon the part of "Who's Looney Now?"
It may not be out of place to observe that the "Paris Prize"
concours (or competitions) described on pages five and six of said
Complaint was conceived and committed to print in the month of
December, 1896, by "Who's Looney Now?" whereas this farcical con
spiracy upon the part of the Chanler family to make out "Who's
Looney Now?" an "incompetent" by reason of hopeless lunacy, states
in its Commitment Papers that "Who's Looney Now?" began to be
"looney' in November, 1896.
In closing the examination of the Complaint we shall draw the
attention of the Newspapers to the salient fact, that this diabolical
plot against the liberty, property, and happiness of an indisputably
sane man on the record of the conspirators on the record of the
220
Proceedings brought by them in the New York Supreme Court which
shows that the charges against the sanity of the plaintiff in Chaloner
against Sherman were perjured and who merely hang on to his prop
erty in the desperate hope to win out on a flimsy, transparent, discred
itable legal technicality we shall draw the attention of the press to
the salient fact that this plot has not only cost an upright and on
his record as the Founder of a hundred thousand dollar Art Educa
tional Scholarship that this plot has not only robbed an upright
and public-spirited citizen of going on nineteen years of the enjoy
ment of his good name and that of his large property but that this
diabolical and sordid plot has robbed Art Education in the metropolis
of this country in which Education is the national aim of thousands
of dollars for years and years.
The reason is not far to seek.
It was to the obvious advantage of the conspirators and their
legal allies to sink from public view anything which could redouna
to the credit of "Who's Looney Now?" Therefore though there were
thousands of dollars rolling up as income from the corpus of the Paris
Prize Fund, and though the scheme for the practical working thereof
had sent two Paris Prizemen each for five years one after the
other to Paris and was in full working order yet and nevertheless
the machinery of the Paris Prize was relentlessly clogged and shut
down by the malevolent parties having control of the person and
estate of "Who's Looney Now?" by grace of the learned and enlightened
courts of New York.
Turning now to the examination of said letter from Mr. Joseph H.
Choate, Jr.
We regret to have to state that "for ways that are dark, and for
tricks that are vain, the heathen (Joe Choate) is peculiar."
The same we shall straightway explain.
He starts off, in said letter, with a most brazen false-statement, to
begin with.
He has the gall to say to a lawyer: "I think you have misunder
stood the situation. As you will see from the Complaint the sole
purpose of the suit is to secure the carrying out of your plan as
originally stated by you."
If the reader will now turn to the top of page 217 of said
Complaint, he will find the following sinister words staring him in
the face. To wit: "or if the said trust be not so established and
enforced, that the rights of the parties hereto in and to the said fund
and moneys, and the rights, powers and duties of the plaintiff as com
mittee as aforesaid in respect thereto, be determined, declared and
adjudged."
Being interpreted said Delphic utterance means in the identical
language of Mr. Joseph H. Choate, Jr., himself as set forth in his said
letter to Mr. Money of our office under date February 8, 1915 "its
return to the subscribers.''
221
It is an old and revered proverb which says "a liar should have
a good memory.'' Evidently a powerful memory is not to be found
among Mr. Joseph H. Choate, Jr's mental assets. For how otherwise
could he have the gall to say as he does "the sole purpose of the
suit is to secure the carrying out of your plan as originally stated by
you" when, only two short months prior thereto, he had been frank
to say in said letter to Mr. Money: "In such an action the court can
dispose of the Fund by directing its return to the subscribers." In
a word by its total and complete destruction! Comment would be a
work of supererogation.
"Who's Looney Now?" being a lawyer, at once penetrated the
dangers surrounding the work now a quarter of a century old of
his hands; and straightway wrote the long and sufficiently frank
letter to Mr. Joseph H. Choate, Jr., given above, pointing out said
dangers.
But when it is borne in mind that Mr. Sherman claims as afore
said in said brief that "Who's Looney Now's?" property vests in Mm
Sherman in other and less technical words becomes the property
of Mr. Sherman a bright light is immediately shed upon the said
dark lantern methods of Messrs. Sherman and Choate anent the Paris
Prize.
For "Who's Looney Now's?" subscription thereto as aforesaid
now amounts to the formidable sum of some seventy-five thousand
dollars; which seventy-five thousand dollars upon its "return to the
subscribers" as engagingly frankly outlined by Mr. Choate which
seventy-five thousand dollars would revert to Mr. Sherman upon his
charming hypothesis aforesaid that all "Who's Looney Now's?" prop
erty vests in him Mr. Sherman!
Mr. Choate continues. "I note that you consider the present an
inappropriate time for this proceeding, but for the reasons stated in
my letter of February 8th to Mr. Money, it is necessary to proceed
within a short time."
How redolent said sentences is of guile! It fairly reeks therewith.
In our said letter to Mr. Choate it was not the time of bringing
before the court the question of saying where the said income-incre
ment held by the Bankers Trust Company should go, that exercised
us; but the manner in which said question was put before the court.
Not the settling of that subsidiary and insignificant side issue
subsidiary and insignificant when the amount involved is compared
with the amount originally placed by ourselves in the United States
Trust Company not that, but the criminally culpable act of jeopard
izing the very existence of the hundred thousand dollar Paris Prize
Fund, by the manner; in which a question regarding the disposal of
some ten thousand or more dollars of its income was wittingly, wil
fully and after full and fair warning of the dangers accruing to the
Fund thereby had been duly given in our above letter to Mr. Choate
was allowed to go before the court.
222
Mr. Choate concludes his interesting epistle as follows: "I have
also considered your suggestion that the Court be asked to order the
Bankers Trust. Company to turn the money over to the United States
Trust Company to be held with the rest of the Fund. I am satisfied,
however, that this could not be done in such a manner as to dispose
of the objections of the Bankers Trust Company."
All we have to say in reply to that amazing statement is that if
Mr. Choate is so satisfied, no honest and learned lawyer cognizant of
the facts at issue could be, what earthly objections could the Bank
ers Trust Company or any honest Trust Company possibly, rightly,
have to returning an income-account to the keeping of the Trust Com
pany which for years twenty-five years, no less had guarded the
parent Fund, from which said interest account had sprung, as faith
fully and well as had the United States Trust Company?
Certainly no objection unless said Bankers Trust Company in
tended to hang onto the said interest-increment account, possibly
until it absorbed the United States Trust Company, as it had ab
sorbed the Trust Company originally holding said interest-increment
account. Which when one bears in mind the age, wealth, and deserved
fame of the United States Trust Company when weighed with that
of the Bankers Trust Company strikes us as about as likely as that
the tail should absorb the dog.
We are forced to the conclusion bearing in mind all the unscrupu
lous acts of Messrs. Choate and Sherman in their long career of ques
tionable practice to use no harsher term to blacken the character
of "Who's Looney Now?" in the eyes of the public, in order that they
may avenge themselves on him for showing them up in "Four Years
Behind The Bars" avenge "Bloomingdale" on him for the same
cause and, lastly, hang onto his million and a half, and shave four
thousand dollars therefrom annually not counting extra fees, com
missions, legal fees, et cetera, and so forth we are forced to the
inevitable conclusion, that said suit is nothing more than a suit en
gineered by Messrs. Choate and Sherman, who have induced by what
means we know not the said Bankers Trust Company to threaten to
bring a suit disastrous in its consequences as aforesaid to the wel
fare the very life of the Paris Prize. For two reasons.
First. For the reason of avarice. For the reason set forth above
that they claim that "Who's Looney Now's?" property belongs to Mr.
Sherman, and by said "strike" suit the Paris Prize may be destroyed
and some seventy-five thousand dollars turned into the yawning pock
ets of Mr. Thomas T. Sherman.
Second. For reasons of spite. They know that their days are
numbered now that the appeal in Chaloner against Sherman is filed
in the Supreme Court of the United States as "custodians" of "Who's
Looney Now's?" million and a half. They know for we have been
at pains to show them in our brief that the United States Supreme
Court has decided in Windsor versus McVeigh, United States Reports,
223
9S in which decision the great civil war Chief Justice Chief Justice
Waite concurred as well as in Simon versus Craft, United States
Reports, 182, in which case the opinion of the court was written by
the present Mr. Chief Justice White, before he became Chief Justice,
that it was decided specifically that notice of the proceedings against
a party to a suit, as well as opportunity to appear and be heard in
defence to the same, were absolutely and unequivocally essential to due
process of law. The language of the court in the former suit was
pages 277-8 "Until notice is given, the court has no jurisdiction in any
case to proceed to judgment, whatever its authority may be, by the
law of its organization, over the subject matter. But notice is only
for the purpose of affording the party an opportunity of being heard
upon the claim or the charges made. It is a summons to him to ap
pear and to speak, if he has anything to say, why judgment sought
should not be rendered. A denial to a party of the benefit of a notice
would be in effect to deny that he is entitled to notice at all, and the
sham and deceptive proceedings had better be omitted altogether."
And again at page 278: "The law is and always has been that when
ever notice or citation is required the party cited has the right to
appear and be heard; and when the latter is denied (note the dis
tinction between notice and opportunity) the former is ineffectual for
any purpose. The denial to a party in such a case of a right to appear
is in legal effect the recall of the citation to him."
In Simon versus Graft aforesaid, the court said, "The essential
elements of due process of law are notice, and opportunity to defend."
Now the Commitment Papers on file in the New York Supreme
Court show that in the Committing Proceedings, when the plaintiff
in Chaloner against Sherman was arrested in 1897 and imprisoned in
"Bloomingdale" specifically state on their face that no notice of said
Proceedings was given said plaintiff.
The reason given being that he was so dangerous an individual
that notice to him would be accompanied by grave danger!
Now the record of the Proceedings in 1899 before a Commission
In Lunacy and Sheriff's Jury also on file in the same court shows
that the plaintiff in Chaloner against Sherman was in bed with an
affectation of the spine at the time of said Proceedings had been in
bed with the same trouble for three weeks previous thereto and had
sent word to said Commission and Sheriff's Jury by Dr. Samuel B.
Lyon the medical Superintendent of "Bloomingdale" at said time
that he was unable to be present at said Proceedings owing to his said
illness.
In spite of which, said Commission and said Jury went right ahead
and although the liberty and happiness of a law-abiding citizen was
at stake to say nothing of hundreds of thousands of dollars of valu
able real estate said Commission and said Jury rushed the Proceed
ings through inside of about an honr and a half, and imprisoned the
plaintiff for life without the least opportunity as above indicated to
appear and be heard.
224
Lastly. There is a third leading United States Supreme Court
case that has an important bearing upon the interesting case of
Chaloner against Sherman.
Said case is known as the United States appt. versus Throckmor-
ton. United States Reports 98 (October term 1878): "Mr. Justice
Miller said: There is no question of the general doctrine that fraud
vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents and even judgments
in cases where, by reason of something done by the successful party to
a suit, there was, in fact, no adversary trial or decision of the issue
in the case. Where the unsuccessful party has been prevented from
exhibiting fully liis case, by fraud or deception practised on him by
his opponent, as by keeping him away from court, a false promise of
a compromise; or where the defendant never had knowledge of the
suit, being kept in ignorance by the acts of the plaintiff; these, and
similar cases which show that there has never been a real contest in
the trial of hearing of the case, are reasons for which a new suit may
be sustained to set aside and annul the former judgment or decree,
and open the case for a new and a fair hearing. In all these cases
and many others which have been examined, relief has been granted,
on the grounds that, by some fraud practised directly upon the party
seeking relief against the judgment or decree, that party has been
prevented from presenting all of his case to the court. On the otQer
hand, the doctrine is equally well settled that the court will not set
aside a judgment because it was founded on a fraudulent instrument,
or perjured evidence, or for any matter which was actually presented
and considered in the judgment assailed. Mr. Wells, in his very useful
work on Rex Adjndicata, says, sec. 499: "Fraud vitiates everything, and
a judgment, equally with a contract; that is, a judgment obtained di
rectly by fraud' The principle and the distinction here taken was laid
down as long ago as the year 1702 by the Lord Keeper in the High
Court of Chancery, in the case of Tovey v. Young, Proc. in Ch., 193.
This was a bill in chancery brought by an unsuccessful party to a
suit at law, for a new trial, which was at that time a very common
mode of obtaining a new trial. One of the grounds of the bill was,
that complainant had discovered since the trial was had that the prin
cipal witness against him was a partner in interest with the other
side.
The Lord Keeper said: "New matter may in some cases be ground
for relief; but it must not be what was tried before; nor, when it con
sists in swearing only, will I ever grant a new trial, unless it appears
by deed, or writing, or that a witness, on whose testimony the verdict
was given, were convict of perjury." As is conclusively proved by the
originator of the said principle namely the Lord Keeper the perjury
of a witness "on whose testimony the verdict was given" must be dis
covered and charged not during but after the said trial.
In other words, the perjury must not have been known to be per
jury and as perjury to have been considered by the court during
said trial. The perjured witness in a word gives his perjured testi-
225
mony, upon which "the verdict was given," without either the Court
or the other side knowing at the time of the trial that same was per
jured. Thereafter said discovery is made, and a new trial granted on
the strength of the newly discovered perjury.
Mr. Choate attempts to show by this very case of United States
vs. Throckmorton that provided a witness has perjured himself in a
given trial and no matter that neither the other side, nor the court,
knew at the time of said trial that said witness was a perjured witness,
yet nevertheless because the witness gave his said perjured testimony
as aforesaid at said trial, that therefore the question of the perjury of
said witness was ipso facto necessarily "actually presented and consid
ered" in said trial as perjury. Whereas, the truth is, the direct antithe
sis thereof! Namely: That said perjury, not having been discovered at
the time of said trial, it could not have been "presented" at said trial.
Not having been "presented" it necessarily could not have been "con
sidered"
And although neither the court nor the other side knew at the
time of said trial that it was perjury: that therefore when after said
trial a; new trial is sought upon the ground upon the totally new
Question of the perjury of said witness that a new trial cannot be
granted because the said perjury although unknown and unhinted at
at saidl trial "was actually presented and considered" at said trial!
when in truth it had been neither one nor the OTHER.
In other words according to the mighty legal mental processes
of Mr. Joseph H. Choate, Jr. if a perjured witness unbeknown to the
court and other side perjures himself at a given trial and "gets away
with it" gets the court and other side to believe it that therefore
thereafter when the other side catches up with the perjurer, and
moves for a new trial that because the perjurer has unbeknown to
the court and other side perjured himself successfully which is to
say, of course, without being caught that according to Mr. Choate
when said perjurer is "caught with the goods" his crooked and slick
work when discovered cannot be taken into consideration by the
court cannot be "considered"!
Let us hear Mr. Choate speak for himself on this interesting and
elevating subject. We cite from page eleven of his brief, in Chaloner
against Sherman, to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the
Southern District of New York New York City.
"An examination of the offers of evidence made by the plaintiff-
in-error, the questions asked and excluded, and, indeed, of the excluded
evidence itself, as it appears in the depositions which were marked
for identification, will show that the alleged fraud complained of con
sisted in the giving of testimony, alleged to be false, in the affidavits.
upon which the commitment was had (in 1897) and in the evidence
upon which the plaintiff was adjudged incompetent in 1899. The al
leged conspiracy appears to have been a conspiracy of the relatives of
the plaintiff-in-error to deceive the Court by such perjury into deciding
226
as it did decide. Such fraud, however, if proved, is no basis for a
collateral attack upon an adjudication. The question whether the testi-
money, given in support of one side of the case, is or is not true, is one
of the questions necessarily adjudged in every litigation. In the case
at bar the question whether the alleged perjurious testimony v,as true
was necessarily adjudged by the Supreme Court of the State of New
York in finding the plaintiff-in-error incompetent. This Court could
not determine whether or not the testimony in question was perjured
without trying over again the very same issue which the New York
Supreme Court decided when it made the order complained of. In
accordance with these principles it is well settled that the fact that a
judgment is procured by false testimony does not open it to collateral
attack. U. 8. v. Throckmorton, 98 U. S., 61."
To conclude. The perjury of Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler in the
Commitment Proceedings in 1897, aforesaid, is proved upon him in
the cross-examination of that gentleman, by onr counsel, in a Deposi
tion de bene esse given by -Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler in or about
November, 1905 on file in the New York Supreme Court.
Said gentleman swore in said Commitment Proceedings said
Commitment Papers that he had heard and seen the plaintiff in Chat-
oner against Sherman say and do irrational things at the said plaintiff's
home in Virginia. Upon the strength of which false oath "the verdict
was given," and the plaintiff lost his liberty and the control of, and
enjoyment of his property for years and years. Whereas in said
Proceedings in 1905, de bene esse, said gentleman admitted on the
stand under cross-examination that he had never in his life been
at, or in, said home of said plaintiff in Virginia!
The said leading cases of Windsor versus McVeigh; Simon versus
Craft; and United States versus Throckmorton ; therefore fit like a
glove Chaloner against Sherman.
The first two prove that "notice," and "opportunity," are essential
to due process of law.
The Commitment Papers show on their face that the plaintiff had
no "notice," in said Proceedings in 1897.
The Record in the New York Supreme Court shows, on its face,
that the plaintiff was physically incapacitated was in bed with spinal
trouble when the 1899 Proceedings were brought, and had been for
three weeks before the 1899 Proceedings were brought was incapaci
tated from taking a forty mile railway journey twenty miles to New
York and twenty miles back to White Plains where "Bloomingdale"
is to said Proceedings, before the Commission-In-Lunacy and Sheriffs
Jury in 1899. Or, in other words, did not have an "opportunity," to
appear and be heard owing to illness at said Proceedings.
The third proves: that a new trial may be had where "a witness,
on whose testimony the verdict was given, was convict of perjury."
Mr. Winthrop Astor Chanler "on whose testimony the verdict wcm
given" v/as as above shown "convict of perjury."
227
On said three cases hang all the Law and the Prophets in Chaloner
against Sherman.
The above interesting testimony "Who's Looney Now?" and his
battle scarred lawyers have been striving for years to get before the
Federal court. But do what he and his lawyers may, the other side
have been able, up to date, to stave off the day of reckoning and sepa
rate the court from the above testimony and other pieces of testimony
fully as interesting. Now, however, that Chaloner against Sherman is
on the high road to the Supreme Court of the United States "Who's
Looney Now?" looks for a verdict supporting the learned decision in
his favour rendered by Judges Lacombe, Coxe and Noyes of the United
States Circuit Court of Appeals, sustaining his claim that he had a
constitutional right to try his case of Chaloner against Sherman in the
Federal courts. Nothing since said decision has occurred to shake
"Who's Looney Now's?" faith therein. Ex-Judge Holt revolted and
reversed the decision of his Appellate Court, the Federal Circuit Court
of Appeals. ' For this "Who's Looney Now?" endeavored to get the
learned Justice impeached at the hands of Congress. But before he
could bring it to the attention of the Judiciary Committee of the House
of Representatives Judge Holt resigned from the Bench.! He then ap
pealed and Judge Lacombe the President of the Court being in
Europe Judge Mayer was allowed to sit in his place. The Bench con
sisted of Judges Coxe, Rogers and Mayer. Judge Mayer wrote the
opinion of the Court sustaining Judge Holt in revolting against and
reversing his Superior Court. Now the interesting thing about said
decision is that Judge Mayer is not a member of the United States Cir
cuit Court of Appeals, but, on the contrary, comes from an Inferior
Court, namely, the United States District Court. Therefore an inferior
Judge is allowed to write the opinion of a Superior Court; by which
said Superior Court is made to reverse itself; and, in so doing, is made
to \sustain the opinion of an Inferior Court which had had the audac
ity to reverse it! Surely an interesting, not to say an amusing situa
tion.
"Revenous nous d nos moutons'": as saith the great Rabelais. "Let
us return to our sheep" our black sheep Messrs. Choate and Sher
man.
As we observed some distance back, there are two reasons two
moving motives back of Messrs. Choate and Sherman's bringing said
murderous action against the very life of the Paris Prize Fund.
The first has avarice as its main-spring.
The second spite.
On the strength of said three leading cases, said gentlemen are
well aware that the United States Supreme Court will support our
tWe do not desire to imply in the slightest degree that the learned
Judge resigned "under fire." There was necessarily considerable delay
in our said effort and considerable time elapsed between the decision
of Judge Holt and his resignation aforesaid.
228
contention, that all proceedings against our sanity in the New York
Supreme Court are null and void for want of due process of law. Being
null and void they have no existence in law, and can be attacked as
we have attacked same in a Federal Court, without laying ourselves
open to the charge of collateral attack against valid proceedings in a
State Court. As the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the
Southern District of New York New York City held in Chaloner
against Sherman, 162 Federal Report (1908) Judges Lacombe, Coxe
and Noyes in writing the opinion therein, the learned Judge Noyes
said: "The Constitution of the United States vests in its judicial de
partment, jurisdiction over controversies between citizens of different
States. The petitioner (the plaintiff) as a citizen of the State of
Virginia, in bringing his said suit in the Circuit Court (since changed
to the District Court) of the United States, was availing himself of a
right founded upon this constitutional provision. And he came into
that Court with a decree of the Court of the 'State of which he was a
citizen declaring his sanity. We cannot disregard that decree. 1 '
We therefore have a constitutional right to bring our case of
Chaloner against Sherman as we did eleven years ago namely in
a Federal Court.
Messrs. Choate and Sherman well know, therefore, that they are
lost since no one for a moment could suppose that the highest
tribunal in the land will reverse itself not only once but three times
running but urill support its own aforesaid three leading cases all
bearing directly upon the law and the facts as set forth in Chaloner
against Sherman.
