Jack's Uncle Louis

John de Saulles had one other uncle – his father's younger brother Louis de Saulles Jr. He was the third of three boys, the rest being daughters, born in New Orleans in 1845/1846. He was about 8 years old when his father Louis de Saulles Sr. decided to quit the cotton export business at the peak of the “boom.” The family moved to New York and stayed for a few years, then relocated to a villa in the south of France.

Louis Jr. was about 13 years old and living in France when the Civil War broke out. His older brother Henry signed up for the Confederacy, and so did his second brother Arthur (who is John de Saulles's father.) Henry was killed in action, Arthur survived the war, but all the while Louis Jr. stayed safely in France with his parents and his sisters. I don't know if he felt frustrated or glad to be left behind, or if he would have lied about his age to enlist if he weren't living in France. I don't know if he admired his “war hero” brothers or if he condemned the foolishness of fighting for the losing side.

What I do know is that Louis Jr. returned to the U.S. after the Civil War ended, leaving behind his parents and sisters in the south of France. He married Miss Carrie Manwaring, daughter of Simon Manwaring, in New York City on January 4, 1870 (certificate #1688, LDS microfilm #1544275)

They lived for a while in Atlanta, Georgia where their only son Louis Manwaring de Saulles was born on Feb. 8, 1874. Then Louis Jr. followed in his brother Arthur's footsteps, also moving to Pennsylvania around the turn of the century to work in the developing steel, coal, and coke industry. His detailed obituary appears in Coal Age, a mining and engineering journal, that pays tribute to Louis for being part of a group that opened one of the first coke plants in Fayette county.

He is in the 1900 federal census of Uniontown, Pennsylvania living comfortably on E. Church Street with his wife Caroline, his son Louis M., and his two daughters Ella and Odele, ages 22 and 18. His occupation is listed as superintendent of the coke works, and his 25 year old son works as a bookkeeper.

Things would fall apart for Louis in the next few years. His daughter Odele died in 1904, his wife Carrie died in 1905, and he became mired in a lawsuit starting in 1906 to prevent the Percy Mining Company from ravaging his private property to excavate coal deposits. He won an injunction from the courts, but I assume it was a hollow victory without his wife to share it.

The 1910 federal census finds Louis de Saulles living alone, a broken man at the age of 64, renting a room in a home on Pittsburgh Street in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He lived long enough to see Jack marry Blanca Errazuriz, but I don't know if they ever met.  

Louis deSaulles committed suicide on September 6, 1915 by shooting himself in the head.

  

The Scandalously Fabulous Joan Sawyer

When Jack and Blanca divorced in 1916, the grounds were that he had cheated on her. The “other woman” was a successful Broadway dancer named Joan Sawyer.

From about 1914 to 1918, Joan Sawyer was one of the country's most popular and successful dance stars. Her main competitors were the dance team of Vernon & Irene Castle who promoted their wholesome image as a married couple. Joan Sawyer – a single, unmarried woman – went through dance partners like satin shoes.

As a self-reliant business woman, she managed a New York nightclub called “Joan Sawyer's Persian Garden” and her business manager was also a woman. She marketed herself to a general audience beyond the vaudeville theater goers. She made records on the early Columbia label and published sheet music with instructions on how to dance her versions of the fox-trot, the waltz, or the maxixe heel step.

Sawyer used her fame to promote the cause of women's suffrage (the right to vote) though ironically her business manager Jeanette Gilder was anti-suffrage.

Pushing the envelope, Sawyer employed black musicians at her nightclub, calling them her “Persian Garden Orchestra” and would not perform without them. Under the direction of Dan Kildare (of the Clef Club) and later Seth Weeks, the orchestra earned rave reviews wherever they played. Sawyer's role in sponsoring talented black musicians in these early days of ragtime and jazz is mostly forgotten.

Sawyer is mostly remembered for being the one who gave silent film star Rudolph Valentino his first break into show business. Sawyer and Valentino danced on stage in New York, Philadelphia, and once did a performance for President Woodrow Wilson. Valentino left New York to pursue a career in silent films. On his job application to the Hollywood studios, he wrote that he was tired of ballroom dancing.

Joan Sawyer also tried getting into films when exhibition dancing fell out of fashion during the First World War, but her movie career fizzled. Eventually, she faded away into obscurity.

Jack's Uncle Henry

Jack never knew his Uncle Henry who died in the Civil War.

Along with Jack's father Arthur de Saulles, another uncle and several aunts, Henry Longer de Saulles was born in New Orleans when the family lived on a prosperous cotton plantation. Their historic mansion still stands at 2618 Coliseum Street in the Garden District of New Orleans – drop by when you're in the neighborhood. 

Henry went to college at Harvard University, class of 1857. When the “boom days” of cotton started to show a decline in the years leading up to the Civil War, the patriarch Louis de Saulles sold his New Orleans home and relocated everybody to New York City. They only stayed there a few years, and then Louis kept going – over the Atlantic ocean to his native France, and settled in a villa in a picturesque town called Pau at the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains near the border of Spain.

Henry did not accompany the family to France but stayed in New York to work as a financier. His father was disappointed, and it looks like the rift between them never had a chance to mend.

When the Civil War broke out, and his home state Louisiana seceded from the Union, Henry abandoned his Harvard education and his career on Wall Street. He enlisted on May 10, 1862 as a Confederate in Company F, Louisiana Volunteers. Under the command of Colonel William R. Miles, Lieutenant Henry de Saulles participated in a series of battles and skirmishes around Port Hudson, Louisiana in late May 1863. At the Battle of Plains Store, his company defended a vulnerable position in a shallow ditch behind a barricade of rails covered loosely with dirt. The men alternated shooting off their rifles with shoveling out the trenches.

On June 3, 1863, Henry took a bullet to the chest and, after languishing through the night, died the next day at the age of twenty-four.

Colonel Miles wrote a condolence letter to Henry's parents to say, "He lingered until the night of the 4th, when he calmly passed away. I was with him most of the night of the 3rd; and at intervals, when sufficiently calm to converse, three subjects alone seemed to occupy his thoughts—his mother, his father, and his country. I cannot refrain from saying of your son that a truer gentleman never lived; a braver soldier never died."

One reference source was Helen P. Trimpi's study of Crimson Confederates, Harvard Men Who Fought for the South. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2010) where I learned that Henry was not alone in returning to his native shores to fight for the Confederacy. Her book makes no judgments on the men – she simply tells their stories. If you have a chance to find it in a library, it's a fascinating collection of hundreds of little biographies.

Trimpi's book includes a photograph of Henry that is available for order from the archives of Harvard University. Below is a scan from the book.

The other reference was from Google Books, a scanned out-of-print copy of J. Wilson and Son's Report of the Class of 1857 in Harvard College, Prepared for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Its Graduation. Published in 1882, the authors of this book contacted the surviving family members of deceased alumni which in this case was Mr. Louis de Saulles himself writing a letter dated in May 1882 from his villa in France. This book has the precious quote of Henry's father (who is Jack's grandfather), “After leaving Harvard... but six years more of life was granted to him. The first one of those was passed in a friend's counting room, at New York. He elected for commerce rather than for law, which I had wished him to prefer.” And this book has the full version of Colonel Miles's condolence letter that Trimpi's book abbreviates.

Henry's body was buried first in New Orleans and later was moved to the prestigious Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. This is the same cemetery, in the same family plot where – in 1917 – Jack was laid to rest.

