Passing Strange (56 page)

Read Passing Strange Online

Authors: Martha A. Sandweiss

79
John Duffy,
A History of Public Health in New York City, 1866-1966
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1974), 212. On the efforts of the New York Health Department during the early 1890s to assure the safety of the milk supply, see ibid., 132-36.
80
Sacks, “ ‘We Cry,’ ” 233.
81
JH to HA, 6 Jan. 1892,
Letters of John Hay,
2:234.
82
Certificate of Birth, Brooklyn. 998, for Ada Todd, Feb. 1, 1892 (filing date), New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives.
83
CK to JH, Jan. 1892, Hay Collection, Brown.
84
Ibid., 25 Jan. 1892; n.d. Feb. 1892; 9 Feb. 1892.
85
New York Freeman,
Sept. 11, 1886, cited in Scheiner,
Negro Mecca,
163.
86
CK to William Brewer, 15 May [1892], HM 27833, HEH.
87
William H. Brewer, “Heredity: Race Crossing,” speech delivered Nov. 1, 1879, to the Social Science Club, Brewer Papers, Yale.
88
Brewer’s response to King cannot be found, and no references to King’s letter can be located in the Brewer Papers.
89
CK to JH, 28 May 1892, Hay Collection, Brown.
90
Ibid., 10 July 1892.
91
Ibid., 30 July 1892.
92
Ibid., 14 Oct. 1892.
93
Although none of the actual letters are known to survive, some of them were read out loud in court when Ada King pressed her claims for King’s estate in 1933. Both court reporters and newspaper reporters avidly transcribed the words. See below, chapter 10.
94
“White Scientist’s Love Letters to Colored Wife Are Bared in Court,”
Pittsburgh Courier,
Dec. 2, 1933, sec. 1, 5.
95
“Scientist’s Letters Reveal His Love for Colored Wife,”
New York Daily News,
Nov. 22, 1933, 3.
96
The letter King wrote from his deathbed instructing Ada in how to address his letters (see Defendant’s Exhibit C, Plaintiff ’s Trial Memorandum, 171, in
King v. Peabody et al.,
file no. 26821=1931; Records of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County Clerk’s Office) suggests that she had heretofore been writing to him under his alias.
97
JH to HA, 25 Nov. 1892,
Letters of John Hay,
2:249. Evidence for his visit with Ada comes from the estimated date of conception for their son Sidney, who was born on July 19, 1893.
98
Adams,
Education,
321, 325.
99
Ibid., 328.
100
HA to JH, 5 Nov. 1893,
Letters of Henry Adams,
4:138.
101
R. Hal Williams,
Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978), 76-77.
102
Junius Henri Browne, “The Bread and Butter Question,”
Harper’s Monthly
88 (Dec. 1893): 278, cited in Dunlop,
Gilded City,
134.
103
Chicago Daily Tribune,
Mar. 15, 1893, 4; “Dined by Whitelaw Reid,”
New York Times,
June 2, 1893, 5; “A Newport Society Feast,”
Washington Post,
Aug. 18, 1893, 5.
104
Wilkins,
King,
353, 386-87.
105
Certificate of Birth, Brooklyn. 8698, 21 July 1893 (filing date) New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives. The 1880 U.S. Federal Census for Brooklyn, King’s County, NY, SD 2, ED 193, p. 24, notes that Samuel Stiles was then working at the Brooklyn Homeopathic Hospital. By 1890, reported the
Brooklyn, New York Directory for 1890-91
(Brooklyn: Lain, 1890), he was in practice at 51 Greene Avenue, with that rare new commodity... a telephone. For more on Stiles, who was an ardent genealogist, see “Samuel Edward Stiles, M.D.,”
New York Genealogical and Biographical Record
33, no. 1 ( Jan. 1902): 5.
106
Sidney’s middle initial is noted on his death certificate. See New York State Department of Health Certificate of Death, 42437, for Sidney C. King (10 July 1942), New York State Department of Health, Vital Records Section, Albany.
107
“A Newport Society Feast”; “His Mind Unbalanced: Clarence King Taken to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum,”
New York Daily Tribune,
4 Nov. 1893, 7.
108
CK to S. F. Emmons, 23 Oct. 1893, box 11, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.
109
Defendant’s Exhibit L, Plaintiff’s Trial Memorandum, 162. This letter is undated. My placing of it here is conjectural, based on King’s diminishing economic prospects during the depression of 1893.
110
CK to S. F. Emmons, 23 Oct. 1893, box 11, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.
111
CK to JH, [1893], Hay Collection, Brown.
 