Said reckless gentlemen, therefore following their guide, philoso
pher, and friend the Devil follow out the lead by him given as set
forth in the Scriptures when knowing his time is short and stick
at nothing which can vent their spite and malice upon "Who's Looney
Now?" Therefore they bring this faked-up suit, in order provided
they cannot scatter the Paris Prize Fund's hundred thousand dollars,
so that some seventy-five thousand there-of shall find their way into
their pockets on the amusing little fiction that all "Who's Looney
Now's?" property vests in Mr. Thomas T. Sherman therefore they
bring said faked-up malicious, and villainous, scoundrelly suit, to in
corporate said Paris Prize Fund and do so while the Founder thereof
cannot by any possible legal chance be one of the Trustees we being
an "incompetent" person in the eye of the New York State Courts, at
present.
Could any more sinister comment than are their own actions be
made upon the profession ornamented by Messrs. Joseph H. Choate,
Jr., and Thomas T. Sherman?
"Woe unto you ye lawyers": said the Founder of Christianity;
now, nigh two thousand years ago.
And Messrs. Choate and Sherman, lawyers, show, that: time can-
nut wither, nor custom xtnlc. their infinite rascality.
ISIS UNVEILED
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Va., Monday, February 1, 1915.
CHAIX)NER INCOME iLARGE.
Committee's Report Shows New Y'ork Property is Valued
at $1,473,000.
The annual accounting of Thomas T. Sherman, committee of the
property of John Armstrong Chaloner, was filed in the New York
County Clerk's office on Saturday. It shows that Chaloner now owns
property worth $1,473,000, from which the income for the past year
was $89,692. The accounting shows that although Mr. Chaloner re
ceived $24,000, and his former wife, Amelie Rives, now Princess Trou-
betzkoy.t got $3,600, the committee has $23,081 of income unexpended.
ISIS UNVEILED.
<rNot alimony as many New York newspapers stated in noticing
this item but the continuation after her re-marriage of an allow
ance made said Princess before divorce had ever been mentioned. As
is indicated by the total absence of alimony from the decree of the
South Dakota Court, granting the divorce, on the grounds of incom
patibility of temper; in the autumn of 1895. Merely the friendly in
terest of an Art Patron Founder of the Paris Prize aforesaid in the
future career of a writer and artist; with whom the said Art Patron
had quarrelled; largely, 'because she refused to cultivate her great
talent as a portrait painter her full length portrait en plein air
(out of doors) of Robert Winthrop Chanler so far back as 1890 in
Foutainebleau, France being little short of a masterpiece. Said Art
Patron held that her artistic gift, was as far stronger than her lit
erary gift, as the sun is than the moon. Which indicates that her
literary gift is redolent of charm to say the least. But her literary
gift lacks the power of creative force. The strongest trait therein is
that which distinguished Keats, namely, the pictorial.
Keats is not the poet of thought, but of beauty of painting in
words. So she excels in that respect, but lacks the dramatic creative
force necessary to create characters and scenes of a dramatic nature,
which fill the following bill, to wit: are full of dramatic incident and
at the same time said dramatic incident is true to life.
Two works of hers fill said bill. "The Quick Or" The Dead" and
"Tanis The San? Digger." The first, a novel. The second, a novelette.
230
The first, done in the winter of 1887 and eight, the second in that of
1892 and three. To these should be added her charming magazine
stories, the late T. B. Aldrich liked so much such as "A Brother To
Dragons" 1 ; "Nurse Crumpet Tells The Tale"; and "The Farrier Lass
Of Piping Pebworth." Beyond this, none of her literary work has
satisfied said Art Patron, when measured by the side of her splendid
artistic power.
One of the best-known teachers of painting in Paris Charles
Lasar an American who has had an atelier (a studio) for American
Art Students in Paris for years and years, and who is one of the
soundest and best teachers of any nationality in Paris in Art to-day
had her under his instruction in Paris for two years in 1889-1891.
When he had finished with her he said, "I can't teach her anything
more in drawing." In other words, her drawing by that time was
that of a master. Her eye for colour was as delicate and true as her
eye for line. And, lastly, her ability for "catching a likeness" was
utterly unequalled by any portrait-painter in France, Great Britain
or the United States excepting neither Carlus Duran, in Paris, nor
John S. Sargent, in London.
She loas so indolent that she buried this divine gift wrapped in
a mortuary napkin in the ground of oblivion; and followed the sister
Art of Literature: which enabled her to sit at her ease and work.
Whereas portrait-painting requires standing up, and walking to and
from the easel, all day long. "Hinc illae lachrymae!" Hence these
tears!
Herewith lifts the veil heretofore shrouding in Oriental mystery,
that Grand Arcanum of The Mysteries the why and wherefore of the
divorce of "Who's Looney Now?" from his former gifted consort.
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Saturday, May 1, 1915.
CHAI/ONER FILES APPEAL-
Virginian Takes His Case to United States
Supreme Conrt.
Washington, April 30. John Armstrong Chaloner, of Albemarle
county, Va., to-day filed in the Supreme Court an appeal from the
decision of the New York Federal Court which refused to declare void
the proceedings in the New York State Courts by which Chaloner was
adjudged incompetent and his property placed in the hands of a com
mittee.
Chaloner seeks to recover damages from Thomas T. Sherman in
charge of his affairs in New York.
NEWSPAPER REVIEWS
The Portland Oregonian, Portland, Ore., August 22, 1915.
"Robbery Under Law," by John Armstrong Chaloner, 50
cents, Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C.
There are two plays in this book.
One is "Robbery Under Law," in which Lunacy abuses
are pictured, and "The Hazard of the Die," a three-act play
in blank verse treating of the conspiracy of Catiline during
the last days of the Roman Republic. Both plays are un
usual, interesting, and show the undoubted dramatic talent
of the author.
232
The Evening Telegram, Portland, Oregon, July 24, 1915.
Robbery Under La\v. By John Armstrong Chaloner, author of
"Scorpio" and "Who's L/ooney Now?" Price 50 cents net.
Published by Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.
John Armstrong Chaloner, author of "Who's Looney Now?" here
offers two plays, some sonnets, and a number of press clippings and
letters to show his sanity and the need of reform in Lunacy Laws. He
is the Chaloner who was judged insane in New York and sane in
Virginia, who was a friend of Stanford White, Harry Thaw's victim,
and was formerly the husband of Amelie Rives. The "Who's Looney
Now?" which he names on the title page as if it were a book, is the
widely-quoted telegram he sent his brother, "Sheriff Bob" Chanler, on
the occasion of the latter's separation from Lina Cavalieri.
The play, "Robbery Under Law, or the Battle of the Millionaires,"
purports to be an autobiographical one. It is to be played, too, the
author says, in every State in the Union, and he will appear for a
curtain talk after each production to emphasize the need of Lunacy
Law reform. "The Hazard of the Die," a blank verse drama of Catiline,
in imitation of Shakespeare, follows with an epilogue in which the
author says this is but the first of a series of plays. The work has
passages of real vividness.
There is real value though to students of Abnormal Psychology in
the accounts of the "Napoleonic trances," of the mediumistic letters
and the like which the author includes in this heterogeneous volume.
Some of these are documents intended to prove his sanity, for he
quotes William James, the American psychologist, as styling him a
medium of unusual powers, and includes a letter from Thomson Jay
Hudson, author of "The Law of Psychic Phenomena," which says it
is unjust to call a man insane simply because he believes there is a
Subjective Mind, a belief scientists are coming round to.
The Post-Express, Rochester, N. Y., July 24, 1915.
"Robbery Under Law; or The Battle of the Millionaires: A Play in
Three Acts and Three Scenes." By John Armstrong Chaloner.
Roanoke Rapids, N. C. Palmetto Press.
Mr. Chaloner's play, "Robbery Under Law," has obviously been
based on his own experiences. The plot turns on a conspiracy to have
a millionaire art patron and author shut up in an asylum.
In the same volume there is another play entitled "The Hazard
of the Die," treating of Catiline's conspiracy. It is in the manner of
Marlowe, even that dramatist's peculiarities of accentuation being imi
tated. The author shows a knowledge of Roman history which is very
creditable to his memory. Among the dramatis personae are the poet
Catullus, Cicero, Crassus, Sulla and Caesar.
The book ivill amuse and in many ways, astonish the average
reader.
234
New York Tribune, Tuesday, June 29, 1915.
"WHO'S LOONEY NOW?" NAPOLEON PXAYWRIGHT IN
LUNACY CRUSADE
"Robbery Under Law," First Big Dramatic Gun in "Battle
of Millionaires," May Yet Invade New York
if Author Has Good Luck.
John Armstrong Chaloner, phrase maker extraordinary and author
of "Who's Looney Now?" has written a play with which he intends
to fight the lunacy laws of various States. It is called "Robbery Under
Law; or, The Battle of Millionaires," and was ground out at Merry
Mills, Chaloner's estate in Virginia. There the author is a sane man
under the State law, while New York courts have adjudged him in
sane.
To give full measure in the volume Mr. Chaloner has combined
with "Robbery Under Law" another play, called "The Hazard of the
Die," numerous newspaper clippings concerning his own vicissitudes
and some sonnets. The frontispiece is a portrait of Chaloner in the
dress of Napoleon the same picture that he sent to newspapers in
1912, when his modesty first yielded to his resemblance to the great
little Corsican.
The play "Robbery Under Law" is founded upon Chaloner's own
adventures before and after his escape from "Bloomingdale." In the
prologue, in which the author refers to himself as "Who's Looney
Now?" Chaloner declares his intention of producing the play in all
parts of the country and accompanying its production with lectures
on the iniquity of insanity laws.
Just how Chaloner is going to manage about New York he doesn't
say. He surely can't be planning to omit New York from his tour, for
here, if anywhere, he has found iniquitous lunacy law, to say nothing
of "ermined anarchy." Perhaps he is reckoning on the co-operation
of the Supreme Court of the United States, where his appeal from an
adverse judgment in his suit to recover the control of his $1,500,000
property is pending.
It is not the first appearance Chaloner has made as an author,
although it is the first time he has come out as a Napoleonic crusader
in literature. In 1907 he wrote forty-seven sonnets, explaining his
ideas on hell and Bernard Shaw. A few months ago the war set his
pen to itching, and he gave the Germans what he gave Shaw only
more so.
Ag a scientist, too, Chaloner has made a deep impression upon
himself. Not only is he the possessor of an "X-faculty" which enables
him to suspend the law of gravitation, but pool balls speak to him
in astrological terms.
All this was for the cause, however, as Chaloner announces in
his prologue to "Robbery Under Law." Presumably even his appar-
235
ently sincere attempts to recover command of his fortune were strate
gic movements intended to embarrass the New York lunacy law, for he
writes that he has "sacrificed the last eighteen years of my life" in
the cause of lunacy reform.
New York Herald, June 29, 1915.
NOW IT'S A FLAY BY " OHALONER 1ST."
Lunacy Law Reform To Be Urged on Stage by John
Armstrong Chaloner.
John Armstrong Chaloner, in a fifty cent paper covered volume,
full of personal declarations, put before the public yesterday his
new play, "Robbery Under Law." "In order to serve as a sort of propa
ganda toward the cause of lunacy law reform, to which the writer has
sacrificed the last eighteen years of his life, come March 13, 1915,"
is Mr. Chaloner's declaration in italics for the purpose of this pub
lication.
More interesting than the publication is the announcement it
carries that Mr. Chaloner proposes to present "Robbery Under Law"
as a dramatic performance in theatres all over the country, making
an address after the fall of the curtain at each performance, which
he solemnly agrees to limit to ten minutes. He will talk for two
hours every Sunday, however.
The frontispiece for the book is a picture of a portrait bust of
the author dressed in the uniform of Napoleon 1. with the caption,
"Chaloner 1st; 1911, by Criswell.
Defending "Robbery Under Law" Mr. Chaloner writes that parts
of it could be cut "without the least injury to the action, though not
to the psychological value of it as a study in the very latest and
furthest advanced realms of mediumship. Since that is what I am
a medium in the language of the late Professor William James, of
Harvard."
Mr. Chaloner's only successful composition heretofore was the
phrase, "Who's Looney Now?" written in a telegram to his brother
"Sheriff Bob" Chanler, when the latter's romantic and marital ex
periences with Mile. Lina Cavalier! became known.
236
New York Sun, June 29, 1915.
CHALONEB HAS A SEQUEL TO "WHO'S L.OONEY NOW?"
It's a Volume, an Epic, a Work of Art ($.5O Per) John A.
Is The Hero and Everything Else, Except
Bosco and Viola.
Every once In a while John Armstrong Chaloner, author of
that merry little quip "Who's Looney Now?' retires into his inner
consciousness and after long lucubration brings forth another book
about John Armstrong Chaloner. Since his escape from "Bloom-
ingdale" Asylum in 1900 to his home in Virginia, where he is legally
sane, Chaloner has been attacking the lunacy laws, and his latest
vehicle of expression, hot off the press, is called "Robbery Under
Law; or, The Battle of the Millionaires."
Although Chaloner modestly takes unto himself the robes of
Shakespeare and Marlowe he was known, until the publication of
this latest collection of blank and other verse, melodrama and press
notices, as the brother of Sheriff Bob Chanler. of New York, who on
his separation from Lina Cavalieri received a telegram from brother
John Armstrong asking "Who's Looney Now?" Mr. Chaloner is
proud of that line. He puts it on the title page and uses it as the
climax of his relation of triumph over Pat Sligo, the asylum keeper.
For of course Chaloner is the hero of his play in three acts
and three scenes, with a prologue and epilogue. His adventures,
"the stirring cycle of events which for the past eighteen years has
been whirling around the head of 'Who's Looney Now' " centre about
the manly form of Hugh Stutfield of Rokeby, Albemarle County, Vir
ginia, "millionaire art patron and law writer." There are two other
millionaires in the play who try to get Stutfield's money and so put
him in the Fairdale asylum, and a man worth half a million. Mr.
Chaloner says it is a psychological play, he having been called a
medium and of psychic temperament by the late Prof. William James.
See What Bosco Does!
Bnit the psychology is not so startling as the action, to which
Bosco, the man servant of Stutfield, his "heavy Numidian cavalry
to use a bold metaphor," contributes strangle holds and half Nelsons.
It begins with a killing. Stutfield, in love with Viola, who is beautiful
but cold, is visited by her. She brings a poor woman who is beaten
every day by her husband with a poker because the poker won't bend,
and Stutfield is about to get a divorce for her when the husband
comes in and lays out the chivalric squire with his favorite weapon.
Enter Bosco.
"With that Bosco crouches like a tig,er and springs upon Bullard
from behind, bringing Bullard down flat on his back under him. By
this time Stutfield has come to and rises to his feet.
237
"Viola (in a low tone) Are you hurt, my darling?
"Stutfield (in the same low voice) No, my dearest darling, not
a bit. You precious child! It took the threat of death of my death
to melt your frozen bosom. Do you love me?"
"Viola Yes, my hero, I do.
"Stutfield (in italics); Thank God, then, for those two blows!
You saved the day, though, dearie. As I went off into my two sleeps
your sweet bell-like voice was ringing in my ears like a silver
trumpet call, sounding the charges. And, by Gad, my black Bosco
heard your bugle and made good. Look at the black rascal holding
that murderous villain down. I hereby crown you queen of love and
beauty of the tournament this modern Ashby-de-la Zouche of Ivanhoe.
"Viola The Queen of Love and Beauty accepts the glorious crown
placed upon her unworthy head by thy glorious hand, Sir Knight of
Rokeby, whose headdress (a football cap of Rugby days) suggests
the Oriental pomp of the dauntless but ruthless Sir Brian de Bois
Guilbert, and whose character that of the stainless Wilfred of Ivanhoe."
After that Chaloner, or Stutfield, simply cannot resist having
another go with the bloodthirsty Bullard, and with the assistance of
the heavy Numidian cavalry the villain is shot.
Don't Be Alarmed. He Isn't Hurt.
"Viola My God. Hugh are you hurt, darling?
"Stutfield No, darling.
"(Bosco lets Bullard softly down on his back.)
"Bosco He dade.
".Stutfield (Gravely.) Yes, Bosco. He dade."
(Curtain.)
After two more acts, which show how Stutfield is incarcerated
in Fairdale asylum by persons who wish to get his money and how
he escapes by overpowering the keeper, Pat Sligo, and binding him
with ingenious devices, he leans over Pat and says:
"Ta, ta, Pat, I'll meet you in a better world where the lunacy
laws presumably are more legal and equitable than in New York at
present. So long, Pat. Be good to yourself. (With great delibera
tion and pausing between each word) Who's Looney Now?"
With which stinging remark he goes out of the play and leaves
Pat flat.
But to make the book really worth fifty cents Chaloner throws
in a lot of other things, including "The Hazard of the Die," of which
he thinks so well that he prefaces it by the following prologue:
His Marlovian Line.
"The grand Marlovian line is surely mine
'Tis Marlowe's heir we are more than Shakespeare's.
But Shakespeare's psychology is mine my mine!
For the rest we're Marlowe, plus our riper years.
238
Thus th' English drama's incarnate in me;
Of its two prophets we the mantle wear.
Shakespeare's knowledge of man therein you see,
Whilst Marlowe's thunder fills the ambient air.
With Marlowe's passion doth fill up our cup;
Of his heroic mould our heroes be,
While passion's cup our heroines fill up
The truth of this the d dest fool may see.
'Deep calleth unto deep' within our plays,
And Marlowe's lightning on Shakespeare's moonlight plays."
After which one simply can't help reading the play, only to meet
at the end the lines:
"Fair reader, this grim play scarce but begins
A chain of plays that equals Shakespeare's length.
In saying this think not the chorus sins
We know our productivity and strength."
And lest there be any misunderstanding as to the worth of
Shakespeare in making comparisons, Mr. Chaloner reproduces a part
of an essay by George Saintsbury to show that the bard was once
considered a regular writer.
New York Call, June 29, 1915.
"WHO'S LOONEY NOW?" WRITES A NEW PLAY.
John Armstrong Chaloner Is Author of the Great Drama hi
Three Acts, Three Scenes, Etc.
Every once in a while John Armstrong Chaloner, author of
that merry little quip "Who's Looney Now?" retires into his inner
consciousness and after long lucubration brings forth another book
about John Armstrong Chaloner. Since his escape from "Bloom-
ingdale" Asylum in 1900 to his home in Virginia, where he is legally
sane, Chaloner has been exposing the lunacy laws, and his latest
vehicle of expression, which comes hot off the press, is called "Robbery
Under Law, or the Battle of the Millionaires."
Although Chaloner modestly takes unto himself the robes of
Shakespeare and Marlowe he was known, until the publication of
this latest collection of blank and other verse, melodrama and press
notices, as the brother of Sheriff Bob Chanler. of New York, who on
his separation from Lina Cavalieri received a telegram from brother
John asking "Who's Looney Now?" Mr. Chaloner is proud of that
line; he puts it on the title page and uses it as a climax of his
triumph over Pat Sligo, the asylum keeper.
239
Chaloner Is Hero of His Play.
But, of course. Chaloner is the hero of his play in. three acts and
three scenes, with a prologue and epilogue. His adventures, "The
stirring cycle of events which for the past eighteen years have been,
whirling around the head of 'Who's Looney Now?' " centre about the
manly form of Hugh Stutfield. of Rokeby, Albemarle 'County, Va.,
"millionaire art patron and law writer." There are two other mil
lionaires in the play who try to get Stutfield's money, and so put him
in the Fairdale asylum, and a man worth half a million. Mr. Chaloner
says that it is a psychological play, he having been called a medium
and of psychic temperament by the late Prof. William James.
But the psychology is not so startling as the action, to which
Bosco, the man servant of Stutfield, his "heavy Numidian cavalry, to
use a bold metaphor," contributes strangle holds and half Nelsons.
It begins with a killing. Stutfield, in love with Viola, who is beautiful
but cold, is visited by her. She brings a poor woman who is beaten
every day by her husband with a poker, because the poker won't bend,
and Stutfield is about to get a divorce for her, when the husband
comes in and lays out the chivalric squire with a poker. Enter Bosco.
Bosco's Noble Deed.,
"With that Bosco crouches like a tiger and springs upon Bullard
from behind, bringing Bullard down flat on his back under him. By
this time Stutfield has come to, and rises to his feet.
Viola (in a low tone)i Are you hurt, my darling?
Stutfield (in the same low voice) No, my dearest darling, not
a bit. You precious child! It took the threat of death of my death
to melt your frozen bosom. Do you love me?
Viola Yes, my hero, I do.
Stutfield Thank God. then, for those two blows! You saved the
day, though, dearie. As I went off into my two sleeps your sweet bell-
like voice was ringing in my ears like a silver trumpet call, sounding
the charge. And, by Gad, my black Bosco heard your bugle and "made
good." Look at the black rascal holding that murderous villain down.
I hereby crown you Queen of Love and Beauty of the tournament
this modern Ashby de la Zouche of Ivanhoe.
Viola The Queen of Love and Beauty accepts the glorious crown
placed upon her unworthy head by thy glorious hand, Sir Knight of
Rokeby. Whose headdress (a football cap of Rugby days) suggests
the Oriental pomp of the dauntless, but ruthless, Sir Brian de Bois
Gilbert, and whose character that of the stainless Wilfred of Ivanhoe."
'Snuff!
240
New York Mail, June 28, 1915.
J. A. CHALONER WRITES BOOK IN SANITY CRU8ADK.
Author of Phrase "Who's Looney Now?" Will Also Lecture to
Prove Laws Are Wrong.
John Armstrong Chaloner, made famous by the query, "Who's
Looney Now?" has started a crusade to prove the sanity laws of
the majority of the States are all wrong.
In a book which appeared on the stands to-day he is putting
forth, admittedly founded on his own experience, his commitment to
"Bloomingdale," his escape and his finding of a refuge in Virginia,
whose courts dec'ared him sane.
