In Death Is Victory

“As a writer and publisher and a wealthy, amusing fellow besides, [Harry] Crosby just about set the pace for the whole crowd of expatriates, who credit him with having ‘lived more fully than any man of his generation.’ None of his fast-moving crowd believe Crosby committed suicide for love, and are sure he sought death just to see what it was like…” – The Chicago Tribune December 1929

These are the facts: On December 10th 1929 two bodies were found in the New York studio apartment of artist Stanley Mortimer. They were identified as Josephine Rotch Bigelow and Harry Grew Crosby. Both of them were from exclusive Boston families. Both of them were married to other people. Bigelow was killed by a .25 caliber bullet to the left temple. Her lover, Harry Crosby, was killed by the same Belgian revolver, an apparent self-inflicted wound to the right temple. Both the bodies were fully clothed and lying side by side on the bed. Crosby was found with the pistol in one hand, and the other holding Bigelow. The coroner reported Crosby died approximately two to four hours after she did. The bodies were barefoot. Crosby’s toe nails were painted red and he had tattoos on the soles of his feet; a cross on one, a pagan black sun on the other. There was no suicide note. A half empty bottle of whiskey was found in the room. A crushed gold wedding band belonging to Crosby was found on the floor beside the bed. In his pockets were $500 cash and two first class tickets for he and his wife, Caresse Crosby, to return to France by steamship the following day. Also in his pocket was a telegram that Bigelow had sent to Crosby while on board the ship Mauretania that brought him and his wife to America. It read: “CABLE GEORGE WHEN YOU ARRIVE AND WHERE I CAN TELEPHONE YOU IMMEDIATELY. I AM IMPATIENT. At the time of the deaths Crosby was due to meet his wife, his mother, and the poet Hart Crane for dinner. It should be noted that the wealthy banker J.P.Morgan (Jr.) was Crosby’s uncle and godfather.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. Not this horror – a sudden and unpredicted final action. She had written in her poem that week that Death was to be their marriage. He had replied with his own poem; Death would open the door of their cage and they would fly home to the sun. But had he really meant that they should die? Together? Now of all times. His return to Paris was imminent. There were no financial problems. In fact, the reverse. The Crosby’s had more than enough money to continue their wild lifestyle despite the recent Wall Street crash. (As luck would have it Crosby had cabled his father from France just weeks before the financial meltdown to sell $10,000 worth of stock so he and Caresse could lead a “mad extravagant life”.) He was excited about his recent literary discovery – Hart Crane – who had just completed an epic poem The Bridge (destined to become one of the great poems of English literature) which was due to be published by the Crosby’s much respected Black Sun Press. Even Death itself did not scare Crosby. In fact, both he and Caresse thought it an empowering gift to be able to choose the moment of one’s passing. The couple had drafted and signed a letter confirming that they would take their own lives and pass into their glorious Black Sun – an alchemical symbol that had a potent power and meaning for both Life and Death. And they had written instructions that their bodies were to be consumed by fire. But that was fifteen years hence. Not now. And not with Josephine, a young woman he had only known for eighteen months. Why had Harry obliterated and devalued the extraordinary life that he had created with Caresse – a partnership that rivaled the stories of mythical gods, both ancient and modern?

Harry and Caresse’s 1920s adventures were pure rock’n’roll thirty years before that hedonistic lifestyle was born; poetry, photography, sex, art, opium, and outrageous stunts. Caresse was his partner in life and art. He had met this fascinating woman a few years after he returned from ambulance duty during the Great War – an experience that had affected him profoundly. At the Battle of Orme he was cited for bravery and became one of the youngest Americans to be awarded the Croix de Guerre. By the time he returned to Boston he had not only changed from boy to man, but there was also a dramatic change in his outlook to life and the privileged life.

The buxom Mary Peabody was ten years his senior, married to a man with a drinking problem, and had two children. Polly, as she was known, was the first woman to have a patent for a brassiere. They had made love within weeks of meeting each other. Boston society was scandalized by their affair. After gaining a divorce from her husband they moved to France. Harry convinced his new wife to call herself Caresse, a name with obvious sexual connotations.