CHAPTER 7: BREAKDOWNS
1
Chicago Tribune,
Nov. 4, 1893, 3. See also
Washington Post,
Nov. 5, 1893, 4.
2
The comment on the Menagerie’s popularity comes from Mabel Parsons; ed.,
Memories of Samuel Parsons: Landscape Architect of Public Parks, New York
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926), 67. On the animals, see
Rand McNally Guide
(1895), 64-65, and on the animal-rights issue, see Dunlop,
Gilded City,
251-52. On the Irish names, see “No More Offensive Names,”
New York Times,
Apr. 21, 1893, 9. For the weather report, see “Hudnut’s Weather Report,”
New York Times,
Oct. 30, 1893, 2.
3
This account of King’s arrest is drawn largely from “Arrested in Central Park: A Man Who Said He Was Clarence King and Lived at the Union League,”
New York Daily Tribune,
Oct. 31, 1893, 4. On Parsons, see
Memories of Samuel Parsons
and Charles A. Birnbaum and Lisa E. Crowder, eds.,
Pioneers of American Landscape Design
(Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1993), 93-96.
4
“His Mind Unbalanced,” 7.
5
Ibid.; “Registers of Admission, Bloomingdale Asylum, NYH: 1891-1924,” vol. 1, “1891-1896,” 51, transcription courtesy of James L. Gehrlich, Head of Archives, Medical Center Archives, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. See also “C. W. Gould Is Dead in California Home,”
New York Times,
Mar. 20, 1931, 25. Gould was a founder of Gould and Wilkie, the New York law firm that would later handle King’s estate.
6
James L. Gehrlich, e-mail communication with author, June 22, 2006.
7
“Is Clarence King Insane? ”
New York Sun,
Nov. 3, 1893, 1.
8
“His Mind Unbalanced,” 7; La Farge to HA, 7 Nov. [1893], Hay Collection, Brown, cited in Wilkins,
King,
388.
9
Emmons, “Clarence King—Geologist,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
293.
10
“His Mind Unbalanced,” 7. Lincoln dabbled in western mining investments and may have had a personal as well as professional connection to King. See
Hinchman v. Lincoln,
124 U.S. 38 (1888).
11
“People in General,”
Washington Post,
Nov. 24, 1893, 4.
12
Gail Satz,
Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie
(New York: Morgan Road Books, 2006), 2.
13
Charles W. Gould,
America, a Family Matter
(New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1922).
14
Williamson,
New People,
102; Nella Larsen,
Quicksand and Passing,
ed. Deborah McDowell (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 157.
15
“His Mind Unbalanced,” 7.
16
“Clarence King Insane,”
Washington Post,
Nov. 5, 1893, 4; article reprinted from the
New York Herald.
17
HA to JH, 5 Nov. 1893, and HA to Charles Milnes Gaskell, 26 Nov. 1893, in
Letters of Henry Adams,
4:137-140.
18
Adams, “King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
164.
19
Adams,
Education,
338.
20
Moses King,
King’s Handbook of New York City
(Boston: Moses King, 1892), 426-28; CK to HA, 31 Dec. 1893, Adams Papers, MHS.
21
HA to JH, 15 Dec. 1893,
Letters of Henry Adams,
4:145.
22
On Gardiner, see Moore,
King of the 40th Parallel,
passim, which focuses almost as much on Gardiner as on King.
23
CK to JH, 3 Feb. 1894, in Harold Dean Cater, comp.,
Henry Adams and His Friends: A Collection of His Unpublished Letters
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 305-6n.
24
J. D. Hague to JH, 24 Nov. 1893, “Letter Book 24 Nov. 1893-14 Dec. 1895,” L17, James D. Hague Papers, HEH.
25
Bronson,
Reminiscences,
329.
26
S. Weir Mitchell,
Nurse and Patient, and Camp Cure
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877), 41; Edward M. Brown, “An American Treatment for the ‘American Nervousness’: George Miller Beard and General Electrization,” paper presented to the American Association of the History of Medicine, Boston, 1980,
http://bms.brown.edu/HistoryofPsychiatry/Beard.html
(accessed Aug. 17, 2007).
27
Mitchell,
Nurse and Patient, and Camp Cure
, 45, 54.
28
