The Sunday Gentleman Page 6

  The moment that I mentioned why I had called upon him, he smiled and became more affable. But he was careful, also. I had to explain what I wanted of the Everleigh sisters, and what I would do with it. Lait listened, but remained noncommittal.

  “Tell me one thing,” I asked. “Are both of them still alive?”

  “Sure they are alive. Their neighbors think they’re two eccentric and retired clubwomen, with independent means. No one knows about their past. To everyone around—they’re just two nice old ladies.”

  “I wish you’d tell me how I could get hold of them.”

  Lait considered me a moment longer, and then he suddenly sat up in his swivel chair. “Okay, Sergeant. You’ve got an honest face, sort of. Just be secretive and discreet about the whole thing, remember.”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay. Their names are Minna and Aida Lester—got that?—Lester. They own a brownstone at 20 West 71st Street, right here in New York. You want their telephone number, too? Okay. It’s Endicott 2-9970. But look, I wouldn’t just call them up cold. I don’t think you’d get anywhere. Here’s what I’d suggest. Write them a letter. You can use my name. Write them, introduce yourself, and tell them what you have in mind. And then, sit back and hope. There you have it. Now you’re on your own.”

  I thanked Jack Lait profusely, and left. The following day, before I could either write or telephone the Everleighs, the Army Signal Corps recalled me to my station in Los Angeles.

  During my first free evening in Los Angeles, I sat down and composed a long and friendly letter to Miss Minna Everleigh and Miss Aida Everleigh, and I addressed the envelope to “Miss Minna Lester, Miss Aida Lester, 20 West 71st Street, New York City 23, New York.”

  Less than a week later, I had my answer. It came, as all the Everleigh letters I subsequently received would come, packed bulkily into a long manila envelope, secured by silver sealing wax. The letter that was contained within was written in blue ink, in a wild and almost indecipherable scrawl, each letter of each word an inch high. This first Everleigh letter, like the correspondence to follow, was unrestrained and extravagant in its phrasing, and highly original in its punctuation. Minna, the letter writer of the pair, showed contempt for periods, commas, and semicolons, but was much devoted to dots, dashes, and exclamation points. I reproduce her first letter exactly as it was written. What follows actually covered twenty good-sized pages when written in Minna Everleigh’s generous hand:

  Sunday—May 7—1944—New York—

  Sgt Irving Wallace

  Dear Sir

  Your letter addressed to my sister, Aida Lester, and to me—lies on my desk…There is truth in the axiom that asserts “A Letter Mirrors the Soul of the Writer”…Your letter portrays culture, courtesy, intellect, literary and dramatic genius…Therefore, this candid heart-prompted response…

  Dear Sgt Wallace—

  Aida and Minna Lester’s past is not linked with the Everleigh Club on South Dearborn Street—Chicago—Illinois…Aida Lester and I lived in Chicago during the first decade of the Twentieth Century—but in a fashion far remote from the famous sisters’ exotic lives…Your time is precious—“brevity is the soul of wit”—suffice it to say that many times false rumors linked our puritan lives with the sensational career of the sisters referred to in your letter!!

  Aida and I traveled in Europe prior to World War I—finally returning to our own dear Land—made our home since 1915 in New York at our present residence 20 West 71st Street New York…Meantime rumors linked our names with the sisters of the Dearborn Street resort!!!

  Finally, we took action—Aida Lester and I—we located the sisters of Dearborn Street—Chicago!!! They proved their innocence of linking their names with ours—I will not take time explaining—plotters of the South Side Levee—their enemies—had sought to cause them trouble—prompted by political Levee gangster feuds!!! These sisters reside in New York City!!! Still fearing their foes, they live isolated lives—Since the panic of 1929, they have sustained severe losses from defaulted mortgage investments…

  After receipt of your letter yesterday, I visited the sisters to whom you had addressed it…They recall the honor of having known Mr. Jack Lait of the New York Mirror—gifted columnist—journalist—famous author…Sister Aida Lester and I have not had the pleasant privilege of meeting him—hope some day to have that pleasure…To make a long story short—dear Sgt Wallace—the sisters you addressed desire to avoid all publicity…(The Everleigh Sisters)—Interested in your plan to dramatize the Everleigh Club they yet ask to be forgotten!!!

