Bringing Down the Colonel by Patricia Miller

Author:Patricia Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

13

Somebody’s Daughter

The “gusty spirit of Saint Patrick” blew into Washington a day early on Friday, March 16, rattling the still-bare trees and blowing away any hint of spring. Just after 10:00 a.m., word began spreading around town that Madeline Pollard had taken the stand. Many had doubted that she would, even up to the last minute. Some believed that her lawyers thought her too emotional to take a chance on letting her testify. Still others couldn’t imagine a woman telling a story “that very few women would care to relate in public.” As word spread, spectators packed into the old courthouse, filling the halls. They “struggled with the bailiffs in the corridor and told of their exalted government positions, their newspaper connections, or their personal relations to the participants or counsels.” Those not lucky or connected enough to get in crowded on tiptoe around the windows in the hall that looked across the courtyard to the courtroom windows.

Madeline took the stand dressed in the same black dress and blue coat she had worn all along, her black velvet hat with its little feathered plume dancing like a question mark over her head. Miss Ellis sat stoically next to her. As Carlisle questioned her, she told about her father’s death, how the family had been left destitute, and her years spent with her aunt in Pittsburgh and then with her other aunt outside of Lexington. She told about her arrangement with Rhodes and about meeting Breckinridge on the train and about how he came to Wesleyan and the paper he had in his hand and the concert in the heights and the closed carriage and the bad throat. She told how he brought her to Sarah Guess’s and how she stayed until Monday morning and how she eventually went to Cincinnati “not because I wanted to, but because I had to.” She told of the room over the mattress store and the Norwood Foundling Asylum and Drs. Perry and Buchanan. She said it was Breckinridge who told her to go to Cincinnati and find a woman doctor and Breckinridge who gave her money and Breckinridge who was the father of the baby born on May 29, 1885. “Had you ever before meeting Mr. Breckinridge had sexual relations with any man at any time or place?” asked Carlisle. “No, never,” she replied emphatically. She told of more visits to Sarah Guess’s and how Breckinridge came to her room at night when he boarded at Mrs. Ketchum’s. “Were you ever at Sarah Guess’s house with any other man than Mr. Breckinridge?” asked Carlisle. “Certainly not,” she answered.

She was clear and direct as she spoke, recalling dates and facts without hesitation, discussing the details of her relationship with Breckinridge unflinchingly; she didn’t blush or avert her eyes when she said “pregnant.” The reporters in the courtroom were impressed by her testimony, “the rising and falling of her plaintive voice, the tone of her demure little acknowledgements about her early life,” although the World thought her a bit “stagy … as if every word, action and gesture had been rehearsed.

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