Ibid., 45, 54, 55. On Mitchell and the rest cure, see also Barbara Will, “The Nervous Origins of the American Western,”
American Literature
70, no. 2 (June 1998): 293-316.
29
For an overview of the appeal of the West to elite urban easterners in the late nineteenth century, see G. Edward White,
The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: The West of Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).
30
Mitchell,
Nurse and Patient, and Camp Cure,
56, 57.
31
Hague, “Editorial Note,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
317n.
32
CK to JH, [n.d. 1893], Hay Collection, Brown.
33
David M. Rein,
S. Weir Mitchell as a Psychiatric Novelist
(New York: International Universities Press, 1952), 129-31.
34
J. D. Hague to JH, 24 Nov. 1893; Hague to E. B. Bronson, 4 Dec. 1893; Hague to Bronson, 11 Dec. 1893, in “Letter Book,” L17, Hague Papers, HEH; CK to JH, 3 Feb. 1894, in Cater,
Henry Adams and His Friends,
305-6n; CK to JH, 16 May 1894, Hay Collection, Brown.
35
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,”
Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1894): 199, 200, 226-27.
36
Ibid., 227.
37
See, for example, Henry Nash Smith,
Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950).
38
King, “Biographers of Lincoln,” 862.
39
“Society News from Newport,”
New York Times,
Dec. 24, 1893, 13.
40
Harry Hazel and S. L. Lewis,
The Divorce Mill: Realistic Sketches of the South Dakota Divorce Colony
(New York: Mascot, 1895), 10. The ninety-day residency rule changed to a six-month requirement in 1893.
41
CK to HA, 31 Dec. 1893, Adams Papers, MHS.
42
CK to Becker, 31 Dec. 1893, box 3, Merrill Collection, LC. See also ibid., Sunday, [n.d.].
43
Ibid., Sunday, [Jan. 1894], box 2. Thanks to Clifford M. Nelson of the USGS, for first alerting me to this document. See also Passport Application for Native Citizen, No. 6632, submitted by King on Jan. 16, 1899, accessed on
Ancestry.com
June 20, 2008.
44
“Col. Waring’s Messenger Promoted,”
New York Times,
June 29, 1895, 16; “Col. Waring Returns to Town,”
New York Times,
Aug. 21, 1895, 12.
45
Wilkins,
King,
207, 218.
46
“Registers of Discharge, Bloomingdale Asylum, NYH: 1891-1933,” vol. 1, “1891-1921,” 12, transcription courtesy of James L. Gehrlich. The medical records relating to King’s case do not survive, most likely a casualty of the disorder surrounding the Bloomingdale Asylum’s move from Morningside Heights to White Plains just a few months after King’s discharge. James Gehrlich, e-mail communication to author, June 19, 2006.
47
CK to JH, 3 Feb. 1894, in Cater,
Henry Adams and His Friends,
305-6n.
48
CK to JH, [March?] 1888, Hay Collection, Brown.
49
King, “Draft of novel,” E1, King Papers, HEH.
50
HA to JH, 27 Feb. 1894, in Cater,
Henry Adams and His Friends,
309-11.
51
Adams, “King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
167; HA to Elizabeth Cameron, 1 Mar. 1894,
Letters of Henry Adams,
4:170.
52
Adams, “King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
168.
53
HA to Elizabeth Cameron, 16 Feb. 1894; HA to Mabel Hooper, 22 Feb. 1894, in
Letters of Henry Adams,
4:162-64.
54
Adams, “King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
172.
55
Adams, “King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
173; King, “Shall Cuba Be Free? ”
Forum
20 (Sept. 1895): 65. On King’s Cuba views, see also his essay “Fire and Sword in Cuba,”
Forum
22 (Sept. 1896): 31-52.
56
Adams, “King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
172-73.
57
Wilkins,
King,
395; HA to JH, 11 Apr. 1894,
Letters of Henry Adams,
4:180.
58
HA to Abram S. Hewitt, 25 Apr. 1894,
Letters of Henry Adams,
4:182.
59
HA to Abram S. Hewitt, 27 Apr. 1894, in Allan Nevins,
Abram S. Hewitt: With Some Account of Peter Cooper
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), 549.

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