diff --git "a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzsjxa" "b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzsjxa" new file mode 100644--- /dev/null +++ "b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzsjxa" @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +{"text":"\n\n\n\nProduced by Chris Curnow, Nicole Henn-Kneif, Tom Cosmas\nand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttp:\/\/www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images\ngenerously made available by The Internet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note\n\n Italic text has been formatted as _text_ and superscript text as ^{text}.\n\n\n\n\n COLOURATION\n IN\n ANIMALS AND PLANTS.\n\n BY THE LATE\n ALFRED TYLOR, F.G.S.\n\n _Edited by_\n SYDNEY B. J. SKERTCHLY, F.G.S.,\n LATE OF H.M. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.\n\n LONDON:\n PRINTED BY ALABASTER, PASSMORE, AND SONS,\n FANN STREET, ALDERSGATE STREET, E.C.\n\n 1886.\n\n\n\n\n IN MEMORY\n OF A FRIENDSHIP OF MANY YEARS,\n THIS BOOK\n IS\n Affectionately Inscribed\n TO\n THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE YOUNG, P.C.\n 1885.\n\n\n\n\n PREFACE.\n\n\nThis little book is only a sketch of what its Author desired it to be,\nand he never saw the completed manuscript. Beginning with the\nfundamental idea that decoration is based upon structure, he saw that\nthis was due to the fact that in the lower, transparent, animals, colour\nis applied directly to the organs, and that the decoration of opaque\nanimals is carried out on the same principle--the primitive idea being\nmaintained. Where function changes the pattern alters, where function is\nlocalized colour is concentrated: and thus the law of emphasis was\nevolved. Symmetry was a necessary consequence, for like parts were\ndecorated alike, and this symmetry was carried out in detail apparently\nfor the sake of beauty, as in the spiracular markings of many larvae.\nHence the reason for recognizing the law of repetition.\n\nWith the developing of these ideas the necessity for recognizing some\nsort of consciousness even in the lowest forms of life was forced upon\nthe Author, until inherited memory formed part of his scientific faith.\nThis he saw dimly years ago, but only clearly when Mr. S. Butler's\nremarkable \"Life and Habit\" appeared, and he was gratified and\nstrengthened when he found Mr. Romanes adopting that theory in his\n\"Mental Evolution.\"\n\nThe opening chapters are designedly elementary; for the Author had a\nwise dread of locking intellectual treasures in those unpickable\nscientific safes of which \"the learned\" alone hold keys.\n\nOnly a very small portion of the vast array of facts accumulated has\nbeen made use of, and the Author was steadily working through the\nanimal kingdom, seeking exceptions to his laws, but finding none, when\ndeath closed his patient and far-seeing eyes. A few days before the end\nhe begged me to finish this abstract, for I had been at his side through\nall his labours.\n\nThe work contains his views as clearly as I could express them, though\non every page I feel they suffer from want of amplification. But I\nfeared the work might become the expression of my own thoughts, though\nwant of leisure would probably have prevented that unhappy result. Now\nit is finished, I would fain write it all over again, for methinks\nbetween the lines can be seen gleams of brighter light.\n\n SYDNEY B. J. SKERTCHLY.\n\n CARSHALTON,\n _July 17th, 1886_.\n\n\n The illustrations were drawn by Mrs. Skertchly chiefly from\n nature, and very carefully printed by Messrs. Alabaster, Passmore, and\n Sons.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n CONTENTS.\n\n\n CHAPTER PAGE\n\n I. INTRODUCTORY 1\n\n II. INHERITED MEMORY 8\n\n III. INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 16\n\n IV. COLOUR, ITS NATURE AND RECOGNITION 25\n\n V. THE COLOUR SENSE 32\n\n VI. SPOTS AND STRIPES 39\n\n VII. COLOURATION IN THE INVERTEBRATA 49\n\n VIII. DETAILS OF PROTOZOA 56\n\n IX. DETAILS OF COELENTERATA 59\n\n X. THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS 68\n\n XI. THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS 75\n\n XII. ARACHNIDA 82\n\n XIII. COLOURATION OF INVERTEBRATA 85\n\n XIV. COLOURATION OF VERTEBRATA 88\n\n XV. THE COLOURATION OF PLANTS 95\n\n XVI. CONCLUSIONS 97\n\n\n\n\n LIST OF WOODCUTS.\n\n\n Fig. 1. Part of Secondary Feather of Argus Pheasant.\n\n Fig. 2. Ditto Wing-feather of ditto.\n\n Fig. 3. Diagram of Butterfly's Wing.\n\n Fig. 4. Python.\n\n Fig. 5. Tiger's Skin.\n\n Fig. 6. Ditto.\n\n Fig. 7. Tiger's Head, side view.\n\n Fig. 8. Ditto, crown.\n\n Fig. 9. Leopard's Skin.\n\n Fig. 10. Ditto.\n\n Fig. 11. Leopard's Head, side view.\n\n Fig. 12. Ditto, crown.\n\n Fig. 13. Lynx' Skin.\n\n Fig. 14. Ditto.\n\n Fig. 15. Ocelot.\n\n Fig. 16. Badger.\n\n Fig. 17. Begonia Leaf.\n\n\n\n\n DESCRIPTION OF PLATES.\n\n\n PLATE I. _Kallima Inachus_, the Indian Leaf Butterfly.\n _p._ 28. Fig. 1. With wings expanded.\n Fig. 2. Two Butterflies at rest, showing their exact\n resemblance to dead leaves.\n This insect affords one of the best examples of\n protective resemblance.\n\n\n PLATE II. Illustration of mimicry in butterflies.\n _p._ 30. Fig. 1. Male of _Papilio merope_.\n Fig. 2. Female of ditto mimicking Fig. 3.\n Fig. 3. _Danais niavius._\n On the African continent both species occur, but in\n Madagascar _D. niavius_ is wanting, and the female\n _P. merope_ is like the male.\n\n\n PLATE III. Fig. 1. _Gonepteryx Cleopatra._\n _p._ 40. Fig. 2. _Gonepteryx rhamni_, male.\n _Note._--The orange spot in Fig. 2 has\n spread over the wing in Fig. 1.\n Fig. 3. _Vanessa Antiopa._\n Fig. 4. _Panopoea hirta._\n Fig. 5. _Acrea gea._\n These two last belong to widely different genera, but\n are admirable examples of mimicry.\n\n\n PLATE IV. Fig. 1. _Leucophasia Sinapis._\n _p._ 42. Fig. 2. Ditto, var. _diniensis_.\n Fig. 3. _Anthocaris cardamines_, male.\n Fig. 4. Ditto, female.\n Fig. 5. _Anthocaris belemia._\n Fig. 6. _Anthocaris belia._\n Fig. 7. Ditto, var. _simplonia_.\n Fig. 8. _Anthocaris eupheno_, female.\n Fig. 9. Ditto, male.\n Fig. 10. _Anthocaris euphemoides._\n Fig. 11. _Papilio machaon._\n Fig. 12. _Papilio podalirius._\n Fig. 13. _Pieris napi_, summer form.\n Fig. 14. Ditto, winter form.\n Fig. 15. Ditto, var. _bryoniae_ (alpine form).\n Fig. 16. Ditto, summer form, underside.\n Fig. 17. Ditto, winter form, underside.\n Fig. 18. Ditto, var. _bryoniae_, underside.\n\n Figs. 13-18 illustrate admirably the variations of the\n yellow and black in the same species.\n\n\n PLATE V. Fig. 1. _Araschnia prorsa_, male.\n _p._ 44. Fig. 2. Ditto, female.\n Fig. 3. _Araschnia levana_, female.\n Fig. 4. Ditto, male.\n Fig. 5. _Paragra aegeria._\n Fig. 6. _Araschnia porima._\n Fig. 7. Ditto, var. _meione_.\n Fig. 8. _Grapta interrogationis._\n Fig. 9. Ditto.\n Fig. 10. Ditto.\n Fig. 11. _Papilio Ajax_, var. _Walshii_.\n Fig. 12. Ditto, var. _telamonides_.\n Fig. 13. Ditto, var. _Marcellus_.\n\n Figs. 1-5 are all one species; _levana_ being the winter form,\n _prorsa_ the summer form, and _porima_ intermediate. Similarly\n 6-7 are the same species, _meione_ being the southern form. So\n with 8-9 and 11-13, which are only seasonal varieties. Here we\n can actually trace the way in which varieties are formed.\n _See_ Weismann's work, cited in the text.\n\n\n PLATE VI. _Syncoryne pulchella_, magnified. After Professor Allman.\n _p._ 62. Gymnoblastic or Tubularian Hydroids. Ray Soc., 1871,\n pl. vi., figs. 1 and 3.\n\n Fig. 1. A planoblast as seen passively floating in the water\n after liberation.\n Fig. 2. The entire hydrosoma of syncoryne.\n _a._ The spadix.\n _b._ The medusae or planoblasts in various stages of\n development.\n\n\n PLATE VII.\n _p._ 80. Fig. 1. _Deilephila galii_, immature.\n Fig. 2. Ditto brown variety, adult.\n Fig. 3. _Deilephila euphorbiae._\n Fig. 4. _Sphinx ligustri._\n Fig. 5. _Deilephila euphorbiae_, dorsal view.\n Fig. 6. _Orgyia antiqua._\n Fig. 7. _Abraxas grossulariata._\n Fig. 8. _Bombyx neustria._\n Fig. 9. _Callimorpha dominula._\n Fig. 10. _Euchelia jacobaea._\n Fig. 11. _Papilio machaon._\n\n\n SPIDERS.\n\n PLATE VIII. Fig. 1. _Segestria senoculata_, female.\n _p._ 84. Fig. 2. _Sparassus smaragdulus_, male.\n Fig. 3. _Lycosa piscatoria_, female.\n Fig. 4. ---- _andrenivora_, male.\n Fig. 5. ---- ---- female.\n Fig. 6. ---- _allodroma_, male.\n Fig. 7. ---- _agretyca_, male.\n Fig. 8. ---- _allodroma_, female.\n Fig. 9. Diagram of _Lycosa_, showing form and position of\n vessels. After Gegenbaur.\n Fig. 10. _Lycosa campestris_, female.\n Fig. 11. _Thomisus luctuosus_, male.\n Fig. 12. _Salticus scenicus_, female.\n Fig. 13. _Lycosa rapax_, female.\n Fig. 14. ---- _latitans_, female.\n Fig. 15. _Theridion pictum_, female.\n Fig. 16. _Lycosa picta_, female.\n Fig. 17. ---- ---- male.\n All the above are British species, and copied from Blackwell's\n \"Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland.\" Ray Soc., 1862.\n\n\n FISHES.\n\n PLATE IX. Fig. 1. Windermere Char. _Salmo Willughbii._ A species\n _p._ 88. peculiar to our North of England lakes.\n Fig. 2. Perch, _Perca fluviatilis_, showing the modified\n rib-like markings.\n\n\n SUNBIRDS.\n\n PLATE X. Fig. 1. _Nectarinea chloropygia._\n _p._ 90. Fig. 2. _Nectarinea christinae._\n These birds illustrate regional colouration well.\n\n\n LEAVES.\n\n PLATE XI. Fig. 1. Horse Chestnut, _AEschulus hippocastanum_, decaying.\n _p._ 95. Fig. 2. _Coleus._\n Fig. 3. _Begonia rex._\n Fig. 4. _Begonia_.\n Fig. 5. _Caladium bicolor._\n Fig. 6. _Anoechtochilus xanthophyllus._\n\n\n FLOWERS.\n\n PLATE XII. Fig. 1. _Gloxinia_, with 5 petals, showing uneven\n _p._ 96. colouring.\n Fig. 2. _Gloxinia_, with 6 petals, showing regular\n colouring.\n Figs. 3 and 4. Pelargoniums, showing the variation of the\n dark markings with the different sized petals.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n COLOURATION IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER I.\n\n INTRODUCTION.\n\n\nBefore Darwin published his remarkable and memorable work on the Origin\nof Species, the decoration of animals and plants was a mystery as much\nhidden to the majority as the beauty of the rainbow ere Newton analysed\nthe light. That the world teemed with beauty in form and colour was all\nwe knew; and the only guess that could be made as to its uses was the\nvague and unsatisfactory suggestion that it was appointed for the\ndelight of man.\n\nWhy, if such was the case, so many flowers were \"born to blush unseen,\"\nso many insects hidden in untrodden forests, so many bright-robed\ncreatures buried in the depths of the sea, no man could tell. It seemed\nbut a poor display of creative intelligence to lavish for thousands of\nyears upon heedless savage eyes such glories as are displayed by the\nforests of Brazil; and the mind recoiled from the suggestion that such\ncould ever have been the prime intention.\n\nBut with the dawn of the new scientific faith, light began to shine upon\nthese and kindred questions; nature ceased to appear a mass of useless,\nunconnected facts, and ornamentation appeared in its true guise as of\nextreme importance to the beings possessing it. It was the theory of\ndescent with modification that threw this light upon nature.\n\nThis theory, reduced to its simplest terms, is that species, past and\npresent, have arisen from the accumulation by inheritance of minute\ndifferences of form, structure, colour, or habit, giving to the\nindividual a better chance, in the struggle for existence, of obtaining\nfood or avoiding danger. It is based on a few well-known and universally\nadmitted facts or laws of nature: namely, the law of multiplication in\ngeometrical progression causing the birth of many more individuals than\ncan survive, leading necessarily to the struggle for existence; the law\nof heredity, in virtue of which the offspring resembles its parents; the\nlaw of variation, in virtue of which the offspring has an individual\ncharacter slightly differing from its parents.\n\nTo illustrate these laws roughly we will take the case of a bird, say,\nthe thrush. The female lays on the average five eggs, and if all these\nare hatched, and the young survive, thrushes would be as seven to two\ntimes as numerous in the next year. Let two of these be females, and\nbring up each five young; in the second year we shall have seventeen\nthrushes, in the third thirty-seven, in the fourth seventy-seven, and so\non. Now common experience tells us not merely that such a vast increase\nof individuals does not take place, but can never do so, as in a very\nfew years the numbers would be so enormously increased that food would\nbe exhausted.\n\nOn the other hand, we know that the numbers of individuals remain\npractically the same. It follows, then, that of every five eggs four\nfail to arrive at maturity; and this rigorous destruction of individuals\nis what is known as the struggle for existence. If, instead of a bird,\nwe took an insect, laying hundreds of eggs, a fish, laying thousands, or\na plant, producing still greater quantities of seed, we should find the\nextermination just as rigorous, and the numbers of individuals destroyed\nincomparably greater. Darwin has calculated that from a single pair of\nelephants nearly nineteen millions would be alive in 750 years if each\nelephant born arrived at maturity, lived a hundred years, and produced\nsix young--and the elephant is the slowest breeder of all animals.\n\nThe struggle for existence, then, is a real and potent fact, and it\nfollows that if, from any cause whatever, a being possesses any power or\npeculiarity that will give it a better chance of survival over its\nfellows--be that power ever so slight--it will have a very decided\nadvantage.\n\nNow it can be shown that no two individuals are exactly alike, in other\nwords, that variation is constantly taking place, and that no animal or\nplant preserves its characters unmodified. This we might have expected\nif we attentively consider how impossible it is for any two individuals\nto be subjected to exactly the same conditions of life and habit. But\nfor the proofs of variability we have not to rely upon theoretical\nreasoning. No one can study, even superficially, any class or species\nwithout daily experiencing the conviction that no two individuals are\nalike, and that variation takes place in almost every conceivable\ndirection.\n\nGranted then the existence of the struggle for existence and the\nvariability of individuals, and granting also that if any variation\ngives its possessor a firmer hold upon life, it follows as a necessity\nthat the most favoured individuals will have the best chance of\nsurviving and leaving descendants, and by the law of heredity, we know\nthese offspring will tend to inherit the characters of their parents.\nThis action is often spoken of as the preservation of favoured races,\nand as the survival of the fittest.\n\nThe gradual accumulation of beneficial characters will give rise in time\nto new varieties and species; and in this way primarily has arisen the\nwonderful diversity of life that now exists. Such, in barest outline, is\nthe theory of descent with modification.\n\nLet us now see in what way this theory has been applied to colouration.\nThe colours, or, more strictly, the arrangement of colours, in patterns\nis of several kinds, viz.:--\n\n1. _General Colouration_, or such as appears to have no very special\nfunction _as_ colour. We find this most frequently in the vegetable\nkingdom, as, for instance, the green hue of leaves, which, though it has\na most valuable function chemically has no particular use as colour, so\nfar as we can see.\n\n2. _Distinctive Colouration_, or the arrangement of colours in different\npatterns or tints corresponding to each species. This is the most usual\nstyle of colouring, and the three following kinds are modifications of\nit. It is this which gives each species its own design, whether in\nanimals or plants.\n\n3. _Protective Resemblance_, or the system of colouring which conceals\nthe animal from its prey, or hides the prey from its foe. Of this class\nare the green hues of many caterpillars, the brown tints of desert\nbirds, and the more remarkable resemblances of insects to sticks and\nleaves.\n\n4. _Mimetic Colouration_, or the resemblance of one animal to another.\nIt is always the resemblance of a rare species, which is the favourite\nfood of some creature, to a common species nauseous to the mimicker's\nfoe. Of this character are many butterflies.\n\n5. _Warning Colours_, or distinctive markings and tints rendering an\nanimal conspicuous, and, as it were, proclaiming _noli me tangere_ to\nits would-be attackers.\n\n6. _Sexual Colours_, or particular modifications of colour in the two\nsexes, generally taking the form of brilliancy in the male, as in the\npeacock and birds of paradise.\n\nUnder one or other of these headings most schemes of colouration will be\nfound to arrange themselves.\n\nAt the outset, and confining ourselves to the animal kingdom for the\npresent, bearing in mind the fierce intensity of the struggle for life,\nit would seem that any scheme of colour that would enable its possessor\nto elude its foes or conceal itself from its prey, would be of vital\nimportance. Hence we might infer that protective colouring would be a\nvery usual phenomenon; and such we find to be the case. In the sea we\nhave innumerable instances of protective colouring. Fishes that lie upon\nthe sandy bottom are sand-, like soles and plaice, in other\norders we find the same hues in shrimps and crabs, and a common species\non our shores (_Carcinus maenas_) has, just behind the eyes, a little\nlight irregular patch, so like the shell fragments around that when it\nhides in the sand, with eyes and light spot alone showing, it is\nimpossible to distinguish it.\n\nThe land teems with protective colours. The sombre tints of so many\ninsects, birds and animals are cases in point, as are the golden coat of\nthe spider that lurks in the buttercup, and the green mottlings of the\nunderwings of the orange-tip butterfly. Where absolute hiding is\nimpossible, as on the African desert, we find every bird and insect,\nwithout exception, assimilating the colour of the sand.\n\nBut if protective colour is thus abundant, it is no less true that\ncolour of the most vivid description has arisen for the sole purpose of\nattracting notice. We observe this in the hues of many butterflies, in\nthe gem-like humming birds, in sun-birds, birds of paradise, peacocks\nand pheasants. To see the shining metallic blue of a Brazilian Morpho\nflashing in the sun, as it lazily floats along the forest glades, is to\nbe sure that in such cases the object of the insect is to attract\nnotice.\n\nThese brilliant hues, when studied, appear to fall into two classes,\nhaving very diverse functions, namely Sexual and Warning Colours.\n\nProtection is ensured in many ways, and among insects one of the\ncommonest has been the acquisition of a nauseous flavour. This is often\napparent even to our grosser senses; and the young naturalist who\ncaptures his first crimson-and-green Burnet Moth or Scarlet Tiger,\nbecomes at once aware of the existence of a fetid greasy secretion. This\nthe insectivorous birds know so well that not one will ever eat such\ninsects. But unless there were some outward and visible sign of this\ninward and sickening taste, it would little avail the insect to be first\nkilled and then rejected. Hence these warning colours--they as\neffectively signal danger as the red and green lamps on our railways.\n\nIt may here be remarked that wherever mimickry occurs in insects, the\nspecies mimicked is always an uneatable one, and the mimicker a\npalatable morsel. It is nature's way of writing \"poison\" on her\njam-pots.\n\nThe other class of prominent colours--the Sexual--have given rise to two\nimportant theories, the one by Darwin, the counter-theory by Wallace.\n\nDarwin's theory of Sexual Selection is briefly this:--He points out in\nmuch detail how the male is generally the most powerful, the most\naggressive, the most ardent, and therefore the wooer, while the female\nis, as a rule, gentler, smaller, and is wooed or courted. He brings\nforward an enormous mass of well-weighed facts to show, for example, how\noften the males display their plumes and beauties before their loves in\nthe pairing season, and his work is a long exposition of the truth that\nTennyson proclaimed when he wrote:--\n\n \"In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast,\n In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest,\n In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove,\n In the spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.\"\n\nThat birds are eminently capable of appreciating beauty is certain, and\nnumerous illustrations are familiar to everyone. Suffice it here to\nnotice the pretty Bower Birds of Australia, that adorn their love\narbours with bright shells and flowers, and show as unmistakable a\ndelight in them as the connoisseur among his art treasures.\n\nFrom these and kindred facts Darwin draws the conclusion that the\nfemales are most charmed with, and select the most brilliant males, and\nthat by continued selection of this character, the sexual hues have been\ngradually evolved.\n\nTo this theory Wallace takes exception. Admitting, as all must, the fact\nof sexually distinct ornamentation, he demurs to the conclusion that\nthey have been produced by sexual selection.\n\nIn the first place, he insists upon the absence of all proof that the\nleast attractive males fail to obtain partners, without which the theory\nmust fail. Next he tells us that it was the case of the Argus pheasant,\nso admirably worked out by Darwin, that first shook his faith in sexual\nselection. Is it possible, he asks, that those exquisite eye-spots,\nshaded \"like balls lying loose within sockets\" (objects of which the\nbirds could have had no possible experience) should have been produced\n... \"through thousands and tens of thousands of female birds, all\npreferring those males whose markings varied slightly in this one\ndirection, this uniformity of choice continuing through thousands and\ntens of thousands of generations\"?[1]\n\nAs an alternative explanation, he would advance no new theory, but\nsimply apply the known laws of evolution. He points out, and dwells\nupon, the high importance of protection to the female while sitting on\nthe nest. In this way he accounts for the more sombre hues of the\nfemale; and finds strong support in the fact that in those birds in\nwhich the male undertakes the household duties, he is of a domestic dun\ncolour, and his gad-about-spouse is bedizened like a country-girl at\nfair time.\n\nWith regard to the brilliant hues themselves, he draws attention to the\nfact that depth and intensity of colour are a sign of vigour and\nhealth--that the pairing time is one of intense excitement, and that we\nshould naturally expect to find the brightest hues then displayed.\nMoreover, he shows--and this is most important to us--that \"the most\nhighly- and most richly varied markings occur on those parts\nwhich have undergone the greatest modification, or have acquired the\nmost abnormal development.\"[2]\n\nIt is not our object to discuss these rival views; but they are here\nlaid down in skeleton, that the nature of the problem of the principles\nof colouration may be easily understood.\n\nSeeing, then, how infinitely varied is colouration, and how potently\nselection has modified it, the question may be asked, \"Is it possible\nto find any general system or law which has determined the main plan of\ndecoration, any system which underlies natural selection, and through\nwhich it works\"? We venture to think there is; and the object of this\nwork is to develop the laws we have arrived at after several years of\nstudy.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [1] Wallace, Tropical Nature, p. 206.\n [2] _Op. cit._, p. 206.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER II.\n\n INHERITED MEMORY.\n\n\nMany of our observations seemed to suggest a quasi-intelligent action on\nthe part of the beings under examination; and we were led, early in the\ncourse of our studies, to adopt provisionally the hypothesis that memory\nwas inherited--that the whole was consequently wiser than its parts, the\nspecies wiser than the individual, the genus wiser than the species.\n\nOne illustration will suffice to show the possibility of memory being\ninherited. Chickens, as a rule, are hatched with a full knowledge of how\nto pick up a living, only a few stupid ones having to be taught by the\nmother the process of pecking. When eggs are hatched artificially,\nignorant as well as learned chicks are produced, and the less\nintelligent, having no hen instructor, would infallibly die in the midst\nof plenty. But if a tapping noise, like pecking, be made near them, they\nhesitate awhile, and then take to their food with avidity. Here the\ntapping noise seems certainly to have awakened the ancestral memory\nwhich lay dormant.\n\nIt may be said all this is habit. But what is habit? Is it any\nexplanation to say a creature performs a given action by habit? or is it\nnot rather playing with a word which expresses a phenomenon without\nexplaining it? Directly we bring memory into the field we get a real\nexplanation. A habit is acquired by repetition, and could not arise if\nthe preceding experience were forgotten. Life is largely made up of\nrepetition, which involves the formation of habits; and, indeed,\neveryone's experience (habit again) shows that life only runs smoothly\nwhen certain necessary habits have been acquired so perfectly as to be\nperformed without effort. A being at maturity is a great storehouse of\nacquired habits; and of these many are so perfectly acquired, _i.e._,\nhave been performed so frequently, that the possessor is quite\nunconscious of possessing them.\n\nHabit tends to become automatic; indeed, a habit can hardly be said to\nbe formed until it is automatic. But habits are the result of experience\nand repetition, that is, have arisen in the first instance by some\nreasoning process; and reasoning implies consciousness. Nevertheless,\nthe action once thought out, or reasoned upon, requires less conscious\neffort on a second occasion, and still less on a third, and so on, until\nthe mere occurrence of given conditions is sufficient to ensure\nimmediate response without conscious effort, and the action is performed\nmechanically or automatically: it is now a true habit. Habit, then,\ncommences in consciousness and ends in unconsciousness. To say,\ntherefore, when we see an action performed without conscious thought,\nthat consciousness has never had part in its production, is as illogical\nas to say that because we read automatically we can never have learned\nto read.\n\nThe thorough appreciation of this principle is absolutely essential to\nthe argument of this work; for to inherited memory we attribute not only\nthe formation of habits and instincts, but also the modification of\norgans, which leads to the formation of new species. In a word, it is to\nmemory we attribute the possibility of evolution, and by it the struggle\nfor existence is enabled to re-act upon the forms of life, and produce\nthe harmony we see in the organic world.\n\nOur own investigations had led us very far in this direction; but we\nfailed to grasp the entire truth until Mr. S. Butler's remarkable work,\n\"Life and Habit,\" came to our notice. This valuable contribution to\nevolution smoothed away the whole of the difficulties we had\nexperienced, and enabled us to propound the views here set forth with\ngreater clearness than had been anticipated.\n\nThe great difficulty in Mr. Darwin's works is the fact that he starts\nwith variations ready made, without trying, as a rule, to account for\nthem, and then shows that if these varieties are beneficial the\npossessor has a better chance in the great struggle for existence, and\nthe accumulation of such variations will give rise to new species. This\nis what he means by the title of his work, \"The Origin of Species by\nmeans of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the\nStruggle for Life.\" But this tells us nothing whatever about the origin\nof species. As Butler puts it, \"Suppose that it is an advantage to a\nhorse to have an especially broad and hard hoof: then a horse born with\nsuch a hoof will, indeed, probably survive in the struggle for\nexistence; but he was not born with the larger and harder hoof _because\nof his subsequently surviving_. He survived because he was born fit--not\nhe was born fit because he survived. The variation must arise first and\nbe preserved afterwards.\"[3]\n\nMr. Butler works out with admirable force the arguments, first, that\nhabitual action begets unconsciousness; second, that there is a unity of\npersonality between parent and offspring; third, that there is a memory\nof the oft-repeated acts of past existences, and, lastly, that there is\na latency of that memory until it is re-kindled by the presence of\nassociated ideas.\n\nAs to the first point, we need say no more, for daily experience\nconfirms it; but the other points must be dealt with more fully.\n\nMr. Butler argues for the absolute identity of the parent and offspring;\nand, indeed, this is a necessity. Personal identity is a phrase, very\nconvenient, it is true, but still only a provisional mode of naming\nsomething we cannot define. In our own bodies we say that our identity\nremains the same from birth to death, though we know that our bodily\nparticles are ever changing, that our habits, thoughts, aspirations,\neven our features, change--that we are no more really the same person\nthan the ripple over a pebble in a brook is the same from moment to\nmoment, though its form remains. If our personal identity thus elude our\nsearch in active life, it certainly becomes no more tangible if we trace\nexistence back into pre-natal states. We _are_, in one sense, the same\nindividual; but, what is equally important, we _were_ part of our\nmother, as absolutely as her limbs are part of her. There is no break of\ncontinuity between offspring and parent--the river of life is a\ncontinuous stream. We judge of our own identity by the continuity which\nwe see and appreciate; but that greater continuity reaching backwards\nbeyond the womb to the origin of life itself is no less a fact which\nshould be constantly kept in view. The individual, in reality, never\ndies; for the lamp of life never goes out.\n\nFor a full exposition of this problem, Mr. Butler's \"Life and Habit\"\nmust be consulted, where the reader will find it treated in a masterly\nway.\n\nThis point was very early appreciated in our work; and in a\npaper read before the Anthropological Institute[4] in the year 1879,\nbut not published, this continuity was insisted upon by means of\ndiagrams, both of animal and plant life, and its connection with heredity\nwas clearly shown, though its relation to memory was only dimly\nseen. From this paper the following passage may be quoted: \"If, as\nI believe, the origin of form and decoration is due to a process similar\nto the visualising of object-thoughts in the human mind, the power\nof this visualising must commence with the life of the being. It\nwould seem that this power may be best understood by a correct\ninsight into biological development. It has always excited wonder\nthat a child, a separate individual, should inherit and reproduce the\ncharacters of its parents, and, indeed, of its ancestors; and the\ntendency of modern scientific writing is often to make this obscure\nsubject still darker. But if we remember that the great law of all\nliving matter is, that the child is _not_ a separate individual, but a\npart of the living body of the parent, up to a certain date, when it\nassumes a separate existence, then we can comprehend how living\nbeings inherit ancestral characters, for they are parts of one continuous\nseries in which not a single break has existed or can ever\ntake place. Just as the wave-form over a pebble in a stream\nremains constant, though the particles of water which compose it\nare ever changing, so the wave-form of life, which is heredity,\nremains constant, though the bodies which exhibit it are continually\nchanging. The retrospection of heredity and memory, and the\nprospection of thought, are well shown in Mrs. Meritt's beautiful\ndiagram.\"\n\nThis passage illustrates how parallel our thoughts were to Mr. Butler's,\nwhose work we did not then know. What we did not see at the time was,\nthat the power of thinking or memory might antedate birth. It is quite\nimpossible adequately to express our sense of admiration of Mr. Butler's\nwork.\n\nGranting then the physical identity of offspring and parent, the\ndoctrine of heredity becomes plain. The child becomes like the parent,\nbecause it is placed in almost identical circumstances to those of its\nparent, and is indeed part of that parent. If memory be possessed by all\nliving matter, and this is what we now believe, we can clearly see how\nheredity acts. The embryo develops into a man like its parent, because\nhuman embryos have gone through this process many times--till they are\nunconscious of the action, they know how to proceed so thoroughly.\n\nDarwin, after deeply pondering over the phenomena of growth, repair of\nwaste and injury, heredity and kindred matters, advanced what he wisely\ncalled a provisional hypothesis--pangenesis.\n\n\"I have been led,\" he remarks, \"or, rather, forced, to form a view which\nto a certain extent, connects these facts by a tangible method. Everyone\nwould wish to explain to himself even in an imperfect manner, how it is\npossible for a character possessed by some remote ancestor suddenly to\nreappear in the offspring; how the effects of increased or decreased use\nof a limb can be transmitted to the child; how the male sexual element\ncan act, not solely on the ovules, but occasionally on the mother form;\nhow a hybrid can be produced by the union of the cellular tissue of two\nplants independently of the organs of generation; how a limb can be\nreproduced on the exact line of amputation, with neither too much nor\ntoo little added; how the same organism may be produced by such widely\ndifferent processes as budding and true seminal generation; and, lastly,\nhow of two allied forms, one passes in the course of its development\nthrough the most complex metamorphoses, and the other does not do so,\nthough when mature both are alike in every detail of structure. I am\naware that my view is merely a provisional hypothesis or speculation;\nbut until a better one be advanced, it will serve to bring together a\nmultitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any\nefficient cause.\"[5]\n\nAfter showing in detail that the body is made up of an infinite number\nof units, each of which is a centre of more or less independent action,\nhe proceeds as follows:--\n\n\"It is universally admitted that the cells or units of the body increase\nby self-division or proliferation, retaining the same nature, and that\nthey ultimately become converted into the various tissues of the\nsubstances of the body. But besides this means of increase I assume that\nthe units throw off minute granules, which are dispersed throughout the\nwhole system; that these, when supplied with proper nutriment, multiply\nby self-division, and are ultimately developed into units like those\nfrom which they were originally derived. These granules may be called\ngemmules. They are collected from all parts of the system to constitute\nthe sexual elements, and their development in the next generations forms\na new being; but they are likewise capable of transmission in a dormant\nstate to future generations, and may then be developed. Their\ndevelopment depends on their union with other partially developed or\nnascent cells, which precede them in the regular course of growth....\nGemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every unit; not only during\nthe adult state, but during each stage of development of every organ;\nbut not necessarily during the continued existence of the same unit.\nLastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual\naffinity for each other, leading to their aggregation into buds, or into\nthe sexual elements. Hence, it is not the reproductive organs or buds\nwhich generate new organisms, but the units of which each individual is\ncomposed.\"[6]\n\nNow, suppose that instead of these hypothetic gemmules we endow the\nunits with memory in ever so slight a degree, how simple the explanation\nof all these facts becomes! What an unit has learned to do under given\nconditions it can do again under like circumstances. Memory _does_ pass\nfrom one unit to another, or we could not remember anything as men that\nhappened in childhood, for we are not physically composed of the same\nmaterials. It is not at all necessary that an unit should remember it\nremembers any more than we in reading are conscious of the efforts we\nunderwent in learning our letters. Few of us can remember learning to\nwalk, and none of us recollect learning to talk. Yet surely the fact\nthat we do read, and walk, and talk, proves that we have not forgotten\nhow.\n\nBearing in mind, then, the fundamental laws that the offspring is one in\ncontinuity with its parents, and that memory arises chiefly from\nrepetition in a definite order (for we cannot readily reverse the\nprocess--we cannot sing the National Anthem backwards), it is easy to\nsee how the oft-performed actions of an individual become its\nunconscious habits, and these by inheritance become the instincts and\nunconscious actions of the species. Experience and memory are thus the\nkey-note to the origin of species.\n\nGranting that all living matter possesses memory, we must admit that all\nactions are at first conscious in a certain degree, and in the \"sense of\nneed\" we have the great stimulation to action.\n\nIn Natural Selection, as expounded by Mr. Darwin, there is no principle\nby which small variations can be accumulated. Take any form, and let it\nvary in all directions. We may represent the original form by a spot,\nand the variations by a ring of dots. Each one of these dots may vary in\nall directions, and so other rings of dots must be made, and so on, the\nresult not being development along a certain line, but an infinity of\ninterlacing curves. The tree of life is not like this. It branches ever\noutwards and onwards. The eyes of the Argus pheasant and peacock have\nbeen formed by the accumulation, through long generations, of more and\nmore perfect forms; the mechanism of the eye and hand has arisen by the\ngradual accumulation of more and more perfect forms, and these processes\nhave been continued along definite lines.\n\nIf we grant memory we eliminate this hap-hazard natural selection. We\nsee how a being that has once begun to perform a certain action will\nsoon perform it automatically, and when its habits are confirmed its\ndescendants will more readily work in this direction than any other, and\nso specialisation may arise.\n\nTo take the cases of protective resemblance and mimicry. Darwin and\nWallace have to start with a form something like the body mimicked,\nwithout giving any idea as to how that resemblance could arise. But with\nthis key of memory we can open nature's treasure house much more fully.\nLook, for instance, at nocturnal insects; and one need not go further\nthan the beetles (_Blatta_) in the kitchen, to see that they have a\nsense of need, and use it. Suddenly turn up the gas, and see the hurried\nscamper of the alarmed crowd. They are perfectly aware that danger is at\nhand. Equally well do they feel that safety lies in concealment; and\nwhile all the foraging party on the white floor are scuttling away into\ndark corners, the fortunate dweller on the hearth stands motionless\nbeneath the shadow of the fire-irons; a picture of keen, intense\nexcitement, with antennae quivering with alertness. On the clean floor a\ncareless girl has dropped a piece of flat coal, and on it beetles stand\nrigidly. They are as conscious as we are that the shadow, and the colour\nof the coal afford concealment, and we cannot doubt that they have\nbecome black from their sense of the protection they thus enjoy. They do\nnot say, as Tom, the Water Baby, says, \"I must be clean,\" but they know\nthey must be black, and black they are.\n\nThere is, then, clearly an effort to assimilate in hue to their\nsurroundings, and the whole question is comparatively clear.\n\nMr. Wallace, in commenting upon the butterfly (_Papilio nireus_)--which,\nat the Cape, in its chrysalis state, copies the bright hues of the\nvegetation upon which it passes its dormant phase--says that this is a\nkind of natural colour photography; thus reducing the action to a mere\nphysical one. We might as well say the dun coat of the sportsman among\nthe brown heather was acquired mechanically. Moreover, Wallace\ndistinctly shows that when the larvae are made to pupate on unnatural\ncolours, like sky-blue or vermilion, the pupae do not mimic the colour.\nThere is no reason why \"natural photography\" should not copy this as\nwell as the greens, and browns, and yellows. But how easy the\nexplanation becomes when memory, the sense of need, and Butler's little\n\"dose of reason,\" are admitted! For ages the butterfly has been\nacquainted with greens, and browns, and yellows, they are every day\nexperiences; but it has no acquaintance with aniline dyes, and therefore\ncannot copy them.\n\nThe moral of all this is that things become easy by repetition; that\nwithout experience nothing can be done well, and that the course of\ndevelopment is always in one direction, because the memory of the road\ntraversed is not forgotten.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [3] Evolution, Old and New, p. 346.\n [4] On a New Method of Expressing the Law of Specific Change. By A.\n Tylor.\n [5] Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii., p. 350.\n [6] Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii., p. 370.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER III.\n\n INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.\n\n\nNatural science has shown us how the existing colouration of an animal\nor plant can be laid hold of and modified in almost infinite ways under\nthe influence of natural or artificial evolution.\n\nIt shows us, for example, how the early pink leaf-buds have been\nmodified into attractive flowers to ensure fertilisation; and it has\ntracked this action through many of its details. It has explained the\nrich hue of the bracts of _Bougainvillea_, in which the flowers\nthemselves are inconspicuous, and the flower-stems in other\nplants, as efforts to attract notice of the flower-frequenting insects.\nIt has explained how a blaze of colour is attained in some plants, as in\nroses and lilies by large single flowers; how the same effect is\nproduced by a number of small flowers brought to the same plane by\ngradually increasing flower-stalks, as in the elderberry, or by still\nsmaller flowers clustered into a head, as in daisies and sunflowers.\n\nIt teaches us again how fruits have become highly to lure\nfruit-eating birds and mammals, and how many flowers are striped as\nguides to the honey-bearing nectary.\n\nEntering more into detail, we are enabled to see how the weird\nwalking-stick and leaf-insects have attained their remarkable protective\nresemblances, and how the East Indian leaf-butterflies are enabled to\ndeceive alike the birds that would fain devour them, and the naturalist\nwho would study them. Even the still more remarkable cases of protective\nmimicry, in which one animal so closely mimics another as to derive all\nthe benefits that accrue to its protector, are made clear.\n\nAll these and many other points have been deeply investigated, and are\nnow the common property of naturalists.\n\nBut up to the present no one has attempted systematically to find out\nthe principles or laws which govern the distribution of colouration;\nlaws which underlie natural selection, and by which alone it can work.\nNatural selection can show, for instance, how the lion has become almost\nuniform in colour, while the leopard is spotted, and the tiger striped.\nThe lion living on the plains in open country is thus rendered less\nconspicuous to his prey, the leopard delighting in forest glades is\nhardly distinguishable among the changing lights and shadows that\nflicker through the leaves, and the tiger lurking amid the jungle\nsimulates the banded shades of the cane-brake in his striped mantle.\n\nBeyond this, science has not yet gone; and it is our object to carry the\nstudy of natural colouration still further: to show that the lion's\nsimple coat, the leopard's spots, and the tiger's stripes, are but\nmodifications of a deeper principle.\n\nLet us, as an easy and familiar example, study carefully the colouration\nof a common tabby cat. First, we notice, it is darker on the back than\nbeneath, and this is an almost universal law. It would, indeed, be quite\nuniversal among mammals but for some curious exceptions among monkeys\nand a few other creatures of arboreal habits, which delight in hanging\nfrom the branches in such a way as to expose their ventral surface to\nthe light. These apparent exceptions thus lead us to the first general\nlaw, namely, that colouration is invariably most intense upon that\nsurface upon which the light falls.\n\nAs in most cases the back of the animal is the most exposed, that is the\nseat of intensest colour. But whenever any modification of position\nexists, as for instance in the side-swimming fishes like the sole, the\nupper side is dark and the lower light.\n\nThe next point to notice in the cat is that from the neck, along the\nback to the tail, is a dark stripe. This stripe is generally continued,\nbut slighter in character across the top of the skull; but it will be\nseen clearly that at the neck the pattern changes, and the skull-pattern\nis quite distinct from that on the body.\n\nFrom the central, or what we may call the back-bone stripe, bands pass\nat a strong but varying angle, which we may call rib-stripes.\n\nNow examine the body carefully, and the pattern will be seen to change\nat the shoulders and thighs, and also at each limb-joint. In fact, if\nthe cat be attentively remarked, it will clearly be seen that the\ncolouration or pattern is _regional_, and dependent upon the structure\nof the cat.\n\nNow a cat is a vertebrate or backboned animal, possessing four limbs,\nand if we had to describe its parts roughly, we should specify the head,\ntrunk, limbs and tail. Each of these regions has its own pattern or\ndecoration. The head is marked by a central line, on each side of which\nare other irregular lines, or more frequently convoluted or twisted\nspots. The trunk has its central axial backbone stripe and its lateral\nrib-lines. The tail is ringed; the limbs have each particular stripes\nand patches. Moreover, the limb-marks are largest at the shoulder and\nhip-girdles, and decrease downwards, being smallest, or even wanting, on\nthe feet; and the changes take place at the joints.\n\nAll this seems to have some general relation to the internal structure\nof the animal. Such we believe to be the case; and this brings us to the\nsecond great law of colouration, namely, that it is dependent upon the\nanatomy of the animal. We may enunciate these two laws as follows:--\n\n I. THE LAW OF EXPOSURE. Colouration is primarily dependent upon the\n direct action of light, being always most intense upon that surface\n upon which the light falls most directly.\n\n II. THE LAW OF STRUCTURE. Colouration, especially where\n diversified, follows the chief lines of structure, and changes at\n points, such as the joints, where function changes.\n\nIt is the enunciation and illustration of these two laws that form the\nsubject of the present treatise.\n\nIn the sequel we shall treat, in more or less detail, of each point as\nit arises; but in order to render the argument clearer, this chapter is\ndevoted to a general sketch of my views.\n\nOf the first great law but little need be said here, as it is almost\nself-evident, and has never been disputed. It is true not only of the\nupper and under-sides of animals, but also of the covered and uncovered\nparts or organs.\n\nFor example, birds possess four kinds of feathers, of which one only,\nthe contour feathers, occur upon the surface and are exposed to the\nlight. It is in these alone that we find the tints and patterns that\nrender birds so strikingly beautiful, the underlying feathers being\ninvariably of a sober grey. Still further, many of the contour feathers\noverlap, and the parts so overlapped, being removed from the light are\ngrey also, although the exposed part may be resplendent with the most\nvivid metallic hues. A similar illustration can be found in most\nbutterflies and moths. The upper wing slightly overlaps the lower along\nthe lower margin, and although the entire surface of the upper wing is\ncovered with scales, and the underwing apparently so as well,\nit will be found that the thin unexposed margin is of an uniform grey,\nand quite devoid of any pattern.\n\nThe law of structure, on the other hand, is an entirely new idea, and\ndemands more detailed explanation. Speaking in the broadest sense, and\nconfining ourselves to the animal kingdom, animals fall naturally into\ntwo great sections, or sub-kingdoms, marked by the possession or absence\nof an internal bony skeleton. Those which possess this structure are\nknown as _Vertebrata_, or backboned animals, because the\nvertebral-column or backbone is always present. The other section is\ncalled the _Invertebrata_, or backboneless animals.\n\nNow, if we take the Vertebrata, we shall find that the system of\ncolouration, however modified, exhibits an unmistakably strong tendency\nto assume a vertebral or axial character. Common observation confirms\nthis; and the dark stripes down the backs of horses, asses, cattle,\ngoats, etc., are familiar illustrations. The only great exception to\nthis law is in the case of birds, but here, again, the exception is more\napparent than real, as will be abundantly shown in the sequel. This\naxial stripe is seen equally well in fishes and reptiles.\n\nFor our present purpose we may again divide the vertebrates into limbed\nand limbless. Wherever we find limbless animals, such as snakes, the\ndorsal stripe is prominent, and has a strong tendency to break up into\nvertebra-like markings. In the limbed animals, on the other hand, we\nfind the limbs strongly marked by pattern, and thus, in the higher forms\nthe system of colouration becomes axial and appendicular.\n\nAs a striking test of the universality of this law we may take the\ncephalopoda, as illustrated in the cuttle-fishes. These creatures are\ngenerally considered to stand at the head of the Mollusca, and are\nplaced, in systems of classification, nearest to the Vertebrata;\nindeed, they have even been considered to be the lowest type of\nVertebrates. This is owing to the possession of a hard axial organ,\noccupying much the position of the backbone, and is the well-known\ncuttle-bone. Now, these animals are peculiar amongst their class, from\npossessing, very frequently, an axial stripe. We thus see clearly that\nthe dorsal stripe is directly related to the internal axial skeleton.\n\nTurning now to the invertebrata, we are at once struck with the entire\nabsence of the peculiar vertebrate plan of decoration; and find\nourselves face to face with several distinct plans.\n\nFrom a colouration point of view, we might readily divide the animal\nkingdom into two classes, marked by the presence or absence of distinct\norgans. The first of these includes all the animals except the\nProtozoa--the lowest members of the animal kingdom--which are simply\nmasses of jelly-like protoplasm, without any distinct organs.\n\nNow, on our view, that colouration follows structure, we ought to find\nan absence of decoration in this structureless group. This is what we\nactually do find. The lowest Protozoa are entirely without any system of\ncolouring; being merely of uniform tint, generally of brown colour. As\nif to place this fact beyond doubt, we find in the higher members a\ntendency to organization in a pulsating vesicle, which constantly\nretains the same position, and may, hence, be deemed an incipient organ.\nNow, this vesicle is invariably tinged with a different hue from the\nrest of the being. We seem, indeed, here to be brought into contact with\nthe first trace of colouration, and we find it to arise with the\ncommencement of organization, and to be actually applied to the\nincipient organ itself.\n\nAscending still higher in the scale, we come to distinctly organized\nanimals, known as the _Coelenterata_; of which familiar examples are\nfound in the jelly-fishes and sea anemonies. These animals are\ncharacterized by the possession of distinct organs, are transparent, or\ntranslucent, and the organs are arranged radially.\n\nNo one can have failed to notice on our coasts, as the filmy\njelly-fishes float by, that the looped canals of the disc are delicately\ntinted with violet; and closer examination will show the radiating\nmuscular bands as pellucid white lines; and the sense organs fringing\nthe umbrella are vividly black--the first trace of opaque colouration in\nthe animal kingdom.\n\nThese animals were of yore united with the star-fishes and sea-urchins,\nto form the sub-kingdom Radiata, because of their radiate structure.\nNow, in all these creatures we find the system of colouration to be\nradiate also.\n\nPassing to the old sub-kingdom Articulata, which includes the worms,\ncrabs, lobsters, insects, etc., we come to animals whose structure is\nsegmental; that is to say, the body is made up of a number of distinct\nsegments. Among these we find the law holds, rigidly that the\ncolouration is segmental also, as may be beautifully seen in lobsters\nand caterpillars.\n\nLastly, we have the Molluscs, which fall for our purpose into two\nclasses, the naked and the shelled. The naked molluscs are often most\nexquisitely , and the feathery gills that adorn many are\nsuffused with some of the most brilliant colours in nature. The shelled\nmolluscs differ from all other animals, in that the shell is a\nsecretion, almost as distinct from the animals as a house is from its\noccupant. This shell is built up bit by bit along its margin by means of\na peculiar organ known as the mantle--its structure is marginate--its\ndecoration is marginate also.\n\nWe have thus rapidly traversed the animal kingdom, and find that in all\ncases the system of decoration follows the structural peculiarity of the\nbeing decorated. Thus in the:--\n\n Structureless protozoa there is no varying colouration.\n Radiate animals--the system is radiate.\n Segmented \" \" segmental.\n Marginate \" \" marginal.\n Vertebrate \" \" axial.\n\nWe must now expound this great structural law in detail, and we shall\nfind that all the particular ornamentations in their various\nmodifications can be shown to arise from certain principles, namely--\n\n 1. The principle of Emphasis,\n 2. The \" Repetition.\n\nThe term _Emphasis_ has been selected to express the marking out or\ndistinguishing of important functional or structural regions by\nornament, either as form or colour. It is with colour alone that we have\nto deal.\n\nArchitects are familiar with the term emphasis, as applied to the\nornamentation of buildings. This ornamentation, they say, should\n_emphasize_, point out, or make clear to the eye, the use or function\nof the part emphasized. They recognise the fact that to give sublimity\nand grace to a building, the ornamentation must be related to the\ncharacter of the building as a whole, and to its parts in particular.\n\nThus in a tower whose object or function is to suggest height, the\nprincipal lines of decoration must be perpendicular, while in the body\nof a building such as a church, the chief lines must be horizontal, to\nexpress the opposite sentiment. So, too, with individual parts. A banded\ncolumn, such as we see in Early English Gothic, looks weak and incapable\nof supporting the superincumbent weight. It suggests the idea that the\nshaft is bound up to strengthen it. On the other hand, the vertical\nflutings of a Greek column, at once impress us with their function of\nbearing vertical pressure and their power to sustain it.\n\nThis principle is carried into colour in most of our useful arts. The\nwheelwright instinctively lines out the rim and spokes and does not\ncross them, feeling that the effect would be to suggest weakness.\nMoreover, in all our handicraft work, the points and tips are emphasized\nwith colour.\n\nThis principle seems to hold good throughout nature. It is not suggested\nthat the colouration is applied to important parts _in order to_\nemphasize them, but rather that being important parts, they have become\nnaturally the seats of most vivid colour. How this comes about we cannot\nhere discuss, but shall refer to it further on.\n\nIt is owing to this pervading natural principle, that we find the\nextreme points of quadrupeds so universally decorated. The tips of the\nnose, ears and tail, and the feet also proclaim the fact, and the\ndecoration of the sense organs, even down to the dark spots around each\nhair of a cat's feelers, are additional proofs. Look, for instance, at a\ncaterpillar with its breathing holes or spiracles along the sides, and\nsee how these points are selected as the seats of specialized colour,\neye-spots and stripes in every variety will be seen, all centred around\nthese important air-holes.\n\nThis leads us to our second principle, that of repetition, which simply\nillustrates the tendency to repeat similar markings in like areas. Thus\nthe spiracular marks are of the same character on each segment.\n\nThe principle of repetition, however, goes further than this, and tends\nto repeat the style of decoration upon allied parts. We see this\nstrongly in many caterpillars in which spiracular markings are\ncontinued over the segments which lack spiracles; and it is probably\nowing to this tendency that the rib-like markings on so many mammals are\ncontinued beyond the ribs into the dorsal region.\n\nUpon these two principles the whole of the colouration of nature seems\nto depend. But the plan is infinitely modified by natural selection,\notherwise the result would have been so patent as to need no\nelucidation.\n\nNatural selection acts by suppressing, or developing, structurally\ndistributed colour. So far as our researches have gone, it seems most\nprobable that the fundamental or primitive colouration is arranged in\nspots. These spots may expand into regular or irregular patches, or run\ninto stripes, of which many cases will be given in the sequel. Now,\nnatural selection may suppress certain spots, or lines, or expand them\ninto wide, uniform masses, or it may suppress some and repeat others. On\nthese simple principles the whole scheme of natural colouration can be\nexplained; and to do this is the object of the following pages.\n\nInto the origin of the colour sense it is not our province to enlarge;\nbut, it will reasonably be asked, How are these colours of use to the\ncreature decorated? The admiration of colour, the charm of landscape, is\nthe newest of human developments. Are we, then, to attribute to the\nlower animals a discriminative power greater than most races of men\npossess, and, if so, on the theory of evolution, how comes it that man\nlost those very powers his remote ancestors possessed in so great\nperfection? To these questions we will venture to reply.\n\nFirstly, then, it must be admitted that the higher animals do actually\npossess this power; and no one will ever doubt it if he watches a common\nhedge-sparrow hunting for caterpillars. To see this bird carefully\nseeking the green species in a garden, and deliberately avoiding the\nmultitudes of highly but nauseous larvae on the currant bushes,\narduously examining every leaf and twig for the protected brown and\ngreen larvae which the keen eye of the naturalist detects only by close\nobservation; hardly deigning to look at the speckled beauties that are\nfeeding in decorated safety before his eyes, while his callow brood are\nclamouring for food--to see this is to be assured for ever that birds\ncan, and do, discriminate colour perfectly. What is true of birds can be\nshown to be true of other and lower types; and this leads us to a very\nimportant conclusion--that colouration has been developed with the\nevolution of the sense of sight. We can look back in fancy to the far\noff ages, when no eye gazed upon the world, and we can imagine that then\ncolour in ornamental devices must have been absent, and a dreary\nmonotony of simple hues must have prevailed.\n\nWith the evolution of sight it might be of importance that even the\nsightless animals should be ; and in this way we can account for\nthe decoration of coral polyps, and other animals that have no eyes;\njust as we find no difficulty in understanding the colouration of\nflowers.\n\nColour, in fact, so far as external nature is concerned, is all in all\nto the lower animals. By its means prey is discovered, or foes escaped.\nBut in the case of man quite a different state of things exists. The\nlower animals can only be modified and adapted to their surroundings by\nthe direct influence of nature. Man, on the other hand, can utilise the\nforces of nature to his ends. He does not need to steal close to his\nprey--he possesses missiles. His arm, in reality, is bounded, not by his\nfinger tips, but by the distance to which he can send his bolts. He is\nnot so directly dependent upon nature; and, as his mental powers\nincrease, his dependence lessens, and in this way--the aesthetic\nprinciple not yet being awakened--we can understand how his colour\nsense, for want of practice, decayed, to be reawakened in these our\ntimes, with a vividness and power as unequalled as is his mastery over\nnature--the master of his ancestors.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IV.\n\n COLOUR, ITS NATURE AND RECOGNITION.\n\n\nThis chapter will be devoted to a slight sketch of the nature of light\nand colour, and to proofs that niceties of colour are distinguished by\nanimals.\n\nFirst, as to the nature of light and colour. Colour is essentially the\neffect of different kinds of vibrations upon certain nerves. Without\nsuch nerves, light can produce no luminous effect whatever; and to a\nworld of blind creatures, there would be neither light nor colour, for\nas we have said, light and colour are not material things, but are the\npeculiar results or effects of vibrations of different size and\nvelocity.\n\nThese effects are due to the impact of minute undulations or waves,\nwhich stream from luminous objects, the chief of which is the sun. These\nwaves are of extreme smallness, the longest being only 226\n_ten-millionths_ of an inch from crest to crest. The tiny billows roll\noutwards and onwards from their source at inconceivable velocities,\ntheir mean speed being 185,000 miles in a second. Could we see these\nlight billows themselves and count them as they rolled by, 450 billions\n(450,000,000,000,000) would pass in a single second, and as the last\nranged alongside us, the first would be 185,000 miles away. We are not\nable, however, to see the waves themselves, for the ocean whose\nvibrations they are, is composed of matter infinitely more transparent\nthan air, and infinitely less dense. Light, then, be it clearly\nunderstood, is not the ethereal billows or waves themselves, but only\nthe effect they produce on falling upon a peculiar kind of matter called\nthe optic nerve. When the same vibrations fall upon a photographic\nsensitive film, another effect--chemical action--is produced: when they\nfall upon other matter, heat is the result. Thus heat, light and\nchemical action are but phases, expressions, effects or results of the\ndifferent influences of waves upon different kinds of matter. The same\nwaves or billows will affect the eye itself as light, the ordinary\nnerves as warmth, and the skin as chemical action, in tanning it.\n\nThough we cannot see these waves with the material eye, they are visible\nindeed to the mental eye; and are as amenable to experimental research\nas the mightiest waves of the sea. Still, to render this subject\nclearer, we will use the analogy of sound. A musical note, we all know,\nis the effect upon our ears of regularly recurring vibrations. A\npianoforte wire emits a given note, or in other words, vibrates at a\ncertain and constant rate. These vibrations are taken up by the air, and\nby it communicated to the ear, and the sensation of sound is produced.\nHere we see the wire impressing its motion on the air, and the air\ncommunicating its motion to the ear; but if another wire similar in all\nrespects is near, it will also be set in motion, and emit its note; and\nso will any other body that can vibrate in unison. Further, the note of\nthe pianoforte string is not a simple tone, but superposed, as it were,\nupon the fundamental note, are a series of higher tones, called\nharmonics, which give richness. Now, a ray of sun-light may be likened\nto such a note; it consists not of waves all of a certain length or\nvelocity, but of numbers of waves of different lengths and speed. When\nall these fall upon the eye, the sensation of white light is produced,\nwhite light being the compound effect, like the richness of the tone of\nthe wire and its harmonies; or we may look upon it as a luminous chord.\nWhen light strikes on any body, part or all is reflected to the eye. If\nall the waves are thus reflected equally, the result is whiteness. If\nonly a part is reflected, the effect is colour, the tint depending upon\nthe particular waves reflected. If none of the waves are reflected, the\nresult is blackness.\n\nColour, then, depends upon the nature of the body reflecting light. The\nexact nature of the action of the body upon the light is not known, but\ndepends most probably upon the molecular condition of the surface.\nBodies which allow the light to pass through them, are in like manner\n according to the waves they allow to pass.\n\nWe find in nature, however, a somewhat different class of colour,\nnamely, the iridescent tints, like mother of pearl or shot silk, which\ngive splendour to such butterflies, as some Morphos and the Purple\nEmperor. These are called diffraction colours, and are caused by minute\nlines upon the reflecting surface, or by thin transparent films. These\nlines or films must be so minute that the tiny light waves are broken up\namong them, and are hence reflected irregularly to the eye.\n\nDr. Hagen has divided the colours of insects into two classes, the\nepidermal and hypodermal. The epidermal colours are produced in the\nexternal layer or epidermis which is comparatively dry, and are\npersistent, and do not alter after death. Of this nature are the\nmetallic tints of blue, green, bronze, gold and silver, and the dead\nblacks and browns, and some of the reds. The hypodermal colours are\nformed in the moister cells underlying the epidermis, and on the drying\nup of the specimen fade, as might be expected. They show through the\nepidermis, which is more or less transparent. These colours are often\nbrighter and lighter in hue than the epidermal; and such are most of the\nblues, and greens, and yellow, milk white, orange, and the numerous\nintermediate shades. These colours are sometimes changeable by voluntary\nact, and the varying tints of the chameleon and many fishes are of this\ncharacter.\n\nIn this connection, Dr. Hagen remarks, that probably all mimetic colours\nare hypodermal. The importance of this suggestion will be seen at once,\nfor it necessitates a certain consciousness or knowledge on the part of\nthe mimicker, which we have shown, seems to be an essential factor in\nthe theory of colouration.\n\nThis author further says, that \"the pattern is not the product of an\naccidental circumstance, but apparently the product of a certain law, or\nrather the consequence of certain actions or wants in the interior of\nthe animal and in its development.\"\n\nThis remarkable paper, to which our attention was called after our work\nwas nearly completed, is the only record we have been able to find which\nrecognises a law of colouration.\n\nFrom what has been said of the nature of light, and the physical origin\nof colour, we see that to produce any distinct tint such as red, yellow,\ngreen, or blue, a definite physical structure must be formed, capable of\nreflecting certain rays of the same nature and absorbing others. Hence,\nwhenever we see any distinct colour, we may be sure that a very\nconsiderable development in a certain direction has taken place. This\nis a most important conclusion, though not very obvious at first sight.\nStill, when we bear in mind the numbers of light waves of different\nlengths, and know that if these are reflected irregularly, we get only\nmixed tints such as indefinite browns; we can at once see how, in the\ncase of such objects as tree trunks, and, still more, in inanimate\nthings like rocks and soils, these, so-to-say, undifferentiated hues are\njust what we might expect to prevail, and that when definite colours are\nproduced, it of necessity implies an effort of some sort. Now, if this\nbe true of such tints as red and blue, how much more must it be the case\nwith black and white, in which all the rays are absorbed or all\nreflected? These imply an even stronger effort, and _a priori_ reasoning\nwould suggest that where they occur, they have been developed for\nimportant purposes by what may be termed a supreme effort. Consequently,\nwe find them far less common than the others; and it is a most singular\nfact that in mimetic insects, these are the colours that are most\nfrequently made use of. It would almost seem as if a double struggle had\ngone on: first, the efforts which resulted in the protective colouring\nof the mimicked species, and then a more severe, because necessarily\nmore rapid, struggle on the part of the mimicker.\n\nYet another point in this connection. If this idea be correct, it\nfollows that a uniformly flower or animal must be of extreme\nrarity, since it necessitates not merely the entire suppression of the\ntendency to emphasize important regions in colour, but also the\nadjustment of all the varying parts of the organism to one uniform\nmolecular condition, which enables it to absorb all but a certain\nclosely related series of light waves no matter how varied the functions\nof the parts. Now, such \"self-\" species, as florists would call\nthem, are not only rare, but, as all horticulturists know, are extremely\ndifficult to produce. When a grower, for instance, sets to work to\nproduce a self- flower--say a white without a dark\neye--his difficulties seem insurmountable. And, in truth, this result\nhas never been quite obtained; for he has to fight against every natural\ntendency of the plant to mark out its corolla-tube in colour, and when\nthis is overcome, to still restrain it, so as to keep it within those\nlimits which alone allow it to reflect the proper waves of light.\n\n [Illustration: Plate I.\n KALLIMA INACHUS.]\n\nThe production of black and white, then, being the acme of colour\nproduction, we should expect to find these tints largely used for\nvery special purposes. Such is actually the case. The sense organs are\nfrequently picked out with black, as witness the noses of dogs, the tips\nof their ears, the insertion of their vibrissae, or whiskers, and so on;\nand white is the most usual warning or distinctive colour, as we see in\nthe white stripes of the badger and skunk, the white spots of deer, and\nthe white tail of the rabbit.\n\nColour, then, as expressed in definite tints and patterns, is no\naccident; for although, as Wallace has well said, \"colour is the normal\ncharacter,\" yet we think that this colour would, if unrestrained and\nundirected, be indefinite, and could not produce definite tints, nor the\nmore complicated phenomenon of patterns, in which definite hues are not\nmerely confined to definite tracts, but so frequently contrasted in the\nmost exquisite manner. As we write, the beautiful Red Admiral (_V.\natalanta_) is sporting in the garden; and who can view its glossy black\nvelvet coat, barred with vividest crimson, and picked out with purest\nsnow white, and doubt for an instant that its robe is not merely the\nproduct of law, but the supreme effort of an important law? Mark the\nhabits of this lovely insect. See how proudly it displays its rich\ndecorations; sitting with expanded wings on the branch of a tree, gently\nvibrating them as it basks in the bright sunshine; and you know, once\nand for all, that the object of that colour is display. But softly--we\nhave moved too rudely, and it is alarmed. The wings close, and where is\nits beauty now? Hidden by the sombre specklings of its under wings. See,\nit has pitched upon a slender twig, and notice how instinctively (shall\nwe say?) it arranges itself in the line of the branch: if it sat athwart\nit would be prominent, but as it sits there motionless it is not only\nalmost invisible, _but it knows it_; for you can pick it up in your\nhands, as we have done scores of times. It is not enough, if we would\nknow nature, to study it in cabinets. There is too much of this dry-bone\nwork in existence. The object of nature is _life_; and only in living\nbeings can we learn how and why they fulfil their ends.\n\nHere, in this common British butterfly, we have the whole problem set\nbefore us--vivid colour, the result of intense and long continued\neffort; grand display, the object of that colour; dusky, indefinite\ncolour, for concealment; and the \"instinctive\" pose, to make that\nprotective colour profitable. The insect _knows_ all this in some way.\nHow it knows we must now endeavour to find out.\n\nIn attacking this problem we must ask ourselves, What are the purposes\nthat colouration, and, especially, decoration, can alone subserve? We\ncan only conceive it of use in three ways: first, as protection from its\nenemies; second, as concealment from its prey; third, as distinctive for\nits fellows. To the third class may be added a sub-class--attractiveness\nto the opposite sex.\n\nThe first necessity would seem to be distinctness of species; for,\nunless each species were separately marked, it would be difficult for\nthe sexes to discriminate mates of their own kind, in many instances;\nand this is, doubtless, the reason why species _are_ differently\n.\n\nBut protective resemblance, as in _Kallima_,[7] the Leaf-butterfly, and\nmimicry, as in _D. niavius_ and _P. merope_,[8] sometimes so hide the\nspecific characters that this process seems antagonistic to the prime\nreason for colouration, by rendering species less distinct. Now,\ndoubtless, protective colouring could not have been so wonderfully\ndeveloped _if the organ of sight were the only means of recognition_.\nBut it is not. Animals possess other organs of recognition, of which, as\neveryone knows, smell is one of the most potent. A dog may have\nforgotten a face after years of absence, but, once his cold nose has\ntouched your hand, the pleased whine and tail-wagging of recognition,\ntells of awakened memories. Even with ourselves, dulled as our senses\nare, the odour of the first spring violet calls up the past; as words\nand scenes can never do. What country-bred child forgets the strange\nsmell of the city he first visits? and how vividly the scene is recalled\nin after years by a repetition of that odour!\n\nBut insects, and, it may be, many other creatures, possess sense organs\nwhose nature we know not. The functions of the antennae and of various\norgans in the wings, are unknown; and none can explain the charm by\nwhich the female Kentish Glory, or Oak Egger moths lure their mates. You\nmay collect assiduously, using every seduction in sugars and lanterns,\nonly to find how rare are these insects; but if fortune grant you a\nvirgin female, and you cage her up, though no eye can pierce her prison\nwalls, and though she be silent as the oracles, she will, in some\nmysterious way, attract lovers; not singly, but by the dozen; not one\nnow and another in an hour, but in eager flocks. Many butterflies\npossess peculiar scent-pouches on their wings, and one of these, a\n_Danais_, is mimicked by several species. It is the possession of these\nadditional powers of recognition that leaves colouration free to run to\nthe extreme of protective vagary, when the species is hard pressed in\nthe struggle for life.\n\n [Illustration: Plate II.\n MIMICRY.]\n\nNevertheless, though animals have other means of recognition, the\ndistinctive markings are, without doubt, the prime means of knowledge.\nWho, that has seen a peacock spread his glorious plumes like a radiant\nglory, can doubt its fascination? Who, that has wandered in America, and\nwatched a male humming-bird pirouetting and descending in graceful\nspirals, its whole body throbbing with ecstasy of love and jealousy, can\ndoubt? Who can even read of the Australian bower-bird, lowliest and\nfirst of virtuosi, decorating his love-bower with shells and flowers,\nand shining stones, running in and out with evident delight, and\nre-arranging his treasures, as a collector does his gems, and not be\ncertain that here, at least, we have the keenest appreciation, not only\nof colour, but of beauty--a far higher sense?\n\nIt has been said that butterflies must be nearly blind, because they\nseldom fly directly over a wall, but feel their way up with airy\ntouches. Yet every fact of nature contradicts the supposition. Why have\nplants their tinted flowers, but to entice the insects there? Why are\nnight-blooming flowers white, or pale yellows and pinks, but to render\nthem conspicuous? Why are so many flowers striped in the direction of\nthe nectary, but to point the painted way to the honey-treasures below?\nThe whole scheme of evolution, the whole of the new revelation of the\nmeanings of nature, becomes a dead letter if insects cannot appreciate\nthe hues of flowers. The bee confines himself as much as possible to one\nspecies of flower at a time, and this, too, shows that it must be able\nto distinguish them with ease. We may, then, take it as proven that the\npower of discriminating colours is possessed by the lower animals.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [7] Pl. I., Figs 1-3.\n [8] Pl. II., Figs. 1-3.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER V.\n\n THE COLOUR SENSE.\n\n\nThe previous considerations lead us, naturally, to enquire in what\nmanner the sense of colour is perceived.\n\nIn thinking over this obscure subject, the opinion has steadily gathered\nstrength that form and colour are closely allied; for form is essential\nto pattern; and colour without pattern, that is to say, colour\nindefinitely marked, or distributed, is hardly decoration at all, in the\nsense we are using the term. That many animals possess the power of\ndiscriminating form is certain. Deformed or monstrous forms are driven\nfrom the herds and packs of such social animals as cattle, deer, and\nhogs, and maimed individuals are destroyed. Similar facts have been\nnoticed in the case of birds. This shows a power of recognising any\ndeparture from the standard of form, just as the remorseless destruction\nof abnormally birds, such as white or piebald rooks and\nblackbirds, by their fellows, is proof of the recognition and dislike of\na departure from normal colouring. Authentic anecdotes of dogs\nrecognising their masters' portraits are on record; and in West Suffolk,\nof late years, a zinc, homely representation of a cat has been found\nuseful in protecting garden produce from the ravages of birds. In this\nlatter case the birds soon found out the innocent nature of the fraud,\nfor we have noticed, after a fortnight, the amusing sight of sparrows\ncleaning their beaks on the whilom object of terror. Many fish are\ndeceived with artificial bait, as the pike, with silvered minnows; the\nsalmon, and trout, with artificial flies; the glitter of the spoon-bait\nis often most attractive; and mackerel take greedily to bits of red\nflannel. Bees sometimes mistake artificial for real flowers; and both\nthey and butterflies have been known to seek vainly for nourishment\nfrom the gaudy painted flowers on cottage wall-papers. Sir John Lubbock\nhas demonstrated the existence of a colour sense in bees, wasps, and\nants; and the great fact that flowers are lures for insects proves\nbeyond the power of doubt that these creatures have a very strong\nfaculty for perceiving colour.\n\nThe pale yellows and white of night-flowering plants render them\nconspicuous to the flower-haunting moths; and no one who has ever used\nan entomologist's lantern, or watched a daddy-long-legs (_Tipula_)\ndancing madly round a candle, can fail to see that intense excitement is\ncaused by the flame. In the dim shades of night the faint light of the\nflowers tells the insects of the land of plenty, and the stimulus thus\nexcited is multiplied into a frenzy by the glow of a lamp, which,\ndoubtless, seems to insect eyes the promise of a feast that shall\ntranscend that of ordinary flowers, as a Lord Mayor's feast transcends a\nhomely crust of bread and cheese.\n\nWe take it, then, as proven that the colour sense does exist, at least,\nin all creatures possessing eyes. But there are myriads of animals\nrevelling in bright tints; such as the jelly-fishes and anemones, and\neven lower organisms, in which eyes are either entirely wanting or are\nmere eye-specks, as will be explained in the sequel. How these behave\nwith regard to colour is a question that may, with propriety, be asked\nof science, but to which, at present, we can give no very definite\nreply. Still, certain modern researches open to us a prospect of being\nable, eventually, to decide even this obscure problem.\n\nThe question, however, is not a simple one, but involves two distinct\nprinciples; firstly, as to how colour affects the animal , and,\nsecondly, how it affects other animals. In other words, How does colour\naffect the sensibility of its possessor? and how does it affect the\nsense organs of others?\n\nTo endeavour to answer the first question we must start with the lowest\nforms of life, and their receptivity to the action of light; for, as\ncolour is only a differentiation of ordinary so-called white light, we\nmight _a priori_ expect that animals would show sensibility to light as\ndistinguished from darkness, before they had the power of discriminating\nbetween different kinds of light.\n\nThis appears to be the case, for Engelmann has shown[9] that many of\nthe lowest forms of life, which are almost mere specks of protoplasm,\nare influenced by light, some seeking and others shunning it. He found,\ntoo, that in the case of _Euglena viridis_ it would seek the light only\nif it \"were allowed to fall upon the anterior part of the body. Here\nthere is a pigment spot; but careful experiment showed that this was not\nthe point most sensitive to light, a colourless and transparent area of\nprotoplasm lying in front of it being found to be so.\" Commenting upon\nthis Romanes observes, \"it is doubtful whether this pigment spot is or\nis not to be regarded as an exceedingly primitive organ of special\nsense.\" Haeckel has also made observations upon those lowest forms of\nlife, which, being simply protoplasm without the slightest trace of\norganization, not even possessing a nucleus, form his division\n_Protista_, occupying the no-man's-land between the animal and vegetable\nkingdoms. He finds that \"already among the microscopic Protista there\nare some that love light, and some that love darkness rather than light.\nMany seem also to have smell and taste, for they select their food with\ngreat care.... Here, also, we are met by the weighty fact that\nsense-function is possible without sense organs, without nerves. In\nplace of these, sensitiveness is resident in that wondrous,\nstructureless, albuminous substance, which, under the name of\nprotoplasm, or organic formative material, is known as the general and\nessential basis of all the phenomena of life.\"[10]\n\nNow, whether Romanes be correct in doubting whether the pigment-spot in\nEuglena is a sense organ or not, matters little to our present enquiry,\nbut it certainly does seem that the spot, _with its accompanying clear\nspace_, looks like such an organ. And when we are further told that\nafter careful experiment it is found that _Euglena viridis_ prefers blue\nto all the colours of the spectrum, the fundamental fact seems to be\nestablished that even as low down as this the different parts of the\nspectrum affect differently the body of creatures very nearly at the\nbottom of the animal scale. This implies a certain selection of colour,\nand, equally, an abstention from other colours.\n\nIt is not part of our scheme, however, to follow out in detail the\ndevelopment of the organs of special sense, and the reader must be\nreferred to the various works of Mr. Romanes, who has worked long and\nsuccessfully at this and kindred problems. Suffice it to say that in\nthis and other cases he has been led to adopt the theory of inherited\nmemory, though not, as we believe, in the fulness with which it must\nultimately be acquired.\n\nThis, however, seems certain, that the development, not only of the\nsense organs, but of organs in general--that is, the setting aside of\ncertain portions for the performance of special duties, and the\nmodifications of those parts in relation to their special duties, is\nclosely related to the activity of the organism. Thus, we find in those\nanimals, like some of the Coelenterata, which pass some portion of their\nexistence as free-swimming beings, and the remainder in a stationary or\nsessile condition, that the former state is the most highly organized.\nThis is shown to a very remarkable degree in the Sea Squirts\n(Ascidians), a class of animals that are generally grouped with the\nlower Mollusca, but which Prof. Ray Lankester puts at the base of the\nVertebrata.\n\nThese animals are either solitary or social, fixed or free; but even\nwhen free, have little or no power of locomotion, simply floating in the\nsea. Their embryos are, however, free-swimming, and some of the most\ninteresting beings in nature. Some are marvellously like young tadpoles,\nand possess some of the distinctive peculiarities of the Vertebrata.\nThus, the body is divided into a head and body, or tail, as in tadpoles.\nThe head contains a large nerve centre, corresponding with the brain,\nwhich is produced backwards into a chord, corresponding to the spinal\nchord. In the head, sense organs are clearly distinguishable; there is a\nwell-marked eye, an equally clear ear, and a less clearly marked\nolfactory organ. Besides this, the spinal-cord is supported below by a\nrod-like structure, called the notochord. In the vertebrate embryo this\nstructure always precedes the development of the true vertebral column,\nand in the lowest forms is persistent through life.\n\nWe have thus, in the ascidian larva, a form which, if permanent, would\nmost certainly entitle it to a place in the vertebrate sub-kingdom. It\nis now an active free-swimming creature, but as maturity approaches it\nbecomes fixed, or floating, and all this pre-figurement of a high\ndestiny is annulled. The tail, with its nervous cord and notochord\natrophies, and in the fixed forms, not only do the sense organs pass\naway, but the entire nervous system is reduced to a single ganglion, and\nthe creature becomes little more than an animated stomach. It is, as Ray\nLankester has pointed out, a case of degeneration. In the floating\nforms, which still possess a certain power of locomotion, this process\nis not carried to such extremes, and the eye is left.\n\nNow, cases of this kind are important as illustrating the direct\nconnection between an active life and advancement; and they also add\nindirectly to the view Wallace takes of colouration, namely, that the\nmost brilliant colour is generally applied to the most highly modified\nparts, and is brightest in the seasons of greatest activity.\n\nBut they have a higher meaning also, for they may point us to the prime\ncause of the divergence of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In\nthinking over this matter, one of us ventured to suggest that probably\nthe reason why animals dominate the world, and not plants, is, that\nplants are, as a rule, stationary, and animals lead an active existence.\nWe can look back to the period prior to the divergence of living\nprotoplasm into the two kingdoms. Two courses only were open to it,\neither to stay at home, and take what came in its way, or to travel, and\nseek what was required. The stay-at-homes became plants, and the\ngad-abouts animals. In a letter it was thus put; \"It is a truly strange\nfact that a free-swimming, sense-organ-bearing animal should degenerate\ninto a fixed feeding and breeding machine. It seems to me that the power\nof locomotion is a _sine qua non_ for active development of type, as it\nnecessarily sharpens the wits by bringing fresh experiences and\nunlooked-for adventures to the creature. I almost think, and this, I\nbelieve may be a great fundamental fact, that the only reason why\nanimals rule the world instead of plants is that plants elected to stay\nat home, and animals did not. They had equal chances. Both start as\nactive elements; the one camps down, and the other looks about him.\"\n\nTalking over this question with Mr. Butler, he astonished the writer by\nquoting from his work, \"Alps and Sanctuaries\" (p. 196), the following\npassage:--\n\n \"The question of whether it is better to abide quiet, and take\n advantage of opportunities that come, or to go farther afield in\n search of them, is one of the oldest which living beings have to\n deal with. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy\n arose in what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The\n schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects--animals\n and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of prey\n is formulated in animals; the other--that it is better, on the\n whole, to stay at home, and profit by what comes--in plants. Some\n intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during\n which the schism was not yet complete.\n\n \"If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression further, I would\n say that it is the plants, and not we, who are the heretics. There\n can be no question about this; we are perfectly justified,\n therefore, in devouring them. Ours is the original and orthodox\n belief, for protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable. It is\n much more true to say that plants have descended from animals than\n animals from plants. Nevertheless, like many other heretics, plants\n have thriven very fairly well. There are a great many of them, and,\n as regards beauty, if not wit--of a limited kind, indeed, but still\n wit--it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advantage.\n The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are\n narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of\n their business sufficiently well--as well as though they kept the\n most nicely-balanced system of accounts to show them their\n position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our intolerant\n and bigoted way of trying to convert them: eating is only a violent\n mode of proselytizing, or converting; and we do convert them--to\n good animal substance of our own way of thinking. If we have had no\n trouble we say they have 'agreed' with us; if we have been unable\n to make them see things from our point of view, we say they\n 'disagree' with us, and avoid being on more than distant terms with\n them for the future. If we have helped ourselves to too much, we\n say we have got more than we can 'manage.' And an animal is no\n sooner dead than a plant will convert it back again. It is obvious,\n however, that no schism could have been so long successful without\n having a good deal to say for itself.\n\n \"Neither party has been quite consistent. Whoever is or can be?\n Every extreme--every opinion carried to its logical end will prove\n to be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves:\n this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since\n pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what is called\n travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a\n bough, a root, or a tendril, without regarding it as a melancholy\n and unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals are\n sessile; and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in\n the main liers-in-wait.\"\n\nThis exquisitively written passage the writer was quite unaware of\nhaving read, though he possessed and had perused the work quoted, nor\ncan he understand how such an admirable exposition could have escaped\nnotice. Had he read it: had he assimilated it so thoroughly as to be\nunconscious of its existence; is this a case of rapid growth of\nautomatism? He cannot say.\n\nTo return to the main point, it would seem that specialization is\ndirectly proportionate to activity, and when we compare the infinitely\ndiverse organization of the animal with the comparative simplicity of\nthe vegetable world, this conclusion seems to be inevitable.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [9] Pflueger's Archiv. f. d. ges. Phys. Bd. xxix, 1882, quoted by\n Romanes. Mental Evolution, p. 80, 1883. _Op. cit._ p. 80.\n [10] Quoted by Romanes, _op. cit._ p. 81.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VI.\n\n SPOTS AND STRIPES.\n\n\nBearing in mind the great tendency to repetition and symmetry of marking\nwe have shown to exist, it becomes an interesting question to work out\nthe origin of the peculiar spots, stripes, loops and patches which are\nso prevalent in nature. The exquisite eye-spots of the argus pheasant,\nthe peacock, and many butterflies and moths have long excited admiration\nand scientific curiosity, and have been the subject of investigation by\nDarwin,[11] the Rev. H. H. Higgins,[12] Weismann,[13] and others, Darwin\nhaving paid especial attention to the subject.\n\nHis careful analysis of the ocelli or eye-spots in the Argus pheasant\nand peacock have led him to conclude that they are peculiar\nmodifications of the bars of colour as shown by his drawings. Our own\nopinion, founded upon a long series of observations, is that this is not\nthe whole case, but that, in the first place, bars are the result of the\ncoalescence of spots. It is not pretended that a bar of colour is the\nresult of the running together of a series of perfect ocelli like those\nin the so-called tail of the peacock, but merely that spots of colour\nare the normal primitive commencement of colouring, and that these spots\nmay be developed on the one hand into ocelli or eye-spots, and on the\nother into bars or even into great blotches of a uniform tint, covering\nlarge surfaces.\n\nLet us first take the cases of abnormal marking as shown in disease. An\nordinary rash, as in measles, begins as a set of minute red spots, and\nthe same is the case with small pox, the pustules of which sometimes run\ntogether, and becoming confluent form bars, which again enlarging meet\nand produce a blotch or area abnormally marked. It was these well-known\nfacts that induced us to re-examine this question. Colouration and\ndiscolouration arise from the presence or absence of pigment in cells,\nand thus having, as it were independent sources, we should expect colour\nfirst to appear in spots. We have already stated, and shall more fully\nshow in the sequel, how colouration follows structure, and would here\nmerely remark that it seems as if any peculiarity of structure, or\nintensified function modifying structure, has a direct tendency to\ninfluence colour. Thus in the disease known as frontal herpes, as\npointed out to us by Mr. Bland Sutton, of the Middlesex Hospital, the\naffection is characterized by an eruption on the skin corresponding\nexactly to the distribution of the ophthalmic division of the fifth\ncranial nerve, mapping out all its little branches, even to the one\nwhich goes to the tip of the nose. Mr. Hutchinson, F.R.S., the President\nof the Pathological Society, who first described this disease, has\nfavoured us with another striking illustration of the regional\ndistribution of the colour effects of herpes. In this case decolouration\nhas taken place. The patient was a Hindoo, and upon his brown skin the\npigment has been destroyed in the arm along the course of the ulnar\nnerve, with its branches along both sides of one finger and the half of\nanother. In the leg the sciatic and saphenous nerves are partly mapped\nout, giving to the patient the appearance of an anatomical diagram.[14]\n\nIn these cases we have three very important facts determined. First the\nbroad fact that decolouration and colouration in some cases certainly\nfollow structure; second, that the effect begins as spots; thirdly, that\nthe spots eventually coalesce into bands and blotches.\n\nIn birds and insects we have the best means of studying these phenomena,\nand we will now proceed to illustrate the case more fully. The facts\nseem to justify us in considering that starting with a spot we may\nobtain, according to the development, either an ocellus, a stripe or\nbar, or a blotch, and that between, these may have any number of\nintermediate varieties.\n\n * * * * *\n\nAmong the butterflies we have numerous examples of the development from\nspots, as illustrated in plates. A good example is seen in our common\nEnglish Brimstone (_Gonepteryx rhamni_) Fig. 2, Plate III. In this\ninsect the male (figured) is of a uniform sulphur yellow, with a rich\norange spot in the cell of each wing; the female is much paler in\ncolour, and spotted similarly. In an allied continental species (_G.\nCleopatra_) Fig. 1, Plate III., the female is like that of _rhamni_ only\nlarger; but the male, instead of having an orange spot in the fore-wing,\nhas nearly the whole of the wing suffused with orange, only the margins,\nand the lower wings showing the sulphur ground-tint like that of\n_rhamni_. Intermediate forms between these two species are known. In a\ncase like this we can hardly resist the conclusion that the discoidal\nspot has spread over the fore-wing and become a blotch, and in some\nEnglish varieties of _rhamni_ we actually find the spot drawn out into a\nstreak.\n\n [Illustration: Plate III.\n BUTTERFLIES.]\n\nThe family of _Pieridae_, or whites, again afford us admirable examples\nof the development of spots. The prevailing colours are white, black and\nyellow: green _appears_ to occur in the Orange-tips (_Anthocaris_), but\nit is only the optical effect of a mixture of yellow and grey or black\nscales. The species are very variable, as a rule, and hence of\nimportance to us; and there are many intermediate species on the\ncontinent and elsewhere which render the group a most interesting study.\n\nThe wood white (_Leucophasia sinapis_) Fig. 1, Plate IV., is a pure\nwhite species with an almost square dusky tip to the fore-wings of the\nmale. In the female this tip is very indistinct or wanting, Fig. 4,\nPlate IV. In the variety _Diniensis_, Fig. 2, Plate IV., this square tip\nappears as a round spot.\n\nThe Orange-tips, of which we have only one species in Britain\n(_Anthocaris cardamines_) belongs to a closely allied genus, as does\nalso the continental genus Zegris. The male Orange-tip (_A. cardamines_)\nis white with a dark grey or black tip, and a black discoidal spot. A\npatch of brilliant orange extends from the dark tip to just beyond the\ndiscoidal spots. In the female this is wanting, but the dark tip and\nspot are larger than in the male.\n\nLet us first study the dark tip. In _L. sinapis_ we have seen that it\nextends right to the margin of the wing in the male, but in the female\nis reduced to a dusky spot away from the margin. In _A. cardamines_ the\nmargin is not quite up to the edge, but a row of tiny white\nspots, like a fringe of seed pearls, occupies the inter-spaces of the\nveins. On the underside these white spots are prolonged into short bars,\nsee Plate IV. In the continental species _A. belemia_ we see the dark\ntip to be in a very elementary condition, being little more than an\nirregular band formed of united spots, there being as much white as\nblack in the tip, Fig. 5, Plate IV. In _A. belia_, Fig. 6, Plate IV.,\nthe black tip is more developed, and in the variety _simplonia_ still\nmore so, Fig. 7, Plate IV. We here see pretty clearly that this dark tip\nhas been developed by the confluence of irregular spots.\n\nTurning now to the discoidal spot we shall observe a similar\ndevelopment. Thus in:--\n\n _A. cardamines_, male, it is small and perfect.\n Do. female, \" larger \"\n _A. belemia_ \" large \"\n _A. belia_ \" large with white centre.\n Do. _v. simplonia_ \" small and perfect.\n [15]_A. eupheno_, female, \" nearly perfect.\n Do. male, \" a band.\n\nWe here find two distinct types of variation. In _A. belia_ we have a\ntendency to form an ocellus, and in _A. eupheno_ the spot of the female\nis expanded into a band in the male.\n\nThe orange flush again offers us a similar case; and with regard to this\ncolour we may remark that it seems to be itself a development from the\nwhite ground-colour of the family in the direction of the red end of the\nspectrum. Thus in the Black-veined white (_Aporia crataegi_) we have both\nthe upper and under surfaces of the typical cream-white, for there is no\npure white in the family. In the true whites the under surface of the\nhind-wings is lemon-yellow, in the female of _A. eupheno_ the ground of\nthe upper surface is faint lemon-yellow, and in the male this colour is\nwell-developed. The rich orange, confined to a spot in _G. rhamni_\nbecomes a flush in _G. Cleopatra_, and a vivid tip in _A. cardamines_.\nThese changes are all developments from the cream white, and may be\nimitated accurately by adding more and more red to the primitive yellow,\nas the artist actually did in drawing the plate.\n\n [Illustration: Plate IV.\n SPOTS AND STRIPES.]\n\nIn _A. cardamines_ the orange flush has overflowed the discoidal spot,\nas it were, in the male, and is absent in the female. But in _A.\neupheno_ we have an intermediate state, for as the figures show, in the\nfemale, Fig. 8, the orange tip only extends half-way to the discoidal\nspot, and in the male it reaches it. Moreover it is to be noticed that\nthe flow of colour, to continue the simile, is unchecked by the spot in\n_cardamines_, but where the spot has expanded to a bar in _eupheno_\nit has dammed the colour up and ponded it between bar and tip. An\nexactly intermediate case between these two species is seen in _A.\neuphemoides_, Fig. 10, Plate IV., in which the spot is elongated, and\ndribbles off into an irregular band, into which the orange has trickled,\nas water trickles through imperfect fascines. This series of\nillustrations might be repeated in almost any group of butterflies, but\nsufficient has been said to show how spots can spread into patches,\neither by the spreading of one or by the coalescence of several.\n\nWe will now take an illustration of the formation of stripes or bars\nfrom spots, and in doing so must call attention to the rarity of true\nstripes in butterflies. By a true stripe I mean one that has even edges,\nthat is, whose sides are uninfluenced by structure. In all our British\nspecies such as _P. machaon_, _M. artemis_, _M. athalia_, _V. atalanta_,\n_L. sibilla_, _A. iris_, and some of the Browns, Frittilaries and\nHair-streaks, which can alone be said to be striped, the bands are\nclearly nothing more than spots which have spread up to the costae, and\nstill retain traces of their origin either in the different hue of the\ncostae which intersect them, or in curved edges corresponding with the\ninterspaces of the costae. This in itself is sufficient to indicate their\norigin. But in many foreign species true bands are found, though they\nare by no means common. Illustrations are given in Plate IV., of two\nSwallow-tails, _Papilio machaon_, Fig. 11, and _P. podalirius_, Fig. 12,\nin which the development of a stripe can readily be seen.\n\nIn _machaon_ the dark band inside the marginal semi-lunar spots of the\nfore-wings retain traces of their spot-origin in the speckled character\nof the costal interspaces, and in the curved outlines of those parts. In\n_podalirius_ the semi-lunar spots have coalesced into a stripe, only\nshowing its spot-origin in the black markings of the intersecting costae;\nand the black band has become a true stripe, with plain edges. Had only\nsuch forms as this been preserved, the origin of the spots would have\nbeen lost to view.\n\nIt may, however, be said, though I think not with justice, that we ought\nnot to take two species, however closely allied, to illustrate such a\npoint. But very good examples can be found in the same species. A common\nGerman butterfly, _Araschnia Levana_, has two distinct varieties,\n_Levana_ being the winter, and _prorsa_ the summer form; and between\nthese an intermediate form, _porima_, can be bred from the summer form\nby keeping the pupae cold. Dr. Weismann, who has largely experimented on\nthis insect, has given accurate illustrations of the varieties. Plate V.\nis taken from specimens in our possession. In the males of both\n_Levana_, Fig. 4, and _prorsa_, Fig. 1, the hind-wing has a distinct row\nof spots, and a less distinct one inside it, and in the females of both\nthese are represented by dark stripes. In _porima_ we get every\nintermediate form of spots and stripes, both in the male and female, and\nas these were hatched from the same batch of eggs, or, are brothers and\nsisters, it is quite impossible to doubt that here, at least, we have an\nactual proof of the change of spots into stripes.\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 1. Part of secondary feather of Argus Pheasant.\n _a. a._ Elongated spots, incipient ocelli.\n _b._ Interspaces.\n _c. c._ Axial line.\n _d. d._ Double spots, incipient ocelli.\n _e._ Minute dottings.\n _f. f._ Shaft.\n _k. k._ Line of feathering.]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 2. Part of secondary wing feather of Argus\n Pheasant.\n _a._ Oval. Axis at right angles.\n _b._ Round.\n _c. c._ Shaft.\n _d._ Imperfect ocellus.\n _e._ Expansion of stripe.\n _f._ Interspace.\n _g._ Stalk.\n _h._ Edge of feather.\n _k._ Line of feathering.]\n\n [Illustration: Plate V.\n SEASONAL VARIETIES.]\n\nThe change of spots more or less irregular into eye-spots, or ocelli, is\nequally clear; and Darwin's drawing of the wings of _Cyllo leda_[16]\nillustrates the point well. \"In some specimens,\" he remarks, \"large\nspaces on the upper surfaces of the wings are black, and\ninclude irregular white marks; and from this state a complete gradation\ncan be traced into a tolerably perfect ocellus, _and this results from\nthe contraction of the irregular blotches of colour_. In another series\nof specimens a gradation can be followed from excessively minute white\ndots, surrounded by a scarcely visible black line, into perfectly\nsymmetrical and larger ocelli.\" In the words we have put in italics\nDarwin seems to admit these ocelli to be formed from blotches; and we\nthink those of the Argus pheasant can be equally shown to arise from\nspots.\n\nDarwin's beautiful drawings show, almost as well as if made for the\npurpose, that the bars are developed from spots.[17] In Fig. 1 is shown\npart of a secondary wing feather, in which the lines _k. k._ mark the\ndirection of the axis, along which the spots are arranged, perfectly on\nthe right, less so on the left. The lengthening out of the spots towards\nthe shaft is well seen on the right, and the coalescence into lines on\nthe left. In Fig. 2 we have part of another feather from the same bird,\nshowing on the left elongated spots, with a dark shading round them, and\non the right double spots, like twin stars, with one atmosphere around\nthem. Increase the elongation of these latter, and you have the former,\nand both are nascent ocelli. We here, then, have a regular gradation\nbetween spots, bands, and ocelli, just as we can see in insects.\n\nIn some larvae, those of the _Sphingidae_ especially, ocelli occur, and\nthese may be actually watched as they grow from dots to perfect\neye-spots, with the maturity of the larva.\n\nEven in some mammals the change from spots to stripes can be seen.\nThus, the young tiger is spotted, and so is the young lion; but, whereas\nin the former case the spots change into the well-known stripes (which\nare really loops), in the latter they die away. The horse, as Darwin\nlong ago showed, was probably descended from a striped animal, as shown\nby the bars on a foal's leg. But before this the animal must have been\nspotted; and the dappled horses are an example of this; and, moreover,\nalmost every horse shows a tendency to spottiness, especially on the\nhaunches. In the museum at Leiden a fine series of the Java pig (_Sus\nvittatus_) is preserved. Very young animals are banded, but have spots\nover the shoulders and thighs; these run into stripes as the animal\ngrows older; then the stripes expand, and, at last meeting, the mature\nanimal is a uniform dark brown. Enough has now, I trust, been said upon\nthis point to show that from spots have been developed the other\nmarkings with which we are familiar in the animal kingdom.\n\nThe vegetable kingdom illustrates this fact almost as well. Thus, the\nbeautiful leaves of the Crotons are at first green, with few or no\n spots; the spots then grow more in number, coalesce, form\nirregular bands, further develop, and finally cover the whole, or almost\nthe whole, of the leaf with a glow of rich colour. Some of the pretty\nspring-flowering orchid callitriche have sulphur-yellow petals, with\ndark rich sepia spots; these often develop to such an extent as to\noverspread nearly all the original yellow. Many other examples might be\ngiven.\n\nHitherto we have started with a spot, and traced its development. But a\nspot is itself a developed thing, inasmuch as it is an aggregation of\nsimilarly cells. How they come about may, perhaps, be partly\nseen by the following considerations. Definite colour-pattern has a\ndefinite function--that of being seen. We may, therefore, infer that the\nmore definite colour is of newer origin than the less definite. Hence,\nwhen we find the two sexes differently , we may generally assume\nthat the more homely tinted form is the more ancient. For example, some\nbutterflies, like the gorgeous Purple Emperor (_Apatura iris_), have\nvery sombre mates; and it seems fair to assume that the emperor's robes\nhave been donned since his consort's dress was originally fashioned.\n\nThat the object of brilliant colour is display is shown partly by the\nfact that in those parts of the wings of butterflies which overlap the\nbrilliant colour is missing, and partly by the generally brighter hues\nof day-flying butterflies and moths than of the night-flying species.\nNow, the sombre hues of nocturnal moths are not so much protective (like\nthe sober tints of female butterflies and birds), because night and\ndarkness is their great defender, as the necessary result of the\ndarkness: bright colours are not produced, because they could not be\nseen and appreciated. In these cases it is very noticeable how\nfrequently the colour is irregularly dotted about--irrorated or peppered\nover the wings, as it were. This irregular distribution of the pigment\ncells, if it were quite free from any arrangement, might be looked upon\nas primitive colouring, undifferentiated either into distinct colour or\ndistinct pattern. If we suppose a few of the pigment cells here and\nthere to become , we should have irregular brilliant dottings,\njust as we actually see in many butterflies, along the costa. The\ngrouping together of these colour dots would give rise to a spot, from\nwhich point all is clear.\n\nThat some such grouping or gathering together, allied to segregation,\ndoes take place, a study of spots, and especially of eye-spots, renders\nprobable. What the nature of the process is we do not know, nor is it\neasy to imagine. But let us suppose a surface uniformly tinted brown.\nThen, if we gather some of the colouring matter into a dark spot we\nshall naturally leave a lighter area around it, just as we see in all\nour Browns and Ringlets. In this way we can see how a ring-spot can be\nformed. To make it a true eye-spot, with a light centre, we must also\nsuppose a pushing away of the colour from that centre. A study of ocelli\nnaturally suggests such a process, which is analogous to the banding of\nagates, and all concentric nodules. Darwin, struck with this, seems to\nadopt it as a fact, for he says, \"Appearances strongly favour the belief\nthat, on the one hand, a dark spot is often formed by the colouring\nmatter being drawn towards a central point from a surrounding zone,\nwhich is thus rendered lighter. And, on the other hand, a white spot is\noften formed by the colour being driven away from a central point, so\nthat it accumulates in a surrounding darker zone.\"[18] The analogy\nbetween ocelli and concretions may be a real one. At any rate beautiful\nocelli of all sizes can be seen forming in many iron-stained\nsand-stones. The growth of ocelli may thus be a mechanical process\nadapted by the creature for decorative purposes, but the artistic\ncolouring of many eye-spots implies greater effort.\n\nThere is, however, one set of colour lines in birds and insects that do\nnot seem to arise from spots in the ordinary way. These are the \nfeather-shafts of birds, and the nerves or veins in a\nbutterfly's wing, In these the colour has a tendency to flow all along\nthe structure in lines.\n\n_Conclusion._ The results arrived at in this chapter may be thus\nsummarised:--\n\nSpots, ocelli, stripes, loops, and patches may be, and nearly always\nare, developed from more or less irregular spots.\n\nThis is shown both by the study of normal colouring, or by abnormal\ncolouring, or decolouring in disease.\n\nEven the celebrated case of the Argus Pheasant shows that the bands from\nwhich the ocelli are developed arose from spots.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [11] Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 132.\n [12] Quart. Journ. Sci., July 1868, p. 325.\n [13] Studies in the Theory of Descent.\n [14] See photographs in Hutchinson's Illustrations of Clinical\n Surgery.\n [15] See Plate IV.\n [16] Desc. Man, vol. ii, p. 133, fig. 52.\n [17] Compare his figs. 56 to 58 op. cit.\n [18] Desc. Man, vol. ii., p. 134.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VII.\n\n COLOURATION IN THE INVERTEBRATA.\n\n\nIf the principle of the dependence of colour-pattern upon structure,\nenunciated in the preceding pages be sound, we ought to find certain\ngreat schemes of colouration corresponding to the great structural\nsubdivisions of the animal kingdom. This is just what we do find; and\nbefore tracing the details, it will be as well to group the great\ncolour-schemes together, so that a general view of the question can be\nobtained at a glance.\n\nThe animal kingdom falls naturally into two divisions, but the dividing\nline can be drawn in two ways. If we take the most simple\nclassification, we have:--\n\n 1. _Protozoa_, animals with no special organs.\n\n 2. _Organozoa_, animals possessing organs.\n\nPractically this classification is not used, but we shall see that from\nour point of view it is a useful one. In the most general scheme the\ndivisions are:--\n\n 1. _Invertebrata_, animals without backbones.\n\n 2. _Vertebrata_, animals with backbones.\n\nThe invertebrata are divided into sub-kingdoms, of which the protozoa\nform one. These protozoa possess, as it were, only negative properties.\nIn their simplest form they are mere masses of protoplasm, even lacking\nan investing membrane or coat, and never, even in the highest forms,\npossessing distinct organs. It is this simplicity which at once\nseparates them entirely from all other animals.\n\nThe other sub-kingdoms are:--\n\n _Coelenterata_, of which the jelly-fishes are a type; animals\n possessing an alimentary canal, fully communicating with the\n general cavity of the body, but without distinct circulatory or\n nervous systems.\n\n _Annuloida_, of which the star-fishes are a type; animals having\n the alimentary canal shut off from the body-cavity, and possessing\n a nervous system, and in some a true circulatory system.\n\n _Annulosa_, of which worms, lobsters, and insects are types;\n animals composed of definite segments, arranged serially, always\n possessing true circulatory and nervous systems.\n\n _Mollusca_, of which oysters and whelks are types; animals which\n are soft-bodied, often bearing a shell, always possessing a\n distinct nervous system and mostly with a distinct heart.\n\nIn old systems of classification, the _Coelenterata_ and _Annuloida_ were\nunited into one sub-kingdom, the _Radiata_, in consequence of their\nradiate or star-like structures.\n\nAs colouration, according to the views here set forth, depends upon\nstructure, we may classify the Invertebrata thus:--\n\n Protozoa Structureless.\n Coelenterata } Radiata. Radiate structure.\n Annuloida }\n Annulosa Segmented \"\n Mollusca Marginate \"\n\nThe mollusca are said to be marginate in structure because, in those\npossessing shells--the mollusca proper--the shell is formed by\nsuccessive additions to the margin or edge of the shell, by means of the\nmargin of the mantle, or shell-secreting organ.\n\nNow we shall proceed to show that the schemes of colouration follow out\nthese structure-plans, and thus give additional force to the truth of\nthe classification, as well as showing that, viewed on a broad scale,\nthe present theory is a true one.\n\nWe can, in fact, throw the whole scheme into a table, as follows:--\n\n\n SYSTEMS OF COLOURATION.\n\n +--+-------------------------+------------------------+------------------+\n | | System of Colouring. | Structure. | Sub-kingdoms. |\n +--+-------------------------+------------------------+------------------+\n | |_A. No Axial Decoration._|_A. No Axial Structure._|_A. Invertebrata._|\n |1.| No definite system. | No definite organs. | Protozoa. |\n |2.| Radiate system. | Radiate structure. | Coelenterata, |\n | | | | Annuloida.|\n |3.| Segmental system. | Segmental structure. | Annulosa. |\n |4.| Marginate system. | Marginate growth. | Mollusca. |\n | | | | |\n | | _B. Axial Decoration._ | _B. Axial Structure._ | _B. Vertebrata._ |\n |5.| Axial system. | Axial structure. | Vertebrata. |\n +--+-------------------------+------------------------+------------------+\n\n\n_Protozoa._ The protozoa are generally very minute, and always composed\nof structureless protoplasm. Their peculiarities are rather negative\nthan positive, there being neither body segments, muscular, circulatory,\nnor nervous systems. Even the denser exterior portion (_ectosarc_)\npossessed by some of them seems to be rather a temporary coagulation of\nthe protoplasm than a real differentiation of that material.\n\nHere, then, we have to deal with the simplest forms of life, and if\ncolouration depends upon structure, these structureless transparent\ncreatures should lack all colour-pattern, and such is really the case.\nPossessing no organs, they have no colouration, and are generally either\ncolourless or a faint uniform brown colour, and through their colourless\nbodies the food particles show, often giving a fictitious appearance of\ncolouring.\n\nTo this general statement there is a curious and most telling exception.\nIn a great many protozoa there exists a curious pulsating cell-like\nbody, called the contractile vesicle, which seems to be a rudimentary\norgan, whose function is unknown. Here, then, if anywhere, traces of\ncolouring should be found, and here it is accordingly found, for, though\ngenerally clear and colourless, it sometimes assumes a pale roseate hue.\nThis may be deemed the first attempt at decoration in the animal\nkingdom, and it is directly applied to the only part which can be said\nto possess structure. Beautiful examples are plentiful in Leidy's\nmagnificent volume on Freshwater Rhizopods.\n\n_Coelenterata._ These animals fall into two groups, the _Hydrozoa_, of\nwhich the hydra and jelly-fishes are types, and the _Actinozoa_, of\nwhich the sea-anemonies and corals are types. Most of the coelenterata\nare transparent animals, but it is amongst them we first come across\nopaque colouring.\n\nOf the lowest forms, the hydras, nothing need be said here, as they are\nso much like the protozoa in their simplicity of structure.\n\nThe _Corynida_, familiar to many of our sea-side visitors by their horny\nbrown tubes (_Tubularia_), attached to shells and stones, are next in\npoint of complexity. Within the tube is found a semi-fluid mass of\nprotoplasm, giving rise at the orifice to the polypite, which possesses\na double series of tentacles. These important organs are generally of a\nvivid red colour, thus emphasizing their importance in the strongest\nmanner. Other members of the order are white, with pink stripes.\n\nIn the larval stage many of the animals belonging to the above and\nallied orders, are very like the true jelly-fishes. These free swimming\nlarvae, or _gonophores_, possess four radiating canals, passing from the\ndigestive sac to the margins of the bell, and these are often the seat\nof colour. In these creatures, too, we find the earliest trace of sense\norgans, and consequently, the first highly differentiated organs, and\nthey appear as richly spots on the margins of the bell. The\ntrue oceanic Hydrozoa again afford us fine examples of structural\ncolouration. The beautiful translucent blue-purple _Velella_, which is\nsometimes driven on to our shores, is a case in point; and its delicate\nstructure lines are all emphasized in deeper hues. The true jelly-fishes\n(_Medusidae_) with their crystal bells and radiating canals, frequently\nshow brilliant colour, and it is applied to the canals, and also to the\nrudimentary eye-specks, which are frequently richly tinted, and in all\ncases strongly marked. In the so-called \"hidden-eyed\" Medusae we find the\nsame arrangement of colour, the same emphasized eye-specks, and the\nreproductive organs generally appear as a vivid cross, showing\nthrough the translucent bell.\n\nTurning now to the _Actinozoa_, of which the sea anemonies and corals\nare types, we are brought first into contact with general decorative,\nmore or less opaque colour, applied to the surface of the animal. In the\npreceding cases the animals have been almost universally transparent or\ntranslucent, and the colouration is often applied to the internal\norgans, and shows through. In the sea-anemonies we find a nearer\napproach to opacity, in the dense muscular body, though even this is\noften translucent, and the tentacles generally so, often looking like\nclouded chalcedony. The wealth of colour to be found in these animals\ngives us a very important opportunity of studying decoration, where it\nfirst appears in profusion.\n\nOne of the first points that strikes even a casual observer is that\namongst the sea-anemonies the colouration is extremely variable, even in\nthe same species and in the same locality. This is in strong contrast to\nwhat we generally find amongst the higher organisms, such as insects and\nbirds; for though considerable variation is found in them, it does not\nrun riot as in the anemonies. It would almost appear as if the actual\ncolour itself was of minor importance, and only the pattern essential;\nthe precise hue is not fixed, is not important, but the necessity of\ncolour of some sort properly arranged is the object to be attained.\nWhether this idea has a germ of truth in it or not, it is hard to say,\nbut when we take the fact in connection with its occurrence just where\nopacity begins, connecting this with the transparency of the lower\norganisms, and the application of vivid colour to their internal organs,\none seems to associate the instability of the anemony's colouring with\nthe transference of colour from the interior to the exterior. Certain it\nis, that vivid colour never exists in the interior of opaque animals; it\nis always developed under the influence of light. The white bones,\nnerves and cartilages, and the uniform red of mammalian muscles, are not\ncases of true decorative colouring in our sense of the term, for all\nbodies must have some colour. All bone is practically white, all\nmammalian muscle red, but for these colours to be truly decorative, it\nwould be necessary for muscles of apparently the same character often to\nbe differently tinted, just as the apparently similar hairs on a mammal,\nand scales on an insect, are variously painted. This we do not find, for\nthe shaft-bones and plate-bones, and even such odd bones as the hyoid\nare all one colour; and no one would undertake to tell, by its hue, a\npiece of striped from a piece of unstriped muscle. Decorative colouring\n_must_ be external in an opaque animal; it _may_ be internal in a\ntransparent one.\n\nThe connection thus shown between decoration and transparency seems to\nsuggest that hypodermal colour is the original, and epidermal the newer\nscheme: that the latter was derived from the former. This agrees with\nHaagen's shrewd hint that all mimetic colour was originally hypodermal.\nCertain it is that the protective colour that is still under personal\ncontrol, as in the chameleon, &c., is always hypodermal.\n\nThe common crass (_Bunodes crassicornis_) is so extremely variable, that\nall one can say of it is, that it is red and green. But this\ncolour is distributed in accordance with structure. The base, or\ncrawling surface, not being exposed to the light, is uncoloured. The\ncolumn, or stem, is irregularly spotted, and striped in accordance with\nthe somewhat undifferentiated character of its tissue, but the important\norgans, the tentacles, are most definitely ornamented, the colour\nvarying, but the pattern being constant. This pattern is heart-shaped,\nwith the apex towards the point of the tentacle; that is to say, the\nnarrow part of the pattern points to the narrow part of the tentacle.\n\nIn the common _Actinea mesembryanthemum_, which is often blood red, the\nmarginal bodies, probably sense-organs, are of the most exquisite\nturquoise blue colour, and the ruby disc thus beaded is as perfect an\nexample of simple structural decoration as could be desired. A zone of\nsimilar blue runs round the base of the body.\n\nTurning now to the corals, which are simply like colonies of single\nanemonies with a stony skeleton, we have quite a different arrangement\nof hues. No sight is more fascinating than that of a living-coral reef,\nas seen through the clear waters of a lagoon. The tropical gardens\nashore cannot excel these sea-gardens in brilliancy or variety of\ncolour. Reds, yellows, purples, browns of every shade, almost bewilder\nthe eye with their profusion; and here again we find structural\ndecoration carried out to perfection. The growing points of white\nbranching corals (_Madrepores_) are frequently tipped with vivid purple,\nand the tiny polyps themselves are glowing gem-stars. In the white\nbrain-corals, the polyps are vivid red, green, yellow, purple and so on;\nbut in almost every case vividly contrasting with the surrounding parts,\nthe colour changing as the function changes.\n\nThe _Alcyonariae_, which include the sea-fans, sea-pens, and the red\ncoral of commerce, practically bring us to the end of the _Coelenterata_,\nand afford us fresh proof of the dependence of colour upon structure and\nfunction. The well-known organ-pipe coral (_Tubipora musica_) is of a\ndeep crimson colour, and the polyps themselves are of the most vivid\nemerald green, a contrast that cannot be excelled. Almost equally\nbeautiful is the commercial coral (_Corallium rubrum_) whose vivid red\nhas given a name to a certain tint. In this coral the polyps are of a\nmilk-white colour.\n\nIt must be remembered that in these cases the colour seems actually to\nbe intentional, so as to form a real and not merely an accidental\ncontrast between the stony polypidom and the polyp, for the connecting\ntissue (_coenosarc_) is itself as colourless as it is structureless.\n\nGathering together the facts detailed in this chapter we find:--\n\n 1. That the Protozoa are practically colourless and structureless.\n\n 2. That in those species which possess a rudimentary organ\n (contractile vesicle) a slight decoration is applied to that\n organ.\n\n 3. That in the Coelenterata the colouration is directly dependent\n upon the structure.\n\n 4. That in transparent animals the colouration is applied directly\n to the organ whether it be internal as in the canals or ovaries, or\n external, as in the eye-specks.\n\n 5. That in opaque animals, as in the sea-anemonies, the colouring\n is entirely external.\n\n 6. That it is very variable in hue, but not in pattern.\n\n 7. That the most highly differentiated parts (tentacles,\n eye-specks), are the most strongly .\n\n 8. That in the corals an emphatic difference occurs between the\n colour of the polypidom (or \"coral\") and the polyp.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VIII.\n\n DETAILS OF PROTOZOA.\n\n\nThe Protozoa are divided into three orders.\n\n I.--_Gregarinidae._\n II.--_Rhizopoda._\n III.--_Infusoria._\n\nI. The _Gregarinidae_ consist of minute protozoa, parasitic in the\ninterior of insects, &c., and like other internal parasites are\ncolourless, as we should expect.\n\nII. The _Rhizopoda_ may, for our purpose, be divided into the naked\nforms like _Amoeba_, and those which possess a skeleton, such as the\nRadiolaria, the Foraminifera and the Spongia.\n\nOf these the naked forms are colourless, or uniformly tinted, excepting\nthe flush already described as emphasizing the contractile vesicle.\n\nThe _Foraminifera_ are the earliest animals that possess a skeleton or\nshell, and though generally very small, this shell is often complex, and\nof extreme beauty, though their bodies retain the general simplicity of\nthe protozoa, indeed, they are said to possess no contractile vesicle.\nStill the complexity of their shells places them on a higher level than\nthe naked rhizopoda.\n\nIn these animals we find the first definite colour, not as a pattern,\nbut as simple tinting of the protoplasm. The general hue is\nyellowish-brown (as in _Amoeba_), but deep red is not uncommon. The\ndeepest colour is found in the oldest central chambers, becoming fainter\ntowards the periphery, where it is often almost unrecognisable.[19]\n\nThe _Radiolaria_ are minute organisms with still more complex skeletons,\nand are considered by Haeckel[20] to be more highly organized than the\npreceding order. They consist of a central portion containing masses of\nminute cells, and an external portion containing yellow cells. Here we\nhave the first differentiation of parts in the external coating and\ninternal capsule, and side by side with this differentiation we find\ncolour more pronounced, and even taking regional tints in certain forms.\n\nWe may notice the following genera as exhibiting fine colour:--\n\n _Red._ Eucecryphalus, Arachnocorys, Eucrytidium, Dictyoceras.\n\n _Yellow._ Carpocanium, Dictyophimus, Amphilonche.\n\n _Purple._ Eucrytidium, Acanthostratus.\n\n _Blue._ Cyrtidosphaera, Coelodendrum.\n\n _Green._ Cladococeus, Amphilonche.\n\n _Brown._ Acanthometra, Amphilonche.\n\nExamples of these may be seen in the plates of Haeckel's fine work, and\nas an illustration of regional decoration we cite _Acanthostratus\npurpuraceus_, in which the central capsule is seen to run from red to\norange, and the external parts to be colourless, with red markings in\nlooped chains.\n\n_Spongocyclia_ also exhibits this regional distinction of colour very\nclearly, the central capsule being red and the external portion yellow.\n\nThe _Spongida_, or sponges, are, broadly speaking, assemblages or\ncolonies of amoeba-like individuals, united into a common society.\nIndividually the component animals are low, very low, in type, but their\nunion into colonies, and the necessity for a uniform or common\ngovernment has given rise to peculiarities that in a certain sense raise\nthem even above the complex radiolaria. Some, it is true, are naked, and\ndo not possess the skeleton that supports the colony, which skeleton\nforms what we usually call the sponge; but even amongst these naked\nsponges the necessity for communal purposes over and above the mere\nwants of the individual, raises them a step higher in the animal series.\nA multitude of individuals united by a common membrane, living in the\nopen sea, it must have happened that some in more immediate contact with\nthe food-producing waters, would have thriven at the expense of those in\nthe interior who could only obtain the nutriment that had passed\nunheeded by the peripheral animals. But just as in higher communities we\nhave an inflowing system of water and an out-flowing system of effete\nsewerage quite uncontrolled, and, alas, generally quite unheeded by the\nindividuals whose wants are so supplied; so in the sponges we have a\nsystem of inflowing food-bearing water and an out-flowing sewage, or\nexhausted-water system. This is brought about by a peculiar system of\ncilia-lined cells which, as it were, by their motion suck the water in,\nbringing with it the food, and an efferent system by which the exhausted\nliquid escapes. These cilia-lined cells are the first true organs that\nare to be found in the animal kingdom, and according to the views we\nhold, they ought to be emphasized with colour, even though their\ninternal position renders the colouration less likely. This we find\nactually to be the case, and these flagellated cells, as they are\ncalled, are often the seat of vividest colour.\n\nThe animal matter, or sarcode, or protoplasm of sponges falls into three\nlayers, just as we find the primitive embryo of the highest animals; and\njust as the middle membrane of a mammalian ovum develops into bone,\nmuscle and nerve, so the middle membrane (mesosarc) of the sponges\ndevelops the hard skeleton, and in this most important part we find the\ncolour cells prevail. Sollas, one of our best English authorities upon\nsponges, writes, \"The colours of sponges, which are very various, are\nusually due to the presence of pigment granules, interbedded either in\nthe _endosarc of the flagellated cells_, or in the mesodermic cells,\nusually of the skin only, but sometimes of the whole body.\"[21]\n\nWe can, then, appeal most confidently to the protozoa as illustrating\nthe morphological character of colouration.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [19] Leidy. Rhizopoda of N. America, p. 16.\n [20] Haeckel. Die Radiolarien, Berlin, 1862.\n [21] Sollas. Spongidae. Cassell's Nat. Hist. Vol. vi., p. 318.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IX.\n\n DETAILS OF COELENTERATA.\n\n\n I. HYDROZOA.\n\n _A. Hydrida._\n\nThe Hydras, as a rule, are not in our sense of the term; that\nis to say, they are of a general uniform brown colour. But in one\nspecies, _H. viridis_, the endoderm contains granules of a green colour,\nwhich is said to be identical with the green colouring matter of leaves\n(_chlorophyll_). This does not occur in all the cells, though it is\npresent in most. The green matter occurs in the form of definite\nspherical corpuscles, and these colour-cells define the inner layer of\nthe integument (the endoderm), and render it distinct.[22] That portion\nof the endoderm which forms the boundary of the body-cavity has fewer\ngreen corpuscles, but contains irregular brown granules, thus roughly\nmapping out a structural region.\n\nWe thus see that even in so simple a body as the Hydra the colouring\nmatter is distributed strictly according to morphological tracts.\n\n_B. Tubularida._ The Tubularian Hydroids are the subject of an\nexhaustive and admirably illustrated monograph by Prof. J. Allman, from\nwhich the following details are culled. These animals are with few\nexceptions marine, and consist either of a single polypite or of a\nnumber connected together by a common flesh, or coenosarc. Some are quite\nnaked, others have horny tubes, into which, however, the polypites\ncannot retreat. The polypites consist essentially of a sac surrounded\nwith tentacles; and one of their most striking characters is their mode\nof reproduction. Little buds (_gonophores_) grow from the coenosarc, and\ngradually assume a form exactly like that of a jelly-fish. These drop\noff, and swim freely about; and are so like jelly-fishes that they have\nbeen classed among them as separate organisms.\n\nThe Tubulariae are all transparent; and in them we find structural\ncolouration finely shown, the colour, as is usual in transparent\nanimals, being applied directly to the different organs.\n\nWriting of the colour, Prof. Allman says: \"That distinct secretions are\nfound among the Hydroida, and that even special structures are set aside\nfor their elaboration, there cannot now be any doubt.\n\n\"One of the most marked of these secretions consists of a \ngranular matter; which is contained at first in the interior of certain\nspherical cells, and may afterwards become discharged into the somatic\nfluid. These cells, as already mentioned, are developed in the\nendoderm;[23] in which they are frequently so abundant as to form a\ncontinuous layer upon the free surface of this membrane. It is in the\nproper gastric cavity of the hydranth and medusa, in the spadix of the\nsporosac, and in the bulbous dilatations which generally occur at the\nbases of the marginal tentacles of the medusae, that they are developed\nin greatest abundance and perfection; but they are also found, more or\nless abundantly, in the walls of probably the whole somatic cavity, if\nwe except that portion of the gastrovascular canals of the medusa which\nis not included within the bulbous dilatations.\n\n\"In the parts just mentioned as affording the most abundant supply of\nthese cells, they are chiefly borne on the prominent ridges into which\nthe endoderm is thrown in these situations; when they occur in the\nintervals between the ridges they are smaller, and less numerous.\n\n\"The granular matter contained in the interior of these cells varies in\nits colour in different hydroids. In many it presents various shades of\nbrown; in others it is a reddish-brown, or light pink, or deeper\ncarmine, or vermilion, or orange, or, occasionally, a fine lemon-yellow,\nas in the hydranth of _Coppinia arcta_, or even a bright emerald green,\nas in the bulbous bases of the marginal tentacles of certain medusae. No\ndefinite structure can be detected in it; it is entirely composed of\nirregular granules, irregular in form, and usually aggregated into\nirregularly shaped masses in the interior of the cells. It is to this\nmatter that the colours of the _Hydroida_, varying, as they do, in\ndifferent species, are almost entirely due.\n\n\"The granular matter is undoubtedly a product of true\nsecretion; and the cells in which it is found must be regarded as true\nsecreting cells. These cells are themselves frequently to be seen as\nsecondary cells in the interior of parent cells, from which they escape\nby rupture, and then, falling into the somatic fluid, are carried along\nby its currents, until, ultimately, by their own rupture, they discharge\ninto it their contents.\n\n\"We have no facts which enable us to form a decided opinion as to the\npurpose served by this secretion. Its being always more or less deeply\n, and the fact of its being abundantly produced in the digestive\ncavity, might suggest that it represented the biliary secretion of\nhigher animals. This may be its true nature, but as yet we can assert\nnothing approaching to certainty on the subject; indeed, considering how\nwidely the cells destined for the secretion of granules are\ndistributed over the walls of the somatic cavity, it would seem not\nimprobable that the import of the matter may be different in\ndifferent situations; that while some of it may be a product destined\nfor some further use in the hydroid, more of it may be simply excretive,\ntaking no further part in the vital phenomena, and intended solely for\nelimination from the system.\"[24]\n\nHere we have very definite statements by a highly trained observer of\nthe distribution of colour in the whole of these animals, and of the\nconclusions he draws from them.\n\nFirstly as to the colour itself. We find it true colour--brown, pink,\ncarmine, vermilion, orange, lemon-yellow, and even emerald green; a set\nof hues as vivid as any to be found in the animal kingdom. It is\ndifficult to conceive these granules to be merely excrementitious\nmatter; for in such simple creatures, feeding upon such similar bodies,\none would hardly expect the excretive matter to be so diversified in\ntint. Moreover, excrementitious matter is not, as a rule, highly\n, but brown. Thus, we see in the Rhizopods the green vegetable\nmatter which has been taken in as food becomes brown as the process of\nassimilation goes on; and, indeed, colour seems almost always to be\ndestroyed by the act of digestion.\n\nStill, it by no means follows that this colour, even if it is produced\nfor the sake of decoration, as we suggest, may not owe its direct origin\nto the process of digestion. The digestive apparatus is the earliest\ndeveloped in the animal kingdom, and in these creatures is by far the\nmost important; the coelenterata being, in fact, little more than living\nstomachs. If, then, colouration be structural, what is more likely than\nthat the digestive organs should be the seat of decoration in such\ntransparent creatures?\n\nSecondly, as to the distribution of the colour. We find it \"frequently\nforming a continuous layer upon the free surface of\" the endoderm, in\nthe \"spadix of the sporosac,\" and in the \"bulbous terminations\" of the\ncanals, that colour is best developed. In other words, the colour is\ndistributed structurally, and is most strongly marked where the function\nis most important.\n\nProf. Allman gives no hint that the colour may be purely decorative, and\nis naturally perplexed at the display of hues in such vigour; but if\nthis be one of the results of the differentiation of parts, of the\nspecialization of function, then we can, at least, understand why we\nfind such brilliant colour in these creatures, and why it is so\ndistributed.\n\nAs an illustration of the _Tubularia_ we have selected _Syncoryne\npulchella_, Fig. 2, Pl. VI., and its medusa, Fig. 1. The endoderm of the\nspadix of the hydranths is of a rich orange colour, which becomes paler\nas it descends towards the less highly organized stem. Medusae are seen\nin various stages of development, and one, mature and free, is shown. In\nthese the manubrium, and the bulbous terminations of the canals are also\nseen to be orange.\n\nIn these medusae we find the first appearance of sensory organs. They\nconsist of pigment-cells enclosed in the ectoderm, or outside covering;\nand are singular as presenting the first true examples of opaque\ncolouring in the animal kingdom. They are associated with nerve cells\nattached to a ring of filamentous nerve matter, surrounding the base of\nthe bell. In some important respects the pigment differs from that in\nother parts of the animal. It is more definite in structure; and the\nwhole ocellus is \"aggregation of very minute cells, each filled with a\nhomogeneous matter.\"[25] These ocelli, and similar sense\norgans, called _lithocysts_, are always situated over the bulbous\ntermination of the canals. The pigment is black (as in this case),\nvermilion, or deep carmine.\n\n [Illustration: Plate VI.\n SYNCORYNE PULCHELLA.]\n\nThe dependence of colour upon structure is thus shown to hold good\nthroughout these animals in a most remarkable manner, and the acceptance\nof the views here set forth gives us an insight into the reasons for\nthis colouration which, as we have seen, did not arise from the study of\nthe question from the ordinary point of view.\n\n_C. Sertularida._ These animals are very similar to the last, but they\nare all compound, and the polypites can be entirely withdrawn within the\nleathery investment or polypary. Their mode of reproduction is also\nsimilar, and their colouration follows the same general plan. Being so\nlike the preceding order, it is unnecessary to describe them.\n\n\n _B. Siphonophora._\n\nThe Siphonophora are all free-swimming, and are frequently called\nOceanic Hydrozoa. They are divided into three orders, viz.:--\n\n _a. Calycophoridae._\n _b. Physophoridae._\n _c. Medusidae._\n\n_a. Calycophoridae._ These animals have a thread-like coenosarc, or common\nprotoplasm, which is unbranched, cylindrical, and contractile. They are\nmostly quite transparent, but where colour exists it is always placed\nstructurally. Thus, in _Diphyes_ the sacculi of the tentacles are\nreddish, in _Sphaeronectes_ they are deep red, and in _Abyla_ the edges\nof the larger specimens are deep blue.[26]\n\n_b. Physophoridae._ These creatures are distinguished by the presence of\na peculiar organ, the float, or _pneumatophore_, which is a sac\nenclosing a smaller sac. The float is formed by a reflexion of both the\nectoderm and endoderm, and serves to buoy up the animal at the surface\nof the sea. The best known species is the Physalia, or Portuguese\nMan-o'-War.\n\nProf. Huxley, in his monograph on the Oceanic Hydrozoa, gives many\ndetails of the colouration; and, not having had much opportunity of\nstudying them, the following observations are taken from his work. It\nwill be seen that the Physophoridae illustrate the structural\ndistribution of colour in a remarkable manner.\n\n_Stephanomia amphitridis_, the hydrophyllia, colourless, and so\ntransparent as to be almost imperceptible in water, coenosarc whitish,\nenlarged portions of polypites, pink or scarlet, sacs of tentacles\nscarlet.\n\nThe enlarged portion of the polypites is marked with red striae, \"which\nare simply elevations of the endoderm, containing thread-cells and\n granules.\" The small polypites do not possess these elevations,\nand are colourless.\n\n_Agalma breve_, like a prismatic mass of crystal, with pink float and\npolypites.\n\n_Athorybia rosacea_, float pink, with radiating dark-brown striae, made\nup of dots; polypites lightish red, shading to pink at their apices;\ntentacles yellowish or colourless, with dark-brown sacculi; thread-cells\ndark brown.\n\n_Rhizophysa filiformis_, pink, with deep red patch surrounding the\naperture of the pneumatocyst.\n\n_Physalia caravilla_, bright purplish-red, with dark extremities, and\nblue lines in the folds of the crest; polypites violet, with whitish\npoints, larger tentacles red, with dark purple acetabula, smaller\ntentacles blue, bundles of buds reddish.\n\n_P. pelagica_, in young individuals pale blue, in adult both ends green,\nwith highest part of crest purple, tentacles blue, with dark acetabula;\npolypites dark blue, with yellow points.\n\n_P. utriculus._ Prof. Huxley describes a specimen doubtfully referred to\nthis species very fully, as follows:--\n\n \"The general colour of the hydrosoma is a pale, delicate green,\n passing gradually into a dark, indigo blue, on the under surface.\n\n \"The ridge of the crest is tipped with lake, and the pointed end is\n stained deep bluish-green about the aperture of the pneumatocyst.\n\n \"The bases of the tentacles are deep blue; the polypites deep blue\n at their bases, and frequently bright yellow at their apices; the\n velvetty masses of reproductive organs and buds on the under\n surface are light green.\"\n\nHe further remarks that the tentacles have reniform thickenings at\nregular intervals, and \"the substance of each thickening has a dark blue\ncolour, and imbedded within it are myriads of close-set, colourless,\nspherical thread-cells.\"\n\nIt would not be possible to find a more perfect example of regional\ncolouration. Not only is each organ differently , but the\nimportant parts of each organ, like the ridge of the crest, the bases of\nthe tentacles, and the thread-cell bearing ridges of the tentacles, are\nalso emphasized with deep colour.\n\n_Velella._ This beautiful creature, which sometimes finds its way to our\nshores, is like a crystal raft fringed with tentacles, and having an\nupright oblique crest, or sail. The margins of the disk and crest are\noften of a beautiful blue colour, and the canals of the disk become deep\nblue as they approach the crest. The polypites may be blue, purple,\ngreen, or brown.\n\n_C. Medusidae._ The structure and colouration of the true Medusae are so\nlike that of the medusiform larvae of the other Hydrozoa, that they need\nnot be particularly described.\n\n_D. Lucernarida._ Of this sub-class we need only cite the _Lucernaria_\nthemselves; which are pretty bell-shaped animals, having the power of\nattaching themselves to seaweeds, etc., and also of swimming freely\nabout. Round the margin are eight tufts of tentacles, opposite eight\nlobes, the membrane between the lobes being festooned. In _L. auricula_,\na British species, the membrane is colourless and transparent, the lobes\nbright red, or green, and the tentacles blue.\n\nAs a group the Hydrozoa display regional colouration in a very perfect\nmanner.\n\n\n II. ACTINOZOA.\n\nIt is not necessary to trace the colouration through all the members of\nthis group, but we will trace the variation of colour through two\nspecies of anemonies, which have been admirably studied by Dr. A.\nAndres.[27] The first column shows the general hue, the second the tints\nof that hue which are sufficiently marked to form varieties as cochineal\nred, chocolate, bright red, rufous, liver-, brown, olive, green\nand glaucous. The third column gives the spotted varieties, from which\nit will be seen that the chocolate, liver, and green forms have\neach varieties. It will be seen that the range of colour is\nvery great, passing from pale pink, through yellowish-brown to\nblue-green.\n\n -----------+-----------+-----------+----------------\n Prevailing | Uniform | Spotted |\n colour. |varieties. |varieties. | Allied species.\n -----------+-----------+-----------+----------------\n White. | ? | | A. candida.\n \" | coccinea. | |\n \" | chiocca. | tigrina. |\n Red. | rubra. | |\n \" | rufosa. | |\n Yellow. | hepatica. | fragacea. |\n \" | umbra. | |\n \" | olivacea. | |\n \" | viridis. | opora. |\n \" | glaucus. | |\n Blue. | ? | |\n -----------+-----------+-----------+----------------\n\nVarieties of Actinea Cari.\n\nThe following brief descriptions illustrate the distribution of the\ncolour:--\n\n_Actinea Cari._\n\nUniform varieties (_Homochroma_).\n\n ----------------------+---------------+----------------+--------+-----------\n | Column. | Tentacles. |Gonidia.| Zone.\n ----------------------+---------------+----------------+--------+-----------\n [alpha]. _Hepatica_ | red brown. | azure. | azure. | azure.\n [beta]. _Rubra_ | crimson. | violet. | |{wanting,\n [gamma]. _Chiocca_ | scarlet. | white. | |{or flesh\n | | | |{.\n | | | |\n [delta]. _Coccinea_ | cochineal. | yellowish. | |\n [epsilon]. _Olivacca_ | olive-brown | azure. | azure. |\n | green. | | |\n [zeta]. _Viridis_ | green. | azure. | azure. | azure.\n | | | |\n Spotted varieties (_Heterochroma_).\n | | | |\n [eta]. _Tigrina_ |red, spotted | | |\n | yellow. | | |\n [theta]. _Fragacea_ |liver, spotted | | |\n | clear green. | azure or white.| |indistinct.\n [iota]. _Opora_ |green spotted, | | |\n | and striped | | |\n | yellow. | azure. | |\n ----------------------+---------------+----------------+--------+-----------\n\nIn this table the varieties above mentioned are further particularized.\nThe column is the stalk or body, the tentacles are the arms, the gonidia\nthe eye spots, and the zone the line round the base. It will be noticed\nthat these regions are often finely contrasted in colour.\n\n_Bunodes gemmaceus_ is another variable form, and the following\nvarieties are recognised.\n\n_Heterochroma._\n\n [alpha]. Ocracea, } peristome ochre yellow, zone black, tentacles grey,\n (type) } with blue and white spots.\n\n\n [beta]. _Pallida_, peristome whitish grey unbanded, tentacles with\n white spots.\n\n [gamma]. _Viridescens_, peristome greenish white unbanded, tentacles with\n white spots and rosy shades.\n\n [delta]. _Aurata_, column at base golden, peristome intenser yellow with\n crimson flush, tentacles grey with ochreous and white spots.\n\n [epsilon]. _Carnea_, column at base flesh , peristome rosy,\n tentacles rosy, with white spots.\n\n_Homochroma._\n\n [zeta]. _Rosea_, like [epsilon], but with rosy tubercles.\n\n [eta] . _Nigricans_, peristome blackish, with blue and green\n reflexions (riflessi).\n\nA few other examples may be given, all of which can be studied in Dr.\nAndre's magnificently plates.\n\n_Aiptasia mutabilis_ is yellow brown, the tentacles spotted in\nlongitudinal rows, the spots growing smaller towards the tip, thus\naffording a perfect example of the adaptation of colour to structure.\n\n_Anemonia sulcata_ has normally long light yellow pendulous tentacles\ntipped with rose, but a variety has the column still yellow but the\ntentacles pale green, tipped with rose.\n\n_Bunodes rigidus_ has the column green, with rows of crimson tubercles,\nthe tentacles are flesh-, except the outer row which are pearly;\nthe peristome is green, with brown lips.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [22] Allman's Hydroids. Ray. Soc., p. 123.\n [23] Compare with Hydra above.\n [24] Allman. Monograph of Tubularian Hydroida. Ray. Soc., p. 135.\n [25] Allman, _op. cit._, p. 139.\n [26] Huxley. Oceanic Hydrozoa, pp. 32, 46, 50.\n [27] Fauna und Flora des Golfes von Neapel. Die Actinien. 1884.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER X.\n\n THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS.\n\n\nIn the decoration of insects and birds, nature has exerted all her\npower; and amongst the wealth of beauty here displayed we ought to find\ncrucial tests of the views herein advocated. It will be necessary,\ntherefore, to enter somewhat into detail, and we shall take butterflies\nas our chief illustration, because in them we find the richest display\nof colouring. The decoration of caterpillars will also be treated at\nsome length, partly because of their beauty, and partly because amongst\nthem sexual selection cannot possibly have had any influence.\n\nButterflies are so delicate in structure, so fragile in constitution, so\ndirectly affected by changes of environment, that upon their wings we\nhave a record of the changes they have experienced, which gives to them\na value of the highest character in the study of biology. In them we can\nstudy every variation that geographical distribution can effect; for\nsome species, like the Swallow-tail (_Papilio machaon_) and the Painted\nLady (_Cynthia cardui_), are almost universal, and others, like our now\nextinct Large Copper (_Lycaena dispar_), are excessively local, being\nconfined to a very few square miles. From the arctic regions to the\ntropics, from the mountain tops to the plains, on the arid deserts and\namidst luxuriant vegetation, butterflies are everywhere to be found.\n\nBefore entering into details, it will be as well to sketch some of the\nbroad features of butterfly decoration. In the first place they are all\nday-fliers, and light having so strong an influence upon colour, there\nis a marked difference in beauty between them and the night-flying\nmoths. A collection of butterflies viewed side by side with a collection\nof moths brings out this fact more strongly than words can describe,\nespecially when the apparent exceptions are considered; for many moths\nare as brightly as butterflies. These will be found to belong\neither to day-flying species, like the various Burnets (_Zygaena_), Tiger\nMoths (_Arctia_), or evening flyers like the Hawk Moths (_Sphyngidae_.)\nThe true night-flying, darkness-loving moths cannot in any way compare\nwith the insects that delight in sunshine. We see the same thing in\nbirds, for very few nocturnal species, so far as we are aware, are\nbrilliantly decorated.\n\nAnother salient feature is the difference that generally exists between\nthe upper and lower surfaces of the wings. As a rule, the upper surface\nis the seat of the brightest colour. Most butterflies, perhaps all,\nclose their wings when at rest, and the upper wing is generally dropped\nbehind the under wing, so that only the tip is visible. The under\nsurface is very frequently so mottled and as to resemble the\ninsect's natural surroundings, and so afford protection. It does not\nfollow that this protective colouring need be dull, and only when we\nknow the habit of the insect can we pronounce upon the value of such\ncolouring. The pretty Orange-tip has its under wings veined with green,\nand is most conspicuous in a cabinet, but when at rest upon some\numbelliferous plant, with its orange tip hidden, these markings so\nresemble the environment as to render the insect very inconspicuous. The\nbrilliant _Argynnis Lathonia_, with its underside adorned with plates of\nmetallic silver, is in the cabinet a most vivid and strongly-marked\nspecies; but we have watched this insect alight among brown leaves, or\non brown stones, outside Florence, where it is very common, and find\nthat these very marks are a sure protection, for the insect at rest is\nmost difficult to see, even when it is marked down to its resting-place.\n\nBut some butterflies have parts of the under surface as gaily decorated\nas the upper; and this not for protection. This may be seen to some\nextent in our own species, for instance in the orange-tip of the\nOrange-tip, and the red bar in the upper wing of the Red Admiral (_V.\natalanta_). If we watch these insects, the conviction that these are\ntrue ornaments is soon forced upon us. The insect alights, perhaps\nalarmed, closes its wings, and becomes practically invisible. With\nreturning confidence it will gradually open its wings and slowly vibrate\nthem, then close them again, and lift the upper wing to disclose the\ncolour. This it will do many times running, and the effect of the sudden\nappearance and disappearance of the bright hues is as beautiful as it\nis convincing. None can doubt the love of display exhibited in such\nactions.\n\nThe delicacy of their organization renders butterflies peculiarly\nsusceptible to any change, and hence they exhibit strong tendencies to\nvariation, which make them most valuable studies. Not only do the\nindividuals vary, but the sexes are often differently . Where\ntwo broods occur in a season they are sometimes quite differently\ndecorated, and finally a species inhabiting widely different localities\nmay have local peculiarities.\n\nWe can thus study varieties of decoration in many ways, and we shall\ntreat of them as follows:--\n\n 1. _Simple Variation_, in which the different individuals of a\n species vary in the same locality.\n\n 2. _Local Variation_, in which the species has marked peculiarities\n in different localities.\n\n 3. _Sexual Dimorphism_, in which the sexes vary.\n\n 4. _Seasonal Dimorphism_, in which the successive broods differ.\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 3. Diagram of Butterfly's Wing.\n A. Upper Wing.\n B. Lower Wing.\n _a._ Costal Margin.\n _b._ Hind Margin.\n _c._ Inner \"\n _d._ Anal Angle.\n _e._ Costa.\n _f._ Costal nervure.\n _g._ Sub-costal do.\n _g_^{1-4}. Branches of do.\n _h._ Median nervure.\n _i._ Sub-median do.\n _j._ Discoidal Cell.\n _k._ Discoidal Veins.]\n\nIn order fully to understand the bearing of the following remarks it is\nnecessary to know something of the anatomy and nomenclature of\nbutterflies. Fig. 3 is an ideal butterfly. The wing margins are\ndescribed as the _Costal_, which is the upper strong edge of the wing,\nthe _Hind_ margin, forming the outside, and the _Inner_ margin, forming\nthe base. The nervures consist of four principal veins; the _Costal_, a\nsimple nervure under the costa, the _Sub-costal_, which runs parallel to\nthe costal and about halfway to the tip emits branches, generally four\nin number; the _Median_ occupying the centre of the wing and sending off\nbranches, usually three in number, and the _Sub-median_ below which is\nalways simple. There are thus two simple nervures, one near the costal\nthe other near the inner margin, and between them are two others which\nemit branches. Between these two latter is a wide plain space known as\nthe _discoidal cell_. Small veins called the _discoidal_ pass from the\nhind margin towards the cell, and little transverse nervures, known as\nsub-discoidal, often close the cell. By these nervures the wing is\nmapped out into a series of spaces of which one, the discoidal cell, is\nthe most important.\n\nThe nervures have two functions, they support and strengthen the wing,\nand being hollow serve to convey nutritive fluid and afterwards air to\nthe wing.\n\nThe wings are moved by powerful muscles attached to the base of the\nwings close to the body and to the inside of the thorax, all the muscles\nbeing necessarily internal. \"There are two sets which depress the wings;\nfirstly a double dorsal muscle, running longitudinally upwards in the\nmeso-thorax;[28] and, secondly, the dorso-ventral muscles of the meso-\nand meta-thorax,[29] which are attached to the articulations of the\nwings above, and to the inside of the thorax beneath. Between these lie\nthe muscles which raise the wings and which run from the inner side of\nthe back of the thorax to the legs.\"[30] When we consider the immense\nextent of wing as compared with the rest of the body, the small area of\nattachment, and the great leverage that has to be worked in moving the\nwings, it is clear that the area of articulation of the wing to the body\nis one in which the most violent movement takes place. It is here that\nthe waste and repair of tissue must go on with greatest vigour, and we\nshould, on our theory, expect it to be the seat of strong emphasis.\nAccordingly we commonly find it adorned with hairs, and in a vast number\nof cases the general hue is darker than that of the rest of the wing,\nand so far as we have been able to observe, never lighter than the body\nof the wing. Even in the so-called whites (Pieris) this part of the wing\nis dusky, and instances are numerous on Plate IV.\n\nThe scales, which give the colour to the wings, deserve more than a\npassing notice. They are inserted by means of little stalks into\ncorresponding pits in the wing-membrane, and overlap like tiles on a\nroof; occasionally the attachment is a ball and socket (_Morphinae_), in\nwhich case it is possible the insect has the power of erecting and\nmoving its scales. The shapes are very numerous, but as a rule they are\nshort. To this there is a remarkable exception on the wings of the males\nof certain butterflies, consisting of elongated tufted prominences which\nappear to be connected with sense-organs. They are probably\nscent-glands, and thus we find, even in such minute parts as scales, a\ndifference of function emphasized by difference of ornamentation, here\nshowing itself in variety of forms; but, as we have said, ornamentation\nin form is often closely allied to ornamentation in colours. In some\nbutterflies, indeed, these scales are aggregated into spots, as in\n_Danais_, and have a different hue from the surrounding area.\n\nThe scales are not simple structures, but consist of two or more plates,\nwhich are finely striated. The colouring matter consists of granules,\nplaced in rows between the striae, and may exist upon the upper surface\nof the upper membrane (epidermal), or the upper surface of the under or\nmiddle plate (hypodermal), or the colour may be simple diffraction\ncolour, arising from the interference of the lightwaves by fine striae.\n\nDr. Haagen, in the admirable paper before mentioned, has examined this\nquestion thoroughly, and gives the results set forth in the following\ntable:--\n\n _Epidermal Colours._\n Metallic blues and greens }\n Bronze }\n Gold }\n Silver } Persistent after death.\n Black }\n Brown }\n Red (rarely) }\n\n _Hypodermal Colours._\n Blue }\n Green }\n Yellow }\n Milk-white } Fading after death.\n Orange and }\n shades between }\n Red }\n\nThe hypodermal colours are usually lighter than the epidermal, and are\nsometimes changed by a voluntary act. Hypodermal and epidermal colours\nare, of course, not peculiar to insects; and, as regards the former, it\nis owing to their presence that the changing hues of fishes, like the\nsole and plaice, and of the chameleon are due.\n\nThe great order Lepidoptera, including butterflies and moths, seems to\nthe non-scientific mind to be composed of members which are pretty much\nalike, the differences being of slight importance; but this is not in\nreality the case, for the lepidoptera might, with some accuracy, be\ncompared to the mammalia, with its two divisions of the placental and\nnon-placental animals. Comparing the butterflies (Rhopalocera) to the\nplacental mammals, we may look upon the different families as similar to\nthe orders of the mammalia. Were we as accustomed to notice the\ndifferences of butterflies as we are to remark the various forms of\nfamiliar animals, we should no longer consider them as slight, but\naccord to them their true value. When in the mammalia we find animals\nwhose toes differ in number, like the three-toed rhinoceros and the\nfour-toed tapir, we admit the distinction to be great, even apart from\nother outward forms. So, too, the seal and lion, though both belonging\nto the carnivora, are readily recognized as distinct, but the seals may\neasily be confounded by the casual observer with the manatees, which\nbelong to quite a different order.\n\nThus it is with the Lepidoptera, for from six-legged insects, whose pupae\nlie buried beneath the soil, like most moths, we pass to the highest\nbutterflies, whose fore-legs are atrophied, and whose pupae hang\nsuspended in the open air; and this by easy intermediate stages. Surely,\nif six-legged mammals were the rule, we should look upon four-legged\nones as very distinct; and this is the case with the butterflies. It is\nnecessary to make this clear at starting, in order that we may\nappreciate to its full value the changes that have taken place in the\ninsects under study.\n\nButterflies (_Rhopalocera_) are grouped into four sub-families, as\nunder:--\n\n 1. _Nymphalidae_, having the fore-legs rudimentary, and the pupae\n suspended from the base of the abdomen.\n\n 2. _Erycinidae_, in which the males only have rudimentary fore-legs.\n\n 3. _Lycaenidae_, in which the fore-legs of the males are smaller than\n those of the females, and terminate in a simple hook.\n\n 4. _Papilionidae_, which have six perfect pairs of legs, and in\n which the pupae assume an upright posture, with a cincture round the\n middle.\n\nIt may, at first sight, appear curious that the imperfect-legged\n_Nymphalidae_ should be placed at the head of the list, but this is based\nupon sound reasoning. The larva consists of thirteen segments, and, in\npassing to the mature stage, the second segment alone diminishes in\nsize, and it is to this segment that the first pair of legs is attached.\nLooking now to the aerial habits of butterflies, we can understand how,\nin the process of evolution towards perfect aerial structure, the legs,\nused only for walking, would first become modified; and, naturally,\nthose attached to the segment which decreases with development would be\nthe first affected. When this is found to be combined with an almost\naerial position of the pupae, we see at once how such insects approach\nnearest to an ideal flying insect. It is a general law that suppression\nof parts takes place as organisms become specialized. Thus, in the\nmammalia, the greatest number of toes and teeth are found in the lowest\nforms and in the oldest, simplest fossil species.\n\nA butterfly is, indeed, little more than a beautiful flying machine; for\nthe expanse of wing, compared with the size of the body, is enormous.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [28] The middle division of the thorax.\n [29] Hinder division of thorax.\n [30] Dallas in Cassell's Nat. Hist., vol. vi., p. 27.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XI.\n\n THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS.\n\n (_Continued._)\n\n\n_General Scheme of Colouring._ So various are the patterns displayed\nupon the wings of butterflies, that amidst the lines, stripes, bars,\ndots, spots, ocelli, scalloppings, etc., it seems at first hopeless to\ndetect any general underlying principle of decoration; and this is the\nopinion that has been, and is still, held by many who have made these\ninsects a special study. Nevertheless, we will try to show that beneath\nthis almost confused complexity lie certain broad principles, or laws,\nand that these are expressed by the statement that decoration is\nprimarily dependent upon structure, dependent upon the laws of emphasis\nand repetition, and modified by the necessity for protection or\ndistinction.\n\nTo render this subject as plain as possible, British species will be\nselected, as far as possible, and foreign ones only used when native\nforms do not suffice.\n\nThe body of by far the greater number of species is either darker or of\nthe same tint as the mass of the wings; and only in rare cases lighter.\nWhen the body has different tints, it is generally found that the thorax\nand abdomen differ in colour, and in many cases the base of the thorax\nis emphasized by a dark or light band.\n\nOn the wings the functional importance of the parts attached to the body\nis generally darker, perhaps never lighter, than the ground of the wing,\nand is frequently further emphasized by silky hairs. This has already\nbeen sufficiently pointed out.\n\nThe wing area may be divided into the strong costal margin, the hind\nmargin, the nervules, and the spaces; and, however complex the pattern\nmay be, it is always based upon these structure lines.\n\nIn the majority of insects the costal margin is marked with strong\ncolour. This may be noticed in _Papilio Machaon_, _P. merope_, _Vanessa\nantiopa_, and the whites in Plate IV. The extreme tip of the fore-wings\nis nearly always marked with colour, though this may run into the border\npattern. This colour is dark or vividly bright, and we know no\nbutterfly, not even dark ones, that has a light tip to the wings.\nSometimes, it is true, the light bead-border spots run to the tip, but\nthese are not cases in point. The development of tips has been traced in\nChapter VI., and need not be repeated.\n\nThe hind margin of both wings is very commonly emphasized by a border,\nof which _V. Antiopa_, Pl. III. Fig. 3, is a very perfect example.\n\nThe border pattern may consist of one or more rows of spots, lines,\nbands, or scallops;[31] and there is frequently a fine fringe, which in\nmany cases is white, with black marks, and to which the term\nbead-pattern may be applied.\n\nA definite relation subsists in most cases between the shape of the hind\nmargin and the character of the border-pattern. The plain or simple\nbordered wings have plain border patterns, and the scalloped wings have\nscalloped borders; or rather scalloped borders are almost exclusively\nconfined to scalloped wings. In our English butterflies, for instance,\nout of the 62 species:--\n\n 33 have plain margins to the wings. In all the border is plain, or\n wanting.\n\n 20 have the fore-wings plain, and the hind-wings scalloped, and in\n all the hind-wings are scalloped and the fore-wings plain, or with\n slightly scalloped border-patterns.\n\n 9 have scalloped margins and scalloped border-patterns.\n\nAnother relation between structure and pattern is found in those insects\nwhich have tailed hind-wings, for the tail is very frequently emphasized\nby a spot, often of a different colour from the rest of the wing as in\nthe Swallow-Tails, Plates IV. and V.\n\nYet another point may be noticed. In each wing there is a space, the\ndiscoidal cell, _j_ Fig. 3, at the apex of which several nervures join,\nforming knots. These are points at which obstacles exist to the flow of\nthe contents, and they are almost always marked by a distinct pattern.\nWe thus have a discoidal spot in very many butterflies, in nearly all\nmoths; and in the other orders of winged insects the decoration is even\nmore pronounced, as any one may see who looks at our dragon-flies,\nwasps, bees, or even beetles.\n\nIn some insects the decoration of the body is very marked, as in our\nsmall dragon-flies, the Agrions. In one species, for example, _A.\nPuella_, the male is pale blue banded with black, and the female bronze\nblack, with a blue band on the segment, bearing the sexual organ; the\novipositors are also separately decorated. The male generative organs\nare peculiar, in that the fertilizing fluid is conveyed from one segment\nto a reservoir at the other end of the abdomen. Both the segments\nbearing these organs are marked by special decoration. The peculiar\narrangement of the sexual organs in dragon-flies is very variable, and\ncertain segments are modified or suppressed in some forms, as was shown\nby J. W. Fuller.[32] In every case the decoration follows the\nmodification. In the thorax of dragon-flies, too, the principal muscular\nbands are marked out in black lines. This distinct representation of the\ninternal structure is beautifully shown in _AEschna_ and _Gomphina_, and\nin the thorax of _Cicada_, as shown by Dr. Haagen in the paper quoted in\nthe last chapter.\n\nWe may, then, safely pronounce that the decoration of insects is\neminently structural.\n\n_Simple Variation._ Cases of simple variation have been already cited in\nour description of spots and stripes, and it only remains to show that\nin this, as in all other cases, the variation is due to a modification\nof original structural decoration.\n\nTo take familiar examples. Newman, in his British Butterflies, figures\nthe varieties of the very common Small Tortoiseshell (_Vanessa urticae_).\nIn the normal form there is a conspicuous white spot on the disc of the\nfore-wings, which is absent in the first variety, owing to the spreading\nof the red-brown ground colour. This variety is permanent on the\nMediterranean shores. In variety two, the second black band, running\nfrom the costa across the cell, is continued across the wing. The third\nvariety, Mr. Newman remarks, is \"altogether abnormal, the form and\ncolouring being entirely altered.\" Still, when we examine the insect\nclosely, we find it is only a modification of the original form. The\nfirst striking difference is in the margin of the wings, which in the\nnormal form is scalloped with scallop-markings, whereas, in the variety\nthe margins are much simpler, and the border pattern closely corresponds\nwith it, having lost its scalloping. In the fore-wing some of the black\nbands and spots are suppressed or extended, and the extensions end\nrigidly at nervules. The dark colouring of the hind-wings has spread\nover the whole wing. We thus see that the decoration, even in varieties\ncalled abnormal, still holds to structural lines, and is a development\nof pre-existing patterns.\n\nNo one can have examined large series of any species without being\nimpressed with the modification of patterns in almost every possible\nway. For instance, we have reared quantities of _Papilio Machaon_, and\nfind great differences, not only in the pattern, but in the colour\nitself. A number of pupae from Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire, were placed in\ncages, into which only light could fall, and though these\nexperiments are not sufficiently extended to allow us to form any sound\nconclusions as to the effect of the light, we got more\nvarieties than could be expected from a batch of pupae from the same\nlocality. The tone of the yellow, the quantity of red, the proportion of\nthe yellow to the blue scales in the clouds, varied considerably, but\nalways along the known and established lines.\n\nThe variations in the colour of Lepidoptera has been most admirably\ntreated by Mr. J. Jenner Weir in a paper, only too short, read before\nthe West Kent Natural History Society.[33] He divides variations into\ntwo sections, Aberrations or Heteromorphism, and constant variations or\nOrthopaecilism, and subdivides each into six classes, as under:--\n\n _Heteromorphism._\n\n Albinism ... ... white varieties.\n\n Melanism ... ... black do.\n\n Xanthism ... ... pallid do.\n\n Sports ... ... or occasional variations not included\n in the above.\n\n Gynandrochomism ... females as males.\n\n Hermaphroditism ... sexes united.\n\n _Orthopaecilism._\n\n Polymorphism ... variable species.\n\n Topomorphism ... local varieties.\n\n Atavism ... ... reversion to older forms.\n\n Dimorphism ... ... two constant forms.\n\n Trimorphism ... ... three do. do.\n\n Horeomorphism ... seasonal variation.\n\n\n\nIn some cases, he remarks, variations are met with which may with equal\npropriety be classed in either section.\n\nAlbinism he finds to be very rare in British species, the only locality\nknown to him being the Outer Hebrides. This reminds us of Wallace's\nremark upon the tendency to albinism in islands. Xanthism, he finds to\nbe more plentiful, and quotes the common Small Heath (_Caenonympha\npamphilus_) as an illustration. In these varieties we have simply a\nbleaching of the colouring matter of the wings, and therefore no\ndeparture from structural lines. Melanism arises from the spreading of\nlarge black spots or bars, or, as in _Biston betularia_, a white moth\npeppered with black, dots by the confluence of small spots; for this\ninsect in the north is sometimes entirely black. It is singular that\ninsects have a tendency to become melanic in northern and alpine places,\nand this is especially the case with white or light species.\n(_See_ Plate IV., Fig. 17) It has recently been suggested that this\ndarkening of these delicate membranous beings in cold regions is for the\npurpose of absorbing heat, and this seems very probable.[34]\n\nOf ordinary spots it is merely necessary to remark, that they are all\ncases in our favour. Thus, in _Satyrus hyperanthus_ we have \"the\nordinary round spots ... changed into lanceolate markings\"; this takes\nplace also in _C. davus_. The other cases of aberration do not concern\nus.\n\nWhen, however, we come to the cases in which a species has two or more\npermanent forms, it is necessary to show that they are in all cases\nfounded on structure lines. The patterns, as shown in Plate V., Figs.\n1-13, are always arranged structurally, and the fact that not only are\nintermediate forms known, as in _Araschnia porima_, Plate V., Fig. 6,\nbut that the various forms are convertible into one another, would in\nitself be sufficient to show that in these cases there is no departure\nfrom the general law. In _Grapta interrogationis_, Plate V., Figs. 8-10,\nwe see in the central figure one large spot above the median nervure, in\nthe left-hand form this is surmounted by another spot above the lowest\nsub-costal branch, and in the right-hand figure this latter spot is very\nindistinct. We have here a perfect gradation, and the same may be said\nof the colouration of the lower wings. Take again the three forms of\n_Papilio Ajax_ in the same plate, Figs. 11-13, and we have again only\nmodifications of the same type.\n\nIn local varieties, as in seasonal forms, we have again nothing more\nthan developments of a given type, as is well shown in Plates IV. & V.,\nFigs. 13-18 & 1-13.\n\nWhen, however, we come to mimetic forms, whether they mimic plants, as\nin Plate I., or other species, as in Plates II. & III., a difficulty\ndoes seem to arise.\n\nThe leaf butterfly (_Kallima inachus_), Plate I., offers no trouble when\nwe view the upper surface only with its orange bands, but its under\nsurface, so marvellously like a dead leaf that even holes and\nmicroscopic fungi are suggested, does seem very like a case in which\nstructure lines are ignored. Take, for instance, the mark which\ncorresponds to the mid-ribs, running from the tail to the apex of the\nupper wing; it does not correspond to any structure line of the insect.\nBut if we take allied and even very different species and genera of\nIndian and Malayan butterflies, we shall find every possible\nintermediate form between this perfect mimicry and a total lack of such\ncharacters. To cite the most recent authority, the various species of\nthe Genera Discophora, Amathusia, Zeuxidia, Thaumantis, Precis, &c.,\nfigured so accurately in Distant's Rhopalocera Malayana, will give all\nthe steps.\n\nIn the cases of true mimicry, as in Figs. 1-3, Plates II. & III., where\ninsects as different as sheep from cats copy one another, we find that\nof course structure lines are followed, though the pattern is vastly\nchanged. The _Papilio merope_, Fig. 1, Plate II., which mimics _Danais\nniavius_, Fig. 3, does so by suppressing the tail appendage, changing\nthe creamy yellow to white--a very easy change, constantly seen in our\nown Pieridae--and diffusing the black. A similar case is seen in Figs.\n4-5, Plate III., where a normally white butterfly (_Panopoea hirta_)\nmimics a normally dark one of quite a different section. Here again the\nchange is not beyond our power of explanation. Where a Papilio like\n_merope_ mimics a brown species like _Danais niavius_, we have a still\ngreater change in colour, but not in structural pattern.\n\nIf we ascribe to these insects the small dose of intelligence we believe\nthem to possess, we can readily see how the sense of need has developed\nsuch forms.\n\nLocal varieties present no difficulty under such explanation. The\nparamount necessity for protection has given the Hebridran species the\ngrey colour of the rocks, and the desert species their sandy hue.\n\n [Illustration: Plate VII.\n CATERPILLARS.]\n\nFinally, to take the case of caterpillars, Weismann has admirably worked\nout the life history of many forms, and shows how the complex markings\nhave arisen by development. Broadly, a caterpillar consists of 13\nsegments, the head being one. The head is often marked with darker\ncolour, and the last segment with its clasping feet is also very\nfrequently emphasized, as in Figs. 1 & 3, Plate VII. The spiracles are\ngenerally marked by a series of spots, and often connected by a line.\nHere the tendency to repetition shows itself strongly, for not only the\nspiracles themselves, but the corresponding points in the segments\nwithout spiracles are frequently spotted, and, moreover, these spots are\nfrequently repeated in rows above the spiracular line. Of this,\n_Deilephila galii_ and _D. Euphorbiae_, Figs. 1-5, Plate VII., are good\nexamples.\n\nThe segmentation is also generally emphasized, as shown in all the\nexamples on the plate, but in its simplicity in Fig. 10.\n\nRunning down the centre of the back a more or less distinct line is\noften seen, as shown in the figures. This corresponds with the great\ndorsal alimentary canal lying just below the skin, and Weismann has\nshown that in young larvae this line is transparent, and the green food\ncan be seen through the skin. We have here, perhaps, a relic of the\ndirect colouration noticed in the transparent coelenterata.\n\nWhere larvae possess horns either upon the head, as in _Apatura iris_ and\n_Papilio machaon_, or on the tail, as in many of the sphyngidae, like\nFigs. 1-5, Plate VII., these appendages are always emphasized in colour.\nAs they are frequently oblique, we often find that this obliquity is\ncontinued as a slanting spot, as in _D. galii_ and _euphorbiae_, and\nsometimes repeated as a series of oblique stripes, as in Fig. 4.\n\nIt must be admitted that in insects we have strong evidence of\nstructural decoration.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n [31] In the true scallop pattern the convexity is turned towards the\n body of the insect.\n [32] J. W. Fuller on the Breathing Apparatus of Aquatic Larvae. Proc.\n Bristol Nat. Soc.\n [33] Entomologist, vol. xvi., p. 169, 1883.\n [34] Nature. R. Meldola on Melanism, 1885.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XII.\n\n ARACHNIDA.\n\n\nThe Arachnida include the scorpions and spiders, and as the former are\ntolerably uniform in colour, our remarks will be confined to the latter.\n\nThe thorax is covered with a horny plate, while the abdomen only\npossesses a soft skin, and neither show any traces of segmentation. From\nthe thorax spring four pairs of legs, and a pair of palpi, or feelers.\nImmediately beneath the skin of the abdomen lies the great dorsal\nvessel, which serves as a heart. This vessel is divided into three\nchambers, the general aspect of which is shown in Fig. 9, Plate VIII.,\ntaken from Gegenbaur's Comparative Anatomy.[35]\n\nFrom this heart the blood passes by vessels to each of the limbs, the\npalpi, etc., as offsets from the double-branched aorta. The shape of\nthis dorsal vessel is peculiar, and its importance in respect to\ncolouration will be immediately apparent.\n\nThe primary scheme of colouration in the Arachnida seems to be the\ndistinguishing of the cephalothorax from the abdomen by a different\ncolour. Thus, of the 272 species of British spiders represented in\nBlackwell's work,[36] no less than 203 have these parts differently\n, and only 69 are of the same hue, and even in these there is\noften a difference of tint. So marked is this in certain cases that the\ntwo parts form vivid contrasts. Of this cases are given in the following\nlist.\n\n Cephalothorax. Abdomen.\n _Eresus cinnabarinus_, Black, Bright Red.\n _Thomisus floricolens_, Green, Brown.\n ---- _cinereus_, Brown, Blue.\n ---- _trux_, Red, Brown.\n _Sparassus smaragdulus_, Green, Red and yellow.\n\nAs a rule the abdomen is darker than the cephalothorax, and many species\nhave the former red-brown and the latter black.\n\nThe legs, usually, take the colour of the cephalothorax, and are, hence,\ngenerally lighter than the abdomen, but to this there are exceptions.\nWhere the individual legs differ in colour, the two first pairs are the\ndarkest, and the dark hue corresponds in tint with the dark markings on\nthe cephalothorax. The joints of the legs are in many species emphasized\nwith dark colour, which is often repeated in bands along the limb.\n\nThe most remarkable point is, however, the pattern on the abdomen,\nwhich, though varied in all possible ways, always preserves a general\ncharacter, so that we might speak with propriety of a spider-back\npattern. This pattern is fairly well illustrated in the genus _Lycosa_,\nbut is seen to perfection, and in its simplest form in _Segestria\nsenoculata_, Plate VIII., Fig. 1, and in _Sparassus smaragdulus_, Plate\nVIII., Fig. 2.\n\nThis peculiar pattern is so like the dorsal-vessel that lies just\nbeneath, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we have here\nan actual case of the influence of internal organs on the integument,\nand this we believe to be the case. No matter how curious the abdominal\nmarkings may seem to be, they never so far depart from this fundamental\npattern as to appear independent of it.\n\nThus, in the genus _Lycosa_, which is by no means the best for the\npurpose, but is chosen as illustrating Gegenbaur's diagram, Pl. VIII.,\nwe have the dorsal-vessel well marked in _L. piscatoria_, Plate VIII.,\nFig. 3, from which may be developed the other forms. In _L.\nandrenivora_, Plate VIII., Fig. 4, the male shows the vessel-mark\nattenuated posteriorly; and in the female, Fig. 5, the hinder part has\nbecome broken up into detached marks, still preserving the original\nshape, while the upper part remains practically unchanged. In _L.\nallodroma_ the disintegration of the mark has further advanced, for in\nthe male, Fig. 6, the upper portion has lost something of its shape, and\nthe lower part is a series of isolated segments. This process is carried\nstill further in the female, Fig. 8, where the upper portion is\nsimplified, and the lower almost gone. In _L. campestris_, Fig. 10, the\nmark is reduced to a stripe, corresponding with the upper part of the\nvessel-mark only: and, lastly, in the male _L. agretyca_, Fig. 7, this\nupper part is represented by two spots, though even here traces of the\noriginal form can be seen.\n\nA simplification of marking of another sort is seen in _L. rapax_, Fig.\n13, where the chamber-markings are almost obliterated, and merely an\nirregular stripe left. The stages by which this modification is arrived\nat are too obvious to need illustration.\n\nIn some species the lower portion of the vessel-mark is reduced to small\ndots, as in _L. cambrica_, _fluviatilis_, _piratica_, and others; and\nthe stages are very clear. Starting with the isolated chamber-marks, as\nin _L. allodroma_, Fig. 5, we get, firstly, a set of spots, as in _L.\npicta_, which, in the female, Fig. 16, are still connected with the\nchamber-marks, but in the male, Fig. 17, are isolated. This leads us, by\neasy steps, to such forms as _L. latitans_, Fig. 14, which consists of a\ndouble row of spots upon dark stripes.\n\nThe intimate connection thus shown to subsist between the characteristic\ndecoration of the abdomen of spiders, and the shape of the important\ndorsal organ beneath, seems to be strong evidence of effect that\ninternal structure may have upon external decoration.[37]\n\nThe cephalothorax of spiders, being covered with a hardened membrane,\ndoes not show such evidence clearly, for it appears to be a law that the\nharder the covering tissue, the less does it reflect, as it were, the\ninternal organs. The hard plates of the armadillo are thus in strong\ncontrast to the softer skins of other animals.\n\nNevertheless, there does appear, occasionally, to be some trace of this\nkind of decoration in the cephalothorax of certain spiders, though it\nwould be hard to prove. The blood vessels of this part (see Fig. 9),\nthough large, are not nearly so prominent as the great dorsal vessel.\nThe chief artery enters the cephalothorax as a straight tube, forks, and\nsends branches to the limbs, palpi, and eyes. In many species, notably\nin the genus _Thomisus_, a furcate mark seems to shadow the forked\naorta. This is best shown in _T. luctuosus_, Plate VIII., Fig. 11.\nMoreover, in this and other genera, lines frequently run to the outer\npair of eyes, which alone are supplied with large arteries, see Fig. 9.\n\nHowever this may be, it is certain that the entire decoration of spiders\nfollows structural lines, and that the great dorsal vessel has been\nemphasized by the peculiar pattern of the abdomen.\n\n [Illustration: Plate VIII.\n SPIDERS.]\n\n\n [35] Elements of Comparative Anatomy, by C. Gegenbaur. Translated by\n Jeffrey Bell and Ray Lankester, 1878, p. 285.\n [36] Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland, J. Blackwell. Ray. Soc.,\n 1861.\n [37] The decoration of many of the Hoverer flies and wasps is of a\n similar character.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIII.\n\n COLOURATION OF INVERTEBRATA\n (_Continued_).\n\n\nOf the Arthropoda, including the lobsters, crabs, shrimps, etc., little\ncan be said here, as we have not yet been able to study them with\nanything like completeness. Still, we find the same laws to hold good.\nThe animals are segmented, and we find their system of colouration\nsegmental also. Thus, in the lobsters and crabs there is no dorsal line,\nbut the segments are separately and definitely decorated. The various\norgans, such as the antennae and eyes, are picked out in colour, as may\nbe beautifully seen in some prawns.\n\nWhen we come to the Mollusca, we meet with two distinct types, so far as\nour subject is concerned; the naked and the shelled. In the naked\nmolluscs, like the slugs, we have decoration applied regionally, as is\nshown to perfection in the _Nudibranchs_, whose feathery gills are often\nthe seat of some of the most vivid hues in nature.\n\nThe shell-bearing mollusca are proverbial for their beauty, but it is\nessential to bear in mind that the shell does not bear the same relation\nto the mollusc that the \"shell\" of a lobster does to that animal. The\nlobster's shell is part of its living body; it is a true exo-skeleton,\nwhereas the shell of a mollusc is a more extraneous structure--a house\nbuilt by the creature. We ought, on our view, to find no more relation\nbetween the decoration of a shell and the structure of its occupant,\nthan we do in the decoration of a human dwelling-house to the tenant.\n\nThe shell consists of carbonate of lime, under one or both of the forms\nknown to mineralogists as calcite and aragonite. This mineral matter is\nsecreted by an organ called the mantle, and the edge, or lip, of the\nmantle is the part applied to this purpose. The edge of the mantle is\nthe builder's hand, which lays the calcareous stones of the edifice.\nThe shell is built up from the edge, and the action is not continuous\nbut seasonal, hence arise the markings known as lines of growth. In some\ncases the mantle is expanded at times into wing-like processes, which\nare turned back over the shell, and deposit additional layers, thus\nthickening the shell.\n\nIn all the forms of life hitherto considered the colouring matter is\ndeposited, or formed, in the substance of the organ, or epidermal\ncovering, but in the mollusca this is not the case. The colouring matter\nis entirely upon the surface, and is, as it were, stencilled on to the\ncolourless shell. This is precisely analogous to the colouring of the\nshells of birds' eggs. They, too, are calcareous envelopes, and the\ncolouring matter is applied to the outside, as anyone can see by rubbing\na egg. In some eggs several layers of colouring matter are\nsuperimposed.\n\nIn no case does the external decoration of molluscan shells follow the\nstructure lines of the animal, but it does follow the shape of the\nmantle. The secreting edge may be smooth, as in _Mactra_, regularly\npuckered, as in most _Pectens_, puckered at certain points, as in\n_Trigonia_, or thrown into long folds, as in _Spondylus_. In each of\nthese cases the shell naturally takes the form of the mantle. It is\nsmooth in _Mactra_, regularly ribbed in _Pecten_, tubercled in\n_Trigonia_, and spined in _Spondylus_. Where the inside of the shell is\n as in some Pectens, regional decoration at once appears and the\npaleal lines, and muscular impressions are bounded or mapped out with\ncolour.\n\nIt is a significant fact that smooth bivalves are not so ornate as\nrugose ones, and that the ridges, spines, and tubercles of the latter\nare the seats of the most prominent colour.\n\nSimilar remarks apply to univalve shells, which are wound on an\nimaginary vertical axis. They may be smooth, as in _Conus_ and _Oliva_,\nrugose, as in _Cerithium_, or spined, as in _Murex_. The structure of\nthese shells being more complex than that of bivalves, we find, as a\nrule, they are more lavishly ornamented, and the prominent parts of the\nshell, and especially the borders, are the seat of strongest colour. In\nsome cases, as in adult Cowries (_Cypraea_), the mantle is reflexed so as\nto meet along the median line, where we see the darkest colour.\n\nThe rule amongst spiral shells is to possess spiral and marginal\ndecoration, and this is what we should expect. The Nautilus repeats in\nthe red-brown markings of its shell, the shape of the septa which\ndivide the chambers, though, as is often the case, they are generally\nmore numerous than the septa.\n\nThe naked Cephalopoda, or cuttle-fishes, often possess a distinct dorsal\nstripe, and when our views were first brought before the Zoological\nSociety, this fact was cited as an objection. To us it seems one of the\nstrongest of favourable cases, for these animals possess a sort of\nbackbone--the well-known cuttle-bone--and hence they have a dorsal line.\n\nSome shells, as _Margarita catenata_, have a chain-pattern, and in this\ncase the action of the pigment cells takes place at regular and short\nintervals. Others, as _Mactra stultorum_, the stencilling forms a series\nof lines and spots, generally enlarging into rays.\n\nThe whole subject of the decoration of shells deserves much more time\nthan we have been able to give to it as yet.\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIV.\n\n COLOURATION OF VERTEBRATA.\n\n\nThe vertebrata, as their name implies, are distinguished by the\npossession of an internal skeleton, of which the backbone is the most\nessential part, and the general, but not universal, possession of limbs\nor appendages.\n\nConsequently we find that the dorsal and ventral surfaces are almost\ninvariably differently, and the dorsal is the darker in the\ngreat majority of instances. Generally the spine is marked by a more or\nless defined central line, and hence this system of colouration may be\ntermed axial, because it is in the direction of the axes, or applied\nabout the axes.\n\n_Fishes._ Where fishes have not been modified out of their original\nform, as are the soles, plaice, and other flat fish, we find the dorsal\nregion darker than the ventral, and even here the under surfaces are the\nlightest. Even in cases like the Char, Fig. 1, Plate IX., where vivid\ncolour is applied to the abdomen, the dorsum is the darker. The dorsum\nis often marked by a more or less well-defined dark band, as in the\nmackerel and perch, Fig. 2, Plate IX. There are sometimes parallel bands\nat right angles to the above, as in the perch and mackerel; and this is\na common feature, and apparently a very old one, as we find it in the\nyoung of fishes whose adults are without these rib-like marks, such as\nthe trout and pike.\n\nIt is only necessary to inspect any drawings of fishes to see that their\ncolouration is on a definite principle, although rather erratic.\nImportant functional parts, like the gills, fins, and tail, are\ngenerally marked in colour more or less distinctly, as may be seen, for\ninstance, in our common fresh-water fishes, like the roach and perch.\nThe line of mucus-secreting glands running along the sides is usually\nmarked by a dark line. These facts point distinctly to structural\ndecoration.\n\n [Illustration: Plate IX.\n CHAR AND PERCH.]\n\nThere are in some fishes, like the John Dory, curious eye-like dark\nspots, which we cannot refer to a structural origin, though a better\nacquaintance with the class might reveal such significance.\n\nThe Amphibia have not been well studied by us, and we must leave them\nwith the remark that they seem to bear out the view of structural\ndecoration, as is seen in our English newts. Some are, however, modified\nout of all easy recognition.\n\n_Reptiles._ Among the reptiles, the snakes, Fig. 4, may be selected for\nillustration. Snakes are practically little more than elongated\nbackbones, and are peculiar from the absence of limbs. The colouring\nmatter does not reside so much in the scales as in the skin beneath, so\nthat the sloughs do not illustrate the decoration. Hence, we might\nexpect to find here a direct effect of morphological emphasis.\n\nThe ornamentation of snakes is very similar throughout the class, both\nin water and land snakes; as may be seen by Sir W. Fayrer's work on\nVenomous Snakes. This ornamentation is of a vertebral pattern, placed\nalong the dorsal surface, with cross lines, which may represent ribs.\n\nWhere the ribs are wanting, as in the neck, the pattern changes, and we\nget merely longitudinal markings.\n\nIn the Python, Fig. 4, there are, near the central line, numerous round\nspots, which apparently emphasize the neural processes. There are\ndiagonal markings on some species which illustrate the development of\ncolour-spots already alluded to.\n\nThis snake-pattern is very singular and striking. The markings are fewer\nin number than the vertebrae, yet their true vertebral character is most\nobvious.\n\nIn Snakes, again, we find the dorsal region is darker than the ventral.\n\nIn the Lizards there are patches of colour placed axially, while each\npatch covers a number of scales.\n\n_Birds._ Birds have their whole economy modified to subserve their great\nfunctional peculiarity of flight.\n\nImmense muscles are required for the downward stroke of the wing, and to\ngive attachment to these the sternum has a strongly developed keel. To\nbring the centre of gravity low, even the muscles which raise the wing\nare attached to the sternum, or breastbone, instead of to the dorsal\nregion, as might be expected; and to brace the wings back a strong\nfurculum--the merry-thought--is attached. The breast, then, is the seat\nof the greatest functional activity in birds, and, consequently, we find\nin a vast number of birds that the breast is the seat of vivid colour.\n\nAs many birds are modified for protective purposes, the brightest\nspecies were selected to test our views, namely, the Birds of Paradise\n(Paradisea), Humming Birds (Trochilidae), and Sun Birds (Nectarinidae). In\nthese birds it is clear that colour has had full sway, untramelled by\nany necessity for modification.\n\nNothing is more striking than the mapping out of the surface of these\nbirds into regions of colour, and these regions are always bounded by\nstructural lines.\n\nTake, for instance, _Paradisea regia_. In this bird we find the\nfollowing regions mapped in colour:--\n\n Sternum brown.\n Clavicle yellow.\n Pelvis yellow.\n Band brown.\n Frontal bone black.\n Parietal bones green.\n Occiput yellow.\n\nA beautiful ruff emphasizes the pectoral muscles, and the tail\nappendages emphasize the share-like caudal vertebrae.\n\nIf we turn to the other species of this genus, we find in _P. Papuana_\nthe claret breast suddenly change to green at the furculum; and similar\nchanges take place in _P. speciosa_, while in _P. Wallacei_ and\n_Wilsoni_ this region is decorated with a wonderful apron of metallic\ngreen.\n\nThe region of the furculum is equally well marked in the Toucans and\nSun-birds.\n\nIf now we observe the back of a bird, and view the skeleton with the\nwings at rest, we shall find it falls into three morphological tracts.\nFirst, the shoulder, or scapular track; second, the thigh, or pelvic;\nthird, the tail, or caudal region; and in all these birds the several\ntracts are beautifully marked by sudden and contrasted change of colour.\nIn _P. Wilsoni_ all the tracts are brilliant red, but they are separated\nby jet-black borders. In _Nectarinea chloropygia_ the scapular region is\nred, the pelvic yellow, and the caudal green.\n\n [Illustration: Plate X.\n SUN BIRDS.]\n\nIn _P. Wilsoni_ we have a wonderful example of morphological emphasis.\nThe head is bare of feathers, and blue, except along the\nsutures of the skull, where lines of tiny black feathers map out the\nvarious bones.\n\nBut morphological emphasis exists everywhere in birds. The\nwing-primaries, which attach to the hand, are frequently differently\ndecorated from the secondaries, which feathers spring from the ulna; and\nthe spur-feathers of the thumb, or pollux, are different in shape, and\noften in colour, from the others, as every fly-fisher who has used\nwoodcock spur-feathers knows full well. The wing-coverts and\ntail-coverts are frequently mapped in colour; and the brain case is\nmarked by crests. The eye and ear are marked by lines and\nstripes; and so we might go on throughout the whole bird. We may remark\nthat these very tracts are most valuable for the description and\ndetection of species, and among ornithologists receive special names.\n\nNow, this distribution of colour is the more remarkable inasmuch as the\nfeathers which cover the surface--the contour feathers--are not evenly\ndistributed over the body, but are confined to certain limited tracts,\nas shown by Nitzsch; and though these tracts have a morphological\norigin, they are rendered quite subsidiary to the colouration, which\naffects the whole bird, and not these regions in particular. In fact,\nthe colouration is dependent upon the regions on which the feathers lie,\nand not upon the area from which they spring. In other words, we seem to\nhave in birds evidence of the direct action of underlying parts upon the\nsurface.\n\nIn more obscurely birds, and those which seem to be evenly\nspotted, close examination shows that even here the decoration is not\nuniform, but the sizes and axes of the spots change slightly as they\noccupy different regions; as may be seen in Woodpeckers and Guinea-fowl.\n\nAlthough the same tone of colour may prevail throughout the plumage, as\nin the Argus Pheasant, great variety is obtained by the fusion of spots\ninto stripes. A symmetrical effect is produced by the grouping of\nunsymmetrical feathers; as is so often seen in plants, where irregular\nbranches and leaves produce a regular contour.\n\nSometimes, especially on the breast and back, the feathers of one region\nseem to unite so as to form one tract, so far as colour is concerned.\nThus, if in _P. Wilsoni_ the black borders of the dorsal regions were\nsuppressed, all three areas would be of one hue. This seems to have\nbeen the case in the breast region of Humming Birds, where only the\nthroat is highly . In the Toucans the breast and throat regions\nare often marked with colour; but sometimes the hue is the same and the\nboundaries of the regions marked with a band of another colour; if this\nboundary band be increased, the regions do not seem so well shown, for\nthe boundary becomes as broad as the area; yet, in all these cases the\ndependence upon regional decoration is manifest. No doubt the few\nuniformly birds were derived from species which were once\nvariously hued; the gradation of colour being lost in transmission.\n\n_Mammalia._ The axial decoration of the mammalia is very definite, and\nnearly all species have a dorsal tract marked with colour. The dark\nbands on the back of the horse, ox, and ass, are cases in point. In\nnearly every case the dorsal is darker than the ventral surface.\n\nIf we take highly decorated species, that is, animals marked by\nalternate dark and light bands, or spots, such as the zebra, some deer,\nor the carnivora, we find, first, that the region of the spinal column\nis marked by a dark stripe (Figs. 9 & 16); secondly, that the regions of\nthe appendages, or limbs, are differently marked; thirdly, that the\nflanks are striped, or spotted, along or between the regions of the\nlines of the ribs; fourthly, that the shoulder and hip regions are\nmarked by curved lines; fifthly, that the pattern changes, and the\ndirection of the lines, or spots, at the head, neck, and every joint of\nthe limbs; and lastly, that the tips of the ears, nose, tail, and feet,\nand the eye are emphasized in colour. In spotted animals the greatest\nlength of the spot is generally in the direction of the largest\ndevelopment of the skeleton.\n\nThis morphological arrangement can be traced even when the decoration\nhas been modified. Thus, in the carnivora we have the lion and puma,\nwhich live in open country, with plain skins, the tiger with stripes, an\ninhabitant of the jungle, and the leopard, ocelot, and jaguar with\nspots, inhabiting the forests.\n\nBut the lion has a dark dorsal stripe, and the nose, etc., are\nemphasized in colour, and, moreover, the lion has probably lost its\nmarked decoration for protective purposes, for young lions are spotted.\nThe tiger's stripes start from the vertebrae, and still follow the lines\nof the ribs. In the tiger the decoration changes at the neck, and on the\nhead, and the cervical vertebrae are often indicated by seven stripes.\nSee Fig. 5.\n\nThe markings over the vertebrae are not in continuous lines, as in many\nmammals, but form a series of vertebra-like spots. This plan of\ndecoration is continued even on the tail, which is more on the\nupper than on the lower surface.\n\nThe spotted cats have their spot-groups arranged on the flanks in the\ndirection of the ribs, at the shoulder and haunch in curves, at the neck\nin another pattern, on the back of the head in another; and the pattern\nchanges as each limb-joint is reached, the spots decreasing in size as\nthe distance is greater from the spine. See Figs. 9-15.\n\nThere is in tigers, and the cat-tribe generally, a dark stripe over the\ndental nerve; and the zygoma, or cheek-bone, is often marked by colour.\nEven the supraorbital nerve is shown in the forehead, and there are dark\nrings round the ears. In dissecting an ocelot at the Zoological Gardens\nin 1883, a forked line was found immediately over the fork of the\njugular vein.\n\nThe colouration in these animals seems often to be determined by the\ngreat nerves and nerve-centres, and the change from spots, or stripes,\nto wrinkled lines on the head are strikingly suggestive of the\nconvolutions of the brain, falling, as they do, into two lateral masses,\ncorresponding with the cerebral hemispheres, separated by a straight\nline, corresponding with the median fissure. This is well shown in the\nocelot, Fig. 15, and in many other cats.\n\nThat the nerves can affect the skin has already been pointed out in\nChapter VI., in the case of herpes, and that it can affect colour is\nshown in the Hindoo described in the same place.\n\nSo marked, indeed, is this emphasis of sensitive parts that every hair\nof the movable feelers of a cat is shown by colour to be different in\nfunction from the hairs of the neck, or from the stationary mass of hair\nfrom which the single longer hair starts.\n\nIn the Badger, Fig. 16, there is a bulge-shaped mass of hair\nnear the dorsal and lumbar regions, but it is axially placed. The\nshoulder and loins are well marked, although in a different manner from\nother species. In some species of deer, and other mammalia, there are\nwhite or lines parallel to the spine, and also, as in birds,\nspots coalesce and form lines, and lines break up into spots.\n\nThe great anteater has what at first seems an exceptional marking on the\nshoulder, but a careful examination of the fine specimen which died at\nthe Zoological Gardens in 1883, we were struck with the abnormal\ncharacter of the scapula, and we must remember that, as Wallace and\nDarwin have pointed out, all abnormal changes of the teeth are\ncorrelated with changes in the hair. Moreover the muscles of the\nshoulder region are so enormously developed as to render this otherwise\ndefenceless animal so formidable that even the jaguar avoids an embrace\nwhich tightens to a death-grip. This region is, therefore, precisely the\none we should expect to be strongly emphasized. This being the case, we\nhave really no exception in this creature.\n\nCertain mammals are banded horizontally along their sides, thus losing\nmost of their axial decoration, and this is well shown among the\nViverridae, and smaller rodents. Now, however conspicuous such animals\nmay appear in collections, they are in their native haunts very\ndifficult to detect. In all cases there is a marked dorsal line; and we\nsuggest that the mature decoration is due to a suppression of the axial\ndecoration for protective purposes, and a repetition of the dorsal\ndecoration according to the law before enunciated. Indeed, in one case\nwe were able to trace this pretty clearly, in the beautiful series of\n_Sus vittatus_ in the museum at Leyden. This pig, an inhabitant of Java,\nwhen mature is a dark brown animal, but in the very young state it is\nclearly marked in yellow and brown, with a dark dorsal stripe, and\nspots, taking the line of the ribs, and over the shoulder and thigh. As\nthe animal grows older, the spots run into stripes, and it becomes as\nclearly banded horizontally as the viverridae. Finally the dark bands\nincrease in width, until they unite, and the creature becomes almost\nuniformly brown.\n\nWe have not been able to see young specimens of the viverridae, but a\nsimilar change may there occur, or it may have occurred in former times.\nWe must also remember that these creatures are long-bodied, like the\nweasels, and hence they may have a tendency to produce long stripes.\n\nIn the case of our domestic animals, especially the oxen, the decoration\nseems often to have become irregular, but even here the emphasis of the\nextremities is generally clearly made out, and that of the limbs can\noften be traced. In horses this is better shown, and dappled varieties\noften well illustrate the points. Most horses at some time show traces\nof spots.\n\nSufficient has now been said to point out the laws we believe to have\nregulated the decoration of the animal kingdom. The full working out of\nthe question must be left to the future, but it is hoped that a solid\ngroundwork has been laid down.\n\n [Illustration: Plate XI.\n LEAVES.]\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XV.\n\n THE COLOURATION OF PLANTS.\n\n\nThe general structure of plants is so simple in comparison with that of\nanimals that our remarks upon this sub-kingdom need only be short.\n\nWith regard to leaves, especially such as are brightly , like\nthe Begonias, Caladiums, Coleus, and Anoechtochilus, Plate XI., the\ncolour follows pretty closely the lines of structure. We have border\ndecoration, marking out the vein-pattern of the border; the veins are\nfrequently the seat of vivid colour, and when decolouration takes place,\nas in variegated plants, we find it running along the interspaces of the\nveins. These facts are too patent to need much illustration; for our\nzonale geraniums, ribbon grasses, and beautiful-leaved plants generally,\nare now so common that everyone knows their character. When decay sets\nin, and oxidation gives rise to the vivid hues of autumn, we find the\ntints taking structural lines, as is well shown in dying vine and\nhorse-chestnut leaves, Fig. 1, Plate XI. This shows us that there is a\nstructural possibility of acquiring regional colouration.\n\nWe must remember, too, that the negative colouration of these dying\nleaves is of very much the same character as the positive colouration of\nflowers, for flowers are modified leaves, and their hues are due to the\noxidation of the valuable chlorophyll.\n\nIn leaves the tendency of spots to elongate in the direction of the leaf\nis very marked, as may be well seen in Begonia. Fig. 17, drawn to\nillustrate another point, shows this partly. When leaves are\nunsymmetrical, like the begonias, the pattern is unsymmetrical also.\n\nAmong parallel veined leaves we find parallel decoration. Thus, in the\n_Calatheas_ we have dark marks running along the veins. In _Dracaena\nferrea_ we have a dark green leaf, with a red border and tip, the red\nrunning downwards along the veins. This action may be continued until\nthe leaf is all red except the mid-rib, which remains green. In long\nnet-veined leaves we may cite _Pavetta Borbonica_, whose dark green\nblade has a crimson mid-rib. Of unsymmetrical leaves those in the plate\nmay suffice.\n\nWhen we come to flowers, the same general law prevails, and is generally\nmore marked in wild than in cultivated forms, which have been much, and\nto some extent unnaturally, modified. Broadly speaking, when a flower is\nregular the decoration is alike on all the parts; the petals are alike\nin size, the decoration is similar in each, but where they differ in\nsize the decoration changes. Thus, in _Pelargoniums_ we may find all\nfive petals alike, or the two upper petals may be longer or shorter than\nthe lower three. In the first case each is similarly, in the\nother the colour pattern varies with the size of the petal. The same may\nbe seen in Rhododendron.\n\nWhere the petals are united the same law holds good. In regular flowers,\nlike the lilies, the colouration is equal. In irregular flowers, like\nthe snapdragon and foxglove, the decoration is irregular. In Gloxinia\nthe petals may be either regular or irregular, and the decoration\nchanges in concert.\n\nA very instructive case was noticed by one of us in _Lamium\ngaleobdolon_, or yellow Archangel. This plant is normally a labiate with\nthe usual irregular corolla, but we have found it regular, and in this\ninstance the normal irregular decoration was changed to a regular\npattern on each petal.\n\nIn gamopetalous flowers the line of junction of the petals is frequently\nmarked with colour, and we know of no case in which a pattern runs\ndeliberately across this structure line, though a blotch may spread from\nit.\n\nWhen we remember that flowers are absolutely the result of the efforts\nof plants to secure the fertilizing attention of insects, and that they\nare supreme efforts, put forth at the expense of a great deal of\nvegetable energy--that they are sacrifices to the necessity for\noffspring--it does strike us forcibly when we see that even under these\ncircumstances the great law of structural decoration has to be adhered\nto.\n\n [Illustration: Plate XII.\n FLOWERS.]\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XVI.\n\n CONCLUSIONS.\n\n\nWe have now, more or less fully, examined into the system of colouration\nin the living world, and have drawn certain inferences from the facts\nobserved.\n\nIt appears that colouration began--perhaps as a product of digestion--by\nthe application of pigment to the organs of transparent creatures.\nSupposing that evolution be true--and, if we may not accept this theory\nthere is no use in induction whatever--it must follow that even the\nhighest animals have in the past been transparent objects. This was\nadmirably illustrated by Prof. Ray Lankester in a lecture on the\ndevelopment of the eyes of certain animals, before the British\nAssociation meeting at Sheffield, in which it was shown that the eyes\ncommenced below the surface, and were useful even then, for its \"body\nwas full of light.\"\n\nGranting this, it follows that the fundamental law of decoration is a\nstructural one. Assuming, as we do, that memory has played a most\nimportant part in evolution, it follows that all living matter has a\nprofound experience in decorating its organs--it is knowledge just as\nanciently acquired, and as perfectly, as the power of digestion. This\ncolour was produced under the influence of light--so it is even in\nopaque animals.\n\nWith a knowledge so far reaching, we might expect that even in opaque\nanimals the colouring would still follow structural lines, and there\nshould still be traces of this, more or less distinct.\n\nThis is precisely what we do find; and, moreover, we sometimes get a\nvery fair drawing of the important hidden parts, even where least\nexpected, as in a cat's head, a snake's body, a dragon-fly's thorax, a\nspider's abdomen, a bird's skull.\n\nBut if animals thus learned to paint themselves in definite patterns, we\nmight expect that when called upon to decorate _for the sake of beauty_\ncertain parts not structurally emphatic, they would adopt well-known\npatterns, and hence arose the law of repetition.\n\nBut with wider experience came greater powers, and the necessity for\nprotection arising, the well-known patterns were enlarged, till an\nuniform tint is produced, as in the Java pig, or some repeated at the\nexpense of others, as in the civets. But so ingrained is the tendency to\nstructural decoration that even where modification has reached its\nhighest level, as in the leaf-butterflies, some trace of the plan that\nthe new pattern was founded on is recognisable, just as the rectangular\nbasis can be traced in the arabesque ornaments of the Alhambra.\n\nThe pointing out of this great fact has seemed to us a useful addition\nto the great law of evolution. It supplements it; it gives a reason why.\n\nCould he who first saw these points have read these final pages, it\nwould have lightened the responsibility of the one upon whom the\ncompletion of the work has fallen. But he died when the work was nearly\nfinished. The investigation is of necessity incomplete, but nothing\nbears such misstatements as truth, and though specialists may demur to\ncertain points, the fundamental arguments will probably remain intact.\n\n\n [Illustration: FINIS.]\n\n\n\n\n GLOSSARY.\n\n\n ACETABULA. Lat. _acetabulum_, a little vessel. Sucking discs as on\n the tentacles of _Physalia_.\n\n AORTA. Gr. The chief artery.\n\n CEPHALOTHORAX. Gr. _kephale_, head; _thorax_, chest. The anterior\n division of the body in Crustacea and Arachnida, composed of the\n amalgamated segments of the head and thorax.\n\n CILIA. Lat. _cilium_, an eyelash. Microscopic filaments having the\n power of vibratory movement.\n\n C[OE]NOSARC. Gr. _Koinos_, common; _sarx_, flesh. The common stem\n uniting the separate animals of compound hydrozoa, &c.\n\n CORPUSCLE. Lat. _corpusculum_, a little body. Small \n bodies, as in the endoderm of hydra, p. 59.\n\n DIFFERENTIATED. Modified into definite organs, or parts; as\n distinct from structureless protoplasm.\n\n ECTODERM. Gr. _ektos_, outside; _derma_, skin. The internal layer\n or skin of the Coelenterata.\n\n EFFERENT. Lat. _effero_, to carry out. A vessel which carries\n fluids out of the body is said to be efferent.\n\n ENDODERM. Gr. _endon_, within; _derma_, skin. The inner layer or\n skin of Coelenterata. _See_ ECTODERM.\n\n ENDOSARC. Gr. _endon_, within; _sarx_, flesh. The inner layer of\n sponges.\n\n EPIDERMAL. Gr. _epi_, upon; _derma_, skin. Relating to the outer\n layer of skin. As applied to colour, surface pigment as distinct\n from hypodermal, or deep-seated colour.\n\n GASTROVASCULAR CANAL. Gr. _gaster_, belly; Lat. _vasculum_, a\n little vessel. The canals or vessels in the umbrella (_manubrium_)\n of hydrozoa.\n\n GONIDIA. Gr. _gonos_, offspring; _oidos_, like. Reproductive bodies\n in Sea-anemones.\n\n HYDRANTH. Gr. _hudor_, water; _anthos_, flower. The bodies or\n polypes of hydroids which exercise nutritive functions. They were\n called polypites by Huxley.\n\n HYDROPHYLLIA. Gr. _hudor_ and _phyllon_, a leaf. Leaf-like organs\n protecting the polypites of hydrozoa.\n\n HYDROSOMA. Gr. _hudor_ and _soma_, body. The entire organism of a\n hydrozoeon.\n\n HYPODERMAL. Gr. _hypo_, beneath; _derma_, skin. In colour, such as\n lies beneath the surface, as distinct from epidermal.\n\n LYTHOCYSTS. Gr. _lythos_, stone, _kystis_, a bladder. Sense organs\n in hydroids, consisting of transparent capsules inclosing round\n transparent concretions.\n\n MANUBRIUM. Lat. a handle. The central polypite suspended from the\n interior of the umbrella of hydroids.\n\n MESODERM. Gr. _mesos_, intermediate; _derma_, skin. The middle\n layer of sponges, &c.\n\n MESOTHORAX. Gr. _mesos_ and _thorax_. The middle division of the\n thorax in insects, carrying the second pair of legs.\n\n PERISTOME. Gr. _peri_, about; _stoma_, a mouth. The area\n surrounding the mouth in sea-anemones.\n\n PNEUMATOCYST. Gr. _pneuma_, air; _kystis_ a bladder. The air-sac\n contained in the pneumatophore, see below.\n\n PNEUMATOPHORE. Gr. _pneuma_; _phero_, to carry. The float of\n certain hydrozoa (_Physophoridae_.)\n\n POLYPITE. Gr. _polus_, many; _pous_, foot. The separate animal or\n zoeoid of a hydrozoeon. _See_ HYDRANTH.\n\n PROTOPLASM. Gr. _protos_, first; _plasso_, I mould. The jelly-like\n matter which forms the basis of all tissues. It is identical with\n the _sarcode_ or flesh of protozoa.\n\n SAC. Lat. _saccus_, a bag, a small cell.\n\n SARCODE. Gr. _sarx_, flesh; _eidos_, form. The protoplasm of\n protozoa, &c., which see.\n\n SPADIX. Lat. _spadix_, a broken palm branch. In zoology a hollow\n process occupying the axis of the generative buds of hydrozoa.\n\n SPOROSAC. Gr. _spora_, a seed, and _sac_. The body containing the\n ova of hydrozoa.\n\n SOMATIC FLUID. Gr. _soma_, the body. The fluid which contains\n digested food, and taking the place of blood, circulates through\n the body of hydrozoa.\n\n TENTACLES. Lat. _tentaculus_, a little arm. The arms or prehensile\n organs of Sea-anemones, &c.\n\n THREAD CELLS. Cells containing an extensible microscopic thread,\n possessing stinging properties, common among the _Coelenterata_.\n\n THORAX. Gr. a breastplate. The chest.\n\n\n\n\n INDEX.\n\n\n PAGE\n\n _Abyla_ 63\n\n _Acanthometra_ 57\n\n _Actinea Cari_, varieties of 66\n\n ---- _mesembryanthemum_ 54\n\n _Acanthostratus_ 57\n\n _Actinozoa_ 51, 52\n\n _AEschna_ 77\n\n _Agalma breve_ 64\n\n _Agrion puella_ 77\n\n _Aiptasia mutabilis_ 67\n\n Albinism in butterflies 79\n\n _Alcyonariae_ 54\n\n Allman, Prof., on Hydroids 59, 60\n\n \"Alps and Sanctuaries\" quoted 36\n\n _Amoeba_ 56\n\n Amphibia 89\n\n _Amphilonche_ 57\n\n Andres, Dr., on Hydrozoa 65\n\n _Anemonia sulcata_ 67\n\n Anemones, Sea 52\n\n Animals and Plants, origin of 36\n\n ---- classification of 49\n\n _Anoechtochilus_ 95\n\n Anteater 93\n\n _Anthocaris belemia_ 41\n\n ---- _belia_ 42\n\n ---- _cardamines_ 41, 42\n\n ---- _euphemoides_ 43\n\n ---- _eupheno_ 42\n\n ---- _simplonia_ 42\n\n _Apatura iris_ 46\n\n ---- larvae of 81\n\n _Arachnida_ 82\n\n _Araschnia Levana_ 43, 45\n\n ---- _porima_ 43, 45, 79\n\n ---- _prorsa_ 43, 45\n\n _Arctia_ 69\n\n _Arachnocorys_ 57\n\n Argus Pheasant 6, 39, 91\n\n _Argynnis Lathonia_ 69\n\n Armadillo 84\n\n Arthropoda, colouration of 85\n\n Ascidians 35\n\n Automatic habits 9\n\n _Arthorybia rosacea_ 64\n\n\n Badger 93\n\n _Begonia_ 95\n\n Birds, colouration of 89\n\n ---- of Paradise 90\n\n _Biston betularia_ 79\n\n Black and White, production of 28\n\n Blackwell, J., on British Spiders 82\n\n _Blatta_ 14\n\n Bougainvillea 16\n\n Bower Birds 5\n\n _Bunodes crassicornis_ 54\n\n ---- _gemmaceus_, varieties of 66\n\n ---- _rigidus_ 67\n\n Burnet Moths 5, 69\n\n Butler S., on inherited memory 9, 10, 11, 15\n\n ---- on origin of animals and plants 36\n\n Butterflies, albinism in 79\n\n ---- classification of 74\n\n ---- sense organs of 30\n\n ---- varieties of 77\n\n\n _Caladium_ 95\n\n _Calathea_ 96\n\n _Calycophoridae_ 63\n\n _Carcinus moenas_ 4\n\n _Carpocanium_ 57\n\n Cats, colouration of 17, 92\n\n ---- recognising form 32\n\n Caterpillars, colours of 81\n\n ---- spiracular markings 22\n\n _Cephalopoda_ 87\n\n _Cerithium_ 86\n\n Char 88\n\n Chlorophyll in hydra 59\n\n Cicada 77\n\n _Cladococeus_ 57\n\n Classification of animals 49\n\n ---- of butterflies 74\n\n _Coelenterata_ 20\n\n ---- colouration in 51\n\n _Coelodendrum_ 57\n\n _Coenonympha davus_ 79\n\n ---- _pamphilus_ 79\n\n Coenosarc 55\n\n _Coleus_ 95\n\n Colour and form 32\n\n ---- and transparency 53\n\n ---- epidermal 72\n\n ---- following structure 83, 91\n\n ---- hypodermal 53, 73\n\n ---- nature of 25\n\n ---- of day-and-night flying insects 47, 69\n\n ---- opaque 53\n\n ---- perception of 5, 23, 25, 32\n\n ---- uniform, why rare 28\n\n Colouration 3\n\n ---- laws of 21, 51\n\n ---- of desert animals 4\n\n ---- of arthropoda 85\n\n ---- of coelenterata 51, 59\n\n ---- of insects 68\n\n ---- of invertebrata 49\n\n ---- of molluscs 85\n\n ---- of plants 94\n\n ---- of protozoa 51\n\n ---- of spiders 82\n\n ---- of vertebrata 88\n\n ---- sexual 5\n\n ---- varieties of 3\n\n Contour feathers 91\n\n _Conus_ 86\n\n _Coppinia arcta_ 60\n\n _Corallium rubrum_ 54\n\n Corals 54\n\n Correlation of teeth and hair 94\n\n _Corynida_ 52\n\n Cowries 86\n\n Crab, shore 4\n\n Croton 46\n\n Cuttle-fishes 19, 87\n\n _Cyllo leda_ 45\n\n _Cynthia cardui_ 68\n\n _Cypraea_ 86\n\n _Cyrtidosphaera_ 57\n\n\n Dallas, W. S., on butterflies 71\n\n _Danais_ 72\n\n ---- niavius 30, 80\n\n Darwin, C. 1, 2, 5, 9, 11, 14, 45, 47, 94\n\n Darwin, Dr. E., cited 37\n\n Deer 92\n\n Deformity, antipathy to 32\n\n _Deilephila Euphorbiae_ 81\n\n ---- _galii_ 81\n\n Descent with modification 1\n\n Desert animals, colour of 4\n\n _Dictyoceras_ 57\n\n _Dictyophimus_ 57\n\n _Diphyes_ 63\n\n Disease, markings in 39, 44\n\n Distant, W. L., on Malayan butterflies 80\n\n Distinctive Colouration 3\n\n Dogs recognising portraits 32\n\n _Dracaena ferrea_ 96\n\n\n Elephant, increase of 2\n\n Engelmann on _Euglena_ 34\n\n Epidermal colour 72\n\n _Eresus cinnabarinus_ 82\n\n _Eucecryphalus_ 57\n\n _Eucrytidium_ 57\n\n _Euglena viridis_ 34\n\n Evolution 1-98\n\n Eye-spots 45, 47\n\n\n Fayrer, Sir W., on snakes 89\n\n Feathers 91\n\n Fishes, colours of 88\n\n Foal, stripes on 46\n\n _Foraminiferae_ 56\n\n Fuller, W. J., on aquatic larvae 77\n\n\n Gamopetalous flowers 96\n\n Gegenbaur's \"Comparative Anatomy\" cited 82\n\n General colouration 3\n\n _Gloxinia_ 96\n\n _Gomphina_ 77\n\n _Gonepteryx Cleopatra_ 41, 42\n\n ---- _rhamni_ 40, 42\n\n Gonophores 52\n\n _Grapta interrogationis_ 79\n\n _Gregarinidae_ 56\n\n Guinea-fowl 91\n\n\n Haagen, Dr., on colour 53, 72\n\n Habits 8\n\n Haeckel, Prof., on _Radiolaria_ 57\n\n Hair and teeth, correlation of 94\n\n Hawk moths 69\n\n Hebrides, colours of insects in 80\n\n Heredity 2\n\n Herpes 40, 93\n\n Heteromorphism 78\n\n Higgins, Rev. H. H. 39\n\n Hoverer flies 84\n\n Humming birds 90, 92\n\n Hutchinson, Mr., on herpes 40\n\n Huxley, Prof., on hydrozoa 63\n\n _Hydra viridis_ 59\n\n _Hydrida_ 59\n\n Hydrozoa 51, 59\n\n Hypodermal colour 53, 72\n\n\n Identity of offspring and parent 11\n\n Identity, personal 10\n\n Inherited memory 8\n\n Insects, colour in 68, 75\n\n\n John Dory 89\n\n\n _Kallima inachus_ 30, 80\n\n Kentish Glory Moth 30\n\n\n _Lamium galeobdolon_ 96\n\n Lankester, Prof. Ray, on development of eyes 97\n\n Large Copper Butterfly 68\n\n Larvae, colours of 45, 81\n\n Laws of emphasis 21\n\n ---- exposure 18\n\n ---- heredity 2\n\n ---- multiplication 2\n\n ---- repetition 21, 22\n\n ---- structure 18\n\n ---- variation 2\n\n Leaf-butterfly 16, 30\n\n Leidy, Prof., on _Rhizopoda_ 56\n\n Leopard 17, 92\n\n _Leucophasia diniensis_ 41\n\n ---- _sinapis_ 41\n\n \"Life and Habit\" cited 9\n\n Light, reflected 26\n\n ---- sensibility to 33\n\n ---- waves 25\n\n _Liminitis sibilla_ 43\n\n Lion 17, 92\n\n ---- stripes on young 46\n\n Lithocysts of hydroids 62\n\n _Lucernaria auricula_ 65\n\n _Lycaena dispar_ 68\n\n _Lycosa agretyca_ 83\n\n ---- _allodroma_ 83\n\n ---- _andrenivora_ 83\n\n ---- _cambria_ 84\n\n ---- _campestris_ 83\n\n ---- _latitans_ 84\n\n ---- _picta_ 84\n\n ---- _piratica_ 84\n\n ---- _rapax_ 83\n\n\n Mackerel 88\n\n _Mactra_ 86\n\n ---- _stultorum_ 87\n\n Madrepores 54\n\n Mammalia, colouration in 92\n\n _Margarita catenata_ 87\n\n Measles 39\n\n Medusae 52, 65\n\n Melanism in insects 79\n\n Meldola, Prof. R., on Melanism 79\n\n _Melitaea artemis_ 43\n\n ---- _athalia_ 43\n\n Mimicry 3, 4\n\n Mollusca 21\n\n ---- colouration in 85\n\n Monstrosities, antipathy to 32\n\n _Morphinae_ 72\n\n _Morpho_ 4\n\n _Murex_ 86\n\n Muscles of insects 71\n\n\n _Nectarinea chloropygea_ 90\n\n Newman, Mr., on varieties of butterflies 77\n\n Newts 89\n\n Nitzsch on feather-tracts 91\n\n Nudibranchs 85\n\n _Nymphalidae_ 74\n\n\n Oak Egger Moth 30\n\n Ocelli 47\n\n Ocelot 93\n\n _Oliva_ 86\n\n Opaque colouring 53\n\n Organ-pipe coral 54\n\n Origin of animals and plants 36\n\n ---- -- species 1\n\n Orthopoecilism 78\n\n Oxen 94\n\n\n Painted Lady Butterfly 68\n\n Pangenesis 12\n\n _Papilio Ajax_ 79\n\n ---- _machaon_ 43, 68, 76, 78\n\n ---- ---- larva of 81\n\n ---- _merope_ 30, 76, 80\n\n ---- _nireus_ 14\n\n ---- _podalirius_ 43\n\n _Paradisea Papuana_ 90\n\n ---- _regia_ 90\n\n ---- _speciosa_ 90\n\n ---- _Wallacei_ 90\n\n ---- _Wilsoni_ 90, 91\n\n _Pavetta Borbonica_ 96\n\n _Pecten_ 86\n\n Pelargonium 96\n\n Perch 88\n\n Personal identity 10\n\n _Physalia_ 63\n\n ---- _caravilla_ 64\n\n ---- _pelagica_ 64\n\n ---- _utriculus_ 64\n\n _Physophoridae_ 63\n\n Plaice 88\n\n Plants and animals, origin of 36\n\n ---- colour in 95\n\n Pneumatophores 63\n\n Portuguese Man o' War 63\n\n Protective resemblance 3\n\n _Protista_ 34\n\n Protozoa 20\n\n ---- colouration in 51, 56\n\n Python 89\n\n\n _Radiolaria_ 57\n\n Rarity of uniform colour 28\n\n Ray Lankester, Prof., on Ascidians 35\n\n Red Admiral Butterfly 29\n\n Repetition, effects of 8\n\n Reptilia, colouration in 89\n\n Resemblance, Protective 3\n\n _Rhizophora filiformis_ 64\n\n _Rhizopoda_ 56\n\n Rhododendron 96\n\n Ringlet Butterflies, eye-spots of 47\n\n Roach 88\n\n Romanes, Prof., cited 33, 34\n\n\n _Satyrus hyperanthus_ 79\n\n Scales of insects, structure of 72\n\n Scarlet Tiger Moth 5\n\n Sea anemones 52\n\n ---- ---- colours of 67\n\n Seasonal dimorphism 70\n\n Sea squirts 35\n\n _Segestria senoculata_ 83\n\n Selection, sexual 5\n\n Self- flowers 28\n\n Sense organs of Butterflies 30\n\n _Sertularidae_ 63\n\n Sexual colours 4\n\n ---- selection 5\n\n ---- dimorphism 70\n\n Shell, Structure of 85\n\n Shore Crab 4\n\n Simple variation in Butterflies 77\n\n _Siphonophora_ 63\n\n Small pox 39\n\n Snakes, patterns of 89\n\n Sollas, Prof., on Sponges 58\n\n Soles 88\n\n _Sparassus smaragdulus_ 82\n\n Species, origin of 1\n\n _Sphaeronectes_ 63\n\n _Sphingidae_ 45, 69\n\n Spiders, structure and colour of 82\n\n Spiracles of larvae 22\n\n _Spondylus_ 86\n\n Sponges 57\n\n _Spongida_ 57\n\n _Spongocyclia_ 57\n\n Spots and Stripes 39\n\n _Stephanomia amphitridis_ 63\n\n Struggle for existence 2\n\n Sun-birds 90\n\n _Sus vittatus_ 46, 94\n\n Sutton, Mr. Bland, on Herpes 40\n\n Swallow-tailed Butterflies 68\n\n _Syncoryne pulchella_ 62\n\n Systems of colouration 51\n\n\n Teeth and Hair, correlation of 94\n\n _Thomisus cinereus_ 82\n\n ---- _floricolens_ 82\n\n _Thomisus luctuosus_ 84\n\n ---- _trux_ 82\n\n Thrush, increase of 2\n\n Tiger 17, 92\n\n ---- Moths 69\n\n _Tipula_ 33\n\n Toucans 90, 92\n\n Transparency and colour 53\n\n _Trigonia_ 86\n\n _Tubipora musica_ 54\n\n _Tubularida_ 59\n\n Tylor, A., on Specific change 10\n\n\n _Vanessa Antiopa_ 76\n\n ---- _atalanta_ 29, 43, 69\n\n ---- _urticae_ 77\n\n Variation in insects 70\n\n ---- law of 2\n\n ---- simple, in Butterflies 77\n\n _Velella_ 52, 65\n\n Vertebrata, colouration of 88\n\n _Viverridae_ 94\n\n\n Wallace, A. R., on sexual selection 5, 6, 14, 15\n\n ---- on colour 29\n\n ---- on abnormal structures 94\n\n Warning colours 4\n\n Wasps 84\n\n Weir, J. Jenner, on variation in insects 78\n\n Weismann, Dr., on Caterpillars 81\n\n Wing of Butterfly, typical 70\n\n ---- patterns of 76\n\n Woodpecker 91\n\n\n Yellow Archangel 96\n\n\n Zebra 92\n\n _Zygaena_ 69\n\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 4.--PYTHON.\n _Showing vertebra-like markings._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 5.--TIGER.\n _The pattern changes at the points lettered._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 6.--TIGER.]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 7.--TIGER.\n _Showing supra-orbital nerve mark._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 8.--TIGER.\n _Showing cerebral markings, and markings over\n nerves near the eyes._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 9.--LEOPARD.\n _The pattern changes at the points lettered._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 10.--LEOPARD.\n _The pattern changes at the points lettered._]\n\n [Illustration: Figs. 11, 12.--LEOPARDS' HEADS.]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 13.--LYNX.\n _The colour changes at the points lettered._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 14.--LYNX.]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 15.--OCELOT.\n _Showing changes of pattern at the joints, &c.,\n with enlargement of head-pattern._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 16.--BADGER.\n _The colour changes at the points lettered._]\n\n [Illustration: Fig. 17.--BEGONIA LEAF.]\n\n\n\n\n Transcriber's Notes:\n\nVariations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained\nexcept in obvious cases of typographical error.\n\n\"Haeckel\" and \"Haeckel\" were used interchangeably and have been\nstandardized to \"Haeckel\".\n\nImage tags interrupting paragraphs have been moved.\n\nFootnotes have been moved to end of chapters.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg's Colouration in Animals and Plants, by Alfred Tylor\n\n*** ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":" \nELIZABETH TAYLOR\nELIZABETH TAYLOR\n\nTHE LADY, THE LOVER, THE LEGEND\n\n1932\u20132011\n\nA NEW BIOGRAPHY BY\n\nDavid Bret\n\nD&M PUBLISHERS INC. Vancouver\/Toronto\/Berkeley\nCopyright \u00a9 2011 by David Bret\n\n11 12 13 14 15 5 4 3 2 1\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.\n\nGreystone Books \nAn imprint of D&M Publishers Inc. \n2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201 \nVancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7 \nwww.greystonebooks.com\n\nPublished simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Ltd \n7 Albany Street \nEdinburgh UK EH1 3UG\n\nCataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada \nISBN 978-1-55365-440-7 (pbk.) \nISBN 978-1-55365-985-3 (ebook)\n\nCover design by Peter Cocking \nCover photograph by Francois Lochon\/Gamma Rapho\/Getty Images \nDistributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West \nTHIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO\n\nBarbara, La grande chanteuse Am\u00e1lia Rodrigues, \nJoey Stefano, Dorothy Squires, Henry, Eden, Fritzi, Adeline \nand Les Enfants de Novembre\nN'oublie pas . . .\n\nLa vie sans amis\n\nc'est comme un jardin sans fleurs\n\n# ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nWRITING THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE had it not been for the inspiration, criticisms and love of that select group of individuals who, whether they be in this world or the next, I will always regard as my true family and autre coeur.\n\nBarbara, Irene Bevan, Marlene Dietrich, Ren\u00e9 Chevalier, Axel Dotti, Dorothy Squires and Roger Normand, que vous dormez en paix. Lucette Chevalier, Jacqueline Danno, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Delavault, Tony Griffin, Betty and G\u00e9rard Garmain, Annick Roux, John and Anne Taylor, Terry Sanderson, Charley Marouani, David and Sally Bolt. Also a very special mention for Am\u00e1lia Rodrigues, Joey Stefano, those hiboux, fadistas and amis de foutre who happened along the way, and mes enfants perdus.\n\nVery many thanks to Bill Campbell and the munificent team at Mainstream. Likewise my agent Guy Rose and his lovely wife, Alex. Also to my wife, Jeanne, for putting up with my bad moods and for still being the keeper of my soul.\n\nAnd finally a grand chapeau bas to Elizabeth, for having lived it.\n\nDavid Bret\n\n# CONTENTS\n\none Mother's Little Dividend\n\ntwo Move Over, Shirley Temple\n\nthree With This Fist, I Thee Wed\n\nfour English without Tears\n\nfive A Date with Jimmy and Rock\n\nsix Lizzie Schwartzkopf, My Jewish Broad!\n\nseven Pass the Parcel, Mike\n\neight The Launch of the $40 Million Bomb\n\nnine That Intemperate Vamp\n\nten The Big Hangover: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?\n\neleven Duds and Diamonds\n\ntwelve From Playboy's Muse to Farmer's Wife\n\nthirteen In the Footsteps of Tallulah\n\nfourteen Goodbye Rock . . . Hello Larry\n\nfifteen Saint Elizabeth\n\nsixteenThe Fading Star\n\nEpilogue\n\n_Photographs_\n\nAppendixThe Films of Elizabeth Taylor\n\nBibliography and Sources \nIndex\n\n# INTRODUCTION\n\nELIZABETH TAYLOR WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY FOR making more turkeys than acclaimed films, for having an on-screen voice that more than frequently grates and for rarely maintaining the acting standards of her co-stars. Additionally, she will be recalled as one of three Hollywood creations who made the successful transition from precocious child prodigy to adult movie star \u2013 the others were Judy Garland and Natalie Wood \u2013 not by talent alone, but by maternal push. Not that this constant surveillance and carping from the wings fashioned lasting success for these women. Judy's mother was an ogre who actively endorsed the enforced feeding of uppers and downers to keep the show on the road \u2013 a selfish action that directly contributed to the early demise of her daughter, something that Ethel Gumm was not around to witness. Maria Gurdin, Natalie Wood's mother, was considerably worse, possessed of an overwhelming ego and diminished mental capacity, which caused her to genuinely believe that her machinations were for her daughter's good. Sara Taylor was a combination of the two. And who may deny, sifting through the evidence, that she was more than partly responsible \u2013 assisted by the negative elements of the Hollywood dream factory \u2013 for her daughter's instability, which threw open the floodgates to a whole catalogue of calamities, suicide attempts, collapsed marriages and sabotaged relationships?\n\nAlthough one cannot doubt that without these ubiquitous Svengalis none of these young women would have made it to the top so quickly, if at all, one cannot ignore the irreparable damage they inflicted on their fragile charges, whose whole lives would be dragged out under enormous clouds of impending gloom. Montgomery Clift, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn and Elvis Presley may also have endured monster mothers, but they knew how to fight back. Elizabeth Taylor never found the strength to.\n\nThe film critic Alexander Walker called her a born survivor, but, as will be seen, this was only partly true. Despite the many genuine concerns about her health, she alone orchestrated the weapons of self-destruction throughout her entire life, deliberately aggravating situations brought about by her own recklessness and folly, often solely for the purpose of contenting the media and keeping her name in the headlines. This she did better than anything witnessed on the screen.\n\nElizabeth Taylor derived some sort of ghoulish pleasure from home-based drama and self-inflicted adversity, and, as such, remains the prima donna of the world's show-business elite. Her story all too often makes for grim reading, but it is nevertheless a fascinating one, from which absolutely no punches have been pulled.\n\n# ONE\n\nMOTHER'S LITTLE DIVIDEND\n\nELIZABETH TAYLOR WAS BORN INTO MONEY, AND THROUGHOUT her entire life never had to compromise or go without. Her father, Francis Lenn Taylor, was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1897 but raised in Arkansas, Kansas, by parents who ran an express-mail and messenger service. As a youth, he fell for aspiring actress Sara Viola Warmbrodt, one year his senior and the daughter of a local German \u00e9migr\u00e9 laundry manager.\n\nAny initial romance between the two was, however, short-lived. In November 1918, when Francis turned 21, he was offered an apprenticeship with entrepreneur Howard Young, his uncle on his father's side. Young, who hailed from St Louis, had amassed much of his fortune from shrewd oil investments and ploughed this back into a successful art-dealing business. The following year, he and Francis opened the Howard Young Gallery in Manhattan.\n\nSara, meanwhile, had left home to study acting in Kansas City and changed her name to Sara Sothern. By 1922, she was playing a minor role in a Los Angeles production of magician\u2013illusionist Channing Pollock's The Sign on the Door (1921). Pollock next put her into The Fool (1925), playing the part of 15-year-old Crippled Mary Margaret \u2013 aka Mary Magdalene \u2013 in this modern version of the St Francis of Assisi story. The critical panning this received coincided with Sara's meeting with the great Russian actress and silent-movie icon Alla Nazimova, a close friend of Rudolph Valentino and the doyenne of Hollywood's closeted lesbian clique.\n\nThat Sara had even been acknowledged by this powerful, feisty woman almost certainly means that she would have been invited to join Nazimova's infamous lesbian 'sewing circle'. This met regularly at The Garden of Alla, Nazimova's mansion on Sunset Boulevard, where the 'baritone babes' included both of Valentino's wives, Lili Damita (who later married Errol Flynn) and Dolly Wilde (Oscar's niece, described by the hostess as 'the only Wilde who likes women'). Even so, Sara's membership of Nazimova's circle must have been fleeting for, despite its dreadful reviews, The Fool opened on Broadway at the end of the year. Here, the lead was played by James Kirkwood, already a name in the New York gay community \u2013 many years later, Sara's daughter would appear in his There Must Be a Pony (1986).\n\nIn September 1926, The Fool opened at London's Apollo Theatre. The sensation in the British capital at this time was the outrageous Tallulah Bankhead, another Nazimova aficionado affectionately known as the 'Queen of the Gallery Girls' \u2013 in other words, London's 'uncloseted' lesbian community. Tallulah was in the middle of a nine-month run of another piece of hokum, The Creaking Chair. For a while, she and Sara competed for the attention of the Sapphic Sisterhood, an organisation run by a woman named Fat Sophie. Any rivalry ended, however, when Tallulah bobbed her famous, lovely waist-length hair one evening before going on stage. Her 'galleryites' very quickly followed suit, and Fat Sophie set her gang onto Sara to 'crop' her outside the Apollo \u2013 their revenge, they said, on this fake for attempting to emulate their heroine. When The Fool closed in March 1925, Sara returned to New York. Several flops followed, including Arabesque, an unlikely pairing with Bela Lugosi. It was here, early in 1926, when she was thinking of giving up the stage, that Sara bumped into her former beau, Francis Lenn Taylor.