Chaloner sets forth in a prologue he has "sacrificed the last
eighteen years of his life" in the cause of lunacy reform. His play
is entitled: "Robbery Under Law, or The Battle of the Millionaires."
Another play, "The Hazard of the Die," is also included in the
volume, which contains numerous clippings from newspapers dealing
with his own case.
His purpose, he isays, is "to put before the public the deadly
disease eating the fiber of our body politic in vicious lunacy legis
lation obtaining in 40 per cent, of the States of the United States as
'damaged goods' put before the public the deadly disease eating the
flesh of alas! but too many of the peoples of the earth."
New York Telegram, June 28, 1915.
"WHO'S LOONEY?" BARES BLOT ON OUR ESCUTCHEON.
John Armstrong Chaloner Before the Footlights With
Scathing Attock on the Law.
REINCARNATED NAPOLEON HAS WRITTEN BOOK
ABOUT IT.
John Armstrong Chaloner, author of "Who's Looney Now?" has
a brand new crusade.
He has set out "to put before the public the deadly disease eating
the fibre of our body politic in vicious lunacy legislation obtaining
in forty per cent, of the States of the United States, as 'Damaged
Goods' put before the public the deadly disease, eating the flesh of
alas! but too many of the peoples of the earth."
To that end he has written a new play entitled "Robbery Under
Law; or, The Battle of the Millionaires," and is offering it to the
241
public in book form. It made its appearance on the book stands
here to-day fresh from the press.
The work, which embraces besides the play, numerous newspaper
clippings, dealing with his now famous case, another play called
"The Hazard of the Die," and some new essays into the field of
poetry, covers 244 pages, set off with a frontispiece portrait of the
author made up as Napoleon.
He Means Business, All Right.
Most of the clippings refer to Chaloner's incarceration in the
"Bloomingdale" Asylum in this State and the actions of the New
York and Virginia courts which respectively held him insane and
sane. In the prologue Chaloner declares that he has "sacrificed the
last eighteen years of my life" to propaganda toward the cause of
lunacy reform. His schemes for furthering the propaganda are an
nounced in the following paragraphs culled from the book:
" 'Who's Looney Now?' proposes to address the audiences after
the fall of the curtain in 'Robbery Under Law' for ten minutes pre
cisely; and put before them in each city he plays in all through
the United States, the black and foul stigma now staining the fair
name of law, justice and liberty in these United States in the name
of the Lunacy Law. Furthermore, each Sunday afternoon 'Who's
Looney Now?' will hire the largest hall each city contains and for
two hours hold forth on the interesting topic of criminal lunacy
legislation now masquerading under the name of law in forty per
cent, of the States of the Union. * * * 'Who's Looney Now?' opines
he will draw a large crowd.'
Founded on Own Ups and Downs.
The play, which is admittedly founded on Chaloner's ups and
downs since he was committed to the asylum, is summarized as
follows:
Hugh Stutfield, of Virginia and New York, wealthy art patron
and writer on law, has an enemy in James Lawless, also wealthy,
who conspires with his relatives to get him out of the way. Hugh
and Lawless are rivals for the hand of Viola Cariston, and fearing;
that he has little chance of winning her from the Virginian, Lawless
determines to resort to any means rather than lose her. Constantia
and Winston Blettermole, cousins of Hugh's, are bitterly jealous of
him, and as they are the next heirs to his millions, if he does not
marry, they listen readily to the criminal suggestions of Lawless and
his lawyer, Spink.
Although Hugh has a certain clairvoyant sense which warns him
of trouble, they manage to have him shut up in an asylum, as a*
dangerous lunatic. From this place he eventually makes his escape,
and by wit and courage gets the better of his persecutors.
Mr. Chaloner declares in his introduction that the first act of
the play, in which the shooting and death of one of the characters
242
occur, is taken "bodily character and action from life." Act II.
Is described as a "thinly disguised statement of cold, hard facts, bar
only the love motive, which is entirely imaginary." He adds: "The
only main differences being that the fight with the "Bloomingdale"
keeper took place in my cell at "Bloomingdale," instead of in the
wood at "Bloomingdale"; and, also, that I escaped from "Blooming-
dale" by flight, unaided by support from outside that Institution
outside the Insane asylum as in the play."
In his fight to prove his sanity before the Virginia court which
ultimately decided he was sane, Chaloner deposed that he had dis
covered a new application of animal magnetism and that his facial
lineaments had changed in recent years so as to resemble portraits
of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Chaloner's last court fight here took place last year when he
made an unsuccessful effort in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals
to recover possession of his $1,500,000 estate from Thomas T. Sher
man, who was appointed committee of his person when he was com
mitted to the asylum.
New York Telegram, June 29, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner now blooms as the Napoleon of a new
reform. A St. Helena for a lot of reformers is something, very much
needed.
New York American, June 29, 1915.
\M1UK RIVES FIGURES IN CHALONER'S BOOK.
John Armstrong Chaloner, whose long fight to prove his sanity
made him famous, has issued a book made up in part of a three-act
play, "Robbery Under Law; or, The Battle of the Millionaires." He
includes a chapter, "Isis Unveiled," explaining why, he says, Amelie
Rives, now the Princess Troubetzkoy, is still paid $3,600 from his
income.
'The allowance of $3,600 to Princess Troubetzkoy, is not alimony,
but a continuance, after her remarriage, of an allowance made said
Princess before her divorce was even mentioned. It is merely the
friendly interest of an art patron in the future career of a writer and
artist, with whom the said art patron had quarrelled, largely because
she refused to cultivate her great talent as a portrait painter."
243
New York World, July 4, 1915.
CHALONER MAKES HIMSELF THE HERO OF HIS OWN PLAY
" Robbery Under Law," He Says, Is an Epitome of His Fight
Against Lunacy Proceedings.
MUCH OF THE DIALOGUE AND SOME INCIDENTS REAL
One Scene Reproduces a Tragedy in Which Ohaloner Was
One of the Actors.
John Armstrong Chaloner has written a play entitled "Robbery
Under Law" to illustrate, as he says, the mischief of lunacy proceed
ings in New York State. When he finished the play last fall he sent
it through friends to a reader for a city theatrical manager. It
was rejected by the reader, who criticized it as "far-fetched and
sensational in plot, the behaviour of the characters being highly
unconvincing under all circumstances." Mr. Chaloner says the rejec
tion is a prime literary asset to him, as practically all the characters
in the play and all the scenes are from life, relating his own experi
ences under the lunacy law. So he has published the play in book
form, together with other of his writings.
The Virginia Tragedy.
In the dramatization Mr. Chaloner poses as chief character, with
the name of Hugh Stutfield of Rokeby, Albemarle County, Va., and
New York, millionaire art patron and law writer. James Lawless
of New York, rejected suitor of Viola Cariston, who loves Stutfield;
Winston Blettermole, cousin and heir-at-law of Stutfield; Belisarius
P. .Splnk, a learned and unscrupulous New York lawyer, and Albert
Wedge, an inventor, are the other important characters in the play.
Viola and the love romance woven about her are dramatic inven
tions; but, Mr. Chaloner says, the other characters correctly portray
relatives and others who had him placed in "Bloomingdale" Asylum,
from which he escaped after he had been kept there nearly four years,
and that many of the utterances in the play were made by actual
persons in the proceedings against him.
The play opens at Rokeby, Stutfield's Virginia Place, where iStut-
field is visited by Viola, accompanied by Mrs. Bullard and her little
daughter, wife and child of an English machinist. Bullard had beaten
his wife until she had resolved to obtain a divorce from him and
Viola had taken her to Rokeby to consult Stutfield as a lawyer.
While they are talking, Bullard enters. He attacks his wife with
a pair of tongs. Stutfield springs to her relief and, after a prolonged
encounter, a pistol for which Stutfield and Bullard have been strug
gling, is discharged, killing Bullard. This act is said to reproduce
244
substantially an occurrence in which John Gillard, an English wife-
beater, was killed by a pistol in the hands of Gillard and Chaloner,
while Chaloner was, in good faith, according to actual verdict of a
coroner's jury, trying to prevent Gillard from shooting Mrs. Gillard.
The Lunacy Plot
Act II. brings together Lawless, Blettermole and wife, and Lawyer
Spink in the Cariston home, where Spink unfolds a plan by which
Stutfield may be declared insane and commtted to an asylum and
his fortune of $5,000,000 divided among his relatives. It is arranged
that Blettermole, as nearest blood relative, and Lawless, as "best
friend," shall apply to the court to commit Stutfield to an asylum as
a dangerous lunatic, a maniac with suicidal and homicidal tendencies.
Stutfleld's psychological studies and manifestations in subconscious or
trance utterances were to be points against him, and the killing of
Bullard a supporting incident.
With the departure of the conspirators from Cariston's, Stutfield
arrives there. He talks with Viola of having awakened that morning
with a subconscious depression of spirits, which warned him of
trouble for himself within the next twenty-four hours. Lest it may
affect him financially, he has brought with him in his saddle-bags
$2,250,000, the proceeds of an investment in a needle-threading inven
tion of Wedge's five years previously. This money he wishes Viola
to put away for him in her safe. As no one will know of the deposit
except the two lovers, Stutfield wants it in the safe in order that no
court may reach it. Stutfield has a low opinion of the Bench, which
he explains at length. Viola puts the money in the safe. Chaloner
says this act is the thinly disguised statement of cold, hard facts,
barring the imaginary love motive.
In a New York Hotel.
Act II. opens with Stutfield in the Hotel Kensington, New York,
where he is visited by two doctors, who profess interest in his powers
as a medium. He g,oes into a supposed trance for their benefit, in
which he denounces both of them as rogues and hirelings. The
doctors summon three manhandlers to seize Stutfield as a lunatic.
Stutfield drives out the entire party at the point of a pistol and says
he will discuss the matter the next afternoon. This scene, Chaloner
says, is almost verbatim and actually from life.
The next scene, declared to be practically from life, Is three
months later, in Stutfield's cell, "Fairdale" asylum. He is writing a
letter to Viola, which he intendes to intrust for delivery to the in
ventor Wedge, whose allowance from Stutfield on account of the
needle-threading invention is running low and in danger of stopping,
and who has been admitted frequently to the asylum to call on Stut- ,
field, because the asylum authorities look upon him as a safe visitor,
being only an inventor, "without much good sense."
245
This letter lays out a plan of escape. Viola is to tell her father
of their engagement and of the money in the safe. Capt. Cariston,
the father, is to have access to that money to pay $2,500 to Wedge;
$2,500 each to three ex-Confederate veterans not too old to shoot
straight, with promise of as much more the day they land Stutfleld
safely in Virginia; $1,250 to the owner of any Norfolk ocean-going
tug, that sum to be doubled when he lands Stutfield on the Virginia
coast; $2,500 for a Connecticut farmer, a friend of Wedge, to transport
any four men, behind a pair of speedy horses, from the "Fairdale"
wall to the Sound, within thirty minutes. There the party will take
the ocean-going tug and head for Virginia.
The Escape.
When all is ready Wedge is to call at the asylum, bringing with
him a "quietus" in the form of a steel harness, which will handcuff,
foot-bind, gag, blindfold and ear-muffle its wearer; also a chain and
padlocks. The apparatus is intended for Pat Sligo, Stutfleld's guard,
with whom Stutfield intends to pick a quarrel in the asylum woods.
He has figured out how he can choke Sligo into insensibility and
then bind and lock him so that Sligo can give no alarm, see nothing,
hear no approaching or departing footsteps and cannot be unharnessed
except by long filing.
This plan is carried out in the play and works perfectly. Chal-
oner says it is "practically" the way he escaped from a real asylum,
the main difference being that the fig;ht with the keeper took place
in the cell, not in the woods, and that the escape from the asylum
grounds was made without help from outside.
New York Times. June 25, 1915.
FALLACIES OF THE ALIENIST IN COURT
Errors of His Expert Opinion in Contrast With the Judgment
of Average Common Sense A Remedy Proposed.
New York, June 23, 1915.
To the Editor of the New York Times:
We cannot but regard with extreme disfavor and denounce with
a feeling of the outraged decency of our profession the part too
frequently acted by professional alienists when called upon to decide
in law courts the legal competency of individuals. Upon the expressed
opinion of these insanity experts hang often the issues of life and
death, vast property interests, or the freedom or incarceration of men
and women. Need I mention that frequently, for some considerable
length of time, the testimony given by prominent alienists in the
courts of this city has been of such a character as to bring discredit
246
not only upon themselves but upon the profession to which they
belong?
Another instance where a man of world-wide reputation as skilled
in the treatment and diagnosis of insanity, displaying a facile weak
ness, sets also in a strong light the untrustworthiness of much of the
testimony given by alienists. A number of years ago this noted New
York physician was called upon to examine a young man who had
killed another with an axe in a rural district up the State. It appears
that the one who had committed the murderous assault was subject
to epileptic fits, and the physician, after an examination, gave as his
expert opinion that the wielder of the axe was a psychic epileptic, and
as such not responsible for his actions. Soon after giving this opinion
the doctor was closeted for some length of time with the prosecuting
attorney on the case, with the result that on the following morning
he requested of the court the privilege of revising his testimony, which
was granted. He then changed it so that it would appear as if the
act was deliberate, the perpetrator hesitating, with the axe uplifted,
before he struck the fatal blow.
Recently an object lesson in a disputed insanity case was pre
sented to the public of New York City, when John Armstrong Chaloner
took the initial steps toward having himself declared legally sane in
the State of New York. For some time past Mr. Chaloner had held
the disagreeably anomalous position of being legally insane in the
State of New York, while declared legally sane in Virginia. This
irregularity, the result of divergent opinions expressed by alienists
simply gives additional emphasis to a suspicion very generally enter
tained by the laity, that such expert opinions are worthy^ of no con
sideration whatever. In the instance just mentioned great money
interests were involved which doubtless made it peculiarly interesting
to others as well as insanity experts.
So I might go on, almost interminably, citing case after case,
equally flagrant, not limited to the city or State of New York, but
co-extensive with the entire country. Surely there must be some
remedy for a crying evil which has not only resulted in numerous
acts of injustice being done, but has also brought contempt upon a
noble profession. Dr. Samuel W. Smith, formerly New York State
Commissioner in Lunacy.
Brooklyn, N. Y. Times, June 29, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner, who escaped from Bloomingdale sev
eral years ago, has written a book to show that the insanity laws in
this country are all wrong. Harry Kendall Thaw is of the same
opinion.
247
New York Evening Sun, June 29, 1915.
THE SUN DIAL.
John Armstrong Chaloner has published another volume proving
he is sane. We would rather take the contention for granted than go
into the book, but we suppose it contains a chart showing the Union
marked off into black or white States, indicating where the cause has
triumphed and where the light has not yet shone.
Boston, Mass., Daily Globe, June 30, 1915.
i
John Armstrong Chaloner has published a play "in order to serve
as a sort of propaganda toward the cause of lunacy reforms, to which
the writer has sacrificed the last 18 years of his life, come March 13,
1915." It is called "Robbery Under Law," and if it's as good as his
"Who's Looney Now?" telegram, written to his brother, "Sheriff Bob"
Chanler, when the latter's marital experiences with Mile. Cavalieri
became known, there should be many appreciative readers.
Meriden, Conn., Journal March 17, 1909.
WAS SHOT DEAD.t
Virginia Husband Who Was Beating Wife.
BATTLE WITH CHALONER.
Amelie Rives' Divorced Husband Took Woman's Part.
Charlottesville, Va., March 17. In a desperate struggle for the
possession of a revolver between John Armstrong Chaloner, once
Chanler, of the influential New York family, and John Gillard, a
tAbove is one of a mass of notices relative to the Gillard affair,
which "Who's Looney Now?" ran across at haphazard recently. It is
added as a graphic account of the said affair the stock Associated
Press story that was sent out at the time by their representative in
Charlottesville, Albemarle county, Va. There are several glaring errors
therein. The two most marked being that (a) Gillard was drunk; (b)
that Gillard was pinioned on the floor by three men, and that "Who's
Looney Now?" "begged Gillard to desist" from murdering his (Gil-
lard's) wife, (a) Gillard was a total abstainer, did not drink, smoke
nor use tobacco in any form, (b) The battle occurred precisely as
described in Act I, Scene I in Robbery Under Law, except that Mr.
Ernie Money not the negro servant not "Bosco" as in the play
was the man who sprang upon and threw Gillard when "Who's Looney
Now?" was temporarily hors de combat.
248
powerful Englishman, at the Chaloner home near here Monday night,
Gillard was killed by a shot from the weapon.
Chaloner had entered his dining room to find Gillard beating Mrs.
Gillard with a pair of tongs. The woman's assailant was raining
savage blows on her head, and would have had her life within a
moment or two.
A coroner's jury of substantial farmers wholly absolved Chaloner
yesterday from all blame in the tragedy. The people of this section
are unanimous in praising Chaloner for his courage in unhesitatingly
entering an unequal combat to protect a woman, mother of seven chil
dren, and poor to destitution. The big family of children witnessed
the death of their father.
The tragedy adds one more dramatic episode to Chaloner's stranyc
career, in which is blended with it romance, love, madness, intense
hatred of kinsmen, and a probably unparalleled battle in the courts
of several States for a legal decree restoring to him the rights of a
sane person. The romance had its ending in a divorce by Amelie
Rives, the novelist, now living in New York, and wife of Prince Pierre
Troubetzkoy, Russian artist, because of incompatibility of temper.
Chaloner was never under even technical arrest for his part in
the death of Gillard. The man, given to drink and violence toward
his family, has been a pensioner of Chaloner, because of pity for the
wife and helpless children. Only recently his benefactor had notified
him that he would be given a mule, in order that he might earn more
for his family.
"Merry Mills," Chaloner's Albemarle county estate, is just beyond
Cobham, near here. Gillard's home is near Campbells, two miles
distant from the Chaloner house. He came to this country from Aus
tralia two years ago; lived a short time at Richmond, moving thence
to his late home.
It was notorious in the community that he habitually maltreated
his wife and children. Mrs. Gillard had appealed several times to
Chaloner, who had talked with her husband about his drinking and
his evil nature. ,
The master of "Merry Mills" was entertaining a guest, Ernie G.
Money, when Mrs. Gillard and her children, the oldest a boy of four
teen, were admitted to the dining room by a servant. They were
announced, but Chaloner lingered a while upstairs with his guest.
Meanwhile Gillard, in pursuit of his wife, forced his way into the
house and into the dining room.
Wild with drink and rage, he seized a pair of heavy tongs and
began beating his wife over the head. Alarmed by the screams of the
woman, her children and the servants, Chaloner and Money ran down
to the dining room.
Gillard was holding his wife by the hair, meanwhile striking her
again and again. The woman was covered with blood. Chaloner, his
guest, and a colored man servant grasped the madman, while Chaloner
249
begged him to desist in his murderous attack. Gillard, powerful and
frenzied, fought so desperately that the three men were all but ex
hausted and were hardly able to hold him.
They finally pressed him to the floor, his arms and legs pinioned
by their hands. The colored servant was sent for a rope with which
to bind him. Chaloner had brought down a revolver, and as Money
held the winded giant he stood by with the revolver, hoping to intimi
date him.
Before the servant could return, Gillard broke from Money, sprang
upon Chaloner and grasped the revolver. Intent upon murdering his
wife, he tried to bring the weapon in line to fire it at the terrorized
woman. As Chaloner and the maniac struggled for possession of the
revolver, it discharged. Gillard fell dead, shot through the heart.
No one, not even Chaloner, appears to know who pressed the
trigger, so fierce and close was the struggle, but Mrs. Gillard says she
is quite sure that her husband sent the missile through his own heart.
The condition of the dining room which, with the body, was left
until yesterday just as it was when death ended the battle, in order
that the authorities might see it, fully corroborated the testimony of
the witnesses. The furniture was turned topsy turvy and was broken;
the big tongs, bent from the blows, were covered with blood and
matted hair. The woman's hat, parts of her clothing and her hair
pins were scattered all about.
Immediately after Gillard met death, Quintus L. Williams, magis
trate, was summoned, as was the coroner. The inquest was held yes
terday, Mrs. Gillard and her oldest son testifying for Chaloner. The
woman showed many wounds from the murderous beating.
She testified that she had been badly beaten on the preceding Satur
day and Sunday, and that her husband had declared he would kill her.
He became violent again and, taking her brood with her, she had fled
to "Merry Mills" to ask Mr. Chaloner's protection. 'She asserted that
Mr. Chaloner and the others had tried to pacify her husband, had
tried to avoid injuring him and had told him that they merely in
tended handing him over to the officers of the law. The boy corrobo
rated his mother.
Magistrate Williams had declared at the outset that Chaloner had
merely done that which any brave and humane man would have done,
and his statement was justified by the jury of farmers which brought
in a verdict of accidental death, exonerating Chaloner, Money and the
servant.
New York Staats Zeitung, June 29, 1915.
A REVEALING BOOK ABOUT CHALONER.
John Armstrong Chaloner, the originator of the great question
"Who's Looney Now?" depicts in a book now to be obtained on the
news stands, his experiences, his assignment to "Bloomingdale," his
250
flight and his rehabilitation in the State of Virginia. He is anxious
to spread abroad the information that the Lunacy Laws in the State
are full of flaws and pernicious.
The Globe, New York, July 1, 1915.
THAW, FREE ON $35,000 BAIL, LEAVES NEW YORK
HENDRICK ASSAILS ALIENIST WITNESS
In Confirming Verdict of Jury, Justice Declares Testimony by
Doctor (Austin Flint, Senior) Who Helped Prepare Case
Is Evil Which Should Be Cured.