Wife, Nun, or Spinster

Blanca was 17 years old when she married Jack in December 1911. He was in his early 30s. OK, not an ideal pairing of ages, but then, not as extreme as today’s Hugh Hefner, Michael Douglas, or Paul McCartney. A hundred years ago, it wasn’t so unusual for girls to marry older men who had steady jobs, who could support a family.

Especially in the developing city of Santiago, Chile, a respectable girl had 3 paths in life:  a wife, a nun, or a spinster. Ironically, Blanca and her two sisters embodied each of these roles.

Blanca’s oldest sister Manuela entered the convent Nuestra Senora de la Victoria, in Santiago. Whether Manuela took holy vows by choice, or not, is a matter of rumor and speculation. Luz Larrain’s 1994 fictional bio portrays Manuela as a wild, flirty girl sent to the convent by her parents to get her free spirit under control.

Blanca’s second older sister Amalia never married, never had children of her own, and stayed at home to serve her widowed mother. She supported Blanca at the murder trial – testified in her defense – but in the end succumbed to loneliness. A journal article published by the Vina del Mar heritage association hints that in later years Amalia became demented and dangerously violent, finally being committed to an insane asylum.

Blanca already had “suitors galore” when Jack caught her attention at the sunny seaside. His outgoing Yankee personality, his exotic blue eyes, his athletic enthusiasm made him stand out from the crowd.  Blanca was being groomed that summer to pick a husband. She had just returned from a European boarding school. The clock was ticking. She had very few choices – nun, spinster, or wife – and she chose to get married. She was a few months short of 18 years old when she donned a lace gown with a trailing hem and walked down the aisle of a church in Paris. It seems young to us, now, but the fact is she would have been married at that age whether or not Jack showed up. Her only minor act of rebellion was in her choice of husbands, not her choice to get married or not. 

Gabriela Mistral

In the process of researching Blanca’s life in Chile, my eyes were awakened to a fascinating country that has – sadly – received very little attention in North America. Though I grew up in California, I never knew that Chile had a devastating earthquake in 1906 a few months after our San Francisco quake. The big businesses who exploited the mineral resources for their own profits certainly knew where Chile is, but there is more to a country than what you can get out of it.

Gabriela Mistral is one of my discoveries. She was a contemporary of Blanca de Saulles, born a couple years earlier and died about 10 years later, but the 2 women cannot be more different. Gabriela (her pen name) is the first Latin American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ironically because she did not consider herself primarily a poet. She came from humble beginnings (unlike Blanca) and worked as a schoolteacher in a small village at the foot of the Andes mountains. Her clear, passionate voice brought her public recognition as a journalist and a lecturer. She traveled to Europe and advocated for the rights of impoverished children, was on the ground floor of UNICEF, and survived the horrors of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. She dedicated one of her books to the orphaned children displaced by the war.

At the end of her life, she settled outside New York City on Long Island in the small harbor town of Roslyn – the same town where Blanca lived in the year she killed her ex-husband.

Gabriela Mistral dealt with her grief and outrage by writing poems about the pain of loss and death, as well as the joy of life illustrated by the beauty of nature. She published 4 books of poetry during her lifetime, and after her death in 1957 from cancer, those who loved and admired her worked on translations to make her poems accessible to an English speaking audience (like me.)

Poetry is the hardest to translate into other languages because so much depends on the cadence, the sound, the structure of each word that is absolutely lost. I have fallen in love with a particular volume, “Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, a bilingual edition translated and edited by Doris Dana,” because it has each original Spanish poem side by side with the English version.

Begging forgiveness, I’d like to reproduce one poem here. I encourage anyone who thinks they know what poetry is to go and find more publications of Gabriela’s work. Even in translation, she moves me to tears.

Una Palabra (One Word)

(Spanish – original)

Yo tengo una palabra en la garganta
y no la suelto, y no me libro de ella
aunque me empuje su empellon de sangre.
Si la soltase, quema el pasto vivo,
sangra al cordero, hace caer al pajaro.

Tengo que desprenderla de mi lengua,
hallar un agujero de castors
o sepultarla con cales y cales
porque no guarde como el alma el vuelvo.

No quiero dar senales de que vivo
mientras que por mi sangre vaya y venga
y suba y baje por mi loco aliento.
Aunque mi padre Job la dijo, ardiendo,
no quiero darle, no, mi pobre boca
porque no ruede y la hallen las mujeres
que van al rio, y se enrede a sus trenzas
o al pobre matorral tuerza y abrase.

Yo quiero echarle violentas semillas
que en una noche la cubran y ahoguen
sin dejar de ella el cisco de una silaba.
O rompermela asi, como a la vibora
que por mitad se parte con los dientes.

Y volver a mi casa, entrar, dormirme,
cortada de ella, rebanada de ella,
y despertar despues de dos mil dias
recien nacida de sueno y olvido.

Sin saber mas que tuve una palabra
de yodo y piedra-alumbre entre los labios
ni saber acordarme de una noche,
de una morada en pais extranjero,
de la celada y el rayo a la puerta
y de mi carne marchando sin su alma!

(English)

I have in my throat one word
that I cannot speak, will not free
though its thrust of blood pounds me.
If I voiced it, it would scorch the living grass,
bleed the lamb, fell the bird.

I have to cut it from my tongue,
find a beaver’s hole,
or bury it beneath lime and more quicklime
lest, soul-like, it break free.

I wish to give no sign of what I live
as this word courses through my blood, ebbs and flows,
rises, falls with each mad breath.
Though Job, my father, burning, spoke it,
I will not give it utterance
lest it roll vagrant
and be found by river women,
twist itself in their braids,
or mangle and blaze the poor thicket.

I wish to throw seeds so violent
they burst and smother it in one night
leaving not even a syllable’s trace.
Or rip it from myself
with the serpent’s severing tooth.

And return to my house, enter and sleep,
torn from it, sliced from it;
wake after two thousand days
newly born out of sleep and oblivion.

Never again to remember the word between my lips,
that word of iodine and alum stone,
or ever again that one night,
the ambush in a foreign land,
the lightning bolt at the door
and my flesh abroad with no soul.

Trash Talker

I've included the bulk of my research in the book manuscript with the goal of making it thorough and complete. However, a few things popped up that I chose not to include. The most notable of these deliberate omissions is Mr. John E. Bleekman, or as I call him, the Trash Talker.

In the New York Time article published August 6, 1917, "Mrs. de Saulles Tells Her Story of the Tragedy," there is mention of John E. Bleekman visiting Blanca in jail the previous day. Let's pause and think about that. One day after seeing the headlines in the newspapers, this guy Bleekman hot-tails it over to the Nassau County Jail and spouts off to the reporters, "...he could prove that de Saulles had boasted in 1911 that he was going to marry a woman for her great wealth and that he borrowed the money with which to go to Paris to marry her. Further allegations by Mr. Bleekman went considerably beyond anything said by Mrs. de Saulles against the dead man."  If there were t.v. back then, he'd be on camera.

Months later, John Bleekman was NOT called to testify at the murder trial. From what I can tell, his hearsay, gossipy trash talk never entered into the record, and he pretty much faded away. Say what you will about Blanca's defense attorney's scruples, but as a lawyer Henry Uterhart was methodical and thorough. The fact he did not use Bleekman says to me that Bleekman's trash talk could not be corroborated.

So, who is this guy?

Not wasting too much time, I found that Bleekman was a business partner of Archibald S. White. The two men, among other projects, started the groundwork on the Cincinnati Railway Terminal that eventually would be the third largest train station in the U.S. (at the time). So, one possibility is that Jack de Saulles owed Bleekman money or they were business rivals.

