Four. Runaway Bride
Four
Runaway Bride
Boston Harbor, July 31, 1865
“Runaway Bride Back in Boston!”
Little Bobbie Acheson was the best newsboy on Long Wharf, and the minute he grabbed the stack of papers off the wagon he knew he had a winner. The RMS Neptune and the SS China arrived twice monthly but five days apart from Liverpool and Portsmouth, respectively, and the race was always on for the two mail steamers to be first to bring the most salient news from across the Atlantic.
“Runaway Bride Back in Boston!”
Bobbie Acheson ran in bare feet as he shouted—his worn and used shoes never lasted long. He had fifty copies of the new London paper The Pall Mall Gazette in his dirt-stained hands, and that night he’d have a hundred more from the State Street offices of the Evening Traveller . The latter paper could be counted on to pick up any notable headlines from England for the last two of their five daily editions. The Traveller was also the first paper in Boston to employ newsboys like Little Bobbie. He made a quarter a day, couldn’t return any unsold papers, and had been running the wharf since he was eight.
“Runaway Bride Back in Boston! ”
The sound of Bobbie’s shrill voice was the moment that Henrietta’s shame hit the city streets—the moment that her entire family had been dreading. Since their dockside reunion, the Stevensons had been living in a kind of protective bubble, with only Graydon Saunders aware of the looming marital scandal along with Connie, Nash, and Nicholas Nelson of Philadelphia, who inexplicably remained in Boston for now.
Haslett Nelson had not joined them on the voyage home. The sisters wanted new friends Louisa and Sara-Beth to know what had transpired, and Nash wanted American correspondents available for any London hearings. So Haz had volunteered to sail to Bruges and locate both women. “I’ll just head for the nearest roulette table!” he had called out with a wave from the Liverpool dock before returning to London and beyond.
Little Bobbie Acheson flew along the Boston wharf, calling out the headline, over and over again. He ran up and down State Street, replenishing his stack of papers from the distribution wagon, spilling his little tin cup of coins into the larger one kept there under lock. The world might be begging for a transatlantic cable line but for now, in Little Bobbie, Boston had its own most efficient conveyor of information—and salacious news always traveled fastest of all.
Thomas Nash was first to hear the news. To literally hear it, from the wharf down the street. He was taking his morning stroll before heading to the courthouse; the cabin in the Adirondacks remained unoccupied although still his for the season; the July ticket to Portsmouth on the China had long since been cashed in.
Nash knew right away to whom the newsboy’s shouts were referring and his heart sank. He did not want to be the first to tell Henrietta, who had been coping so admirably with her estrangement from Denham. Nash certainly did not want to be the one to inform William, who looked as if he had aged ten years in as many days. That left Charlotte, whom the bachelor justice was avoiding for other reasons altogether.
Nash turned from Long Wharf and headed back along State Street to the courthouse. Bounding up the steps, he ignored the looks of the young male clerks who stood about smoking and reading the paper. Nash’s own copies of a dozen different publications would be waiting for him in his chamber. Bobbie Acheson might be the fastest news hawker on the docks, but the courthouse clerk in charge of the library’s periodicals and papers ran a close second. Sure enough, Nash flew into chambers to discover his most trusted London news source, The Times , already on his desk.
RESPONDENT IN DIVORCE SUIT FLEES TO AMERICA
July 17, 1865
Testimony was heard this day at Old Hall, Lincoln’s Inn, before Judge Ordinary, Sir Cresswell Cresswell, of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, in the petition for divorce by Mr. Denham Scott of Tower Hamlets, City of London, employed by Reynolds’s Newspaper , against the respondent, Mrs. Henrietta Scott, of that same address, originally of the city of Boston, capital of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the United States of America. Mrs. Scott was not present at the proceeding but was represented by Dr. Richard Pankhurst, a newly admitted member of the Bar at Lincoln’s Court and commonly with the Northern Assizes Circuit.
The facts of the case are these: husband and wife first met in Boston in March of this year, and exchanged wedding vows on the night of June 25th on board the SS China . The ship was more than ten miles from the coast of England when the ceremony, conducted by the ship’s captain, Cpt. Valentine Norris, took place, and accordingly in international waters. Shortly after this ceremony of marriage, on the 2nd of this month, the respondent was bequeathed property of some private but valuable nature. It is to be supposed that this property may be at the very heart of the rupture of relations between Mr. and Mrs. Scott which occurred shortly thereafter. The respondent is reported to have immediately fled the London marital home following such rupture, and is feared to have already sailed for America in possession of the property at issue.
The petitioner sought from the respondent, firstly, the unidentified property to which is his right under matrimonial law; second, a divorce on the grounds of adultery with the named co-respondent, a Mr. Nicholas Nelson of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.; and third, the provision of such notice of judgement as shall be enforceable in a foreign court. Sir Cresswell agreed to expedite the hearing, due to the urgency and threat of removal of the property from England, and notwithstanding its ex parte nature given the absence of the respondent from the proceeding itself. In an unprecedented decision of the court, which was established in 1857 under the Matrimonial Causes Act, Sir Cresswell declined to render a decision in the matter, and remitted its entirety to the jurisdiction of any such American court from which the petitioner may now proceed to seek remedy and redress.
The petitioner was noticeably distraught at the conclusion of the hearing and declined to provide comment to reporters in the gallery.
Nash put down the paper, lit his pipe, and contemplated what the English decision in Scott v. Scott could mean for Henrietta. The expedited Massachusetts hearing was due to start that very morning with Justice Roderick Norton presiding. The chief justice’s decision to appoint Norton to the matter had been both prudent and unavoidable, given the makeup of the court. Nash and William had immediately recused themselves from the case; Nash had decided not to attend the Boston hearing altogether. Both men already knew, however, that there was not a single precedent in American jurisprudence on the issue of marriages at sea. With the state court’s jurisdiction now sanctioned by the British courts as well, Norton had a clear horizon before him and the chance to leave a mark on U.S. case law in perpetuity. He was also as likely to want to keep Henrietta in a marriage, however sour, as he was to delegitimize it.
At least there would be no protracted legal conflict between the two countries. This was what the lawyer in Nash had been fearing most: the arrival of a foreign court order from England, requiring that Henrietta hand over the admiral’s bequest to her husband. With Sir Cresswell’s decision to defer to an American court, Henrietta would retain all personal property under Massachusetts law, even if she failed to also qualify for a divorce.
But the family friend in Nash knew that such legal victory could only come at a very high price: social notoriety and scandal. Nash was dismayed but not surprised by Mr. Nelson being named a co-respondent in the London case. Nash had been the one to shrewdly order a separate carriage for the sisters en route to Liverpool, and to advise against any private conversation with the men while on board the Neptune . Of course, this meant Nash himself would be safe from Charlotte as well. But despite all his lawyerly efforts, the damage had been done. How supremely he had failed in his role as chaperone when it came to Charlotte and Henrietta both. He could only wonder at the mess he had made of everything, a misbegotten trail now leading all the way to the highest court in the state.