Harry K. Thaw was to-day declared sane by Justice Hendrick and
freed from custody in $35,000 bail pending appeal from the justice's
decision by the attorney general.
Thaw's bond was signed shortly before 1 o'clock and he Immedi
ately started for Pennsylvania in an automobile.
Justice Hendrick's Opinion.
Justice Hendrick said he based his decision that Thaw was sane
on his own judgment, fortified by the advice of a very intelligent jury.
"We have had men here from New Hampshire, not alienists, but men
of large experience, who know the difference between a sane and an
insane man. We have had women here of undoubted high repute who
also testified that this man is sane," said Justice Hendrick in his
decision. The testimony of these people impressed me very much.
"We have been told by one alienist that it was impossible for a
layman to determine whether or not a man has paranoia; that only an
alienist could determine that.
"I want to say here a word about alienists in our courts that it
is fast becoming a scandal. If this court and jury are to depend upon
the opinion of alienists who have made it their business for years
for pay to render what they term expert testimony I want to say that
opinion to me has no value.
An Evil To Be Cured.
"The idea that a doctor of repute should interview witnesses and
publish his opinion in the public prints and help in the preparation
of a case and then go on the witness stand is a state of affairs that
must be remedied.
"If the medical profession does not cure this evil I hope the legis
lature soon will.
"I have adopted the vedict of the jury, and it is the opinion of
this court that Harry K. Thaw is sane."
251
New York City Call, July 21, 1915.
THAW "SANE ALL OVER," SAYS ATTORNEY GENERAL.
Harry K. Thaw at the present time is "sane all over," geographi
cally speaking, it was said at the Attorney General's offices at 299
Broadway, yesterday, when an opinion was requested as to Thaw's
present legal status.
"As matters now stand," Deputy Attorney General Edgar A.
Bromberger said, in answer to a question, "Thaw has the privilege,
for instance, of bringing a suit for divorce from Evelyn Nesbit in
Pittsburg."
"Is he at liberty to come back here and sue for divorce in New
York State?"
"I suppose so," answered Mr. Bromberger.
"What procedure is necessary here," Mr. Bromberger was asked
further, "in order to have Thaw placed in the same legal position in
which John Armstrong Chaloner stands insane in this State and sane
outside of New York?"
"The only way that could be brought about," Mr. Bromberger
answered, "would be an Appellate Court reversal of Justice Hendrick's
recent decision declaring Thaw sane. In other words, if the appeal
which the Attorney General has taken is sustained by the higher court,
then Harry Thaw will be legally insane in New York State. There is
no other way of having; him declared legally insane in this State."
New York Evening Sun, July 19, 1915.
STATE PLANS TO KEEP THAW OUT LIKE OHALONER.
Reversal of Hendrick Ruling Would Make Pittsburgher " Insane "
in New York.
WOULD FORFEIT BAIL AND BE A FUGITIVE.
Hendrick Won't Comment on Foreman's Remarks Jurors
At Odds With Robinson.
New York State will fight to put Harry K. Thaw in the same
status in regard to his sanity as that of John Armstrong Chaloner,
author of the famous quip "Who's Looney Now?" Chaloner is "sane"
in Virginia, but "insane" in this State.
To attain this result the State legal department will strain every
point to obtain a reversal of Justice Hendrick's findings declaring
Thaw sane.
252
Hendrick Is Non-Committal.
Justice Hendrick when asked this afternoon what action might be
taken by the courts in view of the remarks of Foreman Robinson, put
the affair squarely up to Attorney General Woodbury.
"I cannot discuss any phase of this case," he said, "except to say
that I will consider any move that comes before me. I could not pos
sibly discuss now any action I might take. If the Attorney General
wishes to take some action he must decide for himself what it is to be.
The matter rests with him."
Justice Hendrick said he had read the account of Foreman Robin
son's remarks and added:
"I do not care to say what I think of them."
"Would you say it was indiscreet of the juror to follow Thaw to
Atlantic City and register at the same hotel before making remarks
that show he disobeyed your instructions?"
"If others think it was indiscreet" said the Justice, "that is their
opinion. I do not care to discuss it."
Case In The Discard.
When asked if he cared to say how much he had been influenced
in his decision by the jury the Justice said:
"There is my decision. I do not care to add to it. I have seen
that Mr. Stanchfield said when asked about the case that it is now
in the discard. If I knew the legal term for 'in the discard' that
would about express my attitude. I am anxious to be through with
the case. I want to get away to my country place as soon as possible."
The Justice refused to make any comment as to how serious he
regarded the violation of his instructions as revealed by Robinson.
He said any action he might take in holding a juror accountable for
violated instructions in the Thaw case would not deviate from the
usual action in any case.
Deputy Attorney General Edgar A. Bromberger said this morning:
"In any event Thaw cannot be extradited even if the appeal goes
against him. If he refused to return his bail would be forfeited."
If Thaw refused to return to New York in case the appeal were
decided against him he would find himself in the same position as
John Armstrong Chaloner sane in one locality and insane in another.
Maynard Miller, fur-dealer, 148 West 24th Street, said this morning
to a reporter for the Evening Sun:
"Now, after the verdict was reached we discussed the murder, not,
however in connection with the verdict we were expected to render.
WE DECIDED THAT THAW WAS JUSTIFIED IN KILLING STAN
FORD WHITE.
I should add that the thing that Influenced us most next to the
obvious fact of Thaw's sane behavior while in New Hampshire, was
the testimony of the State's alienists. DR. FLINT'S TESTIMONY
WE REGARDED AS ABSURD AND SELF-CONTRADICTORY. THE
253
STATE'S OWN ALIENISTS DISAGREED AS TO WHAT FORM OF
INSANITY THAW MIGHT BE SUFFERING FROM. DR. FLINT DE
CLARED HE WAS INSANE FROM CONSTITUTIONAL INFERI
ORITY AND THAT THIS TROUBLE IS NOT RECOVERABLE. THEN
IT WAS SHOWN THAT NINE SUCH CASES OUT OF TEN HAVE
RECOVERED."
"Justice Hendrick was wise in. agreeing with the advisory jury
that Thaw is sane now, whether he may have been in former years. I
agree with him also in his scathing rebuke of the alienists, who are
willing to change their medical opinions according to their fees. An
impartial spectator of the scenes in court would have concluded that
the lawyers were insane, not Thaw. The talk of the Attorney General
about taking an appeal which put Thaw under bail, instead of giving
him full freedom was clearly an evidence of insanity, and POOR
OLD AUSTIN FLINT, WHO COMMITTED PROFESSIONAL SUICIDE
IN THE WITNESS BOX, should have thus defined it on the usual
terms. The Thaw case has been a scandal and disgrace for many
years, maintained solely to give a livelihood to certain lawyers. When
he was acquitted of murder on the ground of temporary insanity this
ought to have ended the case and would have ended it had Thaw
been a poor man. But the Thaw millions were too tempting to legal
vultures, who fattened upon him until Counselor Stanchfield stopped
their game. I do not believe that any friend of Stanford White ever
instigated the continuous persecution of Thaw, who had only obeyed
the unwritten law in a quarrel over a shameless hussy, who mis
chievously stirred up trouble between the two men, going from one to
the other as suited her purposes. She supplied the lawyers with
material to harass Thaw, and she has done much mischief and cost
the State and Mrs. Thaw much money. At the last she had the grace
to fall ill and refuse to testify against her husband, and she asks to
be let alone to earn a living on the stage and she should be let alone
severely. If the daily papers will let Thaw alone also, he will have
a much better chance to redeem himself by going into business and
leading a normal life. There is no moral in the story which has
been told a thousand times as the eternal triangle except that we
should have one court brave enough to choke off the legal and alienistic
jackals that misuse the law to prey upon their victims."
Exchange, July 22, 1915.
254
The News-Leader, Richmond, Va., Saturday, July 17, 1915.
OHALONER WRITES ON VERDICT I3V THAW CASE
Lord of Merry Mills Says It is Epochal and Just.
At the request of The News Leader, John Armstrong Chaloner,
who is legally insane in New York and sane in Virginia, to-day gave
his views of the verdict which brought about the liberation of Harry
K. Thaw. Chaloner came to Richmond to-day from his home, "The
Merry Mills," Cobham. He characterized the decision in Thaw's case
as "the most epochal announcement ever made by any judge, at any
time, in any lunacy proceedings in any country now on record." He
laid stress on the court's instructions to the Thaw jury to "totally
disregard the preposterously amusing claim" of the chief alienist
opposed to Thaw.
His statement follows:
(By John Armstrong Chaloner.)
This epochal verdict has three bearings. First, regarding, the
verdict itself. Second, regarding the charge of the learned Judge Hen-
drick. Third, regarding the evidence adduced at the trial.
The first shows the intelligence and honesty of the average
American jury. Also, that trial by jury is truly what Sir William
Blackstone termed it in his "Commentaries" namely, "The bulwark
of our constitutional liberties." The second shows that what I, as a
law-writer have maintained since my book, "The Lunacy Law of the
World," first appeared in 1907, finds support in the charge to the jury
of Mr. Justice Hendrick namely, that "the test of sanity is a mental
test wholly within the power of the accused to accomplish and without
any witnesses, professional or lay, to back him up." That all that is
needed is to permit the accused to be present at his own trial as I
was not permitted in my two trials in New York in 1897 and 1899
and testify in his own behalf in rebuttal to the charge of alienists
opposed to him.
Mr. Justice Hendrick's charge to the jury specifically stated and
this was the gist of his admirably learned, and honorable, and unbiased
charge that the jury was to totally disregard the preposterously
amusing claim of Dr. Austin Flint, Sr. the chief alienist opposed to
Thaw, as that celebrated gentleman is also the chief alienist opposed
to me with Dr. Carlos F. MacDonald a close second in both Thaw's
case and my own to disregard the claim, of Dr. Austin Flint, 8r.,
"that the question of Thaw's sanity could only be decided by alienists."
As a law-writer I hail with joy this pronouncement from the bench by
Justice Hendrick; and da not hesitate to say that it is the most
epochal announcement ever made by any judge, at any time, in any
lunacy proceedings in any country now on record. As The News-
Leader has heard, I have sacrificed eighteen years of my life in the
255
cause of lunacy law reform. For I could have obtained both my liberty
and my property so far back as 1899. This is not generally known,
but it is on record in my deposition at Charlottesville in 1911-1912
in Chaloner against Sherman, and my testimony was entirely unshaken
in the gruelling cross-examination supplied me by my redoubtable
adversary in said proceeding^, former Judge R. T. W. Duke, Jr., lead-
Ing counsel, with the late learned lawyer John B. Moon, of Charlottes
ville, in said proceedings.
The testimony I brought out was that a now prominent United
States senator then a congressman visited me in my cell at "Bloom-
ingdale" in the interest of the Chanler family and offered me my
freedom and my property provided I would let the matter drop hush
the matter up in the courts. This I declined to do, and the result is
that I am now in my nineteenth year of my quest of the Holy Grail
in my case the restoration of my property.
Heretofore it has been practically the universal custom in lunacy
proceedings in New York, and some forty per cent, of the States of
the Union, to either try a man in absentia in his absence from the
courtroom as was the case in both my trials in New York or when
present to take the say-so of the hostile alienists, disregarding practi
cally utterly the language and bearing of the accused upon the stand.
The theory being that insanity was so technical a thing that none but
experts could pronounce upon it.
No one, for an instant, can compare insanity technical as that
is with, say, chemistry, for technicality. Take the case of a murder
trial, where the g,ist of the evidence for or against the accused con
sists in the chemical contents of the murdered man's stomach, at the
time of the crime. Whether or not it contained poison and if poison
sufficient to cause death. Chemical formulas are the most technical
things on earth so technical that not one college graduate out of a
thousand can keep them in his head a year after graduation, and yet
the innocence or guilt of the accused, in said murder trial, hangs en
tirely upon chemical formulas, which are given to the jury; and the
jury the majority of which is certainly not college graduates and
therefore utterly unfamiliar with same the jury is called upon to
decide the guilt or innocence of the accused upon such a thing as
"H20," and yet no one was ever heard to maintain that a jury was
incapable of bringing in a verdict of innocent or guilty based entirely
upon their opinion of the chemical formulas brought forward by the
Commonwealth's Attorney and the counsel for the defense.
Nevertheless, in insanity trials the alienists have heretofore
before the enlightened ruling aforesaid of Mr. Justice Hendrick in
the Thaw case been able to throw dust in the eyes of the court, the
jury, and the public, by shouting in unison, "Insanity is too technical
to be decided by any but an expert in insanity." This bugaboo is
forever laid at rest by Justice Hendrick.
The third bearing of said proceedings in the Thaw case proves
the truth of what I have steadily maintained in season and out of
256
season, during my come September next three years' monthly course
of lectures at the Rex theatre here on "Topics of National Import
ance" namely, that the sole and only insane act Thaw was ever
proved guilty of was the shooting of Stanford White; that I have
always maintatined was done in a fit of temporary insanity upon the
part of Thaw. No other insane act has ever been proved agaitist the
Pittsburger. My reason for honestly stating that that act was an in
sane act in Thaw's case is as follows: Thaw was, at that time what
is usually known as a "high-roller." His manner and bearing showed
the effects of his irregular life. He was nervous and quite the reverse
of calm in his manner and bearing before the shooting. In striking
contrast to his usual manner was his bearing when the shooting
occurred. Nothing could have been calmer than his manner immedi
ately preceding, during, and immediately subsequent to that act. Now
calmness is one form of insanity is the outward visible sign of an
insane mind. During the nearly four years of my incarceration at
"Bloomingdale" I had ample opportunity of studying the various forms
of insanity, and nothing could have been calmer than the aspect and
general bearing of a large number of my insane "colleagues" in that
institution. Hence, I infer that Thaw's act aforesaid was the act of
a temporarily insane man since his manner during said act was in
complete and total contradiction to his usual manner before the said
act.
In June, 1917 when my case now pending on appeal before the
United States Supreme Court, will come on for hearing I look forward
supported by the law and the facts in Chaloner against Sherman
to the same happy issue out of my afflictions, which now on the
evidence awaits Thaw.
The News-Leader, Richmond, Va., Monday, August 16, 1915.
CHALONER NOW PUTS HIMSELF IN GEOGRAPHICAL LUNA
TIC CLASS.
Harry K. Thaw, slayer of Stanford White, may be the most famous
lunatic in the world. He has occupied the spotlight for many year?,
but he's a piker when compared with John Armstrong Chaloner, author
of the famous "Who's Looney Now?" telegram.
Mr. Chaloner offers strenuous objection to the desire of the New
York papers to put Thaw in a class with him. The master of "Merry
Mills" claims the field all by himself. He offers The News-Leader in
dubitable proof to back up his contention that his unique position in
the eyes of the law is shared by no other man.
Mr. Chaloner is the only man in the United States, he contends,
so far as the records show, who has been termed a "geographical
257
lunatic" a man whose lunacy depends on State lines a madman in
New York a sane man everywhere else.
The owner of "Merry Mills" still lays claim to the championship
of this class. In this respect Harry K. Thaw is to be regarded as a
"white hope." Mr. Chaloner holds the crown alone and he does not
relish the idea of sharing his laurels with Stanford White's slayer.
A lawyer by profession, his mind active, keen and alert, the fact
that he has been declared insane to the contrary notwithstanding, Mr.
Chaloner has never let up in his attacks on the persons and the meth
ods used to place him in the position he now occupies, and to-day he
gave The News-Leader a further discussion of Justice Hendrick's de
cision in the Thaw case, at the same time challenging Thaw's right to
be placed in a class with himself. Mr. Chaloner gave out the following
information to-day:
"The following clipping has just reached me from my news clipping
bureau, showing that there is a strong desire on the part of certain
New York papers to put Thaw in my class a class which has been
well termed that of the 'geographical lunatic' a man whose lunacy
depends on State lines a madman in New York, a sane man every
where else. I now insert the said clipping:
'New York City Call, July 31, 1915.
"Thaw Sane All Over," Says Attorney General.
"Harry K. Thaw at the present time is 'sane all over,' geographi
cally speaking, it was said at the Attorney General's offices at 299
Broadway yesterday, when an opinion was requested as to Thaw's
present legal status.
" 'As matters now stand,' Deputy Attorney General Edgar A. Brom-
berger said, in answer to a question, 'Thaw has the privilege, for in
stance, of bringing a suit for divorce from Evelyn Nesbit in Pitts
burgh.'
" 'Is he at liberty to come back here and sue for divorce in New
York State?'
" 'I suppose so,' answered Mr. Bromberger.
" 'What procedure is necessary here,' Mr. BTomberger was asked
further, 'in order to have Thaw placed in the same legal position in
which John Armstrong Chaloner stands insane in this State and sane
outside of New York?'
" 'The only way that could be brought about,' Mr. Bromberger
answered, 'would be an appellate court reversal of Justice Hendrick's
recent decision declaring Thaw sane. In other words, if the appeal
which the attorney general has taken is sustained by the higher court,
then Harry Thaw will be legally insane in New York State. There is
no other way of having him declared legally insane in this iState.' "
The above article introduces two things:
First. New matter which has not appeared in any Richmond paper,
258
which I have seen, concerning Justice Hendrick's real reason for de
ciding in favor of Thaw at the recent trial.
Second. It brings to the legal mind the question, "What chance
has the attorney general of New York to win his appeal against the de
cision of Justice Hendrick?"
Referring to point (1). Mr. Justice Hendrick said he based his
decision that Thaw was sane on his own judgment "fortified by the
advice of a very intelligent jury." He then went on to say:
"We have had men here from New Hampshire, not alienists, but
men of large experience, who know the difference between a sane and
an insane mn. We have had women here of undoubted high repute
wJho also testified that this man is sane. The testimony of these
people impressed me very much.
"We have been told by one alienist (Dr. Austin Flint, Sr.,) that it
was impossible for a layman to determine whether or not a man has
paranoia; that only an alienist could determine that.
"I want to say here a word about alienists in our courts that it
is fast becoming a scandal. If this court and jury are to depend upon
the opinion of alienists who have made it their business for years for
pay to render what they term expert testimony, I want to say that
opinion to me has no value.
"The idea that a doctor of repute should interview witnesses and
publish his opinion in the public prints and help in the preparation
of a case and then go on the witness stand is a state of affairs that
must be remedied.
"// the medical profession does not cure this evil, I hope the legis
lature soon will.
"I have adopted the verdict of the jury, and it is the opinion of
this court that Harry K. Thaw is sane."
Taking up now point (2).
"What chance has the Attorney General of New York to win his
appeal against the decision of Justice Hendrick? As a lawyer, I never
was more surprised in my life than when I read that the New York
attorney general had taken an appeal. This appeal is entirely based
on a reporter's statement of what the foreman of the jury told him.
In the first place, the foreman of the jury entirely denies the truth of
the reporter's statement. Also, all the other jurymen who have been
interviewed deny it, so far, at least, as they themselves are concerned.
Herein lies the absurdity of the New York attorney general's
appeal :
To drop into the vernacular "it cuts absolutely no ice" what any
or an of the jury thought, did, or said, in the premises, for, as The
News-Leader well knows, the jury had no real authority in the decsion.
By special arrangement, the decision as to Thaw's sanity or insanity
was left solely and entirely to Mr. Justice Hendrick, with full authority
to override the verdict of the jury whatever that might be.
The jury sat purely and solely in an advisory capacity. So far
259
as I know, as a lawyer, this is the first time it has occurred in the
history of law. In this unique case the facts, as well as the law, were
in the hands of Justice Hendrick to decide as seemed best to him.
If this is so and The News-Leader knows it is so the distin
guished New York attorney general is as we lawyers say left "with
out a leg to stand on."
Justice Hendrick's opinion, which has been cited above gives full,
ample and most learned grounds for him to find as he did, namely, arf
to Thaw's entire and complete sanity since he killed White.
That the jury happened to coincide with Mr. Justice Hendrick s
said opinion, spoke well for the intelligence and perspicacity of the
jury. That was all: it did not give Thaw his liberty. What gave Thaw
his liberty was the conviction of Mr. Justice Hendrick that Thaw is
sane.
In the premises any lawyer would conclude that the appeal of the
New 1 York attorney general must fall to the ground and thereupon,
Thaw will have perfect liberty to go and come to New York as he
chooses and cannot be termed a "geographical lunatic."
The News-Leader, Richmond, Va., July 20, 1915.
EXTRA! EXTRA! CHALONER HAS GONE INTO THE JITNEY
BUSINESS.
Ix>rd of " Merry Mills " and Unremitting Foe of Speeding Autoists
Purchases Car To-day and Enjoys the Joke. His Jitney
Will Run in Albemarle County, Where He
Made "Road Hogs" Live Hard.
John Armstrong Chaloner to-day bought an automobile.
(That ought to be worth a smile.)
The car will be placed in service as a jitney.
(That line's surely worth a laugh.)
Even Chaloner himself, propounder of "Who's Looney Now?" mas
ter of "The Merry Mills," and all that, had to laugh when he told The
Newsreader about it.
It's a considerably better joke than the average when one recalls
that until very lately Chaloner drove armed in a horse-drawn vehicle
over Albemarle county roads determined to hold up at the point of
his sawed-off shotgun any automobilist that was rash enough to try
to crowd him and his horse into the ditch. "Road hogs," was Chalo-
ner's contemptuous designation of auto-owners. One of his favorite
pastimes was neatly planting bullets in the tires of automobiles that
exceeded the speed limit. Speeding, then became a flat failure.