Archibald S. White's name popped up in my research once before, in personal correspondence between Jack and a confidante of President Woodrow Wilson. In those letters, Jack made a recommendation on behalf of A. S. White for a post in the president's cabinet, because White had contributed financially to the campaign efforts. I don't know if White ever "made it" to Wilson's cabinet, and I don't feel inclined to dig into it much further. The bottom line is, White was a rich and powerful railroad builder, a lesser known J.P. Morgan type of guy, and it looks like he (and his partner Bleekman) had their hooks in Jack. Whatever back room deals they had were done behind closed doors, and as the saying goes, dead men tell no tales.

The Box

The home on Long Island, where Jack de Saulles lived after he divorced Blanca and the scene of the shooting, was colloquially known as "The Box."  I have been trying like the dickens to find its location.

First problem, the spacious countryside did not have streets and most of the grand estates of the reclusive millionaires did not need street addresses. If you're a chauffeur or a butler or a gardener, you simply know the way up the winding country lane to the J.P. Morgan Estate or the MacKay Estate. By extension, most of the lesser millionaires followed the trend and gave names to their homes - not addresses.

Second, I am on the West Coast and cannot drop by the local county courthouse, library, university, and historical society where property records (not digitized) are kept. I could hire a researcher - and someday still might - to dig it up for me. I saw one advertising their services on a website, where they'll go beyond public records if they must and search vintage real estate listings and magazines.

What I've been able to find out (from 3,000 miles away) is this:

Old newspapers say that "The Box" was previously owned by Emily Ladenburg, who by the way, was a very cool gal. She was a millionaire's widow and instead of wearing black and crying behind lace curtains, she got out there and had a grand ol' time! She was one of the premier cross country riders, and broke fuddy duddy tradition by refusing to use a side saddle. She went on fox hunts.

Jack bought it shortly before he was killed. He went into debt renovating the place to his own style, and built a playground for his 4 year old son - complete with a see-saw, swings, and a slide. After his death, the mortgage went into default and the bank tried to collect from Blanca (even though they were divorced) - yeah, like she was going to pay a penny for it?  A year later, the property went on the auction block and sold to Thomas Bowles of Kiowa, Kansas for $19,348. Again, this is from an old newspaper clipping.

However, I found a blog http://www.oldlongisland.com/2011/07/box.html that posted a real estate ad from a 1917 copy of Country Life magazine, where it calls The Box "A Bachelor's Country Home" for sale by Harvey Smith Ladew. The blog plots the location on Wikimapia as somewhere in Brookville, NY.

Thanks to Google Books, I found a digital copy of The Social Register from December 1914 that further confuses things. It lists Emily Ladenburg's home as "The Oasis" in Westbury, and Harvey Ladew's home is "The Box" in Brookville. Two different places.

Further confusing things is the tendency for things to get moved around, rebuilt, renovated, and renamed. The Meadow Brook Country Club, where Jack de Saulles tried to transfer his football and baseball skills to polo, closed down and then was resurrected.... in a different place.  There's a town of Westbury... and Old Westbury which is nearer to Brookville. The Long Island Expressway (highway 495) covered up a lot.

Ultimately, for now all I have are the blurry newspaper photos from the sensational stories of the murder. The paparazzi swarmed around the place and took a bunch of snapshots. The District Attorney's office also had a professional photographer take shots of the crime scene, inside and outside, that were presented in court. Unfortunately, a fire in 1981 destroyed all of the Mineola court records and the original transcripts are lost.

A Modern Day Blanca de Saulles

This just happened. In Jupiter, Florida a woman named Donna Horwitz is under arrest for shooting and killing her ex-husband in their upscale home with a Smith & Wesson revolver. The victim was an attorney registered to practice in New York, Florida, Michigan, and D.C. and he was a licensed real estate broker. Although they were divorced, Donna had moved back in.... perhaps to be with their son? Apparently Mr. Horwitz cheated on her and was packed for a business trip planning to go away with a female business partner. He had told Donna to move out before he would return from the trip. Her quote for the newspapers, reporting later on her bail hearing at Palm Beach County Jail, has her saying, “He was so awful.” Except for the fact that they are in their 60s and their son is 37, the parallels are creepy!

Here is a blatant cut-and-paste from the CBS12.com new website.

JUPITER, Fla. -- A rocky marriage turned deadly when police say a woman in the process of moving out of the home she shared with her ex-husband shot and killed him. 

Donna M. Horwitz, 65, was arrested and jailed Thursday on a charge of first-degree murder with a firearm for the murder of her ex-husband, 66-year-old Lanny Horwitz. According to police, Lanny Horwitz was shot multiple times in the head, torso and arm on Sept. 30.

According to the arrest affidavit, a security guard for the wealthy Admiral's Cove community responded to an alarm call at the Mariner Drive home. The guard found Lanny Horwitz dead, face down in the bathroom with a handgun in his right hand. The security guard told police he was let into the residence by the son and mother.

Jupiter police officers arrived immediately afterwards and found Horwitz on the floor of the master bedroom bathroom, nude, face down, the gun in his right hand, and with a large amount of blood around him. According to police the glass door of the shower stall was shattered, with an apparent bullet impact. Water in the shower was still running.

The couple's son, Radley Horwitz, 37, who was staying at the residence, told police his parents had been divorced from each other twice before. He said he woke to two gunshots and heard his mother screaming. Radley told police his mother was pacing back and forth in the master bedroom and screaming.

When he asked his mother what happened, she said "he was so awful," several times. When he saw his father he said he was making a "horrible" gurgling noise, so he backed out of the room, according to the arrest affadavit.

Radley said his father's bags were packed to go on a business trip, possibly with a female business partner with whom his father may have had an on-going relationship with. The victim had also reportedly told his wife to be moved out by the time he returned from his trip.

Police found two guns, a Smith and Wesson revolver by the bathroom, in which all five bullets had been fired. That was the gun the security guard moved out of Horwitz's hands for safety reasons. The second firearm was on the dresser, also a Smith and Wesson, in which all five bullets had been fired as well.

A medical examiner reported that Lanny Horwitz's body had numerous bullet wounds, including one point-blank shot with the gun placed in his mouth.

Lanny Horwitz's Facebook profile says he graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law and Jurisprudence. He is an attornety registered in New York, Florida, Michigan and DC.

His Facebook page also says he is a founding international distributor of LifeMax and a licensed real estate broker.

Read more: http://www.cbs12.com/articles/jupiter-4735839-husband-death.html#ixzz1afkiJnW4  

Ragtime Music

John de Saulles was a contemporary of Irvin Berlin and Scott Joplin. I don't know if he ever met them, but I know he listened to their music when he was out partying the night away and neglecting his wife. When I listen to Ragtime or Swing, I think of Jack smiling and tapping his foot. 

There's another more personal reason why listening to Ragtime music gives me such a sense of calm and clarity. The explanation is going to be a bit long and complicated, but bear with me.... it's really neat.