In their new surroundings, amongst all the other adventurous young people, Harry and Caresse partied to an extreme. Harry not only wrote poetry, but he and Caresse became book publishers. Their original venture was called Éditions Narcisse and then changed to Black Sun Press printing works by up and coming writers such as D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway.

I was fascinated by this incredible story, but my research found that there was a definitive account of Harry and Caresse (Geoff Wolfe’s Black Sun), a handful of other books, and numerous blogs. Almost all the publications regurgitated the facts uncovered by Wolfe. What more could I add? I focused on the two to four hours between the death of Josephine and Harry’s suicide. I then discovered (and made contact with) an independent UK movie company that had spent the last year developing a screenplay around exactly that premise. In an email to me the film maker mentioned that she had uncovered new evidence about the double suicide (or murder/suicide depending on your viewpoint). They merely needed the money to bring the story to life on the big screen.

And so I needed a fresh approach. It occurred to me that lost in the outrageous story of Harry and Caresse was Josephine’s story. Who was she? How and why had she become fascinated with the boyish libertine? Josephine’s story became a portal to the remarkable achievements of other people in her life.

Ten years his junior, the dark and intense Josephine met the boyishly handsome Harry on July 9, 1928 in Venice, Italy at the Lido – the fashionable seaside resort made famous in Thomas Mann’s 1912 novel Death in Venice. They had not been introduced by a third party (as was considered the appropriate behaviour for those of high social standing), but had merely struck up a conversation. She was shopping for her forthcoming wedding to another Bostonian: Albert Bigelow. Harry could not have been more different than her Bert (as he was called). Crosby was a poet, a publisher, a photographer, a libertine, an experienced lover, an opium user, a man who was both free and yet married to an older woman. Bert, on the other hand, was a hard-hitting defenseman on the Harvard ice hockey team. He was due to enroll in the graduate architecture program at the famed Ivy League school. But it was as if Destiny herself had brought the lovers together for they shared a common spark of life.

Josephine had already earned a reputation as “a bad egg” amongst Boston society. She had left the liberal arts college of Bryn Mawr (known for producing extraordinarily independent female graduates) after just two years citing her forth coming marriage as the reason. And her love of art and female independence came by honestly. Her favourite aunt was Katharine “Kitty” Ludington, a talented and outspoken woman who had already gained a reputation as a fine portrait painter, a suffragette, and a founding member of the League of Women Voters. Kitty and Jo-Jo (as Ms. Ludington called her niece) were so close that the wedding reception was to be held at the magnificent Ludington estate in Old Lyme, Connecticut which was next to the church where Jo Jo was to be married. But thoughts of Josephine’s nuptials to her hard hitting hockey star had been side lined during those eight days in Venice. She had sex with Harry as often as time and circumstance allowed. Their love making and her zest for Life was so passionate that Harry called Josephine his “fire princess”.

Josephine would inspire Crosby’s next collection of poems which he dedicated to her, titled Transit of Venus. In a letter dated July 24, 1928, Crosby detailed the affair to his mother, in whom he had always confided: “I am having an affair with a girl I met (not introduced) at the Lido. She is twenty and has charm and is called Josephine. I like girls when they are very young before they have any minds.” In “In Search of the Young Wizard”, part of his 1929 Sleeping Together collection, he wrote:

“ [W]e can never find the young wizard who is able so they say to graft the soul of a girl to the soul of her lover so that not even the sharp scissors of the Fates can ever sever them apart.”

Whether or not that was inspired by Josephine only Harry would know. But the romantic image would not be lost on his young lover. The two had an ongoing affair until June 21, 1929, when she married Albert Smith Bigelow

Five months later, just weeks after the great Wall Street crash, Harry and Caresse sailed back to New York from their home in France ostensibly to attend the Yale and Harvard football game. But there were other things on Harry’s mind. Caresse went on to New York and Harry arranged to meet Josephine in a Detroit hotel. After six days of total lust and intoxicating enjoyment Harry returned to New York, his wife, and what he thought would be a grand party for his new friend and literary discovery Hart Crane. But Josephine was not pleased that her lover was leaving her.

