Florence Foster Jenkins

by Nicholas Martin

  Ella Bulford Harvey was the granddaughter of John Jacob Bulford and Florence’s second cousin once removed. Born in 1888, she had been widowed in her mid-twenties and left with a single daughter. She remarried at nearly forty, was now fifty-six, and was chosen as the Bulfords’ representative presumably because her life experiences had made her resilient. There were a lot of Bulfords to represent: unlike the Fosters, they had bred busily and Mrs Bulford duly submitted a list of twenty second cousins. One each was from New York state, Virginia and West Virginia; two were from Nebraska, three from New Jersey; the majority from Dallas, Luzerne and Trucksville, Pennsylvania.

  Palzer passed on to his new clients the information that Florence had left $70,000 in jewellery and securities and $30,000 in cash. Over the next few days Moritz kept him abreast of his search for the will in Wilkes-Barre banks and half a dozen lawyers’ offices in New York and Washington with whom Florence had had dealings as far back as 1913 and as recently as 1940. One of the lawyers, it emerged, had died thirty years earlier. None knew anything about a will. In the apartment a trunk and a cabinet had their locks broken, but nothing was found. On 11 December Mildred Brown, whose rummaging in the apartment had also turned up nothing, mentioned a bag with valuable papers which had not yet been located. She suggested Moritz apply to look for it in a warehouse where Florence rented storage space. A day later she finished her own search, which she calculated had taken her ninety-nine hours and for which she billed Moritz $88. Moritz, getting desperate, took a final peek behind the many paintings in the apartment, including the two portraits of Florence over the Steinway. The next day, which was three days before Christmas, Ella Bulford Harvey filed a petition for letters of administration on the estate – asking the court to appoint her as the official distributor of Florence’s assets. The Bulfords were evidently confident of success because on Boxing Day Palzer confirmed to Moritz that he would receive from them a fee for his services in organising the funeral and searching for the will.

  Afterwards, theories about the disappearance of the will – and the bag or briefcase in which Florence kept it – laid the blame on two quite different parties. Florence Darnault and Adolf Pollitz believed the thief was Cosme McMoon acting in concert with Mildred Brown. Both, went their theory, had expected to be named in the will. When they discovered they weren’t, they attempted to alter it and, making a hash of it, destroyed it instead. ‘He was a rotter through and through,’ said Pollitz. ‘A terrible person,’ agreed Darnault. Their low opinion stemmed from their disapproval of McMoon’s disloyal stage antics towards the end of Florence’s singing career. It is true that her accompanist was expecting something from the will. ‘This was a part of the background why I was associated with her,’ McMoon said. ‘She had spoken to me about leaving a trust fund for scholarships to talented singers and a musical foundation in a house which she owned in Flemington, New Jersey to be known as the Florence Foster Jenkins memorial.’ On 22 December he asked St Clair to join him and Mildred Brown in employing a lawyer, but St Clair was working on his own case. McMoon went on to sue the estate; Pollitz testified against him and the case was dismissed.

  St Clair was later adamant that McMoon had never said an ill word about Florence, and he was convinced that the will was stolen by a member of the Bulford clan. Either party would need to have done it before her death or almost immediately after it, because Moritz had the apartment sealed on the morning of 27 November.

  But the ultimate responsibility for the chaos which followed her death rested with the decedent herself. Florence’s distrust of lawyers and bankers, both professions closely connected with her father, meant that she had calamitously failed to lodge her will in a safe place beyond the reach of interested parties. It was her final manipulation.

  The emotional cost was borne by St Clair, whose profound grief took on a bitter flavour. The very year he met Florence, indeed not six weeks after their common-law wedding ceremony, Florence had been plunged into an unpleasant court battle occasioned by her father’s missing will. She would have known that the failure to find hers would initiate a second legal scrap with her cousins and that without her money St Clair would be penniless. He was surviving on social security handouts and, unable to afford the rent of $87 a month on the 37th Street apartment that Florence had paid since 1917, he extracted an agreement from the landlord that the payment would be met only after the outcome of his legal challenge to inherit Florence’s fortune. In the meantime he sublet half of the apartment to reduce his financial commitment. Florence’s friends evaporated. He spent Christmas alone in the apartment where every previous year he had hauled a tree up to the fourth floor and decorated it for a party with Florence and friends, who for one night of the year had enjoyed slumming it in St Clair’s cramped quarters with its quaint bare decor. ‘A wet cool miserable day in tune with my regrets about darling B,’ he wrote. ‘It is very lonely without her,’ he later told Betty Moorsteen of PM. ‘But I feel I have no right to be indignant at losing someone who gave me thirty-six years of more happiness than most men ever know.’

  After Florence’s death St Clair did not immediately write to Kathleen Weatherley. He grieved in silence for a month. On 30 December he finally broke his silence. As soon as she received the news Kathleen cabled her condolences. Two days after Hand in Glove closed, St Clair confided to her that only she would be able to understand his complicated feelings. ‘My life’s entirely circled round hers,’ he wrote. ‘Whilst Florence lived, if I were in necessity, she would provide for me, and if she died first I was to inherit her personal estate. My statements of her promises are corroborated by three witnesses to whom she said much the same thing, but even if this claim were successful it would produce nothing for twelve months, and then much less than my claim. A mere pittance, yet she intended me to inherit all her estate, of that I am perfectly sure. If a will is found this fact will be proved, but the most expert search has failed to reveal one. We are at a loss.’