First, I have a sort of congenital brain disorder commonly known as “perfect pitch” or “absolute pitch.” It's pretty rare, some estimates put it at 1 in 10,000 or fewer. It's poorly understood because it gets muddled with talented musicians who are very well “ear trained.” About 15 years ago, a doctor in Boston started doing MRI scans to prove that people with genuine AP ability processed music in the language center of their brains. That is, musical sounds are stored in the same area as speech. Whereas 99.9% of everybody else does not have permanent storage for notes and they process music in the short term memory. That's why, if most people have a starting note on the piano, or a toot off a pitch whistle, they can go forth and sing. Professional musicians build up a familiarity with their own instrument, and “ear training” can be pretty darned reliable. They'll name that note, too. The difference with my odd brain is that I didn't have to learn it. I don't have to think about it. "A, E, I, O, U" are as instantly recognizable as blue and orange, as six and seven, as "C sharp and B flat."  I remember being a little preschooler or kindergardener listening to my favorite LP album of Wizard of Oz. One day, I asked my older sister (who was in 6^th grade) to sing, “Over the Rainbow.” She did... and I'm sure she did a fine job, but I threw a tantrum. I still recall screaming at her, “You're singing it wrong!” before I could articulate what was so wrong about it. 

So, to all you skeptics out there, yes AP is real. I've got it. I've been officially tested by clinic professionals. I have my DNA on file at 2 separate university research projects to prove it.

OK, so now comes the funny little wrinkle. My identification of pitch is a half tone off (flat) compared to the rest of the world. This came a great shock to me when I first figured it out. See, I never pursued a career in music because it is just too frustrating and confusing to play an instrument with a group. They go off one way, and I stay my own course – following the little tuning fork in my head that no one else can hear. I became a writer and a paralegal. I got married. I had kids.

One day, my daughter is starting piano lessons. Fine. We go shopping for a piano, hoping to find an inexpensive upright for her to start on. (BTW, neither one of my kids has “it” but I strictly enforced correct singing at an early age. If they sang the Barney theme song in the car, and they were in the wrong key, I made them stop and start over.) Just for fun, we wandered over to the $ 10,000 grand pianos. My husband does the thing, where he makes me do the show. He pokes a key on a grand and says, “What's that note?” I say, “C sharp.” Then I look, no, it's just plain middle C. So we linger. We go from one ridiculously expensive, perfectly tuned grand piano to another. Every one of them... the white keys sound like black keys to me. I think, this is weird. It's one thing for the electronic keyboards in Radio Shack to sound sharp to me (they always have) but these are the real deal.

I went home and made a phone call to my brother, who is a jazz musician and has one of those electronic tuning devices. I have always ignored and scoffed at such gadgets, but now I needed one. I asked him to toot a simple “A” and over the phone I heard a “B flat.” I started crying, no... no... Suddenly all the little inconsistencies of my life, that I had shrugged off, made sense. My note names are a half tone off. My husband and I worried, for a while, that I was developing Alzheimer's and this was the first symptom. I really thought I was losing my mind.

Research time!! This was the middle/late 1990s, so the internet was not such a big thing yet. I did it the old fashioned way at the public library, in printed encyclopedias, in hardcopy periodicals, etc. Lucky for me, it was right around this time that the guy in Boston was doing his MRIs and articles about AP were accessible. I bought a nearly incomprehensible textbook on cognitive perception, and another book that changed my life: a history of musical pitch.

Brace yourself.

The music notes that you think you know, that you think are solid and absolute and echoing in the rainbow colors of the universe...? They have changed in the 20th century. Do not buy those Chakra meditation chimes at the New Age bookstore. Your body and soul does not resonate to particular pitch tones. 

For thousands and thousands of years, people have played instruments or sang to whatever pitch they felt like. A guy carving a bamboo flute makes the holes sync up and sound right to his ear, and that's good enough. Some guy did a scientific study of European pipe organs and antique tuning forks and found WILD variation all over the place. Poor Mr. Bach, when he went on tour, scribbled transposition of his melodies to adjust the pitch range for the choirs in one cathedral to another. Seriously, he did. In the 19th century, a brass band in Berlin would tune to a sharper pitch than a string quartet in Paris, and the banjoes in the New Orleans bayou would be different from either of them. It was never a problem before, because wherever you were – they tuned to themselves, and it sounded good in that spot.

Then, people traveled. People manufactured instruments and sold them to other countries. People started figuring out that there was some confusion. Singers especially complained because the higher pitch means they have to shriek higher notes. Each country established their own standard, with France being a little lower (the tuning note A is 435 Hz) and British set philharmonic pitch to (A=452 Hz). A lot of the upright pianos manufactured in America tended to lean toward French pitch, the lower, and they churned out thousands of uprights as Stephen Foster sheet music made it popular to have a keyboard in every home.

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, and oh boy, for the first time people recorded music, packaged it up, and sold it to faraway people to spin and listen. The problem is, when you record something at a lower pitch, and play it at a higher pitch, the music sounds like squeaky mice. Folks created a need for standardization, so that a recording from Carnegie Hall in New York would sound the same to someone playing the LP in Vienna.

Blatantly copying from the Wikipedia article, “In 1939, an international conference recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz, now known as concert pitch. This standard was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 and reaffirmed by them in 1975 as ISO 16. The difference between this and the diapason normal is due to confusion over the temperature at which the French standard should be measured. The initial standard was A = 439 Hz, but this was superseded by A = 440 Hz after complaints that 439 Hz was difficult to reproduce in a laboratory because 439 is a prime number.”

OK, so 1939 is the black day in history when A=440Hz became the rule. But, let's face reality. It did not immediately sweep away all those thousands of pianos that were in every home and every jazz cafe in America. Just like today, when Windows 7 hits the stores, a lot of people using Windows 2000 at home are perfectly happy to save their money and keep on using the old outdated computer.

There's a group called The Academy of Ancient Music that performs Baroque Era and Classical music on antique instruments in “historical pitch.” You can't crank a 300 year old violin up to A=440 because it will snap in half. When they play Mozart pieces toned a half note down from modern pitch, they advertise that this is exactly what ol' Amadeus would have actually sounded like. I really like them.

I think our family had an old, lower pitched piano in the home when I was growing up. Dad was cheap; he would have bought it used. My mom wanted us all to be brilliant musicians. I remember her taking my tiny little finger and pressing it to the white key, and saying, “This is middle C...” My mom passed away, and my dad sold off everything to pay the hospital bills – including the old piano – before I made this discovery about my pitch sense being half tone flat. I have no real proof, but aside from a stroke, it's the best explanation.

I bought an antique piano (from the classifieds) that was built in 1884. It has a heavy mahogany cabinet and a wonderful rich voice. I called in a professional piano tuner to polish it up, and he tuned it to the lower pitch. He affirmed that you cannot tune this piano to modern pitch (A=440) or the strings will break, the sound board will warp, etc. In order to bring it up to speed, they would need to gut the whole thing out and restring it with new. I said, no!

Ragtime music of the late teens and 1920s, and the Big Band Swing of the 1930s, was recorded on old grainy equipment BEFORE the pitch standard was set to A-440. Even in the 1940s, when the recording equipment improved and the meters set their dials to the higher pitch standard, the musicians in the studio might have kept their old antique pianos like mine.

I can feel the difference. I can tell when a song is being played on a piano where the white keys are pitched lower, compared to a piano that's tuned to A=440. When I listen to Ragtime, it feels like going home.

Happy Couple (Not)

I can’t find a single snapshot of Jack and Blanca together. I have scrounged old archived newspapers for blurry images that were often doctored (manually) in the days before Adobe Photoshop, cropped and glued and painted over. I contacted an archivist at the Library of Congress who so sweetly retrieved an un-indexed box and sent me old marked up proofs from a newspaper that went out of business. No one before me has seen these black and whites of Blanca in court!! I have contacted other reference librarians at several places, and obtained rare photos of Jack de Saulles from college yearbooks and forgotten crumbling football manuals that are more than 100 years old. I drove to Stanford and walked the dimly lit aisles of the third floor to get my hands on a Chilean poet's fictional memoirs of Blanca, which has a fabulous rare portrait photograph of her on the cover.