\n\nTheirs was a 'lavender' courtship, clearly setting the stall for things to come. Photographs of Sara Sothern taken at the time in The Little Spitfire, her latest play, show her with close-cropped hair and looking decidedly butch \u2013 a true prot\u00e9g\u00e9e of Nazimova. Francis, at 28, was already a promiscuous homosexual. Why the couple decided to date may have baffled their friends: even in those days, homosexuality was less frowned upon in artistic\/theatrical circles than in Hollywood, so neither would have encountered serious problems pursuing their respective careers. Howard Young, however, had offered Francis the management of a new gallery about to open in London and had apparently made it clear that if his nephew was going to relocate overseas and extend the company's good name, it would be as a family man. Naturally, he chose Sara to be his bride, and when she married him at the end of 1926, it was on the proviso that she give up the boards for ever. For the rest of their marriage, Sara would resent this and never miss out on an opportunity to remind her husband who wore the trousers in the Taylor household.\n\nThe Taylors, like their daughter, never did things by halves. The Great Depression, felt by much of the world, did not affect them at all. According to an interview she granted The Ladies Home Journal in February 1954, Sara claimed that she had arrived in London in February 1929, two months ahead of Francis, to go house hunting. This might well have been one of her 'tall tales', one to hammer home the fact that she was boss. Another was the description of the property she settled for: Sara might have seen 'tulips almost three-feet high, forget-me-nots and yellow lavender violas', but it is unlikely that there had been 'flaming snapdragons and roses' in early March.\n\nIn fact, it was the politician Victor Cazalet, who had met Sara during the London run of The Fool, who found the Taylors their first home: 11 Hampstead Way was a two-bedroom Victorian cottage, backing onto the heath. Using this as a base, the pair travelled back and forth to the Continent, snapping up valuable works of art for well-heeled clients. And when Sara introduced her husband to the wealthy 38-year-old bachelor famed for his stance on anti-Semitism, it was love at first sight. Not only did Cazalet become Francis's lover, he became the Taylors' unofficial sponsor \u2013 with Sara more than willing to ignore what they might have been getting up to in private so long as Cazalet was helping Francis to feather their nest by introducing them to all the right connections.\n\nWhen Sara learned that she was pregnant towards the end of 1928, she made up her mind not to be a regular housewife \u2013 a characteristic that would be handed down to her daughter. The Hampstead home might have been on the small side, but she hired a cook, a maid and a chauffeur, and upon the birth of her first child in June 1929 \u2013 baptised Howard in honour of the Taylors' benevolent uncle \u2013 she hired a nurse to look after him.\n\nNaturally, the Hampstead house was by now overcrowded, and the Taylors bought Heathwood, a large mock-Tudor property on nearby Wildwood Road, courtesy of Uncle Howard. The house had around a dozen rooms, servants' quarters, a tennis court and access to a private wood. Some 50 years down the line, their daughter, unable to bear anyone else having something that had once been hers, failed in an attempt to buy it back.\n\nThe Taylors socialised with the St John's Wood\u2013Chelsea artists' clique, becoming friends with Laura Knight, Augustus John and John Flanagan, Gracie Fields's paramour with whom she had recently set up home in Augustus John's former studio. Leaving little Howard at home, Francis and Sara travelled extensively to auctions at home and abroad, snapping up Old Masters for the gallery, which were sold at a huge profit. This stopped in the autumn of 1931 when Sara discovered that she was pregnant again. On 27 February 1932, she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Rosamond \u2013 the first name in honour of both her grandmothers (Sara's mother had recently died), the second after Grandmother Taylor's maiden name.\n\nThe little girl appeared to have been born with a cowl and was suffering from hypertrichosis \u2013 a coating of fine, dark facial hair, though this disappeared by the time she reached three months. The condition, of course, might have been pure invention, enabling Sara when persistently reminded in later years that Elizabeth was far more beautiful than she had ever been to say something along the lines of, 'Well, she wasn't always so!' In early pictures, Elizabeth's eyes, an unusual shade of violet, appear sunken in a head that looks too large for her body on account of her shoulders being too narrow. Neither does she appear to have been baptised: as a half-hearted Christian Scientist, Sara disapproved of such 'rituals'. Victor Cazalet, Francis's amour \u2013 and probably Sara's too \u2013 insisted upon being Elizabeth's godfather \u2013 in an unofficial capacity, owing to the lack of ceremony \u2013 with the added advantage that he was also a Christian Scientist.\n\nWhen Cazalet moved to Grand Swifts, a magnificent retreat near Cranbrooke in the heart of the Kent countryside, he loaned the Taylors Little Swallows, a 15-room Tudor house on the estate, which they visited most weekends. He also plied Elizabeth with expensive gifts, including a pony for her fifth birthday, which she baptised Betty. This set a precedent in her life that material possessions were all that were required for a person to prove their love and worth. Cazalet also supported Sara's aspirations for her daughter's career on the stage \u2013 her theory being that with the right amount of push Elizabeth might one day achieve the goals she had once set for herself. Movies were not even considered: in Sara's opinion, whilst stage actors represented status, movie stars were vulgar.\n\nSara always maintained that Elizabeth and Howard were enrolled at the grandly titled Madame Vacami Dance Academy \u2013 actually run by an unglamorous Mrs Rankin from an attic in Knightsbridge. According to research conducted by Alexander Walker (Elizabeth, 1990), the academy denied that the pair had ever been there. Similarly, Sara boasted that Elizabeth had appeared at the London Hippodrome in a 'command performance' before the Duchess of York (later the Queen Mother) and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Elizabeth herself recalled in her memoirs (Elizabeth Taylor, 1965), with typical exaggeration, 'the isolation, the hugeness, the feeling of space and no end to space', of her alleged debut stage performance \u2013 it was a detailed memory considering she had been just four years old at the time. And, again, it was untrue, as was almost certainly Sara's admission that she had been a guest at George VI's coronation a few years later. As for the 'recital', this was no more than an end-of-term concert at the local parish hall.\n\nSara had already placed Howard at the Arnold House Preparatory School, and in September 1937 she enrolled Elizabeth at Byron House in London's Highgate. No record survives as to how she fared with her lessons or which, if any, were her favourite subjects \u2013 only that she lived for the weekends when she could escape to the house in Kent and her pony. This idyll ended, however, as the war clouds gathered over Europe. In the spring of 1938, with Victor Cazalet footing the bill, Sara and her children were put aboard the SS Manhattan bound for New York. During the voyage, very much against her better judgement, Sara permitted them to watch their first movie: The Little Princess (1939), starring wunderkind Shirley Temple. The trio spent several days in the city, then travelled by train to Pasadena, where Sara's father had a chicken ranch. A few months later, having tied up his business interests in London and bid a presumably tearful farewell to Victor Cazalet, Francis joined them there.\n\nFor such self-appointed society folk as the Taylors considered themselves to be, a modest chicken farm was regarded as an inappropriate base from which to conduct their affairs, and in the spring of 1940 they relocated to southern California, where Sara had formerly nurtured her own dreams of stardom. Here, she set about fashioning her children's futures \u2013 though there was no question that Elizabeth would always remain her favourite. Sara and Francis bought a decent-sized bungalow in Pacific Palisades, within a stone's throw of the ocean, and rented a suite at the Chateau Elys\u00e9e Hotel, where Francis opened a gallery. Here, he set about amassing a sizeable fortune \u2013 selling 'works of art' he had mostly purloined in London to gullible clients who might not have recognised a Laura Knight or an Augustus John if it had jumped up and hit them. John, in particular, had been in the habit of making dozens of preliminary sketches before starting on a major work \u2013 most of these he screwed up and tossed into the waste bin. Initially, Francis had visited John's studio with a genuine interest in securing the artist's paintings to sell on to his clients \u2013 but towards the end of the Taylors' residence in London, he had gone there to rummage through the rubbish. What sketches had been salvageable had been ironed, framed and crated up for the gallery in America \u2013 with the artist completely unaware that he had been effectively ripped off by a friend. The deception had not stopped there: with many European Jewish socialites going into exile to evade Nazi persecution at that time, particularly in Germany and France, Francis had 'relieved' them of their art treasures, buying them for a song and selling them to wealthy Americans at a vast mark-up. Many years later, one of these would cause Elizabeth considerable embarrassment.\n\nElizabeth and Howard were ensconced at a typical Hollywood school, where education came second to their parents' hobnobbing with the rich and famous who turned up at the gates each evening to collect their offspring. In London, this 'tiresome' task had been assigned to the Taylors' nanny or butler. Here, however, Sara needed to be seen and even learned to drive so that the other parents would not think her socially beneath them. Regular scholars would have hour-long lessons in mathematics, geography and English, but these were often substantially reduced to fit in the 'essentials' of Tinsel Town's education system for Elizabeth: photography sessions, wardrobe and make-up trips, etc.\n\nSara had always counted upon one or both of her children to provide meal tickets for the future. She had infiltrated London society, working her way into parties and receptions if invitations had not been forthcoming, hoping that Elizabeth or Howard might marry appropriately and elevate the Taylors to the upper classes, where Sara was convinced they belonged. When Howard began displaying rebellious qualities at an early age, Sara concentrated her efforts solely on Elizabeth and applied the same tactics in Hollywood as she had in London, being far more interested in her pretty ebony-haired, violet-eyed daughter becoming the next Deanna Durbin or Shirley Temple than she was in Elizabeth getting good marks at school. Therefore, instead of politicians and the landed gentry, Sara homed in on Hollywood's 'royalty' \u2013 working her way through the ranks, she would, one way or another, seduce producers, directors, cameramen and, eventually, one or two of the moguls themselves.\n\nFirst, Sara decided that the family would have to make the sacrifices necessary for social elevation. Francis, very much under the thumb and to all intents and purposes enjoying being dictated to by this horrendously manipulative martinet, transferred his gallery to the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, and no sooner had the crates been unpacked at the Pacific Palisades bungalow than the family upped sticks and moved to a villa on the more fashionable Elm Drive \u2013 Elizabeth's home until her first marriage. She and Howard were installed in the more upmarket Hawthorne Elementary, a snooty establishment where they were ribbed on account of their 'clipped colonial' accents. Howard ignored the taunts or sometimes employed his fists to restore decorum. Elizabeth, who had to be the centre of attention even then, mocked them by affecting a shrill Southern accent, which, frequently and annoyingly, would crop up in her films.\n\nSara enrolled Elizabeth for after-school song-and-dance lessons. By hook or crook, she acquired her an audition with MGM producer John Considine, who had scored a big hit with Boys Town (1938) and had recently completed Third Finger, Left Hand (1940) with Myrna Loy. Exercising a brief routine, Elizabeth must have impressed him, because Considine arranged for her to audition for the Messiah himself \u2013 the all-powerful Louis B. Mayer, who had set Judy Garland on the Yellow Brick Road towards immortality. Mayer was decidedly put off by Elizabeth's tuneless voice \u2013 although this was not a major problem, as she could be dubbed by someone else \u2013 but still offered her a contract to be renewed every six months, providing that she lived up to the studio's expectations. Her starting salary was to be $100 a week, a tidy sum for a nine-year-old girl. Sara rejected the offer. A recent client at Francis's gallery had been Andrea Berens, the fianc\u00e9e of Universal's chairman J. Cheever Cowden, who had purchased several of the purloined Augustus Johns. Sara soon inveigled an introduction to Cowden himself, an audition was arranged and Universal offered Elizabeth the same contract as MGM but with a salary of $200 a week. Sara was also placed on the studio payroll as her daughter's chaperone\/adviser, obligatory in those days when the contractually bound was a minor.\n\nSara's victory over Louis B. Mayer was pyrrhic, because although Elizabeth was on a higher salary, Universal had a glut of child stars at that time and did not know what to do with her, which of course prompts the question: why sign her up in he first place? She was given a small part in There's One Born Every Minute (1942) \u2013 heading the credits was child star Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer, unfairly regarded as the first actor to suffer the 'Liz Taylor curse'. In 1959, Switzer, whose speciality as a member of 'Our Gang' was singing off-key, would be shot dead in a drugs-and-drink-fuelled brawl, aged 40. Elizabeth's film with Switzer was released at end of 1942, by which time Universal had dropped her on account of Sara Taylor's persistent on-set meddling.\n\nIntent on making Elizabeth's a household name, Sara unwisely solicited the attentions of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, Hollywood's arch-rival gossip columnists \u2013 the idea being that if one of these influential ladies reviewed Elizabeth favourably, fame and fortune would be sure to come her way. Louella refused to attend Elizabeth's next audition, claiming that she had better things to do. As for Hopper, there appears to have been some sort of link with Francis Taylor's benefactor\/lover Victor Cazalet. Some sources suggest that Cazalet's sister Thelma had befriended Hopper during her trips to London \u2013 others that Cazalet had once had an affair with the columnist's ex-husband, stage actor William DeWolf Hopper. Sara maintained that one of the Cazalets had furnished her with a letter of introduction to Hedda Hopper. However, the likeliest theory is that Sara approached her, taking advantage of the fact that she was a friend of a friend who ironically might just prove an invaluable ally. Hopper was kind enough to invite mother and daughter to her home, but she was not impressed. She observed in her autobiography The Whole Truth and Nothing But (Doubleday, 1963) of the pre-teen Taylor vocals, 'Sara had never gotten over Broadway, and she wanted to have a glamorous life again through her child . . . It was one of the most painful ordeals I have ever witnessed.'\n\nLuck appears to have been on Elizabeth's side \u2013 largely because Hopper did not refer to this 'ordeal' in her syndicated column \u2013 during the summer of 1942 when Louis B. Mayer was having problems finding a little girl with an 'English rose' accent for his debut exercise in Technicolor, Lassie Come Home (1943), which was about to go into production. Mayer's first choice had been Marie Flynn, the soon-to-be-forgotten child prodigy who had appeared with Ingrid Bergman in Intermezzo (1939). During her screen test, however, she was deemed 'mousy-looking and unphotogenic for color'. Mayer, or more likely one of his assistants, remembered Elizabeth and dispatched one of his lackeys to sweet-talk her mother into letting him have her. Elizabeth was offered the part without making a screen test (the four other unnamed child actresses who did tests failed because they could not do English accents) but was compelled to take a drop in salary. This, she later said, had been worth it for the opportunity making the film gave her to form what would be a lifelong friendship with its star Roddy McDowall.\n\nLondon-born fellow evacuee Roddy McDowall had made his name as a child star in John Halifax, Gentleman (1938) three years before taking Hollywood by storm in How Green was My Valley (1941). He would be the first in a long line of closeted gay actors who would regard Elizabeth Taylor as some sort of protectress\/surrogate-mother figure. Cynics have ignobly dubbed her a 'fag hag', but this title is unfair. Despite her selfishness towards many, her flighty reputation, her neurasthenia and her inability to hold herself together at times, for these men she proved nothing less than a rock and a loyal and discreet tower of strength, and as such commanded untold respect from the world's gay community. Even the small section of this community who disliked her could not help but admire her for the unselfish qualities she displayed in her tireless rallying to raise funds for AIDS research. Also, one must not lose sight of the fact that in the days of the intensely homophobic studio system, she too ran the risk of being ostracised by the film community by befriending gay actors and sharing in their 'secret' lives. That this sort of thing was still prevalent was brought to the public's attention, along with her loathing of hypocrisy, in September 1992 when Elizabeth pronounced on Whoopi Goldberg's television show, 'The creativity of homosexuals has made so much possible in this town. Take out the homosexuals, and there's no Hollywood.' The next month, she would go one step further and attack the US government on account of the biggest health crisis to hit the country since the flu epidemic during the early part of that century. 'I don't think President Bush is doing anything at all about AIDS,' she told an International AIDS summit in Amsterdam. 'In fact, I'm not sure he even knows how to spell AIDS!'\n\nLassie Come Home, directed by Fred Wilcox, was a smash at the US box office, and even more so with British audiences who welcomed the heartrending boy-and-dog scenario as an antidote to the horrors of war. Elizabeth played Priscilla, the granddaughter of the Duke of Rudling (Nigel Bruce, aka Dr Watson in the Sherlock Holmes films), to whom Lassie is sold, the story centring around her flight back to her rightful owner Joe Carraclough (McDowall). It spawned the first in a long line of Lassie movies. (The lead was played by a male dog called Pal, who earned more than the rest of the cast added together, Hollywood's biggest canine star since Rin Tin Tin.) In no way can this film be attributed to making Elizabeth a name \u2013 she appeared in four scenes only, was on screen for ten minutes, and was not seen in trailers and on playbills \u2013 but, as part of a hugely successful package comprising the cream of the British thespian crop (Donald Crisp, Elsa Lanchester, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Edmund Gwenn), Elizabeth was assured of being retained on the Metro roster, albeit in minuscule letters.\n\nElizabeth was not yet a star, as she and her mother liked to think when recalling the period, just one of any number of disposable kiddie actresses at a time when there was a surfeit of these. Because she was closer to the bottom of the MGM list than the top, and because they had nothing for her to do after Lassie Come Home, she was loaned out to Twentieth Century Fox \u2013 the studio that, two decades hence, her foibles would come close to bankrupting.\n\nFox had begun shooting Jane Eyre (1944) with Joan Fontaine as the adult Jane and Orson Welles as Rochester. Though her name does not figure in the credits, she acquitted herself extremely well as Helen Burns, the girl who befriends Jane. For once, Sara was justified in complaining that such a stellar performance was not recompensed by her daughter's name being added to the credits (though today Elizabeth's name frequently appears above that of Peggy Ann Garner), but her protestations backfired on her. The director Robert Stevenson complained to Louis B. Mayer, who issued Sara with the first of several verbal warnings when Elizabeth returned to MGM.\n\nThe next film was The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), a tribute to British wartime heroism headed by Irene Dunne and Alan Marshall \u2013 a non-event so far as Elizabeth's contribution was concerned. She appeared briefly in just two scenes, and, as if to punish her further for her mother's interference, Mayer ensured that, once more, her name did not appear in the credits.\n\n# TWO\n\nMOVE OVER, \nSHIRLEY TEMPLE\n\nPRECISELY HOW ELIZABETH CAME TO BE GIVEN THIRD lead in National Velvet (1944) has been swallowed by Hollywood folklore. Sara Taylor claimed that it was on account of her daughter's rave reviews for Lassie Come Home, but there had been none. MGM talent scout Lucille Ryman Carroll claimed in an interview with People magazine in November 1987 that Elizabeth had stormed into her office and announced, 'You're wasting your time auditioning anyone else. I'm going to be playing Velvet Brown!' One finds it hard to imagine her getting away with such audacity. A third, more plausible, explanation appeared in several movie magazines: Carroll and the producer, Pandro S. Berman, had taken Elizabeth's riding skills into consideration and concluded that it would be easier to offer her the part, rather than train someone else. Luckily, they made a good choice, though the back injury she sustained falling off her horse during rehearsals would plague her for the rest of her life because it was not properly tended to at the time.\n\nBased on the novel by Enid Bagnold, the script for National Velvet had been commissioned by Paramount for 30-year-old Katharine Hepburn back in 1935, but it was, not surprisingly, rejected by her (Velvet Brown is only 12 years old) and subsequently sold to MGM, who had kept it on ice since. The story is far-fetched, though the film itself provided an entertaining touch of whimsy for post-war audiences eager to embrace a world hopefully cleansed of oppression. It is marred only by the occasional 'British' accents of some of the leads: Anne Revere is not too bad and Mickey Rooney kept his American accent, because he was in the middle of his Andy Hardy period and MGM did not want his fans to be confused, but the Bronx twang of child star Jackie 'Butch' Jenkins is dreadful.\n\nThe unprecedented success of National Velvet led to Louis B. Mayer upping Elizabeth's salary to $200 a week \u2013 and, bizarrely for a man whose stinginess was legendary, this was not her only reward. Mayer brought in an interior designer who fashioned her a National Velvet bedroom, complete with the most expensive riding equipment money could buy and a wooden horse. Naturally, this came in handy for photo shoots. And, finally, Mayer paid her an unprecedented $15,000 bonus, adding to the speculation that, as had happened with Judy Garland after The Wizard of Oz (1939), this acknowledged connoisseur of underaged girls might have had an ulterior motive.\n\nMayer was certainly acting with shrewdness, because one of the terms for her receiving the bonus was that her current contract would be extended by another year, binding her to him for what was anticipated would be the remainder of her childhood before puberty set in. As for Elizabeth, she had a condition of her own before permitting Sara to sign on the dotted line: she wanted to keep the horse King, with whom she had bonded on the picture. Mayer acquiesced, and photographs of her being presented with the horse \u2013 no longer of use to the studio because he was lame \u2013 flooded the press.\n\nIn October 1943, to counteract one journalist's comment that the horse was far too big for Elizabeth, a statement was issued to the Hollywood Reporter, purporting to have come from her:\n\nHe would never hurt me. You don't have to worry about King when you get on his back \u2013 you just leave everything to him, and I think that he likes to know that I leave it to him, that he's the boss, and I trust him.\n\nThese would almost certainly have been Sara's words, but they presented an interesting analogy with the way in which Elizabeth regarded the men in her life in years to come. Similarly, cynics would draw comparisons between the way she related to the loss of her animals \u2013 the speed with which each 'irreplaceable' furry creature was replaced \u2013 and the way in which she got over her break-ups with her small army of husbands and lovers.\n\nThis love of four-legged creatures would be further documented in a Life magazine feature of February 1945 \u2013 who could resist a cute little girl cuddling up to one of her many pets, at that time a kitten, three dogs and a chipmunk? The chipmunk, the first in a series all baptised Nibbles, became a minor celebrity: first, with a cameo appearance in Courage of Lassie (1946); then when a New York publisher brought out Nibbles and Me, a 77-page tome recounting the story of Elizabeth's friendship with the little fellow(s). Her name appeared on the title page, although it is unlikely that she contributed to it other than to pose sweetly with her cherished pet. The book was essentially a gimmick cooked up by Sara and MGM's publicity department to promote the child star and her latest movies \u2013 location shots from Courage of Lassie and National Velvet were included.\n\nNibbles and Me was serialised in Photoplay, and much was made of the fact that Elizabeth had it drilled into her by her mother that tears were useless when one of the chipmunks died. Sara explained that death did not exist so long as the departed loved one was retained in the memory, according to the edicts of Christian Science. Elizabeth would recall her mother's words many times over the years \u2013 only to go to pieces each time she lost someone dear, frequently, it has to be said, for the benefit of the media.\n\nOne syndicated column, whose contributor perhaps wisely opted to remain anonymous, labelled Elizabeth 'a modern-day St Francis of Assisi', having been alerted by Sara that her daughter was what would today be called a horse-whisperer. 'She whinnies like a horse,' observed the Los Angeles Times's Louis Berg. 'And she also chirps like a squirrel and makes bird noises.' MGM attempted to capitalise on this by purchasing the screen rights to William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel Green Mansions, offering her the central role of Rima. Accepting this would have been a terrible mistake. Though she genuinely possessed the innocent appeal required to play the timid forest girl who converses with the fauna and falls in love with a handsome stranger, she was already too voluptuous and, through no fault of her own, would have turned the part into a joke. Sara realised this. The project was shelved until 1954, when Vincente Minnelli tried to foist it upon the equally unsuitable Italian siren Pier Angeli. It was eventually filmed in 1959 when Mel Ferrer directed his then wife Audrey Hepburn in the definitive portrayal opposite Anthony Perkins.\n\nTo make up for Elizabeth losing out on Rima, and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with America's latest pre-pubescent sensation, an 'official' biography was syndicated in columns across America in the hope of someone coming forward with a role as close to 'real life' as possible. In much the same way as Tasmanian scallywag Errol Flynn had been reinvented as an all-round sporting jock from Ireland, so Elizabeth became a wunderkind talent plucked from the London Blitz \u2013 one who had danced before the king of England and who had also been amazed to learn of her ability to communicate with animals. It was pure hogwash, of course, but peacetime readers lapped up ever syrupy sentence \u2013 although the hoped-for role never came.\n\nAs had happened with Joan Crawford and Judy Garland, Elizabeth was welcomed into Louis B. Mayer's 'family circle' and invited to call him 'Papa'. However, away from the studio with her real family, Elizabeth's life was anything but convivial. Francis, who was involved with Gilbert Adrian \u2013 MGM's chief costume designer since 1927 and in a lavender marriage with actress Janet Gaynor at that time \u2013 moved into a hotel, taking Howard with him, whilst Sara was sleeping with director Michael Curtiz, whom she had met on the set of Life with Father (1947), all in the interest of elevating her daughter's position on the Tinsel Town ladder.\n\nSara is also known to have set her sights on Louis B. Mayer himself, no doubt unaware that she was a generation too old for his tastes. Her ardour dimmed, however, when she learned that Mayer had denounced her as 'gutter-class', though it was Elizabeth who committed the unpardonable sin of squaring up to the messiah. Barging into his office unannounced, she told him exactly what she thought of him, and before she slammed the door behind her, she yelled, 'You and your studio can go to hell!' Mayer did not fire her, but for the rest of his life, he and Elizabeth loathed one another: she never entered his office again and only spoke to him under duress.\n\nMayer, of course, knew the monetary value of his temperamental young star and, cashing in on the latest canine phenomenon, gave her a part in Courage of Lassie \u2013 a misnomer if ever there was one, for the 'Lassie' in question, still played by Pal, was called Bill! Like its predecessors, the film was shot in glorious Technicolor and showcased the famous collie's talents as an Allied agent-combatant more capable of outsmarting the Nazis than its human counterparts, despite suffering from shellshock. Starring Frank Morgan and Tom Drake, it was a big success \u2013 but again not on account of Elizabeth's contribution, which was minimal and overshadowed by her quadruped co-star, as it had been in the last Lassie vehicle.\n\nElizabeth was next whisked through a quartet of kitchen-sink dramas in an attempt to draw as much adolescent mileage out of her as possible \u2013 just in case her star burned itself out with the advent of adulthood, as had happened with other Hollywood child prodigies. Louis B. Mayer had delayed this in Judy Garland's case by ordering her to plait her hair and strap down her budding breasts. Sara was having none of this and began pestering the studio to turn Elizabeth into a young woman at a time when she was still legally regarded as a child, well aware that this would bring protests from the moralists. By the age of 15, Elizabeth had had more than her share of on-screen kisses and a betrothal \u2013 whilst off the screen, Sara fiercely guarded her morals and refused to let her out of her sight for a single moment. If anyone walked up to Elizabeth and asked a question, the reply always came from Sara.\n\nElizabeth was promoted as the home-loving girl who respected her parents and who eschewed the bright lights in favour of helping Mama with her chores. Photographed in an apron and rubber gloves, she could be seen 'labouring' over the stove or hunched over the sink, contemplating the dirty pots. The fake scenarios, arguably the closest Elizabeth ever got to doing actual housework, took place on a film set but were swallowed by the fans, who also clipped snaps taken of her at 'high-school parties', convinced that she was just as normal as they were \u2013 save that that these too were staged on a back lot and the 'students' were young bit-part players and extras.\n\nSara's affair with Michael Curtiz paid off. Life with Father, in which Elizabeth worked as a loan-out to Warner Brothers, was an Irene Dunne\u2013William Powell comedy set in 1880s New York. Elizabeth made a nuisance of herself, courtesy of Sara, by being frequently absent during shooting. It was the unwritten law of some studios in those days that A-list actresses were permitted to leave the set during their menstrual cycle, providing this had been squared with the on-set nurse, who was not averse to examining them to ensure they were telling the truth. So far as the astonishingly naive outside world was concerned, adolescents such as Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and Elizabeth were 'late developers' who did not yet have periods \u2013 the moguls' way of convincing the public that they were not yet watching young women. Sara took Elizabeth home for the least little thing \u2013 a slight cough, aching feet, a pimple, a single sneeze \u2013 resulting in questions being asked by Warner Brothers' insurers, who, stupidly believing that teenage girls only 'fell sick' once a month, wanted to know why she was having 'periods' at the rate of one a week.\n\nIn keeping with her fake studio biography, Elizabeth was not allowed to date and was not permitted to venture anywhere \u2013 not even the bathroom \u2013 unless chaperoned. Though they did not employ the actual word, the movie magazines reminded their readers that, despite the on-screen amours, Elizabeth was very much a virgin. Little girls who smiled a lot and posed for photographs with fluffy animals were not supposed to even know about sex, let alone indulge in it. Such was the naivety of cinemagoers. Therefore, when Elizabeth was observed to be developing breasts, MGM 'extended' her childhood by casting her in Cynthia (1947) with George Murphy and Mary Astor. Promoted as 'a teenage Camille', she played Cynthia Bishop, the consumptive, shy girl who cannot have the puppy she so desires because of her allergies \u2013 but whose overprotective parents do allow to go on her first date with a young marine, who escorts her to the end-of-term prom.\n\nElizabeth got on well with the famously feisty Mary Astor, but the feeling was not mutual. Astor found her scheming, even back then, and could not help comparing her with the much more amenable Judy Garland, with whom she had appeared in Meet Me in St Louis (1944). 'Judy was warm and affectionate and exuberant,' she wrote in her memoir, A Life on Film (Delacorte, 1971). 'Elizabeth was cool and slightly superior . . . There was a look in those violet eyes that was somewhat calculating. It was as though she knew exactly what she wanted and was quite sure of getting it.'\n\nTo reassure the public that, like herself, Elizabeth's character was not flighty, the young man who swept her off her feet in the film was James Lydon, her beau from Life with Father. As the gangly, inarticulate youth in the Henry Aldrich series, Lydon had been America's favourite wartime teenager after Andy Hardy. Since then, he had matured into an inordinately handsome, hunky young man. Even so, where American audiences were concerned, Lydon was still the kind of boy no one would associate with leading a girl astray.\n\nThat Elizabeth was thinking about such matters was, however, evident on 13 July 1947 when she appeared on Louella Parsons' radio show for a 'modest' fee of $3,000. Parsons was aware that the Taylors had separated and that Elizabeth had been the centre of attention at Roddy McDowall's 18th birthday party the previous September \u2013 dancing with several older men. 'Boys of my own age are so young,' she told Louella. She also refused to acknowledge her parents' split \u2013 Elizabeth claimed that her father was away from home on business and that Sara wanted to join him but that she was too busy chaperoning her back and forth to the studio. And, Louella wanted to know, what were her aspirations for the future? Elizabeth's response was that two things were on her mind: becoming a great actress and ensnaring a husband. She did not add that she was not old enough to marry but did give the impression that any husband would do so long as he spirited her away from her overbearing mother.\n\nThe fact that Louella Parsons 'overlooked' the Taylors' marital problems in her syndicated column perturbed MGM: whatever scandal or crisis Louella failed to pick up on, they knew, Hedda Hopper almost certainly would. Both hacks were therefore fed the story that Francis was away on business, discussing the opening of a new gallery with Howard Young. When Louis B. Mayer heard of the split, he decided to take no chances and opted to put an even greater distance between them \u2013 hoping to achieve the maxim 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'. Elizabeth had worked hard over the past year, Mayer told the press. She was beginning to make a name for herself, and, with no project on the immediate horizon, Mayer felt that she was entitled to a holiday. The studio would pick up the tab, naturally.\n\nAt the end of July, Elizabeth and Sara sailed for Southampton on the Queen Mary. They spent two months in London, shopping and revisiting old haunts, until a cable from Mayer summoned Elizabeth home for her first musical \u2013 co-starring with Jane Powell and Wallace Beery in A Date with Judy (1948). The film was produced by Joe Pasternak, the man responsible for reviving Marlene Dietrich's career after she had been branded box-office poison. It was a great success, primarily on account of Brazilian bombshell Carmen Miranda's ferociously camp rendition of 'Cuanto Le Gusta' and Wallace Beery's club-footed dance routine. As for Elizabeth, she provided little more than colourful scenery, and the moralists frowned upon the scene where, still underaged, she vied with Powell for the attentions of 28-year-old Robert Stack. Even so, at least one influential critic was impressed, Irving Hoffman of the Hollywood Reporter singling her out as 'a 14-carat, 100-proof siren of the future'.\n\nNext came Julia Misbehaves (1948) \u2013 essentially a showcase for the phenomenal talents of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon \u2013 a production with distinct but inadvertent references to the crisis within the Taylor household. Elizabeth played wealthy debutante Susan Packett, whose aim was to reconcile her divorced parents whilst attempting to break away from their dominance so that she might have a life of her own with a man of her choosing. The critics \u2013 and Garson-Pidgeon aficionados who had never accepted them extant of their pairing in Mrs Miniver-style dramas \u2013 were not impressed.\n\nElizabeth's first major relationship, at least the first to make the press, was with 23-year-old West Point-graduate-turned-footballer Glenn Davis, whom she met during the summer of 1948. Until this time \u2013 adopting the maxim 'Look by all means, but please don't touch!' \u2013 wearing a succession of outfits by Francis's designer lover Adrian, she had been encouraged to flutter her eyelashes at just about every man in sight, particularly the older, unattractive ones, because, according to Sara, these were the ones with the money and power. Sara and Francis had even bought Elizabeth her first car (courtesy of MGM), a powder-blue Cadillac convertible, to help her get noticed \u2013 not that this was necessary, and in any case she was not yet permitted to drive it.\n\nThe relationship with Davis was almost certainly platonic, an exercise stage-managed by MGM to gain essential publicity after Elizabeth's last few films had failed to match up to the success of their predecessors. Davis had announced his plans to enlist for military service.\n\nElizabeth and Glenn Davis met up most weekends during the summer\/fall of 1948. He would occasionally collect her from the studio where she was shooting Little Women (1949). Directed by Mervin LeRoy, this had an all-star cast \u2013 headed by June Allyson as Jo March, the heroine of Louisa M. Alcott's classic novel \u2013 all of whom were better than Elizabeth, whose squeaky histrionics were lost when pitted against the quiet dignity of Mary Astor, the poetic innocence of Margaret O'Brien and the distinctive presence of that grand old man of the British theatre, C. Aubrey Smith, who sadly died before the film was released. In her blonde wig, it is only towards the end of the film, when she almost comes into her own, that one realises one has been watching Elizabeth Taylor. However, as Amy March, she inadvertently displays some of the later Taylor characteristics of selfishness and impetuosity \u2013 she grabs the best costumes and even manages to steal someone else's intended.\n\nOn 8 September 1948, Elizabeth was photographed kissing Glenn Davis a tearful farewell when he left to fight in Korea. Afterwards. she appeared in public, looking glum, wearing his 'ALL AMERICA' sweatshirt and the 'lucky' gold football chain he had given her. It was all staged, of course.\n\nElizabeth coped with her 'war bride' status by travelling to London in November 1948 to star opposite 37-year-old Robert Taylor in a lacklustre espionage thriller, Conspirator. Sara told the press that whilst in England, still recovering from wartime food shortages, she and her daughter would 'cut corners' the same as everyone else. To prove this point, the two of them travelled 'by common cab' to the Ministry of Food to collect their ration books \u2013 then had the driver convey them to Claridge's.\n\nConspirator was promoted as 'Elizabeth Taylor's First Adult Love Story'. Both leads were woefully miscast. At 16, Elizabeth was hopeless as Robert Taylor's 21-year-old wife, whilst he seemed way out of his depth playing the villain, the British officer who spies for Russia and is instructed by his superiors to kill her. There were also rumours of an off-screen romance between the two \u2013 fuelled by the studio to prevent Taylor's homosexuality from becoming public knowledge.\n\nSuch had been MGM's concern for one of their brightest stars that they had forced Taylor into a lavender marriage with 'baritone babe' Barbara Stanwyck. When Taylor was suspected of hunting for 'rough trade' around Soho, the MGM publicity machine went into overdrive, and once again Elizabeth was appointed the inadvertent stooge for a gay man. Taylor was snapped 'lusting' over Elizabeth in her strapless, low-cut gown, which, of course, only caused more controversy \u2013 though nothing quite as bad as his lusting over rent boys would have done. Alternatively, he was photographed looking all forlorn in his dressing-room, penning one of his daily love letters to his wife, who was back in Los Angeles with her wardrobe-mistress lover. What Stanwyck and the press did not yet know was that Taylor, who was tired of the charade, was about to file for divorce.\n\nAway from the set, there was little time for sightseeing in the British capital \u2013 Sara told reporters that when the cameras were not rolling, her daughter was receiving essential schooling or was safely tucked up in bed. Of course, if that was the case, this posed the question of how could she have been 'involved' with Robert Taylor?\n\nElizabeth and Sara did get around to visiting their former home on Wildwood Road, now loaned out to the Women's Voluntary Services. They also spent time with Victor Cazalet's sister Thelma \u2013 Cazalet had died in an air crash during the war \u2013 and it was she who introduced them to the actor Michael Wilding. Twenty years Elizabeth's senior, Wilding would, of course, figure strongly in her life in later years. The pair are known to have dated, apparently with Sara's blessing, and Wilding was photographed kissing Elizabeth goodbye in the VIP lounge at Heathrow.\n\nMore controversially, upon her return to America early in 1949, Elizabeth, very much against her will, became 'involved' with super-recluse Howard Hughes, who had been monitoring her progress by way of cinema newsreels and movie magazines for months. At the age of 44, Hughes was one of the country's wealthiest tycoons, although he was already mentally unbalanced, and he believed that he could have any woman \u2013 or man \u2013 in the world as long as he offered hard cash and lots of it. His conquests are thought to have included Ginger Rogers, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Carole Lombard, Errol Flynn and Cary Grant \u2013 whilst Jean Harlow, Italian beauty Gina Lollobrigida and French revue artiste Zizi Jeanmaire famously spurned his advances.\n\nHughes possessed a massive collection of Elizabeth Taylor photographs, from the flat-chested ones of her National Velvet days to the more recent ones in which she displayed a more than ample cleavage. He emerged from his mansion bolthole to visit Francis's gallery, striking up a friendship and purchasing several paintings he had absolutely no use for, and eventually invited Francis and his family to his home. Hughes is said to have offered $1 million in cash for Elizabeth's hand in marriage \u2013 moreover, as her father's permission was required for such a union to take place, Francis is said to have accepted the offer. Elizabeth, however, had stood up to the mighty Louis B. Mayer, so she was unafraid of the scruffy Texan billionaire. Hughes was unceremoniously sent packing.\n\nNo sooner had Hughes exited the scene than Glenn Davis arrived home from Korea, hoping to take up with Elizabeth where they had left off. Their reunion would be brief. The press compared their sporting\u2013showbiz love affair with that of French singer \u00c9dith Piaf and world boxing champion Marcel Cerdan \u2013 the two couples frequently appeared on the same front pages. But whereas Piaf and Cerdan stuck it out \u2013 until his death in a plane crash in October 1949 \u2013 Elizabeth and Davis would have no such luck.\n\nAccording to American press reports, Davis turned up at Elizabeth's 17th-birthday party with an expensive cultured-pearl necklace \u2013 and a diamond-and-ruby engagement ring. The latter, however, stayed in his pocket when he was introduced to one of the guests. 'She had started dating that rich guy Pawley, and, let's face it, he showed her a better time than I did,' Davis told biographer Kitty Kelley in 1980. 'I stayed there for about a week or ten days of high-stepping and then I took off.' In 1951, Davis married Hollywood starlet Terry Moore, arguably one of the most popular of the 'studio stooge' dates. In her time, Moore would keep the 'outing' hacks from the doors of numerous gay stars, including Rock Hudson, George Nader, Anthony Perkins and James Dean. The marriage lasted less than a year.\n\nElizabeth had had the new beau waiting in the wings for a while, setting yet another precedent. Twenty-eight-year-old William Pawley was heir to the multimillion-dollar Miami Transit Company. He and Elizabeth met in March 1949. As usual for her, it was love at first sight, and Pawley did not hang around for someone else to muscle in on his territory. First, he wrote Elizabeth a series of love letters, telling her how much he worshiped her. Receiving a positive response, he flew to Los Angeles to gain the approval of her family \u2013 in other words, Sara. This was, of course, forthcoming, and soon afterwards, having consulted with Louis B. Mayer, Sara escorted her daughter to Miami to meet the future in-laws. They were mobbed by thousands of fans at the airport and were trailed by hundreds of camp followers as Pawley showed his guests around his home territory. Occasionally, 'shriekers' would be employed by MGM's Florida representatives to incite excitement amongst the crowd, if it was not already evident. They gathered outside theatres and restaurants, allowing the couple scarcely a moment's peace. It was painful for Pawley, although Elizabeth lapped up this adoration whilst pretending to be unnerved by it all.\n\nThough many would submit to the humiliation of doing so in the future, William Pawley made it clear that he would never walk in a movie star's shadow. Sara was actually in favour of this, seeing as the pickings were suitably rich, whilst Elizabeth, as usual, didn't know what she wanted \u2013 except as much attention as possible. She had just been contracted to The Big Hangover (1950) with Van Johnson and Father of the Bride (1950) with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett \u2013 the latter her biggest break to date \u2013 and she tentatively promised that once these were in the can she would retire.\n\nPawley did not know Elizabeth well enough not to believe her. He tried to expedite matters by asking her to marry him, and on 2 June 1949 she was photographed wearing an emerald-cut diamond ring. Whilst Pawley refused to divulge how much this had set him back, only that Elizabeth was worth every penny, she told Photoplay, 'In Hollywood, I would not be anything but Elizabeth Taylor. In Miami, I'll be Elizabeth Pawley. I like that!'\n\nThen, as would happen with just about every relationship Elizabeth embarked upon, the rot set in. Pawley reminded her of her promise and began 'moulding' her into what he saw as the ideal wife \u2013 telling her how to dress and conduct herself in public, instructing her on what she should and should not eat, and giving her suggestions on how she should speak and to whom. The further the engagement progressed, the more Elizabeth worried that her own marriage might turn out like that of her parents. She was, and forever would remain, hopelessly insecure where men were concerned. She had virtually no female friends or confidantes to turn to for advice and therefore found herself stewing over problems which as yet did not exist \u2013 even when things were going well, she was persistently searching for reasons why they should not be.\n\nIn her own bizarre way, Elizabeth must, therefore, have been grateful for the release that came prior to shooting The Big Hangover, when she was informed that, before going on to Father of the Bride, she would be working as a loan-out in an even bigger project, sharing top-billing with Montgomery Clift in Paramount's $2-million remake of An American Tragedy (1931). The finicky director George Stevens chose Elizabeth not, it is alleged, because he considered her to be in Monty's class, which she certainly never was, but because he was convinced that their combined beauty would 'set the screen alight'. Pawley offered her an ultimatum: unless she renounced the film, there would be no wedding. Elizabeth chose the film, and, initially, Pawley adopted a Machiavellian front, accompanying her to the wedding of her friend Jane Powell in the September. The next day, taking a leaf out of the book of the Hollywood system he so despised, he called Hedda Hopper \u2013 not Elizabeth \u2013 to announce that the engagement was off.\n\nElizabeth, in all probability, could not have cared less. On 22 August, her photograph had adorned the cover of Time magazine. The gist of the accompanying feature was that the golden greats of yesteryear \u2013 Dietrich, Stanwyck, Davis and Crawford \u2013 had passed their sell-by date and that Hollywood was now embracing a new type of goddess. 'MGM has . . . turned up a jewel of great price, a true star sapphire,' the editorial read. 'She is Elizabeth Taylor!' The studio disapproved of the analogy. Elizabeth was still only 17 and still a minor, promoted by them as being the archetypal, pure-as-the-driven-snow girl next door. So far as is known, she was still a virgin, never having been let out of her mother's or chaperone's sight for a moment. And this is how a very naive public would have viewed her, despite the fact that she was a busty, beautiful teenager. Her next film, however, would help her to grow up in the eyes of the public.\n\n# THREE\n\nWITH THIS FIST, \nI THEE WED\n\nFEW MEN WOULD PROVE AS IMPORTANT AS THE NEXT ONE who entered Elizabeth's life \u2013 one who, equally rarely, would stay the course, because theirs was a relationship that almost certainly never progressed beyond the platonic.\n\nEdward Montgomery Clift was born in Nebraska in October 1920 with a whole set of silver spoons in his mouth, the son of the vice president of the National Bank of Omaha and an ordinary housewife, although she was even more domineering and grasping than Sara Taylor. Having dragged Monty and his siblings around the world to teach them the rudiments of culture, and always living beyond her means, Sunny Clift had enrolled Monty with an exclusive modelling agency when he was still in his early teens. She had encouraged his acting bug, which had seen him treading the boards professionally at the age of 15. After ten successful years on Broadway, Monty had been persuaded to make his first film, playing John Wayne's highly strung adopted son in the acclaimed Howard Hawks western Red River (1948).\n\nMonty had loathed the whole Hollywood experience, scrawling the words 'VOMIT, CALIFORNIA' across the tops of the envelopes when writing home. The problem was not the film capital itself, but the hypocrisy of its hierarchy. In the theatre, Monty had been able to choose male lovers without fear of reprisal, but once he hit Hollywood he became so hung up about his sexuality \u2013 he was much less ashamed of sleeping with men than in having to remain closeted about his preferences for the sake of his career \u2013 that he forced himself to sleep with any number of women in an attempt to determine on which side of the fence he truly belonged. One has to remember that this was an age when there was no such term as bisexuality: one was either a 'regular guy' or a 'fairy', and if a man privately professed to liking men and women, this merely meant that he had not yet emerged from the closet. In Monty's case, the torment of uncertainty had driven him to drink and drugs. On top of this, he suffered poor health on account of recurring amoebic dysentery for most of his tragically short life, despite his hunky frame.\n\nThe two women in Montgomery Clift's life as the 1950s dawned could not have been more different: Libby Holman, the 40-something bisexual torch singer who had once stood in the dock accused of shooting dead her 22-year-old gay husband, tobacco heir Zachary Smith Reynolds, and 18-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, whose voluptuous assets, Monty's confidants assured him, would be sufficient to turn any gay man straight.\n\nMonty had received rave reviews for Red River and had gone on to make The Search, directed by Fred Zinneman, The Big Lift (1950) and The Heiress (1949) opposite Olivia de Havilland, establishing himself as one of America's leading young actors. All of these classic films, however, would be eclipsed by A Place in the Sun (1951), the new title for George Stevens's reworking of Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy, first filmed in 1931 with Phillips Holmes and based on an actual New York murder trial of 1906.\n\nIn October 1949, Paramount, worried about Monty's steadfast refusal to cease cruising for rough trade amongst the gay haunts of downtown Los Angeles, opted to 'normalise' him for the benefit of the press by supplying him with Elizabeth as his date for the premiere of The Heiress. For her part, she was delighted at the prospect of meeting the most beautiful man in Hollywood, though Monty was indifferent and would have much preferred to have taken his latest boyfriend. He is even down on record as having declared, 'Who the hell is Elizabeth Taylor?', although he must have known. He also fought against the studio's publicity gimmick that because they were going to play lovers on the screen, it might not be a bad idea if they appeared to be so in real life.\n\nMonty realised that Elizabeth was considerably more than just a pretty face and fabulous body \u2013 she is said to have impressed him by uttering innumerable profanities, aimed at Sara, in the back of the limousine en route to Grauman's Chinese Theater \u2013 and discovered just how much they had in common, not least of all their horrendously overbearing mothers. Monty christened Elizabeth 'my Bessie Mae', a term of endearment that, like their close friendship, lasted for life. Hedda Hopper jumped the gun, as only she of course could, when she saw Elizabeth straightening Monty's bow tie at the theatre entrance. 'Those magnificent lovebirds are very soon going to be married,' she wrote in her syndicated column. In fact, Monty chain-smoked all evening, looked fed up and snarled at a reporter who rushed up to him to praise The Heiress: 'You love it? I hate the fucking thing!'\n\nGeorge Stevens was lucky to be making A Place In The Sun in the first place. The 1931 version, directed by Dietrich's Svengali, Josef von Sternberg (also for Paramount), had so watered down the political content of Dreiser's book that he publicly denounced it, and it had subsequently flopped at the box office. Stevens had no little clout in Hollywood. In the 1920s, he had worked as assistant cameraman on a number of Laurel and Hardy shorts, he had directed his first feature in 1933, and two years later had been requested by Katharine Hepburn to direct her in Alice Adams (1935). He had similarly triumphed alongside Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck. Despite such plaudits, however, Stevens was not entirely indispensable, like just about everyone else in Hollywood, and he now took an uncalculated risk and threw a spanner into the works by informing the Paramount executives that he wanted to follow the Dreiser story to the letter. A lesser director might have been fired. Stevens was politely reminded (as if he did not know already) of the still present ill-feeling and suspicion in the wake of the McCarthy witch-hunt, and he quickly capitulated; even the names of the central characters had to be changed.\n\nFor the sheer beauty and grace of its two leading players, A Place in the Sun remains one of the finest American films of all time. For much of the movie, however, Elizabeth in her first authentic adult role serves solely as pretty scenery, and it is Montgomery Clift who carries the production from start to finish. Both Fred Zinneman and Edward Dmytryk, who later directed Elizabeth and Clift in Raintree County (1957), avowed in a 1989 television documentary (Monty: His Place in the Sun) that Monty's acting prowess had been such that he had been able to coax more out of his co-stars than even the best director.\n\nIn the film, Monty played doomed drifter George Eastman, who gets one girl (Shelley Winters) pregnant whilst falling for rich-bitch Angela Vickers (Elizabeth), who is initially attracted to his sadness \u2013 as happened with Monty away from the screen. In fact, there is much mirroring of the Taylor\u2013Clift relationship here, particularly during the famous balcony scene where, en profile and in the most stunning close-ups since Garbo and Gilbert's Flesh and the Devil (1926), they let themselves go. 'How can I tell you how much I love you? How can I tell you all?' he murmurs in the flickering light, whilst she responds, 'Tell Mama . . . Tell Mama all!' To get this scene spot on, Elizabeth and Monty rehearsed in the privacy of his apartment, with Monty later telling his friend Libby Holman that Elizabeth would allow her hands to wander, hoping to turn him on \u2013 always to no avail. Later in the film, when Eastman is about to go to the electric chair for 'murder by thought', Angela visits him in his cell and swears that she will love him until the day she dies. Many years later, she repeated those words in the message she sent to Monty's family after his death.\n\nMonty's sensitive portrayal of George Eastman was essentially an extension of himself: the loner who does not fit in. The role earned him an Oscar nomination in the same year that his nearest rival, Marlon Brando, was nominated for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) \u2013 both were upstaged by Humphrey Bogart, who won the award for The African Queen (1951). Even so, the film received tremendous praise, with scarcely an adverse review. Charlie Chaplin, not one to offer compliments lightly, called it 'the greatest movie ever made about America'. The New York Times's usually acerbic Bosley Crowther singled out Monty as 'terse, hesitating, full, rich, restrained and poignant', whilst distinguished film critic Andrew Sarris later observed in American Cinema (Dutton, 1968):\n\nClift and Taylor were the most beautiful couple in the history of the cinema. It was a sensuous experience to watch them respond to each other. Those gigantic close-ups of them kissing were unnerving \u2013 sybaritic \u2013 like gorging on chocolate sundaes.\n\nAl Hine observed in Holiday:\n\nGeorge Stevens has placed Elizabeth Taylor in a part where all the uncomfortable, preening mannerisms that have brought a touch of nausea to her recent portrayals are valid. The conceit, artificiality and awkwardness which mar her playing in most ing\u00e9nue roles are not only acceptable but essential to her rendition of Miss Rich Bitch 1951.\n\nMany of those close to the two stars believed that Elizabeth genuinely wanted to marry Monty, particularly when Paramount attempted to exploit their friendship by announcing that they were considering changing the title of the film to The Lovers. When they met, Elizabeth was sufficiently naive not to be aware that Monty was gay \u2013 despite them being frequently accompanied on their outings by his latest rough-trade lover \u2013 and, unable to tell him to his face how she felt about him, she put pen to paper. These love letters disturbed him so much that he later gave them away to another lover.\n\nElizabeth has never kissed and told, despite her hectic love life, so it is very unlikely that we will ever know if their relationship was in any way sexual. What they did share progressed way beyond the mere physical. Though 12 years his junior, Elizabeth would be mother, sister, soulmate and lover, all neatly fit into one decidedly pretty but above all sympathetic package. That they were on exactly the same wavelength is further demonstrated by their love scenes in A Place in the Sun. The final rehearsals for these were conducted entirely without speech, with Elizabeth and her dishy co-star 'thinking' their lines and communicating by eye contact, a process which intensified and added to the value of their on-screen romance.\n\nWhilst shooting the film, Elizabeth had met 23-year-old 'Nicky' Hilton, the wealthy playboy heir to the $150-million hotel chain, and around Christmas 1949 they began dating, encouraged by Elizabeth's parents, who were far more interested in her marrying into money than in being the escort of an acknowledged bad lot of ambiguous sexuality. Hilton was the arch seducer. Though he held an executive position in his father Conrad's hotel conglomerate (as honorary manager of the Bel Air Hotel), he used this and his wealth to coax as many women \u2013 and more than a few men, who were paid to secure their silence \u2013 into the sack. Handsome but virtually devoid of charisma, Hilton had attended the prestigious Loyola College but dropped out at 19 to join the navy. Here, he had had any number of male lovers. Later, for the sheer hell of it, he seduced the formidable siren Zsa Zsa Gabor \u2013 his father's second wife \u2013 with her boasting to all and sundry that he had a ten-inch penis and the sexual stamina of a racehorse.\n\nHad Elizabeth and her parents searched beyond the dollar signs and done their homework, they would have discovered a decidedly unpleasant young man who saw Elizabeth primarily as a status symbol, the first prize in a lottery draw that every red-blooded male in America would have entered, given the chance. Like Elizabeth, Hilton had had no childhood to speak of. Since nursery school, he had been groomed to one day take over the family emporium. As she had been a child star, so he had been a 'child hotelier', never allowed to have friends. However, whereas Elizabeth had had a more or less stable upbringing \u2013 although her parents had slack morals, they had nevertheless striven to protect their own \u2013 Hilton had not. Essentially, he was bad news: a drunkard who was hopelessly addicted to sex, gambling and drugs. One of his cronies was Texan oil magnate Glen McCarthy, upon whom the James Dean character in Giant (1956) would later be based.\n\nHilton also had a fondness for brawling: he had more than once been cautioned by the police for knocking his girlfriends around. He thought nothing of spending thousands of dollars on some trinket to impress a lover who would only learn what he was like the hard way. He often had black or Jewish lovers, who would then have to listen to his virulently racist or anti-Semitic ranting when he had had too much to drink, which was often. Hilton would later have relationships with Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe, and treat them both badly. He was convinced that one of these mistreated lovers or a vengeful partner might want to kill him, so despised was he, that he kept a loaded gun on his bedside cabinet \u2013 with a rosary wrapped around it for good luck.\n\nHilton was a swift mover. Aware of Hollywood's strict, unwritten chaperoning laws, he courted Elizabeth conventionally \u2013 hitting the town once she was safely tucked up in bed. Their first dates were supervised. Elizabeth and her parents visited the Hiltons' 64-room mansion in Bel Air's Bellagio Road and were knocked sideways to observe how the 'other half' lived. This was opulence way beyond Elizabeth's and Sara's wildest dreams \u2013 it was a display of wealth that, certainly from Sara's point of view (if not Elizabeth's, too), far exceeded the need for physical attraction towards the man. Elizabeth might have thought herself in love with Nicky Hilton, but would she have felt the same way had he been poor? And if she could end up living in a place like this, who cared what the husband was like? Not for the first time, unbridled greed for the almighty dollar would cloud Elizabeth's judgement.\n\nHilton, for his part, 'slummed' it by dropping in on the Taylors \u2013 once the press had been alerted to catch him arriving. Occasionally, there would be family outings to Arrowhead Springs. If the couple did go out 'alone' \u2013 always with an MGM chaperone hovering in the background \u2013 Elizabeth insisted upon being taken to downtown drugstores and hamburger joints, hoping that the press would report that she was not interested in Hilton's money, whilst revealing the opposite by showing off the latest costly bauble he had given her. Hilton, the manic spendthrift, fixated her with another pastime that set a precedent for the rest of her life: spending for spending's sake.\n\nWhen Nicky Hilton asked Francis Taylor for his daughter's hand in marriage, permission was granted and the news 'leaked' to the media. On account of her treatment of Glenn Davis and William Pawley, Hedda Hopper had baptised her 'Liz the Jilt', and the columnists now reminded their moralist readers \u2013 who nevertheless loved nothing more than a juicy scandal \u2013 that Elizabeth looked like she might be aiming for the hat-trick, particularly when Hilton announced that he was expecting her to give up her career so that they could start a family at once.\n\nThe press also mentioned that not only was Elizabeth still a minor, but that she had yet to graduate \u2013 legally essential, but no problem for MGM, who organised a diploma and slipped her into a graduation ceremony at Los Angeles High in front of hundreds of fellow graduates who were seeing her for the first time and who must have been irked that whilst they had had to study hard for their diplomas, she had not. In February 1950, a few days before Elizabeth's 18th birthday, Conrad Hilton announced that his son was officially engaged to 'the movie star', and the next day she showed off her ring to the press. Hilton had gone one better than William Pawley by buying her a 4.5-carat diamond.\n\nThe studio publicity machine, though well aware of Hilton's near-psychotic, abrasive nature, went into overdrive, promoting Nicky and Elizabeth as the perfect all-American couple. Elizabeth had merely been pencilled in for the role of Kay Banks in Father of the Bride, but now shooting began in earnest as the studio rode on the back of the phenomenal amount of press coverage afforded to her forthcoming nuptials. This deflected from the back-lot gossip concerning its director Vincente Minnelli, then married to Judy Garland but not averse to having a not-so-discreet fling with Francis Taylor, the real father of the bride.\n\nThe film, recounting a middle-class family's tribulations during the run-up to their only daughter's wedding, is reminiscent of the hugely popular Ernst Lubitsch comedies of the previous generation. In retrospect, of course, its true star is Spencer Tracy, who, as per usual, steals the show. Tracy plays tightwad Stanley Banks, who reflects upon the event which has crippled him financially. In an actress-character juxtaposition, Kay has been a busy girl \u2013 seven serious boyfriends in the last few months \u2013 but now she has met Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor), the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with. Stanley does all he can to discourage her, worrying that Buckley might not be good enough, or worse still a crook. He tries to save money by suggesting the couple elope, finally dipping his hand into his pocket and allowing the ceremony to take place \u2013 an Elizabeth Taylor extravaganza that sees the society caterers moving in and the house stripped of its furniture to accommodate the hundreds of mostly unwanted guests.\n\nFather of the Bride was scheduled to go on general release to coincide with Elizabeth's wedding, which meant that A Place in the Sun was deferred for release until the following year. Much had been made in the press that Elizabeth and Montgomery Clift had extended their love affair beyond the screen, although the studios hoped that such rumours would have been quelled by then. The official reason for the delay was George Stevens's usual excuse that he had used so much film, shooting every scene dozens of times, that it would take this long to cut and edit.\n\nElizabeth is said to have developed cold feet on the eve of the ceremony, spending some time in New York with Montgomery Clift. In her definitive biography Montgomery Clift (Harcourt, 1978), Patricia Bosworth quotes an unnamed friend of Monty telling her that Elizabeth had pleaded with him to marry her so that she could get out of marrying Nicky Hilton. 'Elizabeth's prime objective in life was to find a husband,' the friend is claimed to have said, suggesting that even a neurotic, drunken, partner-beating thug like Hilton might have been better than no husband at all. Elizabeth is also known to have been against the prenuptial agreement drawn up by Hilton's lawyers, avowing that any children the couple had would be brought up in the Catholic faith, though he was a lapsed Catholic who rarely went to church.\n\nThe wedding took place on 6 May 1950 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills and was hailed the society event of the year. There were a couple of hitches. First, the press had been requested not to mention Hilton's age \u2013 ridiculously, so that he would not be accused of 'child-napping' \u2013 and as such he was refused the licence until offering proof that he was over 21! Second, there was a bust-up between Sara and the officiating priest, Monsignor Patrick Concannon, when he informed her that the ceremony would have to be conducted outside the altar rail because although she had signed the documents to marry into the Catholic Church, Elizabeth had never been baptised.\n\nThis was no ordinary wedding, of course. The bride's real family were not the Taylors but MGM, who had more or less organised everything and were not averse to picking up the tab. After all, this was good publicity for Father of the Bride, about to go on general release. The 500 hand-picked guests included the very cream of the MGM crop, many of whom had never met Elizabeth Taylor, and more than a few who could not stand her, Hilton or both of them. Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Phil Harris and Alice Faye, the Van Johnsons, and William Powell only attended because Louis B. Mayer had instructed them to. Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons were there, hoping to pick up some juicy titbit concerning the groom's still-hectic love life. There were, of course, the genuine close friends \u2013 Mickey Rooney, Arthur Loew Jr, Spencer Tracy, Roddy McDowall, Joan Bennett and, for the moment, Debbie Reynolds \u2013 along with 4,000 fans who endured the 100-degree heat and who definitely wanted to be there.\n\nElizabeth looked ravishing in a near-replica of the dress she had worn in Father of the Bride. The dress of white satin, embroidered with hundreds of seed-pearls, was made by MGM's Helen Rose at a cost of $3,500, but as it was officially studio property, it would have to be returned after the ceremony. Elizabeth was allowed to keep the mink stole given to her by Sara \u2013 paid for by Louis B. Mayer. Her other gifts included a Frans Hals original from Francis, 100 shares of stock from Conrad Hilton and a $60,000 diamond-and-platinum ring from Howard Young. The bridesmaids, whose yellow dresses were also on loan from MGM, included Jane Powell, Hilton's sister Marilyn and Mara Reagan, who would soon marry Howard Taylor. Elizabeth, in what would be the first in a series of stock statements, told the sea of reporters, fronted by Hedda and Louella, 'He's my darling. I'll love no other man until my dying day!'\n\nMaybe Elizabeth already knew that she was kidding herself. Hilton, if he had not been aware of the fact before, now realised that he would henceforth be second in running to the 'Queen of Hollywood' \u2013 although as Elizabeth's consort, he was apparently even more in demand as the stud who only had to snap his fingers for the girls \u2013 and boys \u2013 to come running. Within days of the ceremony, he was up to his old tricks, photographed drunk in the bar of the Carmel Country Club at the start of his honeymoon with two call girls he had picked up. News of this was relayed to Louis B. Mayer, who had coughed up for the honeymoon proper, scheduled to begin on 23 May when the couple were to board the Queen Mary bound for Europe. Had Elizabeth been stepping out of line, Mayer would have been able to bring the situation under control. Hilton, however, was a law unto himself, and to have alerted Elizabeth to her new husband's indiscretions \u2013 taking into account his mercurial temperament \u2013 might only have made matters worse. Mayer was left with no alternative but to cross his fingers and hope that they would be able to sort out any differences 'on neutral territory' \u2013 in other words, whilst at sea.\n\nAccording to reports at the time, the couple argued non-stop throughout the voyage, mostly over Hilton's drinking and the $100,000 he blew in the ship's casino, turning the air blue with their language. There were other rows over their accommodation. Hilton had demanded the bridal stateroom, but despite offering to pay over the odds, this was unavailable: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were on board, and the shipping company's unwritten rule declared that this room should always be offered to them free of charge whenever they crossed the Atlantic. Neither were these arguments exclusively verbal. Elizabeth often repeated the story to friends that Hilton, in a drunken rage, had stormed into the bathroom whilst she was showering one evening and punched her so hard in the stomach that she had miscarried. There is no evidence that she was ever hospitalised for this, although several of Hilton's other female conquests \u2013 never the male ones, who would have probably hit him back \u2013 have made similar claims that he managed to win every fight by employing his fists, always hitting them in places where the bruises would not show.\n\nThe charade, with Hilton's gambling and extra-marital romps taking precedence over his honeymoon, continued in London, where the couple attended the premiere of Father of the Bride. Elizabeth thought nothing of standing outside the theatre for two hours, chatting to fans and signing autographs, compelling her husband to hover in the background. Until then, hardly anyone in London had even heard of Nicky Hilton, and he was aggrieved to be persistently addressed as 'Mr Taylor'.\n\nIn Paris, there was a surprise reception hosted by 'holy terror' columnist Elsa Maxwell, Hedda Hopper's and Louella Parsons' arch-rival, who had for many years headed an international sewing circle, along the lines of Nazimova's, despite her considerable girth and unattractiveness. Maxwell was an acclaimed seducer of pretty young women. Many celebrities, such as opera star Maria Callas, succumbed to her charms solely because of the prestige brought about by having a favourable review in her New York Post column. Her attempts to include Elizabeth in her roster of 'Gillette Blades' \u2013 in other words, women who 'cut both ways' \u2013 failed, although Elizabeth was impressed with her hostess's pulling power so far as the guest list was concerned. This included President Auriol, several heads of state, Jean Cocteau, \u00c9dith Piaf, G\u00e9rard Philipe and the ageing revue star Mistinguett, who told the press, 'She [Eliza-beth] can't act, her voice sets your teeth on edge, and all she does is flash her diamonds and show off her cleavage. I guess she'll go a long way!'\n\nThe couple travelled to Rome and then back to Paris for a bash which was attended by more photographers than guests, because word got out that Elizabeth would be wearing $15,000 worth of loaned diamonds. The evening signalled the end of the marriage when a very public slanging match wound up, word for word minus the expletives, on the front pages of the next day's newspapers \u2013 in some instances accompanied by pictures of the sobbing bride. Not long afterwards, the couple flew back to New York, where the press were informed that they had separated.\n\nIn New York, whilst Nicky Hilton embarked on another sex-and-gambling spree, this time with a well-known actor, Elizabeth \u2013 on the verge of what would be the first of many nervous breakdowns \u2013 called MGM and begged the studio to send someone to escort her home and protect her from the press, who would not leave her alone, although the 'publicity-holic' only had herself to blame. In an attempt to fool reporters, whose editors kept them on 24-hour standby, Elizabeth announced that she would be flying back to California but instead flew to Chicago. Here, she made a rod for her own back by meeting up with Nicky Hilton. The pair were snapped kissing and she declared how she had never stopped loving him, that their problems had been brought about by outside interference and that to keep her marriage strong she planned to enrol on a course of cookery lessons and learn how to be a proper housewife. 'Elizabeth Taylor in a kitchen?' Marlene Dietrich scoffed to me some years later. 'She wouldn't have known how to boil water without burning it!'\n\nThe Hiltons moved to Los Angeles, where Hilton rented a house in Pacific Palisades instead of buying one \u2013 it later emerged because a rented property would be easier to dispose of once the marriage had collapsed completely. It was offered a temporary reprieve by Elizabeth's next film. Father of the Bride had brought in so much money that MGM commissioned a sequel with the same cast and production team. Father's Little Dividend (1951) began shooting in the September. It was not a patch on the original, did not do nearly so well at the box office and does not stand up on its own.\n\nWork might have taken Elizabeth's mind off her marital problems, although she also appears to have been deliberately starting out on a Judy Garland-style 'trail of self-destruction'. In the film, she looks very thin, having lost a stone in weight whilst in Europe, and she was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day in an attempt to calm her nerves and ease her depression. Also, she was becoming addicted to sleeping pills. She had flaked out on the set of Father's Little Dividend more than once, and each time Nicky Hilton had dropped in on her at work there had been another row. By October 1950, just five months into her marriage, Elizabeth had had enough. She flew to New York to stay with the only person in the world she felt she could trust \u2013 Montgomery Clift.\n\nMonty had also been in Europe, attending the London premiere of The Heiress then travelling on to Rome, contravening the studio's instructions, to engage in what he called a 'marathon fuckathon' \u2013 a series of wild sexual escapades, which were, from his point of view, a welcome antidote to the restraints of Hollywood. He later said that he might have been content to stay overseas indefinitely, such was his loathing of the film capital and its bigotry, but an emergency had brought him home: Libby Holman's 17-year-old son Christopher had been killed in a climbing accident on Mount Whitney. The tragedy had resulted in a dramatic increase in Holman's already heavy drugs dependency and her ability to drink every one of her hard-drinking friends under the table, bar Monty.\n\nMonty had disapproved of Elizabeth marrying Nicky Hilton, and although they had spoken on the phone and had exchanged letters regularly, this was their first meeting since before the wedding. Both were shocked by the changes in one another: Elizabeth looked gaunt and was a bag of nerves; Monty was matching Libby Holman glass for glass, pill for pill, and was heavily into therapy.\n\nIt was effectively a case of the blind leading the blind. Ten years down the road, the worn-out Monty would be guiding a similarly jaded Marilyn Monroe through her paces during The Misfits (1961), one of her last films. Monty and Elizabeth were seen shopping in Bloomingdale's and dining at his favourite Italian restaurants \u2013 she was one of the few people unaffected by watching him devour his regular fare of raw meat using his fingers, whilst he tended to ignore her habit of belching loudly \u2013 and, on the odd occasion, he took her home to meet his parents, still failing to shock her by addressing his mother as 'Cunt'.\n\nIt was Monty who convinced Elizabeth that divorcing Nicky Hilton was her only option and that confiding in her parents would be a big mistake. Sara, he said, thought only of material possessions and would urge her to patch things up and suffer Hilton's cruelty for the sake of what the Taylors could get out of him. The news hit the headlines on 8 December, courtesy of Louella Parsons' column in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and took the MGM moguls by surprise. The last thing the studio needed prior to releasing A Place in the Sun was adverse publicity, particularly as those critics privileged to have watched the rushes were forecasting that this would be the movie of 1951.\n\nParsons, Hopper, et al., had been keeping tabs on the Hilton fiasco from the word go, relaying details of every row, though they had been prohibited from enlarging on the stories of physical abuse \u2013 not least of all Elizabeth's claims that her husband had once punched her so hard in the stomach that she had miscarried in the bathroom. 'Other young people quarrel, but before we have time to kiss and make up, it's in the papers,' she complained to Louella. This would be the only one of her marriages where she shared no blame for it turning into a disaster \u2013 for not even Hilton's closest friends had known what he had been like behind the bedroom door, and those on the receiving end of his fists had been too dignified, it would appear, or maybe too afraid, to speak out. An MGM spokeswoman whom Hilton had bedded almost let the cat out of the bag, telling Louella, 'They always fight about the same thing: his gambling and playing around, his ignoring her as a wife, and they both have a temper.' The interview had been orchestrated by Louis B. Mayer, wishing to ensure that public sympathy remained on the side of his star, though in this instance he was not wrong in painting Hilton as the archetypal Bluebeard-villain who deserved all that was coming to him.\n\nThe Hiltons' split proved a bitter blow for Elizabeth's grasping mother. Sara had tolerated her son-in-law's philandering \u2013 her own husband was little better. The gambling, too, had not perturbed her unduly, for his supply of cash had always appeared limitless. Being made aware for the first time of his psychotic streak did concern her, but only because this had driven Elizabeth away from him before she had had time to find a suitable, similarly wealthy replacement.\n\nThe divorce was preceded by another incident that set a Taylor precedent: mental or physical collapse in the wake of a dramatic experience, frequently overplayed for the benefit of the media. Having struggled through the initial filming of Love Is Better Than Ever (1952) with frayed nerves and what was reported to be 'recurring ulcerative colitis', on 9 January 1951 Elizabeth booked herself into the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital under the name Rebecca Jones. She stayed there for a week, with the columnists refusing to believe the story put out by the studio that she was running up a several-thousand-dollars bill just to be treated for the flu. Some of the tabloids even hinted at a suicide attempt, but there was no evidence to support this. Equally curious, she was allowed out of the hospital each day to attend studio meetings and reshoot key scenes for the inappropriately titled Love Is Better Than Ever.\n\nThe Hiltons' marriage ended in the Santa Monica divorce court on 29 January 1951 (with the final decree to become effective one year hence), eight months after it had begun, on the grounds of mental and physical cruelty. Elizabeth asked for no alimony but got to keep the shares of Hilton stock given to her by her former father-in-law and around $250,000 of wedding presents. Nicky Hilton did not attend the hearing. He instead sent his lawyer to petition the judge into forcing Elizabeth to sign a document annulling the marriage so that he would be able to remarry in church. The judge declared that the choice was entirely hers, and she refused. Elizabeth also cited Hilton's 'abusive language' as a reason for wanting him out of her life \u2013 which might have been a bit rich from a woman who, even then, was renowned for her ability to out-curse the best of them.\n\n'I never want to hear that man's name mentioned again,' Elizabeth told the sea of reporters waiting outside the courthouse. She would be good to her word. When Nicky Hilton died of a drugs-related heart attack in February 1969, aged just 42, she neither commented nor sent flowers to his funeral.\n\n# FOUR\n\nENGLISH WITHOUT TEARS\n\nELIZABETH EVADED MUCH OF THE PRESS BACKLASH THAT followed her divorce by staying with Montgomery Clift in New York. They are said to have slept in the same bed, though this does not necessarily mean that they were in any way lovers \u2013 it is a well-known fact that, prone to nightmares, Monty frequently slept between his best friends, actor Kevin McCarthy and his wife Augusta Dabney, without the slightest hint of sexual activity. Quite simply, with Elizabeth and Monty it was a case of two soulmates helping one another through a difficult patch. They are also known to have only socialised amongst Monty's circle, sometimes accompanied by Monty's 'fuck buddy', and Elizabeth's old friend, Roddy McDowall. The trio visited leather bars and gay clubs, where Monty could pick up his favourite rough trade and where, according to both men, Elizabeth could curse to her heart's content.\n\nIt had almost been a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire when on the eve of her divorce Elizabeth had made Love Is Better Than Ever with Larry Parks, an actor who had been virtually unknown until playing the Oscar-nominated lead in The Jolson Story (1946) and its sequel Jolson Sings Again (1949). The McCarthy witch-hunt was at its zenith at that time, and just about everyone in Hollywood knew, thought they knew or thought they knew someone who knew a communist. In February 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy's unproved claim that much of the country had been infiltrated by 'Reds' sparked off a wave of mass hysteria that would achieve little other than tarnishing the film community for decades to come and led to a state of paranoia in America in the early 1950s. McCarthy claimed to be in possession of a 205-name list of communists working in the State Department, and it did not take long for 'sublists' of alleged allies and sympathisers to appear \u2013 few of these more influential, the senator pointed out, than the ones the public were flocking to see each day on their cinema screens.\n\nHeading the HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities), which had vetted the script for A Place in the Sun, was Congressman J. Purnell Thomas, who would later be jailed for payroll padding. And in charge of the long-winded Anti-Communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals was John Wayne, a man who had publicly lampooned gay\/bisexual stars such as Robert Taylor, Robert Montgomery and Tyrone Power as 'unnatural men'. However, whilst these actors had been decorated for their bravery during the Second World War, the supposedly gung-ho Wayne had made any number of excuses not to fight for his country. Wayne's fanatical right-wing allies included Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Howard Hughes, Hedda Hopper, Lola Rogers (the mother of Ginger), Walt Disney and two of the actors he had mocked, Robert Taylor and Robert Montgomery. One wonders how Wayne slept at night. Opposing the purge, which very quickly got out of hand, were Tallulah Bankhead, Gene Kelly, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, director John Huston, and future president Richard Nixon.\n\nDirectors Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk (one of the so-called 'Hollywood Ten' who had been jailed for their beliefs) were but two who shopped their suspected communist colleagues. Careers were needlessly destroyed: those of playwrights Lillian Hellman and Dashiel Hammet, actor Melvyn Douglas, and actresses Gale Sondergaard and Anne Revere, who had twice worked with Elizabeth. John Garfield, a brilliant actor who had raved over Elizabeth's performance in A Place in the Sun and had wanted to work with her, died a broken man in 1952 at the age of 39. The worst casualty from Elizabeth's point of view, however, was Larry Parks, because she was indirectly involved with him when the proverbial blast hit the fan. So far as some of Senator McCarthy's aides were concerned, if someone was the partner, lover or best friend of a suspected communist \u2013 or even of you were someone who played a character on screen who seemed to lean in that direction \u2013 it figured that they too might have such tendencies \u2013 absolute piffle, of course!\n\nNeither did Elizabeth do herself any favours in the wake of her messy, very public divorce by having an affair with the director of Love Is Better Than Ever, Stanley Donen \u2013 so far as is known, her first relationship with a married man. Eight years her senior, Donen had teamed up with Gene Kelly as a Broadway dancer\/assistant choreographer in 1941, aged just 17. The two had worked together ever since, their films having included On the Town (1949), which Donen had co-directed. Their subsequent successes would include Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Funny Face (1957) and Charade (1963). Kelly had just signed Donen for Singin' in the Rain (1952) and was keen to have his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 report back with the names of any 'Reds' who might be hiding in the closet. It was almost certainly Kelly who shopped Larry Parks to the HUAC.\n\nParks could have extricated himself from a tricky situation, as many did during this silly political soap opera, by repeating a stock statement at his impromptu hearing: 'I respectfully decline to answer the question [that I am a Communist] on the grounds that this is privileged information under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.' Instead, he admitted that he had once been a member of the Communist Party. Threatened with incarceration (the Hollywood Ten had served up to twelve months in jail, depending upon the gravity of their 'crimes'), Parks was compelled to name, or invent, twelve Reds and was promised that he would be allowed to continue with his career. He refused, and for him it was the end of the road. Love Is Better Than Ever would be assigned to oblivion, and he made just two more films \u2013 his swansong being Freud (1962) with Montgomery Clift \u2013 before his death in 1975, at which time he was running his own real-estate firm.\n\nElizabeth was never summoned before the HUAC, though not through lack of trying on Howard Hughes's part. Having already been twice rejected by her, the tycoon had obviously not learned his lesson. Despite the power his enormous wealth generated, even Hughes would not have dared report Elizabeth to the HUAC without some proof, even fabricated, so he 'leaked' her name to committee member Hedda Hopper \u2013 the method in his madness being that he would 'rescue' her, marry her and they would live happily ever after. Elizabeth might have coped with the absurdity of this had it not coincided with her affair with Stanley Donen hitting the headlines. Mrs Donen \u2013 the dancer Jeanne Coyne \u2013 filed for divorce and threatened to cite the 19-year-old Elizabeth as co-respondent, which, of course, she had every right to do. There then followed a nasty, very public argument with Sara Taylor when Elizabeth took her lover home to meet the family \u2013 this also ended up on the front pages.\n\nShortly after this episode, Elizabeth was rushed into hospital. Depending upon which report one heeded, she was either suffering from exhaustion or it was because of a suicide attempt. No sooner had she recovered from this ordeal than she was once again diagnosed with colitis and a peptic ulcer.\n\nDespite the trouble caused by her relationship with Stanley Donen, Elizabeth refused to give him up, and when she turned up for the premiere of Father's Little Dividend clutching his arm, MGM stepped in. She had been contracted for a cameo role as herself in Callaway Went Thataway (1951) with Fred MacMurray and Howard Keel, but after that nothing major was planned other than the release of A Place in the Sun later in the year. The studio held an emergency meeting, and it was decided to get her out of the country as soon as possible so that they could put an end to her affair with Donen with her out of the frame. She was signed up as Robert Taylor's love interest in Ivanhoe (1952), scheduled to begin shooting in England during the summer.\n\nMedieval dramas, musical revivals, biblical spectaculars and period thrillers were on the rise again at this time because of the McCarthy hearings. The studios, so as not to be caught out, opted for non-contemporary, non-political themes: Quo Vadis (1951) was amongst the first and was followed by Scaramouche (1952), The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). Another massive threat to the movie industry was the new medium of television \u2013 despite the cynics' claims that this 'newfangled contraption' would never take on, in the spring of 1951 one-in-five American homes possessed one.\n\nSome organisations, such as NBC, attempted to draw away some of the rapidly escalating advertising funds from the television network by launching radio programmes such as The Big Show, a $50,000-a-time, 90-minute extravaganza hosted on Sunday evenings by the no-holds-barred Tallulah Bankhead. This featured the most dazzling array of stars ever assembled in a single studio, from all walks of life. The likes of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and \u00c9dith Piaf were treated with the utmost respect, but Tallulah went out on a limb to offend artistes she regarded as 'jokes'. Ethel Merman, whose contract insisted that no reference be made to her age, was greeted with, 'Hello, Ethel, darling. And may I say, you don't look a day over 60!' Tallulah might only have been ribbing when she threatened to inform her listeners on live radio that Elizabeth had once been married to 'the biggest man in the hotel trade' \u2013 an indiscreet reference to Nicky Hilton's legendary endowment, which she had personally sampled. Even so, Elizabeth was taking no chances, and Tallulah got to 'interrogate' his stepmother\/mistress Zsa Zsa Gabor instead.\n\nWith profits plummeting as more and more people stayed home to watch television, big changes were being effected by the studio, particularly at MGM. Louis B. Mayer, the invincible tyrant who had made every star but Garbo quake in their boots and whose health was starting to fail, resigned in 1951 and was replaced by the much younger Dore Schary, who had joined MGM as a scriptwriter in 1937. Schary, to cut down on costs, was forced to release some of his major stars so that they could work freelance, including Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Greer Garson. MGM and the other studios compensated for their losses by searching beyond the confines of Hollywood for 'package deals' \u2013 outfits comprising directors, producers, lead players, scriptwriters and cameramen, mostly from Europe. Though Elizabeth and her contemporaries might not yet have been aware of the fact, fierce competition was just around the corner \u2013 a whole galaxy of stars who were not just pretty faces, but considerably more talented than their American counterparts were on their way: Leslie Caron, Gina Lollobrigida, Vittorio Gassman, Hildegarde Knef, Juliette Gr\u00e9co, G\u00e9rard Philipe and sex-kitten Brigitte Bardot. In short, for every contract player the studio placed on suspension for not toeing the line, two more were waiting in the wings.\n\nIt might well be that Elizabeth was threatened with suspension when she tried to get out of going to England to do Ivanhoe, claiming that she had suffered a nervous breakdown \u2013 true \u2013 but when her pleas fell on deaf ears, following a brief sojourn in New York with Montgomery Clift, she elected to soldier on. On 18 June 1951, she sailed on the Libert\u00e9, accompanied by her secretary Peggy Rutledge and MGM publicist Malvina Pumphrey, who had been instructed to keep an eye on her. No sooner had she settled into her London hotel suite than she received a call from Michael Wilding. Sara Taylor later claimed (in an August 1952 interview with Motion Picture) that she had encouraged Elizabeth to set her sights on Wilding \u2013 another 'tall tale' considering that Sara had bemoaned the family losing out on Nicky Hilton's wealth, and Wilding was not a wealthy man by any means.\n\nLike Howard Hughes before him, Wilding had been monitoring Elizabeth's progress from afar, though not for the same selfish reasons. He invited her to dinner, and, as per usual for her, it was love at first sight. Over the next two months, the pair were rarely apart when she was not working on Ivanhoe.\n\nBorn in Westcliff-on-Sea in 1912, Michael Wilding had spent much of his childhood in Russia, where his father had worked for British Intelligence. Upon leaving the prestigious Christ's Hospital, otherwise known as the Bluecoat School, he had aspired to become an artist, but the acting bug had bitten, and he had made his debut in Pastorale, an Austrian film, in 1933. Dashing and debonair, with a clipped accent and slightly slurred (on account of epilepsy) delivery, he had teamed up with Anna Neagle for a tremendously successful series of post-war sugary romantic comedies \u2013 most notably Spring in Park Lane (1948) and Maytime in Mayfair (1949) \u2013 directed by Neagle's husband, Herbert Wilcox. All three were insufferable snobs but curiously had mass appeal with the working classes, whom they had always looked down upon.\n\nWilding had had a very public affair with Marlene Dietrich, his recent co-star in Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), who was understandably peeved to have been shunted aside for a younger model. 'They said I was jealous because Elizabeth Taylor was much younger than me,' Marlene told me in 1990, 'but that's untrue. I was angry at the time because she wasn't a star, just a tart with breasts and very little talent. Her voice used to set my teeth on edge!' Wilding also had a lengthy off-on affair with Stewart Granger, who later sued Hedda Hopper for outing them in her autobiography. This relationship would continue well into his association with Elizabeth.\n\nWorried by the scandal that would erupt by her dating a man old enough to be her father, MGM's British representatives tried to fix Elizabeth up with golden-boy teen-idol Tab Hunter, who was in London shooting Saturday Island (1952). The move was an attempt to keep an allegedly salacious story out of the press and made this the third time Elizabeth had been used as a stooge-date for a gay man \u2013 one who would years later wear his sexuality with great pride. She enjoyed Hunter's company but made it clear that she was only interested in Wilding. At the end of August 1951, Elizabeth and Wilding became secretly engaged, mindless of the fact that he was still married to the actress Kay Young and that Elizabeth's own decree would not become absolute until January 1952. Also, as she was still under the age of 21, she would not be permitted to marry without her parents' permission. With this in mind, she had the gall to send a telegram home, signed 'Elizabeth and Michael Wilding'.\n\nIvanhoe was an entertaining slice of historical hokum, awash with dodgy wigs and false beards, the kind of fare that appealed to Saturday-morning matinees. Adapted from Sir Walter Scott's novel, it was 'Hollywoodised' and later denounced by Elizabeth as 'a piece of cachou'. It did well at the box office, however, and was nominated for best film at the Oscars in 1952, losing to The Greatest Show on Earth.\n\nRobert Taylor and George Sanders, at 40 and 45 respectively, were a little too old to play the swashbuckling hero and cheesy villain, de Bois-Guilbert, and Taylor's Nebraska drawl is out of place in medieval England. Elizabeth makes her appearance almost half an hour into the film as Rebecca of York, the 'Jewish infidel' who as an outsider must hide her face in public. Some of the anti-Semitic comments levelled at her transcend fiction, paralleling what was happening in Hollywood at the time, and make for uncomfortable viewing.\n\nHaving completed the film, and after spending a few days in the south of France, Elizabeth returned to New York and more shindigs with Montgomery Clift and Roddy McDowall. The trio stayed at the Plaza Hotel, where the management offered them a long-weekend suite free of charge in appreciation of the fabulous reviews earned by A Place in the Sun \u2013 although it was actually paid for by Paramount. Michael Wilding had asked Elizabeth to marry him, and, as had happened with Nicky Hilton, the sojourn appears to have been another attempt to 'cop out' on her accepting. In Montgomery Clift, Patricia Bosworth quotes an anonymous friend of the actor as telling her, 'I remember being at Monty's apartment when Elizabeth phoned from the Plaza, where she was staying, and begged him to reconsider marrying her before Wilding arrived in New York. Monty was sweet [in refusing], but adamant.'\n\nSara and Francis Taylor might not have entirely forgiven their daughter her trespasses, but MGM flew them to New York all the same. They were celebrating their silver-wedding anniversary, and for a couple of days everyone played happy families. There was controversy, however, after the Taylors left and Elizabeth, Monty and McDowall stayed on at the Plaza for another week \u2013 expecting Paramount to pick up the tab. Rather than pay the excess $2,500 \u2013 though goodness knows how they managed to run up such a bill in so little time \u2013 the trio moved to a cheaper hotel, where in a drunken spree they wrecked their room and ran up another bill. Feeling guilty, Elizabeth paid for the damage and bought gifts for those responsible for cleaning up after her.\n\nThen it was on to 'Chez Clift' and more newspaper headlines when Nicky Hilton breezed into town and invited Elizabeth to dinner for old time's sake. She accepted, the press were of course alerted and less than a week later she was photographed in the same restaurant with Michael Wilding \u2013 having learned of her latest 'calamity', Wilding felt that she might need a friendly shoulder to cry on.\n\nWilding had tagged along with Anna Neagle and Herbert Wilcox, who were in America to promote The Lady with the Lamp (1951), their sanitised version of the Florence Nightingale story in which Wilding had a cameo. MGM, who had condemned Elizabeth for her behaviour in New York, saw photographs of her wearing the sapphire ring Wilding had given her (paid for by Elizabeth herself, because his quickie divorce had left him broke) and now declared that she had gone too far by getting involved with a man who was too old for her. They were also annoyed that he was, like Nicky Hilton, a known bisexual \u2013 albeit without Hilton's thuggish traits \u2013 and, like Stanley Donen, very much married when his relationship with Elizabeth had begun. There were further complications when Elizabeth and Wilding were seen socialising with Jean Simmons and her husband Stewart Granger, the very man Wilding was suspected of having an affair with.\n\nDore Schary, who was proving only marginally more popular with his stars than Louis B. Mayer had been, worked behind the scenes, trying to ensure that the Wilcoxes' visit was briefer than planned, even if this meant 'pulling' their film. His plan backfired. When they and Wilding returned to London in the middle of February, Elizabeth gave the gossips something to talk about by travelling with them. She also gave every indication that she might be pregnant, particularly when Wilding announced that he was going to make 'an honest woman' out of her as soon as possible.\n\nHollywood was robbed of cashing in on the publicity this time around when Elizabeth married Michael Wilding on 21 February 1952, six days before her twentieth birthday. She had wanted the ceremony to take place at a church on Victor Cazalet's estate but was told that this would take around a month to organise. Although waiting would have been the respectful thing to do \u2013 King George VI had died two weeks earlier, and the capital was still in mourning \u2013 Elizabeth would not hear of it. She was too impatient to wait and, in any case, would not be told what to do, neither then nor in the future.\n\nThe ten-minute ceremony took place at Caxton Hall. Because he claimed he was 'counting the pennies', Wilding accepted the Wilcoxes' offer to pay for everything, including the reception at Claridge's. Elizabeth financed the honeymoon and set a precedent for this particular marriage: each time she saw an expensive bauble that she liked but which Wilding could not afford, she paid for it herself and told everyone that it had come from him.\n\nThe bride wore another Helen Rose creation. The Wilcoxes were witnesses, whilst Ben Goetz (the head of British MGM) and his wife stood in for Elizabeth's parents, who did not attend. Howard Taylor had wanted to be there but was doing military service in Korea. Outside the registry office, the Wildings were cheered by 3,000 fans, many wearing black armbands. And as had happened on the 'happiest day' of her life with Nicky Hilton, Elizabeth delivered the speech, variations of which would crop up over the years: 'All I want is to be Michael's wife and have his children. I'm never going to put my career first!'\n\nThe honeymoon \u2013 two weeks in the French Alps and innumerable gratis society parties \u2013 is said to have been blissful; certainly, there were no reported arguments. Another month was spent in his plush flat in Mayfair's Bruton Street \u2013 according to Wilding, 'I was learning Elizabeth the rudiments of the housewife!' Sara Taylor scoffed at this and in interviews repeated what she had told Photoplay in September 1951: 'What she can't do around the house includes almost everything you could mention.' When the Daily Express's David Lewin asked Elizabeth if she really was intent on relinquishing her career, she as per usual piped up with the first thing that came into her head: 'A career is not all that important, anyway!'\n\nThen, it was back home and back to work. MGM had heard the rumour that the fiercely independent, anti-Hollywood Montgomery Clift had tried to persuade Elizabeth to drop off the studio-system bandwagon and spread her wings \u2013 or rebel against it, as he had, and accept only the roles she really wanted. They therefore upped her salary to $6,000 a week, loaned her $50,000 for the house in Beverly Hills that had taken her fancy and offered her husband a $3,000-a-week three-year contract, which he certainly did not merit at the time. Prior to leaving England, Wilding also received a \u00a340,000 tax demand that Elizabeth is thought to have paid.\n\nLike the proverbial fish out of water, Michael Wilding did not make it big in Hollywood. His first film there, opposite Greer Garson in The Law and the Lady (1951), was a hopeless rehash of Joan Crawford's The Last of Mrs Cheyney (1937) and saw both leads panned by the critics. His second (of which more later) was Torch Song (1953) with Crawford herself. It was a part that any good-looking actor with a British accent could have played \u2013 it was Crawford's film, period.\n\nElizabeth's first film as Mrs Wilding was the portentously titled The Girl Who had Everything (1953), perhaps MGM's way of warning her, with the emphasis being on the past tense, what would happen if she failed to knuckle down to marriage number two. Like the Wilding outing, it was a rewrite of an earlier smash, A Free Soul, which had earned plaudits for Cark Gable, Norma Shearer and Lionel Barrymore in 1931. Elizabeth plays rich-girl Jean Latimer, who falls for a handsome Latino (Fernando Lamas), becomes his mistress, then finds out he is a crook being hunted by mobsters who eventually kill him. There is also a very bold suggestion for the time of an incestuous relationship between Jean and her father, played by William Powell. However, with Lamas attempting to step into Gable's shoes, even though he possessed not one fraction of his raw animal magnetism, and Elizabeth shrieking much of the time and merely looking decorative, the film was nothing to write home about.\n\nIn fact, so far as MGM were concerned, Elizabeth had stepped out of line by getting pregnant within two months of her wedding and not announcing her condition until well into the shooting of the film. And rather than grant her maternity leave, as any reputable employer would, Dore Schary put her on suspension as soon as the film was in the can. Unusually, though, rather than stop her salary, they trimmed it to $2,000 a week.\n\nMichael Wilding also suffered Schary's wrath for failing to toe the line. When he was offered a part in Latin Lovers (1953) with Lana Turner and Ricardo Montalban, he criticised the script and refused to report to the set until his lines had been changed. With no success in Hollywood and while enjoying a much larger salary than most established character actors, Wilding's should have been a case of beggars not being choosers. He, however, was Elizabeth Taylor's husband and considered himself to be on a higher pedestal than most mortals, which was why Schary opted to bring him back to earth with a bang. Wilding was replaced by John Lund in The Latin Lover then suspended without pay until the picture was completed.\n\nMontgomery Clift was also having a rough time finding good parts after A Place in the Sun, though this was mostly his own fault. He had turned down Sunset Boulevard (1950), declaring that the scenario of the fading star falling for the younger man smacked of his own relationship with Libby Holman. Monty had played the tortured priest in Hitchcock's I Confess (1953) with great conviction, and he had moved audiences to tears with his portrayal of the ill-fated Prewitt in From Here to Eternity (1953), securing Frank Sinatra's comeback by getting him a part in the film, since which time he had rejected one script after another \u2013 over 50 by the end of 1952!\n\nAlthough Monty had refused to see Elizabeth during her marriage to Nicky Hilton \u2013 he had not been far out by giving them just six months \u2013 he took to Michael Wilding and was a frequent visitor to their Hollywood home. Cynics suggested at the time that Monty had some kind of ulterior motive, that despite his homosexuality he believed that he would marry Elizabeth some day and that in the meantime he was looking out for her. The aforementioned anonymous friend interviewed by Patricia Bosworth went one step further by suggesting that Monty and Wilding were actually competing for Elizabeth's affections, concluding, 'Monty felt very loving and protective and rather superior when it came to Elizabeth Taylor.'\n\nThere is little doubting that Monty's professional fussiness rubbed off on Elizabeth during his extended stays with the Wildings. She turned down All the Brothers were Valiant (1953) with Robert Taylor and Stewart Granger \u2013 as it happened, another paltry rehash of a Joan Crawford film (Across to Singapore, 1928) \u2013 and Roman Holiday (1953), later a huge success for Audrey Hepburn. MGM rewarded Elizabeth by extending her suspension.\n\nOn 6 January 1953, Michael Howard Wilding, Elizabeth's first child, was born by Caesarean section, and the press reported Taylor and Wilding 'deliriously happy and in love'. Montgomery Clift showered the baby with gifts and constructed a 'mini-nursery' in his apartment for when Elizabeth came to stay. MGM released Elizabeth from her suspension only to extend her punishment by loaning her out to Paramount for Elephant Walk (1954). The theme of the film was something of a cross between Rebecca (1940) and the later Giant. Elizabeth plays Ruth Wiley, the new wife of a tea planter (Peter Finch) who has tremendous difficulty fitting in when she and her husband relocate to a plantation in Ceylon. That she was miscast goes without saying, particularly in the scenes where her husband eschews his marital bed to spend time with his drinking cronies because he does not find her attractive. What red-blooded male, the critics unanimously demanded, would not wish to spend the night with Elizabeth Taylor?\n\nHedda Hopper suggested the title of the film most appropriate, because Elizabeth's weight had ballooned to 150 pounds following the birth of her son. Elizabeth asked for a salary increase, which was refused. Indeed, she was told to consider herself fortunate to be employed, period. Neither had she been first choice for the film. British actress Vivien Leigh, then married to Laurence Olivier, had completed most of the location scenes before collapsing from nervous exhaustion, in what turned out to be the onset of mental illness. Elizabeth's hell-raiser co-stars Peter Finch and Dana Andrews recognised her as a 'regular guy' and invited her to join their 'Fuck You Club' \u2013 a select group of extras and studio personnel who made it a preoccupation to shock everyone in sight with their foul language and atrocious table manners. For the rest of her life, Elizabeth would belch loudly and break wind in front of dinner guests she believed needed to be put in their place. MGM received $150,000 for loaning her out, around eight times the salary she received from Paramount, and the budget eventually soared to a record (for that studio) $3 million. In an attempt to save on expenditure, Paramount retained all of Vivien Leigh's long shots, though they are thought to have coughed up for the medical expenses when Elizabeth was hospitalised upon her return to Hollywood. A wind-machine had blown a piece of grit into her right eye, and this had become so deeply embedded that surgery was required to remove it, after which there were complications when an ulcer developed. Elizabeth later recalled that she had been lucky not to lose the eye. The bandages were barely removed when she began work on her next film, Rhapsody (1954). It is interesting to note that her co-star for this should have been one Richard Burton, but he had been reassigned to The Robe (1953) on account of the delay caused by Elizabeth's injury.\n\nMichael Wilding, meanwhile, had been given the invidious task of supporting Joan Crawford in her first Technicolor film, Torch Song. Joan played musical-comedy star Jenny Stewart \u2013 an amalgamation of all the gay icons of the day, collectively baptised as 'The Victory Red Brigade' owing to their predilection for the famous Elizabeth Arden lipstick. \u00c9dith Piaf, Maria Callas, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Tallulah Bankhead and Joan herself were rarely seen in public without lashings of the stuff. Wilding played her pianist love interest who had been blinded during the war. The film was shot in just 24 days and was directed by Charles Walters, who had triumphed with Judy's Easter Parade (1948) and Meet Me in St Louis. Walters had planned as near as possible to have an all gay\/bisexual production and to present its male characters as essentially weak, whilst the Crawford character would monopolise the proceedings, again reflecting real life. His big mistake was in failing to realise that Joan Crawford\/Jenny Stewart would never have given a meek, mumbling and mild man such as Michael Wilding the time of day, let alone lean on him for support.\n\nJoan made it more than clear that she did not want Wilding anywhere near the picture, but the $125,000 fee from MGM helped change her mind. Even so, there were problems as soon as shooting began \u2013 caused by Elizabeth, who was naturally apprehensive about her husband working with a nymphomaniac renowned for sleeping with her leading men. In Joan's defence, however, it must be said that it was only through Elizabeth's pushing that Wilding had been given the part in the first place. She was shooting Rhapsody on a nearby lot, so she made a point of checking up on Wilding every day to ensure that Joan was not leading him astray. What she did not know was that the director had set his sights on him, though nothing appears to have come of this.\n\nSome years later, Joan told Roy Newquist in Conversations with Joan Crawford (Citadel, 1980), 'I think Elizabeth Taylor, in one of her rare good films [Rhapsody], is great to watch.' In the spring of 1953, however, she regarded the young star as an upstart, publicly referring to her as 'Princess Brat', and took exception to Elizabeth 'swanning' onto her set, without permission, and ignoring her. Joan sent a message to Elizabeth via her publicist which read, 'You tell that little bitch never to walk in here again without acknowledging me. I want you to teach her some manners!' She then posted a guard at the soundstage door \u2013 at her own expense \u2013 to prevent Elizabeth from getting in.\n\nElizabeth tried to fight back but, aside from her colourful language, was no match for the ferocious, hugely feared but respected Joan, a far greater actress than she would ever be. When Hedda Hopper's syndicated column reported Elizabeth as having said, 'Mike Wilding is playing a blind man \u2013 that way he won't have to look at Crawford during their movie,' Joan hit back with an unprintable comment about Elizabeth almost losing her sight in Elephant Walk. Some years later, when spiralling production costs, largely on account of Elizabeth's illnesses and indispositions, threatened Twentieth Century Fox with bankruptcy and saw them laying off 200 workers, Joan recalled Elizabeth's behaviour on the set of Torch Song and told reporters (Sean Considine, Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud), 'Miss Taylor is a spoilt, indulgent child \u2013 a blemish on public decency.'\n\n# FIVE\n\nA DATE WITH JIMMY \nAND ROCK\n\nIN RHAPSODY, ELIZABETH PLAYED LOUISE DURANT, YET another spoilt rich girl, who flees the comfortable family nest to fall for a couple of self-centred musicians, played by John Ericson and Vittorio Gassman. At that time, Gassman, a brooding, exceedingly handsome slab of beefcake who had recently married Shelley Winters, was Italy's leading actor. He should have been perfect as the moody violinist, but, like everyone else, he appears to be stumbling around the set much of the time.\n\nNaturally, Louise marries the wrong man (Ericson), realises her mistake when he turns to drink and leaves him for his rival. However, because MGM was still ruled by the Motion Picture Code of Decency at that time, she eventually learns the error of her ways and returns to her husband. The film was best summed up by the New York Herald Tribune, which observed, 'Her animation is only the animation of the doll with the strings being pulled behind the scenes . . . even her evident and genuine beauty seems at times to be fake.' Elizabeth and Ericson merely shrugged off the bad reviews, but for Vittorio Gassman it was the last straw. Like Michael Wilding, he had seen his roles deteriorating since coming to Hollywood; by the end of the year, he would have returned to Europe and his former glory. As for Wilding, after Torch Song he would soon revert to his usual Hollywood tosh \u2013 he looks positively embarrassing in tights as Prince Charming in The Glass Slipper (1955).\n\nElizabeth always claimed to have hated Beau Brummell (1954), in which she starred opposite Stewart Granger, still reputedly 'friendly' with Michael Wilding. First filmed in 1924 with real-life Lothario John Barrymore in the title role, as far as costume dramas go it is not that bad, but most of the critics gave it the thumbs down on account of 'regular guy' Granger playing a dandy, the adviser to an even more affected Prince of Wales (later George IV), aka Peter Ustinov. As his paramour, Lady Patricia, Elizabeth was poor \u2013 'Decorative, but something less than usual as a heroine,' opined the New York Herald Tribune. It was filmed in England during the summer of 1953, and the next year it would be selected for the Royal Command Film Performance.\n\nIn the September, leaving Michael junior with Elizabeth's in-laws, the Wildings flew from London to Copenhagen for a series of personal appearances \u2013 for some inexplicable reason, the very bland The Girl Who had Everything was packing Scandinavian cinemas. No sooner had they checked into their hotel than Elizabeth fell victim to viral flu \u2013 worse than this, a Danish consultant diagnosed mild tachycardia. Fearing she might die on the plane home, she sent for her baby and recovered at once. Next, the happy family headed for Madrid \u2013 where Elizabeth threw a fit at a bullfight upon discovering that they killed the bull \u2013 then Capri, where she upset the customers at Gracie Fields' La Canzone del Mare complex by ignoring the hostess and ordering her staff around.\n\nMGM were clearly intent on getting their money's worth out of Elizabeth \u2013 before she developed a genuine illness and actually died on them, according to one anonymous spokesman, which was perhaps being a little too cruel \u2013 for no sooner had Beau Brummell wrapped than she was rushed into the screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Time I Saw Paris with Van Johnson, her fourth film in less than a year.\n\nTold mostly in flashback, it is a good film that might have been better with a more charismatic leading man \u2013 Johnson's utter lack of warmth prevents the audience from ever sympathising with him. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is at her most alluring as doomed American in Paris, Helen Ellswirth. The soundtrack of contemporary French chansons is mesmerising \u2013 composed not by the credited Conrad Salinger, but by Charles Trenet and Henri Contet. Elizabeth also requested that her favourite song at the time, \u00c9dith Piaf's 'La vie en rose', should be included.\n\nElizabeth surprised everyone by getting along with the film's director Richard Brooks, a man almost as renowned for his harsh approach and vulgarity as he was for his gritty scripts and ace direction. Brooks had co-scripted Key Largo (1948) and would go on to win an Oscar for Elmer Gantry (1960), but like Michael Curtiz had a knack of bullying his actresses in an attempt to draw better performances out of them. Alexis Smith, Pier Angeli and the equally foul-mouthed Bette Davis had given as good as they got, maintaining that complaining about Brooks's anti-social behaviour only made matters worse. Elizabeth, it is reported, merely ignored him.\n\nProbably still acting on Montgomery Clift's advice, Elizabeth turned down The Barefoot Contessa (1954) \u2013 which subsequently went to Ava Gardner \u2013 whilst her husband went one better. Wilding denounced the part of the pharoah in The Egyptian (1954) as a 'stuffy nightshirt role' and set about finding a role on the legitimate stage, which he said would better befit his talents \u2013 only to reject, earning Rex Harrison's eternal gratitude, the part of Professor Henry Higgins in a nationwide tour of My Fair Lady. When later asked why he had refused the role of a lifetime, he merely shrugged his shoulders and quipped, 'I guess I just must be lazy!'\n\nThe Wildings' second son, Christopher Edward (the Edward after Montgomery Clift, whose first name this was), was born on 27 February 1955 \u2013 once again by Caesarean section \u2013 it is said so that Elizabeth might have the ultimate 23rd birthday present. By now, their spending was spiralling out of control. However, claiming that their current home was now beneath their 'ultra-celebrity couple' status, the Wildings persuaded MGM to extend their loan to enable them to relocate to a luxury steel, glass and baked-earth residence at 1375 Beverly Estate Drive, in the then largely untouched Benedict Canyon. Designed by Los Angeles architect George McLean and on the market for $150,000, one of its sheer glass walls overlooked the valley below. In next to no time, visitors would be describing the house as filthy on account of the menagerie they had amassed \u2013 cats, dogs and ducks, which were given the run of the place and not house-trained. Wilding was oblivious to the mess and his wife's sloppy habits. 'She hangs her clothes on the floor and is obsessed with collecting magazines with her lovely face on their covers,' he told Louella Parsons. Most of the time all he was interested in was hanging around the pool, smoking his pipe and painting.\n\nIt was only when she learned that Grace Kelly had been pencilled in for one of the leads in George Stevens's Giant, which had already spent three years on the stocks, that Elizabeth became interested. The fact that the film was to be made by Warner Brothers interested MGM even more. Elizabeth's last few films for the studio had been deemed mediocre \u2013 Hollywood was still using A Place in the Sun as a yardstick to measure her by. Dore Schary was hoping that as a loan-out she would bring in a nice return and not be in a position to demand a salary rise or cause them any problems with her convoluted personal life. Schary pulled all the necessary strings, and she got the part.\n\nDespite his near-legendary status, George Stevens preferred the title of 'independent director'. As such, he lacked the financial backing of a major studio. Unable to afford the film rights to Edna Ferber's epic bestselling novel (20 million copies sold by 2004), which critiqued the all-American dream, he formed a profit-sharing corporation with 67-year-old Ferber and producer Henry Ginsberg to get the project off the ground. Alan Ladd and Clark Gable had been considered for the central role of racist bigot Bick Benedict but were dismissed as being 'over the hill'. William Holden had also been tested, but the part was given to Rock Hudson, Universal's resident B-movie beefcake who had impressed everyone with his recent moving performance opposite Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession (1954).\n\nWith Elizabeth signed to play Bick's long-suffering wife Lesley, Montgomery Clift was signed to be the film's third lead, the rebellious outsider Jett Rink, more or less upon her recommendation, only for him to be declared too much of a risk by Warner Brothers' insurance company on account of his much-publicised drink-and-drugs dependency. Instead, Stevens brought in his biggest scoop: 24-year-old James Dean, straight out of the yet-to-be-released Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Completing what would be the ultimate exercise in camp iconography were Mercedes McCambridge, Joan Crawford's pseudo-lesbian sparring partner from Johnny Guitar (1954), James Dean's 16-year-old lover Sal Mineo, who had starred with him in Rebel, Dennis Hopper and Baby Doll (1956) sex-kitten Carroll Baker.\n\nThe interiors of Giant, regarded by critics as George Stevens's finest hour, began shooting in Los Angeles in May 1955. As had happened when Monty Clift had monopolised A Place in the Sun (and, of course, on account of the tragedy just around the corner), it was James Dean's film. Although only East of Eden (1955) had been released at that time and the public at large were yet to be captivated by his spellbinding talent, Jimmy was already being variously hailed as a lost cause, a cock-hungry schizophrenic and a pre-'Brat Pack' prima donna whose only truly happy but not entirely sane moments occurred when he was creating merry hell. Like Valentino before him, he was the supreme control freak whose every nuance and photogenic gesture had to be meticulously rehearsed and perfected.\n\nLike Elizabeth, Jimmy was stubbornly independent and never let the studios push him around as they did everybody else. When MGM tried to prevent him from cruising for rough trade \u2013 the rougher the better \u2013 Jimmy sought out his own bizarre heterosexual conquests: Maila Nurmi, television's Vampira, and, according to lover James Gilmore (James Dean, Robson, 1995), a one-legged woman with whom Jimmy had liked to watch Gilmore have sex \u2013 but only after he had drawn a face on her stump. And yet James Dean's single-handed championing of American youth at a time when the country was recuperating from the ravages of McCarthyism and many parents failing to furnish their offspring with decent role models, made him the icon of an entire generation. Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson might have considered themselves the essential ingredients of Giant during the first few weeks of shooting, but when Jimmy joined the production for the locations in Marfa, Texas, they and their peers very soon realised that regardless of the fact that his screen time would run to just twenty minutes of a three-hour-plus film, Jimmy was the icing on the cake. His chance remark on the set one day to buddy Dennis Hopper, comparing himself with his two idols, would soon enter Hollywood folklore: 'You know, I think I've got a chance to really make it because in this hand I'm holding Marlon Brando saying \"Fuck you!\" and in the other hand saying \"Please forgive me!\" is Montgomery Clift. Fuck you, please forgive me, fuck you. And somewhere in between is James Dean!'\n\nElizabeth, with her innate sense of seeking out men who were different, got on like a house on fire with James Dean and Rock Hudson, though initially there was no love lost between the two male actors, with Rock calling Jimmy 'that little scruff' and Jimmy denouncing Rock as 'having the acting talent of a lump of wood'. Then \u2013 and for the rest of her life as the undisputed champion of the oppressed, troubled homosexual \u2013 she comforted and defended the two men with unswerving loyalty. Just as Elizabeth had done with Monty Clift, she would embrace Dean and Hudson as surrogate sons, though they too were older than her. She was also one of the few who knew at the time why Rock was being pressurised into courting his manager's secretary, Phyllis Gates \u2013 to prevent the trash magazines from publishing stories about his homosexuality.\n\nUnaware that Montgomery Clift had a monopoly on the name, Rock baptised his new friend 'Bessie', and she addressed him as 'Rockabye'. Hudson and Phyllis Gates spent many contented hours with the Wildings at their Benedict Canyon home. Elizabeth's theory, drummed into her by Monty, was that they should inject a little 'Method' into their on-screen performances \u2013 in other words, in order to find out how they would get along as Mr and Mrs Benedict, they would have to spend as much off-screen time together as possible. This involved getting drunk a lot and regularly throwing up on the set \u2013 and Rock and Phyllis being third parties to the Wildings' rows as their marriage crumbled, partly on account of their incompatibility and age difference, and partly on account of the press. Confidential \u2013 the doyenne of the trash mags, which had been trying for some time to out Rock Hudson, hence the set-up with Phyllis Gates \u2013 had recently published a shattering expos\u00e9 on Michael Wilding, claiming that he had organised a noisy pool party complete with strippers whilst his wife had been away filming on location.\n\nIt may well be that Elizabeth calmed the waters between Rock Hudson and James Dean, who were worlds apart professionally. Jimmy's Method training \u2013 in the same school that had produced Brando, Clift, Lee J. Cobb and a handful of distinguished thespians who had initially triumphed on the stage \u2013 had taught him that if the two characters hated each other on the screen, as Bick Benedict and Jett Rink did, then it would also be necessary for them to hate each other in the rehearsal room. Rock, on the other hand, had graduated from the Henry Willson Academy of Glamour. The academy was run by a gay, sexually voracious agent named Henry Willson, whose truc was to seduce every one of the 50 or so young actors who ended up on his roster \u2013 then threaten them with press exposure unless they toed the line. Rock had used sex as his primary means to achieve fame; acting ability had been picked up on the way \u2013 or, as in the case of other Willson recruits Tab Hunter, Guy Madison and several others, not at all. Jimmy, by far the better actor, resented this. However, he was also very obviously attracted to Rock, the superbly packaged slab of beefcake. That Rock and Jimmy had an albeit brief sexual relationship, almost certainly instigated by Elizabeth's machinations, is more than likely. Speaking to Star magazine in 1987, she said, 'After I found out the truth about Rock, I began to feel a strong affection for Jimmy. But my feminine intuition told me that a mysterious understanding was being born between the two actors, and at times I felt like an uncomfortable third party.'\n\nThe Marfa locations for Giant were dominated by the huge $200,000-neo-Gothic Benedict mansion, erected to rise spookily out of the blistering desert sands and allowed to crumble back into them once the film was finished. Shooting was hampered by fierce heat and a severe water shortage that resulted in the consumption of too much alcohol \u2013 and frayed tempers.\n\nTo James Dean's way of thinking, it was possible for him to walk out of a room ten minutes after having had sex with a co-star, as happened with Rock Hudson, and immediately begin attacking him physically and verbally in a scene. Compared to the six-foot-four-inch, two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound Rock, Jimmy was diminutive and wiry, but immensely strong and agile, wholly fearless and capable of challenging any man to a fight, even if he knew he was going to come off the loser. Elizabeth was witness to much of this and is said to have derived enormous pleasure out of watching Jimmy 'psyching' up for a scene \u2013 stomping his feet on the ground for ten minutes at a time, then tearing around the set screaming like a banshee! \u2013 and the effect this had on onlookers. Likewise, the entire cast was irked with George Stevens's habit of demanding that everyone be on the set in full costume from the crack of dawn, even if they were not going to be called for a scene until later in the day. On top of this, he would shoot scenes dozens, sometimes hundreds, of times, from every conceivable angle, often using over a thousand feet of film for a few seconds of screen time. For Giant, Stevens used 700,000 feet of film, of which 25,000 feet formed the finished 198-minute print.\n\nEdna Ferber had based her book on the real-life rags-to-riches story of Texan oil magnate Glenn McCarthy, the aforementioned friend of Nicky Hilton. The film also inspired the glossy television soap-opera Dallas and its resident tyrant, J.R. Ewing \u2013 the latter taking his initials from those above the podium from which Jett Rink delivers his rambling, slurred speech in the film's final.\n\nAs had happened with Monty Clift in A Place in the Sun, there are many thinly veiled references to Elizabeth's off-screen relationships with James Dean and Rock Hudson, many of these sailing above the heads of the general public. When wealthy Texan Jordan 'Bick' Benedict (Hudson) arrives at the Maryland home of the lovely Leslie Linton (Elizabeth) to purchase the black stallion she is exercising, he drawls, 'That sure is a beautiful animal,' not meaning the horse. Later, she poses the question that almost got Rock outed by the press: 'Why aren't you married, Bick?' In the next scene, she is his wife and kills the off-screen rumours: if Rock Hudson could lust after Elizabeth Taylor, there was no way he could be gay!\n\nSimilarly, in a scene buzzing with sexual tension \u2013 the only one in the film \u2013 played against the haunting score by Dimitri Tomkin, Leslie sees a picture of herself (actually an Elizabeth Taylor publicity shot) on the wall of bad-boy Jett Rink's (Dean) shack and realises that he has a crush on her. Before making the film, Jimmy had told a friend that nothing had turned him on quite so much as the Victory Red-painted mouths of Elizabeth, \u00c9dith Piaf and Tallulah Bankhead, and that nothing would have given him more pleasure than having all three fellate him. Repeating her earlier question to Bick, she asks, 'When are you going to get married, Jett?' Jimmy, unlike Rock, never hid his life under a bushel, of course, and he responds only with his eyes. In a poignant moment, he serves her tea, taking (unscripted) a large slug of liquor to give him courage.\n\nJimmy was so nervous about shooting his first scene with Elizabeth \u2013 the zenith of which sees him standing in his famous mock-Crucifixion pose with his rifle threaded between his outstretched arms behind his lowered head, whilst Elizabeth emulates Mary Magdalene by crouching at his feet \u2013 that before the camera started rolling, he strolled out of its range to face the huge crowd of onlookers that George Stevens had allowed on to the lot. Smiling coyly, he unfastened his 'shit kicker' denims, urinated, then shook his penis at the sea of astonished onlookers. Later, he told Dennis Hopper, 'I figured that if I could pee in front of 4,000 people, then I could do anything on film.' (British journalist Donald Zec was afforded a rare interview at around this time and in his memoirs, Put the Knife in Gently [Robson, 2003], said that Jimmy had wanted to stand on a Hollywood rooftop and urinate upon the throng below. And whilst most people found Jimmy fascinating but a little odd, Zec observed, 'I found [him to be] a scruffy, disgruntled misfit, manifestly in need of a bath.')\n\nSoon after this point in the film, Giant starts to lose its credibility, particularly in the scenes where the characters have aged. James Dean relied on Method to age him, telling George Stevens, 'Wrinkles come only with good acting.' With his ever-present shades, greying temples and receding hairline, he looks authentic \u2013 whereas Elizabeth and Hudson resemble crude caricatures, with absolutely no facial lines and blue hair! Even so, the film remains a masterpiece, if only for the aforementioned scenes.\n\nSurprisingly, considering the on- and off-set gossip surrounding Rock Hudson and James Dean (particularly with Jimmy's boast to all and sundry, 'I've had my cock sucked by five of the biggest names in Hollywood \u2013 all of them guys!'), it was the rumour that Rock was having an affair with Elizabeth that brought Phyllis Gates and Michael Wilding rushing to Marfa halfway through Giant \u2013 the latter accompanied by their two children to remind her that she was still a wife and mother. Elizabeth later confessed that she had been attracted to Rock but that like Montgomery Clift he would never be hers other than platonically. After his death, she recalled, 'I looked at Rock, so handsome and so apparently masculine. But I soon realised that no woman would succeed in igniting his enthusiasm.'\n\nSome 30 years down the line, Phyllis Gates confessed that she had been worrying over nothing. Writing in her memoirs, My Husband, Rock Hudson (Doubleday, 1987), she observed, 'Was I jealous? Not really. I realised that no normal male could resist the fabulous charms of Elizabeth Taylor.' And referring to the brevity of Elizabeth's relationships and marriages, she added coyly, 'If there had been an affair, I doubted that it would last.'\n\nElizabeth rejoined Michael Wilding and the children in Hollywood, though the death knell had long since sounded on their marriage. On 30 September 1955, she and the whole of America were stunned by the death of James Dean. Though Jimmy's personal life had always been in turmoil, the real passion in his life over the last few months had been 'Little Bastard', his Porsche Spyder \u2013 top speed 170 mph \u2013 which his Warner Brothers contract had prohibited him from driving whilst shooting Giant. Jimmy had been scheduled to race professionally (he had won numerous trophies) at Salinas a few days after finishing the film, and, ironically, his last celluloid appearance was for a road-safety commercial. 'Take it easy driving,' he told actor Gig Young on behalf of the National Highway Committee. 'The life you might save might be mine!'\n\nIn the fading evening light that had rendered his silver Spyder almost invisible, Jimmy and his mechanic friend Rolf Wutherich crashed into another car at the intersection of Highways 41 and 466 near Chalome. Wutherich was thrown clear, but Jimmy died almost instantly, throwing open the floodgates to the most intense, unprecedented wave of grief and idolatry since the sudden death of Rudolph Valentino in 1926.\n\nJimmy's future had been well assured, with a $1-million contract in the pipeline for nine films to be made over the next seven years, beginning with Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), the biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano. His death affected everyone who had known him personally. Montgomery Clift, who had been desperate to have an affair with Jimmy, is reported to have 'thrown up over his satin bed sheets'. In her book, Phyllis Gates claimed to have found Rock Hudson sobbing like a child \u2013 his character had detested Jimmy's in the film, and he was paranoid that the public would think him pleased that his 'enemy' was dead. Elizabeth was so overcome with shock that she had to be sedated and hospitalised overnight.\n\nWith a wealth of dubbing and retakes to be done before George Stevens wrapped up his production, the cast of Giant were allowed little time for mourning. Not one of the company attended Jimmy's funeral the following week in his home town of Fairmont, Indiana, though many sent flowers and messages of condolence to his family. Following an on-set altercation with Stevens during the dubbing \u2013 over the director's comments that Jimmy's death had not been unexpected on account of his reckless driving \u2013 Elizabeth collapsed with abdominal pains, resulting in yet another two weeks' hospitalisation, leaving critics to make of this what they wanted. Most agreed that she had been best away from Jimmy's funeral, because her presence would have turned it into a circus. Jett Rink's drunken speech in the stateroom at the end of the film \u2013 a scene in which the effects of an all-night bender had left Jimmy's voice inaudible \u2013 was dubbed over by Nick Adams, his ex-lover who had appeared alongside him in Rebel Without a Cause.\n\nThe trash mags continued their attacks on Michael Wilding throughout the winter of 1955. Unable to credibly out him for his homosexual affairs now that he was married to the most voluptuous woman in Hollywood, they were similarly peeved that she was unhappily tied to a much older man of dubious talent. It mattered little that Wilding had been offered no roles to get his teeth into and prove his worth, as had happened in England. Rather than being portrayed as a 'deviant', he was depicted as the archetypal lecher, and the tabloids ran numerous 'exclusives' concerning his supposed poolside romps with strippers. Heading the pursuit was Confidential, whose motto 'Tells the Facts and Names the Names' appeared on the cover beneath the title. 'We all read it,' Marlene Dietrich told me. 'Not because it was any good \u2013 it was rubbish and worse than some of the garbage you get on news-stands nowadays \u2013 but to find out if you were in it. Sometimes you never had an inkling until it was too late.'\n\nConfidential had been launched in 1952 by Robert Harrison, whose 'brainwave' had come following the televised Senator Estes Kefauver crime investigations. According to Kefauver, America was grasped in a wave of vice, organised crime, corruption and gambling scams that was rapidly transforming it into a Mafia state. Harrison had elected to infiltrate and expose the nucleus of this 'den of iniquity' \u2013 Hollywood \u2013 and had thus far managed to keep ahead of orthodox scandalmongers Hopper, Parsons and Maxwell by employing unscrupulous methods. Neither was he too keen on checking the authenticity of his sources before running a particular story \u2013 usually alongside unflattering or suggestive photographs that frequently had nothing to do with the accompanying feature.\n\nIn 1954, Confidential was selling 4 million copies per issue, and Robert Harrison was doling out large amounts of cash to prostitutes of both sexes to coerce stars into compromising situations. Often a tiny microphone would be concealed in the bedroom, capturing not just the sex act itself, but the equally important post-coital small talk. Jealous or thwarted stars were encouraged to rubbish rivals whenever important parts were up for grabs so that they could step into their shoes. For 'special' cases, such as Errol Flynn (two-way mirrors), Rock Hudson and Elvis Presley (homosexuality), and Lana Turner (threesomes), Harrison furnished his 'detectives' with sophisticated miniature infrared cameras.\n\nFor Michael Wilding, Harrison had provided the strippers \u2013 failed bit-part players who needed the money. When it was reported back to him that this had caused a huge bust-up between Wilding and Elizabeth, the odious Harrison had the couple followed to Morocco, where Wilding was filming Zarak (1956) with Anita Ekberg and Victor Mature. Unable to link the Swedish actress with Wilding \u2013 she was about to marry the British actor Anthony Steele \u2013 Harrison printed a story hinting that Elizabeth had had a fling with Mature.\n\nThe source of the widening rift between the Wildings, of course, centred around his being compelled to walk in the shadow of his wife. In terms of their professional lives, he was a virtual nobody, the 'Mr Taylor' who could have resurrected his flagging career had he not been so lazy and fussy \u2013 the rejection of My Fair Lady being a prime example. Working with Elizabeth might have helped, but she does not appear to have wanted this \u2013 quite possibly because he was in his mid-40s and too old to play her love interest without looking ridiculous. Therefore, whilst he was seconded to dire television movies such as Verdict of Three (1958) and Danger Within (1959), Elizabeth was signed up for MGM's $5-million Civil War blockbuster Raintree County, billed as 'Gone with the Wind from the North's point of view', with her beloved Montgomery Clift. She was paid $100,000 \u2013 Monty, the biggest star, received three times this amount. Little did she know then that she would end up becoming his mentor and saviour.\n\n# SIX\n\nLIZZIE SCHWARTZKOPF, \nMY JEWISH BROAD!\n\nMGM HAD WANTED Raintree County TO BE DIRECTED by Richard Brooks, who since last working with Elizabeth had triumphed with Blackboard Jungle (1955), a sizzling expos\u00e9 of the New York education system. Monty, however, wanted nothing to do with him. The studio next approached William Wyler, who had recently directed Friendly Persuasion (1956) \u2013 which Monty had turned down because he had not wanted to work for him! Therefore, in a typical Hollywood volte-face, considering their treatment of him during the McCarthy witch-hunt, MGM \u2013 this time with Monty's approval \u2013 brought in Edward Dmytryk, recently riding the crest of a popularity wave following the success of The Caine Mutiny (1954).\n\nMonty was about to enter that final phase later identified as 'the longest suicide in movie history'. He was still involved with singer Libby Holman, still surviving on a diet of pills, alcohol and rough trade, still refusing to 'sort out' his sexuality for Hollywood's benefit and still a massive box-office draw, as I Confess and From Here to Eternity had proved. Even so, in May 1954 he had rejected more lucrative offers (including East of Eden and High Noon, 1952) in favour of returning to Broadway for 80 sell-out performances of Chekov's The Seagull with his friend Kevin McCarthy, after which he had given every indication that he had turned his back on the movie industry. He had vented his spleen on the 'establishment' very publicly. Attending the premiere of Guys and Dolls (1955), he had stood up in the auditorium and bellowed, 'Brando is vomitable, and this goddam picture stinks!' before storming into the foyer and punching his fist through the display case containing photographs of the cast. Yet the worst said of him was when the press agent for the film observed, 'Montgomery Clift still radiates class, even when urinating in the gutter.'\n\nWhy Monty had chosen Raintree County is not difficult to discern: Ross Lockridge Jr, its author, had also found it tough handling fame and fortune. In 1947, Lockridge, an English teacher from Indiana, where the story is set, had won MGM's annual Best Novel Award for his 1,066-page blockbuster, collecting $150,000 and guaranteed film rights. The following year, aged just 34, he had committed suicide, since which time the script had lain gathering dust in a studio vault.\n\nMonty had called or written to Elizabeth almost every day since her marriage to Michael Wilding, and when visiting the couple, had frequently acted as intermediary during their now persistent quarrels. Sometimes he would spend time with one or the other on neutral territory, psychoanalysing the details of the latest crisis, but never taking sides. In his autobiography Apple Sauce (Allen and Unwin, 1982), Wilding called him 'an interpreter for two people who no longer spoke the same language'. Though he had known Elizabeth longer, Monty had tremendous respect for Wilding, probably on account of their common ground: sexuality, sophistication and theatrical training.\n\nSo far as Elizabeth was concerned, Monty was returning a favour. Time and time again, she had listened to and sympathised with his woes, ignoring the trash-mag innuendo that she and Monty might be having an affair, though Wilding himself was frequently questioned on the subject. Some years later, he told Monty's biographer, Robert LaGuardia, 'I was happy that she had such a dear friend, and I knew how important he was to her. I never felt that they were too close or anything like that.' Wilding knew, of course, that by this time Monty was exclusively gay, that there could never be anything physical between him and Elizabeth, and also that what they had, something she would never share with Wilding, went beyond the carnal.\n\nNeither was Elizabeth perturbed that Monty's name would be appearing above hers in the credits or that he was being paid more than her for his portrayal of John Shawnessy \u2013 in her opinion, he had worked hard to get to the top and deserved every cent. She severely criticised MGM for taking out special insurance on account of his 'delicate health' and in case he didn't finish the film \u2013 claiming that with her on his side, Monty would not falter. What she did not know was that a studio executive had visited Monty's New York brownstone to examine the contents of his 14-foot bathroom cabinet and had reported back that it contained 'every remedy known to mankind'. Even Monty's doctor friends were astonished by his knowledge of pills, potions and their various effects when combined. Monty also carried his infamous grey leather vanity case everywhere, a gift from an Italian lover, which contained thousands of pills of every kind.\n\nFor the duration of the shooting schedule, Monty rented a house in Dawn Ridge Road, not far from the Wildings' Benedict Canyon home. MGM, still reeling from James Dean's death \u2013 or rather the lost future revenue this had brought about \u2013 had provided Monty with round-the-clock chauffeurs so that he would not have to drive. Shooting commenced in April 1956, and the first few weeks are reported to have gone well, with Monty cutting down on his liquor consumption. He was, however, still taking prescription drugs, which Elizabeth later claimed she knew nothing about. One afternoon, director Edward Dmytryk was ordered to search his trailer and found 200 different types. Then came the reports of him flaking out in mid-conversation at dinner parties, with the other guests simply rolling him under the table or tucking him away in a corner of the room until he came round, rather than summoning a doctor.\n\nOn 12 May, Monty attended an intimate gathering at the Wildings, apparently against his will because he was tired. Elizabeth insisted on his presence, and he did not wish to let her down, which some critics interpreted as her having put a jinx on him, with her predilection for always wanting things her way. Also present were Rock and Phyllis Hudson (their 'arranged' marriage had taken place the previous November), and Kevin McCarthy. It is alleged to have been a muted if not miserable evening, with everyone but McCarthy feeling down in the dumps about something or other. Wilding spent much of it semi-prostrated with a slipped disc. Elizabeth also had a bad back, a recurrence of her injury sustained during National Velvet. Monty was depressed because he wanted to change huge chunks of the Raintree County script, and Edward Dmytryk would not hear of it. Meanwhile, the Hudsons' sham marriage was already in strife. Rock Hudson's manager, Henry Willson, had bought off yet another Confidential story. Virtually every move Rock made was shadowed, yet he was still up to his tricks \u2013 at that time, he was embroiled in an affair with a young actor from his new film Written on the Wind (1956), which had gotten Monty hot under the collar, because it happened to be based on Libby Holman's alleged murder of her much younger gay husband!\n\nBecause he had not anticipated Elizabeth's invitation, Monty had given his chauffeur the evening off, and as he had not driven for some time \u2013 he was terrified of 'doing a Jimmy Dean' \u2013 he asked Kevin McCarthy to lead the way in his car on the steep descent from Benedict Canyon to Sunset Boulevard. On the way down, Monty suffered a blackout and crashed into a telegraph pole. He received the most appalling facial injuries \u2013 two fractured jaws, a smashed nose and sinus cavities, severe cuts and lacerations \u2013 yet, apart from a little whiplash, the rest of his body was remarkably unscathed. The ambulance took 45 minutes to reach the unlit stretch of road, but Monty's friends, alerted by McCarthy, were there in minutes. So too were the press, alerted by the police at a time when such pay-off arrangements were commonplace. The photographers were hoping for some sick but valuable exclusive on Monty's pulped, unrecognisable face \u2013 mindless of the stench of gasoline and the threat of the vehicle suddenly bursting into flames. Elizabeth warned them that if they took so much as one shot or repeated one word of her expletives-charged tirade, she would never pose for the press again. Someone did snap a picture of the car, which Monty carried around in his wallet for years to remind himself how lucky he had been.\n\nThe photographers backed off, whilst Rock Hudson, the strongest man there, tried to force open the front door of Monty's car, a total write-off. Because it was pitch black, it was at first assumed that Monty had been flung clear of the wreckage, but when Kevin McCarthy turned around his own car so that his headlights lit up the scene, they saw that he had ended up under the dashboard. Elizabeth crawled in through the back window and found Monty choking on two dislodged teeth \u2013 in pushing her fingers down his throat and extracting them, she saved his life. With her beautiful white dress drenched in his blood, she cradled his head in her lap all the way to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, whilst Phyllis Hudson rode along for support.\n\nAstonishingly, Monty's injuries were almost entirely below the skin, and only light-to-medium plastic surgery was required to patch him up. At that stage, no one considered the possible psychological damage. The Raintree County set was shut down for nine weeks whilst he recovered from the operation to reconstruct his face and teeth. Monty spent much of this time with his jaws wired \u2013 reportedly gaining strength from sipping martinis through a straw \u2013 and in traction on account of the whiplash injuries to his back. After three weeks, the surgeons had to break and reset his jaws. Elizabeth \u2013 feeling guilty because she had persuaded Monty to attend her party \u2013 Libby Holman and Monty's father took it in turns to sit with him. He flatly refused to see his mother. Edward Dmytryk and Dore Schary were frequent visitors, though the latter was less concerned about Monty's well-being than he was about the $2 million that had been ploughed into the production thus far. Friends (but not Elizabeth) advised him to abandon the film and allow MGM to collect on the insurance (which they did anyhow), but Monty would not hear of this \u2013 privately he knew that if he did not finish this film, he might never find the courage to work again.\n\nThe Wildings' marriage floundered completely during the break in filming \u2013 partly because Monty was not there for Elizabeth to lean upon, but largely because she allowed herself to be hustled into a love affair with Mike Todd, the overtly brash Jewish entrepreneur. It was an association that would very nearly cost Elizabeth her friendship with Monty, who frowned upon adultery if there were children involved.\n\nBorn Avrom Goldbogen in Minneapolis in 1905 (he later knocked five years off his age), Mike Todd was arguably America's most flamboyant, headstrong and cocksure showman since Billy Rose. Life for him was one seemingly endless, no-expenses-spared sideshow. Like Elvis Presley with the 'Memphis Mafia', he was rarely seen in public unless flanked by flunkeys who kow-towed to his every command \u2013 which were frequently outrageous or illegal \u2013 without ever questioning his judgement. These people were not particularly well paid, and Mike Todd's women were treated shabbily and insulted in public, but the perks they enjoyed were substantial.\n\nThe son (one of eight children) of a Polish \u00e9migr\u00e9 rabbi, Todd started out selling newspapers and shining shoes, then changed his name and hit the vaudeville circuit, writing sketches for the comedy duo Olsen and Johnson. He next turned to producing \u2013 his The Hot Mikado, a jazz-take on the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, had set Broadway alight in 1939. He followed this with Mae West's hugely controversial Catherine the Great and The Naked Genius with Joan Blondell, whom he had poached from her husband, Dick Powell. Standing in the way of them getting hitched was Todd's wife, Bertha \u2013 the mother of his son and heir, Mike Todd Jr.\n\nElizabeth was so besotted by her not-so-attractive middle-aged beau that she probably knew little or nothing of his personal history at this time. Obsessed with large-breasted women, shortly after the Second World War he made a big star of his mistress, actress-stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, before turning his attention to Blondell, whence he hit the headlines by being arrested on suspicion of murder. Bertha, who steadfastly refused to give him a divorce, was discovered in their kitchen with a large gash on her arm and subsequently died on the operating table whilst surgeons attempted to repair a severed artery. Todd got off the hook when Joan Blondell furnished him with an alibi, claiming that he had been with her on the night of the incident. Additionally, the autopsy concluded that Bertha had died of a heart attack.\n\nTodd married Blondell in 1947. The union was doomed from the start, and for the rest of his life, Todd was suspected of having had some involvement in his wife's death: if not of inflicting the actual wound \u2013 which, given his character and temperament, he had been more than capable of \u2013 then in driving her to the point of self-harm with his brashness and multitude of extra-marital affairs.\n\nAccording to Michael Todd Jr. in A Valuable Property: The Life Story of Mike Todd (Arbor House, 1983), Elizabeth and Todd were thrown together by way of an affair between Elizabeth and Todd's 30-something production assistant, Kevin McClory. He apparently told Todd's son \u2013 who was 21 when Elizabeth met his father \u2013 that they were so serious they had contemplated marriage. This seems unlikely, as McClory would never have been able to provide her with the seriously opulent lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. According to McClory, Todd got wind of the affair and instructed his assistant to arrange a meeting \u2013 not just with Elizabeth, but with Michael Wilding, too.\n\nTodd's own version of events is slightly different. He claimed that he had been intrigued to read of the Wildings' ups and downs in the press, so he had added their names to the guest list for a dinner party, held aboard his yacht moored off the Californian coast on 29 June 1956, in honour of David Niven, who played eponymous hero Phineas Fogg in Todd's film Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), arguably the most colourful adventure film of the 1950s.\n\nAt that time, Todd was dating the actress Evelyn Keyes, a woman with a suitably colourful past. Her first husband had shot himself, and husbands two and three (directors King Vidor and John Huston) were legendary brawlers, boozers and womanisers. Artie Shaw, her fourth husband, who was married eight times, picked up the pieces after her split from Todd. Keyes was present at the party but might as well have been invisible as Todd, the lecherous wolf, encircled his prey and moved in for the kill. Moreover, Elizabeth was a willing victim. 'Their behaviour was outrageous,' Todd's best friend Eddie Fisher later recalled in his memoirs, Been There, Done That (Hutchinson, 1999), 'and they didn't care what anybody else thought. Mike called her \"My little Jewish broad, Lizzie Schwartzkopf\", or he would tell her in front of a group of friends, \"Soon as I finish my dinner, I'm gonna fuck you.\"'\n\nTodd made his mind up at once to woo Elizabeth away from her 'boring and elderly' husband, regardless of the fact that he was older than Wilding. Elizabeth fell for the ruse hook, line and sinker, whilst Wilding, preoccupied with his slipped disc, was initially oblivious to what was going on around him. Two weeks later, Todd threw a reception for 200 A-list celebrities at his rented mansion in Beverly Hills. The guests of honour were \u00c9dith Piaf, her best pal Marlene Dietrich and fellow entrepreneur Ed Murrow, who was hoping to coax 'The Little Sparrow' into permitting him to film her life story. Piaf performed 12 songs but made it clear that she would never consent to any biopic. And whilst she stole the show with her fabulous voice and famous little black dress, Elizabeth turned heads by swanning into the room in a low-cut white-satin creation and $50,000 worth of diamonds. Todd flirted with her openly, and Wilding left in a huff \u2013 enabling his rival to pounce.\n\nA few days later, on 19 July, the Wildings issued a joint statement to the press: they had opted for amicable separation. The very next morning, Elizabeth \u2013 whom virtually no one could order around \u2013 obeyed the summons to Todd's office. Here, with the ubiquitous fat cigar wedged between his teeth, he ordered her not to even think of looking at another man now that Wilding had been removed from the picture, because he had decided that she now belonged to him! Elizabeth later added to the story, telling Hedda Hopper that Todd had announced, 'I'm going to marry you, and from now on you'll know nobody but me.' Hopper later observed in her autobiography, The Whole Truth and Nothing But, that Todd had actually said, 'From now on, you'll fuck nobody but me!'\n\nMeanwhile, shooting was resumed on Raintree County. Montgomery Clift, who was self-injecting himself with cortisone because of the tremendous pain he was in, was filmed mostly from the right, his least damaged profile. The left side of his face would remain semi-frozen and immobile on account of a severed nerve in his cheek. To get through the agonies of sleeping and waking, he took so many uppers and downers that on one occasion he lapsed into a coma with a lighted cigarette in his hand. The set doctor brought him around without too much difficulty, but Clift had burned the flesh of two fingers down to the bone. To cope with the pain from this new injury, he simply doubled up on the cortisone shots.\n\nThere were problems with the locations: first in Natchez, Mississippi, then in Danville, Kentucky. Never once letting his grey bag out of his sight, Monty survived on a diet of barbiturates washed down with alcohol to counteract the after effects of the accident \u2013 and more of the same to help soothe his shattered nerves. In Natchez, a small Methodist town unused to visiting celebrities, he and Elizabeth were treated like freaks. Like George Stevens, Edward Dmytryk preferred working on an open lot, which meant that the whole town was allowed to follow the shoot from start to finish. As such, the locals were witness to frustrated outbreaks and foul language from all concerned, along with the odd technical hitch. One such saw Monty attempting to climb into a carriage only to fall out of the other side \u2013 an exercise he repeated a dozen times before passing out cold. A few days later, it was fortunate that there were few people around when he was found wandering around the streets, stark naked and in a trance, having emerged from a drugs-induced nightmare in the middle of the night.\n\nIn Natchez and Danville, Elizabeth and Monty stayed in the same hotel and shared a bed, but only because he could not cope with being alone. Stories naturally circulated once more that they were having an affair, particularly when neither denied the fact when asked.\n\nMonty was unhappy about a scene in Raintree County in which he is seen taking a bath. He was paranoid about the dense carpet of black hair that completely covered his chest, abdomen, arms and shoulders. In the past, he had tried trimming, shaving, depilatories and monthly visits to an electrolysis centre, none of which had worked. He had appeared smooth in a stripped-to-the-waist scene in From Here to Eternity but since his accident had allowed nature to take its course. Monty asked for the scene to be cut, but producer David Lewis insisted on behalf of MGM that it stay put. In the naive days of the studio system, hirsute actors were presumed to be heterosexual \u2013 in much the same way as gay actors were presumed to be straight once they had taken a trip down the aisle. Robert Taylor, confronted in a London street whilst making Conspirator with Elizabeth, had been called a 'fairy' by a group of hecklers, only to prove them wrong by unbuttoning his shirt and revealing that he was as 'normal' as the next man!\n\nBy the time the Raintree County unit reached Danville, Edward Dmytryk had virtually washed his hands of the film, handing over the directorial reins to Monty \u2013 which turned out to be a viable move. Elizabeth, like Rock Hudson in his early films, was still regarded by many as little more than a decorative addition to whichever production she happened to be in \u2013 guaranteed box-office sales but still near the foot of the ladder so far as legitimate acting talent was concerned. Even the most cloying admirer could not have denied that she had so far proved herself an actress of merit in just two films \u2013 A Place in the Sun and Giant \u2013 though these had still been dominated by the Method techniques of their stars, Clift and Dean. As a highly strung then easily influenced and insecure individual, Elizabeth's precocious talent needed to be coaxed out of her, not bullied by the likes of Dmytryk, and this is what happened whilst she was being 'directed' by Monty.\n\nBetween self-directing, narcotic semi-comas and drunken escapades \u2013 the latter encouraged by Elizabeth, who would soon be able to drink most people under the table \u2013 and despite the fact that he loathed the man, Monty acted as go-between as the Taylor\u2013Todd romance blossomed then spiralled out of control. It was Monty who arranged for Elizabeth to be driven out to Todd's private jet so that the pair could spend the occasional weekend together. It was he who delivered the huge baskets of roses with the $30,000 black-pearl ring that Todd boasted would act as an unofficial engagement ring until he found something better. Later, it was Monty who persuaded Libby Holman \u2013 who disliked Elizabeth for no other reason than she was jealous of her close friendship with Monty \u2013 to allow the couple to meet at Treetops, her country retreat, but only if she or Monty were present to chaperone. Here, aware of her fondness for 'big rocks', Todd presented Elizabeth with an inch-square $95,000 diamond ring \u2013 allegedly the one he had given to Evelyn Keyes, who had returned it after being told about Elizabeth. Elizabeth wore this whilst shooting a scene in Raintree County that called for a wedding ring. Rather than use the one provided by the props department, she turned Todd's ring around so that the cameraman could not see the diamond. Monty saw it and refused to continue with the scene until she had taken it off.\n\nOn account of its multitude of problems, the film was not premiered until December 1957. On its release, many critics went to inordinate lengths to point out scenes that had been shot after Monty's accident, invariably getting it wrong. Most agreed, too, that despite the extensive plastic surgery, Montgomery Clift was still a dazzlingly attractive man and a consummate actor more than capable of riding sky-high above any co-star.\n\nFor her part, Elizabeth's Susanna Drake was criticised for having quite possibly the worst Southern accent thus far in Hollywood history, made even worse by her high-pitched whining as she hovers much of the time between obnoxiousness and insanity \u2013 reflecting Elizabeth's behaviour much of the time towards those around her. Indeed, one wonders how such a creature could woo mild-mannered John Shawnessy (Monty) away from his long-time sweetheart and into her twisted world, which sees her dying face down in a swamp. Most men would have run a mile! Monty, however, was not most men: he accepted the fact that Elizabeth was no different from Susanna \u2013 in turns passionate and vulgar, and at times thoroughly vile towards everyone around her \u2013 and never stopped worshipping the ground she walked upon.\n\nThe locations had begun shooting on 23 July, which was Michael Wilding's 44th birthday. This offered the press the opportunity to 'officially' recognise him as middle-aged and make more snide comments about his being wed to a gorgeous goddess young enough to be his daughter. The film then wrapped on 17 October, which was Montgomery Clift's 36th birthday. The same reporters demanded to know why Elizabeth had not married Monty instead. There were few surprises, therefore, when the Wildings announced, in another reputedly amicable joint statement, that they were getting a divorce.\n\nWhether this overt friendliness with her estranged husband, coming in the wake of so many heated, frequently public rows, was merely acted out for the benefit of the press is not known, but it seems more than likely. Elizabeth needed to be constantly in the headlines to believe that she was achieving anything out of life and persistently presented herself as the maligned heroine. Most of Michael Wilding's Hollywood films had bombed at the box office, and it was a foregone conclusion that matters would only deteriorate once he ceased to be 'Mr Taylor'. MGM offered him just one more film \u2013 The Scarlet Coat (1955), set during the American revolution \u2013 and informed him that they would not be renewing his contract. The press were told that Wilding and the studio had come to a 'mutual agreement'. Soon afterwards, Wilding returned to England, where his career amounted to little compared with his pre-Hollywood halcyon days. The divorce itself was handled by Mike Todd, who felt obliged to have his finger in every pie where Elizabeth was concerned.\n\nThe premiere of Around the World in Eighty Days took place in the October and saw the mega-rich entrepreneur flying in just about everyone who had appeared in it, even those only featured in the film for a matter of seconds in cameo roles. David Niven, Cantinflas, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Boyer, Ava Gardner and Buster Keaton were but a few. Anyone of importance who happened to be in Hollywood at the time was also invited \u2013 around 200 celebrities, plus the hierarchy of the movie industry. At the post-screening party, chomping on his ubiquitous cigar, Todd announced that he and Elizabeth would be marrying early in the new year. Some journalists compared his 'I Must Have' stance with that of Howard Hughes, and, years later, Todd would be cited as a role model for the equally vulgar and grasping Aristotle Onassis in his pursuit of Maria Callas and Jackie Kennedy.\n\nNext came the premiere of Giant at the New York Roxy. George Stevens had taken over a year to cut and edit the vast amount of footage into an acceptable 198 minutes. Elizabeth was supposed to have been Rock Hudson's 'date', because he had recently separated from Phyllis Gates after just 11 months of marriage. However, Mike Todd would not hear of Elizabeth being accompanied by a 'fagelah', so she stayed home, and Rock escorted Tallulah Bankhead, the undisputed queen of the one-liner, who told a bemused young woman reporter, 'This divine young man is a giant in every conceivable way!' Elizabeth then attended a second premiere a week later at Grauman's Chinese Theater, where earlier she and Rock had left their handprints in the famous cement. This time Rock was accompanied by his wife, thanks to Warner Brothers' insistence that the evening should remain scandal free. Elizabeth's 'date' was Michael Wilding. The guests included Clark Gable, Natalie Wood, Tab Hunter and Joan Crawford, who turned her back on the Wildings as they walked past her.\n\nSoon afterwards, Mike Todd celebrated having Elizabeth all to himself by flying her to the Bahamas in his private jet. In the harbour, she slipped on wet cobbles and injured her back. Todd flew her to New York, where she was admitted to the Presbyterian Hospital and diagnosed with crushed vertebrae at the base of her spine. In the subsequent operation, these were repaired with pieces of bone extracted from her thigh, and she was in traction for three weeks. As it was inconceivable that Elizabeth Taylor should suffer from an ordinary malady, she instructed the hospital's director to issue a statement that there was every possibility of her ending up in a wheelchair. She was doubtless cheered considerably by Todd's visits and convinced that affection translated to dollars. For this particular patient, chocolates and flowers were eschewed for original works by Renoir and Monet, and when Elizabeth finally emerged from her sickbed, in January 1957, Todd presented her with a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud so that she could 'travel home in style'. The press reported that she whooped with juvenile joy, and Photoplay's Aline Mosby called her 'a troubled star . . . still a child struggling to grow up and find peace of mind, torn between the demands of the woman and the child'.\n\nAs soon as Elizabeth was back on her feet, Mike Todd began 'working' on her divorce. Michael Wilding was flown in first class from London, and the trio headed for Acapulco to finalise the proceedings and make arrangements for Elizabeth's wedding to Todd. However, there was one problem that could not be resolved by Todd's wallet. The local elections were taking place, and none of the candidates wished to offend the Catholic Church \u2013 or scupper their chances of winning votes \u2013 by being seen to be supporting quickie divorces. Eventually, Todd found a judge who was about to retire from office so would not be affected by public opinion, and a decree of mutual consent was obtained on 31 January.\n\nThe obscenely expensive nuptials took place on 2 February 1957 when Elizabeth became Mrs Avrom Goldbogen, surrounded by thousands of white gladioli and wearing a powder-blue Helen Rose creation. Crooner Eddie Fisher, Todd's best friend, was best man, and Debbie Reynolds, Fisher's actress\u2013singer wife, was matron of honour. The ceremony was conducted by the mayor of Acapulco after Todd's money failed to tempt the local pastor and a rabbi, both of whom had been instructed by their superiors to stay well clear of the event. Sara, Francis and Howard Taylor were able to attend the wedding: unlike Michael Wilding, Mike Todd was rich, so Sara naturally wanted to get things off to a good start by not snubbing him.\n\nThe reception was dominated by the biggest and most expensive fireworks display in Mexico's history \u2013 a wedding present from Cantinflas \u2013 that ended with a vast heart containing the initials 'MT' and 'ETT' (Elizabeth Taylor Todd). According to the legend (almost certainly invented to complement the tragedy of the following year), Elizabeth screamed, 'Mike, don't leave me!' as the smouldering ashes hit the ground.\n\nTo keep out gatecrashers, Todd hired 50 armed Mexican soldiers to mingle with the hundreds of celebrity guests, each of whom had been given shirts or blouses with 'ET\u2013MT' monogrammed on them. No one seemed sure what Elizabeth had given her husband for a wedding gift, but Todd had presented her with a $50,000 diamond bracelet, two cinemas in Chicago and a 40 per cent share in the proceeds from Around the World in Eighty Days. He made a point of showing the receipts to the press, who were also made aware of Elizabeth's 'revised' living arrangements. The Benedict Canyon house she had shared with Michael Wilding was to be sold and the spoils divided 50\u201350. The divorced couple, 'advised' by Todd's lawyers, would share their children less evenly: Elizabeth would have access to them nine months of the year, Wilding three. When not residing with Todd in their sumptuous New York penthouse, Elizabeth could be found with him at their house in Connecticut or holidaying in unabashed luxury at their 'little place' in Palm Springs \u2013 unless, of course, they were zipping around the world in Todd's jet, now renamed Lucky Liz.\n\nAt the end of February, the Todds were A-list guests at the Oscars ceremony. Around the World in Eighty Days had notched up eight nominations and was pitched against Giant's ten, including best actor for Rock Hudson and best supporting actor for James Dean. Neither actor won, although Rock was subsequently voted number-one box-office draw \u2013 the awards went to Yul Brynner for The King and I (1956) and Anthony Quinn for Lust for Life (1956). Todd won the Oscar for best film, and his production scooped five additional awards.\n\nThe Todds' lengthy honeymoon, billed as an extension of the film they were promoting, took in New York, London, Paris, Rome and Moscow, with Todd presenting his wife with some 'special little gift' each time they checked into the best hotel in town \u2013 again, the receipts were shown to reporters, Todd's theory being that the more he spent, the more this proved how much he loved her. In the Paris Ritz, it was a Degas, purchased at a snip from Ali Khan for $30,000. At the Cannes Film Festival on 2 May, Todd hired the casino and commissioned a replica of the hot-air balloon used in his film to float above its roof. Within the building, he had installed a circus complete with lions and tigers. Surrounding their cages were 300 tables for journalists representing every major publication in Europe \u2013 each was treated to a sumptuous banquet on the proviso that they write only good things about their hosts.\n\nThere were no gifts for Elizabeth when the Todd\u2013Taylor extravaganza hit London on 2 July. Todd had hired Battersea Funfair instead, along with a dozen orchestras from around the world and enough food to feed several armies. To add a little of the 'common touch', he commissioned several fishmongers from Billingsgate to supply 2,000 portions of 'traditionally served' fish and chips, wrapped in replica copies of The Times, dated 1893, the year Phineas Fogg had embarked on his journey around the world. Todd liked to believe that there was nothing he could not arrange. When Elizabeth expressed a desire to meet the Queen's cousin Princess Alexandra to determine if the reports in the press were true \u2013 that Alexandra was as beautiful as she was \u2013 Todd got her to the party along with her mother, Princess Marina. And in the midst of this overhyped melee, Elizabeth announced that she was pregnant.\n\nThe tour continued throughout the spring and summer, with Mike Todd now known to have been spending the vast revenue from Around the World in Eighty Days as fast as it was coming in. And the rows between the newlyweds continued, enabling Elizabeth to deliver her legendary quote, 'Mike and I have more fun scrapping than most people have making love!' Yet with her predilection for seeking out life's dramas and complexities, near tragedy lay on the horizon. In the July of that year, during the sea crossing back to New York, Elizabeth went into premature labour and had to be anaesthetised to prevent her from giving birth until the ship docked. Since injuring her back, she had been wearing a support, and complications were anticipated that the ship's doctors felt they might not be able to handle.\n\nThere is a scene in Raintree County in which Eva Marie Saint's character, Nell, comments on Elizabeth's character's sham pregnancy, concluding that people are able to 'count up to nine'. Typically, the press then speculated that, like her character, Elizabeth might have fallen pregnant before marrying Mike Todd when they were told that her baby was not expected until October.\n\nElizabeth was rushed into a clinic, but not before posing for photographs and giving a speedy dockside press conference. Because of her back support, her baby had been pushed upwards under her ribcage. However, rather than deliver at that point, the doctors kept Elizabeth under observation for two weeks before sending her home to the twenty-five-room mansion Mike Todd had rented in Westport. On 6 October, she returned to the clinic, where her daughter Elizabeth Frances (Liza) was delivered by Caesarean section. According to the story that emerged \u2013 put about by Elizabeth, who of course could not possibly allow the world to believe that she had endured a normal delivery \u2013 the four-pounds infant was stillborn, but when she was placed in an incubator whilst the parents were being given the grim news, she suddenly and inexplicably came back to life. Both mother and child remained in the clinic for over a month. Elizabeth's doctors advised her that having another baby might kill her, so she had her fallopian tubes tied as a safety precaution.\n\nLike a well-rehearsed Pirandello grotesque, the Around the World in Eighty Days whirligig resumed. On 17 October, Mike Todd hired Madison Square Garden for a publicity bash \u2013 celebrating, of all things, the film's first birthday. Once again, the situation was engineered to ensure that he and his wife ended up on the front pages. Elizabeth arrived, according to one report, 'looking like the Empress Josephine' in a red-velvet gown and tiara. Twenty thousand invitations had been dispatched worldwide, and the proceedings opened with a circus parade headed by veteran actor Cedric Hardwicke riding an elephant. Topping the cabaret bill was French comedy actor\u2013singer Fernandel, to whom Todd had promised the lead in Don Quixote, his next multimillion-dollar epic, which, he boasted, would naturally feature Elizabeth as Dulcinella \u2013 and which was cancelled on account of the tragedy ahead.\n\nThe press were alerted to the fact that this was an 'anything goes' event, and it certainly was. Ten thousand gifts, donated by sponsors, were randomly doled out to the guests: cars, motorcycles, jewellery, cameras and a Cessna two-seater airplane! There were hundreds of gatecrashers \u2013 again invited by Todd and 'primed' how to misbehave \u2013 and they ran amok in the auditorium, scoffing most of the food. The crowning glory came when the 14-tier cake Elizabeth was cutting collapsed on top of her, covering her and those about her in cream and icing \u2013 it was a staged stunt. When she began flinging chunks around, there was a free for all, resulting in a clearing-up operation costing thousands of dollars \u2013 which Todd, of course, paid for.\n\nFrom New York, trailed by the world's press, the tour took in Hawaii, England, Japan and Australasia, and the boasting never stopped. 'We like a simple life,' Todd told the British Daily Mail. 'My wife pours her own champagne, and I make my own caviar sandwiches.' In Tokyo, Elizabeth caused a fuss by collapsing with appendicitis and an even bigger one when she expressed her mistrust of foreign hospitals, insisting upon returning to America to have her appendix removed \u2013 again, ensuring herself only the maximum publicity.\n\nUpon her recovery (although cynics reasoned that there would have been no time to fly Elizabeth home had the appendix really needed removing), it was back to self-promotion. The Todds decided that they wanted to visit Russia, even though they were unknown there. Todd arrogantly declared that he would soon rectify this and kill two birds with one stone by ending the Cold War in his and Elizabeth's unofficial capacity as American ambassadors!\n\nWhile many of the less impressionable public regarded this announcement as just another facet of the already over-extended Todd\u2013Taylor farce, the American government took it seriously. Todd was warned not to interfere in international politics, and although he listened for once, he refused to cancel the trip. After Don Quixote, he said, Elizabeth would be starring in either War and Peace or reprising Greta Garbo's role in Anna Karenina. One shudders to imagine what this would have been like, with Tolstoy's heroine shrieking in a Deep South accent, as opposed to Garbo's delicious drawl. Thankfully, neither project saw the light of day.\n\nThe Todds flew to Prague on 26 January 1958, not knowing whether they would be allowed into Russia. By then, Elizabeth was demanding a meeting with Krushchev! Three days later, they flew into Moscow, where they managed \u2013 by way of Todd's wallet \u2013 to worm their way into a reception at the Indian embassy. The Soviet leader was there, although whether he made time to talk to his gatecrasher guests is not clear. Elizabeth certainly made an impression, dressed like a member of a defunct imperialist family and dripping with diamonds. Outside the embassy, she found herself surrounded by autograph hunters \u2013 they were aware that they were in the presence of someone of importance, although none of them actually knew who she was until an irate Todd enlightened them.\n\n# SEVEN\n\nPASS THE PARCEL, MIKE\n\nPREDICTING THAT THE EXCESSIVE PUBLICITIY SURROUNDING Montgomery Clift's accident would ensure huge box-office returns, as had happened with Raintree County, Warner Brothers attempted to team Elizabeth and Monty as loan-outs for their next big-budget production, Marjorie Morningstar (1958). In Herman Wouk's bestselling novel, the heroine is a wealthy Jewish girl who defies the edicts of her religion by having an affair with a considerably older man. The still powerful Hays Office censors warned studio head Jack Warner that he would never get such an 'outrageous' scenario past them and ordered the scriptwriters to eliminate the religious element, thus robbing the story of its central significance. Elizabeth did not mind this: all she wanted was to work with Monty again. Mike Todd, however, did not want her to work with anyone \u2013 his wife's place, he declared, was by his side, promoting the by now weary Around the World in Eighty Days project.\n\nWhen Monty turned the film down because of the story change \u2013 and in any case, he was busy shooting Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions (1958) with Marlon Brando and Dean Martin \u2013 Paul Newman was approached to take his place. Newman also said no: he was busy with another production, after which he had been singled out to star opposite Elizabeth in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The part of Marjorie Morningstar was, therefore, given to Natalie Wood, and the Clift\/Newman role went to the less charismatic Gene Kelly.\n\nAs had happened with Nicky Hilton (at that time dating and knocking around the newly cast lead of Marjorie Morningstar) and Michael Wilding, Elizabeth's marriage to the ebullient, fiercely overpossessive Mike Todd was reputedly on the rocks no sooner than the rice had settled. Passers-by in Schuyler Road, the couple's main residence in Beverly Hills, reported hearing them yelling at one another from a hundred yards away. According to the couple, fights were an essential and healthy component of their existence. 'When Elizabeth flies into a tantrum, I fly into a bigger one,' a full-of-himself Todd had told the Chicago Tribune's Marilyn Kruse the previous November. 'She's been on a milk-toast diet all her life with men. But me, I'm red meat!'\n\nEddie Fisher recalled in his 1999 autobiography Been There, Done That the occasion when he and Debbie Reynolds witnessed one of the Todds' arguments, during which Todd had slapped Elizabeth and then dragged her by the hair into their bedroom to make love. 'She liked to be roughed up,' Fisher concluded, adding elsewhere in his memoirs that Elizabeth and Todd had also participated in telephone sex.\n\nAbsolutely no one could contact Elizabeth, unless through Mike Todd, who is said to have pulled enough strings to ensure her an Oscar nomination for Raintree County, though she scarcely merited the accolade for such a dreadfully over-the-top performance. Todd had stopped her from doing Marjorie Morningstar but insisted upon her accepting Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, because he planned to 'arrange' another Oscar nomination. Elizabeth was so awestruck by her latest spouse, by the power his wealth brought, that when Todd told her to jump, she asked him how high.\n\nCat on a Hot Tin Roof began shooting early in March 1958, around the time Mike Todd began putting together Don Quixote. He had also recently completed his (ghostwritten) autobiography \u2013 the soon-to-be portentously titled The Nine Lives of Mike Todd (Hutchinson, 1959). Todd had also been voted Showman of the Year by The Friars Testimonial and was scheduled to pick up the award at the New York Astoria on Sunday, 24 March. Elizabeth had planned to travel with him, but a few days before the event she came down with bronchitis and a fever. On 21 March, Todd took off in Lucky Liz with just his crew and ghostwriter friend Art Cohn, but the plane never reached its destination. A few hours after a refuelling stop in Albuquerque, it plummeted into the Zuni Mountains, over New Mexico. Todd's charred wedding ring was found in the wreckage a few days later. He and his colleagues were identified only from dental records.\n\nElizabeth was inconsolable. This was the worst genuine tragedy of her life to date \u2013 two divorces and now widowhood at the age of just twenty-six would have sent anyone over the edge \u2013 but many people accused her of going overboard with the hysterics, rushing out into the middle of Schuyler Road and screaming at passers-by that she wished she had died with him. Her doctor \u2013 celebrity physician Rex Kennamer, who had supervised Montgomery Clift's post-accident ordeal and had, needless to say, earned a tidy fee \u2013 was summoned, and he administered a sedative. Within an hour, Debbie Reynolds arrived to look after Elizabeth's children, and Michael Wilding, allegedly more concerned for their welfare than that of his ex-wife, flew in from London.\n\nSchuyler Road had, of course, been transformed into a media circus. Mingling with the crowd of pressmen and reporters outside the house were hundreds of fans armed with cameras and autograph books. Few cared about Mike Todd, and they paid little credence to Elizabeth's latest admission that he would remain the great love of her life. With her track record, observers were of the opinion that this marriage would have ended in divorce, just like all the others, had Todd lived. The onlookers merely wanted to catch a glimpse of the widow and whichever celebrities dropped in on her to offer their condolences.\n\nThese were surprisingly few: Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, Montgomery Clift and Nicky Hilton, wishing to avoid the mayhem of the situation, sent telegrams or called. Richard Brooks, the director of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, did turn up \u2013 only to be seen off by Elizabeth's vituperative tongue. According to John Parker in Five for Hollywood (Macmillan, 1989), her exact words to him were, 'You bastard, you've just come to see when I'll be back at work. Well, screw you and your movie. I'm never coming back!'\n\nOnce she had calmed down, Elizabeth needed someone to blame for Mike Todd's death \u2013 which was an accident, pure and simple. She filed a $5-million claim against the owners of Lucky Liz (Todd had merely rented it), which took almost five years to reach the courts. The company was subsequently ordered to pay just $27,000 in compensation \u2013 not to Elizabeth, but to their daughter, Liza Todd.\n\nThe funeral, little more than another Todd extravaganza, took place on 25 March at the Jewish Waldheim Cemetery in Zurich, Illinois. Todd's son had suggested a private cremation \u2013 aside from a few bones that could have belonged to any or all of the victims, the casket was empty \u2013 believing that this would preserve the frail widow from the spectacle of a very public interment. Todd, however, seems to have once expressed his disapproval of crematoria, and Elizabeth was intent on honouring his wishes. For two days, she deliberated over whether to attend, which only drew more attention to the event, but the lure of the spectacle rivalled her grief. As much as the public wanted to ogle her, she just as much needed to entertain them, at whatever personal cost.\n\nHer supposed loathing of Howard Hughes did not prevent her from hitching a free ride to Illinois on one of his private planes. Cynics commented that she put on an act of being helped down its steps by her brother Howard and Eddie Fisher in order to gain sympathy. Helen Rose, who had dressed her for her weddings, had done the honours for the closing chapter of this equally stormy marriage. More than 2,000 fans gathered on the tarmac, yelling her name as she was whisked from the airport to the Drake Hotel. As many as 20,000 more lined the funerary route \u2013 reports claimed it was the highest attendance at a funeral since that of the seven members of the Bugs Moran gang, following the 1929 St Valentine's Day Massacre. It was here that the real circus began. Every hundred yards or so there was a hot-dog seller or refreshment van. A chapter of the Eddie Fisher fan club turned up, chanting his songs and waving albums, whilst buskers entertained the crowd outside the cemetery gates, declaring that Mike Todd would have wanted it that way. High above, the scene was filmed by a press helicopter.\n\nA small marquee had been erected over the Goldbogen plot. Elizabeth had requested that only her family and very closest friends attend the ceremony. Montgomery Clift, who had disliked Todd and found him coarse, had not been invited, but he turned up all the same; he and Rex Kennamer mingled with the crowd. A police cordon surrounded the marquee, but this gave way as the crowd pressed forward, forcing Elizabeth to make a dash back to her limousine. It took the car almost an hour to leave the cemetery as the lunatic fringe of her fan base rocked it from side to side, hoping to get her out of the vehicle or, at the least, to wind down the window. Some fans clambered onto the roof and began stamping their feet, causing Elizabeth to suffer a panic attack, but as unyielding police restored order, the cort\u00e8ge was eventually allowed to leave.\n\nElizabeth had been invited to the Oscars ceremony, two evenings later, but wisely elected to stay home. She badly needed to be with Montgomery Clift, but as she had not wanted him at Mike Todd's funeral, he had returned to New York in a huff. Todd had been posthumously nominated for his Todd-AO cinematography, Elizabeth for Raintree County. Todd won, but Elizabeth lost out to Joanne Woodward, who was about to be married to Paul Newman and who won the Best Actress award for her superb performance in The Three Faces of Eve (1957).\n\nElizabeth might have threatened to walk out of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but to do so would have resulted in immediate suspension. Shooting was resumed in the middle of April, less than a month after Mike Todd's death. The film is so monopolised by ex-footballer Brick (Paul Newman) and cantankerous, larger-than-life but dying patriarch Big Daddy (53-year-old Burl Ives, reprising his acclaimed Broadway role) and his noisy, dysfunctional relatives that Elizabeth is hard put to keep up with them. It is an excellent piece and very typically Tennessee Williams: tantrums and mayhem, obligatory homosexuality, madness, drunkenness, protracted speeches and ever-present 'mendacity'.\n\n'Skipper is the only thing I got left to believe in, and you're dragging it through the gutter. You are making it shameful and filthy!' Brick yells, referring to his footballer lover who killed himself after being confronted by Maggie. Being gay, he is oblivious to her attempts to turn him on, flashing her legs and adjusting her suspenders \u2013 the same tactics, some alleged, that she had used to attempt to seduce Monty Clift.\n\nThere is also a thinly veiled and much-discussed reference to Mike Todd when Maggie screams at Brick in desperation, 'Skipper is dead, and I'm alive!' Then comes the line adopted by the closeted Hollywood gay community of 1958 when, referring to Brick's never having a glass out of his hand, she says, 'Your hand was made for holding something better than that!' Of course, Maggie cures Brick of his 'affliction' \u2013 for as had happened with Rock Hudson in Giant, it was inconceivable that any man could remain gay having been subjected to the charms of Elizabeth Taylor!\n\nBy the time shooting wrapped on the film, Elizabeth was involved with theatre-chain entrepreneur Arthur Loew, Joan Collins's escort since divorcing British actor Maxwell Reed. According to Ketti Fringe, the wife of Elizabeth's agent, Elizabeth also had her eye on her late husband's 21-year-old son. 'She tried Mike Todd Jr first, but his wife said no and put a stop to it before it could develop,' Fringe told biographer Kitty Kelley. 'She got young Mike out of town before Elizabeth could move in on him.' Elizabeth was also enjoying secret trysts with Eddie Fisher, and Loew might well have been the scapegoat to throw the press off their scent.\n\nIt now emerged that Mike Todd had not been the multimillionaire everyone had assumed. His estate amounted to a little over $300,000, out of which debts had to be settled. Neither would there be much future revenue from Around the World in Eighty Days \u2013 Todd had borrowed heavily against the profits to fund his global gallivanting. Most of his cars and houses had been rented, including the property on Schuyler Road. Whilst looking for somewhere else to live, Elizabeth moved into a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel complex, leaving her children with Arthur Loew. Both he and Elizabeth denied romantic involvement, but when the press refused to believe this, she pulled a publicity stunt by choosing Hedda Hopper to accompany her on her first 'official engagement' since Mike Todd's death. The pair went to Romanoff's, where, according to the columnist, Elizabeth wore 'as many diamonds as a grieving widow could get away with'. She was there, she told the press, to bid a temporary farewell to Hollywood because she had arranged to take the children on an extended tour of Europe.\n\nIn the August, having apparently changed her mind, Elizabeth flew to New York to spend a few days with Montgomery Clift \u2013 and, it appears, to enjoy a prearranged sojourn with Eddie Fisher, in town filming his top-rating television show. Though Debbie Reynolds had been left in Hollywood with the Fishers' two children, the pair dined several times without raising too much suspicion: to the casual onlooker, here was Todd's best buddy consoling his widow and weaning her back into society. However, when the couple slipped off for the weekend to Grossinger's Hotel, the Catskills resort, the press immediately jumped to the conclusion that the relationship had progressed beyond the platonic.\n\nDiscovered by Eddie Cantor and promoted by Mike Todd, Fisher had begun his career at Grossinger's Hotel. He and Debbie Reynolds had married there in September 1955, designating it as their 'special' place. In turn, its proprietors had revered them, and they had since held the reputation as the most perfect couple in American show business.\n\nThe first report went out on 9 September, when the Los Angeles Examiner ran the headline 'Eddie Fisher Romance with Liz Taylor Denied'. This was a clever ploy frequently used by the press. News papers would run a 'denial' of a story, along the lines of the Fisher-Taylor one, as a means of bringing a scandal to the attention of the public without having the necessary evidence, in the hope that such evidence would then be forthcoming to enable the story to develop. The vociferous manner in which both parties denied the affair was interpreted by most of the tabloids as a confession of guilt; as a result, they did not feel the need to exercise caution. Elizabeth would reverse this ploy in later years. 'leaking' news to the papers that she was ill again, only to then deny it!\n\nDebbie Reynolds' biggest hit, taking the American and British charts by storm in August 1957, was 'Tammy', the closing line of which was 'Tammy's in love'. Now, the headline ran 'Eddie's in Love \u2013 With Liz!' A photograph of the pair leaving The Blue Angel nightclub appeared in Life magazine, and the New York Daily News ribbed, 'The storybook marriage of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds skidded on a series of curves yesterday \u2013 Elizabeth Taylor's.'\n\nInitially, Debbie refused to believe that her husband and Elizabeth were more than just good friends. However, Elizabeth soon put the record straight upon her return to Hollywood. Leaving Fisher to deal with the barrage of reporters camped outside his house, she unwisely granted an interview to Hedda Hopper, who claimed in her memoirs The Whole Truth and Nothing But that upon being accused of being a home wrecker, Elizabeth had responded, 'Mike's dead, and I'm alive! What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?'\n\nElizabeth later declared that Hopper had fabricated the quote \u2013 whilst some believed Hopper had lifted the 'Skipper's dead!' speech from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and changed the names \u2013 and insisted that what she had really said was, 'You know how much I loved Mike? I loved him more than my life. But Mike is dead now, and I'm alive, and the one person who would want me to try and live and be happy is Mike.' Elizabeth also denied Hopper's claim that she had remarked of Debbie Reynolds, 'Eddie's not in love with her and never has been.' True or not, she had helped bring down the curtain on the Fishers' fairytale marriage, severely blackening her own reputation in the process.\n\nHedda Hopper's unedited story ran on the front page of the Los Angeles Times and was quickly syndicated around the world, followed by news of the Fishers' split. Debbie Reynolds was the nation's favourite; along with Doris Day, she was everyone's idea of the archetypal girl next door who could do no wrong. She too played to the press, as she was entitled to do as the injured party. Whilst Elizabeth was photographed in her jewels and her Helen Rose creations, Debbie posed on her front porch with her hair in curlers, embracing her children and looking glum. The captions invariably alluded to 'Daddy' no longer being around. Though it was widely rumoured that her marriage had been on the rocks before Elizabeth's arrival on the scene, Debbie was still portrayed as the hapless victim of a scarlet woman and a philanderer.\n\nEddie Fisher had idolised Mike Todd to such an extent that once he began emulating Todd's spendthrift, high-flying ways, he was unable to stop. Splashing money around like water, prior to his marriage to Reynolds he had impressed and seduced \u2013 in full glare of the media spotlight \u2013 Marlene Dietrich, Merle Oberon, Hope Lange and any number of other starlets and Las Vegas hoofers, many of whom boasted to friends how 'hung' he was. For Elizabeth, such bravado and chutzpah must have been akin to Todd returning from the grave. Years later, Fisher pulled no punches when he wrote about his hundreds of alleged conquests. He dismissed his marriage to Debbie Reynolds as 'a charade for the media', claimed that she had not enjoyed sex and concluded, 'Mount Virgin. The real challenge was getting to the summit.'\n\nElizabeth, who had ridden high on a wave of global sympathy since Mike Todd's death, was now portrayed as the brazen hussy who had inflicted misery on his two dearest friends. Not even 15-month-old Liza's hospitalisation with double pneumonia in the middle of November changed attitudes towards Elizabeth. The child remained on the critical list for several days, yet the press ignored this and followed Robert Ruark's syndicated lead: 'This Monument to Busting Up Other People's Homes'. At the height of the scandal, she and Eddie Fisher attracted 5,000 letters of complaint a week, and there were even threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Many stores refused to stock Fisher's records, and newspapers warned the parents of teenagers that they ran the risk of turning them into 'immoral delinquents' by allowing them to watch him on television.\n\nIn his memoirs, Eddie Fisher frequently comes across as a deeply unpleasant individual: brash, boastful and big-headed. However, he is also extremely honest \u2013 to a cringe-making degree, one imagines, if any of his wives ever got around to reading what he wrote about them. But they, of course, would have been conditioned by their time with him so that they would be hard edged enough to bear the brunt of any attack. Whilst Debbie is painted as the proverbial ice maiden \u2013 the astonishingly naive, perennial virgin, as portrayed in her films, who was placed on a pedestal by Middle America \u2013 Elizabeth is the ultimate seductress, the Lorelei who set out to ensnare him mindless of scathing public opinion and the threat to all of their careers. Fisher makes no secret of the fact that he was a willing victim, declaring of Elizabeth's voracious sexual appetite, 'She was uninhibited, wild, so totally free with her body. We couldn't get enough of each other.' And recalling how they made love up to five times a day, he added, 'Sexually, she was every man's dream; she had the face of an angel and the morals of a truck driver.'\n\nFisher also claimed that Elizabeth liked her sex rough and probably only truly respected a man after he had belted her one. 'She hit me all the time, too, and tried to goad me into hitting her back,' he wrote. 'She'd force me to pin her down to stop her, and that inevitably led to sex.'\n\nIn December 1958, Debbie Reynolds filed for divorce, but in taking the first step towards granting Fisher his freedom, she failed to release Elizabeth from her position of society-clique pariah. The Theater Owners Association had presented Elizabeth with their prestigious Star of the Year award for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and now promptly took it back. This led to many of her so-called friends and acquaintances \u2013 some of whom had behaved no less irresponsibly in their own private lives \u2013 turning their backs on her. The stalwarts remained loyal: Rock Hudson, now divorced from Phyllis Gates, Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood \u2013 who since marrying in 1957 had inherited the 'perfect couple' tag from Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher \u2013 and, of course, Montgomery Clift.\n\nMonty's confidence in his abilities, which had plummeted towards the end of Raintree County, had been bolstered by working with Marlon Brando in The Young Lions. Directed by Edward Dmytryk, Monty had played kindly Jew Noah Ackerman, who becomes a victim of anti-Semitism when drafted into the army. The reviews had been favourable, and he had successfully portrayed an agony uncle in Lonelyhearts (1958) opposite Myrna Loy. The filming of this movie had seen him reverting to his usual irrational behaviour, on and off the set, and resulted in the studios finally deeming him an uninsurable risk. Ostensibly, he was now rescued by Elizabeth, who insisted that Monty be given the male lead when she was approached to play another mad-woman role in the screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' hysterics-fest, Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). However, with shooting not scheduled to begin until the late spring, Elizabeth channelled all her energy into planning wedding number four \u2013 but only after spending a short time with Monty in New York to confer with her best friend as to whether Eddie Fisher was suitable husband material. The same consultation had occurred before she had married Nicky Hilton and Michael Wilding.\n\nMike Todd had referred to her as his 'Jewish broad', but Elizabeth went one step further for Eddie Fisher by actually embracing the Jewish faith. This was almost certainly a ploy to gain public approval and sympathy, as was the case with Marilyn Monroe before she married Jewish playwright Arthur Miller. However, to be fair, Elizabeth had been seeking guidance from Rabbi Max Nussbaum since Mike Todd's death.\n\nEddie Fisher later confirmed that he had been indifferent towards her conversion and that Elizabeth had wanted to convert for Mike Todd, who had forbidden the move. Fisher even said that with so much anti-Semitism in Hollywood, becoming a Jew would only make those who hated her hate her more.\n\nHer conversion was conducted by Rabbi Nussbaum in April 1959 and was attended by her parents with the same enthusiasm, according to Fisher, that they would have mustered watching their own home burn down. She chose the name Elisheba Rachel, learned several payers in Hebrew and at the few parties she was not excluded from casually slipped Yiddish expressions into the conversation. She did herself few favours by comparing her own tribulations with the persecution of Jews during the Second World War, telling a press conference, 'I was attracted to their heritage. I guess I identified with them as underdogs.' On an even more serious note, Muslim governments across the Middle East slapped a total ban on her films when she pledged $100,000 to the Israeli war effort to 'recompense' for her conversion.\n\nThe conversion, for which Elizabeth never subsequently supplied factual evidence, cut her no slack with the media or the disgruntled public. The press still used terms such as 'home wrecker', and Debbie Reynolds fans meeting Elizabeth in public certainly voiced their opinions. Not since Ingrid Bergman's desertion of her husband to move in with director Roberto Rossellini and bear his children a decade earlier had there been such a national outcry.\n\nDebbie also had the last laugh on her adulterous husband when granted her divorce in February 1959. The judge awarded her full custody of her children, $10,000 alimony a year for 20 years (a vast amount in those days) and the Fishers' homes in Hollywood and Palm Springs. If this was not enough to sting him, and just in case he planned on marrying Elizabeth straightaway, Fisher was told that the divorce would not become absolute until February 1960. And to round off the proceedings, NBC cancelled his television series on account of the scandal.\n\nDebbie, of course, could not prevent the couple from living together or from getting engaged. They rented a house in Las Vegas, where Fisher was due to open a season at the Tropicana Hotel, and threw a party for the few close friends they still had: the Wagners, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and Peter Lawson. Monty Clift declined his invitation: he disapproved of Liza Todd, his favourite child in all the world, being caught up in the middle of a messy divorce whilst trying to come to terms with her new stepfather. Fisher had presented his fianc\u00e9e with a $50,000 diamond bracelet and an evening bag encrusted with twenty-seven diamonds (one for each year of her life) that spelled out 'LIZ'. As with his predecessors, his theory was that love was far better expressed in dollars than with heartfelt words.\n\nEddie Fisher's opening night at the Tropicana was a media-fest, with most of the audience less interested in the on-stage performance than the fact that Elizabeth would be braving the wrath of public opinion by having the gall to show her face. When she arrived, not very sensibly via the front entrance, she was greeted with hisses and 'LIZ GO HOME' banners. Between numbers hand-picked to milk the occasion \u2013 'It Happens Every Day', 'Making Whoopee' and Dorothy Squires' 'I'm Walking Behind You on Your Wedding Day' \u2013 Fisher wisecracked with the audience, playing the cynics at their own game, and by the end of the evening had won over even the hardest of them. After the show, he and Elizabeth met the press and for the first time gained a little sympathy \u2013 not much, but it was a step in the right direction. At one time, the fans had clamoured to see Fisher the crooner-par-excellence, but from that point on audiences felt cheated unless Elizabeth was on full bejewelled display next to the stage at every performance, especially when the curious who had frequently disliked his singing began pushing out the genuine aficionados in the rush for tickets.\n\nIt is not known whether Debbie Reynolds had really intended to make her ex-husband sweat it out for a whole year before being allowed to marry Elizabeth, but neither is it clear why she changed her mind, granting him his freedom after less than three months. Whatever the case, Fisher obtained a Nevada divorce during the morning of 12 May 1959 (although the original stipulation of a one-year gap would have stood had he been in California), and within the hour the couple were wed in a civil ceremony. A blessing followed at the Temple Beth Shalom, and Elizabeth became Mrs Edwin Jack Fisher. Mike Todd Jr was best man, and Elizabeth's sister-in-law, Mara (Howard's wife), was matron of honour. The bride wore an 'unlucky' green Jean-Louis gown recommended by Marlene Dietrich, who told me, 'She'd spent her whole life crying wolf most of the time. To my way of thinking, she deserved a little genuine bad luck for a change!'\n\nElizabeth told the press a variation of her usual stock statement, which was already starting to wear thin: 'This honeymoon is going to last 30 or 40 years. From now on, I want to devote my time to being a devoted wife and mother.' Few took her or the marriage seriously, particularly when she insisted on still wearing Mike Todd's wedding ring on her right hand.\n\nThe honeymoon, compared to its predecessors, was reasonably frugal, part-financed by Columbia Pictures. The couple flew to Spain to shoot the exteriors of Suddenly, Last Summer. Whilst there, Elizabeth also made an unbilled cameo appearance in Mike Todd Jr's 'Smell-O-Vision' curiosity Holiday in Spain (1960), something of a non-event starring Peter Lorre and Denholm Elliott. Naturally, with such a gimmick at its centre, it had a limited release and, fortunately, was soon forgotten. Fans had to wait until near the end to see Elizabeth \u2013 and almost choke on the stench of the perfume accompanying the scene as it was pumped through the cinema's air-conditioning system.\n\nWhen shooting wound up, the Fishers borrowed producer Sam Spiegel's yacht and 'explored' the Mediterranean, attracting large crowds at each 'impromptu' anchorage \u2013 all arranged by the studio publicity department, of course. They then headed for London, where the interiors for Suddenly, Last Summer were shot at Shepperton Studios.\n\nUpon hearing of director Joe Mankiewicz's Lothario reputation \u2013 arguably no worse than his own \u2013 Eddie Fisher took no chances and made a point of visiting the set every day. Though he might not have known it at the time, he was starting to ditch the crooner tag and take up the role of Mr Taylor. 'My real job was keeping Elizabeth happy,' he wrote in his memoirs. 'My own career was disappearing. My singing, which had once been the thing I lived for, was becoming more of a well-paid hobby.'\n\nAt Shepperton, Elizabeth walked in on a dispute that for once did not concern her. Katharine Hepburn, a fighter for a lost cause \u2013 like Elizabeth with Monty \u2013 had been coaxed by producer Sam Spiegel into playing wealthy widow Violet Venable, whose son Sebastian died 'Suddenly, Last Summer' in mysterious circumstances. Hepburn had read the script, and although she had understood that Sebastian was attracted to men, she had apparently been unaware of what homosexuals did in bed until being enlightened on the subject by gay scriptwriter Gore Vidal. Matters were made infinitely worse by a change in the script that resulted in Sebastian's interest turning to teenage boys. 'Ah, the perils of cruising for chicken!' Paul Roen later observed in High Camp (Leyland Publications, 1993), an essential guide to such films, published four decades later, which, surprisingly, contains just one Elizabeth Taylor movie. Hepburn tried to get out of her contract, but by then it was too late.\n\nClaimed by Tennessee Williams to be semi-autobiographical, Suddenly, Last Summer was promoted behind the scenes as 'a film about homosexuality, cannibalism and frontal lobotomies'. It possesses all the elements of the classic camp spectacular, guaranteeing it will never being taken seriously: Grand Guignol settings, sadistic nuns, lesbian nurses and lunatics, all aided and abetted by masters of the genre, Elizabeth and Monty, and Mercedes McCambridge and Albert Dekker.\n\nElizabeth's gay fans hated the slur against them in the film's publicity poster, which depicted her wearing a swimsuit alongside the caption 'Suddenly, last summer, Cathy knew she was being used for evil!' The 'evil' refers to the men Elizabeth's character, Cathy, procured for her cousin, Sebastian, during his annual visit to the Med, once his mother, Violet Venable (Hepburn), had grown too old for the job. (Those in the know scoffed that Sebastian would have used another man to attract his pick-ups had he been so shy.) Sebastian has died in mysterious circumstances, and in order to protect her son's memory, Violet offers to donate $1 million to surgeon John Cukrowiz's (Monty) decrepit asylum if he lobotomises Cathy, who seems to have flipped her lid, and stops her from revealing the truth about her son's homosexuality. The operation never takes place, of course \u2013 with so much character-actress confusion, it would be inconceivable that Elizabeth Taylor be thought of as insane. Instead, we get a hysterical speech akin to some of those Elizabeth gave during her later political rallies, in which we learn the true circumstances of Sebastian's death: that he was stripped and cannibalised by a group of angry young men, performing the ultimate parody of a blow job, all of which was witnessed by Cathy.\n\nMontgomery Clift's health had deteriorated badly since Raintree County, though the magic of his performances had remained intact. During Suddenly, Last Summer, however, he experienced such difficulty remembering his lines that Joe Mankiewicz wanted to put shooting on hold until a replacement was found. Elizabeth defended him virulently, warning Mankiewicz that if her friend left the production, so would she. Katharine Hepburn, purely on a professional level, could not condone the way the director kept abusing Monty every time he fluffed a scene. On the last day of shooting, having been assured that she would not be required for retakes, she strode up to Mankiewicz and spat in his face.\n\nElizabeth's performance in Suddenly, Last Summer was exemplary, effortlessly matching Montgomery Clift's \u2013 she even held her own against Katharine Hepburn's stilted, over-the-top delivery, especially during the gut-wrenching denouement scene. The New York Herald Tribune, critical of much of Elizabeth's past work, observed, 'If there were ever any doubts about the ability of Miss Taylor to express complex and devious emotions, to deliver a flexible and deep performance, this film ought to remove them.'\n\nIt is, however, chiefly for its inadvertent ultra-camp value that the film will be remembered. Back then, it catapulted Elizabeth into the top-ten box-office stars list, along with her friend Rock Hudson and Doris Day, who had taken America by storm with Pillow Talk (1959). Before its release, Elizabeth had again talked of retirement, but the prospect of earning up to $500,000 per picture now put this thought out of her head. However, it would appear that even this was insufficient. When approached by producer Walter Wanger and Spyros Skouras, the head of Twentieth Century Fox, to consider the lead in Cleopatra (1963), a project that had already been on the stocks for two years, Elizabeth upped her demands. Skouras had spent over $500,000 on the production, planned to save cash by using some of the leftover sets from the 1917 production starring Theda Bara and had pencilled in Joan Collins for the title role. However, he believed Elizabeth would be better. She read the script and denounced it as appalling but agreed to do it all the same so long as the studio paid her $1 million! Skouras's lack of respect for her and her demands was only too evident by his quote to the press: 'Any hundred-dollars-a-week girl can play Cleopatra.' He nonetheless swallowed the bait and increased the budget to $3 million.\n\nIn the meantime, MGM informed Elizabeth that her final film in their about-to-expire contract would be Butterfield 8 (1960) with Laurence Harvey and David Janssen. Her salary was a non-negotiable $125,000. 'It was the story of a nymphomaniac who falls in love with a married man and almost breaks up his marriage,' Eddie Fisher later observed. 'Hmm, now where did that concept come from?' Elizabeth attacked the storyline as 'pornographic' and initially refused to play a character described as 'a non-charging hooker'. MGM, she added, had only offered her such a role because they wanted to exact their revenge on her for leaving them.\n\nElizabeth's producer friend Pandro Berman, who had purchased the rights to John O'Hara's novella some years before but until then had failed to get the project off the ground, tried to talk her into doing the film. Berman quietly pointed out that owing to a 'technicality', MGM could legally hang on to her for another two years and prevent her from working for another studio. However, if she refused to cooperate, she would simply be suspended and not work at all during those two years, which would mean her giving up on Cleopatra. What the canny Berman did not let on was that he owned a huge share of the Butterfield 8 movie rights \u2013 a share which would bring in 40 per cent of the profits, providing the film earned $2 million at the box office, no problem at all given the publicity attached to the star's private life.\n\nElizabeth still refused to do the film and was promptly suspended \u2013 a stalemate that ended one week later when she capitulated, doubtless swallowing a huge wedge of humble pie, although she was no less demanding, particularly when David Janssen dropped out of the production. She asked Berman to give Janssen's part to Eddie Fisher! MGM readily agreed to this: having the new husband around, they figured, might just keep their feisty star in check. Also, although the Fishers would never be regarded as being as lucrative or personable as Eddie and Debbie or the Wagners, MGM hoped that pairing them on the screen would fill cinemas \u2013 providing, of course, they were still together by the time the film was released.\n\nNo sooner had Elizabeth been placated than she fell ill again. Eddie Fisher's hype-inspired success at the Tropicana had brought in more offers, including a season at Las Vegas's Desert Inn and New York's Waldorf Astoria. It was while performing in New York that Time magazine declared him 'an absolute smash', though there would be few hit records for a while. Halfway through the run, Elizabeth began to experience breathing difficulties. When she collapsed and was rushed into the Presbyterian Hospital, doctors diagnosed viral pneumonia.\n\nThere seems little wonder, given certain aspects of what happened next, that some sections of the media found it hard to distinguish when Elizabeth was genuinely ailing or attention seeking. Neither did Fisher help by subsequently claiming that she had asked for her lip gloss whilst in the ambulance. But for almost a week she was confined to an oxygen tent and her condition described as critical. Then, as she started to rally, she attempted to obtain some sort of bonus from her indisposition by asking a specialist at the hospital if he could reverse her earlier operation to tie off the fallopian tubes. There were already rumours of a rift in her marriage, and Elizabeth believed that having a baby with Fisher might help the situation. She was advised that surgery would be risky in her current state of health \u2013 and she had only had the procedure in the first place because doctors had warned that having another child might kill her. Once again, searching for a way to remedy a situation she had created affected her capacity for reason.\n\nThis stubborn reluctance to see sense applied to her demands for Eddie Fisher to be in the new film. It was a hopeless attempt to hold on to him \u2013 not that he was going anywhere. She was obsessed with losing him to the point of making life merry hell for everyone around her. Fisher might have been one of the finest singers of his generation, but he had no proven acting ability, a fact he himself readily confirmed. In 1958, he had appeared with Debbie Reynolds in Bundle of Joy. The film was 65 per cent self-financed and slated by the New York Times as 'No bundle of joy . . . sadly deficient entertainment.' Elizabeth even attempted to transform her husband into a legitimate movie star by getting Montgomery Clift to give him acting lessons. This did not work. According to Fisher, the ever-bombed Monty flaked out during the initial reading with a lighted cigarette in his hand, setting fire to the script whilst Fisher was out of the room! Despite all this, he does exceptionally well in Butterfield 8.\n\nShooting on the film got under way in January 1960. Still weak, Elizabeth was laid low by influenza, though by now MGM were allegedly so tired of trying to work out which of her indispositions were real and which were invented that she would have been forced to work, come what may, had it not been for an impromptu strike at the studio. Elizabeth always professed to hating Butterfield 8, the plot of which was based on the real-life story of Starr Faithful, a Palm Beach call girl who had been murdered in 1931. By the time it reached the screen, of course, O'Hara's work had been so heavily censored that it bore little resemblance to the original. All that was important to MGM was that Elizabeth's character, good-time-girl Gloria Wandrous \u2013 who has the audacity to confess that she was sexually abused as a child and enjoyed the experience \u2013 would have to die, to reassure moralists that 'divine' justice had been dispensed.\n\nOn the positive side, Elizabeth loved working with Lithuanian-born British actor Laurence Harvey. The fact that Harvey was another tormented soul fighting the twin demons of drink and homosexuality (though married three times) drew Elizabeth towards him like a magnet, just as it had to Montgomery Clift. The pair would remain good friends until the end of Harvey's life, which came prematurely at the age of just 45. His portrayal of arrogant Northerner Joe Lampton in Room at the Top (1958) had opened the door to Hollywood, and he had recently completed The Alamo (1960) with John Wayne. In Butterfield 8, Harvey excels as 'low-down rotten heel' Wes Liggett, though, like Elizabeth, he believed that he could have given more of himself with a better script. To this end, during the studio's strike, Elizabeth brought in pals Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Christopher Isherwood to liven up the proceedings. Between them they wrote some 'pretty explicit' love scenes for the Taylor and Fisher characters. Fisher later claimed that one of these had been filmed and that they actually had sex on the set. 'I didn't have an orgasm, but we did everything else,' he recalled, adding that being in front of the camera had been a tremendous turn-on. Of course, had such a scene survived it would have been worth a fortune on the black market. It ended up on the cutting-room floor, and the revised script was 'binned' by Pandro Berman and a new one commissioned from John Michael Hayes, the man responsible for getting Peyton Place past the censors.\n\nProviding one is not put off by Laurence Harvey's 'fidgety toupee', it is a good film with none of the usual Tennessee Williams-style histrionics and raucous vocals. In one memorable scene, the barman at Gloria's local could be describing Elizabeth when he says, 'You don't have to describe her to me. I'd know her with my eyes closed, down the bottom of a coalmine, during an eclipse of the sun . . . She's like catnip to every cat in town!' Art also reflects life as the actress and character merge: the man Gloria loves is incapable of leaving his wealthy wife, because she is the one holding the purse strings, whilst the man is a thorough creep who drinks heavily and is physically violent, traits that \u2013 as with Elizabeth \u2013 only excite her and make her love him more. However, as with so many events in Elizabeth's personal life, all must end badly for Gloria.\n\nBy the time Butterfield 8 was released, with rumours rife that Elizabeth's marriage to Fisher was well and truly on the rocks, the critics would be making inevitable comparisons between what they had watched on the screen and what was actually happening within the Taylor-Fisher camps.\n\n# EIGHT\n\nTHE LAUNCH OF THE \n$40 MILLION BOMB\n\nWITH BUTTERFIELD 8 IN THE CAN, IT WAS TIME FOR THE Cleopatra fiasco to roll into action \u2013 a lengthy process that would be fraught with bust-ups of escalating virulence, threats of lawsuits and financial ruin, and for its star a maelstrom of tantrums, indispositions and more attention seeking than most people could sensibly handle. For starters, Elizabeth was not the only contender for the role that Spyros Skouras hoped would make the film Hollywood's biggest smash since Gone with the Wind (1939) had saved Twentieth Century Fox from the receiver, although her personal and financial demands had been met and she had been told that Cleopatra was hers for the taking.\n\nSkouras worked his way up the Hollywood ladder the hard way. The son of a Greek shepherd, he and his brothers Charles and George arrived penniless in the United States in 1910. Settling in St Louis, they bought up every cinema in the city by the mid-1920s. When these were later snapped up by Warner Brothers, Skouras was appointed head of distribution. In 1932, after a brief spell with Paramount, Skouras took over Fox's movie theatres in New York. In 1942, he was appointed their president, investing in the CinemaScope widescreen process, which, for a while, successfully fought off competition from television, the 'newfangled' craze that had hammered the final nail into the coffin of the all-powerful studio system. Skouras's debut film in this media, The Robe (1953), was a big hit worldwide.\n\nProducer Walter Wanger had a no less illustrious pedigree. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he worked for Columbia, most notably on Greta Garbo's Queen Christina (1933), before becoming an independent producer, releasing such gems as Stagecoach (1939) and The Reckless Moment (1949), with his wife, Joan Bennett. In the early 1950s, he spent time in prison for shooting her agent\/lover but emerged from the scandal virtually unscathed to make Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Both Wanger and Skouras boasted at the time that Cleopatra would prove to be their greatest achievement, though it would actually turn out to be their biggest nightmare.\n\nIn recent years, Fox had endured some of the lowest returns of any of the major studios. Aside from The King and I and The Seven Year Itch (1955), there had been no massive box-office hits, and a series of turkeys had lost the company $100 million.\n\nIn June 1960, Elizabeth was yet to sign her contract. One of the reasons for this was that her films were banned in Egypt, where the film was set, and in the rest of the Arab world because of her conversion to Judaism and links with Israel. Still sitting in the wings, but no longer clear favourite, was Joan Collins \u2013 who, in retrospect, would have been just as good in the role \u2013 along with Susan Hayward, Gina Lollobrigida and, more ridiculously, Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, either of whom would have turned the production into a joke. Marilyn had just been assigned to The Misfits with Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable, and would cause them untold problems, turning up late every day, more often than not high on barbiturates and spreading the rumour that she and Monty were an item. Elizabeth detested her. During a confrontation at The Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills (quoted in Norman Mailer's biography of Monroe), Elizabeth is reputed to have exclaimed, in front of witnesses, 'Get that dyke away from me!'\n\nAll of the above-mentioned actresses were contract players and therefore cheaper to employ than Elizabeth. Aside from Monroe and Bardot, all were more talented. Elizabeth, however, was media manna from heaven \u2013 albeit an indiscriminate liability on account of health and personality issues \u2013 so much so that Wanger and Skouras were willing to stake their reputations in acquiring her, regardless of the cost. Any problems, they declared, would be ironed out along the way.\n\nLike Rock Hudson and the Wagners, Elizabeth had founded her own company, the first of several \u2013 based in Switzerland for tax purposes, MCL was named after her children's initials \u2013 and she was proving to be a surprisingly shrewd businesswoman. When the Fox executives decided that a $1-million salary was too steep, she and her agents negotiated a deal whereby she would be paid a flat rate of $125,000 to be followed by $50,000 for each additional week she was asked to work after a to-be-fixed shooting period. Fox were clearly expecting the production to run pretty much to schedule and could not have foreseen any of the dilemmas of the near future. Additionally, the studio would pick up her expenses tab. This included $3,000 per week in personal expenses, the salaries for her entourage, a suite at the Dorchester in London, first-class air and rail travel, and a Rolls-Royce to be laid on around the clock. It was as if Elizabeth had actually seen into the future or had even planned to take Fox for a ride. Though all of these terms combined came to less than the original $1 million she had demanded, by the time Cleopatra hit the screens the tally would be almost double this amount.\n\nTo make money, Spyros Skouras avowed, money would have to be spent, and vast amounts were dispensed with in getting the project off the ground. In Italy, a rival company were about to begin shooting their version of Cleopatra, with a more sensible budget. Skouras bought them out to the tune of $500,000. He then gave the go-ahead for the sets to be constructed \u2013 recreations of Alexandria and Rome, spread across several acres at Pinewood Studios. By the time he had signed the supporting actors, the sets alone had cost Spyros $750,000. Stephen Boyd was hired to play Mark Antony, and Peter Finch was signed for the role of Caesar. Belfast-born Boyd, ethereally handsome and at the prime of his career, had recently triumphed as Massala in Ben-Hur (1959). Finch, a hell-raiser much admired by Elizabeth, had already worked with her in Elephant Walk. Welsh actor Stanley Baker was signed up to play Mark Antony's favourite, Rufio. Shooting was scheduled to begin at the end of September, with director Rouben Mamoulian confident that a typical British autumn would provide an exact climate to the one enjoyed by ancient Egypt.\n\nBy then, Eddie Fisher had all but been relegated to the role of Mr Taylor \u2013 the press reported him as her factotum\/secretary, on Fox's payroll to the tune of $1,500 a week just to ensure that she got to work on time and sober each day. It was suggested that all they ever had in common was a mutual love for one man \u2013 Mike Todd \u2013 one passionately, the other platonically, and that neither had ever stopped mourning him.\n\nThe first major crisis occurred days into shooting when the studio coiffeurs staged a strike because Elizabeth had brought her personal stylist onto the set. When word got around that she must therefore consider British hairdressers to be useless, which was not the case, the technicians took a sympathy vote and downed tools, forcing the studio to shut for several days until the dispute was resolved. This apparently had an effect on Elizabeth's health, and soon afterwards one of her 'aides' \u2013 almost certainly Eddie Fisher \u2013 informed Mamoulian that she would be unavailable for work because of a high fever. The director was concerned enough, having been forewarned of his star's foibles, to cable Spyros Skouras in Hollywood \u2013 and for Skouras to be on the next plane to London. The press then learned that the production was costing the studio over $100,000 a day.\n\nEddie Fisher, by his own admission, found it necessary to get away from his wife from time to time. 'I was caught in a magnificent trap, and even though I was madly in love with her, it was still a trap,' he recalled, adding that his career had evaporated and that the only singing he was now doing was around the house. Taking a leaf out of Mike Todd's book, Fisher had decided to produce Elizabeth's films himself, which would mean jetting back and forth to Hollywood to strike up various deals and hopefully salvage their flagging marriage by putting some distance between them, thus applying the 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' technique used earlier by Louis B. Mayer to patch up the marriage of Elizabeth's parents. She was reputedly interested in playing the outrageous American dancer Isadora Duncan (later immortalised on the screen by Vanessa Redgrave), mindless of the fact that she could not dance, and the great French tragic actress Sarah Bernhardt, mindless of the fact, some sniped, that she could not act. George Stevens, who had directed her in Giant, was also assembling the cast for The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and wanted Elizabeth to play Mary Magdalene, a move that would have seen her torn to shreds by the moralists. Other projects lined up by Fisher included Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers and L'affaire gouffre, a French drama co-starring Charlie Chaplin.\n\nIn what now appears to have been a trial separation, Fisher put his heart into these projects. 'The truth was, I just wanted to breathe on my own,' he observes in his memoirs, describing the tantrum Elizabeth had thrown when he had bid her au revoir. The nearest he came to signing a deal was when Warner Brothers wanted to team her up again with Paul Newman in Two for the Seesaw (1962). When the studio president learned that she would not work for less than her now statutory $1 million, the deal was off, and Fisher returned to London and inevitably more drama, for his wife was ill again.\n\nNever one to do things by halves, Elizabeth had gained a valuable ally during Fisher's absence: Lord Evans, the Queen's personal physician. When she was suddenly declared seriously ill at the end of October, it was he who booked her into the London Clinic. She also flew in her personal doctor from Los Angeles, and despite the gravity of her condition, insisted on being stretchered out of the front entrance of the Dorchester \u2013 but not until the press had been informed.\n\nFor two weeks, all the public were told was that Elizabeth Taylor was very ill, possibly dying. Sara and Francis Taylor, declaring that her illness was 'connected to the spirit', breezed into town, accompanied by a Christian Scientist practitioner. The trio spent several nights at Elizabeth's bedside, taking it in turn to read aloud passages from Mary Baker Eddy's 1875 tome Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The main thesis of this book is that 'disease is of an illusory nature, curable without medication'. Whilst the cynics scoffed, Elizabeth accredited it with helping her towards her recovery, whilst her husband more realistically suspected that the true cause of her malady was her fondness for painkillers. Recalling how she popped pills prescribed by several different doctors, each with no knowledge of the other, he explained how one day he experimented by taking one of the more unfamiliar medications from Elizabeth's nightstand \u2013 before then he had never knowingly taken anything addictive. 'I couldn't stand up until the next morning,' he wrote, adding that he feared that she might overdose. 'The most I could do was be there in case \u2013 just in case.'