  I asked them if they would consider pecuniary considerations for such assistance as they might concede to you for the setting and background of their club on Dearborn Street—Chicago??—Their Answer was that they have an Album of photographs of the parlors and rooms of the Everleigh Club—They might part with those—but they must shun publicity. Finally, the Sisters agreed that they might sell their Album—for cash sum—not for financial percentage of profits after the play is produced:

  Dear Sgt Wallace—I have given you a candid account of my visit to the Everleigh sisters with whom my name and my sister, Aida Lester’s, has so often been linked…I enclose clippings that suggest the past should be forgotten in this swift epoch!! Forget the Everleigh Club and the haunted past portrayed in the photographs of its vanished splendor shown in the album the sisters possess!!! Did not Byron declare “The past is nothing and at last—the future can but be the past”!!

  However, if you still wish to have those Everleigh Club photographs—let me know! ! ! ! Remember—the Everleigh Sisters names were Marie and Alice!!! The names Aida and Minna were borrowed from my name—and Aida Lester’s when we were socialites in Chicago long ago!!!

  And now—forgive this long letter—dear Irving Wallace!!! Pardon my having no writing paper that is proper size for your chic airmail envelope—so beguiling—with its special stamp!!! If you still desire that Everleigh Club Album—state so in reply dear Sgt Wallace…Were it mine to give it would be freely given!!!

  May your heart’s desire be granted!!! Let me know this message reached you!!! Truly your friend and admirer

  Minna Lester

  The eleven clippings that Minna enclosed consisted of an Associated Press story about a warrant officer in the South Pacific who wanted to hear the voice of his four-day-old son on the long-distance phone, and heard nothing until he instructed his wife to spank the infant; a newspaper photograph from a Mickey Rooney film; a sexy advertisement for a “Shar-Loo” slip; a newspaper photograph of Major Jimmy Stewart being decorated by a lieutenant colonel; a newspaper photograph of a radio actress; an advertisement for a newly published book on the Marines; newspaper photographs from a film called The Hitler Gang; a political cartoon of Adolf Hitler; three more cartoons about Himmler, Goebbels, and Hitler facing defeat; and a picture from The New York Times drama section showing the sheet music and the casts of five musical comedy successes created by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammer-stein n.

  I was strangely moved by this first letter from a sixty-six-year-old former madam of the world’s most elegant house of rendezvous in recent times—moved by her elaborate and pathetically transparent story of having been a “socialite” who had known the real Everleighs, and knew them still. And I was touched by her lovely, banal quotations, and by her need to sell the precious album of photographs of the Everleigh Club.

  I wanted to write her immediately, write her anything, but write her nicely, yet I did not—and soon I could not. I found myself traveling around the country to various army installations, researching and writing material for top-priority military films. I had neither time nor energy to devote to Minna Lester, friend of Minna Everleigh. Too, I began to have misgivings about my play project, about the possibility of securing clear-cut legal rights to use the Everleigh Club from one who was an Everleigh and yet denied it. How much of what Minna had written me, I wondered, was conscious pretense based on elementary caution and how much was the subl
imation of an old lady who had come to believe in a dream identity that she had invented for herself out of Wish? Did I want to become seriously involved with such a person? I did not know. I had no time to think it out I was on army time.

  But suddenly, late in 1945, I knew. I was being transferred from Los Angeles to the Signal Corps post on Long Island, New York, and I would be very close to 20 West 71st Street and to the “socialites” named Aida and Minna Lester. The play that I had in mind was one thing, but the lesser one, I decided. If I could reach the real Aida and Minna Everleigh, and from them secure the rights to their story for my play, that would be fine. More interesting to me, to that persistent curiosity built into every writer, was the desire to know firsthand more about those remarkable and legendary sisters, those sweet relics of the bawdy past.