I have photos of Jack. I have photos of Blanca. I have photos of little Jacky Jr. with either his dad, or his mom, but never together. No portrait of the smiling couple, even at their wedding. No portrait of the 3 as a family. It's not really that surprising, I mean ask yourself, how many photos of your great-grandparents do you own right now? I should feel lucky to find so many photos already.

But, compare them to a mutual "friend" Mr. Rudolph Valentino who happily posed with his beautiful wife Natacha every time a camera sauntered into view. Dozens and dozens of photos of them on steamships, in posed portraits, on the street, on movie sets, always stylish, always side by side. I wonder if Rudy was affected by his observation of the de Saulles's relationship. I wonder if he thought, "If I had a gorgeous wife like that, I would never ignore her..." 

Judge Coyne

Jack had a lot of colorful friends, and it has been quite a task to sleuth them out! They make for good reading, because I think a man's character (to some extent) is reflected in the types of friends he chooses to have. I enjoyed learning about his buddy Paul J. Rainey the African lion hunter... Marshall E. Ward the obscure but ambitious Kentuckian stock broker... Coley Carnegie the screwed-up nephew of The Andrew Carnegie...

I stumbled onto another friend, Judge Edward P. Coyne, whose biography is so rich that it won't all fit into my book about Jack and Blanca. The relevant parts are where their lives intersect:  when Judge Coyne is the reason that Jack went to Chile, and when the judge stood up as best man at the wedding.

Born in upstate New York to Irish immigrants, the family all lived together on one big farm. He had several sisters and 2 brothers named John Henry Coyne (who also became a lawyer - judge) and Pascal Coyne. His father James died between the 1870 and the 1880 census, when Edward was between 10 and 20 years old. He continued living on the farm with his Uncle John until he was old enough to go off to college.

He became a lawyer with a flair for litigation, and eventually worked his way up to being a judge. In 1895 he married Elizabeth Haskell Doty, daughter of a local minister, and a descendant of Mayflower immigrants. They had one daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Coyne, born in 1898 and by the 1900 census he's doing quite well for himself. He's the boss judge. He's got a couple servants. He lives in a very nice house at 15 Main Street in the little town of Geneseo, NY. Now owned by the State University College at Geneseo, the house serves as the official residence of the College President. It's a short walk to the court house.

Then, something awful happened. I don't know what became of his first wife, but she drops out of the picture. I have an email in to the local history dude in Geneseo, but for now, all I know is that Judge Coyne marries a second time in 1908 to Miss Mary Gatins, the daughter of a stock broker who came up from Atlanta, Georgia to make a fortune in the big city. She was 21, and he was 48. They lasted about a year, and then she took off for Reno, Nevada to get a quick-and-dirty divorce. There's a wonderful quote in the newspaper from the girl's father, that he has nothing against the judge personally but these marriages between a younger girl and an older man just never work out!!  Jack should have listened to that advice!!

He ain't a bad looking guy, though. His passport says he's 6 feet tall and has blue eyes. He's got kind of a Woodrow Wilson thing going on, which I guess was popular in those days.

From there, the judge gets his name in the papers as an attorney representing the London corporation (syndicate) investing in the gigantic construction project to connect Argentina and Chile with a railroad. He does international contracts and has tens of millions of dollars to account for. That's in 1910... millions.

Jack de Saulles travels to Chile with Judge Coyne, for the adventure of it all (like his friend the lion hunter) and to work on something really big and exciting. This is a once in a country's lifetime project - as big as the transcontinental railroad here in the U.S. or maybe more so. The Andes Mountains are 10,000 feet high and it took 2 years to dynamite a tunnel through those icy rocks.

Yesterday, on Ancestry.com, I found one of Judge Coyne's US passport applications from 1915. In those days, you had to get a friend to sign an affidavit to vouch for you. They didn't have FBI background checks. It looks like they just took anybody's word for it. Guess who signed off, that he had personally known the judge for about 15 years, etc.? Yup. My boy Jack. I just love finding another sample of his big, splashy signature.

When Jack gets killed in 1917, the judge is in Europe doing whatever... I suppose he got involved with supplying the British military during World War One, but I don't know. 

I found the judge's obituary from 1927, he died at home in New York of tuberculosis. In his will (according to the newspaper) he left everything to his brother Pascal and his daughter who by then had married a fellow named Frost and lived in Florida. His other brother John Henry (also a lawyer) had died in May 1900 of diphtheria fever and had a lovely eulogy written in the published proceedings of the 24th annual meeting of the New York State Bar Association. 

One more newspaper article from June 1930 paints the sorry picture of ruin and despair. The judge left nothing but a life insurance policy. All the millions that he handled during his career, and the thousands that he was paid by the race tracks to defend them from  "hostile legislation" was gone. In his final years, he was dependent on his younger brother Pascal for support, and Pascal Coyne died also shortly after the judge died.  His daughter Sarah Frost lives in Jackson Heights, Long Island and will be inheriting $1,429 now that the estate is finally being settled. It's not the $50K that the judge hoped to leave for her, but it's something... and now that the stock market crashed and the Great Depression is sinking in, that's not half bad. 

Last 2 Books for Bibliography

Got 2 more reference books through my public library's Link+ system. Isn't this fantastic? What a time saver! Distant libraries truck the books I want directly to a small branch library near my house, and I just go pick 'em up. In my hands is the 1932 autobiography of Elsie Janis, vaudeville star. Guess who she dated? Yup! There's only a few small quotes, but they are nuggets of pure gold. Also, I have the 1941 book of essays by 9 prominent trial lawyers, collected into a sort of text book titled, “Success in Court.” Guess who wrote an essay about his methods of preparing for a trial, and using examples of a certain murder case that he's proud of winning? Yup! Her defense attorney! Gold, pure gold.

Now, I'm done. I made it my goal to scrape together absolutely everything related to Jack and Blanca, and the murder, and I have done it! Probably. Oh, there might be a few obscure scraps that I've missed, somewhere, but if they turn up later I'll put 'em on the blog. I dare to say that, as of today, this is the most complete and thorough volume it can possibly be.

Publishing 101

I'm putting together a proposal package for a publisher. It's a very interesting experience to switch your brain from creating the work, researching and fact-checking. I have to see myself and my product as a third person observer. I have to ask myself, why should anyone care? Who wants to read this book? The usual writer's doubts start to surface. Sure I've scoffed at other published books, I can't believe this crap made it all the way through to a store's shelf. Now I'm poised on the edge of (hopefully) becoming one of those books that reviewers and critics may praise or despise. Have I put enough sparkle into my narrative, so it isn't dull? Have I integrated the facts appropriately?

Has my research uncovered absolutely everything there is about Jack and Blanquita? Obviously not, because just yesterday I put 2 books on hold through Link+ at my local public library. Every time I think I'm done, another title pops up. Is Google doing this just to torture me?

Wedding Rings

Before the 1940s, most men did not wear wedding rings.  In the olden days, wedding vows bound the wife to "love, honor, and obey..." and the ring on her left hand sealed the deal.  American men started wearing rings in the 1920s. My money is on Rudolph Valentino starting the trend, as he started so many other fashion fads.

Here is dear ol' Rudy (left) posing with his brother Alberto in the mid-1920s.  Clearly a wedding band shows on Rudy's left hand. 