\n\nFisher claimed, just as others have, that Elizabeth knew more about these drugs than most doctors, that she was constantly passing out and that the situation became so bad that he had to be prescribed Librium to get a good night's sleep. In fact, he had been addicted to drugs for years, something he might not have been consciously aware of. One of his mentors was alternative physician Max Jacobson, the infamous Dr Feelgood, whose celebrity clients included neurotics Margaret Leighton and Tennessee Williams. Both relied on his notorious 'vitamin' injections and, like Fisher, might not have known of their amphetamine content. Also, because these were not yet illegal in the United States, patients might have interpreted the unpleasant cold-turkey experience that followed once their effect wore off as merely being part of the condition for which the injections had been prescribed. Jacobson usually administered the shots himself, but once a client was hooked, he taught them to self-inject. According to Fisher, whoever was treating Elizabeth also allowed him to inject her with morphine. 'She needed it more than she needed a husband,' he recalled. 'Ah, the things we do for love.' Then it emerged that the cause of her mystery illness was nothing more than an abscessed tooth. This was removed and the patient given the all-clear, much to everyone's relief.\n\nDuring Elizabeth's indisposition, Rouben Mamoulian had worked around her, shooting crowd scenes and scenes with Stephen Boyd that did not involve Cleopatra. No sooner had she returned to the set than she collapsed with severe headaches and had to be rushed back to the London Clinic. Lord Evans and his colleagues now diagnosed something much more serious: inflammation of the spinal cord and brain, possibly meningitis. On 18 November 1960, she was declared 'unfit to work for the foreseeable future'.\n\nFor Twentieth Century Fox, this spelled disaster. Spyros Skouras had luckily, but with some difficulty, taken out a $3-million insurance policy in the event of such a catastrophe befalling the studio, and when it was decided that filming would have to be postponed, not just on account of Elizabeth but because of the fast-approaching winter \u2013 the cameras were getting steamed up due to the cold and there was steam coming from the actors' nostrils and mouths, hardly appropriate for Egypt! \u2013 Lloyds of London suggested that Skouras find himself another Cleopatra and begin shooting elsewhere. Susan Hayward, Joan Collins and Joanne Woodward (a late contender) were no longer available, but Marilyn Monroe \u2013 a hopeless wreck after The Misfits \u2013 was still interested, and so too now were Kim Novak and Shirley MacLaine. Skouras would not hear of this. He announced that he was closing down the production until the new year, by which time he hoped Elizabeth would be fit.\n\nThe tabloids, meanwhile, were having a field day, fuelled by Elizabeth's own passion for the dramatic. The Daily Mail suggested she had been faking it \u2013 keeping away from the set because she had put on weight. Insiders, who were effectively little more than idle speculators, leaked snippets to the American trash mags. One such rumour was that Elizabeth was cheating on Eddie Fisher with gay actor Stephen Boyd and that the Fishers' marriage \u2013 founded solely on their joint grief for Mike Todd \u2013 was all but over. Boyd was enjoying a discreet relationship with the British boxer Freddie Mills, who later left him for singer Michael Holliday, but the press refused to believe that a man even reputed to be involved with Elizabeth Taylor could be anything but red-blooded and did not 'out' him.\n\nWhilst Boyd breathed a sigh of relief, the Fishers sued various tabloids for a collective $8 million. Not that this did much good. A few years earlier, the Daily Mirror had been taken to the cleaners by the flamboyantly homosexual Liberace for suggesting that he was effeminate, since which time the press had been meticulous in checking their sources. No doubt the newspapers would have supplied proof of where their stories had come from had the matter gone to the high court \u2013 and no doubt released more details of the Fishers' troubled marriage. The couple were therefore compelled to settle out of court for smaller amounts than they had anticipated, amounts which have never been disclosed.\n\nShooting on Cleopatra resumed on 3 January 1961, but ground to a halt days later when Rouben Mamoulian denounced the script rewrites as 'tosh'. Acting on a whim, he flew in writer-cum-producer-cum-director Nunnally Johnson from Hollywood, an exercise which did not come cheap. Johnson had worked on Tobacco Road (1941), The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and, more recently, Elvis Presley's Flaming Star (1960). His fee for Cleopatra was a non-negotiable $100,000, and his on-set presence only added to the general mayhem, forcing Mamoulian to confess that he had made an almighty mistake and throw in the towel. Through no fault of his own, he had ended up with just 15 minutes of usable film, which, he told reporters, had cost Twentieth Century Fox around $500,000 a minute!\n\nIt was Elizabeth who suggested that Mamoulian's replacement should be Joe Mankiewicz, much as she loathed him for his treatment of Montgomery Clift during Suddenly, Last Summer. Riding high on the crest of a wave of popularity following the success of the film, Mankiewicz upped his fee in a deal that very nearly catapulted the studio irretrievably into the red. Mankiewicz joint-owned a production company with NBC that Spyros Skouras had been after for some time. Part of the deal was that Fox should buy him out for $3 million \u2013 and pay him a salary way above the norm, as well as 'executives' expenses. As such, he became the highest-paid director in Hollywood history up to that point.\n\nMankiewicz hit Pinewood like a tidal wave. To pacify the film's backers, who were threatening to pull out, he dismissed Nunnally Johnson and the lesser scriptwriters, sacked most of the bit-parts and extras, and gave instructions for the sets to be trashed and rebuilt. Within a month of taking the helm, he had sent the Cleopatra budget soaring to over $12 million. Then he announced a target date: 3 April 1961. By then, he vowed, he would have come up with a script that would not have cinemagoers cringing and a movie with actors worth watching. Until this date, production would be suspended.\n\nElizabeth, now on the $50,000-a-week part of her deal with Fox \u2013 currently being paid just to hang around waiting for the studio call \u2013 accompanied Eddie Fisher to Munich's pre-Lenten carnival. No sooner had they arrived than Fisher was taken ill with suspected appendicitis. Elizabeth insisted upon him being flown back to London \u2013 again suggesting that the condition cannot have been serious. Fisher subsequently confessed that he had invented the illness in order to draw attention to himself for once and thus prevent Elizabeth from self-destructing completely. Some people might think it incredible that he should actually undergo surgery in order to assuage his wife's acute selfishness rather than 'kick her into touch' as some husbands might have done. Such was her power over him.\n\nFisher had barely recovered from his ordeal when Elizabeth's lungs became congested and she almost choked to death during the night of 3 March 1961. Her life was ostensibly saved by one J. Middleton Price, an anaesthetist attending a party at a nearby suite at the Dorchester who performed an emergency tracheotomy. Rushed into the London Clinic, she was diagnosed with pneumonia and placed on the critical list, with a 40 per cent chance of survival. The headline in the next day's Evening Standard read, 'Liz Fights for Her Life'.\n\nOutside the London Clinic, hundreds of fans kept a round-the-clock vigil, mingling with the curious and reporters eager to relay news of her death to their editors who would vie for the best exclusives on her busy love life once she was deceased and incapable of suing. Some of those religious organisation that had previously denounced her held prayer meetings for her recovery \u2013 they were unashamed to admit that they wanted her well so that they would not feel guilty about attacking her. Some even delivered bottles of Lourdes water to the hospital.\n\nLondon had not witnessed such an emotional scene since June 1939, when Gracie Fields had been placed on the danger list after being admitted to the Chelsea Hospital with ovarian cancer. Photographers were offered huge amounts of cash to infiltrate the tight security for an exclusive of Elizabeth's corpse should the worst befall her. Just over a year earlier, the same incentive had been put forward when French heart-throb actor G\u00e9rard Philipe had died in Paris. Elizabeth's parents flew in to be with her, this time without their Christian Science miracle worker. Montgomery Clift called every day; John Wayne and Tennessee Williams, working in the capital, dropped in to see her. Every hour on the hour there was a bulletin: these either declared her to be slightly on the mend or sinking fast.\n\nOn 10 March 1961, Elizabeth was taken off the critical list, though she would remain hospitalised until the end of the month. There was absolutely no hope of her returning to the Cleopatra set for the time being, but the showbiz wheel had to keep turning, even if the star was out of action. Upon her discharge, Elizabeth was driven to Heathrow, looking pale under her make-up but still every inch the movie legend in her furs and jewels. On a specially equipped plane, she was flown back to Los Angeles to pick up a Best Actress Oscar for Butterfield 8. Many critics believed that the award was given to her not on account of her acting abilities, but out of pity \u2013 others suggested that this was the Academy's way of apologising for their harsh treatment of her during the Fisher-Reynolds split, though she had, of course, brought this upon herself. 'They always gave you an Academy Award when they thought you were going to die,' Marlene Dietrich told me. 'It was their way of salving their conscience \u2013 \"The Deathbed Oscar\" \u2013 and many believe that Elizabeth Taylor died a death every time she stepped in front of a camera.' Elizabeth was presented with the award by Yul Brynner. Her chief rival had been Shirley MacLaine, nominated for The Apartment (1960), who later observed, 'I lost to a tracheotomy.'\n\nElizabeth embarked on a strange and most mysterious relationship during this period with Max Lerner, the 59-year-old ex-Harvard and Brandeis University professor and columnist with the New York Post who had penned a glowing review of her performance in Suddenly, Last Summer. Lerner had also defended her against some of the vitriolic comments that had appeared in the press following her marriage to Eddie Fisher, particularly those made by Robert Ruark, who had denounced her as 'a monument to busting up other people's homes'. Praising Elizabeth and Eddie for their frank expression of their feelings for one another, despite the hurt this had caused, Lerner observed, 'This is a case where joyous candour is far better than a hysterical show of virtue. Where so many people have been desensitised in our world, I welcome this forthright celebration of the life of the senses.'\n\nBiographer Kitty Kelley later compared Elizabeth and Max Lerner with Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller: 'The perfect complement of \"The Brain\" and \"The Body\", a melding of the cerebral and sexual.' It is unlikely Lerner would have bothered watching a film such as Suddenly, Last Summer had it not been for an impromptu meeting with Elizabeth in June 1959, when he had been covering the summit talks between Prime Minister Macmillan and President Eisenhower. It was obviously love \u2013 or lust \u2013 at first sight on his part, and now that her fourth marriage was crumbling, Elizabeth welcomed the attention of a worldly wise, super-intelligent man as an antidote to the inarticulate braggarts she had been involved with in the past.\n\nSpeaking to McCall's magazine in September 1974, Lerner retrospectively confirmed their relationship: 'It strengthened Elizabeth's self-respect, her index of self-worth.' Certainly, her confidence needed a boost after one violent husband, one who was pathologically docile and two more who believed that true love was expressed by way of the wallet, not the heart. According to Lerner, their affair was sufficiently serious for them to contemplate marriage, though with a 32-year age gap, and with both parties still married, this would have created an even bigger scandal than the one involving Eddie Fisher. Elizabeth also trusted Lerner enough to confide her innermost secrets, which she now wanted to share with the world, no doubt wishing to set the record straight should she fall ill again and not survive. She announced that this project would be called Elizabeth Taylor: Between Life and Death, and an undisclosed publisher paid her $250,000 for the privilege of opening her heart. The exercise produced some 200 pages of transcripts from the taped interviews given when she was feeling up to it. Her friend Roddy McDowall compiled a collection 50 never-before-seen photographs for use in the book, an exercise he would later repeat for his famous Double Exposure (William Morrow and Company, 1993) tome. Though the project was subsequently abandoned, some of these confidences are believed to have been incorporated into An Informal Memoir by Elizabeth Taylor (Harper & Row, 1965). Elizabeth's relationship with Lerner, like all the others, quickly fizzled out, though the journalist would remain a close friend until his death, aged 89, in 1992.\n\nSpyros Skouras, meanwhile, announced that Cleopatra would resume shooting in Hollywood in June, and the hardly used Pinewood sets were dismantled and crated up. They were halfway across the Atlantic when a Twentieth Century Fox executive reminded Spyros of the clause in Elizabeth's contract stipulating that MCL had insisted upon the film being made outside the United States for tax purposes. Skouras spent $400,000 creating a huge artificial lake for the film's battle scenes but now had to have this filled in, selling the land at a loss to a real-estate company. Then he began searching for what he considered would be the next best thing to ancient Egypt and Rome: a location in Italy.\n\nTo acquire his director, Skouras had been compelled to buy some of Joe Mankiewicz's holdings. Now, to raise additional funds for what was already being labelled 'Hollywood's costliest turkey', he found himself selling 250 acres of Twentieth Century Fox's studio lots in Beverly Hills. Instructions were given to reconstruct Rome's Forum on a 12-acre back-lot, whilst the Alexandria site sprung up across 19 more, with the studio conveniently forgetting the stipulation in Elizabeth's contract that filming should be done outside the USA for tax purposes. Skouras then commissioned an exact replica of Cleopatra's barge \u2013 at a cost of $100,000. Replicas were made of 200 statues, 30,000 ancient weapons and 25,000 costumes. This done, he summoned his leading lady to work \u2013 only to be informed by her doctors that she would require another three months to recuperate. She was, however, apparently well enough for socialising and attending official functions. On 8 July 1961, Elizabeth and Attorney General Robert Kennedy spearheaded a fund-raising event for the Cedars-Sinai Hospital, with guests paying up to $3,000 to hear her open her heart about her near-death experiences in an 'off the cuff' speech, actually scripted by Joe Mankiewicz:\n\nDying is many things, but most of all it is wanting to live. Throughout many critical hours in the operating theatre it was as if every nerve, every muscle were being strained to the last ounce of my strength. Gradually and inevitably, that last ounce was drawn, and there was no more breath. I remember I had focused desperately on the hospital light hanging directly above me. It had become something I needed almost fanatically to continue to see, the vision of light itself. Slowly it faded and dimmed like a well-done theatrical effect to blackness. I died. Shall I tell you what it was like? Being down a long, dark tunnel, and there was a small light at the end. I had to keep looking at that light. It was painful, but beautiful too. It was like childbirth: painful but so beautiful.\n\nCynics were not slow in pointing out that Elizabeth had never experienced childbirth, having undergone three Caesarean sections. The full speech, syndicated to newspaper columns around the world and frequently dipped into by Elizabeth for future interviews and press conferences, might have been contrived, but the sentiment, linked to her need to reach out and help others, was heartfelt and genuine. When she and Eddie Fisher chipped in with $100,000 for the cause, the well-heeled guests reached for their chequebooks, and the evening raised over $8 million! The world's press had spent years detailing every last moment of her complicated private life; now they were witnessing the birth of Elizabeth Taylor the great humanitarian. What a tremendous pity, then, that over the next decade this quality would be overshadowed by her mania for spending vast amounts of cash on what some people considered to be trivialities.\n\nThree days later, the Fishers flew to Russia for the Moscow Film Festival. This time, everyone knew who she was. The couple and their entourage, which included Rex Kennamer, stayed at the Sovietskaya Hotel. Again, the subject of Anna Karenina was brought up. Elizabeth now wanted the film to be shot on location in Leningrad, but, again, nothing came of it. There was also a minor incident of sorts when Eddie Fisher was invited to sing at the Kremlin \u2013 the first American to do so since Paul Robeson. Elizabeth and Gina Lollobrigida turned up wearing identical Yves St Laurent dresses.\n\nBy early September, Elizabeth and her court had temporarily relocated to Rome: an assortment of servants and animals that decamped, at Fox's expense, to the 20-room Villa Papa near the Cinecitt\u00e0 studios, where the Cleopatra sets had been reconstructed to the tune of $1 million. Stephen Boyd, Peter Finch and Stanley Baker had moved on to new projects by this time. Because they had had no part in the delays, they retained their combined salaries of over $350,000, and Elizabeth had a new Caesar and Mark Antony \u2013 Rex Harrison and Welsh actor Richard Burton. Playing Rufio was Martin Landau. And the so-called 'Roman Scandal' was set to begin.\n\n# NINE\n\nTHAT INTEMPERATE VAMP\n\nRICHARD BURTON HAD RECENTLY WON A TONY AWARD for his interpretation of King Arthur in the stage musical Camelot \u2013 a role later reprised by Rock Hudson. Because this was still playing to packed audiences on Broadway, Spyros Skouras paid the producers $50,000 to release the actor from his contract. Bearing in mind that the production had only a few months to run, and the fact that Burton would be kept hanging around because of Elizabeth's indisposition, this money could have been saved, though, of course, the studio did not know this at the time.\n\nInitially, Burton was reluctant to play opposite Elizabeth, who he did not rate as much of an actress. The $250,000 fee offered by Fox, along with a villa and all its trappings for the proposed three-month shoot, convinced him to change his mind. His one condition was that his friend and Camelot co-star (and alleged lover) Roddy McDowall be given the part of Octavian. In the film, McDowall plays him as an amalgamation of his past and future roles: camp, sexually ambiguous and slightly unhinged. Burton further insisted that McDowall and his current boyfriend also be allowed to stay at the villa.\n\nWhen asked about his new role at a subsequent press conference, he let out an enforced sigh and pronounced, 'Ah, well, I suppose I've got to put on my breastplate and play opposite Miss Tits!' When reminded by Hedda Hopper that such an expression was impolite, he barked, 'Then I shall call her MGM's Miss Mammary \u2013 good at getting sick and acquiring husbands!'\n\nOn the first day of shooting, as if on cue, the heavens opened, and it poured almost every day for a month, delaying production and sending the already sky-high costs soaring even further. Walter Wanger reported that the film was costing him over $60,000 a day. There were further delays when workmen extending the Alexandria site unearthed a large number of unexploded mines \u2013 it emerged that the area had been a minefield during the Second World War. Richard Burton, who does not appear much in the first half of the film, spent his time doing what he was best at \u2013 drinking, hell-raising, womanising and being generally unpleasant \u2013 leaving his wife Sybil at the villa. Joe Mankiewicz, still rewriting the script and making drastic changes on a daily basis, only added to the mayhem. When he asked Skouras to postpone shooting for a whole month until he had completed the script, Skouras announced that there would be two films \u2013 the first, Caesar and Cleopatra, would end with a cliffhanger and would be released whilst a sequel was being completed, perhaps in six months' time. Upon hearing that he might be 'laid off', Burton threatened to sue. By then, he had Elizabeth firmly on side, having decided that he did like 'Miss Tits' and very much so!\n\nThe 'moment of truth' occurred on 22 January 1962 when Elizabeth and Burton filmed their first love scene. Later, she would recall, 'I kind of resented him, and I was certainly determined not to become another notch on his belt.' Eddie Fisher also had his reservations. 'Even if he hadn't destroyed my marriage, I would have disliked him,' he wrote in his memoirs. 'From the first moment I met him, I thought him an arrogant slob.'\n\nOn the 20th anniversary of Richard Burton's death in 2004, the Daily Mail ran a feature in which Glenys Roberts, writing about the actor's homosexual conquests, observed, 'Some claim he first tried to seduce Liz's then husband Eddie Fisher and turned to her only when he was rebuffed.' True or not, she fell for him the way she had other gay or bisexual men: Glenn Davis, Nicky Hilton, Montgomery Clift and Michael Wilding. Like them, she said, he positively oozed sensitivity and roguish charm, and his 'poetic voice' sent shivers down her spine. Clearly, her marriage problems had compelled her to search for a scapegoat, an excuse to ditch Eddie Fisher, following the familiar pattern of her previous marriages to Hilton and Wilding. With Stephen Boyd out of the picture, it might well be that she subconsciously plumped for the best that was on offer and allowed nature to take its course.\n\nElizabeth claimed that the crunch came one morning when Burton was hung-over and suffering from the shakes. He asked her to hold his coffee cup to his lips whilst he drank, playing to her maternal instincts, just as the older Jimmy, Rock and Monty had done in the past. Even so, although he obviously found her sexually attractive, Burton was still able to criticise what he interpreted as her lack of professionalism \u2013 her 'useless' acting and 'inaudible' voice \u2013 until Joe Mankiewicz informed him that her speaking voice could be captured on film with specialised sound techniques just as effectively as everyone else's, as happened with Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando.\n\nWith Burton, this was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Although he excelled at Shakespeare, with his booming voice and mellifluous accent, his movie roles alternated between the sublime and the downright abominable. That he used Elizabeth as a ladder to scale the summit of the global publicity machine goes without saying \u2013 though this did not add much to his prestige, and once he began working with her, there were many people, including most critics, who regarded him as little more than an ebullient, bother-causing, drink-addled buffoon.\n\nNeither was Richard Burton particularly good-looking once he reached 40, something which did not sit well with his acute narcissism. A severe case of acne during his late teens had left him with a face covered in pockmarks. Before shooting a scene, these had to be filled in with heavy layers of make-up \u2013 in some later close-ups, he resembles a hammy, over-painted villain from a silent movie. Burton was also less than fastidious when it came to personal hygiene: during drunken binges he would go for days, sometimes weeks on end, without washing or taking a shower. Confidence in his own abilities, however, was not lacking. Like Mike Todd before him, he genuinely believed himself to be God's gift to mankind, and this chutzpah gave him the hard edge and courage to brave whatever insults the critics flung his way \u2013 and in his later years there were considerably more of these than accolades.\n\nLike Elizabeth, despite his seven Oscar nominations (but no actual winners), Richard Burton had a phenomenal knack of choosing turkeys. Born Richard Walter Jenkins on 10 November 1925, the 12th of a Pontrhydyfen coalminer's 13 children, he liked to boast that he had been raised in abject poverty. This is untrue. After their mother's death, when Burton was about two, the Jenkins brood was farmed out to various relatives. He was the first in his family to attend secondary school, and as an impressionable teenager he was unofficially adopted by a local schoolteacher called Philip Burton, who recognised his budding acting talents, became his legal guardian and gave him his name.\n\nPhilip Burton's extra-curricular activities included writing, directing and acting in radio plays, and he had important contacts in London. The relationship between the boy and his mentor, whose earlier schoolboy prot\u00e9g\u00e9-lover was killed in the Second World War, is believed to have progressed beyond the platonic. Encouraged by this kindly man, albeit one who might have been breaking the law, the young Burton finished school, joined the ATC cadets and as part of their training programme was assigned to a six-month stint in Oxford, where he read classics and joined the university dramatic society. In 1944, he was befriended by fellow miner's son Emlyn Williams, believed by many people to be the greatest Welsh actor, writer and director of his generation.\n\nAgain, Burton and Williams were almost certainly lovers for a time, and it was Williams, something of a matinee idol with lean features and a shock of dark, unruly hair, who gave Burton his first professional stage role, in The Druid's Rest. Like Philip Burton, he was unable to control his headstrong pupil: Burton the younger was a heavy beer drinker from the age of 14, and he now took up womanising with a vengeance \u2013 the handful of men he had slept with had been offered a good time solely with the purpose of furthering his acting career.\n\nBurton met 19-year-old Sybil Williams whilst shooting his first film, The Last Days of Dolwyn , directed (in the Welsh language) by Emlyn Williams, and they married soon after its release in 1949. Their first daughter, Kate, was born in 1957 and was followed two years later by Jessica, who was born severely autistic and placed in an institution, where she remained for the whole of Burton's life.\n\nOn the stage, with his booming voice, perfect pronunciation and commanding presence, Burton quickly established himself as an actor almost in the same class as Sir Laurence Olivier. His greatest triumph was in Hamlet at the Old Vic, where he was perfectly at ease with the largely gay clique headed by John Gielgud. His first British films \u2013 notably My Cousin Rachel (1952) and a stunning contribution to The Robe \u2013 should have set Burton in good stead for celluloid greatness. Meeting Elizabeth Taylor, however, and his insistence on constantly appearing with her on the screen \u2013 attempting but failing to emulate the legendary stage partnership of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne \u2013 would ultimately result in critical ridicule.\n\nBy the time of his involvement with Elizabeth, Burton's finest screen performances were behind him. To a certain extent, she taught him how to become a better film actor \u2013 as Cleopatra progresses, we witness the annoyingly over-the-top Burton boom gradually giving way to a more controlled tone, along with a decrease in the histrionics, a development that was welcomed by theatre audiences. Sadly, these traits returned once Cleopatra was in the can, especially in the films he made with his future wife. Harry and Michael Medford, in their famous book The Golden Turkey Awards (Angus & Robertson, 1980), polled a dozen films in which Burton and Taylor appeared, separately or together, amongst the worst movies of all time, and awarded him the gong for Worst Actor of All Time. Speaking of Burton's 'conscientious hard work to ruin nearly ever film in which he appeared', the Medfords concluded:\n\nWhen he is good, he is very, very good, but when he is bad \u2013 well, he's just the pits. Anyone can make a bad film when working with hack directors and inane scripts, but it takes a true genius like Burton to come up with garbage when teamed with serious artists like Vincente Minnelli, Peter Ustinov, Vittorio de Sica and Joseph Losey. King Richard has developed a sort of Midas syndrome in reverse: everything he touches turns to trash. In forms of wasted opportunities, of promising projects soured through his personal efforts, no one in Hollywood can equal him.\n\nThe first hint of a relationship between Elizabeth and Burton appeared in the Italian tabloids in late January 1962, causing concern for Twentieth Century Fox, who, of course, should not have been surprised. Burton had already told Joe Mankiewicz that he had slept with all of his leading ladies except Julie Andrews, because they had been incapable of resisting his Welsh charms, which had apparently compensated \u2013 until they had grown fed up of him \u2013 for his coarseness and almost permanent drunken state. Burton was also currently involved with a Copacabana chorus girl named Patricia Tunder, who had been promised a small part in Cleopatra in exchange for the usual favours. Now, she was sent packing.\n\nEddie Fisher witnessed Richard Burton at his worst. They were in the same room when Burton called Elizabeth and audaciously reproached her for being unfair to her husband! 'I don't know what she said to him,' Fisher revealed in his autobiography, 'but he screamed at her, \"You fucking sagging-titted, no-talent Hollywood cunt. This man loves you so much . . . Elizabeth, if you're not careful, I'm going to take him upstairs, and I'm going to fuck him!\"' This admission adds credence to the later rumour that Burton tried to seduce Fisher first, resurrected by the aforementioned Glenys Roberts in her anniversary tribute in the Daily Mail. Fisher and others have also maintained that Elizabeth derived sadistic pleasure from such vulgarity, just as she enjoyed being knocked around by her men; indeed, she could out-vulgar the best of them. One gets a pretty accurate indication of how the Taylor-Burton relationship was, even in its early days, by watching one of the key scenes from Cleopatra, after Mark Antony's defeat at Actium. When they argue and she slaps him three times, he gives her such a backhander (reputedly for real), before going completely off his head, that she is sent sprawling \u2013 yet this only makes her want him more.\n\nElizabeth's volatile, extremely public relationship with Burton completed her transition from femme fatale to gay icon. Like many of her predecessors and contemporaries, she perceived suffering and self-destruction to be the key to a happiness that was never found; in fact, were it to be found, this would have defeated the whole objective. One thinks of Judy Garland, \u00c9dith Piaf, Joan Crawford and Billie Holiday as being others who genuinely believed that the path to true love was paved with pain and that no man was worthy of their love until he had displayed an ability to use his fists. Piaf and Crawford sported their black eyes and bruises with immeasurable pride, and stunned the world by disclosing every intimate, angry moment with uncompromising honesty. Nicky Hilton had knocked Elizabeth around, but this had been abuse. Sexually, Michael Wilding and Eddie Fisher had been less exciting, perhaps because they had been too mild-mannered and gentlemanly \u2013 from the point of view of the femme fatale, weak. Richard Burton was like Mike Todd: verbal abuse and physical violence were perceived as essential foreplay. 'I adore fighting with him,' Elizabeth told Life magazine in December 1964. 'It's rather like a small atom bomb going off. Sparks fly, walls shake, floors reverberate!'\n\nThe truth surrounding the Fishers' collapsed marriage was relayed to the US public by the ever-reliable Louella Parsons, whose report appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner on 14 January 1964. Louella was keeping her cards close to her chest regarding her sources, and it was widely rumoured that Twentieth Century Fox had used her as a 'plant' \u2013 a paid informant to bolster public interest in the forthcoming film the studio were promoting, and about which people were probably already sick of reading. Copies of Louella's feature were wired to news agencies all over Europe, where they were often badly translated, causing a heavy increase in paparazzi following the 'guilty' couple around.\n\nWith the costs of Cleopatra escalating way beyond reason, the last thing the studio needed was another Elizabeth Taylor sex scandal. Walter Wanger expressed genuine remorse that his first Mark Antony, Stephen Boyd, was no longer around, as she would never have met Burton and the affair would never have happened. The Italian newspapers reported a suicide attempt when Elizabeth passed out after washing down too many barbiturates with alcohol following a confrontation with Eddie Fisher. There were further rumours of a marriage rift when Sybil Burton unexpectedly returned to New York, claiming that she was visiting Philip Burton, who was sick.\n\nRichard Burton temporarily evaded this mass-media intrusion by flying to Paris to shoot a cameo for The Longest Day (1962). He was still absent on 18 February 1962 when the press reported Elizabeth's latest indisposition \u2013 variously described as food poisoning, nervous anxiety and a recurrence of her earlier meningitis but most likely another attention-seeking suicide bid following another bust-up with Eddie Fisher. He later confirmed this in his memoirs. 'She grabbed a bottle of Seconal that was sitting on her night table and poured a handful of pills down her throat,' he wrote, adding that Elizabeth had hit him when he had tried to shove his hand in her mouth to make her vomit. She then rushed into the bathroom to down more sedatives and started foaming at the mouth. According to Fisher, rather than take her to hospital, Elizabeth was given a life-saving injection by an elderly German doctor, who was paid $1,000 in the hope of keeping the incident out of the papers. It was another example of Elizabeth trying to make Fisher, the hapless witness to her selfish folly, feel responsible for her actions. 'She trusted me enough to make a suicide attempt from which only I could save her,' Fisher concluded.\n\nThe scandal this time around was far worse than the Taylor, Fisher and Reynolds fiasco, and over the next few years would give rise to more mad scenes than all of Elizabeth's Tennessee Williams tantrums put together. The Cinecitt\u00e0 lot was besieged by reporters from all corners of the globe, whilst Richard Burton was flushed out of his Parisian bolthole. It was around this time that he uttered the famous statement to friends that has since entered Hollywood folklore: 'I've just fucked Elizabeth Taylor in the back of my car.' Yet in a press statement he fervently denied 'La Scandale', as he haughtily called it. Not that anyone believed him. Most of the reporters present had already acquired titbits from supposedly reliable on-set sources, and these confirmed the fact that the pair were an item. And when Burton swore on his own life, delivering a boisterous speech that would have done the Old Vic proud, that there was absolutely no truth in any of the rumours, the press believed him less. There was just the one exception when an Italian tabloid swallowed the story that Joe Mankiewicz fed them to cover up his own affair with Elizabeth, which had begun during the filming of Suddenly, Last Summer. Mankiewicz only inflamed the situation by grabbing Burton, kissing him on the lips and announcing to the stunned journalist, 'There you are. I'm the one having the affair with Richard Burton!'\n\nIn a desperate last bid to salvage what remained of his marriage, Eddie Fisher did what he and his predecessor, Mike Todd, were best at: he attempted to buy Elizabeth's affection, and the press, of course, were kept informed of the tally. He paid around $300,000 for the Chateau Ariel, a luxurious chalet in the soon-to-be-fashionable Swiss ski resort of Gstaad. The Aga Khan lived nearby. Elizabeth would retain the property once Fisher was out of the picture, and in the future her neighbours would include Julie Andrews, Peter Sellers and the Robert Wagners.\n\nOn 27 February 1962, Elizabeth's 30th birthday, Fisher threw a party in the Hostaria dell'Orso's very exclusive Borgia Suite, inviting all the leading lights from Cleopatra, except Richard Burton, and representatives from every major newspaper and magazine in Europe. As the flashbulbs popped, Elizabeth squealed with delight as she unwrapped the 'little gifts' her estranged husband had bought her: a ten-carat diamond ring and the \u00a3100,000 'Cleopatra' mirror, a commissioned Bulgari creation that opened out into an emerald encrusted asp. Richard Burton later retorted that he had given her the best present of all: the 'ruby-tipped snake' he kept inside his trousers.\n\nBy the end of March, Elizabeth and Burton cast their fate to the winds by openly socialising. In America a few weeks earlier, Hedda Hopper had let the cat out of the bag, penning a feature for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner entitled 'Row Over Actor Ends Liz and Eddie's Marriage'. Hedda did not feel the need to name the actor \u2013 by then, everyone knew who he was. She blamed Elizabeth for the break-up but criticised both parties for leaving their offspring behind. 'I only hope Eddie's children will recognise him when he gets home,' she sniped. Fisher would neither see nor speak to Elizabeth for almost two years.\n\nWhen Fisher returned to the United States, public opinion was very firmly on his side, despite Hedda Hopper's acid comments. On both sides of the Atlantic, those who had attacked him for cheating on Debbie Reynolds now levelled their spite against Elizabeth. Italy's Il Tempo called her 'that intemperate vamp who devours husbands'. The Pope denounced her as immoral, and the Vatican's official publication, L'Osservatore Della Dominica, declared her 'an erotic vagrant' and attacked her for her latest 'foible', which was a desire to adopt a baby:\n\nDo not such institutions consider the facts before handing out these children? Do they not request moral references? Would it not be better to entrust this little girl to an honest bricklayer or modest housewife than to you, dear lady, and your fourth husband? The bricklayer and housewife will have worked harder and made serious sacrifices for the child \u2013 but not you, dear lady, who have other things to do!>\n\nBefore separating from Eddie Fisher, the couple had made plans to adopt, as they were unable to have children of their own. Negotiations with a Greek orphanage run by Catholic nuns had broken down because of the Fishers' Jewish faith. Instead, they had advertised anonymously for a baby in the German press, with the help of their actress friend Maria Schell. They had subsequently been offered a nine-month-old girl called Petra Heisig, whom they had named Maria, after Schell. The baby had been born with a deformed hip, and her birth parents had been told by doctors that she might not walk unless operated on.\n\nBecause her birth parents were extremely poor, they had put Maria up for adoption, an act which today might attract adverse criticism. Similarly, any would-be adoptive parent, not least of all a millionairess, might today receive short shrift from society for being seen to have taken advantage of a sensitive situation, in this case by removing a child from its mother, as opposed to paying for the operation. In 1962, however, attitudes were different, and in any case the press were not made aware of the full story. They saw only an 'immoral' woman, denounced by the Holy See, embroiled in a messy love triangle and now intent on adopting as a single parent. She was allowing her heart to rule her head, it is true, but what must be remembered is that she was not being entirely selfish. Her caring side was also demonstrated many years later when she nursed Rock Hudson through the final days of his agonising and often messy illness. Elizabeth was like a child in a candy store, grabbing everything in sight, but, ultimately, in her diminished way of reasoning, she genuinely believed she was acting in Maria's best interests by giving her a life beyond her wildest dreams. The biased media were unable, or unwilling, to see this.\n\nIn America, House of Representatives member Iris Blitch proposed a motion that, had it been passed, would have resulted in Elizabeth's passport being confiscated. She was, Mrs Blitch declared, an 'undesirable with no respect for the name of decent American womanhood'. Elizabeth even considered suing the Daily Mirror when it picked up on this, their columnist Cassandra observing, 'The lady is one long eruption of matrimonial agitation.' This was not nearly as offensive as some of the other comments printed about her, but Elizabeth thought about taking legal action for no other reason than Liberace had successfully sued Cassandra a few years earlier for denouncing him as 'an unmanly man'. The fact that he was speaking the truth on both occasions prevented Elizabeth from taking the matter further. The backlash from the other tabloids who were saying more or less the same thing would have been merciless.\n\nThere was also mass condemnation from most of the 30 million viewers who tuned in to The Ed Sullivan Show on a regular basis. Six years earlier, Sullivan's condemnation of Elvis Presley's on-stage gyrations had resulted in the singer being filmed only from the waist upwards. Now, he announced, 'I do hope youngsters will not be persuaded that the sanctity of marriage has been invalidated by the appalling example of Mrs Taylor-Fisher and married man Burton.'\n\nOn a lighter note, but no less explosive, a Cleopatra sketch featured in The Perry Como Show, depicting the Queen of the Nile with a slave named Eddie. Even Fisher himself partook in the mickey-taking. Back in demand as a singer, he began his act with 'Arrividerci Roma' and at New York's Winter Garden did a duet with Juliet Prowse of 'I'm Cleo, the Nymph of the Nile'. Meanwhile, Elizabeth did not mind Decca re-releasing Joan Regan and Dickie Valentine's 'Cleo And Meo', which had been recorded in 1954 and really had nothing to do with La Scandale, but she did take exception to Prowse singing, 'She uses her pelvis\/Just like Elvis\/There wasn't a man she couldn't get\/Such was Cleo's problem on and off the set!'\n\nThings started to get really out of hand when Twentieth Century Fox began receiving death threats from religious and moral fanatics. The studio drafted in two dozen armed policemen, who mingled amongst the Cleopatra extras dressed as Roman soldiers. The mockery and defamation, deserved or not, would have far-reaching effects on Elizabeth. Henceforth, all of her employees would be compelled to sign confidentiality agreements. Eddie Fisher, too, was made to sign an affidavit promising not to rubbish her in the future. This prevented him from publishing an autobiography begun around this time \u2013 he had to wait until 1981 before bringing out My Life, My Loves, though the real kiss-and-tell Been There, Done That came out in 1999, long after the dust had settled.\n\nThe trade press in Hollywood blamed Spyros Skouras for the Taylor-Burton scandal, claiming that he was sufficiently aware of the character of each and should never have cast them together in the first place. Skouras rushed off to Rome to offer them an ultimatum \u2013 cool it, or else. Their response to this was that unless Skouras and his 'monkeys' let them be, they would drop out of the film, regardless of the personal cost to themselves. Skouras retreated.\n\nMeanwhile, as Sybil withdrew to the rented villa in Rome and waited with Roddy McDowall for La Scandale to die down, as always happened with her husband's affairs, news came in of Eddie Fisher's nervous breakdown. Hooked on Max Jacobson's amphetamine shots and a total wreck, he had been approached by Mafia boss Frank Costello. Fisher, who had recently taken to carrying a gun, recalled how Costello had told him, 'Anything you need, you come to me,' which the jilted husband had interpreted as an offer to remove Burton from the scene. Naturally, he declined, believing that if Burton stayed with Elizabeth, he would suffer soon enough!\n\nAssuming Eddie and Sybil to be out of the picture, Burton rented a villa overlooking the sea, where he hoped that he and Elizabeth might spend their weekends away from the paparazzi. No sooner had they settled in for their first sojourn than he received an impassioned call from Sybil: she was anxious for him to return to Rome and give their marriage another go. Burton acquiesced, and when Elizabeth threatened to kill herself if he left, he simply shrugged his shoulders and told her to go ahead. As had happened during the row with Eddie Fisher, she swallowed a fistful of pills and had to be rushed to hospital to have her stomach pumped. Again, the studio saved face by announcing that she had food poisoning.\n\nFour days later, Elizabeth returned to the set. The bruises around her eyes and nose, she said, were on account of the oxygen mask she had been compelled to wear \u2013 they had actually been inflicted by Burton, whilst in a drunken rage, though Elizabeth had given as good as she had got. When the make-up department was unable to conceal them, an exasperated Joe Mankiewicz halted production for two weeks. There was a second incident around the same time, reported by Time magazine, when shooting was put on hold after Burton gave her another good hiding.\n\nSybil Burton suddenly found herself facing more reporters than she had seen in her life after her husband, interviewed by columnist Sheilah Graham, maintained that his affair with Elizabeth had been a 'nine-day wonder', and insisted upon her printing the statement, 'By the time the film's released, everyone will have forgotten about it \u2013 unless something new happens, like my divorcing my wife to marry Elizabeth, and there's no chance of that happening!'\n\nBy that point, Twentieth Century Fox had had enough. At the beginning of June, the studio's chief executives flew to Rome, summarily dismissed Walter Wanger and ordered drastic cuts to the script to curb future expenditure. Elizabeth's salary was stopped to make up for all the time she had not worked but still been paid. Richard Burton's salary had trebled for some reason and Rex Harrison's had quadrupled, but through no fault of their own, so the increases were allowed to ride. By the end of the month, Spyros Skouras's tenure as Fox's president was terminated, and Darryl F. Zanuck was welcomed back into the fold to replace him. Skouras later commented that the move had prevented him from suffering a stroke or worse.\n\nAt once, the mogul who had made Twentieth Century Fox in the first place went for Elizabeth's jugular, blaming her for much of the Cleopatra fiasco \u2013 by now the budget had surpassed the $30-million mark. When Joe Mankiewicz attempted to defend her, Zanuck fired him and declared that he would not be permitted to take part in editing the finished footage of the film he had struggled so hard to complete \u2013 over eight hours so far. Zanuck then rubbed salt into his wounds by issuing a press statement: 'After spending two years on Fox's prized project \u2013 and around $35 million of our shareholders' money \u2013 Mr Mankiewicz is now taking a well-earned rest.'\n\nElizabeth complained loudly about the wretched treatment that she and Mankiewicz had to endure and promptly ended up with egg on her face when Zanuck called another press conference and granted the public access to 'privileged' information about his leading lady's greed. Elizabeth had demanded $1 million for the picture, he said, but she'd effectively been paid twice this amount and would earn even more when the film was released, because she had negotiated a deal, kept under wraps until then, that would reap a whopping 35 per cent of the profits. What the press were not told was that Fox had every intention of offsetting a large portion of these earnings to meet the exorbitant cost of the production. Zanuck subsequently issued Elizabeth and Burton with writs totalling $50 million \u2013 for tardiness and for impeding the film's future commerciality with their shocking off-set conduct. Zanuck later dropped his demands to $44 million. Elizabeth and Burton filed a counter-suit, and the matter was settled out of court.\n\nThe Cleopatra treadmill ground to a complete stop in July 1962. One of the last scenes to be shot was that aboard the golden barge, which had meant the whole production relocating to Ischia off the coast of Naples. The studio facetiously arranged for a boat-ambulance to be on standby \u2013 just in case Elizabeth collapsed due to 'post-production stress' and had to be ferried across to the nearby city. She did not, and for the time being she and Burton went their separate ways \u2013 he to Pays de Galles, his villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, and she to her Gstaad chalet, one of the four homes she had bought with Eddie Fisher, the others being in Las Vegas, Westchester and Jamaica. Here she was joined by her parents, who, of course, believed the story that she had been the unwilling victim these last few months.\n\nCleopatra was released in June 1963, a $40-million, beautifully filmed exercise in Hollywood folly, although some critics believed it was overlong. The movie was a glorious soap opera, with the ancient precursor of Dynasty's Alexis Carrington (marvellously portrayed by Joan Collins, who many people still think should have played Cleopatra) given plenty of opportunity to show off. Right up to the cutting and editing stage, for which Joe Mankiewicz had been rehired, Fox had been hoping to issue two films: Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra. Darryl F. Zanuck, however, had the last word. He wanted the saga to hit the cinemas whilst Elizabeth and Burton were still making headlines. However, Richard Burton appeared for a matter of mere minutes in the first half of the six-hour production, so the film was trimmed to a little over four.\n\nElizabeth is perfection itself in the role of the celebrity harlot, who history tells us once fellated a hundred Roman soldiers in a single night and who, like Elizabeth, had an especial fondness for gay and bisexual men, Caesar and Mark Antony being at the top of her list. Several scenes were cut from the finished print for fear that they might be misconstrued, notably the one where Rufio (Martin Landau), Mark Antony's favourite, bursts into tears upon mistakenly hearing that his love-hero is dead. 'Someone said that generals don't cry,' Landau later said of the cut (in an interview included on a French special edition DVD of Cleopatra), 'but that's not the case where there's this kind of love between two men.' Similarly, Burton was told to 'bite his lip' in the scene in which he discovers Rufio's body and holds him in his arms. And when Mark Antony is about to fall upon his sword and begs Appolodorus (Cesare Danova), Rufio's successor, to lend a helping hand, the emotion is again forcibly suppressed.\n\nThe critics had a field day over Elizabeth's personal appearance in the film \u2013 the fluctuation in her weight over the two-year shooting schedule is very much apparent. She looks chubby and double-chinned dressed as Venus, greeting Mark Antony on their golden barge and when they meet up again after the battle of Actium. 'Overweight, overbosomed, overpaid and undertalented, she sets the acting profession back a decade,' sniped television critic David Susskind \u2013 whilst Time magazine, erroneously for once, drew attention to 'her screeching like a ward-healer's wife at a block party'.\n\nThe other leads, particularly Rex Harrison as the cynical, epileptic Caesar, are mostly remarkable. Only the occasionally wooden Richard Burton lets the side down. Instinctively, one feels that the more charismatic and much more handsome Stephen Boyd would have brought depth and sincerity to the role. Burton also fluffs some of his lines, depending upon which print one views, most notoriously during Cleopatra's entry into Rome when she is swathed in a $7,000, 24-carat gold dress, riding atop a giant sphinx with her son, who was fathered by Caesar. Commenting on the ceremony, a hung-over Mark Antony quips, 'Nothing like this has come into Rome since Romulus and Romulus,' meaning, of course, Romulus and Remus!\n\n# TEN\n\nTHE BIG HANGOVER: \nWHO'S AFRAID \nOF VIRGINIA WOOLF?\n\nFOR A WHILE, THE TAYLOR-BURTON AFFAIR HAD BEEN KEPT off the front pages by the death in August 1962 of Marilyn Monroe. Suicide was given as the official cause, but, then as now, there was much speculation over whether she might have been murdered. Cynics have suggested that with her greed for hogging the limelight, Elizabeth deliberately maintained a low profile until the Monroe scandal had abated. But if she and Richard Burton were trying to kid their respective circles that their 'romance' was over, those who stood to gain financially from their liaison \u2013 for example, the studios, who hypocritically were more than eager to rake in any profits from La Scandale they had openly condemned \u2013 were delighted when, at the end of the month, they read in the press that it had resurfaced with a vengeance. When news leaked that the pair had met for lunch 'somewhere in Switzerland', MGM were the first to monopolise on the tidings \u2013 and Elizabeth's 'scandalous' comment that rather than marry Burton she had no objections to becoming his mistress \u2013 by persuading them to appear in Terence Rattigan's The VIPs.\n\nShooting began early in 1963, with Elizabeth and Burton travelling separately from the Victoria boat-train to the Dorchester, where they took up residence in separate suites. Burton feigned the dutiful husband, ping-ponging back and forth to see Sybil at their house in Hampstead's Squire's Mount. Needless to say, the press were not fooled because neither Burton nor Elizabeth stopped boasting about how much they missed one other whilst apart, even for a few hours. So that he would always be thinking of her whilst alone in his suite, Elizabeth forked out a cool $250,000 for a Van Gogh landscape, along with $10,000 for several hundred leather-bound books that Burton never found time to open. If he was not with Elizabeth \u2013 indeed, most of the time that he was with her \u2013 he was in too much of a stupor to be aware of his surroundings.\n\nOccasionally, Burton sobered up sufficiently to bellow a few good lines in The VIPs, not that this made the film any better. Pathologically boring, it comprises a series of Grand Hotel-style vignettes set in and around the VIP lounge of a London airport. The flights have been delayed by fog, allowing an assortment of odd-bod characters to meet and fling around a few home truths. On account of the leads' salaries, it was MGM's costliest production in years: Elizabeth demanded and received $500,000, along with half this amount against a percentage of the box-office receipts. Upon her insistence, Burton was paid the same, and the money was deposited in bank accounts in Bermuda for tax purposes. The rest of the cast received considerably less than $1 million among them, despite being comprised of the cream of the British acting crop, including Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor, Michael Hordern, Richard Briers and the wonderful Margaret Rutherford, who ran rings around everyone else as an eccentric duchess and who was rewarded with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.\n\nDespite its mediocrity, The VIPs did tremendously well at the box office, earning Elizabeth and Burton a collective $5 million over the next two years. Without doubt, they had become the world's premier couple, and from then on they would go to inordinate lengths to ensure that they maintained the position.\n\nBurton was on his best behaviour during a break in shooting when he took Elizabeth home to Wales to meet his family. Surprisingly, considering their affection for Sybil, they took to Elizabeth very well. In the not too distant future, she would begin sending them clothing parcels \u2013 original creations by Fath, Dior and Balmain that she had grown tired of. She would also fly some of them over to New York to watch their famous relative murder the classics on the stage.\n\nOn other days off, for a whopping $500,000 fee, Elizabeth made her first television documentary. Elizabeth Taylor in London was financed by CBS, and for 60 minutes she escorted viewers around her favourite 'home town' haunts and recited a little Elizabeth Barrett Browning for good measure. This was essentially her way of showing how good she looked in the latest fashion trends. Variety observed, 'Miss Taylor, pompous and so very, very cultured, got in the way of the cameras \u2013 for nearly two-thirds of the programme,' but gallantly concluded, 'she was in competition with London \u2013 and she won!'\n\nAt around this time, the inevitable exclusives from the 'extras' in the Taylor-Burton soap opera also surfaced \u2013 Eddie Fisher and Sybil Burton. Fisher had moved to Nevada for residency purposes in preparation for his divorce, and despite his wealth, demanded a $1-million settlement. He is also thought to have asked for his jewellery back. What he did not get was access to Maria, the baby he had adopted with Elizabeth. Although few details were made public, it was revealed that Fisher had relinquished any claims on Maria and that if Elizabeth married Burton, the child would be legally adopted by him and take his name.\n\nSybil Burton, the only one of the quartet whose behaviour had been exemplary, now let off a little steam, telling reporters, 'I've no intention of allowing the father of my children to become Elizabeth Taylor's fifth husband.' She subsequently changed her mind when informed by him that there was no hope of their ever being reconciled. After their divorce, Sybil married pop singer Jordan Christopher of The Wild Ones, who at the age of 24 was 14 years her junior. The union proved successful and only ended with Christopher's death in 1997. Burton was generous with his divorce settlement. Sybil was assigned one half of his personal fortune, reputed to be in the region of $1 million, with the promise of a decent percentage of his future earnings, whether he married or not.\n\nTowards the end of September 1963, having played the title role in Becket (1964), Burton flew to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico to shoot The Night of the Iguana (1964). The production company was hoping that Elizabeth might not tag along, though by now the couple were inseparable. Indeed, there were clauses in their contracts that if they were not appearing in the same film, they should not work more than one hour's travelling distance from one another. Elizabeth flew into Mexico with Burton because she did not trust him \u2013 suspicious that he might make a play for one of his co-stars, as had happened in the past. This time there were three to choose from: Lolita (1962) babe Sue Lyon, Deborah Kerr and the man-eating Ava Gardner. Elizabeth and Burton were mobbed at Mexico City Airport \u2013 courtesy of a studio publicist, who was instructed to put out a 'Liz and Dick' alert to ensure them maximum media coverage \u2013 and did not disappoint by bawling each other out over some trifle whilst leaving the plane.\n\nElizabeth conducted herself in Puerto Vallarta as if it was her film, invading the set every day and exercising her hold over Burton, who as per usual spent most of his time bombed. In fact, this was virtually an 'everybody's had everybody else' production. Director John Huston \u2013 whom Elizabeth hated for his shoddy treatment of Montgomery Clift whilst shooting The Misfits and Freud \u2013 had formerly been the lover of Ava Gardner. So too had scriptwriter Peter Viertel, now married to Deborah Kerr. Huston's ex-wife \u2013 the woman Mike Todd had dumped to be with Elizabeth \u2013 was now married to Ava's ex-husband, bandleader Artie Shaw. Bringing so many exes together only added to the tension of Elizabeth's presence, and matters were exacerbated by the unexpected arrival of Michael Wilding in his new capacity as assistant to Burton's agent, Hugh French. Huston, who loved nothing more than a brawl \u2013 he and Errol Flynn had famously engaged in a scrap that had not ended until both men had sustained an equal number of broken ribs! \u2013 added spice to the occasion by presenting all the protagonists with tiny gold-plated Derringers, along with bullets inscribed with everyone's names. He is said to have been disappointed that none of these had been used by the time the production wrapped.\n\nIn Puerto Vallarta, acting typically on impulse, Elizabeth fell in love with Casa Kimberley, the villa provided by the studio for Burton's stay in the town. She promptly bought it, and a little later Burton acquired a property across the street \u2013 he had a connecting footbridge constructed so that if they argued, he would be able to escape to his 'pad' with the minimum of effort.\n\nAfter The Night of the Iguana, Burton took a sabbatical and returned to what he had formerly been best at \u2013 the legitimate stage \u2013 appearing in John Gielgud's production of Hamlet. This kicked off in Toronto, where he and Elizabeth rented the most expensive suite at the King Edward Hotel. And on an 'unlucky' 15 March in Montreal, ten days after Eddie Fisher had obtained his Mexican divorce on grounds of abandonment, Elizabeth and Richard Burton were married. 'Beware the Ides of March!' at least one headline read.\n\nElizabeth had wanted them to be married in Ontario by a rabbi, but the state refused to recognise the validity of Mexican divorces, so they had to 'make do' in Quebec Province with a Unitarian minister, the only clergyman available who was not against marrying a woman of scandalous repute for the fifth time in less than 15 years. According to Hollis Alpert, Burton's biographer, the bride arrived late at their hotel suite (where they had booked in as Rosamund Sutherland and Walter Rule), and the groom, blind drunk, exploded, 'Isn't that fat little tart here yet? She'll be late for the last bloody judgement!' Looking lovely in yellow chiffon, dripping with diamonds and emeralds, and with $650 worth of Roman-style extensions decorated with hyacinth petals in her hair, Elizabeth reeled off her usual spiel: she had never been happier, and this time the marriage was for real. Again, few people believed her.\n\nOn 22 March 1964, Hamlet hit Boston. The Taylor-Burton publicity machine had gone into overdrive, and the newly weds were manhandled by a vast crowd outside the Sheraton Plaza Hotel. Crying wolf, Elizabeth collapsed and was taken to her suite, where a doctor gave her a sedative. Just hours later, she was back in the spotlight, looking hale and hearty for a press conference. By that stage in the Hamlet tour, Burton had gone beyond testing his co-stars' patience. Wandering around backstage, almost always with a glass or bottle in his hand, he would suddenly stop some unfortunate in their tracks and assault them with an ear-shattering rendition of a Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca poem or some obscure quote from Oscar Wilde or Rabelais. The booze reacted with the painkillers he was taking for alcohol-related arthritis, though much of the time his behaviour was just down to his binge drinking. More than once he is reported to have pushed his fingers down his throat and vomited in the wings, simply in order to guzzle more. Colleagues and co-stars put up with this thoroughly reprehensible behaviour, of course \u2013 the longer the play ran, the more there was in it for them.\n\nMontgomery Clift, who had not seen Elizabeth in a while and who was yet to express a personal opinion of her new husband, attended the Broadway premiere of Hamlet at the Lunt\u2013Fontanne Theater, where it would play to packed houses until August with just one break (22 June) when Burton took the evening off for a poetry reading with Elizabeth for an American Musical and Dramatic Academy benefit event. Monty's brother Brooks recalled in several interviews that Monty had said of Burton, 'He's turned Shakespeare and serious theatre into a freak show.' Monty was right. Every performance might have been a sell-out, but theatregoers were less interested in Burton's now hammy acting than they were in witnessing what was termed the 'Liz and Dick Roadshow'. And the more Burton performed, the more mediocre he became, until, in desperation, Elizabeth flew in Philip Burton and Emlyn Williams to give him a few 'pointers'. Neither ventured the truth \u2013 that he was drinking himself senseless and was too full of his own self-importance for any self-respecting critic to even take him half-seriously. Monty never repeated his comments about Burton to Elizabeth for fear of hurting her feelings; he liked Burton as a person and later said that he was his favourite amongst her husbands after Michael Wilding.\n\nOver the previous couple of years, whilst Elizabeth had been hogging the spotlight, Monty had been going through a tough patch. On the plus side, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) had seen him working alongside Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich and a very washed-out Judy Garland. Playing a Jew castrated by the Nazis, he had been given just seven minutes of screen time, but his stunning performance had earned him an Oscar nomination. In Freud, directed by John Huston, several scenes had necessitated endless retakes, because the sadistically gung-ho Huston refused to pander to Monty's sensitive side \u2013 on one occasion he had beaten him up and trashed his dressing-room.\n\nDuring the first summer of their marriage, Elizabeth and Burton were offered The Owl and the Pussycat, but it was shelved when Burton refused to do comedy \u2013 some years later it would be a huge hit for Barbra Streisand and George Segal. Next, they were offered three films: The Sandpiper (1965), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Reflections of a Golden Eye (1967). Burton accepted the first two but had reservations about portraying the latently homosexual army officer in Reflections of a Golden Eye, in which Elizabeth would play his nymphomaniac wife. She therefore took it upon herself to 'offer' the role to Monty \u2013 without consulting Warner Brothers. When the studio objected, claiming that Monty was completely uninsurable, Elizabeth was able to sympathise. She herself had encountered insurance problems since Cleopatra. She had paid her own insurance for The VIPs and declared that she would do the same for Monty when the time came. Additionally, she is alleged to have agreed to forfeit her $1-million fee, should Monty not make it to the end of the picture, which would go into production as soon as she had completed her two films with Burton \u2013 possibly in the summer of 1966. Warners, meanwhile, put Monty into The Defector (1966).\n\nAnother visitor to New York during the Hamlet season was Eddie Fisher, there to iron out differences in his and Elizabeth's divorce settlement. Burton was later quoted by John Cottrell and Fergus Cashin in Richard Burton (Coronet Books, 1974) as saying, 'Elizabeth may not have been legally married to Mike Todd after the Wilding divorce. So that means no one was ever married to anyone . . . we might as well start again and get married and divorced on the Koran.' No such comments hit the press at the time. According to the wronged ex-husband, Burton was civil, and there were none of the anticipated run-ins. Fisher was even permitted to watch Hamlet from the wings and was later 'amused' to see how Elizabeth had 'domesticated' his rival and converted him to her factotum. 'Maybe he was doing Hamlet on the stage,' Fisher recalled, 'but in real life he was playing my role.'\n\nNot long afterwards, as his career picked up, at least for a little while, Eddie Fisher took up with Swedish sexpot Ann-Margret, Edie Adams, a German model named Renata Boeck \u2013 he boasted in his memoirs that he had once made love to her nine times in a single night \u2013 Juliet Prowse, Stephanie Powers and several others, before finally becoming involved with the actress Connie Stevens, whom he wed in 1967 after the birth of their daughter. This union proved to be even more ill-fated than the one with Elizabeth: it lasted less than a year.\n\nIn October 1965, the Burtons flew to Paris to film The Sandpiper. Here, Elizabeth gathered her brood about her for the first time in years, only to be severely criticised for the way she went about it. She had demanded her usual $1 million, plus a share of the profits, and successfully negotiated a five-day ten-till-six schedule so that she would have her evenings and weekends free to spend with her family. However, Paris-Match reported that the Burtons' occupancy of twenty-one rooms at the Hotel Lancaster on the rue de Berri, for themselves and their ten-strong entourage, was costing them the equivalent of $10,000 a week, and such was the couple's imperiousness that the children, staying on a different floor, would often go several days between being 'summonsed' to their parents' suite. Other publications observed that they had to bow or curtsy when meeting them and other important 'dignitaries'.\n\nThe press were astonished that four-year-old Maria \u2013 now welcomed 'full-time' into the family fold following the last of her hip operations \u2013 had not been taught to speak English, and that seven-year-old Liza Todd could barely read or write. The Wilding boys were also reported to be hyperactive and hard to handle due to lack of parental control. None had enjoyed an even half-decent education, being dragged from one school to the next in the wake of their mother's divorces and remarriages. There was also a humiliating confrontation when Maria's birth parents, the Heisigs, turned up at the Hotel Lancaster with a lawyer and several journalists, claiming that Elizabeth owed them money for the 'sale' of their daughter. The mystery surrounding Maria's adoption deepened when Elizabeth instructed her own lawyers to pay them.\n\nNext, Elizabeth announced that she wanted to renounce her American citizenship and become British. 'I was born there,' she told French reporters. 'It isn't that all of a sudden I love America less \u2013 it's just that I love my husband more!' The move had considerably more to do with the wealthy 'Briton' being able to enjoy lower taxation rates if she resided overseas than any sense of patriotism. It was avarice, pure and simple, from a woman who already had more money than she could sensibly handle. She was summoned to the American embassy to sign the papers, refused to comply and managed to coerce the embassy lawyers into visiting her so that negotiations could be concluded in the comfort of her hotel suite.\n\nThe entire family uprooted in February 1965, when Richard Burton left for Dublin to shoot The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). There was no question of Elizabeth allowing him to travel alone, because his co-star was Claire Bloom, with whom he had had a passionate affair seven years before. Elizabeth had the pair watched like hawks, though Bloom was happily married to Rod Steiger and was no longer interested in the crumbling, liquor-addled Lothario. Then, Elizabeth's insurmountable pride took a bashing when it was announced from Hollywood that Burton had broken into the top-ten-box-office-stars list, on account of his success in The Night of the Iguana, which saw him ranked alongside the arguably far more charismatic Cary Grant, Rock Hudson and Elvis Presley. What might have upset Elizabeth most was the fact that Burton could not help boasting that she had entered the running at number 11 and declaring that her acting was marginally inferior to his. Time has, of course, proved otherwise; nowadays, Richard Burton is arguably known more for his relationship with Elizabeth Taylor and for the generally mediocre films they made together, than for anything he did on his own.\n\nAlmost as successful, and as dreary, as The VIPs, The Sandpiper was directed by Vincente Minnelli and co-starred Eva Marie Saint and Charles Bronson. Today it is remembered mostly for Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster's haunting theme song 'The Shadow of Your Smile'. This won them an Academy Award and was a big hit for Peggy Lee and Matt Monro. Wearing a succession of kaftans to disguise her 'fuller' figure, Elizabeth played Laura Reynolds, a Bohemian beach-dweller artist with an illegitimate son who when not working spends much of her time saving wounded birds. With echoes of Somerset Maugham's Rain (1932), Burton was Hewitt, the spineless, hypocritical married clergyman who falls in love with her. Most of the critics recognised the scenario as the Taylor-Burton story in disguise, with Hewitt's long-suffering wife representing Sybil Burton. The only difference was this was not the real world, with Hewitt having to renounce his illicit ways and go back to his wife.\n\nThe Golden Turkey Awards called the film 'another tour de force by Liz and Dick, the uncrowned King and Queen of boredom'. The film critic Judith Crist, writing in her syndicated column, came straight to the point: 'Miss Taylor and Mr Burton were paid $1,750,000 for performing in The Sandpiper \u2013 and I wouldn't settle for less for watching them.' Elizabeth always claimed to have detested the film (though not the $3 million-plus it earned her) and later threatened to sue one critic for libel \u2013 for giving it a good review!\n\nElizabeth and Burton had read the script of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? shortly after he had finished Hamlet. Scripted and eventually produced by Ernest Lehman from Edward Albee's smash-hit Broadway play, the film describes a single evening in the marital upheaval of a middle-aged couple called Martha and George, and delves deep into their impossible-to-live-with, impossible-to-live-without situation. Elizabeth found the character fascinating: foul-mouthed, corpulent, blousy but seductive, tyrannical. The character was hugely reminiscent of the part the great Italian actress Anna Magnani had played opposite Burt Lancaster in The Rose Tattoo (1955). Elizabeth instinctively knew that if she accepted the role, she would rid herself in one fell swoop of the tacky B-actress tag foisted upon her by The Sandpiper.\n\nWhose idea it was to reach a compromise over Martha's age is not known: in Albee's play she is 55, Elizabeth was 33 and in the film the character is 45. Elizabeth was certainly not afraid of applying Method principles to the way she looked, something she also had in common with the not unattractive Magnani, and must be admired for the potential risk she took: she reached 155 pounds, donned the most horrendous wig and dropped her voice to a throaty baritone that must have been uncomfortable if not painful to maintain. Likewise, Burton ruffled his hair, wore old-fashioned clothes and sported horn-rimmed glasses in order to portray the lethargic George. The only difference between him and Elizabeth was that whereas she shrugged off the Martha image once the film had been canned, much of George's self-pity was retained by Burton. Just as Cleopatra had ignited the spark then fanned the flames for his passion for Elizabeth, so Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? reaffirmed his fears that he might be passing his sell-by date. Henceforth, it would be mostly downhill for the Burtons.\n\nBurton, initially, did not want to play George. As the washed-up, weakling, henpecked husband, he was afraid that the critics would make too many comparisons between the character and the actor. Amongst the contenders for the part were Jack Lemmon, Glenn Ford and Arthur Hill, who had played George on Broadway. It was only when Elizabeth agreed to do the film and when Ernest Lehman, in vogue after recently completing The Sound of Music (1965), began looking for someone else that Burton changed his mind. The contracts were duly signed \u2013 Elizabeth on \u00a31.1 million plus 10 per cent of the gross, Burton on $750,000 \u2013 and Elizabeth was asked to choose the supports and crew.\n\nShe wanted John Frankenheimer to direct, having admired his film Seconds (1966) with Rock Hudson \u2013 a Kafkaesque piece, photographed through fish-eye lenses, about clapped-out old men being surgically reconstructed to become younger, lustier specimens. Frankenheimer would not work with Burton, so Elizabeth chose 34-year-old German-born Mike Nichols instead. She particularly admired him because he had done a number of ad-hoc jobs to pay for his education after arriving in America as a seven-year-old Jewish refugee: he worked as a cabaret comic (with Elaine May), joined Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio and enjoyed success as a director on Broadway. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would be his first film; equally famously, he would go on to direct The Graduate (1967) and Catch-22 (1970).\n\nThe director of photography should have been Harry Stradling, whose impressionistic work Elizabeth had liked in My Fair Lady. Stradling's truc, picked up whilst working in Europe, was to attempt to recapture the quality of Flemish paintings in key scenes \u2013 not easy in monochrome. His mistake was to sit through a showing of Fellini's Otto e mezzo (81\/2 in the UK) with Mike Nichols \u2013 the director's favourite film \u2013 only to dismiss it as 'a piece of shit'. Nichols refused to work with him, so Warner Brothers approached Haskell Wexler, currently shooting A Fine Madness with Sean Connery. For reasons known only to the 'must be obeyed' Jack Warner, Wexler, famed for his documentary approach to cinematography, was pulled from the Connery film, assigned to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and threatened with ostracism from Hollywood should he refuse to comply.\n\nFor the supports, who would play two young party guests who early in the scenario probably wish they had stayed at home, Elizabeth chose Sandy Dennis and George Segal. She had admired Dennis in her first film, Splendour in the Grass (1961). According to Haskell Wexler (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, DVD, audio-commentary), throughout shooting Dennis and Elizabeth infuriated everyone with their belching contests \u2013 with Dennis always winning. Thirty-one-year-old George Segal had met Richard Burton on the set of The Longest Day. Both Segal and Dennis were wry, natural but inadvertent comedians, perfect stooges for the sparring Burtons.\n\nShooting began in September 1965 at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and wound up two weeks before Christmas. At a cost of over $7 million, it proved the most expensive black-and-white movie ever made \u2013 so filmed, it is alleged, because Heskell Wexler believed that the make-up to conceal Burton's pockmarks would not have to be as 'critical' for the extreme close-ups as it might have been had he been filming in colour. It was also the first American film to use profane language, though today words such as 'goddam', 'crap', 'screw' and 'bastard' are pretty tame and commonplace \u2013 the stage play featured worse. Even so, the fuss this caused resulted in the introduction of the Motion Picture Association of America rating system, which declared that no one under the age of 18 could see the film unless accompanied by an adult. And for those not wishing to be seen entering a cinema in these overtly moral times, Warner Brothers released a special-edition, 'uncensored' double LP of the soundtrack.\n\n'I'm loud and I'm vulgar and I wear the pants in the house because somebody's got to! But I'm not a monster!' So Elizabeth pronounces in what is generally regarded as her most accomplished role since Suddenly, Last Summer, and perhaps the only one which puts her on a par with Garbo, Hepburn, Davis and Crawford at their best. It was also the best thing she ever did with Richard Burton (back to being a great actor in this one), though considering some of the tosh they made, it would be unfair to make comparisons. The film opens with George and Martha (effectively a bickering, La Cage aux Folles-style homosexual couple in flimsy disguise) arriving home after a New Carthage University faculty party hosted by her father, who is its principal. What happens over the course of the next two hours is told in near-real time and so mirrors the Taylor-Burton relationship that it is not difficult to imagine how hellish it must have been to live in close proximity to these tyrants, whose minds and bodies were so addled by liquor and feuding that they could no longer differentiate between fact and fantasy.\n\nMartha, aka Taylor, the mighty star, never lets George, aka Burton, the ham, forget that she is a well-connected somebody, whilst he is a mere nonentity whose career is at a standstill. One is hard put to determine which of these two is the more despicable when entertaining the guests \u2013 college-jock Nick and his fruit-loop-wife Honey \u2013 they have asked over for the evening. One can imagine Burton yelling at Elizabeth when George says to Martha that she must make an impression by keeping her clothes on, and adds, 'There aren't many more sickening sights in this world than you with a couple of drinks inside you and your skirt up over your head.' According to contemporary reports, Martha and George's little drinks party was no different from most Taylor-Burton soir\u00e9es, in that everyone gets plastered and the home truths come tumbling out, along with a number of incidents that, although tame today, genuinely shocked American audiences back then. George refers to his deceased imaginary son as a 'little bugger', a British euphemism for 'handful' that many people misinterpreted for 'sexual deviant'. Then George infers that Nick might be gay, a situation that Martha 'rectifies', just as Elizabeth had done for her gay co-stars in the past, by displaying her ample cleavage and having him thrust his crotch inches from her face as she pronounces, 'You're right at the meat of things!' Martha further humiliates George when he gets grumpy and fetches his rifle. When he pulls the trigger, an umbrella pops out of the barrel. Using this as an opportunity to mock his \u2013 and Burton's \u2013 occasional impotence, she coos to the younger man, 'You don't need any props, do you, baby? No fake guns for you!'\n\nWhen the two men discuss their recipe for success, which involves being with well-heeled wives, it parallels the way in which Burton ensured his own swift elevation to the top of the show-business ladder:\n\nNICK: Take over a few courses from the older men. Plough a few impertinent wives!\n\nGEORGE: Now, that's it . . . you can shove aside all the older men you can find, but until you start ploughing pertinent wives, you're not really working. That's the way to power. Plough 'em all! The way to a man's heart \u2013 the wide, inviting avenue to his job is through his wife, and don't you forget it!\n\nNICK: And I bet your wife's got the most inviting avenue on the whole damn campus! I just better get her off into the bushes straight away!\n\nThe two couples end up playing the jukebox at a roadhouse in a scene choreographed by the then little-known Herbert Ross, who later worked with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (1968) and with her and Segal in the film Elizabeth and Burton should have made, The Owl and the Pussycat (1970). George flirts with Honey, calling her 'monkey nipples', but when Martha fake copulates with Nick, George tries to throttle her and thus begins what Haskell Wexler later described as a carbon copy of a Taylor-Burton fight, made more dramatic, at Elizabeth's request, by being filmed with a hand-held camera.\n\nMartha then goes off with Nick, though they are too drunk to later remember of they had sex \u2013 she just needed to determine if he was gay or straight. This he interprets as a slur on his manhood, until she explains that in this respect he is no different from the other men she has known, which is again true to life. Adding to the character-actress similarities she concludes that only one man has ever made her happy, one whom she now reviles and who must be punished because he has made the mistake of loving her. Finally, she confesses that she and George invented a son, and that the charade has got them through a dreadful marriage. Now, the pretence must end, and Martha's closing monologue is so utterly heart-rending and convincing that we actually feel sorry for her. As happened with Elizabeth herself, we are witnessing a sad, disillusioned woman starting off on the path towards a Calvary of her own making. A masterpiece!\n\n# ELEVEN\n\nDUDS AND DIAMONDS\n\nIN FEBRUARY 1966, THE BURTONS FLEW TO ENGLAND to appear in an Oxford University production of Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus \u2013 a week-long practice run for the film version that would be directed by Burton later in the year. The couple insisted upon performing for free, which was just as well, critics observed, for under any other circumstances they would have been paid up. Whilst Burton ranted, flung his arms about and made little sense of the script, Elizabeth merely postured in the middle of the stage and uttered not one word.\n\nThe film version was little better. Filmed in Rome with students from the university dramatic society (with everyone, including the Burtons, on a daily rate of \u00a318), it was funded to the tune of $1 million out of Burton's pocket, and it earned the celebrity couple some of their worst critical reviews ever. The New York Times denounced it as 'an awfulness that bends the mind'. Time magazine went out of its way to praise co-director Nevill Coghill (who had directed the play) for keeping Elizabeth 'mercifully' mute throughout the production and said of her appearance, 'When she welcomes Burton to an eternity of damnation, her eyeballs and teeth are dripping pink in a hellish combination of conjunctivitis and trench mouth.' Ouch!\n\nRichard Burton, the former thespian, was accused of selling out for the sake of the almighty dollar when he and Elizabeth returned to Oxford for the film's premiere on 15 October 1967. The presenter who interviewed them from a local television news magazine made the mistake of comparing the Faust legend \u2013 the magician who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for material possessions and is dragged down to hell by the women he loves \u2013 with that of the Burtons' relationship. Burton was unable to get a word in edgeways as Elizabeth went for the jugular:\n\nINTERVIEWER: You must have sometimes, Richard Burton, faced the question as to whether you should have continued as an imposing and even in the view of many people great stage actor, and moved into the world of films, which is more commercially rewarding but not perhaps so rewarding artistically. Do you ever regret moving into the commercial cinema?\n\nELIZABETH (narrowing her eyes, pointing accursedly): That makes me so angry because he has not left the stage. That's absolute bloody rubbish, when last year he just got through doing a thing here for Oxford on the stage. The year before that, what was he doing on Broadway? How can you say he's left the stage?\n\nINTERVIEWER: But that is not a continuous stage career in the sense that, for example, Paul Schofield and Laurence Olivier . . .\n\nELIZABETH: He's not continuous, either. He still does films for money, and so does Paul Schofield.\n\nINTERVIEWER: But Schofield has made one film in ten or fourteen years, and Richard was one time potentially the greatest stage actor that England had ever produced. I wondered whether in a way your making of Faustus, which is the story of a man who sells out to a dream, almost, is perhaps comparable with your decision? I want to ask, Elizabeth Taylor, if your irritation was because you felt that the cinema was not the creative medium that the theatre was. I don't know why you got so cross . . .\n\nELIZABETH (cutting the interview short): Because you said the exact phrase that I knew you were working up to \u2013 'sold out' \u2013 and it offends me to the soul!\n\nIt was possibly also the interviewer's phrase 'potentially the greatest actor' and the fact that he was no longer recognised as such, probably because of her, that rankled Elizabeth. Dr Faustus was the first of Elizabeth's films not to recover its production costs, grossing less than $500,000 at the box office on both sides of the Atlantic.\n\nMeanwhile, in the spring of 1966, the Burtons drove overland, via Switzerland, to Rome to appear in Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967), described by film critic Alexander Walker as 'a Tom and Jerry cartoon in costume'. Instead of salaries, they opted for a hefty share of the profits, which earned them in excess of $3 million, despite the mediocrity of the film \u2013 Burton performs drunk throughout.\n\nSince leaving America, Elizabeth had spoken to Montgomery Clift every day on the telephone. He had had a tough time shooting The Defector in Germany, but with Warner Brothers there was no let-up: on 15 July the studio contracted both parties to inform them that Reflections in a Golden Eye would begin shooting in the September. Until then, there had been some talk that Burton might direct, but Monty dismissed the idea \u2013 even though it meant handing the reins to John Huston, whom he hated. Elizabeth promised to keep an eye on the bad-tempered director to ensure there would be no repetition of the violence that had accompanied Freud.\n\nElizabeth had just been offered the film adaptation of This Property Is Condemned (1966) opposite newcomer Robert Redford, but this role now went to Natalie Wood \u2013 for half the fee Paramount had offered Elizabeth. She was still reeling from this when Richard Burton received a call from Roddy McDowall: on the morning of 23 July 1966, Monty had been found dead in his bed, the victim of heart failure. This proved to be Elizabeth's biggest loss since Mike Todd, a grief she would carry with her to the grave. The man she often claimed to be more important to her than all of her husbands was just 45. She did not attend his funeral, three days later in Brooklyn's Quaker Cemetery, using work commitments as an excuse, although it is believed she stayed away to avoid turning the ceremony into a media event. Her wreath of white chrysanthemums was inscribed 'Rest, perturbed spirit'.\n\nAs she had been given contractual approval of her co-stars, and feeling that only he could step into his shoes, Elizabeth contacted Marlon Brando, Monty's nearest rival, and asked him to replace Clift in Reflections in a Golden Eye. When asked by reporters if he had accepted the role as a tribute to Monty, Brando responded, 'Nope. I need the $750,000.'\n\nIt was by no means a poor film: minus the encumbrance of Richard Burton's booming, drunken histrionics, it was a distinct improvement on anything that Elizabeth had done since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The story was based on a 1961 novella by Carson McCullers, a complex individual whose work was labelled by critics and admirers as 'Southern Gothic'. She described her work and the frequently grotesque array of characters who populated her books as, 'The hungry search of people for an escape from individual loneliness, for self-expression and for identification with what each most idealises in human living.' McCullers certainly practised what she preached: she had a lifelong unfulfilled sexual obsession with Greta Garbo and shared a lover with her homosexual husband Reeves, whom she married and divorced twice and who subsequently committed suicide. Who better then to have inadvertently provided a vehicle for Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, now replaced by the equally offbeat Marlon Brando?\n\nIn the film, set in an army post in the Deep South (but filmed in Rome for tax purposes), Elizabeth plays Leonora, the sex-starved wife of the latently homosexual, self-loathing Major Weldon Penderton (Brando), who, in a replica of the Reeves McCullers situation, has the hots for the younger, lustier Private Williams (Robert Forster), who is similarly obsessed with Leonora. And this being rarely-to-the-point Southern Gothic, and as had been the case with the homosexual references in Suddenly, Last Summer, Penderton 'outs' himself to cinemagoers in an inarticulately roundabout manner during a lecture to his men when he asks, 'Is it morally honourable for the square peg to keep scraping around in the round hole, rather than to discover and use the orthodox one that would fit?' Add to this Leonora's penchant for bashing her husband in public, Private Williams' acute narcissism and underwear fetish, and Brando's Method acting and persistent mumbling of his lines, and the end result is either fascinating or downright boring, depending upon how one is 'tuned in' to these complicated, high-charged scenarios.\n\nEven so, working with an actor of Brando's calibre was a step in the right direction for Elizabeth. Her performances were starting to gain more depth with roles such as Leonora Penderton, and had there been more of these in her middle years \u2013 instead of lending herself to mostly trash in order to placate Richard Burton \u2013 she might have developed into an American Anna Magnani. Indeed, to save her unsalvageable marriage from sinking, she signed up for two more productions that might have proved worthwhile with another leading man but with Burton dragging her down ended up as stinkers.\n\nThe Comedians (1967) was especially scripted for the Burtons by Graham Greene from his novel of the same name. Set in Haiti during the 'Papa Doc' Duvalier regime, it had at its helm Peter Glenville, who had more patience with Burton than most: he had directed him in Becket but would rue doing so again. Also, possibly owing to the success of the other film, Burton had top billing \u2013 the only time this happened when he appeared with Elizabeth \u2013 which was reflected in his salary. Shooting was a miserable experience for all. As Papa Doc had refused to allow a film unit in Haiti, the locations were filmed in the African republic of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin), where the heat was intolerable and everyone was plagued by mosquitoes. Elizabeth played another sex-starved siren, ambassador's wife Martha Pineda, with an accent only marginally less atrocious than the one in the later Divorce His, Divorce Hers (1973). Throughout the overlong (160 minutes) production, she alternates between German, French and Spanish, with a dash of the Queen's English thrown in for good measure. Suffering nobly alongside the Burtons were Alec Guinness and Peter Ustinov, who trounced them in every scene. Declaring that he had to fight to get even a half-decent performance out of his stars, Peter Glenville told Vogue, 'She was bored by her own fame and obsessed with his.'\n\nShooting on The Comedians had almost wrapped when the Burtons received a call from Jack Warner, urging them to return to Hollywood to attend the Oscars ceremony. Both had been nominated for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as had the film itself, but three of its numerous nominations. These were the days when stars were expected to show up for the event \u2013 unless seriously indisposed \u2013 or risk being frowned upon by their peers and the media. Elizabeth finished working on the The Comedians first and told Warner that she would be there. Burton threw a fit, announcing that as soon as he had canned his scenes he would be flying to the south of France and that Elizabeth should be by his side as his dutiful wife. She initially fought against this, relenting only when Burton fabricated the story that he had seen her plane crash into the Atlantic in a dream.\n\nElizabeth was widely tipped as favourite for the Best Actress award, having already won the New York Film Critics Circle Award and a British BAFTA. Also nominated were George Segal and Sandy Dennis (Best Supporting Actor\/Actress), Mike Nichols (Best Director), Richard Stybert (art direction), James Hopkins (sets), Haskell Wexler (cinematography) and Irene Sharaff (costumes). Elizabeth's only serious rival, the critics believed, was Anouk Aim\u00e9e for Un homme et une femme, whilst Burton was pitched against Paul Schofield (the mention of whose name had caused Elizabeth to see red in Oxford) for A Man for All Seasons. Schofield had already won numerous awards for his brilliant portrayal of Sir Thomas More, and he picked up the Oscar, as did the film and its director, Fred Zinneman. Elizabeth won her category, becoming only the fifth actress (after Ingrid Bergman, Louise Rainer, Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh) to win two Oscars. Her award was collected by Anne Bancroft. For the rest of his life, Burton was plagued by the fact that Elizabeth had achieved something (twice) that he had not.\n\nOn 29 September 1967, the Burtons flew to Paris, attracting a vast crowd in the Place de l'Op\u00e9ra when they turned up for the premiere of The Taming of the Shrew. Unable to attend, even though Burton is said to have summoned him, President de Gaulle sent a small delegation and armed guard to escort them from an airfield on the outskirts of the city, and Elizabeth posed for photographs wearing a hired Van Cleef & Arpels tiara that cost almost $2 million. And when she commented on how comfortable the flight had been in the private jet that had conveyed them to France, Burton made arrangements to buy it \u2013 for a cool $850,000.\n\nThe Burtons' next venture was Boom! (1968), based on Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. Rumour had it that Elizabeth had been suggested for the central role of Flora Goforth, the world's richest woman, by Tallulah Bankhead, who had played the part on the stage a few years earlier. 'She's a promiscuous, pill-ravaged rip, born in a Georgia swamp,' Tallulah had said at the time, 'so she could only be played by me!' Now, she declared, who better to portray Goforth on the big screen than Elizabeth Taylor, who as 'the world's biggest joke' would only have to be herself? The setting was not far removed from Williams' earlier The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961), with Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty in the main roles, although Lotte Lenya had received all the praise and been Oscar nominated playing the contessa.\n\nTallulah's co-star on the stage was the 32-year-old Tab Hunter, ethereally handsome and perfectly cast as Chris Sanders, the hunky beach-boy poet who has fashioned a career out of consoling rich, moribund ladies \u2013 and on one occasion an elderly man he helped to commit suicide \u2013 on Italy's 'Divina Costiera' (though the locations were shot in Sardinia), earning himself the nickname 'Angel of Death'. Tennessee Williams observed in his 1975 autobiography, Memoirs:\n\nThe death of Miss Flora Goforth is essentially the death of a clown. There is hardly a bit of nobility, nor even dignity, in her fiercely resistant approach to life's most awful adventure \u2013 dying. But you will find it very possible to pity this female clown even while her absurd pretensions and her panicky last effort to hide from her final destruction make you laugh at her.\n\nAt 35, Elizabeth was far too young to play Flora (Tallulah had been 61), but, as always, when she stepped into the shoes of a Tennessee Williams heroine-madwoman, her interpretation was exemplary, and she looked stunning in her all-white Annalisa Nasalli-Rocca creations. Burton, on the other hand, was no Tab Hunter \u2013 bloated and bucolic, much of the time he resembled a badly made-up fourth-rate ham from a cheap medieval drama. Noel Coward, as the Witch of Capri (a female character in the play), is embarrassing to watch, and Joanna Shimkus, who plays the long-suffering secretary Blackie, is totally wooden. And surely director Joseph Losey was playing a joke on cinemagoers by casting a dwarf (Michael Dunn) in the role of Flora's bodyguard, Rudy?\n\nAlthough much of Williams' original theatre script is incorporated into Boom!, he was forced to make a few changes to the screen adaptation to reflect the Taylor-Burton situation. The arguments between the two main characters are therefore more vociferous, bordering on the maniacal, and Burton insisted on being able to kiss both Flora and Blackie, which does not happen in the play. The Taylor-Burton diamond, along with a few of its companions, makes an obligatory appearance. Also upon Burton's request, Williams added a 'put-down' line to counteract Flora's domination of everyone around her. 'Tough as you are,' Chris pronounces, 'you're not so tough that one day, perhaps soon, you're gonna need someone or something that'll mean God to you, if it's only a human hand or a human voice.' The critics hated the film, but the lack of plaudits failed to affect the box office, despite the fact that the Burtons' marriage was starting to fall apart at the seams \u2013 hardly surprising given their volatile, complex relationship.\n\nThe rot appears to have set in early in 1968, after Elizabeth wanted to play Anne Boleyn opposite Burton's Henry VIII in Anne of a Thousand Days. He turned her down in favour of the younger, more appropriately sylph-like Canadian actress Genevi\u00e8ve Bujold \u2013 a role for which she was Oscar nominated. When Bujold politely requested that Burton's famous wife should not be allowed on the set because of the fuss this would cause, Elizabeth immediately suspected that the pair were having an affair. Almost certainly they were not, though Burton was playing around behind Elizabeth's back \u2013 a question of old habits dying hard. And matters were not helped in the September by the not unexpected death of Elizabeth's father at the age of 70. A few years earlier, Francis Taylor had suffered a stroke from which he had never really recovered. His demise reunited mother and daughter, with Elizabeth confiding in Sara about her marital problems.\n\nAs the rows escalated, time after time Burton reached for his chequebook in an increasingly futile attempt to keep their ship from sinking completely, just as Eddie Fisher had done before him. And the press, who trailed around the world after the couple, following the circus like devotees of some fanatical religious sect, delighted in relaying to their readers how every last dollar had been spent.\n\nTowards the end of their second marriage, Richard Burton would boast to an astonished press conference, 'I've spent $20 million on Elizabeth, because she is my baby child.' In a modern, politically educated world, where poverty and starvation were rife, Burton's extravagances were nothing short of shameful. Not long after Anne of a Thousand Days, he bought the wife who already had everything and more the infamous 38.9-carat Krupp Diamond, hardly the sort of trinket one would have thought a Jewish convert would wear with pride, for it had originally been purchased with blood money by the Nazi industrialist Alfred Krupp. Shortly after the Second World War, Krupp had been convicted by an American tribunal for plundering occupied territories and employing slave labour in neo-concentration-camp conditions. Burton bragged that the bauble had been but a 'snip' at $305,000.\n\nNext, Burton acquired an equally controversial piece for $37,000. This was La Peregrina, the fabulous pearl that Philip II of Spain had given to Henry VIII's daughter, Mary Tudor, in 1554 at the start of the union that had made 'Bloody Mary' the most hated woman in England. She is seen wearing it in her official portrait. By the time it ended up in Elizabeth's possession, it had been reset and suspended from a $100,000 diamond, ruby and pearl necklace. The fact that she owned two artefacts steeped in a history of bloodshed, extreme hardship, unpleasantness and evil did not perturb her unduly.\n\nThen there was the even more staggering pear-shaped 69.42-carat Taylor-Burton Diamond, fashioned by Cartier \u2013 an inch-thick monster that set Burton back $1.1 million. Only the French music-hall stars Gaby Deslys (responsible for the downfall of the Portuguese monarchy) and Mistinguett had owned sparklers of such value, closely followed by the Duchess of Windsor, who was Elizabeth's only living rival and who always tried to outshine her whenever they crossed paths on the social circuit. Soon after acquiring this, Burton let Elizabeth in on the secret that one of the bidders had been Sophia Loren's director husband, Carlo Ponti. According to biographer Kitty Kelley, Elizabeth denounced Loren to friends as 'too piss-elegant for words', and the fact that the Italian beauty had almost ended up with her diamond rankled her. Though they would later socialise and pretend to like each other, behind her back Elizabeth would refer scathingly to Loren as 'Madama Ponti'.\n\nElizabeth herself doled out $100,000 for a diamond necklace from which her latest trinket could be suspended so as to conceal her tracheotomy scar. She then paid $80,000 to have it insured by Lloyds of London, when no other American or European company would touch it. There were, however, certain conditions. Elizabeth was only permitted to wear the piece 30 times a year and had to be accompanied by an armed guard, at her own expense, when doing so \u2013 otherwise it would have to remain locked in a bank vault.\n\nThe Burtons enabled the American public to ogle the Krupp Diamond in May 1970 when they made an appearance on The Lucy Show, one of their truly great celluloid moments, if not their best since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The hostess naturally insisted upon trying on the ring, got it stuck on her finger and had it removed by Burton, using the best vintage champagne. Before this happened, however, the press turned up wanting to see the ring: the Burtons received them standing in front of a curtain, behind which hid Lucille Ball, her hand pushed through the gap and up Elizabeth's kimono sleeve. Burton explained that he found the diamond in a 'crackerjack barrel' whilst Elizabeth's 'spare hand' wreaked havoc, gesticulating to the press, stroking Burton's face, trying to strangle Elizabeth and forcing her to drink two glasses of champagne. 'And they call me a two-fisted drinker,' he pronounced, bringing the response from his wife, 'Of all the sinks in Los Angeles, you had to pick her faucet!'\n\nBesides the jewels, there were the properties in Gstaad, Puerto Vallarta and C\u00e9ligny, their walls festooned with Rembrandts, Picassos, Renoirs, Van Goghs and Monets. And there was the $420,000 yacht, the Kalizma, so named after their daughters Kate, Liza and Maria. Jessica Burton was still in the nursing home, conveniently out of the way and, it would appear, forgotten. With seven cabins and two staterooms, the vessel was filled with Chippendale furniture and other antiques. Then there was the $1-million customised private jet and the $500,00 helicopter. The list was apparently endless. As the film critic Alexander Walker observed, 'They lived on a scale few hereditary rulers except the despots of Africa or Arabia thought prudent for either their people to witness or their treasuries to support.' So much money was flying around, with even more coming in, that one story of Burton 'sorting out the clutter' atop his piano in the couple's Gstaad retreat reached the tabloids. While doing so, the actor 'chanced upon' an envelope containing a cheque for over $2 million in royalty payments!\n\nIt was not just the tabloids who were mercilessly critical of the couple's excess. Look magazine called Elizabeth 'a fading movie queen who has too much and wants more'. The New York Times observed of the Taylor-Burton Diamond, 'It would have been nice to wear in the tumbrel on the way to the guillotine. In this age of vulgarity marked by such \"minor\" matters as war and poverty, it gets harder every day to scale the heights of vulgarity.'\n\nThis Borgian extravagance extended towards Elizabeth's pets. In 1968, when she came to London to make Secret Ceremony (1968) \u2013 Burton had eschewed this one for Where Eagles Dare (1968) \u2013 the press were less interested in her latest hospitalisation (on 21 July for a hysterectomy) than they were in the arrangements she had made for her menagerie. Prohibited from bringing her dogs into the country because of British quarantine regulations, and with the Kalizma undergoing a refit, for a mere $10,000 a month, she hired a 200-ton yacht named the Beatriz, which was moored on the Thames. This was also used some evenings for private parties \u2013 and with Elizabeth's disdain for cleaning up after her animals, one can only imagine what the conditions must have been like for the guests. 'The World's Most Expensive Dog Kennel' was also debated in Parliament by Home Secretary James Callaghan, with MPs wanting to know if the British taxpayer would be footing the bill for the police, customs and RSPCA officers patrolling the Thames Embankment to ensure the Burtons didn't bring their pooches ashore. Mr Callaghan duly reassured them that they were not. Even so, there were far-reaching consequences. Burton had been put forward for a knighthood in that year's Queen's birthday honours list, not for his questionable acting abilities, but for his equally dubious charity work \u2013 donations brought about mostly by tax concessions. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, himself from a working-class background, faced a Cabinet backlash. They basically came to the conclusion that the only 'charities' Richard Burton were interested in were himself and his wife. The honour was revoked, though two years later he would be awarded a CBE.\n\nBurton's greed was additionally highlighted when Elizabeth was assigned to Secret Ceremony, and he attempted to get her co-star, Robert Mitchum, fired from the production so that he could take his place. Such unprofessional conduct gave him a bad name in the trade. Tony Richardson, who had directed Tallulah Bankhead in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, signed Burton for Laughter in the Dark, to be made immediately after Where Eagles Dare. Upon hearing of the Mitchum incident, Richardson tried but failed to get rid of Burton. Therefore, when Burton turned up for his first day's work late and drunk, the director seized the opportunity to give him his marching orders.\n\nThe Burtons' cinematic downfall was kick-started following the May 1968 New York premiere of Boom!, a mega-flop that would take 15 years to recover its production costs. The instigator of what many people believed to be their long-overdue demise was the 29 May issue of Life magazine. Having denounced the couple's arrogance, along with their audacity in expecting the public to accept 'anything they cared to shovel out', the editorial concluded:\n\nThere is a slack, tired quality to most of their work that is by now a form of insult. There is neither dignity nor discipline in what they do. She is fat and will do nothing about her most glaring defect \u2013 an unpleasant voice which she cannot adequately control. He, conversely, acts with nothing but his voice, rolling out his lines with much elegance but with no feeling at all. Perhaps the Burtons are doing the very best they can, laden as they are by their celebrity. But if they are not cynics, overestimating their charisma and underestimating our intelligence, then they are guilty of a lack of aesthetic judgement and self-awareness that is just as threatening.\n\nDespite this critical pummelling from one of America's premier publications, the couple were still in demand \u2013 but separately. This caused tremendous problems for anyone interested in offering them contracts, because they refused to work apart \u2013 as if aware that with some distance between them they might never reconcile. Elizabeth was signed to star opposite Frank Sinatra in the gambling comedy The Only Game in Town (1970) and demanded $1.25 million. What is astonishing is that the studio was Twentieth Century Fox, who had sued Burton and Taylor over the Cleopatra debacle and had vowed never to work with either again. Burton demanded, and received without argument, the same fee to play a gay hairdresser opposite Rex Harrison in Staircase. This pathetic horror, released in America on the eve of the Stonewall riots of 1969, dredged up every prejudice, religious reference and gay clich\u00e9 in the bigot's book, and today makes for uncomfortable viewing. As Paul Roen observes in High Camp, 'If nothing else [this movie] vividly illustrates that the time for gay liberation was way past due.'\n\nThe budgets for both productions were bumped up by the Burtons' insistence \u2013 once the contracts had been signed \u2013 that they be filmed in the same place for tax purposes. This ruled out Las Vegas (for Elizabeth's film) and London (for Burton's). The settings were therefore recreated on adjacent lots at a studio on the outskirts of Paris. A further hitch occurred when Frank Sinatra dropped out of the production and was replaced by Warren Beatty, currently a white-hot property following his success in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). With Burton concerned that some of his fans might think him gay because he was playing 'an old queen' and, at the same time, worried that acknowledged Lothario Beatty might make a move on Elizabeth, he increased his already heavy drinking, ignoring doctors' warnings that he was slowly killing himself on account of an enlarged liver.\n\nIn Secret Ceremony \u2013 something of a poor man's McCullers\/Williams psycho-fest \u2013 Elizabeth played another Leonora, a middle-aged prostitute kidnapped by a mentally unbalanced girl (Mia Farrow) who thinks Leonora is her mother. For a while, she keeps her in a spooky Edwardian mansion filled with music boxes and junk \u2013 the pair are just starting to get along when the stepfather (Robert Mitchum) shows up with tragic consequences. The real tragedy, according to the critics, was the film itself. Rex Reed observed in his syndicated column (later collated in the 1977 volume Valentines and Vitriol, Delacorte Press, 1977), 'The disintegration of Elizabeth Taylor has been a very sad thing to stand by helplessly and watch . . . She had become a hideous parody of herself \u2013 a fat, sloppy, yelling, screaming banshee.'\n\nElizabeth worked little during the first half of 1970. She was hospitalised for a while with the anal bleeding spasms that, it was now revealed, had laid her low the previous summer. In the July, she accompanied Richard Burton to Mexico, where he filmed the exteriors for Raid on Rommel (1971). Then in the September they flew to London, where he made Villain (1971) and she Zee and Co. (1972). Whilst they were there, 17-year-old Michael Wilding Jr married 19-year-old Beth Clutter at Caxton Hall on 6 October, with every tabloid headline screaming a variation of 'Here Comes the Mother of the Bride'. Not to be outdone, the Burtons gave the couple a new Jaguar and a \u00a370,000 townhouse, conveniently situated next door to Burton's own in Hampstead. It was a happy wedding in every sense: the groom wore shoulder-length hair, a purple kaftan, bell-bottom trousers and 'Jesus' sandals; his mother a knitted trouser suit and maxi coat. One wonders whether she would have attended the ceremony had she not been working in London at the time, bearing in mind that there had hardly ever been a full family gathering at her own weddings.\n\nThe following August, the Wildings presented Elizabeth \u2013 at 39 \u2013 with her first grandchild, Leyla, precipitating Marlene Dietrich to relinquish her 'World's Most Glamorous Grandmother' crown. 'I was being sarcastic, naturally,' she told me. 'With all her aches and pains, she was physically older than I was. She'd earned it!' Elizabeth would attempt to spoil the child by sending her Christian Dior layettes. She found young Michael work as a photographer's assistant on Zee and Co., which he walked out on because of the unsocial hours. She then offered the couple financial support, which he despised. By the time of Leyla's birth, the London townhouse was transformed into a mini-hippy commune, with Michael the fully fledged flower child, in favour of self-sufficiency and decidedly anti-materialist in lieu of genuine maternal affection. 'My mother's life seems just as fantastic to me as it does everyone else,' he told Time magazine. 'I really don't want any part of it.'\n\nTo get away, the couple sold the London house, packed their bags \u2013 along with around $50,000 of musical equipment that Elizabeth seems to have paid for \u2013 and headed for Ponterwyd, a village in the Welsh mountains. Here they set up their own commune, with Beth appointing herself 'earth mother'. One month later, she left Michael and moved into the Dorchester with the Burtons, taking Leyla with her. When this arrangement failed to work, Beth returned home to her family in Portland, Ohio, and filed for divorce. According to Beth (speaking to Kitty Kelley), Elizabeth demanded not just access to her granddaughter, but that Leyla be sent to her when she wanted to see her. Not surprisingly, Beth refused to comply, and Elizabeth hit the roof. 'Nobody tells me whether I can see my own grandchild,' she is alleged to have exclaimed. 'I'll never help you again!' Beth was, however, adamant. She vowed that her child would have a stable upbringing and would never find herself torn between pillar and post, as had happened with Michael Jr and Elizabeth's other children.\n\nAs for Zee and Co., the film was marginally better than its predecessor, but it was still categorised third-rate by most of the critics. It was based on a novel by Edna O'Brien, who later complained that the script had been amended to fit in with the Taylor-Burton story to such an extent that it barely resembled the original. Elizabeth, unsalaried but on a high box-office percentage, played Zee Blakely, and Michael Caine was cast as her husband who is having an affair with a young widow (Susannah York). When he leaves her, she bungles a suicide attempt \u2013 then gets the widow on side, so to speak, by raking up her lesbian past and seducing her!\n\nJust as this film coincided with the Wildings' wedding, so the birth of Elizabeth's first grandchild was blessed with her presence only because the Burtons were working in the country \u2013 this time filming Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1972) in Wales. Directed by Andrew Sinclair, this was another hotchpotch of booming histrionics and bawdy giggles, and owes more to Russ Meyer than the legendary Welsh poet. Elizabeth was Rosie Prebert, the village harlot, and Burton portrayed 'First Voice', the narrator with whom she was once intimate.\n\nIn February 1972, Elizabeth celebrated her 40th birthday. For this one, Burton presented her with a heart-shaped pendant set with the $1-million yellow Shah Jahan Diamond, which the Indian mogul responsible for building the Taj Mahal had given his wife, circa 1650. On it were inscribed the Parsee words for everlasting love. Burton arrogantly told reporters, 'I would have preferred buying Elizabeth the Taj Mahal itself, but transporting it would have been far too costly.'\n\nThe weekend-long bash took place in Budapest, where Burton was filming Bluebeard (1972), a film that was mocked by the Washington Post as 'Burton announcing his availability for Vincent Price roles, [as] it would be difficult for him to sink below this credit'. The guests at Elizabeth's birthday celebrations included David Niven, Michael Caine, Princess Grace of Monaco, the Ringo Starrs and Susannah York. To show that there were no hard feelings, Elizabeth invited Michael Wilding and his new wife, Margaret Leighton. Liza Todd was there, and Christopher Wilding flew in from Hawaii, where he was attending university. Michael Wilding Jr was conspicuous by his absence, having made it clear what he thought of such squandering of money when there was so much poverty in the world. The guests were instructed what to wear for the various parties \u2013 and were advised to bring dark glasses for the hangovers in between. The Burtons seem to have overlooked that they were guests of a poor Communist country that had seen more than its share of political upheavals and which frowned upon ostentatious spending, such as when Elizabeth paid to have Princess Grace's suite at the Intercontinental Hotel redecorated and filled with borrowed antiques. Just as Mike Todd before him, Richard Burton seemed to be of the opinion that any problem could solved by whipping out his chequebook. Summoning a hasty press conference, he announced that whatever his wife's party had cost, he would donate an equal amount to UNICEF. Good to his word, five months later he presented its representative, Peter Ustinov, with $45,000, although this did not alleviate the ill-feeling harboured by the citizens of Budapest against the Burtons for holding the celebrations there in the first place.\n\nAt some stage of the festivities, the Burtons were interviewed for David Frost's television show, and they were not particularly friendly towards their host. Burton was bombed on bourbon, with Elizabeth not far behind him, and matters were made worse by the producer's insistence that there be as little editing as possible so that Frost's viewers \u2013 or at least the ones who did not already know \u2013 might see what the couple were really like under the influence of drink, which was, of course, most of the time.\n\nBy that stage in their marriage, Burton was totally out of control. Mood swings and tantrums saw him, time and again, walking out on Elizabeth and into drunken one-night stands. Their arguments spilled out into the public arena as they went at it hammer and tong in bars and restaurants. The press reported incidents in which Elizabeth would smack Burton in the mouth, employ language foul enough to make a docker blush then continue necking with him as if nothing had happened. 'I will accuse her of being ugly, and she will accuse me of being a talentless son of a bitch,' Burton told the Daily Mirror, claiming that they had frequently 'pitched' battles for the fun of it. He added coyly, 'I love arguing with Elizabeth, except when she is in the nude. It's impossible to take an argument seriously with her naked. She throws her fingers around so vigorously, she positively bruises herself!'\n\nSuch utterances were voiced at a time when the Burtons' films were absolutely trashed by the critics. Hammersmith Is Out (1972), directed by and co-starring Peter Ustinov (who had obviously not learned his lesson since starring with them in The Comedians), was regarded as their most dire so far. Supposedly set in the American southwest, it was filmed in Cuernavaca, Mexico, so that they would not have to travel far from Puerto Vallarta. Elizabeth played a rough-edged waitress at a greasy spoon, Burton the nutcase who is convinced that he is the devil and promises to get her away from her life of drudgery and turn her into a movie star! Woven into the hammy storyline is his relationship with another 'disciple', played by Beau Bridges. It was the kind of scenario that might have worked well three decades earlier with Joan Crawford and Zachary Scott, but here the leads are wishy-washy and embarrassing: Elizabeth appears bored, and Burton looks overweight, ill and old. Variety observed, 'Burton, as the lunatic Hammersmith, goes through the film with a single (the director told him never to close his eyes!) bored expression.'\n\nElizabeth's Night Watch (1973), filmed in June 1972, was little better. Alongside Laurence Harvey, now in the latter stages of cancer, she played yet another Tennessee Williams-style madwoman who gets to wear stunning Valentino creations whilst going out of her mind.\n\nThere were also overseas family problems. Burton's brother Ifor suffered a serious fall during a visit to the house in C\u00e9ligny. Paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair, he died soon afterwards. Then Michael Wilding Jr was arrested when police raided his Welsh commune and discovered that he had been growing cannabis. By then, he had another 'earth mother', Johanne Lyke-Dahn, and a second daughter, Naomi. At least one of Elizabeth's offspring was turning out to be a chip off the old block. Burton was also cheating on her. There were reputed affairs with Princess Margaret and French actress Nathalie Delon, who also had a fling with Eddie Fisher (or so he claimed). Elizabeth would later suspect Burton of being involved with Sophie Loren in Rome whilst shooting The Voyage (1974). But the affair that caused her the most distress was that with Jackie Onassis.\n\nMany people blamed Elizabeth's complex personality for her husband's straying from the unsettled marital nest. She had always been hopeless when it came to choosing men and seemed to go out of her way to bring out the worst in them. One Hollywood divorce was more or less accepted as the norm, two could just about be excused but a possible fourth meant that there must have been something radically wrong not just with her, but with every man who crossed her path, for they too had had a multitude of partners and acrimonious splits.\n\nIn Britain, Harlech Television (in which Burton had invested $250,000 so that he and Elizabeth could sit on the board) took the brave step of trying to monopolise on the ongoing Taylor-Burton saga by proposing a two-part television movie, Divorce His, Divorce Hers. This told the story of a couple's marriage break-up, each part told from one of the partner's point of view, and did not attract a single favourable review. Time magazine called the Burtons 'a matching pair of thudding disasters', whilst Variety observed, 'This film holds all the joy of standing by at an autopsy.'\n\nTelevision movies rarely come tackier than this. Jane and Martin Reynolds are Taylor and Burton, the spoilt wife and philandering husband, whose mistress, portrayed by Carrie Nye, resembles a second-rate drag queen. 'I am permanently adrift,' Jane proclaims, and she is not kidding! In a flashback scene, 20 years before, she looks older than she does now. Her accent dithers between queen's English and a Bronx-honk, and there is the obligatory mad scene. She wears only the best Edith Head costumes and makes a point of showing off the $1-million-plus La Pelegrina necklace given to her by Burton, who stumbles through the picture so bombed out of his skull that most of his lines make no sense at all.\n\nThis dreadful production in the can, now remembered as 'Liz and Dick's Last Stand', Elizabeth and Burton spent the Christmas holidays in Switzerland. In February 1973, they flew to Italy, where she was to make Ash Wednesday (1973), whilst he worked on the aforementioned The Voyage with Sophia Loren, directed by Carlo Ponti. In her film, Elizabeth played Barbara Sawyer, a middle-aged woman who submits to plastic surgery in an attempt to prevent her husband (Henry Fonda) from divorcing her. In doing so she attracts the attention of Erich, a beautiful young gigolo \u2013 portrayed by Austrian heartthrob Helmut Berger. When asked by a reporter from The Ladies Home Journal if she would ever consider going under the knife for real, Elizabeth responded, 'We can't stop the inevitable, so why try? Plastic surgery isn't for me because I don't base my happiness on the physical aspects of life.'\n\nIn fact, with her marriage at breaking point, Elizabeth had probably never felt so miserable, and it shows on the screen. Even the combined attractiveness of Berger and the ski resort of Cortina D'Ampezzo, where the locations were filmed, failed to put an authentic smile on her face. Upon her return to America, she announced that she and Burton were separating, though only long enough for them to iron out their differences. The exclusive was given to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and was deliberately timed to coincide with Independence Day:\n\nI am convinced it would be a good, constructive idea if Richard and I separated for a while. Maybe we loved each other too much. I never believed such a thing was possible, but we've been in each other's pockets constantly, never being apart but for matters of life and death . . . Wish us well during this difficult time. Pray for us!\n\nRichard Burton responded to the statement and defended their volatile relationship by announcing, 'You can't keep clapping a couple of sticks of dynamite together without expecting them to blow up!' Many critics were surprised that with her track record and his womanising and boozing they had lasted as long as they had. Yet she appeared to be making a concerted effort to hang onto him. Within three weeks of her announcement, the first reconciliation took place in Rome. Naturally, the press were informed well in advance of the staged, very public event at the city's Fiumicino Airport. Some 200 police were drafted in to control the 2,000-strong crowd, which fought with reporters and photographers to get to Burton's car that was waiting for Elizabeth's privately hired aircraft. She arrived accompanied by two of her dogs and was suitably 'dressed down' for the occasion, wearing denims and T-shirt, but she still flashed the Taylor-Burton Diamond at the photographers. The police managed to get her into Burton's car, the rear door of which was left open just long enough for the press to catch a glimpse of them falling into one another's arms and shedding a few crocodile tears. They were then pursued throughout the 12 miles to the Pontis' villa in Marino.\n\nBy 30 July 1973, it was all over. Burton stayed on in Rome to finish his film; Elizabeth remained in the city for a week or so to complete the locations for her latest offering, The Driver's Seat (1974; also released as Identikit). This was a woeful tale, if ever there was one, to cheer her up after her second split from her husband. She played Lise, an unhinged nymphomaniac who wishes to right the wrongs of her shady past by finding a lover willing to kill her \u2013 whilst they are having sex! Her co-star and the man selected to do the deed was Guido Mannari. But if many observers expected her to turn to the young Italian stunner for comfort, the shoulder she instead leaned upon was that of arch weirdo Andy Warhol, playing himself in a cameo in the picture. This was a ploy on Warhol's part to get an exclusive for his monthly Interview magazine, which failed when she heard the tiny tape recorder whirring away in his coat pocket. Exit Andy Warhol, at least for the time being.\n\nAt the end of August, Elizabeth returned to Los Angeles, where press reports soon linked her with Christopher Lawford, the 18-year-old son of 'Rat Pack' actor Peter. Alarmed that his son was seeing a woman old enough to be his mother, not to mention one of the world's most infamous man-eaters, Lawford fixed Elizabeth up with a 40-year-old half-Jewish Dutch used-car salesman named Henry Wynberg. According to biographer Jane Ellen Wayne (The Golden Girls of MGM, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002), Lawford described Wynberg, who was divorced with a young son, as 'a great cocksman with the type of equipment that appealed to Elizabeth'.\n\nBefore long, Elizabeth and Wynberg were cruising the Mediterranean aboard the Kalizma. Burton, monitoring the situation from afar, could not resist quipping to a reporter, 'If he's a used-car salesman, a vital part of Wynberg's anatomy might fall off when he needs it the most!' It was Wynberg who escorted Elizabeth to a charity event, organised to raise funds for the families of Israelis killed in the Middle East war, in Amsterdam, where some of his family lived. She donated some of her jewellery and upped the takings by $200,000.\n\nWhilst in Amsterdam, Elizabeth received word that her friend and former co-star Laurence Harvey was dying. It is evident from her memoirs (One Tear Is Enough, M. Joseph, 1975) that Paulene Stone, Harvey's wife, did not want Elizabeth there, but this was Elizabeth Taylor, accustomed to always having her own way, regardless of anyone else's feelings. There was also a 'family' connection: Harvey's first wife, Margaret Leighton, had married Michael Wilding. In her book, ex-model Paulene explained that she had tried to prevent Elizabeth from seeing Harvey because he had not wanted to see her: '\"She went on and on about life and death \u2013 it seems to be her favourite subject after diamonds,\" Larry growled at me, after one of her calls.' But, Elizabeth being Elizabeth, she managed to slip into the sickroom \u2013 and to get into the dying actor's bed, telling him that she wanted to die with him.\n\nThree weeks after this distressing, if not humiliating, display of exhibitionism, Laurence Harvey died, and Elizabeth vied with his widow to deliver the most fitting but rehearsed eulogy. 'He was part of the sun,' she told reporters, 'and for everyone, the sun is a little more dim.' And just as she had attempted to monopolise Laurence Harvey's deathbed, so she took over the memorial arrangements. With Peter Lawford, she organised an Episcopal service (for a Lithuanian Jew) and greeted mourners at the church door like she was his widow, clad in black, sparkling with the diamonds Harvey despised and handing out bunches of violets.\n\nAnd this was not the only humiliation Elizabeth caused that year. Only the intervention of Maria Callas's entourage prevented the greatest operatic diva of her generation from 'committing grievous bodily harm' when Elizabeth turned up for her recital in Hamburg on 25 October 1973. The reason: Elizabeth, tired of Richard Burton's womanising in Budapest, had played him at his own game on 5 May the previous year by flying to Rome to have dinner with Aristotle Onassis. The pair had been snapped by the paparazzi \u2013 naturally, they had been tipped off beforehand \u2013 and most of the subsequent press reports drew the conclusion that they had spent the night together. Callas would carry a torch for Onassis until his death in 1975, and she despised Jackie Kennedy for stealing him from her. Just as there seemed to be a chance of them reuniting, with the Onassis's marriage reputedly on the rocks, Elizabeth had attempted to pull the rug from under her.\n\nFeelings were still running high in September 1997 when I met up with what was left of Callas's entourage in London on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of her death. Her chauffeur from Hamburg told me:\n\nSuch was Madame Taylor's massive self-esteem that she really expected Maria to welcome her with open arms. Maria had already hit the roof because someone had persuaded, shall we say, her secretary to appear in an Elizabeth Taylor film [Nadia Stancioff, Ash Wednesday]. In her dressing-room, Maria fumed, 'Just who does she think she is, flaunting her diamonds and love affairs in everybody's faces? I'll tear the fucking bitch to pieces and cratch out her eyes if she comes anywhere near me!' The ensuing scene, had it taken place, would have been more exciting than any Hollywood movie \u2013 and Maria would have won!\n\nThis was Maria Callas's farewell tour, a joint series of recitals with tenor Giuseppi Di Stefano. Her magnificent voice was starting to fail her, and she was a bag of nerves \u2013 a condition not helped by the start of the show being held up by ten minutes by the arrival of a woman she positively loathed. Elizabeth's secretary had demanded complimentary tickets, which Callas had refused, suspecting that if Elizabeth turned up at the theatre, she would only end up stealing her thunder. 'Tell her to take a hike along the Rieperbahn,' her chauffeur reported Callas as responding, referring to the city's infamous red-light district. Elizabeth, however, had instructed her secretary to purchase an entire row of top-priced tickets, and, as Callas had predicted, she entered the auditorium to thunderous applause and the popping of hundreds of flashbulbs. Callas, however, had the last laugh when one of Elizabeth's staff and a press photographer attempted to effect a backstage meeting after the recital. 'Elizabeth Taylor?' she spat out. 'Never heard of her!'\n\nRichard Burton was still filming in Rome at the end of the year when Elizabeth collapsed and was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center. Doctors diagnosed an ovarian tumour, necessitating her 30th operation. Burton flew to Los Angeles to be with her, his press office announcing that this time they were together 'for keeps' and that he had given up the demon drink once and for all. The tumour fortunately proved to be benign, and after her discharge she and Burton spent a week in Puerto Vallarta before jetting back to Rome, where he added the finishing touches to The Voyage. They then flew to Oroville, California, where he was to make The Klansman (1974) with Lee Marvin. Here, in an alcoholic stupor, the Burtons celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary: he with the new Miss Pepsi Cola; Elizabeth alone. The film was another stinker, with Marvin playing the hero who takes on the might of the Ku Klux Klan, whilst Burton camps things up and bumps into the scenery. 'His grotesque performance turns a merely mediocre film into a full-blown baddie,' observed the Medved brothers in The Golden Turkey Awards.\n\nThrowing together a pair of alcoholic rabble-rousers such as Richard Burton and Lee Marvin was always going to be problematic. Director Terence Young told the press halfway through shooting that there already had been moments when he had seriously considered flinging himself out of his hotel window. Another story circulated that each day began with Burton guzzling pre-breakfast cocktails \u2013 and ended with him bedding one of the waitresses who had served them. He took ill on the set, and Elizabeth had him flown to Los Angeles, where he was admitted to St John's Hospital. He had diseased kidneys, suspected irreversible liver damage, bronchitis and influenza. Of late, he had also taken to snorting cocaine. Doctors warned him that unless he curbed his drinking habits he would be dead within the year. From then on, Burton was living on borrowed time \u2013 and did absolutely nothing to help himself.\n\nElizabeth had had enough. On 25 April 1974, she instructed her lawyers to draw up the divorce papers.\n\n# TWELVE\n\nFROM PLAYBOY'S MUSE \nTO FARMER'S WIFE\n\nON 26 JUNE 1974, THE BURTONS' TEN-YEAR MARRAIGE ended in a courthouse in Saanen, the Swiss ski resort near Gstaad. Elizabeth told the judge that life with her husband had been intolerable \u2013 not exactly true, for there is more than sufficient evidence that the pair had been making life hell for one another since before their marriage. Some cynics remarked that making up \u2013 i.e. rough sex \u2013 had maybe lost its magic towards the end.\n\nBurton, too sick to attend the hearing, excused himself with a physician's certificate. As had happened with Sybil, he was extremely generous with the divorce settlement. Elizabeth got to keep their yacht, which she transformed into a temporary floating holiday home. Additionally, she kept the $15-million worth of jewellery and personal effects \u2013 and adopted daughter Maria, who had been shunted around for the entirety of her short life. Burton also set up more than substantial trust funds for his and Elizabeth's children.\n\nAfter the divorce, Elizabeth submitted to a handful of interviews in which she explained how sad she was that her favourite marriage had ended \u2013 she then returned to Henry Wynberg. Though Elizabeth had told the press that losing Burton had been the 'second-worst day' of her life (the worst being the day Mike Todd died, a point she was still putting forward as this book was being prepared), she was soon back to letting her heart rule her head, playing the tearful, disillusioned little girl who had mislaid one toy and then stumbled upon another that she did not really want but that would keep her occupied until something better came along. Neither had she severed her ties with Burton completely, having left a clause in her will instructing for them to be buried together, when the time came, next to his parents in a Welsh village cemetery \u2013 whether he wanted this or not.\n\nThe fact that Henry Wynberg only bought a pair of matching friendship rings should have given Elizabeth an inkling towards his intentions, even more so when he told reporters that he had made the mistake of marrying before and was not in any hurry to do so again. Elizabeth hoped to persuade him otherwise by getting him to move into a mini-mansion in the Hollywood hills, which she 'kinked up' by having the bedroom walls decorated with metallic wallpaper so that they could watch distorted images of one another whilst they were having sex. She also renewed her friendship with Max Lerner, now approaching 70, and he acted as some sort of technical adviser on her latest relationship.\n\nAccording to Kitty Kelley, who interviewed Lerner, Elizabeth is claimed to have remarked of Wynberg, 'I know that no one else likes him, but I don't care . . . He fucks me beautifully, and I know he's not a big mind like you are, but he takes care of me, and that's what I need.' Peter Lawford was another regular visitor to the house, probably hoping that this affair would work out, if for no other reason than to keep Elizabeth away from his teenage son. What she did not know was that Wynberg was reported to be sneaking girls into the house when Elizabeth was not home.\n\nRichard Burton might have been 'deteriorating fast', according to his friends in Switzerland, but his libido showed no signs of abating. In October 1974, he announced his engagement to 38-year-old Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia \u2013 tidings that resulted in his first Elizabeth taking to bed with back pains, for which traction was prescribed, though she vehemently denied that she had invented the ailment to gain sympathy. The first to arrive to comfort her was Sara Taylor, living in Palm Springs since Francis's death, then Liza Todd and Christopher Wilding. Elizabeth also arranged for someone to infringe upon Burton and his new romance over the festive season. Her adopted daughter Maria, who had played a minor role in the Burtons' lives so far, was dispatched to Belgium. Maria stayed with Burton and Princess Elizabeth in Verviers, near Li\u00e8ge \u2013 whilst Howard Taylor and his family stayed at Elizabeth's chalet in Gstaad.\n\nWith Burton out of the picture and the media circus put on hold for the time being, Elizabeth's career progressed: for the first time in years, the critics took her acting seriously. She did a sterling job co-comp\u00e8ring That's Entertainment!, and, although the venture was a commercial flop, she was superb in George Cukor's The Blue Bird (1976).\n\nAdhering closer to Maurice Maeterlinck's allegorical fairy tale than its predecessors, this $15-million remake was shot on location in and around Leningrad during the spring of 1975, finally realising Elizabeth's long-standing dream of working in Russia. She waived her fee, such was her eagerness, settling for a percentage of the box-office receipts, covered her own expenses and spent over $10,000 of her own money on her costumes. At points in the film, in which she plays four parts \u2013 Light, Mother, Witch and Maternal Love \u2013 she is almost unrecognisable. The British and American cast was headed by Ava Gardner (who on account of the studio's spartan conditions had to share her dressing-room), Robert Morley and Cicely Tyson. Playing one of the children Mytyl was seven-year-old Patsy Kensit, already a movie stalwart. Thirty years later, she told Attitude magazine's Andrew Fraser:\n\nShe was my first encounter with gayness. She was surrounded by this gay mafia. Raymondo, her stylist, her make-up artists, all the other helpers \u2013 they would all dress in the same colour as Elizabeth. If Elizabeth was in red, they'd all be wearing it. She was my first experience of divadom. The big diamond that Richard Burton bought her, she used to take it off her finger and say, 'Patsy, catch!'\n\nElizabeth was accompanied on the trip by Henry Wynberg \u2013 but only just. Her beau had recently been arraigned on several counts of grand theft, accused of turning back the milometer on cars he had sold. Following an appeal, these charges were commuted to misdemeanours, with a $1,000 fine and three years probation, which normally would have prohibited him from leaving the country. A second appeal appears to have overturned this to enable him to travel with Elizabeth, who might have vouched for him by declaring him to be professionally involved with The Blue Bird as its stills photographer.\n\nWynberg must have felt awkward when Elizabeth insisted upon stopping off en route to Russia at Gstaad to check up on Richard Burton. Princess Elizabeth had just discovered that he had been cheating on her whilst filming in Nice with a black Playboy model named Jeanne Bell. Not wishing to evoke a scandal \u2013 which prompts the question, why get involved with a known lecher like Burton in the first place? \u2013 the princess had broken off their engagement. In Leningrad, a possible reunion with her ex-husband occupied Elizabeth's every waking minute when she was not working, and Wynberg must have seen the writing on the wall as she feigned interest in him.\n\nThe Blue Bird wound up early in August \u2013 several weeks behind schedule due to Elizabeth being laid low with viral flu and then amoebic dysentery. Though illness had prevented her from eating properly whilst filming, and though her beauty would never fade, even in old age, she had piled on the pounds. Unflattering photographs \u2013 usually of her stuffing her face \u2013 began appearing in the press. Then, later in the month, everything fell apart for the Burton-Bell, Taylor-Wynberg liaisons when Burton and Elizabeth met up in Lausanne to discuss 'business affairs'. For her, living with a man was out of the question: despite her many affairs, she had been brought up to respect the sanctity of marriage and was still old-fashioned in this respect. What she now wanted, she told the press, was the stability of marriage. This, of course, had never worked before, and she was arguably too set in her ways for it to do so now. Cynics suggested that the rendezvous and its aftermath was a deliberate ploy to resurrect their respective flagging careers \u2013 particularly when they announced their plans to remarry almost at once.\n\nAccording to Richard Burton, speaking later to People magazine, within days of their getting back together they were 'at it hammer and tongs' \u2013 proof enough that they had never stopped loving one another. Syndicated columns the world over published lurid details of their revived spats, along with extracts from their syrupy love letters. They travelled to Johannesburg for a charity poetry-reading event and from there to Botswana's Chobe National Park, on the banks of the Zambezi. It was there, in a 20-minute ceremony conducted by the district commissioner, that they were married for the second time, on 10 October 1975.\n\nThis time there was no exclusive Helen Rose outfit, and the 'limo' was a Land Rover. The bride wore a floor-length green gown decorated with guinea-fowl feathers, a gift from Burton's late brother, Ifor Jenkins. The groom wore white trousers and a scarlet sweater \u2013 he claimed to have been on the wagon for the past year but was sozzled at ten in the morning. His wedding gift this time around was a 25-carat pink diamond, reported to have cost $1.1 million \u2013 which Elizabeth announced she did not want! Hoping to curry favour with her critics, sharpening their quills in readiness for a renewed attack on the Burton-Taylor spending mania, she decided to sell the bauble and use the money for charitable purposes. Because Botswana had given her the happiest day of her life since marrying Burton the first time, she pledged $1 million towards building a clinic in Kasane, the town adjacent to the park. 'They need one more than I need another ring,' she told reporters. It was an impressive gesture, but nothing more. When the project was inexplicably cancelled \u2013 by which time Elizabeth and Burton were virtually history and the location no longer regarded in the same romantic light \u2013 the health ministry controlling the region was promised $45,000 but only received $25,000. It was a generous donation all the same but would have been more appreciated had this amount been promised in the first place, instead of the community's hopes being built up and then dashed as they had.\n\nThe honeymoon comprised a wildlife safari, too much for the ailing Richard Burton, who came down with malaria. His life was ostensibly saved by an Italian-Egyptian pharmacist who had to be flown in by helicopter. Around Elizabeth's age, her name was Chenima Samin; Elizabeth shortened this to Chen Sam and quickly formed a close bond with her, so much so that when the couple returned to London to celebrate Burton's 50th birthday, Chen Sam accompanied them. She remained an integral part of Elizabeth's entourage as her publicist (replacing Dick Hanley, Mike Todd's publicist, whom she had retained and who had died the previous year). Chen Sam would serve Elizabeth faithfully until her own death in 1996.\n\nThe new marriage lasted all of three months, and, as before, Burton was the one doing the straying. On the Swiss ski slopes, he met racing driver James Hunt's pretty 29-year-old wife Suzy, a leggy former model. In January 1976, when he opened in the Broadway production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, she was at his side. Not long afterwards, Suzy obtained a quickie Haitian divorce.\n\nSo ended arguably the most extravagant pairing in show business. Over the last decade, the Burtons had raked in an estimated $100 million from mostly mediocre movies and shrewd investments with heavy tax concessions. Seemingly without a care in the world or much thought for anyone but themselves, they had ploughed approximately three-quarters of this back into the economy with their greed for razzmatazz and the media spotlight.\n\nPretending not to be affected by Burton and his new love interest, Elizabeth played him at his own game by having a fling with a tall, dark and handsome 37-year-old Maltese advertising executive named Peter Darmanin. The pair met in The Cave, a disco in the basement of Gstaad's Hotel Olden. According to press reports, they danced all evening, despite Elizabeth's bad back. And according to Darmanin, Elizabeth summoned him to her chalet the next morning, and they made love at once. Their affair lasted all of seven weeks, with Darmanin telling People magazine in 1976 that with Elizabeth's constant demands and acute possessiveness it had seemed like seven years. 'She was passionate in bed,' he said, 'and I must confess we didn't sleep much during those seven weeks.' It all ended when Elizabeth slapped him during a barney and one of her diamonds slashed his forehead. Darmanin also claimed that, like her character in Suddenly, Last Summer, Elizabeth had once stubbed out a cigarette in the palm of his hand.\n\nThe break-up coincided with Richard Burton's escalating problems while in Equus in New York. His first stage performances in 12 years were well received by the critics, a far cry from most of the work he had done with Elizabeth. Even the feisty, frequently non-complimentary New York Times's Bosley Crowther observed that Equus was the best thing that Burton had ever done. However, such plaudits coupled with his failed attempts to stay on the wagon placed Burton at an all-time low, and in February 1976 he called Elizabeth and begged her to fly out to New York. Incapable of resisting the command, she was on the next plane \u2013 only to discover that the real reason he wanted her there was to ask her to her face for a divorce so that he could marry Suzy Hunt. Elizabeth returned to California at once and 'reconnected' with Henry Wynberg as if nothing had happened since she had last seen him.\n\nWynberg, who had been shunted aside for Peter Darmanin and then Richard Burton, must have been a sucker for punishment, for no sooner had he and Elizabeth set up home \u2013 again \u2013 at a rented house in Los Angeles's exclusive Trousdale suburb than there was another contender for her favours. In March 1976, the two dined with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his wife (she and Burton had met them the previous year during a lightning charity trip to Israel), and it was Kissinger who added Elizabeth's name, but not Wynberg's, to the guest list for another fund-raiser, this time in aid of the American Ballet Theater. The high-profile bash took place in April at Washington's Kennedy Center. Elizabeth wore over $1 million of jewels and, according to the Washington Post, 'swept into Washington like Cleopatra into Rome'. This was followed by another lavish party at the Iranian embassy, hosted by Ardeshir Zahedi, the country's ambassador to the United States.\n\nZahedi, a 48-year-old bachelor formerly married to the shah's daughter, always maintained that his relationship with Elizabeth was platonic. If this was the case, he did little at the time to convince the world. Over the next two weeks, the pair were virtually inseparable: they were snapped dancing in nightclubs, holding hands and kissing. Zahedi was Elizabeth's date for the New York premiere of The Blue Bird, and she was his 'special guest' when the US\u2013Iran Air Service proposed a 140-strong celebrities-only inaugural flight to Tehran. Their relationship hit a serious snag, however, when rumours that Elizabeth might have been looking for husband number six reached the shah's ears. Having already suffered the extreme humiliation of Zahedi divorcing his favourite daughter, the shah was in no mood to tolerate his cultural representative being involved with a neo-Jewish woman of Elizabeth's reputation. Zahedi was instructed not just to sever ties with her, but to refrain from accompanying the guests on the flight to Tehran. Elizabeth travelled there anyhow, stayed at the Hilton and snarled at a reporter who erroneously addressed her as 'Mrs Burton' \u2013 this just about summed up her one and only trip to Iran. And, as before, she returned to Henry Wynberg.\n\nThe reunion was brief, Elizabeth learning that Wynberg had been recently arrested on 'undisclosed moral charges'. On 16 February, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (and numerous syndicated columnists who almost certainly would not have picked up on the story had it not been for his association with Elizabeth) reported that Wynberg had been questioned by police in regards to his conduct. As would later happen with Michael Jackson, Elizabeth dropped him like the proverbial hot brick. In February 1977, Wynberg was arraigned in Los Angeles for having a party with four girls, at which there was drugs and alcohol. He would later be found guilty of a criminal charge, serve ninety days in the Los Angeles County Jail and be put on probation for five years. Wynberg subsequently sued the National Enquirer over a story that he had 'exploited for commercial gain' his relationship with Elizabeth but lost when the federal judge noted that he had a criminal record and 'a reputation for taking advantage of women generally'.\n\nDuring the early summer of 1976, Elizabeth began taking an active interest in American politics, having discovered that the Washington social register had just as much to offer as its Hollywood and New York counterparts. In New York, she attended a Democratic fund-raiser in support of Jimmy Carter during his run-up to the presidential candidate selections, declaring that she did not dislike his rival Gerald Ford, only that Carter was the more intelligent of the two! The following day she lunched with Vice-President Nelson Rockerfeller in Washington, then returned to New York to lend support to Congresswoman Bella Abzug.\n\nIt was by way of her political leanings that Elizabeth met the next important man in her life \u2013 and a member of the enemy camp. She and 49-year-old Republican John Warner had bumped into each other a couple of times on the society circuit. This was the year of the American bicentenary, and on 8 July 1976, to honour the occasion, President Ford and Queen Elizabeth hosted a dinner party at the British embassy in Washington. Anyone who was anyone was invited. Because she did not have a partner, Elizabeth was 'fixed up' with the six-foot, prematurely greying would-be politician, currently director of the Bicentenary Committee. This apparently did not sit well with the British ambassador Sir Peter Ramsbotham, who is thought to have instructed Elizabeth to dress down for the occasion and not to 'overdo' the jewels. Likewise, Warner was discreetly asked to keep her in check \u2013 the last thing Ramsbotham wanted was the queen of England being upstaged by the queen of the movies!\n\nBorn in 1927, the son of an Episcopalian minister, Warner shared Elizabeth's star sign; she believed that this was a lucky omen after her recent troubles. Warner had dropped out of high school to serve with the US Navy towards the end of the Second World War and had later served with the marines in Korea. Demobbed, he had studied law in his native Virginia, and in 1957 had been appointed an assistant US attorney for Washington. That year he had also married Catherine, daughter of the Pittsburgh multimillionaire philanthropist Paul Mellon. It was reputedly through Mellon's influence with the Nixon administration that Warner had been appointed secretary of the US Navy in 1972. The following year he and his wife had divorced, the major source of dissension between them being Warner's support of the Vietnam War, which Catherine opposed. Theirs had been the most amiable split imaginable. In return for Warner not contesting the action, Paul Mellon had awarded him custody of the three children for most of the year, the couple's $750,000 house in Georgetown, their 2,700-acre farm at Middleburg and a lifelong income from investment valued at around $7 million.\n\nAfter the Washington bash, Elizabeth was invited to John Warner's farm, an hour's drive from the city. Pride of place went to the swimming pool he had built in one of the barns, his 600-strong herd of Hereford cattle and a 500-acre wildlife park. Very soon the place would be 'Taylorised', with the addition of a screening room and disco, and some of Warner's conservative prints would be replaced by her collection of grand masters.\n\nTheirs certainly was a classic case of opposites attracting. Warner was as reserved in his tastes, beliefs and conduct as Elizabeth was boisterous, racy and forthright. She was also a converted Jew and a Democrat, which did not exactly fit in with some of his policies. They had a whirlwind romance \u2013 was there any other kind for Elizabeth? \u2013 and when Warner privately proposed marriage, she was not slow in accepting, even though her divorce from Richard Burton would not be finalised until the August of that year.\n\nMeanwhile, Elizabeth flew to Vienna to shoot the film version of Stephen Sondheim's cult stage musical A Little Night Music. She played Desiree Armfeldt, an ageing actress who wants to retire from the stage and get married. Playing her mother was British acting institution Hermione Gingold, who had never hidden her disdain for Elizabeth during her adventure with Richard Burton, and fireworks were anticipated when these 'connoisseurs of gentlemen' met on the set. But Gingold surprised everyone by declaring Elizabeth to be 'absolutely adorable' and 'divine to work with'. Elizabeth sang 'Send in the Clowns' beautifully \u2013 better, in fact, than anyone other than Frank Sinatra, who took the song into the charts \u2013 and she also formed a close friendship with British actress Lesley-Anne Down.\n\nThe press, unable to report any catfights, made up for their disappointment by drawing attention to Elizabeth's appearance, especially her 'fuller' figure, highlighted in the film when her lover (Len Cariou) laments the fact that she is too attractive by crooning, 'If only she'd been faded . . . If only she'd been fat!' The Daily Mirror's film critic observed after the March 1978 premiere:\n\nWhat brought us all dangerously close to rolling in the aisles was the forlorn attempt to squeeze Elizabeth Taylor's quart-sized goodies into a pint-sized ensemble. Tortuously nipped in here, flowing out there, heaving out you know where \u2013 it only required heavy dark-blue eye-shadow to complete the impression of a superannuated Madame.\n\nIn Vienna, Elizabeth was joined by Maria Todd, now 19, and, unusually for once, although still claiming to despise his mother's opulent lifestyle, Michael Wilding Jr turned up with new girlfriend Joanna and their baby Naomi. It was whilst she was enjoying this little family reunion that she received tidings of Richard Burton's marriage to Suzy Hunt on 22 August 1976. The newlyweds added insult to injury by having the ceremony in Arlington in Virginia, the state where she had found the recent love of her life. Suzy might also have had one of Elizabeth's wedding speeches at the back of her mind when she told reporters, 'I've promised that I'll be with him all the time and do all the things a good wife should.' Her efforts would be in vain: Burton, like Elizabeth, had never listened to reason and was too far gone in his habits to change.\n\nElizabeth called Burton at once, ostensibly to congratulate him, though her sincerity must be doubted. Robert Stephens, her co-star in A Little Night Music (1977), had just walked off the picture, and Elizabeth wanted Burton to replace him \u2013 arguably her first step in wooing him away from his new wife and mindless of her own feelings for John Warner. Unable to cope with what she regarded as Burton's ultimate rejection (though they would stay in close contact until the end), Elizabeth summoned Warner to Vienna, and on 10 October their engagement was made official. From this point in their relationship, there is little doubt that while Elizabeth was using Warner (as she had Wynberg and Darmanin) as a stopgap in the hope that Burton would be hers once more, her celebrity status was arguably beneficial to his aspiring political career, though his affection appears to have been genuine.\n\nElizabeth and John Warner were married on 4 December 1976 at the top of a steep incline on his land, where he had proposed to her, and which they had named 'Engagement Hill'. Later, she told the story of how they had driven there in his jeep to watch the sunset and been caught in a storm, and the moment had been too magical for him to ignore. Elizabeth dressed for the occasion in what passed for the typical garb of the farmer's wife: cashmere dress and turban, suede boots, and a fur-trimmed coat, all in her favourite shades of lavender and grey. The simple ceremony was conducted by Reverend Neale Morgan \u2013 the couple's second choice after one of his colleagues refused to officiate for a woman who had been married six times already. Reverend Morgan read Psalm 23 for Warner and a passage from the Book of Ruth for Elizabeth. The guests included Warner's son, a few friends and farmhands \u2013 and most of the Hereford cows, who followed the party up the hill. For the seventh time, Elizabeth told reporters that she had never felt this much love before \u2013 and, yes, this one would last the course. There was also a prenuptial agreement \u2013 one which, the couple said, would protect their children's futures, because neither would have to pay the other a penny in the event of a divorce. They also made arrangements to be buried together \u2013 Elizabeth had clearly forgotten that she had already reserved a place for her mortal remains next to Richard Burton.\n\nBurton had wooed Elizabeth with paintings and jewels. John Warner gave her a corn silo emblazoned with 'John Loves Elizabeth', whilst she offered him a prize-winning bull and two cows. The honeymoon, extending over the Christmas period, was spent at Elizabeth's chalet in Gstaad \u2013 again, it was as if being in close proximity to Burton was obligatory. John Warner later claimed that he had never met any of Elizabeth's ex-husbands and that the only one worthy of her had been Mike Todd \u2013 no doubt because he was the only one who had never got around to divorcing her and was no longer around to broadcast what she had really been like to live with. He did meet Burton, however, during that festive season, and is on record as having said that he found him 'a fascinating individual'. Aware of Elizabeth's obsession with Burton, he was probably afraid of saying anything else.\n\nIn January 1977, John Warner embarked on his first political campaign, attempting to raise funds for the Republican Party and further his aims to become a senatorial nominee. When Elizabeth boarded his Greyhound bus \u2013 apparently the first time she had been on one \u2013 cynics suggested that having submitted herself to such a drop in standards, using what amounted to public transport, her marriage would have no chance of succeeding, because Warner would now expect her to slum it. She liked to believe this husband as dominant as some of his predecessors, telling People magazine, 'He can make me do anything he wants, except make me pregnant.' When it emerged that Warner had begun dictating to her how to conduct herself in public, it became pretty clear that their marriage was doomed. Asking Elizabeth to lay off the booze and not curse like a docker whilst on the campaign trail was one thing. Warner, however, not only forbade her to wear the famed Taylor-Burton jewels, he also ordered her not to dress in her favourite lavender, grey and purple \u2013 the latter, he declared, because this denoted royalty, which contravened the edicts of the Republican Party. For the time being, she complied, even selling the Taylor-Burton Diamond for $3 million, three times the original purchase price.\n\nThere was a brief return to the Hollywood spotlight that spring when Elizabeth appeared in CBS's An All-Star Tribute to Elizabeth Taylor. For one evening, she stopped being a farmer's wife, donned her baubles and permitted herself to be feted by peers and colleagues. The evening, attended by the likes of June Allyson, Margaret O'Brien, Janet Leigh and the Paul Newmans \u2013 genuine friends who cared about her \u2013 raised over $100,000, which she donated towards a hospital wing that would bear her name. During the summer, she was paid $300,000 for a cameo appearance in television movie Victory at Entebbe (1976), her second outing with Helmut Berger. She handed over her salary to one of her Jewish charities as a tribute to those involved with the Israeli commando raid on the Ugandan town, which had ended the airport siege of 1976. It subsequently emerged (courtesy of a statement leaked by Simcha Dinitz, the Israeli ambassador to the USA) that Elizabeth had offered to fly to Kampala and personally negotiate with dictator Idi Amin for the release of the 104 hostages \u2013 if necessary, offering herself in exchange for their release. And she would have done so had it not been for the intervention of the Israeli troops. An admirable stance indeed.\n\nThe first cracks in the Warners' marriage appeared in February 1978 at a pre-46th birthday party thrown by Elizabeth's couturier Halston at New York's infamous Studio 54, an establishment renowned for its 'anything goes' attitude towards exhibitionist sex and drugs. Elizabeth must have had a very good idea how the evening would turn out and might have deliberately wished to wind up her strait-laced husband by trying to bring him into contact with the 'real' world. A dozen well-endowed hunks, naked but for sequined posing-pouches, and some with joints dangling from the corners of their mouths, scattered gardenia petals in the couple's path as they entered the auditorium with its glitter ball. Several more wheeled in a 500-pound chocolate cake, shaped like Elizabeth's busty upper half. She hugged Andy Warhol \u2013 now forgiven for trying to tape her in Rome \u2013 then picked up a knife and began portioning out the cake. Warhol later observed in his Interview magazine, 'She blew out the candles, sliced off her right tit and gave it to Halston. The television cameras zoomed in as he ate it \u2013 then John Warner ran away.' The dancing and fun continued until the early hours, the atmosphere heavy with the stench of poppers and Elizabeth bebopping with a bevvy of gay porn stars, until Warner put his foot down and said that they were leaving. For him, the writing was by then clearly on the wall.\n\nOn 6 January 1978, John Warner announced that he would be running for the Virginia senatorial Republican candidacy. Needless to say, he had to be seen to be living an unblemished life. His main rivals were Linwood Holton, a former governor, Nathan Miller, the state senator, and, the favourite, Richard D. Obenshain, former state GOP chairman. At that stage, most Virginians regarded Warner as the least likely candidate to win the election. To pay for his campaign, he is alleged to have sold off 40 acres of farmland.\n\nDuring the balloting of 3 June 1978, most of Warner's rivals withdrew from the competition, including Linwood Holton, leaving Richard D. Obenshain in the clear lead, with Nathan Miller and Warner lagging behind. Two ballots later, Warner and Obenshain were the only two in the running. Then, after two more ballots, Warner's hopes were dashed when he lost to Obenshain at the Republican convention. Seemingly unperturbed, Elizabeth told a press gathering, 'I'm not worried. Something's bound to come up!'\n\nThough disappointed by her husband's defeat, Elizabeth took some consolation in returning to work, flying to Hollywood to appear in another television drama, this time as its star. In Return Engagement (1978), she played a college professor of ancient history who falls in love with a student (Joseph Bottoms). Interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, she spoke of her own curiosity value \u2013 for example, during the Warner campaign trail, one overweight, unidentified matron (doubtless of media invention) is supposed to have quipped, 'All my life I've wanted to look like Liz Taylor, and now I do!'\n\n'People are looking for wrinkles and pimples, and I don't disappoint them,' Elizabeth said. 'They want to see if my eyes are really violet, or bloodshot, or both. Then they can go home and say, \"I saw Liz Taylor. And you know what? She ain't so hot!\" And do you know what? They're right!' She was, of course, selling herself short: fat or thin, young or old, she never lost her looks.\n\nNo sooner had Elizabeth completed the film than Obenshain died in a plane crash, on 2 August 1978, remarkably similar to the one that had claimed Mike Todd. Within days of the tragedy, with the press repeating Elizabeth's chilling prediction 'Something's bound to come up!', Warner inherited the Republican candidacy, and the campaigning started all over again. The results, announced on 7 November, were close: Warner won by a majority of just 4,721 votes out of an estimated 1.25 million. But his victory was to be deferred for a recount, the results of which would not be announced until the end of the month. However, this never took place. A board of elections ruling stated that recounts had to be financed by the losing party, in this instance to the tune of $120,000. As the Democrat candidate could not afford this, his only option was to concede.\n\nWarner's election to the Capitol sounded the death-knell on his already shaky marriage. His senatorial work would keep him away from home for long periods, and when they were together, Elizabeth \u2013 largely responsible for his redoubtable success \u2013 was compelled to take a back seat and watch someone else enjoy the limelight for the first time in her life.\n\nIn March 1979, the 'farmer and his wife' were interviewed in their kitchen by Barbara Walters for her television chat show \u2013 a potentially uneasy occasion, because Warner and Walters had once been an item. The scenario was staged to make the most of the rural setting: Warner's hacking jacket was slung over the back of the chair, and Elizabeth wore an old-fashioned smock to make her look a little more homely. When Walters intimated that marrying a serial divorcee might prove detrimental to his career, Warner's reaction was, 'I suppose that if she'd had six or seven consecutive marriages of just two or three years apiece, that might have frightened me away.' He then stated that Elizabeth had been married to Richard Burton for sixteen years and not ten. Obviously, Warner had not done his homework \u2013 otherwise he would have realised that the marriage to Nicky Hilton had lasted all of eight months and that all the others had very quickly hit much-publicised snags.\n\nNeither did John Warner do Elizabeth any favours by publicly referring to her as 'My Little Heifer' and 'Chicken Fat' \u2013 following in the tradition of Montgomery Clift (Bessie Mae) and Mike Todd (My Jewish Broad), this simply was not funny, particularly as her passion for junk food had pushed her weight up to 180 pounds. The press were merciless: if Elizabeth's own husband could poke fun at her, then so could they. Before and after photographs appeared in newspapers and magazines. She was snapped looking obese but elegant during a soiree with Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell \u2013 this was the shot, reversed and with Rubell brushed out, that featured on the cover of Kenneth Anger's acclaimed Hollywood Babylon II (E.P. Dutton, 1984). Inside the book was a much less flattering 'study' of Elizabeth, caught unawares and literally stuffing her face, with the caption, 'Eat it, eat it, open your mouth and feed it.' Comedienne Joan Rivers famously quipped, 'Elizabeth Taylor has more chins than there are in the Chinese phone book!' On stage in Las Vegas, Debbie Reynolds offered dietary advice: 'Know what works for me, girls? I've stuck a photograph of Elizabeth Taylor on my refrigerator door!' Other comics joked that there was going to be a sequel to Around the World in Eighty Days \u2013 with Elizabeth playing the hot-air balloon.\n\nSuch remarks must have rankled, yet in her memoirs Elizabeth writes, 'Since I wasn't working as an actress, I felt there was no reason for me to look any particular way or weigh any particular amount.'\n\nThe Warners' political rallies were hugely successful, with record turnouts. Just as Eddie Fisher fans had latterly flocked to his shows to see her, so the voting public were more interested in the spectacle of Elizabeth Taylor than they were in her dour by comparison silver-haired consort. Over the coming months, she attended wives' groups, judged pie-making and baby contests, opened stores, fetes and charity drives, and was hospitalised several times for her efforts \u2013 following a fall from a horse, with recurrences of her old back problems, and with repetitive strain injury from shaking thousands of hands. More seriously, she very nearly choked to death on a chicken bone. Yet she claimed to have loved every minute, and there is no doubting the enormous impact she had in putting John Warner's name on the map. Even the somewhat stuffy Wall Street Journal observed, 'Mr Warner's rapid political rise is credited to the enormous publicity attracted by his famous wife \u2013 not only in Virginia, but also in the high society of neighbouring Washington.' She also asserted early in these campaigns that she was not going to be one of those politician's wives who sits back at rallies and lets her husband rant on, seemingly without opinions of her own. In February 1980, the Sunday Express covered the GOP's Tidewater Conference in Maryland. The topic was Warner's sexist opinion that only men should be allowed into the services if draft registration be reintroduced. The George and Martha-style bickering went as follows:\n\nELIZABETH: I'm a lady who likes to fight, and I think women should go into the trenches if they could.\n\nWARNER: Elizabeth, you don't have a vote on this issue . . .\n\nELIZABETH: You invited me here!\n\nWARNER: I'm sure that Abe Lincoln, the great emancipator, would see my view . . .\n\nELIZABETH: Abe Lincoln? How many years do you want to go back?\n\nWARNER: I'm proud to say that when I was secretary of the navy, I opened up more jobs for women than they'd ever had before . . .\n\nELIZABETH: 'Rosie the Riveter', you mean? Women have been in active control since year one. Look at Margaret Thatcher. Look at Cleopatra!\n\nShe might have added, 'Look at Elizabeth Taylor!' had not Warner signalled for her to shut up. When he did this, she turned on him and said, 'Don't you dare steady me with that all-dominating hand of yours!' to a massive roar of appreciation from the crowd. If the writing had not been on the wall for John Warner after the Studio 54 party, it certainly was now.\n\n# THIRTEEN\n\nIN THE FOOTSTEPS OF TALLULAH\n\nELIZABETH'S ALWAYS DELICATE CONSTITUTION SUFFERED a severe setback on 8 July 1979 when Michael Wilding died, aged 67, of a brain haemorrhage following a fall at his Chichester home. She flew with Liza Todd to England to join her sons, and the eulogy she delivered at Wilding's funeral was heartfelt and genuine. Unlike with Nicky Hilton and Eddie Fisher, there had been no animosity between them since their divorce, and they had always spoken of one another with great respect. Elizabeth was also upset to learn, after the post mortem, that Wilding had had an aneurism for many years \u2013 even whilst they had been married \u2013 which could have killed him at any time.\n\nShe coped with this loss as she did most of the catastrophes in her life \u2013 with an excess of pills and booze. Wilding's death, however, triggered off another addiction that by the spring of 1980 looked like spiralling out of control: comfort eating. She checked in at the Palm Air Spa, at Florida's Pampano Beach, and within a month had shed 28 pounds. Then she set about sifting through the scripts that had accumulated during her absence.\n\nOf all the films Elizabeth had made over the last three years, only A Little Night Music had attracted half-decent reviews, and as such she was naturally suspicious of taking the plunge again. It was Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd (1980) that took her fancy the most, and she immediately signed the contract because she would be working once again with her great friend Rock Hudson, who had enjoyed tremendous success on the small screen since his career as a matinee idol had ended, most notably in McMillan. Now, he and Elizabeth (replacing Natalie Wood, at four times the salary Wood had been offered) headed a star-studded cast in this high-camp romp, filmed in England in May to June 1980, the action taking place close to the fictional village of St Mary Mead, home to the celebrated Miss Marple. Adding to the glittering roster were Tony Curtis, Edward Fox, Geraldine Chaplin and the scintillating Kim Novak.\n\nIt is a gem of a production, probably the best Elizabeth appeared in during her later career. It also provides another interesting actress-character juxtaposition, in this instance Elizabeth playing fading movie icon Marina Gregg, making her comeback after many years in the wilderness. The action takes place during June 1953, coronation month, when a group of Hollywood eccentrics take over an old mansion to shoot a movie about Mary, Queen of Scots \u2013 or 'Mary Queen of Sluts' as she is referred to \u2013 played by Novak, who Elizabeth could not stand. This only makes the banter between them more realistic and hilarious. Elizabeth is not just acting when she spits at her rival, 'In that wig, you could play Lassie. What are you supposed to be? A birthday cake? Too bad everybody's had a piece!' To which Mary responds, 'Chin up, darling\u2013 both of them!' Elizabeth also added one plum line herself, to 'punish' Rock Hudson for saying in an interview that Doris Day would always remain his favourite leading lady. Gazing at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror while he looks on, po-faced, she sighs, 'Bags, bags, go away. Come right back on Doris Day!'\n\nBecause of its glittering pantheon of stars, the Kent location of The Mirror Crack'd was a fiercely guarded secret \u2013 neither Rock nor Elizabeth were interested in speaking to reporters: he on account of the persistent gay slurs, she because of the rumour that her marriage was on the rocks. It was, and now that the big-screen acting bug had bitten again, Elizabeth realised what she had been missing since meeting Warner. In the July, she was at his side, feigning the role of dutiful wife at the Republican National Convention that nominated Ronald Reagan as the presidential candidate. Reagan had given up a successful acting career to enter the political arena, since which time his wife, former MGM contract player Nancy Davis, had done likewise to support him. Nancy, however, was not the world's biggest still-working movie star, and Elizabeth knew exactly where she belonged \u2013 and it was not in an environment far removed from the one she had spent 30 years monopolising.\n\nSince their second divorce, Elizabeth had been on good terms with Richard Burton. His marriage to Suzy Hunt had floundered, and he returned to what he had done before Elizabeth burst into his life \u2013 a Broadway revival of Camelot. Taking Burton's advice that she would make a fine stage actress, Elizabeth began searching for a suitable role. Eventually, she plumped for Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, on an unprecedented salary of $50,000 a week. The director (her second choice upon learning that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? director Mike Nichols was committed to another project) was Austin Pendleton. Her co-stars included Maureen Stapleton, Anthony Zerbe and Joe Panazecki.\n\nThe last major production of The Little Foxes had been in 1939 when Tallulah Bankhead had, in her own words, 'taken Broadway by the balls' and made a lifelong enemy of Bette Davis, Bette having been contracted for the film version. Tallulah (who died six months after watching Elizabeth 'murder' Flora Goforth in Boom!) had described Regina as 'a rapacious, soulless, sadistic bitch who would have cut her own mother's throat'. Back in 1939, months before the outbreak of the Second World War, the play, a Communist masterpiece, had had very powerful political implications. Hellman's Deep South characters, spearheaded by the obnoxious Regina, were capitalists who achieved their ruthless aims by deceiving, cheating, exploiting black labour, lying and even resorting to murder in order to make huge profits in their cotton mill. Times had changed, and parts of the script had to be amended to suit Elizabeth's less forceful on-stage persona.\n\nLillian Hellman had been so impressed by Tallulah Bankhead's performances \u2013 408 in all \u2013 that she had forbidden anyone else to portray Regina on Broadway until that point, and given Elizabeth's generally bad reviews over the last few years it would appear that Hellman only favoured the Hollywood star because of the enormous revenue the hiked-up ticket prices would bring. To ensure that she raked in as much as possible from the production, Elizabeth formed her own theatre company with impresario Zev Bufman, who had recently triumphed in Washington with a revival of Brigadoon. The try-outs opened at the Florida Playhouse, Fort Lauderdale, on account of its proximity to the Spa, just in case Elizabeth needed to pop back there for treatment.\n\nThe premiere took place on 27 February 1981, Elizabeth's 49th birthday, and constituted her toughest challenge in years. Richard Burton had complained about her inability to project her voice during the early scenes of Cleopatra, so she was generally expected to die on her feet. Many people believed that she had accepted the play to court the necessary publicity in order to get another half-decent film role, and once she did, she would abandon Regina. Indeed, it was also thought that Bufman already had another 'Hollywood stalwart' waiting in the wings to take over. Others who had worked with her and experienced her 'indispositions' believed that her fickle health would not survive the course \u2013 even Bufman himself must have been worried that she would succumb to illness, because he took out a $125,000 insurance policy with Lloyds of London.\n\nThose who had not seen Elizabeth in a while and who were expecting a fat frump to come stomping onto the stage were in for a surprise. By cautious dieting, she had lost 40 pounds and looked as svelte as she had throughout most of Cleopatra. In fact, she was so good as the bitchy, conniving Regina \u2013 with scarcely a jewel in sight \u2013 that by the time The Little Foxes opened at Washington's Kennedy Center, all 47 performances had been sold out. The first-night audience was, courtesy of John Warner, a political showcase attended by President and Nancy Reagan, George Bush senior, the future president, and most of the senate.\n\nThe play transferred to New York's Martin Beck Theater on 7 May, where it would run until 6 September \u2013 123 performances, barring a break when Elizabeth was laid low with respiratory problems. It then moved to Los Angeles for two weeks, a sojourn that enabled her to spend a few afternoons taping five episodes of General Hospital, her favourite daytime soap. She played the wealthy wife of an eccentric scientist who eventually bequeaths her fortune to the hospital \u2013 and promptly donated her $20,000 fee to two Virginia clinics.\n\nIn Los Angeles, there should have been an opening-night party hosted by Rock Hudson, but this was not to be. Rock had secretly complained of feeling unwell whilst shooting The Mirror Crack'd and during the flight back to Los Angeles, but his doctor \u2013 the ubiquitous Rex Kennamer \u2013 had diagnosed nothing more serious than the flu. We now know that this was the onset of heart disease, though he continued to work, still enjoying tremendous success as one of television's leading lights. McMillan had run its course, but he had starred in The Martian Chronicles with Roddy McDowall and, more recently, in the father-son detective series The Devlin Connection with Jack Scalia. He was halfway through taping the second series of this when he was hospitalised on 30 October 1981 with severe chest pains. Two days later, he underwent triple-bypass surgery \u2013 the prognosis was not good. His first visitor at Cedars-Sinai Hospital was Elizabeth, who was sufficiently concerned to consider pulling out of The Little Foxes to spend more time with him. Rock persuaded her not to and, against all odds, pulled through. The incident was a turning point in Elizabeth's life \u2013 from then on she who had thrived on unrelenting selfishness would begin to put others first.\n\nRock's first public outing following his illness was early in the December, when he accompanied Elizabeth to their friend Natalie Wood's funeral. The star, aged 43, had mysteriously drowned off Catalina Island, though at the time \u2013 taking into account her lifelong morbid fear of water \u2013 there was much speculation over whether her death had been an accident or suicide, perhaps even murder. As such, the press were far less interested in Elizabeth, bloated and overweight once more, than they might ordinarily have been. With dignity and compassion, it would appear, Elizabeth allowed Natalie Wood her final moment of notoriety before announcing that she and John Warner had split. The statement was delivered to the press on 21 December 1981. 'There is sadness, but no bitterness,' it concluded. 'Neither party intends to seek a divorce.'\n\nThe move had been triggered largely by John Warner's hostile attitude towards Elizabeth's pets. Now that he had moved up in the world, Warner wanted to relocate to an apartment within his head office, Washington's Watergate building. This would mean selling the house in the city and possibly the farm Elizabeth had loved from day one. Worse still, the Watergate building did not allow dogs and cats. Faced with an ultimatum \u2013 her husband or her 'babies' \u2013 Elizabeth did not find the choice a hard one to make. She 'celebrated' her new-found freedom by treating herself to a new $2-million home \u2013 700 Nimes Road, Bel Air, the former residence of Frank Sinatra's wife, the Nancy of the 'laughing face' \u2013 and she shelled out $150,000 for a customised Aston Martin Lagonda to drive back and forth to engagements.\n\nOn 23 February 1982, leaving several teams of workmen in charge of the renovations, Elizabeth flew to London to prepare for the British production of The Little Foxes. Richard Burton was already in town for a charity performance of Under Milk Wood, and four days later he accompanied his ex-wife to her 50th birthday bash at Legends disco. The press were unkind. Burton, now said to be in the latter stages of liver disease, could scarcely stand; one publication compared him to a 'large blob of pastry'. Elizabeth had left the theatre in a hurry, still wearing her stage make-up, and looked ghastly. There were loud guffaws when Burton introduced her to reporters as 'the fruit of my loins' \u2013 and the next day's tabloids compared her with Hattie Jacques, the loveable but overweight Carry On star.\n\nElizabeth was brutally honest when discussing her drink and drugs problem with the press in the UK. The British tabloids, more famed for their lurid exclusives than their American counterparts (the long-defunct Confidential and its near successor the National Enquirer being exceptions), were robbed of speculation by her insistence on spilling the beans at every opportunity. Elizabeth readily confessed her inability to face the world \u2013 in other words, theatre audiences \u2013 without her two Percodan washed down with liquor. Then, she claimed, she would take two more four hours later to stay on top of things. One biographer, Donald Spoto, went to the trouble of calculating that between 1980 and 1985 she had been prescribed 'more than 1,000 prescriptions for 28 different hypnotics (sleeping pills), anxiolytics (tranquillisers) and narcotics (painkillers) by three Californian doctors who were later reprimanded by a medical board'.\n\nWhen the press questioned Elizabeth and Burton, individually, over rumours that they might be about to tie the knot for the third time, Burton claimed that he had taken her home after the party, 'cast out the homos and hangers-on' and had had his way with her \u2013 whilst Elizabeth's version of events was that he had been 'too drunk to make it to the bedroom'. Burton aside, she was romantically linked with Anthony Geary, the 30-something soap star she had met whilst guesting on General Hospital. It was he who escorted her on a nostalgic trip to Heathwood, the Hampstead house where she had been born. The kindly current owners allowed her to wander around the place \u2013 but refused to sell it to her, even when they were offered way over what would have been the asking price.\n\nThe Little Foxes opened on 11 March and was savaged by the critics. Elizabeth had gone to great pains to look good for the American production but had let herself go again since Rock's illness and the collapse of her marriage. The reviewer for the Daily Express thought she had made an entrance worthy of The Muppet Show's Miss Piggy, whilst Robert Cushman of The Observer called the production 'as grisly as an undertaker's picnic'. Much of what was said, of course, had less to do with what one had witnessed on the stage than whether one loved or loathed Elizabeth Taylor. Indeed, cynics suggested that it was possible to determine the sexuality of these journalists simply by the positive or negative tone of their comments. The Times's Irving Wardell offered a half-hearted compliment by observing, 'Miss Taylor looks in tip-top shape and has a strong line in reptilian Southern charm.' Nicholas de Jongh, writing for The Guardian, must have had at the back of his mind Tallulah Bankhead's infamously panned Broadway production of Antony and Cleopatra, which had been closed by John Mason Brown's cutting, 'Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night \u2013 and sank!' De Jongh's rewording of this was, 'Elizabeth Taylor sailed into London last night like some stately old galleon \u2013 almost submerging the play.' For once, adverse reviews were inconsequential: the largely gay audiences were not paying to be repelled by Regina Giddens's evil machinations; they were at the play expressly to see Elizabeth Taylor!\n\nEven so, Elizabeth believed she was good and confidently announced that her next theatrical project would be better than this one because she had persuaded Richard Burton to co-star with her. Returning to Los Angeles, she met up with Zev Bufman, and two possibilities were discussed: Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth and a stage revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Whilst mulling things over, she divorced John Warner in November 1982 \u2013 cynics have suggested that it took him another twenty-one years to remarry because of the ordeal of living with Elizabeth Taylor. Then, acting on a whim, Elizabeth announced that she and Burton would be appearing in Noel Coward's already outdated Private Lives.\n\nThere was also a new man in Elizabeth's life, arguably her most mismatched coupling since Max Lerner. Victor Gonzalez Luna was an unattractive, balding, paunchy 55-year-old Mexican lawyer who had handled Elizabeth and Burton's property transactions in Puerto Vallarta. Divorced, Luna had four daughters, whom, he said, were very excited at the prospect of having Elizabeth Taylor for a stepmother. Unfortunately, he apparently made the boast before discussing this with Elizabeth. Luna also had political aspirations and might rather have been hoping that being with her would offer him the same prestige as it had John Warner. Even so, she did not turn him down: with the proposal came a fabulous $250,000 diamond-and-ruby engagement ring.\n\nElizabeth next made an announcement of her own. Just as she and Richard Burton had attempted to end the Cold War by visiting Russia, so she and her latest fianc\u00e9 would be 'doing their bit' to end the bloody conflict in the Middle East. She had, she claimed, arranged a meeting with the heads of the opposing factions \u2013 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Lebanon's President Amine Gemayel. Some people might have thought this an admirable idea \u2013 anything to end the suffering and fighting was worth a try \u2013 but the powers that be in Washington were horrified. The State Department issued a statement declaring their opposition to the project, condemning Elizabeth for interfering in a delicate political issue \u2013 whilst the world's press mocked her with such headlines as 'Cleopatra's Latest Peace Initiative' and for having more money than sense to be able to finance such a foolhardy mission. Even so, she refused to compromise, and she flew to Tel Aviv on 27 December 1982, accompanied by Victor Luna.\n\nThe trip turned out to be a farce: just another disappointing, self-centred headline-grabbing stunt. Elizabeth had agreed to meet hundreds of sick and injured children at the Tel Aviv Hilton; secretly, she was planning to adopt one. Typically, she arrived two hours late, dripping in diamonds and laden with gifts, tossing these into the crowd, according to one syndicated report, 'like she was feeding scraps to a pack of starving dogs'. The afternoon she had set aside for this event was reduced to just 15 minutes, whilst local journalists eagerly pointed out that she was more in her element on New Year's Eve, hobnobbing with the elite and wearing more jewels than most of them had ever seen at a political ball. What was actually said to her by the sponsors \u2013 or if she got around to meeting Prime Minister Begin and President Gemayel \u2013 is not known. Her adoption plans also failed when the father of her 'earmarked' baby, whose wife had died during the conflict, changed his mind and decided to raise the child himself. The visit ended prematurely, and on 6 January 1983 Elizabeth and Luna flew home.\n\nAt the end of the month, Elizabeth flew to Canada, where she filmed Between Friends (1983) for pay-for-view television. Her co-star was Carol Burnett. Elizabeth played a wealthy divorcee who spends much of her on-screen time drinking and engaging in 'dirty girl-talk' with man-hungry Burnett. It was a paltry effort, best summed up when the two actresses held a pre-shoot press conference. Elizabeth told the Los Angeles Times, 'She's the nympho \u2013 I'm the drunk!'\n\nThen it was straight into rehearsals for Private Lives. The plot of the play revolves around the absurdly snobbish lovers Amanda Prynne and Elyot, who like Elizabeth and Burton (and Elizabeth and all the other men in her life) have separated after an impossible-to-live-with-or-without affair and who meet up again years later after they have each found someone else. The original production with Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence had played in New York in 1931 and had been old hat then \u2013 it had eventually closed not because of falling ticket sales but because the actors had become bored with it. Tallulah Bankhead had revived it, touring extensively between 1948 and 1950, including 250 performances on Broadway. She had incurred Coward's waspish wrath by deliberately camping up every line, effectively improving the piece. One line, 'I believe in being as gay as possible, darling,' had sent her largely homosexual audience into paroxysms of laughter.\n\nIf Tallulah had purposely sent up Private Lives, Elizabeth and Burton only did so unintentionally when the play opened in Boston on 7 April 1983. The critics (some of whom still referred to the pair as the Burtons) loathed and lambasted it to the last man, not that this prevented every performance from selling out. The play transferred to New York's Lunt\u2013Fontanne Theater on 8 May, almost two years to the day since Elizabeth had opened on Broadway with The Little Foxes, by which time she was exhausted. The curtain rose half an hour late, and the interval lasted about an hour whilst she rested. Twelve performances would be aborted on account of Elizabeth's fatigue, aggravated by bronchitis. She was, of course, insanely jealous and watchful of her co-star, who by now had a new love in his life: Sally Hay, a 34-year-old production assistant he had met in London whilst filming a mini-series about Richard Wagner for the BBC. Burton took advantage of one of Elizabeth's indispositions on 3 July to whisk Sally off to Las Vegas, and when they returned to New York, it was as man and wife. Elizabeth expressed her 'delight' to the press, though from then on sharing the stage with Burton became increasingly traumatic. They still hit the town each night after the show, but now it was with separate entourages. Private Lives ground to a halt in Los Angeles on 6 November, by which time Elizabeth was on the verge of physical and mental breakdown.\n\nIn the December of that year, Elizabeth publicly announced that she was addicted to drink and drugs, and checked into the Betty Ford Clinic at Rancho Mirage. A fellow patient was her friend and former MGM co-star Peter Lawford, now terminally ill with liver and kidney disease \u2013 he died a few months later. Many people, even the ones who disliked her, applauded Elizabeth's courage for using words such as 'drunk' and 'junkie'. The harsh regime that accompanied her treatment \u2013 including 'menial' tasks such as cleaning her room, doing the laundry and taking out the garbage \u2013 did her much good, and she emerged from the clinic in the middle of January looking more like the Elizabeth Taylor of old, returning to her by now completely refurbished Bel Air home.\n\nMost people would have wished to put the whole unpleasant experience of rehabilitation behind them, but hoping that others might learn from her mistakes \u2013 and everything in her life had to be chronicled for posterity with the maximum drama \u2013 she insisted upon appearing on ABC's Good Morning America. Fighting back the tears, trembling a little and slightly slurring her speech on account of her nerves, she took a very deep breath and delivered her 'confession':\n\nI was a stumbling, stuttering, incoherent. I needed sleeping pills for 25 years. I'd learned to rely on them. I'm an addictive kind of person. It's a disease. I was terrified when I first went there \u2013 I'd never felt so alone in my entire life. There's been a lot of genuine pain in my life, and I learned to rely on drugs. I thought I could control it . . . but it's much more fun being lucid. You don't have to worry about forgetting what you've said!\n\nKenneth Anger viewed the situation differently in Hollywood Babylon II, published later that year with the aforementioned 'obesity shot' on its cover:\n\nLiz Taylor's latest health spa check was not so much to knock off some pounds \u2013 though after they laughed at her in Private Lives, the joke went 'like trying to squeeze ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag' \u2013 but to try to get a handle on the rainbow coalition of pills she was dropping every night and day. Pillhead Liz, would you believe? And the health spa clinic made her sign up for S&M Psychodrama I, a wacko Hollyweird therapy involving floor scrubbing \u00e0 la Joan Crawford . . .\n\nRichard Burton had also spent some time in rehab. At just 58, his were the ravaged features of an old man, and he had been crippled with back pains for months. For once, he said, he had a wife who could take care of him, though the marriage to Sally proved short-lived. On 4 August 1984, Burton suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage, brought about by his excesses, and he died in a Geneva hospital the next day.\n\nTo say that Elizabeth was heartbroken was an understatement. As had happened with Mike Todd \u2013 though Burton's death had by no means been unexpected \u2013 she went completely hysterical. Matters were made infinitely worse when she learned that his widow Sally would be burying him in the tiny churchyard at C\u00e9ligny. Until then, Elizabeth had never really regarded him as anyone else's husband but hers, and not being in charge of the funeral arrangements \u2013 and actually being requested to stay away for fear of turning a solemn occasion into a media event \u2013 only added to her grief, which some of her friends genuinely believed might send her over the edge.\n\nNo one had the right, of course, to exclude Elizabeth from her ex-husband's funeral, but she complied with Sally's wishes until 14 August, when she flew out to visit the grave. How the press found out about this, if they were not alerted to the fact by the sensation-seeking Elizabeth herself, remains a mystery. She and Liza Todd turned up at six in the morning, wearing heavy disguises, yet within minutes they were besieged by scores of photographers. The following week, she went to offer her condolences to Burton's family in Pontrhydyfen and stayed at his sister's terraced house. In all the years these ordinary folk had known her, they had never passed judgement, and they welcomed her with open arms. On 30 August, black-clad and genuinely grieving, she joined the Jenkins, Sally and hundreds of Burton's friends, colleagues and acquaintances in London for his memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Sally unfairly dismissed this as an intrusion into her private mourning. She was also miffed by the amount of press attention Elizabeth received \u2013 but this was only to be expected. It was her divine right! Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had been the world's number-one show-business couple for more than a decade, and for another decade after that they had grabbed the headlines whenever they had met up simply because people had refused to believe they would ever really go their separate ways. It is an undisputed fact, and by no means disrespectful to the other love interests in his life, that whenever the subject of Richard Burton crops up, the first and frequently only woman mentioned is Elizabeth.\n\nBurton left the bulk of his $3.5-million estate to Sally (with one-tenth going to adopted daughter Maria), enabling her to enjoy a near royal lifestyle that continues to this day. Many observers believed she had earned this by nursing him through his final months, but others believed that had Burton lived a few more years Sally would not have ended up quite so wealthy, because he would have gone looking for someone else, as had always happened in the past. Indeed, one of Elizabeth's friends believes there would have been a third-time lucky marriage.\n\nNeither did Burton bequeath anything to Elizabeth or her other children, heeding Elizabeth's wishes. She had enough already, most importantly her memories, and they were already wealthy in their own right, mainly thanks the trust funds their mother had set up. The Wilding boys had settled down somewhat, now that they were in their 30s. Michael Jr, now an actor, had married Jack Palance's daughter Brooke, whilst Christopher was enjoying a successful career as a photographer. Liza Todd had married and was working as a sculptress, and Maria Burton was a clothes designer.\n\nIn 1988, Sally Burton would sell the property in C\u00e9ligny, which had meant so much to her husband, and move back to London. To date, she remains single. Unlike Elizabeth, however, she has contributed more to Richard Burton's memory than just standing on a podium, feeling sorry for herself and telling the world how wonderful he was. In recent years, having no use for them herself, she has dispensed with his vast library of books and donated the money to some of his favourite theatrical charities. And in August 2004, on the 20th anniversary of his death, as head of the Burton Trust, she announced that a theatre would be built in his name at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. Even so, in just about every newspaper or magazine article commemorating the event, the accompanying photographs were of Elizabeth and Burton. 'Elizabeth, being so publicly in love with him for so long, will always be the keeper of his dreams,' Sally told the Mail on Sunday's Denai Brook, adding, unable to resist the dig, 'Perhaps I am the keeper of his reality, having restored him to reality.'\n\nExactly who broke off their relationship \u2013 Elizabeth or Victor Luna \u2013 is not clear. The press came to the conclusion that because she would never have Richard Burton again, in her grief she had convinced herself that she would never have anyone else, and Luna was, therefore, sent packing as a form of revenge for Burton having deserted her. In October 1984, Luna told the British Sunday People that he had ended their relationship, adding, 'She was completely out of control. I realised how deeply tied she was to this man, how vital a role he had played in her life, that I could never have that special place in her heart she keeps for Burton.'\n\nAs usual, a replacement was waiting in the wings \u2013 several, if the press were to be believed. Elizabeth only had to be seen with a friend \u2013 even a gay one like Roddy McDowall \u2013 and they were predicting wedding bells. Fifty-two-year-old Dennis Stein ran a faded-denims empire and had financial interests in numerous other companies, including Technicolor. Again, it was a high-speed romance: by November, Stein had presented her with a 20-carat sapphire engagement ring; by January 1985, it was all over. He had entered history as just another notch on the Elizabeth Taylor bedpost, and she was back on the shelf, about to face one of the most harrowing, tide-turning episodes of her life.\n\n# FOURTEEN\n\nGOODBYE ROCK... \nHELLO LARRY\n\nTHE WORK TRICKLED IN SLOWLY BUT SURELY. THERE WAS a cameo appearance in the glitzy soap-style drama Hotel (1984) alongside Roddy McDowall, and she played Louella Parsons opposite Jane Alexander's Hedda Hopper in Gus Trikonis's TV movie Malice in Wonderland (1985). The casting might have been near perfect, but the scriptwriter made the unforgivable mistake of transforming Hollywood's resident harridan hacks into genteel, witty, respectable matrons when they had been anything but. Then, in March 1985, Elizabeth was paid $100,000 for a day's work, playing a brothel madam in an episode of the television mini-series North and South. It was at this time that she came to the rescue of Lesley-Anne Down.\n\nDown and Elizabeth had much in common. Born in Wandsworth, London, in 1954, Down had become a household name at the age of 18, playing the flighty Lady Georgina Worsley in television's Upstairs, Downstairs. Soon afterwards, she had been paid a staggering $5 million to become the face of Est\u00e9e Lauder, and Hollywood had beckoned. Though no great shakes as an actress, with her limited expressions and stilted delivery, there had been no shortage of work. Down's career had peaked in 1976, the year before she first met Elizabeth, when she had starred opposite Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther Strikes Again. In 1980, she had wed Argentinian director Enrique Gabriel. This had not worked out, and two years later she had married The Exorcist director William Friedkin, almost 20 years her senior.\n\nIn September 2004, speaking to Night & Day, Down revealed that she had begun taking cocaine and drinking heavily to cope with the (she alleged) mental cruelty inflicted upon her by her husband. She added that she had been saved on the set of North and South by Elizabeth and the show's cameraman Don FauntLeRoy, whom she subsequently married. First she had to cope with Friedkin's public attacks denouncing her. Elizabeth, who had championed other 'lost causes', such as James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson and Roddy McDowall, had never taken a young woman under her wing before. Perhaps she recognised a little of her younger rebel self in the 30-year-old British actress. 'She was the lone voice of friendship and reason,' Down told Night & Day, adding that Elizabeth had taken her, her mother, her young son and Don FauntLeRoy into her Bel Air home. Of her saviour, she further observed, 'Liz is this blousy, ballsy, wonderful woman who encouraged me to stand up to my bullying husband. She swears like a trooper and is just hysterical. She was a dear friend and remains so to this day.'\n\nAs a special treat to cheer her up, Elizabeth loaned Lesley-Anne Down her Krupp Diamond ring for the evening \u2013 which she very nearly lost when it slipped off her finger and fell into the toilet in a ladies' rest room. 'To this day,' Down said, 'I've never dared tell how I nearly flushed her most prized possession away!' It was Elizabeth who introduced the younger star to celebrity divorce lawyer Mervin Nicholson, and for another two years Elizabeth would stand by Down while Nicholson fought to clear her name \u2013 even though she herself was going through one of the toughest periods of her life.\n\nFor some time, Elizabeth had realised that all was far from well with another of her friends: Rock Hudson was seriously ill. Since Natalie Wood's death, he had made just one film, The Ambassador (1984), shot on location in Israel with Robert Mitchum. He had, however, made a big impression on the small screen, playing rancher Daniel Reece in Dynasty. Then, in June 1984, he had been diagnosed as suffering from AIDS, a secret he had kept from most of his intimate friends, even Elizabeth.\n\nShe had always known that Rock was gay but, like just about everyone else during the early days, knew little about the disease other than that it seemed to almost exclusively affect homosexual men. The scenes in Dynasty in which he had appeared had been filmed haphazardly. As a result, Rock's physical appearance varies to such an extent that he gives the impression that he is fading before our very eyes. Prior to shooting, he had received treatment at a Paris hospital experimenting in a drug that doctors there hoped might slow down the progression of the disease \u2013 though his official reason for being in France had been to visit Deauville for the film festival. So far as the press and Rock's peers were concerned, his gaunt appearance and drastic weight loss \u2013 from 223 to 180 pounds \u2013 was down to something he might have picked up in Israel, some kind of recurrent influenza, though many people speculated that he might have cancer or even anorexia.\n\nSo far as is known, Elizabeth learned of Rock's AIDS status in January 1985 when he escorted her and Liza Minnelli to the Golden Globe Awards. How she reacted to the news, so soon after losing Richard Burton, is not hard to ascertain. Being told that she must keep the fact under wraps and therefore be unable to seek help, solace and advice must also have been difficult. From then on, Rock was never out of her thoughts.\n\nOn 16 July 1984, Rock guested on Doris Day's Best Friends, his Pillow Talk co-star's first television show in years. The media made much of this, though once the programme had aired and pictures of Rock circulated around the world it was Rock's appearance and not the important reunion between one of Hollywood's top comedy duos of the 1960s that hit the headlines. Rock looked so frail in what would be his final celluloid appearance that many fans found it hard to watch what was supposed to be a comedy sketch without shedding tears.\n\nA few days after the show, Rock flew to Paris for more treatment \u2013 by now the press favoured the anorexia story. The diagnosis was revised when he collapsed in the VIP lounge at Orly Airport and was admitted to the American Hospital in Neuilly. A spokesman there announced that he was suffering from acute liver disease, with little chance of recovery. Then, on 25 July, it was officially announced that he had AIDS.\n\nRock was flown home to Los Angeles to die, and amongst his first visitors at the UCLA Medical Center were Elizabeth and Roddy McDowall. They, like his other friends, were counselled before being ushered into his room \u2013 it was essential that Rock should not see how shocked they were by his ghastly appearance or repeat what was being written about him in the press, arguably the worst vilification of a celebrity in show-business history. Elizabeth and McDowall helped Rock wade through 30,000 letters and cards from well wishers \u2013 the ordinary fans who far from judging and condemning him for his lifestyle just wished for the impossible: for him to be well again. There were dozens of telegrams from show-business pals and acquaintances \u2013 some of the gay ones preferring to remain anonymous in the wake of a renewed wave of homophobia.\n\nElizabeth put Rock in touch with the Shanti Foundation, a Los Angeles-based organisation that had set up a telephone helpline for AIDS sufferers who did not wish to be seen visiting their centre. Even this was lampooned by the tabloids, who dubbed it 'Hudson's Hotline of Death'. Elizabeth went to see him almost every day, despite the fact that he could keep nothing down much of the time and mindless of the overpowering stench of the sickroom.\n\nRock's indefatigable champion always managed to stay calm whilst she was with him, but press reports and photographs suggest that she went to pieces the moment she left. In a climate of extreme homophobia and ignorance, Elizabeth was literally putting her career on the line by having anything to do with a homosexual actor suffering from the so-called 'gay plague'. Many of Rock's actor friends wanted to see him but were terrified of being ostracised if they did. Nancy Reagan, America's First Lady, risked the wrath of her husband's administration by speaking to him on the phone, whereas President Reagan is acknowledged as never once publicly uttering the word 'AIDS' until after Hudson's death. Elizabeth, never less than a law unto herself, had no intention of changing now. She did not care what the press thought. She had stuck by one friend, Monty, through thick and thin, and would do so again with Rock.\n\nOn 19 September, Elizabeth and Shirley MacLaine, who had already raised a vast amount of money for AIDS charities, organised a benefits dinner for Rock in Los Angeles. Prior to sending out the invitations, they overconfidently (they thought) announced that they would achieve their $250,000 target, though some of Elizabeth's and Rock's gay friends \u2013 including Roddy McDowall \u2013 who gave generously insisted upon anonymity and did not show up on the evening, fearful of being outed by the press.\n\nRock Hudson died on the morning of 2 October 1985, just short of his 60th birthday. Within 30 minutes of the newsflash, the gates of the Castle \u2013 his sumptuous home on Beverly Crest Drive \u2013 were besieged by a media circus rivalling that witnessed at Mike Todd's funeral. Elizabeth was having none of it and sent a crack team of security men to deal with the situation. For months, she continued to refer to her friend in the present tense. She told reporters on the day of his death, 'I love him, and he is tragically gone. Please God that he has not died in vain.'\n\nWhat made Rock's death harder to bear, for Elizabeth and for most of us, was his horrendous treatment at the hands of the press. In England, more so than in the USA, the tabloids could not have been more inhuman and undignified. 'He was one of the gentlest, kindest men in Hollywood,' Marlene Dietrich told me. 'All those journalists should burn in hell for the bile they printed about him when he died. I've never liked Elizabeth Taylor, but I admired her tremendously for the way she stuck up for him, the way she risked her career by supporting him.'\n\nElizabeth and Tom Clarke \u2013 Rock's ex-lover and latterly his right-hand man \u2013 were unable to arrange the funeral. The Public Health Department insisted that Rock's remains be cremated within hours of his death, and he was taken through the gates of the Castle in a tiny van, with his feet sticking out of the rear doors, a purposely undignified exit stage-managed by the undertakers and the press, who were hoping to get a shot of the corpse. Elizabeth's security men prevented this, and she and Tom Clarke gave their friend the send-off he so richly deserved \u2013 a celebration of his life that took place at the Castle on 19 October. It was Elizabeth who determined that the most fitting service for a lapsed Catholic should be a Quaker one; having missed Montgomery Clift's funeral, this was her way of paying tribute to them both. Elizabeth, Carol Burnett and Tab Hunter read the eulogies. The next day, she helped scatter Rock's ashes at sea, off Catalina Island.\n\nThe shock of Rock Hudson's rapid deterioration and his press-maligned death had brought Elizabeth to her senses so far as her own health was concerned. For the time being at least, alcohol and pills looked like being a thing of the past. At 53, she had regained the figure that had wowed audiences and sent men wild with desire 30 years earlier. She also began dictating her memoirs, Elizabeth Takes Off (Guild Publishing, 1987) \u2013 though this barely skimmed the surface of her complex, busy life. Backed by a promotional campaign said to have been in excess of $10 million, she launched her own range of perfumes (Passion and White Diamonds, retailing at up to $100 per one-ounce bottle) and cosmetics.\n\nIn There Must Be a Pony (1986), which began shooting in May 1987, Elizabeth played a has-been movie star on the comeback trail. Marguerite Sidney, who is the antithesis of Marina Gregg, ends up in the loony bin rather than killing herself. Before this happens, there are several episodes that suggest a link between the actor and the character: the brutal husband, the broken engagements, the neurosis that frequently courts the major star. A touching scene occurs when former child-star Marguerite is reunited with her former co-star: Mickey Rooney, playing himself! Elizabeth's leading man in the television movie was Robert Wagner, who co-produced it for his own company. This being a James Kirkwood story, there was also a gay subplot involving Marguerite's son (Chad Lowe) and a decent mad scene for her to get her teeth into.\n\nThere was also a new man in Elizabeth's life: Memphis-born Lothario actor George Hamilton. Seven years her junior, and one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors, Hamilton had scored a big hit playing an effete young man in his first film Home From the Hill (1959), but major success had evaded him until 20 years later with his Dracula send-up Love at First Bite (1979). Handsome but peculiar looking en profile on account of his thick lips, Hamilton was signed to appear with Elizabeth in a television movie called Poker Alice (1987).\n\nElizabeth's salary for the production was undisclosed, but the press made much of her contractual demands. These included $100,000 to be set aside for 'gifts for the leading lady' \u2013 one to be presented to her on each day of the four weeks of shooting. She squealed with juvenile delight each time the director Arthur Allan Seidelman 'surprised' her with some little trinket she had commissioned: diamond earrings, necklaces, a $10,000 travelling clock. However, as television movies go, this was one of her best. The fine supporting cast included M*A*S*H (1970) actor Tom Skerritt, as well as David Wayne, Susan Tyrrell and character-actor Richard Mulligan, better known as Bert from the television comedy series Soap. The movie also contains a first, an Elizabeth Taylor catfight with a love-rival whore, the likes of which had not been seen in a comedy Western since the one between Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel in Destry Rides Again (1939).\n\nIn February 1987, Elizabeth celebrated her 55th birthday, which coincided with her strangest friendship of all \u2013 with 28-year-old introverted pop star Michael Jackson. Wacko and Liz would rarely, if ever, meet without the press having been previously alerted, the occasion invariably having been orchestrated because of some ulterior motive: for financial gain or to draw attention to some self-inflicted drama. Linked with Elizabeth, Jackson attempted to pass himself off as some mega-rich but normal star-struck 'Stage Door Johnny'. Elizabeth, similarly, considered herself 'hip' to be seen in the company of one of the world's wealthiest and most flamboyant entertainers, even going so far as to attend some of his concerts and \u2013 the mind boggles at the thought of the spectacle \u2013 accompanying him to the races. Secretly, of course, thousands of fans, and even some of her closest friends, believed that there must have been something radically wrong with her to want to be involved with such an eccentric oddity in the first place. 'That's the kind of person she was,' Marlene Dietrich told me afterwards. 'Anything for a free ride. Michael Jackson tried to get in with me around the same time \u2013 wanted to come here [to my Paris apartment] and coax me out of retirement. I told whoever it was who called that I don't do interviews with monkeys!'\n\nElizabeth and Michael Jackson were in many ways still children, never having really grown up, accustomed always to having their own way in adulthood because no one ever got round to telling them that they were wrong. Perhaps this was because of overt sycophancy and fear of being ousted from the court, the hangers-on always aware that another lackey was waiting in the wings to take their place. She was Velvet Brown, eternally searching for that elusive crock of gold at the rainbow's end, never satisfied until she had brought about the storm guaranteed to drive it a little further out of reach. He was Peter Pan, the little boy so wrapped up in his own fantasies that he was unable to distinguish between the real world and what we more rational people call cloud-cuckoo-land.\n\nElizabeth became a regular visitor to his usually off-limits Neverland Ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, a hundred miles north-west of Los Angeles. Contained within its 2,750 acres was a full-sized amusement park with Ferris wheel and roller coaster, and a zoo containing an assortment of animals, including an elephant named Gypsy, a surprise gift from Elizabeth. Neverland provided the perfect lure for children of all ages and in the not-too-distant future the setting for alleged events that would furnish the world's tabloids with some of their most lurid headlines since the AIDS-related deaths of Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury.\n\nIn 1993, Jackson said of Elizabeth (Elizabeth Taylor, Biography Channel), 'We had a similar childhood . . . we shared a quest in search of acceptance from an adoring public.' Elizabeth responded, much to her later embarrassment, 'Michael is like a son to me. He has a quality of innocence we would all like to attain.' Nothing could have been further from the truth. Elizabeth might have had a restricted childhood \u2013 indeed, like all Hollywood child stars, she had been subject to studio-related restrictions that were not just obligatory but the law \u2013 but she had always been loved, and she and never been physically abused, as Jackson claimed he had. Neither did Jackson fit into the 'disenchanted' category into which Elizabeth had slotted Jimmy, Monty, Rock and Richard \u2013 genuinely troubled souls who, it might be argued, had not been the sole causes of their woes and tribulations. Indeed, in the eyes of many people, Elizabeth had taken a tumble from her authority-of-the-human-condition pedestal by adding Jackson's name to this gilded quartet.\n\nElizabeth's first party masterminded by Michael Jackson did not take place at Neverland but at the home of the composer Burt Bacharach. Ageing screen legend Bette Davis was amongst the guests, and it was she who strode up to one of ubiquitous reporters to 'show off' her latest trinket: a glass copy of the Taylor-Burton Diamond that had been presented to every female invited. This was etched with the initials 'E.T.'. 'In honour of Mr Jackson,' Bette drawled. 'Extra-Terrestrial!'\n\nBy now, Elizabeth had ended her relationship with George Hamilton and was 'seeing' 67-year-old Malcolm Forbes, the billionaire publisher of the magazine that bore his name, founded by his father in 1917 as the only business magazine in the USA. Forbes was a divorced grandfather whose interests outside his work included sailing, hot-air ballooning, owning the world's largest collection of Faberg\u00e9 eggs \u2013 and the pursuit of 'chickens', or teenage boys who were paid for sexual favours.\n\nFor Elizabeth, besides being a valuable odd-bod friend, Malcolm Forbes was an invaluable society tool in the stamp of a Mike Todd or an Aristotle Onassis. She headed the 1,000-strong guest list for Forbes magazine's 70th anniversary party and managed to steal the show \u2013 and, she hoped, the host's heart. Had it emerged at the time that Forbes, a senior citizen, liked having sex with underage boys, he would have been ruined \u2013 and what better way, for him, of proving to the world that he was a 'red-blooded male' than to be seen on the arm of acknowledged man-eater Elizabeth Taylor?\n\nIn May 1987, accompanied by Forbes, Elizabeth flew to Paris to receive one of France's top accolades, the L\u00e9gion d'Honneur. When she learned that the late Duchess of Windsor's jewels were being auctioned and the proceeds being donated to the Pasteur Institute for research into a cure for AIDS, she bought the famous Prince of Wales's feathers piece for $450,000. She then flew to Rome, where she had been contracted to make Young Toscanini (1988) with Franco Zeffirelli.\n\nIn arguably her most ridiculous role to date, Elizabeth played the soprano Nadia Bulichoff. As high camp as anything she did in Suddenly, Last Summer and Boom! is the scene in which Bulichoff (whose singing voice was provided by Aprile Millo) is performing Aida in Rio de Janeiro in 1886 \u2013 a true event \u2013 when halfway through 'Ritorna Vincitor' she stops the orchestra and, surrounded by her Nubian servants, makes an impassioned plea for the abolition of slavery. The project was doomed when the backers withdrew their funding and there was no one else to step into the breach. The film was completed but received such a critical panning after its only screening at the Venice Film Festival that it was never put on general release.\n\nThe movie's failure coincided with Elizabeth's autobiography-of-sorts, Elizabeth Takes Off, a bestseller throughout the western world. She travelled just about everywhere to promote it, almost always with Malcolm Forbes, who grasped every opportunity to 'buy in' from the rent-boy population of whichever city they visited. Reporters everywhere raved about how well Elizabeth looked, but when she arrived back in Los Angeles in July 1988, she was on the verge of collapse \u2013 downing pills and back on the bottle. By the end of October, she was back at the Betty Ford Clinic, this time booked in for six weeks' treatment. Her condition was aggravated by her mother's failing health. Now 92, the woman responsible for sowing the seeds of neurasthenia within Elizabeth in the first place was a patient at the nearby Eisenhower Medical Center. Amongst other things, Sara was suffering from bleeding ulcers and was reported to be dangerously ill. Elizabeth was allowed out of rehab for three hours each afternoon \u2013 one hour to be spent with her mother, the other two for visits to her hairdresser, beautician and couturier so that the press, alerted by her aides, could snap her looking her best. Sara recovered, and on 10 December Elizabeth was also given a clean bill of health and discharged.\n\nBeing in love, Elizabeth declared, had helped her through her tough rehabilitation routine. Though discouraged from getting involved with other patients at the Betty Ford Clinic, she had been unable to keep her eyes off hard-case Larry Fortensky, a 36-year-old former truck driver, currently on three years probation after being convicted of drink-driving and possession of drugs. As usual with Elizabeth, it was love at first sight \u2013 the difference being that the copper-haired hunk was from the opposite side of the fence from her, culturally, politically and professionally. As the film critic Alexander Walker later observed, 'To some, the sight of Elizabeth and Larry Fortensky offering each other mutual sympathy and support recalled the set-up for her film Boom!, where Flora Goforth, the world's richest woman, welcomes a passing beach bum with the gifts of life and death into her world of affluence and illness.'\n\nFortensky's personal history was sufficiently complex to make him the perfect consort for the former queen of Hollywood. Born in California, he had dropped out of school and at the age of 18 had married and enlisted for Vietnam in the same week. Discharged from military service a matter of months later, he had returned home in time for the birth of his daughter, but the marriage had not survived. Fortensky had quickly remarried, and upon her divorce the second Mrs Fortensky had told the court that her husband had tried to strangle her during a drunken rage. Clearly, he was a good match for the bust-up-loving Elizabeth, who was advised by Malcolm Forbes to steer clear of him. In Forbes's opinion, Fortensky was vulgar, inarticulate and decidedly bad news, just about everything Elizabeth admired in a man. By the end of the year, he had moved in with her, swearing that being with her would not change him and that he would never give up his new job as a construction worker. As such, his attitude was likened to that of a lottery winner who insists that life will go on as before. Elizabeth dutifully packed his lunch box each morning and waved him off at the door \u2013 initially not appearing to mind if he stopped off after his shift for a few beers with his buddies. Larry was entitled to his freedom and a life of his own, she said, and in any case she was too busy with her career to worry about what he might be getting up to whilst they were apart.\n\nIn the spring of 1989, Elizabeth appeared opposite Mark Harmon in the television movie of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth \u2013 the play she had wanted to do with Richard Burton. Her role, playing Princess Alexandra de Lago, the fading screen icon who seeks comfort in drugs, alcohol and much younger men, seemed appropriate in her current position. 'I'm a great success at playing has-beens,' she later told the Daily Mail.\n\nIn the August, Elizabeth and Fortensky flew to Gstaad \u2013 his first overseas trip \u2013 and she travelled on to Tangiers to host Malcolm Forbes's 70th birthday party. Forbes had recently donated $1 million to the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), one of her projects, and convinced Elizabeth that Fortensky would be surplus to requirements for the $2-million birthday extravaganza, on the pretext that another substantial donation would be forthcoming so long as his wishes were adhered to. Fortensky was, therefore, instructed to house-sit in Gstaad. Once again, it would appear, Elizabeth had found herself a caddy who did not mind being ordered around so long as the pickings were good. Then, on 24 February 1990, Malcolm Forbes suddenly died at his New Jersey estate, and Fortensky must have gleaned some satisfaction from reading some of the lurid expos\u00e9s in the tabloids concerning the extra-curricular activities of a man who had considered him something of an embarrassment and not good enough for Elizabeth.\n\nThat year there were also numerous hospitalisations \u2013 the most serious being an attack of viral pneumonia that laid Elizabeth low in the April and saw her back on the critical list. When she checked into the Daniel Freeman Hospital in Marina del Rey under the name Ruth Warner, some of the tabloids speculated that she might have done so to undergo tests for HIV, perhaps passed on by one of her bisexual friends. Indeed, when her condition deteriorated, forcing her to be transferred to the better-equipped St John's Hospital in Santa Monica, it was speculated that she might even have developed AIDS. Her costume designer Halston and her personal secretary Rother Hall had the disease. Lending credence to their suspicions was the fact that one of the doctors treating Elizabeth was Patricia Murray, a specialist in infectious diseases known to have treated several high-profile AIDS patients. Rather than ignore these hacks, Elizabeth played straight into their hands by telling a press conference, 'I feel that it is important that people are not afraid to be tested for AIDS. I have an annual physical and have been tested for the disease, and the results are negative.' Even so, at least one banner headline proclaimed 'Liz Taylor in AIDS Scare'.\n\nOn 26 July, Elizabeth and Larry Fortensky announced their engagement, she making cracks to the press that in remaining single for the past nine years she had been aiming for some sort of record. The wedding preparations were not all plain sailing, as the tabloids delved into the prospective groom's 'shady' background, claiming to be acting in Elizabeth's interests after hearing that Fortensky had signed a prenuptial agreement wherein he would be paid $1.25 million should the marriage fail. Few observers had any doubt that it would, considering the fate of his predecessors. Taking this into consideration, Fortensky was clearly onto a good thing. First, the press printed various exclusives from his two ex-wives, who had little to say about him that was positive. Then it was revealed that he had ignored his previous court order by walking out of the aforementioned rehabilitation programme soon after meeting Elizabeth. The obvious joke doing the rounds at that time was that the self-taught jewellery expert had found herself a rough diamond.\n\nNext, the press drew attention to Fortensky's family and the fact that several dubious characters would be rubbing shoulders with the Reagans and the cream of Hollywood society. Fortensky's (unnamed) best man was found to have had several convictions for robbery and drink-driving. Another relative had recently served a prison term for reckless conduct on the road. Other family members were deemed similarly suspect, and this resulted in a hasty trimming of the guest list.\n\nHow Larry Fortensky reacted to this media assassination is not on record. He was so besotted with Elizabeth, no doubt bedazzled by the opulence she had represented since before he had been born, that he might have perceived little if anything beyond the dollar signs, although there seems little doubt that he genuinely loved her. He also brought out her maternal instincts, dormant since the deaths of Montgomery Clift and Richard Burton, as was to be expected with the 20-year age gap. As Fortensky's Svengali, Elizabeth subjected the rough-and-ready hard-hat labourer to the ultimate Hollywood makeover, which, under differing circumstances, he might have found difficult to take: manicures, highlights, a designer-label wardrobe, teeth capping and the like. Fortensky was roped into the White Diamonds launch, a ten-city tour intended to test him out in the public arena. Naturally, he passed with flying colours as the crowds turned out in their thousands and roared their approval.\n\nThe couple were given a 'fairy tale' wedding on 6 October 1991 at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. No expense was spared, with Jackson \u2013 who picked up the reported $1.5-million tab \u2013 ensuring that attention was focused on himself at all times, and not the bride and groom. The fiasco had begun several weeks earlier when the Cartier invitation cards had been sent out: 'Mr Michael Jackson requests the pleasure of your company at the marriage of his beloved friend', etc. The press at once latched onto the fact that this was an elaborate publicity stunt, with the singer alleged to have invested heavily in Elizabeth's White Diamonds perfume enterprise. By being seen to be publicly supporting her on this the happiest day of her life (for the eighth time), the press further inferred that Jackson was hoping that he would no longer be lampooned as a freak. Unfortunately, as the day progressed, the chances of that happening were greatly diminished.\n\nThe 160 guests included Franco Zeffirelli, Gregory Peck, Brooke Shields, Liza Minnelli, David Hockney, Bob Hope, Roddy McDowall, Eva Gabor, Rod McKuen, Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth's brother Howard, who is said to have been against the event. On Michael Jackson's orders, all were frisked by members of a 300-strong security force that included a detachment of Israeli commandos hired by Elizabeth. A number of cameras were confiscated \u2013 even from Sinatra and his mafioso bodyguard. Having read of the hoo-ha in the press, former Presidents Ford and Reagan, along with their wives, sent their apologies. Ninety-five-year-old Sara Taylor, now confined to a wheelchair, was guest of honour. The media were represented by all-powerful columnist Liz Smith, photographer Herb Ritts \u2013 and 15 not unexpected helicopters chartered by various television networks.\n\nElizabeth's final walk down the aisle might not have seemed out of place in a Carry On or Monty Python movie. The ceremony itself took place at 6.15 p.m. (45 minutes late) under a white gazebo festooned with gardenias and daisies, conducted by Marianne Williamson, a self-proclaimed high priestess whose voice, along with the piano and violin accompaniment, was completely drowned out by the din from the hovering helicopters. Whatever the press reported had been said, few had actually heard.\n\nElizabeth and Michael Jackson had previously issued separate statements proclaiming that the wedding was to be 'a quiet affair'. Obviously, it had been meticulously worked out to be anything but \u2013 hence the helicopters and a biplane from which a photographer parachuted, landing on the lawn just as Elizabeth was about to make her entrance. Had none of this been anticipated, there would have been no need for the helium balloons, which were sent up to dispel these 'unwelcome invaders', adding to the excitement and guaranteeing more column inches. Screaming profanities, Elizabeth entered the arena wearing an ankle-length yellow lace Valentino gown (an alleged freebie). She was escorted by Michael Wilding Jr but was given away by Jackson, clad in black, wearing silver space boots and garish make-up. Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee, toddled behind eating a bag of peanuts. Larry Fortensky, in a white tuxedo, is reported to have been bemused by it all. His last-minute best man was Elizabeth's hairdresser, Jos\u00e9 Eber, wearing his trademark straw hat, dyed black to match his suit.\n\nWithout trying too hard, Elizabeth had succeeded in making a fool of herself. Then all hell broke loose as she rushed towards the photographer, threatening him with a fate worse than death. The poor man was manhandled by several Israeli commandos, who would not have been required in the first place had the wedding really been planned as a clandestine affair.\n\nThe honeymoon was comprised of a series of trips at home and abroad to raise money for Elizabeth's AIDS charities and to promote her perfume. When asked to describe White Diamonds, she told the press, 'It's as white hot as the depths of a diamond with an endless brilliance. A profusion of living Amazon lily and Italian neroli, heightened by modern notes \u2013 Egyptian tuberose, living narcissus and a haunting blend of amber and precious woods.' Wow!\n\nOne of the AIDS events was presided over by Princess Margaret, who was virtually ignored as the press clamoured to interview and photograph the newlyweds. This time no promises had been made that the marriage would last forever \u2013 indeed, with Larry Fortensky having been offered a huge financial incentive in the event of Elizabeth divorcing him, cynics were saying that he might not have wanted it to work out.\n\n# FIFTEEN\n\nSAINT ELIZABETH\n\nON 27 FEBRUARY 1992, ELIZABETH CELEBRATED HER 60th birthday at Disneyland. The guest of honour should have been Michael Jackson, but he was said to be suffering from depression in the wake of a recent disastrous tour of South Africa, cut short because he had been lambasted by the press for holding his nose each time he had been introduced to someone important, suggesting they smelled. The National Enquirer further upset him by putting forward another reason for his strange behaviour: 'He was picking his nose because he was bothered by the effects of repeated plastic surgery.'\n\nAmongst the 650 guests instructed to wear identity badges were Tom Selleck, Shirley MacLaine and Dionne Warwick. All were presented with goodie bags containing an Elizabeth Taylor sweatshirt and a flacon of White Diamonds. Everyone made a fuss of her, but she persistently reminded them how much she was missing Michael Jackson. She told Liz Smith, 'Michael said to me, \"I can't bear to see anyone. They're all going to laugh at me and everyone is going to start asking questions. I just want to crawl into a hole and die!\" But I'm thinking about him all the time, and this birthday is for the child in me.' Of her new-found happiness with Larry Fortensky, People magazine reported her as saying, 'His main concern is that I'm a star, and he thinks he's a nonentity. But I'm not a star any more. For the first time in my life, I'm a housewife, and I'm enjoying it immensely.'\n\nThe 'housewife' later described her typical day: undergoing two hours of massage and beauty treatment each morning, arranging her daily mini-truckload delivery of flowers, conducting business meetings and fielding telephone calls, enjoying home-prepared meals (though not cooked by her), and spending whatever time was left in front of the television with Larry, watching her favourite sitcoms soaps. She subsequently found the time to appear in a quartet of these (High Society, The Nanny, Murphy Brown, Can't Hurry Love), her on-screen characters promoting her latest fragrance, Black Pearls.