Famous for many reasons, among them that, a millionaire, he is
legally a lunatic in New York and sane in Virginia, Chaloner's violent
260
antipathy to automobiles received wide publicity, and "road hogs"
soon made it a habit to take to the ditch and allow Chaloner the whole
roadway. Chaloner would not ride in an automobile and nearly lost
his life while on his way one night last winter to a theatre in this
city, where he was scheduled to lecture. He was in a horse-drawn
cab and had a narrow squeak from being run down by a large and
swiftly moving automobile.
To-day the sworn enemy of "road-hogs" is the proud owner of a
gas-propelled vehicle. He wasn't exactly bragging about it, being rather
in an explanatory state of mind.
"So, you are turning jitneur?" Chaloner was asked.
The author of "Robbery Under Law," a stirring play in which
Chaloner intends to star himself, touring the country in a tent, ex
plained as follows:
"The car though registered in my name is not for me far from
It. It is merely an act pro bono publico upon my part. Thus: A friend
of mine at Cismont, one and one-half miles from 'The Merry Mills,' is
an expert engineer and can take an automobile to pieces and set it up
again and run it.
"There is a wide demand on the part of the ladies in that section
of Albemarle for an automobile bus line from Cismont to Charlottes-
ville, which will enable them to shop in Charlottesville fourteen miles
off and return, without being bored by having, to drive two miles to
catch a train. So I decided to advance my friend rather more than
half the price of the car, which price is $515, t he paying the balance
from his earnings.
"This is a development of the jitney business of which I highly
approve, and use here in Richmond. I am not interested in the said
bus line financially, beyond a desire to see my money again."
Richmond, Va., Journal, July 7, 1915.
CHALOXER MAKES SELF HERO OF I>URID DRAMA
" Robbery Under La\v," He Says, Is An Epitome of His Fight
Against Lunacy Proceedings Much of the
Dialogue and Some Incidents Real.
The New York World prints the following:
John Armstrong Chaloner has written a play entitled "Robbery
Under Law," to illustrate, as he says, the mischief of lunacy proceed
ings in New York State. When he finished the play last fall he sent
it through friends to a reader for a city theatrical manager. It was
rejected by the reader, who criticised it as "far-fetched and sensational
Ford Touring Car.
261
in plot, the behavior of the characters being highly unconvincing
under all circumstances." Mr. Chaloner says the rejection is a prime
literary asset to him, as practically all the characters in the play and
all the scenes are from life, relating his own experiences under the
lunacy law. So he has published the play in book form, together with
other of his writings.
The Virginia Tragedy.
In the dramatization Mr. Chaloner poses as chief character, with
the name of Hugh Stutfield, of Rokeby, Albemarle county, Va., and New
York, millionaire art patron and law writer. James Lawless, of New
York, rejected suitor of Viola Cariston, who loves Stutfield: Winston
Blettermole, cousin and heir-at-law of Stutfield; Belisarius P. Spink, a
learned and unscrupulous New York lawyer, and Albert Wedge an
inventor, are the other important characters in the play.
Viola and the love romance woven about her are dramatic inven
tions; but, Mr. Chaloner says, the other characters correctly portray
relatives and others who had him placed in Bloomingdale Asylum,
from which he escaped after he had been kept there! nearly four 1
years, and that many of the utterances in the play were) made by
actual persons in the proceedings against him.
The play opens at Rokeby, Stutfield's Virginia Place, where Stut
field is visited by Viola, accompanied by Mrs. Bullard and her little
daughter, wife and child of an English machinist. Bullard had beaten
his wife until she had resolved to obtain a divorce from him and
Viola had taken her to Rokeby to consult Stutfield as a lawyer.
While they are talking, Bullard enters. He attacks his wife with
a pair of tongs. Stutfield springs to her relief and, after a prolonged
encounter, a pistol for which Stutfield and Bullard have been strug
gling is discharged, killing Bullard. This act is said to reproduce
substantially an occurrence in which John 'Gillard, an English wife-
beater, was killed by a pistol in the hands of Gillard and Chaloner
while Chaloner was, in good faith, according to actual verdict of a
coroner's jury, trying to prevent Gillard from shooting Mrs. Gillard.
The Lunacy Plot.
Act II brings together Lawless, Blettermole and wife and Lawyer
Spink in the Cariston home, where Spink unfolds a plan by which
Stutfield may be declared insane and committed to an asylum and
his fortune of $5,000,000 divided among his relatives. It is arranged
that Blettermole, as his nearest blood relative, and Lawless, as "best
friend," shall apply to the court to commit Stutfield to an asylum as
a dangerous lunatic, a maniac with suicidal and homicidal tendencies.
Stutfield's psychological studies and manifestations In subconscious
or trance utterances were to be points against him, and the killing of
Bullard a supporting incident.
With the departure of the conspirators from Cariston's Stutfield
arrives there. He talks with Viola of having awakened that morning
262
with a subconscious depression of spirits, which warned him of trouble
for himself within the next twenty-four hours. Lest it may affect him
financially, he has brought with him in his saddlebags $2,250,000, the
proceeds of an investment in a needle-threading invention of Wedge's
five years previously. This money he wishes Viola to put away for
him in her safe. As no one will know of the deposit except the two
lovers, Stutfield wants it in the safe in order that no court may reach
it. Stutfield has a low opinion of the bench, which he explains at
length. Viola puts the money in the safe. Chaloner says this act is
the thinly disguised statement of cold, hard facts, barring the imagi
nary love motive.
In a New York Hotel.
Act III opens with 'Stutfield in the Hotel Kensington, New York,
where he is visited by two doctors, who profess interest in his powers
aa a medium. He goes into a supposed trance for their benefit, in
which he denounces both of them as rogues and hirelings. The doctors
summon three manhandlers to seize Stutfield as a lunatic. Stutfield
drives out the entire party at the point of a pistol and says he wili
discuss the matter the next afternoon. This scene, Chaloner says, is
almost verbatim and actually from life.
The next scene, declared to be practically from life, is tnree months
later, in Stutfield's cell, "Fairdale" asylum. He is writing a letter to
Viola, which he intends to intrust for delivery to the inventor Wedge,
whose allowance from Stutfield on account of the needle-threading
invention is running low and in danger of stopping, and who has been
admitted frequently to the asylum to call on Stutfield, because the
asylum authorities look upon him as a safe visitor, being only an in
ventor, "without much good sense."
This letter lays out a plan for escape. Viola is to tell her father
of their engagement and of the money in the safe. Captain Cariston,
the father, is to have access to that money to pay $2,500 to Wedge;
$2,500 each to three ex-Confederate veterans, not too old to shoot
straight, with the promise of as much more the day they land Stutfleld
safely in Virginia; $1,250 to the owner of any Norfolk ocean-going
tug, that sum to be doubled when he lands Stutfield on the Virginia
coast; $2,500 for a Connecticut farmer, a friend of Wedge, to transport
any four men, behind a pair of speedy horses, from the "Fairdale"
wall to the Sound, within thirty minutes. There the party will take
the ocean-going tug and head for Virginia.
The Escape.
When all is ready Wedge is to call at the asylum, bringing with
him a "quietous" in the form of a steel harness, which will handcuff,
foot-bind, gag, blindfold and ear-muffle its wearer; also a chain and
padlocks. This apparatus is intended for Pat Sligo, Stutfield's guard,
with whom Stutfield intends to pick a quarrel in the asylum woods.
He has figured out how he can choke Sligo into insensibility and then
263
bind and lock him so that Sligo can give no alarm, see nothing, hear
no approaching or departing footsteps and cannot be unharnessed
except by long filing.
This plan is carried out in the play and work perfectly. Chaloner
says it is "practically" the way he escaped from a real asylum, the
main difference being; that the fight with the keeper took place in the
cell, not in the woods, and that the escape from the asylum grounds
was made without help from outside.
The News-Leader, Richmond, Va., Friday, July 16, 1915.
NOW WE SHALL SEE IF BOOTH HAD ANYTHING ON
CHALONER AS A THESPIAN
Author of "Who's Looney Now?" Writes a Play, in Which He
Will Star Himself It Was Turned Down by a Play
Reader, But That Only Proves That "Truth is
Stranger Than Fiction." Audiences Will
Hear Lectures on Lunacy Laws
as Curtain Speeches.
John Armstrong Chaloner is going on the stage.
He will star in his own play, "Robbery Under Law," enacting the
role of Hugh Stutfield, "millionaire art patron and law writer." Most
of the incidents in the piece have been drawn from Chaloner's own
life, and he is, of course, the hero. Stutfield is the name he gives
himself in the dramatization of his extraordinary experiences.
The author of the amusing quip, "Who's Looney Now?" promises
to take to the "road" with a, good company. Should he find the
theatres closed against him he will follow the illustrious example of
Madame Sarah Bernhardt under similar circumstances and present
"Robbery Under Law" in a tent.
"What kind of a fist can 'Who's Looney Now?' make at acting?
Can he act?" Chaloner himself inquires and promptly answers: "Who's
Looney Now?' undoubtedly can act." He asserts he "came within one
ace of being born on the stage of being actually born on the boards."
He explains this as follows:
" 'Who's Looney Now's?' mamma was very fond of the theatre.
The night before 'Who's Looney Now?' appeared in this world 'Who's
Looney Now's?' mamma was seized with a desire to attend a theatrical
performance that was taking place on the next block from the house
she was then visiting. This house was the town house of her grand
father the late William B. Astor, in Lafayette Place, New York, in
the shadow of the Astor library. 'Who's Looney Now's?' papa humored
his wife's whim it being the first time such a thing had occurred,
264
'Who's Looney Now?' being his mamma's first born and accompanied
his wife to the playhouse and the best box therein. Before the play
was over to cut a long story short 'Who's Looney Now's?' mamma
had to hurry home in order to avoid a most sensational denouement."
Harbored Secret Intent.
Chaloner points out that under the circumstances it is not sur
prising he has had from earliest childhood a penchant for the stage.
He has always felt, he says, "that provided circumstances were favor
able to such a sensational and unusual thing he would one day go on
the stage." With this secret intent he has always avoided strenuously
"taking any active part in that morgue for histrionic ability, private
theatricals."
In anticipation of the time when he would take to the boards
Chaloner has been in training at the Rex motion-picture theatre at
Seventh and Broad streets, Richmond. He lectured there twice a
month from the first week in September, 1912, until January, or later
in 1914, when he cut his appearances down to the last Sunday night
in each month in place of two Sunday nights in the month.
In his published announcement of the forthcoming production of
"Robbery Under Law," Chaloner says: "He (Chaloner) has had so
little difficulty in attracting audiences to the Rex that after the first
few months, way back in 1912, he ceased to advertise his appearance;
and since then has not had to pay out so much as one dollar for adver
tising purposes.
"Incidentally all this time 'Who's Looney Now?' was training and
cultivating his voice for the stage. For this purpose no better spot
on earth than this same Rex theatre could have been chosen for
strengthening the voice and enabling it to shout at top pitch for an
hour or more above a competitive and persistent roar. For along
Seventh street runs a trolley line within some twelve or fifteen feet
or so of the stage. The sides of the Rex are open at the top for venti
lation. Hence 'Who's Looney Now's? voice has had to compete with
and dominate the crash and roar of a trolley car: to which is to be
added the brazen clang of its bell.
"An hour and a quarter of this sort of thing once a month for
two years and a half has given 'Who's Looney Now?' a pair of lungs
ready and willing to compete with the bellowings of the bull of
Bashan itself. Therefore the intelligent reader will gather that there
has been a method lurking in the background of 'Who's Looney Now's?'
three years' shouting at the Rex, to-wit: voice and lung culture."
Unique Curtain Speeches.
Chaloner states that in each city he visits with "Robbery Under
Law" he will address the audiences after the fall of the curtain "for
ten minutes precisely" on "the black and foul stigma now staining
the fair name of law, justice and liberty in these United States in the
name of lunacy law."
265
In addition to this, "each Sunday afternoon 'Who's Looney Now?'
will hire the largest hall each city contains and for two hours hold
forth on the interesting topic of criminal Lunacy Legislation now mas
querading under the name of law in 40 per cent, of the States of the
Union. These lectures will be, of course, free and will be advertised
a day or so before in the local papers, or on billboards and hoardings
as the case may be."
Chaloner asserts there is "somewhat more than a passing likeness
between the storm-tried face of "Who's Looney Now?' and that of
Edwin Booth." He has been told, he says, that the tones of his voice
strongly resemble those of Edwin Booth. During one winter, while he
was an undergraduate at Columbia University, in New York, Chaloner
took lessons in gesture and intonation and the use of the throat and
lungs from a professional in that line whose business it was to train
professional actors.
In protraying Hugh Stutfield in "Robbery Under Law," Chaloner
says he will merely be copying the role he has created in real life and
adds: "It should not be very difficult for a man to copy himself."
Chaloner says his "formidable resolve" to become an actor will assume
definite shape as soon as he recovers his million and a half of property
for which he is fighting in New York.
Founded on Fact.
Chaloner has just published his play in a volume which contains
another play, "The Hazard of the Die," numerous newspaper clippings
and some sonnets. "Robbery Under Law" is founded upon Chaloner's
own adventures before and after his escape from "Bloomingdale"
asylum. Chaloner says of his play: "All the characters with the ex
ception of the heroine's which is entirely an imaginary one have
been photographed actually, so to speak, from life; and all the actions
of all the characters bar the heroine's have been practically copied
from court records."
A professional play-reader in New York read "Robbery Under
Law" and pronounced it hopeless for stage purposes. "This so-called
play is a lengthy and far-fetched narrative, very sensational in plot
and diffuse in dialogue," commented the reader. "The speeches are
almost all pages in length and the authors are apparently quite
ignorant of the form in which plays are written. There is nothing
in the story which is worth considering the behavior of all the
characters being highly unconvincing under all circumstances."
To all of which Chaloner replies that Lord Byron was indubitably
correct when he wrote: "Truth is stranger than fiction."
266
Record, Harrisonburg, Va., July 7, 1915.
JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER OP "WHO'S LOONKY NOW?"
FAME WRITES NEW BOOK.
New York, July 6. Every once in a while John Armstrong Chal-
oner, author of that merry little quip, "Who's Looney Now?" retires
into his inner consciousness and after long lucubration brings forth
another book about John Armstroni Chaloner. Since his escape from
"Bloomingdale" Asylum in 1900 to his home in Virginia, where he is
legally sane, Chaloner has been exposing the lunacy laws, and his
latest vehicle of expression, which comes hot off the press, is called
"Robbery Under Law, or the Battle of the Millionaires."
Although Chaloner modestly takes unto himself the robes of
Shakespeare and Marlowe, he was known, until the publication of this
latest collection of blank and other verse, melodrama and press notices,
as the brother of Sheriff Bob Chanler, of New York, who, on his sepa
ration from Lina Cavalieri, received a telegram from Brother John
asking, "Who's Looney Now?" Mr. Chaloner puts that line on the
title page, and uses it as the climax of his triumph over Pat Sligo, the
asylum keeper.
Chaloner is the hero of his play in three acts and three scenes
with a prologue and epilogue. His adventures, "the stirring cycle of
events which for the past eighteen years has been whirling around
the head of "Who's Looney Now?" center about the manly form of
Hugh Stutfield, of Rokeby, Albemarle County, Va. There are two
other millionaires in the play who try to get Stutfleld's money and
so put him in the "Fairdale" Asylum, and a man worth half a million.
Mr. Chaloner says that it is a psychological play, he having been called
a medium and of psychic temperament by the late Professor William
James.
New York Times, July 4, 1915.
POETRY, DRAMA AND ART.
Robbery Under Law: or, The Battle of the Millionaires. A play in
three acts and three scenes. By John Armstrong Chaloner. North
Carolina: Palmetto Press. 50 cents.
Contains another play, "The Hazard of the Die," treating of the
conspiracy of Catiline. Mr. Chaloner is the author of "Scorpio."
267
The Burlington Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa, July 26, 1915.
Bobbery Under iL/aw, a play by John Armstrong Chaloner; 50c.
Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.
"Robbery Under Law, or The Battle of the Millionaires," is the
title of a play in three acts and three scenes by the author of "Scorpio."
The time of the action of the drama is 1887, and it treats of the adven
tures of the author of "Who's Looney Now?" The volume is paper
covered and contains also a second drama, entitled "The Hazard of the
Die," and many personal declarations by the author.
Pittsburgh, Pa., Dispatch, July 2, 1915.
CHALONER NOW AUTHOR.
New York: John Armstrong Chaloner author of "Who's Looney
Now?" has a brand-new crusade. He has set out "to put before the
public the deadly disease eating the fiber of our body politic in vicious
lunacy legislation obtaining in 40 per cent, of the United States, as
'Damaged Goods' put before the public the deadly disease, eating the
flesh of alas! but too many people of the earth." To that end he has
written a new play entitled "Robbery Under Law; or The Battle of the
Millionaires," and is offering it to the public in book form. It made
its appearance on the book stands here to-day from the press. The
work, which embraces besides the play, numerous newspaper clippings,
dealing with the now famous case, another play called, "The Hazard
of the Die," and some new essays in the field of poetry. Most of the
clippings refer to Chaloner's incarceration in the "Bloomingdale" In
sane Asylum in this State and the actions of the New York and Vir
ginia courts which respectively held, him insane and sane. Chaloner's
last court fight here took place last year, when he made an unsuccess
ful effort in the Federal Court to recover possession of his $1,500,000
estate.
Chicago Herald, June 29, 1915.
" WHO'S LOONEY NOW? " PENS BOOK ABOUT LUNACY LAWS.
John Armstrong Chaloner Wants Insanity Statutes of Most
States Changed a Bit.
New York, June 28. (Special.) John Armstrong Chaloner, made
famous by the query "Who's Looney Now?" has started a crusade to
prove the insanity laws of the majority of the States are all wrong
268
In a book which appeared to-day he is putting forth admitted facts
in his own experience, his commitment to Bloomingdale, his escape
and his finding of a refuge in Virginia whose courts declared him sane.
IChjaloner sets forth in a prologue he has "sacrificed the last
eighteen years of his life" in the cause of lunacy reform. The book
contains a play entitled "Robbery Under Law, or the Battle of the
Millionaires." Another play, "The Hazard of the Die," is also included
in the volume, which contains numerous clippings from newspapers
dealing with his own case.
Will Put Public Next.
His purpose, he said, "is to put before the public the deadly
disease eating the fiber of our body politic in vicious Lunacy Legis-
tion obtaining in 40 per cent, of the States of the United States as
'Damaged Goods' put before the public the deadly disease eating the
flesh of, alas, too many of the peoples of the earth."
The book has a frontispiece portrait of the author in the make-up
of Napoleon. It also contains some poetry.
In furtherance of his crusade he intends to speak in the larger
cities, of which purpose he says:
"'Who's Looney Now?' proposes to address the audience after the
fall of the curtain in 'Robbery Under Law' for ten minutes precisely
and put before them in each city he plays in all through the United
States the black and foul stigma now .staining the fair name of
law, justice and liberty in the United States in the name of the lunacy
law.
Sunday Matinees, Too.
"Furthermore, each Sunday afternoon 'Who's Looney Now?' will
hire the largest hall each city contains and for two hours hold forth
on the interesting topic of criminal lunacy legislation now masquerad
ing under the name of the law in 40 per cent, of the States of the
Union."
In the chief play the hero, Hugh Stutfield, of Virginia and New-
York, has an enemy who conspires with his relatives to get him out
of the way and who manages to get him incarcerated in an insane
asylum. In his introduction Chaloner says the first act, in which
one of the characters is shot and killed, is "taken bodily, the characters
and action, from life."
Other incidents are also from life, he explains, including a fight
with a Bloomingdale keeper, which is from his own experience.
Last year Chaloner made an unsuccessful attempt in the courts
here to gain possession of his $1,500,000 which was turned over to a
committee when he was sent to Bloomingdale.
269
Boston Globe, July 30, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner has published a play "in order to serve
as a sort of propaganda toward the cause of lunacy reforms, to which
the writer has sacrificed the last eighteen years of his life, come
March 13, 1915." It is called "Robbery Under Law," and if it's as
good as his "Who's Looney Now?" telegram, written to his brother,
"Sheriff Bob" Chanler, when the latter's marital experiences with Mile
Cavalieri became known, there should be many appreciative readers.
Chicago, 111., Journal, July 9, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner, author of the interrogative "Who's
Looney Now?" which enriched for awhile the speech of the slangsters,
has written and published a play, "Robbery Under Law," in which he
introduces a hero whose career somewhat resembles his own and
through whom he undertakes to show how bad are the insanity laws
of the State of New York. The play is in blank verse and it is pub
lished with the conclusions of Prof. Joseph Jastrow, of the University
of Wisconsin, who believes that Chaloner exercises a form of graphic
automatism writing without the complete and conscious co-operation
of the writer.
Bridgeport, Conn., Post, July 23, 1915.
The latest move is to make Harry Thaw a fugitive from New York
State, thereby putting him in the same class with John Armstrong
Chaloner. But Harry has promised faithfully not to write a book.
The News Press, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., June 30, 1915.
"BOB" CHAMBER'S BROTHER HAS WRITTEN NEW PLAY.
John Armstrong Chaloner, brother of former "Sheriff" Bob Chan
ler, one time resident of Rhinebeck, has written a new play entitled
"Robbery Under Law." It will be remembered that Mr. Chaloner broke
into the news columns a few years ago when he coined the phrase
"Who's Looney Now?"
"In order to serve as a sort of propaganda toward the cause of
lunacy law reform, to which the writer has sacrificed the last eighteen
years of his life, come March 13, 1915," is Mr. Chaloner's declaration in
italics for the purpose of this publication.
More interesting than the publication is the announcement it car
ried that Mr. Chaloner proposes to present "Robbery Under Law" as a
dramatic performance in theatres all over the country, making an
270
address after the fall of the curtain at each performance, which he
solemnly agrees to limit to ten minutes. He will talk for two hours
every Sunday, however.
