Read Online The Devil's Gentleman by Harold Schechter - Free Book Online
Authors: Harold Schechter
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and numbered amongst his friends a few gifted people known in the musical life of New York.”
When Blanche told Roland of her “own ambitions and work,” he revealed that he held season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera.
“If you wish,” he said with his engaging smile, “you shall have a surfeit of music this winter.”
“To be surfeited would be impossible,” she cried. “But to have a feast of music—how wonderful that would be!” 3
Soon afterward, their tête-à-tête was interrupted by the appearance of Morgan and the others, who came over to join them. Blanche records in her memoirs that, for the rest of that day, “there was only a brief word or two exchanged between us; but I found myself frequently turning to glimpse him as we mingled with the others; and always his eyes followed me; and it was as though a silent and intriguing understanding had already begun to exist.” 4
According to Blanche, her first encounter with Roland Molineux ended around sunset, when she, Isia, Clark Miller, and his two male friends returned to the
Monhegan
aboard the launch that had carried them to the
Viator
earlier that day:
We descended to the motor boat which had been bobbing alongside. Once more it noisily churned the waters and, leaving a long path of white foam in its wake, swung back to the other pleasure craft. The sails of Clark’s racy schooner-yacht bellied out to the wind. Turning, she nosed into the channel and cruised slowly out through the sparkling blue waters of the bay….
The
Viator
with Morgan’s guests aboard still lay anchored in Portland harbor. Those of us aboard the
Monhegan
were now heading in before a stiff breeze that swept the waters off Beaver Tail. The sky had faded from rose—that shade like the inner heart of a shell—to opal and mother-of-pearl. The pearl drifted into blue-gray against the horizon, and the sea and sky blended into one. The wind stiffened and ruffled the surface of the waters into wavering threads of white. The great sails also caught the force of it, and we were cutting through, clean as the blade of a knife. We keeled far over, and soon the decks were awash so that we were drenched with the flying spray. I sat huddled on the upper edge of the companionway. My hair was wet, my frock limp with the spindrift….
Clark came and wrapped a great coat about me. We laughed in high glee, like children. How tremendously exciting it was! 5
That, at any rate, was Blanche’s official version of events. Other people privy to what transpired on board the
Viator
had a different tale to tell.
According to these sources, at the end of that intoxicating, champagne-soaked day, the men and women aboard Morgan’s yacht—Blanche and Isia included—paired off, and a mock marriage ceremony was held for each couple. Then each set of make-believe newlyweds retired to a stateroom, intending to indulge in a very real consummation of their union. 6
Which of these accounts is true has never been definitively established. In any case, the outcome—in one very crucial sense—was the same.
As events would show, Blanche, despite her earnest wish to divest herself of her virginity, returned from her trip aboard the pleasure-craft
Viator
still innocent of (as she put it) the “full realization of sex.”
12
R oland returned from the yachting cruise determined to pursue the enchanting young woman he had met aboard the
Viator.
First, however, he had to sever his ties with Mamie Melando.
If Blanche, in her memoirs, often sounds as if she’d sprung from the pages of
Sister Carrie
(“Life’s shop windows were filled with alluring things,” she exclaims at one point. “I desired them with a great intensity!”), 1 Roland himself, in the fall of 1897, had come to resemble a character from a Theodore Dreiser novel: a young man caught between a coarse if devoted factory girl who had grown increasingly repellent in his eyes and the infinitely more refined, elegant,
When Blanche told Roland of her “own ambitions and work,” he revealed that he held season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera.
“If you wish,” he said with his engaging smile, “you shall have a surfeit of music this winter.”
“To be surfeited would be impossible,” she cried. “But to have a feast of music—how wonderful that would be!” 3
Soon afterward, their tête-à-tête was interrupted by the appearance of Morgan and the others, who came over to join them. Blanche records in her memoirs that, for the rest of that day, “there was only a brief word or two exchanged between us; but I found myself frequently turning to glimpse him as we mingled with the others; and always his eyes followed me; and it was as though a silent and intriguing understanding had already begun to exist.” 4
According to Blanche, her first encounter with Roland Molineux ended around sunset, when she, Isia, Clark Miller, and his two male friends returned to the
Monhegan
aboard the launch that had carried them to the
Viator
earlier that day:
We descended to the motor boat which had been bobbing alongside. Once more it noisily churned the waters and, leaving a long path of white foam in its wake, swung back to the other pleasure craft. The sails of Clark’s racy schooner-yacht bellied out to the wind. Turning, she nosed into the channel and cruised slowly out through the sparkling blue waters of the bay….
The
Viator
with Morgan’s guests aboard still lay anchored in Portland harbor. Those of us aboard the
Monhegan
were now heading in before a stiff breeze that swept the waters off Beaver Tail. The sky had faded from rose—that shade like the inner heart of a shell—to opal and mother-of-pearl. The pearl drifted into blue-gray against the horizon, and the sea and sky blended into one. The wind stiffened and ruffled the surface of the waters into wavering threads of white. The great sails also caught the force of it, and we were cutting through, clean as the blade of a knife. We keeled far over, and soon the decks were awash so that we were drenched with the flying spray. I sat huddled on the upper edge of the companionway. My hair was wet, my frock limp with the spindrift….
Clark came and wrapped a great coat about me. We laughed in high glee, like children. How tremendously exciting it was! 5
That, at any rate, was Blanche’s official version of events. Other people privy to what transpired on board the
Viator
had a different tale to tell.
According to these sources, at the end of that intoxicating, champagne-soaked day, the men and women aboard Morgan’s yacht—Blanche and Isia included—paired off, and a mock marriage ceremony was held for each couple. Then each set of make-believe newlyweds retired to a stateroom, intending to indulge in a very real consummation of their union. 6
Which of these accounts is true has never been definitively established. In any case, the outcome—in one very crucial sense—was the same.
As events would show, Blanche, despite her earnest wish to divest herself of her virginity, returned from her trip aboard the pleasure-craft
Viator
still innocent of (as she put it) the “full realization of sex.”
12
R oland returned from the yachting cruise determined to pursue the enchanting young woman he had met aboard the
Viator.
First, however, he had to sever his ties with Mamie Melando.
If Blanche, in her memoirs, often sounds as if she’d sprung from the pages of
Sister Carrie
(“Life’s shop windows were filled with alluring things,” she exclaims at one point. “I desired them with a great intensity!”), 1 Roland himself, in the fall of 1897, had come to resemble a character from a Theodore Dreiser novel: a young man caught between a coarse if devoted factory girl who had grown increasingly repellent in his eyes and the infinitely more refined, elegant,
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