Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (9 page)

Desperately searching for a counter-charge, the Republican leaders came across a bonanza. One can only appreciate it against the background of gaslight tempores and mores in the heyday of prudery and snob Victorianism. Grover Cleveland, when a young man in Buffalo, had fathered an illegitimate child. And now, with forthright honesty, he admitted it.

Well!

Jubilance danced and capered in Elephant headquarters while the Donkey brayed in dismay. No matter that the child's mother, a widow named Maria Halpin, had put a hammerlock on young Cleveland. No matter that the unfortunate offspring had been placed in a good private home. Cleveland was traduced as a philanderer and a seducer of virtuous maidenhood.

Against Cleveland's wishes, the frantic Democrats sought a

breach in the armor of Blaine's private life. Tamely they came up with the charge that he was tattooed. This was much like denouncing a crook for a bad taste in neckties.

The Old Guard had the big mudball, and they threw it for all it was worth. To advertise Cleveland's assumed perfidy, the Republican Club staged a giant rally in New York City. Marchers garbed as "Blaine's Knights"— plumed tophat and gaudy breast-ribbon—paraded down Broadway carrying baby dolls. As they passed under the street lamps they emitted a joyous chant.

Ma! Ma! Where's my Pa! Going to the White House? Ha! Ha! Ha!

It made history as the most scurrilous campaign slogan on record. It also made the front page of the contemporary papers and illustrated periodicals. Old Guard leaders, who cared nothing about history, loved the advertising. One can imagine them in their smoke-filled room in Washington when a runner dashes in with the morning edition.

"Boys, we're saved!"

And I could imagine Earnest Bridewell showing his mother the story in the Illustrated Weekly. His eyes bright. His cheekbones flushed. His finger trembling as it points to the parade picture.

"Ma, we're saved!"

For the microcosm of Quahog Point was a tiny mirror of the national scene. Earnest Bridewell, like James G. Blaine, had come up against a tough opponent who seemed assured of the election. But now—

"Look, Ma! They're carrying baby dolls. See it? Don't you see?"

Dober Davenport did not know whether Earnest Bridewell made a good showing on the stump. Nor was he conversant with the local issues which engaged the State campaigners in that by-

gone day. Probably area politics inclined the local bigwigs to James G. Blaine because Blaine was a Down Easter. On the other hand, General Benjamin Butler, the Greenback Party candidate, was from Massachusetts. So far as Quahog Point was concerned, Massachusetts was as close to home as Maine.

In the long view of history, Blaine was six of one, Butler half a dozen of the other. A slippery politician and a general who had come out of the Civil War with the reputation of a thief. Butler had also come out of the Civil War with the famous racing yacht America, so he may have been personally known at Quahog Point.

Quite possible, then, that Earnest Bridewell ran on the Greenback ticket. His opponent seems to have been a Mugwump.

To complicate matters, Earnest's opponent, Stephen Foster Alden, was a cousin. Only vaguely related, as were most of the "Pointers," but still related—son of Abby Bridewell's cousin-in-law, Sybil Bridewell.

To further complicate matters—at least for Earnest—Stephen F. Alden was an accomplished lawyer, an intelligent speaker, and a man known throughout the countryside for his competence and integrity.

He was two years younger than Earnest. Had been born in Boston where his mother, Nathan Bridewell's second or third cousin, had gone to teach school. Quahog Point learned nothing of the father, save that he was a Back Bay Bostonian named William Alden. It seemed he died before Stephen Foster was born.

Sybil, the young widow, had endured a hard time. Unable to afford Back Bay life, she had returned to Quahog Point to be principal of the little red school. She called herself Mrs. Alden, but the natives knew her as Sybil Bridewell. Eventually she confided to the town that Alden had left her, and she assumed her maiden name. Stephen Foster kept the Back Bay name.

I could picture him as a mannerly lad, lively and alert, doing well in the classroom thanks to his mother's tutelage. Perhaps this was putting too much construction on Dober Davenport's comment that he was "brighter than Earnest."

However, his mother was a bookish person with a respect for

scholarship, and such mothers usually transfer these virtues to their sons. Davenport said he'd heard that Stephen Alden had outstripped Earnest Bridewell in the County Academy, had gained two years on Earnest in college, and was away out in front with a law degree. Davenport figured this situation nettled Earnest and was "gall and wormwood" to ambitious Abby Bridewell.

