Following her appearance at the inquest—and the scandalous picture Gardiner had painted of her in his closing remarks—Blanche could not appear in public without attracting crowds of the morbidly curious. More than ever, she became a prisoner inside the Molineuxs’ cheerless home, with its dark paneling, its ponderous furnishings, its heavy draperies perpetually drawn against the prying eyes of passersby.
An intensely social creature, she now found herself in a state of almost total isolation—cut off not only from the outside world, but even from the few other members of the besieged little household. “On Fort Greene Place,” she would recall in her memoirs, “we were bound together by a mutual grief; but each of us had to face it alone. We retreated, each in his own way, farther within ourselves. We talked but little. The days became an endless chain, each one linked to the other, drab and colorless.”1
Her in-laws could offer no comfort. They both put on brave faces, though Mrs. Molineux’s hair had turned noticeably whiter in the few months since her son was first implicated in the crimes. As for the General, he did his best to keep up their spirits. “Vindication will come,” he would declare. “And when this is ended, we will shake off this strange dream, and with God’s help forget it.”2
But even as he spoke these hopeful words, Blanche observed, his voice would crack and he would turn away and gaze “into the glowing coals of the open fire. I knew it was so we should not see the tears that were in his eyes. He cleared his throat and briskly knocked the ashes from his pipe.”3
Blanche’s only outings were the occasional visits she paid to her husband. These were not made willingly but were done, at the General’s insistence, for the sake of appearances. By this point, Blanche had developed a deep resentment of her husband. Decades later, in describing these occasions, her distaste for him was palpable. “There was the necessity for those visits to the Tombs, and one was compelled to see this son of General Molineux there, behind those bars.”4
What had turned her so violently against Roland was not a sudden loss of faith in his innocence (though by this time she was, in fact, wracked with doubts). Her bitterness toward him stemmed largely from her sense that, after seducing her into marriage with promises of glamorous living—evenings at the opera, summers in Europe, parties with the social elite—he had condemned her to an existence of crushing tedium, public disgrace, and virtual imprisonment.
Making the situation even more galling was his attitude toward his own incarceration. While Blanche experienced her forced seclusion as unremitting torture, Roland seemed to view his life behind bars as an irksome, though temporary, inconvenience. “He was quite stoical,” writes Blanche in her memoirs. “There was no betrayal of what lay beneath the surface, his lips taut and hard, and his eyes inscrutable. There was about him a supercilious air of patronizing tolerance, as though he were extremely annoyed, as though he hoped they would hurry up and get done with the whole business so that he might resume normal living.”5
Blanche’s efforts to protect her privacy were, of course, futile, given the relentless sensation-mongering of the yellow press. In early spring, the Journal made an explosive charge, claiming that on at least a half dozen occasions between May 1897 and August 1898, Henry Barnet and an unidentified female friend paid periodic visits to a hotel in Jersey City. The couple, who always registered as husband and wife, occupied “the best suite in the house.” Generally, “they remained there just one night, though on at least one occasion they lived at the hotel for a week.”
Employees of the hotel described Barnet’s companion as “a tall, stylish woman, one of whose eyes was faulty.” No one knew who she really was, though as the Journal was quick to point out, the description “tallies with that of Mrs. Roland B. Molineux, the former Blanche Chesebrough.”
During their last overnight stay, the fake Mrs. Barnet had accidentally left behind her parasol, “a dainty, expensive Parisian thing of green plaid, white silk, and lace.” The hotel proprietor, Mr. J. B. Hamlin, had placed it for safekeeping in a storage room. Regarding it as a potentially important clue, Captain McCluskey had dispatched Detective McCafferty to Jersey City to retrieve the parasol, along with the register containing the signatures of Barnet and his lover.6
One day after Hearst’s paper carried this story, Pulitzer’s World featured a front-page denial signed by Blanche, “her first statement for publication,” as the headline trumpeted. The statement read:
Since the terrible tragedy culminating in the death of Mrs. Adams and throughout the inexpressibly painful scenes that have followed, I have felt it to be my duty to bear in silence the cruel attacks that have been made upon me in the newspapers. I have made no answers to these attacks, nor have I made any effort to set myself right before the world, under the advice of the counsel for my husband, who has been subjected to this infamous and unfounded charge, and whose interests are, of course, next to my heart.
But the statements in the newspapers of today, charging me, by implication, with having visited a hotel in Jersey City with Mr. Barnet are so grossly and atrociously false, that I feel in justice to myself, my husband, and my friends I must now make some statement.
I may say, in the beginning, that the cruel slander uttered by the District Attorney in his address to the Coroner’s jury is, I believe, largely responsible for the subsequent attacks upon me. His official position gave his statements a weight that they did not deserve. The public has been slow to believe that a sworn public officer could, without a shadow of proof, vilify and slander the reputation of a woman. But this was done by the District Attorney, and I have suffered in consequence.
There has never been any mystery about my life or movements, nor has there been anything in my life different from that of any other self-respecting woman.
My acquaintance with Mr. Barnet was through the introduction of Mr. Molineux, and my associations with him were merely those of friendship. I was never in Jersey City in my life, except in passing through to take a train.
At the time stated in the newspapers when Mr. Barnet first visited the hotel, May, 1897, I had never met him.
This slander is as baseless as the many others which have been published concerning me.
In simple justice to myself, my family, and my friends, I ask the public press to refrain from printing such wicked accusations, which the slightest investigation would show to be unfounded.7
Though Blanche’s signature was affixed to this statement, she was not, in fact, its sole author. The General, along with Roland’s attorneys, had not only vetted her first draft but made sure to add the line denouncing the “infamous and unfounded charge” that had been leveled against her husband, “whose interests are, of course, next to my heart.”
However deeply she resented Roland for entangling her in such a nightmare, it was made abundantly clear to Blanche that for as long as the ordeal lasted, she was expected to play the part of the loyal, loving wife.