The Napoleon of Crime (42 page)

What little remaining energy he had was devoted to making a home for the two children he knew he had wronged, who were, as Pinkerton noted, “
all in the world he had to care for.” With the profits from the return of the Gainsborough, he took accommodations in Camden at 2, Park Village East, a large, rambling house that was as solid and bourgeois as his earlier London accommodations had been flashy and extrovert. How wealthy Worth now was as a result of the Gainsborough deal is unclear: Pat Sheedy later claimed he
would not take any part of the $25,000 he said Worth had received from Agnew’s, a statement which is surely untrue and may cast doubt on the authenticity of the figure as well. Agnew’s calculated it had cost a total of £7,500 to retrieve the painting, but again that figure is open to question, since the partners never specified the amount paid as ransom. Eddie Guerin thought the sum nearer to £1,000, and pronounced it “
the worst deal Harry ever made in his life.”

If not the worst deal, parting with the Gainsborough was certainly the hardest decision Worth had ever made. With it went his pretensions to aristocratic life and worldly (i.e., criminal) success. The forgery was exposed. But in its place was a feeling perhaps more human than anything he had felt since falling in love with Kitty Flynn: a visceral need to create the family life he had never known, and so find himself. Returning the
Duchess
had released him, but the rupture was agonizing and with each fresh accolade to the lovely portrait that was no longer his to control, Worth dwindled a little more.

“
The sudden return to town of Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire has caused nearly as great a sensation as if the beautiful Georgiana had come back to life, with a fresh lease of beauty and of charm.” The recovery had also brought back to life the ancient debate over its authenticity. “
Never previously in the history of art and its masters has such intense excitement been aroused over a work … as has been awakened by the discovery of the long-lost portrait by Gainsborough of the Duchess of Devonshire,” wrote one observer, noting that, in the matter of authenticity, “the critics have advanced every feasible as well as every untenable argument that they can devise.” Some again said it depicted not Georgiana but Elizabeth, the other Duchess of Devonshire; others that the work was not by Gainsborough; and still others that there was such a painting, by Gainsborough, but that the “
one newly brought to light is a spurious copy.”

The Pall Mall Gazette
pronounced magisterially that “
she is not, after all, the more famous of the two duchesses … she is not Georgiana, but Elizabeth,” yet with equal conviction insisted that, once the portrait was exhibited, the suggestion that it was by anyone other than Gainsborough “
will vanish as the morning mist before the sun. The portrait is typically and thoroughly Gainsborough.”

The Times
suggested that the matter of authenticity be settled by holding an exhibition of the collected paintings of both Georgiana and Elizabeth, and then comparing the likenesses in a sort of artistic identity parade. “
An exhibition in London of as many of these pictures as could be got together, with the newly-recovered duchess as the ‘leading lady’ would form a great attraction in itself, and be useful in settling one or two points about which there may be some little doubt at this present time.”

“
Probably all the speculation with which the newspaper columns have teemed will prove creations of … impalpable fabric,” one jaundiced critic observed, while the
Daily Express
mocked the experts’ furious debating with a doggerel
Ballad of Georgiana
(with apologies to Tennyson’s
Oriana
), which was almost as bad as some of the odes to the duchess during her lifetime:

Our hearts were wasted with our woe—
’Twas five-and-twenty years ago
,
You left us in the winter snow
,
And didn’t even let us know
,
The next address to find you—oh
,

Georgiana!

And now, when we have got you back
,
We get this very nasty smack
,
From folks who surely culture lack
,
Or like a silly joke to crack—
That you’re no better than a quack—

Georgiana!

They say that if you are the same
You really sneak another’s fame
,
In fact, they venture now to claim
The picture stolen from the frame
,
Was Lady Hetty What’s-her-name
,

Georgiana!

And worse than all, they loudly bawl
,
You’re not a Gainsborough at all
,
The expert’s proof they blandly call
,
That black is white, and short is tall
,
That Paul is Peter, Peter Paul
,

Georgiana!

So if you are not you, ’tis clear
,
You’re not the party who was here
,
And if of Gainsborough’s you’re a mere
Rough sketch, I think it must appear
,
You’re neither lost nor found, my dear
,

Georgiana!

The return of the Gainsborough had breathed new vigor into the mythology surrounding the Duchess of Devonshire. It had precisely the opposite effect on Adam Worth. Sensing that time was short, he set about reclaiming his children with a determination he had never shown while the painting held him back. Hitherto, Worth’s life had been defined by his possessions, but now he struggled to capture something more valuable and intangible: the
Duchess
had symbolized what he aspired to take and own, but his children might finally be a reflection of what he now wanted to be.

His first act on returning to London had been to send money to his brother in Brooklyn with instructions to send over young Harry, now aged fourteen, and his younger sister as soon as possible. But even this was proving elusive. His sister-in-law, sensing that Worth was once again “in the money,” flatly refused to release the children to their father without a substantial payment. Worth was livid, and wretched. In June 1901, he wrote to Pinkerton, excoriating “
that brother and sister-in-law of mine” for their disloyalty and greed, and suspecting that his children’s minds had been poisoned against him.

“I have kept them all my life, and they expect me to continue. She is a dirty, hypocritical cow; she professes to be religious, but as I told her every rag on her body, the house she lives in, are the proceeds of—[he was careful not to use the word “crime,” lest the letter should fall into the wrong hands]. She has been cunning enough to get a hold on the children and probably frighten them by hints, so they will not come over here; but that is done for their own selfish interest, not for the children’s sake. Three years ago, when I had no money, they wrote me that they could keep them no longer … There is only one way to do [it], and that is to starve them out. When no more money is forthcoming, the children will be glad to come over.” Worth, ever the “roast,” still held to a residual belief in the ultimate controlling power of money.