"An old-timer once told me Abby and Sybil never got along. Sybil lived in this little cottage below the hill, poor as a church mouse compared with Abby. But she had her pride, and wouldn't take aye, yes or no from Abby and Nathan. Then to have Stephen out-do Earnest like that. Why, a big lawyer in New Haven once offered Sybil's son a partnership in his city firm."

It seemed that Stephen Alden had remained at Quahog Point to be close to his lonely mother. Even so, his law office prospered. His services were sought by some of the more prominent persons in New England, and he conducted a number of litigations that won mention in national law journals.

"Earnest's practice was small apples," Dober said. "He might have made a good justice of the peace. He didn't have half the brains of Stephen Foster Alden."

But Earnest's mother had ambitions. And money. And influence. She used these to back Earnest's Greenback candidacy for State Senator in 1884. As Dober expressed it, her "soul must have curdled" when the Mugwumps in July nominated Cousin Stephen.

What a to-do around Town Hall. What excitement at the Center. What a fog of cigar smoke in Local Lodge No. 46. Earnest Bridewell on the stump at one end of the square. His cousin Stephen on the stump at the other.

Political issues were forgotten in this contest of family rivalry. The campaign became a feud which split the Point right down the middle. The Knights of the Local Lodge backed their "fraternal brother" Earnest Bridewell. The United Fishermen sided with Stephen Alden. The Sabbatarian Church supported Earnest; the Unitarian supported Stephen; and the Methodist community broke in two, with the Center congregation for Bridewell, the Shoreside for Alden.

All in the good American, the sound democratic, tradition. There must be two sides to an election, and no populace can vote for both at once. Still, elections are presumed to decide political issues, and personalities are hardly Party platforms. But, of course, we Americans vote for "images"—that goes without saying. And by an odd trick of mirage, the images which loomed largest in the Quahog Point contest were those of Abby Bridewell and her cousin-in-law Sybil.

Yet it was not entirely strange that Abby Bridewells personality should tower as a shadow behind the torch-lit figure of sallow Earnest. Everyone knew who put him on the campaign stump, and whose policies he would espouse.

Nor was it incomprehensible that the Quahog Pointers should have seen in Stephen Alden the image of Sybil Bridewell, the patient, devoted schoolma'arm who had nursed so many of them along the thorny road to learning.

Two kinds of public indebtedness were personalized by Abby and Sybil. Many townsmen owed Abby for rents and mortgages. Nearly all owed their education to Sybil Bridewell. Which debt was to be paid at the voting booth? The choice could not have been easy.

Since money usually talks, the majority might have decided to play it safe with Abby and vote for Earnest on the Greenback ticket. But even those deepest in vassalage found it difficult to swallow the unsavory record of that Party's national leadership. Ben Butler? Ugh! Cleveland was derided, but Cleveland had never stolen public funds nor appropriated a war-prize racing yacht. (I looked it up. Yacht America, winner of the classic Cup. Sold by Lord Decie to the Confederates in 1862 for $60,000. Captured as blockade-runner in 1863. Sold at Annapolis, 1873, to B. F. Butler, political general extraordinary, for $5,000. A steal for one of the queenliest racers on the Atlantic.)

So the grapevine passed the word that even the rocky Sabbatarians were swinging over to the Alden, or Sybil Bridewell, side. Some of them were sensible enough to see the light—instead of the torchlight.

Alden doubtless appealed to reason. If he followed the liberal

banner, he advocated higher wages for workingmen, a reduction of the twelve-hour day, a merit system for State employees, and better public schools.

I could almost hear Earnest Bridewell. "A vote for the Mugwumps is a vote for national bankruptcy. My friends, they would spend us out of house and home. Cherishing that great flag as I do—Old Glory furling in the breeze—I say to you, do not be misled by my opponent with his extravagant dream of Utopia. In the words of Daniel Webster: Fellow citizens, the hour is late—!"

I do not know that Earnest used those words; nor Webster, either, for that matter. But Davenport described Earnest as "windy"—the term in the 80's was "gasbag"—and if he ran true to average politician, he "spoketh a deal of nothing." (They had them even in Shakespeare's day.) And the hour was late for Earnest, certainly. For all their provincialism, he was talking to crusty, hardheaded people who were as sharp as fishhooks when it came to deals and nothing.