The frontispiece for the book is a picture of a portrait bust of the
author dressed in the uniform of Napoleon I, with the caption, "Chal-
oner 1 1st; 1911, by Chiswell."
Defending "Robbery Under Law" Mr. Chaloner writes that parts
of it could be cut "without the least injury to the action, though not
to the psychological value of it as a study in the very latest and
farthest advanced realms of mediumship. Since that is what I am
a medium in the language of the late Professor William James, of
Harvard."
Cincinnati, O., Times-Star,^ July 23, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner, author of "Who's Looney Now?" has
written a play with which he intends to fight the lunacy laws of several
States. It is called "Robbery Under Law" and was written at "Merry
Mills," Chaloner's estate in Virginia. There the author is a sane man
under the State law, while New York courts have adjudged him insane.
The play is founded upon Chaloner's own adventures before and after
his escape from "Bloomingdale." (Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids,
N. C.)
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 29, 1915.
New York, June 28. John Armstrong Chaloner, made famous by
the query, "Who's Looney Now?" has started a crusade to prove the
insanity laws of the majority of the States are all wrong.
In a book which appeared on the stands to-day he is putting forth,
admittedly founded on his own experience, his commitment to Bloom
ingdale, his escape and his finding of a refuge in Virginia, whose
courts declared him sane.
Chaloner sets forth in a prologue he has "sacrificed the last eighteen
years of his life" in the cause of lunacy reform. His play is entitled
"Robbery Under Law, or the Battle of the Millionaires."
His purpose, he says, is "to put before the public the deadly disease
eating the fiber of our body politic in vicious lunacy legislation obtain
ing in 40 per cent, of the States of the United States."
St. Louis, Mo., Republic, July 17, 1915.
All those who are interested in the author of "Who's Looney
Now?" may now come forward and obtain a new volume by the same
tThis notice also appeared in the Star, Cincinnati, O., July 23, 1915.
271
author, who bears unchallenged the name of John Armstrong Chaloner,
entitled "Robbery Under Law." "Robbery Under Law is "a play in
three acts and three scenes," and it is further enriched by the inclu
sion of other plays and a lot of miscellaneous matter touching John
Armstrong Chaloner. Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C., 50 cents.
Batavia, N. Y., Daily News, July 6, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner ("Who's Looney Now?") denies that he
had the automobile business in mind when he wrote his latest book
"Robbery Under Law, or the Battle of Millionaires."
The Post, Houston, Texas, July 27, 1915.
SOME RECEXT PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED BY "THE POST."
Robbery Under Law By John Armstrong Chaloner, author of
"Scorpio." Published by the Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids,
North Carolina.
John Armstrong, Chaloner, phrase maker extraordinary and
author of "Who's Looney Now?" has written a play with which he
intends to fight the lunacy laws of various States. It is called "Robbery
Under Law, or the Battle of Millionaires," and was ground out at
"Merry Mills," Chaloner's estate in Virginia. There the author is a
sane man under the State law, while New York courts have adjudged
him insane.
To give full measure in the volume Mr. C'haloner has combined
with "Robbery Under Law" another play, called "The Hazard of the
Die," numerous newspaper clippings concerning his own vicissitudes
and some sonnets. The frontispiece is a portrait of Chaloner in the
dress of Napoleon the same picture that he sent to newspapers in
1912, when his modesty first yielded to his resemblance to the great
little Corsican.
The play "Robbery Under Law" is founded upon Chaloner's own
adventures before and after his escape from Bloomingdale. In the
prologue, in which the author refers to himself as "Who's Looney
Now?" Chaloner declares his intention of producing the play in all
parts of the country and accompanying its production with lectures
on the iniquity of insanity laws.
Just how Chaloner is going to manage about New York he doesn't
say. He surely can't be planning to omit New York from his tour, for
here, if anywhere, he has found iniquitous lunacy law, to say nothing
of "ermined anarchy." Perhaps he is reckoning on the co-operation
of the Supreme Court of the United States, where his appeal from an
272
adverse judgment in his suit to recover the control of his $1,500,000
property is pending.
It is not the first appearance Chaloner has made as an author,
although it is the first time he has come out as a Napoleonic crusader
in literature. In 1907 he wrote forty-seven sonnets, explaining his
ideas on hell and Bernard Shaw. A few months ago the war set his
pen to itching, and he gave the Germans what he gave Shaw only
more so.
As a scientist, too, Chaloner has made a deep impression upon him
self. Not only is he the possessor of an "X-faculty" which enables
him to suspend the law of gravitation, but pool balls speak to him in
astrological terms.
All this was for the cause, however, as Chaloner announces in his
prologue to "Bobbery Under Law." Presumably even his apparently
sincere attempts to recover command of his fortune were strategic
movements intended to embarrass the New York lunacy law, for he
writes that he has "sacrificed the last eighteen, years of my life" in
the cause of lunacy reform.
This notice from the Houston Daily Post was repeated also in the
following papers:
The News, Lima, Ohio.
The Herald, Fall River, Mass.
The Dispatch, Wilmington, N. C.
The Courier, Waterloo, la.
The Journal, Niagara Falls, N. Y.
The Times, Rochester, N. Y.
The Graphic, Pine Bluff, Ark.
The Republic, North Yakima, Wash.
The Herald, Dayton, Ohio.
The Scimitar, Memphis, Tenn.
The Times, Akron, Ohio.
The News-Times, South Bend, Ind.
The Tribune, Bay City, Mich.
The News, Mansfield, Ohio.
The Leader, Gloversville, N. Y.
The Freeman, Kingston, N. Y.
The Reporter, Fond Du Lac, Wis.
The Examiner, Ogden, Utah.
The Star, Philadelphia, Pa.
The Philadelphia Star has the following headlines before the
article :
" 'Who's Looney Now? 1 Becomes Playwright. John Armstrong
Chaloner to Produce 'Robbery Under Law' Throughout Country. He
Fights Insanity Laws."
273
The Buffalo Commercial, July 24, 1915.
"The latest offering from the pen of John Armstrong Chaloner is
a play in three acts and three scenes called 'Robbery Under Law, or
The Battle of the Millionaires.' The author says the play was written
to illustrate the mischief of lunacy proceedings in New York State.
All the characters are drawn from life, according to the author, and
the scenes are real. Although Chaloner modestly takes for himself
the role of the hero he has taken into consideration all the persons
who took an active part in having him declared insane. The story
has to do with one Hugh Stutfleld, of Virginia and New York, a mil
lionaire, whose enemy and rival, James Lawless, conspires with his
relatives to get him out of the way. How he manages to escape from
the insane asylum and to keep his freedom, form important chapters
in the play. In the same volume is also presented "The Hazard of the
Die," a drama in three acts, and several sonnets and other composi
tions. The paper-covered volume is published by the Palmetto Press."
The Gazette, Worcester, Mass., July 23, 1915.
Robbery Under Law By the author of "Scorpio." Palmetto Press,
Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Price, bound in paper, 50
cents.
Many people remember the sensation which the publication of
"The Quick or the Dead," written by Amelie Rives, created. It was
the first of many subsequent novels which have pleased people who
delighted in the sensational, in that variety of the sensational which
bordered on the salacious and, written by an engaging young lady of
Virginia the wonder grew, though the story, first appearing in Lippin-
cott's Monthly, acquired an amazing sale. The next source of wonder
was the marriage of Miss Rives to a member of a prominent New
York family, John Armstrong Chaloner. Naturally the public was
more than interested in the man, as it had been in the woman. Ere
many years, the public was again in the condition of amazement when
it appeared that Mr. Chaloner had been adjudged insane and had been
committed to an asylum for that class of unfortunates in "Blooming-
dale," New York. There he was confined four years and at last suc
ceeded in making his escape. Naturally he cherished much animosity
towards his relatives who had brought about his incarceration, and, as
a means of setting himself right before the pubic, he wrote a play
with the title given above, which he submitted to certain playwrights
for their judgment and criticism. When the play is read one does not
marvel that it was not considered adapted to the stage, at least as
written, and to allow the public to judge for itself he puts the entire
play into print. In this way, he brings to view a considerable part of
his former life, especially the death of a certain man who, at the
274
time, was engaged in the somewhat reprehensible occupation of beat
ing his wife. Mr. Chaloner claims that his relatives were anxious to
secure his fortune, hence their part in the immurement. This volume
of 350 pages contains, not alone the play, but several other literary
efforts of the writer which, undoubtedly, will afford a deal of pleasure
to seekers after the curious and strange in deed and thought. Mr.
Chaloner includes in his volume, not only what he has himself written
but, apparently, all that he can find of what others have written about
him and his writings. As to the controversy, the Gazette has no dis
position to take a part, though we are quite ready to assert that the
walls of bedlam do not contain nor have they ever held any consid
erable portion of the really insane, the trouble being that, too often,
the craziest are on the outside. Mr. Chaloner's book creates the im
pression of a man easily excited, ever ready to assert his opinions
and to defend them, if necessary. All lovers of the curious in litera
ture will desire a copy of "Robbery Under Law."
The News, Baltimore, Md. f July 21, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner, he of "Who's Looney Now?" fame, has
written a play "Robbery Under Law; or The Battle of the Millionaires'"
is its title, and it is in three acts, and three scenes.
"Robbery Under Law" has a mission, according to the author,
"the object being to put before the papers the deadly disease eating
the fiber of our body politic in vicious lunacy legislation obtaining
in 40 per cent, of the States of the United States" is the way Chaloner
puts it. In a lengthy prologue he explans that the characters of his
play are sketched from the real, all except the heroine, and that most
of the vivid scenes are pages from his own book of life. The play is
lengthy, has a sensational plot, and lots of dialogue. Along with the
play the reader gets more of the Chaloner plays, some poetry, personal
letters, and so forth.
("Robbery Under Law," John Armstrong Chaloner. Palmetto
Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C., publisher.)
Denver, Colo., Post, July 25, 1915.
"WHO'S IXXJNEY NOW?" REAPPEARS.
Apropos of the interest taken in the case of Harry Thaw, who is
just now very much in the public eye and who for a fortnight has
been on the front page of nearly every newspaper of the country, is
the case of John Armstrong Chaloner. of "Who's Looney Now?" celeb
rity.
275
The latter gentleman has written a long play and a thick book,
both of which have been printed, and by the courtesy of the publishers
have just reached the office of The Denver Post.
The Chaloner story is much older that the Thaw tale, but the
present publication revives it and makes it a timely topic for discus
sion.
The purpse of the present book and the play, is a crusade to prove
the sanity laws of a majority of the States are all wrong.
In this volume, which is only a fornig;ht old, Mr. Chaloner puts
forth, admittedly founded on his own experience, his commitment to
Bloomingdale, his escape and his finding of a refuge in Virginia,
whose courts declared him sane.
Chaloner sets forth in a prologue he has "sacrificed the last
eighteen years of his life" in the cause of lunacy reform. His play is
entitled, "Robbery Under Law, or The Battle of the Millionaires."
His purpose, he says, is "to put before the public the deadly disease
eating the fiber of our body politic in vicious Lunacy Legislation
obtaining in 40 per cent, of the States of the United States as 'Dam
aged Goods,' put before the public the deadly disease eating the flesh
of, alas! but too many of the peoples of the earth."
Chaloner's only successful composition heretofore was the phrase
'Who's Looney Now?" written in a telegram to his brother, Bob
Chanler, when the latter's romantic and marital experiences with
Mile. Lina Cavalieri became known.
Many readers of this page will recall the mysterious sensation
occasioned years ago by the incarceration in Bloomingdale Asylum, in
New York, and the subsequent escape of John Armstrong Chaloner,
the wealthy Virginian and member of the New York bar.
For four months the friends of Mr. Chaloner supposed that he
was away taking a trip for his health. For weeks after his escape
and return to his State of Virginia, newspaper speculation was rife as
to the causes which led up to the imprisonment. He was subsequently
declared sane in an action tried in the courts of Virginia and was
adjudged competent to manage his own affairs. Beyond the fact that
he had brought actions against persons, however, the matter has since
fallen away from public attention and has in many respects remained
ever since a mystery.
Mr. Chaloner was especially known in the South by reason of
his marriage to Amelie Rives, the brilliant Virginia novelist, whose
book, "The Quick or the Dead," created a national furore at the time
of its publication.
That story, as you may remember, tells the old love of a beautiful
widow for her dead husband and her newer love for another man in
the flesh.
Jock Dering, the hero, was Chaloner. This Chaloner was declared
by the courts sane in one State and insane in another. He is cousin
of the Astors, one time chum of the late Stanford White; lawyer, col-
276
lege graduate, student of psychics and, say, ex-husband of that brilliant
woman, Amelie Rives, later the Princess Troubetzkoy.
His story is one of the most remarkable of modern times, and
as printed In the New York papers at the time, from which the fol
lowing facts are taken, reads like fiction. Here is a man of independ
ent means, a man of affairs, a brilliant writer, an ardent sportsman,
a clever raconteur, sent to Bloomingdale adjudged hopelessly insane
"progressive," the physicians called his case.
There he stays for nearly four years. He knows it is hopeless to
protest. There he is, behind the bars, gone from the world forever.
He dreams of freedom by night; by day he ponders over the problem
of getting it. He knows that to be violent would see the end of his
hopes; he acquiesces in everything his keepers order, without a word
of protest. It is the careful working of a mind bent on accomplishing
its object freedom!
He waits his time. He gets the trust of everyone about him. He
does meekly everything that he is bidden everything except admit
to the doctors that he is insane. He gets permission to take walks
without a keeper. He makes his daily jaunts farther and farther
away, deliberately practicing the art of covering great distances in a
short time. He finds a postoffice where he may receive letters under
an assumed name, because nothing may reach him at the asylum until
it has been scrutinized. In this way he manages to borrow $10 this
man with an income of $40,000 a year.
And now what does he do?
One day he does not return from his daily walk. No, he has
walked well and far he has taken a train to New York from an
obscure railroad station miles distant from White Plains, where Bloom
ingdale now is. By nightfall he is safe in Philadelphia.
Does he go into paroxysms of impotent rage at those who incarce
rated him, as do so many of the insane when they escape? Does he
try to kill those whom he might imagine responsible for his sufferings?
Does he break out in incoherent ravings against fancied evils?
No. He goes straightway to a sanitarium in Philadelphia. He
states his case calmly to the physician in charge and asks to be put
under scientific observation. After six months voluntary confinement
there the physicians tell him that he is perfectly sane and has always
been so. He is not even now content. He goes to another institution
and goes through the same voluntary process all over again. Once
more the physicians tell Mr. Chaloner he is well balanced. Then
suddenly he appears at his old hime, "Merry Mills," Cobham, Va.,
where he has stayed to this day, master of his estate, as at Roanoke
Rapids, N. C.
After his discharge from the asylum Mr. Chaloner wrote a book.
Not the book now before me, but one, at present, nearly ten years old.
There he describes with bitterness the manner in which he was lured
to Bloomingdale by Stanford White, who soon after was killed by
Harry Thaw.
.277
"I received a telegram from my friend, Stanford White, proposing
to visit me in company with a mutual friend. As I was on rather
unfriendly terms with Mr. White at the time, owing to an abusive
letter he had recently written me, I did not look forward to a visit
from him with pleasure. I therefore sent him a telegram to say that
I was not well enough to see him. A few days later Mr. White walked
in on me, in company with a physician. I shall not attempt to picture
my surprise. Let it suffice to say that I was struck dumb.
"Mr. White hastily excused his intrusion and implored me to ac
company him to New York for a 'plunge in the metropolitan whirl.' As
I had some business which needed my attention in New York, I con
sented."
He was then hurried to Bloomingdale by White's aid and declared
mad.
iChaloner thinks "the play's the thing," and that he can reach the
public better through the stage than by literature. So he publishes
the drama, and announces he will act in it. He has had considerable
experience in histrionics during his early life.
Chaloner is the hero of his play, which is in three acts and three
scenes, with a prologue and epilogue. His adventures, "the stirring
cycle of events which for the past eighteen years has been whirling
around the head of 'Who's Looney Now?' " center about the manly
form of Hugh Stutfield, of Rokeby, Albermarle county, Va., "million
aire art patron and law writer." There are two other millionaires in
the play who try to get Stutfield's money and so put him in the Fair-
dale asylum, and a man worth half a million. Mr. Chaloner says that
it is a psychological play, he having been called a medium and of
psychic temperament by the late Prof. William James.
He is determined to present his play with himself in the lead.
He expects to encounter difficulties, however.
"If we find the theater closed against us," he says, "for the same
reason we find the newspapers whatever that reason may be we
shall follow the example of Madame Bernhardt under the precise and
identical circumstances, and act in a tent."
Then he puts his case, his ability and his purposes forth as fol
lows:
Having a million and a half of property, we are. in a fairly strong
position as regards carrying out to the letter the above pushful pro
gram. The first question that will present itself to the reader will be
"What kind of a fist can 'Who's Looney Now?' make at acting? Can he
act?" To which we hasten to make answer, " 'Who's Looney Now?' un
doubtedly can act." Thus. In the first place, there is a good deal of
heredity and environment at birth. Now "Who's Looney Now" came
within one ace of being born on the stage of being actually born on
the boards! The remarkable facts are as follows, "Who's Looney
Now's mamma was very fond of the theater. The night before "Who's
Looney Now?" appeared in this world "Who's Looney Now's? mamma
278
was seized with a desire to attend a theatrical performance that was
taking place on the next block from the house she was then visiting.
This house was the town house of her grandfather, the late William
B. Astor, in Lafayette place, New York, in the shadow of the Astor
library. "Who's Looney Now's?" papa humored his wife's whim it
being the first time such a thing had occurred "Who's Looney Now?"
being the mamma's first-born and accompanied his wife to the play
house and the best box therein. Before the play was over to cut a
long story short "Who's Looney Now's?" mamma had to hurry home
in order to avoid a most sensational denouement.
Under the circumstances aforesaid it should not be surprising to
an open-minded reader that "Who's Looney Now?" has had from
earliest childhood a penchant for the stage. Such being the fact,
"Who's Looney Now?" has always carried it locked in the inmost
recesses of his breast that provided circumstances were favorable to
such a sensational and unusual thing he would one day go on the
Stage! With this secret intent he has always avoided strenuously
taking an active part in that morgue for histrionic ability, "Private
Theatricals." Two facts stand out in "Who's Looney Now's?" later
years, indicating his ability to make good on the boards. The first
fact indicates ability in said line. The second fact indicates serious
study along and in said line. Fact number one is that "Who's Looney
Now?" surprised and delighted his father his mother being now-
dead by taking first prize i ndeclamation at a military academy, by
name "St. John's School," Ossining-on-Hudson, New York, at the early
age of thirteen out of a school of seventy-five boys many of whom
were four or five years "Who's Looney Now's?" senior. Anyone who
knows anything about acting knows it's harder to be interesting on a
naked platform, against a whitewashed school room's wall, than sur
rounded by all the sensuousness and fairy glamor of the footlights.
Fact number two is that "Who's Looney Now?" devoted a whole
winter while an undergraduate at Columbia university, in New York,
to taking lessons in gesture and intonation, the use of the throat and
lungs, from a professional in that line; whose business it was to train
professional actors that early day being long before dramatic acade
mies for fitting aspirants for the stage had been dreamed of. "Who's
Looney Now?" being a great admirer of Edwin Booth whom he knew
personally and considering him the greatest actor of his day, if not
of any day spent about four nights out of each week during Booth's
last and longest season at Booth's theater, at Twenty-third street and
Sixth avenue during the same year that he was studying elocution
professionally and also sent his dramatic instructor aforesaid to the
same theater frequently supplying the instructor with the necessary
tickets. The next day "Who's Looney Now?" would read the solilo
quies in "Hamlet" and "Richard III." to the instructor, rendering the
same with as nearly the same tone, accent, and inflection as Booth had
given them the night, or nights, before.
279
When to the above serious active work in the dramatic art is added
the fact that, some years later, "Who's Looney Now?" carried his
lares and penates to Paris and set them up in a house or private apart
ment of his own for five consecutive years, during which time there
was hardly a week elapsed without his going to the Theatre Francois
at least once, if not twice, as well as once or twice each week to some
other of the leading French theaters, it becomes palpable to the poorest
observation that "Who's Looney Now?" was "going some" to theaters
to school. All this time "Who's Looney Now?" had the starry end
in view, to one of these days provided always and only that Fate
should be propitious that circumstance should point the way to that
rugged and daring path of toil and disappointment and severe work
the starry end in view to at the proper time have a dash on th4
boards. And all this time therefore 'Who's Looney Now?" was watch
ing Coquelin Aine, or Coquelin Jeune, or Mounet-Sully at the Frangais
for tips and points and what not, for his own particular use at the
proper time French dramatic art being as much at the top of all
dramatic art to-day, as French painting and sculpture and architecture
are at the topmost pinnacle of their respective branches of art to-day.
Therefore "Who's Looney Now?" would mount the stage with a
far from unsophisticated attitude toward the stage. Now what would
"Who's Looney Now?" be required to do in his initial step the step
that breaks the ice le premier pas qui coute step upon mounting
the stage in "Robbery Under Law?" Why, nothing more difficult than
copy the role he had created in real life on the stage of the world
when he fought Gillard in the dining room at "Merry Mills" that
March afternoon six years ago; or when he held up the doctors in his
suite at the Hotel Kensington three times as many years ago; or later
when he fought his strapping Irish keeper in his cell at "Bloomingdale"
runtil the latter bellowed "Help" at the top of his powerful lungs
seventeen years ago; or, lastly, when he escaped.
