Chapter I: The End

“Oh, few faint voices bravely asking ‘Why?’
You pass like whispers in the roaring play
Of madmen marching to a holiday.
We know. We know, why bound to death they lie.”
+David P. Berenberg.+[1]

There in the newspapers on that morning of August ninth, 1927, was the appeal from the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee to the “rank and file” of artists, authors, teachers (including college professors) and other kinds of professional men and women to come to headquarters in Boston. How many of the rank and file of professors and authors like myself would be there? For me, behind, lay seven years of a working friendship with the Committee.

That noon of August ninth on the shore of Lake Champlain a budge-budge-not struggle went on for more than an hour. If I went, what could I do? Would I not be merely one more person under foot? At such moments were there not always many to go? Had I not--as had so many others with more influence--done what I could over the seven long years to help the Committee in its great work of educating the public to see that the issue was justice to these two Italians, one a shoe worker, the other a fish peddler! And now that the work seemed, one way or another, really over, why go?

But would there be many of my kind? Had not the report of President Lowell, President Stratton and Judge Grant “sand-bagged” the educational world? At least if I did go, there would be nothing left undone to be regretted some day. And this was the ultimate and perhaps the last thing any of us could do for them, for Sacco and Vanzetti were to be executed some time after midnight on the tenth.

On arrival in Boston the next morning, I found that a taxi taken from any station, any public stand or any hotel brought a man up to book your destination and the number of your taxi. Only from my Club was this ceremony omitted. A traffic survey then under way in Boston may or may not have been responsible for such a thirst to know every destination. At least on that day in that city where once I had prepared for college, while I dreamed about Emerson and Margaret Fuller and met such great liberals as Colonel Higginson and Professor John Fiske, it was impossible not to be amused at the anxiety my destinations must, over some eighteen hours, have caused those booking men employed by “protected” Boston, for I came and went steadily morning, afternoon and night among the very places which were taboo and under guard. It would also have been impossible not to have enjoyed the Boston police on that day. They were such nice-looking, well-dressed men who but gained in interest by the fact that so many of them seemed frightened. The officers on guard at the door of Defense Headquarters regarded me with a suspicious eye.

Climbing the two flights of narrow stairs at 256 Hanover Street, passing through a group of people too large for the narrow passageway and the spare, bare outer office, I found myself in the midst of “Headquarters.” On the walls was one poster often repeated: +Justice is the Issue!+ Side by side with this quiet statement were some of the “unguarded” remarks made out of court by Judge Webster Thayer. As I stood there, a stranger among strangers, I saw many men and a few women. Among the women was one who was elderly. She was dressed in gray and the face was good to look at. This--as I discovered later--was Mrs. Glendower Evans, for whom both Sacco and Vanzetti felt love similar to the love they gave their mothers. There were a number of younger women, and they were as well-clad and as well set up as the Boston police. What more could one woman say of other women than that! Some of the men were small and swart. Some of the men were tall and fair. But of the exploded Lombroso criminal type who, in popular opinion, throw bombs, not one was seen,--not in the whole day long.

Then one of the tall, fair men, having a name well known to the art world, asked if there were anything he could do for me. When I inquired for Mary Donovan he said she was in the inner office and he would tell her I was there. I said no, not to call her, I would wait till she came out. Almost immediately Miss Donovan came out, a fine-looking dark Celt whose pale face had in it not only strength but also warmth.

When, a few minutes later, I told her my name, Mary Donovan grasped my hand, saying “I am so glad you have come!” and sent me into the inner office to wait for her.

In that inner office were four people: two men and two women who received me politely. One of the men gave me a chair. But, except for the sending and answering of telephone calls and the coming and going of telegraph and other messengers, the quiet that reigned in the office when I entered continued.

The man who had given me a seat--his seat--sat down on an unopened bale of pamphlets and I noticed the slender, rather large, scrupulously clean hands resting quietly on his knees; the wide, dark, gentle eyes; the head becoming bald; the brow criss-crossed with suffering and with care; the strangely delicate, firm lips and chin. Where had I seen that look of childlike spirituality before? Ah, yes, ridiculous but a fact: in Italian painting on many a celebrated bambino face.

The other man, who went on steadily writing at the center desk around which we were, represented a type more familiar to me. The homely face, the massive head, the thick abundant hair, the look of concentration as he worked, young still, already he resembled a responsible type of American journalist. Who was he?