  And so, shortly after my arrival in New York, on my first free Sunday—December 16, 1945—I sat down at the desk in my room in the Royalton Hotel on West 44th Street and addressed myself to “My dear Minna Lester.” I had made my decision. I would join their game, on their terms.

  “Perhaps you will not remember my name,” my letter began. “Certainly, it is with a sense of guilt that I write you now. But if I may, permit me to refresh your memory. Early in May of last year, while I worked as a writer for the United States Army, I was briefly in New York where I obtained your address through the kind offices of Mr. Jack Lait…” Then, for four pages, I went on to explain why I had not been able to write the sisters in almost twenty months, how much I still wanted to create the play based on their lives, how eager I was to purchase the album of photographs of their club (“if the price is not prohibitive”), and, now that I was back in New York, how much “I should enjoy the pleasure of meeting you and talking with you.”

  The following evening at seven o’clock—I had just returned by subway from my army chores, and was preparing to go out for dinner—the telephone in my room rang. I lifted the receiver, and then I forgot about dinner. The voice on the other end was that of Minna Everleigh. I still have my notes, jotted down immediately after our half hour’s conversation. “Minna sounds very old,” I had observed. “Her voice is quavery, it goes up and down, very much the way Joseph Jefferson sounds on those pioneer recordings Linguaphone puts out. Sometimes she speaks in a shriek, but her sentences are clipped and distinct, often punctuated by shrill laughter. Her speech is staccato.”

  “We have your marvelous letter,” Minna Everleigh was saying, “and we want to thank you for it—the most perfect letter I have ever received. Aida read it and she agrees with me that it is perfect. Now, about that matter you referred to, the Everleigh sisters—I must tell you, they just left for Florida, they are there now and will be there for several months. But Aida and I will be in constant touch with them, and we’ll let them know of your requests and we’ll keep in touch with you.”

  I told her I was deeply appreciative of the time she was giving to act as an intermediary between the Everleighs and myself.

  She listened, and then she asked, “You’re not a Catholic, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I thought not. Well, the Catholics and Puritans in this country would be against such a play as you have in mind. The Catholic Church is powerful, you know, and it’s gaining strength. It has control over everything. It is against such women as the Everleighs, yet, Irving darling, when I lived in Chicago, some of the finest women I met socially were of the same class as the Everleighs, some of the very finest…All this condemnation of the Everleighs. They do not merit it. I know. The whole thing is like those Nazis on trial for their war crimes. Many of those Nazis followed orders. I don’t mean that they’re not guilty. They are guilty. But they followed orders, you understand. They had to do what they did. And the Everleigh sisters had to do what they did, too.”

  I began to tell her that I had nothing but admiration for the Everleigh sisters, but she interrupted me.

  “You know, Irving,” she said, “there have been three books written about the Everleigh sisters. One is Come into My Parlor. It should have been called ‘The Club.’ Another is The Gem of the Prairie. And there is also Lords of the Levee. Most all of this is a bunch of untruths and lies. But Come into My Parlor is the best…As to your play, I know something else you can do meantime. I’ve been reading four volumes written by Paul Eldridge, published by Haldeman-Julius who puts out those Little Blue Books in Girard, Kansas. Eldridge’s books are not books really, but pamphlets—still, real literature you could adapt for the stage. I wrote Eldridge my opinion of his work, sheer genius, nothing like that awful novel. Strange Fruit. He teaches Romance languages right here in New York.”

  Then graphically, if somewhat confusingly, Minna acted out, over the telephone—reciting various characters’ speeches with appropriate voice changes, the plot of one Eldridge book, and concluded by relating to me, briefly, the plots of the other three.

