Over the years, a fair number of people have approached my wife and me for relationship advice. I guess we look like we have our shit together.
When people ask us for the secret to our marriage, Jan often quotes an old NPR story about a couple that had been married for something like 70 years. “What’s our secret? Frequent separations and gradual loss of hearing.”
It gets a laugh, which is what we’re going for. But it’s not true. We live in each other’s pockets. For the first five years Jan and I were together, we didn’t spend a single night apart. If I’m out and hear a story on the radio, I like to call her to discuss it. …
When I was a little kid, my family would make an annual pilgrimage from Ann Arbor to Chicago to visit my aunt Cheryl and her husband David (DB to us) to do some Christmas shopping. We’d stay at their house in Riverside, right next to a house Capone apparently had built for his sister. Then we’d go downtown and visit Marshall Fields’ main store in the Loop and have Christmas tea in the famous Walnut Room.
Tea by the big tree was fine, but as a child of the ‘80s I was a greedy little consumer. Early on I discovered a treasure trove in the basement no one else seemed to care about: a little metal rotating rack of cassette tapes. …
Given the state of our nation, it is worth examining the nexus of white grievance politics, and the three distinct groups that combine to make it so frighteningly strong.
It begins, and probably ends, with conservative Christianity.
True to our Puritanical roots, to many who attend conservative churches, Christianity is defined, not by the teachings of Christ, but by suffering. “Christ died for your sins!” That’s why The Passion Of The Christ, which was religious torture porn, was so beloved in the Evangalical community. For them, faith is not about Christ’s life, it’s about how he died. How he suffered.
Meanwhile, in Catholicism, early saints got to be saints by suffering. The worse the suffering, the greater the saintliness. …
Robert Ray Wants A Divorce!
The New York Times — 3 October 1889
WANTS A DIVORCE.
Robert Ray Hamilton begins suit to have his marriage annulled.
That Robert Ray Hamilton is cured of his infatuation for Mrs. Swinton’s protégé is evidenced by the fact that he has begun a suit in the Supreme Court to have his marriage to her annulled on the ground of fraud and the existence of a previous marriage. Judge Patterson, in Supreme Court, Chambers, yesterday granted a motion made my Mr. Hamilton’s lawyers, Root & Clarke, to have the service of the summons in the case made on Mrs. Evangeline L. Hamilton by publication. It will be published for six weeks in two newspapers and a law paper, and copies of it will be mailed to Mrs. …
Hamilton Again a Victim!
The New York World — Sunday 29 September 1889
HAMILTON AGAIN A VICTIM.
He eludes his friend and succumbs to the adventuress.
He visits her cell and she makes good her word to “win him back in twenty minutes”– not even her confession of the fraud of the baby chills his infatuation — he will attempt to free her.
[Special to The World.]
May’s Landing, N.J., Sept. 28. — The hovel-born adventuress in prison has made good her boast: “Let me see Ray Hamilton for twenty minutes and I’ll win him back again.” She has captured what she has never lost, the heart of the man she has deceived so basely. She owns him body and soul and his enthralment (sic) is as complete to-day as it was when he first came under the magic of Eva Steele’s spell. Hamilton actually has promised to use all the influence that money could exert to have the sentence of the convicted woman lightened, and, if possible, have her pardoned. In addition to this, so completely is he in the toils, he has promised that his political power shall be used with as much freedom as his money. He has pledged himself, in the event that Leon Abbott is elected governor of New Jersey, and this seems probable, that he (Hamilton) will leave no stone unturned, will neglect no opportunity, to gain for the woman who has disgraced him her freedom. The utterance made by Mrs. Hamilton and published in the World Sunday as the text of the remarkable story of her life was founded on a knowledge of her power. Hamilton read it in New York City while in company with his friend Vallmer. It is said that his face flushed and he cast the story aside. He avoided Mr. Vallmer’s society after that, and Thursday he came down here without his friend’s knowledge. …
THE NURSE JOINS A FREAK SHOW!