\n\nWhilst she had been in London the previous November, Elizabeth had heard rumours that the rock group Queen's front man Freddie Mercury was dying of AIDS. After a little investigating on her part, she discovered that the rumours were true. And so began a repetition of the poisonous tabloid journalism that had preceded Rock Hudson's death, except that in Freddie's case he survived for just one day following his press statement that he had the disease. So far as is known, Elizabeth never met the flamboyant singer, but she had heard much about him from Rock Hudson.\n\nIn 1980, Rock and Freddie had met in The Glory Holes (aka South of Market Club), the notorious Los Angeles gay establishment brought to the 'uneducated' world's attention in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels. The Glory Holes (subsequently shut down by the Public Health Department) consisted of several bars and a number of plywood booths, each with several holes through which customers could insert their penises in anticipation of gratification from the other side. But if the recipient had no idea who was pleasuring him, the hundreds of men assembled on the balcony that overlooked the booths were able to observe and applaud every movement. Rock and Freddie had both been offered membership of The Glory Holes: both had declined.\n\nFor some reason speculating that she would be the only one capable of getting the safe-sex message across to a 72,000-strong audience of mostly under-30s, the promoters asked Elizabeth to participate in the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness, which took place at Wembley Stadium on 20 April 1992. The line-up included the three surviving members of Queen, but most of the supporting acts were second-rate. 'Don't worry, I'm not going to sing,' Elizabeth joked, but truthfully she could have done better than most of those who appeared! Even Annie Lennox, David Bowie and Liza Minnelli put in execrable performances \u2013 only George Michael and Elton John were any good, the latter so moving Elizabeth that she later presented him with a silver-and-red-rhinestones AIDS brooch.\n\nA shock item on the bill had to be Guns N' Roses, a group that Freddie Mercury and anyone sensibly and genuinely connected with the gay community and AIDS awareness positively loathed. In 1988, one of their songs had contained the deeply unpleasant line 'immigrants and faggots spread disease', said to have been aimed at Freddie himself. The group were booed throughout their set, and some of their fans heckled Elizabeth whilst she was on stage. 'I'll get off in a minute,' she shouted back, earning a huge cheer from the crowd. 'I have something to say!'\n\nIn her five-minute speech, delivered entirely off the cuff, Elizabeth urged the world to practise safe sex and not share syringes. She concluded:\n\nWe are here to celebrate the life of Freddie Mercury, an extraordinary rock star who rushed across our cultural landscape like a comet shooting across the sky. We are also here to tell the whole world that he, like others we have lost to AIDS, died before his time. The bright light of his talent still exhilarates us, even now that his life has been cruelly extinguished. It needn't have happened \u2013 it shouldn't have happened. Please, let's not let it happen again . . . There's 70,000 people in this stadium. Look at yourselves. Look at how many you are. In two short weeks, there will be as many new infections as there are people here tonight. Please don't let it happen to you. You are the future of our world. You are the best and brightest. You are the shining light that will illuminate a better world tomorrow . . . Protect yourselves, love yourselves, respect yourselves, because until you do I won't give in, and I won't give up, because the world needs you to live! You see, we really love you. We really care!\n\nRock Hudson's death had only been the beginning. The Freddie Mercury tribute concert was another turning point in Elizabeth's life. Henceforth, she would be much less interested in loving one particular man than she would these thousands of unseen, maligned men \u2013 and women \u2013 around the world. She had become Saint Elizabeth.\n\nThere was drama on 6 May \u2013 the day Marlene Dietrich died \u2013 when a number of extremely cutting anti-Elizabeth notes were found pinned to Marlene's bedroom wall, including one which read, 'You have done enough harm to great men like Burton, Todd and Wilding. Why don't you swallow your fucking diamonds and shut up!' This was the politest thing Marlene had written about her \u2013 during a visit to her avenue Montaigne apartment, my wife Jeanne and I had roared with laughter over some of the others, particularly one which had read, 'Elizabeth Taylor has two cunts \u2013 one of them is called Richard Burton.'\n\nOn the same day, Elizabeth's adopted daughter, Maria Burton Carson, delivered a stillborn baby boy in New York. Only days before, Elizabeth \u2013 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles \u2013 had organised a $20,000 pre-natal shower for Maria at a New York hotel. Later, she would auction the baby's designer wardrobe for orphaned children. Maria, she claimed, had intended to name her son Richard, in honour of his late grandfather.\n\nEarly in 1993, Elizabeth was presented with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her outstanding charity work. Then, on 11 March, in a ceremony hosted by Carol Burnett at the Beverly Hills Hilton, she became only the fourth woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award \u2013 the others had been Lillian Gish, Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman and Bette Davis. As Peggy Lee sang 'Fever', the 'who's who' in Hollywood were treated to a potpourri of newsreel clips: Elizabeth's various marriages, the scenes of hysteria that had greeted her appearances around the world, the fan proudly sporting the 'Liz's Weddings' T-shirt. Then Elizabeth, wearing black and less jewels than usual, made her way through the auditorium towards her table, smiling radiantly, shaking hands, but kissing only the by-now-ever-present Michael Jackson. Extracts were shown from her films, including a rare clip of her singing with Alfalfa in There's One Born Every Minute. James Dean and Montgomery Clift were greeted with warm applause. There were congratulatory speeches from Angela Lansbury, Dennis Hopper and her friend Roddy McDowall, who told her, 'It has been wonderful over the years watching you matriculate as a human being, as an actress and as a major contributor to the welfare of mankind.' And unlike some of its predecessors, Elizabeth's acceptance speech was unscripted and delivered from the heart:\n\nWhen I first heard about the award, I went into a state of shock. I guess it's a long time since I've thought of myself as an actress. I, along with the critics, have never taken myself very seriously \u2013 my craft, yes, but as an actress, no. But I wasn't all that bad, was I? You've made me realise how much I really do miss it. But my life is full and good. It has taken so many diverse twists and turns, and I have grown into what I do . . .\n\nAt this point, Elizabeth paused and gazed at the sea of celebrity faces \u2013 a good many of those present genuinely cared about what was coming next, but there were more than a few there who could not have cared less, in particular a minority of closeted stars (including one performer whom she had turned her back on in the wings) who often attempted to camouflage their homosexuality with homophobic comments:\n\nI am filled with pride \u2013 proud that I am part of this community, proud of you as a community, helping as many others, especially in the world of AIDS. We have come a long way in the last decade, and I know you are willing to go the whole mile and do whatever it takes.\n\nThanking everyone in the film industry who had helped her to get where she was today \u2013 though, truthfully, the only ones who deserved such recognition were her mother and her fans \u2013 she concluded:\n\nMy mind goes especially to four magnificent men, who, had they lived, might have stood here and received this award: Monty, Rock, Jimmy and, of course, Richard. Oh, I was so lucky to have known them, to have learned so much from them, to have loved them. Thank you all for making me feel so special tonight. It's a memory that I will have next to my heart for the rest of my life.\n\nIn July 1994, Elizabeth appeared on the big screen for the last time \u2013 as Fred Flintstone's unfortunately named mother-in-law, Pearl Slaghoople, in The Flintstones. She was only on screen for seven minutes but managed to make a big impression in a new Hollywood era when special effects all too frequently overshadowed acting requirements \u2013 in this instance, the prehistoric 'gadgets' that had monopolised the Hanna\u2013Barbera animated television series upon which the film was based.\n\nElizabeth plays the archetypal mother-in-law from hell. John Goodman later confessed that he had found it extremely difficult to walk up to Elizabeth Taylor and growl, 'What's that old fossil doing here?' And in a party scene, the harridan becomes Elizabeth Taylor, turning up in furs and Burton jewels, and leading everyone into the conga.\n\nThe Flintstones was all good, clean fun, and many people expected more such roles to come Elizabeth's way. Sadly, they did not, and once more she began focusing her energies on her personal problems, most of them self-inflicted. Her marriage was all but falling apart at the seams. This time around she had married a malleable, star-struck man who allowed himself to be pushed into the background, or so it seemed, for the privilege of being Elizabeth Taylor's husband. Because of their age difference, she became even more possessive than usual, terrified that he might leave her, particularly as she grew older and more infirm.\n\nAt the end of August, allegedly under tremendous pressure to do so, Larry Fortensky accompanied Elizabeth on a 'mercy dash' to Singapore to rescue Michael Jackson, reported to have been on the verge of mental breakdown in the wake of allegations of drug abuse and, more seriously, child molestation. The news of the lawsuit filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court had caught up with the singer whilst he had been performing in Russia. The New York Times ran the exclusive that a 13-year-old boy had accused him of sexual abuse and had taken out a civil action. The boy's family were now in the process of seeking a trial by jury and 'unspecified monetary damages' from Jackson, who, of course, was denying the charge. The newspaper further reported, on 15 September, that Jackson had also been previously investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department but that he had not yet been charged with any misdemeanour.\n\nJackson was virulently defended by his security consultant, Anthony Pelliciano, who contended that the alleged victim's father had tried to extort $20 million from the singer. 'The first demands were for money, and the latter demand is for money,' the New York Times reported Pelliciano as having said. 'The police are still conducting their investigation appropriately.' Elizabeth lashed out like an angry lioness protecting her injured cub, although she had absolutely no idea what might or might not have actually transpired behind the walls of Jackson's ultra-high-security Peter Pan's palace. 'This is the worst thing that could happen to a man like Michael, who loves children,' she told a reporter from Newsweek, adding that she would do everything within her power to help him and saying that she fully understood why Jackson had allegedly turned to narcotics, because she too had once been hooked on prescription drugs.\n\nJackson avoided criminal charges in this instance by settling the civil suit filed by the boy's father out of court for a reputed $15\u201320 million \u2013 enough in itself for many observers to assume that the accused must have had something to hide, otherwise he would have had no fear in seeing the matter through to its legal conclusion. And Elizabeth would go on supporting what, with equal cynicism, was often referred to as her latest pet project. Once his tour of the Far East was over, she persuaded Jackson to seek treatment and counselling at a London clinic. Later, she installed a private line at her home, similar to the helpline she had opened for AIDS victims in the wake of Rock Hudson's final illness, except that this one was connected to one person only \u2013 the increasingly fragile man\u2013child whose gratitude was expressed by the creation of an Elizabeth Taylor shrine: Jackson decorated the walls of his toy-filled bedroom with dozens of Andy Warhol prints of her and had the woodwork painted the exact shade of violet as her eyes. What Larry Fortensky had to say about this excessive fanaticism \u2013 if indeed he was permitted to express his opinions aloud without being cried down, particularly when Jackson claimed himself to be so happy now the charges had been dropped that he would ask Elizabeth to marry him should she divorce Fortensky one day \u2013 is not on record. One can only speculate wildly about what the press would have made of a Jackson-Taylor wedding should it ever have taken place! Jackson had already taken steps to look like Elizabeth, including plastic surgery, and the media would have afforded them absolutely no mercy.\n\nElizabeth and Fortensky spent Christmas 1993 in Gstaad, and there were several visits to Richard Burton's grave, which must have been unsettling for Fortensky, who appears to have been hanging on to his wife by the skin of his teeth. Whilst there, Elizabeth took a tumble on the ice, aggravating her old back and hip injuries. For three months, she suffered in silence, but in March 1994 she went into hospital for hip-replacement surgery. (This left her with one leg slightly shorter than the other, until a follow-up operation to replace the other hip.) Fortensky stood by her through a painful recuperation process, and she had barely recovered from this when Sara Taylor died at the Rancho Mirage complex, Palm Springs, on 11 September 1994, aged 98. Elizabeth had her interred next to Francis at the Westwood Memorial Park.\n\nBy then, Elizabeth and Larry Fortensky were said to be sleeping in separate rooms, and he was spending more and more time with his drinking pals. Sometimes, if Elizabeth was out of town, they would party all night long at her Bel Air home and leave the place looking a mess. The marriage, which many of her intimates declared should never have happened in the first place, took its first step towards ending in May 1995. Any number of reasons emerged about why Fortensky packed his bags and moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel: topping the list were his smoking (Elizabeth had stopped, taking her doctors' advice, the previous year), his mood-swings and his excluding her from the drinking parties with his friends.\n\nThere were also rumours, albeit unsubstantiated, of a new man in Elizabeth's life. Bernard Lafferty was the former butler of Lucky Strike tobacco heiress Doris Duke, who had died at Falcon's Lair (Rudolph Valentino's former mansion) in October 1993. Duke had named the cross-dressing, pony-tailed Irishman executor of her $1-billion estate, and this had caused concern amongst her relatives. Besides having a serious drink problem, Lafferty was semi-literate with learning difficulties and was therefore declared by them incapable of taking on such a huge responsibility. (Bernard and Doris, a biopic starring Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon, was released in 2007. The producers had deliberated over whether to include Elizabeth's character whilst she was still alive, bearing in mind that she had taken legal action in the past to prevent herself being interpreted on the screen during her lifetime, and decided not to take the risk.)\n\nThe tabloids speculated about how Bernard Lafferty had managed to penetrate Elizabeth's near impenetrable inner circle. Was he, they wanted to know, hoping to fleece her the way Doris Duke's family believed he had wormed his way into their relative's affections? Was Lafferty amorously interested in her, despite his homosexuality, and sufficiently so to wish to oust Larry Fortensky? Did he wish to run Elizabeth's financial affairs the way he had his late employer's? Elizabeth had almost certainly extended the hand of friendship because Lafferty had used his privileged position to persuade Doris Duke to donate $1 million to Elizabeth's AIDS foundation, with the promise of more to come \u2013 and it is likely that Elizabeth had genuinely grown to like him and wanted him around. We shall probably never know for sure.\n\nOne suspects that the real reason for the failure of Elizabeth's eighth marriage was boredom on Fortensky's part \u2013 here was a young man in the prime of life compelled to stay home most of the time, and Elizabeth's near manic demands never to be left alone, along with her failing health, had worn the both of them down. Fortensky emerged form the situation laughing all the way to the bank. His lawyers advised him to reject the $1.25-million settlement detailed in his prenuptial agreement, saying that a kiss-and-tell account of his relationship with Elizabeth Taylor would bring in many more times this amount \u2013 that is, if he planned to do the dirty on her. Though there is no evidence of this, Elizabeth must not have discounted the possibility and was taking no chances. If the press reports are to be believed, the final pay-off to ensure Fortensky's silence was impressive, consisting of the original payment of $1.25 million plus an additional $2 million in stocks and shares, a $2-million beach house, $250,000 for 'immediate expenses', and an alimony-type payment of $600,000 a year for ten years \u2013 and two Harley-Davidsons that had taken his fancy!\n\nWith Larry Fortensky out of the picture, and with no more serious relationships, Elizabeth gradually sank deeper and deeper into reclusion, although each time she emerged from her self-inflicted cocoon it was with great panache, and she always provided a feast for the pre-informed media. In May 1996, she attended an AIDS benefit at the Cannes Film Festival, sponsored by Cher \u2013 another massive gay icon \u2013 who was forced to take a back seat as Elizabeth stole the show. Later in the week, Elizabeth caused controversy by walking out halfway through a gala premiere of an adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma (1996), declaring it to be boring! The following year, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour 'the size of a golf ball', submitted to her most serous operation so far and insisted upon being photographed with a bald head to minimise the stigma of cancer. Her doctors advised her of the dangers of dying her hair when this grew back; for several years, she was a silver-blonde but no less beautiful than before, even in old age. Her slow recovery was aided by her friendship with Rod Steiger; the pair were seen in public but denied any romance.\n\nIn 1996, Elizabeth patched up her quarrel with Sybil Burton, whom she had not seen since they had crossed swords whilst shooting Cleopatra. The two met again at the bedside of Roddy McDowall, their mutual friend, now dying of cancer. It is said that Richard Burton's name was never mentioned, though he was foremost in her thoughts on 16 May 2000 when Elizabeth flew to London to be made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Elizabeth was photographed outside Buckingham Palace with Julie Andrews, there to receive the same honour. The two sat next to each other in the ballroom whilst the band of the Grenadier Guards played a selection from Mary Poppins (1964) \u2013 which Elizabeth confessed she had never seen! Then, looking slightly dumpy but every inch the star in pale-blue slacks, a matching patterned lavender surcoat and just a few jewels, she told the queen, whilst receiving her medal, 'I wish Richard could have been here with me today, ma'am!'\n\nThe honour was commemorated by the BBC's celebration of her life England's Other Elizabeth, for which she agreed to tell her own story and bare her soul in front of the cameras. There were, however, certain conditions. During the 60-minute documentary, narrated by Nigel Hawthorne, she would speak only of the men in her life whom she could recall with genuine fondness: Mike Todd, Richard Burton, Monty, Jimmy and Rock. Similarly, only those who truly respected her were asked to participate: Shirley MacLaine, Angela Lansbury, Rod Steiger and her AmFAR co-founder, Dr Mathilde Krim. These friends applauded her emotional intelligence, keen survival instincts, bravery in the face of adversity \u2013 and unswerving loyalty to those close to her, particularly those amongst the gay community. Slightly tremulous and still a little on the plump side, Elizabeth nevertheless looked fabulous!\n\nOf her first roles as a child star, Elizabeth said, 'I had a great imagination, and I just slid into it. It was like a piece of cake!' Of Monty, she said, 'There was such energy to the man \u2013 what was coming out of his eyes, his body. It was, I suppose, like sitting next to an electric chair.' Recalling Monty's accident, even five decades on, still traumatised her. She recalled intimate moments with Jimmy Dean when he confided in her things that she said would stay locked in her heart for ever: 'Wouldn't you love to know?' She wept whilst reliving Mike Todd's death, cursed the studio for making her return to Butterfield 8 and dismissed the film as 'a piece of shit'. Of Richard Burton, she claimed that he taught her how to be a better actress \u2013 but the other husbands did not get a mention.\n\nElizabeth closed her interview by sounding her own trumpet (and rightly so) about her work for AIDS victims, how she visited hospices anonymously and how, up to that point, she had helped raise over $180 million for her cause. 'You can put your arms around them,' she insisted, begging for tolerance, understanding and help. 'You can kiss their face, you can ruffle their hair. You're not gonna get it \u2013 you're not gonna die. It doesn't cost you one nickel to be of use!' The documentary then ends with a 1981 out-take from General Hospital, in which Elizabeth fluffs her lines. 'I'm sorry, folks,' she quips, 'I'm not used to acting!'\n\nThe biggest feud of Elizabeth's career \u2013 a feud of over 40 years standing, brought about by her stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds \u2013 was 'put to rights' in 2001 when Debbie's and Fisher's actress daughter Carrie came up with the script for These Old Broads and co-produced the television movie. Portraying the cast members of Boy Crazy, a 1960s feel-good film that is enjoying a tremendous box-office revival, were Debbie, Shirley MacLaine and (replacing Julie Andrews) Joan Collins. And Fisher pulled a scoop by casting Elizabeth as their hard-as-nails Jewish manager!\n\nIn fact, it is not entirely clear that Elizabeth and Debbie actually met during filming: in their scenes together, when one is facing the camera, we see only the other's back \u2013 rather like Marlene Dietrich's scenes in her final film Just a Gigolo (1978) when she met none of her co-stars. On the other hand, Elizabeth's obvious condoning of the Taylor-Fisher scandal being used as the butt of the film's funniest jokes, considering the gravity of the situation at the time, suggests that she can only have agreed to bury the hatchet. Similarly, episodes in Joan Collins and Shirley MacLaine's lives that they might have wanted obliterating from history are mercilessly resurrected by Carrie Fisher and her scriptwriting partner Elaine Pope, with hilarious effect. Virtually every scene contains an actress\u2013character juxtaposition that is far from flattering.\n\nThe man responsible for getting the Boy Crazy gang back together again 40 years later is Wesley (Jonathan Silverman), the adopted son of Kate (MacLaine), who has not spoken to him in years. And to make Wesley's job that much more difficult, the three women hate each other for running off with each others' partners. Art mostly reflects real life as Kate tours flea-pit theatres, whilst Piper (Reynolds) sits on a golden throne in her Vegas casino, surrounded by cardboard cut-outs of herself in Singin' in the Rain. Reynolds parodies herself even further by confessing that she had to fight her way back to the top after being swindled by her manager. Her second husband, Harry Karl, gambled away $8 million of her fortune prior to their 1973 divorce.\n\nThe final member of the trio is Addie (Collins), the ex-sitcom star who has been living as a recluse for ten years since the incarceration of her mobster lover. 'I would rather get a barium enema on live TV than work with that tramp again,' Kate says of Addie, and when Wesley fails to reunite the trio, he turns to their former mentor, Beryl (Taylor), whose CV reads, 'Stays in bed all day, eating and talking on the phone, smoking pot and watching documentaries about dead people.' Surrounded by Andy Warhol portraits of herself, Elizabeth also wears the Krupp Diamond.\n\nThe first composite scene between Beryl and Piper dredges up the Taylor-Fisher-Reynolds scandal. It is revealed that Beryl, feeling low after having her tonsils out, stole Piper's husband during a week-long bender:\n\nBERYL: It all happened so long ago, when we were so young.\n\nPIPER: Just drop it, OK? I forgave you years ago, so let's move on. Besides, everyone knows you're a very sick woman, a card-carrying nymphomaniac . . .\n\nBERYL: Nympho! Hah, you think any woman who had a normal, healthy sex life was a nym-pho-maniac?\n\nPIPER: I enjoy sex. But you, if a man was on fire, you'd stamp him out and screw him!\n\nBERYL: Piper, I did you a favour by taking away Freddie . . .\n\nPIPER: A favour is doing something for someone that they're unable to do for themselves. I was perfectly capable of losing Freddie all on my own!\n\nBeryl manages to get the three co-stars back together for a one-off TV special, and the bitching resumes: 'One more facelift and she'll blow her nose through her forehead'; 'Excuse me, Mrs Munster'; and 'Look, it's Queen Elizabeth and her mother, Ethel.' The scriptwriters even get away with referring to Joan Collins as the 'British Open'. Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher are combined in the character Tony the Meatpacker (so named for obvious reasons): he escapes from prison and gives Addie 'multiples' before expiring during Tantric sex \u2013 suffering from post-mortem priapism as the girls smuggle his body from her room, with Piper crooning 'Arrivederci, Tony', a direct reference to Fisher's closing number during the time of the scandal! When rebuking Piper, Addie also borrows a line from Fisher's autobiography, telling Piper, 'You're so frigid, you've never had an orgasm,' before adding a line of her own: 'Pretending to be that little goody two-shoes when you were just as big a whore as we were!' The ensuing fight see the girls walking off the production, prompting Beryl to turn into Elizabeth Taylor as a means of getting her own way \u2013 faking an illness (a coronary) to get them back together again.\n\nThis was Elizabeth's final celluloid appearance, and how lovely she looks, smiling radiantly, swathed in lavender furs, her violet eyes and diamonds sparkling as she coerces the audience into giving her girls a standing ovation by drawling, 'Get off your asses for these old broads!' There could have been no finer swansong for the queen of Hollywood!\n\n# SIXTEEN\n\nTHE FADING STAR\n\nAFTER THESE OLD BROADS, ELIZABETH RARELY EMERGED from her self-enforced solitude other than for the odd lawsuit or the all-too-frequent hospitalisations. Towards the end, there were the occasional sorties with friends and appearances at AIDS benefits, almost always to hammer home the same point: that she was still a force to be reckoned with when it came to personal or political issues, and to refute media claims that she was dying when, sadly, she slowly was.\n\nElizabeth's team always tried to ensure that her entrances were fanfared and spectacular. This did not happen, however, when, decked out in $5 million worth of diamonds, she 'dropped in' on one of Britain's most famous dysfunctional families, the Osbournes, when they held an AIDS fundraiser at their Los Angeles mansion. Because she was confined to a wheelchair, she had to enter the house via the cluttered garage, but she still managed to shine.\n\nDespite her traumas, Elizabeth retained her glamour, courage and ever-present smile until the very end. The term 'mutton dressed as lamb', commonly applied to some of her Botox-enhanced colleagues from the same generation, was never once applied to her. In February 2005, despite ill-health, she attended the Oscars ceremony. By then, walking unaided was extremely difficult, yet she insisted on getting out of her wheelchair and shuffling unassisted \u2013 and still managed to look stunning in a silver, rhinestone-studded outfit, whilst many of the modern-day actresses clustered around her looked like they had been kitted out courtesy of the local nickel-and-dime store. 'I want to make sure that people know I'm still alive,' she told reporters.\n\nElizabeth's final round in the fight to prove herself a force to be reckoned with and a prima donna par excellence began on 19 March 2003 when, speaking at an AIDS benefit in Los Angeles, she laid into President Bush for demanding that Saddam Hussein flee his country on the eve of the Iraqi war. 'I can't imagine the thought of us going into World War III,' she said. 'I think it's so stupid! How can we expect this man who is a dictator and probably the most vain man in the world to leave his palace and his country in 24 hours? If that proposal was given to President Bush, can you see him packing his bags?'\n\nThere were more fireworks on 21 May, when Elizabeth was guest of honour at a special screening of Giant at the Cannes Film Festival. She arrived at the venue in a foul mood, turned her back on the sea of photographers and screamed, 'You want pictures, then you show me the money!' The instant Rock Hudson's face appeared on screen, she burst into tears and insisted on leaving, though this time she did not yell at the press, explaining that recalling Rock, and the terrible manner of his death, always got her overwrought \u2013 and that the demand for cash had been to augment her AIDS charity.\n\nTowards the end of the following year, this indomitable war-ravaged old battleship once more sailed to the rescue of Michael Jackson, who was facing charges of child molestation for a second time. On 20 November 2004, the press reported that Jackson had handed himself in to the Santa Barbara police following the serving of an arrest warrant alleging that he had 'committed lewd and lascivious acts' with a child under the age of 16. Released on a $3-million bail bond, Jackson had gone into seclusion 'somewhere in the Las Vegas area' and immediately began defending himself on the mjnews.us Internet site. 'The charges recently directed at me are terribly serious,' he opined at the start of a five-page statement prepared by his public relations officer. 'They are, however, predicated on a big lie. This will be shown in court, and we will put this horrible thing behind us.'\n\nThe 'we' referred to Michael Jackson, his family and those fans who were so in awe of him that in their blinkered eyes it was inconceivable that he could be anything but innocent. And Elizabeth herself was still sufficiently star-struck to count herself amongst them. Since his earlier accusation of child abuse, Jackson had endured two lampooned marriages, including one to Elvis Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie \u2013 which Elvis's fans did not doubt would have had the King spinning in his grave. There had also been a much-publicised and criticised episode that had seen Jackson attacked by parent groups when the singer had been filmed dangling his baby precariously over a balcony. So far as Jackson's detractors were concerned \u2013 and these by far outweighed the fans \u2013 nothing was inconceivable until the courts proved otherwise.\n\nThis time the matter was taken to the US Supreme Court, with the very real possibility that Jackson would face a long jail sentence if found guilty \u2013 with his fragile constitution, that was an ordeal many people believed he would not survive. 'He is absolutely innocent,' Elizabeth's 2 November press statement read, adding of the media, 'Their whole attitude is that he is guilty. I thought the law was \"innocent until proven guilty\"? I know he's innocent, and I hope they all eat crow!' What everyone wanted to know, as they had the last time Jackson had been accused, was how Elizabeth could be so sure when she had not been there when the alleged offences had taken place? Once again, she was setting herself up for public ridicule.\n\nThere was also considerable speculation as to whether Elizabeth would be summoned to court as a character witness\u2013 it was only when Jackson's office declared that she would be subpoenaed if she failed to put in a good word for her friend that the media began doubting the authenticity of their friendship. Equally, there were conflicting reports over how she might react should the jury reach a guilty verdict. Had this happened, she would never have got away with remaining Jackson's ally \u2013 that is if they were still friends and Elizabeth's defensive outburst was not just another of her publicity stunts to attract attention to her fading star.\n\nIn any event, Elizabeth's presence was not required to augment the media circus. Following an unusually lengthy and fraught deliberation process, to which some believed the adage 'no smoke without fire' applied, the man universally referred to as 'Wacko Jacko' was acquitted of all charges.\n\n'Holocaust Heirs Sue Star Liz for \u00a310 Million Van Gogh Looted by Nazis' screamed the headline in the Daily Express on 15 October 2004, suggesting that at some time Elizabeth had been engaged in nefarious activities. Five months after Elizabeth had submitted a claim to a Los Angeles court stating ownership of the 1889 masterpiece, the descendants of one of its previous owners, the late Margarete Mauthner, were claiming that it had been stolen by the Nazis in 1939 and that under the rules of the 1998 Holocaust Victims Redress Act it should be returned to her heirs or auctioned off and the proceeds handed over.\n\nMauthner's great-grandson, Canadian lawyer Andrew Orkin, declared in his press statement, 'We are asserting that Ms Taylor was negligent and careless when she bought the painting. Our complaint charges that she ignored numerous conspicuous \"red flags\" in 1963 that it had likely been confiscated from a victim of Nazi persecution.' In fact, Elizabeth's father had purchased View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy on her behalf, for an estimated $255,000, from Sotheby's of London.\n\nThe case dragged on for months, with Elizabeth's representatives counterclaiming that Mrs Mauthner, a German Jew, had sold the masterpiece in 1933, six years before fleeing to South Africa when the Nazis had seized her property. As there seemed to be no proof of this, or that Francis Taylor (who had amassed a fortune out of buying such works at rip-off prices from their owners, but never from the Nazis) had been aware of the painting's history, the judge dismissed the lawsuit on 2 February 2005, and Elizabeth got to keep her Van Gogh.\n\nElizabeth is said to have been 'utterly devastated'\u2013 she never did emotions by halves \u2013 by two interviews given by Sally Burton (one to the Mail on Sunday's Danae Brook, the other to the National Enquirer) in August 2004 to mark the 20th anniversary of Richard Burton's death. The widow claimed in both interviews that Elizabeth's overwhelming presence had driven her to the brink of suicide, resulting in her being made an inpatient for six weeks on an intensive drugs programme. Her downward spiral had begun, she claimed, when Elizabeth had turned up at Burton's graveside only days after his funeral, thereby intruding upon her mourning. Elizabeth must have been delighted by the British paper's decision to complement the feature with over half a page of Taylor-Burton photographs and just a tiny picture of Sally.\n\n'Elizabeth has her fantasies, and that's fine,' Sally told the National Enquirer, 'but I thought, \"My God! All I'm ever going to be is one line on the end of the great Burton\u2013Taylor romance!\"' This of course echoed the sentiments of the whole world that, despite their two divorces, Elizabeth Taylor \u2013 and only Elizabeth Taylor \u2013 had been the love of Richard Burton's life.\n\nIn the spring of 2005, Elizabeth co-founded the House of Taylor Jewellery with Jack and Monty Abramov of Mirabelle Luxury Concepts, Los Angeles. The company, it was announced, would supply traditional jewellery at affordable prices, along with 'commissioned couture' pieces costing in excess of $1 million. The press announcement read:\n\nElizabeth Taylor is synonymous with beauty, humanity, talent and exquisite jewellery. It is an unbelievable honour to partner the most iconic woman of our time and to build our entire company around her exquisite taste. To collaborate with her and design for her is one of the greatest dreams of any designer.\n\nElizabeth's passion for jewellery and her mania for one-upmanship even extended as far as her wheelchair. Having broken her back for the fifth time the previous August, she was reported as having placed an order with a Beverly Hills wheelchair company for a gold-plated model, studded with diamonds and with emerald-inlaid armrests. Her aim, she said, was to 'get one over' on the porn-baron Larry Flynt, the victim of an assassination attempt, whom she had seen riding around town in a solid-gold wheelchair.\n\n'I want the Ferrari of wheelchairs,' Elizabeth told a reporter. 'Money's not a problem. Flynt travels in style, and so must I!' Such extravagance was defended by Elizabeth's spokesman, who explained in an 'official' statement, 'The point of acquiring a wheelchair is to enhance her mobility. Ms Taylor is still a very active campaigner and fund-raiser, and wants to do more. She remains a woman of tremendous style.' This might have been true, but there were many critics who questioned the morality of forking out $504,000 for an item that, although essential, need not have cost so much and pointed out that the money could have been better spent augmenting one of her charities.\n\nIn March, Elizabeth granted her first interview, via fax, to a French reporter in a decade. The lucky man was Christophe Martet of T\u00eatu, the country's leading quality gay publication. She might have been slowing down her activities owing to increasingly poor health, but she was as vociferous as ever regarding the fight against AIDS:\n\nOur government must invest more money in research. At the moment, all the passion and hard work is down to individuals and private foundations. I've always detested being famous. Fame was something I tried to evade, but that was totally impossible. Then when I began my fight against AIDS, for the first time ever I was able to put my star status to good use. Because of it, people listened to me. My fame opened all doors. And you know that I have such affection for the gay community. These men are my brothers . . .\n\nBy the autumn of 2005, these brothers and Elizabeth's other fans around the world were distressed to learn that she was reported to be 'despairing, depressed, sleeping 14 hours a day and close to death'. Though it was often near impossible to differentiate between genuine truth, hearsay and plain attention seeking, what was certain was that her doctors had diagnosed osteoporosis \u2013 which certainly explained her falls and broken vertebrae \u2013 and, much more seriously, congestive heart disease.\n\nElizabeth's Bel Air home was reported to have been turned into a one-patient nursing home. With railed walls throughout, it was staffed around the clock. A special bed with cot-sides to prevent her from falling out had been installed in her room. 'It is as if she's thrown in the towel and admitted she has nothing to live for,' an unnamed close friend told the Daily Express. Another was quoted as having said, more prosaically, 'Elizabeth asked me what heaven was like. She couldn't wait to go there. She told me with tears in her eyes, \"I won't hurt any more. I'll be with Richard.\" That's all she really cares about.'\n\nRichard Burton's niece, Sian Owen, to whose home in Pontrhydyfen Elizabeth had sent a Fortnum & Mason hamper every Christmas since Burton's death, told The Observer on 30 October 2005, 'She's a believer. She does think that once she dies she will be together with him again. They were soulmates, but they just couldn't live together. It was like a Shakespearean tragedy.'\n\nFearing that the end might be near, Elizabeth began to finalise plans for her funeral, once more obsessing over Richard Burton. Her friend Mel Ferrer claimed early in November that she had confided in him, saying, 'Soon there will be no pain any more, and I'll be with Richard.'\n\nElizabeth had of course been close to death on more occasions than anyone cared to remember \u2013 sometimes genuinely so, often speculatively or inventively. Most recently, fearing that she might have been having a heart attack, her aides had rushed her to hospital, but this had turned out to be a false alarm \u2013 chest pains brought on by a severe cold. This time she was taken seriously.\n\nInitially, Elizabeth wanted to be buried in the plot that she and Richard Burton had reserved in the Methodist cemetery at Pontrhydyfen \u2013 casually overlooking the fact that she had converted to Judaism. And if Sally Burton would not agree to having him re-interred, Elizabeth would lie next to Burton's parents, Edith and Richard Jenkins. Alternatively, she would be cremated and her ashes scattered across his grave in Switzerland. The plan to be buried in Pontrhydyfen was reaffirmed by Burton's brother, Graham. Speaking to the Daily Mail, he declared, 'She says that although Richard's body is buried in Switzerland, his heart belongs to Wales, and it is her wish to be buried here.'\n\nThis prompted the PerezHilton.com website to post a get-well message, which is said to have tickled her no end:\n\nDear Liz. You can sleep when you're dead! You need to snap out of it. Maybe a nice little cruise will cheer you up. Bring along Liza Minnelli and Debbie Reynolds (Oh, the drama!) and the fags will pay thousands to be at sea with you legends. All proceeds will go to AmFAR, of course. Feel better, Maggie. May you be purring again soon!\n\nThese ups and downs in Elizabeth's health continued throughout the winter of 2005\u201306, with some reports stating that she had Parkinson's disease \u2013 additionally, that she was in the preliminary stages of Alzheimer's. Then on 30 May 2006 came the so-called 'Deathbed Interview' for CNN, a forty-five-minute grilling (with no less than six commercial breaks) conducted by chat-show host Larry King, who certainly was intent on exacting his pound of flesh.\n\nLike Elizabeth, seventy-two-year old King had been around the block a few times: he'd had seven marriages (two to the same woman) and several much-publicised affairs, including one with Angie Dickinson. The interview, pre-recorded and one suspects vetted by Elizabeth before being heavily edited, made the front pages of most of the world's major newspapers the next day, with the emphasis placed on Elizabeth's well-being. 'Oh come on,' she yelled at King, 'Do I look like I'm dying? Do I look or sound like I have Alzheimer's?'\n\nOn first impression, one would have said not. Elizabeth looked good, nowhere near 74, but if you study the interview in its entirety before the cuts have been made, the tell-tale signs are there \u2013 much of her personal appearance has to do with cast-iron self-control and meticulous grooming. Elizabeth wears the most horrendous lime-green kaftan and enough jewellery to sag a Christmas tree. This deflects from her puffed, blotchy features and corpulent (by way of overmedication) figure. Prior to the interview, when we observe her being pushed into the studio in her wheelchair \u2013 her little dog, Daisy, sitting on her lap \u2013 she really does resemble a little old lady, still astonishingly beautiful and smiling radiantly, but very fragile and seemingly a little confused by it all. Later, when she faces the host across his desk, there is no audience. Next to her there are cue cards and a box of tissues, should all this get to be too much for her and she feel a tear coming on. Elizabeth has done this sort of thing before, constantly reminding her interrogators that she is first and foremost an actress, therefore allowing viewers to decide for themselves if she is telling the truth or merely playing her most famous role \u2013 that of Elizabeth Taylor. On this occasion, her speech is slightly slurred. Has she been drinking? Does she have Alzheimer's? Or is she merely nervous? These are the questions the viewer most frequently asks.\n\nOnce she has theatrically denied having one foot in the grave, Elizabeth attacks the tabloids for prompting the rumours in the first place. 'They have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else. They won't let me retire,' she laments. Then she contradicts herself by declaring that she does not want to retire \u2013 which brings up the real purpose of this interview: she is promoting the 15th-anniversary edition of her White Diamonds perfume and is also about to head for Las Vegas to launch the latest batch of jewellery that she has designed.\n\nIn the meantime, King asks her if she would take on another movie role. Without hesitation, she replies that she would, providing it was 'juicy, spicy and challenging'. Then it is back to the subject of her health. She has been confined to a wheelchair, she says, on account of the severe back pain that has plagued her her whole life. She was born with scoliosis (double curvature of the spine) and admits to having osteoporosis, a condition her publicist has recently denied, which prompts the question: if he denied this, what is to say that Elizabeth is not suffering from the other ailments that have also been denied? King asks her if she is afraid of death and she says that she is not, because she has died four times already (her illness whilst shooting Cleopatra) and that she firmly believes that the spirit lives on after death. She speaks briefly about her conversion to Judaism, confessing that she did this to be closer to Mike Todd after his death, from which she has never recovered.\n\nElizabeth is less forthcoming about certain aspects of her love life. In previous interviews, the subject of husbands has always been rigorously taboo, particularly Nicky Hilton and Eddie Fisher, though she grimaces through a clip from Butterfield 8 in this instance. The only husbands she has ever wanted to talk about have been Todd and Burton: losing them was traumatic, and if anything has sustained Elizabeth over the years, cynics might observe, it has been a good old-fashioned trauma, with the promise of a breakdown thrown in for good measure.\n\nElizabeth reacts with angry reticence when King demands to know which husband was her biggest soulmate: 'Oh, aren't you scratchy? I'm not going to tell you the truth!' With this, she was shooting herself in the foot. If she had no intention of divulging the truth about the men in her life, how sure were we \u2013 again \u2013 that she was not trying to pull the wool over our eyes regarding her health? Once more, the audience had to remind themselves that Elizabeth Taylor is first and foremost a thespian who has been doing this sort of thing her whole life.\n\nAs with her recent interview with T\u00eatu, Elizabeth pretends not to care for terms such as 'icon' and 'legend', which she rightfully concedes are too liberally applied. 'An icon is someone who's dead, with a wooden plaque on the wall,' she opines. 'A legend is something you read about in the past tense.' Here she was definitely selling herself short: even her worst enemies would have agreed that Elizabeth was a living legend, and some.\n\nElizabeth says that she has much respect for some of her co-stars. She loved Paul Newman, and Jimmy Dean and Rock Hudson were wonderful, but it upsets her so much reflecting on these two that King avoids mentioning Monty Clift. Brando, she says, was 'full of rubbish', intimidating everyone by fluffing his lines, but she adored him just the same. Then she spoils it all by having too much enthusiasm for Michael Jackson, whom she believes was deliberately set up by the press.\n\n'I've never been so angry in my life,' she growls when questioned about the allegations of child abuse, concluding that Jackson (then self-exiled in Bahrain) had sworn never to perform in the United States again because the media there had treated him like dirt. Recalling an occasion when she, Jackson and his nephews had laid on the bed in his room watching Disney movies, she went on, 'There was nothing abnormal about it. There was no touchy-feely going on. There was nothing odd about it!' Cynics would again suggest, of course, that had any untoward activity taken place chez Jackson, it certainly would not have been in Elizabeth's presence. This is a cue for Elizabeth to dip into the aforementioned box of tissues and for King to announce the next commercial break.\n\nNext, Larry King takes calls from listeners, all female, all telling Elizabeth how wonderful they think she is. The stars she had looked up to in her formative years, she says, were Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Her favourite amongst her films was Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? And regarding her constant back pain, she advises a fellow sufferer, 'If you want to go on functioning, you grin and bear it!'\n\nNext comes the precise reason for the interview: the House of Taylor's latest collection, about to go on show in Las Vegas. She refuses to put a price on each piece: what it is worth, how much customers will have to pay to have some little trinket personally designed by her. King sucks up to her by pretending not to know what a tiara is. The pieces, she says, have been made in Bangkok and other parts of the Far East, which might confirm the real reason behind Elizabeth's and Larry Fortensky's visit to Singapore 'to comfort Michael Jackson' at around the time she put together her first collection \u2013 combining business with a mercy dash to acquire maximum publicity for the former.\n\nFor the benefit of CNN's viewers, Elizabeth has also brought along several items from her personal collection: the Krupp Diamond, nine diamond bracelets, and a diamond-necklace-and-earrings set given to her by Mike Todd. Collectively, these are valued at over $10 million, and it is almost obscene when Elizabeth pretends not to know what they are worth. As for the items she has designed, it will subsequently emerge that the huge House of Taylor ruby-and-diamond brooch she is modelling will retail for $82,500 and the diamond necklace for a cool $179,000. And just to remind viewers that she is not lacking in humility, on King's desk next to these items are Elizabeth's reading glasses \u2013 which she claims she bought from a 99-cents store!\n\nThe final phone call comes from Elizabeth's business partner, Kathy Ireland, who might be excused her acute sycophancy, because what she says could not be more apt: the ultimate tribute to a remarkable woman for all the right reasons. Elizabeth in her heyday might have represented all that was spoilt, reckless, grasping and selfish about a product of Hollywood's studio system, but as an ambassadress for the gay community in the wake of AIDS \u2013 at the time of the Larry King interview, she had raised over $300 million for the cause \u2013 she absolutely and unquestionably was the new Messiah.\n\nRevealing how bigoted 'friends' had hung up on her and how Elizabeth's gay-friendliness had put her own career at risk, Ireland concludes:\n\nToday we have people who are living with HIV. When Dame Elizabeth began her battle, everyone infected died of AIDS, and she's responsible for saving millions of lives. And so for being courageous, for being someone we all love and adore, Dame Elizabeth, you will always be my hero and the Joan of Arc of AIDS.\n\nThe interview ends on a jovial, yet still theatrical note: Elizabeth having a fit of giggles. King wants to know if there is any possibility of her marrying again. She wants to know if he is proposing before delivering a resounding, 'No!' 'Well,' he responds, 'For someone on her death-bed with Alzheimer's, you did amazingly well. For someone so tragically ill, I've never seen more courage!'\n\nIn August 2006, Elizabeth's attention \u2013 though not it would seem her anger \u2013 was drawn to the fact that I was writing this book. She did not appear to mind my describing her as being, in her heyday, 'the most self-centred star in the firmament, whose excesses were obscene'. The publicity sheet that ended up on her desk also referred to her as 'the last truly great Hollywood superstar, in the wake of whom every single one of today's so-called \"headliners\" fades into oblivion'.\n\nHer spokesperson told me over the phone: 'Though I wouldn't doubt she would bawl you out if you've written any shit about her, she'd be the first to want to give you a hug for all the praise you've heaped upon her. Elizabeth's seen some of your books, and she approves of the honest approach you have. She says that David Bret is a shit, but a loveable shit!'\n\nFaced with more speculation over her health, and in a last-ditch attempt to prove that she was still fit as the proverbial fiddle \u2013 for which she must only be commended \u2013 in the September, while holidaying in Hawaii, Elizabeth excelled even herself by making a spur-of-the-moment decision to go swimming with sharks!\n\nDays earlier, the Australian naturalist Steve Irwin had died after being attacked by a stingray, prompting one website to now run the headline 'Krikee! Elizabeth Taylor Is The New Crocodile Hunter!' Sitting in her wheelchair and wearing a T-shirt reading 'Shark Bait', she was photographed being manoeuvred into the boat for the two-hour crossing to Oahu, where she was loaded into a 10 x 8 foot Plexiglas cage and lowered below the surface. After paddling around with the sharks for 30 minutes, she resurfaced looking an absolute mess and panting for breath but exhilarated by the experience. Later, she dashed off a postcard to the New York Post's Liz Smith, the doyenne of gossip columnists. 'For someone who has been in bed with a bad back, I have done all the things I've dreamed of,' she wrote, adding that it had been the most exciting day of her life.\n\nAnd Liz Smith's own reaction to this book, attacking me and my publisher for what she had yet to read, appeared in her New York Post column of 19 October 2006. 'Oh pul-leeze,' she crowed, 'I challenge them to find one scandalous revelation we haven't heard. Miz Liz survives all. The recent Randy Taraborrelli book galvanised her to get up and swim with sharks. What will this one do? Send her to arm-wrestle a giant squid?'\n\nHowever, no sooner had Elizabeth settled this latest rumour about her health than, with contrary aplomb, she started them all up again by announcing that she was selling some of her jewels, memorabilia, art work, clothing and personal possessions. 'She wants the things she's cared about over the years to go to good homes,' a Christie's spokeswoman told me. 'She feels the end is nearer than ever before and doesn't want people squabbling over her possessions when she's dead.'\n\nThe media had by now lost count of the number of times Elizabeth's publicist had 'leaked' the news that she was at death's door, only to just as quickly state that she was hale and hearty \u2013 anything to keep the publicity machine rolling. Arguably the biggest stunt so far occurred when the press reported that she was about to wed for the ninth time!\n\nThe story broke in the Sunday Express on 15 October 2006, when a 'close friend' was reported as saying:\n\nShe has known some terribly dark days, but it's amazing how she's bounced back. She has rebounded straight into the arms of a man, and it's wonderful to see them together. For some stars it's work, family, even shopping. But for Liz, romance has always been a driving force.\n\nThe lucky 'groom-to-be' was Iranian portrait artist Firooz Zahedi, at 57, 17 years Elizabeth's junior. A graduate of Georgetown University, he had studied photography at the Corcoran School and worked for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine in the mid-1970s. At around this time he had met Elizabeth and on the strength of their friendship had relocated to Los Angeles, where he had become her personal movie-stills photographer and, over the next three decades, worked for Vanity Fair, Esquire and Time. He had also developed a coterie of celebrity friends, including Meryl Streep and Barbra Streisand.\n\nZahedi remained tight-lipped about the affair, though there were others willing to speak on his behalf \u2013 mainly to stress that he was not a gold-digger. One story (which no one believed, even after the reportedly genial atmosphere of These Old Broads) circulated that Elizabeth had confided in her 'old movie-star friend' Debbie Reynolds that she was thinking of marrying again, adding, 'He isn't scared of being number eight.' And inevitably there was also the 'close pal who cannot be named' who predicted that Zahedi would be 'popping the question' at the end of the month when he accompanied Elizabeth to her next business meeting in Hawaii.\n\nOf course, after the confession came the denial. Elizabeth's spokesman confirmed the relationship with Zahedi \u2013 and before the ink dried on the newspapers, Elizabeth hit the roof, declaring, 'We are not, never have been and never will be romantically involved! My private life and my plans at this time remain private!' The refutation was delivered with such aggression that, in the end, no one knew what to believe, and few really cared. For ten years, since she'd divorced Larry Fortensky, there had been no regular man in her life \u2013 a bonus, one of her friends told me, adding, 'Without the added complications of love, Elizabeth's that much easier to be around. Let's hope that it stays that way until the end!'\n\nIn the summer of 2007, with her usual defiant attitude that the show must go on no matter what, Elizabeth announced two ambitious projects \u2013 one which attained fruition, the other which never had any hope of doing so. Later in the year, she appeared with James Earl Jones in a single performance of A.R. Gurney's stage play Love Letters, a project that raised $500,000 for her AIDS foundation. Her character, an extension of herself, appeared in a wheelchair, and the show did not place too much strain on her health.\n\nThe monstrously difficult role of Norma Desmond, in the movie remake of Sunset Boulevard, was quite another matter. For one thing, the sponsors would have had a tough task getting anyone to insure her when she was persistently fighting off rumours that she virtually had one foot in the grave. The original film, made in 1950, had starred Gloria Swanson and \u2013 after Montgomery Clift had turned it down \u2013 William Holden. Again, it was difficult to separate truth from hearsay. Paramount released a statement claiming that they had reached 'an advanced stage of negotiation' with Elizabeth's manager, Barbara Berkowitz, and had offered her a fee of $5 million. To add credence to the idea that Elizabeth was 'demonstrating to Tinseltown her improbable recovery', Paul Scott's report in the Daily Mail contained a recent photograph of her descending the steps of a plane, in his words, 'looking like a geriatric Ali G, adorned ridiculously in rapper-style bling crucifixes, gold chains and sporting a trucker's cap made by hip-hop designer Ed Hardy'. A Paramount spokesman told me, however, that Elizabeth had made up the story and had never even been considered for the part, and that the last thing any studio wanted was a multmillion-dollar lawsuit brought about by one of the greatest stars on the planet dying on them mid-production. So, what did Elizabeth do to convince the studio that this would not happen? The same friend who had talked to me about Firooz Zahedi said, 'She pretended that she was fighting fit by putting out the story that she was thinking of getting married again!'\n\nThis latest instalment in the 'Is Liz dying or not?' saga got under way in Hawaii when she planned a 'low-key private dinner' with her friend Jason Winters, a black entrepreneur who at 47 was 28 years her junior. Of course, where Elizabeth was concerned there was no such thing as low key. The staff at the restaurant were instructed not to breathe a word of who their special guest was going to be on 28 September \u2013 while Elizabeth called Liz Smith and announced that there was a new man in her life: 'Jason Winters is one of the most wonderful men I've ever known, and that's why I love him. He bought us a beautiful house in Hawaii, and we visit it as often as possible!' Then she hired a huge black limousine, along with a police escort complete with screaming sirens, to drive her to the venue, and added further excitement to the proceedings by having it park outside the restaurant while she fixed her make-up. Throughout the meal, according to a Reuters report, 'Elizabeth repeatedly caressed the face of her millionaire friend.' Wearing an ankle-length satin gown, a white mink stole, the Krupp Diamond and '$4 million's worth of trinkets', she posed for the crowd in her wheelchair, then rushed home to complain to the press about their having intruded on her evening!\n\nThe next day, a 'close friend' of Elizabeth, who naturally asked not to be named, told Reuters, 'Liz is madly in love with Jason, and he feels the same way. It's taken us all by surprise, but we are happy for her. She didn't think she'd fall in love again, but since Jason came into her life, all that has changed.' It was, of course, the start of another of those attention-seeking campaigns for which Elizabeth had always been known. No sooner had the ink dried on the 'Liz Plans To Marry Husband Number Nine' headlines than the denials came rolling in. Martin Delaney, the founder of a San Francisco AIDS charity of which Winters was patron, told the Daily Mail:\n\nI don't know how a marriage between them could take place. That's not the kind of relationship they've got. Elizabeth is friends with Jason and his long-term friend, Erik Sterling. Jason and Erik are both on the board of the charity, and they have a house in Hawaii. The idea of them marrying is silly stuff.\n\nThe 'romance' quickly played itself out.\n\nThroughout 2008, there were numerous hospitalisations. At one stage, Elizabeth became so ill that her family were summoned to her bedside and told to expect the worst. In October, there was a setback when her former co-star Paul Newman died. The papers reported her as being 'utterly heartbroken', but once again this was mostly attention seeking; she and Newman had neither seen nor spoken to each other for years.\n\nElizabeth's biggest 'drama-fest' since the death of Richard Burton centred on the demise, on 25 June 2009, of 50-year-old Michael Jackson. By now, her friendship with 'Wacko Jacko' had cooled somewhat \u2013 there had been too many child molestation stories since she had last leapt to his defence for her to be certain that he would ever be completely exonerated of all the charges, rumours and facts levelled against him. Even so, this now sadly deluded old lady went into extreme emotional overdrive upon hearing the news, reportedly collapsing and being rushed to hospital \u2013 though no one seemed to know which one \u2013 and issuing a statement which partly read:\n\nMy heart, my mind, they are broken. I loved Michael with all my soul, and I can't imagine life without him. We had so much in common, and we had such loving fun together . . . I still can't believe it. I don't want to believe it. It can't be so . . . He will live in my heart, but it's not enough . . . I don't think anyone knew how much we loved each other. The purest, most giving love I've ever known . . .\n\nElizabeth claimed that she had been in the middle of packing her suitcases, ready to travel to London for the opening night of Jackson's imminent European tour. This was not true. Elizabeth had never packed a suitcase in her life, and her doctors had expressly forbidden her to fly for fear that she might have a heart attack on board the plane. The Wall Street Journal was the first to point out that Elizabeth had referred to herself 23 times in the 162-word statement, bringing the comment from the popular I Hate The Media! website, 'There's one thing in Taylor's statement that cannot be disputed. Her mind is definitely broken.'\n\nIn the wake of the hysteria surrounding Jackson's death, and to ensure that as much emphasis as possible was placed upon her as a self-professed key figure in the singer's life, Elizabeth declared that she would not be attending his memorial service or his funeral. 'I just don't believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of people. I cannot be part of the public whoopla,' she announced on Twitter. In fact, there were reports that the Jackson clan did not want her there, their excuse being that she had been a friend of Michael's, not theirs, but in reality because they were well aware that what was supposed be the combination of a solemn occasion and a celebration of their son's life did not need to be turned into an Elizabeth Taylor extravaganza, where she would be centre of attention.\n\nThere was no way, of course, that Elizabeth was going to miss out on such an important media fest. She attended the ceremony whether she was welcome or not and afterwards did attempt to steal the limelight \u2013 obviously forgetting her earlier promise to Richard Burton \u2013 by announcing that, when her time came, she now wanted to be buried next to Michael Jackson!\n\nThe next big drama occurred on 22 September 2010: Eddie Fisher died, aged 82, and once again Elizabeth was reported to be 'devastated'. This cut no ice with Fisher's family and friends. Speaking to the press, the singer's daughter Carrie declared that Elizabeth had never loved him, rather that he had been no more than a shoulder to cry on after the death of Mike Todd.\n\nThen, on 11 February 2011, Elizabeth was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, where she is now known to have suffered a slight stroke. As with every drama in recent years, her spokesman was there to deny that she was as gravely ill as the hospital claimed. Sadly, this time it really was serious. For a few days, she seemed to rally \u2013 there was even talk of her being discharged.\n\nThe end came suddenly, at 1.28 a.m. on Wednesday, 23 March, just three weeks after she had celebrated her 79th birthday. 'I was tending to her when she opened those big, beautiful violet eyes,' a hospital spokeswoman said. 'She was surrounded by her family and offered a weak, almost timid smile. Then she was gone, perhaps the biggest star Hollywood has ever known.'\n\n# EPILOGUE\n\nWE, THE FANS AND LOVED ONES, HAD ANTICIPATED THE end for a long, long time. Even so, the news came as a tremendous shock. Hers had been a traumatic life, made more so by self-inflicted dramas, persistent ill health \u2013 and arguably not just too many men but almost always the wrong kind of man. Maybe had Elizabeth married her first sweetheart, Glenn Davis, and given up her career as he had wanted her to, there would have been far less tragedy in her life. And then, of course, the world would never have witnessed one of the truly spellbinding talents not just of her generation but of any other.\n\nLong before dawn on 23 March, hundreds of fans gathered on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Many had swooped on the city's florists to snap up violets, the colour of Elizabeth's eyes, and a massive wreath of these was erected over her star. In London, simple bunches of daffodils were left next to the gates of the house where she had been born.\n\nThe tributes and eulogies were legion and could easily form a book of their own. Michael Caine, Angela Lansbury, director Michael Winner, singer George Michael, dozens of minor stars of whom Elizabeth had probably never heard, politicians and heads of state all rushed to their phones to pay their last respects within an hour of her death. Elton John wept at the news and said, 'We have just lost a Hollywood giant. More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being.' Liza Minnelli said, 'As a friend, she was always, always there. I'll miss her for the rest of my life.' Now-retired chat-show host Larry King called her 'a great star and a gutsy woman, the likes of which we will never see again'. Whoopi Goldberg called her 'a great broad and a great friend'. Joan Collins announced, 'There will never be another star who will come close to her luminosity and generosity.'\n\nBarbra Streisand, that other indefatigable champion of the gay man who has also raised millions for her charities, wrote, 'She was so funny. She was generous. She made her life count. It's the end of an era. It wasn't just her beauty or her stardom. It was her humanitarianism. She put a face on HIV\/AIDS.' Debbie Reynolds, who had once been a part of the 'enemy camp', but who had long since made her peace with Elizabeth, called her death 'a blessing in disguise', adding, 'God bless her, she's on to a better place. I'm happy that she's out of her pain because she was in a lot of pain. This was a blessing in disguise . . . she's in heaven and she's in a heavenly place and she's happy.' Debbie's daughter, Carrie Fisher, who had brought about their reunion many years after the affair, said, 'If my father had to divorce my mother for anyone, I'm so grateful that it was Elizabeth.'\n\nAnd Jarrett Barrios, president of GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), observed, 'Dame Taylor was an icon not only in Hollywood but in the LGBT community, where she worked to ensure that everyone was treated with the respect and dignity we all deserve.'\n\nElizabeth's son Michael Wilding Jr spoke eloquently and touchingly when announcing her death to the media:\n\nMy mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour and love. Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world. Her remarkable body of work in film, her ongoing success as a businesswoman and her brave and relentless advocacy in the fight against HIV\/AIDS all make us all incredibly proud of what she accomplished. We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us and her love will live for ever in our hearts.\n\nIt is an indisputable fact that Elizabeth Taylor was the very last of the Hollywood greats. Most of her contemporaries \u2013 Garbo, Streisand and Dietrich excepted \u2013 were compelled to walk in the shadow of her sun. Of today's stars, not one may be deemed worthy of stepping even within a mile of that shadow.\n\n# PHOTOGRAPHS\n\nElizabeth, aged seven, in one of her first Hollywood publicity shots, long before she ever faced a movie camera. (\u00a9 Archive Photos\/Getty Images)\n\nIn 1948 with Roddy McDowall, the first of many gay actors she supported and championed. (\u00a9 Murray Garrett\/Getty Images)\n\nA publicity shot for A Place in the Sun, with Montgomery Clift, the man she later said she loved more than all of her husbands. (\u00a9 Peter Stackpole\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\nIn November 1950, with abusive first husband Nicky Hilton on the SS Queen Elizabeth. The marriage lasted just months. (\u00a9 Leroy Jakob\/NY Daily News Archive\/Getty Images)\n\nWith second husband Michael Wilding in 1951. (\u00a9 Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)\n\nWith Jimmy on the set of Giant in 1955. (\u00a9 Keystone\/Getty Images)\n\nWith Rock, whom she bravely helped through his final illness. (\u00a9API\/Gamma\/Gamma-Rapho\/Getty Images)\n\nIn 1956 with third husband Mike Todd, the man whom she claimed taught her how to appreciate rough sex. (\u00a9 Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)\n\nWith Fernandel, the great French actor-comedian, at the time of Around the World in Eighty Days, 1956. (\u00a9 Alain Benainous\/Gamma-Rapho\/Getty Images)\n\nIn 1960, on the eve of the Cleopatra 'Scandale', with womanising fourth husband Eddie Fisher. (\u00a9 Paul Popper\/Popperfoto\/Getty Images)\n\nRichard... so exciting she married him twice and never stopped mourning his death. (\u00a9 Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)\n\nOne of Hollywood's costliest flops but a beautiful film just the same: Cleopatra, 1963. (\u00a9 20th Century Fox\/Getty Images)\n\nArguably her only truly great film with Burton, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which they scrapped through in 1966. (\u00a9 Apic\/Getty Images)\n\nWith Burton at the Golden Mask Awards, 1966.\n\nElizabeth with her other 'rock' \u2013 her mother, Sara, in 1973. (\u00a9 Apic\/Getty Images)\n\nOne queen plays another! In costume as a very bitchy Mary Queen of Scots in Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd, one of her best later films, which also saw her working again with Rock Hudson, 1980. (\u00a9 AFP\/Getty Images)\n\nIn 1982, congratulated after a performance at London's Victoria Palace Theatre by Princess Diana. (\u00a9 Central Press\/Getty Images)\n\nAttending Richard Burton's memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields in August 1984. (\u00a9 Keystone\/Getty Images)\n\nWith George Hamilton in Poker Alice, 1987, which saw Elizabeth engaged in a thrilling catfight! (\u00a9 CBS Photo Archive\/Getty Images)\n\nAt London's Mirabelle Restaurant for an AIDS benefit with last husband Larry Fortensky, 1991. (\u00a9 Gerry Penny\/AFP\/Getty Images)\n\nAt London's Dorchester Hotel, May 2000 \u2013 Dame Elizabeth Taylor! (\u00a9 Dave M. Benett\/Getty Images)\n\nAn AIDS benefit in Cannes, 2001 \u2013 still gorgeous! (\u00a9 J. Vespa\/WireImage)\n\nAt Macy's Passport Gala in 2009. The indefatigable champion is fading, but, frail and ill, she still radiates a charisma no other star has ever possessed. (\u00a9 Charley Gallay\/WireImage)\n\n# APPENDIX \nTHE FILMS OF ELIZABETH TAYLOR\n\nThere's One Born Every Minute, Universal, 1942 (Harold Young), with Peggy Moran, Carl Switzer, Scott Jordan\n\nLassie Come Home, MGM, 1943 (Fred Wilcox), with Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty, Edmund Gwenn, Nigel Bruce\n\nJane Eyre, 20th Century Fox, 1944 (Robert Stevenson), with Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O'Brien\n\nThe White Cliffs of Dover, MGM, 1944 (Clarence Brown), with Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, Dame May Whitty, Gladys Cooper, Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowall\n\nNational Velvet, MGM, 1944 (Clarence Brown), with Mickey Rooney, Donald Crisp, Angela Lansbury\n\nCourage of Lassie, MGM, 1946 (Fred Wilcox), with Frank Morgan, Harry Davenport, George Cleveland\n\nCynthia, MGM, 1947 (Robert Z. Leonard), with George Murphy, S.Z. Sakall, Mary Astor, Spring Byington\n\nLife with Father, Warner Bros, 1947 (Michael Curtiz), with William Powell, Irene Dunne, Edmund Gwenn\n\nA Date with Judy, MGM, 1948 (Richard Thorpe), with Wallace Beery, Jane Powell, Robert Stack\n\nJulia Misbehaves, MGM, 1948 (Jack Conway), with Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford\n\nLittle Women, MGM, 1949 (Mervin LeRoy), with June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Janet Leigh, Rossano Brazzi\n\nConspirator, MGM, 1949 (Victor Saville), with Robert Taylor, Robert Flemyng, Thora Hird\n\nThe Big Hangover, MGM, 1950 (Norman Krasna), with Van Johnson, Edgar Buchanan, Gene Lockhart\n\nFather of the Bride, MGM, 1950 (Vincente Minnelli), with Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Don Taylor\n\nFather's Little Dividend, MGM, 1951 (Vincente Minnelli), with Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Don Taylor\n\nQuo Vadis (cameo), MGM, 1951 (Mervyn LeRoy), with Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn\n\nA Place in the Sun, Paramount, 1951 (George Stevens), with Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Keefe Brasselle, Raymond Burr, Shepperd Strudwick\n\nCallaway Went Thataway (cameo), MGM, 1951 (Norman Panama, Melvin Frank), with Fred MacMurray, Dorothy McGuire, Howard Keel\n\nLove Is Better Than Ever, MGM, 1952 (Stanley Donen), with Larry Parks, Josephine Hutchinson, Ann Doran\n\nIvanhoe, MGM, 1952 (Richard Thorpe), with Robert Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Emlyn Williams\n\nThe Girl Who Had Everything, MGM, 1953 (Richard Thorpe), with Fernando Lamas, William Powell, Gig Young\n\nRhapsody, MGM, 1954 (Charles Vidor), with Vittorio Gassman, John Ericson, Louis Calhern\n\nElephant Walk, Paramount, 1954 (William Dieterle), with Dana Andrews, Peter Finch\n\nBeau Brummel, MGM, 1954 (Curtis Bernhardt), with Stewart Granger, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley\n\nThe Last Time I Saw Paris, MGM, 1954 (Richard Brooks), with Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor\n\nGiant, Warner Bros, 1956 (George Stevens), with Rock Hudson, James Dean, Mercedes McCambridge, Jane Withers, Carroll Baker, Sal Mineo, Dennis Hopper, Chill Wills\n\nRaintree County, MGM, 1957 (Edward Dmytryk), with Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, Nigel Patrick, Agnes Moorehead, Tom Drake\n\nCat on a Hot Tin Roof, MGM, 1958 (Richard Brooks), with Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson\n\nSuddenly, Last Summer, Columbia, 1959 (Joseph Mankiewicz), with Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn, Albert Dekker, Mercedes McCambridge, Gary Raymond, Mavis Villiers\n\nHoliday in Spain (aka Scent of Mystery) (cameo), Michael Todd Jr Productions, 1960 (Jack Cardiff), with Denholm Elliott, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas\n\nButterfield 8, MGM, 1960 (Daniel Mann), with Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher, Dina Merrill\n\nCleopatra, 20th Century Fox, 1963 (Joseph Mankiewicz), with Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, Pamela Brown, Martin Landau\n\nThe VIPs, MGM, 1963 (Anthony Asquith), with Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Elsa Martinelli, Margaret Rutherford\n\nThe Sandpiper, MGM, 1965 (Vincente Minnelli), with Richard Burton, Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson\n\nWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Warner Bros, 1966 (Mike Nichols), with Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis\n\nThe Taming of the Shrew, Columbia, 1967 (Franco Zeffirelli), with Richard Burton, Cyril Cusack, Michael Hordern\n\nDoctor Faustus, Columbia, 1967 (Nevill Coghill), with Richard Burton, Andreas Teuber, Elizabeth O'Donovan\n\nReflections in a Golden Eye, 1967, Warner Bros (John Huston), with Marlon Brando, RobertForster, Julie Harris\n\nThe Comedians, MGM, 1967 (Peter Glenville), with Richard Burton, Alec Guiness, Peter Ustinov, Lillian Gish\n\nBoom!, Universal, 1968 (Joseph Losey), with Richard Burton, Noel Coward, Michael Dunn\n\nSecret Ceremony, Universal, 1968 (Joseph Losey), with Mia Farrow, Robert Mitchum, Peggy Ashcroft\n\nAnne of the Thousand Days (cameo), Hal Wallis Productions, 1969 (Charles Jarrott), with Richard Burton, Genevi\u00e8ve Bujold, Irene Papas\n\nThe Only Game in Town, 20th Century Fox, 1970 (George Stevens), with Warren Beatty, Charles Braswell, Hank Henry\n\nUnder Milk Wood, Altura Films, 1971 (Andrew Sinclair), with Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Glynis Johns\n\nZee and Co., Columbia, 1972 (Brian Hutton), with Michael Caine, Susannah York\n\nHammersmith Is Out, Cornelius Crean Films, 1972 (Peter Ustinov), with Richard Burton, Peter Ustinov, Beau Bridges, George Raft\n\nDivorce His, Divorce Hers, ABC-TV, 1973 (Waris Hussein), with Richard Burton, Carrie Nye, Barry Foster\n\nNight Watch, Avco Embassy, 1973 (Brian Hutton), with Laurence Harvey, Billie Whitelaw, Tony Britton\n\nAsh Wednesday, Paramount, 1973 (Larry Peerce), with Helmut Berger, Henry Fonda, Keith Baxter\n\nThat's Entertainment, MGM, 1974 (Jack Haley), with Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Peter Lawford\n\nThe Driver's Seat, Avco Embassy, 1974 (G. Patroni Griffi), with Guido Mannari, Ian Bannen\n\nThe Blue Bird, 20th Century Fox, 1976 (George Cukor), with Ava Gardner, Jane Fonda, Patsy Kensit, Robert Morley\n\nVictory at Entebbe, ABC, 1976 (Marvin Chomsky), with Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Richard Dreyfuss\n\nA Little Night Music, New World Pictures, 1977 (Harold Prince), Lesley-Anne Down\n\nReturn Engagement (aka Repeat Performance), NBC-TV, 1978 (Joseph Hardy), with Joseph Bottoms, Peter Donat, Allyn Ann McLerie\n\nWinter Kills, Avco Embassy, 1979 (William Richert), with Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach\n\nThe Mirror Crack'd, EMI Films, 1980 (Guy Hamilton), with Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Kim Novak, Edward Fox, Geraldine Chaplin, Angela Lansbury\n\nBetween Friends, HBO-TV, 1983 (Lou Antonio), with Carol Burnett, Barbara Rush, Stephen Young\n\nMalice in Wonderland, ITC-TV, 1985 (Gus Trikonis), with Jane Alexander, Richard Dysart, Joyce Van Patten\n\nNorth and South (TV mini-series), ABC-TV, 1985 (Richard T. Heffron), with Kirstie Allie, Patrick Swayze, Lesley-Anne Down\n\nThere Must Be a Pony, Columbia TV, 1986 (Joseph Sargent), with Robert Wagner, James Coco, Ken Olin\n\nPoker Alice, New World Television, 1987 (A.A. Seidelman), with Tom Skerritt, George Hamilton\n\nIl giovane Toscanini, Carthago Films, 1988 (Franco Zeffirelli), with C. Thomas Howell, Sophie Ward\n\nSweet Bird of Youth, NBC-TV, 1989 (Nicolas Roeg), with Mark Harmon, Valerie Perrine\n\nThe Flintstones, Universal, 1994 (Brian Levant), with John Goodman, Rick Moranis, Rosie O'Donnell\n\nThese Old Broads, ABC-TV, 2001 (Matthew Diamond), with Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine, Joan Collins, Peter Graves, Jonathan Silverman\n\n# BIBLIOGRAPHY & SOURCES\n\nThe American Film Institute. Dialogue On Film: George Stevens, 4, May\/June 1975.\n\nAnger, Kenneth. Hollywood Babylon. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1981.\n\nAnger, Kenneth. Hollywood Babylon II. New York: Dell Publishing, 1984.\n\nAntonio (Maria Callas' chauffeur). Interview with David Bret, \nSeptember 1977.\n\nAstor, Mary. Life On Film. New York: Delacorte Press, 1967.\n\nBacon, James. Made In Hollywood. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1978.\n\nBast, William. James Dean: A Biography. New York: Ballantine Books, 1956\n\nBelsten, Mick. \"Rock Hudson, Health Report.\" Gay Times, September 1985.\n\nBosworth, Patricia. Montgomery Clift: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1978.\n\nBret, David. Freddie Mercury: Living on the Edge. London: Robson Books, 1996.\n\nBret, David. Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr. London: Robson Books, 2006.\n\nBret, David. Marlene, My Friend: An Intimate Biography. London: Robson Books, 1993.\n\nBrodsky, Jack, and Nathan Weiss. The Cleopatra Papers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963.\n\nBurton, Richard. Meeting Mrs. Jenkins. New York: William Morrow, 1964.\n\nCohn, Art. The Nine Lives of Mike Todd. New York: Random House, 1958.\n\nCollins, Joan. Past Imperfect: An Autobiography. London: Coronet Books, 1979.\n\nConsidine, Sean. Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1992.\n\nCottrell, John, and Fergus Cashin. Richard Burton: Very Close Up. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971.\n\nDalton, David. James Dean: The Mutant King. New York: St. Martin's \nPress, 1987.\n\nDavid, Lester, and Jhan Robbins. \nRichard & Elizabeth. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1977.\n\nDavidson, Bill. Spencer Tracy: Tragic Idol. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987.\n\nDevilliers, Marceau. James Dean on Location. London: Sidgwick & \nJackson, 1987.\n\nDietrich, Marlene. Interviews with \nDavid Bret, various.\n\nDmytryk, Edward. It's A Hell of A Life, but Not a Bad Living. New York: \nNew York Times Books, 1978.\n\nDowning, David. Marlon Brando. \nLondon: W.H. Allen, 1984.\n\nEames, John Douglas. The MGM Story. New York: Crown Publishers, 1975.\n\nEdwards, Anne. Katharine Hepburn: \nA Biography. London: Coronet, 1987.\n\nFerber, Edna. Giant. New York: Doubleday, 1952.\n\nFerris, Paul. Richard Burton. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1981.\n\nFisher, Eddie. My Life, My Loves. London: W.H. Allen, 1982.\n\nGates, Phyllis (with Bob Thomas). My Husband, Rock Hudson. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1987.\n\nGeist, Kenneth L. Pictures Will Talk: The Life & Films of Joseph L Mankiewicz. London: Frederick Muller, 1978.\n\nGreene, Myrna. The Eddie Fisher Story. New York: Paul S. Eriksson, 1978.\n\nHersh, Burton. The Mellon Family. New York: William Morrow, 1978.\n\nHickey, Des, and Gus Smith. The Prince: The Public & Private Life of Laurence Harvey. London: Leslie Frewin Publishing, 1975.\n\nHirsch, Foster. Elizabeth Taylor. New York: Pyramid Publications, 1973.\n\nHolley, Val. James Dean. London: Robson Books, 1995.\n\nHopper, Hedda. From Under My Hat. \nNew York: Doubleday, 1952.\n\nHopper, Hedda. The Whole Truth & Noth-ing But. New York: Doubleday, 1962.\n\nHudson, Rock (with Sara Davidson). \nRock Hudson: His Story. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.\n\nHuston, John. An Open Book. New York: Ballantine Books, 1981.\n\nJenkins, Graham. Richard Burton, \nMy Brother. London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1988.\n\nJoseph, Joan. For Love Of Liz. New York: Manor Books, 1976.\n\nKazan, Elia. Elia Kazan: A Life. London: Andr\u00e9 Deutsch, 1988.\n\nKelley, Kitty. Elizabeth Taylor: \nThe Last Star. New York: Simon \n& Schuster, 1981.\n\nKensit, Patsy. Interview with Attitude, 2006.\n\nLaGuardia, Robert. Monty. \nWestminster, MD: Arbor House, 1977.\n\nMaddox, Brenda. Who's Afraid Of Elizabeth Taylor? New York: M. Evans & Co., 1977.\n\nMankiewicz, Joseph L. Near-Death Experience Speech. July 1961.\n\nMedved, Harry, and Michael Medved. \nThe Golden Turkey Awards. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1980.\n\nMorley, Sheridan. Elizabeth Taylor: \nA Celebration. London: Pavilion \nBooks, 1988.\n\nNickens, Christopher. Elizabeth Taylor: \nA Biography in Photographs. New York: Doubleday, 1984.\n\nQuinlan, David. Quinlan's Illustrated Directory of Film Character Actors. London: Batsford Ltd., 1995.\n\nReynolds, Debbie, and David Patrick Columbia. Debbie: My Life. \nLondon: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988.\n\nRoen, Paul. High Camp: A Gay Guide \nto Camp and Cult Films, Volumes I \nand II. San Francisco: Leyland Productions, 1994.\n\nSchary, Dore. Heyday. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1979.\n\nSheppard, Dick. Elizabeth: The Life & Career of Elizabeth Taylor. New York: Warner Books Inc., 1975.\n\nStone, Paulene, and Peter Evans. \nLaurence Harvey: One Tear Is Not Enough. London: Michael Joseph, 1975.\n\nTaylor, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Takes Off. London: Macmillan, 1988.\n\nTaylor, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Taylor. \nNew York: Harper & Row, 1964.\n\nTaylor, Elizabeth. Nibbles & Me. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1945.\n\nTaylor, Elizabeth. Interview (alleged) with Hollywood Reporter, October 1943.\n\nTaylor, Elizabeth. Interview with \nLadies Home Journal, February 1976.\n\nTaylor, Elizabeth. Freddie Mercury \nspeech, April 1992.\n\nTaylor, Sara. Interview with Ladies Home Journal, February 1954.\n\nTodd, Michael Jr. A Valuable Property: The Life Story of Mike Todd. New York: Arbor House, 1983.\n\nVermilye, Jerry, and Mark Ricci. \nThe Films of Elizabeth Taylor. New York: Citadel Press, 1976.\n\nVatican statement. L'Osservatore Della Dominica, March 1962.\n\nWinters, Shelley. Shelley, Also Known As Shirley. New York: William Morrow, 1980.\n\nWalker, Alexander. Elizabeth. London: Orion Books, 1997.\n\nWalker, Alexander. Interviews with Elizabeth Taylor, various.\n\nWalker, Alexander. Sex In The Movies. London: Pelican Books, 1966.\n\nWarhol, Andy, and Bob Colacello. Andy Warhol's Exposures. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1979.\n\nWaterbury, Ruth. Elizabeth Taylor: Her Life, Her Loves, Her Future. New York: Popular Library, 1964.\n\nWaterbury, Ruth. Richard Burton: His Intimate Story. New York: Pyramid Publications, 1965.\n\nWigg, David: \"Elizabeth Taylor Interview.\" Good Housekeeping, February 1977.\n\nWilding, Michael (with Pamela Wilcox). Apple Sauce. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen \n& Unwin, 1987.\n\nZec, Donald. Liz, the Men, the Myths, and the Miracle: An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth Taylor. London: Mirror Books, 1982.\n\nZec, Donald. Put The Knife In Gently: Memoirs of a Life with Legends. London: Robson Books, 2003.\n\n# INDEX\n\nAdrian, Gilbert 28\u20139, 33\n\nAFI Lifetime Achievement Award 262\u20134\n\nAll-Star Tribute to Elizabeth Taylor, An 220\n\nAndrews, Julie 152, 155, 269, 271\n\nAnna Karenina 107, 144\n\nAround the World in Eighty Days 96, 105\u20136, 109, 115, 223\n\nAsh Wednesday 200\u20131, 204\n\nAstor, Mary 31, 34\n\nBankhead, Tallulah 14, 60, 63, 83, 101, 187\u20138, 193, 229\u201330, 234, 236\n\nBeau Brummel 76\n\nBegin, Menachem 235\u20136\n\nBell, Jeanne 210\u201311\n\nBerger, Helmut 200\u20131, 220\n\nBerman, Pandro 125\u20136, 128\n\nBetween Friends 236\n\nBig Hangover, The 37\n\nBlitch, Iris 157\n\nBlondell, Joan 94\u20135\n\nBloom, Claire 173\n\nBlue Bird, The 209\u201310, 214\n\nBoom! 187\u20138, 193, 229, 252\u20133\n\nBoyd, Stephen 134, 138, 145, 149, 154, 163\n\nBrando, Marlon 45, 80\u20131, 90, 109, 119, 149, 184\u20135\n\nBrooks, Richard 76, 89, 112\n\nBufman, Zev 230, 234\n\nBujold, Genevieve 189\n\nBurnett, Carol 248, 262\n\nBurton, Jessica 151, 191\n\nBurton, Kate 151, 191\n\nBurton, Maria 157, 167, 173, 191, 207, 209, 239, 240, 262\n\nBurton, Philip 150\u20131, 170\n\nBurton, Richard 72, 145\u2013220, 222, 229\u201333, 237\u201341, 245, 251, 254, 256, 262, 264, 266, 269\u201370, 279\u201382, 284\n\nBurton, Sally 237\u201341, 279, 282\n\nBurton, Sybil 148, 151, 159\u201360, 166\u20137, 174, 207, 269\n\nBush, George Sr 23, 276\n\nButterfield 8 125\u20139, 131\n\nCaine, Michael 196, 197, 295\n\nCallaghan, James 192\n\nCallas, Maria 52, 73, 101, 203\u20134\n\nCallaway Went Thataway 62\n\n'Cassandra' 157\u20138\n\nCat on a Hot Tin Roof 110\u201314, 116, 118\n\nCazalet, Victor 15\u201318, 21, 35, 68\n\nChristopher, Jordan 167\u20138\n\nCleopatra 125\u20136, 131\u201363, 171, 193, 230, 269\n\nClift, Montgomery 12, 41\u20136, 49\u201350, 54\u20135, 59, 62, 64, 70, 77\u201385, 88\u201394, 97\u2013100, 109\u201315, 119\u201324, 127\u20138, 132, 139\u201340, 168\u201371, 183\u20134, 223, 244, 263, 264, 285, 290\n\nCollins, Joan 114, 125, 132, 137, 162, 270\u20133, 296\n\nComedians, The 185\u20136, 198\n\nConfidential 81, 86\u20137, 92, 233\n\nConspirator 34\u20135\n\nCourage of Lassie, The 27\u20139\n\nCoward, Noel 188, 234, 236\n\nCrawford, Joan 12, 28, 69, 71, 73\u20134, 101, 105, 153\n\nCurtis, Tony 120, 228\n\nCurtiz, Michael 29\u201330, 76\n\nCynthia 31\n\nDarmanin, Peter 213, 218\n\nDate with Judy, A 32\u20133\n\nDavis, Bette 251\n\nDavis, Glenn 33\u20134, 36\u20137, 48, 295\n\nDay, Doris 228, 245\u20136\n\nDean, James 37, 47, 79\u201386, 91\u20132, 98, 104, 149, 244, 263\u20134\n\nDennis, Sandy 177\u201380, 186\n\nDietrich, Marlene 32, 53, 65, 96, 122, 141, 171, 195, 247\u20138, 250, 262, 271\n\nDivorce His, Divorce Hers 185, 200\n\nDmytryk, Edward 44, 60, 67, 89, 91, 93\u20134, 97\u20139, 109, 119\n\nDr Faustus 181\u20133\n\nDonen, Stanley 61\u20132\n\nDon Quixote 110\n\nDown, Lesley-Anne 217, 243\u20134\n\nDriver's Seat, The 202\n\nDuke, Doris 267\u20138\n\nDynasty 245\n\nElephant Walk 71\u20132, 134\n\nElizabeth of Yugoslavia 208\u201310\n\nElizabeth Takes Off 248\n\nElizabeth Taylor in London 167\n\nEngland's Other Elizabeth 269\u201370\n\nEvans, Lord 135\u20136\n\nFather of the Bride 49\u201354\n\nFather's Little Dividend 54, 62\n\nFerber, Edna 78, 82\n\nFerrer, Mel 28, 281\n\nFields, Gracie 76, 240\n\nFinch, Peter 71\u20132, 134, 145\n\nFisher, Carrie 270\u20133, 294, 296\n\nFisher, Eddie 96, 102\u20133, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115\u201323, 125, 126\u20137, 128, 129, 134\u20135, 136\u20137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144, 148\u20139, 152\u20137, 158, 159, 161, 167, 169, 172, 189, 199, 223, 227, 270\u20133, 284, 293\n\nFlintstones, The 264\n\nForbes, Malcolm 251\u20135\n\nForster, Robert 184\u20135\n\nFortensky, Larry 253\u201360, 265, 266\u20138, 286, 289\n\nFriedkin, William 244\n\nGarbo, Greta 44, 63, 107, 132, 177, 184\n\nGardner, Ava 168, 209\n\nGarland, Judy 11, 20, 26, 29, 31, 153, 171\n\nGassman, Vittorio 75\u20136\n\nGates, Phyllis 80\u20131, 84\u20135, 92\u20133, 101\n\nGeary, Anthony 233\n\nGeneral Hospital 231, 270\n\nGiant 71, 78\u201386, 98, 101, 103\u20134, 114, 135, 276\n\nGirl Who Had Everything, The 69\u201370, 76\n\nGlenville, Peter 185\u20136\n\nGoodman, John 264\n\nGood Morning America 237\u20138\n\nGranger, Stewart 65, 67, 71, 76\n\nHalston 220\u20131, 255\n\nHamilton, George 249, 251\n\nHamlet 169\u201370, 172\n\nHammersmith Is Out 198\u20139\n\nHarrison, Rex 145, 163, 194\n\nHarrison, Robert 86\u20137\n\nHarvey, Laurence 128\u20139, 199, 202\u20133\n\nHellman, Lillian 229\u201330\n\nHepburn, Katharine 26, 43, 123\u20134\n\nHilton, Nicky 46\u201357, 63\u20134, 66, 68, 71, 82, 119, 153, 227\n\nHoliday in Spain 122\n\nHolman, Libby 42, 44, 54, 70, 89, 92\u20133, 99\n\nHopper, Dennis 80, 84, 263\n\nHopper, Hedda 21\u20132, 32, 39, 43, 48\u201352, 55, 60, 62, 65, 72, 87, 97, 104, 116\u201317, 148\n\nHudson, Rock 37, 78\u201387, 92\u20133, 98, 101, 104, 111, 114, 119, 124, 133, 147, 149, 157, 174, 176, 228, 231\u20133, 244\u20138, 251, 260\u20132, 264, 266, 269, 276\n\nHughes, Howard 35\u20136, 60, 62, 64, 101, 112\n\nHunt, Suzy 212\u201313, 217\u201318, 229\n\nHunter, Tab 65, 81, 101, 187\u20138, 248\n\nHuston, John 168\u20139, 171, 183\n\nIvanhoe 63\u20134, 66\n\nJackson, Michael 249\u201351, 256\u20139, 263, 265\u20136, 276\u20138, 285, 286, 292\u20133\n\nJacobson, Max 136\u20137, 159\n\nJane Eyre 24\n\nJohnson, Nunnally 138\u20139\n\nJohnson, Van 37, 50, 76\u20137\n\nJulia Misbehaves 33\n\nKelly, Gene 60\u20131\n\nKennamer, Rex 111, 113, 144, 231\n\nKensit, Patsy 209\u201310\n\nKeyes, Evelyn 96, 99\n\nKing, Larry, 282\u20137, 296\n\nKirkwood, James 14, 249\n\nKrupp, Alfred 189\n\nLafferty, Bernard 267\u20138\n\nLandau, Martin 145, 162\n\nLassie Come Home 22\u20135\n\nLast Time I Saw Paris, The 76\u20137\n\nLawford, Christopher 202, 208\n\nLawford, Peter 202\u20133, 208, 237\n\nLerner, Max 141\u20132, 208, 234\n\nLife with Father 30\u20131\n\nLittle Foxes, The 229\u201334, 237\n\nLittle Night Music, A 216\u201318, 228\n\nLittle Women 34\n\nLoew, Arthur 50, 114\u201315\n\nLoren, Sophia 190, 199\u2013200\n\nLove Is Better Than Ever 56, 61\u20132\n\nLucy Show, The 191\n\nLuna, Victor 234\u20136, 240\u20131\n\nMcCambridge, Mercedes 79, 123\n\nMcCarthy, Joe 59\u201361, 63, 80, 89\n\nMcCarthy, Kevin 92\u20133\n\nMcClory, Kevin 95\n\nMcCullers, Carson 184\n\nMcDowall, Roddy 22\u20134, 32, 50, 59, 66\u20137, 142, 147, 159, 183, 231, 241, 243\u20134, 246\u20137, 257, 263, 269\n\nMacLaine, Shirley 101, 137, 141, 247, 259, 269, 271\u20133\n\nMagnani, Anna 175, 185\n\nMalice in Wonderland 243\n\nMamoulian, Rouben 134, 137\u20138\n\nMankiewicz, Joe 122\u20134, 138\u20139, 143, 148, 152, 155, 159, 161\u20132\n\nMargaret, Princess 17, 258\n\nMarjorie Morningstar 109\u201310\n\nMature, Victor 87\n\nMauthner, Margarete 278\n\nMaxwell, Elsa 52\u20133, 87\n\nMayer, Louis B. 20\u20132, 24, 26, 28\u20139, 32, 36\u20137, 51, 55, 63, 135\n\nMercury, Freddie 251, 260\u20132\n\nMinnelli, Liza 245, 257, 261, 282, 295\n\nMinnelli, Vincente 28, 49, 152, 174\n\nMirror Crack'd, The 228\u20139, 231\n\nMistinguett 53, 190\n\nMitchum, Robert 192\u20134, 231\n\nMonroe, Marilyn 47, 55, 119, 132\u20133, 137, 141, 149, 165\n\nNational Velvet 25\u20137, 92\n\nNazimova 14\u201315, 52\n\nNewman, Paul 109\u201310, 113\u201314, 135, 220, 286, 292\n\nNibbles and Me 28\n\nNichols, Mike 177\u201380, 186, 229\n\nNight of the Iguana, The 168\u20139, 174\n\nNight Watch 199\n\nNiven, David 95\u20136, 101, 197\n\nNorth and South 243\u20134\n\nNovak, Kim 137, 228\n\nNussbaum, Max 119\u201320\n\nNye, Carrie 200\n\nObenshaim, Richard 221\u20132\n\nOnassis, Aristotle 203\u20134, 252\n\nOnly Game in Town, The 193\u20134\n\nParks, Larry 59, 61\u20132\n\nParsons, Louella 21, 31\u20132, 51\u20132, 55, 78, 87, 153\u20134, 243\n\nPawley, William 36\u20138, 48\n\nPiaf, Edith 36, 53, 63, 76\u20137, 83, 96, 153\n\nPlace in the Sun, A 42\u20136, 49, 55, 60\u20132, 66, 70, 78\u20139, 83, 98\n\nPoker Alice 249\n\nPonti, Carlo 190, 200\u20131\n\nPresley, Elvis 12, 278\n\nPrivate Lives 234, 236\u20138\n\nProwse, Juliet 158, 172\n\nRaintree County 44, 88\u201393, 97\u2013100, 105, 109, 113, 119\n\nRamsbotham, Sir Peter 215\n\nReagan, Nancy 120, 229, 231\u20132, 256\n\nReagan, Ronald 120, 229, 231\u20132, 256\u20137\n\nReflections of a Golden Eye 171, 183\u20135\n\nReturn Engagement 221\u20132\n\nReynolds, Debbie 50, 102, 110, 111, 115\u201319, 120, 121, 127, 156, 223, 270\u20133, 282, 289, 296\n\nRhapsody 72\u20135\n\nRichardson, Tony 193\n\nRooney, Mickey 26, 50, 248\n\nRose, Helen 51, 68, 102, 112, 117, 211\n\nSam, Chen 212\n\nSandpiper, The 171\u20132, 174\u20135\n\nSchary, Dore 64, 67\u20138, 70, 78, 93\u20134\n\nSchofield, Paul 182, 186\n\nSecret Ceremony 192, 194\n\nSegal, George 171, 177\u201380, 186\n\n'Send in the Clowns' 217\n\nSkouras, Spyros 125, 131\u20134, 137\u20139, 142\u20133, 144\u20137, 159\u201360\n\nSmith, Liz 257, 259, 288, 291\n\nStein, Dennis 241\n\nStevens, George 43\u20135, 49, 78\u20139, 82\u20136, 97, 101, 135\n\nStone, Paulene 203\n\nStreisand, Barbra 171, 179, 289, 296, 297\n\nSuddenly, Last Summer 119, 122\u20134, 139, 141, 155, 177, 185, 213, 252\n\nSunset Boulevard 70, 290\n\nSweet Bird of Youth 254\n\nSwitzer, Carl 21\n\nTaming of the Shrew, The 183, 187\n\nTaylor, Francis 13, 14\u201316, 17, 18\u201319, 20, 21, 28\u20139, 32, 33, 36, 48, 49, 51, 67, 103, 136, 189, 209, 267, 278\n\nTaylor, Howard 16\u201320, 29, 51, 68, 103, 112, 209, 257\n\nTaylor, Robert 34\u20135, 60, 63, 66, 71, 98\n\nTaylor, Sara 11, 13\u201322, 24, 25, 26\u201328, 29\u201330, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 41, 43, 47, 50, 51, 55, 56, 62, 64, 67, 69, 103, 136, 189, 209, 253, 257, 264, 267\n\nThat's Entertainment! 209\n\nThere Must Be a Pony 248\u20139\n\nThere's One Born Every Minute 21, 263\n\nThese Old Broads 270\u20133, 275, 289\n\nThis Property Is Condemned 183\n\nTodd, Bertha 94\u20135\n\nTodd, Liza 105, 117, 120\u20131, 209, 227, 239\u201340\n\nTodd, Mike 94\u20137, 99, 101\u20137, 109, 110\u201315, 117, 119, 122, 134, 135, 138, 150, 153, 155, 168, 172, 183, 197, 208, 212, 219, 222, 223, 238, 247, 251, 262, 269, 270, 272, 284, 286, 293\n\nTorch Song 69, 73\u20134, 76\n\nTracy, Spencer 37, 49, 50, 64, 171\n\nUnder Milk Wood 196, 232\n\nUstinov, Peter 197\u20138\n\nValentino, Rudolph 14, 79, 85\n\nVictory at Entebbe 220\n\nVIPs, The 165\u20136, 171, 174\n\nWalters, Barbara 223\u20134\n\nWanger, Walter 125, 132\u20133, 148, 154\n\nWarhol, Andy 202, 220\u20131, 266, 272, 289\n\nWarner, John 215\u201317, 218\u201323, 224\u20135, 229, 231, 232, 234, 235\n\nWayne, John 60, 140\n\nWexler, Haskell 176\u20137, 179, 186\n\nWhite Cliffs of Dover, The 24\n\nWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 171, 175\u201380, 184, 186, 191, 229, 234\n\nWilding, Christopher 77, 133, 197, 209, 227, 240, 253\n\nWilding, Michael 35, 64\u201371, 74\u20138, 81, 84\u20137, 90\u20134, 96\u20137, 100\u20132, 110\u201311, 119, 153, 168, 171\u20132, 227, 262\n\nWilding, Michael Howard 71, 76, 173, 195\u20139, 217, 227, 296\n\nWilliams, Emlyn 150\u20131, 170\n\nWilliams, Tennessee 119, 123, 128, 136, 155, 187\u20138, 199, 254\n\nWillson, Henry 81, 92\n\nWilson, Harold 192\n\nWinters, Jason 290\u20131\n\nWood, Natalie 11, 110\u201311, 119, 183, 228, 231\u20132, 245\n\nWynberg, Henry 202, 207, 208\u201311, 213\u201315, 218\n\nYoung, Howard 13, 15\u201316, 32, 51\n\nYoung Toscanini, The 252\n\nZahedi, Ardeshir 214\n\nZahedi, Firooz 289\u201390\n\nZanuck, Darryl 160\u20132\n\nZec, Donald 84\n\nZee and Co. 195\u20136\n\nZinneman, Fred 44, 186\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\n\nDedication\n\n_For Walter_\nEpigraph\n\n_Love stole my prayer beads and gave me poetry and song_\n\n\u2014RUMI\nContents\n\n 1. _Dedication_\n 2. _Epigraph_\n 3. Contents\n 4. Prologue\n 5. PART I\n 1. 1. \"In a lightning flash from here to Vakhsh\"\n 2. 2. Samarkand\n 3. 3. On the Silk Road\n 4. 4. \"Fire fell into the world\"\n 5. 5. Konya\n 6. 6. \"I kept hearing my own name\"\n 6. PART II\n 1. 7. \"The face of the sun is Shams of Tabriz\"\n 2. 8. Separation\n 3. 9. \"I burned, I burned, I burned\"\n 7. PART III\n 1. 10. \"Last year in a red cloak . . . this year in blue\"\n 2. 11. The Fall of Baghdad\n 3. 12. \"Sing, flute!\"\n 4. 13. \"A nightingale flew away, then returned\"\n 5. 14. The Religion of Love\n 6. 15. Wedding Night\n 8. Afterword\n 9. _Acknowledgments_\n 10. _Note on Transliteration_\n 11. _Glossary of Names_\n 12. _Glossary of Terms_\n 13. _Maps_\n 14. _References_\n 15. _Notes_\n 16. _Index_\n 17. _About the Author_\n 18. _Also by Brad Gooch_\n 19. _Credits_\n 20. _Copyright_\n 21. _About the Publisher_\n\n# Guide\n\n 1. Cover\n 2. Contents\n 3. Chapter 1\n\n 1. iii\n 2. vi\n 3. vii\n 4. xi\n 5. \n 6. \n 7. \n 8. \n 9. \n 10. \n 11. \n 12. \n 13. \n 14. \n 15. \n 16. \n 17. \n 18. \n 19. \n 20. \n 21. \n 22. \n 23. \n 24. \n 25. \n 26. \n 27. \n 28. \n 29. \n 30. \n 31. \n 32. \n 33. \n 34. \n 35. \n 36. \n 37. \n 38. \n 39. \n 40. \n 41. \n 42. \n 43. \n 44. \n 45. \n 46. \n 47. \n 48. \n 49. \n 50. \n 51. \n 52. \n 53. \n 54. \n 55. \n 56. \n 57. \n 58. \n 59. \n 60. \n 61. \n 62. \n 63. \n 64. \n 65. \n 66. \n 67. \n 68. \n 69. \n 70. \n 71. \n 72. \n 73. \n 74. \n 75. \n 76. \n 77. \n 78. \n 79. \n 80. \n 81. \n 82. \n 83. \n 84. \n 85. \n 86. \n 87. \n 88. \n 89. \n 90. \n 91. \n 92. \n 93. \n 94. \n 95. \n 96. \n 97. \n 98. \n 99. \n 100. \n 101. \n 102. \n 103. \n 104. \n 105. \n 106. \n 107. \n 108. \n 109. \n 110. \n 111. \n 112. \n 113. \n 114. \n 115. \n 116. \n 117. \n 118. \n 119. \n 120. \n 121. \n 122. \n 123. \n 124. \n 125. \n 126. \n 127. \n 128. \n 129. \n 130. \n 131. \n 132. \n 133. \n 134. \n 135. \n 136. \n 137. \n 138. \n 139. \n 140. \n 141. \n 142. \n 143. \n 144. \n 145. \n 146. \n 147. \n 148. \n 149. \n 150. \n 151. \n 152. \n 153. \n 154. \n 155. \n 156. \n 157. \n 158. \n 159. \n 160. \n 161. \n 162. \n 163. \n 164. \n 165. \n 166. \n 167. \n 168. \n 169. \n 170. \n 171. \n 172. \n 173. \n 174. \n 175. \n 176. \n 177. \n 178. \n 179. \n 180. \n 181. \n 182. \n 183. \n 184. \n 185. \n 186. \n 187. \n 188. \n 189. \n 190. \n 191. \n 192. \n 193. \n 194. \n 195. \n 196. \n 197. \n 198. \n 199. \n 200. \n 201. \n 202. \n 203. \n 204. \n 205. \n 206. \n 207. \n 208. \n 209. \n 210. \n 211. \n 212. \n 213. \n 214. \n 215. \n 216. \n 217. \n 218. \n 219. \n 220. \n 221. \n 222. \n 223. \n 224. \n 225. \n 226. \n 227. \n 228. \n 229. \n 230. \n 231. \n 232. \n 233. \n 234. \n 235. \n 236. \n 237. \n 238. \n 239. \n 240. \n 241. \n 242. \n 243. \n 244. \n 245. \n 246. \n 247. \n 248. \n 249. \n 250. \n 251. \n 252. \n 253. \n 254. \n 255. \n 256. \n 257. \n 258. \n 259. \n 260. \n 261. \n 262. \n 263. \n 264. \n 265. \n 266. \n 267. \n 268. \n 269. \n 270. \n 271. \n 272. \n 273. \n 274. \n 275. \n 276. \n 277. \n 278. \n 279. \n 280. \n 281. \n 282. \n 283. \n 284. \n 285. \n 286. \n 287. \n 288. \n 289. \n 290. \n 291. \n 292. \n 293. \n 294. \n 295. \n 296. \n 297. \n 298. \n 299. \n 300. \n 301. \n 302. \n 303. \n 304. \n 305. \n 306. \n 307. \n 308. \n 309. \n 310. \n 311. \n 312. \n 313. \n 314. \n 315. \n 316. \n 317. \n 318. \n 319. \n 320. \n 321. \n 322. \n 323. \n 324. \n 325. \n 326. \n 327. \n 328. \n 329. \n 330. \n 331. \n 332. \n 333. \n 334. \n 335. \n 336. \n 337. \n 338. \n 339. \n 340. \n 341. \n 342. \n 343. \n 344. \n 345. \n 346. \n 347. \n 348. \n 349. \n 350. \n 351. \n 352. \n 353. \n 354. \n 355. \n 356. \n 357. \n 358. \n 359. \n 360. \n 361. \n 362. \n 363. \n 364. \n 365. \n 366. \n 367. \n 368. \n 369. \n 370. \n 371. \n 372. \n 373. \n 374. \n 375. \n 376. \n 377. \n 378. \n 379. \n 380. \n 381. \n 382. \n 383.\n\n_Prologue_\n\nONE Friday morning, I wandered, nearly alone, through the Grand Bazaar, in Aleppo, Syria. Most of the shops in the usually frenetic indoor market\u2014a warren of dank crosshatching passageways, lined by fluorescent-lit counters piled high with figs, pistachios, djellabas, even toy trucks and cleaning products\u2014were closing for noonday services. I could already see clumps of men depositing their scuffed shoes outside the Umayyad Mosque, its stately courtyard with old square brick minaret, tilted slightly to the right, visible through a pointed archway admitting a shaft of warm sunlight. It was nearly the beginning of springtime, March 18, 2011, and by day's end, unanticipated by me, as well as a surprise to most of the world, a Syrian civil uprising would erupt that within a few years would destroy much of this medieval bazaar and the historic mosque thriving nearby.\n\nThe only sounds in the bazaar that morning, though, were the cooing of doves, fluttering in stone ceilings vaulted high above a darkened second story, and the clanging shut of a few shop grates. Taking advantage of this pause in all the jostling, I pulled out a little notebook and began drawing a map, trying to figure out the architecture extant from the thirteenth century, when the young Rumi had been a student in this thrumming Arabic trading town. I was penciling in an axial line for the straight street east to west, when a black-haired twenty-something-year-old, pedaling by on his bike, came to a sharp stop.\n\n\"Where are you from?\" he asked in impeccable British English.\n\n\"America.\"\n\n\"Are you a spy?\" he said, pointing toward my notebook.\n\nNo sooner did I shoot him an alarmed look than he broke into an infectious \"just kidding\" giggle. \"Sebastian,\" as he told me his name was, quickly filled in that he had been schooled in England and was now home helping his family with their carpet shop. When he poked for more information about my note taking, I started filling in quickly, too.\n\n\"I'm writing a biography of Rumi . . . the Persian Sufi poet . . . he's famous now in . . .\"\n\nI didn't need to continue spelling out the ABCs of Rumi's life. Sebastian was jolted by my response and erupted into a swoon of rapid questions and comments.\n\n\"You're writing about Rumi? He's one of my favorite two or three poets in the entire world. He reminds me of your American poet Whitman because he's so universal!\"\n\nNow I, too, was surprised. Not only was Sebastian one of Rumi's passionate fans, but he also made an apt comparison, which had never occurred to me, with Whitman, likewise a poet of epic intimacy. As we walked a few more steps together, he startled me even more by breaking into a flawless recitation of the opening of Rumi's major poem, _Masnavi_ , not in the original Persian, as I might have guessed, but in singsong stanzas translated in the last century by the eminent orientalist Cambridge don R. A. Nicholson:\n\n_Hearken to this reed forlorn_ ,\n\n_Breathing, ever since was torn_\n\n_From its rushy bed, a strain_\n\n_Of impassioned love and pain_\n\nThe lines were lovely, if dated, and created a heady effect. But their curious spell didn't last. Sebastian needed to get back to his pile of camel hair carpets and Ottoman blue tiles.\n\n\"Rumi is in a small group of the greatest poets of all time,\" he said, as his parting thought. \"Why? Because, like Whitman, or like Shakespeare, he never tells his secret!\"\n\nAfter slipping me his business card, he was gone, a silhouette riding his bike through many receding arches, past the shuttered shops of the spice and jewelry markets.\n\nI instantly felt as if Sebastian, with his dashed, provocative comment, had also handed me\u2014as we stood on that basalt slab walkway in the deserted souk\u2014an important passkey to the poetry, life, and thought of Rumi. For just a few lines further along in the same poem that he had practically been singing to me, Rumi's reed flute itself sings:\n\n_The secret of my song, though near_ ,\n\n_None can see and none can hear_\n\nAnd then, plangently:\n\n_Oh, for a friend to know the sign_\n\n_And mingle all his soul with mine!_\n\nYes, I thought. Rumi did have secrets\u2014personal, poetic, and theological\u2014that he was always both revealing and concealing. His was a life full of both mystery and meaning.\n\nI was in town investigating one piece of the life of Rumi, who had likely been a theological student in Aleppo in the 1230s, perhaps at the former college, which I could just make out across the black-and-white marbled square. Yet I'd been in thrall to Rumi for much longer, beginning with the seductive lines of his verse. For years the poems of Rumi were my steady pleasure, ever since discovering a paperback of translations by A. J. Arberry\u2014a student of Nicholson's at Cambridge\u2014on a friend's bookshelf in Miami. I spent most of a week's visit reading one after another, drawn in by their ecstatic imagery, if not always understanding their mesh of flashes of wisdom on human and divine love:\n\n_I am the black cloud in the night of grief who_\n\n_Gladdened the day of festival_.\n\n_I am the amazing earth who out of the fire of love_\n\n_Filled with air the brain of the sky_.\n\nA decade later I found myself among a group of young Muslim Americans in a Sufi group\u2014the mystical branch of Islam\u2014as I was researching a chapter about Islam in New York City for my book _Godtalk_. We met Friday evenings in a modest apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. By then Rumi was something of a sensation in America, similar to the craze, in Victorian England, for Omar Khayyam (\"A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread\u2014and Thou!\"). Because of popular translations by Coleman Barks, _Time_ magazine labeled Rumi the \"best-selling poet in the U.S.\" Extraordinarily prolific, he had indeed composed a six-book spiritual epic, as well as over three thousand lyric _ghazals_ and two thousand four-line _robais_.\n\nBut this circle was less interested in the compelling single lines of verse (\"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing \/ there is a field. I'll meet you there\"\u2014in Barks's famous version) than with meditations their leader read aloud from Rumi's talks, transcribed and collected in a book titled, simply, _Fihe ma fih_ , or _In It Is What Is in It_ :\n\nIf you accustom yourself to speak well of others, you are always in a paradise. When you do a good deed for someone else you become a friend to him, and whenever he thinks of you he will think of you as a friend\u2014and thinking of a friend is as restful as a flower garden.\n\nTogether the group constituted a Noah's Ark of stripes and strains of Muslims in America, and from these young men and women of Central Asian, Pakistani, Middle Eastern, North African, Turkish, European, or Canadian background, I learned much more about Rumi's life story, and the importance of his religious background and beliefs.\n\nThe map of Rumi's life stretches over 2,500 miles, and I soon began to travel, trying to put a face and a place to this name and ecstatic style glowing in my mind. I spent two summers\u2014in Austin, Texas, and Madison, Wisconsin\u2014in intensive Persian programs, getting closer to his native language, and beginning to translate his elusive poetry, as all the translations in this biography are mine in collaboration with the Iranian-American writer Maryam Mortaz. I visited Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, the site of a traumatic siege during his boyhood. I followed the old Silk Road into Iran, thinking of the adolescent Rumi, traveling west with his family, lulled to sleep by the tinkling saddle bells and Arabic love songs of the camel drivers on endless caravans. I stood at dusk on the bare, rocky rise of Mount Qasiyun, overlooking Damascus\u2014for the mature Rumi, \"paradise on earth.\" I was struck by similarities between his own violent and tumultuous times and our own. I also realized that all the dots of his life might never be connected, some secrets remaining intact. For this mystic of eight hundred years ago, poems were occasionally our only hard facts.\n\nInterest in Rumi inevitably leads to Konya, in south-central Turkey, where he lived most of the nearly fifty years of his adult life. I visited Konya on the most auspicious and crowded week of the commemoration of Rumi's death, spun by him in advance as his \"Wedding Night,\" on December 17, 1273. My guide was a raven-haired Turkish woman, in her early twenties, drawn to Sufism by reading a popular Turkish novel about Rumi. One afternoon she drove me to a thirteenth-century Seljuk inn, or caravanserai, the stone remains of its courtyard and stables outlined against the sky of a flat, grassy Anatolian steppe\u2014like so many where Rumi had lodged. Having passed a peripatetic boyhood, he found in these way stations a metaphor for human experience:\n\n_The mind is a caravanserai_\n\n_Each morning, new guests arrive . . ._\n\n_All thoughts, happy or sad_ ,\n\n_Are guests. Welcome them_.\n\nOn our way back into Konya, rising on its outskirts like a punctuation mark of devotion to Rumi, not only as a poet but also as a saint, was the turquoise-tiled cylindrical tower, wrapped in a band of blue-and-gold calligraphy, of his shrine. The burial site is a rose garden, given as a gift for his father's tomb by their patron, the Seljuk Sultan Alaoddin Kayqobad I. Along with the nearly five thousand daily visitors, I filed through the chamber, crowded with women sobbing and praying, drawing scarves devoutly over their heads, while men and boys read aloud from books of his poetry, murmuring the words in Persian or Turkish. Rumi's elevated tomb, covered in gold-embroidered black velvet, is placed near those of sixty-five members of his immediate family, including his second wife.\n\nMy guide finally dropped me at a private home, for a gathering for whirling, the dance central to Rumi's own meditating. I was stopped at the door and said the password \" _zekr_ ,\" a word for Sufi prayer I'd learned at the Manhattan group. Inside, one by one, men and women whirled on a low table, in a heat of fast drumbeats. The next night I attended the more official ceremony, or _sama_ , at a stadium-size venue, where dozens of \"whirling dervishes\" in tan felt tombstone hats, accompanied by flutes and drums, shed their black woolen cloaks, looking, as they spun, like white flowers opening, or orbiting planets. Like his contemporary Francis of Assisi, whose Franciscan Order cohered mostly after his death, Rumi's circle only later became a standard Sufi order\u2014the Mevlevis\u2014and his practice of meditating while spinning to music was codified into this elegant dance.\n\nDuring the week in 1273 that we were commemorating, Konya had been keyed up, too, with much of the population on a deathwatch for the sixty-six-year-old Rumi\u2014who was as much a public figure as a mystic and poet. His chambers had been hushed for months, except for the mewing of a favorite cat. In those final days, Rumi's thoughts were often on Shams, the transformative friend he felt had opened spiritual dimensions of love and creativity for him\u2014the supposed site of their meeting now marked by a modest octagonal glass and turquoise-painted metal shrine, resembling a bus stop, on Konya's main boulevard. On his deathbed, Rumi had murmured that while loved ones pulled at him to remain alive, Shams \"calls me from the other side.\" And he dictated a number of urgent poems about his impending death, conveying fresh, upbeat messages, including the joyfully brash lines that we visitors could now study carved into the ornate calligraphy of his sarcophagus:\n\n_If you visit my grave_\n\n_My tomb will make you dance_\n\n_Be sure to bring a tambourine_\n\nRumi's funeral on a gray December day was more like the heated frenzy of whirling I'd witnessed in the Sufi home rather than in the official _sama_ ceremony. The turbulent procession originated in his home and school, a site now occupied\u2014as pointed out to me by the director of the Mevlana Museum\u2014by a flimsy, pale-blue, modern apartment house slated for demolition. Rumi's coffin was carried forth in the morning and did not arrive at the rose garden until sunset, its lid needing to be replaced after being torn off by mourners. Following behind, bareheaded, were not only Muslim imams, Quran reciters, bands of musicians playing tambourines and trumpets Sufi-style, as well as singers of Rumi's odes, but also Jewish rabbis, reciting psalms, and Christian priests, reading from the Gospels. They passed through the turreted walls of Konya, which endured into the early twentieth century but have since been reduced to a lonely gate here, some stonework there, such as the archway nearest to the rose garden, still intact, in the midst of a busy traffic circle.\n\nAttending those services, which extended long into the night and still stand out in Konya's civic history, was Eraqi, a Sufi poet, not a close friend of Rumi's, more of an acquaintance. On his way out of the cemetery, and over the years whenever asked, his takeaway remark on Rumi voiced an essential insight that had been echoed, too, unintentionally, by Sebastian in the Aleppo bazaar and remains a through-line in history: \"No one understood him properly. He came into this world as a stranger, and he left as a stranger.\"\nPART I\nCHAPTER 1\n\n_\"In a lightning flash from here to Vakhsh\"_\n\nWHEN Rumi was five years old, he saw angels and would occasionally jump up and grow agitated at these visions. A few of the students gathered around his father, Baha Valad, then held the boy to their chests to try to calm him. \"These are angels from the unseen world,\" his father reassured him. \"They are showing themselves to you to offer you their favors and they have brought visible and invisible gifts for you.\" He emphasized that these unsettling episodes were nothing to fear but a sign of being blessed.\n\nBaha Valad also recalled neighborhood children once visiting his son, when he was about five or six years old, on their rooftop on a Friday morning. \"Let's jump from this roof to the other roof!\" a friend shouted. They made a wager on the daring feat, just as his son, scoffing at their game, somehow vanished, causing a clamor. When he reappeared, a few minutes later, he announced, \"While I was talking to you, I saw some people in green robes. They took me away and helped me to fly and showed me the sky and the planets. When I heard your shouts and screams, they brought me back.\" This report of a mystical adventure cinched his status among his amazed group of playmates.\n\nIn several such stories about Rumi's early childhood passed down from his father and his father's pupils, a coherent picture emerges that is consistent with the boy who saw angels yet managed often enough to stay a step ahead of his peers. The young Rumi was sensitive, nervous, and excitable, but he was also clever, warm, and engaging. The warmth emanated from a family life that he experienced as positive and loving. As he later wrote, \"Love is your father and your family.\" He was eagerly absorbed in childhood fantasy and imagination, yet, given his family and community, this invisible world was mostly religiously tinged. Descended from a line of eminent preachers, his father assumed that his precocious son would follow in his footsteps to the mosque _minbar_ , or pulpit.\n\nWhile aspiring later in life to the ecstatic condition of having \"no name,\" Rumi was truly a boy, and man, wrapped in layers of names and titles. His given name was Mohammad, like his father, and like so many of the boys in his neighborhood. Because the name was so common\u2014if glorified\u2014nicknames were useful, such as \"Khodavandgar,\" a title usually reserved for adult spiritual leaders or seers, as the term was Persian for \"Lord\" or \"Master,\" which his father conferred on him soon after he began seeing angels. Another of Rumi's honorifics, likewise given by his father, \"Jalaloddin,\" means \"Splendor of the Faith.\" In an account in one of his notebooks, Baha Valad tenderly referred to his son as \"My Jalaloddin Mohammad.\" Later in life he tended to be addressed with the title \"Mowlana,\" for \"Our Master\" or \"Our Teacher.\" Indeed \"Rumi,\" the single name by which he is now known\u2014derived from \"Rum,\" or \"Rome,\" referring to Byzantium, the eastern half of the Roman Empire, including present-day Turkey, where he spent most of his adult life\u2014was used for identifying him by few, if any, during his lifetime.\n\nLike most young children, until puberty Rumi spent his earliest childhood years behind the protective walls of the harem, a more intimate and separate domain in a traditional Muslim household, where the women lived and walked about unveiled. He stayed not only with his mother, Momene, about whom little is known, though she was later credited with the honor of descent from the house of the Prophet Mohammad, but also with his father's other wives, his difficult paternal grandmother, \"Mami,\" whom Baha Valad complained about in his diaries, for her \"mean temper . . . always screaming, yelling, and fighting,\" and a nanny, Nosob, with whom he was especially close. Given the intricate dynamics of multiple wives, Rumi had both siblings and half-siblings. His older brother, Alaoddin, was born to Rumi's mother two years before him. He also had an older married sister, Fateme, and at least one half-brother, Hosayn. Rumi was the youngest, as his father was already in his early fifties when he was born.\n\nAccording to Baha Valad's diaries, he was living with his family in Vakhsh, on the banks of the Vakhsh River, in present-day Tajikistan, when Rumi was born on September 30, 1207. Both vital water source and geographical marker for this somewhat obscure town, the Vakhsh River flowed down from the Pamir Mountains\u2014dubbed the \"Roof of the World\" by the Persians\u2014replenished by glaciers, then cut its way nearly five hundred miles southward to disappear into the broader river whose name it vaguely echoed, the Oxus. The Oxus served as a vast natural divide in Central Asia, now the border between Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan, or, in Rumi's time, between Transoxania, \"the lands beyond the Oxus,\" and Greater Khorasan, the eastern half of the old Persian Empire.\n\nVakhsh was a modest one-mosque town, memorable for its stone bridge spanning a deep gorge of the river. The entire valley remained true to its description by one Muslim geographer as \"very fertile, and famous for its fine horses and sumpter beasts; having many great towns on the banks of its numerous streams, where corn lands and fruit orchards gave abundant crops.\" Its soft green fields were filled with willow and mulberry trees, and irises and crocuses in spring. Beyond Vakhsh to the mountainous north and east, in the direction of China, were trade routes, where caravans descended bringing slaves to market, as well as musk, the aroma of male deer, a coveted ingredient in perfume, synonymous in Rumi's poetry with spiritual awakening\u2014\"your sweet scent.\"\n\nWhen asked in future travels about their origins, Rumi's family tended to say they were \"from Balkh,\" the capital of the Balkh region\u2014of which Vakhsh was an outpost\u2014on the southern shore of the Oxus River, in modern-day Afghanistan\u2014and so the phrase \"al-Balkhi\" became yet another tag attached to Rumi. This better-known city helped fix them on the map, as Balkh, known by the Arabs as \"Mother of Cities,\" was one of four capitals of Khorasan, its round central town with over two dozen mosques fortified by triple-gated walls, its markets stocked with oranges, lilies, and sugarcane. Living in Vakhsh between 1204 and 1210, Baha Valad still claimed ties to this metropolis, as Rumi's great-grandfather led Friday prayers and gave the official sermon in one of its largest mosques.\n\nRumi matured into the boldest of believers in the oneness of the \"religion of lovers,\" and few areas could have offered as nurturing (if regularly violent) an experience of religious diversity as Central Asia in these early years of the thirteenth century. Fittingly, he came of age on the edge of several cultures, several languages, and many living faiths. As he insisted, \"If he is Turk or Tajik, I am close to him.\" In the vicinity of Balkh, for instance, were the ruins of a Zoroastrian fire temple, its priests known as Magi, which had itself been converted from a Buddhist monastery. (Zoroastrianism was the imperial religion of the Persians before the Arab Muslim invasions of the seventh century.) Rumi noticed, a bit subversively, in a later poem, the quality of divinity to transcend divisions, when he wrote, \"Why is divine light glowing in this Magi Temple?\"\n\nThe adult Rumi liked to tell his students of a mystic Sufi of Balkh so used to bolting upright at the call to prayer that on his deathbed, when he heard the chant wailed from the minaret, he stood. Recurring in his poems, too, was Ebrahim ebn Adham, the so-called \"Buddha of Balkh,\" an eighth-century Muslim prince who earned his epithet by giving up his kingdom for a life of poverty, and traveling off toward Mecca and Syria:\n\n_Joyful Prince ebn Adham rode his horse away_\n\n_Turning that day into a great king of justice_\n\nThe rising smoke of Zoroastrian holy fires, Buddhist renunciation, and the colorful mystics of Balkh all show up faintly in Rumi's later poetry, like a palimpsest of his childhood in Central Asia, registering the different influences he assimilated naturally.\n\nRumi looked to his father with the admiring and idealizing eyes of a young boy, and strikingly continued to exhibit that attitude well into adulthood. Baha Valad was the single most important influence on his son during the first half of his life, not only emotionally, but spiritually and intellectually, as well. As a little boy, Rumi would watch as his father stood and repeated over and over, \"Allah, Allah, Allah,\" as he himself would pray as a grown man, in a loud voice, during the long nights, his head resting against a wall. He so devotedly studied and recopied his father's personal meditations\u2014written during their time in Vakhsh\u2014that he was able to recite large prose swathes by heart.\n\nYet Baha Valad was more complex than the figure idolized by his son, and, as his diaries revealed, more transparently human. Tall, big boned, and strong, he was a compelling, argumentative figure, full of great spiritual longing and honest outpourings, but also susceptible to tremendous pride and ambition. Rumi once told his students a story of Baha Valad, so rapt at the set time for prayer that he had forgotten to turn his prayer rug to Mecca. Two of his pupils paid him the ultimate respect of continuing to face his back rather than turning their own rugs in the proper direction. Adoringly, Rumi concluded that his pious father had been \"the light of God.\" His father did inspire such feelings, but for some, especially during his years in Vakhsh, he could also arouse dismissive ire.\n\nBaha Valad's main work was as an occasional preacher, as well as a Sunni jurist, grounded in the moderate Hanafi School of law that allowed for personal reasoning in decision making. Popular in Central Asia, the Hanafi approach was followed by his family, and eventually by Rumi. As Baha Valad was not the main preacher at the mosque, he did not deliver the Friday sermons, as his more celebrated grandfather had in Balkh. Instead he spoke on weekdays and taught a circle of young men to whom he was committed for spiritual direction. He was strict and insisted on fasting, proper washing before the daily ritual prayers, and tithing for the poor. When a group of local Sufis slept in the sanctuary to be closer to God, Baha Valad lectured them the next day on the commonsensical virtues of a good night's rest at home rather than pursuing such bliss. Sufism was the mystical branch of Islam, and while Baha Valad was close to the Sufis in many of his spiritual practices, teachings, and writings, he was not publicly identified simply as a Sufi and could be more insistent on keeping to religious rules and regulations.\n\nEach morning Baha Valad sat in the mosque, flattered by the respectful _salam_ s of the worshipers. He passed some of the rest of his day walking the streets, engaging with the townspeople. He advised the town clown to become a vegetable peddler, so that he might live a more honest life and become pure and sincere. He spoke with a local astrologer about the limits of his predictions, and with a silk weaver about the power of the Islamic prophets. He spent enough time in the bazaar to be able to tell yellow Baghdad glass from crimson Samarkand and the round crystal flasks of Bukhara; or to consider the merits of violet-root with sugar over crushed birdlime for a stomachache. He watched as villagers picked mulberry leaves to feed their silkworms to make cocoons.\n\nThe current events and issues of Central Asia all filtered through Baha Valad's alert, theological intelligence as he sifted for morals and lessons. Temple statues of Hindu deities\u2014dragons, snakes, scorpions\u2014fascinated him as he wondered if a graphic illustration of a thief with his head stuck in the mouth of a fiery dragon, or a traitor eaten by a snake, frightened Hindus enough to prevent them from practicing vices. He was disturbed to learn of an ancient clitoridectomy initiation practiced on women in Muslim Turkic tribes in the Khotan region of China, though his horror over the ceremony mostly concerned the scandal of uncovered women, public lovemaking, and wine drinking.\n\nBaha Valad possessed a healthy sexual appetite, both a delight and a challenge. Waking up one dawn to the sound of a barking dog, his eyes fell on his wife \"Bibi Alavi,\" perhaps a pet name for Rumi's mother, and, aroused by her, he wondered, \"This arousal was also caused by God. So why did I have a feeling of torment and distraction?\" Another wife put him in mind of the virgins of paradise: \"Maybe like the morning I had a sensation when I was embracing the daughter of Judge Sharaf, and kissing her lips, and joyfully holding her. I saw that her skirt was rolling up, like a little girl's. She kept saying, 'Oh, God!' The same God who at that moment made my spirit happy.\" He reconciled any conflict over being distracted from God by feminine sensuality, unusually, when he wrote, \"Embrace God, and God will hug you to his bosom, and kiss you.\"\n\nYet Baha Valad was pained by the limits of small-town life, and beneath the pleasures of the daily round he chafed at his rank. He experienced Vakhsh as an exile. His conviction of his importance in the spiritual scheme of things did not match his post at a minor mosque. \"I began to wonder, why Vakhsh?\" he vented in his journal. \"Others are in Samarkand, or Baghdad, or Balkh, or other glorious cities. I'm stuck in this bare, boring, and forgotten corner!\" And he confessed misgivings that he knew revealed a lack of a deep faith: \"Sometimes I feel as if I'm a king without a kingdom, a judge without authority, a man of position without a position, and a wealthy man without any money.\"\n\nBaha Valad backed up his sense of destiny with a grand title that he attached to his signature\u2014\"Sultan al-Olama,\" or \"King of the Clerics.\" Supposedly this title came to at least one of his friends and students in a dream. In this shared dream, a radiant old man stood on a hill and called out \"King of the Clerics!\" to Baha Valad, inviting him to make his true status known to the whole world. A eunuch servant from Merv told him of a similar dream of his exaltation, and of crowds shouting in acclamation. And a Turk dreamed of him leading hundreds in Friday prayer. Yet when Baha Valad used his lofty title to sign a _fatwa_ , or legal ruling by a religious scholar on questions of Islamic jurisprudence, the judge of Vakhsh dismissively crossed it out.\n\nBaha Valad had a number of exalted enemies, if only in his own mind. One was Khwarazmshah, the ruler of much of Khorasan after his conquests of 1204. Baha Valad labeled him a religious \"deviant,\" an insult that might have explained his unimportant post in Vakhsh, if expressed publicly. Even more heated was his dislike of the king's favorite preacher, Fakhroddin Razi of Herat, whose preaching the king so loved that he stationed a representative in regal gold cap and belt, as a seal of approval, at the foot of any pulpit where Razi appeared. Baha Valad did not hide his envy when a friend described being present when Razi, known for bringing his congregation to tears, spoke with barely enough room for the many listeners who entered to hear him, all bearing candles.\n\nYet Baha Valad's aversion was not only a matter of petty jealousy. Known by the title \"Chief of the Skeptics,\" Razi used his defense of reason and science, which made him a famous scholar, as well, in a vendetta directed against Sufis and other mystics. To convince Khwarazmshah, Razi once staged an elaborate hoax. He dressed the king's stablemen in Sufi robes, surrounded with extras posing as disciples. When the king solicited their spiritual advice, Razi exposed his prank, illustrating the potential for charlatanism in such claims. The lesson stuck, as Khwarazmshah ordered a leading Sufi drowned in the Oxus a decade later\u2014an obvious threat to men such as Rumi's father.\n\nWhen he later wished to personify reckless use of power, Rumi, in poems and talks, reached back to Khwarazmshah and, as the very symbol of intellect befuddled by logic rather than love, Razi\u2014the two men his father classified as \"useless\" philosophers, comparing them to locusts. Some consolation to both father and son was Razi's change of heart as he neared death, in 1209. The skeptic had dramatically reproached himself for devoting his life to logical sciences that did not lead to truth. In a deathbed \"Testament,\" Razi admitted that he had studied philosophical methods, \"But I have not found in them either satisfaction or comfort to equal which I have found in reading the Quran.\" Rumi made a vignette of this deathbed scene from his childhood in Book IV of his _Masnavi_ :\n\n_That philosopher on the day of his death_\n\n_Saw intellect as a tree with no fruit or leaves_\n\nBaha Valad was hardly averse to conflict and spent hours, and piled up hundreds of manuscript pages, settling such scores. (If his son had not heard rants against Razi as a boy, he could have relived them by reading later.) Yet he also had a remarkably soft core, a delicacy of sentiment, as he expressed musings, prayers, and dreams, which revealed hints of an extraordinary spirit. He loved music and visualized his prayers as songs played singly by a small, stringed, violin-like rabab, tambourine, and flute, and then by all three. Awaking one morning, he imagined himself as a tree beginning to branch with eyesight, to flower with feelings, to bear fruit with prayer, and to touch the skies with language. Cutting a loaf of bread, he retraced in his mind its cycle from wheat to grist to oven. He recorded a dream of learning the secret language of a flock of large white flying birds.\n\nThis journal was Baha Valad's most durable gift to his son. After his father's death, when Rumi was in his mid-twenties, he was emboldened to listen for internal guidance by the divine messages included in the manuscript, such as Baha Valad's record of fears of failure, revealed by the voice of God to be in fact a test of his fortitude. As he had transcribed into his journal: \"God inspired me with this thought: 'If you are with Me, I will be your companion. You won't be in any one place\u2014not Vakhsh, nor Baghdad, nor Samarkand. You won't be with anyone, nor will you be outwardly adorned.'\"\n\nRumi also borrowed material from his father. Baha Valad's commentary on a passage in the Quran on the four birds God uses to prove to Abraham that He can resurrect the dead is spun in the _Masnavi_ into over a thousand lines on the duck of greed, rooster of lust, peacock of pride, and crow of avarice. Inherited, too, was his bold and confessional voice, an intimate yell. Baha Valad experienced a midlife crisis in Vakhsh, and his articulation of its dark nights remained vibrant: \"I will be fifty-five years old on the first day of Ramadan. I've heard my life span will be another ten years, since the average life span is sixty to seventy years. When I added up ten years, I found that would amount to 3,600 days. I want to be sure to spend those 3,600 days in the best way . . . remembering the splendor and greatness of God.\"\n\nThe dominant force in his son's emotional and even literary development, Baha Valad was not Rumi's sole influence, though, as the world of Khorasan was rife with stimulation for a boy with an active imagination and an early curiosity about matters spiritual and heroic. Trances and the supernatural were popular elements in the storytelling culture that filtered through Vakhsh and Balkh, both for entertainment, or when shared by wandering holy men, for moral wisdom. Fantastical tales were retold, embroidered, and exchanged among Rumi and his friends. Favorites were stories of good and evil genies, demons and angels, as well as the exploits of legendary kings and princes, judges and warriors. Within earshot, too, were teasing riddles, jokes, and obscene remarks or curses that were particularly colorful. Even as an adult, Rumi could startle by occasionally letting fly with the common Khorasani insult \"You brother of a whore!\"\n\nThe most persistent of these boyhood spells was cast on Rumi by the animal fables of friendship and betrayal collected in the famed tale collection _Kalile and Demne_ named for its vivid pair of squabbling jackals. Dating back at least as far as the ancient Sanskrit _Panchatantra_ , these enchanting tales were translated in the sixth century into Pahlavi Persian, and then into early Modern Persian in the eleventh century by Nasrullah, as \"The Fables of Bidpai.\" The stories had such force that when the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad conceived an ambitious project to translate the Greek and Persian classics into Arabic, _Kalile and Demne_ was among the first\u2014an edition popular in Rumi's time.\n\nThe Arabic and Persian collections hung on the pretext of a Sassanian emperor hearing rumors of the existence of an ancient book of wisdom for rulers hidden at the court of an Indian king, and dispatching his learned physician to surreptitiously copy down its stories, with the help of a wise sage. The tales often cleverly open up into other tales-within-tales. Animating all the plot trickery is a bestiary of scampering, cognizant species: a hare outwits a lion, luring him to dive into his own reflection in a well; a crow shuttles a mouse, nearly trapped in the nets of a hunter, to the safety of a tortoise pond.\n\nRumi showed how avidly he absorbed these stories when he revisited them in the last two decades of his life while composing his _Masnavi_ , described by one literary scholar as \"a grand Storybook.\" Early in Book I, he unrolls its tale of the crafty hare outwitting a powerful and arrogant lion, in nearly five hundred lines of verse, baldly introduced:\n\n_Go ask Kalile about that story_\n\n_And seek out the moral there_\n\nIn Rumi's adaptation, the story transforms into a debate on faith and works. In Book II appears the fox from _Kalile_ , tearing down a hollow drum hanging from a tree branch, believing its rattling in the wind is the sound of an edible pig. In Book IV, the three great fish of _Kalile_ \u2014one wise, one clever, one stupid\u2014meet differing outcomes at the hook of the fisherman, with a caveat from Rumi that his storytelling is strategic:\n\n_You must have read the story in_ Kalile\n\n_That was the husk, this is the kernel_\n\nThe cautionary tale of the three fish leads him to meditate on wisdom as a solitary path, as the surviving fish had figured out his escape on his own, through independent thinking.\n\nThe other monumental storyline for Persian-speaking adults and children, especially in Khorasan, was set in marble in the epic _Shahname_ , or _The Book of Kings_ , written in the eleventh century by Ferdowsi, in the rhyming-couplet _masnavi_ form that Rumi would use for his own spiritual epic. A mythologized history of the Persians from Creation until the toppling of the Sassanid Dynasty, the poem is set in the land of Rumi's birth. Like Greece and Troy in the _Iliad_ , the opposing sides in this heroic tale, which is described in the _Shahname_ 's second third, are Turan, in Transoxania, and Iran, already another name for Persia, in Khorasan, with the river Oxus as the divide between the two fighting clans. At a climactic moment, the Iranian king Khosrow rides his black stallion across the Oxus to the amazement of a boatman, who exclaims: \"No one has ever seen horsemen in full armor crossing the river in the height of spring!\"\n\nRumi's imagination was filled with the kings and princes of _Shahname_ , its fathers and sons. In his lyric poems, the mythic fourth king of the world, Jamshid, again \"sets the world on fire,\" and he evokes the evil Zahhak, snakes coiled on each shoulder:\n\n_Anywhere you find anger, you will also see pride_\n\n_If you're happy with these snakes, turn into Zahhak_\n\nRumi was most smitten with Rostam, son of Zal, who excelled, Hercules-like, at completing seven labors while riding his mighty steed Rakhsh. (In the tragedy at the heart of the poem, a reversal of _Oedipus Rex_ , Rostam unknowingly kills his son in battle.) Rostam was to become his epitome of the spiritual hero, comparable to Joseph, or Ali:\n\n_When the perfume of your grace arrives_\n\n_All Zals become Rostams, ready for battle_\n\nThese heroes from Rumi's boyhood became familiar presences scattered throughout his work. Yet he was never nostalgic. He looked back on his childhood in Khorasan as a stage of development in learning to see through surface to meaning. To be a boy was to ask literal questions, about how two jackals could speak, or how a moon could fill an elephant with fear. As a man, his subject became \"meanings inside,\" and mature heroism:\n\n_The hero gives a wooden sword to his son_\n\n_Until he learns to use a real battle sword_\n\n_Human love is a wooden sword_\n\n_Until he learns to battle hurt with mercy_.\n\nBetween 1210 and 1212, Baha Valad finally resolved to leave Vakhsh. His motives might have been political. The cities and towns of Transoxania were forever being sequestered and reclaimed in shifting territorial allegiances, mostly between the Khwarazmshah and other dynasties, such as the Ghurids, from a central province in Afghanistan. The king of Ghur ruled in Vakhsh during at least part of the stay of his family; when this king came to town in 1204 to settle a policy dispute with a minor vizier, Baha Valad remained neutral, invoking uncertainty about the ultimate will of God.\n\nYet Baha Valad did not need an excuse to abandon Vakhsh. Near the end of his family's stay in the town, he worked through his ambivalence about making a move westward. He worried about leaving friends and securing a stable living situation for his mother. Taking into account his age and chronic diabetes, he wrote: \"It occurred to me: I am sick and am in no state to travel, for I have always stayed in a fixed place. What should I do?\" Eventually he felt as if he received direction through prayer, and grew resolved: \"God gave the inspiration: 'If you want to travel and to gain endurance, begin to go, little by little, in heat and in cold, every day, and then return home, until you get used to it!'\"\n\nBaha Valad did lead his family out of Khorasan in half steps. Their first destination was Samarkand, one of the enviable three cities on his wish list. After their departure from Vakhsh, or later from Samarkand, or perhaps both, they halted in Balkh. Yet clearly when they left humble Vakhsh, traveling \"little by little,\" the family of Baha Valad, and certainly their youngest son, Rumi, did not know they were embarked on a perpetual journey with no fixed conclusion that would last nearly two decades and constitute a grand, if not always voluntary, tour of the vital Muslim civilizations of the Middle East.\nCHAPTER 2\n\n_Samarkand_\n\nWHILE still a boy no more than six years old, Rumi, around the year 1212, traveled with his family to Samarkand. Located only 150 miles northwest of Vakhsh, in modern-day Uzbekistan, this most fabled capital of Central Asia would have been reached most directly by his father's caravan crossing the Zarafshan mountain range into a region ruled by the Karakhanids, one of the Turkic dynasties in the region vying for its control. In Rumi's later poems, such Turk warriors were often romantically frozen in time, nomadic on the steppes, and riding wild horses, as in one of his Ramadan poems:\n\n_Inside this month is a hidden moon_\n\n_Hidden like a Turk inside the tent of fasting_\n\nYet by the time Baha Valad and his family arrived in Samarkand, their new Turk rulers, like many such roving clans, had long ago abandoned their ancient, shamanic practices for more urbane and cosmopolitan lives while adopting, as well, the Sunni Islam of their subjects.\n\nSamarkand was certainly the grandest, busiest, and most eclectic city the boy had yet witnessed, even more so than Balkh because of its crucial location at the crossing of several important trade routes, bringing traders and their curious goods from farther away. Samarkand was also at a poetic crossroads, one of the cities where innovative poems were first composed and sung a couple centuries earlier in the Persian his family spoke, rather than a more ancient, classical form. Samarkand tasted and sounded sweet to the young Rumi, though he would also experience within its walls some of the dark tumult released by the historical forces into which his family was now unwittingly traveling.\n\nThe first glimpse of Samarkand for any caravan crossing the Zarafshan River and making its way through surrounding peach orchards and tall cypress trees, irrigated by numerous canals, was the impressive Sharestan, the old district, commanding the highest ground above the city bulwarks\u2014built in clay in pre-Muslim times. Circular in the Persian manner, and protected by a round wall, Sharestan could only be entered through one of the four royal gates: the China Gate to the east, with its many terraced steps, led down to the river. Visible everywhere were lead pipes on stone supports carrying water to most of the homes and the markets. Arcing overhead was the expansive pale blue sky described by one Syrian traveler, with a memory perhaps tinted by nostalgia, as \"perpetually clear.\"\n\nRumi's family likely settled in a more modest but popular neighborhood nestled below the promontory, along the riverbank\u2014flooded sometimes in spring, when mountain snows thawed, just south of the Kish or \"Great Gate.\" This newer, almost suburban area was protected by its own seven-mile, semicircular wall, which was pierced by eight gates. Here were clustered most of the wood and clay brick houses of an estimated hundred thousand families, so many with gardens that a guard looking down from the fortress of the Citadel might not see any buildings at all, just brick minarets and a forest of trees. Cutting through the district were flagstone streets converging onto the great marketplace Ras al-Taq, in the square that connected the neighborhood to the old city of Sharestan.\n\nFifty years later Rumi would faintly evoke this largely merchant neighborhood in the opening story of the first book of the _Masnavi\u2014_ the tale of the goldsmith of Samarkand, told not simply as a spiritual parable, but also with a feel for the texture of its setting, the sense of place that comes from being a resident rather than a mere visitor. The story turns on a pretty slave girl adored by a much older king. As she remains so wan and unresponsive to his advances, the king dispatches his trusted physician to diagnose the problem. Cleverly, the royal physician, taking her pulse, asks leading questions until a quickening occurs at the mention of \"sweet\" Samarkand, and of her own abduction from her beloved there:\n\n_Her pulse was beating normally and evenly_\n\n_Until he asked about Samarkand, sweet as sugar_ ,\n\n_Her pulse quickened, her face turned red and white_\n\n_She had been carried off from a man of Samarkand, a goldsmith_.\n\n_As the physician uncovered the secret of her illness_\n\n_The source of all that pain and misery_\n\n_He asked, \"Where is his street, and which way?\"_\n\n_She answered, \"By the bridge, at Ghatafar Street.\"_\n\nGhatafar quarter, with its small bridge, was located in the market district near Kish Gate, fitting for a goldsmith. And the couplet offers a rarity in Rumi's verse: an address.\n\nThe casting of his main character as an artisan was not apt for just the neighborhood of Ghatafar, but for all Samarkand, where commerce was king. Rumi would later include lots of imagery of bazaars piled high with products, drawn mostly from Konya\u2014he was taken by the bazaar as a symbol of the seductions of material life, sensuous, though finally evanescent. Yet during the time his family visited Samarkand, the immense square of Ras al-Taq, just steps away, offered exposure to shopkeepers and artisans more lavish than anything he might ever again have known.\n\nThroughout the city, but especially near its chief bazaar, two thousand stations were set up for obtaining iced water, kept chilled in tiled fountains, copper cisterns, or clay jugs. In spite of some of the stricter rules of Islam against representation, lifelike statues of animals had once been arranged about the square as a folly, as recorded by one tenth-century geographer: \"Astonishing figures are cut out of cypresses of horses, oxen, camels, and wild beasts; they stand opposite the other, as though surveying each other and on the eve of engaging in a struggle or combat.\" Still milling in Ras al-Taq in the evenings, by oil lamplight, were storytellers, snake charmers, and backgammon players.\n\nSamarkand products carried mystique. Looms spun red and silver cloth, as well as brocades and raw silk. Coppersmiths hammered gigantic brass pots. Craftsmen fashioned stirrups, harnesses, and goblets. Farmers grew walnuts and hazelnuts. Famous worldwide was Samarkand silk paper, originally a product of China. Handmade from the bark of mulberry trees, the smooth paper\u2014dyed in many colors, using henna, rosewater, or saffron\u2014had a sheen almost tactile in the sheets scattered throughout Rumi's poems, as he exclaimed: \"Spread out the paper and break the pen. The wine-server has arrived!\"\n\nStill being sung in Ras al-Taq Square when Rumi was growing up were the odes of Rudaki, lovingly recorded on those sheets of fine Samarkand paper. This tenth-century innovator in \"New Persian\" poetry, the language and style in which Rumi would write all his works, was born in a small village near Samarkand. Rudaki became one of the first to write poetry in Modern Persian, its alphabet in phonetic Arabic script\u2014very close to contemporary Farsi\u2014rather than ancient Pahlavi Middle Persian ideograms. He had begun by versifying tales from _Kalile and Demne_ and went on to compose in all genres used by Persian poets from then on. Rudaki was said to have invented the _robai_ quatrain form based on a jingle he heard chanted by children as they were rolling walnuts down the streets of Bukhara\u2014the nearby twin city of Samarkand, famous for its library, and twinned by Rumi in his poetry, too:\n\n_Sugar comes from Samarkand, but his lips_\n\n_Found sweetness in Bukhara, so he stayed_\n\nRudaki's lyrics remained humming in Rumi's mind throughout his life, like the songs of childhood. Sometimes he borrowed lines directly, taking a half line from Rudaki's elegy about a friend for his own elegy for the mystic poet Sanai: \"The death of a great man is no small matter.\" The most famous of Rudaki's poems was a ballad composed to convince the king to return home to his court in Bukhara after summering in Herat, lured by a wide variety of grapes for fine wine. As the story went, by the last strum of Rudaki's lyre, the king had already mounted his horse for the return trip. \"Now stirs the scent of the Muliyan brook,\" Rudaki sang, \"the memory of dear friends.\" Rumi adapted the line, giving a more romantic and spiritual sense to its longing for home and companions:\n\n_Now stirs the scent of garden and gardener_\n\n_Now stirs the scent of the beloved friend_\n\nNot all of Rumi's memories of Samarkand, though, were filled with melodic odes and lively marketplaces. Soon after his family's arrival, still around 1212, he had his first brush with a frightening siege, by none other than his father's nemesis, the Khwarazmshah, who felt ready and powerful enough to annex this most attractive of the capitals of Central Asia. Using as his excuse the supposed mistreatment of his daughter, one of the wives of the Karakhanid ruler, he massed soldiers at the city walls and conducted an aggressive three-day siege. This was Rumi's earliest recorded memory, and he relived the events years later, in a talk to students, dwelling on the plight of a lady he remembered watching, and interpreting the scene, in retrospect, with more than a boy's maturity:\n\nWe were in Samarkand and Khwarazmshah had surrounded the city, with his soldiers in ranks. In that neighborhood, there was an extremely beautiful lady, without compare in the entire city. I kept hearing her say, \"Oh God, how could you let me fall into the hands of tyrants? I know you would never permit such a thing, I trust you.\" They looted the city, and were taking everyone captive, including the lady's maids, but nothing happened to her. Even though she was very beautiful, no one even looked at her. So you should know that whoever trusts in God will be safe from all harm.\n\nThe onslaught was relentless enough for Khawarazmshah to emerge as the new ruler of Samarkand and fierce enough for him to live on in Rumi's poetry for his weaponry and violence: \"The word is an arrow, and the tongue the bow of the Khwarazmians.\" Any victory for Khwarazmshah marked a setback for Baha Valad. Yet no record exists of the family fleeing Samarkand, or even leaving soon afterward. This change of power at the top was assimilated by a city well used to such shakeups. Life went on, and in some ways the city became even more lustrous, as Khwarazmshah memorialized his victory by building a cathedral mosque and a lofty edifice of a palace.\n\nThe impression left by Samarkand in the poetry of Rumi was certainly warm, tender, and nostalgic\u2014a wide-eyed appreciation shared by many other Persian poets:\n\n_Join together the fractured bits of your intellect with love_\n\n_So you may become as sweet as Samarkand and Damascus_\n\nHe often talked about his entire homeland as \"Khwarazm,\" which included Samarkand, now subsumed within Khwarazm, and more than once remarked on its beautiful people:\n\nSomeone said, \"No one falls in love in Khwarazm: there are so many beauties that as soon as you see one and become infatuated, you see another even more beautiful, and forget about the first.\" If you don't dare fall in love with the beauties of Khwarazm, better fall in love with Khwarazm itself, which has many inner beauties.\n\nHe associated both the city and his homeland with this inner beauty, outlasting even the striking beauty of the people on its streets, and holding a quality heartfelt and enduring.\n\nBy the time of the siege of Samarkand, six-year-old Rumi was old enough to attend one of the _maktabs_ , or elementary schools, attached to the local mosques. While no sure record exists of Rumi enrolled in any of the _maktabs_ of Samarkand, stories of him as a pupil in learned settings come from Sharafoddin Samarqandi, an eminent citizen of the city, as well as a follower of Baha Valad. Sharaf liked to tell of Rumi as a nine-year-old\u2014three years after the siege of Khwarazmshah\u2014asking tricky questions of the local scholars, but being too polite to contradict his elders when they were mistaken. \"He went to exaggerated lengths in respecting the religious scholars,\" Sharaf reported. Sharaf's wife was also devoted to Baha Valad, and first taught Rumi a juvenile version of _sama\u2014_ meditating while listening to poetry and music\u2014though he only went as far as \"waving his hands about.\"\n\nWhether Rumi's knowledge of _maktab_ schooling came from Samarkand, Balkh, or elsewhere, the experience of this early education was nearly standard throughout Khwarazm, as the curriculum was controlled through the network of mosques. Most subjects were related back to knowledge needed for better reading the Quran. Here Rumi would have learned the technique for properly intoning the holy book and studied the lives of the prophets, and sayings of caliphs, imams, and companions of the Prophet Mohammad. Many proverbs were set to verse for easy memorizing. Yet language, mathematics, and science were taught, as well. As with Quranic proverbs, Arabic lessons were versified into catchy lines matching Arabic terms with Persian definitions, including vocabulary from astronomy or geography. The popularity of such _maktab_ schools helped explain the high literacy rates of the medieval Islamic world, said to have surpassed medieval Europe.\n\nLike love and religion, school, for Rumi, was blurred into the world according to his father. In the _Masnavi_ , Rumi draws a naturalistic scene of a mother and father quarreling over sending their son to school. The mother wants her child to stay home:\n\n_That anxious mother complains to her husband_ ,\n\n_\"My child has grown thin from going to school.\"_\n\nThe disciplinarian father forces him to school, his tough love identified with the intellect:\n\n_Stay away from that mother and her worries_\n\n_A father's slaps are better than her sweet pastries_.\n\n_The mother is impulsive, the father, noble reason_ ,\n\n_At first, difficult, but finally a hundred times easier_.\n\nWhile still living in the harem with his mother when he began classes, and alert to the world of women\u2014as indicated by his close observation of the plight of their female neighbor during the siege\u2014Rumi aspired mostly to become a man exactly like his father.\n\nTraits of Rumi as a boy in school for the first time among other boys included many of the qualities to be expected, though with some surprises. He was a natural student and focused on his teachers, as might be expected of the son of a serious imam. He was also predictably precocious. The boy whose playmates were convinced he had disappeared to tour other realms with angels stood out in a classroom setting. More surprising was a suggestion from the adult Rumi that he had been a bit of an unwilling student, perhaps even a prankster, and preferred his imaginative realms to the studious.\n\nWhen he was later teaching his own students, Rumi occasionally summoned his _maktab_ memories for examples of model teachers. Rumi's father was a disciplinarian and a great believer in strict observance of protocol. Yet Rumi from an early age was drawn to kindness as the most effective teaching tool. Second only to Quranic recitation in elementary school had been handwriting lessons, a subtle skill with Arabic cursive script, and he recalled most fondly one penmanship teacher, clearly gentle in his pedagogy:\n\nAt first, when the child shows his handwriting to the teacher, the letters are all slanted and wrong. But the teacher, patiently and skillfully, says to the child, \"All the letters are good! You have written them very well. Very good! Very good! You have only written this letter the wrong way. You should write it like this. And also that letter is incorrect. It's like this.\"\n\nRumi never bragged of any exceptional signs of adolescent intellectual power, yet he did allow himself to etch a portrait of a boy in the third person that might well be understood as a self-portrait, a tactic he coyly used several times in the _Masnavi_. In a slight detour, while writing a scene set in a school, he meditated on gifted children, arguing the Sunni philosophical position that all minds are created different, against the claim of some philosophers that all minds are created equal and that differences occur later because of education, a sort of nurture over nature argument. Rumi brings to life, as his example, a young prodigy, already wise beyond his years, self-possessed, with a knowing manner:\n\n_The opinions of a young boy_\n\n_Without much experience in life_ ,\n\n_May arise from thoughts that an old man_ ,\n\n_Full of years, might never comprehend_.\n\nRumi's vignette has a knowing ring, and the boy he describes is recognizable in the anecdote passed down from Sharaf of the pupil refuting the \"cleverly subtle\" scholars.\n\nIn one of the funniest tales in the _Masnavi_ , a group of boys in a _maktab\u2014_ hardly seeming to be entertaining thoughts beyond their years\u2014plot how to escape the grind of work being assigned by a demanding teacher. One cunning pupil decides to use the power of suggestion to convince the instructor of an illness during the core _maktab_ class of recitation of the verses of the Quran to learn to give each letter and vowel its due:\n\n_The cleverest boy in the class made a plan_\n\n_To tell the teacher, \"You look so pale_.\n\n_I hope you are well, but you've lost all color_.\n\n_I'm wondering if it's the weather, or fever.\"_\n\n_The teacher began to have his doubts_.\n\n_Then the clever boy told another, \"Do the same.\"_\n\nAfter all thirty students express concern, the teacher hurries home and stays abed, shivering. Rumi's glee in the prank obviously came from siding with the students and made believable an even more direct confession of his younger self resisting classwork:\n\n_Your love of mother's milk didn't last_\n\n_Your hatred of going to school didn't last_\n\nThe heart of this education, though, for Rumi, both young and old, was the Quran, the sacred text of Islam, recited by the Prophet Mohammad in Mecca and Medina in the seventh century, as holy verses memorized and transcribed in mostly rhymed Arabic prose. The Quran was divided into suras, or chapters, eventually arranged in order from longest to shortest. While Rumi could be comical or even rebellious about _maktab_ lessons, he was never ironic about the Quran. Everything about the temperament and family of this sensitive child primed a mesmerized reader and listener. If his ears burned hearing the tales of jackals or lions in _Kalile and Demne_ , the accounts in the Quran were narrative \"husks\" that included moral \"kernels.\" Later in life, he grew even more fascinated by the model of Mohammad, the ordinary merchant chosen as the messenger of the words of God put down in the Quran, whose personal qualities were nearly erased by divine inspiration\u2014\"A window through which we see the Creator.\"\n\nOver and over, the young Rumi heard the stories of prophets from the Quran that would form the raw material of his prayers, talks, and certainly poetry. Among his favorites were: Abraham, surviving Nimrod's fiery furnace without being burned; Noah, whose restive son dies in the flood; Joseph, so handsome some Egyptian women slice their hands with their dinner knives while distractedly staring at him; Moses, whose rod turns into a serpent and swallows the magician's wands; Mary, giving birth beneath a palm tree that showers her with ripe dates; the baby Jesus, gifted with speech in his cradle, and able to give life to clay birds with his breath; David, fashioning armor from iron chain-links; King Solomon, with his magic ring, like Rumi's father in his dream, understanding the language of birds:\n\n_The flames were obedient to Abraham_ ,\n\n_The waves bore Noah on their backs_ ,\n\n_Iron obeyed David, and melted like wax_\n\n_While winds were the slaves of Solomon_.\n\nRumi later imagined the Quran as a rich fabric brocade woven on two sides\u2014\"Some enjoy the one side, some the other. Both are true.\" And he saw these two complementary sides as a woman, both a mother and a wife, supplying different needs:\n\nHer baby's pleasure comes from her breasts and her milk, that of the husband from enjoying intimacy with her. Some are children on the path and drink milk\u2014these enjoy the external meaning of the Quran\u2014unlike those who have become mature and understand in a different way.\n\nThe _Masnavi_ unfolds with long stretches of probing philosophical questions raised by the Quran, in sermonic style, and in parsed couplets. Rumi could be precise and legal in his musings on free will or determinism. But other parts of the poem reveal a more immediate, childlike response to the Quran as a boyhood book of wonder. In one such story of the Blind Man and the Quran, a visiting sheikh is confused by the prominence of the scripture on a shelf in the home of a blind man. At night he hears him reciting verses, and rushes out to catch him in the act, and to demand some explanation:\n\n_\"Amazing, with your blind eyes_\n\n_You recite as if you see the lines_\n\n_You have touched what you are reading_\n\n_You put your finger on the very word!\"_\n\nThe blind man explains that when he went blind he prayed to be able to read the Quran, as he was not a _hafez_ , who had memorized the entire book. God granted him sight for the sluices of time when he read verses, and then\u2014like magic\u2014his eyes snapped shut again:\n\n_\"That peerless King restores for me my sight_\n\n_Like a lantern that brightens the dark night!\"_\n\nDuring the decade between 1212 and 1221, most probably in 1216, when Rumi was nine or ten years old, the camel caravan of the family of Baha Valad set out again, this time in the direction of Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet Mohammad and holy city of Islam, a required pilgrimage destination for every Muslim in reasonable health at least once in a lifetime. Theirs was a journey with no certain plan of return. All the accounts record their point of embarkation from Khorasan as Balkh\u2014likely enough, given the family history. To travel from Samarkand to Balkh, they simply would have needed to double back alongside the Oxus River.\n\nA natural crossing point to the Balkh side of the river was the fortress town of Termez, hometown of Rumi's tutor Borhan, who had decided to remain there. In his midforties, Borhan was Rumi's _lale_ , a tutor assigned the special task of looking out for his well-being and spiritual education, and so was a warm and important figure in Rumi's boyhood, surpassed in influence only by his father. Borhan was later fondly remembered for \"always lifting Khodavandgar on his shoulders and carrying him around.\" Rumi spoke of this tutor in the same glowing terms as he spoke of his father: \"Go! Turn into pure light like Borhan-e Mohaqqeq!\" And he remarked on his \"ability to argue fine points well from his reading the masters.\"\n\nBorhan had become one of an intimate group of acolytes around Baha Valad, devoted to studying mystical practices in a sort of advanced seminar in prayers, visions, and dreams, which was not shared publicly. Of these practices, Borhan was particularly fanatic about fasting as a technique for self-discipline. In imitation of Baha Valad, he kept his own spiritual diary, where he wrote of the benefits of abstinence, so that his body might become \"just like a glass through which the light of faith shines.\" Rumi quickly absorbed these cues. By age six, he was supposedly able to sustain a fast as long as three or four days. So this sudden, absolute separation from his _lale_ was not easy for the boy.\n\nOther separations caused by his father's decision to embark were equally difficult. Staying behind, most likely in Balkh, were his grandmother \"Mami,\" in her seventies, too aged for the rigorous and uncertain trip; his older half-brother Hosayn; his half-sister Fateme, who stayed with her husband; and, along with Borhan, the other figure Rumi missed most, looking back, his dear nanny, Nosob. When he wished to stress the need to count solely on God, he evoked the loss of this nurturing pair from his young life:\n\n_Closeness to anyone but God's untrue_ ,\n\n_Where now is the love of your nanny and your tutor?_\n\n_Only God is your true supporter_\n\nHis eminent family friend, and another mentor in his young life, Sharaf Samarqandi, had recently died\u2014another separation. Since Sharaf had been a man of means, his widow used the remaining family resources to travel on the pilgrimage, too, with her daughter Gowhar. Both mother and daughter would grow in importance to the family over the course of this journey. Baha Valad later said of the widowed \"perfect saint,\" \"My spiritual level and her spiritual level are the same.\" By the time they neared the end of their travels, nearly a decade later, Gowhar had become Rumi's first wife.\n\nWhether paranoid or realistic, Baha Valad was always anxious about the risky politics of the region. While they were still living in Vakhsh, he feared that he would be imprisoned for his political opinions in an area far removed from his family and his followers, where no one could help him. During his time in Samarkand, the power of Khwarazmshah had grown, and his influence was everywhere. On the eastern borders, the first threats from Mongols had been felt as early as 1211, as this Asiatic power made border skirmishes from China. So the practical concerns of Baha Valad interlocked well with the requirements of his religion to make a trip to Mecca.\n\nBaha Valad often wrote in his journal of yearning for quest and for movement\u2014\"When God is taking your body and your soul from East to West.\" He would not have been disappointed in the larger caravan they now joined. In the first leg of their journey, as they trekked along the borders of Central Asia, countless other long trains of double-hump Bactrian, or single-hump dromedary camels and donkeys, were making their way across the deserts and plains ringed by snowcapped mountains, stopping in oasis towns surrounded by subtropical palm trees. Busy markets were crowded with merchants peddling melons or horses to travelers from a wide swathe of the known world\u2014as Rumi would write when reaching to express geographical expanse, \"from Rome to Khorasan.\"\n\nAs a boy, Rumi absorbed the rhythm of these camels as they traced their shuffling lines in grass and sand, dutifully following the lead of their drivers, who steered with pegs of wood inserted in the camels' noses, through which loops of rope were strung. He would later come to imagine himself as just such a camel, guided by reins held by love's hand, \"Drunkenly pulling your load, in ecstasy.\" And he came to know by heart the tunes permeating everywhere on the trip, sung to pass the time or quicken the pace. Accompanied at each stride by the jingle of silver bells fastened near their camels' ears, the drivers spontaneously broke into traditional songs\u2014often love songs\u2014only interrupted for the call to prayer. Most pronounced in these melodies was the _nay_ , or reed flute, an almost mournful Persian instrument that became for Rumi an image of his art and soul.\n\nSpaced a day's journey apart along the way were the caravanserai, outfitted with a well and stables for animals, a prayer room, a small bazaar, and a gallery of guest rooms around a central courtyard. In the colder mountains, these inns were built of stone, with roofed courtyards to keep out rain and snow. On the warmer plains, they were constructed of compacted earth or brick with open courtyards. Such inns always evoked for Rumi transience rather than comfort, as he passed through so many growing up. Yet the tenor of his writing about this juvenile time of traveling was positive. He was moving farther from any _maktab_ school, being taught by his father or others. And images of flutes and camels, caravans and inns, crescent moons and desert sands, along with the constant change would eventually be compressed into his great theme of nonattachment:\n\n_Our voices like the bells of a caravan_\n\n_Or thunder when the clouds are full_\n\n_Traveler, don't leave your heart in the inn_.\nCHAPTER 3\n\n_On the Silk Road_\n\nIN the early stretches of their travels, Rumi's family followed simple roads that traced the shortest distance between two points. Yet as their destinations became more distant, they joined into an elaborate network of trade routes that connected China, India, and Persia to the Mediterranean Sea. This well-kept system of major roads, inherited by the Arabs from the earlier Persian kingdom, radiated out of Baghdad and served both trade and religious purposes. Known in later centuries as the \"Silk Road,\" the route was actually neither: \"silk\" was just one of its transported goods, which included everything from spices and fine glass to ammonium chloride for treating saddles; and the \"road,\" in outlying regions, broke into unmarked paths over deserts or steep mountains.\n\nLike other travelers from Balkh, Rumi's family would have followed a southern route that linked to the most trafficked of the trunk roads, the Great Khorasan Road, to Baghdad and Mecca, passing through Khorasan, and continuing westward, with the Great Desert to their south and the Tabaristan Mountains to their north. Eventually they would have descended from the highlands of Persia to cross the Tigris River and enter Baghdad through its eastern Khorasan Gate. From western Baghdad, the main Pilgrim Road then led on toward Mecca and Medina, crossing over the vast Arabian Desert in a direct line.\n\nThis journey, though, was as much inward as outward, even if Rumi was still such a young boy and much of its impact not fully realized for some time. He was seeing many fantastic sights by touring through the great Islamic cities of the day, yet he was even more crucially coming into contact with important clues to his poetic, cultural, and spiritual lineage, especially in Nishapur, Baghdad, and Mecca. Nishapur was the center of a vibrant scene of devotional poetry and mystics trading in scandal as a spiritual practice; Baghdad, the very nervous system of both Islamic university life and Sufism from its beginings, as well as the seat of the caliph, both pope and king; in Mecca, Muslims of all ages came to reflect, once in a lifetime, on the relation of their souls to God, a matter of early concern to Rumi as it was to his family. The man Rumi became would have been inconceivable without the pieces of his identity he discovered in this decade-long trip.\n\nTheir first stop would have been Nishapur, near the northeast border of present-day Iran, where they likely arrived sometime in 1216, when Rumi was about ten years old. Nishapur was the fourth of the large capitals of Khorasan, the most populous, and the most western in location, a final outpost of the land of Rumi's birth. It was also a welcome respite on such a trip, as branch roads from Balkh were among the more meandering kind, less well kept than the broader routes leading into Baghdad, and so the family had just passed through long stretches of dusty badlands, a forbidding hideout for outlaws, with endless plains enlivened in spring only by a fuzz of green grass dotted with red poppies, domed adobe houses, and the tent camps of nomad shepherds. The resolve, and health, of Baha Valad would have been tested with such a rocky beginning, and the relative comforts of home and the _maktab_ schools set in high contrast for the boy Rumi.\n\nIn Nishapur in 1216 was the geographer and travel writer Yaqut, who visited many of the same cities as Rumi and his family, and often in the same year. He described the capital in the phase that would have been witnessed by the family of Baha Valad as still distressed in spots from the great earthquakes of 1145, followed, in 1153, by a siege by Oghuz Turks, who captured and carried off their grand sultan Sanjar the Seljuk. As an empire builder, Sanjar came to stand for powerful, worldly rulers in Rumi's poems:\n\n_Since I came into your shade, I am the sun in the sky_\n\n_Since I became a slave of love, I am the Khan and the Sultan Sanjar_\n\nAs with many of the cities he described in the florid style of the time, Yaqut still found fine marvels to catch his eye, praising especially the turquoise mines and the swift river of Nishapur, powering dozens of mills with the snow melting from nearby mountains.\n\nWhile Nishapur was not the most memorable or significant of places visited by Rumi's family, the city did offer its style of liberated, freewheeling spirituality, and an equally novel and brilliant poetry scene\u2014with both of which Rumi eventually revealed an affinity. Nishapuri mystics were distinctive enough to become labeled the \"School of Khorasan.\" Their most notorious members were followers of the \" _malamatiyya_ ,\" or \"path of blame.\" Camouflaging their actual piety so as not to be deemed saintly, these brazen types walked the streets barefoot, appeared to drink wine, wore finely embroidered silks, and behaved as if sinful or crazy. Having witnessed urban frivolity in the squares of Samarkand at twilight, which may have been extreme for a boy from Vakhsh, Rumi was likely exposed in Nishapur to these fools for God, behaving just as wildly but as a spiritual practice.\n\nThe Nishapuri poets, too, traded in scandal. Their most famous practicing master, Attar, was by then well into his eighties or even nineties, his finest works behind him, especially _The Conference of the Birds_ , an inventive and vividly imagined tale of a flock of birds embarked on a quest in search of the divine, fantastically plumed Simorgh, perched atop the highest peak of the Alborz mountain range in northern Iran. Such a work was made-to-order for a boy such as Rumi. Its moral tale involved talking animals, like his favorite _Kalile and Demne_ , and the Simorgh had first appeared in all her majesty in the _Shahname_. Rumi responded to its simple Arabic meter, which he later used in his own _Masnavi_. And the poem reflected much that was rich and captivating in the sensibility of Nishapur at this peak moment.\n\nDuring the family's stay, Baha Valad, with his son in tow, was said to have found his way to the apothecary shop run by Attar inside a crowded bazaar. (\"Attar\" was a pen name signifying an herbal druggist, apothecary, or even a perfume seller, as in \"attar of roses.\") Such a meeting was indeed possible, though Rumi never spoke in public of such a fateful audience with the great poet, arguably his favorite. Attar was apparently in Nishapur during the year of the family's visit; an arranged conversation between a visiting religious leader, traveling from the eastern lands, and versed in the language of dreams and visions, would seem possible. The focus, though, should have been the elder dignitary, Baha Valad, not his little boy.\n\nAs the story was told, flatteringly, by others, Attar, however, was more taken with Baha Valad's sensitive son. With great prescience, the poet intuited the future of the child standing before him and predicted to Baha Valad, \"Your son will soon be kindling fire in all the world's lovers of God.\" As a gift, he handed the boy a copy of his _masnavi_ in couplets, his _Book of Secrets_. In this abstract reverie, with a sage theme, Attar reveals that the secrets of the world are hidden near the throne of God, and discovery of these eternal verities is available only to those willing \"to lose their heads\" and drink the divine rosewater of \"meaning.\" With blessings bestowed, both father and son then walked off.\n\nThis story clung to Rumi's reputation in later years because whether or not it actually occurred in the bazaar in Nishapur, it occurred in a realm of \"meaning,\" important to him and his followers. Rumi claimed in Attar a sort of father figure, a poet father, and came to venerate \"the unique Attar,\" always comparing himself diminutively, or inventing puns playing on \"the scent of Attar,\" or on his small perfume and apothecary shop:\n\n_Whatever you want, you will find in Attar_\n\n_His is the shop of the world, and there is no other_\n\nRumi not only looked up to Attar as a poet, but he also accepted the poetic lineage Attar fashioned for himself. Like many poets in defense of their style, Attar found inspiration and a model to emulate in the past, and contrary poets to reject for following an unsatisfying muse. He chose as his own father figure poet Sanai, a poet of the previous generation from Ghazna, in present-day Afghanistan, the first court poet credited with giving up writing fawning odes for his patron so he could practice devotional poetry. Sanai's _Garden of Truth_ , in ten chapters, was the first spiritual _masnavi_ , a template for those to come, including Rumi's, its flat, deliberate rhymed couplets recited throughout Khorasan. (Rumi's tutor Borhan had loved to pepper his conversations with its proverbs: \"The Royal Road leading your soul to God is nothing but the cleansing of the heart's mirror.\")\n\nAttar, following the later Sanai, bragged of never having written a panegyric for hire, and both freely mixed their spirituality with scandal, in the mode of the flamboyant mystics of Nishapur. Sanai's most notorious poem, \"Satan's Lament\"\u2014parodied once by Rumi\u2014turned on the tricky notion of Satan as the true lover of God, impossibly jealous of Adam. In _The Conference of the Birds_ , Attar's flock exchanges tales of unconventional passions, between, for example, a Muslim sheikh and a Christian lady, or Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna and his Turk male slave Ayaz. Rumi was definite about his deep literary and spiritual debt to these poets, and his son Sultan Valad later ascribed to his father the line:\n\n_Attar was the soul and Sanai the eyes of the heart_\n\n_I follow in the footsteps of Sanai and Attar_\n\nRumi said as much when making clear his poetic and spiritual lineage for his students:\n\nWhoever deeply reads the words of Attar will understand the secrets of Sanai, and whoever reads the words of Sanai, with belief, will better comprehend my own words and will benefit from and enjoy them.\n\nThe poet of the previous generation dismissed by Attar, and by Rumi, or at least by his friend Shams of Tabriz, was Omar Khayyam, buried beside a garden wall a few miles outside Nishapur, where pear and peach trees scattered petals on his tomb. Celebrated as a mathematician and astronomer while alive, Khayyam also wrote seductive, four-line quatrains, compatible with short, pithy observations about life: \"Whether at Nishapur or Babylon . . . The leaves of life keep falling one by one.\" Yet the bracing wind of doubt and pessimism\u2014including questioning whether an afterlife existed\u2014that sweeps through these _robais_ disturbed the mystical Attar. In his _Book of the Divine_ , Attar imagined a clairvoyant, standing at Khayyam's grave, seeing the great intellectual \"bathing in his sweat for shame and confusion,\" having to admit his error. No story was ever told of Baha Valad and Rumi visiting the grave of Omar Khayyam.\n\nNishapur was known not only as the \"Gate to the East\"\u2014the entrance to Khorasan\u2014but also as the \"Gate to the West.\" Having passed through that gate, as two roads diverged just west of Nishapur, travelers such as Rumi's family would have then taken the more northern caravan route rather than the southern post road. This route led past Rey, near modern-day Tehran, and on to Baghdad. Along the way, Persian tunes gradually gave way to Arabic love songs as the caravans left behind the Persian towns, where Farsi was spoken, and headed toward the Arabic-speaking regions of the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. Of a life spent toggling between these two languages, Rumi wrote:\n\n_Speak Persian, though Arabic is more beautiful_\n\n_Love speaks a hundred different languages_\n\nWhen they passed beyond the outskirts of Persian-speaking Nishapur, Rumi's family forever departed Khorasan. He never again saw the \"beauties\" of his native homeland.\n\nAs they were on pilgrimage to Mecca, the family was also traveling to the center of the Muslim religious world. As important as land geography for thirteenth-century Muslims were religious quadrants, the location of these places within latitudes and longitudes of spiritual significance. All prayer rugs during ritual prayer were pointed in the direction, or _qibla_ , of Mecca. In Muslim cemeteries, usually located, as in Baghdad, just outside the city gates, the deceased were often buried facing toward Mecca. A carved wall niche in all mosques indicated the alignment with the holy city\u2014this _qibla_ later reimagined with romantic devotion by Rumi as the \" _qibla_ of the friend's face.\"\n\nBaghdad was constructed as a main entranceway to Mecca, the entire city roughly oriented toward the _qibla_ , as its Kufa Gate was calibrated southwest in the direction of the holy city, leading to a pilgrim road. As with a succession of capitals, its geography also marked its political destiny. Mohammad's flight from Mecca to the hamlet of Medina signaled his shift from a lone prophet to a political leader, the beginnings of an Arabian theocracy. The first purely Arab Umayyad Caliphate ruled from Damascus, in Syria, backed by the Arabian Desert, the homeland of their best soldiers and nomadic kin\u2014the caliph, meaning \"deputy\" or \"successor,\" was the ruling descendent of the Prophet Mohammad. The succeeding Abbasid Caliphate built Baghdad\u2014a Persian name, meaning \"Given by God\"\u2014on the banks of the Tigris, in the eighth century, near the old Persian capital Ctesiphon, closer to Central Asia and accessible to the non-Arab Muslims of Khorasan.\n\nProbably arriving in Baghdad in January or February of 1217, Rumi's family had missed the golden age of the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad. Its glamour had been at its most radiant during the reign of Harun al-Rashid in the ninth century, the prosperity of his capital city opulently conveyed in the _Arabian Nights_. Harun set up a court in the Persian imperial style and encouraged intellectual projects\u2014primitive Bedouin songs were transcribed, and Greek scientific texts translated by Nestorian monks. The gardens of his Golden Gate palace were plotted about a tree made of silver with mechanical singing birds, and beyond stretched a cosmopolitan city that included three pontoon bridges, anchored by iron chains to either bank of the Tigris, plus thousands of ferry skiffs; a Christian district with churches and monasteries; public parks for horse racing and polo (a Persian sport); and a wild beast park, with Indian peacocks.\n\nDuring the winter of 1217 Baghdad was a less coherent showplace of urban planning, with travel across town for Rumi's family probably made more difficult by a great flood. The caliph al-Nasir had been ruling for nearly forty years, striving to maintain the glories of the Baghdad of Harun but without unified military power. The caliph remained checked by Khwarazmshah to the east and Seljuk Turks to the west. Yet he dealt effectively, while cultivating his gardens and moving the palaces from Harun's round city to the eastern banks of the Tigris. The poet Khaqani, as he passed through Baghdad, swooned over the gardens as a paradise, comparing the Tigris to the Virgin Mary's tears.\n\nMedieval Baghdad was widely diverse and tolerant, with a few restrictions. Some caliphs decreed that non-Muslim women wear yellow or blue clothing and red shoes. Yet Christian neighborhoods were among the most popular in Baghdad, partly explained by the unofficial role of monks as bootleggers for abstaining Muslims, as they brewed and dispensed wine from their cloisters. \"On a rainy day, what a pleasure it is to drink wine with a priest,\" wrote one chronicler. Around the time of Rumi's visit, the geographer and travel writer Yaqut was quite taken with a Greek Nestorian church, in the Dayr al-Rum quarter, where he said crowds of Muslims came on festival days to stare at \"the young deacons and monks, with their handsome faces\" and enjoy \"dancing, drinking, and pleasure-making.\"\n\nRumi accumulated a personal geography, a poetic version of Yaqut's _Dictionary of Countries_ , where these cities he visited were consistently pegged. Samarkand and Damascus were forever sweetness and light, Bukhara forever tied to the suspect \"logic\" of Greek sciences on display in its renowned library, where the texts, stored in chests rather than on shelves, were delivered on request by the staff. \"Bukhara is a mine of knowledge,\" he wrote, adding a warning against just such knowledge elsewhere:\n\n_Give up art and logic for amazement_\n\n_Go towards humility, not Bukhara_\n\nAs the center of the caliphate, Baghdad remained, for him, a symbol of justice and power:\n\n_Your Baghdad is full of justice_\n\n_Your Samarkand is full of sweetness_\n\nIn one tale of Baghdad in the _Masnavi_ , the ambitious wife of a Bedouin nomad convinces her husband to advance their fortunes by petitioning the caliph, and bringing to him as a tribute the greatest and scarcest treasure in the desert, a jug of rainwater:\n\n_The Bedouin's wife was not aware_\n\n_The Tigris, sweet as sugar, flows there_ ,\n\n_Flowing through Baghdad, like a sea_ ,\n\n_Full of boats, with nets full of fish . . ._\n\n_All our senses, and perceptions_\n\n_Are like a drop in that pure river_.\n\nThe joke was about the comic limits of human understanding of the unknown, especially the divinely ordained unknown. Rumi was impressed with the \"hot sun of Iraq,\" and the Tigris and Euphrates from then on joined the mighty Oxus on the map of his imagination:\n\n_The Euphrates, Tigris, and Oxus would be bitter_\n\n_As the salty sea, if they were not flowing_\n\nThe family likely stayed in Baghdad for a month. By the thirteenth century, the city was full of _khaneqahs_ , or Sufi lodges, often built next to cemeteries, appropriate for otherworldly yearning. Yet Rumi's father was said to have chosen instead to reside in one of the _madrases_ , or colleges. On the western side of Baghdad, the terminus for caravans from Khorasan, at least thirty such religious colleges were located. He never publicly identified with Sufi lodges, and the college setting was deemed more appropriate for a jurist and preacher, traveling with his family. In an important moment in his life, an emissary of the Seljuk sultan of Konya supposedly heard a weekday sermon given by Baha Valad in a Baghdad mosque, and reported back his favorable impression.\n\nIf not in residence at Nezamiyye College, Baha Valad would at least have toured this most magnificent university in the Islamic world, founded by the Vizier Nezam al-Molk in 1065, over a century before Oxford or the Sorbonne. Providing free education in the Shafiite branch of Sharia law, this institute, with branches for research, known as the \"Mother of Madrases,\" was located near a wharf on the banks of the Tigris River\u2014alongside the great Tuesday Market street of East Baghdad that led in a serpentine route around the walls of the palaces of the caliphs\u2014and was funded by the state with generous stipends for professors, as well as for building and grounds maintenance. Babylonian willow trees provided shade, while date and dried fruit sellers plied their trades nearby.\n\nEven a casual stroll through Nezamiyye College offered a sampling of the textures of academic life that would become familiar to Rumi during the studious years of his young adulthood. Following a student riot and fire years earlier, the college had been rebuilt and was again stirring with activity. The long, open-fronted robes of the scholars debating one another in the porticos were often dusty and frayed, while more celebrated jurists, in the manner of Baha Valad's imagined rival Razi, were elegantly dressed and perfumed, their sharp beards trimmed, and their large turbans tightly wound. (In the _Masnavi_ , Rumi pokes fun at one such scholar stuffing his academic turban with rags to make it appear bigger.) The universal language of students bustling in the courtyards was Arabic\u2014like Latin in Europe, the lingua franca for all scholarly discourse and writing.\n\nMost famously at Nezamiyye, nearly two hundred years earlier, in the eleventh century, the renowned scholar Mohammad al-Ghazali lectured in halls that were crowded with hundreds of students, for four years, then apparently suffered a nervous breakdown and left Baghdad to wander the deserts of the Hejaz, near Mecca and Syria. Haunted by doubts about Aristotelian logic, he eventually entered a Sufi lodge, where he wrote his widely influential treatise on \"inner\" science, _The Revival of the Religious Sciences_. In his lifetime\u2014and Rumi's\u2014 _The Revival of the Religious Sciences_ was akin to a best seller.\n\nRumi would refer to al-Ghazali with respect, but his true passion was al-Ghazali's more radical and outrageous poet brother, Ahmad, sometimes credited with the dramatic turnaround of the older philosopher from logical analysis toward his more therapeutic religion of the heart. Ahmad had always been a highly visible Sufi in Baghdad, espousing mystical love in aphorisms in his well-known book, _Savaneh_ , or _Flashes_ , and rather notorious for meditating on the eternal while gazing on the face of a beautiful boy, known as _shahed-bazi_ , a controversial practice in Sufism. Ahmad liked to lay a rose before a comely face and contemplate the lovely pair alternately. Yet Rumi remarked on the diminution of Mohammad's intellect next to Ahmad's hot passion: \"Had he possessed just one atom of love like Ahmad, it would have been better.\"\n\nIf Baghdad had lost a degree of its caliphal splendor by the time Rumi's family visited, the city was still a great laboratory of developing Sufism, as it had been for over the previous four centuries. While the plain woolen robes of the earliest Sufis\u2014their name probably derived from _suf_ , or wool, for this near-uniform\u2014associated them with Christian desert monks, the label \"Sufiyya,\" rooted in the Arabic word _tasawwuf_ , from which the English word \"Sufism\" is derived, was first applied to a mostly urban movement in eighth-century Baghdad. As one modern scholar of Sufism has speculated: \"The term 'Sufi' had a certain 'avant-garde' or 'cutting-edge' resonance among both renunciants and others . . . this 'hip' quality facilitated its application to the new movement.\"\n\nStarting from simple notions of clean living and exile from the luxuries of civilization\u2014following the example of Ebrahim ebn Adham, the \"Buddha of Balkh\"\u2014Sufism exfoliated into a subtle theology, emphasizing a more intimate relation with God and the possibility of inner union, or reunion, with the divine. Sufis favored verses of the Quran that emphasized closeness and accessibility over the sheer transcendence of God. Especially beloved was the fifteenth verse of Sura 50: \"We indeed created man; and We know what his soul whispers within him, and we are nearer to him than the jugular vein.\"\n\nA chronicler of these early Sufis, appropriately enough, was Attar. Uninterested in writing yet another _Lives of the Poets_ , he had retooled the genre, as Sanai had lyric poetry, by compiling a Persian _Lives of the Saints\u2014_ such compilations of popular stories about holy figures had long been popular in Arabic. There he told of Rabia, the woman mystic of Basra, said to have torn through the streets with a torch in one hand and a jug of water in the other to burn down Paradise and douse the fires of Hell, so no one would love God solely for reward or punishment. He profiled Jonayd, the glass seller, who promoted a \"sober\" School of Baghdad, advising speaking in code, and his foil Bayazid Bestami, who inspired a \"drunken\" school of Sufism similar to the School of Khorasan, full of music and ecstasy. These stories were lore the boy Rumi either already knew or was now discovering.\n\nThe climax to Attar's seventy-two life sketches was Mansur al-Hallaj, a larger-than-life \"drunken\" Sufi, brutally executed in Baghdad in 922. Attar blamed his death on his famed utterance, \"I am the Truth.\" Since Truth was one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam, the claim was judged heretical. (For his supporters, the statement indicated a complete annihilation of ego.) The sister of Hallaj also caused a minor stir by walking the streets of Baghdad without wearing a proper veil. Attar told a gruesome tale of the martyrdom of Hallaj\u2014the merciful saint was led to the gallows, where his hands and feet were cut off, while he smiled and prayed. His body was then burned and his ashes tossed into the Tigris. Rumi's Baghdad was a city of power, but sometimes that power was harshly wielded:\n\n_In the world of Baghdad I cried out, \"I am the Truth!\"_\n\n_While that world was busy debating the words of Hallaj_\n\nTraveling to Mecca in 1217, Rumi's family would have needed to depart Baghdad by February, at the latest. That year, on the Muslim lunar calendar, the final month of the year, or _Dhul-Hijja_ , named as the month for the pilgrimage, or _hajj_ , to Mecca\u2014the birthplace of Mohammad\u2014began on March 11. The official ceremonies in Mecca took place during the first two weeks of this month; Muslims could make a \"little\" pilgrimage to the holy city at any time throughout the year, though without fulfilling the commandment to participate in the _hajj_ at least once in a lifetime. Incumbent on Hanafites departing from Baghdad, such as Baha Valad, was to first visit the grave of Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi School. His shrine was marked with a white dome, where a charitable station was set up for feeding the poor. The first phase of their trip was then the hundred-mile journey to join with pilgrim caravans departing from the squat brick city of Kufa.\n\nCaravans leaving Kufa took nearly a month to arrive in Mecca, a journey of over a thousand miles across the Arabian Peninsula, through much of modern-day Saudi Arabia, which included forbidding territories troubled by stifling heat, deadly winds, and clouds of black flies. The desert road stretching from Kufa to Mecca offered only water in wells, or cisterns, and an occasional underground canal. Absent were the caravanserai stationed along the Khorasan Road. Pilgrims remained in caravans at night, without the protection of walls, or they continued traveling in the dark. As Rumi later embroidered:\n\nA man traveling with a caravan on a dark, overcast night does not know where he is, how far he has traveled, or what he has passed. At daybreak, he sees the results of the journey, that is, he will have arrived at some place. Likewise, whoever labors for the glory of God is never lost, though he shut both his eyes.\n\nWhile Rumi had many experiences with caravans to draw on, his more extreme memories of fears faced during travel were consistent with tales told of going on _hajj_ in medieval times. He spoke of travelers attacked in one spot, \"piling a few stones on top of each other as a marker, as if to say, 'This is a dangerous place.'\" And his evocation of caravans in desolate terrain conveyed the menace for a child of many imaginary threats:\n\nSay there is someone in a caravan on a dark night. He is so afraid that he constantly imagines that bandits are attacking the caravan. He wants to hear and recognize his fellow travelers' voices. When he hears their voices, he feels safe.\n\nThe greatest threat was marauding Bedouin tribes that raided caravans. By day these Bedouins tried to sell hungry travelers meat, milk, and cheese. Yet even in daylight the journey was filled with the potential for accidents and sudden catastrophe. The Spanish geographer Ibn Jubayr, traveling to Mecca thirty years before Rumi's family, witnessed a roadside stop where seven pilgrims had been trampled to death in a rush on a water tank used by men and camels. Rumi compared these travails to spiritual efforts:\n\n_The glory of the Kaaba and its gathering is proved_\n\n_When pilgrims brave Bedouins and travel the wide desert_\n\nOnce within the sacred zone of Mecca, the basic rituals of _hajj_ had remained constant over the centuries, though political control of the region shifted. (One local ruler during this period mistreated pilgrims from Baghdad to display his power in a feud with the caliph.) While the majority of pilgrims were males, their families and single women also took part. Men and boys wore the pilgrim's robe\u2014two sheets of white cloth, secured by a white sash, with sandals. Women wore modest dress and _hijab_. The core event was walking seven times counterclockwise around the Kaaba, the granite cube that stood at the center of the Islamic world, the vanishing point of _qibla_ , so that, as Rumi wrote: \"When you're inside the Kaaba, you don't need to face in any direction.\" Especially cherished was the Black Stone, affixed by Mohammad in the Kaaba wall. Other rituals included running between the hills of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, drinking from the Zamzam Well, standing vigil at Mount Arafat, and the symbolic Stoning of the Devil.\n\nWhile the meaning of _hajj_ centered on communal worship at the Grand Mosque, and the final animal sacrifice in the nearby village of Mina, marketplaces thrived, even if officially discouraged. Ibn Jubayr noted, between the hilltops of al-Safa and al-Marwa, a \"market full of fruits\" set up such that pious runners could \"hardly free themselves from the great crowd.\" He described the exhalation after the two weeks, when the Grand Mosque, the sanctuary of the Kaaba, \"became a great market in which were sold commodities ranging from flour to agates, and from wheat to pearls.\" Poor Yemenis bartered wheat, raisins, or butter for \"women's veils or strong quilts,\" worn by Bedouins.\n\nRumi once told his students that the true place of the Kaaba in Islam was to fulfill the recorded saying of Mohammad that \"cohesion is a mercy, and isolation torment.\" Visiting the Kaaba was made obligatory so that people from many cities and climes of the world might gather there. Yet most often he transposed Mecca to the spiritual plane, never commenting on his personal experience of _hajj_. He even pitied a poor pilgrim, lost in the surrounding desert:\n\n_Oh you who've gone on_ hajj _\u2014_\n\n_Where, oh where, are you?_\n\n_Here, here is the Beloved!_\n\n_Oh come now, come, oh come!_\n\n_You, lost in the desert\u2014_\n\n_What air of love is this?_\n\n_You are the house, the master_ ,\n\n_You are the Kaaba, you!_\n\nSuch sentiments reflected the attitudes he shared with, and may even have learned from, Attar and the Sufis of Baghdad: in his _Lives of the Saints_ , Attar told a story of Rabia on her way to Mecca being met and welcomed on the road by the Kaaba, rather than proceeding as a pilgrim to pay her respects at the shrine. \"I need the Lord of the house,\" she said. \"What am I to do with the house?\"\n\nWithin a week of the conclusion of these sacred ceremonies, all pilgrim caravans once again departed for Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and points beyond as Mecca and Medina reverted to quiet and sleepy towns until the following year. And the Black Stone of the Kaaba, for Rumi in his later poetry, like the _qibla_ , resolved into a human face:\n\n_The pilgrim kisses the Black Stone of the Kaaba_\n\n_As if he were kissing the red lips of the beloved_\nCHAPTER 4\n\n\"Fire fell into the world\"\n\nAS a gathering place for pilgrims from throughout the wider Muslim world, Mecca also served as a center of news and information, where Rumi and his family would have heard the latest in eyewitness reports, or twice-told rumors from various corners of the map. In 1217, the urgent talk among travelers from Central Asia concerned the threat of the Mongols. Since the time of the departure of Rumi's family from Khorasan, tensions had only increased between Genghis Khan and Khwarazmshah, with word spreading of an onslaught that was taking place along the easternmost borders, nearer to Vakhsh and other outlying regions. The fate of those on _hajj_ was unclear, and the decision open of whether to return to endangered cities such as Balkh or Samarkand.\n\nAfter Mecca, Rumi's family next appeared in Damascus, which required taking a route from Mecca back to Baghdad, and connecting near its Syria Gate with a western road, the entire journey lasting about two months. Not knowing whether war was imminent, Baha Valad would have been pushed to clarify his decisions about the future. A teaching post in Damascus, one of the core cities for Islamic intellectual life, along with Cairo and Baghdad, was desirable, but Baha Valad's imperfect spoken Arabic may have been an impediment, as seamless eloquence was expected from public speakers. Damascus itself was also volatile. While the Crusades, launched by the Latin Catholic Church, were according to one historian a \"sideshow\" compared to the destruction about to be inflicted by Tatar armies, Syria was still checkered by this conflict\u2014the ruler of Damascus at the time was al-Moazzam, whose father was off fighting the Fifth Crusade.\n\nBaha Valad moved with his family, once again, this time from Syria to Anatolia\u2014the Asian, or Asia Minor, section of modern-day Turkey\u2014probably during the summer of 1217. Until this move, Rumi, about ten or eleven years old, had been exposed to diverse religious groups, but always in Muslim-controlled areas and with clear Muslim majorities. Anatolia was territory defined in the imagination of Muslims as the outer limits of their civilization, the borderlands of Christian Rome, or Rum. (The term \"Rumi\" was used sometimes as a synonym for \"Christian,\" this shadow meaning still clinging to the name when used for Rumi after his death.) From now on they would be living in cities where they were greatly outnumbered by mostly Greek-speaking or Armenian Christians, with Muslims in Anatolia estimated at just 10 percent of the population.\n\nThe city where they first alighted, Malatya, in southeast Anatolia near a juncture of the Euphrates River, was a garrison town attached to an eighth-century fortress, the first square of defense in a line of fortresses against the Byzantines extending to the Mediterranean. Yaqut described the town as part of Greek territories when he traveled through, yet the Seljuk Turks were apparently in charge when the family of Baha Valad resided there briefly. The climate of the large town wavered\u2014between desert aridity and northerly precipitation\u2014as did its religious persuasions between Christian and Muslim.\n\nWhile in Malatya the boy Rumi had the second of his reputed meetings with remarkable men. Also living in town at the time was the Spanish-born Arab mystic Ibn Arabi, the grandest and most sublime thinker of the era, his speculations concerning the merging of Creator and Creation sometimes accused of being a pantheistic, heretical bending of the theology of a transcendent deity in Islam. Picking up pieces left behind in the writings of al-Ghazali a century earlier, Ibn Arabi created a synthesis of mystical thinking, an intellectual Sufism in hundreds of volumes, where he developed ruminations on abstruse matters such as a \"science of letters\" of God's name, which had absorbed Sufi thinkers since at least the eleventh century. Although he taught in Damascus, Syria was enough of a war zone that he passed the years from 1216 to 1220 in Malatya.\n\nAs the story was told, a conversation had been arranged between the newly arrived Baha Valad and the greatest living master of Sufi theology. He brought along his son, yet when they departed, as with Attar, it was the boy who drew the attention of the great mystic. Watching young Rumi trail his father down the street, Ibn Arabi remarked, \"Glory be to God! An ocean is following a lake!\" Again, Rumi never spoke of such a meeting. Yet unlike his supposed encounter with Attar, Rumi as an adult had more ambivalent feelings about Ibn Arabi, as about all things highly intellectual or abstruse, and later in life even made a small joke at Ibn Arabi's expense. He had walked into a hall where his disciples were discussing Ibn Arabi's esoteric _Meccan Revelations_. Suddenly Zaki the Singer entered and broke into a joyful song. Rumi exclaimed, \"Well now the _Zaki Revelations_ are even finer than the _Meccan Revelations_! _\"_ And he began to whirl. His point was that music, poetry, and dance were more important than abstract ideas.\n\nThe first solid patron of Baha Valad in Anatolia was Bahramshah, the prince of Erzincan, and his wife, the princess Esmati. Their capital was located at the upper end of the Euphrates Valley, where Rumi's family soon undertook yet another journey, of two hundred miles, to northeast Anatolia. Erzincan was a large and primarily Armenian Christian town. Such towns often provoked the ire of visiting Muslims, who expressed indignation at all the wine, pork, and religious processions. Wishing to avoid these alien practices, Baha Valad insisted that his own school be established nearby in the more sober town of Aqshahr, and there he apparently was set up in the winter of 1218, in \"Esmatiyye,\" named after his royal patroness, teaching general classes, rather than a strict Hanafi law curriculum, with a soft edge of Sufi mysticism.\n\nThis minor shah of Erzincan was already accustomed to patronizing Persian cultural figures such as Baha Valad. He had earlier supported the production of a long didactic poem, _Treasury of Secrets_ , written in the style of Sanai, by Nezami. A court poet of Azerbaijan, Nezami had also written the most famous romance in _masnavi_ couplets, _Layli and Majnun_ , a classic tale of the unrequited love of Majnun, a Bedouin youth, his name meaning \"Crazy,\" driven insane by his intense devotion for the delicate Layli. This star-crossed pair remained in Rumi's imagination as his favorite fictional lovers, and he later sainted suffering Majnun as the quintessential Sufi \"martyr of love\" for God:\n\n_Majnun, embrace the Layli of night_\n\n_Night is the time for divine solitude_.\n\n_Layli is night, and the day is ahead, Majnun_.\n\n_At dawn, wisdom will light the curls of her hair_.\n\nAbout a year had passed since Rumi and his family had been on _hajj_ in Mecca. During this time Baha Valad, and anyone else from Khorasan, was anxiously looking and listening to discover recent news of the situation there. No one was truly settled anywhere. Yet the reports brought by travelers were increasingly dire, and any future plans of Baha Valado eventually to return were quickly demolished, their sojourn in Anatolia looking more permanent. If Rumi's family set out on their quest as pilgrims, or even as emigrants, within the next few years they wound up as displaced refugees. Rumi later brought to life the feelings aroused by hearing of the chaos caused by this greatest of historical disruptions:\n\n_Day and night I'm thinking of you_\n\n_In these bloody days and nights, how do you feel?_\n\n_As this fire fell into the world_\n\n_In this smoke of the Tatar army, how do you feel?_\n\nBy the time Baha Valad was finally settled in his new school in Aqshahr, the Khorasan region, where he had left behind his aged mother, as well as oldest son and daughter, was registering serious activity, sparked by a small border incident. Rumi later told this history, with accuracy, as he knew the terrain and players intimately. As a boy, he had seen the Asiatic faces of the traders in Chinese silk and camel cloth, silver and jade, and his father had early identified the unreliable character of the Khwarazmshah:\n\nSome of them who used to come as traders into the territories of the Khwarazmshah would buy muslin to clothe themselves. The Khwarazmshah prohibited them and ordered their traders killed. He also taxed them and barred his own merchants from traveling to their lands. The Tatars went humbly before their king, wailing, \"We have been destroyed.\" The king sought ten days to consider the matter and went into a deep cave, where he fasted the ten days, and he beseeched and prayed. A cry came from God, saying, \"I have heard your plea. Come forth and be victorious wherever you go.\" They came out and under God's command they were victorious and conquered the world.\n\nThis provocation, retold by Rumi, occurred in 1217, when Genghis Khan, eyeing Khwarazm as a lucrative trading partner, sent his ambassadors to negotiate a trade agreement and followed them with a caravan of 450 merchants carrying luxury goods. As the caravan crossed into present-day Kazakhstan, just north of Rumi's childhood home, its governor, a relative of the Khwarazmshah, seized the goods and killed the merchants, as spies. Genghis Khan sent envoys to demand retribution. Instead, Khwarazmshah beheaded one envoy and returned the others, their beards insultingly shaved. Verifying Rumi's account, the contemporary Persian historian Jovayni reported that Genghis Khan ascended a mountaintop to pray, and descended, \"ready for war.\" He dramatically added that the rash acts would wind up having \"laid waste a whole world.\"\n\nThe ensuing, punishing invasion lasted four years, until Genghis Khan, in his sixties, returned home to Mongolia, leaving behind in ruins the grand cities that Rumi had known as a boy\u2014Bukhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Herat, Merv, and Nishapur. As Jovayni described the vanguard of the descent of the Mongol forces on Bukhara\u2014a signature display of sound and fury\u2014the townspeople \"beheld the surrounding countryside choked with horsemen and the air black as night with the dust of cavalry, and fright and panic overcame them.\" Genghis Khan himself rode into the town that for Rumi \"stands for the true source of knowledge,\" halting to ask if the mosque, the biggest edifice, were the sultan's palace. He ordered imams to feed his horses, using the libraries as stables, and Quran stands as mangers for straw. One survivor succinctly reported, \"They came, they sapped, they burnt, they slew, they plundered, and they departed.\"\n\nFrom Bukhara, the Mongol armies proceeded through the fertile Zarafshan valley to attack Samarkand, an operation far more brutal than the siege Rumi had witnessed as a boy, just eight years earlier. Mongol numbers were augmented by a forced march of prisoners, the weakest dropping from exhaustion. Outside the walls of the city, these prisoners were disguised as soldiers, with every tenth one holding a flag, so that the citizens of Samarkand imagined a force many times larger. Genghis Khan entered by the northwest gate, dividing thirty thousand of the skilled artisans among his sons and kinsmen, and then killing a sizable portion of the population. The lustrous new Cathedral Mosque, built by Khwarazmshah after his own siege, was bombarded with hurled pots of flaming tar.\n\nThe cavalry then retraced the same route from Samarkand to Balkh that had likely been traveled by Rumi's family. Termez\u2014 where Rumi's tutor Borhan stayed behind\u2014was shown no mercy. Jovayni recorded that \"all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain and divided proportionately among the soldiers in accordance with their usual custom; then they were all slain, none being spared.\" In Balkh, where members of Baha Valad's family were perhaps still living, any fortifications and walls, as well as mansions and palaces, were obliterated, and the killing fields of Termez were replicated: \"Wild beasts feasted on their flesh, and lions consorted without contention with wolves, and vultures ate without quarreling from the same table with eagles.\"\n\nNishapur suffered the most numbing treatment of all the cities in this prolonged exercise in bloody revenge and tactical empire building. An arrow shot from the city ramparts during its defense killed Tokuchar, the son-in-law of Genghis Khan. The conqueror allowed his widowed and pregnant daughter to exact the revenge. In April 1221 she decreed death for all except four hundred craftsmen, including dogs, cats, and any living animals, and ordered the skulls of the corpses to be piled into three pyramids\u2014for men, women, and children. A few accounts numbered Attar among these dead, seemingly fitting for this subtle and melancholy poet who described himself as \"the voice of pain.\"\n\nFor the three years leading up to the Mongol invasion, the geographer Yaqut had been staying happily in Merv, where he was researching his travel books in its many libraries. \"But for the Mongols I would have stayed there and lived and died there,\" he wrote, \"and hardly could I tear myself away.\" When the Mongol attack was imminent, Yaqut fled to Mosul. Soon afterward the invaders burned down all of its libraries, and smashed the dams and dikes so that the oasis reverted to a desert swamp.\n\nYaqut then joined an exodus of displaced Persians on the clogged roads heading west toward Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia. Caravans now included escapees from Khorasan, crossing paths with returning _hajj_ pilgrims. In Baghdad, lodging was in short supply, and housing difficult to rent, as the displaced attempted to find places to stay. In a letter penned shortly after his escape, Yaqut, in an effusive, elegiac court style, mourned the palaces he had witnessed \"effaced from off the earth as lines of writing are effaced from paper, and those abodes become a dwelling for the owl and the raven; in those places the screech-owls answer each other's cries, and in those halls the winds moan.\"\n\nThe numbers of dead were wildly exaggerated at the time, with suggestions of casualties in the hundreds of millions, far beyond the population of any cities in Central Asia. (Even some modern scholars, though, have confirmed the possibility of a 90 percent extermination rate among the Persian population in Khorasan, constituting racial genocide.) If a percentage of the victims were spared for deportation as skilled slaves, Genghis Khan was uncompromising in his systematic destruction of cities, as well as lead piping and irrigation systems, turning farms and orchards back to grazing lands for his herds. Voicing a general pessimism in the society, one contemporary historian opined that the Mongols were \"the announcement of the deathblow of Islam and the Muslims.\"\n\nYet as Genghis Khan was establishing his brutish militarist state in Central Asia\u2014an absolute threat to the religion of Islam\u2014curiously resilient were the mystical practices of Sufism, already established in the western provinces and revivified by these Khorasani immigrants, including Baha Valad and his family. Sufi lodges became welcome cultural outposts of refinement, where sheikhs, or spiritual leaders, offered messages of hope and transcendence, friendship and love, as well as musical concerts, poetry, and dance, evoking rapture. Sufi orders, loosely similar to Western religious orders, were beginning to multiply and would become more formalized in the next decades and centuries. As the German Middle East scholar Annemarie Schimmel summed up the contrast: \"This period of the most terrible political disaster was, at the same time, a period of highest religious and mystical activity.\"\n\nThe full force of the Mongol campaigns would be concentrated in two aggressive phases\u2014the first, the conquest of Central Asia, and the second, commandeered by the grandsons of Genghis Khan, marked by incursions into the Middle East and Anatolia in the 1250s. A newly configured world map spread contiguous Mongol-controlled territories from Korea to Hungary. From the age of ten until his death, Rumi coped with the turmoil caused by this churning realpolitik of the Mongols. Yet either ignoring, or because of, the pain and suffering caused to his family and community, as an adult, Rumi stuck resolutely to his surety of an \"invisible hand\" in these dark historical events:\n\n_While everyone flees from the Tatars_\n\n_We serve the Creator of the Tatars_\n\nHe framed the issue even more starkly for his circle, often immigrants from Khorasan, writing, \"If you're afraid of the Tatars, you don't believe in God.\"\n\nIn the final phase of his life, Baha Valad\u2014now nearly seventy years old\u2014found the acceptance, even acclaim, which had eluded him during his earlier years. He might well have discerned divine providence at work\u2014and communicated to his son this understanding of otherwise tragic events. His choice of location in Asia Minor was not random, as he moved as an itinerant preacher from city to city, and patron to patron, working his way always closer to Konya, the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, ruled by Sultan Alaoddin Kayqobad I, which he may have first visited as early as 1221. And of course the timing of this late-life migration had allowed his family to escape possible execution by the world conqueror known, by then, simply as \"The Accursed.\" He and his family spent the next seven years in the center of Anatolia before finally arriving in Konya, and Rumi passed from a boyhood spent traveling to young manhood.\n\nWithin four years of arriving in Erzincan, by 1222, Baha Valad was finally on his way, with his family, to the more central city of Larande, well inside the realm of the Seljuk sultanate. The daughter of the shah of Erzincan had been married to Kaykaus I, the Seljuk king, and may have smoothed the way for Baha Valad with members of the royal family. Originally one of dozens of nomadic Turkic clans in Central Asia, the Seljuks were nearing the apogee of a two-century hold on power in the central Islamic lands. In 1055, the Great Seljuks had taken control as \"protector\" of the Abbasid Caliphate; in 1077, the Seljuks in Anatolia defeated the Byzantines, at the Battle of Manzikert near Erzincan, almost to their own surprise, giving them sway over much of Asia Minor.\n\nArriving when he was about fifteen years old, Rumi truly came of age in Larande, or modern-day Karaman, sixty miles southeast of Konya. The hilltop town was full of gardens, fountains, and sweet peaches, which he later said could set a whole town smiling:\n\n_Today a hundred beautiful faces are smiling in Konya_\n\n_Today a hundred peaches are arriving from Larande_\n\nThis pleasant association fit the experience of his family, particularly his father. Baha Valad's patron was the local governor, who built him an entire school on the main square in town. Baha's orientation as a Sunni Hanafite with Sufi leanings fit with the broader agenda of the Seljuks, as they had been part of the military force behind a \"Sunni Revival\" of the Abbasid Caliphate, and had originally been converted to Islam by the heartwarming preaching of the Sufis. This formula worked especially well in trying to win over the local Greek Christians, rather than a hardline legalism. (Larande also included many Christian Turks, who were writing Turkish using a Greek alphabet.)\n\nMost of Rumi's adolescent education took place in these learned settings arranged for his father in such Anatolian towns. In spite of any juvenile resistance to primary school lessons, he had grown into an avid pupil, curious and studying widely, absorbing all manner of religious, scientific, and literary texts. The basics of his classwork were meant to prepare him for a life of preaching, teaching, and judging. He studied Arabic grammar and prosody; commentaries on the Quran; accounts of the life and sayings of the Prophet Mohammad; and Sharia, or religious law. He also studied history, philosophy, mathematics, and a favorite Persian science, astronomy, its scientific instruments for precise measuring and stargazing recurring in many of his later lyrics:\n\n_The sky is an astrolabe, while the truth is love_\n\n_When I speak, spin your ear towards my meaning_\n\nTurning seventeen in Larande, Rumi was wed, in 1224, to Gowhar, in a ceremony that bore all the marks of a traditionally arranged marriage. As the daughter of Sharaf of Samarkand, the deceased patron and disciple of Baha Valad, and his widow, the matriarch now known as the Great Kerra, Gowhar had been close to Rumi since they were both learning their alphabets. She had traveled with her mother in the harem of the caravan all the way from Samarkand, and, like Rumi, had grown from a child into a young adult over the course of the eventful decade\u2014rare memories, which they shared. Almost immediately, they had two sons: Bahaoddin Mohammad, later known as Sultan Valad, born in 1226, and named with his grandfather's full name, and Alaoddin Mohammad, named for Rumi's older brother, who possibly died during the long journey.\n\nRumi was keenly observant of the process of giving birth, and the transformation of a wife into a mother, his empathy palpable in the _Masnavi_ , where he writes of pregnant women trembling at each spasm, or chewing on clay lumps to help ease their birth pangs _:_\n\n_In childbirth every mother suffers aches_\n\n_As her baby tries to break out of prison_.\n\n_The mother cries, \"Where is my refuge?\"_\n\n_The baby laughs, \"Salvation is here!\"_\n\nHe graphically rendered the first demanding phases of child rearing, when he devised an analogy for his students about God's transformative patience with spiritual immaturity:\n\nGod is able to do all things. . . . When a child is newly born he is worse than a donkey. He puts his hand in his filth and then his hand in his mouth to lick. His mother slaps him to prevent it. When he pisses, he spreads his legs so that the pee doesn't drip on his leg. . . . Yet God is able to turn a baby into a human being.\n\nAnd he tenderly recalled a mother's breastfeeding moments at the side of a baby's crib:\n\n_Unless the baby in the cradle cries and weeps_\n\n_How does the anxious mother know to feed him milk?_\n\nFrom earliest childhood, Rumi's two sons were a tumble of conflicts. Even the order of their births has never firmly been established. Sultan Valad was named after his grandfather, a distinction signaling a firstborn, especially as Rumi's father was about seventy-five years old at his birth. Yet one contemporary biographer recorded that Alaoddin was one year older. Less ambiguous would be Sultan Valad's place as his father's favorite, not only his child but also his disciple, revering his father as Rumi had revered and tried to emulate Baha Valad. So sibling rivalry was ever roiling between these brothers\u2014a source of pain for their father, who sketched all boys' games as combative:\n\n_Wars are like the fights of children_ ,\n\n_Meaningless, thoughtless, and petty_\n\n_They aim at each other with wooden swords_\n\n_But their goals and purposes are futile_.\n\nIn Larande, Rumi, now a married young adult, stepped into the position of preacher, occasionally taking his father's place on the steps of the pulpit, where sermons were delivered in mosques, or in the seat of honor, in a college. In the medieval Muslim world, preaching was an art and a pillar of moral teaching, both entertainment and instruction. Rumi's father's delivery was fiery, a popular timbre. His grandson Sultan Valad told of him once throttling three sturdy camel drivers on the road to Baghdad. \"They repented and begged forgiveness,\" he said, comparing his grandfather to a lion. Such force came through in his sermons. He was saturated in the preaching culture of Khorasan, where sermons often ended on shrill warnings about judgment on the Last Day as weeping listeners, revival-style, came forward to repent of sins by having their heads shaved.\n\nRumi's tone was already more dulcet and controlled. He did not preach fire and brimstone, yet he adhered to the basic model. His early sermons were traditional and fairly standard, opening with a benediction in Arabic rhymed prose, in the style of the Quran, praising God, His Messenger Mohammad, and Abu Bakr, the first of the four \"Rightly Guided\" caliphs venerated by Sunni Muslims. He then prayed for God's intercession in a lyrical Persian that was full of crescendos\u2014the language was understood in Anatolia by the many Persian immigrants as well as being generally used as the universal court language for business and ceremonies. In one sermon evidently delivered in Larande, he prayed for his father and mother, and for his \"instructor,\" another figure clearly involved in his sophisticated religious education. He then repeated, in Arabic, a saying of the Prophet\u2014the text of his sermon\u2014after which he switched back into Persian.\n\nIn periodic flashes, the later mystic and poet Rumi can be glimpsed in some of these early sermons\u2014otherwise they were the works of a young man trying to conform to his father's pattern. In one of seven surviving sermons, he borrows a metaphor from a long poem attributed to Attar, _The Book of the Camel_ , but common enough in mystical literature\u2014a Turkish puppeteer performs with seven veils, and at the end of the night, like the cosmic creator, breaks all of his puppets and stores their pieces again in the dark box of Unity. In his opening prayer, Rumi makes enchanting theology from this material:\n\nThe magician of the skies, from behind the curtain of imagination, brings forth a play of shimmering stars and gorgeous planets. We crowd around this theatrical spectacle, mesmerized, passing away the night. In the morning, death will arrive, and the performance of these shadow players will grow cold, and the night of our life will vanish. Oh Lord! Before the morning of death dawns, let our hearts grow cold towards this play so that we might escape in time from this crowd, and not fall behind those who have been traveling through the night. When morning dawns, may we find ourselves arriving within the wider precinct of Your acceptance.\n\nAround 1229, Baha Valad finally received his invitation from the Sultan Alaoddin Kayqobad I to travel to Konya to teach and to live, with his family, at the Altunpa Madrase, the only _madrase_ operating at the time in the capital. If Baha Valad hoped to realize his wish to be preaching in one of the more \"glorious cities,\" he was fortunate. The sultan was gathering together a court unequalled in the Anatolian Seljuk dynasty, with many Persian-speaking poets, artisans, administrators, and scholars, even if the atmosphere included wine drinking and harp playing, which Baha Valad abhorred.\n\nOthers were not so fortunate. Uprooted scholars, poets, and religious leaders, bereft of their former university posts or courtly sinecures, were arriving in Anatolia daily, and the court of Kayqobad I was murmured among them to be the most supportive refuge as they tried to recoup their livelihoods in the aftermath of extreme trauma. Just one example of a suddenly needy fellow scholar was Najmoddin Razi, a leading Sufi thinker, a generation younger than Baha Valad, who fled the Mongols to Kayseri in East Anatolia and quickly dispatched inscribed copies of his well-known writings to the Seljuk sultan, without the desired result of a royal invitation to Konya. Yet Baha Valad had luckily managed to salvage, even improve, life for himself and his uprooted family.\n\nBefore the Valad family departed for Konya, Rumi's mother died and was buried in Larande. (The burial place of Momene, known as \"Madar Sultan\" by the Mevlevis, became a much-visited shrine.) By the time Rumi\u2014now a young father and preacher\u2014 left Larande he had experienced not only a panoply of traveling, but he had also seen the stages of life played out, with the deaths of his mother and older brother, his marriage to a childhood friend, and the births of their two sons, who took their names from the older generations. Rumi would discover in birth, and the constant metamorphoses of the life cycle, his favorite metaphor for the inner life:\n\n_Like a baby in the womb, I am nourished with blood_.\n\n_Everyone is born once. I have been born many times_.\nCHAPTER 5\n\nKonya\n\nTHICK stone walls, one hundred and forty watchtowers, and twelve gates rose from the central plateau of Anatolia with all the force and stature of the ramparts of Samarkand, Bukhara, Balkh, or Nishapur, as Rumi's family made their way to settle in the city where he would spend most of his adult life. The difference between Konya and these classic cities\u2014by then, mostly razed to the ground\u2014was its relative newness. In 1229 Konya was still a buzzing construction project rather than a monument to the past, the Seljuk capital intended as a living replication of these former capitals of Khorasan. The Sultan Alaoddin Kayqobad I had attempted to consolidate and add legitimacy to his raw power by creating a Turco-Persian axis, and coopting Persian literature, religion, art, and architecture, as well as statecraft and pageantry. Baha Valad and his family would have felt some sense of familiarity and even homecoming as they relocated to the capital, a kinship that resonated in warm tones in Rumi's later poetry:\n\n_Come into my house beloved\u2014a short while!_\n\n_Freshen my soul, beloved\u2014a short while! . . ._\n\n_So that the light of love radiates from Konya_\n\n_To Samarkand and Bukhara\u2014a short while!_\n\nEven in its layout, Konya more closely resembled the cities of Central Asia than those of Asia Minor. Houses were spread out between markets and flower gardens. Streets and wide alleys were lined with terra-cotta gullies of running water. Fountains were inset into the walls of public buildings in arch-shaped enclosures. Public baths were centrally located, with sections for men and women, and fresh water spilling continuously from a spout into a basin\u2014all the water was drawn from a reservoir pool beneath a marble dome at one of the city gates. The three miles of city walls were arranged as a rectangle with rounded corners, while the Citadel hill was freestanding in the center of town, in a pentagonal shape, with its own wall and towers constituting a second inner ring of protection. None of this conventional scheme, or its social significance, was lost on Rumi, who later delineated its rigid hierarchy for his son from a celestial perspective:\n\nBahaoddin, in this city of Konya notice how many thousands of houses, villas and mansions belong to commanders, noblemen and the wealthy. And notice how the houses of the gentlemen and administrators are grander than the houses of the artisans, and the mansions of the commanders are grander than the houses of the gentlemen. Likewise, the arches and palaces of the sultans and rulers are a hundred times grander and more splendid than the others. But the height and splendor of the heavens compared with these mansions turns out to be far more lofty, mighty, and splendid, and indeed many times more so.\n\nHaving drawn on Persian mythology to enhance his status in the capital, Sultan Alaoddin Kayqobad I lent himself an invented pedigree distinct from his nomadic Turkic ancestors, beginning with his name. Like his brother, Kaykaus I, and his father, Kaykhosrow I, the sultan took his royal name from the great fictional kings of the seminal epic of Rumi's boyhood in Khorasan, the _Shahname_ , or _The Book of Kings_. The sultan likewise had chiseled onto the towers of the two main entrances to Konya's Citadel sculptural figures and quotations, in tall gold lettering, from the _Shahname_ , and, throughout the palaces were set statues of dragons, a symbol in the epic poem of a Turk warrior, whom Ferdowsi, in the _Shahname_ , describes as \"a dangerous dragon whose breath is as fire.\" The sultan's glorification of all things Persian, combined with the status of the Seljuks as latecomers to Islam, helped create the perfect milieu for welcoming Rumi's family to Konya, as well as the later crucial tolerance and protection for Rumi by the sultan's descendants.\n\nKayqobad I was the single most important force in the reversal of fortune for Rumi's family and was generally convincing in fulfilling the heroic ideal of his glorious fictional namesake. His reign was the bright center of the comparatively brief two-century arc of imperial Seljuk Rum. Having ascended to power in 1219, after surviving imprisonment by his older brother Kaykaus I, he was a mostly wise ruler, evidently charismatic, though considered overly haughty by some of his emirs. He was also an able administrator, bringing into his treasury annual revenue of 3,300,000 gold dinars, from trade with Europe, and according to one historian, \"embellishing Konya beyond all recognition.\" During his fifteen-year reign, his armies secured the whole of Asia Minor from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, transforming Anatolia into a maritime power.\n\nA patron of architecture, a devout Muslim, and an ambitious ruler with a talent for stagecraft, Kayqobad I chose as his legacy project the reconstruction of the Great Mosque on the Citadel hill, adjacent to the royal palaces and overlooking the plains. (When Konya was the classical Roman city of Iconium, Paul, from coastal Tarsus, preached Christianity on this Acropolis.) Built by a Syrian architect, the mosque retained the floor plan of the Great Mosque of Damascus, with a flat roof. The main prayer room held four thousand worshipers, with an atmosphere of awe created by forty-two marble columns, like a stone forest. Including an intricate ebony pulpit, the congregational mosque was used for noon sermons, and Rumi would kneel many Fridays on its woolen prayer rugs:\n\n_I prayed so much that I turned into prayer_\n\n_Whoever looks into my face remembers to pray_\n\nThe imaginative creatures chiseled on walls and gates surrounding these ceremonial buildings, including the palace, which stretched from the main gate to the wall of the mosque, would filter into Rumi's imagination, too. Two pairs of winged angels guarded entrances to the Citadel. Over twenty lions, and several double-headed eagles, were carved in relief, as well as a caparisoned elephant pierced by a rhinoceros's horn:\n\n_If you turn into a lion, Love turns into a lion hunter_\n\n_If you turn into an elephant, Love turns into a rhinoceros_\n\nBuilt as well at the command of Kayqobad I, in 1229\u2014the probable year of the arrival of Rumi's family in Konya\u2014was Sultan Han, a traveler's caravanserai, on the road from Kayseri to Konya, in a region of flat Anatolian grasslands broken only by clumps of mountains, much like the steppes of Central Asia. In the first decades of the thirteenth century the main Seljuk construction project was to repair the old Roman stone roads, making them safer for merchants, and positioning rest houses at distances of nine hours travel by camel, or every eighteen miles. The largest of these inns provided mosques and fountains, camel and horse stables, kitchens and bathhouses. The Sultan Han even kept a band of musicians for entertainment. Near the outside gates, water usually gushed from stone animal fountains\u2014decorative, yet for Rumi, also symbolic:\n\nOn all the roads they have built caravanserais with stone birds and other figures set around the edges of pools. Water flows from their mouths and spills into the pools. Any intelligent person knows that the water is not flowing from the beaks of the stone birds but from some other place.\n\nHis analogy was to God's force behind \"whatever words, voices, or languages He wills.\"\n\nThese government-funded inns and reinforced roadways were crucial in Anatolia during the severe winters, when heavy snowdrifts inundated the highlands, five thousand feet above sea level, forcing travelers to remain indoors for days until the roads were cleared:\n\n_At night Easterners and Westerners and Transoxanians_\n\n_Stay together inside the same caravanersai_\n\n_Small and great remain together for days_\n\n_At the inn, because of the frost and the snow_\n\n_As soon as the road is opened and the obstacles removed_ ,\n\n_They separate, and go in their different directions_.\n\nPrime time for traveling was spring\u2014the season the family of Baha Valad would have chosen in the absence of any pressing issues\u2014when the roads leading into Konya from the Salt Lake to the north were lined with camels bearing salt, as well as grass, straw, or wood. On other passes into town, fields of cotton and corn gave way to gardens of yellow plums, or the famous Konya _Qamar al-Din_ , or Moon of Faith apricots. On mornings following thunderstorms, more roses opened, more greenery filled in, and the scent of silverberry trees, hanging like willows, with yellow blossoms, pervaded. Spring is the favorite season in Rumi's poems, his springtime vignettes often vividly Anatolian:\n\n_The rose garden, and sweet basil, all shades of peonies_\n\n_A violet bed among the dirt, and wind and water and fire, O heart!_\n\nBaha Valad was reportedly given a royal welcome to Konya. His great-grandson, Rumi's grandson Aref Chelebi, about ninety years later, commissioned his disciple Aflaki to gather memories of these times from survivors, and collect them in an often romanticized history titled _The Acts of the Mystics_. According to Aflaki, the Sultan Alaoddin Kayqobad I personally greeted Baha Valad, and offered him residence, if he preferred, in a room in the palace used for storing vessels, or hand washing, as well as for sleeping quarters. In declining health, Baha Valad, now an old man of Khorasan, spoke of the traditional divisions of society, perhaps not quite as set in the still evolving Seljuk Rum. \"Religious teachers belong in schools,\" he said. \"Sufis in lodges, commanders and princes in palaces, merchants in inns, artisans in guilds, and foreigners in guesthouses.\"\n\nThe extravagant gestures credited to the sultan were extraordinary for a king\u2014such as kissing the knee of Baha Valad\u2014but not entirely out of character. Sultan Kayqobad I was always at pains to display his reverence, especially toward mystical teachers from the spiritual homeland of Khorasan, considered a repository of ancient Persian wisdom as well as known territory to the Turkic clans. As Asia Minor was set off from the Arabian mainland, and its population was mostly Greek and Armenian Christian, Islam was being allowed to develop under these Seljuks in a fashion more attuned to the universalism of Ibn Arabi. (While living in Malayta, Ibn Arabi had served as an adviser and a spiritual father for the sultan's older brother, Kaykaus I.) The Seljuk sultans also believed that prayers for prosperity from saintly old men, such as Baha Valad, were especially potent.\n\nFitting Baha Valad's sense of propriety, as in Baghdad, he and his family then set up residence at a school, rather than in a Sufi lodge or palace room. The Altunpa Madrase and Mosque had been built for the sultan's commander Shamsoddin Altunbey in 1202, in the sober and restrained style of early Seljuk architecture, and was located near the main market square in the more populous district of Konya. Such Seljuk schools tended to be rectangular, two-story buildings, with lecture halls and study rooms on the first floor and student bedrooms with fireplaces and cupboards on the second floor, set around a central courtyard and fountain, much like a medieval cloister. Baha Valad paid retainers of a thousand dinars each to two of his new disciples, a baker and a butcher, described as \"pleasant and polite young men,\" to tend to the kitchen and to the meals.\n\nBaha Valad rapidly attracted a number of other disciples, both men and women. Rather than a drawback, his advanced age of nearly eighty was considered desirable in a religious teacher. In a manual for students written a few decades earlier, in Khorasan, one Hanafi jurist advised selecting as a teacher the \"most learned, the most pious and the most advanced in years.\" With his livelihood secured by the sultan, Baha Valad, as in Aqshahr and Larande, began teaching a mixture of law, ethics, and mystical Islam, and drawing students from different social classes. He shared his learning not only with a weaver, and with someone identifying himself as a \"simple-hearted\" Turk, but also with the courtiers.