The Devil's Gentleman (8 page)

14

T
he holiday season of 1897 was an unhappy time for Roland Molineux. First came Blanche’s rejection of his marriage proposal on Thanksgiving Day. Then, just before Christmas, his protracted feud with Harry Cornish reached a sudden and—from Roland’s point of view—exceptionally bitter climax.

The unwitting catalyst was a gentleman named Bartow Sumter Weeks. The son of a Civil War colonel, Weeks had gotten his law degree from Columbia University before going to work in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. In the fall of 1897, he had just entered into private practice with another former assistant DA, George Gordon Battle. Eventually, Weeks would become a New York State Supreme Court justice.

Besides the law, amateur athletics was the great passion of Weeks’s life. A long-standing member of the New York Athletic Club, he had served as two-term president, chairman of the Athletic Committee, member of the Board of Governors, and captain of the club’s athletic team.

He was also a close family friend of the Molineuxs and had known Roland for many years.

In October 1897, the pugnacious Harry Cornish had become embroiled in a dispute with Weeks, accusing him in print of an ethical violation. According to Cornish—who published his charge in
Harper’s Weekly
—Weeks, in his eagerness to win an international meet, had paid a track star named Bernie Wefers, holder of the world record in the 100-yard dash, to switch membership from the Knickerbocker Athletic Club to the NYAC. Cornish was incensed over this payoff, a flagrant breach (so he argued) of the amateur code.

Cornish was after Weeks, not Bernie Wefers, whom he considered a friend. So when the Amateur Athletic Union suspended Wefers from competition until a hearing could be held, Cornish backpedaled and refused to testify. The hearing was canceled, Wefers was reinstated, Weeks was exonerated, and Cornish himself ended up receiving an official reprimand for bringing “false and malicious charges.”

Afterward Cornish—seeking to mend fences with Bernie Wefers—sent him a letter on official KAC stationery. Though he apologized for the trouble he had caused the track star, he remained unrepentant in regard to Weeks. “I have got it in for Weeks,” he wrote, “for I consider him to be as far beneath me as one man can be with another. He has been guilty of a dirty piece of business.”
¹

Somehow, this letter ended up in Weeks’s possession. And Weeks lost no time in showing it to Roland Molineux.

Whether Weeks had any sense of Roland’s obsessive hatred of Cornish is unclear. In any case, the “Wefers letter” (as it came to be known) drove Roland to new heights of outrage.

Appearing before the Board of Governors, he demanded that Cornish be fired at once. After taking the matter under advisement, the board members—who were, on the whole, quite pleased with Cornish’s performance as athletic director—opted for little more than a slap on the wrist. The Wefers letter, they concluded, was Cornish’s private affair. He had every right to express his opinion of Weeks in however churlish a manner he wished—though not with the imprimatur of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club. Henceforth, he would be deprived of the use of club stationery for his personal correspondence.

As a gesture befitting the gentlemanly code of clubdom, the board also voted to throw a dinner for Weeks, at which they offered their formal apologies and expressed their admiration for the leadership of the NYAC. Weeks was placated, and the whole unfortunate incident appeared to be settled.
²

Roland, however, would not let the matter rest. Not long after the conciliatory dinner, he issued an ultimatum to the board: either Cornish must go or he himself would quit the club. On the evening of December 20, 1897, the board met again. After deliberating for half an hour, they let Roland know that, while they valued his membership and sincerely hoped that he would reconsider his position, they had voted to retain Cornish. With a little bow, Roland promptly resigned.

Back in his room, he composed a letter to the club secretary, John Adams:

My Dear Adams,

Although I have resigned from the K.A.C., do not for one moment suppose that I wish it other than success. I entertain the highest personal regard for its officers, but I have been a disturbing element in its counsels because, with the very best intentions, I have opposed what I am confident is a wrong policy, that of allowing an employee to use the club for personal advertisement and to get even with gentlemen who displease him. This I am not in sympathy with. Believe me, it is best that I resign, which I do regretfully. I hope you will show this to Mr. Ballantine, that he may know how I stand on this matter. Wishing you all the compliments of this happy season, I am,

Yours most cordially,
Roland Molineux
³

He sealed the letter in an envelope. Then, descending to the main floor, he strode across the empty lobby to Adams’s office and slipped the envelope under the door.

As he returned to his room, he encountered Harry Cornish on the stairs.

“You son of a bitch,” sneered Cornish, who had just learned of the board’s decision. “You thought you’d get me out, and I got you out instead.”

These were, as Cornish knew perfectly well, fighting words. If any man had dared utter them to
him,
Cornish would have promptly answered with his fists.