Dial the Way-Back machine a couple of years, and compare to the hand of our red-blooded, all-American male, ex-football captain and man about town, John de Saulles. A newspaper photographer in 1914 snapped a shot of him walking down the street, and it's so clear... almost a 100 years later, I can zoom in on Jack's left hand. Gasp! No wedding band. He has a pinky ring, which could be a fraternity or a class ring. 

Now, thanks again to the Library of Congress - I love you guys!!! - I have a clear shot of Blanca's left hand from a portrait photo of her and the baby. Little Jack Jr. is in a beautifully embroidered white gown, that I assume is his baptismal dress. Hey, she's Catholic. The gigantic square rock is so heavy that the band sagged sideways as she places her hand delicately against the child's front. 

Say what you will about Jack being too busy with his real estate deals and his baseball buddies, but he knew how to bling-bling his trophy wife. 

Book Review (Luz Larrain)

Blanca Elena, Memoria Indiscreta de la Quinta Vergara, by Luz Larrain 1994

This book is not available in English, so I have made an unofficial translation. The author’s prologue describes the narrative as a blend of fiction and reality, based on a little bit of research and personal interviews with anonymous collaborators. Her mission statement is to recreate the mood of characters and painful events that rattled her grandparents’ generation. In that, she accomplished her goal.

From what I can tell, even in translation, the poetic language is just lovely. She introduces Blanca as a young debutante enjoying the glamour of Paris with all its sensual delights, floral scents, brilliant colors, gourmet food, literature, fashion, etc. John de Saulles is a dazzling gentleman who sweeps her off her feet and awakens emotions she never knew she had. Their marriage quickly goes sour, with his drinking and carousing with other women. The murder itself is told delicately in sentence fragments that hint of his angry eyes, her shaking hands, a pistol… During the trial, Blanca stares sadly out the dirty window of her jail cell. The narrative jumps ahead to Blanca playing the piano and reflecting on her acquittal, then delves into her melancholy mind in the hours before she overdoses on barbiturates. Blanca’s last thoughts are of her ex-husband’s ghost and her estranged adult son. It ends with her housemaid discovering her body, the empty bottle, and the blank eyes staring off into nothingness as the church bells ring in the distance.

I enjoyed the book on an emotional level, that is, I found it entertaining. The plot moved along quickly and every character had a vivid presence. However, it is not a work of great literature by any means and shamelessly delves into the realm of melodrama. The author walked an easy road by taking the heroine’s point of view and making the victim of her violent act into a stereotypical villain. Not only did this John de Saulles deserve what he got, but Blanca is elevated to saintly status and absolved of all blame. There are no subtleties or ambiguities. Her lawyer Henry Uterhart and a fictional newspaper reporter named Nick are wholly on her side. Blanca is treated cruelly by her jailers, by the wicked prosecutor, and by John’s nasty selfish family. Even at the end, when her adult son argues with her and leaves home, it is portrayed as the act of a petulant youth. Blanca shouts back at him to be proud of his maternal ancestors, and later the house maid ponders her disapproval of the boy not standing loyal to his mother.

The errors distracted me a great deal. Numerous historical facts and dates are just plain wrong:  President Woodrow Wilson announcing his declaration of war on his radio talk show; titles of popular songs, silent films, and Broadway shows that had not appeared yet; John’s father researching how to make homemade beer because of Prohibition; and the famous Russian monk Rasputin’s is assassinated while she is still unhappily married to John. These are sloppy mistakes that could have been easily discovered in an encyclopedia.

Main characters are wrong, as well. She invents the names of John’s mother and a brother Bernie, portrays his sister Caroline as a spoiled single girl attending the opera and trawling for a fiancée. She wrongly pegs someone called J. Heckscher as John’s family attorney. The biggest blunder was to include Blanca’s father as the concerned parent disapproving of John and reluctantly walking her down the aisle at her wedding – Guillermo Errazuriz died when Blanca was a small child. In real life, part of her attraction to an older man was to fill the void of the father figure she never knew.

Mixed in with these errors are just enough true facts to confuse me about what is true and what the author simply dreamed up.  I cannot know what tidbits came from local knowledge and family folklore. She does a charming job of describing Dona Blanca bossing around the Italian architect who is rebuilding the Quinta Vergara palace after the 1906 earthquake. She dramatizes Hugo’s accidental death by falling off a horse. But when she has Manuela being sent to a convent to keep her from chasing boys, I am not sure if I should believe it. Frankly, I expected a little more accuracy from someone who is from Santiago.

I would put this book in the same category as the Daisy Waugh romance novel, as a work of total fiction sprinkled with a little bit of fact. It’s entertaining as an afternoon read but is not a reliable reference. When I must refer to it, I do so sparingly and cautiously, and out of desperation. It is absolutely the only Spanish language source that attempts to tell Blanca’s story.

Errazuriz Wine

I went to 4 different stores and finally got my hands on a bottle of Errazuriz red wine. Yes, Blanca's grandfather Don Maximiano Errazuriz founded a winery in the Napa Valley type hills north of Santiago, and it continued to be a family run business up to this day. Wow. Their wine is really, really good. Fragrant, smooth, light.

Valentino

Silent film star Rudolph Valentino died on this date, August 23, 1926, at the age of 31.  He was at the height of his career, visiting New York City to promote his latest blockbuster movie, "Son of the Sheik" - a sequel to the 1921 smash hit, "The Sheik."  He'd been feeling unwell for at least 6 months or more, suffering from a stomach ulcer, and while in New York in August he collapsed with an attack of appendicitis. The doctors did what they could but - face it - in 1926 the medical care was not all it should have been. Add to that his heavy, heavy chain smoking (up to 40 - 50 cigarettes a day!!) and that played havoc with his insides. Antibiotics kind of existed but they were experimental and not widely used, so when he developed an infection (fever) after they removed his appendix, and his stomach ulcer went to hell, the doctors basically stood by and watched him die. They pumped him full of morphine to keep him comfortable. Thousands of phone calls, telegrams, and flower bouquets overloaded the hospital. The newspaper headlines reported on his condition daily. When he passed away, his fans went totally nuts.  A riot of thousands of people clogged the streets of New York and smashed the windows of the funeral parlor trying to get a look at his body. It was Hollywood's first mega movie star funeral.

Rudy's body lay "in state" at Campbell's Funeral Parlor at 66th and Broadway - the exact same mortuary that handled the corpse of John L. de Saulles in 1917.  It's the last time their paths would cross.

Jack is buried in Brooklyn, in stylish accommodations at the Greenwood Cemetery, but they put Rudy on a train and carted him across the country to L.A. for final rest. His brother Alberto chose to bury him there, instead of Italy, because he knew Rudy considered himself an American in spirit, if not legally. (He started to apply for citizenship but never followed through.) His death was so unexpected that they didn't have a grave prepared - his friend screenwriter June Mathis let him borrow a slot in her family mausoleum, and she died of a heart attack 6 months later. They are side by side, to this day.

There's going to be the annual Valentino memorial tribute in front of his crypt at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, 6000 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles. The "service" starts today at 12:10 pm which is the time Rudy died in New York - they don't adjust for Pacific Time.  If you're in the area, go bring a red rose.

And if you're ever in Brooklyn, go look up Jack at Lot 9460, Section 45 in historic Greenwood Cemetery. Put a lily on there for me.

Indictment

Say what you will about the U.S. Postal Service, but today they came through!  I received the ORIGINAL INDICTMENT of Blanca de Saulles from the Nassau County Court.  The court clerk just mailed it Friday. Wow.