\n\nAn early disciple of Baha Valad from among the governing elite was Amir Badroddin Gowhartash, also known as the fortress commander, one of the chief stewards of the palace. Gowhartash took responsibility for building a new _madrase_ for Baha Valad and his family that eventually came to be known during Rumi's lifetime as the Madrase Khodavandgar, and to establish the village of Kara Arslan as its endowment\u2014a financial practice designating a portion of the village income from farming to the _madrase_. While closer to the ceremonial main gate of entrance to the Citadel and the palace, this _madrase_ was located in the same general neighborhood as the Madrase Altunpa, a merchant and artisan district of earthen houses with red tile roofs set among cypresses, maples, and thick oak trees, the sound of water flowing in its gutters always faintly audible. The _madrase_ included an adjoining harem for Rumi's wife and mother-in-law, as well as his two young boys, who remained, as he had, living in the harem until age ten or eleven.\n\nBaha Valad's decision to live near the markets made his teaching available to a wider following, as the Citadel was a much more elite and self-contained gated town-within-a-town. Only about nine hundred of the hundred thousand residents of Konya lived and worked in the defended Citadel. They were mostly administrators, palace servants, translators, often Jewish doctors, and, as Rumi observed, commanders living in houses just to the north that were visible from the two-story, blue-tiled imperial palace, its balconies facing in three directions atop an outer wall. The entire complex included a harem, bakery, treasury, bathhouse, stables, wine cellar, gardens, and\u2014about fifty yards from the Great Mosque\u2014the Church of St. Amphilochios, a chapel used by the many Christian mothers, wives, and daughters-in-law of the sultans. (One of the wives of Kayqobad I, Mahpari, was a Greek Christian; she was the mother of his eldest son and successor, Kaykhosrow II.) This nearly accidental religious diversity\u2014a matter of indifference as much as design among these governing sultans\u2014eventually helped to create the conditions for Rumi's being able to inspire, teach, and learn lessons from all of these different faith communities at once.\n\nBaha Valad did preach regularly at the Great Mosque in the Citadel complex. Indeed, Gowhartash first approached him at the mosque of the sultan, following a sermon that he found powerful. Yet Baha Valad mostly moved among the merchants and craftsmen, following a routine similar to his life in Vakhsh. In the style of the Sufis, he liked to wander about the Konya cemetery, reciting the Quran in a low voice. One day he had a pulpit set up outside the cemetery and preached to both men and women about the Day of Resurrection, reminding them of the stark terrors of the final judgment. He continued delivering legal judgments, many as strict as ever, especially on drinking wine, with his son Rumi always beside him, increasingly serving as his \"tongue\" and \"walking stick.\"\n\nAfter two years, Baha Valad's health began to fail. Most of his teeth were now missing, his voice quavering, and he was receiving his followers, including the sultan, at home. \"Wait until I pass away and you see how my son Jalaloddin Mohammad turns out!\" he said of his son, then twenty-three years old. \"He will take my place and become more elevated than I.\" Late one morning, in February 1231, at about eighty years of age, Baha Valad died. Having led his family thousands of miles, escaping possible extinction, and achieving recognition for wise leadership, he died as a patriarch and hero for his community. Kayqobad I donated the grounds in his rose gardens, beyond the Horse Bazaar Gate, where Baha Valad was buried. When his grandson Sultan Valad later wrote of the widely attended funeral, he emphasized the passing of authority next to his father: \"After the mourning was complete all the people, young and old, gathered around, and looked to his son, saying, 'You are like him in beauty. From now on we will hold to the hem of your robe. We will follow you wherever you go. From now on you are our king.'\"\n\nRumi had always been a highly sensitive and emotional boy. So he remained as a young and mature man, with no event so far in his life shaking and challenging him as much as the death of the father he idolized and emulated. He would return, full of both sorrow and need, to the grave of Baha Valad, near a marble fountain, whenever he wished to gather his thoughts or solve problems. Faced with crises, he was often spotted striding out through the Horse Bazaar Gate to visit his father's tomb. \"He clearly heard the correct answer from the garden of his father's tomb,\" said one of the townspeople.\n\nRumi also began carrying pages of his father's writings tucked into the inner sleeve pocket of his long robes. Although Baha Valad was outwardly strict, and stressed the wages of sin, his private journal was filled with intimate meditations on divine love expressed in passionate language that allowed Rumi to hear the voice of his dear father once again, filling him with warmth and purpose, and informing his ideas about love and God. \"The most effective and the strongest creation of God is love,\" wrote Baha Valad. \"Nothing created by God is as strong and as marvelous as love. Without love, life lacks its true power. I am constantly remembering God and I am always occupied with Him.\"\n\nFollowing the death of his father, Rumi traveled to Larande, where his mother was buried and many of his father's students from his former school were living. He obviously felt a need to reconnect with family and homeland. One day during this visit, the grieving son received a startling message. His mentor from Khorasan, Borhan, had not only survived the Mongol devastation in Termez but had arrived in Konya, and was staying at the Senjari Mosque. Rumi had not seen his tutor in fifteen years, since Borhan carried him on his shoulders during childhood, so he quickly returned home. Borhan, now over sixty years old, rushed through the front door of the mosque and the two embraced again.\n\nThe timing of Borhan's appearance, around 1232, was uncanny. Borhan attributed his arrival to the prodding of Baha Valad in a dream. As Borhan was mourning the news of his passing, Baha Valad angrily rebuked him: \"Borhanoddin, why is it that you are not attending upon our Khodavandgar but have left him alone? This is not the behavior of a guardian and a tutor. What explanation do you give for this shortcoming?\" According to a different report, Borhan was on pilgrimage in Mecca when he learned from either the sheikhs of Syria or the pilgrims of Rum of the whereabouts of Baha Valad, but not of his death. The result either way was fortunate for Rumi, who was not yet quite ready to assume leadership of the school, the age of wisdom in Islam being considered about forty. So he invited Borhan to move into his room, and to take over his father's place as preacher and teacher.\n\nBorhan in turn invited Rumi to learn more of the \"secret\" knowledge he had received from Baha Valad. The psychological subtleties of the matters they needed to discuss could only be understood, he explained, in intimate encounters between a teacher and his student. On their reunion, Borhan told Rumi, \"Your father mastered both knowledge of words and knowledge of spiritual states.\" Encouraging him to expand his knowledge of such states, Borhan became Rumi's sheikh, or spiritual director. Over the next decade, he plotted the course of his spiritual higher education. Listening to Borhan was like listening to his father. He trusted him and regarded him with filial tenderness.\n\nAt the _madrase_ , Borhan took flight with Sufi notions of the mystical life. He was less circumspect than Baha Valad, though he likewise rarely used the term \"Sufi,\" preferring to speak of mystics, or of \"dervishes,\" the Turkish version of a Persian word for those who had renounced the world and served God in poverty. He loved poetry more than Baha Valad and recited favorite lines from the poems of Sanai and Attar. Yet his presence gave the followers of Baha Valad a sense of continuity, as he was an aging, dignified preacher, scholar, ascetic, and Quranic commentator. With his Khorasani accent and bearing, he carried with him echoes of the vanished worlds of Samarkand and Balkh.\n\nBorhan was always trying to impart esoteric ideas he described as \"secrets,\" which essentially conveyed an understanding of divinity as present in everyone. The \"science\" he was teaching was a science of the soul. But such a science was not easily put into language and presented perils if the line between human and divine appeared to have been crossed. Most of the Sufis' doubling of language and use of elliptical and poetic words was intended to, or subtly resulted in, the intertwining of the divine and the human, either through transformation by knowledge, a vision of light, or ecstatic immolation in love. Borhan used many of the standard Sufi images for these experiences, such as discovering a pearl, reflecting light in a mirror, or burning like a moth in a flame. With students, perhaps even Rumi, taking notes, he explained, \"You are your own pearl. . . . If you don't know anything else, but know yourself, then you are a scholar and a mystic. If you don't know yourself, then all the science and knowledge that you possess is useless.\"\n\nSuch messages of self-knowledge were not unfamiliar to the Greeks of Anatolia, either. From the inscription \"Know Thyself\" (\" _gnothi seauton_ \") on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, knowledge, or _gnosis_ , had been aligned for the classical Greeks with religion. Neoplatonic thought emphasizing knowledge as a mystical path was alive in the Anatolian region, and Plato was an almost magical figure, treated as a saint by both Greeks and Turks. Near Konya bubbled \"Aflatun Pinari,\" or \"Plato's Spring,\" where he was believed to have lived. ( _Aflatun_ was a translation of _Plato_.) Some said Plato was buried in the chapel on the Citadel. Rumi often visited the monks in the Eflatun Monastery near Konya, and he made Plato a symbol of great wisdom in his _Masnavi_ :\n\n_God's seal on the eyes and ears of the intelligence_\n\n_Turns an intelligent man into an animal, even if he is a Plato_\n\nSometimes he spoke of Plato in the tones he usually reserved for a Sufi spiritual master:\n\n_Whatever the Plato of the age advises you to do_ ,\n\n_Give up your self-will and act according to his counsel_\n\nThis resonance may have helped the warm reception given Khorasani mystics in town.\n\nYet not all his students immediately took to Borhan. Baha Valad had kept a judicial, scholarly tone, while Borhan was more openly (rather than covertly) mystical and poetical. Rumi often needed to come to his defense. Some of the infighting was stinging enough that Rumi could still relate the heated debates to his own students, decades after Borhan's death, especially concerning the mixing of poetry with theology:\n\nThey said, \"Sayyed Borhanoddin speaks very well, but he quotes Sanai's poetry too often.\" This is like saying the sun is good but it gives off too much light. Is that a fault? Quoting Sanai's words casts more light on the discussion. Sunlight casts light on things!\n\nOnce a student interrupted Borhan to protest his overuse of analogies, as a frivolous tool for scholars to use. As Rumi told the story, Borhan was not shy in defending his methods:\n\nSayyed Borhanoddin was giving a lecture. A fool broke in and said, \"We need words without analogies.\" Sayyed answered, \"Let him who seeks to hear words without analogies, draw closer. For you are actually an analogy yourself. You are not this thing. Your self is only your shadow. When someone dies, people say that he has departed. If he were this thing, where has he gone? It is clear that your appearance is only an analogy of your true self, from which your true self can be deduced.\"\n\nOthers adored Borhan in the manner a dervish did toward his sheikh, looking for guidance on a path deemed dangerous without direction from a mature teacher\u2014a path envisioned by Borhan as an expansive journey, like the flight of Attar's birds. \"The path of reunion has no end,\" he told them, \"God is the goal and destination.\" His most excited recent follower on this spiritual quest was a humble, unlearned goldsmith\u2014Salahoddin Zarkub\u2014a Turk from one of the nearby fishing villages on the Konya plains\u2014who arrived in the capital in the 1230s to set up a small shop in the goldsmiths' bazaar. He was fervent about Borhan's emphasis on fasting and purification, and became important enough to Rumi later in life for him to describe Salah as his \"root of spiritual joy.\"\n\nRumi spent a year or so in the growing circle of Borhan, learning more of the basics of Sufi thought. He was highly receptive to all of Borhan's mystical language and concepts. Borhan imparted to Rumi his passion for Hallaj, also known as Mansur. He liked to make a contrast between the \"I\" of the villain Pharaoh in the Quran, proudly refusing to bend to God's will in the liberation of the Hebrew slaves, with the egoless \"I\" in the \"I am the Truth!\" of Hallaj, which reportedly got him executed in Baghdad. \"Pharaoh, God's curse upon him, said, 'I am your Lord,'\" preached Borhan. \"His use of the word 'I' brought God's curse upon him. Mansur said 'I am the Truth' and his use of the word 'I' was a mercy from God.\" In his _Masnavi_ , years later, Rumi neatly set this thought of Borhan:\n\n_\"I am the Truth,\" shone from Mansur's lips like light_\n\n_\"I am the Lord,\" fell from Pharaoh's lips like a threat_\n\nBorhan eventually decided on a plan to prepare Rumi to manage the school established by his father and evolve into a religious jurist and guider of souls. To accomplish this ambition, Borhan resolved that his young charge travel to the most respected colleges in Aleppo and Damascus and study with elevated scholars in a curriculum combining readings in law and religion with a glass-bead game of esoteric knowledge. Borhan would take responsibility for caretaking the _madrase_ , and their grandmother, the Great Kerra, would serve as spiritual mother for Rumi's boys, then about six years old. She was considered another beneficiary of Baha Valad's higher \"secrets.\"\n\nFrom the seat of honor one day, Borhan singled out Rumi and addressed him directly, charging him with his imminent mission: \"God the Almighty, elevate you to the rank of your father. No one is at a higher rank than him, or I would have prayed, 'God, let him surpass him.' But that is the ultimate.\" Rumi's son painted the farewell as even more luminous, remembering Borhan as extravagantly and emotionally blessing Rumi at his departure, with the glorious prediction: \"And like the sun you'll scatter light worldwide.\"\nCHAPTER 6\n\n_\"I kept hearing my own name\"_\n\nARRIVING in Aleppo in northern Syria to begin his studies at about the age of twenty-five, and moving on eventually to Damascus, Rumi took his place in an entitled \"turbaned class\" of scholars and their chosen students. This selective gathering of the religious elite was made all the more lively and competitive as Syria in the early decades of the thirteenth century was widely considered the heart of Muslim culture in the Arabic language. Here he could see once again the learned society of debaters with clipped beards, trailing turban tassels, and green academic robes with wide, long sleeves, which he first might have glimpsed as a boy in the courtyards of Nezamiyye College in Baghdad.\n\nYet education in Rumi's time was also intimate and personal, a matter of a student being taken in hand by a teacher, or a small circle of teachers, and imitating their _adab_ , or manners and style, as much as mastering a single field of apprenticeship. Dispatching his charge to Aleppo, Borhan was entrusting him with cosmopolitan choices, not only in interpreting religious law, but also in comportment, intellectual tastes, and moral conduct. With his disciple Salah, he accompanied Rumi as far as Kayseri, midway between Konya and Aleppo, where they stayed briefly with the governor, who was building Borhan his own _madrase_. Kayseri was the second most important city in Rum, as Sultan Alaoddin Kayqobad I had built his ornate Qobadiyye Palace on its lakefront.\n\nAs a married student, with an ascetic practice encouraged by Borhan, Rumi lived a circumscribed life, in a traditional student cell in the most famous of the colleges of Aleppo, the Halaviyye, which was converted into a mosque from a Byzantine cathedral a century earlier as revenge against the Franks for pillaging during the First Crusade. While Rumi was in Aleppo, around 1233, the Halaviyye was sliding into disrepair and barely used as a teaching facility. Such schools were as much dormitories, with charitable endowments for supporting residential students, as academies granting certificates. The situation was fluid as mosques evolved into schools, then changed back again, and Rumi was free to follow lectures at the Shadbakht Madrase or reading circles at the Great Mosque.\n\nMuch like Konya, Aleppo was flourishing in a rare phase of peace and prosperity. The previous Ayyubid sultan al-Zahir, a son of the famed commander Saladin who had founded an Ayyubid dynasty in both Egypt and Syria, had reinforced the oval Citadel in the center of town, added a grand entranceway, repaired the canal system, and built a palace, upgrading Aleppo into one of the most beautiful cities in the Middle East. His son al-Aziz, who ruled during Rumi's school years, capitalized on the advantages of the city's trading location on caravan routes linking China with Europe, bringing in revenues second only to Egypt. The wood-roofed bazaar was its trading floor, offering local specialties such as pistachios and the glassware that glimmered in Rumi's later poems:\n\n_I'm the slave of hopeless time, until that time_\n\n_The wine of unity shines in a chalice of Aleppo glass_\n\nLike the interlocking patterns displayed on its stone and marble walls and portals, Aleppo was a complex mesh of East and West, Christian and Muslim. Much of its prosperity came from shrewd trading agreements with Venice that allowed Venetian merchants to establish a colony in Aleppo, with their own trading post, baths, and church. In 1219 Francis of Assisi met in Egypt with the Ayyubid sultan and won an agreement for his \"Monks of the Rope\" to wander the Holy Land. During the time of Rumi's stay, the first Franciscan friars began arriving in Aleppo to minister to Crusader princes and soldiers held prisoner in the Citadel. They swept through the streets in their rough, woolen robes, much like the robes worn by Sufis, with similar vows of poverty, and may have imprinted on Rumi the affinities between these two expressions of spirituality.\n\nRumi's main teacher in Aleppo was Ibn al-Adim, a quick-witted and urbane scholar, historian, legal expert, diplomat, and calligrapher in his midforties, with a post at Shadbakht Madrase. Five members of his eminent Hanafi \"old family\"\u2014including his father\u2014had served in the powerful post of chief justice, or _qadi_ , in Aleppo, since the tenth century. Ibn al-Adim was best known as a historian of Aleppo, and as a biographer of its leading citizens in his _Biographical Dictionary_ , a massive, forty-volume who's who of short vignettes, written by him in penmanship so fine that the sultan once summoned him to the palace to praise its beauty. He also wrote treatises on preparing perfumes, and on handwriting (practices, pens, and papers), as Arab intellectuals of his time were given to such encyclopedic \"boundless compilation.\" He did most of his writing on diplomatic missions for the sultan, when he traveled on a palanquin rigged between two mules.\n\nIbn al-Adim was a master of the basic sciences, explaining his quick ascent in the academic ranks, and was equipped to instruct Rumi in most areas of knowledge required for an advanced religious scholar: Arabic linguistics and grammar; dialectic reason and legal conflict; and the Quranic sciences. He gave indications of being a fellow traveler of Sufism, though he was too shrewdly political to proclaim such sympathies openly. (In the early years of his reign, al-Aziz had executed the Sufi leader Sohravardi for heresy.) Yet his father had called on his deathbed for the prayer beads of a Sufi saint, and Ibn al-Adim reserved a room in his own tomb for a Sufi, perhaps as a hedge against divine judgment. He espoused, if not always fully practiced, the virtues of poverty, solitude, and self-reliance.\n\nWhile Rumi never absorbed his teacher's passion for history, he was delighted by his exposure in Aleppo to the intricate joys of Arabic poetry. Ibn al-Adim was a minor poet. He wrote clever lines on slight topics, such as sighting the first white hairs in his beard. Yet he idolized those with \"innate poetic ability,\" and championed the poetry of the premier Arabic poet al-Mutanabbi, whose verses remained a lifelong pleasure for Rumi. During the eleventh century al-Mutanabbi had lived in the quarter of Aleppo where Ibn al-Adim's family's marble compound was located. Rumi's favorites were al-Mutanabbi's _qasidas_ , often odes of praise for a patron, known for their technical virtuosity, though a surprising choice perhaps given their standard use of the tradition of braggadocio and praise of wine, power, and battlefield glory. Al-Mutanabbi wrote zestfully of \"the play of swords and lances\" and \"the clash of armies at my command.\" Rumi later scattered lines of al-Mutanabbi in his talks, and one of the Arab poet's more famous openings\u2014\"A heart that wine cannot console\"\u2014entwined for Rumi with memories of school years in Syria, he transposed as a closing for a poem on spiritual wine:\n\n_We can look for the answer in Mutanabbi:_\n\n_\"A heart that wine cannot console\"_\n\nIn Aleppo, Rumi was also introduced to an active Shia community, especially visible during the festivals of the family of Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mohammad, whose heirs are believed by Shia to be the rightful holders of the leadership of all Muslims. The Sunni rulers observed these festivals warily, while Rumi's teacher, Ibn al-Adim, a member of the establishment, was described by his biographer as a \"sentinel of the Sunni state.\" On the Day of Ashura, mourning the death of Ali's son Hosayn at the Battle of Karbala in 680, Rumi witnessed pious Shia weeping and beating themselves at Antioch Gate, the main fortress gate at the entrance of Aleppo. Thinly disguising himself as \"A poet,\" Rumi recorded this memory in _Masnavi_ :\n\n_On the day of Ashura, all the people of Aleppo_\n\n_Gather from day until night at the Antioch Gate . . ._\n\n_One day a stranger, who was a poet, came along_\n\n_On this day of Ashura, and heard their lamentations . . ._\n\n_He went along, asking questions gently on his way_ ,\n\n_\"What is this sorrow? Whose death are they mourning?\"_\n\nThough Rumi may not have been previously aware of this ritual, as Persians were mostly Sunni during his lifetime, his na\u00efvet\u00e9 in rendering the experience was exaggerated, as he feigned discovering that the martyrdom being mourned had taken place centuries earlier:\n\n_Have you been asleep all this time?_\n\n_You are only now tearing your garments in sorrow?_\n\nRumi may have felt some shock as a young man, but revisiting the event, in his maturity, he was more intent on questioning sorrow as a response to death rather than joy:\n\n_Mourn for your own broken faith and religion_\n\n_If your faith doesn't see beyond this old earth_\n\nThe second phase of Rumi's advanced education took place in Damascus, where he likely traveled about a year later and had previously visited with his family during their original journey from Central Asia. While Aleppo was known as a trading and mercantile city, Damascus, in southern Syria, in the midst of a desert oasis, was both a commercial center and a holy city, the capital of the former Umayyad Caliphate, and one of the important departure points for _hajj_ , especially for pilgrims traveling from points west. Because of the city's religious history and geography, students of the Quran were welcomed and treated respectfully. The magnificent Umayyad Mosque, still enshrining the reputed head of John Baptist from its previous days as a Christian basilica, hummed all day with groups of students listening to their sheikhs read aloud. As Damascenes were not encouraged to read books silently or alone, the murmur of these many study circles was a kind of spoken music filling the courtyards daily from dawn until dusk.\n\nOver about four years, in his midtwenties, Rumi studied in Damascus in one of the Hanafi seminaries, probably the Moqaddamiyye Madrase, near the Bab al-Firdaws, or Gate of Paradise, where he could stay in an outer building, free of the nighttime regulations overseeing entrances and exits that were enforced on younger students in the inner buildings. Of his studies of one important Hanafi text, he later recalled, \"In my youth I had a friend in Damascus who was a companion with me in studying the _Hedaya_.\" He also seems to have attended sessions of a famed Hanafi scholar from Bukhara, who was teaching at Nuriyye Madrase. All public classes were highly formal, modeled on behavior in a mosque, with a nearly sacred space cleared about the lecturer, so his rug and cushion were left untouched. As one manual prescribed proper student etiquette: \"Do not look at anything but the teacher, and do not turn around to investigate any sound, especially during discussion. Do not shake your sleeve. The student should not uncover his arm, nor should he fiddle with his hands or feet or any part of his body parts, nor should he place his hand on his beard. . . . Nor should he try to say anything funny or offensive; and he should not laugh except out of surprise. If something overcomes him, he should smile without giving voice.\"\n\nThough student life was rigorous, Rumi loved his time in Damascus. He often called Damascus the \"City of Love,\" punning on the word for love, \" _eshq_ ,\" tucked into its Arabic name, \"Dameshq.\" He even wrote his single example of an ode to a city for Damascus, not only as homage to the capital, but also to Arabic poetry, where such love poems to cities abound, especially to Baghdad. Only Samarkand comes across in his writings with such verve and close observation. He exuberantly opens his city poem:\n\n_I'm madly in love, and crazy for Damascus_\n\n_Damascus, where I left my heart and soul_\n\nRumi catalogs the most prominent of the thirteen gates to the medieval city:\n\n_Separated from friends, I stand alone at the Barid Gate_\n\n_Beyond the Lovers' Mosque, in the green fields of Damascus . . ._\n\n_Far from the Gate of Joy and the Gate of Paradise_\n\n_You'll never know what visions I'm seeking in Damascus_.\n\nHis references are often built on inside jokes that only other visitors to Damascus at the time would fully understand. The Ayyubid sultan, during his stays in town, liked to play polo in the Verdant Field hippodrome, where Rumi imagined his own head as a swerving ball:\n\n_I want to roll through her Verdant Field, like a polo ball_\n\n_Struck by polo sticks, towards the main square of Damascus_\n\nA large Quran commissioned by Caliph Uthman was kept veiled as a relic in the mosque:\n\n_Let me swear an oath on Uthman's holy book_\n\n_The pearl of that beloved, shining in Damascus_\n\nThe soft border between Muslims and Christians was nowhere more evident than in Damascus, even in these waning days of the Crusades. Many Christians and Jews lived in the capital, though neighborhoods were segregated by religion, with gates clanged shut at the dusk curfew, and beliefs worn on the sleeve: under a legal dress code, Christians wore crosses, and Jews a yellow or red shoulder rope. Syria was the historical center of monasticism, and Rumi was said to have come across a group of forty desert fathers, or hermit monks, on his way from Aleppo. The Quran was understood to say that Jesus stayed on the hill of nearby Rebva, and Damascenes hoped to witness his resurrection at their Eastern Gate:\n\n_Let's climb Rebva, as if we're in the time of Christ_\n\n_Like monks, drunk on the dark red wines of Damascus_\n\nThe Bab al-Faraj, or Gate of Joy, evoked by Rumi stood just east of the Salehiyye, or the Righteous District, outside the walls of the old city at the foot of prominent Mount Qasiyun. This neighborhood had grown in the past few decades and was crowded with mostly Sufi hostels and learning centers, explaining Rumi's exclamation \"On the Mount of Righteousness is a mine of pearls!\" The most illustrious of those pearls, of course, was Ibn Arabi\u2014who Rumi may or may not have met in Malatya a decade earlier. Ibn Arabi lived the final phase of his life in Damascus and was buried in a tomb in Salehiyye. Whether Rumi was included in his reading circles, he was certainly aware of the famous mystic. Definitely in attendance at readings of his voluminous texts, as Ibn Arabi was still producing them, though, was his godson Qonavi, with whom Rumi had a gradually evolving friendship later in Konya. Some of Ibn Arabi's readings aloud were meant for Qonavi's ears alone. Rumi saw venerated in the person of Ibn Arabi a sublime and knowledgeable approach to spirituality as an elite science available only to initiates with rarefied experience. Though tempted by Ibn Arabi's approach, he was never entirely committed.\n\nAlong with dazzling verbal performances and abstruse examinations of religious thought, Rumi was surrounded in Damascus by a scholarly culture that valued rank and fame. Books were stacked according to importance, with the Quran on top of any pile. Seating at lectures radiated out from the sheikh in decreasing order of status, as he was faced with his most eminent guest, judged by knowledge, age, piety, or fame. Of these qualities, fame weighed most strongly, the making of a name, especially a name beyond Damascus or, even better, Syria. Sources of the time noted that one young scholar \"flashed his merit like a bright star rising on the horizon,\" and, of another, \"his name flew to fill the regions\"\u2014values far from Rumi's later yearning for a nameless sort of oblivion.\n\nFollowing nearly five years of study in Aleppo and Damascus, having saturated himself in steep and difficult texts, and having been exposed to some of the most renowned religious scholars of the day, Rumi, about thirty years old, returned to his teacher of teachers, Borhan. Rumi sought to integrate the last and most important missing piece in his education, held out by Borhan as the ultimate achievement\u2014advanced lessons in spiritual practice designed to unlock interior practices even more demanding and essential for his future responsibilities than the academic exercises mastered in Syria.\n\nTheir meeting likely took place in Kayseri. The sultan's governor had constructed by then the _madrase_ where Borhan was based, though he still made the trip of about two hundred miles to Konya regularly. When Rumi arrived, the governor invited him to stay in his palace, but Borhan, channeling the words of Baha Valad, warned Rumi that schools were the proper place for scholars to reside. The name of the town reflected its grand past history as a Roman capital, and Rumi punned on the naming of Kayseri, or Caesarea, after the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, when alluding to Borhan:\n\n_When our Caesar is in Kayseri\u2014_\n\n_Don't keep us waiting in Elbistan_\n\nThe brunt of Rumi's joke, Elbistan, was a smaller Anatolian city on the road to Syria.\n\nBut their reunion might have taken place anywhere, as Borhan was now stressing the inner world with his pupil. In the tradition of the historical Sufi movement, Borhan trained Rumi in exercises of asceticism, especially fasting. Borhan had been dedicated to fasting all his life. During this period, he wrote in his notes of the exemplary effects of fasting on the soul: \"The thinner the shell of the walnut, the fuller is its nut, and the same for the almond and pistachio.\" He had advised his disciple Salah that even if he found himself unable to perform other devotions, he should never neglect fasting. Such self-denial was meant to instill martial discipline, as well as to wean the practitioner off the ordinary values of the world. The ultimate \"fasting of the elite\" meant the desire for God alone.\n\nFrom this intensive season in Kayseri, Rumi never relaxed his stance on fasting, a habit he pursued with passion, almost thrilled, becoming as identified as Borhan with the practice. In Book V of the _Masnavi_ , he would lift off in an inspired hymn to fasting:\n\n_Don't eat straw and barley, like donkeys:_\n\n_Graze on flowers of the Judas tree, like musk deer in Khotan_\n\n_Only graze on clove, jasmine, or roses_ ,\n\n_In Khotan, with your beloved companion . . ._\n\n_The stomach of the body pulls towards the straw-barn_\n\n_The spiritual stomach pulls towards fields of sweet basil_.\n\nIf spring is the favorite season in Rumi's poems, Ramadan, the month of fasting from dawn to sunset, obligatory for able Muslims, became his cherished religious observance:\n\n_Congratulations! The month of fasting is here!_\n\n_Have a good journey, my companion in fasting_.\n\n_I climbed to the roof, to see the moon_ ,\n\n_With my heart and soul, I longed for fasting_.\n\n_When I looked up, my hat fell off_ ,\n\n_My head was set spinning by the king of fasting!_\n\nFasting became a reminder for Rumi of memories of Borhan, as few anecdotes about the displaced mystic of Khorasan failed to link him with his habitual practice. Fasting was also Rumi's introduction to the consolations of \"tightening the belt.\" He was learning that things were not what they seemed, and that empty stomachs held \"hidden sweetness.\"\n\nLike the scholars of Damascus, the mystics and Sufis had their own ranks and an organized ladder of mystical practices that indicated status in the spiritual world. More extreme than regular fasting but essential was the completion of a forty-day trial in sealed isolation from the world known as _chelle\u2014_ from _chehel_ , Persian for \"forty.\" This period of solitude and subsisting on bread and water was a sort of vision quest, conceived as an inward _hajj_ , or desert experience, owing its origins perhaps to the Syrian hermit monks, such as those Rumi met on his way to Damascus. Borhan arranged Rumi's retreat, sealing him into total seclusion, and then helping him with interpreting his insights afterward.\n\nA chip of remembrance, likely from this retreat, appears in Book V of the _Masnavi_. This time, rather than \"a poet,\" Rumi casts his younger self as \"a certain man,\" but his exact recording of one disorienting nightmare was quite personal, nearly surreal:\n\n_During the_ chelle _, a certain man_\n\n_Dreamed he saw a pregnant dog on a road_\n\n_Suddenly he heard the cries of her puppies_\n\n_Though they were in the womb, invisible . . ._\n\n_Puppies howling in a womb, he thought_\n\n_\"Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?\" . . ._\n\nInterpreting dreams was a problematic challenge\u2014for medieval Muslims especially, a religious problem. Isolation only exacerbated Rumi's confusion, blurring his waking:\n\n_When he woke from his dream and came to himself,_\n\n_His astonishment grew greater at every moment_.\n\n_During the_ chelle _, there is no other solution to problems_ ,\n\n_Except for being present to God the Almighty_.\n\nSo he began to pray, and heard a wise voice interpreting his bizarre dream imagery:\n\n_At that moment, he heard a mysterious voice_ ,\n\n_Saying, \"That is a symbol of the yelping of the ignorant_ ,\n\n_Those who have not pierced the veil and curtain_ ,\n\n_But with blind eyes are speaking aimlessly.\"_\n\nRumi emerged from his _chelle_ with a personal experience of having heard a voice that he felt was available to him for guidance. He could hear wisdom, not just in reading circles, or from lecturers, but also in meditation, and he could copy down the words, as in dictation. In trying to measure the gap between human and divine, such an encounter was revelatory.\n\nAfter instructing Rumi in the wisdom tradition shared with him by Baha Valad, and encouraging him even more insistently to study his father's notebooks, Borhan began to decline. During his last few years Borhan was sometimes in Konya, but he kept returning to Kayseri, possibly wishing to withdraw so that his charge could take on a leadership position alone. In Kayseri, Borhan showed poignant signs of loss of the strength, mental focus, and near athletic prowess in self-discipline that marked his prime years, though his behavior was also taken as evidence of saintliness, of having moved beyond the ordinary restraints of religion. When he led prayers in the mosque he spent long stretches of time\u2014rather than minutes\u2014in bowing or standing poses. When some members of the congregation complained, he apologized, \"Some madness continually overwhelms me. I am not fit to be your prayer leader.\" The plea only made him more revered and followed, as he was now understood to be as humble as he was wise.\n\nMost striking was the transformation of the rigid ascetic into a corpulent gentleman as he relaxed his tight regimen. Borhan once heard a voice commanding, \"Undergo no further hardship!\" He now obeyed this voice. A grand lady, who had become his disciple, teasingly asked why he had given up fasting and was not practicing his five daily prayers. \"Oh child, I am like a load-bearing camel,\" he replied, comparing himself to an emaciated camel at journey's end being fed a few grains of barley. When his patron, the governor, grew concerned about his unkempt appearance, he snapped, \"So I came into the world for the sake of doing my laundry? Leave me alone!\" Rather than feats of fasting, Borhan focused on his love of pickled turnips for indigestion. In old age, he began behaving with some of the carefree joy of the holy fools for God of Nishapur.\n\nBorhan died in Kayseri in 1240 or 1241, in his midseventies. Following a conventional mourning period of forty days, a letter was sent notifying Rumi in Konya. A decade after the death of his father, this news had a similar impact. Rumi collapsed into the knowledge that he was again without fatherly support. He set out quickly with a band of disciples on a road he traveled regularly enough during those years to recall later all the stops on the way, while illustrating the difference between ritual and true spiritual progress:\n\nThe stages on the road from Konya to Kayseri are fixed and defined. They are Kaymaz, Uprukh, Sultan, and so forth. But the stages on the sea between Antalya and Alexandria are not fixed and defined. A ship's captain may know them, but he won't tell them to land dwellers because they would not understand.\n\nRumi visited the grave of his mentor and held a funeral banquet in his honor. Borhan's books and notes were spread out for him to choose whatever he wished. He cherished these words and found in rereading them the connection so important in his growth over the past decade. As with his father's writings, Borhan left Rumi not only hard ascetic rules, but also messages of love that were the soft core of his discipline of curbing impulses: \"If you prick your foot on a thorn, you would leave all the important things aside, and wholly attend to it. You ought then to do the same for your brother.\"\n\nIn his midthirties Rumi, finally, if inevitably, ascended to the leadership of his community. At the Madrase Khodavandgar, he was looked upon as the living embodiment of Baha Valad and Borhan. He walked the streets of Konya in the official garb of a religious scholar\u2014wearing a cumbersome wide-sleeve cloak and a large turban, wound with one band unraveleld and hanging down his back. Although he never served in Konya as chief justice, or _qadi_ , he held academic appointments at four separate colleges, all respected, including the Cotton Sellers Madrase, endowed by the guild of cotton merchants, and located on their street in the market district. His name appeared on lists of the most prominent doctors of the law belonging to the Hanafi School.\n\nAt about the same time as the death of Borhan, Rumi's wife, Gowhar, also mysteriously died, with no record of the cause. Again, Rumi experienced the loss of an intimate link to his childhood in Central Asia as well as, most crucially, the mother of his two sons. Yet Gowhar's mother continued to live in the harem and take special interest in her grandsons. Rumi soon afterward married a widow, Kerra, from a Roman-Turkish family in Konya, whose deceased husband Mohammad Shah had been an aristocratic Persian speaker from Iran. Like Rumi, Kerra brought two children to their marriage\u2014a boy, Shamsoddin Yahya, and a girl, Kimiya. Over the next few years Rumi and Kerra had their own son, Mozaffaroddin Amir Alem Chelebi\u2014Rumi's third\u2014and a daughter, Maleke. With these four young children, the harem grew even more crowded and busier.\n\nUnlike his father, Rumi never kept multiple wives, and the widower and his widowed bride remained together for the rest of his life. Kerra was more vividly remembered than Gowhar, as theirs was not an arranged marriage, and she lived with Rumi during the period of his growing fame. Though he never wrote about Kerra directly, she was remembered by those in his inner circle and was later the source of some of the more magical and fantastical tales about her husband. Her choice to leave the aristocratic household of her deceased husband to marry a cleric pointed to spiritual leanings, underlined in Aflaki's description of her as \"a second Virgin Mary.\" She was certainly superstitious, and was forever seeing _jinn_ , or invisible, mischievous spirits. Early in their marriage, Rumi used to stand by a tall lamp stand at night, reading his father's pages. She told him that the _jinn_ complained to her of the bright light. Rumi smiled and three days later tried to mollify her. \"After today do not worry. The _jinn_ are my disciples and they are devoted to me. They will not cause any harm to come to our children or friends.\"\n\nRumi's bemused smile to Kerra, on news of the _jinn_ , either patronizing, loving, or both, expressed some of the enigma of his attitude toward women and marriage, as well as the general ambivalence toward women in medieval society. Rumi often fell into a traditional classifying of men as strong and rational, and women as mercurial and emotional. He once even painted wives as purifying tests for their coarse husbands:\n\nGod showed the Prophet a narrow and hidden way to refine himself, and that was the path of marrying women, and enduring their tyranny, and listening to their complaints, and letting them order him around. . . . Character would only become purer through such patient forbearance.\n\nIn other moods, he could be more sympathetic, as in his ode in the _Masnavi_ to women _:_\n\n_A woman is a ray of God, heavenly and beloved_\n\n_She is a creator, uncreated, from above_\n\nRumi later argued against imposing veils on women and had many female disciples, whose Friday evening gatherings in one lady's garden he was criticized for attending.\n\nWhen his two older sons reached adolescence, Rumi sent them both to study in Damascus, a decision that distressed their maternal grandmother, the Great Kerra, as she would miss them greatly. He evidently thought highly enough of Damascus as the standard for religious education. Overseeing them on this trip was their tutor and guardian, Sharafoddin. Yet as both boys were now in their midteens, the combativeness of their childhood conflicts was only magnified. When they were younger, Rumi himself had mostly been away in Syria, leaving his first wife, Gowhar, with the problem of their bad behavior. Now the target of their rebelliousness in Damascus quickly became their tutor, and Rumi was upset at needing to write them a pointed letter, advising them to be more respectful to their elders:\n\nDear son Bahaoddin, and dear son Alaoddin. Don't forget to be polite to this father, the father of your education and training, Sharafoddin. Don't be rude, or judgmental, or abusive, and treat him as a father. I am indebted to this dear father Sharafoddin. I am hoping that my dear children will be patient and kind and generous with him, and talk to him in a very kind way, and when this father is angry, I want my children to make themselves busy with other matters, or go to sleep. I am waiting to receive some news, and I pray for my children to become more kind and hopefully very soon you will return home and make us happy.\n\nRumi was now flourishing in Konya, where he had become known for the power and popularity of his eloquent preaching. By the time he was seventeen and had returned from Syria, his son Bahaoddin, later known as Sultan Valad, would sit next to his father during these sermons, just as Rumi sat next to his father, Baha Valad. However, Rumi had such a youthful appearance that when the two appeared together in public they were often mistaken for brothers. Rumi was satisfying his patrons, the Sunni Seljuk rulers, as his public speeches displayed enough emotion and beauty to convert Greeks and Armenians, a desired outcome for the regime. He could later still summon the fervent emotion that his sermons had stirred among local Greek speakers, who did not understand much of their content:\n\nI was speaking one day to a crowd that included non-Muslims, and during my talk they were weeping and going into ecstatic states. \"What do they understand? What do they know?\" someone asked. \"Not one out of a thousand Muslims can understand this sort of talk. What have they comprehended that they can weep so?\" It was not necessary for them to understand the words. What they understood was the essence of the speech . . . the oneness of God.\n\nSeeing the response of audiences from the viewpoint of his father, as he sat beside him, Sultan Valad, too, recalled the excitement stirred by his gifted and warmhearted oratory: \"Now that he stood alone, his greatness became more visible, in the eyes of the old, and the eyes of the young. Even among those who had kept their distance from him before.\"\n\nYet Rumi was not wholly satisfied by this early success. Ironically he had achieved everything his father and tutor desired for him, and attained the goals and station considered most lofty by his society at a relatively young age. Ever since childhood he had been a bit of a prodigy, and always had a graceful power over those around him. These indicators of success were borne out by his talents as a teacher, preacher, jurist, and spiritual counselor. He traveled both outward and inward paths of education, yet he was feeling incomplete, inauthentic, not yet arrived at his destination.\n\nNow in his late thirties, Rumi particularly puzzled over the limits of the learning he had accumulated with such exertion in Aleppo and Damascus\u2014expending great effort was another virtue of the scholarly culture. He struggled, as well, with fame, the sort of important status recognized by the scholars. By his combination of the authority of learning with youthful charm and charisma, he attracted an eager retinue\u2014if not quite the \"ten thousand more\" newly minted followers counted by Sultan Valad. His pleasure in this easy adulation was authentic, but so was a jagged shadow of doubt. Rumi began to feel uneasy about expectations being laid on him. He distrusted his need for notice of an identity he could not comfortably fit\u2014a discomfort made worse by having no one to talk with about these unexpected doubts, no confidant. The vehemence of Rumi's later attacks on intellectual preening and the traps of fame grew from experiences during this unexpectedly conflicted moment in his life. He admitted as much in a reflective _robai_ :\n\n_For some time, like everyone, I adored myself_ ,\n\n_Blind to others, I kept hearing my own name_.\nPART II\nCHAPTER 7\n\n_\"The face of the sun is Shams of Tabriz\"_\n\nA stranger appeared in Konya on November 29, 1244. About sixty years old, dressed in a cloak fashioned from coarse black felt, and wearing a simple traveler's cap, he checked into one of the inns managed by the sugar confectioners or the rice sellers within the market district, not far from Rumi's school. His name was Shamsoddin, or Shams of Tabriz, and he was a singular outlier mystic in a period of history crowded with extreme religious seekers, especially active in the wake of the Mongol invasions. From decades of restless travel throughout all the religious capitals of the Muslim world, he had earned the nickname \"Parande,\" or \"The Flier.\"\n\nIgnoring the social etiquette that Baha Valad had followed so strictly, Shams bypassed the Sufi lodges, where he could easily have found subsidized room and board. Instead he chose to remain incognito in a merchant inn, disguising himself as a commercial businessman, even putting a giant lock on his door to insinuate that he was carrying valuable wares that needed to be safeguarded, though inside was nothing but a straw mat. In conversations with Rumi later written down by students, including Sultan Valad, Shams remembered being asked, \"Aren't you coming to the _madrase_?\" and answering, \"I'm not a debater. I'm a stranger. The inn is the right place for strangers.\"\n\nMost likely during the first week of December, Shams and Rumi suddenly met. At the crest of his prominence as a religious teacher and jurist, Rumi was on his way from one of his teaching appointments at the Cotton Sellers Madrase and was passing by the inn where Shams was staying. He was riding a mule and surrounded by a posse of students, walking on foot, holding his stirrups, adding an aura of celebrity similar to the retinue of Razi in Herat during Rumi's childhood, though on a smaller scale. In place were the symbols of his scholarly status he wrote about later in a self-deprecating tone:\n\n_My turban, my robe, and my head_\n\n_Are worth less than a single penny_\n\nSlicing through all the jostling, his black cloak wrapped tightly about him, Shams grabbed the reins of Rumi's mount. The conversation that ensued was a hasty theological exchange. As Shams later recalled:\n\nThe first words I spoke to Mowlana were: \"Why didn't Bayazid follow the example of the Prophet and say, 'Glory be to You!' or 'We have not fully worshipped You?'\" Mowlana perfectly understood the full implications of the problem, and where it came from, and where it was leading. It made him ecstatic because his spirit was so pure and clean, and shone in his face. I realized the sweetness of my question only from his ecstasy. Before then I had been unaware of its sweetness.\n\nThe issue that Shams was raising pivoted on Bayazid Bestami, an Eastern Iranian Sufi mystic of the \"drunken\" school, who exclaimed, \"Glory Be to Me! How great is My Majesty!\" Like Hallaj's \"I am the Truth!\" Bayazid's unorthodox hymn of praise, seemingly to himself, could be interpreted as evidence of a mystic having lost all sense of self. To ordinary ears, he was risking blasphemy by merging his human identity with the divine. Shams was asking Rumi how such a high state of rapture should be compared with the Prophet Mohammad, who had spoken of being raised to the highest heavens, and yet, more humbly, prayed, \"We have not known You as You should be rightly known.\"\n\n\"Was Bayazid greater or Mohammad?\" pressed Shams.\n\n\"Bayazid's thirst was quenched by a single mouthful, and he was satisfied, and claimed he was no longer thirsty,\" answered Rumi. \"The water jug of his understanding was filled with a single sip. His house received light that fit the size of its single window. But Mohammad's quest for water was immense, consisting of thirst upon thirst.\"\n\nSome reported that Shams \"fell in a swoon\" at Rumi's response, though it was fairly standard in the Muslim catechism: Mohammad was the greatest of all men. Yet Shams and Rumi had gazed at each other, and this exchange was far more disruptive. A recurring theme in the literature of romantic love and Sufi mystical love was this deep gaze. Not only Layli and Majnun exchanged amorous looks, so did Sufi masters and their true disciples behold each other. Writing of this extraordinary meeting, Sultan Valad used all the rich language and imagery of ecstatic love to describe his father's first glimpse of Shams. Rumi \"saw the veil pulled away from his face\" and \"fell in love with him.\"\n\nDescribing their meeting months later, among a circle of interested students, Shams did not spell out Rumi's parsing of his leading question. Rather he simply remembered responding to his pure spirit, shining face, joy at finding a kindred soul, and a tenor of sweetness. A through-line in Rumi's poetry, too\u2014following from this flash of a meeting\u2014was the certainty that recognition occurs beyond speech, language, and thought:\n\n_For lovers, the beauty of the beloved is their teacher_\n\n_His face is their syllabus, lesson, and book_\n\nWhether in a faint or awake, Shams was led immediately afterward by Rumi to the Madrase Khodavandgar. In seclusion, the two spoke more openly, and their intimate discussion was compelling enough for Rumi to decide that he wished to follow its thread even further. He also realized such an exploration would be impossible in the burgeoning school that was doubling as his home and a busy harem for his wife, children, and extended family. So he decided that same day to decamp. As Aflaki described the next of the startling developments: \"After that Mowlana grasped his hand and they departed.\"\n\nRumi took Shams back into the market district, to the street of the goldsmiths, to the shop of Salah, who had been such a devoted follower of his tutor Borhan. After the death of Borhan, four years earlier, Salah returned to his fishing village, married, had several children, and then moved back to the capital city to set up his permanent home and shop. Though an illiterate workman, he had an enthusiastic spirit that Rumi trusted, as had Borhan. In the past few years, whenever Rumi delivered one of his celebrated public sermons, Salah was said to have shouted fervent yells of assent. Rumi's intuition proved correct, as Salah responded warmly to the unusual newcomer from Tabriz.\n\nRumi and Shams lived together in near seclusion in a room of Salah's house for at least the next three months. The rapidness of their bonding was shocking, but not without foreshadowing, as the vehemence of Rumi's seizing at an escape from his daily round, as well as his future eviscerating of his former way of life, all indicate that he was ready for a major change. He later claimed to have had some premonition of a figure like Shams. Since _shams_ is the Arabic word for _sun_ , Rumi used imagery of the sun to express his feelings for the man. His poems would be saturated with this sunlight, as he revealed:\n\n_I already held a sweet image of you in my heart_\n\n_When at that dawn, I first truly felt the sun_\n\nWhile Rumi may have had some inkling, Shams claimed the two had actually met once. The place was Damascus; the time, sixteen years earlier. Shams later spoke in his talks of remembering Rumi, as a student, a sort of prodigy, talking in public about the unity of souls: \"I remember Mowlana sixteen years ago. He was saying that creatures are like clusters of grapes. If you squeeze them into a bowl, no difference remains.\" He greeted him with \"Salam,\" in a public square. Rumi did not pay much attention, yet Shams, older and wiser, quickly perceived the glimmer of Rumi's true potential: \"From the first day that I saw your beauty, attraction and kindness towards you filled my heart.\"\n\nThe friendship between Rumi and Shams was intense from the start, and often difficult to define. Shams did not fit the pattern of a traditional sheikh, as he never received a cloak from a Sufi master, the standard ceremony of commitment, and so was not part of an established lineage. (He claimed to have received a cloak in a dream directly from Mohammad, as Attar claimed to have received his cloak in a dream from Hallaj.) With Shams, who was nearly twenty years his senior, Rumi's attitude was that of a pupil. Yet Rumi was already a spiritual director and teacher. Shams complained once about this lack of clarity: \"I need it to be clear how our life is going to be\u2014brotherhood, friendship, or sheikh and disciple. I don't like not knowing. Is it teacher and pupil?\"\n\nDuring the period of withdrawal in Salah's house\u2014a sort of _chelle_ , for two rather than one\u2014Shams was directing Rumi toward a new way of being in the world, and he followed. \"Before me, as he listens to me,\" said Shams, \"he considers himself\u2014I am ashamed to even say it\u2014like a two-year-old before his father or a new convert to Islam who knows nothing. Such submission!\" While Shams refused labels, he was well within the _malamatiyya_ tradition of the fools of God\u2014his mission, to free Rumi from the weight of his own dignity. So he devised tasks such as dispatching him to the Jewish neighborhood to buy wine and carry the pitcher through the streets. Konya had a tavern frequented by Armenian Christians, and Shams said: \"Let's go see the women in the tavern. Let's go to church, too, and look in.\" Such neighborhoods became romantically spiritual for Rumi:\n\n_The tavern keeper became my heart's companion_\n\n_Love turned my blood into wine and burned my heart_\n\nShams grew keen to dismantle Rumi's reliance on his talent for using words to spin arguments and spellbind audiences. \"Where's your own?\" he demanded, if Rumi was quoting too many proverbs, or poems and tales. \"Come on, answer!\" Like Kerra, irked by the incessant lamplight while he read, Shams was bothered by Rumi's poring over pages of his father's manuscripts. He once barged in while Rumi was reading, and shouted, \"Don't read! Don't read! Don't read!\" Aged disciples informed his biographer Aflaki that Rumi told them, \"He firmly commanded me, 'Don't read the words of your father any longer!' Following his instruction, I stopped reading them for some time.\"\n\nShams also disapproved of the fashionable poetry of Rumi's favorite Arabic poet from his schooldays in Aleppo, al-Mutanabbi. Besides his father's writing, Rumi loved to read verses of al-Mutanabbi in the evening. Shams said to him, \"That is not worthwhile. Never read that again.\" Rumi ignored his warning until, one night, falling asleep reading the poet, he had a nightmare in which Shams grabbed al-Mutanabbi by the beard and dragged him forward, saying, \"This is the man whose words you are reading!\" Al-Mutanabbi, scrawny with a tiny voice, begged, \"Please release me from the hands of Shams and never read my book again!'\" Another dubious poet read by Rumi was al-Maarri, a blind Syrian, melancholy\u2014like Khayyam\u2014about life's quick passing: \"How sad that man, after wandering freely through the world, is told by fate, 'Go into the grave.'\" (Even Shams was known to recite a line or two of al-Maarri now and then, but he thoroughly disliked Khayyam for speaking \"mixed-up, immoderate, and dark words.\")\n\nRumi and Shams were not entirely isolated during their stay at Salah's home, just insulated from conventional responsibilities. Both Rumi's wife and Sultan Valad visited, and were drawn into some extreme tests of loyalty, obedience, and liberation, sprung by Shams. Rumi allowed his wife to be unveiled in front of Shams, an exposure reserved for family members, which would have been a difficult transgression for her. When Shams asked for a beautiful boy to serve him, Rumi presented Sultan Valad, though Shams thoughtfully declined, saying that the young man was more like a son to him. Missing was Alaoddin, Rumi's second son, who was following an orthodox path, with plans to become an esteemed religious figure like his father. Shams posed a threat to his ambitions to carry on the family name, and Alaoddin was appalled by his influence. These dynamics among family members\u2014lining up in response to Shams's presence\u2014remained set from that first encounter, with Alaoddin always sorely judging from outside.\n\nThe only other intimate allowed into the charmed circle was Hosamoddin Chelebi, a nineteen-year-old from a good middle-class Konya family of Kurdish origin, from Urmia in Azerbaijan, who had grown enamored with Rumi's way of teaching. Hosam's recently deceased father was Akhi Tork, his name indicating that he had been a leader of an _akhavan_ organization, a fellowship of craftsmen, laborers, and merchants, like early guilds. This brotherhood ( _akhi_ could mean \"my brother\") overlapped with a wider _fotovvat_ movement to which even the caliph belonged, combining chivalric morals with Sufi mysticism and a touch of vigilante power, as its members wore uniform vests and trousers. At the time, the streets of Konya were full of such young men, often long-haired, with glinting daggers slipped into their ceremonial belts, protective yet intimidating.\n\nHosam was welcome because of his mild temperament. He was intuitive and empathetic, as he was said to feel the pains of his friends in his own body. He was considered a handsome paragon of decent behavior and, like Salah, was drawn to asceticism from an early age. Most importantly, for Rumi, Shams expressed great fondness for the young man. Shams's judgments of character became Rumi's judgments, and the circle forming around Shams would remain the nucleus of his own world. Decades later, Rumi described Hosam, in an affectionate letter to him, as \"both father and son to me, both light and sight.\" With the death of his father, Hosam was looked upon as the leader of the group of workingmen, and key in aligning these new followers with Rumi, just as Alaoddin, and other traditional pupils of Baha Valad, were growing disgruntled.\n\nShams had an aggressive, domineering manner that could seem extreme to many. Unlike Rumi, a public speaker practiced in politic turns of phrase and graced with the ability to charm, Shams was guileless. He avoided small talk: \"I rarely speak with people.\" His speech was spare, yet musical and expressive in its rhythms and its simple, moving imagery, occasionally like Rumi's mature poetry. He disapproved of the gap between Rumi's speaking in public and the voice he heard when they were alone. \"He has a beautiful manner and speaks beautiful words, but don't be satisfied with those,\" he warned a group of students. \"Beyond them is something else. Seek that from him.\" He claimed, \"He has two ways of speaking, one is circumspect, and the other, honest.\"\n\nDuring these intensive first three months together, the range of conversation between the two men was wide, and Shams did not hold back from exposing Rumi to all his beliefs and practices, acting as if these moments together might never be repeated. Shams especially encouraged the honest, heartfelt Rumi. His was entirely a religion of the heart. \"Practice is practice of the heart, service is service of the heart, and devotion is devotion of the heart,\" he told him. To illuminate Rumi's heart, he felt the need to shake him loose not only from his father's writings and al-Mutanabbi's poetry but also from all the language and philosophy that had been his support and the basis of his fame in early adulthood. Consistent with some strains of Sufi thought, Shams saw words and logic as \"veils,\" hiding Rumi from the truth. Of the Greek philosophers, he preferred Plato because he \"laid claim to love.\" As Rumi would write of this radical reorientation:\n\n_When your love enflamed my heart_\n\n_All I had was burned to ashes, except your love_.\n\n_I put logic and learning and books on the shelf_.\n\nTo replace thinking in words, especially the words of others, Shams rapidly introduced music, sung poetry, and dance into Rumi's life, through the practice of _sama_. Technically meaning \"listening,\" _sama_ applied to listening in the scholarly reading groups that Rumi had attended in Damascus, when a certificate, or _ijazat al-sama_ , was granted for having heard a book read aloud. In many Sufi circles, though, _sama_ came to mean a session of listening to music and poetry, sometimes accompanied by a whirling dance. The Great Kerra had taught Rumi as a boy to sway his arms to music. Shams, within weeks of their having first met, instructed him more fully in whirling\u2014teaching him to literally spin loose of language and logic, while opening and warming his heart:\n\n_When all the particles of the air_\n\n_Are filled with the glow of the sun_\n\n_They all enter the dance, the dance_ ,\n\n_And never complain of the whirling!_\n\nShut away in private with Rumi, Shams soon became a compulsive topic of gossip throughout Konya, much of it malevolent and suspicious. The result of their sequester at the home of Salah was chaos and anxiety for Rumi's family and seminary students. Both groups relied on Rumi, not just for moral guidance but also for their livelihood and support as the patronage for his _madrase_ trickled down. As Sultan Valad dramatized the passing of the staff of leadership, his father's pupils had sworn allegiance to Rumi, saying, \"We will seek wealth and gain from you.\" So Shams was disparaged as a bewitching sorcerer, casting a spell on their local saint, or an unlearned \"Towrizi\" from Tabriz. (\"Towrizi\" was another term for \"Tabrizi,\" in a local spoken dialect of Persian.)\n\nActually Shams was neither a sorcerer nor uneducated, yet he was not in the habit of sharing many of the details of his eccentric and extraordinary life. In their three-month period of intimacy, though, shut away in Salah's home, Rumi did begin to learn his life story, as Shams told of decades passed as a lonely sojourner, seeking the truth, but often confronted with the pain of being misunderstood. While on the surface the conditions of their two lives contrasted highly, like Rumi, Shams had been driven by a longing rarely satisfied. The revelation of this shared quest and mutual dissatisfaction only ignited further their spiritual and intellectual romanticism, and sealed Rumi's final commitment.\n\nLike many others in this era of chaos and high mobility, Shams traveled long distances before arriving in Konya, having grown up in Tabriz, in eastern Azerbaijan, where he was born sometime around 1180. Similar to Balkh or Samarkand, though farther west, situated in a fertile province between modern-day Turkey and the former Russian Transcaucasia, Tabriz was an important Persian market on the main trade routes between India and Constantinople. The city was also pinpointed in lore as the location of the Garden of Eden. Rivers to its north and south flowed into the Caspian Sea; nearby was the salt lake of Urmia, and the hometown of Hosam's family. Rumi never visited, though he spoke knowingly of \"the rose-garden district\" of the \"glorious imperial city.\"\n\nLike most commercial cities of the era, Tabriz was constantly changing hands, a contested chip in power struggles. When Shams was a boy, the Turkic ruler was Atabeg Abu Bakr, described by him as \"towering over everybody, and surrounded by armed guards an entire arrow's flight around.\" Similar to the Seljuks, the Atabegs favored Persian as their primary language, and art and culture flourished. Tabriz, too, was culturally closer to the cities of Central Asia. In 1220, the unchecked Mongol invasions of Khorasan reached the city. For urging resistance to the non-Muslim Mongols, Shams praised its ruler as the \"greatest of the age,\" though by the time Shams arrived in Konya to meet Rumi, Tabriz was securely part of the Il-Khan Dynasty of the Mongol Empire.\n\nBoth Rumi and Shams wrestled with the authority of father figures, but in opposite manners. Rumi had tried to imitate and please his revered father, while Shams, apparently an only child, from early on struggled with his own father, Ali ebn Malekdad, for lack of understanding and for being pampering and overprotective. \"The fault is that of my father and mother for they brought me up with too much kindness,\" Shams oddly complained. Shams's father worried over signs of spiritual zeal in his unusual son, who had not yet reached puberty yet was already hearing preaching whenever he could, and fasting for at least a month at a time. \"You're not crazy,\" his father said, \"but I don't understand your ways.\" Shams felt as if he were a duck egg laid by a common hen. Like Rumi, at the same age, he was sure he saw \"angels and higher and lower worlds. I assumed that everybody saw what I saw. Then I found out that they could not see it.\"\n\nHis father's \"spoiling\" was partly a response to the exceedingly sensitive spirit that he recognized in his introverted son. In Tabriz, stray cats often jumped in windows to swipe food from cloths on the floor, and were duly beaten off with sticks. Even if one of these cats broke a dish of milk, Shams's father spared it because of his son's delicate sensibility. Instead he would say, \"This is destiny! This is a good omen!\" In the fifteenth century, Dowlatshah, writing a _Lives of the Poets_ in the Timurid court in Herat, recorded for the first time stories that had been passed down of Shams as a beautiful boy, with a temperament considered by some \"effeminate,\" supposedly proved by his skill as an embroiderer in gold, a handicraft learned from tarrying with the women in the harem.\n\nShams told Rumi of a search for kindred spirits that led him first to the lively Sufi neighborhoods of Tabriz\u2014the Sorkhab quarter to the north, where many Sufis were buried in tombs at the foot of Valienkuh, or Saints' Mountain, and, to the south, the Charandab quarter. The density of Sufis in these neighborhoods was so high that the souls of saints in the cemeteries were said to rise on Friday nights, form groups of red and green doves, and fly to Mecca to encircle the Kaaba. Nearly seventy Sufis were clustered about one charismatic leader, who built a Sufi lodge in the Sorkhab district and taught a popular form of devotion based on mystical states rather than on studying books. Many Sufis in Tabriz favored this simple, unlettered approach, of the type described by Rumi:\n\n_The Sufi's book is not made of words_\n\n_It's nothing but a heart, as white as snow_\n\nShams said to Rumi, of these inspiring local figures, stimulating so much excitement and growth, \"There were people there in comparison to whom I am nothing, as if the sea cast me up, like waves tossing up driftwood. If I am like this, imagine what they were like!\"\n\nHe told of gravitating, while still a teenager, toward Sheikh Abu Bakr Sallebaf of Tabriz, who headed a Sufi lodge in the Charandab district. A maker of wicker baskets by trade, his followers tended to be drawn from the working-class _fotovvat_ movement and were often threateningly more loyal to him than to the rulers. \"There were dervishes staying with Sheikh Abu Bakr,\" remembered Shams. \"When one of the assistants of the vizier would come to see him, the dervishes would show reverence to the sheikh a hundred times more than they had before the official arrived.\" Sallebaf did not bother with all the Sufi trappings, such as bestowing cloaks. Either from this sheikh, or another passionate local Sufi, Shams learned the whirling practice that he was teaching to Rumi: \"With such a love, the passionate companion seized me in the _sama_. He was turning me around like a little bird. Like a husky young man who hasn't eaten for three days and suddenly finds bread\u2014he grabs it, and breaks it apart hastily. I was like that in his hands.\"\n\nAs with most of his mentors, though, Shams finally felt misunderstood, or underestimated, and stepped back from unconditional loyalty. He later confided to Sultan Valad, \"I used to have a sheikh by the name of Abu Bakr in the city of Tabriz and he was a basket weaver by trade. I learned much about godly friendship from him, but there was something in me that my sheikh could not see and that nobody ever saw. Only Mowlana has seen it.\" Unlike Baha Valad when Rumi had visions of angels, Abu Bakr cautiously forbade Shams to talk about his visions. In turn, Shams was suspicious of the practice of Tabrizi Sufis of begging for a living. So he set out from home on a protracted quest that lasted four decades and took him on a scribbling route through the Middle East. A highly motivated seeker, he traveled to Baghdad, Mecca, Damascus, Aleppo, and many Anatolian cities, meeting on his journey with most of the prominent Sufis of his day.\n\nShams supported himself on the road by working odd construction jobs, teaching the Quran to children, or weaving trouser ties. Due to the frail look that came from his indefatigable fasting, he was often passed over for hard labor crews, to his disappointment. \"They chose everybody else but left me standing there,\" he recalled. He was more successful as an elementary school instructor and appreciated the humility of the position. He recognized one of Rumi's disciples as having once seen him as a teacher and not acknowledged his presence. \"You used to come to the school and saw me as a mere teacher,\" accused Shams. \"But how often an unknown person does us a service.\" He was proud of having taught a stubborn boy to memorize the Quran in three months, though he appeared to have done so with the help of a liberal use of strict beatings.\n\nEventually he found his way to Baghdad, the center of Sufism, some years before Rumi passed through with his family. Shams belonged to the Shafii School of Islamic jurisprudence, more common among Sufis than the Hanafi interpretation followed by Baha Valad, Rumi, and many from Central Asia. Shafii judges based their legal decisions as much as possible solely on the blueprint of the life and practices\u2014or _sunna\u2014_ of Mohammad, often by using analogies. Shams and Rumi discussed one of the basic Shafii legal texts, written by an early professor of the Nezamiyye College in Baghdad. Yet their slightly different legal orientations never seemed to matter overly to either of them. \"If Abu Hanifa saw Shafii, he would pull his head towards him and kiss his eyes,\" said Shams, of the founders of the two schools. \"How can God's servants disagree with God?\"\n\nLikely having stayed at the Daraje Sufi lodge on the western bank of the Tigris, Shams told of being involved briefly with the Turkish Sufi Kermani, the leader of an order in Baghdad and Damascus. Kermani was one of the more vivid and outrageous of the Sufi figures of his time. Very much in the school of Ahmad al-Ghazali, who glimpsed flashes of divinity in the faces of beautiful boys, Kermani was notorious for tearing open the cloaks of beardless young men during _sama_ dancing and pressing his chest against theirs. He was also rumored to have undone some of their turbans in the heat of whirling.\n\nAlthough Kermani was decades older, Shams was not intimidated. One evening he came across the mystic staring into a bowl of water, and asked what he was doing. \"I'm looking at the reflection of the moon in a bowl of water.\" \"Unless you have a boil in your neck, why not look at the sky?\" Shams questioned, sarcastically. \"Maybe you should see your doctor to be cured so that you can see the real thing.\" His intent was to refute the practice of looking for divinity reflected in human beauty rather than directly in God. Nevertheless, Kermani invited Shams to become one of his close companions. Shams insisted that he first \"drink wine with me in the middle of the bazaar of Baghdad.\" Unlike Rumi, who at least bought wine for him publicly, Kermani refused, and Shams moved on.\n\nIn Damascus, Shams gravitated toward the renowned Sufi Salehiyye district, at the base of Mount Qasiyum, near Rebva, its panorama evoked by Rumi in the _Masnavi_ using a popular Arabic proverb, which counseled maintaining perspective on life's trials:\n\n_When you see grief, embrace it lovingly:_\n\n_Look on Damascus from the top of Rebva_\n\nAccording to Shams's own dating of his first passing encounter with Rumi, he was in Damascus around 1230, if not before or after. While Rumi may have had some contact with the circle around Ibn Arabi, Shams appears to have become a serious student. He spoke of a \"Sheikh Mohammad,\" who is thought to have been the visionary Andalusian Sheikh Ibn Arabi, to whom he had likely been referred by Ibn Arabi's friend Kermani. \"He was a mountain, a true mountain!\" praised Shams. \"He was such an exalted scholar, and he was more knowledgeable than me in every single way . . . a seeker of God.\"\n\nYet Shams's warm praise of Ibn Arabi's scholarly knowledge was not the entire story. As with all his teachers, relations were occasionally contentious due to Shams's defiant attitude. The two of them discussed many intricacies of prophetic sayings and related Quranic passages, a sort of Muslim version of the Talmudic scholarship of Jewish rabbis. Shams, though, was disappointed that they did not engage in more extended sparring. \"Sheikh Mohammad used to give in to me, and not debate,\" grumbled Shams. \"Yet if he had debated, there would have been more benefit. I needed for him to debate with me!\" He would accuse Rumi, too, of refusing to debate with him satisfactorily. Obviously tireless, Shams wore down his debating partners. \"You crack a powerful whip!\" wryly joked Sheikh Mohammad, yet he always referred to Shams endearingly as his \"son.\"\n\nOff-putting for Shams was his opinion that Sheikh Mohammad did not \"follow,\" or imitate the Prophet Mohammad faithfully enough. \"He was compassionate, a good friend. He was a unique human being, Sheikh Mohammad, but he did not follow.\" This \"following\" was a charged issue in debates among the Sufis of Anatolia. Shams's original question to Rumi when they met had pointed toward it. Wherever Rumi fell in this argument, his odes to Mohammad were certainly inspired by heights of adoring passion, which would have been shared by Shams. Rumi wrote of Mohammad in the mode of love, often returning to the account in Sura 54 of the Quran on his splitting the moon:\n\n_Our caravan leader, Mohammad, the pride of the world_\n\n_The moon was split in two, by seeing the beauty of his face_ ,\n\n_The moon, with its good fortune, gazed on his humility . . ._\n\n_Look into my heart, split, like the moon, at every moment_.\n\nFor such tender logic, Rumi became a \"pearl\" to Shams, and Ibn Arabi a mere \"pebble.\"\n\nShams also grew close in Damascus with Shehab Harive, a materialist philosopher from Herat, where he had been a prize student of Razi. Shehab relied on logic, analysis, and reason, and dismissed revelation, miracles like the splitting of the moon, or bodily resurrection as fables for common folk. Theirs was an unusual friendship that should never have been if the logic that Shehab found so irrefutable were applied. In the scholastic ferment of Damascus, Shehab was sought after for his brilliant arguing that God has no free will, backed up by the certainty that \"intellect makes no mistakes.\" \"For me, death is as if a weak man has been loaded down with a sack tied to the neck,\" he said. \"Someone cuts the rope, the heavy load falls, and he is released.\"\n\nYears later in Konya, Shams was still arguing in his mind with his old friend Shehab. He told Rumi, \"I would say, 'I don't want that God. I want a God who has free will. I seek that God. I would tell him to destroy that God of whom he spoke. . . . If the whole world were to accept that from Shehab, I still wouldn't!\" Yet Shams and Shehab were brought together by their aloof dispositions, their sharp misanthropy and stubbornness, and each other's appetite for ceaseless debating. \"This man is congenial,\" said Shehab. Likewise Shams said, \"I felt at ease when sitting with him. I found ease there.\" He wittily added, \"Though Shehab spoke blasphemy, he was pure and spiritual.\" Tellingly, for Shams, their mutual affection outweighed any philosophical differences.\n\nContrary, difficult, and unpredictable, Shams debated and refuted his way through the emerging intellectual centers of Anatolia, as well. Traveling north from Aleppo, he spent time in Erzurum and Erzincan, where Baha Valad had taught in his \"Esmatiyye\" school for four years; Sivas; Kayseri, where Borhan passed the final years of life; and Aksaray, unusual in the region for having been organized by the Seljuks as a purely Muslim model town, a hundred miles northeast of Konya. Typical of Shams's arguments was a disagreement with a scholar in Sivas. Annoyed that Shams contradicted him in public on a fine point about man's knowledge of God's essence, the scholar said, \"You are asking old questions.\" \"What do you mean 'old?'\" Shams snapped back. \"It's aching with newness! Is this what passes for lecturing these days?\" A number of eminent teachers refused to take on Shams as a private student because of his abrasive manner.\n\nHaving trouble finding his place within this well-ordered society of saints and scholars in the medieval Islamic world, Shams's individuality kept interfering. His conversation was flecked with mentions of challenging texts of law and spirituality. He resided in a _madrase_ college in Aleppo for fourteen months. Yet he never felt comfortable among either the legal scholars or the Sufi dervishes. Of his ambivalence, he said to Rumi, \"At first I wouldn't sit with jurists, I sat with dervishes. I used to say, 'They're strangers to dervishes.' Then I began to know what it is to be a dervish and where they were coming from, and now I would rather sit with the jurists. At least the jurists have taken some trouble to learn. The others simply brag about being dervishes.\"\n\nShams did have one trusted guide\u2014his heart. He did not reject teachers one after another on the basis of a consistent theological stance as much as on feeling and intuition. Within his crusty exterior still beat the heart of the sensitive boy from Tabriz, which remained the source of his discernment. \"Whenever you see someone whose character is expansive, speaking broadly and patiently, and blessing the whole world, so that his words open up your heart, and you forget this narrow world . . . he is an angel from paradise,\" he counseled Rumi. \"Whenever you hear in someone's words anger and coldness and narrowness, you become chilled by his words. . . Whoever discovers this secret, and puts it into practice, pays no attention to a hundred thousand of the sheikhs.\"\n\nShams told of visiting Konya on previous occasions. On his first visit, he found three dirham coins, marked as currency of the Seljuk sultan, on the road to a main gate, leading toward the town square. Kayqobad I was the first Seljuk sultan to mint gold coins, but Shams obviously found an ordinary one. Each night he would buy a half piece of fine white flatbread and give away an amount equal of its cost to the poor. When the money was used up, he departed once again for Syria. His visit in the fall of 1244 was more intentional. He later said that he had a dream in which God promised to answer his prayers, and to make him at last the companion of one saint, \"in Rum.\" Shams had arrived in Konya with strong hopes of reaching the end of his long and solitary road, and his meeting with Rumi clearly seemed to him the fulfillment of that prophetic dream, just as Rumi had revealed the premonition that he felt was surely being realized in Shams.\n\nSometime in 1245 Rumi and Shams emerged from the winter of seclusion that followed their first meeting. They returned to the Madrase Khodavandgar and began to take part in a curtailed manner in the life of the community. Making short work, though, of the longings of many family members and students for a complete resumption of normalcy, the two quickly disappeared behind closed doors within the _madrase_ for yet another intimate encounter that lasted six months\u2014to the astonishment of those left again counting the days against an uncertain ending to the strange silence that had fallen over the school, without any classes or sermons being delivered by their youthful patriarch.\n\nThe dismay of those left behind was understandable. The connection between these two complicated souls could seem weird and inscrutable. Shams was acerbic at times and misanthropic, likely at any moment to reveal the sharp edges of his personality that had caused many sincere Sufi masters throughout the Middle East to keep their distance or back off entirely. Rumi was his foil, a man of great charm and affection in a position of power and influence, now risking everything to remain locked away in insulated confinement, allowing all that he and his revered father built so diligently to be endangered, family and students adrift, while he lost himself in the challenge of Shams.\n\nStill their love was instantaneous and enduring. Shams had seen Rumi for who he was, and that look of recognition had begun to set Rumi free. No matter how many honors and accomplishments he accumulated, Rumi still felt encumbered by his position. Shams saw that Rumi was creative, a poet and a mystic, not a gatekeeper for rules. He encouraged him to find his voice, and so Rumi owed him his newfound heart. Likewise, Shams, for all his grumbled bragging about self-reliance, traveled for decades in search of someone who would recognize his own authentic self, his softer core. As Shams had told Sultan Valad, Rumi was the first to do so. The religious life for men of their day was often demanding and restrictive. Together they created a safer, lighter domain of their own. Both were old enough to know the value of their discovery, and wished it to last.\n\nThe only two visitors allowed during this time were Salah and Sultan Valad, who gained even more of his father's affection to the degree that he supported his devotion to Shams. Even Kerra was now excluded from the room, kept apart from her adored husband, who she was used to fussing over for trifles\u2014like warning him to chew a stick of straw to ward off bad luck because he had broken his belt. Yet although her marital and family life had been greatly disrupted because of Shams, she never spoke publicly against him. Likewise Shams occasionally spoke affectionately of Kerra and seemed to understand her predicament. \"Kerra Khatun is jealous,\" he said. \"But hers is the sort of jealousy that takes you to paradise, not hell, and is truly part of the path of goodness.\" Belying slurs against Shams as untutored, Sultan Valad later accurately wrote of him as a man of \"learning and knowledge.\" (Rumi likewise attested to Shams's familiarity with \"alchemy, astronomy, mathematics, theology, astrology, law, logic, and debate.\") Sultan Valad looked up to Shams as \"beloved\" and a spiritual \"sultan.\" In turn, Shams took a guiding role, teaching him the meditative _sama_ as well as counseling the adolescent young man.\n\nWhile Rumi was undergoing this major change of life with Shams, and evolving in his understanding of his vocation, the Seljuk Empire of Rum, outside the wall of their cell in the Madrase Khodavandgar, was undergoing an equally major disruption, though more a devolution, a loss of power and might. The Sultan Kayqobad I, the patron of Rumi's father\u2014having overseen an uninterrupted stretch of prosperity and cultural glister\u2014died in 1237, while rumors circulated claiming he was poisoned by his son and successor, Kaykhosrow II. On ascending the throne, Kaykhosrow II married the daughter of a ruler of Aleppo, but soon revealed his predilection for Christian ladies by marrying his second wife, Tamara, or Gorji Khatun, a young Georgian princess who rose to the level of his consort and eventually became one of Rumi's most ardent female disciples.\n\nUnlike his father, a paradigm of wise rule, Kaykhosrow II had a sillier disposition and delighted in nightly cups of wine while being entertained with songs and clever quatrains. Having inherited valuable territory that included most of Asia Minor, Kaykhosrow II managed during his decade of governance to diminish Seljuk Rum to a kingdom in name only, his father's empire never regaining its former grandeur. First among his challenges, caused by the populations displaced from Khorasan by the Mongols, were popular Turkoman Sufi preachers, usually called \"Baba,\" meaning \"father,\" by their followers, who preached against the power of the state and set rural Turks against urban Seljuks. These incendiary preachers riled both the Khorasani refugees and local peasants until Kaykhosrow II put down their insurrection with the help of Frankish mercenaries.\n\nEven more destabilizing were Mongol forces on his eastern borders. In 1243 Kaykhosrow II assembled a large force to make a stand at the battle of Kose Dag, where the smaller Mongol army routed them. As panic spread through Anatolia, Kaykhosrow II escaped to the coast while his vizier negotiated a weak peace treaty, agreeing to payment of annual tributes of gold and silver to the Mongols in return for sparing Konya. By the time Kaykhosrow II returned to the capital, he had outlived his power, and Konya its political independence. (Shams's praise of the Tabrizi ruler Shams Toghri for bravely standing up to the Mongols would have been heard as a putdown of Kaykhosrow II.)\n\nThough a sense of floating anxiety that both Rumi and Shams knew well, from the encroachment of the Mongols into their native homelands, now permeated Konya, the streets into which they reemerged after their second retreat were still reasonably safe and unchanged from the earlier days of peace and prosperity before Shams's arrival. Shams tended to thrive in one of two settings\u2014locked away in seclusion, or wandering and seeing the sights. He claimed these contraries in his state were actually one. \"Be among the people, but be alone,\" he advised Rumi. \"Don't live your life in seclusion, but be solitary.\" In Konya, Shams took his own advice, accepting that Rumi could not always be with him. \"When I'm by myself, I'm free,\" said Shams, with a dose of his usual sarcasm. \"I wander anywhere and sit in any shop. I cannot take him along\u2014a well-born man, one of the muftis of the city\u2014to look in on every seedy place.\" A favorite place for them to at least talk without disturbance was the rooftop of Rumi's school, where they could look down in the bright light of a full moon on neighbors on warm nights sleeping on their terraces. Rooftops became sweet reminders for Rumi of these elusive private interludes:\n\n_Sometimes Love shone on the roof like a moon_\n\n_Sometimes like a breeze, moving from lane to lane_\n\nRumi and Shams did go walking together through the epicenter of Konya, its thriving market district, which especially fascinated their moral imaginations with its power to lure and seduce by playing on basic desires and fantasies. As Rumi later wrote:\n\n_The world is an illusion, and we are like merchants_ ,\n\n_Trying to buy its moonlight, measured by the yard_\n\nThey paused to watch gypsies, or _lulis_ , who passed through Konya. With their music and rope dances, they excited interest and were given money. Sugar was sold in the apothecary shops in little brown bags, or wrapped in packets of paper, like candy. So Rumi later wrote of Shams:\n\n_Whenever I write the name of Shams of Tabriz_\n\n_I sprinkle my favorite sugar into a paper wrapper_\n\nBoth men were equally drawn to the disturbing as well as the pretty. Rumi was reminded by the butcher shops selling intestines of the cruel beloved of Persian love poetry, like a butcher, his hands bloodied with the livers of unrequited lovers. Fascinated by the dark shops offering bloodletting, near the herbalists, Shams reflected on its customers choosing to disappear into the darkness while \"a sun has come up, filling the world with light!\" More pointedly he suggested learned theologians would do better to \"be like the poor Russian man, cloaked in sheepskin, wearing a tall fur hat, and selling sulfur matches.\"\n\nJust as central as the bazaar in Rumi's and Shams's life in Konya were its many _hammam_ , or bathhouses, particularly as Seljuks were enamored of fresh flowing water and made medicinal use of the countless mineral springs of Anatolia. They both frequented the _hammam_ , singly and together. \"I stop in every bathhouse,\" reported Shams. Rumi was visceral in his fondness for the _hammam_ and dwelled on each detail, taking in the nimbleness of the attendant stoking heat in the stove, or the cup for pouring water over the body, or the thick _sultani_ soap. He was most fascinated by decorative paintings on bathhouse walls, often of heroes from the _Shahname_ , and meditated on the difference between a painted heroic Rostam and a real warrior, between artifice and spirit, and the way light falling from a window in a dome animated these static figures:\n\n_The world is a bathhouse, its skylight eternity_\n\n_Illumined by the window is the hero's beauty_\n\nFollowing their freeing spell of withdrawal, Rumi did step back, tentatively, into his former life as a religious leader in the city, too. Remaining in his sights was Qonavi, the godson and designated deputy of Ibn Arabi. After Ibn Arabi's death, Qonavi had moved north to Konya and was continuing the philosophical tradition of Ibn Arabi, filling in more steps of mystical knowledge in learned Arabic treatises. Rumi and Qonavi were about the same age, and before Shams's arrival, Rumi attended his lectures. Yet with Shams's influence, their ideas increasingly diverged, as Qonavi preached the path of knowledge, and Rumi performed the path of love. They came to represent the two antipodes of Sufi temperament in Konya yet remained respectful, if wary, colleagues.\n\nRumi returned to teaching as well, but with Shams doing most of the talking, or the two of them engaged in dialogue in front of a hall of students. Many of the more conservative disciples were horrified to find Rumi nearly silent, or deferring to the words and opinions of the strangely rambling mystic from Tabriz, who spoke at times in riddles or enigmatic non sequiturs. Like Rumi, Shams was an intellectual. Yet inspired by the \"unlettered\" Tabrizi mystics of his childhood, he had left learning behind, as if he had climbed a tall ladder that he then pushed away. Rumi likely assigned Sultan Valad to write down these sessions, as one of the surviving transcripts appears to be in his handwriting.\n\nInstead of lecturing on logic and religious law, Shams preferred to speak vulnerably and tenderly of his friendship with Rumi. These public teaching circles became love fests as much as occasions for unpacking one or another abstruse topic. Shams modeled speaking from the heart rather than the more formal double-talk, hypocritically mastered, he grumbled, by Rumi, which made him so impatient. \"We've met each other in an amazing way,\" he exclaimed, with transparent joy. \"It's been a long time since two people like us have fallen together. We're extremely open and obvious. The saints did not used to be so obvious. But we are also hidden and we do have our secrets. . . . I'm so happy to be your friend\u2014so happy that God has given me such a good friend! My heart gives me to you\u2014whether I exist in that world or in this world, whether I'm in the pit at the bottom of the earth or above the heavens, whether I'm up or down.\"\n\nHe revealed, in this open setting, the ground rules of their friendship: \"The first stipulation I made was that our life should be without hypocrisy, as if I were alone.\" He insisted that he saw himself not as a sheikh but as a friend: \"God has not yet created a human being who could be Mowlana's sheikh. Yet I am also not somebody who can be a disciple. Nothing of that remains in me.\" He compared his beloved Rumi to moonlight and, audaciously, to the _qibla_ , pointing the direction to Mecca for prayer: \"I wanted someone of my own kind so that I could make him my _qibla_ and turn my face towards him. I was bored with myself. . . . Now that I have that _qibla_ , he understands and grasps what I'm saying.\" According to Shams, Rumi was a bolt of natural energy, dislodging the dam that caused his waters to stagnate: \"Now the water flows forth smoothly, freshly, and splendidly. . . . I speak eloquently and beautifully. Inside, I'm bright and luminous.\" He put much stress on the freeing informality between them both in public and private.\n\nShams not only spoke of his feelings, but he also acted them out, leaning over to stroke or take hold of Rumi's hand. \"Now rub my little hand,\" he cajoled. \"It's been awhile since you've rubbed it. Do you have something better to do? Rub just like that for a while.\" He rambled on in squibs of exalted poetry: \"In the lane of the beloved there's a kind of hashish. People take it and lose their minds. Then they can't find the beloved's house and they fail to reach the beloved.\" And he testified to having finally found meaning, not in a set of ideas, but in their friendship. Truth, Shams implied, was face-to-face: \"The purpose of life is for two friends to meet each other and to sit together face to face in the spirit of God, far from earthly desires. The goal is not bread or the baker, not the butcher shop or the butcher. It's simply this very hour, while I'm sitting here at ease in your company.\"\n\nShams examined theology, but his approach was untraditional, as he acidly put down the philosophers' need to prove God's existence. As Rumi recalled one incident:\n\nIn the presence of Shamsoddin of Tabriz, someone said, \"I have proven the existence of God, indisputably.\" The next morning Shamsoddin said, \"Last night the angels came down and blessed that man, saying, 'Praise to God, he has proven our God. May God grant him long life!' . . . O poor man, God is a given fact. His existence needs no logical proof. If you must do something, then just prove your own dignity and your own rank in His presence. He exists without proof. Of this there is no doubt.\"\n\nShams ridiculed scholars for quoting sayings of the Prophet and giving the source\u2014a \"chapter and verse\" approach\u2014rather than speaking from their hearts and citing God as the source. He skirted heresy with provocative comments: \"I do not revere the Quran because God spoke it. I revere it because it came out from the mouth of Mohammad.\"\n\nRumi, too, grew bolder about expressing his feelings for Shams in public. One day he was attending the inaugural ceremony for an important new _madrase_. Shams arrived late and he was sitting among the onlookers in the entranceway, where shoes were removed and stacked. Rumi sat with the prominent religious scholars, and a symposium was being conducted on a most pressing issue for them\u2014\"Which place is the seat of honor?\" Echoing his father, while turning social decorum on its head, Rumi said:\n\nThe seat of honor for the scholars is in the middle of this raised platform. The seat of honor for the mystics is in a corner of their own house. The seat of honor for Sufis is next to the raised platform. But in the practice of true lovers, the seat of honor is next to the beloved, wherever he may be.\n\nAt that moment Rumi stood up and quickly exited the stage, making his way through the press of gathered dignitaries, and shockingly sat down in the far vestibule next to Shams.\n\nSuch behavior was endured because Rumi was so cherished by the town fathers. They were not so patient with Shams, and kept trying to find ways to weaken his position or drive him away. One day a delegation of these local notables showed up at Rumi's school to raise the issue of Shams and wine drinking, which was forbidden in Islam, though famously a test case of rules and rituals among some Sufis. He was obviously at least understood to be drinking real wine, not just divine wine. So they asked Rumi the leading question, \"Is wine forbidden or not?\" His cutting reply was dismissive, as he showed that he refused to be intimidated by them, even using a Khorasani curse:\n\nIt depends who is drinking. If you pour a flask of wine into the ocean, the ocean would not be transformed or polluted, or darkened by the wine, and so it would be permitted to use its water for ablutions and drinking. But, without doubt, one drop of wine would make a tiny pool of water unclean. . . . My clear answer to you is that, if Shamsoddin drinks wine, for him everything is permitted, since he has the overwhelming power of the ocean. But for you\u2014you brother of a whore\u2014even eating a piece of barley bread should be forbidden.\n\nRumi appeared to acknowledge to them that Shams was indeed drinking real wine and presumably did not think of himself as a \"tiny pool of water\" rather than an ocean.\n\nShams did not help his position with the elders of Konya or with Rumi's more immediate circle inside his school. He made enemies more easily than friends, as he began to act as a kind of secretary, chamberlain, even bodyguard, interceding, blocking access, and occasionally charging a small fee for audiences with Rumi: \"What have you brought and what will you give away as an offering, so that I show him to you?\" One day a visitor asked Shams, who was sitting in front of the door to Rumi's private room, collecting money, \"For your part, what have you brought since you ask something of us?\" \"I've brought myself,\" Shams answered, dramatically, \"and I've sacrificed my life for him.\" To Rumi, Shams explained the taxes as a test: \"One of them claims to love you from the bottom of his soul, but if I ask him for one dirham, he loses his mind, he loses his soul, and can't tell his head from his feet. I tested them so they would understand a bit about themselves. But they began to revile me saying that I discouraged your followers.\"\n\nSuch chafing words and deeds caused resentment to grow. \"The lovely son of Baha Valad from Balkh has become obedient to a child of Tabriz,\" complained one of Rumi's followers, obviously from Khorasan, and perhaps among the cadre of men who had accompanied Baha Valad and his family on their emigration. \"Does the land of Khorasan take orders from the land of Tabriz?\" Other Khorasanis went about saying that the people of Tabriz were all \"jackasses.\" (These loyalists were eventually buried near Baha Valad in the imperial rose garden.) In his later biography in verse about his father, Sultan Valad recorded some of the harsher of their cascade of outraged comments to each other: \"Who is this who stole our sheikh from us?\" Paranoia mixed with jealousy as they accused Shams of \"'hiding him away from everybody else. Of his existence there was not a trace. We no longer may see his face. We no longer may sit at his side. He must be a magician casting an evil spell, mesmerizing our sheikh with his incantations.'\"\n\nThese grievances were voiced often, and openly, and Shams was just as strident in defending himself in his teaching circles, with Rumi present. He easily quashed the argument of the Khorasani by saying that if a man from Constantinople possessed grace, it would be incumbent even on a man from Mecca to follow him. He mused aloud on the difficulties that the rough edges of his personality might create for others. \"Mowlana has great beauty, while I have both beauty and ugliness,\" he explained, perceptively enough. He recognized that his own gentleness was balanced with severity. But ugliness and severity, in Shams's assessment, were elements of absolute honesty and frankness, the absence of hypocrisy. \"I'm all one color on the inside,\" he bragged. And he claimed to thrive on insults. \"I am only troubled when someone praises me,\" he goaded his critics.\n\nRumi occasionally joined in the argument, rebuffing those who complained that Shams was \"arrogant, greedy, and doesn't mix with us.\" He counseled understanding:\n\nYou only say so because you do not love Mowlana Shamsoddin. If you loved him, you would not see greed or anything reprehensible.\n\nHidden in Rumi's response was his cherished tale of Majnun and Layli. As he liked to tell the story, Layli was ordinary, her beauty only obvious in Majnun's own loving vision. He clearly knew his love for the grating and sharp-tongued Shams confused them:\n\nDuring Majnun's time there were girls more beautiful than Layli, but they were not Majnun's favorite. They said to Majnun, \"There are girls more beautiful than Layli. Should we bring them to you?\" He answered, \"But I don't love Layli because of her face. She is not just a face. Layli is like a cup in my hand. I drink wine from that cup. So I am in love with the wine that I'm drinking from her. You look only at the cup. You are not aware of the wine. If I had a golden cup, decorated with jewels and stones, and it contained vinegar, or something besides wine, why should I use that cup? A broken old pumpkin that holds wine is worth a hundred times more.\"\n\nMostly, Rumi did not bother to argue. One time, on hearing someone begin to broach a criticism of Shams, he jumped up and shouted, \"I'm not going to listen to this!\" and exited the hall. At other times, he spoke so honestly of the depths of their friendship that he left little room for criticism in the wake of his blatant exhilaration and passion\u2014articulating for them the eternal love at the core of their striking spiritual connection:\n\nOn the Day of Resurrection, when the ranks of the prophets and the categories of the Friends of God will be drawn up, and the believers of the Muslim community, troop after troop, will gather together, Shamsoddin and I, holding one another's hand, will walk proudly and graciously into Paradise.\n\nRumi was remarkably confident about the great changes caused in his life by Shams, whose bold commands helped him not only to relax from reading his father's words but also from copying the manner of life of his father, as much as he continued to respect him. He realized that he had been given an opportunity for a more expansive existence. Shams allowed Rumi to experience the heartfelt warmth that he would always associate naturally enough with the sun, from which creativity soon began to flow. As he wrote of this disruption, appropriately, ventriloquially channeling the voice of Shams:\n\n_You were silent and I made you a storyteller_\n\n_You were pious and I taught you how to sing_\nCHAPTER 8\n\n_Separation_\n\nA few days before Nowruz, the Persian holiday marking the first day of spring, in March 1246\u2014about fifteen months after appearing in Konya and upending Rumi's life\u2014Shams abruptly disappeared. He departed Konya without any warning, leaving behind Rumi, who became startled, confused, and distraught. Influencing his quick exit was the rising volume and intensity of anger from Rumi's followers and, perhaps, Rumi's ambivalence about Shams's insistently pressing him to abandon his former life entirely.\n\nSultan Valad vividly recalled the agitation that had been so consuming in the days before Shams vanished. A hint of violence was in the air. Some angry men even flashed their daggers at Shams or cursed at him as he passed them in the street. \"All wondered when he would quit town or come to a wrathful end,\" Sultan Valad wrote. Driving this wish for the eclipse of Shams was the expectation of Rumi's followers that they would have their teacher and old way of life back. Yet the opposite occurred. Rumi withdrew entirely. As Sultan Valad poetically described, \"His bird of affection flew away from their houses.\" Realizing their situation had deteriorated\u2014not improved\u2014many repented.\n\nIf Shams had been devising another of his tests, Rumi passed. He found that he was not able to return to his earlier ways. He was not able to go forward, either, as his new life pivoted on Shams. In its place was an emptiness Rumi was unable to fill, and he was left feeling paralyzed and depressed. As Aflaki reported, \"Because of being apart from Shamsoddin, Mowlana grew unsettled. Day and night he found no rest and did not sleep.\" Unknown to Rumi, Shams had traveled to Syria, either Damascus or Aleppo, or both. Yet he may have heard of Rumi's condition. Even though it took a while to travel this distance, many shuttled between these cultural capitals. So Shams relented a bit. He entrusted a note with a traveler to Konya, reassuring Rumi he was alive and thinking of him: \"Please be aware this humble man is praying for you, and mixes with no one else.\"\n\nRumi's response was electric. He composed at least four letters in verse for Shams, moved by this momentous personal crisis to begin to try to find his voice as a poet. Rumi may have been experimenting earlier, since he was an aficionado of Arabic and Persian poetry, and implied in one stanza that he had begun writing poems:\n\n_When you're not here the_ sama _is forbidden_\n\n_Music and dance are pelted with stones, like Satan_\n\n_Without you not even one_ ghazal _has been written_\n\n_Until the clear message of your letter arrived_.\n\nThe first few of these urgent verse-letters lack the confident tone of his mature works. Tellingly, he began in Arabic, the more intellectual and formal language of the time. He did choose, though, as his form, the _ghazal_ \u2014his lifetime favorite\u2014a rhymed poem of seven or more lines classically used as an erotic poem, sung by minstrels mostly on frivolous topics of wine, women or boys, and song, and eventually developed as a vehicle for mystical love poems. Like the English or Italian sonnet, the _ghazal_ could be modulated from low to high themes, still redolent of the roughness of the Bedouin desert chants, while expressing the subtler Sufi sentiments.\n\nAlthough Shams was so derisive of the poetry of al-Mutannabi, these first poems Rumi wrote to him often sound like that favorite Arabic poet, both in language and in courtly convention. Very much a poet-for-hire, al-Mutannabi had specialized in _qasidas_ , or odes of praise, written in a heroic style for a tenth-century ruler of Aleppo. In these paeans, the king is compared to the sun, his perfumed scent is carried on the breezes, his power rivals that of lions, his favor to another causes the poet painful jealousy. Rumi simply adapted these majestic tropes for Shams, comparing him to King Qobad, a Sassanian Persian king, or to a great military commander bringing triumph and victory. He instinctively knew that only the grandest of comparisons matched his spiraling emotions.\n\nIf these first attempts were imitative copies of classical poems of love and praise, like juvenile poems, some of Rumi's wit and vulnerability are evident\u2014that other voice Shams heard when they were in private. A link in many _ghazals_ was the _radif_ , a repeating refrain of a word or phrase at the end of each line, adding a percussive beat that made for easy group chanting, when recited in public. For one of these verses, Rumi chose as his _radif_ a supplication of a command, \"Come!\"\u2014an urgent refrain imploring Shams's return:\n\n_Oh you, light within the heart, come!_\n\n_Goal of all effort and desire, come!_\n\n_You know my life is in your hands_.\n\n_Do not oppress your worshiper, come!_\n\nMidway through the supplication, Rumi cleverly switched to Persian, and likewise switched from the Arabic for \"Come!\"\u2014\" _Taal_ \"\u2014to the Persian for \"Come!\"\u2014\" _Biya!_ \":\n\n_What is \"Taal\" in Persian? Biya!_\n\n_Either come or show mercy, Biya!_\n\nRumi and Shams lived in a bilingual world, and this switching back and forth matched the way they spoke together and with others. When recounting to the disciples his important memory of meeting Rumi, Shams shifted to Arabic. When Rumi dictated to Hosam the precise date of Shams's departure for Syria, he segued into formal Arabic:\n\nThe Sun of Truth and Faith, the hidden light of God in the beginning and in the end\u2014may God lengthen his life and favor us with greeting him\u2014departed on Thursday the 21st day of the month of Shavval in the year 643.\n\n(A waning quarter moon on a lunar calendar, the date corresponded to March 11, 1246.)\n\nRumi deputized his son Sultan Valad to deliver his reply to Shams in Syria, sending with him a tribute of gold and silver coins. The offering was a subtle reminder of the tariffs that Shams had demanded of Rumi's followers to prove their love. In an accompanying prose letter, Rumi addressed the issue of these followers and assured Shams of their sincere change of heart\u2014they were eager for Shams's return and looked forward to his renewed teachings. In his verses, though, Rumi allowed more intimate glimpses of a desperate heart, coded and camouflaged in standard poetic decor:\n\n_From the moment when you went away_\n\n_I was stripped of sweetness, turned to wax_\n\n_All night long I burn like a candle_ ,\n\n_Scorched with fire, but deprived of honey_.\n\n_Separated from your beauty, my body_\n\n_Lies in ruins and my soul is a night owl_\n\nHe signed off with his favorite source of puns from that time on\u2014Shams's name, as \" _shams_ ,\" lent itself, in Arabic, to the sun, as well as to Syria ( _Sham)_ and, in the ancient yet still current Pahlavi Persian vocabulary, to the night or early evening hours ( _sham_ ):\n\n_May my night be turned to bright morning by you_\n\n_You, who are the pride of Syria, Armenia and Rum!_\n\nHis saddlebag filled with the missive, gold and silver coins, and the verse letters\u2014both charming and intense\u2014Sultan Valad, then twenty, set off for Syria. In his writings, he spoke of being dispatched by his father to Damascus. The biographer Aflaki later gave more details of Rumi directing Sultan Valad even more precisely to a well-known caravanserai located in the Sufi Salehiyye neighborhood, where he told him to expect to find Shams playing backgammon. Shams in his later accounting of his time away from Rumi in Syria spoke fondly of Damascus, and of his special love for the grand Umayyad Mosque, repeating the well-worn equation of Damascus with paradise. Mostly, though, he spoke of having lingered in Aleppo, so that Sultan Valad either went to both cities, the two men stopping in Aleppo on the way from Damascus, or two separate trips were taken.\n\nIn his own mind, the high point of Shams's retreat from Konya, and the city with the greatest pull on his spirit to remain and never depart for Rum, was Aleppo. Shams reported having felt the excitement of a return visitor, sitting near its grand Citadel, close to the district where Rumi's tutor Ibn al-Adim lived: \"It's a wonderful city, Aleppo\u2014the houses, the streets. I looked around happily, seeing the tops of the battlements. I looked down, I saw a world and a moat.\" Of a fortress a short distance from town, he said, \"If they had said to me, 'Your father has come out of the grave and wishes to see you. He has come to Tel Bahser to see you and then die once again\u2014come see him.' I would have said, 'Tell him to die.' I wouldn't have left Aleppo even for him.\" If still unsure of his feelings about Rumi, he was quite sure he had no desire to exchange Aleppo for Konya.\n\nShams brought between three hundred and five hundred dirhams from Konya, and paid seven dirhams a month for his room, so he did not need to seek odd jobs, as in the past. He also ate frugally. When he had been on the road in earlier days, he was so ascetic that once a day would he go to a lamb's head seller to buy bread and broth. When a shopkeeper insisted that Shams be given the best cut of lamb in his soup, Shams switched to a shop where they did not give him any such special treatment. On this trip, he was more relaxed about eating. As he later reminisced to Rumi, \"I remember in Aleppo, I was saying I wished you were there. When I was eating, I would have given some to you, as well.\"\n\nApart from his absolute love for the city, though, Shams did experience mixed feelings about his motives for being there and his split with his beloved Rumi. During their first month apart he kept vacillating. He was testing Rumi's resolve. He was also testing himself, deciding whether to walk away from such a cherished friend after having spent much of his adult life looking for him. He later confided to Rumi, \"Such praying I did for you in Aleppo in that caravanserai where I was staying! It was not right to show my face to the people when you were not there. So I busied myself with work or spent time at a Sufi lodge.\" At other times he felt ready to revert to his earlier, freer life: \"When I was in Aleppo, I was busy praying for Mowlana. I prayed a hundred prayers, and only brought to mind memories that increased my affection, avoiding those that cooled the affections, but I had no intention to return.\" Balanced in Shams's thoughts, as well, was the mission of transformation he called \"the work.\" He did understand their friendship as not merely emotionally charged, but also critical for releasing Rumi's potential.\n\nEventually Sultan Valad, with a retinue of twenty companions, discovered Shams's whereabouts: \"When I found Shamsoddin, I put my forehead to the ground, and bowed.\" According to the account in Aflaki, Shams was touched and moved to see Sultan Valad again: \"Kissing Valad several times, Shamsoddin caressed him beyond measure and asked after Mowlana.\" Sultan Valad duly presented the gifts, pouring all the coins into Shams's shoes, and then passed on a crucial message from his father. \"All the companions of Rum have bowed their heads in complete sincerity,\" he reported. \"Having repented, they have sought forgiveness beyond measure and regret what they did. They have resolved that from this day forward they will not show any disrespect and will not allow any envy to arise within themselves. They are all awaiting your most blessed arrival.\"\n\nShams relented\u2014though when he later discussed their exchange that day with Sultan Valad, he insisted that he had been far from certain about his choice. He was not simply being evasive. He reminded Sultan Valad that his composure had not changed when he saw him: \"When you came to Aleppo did you see any change in the color of my face? It's as if it had been the same for a hundred years.\" He went on to admit that he had been suffering greatly inside from the separation: \"But it was so unpleasant and difficult for me that it would be bad to speak of it. Sometimes I enjoyed myself. But the unpleasantness was stronger. I preferred Mowlana.\" No one knew better than Rumi the hesitation that his son was likely to encounter. Shams had evidently been talking about this choice for some time. Before the group left Konya for Syria, Rumi wrote and performed for them a more lighthearted _ghazal_ that warned of just that strong possibility:\n\n_Comrades, go, and bring back my beloved_\n\n_Bring back to me my runaway beloved_\n\n_Lure him with sweet melodies, and gifts of gold_ ,\n\n_Bring him back home, his face a beautiful moon_.\n\n_If he promises that he'll come along shortly_\n\n_He may be deceiving you. All his promises are tricks_.\n\nRumi's playful tone implied that he judged the worst over. Likewise playful was his toying with the romantic conventions of the _ghazal_ \u2014addressed to women in Arabic lyrics, though more often in the Persian tradition to young men, especially Turk soldiers in court, or wine stewards, with curly black hair and eyebrows. Shams was as far from that beardless ideal as from the warrior kings Rumi compared him to in his verse letters, while at the same time arousing all of the fiery love, longing, and awe that the imagery carried.\n\nThe distance from Aleppo to Konya was about four hundred miles, which would have taken a camel caravan approximately a month. Sultan Valad's contingent traveled on horseback. According to Aflaki, as they now had an extra rider, they were one horse short. Sultan Valad reasonably enough insisted that Shams ride the horse. Less reasonably, when Shams suggested their riding together, Sultan Valad refused, on the grounds of proper respect in the presence of a sheikh. Given the ancient emphasis on elaborate rituals of politeness in Persian culture, this exchange might have gone on extensively. \"It is not permitted for a king and a slave to ride on one horse at the same time,\" demurred Sultan Valad, attending to Shams's stirrup throughout the entire journey.\n\nRumi and Shams's separation lasted about a year, with Shams's reentry to Konya taking place around April 1247. As Rumi was dejected for months, his happiness anticipating Shams's return was nearly manic. He saw the chance of having his life both ways\u2014exploring the freedom, creativity, and love Shams offered, while remaining responsible to family and community. If Rumi had been more committed when the two\u2014according to Shams\u2014briefly met in Damascus during his student years, he might have pursued a life as a poet and mystic. He, too, could have been a \"flier\" like Shams, Attar, or Sanai. As his revolution occurred midlife, he needed to set responsibilities bequeathed by his father against the adventurous alternatives offered by Shams. The hope he might be able to have both made him giddy.\n\nRumi wishfully told his disciples of the wonderful life they would now share, as he took them at their word about leaving behind their jealousy of the provocative Shams:\n\nThis time you will find yourselves taking more pleasure from Shamsoddin's words that faith is the sail on the ship of a man's life. When the sail is set, the wind takes it to great places. Without the sail, words are nothing but wind.\n\nTrying to please, these disciples encouraged their teacher's excitement by reporting rumors of Shams being spotted on his way to Konya. In his playful response, Rumi scolded them for these false sightings, making a comparison between seeing Shams and having spiritual insight. Without such insight, Shams would remain invisible:\n\nThese people say, \"We saw Shamsoddin of Tabriz, Master, we did see him.\" You brother of a whore, where did you see him? It's like someone who can't even make out a camel on a roof saying, \"I found the eye of the needle and threaded it!\"\n\nShams's highly anticipated homecoming was treated as a civic holiday. When Sultan Valad arrived at the nearby Zanjirli Caravanserai, he sent ahead a dervish to inform Rumi of their imminent arrival. Rumi alerted his disciples, who paraded out beyond the city gates to greet Shams in a welcoming ceremony that included banging on kettledrums, waving banners, and reciting poetry. Sultan Valad then led Shams's horse to Rumi's house. Again they saw each other, and again their hearts expanded. As Sultan Valad described the event, stressing the lack of clarity, or the mutual feeling, which marked their unconventional relationship, they fell at each other's feet, \"and no one knew who was the lover and who the beloved.\" This perceptive comment on the abandon of their greeting was circulated widely enough to find its way eventually into a quatrain of Rumi's:\n\n_With his beautiful face, the envy of angels_ ,\n\n_He came to me at dawn and wept on my chest_\n\n_He wept and I wept until the break of day_\n\n_\"How strange,\" they said. \"Of these two, who is the lover?\"_\n\nRumi celebrated Shams's arrival by performing occasional poems\u2014writing poems for special occasions would remain his lifelong practice. These lines were musical, and trancelike, designed to accompany the whirling and meditating that went on at festivals. In his rousing lyric for Shams's return, he used the same _radif_ , \"come,\" which he had used in his imploring verse letter, but in the past tense, as a wish fulfilled, making a full circle. The poem was a long exhalation of the breath Rumi had been holding for nearly a year:\n\n_My sun and moon has come, my sight and hearing has come_\n\n_My silver one has come, my mine of gold has come_.\n\n_My ecstasy has come; the light of my life has come_\n\n_Whatever you may name has come; my wish has come_.\n\n_My highway robber has come; my parole breaker has come_\n\n_That fair-skinned Joseph, suddenly by my side, has come_.\n\n_Today is better than yesterday, my dear old friend_ ,\n\n_Last night I was ecstatic, hearing news that he had come_.\n\n_The one I was looking for last night with lantern in hand_\n\n_Today, like a basket of flowers strewn on my way, has come . . ._\n\n_Now is the time to rise up, as morning rises in the world_\n\n_Now is the time to roar, because my lion has come_.\n\nThe peaceable community to which Shams returned held together without unraveling for several months. During the first weeks, different members of Rumi's circle hosted parties that included music, poetry, prayer, and _sama_ dancing in their private homes, celebrating Shams's return. Eventually he began teaching again, speaking to the newly respectful students about a theme close to his heart\u2014the beauty of the world, accessible beyond our confining minds. \"The heart is wider than the heavens,\" Shams taught them, \"and subtler and brighter than the starry skies. Why squeeze your heart with thoughts and whispering doubts? Why make this joyous world into a narrow prison? Like a caterpillar, we weave a cocoon of thoughts, doubts, and fantasies, slowly suffocating ourselves.\" He added, \"I never struggle with sayings of the Prophet, except 'This world is the prison of the believer.' But I don't see any prison. I ask you, 'Where is the prison?'\"\n\nWhile Shams did not pride himself on being a poet, and did not work at the craft, he did have poetic talent and accented these talks with couplets of his own that he recited spontaneously. \"Tolerate me for just two or three more days\u2014in the book of my life, only a single page remains,\" he said, sighing aloud in a rhyme one day, expressing a sentiment eerily hinting at an imminent ending. Many of these lines show up in Rumi's later poems, either because he memorized them, or he pored over the pages of Shams's transcribed talks, as he had pored over his father's pages\u2014often in poems revolving around Shams:\n\n_In the book of my life, only a single page remains_.\n\n_His sweet jealousy has left my soul restless_\n\n_In my book, he wrote words sweeter than sugar_ ,\n\n_Words that would make the shy moon blush_.\n\nUnder no illusion about the display of newfound respect among the students of Rumi, Shams knew that much of their warmth was contrived. He was too observant not to realize that theirs was a calculated reverence, and, with his uncensored frankness, he said as much in public. \"They felt jealous in the past because they supposed, 'If he were not here, Mowlana would be happy with us,'\" Shams summarized the matter. \"Then they experienced that things became worse, but Rumi gave them no consolation. Whatever they had in the beginning, they lost, and then even all the passion they held about the situation dissipated. So now they are happy and they honor me and they pray for me.\"\n\nAfter his return Shams and Rumi resumed their intense companionship. According to the early biographer Sepahsalar, who presented himself as having been by Rumi's side from the earliest days, \"Mowlana became even more involved with Shamsoddin, even more than the first time they met each other. They became more united than ever. Day and night they talked to each other, and they sank into each other.\" Yet even with the lighter atmosphere in the Madrase Khodavandgar, Shams still longed for the open road. If Rumi's ideal solution was having Shams available in Konya as he went about his duties, Shams's wish was to disappear with Rumi as his traveling companion. He wanted to show him his homeland. \"I wish we could take a trip together to Mosul and\u2014you have not seen those places\u2014to Tabriz,\" he cajoled Rumi. \"You could preach in the pulpit, and then mingle with the crowds and see how they are when they get together just among themselves. Afterwards we could travel to Baghdad, and then travel on to Damascus.\"\n\nImplicit in such invitations was Shams's persistent desire to depart. When he spoke with Sultan Valad of his composure when he arrived in Syria, he insinuated that Rumi was far more distraught and agitated by the sudden separation. The \"work,\" the teaching with Rumi, was going well. Indeed the \"sinking\" of Rumi into Shams was the spiritual immersion that he had hoped to achieve. Yet the threat of an abrupt departure still made Rumi uneasy, while Shams's years of solitude had accustomed him to self-reliance, or at least so he claimed, though he had not been entirely sure when he was in Aleppo. \"If truly you are not able to accompany me, I'm not afraid,\" insisted Shams. \"I did not suffer when I was separated from you, nor does being together with you bring me happiness. My happiness comes from within and my suffering comes within. Now, I know living with me is difficult. I know that I am complicated. I am neither this nor that.\"\n\nA significant interruption in this steady pattern of communing followed by threats of leaving forever occurred in the early winter of 1247 when Shams, now in his sixties, surprisingly asked Rumi for permission to marry Kimiya, a young woman brought up in Rumi's harem. (As she may have shared a name with Kerra's daughter, some would surmise she was Rumi's stepdaughter.) This request, with its implication of settling down, not only marked a change in the tenor between Shams and Rumi, but also a sharp break from Shams's lifetime habit of wandering loosely, with no family ties, though he did mention having once had children, whom he left behind to travel on his quest. Kimiya was a \"pure and beautiful\" young woman, and theirs was a December-May marriage. This late-life blossoming of desire on the part of Shams seemed sincere, though it clearly began as a practical transition to a more stable connection with Rumi. As marriages were arranged according to a patriarchal tradition, Kimiya's opinion may or may not have been heard.\n\nRumi was most pleased by this turn of events, which insured that Shams would be more committed\u2014and nearby\u2014as an official member of his household. On the day of the wedding, Rumi read the contract of marriage for the couple. According to the biographer Sepahsalar, \"Because it was winter, Mowlana arranged special rooms with a fireplace for them to consummate their vows. That winter Shamsoddin continued to reside in those rooms.\" The nuptial bed was a ceremonial focus of the traditional wedding ritual, and like Rumi's father, Baha Valad, Shams emphasized the integration of his sexual relations with Kimiya and his intense religious devotion. In later years, when trying to explain to some students the meaning behind Bayazid Bestami's practice of seeking divinity in the faces of young men, Rumi told them a story about Shams from that winter:\n\nShamsoddin said, \"The Lord Most High loves me so much that He comes to me in whatever appearance pleases me. Just now, He came to me in the appearance of Kimiya, having taken on her form.\" So it was with Bayazid. The Lord Most High appeared before him in the face of a beardless youth.\n\nOn another occasion, Shams re-created a bit of bedtime conversation with his new wife for Rumi, or others gathered. \"'I asked God to give me a child,'\" he had apparently said to Kimiya. \"'My wish to have a child is because I want you to be his mother. You are sleeping!' Then she opened her eyes. She saw me. Again she fell asleep. It's rare that I wake anybody up, but I woke her up three times. And each time she fell asleep again.\" On another evening, Shams took his bedding and slept alone in a corner, his head pillowed on his arm. He was as open about talking of intimacies with Kimiya as Rumi's father had been confessional in his own notebooks about sleeping with Rumi's mother.\n\nThe small heated rooms Rumi set aside for Shams and Kimiya were located off a porch leading to the women's harem. The other half of Rumi's domestic world, the harem was adjacent to the _madrase_ , but entirely separate. No women were allowed to use the entrance leading to the school, and no males were allowed to pass into the small hallway, unless they were _mahram_ , or religiously legal insiders, as Shams now was. Such harems often had their own courtyard, with a pool of water, gutters, and, in Konya, mulberry or plane trees, hung with icicles in winter, surrounded by mud walls, and lit at night by torches. Besides sleeping cells there was a kitchen, a bath, and an undecorated women's dining room.\n\nIf the life of the _madrase_ was in constant upheaval during those years, the harem was still dominated by some of the original personalities and customary behavior, dating back to Khorasan. Holding sway as a matriarchal figure remained the Great Kerra, the mother of Rumi's first wife. A keeper of the institutional memory, she was able to tell tales of life in Balkh and Samarkand, and had been witness to the difficult period when her daughter, Rumi's first wife, Gowhar, was left to bring up their two tussling sons while her husband was off in Syria pursuing his studies. The feuding of the boys had so embroiled the harem that some said it instigated their being sent away to Damascus to school. Still living in the harem, too, was their nanny, who had been so pained when her charges were sent away that she had passed her days in her chamber, mournfully cleaning carrots and turnips. The youngest children left in the harem were Rumi's second pair, by Kerra\u2014his daughter, Maleke, and his third son, Mozaffaroddin.\n\nBy moving into a residence just inside the harem, Shams found himself immediately enmeshed in some difficult family politics, which were not mollified by his aggravating personality. The focus was Rumi's second son, Alaoddin, who was already antagonistic toward Shams. Among the few in Rumi's circle who did not participate in the welcoming ceremonies in honor of Shams's triumphal return, Alaoddin, now in his early twenties, had a natural talent for book learning and knowledge. In the absence of his father, many of the more traditional students in the _madrase_ had begun to gather around him for orthodox teachings, as he mingled with the learned jurists in other schools. He particularly resented Shams for taking his father away from his lectures and sermons, and, now, for interjecting himself in a volatile sibling rivalry by favoring Sultan Valad. Some rumors were even circulating that Alaoddin had secretly wished to marry Kimiya. Annoying Alaoddin, too, was Shams's interfering with his favorite pastime of chess, the Persian court game, as Shams told Rumi that he should stop procuring Alaoddin's chess pieces. \"This is his study time,\" Shams said. \"He must study every day, even if only one sentence.\"\n\nThe incident that caused these tensions to explode was Alaoddin walking too often by Shams's and Kimiya's rooms\u2014even though another path would have been impossible, given the layout of the harem. As Sepahsalar told the story, \"The second son of Mowlana, Alaoddin, was the treasure of the world, because of his beauty, kindness, knowledge, and intellect. Every time he would come to pay his respects to his grandmother and women relatives, when he would pass through the courtyard and go by the winter house, Shamsoddin would boil with jealousy. A few times, Shamsoddin gently advised Alaoddin, 'Oh light of my eyes, even though you have wonderful manners, you need to walk by this house less often.' This rebuke humiliated Alaoddin, especially as he already resented Shamsoddin for showing more attention and kindness to Sultan Valad.\"\n\nAngry words were exchanged that led to much trouble between them. \"Did you see how I threatened Alaoddin, indirectly?\" Shams asked around afterward, giving a fuller report of his side of the conversation. \"I said, 'Your cloak is in the shop.' He said, 'Tell the merchant to bring it here for me.' 'No, I've forbidden him to come into my room because it disturbs me. I've chosen this place for my seclusion and solitude.' Likewise to the woman who brings water to the room, I said, 'Come, when I tell you to come. But otherwise don't just walk in. I may be naked or I may be clothed.'\" He then quoted to Alaoddin, in Arabic, similar rebukes ascribed to Mohammad, for his followers, when they were given to walking into his private family quarters unannounced. The message Shams seemed to be sending in this conflict was of his desire to maintain his privacy\u2014and Kimiya's\u2014against Alaoddin's casual and frequent comings and goings.\n\nAlaoddin spoke publicly of this perceived insult, causing more troubles in the school and the harem. According to Sepahsalar's account, \"He repeated Shamsoddin's words to others. They took advantage of that opportunity to begin to rile Alaoddin even further. They said, 'What a strange thing to say! That foreigner has come and is staying in Khodavandgar's house and he doesn't allow Khodavandgar's son into his own home.' Whenever these people had a chance, they tried to challenge and embarrass Shamsoddin. Because of his great kindness and patience, Shamsoddin did not say anything to Mowlana. After awhile he spoke to Sultan Valad, as they bothered him excessively.\"\n\nAlthough Shams swore that Kimiya's \"heart was after me,\" she often chafed against her new regimen as the young bride of Shams. Referring to his possessiveness with Rumi, Shams admitted: \"Whomever I love, I oppress. If he accepts, I roll up like a little ball in his palm. Kindness is something that you can practice with a five-year-old child, so he will believe in you and love you. But the real thing is oppression.\" He contrasted his harsh manner with Rumi's gentleness, a trait from childhood on. \"'Someone said,' he repeated, 'Rumi is all gentleness, and Shamsoddin has both the attribute of gentleness and the attribute of severity.'\" Shams added, \"I become bored with gentleness.\" Ever the strict Quran teacher, he saw kindness as ineffectual for teaching.\n\nYet the wisdom that Shams accrued over long years of teaching and debating the philosophers, and praying and fasting in solitary confinement in little rooms in caravanserai across the Middle East, had not prepared him for life in the harem. Severity worked well perhaps with disciples on a chosen fiery path to self-knowledge, yet he was not entirely in control of his passions in this late-life union with a woman much younger. His traits of possessiveness and jealousy became inordinate. He grew suspicious of younger men as having potential charm for her, especially Alaoddin. After a lifetime of ascetic practice and notorious mystical feats, Shams was blindsided by domestic life.\n\nFlashes of marital fights and conflicts began to surface in his monologues. Kimiya evidently was a free spirit and not ideal as a submissive wife. An issue was her frequent escaping to one of the gardens on the outskirts of town with other women, without his permission. Such walled gardens were located outside the city and were generally divided into orchards for cultivating figs and grapes or producing honey, and rose gardens with benches set aside for chatting and entertaining among the upper classes. Shams complained of Kimiya spending time with ladies outside of their home: \"I cannot blame her. She does not know what she is doing. But why has she gone to the garden? How could she sit with this group?\" He threatened to find two witnesses in front of whom he could perform the simple Muslim rite of divorce. Another time he begged Rumi to give him ten days to find a house and leave. \"Stay for two months,\" requested Rumi. Upset, Shams responded, \"It was as if he was telling me to sit still for two years.\"\n\nOne afternoon during that winter, the women of the harem decided to take Kimiya on an outing for fresh air. She had evidently been depressed, kept guarded in near isolation by her husband, and perhaps had been ill, too. As Aflaki told the story, \"One day, without permission from Shamsoddin, the women took her with Sultan Valad's grandmother to her garden to cheer her up. Suddenly Shamsoddin returned home and asked for Kimiya. He was told, 'Sultan Valad's grandmother, with other ladies, has taken her out for a walk.' Shamsoddin let out a loud shout and became very angry. When Kimiya Khatun returned home, she immediately felt pain in her neck and she was as motionless as a dry branch. She screamed in pain, and after three days she passed away.\"\n\nThe sudden death of Kimiya was the darkest of Shams's many difficult challenges in Konya. However awkwardly or excessively he expressed his feelings, Shams had come to cherish Kimiya. Certainly no contemporary account accused Shams of her murder. Yet the fraught circumstances of her death, and suspicious shadow of his own violent anger over those final winter days, did not give him much confidence in his unseasonable attempt to live a settled family life, while the tragedy exacerbated the fully returned anger of Alaoddin and his emboldened cohort. Rumi would compose lines about his commitment to Shams, vow-like lines that included his refusing to listen to dissenters:\n\n_When speaking with people, seal your lips with mud_\n\n_Keep the sugar stuck behind your teeth, and go_.\n\n_Say, \"'That moon is for me, the rest is for you_ ,\n\n_I don't need a family or home,\" and go_.\n\n_Who is that moon? The Lord Shams of Tabriz_.\n\n_Step into the shadow of that king, and go_.\n\nOn the subject of the death of Kimiya, however, Rumi was publicly silent. Enduring his shocking loss, Shams left the harem to return to live near the portico of the _madrase_.\n\nHanging over Shams was a sense of failure. While Rumi had begun as his eager student, and Shams enjoyed the power of his own independence\u2014his experience as a lifelong wanderer\u2014he had tried in several dramatic ways to secure their valued companionship. Shams changed his life more than Rumi had, and he had sacrificed more. He never wanted to remain in Konya, and clearly after his departure to Syria did not wish to return to certain trouble, being constantly studied by the glaring eyes of enemies. His marriage to Kimiya was his final attempt at making the situation work by becoming a stable member of Rumi's extended family. Yet Shams was unsuited for domestic life. As he left his room in the harem, having practically been banished now from that family, he was reduced to a few moves, cornered, and was mulling the meaning of these ominous signs of trouble.\n\nShams's tiny cell in the school was far less secure than his peripheral room with Kimiya on the edge of the harem. Sensing weakness, Alaoddin and his allies again tried to drive Shams from town, as if the welcoming jubilee of nine months earlier had never occurred. Rumi had set Shams up in a cell that he nicknamed \"The Place of Khezr,\" referring to the mystic friend of Moses in the Quran, who initiated him into the secret ways of spiritual practice. As he had with his rooms in the merchant inn, Shams padlocked the door to insure privacy and seclusion, his habit in whatever setting he found himself. Yet the protective hand of Rumi was not sufficient to guard him against unannounced nighttime local police incursions and regular threats to his security.\n\nOne incident was so distressing that Shams waited two days before informing Rumi. This confrontation at his cell was not the first, or he had been warned, because he had been awake all night in anticipation of some kind of incident. \"I was restless the whole night,\" said Shams, when he told of the disturbing encounter. \"My heart was trembling.\" Finally at daylight some guards arrived, under the command of Aminoddin Mikail, an important lieutenant and viceroy of the sultan, though he was not present. They claimed the emir himself ordered that the cell must be emptied and Shams must leave. They also claimed the authority of Tajoddin Armavi, a high-ranking lieutenant.\n\n\"'This cell belongs to the sweeper, and now this man puts a lock on it and says that it belongs to him.'\" Shams reported the incoherent shouting of the head guard, in Turkish. \"Then he said, 'We're talking to you. Why did you lock this cell? You're not a licensed instructor here. We're talking to you. They threw you out of town. What do they call you? Shams? What? Shams? What?'\" Then Shams stood up silently, having not yet said a word: \"Those men of Aminoddin looked at my face and thought they needed to speak Turkish to me. They didn't think I understood what they were saying. 'This is Mowlana's cell,' I said. 'It's his library. I will go and get the key from Mowlana, and I will open the door.' 'Get him,' they said. 'He's lying. He has the key. Get the key from him.'\" One of them persisted, \"Why are you coming here? We threw you out a few times.\" Shams asked whether they had really been sent by the proper authorities. \"I know Tajoddin's nature,\" he said. \"I need proof if he says that I'm a dog and a nonbeliever.\" (Tajoddin, also known as \"Tabrizi,\" was from Shams's hometown.)\n\nAmid all the anxiety and disruption of being trapped within the surveillance of the religious military state, if only at its lower echelons, Shams in these last days persisted in his teaching, mostly meant for Rumi alone, during a period that lasted anywhere from a week to several months. He still had important themes to communicate that he felt his existence hung upon and were the core of \"the work\" he was intent on finishing. Essential for him was the message of love, and of the heart, which was Rumi's great inspiration. In Persian epic or spiritual poetry, _n\u00e2me_ meant \"book,\" as in the _Shahname_ , the Book of Kings, or Attar's _Asrarname_ , the Book of Secrets. For Shams, the Quran was the _Eshqname_ , or Book of Love. He also rose to poetic utterances about the practice of whirling. \"The dance of the men of God is delicate and weightless,\" he exulted. \"They are like leaves floating on a river.\" That such delicate, sensitive lessons were expounded in an atmosphere increasingly unsettled and dangerous only added to their sense of urgency.\n\nA darker and more complex theme began to emerge, as well, in Shams's teachings to Rumi during this chaotic time\u2014separation. He revealed his departure to Syria as having been an object lesson, not an impulse, and threatened more such lessons. \"If you can,\" Shams spelled out his intentions, \"act such that I don't have to travel for the sake of your work and your best interest, so the work may be accomplished by the journey that I already took. That would be better. I am not in a position to command you to travel. I can take on the traveling for your benefit, so you may become more mature. In separation, you say, 'That degree of commandments or prohibitions was nothing. Why didn't I do it?' It was easy compared to the hardship of separation.\"\n\n\"I was just speaking in riddles,\" he went on, unpacking his metaphor. \"I should have been explicit. What's the worth of that work? For your best interest, I would make fifty journeys. Otherwise what difference does it make to me whether I am in Rum or Syria? Whether I'm at the Kaaba or in Constantinople, it makes no difference. However it is certainly the case that separation cooks and polishes. Now, is the one polished and cooked by union better, or the one polished and cooked by separation? . . . Was Mowlana ever happy from the day that I left? . . . The deeper the union, the more difficult and arduous the time of separation.\" This was a core lesson, a sermon, he implied, he was willing to teach with his own life.\n\nOf all the teachings that Shams shared with Rumi, which were becoming the raw material of Rumi's poetry, he gave him perhaps his most central metaphor in these last talks: comparing the evolution of the human spirit, through the workings of separation, to cooking. This imagery\u2014a way of explaining how a painful separation can have beneficial results, and how love, both human and divine, involves both union and separation\u2014became a continuous motif in Rumi's poetry and talks, a familiar and homey analogy of the type that he favored. Rumi liked to tell of the chickpea transformed through suffering in the boiling water of the cook's pot. He also expressed far more personally his own suffering in the heat of separation, which was visited on him through his love for Shams:\n\n_My entire life has come down to three words\u2014_\n\n_I was raw, I was cooked, I was burned_\n\nHe used nearly the same wording in a less precisely parsed cry from the heart in a _ghazal_ :\n\n_My entire life has come down to three words\u2014_\n\n_I burned, I burned, I burned_\n\nShams was emotionally riveting as he talked of separation, especially gripping for Rumi, who felt the fire in his words, yet he had motives for dwelling on separation besides the poetic and philosophical. Shams's daily life was ever more precarious in Konya, and he faced constant difficulties. The incident at his cell was not isolated, and Rumi's followers were aligning with the cohort identified with Alaoddin. Shams spared Rumi many details, though he confided his apprehensions to Sultan Valad, who later recalled Shams's ultimatum to him: \"He said, to me, 'Have you seen them? Reunited again by envy with each other? They want to separate me from Mowlana, who is far wiser than anyone else. They want to separate me and take me away. After me, they want to be in charge of everything. This time, I'll leave in such a way that no one will be able to find where I am. All will fail miserably trying to find me. No one will be able to find the slightest clue. Many years will pass in this way. No one will find even a trace of my dust. When I have been gone for a long time, they will say surely they think that an enemy has killed me.' He repeated his words several times because he wished to emphasize them.\"\n\nWhen he was feeling particularly troubled, Shams did occasionally discuss matters with Rumi. He was once accused of stealing and spoke in obviously distressed tones to Rumi. \"I cannot even get a separate house,\" he was saying of his fragile and uncharacteristically dependent living situation. \"I don't want to make you a prisoner here. But I don't want anything else from this place, just to be able to see you.\" He was underlining that the only attraction for him in Konya was Rumi, but that just such singleness of purpose could finally become an increasing burden for both of them. At other times, though, he blamed Rumi for not coming to his defense, and keeping him out of sight, as if embarrassed by him, or living his two lives in two discrete compartments.\n\nOne practice in Rumi's household, traditional in the Islamic culture that set Fridays apart for congregational prayer and for time spent with family, was for him to visit with the community during the dusk hours after evening prayers, following any obligations at the Citadel mosque or on the palace grounds. Customarily, the men would be seated at the top end of a long carpet, where some bread or dates were usually laid out, the women seated farther down, while Rumi listened to the concerns of the household, or told stories, or otherwise invested his charm in calming conflicts. He did not invite Shams to those Friday gatherings, and Shams was stung. \"As neither Mowlana nor I like to spend time without a purpose, we tend to stay alone with each other,\" Shams complained. \"So every Friday that he doesn't bring me with him, I become depressed. Why can't I be included in this group? I know my sadness should not be real, but it is.\"\n\nSometimes Shams's feelings of betrayal by Rumi broke through their mutually adoring banter. Rumi appeared to be trying to distance himself from Shams's disruptive presence, to keep the peace, especially following the death of Kimiya and the sharpened anger of Alaoddin, who would have been present at the Friday gatherings where Shams was excluded. \"I became so upset when instead of answering them, you stayed silent,\" Shams said, confronting Rumi when he had not countered criticisms against him, the sorts of complaints making the attacks possible. \"My whole resentment arose when they said those things and you didn't answer them. You remained silent. You know my loyalty. You know me. But when someone outside the house said something, you didn't answer.\"\n\nThis incident, or another similar, kept Shams awake at night. \"To be able to look into my friend's eyes, I have to go through the eyes of a hundred enemies,\" he bemoaned. \"Last night I was thinking of you, and I was picturing your face. I was saying to you, in my mind, 'Why didn't you answer those people, clearly and directly?' In my imagination, you were saying, by your expression, 'I am ashamed of them,' or 'I am shy,' or 'I don't want them to be upset.' I talked to you, and our argument took a long time within my mind.\" Rumi had always been averse to open conflict and had evidently reverted to trying to placate Alaoddin and Shams's many critics, doing his best to keep all parties placated, especially after the difficult events of the winter. Shams clearly felt that Rumi was not defending him sufficiently, and he was left staving off threats while feeling less certain that Rumi needed him as absolutely as he had in their early days. Yet he had not lost control of his wisdom and understanding of the events around him. His recent conversations with Rumi were profound in revealing the nature of love as including suffering and separation\u2014a message that was about to become even more relevant.\n\nOne morning Rumi arrived at the school and, as was his custom, went to visit Shams's cell near the portico. When he entered, he found no sign of his friend other than his cap, a pair of shoes, and a few items accumulated while in Konya. Missing were the personal belongings that Shams carried when traveling, alerting Rumi to his departure. Given the dark mood and tragic events of the past months, Rumi understood that this hasty flight was not simply in keeping with Shams's elusive character but had an air of finality that even the first disappearance lacked. He realized with horror that his own attempt to live his life both ways had just collapsed. Rumi rushed into Sultan Valad's room. \"Bahaoddin, why are you sleeping?\" he cried out. \"Get up, and seek for your sheikh. I'm not sensing his merciful presence anywhere nearby.\" \"When Shamsoddin wasn't found after a day or two,\" recalled Sultan Valad, \"Mowlana began crying from pain.\" As Sepahsalar reported, out of sorrow, \"Mowlana roared like thunder.\"\nCHAPTER 9\n\n_\"I burned, I burned, I burned\"_\n\nRUMI skirted madness. Or madness was simply the only explanation those closest to him could find for his heartbreaking collapse in the wake of Shams's departure. Even five decades later, when the Arab travel writer Ibn Battuta passed through Konya, he was still hearing stories of the mad behavior of \"the sheikh and pious imam\" Jalaloddin Rumi following the disappearance of a Shams-like figure who sold him sugar-covered fruits, causing Rumi to abandon his college post to pursue him. \"Subsequently he came back to them, after many years, but he had become demented and would speak only in Persian rhymed couplets which no one could understand,\" as Ibn Battuta recorded the local lore. \"His disciples used to follow him and write down that poetry as it issued from him.\"\n\nRumi lost control on the morning that he discovered Shams's empty chamber, and the howling and sobbing heard throughout his school and house went on for days, not hours. When Shams had mysteriously left town two years earlier, Rumi retired to his private quarters and shut the door, allowing a recriminating silence to fill the hallways until those responsible for the rattling event repented. This time was dramatically different. He was focused only on hearing Shams's inimitable voice once again, and feeling \"his merciful presence,\" as he said to his son, anywhere nearby. All pretense of maintaining his carefully constructed two lives that had so irked Shams was abandoned.\n\nTheir time together lasted only about two and a half years, and in that interval, Shams had disappeared for nearly a year. Yet nine of their months together were spent in near seclusion night and day as they communed, talked, and shared secrets, in a marked parenthesis that Rumi cared enough to carve out of the middle of his busy and already accomplished life. Nothing remotely resembled the intensity of the time he spent with Shams, who rightly said just weeks earlier that he and Rumi preferred each other's company to the superficiality of most other social life. Rumi knew their connection was unique. It had begun with a gaze that pierced his heart. Now he was left with the memory of those searing eyes and whatever transforming truth they had communicated to him. The memory caused Rumi to experience an unraveling between his heart and his mind.\n\nAfter \"a day or two,\" according to Sultan Valad, Rumi went even more public with his hysteria and grief, beginning a search throughout Konya for Shams. Such a wide hunt would have included all of Shams's favorite \"seedy\" spots, such as the taverns and Armenian churches they visited together, as well as steam baths in every district. Rumi's concerned family as well as friends and disciples tried to help. He was well connected in the government and able to involve the imperial guards and police in the action. Shams's prophecy to Sultan Valad that he would disappear without a trace appeared to have come true. \"They looked for him in every alley and house,\" remembered Sultan Valad of the citywide pursuit, with no clues or leads turning up. \"No one had any news of him. Nobody could find a hint of a scent of him. The sheikh was crazed by the separation.\"\n\nUnable to find him in person, while remaining hopeful if not in full denial, Rumi tried to re-create his closeness to Shams once again in _sama_. Besides his focused final messages to Rumi on the meaning of separation, Shams, according to Sepahsalar, had encouraged him to keep practicing _sama_. \"Perform _sama_! _\"_ Shams said. \"Whatever you seek will be gained in abundance in the _sama_.\" Rumi treated this mystical dance they had performed together as a form of bonding, though now he was revolving incoherently around the absence of Shams as much as practicing enlightenment. He needed the steady rhythms to mollify his pain and was said to whirl, or turn unsteadily about a pole, while spouting some of the incomprehensible lines heard by anyone nearby.\n\nRumi soon invited a group of musicians to be present as well, filling in the empty spaces around his solitary dance. The traditional instruments he chose hearkened back to Central Asia, the cultural homeland of both himself and Shams. Crucial was the mournful _nay_ , or reed flute, which one story credited as having first been brought to Anatolia on caravan by Rumi's family. He came to associate each instrument with the travails of love. The bold trumpet \"sang\" only when touched to a player's lips: \"Without your lips, I'm silent.\" The Khorasani _rabab_ was a voice heard only when stroked with a bow. Rumi imagined his heart a trembling tambourine. Included, too, in his intimate band were a harp held in the lap; drums, both large and small; a _tambura_ lute _;_ and bundled Pandean pipes. As he later wrote, \"Sometimes I am a harp, sometimes a lute, night and day.\"\n\nRumi danced his repetitive spinning to music long into the night to the dismay of his exhausted musicians, who were as much drawn into the hole of his despair as they were allowed to act as a healing force. Sultan Valad recorded these frantic scenes he witnessed: \"Day and night he began to dance _sama_ , on the ground like a spinning wheel. His voice and his cry reached the sky. Everyone heard his lamentations, young and old. He gave gold and silver to the musicians. Whatever he had in the house, he gave away. He was continuously dancing _sama_. Day and night, he did not rest for a moment, so the musicians could not keep up. From singing so much they lost their voices. Their throats were sore from singing. Everyone hated the gold and the silver. Everyone was tired and run-down. Without wine, everyone was hungover. If that hangover had been from real wine, it would have disappeared with more wine. Everyone was tired from lack of sleep. Their hearts were cooked, not from fire, but from the pain.\"\n\nRumi's response during his first and far more benign separation had been to pivot to writing poetry to channel his pain as well as to lure Shams to return with flattery and proof of his creativity, which his beloved had encouraged and nurtured. Now Rumi turned to poetry again, but with less polished results, as stumbling in execution as his _sama_ dancing. As Aflaki reported, \"Mowlana was extremely agitated day and night and had no peace and no rest. He constantly walked up and down in the courtyard of the _madrase_ , reciting quatrains.\" Sometimes he muttered broken phrases. At other times, he seemed\u2014in painful, occasionally sinister, often roughly constructed lines\u2014to be trying to gain a foothold onto his own sanity as much as onto the metrical terrain of poetry. The themes tended to oblivion or total annihilation in the shadow of the vanished beloved:\n\n_The night wears black to show us that it mourns_\n\n_Like the widow who wears a black dress after burying her husband_\n\nHe spoke of these desperate poems as \"bloody,\" as they were clotted with violent images, perhaps evoking the distress caused by his menacing thoughts. He imagined in one of them Mount Sinai \"covered in blood, longing for love,\" and elsewhere wrote:\n\n_This earth is not covered with dirt but blood_\n\n_From the blood of lovers, the wounds of a checkmated king_\n\nWritten under pressure of grief, and relying on heart and imagination rather than intellect for their rapidly flashing imagery, such lines often approached a surreal incomprehensibility.\n\n_When the water boiled into a wind, making mountains fly_\n\n_Like straw before the fierce wind, whirling and frightening_\n\n_Through the cracked mountains, deep mines were revealed_\n\n_Where you could see ruby on ruby, shining like moonlight_ ,\n\n_In that glow, you beheld him, his face porcelain, like the moon_ ,\n\n_His hands open, full of blood, like the hands of a butcher_.\n\nYet the \"bloody\" handprints in these poems may also have reflected a grim possibility that must have been playing on Rumi's mind, and certainly in his most troubled fantasies in his unsettled state, as the question spread through Konya: Was Shams murdered? The atmosphere of the past few months made such an act conceivable. Rumors of murder were swirling around Rumi, two of them\u2014contradicting each other\u2014finding their way into Aflaki's later accounts. In one of these dark scenarios, Shams and Rumi were seated together in the evening when a stranger came to the door and whispered for Shams to step outside. Shams rose and said, \"They want to kill me,\" to which Rumi responded, \"Perhaps it is God's will.\" Shams walked outside, where he was set on by seven ruffians with knives. His loud shouts caused them all to pass out in unison and when they awoke they saw nothing but a few drops of blood, with no other sign of their victim. In a second rumor, Sultan Valad, alerted by a dream, discovered Shams's corpse at the bottom of a well and buried him in the _madrase_ walls. Rumi never endorsed such reports of the murder of Shams, though they were haunting his poems.\n\nAlmost as compelling as the unsolved murder mystery, though, was the distress in Konya and the Madrase Khodavandgar that allowed even the suspicion of the killing of Shams of Tabriz to have taken hold as imaginable. Somehow this unique bond between Rumi and Shams was unconventional enough to have driven those around them to irrational and outsize reactions. As Annemarie Schimmel has described their challenge: \"The relationship between Mowlana and Shams was nothing like the traditional love of a mature Sufi for a very young boy in whom he saw Divine Beauty manifested, and who thus is a _shahed_ , a living witness to Divine Beauty\u2014indeed it is revealing that the term _shahed_ , favored by most Persian poets, occurs only rarely in Mowlana's work. This was the meeting of two mature men.\" The Iranian-American scholar Janet Afary has described their connection as \"a more reciprocal ethic of love.\" Rumi and Shams were tampering with social formalities, and their lack of clear boundaries was disturbing, as the cultural norm of \"lover\" and \"beloved\" between men and boys, or even between sheikh and disciple, required one partner to be the moth and the other the flame.\n\nRumi next fixed on the hope that Shams was in Damascus, where he first traveled sometime between the winter of 1248 and the spring of 1249, and then on one or two other occasions, alone or with a retinue. Whatever lapses of sanity Rumi may have undergone in the first weeks and months of their jarring separation, he kept enough presence of mind to pursue with a steady logic the dwindling few chances of finding Shams, while striving to keep his spirit stitched to him through _sama_ and poetry.\n\nEven before departing Konya, Rumi seized on travelers from Damascus, hoping to hear news of Shams, his desperation making him vulnerable. As Aflaki told: \"One day someone informed Rumi, 'I saw Shamsoddin in Damascus.' Rumi became more cheerful than can be expressed in words. He gave away everything he was wearing to the man as gifts\u2014his turban, cloak, and shoes. A close companion said, 'He lied to you. He has never seen him.' Rumi replied, 'I gave him my turban and my cloak for his lie. If his news were true, instead of giving away my clothing, I would have given my life away. I would have sacrificed myself for him.\" This desire to give away, or throw away, grew extravagant.\n\nBarely able to manage his daily existence, Rumi had easily let the business of the _madrase_ fade to the margins of concern, while holding many of those in the community responsible for Shams's vanishing, especially his son Alaoddin, from whom he became estranged during this period of heightened emotion and tension. As Sepahsalar wrote, \"During that time, whoever was blamed for this separation did not receive any attention from him.\" When he went away, Rumi put Hosam, the young leader of the local workingmen, in charge of keeping order in the day-to-day operations of the school. He instinctively only entrusted a position of authority to someone drawn from within the small, warm circle around Shams\u2014a pattern he continued for the rest of his life.\n\nWith Syria riven by civil war, and suffering from the famine and general ruin caused by the incursions of many Crusader armies, the Damascus that Rumi confronted upon his arrival was not the paradise of brilliant intellectual debate, spirited commerce, and monumental architecture he had witnessed just a decade earlier from the removed vantage of the Sufi Salehiyye neighborhood during his student years. Yet the circles in which he had moved were still active, and so, reported Sultan Valad, he went street by street, \"putting his head into every corner.\" He performed very public _sama_ sessions, hoping to attract locals who knew Shams, or might have information. And he composed new, anxious _ghazals_ , written in Arabic. As he proclaimed his mission on a third journey:\n\n_For the third time, I rush from Rum to Syria_ ,\n\n_Seeking his curls as dark as night, seeking the fragrance of Damascus_\n\n_If my Master Shams, the Truth of Tabriz, is there_\n\n_I will be the Master of Damascus, the Master of Damascus!_\n\nThe Damascus period of Rumi's search for Shams lasted about two years. After days or weeks scouring the Sufi neighborhoods, with the same disappointing results he had encountered in Konya, Rumi spent much of the rest of the time hunting down clues or listening to hearsay, waiting to talk with the pilgrims returning from Mecca, or other travelers, as travel was the main artery of communication. He was also cultivating _sama_ and beginning to write poems with more intensity and frequency than ever before. The pitch of hysteria reached in Konya could not be sustained, and he began to discover in his emerging poetry and song not only expressions of pain but also inklings of love.\n\nRumi instinctively relied on whirling after Shams's disappearance to quell his panic and somehow stay closer to his companion by imitating him at a time when he could think of nothing or no one else. His intuition about his need at that moment for _sama_ was a positive one. The philosopher Mohammad al-Ghazali, whose intellectual legacy Rumi and his father encountered, especially in Baghdad, claimed the whirling practice had pulled him back from his own period of despair, which has been construed as a nervous breakdown. Indeed, he devoted an entire volume of his monumental _Revival of the Religious Sciences_ to _sama_ , eloquently writing of having his spiritual life saved by such practices. His testimony helped in the spread of rooms appointed for _sama_ in tenth-century Baghdad. Rumi, too, was now sensing that his sanity and spiritual revival owed much to the meditative dance.\n\nWhile Shams was in Konya, he and Rumi practiced _sama_ in seclusion, hidden from the eyes and ears of the legally minded, including Alaoddin. Even though Rumi's father was sympathetic with Sufis and practiced secret mystical techniques, he would never have allowed music and dance in the halls of the Madrase Khodavandgar, as such expressions were likely to be dangerous, even illegal. Just as popular as al-Ghazali's defense of _sama_ in Baghdad was the treatise _The Trickery of Satan_ , by an austere theologian claiming music and dance were the devil's work. Many medieval Islamic leaders\u2014failing to find sanctions in the Quran or the teachings of the Prophet for listening to music, singing, and chanting\u2014insisted that the only acceptable music worth listening to was Arabic Quranic recitation. As Rumi became more public and open about _sama_ in Konya and Damascus, he was moving closer toward a fault line, and setting up a defining conflict of the rest of his life.\n\nLikewise in Damascus Rumi's poems began to reveal a new lightness and to announce their true source of inspiration, Shams of Tabriz, as the messenger of love. Since the works of medieval Persian poets are arranged according to the alphabetical order of their rhyming letters\u2014beginning with the long _a\u2014_ and within that scheme by meter, rather than chronologically, the sequence of Rumi's poems has never been clear. Yet a logic of suffering and acceptance was at work indicating their falling into loose, overlapping stages, marked by their openness in naming Shams as muse. By the time Rumi left Damascus, he had found his voice as a poet or, as he understood it, found Shams's voice through his poetry, while experiencing a midlife creative burst that was exceptional in the history of world poetry as he wrote the bulk of his lyric love poems.\n\nFollowing from the verse-letters that he wrote on Shams's first departure to Syria, over a year earlier, Rumi resumed, likely in Damascus, rhapsodizing Shams in extravagant codes of praise. Rather than mentioning his name, using Sufi discretion, he invoked his reliable symbol for fiery Shams, the \"Sun of Religion,\" and \"Sun of Tabriz\":\n\n_Since I am the servant of the sun, I speak only of the sun_.\n\n_I do not worship the moon, nor do I speak of dreams_\n\nAstrological houses could stand for Shams, too, such as Mars, or Venus, or the panoply of stars. Gypsies, or _lulis_ , evoked his perpetual motion and cleverness, and the wide desert, the _sahra_ , his location beyond all places and categories, his abstraction from daily life, his transcendence. Rumi addressed Shams as his \"sovereign,\" or, in Greek, as _afenti_ or _aghapos_ , honored and beloved, and used various other glorifying terms for him:\n\n_I gave him so many names, perfect and imperfect_ ,\n\n_But since he is unique, he has a hundred times more_\n\nOne fixture of traditional Persian poetry that Rumi began to experiment with in these poems, as he seemed once again more in control of his method of composition, was the _takhallos_ , a poetic signature, or pen name, reserved for the final line of a _ghazal_ , also romanticized as a \"clasp,\" holding together the strung pearls of single lines into a necklace. Rumi shied away from using his own name as a _takhallos_. Only once, in an early, opaque poem, did he try using his title bestowed on him by his father as a tag in the more conventional fashion:\n\n_Jalaloddin, go to sleep now, and quit writing_\n\n_Just say: No leopards can find such a unique lion_.\n\nMany of the poems of crisis were unruly and lacked a polished final line altogether. In some, Rumi had abruptly announced, \" _Bas!_ \" or \"Enough!\" Yet he came close to an inventive _takhallos_ by closing several with _\"Khamush!\"_ or _\"Silence!,\"_ indicating an approach to a mystical state of unknowing as well as reticence in naming his inspiration:\n\n_Be silent my tongue, since my heart is burning_ ,\n\n_Your heart will burn, too, if I speak of my burning heart_\n\nA breakthrough for Rumi occurred when he was finally able to name Shams in his poems, as if the same breaking down of a wall between his inner and outer lives, which had been forced by Shams's disappearance, also needed to take place in his poetry. This transition was enacted in one crucial _ghazal_ where he dramatized an imaginative vision, reminiscent of dream visions he experienced during _chelle_ , including a voice of wisdom:\n\n_One night, I awoke at midnight, unable to find my heart_\n\n_I looked everywhere, around the house. Where did he go?_\n\n_When finally I searched every room, I found the poor thing_\n\n_Crying in a corner, whispering the name of God, and praying_.\n\nAs he eavesdropped on his own heart praying, Rumi heard him confessing trepidation about ever uttering the name of his beloved for fear of having his secret stolen away by someone who might be listening. A guiding voice commanded him to speak the name:\n\n_A voice called to the heart, \"Say his name_ ,\n\n_Don't worry about others, say his name boldly_\n\n_His name is the key to the wishes of your soul_\n\n_Say his name at once, so he will open the door quickly.\"_\n\nThe poet's heart remained anxious, in spite of divine intervention, until finally at dawn the sun rose\u2014reliable code for Shams\u2014and the heart yelped, \"Tabriz!\" unraveled by these efforts like the woof and warp of a carpet. The poem ends with Rumi's joyful confession:\n\n_As I was fainting away, the name of Shamsoddin_ ,\n\n_That ocean of generosity, was engraved upon my heart_\n\nHaving opened the door, as he described the sensation, Rumi found, within the heart of his poetry, permission to speak the name of his beloved, going against all caution and secrecy. In the Persian poetic tradition, such love poems were only written to youths, not mature men, and personal names rarely, if ever, used, except for that of the patron or the poet's own _takhallos_ pen name. Rumi was explicit about the course of his evolution toward this liberation. Not only could he speak of Shams in code, but he could now also spell out Shams's name brazenly within the lines of his poems, a bold transparency he found exhilarating and inspiring as he made use of this new freedom rhapsodically:\n\n_Not alone I keep on singing, Shamsoddin and Shamsoddin_\n\n_The nightingale in the garden sings, the partridge in the hills . . ._\n\n_Day of splendor, Shamsoddin, turning heavens, Shamsoddin_\n\n_Mine of jewels, Shamsoddin, day and night, Shamsoddin_.\n\nIn the abundance of incantatory poems that followed were lines revealing Rumi's belief that chanting Shams's name freed his spirit from the guarded fear that contributed to their painful separation and gave luster and a radiant spark to his art and poetry:\n\n_Say the name of Shamsoddin every single moment_\n\n_Until your poems and songs begin to glow with beauty_\n\nNaming names was a bold personal move for Rumi, especially given his public position. His next steps, though, were even more radical, as he began writing poems that moved beyond anything dared so far in either Persian lyric poetry or Muslim devotional poetry. Novelty was immaterial to Rumi. He was not interested in becoming a poet's poet. Yet in trying to articulate his love for Shams, he was led by force of passion to breaking with tradition. His innovation in Persian lyric poetry was to begin using as his _takhallos_ , or signature tag, the name of Shams of Tabriz, rather than his own. By the end of his life, he had written nearly a thousand poems mentioning Shams or ending with the flourish of his name. The most extraordinary probably date from his Damascus period, when he was away from the judgmental eyes and ears surrounding him in Konya. He had been energized by the poetic license he felt granted him by his own heart, reacting to divine prompts, and allowing him to be at once romantic and religious. As he wrote in one _ghazal_ composed while the search for Shams was under way, using his special _takhallos_ :\n\n_I wonder, where did the handsome beloved go?_\n\n_I wonder, where did that tall, shapely cypress tree go?_\n\n_He spread his light among us like a candle_\n\n_Where did he go? So strange, where did he go without me?_\n\n_All day long my heart trembles like a leaf_\n\n_All alone at midnight, where did that beloved go? . . ._\n\n_Tell me clearly, Shams of Tabriz_ ,\n\n_Of whom it is said, \"The sun never dies!\"\u2014Where did he go?_\n\nThe adoption of Shams as his _takhallos_ was an original solution to Rumi's quandary. He was audaciously implying that he was not the author of his own poems. Shams was writing the verses through him, and he was merely the ink pen or the paper:\n\n_Speak, Sun of Truth and Faith, Pride of Tabriz_ ,\n\n_For your voice is speaking through all my words!_\n\nRumi pushed the notion of a muse to its extreme, so that he was not merely inspired by but infused with the spoken word of Shams being dictated through him. This frame for understanding the poetry\u2014especially these lyric love poems _\u2014_ remained forever affixed to them, in Rumi's understanding, and in their public reception. When the poems were later gathered in collections, or _divans_ , some dating back to within a couple decades of Rumi's death, they were titled as _Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi_ (\"The Collected Shams of Tabriz\"), or _Kolliyat-e Shams-e Tabrizi_ (\"The Complete Shams of Tabriz\"), or _Ghazaliyyat-e Shams-e Tabrizi_ (\"The Shams of Tabriz Ghazals\"). (These earliest collections were helped in being judged authentic by their use of Rumi's local Khorasani spellings for Persian words, rather than Anatolian, similar to the differences between British English and American.)\n\nRumi then took a final step, investing Shams with prophetic or even divine powers, which was as challenging to Muslim orthodoxy as the use of music and dance in _sama_. It was as if the less chance Rumi felt of their being reunited in person, the more Shams began to merge in his heart with the source of love itself. The Rumi scholar Franklin D. Lewis has written that \"there was probably no precedent for addressing any person, other than the Prophets,\" as Rumi in one instance praised Shams as \"the light that said to Moses, 'I am God, I am God, I am God.'\" Never in classical Persian poetry had the beloved been divinized as the burning bush through whom Moses heard the voice of God, or as the lover's _qibla_ , for turning to prayer, or beyond the ken of the angel Gabriel, revealing the Quran to Mohammad. Such exclamations bordered on blasphemy:\n\n_It's not enough for me to call you a human being_ ,\n\n_But I am afraid to call you \"God.\"_\n\n_You do not allow me to remain silent_\n\n_Yet you do not reveal to me the proper speech_.\n\nImploring Shams to forgive his own sins of pride, or heal his wounds, Rumi dared to fashion in these rhapsodic, celestial poems an audacious meld of love poem and prayer:\n\n_You speak for God, you see the Truth_ ,\n\n_You save the world from drowning in an ocean of fire_\n\n_A king beyond compare, your majesty is eternal_\n\n_You lead the soul away from harmful desires_\n\n_You hunt for souls on the path of self-sacrifice_\n\n_Looking to discover which soul is the most worthy . . ._\n\n_Sun of souls! Shamsoddin, the Truth of Tabriz_ ,\n\n_Each of your radiant beams speaks eloquently of God_.\n\nYet Rumi had still not accepted the difficult fact of the permanent loss of Shams in death. His last holdout of hope was Tabriz, an obviously magical point on Rumi's imaginative horizon, and a journey by land of only about seven hundred miles from either Damascus or Konya, although no record exists of Rumi actually undertaking that trip. By 1248 the Azerbaijani capital was solidly within the control of the Il Khan dynasty, under the transitional rule of a Persian ally of the Mongols, responsible for funneling taxes and tributes to its rulers. Rumi's poems of the period are dotted with mentions of Tabriz, as if the possibility of Shams's having returned home kept arising\u2014either from reports, or because of his friend's ardent wish for them to have traveled there together. In these final poems, Tabriz remains a distant place of the mind, not, like Damascus, an actual location:\n\n_When I went to Tabriz, I spoke with Shamsoddin_\n\n_Of the oneness of God, without needing any words_\n\nAt least once, Rumi heard news of Shams in Tabriz that was believable enough for him to write a poem excitedly about the possibility of his being alive, more visceral than his whimsical payments given to strangers claiming a sighting here or there. Rumi compared the reception of this news to the Quranic story of Joseph's father, Jacob, catching the scent of his vanished son, who was said to have been murdered and cast down into a well by his brothers\u2014suspiciously similar to the murder rumors about Shams:\n\n_Joseph's shirt, and the scent of him have come!_\n\n_Following these two signs, surely he too comes!_\n\nThe finale of the _ghazal_ fixes the living Shams's whereabouts confidently within Tabriz:\n\n_You asked for a banquet from heaven_\n\n_Rise up, and prepare. The table descends_.\n\n_Good news, O Love! From Shamsoddin_ ,\n\n_In Tabriz, a new sign has come!_\n\nFinally, though, most likely in Damascus, around 1250, Rumi heard some confirmation of the death of Shams that caused him to decisively face his worst fears, which he had been avoiding as much as pursuing during the past two years, and to adopt instead an attitude of mourning, and to no longer hold out hope. The tenor of his writing, speaking, and feeling about Shams shifted. He moved toward acceptance rather than denial. From him poured a classical elegy, a container for his grief, filled with tears that were hot but not hysterical, each line of the threnody ending with the sad _radif_ , \"weep\":\n\n_If my eyes could bear to cry fully for this great grief_\n\n_Days and nights, until dawn, I would only weep . . . ._\n\n_Death is deaf to mourning, and hears no wailing_\n\n_Otherwise, with a burning heart, he would weep_.\n\n_Death is an executioner, without a heart_ ,\n\n_Even if he had a heart of stone, he would weep_.\n\nThe noble ode ends in a sorrowful mode unusual for Rumi's writings on his personal sun:\n\n_Shams of Tabriz is gone, and who_\n\n_For this greatest man among men, will weep?_\n\n_In the world of essences, he is enjoying his wedding_ ,\n\n_But in our world of mere forms, without him, we weep_.\n\nRumi might never have known the exact cause of Shams's death, or his final resting place, and he appears to have strongly dismissed all murder rumors to the end of his life. Whether inklings or doubts rose and fell over the years is not known. No one will ever know the truth about the hazy circumstances of Shams's death and burial, which were just as mysterious and obscure at the time\u2014not entirely surprising for a lone figure, no longer young, possibly traveling incognito, and without an entourage. Tombs for Shams exist in Konya, Tabriz, and Multan, Pakistan\u2014the most ancient in Khoy, a town near Tabriz on the main road from Konya, its grave site, with encrusted minaret, dating back at least to 1400.\n\nRumi's acceptance of Sham's death, though, set him free and also set Shams free to live again in Rumi's poetry as a state of being as much as a mere mortal. During the rest of Rumi's time in Damascus, he reconciled himself to this finality while allowing himself to be remade from within to become the man he wished to be in the wake of Shams's departure. When Shams left for Aleppo, four years earlier, Rumi discovered how much he relied on the volatile teacher for his new way of life. Now he needed to accept that Shams's absence was permanent. He had the option of returning to Konya, defeated, to take on the turban and robes again to live out his life respected, if perhaps a bit pitied, or of seizing responsibility for embodying the freedom and love Shams sought to impart. To do so meant undergoing the kind of life change common in young people in transition from adolescence to adulthood, but more rare in a man in his forties.\n\nSultan Valad wrote of the transformation of his father in Damascus in the technical terms of medieval theology\u2014his father went from being a \"pious man\" to a \"mystic.\" A \"pious man,\" explained Sultan Valad, obediently follows the religious laws, believing \"If I do good deeds, I won't be drawn to evil.\" Yet the mystic, he wrote, \"Out of love, says 'What will come to pass?' In a state of amazement, he waits to see what God will do.\" Sultan Valad probably learned of this distinction from his father, who composed another elegy for Shams at that time revealing a similar understanding of his change:\n\n_Each dawn, like an autumn cloud, I rain tears at your door_\n\n_Then wipe the tears from your house with my sleeve_\n\n_Whether I travel to the east or the west, or up into the sky_\n\n_I won't see any sign of life, until I see you again_.\n\n_I was a pious man of the land. I held a pulpit_.\n\n_Then fate made my heart fall in love and dance after you_.\n\nRumi's final days in Damascus were quieter and more formal. The madness of Konya for him had subsided. Aflaki later reported of time spent by Rumi studying in the company of a local leader of the Damascene Sufi community whom he \"loved dearly.\" He had clearly avoided Konya, the scene of so much pain and breakdown, and was now ready to return. In another set of Sufi terms, he had graduated from \"lover\" to \"beloved,\" finding the source of the power and wisdom he admired and missed in Shams within himself. The integration he experienced in his poetry occurred in his life as well. In Sultan Valad's version, Rumi discovered Shams, \"in himself, radiant as the moon.\" As he directly repeated his father's words, either from verses Rumi recited, or from a near rendition:\n\n_He said, \"Since I am he, who am I seeking?_\n\n_I am the same as he. His essence speaks!_\n\n_While I was praising his goodness and beauty_\n\n_I myself was that beauty and that goodness_.\n\n_Surely I was looking for myself.\"_\n\nAt about the age of forty-three, Rumi returned to Konya, rarely to leave again. Much had transpired in the capital since he had looked on as a young man while his father was given a royal welcome when his family first arrived two decades earlier. His own reentry was now quite different, as those gilded and hopeful days were long faded. The great protector of both his father and the Seljuk Empire, Kayqobad I, had been dead for over a dozen years. Likewise Kayqobad I's profligate and inept son, Kaykhosrow II, had died four years earlier\u2014after having temporarily placated the Mongols with a weak financial deal. He left behind an uneasy triumvirate of three young princes, all younger than twelve\u2014Ezzoddin, Roknoddin, and Alaoddin, the son of the sultan's favorite wife, Gorji Khatun.\n\nThese royal personages and their machinations were more than distant chess pieces to Rumi. He returned to Konya a far more outspoken figure than he left\u2014less \"pious,\" to use the word of both his son and himself. These key personalities of the Seljuk court would turn out to be far more forgiving and protective than some of the more upright members of the religious establishment in town, and his relations with them were often quite close. Either mother or stepmother to all three sultans, Gorji Khatun became the center of a circle of noblewomen devoted to Rumi, and was mentioned warmly in a poem of praise written by Sultan Valad. At least nine letters exist from Rumi to the Sultan Ezzoddin, in which he referred to Ezzoddin as his \"son\" and himself as his \"father.\" Mutual fondness also tied him to Karatay\u2014a freed Greek slave, now regent, the true power behind all three thrones between 1249 and 1254\u2014whose \"angelic qualities\" Rumi once extolled.\n\nKaratay especially was helping preserve Konya from the sort of destruction and stripping of all beauty and subtlety that Rumi had just witnessed in Damascus. Indeed the capital was experiencing a mellifluous and florid spike in its art and architecture that lent a warm context to Rumi's wish for a spiritual life of music and poetry. The symbol of this late phase of the Seljuk Empire in Konya was the _madrase_ built by Karatay as his own legacy, a theological school across from the Citadel, midway to the Madrase Khodavandgar, which was finished in 1251, just as Rumi was returning from Damascus. Its architecture was a clear departure from the sobriety of the Alaoddin Mosque toward a more refined Seljuk classical style\u2014covered in turquoise blue glazed tiles, encircled by bands of Kufic inscriptions, with carved interlocking triangles leading toward an open dome. The white, bluish, black, and turquoise tiles of the dome formed complex patterns of stars. At night, actual stars visible in the circle of the dome reflected in a pool below, the sort of effect never lost on Rumi, for whom reflections expressed his metaphoric way of seeing:\n\n_Just as water reflects the stars and the moon_ ,\n\n_The body reflects the mind and the soul_.\n\nIf Rumi's life had been disrupted by Shams, so had the family to which he returned, though in ways set up early on by their first responses to the stranger from Tabriz. Kerra went along rather easily with her husband's transformation following Damascus. She had always exhibited a bent toward a magical spirituality of dreams and visions as well as hovering _jinn_ and lurking water monsters. Many of the more incredible tales of Rumi after his death\u2014like being transported to Mecca during prayer and returning with dust on his feet\u2014were traced back to her. Of his two sons, both in their midtwenties, Sultan Valad had solidified his role as his father's dutiful favorite. His white sheep image, though, was sullied by some, like Kerra, who complained of his violent behavior, out of his father's view, toward other family members in the harem. The more tortured Alaoddin left Konya for a time after the disappearance of Shams, shamed by his father's blaming him for his role in the events\u2014the estrangement between the two never entirely healed during Alaoddin's lifetime. Rumi's third son, Mozaffaroddin, a young boy, was still in the harem, with his sister Maleke; within a decade both children would need to decide whether to lead mercantile lives or to become Sufis.\n\nWhen Rumi returned from Damascus, he moved between court and family and school as he always had, yet he was somehow changed. And that change became the next mystery for those around him to notice and try to understand. Unlike Shams, truly an outsider with no stake in any place or institution, Rumi had always been an entitled member of the religious and ruling class of Konya, and his comments and actions were topics of note, especially given the ongoing drama of his very public adoration of Shams. He knew when he returned to Konya that he was walking onto a stage again. He went about his business with that air of being solitary while being among people that Shams had counseled. Yet he was now not a frightening or aloof figure to most. He had evolved into a far more accessible and concerned religious leader, without pretense, good-humored, humble and simple in approach, living life in a new way in his old town.\n\nMany stories of Rumi following his return from Damascus report quiet acts of kindness around town. Typical was the friend who told of Rumi having asked him to purchase two trays of tasty delicacies at market. When he gave them to Rumi, he wrapped them in a cloth and departed. Curious, the friend trailed him and discovered Rumi inside a ruined building, feeding the treats to a dog that had given birth to puppies. When confronted, he explained, \"This unfortunate dog has not eaten anything for seven days and nights, and because of her puppies she is unable to go off.\" Such mercy from Rumi, described as having walked with his head down, spoke to all the people of Konya, his humility and kindness understood as virtuous by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike.\n\nHe appeared everywhere, mixing with everyone, in all kinds of settings. Many of those around him wished to protect him by keeping him apart and dignified. But he repeatedly showed by his demeanor that he was a changed person. Once he attended a _sama_ session where a young man brushed against him during the dance, and Rumi's disciples said harsh words to the overly excited whirling Sufi about his decorum. Rumi quickly cut them off, refusing to be kept insulated or to hurt anyone's feelings in the name of piety:\n\nMy kindness is such that I don't want anyone's heart to be hurt because of me. When someone in a crowd in _sama_ brushes up against me, some of my friends try to prevent them, but I am not pleased by that. I have said a hundred times don't presume to speak for me. Only then am I content.\n\nHe was also bold and energetic in organizing his own _sama_ sessions in public, drawing a clear line to show where he stood on this issue of music, dance, and song in religious meditation and prayer. While exceedingly kind, he was also galvanized and immoveable in his resolve. As Sultan Valad remembered, stressing his remarkable reinvigoration: \"He went to Damascus like a partridge, and returned to Rum like a falcon. A drop of his soul became as expansive as the sea. The degree of his love became even greater. Because he became like this, don't ever say, 'He didn't find him.' Whatever he was seeking, he truly found. He again called together all the musicians, on the roof and in the yard. Not knowing his head from his feet, he shouted with all his strength, his voice boisterous. His love was filled with waves like a stormy sea. Everyone was astonished.\"\n\nIn trying to make sense of the meaning of his time with Shams, and its lessons for his life going forward, Rumi's thoughts often returned to a favorite Sufi guiding notion of the need for a living spiritual world axis, either known or anonymous, who was the center of love and understanding in his time, and on whom the welfare of all human beings depended. Rumi later explained this subtle, elusive concept in Book II of his _Masnavi_ :\n\n_In every age a saint appears_\n\n_As testing continues to the end of time_\n\n_When those with good souls will be liberated . . ._\n\n_He is the lamp that gives light to other saints_\n\n_Lesser saints are like lamp niches, reflecting his light_.\n\nRumi never directly said that he considered Shams as the saint of saints of his epoch. He did not attempt to place him technically within the complex hierarchy of Sufi spirituality, remaining as guarded, or ambiguous, on this as on many theological matters. Yet he implied in all his turns of phrase that he did believe Shams was such an exalted figure. He went about Konya looking for the reflection of such light in the people he met every day.\n\nWith the passing of the decades, especially the tumultuous decade of the 1240s, Sultan Valad came to present the life of his father schematically, following the basic contours, but tidying them into defined squares and boxes. As his son described his father's life, the crazed search by Rumi for Shams was resolved by 1250, when he returned to Konya having attained a station of empowerment. Yet Rumi actually remained fitfully pained by his aching memories of the loss of Shams throughout his life, while revealing or concealing that secret in different ways. Likewise his \"Collected Shams of Tabriz,\" or at least the thousand or so poems explicitly naming Shamsoddin, were implied to have all been written during their time together, especially during the searching in Syria. Logically, if Rumi understood the need for a living spiritual saint, he would not have kept summoning the spirit of Shams in poetry. He did, though, continue writing poems of love that pointed to just such composition, as in one wrenching late _ghazal_ :\n\n_I grew old mourning him, but say the word \"Tabriz\"_\n\n_And all of my youth comes back to me_\n\nRumi kept honoring the memory of Shams and marked his continuing presence, his enduring spirit. He often visited Shams's cell near the _madrase_ portico. Evoking his own nicknaming of Shams, Rumi, according to Aflaki, \"one day lowered his head before the door of Mowlana Shamsoddin's room and, with red ink, inscribed in his own blessed handwriting, 'The place of the beloved of Khezr.'\" The cell was kept untouched as a timeless shrine to Shams. Years later, when Rumi heard someone doing repairs, and hammering a nail into the wall of the cell, he cried out, \"They feel no fear in hammering a nail in this place? Don't let them do it again. I imagine that they are driving that nail into my heart!\" No one could spend time in the Madrase Khodavandgar without sensing the resonance of Shams's lasting impact upon Rumi. Folded into his aura of solitude, and his faraway look, was the absence of the one man who would have understood him.\n\nEven Rumi's way of dressing was a constant reminder for him of Shams. As a sign of respect, when he accepted Shams's death, Rumi put aside the white turban that had been his headgear until that time, the standard designation of the scholar and mature religious leader, and wrapped a smoke-colored turban about his head instead. He also dispensed with his wide-sleeve jurist's robe, like the _atabi_ robes worn by academics in Baghdad, made of shimmering silk. He fashioned an inexpensive _faraji_ cloak woven from thick linen cloth, made in India or Yemen, and dyed dark blue. Such was the garb associated with traveling Sufis, their dark hues masking the clotted dirt of the road, while Rumi associated them as well with the rich violet hues of the early morning skies:\n\n_Morning rises, and draws his polished blade_ ,\n\n_In the heavens, a light as white as camphor bursts forth_\n\n_The Sufi of the skies slices his blue robe and shawl_\n\n_Downwards, deliberately, until he touches his navel_.\n\nDark blues and violets were also the colors of sorrow and distress in medieval Persian society, and family members wore blue clothing as often as black during their formal forty days of grief. As Aflaki reported, \"This was his clothing until the end of his life.\"\nPART III\nCHAPTER 10\n\n_\"Last year in a red cloak . . . this year in blue\"_\n\nONE day Rumi, in an energetic state, was walking down a street in the goldsmiths' quarter within the commercial market district of Konya. When he happened to pass by the familiar, small shop of Salah, the sound of the steady hammering of the goldsmith struck his ear in a musical way. He responded to the percussive rhythms and, according to the story told by Sepahsalar, began to whirl spontaneously in the street: \"When Salahoddin saw his _sama_ and his movement to the rhythm of his beat, he did not stop his hammering, not caring about the damage to the gold. After a while Salahoddin stepped out of his shop to converse quietly with Mowlana.\" As Sepahsalar recounted their portentous reunion: \"Salahoddin polished his inner mirror by speaking with Mowlana.\"\n\nThe two had known each other for twenty years, most memorably during the early days when Rumi and Shams first met and Salah opened his home to the two men, giving them a safe haven, while many of Rumi's family and school, outside those walls, were growing irate and agitated. For his trust and sharing in a special time kept secret from most others, Rumi cherished Salah. On the afternoon he began whirling in front of his shop, he and Salah shared a magical moment of recognition rekindling the memory of Rumi's first glimpse of Shams outside the inn at least six years earlier. Following this encounter, Salah became the second of the three beloveds central in Rumi's life.\n\nSalah was also a living link to Rumi's original tutor, Borhan, and so to the spiritual legacy of the lost world of Khorasan and Rumi's father. Both Salah and Rumi had been helped by Borhan, who recognized promise in Salah because of his close following of Borhan's austere regimen in fasting and meditation. Salah's daughter Fateme recalled an occasion in their home when Borhan pointed out the different temperaments of Rumi and her father. If the traditional teacher of the time passed on his very style and behavior to his students, Borhan spoke of splitting that legacy: \"I passed on my eloquent speech to Jalaloddin, since he already had abundant spiritual power. I bestowed my beautiful spiritual state on Salahoddin, as he has no capacity for any form of eloquence.\" No trait of Salah's was more commented upon than his inarticulate manner of public speaking.\n\nRumi was a member of the Persian cultural elite, by dint of not only his family but especially his immersion in the rarefied university atmospheres of Baghdad, Damascus, and Aleppo. Salah, if he read at all, had never even attended a _maktab_ , the elementary school emphasizing reading, writing, and Quranic recitation so important in Rumi's life as a boy in Central Asia. Salah's Persian and Arabic were broken. When he had returned to the fishing village of Kamele, following Borhan's departure for Kayseri, Salah fit easily into the simple rustic life of his father, Faridun, and mother, Latife. He married and had several children of his own. Returning to Konya, according to Aflaki, he and Rumi then followed the separate paths laid out by Borhan: \"As Mowlana was engaged in the study of the religious sciences, disputation, teaching and giving sermons, Salahoddin was striving in his goldsmith shop to earn a living while gaining power in his spiritual state.\"\n\nCloser in age to Shams than Rumi, Salah cut a fabulist figure of a wizened mystic in his shop. He was especially given to seeing colored lights and visions from a world made visible only with the inner eye, perhaps enhanced by the extremes of his fasting. \"I see so many wondrous lights,\" he told Rumi. At other times, he would say, \"I have seen an ocean of white light,\" or \"I see an ocean of dark blue light,\" or \"I see a green light and I see a yellow light. I see a smoke-colored light and behold, the ocean of black light has become agitated with waves.\" When Sultan Valad asked his father if their renewed companionship was based on these hallucinatory visions, Rumi replied, \"No, rather I love him because of his character and our special affinity.\" In most of the poems that he began writing evoking Salah, Rumi stressed his otherworldly demeanor and his faraway gaze:\n\n_That lion-hunting deer, clearly from his eyes_ ,\n\n_Roams another desert, beyond heaven and earth_\n\nRumi was not shy about casting Salah as a substitute for Shams. The logic of the medieval Sufi notions of love and sainthood led to his understanding that the love in human hearts was universal and, therefore, similar. The life of the spirit required two hearts beating as one to work its alchemy. Rumi wrote transparently of his substitution of Salah for Shams, following their afternoon of dance and conversation outside his shop:\n\n_Last year in a red cloak, he rose, like the moon_ ,\n\n_Only to return this year, in blue_\n\n_The Turk you saw last year in Turkestan_\n\n_Returned this year as an Arab_\n\n_The same beloved, but in different clothes_\n\n_He changed his clothes, and then he reappeared_\n\n_The wine is the same, but in a different glass_.\n\nSignifying the growing claim of Salah on his heart, Rumi began dropping his name into poems. He introduced him tentatively at first in lines referring to a \"goldsmith,\" or a \"crucible,\" much as he first camouflaged Shams's name in the Arabic word for \"sun.\" He finally mentioned Salah directly in a poem that still carried the name of Shams as its _takhallos_ , soon enough advancing to advertising his name as a new _takhallos_ in many of the over seventy love poems inspired by him over the next decade:\n\n_The grace of Salahoddin shone in the midst of my heart_\n\n_He is the candle at the heart of the world_\n\n_I am nothing but the basin where his wax drips_\n\nSome of these poems came to express an intimacy and beauty equal with those to Shams:\n\n_At the end of time, no one will help you_\n\n_Only Salahoddin, only Salahoddin_ ,\n\n_If you've learned the secret of his secret_\n\n_Don't breathe a word. Let no one know_.\n\n_A lover's chest is a fresh, flowing stream_\n\n_Souls float on its waters, like sticks and straw_\n\n_When you see his face, don't breathe a word_\n\n_Breathing will only fog the mirror_.\n\n_A sun rises from within the lover's heart_\n\n_Filling the entire world with light_.\n\nBecause these were quite different men, if Salah replaced Shams as Rumi's spiritual axis, then the resultant poems to Salah registered a change of mood from the Shams years. Gone was the fiery sun, threatening to singe or burn if too closely approached. Salah was a mirror in which Rumi saw a reflection of his own face, or a candle softly lighting a room, a deer, a gold mine, a lily, or a rose. The tenor of these poems was tender and warm. Salah was not Rumi's intellectual equal, and did not provide him with sharp challenges and debates, yet neither did he lay traps of disturbance, constantly raising the punishing, if salutary, threat of separation. In his simplicity, his ability to mirror rather than enflame, Salah had a soothing effect, allowing Rumi to regain some semblance of balance and sanguinity. Aflaki writes of them engaging lightly in \" _eshq-bazi_ ,\" a sort of \"amorous playfulness.\"\n\nCompared with Shams, a respectful formality also persisted between them. Everything was not always _eshq-bazi_. Rumi later shared a memory of Salah with students, making a point about etiquette while revealing their almost comic propriety:\n\nIt happened to me that once in the bathhouse, I was acting with excessive politeness toward Sheikh Salahoddin, and he was being excessively polite toward me. As I complained of his politeness, the thought occurred to me that I was overdoing my own humility and that it would be better to reveal my humble nature gradually. First you rub someone's hands and then his feet until little by little he becomes so accustomed to it that he no longer notices. You should not make him feel awkward, but rather match courtesy with courtesy. Whether showing friendship, or anger, you need to proceed by gradual steps.\n\nUnlike Rumi and Shams, the pair never vanished for long periods into a timeless cocoon. Rumi was often in seclusion, but usually in solitary prayer and reverie. From the time of Shams's final disappearance, he kept about him a nimbus of distinct separateness, a mysterious otherness, and a touching aloneness, which was never completely dispelled.\n\nThe shock for Konya and the Madrase Khodavandgar in this newfound focus on Salah was Rumi's decision to raise the humble goldsmith to the exalted rank of his successor. Sultan Valad labeled him the _nayeb_ , or deputy and successor of Rumi\u2014in the law schools of the time, a precise rank and position. As professors would hold more than one academic position\u2014Rumi held four different posts when Shams appeared on the scene\u2014their _nayeb_ would teach some of their classes, and deliver sermons in their stead, for a small fee, paid from the professor's salary, with the promise of future promotion to a full position. Salah did begin such preaching, as Aflaki reports that Rumi had given up delivering sermons ever again, except for one final occasion, when Salah coaxed him to elaborate on his own instruction. This appointment of a nearly illiterate local merchant to a position intended for the nuanced articulation of refined theological points was a forced variation on the usual expectations, if not an outright mockery of the entire system.\n\nRumi's bonding with Salah was a response to his need for a kindred soul. As Sultan Valad recalled him saying, echoing his own _ghazal_ : \"He said, 'That Shamsoddin I was talking about has returned again! Why am I sleeping? He just changed his clothes and returned.'\" But he was also being artful and strategic. Rumi no longer wanted to be in a position of daily authority. He preferred to be left alone. Salah was the figure he put in place as a buffer between him and his ever-needy group of students. As Sultan Valad recorded the blunt\u2014even harsh\u2014words of his father, passing on his official leadership role: \"Dedicate yourselves to Salahoddin. I am not in the mood for being a sheikh, for no bird can match flight with my wings. I am happy with myself. I need no one. Having others around me, like flies, bothers me. From now on just follow Salahoddin\u2014seek him with all your heart and your soul, and like him, walk along the straight and narrow path.\"\n\nEither intentionally or by chance, by appointing Salah, Rumi was beginning to tamper with the fundamental nature of the former _madrase_ , and to attract a new and potentially much larger and inclusive group of followers. Salah was able to appeal directly to the local working-class Greeks and Turks, rather than only to the more select religious class of Persian and Arabic \u00e9migr\u00e9s. His mispronunciation of words, which so horrified many of the educated class, would have been reassuringly familiar to his fellow laborers. Salah even had trouble with the word \" _al-hamd_ ,\" or \"praise,\" in the \"al-Fatiha,\" the opening sura of the Quran recited at the beginning of all five daily prayers, as well as a number of other Arabic and Persian words. To cover for him, as well as make a point, Rumi began mispronouncing these words in the same manner as Salah. \"Words have been changed by people in every age since the beginning of creation,\" he argued. His raising up of Salah solidified his reputation as a lover of all people, opening spirituality to everyone, not only to those who had special religious training and education.\n\nIf Salah was Shams reborn for Rumi, he reinvigorated some of the old conflicts around Shams for those traditional members of the _madrase_ , especially the remnant of the disciples of Rumi's father. They began their lamenting again, even wishing for the return of Shams as the lesser of two evils, the devil they knew: \"Again envy spread among the distrustful. Again, the hypocrites gathered together. Again, jealousy was boiling up, because they were drowning in their delusions. They said to each other, 'We were freed of the other one, but now we fear that we are entrapped again. This one is worse than the first one. . . . At least he was articulate in his speech, and well-spoken, with knowledge, intellect, language and writing. . . . This one does not know writing, or science, or rhetoric. He does not have any worth or value for us. He is an ordinary person, and foolish. He does not know good from evil. He was constantly day and night in his shop hammering, so much so the neighbors closed their doors and windows from the noise.\" Much of their resistance was based on issues of class. Salah had actually received deep spiritual training from Borhan and was perceived by Rumi as a true successor to Shams, yet they were blinded to these virtues because he was less articulate and had not read widely.\n\nRumi had no patience with criticism of Salah, especially given the history of complaints against Shams. He had learned a lesson in conviction and was now indifferent to pressure from others, whether princes or students, family or strangers. For all his starry distractedness, he had an inner rudder by which he was now navigating, its course known to him alone. Ebn Chavosh, a friend of the goldsmith, went behind his back to inform Rumi of grumblings around town claiming Salah amounted to \"nothing,\" and that his counsel was corrupted by mixed motives. Rumi was swift in his dismissal of both messenger and message, in a disquisition on the wise compassion of Salah, delivered mostly in Arabic:\n\nAs a matter of principle Ebn Chavosh should guard against backbiting with regard to Sheikh Salahoddin\u2014both for his own good and so that this dark covering might be lifted from him. Why does Ebn Chavosh think that so many people have abandoned their homes, fathers and mothers, families, relatives, and tribes, and worn out the iron in their boots traveling from \"India to the River Sind\" in hopes of meeting a man who has the aroma of the other world? How many people have died from regret because they were unsuccessful in meeting his equal? In your own house you have encountered such a man in the flesh and yet you turned your back on him. This is both unfortunate and unwise.\n\nRumi trusted his heartfelt instincts. He also understood himself to be living in a spiritual world of mirrors, as much Sufi thought conceived of the sort of affinity he was experiencing with Salah through the imagery of light and reflection, candles and mirrors. The heart of the beloved was a mirror in which the lover saw himself, and saw his reflection dignified by a shared light. True enlightenment only took place in a relationship:\n\n_Without a mirror, you can't see your face_\n\n_Look at your beloved. He is your mirror_.\n\nThis bouncing light created \"flashes\" (as Ahmad al-Ghazali described) of divinity in humans, in a physics of love, and in the natural world, mirroring divinity, when properly seen. Engaged in this optics rather than logic, the saint merely reflected. As Rumi wrote:\n\n_I'm a mirror, I'm a mirror, I'm not a debater\u2014_\n\n_You only see me if you turn your ears into eyes_.\n\nThe ultimate beloved reflected in this purified heart was understood to be God: \"Take a polished heart to God so that He may see Himself.\" For Rumi, he and Salah were two such mirrors, gazing into each other, their affinity inexplicable in words or thought. The polishing took place together and involved maturing through union and separation. Rumi's passion around Salah was driven in part by his embrace of these concepts, and this vision of a world of ricocheting light and love compelled him for the rest of his life.\n\nRumi's deputizing of Salah not only reverberated in his community but also in his family. The decision had the greatest impact on Sultan Valad, especially in the absence of Alaoddin. Sultan Valad wrote in detail of this phase of his father's life, the memories vivid because he was by then a grown man in his midtwenties and a close observer of the dynamics described\u2014rather than the teenager who tried to make sense of the disruptions caused by the even more inexplicable Shams of Tabriz. He was also alertly engaged, since he had been viewed universally as the inevitable successor to Rumi.\n\nOne day Rumi summoned his son and said, \"Look at the face of Salahoddin. That king of truth carries such insight!\" Sultan Valad agreed, though a bit unenthusiastically, pointing out to his father, \"Yes, but only in your eyes. Not in the eyes of ordinary people.\" Rumi pushed his argument that Salah was the embodiment of Shams, insofar as he carried for him the essence of love: \"This is Shamsoddin the King, just without a horse and saddle.\" While Sultan Valad hinted delicately at his disappointment, his entire life had been predicated on obeying and pleasing his father, and so he capitulated to his wishes. \"I see him the way you do,\" he reassured Rumi. And his father gave his clear command, \"From now on follow Salahoddin. Follow that true kin.\" \"Whatever he commands me, I will do,\" Sultan Valad vowed. \"I am at his service with all my soul.\"\n\nSalah felt the need to assert his position more strongly with Sultan Valad. Either coached by Rumi, or on his own volition, he pressed for an oath of loyalty, saying to Rumi's son, \"If you become my disciple, commit to me with all your heart and soul.\" Sultan Valad responded, hedging slightly to allow a higher status to the previous favorite, Shams: \"Oh king, no one can match you in _this_ age.\" Another sign of loyalty Salah shrewdly demanded was that Sultan Valad stop delivering sermons, which reminded Rumi's followers of his articulateness and fueled resentments: \"My friend, stop preaching. From now on, only speak of my goodness. . . . I want to be sure that you are all mine.\" Sultan Valad swore, in the highly florid medieval Persian manner: \"Day and night, I will turn my face towards you. You are the king and I am the servant. Whatever you want me to say, I will say. Wherever you wish to send me, I will follow your orders.\"\n\nSalah spoke with Sultan Valad about the agitation he knew was growing in the community, familiar to them from the time of Shams. He explained his promotion in rank using the metaphor of the mirror, which dominated Rumi's understanding of their relationship: \"They are upset because Mowlana made me special, above everyone else. But they know not that I am but a mirror. The mirror does not reflect itself. In me, he sees his own face. So how could he do otherwise but choose me?\" Salah was more adept than Shams at dealing with the rough-and-tumble of violent threats. Sultan Valad never wrote of any murder plots against Shams, but he did discuss a conspiracy directed at Salah, who was brusque in his response: \"When this news reached the king Salahoddin . . . he laughed loudly, and said, 'Those blind men, they are lost unbelievers. They are not aware of the power of the truth that nothing moves without God's command, not even a straw.'\"\n\nRumi not only commanded his son to submit to Salah, but he also soon arranged for him to marry Fateme, Salah's eldest daughter. In his time living at the home of Salah with Shams, during their first intense seclusion of three months, Rumi had grown close with Salah's family, including his wife, Latife; his mother, also named Latife, who lived in the house after her husband's death; Fateme, about ten years old at the time; and her younger sister, Hediye. Latife and her daughters were allowed before Rumi \"with their faces fully unveiled,\" as he was considered _mahram_ , or part of the family. He once exclaimed, of his bonds with them, \"Fateme is my right eye, and her sister Hediye is my left eye.\"\n\nOf all the women in the family, Fateme was definitely Rumi's favorite. When she was still a little girl \"because of the extreme affection he felt for her,\" he began teaching her writing and reading the Quran\u2014quite unusual for a girl of the period. So the choice of Fateme as a bride for Sultan Valad, now that she had come of age, was natural for Rumi. He was also accomplishing a spiritual version of a state wedding, merging their two families, with great hopes for a resulting baby, combining the strains of Rumi and Salahoddin. For Sultan Valad, the marriage was less ideal, and some hard days would lie ahead for the newlyweds because of his attitude. Never as visionary as his father, a marriage to the daughter of a goldsmith remained a social demotion for Sultan Valad.\n\nBalancing any misgivings of his son, Rumi expressed nothing but ecstatic joy and happiness. He wrote at least two poems, either on the occasion of the wedding contract or the wedding celebration, or both, replete with mentions of \"the Sheikh,\" the father of the bride, and raining down upon them blessings from all the religious holidays at one time:\n\n_May the blessings that flow in all weddings_\n\n_Increase with even more blessings, for this wedding_ ,\n\n_The blessings of the Night of Power, and fasting, and the feast_\n\n_The blessings of the meeting of Adam and Eve_\n\n_The blessings of the meeting of Joseph and Jacob_\n\n_The blessings of the vision of the heavens above_\n\n_The blessings that cannot be put into words_\n\n_For the daughter of the Sheikh and my eldest son_.\n\nIn another of these nuptial poems, Rumi gives a glimpse of the celebrating that took place, full of the percussive drumming now central to daily life in his community:\n\n_Dance you saints! Whirl you righteous ones!_\n\n_In the kingdom of the king of the world, lift our spirits!_\n\n_With drums hanging from your necks, in the rosy nuptial bower_\n\n_Tonight, full of tambourines and drums, the best of the best . . ._\n\n_At this moment Sufis are gathering together out of joy_\n\n_Glimpsing an invisible world, through my shouts of praise_\n\n_A throng of clapping guests, clapping like the waves of the sea_ ,\n\n_A throng of upright guests, like sharp arrows, bundled in a quiver_.\n\nBy the time of the wedding of Fateme and Sultan Valad, Rumi was adrift in a continuous outpouring of music and poetry. He performed the five daily prayers, as no one was more assiduous at adhering to the religious regimen than his self-designated Sheikh Salahoddin. (Once when he left his robe outdoors in winter, Salah was said to have put on the frozen garment and rushed to morning prayers rather than risk any infringement of the letter of the religious law.) Yet Rumi was mostly living in an atmosphere of musical instruments and altered states brought on by whirling, fasting, and meditation, while sleeping only a few hours a night. The result was the accumulating creation of the rest of his nearly 3,500 lyric _ghazals_ , written in fifty-five different meters, including obsolete classical meters. The creativity that had begun under the dramatic influence of Shams continued apace and expanded in its breadth throughout the 1250s.\n\nAn apparent source of this virtuosity was Rumi's natural talent and knack for music. His favorite instrument to play was the _rabab_ , which he customized for his purposes with a hexagonal box rather than the traditional square shape. His favorite musician, Abu Bakr Rababi, named for his mastery of the _rabab_ , was remembered clearly enough to make his way into the histories. \"His knowledge of music, which, in reality is the source of rhythm, provided Rumi with the necessary wherewithal and artistic skill to write poetry that has greater metrical variety than any other Persian poet,\" concluded the Iranian scholar Badi al-Zaman Foruzanfar of Rumi's technical skill, \"and that is why a number of meters can be found in Rumi's lyrics which are absent in the poetry of other Persian poets.\"\n\nHis method of composition was often collaborative. Not only Rumi's expertise explained his experimenting in different meters, but also the knowledge of the musicians around him, trying out different musical modes as Rumi took up the challenge to fit his words and messages to their rhythms and beats. If Shams had been the designated representative of _sama_ and its evils during their time together, Rumi was left standing alone as its defender. \"One day they asked my father, 'Why is the sound of the _rabab_ so strange?'\" recalled Sultan Valad. \"He replied, 'It's the creaking sound of the door of paradise that we hear.'\" When a local religious eminence heard the remark, he quipped, \"But we also hear the same sound. How is it that we don't become as passionate as Mowlana does?\" Rumi wittily responded, \"God forbid! In no way! What we hear is the sound of the door opening, while what he hears is the sound of that same door closing.\"\n\nAmid all this provoked and controlled ecstasy\u2014in a society where personal _gravitas_ was expected\u2014while cultivating the delicate cult of friendship between men of God, Rumi still managed to be alert to the competing practical needs of his circle, especially his family. His most pressing concern, following the wedding of Sultan Valad and Fateme, was their married life together, which turned difficult quickly and continued to present challenges when Fateme did not bear her husband any children during their first few years. Quite possibly the aggressive behavior that Rumi's wife reported witnessing from Sultan Valad toward family members in the harem was toward his wife, as Rumi was moved to write a supportive letter to Fateme, promising his advocacy:\n\nIf my dear son Bahaoddin is being mean to you, truly and with all my heart, I will withdraw my affections from him, and I won't respond to his greetings, and he won't be allowed to come to my funeral. Don't be sorrowful, and don't be unhappy, because God is by your side and He will help you. Whoever brings harm to you, if they swear a hundred thousand oaths that they are innocent, I will still find them guilty, because they are not kind to you and don't appreciate you. . . . Do not hide anything from this father, but tell me in detail about whatever happens to you so that with God's help I will be able to provide you the utmost possible assistance.\n\nHe likewise wrote a letter to his son, with whom he was more politic, almost gingerly in his approach, revealing his expertise at persuasion and tact. He made a case for his son to modify his behavior around his wife, while presenting an astute argument for respect toward women, an approach not always required of husbands at the time:\n\nBecause of the white hair of her father, and because of our family, I want you to treat her dearly, and every day and every night, treat her as if it were the first day, and every night as if it were the night of the bridal chamber. Don't think that you have caught her and you don't need to pursue her anymore, because that is the manner of superficial people. She is not the sort of woman who will ever lose her freshness. I swear to God that she has not complained, and is not sending any messages to me, either by hinting or by gesture. . . . I'm not going to tell anyone of this advice. This letter is a matter between us.\n\nRumi was similarly engaged in bringing about the marriage of the second daughter of Salah, Hediye, to the young calligrapher Nezamoddin, a scribe of the sultan and teacher of the young princes. The obstacle was the poverty of Salah, who had given up his livelihood as an artisan to take over full-time as the spiritual leader of Rumi's community, as well as being his closest companion and deflecting as much business and workaday concern from him as possible. Yet the father of a bride was responsible for providing a dowry, an expense out of reach for Salah. Though living within the tight constraints of poverty, which sometimes weighed on his own wife and family, Rumi expended much energy in letter writing to procure jobs and loans for his dependents. And so he approached a female tutor of the royal princesses, and a \"child\" of Rumi's, to take a request to the powerful and wealthy queen mother, Gorji Khatun.\n\nThe request met with a charmed response, as was often the case when the women followers of Rumi were involved. Gorji Khatun ordered her treasurer to conjure two or three clothespresses and prepare five outfits, as well as veils, hats, and jewels as accessories. According to Aflaki, \"They collected rugs and curtains and delightful carpets from Georgia, Shiraz and Aksaray, as well as a tray, a pan, a cauldron, copper and porcelain bowls, a mortar, candlesticks and a complete set of kitchen utensils.\" The value of the goods, transported to Rumi's school on mules, was high, and he divided the value of the trousseau between the two sisters to prevent any hurt feelings. Rumi next began writing helpful letters on behalf of Nezam, whom he praised as \"my dear child and an accomplished artist,\" as well as \"my eloquent, literary, competent, and honest son.\"\n\nAs expected, Rumi created a nuptial poem for the wedding of Hediye and Nezam. These occasional poems are not among his most inventive. They are formulaic and\u2014even if Rumi was not a patronized courtly poet\u2014tailored to the expectations of his audience and their degrees of understanding. But these standard poems stood in clear contrast to the tortured odes that had poured out of him publicly and privately over so many years not even a decade earlier. Rumi truly did seem to have found some balance of mystic solitariness with the patriarchal pleasures of seeing his family grow and flourish into the next generation. The palm dates, cups of red wine, and streams of milk and honey in these happy matrimonial poems of the 1250s exude felt life. As Rumi sang that day:\n\n_May this wedding still be smiling like the angels_\n\n_Today, tomorrow, and for all eternity . . ._\n\n_May this wedding be fortuitous, beautiful, and acclaimed_\n\n_Like the moon, and like the blue wheel of the sky_.\n\n_I grow silent, unable to find the words to say_\n\n_How radiantly my soul glows on this wedding day_.\nCHAPTER 11\n\n_The Fall of Baghdad_\n\nDURING the autumn of 1257, Hulagu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, began a march on Baghdad, sweeping with his Mongol forces across the Great Khorasan Road, the route traveled by Rumi's family four decades earlier. Since the death of Genghis Khan, in 1227, the Mongols had limited themselves to incremental conquests of the south of China, Russian territories, or parts of modern-day Iran, but nothing on the scale of their earlier leveling of an entire civilization in the Central Asian capitals of Samarkand, Bukhara, Balkh, and Merv. Hulagu had renewed global ambitions and was now focused on the ultimate prize of Baghdad, the financial, political, and cultural capital of the Muslim world, where much wealth had been conspicuously displayed for five centuries.\n\nFollowing the standard practice employed by his grandfather with Khwarazmshah, Hulagu sent Caliph al-Mustasim an ultimatum urgiung him to atone for a contrived list of grievances, including not providing the Mongols with military aid in various conflicts, as the caliph had sworn allegiance to Genghis Khan. The Abbasid Caliph, the thirty-seventh successor in a direct line from the Prophet Mohammad, as well as ruler of a metropolis legendary at least since the creation of its most famous fictional resident, Scheherazade, in _The Thousand and One Nights_ , was dismayed by these blunt demands. A hybrid of pope and emperor, al-Mustasim replied that the entire Muslim world, from as far as North Africa, would wage a holy war to defend the capital and its caliph.\n\nThe holy war never materialized. By January 1258 the forces of Hulagu had surrounded the city walls of Baghdad and occupied its suburbs, stretching beyond the confines of the old \"round city,\" which was quickly filling to capacity with refugees. The Mongols bombarded the city with innovative ammunition, including missiles fashioned from the trunks of local date palms and gunpowder treated with oxygen to create more powerful explosions, as well as rudimentary grenades, smoke bombs, and fire rockets.\n\nThe destruction of Baghdad was catastrophic and matched the brutal razing of Termez or Nishapur, decades before, by the unsurpassed creator of terror, Genghis Khan. Destroying dams and diverting the Tigris to create a barrier of water around the city, on February 5, 1258, Hulagu and his forces broke through the walls, burning its great libraries to the ground, massacring scholars and soldiers alike, and piling up their skulls. Hulagu then summoned the captured caliph to his camp outside the city, where the leader of the Islamic faith and his male children would be executed. According to different reports, they were wrapped in carpets or sacks, and either kicked to death by booted warriors or trampled by fierce horses. The Islamic caliphate that had existed for more than six centuries was destroyed within a week, along with its rarefied culture of meticulous Arabic scholarship and research, while the control of the central lands of the realm of Islam passed to an utterly foreign power.\n\nThis news could have taken a couple weeks to reach Konya. Eventually Rumi did speak to his circle of the nearly apocalyptic event for orthodox Muslims. As with other historical incidents, he was quite accurate in his basic account, down to the exact dating:\n\nWhen in the year six hundred and fifty-five Hulagu Khan arrived in the region of Baghdad . . . the Khan ordered the vizier of his kingdom and the pivot of his affairs: \"Write a letter on my behalf to the caliph telling him to be obedient and to submit and not to act insolently.\" . . . The caliph refused, acted with insolence, and uttered much abuse. That same day Baghdad was conquered and the caliph was taken away as a prisoner.\n\nIn his rendition of the imprisonment, Rumi tells of the caliph begging for food and being given instead bowls of jewels, pearls, and coins from his treasury as a lesson for his profligacy in spending monies on luxury rather than armies. Marco Polo chronicled a parallel tale of the caliph imprisoned in the treasury tower where he stored gold. Rumi then detailed his ignominious execution, \"in a sack . . . kicked to death.\"\n\nThe Arabic poets of the time were traumatized by the fall of Baghdad and the caliphate and mourned its passing in rhyme and meter. As one poet sorrowfully wrote of the incomprehensible event, \"Oh seekers of news about Baghdad, the tears will tell you.\" He saw no benefit remaining as \"the beloved has departed.\" For yet another poet, the unthinkable disaster signaled a \"loss for the kingdom, for true religion,\" which could turn a child's hair white. For some, the waters of the Tigris ran red from the bloodshed, for others, black from the ink of the books. Regarded as marking the apex of an Islamic golden age, Baghdad would remain much depopulated and mostly in ruins for centuries.\n\nRumi never joined in the wailing chorus. Rather than focusing on damage done to the religion of Islam or the insult to the caliphate, he mostly dwelled on the benefits of fasting, using the Mongols as examples, as they fasted for three days before the battle:\n\nNow if not eating and fasting had such an effect on the affairs of unbelievers and doubters of the faith so that they could attain their goal and become victorious, imagine what would be achieved and bestowed upon supporters of religion and upon all good and pious people if they were to do the same.\n\nAs Aflaki summed up Rumi's treatment of this crucial historical event of the Muslim era: \"Mowlana brought forth this story on behalf of the excellence of hunger and not eating.\"\n\nThe crisis was even less seismic in Rumi's poetry, dedicated to a spiritual world that had become even more powerfully attractive as the events on the ground in the Middle East and Anatolia grew more dire by the year. Rumi did pay his respects to the power of the caliphate in his _Masnavi_ but in lines likely written years after its demise:\n\n_The deputy of the Merciful God, the Caliph of the Creator_\n\n_Because of him, the city of Baghdad is like springtime_\n\nThese words of praise, though, were put in the mouth of the Bedouin wife, perhaps purposely dated as a character from times past. He never revealed any orthodox reverence for the figure of the caliph or for any of the symbolic trappings of religious power in Baghdad.\n\nMongol armies had been appearing intermittently at the gates of Konya, too, ever since their victory over the Seljuks in 1243. In one _ghazal_ , Rumi included a personal nightmare of the Mongols threatening Konya. He atypically dated the dream within the lines of the poem as having occurred on November 25, 1256, perhaps inspired by an actual threat by Baiju, the commander of the occupying Mongol forces in Anatolia:\n\n_The Tatar armies, with bows and arrows, swelled the sky_\n\n_Ordered to rip apart the pregnant sky, to give birth to a baby . . ._\n\n_On Saturday night, on the fifth of the month of Qa'de_\n\n_In the year of six hundred and fifty-four_\n\n_Turbulence shook the town. An earthquake seized the town_.\n\nWhile the poem was phantasmagoric, Konya never suffered the horrific fate of Baghdad. At its conclusion, Rumi was unharmed, calming his own spirit, \"Help yourself to sleep.\"\n\nRather than the dramatic reversal of fortune suffered by Baghdad, Konya endured an interregnum of decades of appeasement and subjugation, with some benefits as well as much anxiety and uncertainty. In his letters, Rumi gave glimpses of his own worries as a citizen of the Il Khanate\u2014the vassal empire that was now formidably ruled by Hulagu and his extended family, and stretched from Central Asia to Anatolia, or the entire arc of the world Rumi had traversed. He complained of the greed of the Mongols for demanding endless \"taxes and camels.\" In one letter to a Seljuk official, away from Konya on military business, he reported horrid disruptions of daily life by rough bands of Mongols:\n\nDuring your absence, troubles began to occur in this town. Every night they captured a house, and killed women and children, and stole their belongings. . . . Anyone concerned with education during that time had no choice but to close their schools and end their classes. When the mind is filled with frightening thoughts, when every day there is bad news, then there is no time for education. . . . I hope that the prince will protect them, as they are distracted and unemployed. Those used to drinking sweet water, and sitting with scholars, cannot live with such constant distress.\n\nIn the same letter, Rumi imaginatively expressed the nature of the power of the Mongols, always menacing, while still allowing the Seljuks a semblance of normal life:\n\nSince this group has gained power over us, fear has prevailed. If it has stopped for an hour, it is as if a viper, sated with its prey, was asleep for a while in the corner. But it is the same viper. It will awake again eventually. Konya today is clearly one of the great centers of knowledge in the world and, God willing, will be allowed to remain so for longer into the future.\n\nOne of the ironies of this twilight epoch was the greater freedom granted figures such as Rumi. Islamic culture was allowed to flourish under Mongol rule in Anatolia, and the indifference and tolerance of these rulers toward Sufis, and religious matters generally, overlapped with the fine velleities of Persian and Seljuk culture to create a zone where exploratory mysticism was given leeway\u2014though heatedly disputed\u2014rather than leading inexorably to the brutal executions endured by al-Hallaj and others under the rule of the caliphs in earlier Baghdad.\n\nThe shadow sultan of Konya and the Seljuk Empire during all the remaining years of Rumi's life\u2014and the main foil for his ambivalent relations with the power politics of the era\u2014was Moinoddin Solayman Parvane, the de facto ruler of the Seljuk state in Anatolia during most of the period of the Mongol Protectorate, as well as a somewhat mercurial disciple of Rumi. His father, born in northern Iran, had gained prominence as a trusted vizier of Khaykhosrow II, and negotiated the peace with the Mongols that spared weakened Konya after the Seljuk defeat in the battle of Kose Dag. The son then became a regional commander in Tokat until summoned, in 1256, by the Mongol chief Baiju, who awarded him the more princely and powerful titles of _emir hajib_ and _parvane_.\n\nThe title that stuck to him, and by which he was known in his time, and down through history, was simply \"Parvane\"\u2014a Persian word with the whimsical-sounding meaning of \"butterfly.\" He was officially lord chancellor and president of the _Divan_ , or council, and, so, the representative of the sultan in all internal affairs. \"Butterfly\" referred to his dual function as the chief of the twenty-four secretaries in a sort of department of state, concerned with foreign affairs, especially the constant rustle of communications with foreign powers. Written on finely textured white Chinese paper, these memos were generally in Persian, though the Mongols had begun to introduce Turkish into the chancelleries. In the pantomime of Seljuk power on display at state ceremonies, the Parvane wore an inkpot hung about his neck\u2014the emblem of his office.\n\nEarly on during his time in Konya, the Parvane made a point of meeting and cultivating Rumi. A son-in-law of the Parvane was a disciple of Rumi in attendance at many of his talks and was sometimes their go-between. On one introductory occasion, the Parvane sent him to invite Rumi to a gathering of religious scholars at his palace. \"How would it be if Mowlana also deigned to honor us with his light-filled presence?\" the Parvane asked. \"Indeed, that would be the honor of a lifetime.\" Rumi came along but created an edifying distraction by seating himself in the courtyard rather than on the high platform reserved for honored guests. The Parvane occasionally sent Rumi gifts, which were invariably refused, eluded, or redirected. When he suggested building a cupola over the simple grave of his father, Rumi replied that the azure arch of the sky would suffice.\n\nRumi was not at all hesitant about speaking truth to power. When the Parvane appeared one day to ask him to give counsel and advice, Rumi, raising his head after several moments of silence, replied, \"I hear that the commander Moinoddin has learned the Quran.\" He answered, \"Yes, I have.\" \"I also hear that you have listened to the important works written on the study and classification of the sayings of the Prophet Mohammad.\" He replied, \"Yes, I have.\" Rumi said, \"Since you have read the word of God and the Prophet, and you know how to discuss as is required, and yet you do not take counsel from these words and you are not acting in accordance with any Quranic verse or saying of the Prophet\u2014why ever do you wish to hear something from me and then follow that?\"\n\nRumi was known to reassure the Parvane when he worried aloud to him that he was devoting all his time to the brutal machinations of power and politics rather than to his spiritual life. He once sent a message apologizing for not attending one of Rumi's talks: \"Day and night my heart and soul have been at your service, but I have not been able to attend because of my preoccupation with Mongol affairs.\" To which Rumi responded:\n\nThese are also the works of God, since they have to do with the safety and security of the faithful. You have sacrificed your all, both materially and physically, to give tranquility to the hearts of a few Muslims so that they may occupy themselves with acts of devotion. This is good work, too.\n\nOn other occasions, when the Parvane arrived unannounced to solicit wise advice from the spiritual teacher, Rumi hid from him and his retinue. He guarded his privacy and was careful not to show any special favor to the rich and powerful. After keeping the Parvane waiting at length\u2014uncustomary treatment for him\u2014Rumi emerged to find that his guest had learned an important lesson. \"For my part, because Khodavandgar was late in coming, I imagined as follows,\" said Parvane. \"'This lateness is a lesson for you, Parvane! How bitter and what a hardship it is for people in need to have to be kept waiting to speak to you.' Your being late has caused this benefit for me.\" His newfound humility freed Rumi to indulge in a soaring example of excessive Persian etiquette:\n\nThis way of thinking is very good. But the truth is that if a supplicant comes to someone's door and has a request but his voice and his face are not attractive, he will be quickly sent away. However, if someone arriving with a request has a beautiful voice and is good-looking and pleasant, he would not so quickly be given a piece of bread, to keep him there longer. I came late because your supplications, your love, and your longing are so pleasing to all the men of God that I wished for the benefits to linger.\n\nThe Parvane was so happy with this elaborate compliment that he ordered six thousand sultani coins to be delivered to the _madrase_ , which Rumi then distributed among his companions.\n\nRumi was increasingly displaying otherworldly behavior during this decade\u2014praying until dawn on his rooftop or preaching to a pack of wild dogs. Yet he never abdicated his role as a civic diplomat. He turned out to be skilled at managing the expectations of Seljuk sultans and their emissaries, providing them a connection to a spiritual practice that was sincere but also constituted good public relations requisite with their position. Rumi could create metrically precise poetry while whirling, or deliver legal opinions from the midst of extreme fasts and meditation, due to his scholarly training. Likewise his years of learning the manners of court and academy were never lost. In that sense, he fit a description by the scholar of Sufism Omid Safi of \"premodern Muslim saints\" as \"men and women of power. Their power derived from their sanctity.