Roland, however, did not rise to the bait. Instead, he merely gave his strange, enigmatic smile, waved his hand blithely, and said, “You win.”

Then he mounted the stairs to his room, where he proceeded to pack his belongings. By the following morning he was gone from the club, never to return.
⁴

In the nineteenth century, the word
molly
(derived from the Latin
mollis,
meaning “soft”) was derogatory slang for a male homosexual, the Victorian equivalent of the later slur
fairy.
It was also, as it happened, phonetically identical to Roland’s nickname, “Mollie.”

On the evening of his climactic encounter with Molineux, Cornish, as was his custom, visited Jim Wakeley’s saloon. There, beneath the portraits of bare-chested pugilists and other athletic luminaries, he regaled his drinking chums with an account of his triumph over his longtime adversary.

As he repeated Roland’s submissive parting words, Cornish snorted with contempt. It was just the sort of response, he and his cohorts agreed, that a man would expect from the aptly named Mollie.

15

I
ncreasingly preoccupied with thoughts of Henry Barnet, Blanche was oblivious to Roland’s troubles with Harry Cornish. Nor did Roland inform her of his resignation from the club. He had, after all, suffered a humiliating defeat in his final showdown with his nemesis and wasn’t eager to reveal it to the woman he sought to impress.

The day after New Year’s 1898, Blanche herself changed living quarters, moving in with a family friend named Alice Bellinger, a forty-year-old divorcée who quickly became her closest confidante. In the meantime, Roland retreated to his apartment in the Newark paint factory, where amid his books, laboratory equipment, and shelves of toxic chemicals, he passed much of his time brooding.

He had a good deal to brood about. His heart still rankling with hatred, he sent letters to various acquaintances, detailing Cornish’s transgressions, which—so he insisted—were doing such harm to the KAC that Roland could no longer associate himself with the club.
¹

Blanche’s relationship with Henry Barnet had also begun to eat at him. Roland had made it very clear that he desired to marry her, and he had no intention of putting up with her increasingly open flirtation with Barney.

In all of the public statements she was ever to make on the subject, Blanche would insist that her relationship with Harry Barnet had been purely platonic—nothing more than a warm friendship, conducted with the approval, even encouragement, of Roland Molineux. Only much later, when she set down her memoirs in old age, would she confess the truth.

Her description of the fateful evening when her flirtation with Barnet took a far more serious turn occupies an entire chapter of the manuscript. It reads—as does so much of her writing—like an overheated excerpt from a pulpy true romance magazine. Precisely because it
is
so clichéd, however, it serves as a revealing self-portrait of the author. More revealing, perhaps, than she intended, since it shows her in a not-very-flattering light: as a hopelessly histrionic woman who sees herself as the star of a glamorous grand opera even while coming across as a character in an embarrassingly cheesy bodice ripper.

It began on a wintry Monday evening in late January. Blanche had been asked to perform at a late-night soiree. Though Roland was to be her escort, her mind was focused entirely on Barnet. He, too, had been invited, and his presence was all she could think about.

It would be, she writes in her memoirs, “the first time Barney heard me sing.”
²
Eager “to look particularly well” for him, she dressed in a “filmy tulle gown, together with black satin slippers, the high heels of which were studded with brilliants.” Then, for the finishing touch, she added her diamond butterfly pin from Tiffany’s.

It had, of course, been a gift from Roland. But she was wearing it for Barnet.

Descending from her bedroom to the parlor, she found her landlady and friend, Alice Bellinger, seated before the glowing fireplace.

“You look like a million,” said Alice.

“Of course!” Blanche laughed. “And why not?”

“Your frock—it is quite too lovely,” said Alice, surveying Blanche from head to foot. “It absolutely
breathes
Paris.”

All at once, a shadow of concern crossed the older woman’s face and her tone became solemn.

“I warn you,” she said, as though reading Blanche’s thoughts. “Stop your flirtation with Barnet or you are going to get into a lot of trouble. One can see in his eyes that Roland won’t stand for it.”

“Why, that is nonsense,” said Blanche, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “That’s perfectly silly.”

At that moment, the doorbell rang. Grabbing her long white gloves and throwing on the chinchillas loaned to her by Alice, Blanche hurried to the door. There stood Roland in a “mood of lightheartedness” and “looking awfully well in his evening clothes.”

After a quick ride downtown in a horse-drawn cab, they reached their destination, a handsome apartment in Washington Square filled with laughing, chattering partygoers, many of whom had just come from the Met. Blanche quickly realized that she was not going to be performing that evening. The crowd was so large and raucous that singing was out of the question. What disappointed her most, however, was that Barnet was nowhere to be seen.