Chaloner, like Thaw, killed his man. But in the case of the former
it was not the result of an unclean brawl, but in defense of a woman
whose drunken husband was beating her and would have had her
life had not Chaloner interfered, saved the wife and shot the man.
This occurred in Virginia and a jury of substantial farmers wholly
absolved Chaloner from blame in the tragedy; in fact, complimented
him on his bravery in protecting a defenseless woman.
The main purpose of the Chaloner book is to supplement Charles
Read's well-known novel, "Hard Cash," in an effort to prevent sane
persons being locked up in asylums without proper process of law.
No doubt the law in many States is defective.
As was well said by one of our leading law journals not long ago,
the fact that many mentally deranged persons are incapable of com
prehending the nature of the steps taken to place them in custody, the
custom has become prevalent that no process is needed to place them
on trial as to their sanity.
280
It is to be remembered that in every State of the Union, and, in
'fact, in every country of the world, fraud has been perpetrated on
men and women of means by greedy relatives and the unfortunate
ones placed in asylums for no other purpose than to secure control of
their property. And further it should be remembered that one once
adjudged insane, if he cannot secure a hearing of his right to restora
tion through the influence of true friends, is forever barred of the
right to be heard.
He has lost the standing of a citizen.
Mr. Chaloner, whether he be "queer" or not, is certainly mentally
brilliant and in deadly earnest in all he does.
He must also have a generous heart, for to this day he pays his
divorced wife, Amelie Rives that was, and now the Princess Troubetz-
koy, $3,000 a year as a pleasing remembrance of once happy days.
Naturally he is very bitter in his denunciation of New York so
ciety, which he maintains was instrumental in his downfall. In a
series of published "sonnets," some of which are genuine poetry, he
has this on the famous Horseshoe of the Metropolitan Opera House,
New York, where the fashionable 400 gather in force, on Caruso nights
especially.
He calls it "The Devil's Horseshoe," and describes the gracious
company thus:
A fecund sight for a philosopher
Rich as Golconda's mine in lessons rare
That gem-bedizen'd "horseshoe" at th' opera,
Replete with costly hags and matrons fair!
His votaresses doth Mammon there array,
His Amazonian Phalanx dread to face!
To Mammon there do they their homage pay!
Spangl'd with jewels, satins, silks and lace,
Ghouls when they speak one hears the grave-mole squeak
Beldams whose slightest glance would fright a horse;
Ghouls when they speak one hears the grave-mole squeak
Their escorts parvenus of feature coarse,
A rich array of Luxury and Vice!
But, spite of them, the music's very nice.
It may be hoped that Mr. Chaloner's book, as well as his play,
will have some good effect in awakening the public to that iniquitous
system against which Charles Reade waged his long war in England.
Both the novelist in Europe and the aristocrat in America put
the case strongly.
Their criticism of the practice of adjudging persons incompetent
and depriving them of their liberties without due process of law is
the theme well developed in this story.
It shows that people may still be incarcerated in insane asylums
without notice and without an opportunity to be heard. Once in an
281
asylum a patient has little chance of any liberty; small protection
against the keepers.
The lunacy laws of the world certainly 'need reform.
Philadelphia North American, July 29, 1915.
PLAY BY CHAIX)NER.
John Armstrong Chaloner, who is sane in Virginia but crazy in
New York, has gone into print again this time with a play, "Robbery
Under Law, ' printed by the Palmetto Press, in North Carolina. Fol
lowing this is a blank verse three-act drama of the Roman Republic's
last days, "The Hazard of the Die." Further on about half of the
book is a rescript of most of the matters connected with Mr. Chal-
oner's invasion of the law's strong arm in New York.
The Journal, Milwaukee, Wis., July 31, 1915.
OUR LUNACY LAWS.
John Armstrong Chaloner has had some very unpleasant experi
ences. In "Robbery Under Law, or The Battle of the Millionaires," he
makes his wrongs public. According to this story he was imprisoned
for lunacy, although perfectly sane. This was done, he explains, by
his brothers and sisters who thought thereby to obtain his share of
his father's estate. There are many letters, essays and various writ
ings included, by which he would prove his sanity. From his account
it would appear that he had real cause for complaint. The avowed
motive of Mr. Chaloner in making public his wrongs, is to bring about
reforms in lunacy law that no one else may ever suffer what he has
endured. Mr. Chaloner is a lawyer. He was married to Amelie Rives,
and divorced from her previous to her marriage to Prince Troubetzkoy.
Besides the play "Robbery Under Law" he publishes another, entitled
"The Hazard of the Die." ("Robbery Under Law." Palmetto Press,
Roanoke R.apids, North Carolina. 50 cents.)
The Detroit Free Press, Detroit, Mich.
"Robbery Under Law." By John Armstrong Chaloner. A play in
three acts and three scenes, by the author of the famous inquiry,
"Who's Looney Now?" Paper, octavo, pp. 240.
(Roanoke Rapids, N. C. Palmetto Press.)
282
Los Angeles Express, Los Angeles, Calif., August 7, 1915.
"ROBBERY UNDER L.AW."
John Armstrong Chaloner has written a play or more properly
two of them, but it is the first which gives title to the book containing
them.
"Robbery Under Law" is founded upon episodes in the author's
career, including his confinement in, and escape from, "Bloomingdale"
Asylum. Some may find in it an answer to Chaloner's famous query
to his brother, Robert, upon the latter's marriage to an opera star.
The second is a three act play in blank verse, the setting being in
the last days of the Roman Republic.
Then there are some other writings all of which combine to make
a volume of formidable proportions.
The Evening Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wis., August 10, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner continues his propaganda for reform
of the lunacy laws. He has just issued from the Palmetto Press, Roan-
oke Rapids, N. C., a paper-covered book (50 cents) entitled "Robbery
Under Law, or The Battle of the Millionaires," a play in three acts
and three scenes treating of the adventures of the author of "Who's
Looney Now?"
The Rochester Democrat, Rochester, New York, August 6, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner, author of "Scorpio" and of the noted
phrase "Who's Looney Now?" and famous for his many years' fight
after his escape from "Bloomingdale" asylum to prove himself sane,
has written a new play entitled "Robbery Under Law." The piece has
been created, he says "in order to serve as a sort of propaganda toward
the cause of Lunacy Law reform, to which the writer has sacrificed
the last eighteen years of his life, come March 13, 1915." A portrait
bust of the author garbed as Napoleon 1st, with the line "Chaloner 1st;
1911, by Chiswell," is the frontispiece of this paper-covered volume.
This prepares one for the great surprise that Chaloner himself is the
hero of his play, the scenes of which are filled with episodes from his
own stormy life. He is quite frank in admitting that parts of his play
could be cut "without the least injury to the action, though not to the
psychological value of it as a study in the very latest and furthest
aldvanced realms of a mediumship. Since that is what I am a
medium in the language of the late Professor William James, of
Harvard." Chaloner has been generous, crowding another play en
titled "The Hazard of the Die," and many newspaper clippings dealing
283
with his own case, into the new volume. Price, 50 cents net. Pub
lished by the Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C.
Utica Daily Press, Utica, New York, August 12, 1915.
"Robbery Under Law," by John Armstrong Chaloner. Published
by The Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C. Price, 50 cents.
Boy, page Harry Kendall Thaw!
The man who immortalized himself with "Who's Looney Now?"
once a husband of Amelie Rives, now Princess Troubetzkoy; adjudged
insane in New York and sane in Virginia, has written the story of his
own trials and tribulations in play form.
The play goes under the alias of "The Battle of the Millionaires,"
and is a thing fearful and wonderful to read. A wife-beater is killed
in the first scene, and from then on, there is plenty of action, with the
hero, Stutfield, who is, of course, none other than J. A. Chaloner. The
acts and scenes of "Robbery Under Law" are acts and scenes from
the author's life, dressed up a bit and adorned with some fearfully
long speeches. The hero pulls one five pages long and never seems
to notice it. A little later on, when he is incarcerated in an insane
asylum by relatives who wish to get his money, he breaks into a letter
nearly as long.
In the course of the play Mr. Chaloner gets a great deal off his
chest concerning the Insanity Laws and the Courts; his hero always
rises above the situations which confront him, and is a wonder at
strangle-holds. Of course, Stutfield escapes from the asylum, binding
and gagging his keeper, and leaving him with the capitalized remark
"Who's Looney Now?" of which the author seems quite proud. He is
assisted in his escape by the father of his beloved Viola and the whole
thing draws to an end in absolute silence, for, while there is plenty
of action in the last page and a half of the play, not a word is spoken.
But there is plenty in the rest of the work to make up for it, and so
the reader is not likely to regret this feature.
"The Hazard of the Die" is a play in three acts concerning the
last days of the Roman Republic, and concerns the conspiracy of
Catiline. It goes along pretty well until the denouement is reached,
when the author apparently gets so excited over his theme that he
relapses into prose and past tense until the hullabaloo is over, when
he goes back to blank verse. The remainder of the book is hashed
newspaper clippings concerning the troubles of the author, with some
treaties of poetic writing thrown in for luck.
284
Houston Post, Houston, Texas, July 23, 1915.
Till' PURSUIT CONTINUES.
The country had commenced to hope that the end of the Thaw
case had been reached, but Albany dispatches state that the attorney
general has ordered an investigation of the jury which recently de
clared Thaw sane, with a view to nullifying the action of Justice
Hendrick's court and opening the entire question again.
This investigation comes about as the result of the garrulity of
one of the jurors who declared in an interview last Sunday that the
jury had disregarded Justice Hendrick's instruction that they must
proceed upon the hypothesis that Thaw was insane when he was com
mitted to Matteawan and then decide if he were sane at present.
Instead of observing this instruction this juror declared the jury
concluded that Thaw had always been sane and that in killing White
he had merely followed the "unwritten law," and ought to have been
acquitted in the first trial.
The position of the attorney general is, therefore, that the jury's
verdict was not legally reached as the jury had violated the court's
instructions. Just how much is in this point is for the lawyers to
thresh out, but as it was Justice Hendrick's decision that released
Thaw and not the jury's, it is difficult to see how the judgment can
be upset merely because of the mental attitude of the jurors in the
jury room.
The justice was empowered to disregard the verdict of the jury.
Had the jury found Thaw insane, the justice could have released him.
Or he could have remanded Thaw to Matteawan regardless of its favor
able verdict. As the jury was acting merely in an advisory capacity,
its verdict was not vital.
The public had hoped that the State would not prosecute the
appeal of which it gave notice, but if it does, and the decision of
Justice Hendrick is set aside, there is no likelihood that Thaw would
return to New York for another trial. His $35,000 bond would be
forfeited, but there is no way to extradite him, for he is charged with
no crime in New York. He would be in the same position that John
Armstrong Chaloner is; legally insane in New York, but legally sane
everywhere else.
Unless for purposes of exploitation or revenge, there could be no
reasonable motive for New York to wish to take Thaw from his native
State or elsewhere and impound him in an institution for the criminal
insane.
It is plain, however, that Thaw would be wise to give New York
a wide berth, regardless of the result of the State's appeal. Were he
to sojourn there again, his enemies might easily conspire to get him
in the toils again and there is no reason to doubt that they would
exhaust every resource to do so.
285
Pennsylvania is the safest place in the world for him, and the
closer he sticks to his mother the better it will be for him.
Portland Evening Express, Portland, Maine, August 21, 1915.
"Robbery Under Law," by the author of "Scorpio," is a play by
John Armstrong Chaloner, phrase-maker extraordinary and author of
"Who's Looney Now?" intended to fight the lunacy laws of the various
States. The play is founded on Chaloner's own adventures before and
after his escape from "Bloomingdale." It will be remembered that
Chaloner was adjudged insane under New York law but was cleared
of the charge in Virginia. The writer says it is his intention to pro
duce the play in all parts of the country and to accompany its pro
duction with lectures on the iniquity of the insanity laws. A picture
of Chaloner in the dress of Napoleon forms the frontispiece. Published
by The Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C.
The Sun, Baltimore, Md., August 1, 1915.
"Robbery Under Law, or The Battle of the Millionaires." By John
Armstrong, Chaloner. (Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C. Paper
cover, pp. 240, 50 cents.) A play in three acts and three scenes, time,
1887, treating of the adventures of the author of "Who's Looney Now?"
The Scimitar, Memphis, Tenn., July 15, 1915.
Prom the Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C., comes a fat
volume garnished in purple and gold, with two splashes of red across
the front paper cover, the author of which is John Armstrong Chaloner,
who startled the reading public some time ago by the famous query
"Who's Looney Now?" During the course of his trial the other day
Harry Thaw honored the Virginian by repeating the query. The
volume contains a play called "Robbery Under Law" and another called
"The Hazard of the Die," together with a vast amount of comments
and correspondence that he has gathered up and assembled. In New
York, if he should venture there, Chaloner would probably be called the
brightest crazy man alive. In Virginia he is legally sane and certainly
a most industrious writer and man of affairs. His play shows that
his reading has been discursive and by no means desultory,, and if he
is a madman, then all the great icriters can be convicted of the same
charge. He certainly has imagination and inventive genius, and his
workmanship shows a command of literary technique not to be de
spised. His gifts are eminently respectable, and he is fortunate in
having the money to place himself before the public in spite of the
Pharisees and the guardians of our literary morals."
286
The Age-Herald, Birmingham, Ala., September 5, 1915.
"ROBBERY UNDER LAW, OR THE BATTLE OF THE MILLION
AIRES." (A play in three acts and three scenes.) By John
Armstrong Chaloner. The Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, North
Carolina.
John Armstrong Chaloner, author of "Scorpio," presents a play
under the title of "Robbery Under Law, or the Battle of the Million
aires," which has attracted widespread attention.
Among other things interesting things about the play, is Mr.
Chaloner's "prologue," which throws considerable light on the subject
as follows:
"Since finishing the play, 'Robbery Under Law,' last fall, the
undersigned has written another play found herewith, entitled, 'The
Hazard of the Die,' a three act play in blank verse treating of the
conspiracy of Catiline during the last days of the Roman Republic.
"A word of explanation is germane to the matter in hand. Upon
finishing 'Robbery Under Law,' this last fall, the writer sent it to a
friend a lady upon a large New York daily paper. She in turn sent
it to another lady a friend of hers with the request that she bring
the play to the attention of her friends a large New York theatrical
manager's play reader.
"In closing this introduction to an introduction so to speak it
might be observed that the length of the first play a thing which can
be remedied by a blue pencil and judicious and experienced cutting,
without in the least interfering with the action of the drama the
length has been retained even added to since the letter below was
written in order to serve as a sort of propaganda towards the cause
of Lunacy Law reform, to which the writer has sacrificed the past
eighteen years of his life come March 13, 1915. All the characters
with the exception of the heroine's which is entirely an imaginary
one having been photographed actually so to speak from life; and
all the actions of the characters bar the heroine's having been prac
tically copied from the court records as is indicated in the subjoined
letter. To that end the writer has left his comments unpruned, upon
the abominable laws, and the even more abominable administration
of said laws, by the New York courts, both State and Federal, set forth
in 'Robbery Under Law.'
"The object being to put before the papers the deadly disease
eating the fibre of our body-politic in vicious Lunacy Legislation obtain
ing in 40 per cent, of the States of the United States as 'Damaged
Goods' put before the papers and public the deadly disease eating the
flesh of alas! but too many of the peoples of the earth."
Charles Reade's brilliant and powerful novel, "Very Hard Cash,"
of some 50 years ago, revolutionized the treatment of prisoners behind
the bars of English insane asylums. It is far too much to expect the
same result from "Robbery Under Law," but for what it is worth as a
photographic exposition of cold, hard, every day facts, in our alleged
humane and civilized and upright community of the United States, it is
hereby launched upon the perilous seas of literature."
From the foregoing the object of the play may be deducted and
the brilliant manner in which the author has handled the subject is
in keeping with the other clever things he has written.
Decision of Judges lacombe, Coxe and Noyes
162 Federal Reports, 19.
CHALONER vs. SHERMAN.
(Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.)
May 11, 1908.
No. 201.
In error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York, W. D. Reed for plaintiff-in-error ; Evarts, Choate
and Sherman (J. H. Choate, Jr., and George L. Kobbe, of counsel), for
defendant-in-error.
Before Lacombe, Coxe, and Noyes, Circuit Judges.
Noyes, Circuit Judge. "This appeal is from the denial of a petition
for an auxiliary order in the nature of a writ of protection, in an
action at law for conversion.
"The situation as disclosed by the record in the action and by the
affidavits upon the petition may be thus briefly stated.
"(1) In 1897 the petitioner being the plaintiff in said action
was adjudged insane by a justice of the Supreme Court of New York
and ordered committed to Bloomingdale Asylum, an institution for
the custody of the insane, to which he was duly taken and from which
he escaped in 1900 and went to Virginia.
"(2) In 1899 an order was made by the Supreme Court of New
York finding that the petitioner was of unsound mind, and appointing
a committee of his person and property, which office is now held by
the defendant in this action.
"(3) In 1901 upon an application made to the County Court of
Albemarle County, Virginia, where the petitioner then resided, alleging
that he had previously been adjudged insane in New York and praying
for an examination as to his then condition, said court found that he
was sane and capable of managing his affairs.
"(4) In 1904 the petitioner brought this action in the Circuit
Court as a citizen of Virginia averring that he was sane, and had so
been declared by the Virginia court and that said orders of the Su
preme Court of New York and of the justice thereof were void for
want of jurisdiction, and demanding, damages from the defendant
upon the theory that he had converted the property of the petitioner
in his hands as committee. ,
"(5) The defendant in his answer, not only relied upon said New
Your orders, *but went further, and alleged that the plaintiff the
petitioner was and had teen in fact insane, and that the judgment of
the Virginia Court was collusive and void.
288
"(6) The time for the trial of said action approaching, the plaintiff
filed the present petition, stating that his presence as a witness at
the trial was imperatively required, but that, in case he returned to
New York he was threatened with reincarceration in the asylum, not
withstanding the Virginia decree.
"He therefore prayed for an order protecting him while coming
into the State of New York, attending the trial and returning.
"It is apparent from the record, that upon the issues as they stand,
the attendance of the petitioner at the trial is necessary. His case
cannot be presented without him. And it is also most probable that,
if the petitioner return to New York without protection he will be
apprehended and retaken to the asylum, as an escaped patient. With
out relief he is in this predicament. He must abandon his action for
the recovery of a quarter* of a million dollars in order to retain his
freedom or must abandon hia liberty in order to try his case. The
Constitution of the United States vests in its judicial department
jurisdiction over controversies between citizens of different States.
The petitioner as a citizen of the State of Virginia in bringing his said
suit in the Circuit Court$ of the United States, was availing himself
of a right founded upon this constitutional provision. And he came
into that court with a decree of the court of the State of which he
was a citizen, declaring his sanity.
"We cannot disregard that decree. In considering it we do not
ignore the orders of the courts of New York. Insanity is not neces
sarily permanent. For the purpose of this petition laying aside
jurisdictional questions we may properly consider that the petitioner
was insane when so declared in New York, but that he had recovered
his sanity when he was declared sane in Virginia.
"The question, then, is whether a circuit court of the United
States has power to protect a person in the situation of the petitioner
while attending the trial of his cause therein. It is objected at the
outset that the Circuit Court has no power to grant a protective order
because it would have the effect of restraining proceedings in a State
court. Sec. 720 of the Revised Statutes prohibits the granting of
writs of injunction to stay proceedings in any court of a State, except
when authorized in bankruptcy proceedings. But, assuming that the
order at present prayed for would have injunctive effect, our attention
has been directed to no proceeding pending in a State court which it
would stay.
"It appears that ten years ago a judge of a State court signed an
order committing the petitioner to an asylum, and that the order was
complied with. It does not appear that those proceedings are still
pending or that resort to them would be necessary to recommit the
*Italics ours.
tThe sum technically sued for; in reality largely over a million.
ttSince been changed to District Court.
289
petitioner to the asylum. The Statutes of New York apparently pro
vide that patients escaping from insane hospitals may be returned by
peace officers and by designated hospital attendants.
"No proceedings in court seem necessary or to be provided for.
The only other proceedings in New York those in which a committee
was appointed if still regarded as pending would not be stayed by a
protecting, order, because it was not the object of those proceedings
to commit the petitioner to an asylum. He was already in one when
they were instituted.
"The next objection is that the petitioner ought to apply to the
courts of the State of New York for the recision of the orders commit
ting him to the asylum and appointing a committee of his person and
property. We have not the slightest doubt that full justice would be
don- the petitioner should ' t submit himself to the jurisdiction of ihe
State courts.
"But to assume that he was under any obligation to resort to
them is to beg the whole question at issue. To say that the orders
in question were valid and must stand until set aside by the tribunal
which granted them is to assert that the petitioner has no cause of
action in the Circuit Court. But he states a cause of action. He as
serts that the orders were wholly void for want of jurisdiction. And
if they were void, they were of no effect, and the petitioner had a
right to assert their invalidity in any court.
"We now come to the broad question of the power of the Circuit
Court to grant a protective writ.
"Such writs have been issued since early times to protect wit
nesses, and parties coming; from one State into another to attend a
trial from arrest and detention upon civil process. It is true that if
the petitioner were retaken as an escaped insane patient, it would not
be upon civil process. But whatever the form of the process if any
at all were necessary the power exercised to retake him would be
that of the police. With the exercise of the police power of a State a
court of the United States should not lightly interfere. But we have
no doubt of its right to interfere when necessary for the efficient exer
cise of its own jurisdiction and where the threatened act under the
police power must rest for its justification upon the validity of the
very matter which the court is called upon to determine.