\"\n\nMany were the reports of haughty behavior on Rumi's part toward the Parvane. In dozens of surviving letters to the statesman, though\u2014more than to any other correspondent\u2014he was quite formal and respectful, which suggests perhaps exaggeration in the reporting of his public rebuffs or a kind of elaborate role-play acceptable to both. In these letters, Rumi employed all the titles of office of the Parvane, including his title among the Mongols, while soliciting favors for children or disciples, such as jobs, tax exemptions, or pardons. Almost all contained the bartering promise of \"praying for your prosperity.\"\n\nSometime after the death of the sultan Kaykhosrow II, the Parvane had consolidated his authority within the palace by marrying the wife of the deceased sultan\u2014and mother of the young sultan Alaoddin\u2014Gorji Khatun, the \"Georgian lady,\" otherwise known as the \"Queen of Queens.\" While she was the most powerful woman in the Seljuk state, and had become a committed devotee of Rumi, no clear evidence exists that she ever officially gave up her Christian faith, as she never took on a traditional Muslim name. Arriving on the Citadel hill, as a young bride, the Georgian princess had been accompanied by senior Christian ecclesiastics. Later in life after Rumi's death, she acted as patron of a church in Cappadocia and was depicted in one of the sanctuary murals.\n\nThe fervent devotion of Gorji Khatun to Rumi as her personal saint and spiritual guide, though, was never in doubt. When she needed to travel to the royal palace in Kayseri, she commissioned a Greek portrait painter to draw Rumi to console her during her absence. Of the proposal, Rumi said to the painter, \"It's fine, if you are able.\" As Aflaki reported, \"He drew a very delicate face, but when he looked a second time, the expression was different from the first time.\" The painter wound up with twenty sketches, since his subject's likeness was proving resistant to capture. Unfazed, Gorji Khatun packed all twenty sheets of paper into her trunk and gazed at them whenever she needed to be comforted. Her relationship with Rumi was apparently more satisfying than with her husband, as the Parvane once had to approach Rumi as a marriage counselor when Gorji Khatun demanded a divorce. She said, \"I want you to divorce me.\" Rumi advised the husband to keep promising \"I will do it,\" but not follow through, until her mood passed.\n\nThe wife of a treasury official and later viceroy, Aminoddin Mikail, was likewise one of the women in Rumi's circle, and was dubbed by him \"Sheikh of the Ladies,\" as she hosted weekly Friday evening women's _sama_ sessions. These sessions, which Rumi often attended, were far more potentially scandalous and incendiary than his public gatherings in the _madrase_. When he was present, the husbands would stand guard outside. After evening prayers, bending all rules of religious propriety, Rumi visited the women \"all alone without any followers.\" As Aflaki reported:\n\nHe would sit down among them and they would form a circle and gather before him. They would scatter so many rose petals over him . . . Mowlana, in the midst of roses and rose water, would be immersed in sweat, and until midnight he engaged in uttering higher meanings and secrets, and giving advice. Finally, slave-girl singers and rare tambourine players, as well as female flutists would start to play. Mowlana would begin performing the _sama_ and all the women became so ecstatic that they could not tell their heads from their feet, or even whether they were still wearing any covering on their heads. They would cast all their jewels and gold into the shoes of this sultan in hopes that he might accept some small thing or pay them some regard. He did not glance at anything at all. Having performed the dawn prayers with them, he would then depart.\n\nAs Aflaki clarified, at that time and in their traditional society, \"No Friend of God or prophet . . . behaved in such a manner or style.\"\n\nThe spirit of tolerance and creativity allowing such expressions of spiritual ecstasy continued to influence, as well, the public building still taking place all over Konya, especially the _madrases_ funded by ministers in the extended circle about Rumi. Rising to power as vizier after the death of the sympathetic regent Karatay was a younger politician, Fakhroddin Saheb Ata, praised by Rumi in letters to him as \"my brother\" and \"lofty and pious.\" Perhaps competing with the Karatay _madrase_ , about a hundred yards away, the vizier had built his own Ince Minareli, graced with an innovative slender minaret. Completed during the same year as the fall of Baghdad, the Ince Minareli marked a final baroque phase in Seljuk architecture, its gateway decorated with sinuously twisted Quranic lines in cursive Kufic script, one of the first uses of this more fluid style in architectural inscription, similar to the tumbling and kinetic intricacies of Rumi's own fluid poetics.\n\nRumi also maintained relations with the three young sultans, though with differing intensities of feeling and commitment. He knew Alaoddin Kaykobad III particularly, as he was the son of his devotee, the queen mother Gorji Khatun, and had been the designated successor of Kaykhosrow II\u2014even though he was the youngest\u2014since she was his favorite wife. Yet Alaoddin, who was part Muslim and part Georgian Christian, was unlucky in his final destiny. When Mongke, the descendent of Ghengis Khan, summoned the leaders of the Seljuks to his capital in Mongolia, Alaoddin accepted, as the representative of the royal triumvirate but was mysteriously murdered en route.\n\nRumi was also close with Ezzoddin Kaykaus II, the oldest brother, who was ruling in Konya during much of the latter third of the decade of the 1250s, though he spent most of his time in the pleasant Mediterranean town of Antalya, where he invited Rumi to visit. Rumi declined, telling his circle that while Antalya was warm, \"the people there are mostly Greeks, who don't understand our language, although a few Greeks do.\" In one letter, Rumi compared their separation, when Ezzoddin was away from Konya, to that of the patriarch Jacob missing his son Joseph. As his brother Roknoddin Qelij Arslan IV was the favorite of the Parvane, Ezzoddin suffered many setbacks. Rumi's letters, whenever Ezzoddin found himself again in exile, were always supportive and consoling:\n\nYour kingdom is a shelter for the poor and weak, and a shrine for the innocent and for those who are victims. I am hoping that soon happy news arrives that will tell us of your blessed return, bringing us joy.\n\nEventually Ezzoddin fled into a final exile in Constantinople, where he wore the purple slippers of Byzantine royalty and practiced Christianity. Roknoddin was then propped up by the Mongols as sole sultan with the Parvane as his designated political intelligence.\n\nFar more troubling to Rumi than the effects of the conquest of Baghdad or internal Seljuk politics during the fall and winter of 1258 was the deteriorating health of Salah, who had grown older and frailer and was bedridden. The decade that Rumi spent with Salah had been nurturing and marked a peak period of his playing musical instruments and whirling in _sama_ sessions. With such different characters, they had often been alone, even when together. Attuned to his friend with the multicolored visions, while creating his own far more delineated and fabulous images of an invisible realm in poetry, Rumi felt freer to explore his contemplative inner world of silence with Salah reliably nearby. He honored this closeness during his friend's illness by visiting him daily for long periods and neglecting most of his other obligations. Writing to one of the princes, Rumi apologized profusely:\n\nI wanted to come and be at your service and visit your blessed face but I have not had the opportunity because of the weakness and illness of our great Sheikh Salahoddin, because I am busy only with him.\n\nHe went on to say that he was praying steadily by the bedside of Salah, but to little avail.\n\nThe only friction in an otherwise smooth friendship between these two companions\u2014in contrast to the tumult of his time with Shams\u2014had been caused by jealous tendencies in Salah. Rumi inspired an unusual pitch of rivalry around him, made more pronounced by his air of detachment. Knowing of Salah's acute sensitivity, Rumi advised his son Sultan Valad not to even mention Shams or the younger Hosam, who Rumi had put in charge during his time in Damascus, in the presence of Salah. \"Even though there is no difference between them, one should not mention them,\" he said. Sultan Valad reported that his father decided against inviting to Konya, his dear Sufi friend from his time in Damascus, to avoid exacerbating these tensions with Salah.\n\nMostly, though, Rumi and Salah harmoniously shared in the daily events of each other's lives. Salah was one of the few with Rumi regularly at intimate family moments or in mundane domestic situations. At the burial of Salah's mother, Latife, dear to both of them, Rumi stayed behind at the grave with him. \"Come let us go,\" Rumi encouraged, but Salah wished to linger to pray for her delivery into the hands of angels. When Rumi next saw Salah, he was smiling, his graveside mission complete. On another day Salah hired Turkish laborers to do some work in his garden. Echoing comments common in the polyglot culture, Rumi advised, \"For demolition, hire Turks, for building, Greeks.\" When Rumi needed a fireplace built, he hired a Greek. Such were the ordinary tales told of their calm and stable companionship.\n\nThe final illness of Salah was protracted over weeks and then months. Rumi visited constantly, but such attentiveness, Salah came to realize, was keeping him alive. He finally asked Rumi to release him from his affliction. As Sultan Valad recorded, \"He accepted his request and said, 'So be it.' He rose from his bedside, and left quickly, setting off down the road towards his own house, and he became engaged with consoling his own pain. He didn't visit him again for two or three days. . . . Salahoddin, our king, grew lucid, and said to himself, 'My soul is departing my body. Now I am certain that I am leaving the world of the living. I am heading towards the world of eternity. His not visiting me is the sign that I should leave. This is the sign for me to bid farewell.'\"\n\nIn one of their quiet conversations before his death, Salah laid out his wishes for an unconventional burial, a blueprint for a style of funeral that advertised the meaning of the kind of life to which he and Rumi were committed. As Sultan Valad remembered these deathbed wishes, \"The Sheikh said, 'Around my dead body, bring the drums and the tambourine. Process towards my grave, while dancing, happy and joyful, ecstatic and clapping, so that all may know the friends of God go towards eternity joyful and smiling. Mine is a death that will be made joyful by the _sama.\"_ He envisioned a tuneful procession of dancing accompanied by drums, tambourines, flutes, and snares.\n\nSalah died on December 29, 1258. Baring his head in grief, Rumi then carried out the wishes for Salah's funeral carefully and explicitly. He ordered that the wind instruments and kettledrum players be gathered, and all processed through the streets of Konya to the family burial site in the sultan's rose garden. Before the funeral bier, carried on the shoulders of disciples, walked eight troops of singers and reciters, while Rumi spun in _sama_ all along the way. Salah was buried to the left of the sepulcher of Rumi's father. At the emotional funerary banquet that evening, Rumi recited a sorrowful elegy, echoing in some of its lines and in its _radif_ , or repeated refrain, \"weep,\" his earlier ode to Shams:\n\n_Gabriel and the wings of all the angels turn blue_\n\n_For your sake, the saints and all the prophets weep_.\n\n_Stunned by my grief, I am too weak to even speak_\n\n_Unable to create any comparisons, I simply weep_.\n\nThe joyous and frenzied funeral of Salah was yet another shock to the orthodox Muslim population of Konya. Muslim funerals were traditionally marked by gravity and restraint, the only remotely musical expression being the somber chanting of the Quran by reciters trained to modulate their tones of grief with an austere solemnity. Called to account for this raucous spectacle\u2014anticipating in its music and song his own funeral\u2014Rumi was sharply questioned. \"Ever since time immemorial the bier of the dead has always been preceded by Quranic readers and muezzins,\" he was reprimanded. \"Now, in your time, what is the meaning of these singers?\" Rumi calmly answered their concerns:\n\nThe muezzins and Quranic readers and Quran memorizers in front of the bier testify that the dead person was a believer who died in the Muslim religion. Our singers testify that the deceased was a lover as well as a believer and a Muslim.\nCHAPTER 12\n\n_\"Sing, flute!\"_\n\nDURING the years following the death of Salah, Rumi, in his mid-fifties, did not immediately fill the leadership post left vacant. More accessible than in years past, he was taking an expanded role in running the _madrase_ , now operating closer in style to a Sufi lodge, though without much formal hierarchy, or reliable income or wealth. The bulk of his surviving talks, collected in the volume titled _Fihe ma fih\u2014_ as well as much official correspondence\u2014date to this middle period. In these talks, he often stressed that no progress was possible without guidance from a wiser soul. He had entered a phase of embracing his teaching again and often looked for metaphors for his vision of his work such as an astrolabe, an instrument used in the period to determine the positions of planets:\n\nA human being is an astrolabe of God, but you need an astronomer to know how to use the astrolabe. If a seller of leeks or a greengrocer possessed an astrolabe, what would be the use? How could he fathom the conditions of the celestial spheres, or the turning of the houses of the zodiac, or their influences? Only in the hands of an astronomer is the astrolabe beneficial, for whoever knows himself knows his Lord.\n\nRumi felt a kind of spiritual expertise, like the scientific knowledge of an astronomer, which he wished to share, while knowing such learning required the passion of a lover. He was confident now in who he was as a daring religious leader, and where he fit in.\n\nWhile committed again to his school, he was hardly confined to its walls. Probably no figure was more singular, and recognizable, on the streets, or walking in the gardens or cemeteries beyond the city gates of Konya, during the decade of the 1260s. Of medium height, with gray hair, a sallow complexion, and an intense stare, and dressed always in his tightly wound turban, rough linen cloak, and orange shoes or boots, he kept his head shaved, and beard trimmed, unlike the pious religious. Often remarked on was his thinness\u2014\"as thin as the rim of a cup\"\u2014a natural trait, as his steady diet was a bowl of yogurt with cloves of raw garlic and a crust of bread. His identifiable silhouette sometimes made him a target for derision. As a rival Sufi complained, snidely, \"Look at Mowlana! What a dark figure he is, and what a silly path he follows, with his smoky turban and his dark-blue _faraji_. Who has bestowed that cloak upon him?\"\n\nTeaching the circle of Khorasani emigrants remaining from the days of his father, and the widening number of working-class Turks, Kurds, or Greeks recently brought in by Salah, he was just as compelling in giving lessons while walking about. He did not pay much attention to markers of class, race, or religion. At every random turn he was met by new opportunities to confound expectations. One day a Jewish rabbi ran into him on the street and asked, \"Is our religion better or your religion?\" \"Your religion,\" Rumi surprisingly answered. In many of these accounts, the result of Rumi's responses was instant conversion to the Muslim faith, which may or may not have occurred, though certainly Sufis were attractive representatives of the faith, as the Seljuks had calculated.\n\nRumi had more than passing relations with the Christians, not just the indigenous Greek population, but also with the many Tuscans, Genoese, and Venetians who were resident in Konya. He often visited the nearby Monastery of Plato the Philosopher, and\u2014according to a learned old monk who would later tell Rumi's grandson stories of his grandfather\u2014would take retreats there, where monks from the Byzantine Empire, Europe, Armenia, and Trabzon on the Black Sea would be staying. When he once saw a young Christian, Theryanus, about to be executed for murder near the Gate of the Horse Bazaar, Rumi, as a friend of the local Greek community, intervened with the prefect of police to save his life by covering him symbolically with his cloak. The young man became a devoted convert and changed his given Greek name to Alaoddin Theryanus.\n\nA visiting Christian monk from Constantinople, having heard of Rumi's reputation for such gestures of kindness, encountered him on the streets of Konya and bowed three times. As he raised his head, he found that Rumi was bowing back but had continued well beyond three bows. \"Mowlana lowered his head thirty-three times before the monk,\" reported Aflaki, suggesting immoderation. When the monk asked why he was showing such extreme humility before him, Rumi answered, \"How could I not act with humility towards one of God's servants? If I were not to behave this way, why would I have any worth, and who could I truly help, and what work would I be fit for?\"\n\nFollowing the example of Shams, Rumi continued to frequent the Armenian tavern district, considered definitely off-limits for Muslims. After one _sama_ session at the residence of a nobleman, Rumi was wearing luxurious gifts he had been given of a red cloak with a lynx fur collar and golden knot buttons as well as an Egyptian woolen turban. Walking past a rowdy wine tavern, he heard the irresistible tune of a _rabab_ being played inside and, filled with joy, wound up whirling in the street and giving away his cloak and hat. Regarded as scandalous was his ongoing friendship with a beautiful dancing girl, from a nearby caravanserai, who freed the slave girls working for her after meeting him. When one cleric complained, \"It is not proper for so great a person to spend time with a prostitute of the tavern,\" Rumi responded, \"At least she is honest about who she is.\"\n\nIf Rumi was misunderstood, or felt to be a threat, by a number of the religious leaders of Konya, both orthodox and Sufi, he found an entirely receptive audience in children. Even when his own children were older, he often used games and stories to teach them lessons. One day, noticing that Sultan Valad, now a grown man, was sad and depressed, Rumi put on a wolf skin, covering his head and face, and crawled up to him and said, \"Boo!\" When his son laughed, he said, \"If a beloved friend were always joking and cheerful and then said, 'Boo,' would that frighten you?\" His point was that life experiences might be scary or threatening, but never the loving essence. When his daughter Maleke complained of the stinginess of her husband, Rumi told her a story of a rich man so miserly he wouldn't open his door for fear the hinges would wear out. According to Aflaki, \"Maleke became happier. She laughed and was free from her cares.\"\n\nHe could teach his children difficult lessons, as well. Rumi's temper flared when he once came across Maleke beating her female slave. Pushing through the door, he shouted at her, \"Why did you hit her? And why are you harming her? If she was a lady and you were a slave girl what would you wish from her? Do you want me to issue a _fatwa_ that there should be no male or female slaves in the whole world, except those belonging to God? In reality, we are all brothers and sisters.\" Shocked by her father's reaction\u2014a _fatwa_ against slavery would have been remarkable in the Middle Ages\u2014Maleke freed the slave, dressing her in her own clothes, and, as long as she lived, behaved with the utmost kindness and consideration to both male and female slaves.\n\nOne day he left his neighborhood and came across some children playing. When they spotted Rumi they ran over, bowed to him, and he bowed back. A little boy shouted from the distance, \"Lord, wait for me to finish my work and I'll come, too.\" Rumi waited for him to finish his \"work\" and then embraced him. He often interceded to prevent cruelty to animals. While riding beside him, a Quranic reciter began beating the head of his donkey for braying. Rumi asked, \"Why are you beating that poor animal? He is either hungry or excited. But all beings share these responses. Why don't you hit everyone on the head?\" He could bring sweets to a litter of puppies but was also a clear-eyed observer. When a friend noted the \"happy union\" of dogs asleep in the sun, he corrected:\n\nIf you really want to see their friendship and unity, throw a piece of meat or some tripe into their midst. Then you will discover their true situation. This is the condition of people attached to the world and worshiping wealth. As long as there are no worldly goods or self-interest involved, they are friendly and loyal. But throw in a trifle of worldly goods and they forget their friendship and unity.\n\nRumi remained keen about the dangers of high position or any kind of wealth. He reserved his strongest and most stinging criticism for the rich and powerful, and could be as censorious about them as he was welcoming to the poor and marginal. When a wealthy townsman was brought to visit to pay his respects, Rumi bolted from his place and went into the toilet. After much time had passed, one of his students went looking and found him hunched down in a dark corner. Rumi heatedly explained to him:\n\nThe stench of this clogged-up toilet is a hundred times better to me than the company of the anxiety-laden rich. For the company of worldly people and the wealthy turns enlightened hearts dark and only causes confusion.\n\nHe put the matter a bit more elegantly when speaking in public to a circle of his students:\n\nThe danger in associating with kings is that anyone who converses with them, claims their friendship, or accepts wealth from them, must in the end tell them what they wish to hear, and hide their own opinions about their evil behavior to preserve themselves. They are unable to speak in opposition to them. Therein lies the danger, for their religion suffers. The further you go in the direction of kings, the more the other direction, which is essential to you, becomes strange to you. The further you go in that direction, this direction, which should be beloved by you, turns its face away from you. The more you accommodate yourself to worldly people, the more the true object of your love grows estranged from you.\n\nEqually challenging to Rumi was fame, creating another sort of status, which was based on a more subtle currency, intimately and increasingly familiar to him. Aflaki reported that one day Rumi turned to his companions and unexpectedly confided:\n\nAs my fame increased and people came to visit me and desired to be with me, from that day, I have had no peace or rest from this affliction. The Prophet was correct when he said that \"Fame is an affliction, and repose lies in obscurity.\"\n\nHe often lashed out at fame, claiming that each degree of removal from obscurity and anonymity increased the deep pain of separation from God. As he wrote in the _Masnavi_ :\n\n_Make yourself thin and wretched_\n\n_To be let out of the cage of fame_\n\n_Fame is a strong and powerful chain_\n\n_Heavier along this way than iron_.\n\nHe felt similarly about the sort of false praise or flattery bestowed on the rich or famous:\n\n_Words of praise taste delicious_ ,\n\n_But be careful, they are filled with fire_\n\nSo Rumi avoided any privilege of rank or status both for himself or anyone around him. He quickly exited a bathhouse minutes after entering when he discovered that an attendant had removed someone from the edge of the pool to make room for him. \"I began to sweat in shame and I quickly came outside,\" he said. He would always wait for his disciples to enter the house of noblemen first for fear they would be stopped at the door after he entered. When he saw Sultan Valad bumptiously riding on a horse while others walked, he ordered him to dismount, warning of the \"affliction of high position . . . You are looking at everyone from above, and so you see them as beneath you.\"\n\nTo keep his own appetite for food, money, or fame in check, Rumi exercised extreme austerities, rarely slept, and was continuously close to prayer. He distrusted comfort, and while embroidering a beautifully inviting theology of love, music, and poetry, relied for its practice on a forbiddingly hard regimen. Instead of candles, he would insist on linseed-oil lamps, which the poor used. When his wife complained of their extremes of penury, he replied, \"I am not keeping you from having the things of the world, I am keeping the world from having you.\" After a female servant in the women's quarters complained of being allotted such a small amount of money to spend for food, he reminded her that she still had her eyes, nose, and limbs, which were extremely valuable.\n\nIn a public bathhouse, Rumi was shocked to catch sight of a reflection of the result of his abstemiousness\u2014his weak and emaciated body. \"I have never in my whole life felt ashamed before anyone but today I am extremely embarrassed before my thin body,\" he said. \"How my body laments, 'You don't leave me be in peace for even a single day so that I might gain some strength back to bear your load!'\" His startled recognition, however, did little to change his behavior. In the middle of that difficult winter, while even young men were huddled in front of ovens and stoves in furs, Rumi was on the roof nightly, praying\u2014all done in the interest of achieving further visionary glimpses of the loss of self, of becoming freer:\n\n_One morning, a moon appeared in the dawn sky_\n\n_Descending even closer to get a look at me_\n\n_Like a hawk, seizing a little bird, while hunting_ ,\n\n_That moon seized me, and as we climbed the sky_\n\n_I looked within myself, only to find no self there_\n\n_Within that tender moon, my body had become a soul . . ._\n\n_The entire ship of my existence had vanished in the sea_.\n\nOn one of those evenings, around 1261 or 1262, Hosam chanced upon Rumi in his private quarters. Rumi's loyal follower was now in his midthirties, and had been serving, at his request, as the treasurer of the unofficial order so that Rumi never needed to touch money or pay much attention to its allotment. Hosam had recently been mulling over a suggestion and was looking for an opportune moment to approach. He had noticed that many of the younger students were eagerly reading aloud from Attar's _Conference of the Birds_ as well as Sanai's _Garden of Truth_ \u2014both _masnavis_ or long poems in rhymed couplets on spiritual themes. They preferred such poems to the drier prose manuals on Sufi theory. So he decided that Rumi should write his own extended poem, full of moral pith and wisdom. \"Collections of your _ghazals_ have become numerous,\" he proposed. \"Yet a new book in the manner of Sanai, written in the meter of Attar, as a memento for the souls of lovers, would be a kindness.\"\n\nIn response, Rumi supposedly plucked from the folds of his turban a page on which he had already written eighteen couplets, the beginning of a poem in rhyming lines of eleven syllables that followed just the meter requested\u2014the flowing _ramal mahzuf_ , stressed in drumming feet of four syllables each, with the last foot of each line losing a syllable. He handed the page to Hosam, who read the prologue of a poem-in-the-making that eventually grew so famous as to simply be referred to by its form\u2014as the _Masnavi\u2014_ eclipsing all other verses composed in the same rhyming pattern:\n\n_Listen to the reed flute and the tale that it tells_\n\n_How it sings of separation:_\n\n_Ever since I was cut from my bed of reeds_\n\n_Men and women have joined in my lament_\n\n_I keep seeking other hearts, torn by separation_ ,\n\n_To share my tale of painful longing_\n\n_Everyone cut at the same root_\n\n_Longing for the time when they were joined_.\n\nIn the guise of this mournful flute\u2014perhaps a flute cut from the reed beds of Khorasan\u2014Rumi found a voice that allowed him to sing of separation, which had been Shams's last and greatest lesson to him before his departure over a decade earlier, as well as of secrets, which could only be expressed in the allusive language of lyric poetry:\n\n_Out of curiosity, they drew close to me_ ,\n\n_But none discovered my secret_\n\n_My secret is woven into my lament_\n\n_Yet no eyes or ears can find its light_\n\n_Soul is woven into body, and body into soul_\n\n_Yet no eyes have the power to see the soul_\n\n_Fire, not wind, makes this flute sing_\n\n_If you don't have fire, don't play_.\n\nThe poetic flute of the eighteen-line prologue was a symbol at once mystical and familiar for its intended audience, as an instrument carrying tunes from Central Asia, but also akin to the Anatolian Phrygian flute, its plangent tones, like a human voice, commented on already in ancient writings. In one such local tale, King Midas of Gordion\u2014not far from Konya\u2014had been cursed by Apollo with a pair of donkey ears that he hid beneath his Phrygian cap. Unable to keep the secret, a courtier whispered the truth to a lake, where he thought it was safe. Yet a reed growing on the banks heard, and when a shepherd cut the reed to make his own flute, the flute began singing of the king's secret.\n\nThe result of the meeting of minds of Rumi and Hosam at this time was dramatic and significant. For Rumi to make any major shift in his life at this stage, he needed to align his roles as sheikh, preacher, father, teacher, mystic, and poet. In the confluence of Hosam with his emerging _Masnavi_ , he had discovered a diligent secretary, a respected deputy, and a beloved companion for his later years, as well as a medium of poetry that allowed him to be both ecstatic and didactic, both a mystic seer and a moral preacher.\n\nHosam was hardly a newcomer. His involvement in Rumi's life dated to the arrival of Shams, who took an interest in the young man, a teenager with the maturity of an older man because of having lost his father at an early age, while inheriting power and respect among Kurds and followers of the _akhavan_ youth movement. Much noted had been the handsome appearance of Hosam. As Aflaki recorded, \"When Hosamoddin reached the age of puberty, he was extremely beautiful and the Joseph of his day.\" (The reference was to the young Joseph, so irresistible to women, as described in the Quran.)\n\nBy the evening of his proposal of the _Masnavi_ , Hosam had begun making his transit into the much more intimate poetic cosmology of Rumi, and was soon to be affixed in his shining firmament as the third of Rumi's beloveds, both muse and companion. In this personal universe, Shams was the sun, and Salah either moon or mirror. Like Salah, Hosam was only gradually introduced in the poems\u2014sometimes in puns on the Arabic word for sword, \" _husam_.\" Sultan Valad wrote that his father came to think of Hosam as a star, or a constellation of stars. Yet in his poems, he usually identified him with sunlight\u2014not _shams_ , the source, but rather _ziya_ , which is a sunbeam or \"ray of sun.\" Rumi codified this private image in the prelude, introducing Book IV of the _Masnavi_ :\n\n_You are a ray of the sunlight of Truth, Hosamoddin_\n\n_With your light the_ Masnavi _glows brighter than the moon_\n\nThough Hosam was busy as a community leader, and devoted to his wife, he and Rumi set to work almost instantly on their project, which was taxing, time-consuming, and intensive. The poem was collaborative, as nothing was written unless Hosam was there to record it, and then to read it back and help revise it. For months and eventually years, he accompanied Rumi everywhere, writing down verses as Rumi spoke them, whether walking along the street or in a bathhouse, at home, or turning about a pole during _sama\u2014_ his informal version of the whirling dance that sometimes accompanied the meditation. Hosam recited the lines back, and Rumi would correct them, before they would be read to the disciples, as sermons or stories in serial form. Rumi preferred nighttime for poetic composition\u2014as for prayer\u2014and included apologies to Hosam for keeping late hours:\n\n_It's dawn. You who support and shelter the dawn_ ,\n\n_Please grant me pardon from Hosamoddin_\n\n_You who grant the release of intellect and soul_\n\n_You, the soul of souls, and the radiance of coral_ ,\n\n_From whom the light of dawn now begins to shine_.\n\nRumi would occasionally confuse his scribe, playing tricks on him, teaching him personal lessons beyond those expressed in his verses. As Hosam told of one incident: \"One day Mowlana came to our house. Choosing the winter room for seclusion, he went inside and did not eat anything at all. . . . He asked that the doors be closed and the windows covered. He ordered me to bring several packets of Baghdadi paper. He then began uttering divinely inspired knowledge, and I wrote down whatever he dictated in Arabic and Persian. I would read aloud whatever I had recorded, page by page, and set them aside when I was finished. He then ordered me to light the oven. He took hold of around one hundred sheets of paper, one page after the other, and threw them into the oven. . . . When the fire sent up flames and kindled the pages, he smiled, and said, 'They came from the invisible world and shall return to the invisible world.' . . . I wanted to hide a few pages, but he shouted, 'No! No! That's not correct!'\"\n\nThe poem survived such treatment, though, and thrived, and their work of the early 1260s was finally fashioned into a coherent first volume of about four thousand lines, with a beginning, middle, and end. Introducing the poem was a traditional enough Arabic prose preface, replete with Quranic references, identifying the poet, as Rumi used his first name; giving his family pedigree, \"Mohammad the son of Mohammad the son of Hosayn from Balkh;\" and crediting the inspiration for \"this long work of rhyming couplets\" to Hosam, the \"Sword,\" or \" _husam_ ,\" of truth and religion. Less traditional was Rumi's appearing to make the long poem analogous to the Quran, or at least, as he wrote, \"the unveiler of the Quran,\" as well as not including the usual invocation to the Prophet.\n\nAfter the plangent opening aria of the flute, bemoaning \"love's path, full of pain,\" a few lines into the first tale concerning the love of the slave girl for the goldsmith of Samarkand, Rumi halts to share an aside on the creation of the _Masnavi_. Among the key verses of the _Masnavi_ is this dramatized vignette in which Hosam understandably enough requests that Rumi speak to him more about his beloved Shams of Tabriz. Like the royal physician in the tale, Hosam is seeking love's pulse. Rumi, the \"I,\" in the segment, tells Hosam, the \"he,\" that the truth of love can only be expressed by metaphor:\n\n_\"It's better the secret of the loved one be disguised,\" I said_ ,\n\n_\"Even if you're telling the story, be sure to cover your ears_ ,\n\n_It's better that the lover's secret_\n\n_Be told through the tales of other lovers.\"_\n\n_He said, \"No, tell it openly, and unveiled_ ,\n\n_It's better to reveal than to hide your devotion_\n\n_Lift the veil and speak nakedly_.\n\n_I don't wear clothes when I sleep with my beloved.\"_\n\n_I said, \"If you were allowed to see the beloved naked_ ,\n\n_You would no longer exist, neither your chest, nor waist_.\n\n_Please don't request what you can't endure_\n\n_A blade of straw can't endure the weight of a mountain_ ,\n\n_If the sun, illuminating our world, came any nearer_\n\n_Then everything would be burned and go up in flame_\n\n_Don't seek to make such trouble, or turmoil, or strife_ ,\n\n_From now on, never ask again about the Sun of Tabriz!\"_\n\nIn the twenty-five thousand verses of the _Masnavi_ that follow, the name of Shams is rarely again mentioned, though his presence shimmers throughout. Only when Rumi neared its final sections would he again press harder at revealing in code the true begetter of his poem.\n\nThe key term in these verses of rhymed conversation between Rumi and Hosam was \" _serr_ ,\" or secret, which for Rumi conveniently elided with \" _sher_ ,\" or poetry. (Which elided further with \" _shir_ ,\" sweetness, reminding him of the beautiful _Shirin_ of Persian love poetry, and so on.) He never bothered to title his poem, known already in his lifetime as the _Masnavi_ , or, sometimes, _Masnavi-ye manavi_ , or _Spiritual Couplets_. In the heat of composition, he once called the poem _Hosamname_ or _The Book of Hosam_. Had the title not already been claimed by Attar, _Asrarmame_ , or _The Book of Secrets_ , would have fit. For Rumi circled in its accumulating lines around his most cherished secrets\u2014the nature and identity of the beloved, and the borderline between the human and the divine.\n\nRumi exhaustively played in his _ghazals_ on the ambiguity of the Persian pronoun \" _u_ ,\" which could refer to either \"he,\" \"she,\" \"it,\" or \"God.\" The gender of the beloved was a game built into the language that was occasionally played by Persian poets, but Rumi especially exploited its metaphysical confusions: Were his poems truly to Shams? Or God? Was he praising the natural sun, the human Sun, or the eternal Sun? In the _Masnavi_ , which was more of a teaching poem, he engaged in theological issues, but with the same coy gamesmanship. In the _Masnavi_ , edgily dubbed \"the Quran in the Persian tongue,\" probably by the Sufi poet Jami two centuries later, Rumi explored the nearness of the human to the prophetic or the divine. Such intimacy seemed especially granted to the lover, or to the poet of love, as Rumi cast himself as the thin reed flute played by Love:\n\n_You blow into me. I am in love with your breath_.\n\n_I am your flute! I am your flute! I am your flute!_\n\nThe _Masnavi_ expanded into a grand book of tales, like much of the literature Rumi had grown up with as a boy in Khorasan. A number of the stories in its first book are set in the locations\u2014either geographical or imaginative\u2014of his childhood. The slave girl has been carried away from her goldsmith of Samarkand, perhaps during the siege of Khwarazmshah. The lion and hare of _Kalile and Demne_ appear early on, as the hare tricks a marauding lion into lunging after his own reflection into a deep well. From Attar, Rumi retooled a number of stories, such as the parrot of India who escapes her cage in a greengrocer's shop by playing dead. Unlike the originals, though, these tales are not framed or continuous, but are linked or interrupted by Rumi's musings in a manner closer to the rambling style of a Sufi master adlibbing a mixture of stories and morals.\n\nOther stories came from Rumi's memories of tales told by Shams, not only the secret pulse of the poem but also a source of much of its raw material. If Rumi maintained his closeness with Shams by whirling in _sama_ , he did so, as well, by retelling his stories. During his time in Konya, Shams especially liked to tell of a vain gentleman who fussily instructed his barber to pick out all the white hairs from his beard. The barber espied so many white hairs that he snipped off his entire beard and laid out the hairs before his customer, saying, according to Shams, \"You pick them out. I have work to do.\" (In Rumi's version in the _Masnavi_ , the moral is the unimportance of theological hairsplitting for lovers of God.) Or his tale about the mouse that took the reins of a camel and started walking, fancying he pulled the beast by his own strength. Rumi used many of these lines and stories, like bits of colored glass or tile, in his complex epic arranged in mosaic form.\n\nAfter a year or two, Rumi concluded the first volume of the _Masnavi_ by reciting to Hosam an incident told of Ali, the nephew and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad, who was on the battlefield and about to deliver a death blow to an infidel knight. As Ali lifted his sword, the knight spat in his face. Suddenly Ali, instead of stabbing downward, let his sword drop. Not spun as a parable of nonviolence by Rumi, the incident is a showcase of the mysterious ways of God. Held by Sufis as a model of the mystic saint, like Arjuna on the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita, Ali sees beyond mere winning or losing to a larger divine pattern:\n\n_I am a mountain. He is my solid base_.\n\n_Like straw blown about by the thought of Him_.\n\n_My desire is stirred only by His wind_ ,\n\n_I am ridden by the love of Him alone_ ,\n\n_Anger is the ruler of kings, but my slave;_\n\n_I have tied anger beneath my horse's bit_ ,\n\n_I have beheaded anger with the sword of patience_\n\n_God's anger has been turned within me into kindness_\n\n_I am plunged in light, though my roof lies in ruin_\n\n_I am turned into a garden, though I am filled with dust_.\n\nRumi concludes his first book, perhaps still conceived as the entire work, with the true lover, the lover of God, and emphasizes his essential theme as religious and spiritual. He would eventually quotes or alludes to 528 Quranic verses in thousands of the lines of the epic.\n\nAs Rumi was absorbed in the composition of his _Masnavi_ , he became clearly aware of the tremendous changes he had undergone in the two decades since his first poems encouraged by Shams of Tabriz. If the beloved were a mirror in which the lover could see his soul, poetry was a mirror, too, in which the poet could glimpse personal reflections. Rumi had matured, and like many poets still creating into their later years, he had advanced from lyrical abandon to a more classical and meditative mode. A measured clarity replaced the earlier divine madness. Rumi recognized, and shared with the audience for the new _Masnavi_ , his sense of the loss of his more torturous rapture, his late work framed as the calmer product of his sunset rather than his sunrise years:\n\nWhen I first began to compose poetry, there was a strong inspiration that caused me to compose. At that time it was very effective. And now, even though this inspiration has weakened and is setting, it still is effective. It is God's way to nurture things while they are rising, and create great effects and much wisdom. Yet even during the setting time that nurture still stands. The noble title _Lord of the East and the West_ means that God nourishes both the rising and the setting inspiration.\nCHAPTER 13\n\n_\"A nightingale flew away, then returned\"_\n\nSOON after Rumi completed the first book of the _Masnavi_ , around 1262, revealing his expanded powers as a poet of richly animated spirituality, production came to a sudden halt. Hosam's wife had died, and the young man's response was severe. Like Rumi, Hosam had a single wife, rather than the conventional harem of wives kept by Rumi's father, Baha Valad. Hosam was also a notably devoted husband. From the earliest days of their marriage he would not look at other women, whom he could have married according to Islamic law. And he took care to avoid the bathhouse during the day when he might catch sight of women entering and leaving, instead going at night when only the men bathed.\n\nThe death of his wife caused Hosam to plunge into a severe depression, and he exhibited a lack of energy for completing daily tasks. He experienced an inner darkness that led him to withdraw. As Aflaki described his condition, \"In his emotions and in his body, he became sluggish and slow. Within himself, every moment he experienced a new mood and a new perplexity so that he could not be engaged with anything else.\" Rumi later described this hidden phase in his life as leading to Hosam's \"spiritual ascension.\" During the long interruption, the two men neither visited nor spoke with each other.\n\nEqually disruptive, the death occurred in mid-September of the same year as that of Alaoddin, who had been estranged from his father since the disappearance of Shams, nearly fifteen years earlier. Dying young at about the age of thirty-five, Alaoddin had children who were living separately from the _madrase_. He had continued to follow the orthodox path of teacher and preacher, questioning the musical and mystical practices of his father, and embarrassed by the changes wrought upon the family legacy bequeathed by his grandfather. Rumi, in turn, had never forgiven his son for his part in the disappearance of Shams and for joining the insurrection against him. He did not even attend his funeral. As Aflaki recapped the family history, \"Having waged war against Mowlana Shams of Tabriz, he hastened to ally himself with the rebellious disciples. It is said that they led him astray and put him up to this. Afterwards, being angry with him, Mowlana cast out of his blessed heart the love he had for him. . . . And during those days after Alaoddin had died, he was not present at his funeral and did not pray over him.\"\n\nThe reported hard feeling for his son, even at the time of his funeral, was harsh and not always accepted as accurate. Some explained Rumi's absence at his son's funeral as extreme grief. Others took the report as propaganda against Alaoddin in a conflict between his descendants and those of Sultan Valad over the family heritage. Indeed many signs pointed to Alaoddin's continued engagement with his family. Sultan Valad wrote two elegies for his brother\u2014if not especially moving quatrains\u2014and he was buried in the family plot, near Baha Valad and Salah. Rumi had written at least three letters to Alaoddin in recent years, addressing him as \"my dear son,\" \"light of my eyes,\" and \"pride of professors,\" pleading in one for him to return home, where he belonged, and to ignore accusations leveled against him. Filial relations were strained but not broken:\n\nDear pride of professors, and beloved of the pious, accept greetings from this father, and pray for him. I wish for you to look into your generous spirit and shut the window of anger. . . . If someone does not fulfill his duties as a son, he will never feel peace and his heart will never grow light, even if he prays and fulfills all his religious duties.\n\nThough their relationship remained tense at the time of his death, his father eventually came to forgive Alaoddin for his part in the traumatic events of the decade of the forties. A schoolteacher told of having accompanied Rumi one day to visit the tomb of Baha Valad: \"After he prayed for his father and recited litanies for him and meditated for quite some time, he asked me for an inkwell and a pen. When I brought them, he stood up and went to the tomb of his son Alaoddin, and wrote a couplet on the whitewashed tomb. . . . Mowlana immediately forgave him and said, 'I had a vision that my Lord Mowlana Shamsoddin Tabrizi had made peace with my son and forgave him and interceded on his behalf so that he became accepted as one of those pardoned by God.'\"\n\nWhile the conflicts with Alaoddin were resolved for Rumi after his son's death, the theological issues that had separated them continued to divide Rumi from other prominent members of the local community of learned Muslims. Rumi often found himself at odds with both the pious clerics and other Sufis. Aflaki described the ceaseless criticism of his practices among the clerics: \"At this time people expressed so many complaints and so much resistance, issued _fatwas_ and read out so many chapters forbidding _sama_ and the _rabab_ that it would be impossible to describe in an entire book. He tolerated all of this because of his extreme kindness, compassion, and generous spirit, and he said nothing.\"\n\nIn spite of Aflaki's stress on his magnanimous serenity, Rumi was not always impassive about internecine conflicts, especially those involving other Sufis. By the 1260s the religious figures known as \"Babas,\" who often accompanied Turkmen emigrating from Central Asia, had been spending more time in Anatolian cities, attracting large followings and princely patronage. When the Sultan Roknoddin chose one of these popular Babas as his personal spiritual leader, Rumi responded peevishly. He had been invited to a ceremony at the palace in honor of this Baba, but entered with a mere \"Salam\" and sat alone in a corner. When the sultan announced his oath of fealty, Rumi, in extreme jealousy, shouted, \"If the sultan has made him his father, I will take another son.\" He departed barefoot, without bothering to collect his shoes.\n\nAdding to Rumi's outsider status, even among his protectors, was the rough working-class background of some of his followers. As many often took their job description as part of their title, the names of those relating firsthand stories about Rumi in later accounts was a catalog of the varieties of labor\u2014hat maker, tanner, carpenter, physician, astrologer, butcher, harpist, as well as such religious jobs as Quran reciter and schoolteacher. At a gathering at his home, the Parvane complained to one of his guests, \"Khodavandgar is a king without equal . . . but his disciples are an extremely bad and gossiping lot.\" A supporter of Rumi overheard the remark and reported back to him. Seeing hurt in the faces of some followers, Rumi dispatched a response to the Parvane:\n\nIf my disciples were good people, I would myself have become their disciple. It is because they were bad people that I accepted them as disciples, so that they might change into good people and enter the company of those who are good and do good works.\n\nEven Sultan Valad felt moved to comment on the unruly nature of Rumi's growing corps of followers and their difference in demeanor and style from the softer, more restrained, and otherworldly Sufis seen everywhere in those days on the Konya streets. \"These Sufis seem very content with each other, and talk without ever arguing,\" he observed to his father. \"But our companions fight with one another, for no reason, and they do not get along together.\" Rumi answered, \"Yes, indeed, Bahaoddin. If a thousand hens are in one house, they will get along together. But two roosters in the same place do not get along. Our companions are like roosters and that is why they raise a ruckus.\" The decidedly virile virtues Rumi was praising were attributes of the _akhavan_ movement, as close in manner to the chivalric knights of Europe as to the Muslim Sufis.\n\nExhibiting the sublime sensibilities of Sufism more pleasingly, and with fewer rough edges, was the godson of Ibn Arabi, Sadroddin Qonavi, reputed to be so devoted to learning that he rigged a contraption suspending a bag of stones held by a rope above his bed; if he fell asleep studying and lost grip on the rope the stones would fall on him. He was known in Konya by the honorific title of Sheikh al-Islam, making him a sort of archbishop among Sufis, with his well-appointed Sufi lodge more like a grand governor's palace, replete with doormen, eunuchs, and porters. His residence was quite different from the modest, drafty Madrase Khodavandgar, with barely enough food to keep its residents nourished and identifiable by the makeshift cell on its roof where Rumi passed his solitary nights.\n\nQonavi was drawn to systematic mystical thought and gave much-appreciated lessons to the Parvane as they spun abstruse webs of theory together, while Rumi followed the practical path of love, dispensing with the Damascene knowledge of his youth. Tensions could exist between them. Qonavi did not like Rumi at first, and one of Rumi's admirers voiced offense at Qonavi's aristocratic airs, saying he felt as if he were visiting the house of a ruler rather than a man of poverty. Yet Rumi advised the Parvane to give a stipend to Qonavi, as he had so many more students to feed in his kitchen. Eventually a quiet respect grew between them, and on at least one occasion Rumi and Qonavi were seen quietly meditating together, their prayer rugs facing, knees touching. When a student approached during this session to ask Rumi \"What is poverty?\" he would not answer\u2014his point being that silence itself was a kind of poverty.\n\nRumi's sincerity, coupled with the entrancing spell of his evolving poetry and the infectiousness of his message of love, granted him freedom from the rules that another might not so easily have been given. At one point the Parvane was considering appointing the son of the vizier Tajoddin as _qadi_ , or chief judge of Konya. The young man was learned in religious law but impervious to the charms of Sufism, especially those of the least manageable of Sufis, Rumi. He agreed to accept the post on three conditions: the outlawing of the _rabab_ ; removal of corrupt bailiffs from the court; and paying bailiffs a stipend so they would not accept bribes. The Parvane accepted the last two conditions, but not the first, knowing its repercussions for Rumi. When word reached Rumi, he said, \"Such a blessing, _rabab_! And praise God that the _rabab_ also saved the son of Tajoddin from the trap of being a judge!\"\n\nThe presiding _qadi_ during most of Rumi's mature years, and so the most influential in his legal fate, which was always somewhat in jeopardy, was Serajoddin Ormovi, imported to Konya by the Seljuks in 1257, and lasting through all the shifts in imperial administration, mostly because of the support of the Parvane. A Persian speaker, born in Azerbaijan, Serajoddin was already sixty years old when he settled in Konya, after having lived in Mosul, Damascus, and Egypt as part of the civilian elite. A philosopher-theologian of the rationalist school, equally at home in the court or the _madrase_ , he was particularly suited to the Seljuk post, as he spoke Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and was familiar with Jewish and Christian scriptures as well as Islamic legal tomes and studies.\n\nAs a meticulously trained logician versed in analysis, Serajoddin was not by nature sympathetic with _sama_ and some of the more illogical practices of the visionary mystics. He and Rumi held predictably opposite positions on many issues. Given the seat of honor at most public ceremonies, he embodied for Rumi the hypocrisy of rank and position, and Rumi judged him handicapped by his reliance on the finer points of logic. When Hosam asked Rumi his opinion of Serajoddin, he answered, \"He is a good man. But he circles about the watering hole. He just needs one kick to reach it.\" As with Qonavi, though, Rumi gradually developed a respectful friendship with Serajoddin.\n\nAs chief judge, Serajoddin often needed to rule on issues involving Rumi. In one instance, Rumi wrote to him to intervene to insure that the children of Alaoddin not be deprived of their rightful inheritance. Another time, Theryanus, the Greek convert saved by Rumi from execution, was brought before the judge and charged with going about town proclaiming that Rumi was God\u2014which was obviously not encouraged in Islam. Questioned by the _qadi_ , he answered, \"No, I said he is a God-builder. Don't you see how he has remade me into a knower of God?\" Case dismissed, he reported the proceedings to Rumi, who smiled and replied, \"You should have said, 'Shame on you, if _you_ don't become God!'\"\n\nThe crucial rulings of Serajoddin concerned _sama_ , an issue of spiritual life and death for Rumi, who had by then given up on traditional instruction in favor of teaching with insights gained with the help of such tavern pastimes as music, song, and poetry. At least once, formal charges were brought against Rumi by a group of the religious scholars in Konya, their pressing for a legal ruling reminding the _qadi_ of the radical nature of Rumi's liberated life and teachings. \"Why must this kind of innovation advance and this practice be promoted?\" they demanded. The answer of the _qadi_ focused on the person of Rumi, not on any theological principle: \"This heroic man is strengthened by God and is without peer in learning. You should not quarrel with him. He is the one who knows, as does his God.\"\n\nAfter two years, in June of 1264, Hosam finally recovered from his protracted mourning and depression. He had been feeling the predictable wish to marry again, and was searching for a wife. He awoke one summer morning, though, pining again for the spiritual life, and also for the poem-in-couplets that he had abandoned in his sorrow. As suddenly as he had been overcome by lassitude, Hosam felt its release and went straightway to the _madrase_ to propose starting up again just where he and Rumi had left off, \"requesting the remainder of the _Masnavi_ from the luminous heart of the Sheikh.\"\n\nRumi assessed Hosam as having matured and was thrilled by his return. Wasting no time, he dictated a new prologue for him to write down, on the spot, starting again at the beginning\u2014this time of Book II\u2014with a date and gloss explaining the interruption:\n\n_The light of God, Hosamoddin_ ,\n\n_Pulled back the reins at the summit of heaven_\n\n_During his ascension, while seeking for the truth_ ,\n\n_Without his springtime, buds would not bloom_\n\n_When he returned from the ocean to the shore_\n\n_The harp strings of the_ Masnavi _were retuned_\n\n_This_ Masnavi _has burnished every soul_\n\n_His return was a day of beginning again_\n\n_The date of the renewal of this great gift_\n\n_In the year six hundred sixty-two_\n\n_A nightingale flew away, then returned_\n\n_As a falcon, hunting for mystical truths_.\n\nMystic and scribe fell quickly back into their old way of working, with Hosam revising and adding vowel signs. As Aflaki confirmed, \"There was no further delay up to the end of the book. Mowlana continually recited in unbroken succession and Hosamoddin wrote it down and repeatedly read out loud what he had written until the work was completed.\"\n\nHis harp strings retuned, Rumi also realized a wish he had been harboring for some time\u2014making Hosam the sheikh of his unofficial order. For the third time, Rumi elevated a chosen companion into a position of esteem, a position he himself might more naturally have held. The maneuver was loving and passionate, a reflection of the feelings in his heart, but also savvy, as he again put a barrier between himself and his followers, allowing more space for mystical abstraction and his own rapt devotion to prayer and dance. The difference between Hosam and the others was that he was accepted by most of Rumi's students without as much conflict. Hosam was now forty years old\u2014a respectable age for a religious leader\u2014and had been espousing Rumi to his band of young men for years, attracting resources and a more diverse group of followers.\n\nPassed over again, of course, was Sultan Valad, who described the transition without any evident slighted feelings, telescoping six years into a single poetic frame: \"When Salahoddin left this world, Sheikh said, Hosam, the Way of Truth, you are the successor and caliph. The Sheikh seated him in place of Salahoddin and scattered light above his head. He asked all the followers to bow to him, and be humble before him, and obey all his commands with all their heart, and plant his love within their souls.\" The exception in this smooth transfer of power was Sultan Valad's wife, Fateme. She kept alive the jealousy and suspicion of her father, Salah, toward Hosam, resenting that her husband had not ascended to the position of leadership she felt belonged to him.\n\nRumi's worship of his appointed beloved was always a challenge for the community. Shams had presented special difficulties because of his irascible temper and eccentricity. Salah, as a practically illiterate teacher, confounded every expectation of a school or Sufi lodge. Hosam was well liked and a natural leader since adolescence, but the social reversal was of an older man humbling himself before a younger man. Yet humble himself Rumi flagrantly did. Once when a group was setting out for a ceremony at a Sufi lodge, Rumi took Hosam's prayer rug from the shoulder of a follower and carried it on his own shoulder, walking the entire way through the center of town. Shopkeepers and passersby recognized the gesture as proper for a well-behaved servant.\n\nAs with Shams and Salah, Rumi pushed his devotion to friendship to extravagant lengths. On one occasion, the Parvane held a gathering of ministers and prominent men at his home and invited Rumi, hoping for him to entertain in a spiritual key with choice words and perhaps bursts of lyric poetry and ecstatic dance. Noticing that Rumi was sullen and silent, the Parvane realized that he had not invited Hosam and sent for him. As soon as he arrived, being led in with a torch, Rumi jumped down from his rug on the dais to join him in the palace courtyard, exuberantly greeting him, \"Welcome my soul, my faith, my light!\" Aware of the Parvane, who was suspicious of the exaggerated compliments, Hosam explained, \"Even if not true, once Mowlana says so, it is like this and a hundred times more!\" Hosam understood\u2014as had Salah, in his sense of mirroring\u2014that the intensity of Rumi's adoration could inspire the recipient to rise to the challenge.\n\nMost of the more relaxing periods of visiting between Rumi and Hosam, especially during the warmer months, were passed in Meram, where Hosam owned a garden. Every year during the later decades of his life, Rumi spent forty days each summer at the hot springs of Ilgin, reached by wagon, about sixty miles northwest of Konya. He would teach his students at twilight next to a frog pond. Otherwise he often stayed with Hosam in Meram, a settlement where gardens and orchards were cultivated, just a carriage or mule's ride from Konya. Here he would picnic with friends and enjoy listening to the splashing of its many waterwheels. Running water was believed to calm the spirit, and was used to treat the mentally ill in an Anatolian hospital built in Rumi's lifetime in Divrigi, outfitted with watercourses emptying into basins. Yet watermills throughout the Middle East also made loud creaking noises. In their endless turning, and plaintive screaks, Rumi imagined lovers pining for each other, and for reunion with God:\n\n_Lovers are like waterwheels turning day and night_\n\n_Restlessly revolving, endlessly moaning_ ,\n\n_The turning of the wheel teaches those who seek the river_.\n\n_No one may say to them this river is ever still_.\n\nMany fond memories by followers of Rumi date from these retreats in Meram, as he was otherwise mostly secluded in Konya. One told of the time a group of travelers from Bukhara sought Rumi in Hosam's garden, and a close woman friend, who often stayed up late into the night talking with him, brought out a tray of homemade desserts. \"If you asked for the banquet table of Jesus it would have descended for you in this house,\" said Rumi, referring to a story of Jesus feeding the hungry with food from heaven. (This woman \"kept constant company\" with another follower of Rumi's, who also held _sama_ sessions locally in her home.) Especially coveted by Rumi's extended family of wife and children from two marriages, as well as Salah's widow and children, was the white honey from Hosam's garden, which was used in medical potions. Rumi felt comfortable in Meram, and whenever he went missing, which happened frequently, he could most reliably be discovered praying alone in the Meram mosque.\n\nDuring all the seasons of the year, though, whether in Konya or Meram, Rumi and Hosam kept up their unflagging work on the poem, which Rumi was imagining might grow so lengthy as to need to be carried by forty mules. Rumi paused every so often in the poem to exult in Hosam. Midway through Book II, he stopped to duly credit him:\n\n_Come light of God, Hosamoddin_ ,\n\n_Without you no plants grow in this dry soil_\n\nHosam could be just as extravagant in his praise of the importance of the poet and his poem to which they were both committed. More than once, he reported having a dream in which the Prophet Mohammad was reading the _Masnavi_ with great interest and approval.\n\nThe writing of the _Masnavi_ was not solely a production undertaken by Rumi and Hosam in privacy\u2014though it was often so. Rumi also composed with listeners gathered, as oral performance was an important quality of its rhythmic power. Unlike _sama_ gatherings, these sessions required absolute silence, as the teasing out of meanings from fables, and their weaving, was a delicate procedure. Implied in the poem were hints of occasions when witnesses fell asleep, while the creation evolved within the deep silence of the insulating stone pillars and heavy roof of the main hall. Rumi was anxious to make sure that these recitations were not seen as mere entertainment. He discounted himself as a poet to his followers\u2014a bit disingenuously, given his skill and lifetime love of poetry:\n\nWhen friends come to visit me, I am worried that they will be bored, so I recite poetry. Otherwise why would I have anything to do with poetry? I am vexed by poetry. There is nothing worse for me. I do poetry the way someone puts his hand into tripe to wash for guests because they have an appetite for it. That is why I must do so. A man has to look at the town where he is living to see what goods the people need and what kind of goods they wish to buy. People will then buy such goods even if they happen to be of the lowest quality.\n\nCasting himself as a humble merchant, peddling second-rate wares, Rumi also spoke of the disparagement of the art of poetry by religious long beards in his native Khorasan, which may have been true in orthodox circles, but certainly not in the highly poetic culture generally, or by his father, who often quoted Sanai and other poets:\n\nWhat am I to do? In our country and among our people there was nothing more disgraceful than being a poet. If I had remained in our native land, and wished to live in harmony with their tastes, I would have done only what was desired of me, such as teaching, writing books, preaching, fasting and performing pious deeds.\n\nEven if a reluctant poet\u2014and a self-deprecating one\u2014Rumi either took exacting pains with the structure of the _Masnavi_ , or a lifetime of rigorous intellectual activity manifested itself spontaneously. The second book matched the structure of the first book, and both set the template for the books to come. At about 3,800 lines, the second volume is almost the same length as the first. Both contain about a dozen core stories, which are broken up by digressions and expostulations, and are fed into by less complex anecdotes. The sections are also introduced by rubrics, _Kalile and Demne\u2013_ style, probably inserted by Rumi or other scribes later, such as \"How a king tested two slaves he had just purchased.\"\n\nWhile neither book settled into a single succinct theme, Book I conformed loosely to the Sufi genre of a pilgrim's progress, where a soul progresses from the pain of separation from God, like the mournful reed flute, longing for reunion, to the divine illumination experienced by Ali. The stories of the second book center more on the split between appearance and reality, with the spiritually undiscerning always mistaking surface for essence, and so succumbing to painful or deadly moral errors: a Sufi leaves his cherished donkey with a servant who swears he needs no instruction in caring for the animal, which nearly dies of neglect; a king entrusts his falcon with an old woman who clips its claws to try to domesticate the royal bird. Most darkly comic, was the tale of the man who befriends a bear that winds up swatting a fly on his friend's face with a giant boulder:\n\n_A fool believes the love of the bear is true_\n\n_Yet his love is anger, and anger is his love_\n\nThe lesson of the tale of the bear was care in choosing a friend whose spiritual insight was compatible, an important lesson for Sufis selecting their companions along the way.\n\nFollowing through on his promise in the first book, Rumi included private memories of Shams, all of them camouflaged, and known to him alone, or to a few intimate disciples such as Hosam, who had been present for the original talks of the stranger from Tabriz. Only once does he make any kind of direct reference to Shams:\n\n_From love of Shams, I have grown weak_\n\n_Or else I would give sight to the blind_\n\n_Light of the Truth, Hosamoddin_\n\n_Quickly heal them, and make the envious blind_.\n\nYet the penultimate set piece of Book II, \"The story about the ducklings raised by a hen,\" is stocked with memories of Shams. During his time in Konya, Shams often spoke about his adolescence as a misunderstood mystic with this analogy: he felt he was a duckling raised by a hen. As he said, \"Now father, I see that the ocean is my homeland. If you are of me, or I am of you, come into the ocean. If not, go back to your hens.\" Rumi universalized Shams's experience, as shared by all landlocked mystics:\n\n_You are the child of a duck, even if a hen_\n\n_Held you beneath her wing, and raised you_\n\n_Your real mother belongs to the ocean . . ._\n\n_We are all seabirds. Only the ocean knows our language_.\n\nAs a seabird himself, Rumi's instinct was to soar, and his reflex in these books was to conclude with a lyric crescendo. In the first book, the epic hero was revealed to be Ali on the battlefield. In the second, following a catalog of ascending birds\u2014falcons, nightingales, parrots, and peacocks\u2014Rumi introduces his hero, an ascetic in the desert. Rumi classified the _Masnavi_ as a \"Shop of Unity,\" and his ascetic, or mystic, lives beyond the differences that confused seekers in earlier stories, as he prays in a terrain without variation. Rumi had envisioned his solitary desert mystic in a separate _robai_ :\n\n_Beyond belief and doubt is a vast desert_\n\n_In the middle of this desert, we find ecstasy_\n\n_When a mystic arrives here, he bows to the ground_.\n\nAt the climax of the spiritual tale, a group of pilgrims, doubtless on the way to Mecca, pass by the mystic. Though the land is parched and dry, the mysterious, lone figure turns to them from his prayers, dripping with water from hands and face, his clothes damp. A perplexed pilgrim asks for an explanation, so the saint prays to Him who \"opened the door to me from above\" to reveal the nature of the place. Rumi at his most visionary then describes a shower of bountiful rain, the rain of love he felt was assured and was to become an even more effusive and unorthodox theme as the poem went on:\n\n_As he was praying, a beautiful cloud appeared_\n\n_Like an elephant, spraying water from its trunk_.\n\n_Suddenly a shower began pouring down_\n\n_And settled in the ditches and the caves_.\n\n_While the cloud kept pouring rain, like tears_ ,\n\n_The pilgrims turned their faces to the sky_.\nCHAPTER 14\n\n_The Religion of Love_\n\nRUMI was living in a society of conventions, where the decades of life were assigned set significances\u2014maturity was believed to arrive at age forty, which he respected when he waited to appoint Hosam to a leadership role, while sixty marked a graduation to the age of sagacity, the proper time for the consideration of last things. Almost immediately on completion of Book II, around 1266, Rumi and Hosam began work on Book III, which was finished in 1268, as Rumi was moving into his sixties, his own final decade. He was seizing on this ripe moment to express his increasingly radical and personal wisdom in as liberated, joyful, confident, and even reckless a manner as ever.\n\nRumi described his _Masnavi_ as a \"box of secrets.\" With each installment of the expanding poem-in-progress, he was allowing the box to become further ajar, its contents more clearly and unapologetically exposed. By the late 1260s the _Masnavi_ had become a public attraction and, like much about Rumi in Konya, a generator of debate. The orthodox were shocked by some of its theology, while even more sniping for its storytelling came from the intellectual Sufis in the lodge of Qonavi. Rumi described one such slur:\n\n_Suddenly a fool, from out the stable_ ,\n\n_Poked his head, like a sarcastic old woman_ ,\n\n_Saying, \"This_ Masnavi _is cheap and low_\n\n_Just stories of the Prophet, on how to follow_ ,\n\n_No mention of the loftier secrets of divinity_ ,\n\n_Which cause the steeds of saints to gallop_ ,\n\n_Or of the many stations of renunciation_\n\n_Stage by stage up to union with God.\"_\n\nThe poet's brash defense was to compare his inspired verses to the holy Quran:\n\n_When the Quran came down_\n\n_Disbelievers were just as sarcastic and mean_ ,\n\n_Saying, \"These are just legends and myths_ ,\n\n_Without any depth or lofty speculation_\n\n_Something little children can understand_\n\n_Nothing but lessons about right and wrong_.\n\n_The story of Joseph and his long, curly hair_\n\n_The story of Jacob, the passion of Zolaykha_\n\n_It is simple and plain, and everyone understands_\n\n_Where is the exposition in which intellect gets lost?\"_\n\n_God answered, \"If this seems so simple to you_ ,\n\n_Try composing a single chapter in the same style_.\n\n_Let the spirits of heaven and the men of earth_\n\n_Try writing a single verse in this 'plain' style.\"_\n\nMany were protective of Rumi, and tried their best to keep him from straying too far into dangerous territory and to shield him from the most serious charges of innovation in religious matters. Rumi did little to bolster their helpful cause. Once a companion informed Rumi that when interrogated by a suspicious religious scholar, \"Why do they call the _Masnavi_ the Quran? _\"_ he had corrected him. \"It is a commentary on the Quran.\" Sultan Valad recalled, \"My father remained quiet for a moment and then exclaimed:\n\n\"You dog! Why is it not the Quran? You ass! Why is it not the Quran? You brother of a whore! Why is it not the Quran? Truly contained in the words of the Prophets and the Friends of God are nothing but lights of divine secrets. The speech of God has sprung up from their pure hearts and has flowed forth upon the stream of their tongues. Whether it is Syriac or the Fateha prayer of the Quran, whether in Hebrew or in Arabic.\"\n\nHe grew convinced that all divinely inspired speech, including the poetry of the _Masnavi_ , in whatever language or format, was equal, whether from the living or the dead.\n\nAt the outpost of such skirmishes with tradition was Mansur al-Hallaj, executed in Baghdad for his heretical pronouncements, the most famous being \"I am Truth.\" In these later years, Rumi adopted Hallaj as a personal saint and his infamous self-blessing as a favorite inspiration for teaching. Defending the Sufi's possibly apocryphal statement, Rumi grappled with his own experience. He explained Hallaj's paradox to students:\n\nPeople think that to say \"I am Truth\" is a claim of greatness, but it is actually extreme humility. Anyone who says, \"I am God's servant\" is really claiming two existences, his own and God's, while the one who says, \"I am Truth\" erases himself and gives up his own existence as nothing. When he says \"I am Truth,\" he means, \"I do not exist. Everything is He. God alone exists. I am utter, pure oblivion. I am nothing.\" There is more humility in this than any claim to greatness.\n\nHe spoke approvingly of the remark, on another occasion, inviting its embrace by others:\n\nEveryone who exhibits some form of perfection and beauty, whether through actions or words, and has pride and grace, may actually claim, according to their own state and condition, \"I am Truth\"!\n\nThe figure of Hallaj and his pronouncement \"I am Truth\" haunt the last few books of the _Masnavi_ , like a faint clue to a mystery, or a motto for any knowing mystic:\n\n_When Hallaj said, \"I am Truth,\" and kept on_\n\n_He throttled the necks of the blind_\n\n_When the \"I\" vanishes from our existence_\n\n_What remains? Consider this thought_.\n\nNothing was more rousing to Rumi both as mystic and poet than the contemplation of annihilation and the erasure of self and all the mundane details of life, including the need for speech and language. He wished to whirl them away. This ecstatic freedom was embodied in Hallaj, and many of Rumi's more exquisite _robai_ quatrains, which he was writing late in life, evoke him:\n\n_He dove into the sea of his own oblivion_\n\n_Then pierced the pearl of \"I am Truth\"_\n\nAs an early Arabic Sufi poet\u2014Rumi often retold Hallaj's parable of the moth drawn by a passionate love for a flame\u2014Hallaj could be found subtly mixed with imagery of books:\n\n_I am the servant of those who know themselves_\n\n_Who free their hearts from error at each moment_\n\n_Composing a book from their own essence and traits_\n\n_And making the title of that book, \"I am Truth.\"_\n\nLike Hallaj's fluttering moth, Rumi circled the flame of truths that were inexpressible, or only expressed at great cost or danger of being misunderstood. Yet by the time he arrived at writing the third book of the _Masnavi_ , and in talks written down by scribes, he was more baldly and directly stating his challenging secrets. He clearly felt that divine inspiration was universal and reflected in the mirror of the hearts of living saints, and he implied that he had experienced just such immolation in the divine spirit of love. Modeled on the story of the composition of the Quran by Mohammad, Rumi recited his _Masnavi_ in an inspired state and imagined he was a mere instrument like a reed flute:\n\n_Be empty! Sing like a flute, full of passion_.\n\n_Be empty! Tell secrets with your pen_.\n\nRumi and Shams first discussed such matters while they were in seclusion, and the force of these revelations had changed his life remarkably. Yet Shams was even more adamant about \"following\" the Prophet Mohammad, and he strongly rejected Hallaj and his involuntary shout \"I am Truth!\" In his embrace of Hallaj, Rumi appeared to have gone beyond even Shams in the radicalism of his ideas about God and man. He no longer stood in anyone's shadow, having fully realized his own voice. Although he stayed faithful to Sunni practice, and the _Masnavi_ is filled with Muslim piety, the logic of a religion of the heart led him beyond denominations and religions to a universal vision:\n\n_The mosque inside the hearts of holy men_\n\n_Is a place of worship for everyone. God is there_.\n\nHe sang of a \"religion of love,\" and a \"religion for lovers,\" and its daring implications:\n\n_The religion of love is beyond all faiths_ ,\n\n_The only religion for lovers is God_\n\nIn Book III of the _Masnavi_ he put this creed as simply and unambiguously as possible:\n\n_Since we worship the one God_ ,\n\n_Then all religions must be one_\n\nWhile celebrating love and his religion of lovers with such exuberance and freedom, Rumi, though, was beginning to show signs of physical aging, and to share hints of his sense of the divergence of his stiffening body from his timeless heart, mind, and soul. As he wrote in Book III of the _Masnavi_ , \"My heart is a field of tulips that can't be touched by age.\" Other parts were more susceptible. Rumi had put his body through punitive trials of fasting and deprivation, and pushed himself with damaging nightly sessions of spontaneous composition and prayer. Of all the memories so carefully collected of his life from his disciples, none ever recalled seeing him asleep in his bed at night during these decades of his life. For the era, he was reaching life expectancy.\n\nIn a surprising aside in Book II of the _Masnavi_ , Rumi had even departed from his usual invective against worldly pleasures and the lures of the senses. He mused on the strengths of bygone youth, when springtime was flourishing, and life was a rose garden in full bloom:\n\n_Youth is a garden, fresh and green_\n\n_Easily yielding leaves and fresh fruit_\n\n_Fountains of strength and passion flow_\n\n_Making green the soil of the body_\n\n_A well-built house with a high ceiling_\n\n_Its columns straight and tall and standing free_.\n\nThe ensuing caricature of old age as the head of a horse being forced into a halter was harrowing by contrast, as he listed the loss of moral strength as one of its infirmities:\n\n_The eyebrows droop and are almost white_\n\n_The eyes dim, and wet with tears_\n\n_The face wrinkled, like a lizard's back_\n\n_Speech is gone, as are teeth and taste_\n\n_The day late, the path long, the mule limping_\n\n_The shop in ruins, the business failing_\n\n_The roots of bad habits having taken firm hold_\n\n_And now the strength to dig them up lost_.\n\nRumi was hardly as bowed by age as the decrepit figure of his meditation on the stages of man, yet he was marked with the lines and strains of a life lived forcefully at a steady pitch of intensity even if its main activities were composition, prayer, and meditation. He might well have thought of his teacher Borhan, who grew more carefree and joyful in his daily life at about the same time his body began to lose its former powers of endurance. Unlike Borhan, Rumi never relaxed his regimen of fasting and daily prayer, though he did relax the constraints of conventionally pious thinking and dogma to the extreme. With his gait of an elder combined with almost juvenile unchecked energy, no one in Konya was remotely like peripatetic Rumi.\n\nThe final decade of his life also marked the final decade of Konya maintaining even a pretense of independence as the capital of a Seljuk Empire. Its most compelling spiritual figure, Rumi, felt unfettered enough to trust in a steady light at the heart of events as civilizations collapsed and maps were redrawn, while his counterpart in the political world\u2014the Parvane\u2014lived with increasingly complex problems and acted with greater desperation. A respite from the Mongol threat was promised by their first defeat\u2014by the Egpytians at the battle of Ayn Jalut in Syria in 1260\u2014shifting the Muslim power base from Baghdad to Cairo. Yet for the Parvane, machinations became more elaborate, as he engaged in a perilous game of playing the Egyptian Mamluks against the Mongols.\n\nInternal politics in Konya were just as brutal. With power came paranoia for the Parvane. He grew convinced that the Sultan Roknoddin, who had been given of late to childishly imprudent language and stormy behavior, was plotting against him. So the Parvane took the proactive measure of having Roknoddin murdered at a banquet, in 1265, and in his place put Roknoddin's son Kaykhosrow III, less than seven years old and obviously not a threat. Taking no chances, the Parvane then set himself up as the boy's tutor and regent. Among those the Parvane termed Rumi's \"gossiping\" followers was talk of Roknoddin's fall as divine retribution for his having spurned Rumi in favor of the more rural Turkish Babas.\n\nAs distracted as Rumi might appear, he was still engaged with his family, and still shrewdly maintained an air of studied indifference toward political intrigues at court and in the Sufi lodges. In his family life, a rare incidence of Rumi becoming angry with his wife was provoked around this time by her interest in a group of flamboyant silk-clad traveling Sufi dervishes attracting great attention in Konya for walking on hot coals, swallowing snakes, sweating blood, bathing in boiling oil, whipping themselves, and making animal noises. They were members of the Refaiyya Order, known as far as Europe as \"the howling dervishes\" for their wild and loud _sama_ performances. While Rumi was away in Meram on a day trip, a group of noble ladies came to Kerra to convince her to go with them to Karatay Madrase, where the dervishes were performing their circus magic. When Rumi returned that evening he was livid with her for attending a session of this troupe, though even Afalki reported that his upset arose \"out of jealous anger.\"\n\nAt most times, though, Rumi's manner with his wife was tender and bemused, the testing of the Shams years replaced with mellow companionship. Kerra remained superstitious. When he traveled to Ilgin in the summer, she worried that he might fall prey to the water monster believed to live under a bridge near a meadow he enjoyed. \"How wonderful,\" Rumi joked. \"I have wanted to meet the lord of this river for years.\" As her husband grew more impractical, Kerra became increasingly protective. When Rumi went to the bathhouse, she told his companions, \"Take care of Mowlana because he pays no attention to himself at all.\" They toted a rug and towel to spread for him in the cooling chamber. Whatever light eating and sleeping he managed was due to her insistence.\n\nAll of Rumi's children were now grown and pursuing adult lives. Sultan Valad was closest, as he remained at Rumi's side. His great disappointment was his wife's lack of children, while Rumi also remained hopeful for grandchildren from the line of Salah. Maleke, the daughter of Rumi and Kerra, was still married to the miserly Konya businessman who had been enduring a losing streak in his petty trading deals in Sivas. Rumi tried to help his son-in-law by writing to the Parvane to request his exemption from the high road tolls and taxes along the way. Their son Mozaffar worked in the sultan's treasury and government service until\u2014to Rumi's great joy\u2014he decided to don the cloak of the Sufis.\n\nRumi's main focus remained Hosam, who was not only leading the community and transcribing Rumi's poetry and correspondence but also staying active in the spiritual politics of the wider Sufi community in Konya, one of the most vibrant at the time in the Muslim world. When the sheikh of another Sufi lodge died, Hosam took over leadership of that community after a letter-writing campaign on his behalf by Rumi, overriding objections by rivals. At an inauguration, after the issuing of a royal decree, violence broke out because of continued opposition, and knives were drawn. \"Why do these men with donkey tails show such ingratitude for God's blessings?\" asked Rumi on his way out. Hosam eventually went on to be in charge of yet a third such lodge in Konya.\n\nA technicality more important to Hosam than to Rumi was his affiliation, like Shams of Tabriz, with the Shafii School of jurisprudence, as opposed to the Hanafi tradition. In Sufi practice, a master and his disciple were always of the same school. Hosam lowered his head and said, \"I wish from this day to belong to the Hanafi School, as Khodavandgar is a follower of the Hanafi School.\" Rumi was absorbed by then in his religion of love and the mosque of the heart and had little interest in such divisive legal issues. \"No, no!\" he answered. \"What is proper is that you remain in your school, and follow it, but that you travel our mystic path, and guide people on our road of love.\"\n\nThe gatherings for Rumi's talks, transcribed under the supervision of Hosam, were continuing, though they often evolved into discussion groups or question-and-answer sessions regarding the burgeoning _Masnavi_ as the poem was being circulated. On one occasion, a student asked for an explanation of a few of its more perplexing lines:\n\n_Oh brother, you are nothing but your thoughts_\n\n_The rest of you is merely skin and bones_\n\n_If your thought is a rose, you are a rose garden_\n\n_If your thought is a thorn, you are fuel for the fire_.\n\nRumi explained that what is seen or heard is secondary to the more essential force of thought, which is the invisible creator of words and actions, like the sun in the sky:\n\nAlthough the sun in the sky is constantly shining, it is not visible unless its rays strike a wall. Similarly, if there is no medium of words and sound, the rays of the sun of speech cannot be seen.\n\nIn these talks, Rumi explored the practical relevance for the lives of those who were drawn to him and his increasingly unorthodox _madrase_ of the \"religion of lovers\":\n\nPeople work variously at all sorts of jobs, crafts, and professions, and they study astrology and medicine, and so forth, but they are not at peace because they have not found what they are seeking. The beloved is called _delaram_ , or \"he who gives the heart repose,\" because the heart finds peace through the beloved. How then can it find peace through anything else? All these other joys and goals are like a ladder. The rungs on the ladder are not places to rest but for passing along.\n\nIn a surprising departure from the enlightened and ethereal tone of many of his remarks, Rumi announced one evening that he had been weighing in on current political difficulties with the Parvane, lecturing him on his appeasement of the Mongols rather than allying himself with the Muslim Mamluks of Egypt. He had obviously not lost his alertness to politics nor to the side of himself capable of being engaged and partisan:\n\nAll this I said to the Parvane, I told him, \"You have united yourself with the Tatar, whom you aid to annihilate the Syrians and Egyptians and so to lay waste the realm of Islam. What was supposed to be a cause for the expansion of Islam has become the cause for its diminishment. In this state, which is a fearful one, turn to God. Give alms to the poor so that He may deliver you from this evil condition, which is simply fear.\"\n\nHe reserved special anger for students he felt were too prone to falling under the spell of the Parvane and his sumptuous lifestyle. Especially irritating was a group sent on a mission to Kayseri, who returned talking about the delicacies and tasty dishes they sampled at the imperial table. Cuttingly, Rumi said, \"Shame on the companions for their exaggerated praise of the stuff of the table, and for being proud and saying, 'We ate such and such.' You who beheld fine fat foods, get up to look at what is leftover in the toilet.\"\n\nThe aging sage appeared most often in a delighted state and was refreshingly otherworldly in sightings around town. One day as he was walking in the bazaar, a Turk was offering a fox skin for sale to the highest bidder, calling out, in Turkish, \" _Delku, delku_ ,\" meaning \"fox.\" Rumi held his heart, and whirled, repeating, in Persian, \" _Del ku? Del ku?_ \" meaning, \"Where is the heart?\" When a Turkish jurist presented him with a list of abstruse legal questions while he was sitting alongside a moat next to the Sultan Gate, reading a book, he called for a pen and inkwell and dashed off exemplary answers without consulting any authorities. He also liked leaving messages on public spaces. As he had once written on his son's tomb and Shams's door, he ordered verses that he first composed in ink on paper to be inscribed on the gate of the little garden of the _madrase_.\n\nKindness continued to stand out as a virtue for him, as was borne out by many testimonials. When a Christian, drunk on wine, wandered into a _sama_ session, accidentally bumping into Rumi, some of his followers shoved the man. \"He is the one who drank wine,\" Rumi berated them, \"but you are the ones behaving like drunken brawlers.\" Preventing his companions from clearing a bathhouse pool of lepers and the sick, Rumi quickly took off his clothes, entered the water, and pourd the water they were using over his head. When a thief stole his prayer rug, he sent someone to buy it back from him at the bazaar to spare him embarrassment. Animals continued to be beneficiaries of his kindness, such as the ox some butchers bought intending to slaughter that he convinced them to set free, or a wild dog he saved from a beating on Hosam's street.\n\nWhile not overly careful in guarding his own health\u2014other than relying on a favorite drink, julep of sorrel\u2014Rumi had begun to add to his reputation, too, an instinct for natural healing. When a favorite disciple had a high fever, which the doctors could not treat, Rumi pounded garlic cloves into a mortar and mixed the paste with the man's food, causing him to break into a sweat and recover. For a pupil complaining of falling asleep too often, Rumi successfully advised, \"Extract the milk of poppies and drink it.\" During one of his summer retreats in Ilgin, a disciple became grievously ill. Rumi ordered him lifted in his bedding and brought to the bathhouse, where he immersed him in the central spring water pool and dunked him repeatedly until he revived. The method worked, though, according to Aflaki, \"No clever doctor ever used this strange form of treatment.\"\n\nRumi and Hosam were proceeding at a steady and energetic pace through the composition of the books of the _Masnavi_ , with about two or three years separating the creation of Books III, IV, and V, near the turn of the decade of the 1270s. Much of Rumi's spiritual life since Shams's departure decades earlier had circled about his beloved friend's final lessons to him on the meaning of separation, which was the mystery at the heart of their friendship, as well as, explained Shams, central to the experience of love, both human and divine. Rising and falling in these later books was a meditation on death as the ultimate separation, the root of so much pain.\n\nIn Book III of the _Masnavi_ , Rumi had not only identified himself as the unabashed preacher of love\u2014as he wrote in one ghazal, \"At the Festival of Unity, the Preacher of Love arrives.\" He also turned to considering death as fully as love, if not as a form of love, as he moved closer to the horizon of his own life. Yet he was not composing in the violet mode of sad elegy\u2014the somber hymns of the blue-winged angels in his weeping poems on the death of Shams or Salah. Instead his message was the joy and release of death. Fear of death was nothing but a reflection in the mirror of passing thoughts:\n\n_You flee from death because you are afraid_\n\n_But truly you fear yourself. Consider this!_\n\n_Your own face is frightening, not the face of death_\n\n_Death is a leaf, but your soul is the tree_\n\n_Every leaf grows from you, both good and bad_\n\n_Every hidden thought, both pleasant and ugly_.\n\nThe tenor of much of Rumi's poetry in the _Masnavi_ is cheerful and transcendent. The conviction behind this sensibility depended on his belief in the shifting qualities of the world, so that thoughts were not taken as fixed or unchanging. Soul or spirit or even attitude could recast or illuminate the perception of all experiences. As far as the psychology of approaching death, Rumi almost reflexively counseled its embrace rather than its fear\u2014advice, given the timing, for himself as much as anyone. He chose to see the \"limping\" physical demands of his own aging as the fermentation of eternal love:\n\n_God created me from the wine of love_ ,\n\n_I'm still that love, even as death wears me down_\n\nAs a mystic, Rumi had a more powerful and compelling incentive for dwelling on death in the final books of the _Masnavi_. He lived according to the belief that not only was the invisible world more real than the visible, but also that life after death was a release into a cosmic experience of infinitely greater light and love than experienced in the body. In the third book of the _Masnavi_ , Rumi sings of death as a release, in one homespun simile after another. Life was like a steam bath you needed to exit for the sake of your heart, or like wearing tight shoes in the desert, or a confining womb after nine months had passed:\n\n_Squeezed in the womb like a baby_\n\n_I am eager to move on, after nine months_ ,\n\n_If my mother were feeling no labor pains_\n\n_I might be left in this burning jail_\n\n_But the pains of death are telling her_\n\n_The time has come for the lamb to be born_\n\n_So that he may graze in lush, green fields_\n\n_Open wide the womb, the lamb is ready!_\n\nIn a weirdly hypnagogic tale of a mosque where anyone who spent the night would die and of the lover who insisted on spending the night there, Rumi identified with the death-radiant lover, bragging of his recklessness in facing his own certain extinction:\n\n_He said, \"My friends, with no regrets_ ,\n\n_I have grown weary of life in this world_\n\n_I'm a wanderer, seeking only pain and wounds_ ,\n\n_Don't expect sense from this wanderer on the road_\n\n_I'm not a wanderer seeking my next meal_\n\n_I'm a reckless wanderer, seeking death_\n\n_I'm not a wanderer seeking to make money_\n\n_But a nimble wanderer seeking to cross the bridge_\n\n_Not to be found hanging around in shops and markets_\n\n_But rather running away from my own existence.\"_\n\nThe tale of the lover in the mosque of death in Book III was interrupted\u2014or illustrated\u2014by a companion tale of a caged bird in a rose garden, visited by a flock of birds singing of their freedom on the wing, a message that causes the bird to lose its satisfaction with its gilded prison and to desire escape. Yet the bird stops itself from squeezing through its bars by the sudden appearance of a cat identified as \"Death, its claws disease.\" Fear of the cat of death turns the hopeful bird into a spiritual gray mouse:\n\n_The bird turned into a mouse, seeking a hole_\n\n_After he heard the cat's cry, \"Stop!\"_\n\n_Just like a mouse, his soul was calmed_\n\n_By finding a home in this world's hole_\n\n_He started building and acquiring knowledge_\n\n_That fit into just the space of this small hole_\n\n_He only learned trades that would work well_\n\n_Within the confines of his small hole_.\n\nBraving\u2014even loving\u2014death was revealed to be the secret for living a fulfilled life. For Rumi, love and death were entwined in an embrace, while love and fear were opposites.\n\nThe crescendo to Rumi's growing excitement about death as an expression of love and nonattachment was reached in a glorious hymn to death in Book V, which Rumi composed at the beginning of the decade of the 1270s, when he was sixty-three years old. He was now quickened with anticipation at the prospect of death and resurrection. The theme of transcending his mortal body had become inseparable from his religion of love:\n\n_When you hear them say, \"That poor man is dead,\"_\n\n_You may answer, \"I am alive, you just cannot see!_\n\n_When my body was laid to rest, all by itself_ ,\n\n_Eight paradises blossomed inside my heart!\"_\n\n_When the soul sleeps among roses and jasmine_\n\n_What matter if the body is buried in dirt?_\n\n_What does the sleeping soul know of the body?_\n\n_Or care whether its grave is a rose garden or ash pit?_\n\n_The soul has emerged into the sky-blue of the heavens_\n\n_Crying out, to those below, \"If only everyone knew!\"_\nCHAPTER 15\n\n_Wedding Night_\n\nAS Rumi was walking one day, in bright daylight, his mind elsewhere, his shoe became stuck in the mud. He simply discarded it and proceeded barefoot. At other times, and other places, Rumi's behavior was becoming similarly marked by absentmindedness, ecstatic absorption, or the freedom that came with advanced age and station. He once grew excited enough during _sama_ that the knot of his drawers came undone, though he kept twirling only in a loose shirt until Hosam jumped up, clasped him in a tight embrace, and covered him with a cloak. Aflaki reported, \"If a group of poor people begged from him, he would give them the cloak from his back, the turban from his head, the shirt from his body, and the shoes from his feet\u2014and off he would go.\"\n\nProvoking an even more exhilarated response was the birth of his grandson, anticipated ever since the marriage of his son to Salah's daughter at least fifteen years earlier. Born on June 7, 1272, Ulu Aref Chelebi arrived as a kind of miracle into Rumi's life. Fateme had suffered many stillborn births, or children dying in infancy, and was taking drugs and making violent movements to eliminate the fetus, not wishing to undergo the ordeal of labor again. She was convinced her pregnancy was doomed. Hearing of these practices, Rumi sent a strong message to Fateme: \"Do not do such things but keep to your pregnancy. Can it be that you feel so ashamed of our lineage?\"\n\nAs soon as he received news of the birth of his grandson, even before the completion of the ritual rubbing of salt on the newborn, Rumi rushed to Fateme's bedside. He gleefully scattered gold coins over the head of the mother, a blessing of good fortune, and asked whether he might take the baby. Receiving the baby from the midwife, he then wrapped him in the sleeve of his cloak and whisked him away. After spending some afternoon and evening hours alone with him, Rumi returned the baby that night to Latife, the mother of Fateme, with more gold coins tied in a loop wrapped in his sheet. Weeks later, when the baby was in his crib, Rumi lightly raised the covering veil and whispered, \"Allah, Allah,\" teaching him the mantra for prayer first taught to him by Baha Valad.\n\nRumi also took responsibility for naming the child. He instructed Sultan Valad that his name should be \"Faridun,\" the first name of the boy's grandfather Salah. But he added, \"You should address him as Amir Aref, the way Baha Valad called me Khodavandgar, and never said my actual name. Let my spiritual gift to him be my title, meaning that you may write his name as Jalaloddin Amir Aref.\" He also marked the occasion with a poem that harked back to his formulaic wedding poems for Faridun's parents:\n\n_The day he was born from his mother was Tuesday_\n\n_In the year six hundred and seventy\u2014Faridun!_\n\n_On the eighth day of the month of Zel-Qa'de_ ,\n\n_Two hours after noonday prayers\u2014Faridun!_\n\n_From the family and race of the Khosrows_ ,\n\n_He was loved like Shirin\u2014Faridun!_\n\n_Descended from nobility in both his father and mother_ ,\n\n_He came from Paradise, a beautiful angel\u2014Faridun!_\n\nRumi imbued him not only with a spiritual pedigree, but a Persian one, saturated in the epic love for Shirin of King Khosrow, \"beautiful as the moon,\" as he once wrote of him.\n\nA _Masnavi_ reciter\u2014now an occupation, like Quran reciter\u2014told of visiting Rumi and Hosam, when the grandchild was not more than a year old. \"Suddenly I saw the door of the small garden open,\" he recalled. \"Amir Aref was seated on a little wagon and his tutor was pulling him. Mowlana stood up and placed the rope of the wagon over his own blessed shoulder and pulled it along and said, 'I can be Aref's little ox.' Similarly, Hosamoddin stood next to Khodavandgar and grabbed the other side of the rope, and both of them pulled the wagon one or two times around the courtyard of the _madrase_. Aref laughed sweetly and screamed with joy. Khodavandgar announced, 'Being kind to little children is a legacy for Muslims.'\" Rumi then repeated a teaching from the Prophet Mohammad in the Arabic, \"'Whoever has a child, let him behave like a child himself.'\"\n\nWhen Aref was a bit older, Sultan Valad was often startled when the boy entered a room, as he recognized mannerisms of Rumi in his son. Aref's Quran teacher recalled that Sultan Valad told him, when the child was only six years old, \"The moment Aref enters the door of the _madrase_ , I imagine that my father has entered. His graceful gait, his delicate manner of walking, and his balanced movements are exactly the way my father walked. In my youth, I continually saw my father with these same characteristics and appearance, and Aref's movements during _sama_ are exactly like his.\" _Sama_ , within Rumi's _madrase_ at least, had become a regular family activity practiced by all ages.\n\nRumi's stretches of skyward distraction, alternating with silly patches of playfulness during the infancy of his grandson, did not keep him from starting back to work on Book VI of the _Masnavi_ , which he identified in its Prologue as the final book. He chose the number six as representing in Islamic medieval thought the six directions\u2014the four cardinal points, plus zenith and nadir, which were a sort of moral height and depth:\n\n_Oh, Life of the Heart, Hosamoddin_ ,\n\n_Desire for a Sixth Part is now boiling_\n\n_Because of your magnetic wisdom_\n\n_A Book of Hosam circulates in the world_\n\n_Oh, Spiritual One, I dedicate to you_\n\n_A Sixth Part, the ending of the_ Masnavi.\n\nThe sixth book revisits in its philosophical disquisitions the concerns of the earlier books with teaching questions, especially the debate that most absorbed Rumi, between a determinist submission to the will of Allah expressed in thoughts, feelings, events, and actions and the commonsense exercise of personal free will. As in the other five books, he reached back to his childhood for animal fables\u2014from _Kalile and Demne_ came the tale of the friendship of a mouse with a frog. More novel was his growing reliance in the last two books on raw material drawn from _hazl_ poems, which featured bawdy, even obscene or profane language, and lewd scenarios. (When R. A. Nicholson later translated the _Masnavi_ into English he rendered these sections in Latin to spare the general public material he considered pornographic.) In one such tale, a maiden uses a donkey's equipment for her sexual satisfaction, which Rumi presents as a lesson on being in thrall to our animal nature. In another, a young man in a Sufi lodge builds a wall behind him each night to prevent being raped\u2014an example of abuse of power in the religious life. Rumi was illustrating, to the dismay of some, that no material was too vulgar to be embraced within the rich universe of his book and of God's wisdom and understanding.\n\nKnowing that he was drawing closer to the finale of the poem, Rumi's thoughts turned more often to its secret muse, Shams of Tabriz, the human sun now visible only in shadows cast on a wall. In death, Shams had merged with eternity, which was the presence of God's love expressed in this world and in the world beyond death. Rumi took on this paradoxical mystery\u2014of the sun and the Sun\u2014in the tale of \"The Poor Dervish and the Police Inspector of Tabriz\"\u2014its setting a clue. Spread over five hundred lines, the story concerned a Sufi dervish whose debts had always been paid by a kindly police chief in Tabriz, until the policeman died, leaving his treasure hidden. The dervish travels to \"glorious\" Tabriz only to discover that his true benefactor was God, the treasure, divine:\n\n_He gave me a cap, but You the head filled with intelligence_\n\n_He gave me a coat, but You the tall figure to clothe_\n\n_He gave me gold, but You the hand for counting_\n\n_He gave me a horse, but You the mind for riding_\n\n_He gave me a candle, but You the eyes for seeing . . ._\n\n_He gave me a house, but You the sky and the earth_.\n\nThe limits the debtor discovered in the police inspector of Tabriz were those Rumi had come to find were the human limits of Shams of Tabriz\u2014he lit the candle of love for him, yet God imbued Rumi with the mirror reflecting the flame from Shams and other lights.\n\nWithin a few hundred lines of the completion of the _Masnavi_ , and immediately preceding its ultimate \"Story of the Three Princes,\" Rumi breaks into a moving litany, a catalog poem of all of lovesick Zolaykha's coded language, disguising her feelings for Joseph, the paragon of beauty in Rumi's poetry\u2014the story of the Egyptian lady's love for the Hebrew slave is described in the Quran itself as \"the fairest of stories.\" Zolaykha's dexterous ploy happened to match Rumi's in expressing his feelings for Shams of Tabriz\u2014often compared by him to handsome Joseph\u2014and was a parable for his poetic task of coming closer to the truth by going in circles. In talking about such ineffable love, Rumi believed, the longer the detour the more sure the arrival:\n\n_And when she said, \"The wax is melting softly!\"_\n\n_That was to say, \"My friend was kind to me.\"_\n\n_And when she said, \"Look, the moon is rising\"_\n\n_And when she said, \"The willow is now green!\"_\n\n_And when she said, \"The leaves are trembling\"_\n\n_And when she said, \"How nicely burns the rue!\"_\n\n_And when she said, \"The nightingale sang for the roses\" . . ._\n\n_And when she said, \"Beat firmly all the rugs!\" . . ._\n\n_And when she said, \"The bread is all unsalted!\"_\n\n_And when she said, \"The spheres are turning backwards\" . . ._\n\n_When she praised something\u2014that meant \"His sweet embrace.\"_\n\n_When she blamed something\u2014that meant \"He's far away!\"_\n\n_And when she piled up a hundred thousand names_\n\n_Her desire and intention was always Joseph's name_.\n\nRumi had circled back to his dialogue with Hosam in Book I. He was confessing that all the while he was writing the _Masnavi_ he had never stopped thinking of Shams. Just as Zolaykha meant Joseph with every word of hers, so Rumi meant Shams with every word, verse, and tale of the _Masnavi_. Since Shams had first awakened his heart to the transformative fire of love, the name of that sun also evoked the hidden name of God.\n\nThe _Masnavi_ ends on an inconclusive note, almost midstory. Its final tale is fitting. The story of the three princes who fall in love with a portrait of a Chinese princess and travel to the royal court of a king in faraway Asia shares elements with the first tale of the _Masnavi_ of the king and the slave girl of Samarkand. The story was yet another told to him\u2014and finished\u2014by Shams. Given their months of seclusion, most if not all the stories in the _Masnavi_ might have originally been just such teaching stories Rumi first heard from Shams and wished to keep alive in his poem. Book VI ends on a quiet parable of a \"window between hearts,\" without any crescendo, so the epic seems to be a mosaic with a few pieces missing. For a poet with so little interest in titles or frames, dying off into silence was an appropriate enough statement. Some said, though, that Rumi had simply lost interest in dictating, in spite of requests from Hosam and Sultan Valad, as if he had descended or ascended into the distant calm that increasingly possessed him.\n\nIn the autumn of 1273 Rumi fell seriously ill. Among the closest of his companions had always been a prominent local physician, well regarded as a commentator on a five-volume Persian encyclopedia of medical knowledge, based mainly on the ancient Greeks Galen and Aristotle. Rumi had satirized Galen and the reliance on medicine in general in Book III of the _Masnavi_ , his skepticism prescient, as this doctor was unable to diagnose the cause of his weakness, other than detecting excess water in his side. Nevertheless he remained next to Rumi to monitor his condition.\n\nThe unspecified malaise lingered for weeks and months, as Rumi's bedside became the center of heightened concern and anxiety for his family, school, and all of Konya. Most frenzied and upset was his wife, Kerra. \"You should have a precious life of three hundred years, no four hundred years, to fill the world with higher truth and meaning,\" she pleaded with him. \"Why, Why?\" Rumi answered. \"Am I Pharoah? What do I have to do with this world of dust? How can I find rest and peace in this world?\" For three full days and nights he asked that no one speak to him, and he did not speak to anyone. When his wife finally came to him, and lowered her head, and asked about his health concerns and his pain, he answered, \"I am thinking about my death, which will be occurring soon.\" At that remark, she shrieked and was hysterical for several more hours.\n\nDuring the onset of his illness, Rumi was not entirely bedridden and sometimes walked about the _madrase_ in a frail manner. Unchanging was his certainty that he was going to die, and his preparing those close to him for the eventuality, as well as setting its tenor with good humor if not outright eagerness. When he sighed from pain while hobbling in the courtyard, his favorite cat mewed and howled. \"Do you know what this poor cat is saying?\" Rumi asked. \"It says, 'During these days you will be setting out towards heaven and returning to your original homeland. Poor me! What am I to do?'\" (When this cat died a week after Rumi, his daughter, Maleke, buried it near him.)\n\nEarthquakes were common enough in Anatolia, but during that fall a particularly powerful quake occurred, interpreted by Rumi's followers as connected to his condition. In a joking way, Rumi agreed, saying the earth was hungering for a juicy morsel and would soon be satisfied by his corpse, yet no harm would come to the town. He informed his friends that most of the prophets and mystics departed from the world in autumn or the dead of winter, \"when the earth is like iron.\" Weighed down by worry about a lingering debt of fifty dirham, he tried to repay with gold filings. When the creditor forgave his debt, Rumi said, \"Thank God I am delivered from this horrible obstacle!\"\n\nSoon he was confined to his room, a pan full of water set by his bed for him to dip his feet into and sprinkle his chest and forehead, as he had begun to be racked with intense fevers. Hosam and Sultan Valad were usually nearby. Visions and dreams abounded among those gathered, at least in later retellings of the events of those days by those present. Hosam told of being seated at the top of the bed with Rumi's head resting on his chest as they saw a handsome young man materialize in front of their eyes. When Hosam asked his name, he identified himself as Azrael, the Angel of Death. \"What excellent, perceptive sight to be able to see a face such as that!\" Rumi weakly exclaimed.\n\nOne by one the notables of the town visited to pay their respects. Leading them was Qonavi, whose earlier haughtiness toward Rumi had long since dissolved and been replaced by an admiring respect. The godson of Ibn Arabi appeared quite disturbed and began to pray for Rumi's healing: \"It is hoped that recovery will take place. Mowlana is the soul of mankind. He deserves a full recovery.\" Rumi quickly snapped back, \"Let those words be for your sake! When there is no more than a thin shirt between lover and beloved, do you not wish the shirt to be removed so that light may be joined with light?\"\n\nOn another occasion the Chief Judge Qadi Serajoddin visited Rumi, his judgments in favor Rumi's _sama_ practice crucial in his having been able to safely complete the _Masnavi_ and teach, dance, and play music for the glory of his religion of love. Hosam was holding a cup filled with a medicinal potion in his hand, in the hopes that Rumi would drink some. Rumi paid no attention at all. \"I placed the cup in the Qadi's hand hoping Mowlana might take it from the hand of so great a person, but he refused,\" said Hosam. When the Qadi departed, Qonavi again entered. \"He took the cup from my hand and offered it to Mowlana,\" recalled Hosam. \"After taking a few sips, Mowlana gave it back to him.\" A friendship and trust had deepened between them in spite of their philosophical differences, like that between Shams and the cynic Shehab in Damascus.\n\nHosam was there as always to copy the poems that Rumi kept producing to the end, his lucidity intact except when the fevers became too high. Rumi was well used to reciting poems in extreme states, from ecstasy in the midst of whirling to exhaustion in the middle of the night. His theme on his deathbed was the joy of death, which became the occasion he was addressing, always with the message that love rather than fear was the single choice if you did not wish to lose the only life that mattered. As a patriarch and mystic who achieved some joy and peace he was able to sing convincingly of the happiness and release of death in a set of poems unmatched on the daunting theme:\n\n_When you see my coffin being carried out_\n\n_Don't think I'm in pain, leaving this world . . ._\n\n_When you see my corpse, don't cry_\n\n_I long for that time, and for that reunion_\n\n_When they bury me, don't cry_\n\n_The grave is but a veil for eternity_\n\n_When you see the setting, wait for the rising_.\n\n_Why worry about a sunset, or a fading moon?_\n\n_You think you are setting but you are rising_\n\n_When the tomb encloses you, your soul will be released_.\n\nHe also recited lines that would eventually be used for the inscription on his tomb. Its _takhallos_ , or signature, was Shams of Tabriz, which had been replaced by Hosam, yet such a circling back to his original muse might have been his point. Rumi was increasingly summoning the name and presence of Shams on his deathbed. His happiness and excitement at death were made more real by imagining its resolution as a joyous reunion with Shams, as well as with the light of the sun, and the source of both, God:\n\n_Don't be sad at God's festival_\n\n_My chin is shut, within the grave, asleep_\n\n_While my mouth tastes bittersweet love . . ._\n\n_I will never rest, until my soul flies_\n\n_To the towering soul of Shams of Tabriz_.\n\nDistraught from watching his father succumb to this illness, and spending sleepless nights nursing him, Sultan Valad also became ill. As Aflaki reported, \"Sultan Valad had become extremely weak from limitless service, deep sorrow, and lack of sleep. He was constantly crying, tearing his clothes, and lamenting. And he did not sleep at all.\" Rumi said, \"Bahaoddin, I am happy. Go, lay your head on your pillow and get some rest.\" He then a wrote a poem that fit the moment, this \"last _ghazal_ that Mowlana composed,\" alluding once again to Shams, the name cloaked inside of his dying poems:\n\n_Go. Lay your head on your pillow. Leave me be!_\n\n_Let me wander in the night, ruined and afflicted_.\n\n_I am alone in waves of passion, all night until dawn_\n\n_If you wish, come, have mercy, if you wish, go, be cruel_.\n\n_The only cure for my pain is dying_\n\n_So how may I ask him to cure my longing?_\n\n_Last night I dreamed I saw an old man in the alley of love_\n\n_He waved to me with his hand, as if to say, \"Come to me.\"_\n\nDuring Sultan Valad's absence, Rumi addressed the question of his successor. Fateme continued to press for her husband to take the traditionally inherited position at the head of the family _madrase_ and secure the place for their son, Amir Aref, as a kind of spiritual royal family. Again Rumi decisively deflected the chance to begin a lineage or form a more standard order. Some imams of Konya came to see Rumi and asked, \"Who is suitable to succeed Mowlana and who has been chosen?\" Rumi named Hosam. The question and answer was repeated three times. On the fourth query, they asked, \"What do you have to say to Bahaoddin Valad?\" Rumi answered, \"Bahaoddin is a champion. He has no need of confirmation from me. He has no need to boast or make claims.\" His eldest son accepted this decision as he had before, in silence, without public complaint.\n\nNo one left in the room was able to comprehend fully the length and breadth of Rumi's expansive life. The companions who traveled with his family from distant Khorasan were now mostly buried near Baha Valad in the family plot of the imperial rose garden. None of his children had ever laid eyes on the Oxus River, the great natural divide separating the Balkh region of his birth, nor was it any longer possible for them to visit the capitals of his youth, Samarkand or Bukhara, as they had been destroyed as cultural centers by the Mongols, as had Baghdad. His mother remained buried in Larande, and the grave of his first wife was not included among the rest of the family. Some closest to him had known the remarkable Shams of Tabriz, but only Rumi understood the nature and extent of their months of intimate encounter that transformed him midlife from a respected religious leader into an audacious mystic and visionary poet. These experiences kept him a figure apart even in his approach to death. As everyone around him was grieving and sorrowful, he remained witty and serene.\n\nRumi took leave of his circle in a coherent manner with targeted words and messages, treating death as a teaching moment. He was especially understanding with Kerra, who would outlive her husband by nineteen years and during those years become a distinctive, eccentric figure in Konya, only leaving the house in the evening to go to the bathhouse, wearing a fur coat from Turkestan in the summer with a silk veil over her head, burning candles during the daylight hours, but much sought after for her reputed psychic powers. \"Will there appear anyone like our Khodavandgar?\" she asked inconsolably. \"If there is, he will also be I,\" Rumi answered. And then he added: \"I have two attachments in this world, one to you, and the other to my body. When I leave my body, and join the world of Oneness, my attachment to you will continue to exist.\"\n\nRumi consoled his companions with just such a message\u2014the emanation of the manner of spirit he exhibited would be the same as his presence. Such a belief had animated his similar relations with the two successors of Shams, Salah and Hosam, whom he believed emanated and inspired the spirit of love and so were avatars of love: \"Don't be afraid when I depart, and don't be sad, because the light of Hallaj, one hundred and fifty years after his death, revealed itself to the spirit of Attar and became his spiritual director. Whatever situation you are in, try to stay with me and to remember me so that I can show myself to you. Whatever clothes I may be wearing, I will always be with you.\"\n\nHe concluded with practical life advice: \"I recommend to you fear of God, both silently and publicly, neither eating too much nor speaking too much, avoiding causing any trouble or sin, diligence in fasting, continuous praying, the leaving behind of all passion and lust, patience in the face of injustice from all mankind, renouncing the company of fools and common people, and associating with the virtuous and the noble. Moreover, the best person is the one who benefits other people, and the best speech is brief and gives guidance.\" He also taught those gathered a prayer to memorize and recite for the rest of their lives, beginning, \"Oh Lord God, I draw breath only for Your sake.\"\n\nHearing the finality in his tone, some of those in the room nevertheless pressed him to rest, take his medicine, and care for his recovery. \"My companions pull me in one direction,\" Rumi sighed, \"while Mowlana Shamsoddin calls to me from the other direction . . . I am obliged to depart.\" Closest to his pillow in the final hours was Hosam, his \"pearl-shedding sea,\" as he had exulted recently in the _Masnavi_. Turning to Hosam, his last words, in character, faithful yet whimsical, Rumi instructed, \"Place me at the top of the sepulchral niche, so I may arise before everyone else.\" At sunset on the evening of December 17, 1273, Rumi died in peace, having given repeated instructions that the night be treated as his Wedding Night, a time of joy and happy reunion with the beloved:\n\n_The bats of your senses fly into the sunset_\n\n_While the pearl of your soul rolls towards sunrise_\n\nRumi had planned his own funeral, reviving the basic design of the funeral Salah laid out for himself fifteen years earlier, a boisterous procession worthy of a wedding celebration, with singers, musicians, and dancers, as well as Quran reciters and imams. The burial of Salah had been controversial, a funeral unlike any witnessed in Konya until that time. Its issues had hardly disappeared, especially the shock of mixing joyous music and dance with a traditionally somber religious observance. Soon after Rumi's death, Hosam was brought before the court of Qadi Serajoddin to once again defend the _rabab_ from being outlawed, the chief justice ruling in its favor, simply in memory of his friend. Yet on the day of the funeral seemingly all Konya crowded to join in the vibrant ceremony expressly designed for them by a man popularly felt to be a holy figure or even a saint.\n\nOn the evening of his death, Rumi's body had been placed on a bench and washed according to Muslim practice by an imam, several of his companions helping with pouring the water. Early the next morning the coffin was carried on the shoulders of a group of friends and followers out of the _madrase_ that had been the family home in Konya since the final years of the life of Baha Valad. At the first sight of the simple coffin, all the men of Konya, from whatever background, bared their heads, among crowds that included numbers of women and children. The procession was led by Quran reciters intoning verses, along with twenty groups of singers chanting poems that Rumi composed, and musicians beating kettledrums, and playing oboes, trumpets, and flutes.\n\nMost remarkable was the spontaneous appearance of religious leaders from all the other faiths practiced in town, as well as their faithful taking part. As Aflaki chronicled, \"All the religious communities with their men of religion and worldly power were present, including the Christians and the Jews, the Greeks, the Arabs and the Turks. All of them in accordance with their own traditions walked in procession while holding up their books. And they recited verses from the Psalms of David, the Torah, and the Gospels, and made lamentation.\" Sultan Valad remembered his father's funeral, \"The people of the city, young and old, were all lamenting, crying, sighing aloud, the villagers as well as the Turks and Greeks. They tore their shirts from grief for this great man. 'He was our Jesus!' the Christians said. 'He was our Moses!' the Jews said.\"\n\nThe occasion was marked, though, by frenzy and violence as much as by peace and joy. The beauty of the outpouring was interrupted when some of Rumi's followers tried to push others away from a religious ceremony they felt belonged solely to them. \"The Muslims were unable to beat them off with sticks and swords and blows,\" Rumi's grandson told of the occasion, as remembered in his family. \"The crowd could not be scattered and a great dispute arose.\" When the Parvane was informed of the disturbance some prominent monks and priests were summoned to explain their participation. Rumi had been spending more time in the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish districts than was realized, teaching and conversing. \"Whatever we read in our sacred books about the prophets, we beheld in him,\" one said. A Greek priest said, \"He was like bread. Have you ever seen a hungry person run away from bread? You have no idea who he really was!\"\n\nBecause of the long pause until the dispute among the faiths was adjudicated by the Parvane, and then the stopping and starting as mourners ripped off the coffin cover, which needed to be replaced six times, their hysterics only partly successfully tamped down by Seljuk soldiers and police, the procession did not arrive at the rose garden cemetery until sunset. The harshness of the wintry day and the fading of the light added to a feeling of sadness infusing many of the Sufi leaders closest to Rumi, in spite of the affirming music and poetry. They took part one by one in the ritual known as the \"Visiting Rite\" of saying farewell to the corpse, where a master of ceremonies would proclaim their names, as if visiting a royal court. When the announcer called the name of Qonavi, he added many respectful titles. Qonavi later confided that he did not realize he was being called, as all of the effusive titles being listed sounded more fitting for Rumi.\n\nAs a surprising revelation of the closeness that had developed between them, Rumi in one of his final deathbed wishes asked that Qonavi be entrusted with the leading role in the funeral service of reading the final prayers over his body before burial. During the recital of these prayers, Qonavi became momentarily dazed from grief. In the confusion of the day some had arrived late at the cemetery, and given Qonavi's emotional distress, the Chief Judge Qadi Serajoddin repeated the burial prayer once more, or completed the prayer, if the distress of Qonavi had caused him to simply break off. Leaving the service in the dim light of that early evening, the Sufi poet Eraqi made his apt observation of Rumi, \"He came into the world as a stranger, and he left as a stranger.\"\n\nRumi inspired visions, especially fitting, since he had been known as a boy who saw angels. One mourner later spoke of seeing rows of blue angels that day in the cemetery, and Kerra saw her husband transfigured into an angel with four pairs of wings. More restrained and precise, Hosam claimed he never dreamed of Rumi or even sensed his presence for seven years after his death, until he encountered him once walking in the Meram garden and Rumi asked simply, _\"Chuni?\"_ \"How are you?\" \"I saw nothing else,\" said Hosam. Even less supernatural, but most evocative of the way Rumi spoke and saw things, was a dream shortly after his death by his friend Serajoddin, a _Masnavi_ reciter, who dreamed of seeing Rumi hunched in a corner of the house, lost in contemplation. When the reciter asked him about his life in heaven, Rumi wryly answered, \"Serajoddin, they have not come to understand me in the afterlife any more than they understood me in this world.\"\nAfterword\n\nIN just the six years since I retraced the steps of the young student Rumi in Aleppo, history had reminded me of its cruel and destructive powers. Arriving at the end of writing about the life of Rumi, I cast back to my early, significant meeting on a Friday morning with Sebastian in the quiet covered bazaar of Aleppo and wondered where he might be. By now the civil war that had begun nearly unnoticed that same week had created unimaginable catastrophe in Syria on the scale of the Mongol devastation in Rumi's own time. I looked for and eventually found the card Sebastian handed me.\n\nI had no luck reaching him at the email or telephone number handwritten on the back of the crinkled card for the carpet store, though I did manage to find Omar on Facebook, through a mutual journalist friend. Omar had sold rugs in the same family business as Sebastian and was now living as a Syrian refugee in New Zealand. His uncle was the brother-in-law of Sebastian, but the uncle only knew of a last sighting, in England, of my accidental friend. \"I feel sad about what happened,\" Omar wrote to me in a message as poignant as it was brief. \"I wish I can change but as you know we can't.\"\n\nAll signs of Rumi might have vanished, too. He lived in just such a brutal time of destruction and tumult, hardly conducive to the preservation of delicate poetry and spiritual teaching. His death marked the end of an era, and his \"setting\" was simultaneous with the disappearance of the refined culture\u2014and dominant personalities\u2014of his time and place. Within four years, Rumi's political alter ego, the Parvane, had been executed for treason by the very Mongols who propped him up for two decades, a fall from unreliable power that would not have surprised his spiritual mentor. In those same years Rumi's counterpoint Qonavi died, his simple grave in Konya still identified by a wooden honeycomb of a tomb, open to the air, according to his wishes. Finding a pattern in the deaths of these three men, the historian of the Seljuks Claude Cahen has written: \"All those who had been molded politically and intellectually during the period of Seljukid splendor had now perished together, and the former brilliance had vanished with them.\"\n\nRumi's posterity, though, was fortunate in having leaders committed to his legacy in the right place at the right time. Following Hosam's death eleven years after Rumi, his son Sultan Valad, succeeded by his grandson Aref, on whom Rumi had doted, became leaders of a more formal institutional Mevlevi Order\u2014\" _Mevlevi_ \" is Turkish for \" _Mowlavi_ \"\u2014with leadership passed down in royal fashion from fathers to sons. They sent emissaries around Asia Minor and the Levant to propogate the brotherhood. \"Most of these orders peter out, after a bang with an exciting leader,\" Professor Ahmet T. Karamustafa, an expert on Sufism at the University of Maryland, told me in a conversation. \"No one follows up, and that is that. The Mevlevis ended up being pretty successful.\" By the time of the Ottoman Empire the Mevlevis had become _the_ establishment order, and the Mevlevi sheikh, a descendent of Rumi, delegated to gird any new sultan with a ceremonial sword.\n\nFortune did reverse for the Mevlevis in Turkey with the Amendment of 1925, devised by the new secular president, Kemal Ataturk, banning all Sufi orders, as he feared their political power and disliked their musty reminiscence of the Ottoman past. The law forbade the use of Mevlevi mystical names, titles, or costumes, impounded assets, and provided prison sentences for such practices. Yet two years later, in 1927, the Mevlevi lodge in Konya\u2014which grew up around Rumi's tomb, the Green Dome, built by Hosam with funds from the Parvane and Gorji Khatun\u2014was allowed to reopen as a museum, which it remains: visitors can see robed mannequins posed in a dervish's daily round.\n\nEqually difficult to eradicate was Rumi's sublime whirling meditation, allowed to reemerge publicly in the guise of a folk dance in the 1950s. Present at its first \"performance\" in Konya on the anniversary of Rumi's death in December 1954 was the scholar Annemarie Schimmel, who traveled from Ankara, where she was teaching. \"Late in the evening we were brought to a large mansion in the center of the old town, in which armchairs had been set out for the noble guests,\" she recalled. \"With amazement we observed as a group of elderly gentlemen unwrapped mysterious parcels out of which emerged flutes, _rababs_ , tambourines, even dervish caps and gowns. . . . For the first time in twenty-nine years the men began to perform the mystical dance together . . . at once they found their way back to the old rhythm of the 'heavenly dance.'\" While officially cast as performers, the dervishes performing the whirling dance in Konya are now popularly understood to be spiritual practitioners attuned to the resonance of the _sama_ , though in the more formal and elegantly choreographed version developed by the Mevlevis during the Ottoman period.\n\nWhen I visited Konya for the memorial _sama_ ceremony in December 2010, this public rehabilitation was well under way, helped by the election of Prime Minister Erdogan, whose electoral base was centered in the politically conservative Konya region, known as the \"Quran Belt\" of Turkey. Mistakenly turning down a wrong hallway in the vast saucer-shaped venue where the ceremonies took place, I was startled to be confronted by a security detail with oversize automatic weapons. As the prime minister addressed the thousands gathered for the event, I could make out the words \"Rumi\" and \"Turkey\" repeated in close juxtaposition. Rumors circulated that the Iranian president would be attending, too, though he did not finally appear. (Rumi had figured in Iranian-Turkish political relations decades earlier when Ayatollah Khomeini, exiled to Bursa, in Turkey, before becoming supreme leader of Iran, reportedly wished to make a pilgrimage to Rumi's tomb but was prevented for refusing to remove his clerical garb.)\n\nSuch geopolitical relevance for a distant poet of love might appear improbable. Rumi had warned endlessly about the danger of engaging with politics and position:\n\n_Animals grow fat from eating grass_ ,\n\n_People from power and fame_\n\nYet the momentum of his words and poetry has proved as self-propelling\u2014if as unlikely\u2014as the success of his whirling dance and Mevlevi Order, and his double legacy as earnest saint and world-class poet has proved potent. Thousands of elegant couplets by other poets, from a rich moment in Persian poetry\u2014like strings of pearls, as one of their own critics described them\u2014have faded, too. Yet by accident and devoted design, Rumi's lines are reproduced daily both in the original and in modern translations. (I've added to the dense stream with daily tweets of my collaborative translations of lines of his poems.)\n\nThe threads connecting us back to his original poetry are at least as fragile as those tying us to him as a spiritual figure, and were just as susceptible to snapping. Rumi's voice first registered in the West, faintly, only in the eighteenth century, when a young Austrian ambassador in Istanbul, Jacques de Wallenbourg, translated the _Masnavi_ into French. More enduring were forty-four _ghazals_ translated into German by Friedrich R\u00fcckert around 1820. One critic spryly characterized a translation of R\u00fcckert's: \"This poem smells of roses.\" Hegel admired the verses for the pantheistic philosophy he believed he detected. Schubert and Strauss set a few to music as _lieder_. The classic English \"orientalist\" scholar R. A. Nicholson produced a grand and enduring translation of the six volumes of the _Masnavi_ , which began appearing in print in 1925. His students at Cambridge University reported that he would weep during his _Masnavi_ lectures. Nicholson's office was decorated in the oriental style, and he would toil over his lifework while draped in long Sufi robes, with a tall, round Mevlevi hat set atop his head.\n\nRumi's words have found receptivity in the \"ear of the heart\"\u2014as he put it\u2014through translations in dozens of languages, though not uniformly. His poems have been most popular on the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent since the early fourteenth century and in Afghanistan, where recitation is probably closest in pronunciation to Rumi's own speech, as Afghani Persian has barely changed since medieval times. While Rumi is currently popular in Israel, his poems are less so in Arabic countries, as they are associated with Persian and Iran. Equally ironically, when the Rumi scholar Foruzanfar was studying as a young man in Mashad, in eastern Iran, he had difficulty finding texts of Rumi, as this \"Sunni poet\" was considered superfluous reading for the many Shia seminary students.\n\nSomething of the American heartbeat has always quickened to Rumi, beginning with the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who retranslated lines from the German of R\u00fcckert:\n\n_Of Paradise am I the Peacock_ ,\n\n_Who has escaped from his nest_.\n\nA decisive event in raising awareness of Rumi even more in the United States occurred in the mid-1970s, when Robert Bly handed a copy of the scholarly translations of A. J. Arberry to the poet Coleman Barks, saying, \"These poems need to be released from their cages.\" The ensuing flutter of renditions in a free-verse American idiom has been vivifying, and often when someone says that they _love_ Rumi they mean Barks's versions. Barks took some heat for not knowing Persian\u2014he works with a native speaker or from literal English academic versions. Yet Rumi has ever been a permissive muse. While less a publishing phenomenon than Barks, the German poet Hans Meinke, who died in 1974, wrote over a hundred odes in Rumi's name, channeling his spirit, as Rumi had Shams's:\n\n_O Rumi, since I became you_ ,\n\n_The turmoil stopped . . ._\n\n_O Rumi, since I became you_ ,\n\n_North has become south and south has become north_.\n\nI suppose that my frustrated wish to speak with Sebastian at the conclusion of my journey had arisen from a need to talk with him once again of his notion of Rumi's \"secret,\" which helped guide me on my way and fortuitously turned out to be as significant to the mystic poet as to his readers and listeners. I'd come to agree with Sebastian that mystery was an essential ingredient in Rumi's enduring power. Rumi spoke of _serr_ often and in many contexts. This veil of secrecy was a virtue and an artistic style in the broader culture of the time. It was the atmosphere Sufi mystics and Persian poets breathed, as\u2014a favorite metaphor of Rumi for lovers\u2014fish swam obliviously in the ocean. Rumi, though, created an unmistakably personal version that resonates in our time beyond the others.\n\nThe greatest and most guarded secret in Rumi's life concerned the nature of his fiery and transformative friendship with Shams of Tabriz, \"the sunshine of the heart.\" Some have explained the torrent of passionate love poems that ensued when Shams disappeared from Rumi's life as fitting into a tradition of devotion of disciple for sheikh. Yet Rumi and Shams\u2014as well as other witnesses\u2014emphasized the complexity of their relationship, its failure to conform to such a neat teacher-student model. While no evidence exists of an erotic component, Rumi chose to speak of their spiritual love in the mode of Persian romantic love poetry, and from weaving the two came his evanescent message. Most ironic in his current appeal in our age of telling-all and exhibitionism is Rumi's conviction\u2014especially in the _Masnavi\u2014_ that even the name of his beloved Shams must be steadily disguised.\n\nHis poetry, too, operated from an aesthetic of secrets. Rumi spoke in code. Shams was the light of the sun, but so was God, and in speaking of the beloved he was also speaking of the unspeakable, or approaching the unspeakable, as the essence of God is love. His stress on the pain of separation applied to both human and divine as well. All Persian love poetry was built from a reservoir of stock images: the young wine-bearer with black eyelashes; the nightingale in the rose garden; cypresses and narcissi, stars and moons. Yet in writing around and toward God, Rumi was writing, too, in the tradition of mystical poetry, including Sufis of the East, but also St. John of the Cross or John Donne of the West. Rumi would have agreed with Emily Dickinson's \"Tell all the truth but tell it slant.\" He used Shams as his _takhallos_ but also Silence, or _Khamush_. The most successful poems for Rumi were failures. Nearing God, they collapsed into silence:\n\n_Explanations make many things clear_\n\n_But love is only clear in silence_\n\nThe most practical of secrets for Rumi concerned his faith. Rumi was born into a religious Muslim family and followed the proscribed rules of daily prayer and fasting throughout his entire life. Yet equally devout Muslim Sufis, such as his beloved Hallaj, had been executed in centuries past, and discretion and speaking in allusive poetry became more than just a stylistic preference among them. At least once, legal charges were pressed against Rumi for his use of music and dance in religious practice, as they had been against Shams for wine drinking. In the _Masnavi_ , Rumi grew bolder in making claims for a \"religion of love\" that went beyond all organized faiths. As Jawid Mojadeddi, who is currently embarked on retranslating into English the entire _Masnavi_ , said to me, \"Rumi resonates today because people are thinking post-religion. He came to see mysticism as the divine origin of every religion.\" Rumi said as much, subtly, in verse:\n\n_When you discover the source of sunlight . . ._\n\n_Whatever direction you go will be east_\n\nWhen I spoke with Coleman Barks by phone from his home in Athens, Georgia, he agreed with Mojadeddi that the sensational response to his own translations in English in our time has much to do with Rumi's emphasis on ecstasy and love over religions and creeds. \"I do believe that Rumi found himself going beyond traditional religion,\" said Barks. \"He has no use for dividing up into the different names of Christian and Jew and Muslim. It was a wild thing to say in the thirteenth century, but he said it, and he was not killed. He must have said it with such gentleness and such authority that they couldn't attack him. None of the fundamentalists attack Rumi. They just don't. They leave him alone because he is so beloved. There is a music of grace inside Rumi's poems that people can hear, not physical music, a psychic music that makes them feel ecstatic.\"\n\nThese exquisitely calibrated ideas and lyrics matter to many readers today then, not simply for their beauty, or even mystery, but also for truths they find helpful in their lives. One evening I had supper in a garden restaurant in lower Manhattan with Asma Sadiq, a pediatrician at Beth Israel Medical Center. Born in Pakistan, she spoke of having been brought back to her roots, as well as to a concept of mental health, by reading Rumi. \"I felt befriended by Rumi,\" Asma said. \"It was very strange but he gave me a connection to something beyond.\" Her father recited Rumi to her as a child, as well as Urdu poets, and at the time of his death, she found solace in Rumi. She also found her way back to her religion and the Quran, especially embracing Sufism, though a disaffected sister failed to see the connection: \"She said to me, 'Rumi was a gentle, smart man, a humanist. Why are you connecting him with religion?'\" Going through difficult times in her personal life, she kept Rumi's poems in her office, to read between patients: \"We're a society in love with love, but Rumi takes that love deeper and acknowledges the pain beyond the high.\"\n\nI recognized at the end of my travels a sensation present with equal force when I first discovered Rumi in my friend's apartment in Miami two decades earlier: the texture of a voice. No matter whether in the echoing lyrics of the _ghazal_ , the sermonic tales of the _Masnavi_ , or his extemporaneous talks, Rumi communicated urgency and intimacy, love and humor, as well as a need to be heard, even while circling secrets. In what I might sniff at or admire in various translations something irresistibly recognizable comes through. While reticent in sharing all the minute details of his everyday life, Rumi remained open, loving, vulnerable, candid, and even confessional. His great achievement\u2014to articulate the sound of one soul speaking:\n\n_Don't speak so you can hear those voices_\n\n_Not yet turned into words or sounds_\nAcknowledgments\n\nA great benefit in writing about Rumi is being refreshed daily by his wise statements and life advice. Early on I was taken with one such line from a _ghazal_ , which became a compass needle in the travels both geographic and literary that have engaged me for nearly eight years: \"Sit close to someone with a big heart, sit in the shade of a tree with fresh leaves.\" Fortunately, Rumi tends to attract scholars, curators, translators, tour guides, devotees, religious leaders, librarians, artists, musicians, and close readers with big hearts. To all of them, who are finally too numerous to name, I owe a debt of gratitude for the extended experience of sitting in the shade of this tree with fresh leaves.\n\nRumi's was a big life, and the world of interest that has grown around him in over eight hundred years is immense. My predecessors in studying the life and work of Rumi include writers and scholars of such accomplishment that I could only hope their contributions register however faintly in my own language and thought. The contemporary American scholar who has devoted himself most exhaustively to Rumi is Franklin D. Lewis, chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His _Rumi: Past and Present, East and West_ was my authoritative source for many of the facts of Rumi's life. I am also grateful to Professor Lewis for taking time to have a conversation over lunch when he was in New York City. Of bygone Rumi scholars of similar stature, I am indebted to the great editor Badi al-Zaman Foruzanfar, of the University of Tehran, and to the vibrant books on the subject by Annemarie Schimmel, formerly Professor of Indo-Muslim Studies at Harvard.\n\nWriting this biography has required many meetings with experts, several of whom have been extraordinarily generous, ignoring any impulse to territoriality in sharing their knowledge\u2014a testament to them and, again, perhaps, to Rumi. Standing out among these is the Iranian-American novelist and essayist Salar Abdoh, codirector of the Creative Writing MFA program at the City College of New York. Dividing his time between Tehran and New York City, Salar was invaluable in finding books for me in the original Persian that were unavailable in the United States. For securing the remainder of such elusive texts through interlibrary loan, I am grateful to W. Gregory Gallagher, the diligent librarian of The Century Association. For other such guidance, I thank: Ahmad Ashraf, managing editor of _Encyclopedia Iranica_ , Columbia University; Mohammad Batmanglij, publisher of Mage books; Dick Davis, the excellent translator of Hafez and other Persian poets; and research specialist David Smith, formerly at the New York Public Library.\n\nAs Rumi wrote and spoke in Persian and most of the contemporary accounts of his life are in Persian as well as some of the most fascinating scholarship, much still not translated, the initial phase of this project involved learning the language. For leading me through the beauties and peculiarities of Farsi my greatest debt is to the writer and native Persian speaker Maryam Mortaz, my first tutor. As the project grew, so did her role, as she was my collaborator on the translations of Rumi and other sources from the original Persian used in this biography. At the University of Texas in Austin, where I took part in the Summer Persian Language Institute in 2011, my talented instructor was Blake Atwood, with whom I subsequently studied in an online graduate-level Persian language course. At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where I attended the Arabic Persian Turkish Language Immersion Institute in the summer of 2012, I am similarly indebted to Seyede Pouye Khoshkhoosani, Parvaneh Hosseini Fahraji, and Mehrak Kamalisarvestani. For seven years I have also studied on-and-off in the collegial evening classes of Persian taught by Fahimeh Gooran Savadkoohi at the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies. For guiding me to all of these programs, and for our stimulating discussions of Persian poetry over coffee, I acknowledge the esteemed literary critic and Iranologist, Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami, clinical professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.\n\nTraveling in the lands known to Rumi requires expert help and guidance. Among those who made my travels both possible and most rewarding: the Harvard Museum of Natural History Travel Program; Dmitry Rudich at MIR Corporation in Seattle; and my guides Muzafar Ibragimov in Tajikistan, Mahmood Daryaee in Iran, and \u00dczeyir \u00d6zyurt in Konya, Turkey, where I was also shown around by the highly informed Dr. Naci Bakirci, associate director of the Mevlana Museum, and Dr. Nuri \u015eim\u015fekler of the Sel\u00e7uk University of Konya. Of helpful friends, I wish to thank: Saadi Alkouatli for his part in arranging my trip within Syria; for her advice on traveling in Central Asia, Dr. Emily Jane O'Dell; Dr. Robert Finn, formerly the United States ambassador to Afghanistan; Frederick Eberstadt; Omer Ko\u00e7, for his hospitality in Istanbul and for providing me with an introduction to Esin Celebi Bayru, Rumi's granddaughter from the twenty-second generation; and Joshua W. Walker. I am also grateful to Richard David Story, the editor in chief of _Departures_ magazine, for commissioning the article \"Turkey's Magical Mystical Tour.\"\n\nFor interviews kindly granted either in person, through email, or on Skype, I wish to thank: Coleman Barks; William Chittick, professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University, to whom I was kindly introduced by his student Behrooz Karjooravary; Kabir Helminksi; Ahmet Karamustafa, professor of History at the University of Maryland; Jawid Mojaddedi, associate professor of Religion and director of Graduate Studies, Rutgers University, and translator of _The Masnavi_ ; Asma Sadiq, M.D., director of the Division of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, Beth Israel Medical Center; Professor Dr. Kelim Erkan T\u00fcrkmen; travel writer and linguist Bruce Wannell; and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, founder of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University.\n\nFor invaluable ongoing advice on the writing of this book, I wish to thank my perceptive friend and longtime \"first reader\" Barbara Heizer for her generous and characteristically insightful responses. I relied as well on my two resourceful research assistants Mariam Rahmani and Jacob Denz, and on the cartographer Anandaroop Roy for designing the accompanying maps. For expert readings of later versions of the book, I am indebted to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of The Cordoba Initiative, Joel Conarroe, and Daniel Rafinejad. I cannot imagine this book existing in its present form without the influence at critical moments of my editor at Harper, William Strachan, as well as the early, bold, and continuous support of my publisher, Jonathan Burnham, and the tiger in my corner, my agent, Joy Harris, whose passion for this project has never wavered.\n\nRumi's name will always be synonymous with love. He is the poet of love and, as he put it, \"the preacher of love.\" Nowhere has love been more real to me during the writing of this book than in my family, a kind of team of love. I could never decide whether my partner, Paul Raushenbush, was the Rumi in my life or the Shams, but he was certainly the loving and listening collaborator and fellow traveler in the creation of this book in more ways than I could ever spell out. The miracle of love, who happily arrived during the last year of _Rumi's Secret_ , our son, Walter, has by now made everything new, including writing, and the sort of reading that takes place on cardboard pages, bringing to life for us Rumi's essential line, \"Your love claps its hands, creating a hundred worlds.\"\nNote on Transliteration\n\nTHE guiding principle in transliterating Persian and Arabic words in this biography has been to ease the difficulties of non-specialist readers. Persian words have been rendered into Latin script according to the standard Iranian pronunciation of today. Words of Arabic origin that have entered English parlance, such as hijab or Kaaba, have retained their common spellings. Proper names of Arab historical figures have been transliterated according to a simplified version of the system used by the _International Journal of Middle East Studies_. Diacritic marks have been entirely omitted, except in the bibliographical citations, where a stricter system of transliteration, which adheres more closely to the titling of articles or books in library catalogues, has been used.\nGlossary of Names\n\nFAMILY\n\n_Alaoddin Mohammad_. One of Rumi's two sons by his first wife, named after Rumi's brother.\n\n_Bahaoddin Valad_ , or _Baha Valad_. Rumi's father.\n\n_Fateme Khatun_ , or _Fateme_. Daughter of Salahoddin; wife of Sultan Valad.\n\n_Gowhar Khatun_ , or _Gowhar_. First wife of Rumi.\n\n_Great Kerra_ , the. Mother of Rumi's first wife; a Samarkand disciple of Rumi's father.\n\n_Kerra Khatun_ , or _Kerra_. Second wife of Rumi.\n\n_Kimiya_. In harem of Rumi; wife of Shams of Tabriz.\n\n_Kimiya Khatun_ , or _Kimiya_. Stepdaughter of Rumi; daughter of Kerra Khatun.\n\n_Maleke Khatun_. Rumi's daughter, with Kerra Khatun.\n\n_Momene Khatun_ , or _Momene_. Rumi's mother, one of Bahaoddin Valad's wives.\n\n_Mozaffaroddin Amir Alem Chelebi_. Rumi's third son, with Kerra Khatun.\n\n_Shamsoddin Yahya_. Stepson of Rumi, son of Kerra Khatun.\n\n_Sultan Valad_ , or _Bahaoddin Mohammad_. One of Rumi's two sons by his first wife.\n\n_Ulu Amir Aref Chelebi_ , or _Jalaloddin Faridun_. Rumi's grandson, son of Sultan Valad and Fateme.\n\nFRIENDS\n\n_Badroddin Gowhartash_. Fortress commander, built _madrase_ in Konya for Rumi's family.\n\n_Borhanoddin Mohaqqeq_ , or _Borhan_. Born in Termez, Rumi's tutor, godfather, and guide.\n\n_Gorji Khatun_ , \" _the Georgian lady_ ,\" or _Tamar_. Noblewoman, devotee of Rumi.\n\n_Hosamoddin Chelebi_ , or _Hosam_. Rumi's final beloved companion; wrote down _Masnavi_.\n\n_Ibnal-Adim_. Poet, historian, and diplomat, as well as Rumi's prime teacher in Aleppo.\n\n_Sadroddin Qonavi_. Godson of Ibn Arabi; in Konya, taught a path of mystical knowledge.\n\n_Salahoddin Zarkub_ , or _Salah_. Goldsmith; Rumi's beloved companion after Shams.\n\n_Serajoddin Ormovi_. Religious judge in Konya during Rumi's mature years.\n\n_Shamsoddin, Shams of Tabriz_ , or _Shams_. Rumi's beloved companion, and the \"face of the sun.\"\n\nPOETS AND WRITERS\n\n_Attar_. An herbal apothecary, in Nishapur; wrote _The Conference of the Birds_.\n\n_Jami_. Fifteenth-century Naqshabandi Sufi poet of Khorasan.\n\n_Khayyam, Omar_. Twelfth-century mathematician from Nishapur, famous for his _robaiyyat_.\n\n_al-Mutanabbi_. Major eleventh-century Arabic poet, a lifelong favorite of Rumi.\n\n_Nezami_. Court poet in Azerbaijan; wrote classic romance in couplets, _Layli and Majnun_.\n\n_Rudaki_. Tenth-century innovative poet in Bukhara said to have invented the _robai_ form.\n\n_Sanai_. From Ghazna, Central Afghanistan; adapted courtly forms for spiritual subjects.\n\n_Yaqut_. Muslim geographer and travel writer; a contemporary of Rumi.\n\nPOLITICAL FIGURES\n\n_Alaoddin Kayqobad I_. Seljuk Sultan (r. 1219\u201337); invited Rumi's family to Konya.\n\n_Alaoddin Kayqobad II_. Seljuk Sultan (r. 1246\u201357). Youngest son of Kaykhosrow II, his mother was the Georgian princess Gorji Khatun; died on mission to the Mongol court.\n\n_Aminoddin Mikail_. A treasury official and viceroy, his wife was a disciple of Rumi.\n\n_Ezzoddin Kaykaus II_. Seljuk Sultan (r. 1246, or 1248\u201360). Eldest of three sons of Kaykhosrow II, his mother was the daughter of a Greek priest.\n\n_Ghengis Khan_ (c. 1162\u20131227). Founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire.\n\n_Ghiasoddin Kaykhosrow II_ , Seljuk Sultan (r. 1237\u201346) married to Gorji Khatun.\n\n_Ghiasoddin Kaykhosrow III_ (r. 1264\u201382), Seljuk Sultan set up, when no more than seven years old, by the Parvane.\n\n_Hulagu Khan_ (c. 1218\u20131265). Grandson of Ghenghis Khan; conquered much of western Asia and led the siege and attack on Damascus.\n\n_Khwarazmshah, Alaoddin Mohammad_ , b. _Takesh_ (r. 1200\u20131220). Ruler of Khwarazm, in Central Asia, during Rumi's childhood; besieged Samarkand.\n\n_Moinoddin Solayman Parvane_ (\"The Butterfly\"). Statesman, and de facto ruler of Seljuk Anatolia during the period of the Mongol protectorate; married to Gorji Khatun.\n\n_Nezam al-Molk_. Eleventh-century Seljuk vizier; founded Nezamiyye University in Baghdad; patron of Omar Khayyam, and author of a handbook on statecraft.\n\n_Roknoddin, Qelij Arslan IV_ (r. 1246\u201364), Seljuk Sultan. Second son of Kaykhosrow II, his mother was a Greek slave and concubine. Apparently murdered at a banquet.\n\nRELIGIOUS FIGURES\n\n_Bayazid Bestami_. Ninth-century Sufi; promoted a \"drunken\" School of Sufism.\n\n_Fakhroddin Razi of Herat_. Muslim analytic philosopher and preacher disliked by Rumi's father.\n\n_al-Ghazali, Abu Hamed Mohammad_. Eleventh-century luminary of Nezamiyye College, Baghdad; rejected logical philosophy in his _The Revival of the Religious Sciences_.\n\n_al-Ghazali, Ahmad_. Radical Sufi poet and mystic; brother of Mohammad al-Ghazali.\n\n_al-Hallaj, Mansur_. Tenth-century ecstatic or \"drunken\" Sufi, executed in Baghdad.\n\n_Ibn Arabi_. Spanish-born Arab mystic; wrote _Meccan Revelations_ , a synthesis of mystical thought in Rumi's era; taught in Damascus and Aleppo.\n\n_Jonayd_. Tenth-century Sufi; promoted the \"sober\" School of Baghdad.\nGlossary of Terms\n\n_Abbasid_. The third of the Islamic caliphates to succeed the Prophet Mohammad, the Abbasids ruled mostly from their capital in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq after assuming authority from the Umayyads in the eighth century.\n\n_akhavan_. A sodality of craftsmen, laborers, and merchants, similar to early guilds, with overtones of chivalry and brotherhood.\n\n_Ayyubid_. A Muslim dynasty founded by Saladin and centered in Egypt with sultans often vying for power in Syria and other parts of the Middle East.\n\n_Baba_. Religious figures, often accompanying Turkmen immigrating to Anatolia from Central Asia.\n\n_caliph_. A term meaning \"deputy\" or \"successor\" of the Prophet Mohammad after his death, applied to the governing religious leader of Muslims.\n\n_caravanserai_. A roadside inn, also known as a _han_.\n\n_chelle_. Sufi initiatory practice of an extended period of isolation from the world.\n\n_dervish_. The Turkish version of a Persian word for those who renounced the world, or for the poor in God; commonly used for Sufis.\n\n_divan_. A collection of poems.\n\n_fatwa_. A ruling of a religious scholar on questions of Islamic jurisprudence.\n\n_fotovvat_. A widespread brotherhood within Islam, which included some caliphs as members, and combined chivalric morals and a set of ethics with Sufi mysticism as well as a touch of militant power.\n\n_ghazal_. Lyrical, rhymed poems, often on romantic themes, sometimes including _radif_ , or repeated words or phrases at the end of each line, and not usually exceeding sixteen lines.\n\n_hadith_. Recorded sayings or teachings of the Prophet Mohammad.\n\n_hajj_. The annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, incumbent on able Muslims at least once in a lifetime.\n\n_harem_. Separate quarters for women and young children in a traditional Muslim household.\n\n_hazl_. Bawdy Persian poems featuring course satire and vulgar language.\n\n_jinn_. Invisible, mischievous spirits, or genies.\n\n_Kaaba_. The most sacred shrine in Islam, located in the courtyard of the Great Mosque at Mecca, and believed to have been built by the patriarch Abraham.\n\n_khaneqah_. A Sufi lodge.\n\n_Khorasan_. The eastern region of the former Persian Empire, including much of modern-day eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.\n\n_lale_. A tutor for children.\n\n_madrase_. An upper-level school or college.\n\n_maktab_. Elementary school.\n\n_malamatiyya_. Followers of the \"path of blame,\" who purposely disguised their piety in unorthodox clothing and behavior.\n\n_Mamluk_. A military or warrior caste that rose from the ranks of slave soldiers to eventually control sultanates in Egypt and Syria in the thirteenth century.\n\n_masnavi_. A long poem in rhyming couplets, often on spiritual themes; also the preferred form for narrative in classical Persian.\n\n_mihrab_. A wall niche in mosques indicating the direction of the holy city of Mecca.\n\n_minbar_. Pulpit in a mosque.\n\n_Mowlana_. Rumi's title, meaning \"Our Master,\" or \"Our Teacher.\" The term in Turkish is \"Mevlana,\" the basis of the name for the Mevlevi Order.\n\n_nay_. A reed flute.\n\n_qasida_. A longer ode, often of praise, but also written with elegiac, satirical, didactic, or religious content.\n\n_qadi_. A local Muslim judge of religious law.\n\n_qibla_. The direction of Mecca, which is the orientation for Muslim prayer.\n\n_rabab_. A rebec, or small, stringed, upright instrument, sometimes bowed like a fiddle.\n\n_robai_. A poem consisting of a four-line quatrain, often including short, pithy observations about life.\n\n_sama_. Meditative sessions of listening to music and poetry, sometimes accompanied by a whirling dance.\n\n_Seljuks_. Originally one of dozens of nomadic Turkic clans in Central Asia, the Seljuks enjoyed a two-century hold on power in the central Islamic lands\u2014the Great Seljuks the \"protector\" of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, and the Seljuks in Anataolia defeating the Byzantines to establish a Seljuk Sultanate.\n\n_Sharia_. Religious law, differently interpreted in such Sunni schools of law as Hanafi, which was followed by Rumi's family, Shafii, and Hanbali.\n\n_sheikh_. In the Sufi tradition, a spiritual leader or guide.\n\n_Shia_. The minority branch of Islam believing that the leadership of Islam should reside with the descendants of the family of the Prophet Mohammad, beginning with his cousin and son-in-law Ali. \"Shia\" literally means \"Party of Ali.\"\n\n_Sufism_. The mystical branch of Islam, from the root word \" _suf_ ,\" or wool, perhaps for the woolen robes worn by early Sufi ascetics, rejecting wealth and worldliness.\n\n_Sunni_. The majority branch of Islam, believing leadership of Islam was rightfully passed down through the Companions of the Prophet, following the \"sunna\" or example of the Prophet, rather than residing necessarily with the family and descendants.\n\n_takhallos_. A signature, tag, or pen name, used by a poet, and usually reserved for the last line of a _ghazal_ ; also described as a \"clasp,\" holding together its strung pearls of single lines into a necklace.\n\n_Umayyad_. The second of the Islamic caliphates to succeed the Prophet Mohammad, the Umayyad dynasty ruled mostly from Damascus, beginning in the seventh century until overturned by the Abbasid dynasty in the eighth century.\nMaps\n\nCentral Asia and the Middle East in the Thirteenth Century CE\n\nAnatolia and Neighboring Lands in the Thirteenth Century CE\n_References_\n\nWORKS CITED [DIRECT TRANSLATIONS]\n\nal-Aflaki, Shams al-Din Ahmad. _Man\u00e2qeb al-'\u00e2refin_ , ed., Tahsin Yazici, 2 vols. (Ankara: T\u00fcrk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1959). Reference is made to the offset reprint, 4th edition (Tehran: Dony\u00e2-ye Ket\u00e2b, 1985\/2006).\n\nBah\u00e2 al-Din Valad. _Ma'\u00e2ref: majmu'e-ye mav\u00e2'ez va sokhan\u00e2nan-e Solt\u00e2n al-'olam\u00e2 Bah\u00e2 al-Din Mohammad b. Hosayn Khatibi-ye Balkhi_ , ed., Badi' al-Zam\u00e2n Foruz\u00e2nfar, 2 vols. (Tehran: Ed\u00e2re-ye Koll-e Enteba'\u00e2t-e Vez\u00e2rat-e Farhang, 1955 and 1959.) A 2nd edition was published in Tehran in 1973.\n\nBorh\u00e2n al-Din Mohaqqeq. _Ma'\u00e2ref: majmu'e-ye mav\u00e2'ez va kalam\u00e2t-e Seyyed Borh\u00e2n al-Din Mohaqqeq-e Termezi_ , ed., Badi' al-Zam\u00e2n Foruz\u00e2nfar. 2nd edition. (Tehran: Markaz-e Nashr-e D\u00e2neshg\u00e2h-e Tehr\u00e2n, section edition, 1998). First published 1961.\n\nFaridun b. Ahmad Sepahs\u00e2l\u00e2r. _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahs\u00e2l\u00e2r_ , ed. by Sa'id Nafisi (Tehran: Eqb\u00e2l, 1325\/1947); reprinted as _Zendegin\u00e2me-ye Mowl\u00e2n\u00e2 Jal\u00e2l al-Din Mowlavi_ in 1983).\n\nForuz\u00e2nfar, Badi' al-Zam\u00e2n. _Res\u00e2le dar tahqiq-e ahv\u00e2l va zendeg\u00e2ni-ye Mowl\u00e2n\u00e2 Jal\u00e2l al-Din Mohammad mashhur be Mowlavi_ , rev. 4th edition (Tehran: Zavv\u00e2r, 1978). First published 1951.\n\nRumi. _Div\u00e2n-e Shams-e Tabrizi_. Following the edition of Badi' al-Zam\u00e2n Foruz\u00e2nfar, _Kolliy\u00e2t-e Shams y\u00e2 Div\u00e2n-e Kabir_ , 10 vols. (Tehran: University of Tehran Press, 1957\u201367). Reference is made to the edition of the entire series reprinted by Amir Kabir in nine volumes, 2535\/1977. The _Div\u00e2n_ gives the number for each _ghaza l_ , _robai_ , and _tarji-band_.\n\n _Fihe m\u00e2 fih az goft\u00e2r-e Mowl\u00e2n\u00e2 Jal\u00e2l al-Din Mohammad mashhur be Mowlavi_ , ed. Badi' al-Zam\u00e2n Foruz\u00e2nfar (Tehran: Neg\u00e2h, 1389\/2010). First edition published by Amir Kabir, 1951.\n\n _Maj\u00e2les-e sabe'e_ (Tehran: Kayh\u00e2n, reprint 1994). First edition published in 1986.\n\n _Maktub\u00e2t-e Mowl\u00e2n\u00e2 Jal\u00e2l al-Din Rumi_ , ed., Towfiq Sobh\u00e2ni (Tehran: Markaz-e Nashr-e D\u00e2neshg\u00e2hi, 1992).\n\n _Masnavi-ye ma'navi_ , ed., R. A. Nicholson as _The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi_ , E. J. W. Gibb Memorial, new series (London: Luzac & Co., 1925, 1929, 1933). Reference is made in these pages to the one-volume edition subsequently printed in Iran (Tehran: Gooya Books, 1386\/2007).\n\nShams al-Din Tabrizi. _Maq\u00e2lat-e Shams-e Tabrizi_ , ed., Mohammad 'Ali Movahhed (Tehran: Sah\u00e2mi, Entesh\u00e2r\u00e2t-e Khw\u00e2razmi, 1990).\n\nSultan Valad. _Div\u00e2n_ : _Div\u00e2n-e Sultan Valad_ , ed., S. Nafisi (Tehran 1338\/1959).\n\n _Masnavi-ye Valadi, ensh\u00e2'-e Bah\u00e2 al-Din b. Mowl\u00e2n\u00e2 Jal\u00e2l al-Din Mohammad b. Hosayn-e Balkhi, mashhur be Mowlavi_ , ed., Jal\u00e2l al-Din Hom\u00e2'i (Tehran: Hom\u00e2, 1389\/2010. Second Printing. First edition published by Eqb\u00e2l, 1316\/1937.) Known as _Valad n\u00e2me_ in Iran, and as _Ebted\u00e2 n\u00e2me_ in Turkey. [My translations are in prose; the original was written in _masnavi_ verse couplets.]\n\nWORKS CITED (SECONDARY SOURCES)\n\nBarthold, W. _Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion_ (Exeter, Great Britain: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust. First published in English in 1928, 2012 reprint).\n\nBennison, Amira K. _The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the Abbasid Empire_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).\n\nBobrick, Benson. _The Caliph's Splendor: Islam and the West in the Golden Age of Baghdad_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012).\n\nBrowne, Edward G. _A Literary History of Persia: 1000\u20131290_ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969; first published in 1906).\n\nChamberlain, Michael. _Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190\u20131390_ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).\n\nChittick, William C. _The Sufi Path of Love_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983).\n\nHansen, Valerie. _The Silk Road: A New History_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).\n\nHarvey, Andrew. _The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi_ (Berkeley, California: Frog, Ltd. 1994).\n\nHirtenstein, Stephen. _The Unlimited Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn Arabi_ (Ashland, Oregon: Anqa Publishing, 1999).\n\nKaramustafa, Ahmet T. _Sufism: The Formative Period_ (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007).\n\nLe Strange, Guy. _The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur_ (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010; first published in 1905).\n\n _Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate_ (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2011; first published in 1901).\n\nLewis, Bernard, editor and translator. _Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew Poems_ (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001; first published in hardcover by Oneworld Publications, 2000.)\n\nLewis, Franklin D. _Rumi: Past and Present, East and West_ (Oxford: A Oneworld Book, 2008, revised paperback edition). First published in hardback by Oneworld Publications, 2005.\n\n \"Reading, Writing, and Recitation: Sanai and the Origins of the Persian Ghazal\" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1995).\n\nMorray, David. _An Ayyubid Notable and His World: Ibn al-Adim and Aleppo as Portrayed in His Biographical Dictionary of People Associated with the City_ (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).\n\nRypka, Jan. _History of Iranian Literature_ (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1968).\n\nSafi, Omid. _The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).\n\nSchmimmel, Annemarie. _As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam_ (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001, originally published 1982).\n\n _Mystical Dimensions of Islam_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).\n\n _Rumi's World: The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet_ (Boston & London: Shambhala Press, 2001; originally published as _I Am Wind, You Are Fire)_.\n\n _The Triumphal Sun_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).\n\nTabatabai, Sassan. _Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry_ (Leiden: Leiden University Press, Iranian Study Series, 2010).\n\nWeatherford, Jack. _Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World_ (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004).\n\nZarrinkub, A. H. _Step by Step Up to Union with God: Life, Thought and Spiritual Journey of Jalal-al-Din Rumi_ , trans. by M. Kayvani (New York: Persian Heritage Foundation, 2009).\nNotes\n\nEPIGRAPH\n\nxi \"Love stole.\" Ghazal #940.\n\nPROLOGUE\n\n _Masnavi_. Its full title, _Masnavi-ye ma'navi_ , is sometimes translated into English as \"Spiritual Verses.\"\n\n \"Hearken to this reed.\" _Rumi: Poet and Mystic_. Translated by Reynold Nicholson (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1950), 31.\n\n \"I am the black cloud.\" #183. _Mystical Poems of Rumi_. Translated by A. J. Arberry. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press edition, 2009), 197.\n\n \"Islam in New York City.\" A chapter of my book _Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).\n\n \"best-selling poet.\" Ptolemy Tompkins, \"Rumi Rules!\" _Time Asia_ 160, no. 13 (October 7, 2002), 62.\n\n \"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing.\" _The Essential Rumi_. Translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1997), 36.\n\n \"If you accustom yourself.\" _Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi_. Introduction and translation by W. M. Thackston Jr. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994), Discourse 55, 210.\n\n \"paradise on earth.\" Ghazal #1493. All the lines from the _ghazals_ and _robais_ are taken from the _Div\u00e2n-e Shams-e Tabrizi_.\n\n \"The mind is a caravanserai.\" _Masnavi_ , V, 3644; 3646.\n\n \"calls me from the other side.\" Aflaki, _Man\u00e2qeb al-'\u00e2refin, III, sec_. 579, 589.\n\n \"If you visit my grave.\" Ghazal #683.\n\n \"No one understood.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 333, 400.\n\nCHAPTER 1: \"IN A LIGHTNING FLASH FROM HERE TO VAKHSH\"\n\n \"In a lightning flash.\" _Masnavi_ , IV, 3319.\n\n \"These are angels.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 1, 73.\n\n \"Let's jump.\" Ibid., III, sec. 2, 74.\n\n \"Love is your father.\" Ghazal #333.\n\n \"no name.\" Robai #1143.\n\n \"My Jalaloddin.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 2, 74.\n\n \"mean temper . . . .\" Baha, _Ma'\u00e2ref_ , 2:62.\n\n Vakhsh. An equation of Vakhsh with the medieval city of Lewkand, near the modern village of Sangtuda, is established in V. Minorsky, _Hudud al-'al\u00e2m: Translation and Commentary_ (London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series, New Series, XI, 1970), 359, 361. His findings are corroborated by Barthold, _Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion_ , 69, and J. Marquart, _Eransahr nach der Geographie des Ps. Moses Xorenanc I_ , Abh.kgl.Ges.Wiss.G\u00f6ttingen, Phil.-hist. KLI.NJ Bd III, Nro. 2, 1901, 232\u201334, 236, 299, 303. Marquart writes that \"as so often happens among the Arabs, the name of the country [Vakhsh] was carried over [to what] must have been considered its capital city [Lewkand]\" (299). These studies are cited by Fritz Meier, _Baha-e Walad: Grundz\u00fcge seines Lebens and seiner Mystik_ (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), 15, footnote 7, the study that first established Vakhsh as the home of Baha Valad between 1204 and 1210. Meier deduces that if Minorsky is correct then Vakhsh was located on the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude. Franklin D. Lewis in _Rumi: Past and Present, East and West_ (Oxford: A Oneworld Book, 2008, revised paperback edition), 47, further pinpoints the location of medieval Vakhsh\/Lewkand near the modern-day village of Sangtuda, Tajikistan, on the east bank of the Vakhshab River, about sixty-five kilometers southeast of Dushanbe, thirty-five kilometers northeast of Kurgan-Tyube, within five hundred kilometers of China.\n\n \"very fertile.\" Guy Le Strange, _The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur_ (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010; first published in 1905), 438.\n\n \"your sweet scent.\" Ghazal #12.\n\n \"religion of lovers.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 1770.\n\n \"If he is Turk or Tajik.\" Ghazal #58.\n\n \"Why is divine light.\" Ghazal #332.\n\n \"Joyful Prince.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 929.\n\n \"Allah, Allah, Allah.\" Aflaki, III, secs. 159\u201361, 250\u201351.\n\n \"the light of God.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 2, 25.\n\n \"This arousal.\" Baha, 1:381.\n\n \"Maybe like the morning.\" Baha, 1:327.\n\n \"Embrace God.\" Baha, 2:28.\n\n \"I began to wonder.\" Baha, 2:138.\n\n \"Sometimes I feel.\" Baha, 1:374.\n\n \"Sultan al-Olama.\" Baha, 1:188\u201389.\n\n \"deviant.\" Baha, 1:82.\n\n \"useless.\" Ibid.\n\n \"But I have not found.\" _Encyclopedia of Islam_ , New Edition, vol. 2, C-G, 1965, s.v. \"Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.\"\n\n \"That philosopher.\" _Masnavi_ , IV, 3354.\n\n Journal. Known as _Ma'\u00e2ref_ , or \"Intimations,\" this journal was held by Rumi, then recopied and circulated in private libraries of the Mevlevi order in Konya and Istanbul over seven centuries. When Rumi's Iranian editor Badi al-Zaman Foruzunfar obtained a handwritten copy in Tehran in the 1950s, he was impressed enough to publish a critical edition. He praised Baha Valad's \"elegance of expression\" as \"one of the best examples of poetic prose\" in Persian [Lewis, _Rumi_ , 85]. A. J. Arberry, translating twenty sections into English, found his Persian \"remarkably fine and eloquent\" [Arberry, _Aspects of Islamic Civilizaion_ , 228]. For the German Rumi scholar Annemarie Schimmel, the text was \"rather weird\" but the visions \"astounding\" [see Annemarie Schimmel, _The Triumphal Son: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi_ (Albany: State University of New York, 1993; first published in 1978 by FineBooks Ltd, Great Britain), 398].\n\n \"God inspired me.\" Baha, 2:138.\n\n \"I will be.\" Baha 1:354.\n\n \"You brother.\" Also translated as \"Your sister's a whore.\" See Aflaki, III, sec. 417, 451.\n\n \"a grand Storybook.\" Rumi. _A Rumi Anthology_ , trans. by Reynold A. Nicholson (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000), Introduction, xxiii.\n\n \"Go ask Kalile.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 899.\n\n \"You must have read.\" _Masnavi_ , IV, 2203.\n\n \"No one has ever seen.\" Ferdowsi, _Shahname: The Epic of the Persian Kings_ , trans. by Ahmad Sadri (New York: The Quantuck Lane Press, 2013), 347.\n\n \"sets the world on fire.\" Ghazal #975.\n\n \"Anywhere you find anger.\" Ghazal #2198.\n\n \"When the perfume of your grace.\" Ghazal #690.\n\n \"The hero gives a wooden sword.\" Ghazal #27.\n\n \"It occurred to me.\" Baha, 1:360.\n\nCHAPTER 2: SAMARKAND\n\n \"1212.\" Yolande Crowe, \"Samarkand,\" _The Encyclopedia of Islam_ , Volume VIII (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 1033. Possible dates suggested elsewhere for the siege of Samarkand, which fixes the presence of Rumi and family in the city, are 1211 or 1213.\n\n \"Inside this month.\" Ghazal #2344.\n\n \"perpetually clear.\" Abul-Fida, cited in Afzal Iqbal, _Life & Work of Muhammad Jalal-ud-Din Rumi_ (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 2003), 29.\n\n \"Her pulse was beating.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 167\u201370.\n\n \"Astonishing figures.\" Ibn Hawqal, cited in W. Barthold, _Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion_ (Exeter, Great Britain: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust. First published in English in 1928, 2012 reprint), 91.\n\n \"Spread out the paper.\" Ghazal #1.\n\n _robai_. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), in the chapter on poetics in his _Mantiq al-shif\u00e2'_ , mentions an alternative possibility that the _robai_ might have been of Greek origin. See A. M. Damghani, \"Persian Sufi Literature in Arabic,\" in _The Heritage of Sufism: Volume I: Classical Persian Sufism from Its Origins to Rumi_ (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), 53, fn. 35.\n\n \"Sugar.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 3863.\n\n \"The death of a great man.\" Ghazal #1007.\n\n \"Now stirs the scent.\" Translation by the author from Persian text, in Sassan Tabatabai, _Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry_ (Leiden: Leiden University Press, Iranian Study Series, 2010), 31.\n\n \"Now stirs the scent of the garden and the gardener.\" Ghazal #2897. (Cited in Usman Hadid, \"Transformer,\" _The Friday Times_ , Pakistan weekly newspaper, vol. 25, no. 16, May 31\u2013June 6, 2013, 24.)\n\n \"We were in Samarkand.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 44, 195.\n\n \"The word is an arrow.\" Ghazal #3073.\n\n \"Join together.\" _Masnavi_ , IV, 3289.\n\n \"Someone said.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 41, 180.\n\n \"He went.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 246, 321.\n\n \"waving his hands.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 84, 681.\n\n high literacy rates. For a discussion of Muslim literacy, libraries, and schools and colleges in the Abbasid period in contrast with Europe, see Edmund Burke III, \"Islam at the Center: Technological Complexes and the Roots of Modernity,\" _Journal of World History_ , vol. 20, no. 2 (June 2009) 177\u201382.\n\n \"That anxious mother.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 1433.\n\n \"Stay away.\" VI, 1436\u201337.\n\n \"At first.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 30, 151.\n\n nurture over nature. The Mutazilites favored such teaching. Mutazila was an Islamic school of theology stressing rational thought over sacred precedent; they argued that the Quran was created, or written, rather than having been eternal or always coexisting with God.\n\n \"The opinions.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 1542\u201343.\n\n \"The cleverest boy.\" III, 1526\u201328.\n\n \"Your love.\" III, 551.\n\n \"A window.\" VI, 3198.\n\n \"The flames.\" III, 3102\u201303.\n\n \"Some enjoy.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 43, 187.\n\n \"Amazing.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 1858\u201359.\n\n \"That peerless.\" III, 1871.\n\n \"always lifting.\" Aflaki, II, sec. 1, 58.\n\n \"Go!\" _Masnavi_ , II, 1319.\n\n \"ability to argue.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 25, 129.\n\n \"just like a glass.\" Borhan, _Ma'aref_ , 14.\n\n \"Closeness.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 549\u201350.\n\n \"perfect saint.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 84, 680.\n\n \"When God is taking.\" Baha, 1:354.\n\n \"from Rome to Khorasan.\" Rubai #1910.\n\n rhythm. According to legend, Persian-Arabic poetic meters echo the different patterns of a camel's footfalls.\n\n \"Drunkenly pulling.\" Ghazal #302.\n\n \"Our voices.\" Ghazal #304.\n\nCHAPTER 3: ON THE SILK ROAD\n\n \"Silk Road.\" I am indebted for this characterization of the Silk Road to Valerie Hansen, _The Silk Road: A New History_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5\u20137.\n\n \"Since I came.\" Ghazal #1373.\n\n _The Conference of the Birds_. The original title is _Manteq al-tayr_.\n\n \"Your son.\" William C. Chittick, _The Sufi Path of Love_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), 2.\n\n _Book of Secrets_. The original title is _Asrarname_.\n\n \"to lose their heads.\" J. T. P. De Bruijn. _Persian Sufi Poetry: An Introduction to the Mystical Use of Classical Poems_ (London: Routledge, 1997), 107.\n\n \"the unique Attar.\" Ghazal #824.\n\n \"the scent of Attar.\" Ghazal #24.\n\n \"Whatever you want.\" Ghazal #2634.\n\n Sanai. For a critique of the story of Sanai's sudden conversion to Sufism and complete abandonment of court poetry as a simplification of the facts see Franklin D. Lewis, \"Reading, Writing, and Recitation: Sanai and the Origins of the Persian Ghazal\" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1995).\n\n _Garden of Truth_. The original title is _Hadiqat al-haqiqe_.\n\n \"The Royal Road.\" Quoted in J. T. P. de Bruijn, \"Comparative Notes on Sana'i and Attar,\" in _The Heritage of Sufism. Volume I_ , ed., Leonard Lewisohn (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999), 371.\n\n parodied. See _Masnavi_ , II, 2617 ff.\n\n \"Attar was the soul.\" Sultan Valad, _Divan_ , 240.\n\n \"Whoever deeply.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 430, 458.\n\n \"Whether at Nishapur.\" Translation by Edward Fitzgerald, in _Persian Poets_ , selected and edited by Peter Washington (New York: Everyman's Library, 2000), 16.\n\n \"bathing in his sweat.\" Quoted in de Bruijn, _Persian Sufi Poetry_ , 12.\n\n \"Speak Persian.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 3842.\n\n \" _qibla_ of the friend's face.\" Quoted in Annemarie Schimmel, _The Triumphal Sun_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 292.\n\n \"On a rainy day.\" Quoted in Benson Bobrick, _The Caliph's Splendor: Islam and the West in the Golden Age of Baghdad_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 71\u201372.\n\n \"the young deacons.\" Quoted in Guy Le Strange, _Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate_ (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2011; first published in 1901), 212.\n\n \"Bukhara is a mine.\" Ghazal #2168.\n\n \"Give up art and logic.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 1146.\n\n \"Your Baghdad.\" Ghazal #344.\n\n \"The Bedouin's wife.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 2716\u201317, 2719.\n\n \"hot sun.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 1041.\n\n \"The Euphrates, Tigris, and Oxus would be bitter.\" Ghazal #214.\n\n turban. See _Masnavi_ , IV, 1578\u201379.\n\n _The Revival of the Religious Sciences_. The original title is _Ehya olum al-din_.\n\n \"Had he possessed.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 128, 219.\n\n \"The term.\" Ahmet T. Karamustafa, _Sufism: The Formative Period_ (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 7.\n\n \"We indeed created.\" _The Koran Interpreted_ , translated by A. J. Arberry (New York: Touchstone, 1955), vol. 2, 234.\n\n Rabia. Rumi is quoted, telling this story of Rabia, in Aflaki, III, sec. 331, 397.\n\n \"I am the Truth.\" The original, in Arabic, is _an\u00e2 al-Haqq_.\n\n \"In the world.\" Ghazal #731.\n\n \"A man traveling.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 10, 63.\n\n \"piling a few.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 61, 244.\n\n \"Say there is someone.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 43, 190.\n\n \"The glory.\" _Masnavi_ , V, 3224.\n\n \"When you're inside.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 1768.\n\n Stoning of the Devil. This ritual involves throwing pebbles at three pillars thought to represent Satan, who was believed to have thrice tried to persuade Abraham to disobey God's command to sacrifice his son Ishmael.\n\n \"market full of fruits.\" _The Travels of Ibn Jubayr_ , translated by Roland Broadhurst (New Delhi: Goodword, reprinted 2011, first printed 1952), 103.\n\n \"became a great market.\" Ibid., 188.\n\n \"women's veils.\" Ibid., 132.\n\n \"cohesion.\" Quoted in W. M. Thackston Jr. _Signs of the Unseen_ (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1999), 67, fn. 111.\n\n Visting the Kaaba. _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 14, 80.\n\n \"Oh you.\" Ghazal #648.\n\n \"I need.\" \"Rabia,\" in _Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qur'an, Mi'raj, Poetic and Theological Writings_ , translated, edited, and with an introduction by Michael A. Sells (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1996), 157.\n\n \"The pilgrim kisses.\" Ghazal #617.\n\nCHAPTER 4: \"FIRE FELL INTO THE WORLD\"\n\n \"Fire.\" Ghazal #2670.\n\n \"sideshow.\" Amira K. Bennison, _The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the Abbasid Empire_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 203.\n\n \"Glory be to God!\" Foruzanfar, _Zendegi-ye Mowl\u00e2n\u00e2 Jal\u00e2l al-Din mashur be Mowlavi_ , 43, fn. 2. While the Foruzanfar version places the story in Syria, Ibn Arabi's biographer argues that such a meeting would more likely have been in Malatya. See Stephen Hirtenstein, _The Unlimited Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn Arabi_ (Ashland, OR: Anqa Publishing, 1999), 188.\n\n _Meccan Revelations_. The original title is _Fotuhat-e makkiye_.\n\n \"Well.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 444, 470.\n\n \"Crazy.\" Majnun is a nickname, literally meaning \"possessed by _jinn.\"_ His actual name is Qays.\n\n \"Majnun.\" Ghazal #947.\n\n \"Day and night.\" Ghazal #2670.\n\n \"Some of them.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 14, 80.\n\n Genghis Khan. I am indebted for the full history of Genghis Khan's invasions to Jack Weatherford, _Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World_ (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004).\n\n \"ready for war.\" Ala Ad Din Ata Malik Jovayni. _The History of the World Conqueror, Vol. I_ , translated by John Andrew Boyle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 81.\n\n \"laid waste a whole world.\" Ibid., 80.\n\n \"beheld.\" Ibid., 98.\n\n \"stands for.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 3791.\n\n \"They came.\" Jovayni, 107.\n\n \"all the people.\" Ibid., 129.\n\n \"Wild beasts.\" Ibid., 131.\n\n \"the voice of pain.\" Quoted and translated from _The Conference of the Birds_ by Annemarie Schimmel, _As Through a Veil_ , 53. Schimmel was working from: Attar, _Mantiq ut-tair_ , ed. M. Javad Mashkur (Tehran: Kitabfurush-i Tehran, 1962), 287.\n\n \"But for.\" Quoted in Le Strange, _The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate_ , 401\u20132.\n\n \"effaced.\" Quoted in Edward G. Browne, _A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2_ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969; first published in 1906), 432.\n\n \"the announcement.\" Ibid., 427.\n\n \"This period.\" Annemarie Schimmel, _The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993; first published in 1978), 9.\n\n \"While everyone.\" Ghazal #1764.\n\n \"If you're afraid.\" Ghazal #1609.\n\n \"Today.\" Tarji-band #24, in _Divan_.\n\n \"The sky.\" Ghazal #1092.\n\n \"In childbirth.\" _Masnavi_. III, 3560\u201361.\n\n \"God is able.\" _Fihe ma fih, Discourse_ 24, 125.\n\n \"Unless the baby.\" Ghazal #1156.\n\n \"Wars are like the fights.\" _Masnavi_ I, 3435\u201336.\n\n \"They repented.\" Afklaki, I, sec. 47, 46.\n\n \"instructor.\" _Maj\u00e2les-e sabe'e_ , 62.\n\n \"The magician.\" Ibid., 108.\n\n Najmoddin Razi. For a full comparison of the careers of Najmoddin Razi and Baha Valad, see Meier, _Bah\u00e2'-i Walad_ , 41\u201342.\n\n \"Like a baby.\" Ghazal #1372.\n\nCHAPTER 5: KONYA\n\n \"Come.\" Ghazal #2905.\n\n \"Bahaoddin.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 148, 236.\n\n \"a dangerous dragon.\" Quoted in Tamara Talbot Rice, _The Seljuks_ (London: Thames and Hudson, 1961), 172.\n\n \"embellishing.\" Ibid., 71.\n\n \"I prayed so much.\" Ghazal #903.\n\n \"If you turn into a lion.\" Ghazal #920.\n\n \"On all the roads.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 9, 54.\n\n \"At night.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 2381\u201383.\n\n \"The rose garden.\" Ghazal #1339. Of course spring was arguably the favorite season for all Persian poets and the depiction of the season a standard topos throughout all the lyrical poetry.\n\n _The Acts of the Mystics_. The original title is _Man\u00e2qeb al-'\u00e2refin_.\n\n \"Religious.\" Aflaki, I, sec. 21, 28\u201329.\n\n \"pleasant and polite.\" Ibid., 29.\n\n \"most learned.\" Borh\u00e2n al-Din al-Zarn\u016bj\u012b, _Ta'l\u012bm al-Muta'allim: Tar\u012bq at-Ta'allum; Instruction of the Student: The Method of Learning_ , trans. G. E. Von Grunebaum and Theodora Abel (New York: King's Crown Press, 1947), 28.\n\n \"simple-hearted.\" Aflaki, I, sec. 36, 39.\n\n \"tongue,\" \"walking stick.\" A. H. Zarrinkub, _Step by Step Up to Union with God: Life, Thought and Spiritual Journey of Jalal-al-Din Rumi_ , trans. by M. Kayvani (New York: Persian Heritage Foundation, 2009), 61.\n\n \"Wait until.\" Aflaki, I, sec. 54, 52.\n\n \"After the mourning.\" Sultan Valad, _Valadname_ , 195\u201396.\n\n \"He clearly heard.\" Aflaki, I, sec. 34, 38.\n\n \"The most effective.\" Baha, I: 152.\n\n \"Borhanoddin.\" Aflaki, II, sec. 22, 71.\n\n \"Your father.\" Ibid., sec. 1, 56.\n\n \"You are . . . If you don't know.\" Borhan, _Ma'aref_ , 10, 18.\n\n \"God's seal.\" _Masnavi_ , IV, 1923. By this time, Plato had become a standard symbol of wisdom generally in Persian poetry.\n\n \"Whatever.\" Ibid., VI, 4144.\n\n \"They said.\" _Fihe ma fih_ Discourse 55, 229.\n\n \"Sayyed Borhanoddin.\" Ibid., Discourse 60, 242.\n\n \"The path.\" Borhan, _Ma'aref_ , 14.\n\n \"root of spiritual joy.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 21, 113.\n\n \"Pharaoh.\" Borhan, _Ma'aref_ , 26.\n\n \"I am the Truth.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 305.\n\n \"God the Almighty.\" Borhan, _Ma'aref_ , 26.\n\n \"And like.\" Sultan Valad, _Valadname_ , 198.\n\nCHAPTER 6: \"I KEPT HEARING MY OWN NAME\"\n\n \"I kept hearing.\" Robai #15.\n\n \"turbaned class.\" David Morray, _An Ayyubid Notable and His World: Ibn al-Adim and Aleppo as Portrayed in His Biographical Dictionary of People Associated with the City_ (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 123.\n\n \"I'm the slave.\" Ghazal #3049.\n\n \"boundless compilation.\" Morray, _An Ayyubid Notable_ , 10.\n\n \"innate poetic ability.\" Ibid., 181.\n\n \"the play.\" _Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew Poems_ , translated and introduced by Bernard Lewis (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 68.\n\n \"A heart.\" Ibid., 69.\n\n \"We can look.\" Ghazal #2266.\n\n \"sentinel.\" Morray, _An Ayyubid Notable_ , 150.\n\n \"On the day.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 777, 782, 784.\n\n \"Have you been?\" Ibid., 795.\n\n \"Mourn.\" Ibid., 802.\n\n \"In my youth.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 218, 301.\n\n \"Do not look.\" Cited in Michael Chamberlain, _Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190\u20131390_ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 129\u201330.\n\n \"I'm madly in love.\" Ghazal #1493.\n\n \"flashed.\" Cited in Michael Chamberlain, _Knowledge and Social Practice_ , 155.\n\n \"his name.\" Ibid., fn. 25.\n\n \"When our Caesar.\" Ghazal #1921.\n\n \"The thinner.\" Borhan, _Maaref_ , 14.\n\n \"fasting of the elite.\" Ibid., 20.\n\n \"Don't eat straw.\" _Masnavi_ , V, 2473\u201374; 2477.\n\n \"Congratulations!\" Ghazal #2344.\n\n \"tightening.\" Ghazal #2307.\n\n \"hidden sweetness.\" Ghazal #1739.\n\n \"During the _chelle_.\" _Masnavi_ , V, 1445\u201346; 1448\n\n \"When he woke.\" Ibid., 1449\u201350.\n\n \"At that moment,\" Ibid., 1453\u201354.\n\n \"Some madness.\" Aflaki, II, sec. 4, 61.\n\n \"Undergo.\" Ibid., II, sec. 5, 61.\n\n \"Oh child.\" Ibid., II, sec. 12, 65.\n\n \"So I came.\" Ibid., II, sec. 23, 71.\n\n \"The stages.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 10, 62.\n\n \"If you prick.\" Cited in Zarrinkub, _Step by Step_ , 91\u201392.\n\n lists. See Chittick, _The Sufi Path of Love_ , 2, as well as \"Mawlana Jalaladdin Muhammad Rumi,\" by Adnan Karaismailo\u011flu, in _Rumi and His Sufi Path of Love_ , eds., M. Fatih \u00c7itlak and Huseyin Bing\u00fcl (Somerset, NJ: The Light Publishing, 2007), 50.\n\n \"a second.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 14, 90. Partly due to Aflaki's description, she has sometimes been surmised to have been Christian, though no evidence exists.\n\n \"After today.\" Ibid., III, sec. 15, 93.\n\n \"God showed.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 19, 103.\n\n \"A woman.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 2437.\n\n \"Dear son Bahaoddin.\" Rumi, _Maktub\u00e2t_ , Letter 64, 142.\n\n \"I was speaking.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 22, 115.\n\n \"Now that he stood.\" Sultan Valad, _Valadname_ , 199.\n\n \"ten thousand.\" Ibid.\n\n traps of fame. As Andrew Harvey wrote in _The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi_ (Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd. 1994), 20\u201321: \"The ferocity and precision of Rumi's later attacks on mental pride and the hunger of fame show how intimately he knew and understood the dangers of both.\"\n\n \"For some time.\" Robai #15.\n\nCHAPTER 7: \"THE FACE OF THE SUN IS SHAMS OF TABRIZ\"\n\n \"The face of the sun.\" Ghazal #310.\n\n Shamsoddin. As _shams_ is Arabic for \"sun,\" his name could be translated \"the Sun of Faith\" or \"the Sun of Tabriz.\"\n\n \"Parande.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 3, 615.\n\n \"Aren't you coming?\" Shams, _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 141.\n\n \"My turban.\" Robai #1284.\n\n \"The first words.\" Shams, _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 685; [Chittick, 210; Lewis, _Rumi_ , 155]. Sepahsalar recounts their meeting as taking place in a little shop of the bazaar, where they stared at each other for hours before speaking. See Sepahsalar, _Res\u00e2le Sepahsalar_ , 127.\n\n \"Was Bayazid.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 8, 618\u201319.\n\n \"fell in a swoon.\" Ibid., 620.\n\n \"saw the veil.\" Sultan Valad, _Valadname_ , 43.\n\n \"For lovers.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 3847.\n\n \"After that.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 9, 620.\n\n \"I already held.\" Ghazal #2669.\n\n \"I remember Mowlana.\" Shams, _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 690.\n\n \"Salam.\" Ibid., 290.\n\n \"From the first day.\" Ibid., 752.\n\n \"I need it to be clear.\" Ibid., 686.\n\n \"Before me.\" Ibid., 730.\n\n \"Let's go.\" Ibid., 302.\n\n \"The tavern keeper.\" Ghazal #310.\n\n \"Where's your own?\" Shams, _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 744\u201345.\n\n \"Don't read!\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 13, 623.\n\n \"He firmly commanded.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 12, 623.\n\n \"That is not.\" Ibid., sec. 14, 623.\n\n \"This is the man.\" Ibid., sec. 15, 624.\n\n \"How sad.\" Lewis, _Music of a Distant Drum_ , 71. Shams quotes a half-line of al-Maarri, \"The high places will be earned in the measure of diligence,\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 466.\n\n \"mixed-up.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 301.\n\n \"both father and son.\" _Maktub\u00e2t_ , Letter 130, 224.\n\n \"I rarely speak.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 290.\n\n \"He has a beautiful manner.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 38, 636.\n\n \"He has two ways of speaking.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 104.\n\n \"Practice is practice.\" Ibid., 612\u201313.\n\n \"laid claim to love.\" Ibid., 231.\n\n \"When your love.\" Robai #616.\n\n \"When all the particles.\" Ghazal #1295.\n\n \"We will seek.\" Sultan Valad, _Valadname_ , 195.\n\n life story. Later Shams would refer in public with Rumi to past incidents, but presumably these comments were only quick references to background exchanged more fully between the two in private.\n\n \"the rose-garden district.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 3107\u20138.\n\n \"towering.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 369.\n\n \"greatest.\" Ibid., 822.\n\n \"The fault.\" Ibid., 625\u201326.\n\n \"You're not crazy.\" Ibid., 77.\n\n \"angels.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 82, 680.\n\n \"spoiling.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 625\u201366.\n\n \"effeminate.\" Dowlatsh\u00e2h-e Samarqandi, _Taz Kerrat al-sho'ar\u00e2_ , ed. Mohammad Abb\u00e2si (Tehran: B\u00e2r\u00e2ni, 1337\/1958), 216.\n\n \"The Sufi's book.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 159.\n\n \"There were people.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 641.\n\n \"There were dervishes.\" Ibid., 687.\n\n \"With such a love.\" Ibid., 677.\n\n \"I used to have.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 81, 679.\n\n \"They chose everybody.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 278\u201379.\n\n \"You used to come.\" Ibid., 729.\n\n \"If Abu Hanifa.\" Ibid., 304.\n\n \"I'm looking.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 4, 616.\n\n \"When you see.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 3753.\n\n \"Sheikh Mohammad.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 120. For a discussion of the likely identification of \"Sheikh Mohammad\" with Ibn Arabi, see Omid Safi, \"Did the Two Oceans Meet?\" _Journal of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society_ , vol. 26 (1999): 55\u201388.\n\n \"He was a mountain.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 239.\n\n \"You crack.\" Ibid., 239.\n\n \"He was compassionate.\" Ibid., 299.\n\n \"Our caravan leader.\" Ghazal #463.\n\n \"pearl.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 304.\n\n \"intellect.\" Ibid., 82.\n\n \"For me, death.\" Ibid., 286.\n\n \"I would say.\" Ibid., 635\u201336.\n\n \"This man.\" Ibid., 641.\n\n \"Though Shehab.\" Ibid., 225\u201326.\n\n \"You are asking.\" Ibid., 295.\n\n \"At first.\" Ibid., 249.\n\n \"Whenever you see someone.\" Ibid., 713\u201314.\n\n \"in Rum.\" Ibid., 760.\n\n \"Kerra Khatun.\" Ibid., 315.\n\n \"learning and knowledge.\" Cited in Lewis, _Rumi_ , 135.\n\n \"alchemy, astronomy.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 18, 625.\n\n \"beloved.\" Cited in Zarrinkub, _Step by Step_ , 131.\n\n \"Be among.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 721.\n\n \"When I'm by myself.\" Ibid., 761.\n\n \"Sometimes Love.\" Ghazal #2231.\n\n \"The world.\" _Masnavi_ , V, 1039.\n\n \"Whenever I write.\" Ghazal #1593.\n\n \"a sun has come up.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 223.\n\n \"be like the poor.\" Ibid., 778.\n\n \"I stop.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 761.\n\n \"The world.\" Ghazal #1095.\n\n \"We've met.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 93\u201394.\n\n \"I'm so happy.\" Ibid., 189.\n\n \"The first.\" Ibid., 779.\n\n \"God has not yet.\" Ibid., 777.\n\n \"I wanted.\" Ibid., 219.\n\n \"Now the water.\" Ibid., 142.\n\n \"Now rub.\" Ibid., 300.\n\n \"In the lane.\" Ibid., 646.\n\n \"The purpose.\" Ibid., 628.\n\n \"In the presence.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 20, 109.\n\n \"I do not revere.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 691.\n\n \"Which place.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 38, 121\u201322.\n\n \"Is wine.\" Ibid., IV, sec. 41, 639.\n\n \"What have you.\" Ibid., IV, sec. 89, 683.\n\n \"One of them claims.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 306.\n\n \"The lovely.\" Ibid., 736.\n\n \"jackasses\" Ibid., 641.\n\n \"Who is this.\" Sultan Valad, _Valadname_ , 44.\n\n \"Mowlana has.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 74.\n\n \"I'm all one color.\" Ibid., 106.\n\n \"I am only troubled.\" Ibid., 319.\n\n \"arrogant.\" Ibid., 774.\n\n \"You only.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 237, 314.\n\n \"During Majnun's time.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 15, 87.\n\n \"I'm not.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 774.\n\n \"On the Day of Resurrection.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 80, 679.\n\n \"You were silent.\" Robai #1143.\n\nCHAPTER 8: SEPARATION\n\n \"All wondered.\" _Valadname_ , 43.\n\n \"His bird.\" Ibid., 47.\n\n \"Because.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 26, 630.\n\n \"Please be aware.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 783.\n\n \"When you're not here.\" Ghazal #1760.\n\n sonnet. The great historian of Iranian literature Jan Rypka writes of the \"striking resemblance to the sonnet\" of the _ghazal_ , \"the truest and most pleasing expression of lyricism, particularly of the erotic and mystical but also of the meditative and even the panegyric.\" Jan Rypka, _History of Iranian Literature_ (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1968), 94\u201395.\n\n \"Oh you, light.\" Ghazal #1364.\n\n \"The sun of Truth.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 24, 629.\n\n \"From the moment.\" Ghazal #1760.\n\n \"It's a wonderful.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 340.\n\n \"If they had said.\" Ibid., 756.\n\n \"I remember.\" Ibid., 340.\n\n \"Such praying.\" Ibid., 766.\n\n \"When I was in Aleppo.\" Ibid., 118.\n\n \"the work.\" Ibid., 766.\n\n \"When I found.\" _Valadname_ , 49.\n\n \"Kissing Valad.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 105, 695.\n\n \"All the companions.\" Ibid., 696.\n\n \"When you came.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 773.\n\n \"Comrades, go.\" Ghazal #163.\n\n \"It is not permitted.\" Aflaki, IV, sec., 105, 696.\n\n \"This time.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 19, 106.\n\n \"These people.\" Ibid., 105.\n\n \"and no one knew.\" Quoted in Annemarie Schimmel, _Rumi's World: The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet_ (Boston and London: Shambhala Press, 2001; originally published as _I Am Wind, You Are Fire_ ), 18.\n\n \"With his beautiful.\" Robai #352.\n\n \"My sun and moon.\" Ghazal #633.\n\n \"The heart.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 610.\n\n \"Tolerate.\" Ibid., 260.\n\n \"In the book.\" Ghazal #327.\n\n \"They felt jealous.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 72.\n\n \"Mowlana became.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 132.\n\n \"I wish.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 353.\n\n \"If truly.\" Ibid., 757.\n\n \"pure and beautiful.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 43, 641.\n\n \"Because it was winter.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 133.\n\n \"Shamsoddin said.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 39, 637.\n\n \"I asked God.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 347.\n\n \"This is his study time.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 623.\n\n \"The second son.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 133.\n\n \"Did you see.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 198.\n\n \"He repeated.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 133.\n\n \"heart was after me.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 803.\n\n \"Whomever I love.\" Ibid., 219.\n\n \"Someone said.\" Ibid., 74.\n\n \"I become bored.\" Ibid., 740.\n\n \"I cannot blame.\" Ibid., 803.\n\n \"One day.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 43, 641.\n\n \"When speaking.\" Ghazal #2179.\n\n \"I was restless.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 351.\n\n \"The dance.\" Ibid., 623.\n\n \"If you can.\" Ibid., 163\u201364.\n\n \"Was Mowlana.\" Ibid., 773.\n\n \"My entire life.\" Quoted in a slightly different translation in William C. Chittick, \"Translator's Introduction,\" _Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi_ (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2004), xiv.\n\n \"My entire life.\" Ghazal #1768.\n\n \"He said.\" _Valadname_ , 54.\n\n \"I cannot.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 334.\n\n \"As neither Mowlana.\" Ibid., 742\u201343.\n\n \"I became so upset.\" Ibid., 696.\n\n \"To be able.\" Ibid., 187.\n\n \"Bahaoddin.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 134.\n\n \"When Shamsoddin.\" _Valadname_ , 54.\n\n \"Mowlana roared.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 134.\n\nCHAPTER 9: \"I BURNED, I BURNED, I BURNED\"\n\n \"I burned.\" Ghazal #1768.\n\n \"the sheikh.\" _The Travels of Ibn Battutah_ , ed., Tim Mackintosh-Smith (London: Picador, 2003), 106.\n\n \"Subsequently.\" Ibid.,107.\n\n \"his merciful presence.\" _Res\u00e2le Sepahsalar_ , 134.\n\n \"a day or two.\" _Valadname_ , 54.\n\n \"Perform.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 65.\n\n \"sang.\" Ghazal #1641.\n\n tambourine. Ghazal #2083.\n\n \"Sometimes.\" Ghazal #302.\n\n \"Day and night.\" _Valadname_ , 58.\n\n \"Mowlana.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 92, 686.\n\n \"The night wears black.\" Ghazal #2130.\n\n \"bloody.\" Ghazal #2807.\n\n \"covered in blood.\" Ghazal #144.\n\n \"This earth is not.\" Ghazal #336.\n\n \"When the water.\" Ghazal #2514.\n\n \"They want to kill.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 91, 684.\n\n \"The relationship.\" Schimmel, _Rumi's World_ , 22.\n\n \"a more reciprocal.\" Janet Afary, _Sexual Politics in Modern Iran_ (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 98.\n\n \"One day.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 51, 647.\n\n \"During.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 134.\n\n \"putting his head.\" _Valadname_ , 60.\n\n \"For the third time.\" Ghazal #1493.\n\n _The Trickery of Satan_. The original title is _Al-talbis Iblis_ , written by Ibn al-Jawzi (d. c.e. 1201). For a fuller discussion, see Ali Asani, \"Music and Dance in the Work of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi,\" _Islamic Culture_ , 60:2 (April 1986): 41.\n\n stages. I am indebted to the analysis of Rumi's poetry about Shams in terms of such stages to Annemarie Schimmel, especially her chapter on \"Rumi and the Metaphors of Love,\" in _As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam_ (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001, originally published 1982), 86\u201390.\n\n \"Since I am.\" Ghazal #1621.\n\n \"I gave him.\" Ghazal #600.\n\n \"Jalaloddin\" Ghazal #1196.\n\n \"Be silent.\" Ghazal #1621.\n\n \"One night.\" Ghazal #757.\n\n \"Not alone.\" Ghazal #1081.\n\n \"Say the name.\" Ghazal #2807.\n\n \"I wonder.\" Ghazal #677.\n\n \"Speak.\" Ghazal #2056.\n\n \"there was probably.\" Lewis, _Rumi_ , 167.\n\n \"the light.\" Ghazal #1526.\n\n \"It's not enough.\" Ghazal #2768.\n\n \"You speak for God.\" Ghazal #1310.\n\n \"When I went.\" Ghazal #2968.\n\n \"Joseph's shirt.\" Ghazal #997.\n\n \"If my eyes.\" Ghazal #2893.\n\n \"pious man.\" _Valadname_ , 57.\n\n \"Each dawn.\" Ghazal #2152.\n\n \"loved dearly.\" Aflaki, V, sec. 13, 714.\n\n \"in himself.\" _Valadname_ , 61.\n\n \"He said.\" Ibid., 63.\n\n \"son.\" Rumi, _Maktubat_ , Letter 1, 59.\n\n \"angelic qualities.\" Ibid., Letter 23, 91.\n\n \"Just as water.\" Ghazal #232.\n\n \"This unfortunate.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 307, 376.\n\n \"My kindness.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 15, 89.\n\n \"He went. _\" Valadname_ , 62.\n\n \"In every age.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 815\u201316; 819\u201320.\n\n \"I grew old.\" Ghazal #207.\n\n \"one day.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 110, 700.\n\n \"They feel\" Ibid., III, sec. 297, 362.\n\n \"Morning rises.\" Ghazal #879.\n\n \"This was his clothing.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 93, 687.\n\nCHAPTER 10: \"LAST YEAR IN A RED CLOAK . . . THIS YEAR IN BLUE\"\n\n \"Last year.\" Ghazal #650.\n\n \"When Salahoddin.\" _Res\u00e2le-ye Sepahsalar_ , 135.\n\n \"I passed on.\" Aflaki, V, sec. 3, 705.\n\n \"As Mowlana.\" Ibid.\n\n \"I see so many.\" Ibid., V, sec. 15, 715.\n\n \"No.\" Ibid., V, sec. 11, 712.\n\n \"That lion-hunting.\" Ghazal #594.\n\n \"Last year.\" Ghazal #650.\n\n \"The grace.\" Ghazal #1397.\n\n \"At the end.\" Ghazal #1210.\n\n \" _eshq bazi_.\" Aflaki, V, sec. 7, 711; John O'Kane translates the Persian as \"amorous playfulness\" in his translation of Aflaki, _The Feats of the Knowers of God_ (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), 495.\n\n \"It happened to me.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 20, 111.\n\n \" _nayeb_.\" For a discussion of Salahoddin and the position of _nayeb_ , see Lewis, _Rumi_ , 207.\n\n delivering sermons. In a different account in Aflaki, the finality of Rumi's giving up sermons is presented as debatable: \"He never again undertook to preach. According to others, he did continue to preach, but not consistently.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 86, 172.\n\n \"He said.\" _Valadname_ , 66.\n\n \"Dedicate yourselves.\" Ibid.\n\n \"Words.\" Aflaki, V, sec. 18, 718.\n\n \"Again envy.\" _Valadname_ , 73.\n\n \"nothing.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 21, 112.\n\n \"Without a mirror.\" Robai #1552.\n\n \"I'm a mirror.\" Ghazal #38.\n\n \"Take a polished.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 49, 209.\n\n \"Look at the face.\" _Valadname_ , 67.\n\n \"If you become.\" Ibid., 106.\n\n \"Day and night.\" Ibid., 108.\n\n \"They are upset.\" Ibid., 78.\n\n \"When this news.\" Ibid., 77.\n\n \"with their faces.\" Aflaki, V, sec. 20, 719.\n\n \"Fateme is my right.\" Ibid.\n\n \"because of the extreme.\" Ibid., V, sec. 19, 719.\n\n \"May the blessings.\" Ghazal #236.\n\n \"Dance.\" Ghazal #31.\n\n \"His knowledge.\" Badi al-Zaman Foruzanfar, \"Some Remarks on Rumi's Poetry,\" _Mawlana Rumi Review_ , vol. 3 (2012): 183\u201384.\n\n \"One day.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 458, 483\u201384.\n\n \"If my dear son.\" _Maktubat_ , Letter 56, 132\u201333.\n\n \"Because of the white.\" Ibid., Letter 6, 69\u201370.\n\n \"They collected.\" Aflaki, V, sec. 30, 727.\n\n \"my dear child.\" _Maktubat_ , Letter 29, 98.\n\n \"my eloquent.\" Ibid., Letter 45, 117\u201318.\n\n \"May this wedding.\" Ghazal #2667.\n\nCHAPTER 11: THE FALL OF BAGHDAD\n\n Abbasid Caliph. He was a successor in a direct line from the Prophet Mohammad, though not by blood.\n\n pope and emperor. See Weatherford, _Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World_ , 180.\n\n \"When in the year.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 112, 202.\n\n \"in a sack.\" Ibid., III, sec. 113, 205.\n\n \"Oh seekers.\" Taqi al-Din ibn Abi al-Yusr, \"[Burned to Ashes],\" in _Baghdad: The City in Verse_ , trans. and ed. Reuven Snir (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 155.\n\n \"loss for the kingdom.\" Al-Majd al-Nashabi, \"[Turning a Child's Hair White],\" ibid., 154.\n\n \"Now if not eating.\" Ibid., III, sec. 112, 203.\n\n \"The deputy.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 2685.\n\n \"The Tatar armies.\" Ghazal #1839.\n\n \"taxes and camels.\" _Maktubat_ , Letter 42, 114.\n\n \"During your absence.\" Ibid., Letter 61, 139.\n\n \"How would.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 37, 118.\n\n \"I hear.\" Ibid., III, sec. 82, 165.\n\n \"Day and night.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 2, 24.\n\n \"For my part.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 217, 299.\n\n \"premodern.\" Omid Safi, _The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry_ (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 129.\n\n \"It's fine.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 374, 425.\n\n \"I want you.\" Ibid., III, sec. 384, 432.\n\n \"all alone.\" Ibid., III, sec. 468, 490.\n\n \"my brother.\" _Maktubat_ , Letter 36, 104.\n\n Ince Minareli. Annemarie Schimmel described the cursive Kufic architectural inscriptions as \"the beginning of a new artistic consciousness.\" Schimmel, _Rumi's World_ , 7.\n\n \"the people.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 22, 115.\n\n \"Your kingdom.\" _Maktubat_ , Letter 102, 188.\n\n \"I wanted.\" Ibid., Letter 28, 97.\n\n \"Even though.\" Aflaki, IV, sec. 83, 680.\n\n \"Come let us go.\" Ibid., V, sec. 17, 718.\n\n \"For demolition.\" Ibid., V, sec. 23, 721.\n\n \"He accepted.\" _Valadname_ , 113.\n\n \"The Sheikh said.\" Ibid., 115.\n\n \"Gabriel and the wings.\" Ghazal #2364.\n\n \"Ever since.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 147, 233.\n\nCHAPTER 12: \"SING, FLUTE!\"\n\n \"Sing, flute!\" Robai #1271.\n\n \"A human being.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 1, 23.\n\n \"as thin.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 204, 290.\n\n \"Look at Mowlana!\" Ibid., III, sec. 99, 188.\n\n \"Is our religion.\" Ibid., III, sec. 459, 484.\n\n \"Mowlana.\" Ibid., III, sec. 296, 361.\n\n \"It is not proper.\" Ibid., III, sec. 542, 555.\n\n \"Boo!\" Ibid., III, sec. 148, 234.\n\n \"Maleke.\" Ibid., III, sec. 249, 323.\n\n \"Why did you hit.\" Ibid., III, sec. 344, 406.\n\n \"Lord, wait for me.\" Ibid., III, sec. 68, 153\u201354.\n\n \"Why are you beating.\" Ibid., II, sec. 34, 116.\n\n \"happy union.\" Ibid., III, sec. 100, 190.\n\n \"The stench.\" Ibid., III, sec. 166, 258.\n\n \"The danger.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 1, 22.\n\n \"As my fame.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 138, 226.\n\n \"Make yourself thin.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 1545\u201346.\n\n \"Words of praise.\" Ibid., I, 1855.\n\n \"I began to sweat.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 325, 394.\n\n \"affliction.\" Ibid., VII, sec. 14, 800.\n\n \"I am not keeping.\" Ibid., III, sec. 404, 441.\n\n \"I have never.\" Ibid., III, sec. 330, 395.\n\n \"One morning.\" Ghazal #649.\n\n \"Collections.\" Aflaki, VI, sec. 3, 740.\n\n \"Listen to the reed flute.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 1\u20134. An alternative translation of the last line of this section would be: \"Longing to be joined together once again.\"\n\n \"Out of curiosity.\" Ibid., I, 6\u20139.\n\n \"When Hosamoddin.\" Aflaki, VI, sec. 2, 738.\n\n \"You are a ray.\" _Masnavi_ , IV, 1.\n\n \"It's dawn.\" Ibid., I, 1807\u20139.\n\n \"One day Mowlana.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 544, 556.\n\n \"Mohammad.\" _Masnavi_ , I, Prose Introduction.\n\n \"love's path.\" Ibid., I, 13.\n\n \"It's better the secret.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 135\u201342.\n\n \"You blow into me.\" Robai #1273.\n\n \"You pick them out.\" _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 180.\n\n \"I am a mountain.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 3797\u2013801.\n\n \"528 Quranic verses.\" Franklin Lewis cites this statistic from a talk given by Foruzanfar at the Rumi UNESCO Festival. See Lewis, _Rumi_ , 291.\n\n \"When I first began.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 53, 221.\n\nCHAPTER 13: \"A NIGHTINGALE FLEW AWAY, THEN RETURNED\"\n\n \"A nightingale.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 8.\n\n \"In his emotions.\" Aflaki, VI, sec. 3, 743.\n\n \"spiritual ascension.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 4.\n\n \"Having waged.\" Aflaki, VI, sec. 18, 766.\n\n \"my dear son.\" _Maktubat_ , Letter 7, 71.\n\n \"Dear pride of professors.\" Ibid., Letter 67, 146.\n\n \"After he prayed.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 510, 523.\n\n \"At this time.\" Ibid., III, sec. 69, 154.\n\n \"If the sultan.\" Ibid., III, sec. 59, 147.\n\n \"Khodavandgar.\" Ibid., III, sec. 46, 129.\n\n \"These Sufis.\" Ibid., III, sec. 362, 416.\n\n \"What is poverty?\" Ibid., III, sec. 190, 278.\n\n \"Such a blessing.\" Ibid., III, sec. 361, 415.\n\n \"He is a good man.\" Ibid., III, sec. 352, 412.\n\n \"No, I said.\" Ibid., III, sec. 185, 274\u201375.\n\n \"Why must this kind.\" Ibid., III, sec. 83, 165\u201366.\n\n \"requesting the remainder.\" Ibid., VI, sec. 3, 743.\n\n \"The light of God.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 3\u20138.\n\n \"There was no further.\" Aflaki, VI, sec. 3, 744.\n\n \"When Salahoddin.\" _Valadname_ , 116.\n\n \"Welcome my soul.\" Aflaki, VI, sec. 20, 770.\n\n \"Lovers are like waterwheels.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 911\u201312.\n\n \"If you had asked.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 381, 431.\n\n \"kept constant company.\" Ibid., III, sec. 591, 601.\n\n \"Come light of God.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 2282.\n\n \"When friends.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 15, 89.\n\n \"What am I.\" Ibid.\n\n a dozen core stories. I am indebted for insight into the structure of the _Masnavi_ to Jawid Mojadeddi, \"Introduction,\" _The Masnavi: Book Two_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).\n\n \"A fool believes.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 2130.\n\n \"From love of Shams.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 1122\u201323.\n\n \"Now father, I see.\" _Maqalat_ , 77.\n\n \"You are the child.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 3766\u201367; 3779.\n\n \"Shop of Unity.\" Ibid., VI, 1528.\n\n \"Beyond belief.\" Robai #395.\n\n \"opened the door.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 3803.\n\n \"As he was praying.\" Ibid., II, 3805\u20137.\n\nCHAPTER 14: THE RELIGION OF LOVE\n\n \"the religion of love.\" Rumi speaks of \"the religion of love\" in Ghazal #195 and Ghazal #232: \"Reason is puzzled by the religion of love.\" He uses the Persian word for religion, \" _din_ \" in Ghazal #195, and the Arabic word, \" _mazhab_ \" in Ghazal #232.\n\n \"box of secrets.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 2.\n\n \"Suddenly a fool.\" Ibid., III, 4232\u201335.\n\n \"When the Quran.\" Ibid., III, 4237\u201343.\n\n \"Why do they call.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 205, 291.\n\n \"People think.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 10, 58.\n\n \"Everyone who exhibits.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 196, 284.\n\n \"When Hallaj.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 2095.\n\n _robai_. For a discussion of the robais as having been written later in Rumi's life, see Harvey, _The Way of Passion_ , 54.\n\n \"He dove.\" Robai #422.\n\n \"I am the servant.\" Robai #717.\n\n \"Be empty!\" Ghazal #1739.\n\n \"The mosque.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 3111.\n\n \"the religion of love.\" Ibid., II, 1770.\n\n \"Since we worship.\" Ibid., III, 2124.\n\n \"My heart.\" Ibid., III, 2935.\n\n \"Youth is a garden.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 1217\u201319.\n\n \"The eyebrows droop.\" Ibid., II, 1223\u201326.\n\n \"out of jealous anger.\" Aflaki, V, sec. 16, 717.\n\n \"How wonderful.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 598, 608.\n\n \"Take care of Mowlana.\" Ibid., III, sec. 43, 126.\n\n \"Why do these men.\" Ibid., VI, sec. 12, 755.\n\n \"I wish from this day.\" Ibid., VI, sec. 14, 759.\n\n \"Oh brother.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 277\u201378.\n\n \"Although the sun.\" _Fihe ma fih_ , Discourse 52, 218.\n\n \"People work.\" Ibid., Discourse 14, 79.\n\n \"All this I said.\" Ibid., \"Introduction,\" 18.\n\n \"Shame on the companions.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 441, 468.\n\n \" _Del ku_.\" Ibid., III, sec. 292, 356.\n\n \"He is the one.\" Ibid., III, sec. 291, 356.\n\n \"Extract.\" Ibid., III, sec. 256, 330.\n\n \"No clever doctor.\" Ibid., III, sec. 549, 563.\n\n \"At the Festival of Unity.\" Ghazal #202.\n\n \"You flee from death.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 3441\u201343.\n\n \"God created.\" Ghazal #683.\n\n \"Squeezed in the womb.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 3556\u201359.\n\n \"He said, 'My friends.'\" Ibid., III, 3946\u201348.\n\n \"Death, its claws disease.\" Ibid., III, 3984.\n\n \"The bird.\" Ibid., III, 3977\u20133980.\n\n \"When you hear.\" Ibid., V, 1736\u201340.\n\nCHAPTER 15: WEDDING NIGHT\n\n \"If a group.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 253, 328.\n\n \"Do not do.\" Ibid., VIII, sec. 3, 826.\n\n \"Faridun.\" Ibid., VIII, sec. 5, 828.\n\n \"The day.\" Ibid., VIII, sec. 5, 829; since the poem does not appear in most copies of Rumi's _Divan_ , Sultan Valad has also been credited as its actual author.\n\n \"beautiful.\" Ghazal #16.\n\n \"Suddenly.\" Ibid., VIII, sec. 9, 832.\n\n \"The moment.\" Ibid., VIII, sec. 15, 838.\n\n \"Oh, Life of the Heart.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 1\u20133.\n\n \"glorious.\" Ibid., VI, 3109.\n\n \"He gave me a cap.\" Ibid., VI, 3126\u201328, 3130.\n\n \"the fairest.\" Sura XII, l.3. _The Koran Interpreted_ , trans. A. J. Arberry, vol. I, 254.\n\n \"And when she said.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 4023\u201327; 4030; 4032\u201333.\n\n story of the three princes. See Shams's account, _Maq\u00e2l\u00e2t_ , 246\u201347.\n\n \"window between hearts.\" Ibid., VI, 4916.\n\n \"You should have.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 565, 579.\n\n \"I am thinking.\" Ibid., III, sec. 566, 580.\n\n \"Do you know.\" Ibid., III, sec. 567, 580.\n\n \"when the earth.\" Ibid., III, sec. 368, 420.\n\n \"Thank God.\" Ibid., III, sec. 568, 581.\n\n \"What excellent.\" Ibid., III, sec. 579, 587.\n\n \"It is hoped.\" Ibid., III, sec. 569, 581.\n\n \"I placed the cup.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 582, 594.\n\n \"When you see.\" Ghazal #911.\n\n \"Don't be sad.\" Ghazal #683.\n\n \"Sultan Valad.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 579, 589.\n\n \"last _ghazal_.\" Ibid., III, sec. 579, 590.\n\n \"Go.\" Ghazal #2039.\n\n \"Who is suitable.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 578, 586.\n\n \"Will there appear.\" Ibid., III, sec. 571, 583.\n\n \"Don't be afraid.\" Ibid., III, sec. 570, 582.\n\n \"I recommend.\" Ibid., III, sec. 574, 584.\n\n \"Oh Lord God.\" Ibid., III, sec. 575, 585.\n\n \"My companions.\" Ibid., III, sec. 579, 589.\n\n \"pearl-shedding sea.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 1999.\n\n \"Place me.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 573, 584.\n\n \"The bats.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 47.\n\n \"All the religious.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 580, 592.\n\n \"The people.\" Sultan Valad, _Valadname_ , 124\u201325.\n\n \"The Muslims.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 580, 592.\n\n \"He was like.\" Ibid., III, sec. 580, 593.\n\n \"He came.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 333, 400.\n\n \" _Chuni?_ \" Ibid., III, sec. 588, 598.\n\n \"Serajoddin.\" Aflaki, III, sec. 587, 597.\n\nAFTERWORD\n\n \"I feel sad.\" Omar, Facebook message to author, June 3, 2015.\n\n \"All those.\" Claude Cahen, _Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A general survey of the material and spiritual culture and history c. 1071\u20131330_.\n\n \"Most of these.\" Ahmet T. Karamustafa, in discussion with the author, May 15, 2015.\n\n \"Late in the evening.\" Schimmel, _Rumi's World_ , 195\u201396.\n\n \"Animals grow fat.\" _Masnavi_ , VI, 290.\n\n collaborative. I collaborated with the Iranian-American writer Maryam Mortaz on translations of Rumi's poetry posted on Twitter under #RumiSecrets.\n\n \"This poem smells of roses.\" \u015eefik Can, \"Rumi Studies in the West,\" in _Rumi and His Sufi Path of Love_ , eds., M. Fatih \u00c7itlak and H\u00fcseyin Bing\u00fcl (Somerset, NJ: The Light Publishing, 2007), 98.\n\n \"ear of the heart.\" Ghazal #837.\n\n \"Of Paradise.\" _The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson_ , vol. 2 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992), 48; identified as a translation of lines of Rumi in Lewis, _Rumi_ , 570.\n\n \"These poems need to be.\" Coleman Barks, \"Releasing Birds to the Air,\" in _Robert Bly in This World_ , eds., Thomas R. Smith with James P. Lenfestey (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 268.\n\n \"O Rumi.\" Cited in a translation by Mehmet \u00d6nder published in, \"Rumi Studies in the West,\" in _Rumi and His Sufi Path of Love_ , eds., \u00c7itlak and Bing\u00fcl, 100.\n\n \"the sunshine of the heart.\" Ghazal #968.\n\n \"Tell all the truth.\" Poem #1263. _The Poems of Emily Dickinson_ , vol. 2, ed., R. W. Franklin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard, 1998), vol. 2, 1089.\n\n \"Explanations.\" _Masnavi_ , I, 113.\n\n \"Rumi resonates.\" Jawid Mojadeddi, in discussion with the author, June 11, 2015.\n\n \"When you discover.\" _Masnavi_ , II, 45\u201346.\n\n \"I do believe.\" Coleman Barks, in discussion with the author, July 31, 2015.\n\n \"I felt befriended.\" Asma Sadiq, in discussion with the author, June 12, 2015.\n\n \"Don't speak.\" _Masnavi_ , III, 1305.\nIndex\n\nThe pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader's search tools.\n\nNOTE: Page numbers followed by an \"n _\"_ indicate a note on that page; the number following the _\"n\"_ is the page number to which the note refers.\n\nAbbasids, 21\u201322, 50, 71, 218\u201319, 325, 327\n\nAbu Bakr Rababi, 213\u201314\n\nSheikh Abu Bakr Sallebaf of Tabriz, 127\u201328\n\n_The Acts of the Mystics_ (Chelebi), 82\n\nAfary, Janet, 178\n\nAflaki (Rumi biographer)\n\nand Baha Valad, 82\n\non criticism of Rumi's _sama_ practices, 254\n\non fame as an affliction, 240\n\non Hosam, 245, 252\n\non Kerra, 108\n\non Kimiya, 165\n\non Maleke, 238\n\non portraits of Rumi, 228\n\non Rumi after Shams's departure, 176, 179\n\non Rumi and Alloddin, 253\n\non Rumi and Shams, 118, 120, 148, 151, 197\n\non Rumi bowing to a Christian monk, 237\n\non Salah and Rumi, 202, 205\n\non _sama_ sessions with all women present, 228\u201329\n\non Sultan Valad and Shams, 153, 165\n\nAhmad, 54\n\n_akhavan_ organizations, 122, 245, 256, 325\n\nal-Ghazali, Mohammad, 54, 180\u201381\n\nal-Hallaj, Mansur, 56\n\nal-Maarri, 121\n\nal-Mutanabbi, 96, 120\u201321, 149\n\nal-Nasir, Caliph, 50\n\nal-Rashid, Harun, 50\n\nAlaoddin Kayqobad I, Sultan\n\nabout, 78\u201379, 136\n\nand Baha Valad, 75\u201376, 77, 82\u201383, 85\n\nand Great Mosque in Konya, 79\u201380, 84\u201385\n\nand Konya, Anatolia, 77, 78\n\nand Sultan Han caravanserai, 80\u201381\n\nAlaoddin Kayqobad III, 229\u201330\n\nAlaoddin Mohammad (Rumi's son)\n\nabout, 162\n\nbirth and childhood, 72\u201374\n\nchastisement from Rumi while studying in Damascus, 109\u201310\n\ndeath and funeral of, 253\n\nand Rumi, 171, 179, 193, 253\u201354\n\nand Shams, 121, 162\u201363\n\nAleppo, Syria\n\nabout, 94\u201395\n\nthe Citadel, 94\u201395, 151\u201352\n\nGooch in, 1\u20134\n\n_madrases_ in, 94, 95\n\nRumi as theological student, 3\u20134, 93\u201397\n\nShams in, 132\u201333, 151\u201354\n\nShia in, 97\u201398\n\nAli and the infidel knight tale, 250\n\nAli ebn Malekdad, 126\n\nAltunpa Madrase and Mosque, Konya, 83\u201385\n\nAminodin Mikail \"Sheikh of the Ladies,\" 228\n\nAnatolia and Neighboring Lands\n\n13th Century map, 332\u201333\n\nErzincan, 63\u201365, 70\n\njourney from Konya to Kayseri, 106\u20137\n\njourney from Syria to Anatolia, 62\n\nKayseri, 93\u201394, 102, 105\u20137\n\nLarande, 70\u201375, 76, 86\u201387\n\nMalatya, 62\u201363\n\n_See also_ Konya, Anatolia\n\nAnatolian region\n\nBaha Valad family in, 62\u201376, 82\u201385\n\nearthquakes in, 292\n\nGreeks in, 88\u201389, 110, 192\u201393, 207, 232\n\nMongol rule, 221\u201323\n\nShams in, 132\u201334\n\nAqshahr, Anatolia, 64\n\nArberry, A. J., 4\n\nascetic in the desert hero, 266\u201367\n\nastrolabe metaphor, 235\n\nastronomy, 72\n\nAtaturk, Kemal, 303\u20134\n\nAttar\n\n_Book of Secrets_ , 46\u201347\n\n_The Book of the Camel_ , 75\n\n_Book of the Divine_ , 48\u201349\n\n_The Conference of the Birds_ , 46, 48, 242\u201343\n\ninfluence in Rumi's Masnavi, 249\n\n_Lives of the Saints_ , 55\u201356\n\nand Rumi, 46\u201348, 59\u201360\n\nausterity of Rumi, 102\u20135, 241\u201342, 279\n\nAyyubid dynasty, 94\u201395, 99\u2013100, 325\n\nBabas, 136, 255, 325\n\nBadi al-Zaman Foruzanfar, 214\n\nBaghdad\n\nabout, 51\u201353\n\nBaha Valad family in, 50, 53\u201356\n\nas entranceway to Mecca, 50\n\nMongol takeover of, 218\u201321\n\nrefugees from Mongol invasion, 68\n\nroads to, 43\u201344, 49\n\nShams in, 128\u201329\n\nBaha Valad (Rumi's father)\n\nin Anatolia, 62\u201365, 70\u201371, 82\u201385\n\nBorhan passing on teachings of, 87\u201389\n\nand Damascus, 61\u201362\n\ndeath of, 85\u201386\n\nenemies of, 18\u201319, 20\n\nfear of politicians, 40\n\ninfluence on Rumi, 15\n\ninvitation to teach in Konya, 75\u201376\n\njournal of, 13, 18, 20, 41, 86, 341 _n_ 20\n\njourney to Mecca, 38\u201342\n\nleaving Vakhsh, 24\u201325\n\nmidlife crisis, 20\u201321\n\npersonality of, 15\u201318, 33, 34\n\nand Rumi's visions of angels, 11\u201312\n\nsermons of, 74\n\nas \"Sultan al-Olama,\" 18\n\nBahaoddin Mohammad (Rumi's son), 72\u201374. _See also_ Sultan Valad\n\nBahramshah, prince of Erzincan, 63\u201364\n\nBalkh, Tajikistan, 14\u201315, 39, 67\n\nBarks, Coleman, 4\n\nBasra, 55\n\nBayazid Bestami, 116\u201317\n\nbear as friend metaphor, 265\n\nBedouins on road from Baghdad to Mecca, 58\n\n_Biographical Dictionary_ (Ibn al-Adim), 95\n\nBlack Stone of the Kaaba, 58, 60\n\nBly, Robert, 307\n\n_The Book of Kings_ , or _Shahname_ (Ferdowsi), 23\u201324, 78\u201379\n\n_Book of Secrets_ (Attar), 46\u201347\n\n_The Book of the Camel_ (Attar), 75\n\n_Book of the Divine_ (Attar), 48\u201349\n\nBorhan (Rumi's tutor\/teacher), 39, 87\u201392, 93\u201394, 105\u20137, 202\n\nbraggadocio tradition, 96\n\nBukhara, Uzbekistan, 30, 51\u201352, 66\n\nCahen, Claude, 303\n\ncaliph, 44, 325\n\nCaliph al-Mustasim, 218\u201319\n\ncaravanserai (roadside inn)\n\nin Aleppo, 152\n\nin Damascus, 151\n\nKayseri to Konya, 80\u201381\n\nin Konya, 155\u201356\n\nfrom Rome to Khorasan, 41\u201342\n\nRumi comparing the mind to, 6\n\nRumi's friend the dancing girl, 238\n\nSultan Han, Konya, 80\u201381\n\nCathedral Mosque, Samarkand, 67\n\nCentral Asia and the Middle East\n\nmap, 13th Century, 330\u201331\n\njourney from Samarkand to Mecca, 38\u201339, 40\u201342\n\njourney from Vakhsh to Samarkand, 24\u201325\n\n_See also_ Silk Road\n\n_chelle_ , 104, 325\n\nchildren and Rumi, 239\n\nChristianity\n\nAnatolia surrounded by, 62\n\nCrusades in Syria, 62\n\nin Damascus, 100\n\nFranciscan friars in Aleppo, 95\n\nof Gorji Khatun \"Queen of Queens,\" 227\n\nin Konya, 84\u201385\n\nin Larande, 71\n\nRumi and, 237\u201338\n\nCitadel, Aleppo, 94\u201395, 151\u201352\n\nCitadel, Konya, 78, 79\u201380, 84\u201385, 89, 227\n\nclitoridectomy in Muslim Turkic tribes, 17\n\n_The Conference of the Birds_ (Attar), 46, 48, 242\u201343\n\nCrusades in Syria, 62\n\nDamascus, Syria\n\nabout, 98, 100\u2013101\n\nRumi after accepting Shams's death, 188\u201391\n\nRumi as theological student, 98\u2013101\n\nRumi's search for Shams in, 179\u201390\n\nShams in, 130\u201332, 151\n\nuncertainty for Baha Valad family, 61\u201362\n\ndervish and dervishes, 88, 90, 133, 289, 325. _See also_ whirling and whirling dervishes\n\n_Dictionary of Countries_ (Yaqut), 51\u201352\n\nDowlatshah, 126\n\nducklings raised by a hen story, 266\n\nEbn Chavosh, 208\n\nEmerson, Ralph Waldo, 307\n\nEraqi (Sufi poet), 8\n\nErzincan, Anatolia, 63\u201365, 70\n\nEsmati, princess of Erzincan, 63\u201364\n\nEuphrates River, 52\n\nEzzoddin Kaykaus II, 230\n\nFakhroddin Saheb Ata, 229\n\nFaridun (Jalaloddin Amir Aref\u2014Rumi's grandson), 286\u201387\n\nfasting, importance of, 102\u20134, 221\n\nFateme (Rumi's half-sister), 13, 40\n\nFateme (Salah's daughter), 202, 211\u201312\n\nFateme (Sultan Valad's wife), 212\u201313, 261, 285\u201386\n\n_fatwas_ , 18, 238, 326\n\nFerdowsi, 23\u201324, 79\n\nflute in opening of _Masnavi_ , 243\u201344, 249, 265, 272\n\n_fotovvat_ (Islamic brotherhood), 122, 127, 326\n\nFranciscan friars in Aleppo, 95\n\nfuneral procession, Rumi's, 8, 299\u2013300\n\n_Garden of Truth_ (Sanai), 47, 242\u201343\n\nGenghis Khan, 61, 66\u201370\n\n_ghazal_ (lyrical, rhymed poems), 148\u201351, 153\u201354, 185\u201386, 242\u201343, 326. See also _Masnavi_ (Rumi)\n\nGod\n\nand inspiration, 251\n\nQuran verses emphasizing closeness of, 55\n\nRumi's poetry on, 40, 69\u201370\n\nShams teachings about, 141\n\ntrue lover, the lover of God, 250\u201351\n\n_Godtalk_ (Gooch), research for, 4\u20135\n\nGooch, Brad, 1\u20137, 302, 304\u20135, 307\u20138\n\nGorji Khatun \"Queen of Queens,\" 227\n\nGowhar (Rumi's first wife), 40, 72\u201374, 107\u20138\n\nGowhartash, Amir Badroddin, 84, 85\n\nGreat Mosque, Konya, Anatolia, 79\u201380, 84\u201385\n\nGreat Seljuks, 71\n\nGreeks of Anatolia, 88\u201389, 110, 192\u201393, 207, 232\n\n_hajj_ (pilgrimage), 56, 58\u201359, 60, 326. _See also_ Silk Road\n\nHallaj, Mansur al-, 270\u201372\n\n_hammam_ (bathhouses), 138\u201339\n\nHanafi School of law, 16\u201317, 71, 83, 98\u201399\n\nAbu Hanifa, 57\n\nharems, 12\u201313, 34, 164\u201365, 326\n\n_hazl_ (bawdy poems), 288, 326\n\nHediye (Salah's daughter), 216\u201317\n\nheroes from Rumi's boyhood, 23\u201324\n\nHosam (Hosamoddin Chelebi)\n\nabout, 121\u201322, 245\n\nand _Masnavi_ (Rumi), 242\u201351\n\nwith Rumi in Meram, 262\u201363\n\nas Rumi's beloved and sheikh of the order, 260\u201363, 277\n\nas Rumi's scribe, 245\u201348, 259\u201360, 263\u201364, 293\u201394\n\nand seclusion of Rumi and Shams, 122\n\nwife's death, 252, 259\n\nHulagu Khan (Mongol), 218\u201320\n\nIbn al-Adim, 95\u201396\n\nIbn Arabi, 62\u201363, 82\u201383, 101, 130\u201331, 139, 346 _n_ 63\n\n_In It Is What Is in It_ , or _Fihe ma fih_ , 4\u20135\n\nInce Minareli, Konya, 229\n\nIran, Rumi as adolescent, 5\n\nIslam\n\n_fatwas_ , 18, 238, 326\n\n_fotovvat_ , 122, 127, 326\n\nGenghis Khan as threat to, 68\u201370\n\nHanafi School of law, 16\u201317, 71, 83, 98\u201399\n\nMohammad the Prophet, 50, 131\n\nand Mongol rule in Anatolia, 223\n\nrules against representations, 29\n\nRumi growing up in, 14\n\nShafii School of Islamic jurisprudence, 128\u201330, 277\n\nSee also _specific sects of Islam_\n\nJalaloddin Mohammad, 12, 85, 182. _See also_ Rumi\n\njinn (spirits or genies), 21, 108, 326\n\nJonayd, 55\u201356\n\nIbn Jubayr, 58, 59\n\nJudaism, 100, 120, 236, 299\u2013300\n\nKaaba (sacred shrine in Mecca), 58, 326\n\n_Kalile and Demne_ (collection of animal fables), 21\u201323, 249, 288\n\nKarakhanids (Turkic dynasty), 26\n\nKaramustafa, Ahmet T., 303\n\nKaratay (freed Greek slave, Seljuk), 192\u201393\n\nKaykhosrow II, Sultan, 136\u201337\n\ndeath of, 192\n\nKaykhosrow III, Sultan, 275\n\nKayseri, Anatolia, 93\u201394, 102, 105\u20137\n\nKermani (Turkish Sufi), 129\u201330\n\nKerra Khatun (Rumi's second wife)\n\nabout, 108\n\nand howling dervishes, 275\u201376\n\nand Rumi, 193, 276\n\nand Rumi's illness\/death, 291\u201392, 296\u201397\n\nand Shams, 121, 135\n\nKhayyam, Omar, 48\u201349\n\nKhodavandgar, 12, 39, 87, 163, 255, 286\u201387. _See also_ Madrase Khodavandgar, Konya; Rumi\n\nKhorasan region\n\nabout, 326\n\nBaha Valad's exit from, 25\n\nchaos and skirmishes in, 64\u201366\n\nGenghis Khan's plundering of, 66\u201370\n\nNishapur, 44\u201349, 67\u201368\n\nRumi's boyhood influences, 21\u201324\n\nTermez, 39, 67, 87\n\nKhwarazmshah, 18, 19, 30\u201331, 61, 65\u201366\n\nKimiya (Shams wife), 159\u201361, 163\u201366\n\nKonya, Anatolia\n\nabout, 78\n\nBaha Valad invitation to teach in, 75\u201376\n\nBaha Valad teaching in, 83\u201385\n\nbathhouses in, 138\u201339\n\nBorhan in, 87\u201392\n\nthe Citadel, 78, 79\u201380, 84\u201385, 89, 227\n\ngossip about Rumi and Shams, 124\n\nGreat Mosque7, 79\u201380, 84\u201385\n\ninternal politics, 275\n\nmemorial _sama_ ceremony, 304\u20135\n\nMevlevi lodge museum, 304\n\nand Mongols, 137, 221\u201326\n\nRumi after accepting Shams's death, 191, 193\u201398\n\nRumi in, 6, 78, 85\u201386, 87\u201392\n\nRumi's preaching in, 110\u201311\n\nShams in, 133\u201334\n\nKufa, 57\n\n_lale_ (tutor for children), 39, 326\n\nLarande, Anatolia, 70\u201375, 76, 86\u201387\n\n_Layli and Majnun_ (Nezami), 64, 145\n\nLewis, Franklin D., 186\n\n_Lives of the Poets_ (Dowlatshah), 126\n\n_Lives of the Saints_ (Attar), 55\u201356, 59\u201360\n\nlove\n\nmartyr of love, Majnun, 64\n\nPersian love poetry, 307\u20138\n\nas rain in a desert, 267\n\nof Rumi and Shams, 139\u201341, 142\u201343, 145\n\nRumi as, in his _Masnavi_ , 249, 281\n\nRumi associating music with, 175\n\nRumi's poetry on, 64, 80, 123\n\nSham's religion of the heart, 123\u201324\n\ntrue lover, the lover of God, 250\u201351\n\nunion and separation aspects, 169\u201370, 172\n\nuniversal nature of, 203\n\nas way to peace in the heart, 278\n\nMadrase Khodavandgar, Konya\n\nGowhartash as builder of, 84\n\nRumi and Shams in seclusion at, 134\u201335\n\nRumi and Shams teaching together, 139\u201341\n\nRumi as leader of, 107, 277\u201378\n\nRumi's disciples' dislike for Salah, 207\u20138\n\nRumi's disciples' dislike for Shams, 139\u201341, 147, 158, 163, 166\u201368, 170\u201372, 177\u201378\n\nRumi's recommitment after Salah's death, 235\u201336\n\nSalah as Rumi's successor, 206\u20137\n\nand _sama_ practices, 181\n\nand Shams, 117\u201318, 134, 158\u201359, 197\u201398\n\nShams teaching at, 117, 157\u201358, 168\u201370\n\n_madrases_ (upper-level schools)\n\nabout, 93, 326\n\nin Aleppo, 94, 95\n\nAltunpa Madrase and Mosque, Konya, 83\u201385\n\nBaha Valad and family residing in Baghdad _madrase_ , 53\n\nKaratay's madrase in Konya, 192\u201393\n\nShadbakht Madrase, Aleppo, 95\n\n_See also_ Madrase Khodavandgar, Konya\n\n_maktab_ (elementary school), 32\u201336, 326\n\n_malamatiyya_ (followers of the \"path of blame\"), 45, 326\n\nMalatya, Anatolia, 62\u201363\n\nMaleke (Rumi's daughter), 108, 238, 276\n\nMamluks (military or warrior caste), 275, 278, 326\n\nmaps, 330\u201333\n\n_masnavi_ (long poem in rhyming couplets)\n\nabout, 327\n\n_Book of Secrets_ (Attar), 46\u201347\n\n_Garden of Truth_ (Sanai), 47\n\n_Layli and Majnun_ (Nezami), 64, 145\n\n_Shahname_ , 23\n\n_Masnavi_ (Nicholson, trans.), 2\u20133\n\n_Masnavi_ (Rumi)\n\nabout, 265, 268, 280\u201381\n\nAli and the infidel knight tale, 250\n\nascetic in the desert hero, 266\u201367\n\nBedouin nomad brings a jug of rainwater to Baghdad, 52\n\non Blind Man and the Quran story, 38\n\nBook I, 242\u201351, 265\n\nBook II, 259\u201360, 263\u201367, 273\n\nBook III, 268\u201373, 281\u201383\n\nBook V, 104\u20135, 284\n\nBook VI, 287\u201391\n\non conversion of his wife into a mother, 72\u201373\n\non death, 281\u201384\n\nducklings raised by a hen story, 266\n\non fasting, 103\n\nflute in, 243\u201344, 249, 265, 272\n\ngoldsmith of Samarkand tale, 28\u201329\n\non Hosam, 245, 246\n\nHosam asks Rumi about Shams, 247\u201348\n\non \"I am Truth\" meaning, 270\u201372\n\n_Kalile and Demne_ tales, 22\u201323, 249, 288\n\nparents quarreling about sending their son to school, 33\u201334\n\non power of the Abbasid caliph, 221\n\nQuran in, 20, 250\u201351\n\nRumi's defense of and feelings about, 268\u201370\n\non Shia at Antioch Gate, 97\n\non spiritual guides, 195\u201396\n\nthree princes story, 290\n\ntranslations of, 2\u20133, 306\n\nvulgar material in, 288\n\non women, 109\n\non young prodigy, 35\n\non youth and old age, 274\n\nZolaykha's coded language, 289\u201390\n\nMecca, 38\u201342, 59\u201360, 61\n\n_Meccan Revelations_ (Ibn Arabi), 63\n\nMeram, 262\u201363\n\nMerv, Mongol invasion of, 68\n\nMevlevis (Sufi order), 7, 303\u20134\n\nMohammad the Prophet, 50, 131\n\nMoinoddin Solayman Parvane. _See_ Parvane, Moinoddin Solayman\n\nMongol-controlled territories, 66\u201370\n\nMongols and Seljuks Empire of Rum, 136\u201337\n\nMortaz, Maryam, 5\n\nMount Qasiyun, Damascus, Syria, 5\n\nMowlana, 128, 327. _See also_ Rumi Mozaffar (Mozaffaroddin Amir Alem Chelebi\u2014Rumi's son), 108, 193, 276\n\nMuslim Americans, 4\u20135\n\n_Mystical Poems of Rumi_ (Arberry, trans.), 4\n\n_nay_ (reed flute), 41, 175, 243\u201344, 249, 265, 272\n\nNezam (Nezamoddin), 216\u201317\n\nNezami (poet), 64\n\nNezamiyye College, Baghdad, 53\u201354\n\nNicholson, R. A., 2\u20133\n\nNishapur, Khorasan, 44\u201349, 67\u201368\n\nNosob (nanny), 40\n\nOxus River, 13, 23, 52\n\nthe Parvane, Moinoddin Solayman\n\nPersian language\n\nArabic lessons and, 33\n\nArabic vs., 49\n\nGooch learning, 5\n\nRumi preaching in, 74\u201375\n\nRumi's _Masnavi_ in, 249\n\nswitching to Arabic and back, 149\u201350\n\nPlato, 89, 123\n\npoets and poetry\n\nArabic poets in Aleppo, 96\n\nand fall of Baghdad, 220\n\nNezami, 64\n\nin Nishapuri, 46\n\nodes to cities in Arabic poetry, 99\n\npoetry as a mirror of the poet, 251\n\nRudaki, 29\u201330\n\nin Samarkand, 27\n\nand spring, 81\u201382, 348 _n_ 82\n\n_See also_ Rumi's poetry\n\n_qadi_ (judge of religious law), 257\u201359, 327\n\n_qasidas_ (longer odes), 96, 327\n\n_qibla_ (direction of Mecca), 49\u201350, 327\n\nQonavi (Sadroddin Qonavi), 139, 256\u201357, 293, 300, 303\n\nQuran\n\nBlind Man and the Quran story, 38\n\nelementary school teachings, 33\n\nand funerals, 233\u201334\n\nimportance to Rumi, 36\u201338\n\nand the Parvane, 225\n\nRumi comparing _Masnavi_ to, 268\u201370\n\nRumi's favorite stories, 37\n\nin Rumi's _Masnavi_ , 20, 250\u201351\n\nverses emphasizing closeness of God, 55\n\n_rabab_ (stringed instrument), 175, 213, 327\n\nRabia on her way to Mecca, 60\n\nRamadan poems, 26\n\nRazi of Herat, Fakhroddin, 18\u201320\n\nreligion of the heart, 123\u201324, 278\n\nreligious diversity, 84\u201385, 100, 236\u201340, 273, 299\u2013301\n\n_The Revival of the Religious Sciences_ (al-Ghazali), 54, 180\u201381\n\n_robai_ quatrain, 30, 48, 327, 342 _n_ 30\n\nRoknoddin Qelij Arslan IV, 230\n\nRostam, 23\u201324\n\nRudaki, poetry of, 29\u201330\n\nRumi\n\nabout, 34\u201335, 194\u201395, 226\u201327, 237\u201340\n\naging of, 273, 274\u201375, 285\n\nand Ahmad, 54\n\nastrolabe metaphor, 235\n\nand Attar, 46\u201348, 59\u201360\n\nattitude toward women, 108\u20139\n\nausterity of, 102\u20135, 241\u201342, 279\n\nin Baghdad, 53\u201356\n\nand Baha Valad's death, 85\u201386\n\nand bathhouses in Konya, 138\u201339\n\nand Borhan, 87\u201389, 90\u201392, 102\u20137\n\n_chelle_ of, 104\u20135\n\ndeath of, 6, 7\u20138, 292, 294\u201398\n\ndescription of, 236\n\nfuneral of, 298\u2013301\n\ngiving up delivering sermons, 206, 358 _n_ 206\n\nharem of, 161\u201362\n\nas husband and father, 72\u201374\n\non \"I am Truth\" meaning, 270\u201372\n\nand Ibn Arabi, 62, 63, 101\n\nillness of, 291\u201394\n\nkindness of, 34, 164, 194\u201395, 279\u201380\n\nin Konya, 6, 78, 85\u201386, 87\u201392\n\non Konya hierarchy, 78\n\nin Larande, 71\u201375\n\nand Majnun and Layli tale, 64, 145\n\non marriage of Sultan Valad and Fateme, 215\u201316\n\nand Mongols controlling Konya, 221\u201326\n\nand music, 213\u201314\n\nname(s) of, 12\n\nas preacher, 74\u201375\n\nand Qonavi, 139, 300\n\nand Quran, 36\u201338\n\nand Sanai, 47\u201348\n\nand Serajoddin, 257\u201359\n\nshrine and tomb, 6\u20137\n\nsiblings, 13, 40\n\non wealthy or wordly people, 239\u201340\n\n_See also_ Hosam; Salah; Shams of Tabriz\n\nRumi's childhood\n\nand Borhan, 39\n\nelementary school, 32\u201336\n\nin harem, 12\u201313, 34\n\njourney to Mecca, 39\u201340, 41\u201342\n\nin Nishapur, 44\u201349\n\nin Samarkand, 26\u201327, 30\u201336\n\nand siege of Samarkand, 30\u201331\n\nin Vakhsh, 13\u201314, 21\u201324\n\nvisions and personality, 11\u201312\n\nRumi's followers\n\nAminodin Mikail \"Sheikh of the Ladies,\" 228\u201329\n\nFakhroddin Saheb Ata, 229\n\nGorji Khatun \"Queen of Queens,\" 227\u201328\n\nthe Parvane, 223\u201327, 228\n\nworking-class background of some, 255\u201356\n\nRumi's poetry\n\nabout, 264, 307\u201311\n\non Aleppo, 94\n\non astronomy, 72\n\non Borhan's teachings, 91\n\non chaos in Khorasan region, 65\n\non children and child rearing, 73, 74\n\non death, 97\u201398\n\non fame, 111\u201312, 350 _n_ 112\n\nfor Faridun, his grandson, 286\u201387\n\non God, 40, 69\u201370\n\non _hajj_ , 59\u201360\n\n_Kalile and Demne's_ influence, 21\u201323, 249, 288\n\nKhorasan region influence, 21\u201324\n\non Konya, 77\n\non Larande, 71\n\non life cycles, 76\n\non loss of self, 242\n\non love, 80, 123\n\non lovers and waterwheels, 262\n\non meeting your teacher, 117\u201318\n\non Mutanabbi, 96\n\node to Damascus, 99\u2013100\n\non prayer, 80\n\non Prophet Mohammad, 131\n\nRumi's use of when Shams disappeared, 176\u201377, 181\u201386\n\nfor Salah, 203\u20135, 209, 233\n\nSamarkand influence, 31\u201332\n\non Sanjar the Seljuk, 45\n\n_Shahname's_ influence, 23\u201324\n\nfor Shams, 158, 187\u201388, 189, 190\u201391, 196\u201398\n\non Shams and their experiences, 137\u201338, 139, 146, 156\u201357\n\non spring, 82, 348 _n_ 82\n\non Sufism, 127\n\non thoughts, 277\u201378\n\ntranslations of, 306\u20137\n\non traveling, 42\n\nverse letters for Sham, 148\u201351\n\non wealthy and wordly people, 241\n\nfor wedding of Hediye and Nezam, 217\n\nfor wedding of Sultan Valad and Fateme, 212\u201313\n\non winter, 81\n\non women's role in marriage, 109\n\nYaqut's influence on, 51\u201352\n\nSee also _Masnavi_ (Rumi)\n\nRumi's spiritual studies\n\nin Aleppo, 3\u20134, 93\u201397\n\nBorhan's plan for, 91\u201392\n\nin Damascus, 98\u2013101\n\nexercises in ascetism with Borhan, 102\u20135\n\nand Ibn al-Adim, 95\u201396\n\nRumi's unanswered questions, 111\u201312\n\nShams as teacher, 119\u201324\n\nSadiq, Asma, 310\n\nSalah (Salahoddin Zarkub)\n\nabout, 90, 202\u20133\n\ndeath and funeral of, 232\u201334\n\ndeteriorating health, 231, 232\n\nmoment of recognition with\n\nRumi, 201\u20132\n\nand Rumi, 206\u20137, 208\u20139, 232\n\nRumi compared to, 202\n\nRumi's poems for, 203\u20135, 209\n\nand Shams, 118\n\nShams compared to, 204, 205\n\nand Sultan Valad, 210\u201311\n\n_sama_ (meditative sessions)\n\nabout, 33, 327\n\nal-Ghazali on, 180\u201381\n\nmemorial ceremony in Konya, 304\u20135\n\n_qadi_ Serajoddin's rulings on, 258\u201359\n\nRumi after Shams death, 195\n\nRumi's at women's sessions, 228\u201329\n\nRumi's reliance on after Shams's disappearance, 175\u201376, 180\n\nRumi's support for, 213\u201314\n\nSalah's funeral as, 232\u201333\n\nShams teaching Rumi about, 123\u201324, 174\u201375\n\n_See also_ whirling and whirling dervishes\n\nSamarkand, Uzbekistan, 5, 25, 26\u201330, 67\n\nSanai, 47\u201348, 89\u201390, 242\u201343\n\nSanjar the Seljuk, 45\n\n\"Satan's Lament\" (Sanai), 48\n\n_Savaneh_ , or _Flashes_ (Ahmad), 54\n\nSchimmel, Annemarie, 69, 178, 304\n\nSchool of Khorasan, 45\n\nSebastian (Aleppo Rumi expert), 1\u20133, 302, 307\u20138\n\nsecrets, Whitman's and Rumi's, 2\u20133, 308\u201311\n\nself-knowledge in Sufism, 88\u201389\n\nSeljuks Empire of Rum, 135\u201337, 192\u201393, 223\u201327, 228. _See also_ Konya, Anatolia\n\nSeljuks (nomadic Turkish clan)\n\nabout, 327\n\ncaravanserai, 6\n\nCentral Asian sultinate, 70\u201371\n\nGreat Seljuks, 71\n\nSanjar the Seljuk, 45\n\nSepahsalar (biographer)\n\non Alaoddin and Shams, 162\u201363\n\non Rumi after Shams left the second time, 172, 175, 179\n\non Rumi and Salahoddin, 201\n\non Rumi and Shams, 158, 351 _n_ 116\n\non Shams marriage to Kimiya, 160\n\nSerajoddin Ormovi, 257\u201359, 293\n\nsexual appetite, Baha Valad's, 17\u201318\n\nShadbakht Madrase, Aleppo, 95\n\nShafii School of Islamic jurisprudence, 128\u201330, 277\n\n_shahed-bazi_ practice, 54, 178\n\n_Shahname_ , or _The Book of Kings_ (Ferdowsi), 23\u201324, 78\u201379\n\nabout, 115, 124\u201329, 132\u201334\n\nin Aleppo, 151\u201354\n\nchallenges of living near Rumi's harem, 164\u201365\n\nin Damascus, 151\n\ndeath of Sham and Rumi's acceptance, 188\u201391, 193\u201398, 195, 196\u201398\n\ndisappearance of, Rumi's despair, 147\u201348, 153\u201354, 172, 173\u201377, 178\u201388\n\ngossip about Rumi and, 124\n\nharassment at Madrase, 139\u201341, 147, 158, 163, 166\u201368, 170\u201372, 177\u201378\n\nand Ibn Arabi, 130\u201331\n\nin Konya with and without Rumi, 137\u201339\n\nliving in seclusion with Rumi for\n\nShams of Tabriz (Shamsoddin) months at a time, 118\u201324, 134\u201335, 174, 272\n\nmarriage to Kimiya, 159\u201361, 163\u201366\n\nmeeting Rumi for the first time, 116\u201318, 351 _n_ 116\n\nparents of, 126\n\npersonality of, 122\u201323\n\nreligion of the heart, 123\u201324, 168\n\nreturn to Konya and Rumi, 154\u201357\n\nand Rumi, 139\u201341, 146, 170\u201372\n\nRumi expressing his love for, 142\u201343, 145\n\nRumi merging with Shams in his heart, 186\u201387\n\nRumi's commitment to, 125\n\nand Rumi's _Masnavi_ , 289\u201390\n\nas Rumi's teacher, 119\u201324, 168\u201370\n\nrumors of death of, 177\u201378, 187\u201388\n\nscholars' and Rumi's followers' disapproval, 142, 143\u201345\n\non separation from Rumi, 168\u201370\n\nand Shafii jurisprudence, 129\u201330\n\nand Shehab Harive, 131\u201332\n\nstories of, in Rumi's _Masnavi_ , 249\u201350, 265\u201366\n\ntravel lust of, 158\u201359\n\nShams (Rumi's friend), 7\n\nSharaf (Sharafoddin Samarqandi), 32\u201333, 40\n\nSharia (religious law), 53, 327\n\nShehab Harive, 131\u201332\n\nSheikh Mohammad, 130\u201331. _See also_ Ibn Arabi\n\nShia (minority branch of Islam), 97\u201398, 327\u201328\n\nshrine to Rumi in Konya, 6\u20137\n\nsiege of Samarkand, 30\u201331, 342 _n_ 26\n\nSilk Road\n\nabout, 43\u201344\n\nBaghdad, 50\u201356\n\nBaghdad to Mecca, 56\u201360\n\nNishapur, 44\u201349\n\nshift from Persian to Arabic, 49\n\nslaves and slavery, 238\n\nStoning of the Devil _hajj_ ritual, 58\u201359, 345 _n_ 58\n\nSufism (mystical branch of Islam)\n\nabout, 328\n\nin Baghdad, 54\u201356\n\nBayazid's hymn of praise, 116\u201317\n\nand Borhan, 87\u201388\n\ndisapproval of Rumi within, 254\u201355\n\nguiding notion about a living spiritual world axis, 195\u201396\n\nand Ibn Arabi, 63\n\nKermani and, 129\n\nNew York City group, 4\u20135\n\npersecution of Sufis, 96\n\nresilience in spite of Genghis Khan, 69\n\nsaints of, 55\u201356\n\nand Seljuks, 71\n\n_shahed-bazi_ practice, 54\n\nin Tabriz, 126\u201327\n\nwords and logic as \"veils\" hiding the truth, 123\n\nSultan Han caravanserai, Konya, 80\u201381\n\nSultan Valad (Rumi's son)\n\nabout, 276\n\non Attar's and Sanai's influence on Rumi, 48\n\non Baha Valad, 74\n\non Baha Valad's funeral, 85\u201386\n\nbirth and childhood, 72\u201374\n\nchastisement from Rumi while studying in Damascus, 109\u201310\n\ndelivering verse letters for Sham, 150, 151, 152\n\nand Faridun, 287\n\non Hosam and Rumi, 245\n\nand Hosam as Rumi's successor, 260\u201361, 295\u201396\n\nas leader of Mevlevi Order, 303\n\nmarriage to Salah's daughter Fateme, 212\u201313, 214\u201316\n\npresented to Shams as boy for serving him, 121\n\nand Rumi, 238\n\non Rumi after Shams's death, 195\n\non Rumi and Salah, 206\n\non Rumi's comparison of his _Masnavi_ to the Quran, 270\n\non Rumi's preaching, 111\n\non Rumi's transformation in Damascus, 190\u201391\n\nand Salah, 210\u201311\n\nand Shams, 135, 144, 163, 170\n\non Shams's disappearance, 174\n\nviolent temper of, 193, 214\u201315\n\nSunni (majority branch of Islam), 26, 35, 71, 328, 343 _n_ 35\n\nTabriz, 125, 187\u201388\n\ntakhallos (signature, tag, or pen name of a poet), 185\u201386, 204, 328\n\nTermez, Khorasan, 39, 67, 87\n\n\"Testament\" (Razi), 19\n\nTigres River, 52\n\n_Time_ magazine, 4\n\ntransliteration process, 319\n\n_Treasury of Secrets_ (Nezami), 64\n\nturbaned class, 93, 107\n\nUmayyad dynasty, 50, 328\n\nUmayyad Mosque, Damascus, 98\n\nVakhsh, Tajikistan, 13\u201318, 24\u201325, 40, 340\u201341 _n_ 13\n\nVenice and Venetians, 95\n\nvisions of angels, 11\u201312, 128\n\nwealthy or wordly people, Rumi's avoidance of, 239\u201340\n\nwhirling and whirling dervishes\n\ndervishes, 88, 90, 133, 289, 325\n\nby Gooch in Aleppo, 7\n\nreemergence of, 304\n\nRumi creating poetry at the same time, 226\u201327\n\nRumi's use of when Shams disappeared, 175\u201376, 180\n\nShams learning about, 127\u201328\n\nShams teaching Rumi about, 124\n\nWhitman, Walt, Rumi compared to, 2\u20133\n\nYaqut, 45, 51\u201352, 68\n\nZolaykha's coded language, 289\u201390\n_About the Author_\n\n**BRAD GOOCH** is a poet, novelist, and biographer whose previous ten books include _Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor_ , which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, _New York Times_ Notable Book of the Year, and _New York Times_ bestseller; _City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara_ ; _Godtalk: Travels in Spriritual America_ ; and the memoir _Smash Cut_. The recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim Fellowships, he earned his PhD at Columbia University and is a professor of English at William Paterson University. He lives in New York City.