Lonely, drunken, and plaintive, Worth cut himself off from all human company. Word had reached the underworld of his return to London, and some of his colleagues from the criminal past looked him up for money, as in the old days, or to see whether Worth had anything profitable afoot. He sent them away with a little loose change and the firm impression that the onetime master criminal was now firmly in retirement.

William Pinkerton, once his sworn enemy, was now the only human being in whom Worth placed any trust. He wrote the detective long, distressed letters, usually in cryptic “secret writing” and signed with the alias “Robert R. Bayley.” On his better days Worth gossiped about mutual acquaintances in the criminal world, but for the most part his missives were, as Worth admitted, “boozy” rants against his ill fortune, his mercenary relatives, and his failing health. “
I am little better on the chest,” he wrote of the coughing fits that left him shivering and weak. “Not so much blood but I am afraid it is only temporary, as I have these awful night sweats and cough.” Pinkerton wrote back with genuine concern, more like an anxious brother than a world-famous detective to an elite member of the criminal fraternity.

Their relationship had long passed beyond the merely professional. Both were hard men—the Pinkertons’ union-busting techniques had made William a hate figure for many working Americans—but both had psychological weaknesses that seemed to find release in their friendship. Perhaps Pinkerton saw in Worth the rebellion against authority that eased some of his resentment against a dour father and a life spent obeying the rules. The detective had risked his professional reputation in the Gainsborough affair, for if Agnew’s or Scotland Yard ever learned how closely he was in league with Worth he would have been hard put to defend himself. Worth, conversely, seemed to look on his friendship with the detective as a justification for his past, proof that during their long battle on opposite sides of the law they had played by the same rules of honor and respect—a tribute that meant more to Worth now than all the fake “respectability” he had stolen. The Eye had long protected Worth from prosecution; now he sought to protect him from himself.

“
Friend H.,” the detective wrote from Chicago. “You have no idea how sad it made me feel to have you write in the despondent manner in which you do … the sooner you get out of the atmosphere of London, the better it will be, and would advise that you come at once to this country and go to Colorado, where the altitude is very beneficial for people suffering from pulmonary trouble.

“I want to say to you, Harry, that the excessive use of liquor has a good deal to do with your trouble. I know that you were on one or two big sprees, and they must have considerable to do with the bringing about of your present condition. I find that nobody can drink in sociability without taking liquor to excess, and it is bound to create no end of trouble, therefore I have stopped the use of it entirely.”

Pinkerton sent his friend poems cut from the local paper, snippets of underworld news, and the latest racing results. He tried to buck Worth up with news about the
Duchess of Devonshire
, perhaps inadvertently reminding him of his loss. “
I have had several nice letters from the client for whom I worked in connection with the picture, and he is very well satisfied with everything that was done for him.” So friendly had the correspondence become between the two that William’s more cautious brother was alarmed. “
I think you write this man too fully,” Robert Pinkerton told William. “He is liable to be arrested and his mail gotten hold of. I am aware that it is written in typewriting and signed by an initial and nothing could be proved back, but there are things said in this letter that would enable any shrewd detective to guess who the probable writer is … If this letter was to fall into Scotland Yard hands, would they not think that we ought to inform them of any such man being in Europe at the present time and living in London?” William was contrite. He promised his brother he would “
stop this correspondence entirely,” and did no such thing. His imprudent loyalty to Worth now far outweighed that to Scotland Yard.

As the letters passed back and forth, the detective and the criminal discussed how Worth could best use his remaining money. “
I urged upon him to invest … in securities, and leave the same in my care,” for the benefit of his children, Pinkerton later recalled in a letter to Worth’s son. “I urged upon him at that time to quit Europe and come back here … and with the means he had to settle down to some little business … he took seriously to the matter and thought he would like to locate at Hot Springs, Ark., and I told him that would be a good idea and to bring yourself and your sister out here and with the means he then had he could easily have started himself in a nice little business in Hot Springs and made a good living for you all, and his health would have been much improved. I feared his return to London among genial companions would be too much for him in the state of health he was then in.” The genial companions Pinkerton referred to, of course, came in bottled, not human form.

In a late burst of his old ingenuity, Worth began to discuss again his ideas for making a burglar-proof safe alarm, a gadget he was uniquely qualified to perfect. But as his battle to secure his children dragged on, and crippling headaches beset Worth (Pinkerton ascribed them to a “
tumor”), both he and the detective seem to have realized that the talk of moving to Arkansas, of investments and burglar alarms, was mere dreaming. Time was running out, and Worth’s need to bring together his family had become desperate. Finally he swallowed his pride and agreed to send his avaricious sister-in-law as much money as she wanted, if only she would send his children to England. She agreed, but the price was high. Worth was now virtually penniless once again.

Late in 1901, the children finally arrived in Camden where their father, according to Pinkerton, “
had fitted up a nice home.” For almost the first time in his life, Worth was at the center of a family. He was determined to prevent his children from finding out about his crimes, and Pinkerton remained convinced that they “
knew nothing of his past career.” But the younger Harry Raymond was no fool; the teenager may have caught more than an inkling of his father’s unorthodox profession. “
He told me little or nothing about his affairs,” the young man later confided to Pinkerton, but in the same letter he stressed his intention “to put my shoulder to the wheel and earn an honest living, which will always be my desire to do.” Would a young man take so much trouble to emphasize his honesty if there was no reason to doubt it?

Even his children knew Adam Worth as Henry Judson Raymond, and to the end the master crook kept up the façade that had served him so well for years. If his children suspected he was other than the respectable if ailing businessman he appeared to be, they at least had the generosity to grant him this one last delusion and disguise.