envelope and embossed with a crest of three interlaced silver crescents. “Please find enclosed 25 cents, for which send remedy, and oblige,” read the handwritten note.
The sender gave his return address as 6 Jersey Street, Newark, New Jersey—the location of the Morris Herrmann and Company paint factory. The letter was signed “Roland Molineux.”
19
I n the middle of June—after daily trips to his private letter box at Heckmann’s—the man who called himself Mr. H. C. Barnet suddenly stopped picking up his mail. His disappearance coincided with the departure of Roland Molineux for a summer trip to Europe.
When Roland returned at the end of August—minus his mustache—he took a room at Travers Island, the New York Athletic Club’s summer home on the Long Island Sound. He retained his living quarters at the Newark paint factory, though he rarely spent the night there anymore. He also made regular trips to Manhattan. Some of these were business-related.
Others had to do with matters of a more personal nature.
The offices of the Jersey City Packing Company—Henry Barnet’s employer—were located in the Produce Exchange Building, a vast, imposing structure in lower Manhattan, long since demolished but once considered a landmark of architectural design.
On a morning in late August, not long after Roland Molineux’s return from his European vacation, a small, slender package arrived in the mail, addressed to “H. C. Barnet, Room 342, Produce Exchange.” Barnet was out of town, so his office-mate, a salesman named James J. Hudson, set the package aside.
When Barnet returned a few days later, Hudson handed him the package. Barnet tore off the light-colored wrapping and exclaimed in surprise.
Inside was a small white box containing a number of white, powder-filled capsules. The box, which had a sliding top, was labeled “Calthos, five days’ treatment. The Von Mohl Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.”
There was no accompanying message or note, nothing to indicate why the pills had been sent to Barnet. Certainly he had no need for them, never having suffered from the condition for which Calthos was purportedly a cure.
With a shrug, he stuck the little box in the side pocket of his jacket. Later, he put it in a drawer of his desk and forgot about it. 1
20
T hough Blanche was an old woman by the time she wrote her memoirs, she describes the key events of her earlier life in novelistic detail. She recalls precisely what gown she was wearing when she performed at Carnegie Hall with the Musical Arts Society, the way the sunlight sparkled on the water the day she met Roland aboard the yacht
Viator,
the furnishings of the room in which she and Henry Barnet first made love.
So it seems odd—and highly significant—that she is unable to say exactly what happened on that fateful afternoon in early September 1898, when, with startling suddenness, she renounced her relationship with Barnet and reconciled with Roland.
True, she remembers that it happened over lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria. She recalls the table by the “great windows that opened on Fifth Avenue” and the “throngs of passersby” visible through the panes. She even remembers that she and Roland dined on filet of sole and drank white wine.
But as for what brought about her sudden change of heart, she claims a complete loss of memory. “In some way—I hardly remember—Molineux and I bridged the separation between us” is all she writes of that moment. 1
It is hard not to conclude that Blanche is being deliberately evasive here, that she simply prefers not to recall—or not to confess—the real reason for her surprising turnaround. Still, it is possible to speculate.
We know from her memoirs that Blanche’s dearest dream was to visit Paris. It was a dream, as she had discovered by then, that she was unlikely to realize as the wife of Henry Barnet, whose financial circumstances were far less comfortable than Molineux’s.
The sender gave his return address as 6 Jersey Street, Newark, New Jersey—the location of the Morris Herrmann and Company paint factory. The letter was signed “Roland Molineux.”
19
I n the middle of June—after daily trips to his private letter box at Heckmann’s—the man who called himself Mr. H. C. Barnet suddenly stopped picking up his mail. His disappearance coincided with the departure of Roland Molineux for a summer trip to Europe.
When Roland returned at the end of August—minus his mustache—he took a room at Travers Island, the New York Athletic Club’s summer home on the Long Island Sound. He retained his living quarters at the Newark paint factory, though he rarely spent the night there anymore. He also made regular trips to Manhattan. Some of these were business-related.
Others had to do with matters of a more personal nature.
The offices of the Jersey City Packing Company—Henry Barnet’s employer—were located in the Produce Exchange Building, a vast, imposing structure in lower Manhattan, long since demolished but once considered a landmark of architectural design.
On a morning in late August, not long after Roland Molineux’s return from his European vacation, a small, slender package arrived in the mail, addressed to “H. C. Barnet, Room 342, Produce Exchange.” Barnet was out of town, so his office-mate, a salesman named James J. Hudson, set the package aside.
When Barnet returned a few days later, Hudson handed him the package. Barnet tore off the light-colored wrapping and exclaimed in surprise.
Inside was a small white box containing a number of white, powder-filled capsules. The box, which had a sliding top, was labeled “Calthos, five days’ treatment. The Von Mohl Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.”
There was no accompanying message or note, nothing to indicate why the pills had been sent to Barnet. Certainly he had no need for them, never having suffered from the condition for which Calthos was purportedly a cure.
With a shrug, he stuck the little box in the side pocket of his jacket. Later, he put it in a drawer of his desk and forgot about it. 1
20
T hough Blanche was an old woman by the time she wrote her memoirs, she describes the key events of her earlier life in novelistic detail. She recalls precisely what gown she was wearing when she performed at Carnegie Hall with the Musical Arts Society, the way the sunlight sparkled on the water the day she met Roland aboard the yacht
Viator,
the furnishings of the room in which she and Henry Barnet first made love.
So it seems odd—and highly significant—that she is unable to say exactly what happened on that fateful afternoon in early September 1898, when, with startling suddenness, she renounced her relationship with Barnet and reconciled with Roland.
True, she remembers that it happened over lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria. She recalls the table by the “great windows that opened on Fifth Avenue” and the “throngs of passersby” visible through the panes. She even remembers that she and Roland dined on filet of sole and drank white wine.
But as for what brought about her sudden change of heart, she claims a complete loss of memory. “In some way—I hardly remember—Molineux and I bridged the separation between us” is all she writes of that moment. 1
It is hard not to conclude that Blanche is being deliberately evasive here, that she simply prefers not to recall—or not to confess—the real reason for her surprising turnaround. Still, it is possible to speculate.
We know from her memoirs that Blanche’s dearest dream was to visit Paris. It was a dream, as she had discovered by then, that she was unlikely to realize as the wife of Henry Barnet, whose financial circumstances were far less comfortable than Molineux’s.
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