At the stenographic desk before the one window of that inner office sat a pretty “child” working silently and rapidly addressing envelope after envelope, for the new Bulletin of the Committee was just off the press, containing among other articles reprints of noble editorials from the _Springfield Republican_ together with a passionate editorial by Heywood Broun in the _New York World_. The “child’s” hair was a halo about her head and her features were cameo cut. She paused in her rapid work only to take or to give a telephone call.

The other woman, beside whom I was sitting, was older than the “child” but still young. Except for the man who had given me his seat and myself the grave beings in that little office were all young. And the quiet woman at my side with her lovely uncropped auburn hair, the somewhat oval features, had in her face not only the still look of suffering, but also the only indestructible youth,--that of goodness. As about that inner office, so about her was an atmosphere of stillness and of waiting. Except that she crumpled paper occasionally and that she had a dry cough from time to time, she made no motions and no sound.

Who were they all?

From beginning to end of that day at Headquarters, whose passing was noted the world over and on which more newspapers were sold than on any other day in history, in that spare, shabby center of the Defense struggle, it was plain from the instant those offices were entered that every dollar had been spent on the building up of public opinion and on fees for defense, and that not a penny had been wasted.

Up in the State House on Beacon Hill there were “banks” of telephone and telegraph wires installed, to send Sacco-Vanzetti news over the whole world; and at Charlestown was another “bank” of wires which were to flash the Death House scene to the ends of the earth. Here in the dingy office in the very center of this fight for justice, an office from which had come and would come the legal fees to pay for success or failure, there was but one wire which whistled or faded as calls were received or sent. Why this interference in such a place on such a day?

And then Mary Donovan came back, and I met those with whom I had been sitting in the little office. He of the gentle eyes was Aldino Felicani, the devoted personal friend of the two condemned men, the spirit behind the entire movement, and the treasurer of the Committee. The young man with the shaggy hair and massive head who was still steadily writing was Gardner Jackson. And the woman with the lovely uncropped auburn hair and the intelligent, good face was Rosa Sacco.

Apparently the seven years I had “served” Old Testamentwise, in obscure, if faithful, work for the Defense had won me in the minds of some of the Committee a right of friendship which I did not, I know, deserve. And it became my privilege to spend in close association some of the most momentous days in the Committee’s history.

As that day “wore on”--never was phrase more descriptive of the fixation of tragedy there symbolized and apparent--groups came and went in the outer office. The Defense Committee had done everything possible to secure a hall where these groups from New York City, Philadelphia, and from towns in many near-by states could meet. But not a landlord in Boston would rent them a hall. Finally a church was secured. Immediately police and patrol wagon were posted there. Groups came and went at Defense Headquarters, asking what to do, asking for instructions. Defense Headquarters had no place to offer them for meeting except the church or Socialist Headquarters at 21 Essex Street.

The day before thirty-nine men and women had been arrested, among them Alfred Baker Lewis, the Massachusetts State Secretary for the Socialist Party, while engaged in silent picketing outside the State House. The groups now coming in also wished to picket. In their numbers were men and women well known in art and in letters: Lola Ridge, Art Shields, Ruth Hale, the wife of Heywood Broun; Isaac Don Levine, whose articles on Soviet Russia published in the _New Republic_ had been the first to tell the American public about the new Russia; Edward H. James, a nephew of William James; John Dos Passos, and many others.

For a reply to the question as to when and where they should picket, Defense Headquarters sent them on to Alfred Baker Lewis at Socialist Headquarters. It was apparent that Defense Headquarters felt that their own work lay in the hour to hour messenger service and telephone battle, over that single “tapped” wire, which they still waged in arousing public opinion. From the beginning education for justice and not revolutionary agitation had been their work. And under Alfred Lewis’s leadership any group that wished to picket would have good advice and sane control.

I went over to Socialist Headquarters to get advice with the rest.

A group of girls called to me eagerly, “Are you going out with us?”

I answered, “I don’t know: I’m going to do what Alfred Lewis tells me to do.”

There he sat, young still although his hair is turning gray, clear-cut of feature, with the look of a boy who has just had a cool, long swim and would like to have it all over again.

He studied me and said, “That’s a Communist crowd going out to picket. I’m not going myself and I wouldn’t ask you to do what I myself am not going to do. Wait! We may be needed more later.”

That settled it, and I went back to Defense Headquarters where I might be of some use. But the crowd went out. Forty-four men and women were arrested. One courageous little woman, Dorothy Parker, was roughly handled by officers who bruised her neck and arms, marching her in the middle of the street up three cobblestone blocks.

