There had been no communication between Blanche and Barnet since their stormy confrontation several weeks earlier. But her ex-lover—the man who had awakened her to a “full realization of sex”—was always on her mind.
During the first week of November, a dinner was to be held for General T. L. Watson, president of the New York Athletic Club. Roland was one of the organizers. Invitations had been issued to select members of rival clubs, including the Knickerbocker. Blanche, who always enjoyed these affairs, became even more excited when she learned that Barney was on the guest list.
She was keenly disappointed, therefore, when word reached her that Barnet was too ill to attend. She was also surprised. “I recalled how strong and vital he was, in what apparently perfect health,” she would record in her memoir. “I was anxious for more detailed news and called the club to make inquiries. They repeated only what I already had learned, that he was suffering from a serious attack of diphtheria.”1
When Roland arrived at Alice Bellinger’s a short time later, Blanche rushed to meet him at the entranceway.
“Barney is ill,” she cried. “Under the care of physicians at the club. Have you heard?”
“Yes,” he calmly replied.
“I want to send him flowers,” she said. “And a message.”
Using Alice’s telephone, Blanche called Thorley’s Flower Shop and ordered a “huge box of shaggy chrysanthemums.” “They seemed more appropriate for a man,” she writes in her memoir. “They lacked cloying perfume and possessed a sort of rugged beauty.”
She also wrote a letter to Barnet. Enclosing it in an envelope, she called a messenger, who conveyed it to Thorley’s, where it was placed inside the flower box. The letter read:
I am distressed to learn of your illness. I arrived home Saturday. I am so exceedingly sorry to know that you have been indisposed. Won’t you let me know when you are able to be about? I want so much to see you. Is it that you do not believe me? If you would but let me prove to you my sincerity. Do not be cross any more and accept, I pray you, my very best wishes.
YOURS, Blanche
Blanche waited to hear back from Barnet. But she never received a reply.2
The flowers were not delivered until early the following day, Monday, November 7.
Barnet was asleep when they arrived. When he awoke, his day nurse, Addie Bates, told him that he had received a big bunch of lovely chrysanthemums, along with a note.
Barnet asked her to read it to him. Addie proceeded to do so. When she was done, he closed his eyes and, in a voice barely above a whisper, said, “I wonder how she knew I was ill?”3
Two nights later—at around 4:00 A.M. on November 9—Barnet awoke from a troubled sleep and struggled out of bed.
He had been growing weaker by the day and seemed so unsteady on his feet that his night nurse, Jane Callender, urged him to lie back down at once.
Barnet refused. Despite the sponge baths he had been receiving, he felt unbearably filthy and was determined to give himself a thorough washing. Above the objections of Miss Callender, he made his way to the bathroom and shut himself inside.
When he emerged a half hour later, he barely had the strength to make it back to his bed.
Alarmed at his condition, Nurse Callender telephoned Dr. Douglass, who arrived at the Knickerbocker in short order. A brief examination of Barnet was all Douglass needed to see that his patient was in the throes of heart failure.
Barnet’s brother, Edmund, was immediately summoned to his bedside. At Edmund’s urging, two other physicians were called in for an emergency consultation. Each examined Barnet in turn. Each confirmed Douglass’s grim diagnosis.
Barnet clung to life for another ten hours. His death, late in the afternoon of Thursday, November 10, 1898, was officially attributed to a weakened heart caused by diphtheria.4
A memorial service for Henry Crossman Barnet was held at the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street in Manhattan at 2:00 P.M. on Saturday, November 12. A tearful Blanche was among those in attendance.5
Exactly one week later, she took part in another ceremony. On Saturday, November 19, 1898, at the Church of Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, Roland Burnham Molineux—as he had long vowed to do—took Blanche Chesebrough for his lawful wedded bride.6