\n\nDiscover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.\nAlso by Brad Gooch\n\n_Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard& Art & the '70s & the '80s_\n\n_Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor_\n\n_City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara_\n\n_Scary Kisses_\n\n_Zombieoo_\n\n_The Golden Age of Promiscuity_\n\n_Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America_\n\n_Finding the Boyfriend Within_\n\n_Dating the Greek Gods_\n\n_Jailbait and Other Stories_\n\n_The Daily News_\n\nCredits\n\nCOVER DESIGN BY SARAH BRODY\n\nCOVER IMAGES : \u00a9 LANA VESHTA \/ SHUTTERSTOCK (TEXTURE); \u00a9 ANNA POGULIAEVA \/ SHUTTERSTOCK (ORNAMENTATION)\nCopyright\n\nRUMI'S SECRET. Copyright \u00a9 2017 by Brad Gooch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.\n\nFIRST EDITION\n\nISBN 978-0-06-199914-7\n\nEPub Edition JANUARY 2017 ISBN 978-0-06-219907-2\n\nVersion 01182018\nAbout the Publisher\n\n**Australia**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.\n\nLevel 13, 201 Elizabeth Street\n\nSydney, NSW 2000, Australia\n\nwww.harpercollins.com.au\n\n**Canada**\n\nHarperCollins Canada\n\n2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor\n\nToronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada\n\nwww.harpercollins.ca\n\n**India**\n\nHarperCollins India\n\nA 75, Sector 57\n\nNoida\n\nUttar Pradesh 201 301\n\nwww.harpercollins.co.in\n\n**New Zealand**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers New Zealand\n\nUnit D1, 63 Apollo Drive\n\nRosedale 0632\n\nAuckland, New Zealand\n\nwww.harpercollins.co.nz\n\n**United Kingdom**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Ltd.\n\n1 London Bridge Street\n\nLondon SE1 9GF, UK\n\nwww.harpercollins.co.uk\n\n**United States**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Inc.\n\n195 Broadway\n\nNew York, NY 10007\n\nwww.harpercollins.com\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\n\nTHIS IS A BORZOI BOOK \nPUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2010 by Danielle L. McGuire \nAll rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.\n\nwww.aaknopf.com \nKnopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data \nMcGuire, Danielle L. \nAt the dark end of the street \/ by Danielle L. McGuire. \u2014 1st ed. \np. cm. \n\"Borzoi Book.\" \neISBN: 978-0-307-59447-1 \n1. African-American women\u2014Civil rights\u2014Alabama\u2014History\u201420th century. 2. African-American women\u2014Violence against\u2014Alabama\u2014History\u201420th century. 3. Rape\u2014Political aspects\u2014Southern States\u2014History\u201420th century. 4. Civil rights movements\u2014Southern States\u2014History\u201420th century. 5. Southern States\u2014Race relations\u2014History\u201420th century. I. Title. \nE185.61.M4777 2010 \n323.1196\u20320730761\u2014dc22 2010012072\n\nv3.1\n_For Recy and Ruby_\nSex is the principle around which the whole structure of segregation... is organized.\n\n\u2014GUNNAR MYRDAL, 1944\n\n# Contents\n\n_Cover_\n\n_Title Page_\n\n_Copyright_\n\n_Dedication_\n\n_Epigraph_\n\n_List of Illustrations_\n\n_Prologue_\n\nCHAPTER 1 \"They'd Kill Me If I Told\"\n\nCHAPTER 2 \"Negroes Every Day Are Being Molested\"\n\nCHAPTER 3 \"Walking in Pride and Dignity\"\n\nCHAPTER 4 \"There's Open Season on Negroes Now\"\n\nCHAPTER 5 \"It Was Like All of Us Had Been Raped\"\n\nCHAPTER 6 \"A Black Woman's Body Was Never Hers Alone\"\n\nCHAPTER 7 Sex and Civil Rights\n\nCHAPTER 8 \"Power to the Ice Pick!\"\n\nEPILOGUE \"We All Lived in Fear for Years\"\n\n_Acknowledgments_\n\n_Notes_\n\n_Bibliography_\n\n# Illustrations\n\n1.1 Members of the SNYC's Third Conference Preparation Group gather at Miles College in Alabama, 1940. (Courtesy of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University)\n\n1.2 Esther Cooper, executive secretary of the SNYC (Courtesy of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University)\n\n1.3 Recy Taylor, Willie Guy Taylor, and their child, Joyce Lee Taylor (Courtesy of the _Chicago Defender)_\n\n1.4 Rosa Parks's letter to Chauncey Sparks, governor of Alabama (Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama)\n\n2.1 Willie McGee (\u00a9 Photo by Robert W. Kelley\/Time & Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n2.2 More than five hundred white men, women, and children gather outside the Jones County Courthouse in Ellisville, Mississippi, 1951. (\u00a9 Photo by Robert W. Kelley\/Time & Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n2.3 Members of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice\u2014a national black women's organization dedicated to the protection of \"Negro Womanhood\"\u2014with Paul Robeson in 1952. (Louise Thompson Patterson Papers, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University)\n\n2.4 Rosa Lee Ingram with sons Sammie and Wallace in an Albany, Georgia, jail cell, 1948 (\u00a9 AP\/Wide World)\n\n3.1 Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass Patterson at Highlander Folk School in July 1955 (Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society, 56309)\n\n3.2 Boycotters, February 1956 (\u00a9 Photo by Don Cravens\/Time & Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n3.3 Three police officers watch a group of African-American women waiting at a carpool pickup location. (\u00a9 Photo by Don Cravens\/Time & Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n3.4 African-American women filled the pews at weekly mass meetings. (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/Time & Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n3.5 Armed white men attack two black women after a desegregation attempt in Montgomery, Alabama. (\u00a9 Photo by Charles Moore\/Blackstar)\n\n3.6 Rosa Parks (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.7 Mrs. A. W. West (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.8 Jo Ann Robinson (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.9 Euretta Adair (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.10 E. D. Nixon (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.11 Reverend Solomon Seay, Sr. (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.12 Reverend Ralph Abernathy (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.13 Reverend E. N. French (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.14 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.15 Fred Gray (Courtesy of the Montgomery County Archives)\n\n3.16 African Americans gather outside the courthouse as Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., stands trial for conspiracy. (\u00a9 Photo by Don Cravens\/Time & Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n3.17 Rosa Parks speaks with an interviewer as she arrives at court with E. D. Nixon and others on trial for violating a 1921 antiboycott law. (\u00a9 Bettman\/Corbis)\n\n3.18 The Fellowship of Reconciliation comic book, published circa 1957, gave rise to the myth of Rosa Parks's \"tired feet\" and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, heroic leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott. (Courtesy of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Ed King Collection of Civil Rights Material, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)\n\n4.1 Melba Patillo (Courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, 52734)\n\n4.2 Police investigate a Ku Klux Klan cross left on the front lawn of L. C. and Daisy Bates in October 1956. (Courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society, 52745)\n\n4.3 Alabama state senator Samuel Engelhardt, Jr., promotes a \"white only\" anti-integration rally. (\u00a9 Photo by Don Cravens\/Time & Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n5.1 Scene of the crime where four white men from Tallahassee, Florida, kidnapped and raped an African-American college student (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n5.2 Joe D. Cooke, Jr., an intern from Florida State University, defied racial conventions when he agreed to search for the white assailants of an African-American college student. (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n5.3 On May 4, 1959, more than one thousand Florida A&M University students gathered on the university's quadrangle to demand justice for Betty Jean Owens. (Courtesy of _The FAMUAN_ , the Florida A&M University student newspaper, May 1959)\n\n5.4 Patrick Scarborough, David Beagles, Ollie Stoutamire, and Ted Collinsworth (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n5.5 State prosecutor William Hopkins (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n5.6 Judge W. May Walker (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n5.7 African Americans and whites outside the Leon County Courthouse in Tallahassee await the verdict of four white men accused of raping Betty Jean Owens, a black college student. (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n5.8 Cartoon featured in an African-American newspaper, May 16, 1959 (Courtesy of the _Baltimore Afro-American)_\n\n5.9 African-American women made up the bulk of the 257 Florida A&M University students arrested for protesting segregated movie theaters in Tallahassee in the spring of 1963. (Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida)\n\n6.1 Fannie Lou Hamer (Will D. Campbell Papers, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi)\n\n6.2 Two trustees carry an African-American woman to the paddy wagon in Jackson, Mississippi, 1963. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)\n\n6.3 Police crammed a group of teenage girls into a stockade in Leesburg, Georgia, after they were arrested for protesting segregation at a movie theater. (\u00a9 Photo by Danny Lyon\/Magnum Photos)\n\n6.4 Endesha Ida Mae Holland with SNCC voting-rights activists (\u00a9 1978 Matt Heron\/Take Stock Photos)\n\n6.5 Allen Thompson, mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, with police force and armored tank as the city prepares for the arrival of black and white voting-rights volunteers in the summer of 1964 (\u00a9 1978 Matt Heron\/Take Stock Photos)\n\n7.1 Dallas County sheriff Jim Clark (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)\n\n7.2 Jim Clark ordered hundreds of schoolchildren arrested after they held a silent demonstration outside the Dallas County Courthouse on February 3, 1965. (\u00a9 Corbis\/Bettman)\n\n7.3 An Alabama state trooper accosts Annie Cooper, an African-American woman, as members of Jim Clark's mounted posse rally in the background. (\u00a9 Corbis\/Bettman)\n\n7.4 Viola Liuzzo (\u00a9 AP\/Wide World)\n\n7.5 An Alabama state trooper's car is parked near the site where the Ku Klux Klan fatally shot Viola Liuzzo and injured Leroy Moton. (\u00a9 AP\/Wide World)\n\n7.6 An all-white jury found Klansmen Collie Leroy Wilkins, Eugene Thomas, and William Eaton not guilty for the murder of Viola Liuzzo. (\u00a9 AP\/Wide World)\n\n7.7 County prosecutor James Dukes and district attorney James Finch outside the Forrest County Courthouse (Moncrief Photograph Collection, #607, Mississippi Department of Archives & History [])\n\n7.8 The front page of the November 12, 1965, _Hattiesburg American_ highlights the historic verdict.\n\n7.9 Mildred and Richard Loving share a laugh with friends during an outing in Virginia, 1965. (\u00a9 Photo by Grey Villet\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images)\n\n8.1 Joan Little surrenders to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, September 7, 1975. (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.2 Attorney Jerry Paul defied the state's racial status quo by representing African Americans and working on civil rights cases. (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.3 Joan Little, 1975 (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.4 Demonstrators outside the Wake County Courthouse. (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.5 An eclectic group of protesters join forces to \"Free Joan Little,\" 1975. (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.6 An African-American woman pickets outside the Wake County Courthouse in Raleigh, 1975 (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.7 The Wake County Courthouse, Raleigh, July 14, 1975 (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.8 Outside the Joan Little trial, 1975 (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.9 Joan Little and Karen Galloway, July 14, 1975 (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives. Reprinted with the permission of _The News and Observer_ of Raleigh, North Carolina)\n\n8.10 Joan Little, published in the _Baltimore Afro-American_ , 1975 (Courtesy of the _Baltimore Afro-American)_\n\n# Prologue\n\nON SEPTEMBER 3, 1944, the Rock Hill Holiness Church, in Abbeville, Alabama, rocked late into the night. It was nearly midnight when the doors of the wooden, one-story church swung open releasing streams of worshippers, all African American, into the moonlight. After a night of singing and praying, Recy Taylor, Fannie Daniel, and Daniel's eighteen-year-old son, West, stepped out of the country chapel and strolled toward home alongside the peanut plantations that bounded the Abbeville-Headland highway. Taylor, a slender, copper-colored, and beautiful twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, noticed a rattletrap green Chevrolet pass them at least three times, young white men gawking from its windows.\n\n\"You reckon what they are up to?\" Taylor asked.\n\nTaylor and Daniel, a stout sixty-one-year-old woman, watched the car creep by one last time and roll to a stop a few feet ahead of them. Seven men, armed with knives and guns, got out of the car and walked toward the women.\n\nHerbert Lovett, the oldest of the crew at twenty-four and a private in the U.S. Army, shouted, \"Halt!\"\n\nWhen they ignored the order, Lovett leveled his shotgun. West tugged at his mother's sleeve, begging her to stop. \"They might shoot you,\" he whispered.\n\nAs the circle of men closed in, Lovett waved his gun at Taylor.\n\n\"We're looking for this girl, right there. She's the one that cut that white boy in Clopton this evening,\" Lovett said, adding that the local sheriff, George H. Gamble, had dispatched the group to find the alleged assailant.\n\n\"You're wrong,\" Fannie insisted. \"She's been to my house all day.\"\n\nThe men crowded closer, nodding their heads in agreement. \"Ain't this her?\" Lovett asked.\n\n\"Yep, this the one,\" Joe Culpepper said. \"I know her by the clothes she got on.\"\n\n\"That's her,\" Luther Lee agreed. \"Get her!\"\n\nLovett lurched toward Taylor and grabbed her arm. Then he turned to West and asked if Taylor was his wife.\n\n\"No,\" West replied, \"she's Willie Guy Taylor's wife.\" Undeterred, Lovett extended his hand to the teenager, ordered him to shake it, and promised not to hurt Taylor.\n\n\"We're going to take her up here and see if Mr. Gamble knows her,\" Lovett claimed. \"If she's not the one, we'll bring her right back.\"\n\nAs Lovett spoke, Taylor managed to wrest her arm from his grasp and bolted toward a stand of trees behind a cabin.\n\n\"Come back! Come back!\" Fannie yelled. \"They going to shoot you. Come back!\"\n\n\"Stop!\" Lovett shouted. He cocked the gun at the back of her head. \"I'll kill you if you run.\"\n\nLovett walked Taylor to the car and shoved her into the backseat. Three men piled in behind her, while four others squeezed into the front. The headlights switched off and the car crept away. After a few miles, the green sedan turned off the main highway, rattled down a red-clay tractor path into the woods, and stopped in a grove of pecan trees. \"Y'all aren't carrying me to Mr. Gamble,\" Taylor shouted. The men in the backseat clasped her wrists and ordered her to be quiet. Lovett grabbed his gun and waved Taylor and his companions out of the car.\n\n\"Get them rags off,\" he barked, pointing the shotgun at her, \"or I'll kill you and leave you down here in the woods.\"\n\nSobbing, Taylor pulled off her clothes.\n\n\"Please,\" she cried, \"let me go home to my husband and my baby.\"\n\nLovett spread an old hunting coat on the ground, told his friends to strip down to their socks and undershirts, and ordered Taylor to lie down. Lovett passed his rifle to a friend and took off his pants. Hovering over the young mother, he snarled, \"Act just like you do with your husband or I'll cut your damn throat.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nLovett was the first of six men to rape Taylor that night. When they finished, someone helped her get dressed, tied a handkerchief over her eyes, and shoved her back into the car. Back on the highway, the men stopped and ordered Taylor out of the car. \"Don't move until we get away from here,\" one of them yelled. Taylor heard the car disappear into the night. She pulled off the blindfold, got her bearings, and began the long walk home.\n\nA few days later, a telephone rang at the NAACP branch office in Montgomery, Alabama. E. D. Nixon, the local president, promised to send his best investigator to Abbeville. That investigator would launch a movement that would ultimately change the world.\n\nHer name was Rosa Parks.\n\nIn later years, historians would paint Parks as a sweet and reticent old woman, whose tired feet caused her to defy Jim Crow on Montgomery's city buses. Her solitary and spontaneous act, the story goes, sparked the 1955 bus boycott and gave birth to the civil rights movement. But Rosa Parks was a militant race woman, a sharp detective, and an antirape activist long before she became the patron saint of the bus boycott. After meeting with Recy Taylor, Rosa Parks helped form the Committee for Equal Justice. With support from local people, she helped organize what the _Chicago Defender_ called the \"strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade.\" Eleven years later this group of homegrown leaders would become better known as the Montgomery Improvement Association. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, often heralded as the opening scene of the civil rights movement, was in many ways the last act of a decades-long struggle to protect black women, like Taylor, from sexualized violence and rape.\n\nThe kidnapping and rape of Recy Taylor was not unusual in the segregated South. The sexual exploitation of black women by white men had its roots in slavery and continued throughout the better part of the twentieth century.\n\nWhen African Americans tested their freedom during Reconstruction, former slaveholders and their sympathizers used rape as a \"weapon of terror\" to dominate the bodies and minds of African-American men and women. Interracial rape was not only used to uphold white patriarchal power but was also deployed as a justification for lynching black men who challenged the Southern status quo. In addition to the immediate physical danger African Americans faced, sexual and racial violence functioned as a tool of coercion, control, and harassment. Ida B. Wells, the gun-toting editor of the _Memphis Free Press_ who led a crusade against lynching in the 1890s, argued that white men accused black men of rape as part of a larger \"system of intimidation\" designed to keep blacks \"subservient and submissive.\" Worse, Wells argued at the turn of the century, white men used the protection of white womanhood to \"justify their own barbarism.\"\n\nThe rape of black women by white men continued, often unpunished, throughout the Jim Crow era. As Reconstruction collapsed and Jim Crow arose, white men abducted and assaulted black women with alarming regularity. White men lured black women and girls away from home with promises of steady work and better wages; attacked them on the job; abducted them at gunpoint while traveling to or from home, work, or church; raped them as a form of retribution or to enforce rules of racial and economic hierarchy; sexually humiliated and assaulted them on streetcars and buses, in taxicabs and trains, and in other public spaces. As the acclaimed freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer put it, \"A black woman's body was never hers alone.\"\n\nBlack women did not keep their stories secret. African-American women reclaimed their bodies and their humanity by testifying about their assaults. They launched the first public attacks on sexual violence as a \"systemic abuse of women\" in response to slavery and the wave of lynchings in the post-Emancipation South. Slave narratives offer stark testimony about the brutal sexual exploitation bondswomen faced. For example, Harriet Jacobs detailed her master's lechery in her autobiography to \"arouse the women of the North\" and \"convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is.\" When African-American clubwomen began to organize antilynching campaigns during the late nineteenth century, they testified about decades of sexual abuse. On October 5, 1892, hundreds of black women converged on Lyric Hall in New York City to hear Ida B. Wells's thunderous voice. While black men were being accused of ravishing white women, she argued, \"The rape of helpless Negro girls, which began in slavery days, still continues without reproof from church, state or press.\" At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Fannie Barrier Williams told an audience of black and white clubwomen about the \"shameful fact that I am constantly in receipt of letters from the still unprotected women of the South....\" Anna Julia Cooper, a Washington, D.C., educator, author, and respected clubwoman, echoed Williams's testimony. Black women, she told the crowd, were engaged in a \"painful, patient, and silent toil... to gain title to the bodies of their daughters.\"\n\nThroughout the twentieth century, black women persisted in telling their stories, frequently cited in local and national NAACP reports. Their testimonies spilled out in letters to the Justice Department and appeared on the front pages of the nation's leading black newspapers. Black women regularly denounced their sexual misuse. By deploying their voices as weapons in the wars against white supremacy, whether in the church, the courtroom, or in congressional hearings, African-American women loudly resisted what Martin Luther King, Jr., called the \"thingification\" of their humanity. Decades before radical feminists in the women's movement urged rape survivors to \"speak out,\" African-American women's public protests galvanized local, national, and even international outrage and sparked larger campaigns for racial justice and human dignity. When Recy Taylor spoke out against her assailants and Rosa Parks and her allies in Montgomery mobilized in defense of her womanhood in 1944, they joined this tradition of testimony and protest.\n\nMontgomery, Alabama, was not the only place in which attacks on black women fueled protests against white supremacy. Between 1940 and 1975, sexual violence and interracial rape became one crucial battleground upon which African Americans sought to destroy white supremacy and gain personal and political autonomy. Civil rights campaigns in Little Rock, Arkansas; Macon, Georgia; Tallahassee, Florida; Washington, North Carolina; Birmingham and Selma, Alabama; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and many other places had roots in organized resistance to sexual violence and appeals for protection of black womanhood.\n\nAnd yet analyses of rape and sexualized violence play little or no role in most histories of the civil rights movement, which present it as a struggle between black and white men\u2014the heroic leadership of Martin Luther King confronting intransigent white supremacists like \"Bull\" Connor. The real story\u2014that the civil rights movement is also rooted in African-American women's long struggle against sexual violence\u2014has never before been written. The stories of black women who fought for bodily integrity and personal dignity hold profound truths about the sexualized violence that marked racial politics and African American lives during the modern civil rights movement. If we understand the role rape and sexual violence played in African Americans' daily lives and within the larger freedom struggle, we have to reinterpret, if not rewrite, the history of the civil rights movement. _At the Dark End of the Street_ does both.\n\nIt is no surprise that buses became the target of African-American resistance in Montgomery during the 1955\u201356 boycott. It was much easier, not to mention safer, for black women to stop riding the buses than it was to bring their assailants\u2014usually white policemen or bus drivers\u2014to justice. By walking hundreds of miles to protest humiliation and testifying publicly about physical and sexual abuse, black women reclaimed their bodies and demanded to be treated with dignity and respect. Coupling new historical evidence with a fresh perspective, Chapters 2 and reveal the history of the Montgomery campaign as a women's movement for dignity.\n\nIssues of sexual violence were crucial both to the civil rights movement and to the white supremacist resistance. Segregationists responded to the nascent African-American freedom movement with a sexually charged campaign of terror to derail the freedom movement. Between 1956 and 1960, black Southerners braved the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens' Council, and other extremist groups, sparking some of the fiercest struggles for black humanity of the modern civil rights movement. These battles, highlighted in Chapter 4, exposed the power of sex in maintaining the South's racial hierarchy and underscored the extent to which whites would fight to preserve it.\n\nOften ignored by civil rights historians, a number of campaigns led to trials and even convictions throughout the South. These cases, many virtually unknown, broke with Southern tradition and fractured the philosophical and political foundations of white supremacy by challenging the relationship between sexual domination and racial equality.\n\nNowhere was this more apparent and more important than in Tallahassee, Florida, where Betty Jean Owens, an African-American college student, stood in front of an all-white jury in 1959 and testified about being kidnapped and gang-raped by four white men. The extraordinary trial, the subject of Chapter 5, focused national attention on the sexual exploitation of African-American women. For perhaps the first time since Reconstruction, black Southerners could imagine government as a defender of their manhood and womanhood. The Tallahassee case led to rape convictions elsewhere that year in Montgomery, Alabama; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Burton, South Carolina. The 1959 Tallahassee rape was a watershed case that remains as revealing now as it was important then.\n\nBlack women's testimonies revealed their vulnerability across the South, especially in Mississippi. Most accounts of the Mississippi movement focus on racist brutality directed at men\u2014from Emmett Till and Medgar Evers to Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney. Chapter 6 challenges the dominant historical narrative of the Mississippi freedom struggle by documenting black women's resistance to racial _and_ sexual abuse.\n\nThe 1965 Selma, Alabama, campaign, like the Montgomery movement, has an important history rooted in sexualized violence that historians have not yet explored. Federal intervention and congressional action on behalf of African Americans in 1964 and 1965\u2014especially the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act\u2014constituted the most dangerous threat to white dominion and left segregationists reeling. But the segregationists fired back with traditional ammunition of sexual slander and the \"black beast rapist.\" Chapter 7 documents how white supremacists in Selma and across the South used the rhetoric of rape and \"miscegenation\" to resuscitate and revive massive resistance, underscoring the importance of sex and sexual violence to the maintenance of white supremacy. Civil rights activists were not only \"outside agitators\" or Communists intent on destroying the Southern way of life; now they were sexual fiends. It was within this storm\u2014and because of it\u2014that the Ku Klux Klan murdered Viola Liuzzo, a white housewife from Detroit who embraced the black freedom struggle. Her detractors, of course, accused her of embracing black men.\n\nAn analysis of sex and sexualized violence in well-known civil rights narratives changes the historical markers and meanings of the movement. Like the Tallahassee case, the 1965 trial of Norman Cannon, a white man who abducted and raped a black teenager in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, had broad implications for both the Mississippi movement and the African-American freedom struggle as a whole. The verdict was recognized nationally as a major victory. It ought to be considered one of the bookends of the modern civil rights movement. And yet the story has never been told. While the Voting Rights Act is often referenced as the culminating achievement of the modern civil rights movement, a pillar of white supremacy fell in 1967 when the Supreme Court banned laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the landmark _Loving v. Virginia_ decision. Only when we place the _Loving_ decision within the long struggle for black women's bodily integrity and freedom from racial _and_ sexual terror can it be properly recognized as a major marker in the African-American freedom movement.\n\nThe struggle did not stop with that landmark victory. The right of African-American women to defend themselves from white men's sexual advances was tested in the 1975 trial of Joan Little, a twenty-year-old black female inmate from Washington, North Carolina, who killed her white jailer after he allegedly sexually assaulted her. The broad coalition of supporters who rallied to Little's defense\u2014from the National Organization for Women to the Black Panther Party\u2014reflected the enormous social, political, and economic changes wrought by the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the emergence of the New Left and Black Power. But it also showed continuity with the past\u2014the Free Joan Little movement mirrored the eclectic coalition that formed to demand justice for Recy Taylor in 1944. They were both led primarily by African-American women and helped serve as catalysts for larger struggles. The stunning verdict, announced by a jury made up of whites and blacks, signaled the death knell of the rape of black women that had been a feature of Southern race politics since slavery.\n\nLike the kidnapping and rape of Recy Taylor in Abbeville, Alabama, in 1944; Betty Jean Owens in 1959; Rosa Lee Coates in 1965; and hundreds of other African-American women throughout the segregated South, these brutal attacks almost always began at the dark end of the street. But African Americans would never let them stay there.\n\n# CHAPTER 1 \n\"They'd Kill Me If I Told\"\n\nTHE ROAD TO ABBEVILLE, a rural county seat ninety miles southeast of Montgomery, was familiar territory for Rosa Parks. Her father, James McCauley, a handsome, barrel-chested builder and expert stonemason, was one of eleven children reared by Anderson and Louisa McCauley in the hardscrabble town. The sprawling McCauley clan squeezed into a tiny, wood-frame home with dirt floors. Similar cabins provided shelter for the bulk of Abbeville's two thousand souls\u2014mostly sharecroppers and tenant farmers who scraped a living out of the peanut and cotton fields that quilted the countryside.\n\nWhile Rosa's grandmother, Louisa McCauley, maintained the homestead and tended to her growing family, her husband and oldest sons built big, beautiful homes throughout Alabama's Black Belt, a band of inky, fertile soil stretching across the middle of the state. The region was known for its bumper cotton crops and punishing plantations. As skilled laborers and contract workers, the McCauley men maintained a sense of independence that few African Americans could claim. Despite the promises of a progressive New South, the legacy of slavery in the Black Belt was palpable. Tenant farming and debt peonage dominated the economy, and the ghosts of the \"peculiar institution\" haunted the rolling landscape, where the children and grandchildren of slaves and slave owners eyed each other with fear and familiarity.\n\nThat familiarity was visible in James McCauley's pale almond skin and dark, wavy hair. The grandson of a fair-skinned slave woman and a \"Yankee soldier,\" he had a light coloration that mocked the new segregation laws that white legislators passed at the turn of the century. City workers nailed wooden signs proclaiming \"Colored\" or \"Whites Only\" between seats in streetcars and above doorways in theaters, restaurants, and boardinghouses. Toilets, water fountains, telephone booths, waiting rooms, and ticket windows were all similarly marked. In Birmingham, Alabama, Jim Crow laws barred whites and blacks from being together in \"any room, hall, theatre, picture house, auditorium, yard, court, park or other indoor or outdoor place.\" Black nurses could not care for white patients, and black students dared not use \"white\" textbooks. In Texas, circuses were segregated, and \"Caucasians\" and \"Africans\" could not watch a boxing or wrestling match together. Some states prohibited black and white workers from laboring together in the same room, while others barred blacks from certain trades altogether. For the most part, the McCauleys pursued their daily affairs without giving much thought to these laws.\n\nOne Sunday, in the spring of 1912, James McCauley decided to go hear his brother-in-law preach at the white-framed Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pine Level, Alabama. Across the pews, he saw a striking woman with diaphanous skin, high cheekbones, plum lips, and flowing waves of dark, shiny hair. She was twenty-four years old, had attended Payne University in Selma, Alabama, and taught school nearby. Her name was Leona Edwards.\n\nLike many black Southerners, McCauley and Edwards shared a family history that involved interracial couplings ranging from tragic love to brutal rape. Leona was the daughter of Rose Percival, born a slave; and Sylvester Edwards, whose milky-white complexion and straight brown hair were the product of an illicit relationship between a white plantation owner and his slave mistress. After his mother and father died, Sylvester became an object of mistreatment in the plantation household. The white overseer beat him mercilessly, starved him, and refused to let the boy wear shoes. Years of cruelty hardened Sylvester until he felt what his granddaughter Rosa would describe as an \"intense, passionate hatred for white people.\"\n\nAfter slavery ended, despite his disdain, Sylvester often passed for white. After shaking Sylvester's hand and speaking to him as an equal, whites occasionally discovered he was \"black\" and became angry or embarrassed. In a kind of tragicomic retribution for years of mistreatment, Edwards enjoyed watching whites squirm over the unspoken absurdities of the color line. Though he used his apparent whiteness to his advantage when necessary, he remained pugnacious toward whites and taught his three daughters to be especially wary of white men. Leona inherited both her father's pigmentation and his pride\u2014she became a teacher so she would never have to cook or clean for whites.\n\nIt didn't take long for Leona and James McCauley to fall in love. They were married \"right there in Pine Level\" on April 12, 1912, and moved to Tuskegee, Alabama, home of Booker T. Washington's famed Tuskegee Institute. Their daughter, Rosa, was born roughly nine months after the wedding. Leona hoped her itinerant husband would land a job at Tuskegee and settle down, but the \"citadel of black intellectual life\" was not as appealing to James as it was to his wife. He saw himself as a rambling man, more interested in making good money than putting down roots. His long trips away from home left Leona depressed and tearful, alone with her new baby. When James decided he wanted to move back to Abbeville to be closer to his family, Leona had no choice but to leave Tuskegee and abandon her dream of racial uplift.\n\nRosa was two years old when they moved in with her father's extended family in Abbeville. Surrounded by playmates, she quickly became the center of attention. Over time, however, the dirt floors and crowded beds were too much for Leona, who was not particularly fond of her in-laws. James announced in 1915 or 1916 that he planned to move north, joining the millions of African Americans fleeing the South in search of better jobs and the promise of freedom. Leona decided to stay behind. She and little Rosa left Abbeville and returned to her parents' farm in Pine Level, where Sylvester Edwards taught his granddaughter, who the world would come to know as Rosa Parks, \"not to put up with bad treatment from anybody.\"\n\nWhen Rosa Parks returned to Abbeville almost thirty years later to investigate the rape of Recy Taylor, she was, in a sense, coming home. Though she had not seen her father in years, she remained kin to a sizable portion of the black community there. She could count on the McCauleys for a hot meal, a warm bed, and all the local gossip. News of the gang rape of Mrs. Taylor had reverberated through the sharecroppers' cabins and the tattered gray shacks in the colored section of town. Taylor, her husband, and their three-year-old daughter, Joyce Lee, rented one of these cabins at the bottom of a rust-colored hill just outside of town. Here Parks scribbled notes as she listened to Taylor testify about the vicious attack. Her time was limited. Deputy Sheriff Lewey Corbitt, known among blacks in Abbeville as a mean man with a propensity for violence, drove repeatedly past the house. Finally, he burst into the cabin and ordered Parks out of town. \"I don't want any troublemakers here in Abbeville,\" he said. \"If you don't go,\" he said, \"I'll lock you up.\"\n\nParks gathered up her notes and carried Taylor's story back to Montgomery, where she and the city's most militant black activists organized a campaign to defend Recy Taylor. Eleven years later, this group of homegrown leaders would take history in their hands and become heralded as the Montgomery Improvement Association, eventually vaulting its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to international prominence during the Montgomery bus boycott. But when the coalition first took root, King was still in high school in Atlanta.\n\nAlone on the dark highway after her assailants dumped her out of the car, Recy Taylor pulled off the blindfold and got her bearings. In the moonlight, she recognized the silhouette of Judge Charlie Nordan's barn and knew which way to turn. Staggering along the edge of the road, she saw the deputy sheriff's car whiz past. As she approached Three Points\u2014the intersection of three main roads near the center of Abbeville\u2014she saw another familiar vehicle. Will Cook, the former chief of police and a local shopkeeper, pulled his automobile to the side of the road. Taylor's father, Benny Corbitt (no relation to the deputy sheriff), called to his daughter, the oldest of seven children, and she crawled into the car. As the dark, open space of the highway receded behind small storefronts, Taylor saw her husband, Willie Guy Taylor, and her friends Fannie and West Daniel, huddling with two police officers in front of Cook's store. It was nearly three in the morning.\n\nRecy Taylor had no way of knowing that Fannie Daniel had immediately reported the abduction to Cook, who must have felt the fear and urgency in the older woman's voice. Her son's description of the green Chevrolet assured Cook's assistance. He \"knew at once,\" he said, who owned it. Cook fired off a series of orders to get the investigation under way, sending Fannie and West to rouse George Gamble, the Henry County sheriff; then driving to Benny Corbitt's house to notify him about the abduction of his daughter. Benny grabbed a pistol, slid it into his waistband, and ran outside. First he went to Price's lumber, where white men had taken black women before, and searched desperately between the stacks of wood. When he could not find her there, he began walking through town. Finally, he headed east, toward \"lovers' lane,\" a wooded area outside town where white teenagers were known to congregate after hours. His shirt was soaked with sweat when he finally spotted the silhouette of his daughter staggering on the roadside. Her clothes were tattered and torn, and she was shaking with sobs.\n\nAfter such a brutal gang rape, Taylor must have been in extreme pain and shock. There was no telling what physical injuries she sustained, how many bruises would mar her skin the next morning. The psychological wounds were bound to last a lifetime. That she could walk a distance after the attack indicates only a dogged determination to return home alive.\n\nWhen Taylor stumbled into the arms of her husband, he was standing outside Cook's store. Taylor's family and friends crowded around her, listening quietly as she told them what happened. She told Sheriff Gamble that she could not name any of her assailants, but her description of the car pointed to one suspect. \"There's only one car in the county that fits that description,\" he said. Telling Taylor to stay put, he quickly walked to his car.\n\nThirty minutes later the sheriff returned with Hugo Wilson, his father, and their big green sedan. Taylor identified the car and pointed to Wilson as one of the rapists. Fannie and West Daniel backed Taylor up. West identified Wilson's car as the one \"that the white boys were in when they stopped me, my Mama and Recy Taylor.\" Wilson, he said, pointing to the young white man, \"made Recy Taylor get in the car and drove off with her.\" Sheriff Gamble took Wilson to the jailhouse, and Willie Guy Taylor walked his wife home.\n\nUnder questioning from Gamble at the Henry County jail, Wilson admitted picking Taylor up and, as he put it, \"carrying her to the spot,\" and gave up the names of his accomplices. Dillard York, Billy Howerton, Herbert Lovett, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper, and Robert Gamble, he said, \"all had intercourse with her.\" Wilson swore that they did not use force. \"We all paid her.\"\n\nWilson's defense was certainly plausible; it was not uncommon for white Southerners\u2014even die-hard segregationists\u2014to visit black prostitutes under the cover of darkness. African Americans called white men who surreptitiously searched for coerced or consensual interracial intercourse \"alleybats.\" Still, Gamble must have known Wilson was not telling the truth. He himself had seen Taylor distraught, disheveled, and trembling. Three eyewitnesses identified Wilson as the driver of the car used in the armed abduction. Sheriff Gamble could have justified arresting Wilson without difficulty. At the very least, he might have called the other men Wilson named and brought them in for questioning. Instead, Gamble sent Wilson home with a $250 bond and instructions to have his parents sign and return it at their leisure. The sheriff did not call the other men in, issue any warrants, or make any arrests.\n\nIf Sheriff Gamble hoped the case would quietly disappear, he was disappointed. Rosa Parks had been a member of the Montgomery NAACP for only a year when she met with Recy Taylor in 1944, but she was already a seasoned activist. Her quiet demeanor hid a steely determination to battle white supremacy. Rosa's grandfather taught her to stand up for herself and others and introduced her to the boisterous exhortations of the Jamaican-born black nationalist Marcus Garvey when she was in grade school. Garvey's condemnation of white supremacy and his calls for a \"Back to Africa\" movement were common topics of conversation in the Edwards household. Garvey's fearless race pride rallied millions into the ranks of his Universal Negro Improvement Association. From its auspicious beginning in 1914 to its stark demise eleven years later, the UNIA was the biggest and brassiest organization for black human rights in the world. Garvey's call for a \"new world of _Black_ men, not peons, serfs, dogs, or slaves,\" resonated with Edwards, who refused to be cowed by white men, even when they wore hoods and carried guns. Perhaps her grandfather took young Rosa to Tuskegee in 1923, where Garvey enjoyed a warm reception from students and faculty and impressed African-American ministers from Birmingham.\n\nSylvester Edwards became his granddaughter's political mentor at a time when Garvey's rise coincided with a national resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization dedicated to \"100 Percent Americanism\" and the supremacy of white Anglo-Saxon Christians. Though they hid behind masks when committing acts of terrorism, businessmen, police officers, civic leaders, and state politicians north and south proudly proclaimed their loyalty to the hooded order. By 1924 the KKK counted four to six million members nationwide. Alabama boasted 115,000 men and women in 148 separate klaverns. Even Governor Bibb Graves held a membership card.\n\nAfter World War I the Alabama Klan unleashed a wave of terror designed to return \"uppity\" African Americans to their proper place in the segregated social order. The war to \"make the world safe for democracy\" had upended the racial status quo in the South. The promise of a better life in the North encouraged thousands of domestics and sharecroppers to flee low-paying jobs and the constant threat of racial violence, launching the Great Migration. Meanwhile many black soldiers returned to the South expecting that their military service would be rewarded with better treatment. \"Whites didn't like blacks having that kind of attitude,\" Rosa Parks recalled years later, \"so they started doing all kinds of violent things to black people to remind them that they didn't have any rights... I heard a lot about black people being found dead and nobody knew what happened,\" she said. \"Other people would just pick them up and bury them.\" In 1919 the Alabama Klan lynched four African Americans in Montgomery in less than twelve hours. In Ensley Klansmen flogged a black doctor who treated white patients; the Klan murdered two black men in Shelby County who decided to quit their low-paying farm jobs; and in Houston County an angry horde of hooded vigilantes shot and killed a black man as he waited on a platform for a northbound train.\n\nSylvester Edwards refused to be the Klan's next victim. Cradling his double-barreled shotgun as the robed rebels paraded on the street outside his home in Pine Level, he positioned himself between the front door and the yawning fireplace. Rosa remembered kneeling beside his chair as he waited, rocking slowly back and forth. \"I don't know how long I would last if they came breaking in here,\" he said to Rosa, \"but I'm getting the first one who comes through the door.\" Rosa sat with her grandfather each night, waiting for the danger to pass. \"Whatever happened,\" she said later, \"I wanted to see it. I wanted to see him shoot that gun. I wasn't going to be caught asleep.\"\n\nBy the time she was ten years old, Rosa was as defiant as her grandfather. \"I saw Franklin,\" she announced to her grandmother one summer day, referring to a notorious white bully. \"He threatened to hit me,\" she said. \"I picked up a brick and dared him to hit me.\" Her grandmother scolded her and insisted that black children could not \"talk to white folks that way... You'll be lynched before you're twenty years old.\" The sharp reprimand hurt young Rosa's feelings, but it did not curtail her feisty behavior: \"I felt that I was very much in my rights to try to defend myself if I could.\" When another white boy on skates whizzed past and tried to push Rosa off the sidewalk, she pushed him back. The boy's mother saw the infraction and threatened to have Rosa arrested. \"He pushed me,\" Rosa snapped, \"and I didn't want to be pushed.\" \"It had been passed down almost in our genes,\" she said later, \"that a proud African American can simply not accept bad treatment from anybody.\"\n\nAs a young woman, Rosa McCauley was drawn to Raymond Parks, a spirited and brazen barber who lived in Montgomery, soon after she met him in the spring of 1931. At first his light complexion turned her off, and she rebuffed his flirtations. \"I thought he was too white,\" she admitted; \"I had an aversion to white men.\" But when she found out that Parks was a charter member of the Montgomery NAACP who carried a pistol in his pocket so that he could stand up to whites without fear, she relented and agreed to a date. Over the next year, they spent hours sitting in the rumble seat of his little red Nash, talking about injustice in Alabama. \"He was the first man of our race, aside from my grandfather,\" she said, \"with whom I actually discussed anything about the racial conditions.\"\n\nRaymond and Rosa had plenty to talk about. Rape and rumors of rape preoccupied Alabamians during the Depression years, and stories of racialized sexual violence echoed out from Alabama to the rest of the world. It is likely Rosa and Raymond discussed the brutal rape of Murdus Dixon, a twelve-year-old black Birmingham girl raped at knifepoint in the early 1930s by a white man who hired her as a domestic. Police refused to arrest the man, and the case languished until it finally disappeared from public conversation.\n\nBy the spring of 1931, most conversation in Alabama centered on what had happened in the small town of Scottsboro. On March 25 hundreds of white men in dusty overalls, with shotguns slung over their shoulders, crowded around the crumbling two-story jailhouse. Inside were nine African-American boys, none older than twenty, who had been kicked off a Memphis-bound freight train and arrested after roughhousing with a handful of white hoboes. But when Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, two white women working as prostitutes, were also taken off the train, they accused the black youths of rape. By late afternoon, their accusation had been transformed into a lurid tale. Rumors spread that nine \"black brutes\" had \"chewed off one of the breasts\" of Ruby Bates. By the time the young men were brought to the Scottsboro jail, an incensed mob had already decided they were guilty. \"Give 'em to us,\" someone shouted, as the mob pushed toward the jailhouse door. \"Let those niggers out!\" \"If you don't,\" another threatened, \"we're coming in after them.\" Fearing a mass lynching, the sheriff asked Governor B. M. Miller to send in the National Guard.\n\nDenied a lynching, white Scottsboro clamored for a quick hearing and a quicker execution. The \"nigger rape case,\" as locals called it, began the day after the arrests. Within two weeks the young men had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Alabama's electric chair. The instant trial and harsh sentences aroused anger and protest around the country. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States issued a statement calling the ruling a \"cold blooded 'illegal' lynching.\" The Interdenominational Ministers Alliance, a group of black clergymen from Chattanooga, Tennessee, raised fifty dollars for their defense, and the Alabama Interracial Commission passed a resolution calling for a careful review of the facts. In the months after the trial, the International Labor Defense, the NAACP, trade unions, leftist groups, and outraged individuals flooded the governor's office with letters of protest.\n\nIn Montgomery, Raymond Parks joined other black activists in secret meetings to raise money for the Scottsboro defense. \"It gnawed at him to see those innocent kids were framed,\" Rosa said. \"He'd say, 'I'll never sleep until they're free.' \" After Rosa and Raymond were married in 1932, they hosted gatherings of local Scottsboro defenders in the front room of their little shotgun house in Montgomery's Centennial Hill neighborhood near Alabama State College. \"Whenever they met,\" Parks recalled, \"they had someone posted as lookout and someone always had a gun.\" At one meeting, the men sat around a small card table covered with guns plotting to save the youths from the electric chair. \"This was the first time I'd seen so few men with so many guns,\" Parks remembered fondly. \"I didn't even think to offer them something to drink... I don't know where I would have put any refreshments. No one was thinking of food anyway.\"\n\nRosa Parks spent the rest of the evening on the back porch with her legs folded into her chest, her chin resting gently on her knees. After the men left, Raymond lifted his wife from the porch and assured her everything was all right. Even though the immediate danger had passed, she was sad and angry \"about the fact that black men could not hold a meeting without fear of bodily injury or death.\" It would take Parks and other activists, mainly the International Labor Defense and the NAACP, almost twenty years to free the Scottsboro boys. When the last of the nine men walked out of prison in 1950, Scottsboro was \"synonymous with Southern racism, repression, and injustice,\" and Montgomery was heading for the history books.\n\nIn the early 1940s, Rosa and Raymond Parks hosted Voters League meetings, where they encouraged their friends and neighbors in Montgomery to register to vote, even though it was a dangerous proposition. These clandestine meetings, like the Scottsboro gatherings, introduced Parks to Alabama's underground network of black activists who worked for racial justice during the dark days of the Depression. That support network became indispensable when Rosa Parks tried and twice failed to register to vote. Unlike whites, blacks had to pass a literacy test to prove their intellectual fitness to vote. County registrars routinely failed the South's most-educated blacks and passed illiterate whites as a way to maintain lily-white voter rolls. Parks persisted, however, and finally received her registration certificate in 1945, after taking the qualifying exam three times. She was so sure she passed the third test that she copied her answers on a separate sheet of paper in case the registrar claimed she failed. She kept that copy, she said later, so she could \"bring suit against the voter registration board.\"\n\nIt was after her second attempt to register, in 1943, that Rosa Parks first collided with a burly white bus driver named James F. Blake. Blake was known around town as a \"vicious bigot\" who targeted black women for mistreatment, calling them \"bitches\" and \"coons.\" When Parks refused to reenter Blake's bus from the rear door after paying up front, a humiliating Jim Crow practice, he threatened to throw her off the bus. She refused. \"I [don't] see the need of getting off and getting back on,\" she protested, \"when people were standing in the stepwell.\" Besides, she added, \"how was I going to squeeze in anyway?\" Parks's behavior infuriated Blake. He lunged at her, grabbed her by the coat sleeve, and pulled her toward the door. \"I know one thing,\" she warned as he dragged her out, \"you better not hit me.\" As she was about to disembark, she pretended to drop her purse and quickly sat down in the front seat to retrieve it. Her spurt of defiance enraged the bus driver. \"Get off my bus!\" Blake roared as she finally stepped into the street. As the bus pulled away from the curb, Parks vowed to never ride on Blake's bus again.\n\nRosa Parks joined the Montgomery NAACP chapter shortly after the 1943 bus incident with Blake. At the first meeting she attended, she was elected branch secretary. The humble title obscured the importance of the job, which required Parks to spend much of her time traveling down dusty Alabama roads interviewing people and documenting acts of brutality, unsolved murders, voter intimidation, and other racial incidents. Her belief in racial equality and her ingrained sense of self-worth helped Parks become known as someone who could be trusted with delicate or dangerous information. \"Rosa will talk to you,\" folks quietly assured victims of racial violence. Having been politicized and deeply affected by the injustice in the Scottsboro case, Parks was especially interested in interracial rape cases.\n\nRosa Parks carried Recy Taylor's story from Abbeville to Montgomery, where she helped organize her defense. E. D. Nixon, a union man who headed the Alabama Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Rufus A. Lewis, who directed both a local funeral home and the football team at Alabama State; and E. G. Jackson, who served as editor of the _Alabama Tribune_ , all signed on to help. With support from national labor unions, African-American organizations, and women's groups, Rosa Parks and her local allies formed the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. By the spring of 1945, they had recruited supporters around the country and had organized what the _Chicago Defender_ called the \"strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade.\"\n\nWhen the Henry County Grand Jury took up Recy Taylor's case on October 3 and 4, 1944, no one expected equal justice, but Taylor's family and friends hoped for an honest hearing. Once there, Taylor discovered that none of the assailants had actually been arrested. That meant the only witnesses present, when the all-white, all-male jury came together during the fall session, were Taylor's loved ones, none of whom could provide the names of the white men who assaulted her. Aside from identifying Hugo Wilson and his car the night of the attack, Sheriff Gamble never arranged a police lineup, so Taylor could not point to her attackers in court. He claimed he placed Hugo Wilson and his accomplices under a $250 appearance bond, but court records indicate that the bonds were issued late in the afternoon, a day _after_ Taylor's hearing. Circuit solicitor Keener Baxley, whose son Bill would eventually become attorney general of Alabama in 1971 and pardon the last Scottsboro defendant, appeared to go through the motions of a legitimate trial. It was clear that the proceeding was a farce designed by Baxley and others to protect themselves from outside criticism and to remind black women that they could not rely upon even the most basic protections under the law.\n\nBy creating a faint shadow of judicial procedure, white leaders could dismiss complaints of racial discrimination by arguing that Recy Taylor received every consideration the law allowed. White Alabamians were so sensitive to the national and international outrage over the near lynching and subsequent trials of the Scottsboro nine that state and county leaders had to at least give an appearance of equal justice. Baxley and Gamble knew exactly what they were doing. Without an indictment from the grand jury, Taylor's case would never make it out of Henry County. There would be no further hearings, and they expected that the matter would eventually die.\n\nFor nearly a month after the grand jury met, Baxley and Gamble's strategy appeared to be working. Taylor and her husband quietly returned to their jobs and daily burdens, resigned to the bitter truth that her assailants roamed freely through town. They did not have much of a choice. After reporting the rape, Taylor received multiple death threats. The night after the attack, for example, white vigilantes firebombed Taylor's home while the family slept, setting the front porch on fire. Taylor's husband rushed outside and quickly put out the flames, saving his wife and toddler. They moved in with her father and six siblings the next morning, and Taylor stayed close to home. \"I haven't gone up into the town since it happened,\" she told a reporter later. \"I'm afraid they'll kill me. They said they'd kill me if I told on them.\" The entire family took precautions as well. \"Nobody would walk at night,\" Taylor's brother, Robert, recalled. \"Everybody tried to make sure that they done what they had to do in the daytime.\" And each night, after everyone was tucked safely into bed, Benny Corbitt climbed a tree in his backyard. Cradling a double-barreled shotgun and a sack of shells, he guarded the cabin until the sun broke on the horizon, and then went inside to sleep.\n\nAs the crisp fall days passed, however, the story of the brutal rape and the phony hearing spread across the state and then the nation, passed on in union halls, churches, NAACP chapters, barbershops, pool halls, and juke joints, through the underground networks of African-American activists, and along the infrastructure built by the defenders of the Scottsboro youth. Bolstered by a rising black militancy fueled by the global war against fascism, black activists in Alabama and their allies in national labor unions and leftist and liberal organizations joined in coalition to defend Taylor and demand punishment for the white men who kidnapped and raped her.\n\nMany of these activists came together at the Negro Masonic Temple in Birmingham, the nerve center of Alabama's black political community. Here, militant members of the Birmingham and Montgomery NAACP chapters swapped organizing strategies with sharecroppers and steel-fisted union men whose battles for better wages and human dignity in the 1930s had laid a solid foundation. Editors and reporters from Alabama's black newspapers, mainly the _Alabama Tribune_ and the _Birmingham World_ , could interview members of the middle-class, progressive, and Communist-infused Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), or catch up on regional news with the leading lights of the Alabama branch of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), the South's most prominent interracial liberal organization. Labor organizers passing through Birmingham could stop in to make a connection, gather information, or have a friendly chat. Together these eclectic groups and individuals turned the Masonic temple into a hive of activity. They coordinated campaigns, investigated police brutality, condemned the poll tax, pushed for the ballot, and fought for human rights.\n\nThe SNYC, an outgrowth of the left-wing, New York\u2013based National Negro Congress, was just nine years old in 1944, but it was perhaps the most promising civil rights organization in Alabama at the time. At first, the SNYC attracted mostly young, college-educated black Southerners, but it quickly gained attention and support from prominent African-American leaders with national political reach. The list of SNYC board members included conservatives like Charles Gomillion and F. D. Patterson, the dean and president of the Tuskegee Institute; Percy Sutton, a Tuskegee Airman and well-known lawyer; Atlantans Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse College; Ralph Abernathy, a powerful young preacher in Montgomery; Modjeska Simkins, an outspoken and fearless NAACP leader in South Carolina; and Nannie Burroughs, a nationally known educator and women's club leader from Virginia. This broad-based coalition helped publicize the SNYC's activities.\n\nIn Alabama the SNYC leadership included black women, many of whom practiced a tradition of collective organizing rooted in sharecroppers' struggles to win the most rudimentary rights from white landlords in the early 1930s. Other members were middle-class, college-educated black women who saw the SNYC as providing more opportunities for women than traditional black organizations. Esther V. Cooper, a feisty organizer and women's rights advocate, was only twenty-three years old in 1940 when she helped lead the Birmingham chapter of the SNYC. Just before she moved there, Cooper wrote a master's thesis at Fisk University devoted to the \"special issues that confronted working-class black women,\" especially domestics and sharecroppers. Dedicated to cultivating black female leadership throughout Alabama and building bridges with existing women's networks, she was the SNYC's executive secretary by 1942.\n\nAfrican-American women played a prominent role in the Southern Negro Youth Conference, a leftist organization committed to fighting racial injustice. Members of the SNYC's Third Conference Preparation Group gather at Miles College in Alabama, 1940. (photo credit 1.1)\n\nRosa Parks and the SNYC women were natural allies. By leveraging their relationships with CIO-affiliated unions, Communist networks, and local and national civil rights organizations, Parks, Cooper, and their cohorts helped spread Recy Taylor's story from the back roads of Alabama to the street corners of Harlem. Reaching out to friends and affiliates around the country, they sought publicity, funding, and legal assistance. By the end of October, Taylor's story had traveled all the way to Pennsylvania, where the widely read and respected black newspaper the _Pittsburgh Courier_ ran it on October 28, 1944. Strategically placed beneath a banner headline that declared \"Treatment of Negro Called Greatest Evil in America,\" the succinct front-page article, \"Alabama Whites Attack Woman; Not Punished,\" highlighted sexual violence as one of those evils. The prominent article and provocative headline reflected the _Courier's_ \"Double V\" strategy. During the war years, the black press, led by the _Pittsburgh Courier_ , urged African Americans to adopt \"double victory\" as a wartime battle cry. \"The first V [is] for victory over our enemies from without,\" a _Courier_ reader argued in a letter to the editor. \"The second V [is] for victory over our enemies from within. For surely those who perpetuate these ugly prejudices here are seeking to destroy our democratic form of government just as surely as the Axis forces.\" Readers responded to the black press's drumbeat to \"Defeat Mussolini and Hitler by Enforcing the Constitution and Abolishing Jim Crow,\" devouring 200,000 copies of the _Courier_ each week. The _Courier_ was not alone in its success; wartime readership of black newspapers increased nearly 40 percent.\n\nAs executive secretary of the SNYC, Esther Cooper, seated right, organized committees, lobbied government officials, published newsletters, and investigated racial crimes. She visited Recy Taylor in Abbeville, Alabama, in July 1945. (photo credit 1.2)\n\nThe _Courier_ article made the rape of Recy Taylor a national example of Southern injustice. It immediately sparked nationwide interest. Eugene Gordon, a prominent black Communist and writer for the _New York Daily Worker_ , followed up on the _Courier_ 's lead by traveling to Alabama to interview Taylor. Gordon's November 19 article, \"Alabama Authorities Ignore White Gang's Rape of Negro Mother,\" reported that since the attack, \"Alabama justice has been blind, deaf, and mute.\" Gordon blasted segregationists' long-standing defense of white womanhood and their manipulation of interracial rape to justify violence against black men. Pointing to the most recent example, Gordon argued that \"every southern newspaper played up the rape of the unnamed wife of a white soldier in Florida\" but failed to report the crime against Recy Taylor. Worse, he fumed, Southern editors stood silent as the alleged black rapists of a white woman \"were burned to death in Florida's electric chair,\" while Taylor's assailants weren't even questioned. \"The whole country must be aroused to action,\" Gordon thundered, \"against this and other similar outrages against Negro womanhood.\"\n\nRecy Taylor, Willie Guy Taylor, and their child, Joyce Lee Taylor. (photo credit 1.3)\n\nIn New York City black activists, embroiled in their own grassroots struggles against segregation, police brutality, and housing discrimination, read Gordon's article and were outraged. They heeded his call to arms by flocking to Harlem's Hotel Theresa on November 25 for a mass meeting. Called by the New York branch of the SCHW, and the SNYC's parent organization, the National Negro Congress, the meeting hoped to draw attention to the double standard of justice in the South and \"find ways and means of centering nationwide attention on Mrs. Taylor's case and forcing legal action\" in order to \"lay a basis for ending this southern practice of degrading Negro womanhood.\" Their allies in Alabama provided crucial assistance.\n\nMore than one hundred people, representing middle-class mainstays like the YWCA, the NAACP, and the National Council of Negro Women, as well as leftist labor unions like the CIO and the Negro Labor Victory Committee, came to the emergency meeting. Audley Moore, a spirited black nationalist who had a long history of defending black women from sexual violence, came as the Harlem representative of the International Workers Order. Prominent black Communists like Benjamin J. Davis and James W. Ford, as well as leftist and Communist-affiliated organizations like the International Labor Defense, filed into the hotel and found seats. Reporters from the leftist _Daily Worker;_ the New York tabloid _PM;_ the progressive West Coast paper the _California Eagle;_ and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.'s, weekly, _The People's Voice_ , clustered around the dais, pencils and notepads at the ready. Alabama SNYC delegates provided local information about the Recy Taylor case.\n\nThe assembly of such an eclectic group of activists yielded incredible results. After being briefed on the \"Abbeville Affair,\" participants agreed to partner with the Alabama branches of the SNYC and the SCHW to form the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. They chose delegates who would immediately travel to Abbeville to investigate the crime and report their findings at the Sixth All-Southern Negro Youth Congress conference, to be held in Atlanta the following week. There they planned to create a \"Negro-rights, Negro-white unity campaign throughout the South.\" When the call for donations came, activists dug into their pockets and contributed close to one hundred dollars. They agreed to use the money to flood the South with flyers decrying white attacks on black women and promised a publicity campaign aimed directly at the governor of Alabama, Chauncey Sparks. As one newspaper article put it, \"The phrase 'protection of Southern womanhood' had life and meaning injected into it.\"\n\nAlmost immediately letters and postcards trickled in to Governor Sparks's office. Known as the \"Bourbon from Barbour,\" Chauncey Sparks won the governorship in 1942 by promising to \"padlock the state treasury\" and keep the federal government's nose out of Alabama's business. Though he eventually started spending money on schools, agricultural programs, and hospitals, he was no Franklin Roosevelt liberal. A tight-lipped and pragmatic conservative, he was also an ardent white supremacist like other anti-tax, anti-labor elite Democrats, known as the Big Mules, in Alabama.\n\nRosa Parks wrote letters, signed petitions, and sent postcards in an effort to secure justice for Recy Taylor. (photo credit 1.4)\n\nIn 1946 Sparks helped lead a campaign to ratify the Boswell Amendment, which made it all but impossible for most African Americans and poor whites to register to vote. He was George Wallace's first mentor and benefactor. In the fall of 1945, Sparks offered the skinny twenty-six-year-old a job as an assistant in the attorney general's office, giving rise to Wallace's storied career.\n\nBy mid-December 1944 hundreds of letters protesting the rape of Recy Taylor poured in from all over the country and stacked up on Sparks's desk. \"I've heard a great deal of how the South prides itself on protecting its womanhood,\" Mrs. Gretchen Coon told Governor Sparks. \"How do you square this vaunted theory with the practice and the kind of justice evidenced in Abbeville on September 3rd and subsequently?\" A \"friend of the South\" tried to appeal to Sparks's sense of racial duty, pointing out the irrational defense of white supremacy while doing nothing to prevent whites from having sex\u2014coerced or otherwise\u2014with black women.\n\nYou are justly and earnestly striving for the purity of your race, yet you openly permit a great many of your men to freely cohabit with women of the Negro race. This is encouraged by your laws. Ironically enough, the Negro man does not seem as desirous of cohabiting with the white woman as the white man is pleased with cohabitation with Negro women... The failure to indict the white men [who assaulted Recy Taylor] says to the white youth of the South that it is alright to have sexual intercourse with the Negro... [The rapists] in Abbeville Alabama... have made your lofty and noble principles of race and good clean society a _joke_.\n\nCharles Collins, executive secretary of the Negro Labor Victory Committee, a leftist labor union, agreed. \"The rapists are known, identified, and yet allowed to go unpunished in your state,\" Collins argued. \"This brazen denial of the simple rights of humanity, exposes, more than ever, the emptiness of the white supremacy advocates who employ the charge of 'rape' in order to attack the Negro people.\"\n\nUnsubstantiated charges of the rape of white women by black men had been part of the Southern political culture for decades. Rumors of rape were rooted in Reconstruction-era stereotypes, in which white Southerners portrayed black men as the mythological incubus, a beast that attacks women while they sleep, to disfranchise African Americans and justify racial violence. Between 1880 and 1920, Southern Democrats fueled rumors of \"black beast rapists\" defiling pure, white womanhood, in an effort to \"redeem\" Dixie from the grip of Republican rule. Most often these campaigns amounted to one-sided racial pogroms, as white supremacists used white fears of black male sexuality to seize political control of the state and subjugate African Americans. Even after the white supremacy campaigns secured state legislatures and sanctioned Jim Crow, rumors of black-on-white rape conveniently surfaced whenever African Americans asserted their humanity or challenged white supremacy. \"Any assertion of any kind on the part of the Negro,\" as Southern historian W. J. Cash put it, \"constituted in a perfectly real manner, an attack on the southern white woman.\"\n\nDuring the 1940s, virtually any self-assertion among African Americans conjured images of \"amalgamation\" and fears of \"social equality,\" a euphemism for interracial sex. In a rant against wartime black activism, Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo, perhaps the most acrimonious segregationist in Congress, argued that \"every Negro in America who is behind [civil rights] movements... dream[s] of social equality and intermarriage between whites and blacks.\"\n\nHoward Odum, a prominent sociologist from the University of North Carolina, argued that white fears of interracial sex sat at the center of wartime racial tension. In his 1943 study, _Race and Rumors of Race_ , Odum documented the \"weird, wild stories\" whites told one another about blacks. Whites, he said, worried that demands for black equality heralded a bloody insurrection, similar to Nat Turner's murderous slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831. \"Negroes are buying up all the ice picks,\" whites told one another, \"waiting for the first blackout\" to attack. Many whites believed that blacks were also hoarding guns, stashing them in coffins and church basements, waiting for the right moment to \"turn the tables\" and \"overrule the South.\"\n\nThe most incendiary race rumors were about black men's insatiable lust for white women. According to Odum, these near-hysterical stories reflected white beliefs that rising black activism indicated African Americans' \"bold intention\" to achieve the hated \"social equality.\"\n\nEveryone had their own version of this story.\n\n\"Negro Men were all planning to have white wives,\" whites whispered to one another in wartime North Carolina. \"And when all the white men have gone to war,\" they said, \"the white women will be left for the Negro men.\" Another tall tale traded among friends in Georgia told of a black man who warned a white couple that they \"better be necking now because after the war we'll be doing the necking.\" In Louisiana whites warned schoolgirls to never walk alone since there was apparently an \"outbreak of Negroes attacking white women.\"\n\nUnsubstantiated rumors of black men attacking innocent white women sparked almost 50 percent of all race riots in the United States between Reconstruction and World War II. In 1943 alone there were 242 violent interracial clashes in forty-seven cities. Beaumont, Texas, was typical of small manufacturing towns reeling from changes wrought by the war. As blacks and whites from surrounding areas poured into the Gulf Coast town for defense jobs, racial tension increased. Lack of housing and health care, overstretched social service providers, and overcrowding on buses and public transportation all threatened the segregated social order. But it was the rumors that a black man brutally raped, beat, and stabbed an eighteen-year-old white telephone operator in Beaumont on June 5, 1943, coupled with reports of a plan among black soldiers to \"invade the city in search of unprotected white women,\" that triggered a riot in the tinder-box town.\n\nWhen a twenty-four-year-old white woman claimed she was attacked by a black man in her \"victory garden\" a few days later, a mob of more than two thousand white men, mostly bulky stevedores, rampaged through the black neighborhood, beating pedestrians and burning businesses. In their wake, they left hundreds injured and three dead and destroyed more than two hundred buildings. The Beaumont riot was hardly unusual; racial disturbances in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, Atlanta in 1906, Springfield, Illinois, in 1908, Omaha, Nebraska, and Washington D.C., in 1919, Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, and Mobile, Alabama, in 1943 were all sparked by rumored incidents of rape or manufactured \"rape epidemics\" involving black men and white women.\n\nRumors about the mistreatment and rape of _black_ women by _white_ men started plenty of brawls throughout the South, too, but none caused as much violence and bloodshed as the rumor that made Detroit explode in the summer of 1943. Three days of rioting left thirty-four people dead, nearly seven hundred injured, and an estimated $2 million in property damage. During World War II, Detroit, like Beaumont, teetered on the edge of racial cataclysm. Five hundred thousand black and white migrant workers poured into the Motor City, clashing over defense jobs, housing, and access to transportation, public parks, and education. On June 20, 1943, the temperature soared past ninety degrees, and thousands of Detroit's working-class residents sought relief on the beaches of Belle Isle. Throughout the day, isolated scuffles broke out between black and white picnickers who competed for grills and tables. These minor skirmishes erupted into a full-scale riot after rumors that a white Southerner had thrown a black mother and her baby off the Belle Isle Bridge sent hundreds of black men streaming into the streets to defend and protect black womanhood.\n\nThe rumor that sparked the Detroit riot was one of many sexual stories detailing the widespread mistreatment of black women during the 1940s. The most oft-repeated tale insisted that \"white soldiers in the South were mistreating Negro women.\" One rumor told of a white MP who \"had beaten the wife of a Negro soldier in a Georgia camp.\" Another story, from Mississippi, described the beating of black soliders while police attacked their wives and girlfriends. There were also plenty of stories circulating about black women who had been arrested and beaten by policemen after protesting mistreatment on buses.\n\nAs a kind of cultural narrative, rumors of rape and sexualized violence had enormous symbolic power and political potency. Whites used outrageous racial rumors and rape scares to justify strengthening segregation and white supremacy. Meanwhile the stories of sexual subjugation and racial terror that circulated among African Americans exposed white hypocrisy about interracial sex and spurred demands for equal justice and bodily integrity. Given the tenuous social and political environment into which the Recy Taylor story quickly spread, it was bound to spark similar fears and anxieties, if not violent clashes.\n\nPerhaps few understood this better than members of the U.S. military. Thirty-three soldiers from \"somewhere in Belgium\" put down their guns and picked up pens to sign a petition addressed to Governor Sparks. They demanded he use his gubernatorial powers to intervene in the case. \"Failure to act in any such case,\" the soldiers argued, \"is a matter of grave concern to everyone believing in the principles of American democracy\u2014the principle of the equality of all before the law, regardless of race, color or religion; particularly to those of us who face a ruthless enemy to preserve that democracy.\" The failure to hold white men accountable was irresponsible: \"we are engaged in a war for freedom,\" they insisted, \"which requires the united support of all Americans, Negro and White.\"\n\nIn a letter to Governor Sparks, Eugene Henderson, an African-American merchant seaman, noted the irony of America's role as defender of democracy abroad while it denied justice at home. \"I have risked my life many times to deliver supplies to our armed forces and our allies,\" he said. \"My morale drops when I learn that a woman of my race has been brutally raped by six white men and nothing done about it.\" Why, Henderson asked, \"isn't Negro womanhood as sacred as white womanhood?\" Ernest Scott, president of the Transport Workers of America, echoed Henderson's sentiments and feared that the \"effect of such lawlessness on the morale of our men in the armed services... cannot but be bad... [T]he least we can do for our servicemen and women is to assure them that while they are fighting our country's battles... their families back home are safe.\"\n\nEnough black troops were upset by the gang rape of Recy Taylor that Charles S. Seely, the editorial director of the _Army News_ , felt compelled to urge Governor Sparks to act. \"If this pamphlet reaches any considerable number of Negroes in our armed services, and I have no doubt it will,\" he warned Sparks, \"it will greatly affect their efficiency... This of course will be very bad for the war effort,\" he argued, \"for it is senseless to fight fascism abroad if fascistic influences are to be protected here at home.\" Seely asked Sparks for a statement \"that assures Negro soldiers that you will see to it that the 'degenerate and ruthless persons who attacked Mrs. Taylor are brought to justice and severely punished.' \" If Sparks would commit to a similar statement, Seely argued, he could \"publish it in all three of our papers... This way,\" he insisted, \"it will reach a great many of the million or so American Negroes who are fighting for democracy\" and \"help keep up the morale of the Negroes in our services.\"\n\nAs the \"Abbeville Affair\" threatened America's war effort, Governor Sparks worried about the negative publicity the assault would have on his state. Mr. and Mrs. Scott McCall told Sparks that the rape of Recy Taylor \"was as bad as what we would expect from the Nazis.\" Julius Crane, the vice president of the United Shoe Workers of America, demanded Governor Sparks take \"immediate steps\" to try Taylor's assailants \"before Alabama is placed on Hitler's list as a possible postwar refuge.\" Perhaps Crane knew that Fort Rucker, a military base just outside Abbeville, was already home to German prisoners of war, who were often treated better than African-American citizens.\n\nLetters and petitions continued to pour in from concerned Alabamians, and Sparks worried that he faced \"another Scottsboro,\" as one correspondent after another called it. The governor knew that in places like Birmingham, Mobile, and Montgomery, where fierce labor competition, union battles, and rabid racism created a volatile climate, the failure to prosecute Recy Taylor's assailants could easily cause an explosion. Of course, prosecuting them also carried risks, but Taylor's defenders seemed considerably better organized than her antagonists. Just before Christmas, Eugene Gordon from the _Daily Worker_ teamed up with E. G. Jackson, Montgomery activist and editor of the popular black newspaper the _Alabama Tribune_ , to confront Sparks. Inside the imposing white marble capitol, where Jefferson Davis pledged his loyalty to the Confederacy in 1861, Governor Sparks reluctantly agreed to launch an investigation. Sparks hedged, making no commitments to a just outcome. Still, Gordon and Jackson sensed the governor's responsiveness to outside pressures. In an article about their meeting, Gordon reported that \"the Governor... agreed with his Attorney General that they wanted no publicity. They wished to make their investigations and decide on what action to take, all without the _Daily Worker_ or the Negro press saying anything about the fact that the state's highest officers were interested.\"\n\nIf Governor Sparks hoped to keep his decision a secret, members of the Committee for Equal Justice proclaimed the news far and wide. Talk of Sparks's interest propelled local leaders into action, many of whom formed local branches of the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. \"I found people in Birmingham, Montgomery and other Alabama cities and towns,\" Gordon noted, \"talking about the case as a result\" of the official investigation. \"Young people,\" he boasted, \"were asking their churches to get in on the case.\"\n\nIn Montgomery, Rosa and Raymond Parks joined E. D. Nixon; Rufus A. Lewis; Johnnie Carr and her husband Arlam Carr, Sr., both longtime NAACP members; E. G. Jackson; and Mrs. Irene West, the wife of Montgomery's only black dentist, to raise money for Taylor's defense. They organized mass meetings, canvassed neighborhoods, signed petitions, and sent postcards to the governor and attorney general. These networks\u2014these very people\u2014would lift Martin Luther King, Jr., to international prominence a decade later, after their leading organizer was arrested on a Montgomery bus. The protection of the dignity of black women's bodies, begun in a long twilight struggle in causes like the Abbeville crusade, would alter the arc of human history, making the word _Montgomery_ an enduring metaphor for the power of nonviolent direct action.\n\nMontgomery was not the only city with a local chapter of the Committee for Equal Justice. By January, the _Worker_ reported that the \"Taylor Case Is Now Nationwide,\" with branches in sixteen states and Washington, D.C. Distinguished activists, artists, and political leaders added their names to the growing board of advisers. Such luminaries included W.E.B. Du Bois; Mary Church Terrell, a suffragist and founder of the National Association of Colored Women; Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a popular clubwoman and respected educator; Ira De A. Reid, a sociologist and assistant director of the newly formed Southern Regional Council; John Sengstacke, the publisher of the _Chicago Defender;_ Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes of Harlem Renaissance fame; Lillian Smith, author of the controversial interracial love story _Strange Fruit;_ and Broadway impresario Oscar Hammerstein II. Such an illustrious roster raised eyebrows\u2014especially among anti-Communists, who suspected the Committee for Equal Justice was nothing but a front for the Communist Party.\n\nJ. B. Matthews, one of the most well-known professional anti-Communists who worked for the House Un-American Activities Committee and named names for the Hearst Corporation, warned the FBI that the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor (CEJRT) contained more than \"400 names\" and was the \"chief large-scale agitation of the communists in the South at the present time.\" The Communist Party, he said, was engaged \"in one of their typical agitational campaigns to exploit the incident of Mrs. Taylor's rape, just as they agitated for many years on the subject of the Scottsboro case.\" While Matthews was correct that some members of the CEJRT were Communists or \"fellow travelers,\" it was not a front for Communism. But its glaring spotlight on white men who raped black women did smack of subversion. Exposure of this historic relationship threatened to unravel the racial and sexual status quo that held the segregated social order together. For Montgomery's black activists, the prospect of striking at the heart of the matter was invigorating.\n\n\"With the people, black and white, North and South mobilized for a fight for justice around Mrs. Taylor,\" E. D. Nixon told Earl Conrad, a reporter for the _Chicago Defender_ , \"we now have the strength and power to do something with it.\" Nixon lamented that cases \"like this or cases almost as serious as this are so frequent down here that we almost take them as a matter of course. It's a question of choice sometimes\u2014which we can concentrate on for a fight.\"\n\nNixon was Montgomery's most outspoken black activist. According to Roy Wilkins, he was \"straight as a ramrod, tough as a mule and braver than a squad of marines.\" In addition to leading the Montgomery NAACP, Nixon served as head of the Alabama Voters League. In 1944 he led nearly eight hundred African Americans on a march to the registrar's office, demanding the right to vote. His fearlessness and constant agitation caught the attention of the city's white newspaper, the _Montgomery Advertiser_ , which referred to him later as the \"NAACP Mau Mau Chief.\" As president of the Alabama branch of the nation's largest all-black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nixon was connected to militant unionists who knew how to organize. Led by the powerful and imposing A. Philip Randolph, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was one of the most successful labor unions during the 1940s. In 1941 Randolph threatened to bring his army of sleeping car porters to Washington unless President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ended segregation in defense industries. Fearing global embarrassment on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Roosevelt capitulated and signed Executive Order 8802, creating the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Randolph recognized Nixon's indomitable energy and political talent early on and served as his mentor for many years.\n\nE. D. Nixon told the _Defender_ reporter that he had \"a dossier of fifty cases of rotten violence against Negroes in Alabama in the past couple years\u2014we hardly know where to begin in approaching this question.\" Since Rosa Parks lived next door to Nixon, served as his personal secretary, managed his union office, and did field work for the Montgomery NAACP, she almost certainly prepared the file Nixon referenced. E. G. Jackson, editor of the _Alabama Tribune_ , sat next to Nixon as the reporter from the _Defender_ took notes. Nixon provided grisly details of what he called \"one horror tale after another of white male degradation of the Negro women of Montgomery and lower Alabama.\" \"We have numerous reports from our women,\" Jackson said, \"of assaults by white taxicab drivers... The cabbies take them into their cars at the railroad depot, but before taking them home, drive them outside the town, and subject them to attacks.\" Jackson and Nixon told the _Defender_ that what happened to Recy Taylor was hardly unusual\u2014it was part of a ritual of rape in which white men in the segregated South abducted and assaulted black women with alarming regularity and stunning uniformity. \"We Negro men feel powerless,\" Jackson confessed. \"The weight of hundreds of years hangs over us like so much iron... [W]e would be superhuman if we alone could lift it off of our shoulders.\"\n\nDuring the 1940s, reports of sexual violence directed at black women flooded into local and national NAACP chapters. Women's stories spilled out in letters to the Justice Department and appeared on the front pages of the nation's leading black newspapers. The stories told how white men lured black women and girls away from home with promises of steady work and better wages; attacked them on the job; abducted them at gunpoint while they were traveling to or from home, work, or church; and sexually humiliated and harassed them at bus stops, grocery stores, and in other public places. John McCray, a spirited advocate for black voting rights in South Carolina and editor and publisher of the _Lighthouse and Informer_ , the Palmetto State's most important black newspaper, argued that it was a \"commonplace experience for many of our women in southern towns... to be propositioned openly by white men. You can pick up accounts of these at a dime a dozen in almost any community.\"\n\nThe stories followed similar patterns. In January 1940 John H. Davis, a white man from Fayetteville, North Carolina, lured sixteen-year-old Mary Poole from her home by promising her a job \"as a nurse girl for his wife.\" Instead, as she put it, he \"drove her to some woods\" and \"forced her to submit.\" As he drove away, abandoning her in the woods, he tossed her clothes out of the car window. In May 1942 Sadie Mae Gibson, a twenty-three-year-old black schoolteacher in Decatur, Alabama, was walking home one sunny afternoon when Dan Olinger, a white teenager, forced her into a clump of bushes and at rifle point raped her. Two months later, as Rosa Lee Cherry, a black high school student, walked home from church in Little Rock, Arkansas, three uniformed police officers threatened to throw her in jail unless she got in their patrol car. They drove her behind a railroad embankment and sexually molested her. She escaped after promising to \"get them another girl.\"\n\nLila Belle Carter, a sixteen-year-old girl from Pine Island, South Carolina, never escaped. She was abducted in October 1945, on her way to the store for some rice. After a white insurance collector raped her, he murdered her and left her lying face down in a puddle of mud. While most victims did not share Lila Belle Carter's fate, the method her assailant used\u2014abduction\u2014was quite common. Nannie Strayhorn, a thirty-two-year-old mother of two from Richmond, Virginia, accepted a ride home from two white police officers in October 1946. Instead of taking her home, officers Carl R. Burleson and Leonard E. Davis drove to an isolated area outside town and took turns raping her at gunpoint. In Clio, Alabama, in 1948, a white man offered Janie Mae Patterson, an eleven-year-old girl, some money in exchange for help finding a well to slake his thirst. She eagerly climbed into his car and promised to show him the way. Instead of following the girl's directions, he drove to a mill about five miles away, \"took a blanket out of his car,\" and then \"ravished the girl.\"\n\nThe sexual violence enacted and enforced rules of racial and economic hierarchy. When Herschel Gasque and Charles Berryhill, two white farmers brandishing guns, knocked on Mrs. Mamie Patterson's door in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in February 1948 to \"collect a debt from [her] husband,\" she refused to divulge his whereabouts. When she demanded that they leave, they pushed Patterson aside and barreled into her house, where they found her husband hiding. Gasque and Berryhill, a \"200-pound former professional wrestler,\" brutally beat Patterson's husband, then turned their pistols on her and slowly backed her outside into their car. In retaliation for Patterson's defiance, the white men drove the mother of six into the woods, where \"they both raped [her]\" and told her to \"perform abnormal acts.\"\n\nIn order to reclaim their bodies and their humanity, African-American women called on a tradition of testimony and truth-telling that stretched back to slavery. \"We colored women are tired of such things,\" Mrs. Joy B. Jones proclaimed in a 1947 letter to NAACP founder Arthur Springarn. She attached a news clipping that described the sexual molestation of a black girl by a white businessman in Macon, Georgia. \"Seems like all the money we pay in organizations,\" Jones argued, \"doesn't remedy the matter. This man should be given the same conviction that a colored man would have got.\"\n\nFailure in the courts did not stop black women from speaking out, decades before the women's movement. These testimonies helped bring attention to the issue of sexual violence and often ignited local campaigns for equal justice and civil rights. When James Lee Perry, a \"well-to-do white oil dealer\" from Meridian, Mississippi, raped Ruby Atee Pigford, a black teenager, he never expected her to report the crime. Even if she did, he could be fairly confident that white authorities would not take her complaint seriously. Perry lured the girl away from home by promising her a babysitting job that paid seventy cents an hour\u2014good money at the time. After picking her up on August 7, 1947, Perry drove Pigford to a nearby roadhouse, instead of taking her to his home. Angered by her refusal to accompany him into the bar, he beat her until she was unconscious. He then raped her, tied her to the bumper of his car, and dragged her bound body through town. He dumped her, bruised and battered, outside her home later that evening.\n\nShe told her parents what happened, and they told their friends. By the next day, African Americans throughout town demanded punishment for the crime. Edward Knott, Jr., the secretary of the Meridian, Mississippi, NAACP, wired the story to the _Pittsburgh Courier_ and airmailed a letter to the national NAACP office. Assistant special counsel Marian Wynn Perry responded immediately. \"We have discussed the case here in this office in light of the conditions in Mississippi and action which is possible there,\" she said. \"It is our suggestion that as much publicity as possible be given to the case.\" Perry knew that accusing a white man of raping a black woman in Mississippi, the most violent state in the South, was dangerous, if not deadly.\n\nIn Mississippi, African Americans understood that their lives \"could be snuffed out on whim.\" Aside from the daily indignities of segregation, between 1943 and 1949, white men in Mississippi castrated, mutilated, and lynched two fourteen-year-old black boys for playing tag with a white girl near the town of Quitman; murdered a dairy farmer, who had used self-defense when his white employer attacked him; killed Reverend Isaac Simmons and cut off his tongue for refusing to sell his land; whipped Leon McTate to death for allegedly stealing a saddle; and beat Malcolm Wright to a bloody pulp because they didn't like the way he drove a wagon.\n\n\"The only chance you have to secure redress for this terrible attack,\" the NAACP assistant counsel asserted in the rape and dragging of Ruby Pigford, \"is by publicity and pressure within the State of Mississippi, and you, of course, who are in Mississippi, will know how much can be done.\" Perry encouraged Knott and other concerned citizens to get the local black newspaper, the _Jackson Advocate_ , and its editor, Percy Greene, on board. She also promised assistance from the national office, which eagerly protested lynching but rarely got involved in rape cases. After signing off, Perry sent a picture of a bloodied and battered Ruby Pigford in her hospital bed to the _Pittsburgh Courier_ for an exclusive report. Perry seemed to understand that justice in the Pigford case, like so many others, was unlikely. The only feasible way to hold white men accountable for raping black women\u2014since Southern courts would not\u2014was to draw outside attention to the crime.\n\n\"If the state of Alabama does not handle [the Recy Taylor] case in the way it ought to,\" E. G. Jackson thundered from the pulpit of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in December 1944, \"if the right-minded citizen[s] of the state do not demand indictment in this situation, then... the Negro people will welcome and invite all of the assistance that they can get from the North.\" It was no idle threat. The _Chicago Defender_ called the attack on Recy Taylor \"Dixie's most blatant rape case.\" When the _Defender_ argued that the CEJRT had launched the \"strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade,\" they meant that Rosa Parks's trip to Abbeville had grown into the most successful national campaign for racial justice since the Scottsboro trials, where Parks had first learned how to organize.\n\nProminent white Alabamians took the growing movement seriously. Like Parks, they too remembered Scottsboro. Mrs. Margaret H. Moss, president of Alabama's Federation of Women's Clubs, wrote to Governor Sparks for advice. Fretting about the effect the \"northern press\" and \"outsiders\" could have on her beloved state's reputation, she offered the governor some advice. \"Some years ago, when visiting my brothers in Washington,\" she wrote, \"I found that many people knew little of the conditions in our state beyond 'Stars Fell on Alabama,' the football team and the Scottsboro case.\" Fearful of \"another misrepresentation of Alabama\" caused by the \"delay and inaction of government in the Abbeville affair,\" she asked Sparks for a statement promising equal justice. That way, she said, \"I can be armed with something to say when rumors and mistaken information come to me.\" For example, she said, \"I am told, that the assistant attorney general is quoted as saying that 'he hates niggers and would as soon run over one in his car as to speak to one.' I am also told,\" Moss continued, \"that the case is being discussed in the Negro National Press and committees are being formed in a number of other states to see the matter through. This all sounds so unnecessary.\" At least, she added, they agreed that \"the less publicity the better.\"\n\nGovernor Sparks hoped that promising a separate investigation would hold back protests, but it did not stem the tide of petitions and letters pouring into the governor's office, especially after the _Pittsburgh Courier_ ran the erroneous headline \"Sparks to Press Charges Against Rapists Following Protests\" in a front-page article two days before Christmas. As time wore on without any major arrests or trials, Sparks became the protesters' number-one target.\n\nInstead of targeting Sparks, who followed through on his promise to launch an investigation, the Committee for Equal Justice should perhaps have directed national attention to G. D. Halstead and Keener Baxley, the less visible but, in this case, more powerful county and circuit solicitors, whose intransigence kept the case bottled up. In order to get a sense of what was going on in Henry County, Sparks sent his private investigators, J. V. Kitchens and N. W. Kimbrough, to Dothan, Alabama, on December 9, 1944, to interview Halstead, Baxley, and Sheriff George H. Gamble. While Baxley readily admitted that \"in his opinion the crime was committed as alleged by the victim,\" he feigned ignorance about how to move forward. \"No further facts could be ascertained,\" he claimed, \"because the victim stated... that she did not know any of the boys that she claimed to have ravished her.\" Halstead seconded Baxley's defense. He \"had come to a block,\" he said, and did not know \"how any additional information could be obtained... It would be free-lancing,\" Halstead insisted, \"as no one else knew any of the facts in this case\" and \"neither of the witnesses had identified the boys who were alleged to have ravished Recy Taylor.\" When the investigators reminded them that Recy Taylor had identified Hugo Wilson as one of her assailants and owner of the car used in the attack, Baxley grew visibly upset. He \"would not consent for any of them to be interviewed,\" Baxley stammered. Baxley's bluster did not scare Kimbrough and Kitchens, who had not come to ask permission.\n\nIn Abbeville the next day, Sheriff George Gamble, who claimed to have started an investigation immediately after the crime was alleged, told the investigators that he placed Hugo Wilson under a five-hundred-dollar bond. He also assured them that he arrested \"all of the boys except Wilson\" two days after the assault. Taking the investigators aside, Gamble warned them that the \"victim was nothing but a whore around Abbeville\" and had \"been treated for some time by the Health Officer of Henry County for venereal disease.\" Gamble claimed he even had to put Taylor in jail \"once or twice... upon written request from the County Health Officer.\" To further discredit Taylor and discourage the investigators from pursuing the case, Gamble added that Taylor's husband \"would not work and lay around Abbeville practically all the time.\" He even threatened to throw him \"in jail and charge him with vagrancy.\"\n\nWill Cook, the former police chief and white store owner who said he launched a search for Taylor after she was abducted, told the investigators the same story Gamble had just peddled. After detailing his role in the search that night, Cook smeared Taylor as a prostitute. She \"was nothing but a whore around Abbeville,\" he insisted. She worked at Fort Rucker, a nearby army training base, he said, \"but they ran her away from there [after she] had given a number of soldiers... the clapp.\"\n\nOther whites with whom Kimbrough and Kitchens spoke contradicted Gamble's and Cook's stereotypical descriptions of the Taylors. Mr. W. H. Carr, Recy Taylor's neighbor and occasional boss, told investigators that Recy and her husband \"were good workers.\" In more than three years, he said, he had \"never seen any strange Negroes hanging around their home.\" They \"always stayed in their place,\" Carr said, and had \"never been involved in any disturbances of any kind.\" Other white men in Abbeville corroborated Carr's characterization of Recy Taylor as an upstanding, respectable woman who abided by the town's racial and sexual mores. Marvin White, L. D. Smith, Robert Sowell, and M. B. Clark, all honorable white men in the community, stated that they knew Taylor and \"knew nothing detrimental as to her character.\" Most folks, they said, \"consider her above the average Negro as to her conduct as a Negro woman in the community.\" Major L. A. Hamilton at Fort Rucker told the investigators that there was nothing in Taylor's file \"regarding any misconduct of any nature.\"\n\nKimbrough and Kitchens soon found proof that Sheriff Gamble was lying. Searching through the bonds filed at the Henry County Circuit Court, they discovered that Gamble never placed any of the assailants under arrest, not even Wilson, who admitted having sex with Taylor. After confronting Gamble with the conflicting information, the sheriff stonewalled. \"It's a bad case,\" he said.\n\nDespite Gamble's intransigence, Kimbrough and Kitchens returned to Abbeville with the assistant attorney general, John O. Harris, on December 18, 1944. When they arrived, they contacted Sheriff Gamble, whose story quickly changed in front of the governor's deputy. Gamble told the assistant attorney general that he \"never arrested [Taylor] or committed her to jail for any offense.\" Nor did he ever have \"any trouble with her or her husband.\" Taylor's reputation, Gamble now claimed, \"is as good as any Negro's in that community.\" While Gamble still insisted he had arrested the assailants, Kimbrough and Kitchens decided to go directly to the source and ask the suspects what happened the night they picked up Recy Taylor.\n\nAlmost all of them told the same story. Four of the seven men admitted having intercourse with Taylor, but argued that she was essentially a prostitute and a willing participant. They took up a collection to pay her, they said. All but two of them said Taylor got into the car of her own volition and that there was no force or coercion used. Hugo Wilson, whom Taylor and other witnesses identified on the night of the crime, said he had had nothing to do with her, denied being present, and claimed to know \"nothing in the world about it.\" Recy Taylor, he added, was a \"damned liar,\" and so were the sheriff and anyone else who claimed they saw him that night. Herbert Lovett, who cradled a shotgun during the attack on Taylor, claimed he \"was never arrested\" and \"knew nothing of the affair.\" Furthermore, he said, he was not with any of the other suspects that night and did not know why his friends \"would want to bring him into something of which he knew nothing and was innocent.\"\n\nJoe Culpepper's version of events corroborated Recy Taylor's testimony in considerable detail. Culpepper said that he and the other men \"were talking about getting a woman\" on that September night and \"rode out on the highway toward Dothan... We saw two women and a man walking along the highway,\" he said, and decided to pull over. \"All of them except one got out of the automobile.\" Herbert Lovett, he added, took his shotgun \"down the road and was talking to Recy Taylor.\" A few moments later, Culpepper said, \"Recy Taylor came to the automobile with Lovett behind her with the shotgun in his hand.\" After turning off the highway, Culpepper recalled that Taylor yelled, \"Yo'all are not carrying me to Mr. Gamble.\" When they stopped beneath a patch of trees, Lovett forced her out of the car at gunpoint and made her undress. \"She was crying and asking them to let her go home to her husband and her baby,\" Culpepper said. When it was over, he said, \"someone... put a blindfold on Recy's face, got her in the car and put her out near a street light.\" Culpepper added nothing about paying her, but when asked directly by the detectives, he quickly corrected himself. \"Yes,\" he said, \"they paid her money.\" He could not remember who took up the collection, however, or how much she received.\n\nWith the suspects' statements, Culpepper's admission of coercion, signed affidavits from at least three eyewitnesses, and Sheriff Gamble's recantations and lies, Governor Sparks had enough ammunition to order a second grand jury hearing. He appointed Assistant Attorney General William O. Harris to lead the charge. After meeting with Harris to go over the case, members of the Committee for Equal Justice gathered to debate hiring a new attorney. According to Pauline Dobbs, a SNYC worker present at the meeting, Harris seemed \"more concerned about the representative... sent by the _Daily Worker_ to investigate the case\" and the \"deluge of letters and telegrams received from northern pressure groups\" than he was about the \"guilt of the criminals or the crime itself.\" The whole \"purpose of presenting the case to the grand jury in Abbeville,\" Dobbs noted, \"was to give the defendants light sentences in order to close the case.\"\n\nDobbs was right to worry. The attorney general failed to convince the jurors of Henry County that there was enough evidence to indict the seven suspects when he presented Taylor's case on February 14, 1945. With at least one confession and corroborating testimonies among the suspects, not to mention the sheriff's blatant attempt to stuff the entire affair under the carpet, it seemed like a relatively easy case to close. But the all-white, all-male jurors sat stony-faced and silent. For a second time, they refused to issue any indictments.\n\nNews coverage of the second hearing was more hostile to Taylor. The _Dothan Eagle_ repeatedly referred to Recy Taylor as \"the Taylor woman\" and dismissed her testimony\u2014arguing that she was essentially a prostitute. The _Birmingham News_ expressed concern, but not for justice or for Recy Taylor. Instead, editors worried that the outcome would only aid \"those disposed to think ill of Alabama because of the Scottsboro case.\" The Recy Taylor case, the _News_ noted, \"was certain to become a _cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre\"_ and _\"that_ is why all Alabamians should be interested.\" Already, the editors proclaimed, \"this ugly business has drawn national attention.\" The ghosts of Scottsboro haunted every discussion. Residents of Henry County \"ought to know by this time what agitation for justice by disadvantaged persons can do to bedevil the life of the state.\" The assistant attorney general told the _Dothan Eagle_ there was nothing more that could be done. \"This case has been presented to two grand juries in Henry County,\" he said, and \"both grand juries have not seen fit to find an indictment.\" Harris argued that he made a \"full disclosure... and no facts or circumstances connected with this case have been suppressed.\"\n\nMembers of the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice were disheartened by Harris's statement, which implied that the state no longer planned to intervene on behalf of Recy Taylor. It all seemed a little too tidy. E. G. Jackson, E. D. Nixon, and Rosa Parks worried that the state's public resignation put Taylor and her family in imminent danger. Esther Cooper of the SNYC checked in on Recy Taylor after the trial. Taylor \"shows in her face the terror of her experience,\" Cooper said. Taylor told Cooper that their mail often arrived already opened and that she was afraid to go into town. Fearful of white retaliation, Parks, Nixon, and other members of the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice moved Taylor and her family to Montgomery, where they provided an apartment and secured a job for her husband. Clara Hard Rutledge, who was one of a handful of liberal white women in Montgomery who supported the Taylor case and the bus boycott ten years later, helped to organize other sympathetic whites. She told Earl Conrad, the reporter for the _Chicago Defender_ , that the \"only possible approach at the present time is letters to the Governor.\" Local members of the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice followed Rutledge's advice and redoubled their efforts to persuade Governor Sparks to intervene. Henrietta Buckmaster, a historian and the new chairwoman of the national Committee for Equal Justice, also urged supporters across the nation to contact Sparks and send money to the committee. \"We can bring these criminals to justice,\" she proclaimed, \"because the Recy Taylor case is the people's case.\"\n\nAlexander Nunn, the white editor of the _Progressive Farmer_ , a conservative magazine, watched the case \"with apprehension\" and worried that the failure to indict would hurt Alabama in the long run. In a letter to Governor Sparks, Nunn encouraged him to send the attackers to jail. \"We had a similar case,\" Nunn wrote, \"though not so disgusting, in my home county of Lee several years ago and the white man, a taxicab driver, was set free at that time. I said then and I say to you now, that for the good of both races, I think I would punish even more quickly and severely, white men for criminally attacking Negro women than I would Negro men.\" Lest Sparks mistake him for a wishy-washy liberal, Nunn reminded him that \"no one in this state would be more severe on a Negro in such cases than I would.\" Sparks replied that his hands were tied: \"Nothing further can be done without a grand jury indictment. As you know, the grand jury of any county is all-powerful in the matter of criminal investigation and prosecution. No trial can be had until a grand jury returns an indictment.\" While letters still urged Sparks to intervene, by springtime it was apparent that the \"people's case\" was going nowhere.\n\nAs time passed without an indictment, Henrietta Buckmaster and members of the executive board of the Committee for Equal Justice quietly agreed to shift their attention away from the Taylor case and \"broaden the scope of [their] work.\" At the end of March, the CEJRT issued a press release for a different rape case: \"Another young Negro girl has been raped under circumstances of almost incredible brutality. This committee was organized to fight for equal justice for Recy Taylor, but we cannot ignore another such case.\" The press release referenced a recent case in which three white men in Decatur, Georgia, kidnapped and raped a seventeen-year-old black high school girl. Unlike the Taylor case, a grand jury indicted the assailants, but an all-white jury acquitted the three men at their criminal trial on March 23, 1945, after deliberating for only six minutes.\n\nIn a letter to board members on April 2, 1945, Buckmaster acknowledged defeat in the Recy Taylor case. It was time, she said, to \"put all [our] forces behind the demand for punishment of the rapists of a 17 year old Negro girl in Decatur.\" Shortly thereafter they sent out flyers screaming, \"The Terror Spreads!\" In Memphis, Tennessee, the committee announced, \"Two Negro girls were forced into a police car, taken for a ride in the country and criminally assaulted by two uniformed policemen.\" And in Bennettsville, South Carolina, \"a respectable Negro woman was ordered off the streets by four white men and forced to pay a five dollar fine.\" By referring to these very different incidents as \"terror,\" the CEJRT signaled its intent to wage war not only upon the ritual of rape but also upon the everyday assaults African-American women faced.\n\nIn a pamphlet promoting the committee's broader approach, Buckmaster argued that despite the lack of a legal conviction, the successful mobilization of activists across the nation on behalf of Recy Taylor represented a major victory. \"Our hope of a free new world,\" she said, \"our passionate conviction that the day has almost come when women everywhere may raise their children without fear and love their husbands with assurance and be the individuals to which their highest hopes and capacities entitled them. This is what we're fighting for... When we say 'Equal Justice for Recy Taylor,' \" Buckmaster wrote, \"we are also saying Equal Hope, Equal Joy, Equal Dignity for every woman, child and man the wide world over... Is that too much to ask?\"\n\nThe announcement of the Committee for Equal Justice's new aims came on the eve of the greatest red scare in American history. Coupled with the legal dead-ends it hit in Alabama, the committee's ability to mobilize local people and rally nationwide support slowed as Southern segregationists combined white supremacy and vicious red-baiting to attack African-American activism as a Communist plot to destroy \"the Southern way of life.\" These bitter attacks forced the more radical leaders of the Alabama branch of the CEJRT, like the SNYC women, to seek shelter in other states or less tainted organizations, where they continued to press for racial justice. Mainstream black activists who were involved in the campaign for equal justice for Recy Taylor, but were otherwise not affiliated with the Communist Party, like E. D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, E. G. Jackson, Rufus Lewis, and Johnnie Carr in Montgomery, distanced themselves from their more radical allies. In later years, they would use the international Cold War as a political lever to expose the deep canyon between the United States' boasts of freedom and democracy and the brutal reality of segregation. But when the Red Scare began, they did what was necessary to survive politically and continue their assault on Jim Crow.\n\nAlthough the struggle to secure justice for Recy Taylor did not succeed in the short term, it was the largest and best organized of many efforts to draw attention to the ruthless heart of the racial caste system. Decades later, when radical feminists finally made rape and sexual assault political issues, they walked in the footsteps of generations of black women. If they did not always know this, it was hardly the fault of African-American women in the South, who testified both in the nation's courts and in its newspapers that their bodies were not their own. The Recy Taylor case brought the building blocks of the Montgomery bus boycott together a decade earlier and kept them in place until it became Rosa Parks's turn to testify. When that boycott took off, no one called it a women's movement, though many observers then and since have noted the centrality of women in its ranks. Even Dr. King credited \"the zeitgeist\" when asked to comment on the strange, spontaneous combustion of the bus protest. But the Montgomery bus boycott was not a prairie fire, or a rising tide, or a gear that tumbled in the cosmos. It was another in a series of campaigns that began when Rosa Parks rode up to Abbeville in 1944 to gather the facts in the Recy Taylor case, so that black women could tell their stories.\n\nIndeed, many of the African Americans who cut their political teeth defending black women like Recy Taylor who were raped by white men in Alabama in the 1940s brought their experiences and organizational insight to other struggles for dignity and justice in the 1950s and 1960s. Like E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks in Montgomery, they often became pillars of the modern civil rights movement.\n\nThe national campaign to defend Recy Taylor highlighted the power of sexual stories to mobilize communities and build coalitions. African Americans throughout the country risked their lives and livelihoods on behalf of black women's right to bodily integrity. This cut to the heart of people's lives. It was deeper than voting rights, deeper than the poisons of stigma and exploitation, though those cruelties were also fundamental to the racial caste system.\n\nWhile the survivors of sexualized violence rarely received justice in Southern courts, black women like Recy Taylor who were raped by white men in the 1940s used their voices as weapons against white supremacy. Their testimonies were a form of direct action. Taylor's refusal to remain silent helped expose a ritual of rape in existence since slavery, inspired a nationwide campaign to defend black womanhood, and gave hope to thousands suffering through similar abuses. Because of the campaign for equal justice for Recy Taylor, sexual violence and interracial rape became the battleground upon which African Americans sought to destroy white supremacy and gain personal and political autonomy. That battleground is where the modern civil rights movement began, though its roots were as deep as the Atlantic slave trade.\n\nAs World War II came to a bloody close, another war was about to begin on the buses in Montgomery, Alabama.\n\n# CHAPTER 2 \n\"Negroes Every Day Are Being Molested\"\n\nAFTER SPENDING a hot July day in 1942 studying at Alabama State Teachers College in Montgomery, Ella Ree Jones decided to catch the earliest bus home. She felt ill all morning and was in no mood for a fight. She boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus, the same one Rosa Parks would make famous thirteen years later, and quietly slipped into a seat opposite the rear door, in the section reserved for colored passengers. The bus filled to capacity as it rumbled through downtown Montgomery. Glancing into his rearview mirror, the bus driver noticed one white man standing. At the next stop, he turned and glared at Jones.\n\n\"Girl, get up and let this passenger sit down,\" he said.\n\n\"I am sick,\" Jones replied. \"And I don't feel able to stand up for that man to sit down. Besides,\" she added, \"I am over halfway to the back of the bus.\"\n\nUnwilling to engage in a debate about the subtleties of segregation, the driver became agitated. \"Do you want to stand up,\" he shouted, \"or do you want me to put you off?\"\n\n\"Neither,\" Jones said.\n\nSuddenly the bus lurched to the curb, and the driver scurried out. He made sure he locked the back door before he called the police.\n\nThe trapped black and white passengers collectively held their breath. Granted police powers, bus drivers enforced segregation with an iron fist. Many kept blackjacks and pistols under their seats, wielding them whenever their authority was challenged. It was not unusual for black passengers to defy drivers, whose penchant for cruelty angered even the most accommodating customers, but it carried enormous risk. The complaint records of the Birmingham buses are riddled with reports of drivers beating, shooting, and even killing black passengers. When Jones ignored the driver's direct order, everyone on the bus knew she sat in the path of peril.\n\nAs the driver waited for the officers to arrive, a white man carrying carpenter's tools walked over to Jones and pulled out a shiny, sharp saw. Standing over her with the saw drawn back, he told the student he had a \"notion to slap [her] brains out.\" Just then the driver returned, flanked by two Montgomery police officers. Pointing toward Jones, the driver sneered, \"I'm going to teach you to do what the white man tells you to do.\" The officers lunged and pulled the student out of her seat and down the back steps, scattering her school supplies. They grabbed her arms, twisted them until she screamed, and pushed her toward the waiting police car. When one officer loosened his grip long enough to open the back door, she clawed his face with her fingernails. \"He threatened to kill me then,\" she recalled later. \"They cursed me all the way to City Hall.\"\n\nWhen they arrived at City Hall, the officers dragged Jones behind the building and beat her with a pipe until she was, as she put it, \"too weak to get off the ground without help.\" She struggled to stand, but they kicked her repeatedly. As she writhed on the ground, one of the officers grabbed Jones's head between his hands and propelled it into the brick wall. She collapsed and crumbled to the ground. Clenching her arm, an officer pulled her toward the back steps, then \"twisted his hand in [her] hair and picked [her] up off the ground by [her] hair.\" When she was finally on her feet, the officers pushed Jones up the stairs, poking her with a walking stick until she was in a jail cell. \"What am I being charged with?\" Jones asked before the officer slammed the door. \"Suspicion,\" he said.\n\nThe police held Jones overnight, denied her medical attention, and took her to court the next morning, where she was fined twenty-eight dollars. Standing before a judge in a bloodied and torn dress, she demanded to know the reason for the exorbitant fine. \"Case closed,\" the judge said, and dismissed Jones with a flick of his wrist.\n\nThe next day Jones filed a complaint with the national NAACP. Thurgood Marshall, a young attorney working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was appalled by the beating and the trumped-up charges. Despite his age, Marshall was the most celebrated black lawyer in America, having won a number of high-profile cases, including the integration of Missouri Law School in 1938. His growing status as a civil rights warrior led thousands of people to flood his New York office with complaints of racial discrimination and police brutality. \"There is no question in my mind,\" Marshall said in a letter about Jones to T. T. Allen, the president of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP in 1942, \"that we should bring suit against the bus company, and take whatever steps we can against the policemen.\" Apparently the case never went to court.\n\nThurgood Marshall's problem was that there were too many cases and too few resources. Marshall and his colleagues performed a cruel triage to determine which cases to pursue. African Americans choosing to testify in racially charged cases placed themselves and their loved ones at great risk. Sometimes the victims scratched out shaky lives among the downtrodden that could easily be caricatured to discredit them. Sometimes the cases were heart-wrenching but hopeless from a legal standpoint, given the realities of judicial practices in a hard racial caste system. Finding the right combination of strong documentation, brave witnesses, sympathetic victims, and legal resources tested Thurgood Marshall's legal and political acumen.\n\nIn a letter to his mentor, Judge William H. Hastie, the dean of Howard Law School, Marshall asked for advice on how to respond to the brutal mistreatment and sexual harassment of two black women on a bus at an Alabama military camp in 1945. The two women, Private Roberta McKenzie and Private First Class Gladys Blackmon, boarded an empty bus and sat down in the rear. When asked to stand so that a white man could sit, they both refused, arguing that there were plenty of seats remaining in the white section. The bus driver grabbed his nightstick, walked toward the two Women's Army Corps (WAC) members, and knocked off their hats. He then slapped both women and, they alleged, \"punched them in the breast,\" while uttering profanities. After he pushed them off the bus, they reported the attack to the NAACP. In the midst of a \"War for Democracy,\" Marshall knew that the beating of black WACs in uniform would be explosive. \"This is one of the worst cases we have had in this office for some time,\" he said. It \"looks like dynamite to me.\"\n\nTen years later thousands of working- and middle-class women, fed up with decades of abuse, took to the streets to protest their mistreatment and demand the right to \"sit with dignity.\" The Montgomery bus boycott, frequently regarded as the spark plug of the modern civil rights movement, was actually the end of a drive chain that ran back into decades of black women's activism. That supposedly \"spontaneous\" event was, in fact, the culmination of a deep history of gendered political appeals\u2014frequently led by black veterans\u2014for the protection of African-American women from sexual and physical assault. Only by understanding the long and relatively hidden history of sexualized violence in Montgomery, Alabama, and African Americans' efforts to protect black womanhood, can we see that the Montgomery bus boycott was more than a movement for civil rights. It was also a women's movement for dignity, respect, and bodily integrity.\n\nRosa Parks left Alabama for the first time in 1946. Atlanta was less than two hundred miles away, but it seemed a world away from the rickety rural shacks that still dotted the Alabama countryside. The New South city promised great change and possibility for the future. Skyscrapers sparkled against the sky and served as a backdrop for the bustling business district anchored by the headquarters of Sears, Roebuck and Coca-Cola. Streams of automobiles roared through the city on viaducts high above the busy rail lines. Airplanes took off and landed just outside town. Though Atlanta was thoroughly segregated, it seemed to be the perfect setting for an NAACP meeting dedicated to training future leaders who would seize the opportunities of the postwar period to wage war against Jim Crow.\n\nThurgood Marshall, known as \"Mr. Civil Rights\" since he persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the white-only Democratic primary as unconstitutional in 1944, was the keynote speaker. Though African Americans won some concessions during World War II, there was much work to be done, he said, listing the primary problems plaguing African Americans throughout the South. Much of what he focused on\u2014police brutality, discrimination in public facilities, job discrimination, and segregation\u2014resonated with Rosa Parks, who had reams of notes on such abuses in Montgomery. But his final topic, the heinous treatment of returning black veterans, was on everyone's mind that year.\n\nFor the approximately one million African Americans who served in the armed forces, victory over totalitarianism abroad meant little without real change at home. Having helped topple Hitler, black soldiers were not about to bow before the Bilbos and Talmadges of the South. Instead, they returned home with a new sense of pride and purpose and often led campaigns for citizenship rights, legal equality, and bodily integrity. In small towns and cities across the South, black veterans became the \"shock troops\" of an emerging civil rights movement.\n\nWhite Southerners responded to postwar black activism with a wave of violence that reasserted white supremacy. In Birmingham, Alabama, police commissioner Eugene \"Bull\" Connor directed a force that was responsible for untold numbers of racially motivated beatings, bombings, and murders in the years immediately after World War II. Within the first six weeks of 1946 alone, uniformed officers reportedly killed five black men, all veterans, because they had taken part in voter registration drives. On February 12, 1946, Linwood Shull, the chief of police in Aiken, South Carolina, jammed his billy club into Sergeant Isaac Woodard's eye sockets after the black serviceman, home from a fifteen-month stint in the South Pacific, got into an argument with a white bus driver. The beating permanently blinded Woodard. After an all-white jury in Columbia, South Carolina, acquitted Shull of any charges, white spectators in the crowded courtroom roared with approval.\n\nFearful of black veterans' refusal to stay \"in their place,\" whites in Georgia warned African Americans, especially vets, to stay away from the polls in 1946. Since Thurgood Marshall helped persuade the Supreme Court in _Smith v. Allwright_ to outlaw the white primary two years earlier, strict adherence to the Court's ruling would have transformed the political landscape. Whites across the region turned to extralegal terror. In Greenville the Ku Klux Klan planted a fiery cross in a black neighborhood, hoping it was enough to scare away any potential voters. In Cairo masked men fired shots at the homes of prominent blacks. Throughout the state, white men nailed warnings and death threats on the doors of black homes and slipped them inside black newspapers. On July 17, 1946\u2014Election Day\u2014veteran Maceo Snipes walked past armed thugs patrolling the ballot box to cast his first and last ballot. Later that night, four white men dragged him out of his house and murdered him.\n\nA few weeks later, a white mob led by the Georgia state police shot two black couples to death in broad daylight. Roger Malcolm, one of the victims, had stabbed his white landlord earlier that summer, allegedly because he showed sexual interest in Malcolm's pregnant wife, Dorothy. Dorothy's brother, George Dorsey, a veteran, defended his sister's womanhood and his brother-in-law's actions, insisting black men had the same right as white men to protect their women. Enraged whites gathered on July 25, 1946, beneath Moore's Ford Bridge. Along the sloping banks of a river, a mob lined up the two couples and peppered their bodies with bullets. \"Up until George went into the army,\" Loy Harrison, one of the murderers, said years later, \"he was a good nigger. But when he came out, they thought they were as good as any white people.\"\n\nIt did not take long for white Southerners to claim black efforts to gain equality were a mask for more sinister, sexual desires, an argument rooted in Reconstruction-era politics. During the 1890s, former slaveholders and their Democratic political allies used the rhetoric of black-on-white rape and fabricated rape scares, as Glenda Gilmore put it, as \"a politically driven wedge powered by the sledgehammer of white supremacy\" to seize power from the biracial coalitions of Republicans and Populists that swept elections in Southern states. Black activists in the post\u2013World War II period often joked that \"the closer a black man got to a ballot box, the more he looked like a rapist.\" However, African-American men did not actually have to vote or threaten political overthrow to be accused of rape. As Frederick Douglass noted nearly a century earlier, the myth of the black man as a rapist was an \"invention with a well defined motive.\" These ghosts were easily conjured in the uncertain years after the war. Whites used rape as a catchall charge to justify violence against African Americans and undermine their political, social, and economic rights.\n\nFor example, in August 1946, police in Minden, Louisiana, arrested and jailed John C. Jones, a twenty-eight-year-old black veteran, and his seventeen-year-old cousin, Albert Harris, for acting \"uppity\" after they protested an unfair land deal. However, police claimed the two men were \"prowling\" around a white woman's window, though she refused to press charges. After several days in jail, police released them into a mob of armed white men. The mob drove Harris and Jones down a country road, where they tortured and beat Harris until they believed he was dead. Then the mob mutilated Jones with a meat cleaver and a blowtorch. When they were satisfied with their work, the mob left the mangled men in a ditch, ostensibly dead. Jones died, but Harris managed to survive and eventually identified five of the murderers in court, though an all-white jury quickly acquitted them.\n\nThe brutal beating of Isaac Woodard and Albert Harris, the murder of Maceo Snipes and John Jones, the lynching on Moore's Ford Bridge, and dozens of other incidents across the South in 1946 were designed, as one white man put it, to \"keep Mister Nigger in his place.\" Walter White, head of the NAACP, called the violence \"a rabies of the spirit... a mob sickness.\" This disease, he said, was \"a dread epidemic\" that was \"rampant in our land.\" In an effort to end the violence, the national NAACP and forty other civil rights groups formed the National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence on August 6, 1946, to focus national and international attention on racist brutality. The committee met with President Harry Truman a month later and urged him to use the power of the federal government to end mob violence in the South.\n\nThey believed Truman would act, if only to boost the United States' image in the world at the dawn of the Cold War. Images of lynchings and racial violence scarred the front pages of newspapers around the world, mocking American ideals of democracy. The Soviet newspaper _Trud_ pointed to the \"increasing frequency of terroristic acts against Negroes,\" as part of an expos\u00e9 on the \"Position of Negroes in the USA.\" Segregation, a reporter for a Sri Lankan newspaper noted, \"is the greatest propaganda gift any country could give to the Kremlin in its persistent bid for the affections of the coloured races of the world.\" Federal action would not only shore up America's image abroad, the committee assured Truman, but would also give black voters in the urban North, whose ballots could tilt the election in his favor, an incentive to vote for Truman in the 1948 presidential election.\n\nTruman responded with Executive Order 9808, creating the President's Committee on Civil Rights (PCCR), on December 5, 1946. He hailed their report, _To Secure These Rights_ , as \"an American charter of human freedom in our time\" and a \"guide for action.\" The report condemned lynching, disfranchisement, and racial discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment and issued concrete prescriptions for change. Nearly a decade before the _Brown v. Board of Education_ decision, _To Secure These Rights_ asserted unequivocally that segregation was \"inconsistent with the fundamental equalitarianism of the American way of life in that it marks groups with the brand of inferior status.\" Most important, the report argued that it was the job of the federal government to protect individuals from racial violence and discrimination, something that would not be codified until the Civil Rights Act of 1968.\n\nAt the 1948 statewide NAACP convention in Mobile, Alabama, African Americans praised Truman's new commitment to civil rights. But Rosa Parks, who attended the meeting as a delegate from the Montgomery branch, was more cynical. She knew sexual violence sat at the core of white supremacy, and she feared a terrible backlash as segregationists, whose anger had already been roused by rising black activism, came unhinged. They viewed the report as a federal attack on the Southern way of life and an open invitation for interracial sex. Truman's actions, segregationists argued, would lead to intermarriage, \"amalgamation,\" \"miscegenation,\" and the rape of white women. Led by Strom Thurmond from South Carolina, Southern legislators raced to vilify the president. In a fiery diatribe on the U.S. Senate floor, Mississippi's James Eastland and his state colleagues accused Truman of \"turning over the government to the mongrelized minorities.\"\n\nIn popular memory, Rosa Parks leaves the speechifying to Dixie demagogues and Dr. King, but at the 1948 NAACP convention in Mobile, Parks gave an impassioned speech warning her colleagues to be wary of any federal civil rights promises. With Southern Democrats like Eastland and Thurmond threatening to bolt the Democratic Party, Parks suspected that few, if any, of Truman's initiatives on civil rights would become law. Besides, she argued, no matter how promising the report was, it would not end the wanton abuse and harassment of African Americans. \"No one should feel proud,\" she said, \"when Negroes every day are being molested and maltreated.\" Parks's fiery speech got her elected secretary of the Statewide Conference of the Alabama NAACP, a job she took on in addition to her work for the Montgomery branch, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and her employment as a seamstress.\n\nThe new state NAACP position expanded the scope of Parks's work documenting racial incidents, discrimination, and violence in Alabama. \"There were many, many cases to keep records on,\" she recalled later. The failure to secure justice for Recy Taylor in 1944\u2014one of the first cases Parks worked on as secretary of the Montgomery NAACP\u2014weighed heavily on her memory. \"There wasn't much we could do,\" she admitted in her memoir. \"The NAACP and the Committee [for Equal Justice] managed to get Governor Sparks to commence a special grand jury to investigate the case\u2014though that grand jury also refused to indict the men.\" \"Of course,\" Parks noted, \"the opposite was true if a white woman cried rape and accused a black man.\"\n\nParks clearly understood, as historian Timothy B. Tyson puts it, that the \"much traveled back-road between the races was clearly marked 'one-way.' \" When white women violated these Southern signposts, it was not uncommon for them to sacrifice their black lovers to save themselves from the stigma of violating the South's most sacred taboo. No one traveling in Parks's political circles, for example, could have failed to hear about the tragedy of Willie McGee.\n\nMcGee, a married African-American man from Laurel, Mississippi, entered into a long sexual relationship with his white employer, Mrs. Willametta Hawkins, after she threatened to cry rape if he refused her flirtatious advances. Hawkins first propositioned McGee, who often did odd jobs around her house, in 1942. \"I was waxing the floors with her in the house and she showed a willingness to be familiar and let me have intercourse with her in the back room,\" McGee said. \"After that, she frequently sent for me to do work which gave opportunities for intercourse, which she accepted, and on occasions after dark,\" he said, \"she took me in her automobile out to a place in the graveyard where we had intercourse.\" The illicit relationship smacked of coercion from the start, but it turned brutal when word leaked out.\n\nMcGee's wife, Rosalee, figured out what was going on when Mrs. Hawkins surprised McGee as he and his wife walked home from a movie theater. \"All of a sudden,\" Rosalee said, \"Mrs. Hawkins come out of an alley, and she says to Willie, 'I got my car over here. Come on into my car with me.' \" Rosalee protested, and McGee told Hawkins to \"go away.\" \"This is my wife,\" he said, shocked at the woman's audacity. \"I'm with my wife!!\"\n\nAn all-white jury in Laurel, Mississippi, sentenced Willie McGee, a thirty-one-year-old father of four, to death for allegedly raping a white housewife. The Civil Rights Congress protested the decision and launched an international movement to free McGee. (photo credit 2.1)\n\n\"Don't fool with no Negro whores,\" Hawkins shouted, angry at being rebuffed.\n\nMcGee reluctantly went with Hawkins, fearing the tragic consequences of turning her away. \"People who don't know the South don't know what would have happened to Willie if he told her no,\" Rosalee told a friend. \"Down South you tell a woman like that no, and she'll cry rape anyway. So what else could Willie do?\"\n\nMcGee finally broke off the relationship with Hawkins in November 1945, just before her husband, Troy, discovered the affair. After Troy and Willametta had a terrible fight, she called the police to report that a black, kinky-haired intruder had raped her. Within a few hours, police held McGee in custody.\n\nNothing could have convinced white Southerners that Willametta Hawkins seduced McGee or that they had had a long-term sexual relationship. While it was perfectly reasonable, if frowned upon in some circles, for a white man to have a sexual relationship with a black woman, the segregated social order strictly forbade white women and black men from association, let alone sex. The chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court called the suggestion of a mutual love affair between a black man and a white woman a \"revolting insinuation\" that he \"could not entertain\" or \"even consider in court.\" He sent McGee to the electric chair without hesitation. That McGee received the death sentence for what was a relatively common, if covert, practice among white men and black women underscored the hierarchy of race and sex in the segregated South. It also helped launch an international protest movement.\n\nThe Civil Rights Congress (CRC), a leftist legal defense and protest organization, led the worldwide efforts to free McGee. Despite three interventions by the U.S. Supreme Court and overwhelming evidence of racial bias in sentencing in Mississippi, officials readied the portable electric chair at the Jones County courthouse and scheduled McGee's execution for May 8, 1951. Anne Braden, a white activist from Louisville, Kentucky, who protested the public execution, demanded that \"no more innocent men... die in the name of protecting southern white womanhood. We have been made a party to this injustice too long.\" Willie McGee understood the political purpose of his execution. \"You know I am innocent,\" he told his wife in a letter the night before he was scheduled to die. \"The real reason they are going to take my life is to keep the Negro down in the South.\"\n\nOn May 8, 1951, more than five hundred white men, women, and children gathered outside the Jones County courthouse in Ellisville, Mississippi, to cheer the execution of Willie McGee. (photo credit 2.2)\n\nNear midnight on that fateful May evening, state officials delivered two deadly currents of electricity to Willie McGee as an ecstatic, almost all-white audience of five hundred men, women, and children gathered outside. Troy and Willametta Hawkins stood among their neighbors and cheered McGee's death.\n\nWillie McGee was not the first nor the last black man executed for violating the South's racial and sexual rules. On February 2, 1951, officials at the Virginia State Penitentiary executed seven black men convicted of raping a white woman in Martinsville two years earlier. On January 8, 1949, Ruby Floyd, a thirty-two-year-old white woman, accused the seven black men of violently raping her. The police rounded up some suspects, and within a matter of days, seven men sat in jail. By the end of January, the Martinsville Seven had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.\n\nAs African Americans in Martinsville dealt with the shock of \"seven rapid-fire consecutive death sentences,\" they faced the stark reminder that white men guilty of the same crime almost never received the same punishment. The _Pittsburgh Courier_ highlighted this discrepancy on May 14, 1949, by juxtaposing the front-page announcement of the Martinsville Seven death sentences with an article detailing the rape of a black woman by two white police officers in Richmond, Virginia. The policemen, Carl R. Burleson and Leonard E. Davis, who were tried and convicted of raping a black woman in 1946, kidnapped the black woman, a waitress and mother of two, then drove her to a construction site and sexually assaulted her. Judge John L. Ingram found Burleson and Davis guilty and sentenced them to seven years in prison. The guilty verdict was surprising, but the paltry sentence reminded black women that society did not consider them worthy of the same protection afforded white women.\n\nDuring the late 1940s and early 1950s, \"protection\" of white womanhood often meant shielding them from any kind of contact with African-American men, sexual or otherwise. In Yanceyville, North Carolina, the collision of race and sex was so combustible in the summer of 1951 that even a glance in the wrong direction could land a black man in jail. On June 4, Mack Ingram, a forty-two-year-old black farmer and father of nine children, walked through a tobacco field on the Boswell farm to ask the white owner if he could borrow a trailer. About seventy-five feet ahead of him walked the farmer's eighteen-year-old daughter, Willa Jean Boswell, who wore overalls and carried a hoe. Willa Jean screamed and began running when she saw Ingram walking in the same direction. She ran as fast as she could until she reached her brother. Exhausted and clearly terrified, she informed him that Ingram was \"looking at her in a leering manner.\" Her father called the police, who arrested Ingram later that afternoon. At the trial two weeks later, Willa Jean admitted Ingram never spoke to her; nor could he have since he was always at least seventy-five feet away. Still, her father argued, Ingram's \"eyes were all over her.\"\n\nA charge of \"eye rape\" was enough for Judge Ralph Vernon of the Caswell County Recorder's Court to sentence Ingram to two years of hard labor. According to the NAACP, which launched a campaign to defend Ingram, it was \"as fantastic a story as has ever been enacted in an American court.\" It ought to be \"sold to _Ripley's Believe It or Not,\"_ they said. Although the charge of \"eye rape\" seemed utterly absurd, it was deadly serious. \"The big issue,\" according to the _Chicago Defender_ , \"is the right of a Colored man to walk across a farm road or walk the streets of Yanceyville\" without the fear of being killed or sent to prison \"because [a white woman] doesn't like the way he looks at her.\" The North Carolina Supreme Court finally dismissed the case in 1953.\n\nWhile the CRC, NAACP, and other organizations lost the Martinsville Seven and Willie McGee cases, they helped expose the South's legal double standards. At the same time, they revealed to the world the South's tendency toward hysteria when black men and white women crossed paths, whether in a bedroom or a wide-open tobacco field. Though McGee lost his life, his defenders worked to make audible the \"whispered narrative of consensual interracial sex that had been the real story behind too many southern lynchings.\"\n\nRosa Parks labored tirelessly on similar cases in Montgomery, but one in particular haunted her. In 1952 a white Montgomery woman cried rape after a nosy neighbor caught her undressing with her sixteen-year-old black lover, Jeremiah Reeves. Shortly thereafter Montgomery police arrested Reeves and beat a confession out of him. The lower courts found Reeves guilty of rape and sentenced him to die. Reeves's mother, Parks recalled, \"brought the case to the NAACP.\" The Montgomery branch, she said, \"struggled for quite a few years\" to save the young man. They challenged his sentence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to no avail. Alabama officials executed Reeves in 1957. \"It was a tragedy he lost his life,\" Parks said. \"I tried to find some way of documenting that [the white woman had] lied but I was never able to do so... [S]ometimes it was very difficult to keep going when all our work seemed to be in vain.\"\n\nCases like Jeremiah Reeves's and Willie McGee's taught African Americans, as Martin Luther King, Jr., noted in _Stride Toward Freedom_ , to \"fear and mistrust the white man's justice.\" \"In the years that [Reeves] sat in jail,\" King wrote, \"several white men in Alabama also had been charged with rape, but their accusers were Negro girls.\" White men were seldom arrested, and if they were, King said, \"they were soon released by the grand jury. No one was ever brought to trial.\" This was mostly true throughout the South, but Montgomery seemed to get more than its share of what NAACP leader Roy Wilkins called \"sex cases.\"\n\nLaboring patiently for the NAACP in Montgomery, Rosa Parks felt that 1949 in particular was a \"very bad year.\" \"There was a lot of white violence against blacks,\" she recalled. \"Things happened,\" she said, \"that most people never heard about.\" Even if the stories never got their due in the mainstream press, it was the misfortune and courage of a number of unknown women who helped mobilize the African-American community in the late 1940s around issues of sexualized violence. These campaigns sparked larger protests for dignity and bodily integrity that culminated in the Montgomery bus boycott. The truly decisive moment came in 1949, when two white police officers attacked a young woman named Gertrude Perkins. \"Gertrude Perkins is not even mentioned in the history books,\" Joe Azbell, former editor of the _Montgomery Advertiser_ , said, \"but she had as much to do with the bus boycott and its creation as anyone on earth.\"\n\nThe moon illuminated the dark street as Gertrude Perkins, a twenty-five-year-old black woman, walked home, a little unsteady on her feet after a night of partying. It was after midnight on March 27, 1949, when a squad car inched toward her and stopped. Two Montgomery police officers, their badges glimmering in the moonlight, told Perkins to halt, then walked toward her. Smelling beer on her breath, they accused her of public drunkenness and ordered her to get into their car. When she refused, they grabbed her and pushed her into the backseat. They drove to the edge of a railroad embankment and dragged her behind a building, where the uniformed men raped her repeatedly at gunpoint and forced her to have \"all types of sex relations.\" When they finished, they shoved Perkins back into the car, then dumped her out in the middle of town and sped away.\n\nAlone on the dark roadside, terrified and shaken, Perkins nevertheless mustered the clarity and courage to report the crime. Instead of going home to her three children, she went directly to Reverend Solomon S. Seay, Sr.'s, house. Seay was the prominent and rotund minister of the Mt. Zion AME Zion Church. A newcomer to Montgomery, Seay was already regarded as one of the most outspoken black ministers in town. She knocked on the door of the Holt Street parsonage, where Seay and his family lived. Waking him, Perkins told Seay the details of her assault through sobs and tears. He could smell the alcohol and wondered if perhaps she was lying. \"If you're not telling the truth,\" he said, \"you're going to be in big trouble.\"\n\n\"I'm telling you the dying truth,\" she insisted. Seay decided that even if she had had too much to drink, she did not deserve to be attacked. \"No white or black man,\" he said, \"had a right to rape her.\" Seay consoled Perkins and listened as she spoke. \"We didn't go to bed that morning,\" he recalled. \"I kept her at my house, carefully wrote down what she said, and later had it notarized.\" He sent Perkins's horror story to syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, who let the whole country know what happened in his daily radio address before Montgomery's white leaders knew what hit them.\n\nEarly the next day, Seay escorted Perkins to the police station so she could report the crime. She asked Mayor John L. Goodwyn to arrest her assailants. He quickly rebuffed her. Goodwyn, who also served as police commissioner, refused to hold a lineup so Perkins could identify her attackers. He denied her request to see a log of who was on duty the previous evening. Goodwyn claimed that providing access to that information would \"violate the Constitutional rights of the members of the Police Department as individuals.\"\n\nAs word of the attack spread, E. D. Nixon and Reverend Seay, the leaders of the local Ministerial Alliance, the Negro Improvement League, and the NAACP, organized the Citizens Committee for Gertrude Perkins. Dozens of active black citizens joined to demand equal justice and protection for black women. Mary Fair Burks, an English professor at Alabama State, and her newly formed middle-class organization, the Women's Political Council, may also have been involved, since one of their early goals was to \"come to the defense of women who had been victimized by rape and other physical assaults.\"\n\nAt the first meeting of the Citizens Committee, members elected Reverend Seay chairman of the \"investigating committee.\" His job was to find the police officers who attacked Perkins. When the meeting adjourned, members of the Citizens Committee poured out of the YMCA and ran into a wall of police cars and blinding headlights. Seay stepped forward. \"Why are you flashing your lights into my face?\" he asked. An officer stepped out of his car, grabbed his club with one hand and pulled at his gun with the other, and walked over to Seay. Without saying a word, he threw his arm back and hurled the club into Seay's chest.\n\n\"You're under arrest,\" the officer said as Seay recoiled in pain. Members of the Citizens Committee rushed around Seay.\n\n\"Y'all ought to leave this man alone,\" someone said, \"he ain't doing anymore than you do... trying to defend his women.\" Police grabbed Seay, pushed him into their squad car, and drove him downtown. At the jailhouse, the chief of police recognized the minister. \"Pull your hat off,\" he ordered. \"We gonna teach you that _we_ run this town. Niggers don't run it.\" The next day E. D. Nixon helped bail Seay out and promised that the NAACP would defend him in court.\n\nAs the ministers and the NAACP rallied around Seay and Perkins, white officials publicly dismissed Perkins's case. The mayor claimed Perkins's rape charge was \"completely false.\" He insisted that holding a lineup or issuing any warrants would set a bad precedent since, as Goodwyn argued, \"charges of this nature, even though untrue... are often used to destroy goodwill between the races.\" Besides, he added, _his_ \"policemen would not do a thing like that.\" Since black prostitutes had routinely serviced white police officers in the past in exchange for allowing the existence of brothels in Montgomery, perhaps Mayor Goodwyn thought there was no need to resort to violence or force for interracial intimacies.\n\nBlacks in Montgomery knew better. The city's police force had a reputation for physical and sexual violence. Police brutality plagued the black community. The Perkins case was just the tip of the iceberg. E. G. Jackson, editor of Montgomery's black newspaper, the _Alabama Tribune_ , urged action on the Perkins case and reminded readers of a similar assault three years earlier.\n\nIn 1946, Viola White, an African-American woman who worked at Maxwell Air Force Base, had refused a bus driver's order to move out of her seat. The driver threatened to physically remove her, but she would not budge. Finally he called the police and asked them to arrest her. When the officer arrived, he beat White into submission and took her to jail. The next day a judge found White guilty of \"disobeying a bus driver.\" White was so incensed that she hired a lawyer to appeal her case. Not long after she filed suit, Montgomery police retaliated. One afternoon Officer A. A. Enger seized White's sixteen-year-old daughter, drove her to a cemetery, and raped her. As the officer thrust himself inside her, she stared at his car and focused on memorizing the tag number. The next day she reported the crime. After many attempts, E. D. Nixon was finally able to get a judge to sign a warrant for Enger's arrest. Instead of detaining Enger or firing him, however, the police chief decided to let him slip quietly out of town.\n\nWhile E. G. Jackson recalled other unsolved crimes against black women, the assault on Gertrude Perkins, he said, was \"one of the worst crimes ever committed in... Montgomery.\" \"The head officials,\" he complained, were still \"trying to keep it quiet.\" But nothing could silence the voices of protest coming from the Citizens Committee for Gertrude Perkins. Their public protests, sensational newspaper headlines, and a flood of \"inflammatory\" pamphlets garnered massive attention throughout the city. Even the _Montgomery Advertiser_ , the \"white\" daily newspaper, followed Perkins's case for nearly two months, often featuring the latest news on the front page. Because of the media attention, unrelenting protests from the Citizens Committee, and the dogged determination of Perkins's white liberal lawyers, John and Virgil McGee, the mayor finally relented and brought the case in front of the grand jury.\n\nReverend Seay accompanied Perkins to court on May 20, 1949, nearly two months after police assaulted her. Seay waited outside the closed courtroom, where he could hear county solicitor Temple Siebels berate Perkins with his \"roaring, shaking and loud voice.\" \"Aren't you lying?\" he bellowed repeatedly. \"No,\" Perkins said plainly. \"I am not lying.\" The fact that she did not say \"sir\" must have unsettled Siebels, who continued to verbally assault her. His bellicose style did not seem to rattle Perkins, who walked out of the courtroom, according to Seay, \"as calm as anybody you've ever seen in your life.\"\n\nPerkins's dignified self-defense belied white portrayals of her as a drunk and an \"ignorant, almost illiterate black woman,\" but that did not stop Siebels from presenting her as a prostitute. \"Reverend,\" Siebels said to Seay when he was questioned in front of the jury, \"did you know that Gertrude Perkins was... that she's just a common street woman?\" Seay argued that Perkins's character was not the issue. \"Whatever she [is],\" Seay said, \"she had rights that no man had a right to violate.\" Besides, Seay argued, \"since when did policemen gain the special liberty, on or off duty, to be entertained in such a fashion?\"\n\nPerkins's testimony and Seay's defense did not move the all-white, all-male jury. Convinced that \"there was no evidence of rape in the Perkins case,\" the jurors refused to indict anyone. In an interview with the _Montgomery Advertiser_ , the lead juror declared Perkins's testimony full of \"manufactured lies.\" Then, scolding the Citizens Committee and the NAACP, he argued that \"the publicity of this case has not been helpful to the racial relations of the city.\" In order to stave off any protests, the editor of the _Montgomery Advertiser_ felt compelled to report that the men serving on the jury were \"prominently identified\" with Montgomery's different churches, including \"five Methodists, seven Baptists, three Presbyterians, and three members of the Church of Christ.\" \"You could see what the point was,\" Reverend Seay stated in response to the newspaper's reference to ecumenical diversity. Perhaps the editor hoped this tactic would stave off any criticism of the verdict.\n\nIn an editorial designed to put any hard feelings to rest, the _Advertiser_ argued that \"those colored people who have felt humiliated or angered over the Perkins case can now abate those emotions.\" It pointed to a similar case seventeen miles north, in Wetumpka, Alabama, in which two white men, John C. Howard and Jack Oliver, received forty-five-year sentences for raping two black women, as proof that African Americans could get justice in the courts. \"We have no doubt,\" the _Advertiser_ insisted, \"had there been evidence, the same would have happened here.\" After all, the _Advertiser_ continued, \"the case ran the full process of our Anglo-Saxon system of justice. What more could have been done?\"\n\nCertainly Seay and other members of the Citizens Committee would have preferred an indictment. White people, Reverend Seay noted, \"had not accepted black people as really human.\" The lack of justice in the Perkins case, he said, only \"increased the resentment of ordinary black people about how they were being treated.\" Still, many were pleased with the \"groundswell of unrest\" that their protest yielded, including the fact that, according to Seay, it was \"the first time all the ministers in the city were shaken up.\" It would not be the last time, of course: when Rosa Parks's arrest in 1955 stirred the black community into a truly mass protest, Seay would be a pivotal leader. The public outcry in the Perkins case was \"a bold expression,\" Seay said, \"on the part of black people in this town to say to the courts and others 'We protest what is going on.' \"\n\nThe Perkins protest did not occur in isolation. In February 1951 a white grocery store owner raped a black teenager. Sam E. Green regularly employed Flossie Hardman, a black fifteen-year-old, as a babysitter and frequently drove her home at the end of her shift. One night, instead of taking Flossie directly home, Green pulled to the side of a quiet road and raped her.\n\nFlossie immediately informed her parents of the assault. Despite the odds of bringing Green to justice, they decided to press charges. Meanwhile Rufus A. Lewis, a World War II veteran and celebrated football coach at Alabama State University, launched a campaign to bring Green to trial. Backed by Lewis and many of his fellow veterans, the Hardmans succeeded in bringing Green to court. But when an all-white jury returned a not guilty verdict after deliberating for only five minutes, African Americans decided to take the matter into their own hands. Lewis led the charge.\n\nAs one of the principal spokesmen for voter registration efforts in Montgomery, Lewis had enormous respect and support within the black community; he belonged to the mostly middle-class Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and was a member of many of the \"best\" clubs and associations in town. Additionally, as the owner of Montgomery's largest black funeral home, he was financially independent and not easily intimidated by white economic reprisals. Lewis parlayed his social and economic wealth into a spacious brick clubhouse, named the Citizens Club. It functioned as the headquarters for many of the city's community organizations. Here Lewis taught veterans and others the ins and outs of voter registration and created a safe space where African Americans could \"come and socialize\" and, in the process, get politicized. Lewis knew that a large swath of the black community was outraged by the attack on Flossie Hardman and the unjust ruling. Since Green's grocery store was located in a primarily black community, Lewis figured an economic boycott could destroy Green's livelihood.\n\nLewis organized the \"Citizens Committee\" to lead the boycott. The committee brought together veterans groups, the Women's Political Council, and the NAACP under the banner of protecting black womanhood. The campaign to shut down Green's store was a success. Within a matter of weeks, African Americans delivered their own guilty verdict by driving Green into the red. The campaign established the boycott as a powerful weapon for justice and sent a message to whites that African Americans would not allow white men to disrespect, abuse, and violate black women's bodies with impunity. Soon enough an even larger boycott would be imaginable for the African-American community.\n\nMany whites chose to ignore this message, notably the city's bus operators, who snubbed, bullied, and brutalized black passengers daily. Drivers shortchanged African Americans, then kicked them off the bus if they asked for correct change. Half-empty buses often bypassed blacks waiting at bus stops. And bus drivers never hesitated to use violence to enforce segregation. In a sense, the ruthless beatings that Ella Ree Jones, Roberta McKenzie, and Gladys Blackmon received when they defied Jim Crow in the early 1940s represented relatively light punishment, considering the price paid by Hilliard Brooks.\n\nOn August 12, 1950, Brooks, an African-American veteran of World War II and neighbor of Rosa Parks, attempted to board a bus driven by C. L. Hood. Hood refused to let Brooks on his bus, claiming he was too intoxicated. Brooks put up a fuss and demanded to be allowed to ride. Hood waved a police officer over, then pushed the veteran off the front steps, knocking him to the ground. As Brooks struggled to stand, the police officer, M. E. Mills, pointed his pistol at Brooks and, in the bright afternoon sun, shot him dead. Satisfied with the assailants' claim of self-defense, the mayor cleared them of any wrongdoing.\n\nThere were at least thirty complaints by African Americans in Montgomery in 1953, indicating a growing sense of impatience with the grim conditions on city buses. Most of these complaints came from working-class black women who made up the bulk of Montgomery City Lines' riders, over half of whom toiled as domestics. With a median salary of just $523 per year, domestics could not afford automobiles and had no choice but to ride the city buses to and from the white homes in which they worked. Their workplace could be just as dangerous: domestic workers faced sexual and physical abuse by their white employers. While domestics could and often did resist sexual harassment and abuse on the job by quitting, they could not easily find other transportation. They were stuck with the buses. As black lawyer Fred Gray put it, bus transportation was not \"something optional, like restaurants.\"\n\nAfrican-American women constantly complained about the atrocious treatment they received on the buses. Gladys Moore remembered that Montgomery's bus operators treated black women \"just as rough as could be... like we are some kind of animal.\" Jo Ann Robinson, an English professor at Alabama State and member of the increasingly militant Women's Political Council, argued that mistreatment on the buses was degrading, shameful, and humiliating. \"Black Americans,\" she insisted, were \"still being treated as... things without feelings, not human beings.\" Bus drivers, Robinson recalled, disrespected black women by hurling nasty sexualized insults their way. Ferdie Walker, a black woman from Fort Worth, Texas, remembered bus drivers sexually harassing her as she waited on the corner. \"The bus was up high,\" she recalled, \"and the street was down low. They'd drive up under there and then they'd expose themselves while I was standing there and it just scared me to death.\" Aside from direct sexual harassment, drivers referred to black women with contemptuous names like \"black niggers,\" \"black bitches,\" \"heifers,\" and \"whores.\" Della Perkins remembered a driver who regularly referred to her as an \"ugly black ape.\"\n\nIn addition to slinging insults, bus drivers often slapped black women who crossed them. They refused to stop at every corner in black neighborhoods, allowed white children to board before black adults, demanded blacks give up their seats for whites, and forced them to pay their fare at the front of the bus and then enter via the rear. The latter practice was designed to eliminate any chance that black bodies might accidentally come in contact with white bodies, thus removing the opportunity for any inadvertent move toward \"miscegenation\" or \"social equality.\" This was especially important if black men boarded the bus when white women sat in the front seats, but drivers imposed the rule on black women as well. One black woman recalled that a bus driver demanded she relocate \"because a white man could not sit opposite a colored lady.\" Considering white men's long history of \"integrating\" with black women, this rule was particularly galling.\n\nGeorgia Gilmore, a plucky and spirited black cook, decided not to ride the buses after a driver insisted she enter the bus through the rear after paying her fare in the front. Gilmore protested, but the red-faced, redheaded driver hollered, \"I told you to get off and go to the back, Nigger!\" Since the bus was her sole transportation, Gilmore retreated. As she was about to enter the back door, the driver slammed it shut and pulled away. Such malicious acts often resulted in injuries. \"There had been several reported incidents,\" Ralph Abernathy, a Baptist minister, recalled, \"of persons being caught in the doors... [and] dragged for some distance.\"\n\nVerbal, physical, and sexual abuse maintained racial hierarchy in an enclosed space where complete separation of whites and blacks was all but impossible. A big arrow pointing to the rear of the bus for \"colored\" and another pointing to the front of the bus for whites provided some guidance. But the Jim Crow line could vanish just as easily as it appeared, as the racial composition of riders changed at each stop. \"The bus driver could move colored people anywhere he wanted on the bus,\" E. D. Nixon recalled. \"If a white person came into the bus and sat way back in it, no Negro was permitted to stand or sit between the motorman and that person.\" As a rule, the first ten of the thirty-six seats on a Montgomery city bus were reserved for whites, no matter how many people were actually on the bus. This frequently left black passengers, who almost always outnumbered white passengers, in the humiliating position of having to stand over empty seats.\n\nThis policy fueled resentment and anger among African Americans, especially domestics and day laborers who spent hours on their feet cooking, washing, and ironing for white people. \"You spend your whole lifetime in your occupation... making life clever, easy and convenient for white people,\" Rosa Parks recalled, \"but when you have to get transportation home, you are denied an equal accommodation.\" Mistreatment on the buses, she argued, emphasized the fact that \"our existence was for the white man's comfort and well being; we had to accept being deprived of just being human.\" Like sexualized mistreatment, it was an all-too-familiar part of being a black woman in Montgomery.\n\nWith abuses piling up like cordwood and memories of previous crimes smoldering, a group of black women decided to take on the bus drivers by demanding to be treated like ladies. The Women's Political Council led the charge. This militant women's group was one of over fifty active and vibrant black benefit associations, mutual aid societies, and social clubs in Montgomery that stitched together the social fabric of the African-American community. Professional black men belonged to one or more of the traditionally black fraternities like Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, or Omega Psi Phi, while small businessmen and laborers held membership in the fraternal orders and benefit associations like the Prince Hall Free Masons, the Knights of Labor, the Elks, or the Knights of Pythias. There were also neighborhood associations, church clubs, and political organizations like the NAACP and its youth division, E. D. Nixon's Progressive Democrats, and Rufus Lewis's Citizens Club.\n\nBlack women of a certain class in Montgomery found camaraderie in sororities like Alpha Kappa Alpha, Zeta Phi Beta, Delta Sigma Theta, or Sigma Gamma Rho, or they belonged to one of eighteen clubs that made up the Montgomery City Women's Federated Clubs, including the Crusaders, Anna M. Duncan, Excelsiors, Home Makers, Phillis Wheatley, Cosmopolites, and Sojourner Truth clubs\u2014most of which featured junior versions for young women. In addition to these civic, professional, and social clubs, many black women belonged to societies affiliated with the more than fifty black churches in Montgomery.\n\nMeetings occurred in church basements, at women's homes, at the black-owned Ben Moore Hotel, which had a large ballroom and rooftop garden, or at any one of the dozen or more lounges, bars, and clubs where blacks could drink, dance, or eat a hearty meal. The most popular gathering places were the Elks Club, the Reno Caf\u00e9, Pics Caf\u00e9, the Afro-Club, Rufus Lewis's Citizens Club, Club 400, and the Tijuana Club. These clubs provided spaces where black men and women, free from white surveillance and racial domination, could work out community problems, organize politically, or just relax.\n\nThe rich network of social and political organizations kept Montgomery's class-divided black community relatively connected. In addition, they served as information hubs, where news could travel easily from one neighborhood to the next. The sheer number and diversity of organizations explains the relative speed with which the 1955 boycott began; after all, blacks in Montgomery were _already_ organized. It only seemed \"spontaneous\" from a distance.\n\nEven though they were knit together socially, African Americans in Montgomery rarely came together to protest white supremacy en masse. With the exception of E. D. Nixon and Rufus Lewis's voter registration efforts, Rosa Parks's investigations on behalf of the NAACP, and the mass mobilization on behalf of Gertrude Perkins and Flossie Hardman, most clubwomen preferred to work on racial uplift and charitable causes within the black community instead of agitating for political and civil rights in the city at large. Direct protests proved dangerous throughout the South, and Montgomery was no exception. Few people were willing to risk their lives or their livelihoods for something that seemed as immutable as segregation.\n\nAnd yet there were always a handful of fearless individuals, like E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks, who pushed for more direct political engagement. Vernon Johns, the irascible and outspoken preacher at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in the 1940s and early 1950s, regularly chastised his \"silk stocking\" congregation for their apparent resignation to Jim Crow. But Johns was not an ordinary man. He seemed to be hardwired to resist segregation. The preacher loved to shock his congregants and scare white Montgomerians. In response to the ruthless beating of a black man by white police officers in the early 1950s, he posted \"It's Safe to Murder Negroes in Montgomery\" on the church marquee. The next week his advertised sermon title was: \"When the Rapist Is White.\" One Sunday morning he stunned his middle-class audience by beginning his sermon with a horrific tale. \"When my grandfather was hanged for cutting his master in two with a scythe,\" he said, \"they asked him on the gallows if he had anything to say.\" \"Yes,\" his grandfather said, \"I'm just sorry I didn't do it thirty years before.\" The story was not true, but Johns had a point. He wanted his flock to become as fearless as was his fictional grandfather.\n\nJohns's tactics made most of Dexter's members uncomfortable, but Mary Fair Burks felt the call one morning when Johns mounted another scathing attack on the complacency of his affluent parishioners. Burks had waged her own private \"guerrilla warfare\" by refusing to abide by Jim Crow signs throughout the city. After a run-in with a white police officer, however, Burks decided to broaden her attack and form an army of women dedicated to destroying white supremacy. She needed foot soldiers. \"I looked around and all I could see were either masks of indifference or scorn,\" she recalled. Being a \"feminist before [she] really knew what the word meant,\" she said, she \"dismissed the hard-faced men.\" They \"would take it over,\" she said, \"and women wouldn't be able to do what they could do.\"\n\nInstead, Burks focused on the women in her church and social circles, hoping she could convert them into activists. \"I played bridge with them,\" she reasoned, \"but more important, I knew that they must suffer from the same racial abuse and the indignity.\" She left church that day with a plan. Over the next week, she contacted fifty women. When forty showed up for the first meeting of the Women's Political Council (WPC) in the fall of 1946, she was pleasantly surprised. Burks started the meeting by testifying about her run-in with a club-wielding police officer. When she finished, nearly every woman at the meeting chimed in with similar stories of brutalization.\n\nIn order to gain political leverage with the city's leaders, members of the newly formed WPC, many of them public school teachers and faculty members at Alabama State College, decided they needed to become registered voters. After a number of them cleared the various hurdles designed to keep the voting rolls lily white, they set up workshops throughout the city to help others get registered. The WPC set up \"registration schools\" in churches, where they taught weekly classes on how to fill out voter registration forms and, if necessary, on basic literacy. When participants were ready, WPC members accompanied them to the courthouse and helped them fill out registration applications, then returned a few days later to check on the results. More than anything, they taught ordinary women how to assert themselves in front of white authorities.\n\nBy teaming up with Rufus Lewis's veterans organization and E. D. Nixon's Progressive Democrats, both of which had been active in voter registration efforts since the early 1940s, the WPC muscled its way into city elections. By the early 1950s, there were enough African Americans registered to vote in Montgomery that they could easily tip the scale in close elections. Over the next few years, the Women's Political Council grew as well. By 1955, it had three chapters in Montgomery and more than three hundred female members. During this remarkable growth period, the WPC earned a reputation as the \"most militant and uncompromising voice\" for blacks in the Cradle of the Confederacy.\n\nThe militant reputation rested upon the WPC's new leadership and new focus: mistreatment on the city's buses. Mary Fair Burks handed Jo Ann Robinson, her colleague at Alabama State College and a fiery advocate of human rights, the reins of the radical women's organization in 1950, just a year after she moved to Montgomery. Despite being a newcomer, Robinson easily fell in with Montgomery's middle-class clubwomen, among whom she quickly became a \"much sought after dinner guest.\" Born and raised in Georgia, Robinson was no stranger to white supremacy. As a middle-class woman with a vehicle, though, she was unaware of the intricacies of the segregated seating policies on Montgomery's buses.\n\nHer introduction came at the end of her first full semester teaching, as she was preparing to visit family for Christmas in December 1949. Robinson boarded a near-empty city bus and sat down in the fifth row, two rows behind the only white woman on the bus, closed her eyes, and imagined \"the wonderful two weeks [of] vacation\" ahead. Suddenly startled by the bus driver's roaring voice, Robinson sat straight up.\n\n\"If you can sit in the fifth row from the front of the other buses in Montgomery,\" he bellowed, \"suppose you get off and ride in one of them.\"\n\nBeing a respectable, professional woman who was used to being treated like a lady in the black community, Robinson did not realize the driver was speaking to her until he pulled to a stop and stormed over to where she was seated.\n\n\"Get up from there!\" he yelled, drawing his arm back as if he were about to strike her. \"Get up from there!\"\n\nRobinson leaped to her feet, fearful of being beaten, and ran to the front of the bus. She stumbled off the bus in a daze. \"Tears blinded my vision,\" she recalled, and \"waves of humiliation inundated me.\"\n\nRecalling the shame and embarrassment she experienced that December day, Robinson readily accepted the leadership of the WPC. Utilizing the political leverage the WPC had built up over the previous years, Robinson and her army of militant women\u2014Mrs. A. W. West, Mrs. N. W. Burkes, Mrs. J. E. Pierce, Georgia Gilmore, Mrs. Edwyna Marketta, Ella Mae Stovall, Lettie M. Anderson, Mrs. Horace Burton, Mrs. Ruby Hall, and Ella Mae Henderson, to name a few\u2014canvassed black neighborhoods. According to Robinson, they gathered \"thousands of signatures on hundreds of petitions\" that demanded the city do something about the \"shameful and deplorable one-sidedness\" of the city's segregated parks and recreation system. They repeatedly confronted the city commissioners with complaints about police brutality. In the early 1950s, Jo Ann Robinson led her band of women warriors to directly attack abuse on the city's buses.\n\nIn 1952 members of the WPC packed a public hearing regarding a bus fare increase, where Zolena Pierce and Sadie Brooks testified about their mistreatment on the buses. One year later a group of WPC members stormed a meeting with the City Commission, where Jo Ann Robinson railed against the abuses heaped upon black female bus riders and argued that African Americans should not have to stand over empty seats when the black section was filled and the white section was empty. Nor should they have to pay at the front, she said, and then disembark and get on in the back. The WPC demanded that black riders be treated with dignity and respect. \"We were not fighting segregation,\" Mary Fair Burks pointed out, \"as much as abuses of Negroes.\"\n\nBlack women across the country spoke out against similar abuses. Besides the WPC, no organization did this better or more explicitly than the Sojourners for Truth and Justice (STJ), a short-lived but important national black women's organization dedicated to \"the full dignity of Negro womanhood.\" Two African-American women, Louise Thompson Patterson, a Communist and wife of William Patterson, the head of the Civil Rights Congress, and Beulah Richardson, a poet and Progressive Party activist from Mississippi, organized the STJ in the fall of 1951. Patterson and Richardson sought to unite black women across social, political, and economic lines in an effort to end white violence and terror. \"We will no longer in sight of God or man,\" the women proclaimed, \"sit by and watch our lives destroyed by an unreasonable and unreasoning hate that metes out to us every kind of death.\"\n\nSpeaking as mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, and witnesses to sexualized violence, the members of the STJ issued a pamphlet that assailed white supremacy and called for a national meeting of black women in Washington, D.C., \"We have seen our brothers beaten, shot, and stamped to death by police [and] we have seen our daughters raped and degraded, and when one dares rise in defense of her honor she is jailed for life.\" By inviting black women to come \"speak [their] mind\" and issuing the call in the \"spirit of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth,\" the STJ rooted themselves in a \"radical black feminist tradition of resistance\" and the tradition of testimony.\n\nMembers of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice\u2014a national black women's organization dedicated to the protection of \"Negro Womanhood\"\u2014pose for a photo with celebrated athlete, singer, and actor Paul Robeson in 1952. (photo credit 2.3)\n\nOn September 29, 1951, more than one hundred African-American women from fifteen states gathered in the nation's capital to testify and bear witness to one another's horror stories. Mary Church Terrell, the aged and sagacious \"dean of Negro women,\" presided over the weekend gathering and encouraged participants to \"fight for our country\" and make it \"practice what it preaches.\" At the end of the historic meeting, the STJ issued a proclamation demanding the protection of \"Negro womanhood\" and decrying black women's \"second-class\" status, which \"denies us dignity and honor.\"\n\nAs part of the campaign to protect black womanhood, the STJ called for the immediate freedom of Rosa Lee Ingram, a black sharecropper widow and mother of twelve who was convicted and sentenced to death in the self-defense slaying of a white man in Ellaville, Georgia, on November 4, 1947. John Stratford, a sixty-four-year-old white sharecropper who lived on the same property as Ingram and her family, harassed Ingram for years. She finally fought back after he tried to force her into a shed to have sex with him. \"He never tried to rape me,\" she told a reporter, \"... he just tried to compel me.\" Angered by her repeated rejections, Stratford lashed out. Cursing her out, he grabbed his gun and used the butt as a bludgeon. \"I grappled with him,\" she remembered, \"and he dropped the gun. He choked me and nearly tore off my sweater.\"\n\nRosa Lee Ingram, a sharecropper and mother of twelve, was sentenced to death for the self-defense slaying of a white man in Ellaville, Georgia, on November 4, 1947. The NAACP raised thousands of dollars to challenge the conviction. Ingram was finally released from prison on August 26, 1959. Ingram (seated) with sons Sammie (center) and Wallace (standing) in an Albany, Georgia, jail cell, 1948. (photo credit 2.4)\n\nWhen Ingram's sixteen-year-old son, Wallace, heard the scuffle, he ran to his mother's aid. \"Please stop beating mama,\" he begged. Stratford persisted, and Wallace picked up the gun. Wallace rammed the gun into Stratford's head, knocking him to the ground. Rosa Lee and her son left Stratford lying in the grass and ran home, unaware that he was dead. Within two months, she was on death row for murder.\n\nThe Sojourners for Truth and Justice rallied to free Rosa Lee Ingram from prison and praised her for \"defending the honor of all womanhood.\" They argued that her willingness to fight back against a white man's sexual and physical advances was not a crime but instead was \"the first step in ending the indignities heaped upon Negro women everywhere in our land.\" \"WE SHALL NOT BE TRAMPLED UPON ANY LONGER,\" the women declared.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBlack women in Montgomery, especially those in the Women's Political Council, could have adopted the Sojourners' rallying cry as their own. When members of the WPC, Rufus Lewis's Citizens Committee, and the Federation of Negro Women's Clubs marched into another meeting with the city commission in March 1954 and demanded better treatment on the buses, city leaders again refused to budge. Jo Ann Robinson was furious. As she heard more \"stories of unhappy experiences\" on the buses, she decided to give Mayor W. A. \"Tacky\" Gayle a piece of her mind. Robinson fumed, Gayle recalled later; she said \"they would just show me,\" he claimed. \"They [said] they were going in the front door and sitting wherever they pleased.\"\n\nLest Gayle misunderstand the threat, Robinson sent him a letter on May 21, 1954, just four days after the momentous Supreme Court decision in _Brown v. Board of Education_ that banned segregation in public schools. In the letter, Robinson spelled out exactly what would happen should Gayle and the other city commissioners ignore the WPC's demands. Since \"three-fourths of the riders of those public conveyances are Negroes,\" Robinson warned, \"they could not possibly operate... if Negroes did not patronize them.\" \"More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends,\" she asserted, \"to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers.\" In addition, Robinson pointed out, more than twenty-five local organizations had begun talking about a \"city-wide boycott of the buses,\" and plans were already \"being made to ride less or not at all, on our buses.\"\n\nPerhaps the earth-shattering Supreme Court ruling gave Robinson the courage to issue such a forceful warning. After all, it appeared that Jim Crow was beginning to die a slow but sure death. Maybe she was inspired by the spirit of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice. More likely, however, she had simply had enough. Threatening a boycott was perhaps the only option remaining after requests to be treated with dignity fell on deaf ears for more than a decade.\n\nTen years earlier Thurgood Marshall had warned that the abuse and mistreatment of black women on public conveyances was \"dynamite.\" Just after Robinson sent her letter to Mayor Gayle, a news report hit the black community like a \"bombshell.\" Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old high school girl, had been manhandled, arrested, and indicted for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white man.\n\n# CHAPTER 3 \n\"Walking in Pride and Dignity\"\n\nCLAUDETTE COLVIN, A SPIRITED and studious tenth grader at Booker T. Washington High School, boarded the Highland Gardens bus near Dexter Avenue Baptist Church after school on March 2, 1955. She had spent the school day studying Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, \"black heroes and how they broke down Jim Crow laws,\" as she put it. Each student brought in articles about racial violence and discrimination. Her class spent the afternoon talking about the bleak racial conditions in Montgomery. By the time she boarded the bus, Colvin was filled with resentment over the city's double standard of justice. She plopped down in the rear section reserved for \"colored\" passengers.\n\nAt the next stop, passengers climbed aboard and filled the remaining seats\u2014the first ten rows reserved for whites, blacks in the back. Mrs. Ruth Hamilton, visibly pregnant, sat down next to Colvin. A white couple squeezed into the last two seats directly across from them. When the bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, saw that the color line had been breached\u2014black and white people could not sit across from one another\u2014he ordered Colvin and Hamilton to stand in the aisle to preserve segregation. Hamilton refused to give up her seat. Placing her hands on her protruding belly, Hamilton told Cleere that she \"was not going to get up,\" because, she said, she \"didn't feel like it.\"\n\nUncomfortable asking a pregnant woman to relinquish her seat, the driver turned to Colvin and threatened to call the police unless she moved. Colvin did not budge. Furious, Cleere pulled the bus to the curb in the middle of the downtown business district, locked the passengers in, and walked away. He soon returned with two policemen. The officers lumbered onto the bus and stood over Hamilton and Colvin, staring down at the stubborn women. \"Move,\" ordered one of the officers. A black man seated behind Hamilton interrupted the standoff and offered Hamilton his seat, which she accepted, leaving Colvin alone. The police demanded to know why she ignored the driver's direct order.\n\n\"It's against the law here,\" an officer reminded her.\n\n\"I didn't know that it was a law,\" Colvin shot back, \"that a colored person had to get up and give a white person a seat when there were not any more vacant seats and colored people were standing up.\"\n\nColvin had a point\u2014the city law required passengers to move only if another seat was available. Since all the seats were taken, Colvin had every right to stay put. The officers seemed genuinely stumped until she sat up and with righteous indignation said, \"I [am] just as good as any white person.\"\n\nA hush fell over the crowded bus. The driver and the two officers stepped outside to consider their options. \"We just sat there,\" Gloria Hardin, another passenger, recalled. \"We didn't know what was going to happen but we knew something would happen.\" Colvin waited quietly for Cleere and the police. \"I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on,\" Colvin said later. \"That's what they usually did.\" Colvin's assertion of equality seemed to have pushed Cleere over the line. He told the police to arrest her. Clambering back onto the bus, Cleere pointed at Colvin. \"I have had trouble out of _that thing_ before,\" he said. The police slowly walked over to Colvin, grabbed her arms, and jerked her toward the aisle. She began to sob and pulled against the officers, trying to remain in her seat. \"I wasn't getting up,\" she said later. \"I couldn't. I had it in my mind that it was wrong.\"\n\n\"You black whore,\" an officer shouted, then yanked her from the seat and kicked her down the aisle toward the front of the bus. The other officer dragged the weeping teenager down the steps and pushed her into their patrol car. Colvin was terrified. \"You just didn't know what white people might do at that time,\" she recalled later. \"I didn't know if they were crazy or if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting.\" When she heard one of the officers make a joke about her breasts and bra size, she feared the worst. Stories of ordeals like the one Gertrude Perkins endured at the hands of the Montgomery police were common currency in the black South. \"I started protecting my crotch,\" she remembered. \"I was afraid they might rape me.\"\n\nDeep history and day-to-day life in Montgomery gave her plenty of reasons to be afraid. Away from the public glare and in the backseat of a white man's car, anything could happen. They could take Colvin wherever they wanted and do whatever they pleased without fear of punishment. It was the worst possible situation for a young black woman\u2014something generations of mothers had warned their daughters to avoid at all costs.\n\nColvin tried to remain calm as the police drove her to the jail and booked her for violating the city's segregation laws. Furious that the teenager had defied them, they also charged her with assault and resisting arrest. To drown out the horror of being in jail, Colvin recited poetry and scripture. \"I recited Edgar Allan Poe,\" she recalled, \" 'Annabel Lee,' the characters in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ , the Lord's Prayer, and the Twenty-third Psalm.\"\n\nColvin may have asked the Lord to be her shepherd, but the local trinity of Fred Gray, E. D. Nixon, and Jo Ann Robinson planned her deliverance. News of Colvin's stand against segregation and subsequent detention spread quickly through town. \"In a few hours every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest,\" Jo Ann Robinson remembered. \"Telephones rang, clubs called special meetings... mothers expressed concern... [and] men instructed their wives to walk or to share rides.\" Almost immediately, blacks formed the Citizens Coordinating Committee, led by Robinson, Rufus Lewis, and Fred Gray, Montgomery's newest and youngest black attorney. They sent out an appeal to \"Friends of Justice and Human Rights.\" They requested financial assistance and called for an \"unconditional acquittal of Miss Claudette Colvin.\" Martin Luther King, Jr., the baby-faced Baptist preacher who had only been in town for a few months, called the situation an \"atrocity\" that \"seemed to arouse the Negro community.\" He remembered later: \"There was talk of boycotting the buses in protest.\" In fact, there had been an explicit threat to boycott the buses by the Women's Political Council nearly a year earlier. But fighting the city was risky, if not dangerous. \"People had everything to lose,\" Jo Ann Robinson noted, \"and nothing to gain.\" Committee members shelved the boycott and decided to appeal to city and bus officials directly, and if that failed, they reasoned, then they would go to court.\n\nThe first meeting the Citizens Coordinating Committee had with police commissioner Dave Birmingham and J. H. Bagley, the manager of the bus company, went relatively well. Birmingham, an amiable if demagogic populist, frequently met with black constituents and often responded to their complaints. In 1953, for example, Birmingham acknowledged widespread police brutality in black neighborhoods and appointed the city's first seven black police officers\u2014four men and three women\u2014the most in the state. Birmingham expressed deep concern over what happened to Colvin and conceded that the driver acted improperly. He and Bagley agreed that bus drivers ought to treat all passengers with courtesy and promised to take a look at the \"Mobile plan,\" a seating scheme used in Mobile, Alabama, in which there was no firm color line. Blacks filled seats from the back of the bus forward and whites from the front to the back until they met somewhere in the middle. With assurances that Birmingham and Bagley would consider changing some of the most humiliating practices on the buses, Jo Ann Robinson and King left the meeting feeling optimistic. But within a few days, as King recalled, \"the same old patterns of humiliation continued.\"\n\nThe second meeting was more confrontational. Backed by a crowd of black women from the WPC and the Federation of Negro Women's Clubs, Rufus Lewis and Fred Gray presented petitions that demanded an end to mistreatment on the buses to Mayor Gayle and a cadre of city and corporate attorneys. Nixon had invited Rosa Parks, but she refused to attend. The race pride that she had learned from her Garveyite grandparents drew limits. \"I had decided,\" she said, \"that I would not go anywhere with a piece of paper in my hand asking white folks for any favors.\"\n\nParks's instincts proved correct. At the meeting, Robinson urged complacent city commissioners to again accept the \"Mobile plan,\" but Jack Crenshaw, the attorney for the bus company, quickly quashed the idea, claiming it would violate the city's segregation laws. City attorneys backed Crenshaw. The meeting ended in stalemate. Since the city's leaders stubbornly sided with segregation, Attorney Gray decided to take Colvin's case to court. Instead of asking for a kinder, gentler Jim Crow on the buses, he would challenge its constitutionality.\n\nOn March 18, 1955, Fred Gray, the twenty-four-year-old attorney, stood before Judge Wiley C. Hill, whose first cousin was U.S. senator J. Lister Hill, and defended Colvin, who pleaded not guilty to all charges. A native of Montgomery and a former student of Jo Ann Robinson at Alabama State University, Gray returned to the Cradle of Confederacy after law school to \"destroy everything segregated that [he] could find.\" He wasted no time. Segregation ordinances on the city buses violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Gray asserted. Judge Hill quickly overruled Gray's claim, swatting it away as if it were a pesky fly. Gray pushed ahead. Colvin was innocent, he insisted, because it was a crime to disobey a bus driver's order to relinquish a seat only if there were other seats available in the colored section. Since more than a dozen witnesses testified that no other seats were available, Gray claimed Colvin had not violated the law.\n\nGray also produced witnesses who testified that Colvin was calm and well behaved, rather than unruly and wild, as the officers claimed. Under cross-examination, the bus driver, Robert Cleere, admitted that Colvin was \"not talking in a rage\" and was not \"disturbing anybody on the bus.\" When asked if Colvin ever hit the officers, Cleere had to admit he \"didn't see her hit them.\" When circuit solicitor William F. Thetford asked one of the police officers if Colvin \"hit or strike [sic] or scratched\" him, the officer said simply, \"No, sir.\" Thetford seemed surprised by his witness's answer. When he asked the officer again if Colvin caused a commotion, the policeman could only say \"She started crying.\" But, he added, he \"didn't hear her scream too loud\" and didn't remember her swearing. Although Gray proved Colvin did not violate any laws and was not unruly or abusive, Judge Hill found her guilty of assault and battery and charged her with violating the _state_ rather than city segregation laws, something Thetford had thrown in at the last minute. Hill sentenced Colvin to indefinite probation.\n\nWhen Gray appealed the decision in circuit court on May 6, 1955, Thetford dropped the state segregation charge, a sly move that destroyed Gray's plan to use Colvin's case to test the constitutionality of bus segregation. Despite the solicitor's backpedaling and the lack of evidence, circuit court judge Eugene Carter found Colvin guilty of assault and battery, assessed a small fine, and declared her a juvenile delinquent.\n\nStunned by the harsh decision, Colvin burst into tears. Spectators and supporters who filled the courtroom, Jo Ann Robinson recalled, \"brushed away their own tears\" as her \"agonized sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse.\" African Americans in Montgomery, Robinson remembered, \"were as near a breaking point as they had ever been. Resentment, rebellion, and unrest were evident in all Negro circles.\" The unexpected verdict hit the black community, she said, \"like a bombshell.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nColvin was not the first woman to be arrested for violating Montgomery's segregation code. She was, however, the first to plead innocent and challenge the city in court. And she had the support of all three hundred members of the Women's Political Council. \"Bless her heart, she fought like a little tigress,\" said Irene West, an influential WPC member and widow of a prominent black dentist. Virginia Durr, a well-known white liberal in Montgomery, told a friend that Colvin's case \"created tremendous interest in the Negro community.\" African Americans were \"fighting mad,\" she said, adding that Colvin's arrest \"may help give them the courage to put up a real fight on the bus segregation issue.\"\n\nJo Ann Robinson had been itching for a boycott for over a year, and now she began laying the groundwork. The timing seemed right; after Colvin's second trial, Robinson recalled, \"large numbers [of women] refused to use the buses... for a few days.\" These private protests convinced her that the community was ready for action, but she had to convince E. D. Nixon, whose connections and expertise would be necessary for any successful mass movement.\n\nWith Mary Fair Burks, her colleague from Alabama State, and two carloads of women, Robinson led a caravan to E. D. Nixon's house to sketch out plans for a citywide boycott. Robinson and Burks told Nixon that they had found a \"victim around whom they could rally community support for a general protest\" and assured him they were ready to mobilize the masses. Robinson told Nixon that they \"had already planned for fifty thousand notices calling people to boycott the buses; only the specifics of the time and place had to be added.\" The women asked Nixon for his support.\n\nNixon hesitated to endorse a general boycott before meeting with Colvin and her parents. He asked Robinson to give him some time. Nixon had followed Colvin's case. In fact, the seasoned labor union operative had already contacted Virginia Durr's husband, Clifford, a local white attorney and former New Deal \"brain-truster,\" to discuss legal and political options. Still, he worried about using Colvin as a symbol for the fight. A visit to Colvin's home made his decision easy. Nixon arrived at Colvin's house in the King Hill section of Montgomery, a lower-class black enclave with tumbledown houses, unpaved streets, and outdoor privies. When Colvin answered the door, Nixon saw that she was pregnant. \"My daughter,\" Colvin's mother explained, \"done took a tumble.\" Nixon decided that Colvin could not possibly serve as the community's standard-bearer, nor be a good litigant.\n\nFor starters, an unwed pregnant teenager might be a divisive symbol for a community where fissures of class, religion, and color already presented tough challenges. Her stomach was beginning to swell, Nixon argued, and her mother was ashamed to have her appear in public. But it was more than Colvin's pregnancy and her parents' shame that concerned Nixon. Colvin's dark skin color and working-class status made her a political liability in certain parts of the black community. Colvin's mother was a maid, and her father did yard work. They lived in one of the poorest sections of town, where juke joints rocked until dawn and, Nixon acknowledged, \"men would drink too much and get into a fight.\" \"It wasn't a bad area,\" Colvin said years later, \"but it had a bad reputation.\"\n\nIn some ways, Colvin's roots in King Hill could have made her the perfect symbol for a bus boycott, since she was one of thousands of working-class black women who suffered humiliation and mistreatment daily on the buses. Though Jo Ann Robinson was firmly rooted in the middle class, she saw Colvin as a kind of black everywoman who would inspire others. But Nixon refused. \"She's just not the kind we can win a case with,\" he said. Robinson fumed. She \"liked to have a fit,\" Nixon recalled. \"She jumped all over me.\" But he was resolute: \"I'm not going to go out on a limb with it.\" \"I've handled so many cases that I know when a man would stand up and when he wouldn't,\" Nixon argued. \"You've got to think about the newspapers, you got to think about public opinion, you got to think policies and so forth, and intimidation.\" His point was not easily dismissed.\n\nDespite her support for Colvin, who was a straight-A student and a member of the NAACP Youth Council, Rosa Parks believed that Nixon was right. Parks knew that Colvin had stepped outside the bounds of respectable behavior for a young woman in the 1950s. \"If the white press got hold of that information,\" Parks feared, \"they would have [had] a field day... They'd call her a bad girl and her case wouldn't have a chance.\" And Parks knew Montgomery. Even if African Americans there were, as the historian Taylor Branch put it, \"willing to rally behind an unwed pregnant teenager\u2014which they were not\u2014her circumstances would make her an extremely vulnerable standard-bearer.\" Without Nixon's support, Robinson and her colleagues on the Women's Political Council would have to wait for another arrest.\n\nIt did not take long. On October 21, 1955, police arrested and fined Mary Louise Smith, an eighteen-year-old maid, for refusing to give up her seat and stand in the colored section so that a white woman could sit down. \"I am not going to move,\" she declared when the driver asked her to stand. \"I got the privilege to sit here like anybody else.\" After meeting Smith and her family, Nixon decided that she could not be the boycott's symbolic heroine, because her father had a tendency to drink too much and she lived in a \"low type of home\" in Washington Park, a poor section of town similar to King Hill. A few days after her arrest, Smith's father paid the fine, making a legal challenge impossible.\n\nColvin and Smith were victims of time, place, and circumstance. By late 1955, black leaders in Montgomery had little choice but to embrace the \"politics of respectability\" amid the growing white backlash sparked by the 1954 _Brown v. Board of Education_ decision. Just four days after the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Thomas P. Brady, a circuit court judge in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and author of the segregationist manifesto _Black Monday_ , called on state legislators to build an organization that would protect white supremacy by any means necessary. Their response was the White Citizens' Council (WCC), an organization designed to \"counteract the NAACP and other left-wing organizations.\" The WCC quickly spread throughout Mississippi and the Deep South, especially areas where African Americans pressed for desegregation of schools or public accommodations. In Mississippi alone, the WCC counted twenty-five thousand members in 1955 and nearly eighty thousand in 1956. The WCC recruited supporters by relying heavily on sexual scare tactics and the paranoia that _Brown_ would lead to \"racial amalgamation.\" Headlines in the _Citizens' Council_ , the organization's newsletter, warned that \"mixed marriage,\" \"sex orgies,\" and black men raping white girls were \"typical of stories filtering back from areas where racial integration is proceeding 'with all deliberate speed.' \"\n\nIn this environment, political respectability required middle-class decorum. Shining a spotlight on a pregnant black teenager would only fuel white stereotypes of black women's uninhibited sexuality. Colvin's swollen stomach could have become a stark reminder that desegregation would lead to sexual debauchery. Smith's shaky social status could raise the question of whether black citizens merited equal treatment in the minds of whites and might divide African Americans along class lines. If Nixon and the WPC supported Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, they risked evoking black stereotypes that could ultimately smother any movement for change.\n\nRespectability had been a staple of African-American politics since Reconstruction, when whites used racist violence and sexual abuse to shore up white supremacy. Silence and secrecy among black clubwomen at the turn of the century helped counter slanderous images and kept the inner lives of African Americans hidden from white people. This self-imposed reticence, Darlene Clark Hine argues, \"implied that those [African-American women] who spoke out provided grist for detractors' mills and, even more ominously, tore the protective cloaks from their inner selves.\" In the wake of _Brown_ , testimony and openness were temporarily replaced with silence.\n\nTestimony triumphed throughout the 1940s as African Americans rallied around black women who had been sexually abused, no matter their class status. Recy Taylor was a struggling sharecropper, yet her case served as the catalyst for a national campaign. In 1947 the NAACP and the National Council of Negro Women\u2014both solid, middle-class organizations\u2014stood by Rosa Lee Ingram despite the fact that she was poor and had a dozen children. Gertrude Perkins was hardly a model of respectable womanhood, but Montgomery's middle-class black ministers rallied to her defense, risking their livelihoods, if not their lives, to help preserve her dignity and bodily integrity.\n\nFive years later, amid rising white opposition to _Brown_ and growing anti-Communism at home and abroad, African Americans found themselves hemmed in politically. As Southern McCarthyites equated black self-assertion with a Marxist plot to destroy America, the WCC and the KKK claimed desegregation efforts would lead to \"mongrelization\" and \"amalgamation.\" The powerful cocktail of anti-Communism, white supremacy, and sexualized propaganda and paranoia enabled whites to push aside or even kill African Americans who asserted their humanity. By February 1956, forty thousand white Alabamians, many from Montgomery, joined the Citizens' Council crusade, helping to launch the \"massive resistance\" movement. Mayor Gayle and other city commissioners, not to mention state senators, proudly proclaimed solidarity and allegiance to the WCC as it became the \"mouthpiece of southern defiance.\" E. D. Nixon undoubtedly sensed this hysteria when he refused to raise a pregnant teenager up as the symbol of the integration struggle. In mid-1950s Alabama, he had to find someone whose class background, moral reputation, and public record could withstand withering white scrutiny and inspire African-American unity.\n\nBecause she was so perfect for the role, it is tempting to think that Rosa Parks's famous stand against segregation was a planned protest. She was, as historian J. Mills Thornton argues, \"more actively involved in the struggle against racial discrimination, and more knowledgeable about efforts being made to eliminate it, than all but a tiny handful of the city's forty-five thousand black citizens.\" She knew Nixon was searching for a \"plaintiff who was beyond reproach\" and was certain he would support her, since she fit his qualifications of respectability. But it is unlikely that she planned a protest. Instead, when Rosa Parks had an opportunity to resist, she seized it. Her decision to stay put that fateful day was rooted in her history as a radical activist and years of witnessing injustice\u2014from Recy Taylor to Gertrude Perkins to Jeremiah Reeves. She had grown up in the Garvey movement. She and her husband had labored in the Scottsboro struggle as a young married couple. In 1944 her investigation of the Recy Taylor case launched a national crusade. For more than a decade, her work with the NAACP, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and other groups placed her at the center of Montgomery's black freedom struggle. Her decision to keep her seat on December 1, 1955, was less a mystery than a moment.\n\nRosa Parks at a desegregation workshop at Highlander Folk School in July 1955, five months before the Montgomery bus boycott began. Seated to her right is Frederick Douglass Patterson, former president of Tuskegee University, founder of the United Negro College Fund, and supporter of the 1944\u201345 Recy Taylor campaign. (photo credit 3.1)\n\nRosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus on December 1, 1955, and slipped into a seat near the middle of the bus\u2014an area passengers referred to as \"no-man's-land\" because it was not designated white or black. When the ruddy-faced bus driver saw her seated there, he yelled, \"Let me have those front seats.\" Parks sat still. \"Make it light on yourself,\" he shouted, \"and let me have those seats!\" Parks recognized the driver immediately. It was James F. Blake, the same operator who had mistreated her in 1943. She turned to look out the window and ignored Blake's order. \"I couldn't see how standing up was going to 'make it light' for me,\" she said later. \"The more we gave in and complied, the worse they treated us.\"\n\nWhen Blake stepped off the bus to call the police, Rosa Parks remained calm, though she knew better than anyone what kind of danger she faced. She had twelve years of notes on nearly every case of racial brutality in and around Montgomery. There was no way to be without fear, but she held herself steady. As she waited, perhaps she conjured up the spirit of her grandfather, who sat up many nights with a double-barreled shotgun to protect their little home from the Klan in Pine Level, Alabama.\n\nParks also recalled the ten days she had spent in the company of the South's most active reformers at the Highlander Folk School, a training center for labor and civil rights activists in Tennessee. Her experience at Highlander in the summer of 1955 was a highlight in her career as an activist and one of the first times she said she did not \"feel hostility from white people.\" She had been reluctant to leave that interracial island, and now she found herself stranded on a city bus, about to be arrested\u2014or worse.\n\nTwo white police officers, F. B. Day and D. W. Mixon, climbed onto the bus and ambled toward Parks. One asked why she refused to give up her seat. \"Why do you all push us around?\" she shot back.\n\n\"I do not know,\" the officer replied, \"but the law is the law and you're under arrest.\" The officers picked up her purse and shopping bags, escorted her to their squad car, and drove her to the city jail.\n\nNews that her daughter was in jail must have sent shivers down Leona McCauley's spine. Rosa's mother had been a member of the NAACP since 1943 and had worked with her daughter on the Recy Taylor case in 1944; she must have known about Gertrude Perkins, Flossie Hardman, and the other women who were abused in and around Montgomery. Parks was vulnerable every minute she was in jail. When she finally called home, her mother immediately asked, \"Did they beat you?\" That these were her first words speaks volumes about the context of Parks's protest.\n\nIf E. D. Nixon shared Leona McCauley's fears, he kept them hidden. Instead, he seemed positively jubilant. \"That's it!\" Nixon shouted after he heard about the arrest, then picked up the telephone to spread the good news. Johnnie Carr, Parks's childhood friend and fellow NAACP member, was one of the first people on Nixon's list. \"Mrs. Carr,\" Nixon said gravely, \"they have arrested the wrong woman.\"\n\n\"Who have they arrested?\" she asked.\n\n\"Rosa Parks!\" Nixon replied, barely able to contain his glee.\n\n\"You're kidding,\" Carr said.\n\n\"No,\" he chuckled, \"they arrested Rosa Parks. They arrested the wrong woman!\"\n\nUnlike Claudette Colvin or Mary Louise Smith, Parks was the _perfect_ woman to rally around. \"She was secretary for everything I had going,\" Nixon told reporters, \"the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the NAACP, Alabama Voters' League, all those things.\" Plus, he said, she could \"stand on her feet, she was honest, she was clean, she had integrity. The press couldn't go out and dig up something she did last year, or last month, or five years ago. They couldn't hang nothing like that on Rosa Parks.\" As long as Nixon could persuade Parks to press charges, she could serve as the symbol of segregation in court, and Nixon and attorney Fred Gray could use her arrest to strike a blow at Jim Crow.\n\nOnly her husband stood in the way. In the 1950s this was no small obstacle. Raymond Parks begged his wife to turn Nixon down. \"Oh Rosa, Rosa, don't do it, don't do it,\" he pleaded. \"The white folks will kill you.\" Though his days as a defender of the Scottsboro boys had passed and he no longer held secret, armed meetings in the middle of the night, he knew something about the risks entailed in protesting white supremacy. He was certainly not ready to sacrifice his wife.\n\nWhen Jo Ann Robinson heard that Parks had been arrested, she did not wait for Nixon's approval to launch a boycott; nor did she ask Rosa and Raymond Parks what they thought. Instead, she planned the kind of protest that members of the Women's Political Council had been demanding. \"The Women's Political Council will not wait for Mrs. Parks's consent to call for a boycott of city buses,\" Robinson scribbled on the back of an envelope as soon as she heard the news. \"On Friday, December 2, 1955, the women of Montgomery will call for a boycott to take place on Monday, December 5.\"\n\nRobinson quickly drafted a more detailed announcement, called John Cannon, her colleague at Alabama State University, and asked for access to the college's mimeograph machines. Cannon agreed, adding that he had been mistreated on the buses one too many times. As darkness fell across campus, Cannon, Robinson, and two student assistants met in a basement office. There they copied, cut, and bundled 52,500 flyers. Only the rising sun and the fear of being caught chased them home.\n\nThe flyers announced the boycott, promoting it as an effort to protect black womanhood:\n\n_Another Negro woman_ has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. _The next time it may be you, or your daughter or mother_. This woman's case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday... Please stay off all buses Monday.\n\nIn the early morning hours, Robinson called her foot soldiers in the WPC and told them it was time for their long-planned protest. She explained the distribution routes they had sketched out for delivering the announcement. Before breakfast on Friday, December 2, Dr. Mary Fair Burks, Mrs. Mary Cross, Mrs. Elizabeth Arrington, Mrs. Josie Lawrence, Mrs. Geraldine Nesbitt, Mrs. Catherine N. Johnson, and a dozen other women waited on street corners for Robinson and her student helpers to hand over the huge stacks of flyers. The women delivered the notices to schools and storefronts, beauty parlors and beer halls, barbershops and businesses. By midafternoon, \"practically every black man, woman, and child in Montgomery knew the plan and was passing the word along,\" Robinson said. \"No one knew where the notices had come from or who had arranged them and no one cared.\" Just before she rallied her troops, Robinson called Nixon to let him in on the news. This time he could not say no. Of course, he had no such intention.\n\nNeither did Rosa Parks. Despite her husband's pleas, she decided that the benefits of a legal battle and a boycott outweighed any personal risks. \"There had to be a stopping place,\" she said, \"and this seemed to be the place for me to stop being pushed around. I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama.\" Parks told her husband about her decision and gave Nixon permission to go ahead with the legal case, both defying gender roles as a dutiful wife, and defining them by agreeing to serve as a model of dignified womanhood in court.\n\nFrom that moment forward, Rosa Parks's history as an activist and defiant race woman disappeared from public view. Nixon and others promoted her as a model of the middle-class ideals of \"chastity, Godliness, family responsibility, and proper womanly conduct and demeanor.\" She was the kind of woman around whom all African Americans in Montgomery could unite. She was \"humble enough to be claimed by the common folk,\" Taylor Branch notes, and \"dignified enough in manner, speech, and dress to command the respect of the leading classes.\" Though Parks was far from a bruised blossom in need of chivalry, her role as a symbol of virtuous black womanhood was decisive in Montgomery as even the most reluctant middle-class ministers rallied to her defense.\n\nThe day after Parks was arrested, more than fifty black activists and community leaders gathered in the basement of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to hash out conflicting ideas about Jo Ann Robinson's call for a boycott. The debate was fierce, with some ministers refusing to be part of the boycott. But Parks's presence and her moving appeal to the ministers to do something about the long-standing abuse of black women in Montgomery brought unity. Undoubtedly, members of the Women's Political Council echoed her sentiments. Many of the ministers and political leaders, according to the historian Douglas Brinkley, \"did not want to be on record as abandoning a good Christian woman in need.\" They decided to put aside their differences to \"embrace 'Sister Rosa' \" by \"promising to promote the one-day boycott in their Sunday sermons.\" Parks's iconic role as the respectable, even saintly heroine played a role in the wider political world and was crucial at the birth of the boycott. Because it was the first Sunday of the month, parishioners filled almost all the pews in Montgomery's black churches. Ministers decried the arrest of Rosa Parks and urged congregants to join in the one-day boycott on Monday, December 5, and assemble afterward at the Holt Street Baptist Church for further instructions.\n\nMonday December 5, 1955, was a rainy, bone-cold day. Robinson and others worried that the downpour would dampen the one-day protest, but those fears quickly dissipated as empty buses began rolling through Montgomery's rain-soaked streets. Rosa Parks awoke early and watched the normally packed Cleveland Avenue bus whiz past her house without a single passenger. Parks felt vindicated. \"I could feel that whatever my individual desires were to be free,\" she said later, \"I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way.\" Like Parks, Johnnie Carr watched with satisfaction as the empty buses splashed through intersections. She even decided to trail one in her car. They \"didn't pick up a single soul,\" she remembered with glee. \"They were just moving down the street empty.\" When Parks and Carr saw the sidewalks clogged with black women under dark umbrellas walking to work or waiting for a ride, they were elated.\n\nMontgomery officials, who did not share the excitement, inadvertently boosted boycott participation. Surely, they reasoned, the near-universal abandonment of the buses by their happy Negroes must reflect coercion by agitators. The city assigned police escorts to bus routes in black neighborhoods in order to \"protect Negro riders\" from potential \"goon squads.\" If any black women were tempted to get on the bus that miserable Monday morning, the sight of police with shotguns surrounding the buses can only have strengthened their resolve.\n\nConfident that the one-day boycott was going to be successful, Parks readied to play her part in court. \"I knew what I had to do,\" she recalled. \"I remember very clearly that I wore a straight, long-sleeved black dress with a white collar and cuffs, a small black velvet hat with pearls across the top, and a charcoal-gray coat. I carried a black purse and wore white gloves.\" Her conservative, Puritan-like clothing\u2014and her memory of exactly what she wore forty years later\u2014indicated a keen understanding of the importance of the politics of respectability.\n\nFlanked by E. D. Nixon and her two attorneys, Fred Gray and Charles Langford, Rosa Parks ascended the courthouse steps with confidence and grace. Her elegant deportment made quite an impression on the five hundred supporters who crowded the steps of Montgomery's city hall, many of whom were her charges in the NAACP Youth Council. Mary Frances, one of the girls in the crowd, saw Parks and shouted, \"Oh, she's so sweet! They've messed with the wrong one now.\" Frances and others began to chant \"They've messed with the wrong one now\" as Nixon, Parks, and her attorneys, both in their best Sunday suits, waded through the throng of supporters and disappeared into the crowded courtroom.\n\nThe trial lasted no more than five minutes. Judge John B. Scott quickly found Parks guilty of violating the state segregation law, despite the fact that she had been arrested for violating the _city's_ segregation ordinance. He then gave her a suspended sentence and fined her fourteen dollars. As Parks turned and walked briskly out of the courtroom, two policemen scurried to her side. She and Nixon walked down a long hallway to the city clerk's office to sign an appeal bond. Gray and Langford stayed behind to file an appeal. The sight of police officers escorting Parks sent the crowd into hysterics. They surged, crowding around Parks so she could hardly move. \"It was the first time I had seen so much courage among our people,\" Nixon recalled. Despite his excitement, he urged calm. \"Everything is all right,\" he said, gesturing toward the heavily armed policemen who suddenly lined the hall. \"Keep calm because we don't want to do anything to make that man use the shotgun.\" After Nixon signed the bond and handed Parks to her husband, he turned to the angry crowd and told them to go home. \"Don't hang around,\" he urged, \"because all they want is some excuse to kill somebody.\"\n\nParks asked her husband to drop her off at Fred Gray's office to work the phones for the rest of the afternoon. Meanwhile, Gray, E. D. Nixon, Ralph Abernathy, Reverend E. N. French, and a handful of other ministers assembled in the basement of the Mt. Zion AME Zion Church to hammer out a plan for that evening's mass meeting. They needed a name and a president for their new organization. Nixon suggested the Citizens Coordinating Committee, a kind of amalgam of titles from previous campaigns to protect black women like Recy Taylor and Gertrude Perkins. Ralph Abernathy, the young Baptist minister in town, wrinkled his nose at the suggestion. \"No, I don't like that,\" he said. \"What about the Montgomery Improvement Association?\" \"That sounds good,\" Reverend French, pastor of the Hilliard AME Zion Church, said. \"I believe I can go along with that.\" Abernathy then turned to Nixon. \"Brother Nixon, you going to serve as president, ain't you?\" Nixon smiled. \"Not unlessen you don't accept the man I got in mind.\"\n\nReverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was only twenty-six years old, virtually unknown outside his upper-crust congregation at Dexter Avenue Baptist. But everyone who met him knew he was good-looking, intelligent, and eloquent. To Nixon, however, the crucial fact was that King was not beholden to anyone, white or black. \"He didn't have to bow to the power structure,\" Nixon recalled. \"So many ministers accept a handout, and then they owe their soul.\" King had not even had the opportunity to sell out. \"He had not been here long enough for the city fathers to put their hands on him,\" as Nixon put it.\n\nAlthough historians would later argue that Nixon wanted to be president of the MIA and that Rufus Lewis, Nixon's chief political rival, engineered King's nomination, Nixon and other established leaders in Montgomery were not eager to take on what in all likelihood would be a short-lived and dangerous exercise. After all, their plans called only for a one-day boycott. No one knew what would happen next, but most were confident it would not include glory or fame. Though they all knew a moment had come, no one suspected that _the_ moment had come.\n\nThough Nixon was happy to let King head the MIA, he did not shrink from bold leadership. When some ministers suggested that their names remain secret to protect themselves and their families from white retribution, Nixon exploded in anger. \"They was talking about slipping around, didn't want the white folks to know,\" Nixon recalled. \"How you going to run a bus boycott in secret?\" he demanded. Then, using language that, as Nixon put it, \"wasn't in the Sunday school books,\" he chastised the timid preachers. \"How the hell you going to have a protest without letting the white folks know? What's the matter with you people?\" he asked, flabbergasted by their cowardice. \"Here you have been living off the sweat of these washwomen all these years, and you have never done anything for them. Now you have a chance to pay them back. And you're too damn scared to stand on your feet and be counted.\" Scolding the black ministers for shirking their manly duties, he dared them to rise up in defense of black womanhood. \"We've worn aprons all our lives,\" he said. \"It's time to take the aprons off... If we gonna be mens, now's the time to be mens.\"\n\nNixon's tirade may have convinced the ministers to stand up for black women, but it did not mean they planned to share leadership with them. Indeed, Jo Ann Robinson and Rosa Parks, the two women who made the boycott possible, were not at the meeting where the Montgomery Improvement Association was born and Martin Luther King, Jr., was chosen as its president. Whether Nixon and others simply forgot to include Robinson and Parks or explicitly excluded them is not known. It was not until the mass meeting that night that Robinson realized her leadership had been subverted. \"The men took it over,\" she said. They had \"definitely decided to assume leadership.\"\n\nThat night, December 5, 1955, more than five thousand African Americans squeezed into the sanctuary, the balcony, and the basement annex at the Holt Street Baptist Church. A wave of bodies spilled out the double doors and clogged six blocks of city sidewalks outside. Cars jammed the streets surrounding the modest church, unable to move even an inch. Volunteers set up loudspeakers so that the throngs of people clamoring unsuccessfully for a seat could stand outside and hear Nixon, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other ministers make their debut as \"mens.