Geneva Lake
I left the Daily News and walked over to the train station to meet Nora and ride up to Geneva Lake. Though I loved Chicago, I wanted to get away from it as quickly as I could.
On Madison Street, alas, I encountered young Cyrus McCormick, the scion of the clan who now ran the company and helped to fund Captain Schaack. He was dressed in riding clothes with a riding whip in his hand. He was about my age and tall, turning fat.
He saw me from across the street and, ignoring the traffic, strode towards me.
I must stress in these notes that I was not looking for a fight. Nor was I looking forward to one. Yet one part of me, some deep Gaelic demon perhaps, was eager to face him.
“Fitzpatrick!” he shouted.
“Mr. McCormick.” I bowed.
“I heard what you did at St. Patrick’s Church yesterday.”
“I didn’t do anything, Mr. McCormick.”
“You were behind it all.”
“I was not.”
“You ought to be horsewhipped”—he raised his whip—“because of your support of those damned foreigners.”
I evaded the first blow of his whip and hit him with a sharp left and then a solid right.
He collapsed into a readily available pile of manure.
Nursing my fingers, for effect if truth be told, more than for anything else, I continued my walk to the station. I didn’t bother to tell Nora about the encounter, not because it would worry her (though it might) but because she might give me undue credit.
When my father and mother appeared on Thursday along with Josie and our daughters, the General took me aside almost immediately.
“I hear you’ve been horsewhipped by young Cy McCormick,” he said with a grin.
“Have I now?”
“Well, that’s the story he’s been spreading around. He has, however, a swollen jaw it seems to me.”
“I can’t imagine how that might have happened.”
“You disposed of that vainglorious punk with one punch?”
“No, sir.”
“Two?”
“That might be a bit closer to the truth.”
Later the General and I sat on the porch in front of the larger house, smoked our pipes, and drank a glass of Irish whiskey. The blue of Geneva Lake reminded me of pictures of the Mediterranean. I had promised Nora I would take her abroad after the trial and the appeal were over. The sun set slowly, painting the lake red and gold.
The General sighed contentedly.
“ ’Tis good to have this place and myself with only half a bed in a turf-heated cottage when I left home.”
He could never quite believe his good fortune in America. “Pure luck,” he would say. He meant it. He laughed at the pretensions of the Fields and the McCormicfa and the Pullmans, who thought they were rich because of superior virtue.
“What’s happening in the trial?” I asked casually.
“You haven’t gone into town to buy a paper?”
“I wouldn’t waste a precious moment here.”
“With Nora?”
“Certainly.”
“As I’ve always said”—he sipped on his whiskey—“I am constantly astonished at your good taste… You have missed very little. It is a circus, a disgraceful circus. Your stories from Dublin and Galway four years ago portrayed a harsh judicial system blind to justice, but at least serious. Justice in Chicago is exposed to the world as a farce.”
“So it seems to me,” I agreed.
“The tide will turn eventually. Many of the better educated people in Chicago are already embarrassed by Gary and Grinnell. The working people have begun to understand that the Anarchists are on their side. In a year or two or three sympathy will shift to the Anarchists.”
“After they’re dead.”
He sighed again, much the way Nora sighs.
“I’m afraid so, Ned. Not necessarily all of them. Bill Black is a fine lawyer. He knows that the jury has already made up its mind. He’s making a record for an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, perhaps even to the United States Supreme Court.”
“Will he win?”
“Not as long as the rich men are ready to buy justices. However, he will get a chance to make the case in public without the endless interruptions of that fool Gary. The best hope is Governor Oglesby, who can commute the sentences by a grant of clemency.”
“Will he?”
My father shifted uncomfortably.
“You understand that some of the things I say to you ought not to appear in the newspaper.”
I laughed.
“Very well, I had occasion recently to speak to the Governor. He deplores the trial. He detests Judge Gary. He is disgusted by young Cy McCormick, who he thinks is a fool. He can barely stand men like Marshall Field and George Pullman. I came away from our conversation with the conviction—no promises mind you—that he would entertain appeals for clemency.”
“Most of those men have wives and children!” I cried, “young wives and young children!”
“I understand that, Ned. So, if I may say so, does the Governor.”
“I’m not sure that they would ask for clemency.”
“I wonder about the same thing. While Captain Black makes a record for appeal, the defendants strive to make a record for history.”
“Fools!” I exploded.
My father sighed again.
“History will listen to them, I think. And to you, Ned, for writing the truth.”
“Life is more important than history. Let the dead bury their dead.”
My mother’s voice rang out on the twilight air.
“If youse want food, you’d better come now or we’ll throw it away.”
“By the way,” the General said as we walked up to the cabin, “I think that young Miss VanZandt would make a good story. She is no one’s fool.”
“Very well.”
Chicago August 1, 1886
Next summer, please God, we will spend at least a month at Geneva Lake.
Only Josie was unhappy with our brief vacation. Poor Timmy Hardiman could not join us because he had to shove lumber. She confessed to me that she might attend college at St. Mary’s, across the road from Notre Dame.