The mob which had been watching the picketers, undisturbed and unarrested for “loitering,” backed off in front of Mrs. Parker, shouting, “Hang her! Hang them all! Hang the anarchists!”

Later, after she had been bailed, I saw her crying, not because she had been so badly bruised but because she could not forget that cry of the mob, “Hang her!” She was not an anarchist; she was not a Communist; she was not, so far as I knew, even that constitutional radical known as Socialist. She was, like Mr. Teeple, just one more American doing her duty for justice’s sake.

Still the afternoon “wore” on. Once Mary Donovan went into the outer office to send away a noisily excited group.

“Think,” she said on her return, “of their daring to come here on a day like this to enjoy themselves!”

Rosa Sacco said nothing. She seemed to drift further and further away from those unfailing friends of hers as she waited to know whether a respite would be granted and she might see her husband many times again, or whether she must see him for the last time. The cough was drier, a few more pieces of paper were crumpled, but she neither sighed nor spoke nor wept.

The Governor’s Council was to meet at noon. Surely by three or half past there would be some word. But, we heard, the Council did not meet and there was no word. It was half past five before the Governor entered his office and the Council did meet. Then they adjourned for dinner and it was half past eight before they were in session again, Attorney Arthur D. Hill with them to make one more last plea for the Defense.

But the little woman who waited, and Mary Donovan her friend, and these good men? They adjourned for no food,--they had eaten nothing all day.

Saying I would return, I went out, passing the handsome blue coats, and turning the corner to an Italian fruit stand. There I bought big rosy cling-stone peaches, plums and pears golden from sunlight and from air. And back I went, past the handsome blue coats once more, these “bombs”--many of them!--in three bags. And at the sight of food that is more beautiful than any other, as fruit is, eyes brightened.

I coaxed Mrs. Sacco. Rubbing off the fuzz carefully, she ate a peach. Then Mr. Felicani’s hand reached into one of the bags and he, too, rubbed the fuzz from a peach and ate it gratefully.

“Oh, I’m so glad when they eat!” exclaimed Mary Donovan. “I cannot make them take any food at all!”

Of herself she neither spoke nor thought. And she took no fruit. It was plain that even her endowment of strength could not stand the strain much longer. And as for her career as a State Factory Inspector that was over, for the State had dismissed her the day the Court’s decision had been made known.

And already she was in bondage of a sort. For there are two economic and social prisons: the first in which men are shut out from the opportunity to earn their livings; the second in which they are shut in, away from those who do earn their living under conditions which are in general termed “free.” The forces behind the first order of imprisonment are found in the _mores_ of an age. And those who have watched those forces at work on others or upon themselves, know how brutally efficient they can be. Imprisonment of the second order Mary Donovan was to face later on the two charges made by the Boston police. But the first she was soon to experience in all its bitterness not of confinement but of exclusion. Towards the close of August she was to begin spending days, weeks, months, looking for work in Boston and New York and to find that all doors, even those she might have expected to be open, were closed to her. Several friends were to do what they could to break through this social “police” cordon. By and large their efforts were futile. And Mary Donovan was to pay in full the charge in this country to-day against a struggle for conscience’ sake in the loss of the well-paid post of State Factory Inspector in Massachusetts. In New York in December, after more than a half a year of unemployment, she found a chance to wash dishes in Schrafft’s!

Off and on throughout that interminable afternoon and early evening, a man’s hand would reach into a bag and take plum or pear or peach. And from time to time in one way or another during the late afternoon the tension was relaxed.

Gardner Jackson, jesting with Felicani, said he could not answer a certain telephone call, “For I can’t speak Italian,--not yet!”

Or Mrs. Sacco, persuaded into something like listening to bird and dog stories, told about her little daughter’s pet kitten.

“Sometimes,” added Mrs. Sacco, with a smile that was a gleam from a storm-tossed sea-gull’s wing, “when I am not nervous, I like to pet it, too.”

Or the quiet entrance of Professor Felix Frankfurter, compact, human, friend of justice and of these breaking hearts. Or the coming and going of Joseph Moro, and Creighton Hill, friend of the Committee, alert, attentive to a thousand details.... And there was John Barry, sometime chairman of the Committee, but whether active as chairman or not, there one night every week with a regularity which never failed.

Out in Charlestown they were getting ready. The official executioner for three states, among them Massachusetts, had arrived. That death’s head of his, that mouth with its twisted fixed smile, how did he fare as he looked forward to the night’s work? He was not to be at the banquet after the Death House scene, to which official guests at the execution had been invited, for he was to return to New York on a dawn train. How would dawn feel to him? And the arms of his wife and the kiss of his little child?