When he
did
arrive, about twenty-five minutes later, he had an attractive young woman on his arm. Yet no sooner did his eyes fall on Blanche than he began to make his way toward her through the crowd. By the time he reached her side, he had managed to detach himself from his date.

“You look wonderful,” he said. “Where’s Mollie?”

“Over there,” Blanche said, nodding toward the anteroom, where Roland was chatting with the host. “And where’s your woman friend?”

“Lost in the crowd.” Barnet laughed. “I’m sure she’ll have a good time flirting.” Then looking about, he said, “What a mob. Isn’t there someplace we can escape to and talk?”

Before Blanche could reply he had taken her by one arm. “Come on,” he urged. “Let’s get out of this. I know where we can have a moment together. Shall we? Let’s go—we’ll get back before they miss us.”

Still holding on to her arm, Barnet pushed through the crowd, then hurried outside while Blanche gathered up her wraps. By the time she emerged onto the street, he had secured a cab.

“Where are we bound?” she asked in an excited, slightly breathless voice as Barnet seated himself close beside her. “What sort of escapade have you planned, Barney?”

Even in the darkness of the cab she could see his rakish smile. “I have the keys to D——’s apartment,” he said, naming a friend from the KAC. “He’s in Europe, you know. For six weeks. Said I could have it until his return.”

Less than five minutes later, Barnet was unlocking the door to the uptown apartment, just off Fifth Avenue. The time was shortly before midnight.

The instant they entered, Blanche could tell from the decor that it was the residence of a well-to-do bachelor. She could tell something else, too: that arrangements had been made for a carefully orchestrated seduction.

Barnet had prepared for this, I was sure. He must have planned our coming here, all in advance. The apartment was dimly lighted and a chaise longue was drawn up before an open fireplace. The logs were laid, and Barnet stooped to touch a lighted taper to them. The bits of paper underneath curled and blackened, and the flames raced to the driftwood, catching the heavy log which was upheld by massive old andirons of some early English period. The firelight played on the nearest objects and threw shadows on the opposite walls.

Reaching behind her, Barnet removed the furs from Blanche’s bare shoulders and arms. He then disappeared into another room, returning a few moments later with a tray holding a bowl of ice, a flask of scotch, and a siphon bottle. Setting the tray down on a carved taboret, he mixed two highballs in tall crystal glasses and handed one to Blanche.

“To you,” he said, touching the rim of her glass with his own. They drank. Then, rearranging the deep pile of damask-covered pillows on the chaise longue, Barnet said, “Lie there, where I can look at you.”

She did as he asked while he seated himself close beside her.

“You certainly have set the stage for something, Barney,” she said, sipping again from her glass.

“For you,” he answered.

“We’ve done a perfectly wild thing,” she said, “running away like this from the party. If they miss us, what then?”

“They won’t,” said Barnet. “I’ll watch the time. No one will know we’ve escaped.”

“Still,” she said, “if Roland finds out that I came here with you…”

“Then why tell him?” asked Barnet.

“I shan’t,” said Blanche.

They spoke for a while about her feelings for Molineux. She confessed that, though she still entertained thoughts of marrying him one day, she was not really in love with him.

By then, she had finished her drink. “You know, Barney,” she said with a smile, “it is terribly risqué, our being alone like this.”

“Are you afraid of me?” asked Barnet.

“Somewhat,” she said.

In truth, she felt no fear at all, but rather “an uncontrollable desire to touch him—to have him touch me.”

Wanting him “to be conscious of the faint indefinable perfume of my hair, my flesh,” Blanche bent forward. Barney’s eyes shone as he stared at her, his gaze “like a caress as it rested on the little hollow between my white breasts, plainly discernible under the revealing outlines of my bodice.”

All at once, “as though with an overwhelming impulse of desire, he caught me up in his arm, pulled me down against him, and buried his lips in mine.”

I don’t know how many minutes I lay there with his arms about me. He kissed my hair, my neck, my shoulders and breast. My heart pounded against his heart, and my breath came in little gasps. It was like a torrent, his passion.

“My God, what lips, what a body you have,” he whispered. “You are like a flame. You have made me on fire for you!”

He was drunk with the madness and passion of the moment, and I was trembling. He bruised my mouth, and afterwards there were little black and blue marks on my flesh. The brutality of it was an ecstasy!

They were still lying on the chaise when they heard the mantle clock strike one. Barnet rose, then reached out his hands and pulled Blanche to her feet.

“We have gone mad,” said Blanche.

“Yes,” said Barnet. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

They kissed again. Then, throwing on their garments, they made their way to the street, found a cab, and drove off to rejoin the party.