  Towards the end of January American Weekly caught wind of the legal story brewing and had a field day with Florence all over again. ‘Discordant Diva’s Missing Will’, said the title. ‘What is to happen,’ it asked, ‘to the wealth of Florence Foster Jenkins, whose odd operatic career amounted to murder of the undetectable B sharp?’ No wonder St Clair confided to his diary: ‘Had a burst of emotion which tore me apart, at loss of B. Can’t seem to get my balance.’ He was also suffering from rheumatism. Two days later Florence’s qualities were more generously considered at a luncheon held in her memory at the Shelton. Tributes were paid by Verdi Club members, led by St Clair. A new president was elected: Mrs Owen Kildare, married to an émigré Russian prince who hid his identity behind an Irish name, was a busy broadcaster, ardent Republican and former suffragette who strongly disapproved of stylish fashions. She was a tireless club woman and for years she had taken charge of the pageants at the Silver Skylarks Ball. Without its founder and figurehead, the Verdi Club subsided into invisibility. It was to be mentioned just twice more in the Times, and then only in passing.

  On Valentine’s Day (‘Dear B of last year was my Valentine’) St Clair submitted a petition to the Surrogate Court that he and Florence had lived together since 1909 as common-law husband and wife, which various witnesses could confirm, at which date he had abandoned his career to manage hers; and that Florence had made a will of which he was to be the main beneficiary. He also wished to revoke the consent which, erroneously and without knowing his legal rights, he gave to Ella Bulford Harvey, and applied to administer the estate himself. Plus he wanted his paintings back. He signed the document ‘John St Clair Roberts known as St Clair Bayfield’. In early March he answered Mrs Harvey’s demand for proof of his marriage to Florence by submitting a long bill of particulars: it included a description of their meeting and pledge to each other, a list of the addresses in which they had cohabited and the hotels across the country where she had joined him on tour in the 1910s. He added, for effect, that the tours had been with S
ir Herbert Tree and George Arliss. A list of fifteen witnesses was supplied who could confirm that he and Florence were married, including her Hungarian accompanist, Prince Galitzen, the new president of the Verdi Club and his landlord. He did not know the date of Florence’s marriage to Frank Thornton Jenkins, but he did claim to know when they were divorced. Also, he knocked a decade off his own age. On 5 March St Clair was in court as witnesses gave evidence that he was Florence’s common-law husband, though he complained that his attorney was ‘utterly outshone’ by Palzer and ‘did not make the most of the excellent witnesses I had marshalled in our favour’. He took the decision to appoint a new attorney.

  In due course the newspapers caught wind of St Clair’s petition to be recognised as her heir. ‘The Sour Soprano’s Discordant Legacy’, ran the Sunday Mirror headline in early May. Alongside more of the usual jokes about Florence, the article was unkind about St Clair’s career – ‘he claims that he acted years ago in Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s and George Arliss’s Shakespearian troupes’ – and lampooned the image of him as her loyal protector in a verse to ‘a departed chantoose’:

  Though others howled when Madame yowled,

  Rudely tooted when La Jenkins hooted,

  Hissed when she missed,

  Booed when she mooed,

  Groaned when she moaned,

  Blatted when she flatted,

  Razzed the very pantos

  Off her bel cantos,

  Mocked her Puccini

  With wilted zucchini,

  Rewarded with spinach her lieder in Finnish,

  With odorous scallion

  Her group in Italian …

  Though others did those discouraging things,

  NOT St Clair Bayfield! HE cheers in the wings.

  This was published on 6 May, and syndicated to the Wilkes-Barre Record on VE Day. Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender offered no distraction for St Clair who started dreaming that Florence was alive and well and with him. He was soon receiving auditory visitations from her. One night he awoke in his apartment to the sound of knocking. ‘I disregarded it and told myself I must not be fooled,’ he wrote in a letter to Kathleen on 14 May. ‘But when some nights later I awaked [sic] for no reason, and then heard a secret knock, very distinctly, in the north room of 66, I went in the dark and talked to her but gained no response. Thinking this was a wish I should communicate, I went to a spiritualist with a handbag of hers. Aware that these people usually preyed on thought reading, I was only astonished when certain things were mentioned which I myself did not know till afterwards verified. Also the message said, “I’m very unhappy you should be suffering because of lack of care on my part. There was a will but it has been destroyed. I love you and shall always love you as much as I ever did with my whole heart, and I send you my blessings. In three months your financial position will be improved, so do not worry. Attend to your stage work to avoid it. Trust in God more than you ever did before, above all I want you to be happy. Bless you, bless you, bless you.” I have written this from memory but have the memo I made immediately after hearing this. The other things mentioned were about her father, and not until I verified them did I know them, so that could not have been thought reading.’ The clairvoyant talked of a safe and Chase Bank and a court case, though they might easily have intuited this information by reading a newspaper.