  “You know, I have been writing a book of my own for seven years,” she went on. “It is called ‘Poets, Prophets and Gods.’ I have read a lot, you know, all of the three thousand books which I have here in my home, and I went around the world twice, once in 1909 and again in 1912. I am absolutely a freethinker, no nursery stories for me. You are a freethinker, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “My book would be heresy. I think I will have Haldeman-Julius publish it. They publish that sort of thing. I will finish it next year and you shall have an autographed copy.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “You may yet have your play, Irving. But really, you don’t think it could actually be done, do you? Did you ever see a photograph of the Everleigh sisters?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “One had warm brown hair, and the other had natural golden hair, and it would be difficult to find anyone to portray them on the stage. They were very strange, not happy girls. There was so much tragedy in their lives. They left Chicago in 1911 with over a half-million dollars. They lost most of it later through investments, but don’t think they are poor, because they are not. They live well, and have their jewels still. They are not poor, they are not dependent on anyone.”

  I was relieved about that, and wanted to let Minna know, but she was rambling on.

  “We had several large parties in this house in the thirties, but in June, 1937, when the war came, we swore off parties. We only go out to the theater sometimes now. Do you think that’s strange? But I do want to finish writing my book. Women friends are always calling about parties, about club meetings, about teas, but I have to refuse them…We ordered eight more copies of Eldridge’s books, something different for the reader, really, and I shall send you four in January of the new year. Eldridge is the modern Guy de Maupassant…I saw that movie, The Dolly Sisters, did you? I couldn’t help laughing at the picture, at Betty Grable and that other girl—I forget her name—oh, yes—June Haver. Yes. Oh dear, they were too lustful. Women in our day just weren’t like that at all, but I suppose men want to see that today. Remember the old saying, ‘What a man sees in a woman, he gets.’ Well, nowadays, Irving, he certainly wants a hot number, that’s what he wants today!”

  She broke into a great peal of laughter, then suddenly sobered. “How old are you?” she asked.

  “I’m thirty.”

  “Thirty?” She laughed nicely. “What a wonderful age.” She paused, and then she said, “I will speak to the Everleigh sisters. You may yet get what you desire. But meantime, work on other things. There are more fish in the sea than are ever caught. Best wishes for the new year, darling, and thank you for the most perfect, most charming letter we have ever received, darling, and good-bye for now.”

  Dazed, yet stimulated, by my first personal contact with Minna Everleigh, I wondered when we would speak to one another again. The week passed without another call from Minna. But the sisters were on my mind, and so was Christmas, then fast approaching, and three days before Christmas I went to a bookstore on Fifth Avenue and boug
ht deluxe editions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and ordered them gift wrapped and sent to Minna and Aida Lester.

  The following day, a Sunday, the sixth day since Minna’s first call to me, I was downstairs in the lobby of the Royal-ton purchasing pipe tobacco, when I was summoned to the telephone. A Miss Lester, I was told, wished to speak to me. While this conversation was briefer than our first, it was as meaningful to me, because, at last, I met Aida of the golden hair and gold piano.

  At once, Minna said that she had just mailed a package to me. Her latest shipment of Little Blue Books had arrived from Girard, Kansas, and she was sending me several by Eldridge which she hoped I would consider for dramatization.

  Before I could thank her, she began to reminisce about her sister and herself. “Aida and I were of a family of five,” she said. “Everyone wants to be something in their life, and I was no different. Like that young actor in California we’ve been corresponding with. He wrote us, just as you did, under the erroneous impression that we were the Everleigh sisters. I corrected him. He now sends us snapshots of himself and baskets of fruit. He wants to be a writer as well as an actor. He writes well. I suspect he has a Semite strain. I believe the greatest poets, writers, actors were Semites. Unfortunately, Aida and I are Aryan. I wish we weren’t. What are you, Irving? Are you a Semite?”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  Minna laughed. “I love that word ‘definitely.’ I have a feeling you’re going to go far…Look, Irving, I want you to talk to my sister, Aida, also. She’s ninety-nine percent more worthy than I am. I’m going to call down to her, and she’ll go into the library, among all our books, and talk to you on that phone, while I stay on this one. I hope you two get along without having met. Well, hold on—”