I have in my hands a copy of the actual typewritten pages signed by the Nassau County District Attorney, charging Blanca de Saulles with murder in the first degree.  Awesome.

This is gonna be such a cool book. 

Trial Transcripts

I've been trying for months to find the original court transcripts of Blanca's murder trial.  I've written letters.  I've sent emails.  I've floundered about the various New York State archives and courts and law libraries.  Finally, picked up the phone and got transferred a few times, and landed in the helpful hands of Marilyn at the Nassau County Court.  She expressed interest in the project - most everyone does, when I give my 3 minute spiel - and she kindly did a little research into their records.

A fire at the courthouse in 1981 destroyed most of the records. The original trial transcripts are gone forever.

Marilyn did manage to find me a couple of tidbits, such as the original indictment.  She's going to mail copies to me, absolutely free.  Thanks, Marilyn!

Demolished

I have a nephew living in New York who offered to make a short documentary or book trailer. (Shout out to Casey of Lamp & Boat.) I replied, thanks, but there's a problem. Except for his grave at the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, most of Jack de Saulles's world has been demolished.

Bethlehem Steel works factory in Pennsylvania, where he grew up, is a quiet, rusty, abandoned blight on the landscape.. The local historical society gives tours.

I think the luxury Nassau Hotel on the Long Beach boardwalk is gone, too.

The (hyphenated) Waldorf-Astoria hotel where he and Blanca attended a spectacular charity ball in 1914 and danced the waltz under glittering chandeliers, was demolished in 1931 to make way for the Empire State Building.

The Union Club - that all-male sanctuary where John socialized and smoked cigars with the Blue Book gentlemen of New York's upper crust - moved to a new building in the 30s.

The Meadow Brook polo and fox hunt club, where John took little Jack to practice riding on a scaled down pony, also closed down in the 1930s or 1940s. A new country club opened in Long Island later, calling itself the Meadowbrook club in homage to the old one. But the grassy fields where Big Jack and Little Jack laughed, and played with dogs, and tossed a football back and forth, are paved under the expressway and flattened by the foundations of condos.

I am still trying to pin down the location of his last home, "The Box" on Long Island where Blanca shot him. I don't know if it's still there, or if it's been remodeled beyond recognition, or demolished.

It's ironic that a man's whole life - everything he thought was solid and real - can be crushed by a wrecking ball and pushed away by shovels. The only thing left is a grave.

What You Can Learn from a Photograph

 

 This photo of Blanca de Saulles is on the Library of Congress online catalog of photographs.  The photo is poorly labeled by the original photographer and came from the Bain News Service.  It is not officially dated, but I looked at a few clues and I've given it a tentative date of early 1913. 

First, the fact that it belonged to a U.S. news service means the photo was taken here in the states, not Chile. So it could only be after their marriage (Dec. 1911) and after they came here as a couple.  

According to immigration records, John and Blanca arrived on 2 separate occasions in 1912.  One, in January 1912 for a short visit before they returned to Chile by March. Two, in August when John was invited to help with the campaign to elect President Woodrow Wilson, and they stayed in the U.S. after that. 

Second, she is wrapped up in fur and dark colors which says to me it is not summertime.  

Third, this setting is not a hotel or temporary accommodation. She is quite settled in here. The piano has a pile of sheet music, where Blanca has perhaps been practicing her Chopin and Debussey.  The mantle over the fireplace has a framed photograph of her mother.  Most interesting is the dark ceramic Kewpie doll - which is a novelty item that hit the marketplace in 1912, so the January 1912 date seems less likely. 

Fourth, behind the Kewpie doll is what appears to be a clock, and there is a paper note hanging over the clock face. I have downloaded the highest resolution .TIFF possible and zoomed in, but it is impossible to read.  So, from having been a mother myself, my intuition tells me that the note might say, "Please do not wind the clock because its chiming wakes up the baby."  The placement of the Kewpie doll in front of the clock also supports my assumption, as a clue to the non-English (or non-Spanish) speaking household servants. 

I'm just going on my gut here, but I think it's early January or February 1913, which means Blanca is staying with her in-laws in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania soon after giving birth to John de Saulles Jr. 

Mistakes

We all make mistakes. We're human. We turn at the wrong street in the dark. We forget to do something really important until it's too late. We make rash choices before thinking through the consequences.

If we're lucky, our mistakes aren't too serious and we can simply go along. Hopefully we learn something along the way, like how to carry a map and not trust the cheap GPS machine, or how to make reminders for things we need to do. For the important stuff – I mean the really, really important stuff – we need to stop and think it through.

Nurses working at a hospital need to check the medications they give out. Cops need to be careful approaching the window of a car they just pulled over for speeding. Firemen need to touch that door handle to see if it's hot before they open it.

As I'm researching the lives of John de Saulles and Blanca Errazuriz, I see the mistakes they made along the way. Their infatuation and impetuous marriage. Their failure to see each other for who they were instead of the illusion they hoped for. And of course, on that one fateful night... John made a mistake in not seeing the rage and frustration in her eyes when she came to his doorstep. Blanca made a mistake in carrying a loaded gun when she felt at the end of her rope.

A Moment of Silence

Jack de Saulles died today, exactly 94 years ago. Blanca pumped five bullets into him around 8:30 pm and it took him two hours to bleed to death. The doctors called it at 10:20 pm.

Why History

There are 2 kinds of people who research history and genealogy. One group is interested in credentials, the glorious achievements of our nation’s founders, the heroics of generals who triumphed in battle, the lords and ladies to whom they are distantly related. I belong to the second group, interested in the brick makers who paved the roads of our cities as much as the tycoons who paid for the paving. I think we can learn from the struggles of an ordinary guy a 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, because most of us have more in common with a man trying to put bread on the table than with Lord So-and-So. I first got into genealogy about 25 years ago, when my father made a few trips to the LDS archives and proudly declared that our family was descended from Sir de la Croix. He believed his aunt’s folklore that he was a cousin of President Woodrow Wilson and never tried to prove it with documentation. It was enough for him to link himself to famous and illustrious persons of the past. I think it gave him a sense of validation, that although he was a middle-class regular guy who worked a salary job all his life, he had a bloodline to be proud of. After my father passed away, I discovered that we really aren’t related to Sir de la Croix but our line comes down from the lord’s little brother (both named Pierre, and confused in the church records.) I cannot for the life of me make a connection to Woodrow Wilson, as our direct ancestor immigrated to the U.S. about 100 years later than Wilson’s forebears. But what I did find, in my research, was inspiration from French ancestors who survived the British assault on Montreal, or the Wilsons who worked to keep their family together by traveling from England to Canada to Ohio to Virginia. These simple people, with their struggles, their ironies, and their tragedies, are my payoff.

I’ve applied my genealogy skills to researching the family backgrounds of John de Saulles and Blanca Errazuriz. My goal is not to be the TMZ of dead celebrities, but to see them as real people with real lives.

Maury y Billy

I’ve reached critical mass of research. I have collected one too many tidbits, to the point that one anecdote that won’t fit into the book.

In February 1917, Blanca’s brother Billy Errazuriz attended the Pan-American Aeronautics Exposition in New York City as a Chilean representative. One of the expo’s hosts, listed on the welcoming committee, was John’s cousin Maurice Heckscher. This is after the ugly and painfully public divorce, when John and Blanca are living in separate homes and splitting custody of their little boy. It’s just 6 months before the murder. 

By the end of the same year, these two men—Billy and Maurice—would glare at each other from opposite aisles of the court room. But on this day, the only thing on their minds were the marvelous new airplanes on display. They said hello. They chatted about the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh. They fantasized about the day when people might use “airbuses” on a regular basis, perhaps replacing steamships for travel across the ocean. They shook hands and wished each other well. 