  St Clair didn’t mention his dealings with a clairvoyant in the sympathetic interview which appeared in PM. It was published the day before the hearing to establish his marital status. In the Surrogate Court St Clair professed his love for Florence and produced correspondence between them over the years to prove they had thought of themselves as a married couple. One witness brought from Wilkes-Barre told the court that Florence had introduced St Clair as her secretary (‘which is the last thing she would do!’ St Clair exclaimed in his diary). Only one witness was called to testify that they were often seen together, but she was the grandest personage on his list. Mrs Edith Bobe Hague’s sympathy could be counted on as her name had also been dragged through the papers. In 1925 she was physically assaulted and robbed of $40,000 worth of jewellery by three armed men. Her companion for the evening was Robert Hague, the head of the marine division of Standard Oil. The robbery caused their affair to be revealed, Hague to obtain a divorce from his wife and to marry Miss Bobe, who was described as a ‘modiste’. She was widowed in 1939. Her presence in court in 1945 attracted press photographers. A platinum blonde in a fur stole and sunglasses emerged into the early summer gloaming, shielding her face from the camera flashes. St Clair wore a dark suit, a fedora and an anxious smile.

  Deliberating his verdict, Judge James Delehanty was unable to overlook the blood ties of Florence’s cousins, but he took pity on St Clair and found his claim to have some merit. In Delehanty’s chambers St Clair’s lawyer negotiated with Palzer and came up with a figure of $22,000. On St Clair’s birthday – 2 August – Delehanty publicly delivered his judgment. The letters of administration were granted to Ella Bulford Harvey, who would be appointed administrator ‘subject to the payment of $22,000 to John St Clair Roberts in full settlement and payment of his claim of common-law husband of the decedent, including any and all claims for services rendered as secretary or manager, or otherwise’.

  In Wilkes-Barre this was reported as a victory for Florence’s local heirs. ‘It is understood,’ said the Wilkes-Barre Record, ‘the heirs have made a small settlement with Bayfield.’ In fact, while St Clair had done worse than he had hoped, he fared far better than any other individual in the distribution of Florence’s money. The sum almost exactly matched that granted to the Bulfords by Florence’s father in the contentious second codicil to his will. The tax on his award was to be paid by the estate, which also had to cover the costs of the public administrator’s legal expenses and costs of more than $2,000. Another $3,000 had already been withdrawn from the estate to settle the outstanding rents at both apartments, plus paying for the restoration of the Seymour Hotel apartment to the condition in which Florence entered it in 1917 (a bathroom had been turned into a storeroom). The following year Moritz asked for his unsettled bill of $750 for services rendered to be paid out of the estate too. It was a far more demanding task than he anticipated. ‘The decedent was advanced in years and regarded as eccentric,’ he explained in his petition, ‘had no one (except for Mr St Clair Bayfield) in close relationship with her.’ He submitted a detailed breakdown of the 347⁄8; hours he’d spent on tidying up her affairs. The next of kin argued that the payment should be met by St Clair. ‘I was never the attorney for Mr Bayfield,’ Moritz said. ‘I never acted on his behalf.’ The judge ruled that the estate must pay. Thus a sum slightly above $70,000 was shared between twenty Bulford cousins. Mrs Harvey also took charge of Charles D. Foster’s considerable portfolio of real estate.

  On the day St Clair celebrated his seventieth birthday, at least in prospect he was richer than he had ever been. So were many of his co-beneficiaries. On 7 August George Bulford announced that he would be opening a showroom dealing in farm machinery and hardware. On the 19th the Bulfords held their fifteenth annual reunion picnic in the Luzerne countryside. After they’d opened with the Lord’s Prayer, the treasurer had something more momentous than usual to report. The absentee Bulfords serving in the armed forces were enumerated, including one seriously wounded on D-Day. Three births were recorded, two marriages and two deaths. Although she’d certainly never attended these gatherings, one of the names of the departed belonged to Mrs Florence Jenkins. A measure of how much her money would mean to her more indigent next of kin came on 28 August when the will of Frank Bulford was probated: he left his home and an acre of land to one daughter and $500 each to four grandchildren, splitting between three daughters and one granddaughter the remainder of an estate valued at $1,900.

  St Clair was still wounded by sorrow and self-pity. On the anniversary of his common-law marriage he wrote, ‘This day 1909’ in his diary. At the end of August he was still hearing
Florence’s knocks. ‘Will see spiritualist and find if B wishes me to get in touch.’

  On a more concrete plane he and Kathleen made plans to reunite. She sought release from the War Office but didn’t sail to New York until January 1946, arriving just as St Clair was going into rehearsals for a play called Jeb about a black soldier returning to the US after three years in the South Pacific. She too had not seen him for three years. In Kathleen’s judgement, the hunted look she had known when their affair had to be kept a secret had now disappeared. She attributed the change to Florence’s death. Two days before they married St Clair, a keen swimmer till the end of his life, had a serious accident in a pool which meant that for several years he was unable to raise his arms above his head. And yet, said Kathleen, ‘After a couple of years’ marriage with me, even though he was then seventy-three years old, his face completely changed, he became fatter, was exceedingly happy.’