"The petitioner was given the right under the laws of the United
States to try his case in the courts of the United States. He is not
permitted to exercise that full right, and the court in effect is not
permitted to exercise its full jurisdiction, if, while attending the trial
and perhaps before he can be heard, he may be seized and taken to
an asylum and so seized for the reason, that he had been previously
committed under an order which the petitioner in the very case was
asserting to be wholly void. Under such extraordinary conditions, we
think the Circuit Court had the power to grant the protective writ.
"Having determined the question of power, we come to the pro
priety of exercising it.
290
"Notwithstanding the fact that the petitioner is at liberty in other
States, it is suggested that it would be unsafe for him to be brought
to New York. // any danger were to be apprehended it would furnish
o good reason for refusing the writ. There is, however, nothing in
the record to indicate the probability of any such danger and the peti
tioner's prayer for relief is based upon the express condition that he
remain in the custody of United States marshals during his entire
sojourn in the State.
"For these reasons we think a writ of protection should issue if
the pleadings' in the case remain as they are. The defendant joins
issue upon the fact of sanity after the New York orders were made,
and also sets up that the Virginia decree was obtained' by collusion
and is void. With respect to these questions the presence of the peti
tioner upon the trial would be imperatively required. //, however, the
defendant as a committee appointed by the Supreme Court of New
York, stood squarely upon the decrees of that court as justifying his
acts and asserted that such decrees while unreversed, constitute a
complete defense regardless of the fact whether the petitioner had
since recovered his sanity, the question upon the trial in the Circuit
Court would simply relate to the validity of those decrees.
"That question would be principally a question of law. Practically
the only facts involved would be as to notice given the petitioner
if notice is necessary and perhaps as to his residence.
"With respect to these questions, the proof would necessarily be
within narrow limits, and the petitioner's testimony, if required might
be taken by deposition. Upon such issues we think the personal pres
ence of the petitioner not so necessary that he should be granted the
extraordinary relief prayed for here.
"The order of the Circuit court is reversed, with costs to the peti
tioner, and the matter is remanded to the court with instructions, in
case the issues remain as at present, to issue a writ of protection to
the petitioner prohibiting any person from apprehending or taking
him for the purpose of returning him or committing him to an insane
asylum while attending the trial of this said action and for such
reasonable time before and after the trial as said court may determine
is necessary for him to come into the State and return, provided that
he shall submit himself during such time to the custody of one or
more United States marshals, shall obey their directions and shall
pay the expenses of their employment. But that in case all the issues,
except with respect to the validity and effect of the said orders of the
Supreme Court of New York and of the justice thereof, be eliminated
within sixty days, then said writ of protection do not mue."t
tSaid issues remain in statu quo.
291
What the Law Reviews Have to Say about " The
Lunacy Law of the World."
By John Armstrong Chaloner, A. B., A. M., Member of the Bar.
NORTHEASTERN REPORTER.
St. Paul, Minn., July, 1907.
"The Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C., has printed a book on
The Lunacy Law of the World,' by John Armstrong Chaloner, of the
same place. It is an examination of the laws of the States and Terri
tories, and of the Six Great Powers of Europe, on this subject, and is in
terms a very severe arraignment of most of them. It would appear
that the iniquitous system against which Charles Reade waged war
has by no means disappeared. People may still be incarcerated in
insane asylums without notice, and without an opportunity to be
heard, either in person or by attorney and once in an asylum, a
' patient has little protection against the keepers. They may be wise$
and kind, but the instances of cruelty which occasionally reach the
public indicate that this is not a safe assumption. Mr. Chaloner holds
a brief for the accused, and puts his case very strongly, but, in view
of the cases he cites, it would be impossible to state the matter too
strongly. He says:
" 'A survey of the field of Lunacy legislation the world over pre
sents to-day an appalling spectacle. It affords, to put it mildly, the
strongest card in favor of anarchy of no law ever laid upon the
table of world-politics and throws into lamentable relief the fact that
in about forty per cent, of the 'States and Territories of the United
States neither the Bench with many honourable exceptions the Bar
nor the Legislature, can be entrusted with safeguarding that funda
mental principle of liberty, the absolute rights of the individual.'
"The book should awaken public interest in an important matter."
THE OHIO LAW BULLETIN.
Norwalk, Ohio, July 29, 1907.
Chaloner, Lunacy Law of the World.
"A criticism of the practice of adjudging persons incompetent and
depriving them of their liberties without due process of law, fortified
by decisions of the courts, is the theme upon which the author has de
veloped this interesting and instructive work. The lunacy law of all
the States of the Union and six of the Great Powers of Europe are
292
reviewed, and surprising ag it may seem, nearly half of the States and
Great Britain fail to require notice of the inquisition to be given the
alleged lunatic or incompetent; twenty-four of the States and Ger
many and Great Britain fail to afford him opportunity to appear and
be heard. The author makes it conclusively appear that there is
needed revision of these laws. Edited by John Armstrong Chaloner,
counsellor at law. Published by the Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids,
N. C.
THE OKLAHOMA LAW JOURNAL.
Guthrie, Oklahoma, September, 1907.
"The Lunacy Law of the World,
By John Armstrong Chaloner.
Published by the Palmetto Press,
Roanoke Rapids, N. C.
This is a volume of nearly four hundred pages, well printed, but
bound in paper covers a point always detrimental to the sale as well
as the dignity of a law book. However, when the contents are care
fully read and reflected upon, it is found one of the best and most
needed books that has appeared for many years.
The subject of Lunacy Law in spite of all the legislation we have
had in other departments, has received little attention. In fact, it is
little better than when Charles Reade wrote his book, entitled 'Hard
Cash.' From the fact that many mentally deranged persons are in
capable of comprehending the nature of the steps taken to place them
in custody, the custom has become prevalent that no process is needed
to place them on trial as to their sanity. It is to be remembered
that in every State of the Union and in fact, in every country of the
world, fraud has been perpetrated on men and women of means by
greedy relatives and the unfortunate ones placed in asylums for no
other purpose than to secure control of their property. And further
it should be remembered that one once adjudged insane if he cannot
secure a hearing of his right to restoration through the influence of
true friends he is forever barred of the right to be heard. He has
lost the standing of a citizen. There is much in Mr. Chaloner's book
that should be well studied by every lawyer and legislator as to what
should be done to secure the constitutional rights of every one alleged
to be of unsound mind. The book carefully goes over the law of
lunacy in the forty-five States and Territories as well as that of the
leading nations of Europe."
293
LANCASTER LAW REVIEW.
Lancaster, Pa., September 30, 1907.
"The Lunacy Law of the World,
By John Armstrong Chaloner, Counsellor at Law.
Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C.
The work is a review of the lunacy laws of the States and Terri
tories of this country together with those of Great Britain, France,
Italy, Germany, Austria and Russia, with a view of showing their de
fects mainly in regard to affording proper protection to the alleged
lunatic.
To those of us who have been accustomed to look with compla
cency on our lunacy laws, remembering how\ lunatics were thrown
into dungeons and chained and tortured but a short time ago, this
book brings home some startling truths. It shows clearly the dan
gers of that class of legislation in force in England and many of our
States (as our own Act of April 20, 1869, P. L., 78), which permits an
alleged lunatic to be incarcerated upon the certificate of 'two or more
reputable physicians.'
The author contends that in lunacy proceedings notice to the al
leged lunatic ought to be absolutely essential and that the trial should
be by jury in the presence of the alleged lunatic-; that any other prac
tice is a violation of his constitutional rights and dangerous, in that
it might be used by designing relatives for fraudulent purposes.
The importance of a jury trial in such cases has been recognized
by Judge Brewster in Com. ex rel. vs. Kirkbride, 2 Brewster, 402.
The writ of habeas corpus is not a sufficient safeguard.
In setting forth the importance of allowing the alleged lunatic an
opportunity to appear, the author says:
"The test of sanity is a mental test wholly within the power of
the accused to accomplish and without any witnesses, professional or
lay, to back him up. Suppose two paid experts in insanity in the pay
of the other side, swear defendant's mind cannot tell what his past
history has been that said defendant's mind is a total blank upon
the subject. Would that professional and paid for and interested oath
stand against the defendant's refutation thereof by taking the stand
and promptly and lucidly giving his past history, provided he were
afforded his legal privilege of taking the stand in place of being kept
away from court and having to allow his liberty and property to be
perjured away from him in his enforced absence?" (Page 217.)
Collusion would be very difficult to prove. It has been held that
no presumption arises from the fact that the parties certifying to the
alleged lunacy were in fact mistaken. Williams vs. Le Bar, 114 Pa.,
149.
The subject is an important and interesting one, and the book
shows extensive and careful research. It is forcefully written and car
ries conviction."
294
LAW NOTES.
Northport, New York, September, 1907.
"The Lunacy Law of the World,
By John Armstrong Chaloner,
Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.
The writer is assuredly earnest, . . . setting forth the unques
tionable abuses to which the state of the lunacy law has given rise.
The exhaustiveness of his research into the question compels ad
miration; an author who can work through lunacy laws from the
time of the Emperor Conrad down to the present."
Harper's Weekly, (New York), August 14, 1915.
John Armstrong Chaloner, Esq., of Virginia, who, apropos of Mr.
Trevor's articles, said: "It is a splendid idea, and, so far as I know,
absolutely original, to have nwn's wearing apparel treated by a gentle
man and a litterateur." Vanity Fair. New York, July, 1915.
297
Harper's Weekly, (New York), August 14, 1915,
PEN AND INKLINGS.
By Oliver Herford.
Who's Pantaloony Now?
Disrespectfully dedicated to John Armstrong \Chaloner, Esq.
Astride your charger (like Napoleon) seated,
Upon the world, this jewel you confer.
"How splendid to have men's attire treated
Sic by a gentleman and litterateur."
Ah me! Had Horace when his muse was flagging,
But given laughing Lalage a rest,
And kept Maecenas' pantaloons from bagging,
(Or whatever 'twas he wore below his vest.)
If Tommy Moore when not devoutly pressing
His suit in amorous rhyme, had pressed instead
His patrons' lordly "pants," it is past guessing
What titles had been showered on his head.
Had Bobby Burns renounced his Highland lassies,
And tuned his pipes to "Gentlemen's attire,"
He might in time have risen from the masses
And been addressed as Eobert Burns, Esquire.
Come, Chaloner, confess like a good feller
By "Gentleman and litterateur" you meant
The literary style of the Best Seller
And the strictly pure refinement of the Gent.
DAVID-UP-TO-DATE
A SEQUENCE OF SIX DRAMATIC SONNETS
To Henry Brinsley.
I.
I am the modern David that '* my claim.
Apply four lives the deadly parallel
And thou shalt see that sans the slightest blame
He was forced to run the gauntlet of black Hell !
Then song to him was given Divine gift!
With which to sing his woes and praise his God
With which to sing life's lute and her sad rift
With which to sing grim Saul his iron rod!
T'Adullam's Cave he then was forced to flee
And gather there his future "Mighty Men"
In Adullam's Cave "The Merry Mills" ye see
And as he drew the sword, draw I the pen.
I call upon my God, Jehovah Jah!
The Supreme Being! God the "Man of War!"
II.
The mighty Goliath he first did slay
That haughty formidable Philistine
The boldest deed sun e'er shone on I say!
In days full modern or in days pristine.
The modern Philistine's the Mad-House Trust
Which held me captive for four fetid years
Hoping thereby my courage could be crusht
Hoping my soul would drown herself in tears.
David then fled an exile from his home
And to save 's life did feign insanity
I to save mine to th' Sunny South have come
And tables turned! Courts proved my sanity!
I call upon my God Jehovah Jah !
"The God of Battles!" God the "Man of War!"
299
III.
Goliath, with the law as sling, I'll slay!
And cut his head off, and stamp on the same.
As fighting-dog I sure shall have my day
Then from the world my meed of fame I'll claim!
In His good time the Lord did conquer Saul
And that grand spirit nobly took his life
Drowning his sorrows in a sea of gall
Thus baffling Philistines o' th' fruits of strife !
David then entered on his glorious wars!
And King of Israel did rule the land.
His glory mounts for aye unto the stars!
His name's a household word on every hand !
David, as God said, was a "man of blood"
So falls my pen on rogues with bloody thud!
IV.
As David drew the sword, draw I the pen
Poet-pen-militant! The pen of war!
And with its edge draw I the blood of men
A magic edge that slays or near or far !
Nought can escape me in the Universe!
Kings, Potentates, and Princes Monarchs all!
For each a pit is digged within my verse
For each is spread a winding-sheet a pall.
The rich and' haughty are my chopping-block
The block on which my Headsman's axe doth strike
Their swollen heads and swollen guts I mock,
My lictor's rods scourge fools whom I dislike!
We crown ourselves THE KING OF WARLIKE VERSE
And smile while hostile critics rave and curse.
300
V.
I haste to say some critics are my friends,
A goodly roll of talent supports me
A goodly roll of critics back my ends
A goodly roll my aim's pure ends do see.
But Bushwhacker-Banditti of the Pen
Blackguard Swashbucklers and Draw-Can-Sirs fell
Who lick the boots of low-born rich-quick-men
Anent my Muse the d dest lies do tell !
These paltry, petty, furtive human-lice
These gray-back-body-lice that run so fast
Unless one is upon them in a trice
The day of reck'ning's gone! Its hour full past!
Against these vermin do I detonate
And jet pure vitriol both soon and late.
J. A. C., Richmond, Virginia, Jefferson's Birthday, 1915.
L/ Envoi
VI.
We point unto our record quietly.
The Tribune and the World admit by we
The Kaiser and his crew entirely
In purest vitriol deep soused be.
And other leading papers say the same
Anent our modest book Pieces of Eight
North, South and West do frank admit naught's tame
That therein pictures for said crew our hate.
All frank admit that we possess the "punch"
The "punch" that lands the "knock-out" coveted
The "punch" which swift all consciousness doth crunch
Pulverize and put out i' th' buffeted.
T'all said distinguished judges of our "swat"
We bow our compliments and doff our hat.
J. A. C., Richmond, Virginia, May 19, 1915.
301
INDEX
AM BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (A Romance in
High Life in New York showing how the Vendetta is
operated on Fifth Avenue) 82-136
ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP 148-178
Author of "Who's Looney Now?" Gets Spirit Message from
Hades, etc 169
Art Students, to Aid 197
Art Students' Fund, an 194
Brinsley, Henry, in "Vanity Fair" 175
"Beaux Arts," To Form a 199
Booth, Edwin, Letter of 199
"BRER FOX AND BRER RABBIT" 219-228
Chaloner, John Armstrong Speaks 127
Chaloner, Via Mr 174
Chaloner to Choate, Letter of 187
Chaloner's Income Large 229
Chaloner Files Appeal 230
Chaloner on War Path 133
Chaloner on War Path 134
Chaloner Writes on Verdict in Thaw Case 254
Chanler-Family Letters, The 110
Correspondence Elicited by First Edition of "Hard Cash".. 137
Choate, Jr., Joseph H. and T. Tittlebat Sherman, In re. ... 201
Copy of Letter Addressed to Members of Press, Washing
ton, D. C 165
Chronicle, San Francisco, "A New Vision of Hell" 173
DAVID-UP-TO-DATE 298-300
Decision of Judges Lacombe, Coxe and Noyes, 162 Federal
Reports, 19 287-290
Frontispiece Opposite Title Page
Frontispiece, Note to 185
Four Years Behind the Bars of Bloomingdale 103
Four Years in Bloomingdale 117
Hell 173
Hell, The Call of 164
Hell, Message from 173
Hell, New Vision of 173
Hendrick's, Mr. Justice, Statement in the Thaw Case and Opin
ion Based Thereon 254
History of English Prosody, A 61
HAZARD OF THE DIE, THE 1-58
302
Hazard Of The Die, Prologue to 2
Hazard Of The Die, Epilogue to 59
Hudson, Thomson Jay, Statement of 159
Herald, New York, "For Benefit American Art" 193
Herald, Washington, "Author of "Who's Looney Now Gets
Spirit Message" 169
ISIS UNVEELED 229-237
Jastrow, Prof. Joseph, Statement of 152
James, Prof. William, Statement of 157
Journal, Richmond Evening, "Hell" 173
News-Leader, Richmond, Note to Frontispiece 185
News and Observer, Raleigh, "Four Years in Blooming-
dale" V 117
NEWSPAPER REVIEWS 231-286
Prologue I-VI
PRISON HOUSE, THE 137-147
Press Statement 108
PARIS PRIZE, IN RE, THE 207-218
Preface to "Hard Cash" 137
Passing Show, The 174
ROBBERY UNDER LAW or THE BATTLE OP THE MIL
LIONAIRES 1-97
Robbery Under Law, Inset to vi
Robbery Under Law, Epilogue to 98
Roanoke News, Weldon N. C. "Chaloner on War Path". . . 133
"SHAVING OF SHAGPAT," THE 187-206
Scholarship, Benefit American Art 193
Scorpio 177
Saltus, Edgar, in "Vanity Fair" 175
Stop Thief, Give Me My Million 122
State, New Orleans, "The Passing Show" 174
Summons and Complaint, In re Paris Prize 207
Shakespeare and Blank Verse 61
Shakespeare's Predecessors in English Drama 69
"THE PLAY'S THE THING" 179-184
TEMPLE OF APOLLO AND THE MUSES, THE 61-81
Telegraph, New York, Satan Is A Gentleman" 175
Times-Dispatch, Richmond, "John Armstrong Chaloner
Speaks" 127
Tribune, New York, Editorial 197
Tribune, Chicago, "Via Mr. Chaloner" 174
Virginian, Richmond, "The Call of Hell" 164
Who's Pantaloony Now? 296-297
What The Law Reviews Have to Say About "The Lunacy
Law of the World" 291-294
World, New York, "Stop Thief, Give Me 'My Million" 122
Wood, Dr. Horatio Curtis, Statement of 148
303
ALIGNMENT OK CONTENTS
Frontispiece Opposite Title Page.
Prologue 1-VI
Inset To "Robbery Under Law." VI
ROBBERY UNDER LAW or THE BATTLE OP THE MIL
LIONAIRES 1-97
Epilogue To "Robbery Under Law." : 98
THE HAZARD OP THE DIE 1-58
Prologue To The Hazard Of The Die 2
Epilogue To The Hazard Of The Die 59
THE TEMPLE OP APOLLO AND THE MUSES 61-81
"Shakespeare and Blank Verse." 61
"Shakspere's Predecessors In The English Drama." 69
ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES 82-136
"Four Years Behind The Bars of Bloomingdale." 103
Press Statement 108
The Chanler-Family Letters 110
"Four Years In Bloomingdale" The News and Observer, Raleigh,
North Carolina, October 18, 1906 117
Stop Thief! Give Me My Million! The World, New York, Novem
ber 11, 1906 122
John Armstrong Chaloner Speaks. The Times-Dispatch, Rich
mond, Virginia, October 17, 1906 127
Chaloner On The War Path. The Roanoke News, Weldon, North
Carolina, October 18, 1906 133
Chaloner On The War Path. News-Leader, Richmond, Virginia,
October 15, 1906 134
THE PRISON HOUSE 137-147
ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP 148-178
Statement By Dr. Horatio Curtis Wood 148
Statement By Professor Joseph Jastrow 152
Statement Of Professor William James; 157
Statement Of Thomson Jay Hudson 159
The Call Of Hell. Richmond Virginian, August 12, 1912 164
Copy of Letter Addressed To A Score Or So Of The Members Of
The Press Of Washington, D. C 165
Author Of "Who's Looney Now?" Gets Spirit Message From Hades
From Friend Who Says He Is There. Washington Herald,
August 5, 1912 169
Hell. Richmond News-Leader, October 28, 1912 173
A Message From Hell. Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 30, 1912. 173
A New Vision Of Hell. San Francisco Chronicle, August 6, 1912.. 173
304
Via Mr. Chaloner. Chicago (111.) Tribune, August 6, 1912 174
The Passing Show. New Orleans (La.) States, August 8, 1912 174
In re Hell. New York Tribune, August 6, 1912 175
In re Hell. New York Telegraph August 6, 1912 175
Edgar Saltus In "Vanity Fair," New York, January, 1914 175
Henry Brinsley in "Vanity Fair," New York, January, 1914 175
Scorpio (Sonnets) The Academy, London, August 8, 1908 177-178
"THE PLAY'S THE THING." 179-186
Note To Frontispiece The News-Leader, Richmond, Virginia,
October 5, 1911 185
"THE SHAVING OP SHAGPAT." 187-206
Letter of Chaloner to Choate 187
"For the Benefit Of American Art." New York Herald, January 26,
1891 192
An Art Students Fund. New York World, January 26, 1891 194
To Aid Art Students. New York Tribune, January 26, 1891 197
Editorial New York Tribune, January 29, 1891 197
To Form A "Beaux Arts" New York World, January 29, 1891. . . . 199
Letter From Edwin Booth To John Armstrong Chaloner 199
In re Joseph H. Choate, Jr., and T. Tittlebat Sherman 201
IN RE THE PARIS PRIZE 207-218
Summons and Complaint In re Paris Prize 207
"BRER POX AND BRER RABBIT." 219-228
ISIS UNVEILED , 229-230
Chaloner Income Large Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond,
Va., February 1, 1915 229
Isis Unveiled 229
Chaloner Files Appeal. Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 1, 1915.. 230
NEWSPAPER REVIEWS 231-286
Chaloner Writes on Verdict in Thaw Case 254
Hendrick's, Mr. Justice, Statement in the Thaw Case and Opinion
Based Thereon 254
Decision of Judges Lacombe, Coxe and Noyes, 162 Federal Re
ports, 19 287-290
What the Law Reviews Have to Say about "The Lunacy Law of
the World" 291-294
Who's Pantaloony Now? 296-297
DAVID-UP-TO-DATE . ..298-300
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