To the _Brooklyn Eagle_ reporter who had been with us, word had been sent by Warden Hendry that if he wanted to cover the night he would better come on out to Charlestown. But still no official word had been received at Headquarters, and now the evening was “wearing” on.

Then Rosa Sacco fainted as quietly as she had spent the day. A nurse was called who, with Mary Donovan, took Mrs. Sacco, half-conscious, in a taxi to a friend’s house, honest, fearless Lilian Haley’s. And now the night “wore on,” and stories of respite or execution were given out and “killed” and given out and “killed.”

Mary Donovan returned.

“What,” she said, with her finger pointing upward, “if the finger of God should stay this execution to-night!”

Gardner Jackson went to the State House, asking to see the Governor. And the Governor’s Secretary inquiring whether Mr. Jackson had come to see the Governor “for humane or legal reasons,” Jackson replied, “Humane. What else is left!” And he was asked to leave the State House. Here was a man who was no politician, sacrificing openly, as Mr. Jackson was doing, any possible future in the state. Now he was back.

It was eleven and the midnight hour was on its way. Still no message! Several calls came from “the friend’s house” saying that Rosa Sacco wanted Mary Donovan, and still they waited, hoping and despairing.

Word was sent from Defense Headquarters that Mrs. Sacco must be got ready for the worst. The strength of Mary Donovan was beginning to show a break here and a break there. She not only thought of the torture to those innocent men and women, but, like the levee holding back the river, occasionally a torrent of spoken anger swirled through. Several times she promised to go to the friend’s house but always she waited for another telephone call, and still no message came. Finally she took up the telephone, calling Mr. Thompson to ask what steps should be taken to claim the bodies of Sacco and Vanzetti. Her voice broke and she sobbed.

Strange, I thought, that she should still believe in the kindness of the law! Was not this belief in its ultimate kindness but one more evidence of her own generous heart?

The offices were filling up. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew what to think. Messages came, messages were sent, there was nothing authoritative. It was five minutes before twelve. And the sensitive face of Felicani was ghastly. And then came word that could be trusted. It was not sent by the Governor or any one connected with him: +A RESPITE OF TWELVE DAYS HAD BEEN GRANTED TO NICOLA SACCO AND BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI+.

The crowded office became more still. A member of the Committee picked up the telephone and sent the message to the “friend’s house” that, without a moment’s delay, Rosa Sacco might know.

No voices were raised. There was no excited speaking. Gradually those friends who were unofficial faded away. The Committee could be seen gathering itself together to battle on for justice for these two Italian workers who had dared to hope for the day when the workers would themselves end war and poverty.

To one another they kept repeating, “We have until the twenty-second. Well, that is something.”

As she left the office Mary Donovan turned to me and said, “I’m going to Rosa. Mr. Felicani is coming later. You come with him!”

And she was gone.

Before we could leave there were odds and ends of business needing attention. Then I found myself out on Hanover Street, walking with Mr. Felicani up cool, moonlit, deserted city streets towards Beacon Hill.

We were on our way towards Boston Common where once Emerson had pastured his cow, and then up onto Beacon Hill of which Margaret Fuller Ossoli after her Italian marriage had dreamed in Italy. Where was that “kernel of nobleness” of which Margaret Fuller wrote? Was it within the State House which we were passing, or within the minds and hearts of these men and women who believed that a living law has in it, like life, elements of growth and progress; that commerce is creative only when it benefits the community as a whole as well as individual wealth; and that that education alone is really humane which is democratic and without fear?

Were not these men and women fighting for--not against--law and order? Was not justice the issue? And was not injustice the fuse which touched off every revolution there ever was or ever will be? What revolt, what destruction of law and order, could there be if there were no injustice in commerce, in education, in government?

Down a hill, then up a hill to Lilian Haley’s, the friend’s house where Rosa Sacco was. We were talking now of the education of public opinion and of the safety and the hope which lies in education and education alone. With that strange, unbendable, almost fierce, independence which those who are strong in their gentleness sometimes possess, it was plain that in Aldino Felicani was one who would never yield, never compromise, until all that a dedicated life could do had been done to secure justice, present or retroactive.

Just before we entered the friend’s house, Aldino Felicani was speaking of what the Defense Committee had to do in the days that now remained.

Of Sacco and Vanzetti he added wistfully, “Ah, these are the very best men I must ever hope to know!”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From “America Arraigned,” an Anthology of Sacco-Vanzetti poems edited by Lucia Trent and Ralph Cheyney.