“Would you object to that, Uncle Ned?”
“I would accept any decision that your aunt might make,” I said cautiously.
“Oh, she doesn’t mind. She thinks Timmy is a wonderfully sweet boy.”
“And you?”
“Well… I’m not quite sure. It wouldn’t hurt, however, to get to know him better, would it?”
“I am much too young, Josie, to be acting like a father for a woman your age. However, in words your aunt might use on a subject like this, ‘They wouldn’t be all that wrong who might say that it would be a good idea to get to know Timmy Hardiman better.’”
She grinned impishly and ran from my office.
I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps I would be better prepared when my two daughters reached the same age.
The trial drones on. Verdicts, for whatever they are worth, sometime this month.
I saw the bomb thrower the other night.
I was walking down North Avenue, returning from a brief visit to Laddy’s, where the general opinion seemed to be that it was time to get the whole thing over.
I saw ahead of me on the street, not my mysterious friend, but the man who had thrown the bomb, a big man with broad shoulders and an odd gait. I followed him as quietly as I could.
I pondered swiftly what I ought to do. He was big enough to brush me aside again if I got in his way. I would have to overtake him, make him turn around and try to land some decisive blows.
I confess I gave no thought to Nora or Josie or Mary Elizabeth or Grace.
I was only a few feet behind when he turned suddenly, saw me, and then broke into a run. I followed him as he turned north on Clark Street but lost him in the darkness of Lincoln Park.
Though I had caught a glimpse of his face, I still did not know who he was. However, I knew he was from Ireland, indeed from Galway.
Back here in my office I am unaccountably shaken. The man could be dangerous. I worry now about my family. Moreover, I don’t know his name. I can hardly identify him in court. I must consult with the General.
I wonder if Nora would recognize him.
August 2 1886
The General wisely says that I should do nothing unless I have another visit from my mysterious friend on the beach. The story is so wildly improbable that it would do nothing to save the Anarchists. He will assign some of his men again to protect me and the family, though he insists that it’s only a precaution.
“Was he an RIC man in Galway?” he asks me tentatively. “Though why one of them would be throwing a bomb in Chicago is not obvious to me.”
“Not uniformed. He seemed to be present at the fringes of crowds, just watching. More likely a Fenian spy, though I can’t imagine why one of them would be involved in the Haymarket incident.”
“Deep waters here, Ned. I don’t think there’s any danger, but we still must be careful.”
“If he were acting for anyone it would be the police, which confirms my suspicion that Bonfield and Schaack planned the explosion, but lost control of the situation.”
“You probably have the right of it, Ned. You’ll never be able to prove it, however.”
I knew that.
SOCIALITE SIDES WITH ANARCHISTS
Although she attended Mrs. Grant’s Finishing School and graduated from Vassar College, Rosanina Clarke VanZandt has chosen to side with the Anarchist defendants in the trial which is dragging on at the County Courthouse on Michigan Street.
“Along with many of my friends I went to the courthouse for the fun of it,” said the striking beautiful young woman. “We had decided that it was the thing to do this summer. I was expecting to see a rare collection of stupid, vicious, and criminal-looking men. I was greatly surprised to find that several of them, so far from corresponding with this description had intelligent, kindly, and good faces.”
Miss VanZandt’s father owns a successful pharmaceutical company. She is rumored to be in line for a large inheritance from an aunt in the East and is expected to join Society and make a good marriage. Yet her reported love for defendant August Spies puts that happy future in serious jeopardy.
She does not try to hide her feelings about Spies, whom she is assisting in the preparation of his autobiography.
“My sympathy with the persecuted and lawlessly adjudicated prisoners soon changed in a feeling of amity for Mr. Spies and from feeling of friendship there has gradually developed a strong affection.”
Poor Nina. She does not know what she is risking. How can the rich and spoiled know that the life of an Anarchist’s lover or even widow must be dedicated to a never-ending crusade for his memory. Lucy Parsons could tell her and perhaps warn her away. However, Lucy will see Nina VanZandt as another recruit to the cause, another soldier in the war for justice and the cause of working people.
I reflect on Metta Nebbe, living in terrible poverty with her two children, or George Engel’s aging wife, presiding over their tiny toy store while her husband suffers through this joke of a trial, of Elise Freidel, Louis Lingg’s pretty immigrant girlfriend with only a smattering of English.
She sees me on Michigan Street and shows me a pair of gold cuff links.
“Ja, I give to Louis. He look fine in court, nien?”
I agree with her.
“He wear when he die, nein?Carry to tomb.”
“I hope not.”
“See, I have our initials carved inside heart. Together in death, ja?”
Does one this young know what death is? Peasants cannot afford to be romantics, can they?
Do these men, dedicated and mad as they are, deserve such women? Do any of us deserve the women who give their lives to us? Probably not.
Someday, not now, I will write a story about these women. I will ask Nora about it first. She knows what it is like to lose a dearly loved husband to a murderous legal system.