Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel of Ireland

  The contact between King Kelly and his daughter in those first years of the new century also casts light on what followed between him, his daughter, and his granddaughter in the years I knew them.

  Talk about volatile! From the outside it looked as though Sarah loved and hated her father equally; she worshipped and despised him, she kissed him on the mouth and she slapped him in the face.

  King Kelly adored his new granddaughter, no doubt about that. But, like all his responses, it was a love that considered his feelings, not anybody else’s. For instance, one evening early in 1902 (this information comes from Mrs. Haas), King Kelly came home at about seven o’clock to the house in Brooklyn.

  In his fashion—like a gale with musical accompaniment—he sang at the top of his voice as he swept into the hall. He called out to Sarah and Mrs. Haas that he was going out to dinner with some friends, who would come home with him later for a card game.

  “And where’s my little angel?” he shouted. “Where is she?”

  “She’s asleep,” said Mrs. Haas. “Do not wake her. It took a while to make her sleep—she is tired and has new teeth.”

  “New teeth?” he roared. “Look who’s talking about teeth—old Shark-face herself. I must see these new Kelly teeth. I, who have to wear other people’s teeth, must see this.”

  He rampaged across the landing and into the nursery and switched on the bright gaslight. The child awoke, he picked her out of her cot and swung her high, and she began to shriek.

  Drab Mrs. Haas, who was then in her mid-twenties, only a few years older than Sarah, ran up the stairs and Sarah came tearing after her. Little Venetia was now yelling in fear, and the big man was trying to soothe her by holding her cheek to his.

  “But he hadn’t shaved that morning and his beard hurt her,” said Mrs. Haas—who took Venetia from him and began to calm her. (Venetia, by the way, claimed to remember every moment of this story, even though she was only twenty-four months old at the time.)

  As King Kelly, in his brown suit, backed out of the nursery, protesting that he only wanted to see his little granddaughter, his angel, his jewel, Sarah reached the top of the stairs. She had been out walking that day and hadn’t taken off her strong town shoes. When her father turned to greet her, she began to kick him. She landed her shoes on his shins, on his knees, every lower extremity within reach.

  He grabbed her and held her at a distance, too far for her boots to connect with him. Then he spun her around, bent her over like a jackknife, and larruped her three, four, five times on the behind. The whacks echoed through the house. He pushed her away from him, made it to his bedroom, and locked himself in, while Sarah—who had almost fallen over when he dropped her—stormed up and down outside, screaming at him and kicking his door. Eventually Mrs. Haas prevailed upon her to calm down so that the child might get some peace.

  Later that night, however, all through the card game, in which five of his cronies took part, Sarah sat right beside King Kelly, her thumb in her mouth, her head often leaning on his shoulder. During a break she sat on his knee, while he boasted about her to his pals: “My daughter, the great actress.”

  “I’ve never been conventional in my relationships,” she often told me.

  If I had known all those details, if I’d had any idea of what volatility they had survived between each other, I’d have understood better the bond between father and daughter, the seeming mismatch that so puzzled me later on.

  Here I feel that I must balance things a little by telling you how different my own mother’s life was in those days—such a contrast with the afternoon hours of Sarah Kelly in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Mother had been born a lean infant, wiry and long. By the time she was twelve she had acquired after-school and holiday work from a farmer who lived near her parents. When asked by the farmer what she’d like to do, Mother said, “The cows.” All through her teenage years, she fetched them in the morning and evening for milking—a tall, thin young drover, appreciated by all who knew her.

  “Handsome more than pretty,” she herself said she was—but memorable even at twelve. And passionate about what she did. “Cows will do anything for you,” she told me once, “if they like you. That’s a good lesson, isn’t it?”

  When I discovered—I was about eight years old—this feeling she had for cows, I begged her for her stories. She remembered individual cows, creatures who would allow her and her alone to milk them. “There was a Friesian called Lucy who kicked everybody else. And Flicker, because she always caught you in the face with a flick of her tail.”