The Evening World/27 September 1889
SHE’S A FREAK NOW
NURSE MARY CONNELLY IN A BOWERY DIME MUSEUM
Showing the Wound Made by Eva Hamilton’s Knife
And the Whiskey Bottle Which Ray Hamilton’s Wife Drank From.
Nurse Mary Donnelly, who was so nearly carved to death by Mrs. Eva Hamilton at Atlantic City last month, has joined the noble army of freaks.
A museum on the Bowery has allured her, she alleges, for two weeks’ engagement at a salary of $150 a week, with the privilege of a renewal, and she will begin to hold “daily receptions in Curio Hall,” from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. …
The New York World/May 27, 1888
Queer Communications Written by All Kinds of Strange People
She Began Getting Affectionate Letters at the Tender Age of Four — Of Late Her Mail Has Not Room No Loving — Cranks Who Want her Aid — Delightful Notes from Girls — A Singular Collection.
If there is anything for which I have a special weakness, barring a fine horse and chewing-gum, it is letters. My mania for them has been the growth of years — I don’t dare say how many. It began when I was about four years old and still wore bibs and such juvenile apparel. The seed which implanted this mania was the receipt of a letter addressed to my full Christian name which crossed the envelope twice. The writer was a boy of twelve, so I have been told. I had formed his acquaintance while he was visiting his grandmother in the country. We got up the flirtation by peeping at each other through the crevices in the back fence. He soon called, and many long summer days we spent “keeping house” under the east piazza. Cupid’s cousin, Miss Sudden Fancy, made a dent in our baby hearts. …
AN ASTOUNDING BIOGRAPHY OF EVA!
The New York World — Sunday, 22 September 1889
FROM HOVEL TO WEALTH.
WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY THIS IS OF ROBERT RAY HAMILTON AND HIS WIFE.
THE WOMAN’S EVIL HISTORY.
It Has Not Before Been Told, and the Like of It Perhaps Never Was Before.
NOW TWO YEARS IN CONVICT GARB.
A Freckle-Faced Child in a Pennsylvania Lumber Camp — Practically Without Education, but with Remarkable Shrewdness of Intellect —What was it that Fascinated a Man of Robert Ray Hamilton’s Refinement, Cultivation and Social Connections? …
THE VERDICT!
The New York World — Friday, 20 September 1889
PUT AWAY FOR A TIME.
ROBERT RAY HAMILTON’S ADVENTURESS-WIFE SENTENCED TO TRENTON PENITENTIARY.
Two Years in Convict’s Garb.
Calmly She Heard Her Fate, But Wept Bitterly in Her Cell.
She Denounces Her Husband.
While Trying to Make a Statement to The World She Was Led Away by the Sheriff — The Judge Borrowed a Lesson From the Maybrick Trial and Argued as well as Charged — One of Inspector Byrnes’ Men Waited with a Warrant to Arrest the Woman, had She Been Acquitted.
[Special to The World]
May’s Landing, N.J., Sept. 19 — “Two years in state prison at Trenton.”
Evangeline Hamilton, wife of the representative of the Murray Hill district, heard her doom pronounced this afternoon by a cold-faced Judge, without the slightest semblance of emotion. Indeed her countenance was so thoroughly impassive that the natural sneer which has always hovered about the corners of her Cupid-arched mouth was plainly perceptible. There were undried tears in her eyes, and her hands were clasped nervously over her handkerchief, as they were yesterday, while she listened to the testimony of the man who sought to shield her while he held up before the whole world the evidence of his most peculiar and unaccountable infatuation. The assumed artlessness which the defendant had shown up on the witness stand during the examination, which so prejudiced her cause, had entirely deserted her. Albeit she did not show in her outward demeanor that her spirit had been broken, nevertheless it was patent to the most ordinary observer of human nature that she had cried quits. …
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