It wasn’t just the sex, or the whiskey, or even the opium. He had ignited a flame in her. She was aroused with creativity, and the poetry was flowing out of her as if it was the force of love itself writing the words. She felt trapped in her marriage to her new husband and gave voice to that concern in her poems. Josephine was not going to let her lover leave without an attempt to make him stay in America with her. So she followed him to New York.

When Harry received the note from Josephine that she was in the city and wanted to see him before his return to Paris it unnerved him. At lunch that day he complained to a female friend who was aware of his dalliances that he had to do something to dampen this smoldering affair with his “fire princess”. He contacted his friend Mortimer and asked if he could use the artist’s studio that afternoon so he could have one final meeting with Josephine. Mortimer met them at the studio and then left the lovers to their privacy.

Harry told her that he had to return to France as there were great plans for his Black Sun publishing house, most notably Hart Crane’s new work. And besides she had recently married and needed to give her new husband a chance at making the union work. But Josephine was not going to give up her lover without a fight. As she lay on the bed she reached for the Belgian revolver that Harry carried in his jacket. The symbol of the black sun on its handle. In the next moment she was dead by a single bullet to the head.

Josephine lay there stretched out on the bed in front of him. Beauty, talent, passion annihilated in a single second. For the next couple of hours Harry wrestled with his thoughts. What was he to do? Ultimately, he decided he was not going to back down from his claim that to pick the moment of one’s death was in itself a triumph, even if this was not exactly the way he had envisioned it.

In “Hail Death” he had written: “Die at the right time when your entire life, when your soul and your body, your spirit and your sense are reduced to a pin-point, the ultimate gold point, the point of finality…in order to be reborn, in order to become what you wish to become, tree or flower, or star or sun, or even dust and nothingness.”

He removed the special sun ring from his finger. He had been told when he purchased it in Egypt it had come from the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamen. Whether or not that was true did not matter for it became a symbol of not only his commitment to Caresse, for he had told her he would never remove it, but also to his solar god. Now that commitment was a horrible lie. He was not dying for Caresse, or even Josephine, but for the philosophical code he had created for himself, his wife, lovers, and his audience. It was now time to live up to his creation and his beliefs. In anger he stamped on the ring. He then removed his shoes and socks, his red painted toe nails staring at him as he lay on the bed. He put his left arm around his fire princess for a final time. With his right hand he raised the gun to his head. And then he pulled the trigger.

The newspaper reports over the next couple of days, and the stories over many years, tried to make sense of the lurid facts and the seemingly senseless deaths. Was it a double suicide or a murder/ suicide? Whatever the conclusions Josephine would now always be remembered as the woman united with Harry in his final act.

Harry’s body was cremated and it is believed that his ashes were scattered over New York via airplane.

Caresse would go on to become a patron of the arts. She continued to publish Black Sun Press, including Harry’s poems, and works by Hart Crane, T.S.Eliot, and William Faulkner. The exquisitely bound books are highly prized by collectors today. Caresse would go on to marry again. She died in Rome, Italy in 1970 at the age of 78. In a Time magazine obituary it was noted that she was a “literary godmother to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers in Paris.”

Albert Bigelow married Sylvia Weld two years after Josephine’s death. During WWII he was a commander of a US submarine and the captain of a destroyer. In the 1950s he became involved in the peace movement. In 1958 he skippered the yacht Golden Rule which attempted to sail into the area around the Marshall Islands to protest and halt the detonation of a nuclear bomb by the US government. The media stunt failed when their yacht was intercepted just off Hawaii and the crew was jailed for 60 days. But worldwide attention had been drawn to the anti-nuclear cause. (Those tactics would later inspire Greenpeace). During the 1960s civil rights movements he participated in the freedom rides campaigning for voter rights for African- Americans.

As for Josephine, her funeral was held in Aunt Kitty’s Old Lyme mansion. Those in attendance were the same family and friends who six months earlier had attended her wedding reception in the same room. She was buried in the local cemetery. On her tombstone was the enigmatic inscription: In Death is Victory.

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In Death Is Victory