  She remembered settling them in their winter stalls, squeezing her slim body between their adjacent flanks. She remembered inspecting each cow for any ailment or injury once a week in case the vet had to be called. “When I was a child,” she said, “I never got comfort. I was so bony. In the winter or when the east wind came in at the end of March, I felt the cold in every bone. The only place I ever felt really warm was with the cows.”

  She slept with cows about to calve—and she grieved if she lost either mother or calf. “A cow’s grief is a real thing,” she said to me once. “I’m not saying they cry salt tears—but you do weep if the calf comes out dead, and the mother can’t lick it into life, and she lowers her head and looks away.”

  Her love of cows endured all her life. She talked to them, she represented their interests. Drovers famously carry sticks, long ash batons to steer and drive cattle. One lunchtime, I saw Mother rush out into the yard, where a drover, who had bought two heifers from us, was hammering on their backs to get them up on his cart. She grabbed the ashplant out of the man’s hand and broke it across her knee.

  “’twould serve you right,” she snapped at him, “if they turned around and pucked you.”

  That day, though a little scared in case the drover, a rough fellow, might retaliate, I thought Mother was wonderful. Do I still think it? I do—and now much more so, despite everything, and I don’t think it simply because of her love of cows. In time, she came to look a bit like them; as she aged, and once all her troubles were behind her, she too developed wrinkled and placid features.

  No wonder I wanted to spoil her, make her life easy and easier. She had so many qualities that I liked—the quick movements, the fiddling with her hair, the laugh that, once it started, went right out of control.

  All who know the Kelly family seem in agreement that Venetia’s early years passed more or less sensibly, without agitation or unease. In the spring of 1901, and peacefully for mother and child, King Kelly had begun to travel a great deal in the United States. He was, he said, buying land, “investing in the New World.” Thus, he impinged scarcely at all on the life of his daughter and granddaughter in New York. When he did, and when he overdid it, Mrs. Haas repelled his invasions.

  The following year, 1902, brought a different pattern. King Kelly was in his forties, and by all accounts—and from the brown photographs—a sight to behold, with his elaborate waistcoat, distinctive hat, and silver-topped walking cane, not to mention the laugh that could crack a hillside. He’d been strutting about in New York, boasting about his daughter “the great actress,” trying to make himself a gentleman among the posh clubs, and trying to avoid the Irish-Americans who might, he said, drag him down. As if he could find a lower place than his own morals.

  At first he couldn’t stay away from the Irish. They were too exciting and raunchy, and they were making money. So he played with them and he politicked with them. But then, mid-1902, he disappeared into the West. In the now calmer house Sarah was able to devote herself completely, she said, to the care and attention of the infant.

  A letter came in due course, in which King Kelly explained his absence, by saying that he had been elected mayor of Manhattan, Montana, “because of my unexpected and dramatic success at distributing land here in a fair and peaceable fashion.” He was, said his daughter, “a savage when it came to acquiring land.” Sarah had a way of resting her right elbow in her left hand as she spoke; for her, all th
e world truly was a stage.

  By the time Sarah told me about Montana I’d come to know King Kelly too well to take anything at face value. In case it should prove useful, give me some clues, I decided at one stage to investigate this missing eighteen months of his life. I wrote a letter, “To the Editor, Local Newspaper, Manhattan, Montana,” asking about the name “Kelly” and the 1902 land rush, and—“by great good fortune,” as King Kelly himself might have said—back came a reply.

  Dear Sir,

  Reference to your inquiry, re: one Thomas Kelly, a.k.a. “The King.” This gentleman did come to our town in 1902—it is thought he came here because we are famous for beer. He also did participate in the 1902 contest for town parcels. The contest was to be decided on “The race is to the swift”—meaning, also, “First come, first served.” Regrettably the Kelly gentleman hired athletes to outpace all decent and honorable contestants. He also hired bullyboys with cudgels to crack the heads of legitimate entrants and slow down or halt their efforts. Also, he had by then opened a house of ill repute. For all this he received a jail sentence of seven years, which was commuted after eighteen months on condition that he quit Manhattan, Montana, and indeed also the state. He forfeited all parcels of land, properties that he once said he would “murder for.”