I look back through the lens of time at the exposition’s program schedule (thank you, Google books) and my heart flutters at the irony. You poor bastards… You both had no idea of what the future held. 

I love research

Maybe it's 'cause my dad loved reading mysteries. Maybe it's 'cause my mom was an avid reader and took us to museums and libraries all the time.  But, I LOVE RESEARCH.  I love digging around in dusty old archives and finding out stuff that nobody else knows.  Not a lot of people have this personality trait.  They enjoy hearing the results of somebody's research, the interesting gossip of folks long dead, but they don't like rolling up their sleeves and getting into it.

I have had a blast researching the John de Saulles case.  Thank God for Google!!  I've been doing genealogy as a hobby for about 25 years, and what a difference the internet makes.  It used to be I'd drive to the local Mormon library, squint at hardback books of printed indexes or microfiche, then if I was lucky enough to find a clue, I'd order a microfilm from the underground vaults in Salt Lake City.  I'm not kidding, there are really underground vaults.

Once I got bit by the curiosity bug, it wasn't hard to go through the basic steps.  Old newspapers digitized online. Federal census. Vital documents, marriages and birth certs and death notices. Good ol' Ancestry.com gave me access to cool stuff like scanned passports and U.K. port manifests.  Ellis Island has a free database of all travelers from the 1890s through the 1950s. Published local histories are getting scanned into Google ebooks by the truckload.  Rootsweb put me in touch with descendants of cousins who, sadly, know less than I do about ol' Jack. Blanca's home town in Chile has a website now, with a heritage association, a historical magazine, and online archives!  Oh boy!  Reference librarians at historical societies and a couple of universities have been awesome.

Gleefully exhausting all the usual sources, I am now getting creative. Again, thanks to Google ebooks (snippet view) I discovered that a guy wrote a cookbook about New Orleans cuisine, and to be unique, he included profiles of some of the well known historic houses.  Guess who I found?  Yes... Jack's grandfather Louis de Saulles had a plantation mansion, and it's still there!  From the "acknowledgments" in the cookbook, I got the exact name of the historical society that was the source, and from their website I got the exact reference to the obituary.  I put a $6 check in the mail today, and I can't wait to get the obit of Louis de Saulles.  One more piece of the puzzle.

I love research.

Fact or Fiction

Do people want facts, really?

When I first mention the book I am writing, to friends or colleagues, they assume I am making a work of fiction.  They do not automatically think of a nonfiction biography/courtroom drama even though it is a true crime story.  Okay, fiction gives an author more latitude.  I wouldn't have to worry about cross-checking facts, squinting at smudgy pages of the federal census, getting death certificates and baptismal certificates, plucking clues from 100 year old newspapers, making footnotes and keeping up a bibliography.  I could just.... wheeee!!  Whatever comes to mind.  Edith Wharton.  D.H. Lawrence.  F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Maybe I'd change the names, or maybe I'd keep 'em.  The folks involved are long since dead and gone, so no one is alive to sue me if I get it wrong.

Fiction is freedom.

What holds me back is this:  fiction has been done on this story 3 times.  1) Hollywood produced a really trashy exploitation film in 1918 that has been lost to the dust bin of time - fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your curiosity level.  Myself, I would give anything to see it.  2) A Chilean poet Luz Larrain wrote a fictional memoirs in 1994 from Blanca's viewpoint, in Spanish, and although I got a copy, I can't read Spanish!  I've put some of it through Google translator, enough to recognize a few small factual errors.  For example, she calls John de Saulles's sister Caroline a "senorita" which means a single woman, but in fact Caroline was married and had a daughter of her own.  Little things like that bug me.

This year, a columnist for the London Sunday Times wrote a romance story involving Rudolph Valentino and used the de Saulles murder as a background setting.  Although the author did some research, she did not go quite so crazy as I did and I immediately spotted a number of factual mistakes in her timeline of events, etc.  She changed the name of John de Saulles's chauffeur just enough to give herself the "freedom" because she wanted to depict him as a jolly 6 foot+ tall blonde Swedish man.  The truth is Julius Hadamek was 5 ft. 5 in. dark haired and from Austria.  I found his passport, with photograph and physical description on Ancestry.com.  I found the passenger manifest from when he first arrived at Ellis Island in 1909.  I found him in the 1920 New York federal census, and from his World War II compulsory draft registration card, I know that he and his wife Olive stayed together for 20 years.  Facts are interesting to me.  The humble immigrant chauffeur, who watched his master be shot dead by his ex-wife, found true love and happiness for himself.

I want to be the first to write the only, definitive factual reference book about the de Saulles case.  But will it sell?  Do people really want to know what happened, or do they just want a fancy story?  Is fiction more glamorous than fact?

exploding toasters

Some people unplug the toaster every time they leave the house for fear that the simple appliance will spontaneously explode in their absence. They don't unplug the lamps or the computers or the blender. Just the toaster. I have never heard a news report of a single toaster being the cause of a house fire. It's more likely that electrical wiring to the stove or Christmas candles will do you in.

People can find all sorts of reasons to be afraid of the world, of taking risks, of simple household appliances. I think Blanca de Saulles was one of those people - terrified of going outside her comfort zone. Her father died of TB when she was 3. Her older brother died by falling off a horse. When she married a white American and sailed off to New York with him, she was not being adventurous. She came under the umbrella of John's fearless spirit, perhaps hoping that some of his reckless gleeful courage would rub off on her. She described in one of her jailhouse interviews arriving in New York for the first time, leaning over the railing of the steamship with his strong arm around her, and all the sweet romantic promises he had made. Whenever he went off to conduct business dealings or campaign for Woodrow Wilson's presidential election, she felt lost without him. His friends became her friends. His relatives were her relatives. She was isolated and alone in America. At her murder trial she blamed him for keeping her shut in... but I think she willingly let herself be a princess in a glass box. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz movie, she was in a beautiful exotic new place but all she kept saying was that she wanted to go home. She clicked her heels 3 times and did not go anywhere. So she shot him, and felt immediately relieved of her panic and fear. She endured the trial like a bad dream, and after acquittal went home to Chile with her son - and never left.

I'll bet she unplugged the toaster every time she went out.

Why I Can't Stop Thinking About this Murder Case

I am watching the morning news and they're talking about Casey Anthony being released from prison.  It's been almost 100 years since Blanca de Saulles walked away free, after gunning down her ex-husband, and it seems nothing has changed. A pretty young girl, accused of murder, tells a tale of woe and the jury lets her walk free. 

What's unique about Blanca is that she shot John de Saulles in front of several witnesses - his father, his butler, his best friend, and her own trembling maid. Unlike Lizzie Borden, or OJ Simpson, there is absolutely no doubt that she pulled the trigger. The prosecutor thought he had a slam dunk case, until the defense attorney came along. 

In the 3 months leading up to her trial, Blanca talked to reporters from her jail cell and charmed them all. She fainted and doctors feared for her health, declaring her anemic. They allowed her darling 4 year old boy to visit her in prison. A concert pianist friend visited Blanca and played the piano (that the sheriff provided) for the pleasure of the other murderers, arsonists, and drunkards in lock up. 

How did the tables turn so quickly? Her ex-husband John de Saulles was a popular college football star, a successful New York businessman, and well liked by everyone... until his wife shot him dead. Blanca in jail became a martyr, and John became the scoundrel who drove her to madness.