Earnest Bridewell knew his neighbors. He must have known he was going to lose. In the Bridewell parlor the temperature doubtless matched the heat depicted in one of the Dore etchings of Inferno.

Abby: You've got to win. I've put a lot of money into your campaign.

Earnest: Can I help it? How could I know in June the Mugwumps would nominate Stephen Alden in July?

Abby: That clambake I gave your lodge cost over two hundred dollars.

Earnest (glaring at the Eye): Yes, and some of them been talking as though they might just favor him! It's a secret ballot, you know.

Abby: Keep them in line.

Earnest: Easy to say. Stephen pumps them full of talk about a shorter work day and free schoolbooks. It's Sybil, I tell you. She's got him to run just to show us up. You! Me!

Abby: We've got to stop Sybil and him.

Earnest: How?

Abby: Somehow. You're the politician. Use your head, if you've got one. Find a way!

Was it coincident with this stage of affairs in the Bridewell, and American, history that Ambrose Bierce wrote in The Devil's Dictionary: POLITICS —A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles? Next word: POLITICIAN — An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared.

Bierce began his best-selling Dictionary in 1881, and its writing

spanned a period of years. It would seem he reached the "P's"

before the election campaign of 1884, which called for a stronger

word than "eel." The traducing of Grover Cleveland suggests

snake.

However, in the "fundamental mud" Candidate Earnest evidently found his way. Which brings us back to the scene where he rushes into his mother's parlor with the weekly periodical in trembling hands.

"Look, Ma! They're carrying baby dolls! Cleveland had a child out of wedlock! We're saved!"

No one knows what actually occurred at that juncture in the Bridewell parlor. No one could possibly know. But one could conjecture.

For instance, Abby Bridewell could have said, "That's wonderful, but you're not running against Grover Cleveland."

Or she might have put it this way: "What's Cleveland's private life got to do with your Aunt Sybil and your cousin Stephen?"

Or she might have exclaimed: "An illicit affair! Earnest, that does it! We must get in touch with those people in Boston at once."

All pure hypothesis. But based on the account given me by Davenport and on the historical background of 1884. Plus the fact that Lionel Bridewell was studying opera in Boston at the time, and the origin of this story's denouement could have had its source in Boston.

The localities drew their own conclusions, putting two and two together. They knew Abby and they knew Earnest, and they knew that Lionel, circulating in Back Bay society, may have heard certain things and written them to his mother.

In Quahog Point the news about Grover Cleveland had come as a bombshell. The local Mugwumps were stunned. They had neither posed nor campaigned as Puritan Crusaders. But the obloquy now attached to their Party's national leader would certainly cost them some local votes. Thank God the County opposition had nothing against the private life of Stephen Foster Alden.

But then-Something was up at Local Lodge No. 46. Two or three nights before the election, the Lodge Brothers gathered in secret conclave in their Hall. Excitement electrified the cigar smoke. Big doings.

The meeting, of course, was delightfully clandestine. And quite in keeping with that day and time when Americans everywhere adhered in dense "togetherness" in such fraternal organizations as the Loyal Order of Eagles, the Woodcutters of the World, the Ancient Society of This, the Benevolent Brotherhood of That, and the Knights of So and So. The nation never did a bigger business in Grand Caverns, Grottoes and Mystic Dens. Nor in bloomers, sashes, badges, swords, plumed hats and other items of abracadabra costumery. All of these clans and brotherhoods were up to the hilt in politics, and no candidate for public office could ignore them.

So the Mugwumps of Quahog Point must have been uneasy about the meeting at Lodge Hall. Especially when they saw Earnest Bridewell drive up hell-for-leather in a gig, and enter the Hall in his Ancient Knight, Lodge 46, regalia.

Rumors flew. Somebody told somebody that Earnest Bridewell was offering the Lodge members political jobs. Others averred that a cash payoff was in the deal. Everyone opined that a sensation was brewing. They knew it when, later that evening, Abby Bridewell's carriage dashed across Center Square, and Abby herself, skirts hoisted for speed, ran up the steps to the Hall. On-