  Hoping that this reply satisfies your inquiry. Glad to be of assistance. One is always warmed by a letter from the Old Country.

  Yours truly,

  Cyrus Murphy, Editor.

  In King Kelly’s absence, Sarah returned to the theater. Despite her great status as an actress and a beauty, she found herself limited in what was available—because she refused to tour plays, a normal practice in those days. She overcame this by straightforward talent, and landed a number of good parts.

  The New York stage at that time had great energy. Big names and bold works made headlines every day. As did Sarah, in Nathan Hale, as the mischievous and tender Alice Adams, and what she herself termed a “famous” performance as Roxanne in the new play Cyrano de Bergerac.

  Her career, insofar as she told me, and insofar as I’ve been able to trace it, seems to have been shrewdly managed. She received the respect of her peers and her public without the “star” label and its problems—because although she worked in prestigious houses, she didn’t let herself get strangled by the big owners. Even though chagrin pierced her when the occasional impresario ignored her and brought on actress after actress, she held out against being owned by managements—and it seems not to have damaged her career.

  Nor did she become the plaything of a Diamond Jim Brady or any of the other Irish flashmen who strutted across the skyline of New York like rakish giants.

  “I had enough of that at home,” she said, “and I didn’t need more of it. Also, I had Mr. Anderson’s heart, and I simply loved my work. I got plenty of both and I had my lovely baby daughter.”

  Whatever Mr. Anderson’s role, her world turned around Venetia and the theater, the theater and Venetia. With Mrs. Haas in attendance, she conducted her household quietly and with efficiency. And she steadied her life—helped considerably, she acknowledged, by the guiding (but not touching) hand of the tall, nasal Mr. Anderson.

  It was a good existence. Society accepted her because of her talent. In this, she said, she was lucky.

  “Try to imagine,” she remarked to me, “what New York in those days was like for us. We were Irish-Americans with the look of money, and therefore considered somewhat vulgar. It was assumed that we were Catholics, and so we were still reviled by the ruling classes of New York. If we’d been poor we’d have been a lot farther down the social ladder. A lot closer to the bottom-of-the-heap Irish coming in off Ellis Island.”

  The idea of socially acceptable Irish in nineteenth-century New York—call that an oxymoron. No matter their wealth, the new Irish-Americans had a tough haul. Any status they achieved came mostly through politics—where they weren’t trusted anyway. Or the Church, still tarred as “Papist.”

  I was to learn that Sarah didn’t play that “bottom-of-the-heap Irish” harp too loudly. But she did inherit—and passed on to her daughter—ferocious ambition to succeed.

  By now I’ve made clear that I’m assembling this material—from notebooks, jotters, backs of envelopes—so that I can survey and judge—so forgive me if I sometimes come across as jumpy. And I also want to grasp and analyze what I myself did in those crucial times. I know that, at the end of it all, I did some remarkable things, far beyond the reach of a man of my age. We’ve all heard stories of great sportsmen or performers who, in one moment above all, reached the sublime—and then couldn’t say whether they knew beforehand that they could do it. They just hoped that they could do it again. That somewhat defines my position, though only in part; so I’m also writing all this down to see whether I can find in me the qualities I exhibited at that time—power, love, care, daring—because I need them all the time.

  But I’ve learned much else—in particular how to read signs. You see, I realize now that I could and should have anticipated some of the unpredictable fires that broke loose and almost burnt the house down. After all I was a secret witness to what I call the Prizefight. Mother never knew about it, and only at a sharp moment in our relationship did I tell my father that I’d been there.

  The Prizefight took place on a Good Friday. When you grow up alone you learn how to acquire knowledge secretly. If you’re an only child, you think that most of the whispered conversations between your parents are about you. Or so you have to believe in order to survive.

  Thus, at an early age I learned to hide in order to listen. I knew how to skulk around the property, pretending to play my wild and solitary games, but in essence watching everything. The ancient structure of the house, with its nooks and crannies, gave substantial cover. So did the trees and the gardens, and I could spy on people indoors and out, and I did all the time. This continued into my early teens. You learn a great deal about people when you can observe them from hiding. The first thing you learn is that they behave differently when they’re alone and think nobody’s looking.

  Spring had come. We had a late Easter that year and the air had begun to hum and sing. At the top of one section in the home garden, rows of currant bushes, dense as a little green city, ran along the brick walls. When I came into the garden through the gray wooden gate, I saw my father and Ned Ryan, our yard worker, in conversation with another man. As I watched, a rough argument broke out, unusual to see in my life.

  I recognized the other man; he scared me. His name was Thomas Kane—the principal in the next village’s school. A tall, burly man, he’d been a gunman out in the fields during the War of Independence, and had laid some claim to being called a hero. I’ve since learned that he was also considered a bully, and I think I must have known it at the time because I was afraid for my father. Mr. Kane’s pretty wife, a small, brown-eyed woman whom he married some years later, became one of Mother’s “warm acquaintances,” as she called those who hadn’t quite made it into the inner ring of friendship.

  As little Ned Ryan bounced up and down between them trying to make peace, Mr. Kane poked his finger into my father’s chest. Then he rapped his knuckles hard on my father’s head.

  Brushing the hand away, my father whipped off his jacket, a rust-colored Harris Tweed of which I was fond. Ned Ryan took the jacket—and next accepted Mr. Kane’s coat, who then squared off toward my father. And he shouted something that I couldn’t quite hear, though it smacked, I felt, of Billy Moloney’s “flockin’” lingo.

  My father stripped naked to the waist; Mr. Kane didn’t. The two men walked to a small patch of clear and level ground. Ned Ryan followed, fussy as a hen.

  Now my father held up his fists like a pugilist of old, and said something—to which Mr. Kane replied with a punch. It seemed to me that my father allowed the punch to hit him—on the side of the head—and then the fight began in earnest.

  My feelings, I remember, twisted my heart like twine. On the one han
d I felt afraid that my father might get hurt; on the other hand I was watching a trial of strength and ferocity between two men of the parish. I didn’t seriously think that my father might lose—or was that just hope?

  The punches flew. Mr. Kane had a longer reach and he jarred my father several times, set him back on his heels. All the birds stopped singing. The dogs lay in the grass, noses down, eyes narrowed, uncomfortable, whining. And the fight swung back and forth along a wide grass path between the vegetable beds.

  I see it all so clearly, still: two big men in their thirties, my father’s torso whiter than dough, and now reddening here and there as punches landed. Mr. Kane had black hair, and eyebrows that met in the middle; the sun caught my father’s wavy red hair.

  It became a brawl. The classy pugilism went out of it when Mr. Kane suddenly delivered a kick. Ned Ryan shouted, “Foul blow, foul blow.”

  The kick was meant for my father’s groin, but he spun and took it on his thigh. He rocked right back at the force of the great boot. For a moment he dropped his fists and I almost rushed out of my hiding place. And then my father ignited: He said something. Again I didn’t hear the actual words, but it inflamed the other man, who drove forward.

  They grappled and wrestled, untidy and roiling about. They fell to the ground, they rose again. Once more they grappled, looking for a grip here or there. My father grabbed Mr. Kane’s jacket and tried to swing him around; Mr. Kane took a fistful of my father’s hair and twisted; my father somehow wriggled away.

  The fight ended at that moment. With one clean punch my father lowered him. I heard the crack and saw my father wince and pull back his hand as Mr. Kane staggered, half-slipped, and fell. I thought his head rolled a little.

  He lay on the earthen seed drills; Ned Ryan came forward to inspect my father’s hand. My father flapped the hand vigorously and nursed it; he bent at the waist, raised one knee in his wincing, and sucked at his knuckles. Soon, garment by garment, he began to take his clothes as Ned Ryan offered them.