\" The moment was electrifying.\n\nKing started slowly, speaking about the murky nature of segregation laws, then began to rock the crowd with his incredible oratory, bringing a steady stream of \"yeses\" and \"amens.\" When King praised Parks, the audience applauded and cheered on their new heroine. \"And since it had to happen,\" King declared, \"I'm happy that it happened to a person like Mrs. Parks.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" the crowd shouted.\n\n\"Nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity,\" King said.\n\n\"Sure enough,\" someone in the audience yelled.\n\n\"Nobody can doubt the height of her character; nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus.\"\n\n\"Yes!\" roared the crowd.\n\n\"Nobody can call [Rosa Parks] a disturbing factor in the community... She is a fine Christian person, unassuming, and yet there is integrity and character there.\"\n\nThe crowd, undulating in call and response, shouted, \"All right!\"\n\nThen, in the gospel tradition of turning one person's burden into a shared experience, King spoke to everyone who had been mistreated on the buses or humiliated by segregation. \"There comes a time,\" he began, his voice steady and even, then rising, \"when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.\" A roar of approval rolled over the crowd. \"There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair.\" As emotions swelled and the applause shook the rafters of the old church, King reached a crescendo: \"There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.\" The amazing thunder of sound\u2014clapping, screaming, and foot stomping, drowned King out.\n\nHe had touched a nerve. In those few sentences, King captured the soul-deep sense of humiliation and degradation that the mostly working-class audience of maids, cooks, teachers, and day laborers undoubtedly felt. The language King employed to describe the effect of mistreatment on the buses\u2014\"abyss of humiliation\" and \"nagging despair\"\u2014speaks to the way racial and sexual subjugation conspire to steal a person's humanity. It is no surprise that the audience erupted in raw emotion. King then skillfully moved to control the anger and enthusiasm, to remind the audience that they had the power\u2014through Christian love, faith, and unity\u2014to overthrow the system that had oppressed them for so long.\n\nAfter King's momentous speech, Reverend E. N. French stepped onto the pulpit and presented Rosa Parks to the crowd. If there was one woman in Montgomery who could testify to the decades of injustice under Jim Crow, it was Rosa Parks. Not only could she speak about her own mistreatment and abuse on the buses\u2014something that so many of the women assembled together shared\u2014she could also place her arrest in the long history of crimes committed by whites against blacks, something of which she had intimate knowledge.\n\nJust before Reverend French presented Rosa Parks to the crowd, she asked him if the men in charge that night wanted her to say a few words. French told her that she had \"had enough and [had] said enough and you don't have to speak.\" She nodded and they walked toward the front of the church. \"I have the responsibility,\" Reverend French proclaimed to the pulsating crowd, \"to present to you the victim of this gross injustice, almost inhumanity, and absolute undemocratic principle, Mrs. Rosa Parks.\" The audience erupted in applause as she stood silent before them.\n\nWe can only wonder what Rosa Parks might have said that night in front of throngs of supporters and fellow sufferers. Perhaps she would have spoken about the abuses suffered by Recy Taylor, Gertrude Perkins, Flossie Hardman, Claudette Colvin, and so many of the women present that night, conjuring up a collective spirit of defiance and self-defense. She might have called on her decades of experience defending ordinary black Alabamians from white terror and her long struggle for human rights to remind her peers of their long and continuing struggle for justice and to push for mass action. Her testimony could have changed the way she was received and forever remembered.\n\nBecause Reverend French and the ministers leading the mass meeting that night silenced Parks, they turned her into the kind of woman she wasn't: a quiet victim and solemn symbol. From that moment forward Parks was sainted and celebrated for her quiet dignity, prim demeanor, and middle-class propriety, her radicalism all but erased as she became the Madonna of Montgomery. She \"looked like a symbol of Mother's Day,\" L. D. Reddick, a history professor at Alabama State, proclaimed, though Parks was neither a mother nor, at just forty-two years old, matronly. The deliberate construction of Rosa Parks as a symbol of virtuous black womanhood began that evening. Reverend Abernathy said as much: \"Mrs. Rosa Parks was presented to the mass meeting because we wanted her to become symbolic of our protest meeting.\"\n\nUnlike Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, Parks's respectability gave credibility to the nascent Montgomery Improvement Association, minimized controversy, and allowed African Americans to claim the moral high ground in what would become an all-out war against white supremacy. At the same time, they protected themselves and Parks by playing down her radicalism, which would have encouraged opposition, if not outright violence, in an environment poisoned by anti-Communist paranoia and the racist rhetoric of White Citizens' Councils.\n\nThe presentation of Parks as a woman worthy of protection enabled African-American ministers and male leaders, most of whom had been resistant to the WPC's calls for a boycott, to take credit for and assume leadership of the boycott. By stepping forward, they could fulfill their manly duty to defend black womanhood, a role that white supremacy had denied them for centuries. Jo Ann Robinson, who complained in her memoir about black men's inability or unwillingness to protect black women from abuse and mistreatment on the buses, understood the enormous symbolism displayed at the Holt Street Baptist Church that night when the leading black men of the community claimed leadership and, as Nixon put it, removed their \"aprons.\" The ministers, Robinson noted, were finally \"catching up with their congregations.\"\n\nIf the ministers caught up with their congregations by assuming the leadership of the MIA, black women, who filled the majority of the pews that evening and every mass meeting thereafter, kept the MIA and the bus boycott running. Although newspapers focused on King as the leader and ministers' names lined the MIA's letterhead, Robinson made sure that she, along with Mrs. A. W. West, a wealthy eighty-year-old widow and WPC member, and Rosa Parks served on the executive committee. In fact, it was Robinson, \"more than any other person,\" according to King, who \"was active on every level of protest.\" As long as WPC members handled the day-to-day business of the boycott, Jo Ann Robinson did not challenge the MIA's male leadership. \"We felt it would be better,\" Robinson said, \"if the ministers held the most visible leadership positions.\"\n\nRobinson stacked the MIA staff with her own WPC members, guaranteeing control of the boycott's daily operations. She chose each woman carefully. Mrs. Erna Dungee, a \"sophisticated, socially involved woman,\" was the MIA's financial secretary and worked for the boycott full time. Mrs. Maude Ballou became Martin Luther King's personal secretary. Ballou, a quiet and dedicated worker, earned King's trust, Robinson recalled, by \"never remembering\" any of his business. Mrs. Martha Johnson was the MIA's secretary clerk. She assisted all the other leaders of the MIA and \"never got two persons' business mixed up.\" Mrs. Hazel Gregory served as the general overseer of the MIA. She knew \"where everything was, never got anything mixed up, and could get what was needed immediately,\" Robinson remembered fondly. Gregory's position also included \"managing the business and taking care of the building where the MIA was housed.\" Only at the podium did women take a backseat in the boycott.\n\nThe public face of the boycott belied the crucial role Jo Ann Robinson played in making it a success. During an interview with Rufus Lewis on January 20, 1956, Donald T. Ferron, an oral historian from Fisk University, questioned the leadership of the boycott in his notes. \"The public recognizes Reverend King as _the_ leader,\" he wrote, \"but I wonder if Mrs. Robinson may be of equal importance. The organizational process is being kept secret, as well as the organizers.\"\n\nIt was Jo Ann Robinson, not Martin Luther King, Jr., who served as the chief strategist for the Montgomery Improvement Association. She negotiated with city leaders and bus company officials, edited the MIA newsletter, and ferried African Americans to and from work for nearly 381 days, all while holding down a full-time teaching job at Alabama State. \"Few realize how much Jo Ann did,\" Fred Gray recalled. Hardly anyone knew, for example, that \"much of the activity... occurred at Jo Ann Robinson's house.\"\n\nThe enormous spotlight that focused on King, combined with the construction of Rosa Parks as a saintly symbol, hid the women's long struggle in the dimly lit background, obscuring the origins of the MIA and erasing women from the movement. For decades, the Montgomery bus boycott has been told as a story triggered by Rosa Parks's spontaneous refusal to give up her seat followed by the triumphant leadership of men like Fred Gray, Martin Luther King, Jr., E. D. Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy. While these men had a major impact on the emerging protest movement, it was black women's decade-long struggle against mistreatment and abuse by white bus drivers and police officers that launched the boycott. Without an appreciation for the particular predicaments of black women in the Jim Crow South, it is nearly impossible to understand _why_ thousands of working-class and hundreds of middle-class black women chose to walk rather than ride the bus for 381 days.\n\nAfrican-American women were the backbone of the Montgomery bus boycott. Here black women walk to work in February 1956. (photo credit 3.2)\n\nWomen walked, Parks claimed in an interview in April 1956, not merely in support of her but because she \"was not the only person who had been mistreated and humiliated... Other women had gone through similarly shameful experiences,\" Parks said, \"some even worse than mine.\" These experiences propelled African-American women into every conceivable aspect of the boycott. African-American women of means, professional women like Jo Ann Robinson, and society women like Irene West brought their own gifts to the boycott, even though many did not ride the buses. Erna Dungee, MIA financial secretary, said women \"really were the ones who carried out the actions... We organized the parking lot pick-ups... drove the cars,\" and did \"the little day-to-day things, taking care of the finances, things like that. When all the dust settled,\" she told an interviewer, \"the women were there when it cleared. They were there in the positions to hold the MIA together.\"\n\nClass status did not dictate women's roles. More than any single individual, the city's domestic workers put the Montgomery City Lines out of business. \"The maids, the cooks, they were the ones that really and truly kept the buses running,\" Georgia Gilmore recalled. \"And after the maids and the cooks stopped riding the bus,\" she added, \"well, the bus didn't have any need to run.\"\n\nDuring the first few months of the boycott, Willie M. Lee, a researcher from Fisk University, went to Montgomery to figure out why so many domestic workers were determined to stay off the buses. \"I'll crawl on my knees 'fo I get back on dem buses,\" one woman said while waiting at a carpool dispatch center. Her friend agreed, \"I ain't 'bout to get on dem buses... I'll walk twenty miles 'fo I ride 'em.\" Irene Stovall, a mother and domestic servant, told Lee that she was \"never gon git back on dem ole buses\" because the bus drivers sexually harassed her. They \"say nasty thangs and dey talk under folks' clothes,\" Stovall said. \"They ain't gittin no more of my dimes.\"\n\nA tall, stately maid named Mrs. Beatrice Charles told Lee a long story about why she refused to ride the buses. She said she was staying off the buses because the abuse black women suffered had \"been happening since [she] came here before the war.\" Bus drivers \"make you get up so white men could sit down,\" she testified. \"But we are sure fixing 'em now and I hope we don't ever start back riding. It'll teach them how to treat us,\" she said. \"We people, we are not dogs or cats.\" Then she told Lee about a recent dispute with her white employer, Mrs. Prentiss. When Prentiss asked her if she rode the bus, Mrs. Charles replied, \"I sure didn't.\"\n\nPrentiss seemed shocked at the woman's brazen response. \"Why, Beatrice, they haven't done anything to you,\" she said.\n\n\"Listen, Mrs. Prentiss,\" Charles replied, \"you don't ride the bus, you don't know how those ole nasty drivers treat us and further when you do something to my people you do it to me too... I don't have anything in my heart but hatred for those bus drivers.\"\n\nMrs. Prentiss attempted to mitigate her employee's anger by arguing that she had \"always been nice\" and then added, \"I just can't see white and colored riding together on the buses.\" \"It just wouldn't come to a good end,\" Prentiss proclaimed. Prentiss hinted at the underlying fears white Southerners harbored after the _Brown_ decision. Many worried that bus integration was merely an entr\u00e9e to \"social equality\" or interracial sex. For example, Sam Englehardt, the local leader of the Citizens' Council, warned whites in February 1956 that the bus boycott was \"piddling stuff.\" What protesters are really after, he insisted, was \"complete integration, even to intermarriage.\"\n\nThree police officers watch a group of African-American women waiting at a carpool pick-up location. The Montgomery Improvement Association set up an alternate transportation system that utilized more than three hundred private cars to carry thousands of passengers to and from work each day. (photo credit 3.3)\n\nBeatrice Charles set Mrs. Prentiss straight about who wanted to sleep with whom. \"You people started it way back in slavery,\" she said. \"If you hadn't wanted segregation, you shouldn't got us all mixed up in color... Right now I can sit on my porch and when it starts getting dark, I can look down the street by those trees and see colored women get in the cars with policemen. And what about that colored boy who had to leave town 'cause that white woman out here was going crazy about him? So you can't tell me that it's over.\" By bringing up the issue of white men prowling around black neighborhoods searching for black women, and the double standard applied to black men caught with white women, Mrs. Charles gave voice to the sexual and racial components of the protest movement.\n\nWhen Mrs. Prentiss threatened to participate in the White Citizens' Council's plan to starve the maids for a month, her maid laughed. \"I sure won't starve. You see, my husband is a railroad man, my son and daughter have good jobs, and my daddy keep plenty of food on his farm. So I'm not worried at all, 'cause I was eating before I started working for you.\"\n\nBeatrice Charles spoke for many women who beamed with a new sense of what Martin Luther King, Jr., called _\"somebodyness_.\" Jo Ann Robinson articulated that newfound sense of power and pride at a mass meeting in late March 1956. \"The whole world is watching the boycott,\" she said with glee. \"The whole world respects us... You go downtown now and people show respect. Negroes are proud now, they hold their heads high and strut,\" Robinson said. \"I have never been so proud to be a Negro.\" Martin Luther King, Jr., often rhapsodized about a \"New Negro\" emerging out of the black freedom movement who replaced self-pity with self-respect and self-doubt with dignity. \"In Montgomery,\" he boasted, \"we walk in a new way. We hold our heads in a new way.\"\n\nThe fear that had immobilized African Americans for so long seemed to disappear as the boycott continued into its second month. This sentiment was audible at the many carpool pick-up locations around Montgomery, where domestics gathered to wait for rides from black volunteers. Willie Lee listened in on many of these conversations, recording them for posterity. \"We got these white folks where we want 'em,\" Dealy Cooksey, a forty-year-old domestic servant, said. \"Dere ain't nothing dey can do but try to scare us. But we ain't rabbit no more,\" she warned, \"we done turned coon... It's just as many of us as the white folks and dey better watch out what they do.\"\n\nMrs. Allen Wright, a forty-five-year-old cook, agreed. \"They bit off more than they can chew when they put one of our fine ladies in jail,\" she proclaimed. \"Clyde Sellers [the new police commissioner] might as well give up,\" she said, \" 'cause we ain't gonna be pushed down no more. Our eyes is open and dey gonna stay open.\"\n\nAt least one woman in the group threatened to meet white resistance with violence. Whites \"think they bad 'cause they got guns,\" Willie May Wallace, a store maid, argued, \"but I sho hope they know how to use 'em, 'cause if they don't, I'll eat 'em up with my razor.\" A white man \"bet not come up on me and hit me 'cause... he'll be in pieces so fast he won't know what hit him.\" Then Wallace told Lee a story about her confrontation with a white female co-worker. When Wallace told her colleague that she was never going to ride the buses again, the white woman \"bristled all up lack she wanted to hit me,\" the maid said. But \"I told her... a white woman ain't been born that would hit me and live.\" Even though the police may come, she boasted, \"when they do you'll be three D: Dead, Damned and Delivered.\" The maid was proud to note that \"that huzzy ain't did nothing but spoke to me since den. When they fine you ain't scared of 'em,\" she chortled, \"they leave you 'lone. Son-of-a-bitches.\"\n\nAt the weekly mass meetings, hundreds of African Americans gathered to renew spirits and reenergize tired bodies. Photographs of the crowds invariably reveal large female majorities. Here they shared their stories of defiance and testified about their degradation, transforming bitter memories and shame into weapons of protest. Reverend Robert Graetz, a white minister who became active in the bus boycott, recalled that when women told their stories, the \"people would cheer\" for their new heroines. The \"maids were the soldiers,\" he said. \"They rallied the leaders.\"\n\nAt an evening assembly in March 1956, one woman stood up and said she was with the protest because she had been called a \"nigger\" on the bus. Worse, she argued, \"I was asked to give a white _man_ a seat,\" she said. \"I am filled up to my bones, in this, it's way down in my bones and when there ain't no protest,\" she said, offering a profound defense of her humanity, \"I'm still gonna have it. I'm still gonna have my protest.\" After her moving testimony, the congregation sang the Negro spiritual \"Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen,\" translating the troubles they had all seen into \"Glory, Hallelujah.\"\n\nAfrican-American women filled the pews at weekly mass meetings. (photo credit 3.4)\n\nWomen at the mass meetings demanded that they be treated like human beings, worthy of protection and respect. The male leaders of the boycott made sure that women's actions were celebrated in the community. One minister praised a group of women whom he saw \"walking in pride and dignity.\" They \"would do justice to any queen,\" he declared. Another preacher honored the \"ancient\" Mother Pollard, a well-known elderly black woman, who refused to accept a ride or an exemption from the boycott because of her frailty. \"My feets is tired,\" she said, \"but my soul is rested.\" These weekly testimonies gave boycotters a sense of worth and agency and united the \"walking city\" as individual burdens were universalized and spread out over the whole.\n\nThe mass meetings fostered a sense of community that did not exist before the boycott. \"Everybody walked together. We rode together,\" Zelia Evans, a teacher at Alabama State and WPC member, recalled. \"There was a togetherness that I hadn't seen before. We had suffered and sacrificed so long,\" she added, \"we were ready... to support a movement.\" \"It was the first time in the history of Montgomery,\" Robert Nesbitt, the secretary for the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, recalled, \"that all the ministers threw away their little egos... and united.\"\n\nIn order to fund the daily operations of the Montgomery Improvement Association and finance the expensive alternative transportation system, Montgomery's African Americans had to raise enormous amounts of money. A fleet of nearly three hundred private automobiles picked up passengers at forty-two locations and ferried the former bus riders around town. The city's black social clubs held dances and sponsored activities to raise funds. Black churches took up a collection every Sunday. The Federated Women's Clubs threw parties to raise needed cash, and women went door to door, canvassing neighborhoods for donations. Their efforts paid off. Within the first few months of the boycott, when donations from outside organizations like the national NAACP were rare, members of the MIA raised a quarter of a million dollars, primarily from local blacks.\n\nThe most consistent local fund-raiser was Mrs. Georgia Gilmore, a nurse, midwife, and defiant mother of six, who used her experience as a cook to raise money. Gilmore was a \"pretty, smooth-complexioned black woman as large in kindness as she [was] in body,\" said B. J. Simms, leader of the MIA's transportation system. But, he warned, \"don't rub her the wrong way. Would you believe that this charming woman once beat up a white man who had mistreated one of her children?\" he asked. \"He owned a grocery store and Mrs. Gilmore marched into his place and wrung him out!\"\n\nGilmore had a long history of standing up for herself and fighting for justice. She refused to follow bus drivers' demands and insisted on being treated with dignity. A Montgomery minister recalled Gilmore's reputation: \"Even the white police officers let her be,\" he said. \"The word was 'Don't mess with Georgia Gilmore, she might cut you.' \" \"But Lord,\" he reminisced, \"that woman could cook.\" When the MIA announced its plan to boycott the buses for one day, Gilmore immediately called her friends and enlisted their talents for the boycott.\n\n\"What we could do best,\" Gilmore proudly declared, \"was cook.\" That day, Gilmore recalled, she and a handful of her friends \"collected fourteen dollars amongst ourselves and bought chickens, bread and lettuce and started cooking... We made a bundle of sandwiches,\" she said, to sell at the mass meetings at Holt Street Baptist Church. From there Gilmore and her fellow chefs began preparing and selling full dinners, pies, and cakes. They called themselves the Club from Nowhere.\n\nThe ambiguous club name was strategic: it helped safeguard the women from \"the police and laws\" who, Gilmore complained, \"go around trailing our members and giving them traffic tickets the way they were doing with so many colored folk.\" And it provided anonymity when selling their wares. Each day the women sold their savory sandwiches and chicken dinners door to door and to hungry downtown workers, black and white. \"When we'd raise as much as three hundred dollars for a Monday night rally,\" Gilmore explained, \"then we knowed we was on our way for five hundred on Thursday night.\"\n\nWhen the call for collections came at weekly mass meetings, Gilmore would stand up and shout, \"We're the Club from Nowhere!\" and walk the women's profits up to the front of the church. Gilmore's proud strolls to the collection plate became one of the most anticipated weekly rituals. As Gilmore strutted back to her seat, boycotters rattled the church rafters with \"dignified applause, foot stomping, and exclamations of 'Aaaamen, Amen!' \" The excitement and support for the Club from Nowhere, Gilmore explained, encouraged \"other ordinary folks\" to do \"the same thing in their neighborhoods\u2014competing with us to raise more than us.\"\n\nIt was hard to compete with the Club from Nowhere. They raised \"maybe a hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars or more a week,\" Gilmore recalled. Inez Ricks, a black woman who lived on the other side of town, was up for the challenge. When she set up a competing women's club, the Friendly Club, the rivalry heated up. The collegial competition enlivened the meetings while inspiring other women.\n\nGilmore and her Club from Nowhere \"represented more than the actual cash they contributed each week,\" B. J. Simms insisted. \"This fine woman and her team represented the grass-roots type of support and enthusiasm that launched the boycott and kept it moving to the very end.\" Without support from working-class women like Gilmore, the bus boycott would have failed. And yet Gilmore, like all the women who risked their lives and livelihoods to make the thirteen-month protest possible, has been relegated to the footnotes of history. \"We made the world take notice of black folks in Montgomery,\" Gilmore said, but now \"we're all in the Club from Nowhere.\" Simms agreed. \"Most of the people who made indispensable contributions\" to the boycott, he argued, \"were soon forgotten and today are ignored as nobodies from nowhere.\"\n\nThose \"nobodies\" made the Montgomery movement possible by finding \"ingenious ways to keep the boycott alive.\" Though ministers like Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy filled public leadership positions, black women were \"the power behind the throne,\" as Erna Dungee, WPC secretary and MIA finance manager, put it. \"We really were the ones who carried out the actions,\" she insisted. Like Dungee, Hazel Gregory insisted that it was working-class women whose collective refusal to ride the buses \"made it work.\" \"If you hadn't had those people, you would not have been able to [succeed],\" she said.\n\nBesides serving as the boycott's foot soldiers, handling the day-to-day business of the MIA, and leading local fund-raising drives, black women helped keep the carpool running. At least twenty-nine women worked as regular carpool drivers or dispatchers. Ann Smith Pratt, a hairdresser, was the chief dispatcher. She worked the ham radio \"directing taxi drivers and the church station wagon crew to urgent pickups at thirty-two designated sites.\" After Rosa Parks lost her job as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair on January 7, 1956, she often filled in as a dispatcher, sometimes working from sunup to sundown. And Alberta James was, according to her peers, \"unquestionably the best driver employed by the MIA transportation committee.\"\n\nMiddle-class women who had their own cars, mostly black but some white women, used their vehicles and their free time to transport their less affluent neighbors. One of the boycott's classic sights was when Mrs. A. W. West, an eighty-year-old widow, rambled down the streets in her green Cadillac limousine every morning between seven and eleven in the morning \"to chauffeur people about.\" \"And that's why,\" Virginia Durr, a white activist, noted, \"Mrs. West was called a queen.\" Mrs. West was regaled by other women for her daily contributions. She was the kind of woman \"who did not have to do it,\" Durr said. \"Because she could have stayed at home and said that she was, you know, elderly.\"\n\nSince black women provided the backbone of the boycott, they were also the primary targets of white retaliation. Aside from getting fired from their jobs, which was the most common reprisal, African-American women walking to work remained vulnerable to physical and sexual harassment. Whites in passing cars pelted pedestrians with \"water balloons and containers of urine... rotten eggs, potatoes and apples.\" Jo Ann Robinson was terrified when two white men threw a brick through her window. Shortly thereafter she saw two policemen pour acid on the hood of her car. The next morning the car \"had holes as large as a dollar\" all over its hood and roof, she said. Armed whites stood on street corners and jeered at the walking women. \"Look at dem red bastards over der watching us,\" a domestic protested. \"Dey got dem guns, but us aint skered.\" \"I don't mind dying,\" she said, \"but I sho take one of dem with me.\"\n\nAfrican-American women were constant targets of physical and sexual assaults during the modern civil rights movement. Here, armed white men attack two black women after a desegregation attempt in Montgomery, Alabama. (photo credit 3.5)\n\nThe fact that white men with guns could not force black women back into their \"place\" indicated the sense of power and pride the boycott aroused among African Americans. King argued that this new sense of pride and power was a crucial component of the movement. One \"can not understand the bus protest,\" King said later, \"without understanding that there is a new Negro in the South, with a new sense of dignity and destiny.\"\n\nSegregationists, however, had little interest in Negroes, old or new. City commissioners, angered by the success of the boycott and their inability to quell it, launched a city-sponsored intimidation campaign on January 23, 1956. Mayor Gayle called it his \"get tough\" policy. Denouncing the MIA as a \"group of Negro radicals,\" Gayle claimed he was \"tired of pussyfooting around\" and ordered police to \"break up Negro car pools by diligent enforcement... of all traffic regulations\" and to charge African Americans waiting for rides at dispatch stations with loitering. \"Every black person would get a traffic ticket two and three times a week... There was no need arguing with police,\" Georgia Gilmore recalled. Gilmore alone received more than thirty tickets. \"We just took [them]\" she stated. \"Policemen would give hundreds and hundreds of tickets every day to black people.\" One day after Gayle's \"get tough\" announcement, he and Commissioner Frank Parks publicly declared their support for and membership in the White Citizens' Council.\n\nThe official announcement, Clifford Durr pointed out, \"was quite naturally taken by the denizens of the woodwork and the underside of rocks to be a signal to come out and do their worst.\" Those \"denizens\" dynamited Martin Luther King's home on January 30 and bombed E. D. Nixon's house two days later. At an MIA meeting on February 2, members of the executive committee decided to employ armed guards for the homes of key individuals thought to be the most vulnerable to attack. A number of women were at the top of the list, including Rosa Parks, Erna Dungee, Jo Ann Robinson, Euretta Adair, and Maude Ballou. Parks was especially worried. \"Some strange men have been coming into my neighborhood inquiring about this woman who caused all this trouble,\" she reported. Parks then asked for the MIA to provide night watchmen.\n\nShe had reason to be afraid. On February 10, just over a week after Rosa Parks helped Nixon's wife clean up the mess made by the bomb, more than ten thousand whites attended what they billed as the \"biggest pro-segregation rally in the United States since the Civil War.\" There Mississippi senator James Eastland, a rabid racist, told the cheering crowd that the prescription for a segregationist victory was to \"organize and be militant.\" Other speakers, surrounded by hundreds of Confederate flags, boasted that they would \"give the niggers a whipping\" and teach Rosa Parks a \"harsh lesson.\" By singling Parks out for special punishment, Citizens' Council members implied that they wanted to do more than physically abuse her. Ironically, after they threatened her, Mayor Gayle and Commissioners Sellers and Frank Parks promised to \"hold the line against Negro integration.\" Gayle did everything he could to hold that line, including turning a blind eye to the Citizens' Council's public declaration of its intent to \"abolish the Negro race\" with \"guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives.\"\n\nWhile the WCC did Gayle's dirty work, the mayor harnessed the city's institutional power to harass boycotters and shut down the carpool system. On February 13 local prosecutors summoned more than two hundred African Americans to testify about who was behind the boycott. The special grand jury, impaneled by Judge Eugene Carter, who had sentenced Claudette Colvin nearly a year earlier, was charged with investigating whether African Americans violated a 1921 statute outlawing boycotts \"without just cause or legal excuse.\" On February 21 the grand jury returned indictments against Rosa Parks, Reverend King, and eighty-seven others, more than a dozen of whom were women. It was, according to Taylor Branch, \"the largest wholesale indictment in the history of the country.\"\n\nMayor Gayle's \"get tough\" policy backfired when scores of African Americans turned themselves in for voluntary arrest. Rosa Parks. (photo credit 3.6)\n\nMrs. A.W. West (photo credit 3.7)\n\nJo Ann Robinson (photo credit 3.8)\n\nMayor Gayle's attempt to frighten boycotters with the threat of arrest and jail time\u2014something African Americans had special reason to fear\u2014backfired when a fearless E. D. Nixon marched to the courthouse and turned himself in. \"Are you looking for me?\" Nixon asked the sheriff. \"Well, I am here.\" Parks followed Nixon's example, and soon hundreds gathered around the courthouse applauding and celebrating the bravery and courage of those arrested. \"We took the news as a joke, a pretense, an excitement for the moment,\" Jo Ann Robinson noted. Outside the courthouse, she remembered, \"Negroes laughed, determined to stand their ground. They were defiant, willing to go to jail, ready to let Americans and the world know that they could not and would not take any more.\"\n\nJail could not possibly be worse than death, many reasoned, and African Americans were, according to Robinson, ready \"to die for justice and freedom.\" The crowd grew larger and more celebratory as more and more blacks voluntarily turned themselves in, transforming the jailhouse, a place to be feared and avoided at all costs, into a place of honor. Sheriff Butler, clearly peeved by the \"perversion of the penal spirit,\" demanded silence. \"This is no vaudeville show,\" he shouted to no effect.\n\nEuretta Adair (photo credit 3.9)\n\nE. D. Nixon (photo credit 3.10)\n\nWatching the crowd mock the police, Jo Ann Robinson realized the world she had always known had somehow changed. The fear that had held black people down had begun to evaporate. \"If there was any nervousness or uneasiness,\" she argued, \"it was on the part of the whites.\" Whites seemed especially tense when scores of black domestics descended upon the courthouse. \"From the alleys they came,\" B. J. Simms gleefully recalled. \"Black women with bandannas on, wearing men's hats with their dresses rolled up. This is what scared white people.\" When a policeman tried to get control of the crowd, the women surged forward. \"All right, you women get back,\" the officer shouted as he reached for his billy club. Then \"these great big old women with their dresses rolled up,\" Simms recalled, \"told [the officer], 'Us ain't going nowhere. You done arrested us preachers and we ain't moving.' \" When the officer reached for his gun, the fearless women dared him to use them. \"I don't care what you got,\" one woman said. \"If you hit one of us, you'll not leave here alive.\"\n\nThe public confrontation between black women and the police in Montgomery was a long time coming. That night black women served notice that they were no longer going to be violated by or pushed around by white police officers. They put their bodies on the line in defense of their humanity, something anyone watching could see. The standoff, the editor of _The Christian Century_ argued in 1956, \"marked the first fateful assertion of their full dignity as human beings.\"\n\nReverend Solomon Seay, Sr. (photo credit 3.11)\n\nReverend Ralph Abernathy (photo credit 3.12)\n\nOn March 19 twenty-eight black women asserted their full dignity and their right to protest abuse on the buses at the only trial held after the mass arrests. Prosecutors tried Martin Luther King, Jr., for conspiracy and held the other eighty-eight indictments in abeyance. They believed that if they could remove King as leader of the boycott, it would quickly fall apart. At first the defense played dumb. Most witnesses feigned ignorance of King's role in the boycott and some acted as if the boycott were simply a figment of the prosecutor's imagination. Gladys Moore seemed to take offense at the suggestion that King started the protest. \"Wasn't no one man started it,\" she insisted. \"We all started it overnight.\" Estella Brooks testified that King had nothing to do with her decision to stay off the buses. She told the judge she had not been on a bus since August 12, 1950, the day a policeman shot and killed her husband for arguing with a bus driver. \"No one told me to stop riding the buses,\" Gladys Moore said after prosecutors tried to get her to blame King. \"I stopped because we had been treated so bad down through the years that we decided we wouldn't ride the buses no more.\" Finally, in what seemed like an effort to shame the judge into ruling for the defense, King's attorneys \"summon[ed] a stream of Negro women to the stand to testify about cruelties they had seen and endured on the buses.\"\n\nReverend E. N. French (photo credit 3.13)\n\nReverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (photo credit 3.14)\n\n_Time_ magazine reported that the women eagerly testified, often without any prompts. The black women, _Time_ noted, \"began talking before defense lawyers asked their names; others could hardly be stopped.\" By detailing one insulting experience after another, a group of core women activists denounced the system that denied their humanity on a daily basis. Almost all of them testified that they had stopped riding the buses because white drivers had humiliated them or abused them.\n\nMartha K. Walker said she stopped riding because drivers constantly heaped abuse upon her and her blind husband, who was a veteran of World War II. Gladys Moore testified that bus drivers treated women \"just as rough as could be... like we are [not] human.\" Bus drivers, Georgia Gilmore declared, mistreated people \"positively for nothing.\"\n\nHenrietta Brinson said the mistreatment was too much: \"I am just fed up with these bus drivers... just fed up to my neck.\" They \"don't want to treat us the right way,\" she said. Referencing one particularly mean operator, she told the court that he said, \"All you niggers are pushing like a passel of cows.\" She stared at the judge. \"Cow,\" she said, \"that's what he called us.\"\n\nFred Gray (photo credit 3.15)\n\nJudge Carter sat in stony silence, completely unmoved. At the end of the trial, he pronounced King guilty of conspiracy to violate the 1921 law and ordered him to pay a five-hundred-dollar fine or serve a year at hard labor. Like Judge Carter, the national newspaper and magazine reporters waiting outside for the ruling ignored the black women's testimonies that detailed decades of mistreatment and denied King's leadership in the boycott. Instead, the media turned King into an apostle of civil rights. A reporter for _The New York Times_ recorded the time, down to the exact minute, that King emerged from the courthouse. It was 4:39 P.M. A throng of supporters erupted in cheers when King emerged, many of them shouting, \"Behold the King!\" and \"Hail the King!\" as though he really were \"Alabama's Modern Moses,\" as _Jet_ magazine called him.\n\nAt Holt Street Baptist Church, where thousands of African Americans gathered that night, ministers presented Reverend King as a Christlike figure sent to Montgomery to deliver blacks from their misery. \"Here is the man,\" one minister proclaimed when introducing King to the mass meeting, \"who today was nailed to the cross for you and me.\" While the exaltation of King fit into a distinctly black Christian tradition, it obscured other leaders. \"From that day onward,\" Rufus Lewis recalled later, \"Rosa Parks became a secondary figure.\"\n\nAfrican Americans gather outside the courthouse as Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., stands trial for conspiracy. (photo credit 3.16)\n\nIt was not just Rosa Parks, the radical activist, who was written out of the story of the Montgomery bus boycott. Jo Ann Robinson and her army of women in the WPC, as well as the thousands of working-class women who made Montgomery \"the Walking City,\" were reduced to the footnotes of history. While the media were partly to blame in framing the story around King, other civil rights organizations, in an effort to use Montgomery's success to spark similar civil rights campaigns throughout the South, recast the bus protest as a movement led by ministers.\n\nShortly after the boycott ended on December 21, 1956, nine months after the trial that turned Martin Luther King, Jr., into a modern Moses, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) published a comic book that cast King as a fearless freedom fighter and experienced organizer who had led his people out of bondage. In FOR's retelling of the bus protest, Reverend King and his cavalry of militant ministers came to the rescue of Rosa Parks, who refused to move from her seat \"because she was tired and her feet ached.\" The cartoon features a nervous King, worried sick about Parks's arrest, who stays up all night planning a response. \"Something ought to be done,\" King, visibly upset, says to his wife. \"Rosa is a good woman and not a trouble maker. They had no right arresting her.\" A helpless Coretta, seated next to King, asks, \"But what can we do?\" The next frame portrays King as an organizer, standing in front of a roomful of men demanding a public response. \"We ought to _protest,\"_ he says, pointing at the men, \"and not ride the buses for a day.\" In the next image, King stands over a mimeograph machine with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He and another man run off \"a few hundred\" copies of the announcement calling for a one-day boycott. And the rest, as they say, is history.\n\nRosa Parks speaks with an interviewer as she arrives at court with E. D. Nixon (center) and eighty-nine other African Americans on trial for violating a 1921 antiboycott law. (photo credit 3.17)\n\nUnfortunately, this King-centric and male-dominated version of events obscures the real history of the Montgomery bus boycott as a women's movement for dignity. The focus on King is so absolute that even today many historians overlook the fact that it was four female plaintiffs, Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith, Mrs. Aurelia Browder, and Mrs. Susie McDonald, who filed the lawsuit that finally ended segregation on public transportation and put teeth into the _Brown_ decision.\n\nOn December 17, 1956, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the U.S. district court's decision in _Browder v. Gayle_ that segregation, even outside public schools, violated the due process and equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling signaled the death knell of the \"separate but equal\" doctrine established by the Supreme Court in the 1896 _Plessy v. Ferguson_ decision. But it also heralded something significantly more important. The _Browder_ decision determined more than where one could sit on a bus. It was an affirmation of African Americans' humanity. The Supreme Court, as Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, \"ruled that we have the right to sit with dignity.\"\n\nThis Fellowship of Reconciliation comic book, published circa 1957, gave rise to the myth of Rosa Parks's \"tired feet\" and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, heroic leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott. (photo credit 3.18)\n\nResponse to the decision indicated its powerful emotional impact. At an enormous mass meeting in Montgomery that night, Reverend Solomon S. Seay, Sr., burst into tears at the pulpit when he cried out, \"God is on our side.\" A hush fell over the ecstatic crowd when Reverend Graetz, the lone white minister in the movement, walked to the front of the church and began to read from Corinthians I: \"When I was a child, I spake as a child,\" he recited, \"I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.\" The passage struck a nerve. Before Graetz could finish his reading, the mostly female crowd rose to their feet and cheered. \"Several women,\" according to the _Montgomery Advertiser_ , \"screamed with what appeared to be religious ecstasy.\"\n\nGraetz captured the essence of the Supreme Court victory. Though even the biblical language was gendered, the women in the audience that night understood that the _Browder_ decision signaled African Americans' arrival as full human beings, as men and women worthy of recognition and respect. While the legal ruling made segregation on public conveyances unconstitutional, the boycott was never just about integration. It was about what Martin Luther King, Jr., later called the \"thingification\" of white supremacy. By walking hundreds of miles to protest humiliation and testifying publicly about physical and sexual abuse, African Americans\u2014mostly women\u2014reclaimed their bodies and demanded the right to be treated with dignity and respect.\n\nThe legal and moral victory over white supremacy in Montgomery gave African Americans around the country a sense of hope for the future, an inspirational and powerful figurehead in Martin Luther King, Jr., and an organizing model\u2014nonviolent direct action, which they hoped to use throughout the South to dismantle Jim Crow. Segregationists intent on thwarting black advances launched their own war to retain their position of power in the South. A swirling storm of white resistance had been gathering since the 1954 _Brown v. Board of Education_ decision. As African Americans in Montgomery returned to the buses and some Southern schools took baby steps toward compliance with the _Brown_ decision, the \"massive resistance\" movement thundered through the South. Drawing on whites' deepest fears about integration and interracial sexuality, Citizens' Council members and other die-hard segregationists used economic intimidation, sexualized violence, and terror to derail desegregation and destroy the developing black freedom movement. Between the Montgomery bus boycott and the student sit-in movement in 1960, African Americans hoping to re-create the Montgomery experience faced the forces of Jim Crow, sparking some of the fiercest battles for manhood and womanhood of the modern civil rights movement.\n\n# CHAPTER 4 \n\"There's Open Season on Negroes Now\"\n\nTHE SEVENTH-GRADE TEACHER AT Dunbar Junior High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, dismissed her students early on May 17, 1954. News of the historic Supreme Court decision striking down segregation in public schools had just hit the airwaves, and she feared a violent white response. As students streamed out of the all-black school, she urged them to \"pay attention to where you're walking. Walk in groups, don't walk alone.\" \"Hurry,\" she added. Melba Patillo, a twelve-year-old African-American student at Dunbar, wondered what all the fuss was about. Still, Melba was happy to have the afternoon free. She gathered her books and started on the route she had taken home for nearly six years. According to her autobiography, published several decades later, she meandered through a grassy stretch of blooming persimmon trees and daydreamed about becoming a movie star and moving to New York or California.\n\nThe sound of rustling leaves snapped her back to reality. She stopped and listened carefully, straining to see through the thick flora. Suddenly a deep voice sliced through the brush. \"You want a ride, girl?\" She could not see anyone. Then it came again. \"Want a ride?\"\n\n\"Who is it?\" she asked nervously.\n\n\"I got candy in the car,\" a man's gravelly voice sang out. \"Lots of candy.\" Patillo inched forward and saw a burly white man coming toward her. She turned and fled in the opposite direction, screaming for help and running as fast as her black-and-white saddle shoes could carry her. \"You better come and take a ride home,\" he growled. \"You hear me, girl?\"\n\nMelba Patillo (photo credit 4.1)\n\nHe was a \"huge\" man, Patillo recalled later, built \"like a wrestler.\" He chased Patillo through the wooded path, screaming about \"niggers wanting to go to school with his children and how he wasn't going to stand for it.\" Suddenly Patillo tripped on her shoelaces and fell. As she struggled to stand, he grabbed her shoulders, thrust her to the ground, and flipped her over on her back. \"He slapped me hard across the face,\" she said in her memoir, then pinned her down and began fumbling with his belt buckle. \"I'll show you niggers the Supreme Court can't run my life,\" he said as he reached under Patillo's dress and ripped off her underwear. In her account, she scrambled out from underneath him and started to run.\n\nMelba Patillo arrived home, shaken and disheveled. She told her grandmother that a white man attempted to rape her. Patillo's grandmother, who loved to garden and read Shakespeare and Langston Hughes, listened and then quietly shuttled Melba to the bathroom and started a bath. \"You soak a while, child. When the water goes down the drain, it will take all that white man's evil with it.\" Melba sat in the tub for what seemed like hours, listening to the muffled voices of her parents and grandmother arguing about whether they should call the police. When she finally emerged, her family encouraged her not to feel ashamed about the attack. Her father, Howell Patillo, an enormous man who worked as a hostler's assistant on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, reached for Melba and pulled her close. \"We ain't gonna call the law,\" he said. \"Those white police are liable to do something worse to her than what already happened.\" Survival sometimes required that silence surround sexual violence, especially in an environment poisoned by the fierce backlash to _Brown_. Eventually Melba would tell her story of the struggle in Little Rock for students across the country, but silence was not the only choice. Between 1956 and 1959, sex and sexual violence sat at the center of the freedom struggle, and African Americans deployed different strategies to carry the movement through a crucial and difficult transition, including testimony, armed self-defense, and international pressure.\n\nIn the decade before _Brown_ , African Americans in Little Rock, Arkansas, and throughout the South had testified openly about white attacks on black women. In the 1940s, for example, Daisy Bates, the acclaimed freedom fighter and leader of the Little Rock Nine, used the power of the _Arkansas State Press_ , the newspaper she and her husband, L. C. Bates, owned, to call attention to the long history of white-on-black rape. Like Rosa Parks, Bates was a militant activist long before she orchestrated a showdown between Governor Orval Faubus and the federal government over the integration of Central High School in 1957. Her newspaper became a thorn in the sides of Little Rock's white and black leaders, whom she pilloried regularly for failing to remedy the injustices of Jim Crow, especially police brutality and the abuse of black women. For Bates, rape was not just a political and legal issue that required state and community action, it was personal.\n\nDaisy and L. C. Bates and two police investigators examine a Ku Klux Klan cross left in their front yard in October 1956. Bates and her husband were targets of the Klan years before the Little Rock crisis began because of their vocal support for equality and justice for African-American rape victims in their newspaper, the _Arkansas State Press_. (photo credit 4.2)\n\nWhen Daisy Bates was just was seven years old, three white men brutally raped and murdered her mother. Bates's father blamed the attack on the \"timeworn lust of the white man.\" She was \"not the kind to submit,\" he explained to his daughter, \"so they took her.\" Overwhelmed by guilt and pain, he abandoned Daisy at a young age. She vowed revenge. \"Young as I was, strange as it may seem,\" Daisy Bates wrote in her memoir years later, \"my life now had a secret goal\u2014to find the men who had done this horrible thing to my mother.\" The whole ordeal left her feeling like a \"little sapling, which, after a violent storm, puts out only gnarled and twisted branches.\" When she became older, Bates decided to transform her hatred and anger into positive action and \"make it count for something.\" Over time the \"little sapling\" became a towering oak: Bates became a fierce freedom fighter and leader of the Little Rock NAACP and in 1952 president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP branches.\n\nAs an outspoken advocate for African Americans, Bates, like Rosa Parks, became known as the go-to person for victims of racial and sexual violence in Little Rock. She listened to them and scribbled notes, then placed their stories on the front page of her newspaper. The _State Press_ became Bates's personal bullhorn, which she used to amplify demands for justice and voting rights and call for an end to the wanton sexual abuse of black women. Banner headlines between 1941 and 1955 made the crime public, helped to mobilize the black community, and alerted white officials that crimes against black women would not go unnoticed. For example, on July 17, 1942, the _State Press_ published photographs of two white Little Rock police officers who raped Rosa Lee Cherry, a nineteen-year-old African-American student at Dunbar High School. Daisy Bates even printed a transcript of Cherry's grand jury testimony. This helped secure public support for an indictment. Bates then argued that a conviction was necessary to save the \"great state of Arkansas.\" Although the white policemen walked free after their case ended in a mistrial, Bates's vigilance on the Cherry case and others like it made it impossible for white authorities to ignore crimes against African-American women. Her outspoken attacks on rape and other forms of sexualized violence helped secure trials and, in some instances, even rare convictions of white assailants who attacked black women in Arkansas during the 1940s and early 1950s.\n\nBy 1954, however, a veil of secrecy had descended among African-American activists. In the years after _Brown_ , more than half a million people opposed to integration and dedicated to white supremacy joined organizations like the White Citizens' Councils, the Ku Klux Klan, and the American States Rights Association, and launched an all-out war against the burgeoning freedom struggle. Death threats and dynamite blasts shook civil rights advocates across the region. The Patillos understood that the swirling storm of resistance that segregationists unleashed after _Brown_ made silence about sexual violence a political imperative.\n\nSegregationist leaders throughout the South urged \"massive resistance\" to _Brown_. They recruited supporters by denigrating the \"traitorous\" Supreme Court, while exploiting whites' fears about integration and interracial sexuality. _U.S. News & World Report_ announced that many white Southerners opposed _Brown_ because they feared \"eventual amalgamation of the races\u2014meaning miscegenation, intermarriage or whatever you want to call it.\" Judge Leander Perez, a political heavyweight in Louisiana, told supporters that the goal of integration was \"miscegenation.\" \"You make a Negro believe he is equal to the white people,\" he said, \"and the first thing he wants is a white woman. And that's why there are so many criminal assaults and rapes.\" In a pamphlet titled _You and Segregation_ , Georgia senator Herman Talmadge argued that the Almighty \"Advocates Segregation,\" and warned that the \"ultimate aim and goal of NAACP leaders... is the complete intermingling of the races in housing, schools, churches, public parks, public swimming pools and even in marriage.\" The _Brown_ decision, he said, was \"judicial tyranny\" and \"the greatest single blow ever... struck against constitutional government.\" \"Resistance to tyranny,\" Mississippi senator James O. Eastland told white supporters, \"is obedience to God.\" Walter Givhan, an Alabama state senator and ardent supporter of the White Citizens' Council, argued that desegregation was simply a ruse to \"open the bedroom doors of our white women to Negro men.\"\n\nAlabama state senator Samuel Englehardt, Jr., an ardent segregationist and member of the White Citizens' Council, promotes a \"white only\" anti-integration rally. (photo credit 4.3)\n\nDemagoguery of \"miscegenation\" fanned followers' fears to red-hot rage. Most did not explicitly advocate violence, but their extremist rhetoric undoubtedly encouraged it. Some politicians could not hold back. \"A few killings now,\" a Mississippi legislator boasted, could \"save a lot of bloodshed then.\" At a massive Citizens' Council rally in Alabama, Senator Eastland cheered on the white mob that blocked Autherine Lucy, an African-American woman, from attending the University of Alabama in February 1956. He praised them for not letting the \"NAACP run your schools.\" Southern whites, he told the audience, were \"obligated to defy\" _Brown. 16_ When some whites responded by launching campaigns of violence and terror, many of those legislators stood silent, offering tacit approval while protecting themselves from blame.\n\nOther political leaders fully supported the White Citizens' Council and its goals but worried that violence could hurt the segregationists' cause. J. P. Coleman, the pragmatic governor who led Mississippi between 1956 and 1960, feared that defiance of federal law would hurt the state's standing in the national Democratic Party or provoke federal intervention. Coleman hoped to achieve the same goals as Eastland and other radicals through what he called \"practical segregation.\" He pushed for the creation of a state agency that would mirror the FBI's investigative prowess and function as a public relations bureau. His goal was to \"keep racial conflict out of the press while quietly and effectively managing the state's fight against integration.\" Coleman tested the effectiveness of the newly formed State Sovereignty Commission in May 1956, when four white men from Tylertown, a small village in the Piney section of Mississippi, kidnapped a young black woman on the eve of her wedding and gang-raped her.\n\nIt was just before dawn on May 13, 1956\u2014Mother's Day\u2014when Ernest Dillon, a twenty-nine-year-old siding salesman; his brother Ollie, a middle-aged construction worker; and Olen and Durora Duncan, twenty-one-year-old cousins, went looking for \"some colored women.\" Wielding a shotgun, Ernest Dillon approached Stennis Butler, a thirty-year-old black sharecropper who was outside preparing for the day's work. Dillon ordered him to take him and his friends to a home with black women inside. Annette Butler, a sixteen-year-old high school student, was in bed with her mother when she heard someone pounding on the front door of their two-bedroom home. Ernest Dillon introduced himself as a policeman. \"You're under arrest,\" he said to the girl, for \"sacking up with your boyfriend.\" When her mother objected, Dillon raised the shotgun, grabbed the teenager, and pulled her outside. He kept the shotgun trained on the girl's mother as his brother pushed her into the backseat of the car. Olen Duncan revved the engine and drove away, leaving Butler's mother alone in the front yard.\n\nThe four white men drove Butler deep into the Bogue Chitto swamp, where they took turns raping her. Olen Duncan threatened to \"cut her neck off\" if she resisted. \"I followed his instructions,\" she testified at the trial. When they finished, the four white men piled into the car and left Annette stranded in the woods. Wandering through the swamp half naked, she stumbled upon a group of black fishermen and ran to them for help. They led her out of the woods and delivered her to the police. Sheriff A. E. (Bill) Andrews took her complaint and then drove her home to get dressed. Later that day Sheriff Andrews brought Olen Duncan in for questioning, and he willingly signed a statement testifying that he had had \"intimate relations\" with Annette Butler. \"It was done with every safeguard for the right of the defendant,\" Sheriff Andrews said, \"after [Duncan] had been repeatedly advised that anything he might say could be used against him.\" A few days later District Attorney Michael Carr charged all four men with \"forcible ravishment and kidnap\" and sent them to the Magnolia jail to await trial.\n\nJudge Tom Brady, a fierce white supremacist and one of the fathers of the White Citizens' Councils, presided over four separate trials in Pike County Circuit Court four months after the attack. The assailants must have wondered what kind of punishment Brady would impose since his public pronouncements against interracial mixing were already legendary. _Time_ magazine called Brady the \"prophet\" of segregation and his manifesto, _Black Monday_ , the \"Bible of the White Citizens' Council movement.\" When confronted with real interracial mixing and actual rapists, not the fictional black rapists he saw lurking behind every school-desegregation case, Brady buckled under the weight of his own racial prejudices. He appointed the \"finest lawyers in Mississippi\" to defend the four white assailants.\n\nErnest Dillon may not have understood Brady's gesture, since he pleaded guilty on March 26, 1957, to the lesser charge of \"assault with intent to rape.\" It was a risky plea that left his co-conspirators vulnerable. On the other hand, the plea bargain released him from trial and from the threat of the death penalty or life imprisonment\u2014the state's only punishments for rape. It also freed the jurors from having to declare a white man guilty of raping a black woman and defused any complaints of unequal justice or outside criticism of the state. It is likely that Dillon believed he would receive a minor sentence or even a suspended sentence. Politically, the plea deal worked for everyone\u2014except, of course, Annette Butler.\n\nOn April 4 Olen Duncan, described by the _McComb Enterprise Journal_ as a \"slender man with facial skin paled to a dead white,\" surprised the packed courtroom by pleading not guilty despite his previously signed admission. His declaration of innocence fueled a day of intense testimony. Annette Butler took the stand and provided what the newspaper called \"lurid details\" of the attack. She easily identified Duncan as the driver and told the jury he was the second man to rape her.\n\nIn an effort to portray Butler as a prostitute or at least a juvenile delinquent, Duncan's attorneys grilled her about her whereabouts the night before the attack. Butler told the jury that she had accompanied her mother and cousin to a juke joint called Willie's Penthouse and stayed out past midnight. Defense attorneys then called George W. Wingo, a local white man, to testify about the \"general reputation\" of Butler. \"It is not good,\" he said without hesitation. They did not bother asking any African Americans about Butler's standing in the community\u2014even though they trotted out a number of white men who testified that Olen Duncan's stature was impressive.\n\nMichael Carr, the district attorney, urged the jury to consider Duncan's signed confession above all else. The girl submitted to the four men not because she was easy, he argued, but because the assailants \"placed [her] in such fear of severe personal injury and for her very life.\" Despite Duncan's admission of intercourse and his friend's guilty plea a week earlier, the all-white, all-male jury unanimously acquitted Olen Duncan of rape. On April 5, Judge Brady declared a mistrial when Olen's cousin, Durora Duncan, also pleaded not guilty and the jury deadlocked.\n\nNews of the acquittal and mistrial infuriated a group of African-American women, who wrote an anonymous letter to the _McComb Enterprise Journal_. They criticized the jurors for acquitting \"confessed rapists\" and argued that \"an alleged 'bad-reputation' \" did not \"excuse the criminal act which was committed.\" \"We feel that no Negro Woman is safe within the bounds of her own home,\" they said, \"despite the fact that she is a law-abiding citizen.\" A group of black ministers made a similar argument in a statement submitted to the newspaper: \"It is a dreadful thing to think our widows and their children have no protection, that their homes can be invaded by men of other races and that all the security of democracy is denied them.\"\n\nOn April 5, 1957, Judge Brady sentenced Ernest Dillon to twenty years of hard labor. Brady castigated Dillon for bringing \"bitter condemnation upon his community and state and the entire South\" for attacking Annette Butler. His actions, Judge Brady told Dillon, \"will bring further vitriolic attacks on our region from those who hate the South.\" Brady then scolded Dillon for integrating and declared him unfit for membership in the white race. \"No action could be more in contrast with the beliefs of the segregationist,\" he argued. Dillon had the \"good fortune,\" Brady said, sounding disappointed, \"of having able counsel... and prosecuting attorneys who were willing to show leniency...\" It was a harsh way of telling Dillon that he would be a sacrificial lamb.\n\nThe twenty-year sentence was nothing to sneeze at. It was highly unusual, if not unheard of, in the Magnolia State. And yet it served a political purpose. The trials and the lengthy sentence blunted outside criticism of the state's long history of racial terror. White leaders could point to Dillon as proof that Mississippi did not discriminate. At the same time, state senator Mayes McGehee, the chairman of the general legislative investigating committee of the State Sovereignty Commission, argued that the state's rape laws tied the jury's hands\u2014they simply had no choice but to acquit most of the men. \"There wasn't necessarily any prejudice involved,\" he said. \"Whether that had been a white girl involved or a colored girl, a jury is very reluctant to pass a death sentence or life imprisonment for that charge upon a man.\" The sheriff, the district attorney, and the county attorney, McGehee added, \"made every possible effort to get a conviction in that case.\" Oliver Emmerich, the editor of the _McComb Enterprise Journal_ , echoed McGehee's sentiments and argued that the people of Mississippi think \"such crimes are repugnant.\" \"As with all heinous crimes,\" he said, \"it leaves broken, bleeding hearts in its wake.\" \"The world must know, and our people must know,\" he argued, \"that the law enforcement officers of this area were alert and dutiful and that the evidence was taken on the spot, without delay, and to the credit of the people of Pike and Walthall Counties and Mississippi as well.\" By giving Dillon twenty years, Judge Brady and the Sovereignty Commission sent a message: even the most vehement segregationists still believed in law and order.\n\nExcept when they didn't. The lengthy jail sentence did not stop whites from terrorizing blacks in Mississippi or elsewhere. Citizens' Council members, Klansmen, and their ilk harassed African Americans over the phone, on the streets, and in public places. Hate mail peppered black activists, and threatening calls kept their phones ringing through the night. Rosa Parks, for example, constantly received calls from angry whites who yelled \"Die, nigger!\" whenever she or her husband picked up the phone. Like other blacks committed to the freedom struggle, Rosa Parks lost her job and was blacklisted in Montgomery, as were her husband and mother. After an especially vicious death threat in the summer of 1957, Parks called her cousin in Detroit sobbing. \"Rosie, get the hell out of Montgomery,\" he urged. \"Raymond's right; Whitey is going to kill you.\"\n\nParks knew that harassment and economic intimidation were not the outer limits of white terror. She packed up her things and moved her family to Detroit in the summer of 1957, just as white vigilantes started bombing black homes, churches, and businesses in Montgomery. Dynamite damaged or destroyed the homes and churches of prominent ministers and bus boycott leaders like Ralph Abernathy, Robert Graetz, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In Birmingham at least twenty-one bombings directed at blacks between 1955 and 1958 turned the \"Magic City\" into \"Bombingham.\" In small towns and cities throughout the South, white mobs beat and sometimes killed African Americans\u2014especially those who advocated desegregation or voting rights\u2014with baseball bats, brass knuckles, tire irons, rusty chains, and other implements of torture. In the Mississippi Delta white men murdered three black males in 1955: In May whites murdered the Reverend George Lee for registering voters. In August, Lamar Smith, a sixty-year-old farmer, was killed in broad daylight, apparently for voting in a primary and teaching other blacks how to register. Later that month, on August 28, 1955, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant murdered fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi.\n\nTill, a Chicago native in Mississippi to visit his uncle, Mose Wright, accompanied a group of black teens and children to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market to purchase candy. Unaware of the strict racial etiquette governing interracial interactions, the black youngster allegedly flirted with Bryant's young wife after purchasing some bubble gum. Four nights later Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam kidnapped Emmett Till, brutally beat him, and then shot him in the head. They tied a metal cotton gin fan around his neck with barbed wire and pushed him into the Tallahatchie River. A fisherman spotted Till's body, and investigators pulled the mutilated corpse from the river three days later. _Jet_ magazine printed photos of the gruesome remains, exposing the savage and murderous side of segregation to the nation and the world, and the NAACP launched a national campaign for justice. Still, an all-white jury acquitted Bryant and Milam of murder on September 23. Four months later they admitted guilt to the journalist William Bradford Huie for an article in _Look_ magazine. Bryant justified his actions and accused Till of wanting more than bubble gum that August afternoon. \"When a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman,\" Bryant argued, \"he's tired o' livin'.\" The response to the article was immediate. \"There's open season on the Negroes now,\" one Mississippi man said. \"They've got no protection and any peckerwood who wants can go out and shoot himself one and we'll free him.\" The NAACP demanded punishment for the shocking deaths. It issued a pamphlet, titled _M Is for Mississippi and Murder_ , to publicize the killings.\n\nBesides murder, whites also used sexual violence as a weapon of terror\u2014and not always against black women. In Union Springs, Alabama, about forty miles southeast of Montgomery, Klansmen attacked Edward Judge Aaron, a thirty-four-year-old African American, while he and his wife walked along a country road on September 2, 1957. Klan members berated Aaron, known among whites as a \"white folks' nigger,\" before they pistol-whipped him. \"You think any nigger is as good as a white man? You think nigger kids should go to school with my kids?\" they shouted. As the men pummeled Aaron to the ground, one of them managed to tear off Aaron's pants. Then he flashed a shiny razor blade and grabbed Aaron's scrotum and pressed the blade into his flesh, severing his testicles.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe castration of Edward Judge Aaron vividly illustrated white fears that _Brown_ would unleash the black beast rapist of Reconstruction lore. The fear was so great that an unsubstantiated rumor or an innocent glance, a misconstrued gesture or an informal greeting between a black man and a white woman, could end in murder. In Montgomery, for example, a group of Klansmen heard a vague rumor that a black truck driver was intimately involved with a white woman. On a cold January night in 1957, three dedicated Klan members randomly attacked Willie Edwards, Jr., a delivery truck driver who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Klansmen walked Edwards to the edge of a bridge that stretched across the Alabama River. Edwards swore he was innocent and denied any interest or involvement in an interracial tryst, but his speech fell on deaf ears. The Klansmen forced Edwards to the edge of the bridge and made him jump to his death.\n\nAfrican Americans were not always victims. In Richmond, Virginia, on July 27, 1956, Rudolph Valentino Henry, a thirty-one-year-old combat veteran, stabbed a white man for harassing his wife. Henry and his wife, Carrie, were walking home from a downtown movie theater when John Morgan, a white city employee, whistled and honked his horn at the couple as they passed in front of his parked car. \"Who are you whistling at,\" Henry asked. \"Don't you know that's my wife?\"\n\n\"I don't give a damn if it is your wife,\" Morgan shot back. \"If I want to make a date with her I will.\" Morgan reached for what appeared to be a gun, jumped out of the car, and a fight ensued.\n\n\"They began to scuffle,\" Carrie Henry told the newspaper, \"and the white man had a grip on my husband and was getting the best of him.\" In order to break loose, she said, her husband \"stabbed [Morgan] with a little clasp knife.\" \"He had to do something,\" she insisted. \"It was his life or the other man's.\" Finally Morgan backed off and turned and walked away. \"We thought he was going to get some help,\" Henry said, \"so we ran across the parking lot and went home... We didn't know that he was dead until we read about it in the papers.\"\n\nThe murder may have been a mistake, but the clash between Rudolph Henry and John Morgan was part of a larger struggle that had been brewing all summer. \"It happens every night,\" Rufus Wells, a writer for the _Richmond Afro-American_ , argued in an article titled \"Mashers Molest Women, Police Look Other Way.\" \"After sundown,\" Wells said, \"certain colored neighborhoods in Richmond become a happy hunting ground for white men on the prowl for illicit romance.\" White men in \"limousines and Tin Lizzies,\" Wells reported, \"cruise slowly around the block and leer and whistle\" at black women. The bolder ones simply parked their cars and waited, he said, \"ready to proposition any woman who chances by.\" Wells argued that these \"wolves, mashers and sex perverts\" roam the streets and assault women with impunity. \"They're getting worse and worse,\" an older black woman argued. \"One night last week, a car containing three white men drove slowly past the house three or four times. Finally they parked a few doors away and two of them started toward my house. I got up and went inside and locked the door,\" she said. \"They're getting so they'll snatch you from your own porch.\"\n\nShe was one of many residents who argued that violence would flare if police refused to protect black women. To be sure, John Morgan was not the first white man to pay a price for \"molesting\" black women that summer. Local African Americans killed a thirty-one-year-old white man earlier in the summer and severely beat another man in late August for \"accosting women in the vicinity.\" \"They [the police] are not going to protect our women,\" a local black man stated, \"so we have to do it ourselves. Every time we catch a man molesting women we try to beat his brains out.\"\n\nWhen Rudolph Valentino Henry stood trial for the \"Wolf Whistle\" murder of John Morgan in front of an overflowing courtroom on November 10, 1956, he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. He did not intend to kill Morgan, he said; he simply tried to defend his wife from attack. Henry's lawyer, Martin A. Martin, a prominent attorney and NAACP leader, placed the case in the long history of white-on-black assault and argued that Henry had a right to protect his family. A white police officer served as the key witness. Detective Sergeant F. S. Wakefield of the Richmond Police Department testified that he had received \"numerous complaints of white men molesting colored women in that neighborhood.\" The judge must have recognized the volatility of the situation and decided to suspend Henry's sentence. \"I'm mighty happy to be back,\" the former vet declared after the judge issued his ruling. \"I've been around the world,\" he said, \"but there is no place like home.\"\n\nThe public exposure of Southern white men's proclivity for \"nighttime integration\" did not stop the usual suspects from railing against perceived threats posed by desegregation. Citizens' Councilors and Klansmen busied themselves by educating their progeny and protecting them from the threat of race mixing. Though their children were not yet afflicted by puberty or the hysterical fear of black men as rapists\u2014what W. J. Cash called the \"southern rape complex\"\u2014adults seemed to feel it necessary to spell out the unwritten rules of white supremacy. \"The racist,\" Southern poet and essayist Wendell Berry wrote, \"fears that a child's honesty empowered by sex might turn in real and open affection toward members of the oppressed race, and so destroy the myth of that race's inferiority.\" They created a pamphlet for young whites called the _Manual for Southerners_ , which claimed that \"if boys and girls share the school room, lunch room, dances, sports, rest rooms and playgrounds, then the boys and girls will want to date each other.\" Worse, the booklet warned, \"integration always leads the races to marry one another.\"\n\nSegregationists fought to keep their children insulated in lily-white schools, but they could not control the growing affection for African-American music among their youth. Many whites greeted rock and roll as if it were \"a guided missile,\" as Eldridge Cleaver remembered, \"launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. It succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.\" Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, LaVern Baker, Little Richard, and their interracial bands belted out blues, ballads, and bebop over integrated airwaves, effectively launching a revolution that rattled and roused teenagers and shook up segregationists, who bristled at the idea of their offspring listening to the new \"jungle music.\" Dancing was worse since, in their opinion, it would inevitably lead to race mixing, juvenile delinquency, and sexual immorality.\n\nBecause black musicians performed in front of segregated but sold-out crowds of screaming, ecstatic teenagers, it became impossible to maintain a strict color line in the South. As a result, many concerts inadvertently became interracial dance parties, where black and white fans found themselves pressed against one another. For example, in the mid-1950s, black and white teenagers mobbed concerts given by Fats Domino, whose songs \"Ain't That a Shame\" and \"Blueberry Hill\" propelled him to the head of the Top 40 charts. The petrified parents of white teens picketed these concerts with signs that read \"Rock and Roll Breeds Integration\" and \"Ask Your Preacher about Jungle Music.\" One worried parent summed up their complaint in a letter to Sam Phillips, the producer and owner of Sun Records, which launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Rock and roll, the parent informed Phillips, was \"ruining our children. These little kids are falling in love with niggers!\" Similar complaints forced many venues to ban interracial dancing. In 1956 the Louisiana legislature outlawed mixed-race dancing entirely.\n\nAsa Carter, a notorious anti-Semite and racial terrorist who served as head of the North Alabama White Citizens' Council and later became Governor George Wallace's speechwriter, railed against \"sensuous Negro music\" in his magazine _The Southerner. 53_ Rock and roll, he said, appealed to the \"base in man\" and encouraged \"animalism and vulgarity.\" It was part of an NAACP plan, he warned, to \"mongrelize America.\" Carter fanned the flames of interracial fear and sexual paranoia around Birmingham in the weeks before Nat \"King\" Cole was scheduled to give a concert at the Municipal Auditorium on April 10, 1956. He printed pictures of Cole standing next to adoring white females in _The Southerner_ above captions like \"Cole and His White Women\" and \"Cole and Your Daughter.\" In an accompanying article, Carter insinuated that Cole had ulterior motives that any self-respecting segregationist would recognize. \"You have seen it,\" he said, \"the fleeting leer, the look that stays an instant longer... the savagery.\"\n\nNo one had to stretch his or her imagination to understand what Carter was getting at. Indeed, the whole world witnessed white reaction to the \"fleeting leer\" when whites murdered Emmett Till in Mississippi the year before. The Till slaying cast a pall over every interracial exchange, but Nat \"King\" Cole did not expect to be attacked simply for singing his songs, especially in front of a segregated audience. Still, he went out of his way to remove any hints of sexuality from his show and presented himself as nonthreatening in style and demeanor. When the footlights burst open and illuminated the stage, Nat \"King\" Cole bounded forward and sailed through two songs. Suddenly, a group of white thugs scurried to the platform, leaped over the footlights, and knocked Cole to the ground. Their goal was to push Cole out of the way and \"take control of the microphone and lecture the audience about integration.\"\n\nWhile Asa Carter's low-life allies literally attacked Nat \"King\" Cole, more sophisticated segregationists pressed the issue. James J. Kilpatrick, the elegant and conservative editor of the _Richmond News-Leader_ , told James Baldwin that he regarded the Negro writer as a citizen, but that did not mean he wanted Baldwin to marry his daughter. \"You're not worried about me marrying _your_ daughter,\" Baldwin shot back. \"You're worried about me marrying _your wife's_ daughter. I've been marrying _your_ daughter since the days of slavery.\" Baldwin's comment brilliantly captured the cruel conundrums of interracial sex and sexual violence between white men and black women in the South.\n\nThese fears gripped whites in the small town of Monroe, North Carolina, in 1958, when an innocent kissing game between black and white children became front-page news around the world as hysterical adults cried rape and demanded revenge. This single event reinforced Gunnar Myrdal's observation a decade earlier that sex was \"the principle around which the whole structure of segregation... is organized.\" Indeed, the \"Kissing Case,\" as it became known, exposed the power of sex in maintaining the South's racial hierarchy and underscored the extent to which whites would fight to preserve it.\n\nSissy Sutton, a seven-year-old white girl, and her two friends must not have read the _Manual for Southerners_. If they had, they would have known that playing a kissing game in a ditch on an autumn afternoon with David Ezell \"Fuzzy\" Simpson and James Hanover Grissom Thompson, eight- and ten-year-old African-American boys, was strictly prohibited. The three girls had been minding their own business, watching a group of black and white boys play cowboys and Indians on October 28. \"At first it was just boys playing,\" Thompson later recalled. \"We was just running through the water with our feet first, acting crazy like kids.\" Sutton and her friends joined the fun, and after a few boys drifted off toward home, a white boy suggested they play a kissing game.\n\nAccording to the rules, one of the boys said, each girl would have to sit on a boy's lap and kiss him, \"like on TV or in the movies.\" Though nobody knows exactly who kissed whom, somebody seems to have kissed somebody.\n\nSutton told her mother about the game when she returned home that evening. When Mrs. Sutton realized her daughter had actually touched a black boy, she was furious. Hysterical, she called the police and reported that Simpson and Thompson had attempted to rape her little girl. Mr. Sutton grabbed his gun, gathered up some friends, and went searching for the prepubescent assailants. The growing mob of angry men first went to Thompson's home, where they threatened \"not only [to] kill the boys but to lynch the mothers.\" Mrs. Sutton insisted that she \"would have killed Hanover myself if I had the chance.\"\n\nLater that afternoon police officers spotted the boys tugging a red wagon down the street, completely oblivious to the growing mob of men searching for them. The officers jumped out of the car \"with their guns drawn,\" grabbed the boys, and shoved them into the car. \"We'll teach you little niggers not to kiss white girls,\" one of the officers snapped. When they arrived at the jail, Thompson recalled, the policemen \"threw us down and then started beating us.\" They \"hit us hard in the chest, call[ed] us all kind of names... and talked about how they was going to lynch us.\" The police put the boys behind bars and held them there for six days as the Klan clamored for blood outside. No one contacted their parents. Even if the police wanted to call the boys' mothers, they would have had a hard time finding them. Both women had holed up with neighbors after their homes became targets of terrorist attacks. Evelyn Thompson fled after a carload of angry whites sprayed her windows with bullets and masked men burned a cross on her front lawn. The final straw may have been when someone shot the family's dog and left it dead in the front yard.\n\nNews reports of the illicit kissing game hewed closely to the politics and prejudices of the color line. Some white reporters detailed an attempted rape in which one of the boys held Sutton down until the other could extract a kiss or more. White officials argued that the boys were guilty of \"molesting three white girls.\" Even Governor Luther Hodges insisted that Thompson and Simpson \"had assaulted\" the girls. The _Carolina Times_ , on the other hand, a black newspaper, argued that the \"crisis in Monroe... had nothing to do with assault or delinquency.\" According to Louis Austin, the editor, the racial hubbub was the product of white angst and shame, and that Thompson and Simpson had not yet learned the \"unwritten law of white supremacy\" that \"white is right and God... has made one race of men superior to another.\" \"No one but a bunch of numbskulls,\" he fumed, \"with hearts full of the filthiest kind of dirt would attach any significance to what children of six to ten years of age do at play.\"\n\nAt a hearing on November 4, 1958, J. Hampton Price, a juvenile court judge, found Hanover Thompson and Fuzzy Simpson guilty of molestation and sentenced them to the Morrison Training School for Negroes in Hoffman, North Carolina, for \"indeterminate terms.\" The ridiculousness of the charge and the harshness of the sentence, not to mention the fact that Judge Price referred to the boys twice as \"niggers,\" convinced Robert F. Williams, the militant leader of the Monroe, North Carolina, NAACP, to launch a major publicity campaign. Williams organized the Committee to Combat Racial Injustice (CCRI) with assistance from Conrad Lynn and George Weisman, activists in New York who had connections to the Socialist Workers Party; C. K. Steele, president of the Tallahassee, Florida, NAACP and head of the successful 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott; and Carl Braden, co-founder, with his wife, Anne, of the liberal Southern Conference Education Fund. Their plan was to remove the story from the narrow confines of Monroe, North Carolina, and place it on a world stage, shaming the state and ultimately the entire nation.\n\nIt was not difficult to sell the story outside the South. The _London News-Chronicle_ gobbled up the \"Kissing Case\" and prominently placed it on the front page on December 15, 1958. With the paper's circulation of more than one million, the story quickly spread. In Italy newspapers ran sympathetic photos of Thompson and Simpson in juvenile detention on the front page under headlines bemoaning the excessive punishment: \"He Will Grow Up in Jail.\" Similar stories appeared throughout Europe; even the Soviet Union and China ran the story, presenting it as a mockery of American democracy. The CCRI hoped the \"lever of worldwide publicity and the fulcrum of Cold War politics would lift them to victory.\" At the very least, they knew it would expose the South's growing racial and sexual hysteria. But what they really desired was enough global pressure to prod President Eisenhower or Congress to take action. After two months of negative publicity at home and abroad, Governor Hodges finally issued the order to release Fuzzy Simpson and Hanover Thompson. The two boys reunited with their mothers on February 13, 1959, nearly four months after their arrest.\n\nDomestic racial politics had vexed America's cold warriors for many years, forcing the federal government at times to intervene on behalf of African Americans in order to avoid international embarrassment. For example, when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus activated the National Guard to block nine African-American children, including Melba Patillo, from integrating Little Rock's Central High School in 1957, and then removed them as an angry mob converged on the school, the whole world took notice. Televised images of well-dressed black children surrounded by straight-faced soldiers and angry, screaming whites transported Jim Crow into homes around the country and the globe, making Little Rock the \"foremost international symbol of American racism.\"\n\nPresident Dwight Eisenhower, furious that Faubus had defied both federal law and tolerated, if not encouraged, mob violence in the streets of Little Rock, decided to let the governor know that, as David Halberstam put it, he did not \"look kindly on frontal challenges by junior officers.\" On September 24, Eisenhower sent one thousand paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock, becoming the first president since Reconstruction to use the military to defend African Americans' constitutional rights. In a televised address that night explaining his decision, Eisenhower told the nation that the Little Rock crisis had threatened America's position in the Cold War. \"It would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being done to the prestige and influence, and indeed to the safety of our nation around the world,\" Eisenhower argued. \"Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct which the peoples of the world unite to proclaim in the charter of the UN.\" By the next day the fierce and flinty paratroopers, from the unit that had stood up to the Nazi Wehrmacht and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, stared down the segregationists and escorted Melba Patillo and eight others to class.\n\nFederal intervention finally forced Governor Faubus to integrate Central High School, but it did not stop demagogues in Dixie from flirting with secession, passing resolutions of interposition, and terrorizing African Americans. On the contrary, the sight of federal troops on Southern soil fueled massive resistance. That year Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida \"nullified\" _Brown. 72_ Overall, eleven Southern states passed more than 450 acts and resolutions in the decade after the controversial Supreme Court decision in order to maintain \"lily-white\" schools. Southerners' deep-seated fear of interracial sexuality trumped their enthusiasm for anti-Communism. Not even the threat of international embarrassment stopped some segregationists from enforcing their beliefs and biases with violence and terror. The Southern Regional Council, a liberal organization, reported more than 530 acts of segregationist violence and economic intimidation against African Americans between 1954 and 1959.\n\nBecause of this backlash, direct action campaigns like the Montgomery bus boycott waned, prompting the historian Adam Fairclough to call the period between 1956 and 1960 the \"fallow years.\" Even Martin Luther King, Jr., found himself in a tactical conundrum. \"No matter how many cheers he received or how many tear streaked faces assured him that lives were transformed,\" Taylor Branch notes, \"tomorrow's newspapers still read pretty much like today's. Segregation didn't disappear.\" The NAACP, legally banned from operation in Alabama and starkly curtailed in Texas and Arkansas, avoided confrontation with white authority and instead sponsored legal cases, which slowly crept through the courts. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), created in 1957 to parlay the Montgomery success into a national movement, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a mostly Northern organization formed in 1948 to protest racial segregation, had yet to come up with a strategy that would mobilize the masses. Roy Wilkins, the head of the national NAACP, recognized the threat posed by massive resistance. \"The race,\" Wilkins said, \"is in a life and death struggle for all the ground it has won since Reconstruction. Between the ruthlessness of the South and the what-the-hell attitude of the North, we could lose.\"\n\nAlthough civil rights organizations confronted increasingly hard sledding in the years after Montgomery, the \"fallow period\" actually yielded a fertile crop of campaigns. As Montgomery had in the 1940s and 1950s, these struggles focused national attention on sexualized violence toward African Americans and the sexual exploitation of black women at the hands of white men. Reaction to the _Brown_ decision was sexually charged and it unfolded in a Cold War context that confined civil rights movements, yet made \"sex cases\" especially useful for organizing purposes. Federal sensitivity to world opinion, and the existence of a left-wing media that spotlighted black women's testimony, brought the issue of white-on-black rape to the forefront of the freedom struggle. Indeed, Montgomery, Alabama, and Little Rock, Arkansas, were not the only places in which attacks on black women fueled protests against white supremacy.\n\nOften ignored by historians, a number of these campaigns led to trials and even convictions throughout the South. For perhaps the first time since Reconstruction, Southern black communities could imagine state power being deployed in defense of their safety and respectability as men and women. This was clear in Tallahassee, Florida, where Betty Jean Owens, an African-American college student, stood in front of an all-white jury in 1959 and testified about being kidnapped and gang-raped by four white men. \"All eyes,\" Roy Wilkins argued, \"will be upon the state of Florida.\"\n\n# CHAPTER 5 \n\"It Was Like All of Us Had Been Raped\"\n\nON MAY 2, 1959, FOUR WHITE men in Tallahassee made a pact (as one of their friends testified in court later) to \"go out and get a nigger girl\" and have an \"all night party.\" They armed themselves with shotguns and switchblades and crept up behind a car parked alongside a lonely stand of scrub pines and blackjack oaks near Jake Gaither Park. When they reached the car, Patrick Scarborough pressed his sixteen-gauge shotgun against the driver's nose and ordered Richard Brown and his companions out. Dressed in formal gowns and tuxedos, the four African Americans reluctantly stepped out of the car. All were students at Florida A&M University (FAMU), where R&B crooner Roy Hamilton had sent a \"capacity audience... into musical bliss\" at the Orange and Green Ball that night.\n\nScarborough forced the two black men to kneel, while his friend David Beagles held the two black women at knifepoint. When Betty Jean Owens began to cry, Beagles slapped her and told her to \"shut up or she would never get back home.\" Waving his gun, Scarborough ordered Richard Brown and his friend Thomas Butterfield back into the car and told them to leave. As Brown and Butterfield moved toward the car and then slowly drove away, Edna Richardson broke free and ran to a nearby park, leaving Betty Jean Owens alone with their attackers.\n\nBeagles pressed the switchblade to Owens's throat and said, \"We'll let you go if you do what we want,\" then forced her to her knees, slapped her as she sobbed, pushed her into the backseat of their blue Chevrolet, and drove to the edge of town, where he and his friends raped her seven times.\n\nWhen the four armed white men in Tallahassee forced Thomas Butterfield and Richard Brown to drive away, leaving Betty Jean Owens at the mercy of their assailants, the two black freshmen drove around the corner and waited. As the blue Chevrolet disappeared down the street, Brown and Butterfield hurried back to the scene. Edna Richardson, the black woman who was able to get away, saw her friends from her hiding spot, called out to them, and then ran to the car. Hoping to save Owens, the FAMU students rushed to the local police station to report the crime.\n\nSimilar situations in other Southern towns had often left African Americans without police aid. Although the Tallahassee police were not known for repression and brutality, they were hardly friendly toward African Americans, who made up nearly 40 percent of the city's population. Frank Stoutamire, the chief of police, was a genial if temperamental man who sold eggs out of the trunk of his patrol car to blacks and whites and often ignored violations of the county's ban on liquor. Russell Anderson, a minister at FAMU, remembered that Stoutamire \"stayed in power by playing the races against each other.\" He would \"act like he was a friend of the blacks when he was around them,\" Anderson said, but he \"let it be definitely known that he was a white man's man.\"\n\nIn 1937, for example, investigators implicated Stoutamire, then the Leon County sheriff, in a gruesome double lynching. Police arrested Richard Ponder and Ernest Hawkins, two black teenagers, for robbing a downtown business and threatening an officer with a knife. They were in the county jail no more than a few hours when four men with paper bags over their heads kidnapped the youths at gunpoint. They drove them three miles outside of town and riddled their bodies with bullets, then left the scene littered with hand-painted signs warning blacks to \"stay in your place.\" Only Stoutamire and the police chief knew who held the keys to the county jail, but the investigation was quickly shelved. By the time Stoutamire became the chief in 1953, he relied more on threats than on violence, but his policemen never hesitated to enforce white supremacy. They issued bogus tickets when it served their own interests, sent detectives to spy on and infiltrate black organizations, and harassed African Americans relentlessly.\n\nScene of the crime where four white men from Tallahassee, Florida, kidnapped and raped an African-American college student. (photo credit 5.1)\n\nJoe D. Cooke, Jr., an intern from Florida State University, defied racial conventions when he agreed to search for the white assailants of an African-American college student. (photo credit 5.2)\n\nStoutamire and his officers were off the night Betty Jean Owens was attacked. The officer on duty in Florida's capital city that evening was Joe D. Cooke, Jr., an energetic nineteen-year-old intern from Tallahassee who was majoring in criminology at Florida State, the all-white local university. Much to the surprise of the three black students, he called for backup and eagerly agreed to look for Owens and her assailants.\n\nAfter a lengthy search, one of the students finally spotted the blue Chevrolet and shouted, \"That's it!\" It was just after four A.M. Deputy Cooke turned on his flashers and drove alongside the car. Attempting to escape, the kidnappers led Cooke \"twisting and turning\" through the dark, tree-lined streets of Tallahassee \"at speeds up to 100 miles per hour.\" One of the white men suggested \"dumping the nigger,\" but William Collinsworth, a twenty-four-year-old married telephone lineman, said, \"We can't now, he's on our tail.\" Finally, Collinsworth pulled his car to the curb, grabbed his shotgun, and got out of the car. The young deputy drew his pistol and ordered all four to line up against the car or, he threatened, \"I will shoot to kill.\"\n\nAs they waited for assistance from Cooke's supervisor, they heard muffled screams coming from the car. Richard Brown and Deputy Cooke peered through the rear window and saw Betty Jean Owens bound and gagged, lying on the backseat floorboards. Brown tried to help her out of the car, but as her feet touched the ground, she collapsed. Cooke drove Betty Jean Owens and her friends to the local colored hospital, while Deputy Sheriff W. W. Slappey arrested the four white men and drove them to the jailhouse.\n\nLaughing and joking on the way to the police station, the four white men apparently did not take their arrest seriously nor think they had done anything wrong. Collinsworth, for example, worried less about the charges against him than about the safety of his car. Deputy Sheriff Slappey revealed his disgust when he handed the men over to Sheriff Raymond Hamlin, Jr. \"They all admitted it,\" Slappey said. \"They didn't say why they did it, and that's all I'm going to say about this dirty business.\" William Collinsworth, Ollie Stoutamire (the sixteen-year-old cousin of police chief Frank Stoutamire), Patrick Scarborough, and David Beagles, whom the _Pittsburgh Courier_ called the \"element which sports duck-bill haircuts,\" confessed in writing to abducting Owens at gunpoint and having \"sexual relations\" with her. When Sheriff Hamlin asked the men to look over their statements and make any necessary corrections, Beagles, a high school senior and part-time service station attendant, smiled and bent over the table. He made one minor adjustment before he and his friends were hustled off to jail.\n\nIf the four white men did not take their arrests seriously, students at FAMU, a historically black university that anchored middle-class black life in Tallahassee, did. Many of them were veterans of the Tallahassee bus boycott in 1956, a Montgomery-inspired campaign that highlighted both students' preference for direct action and their willingness to rally behind the protection of black womanhood rather than the plodding litigation favored by the NAACP. White authorities had charged Carrie Patterson and Wilhelmina Jakes, roommates at FAMU, with \"inciting a riot\" after they refused to move to the colored section of a city bus on May 26, 1956. As in Montgomery, the women who fueled the boycott fought for the dignity of their personhood. They were \"real upset,\" Jakes said later, that bus drivers \"were treating us like criminals... like we weren't human beings.\"\n\nA burning cross on the front lawn of their home baptized them into the struggle and galvanized the black community into action. A student-led boycott forced the city bus company to shut down, five months faster than the boycott in Montgomery. Despite economic intimidation, constant police harassment, and violence, African Americans stayed off the buses. At a mass meeting in June, C. K. Steele, a Baptist minister who helped lead the boycott, said that blacks would rather \"walk in dignity than ride in humiliation.\" Steele had preached at Hall Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1940s, when the Recy Taylor and Gertrude Perkins cases shook up the ministers and mobilized community action. He arrived in Tallahassee in 1952 and quickly became a community leader. Steele's experience in Montgomery and strong relationship with civil rights advocates in Florida and throughout the South made him a natural mentor for the FAMU students. \"Without the students,\" he insisted, \"there would be no movement.\" \"They are the militants\u2014they're your soldiers.\" The buses were finally integrated in the spring of 1957, two years before the four white men armed themselves to kidnap and rape Betty Jean Owens.\n\nWhen FAMU students heard news of the attack on Owens and the subsequent arrest of four white men, a small group planned an armed march to city hall to let city officials know that they were willing to protect black womanhood the same way whites \"protected\" white womanhood\u2014with guns. Mainstream student leaders persuaded them that an armed march was \"the wrong thing to do\" and patched together a \"Unity\" demonstration only twelve hours after Betty Jean Owens was admitted to the local colored hospital.\n\nAs the four white men sat in jail, fifteen hundred students filled Lee Auditorium, where Clifford Taylor, president of FAMU's Student Government Association, said he \"would not sit idly by and see our sisters, wives, and mothers desecrated.\" Using language white men in power could understand, student leaders professed their \"belief in the dignity, respect, and protection of womanhood\" and announced that they would petition the governor and other authorities for a \"speedy and impartial trial.\"\n\nOn May 4, 1959, more than one thousand Florida A&M University students gathered on the university's quadrangle to demand justice for Betty Jean Owens, who was brutally raped by four white men two nights before. (photo credit 5.3)\n\nEarly the next day more than a thousand students gathered in the university's grassy quadrangle with signs, hymns, and prayers aimed at the national news media, which sent out stories of the attack across the country. The students planned to show Tallahassee and the rest of the nation that white men could no longer attack black women without consequence. Student protesters held signs that declared, \"It could have been YOUR sister, wife, or mother.\" Some students linked the attack in Tallahassee to larger issues related to the black freedom struggle: two students held up a poster depicting scenes from Little Rock, Arkansas, that read, \"My God How Much More of This Can We Take.\"\n\nIt was the deeply personal issue of rape, however, that gave the students their focus. Patricia Stephens Due, a Miami native and student at FAMU, remembered feeling helpless and unsafe. \"We all felt violated, male and female,\" she recalled. \"It was like all of us had been raped.\" Student leader Buford Gibson, speaking to a crowd, universalized the attack when he said, \"You must remember it wasn't just one Negro girl that was raped\u2014it was all of Negro womanhood in the South.\" By using Betty Jean Owens as a black everywoman, Gibson challenged male students to rise up in protest and then placed the protection of black womanhood in their hands. Unlike white men who historically used the protection of white womanhood to inspire mob violence, Gibson's speech inspired students at Florida A&M to maintain their nonviolent demonstration.\n\nFrom left to right: Patrick Scarborough, David Beagles, Ollie Stoutamire, and William Ted Collinsworth. (photo credit 5.4)\n\nAt about the same time, white men in Poplarville, Mississippi, used the \"protection of womanhood\" as justification for the lynching of Mack Charles Parker, a black man who was charged with the kidnapping and rape of a twenty-four-year-old white woman who could barely identify him in a police lineup. Two days before his trial, a group of eight to ten white men obtained keys to Parker's unguarded jail cell, savagely beat him, and then dragged him screaming down three flights of stairs. FBI agents located Parker's bloated body floating in the Pearl River on May 4, 1959, just two days after four white men gang-raped Betty Jean Owens. The Parker lynching cast a shadow over Tallahassee, brutally reminding the black community that white women's bodies were off limits, while the bodies of black women were fair game.\n\nThe accelerating media coverage, student-led protests, and a threat to boycott classes at Florida A&M forced circuit court judge W. May Walker, a white-haired former firefighter, to call members of the grand jury into special session in Tallahassee on May 6, 1959. More than two hundred black spectators, mostly students, squeezed into the segregated balcony at the Leon County Courthouse to catch a glimpse of Betty Jean Owens and her attackers before they retreated into the secret hearing. Still undergoing hospital treatment for injuries inflicted during the attack and for \"severe depression,\" Owens was accompanied to the courthouse by a nurse, the hospital administrator, and her mother.\n\nGasps and moans sounded from the balcony when, after two hours behind closed doors, Collinsworth, Beagles, Scarborough, and Ollie Stoutamire emerged and calmly faced the judge. When they all pleaded innocent, making a jury trial mandatory, African Americans roared with disapproval. Dr. M. C. Williams, a local black leader, shouted, \"Four colored men would be dead if the situation had been reversed. It looks like an open and shut case.\" Defense attorneys for Collinsworth and Scarborough argued for a delay, insisting that public excitement threatened a fair trial, but Judge Walker ignored their objections. For the first time in Florida history, a judge sent the white defendants charged with raping an African-American woman back to jail to await their trial. Echoing the sentiments of the people around him, a young boy traced \"we want justice\" in the dust on the railing of the segregated balcony.\n\nJustice was the last thing the black community expected. In the thirty-four years since Florida began sending convicted rapists to the electric chair instead of the gallows, the state had electrocuted thirty-seven African Americans charged with raping white women. Before this, Florida had led the country in per capita lynchings, surpassing notoriously violent states like Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana. From 1900 to 1930 white Floridians lynched 281 people, 256 of whom were African American. Throughout its history, Florida had never executed or lynched a white man for raping a black woman.\n\nFlorida's violent history included the \"little Scottsboro\" case, involving Samuel Shepard, Walter Irvin, and Charles Greenlee, black men accused of raping a white woman in Groveland, Florida, in 1949. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned their guilty verdicts in 1951, Sheriff Willis McCall picked up Shepard and Irvin from Raiford State Prison to transfer them back to the county. On the way there, McCall pulled to the side of the road and asked the two handcuffed men to change the tire, then shot them both in the chest. \"I got rid of them,\" he told his boss over the radio, \"killed the sons of bitches.\" Walter Irvin survived the shooting, but Samuel Shepard died that day.\n\nIn Tallahassee, memories of the \"little Scottsboro\" case hung over the African-American community in 1954 when the state electrocuted Abraham Beard, a seventeen-year-old black youth accused of raping a white woman. Apart from the race of the accused, the Beard case featured an almost identical cast of characters as the Tallahassee case four years later: an all-white jury had tried and convicted Beard in the same courtroom where Betty Jean Owens faced her attackers. Judge W. May Walker presided and William D. Hopkins served as the state prosecutor. Harry Michaels, Patrick Scarborough's attorney in 1959, served as Beard's court-appointed attorney in 1954. Both the \"little Scottsboro\" and the Beard cases revealed the extent to which the protection of white women served as the ultimate symbol of white male power and the foundation of white supremacy. When African Americans in Tallahassee demanded equal justice for Betty Jean Owens, that foundation began to crumble.\n\nNews that four white men would actually face prosecution for raping a black woman plunged both whites and blacks into largely unfamiliar territory. It not only highlighted the bitter ironies of segregation and \"social equality\" but allowed African Americans to make political use of them. According to the _Pittsburgh Courier_ , the rape case \"is the worst headache the Dixiecrats have ever suffered.\" All of their \"arguments for white supremacy, racial discrimination, and segregation fall by the wayside,\" the _Courier_ argued, and the arguments against school desegregation seem \"childishly futile.\" \"Time and again,\" another newspaper editor argued, \"Southern spokesmen have protested that they oppose integration in the schools only because it foreshadows a total 'mingling of the races.' The implication is that Negroes are hell-bent for intimacy, while whites shrink back in horror.\" \"Perhaps,\" the writer argued, \"as Lillian Smith and other maverick Southerners have suggested, it is not quite that simple.\"\n\nWhile prominent members of Tallahassee's conservative white community expressed their shock and horror at the rape, they continued to stumble into old narratives about race and sex. The indictment helped incite age-old fears of miscegenation and stereotypes of the \"black beast rapist.\" The historian William H. Chafe argues that \"merely evoking the image of 'miscegenation' could often suffice to ring the alarm bells that would mobilize a solid phalanx of white resistance to change.\" For example, white women around Tallahassee began to speak openly about their \"fear of retaliation,\" while young couples avoided parking \"in the country moonlight,\" as one said, \"lest some Negroes should be out hunting in a retaliatory mood.\" Reflecting this fear, as well as the larger concern with \"social equality,\" Florida legislators, like other lawmakers throughout the South, passed a series of racist bills designed to segregate children by sex in order to circumvent the _Brown_ decision and \"reduce the chances of interracial marriage.\" The extent to which the myth of the \"black beast rapist\" was a projection of white fears was never clearer than when the gang rape of a black woman conjured up terror of _black-on-white_ rape. The fact that the black community rallied around Betty Jean Owens threatened white male power\u2014making the myth of the black savage a timely political tool.\n\nState prosecutor William Hopkins (photo credit 5.5)\n\nJudge W. May Walker (photo credit 5.6)\n\nBlack leaders from all over the country eagerly used the rape case for their own political purposes as well. Most focused on the lynching of black men in similar cases, placing the crime against Betty Jean Owens into a larger dialogue about the power struggle between black and white men. As A. D. Williams, a black businessman in Tallahassee, put it, \"The white men are on the spot.\" Reverend Dennis H. Jamison felt that the indictment of four white men indicated a \"better chance at Justice than any involving the races in the South,\" but added, \"still no white men have ever been executed.\" Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, used almost the exact same language as white supremacists, accusing the \"four devil rapists\" of destroying the \"virginity of our daughters.\" \"Appeals for justice,\" he fumed, \"will avail us nothing... We know there is no justice under the American flag.\" Nearly all the editorials in major black newspapers echoed his sentiments.\n\nElla Baker, the spirited director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and perhaps the most important grassroots organizer in the South, felt that the evidence in the Tallahassee case was so strong that \"not even an all-white Florida jury could fail to convict.\" Reminding whites of their tendency to mete out unequal justice toward black men, she warned, \"With memories of Negroes who have been lynched and executed on far less evidence, Negro leaders from all over the South will certainly examine every development in this case... What will Florida's answer be?\" The _New York Amsterdam News_ called for equal justice, noting that the \"law which calls for the death sentence does not say that Negro rapists should be punished by death and white rapists should be allowed to live.\" The _Pittsburgh Courier_ bet on acquittal, despite the fact that the case \"is as open and shut as a case can be.\"\n\nAt the annual SCLC meeting in Tallahassee a few days after the indictment, Martin Luther King, Jr., praised the student protesters for giving \"hope to all of us who struggle for human dignity and equal justice.\" But he tempered his optimism with political savvy, calling on the federal government to force the country to practice what it preached in its Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union. \"Violence in the South can not be deplored or ignored,\" King declared, directing his criticism at President Dwight Eisenhower; \"without effective action, the situation will worsen.\" King exploited a political context in which America's racial problems were increasingly an international issue. The BBC broadcast segments of the FAMU student speeches condemning the rape and racial injustice, while newspapers throughout Europe watched the case closely. A black soldier stationed in Germany winced when a German man mocked American rhetoric of democracy. \"It is funny that you are over here to protect us from the Russians,\" he said, \"when there is no one to protect your people from the KKK and white Americans.\"\n\nKing exploited the chasm between rhetoric and reality to highlight the injustice of Jim Crow. \"It is ironical that these un-American outrages occur as our representatives confer in Geneva to expand democratic principles... It might well be necessary and expedient,\" King threatened, \"to appeal to the conscience of the world through the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations.\" This international angle was a strategy shared by mainstream integrationists, leftist radicals, and black nationalists alike. Audley \"Queen Mother\" Moore, leader of the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, petitioned the United Nations Human Rights Commission in person to end the \"planned lynch terror and willful destruction of our people.\" She tied issues of race, gender, sex, and citizenship together by demanding Justice Department assistance for Betty Jean Owens's rape case, an FBI investigation of the Mack Charles Parker lynching, and basic voting rights.\n\nRobert F. Williams, militant president of the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP and leader of the defense in the 1958 \"Kissing Case,\" insisted that African Americans stand their ground and defend themselves. The Parker lynching, the Tallahassee rape case, and two local cases where white men stood accused of attacking black women inspired Williams to defend racial pride and black womanhood. On May 5, 1959, Williams and a group of angry black women converged on the Union County Courthouse to hear testimony in two trials. Georgia Davis White, a maid at the Hotel Monroe, accused Brodus F. Shaw, a white railroad engineer, of beating and kicking her down a flight of stairs after she allegedly disturbed his sleep. The judge dismissed the charges against Shaw, even though he did not show up for court. That same day white jurors giggled while Mrs. Mary Ruth Reed, a pregnant black sharecropper, testified that Lewis Medlin, a white mechanic, attempted to rape her in front of her five children. In an effort to get help, she scooped up her youngest child and ran across a field. Medlin knocked her down and pummeled her until a neighbor finally heard her screams and called the police. In court, Medlin's attorney argued that he had been drinking and was \"just having a little fun.\" Then, turning to the white jurors, the attorney pointed to the woman sitting next to Medlin. \"You see this pure white woman, this pure flower of life?\" he said. \"... This is Medlin's wife... Do you think he would have left this pure flower, God's greatest gift,\" he asked, \"for _that?\"_ Reed burst into tears as the jury broke for deliberation. Less than ten minutes later they returned a not guilty verdict.\n\nThe black women with Williams were furious. Before the trial, they had wanted to \"go and machine gun [Medlin's] house,\" but Williams had urged them to let the courts handle it. \"We would be as bad as the white people if we resorted to violence,\" he told them. Since the judge and jury had virtually laughed Reed out of court, the women blamed Williams. \"I had kept the black men in the community from killing this man,\" Williams said bitterly. The shocking indifference of the verdict enraged Williams. \"We didn't have as much protection as a dog down there,\" he said later, \"and the Government didn't care about us.\" Turning to the reporters left in the courtroom, Williams demanded a response. \"We cannot rely on the law,\" he said. \"We get no justice under the present system. If we feel that injustice is done, we must right then and there on the spot be prepared to inflict punishment on these people.... If it's necessary to stop lynching with lynching,\" he argued, \"then we must be willing to resort to this method.\" Williams's exhortation set off a national controversy, culminating at the 1959 national NAACP convention where the executive secretary, Roy Wilkins, suspended Williams for his stance. Williams defended his position by citing the tragedy in Tallahassee. \"The young prom escorts of the co-ed who was kidnapped and raped at gunpoint by four white men in Tallahassee,\" he insisted, \"would have been justified in defending the girl had they had weapons.\" \"We as men,\" he stated to the delegates, \"should stand up as men and protect our women and children.\"\n\nRoy Wilkins shared Williams's gender and race politics but not his methods for achieving justice. In a letter to Florida governor LeRoy Collins, a moderate segregationist with national political ambitions, he invoked the lynchings of Mack Charles Parker and Emmett Till, noting that the victims' skin color alone kept them from receiving a fair trial and that their deaths created political embarrassment at home and abroad. \"Full punishment has been certain and swift in cases involving a white victim and a Negro accused,\" he said, \"but the penalty has neither been certain nor heavy in cases involving a Negro victim and a white accused... For these reasons,\" Wilkins threatened, \"all eyes will be upon the state of Florida.\"\n\nOn June 12, 1959, at least four hundred people witnessed Betty Jean Owens face her attackers and testify on her own behalf. Owens approached the witness box with her head bowed. She wore a white embroidered blouse and a black-and-salmon-checked skirt. Gold earrings drew attention to her close haircut and sharp cheekbones. The African-American press cast her into the role of respectable ladyhood by characterizing her as a middle-class coed \"raised in a hard-working Christian household\" with parents devoted to the \"simple verities of life that make up the backbone of our democracy.\" Unlike white women, who were often able to play the role of \"fair maiden\" before a lynch mob worked its will on their alleged attackers, Betty Jean Owens had to tell her story in front of hundreds of white people in a segregated institution. She knew that the four white men who raped her might go unpunished.\n\nRain pattered against the courtroom windows as state prosecutor William Hopkins asked Owens to detail the attack from the moment she and her friends left the Florida A&M dance. \"We were only parked near Jake Gaither Park for fifteen minutes,\" she said, when \"four white men pulled up in a 1959 blue Chevrolet.\" She identified Patrick Scarborough as the man who yelled, \"Get out and get out now,\" as he poked the shotgun into her date's face. When Owens began to cry, David Beagles pressed a \"wicked looking foot long knife\" to her throat and forced her down to the ground. He then pulled her up, slapped her, and said, \"you haven't anything to worry about.\" Owens testified that Beagles pushed her \"into the car and the boy with the knife then pushed my head down in his lap and yelled at me to be quiet or I would never get home.\" \"I knew I couldn't get away,\" she said. \"I thought they would kill me if I didn't do what they wanted me to do.\"\n\nShe continued with the horrible details. As the car pulled off the highway and into the woods, \"the one with the knife pulled me out of the car and laid me on the ground.\" Owens was still wearing the gold and white evening gown; they tugged at her dress and, she testified, \"pulled my panties off.\" She then told how each one raped her while she was \"begging them to let me go.\" \"I was so scared,\" she said, \"but there was nothing I could do with four men, a knife, and a gun... I couldn't do anything but what they said.\" Owens testified that the men eagerly watched one another have intercourse with her the first time around but lost interest during the second round. \"Two of them were working on taking the car's license plate off,\" she said, \"while the oldest one\" offered her some whiskey. \"I never had a chance to get away,\" she said quietly. \"I was on the ground for two or three hours before the one with the knife pushed me back into the car.\"\n\nAfter the men collectively raped her seven times, Owens continued, Stoutamire and Beagles blindfolded her with a baby's diaper, pushed her onto the floorboards of the car, and drove away. When she heard the police sirens and felt the car stop, she pulled the blindfold down and began yelling for help. After police ordered the men out of the car, Owens recalled, \"I was so scared and weak and nervous that I just fell on the ground and that is the last thing I remember.\"\n\nBetty Jean Owens then described the physical injuries she sustained from the attack. \"One arm and one leg,\" she said, \"were practically useless\" to her for several days while she was at the FAMU hospital. A nurse had to accompany her to the grand jury hearing a few days after the attack, and she needed medication for severe depression. She also had a large bruise on her breast where the bodice stay from her dress dug into her skin as the four men pressed their bodies into hers. Asking her to identify some of the exhibits, her lawyer William Hopkins flipped open the switchblade used the night of the attack, startling some of the jurors. Immediately the three defense attorneys jumped up and called for a mistrial. \"By flashing the knife,\" they argued, \"Mr. Hopkins tried to inflame the jury and this prejudiced their clients' constitutional rights to a fair trial.\" Judge Walker denied their motion, signaling Hopkins to continue.\n\nWhen asked whether she consented, Owens clearly told Hopkins and the jury, \"No sir, I did not.\"\n\n\"Was it against your will?\" Hopkins asked.\n\n\"Definitely,\" she replied.\n\nDefense attorneys grilled Owens for more than an hour, trying to prove she consented because she never struggled to get away, and that she actually enjoyed the sexual encounter. \"Didn't you derive any pleasure from that?... Didn't you?\" attorney Howard Williams yelled repeatedly. Williams kept pressing her, \"Why didn't you yell or scream out?\"\n\n\"I was afraid they would kill me,\" Owens said quietly.\n\nShe showed signs of anger when Williams repeatedly asked if she was a virgin, attempting to characterize her as a stereotypical black jezebel. Owens retained her composure, refused to answer questions about her chastity, and resisted efforts to shame her. The defense made a last-ditch effort to discredit Owens by arguing that if the young men had actually raped her and threatened her life, she would have sustained more severe injuries.\n\nProceeding with the state's case, attorney Hopkins called the doctors, both black and white, who had examined Owens after the attack. They told the jury that they found her in a terrible condition and that she \"definitely had sexual relations\" that caused injuries that required a five-day hospital stay. Richard Brown, Thomas Butterfield, and Edna Richardson took the stand next. They all corroborated Owens's testimony, adding that after the attack, Owens was \"crying, hysterical, and jerking all over.\" Brown testified that Scarborough pointed the shotgun into his car window and ordered him and Butterfield to kneel in front of its headlights. Defense attorney John Rudd, a city judge who had been especially rough on African Americans during the 1956 bus boycott, asked Brown on cross-examination whether it was a \"single or double barrel shotgun they pointed into your car?\"\n\nBrown replied, \"I only saw one barrel, sir.\"\n\nLaughter rolled down from the balcony, upsetting Rudd. \"I cannot work with this duress and disorder at my back, a boy's life is at stake here!\"\n\nJudge Walker called for order and reprimanded the spectators.\n\nWhen the prosecution finally rested its case at eight-thirty P.M., defense attorneys moved for a directed verdict of acquittal, claiming the state failed to prove anything except sexual intercourse. Judge Walker denied the motion and insisted the defense return the next day to present their case.\n\nAmid a sea of people in the tiny courtroom, David Beagles, a towheaded eighteen-year-old high school student with a crew cut, sat rigidly on the stand, pushing a ring back and forth on his finger as he answered questions from his attorney. His mother buried her head in her arms as she listened to her son tell the jury his side of the story. Beagles testified that he had a knife and Collinsworth had a shotgun. The four of them, he said, were out \"looking around for Negroes who had been parking near Collinsworth's neighborhood and bothering them.\" When they came upon the Florida A&M students, Beagles admitted holding the switchblade, but then said he put it away when he saw they were dressed in formal wear. He admitted that they ordered Brown and Butterfield to drive away, but insisted that he _\"asked_ the girls to get into the car.\" He denied the rape, arguing that Owens consented and even asked them to take her \"back to school to change her dress.\"\n\nUnder cross-examination, Beagles admitted that he \"pushed her, just once... not hard,\" into the car; that he said, \"If you do what we want you to, we'll let you go,\" and then blindfolded her with a diaper after the attack. Defense attorney Howard Williams then asked Judge Walker to remove the jury, as Beagles detailed the confession he made the night of the crime. Williams argued that when police officers arrested the young men, they \"were still groggy from a night of drinking,\" making their taped confessions inadmissible. Under Hopkins's cross-examination, however, Beagles admitted that his confession was entirely voluntary and that he actually looked over the written statement and made an adjustment.\n\nPatrick Scarborough, a twenty-year-old who was AWOL from the air force, admitted that he was married to a woman in Texas and testified that he had intercourse with Owens twice. He emphatically denied using force, despite the fact that he acknowledged that there was one shell in the barrel of his shotgun and two in the magazine. When Hopkins questioned him, Scarborough admitted that Owens pleaded, \"Please don't hurt me,\" but insisted that she offered \"no resistance.\" He denied kissing her at first, and then said he kissed her on the neck while he had sex with her.\n\nDefense attorneys tried a series of contradictory approaches to win over the jury. First, they focused on discrediting Owens instead of defending their clients, because the prosecution repeatedly drew self-incriminating information from them. Then they tried to use each man's ignorance to prove his innocence, highlighting their low IQs and poor educations. When that failed, they detailed the dysfunctional histories of each defendant. Attorney Harry Michaels told the jury that Patrick Scarborough's juvenile record was the result of a sorry childhood. His mother died when he was born, Michaels told the jury, his father committed suicide shortly thereafter, and his grandparents reared him.\n\nSimilarly, character witnesses for William Collinsworth described his sordid home life and drinking problem. Nearly every member of Collinsworth's family took the stand, spilling sorrowful stories about their poverty and dysfunction. His sister, Maudine Reeves, broke down on the stand and had to be taken to the hospital. His wife, Pearlie, told the jury through sobs and tears that he was \"not himself when he was drunk,\" but when he was sober, \"you couldn't ask for a better husband.\" She failed to mention on the stand what her letter to the judge made explicit: that her husband regularly beat her.\n\nUnable to achieve any real sympathy, defense attorneys switched gears and attempted to portray their clients as reputable young men who were incapable of rape. Friends and family members lined up to testify that these young men \"were good boys\" and that defendant Ollie Stoutamire in particular had dropped out of school after the sixth grade, but had \"nothing but pure and moral intentions.\"\n\nFinally, the defense appealed to the jury's prejudices in both more and less predictable ways. Owens was a jezebel, they insisted, and could not have been raped. But attorneys for Collinsworth blamed his actions on the \"Indian blood\" pulsing through his veins. Pensacola psychiatrist Dr. W. M. C. Wilhoit backed him up when he argued that \"it is a known fact that individuals of the Indian race react violently and primitively when psychotic or intoxicated.\" When Collinsworth added alcohol to his \"Indian blood,\" Wilhoit argued, \"he was unable to discern the nature and quality of the crime in question.\"\n\nThe attorney for Stoutamire, City Judge John Rudd, blamed \"outside agitators.\" The defendants are \"being publicized and ridiculed to satisfy sadists and people in other places,\" Rudd yelled during closing arguments. \"Look at that little skinny, long legged sixteen-year-old boy. Does he look like a mad rapist who should die... Should we kill or incarcerate that little boy because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?\"\n\nIn their summations to the jury, defense attorneys S. Gunter Toney and Harry Michaels followed Rudd's lead. \"The crime here is insignificant,\" they said. \"... The pressure, clamor, and furor are completely out of proportion.\" Pointing to Scarborough, Michaels told the jury \"his motives, intentions, and designs that night were wholesome, innocent and decent.\" The fact that Owens could \"have easily walked ten feet into the woods where nobody could find her,\" Michaels said, proved that she consented. Waving her gold-and-white gown in front of the jury, he pointed out that it was \"not soiled or torn,\" which he said proved no brutality was involved. Finally, he called for an acquittal, arguing that the jury could not possibly convict on the basis of \"only one witness\u2014the victim, and confessions that admitted only one fact\u2014sexual intercourse.\" Sitting in the segregated balcony, Charles U. Smith, a sociologist at Florida A&M University, gasped when he heard Williams yell, \"Are you going to believe this nigger wench over these four boys?\"\n\nIn his closing argument, prosecuting attorney William Hopkins grabbed the shotgun and Betty Jean Owens's prom dress and appealed to the jury for a conviction. \"Suppose two colored boys and their moron friends attacked Mrs. Beagles' daughter... had taken her at gunpoint from a car and forced her into a secluded place and regardless of whether they secured her consent or not, had intercourse with her seven times, leaving her in such a condition that she collapsed and had to be hospitalized?\" Betty Jean Owens, he said, \"didn't have a chance in the world with four big boys, a loaded gun and a knife. She was within an inch of losing her life... she was gang-raped SEVEN times.\" \"When you get to the question of mercy,\" he told the jury, \"consider that they wouldn't even let that little girl whimper.\"\n\nRestless spectators, squeezed into every corner of the segregated courthouse, crowded back into their seats when jurors emerged after three hours of deliberation with a decision. An additional three hundred African Americans held a silent vigil outside. A. H. King, the jury foreman and a local plantation owner, slowly read aloud the jury's decision for all four defendants: \"guilty with a recommendation for mercy.\" The recommendation for mercy saved the four men from the electric chair and, according to the _Baltimore Afro-American_ , \"made it inescapably clear that the death penalty for rape is only for colored men accused by white women.\" A. H. King defended the mercy ruling by arguing that \"there was no brutality involved\" and insisted, implausibly, that the decision would have been the same \"if the defendants had been four Negroes.\" Judge Walker deferred sentencing for fifteen days, cleared the courtroom, and sent the four white men to Raiford prison.\n\nAfrican Americans and whites outside the Leon County Courthouse in Tallahassee eagerly await the verdict of four white men accused of raping Betty Jean Owens, a black college student. (photo credit 5.7)\n\nAfrican Americans who attended the trial quietly made their way home after the bittersweet verdict. The _Pittsburgh Courier_ reported that \"throughout Negro Tallahassee, there was resentment that the rapists had not been given the death sentence.\" The verdict cast a pall of gloom, the article continued, \"thick enough to be cut with a knife.\" Betty Jean Owens's mother told reporters that she was \"just happy that the jury upheld my daughter's womanhood.\" Reverend A. J. Reddick, former head of the Florida NAACP, snapped, \"If it had been Negroes, they would have gotten the death penalty.\" \"Florida,\" he said, \"has maintained an excellent record of not veering from its pattern of never executing a white man for the rape of a Negro,\" but he acknowledged that the conviction was \"a step forward.\" Owens showed a similar ambivalence in an interview by the _Amsterdam News_. \"It is something,\" she said. \"I'm grateful that twelve white men believed the truth, but I still wonder what they would have done if one of our boys raped a white girl.\"\n\nFlorida A&M students, who had criticized Butterfield and Brown for failing to protect black womanhood a week earlier, were visibly upset after the trial. In fact, letters to the editors of many African-American newspapers condemned the two men and all black men for failing to protect \"their\" women. Mrs. C.A.C. in New York City felt that all Negro men were \"mice\" and not worthy of respect because \"they stand by and let the white men do anything they want to our women.\" She then warned all black men that they \"would never have freedom until [they] learn to stand up and fight.\" In a letter to the _Baltimore Afro-American_ , a black man accepted her challenge: \"Unless we decide to protect our own women,\" he argued, \"none of them will be safe.\" Some African-American women felt they should protect themselves. A white woman sent her black maid home one day after she came to work with a knife, \"in case any white man came after her,\" reported the _Tallahassee Democrat_. Still, many felt that \"someone should have burned.\"\n\nDespite their anger at the unequal justice meted out, some African Americans in the community considered the guilty verdict a victory. The Reverend C. K. Steele, Jr., head of the Tallahassee chapter of the SCLC, reminded others that four white men \"wouldn't have even been arrested twenty years ago.\" The Reverend Lowery, state president of the Florida NAACP, saw a strategy in the mercy recommendation. He thought that it could help \"Negroes more in the long run\" by setting a precedent for equal justice in future rape cases. Later that summer, for example, Leon A. Lowery and others helped launch a successful campaign to highlight the unequal justice meted out for black men accused of raping white women. They asked Governor LeRoy Collins to commute the sentences of four black men who lingered on death row. A white jury sentenced Ralph Williams to death for having a consensual relationship with a white woman; John Edward Paul confessed to raping a white woman after police tortured him and shot him in the foot; an all-white jury sentenced Sam Wiley Odum to death after only six minutes, despite the fact that he had an alibi and was nowhere near the alleged rape victim; and Jimmie Lee Clark was sentenced to the electric chair for attempted rape, though police beat a confession out of him.\n\nAfter Judge Walker handed down a stern lecture and life sentences to the four white men on June 21, 1959, some African Americans in Tallahassee applauded what they felt was a significant step in the right direction. Betty Jean Owens's mother argued that the conviction and life sentence were \"open vindication for my daughter.\" Her daughter told the _Baltimore Afro-American_ , \"I feel better now for the first time since it happened.\" \"For the first time I feel safe,\" Owens said. \"After the jury recommended mercy,\" she continued, \"I thought that one or two of them might have been turned loose and that the others would get short terms. And that was why I was afraid... I felt they would come back and do something to me.\" Owens's intuition would prove correct. According to the _Chicago Defender_ , when David Beagles was paroled in 1965, he sought retribution. Four years after his release, he allegedly tracked down and murdered a thirty-year-old black woman and buried her body in a shallow grave. He thought it was Owens. Instead, it was Betty Jean Robinson Houston, an entirely different woman.\n\nUnlike Owens and her family, many others exhibited outrage at the verdict. Roy Wilkins praised it as a move toward equal justice, but acknowledged in a private letter the \"glaring contrast that was furnished by the Tallahassee verdict.\" In light of the recent lynching of Mack Charles Parker, no one really had to wonder what would have happened had the attackers been black. Editors of the _Louisiana Weekly_ called the trial a \"figment and a farce\" and insisted that anyone who praised the verdict \"confesses that he sees nothing wrong with exacting one punishment for white offenders and another, more severe for others.\" The editors of the _New York Amsterdam News_ were \"outraged\" by the verdict. \"We are not going to place ourselves in the ludicrous position of saying that we're satisfied. The verdict of guilty was the very least we expected,\" the editors wrote. \"It was obvious they were guilty from the start... They were caught at the scene, made confessions, and the victim clearly identified them.\" Anyone who said the \"half-loaf they got represents progress,\" they argued, \"is simply making a virtue out of the vice of appeasement and laying the groundwork for the same unjust system to continue for the next one hundred years.\"\n\nThe simple fact of the conviction was too much for some whites, who felt that sending four white men to jail for raping a black woman upset the entire foundation of white dominion. Many believed the guilty verdict was the result of a \"Communist-inspired\" NAACP conspiracy, which would ultimately lead to \"miscegenation.\" Letters to Judge Walker featured a host of common fears and racist stereotypes of black men and women. One man reminded the judge that a conviction \"would play into the hands of the Warren Court, the NAACP, and all other radical enemies of the South... even though the nigger wench probably had been with a dozen men before.\" Mrs. Laura Cox told Judge Walker in a letter that she feared this case would strengthen desegregation efforts, posing a direct threat to white children who might attend integrated schools. \"If the South is integrated,\" she argued, \"white children will be in danger because the Negroes carry knives, razors, ice picks, and guns practically all the time.\" Petitioning Judge Walker for leniency, Bill Arens reminded him that \"Negro women like to be raped by the white men\" and that \"something like this will help the Supreme Court force this low bred race ahead, making whites live and eat with him and allow his children to associate with the little apes, grow up and marry them.\"\n\nThis cartoon, featured in an African-American newspaper, places sexual violence at the center of the civil rights campaign for equal justice. It also demonstrates African Americans' belief that historically, Southern white men went unpunished for sexually assaulting black women, even when they admitted to the crime. May 16, 1959. (photo credit 5.8)\n\nIt is ironic that a rape case involving a black woman and four white men would conjure up images of the black brute chasing white women with the intent to mongrelize the white race. The Tallahassee case attests to the persistence of such images decades after Reconstruction, when the mythological incubus took flight, justifying mob violence and a reign of terror throughout the South. To be sure, anxieties about the black beast rapist and fears of \"miscegenation\" conveniently surfaced when white men feared losing their monopoly on power.\n\nDespite segregationists' efforts to maintain the status quo, the conviction signaled an enormous break with the past. While the verdict was due largely to the confluence of localized issues\u2014a politically mobilized middle-class African-American community; the lower-class status of the defendants, who were politically expendable; Florida's status as a \"moderate\" Southern state dependent on outside tourism; and media pressure\u2014the case itself was rooted in a decades-long struggle for black women's bodily integrity that had far-reaching consequences. Like the Recy Taylor case, the Tallahassee case focused national attention on the sexual exploitation of black women by white men. The life sentences helped secure convictions elsewhere that summer. In Montgomery, Alabama, Grady F. Smith, a retired air force colonel, was sentenced to fourteen months of hard labor for raping a seventeen-year-old African-American girl. In Raleigh, North Carolina, Ralph Lee Betts, a white thirty-six-year-old ex-convict, was sentenced to life imprisonment for kidnapping and molesting an eleven-year-old African-American girl. And in Beaufort, South Carolina, an all-white jury sentenced a white marine named Fred G. Davis to the electric chair\u2014a first in the history of the South\u2014for raping a forty-seven-year-old African-American woman.\n\nBetty Jean Owens's grandmother recognized the historic and political significance of the verdicts. \"I've lived to see the day,\" she said, \"where white men would really be brought to trial for what they did.\" The _Louisiana Weekly_ argued that the verdict \"indicates that the South is, after one hundred years, moving toward equal justice.\" For nearly a century, the editors argued, \"the white South has excused the white man involved in the ugly crime of rape of a Negro woman, but became incensed like wild men if it was the other way around. Just take a look at the complexion of the 'darker' race in the South and you'll find that amalgamation is not something that is about to start, but what started one hundred years ago.\"\n\nJohn McCray, the editor of the South Carolina _Lighthouse and Informer_ , realized the importance of guilty verdicts. \"From personal observation and civil work,\" McCray noted, \"our women have been molested and their defilers allowed to go free for the last quarter of a century. This forced intimacy,\" he said \"goes back to the days of slavery when our women were the chattel property of white men.\" For McCray, the life sentences indicated a new day: \"Are we now witnessing the arrival of our women?\" he asked. \"Are they at long last gaining the emancipation they've needed?\" James Booker, a writer for the _Amsterdam News_ , took it a step further: the Tallahassee case, he said, \"will go down in history as the turning point in the struggle of Negroes for equal justice.\"\n\nIt is not a coincidence that black college students sparked the sit-in movement soon after Betty Jean Owens was brutally raped. Patricia Stephens Due, who felt that the rape symbolized an attack on the dignity of all African Americans, organized Tallahassee's first Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapter just six weeks after Owens's trial. Florida A&M CORE members launched an uneventful sit-in campaign that fall. A year later, in the spring of 1960, they successfully desegregated local lunch counters, theaters, and department stores, as did black college students throughout the South.\n\nThe sit-in movement spread rapidly across the South after four North Carolina A&T students demanded service at Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro on February 1, 1960. By the end of the week, hundreds of black college students jammed Greensboro's segregated lunch counters and restaurants, quietly demanding service and stubbornly refusing to leave, even when angry whites poured ketchup on their heads, put cigarettes out on their necks, and pummeled them with their fists. Although the students targeted restaurants, their goals were, according to activist Ella Baker, \"bigger than a hamburger or a giant-sized Coke.\" The students carried signs condemning the \"lack of dignity and respect\" shown to them and demanded universal human rights. \"I felt as though I had gained my manhood,\" Franklin McCain, one of the four pioneers, said later. By the end of February, black college students had launched sit-ins in thirty-one cities and eight states across the South.\n\nDuring the next three years, the nation and the world witnessed African Americans risking their lives for human rights during the Freedom Rides in 1961; watched \"Bull\" Connor unleash snarling police dogs on black children during the Birmingham movement in 1963; heard about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, dream at the Lincoln Memorial; and saw investigators pull the bodies of three voter registration workers out of an earthen dam in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964.\n\nDespite the almost unlimited media focus on racial violence, interracial rape cases no longer made national headlines. A cursory glance at newspapers in the early 1960s might suggest that white-on-black rape had abated and that black women were relatively safe from white racial and sexual violence. But the \"Second Reconstruction\" was nearly as violent and dangerous for black women as the first, when white Southerners had used rape as a \"weapon of terror\" to reclaim their power after the Civil War.\n\nAfrican-American women made up the bulk of the 257 Florida A&M University students who were arrested for protesting segregated movie theaters in Tallahassee in the spring of 1963. (photo credit 5.9)\n\nThe Tallahassee verdict proved that a new day had dawned in the South, but it was not yet a new world. During the 1960s black women, particularly voting-rights activists, remained vulnerable to rape and sexualized violence, especially in places where television crews and NAACP organizers could not go: private homes and prison cells. Nowhere was this clearer than in Mississippi, where white supremacy was backed by state leaders and legislators, protected in the courts, and reinforced on the local level by police, the White Citizens' Councils, and the Ku Klux Klan. It was a \"closed society,\" as James W. Silver put it, \"as near to... a police state as anything we have yet seen in America.\" And yet even in the most intransigent part of the country, where sexual violence against black women was endemic, there was a slow transformation taking place.\n\n# CHAPTER 6 \n\"A Black Woman's Body Was Never Hers Alone\"\n\nFANNIE LOU HAMER, A forty-three-year-old sharecropper and freedom fighter from the Mississippi Delta, knew that sexual terror was common in the history of the South. Hamer's grandmother, Liza Bramlett, spoke often of the \"horrors of slavery,\" including stories about \"how the white folks would do her.\" Bramlett's daughter, Hamer's mother, remembered that \"this man would keep her as long as he want to and then he would trade her off for a little heifer calf. Then the other man would get her and keep her as long as he want\u2014she was steady having babies\u2014and trade her off for a little sow pig.\" Twenty of the twenty-three children Bramlett gave birth to were products of rape. At some point, Hamer's mother must have decided death\u2014hers or someone else's\u2014was preferable to her own mother's experience. Fannie Lou Hamer remembered her mother packing a nine-millimeter Luger into their covered lunch bucket, just in case a white man decided to attack her or her children in the cotton fields.\n\nHamer's mother and grandmother taught her the painful truth that in the Mississippi Delta, if not the entire South, a \"black woman's body was never hers alone.\" If she was at all unclear about this lesson, the forced hysterectomy she received in 1961 when she went to the hospital to have a small cyst removed from her stomach left little room for confusion. \"I went to the doctor who did that to me,\" she said, \"and I asked him, 'Why? Why had he done that to me?' He didn't have to say nothing\u2014and he didn't.\" \"He should have told me,\" she said. \"I would have loved to have had children.\" The practice was so common that blacks often called it a \"Mississippi appendectomy.\" Hamer, like other black women who received the same procedure, had little recourse. If she had called a lawyer, she said, \"I would have been taking my hands and screwing tacks into my casket.\" The brutal beating Hamer received in the Winona, Mississippi, jail only reinforced these lessons.\n\nFannie Lou Hamer (photo credit 6.1)\n\nOn June 9, 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer and a group of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) volunteers returned to Mississippi from a citizenship training school in Charleston, South Carolina. At a rest stop in Winona, Mississippi, just thirty miles from the Delta town of Greenwood, police arrested Hamer and her companions for attempting to desegregate the bus terminal's lunch counter and drove them to the local jail. The county sheriff met the black women at the door. \"I been hearing about you black sons of bitches over in Greenwood, raising all that hell,\" he said. \"You come over here to Winona, you'll get the hell whipped out of you.\" He was not kidding. Once in custody, each activist received a savage and sexually abusive beating by the Winona police.\n\nOfficers first assaulted and sexually humiliated June Johnson, a beautiful and statuesque sixteen-year-old. Everyone in the jail must have heard Johnson's screams and the thump of fists and boots hitting flesh as policemen yelled, \"We're going to teach you how to say 'yes, sir' to a Mississippi white man.\" According to Hamer, the officers \"tore off most of her clothes\" and then forced her to strip off the rest as they watched. Johnson's coworkers gasped when they saw her naked, bloody body and \"bulging\" eye as she stumbled back to her cell.\n\nOfficers then brutalized Annelle Ponder, a coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and organizer of the trip. Three policemen took turns viciously beating her with a \"blackjack... belt, fists and open palms,\" while berating her for not showing racial deference. \"I want to hear you say 'Yes Sir,' nigger,\" one officer yelled repeatedly. \"They really wanted to make me say 'yes, sir,' \" Ponder recalled, \"and that is the one thing I wouldn't say.\" When the police finished pounding Ponder, they directed their fury at Fannie Lou Hamer.\n\nHamer, a stocky, churchgoing woman with a powerful singing voice, had worked as a field secretary for SNCC since B. D. Marlowe, her former employer and plantation owner in Sunflower County, fired her for registering to vote in the fall of 1962. Sunflower was home to both Parchman penitentiary and Senator James O. Eastland, both notorious symbols of white supremacy. Hamer and her husband, \"Pap,\" had worked on Marlowe's plantation for eighteen years, but once she stepped outside the narrow confines of Jim Crow, Marlowe kicked her off his land and notified the local White Citizens' Council, which harassed her and Pap relentlessly. Unable to find a job, she became an organizer for SNCC.\n\nFor over a year, Mrs. Hamer had been traveling around the Mississippi Delta rousing local blacks with her witty and bold speeches, soul-stirring songs, and fervid commitment to the plight of the poor. Robert Jackall, a Georgetown professor who volunteered in Sunflower County in 1967, was struck by Hamer's charisma. It was \"her unvarnished, earthy forcefulness, devoid of all pretense,\" he said; \"her unshakeable conviction in the justness of her cause, proved by her personal sufferings and the risks she continued to take; her ennobling vision of racial harmony and of personal redemption for those who seek it; and her ability to articulate her ideas with a powerful religious rhetoric that had deep resonance for her audience but that had no trace of practiced cant.\" Hamer concentrated her efforts in Greenwood, home of the White Citizens' Council and the center of SNCC's Delta activities. Her leadership inspired working people scarred by poverty and racism, but it also made her a constant target of intimidation, harassment, and sexualized violence.\n\n\"You bitch,\" one officer yelled, \"we going to make you wish you was dead.\" He ordered two black inmates to beat Hamer with a \"long wide blackjack,\" while other patrolmen battered \"her head and other parts of her body.\" As they ruthlessly beat her, Hamer felt them repeatedly, \"pull my dress over my head and try to feel under my clothes.\" When she attempted to pull her dress down in order to, as she put it, \"preserve some respectability through the horror and disgrace,\" a white officer \"walked over, took my dress, pulled it up over my shoulders, leaving my body exposed to five men.\"\n\nHamer found out later that Lawrence Guyot, a civil rights activist who came to the Winona jail to inquire about the women's status, was arrested and sexually tortured as well. \"They forced me to take off my pants,\" Guyot remembered, \"and they threatened my testicles with burning sticks.\" Hamer was sure her attackers were sadists. She remembered their facial expressions during her beating and believed they \"displayed pleasure that was sexual in nature.\"\n\nLike many of her foremothers, Hamer did not shy away from detailing the sexual aspects of her beating. She told her story on national television at the Democratic National Convention in 1964, and to congressmen investigating civil rights abuses in June 1964, and she continued to tell it \"until the day she died,\" offering up her testimony as a form of resistance to the sexual and racial injustice of segregation. Hamer's testimony, like that of other black female civil rights activists abused in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama in the early 1960s, countered white supremacist narratives of miscegenation, put segregationists on the defensive, and helped convince President Lyndon B. Johnson to use the power of the federal government to protect civil rights activists.\n\nFannie Lou Hamer was not the only woman willing to speak out publicly against sexualized violence in Southern jails. On June 6, 1963, three days before the Winona incident, Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), and Jeanne Noble, president of Delta Sigma Theta, went on WNEW, one of New York City's most popular radio stations, to announce an exclusive report documenting \"indignities to girl freedom demonstrators in Southern prisons.\" Dorothy Height revealed that the leaders of twenty-four women's groups had met a month earlier to hear firsthand accounts of \"brutality and sexual abuse\" from civil rights demonstrators in the South. Respectability and reticence, hallmarks of the black clubwomen's movement in the early twentieth century, gave way to stark testimony as Height told thousands of people listening to the radio that day that black and white female activists in Jackson, Mississippi, \"were raped by attendants at the jails.\" According to Height, the young women who were arrested in Jackson in the spring and summer of 1963 \"had been subjected to internal exams at the hands of attendants there and under very unsanitary conditions.\" One young woman told Jeanne Noble that she was \"asked to strip naked and stand before male prisoners in the yard of the jail\" and was one of many women forced to undergo \"unsanitary and unmedical [ _sic_ ] vaginal exams.\"\n\nTwo trustees carry an African-American woman to the paddy wagon in Jackson, Mississippi, 1963. African-American female activists were often sexually harassed and abused in prisons. (photo credit 6.2)\n\nThe incidents Height and Noble recounted for the radio audience reflected common practices in prisons throughout the South during the civil rights years, though they were rarely documented at the time. When the Freedom Riders poured into Jackson, Mississippi, in the summer of 1961, they were immediately arrested and delivered to Parchman penitentiary, a twenty-thousand-acre prison farm in the middle of the Delta and the most fearsome prison in the South. Officers herded the demonstrators into exam rooms with cattle prods, where both men and women \"were ordered to strip naked for thorough body searches.\" The women endured \"rough, painful vaginal searches,\" by prison guards who used gloves dipped in Lysol.\n\nIn Clarksdale, Mississippi, police arrested Miss Bessie Turner for allegedly stealing money and then viciously flogged her. Turner told SNCC officials later that police made her \"pull up [her] dress and pull down [her] panties\" and then began to whip her with a \"wide leather strap.\" When that failed to coerce an admission out of her, the officer told Turner to \"turn over an _[sic]_ open your legs and let me see how you look down there.\" He then took the leather strap and hit her \"between [her] legs.\" Not quite satisfied, the officer made Turner stand up and expose her breasts. \"He said he was looking for the money in my bra,\" she testified later.\n\nUnita Blackwell, a SNCC activist from Mayersville, Mississippi, remembered how dangerous it was to organize in rural areas. \"Every time I drove down the highway, I knew I might be arrested,\" she said. \"One time I was coming from Yazoo City and met the police. I had on pants and he made me take them off.\" He stared for a bit, then turned to another officer, and according to Blackwell, said, \"You want some of this?\"\n\nMississippi police did not hold a monopoly on the sexual humiliation and abuse of black women. According to a SNCC report, some of the worst incidents occurred in jails in southwest Georgia in the fall of 1962 and spring of 1963. Faith Holsaert, a SNCC field secretary in Albany, Georgia, was \"obscenely questioned\" by the police and \"fondled by officers during her booking.\" She was also sexually intimidated, she said, when officers \"propositioned\" her. Other SNCC workers were, she said, \"forced to strip to their panties,\" and at least one girl was sexually assaulted. LaVette Christian, a local teenager from a movement family, woke up in the middle of the night to find a prison official \"standing over her.\" According to SNCC documents, he \"started rubbing her arms and legs\" and she kept telling him \"No, no.\" Police threw Mrs. Marion King in the Albany jail in July 1962 when she was seven months pregnant. \"Police officers shoved her, kicked her and punched her in the face,\" the SNCC report said, \"causing her to fall to the ground and lose consciousness.\" One month later King gave birth to a stillborn baby.\n\nA report issued by the Medical Committee for Human Rights, an organization of physicians designed to provide medical assistance during Freedom Summer, showed that Georgia was not alone in its deployment of sexual abuse. The report documented \"extreme sexual brutality\" in Jackson, Mississippi, where police hit male activists' testicles with clubs, pulled women's dresses up, fondled their breasts, and ogled them while they were given vaginal exams.\n\n\"As a woman,\" Jeanne Noble exclaimed on WNEW, \"I can think of no greater indignity than rape... or sexual exposure... or unsanitary conditions.\" Height agreed and said that was why she called a special conference. The women's organizations that attended, Height said, \"came away... determined that this is one thing we could do as women... We could speak out and work toward the elimination of these horrible atrocities that seem to be vented against women and girls.\" These abuses, which often occurred behind closed doors and were exposed only months later, garnered neither the media coverage nor the organizational support necessary to stop them from happening. Height and Noble deviated from their own organizations' historic silence surrounding sexual violence by exposing the reality of rape and sexual abuse in Southern prisons. The National Council of Negro Women and Delta Sigma Theta embraced the tradition of testimony and used their institutional voices as weapons in the war against white supremacy.\n\nPolice crammed a group of teenage girls into a filthy stockade without beds, toilets, or running water in Leesburg, Georgia, after they were arrested for protesting segregation at a movie theater. (photo credit 6.3)\n\nThey also organized. On October 4, 1963, Dorothy Height; Shirley Smith, executive director of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights; Polly Cowan of the Citizens Committee for Children in New York; and Dr. Dorothy Ferebee, director of health services at Howard University, flew to Selma to bear witness and hear testimony from sixty-five young women and their parents about \"police brutality and hideous jail conditions\" in Dallas County. Young women from Selma had called Height, \"begging her to come see accounts firsthand and make an effort to have women's organizations come to [their] aid.\"\n\nThat night sixty-five teenagers and their parents assembled at First Baptist Church, where they testified about their experiences in Selma's jails. According to Polly Cowan, who recorded the meeting, Dorothy Height skillfully elicited the girls' stories. \"The teenagers had been tossed into cells without room for them all to sit on the floor,\" Cowan recalled. \"They were given no blankets, insufficient drinking water. They had no toilet facilities. There was sawdust in the small amount of food they were served. Salt was substituted for sugar in their coffee.\" There were numerous threats of sexual assault on the girls by local police. The black teenagers told Cowan and Height that the warden threatened them constantly. \"If you don't behave,\" he allegedly said, \"the men prisoners will be let into your cells.\" In order to protect themselves, the female freedom fighters \"huddled together at night, taking turns staying awake in case the guards came in to harass them.\"\n\nAs if to underline the point, about fifty policemen surrounded the church as the clubwomen streamed out. \"They stood in clumps,\" Cowan reported. \"It was dark with only one street light,\" she said, but she could see their weapons: \"clubs, pistols... and cattle prods. The yellow helmets and arm bands added to the impression that this was an invasion.\" Walking out of the meeting into the cluster of police was \"frightening,\" Cowan said. \"One hardly dared to look up from the red dirt of the church parking lot.\" As she walked past one of the state troopers, she noticed his cattle prod dangling from his belt and recalled a story she had heard from a local woman: pointing to one of the electric cattle prods, the mayor of Selma boasted that he could \"make a nigger jump three feet with one of these.\" The social standing of Dorothy Height and the Northern professional women who accompanied her did not exempt them from the threats described in the testimony of the young black women of Selma, Alabama.\n\nIn March 1964 Dorothy Height convened an \"off the record\" meeting in Atlanta with the NCNW, the YWCA, the National Council of Catholic Women, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the Church Women United to \"discuss police brutality and the treatment of women and girls who had been arrested for civil disobedience in the seven most troubled cities.\" In preparation for the meeting, each organization sent delegates to Southern movement towns to document local conditions. At that meeting, the leading clubwomen, whom Polly Cowan called the \"Cadillac Crowd,\" formed an interracial organization that sent teams of women to Mississippi in 1964 to establish ties among white and black women, observe civil rights projects, and bear witness to atrocities.\n\n\"Wednesdays in Mississippi\" helped bring outside resources and much-needed institutional attention to the stark conditions in the Deep South. Unfortunately, the integrated teams of middle-class women spent only one day a week in different towns in Mississippi observing work in Freedom Schools and community service projects. They seemed to be more comfortable doing traditional clubwomen's work, like community service and moral uplift, than documenting sexual abuse on the front lines of the freedom struggle. This strategy ignored black women's struggles with sexual discrimination and sexualized violence, despite the fact that it was an historic and ongoing issue. Though the clubwomen made good connections with local activists, Wednesdays in Mississippi did not translate into an effective program to protect black women from sexual violence.\n\nStories of sexual abuse and violence in Southern jails rarely reached a mass audience during the 1960s. If they received any press at all, it paled in comparison to the national and international attention given to the major civil rights campaigns under way throughout the South. African Americans' victory over Eugene \"Bull\" Connor in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, followed by the successful March on Washington later that summer and the signing of the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964, mortally wounded Jim Crow and began to dismantle the social and legal underpinnings of segregation. But blacks remained vulnerable to white attacks and were still denied the franchise in many places throughout the South. In Alabama and Mississippi, for example, segregationists were on the defensive, and they dug in\u2014their opposition to black equality became further entrenched, making change difficult and dangerous.\n\nStill, the ability to simply _survive_ white intransigence and federal indifference gave blacks a new sense of empowerment that enabled them to slowly overcome their fears. Endesha Ida Mae Holland, an eighteen-year-old African-American woman, gained a sense of pride and self-worth when SNCC started organizing voter-registration drives in Greenwood in 1962. By pushing aside fears of white violence and joining the local movement, she began to understand what Martin Luther King, Jr., called \"somebodyness.\" \"People started looking up into my face, into my eyes,\" Holland remembered. \"Whereas the whole town, to me, was looking down its nose at me,\" she said, \"the movement said I was _somebody;_ I was _somebody_ , they said.\" It was a message that transformed her life. Just seven years earlier Holland had been the victim of a terrible sexual assault.\n\n\"The movement said I was _somebody_.\" Endesha Ida Mae Holland (far left) with SNCC voting-rights activists. (photo credit 6.4)\n\nOn August 29, 1955, a day after J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant kidnapped Emmett Till, a wealthy white woman named Mrs. Lawrence asked Holland if she would babysit her granddaughter for the day. \"Ida Mae,\" as she was known then, frequently did babysitting and domestic work to help her mother, who spent her days ironing white folks' clothes inside their tiny tarpaper shack. Since it was Ida Mae's eleventh birthday, Mrs. Lawrence promised her two dollars and a \"birthday bonus\" if she would come by their big plantation-style home later that afternoon. After Ida Mae played with the child for a bit, Mrs. Lawrence summoned her upstairs. \"Mr. Lawrence wants to see you and wish you a happy birthday,\" she said. Mrs. Lawrence called her into the bedroom where her husband, a wizened old man, lay beneath crumpled blankets. Mrs. Lawrence tore back the sheets, exposing what Holland called \"his old shriveled _thing_ \u2014a slimy white penis asleep on his pasty leg.\"\n\nThen she scooped Holland up, placed her on top of the bed, and quickly left the room. The old man reached for Holland, \"pulled down [her] shorts and snapped down [her] panties,\" and began to fondle her. She was terrified. Her mother, she said in her memoir, had repeatedly told her to never allow anyone to \"touch [her] down there.\" Holland screamed and \"beat [her] hands against the wall, grabbing and pushing at the same time, looking for something to hold on to.\" Lawrence asked the child if she was enjoying herself, as if she were a grown woman engaged in a consensual act. \"Nawsir,\" Holland replied, \"it hurts.\" The rape lasted for what Holland said \"seemed like a lifetime.\" \"I began to think I was dying,\" she remembered. When Lawrence finished, he handed Holland a five-dollar bill and told her to go downstairs. When Holland opened the door and walked out, Mrs. Lawrence looked at her, as Holland put it, \"without expression, as if she'd gone somewhere else.\" \"But I knew,\" Holland said, \"that _she_ knew the bull had thrown me.\"\n\nHolland's experience was a common one for many African-American girls and women working in white households. Indeed, she suspected the \"bull\" had thrown plenty of other girls her age. Through \"sly innuendo, knowing glances, and telling silences,\" Holland said, she figured about half the girls in Greenwood\u2014maybe even the whole Delta\u2014lived without \"daddies who knew the score about white men and kept their daughters safe by refusing to let them work in white households.\" Of those, she estimated that approximately three-fourths were victims of rape. \"Folks used to tell how, in the South no white man wanted to die without having sex with a black woman,\" Holland said. \"It was just seen as part of life and if you... were black, you were always at the mercy of white people.\" \"You didn't need to be sitting babies or cleaning houses to fall victim to the white man's lust,\" she remembered. \"We could just as easily be picking cotton or walking to the store or spending money in the white man's store when the mood would take him and he'd take us\u2014just like that, like lightning striking.\" Like Fannie Lou Hamer, Holland understood that black women's bodies did not belong to themselves. They \"belonged to everyone,\" she said.\n\nBy the time SNCC organizers came to Greenwood in 1962, Holland was a high school dropout and a prostitute. One day she saw a well-dressed young black man walking through town and decided to follow him, hoping to turn a trick. \"I got it\u2014come an' get it,\" she sang. \"Come and get you some.\" She strutted and sashayed behind him until they reached the local SNCC headquarters. He turned around and asked if she was going to \"help get all these people signed up?\" It was Bob Parris Moses, a twenty-six-year-old, Harlem-born, Harvard-educated math whiz who came to Mississippi in the summer of 1961 as a SNCC organizer to register black voters. Moses introduced Holland to the other volunteers, and before she knew it, she was sitting in front of a typewriter, helping local sharecroppers fill out voter-registration forms. By the end of the day, she felt different. \"Being treated with respect was something wholly new for me,\" she said in her memoir. Holland quit selling sex and joined the freedom movement, eventually becoming a field secretary for SNCC. \"Being around the SNCC people,\" she said later, \"had turned my narrow space into a country bigger than I'd ever imagined.\"\n\nOrganizing helped local people regain a sense of humanity, but they remained vulnerable to white retaliation and physical harm. Bob Moses and other SNCC leaders eventually came to believe that federal indifference would fade only when _white_ bodies and lives were threatened. SNCC proposed a summer project that would recruit hundreds of white students from Northern states to help register Mississippi blacks. The presence of Northern whites, Bob Moses believed, would shine a bright light on the state so the rest of the country could see \"what was really happening.\" Moses made this clear at an orientation session for volunteers. \"When you come South,\" Sally Belfrage, a white volunteer-journalist in Greenwood, remembered Moses saying, \"you bring with you the concern of the country\u2014because the people of the country don't identify with Negroes.\" After requesting federal protection for three years; after the harassment and murder of so many African Americans in Mississippi, the FBI finally responded to black demands and sent in a \"crack team\" to Mississippi on the eve of Freedom Summer. \"Now [that] the federal government is concerned,\" Moses told the volunteers, \"there will be more protection for us, and hopefully for the Negroes who live there.\"\n\nAs Northern volunteers flooded into the state in June 1964, white Mississippians braced themselves for what they considered a military\u2014and sexual\u2014invasion. According to the historian John Dittmer, white Mississippians \"made interracial sex a centerpiece of their attack on the summer project itself.\" The presence of Northern whites, unaccustomed to Jim Crow and uninterested in maintaining Mississippi's white power structure, threatened to undermine the state's racial hegemony and expose white Mississippians to other ways of thinking about race. In order to discredit the goals of Freedom Summer and shore up white solidarity, state and local officials acted as if the student volunteers were an army of amalgamation hell-bent on forcing the state to allow interracial sex and marriage. The arrival of these sex-crazed white \"beatniks\" and \"black rapists\" disguised as civil rights activists propelled whites to rise up in defense of the so-called \"Southern way of life.\" White fears bordered on hysteria. According to _Newsweek_ , many \"believed interracial bands were coming... to start violence\" and assault white women. Some were even convinced that \"black men wearing white bandages on their throats had been designated to rape white women.\" Local newspapers and public officials, _The New York Times_ reported, \"did little to discourage these ideas.\"\n\nReady to meet the \"Army of Amalgamation.\" Allen Thompson (front, center), mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, poses with his police force and armored tank as the city prepares for the arrival of black and white voting-rights volunteers in the summer of 1964. (photo credit 6.5)\n\nTo protect themselves, white Mississippians prepared for war. They stocked up on guns, ammunition, and dynamite and renewed their membership in, or joined, the local Ku Klux Klan. Allen Thompson, the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, felt that \"Armageddon [was] just around the corner.\" _Newsweek_ reported that Mayor Thompson planned to save his state from these interracial incubi with his \"impressive\u2014and expensive\u2014deterrent force of men and military power.\" Thompson hoped that 450 riot police, 220 new shotguns, six dogs, and a \"13,000 pound armored tank... abristle with shotguns, tear-gas guns and a sub-machine gun,\" would stop the integrated infantry from advancing. \"We're ready for them,\" Thompson told _Newsweek_. \"They won't have a chance.\"\n\nThat hundreds of white women were coming to Mississippi to work for the movement must have made Thompson and his segregationist soldiers seethe with rage. The mere presence of white women in the black community helped make the summer of 1964, according to John Dittmer, \"the most violent since Reconstruction.\" In addition to the tragic murders of Northern volunteer Andrew Goodman and CORE organizers Michael Schwerner and James Chaney in Neshoba County on June 21, 1964, there were at least three other homicides that summer. Additionally, organizers reported more than thirty-five shootings and sixty-five cases of arson at individual homes and movement offices. Klansmen and their allies burned thirty-five black churches to the ground; while police arrested one thousand movement people and eighty activists suffered beatings. Shocking as these numbers are, they do not account for subtle forms of personal abuse and sexual attacks that often went unreported.\n\nSummer volunteers were keenly aware of the fact that white women working alongside black men and sharing conversation or contact with them violated the South's most sacred taboo. If they did not understand this, they quickly learned the rules. Most African-American SNCC workers came of age in the 1950s, when white men had brutally murdered Emmett Till for talking fresh to a white woman; they did not want to subject local blacks to any danger if they could help it. Organizers instructed the white volunteers to abide by local custom and maintain strict separation. This is why so many white female volunteers were confined to office jobs instead of community organizing; it was not simply because of sexism, as some argued later. Still, white women and black men were often seen working together and enjoying one another's company. \"It's one thing to have white women work in the office,\" Chuck McDew, a SNCC worker, remembered. \"It's another [for a black man] to be driving around in rural areas with a white woman sitting by your side. Whites can't handle that. Imaginations just went wild.\" The sight of white women mingling with African Americans, especially black men, constituted the \"ultimate white supremacist nightmare.\" Worse, the sight of interracial couples\u2014whether they were romantic partners or not\u2014\"only added to the rage and sense of impotence of white segregationists,\" Karl Fleming, a correspondent for _Newsweek_ , remembered. \"That is what it was _all_ about, _all_ the time, everywhere,\" Fleming said. \"It was the great underpinning of the whole damn thing\u2014just pure sexual fear.\"\n\nSally Belfrage, a white volunteer whose astute memoir provides one of the most vivid accounts of Freedom Summer, knew that whites' overblown orations about interracial sex masked an all-out effort to defend their position atop the political, economic, and social hierarchy. Integration, she insisted, was nothing new in Mississippi. \"For generations,\" Belfrage argued, whites had been crossing the color line to indulge in what African Americans called \"nighttime integration.\" Belfrage dismissed arguments against \"race mixing\" and the \"mongrelization of the white race\" among opponents of civil rights, since \"the principle was one-sided depending upon the color of the man involved.\" \"It's too late for the white man to start worrying about integration,\" she said, quoting an African-American woman, \"because [he] has already mongrelized the white race and the black one too. The only thing [he] hasn't done,\" she argued, \"is claim [his] children.\" The \"light-skinned products of the sinful doctrine of racial amalgamation,\" Belfrage said, \"were everywhere, and those of us who got up early met the not infrequent sight of white men driving out of the Negro neighborhood at dawn.\"\n\nBelfrage's stark analysis of and witness to white men's appetite for \"nighttime integration\" while feigning disgust for it during the day captured the long history of the racial and sexual subjugation of African Americans and the political maneuvering required to maintain the racial status quo. Like Belfrage's analysis, black women's testimonies concerning the actualities of interracial sexual violence consistently challenged the white supremacist narrative of miscegenation. One story from Grenada, a segregationist stronghold on the eastern edge of the Delta, illustrates this perfectly.\n\nWhen police charged L. J. Loden, a married white man, with raping a sixteen-year-old African-American girl in the summer of 1960, it did not make headlines. Loden's actions were not all that unusual. But when he was forced to stand trial and then convicted of rape on July 27, his world\u2014and that of white men in the Delta\u2014seemed upside down. The victim testified that Loden picked her up on the pretense of hiring her as a housemaid, but when she got into his car, he attacked her. She did not consent, she said at the trial, but actively \"resisted his advances.\" She testified that she struggled to escape and repeatedly stabbed him with a penknife during the assault. When a jury of twelve white men delivered a guilty verdict without recommending mercy, Loden was, by default, sentenced to death.\n\nThe ruling could have had profound implications throughout the state\u2014no white man had ever been sentenced to death for raping a black woman in Mississippi, or in the South for that matter. Between 1940 and 1965, only ten white men were convicted of raping black women or girls in Mississippi despite the fact that it happened regularly. Besides Loden, Clyde Johnson, an Adams County white man, received fifteen years for assault with intent to rape. In Jones County, Laverne Yarbrough was convicted of raping a seven-year-old black child and sentenced to life. He was paroled shortly after sentencing. Bennett Austin and Charles Wiggins were convicted of raping a black teenager and received a paltry two-year sentence. In Brookhaven, Ernest Dillon received twenty years in prison, having confessed to raping a black woman on the eve of her wedding. Robert Hamblin of Union County and Abraham Sloan of Washington County each received one year for attempted rape. And in Yazoo County, the \"gateway to the Delta,\" Bobby Smith received five years for assault with intent to rape a black middle-aged woman. Ten cases scattered over fifteen years and hundreds of miles hardly qualified as justice for a crime that happened as routinely as white-on-black rape.\n\nA death sentence in the Loden case would have fundamentally reordered the infrastructure of white supremacy that had been in place since slavery and shattered the unspoken rule that reserved the state's electric chair for black men. No Mississippi white man, certainly not Circuit Judge Henry Lee Rogers, was going to set _that_ precedent. Rogers recalled the jurors and told them to reconsider. Surely, he chided, they did not \"mean the verdict to read that way.\" Rogers reasoned that the jurors \"did not realize that the 'guilty as charged' verdict made execution mandatory\" and insisted they \"modify [their] verdict.\" As instructed, the white jurors changed their verdict and recommended mercy for Loden. He was finally sentenced to life in prison with the possibility for parole in ten years. In the end, it was both an incredible victory and a stunning loss. It would take an additional five years before Mississippi sentenced a white man, guilty of raping a black teenager, to life in prison without parole. And never, not once, would a white man pay with his life for raping a black woman.\n\nWhen President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, segregation suffered a serious blow but survived. African Americans could now theoretically receive equal treatment in restaurants, hotels, and theaters, but they could not count on access to the ballot nor on the federal government to protect them from physical harm. Southern segregationists remained firmly ensconced in positions of power. However, by the time fall breezes swept Freedom Summer into the past, thousands of black children had attended Freedom Schools; even more African Americans overcame their fears and survived white terror in an effort to be treated like human beings and citizens; and more than eighty thousand African Americans participated in the \"freedom vote,\" a series of mock elections organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) to dramatize black disfranchisement. COFO's efforts culminated in the organization of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which protested black exclusion from the political process in Mississippi and challenged the state's lily-white delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in August.\n\nBeneath red, white, and blue bunting, among Democrats from all over the country, Fannie Lou Hamer testified in Atlantic City about the savage beating she received in Winona, providing painful details and stark evidence of white reprisals for voter registration. Her emotional testimony challenged the Democratic Party's commitment to civil rights in front of a national television audience. \"Is this America?\" she asked. \"The land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks,\" she said, her voice shaking, \"because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?\" Hamer's testimony helped push President Johnson to offer the MFDP two at-large seats at the convention, but they refused, arguing that, as Hamer put it, \"we didn't come all this way for no two seats.\" Johnson's meager offer at least proved that Mississippi was no longer a place where whites could torment blacks with complete impunity. African Americans in Mississippi, many of them women who testified about sexual violence, had finally forced federal intervention and congressional action on behalf of their humanity. It was perhaps the most dangerous threat to white hierarchy yet.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nDie-hard segregationists responded by mobilizing an army of Klansmen and other rigid racists to discredit and disrupt the freedom struggle. In Selma, Alabama, in 1965, they used the age-old fear of interracial sex and black-on-white rape to unleash a campaign of terror that began with the beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the Selma-to-Montgomery march and culminated in the murder of Viola Liuzzo. Liuzzo, a white housewife from Detroit, embraced the civil rights movement and died in a hail of gunfire while ferrying demonstrators in her automobile. Her detractors, of course, accused her of embracing black men.\n\n# CHAPTER 7 \nSex and Civil Rights\n\nON MARCH 25, 1965, more than ten thousand civil rights activists and supporters spilled into downtown Montgomery, Alabama, and assembled where Jefferson Davis had once taken the oath of office as president of the Confederacy and where George Wallace had recently declared, \"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!\" The interracial throng had passed four hard days and four harrowing nights on the lonely highway that connects Selma to the state's capital. They braved a pounding rain and slept in strangers' fields to demand voting rights and federal protection from violence. The normally bustling downtown was nearly empty since Governor George Wallace declared a \"danger holiday for female state employees,\" ostensibly to protect them from the sexual threat posed by black marchers. The empty streets did not seem to bother the weary but jubilant crowd. \"Segregation is on its deathbed in Alabama,\" Martin Luther King declared to the cheering audience. \"The only uncertain thing,\" King added, \"is how costly the segregationists and [Governor George] Wallace will make the funeral.\"\n\nSegregation would not die gracefully. During the Selma-to-Montgomery march, Alabama's staunchest segregationists used a kind of sexual McCarthyism in order to defame the demonstrators and to derail the new legislation that Lyndon Johnson had sent to Congress guaranteeing the right of African Americans to vote. The appeal to whites' baser instincts, and fears about sex and race, indicates how desperate the diehards had become. It also underscored the importance of sex and sexualized violence to the maintenance of white supremacy. They no longer smeared civil rights activists as mere Communists or outside agitators; now they were purely sex fiends, intent on spreading a culture of depravity throughout the country. But by 1965, these tactics were increasingly less effective.\n\nSituated in the center of Alabama's Black Belt, an area known for its rich, inky soil and grinding poverty, Selma mirrored the Mississippi Delta in its history of near-feudal oppression of African Americans. By the 1960s, the White Citizens' Council (WCC) held dominion over the rolling pastures and cotton fields that surrounded the riverfront town. The mayor of Selma and the county probate judge chose its leadership; the presidents of Selma's banks sat on the council's executive committee; both editors of Selma's newspapers were \"zealous adherents\" to the dictates of the WCC; Selma's two radio stations and lone television outlet aired Citizens' Council propaganda as a public service; and white preachers presented their ideology as the gospel truth during Sunday services. State senator Walter Givhan, whose sprawling plantation sat in the western corner of the county, was in the WCC's pocket. He served as chairman of the Dallas County chapter until 1958 and then led the statewide Association of Alabama White Citizens' Councils for four years. In Selma, there was no room for opposition to the councils' rigid racial and sexual ideology, even among whites.\n\nJames Clark, the bellicose county sheriff who wore a \"Never\" (integrate) button pinned to his uniform, enforced white supremacy with an iron fist. Standing more than six feet tall and weighing 220 pounds, Clark strode through Selma as if he were General Patton. He wore a hard helmet and had a .38-caliber pistol strapped to his side and a swagger stick and an electric cattle prod dangling from his belt. Clark policed white conformity and terrorized African Americans by parading through town with a mounted posse made up of Citizens' Council and Klan members. When SNCC organizers arrived in 1962 to help register blacks to vote\u2014less than one percent were registered in Dallas County\u2014Sheriff Clark stood at the top of the courthouse steps, blocking the entrance.\n\nThe most polite request to enter the registrar's office could set off Clark's notorious temper, prompting beatings, mass arrests, and other violent outbursts. For example, in mid-January 1965 Clark snatched Mrs. Amelia Boynton, a prominent member of the black community and head of the Dallas County Voters League, from a long line of people waiting to register. He grabbed her coat lapels, pulled her toward his fleshy, scowling face, then shoved her down the sidewalk toward a patrol car. He arrested Boynton for \"criminal provocation.\" The next month Clark beat James Bevel, an organizer for SCLC, with a nightstick and threw him in jail. Each night police hosed down Bevel with cold water until he was shaking with viral pneumonia. When a group of black schoolchildren held a silent demonstration outside the courthouse in mid-February, Clark lined them up and forced them to march three miles out of town to a gravel pit, shocking them with his electric cattle prod along the way.\n\nDallas County sheriff Jim Clark uses a billy club and an electric cattle prod to push voting-rights activists away from the courthouse. (photo credit 7.1)\n\nClark's \"primitive itch to attack Negroes,\" as Taylor Branch put it, drove him thirty miles outside Dallas County to Marion, Alabama, on February 18, 1965, where local activists planned a nighttime march. Clark stood among state troopers who amassed outside Zion's Chapel Methodist Church, waiting for the five hundred protesters inside to file out. When the doors to the chapel opened, police shot out the streetlights, sprayed black paint on the lenses of reporters' cameras, and charged into the crowd. \"Negroes could be heard screaming,\" _The New York Times_ reported, \"and loud whacks rang through the square.\" State trooper James Bonard Fowler and a handful of other policemen chased a group of activists into Mack's Caf\u00e9, then overturned tables and lunged at patrons. When Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young black laborer, saw an officer beating his mother, he rushed to her defense, thrusting himself between the police and her crumpled body. Fowler responded by pumping two bullets into Jackson's stomach. He died eight days later.\n\nJim Clark ordered hundreds of schoolchildren arrested after they held a silent demonstration outside the Dallas County Courthouse on February 3, 1965. He forced them to march three miles out of town to a detention center. (photo credit 7.2)\n\nThe brazen murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper and the police brutality on display in Marion that cold winter night infuriated African Americans around Selma. Many felt the federal government was responsible since it had promoted voter registration but refused to protect black lives. \"He was murdered,\" Martin Luther King, Jr., said at Jackson's funeral, \"by the irresponsibility of every politician from governors on down who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism.\" Jackson, King continued, \"was murdered by the timidity of a federal government that can spend millions of dollars a day to keep troops in South Vietnam and cannot protect the lives of its own citizens seeking the right to vote.\" King and the SCLC proposed a symbolic march from Selma to Montgomery. \"We wanted to carry Jimmie's body to George Wallace and dump it on the steps of the capitol,\" Albert Turner, the leader of the Marion movement, said later. \"We had decided that we were going to be killed or we was going to be free.\"\n\nThe goal of the march was to force federal action by focusing national media attention on Selma as Sheriff Clark and his gang of Klansmen committed acts of brutality. This had been the SCLC's strategy in Birmingham in 1963, where the irascible and intemperate \"Bull\" Connor, who hailed from Selma, reacted to nonviolent black activism with violence. His decision to unleash ferocious police dogs and fire hoses on African-American children protesting segregation in 1963 was met by national and international outrage and, as civil rights leaders predicted, federal action. Sheriff Clark proved to be as helpfully hot-tempered as Connor: \"We should put him on the staff,\" one SCLC organizer cracked. King announced that the Selma-to-Montgomery march would begin on March 7, 1965.\n\nOrdered by Governor Wallace a day earlier to prevent the march to Montgomery, state troopers and local policemen in riot gear amassed at the foot of Edmund Pettus Bridge and spread out across Highway 80. As Colonel Al Lingo oversaw his team of troopers, and Jim Clark's men saddled up their horses and dispersed gas masks, a line of African Americans, two abreast, made their way slowly across the Alabama River. After crossing the bridge, they came face-to-face with a human barricade. \"When we got to the apex of the bridge, and started down,\" F. D. Reese, president of the Dallas County Voters League, said, \"you saw nothing but a sea of blue. Helmets, state trooper cars, saw masks on the belt of the state troopers, billy clubs and so forth.\"\n\nLike the silence that settles in before an enormous storm, all was quiet as the well-dressed black men and women paused to consider their options. Major John Cloud, Lingo's deputy, picked up a bullhorn and ordered the crowd to disperse. \"This is an unlawful assembly... Go home or go to your church,\" he bellowed. \"This march will not continue. Is that clear?\" Hosea Williams, an SCLC leader who stood at the front of the line, managed to squeak out a request to talk to Cloud, but the major quickly shut him up. \"There is no word to be had,\" Cloud declared. Then he turned to his troopers and ordered them to advance.\n\nWith their clubs thrust out like bayonets, the line of police slowly moved forward until they stood nose to nose with the marchers, who had not budged. Sounds of gunfire broke the silence when Sheriff Jim Clark discharged a canister of tear gas. Others quickly followed his lead. Amid the billowing gas, state troopers and the mounted posse charged into the line of protesters, mercilessly beating them with nightsticks and rubber hoses laced with spikes. Horses trampled on the fallen, and the dense crack of hard wood on human bones could be heard over the din.\n\nBloody Sunday. An Alabama state trooper accosts Annie Cooper, an African-American woman, as members of Jim Clark's mounted posse rally in the background. (photo credit 7.3)\n\nThat evening ABC interrupted the forty-eight million Americans who were watching the television premiere of _Judgment at Nuremberg_ , an Academy Award\u2013winning film about Nazi war crimes, to broadcast scenes from the wanton attack on African Americans in Selma. Images of policemen clubbing women as they struggled to stand and mounted officers flattening children shocked sympathetic Americans and sent a powerful message about the brutality of Jim Crow. When Martin Luther King, Jr., called for another march to protest what they now called \"Bloody Sunday,\" thousands of supporters streamed into Selma.\n\nThough Sheriff Clark and Al Lingo had been exposed as brutal bullies to the entire nation, local whites hailed them as heroes. As civil rights workers planned their response to Bloody Sunday, Clark and his men believed they had gotten the best of King and his allies. After a federal injunction stymied a second demonstration on March 9, scores of students, sharecroppers, seminarians, and civil rights sympathizers from all walks of life poured into the town. When they finally braced for the long walk to Montgomery on March 21, they did so under federal protection. Segregationists responded by defaming the demonstrators as sexual fiends.\n\nThe Alabama state legislature fired the opening salvo on March 23, 1965, by printing Act 159 in the _Montgomery Advertiser_. The act accused civil rights activists of leading the \"innocent people of Alabama\" into a den of corruption and sin. \"There is evidence of much fornication,\" the resolution stated, \"and young women are returning to their respective states apparently as unwed expectant mothers.\" A few days later William Dickinson, the freshman congressman from Alabama, denounced the marchers as perverts on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. \"Drunkenness and sex orgies were the order of the day,\" he fumed. \"Negro and white freedom marchers invaded a Negro church in Montgomery and engaged in an all night session of debauchery within the church itself.\"\n\nDickinson dismissed any notion that activists volunteered to go to Selma. He had proof, he said, that they were actually \"hired to march for ten dollars a day, free room and board and all the sex they wanted.\" When civil rights activists were not engaging in \"instances of public sexual intercourse,\" Dickinson proclaimed, they spent their time \"in a hotel in Montgomery\" engaged in group sex. \"Free love,\" the congressman continued, \"is not only condoned, it is encouraged... Only by the ultimate sex act with one of another color can they demonstrate they have no prejudice.\" Dickinson promised skeptical legislators and constituents sworn affidavits from eyewitnesses, photographs, and \"motion picture proof\" showing that \"this bunch of Godless riff-raff engaged in acts of indecency.\" Dickinson would only allow House members to view his \"proof\" privately, however, as it was \"too obscene for public showing.\"\n\nDickinson could not resist the opportunity to make money and political hay from the salacious stories. Indeed, the affidavits and photos were not too obscene to publicize in a magazine, written and distributed to the public by Albert C. Persons, a stringer for _Life_. Hired by Congressman Dickinson to investigate the demonstrations in Selma, Persons's \"findings\" appeared in his voyeuristic and somewhat pornographic glossy, _Sex and Civil Rights: The True Selma Story_. The propaganda piece sold for one dollar and quickly became one of the best-selling books that season. _Sex and Civil Rights_ documented alleged \"eyewitness\" accounts of white female volunteers who \"had no underpants on\" and of public \"smooching and lovemaking between Negroes and whites.\" Persons spared no details in describing the so-called \"sex acts\" between James Forman, executive director of SNCC, and a \"red-haired girl whose name is Rachel.\" Apparently, an anonymous African-American mole saw Forman and \"Rachel\" engaging in \"an abnormal sex act which consisted of each of the two manipulating the other's private parts with their mouths simultaneously.\"\n\nMost of the so-called eyewitness accounts and affidavits came from state troopers and reflected segregationists' salacious interracial fantasies. Walter L. Allen, one of Colonel Lingo's key deputies, claimed he \"lost count of the times I saw Negro and Caucasian males fondling the breasts of black and white girls.\" He also alleged that he saw \"one white girl holding a Negro's penis through his trousers.\" Captain John Williams swore that he saw \"white girls and Negro boys laying under blankets on the grass... From their movement,\" he said, \"it is my best judgment that they were having intercourse.\" Interestingly, nearly all the accounts detailed behavior that occurred over a week _before_ the march began\u2014before most white volunteers had arrived in Selma. And most of the affidavits offered different variations of the same story, as if each witness simply repeated official talking points.\n\nMany of the photos offered up as irrefutable proof of interracial impropriety consisted of cleverly doctored images. One in particular shows three men, two black and one white, wrestling with one another, the white man's hand thrust between the legs of a black man. The caption, three question marks, suggested the strange positioning was a sign of homosexuality. Another photo focuses in on a white woman and black man standing arm in arm\u2014and completely out of proportion\u2014amid a number of African Americans sitting on the ground. The pictures that do not look doctored feature leading captions. For example, one photo of a trash can full of 7-Up bottles pretends to offer evidence of excessive drunkenness by asking, \"No Booze?\"\n\nOther sections of the magazine portray the leading ministers of the movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy, as sexual deviants by linking them to Bayard Rustin, a master strategist who organized the March on Washington in 1963 and who was openly gay at a time when it was despised and criminalized. While the section, entitled \"Bayard and Ralph, Just a Couple of the Boys,\" claims to \"not be concerned with a person's private sex life,\" it goes to enormous lengths to detail their sexual misadventures. Included is a 1953 police report detailing Rustin's arrest for \"sex perversion\" and a partial transcript from a 1958 trial in which details of Ralph Abernathy's extramarital affair were exposed.\n\nPersons viewed leaking this information as a public service that would be instructive, he said, \"to any who are interested in knowing what direction the civil rights movement may be moving.\" _Sex and Civil Rights_ gave credibility to the outrageous rumors swirling around the Selma march. Its professional veneer and glossy photographs, sworn affidavits by well-known state officials, and facsimiles of official documents made the propaganda piece a politically useful tool. Coming on the heels of Dickinson's speech to the House of Representatives, the book bolstered the congressman's claims and helped disseminate them among the broader public.\n\nAfrican Americans protested the rumors, which to them seemed utterly ridiculous. \"These white folks must think we're supermen to be able to march all day in the rain,\" one marcher said, \"... and make whoopee all night and then get up the next morning and march all day.\" Virginia Durr, a white civil rights supporter from Montgomery, worried that society was losing \"all sense of reality.\" The stories about \"sexual orgies,\" she said with exasperation, \"are quoted and believed all over town.\" One story particularly irked Durr. In a letter to fellow activists Carl and Anne Braden on May 3, 1965, she said that according to rumors, \"SNCC Kids (Negroes) raped a white girl in the Ben Moore Hotel forty-seven times, and was taken to St. Margaret's, where she died.\" Durr called St. Margaret's to verify the rumor and found that it contained \"not a word of truth.\" Still, the whole town, Durr complained, \"BELIEVES THE CHARGES AND REPEATS THEM OVER AND OVER. And whether the girl was raped forty-three times or forty-seven times is a matter of great debate.\"\n\nSome enterprising reporters tried to debunk Dickinson's claims and other rumors of sexual debauchery, but many preferred to let their readers decide what to believe. \"Did Martin Luther King's organization recruit civil rights mercenaries with offers of money plus food and sex?\" Al Kuettner, a reporter for the United Press, asked. \"A substantial segment of southern society believes the answer is yes.\" As for the most commonly repeated charge of wild orgies under the tents each night, Kuettner said, the truth \"depends on your definition of an orgy.\"\n\nThe _New York Times_ offered a more balanced analysis that allowed the participants some space for rebuttal. It accused Dickinson of \"spreading slanderous falsehoods\" in an effort to \"defame and debunk the whole civil rights movement with a new type of McCarthyism.\" John Lewis, chairman of SNCC, told the _Times_ that Dickinson and Persons's smears were nothing new. \"Segregationists are preoccupied with interracial sex,\" he argued. \"Which is why you see so many shades of brown on the march.\" Virginia Durr seconded Lewis's assessment. \"All of the cesspool of sickness connected with sex guilt comes out in these stories,\" she said. Segregationists' fear of interracial sex and corresponding paranoia, she said, \"came from the fact that white men of the South had had so many sexual affairs with black women. And they just turned it around. It's the only thing I can figure out that made them so crazy on the subject.\"\n\nBut it was not just the \"crazies,\" as Durr put it, who were afflicted by sexual paranoia that summer. Congressman Dickinson's efforts were part of a broader campaign run out of Governor George Wallace's office to discredit the civil rights movement. Wallace commissioned a film that purported to document \"the inflammatory activity... by beatniks, pinkos, misguided do-gooders, and out and out communist sympathizers\" that occurred on the Selma-to-Montgomery march. A press release issued by the cigar-chomping Wallace promised that the film would \"Stand Up for Alabama.\" Since \"the left-wingers spend millions of dollars to promote their causes,\" he said, \"certainly we, as independent, freedom-loving Alabamians, can do as much.\" Mainstream magazines like _Time, Newsweek_ , and _U.S. News_ \"stood up for Alabama\" without any prodding from Wallace. They provided a national platform and some measure of respectability for the rumors in articles entitled \"Kiss and Tell,\" \"Charges of Interracial Sex,\" and \"Orgies on the Rights March.\"\n\nA few months later Sheriff Jim Clark hurled the final and what was perhaps the crudest accusation. _I Saw Selma Raped_ , Clark's personal account of events that spring, portrayed civil rights activists and the federal government as sexual vampires, eager to attack an innocent and defenseless city. \"Make no mistake about it,\" Clark argued in the book, \"sex and civil rights go together in the most licentious ways possible to imagine.\" Nationwide repetition of state propaganda contributed greatly to the racial and sexual hysteria that swirled around Selma that spring and summer. It was within this storm\u2014and perhaps as a result of it\u2014that four Klansmen murdered white Detroit housewife Viola Liuzzo.\n\nShuttling tired marchers back and forth from Montgomery to Selma on the night of March 25, Liuzzo and Leroy Moton, a nineteen-year-old African American, knew they had to be on the lookout for hostile Klan members waiting to attack them on the dark and lonely stretches of Highway 80. What they didn't know was that a carload of Klan members, whipped into a frenzy by the wild rumors of interracial sex, spotted them at a stoplight in Selma shortly before their final trip of the day. \"Well, I'll be damned,\" a Klansman exclaimed when he saw Liuzzo sitting next to Moton in the front seat of her Oldsmobile. Eager to send a powerful message about interracial mixing, they trailed the volunteers as they drove toward Montgomery, speculating about all the \"lewd acts the racially mixed couple must have in mind.\" When they had gotten far enough out of town and into a desolate stretch of highway through Lowndes County, the car carrying the four Klan members overtook Liuzzo's vehicle. With their guns poking out of the rolled-down windows, the Klansmen fired into Liuzzo's speeding car, killing her instantly. She slumped over the steering wheel while Moton frantically steered the car into a ditch. Moton remained absolutely still as the men got out of their car and inspected their work. With blood splattered all over Liuzzo and Moton, the Klansmen drove off believing they had killed both passengers. Deeply shaken but alive, Moton crawled out of the car, flagged down a passing truck full of freedom marchers, and told them about the brutal murder.\n\nViola Liuzzo (photo credit 7.4)\n\nWhen FBI director J. Edgar Hoover found out about the murder from Gary Thomas Rowe, a paid informant who received permission from the FBI to ride along with the Klan that night, he immediately began damage control. Jack Anderson, a reporter for _The Washington Post_ , speculated that, in an effort to protect himself and the FBI from any appearance of complicity, Hoover \"marshaled the bureau's resources to blacken the dead woman's reputation.\" Anderson's use of the term \"blacken\" is particularly apt. Within twenty-four hours after Klansmen killed Liuzzo, the director of the FBI portrayed her as a traitor to her race, a prostitute, and a derelict mother\u2014what Klan lawyer Matt Murphy later called a \"white nigger\"\u2014who got what she deserved.\n\nIn an internal memo sent to President Lyndon Johnson the next morning, Hoover deflected any bureau responsibility in the murder by echoing the Klan's justification for killing Liuzzo. Hoover advised President Johnson, who was under pressure to call Liuzzo's husband and offer condolences, to hold back, arguing that she was not a respectable woman worthy of presidential sympathy. By riding around with a black man after dark, Hoover argued, she was outside the bounds of white womanhood. Liuzzo, he said, had \"indications of needle marks in her arms where she had been taking dope.\" And, he added, she had been \"sitting very, very close to the Negro in the car; it had the appearance of a necking party.\" Hoover then instructed staffers to \"leak his speculations to Klan informants,\" who in turn sent them to their press contacts. The media blitz successfully changed the subject from FBI complicity in a killing to questions about Liuzzo's morality and fitness as a mother.\n\nAn Alabama state trooper's car is parked near the site where the Ku Klux Klan fatally shot Viola Liuzzo and injured Leroy Moton. (photo credit 7.5)\n\nDespite Hoover's personal biases and beliefs, the FBI apprehended the culprits and assembled a legal case against them. At the state murder trial in Haynesville, Alabama, which began on May 6, 1965, Klan attorney Matt H. Murphy defended his clients and his organization by claiming to protect white supremacy. \"I am proud to be a white man,\" Murphy declared in a studied drawl. \"I am proud to stand on my feet,\" he said, pumping his fist into the air, \"and say that I am for white supremacy.\" \"This white woman,\" he said, then paused and turned toward the jurors with a grin. \"White woman?\" he sneered, \"Hah! Where's that N.A.A.C.P. card?\" Digging into his breast pocket, he pulled out Liuzzo's bloodied membership card. He had found it earlier that day while rummaging through Liuzzo's purse. Murphy's defense relied upon denouncing Liuzzo as a \"white nigger\" and repeated innuendos suggesting she and Moton \"were linked in a sexual relationship.\" It did not seem to matter to either Murphy or the jury that the state toxicologist, Dr. Paul Shoffelt, found absolutely \"no evidence of recent sexual relations\" when he performed Liuzzo's autopsy.\n\nAn all-white jury found Klansmen Collie Leroy Wilkins (in hat), Eugene Thomas (center stairs), and William Eaton (top) not guilty for the murder of Viola Liuzzo. On December 3, 1965, Wilkins, Thomas, and Eaton were found guilty of conspiracy to violate Liuzzo's civil rights, a federal charge. (photo credit 7.6)\n\nThe attacks on Liuzzo's character were worse than most newspapers indicated. Virginia Durr could barely stomach Murphy's repeated aspersions in court. \"The three days at the trial made me sick, literally,\" she said in a letter to friends. \"The poor dead woman was on trial and the Counsel for the KKK asked the most vile and obscene questions about the state of her underwear and her dead body.\" They tried to turn her into \"some kind of sex fiend as well as a dope fiend.\" Murphy, she said, piled \"vileness upon vileness,\" all in the name of \"Southern White Tradition and Pure White Southern Womanhood.\" The venomous attacks terrified Durr: \"I get both sick and frightened by [the Klan],\" she said.\n\nThe Klan made no effort to hide its presence at the trial; Klansmen strutted around the courtroom as if they owned it. Robert Shelton, the Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama, weaved through the aisles, shaking hands and chatting with white spectators. He advised the defendants, offered himself up for news interviews, and disparaged Liuzzo mercilessly. Liuzzo was not a \"mother of five lovely children and a community worker,\" he said to a reporter; she was a \"fat slob with crud that looked like rust all over her body.\" Worse, he added, she was frequently \"braless.\" He also assured anyone who would listen that he had eyewitnesses who \"saw Liuzzo behaving like a whore.\" Defense attorneys used the same strategy to justify Liuzzo's murder: \"Klonsel\" Murphy argued that \"acquittal is certain.\" Integration, he said to the journalist William Bradford Huie, \"breaks every moral law God wrote... All I need to use is the fact that Mrs. Liuzzo was in the car with a nigger man and she wore no underpants.\"\n\nProsecuting attorneys at the trial did nothing to defend Liuzzo's dignity; nor did they try to rebut attacks launched by the defense. \"No one, prosecutor or defense lawyer, had a kind word for the dead woman during the four day trial,\" _The New York Times_ reported. Even her personal items retrieved from the crime scene were treated with disrespect. Instead of receiving protection as state's evidence, the bloodstained objects found in her car were thrown into a bunch of cardboard boxes and were made available to reporters and Klansmen, who rustled through them at will. The only attempt prosecution made to humanize Liuzzo was by presenting her as a mother of five children. Surprisingly, ten jurors voted for a conviction of manslaughter, which carried a ten-year sentence, while two held out for an acquittal. The deadlock forced the judge to declare a mistrial.\n\nAlthough most jurors believed the Klansmen were guilty of manslaughter, many felt Liuzzo was just as culpable for violating the gender and racial norms of the day. One woman who sat in on the trial told reporters that she didn't \"know why they kept calling Mrs. Liuzzo a 'mother of five children.' \" \"A mother wouldn't have gone off,\" she said, \"and left her children and come here.\" \"I have five children, too,\" Sheriff Clark told a reporter, \"but the night this happened, my wife was at home with the children where she belongs.\" Clark's statements reflected popular opinion about women's roles at the time. A survey in _Ladies' Home Journal_ showed that a majority of American women felt that Liuzzo did the wrong thing by leaving her children to risk her life for a social cause. Fifty-five percent \"felt strongly\" that she \"should have stayed home\" while only twenty-six percent said she \"had a right\" to go. For most of the women surveyed, Liuzzo's decision to go to Selma defied acceptable maternal and feminine behavior.\n\nWhile civil rights activists viewed Viola Liuzzo as a martyr who gave her life for equal justice and African-American dignity, many whites viewed her as an abject mother, guilty of the most reprehensible crime: abandoning her children in favor of cavorting with black men. The truth\u2014that Liuzzo had help at home and did not abandon her children, that she did not use drugs or engage in extramarital sex with African Americans\u2014did not seem to matter. Rumors about her fitness as a mother and lack of sexual and racial restraint only added to the belief that by traveling to Selma to help with civil rights, she had ventured far outside the bounds of respectable white womanhood. When J. Edgar Hoover fanned the flames of these rumors in order to protect his own secrets, he did not just \"blacken\" her character; he treated her the way white men had historically treated black women.\n\nThe attacks on Viola Liuzzo foreshadowed the criticism heaped on black women and families in a report issued by the Department of Labor at the end of that summer. Named after the assistant secretary of labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the \"Moynihan Report\" blamed decades of matriarchy for the \"crisis\" of black family pathology and degeneration, instead of the legacy of white supremacy, laws banning interracial marriage, and the historic rape of black women by white men. Stokely Carmichael, the charismatic proponent of \"Black Power\" who became the head of SNCC in 1966, pointed to the history of sexualized violence and argued that matriarchy was not the problem. \"The reason we are in this bag isn't because of my mamma,\" he said, \"it's because of what they did to my mamma.\" Other comments from prominent black leaders echoed Carmichael's concerns. \"For two centuries,\" Bayard Rustin said, \"black families had been denied human status in order to safeguard the property rights and breeding prerogatives of slave owners.\" Martin Luther King, Jr., agreed. The problem of black poverty was rooted in a past too \"ghastly\" to discuss, he said. \"No one in all history had to fight against so many psychological and physical horrors to have a family life,\" King noted. \"Our children and our families are maimed a little every day of their lives.\" News outlets did not focus on the legacy of segregation and sexualized violence on the black family. Instead, reporters pointed to black pathology as the reason for poverty and rising crime rates in Northern and Western cities.\n\nThe riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles were used to bolster those claims. On August 11, 1965, five days after Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, Watts exploded in a race riot. The five-day firestorm exposed the powder keg of racial tension and economic instability in American urban centers and destroyed any myths about the North and West as \"the promised land.\" As the locus of racial turbulence shifted from the rural South to Northern cities, the nation turned its sympathy and attention away from civil rights. Urban riots, increased American involvement in Vietnam, a nascent antiwar movement, and a growing belief that the Voting Rights Act completed African Americans' campaign for civil rights made it easy for many Americans to ignore ongoing struggles for dignity and justice in the South as the sweltering summer of 1965 gave way to the crisp days of fall.\n\nOn November 11, 1965, however, African Americans in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, won one of the most important legal cases in the civil rights movement. As in Selma, white segregationists in Hattiesburg were on the defensive, but their response to the abduction and rape of an African-American teenager shocked the nation. The story has been largely forgotten.\n\nHattiesburg was the only city in the southern half of Mississippi where SNCC made inroads organizing the local black community before 1963. Nestled in the Piney Woods section of the state and home to the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg was somewhat less violent than the Delta towns, though it was equally repressive in denying African Americans the right to vote. Theron Lynd, the Forrest County circuit clerk, disfranchised so many African Americans that, as John Dittmer noted, he \"put his Delta counterparts to shame.\" Lynd was \"totally uncooperative; totally hostile; and very rude,\" Victoria Gray Adams, a local black businesswoman active in voter-registration campaigns, said. \"He just did everything possible to discourage you aside from saying 'get out of here.' \" To curtail fear and build confidence, Victoria Gray Adams and Vernon Dahmer, a businessman, voting-rights activist, and two-term head of the local NAACP, worked with local people to organize citizenship schools and voter-registration drives. Over time their efforts helped make Hattiesburg what historians later called the \"Mecca of the Freedom School\" movement.\n\nLike the men and women who defied white supremacy in the Delta and Alabama's Black Belt, African Americans in the Piney Woods region faced immediate economic and physical reprisals by hostile whites. Hattiesburg was only thirty miles away from Poplarville, where a white mob kidnapped and lynched Mack Charles Parker in 1959. That same year white officials from Hattiesburg with ties to the State Sovereignty Commission framed and imprisoned Clyde Kennard, a thirty-five-year-old native of Forrest County and World War II vet, who tried to desegregate the University of Southern Mississippi. Judge Stanton Hall sentenced him to seven years in Parchman penitentiary for allegedly masterminding a plot to steal twenty-five dollars' worth of chicken feed. Ignoring Kennard's advanced cancer, prison officials forced him to do backbreaking labor in Parchman's fields each day.\n\nDespite federal intervention in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, by the end of 1964 a Ku Klux Klan resurgence threatened black activists throughout the state. In Laurel, Mississippi, a small town just outside Hattiesburg, Sam Bowers, the forty-year-old Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, declared that his mission \"was the destruction of the Mississippi civil rights movement.\" Since the White Citizens' Council had been unable to crush the freedom movement, the White Knights felt it was their turn to try. According to the _Hattiesburg American_ , the White Knights were known as the \"most secretive and violent of the Klan groups in Mississippi.\" Bowers ordered members and like-minded supporters to stockpile weapons and ammunition, practice military drills, and study \"counterattack maps, plans and information\" to prepare for the coming racial Armageddon. His appetite for violence was well known. Though most suspected his involvement in the kidnapping and murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in the summer of 1964, he was not convicted until 1967, and then only for violating their civil rights. The revival of the Klan, especially one focused on racial terrorism, worried moderate segregationists who preferred to intimidate blacks without physical brutality, which tended to draw media and federal attention.\n\nVictoria Gray Adams and other Hattiesburg blacks hoped to draw the federal government into the fray. In the spring of 1965, Adams and Dahmer invited white clergy from the National Council of Churches to join \"Freedom Day,\" a massive voter-registration campaign designed to highlight Theron Lynd's defiance of the new Voting Rights Act. Adams and others thought that the presence of white clergy, like Northern students' involvement in Freedom Summer, would surely inflame Bowers and other segregationists who would act foolishly enough to draw national interest. Local police, however, bucked Bowers and the Klan and adopted a nonviolent approach toward the activists. It was the same strategy that Laurie Pritchett, the chief of police in Albany, Georgia, effectively used to stymie an SCLC campaign in 1961. Instead of beating blacks who sought the franchise, police quietly and gently arrested them, denying them the media attention they needed. Even stubborn Theron Lynd grudgingly allowed more than 150 African Americans to complete the registration test.\n\nThough media coverage failed to materialize, the successful registration campaign nonetheless strengthened the movement in Hattiesburg. At the same time it strained relationships between the \"moderate\" and radical forces of white supremacy. With the federal government more willing to intervene and the legal structures of Jim Crow nearly destroyed, whites in Mississippi struggled to maintain their unity as well as their power. These tensions were on display in Hattiesburg in the fall of 1965, when a white man stood before a white judge and jury for kidnapping and raping an African-American teenager.\n\nOn July 13, 1965, Norman Cannon, a slim, bushy-haired young man, pulled his old-model red-and-white Chevrolet up to Mrs. Lillie Beal's little shotgun house in a Negro neighborhood in Hattiesburg. He told the older woman he was \"looking for a babysitter.\" He had spoken to one of Mrs. Beal's neighbors, he said, who suggested there was \"a young girl living here who sought work.\" Cannon told Beal that he lived across town and that he would be happy to drive her fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Rosa Lee Coates, to his house to \"keep the children while he and his wife were away.\" Lois Miles, a neighbor, recalled that Cannon's visit was not uncommon. \"Whites came by a lot,\" she said, \"to sell their wares\u2014greens, fish, cookies.\" She said that it was not unusual for white men and women to come searching for day workers and babysitters, either. Rosa Lee Coates agreed to babysit and got into Cannon's car. When it was clear he was not driving across town, but out of town, the young girl protested. After traveling about fifteen miles, past Rawls Spring Road and over the Big Creek Bridge, Cannon pulled onto a heavily shaded gravel road used by a logging company. Wielding a yellow-handled knife, he pushed the girl out of his car and threatened to cut her head off unless she submitted. Beneath a canopy of towering pines and atop a mound of fire ants, Cannon raped Coates at knifepoint and then quickly drove away, leaving her stranded in the woods.\n\nNot long after the attack, a passing motorist found the teenager wandering dazedly along Highway 49. He picked her up and rushed her to the hospital, where she told local police and her grandmother what happened. Within forty-eight hours, police held Cannon in custody, and Coates easily identified him out of an eight-man lineup. Police notified district attorney James Finch and James Dukes, the young county prosecutor, about the crime. Finch was a gray-haired courthouse hand, Dukes a newly minted lawyer with a blond buzz cut, but they both knew they faced a dilemma. If they brought a case against Cannon, it would be the first time in Forrest County history that a white man was charged with raping a black woman. If he were acquitted, it could arouse and anger local African-American leaders, who were well organized and feeling stronger after their successful Freedom Day registration drive. Yet both men, as members of the town's white elite, were also well aware of the state's desire to avoid federal attention and bolster Mississippi's reputation after the atrocities committed during Freedom Summer. Even the State Sovereignty Commission, once considered the \"watchdog of segregation,\" was now engaged in a public relations campaign. The new goal, as a press release put it, was to \"project Mississippi outside the state, as a good place to be, as a good place to work [and] as a good place to settle down.\"\n\nAware of the potential public relations disaster, Finch, Dukes, and other white city officials met for several hours the night of the attack and chewed over the political implications of the case. \"This was not a pleasant case,\" Dukes said later. \"In prior years,\" he said, \"when whites committed acts like this they just swept them under the rug.\" After much debate, Finch and Dukes decided to file rape charges against Cannon\u2014a first for Forrest County and a highly unusual step in Mississippi. Four days after the attack, the Forrest County grand jury indicted Norman Cannon and sent him to the county jail to await his trial.\n\nDressed in a dark suit and polished loafers, Cannon pleaded innocent on November 9, 1965, the first day of his trial. Cannon admitted he was not married and had had sexual relations with the African-American girl, but he denied using any force. He then spun a long story designed to exculpate himself from any guilt. Cannon told the judge and jury that three days before he picked up Rosa Lee Coates, he saw her standing near a bus stop with a white boy \"all hugged-up together.\" When the bus pulled to the curb and the white boy got on, Cannon approached the heavyset teenager, he said, and asked her \"if she liked to go out with white boys.\" When the teenager said yes, Cannon said, he asked her out on a date. He testified that Coates told him \"he could take her out... any day, just to come by her house and say he needed a babysitter.\" When asked by the prosecution why he wanted to date an African-American girl, Cannon told the jury he became interested in having an interracial affair after \"watching television programs which showed Negroes and whites dating.\" Finch and Dukes, the _Hattiesburg American_ reported, \"snorted with disgust\" at the outlandish excuse. \"He was not the sharpest knife in the box,\" Dukes said later.\n\nCounty prosecutor James Dukes (left) and district attorney James Finch outside the Forrest County Courthouse. (photo credit 7.7)\n\nOn the stand, Cannon continued to spin his yarn. He claimed he used the agreed-upon code word on July 13 and drove the girl outside town, where she readily had sex with him. Cannon's description of their \"romp\" in the woods and his attorney's portrayal of Coates as a prostitute became \"so rugged,\" according to the _Hattiesburg American_ , that the court reporter, Betty Hamil, threw her pen down and excused herself from the courtroom. \"The whole damn jury wanted to walk out,\" Dukes said. \"It was the most disgusting thing.\" \"We had to get a male reporter out of Vicksburg just to continue,\" Dukes recalled. \"Betty Hamil said she was just not going to do it. She had been court reporter for gruesome murder cases. Klan cases. But that case? Well,\" Dukes said, \"she couldn't do it.\"\n\nCannon's story may have sounded plausible to whites inclined to believe that all black women were sexually promiscuous, but Finch and Dukes quickly destroyed his argument. Cannon sat \"impassively\" as the two attorneys took turns picking apart his story. Dr. Willis Walker, a white physician who examined the victim after the attack, testified for the prosecution that Coates had been a virgin and had sustained internal injuries consistent with rape. Police officers told the jury that they found pieces of the victim's clothing at the crime scene. They also testified that Cannon signed a statement when he was arrested denying any relationship with Rosa Lee Coates and that he had admitted he had just met her. Mary Louise Wade, a friend and neighbor of the victim, corroborated police statements. Cannon was \"driving around the Negro neighborhood,\" she said, looking for a girl to hire. When Cannon asked Wade if she would babysit for him, she said no and suggested he go to Beal's house. \"Twenty minutes later,\" Wade recalled, she \"saw Cannon drive by her house with Rosa Lee Coates in the front seat with him.\" Wade identified Cannon in the courtroom.\n\nMrs. Lillie Beal did not hesitate, either. According to the _Hattiesburg American_ , Beal \"arose from the witness stand, walked across the room in front of the bench and pointed a long, brown finger at the defendant.\" \"That's him,\" she said confidently, \"right there.\" Beal testified that Cannon lured her granddaughter into his car on the pretense that he needed a babysitter. She recounted the events that led to the assault and told the jury that her granddaughter would not have consented. When she finally saw Rosa Lee at the hospital, Beal said, she was crying and was as \"nervous as a wretch.\" \"The child's brassiere was gone,\" Beal testified. \"And her slip\u2014all she had on was her outside dress.\"\n\nCannon's counsel was the well-known Klan attorney Lawrence Arrington. A short, portly man who had represented Sam Bowers, Arrington did his best to discredit the victim. First he insinuated that Coates was sexually active by asking her grandmother if she were \"fully developed.\" Then he argued that the \"hymenal laceration\" the victim suffered could have \"been made by most any means.\" When Dr. Walker said he didn't know \"of any other means which deposits sperm,\" Arrington backed off. \"He thought all of this would be cute before a white jury,\" James Dukes said later in a slow drawl. \"But it was totally repugnant. Whether it's white or black, an older white man and a young girl with her menstrual period,\" he said shaking his head in disgust, \"it was bad.\" When attacks on the victim seemed to fail, Arrington argued that his client was illiterate and that the jury should take pity on him because he did not have much education.\n\nFinally, the trial turned on the testimony of the victim herself. Dressed in a starched white cotton blouse, a purple skirt, yellow tennis shoes and white socks, Rosa Lee Coates presented herself as a respectable and dignified young lady. Speaking from the witness stand, she spoke in a low, steady voice. She used \"fifteen-year-old words,\" Dukes said. \"She was very subdued.\" Coates denied having met Cannon prior to July 13, tactfully challenged attempts by the defense to portray her as promiscuous, and described her courageous attempts to escape. Once she realized Cannon had no intention of using her as a babysitter, she said, she did everything she could to get away. When Cannon stopped the car at an intersection, she testified that she \"opened the door on her side of the car and tried to jump out.\" But Cannon caught her, she said, and he \"slammed the door on [my] right foot.\" Coates attempted to escape again when Cannon stopped the car on the gravel road. She told the jury that she \"tried to run,\" but when she \"slipped down in the mud,\" Cannon \"caught the back of her dress and hit her on the side of her face.\" \"I tried to fight,\" she said softly. \"I was crying and asking him to leave me alone when he pulled out a knife and held it to the side of my neck.\" Cannon then \"ripped off her clothing,\" she said, and in the newspaper's parlance, \"ravished her.\" When Cannon finished, he made Coates \"lie on [her] stomach, face against the ground.\" Then he drove away.\n\nThe _Hattiesburg American_ , the local white daily, was impressed with the victim's \"clear and simple\" testimony and reported that it was \"impossible on cross-questioning to trip her up.\" Cannon's testimony, the newspaper reported, was \"full of contradictions.\" The jury must have agreed. After deliberating for five and a half hours, jurors emerged from isolation and delivered their verdict: guilty as charged. Because jurors believed that Cannon did not inflict brutality on the victim, they recommended mercy. As a result, he received a life sentence instead of the death penalty. Still, the shocking verdict was the first of its kind in the history of Forrest County and, according to _The New York Times_ , represented a \"major breakthrough for the state of Mississippi.\" The ruling, the _Jackson Advocate_ reported, represented the \"first time since Reconstruction that a white man had been convicted [and sentenced to life in prison] for raping a Negro.\"\n\nStrangely, the legal victory seemed to go unnoticed by local civil rights activists. By the fall of 1965, the organizational infrastructure that existed during Freedom Summer had been disassembled. Many veteran organizers had moved away. Those who remained suffered severe \"battle fatigue\" or were busy waging their own small-scale wars against white supremacy. Years of harassment and brutality, layered atop the murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the failure of the Democratic Party to seat delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the national convention in Atlantic City in the summer of 1964, left many civil rights workers worn out and disillusioned. Even the black press seemed to ignore the groundbreaking verdict. The muted response at the time was unusual; historically, similar cases had served as catalysts for community mobilization.\n\nThe front page of the November 12, 1965, _Hattiesburg American_ highlights the historic verdict. (photo credit 7.8)\n\nPerhaps it was because, unlike officials in Selma, Mississippians had done everything right\u2014there was nothing to protest and therefore no reason to organize. White police officers in Hattiesburg arrested Cannon less than forty-eight hours after the attack; prosecutors indicted him two days later and then mounted a serious case against him. Even though Cannon employed a Klan lawyer who repeatedly tried to appeal to segregationist sentiment among white jurors at the trial, Dukes and Finch\u2014certainly no supporters of civil rights\u2014easily deflected his racial arguments. The prosecution destroyed Cannon's flimsy justification for the heinous crime. When the defense tried to sully the victim's character, prosecutors did not stand silent, as they had in the Liuzzo case; instead, they successfully defended Coates's chastity and respectability.\n\n\"It wasn't a black and white thing,\" Dukes insisted years later. \"Once they saw that we indicted him and we were going to prosecute him and bring him to trial\u2014it didn't have racial overtones. It was just an unsavory character who took advantage of a fifteen-year-old.\" Time and distance may have blunted Dukes's memory of the racial implications of the case, but their strategy worked to keep local African-American activists and the federal government at bay.\n\nThe night before the jury sentenced Cannon to life in prison, Mississippi senator John Stennis warned members of the State Farm Bureau Federation that the federal government would \"assume jurisdiction\" over Southern states if they failed to enforce their own laws. \"We can make friends and allies,\" he said, \"and help our own cause more by prosecuting assault, arson, bombings and like crimes.\" Failure to do so, Stennis argued, \"would create a curtain of misunderstanding.\" Since Mississippi could not afford any more \"misunderstandings,\" the State Sovereignty Commission prepared to rebut outside criticism of the Cannon case.\n\nPrior to Cannon's trial, Earle Johnston, Jr., the director of the State Sovereignty Commission, ordered a review of all the white inmates who had been sent to Parchman penitentiary for statutory rape in the past thirty years. Johnston planned to report the findings, which would then debunk any Northern arguments purporting to claim that, in his words, \"Mississippi and the South in general never punish a white person who commits a crime against a Negro.\" Tom Scarbrough, the Sovereignty Commission's best investigator, told Johnston that his research found \"a number of white men have been sent to the penitentiary for various crimes committed against Negroes,\" but, he said, he would have clerks double-check the \"race of the victims\" so that \"we may compile an absolute record for the good of Mississippi.\" Instead of carping about Cannon's conviction, as they surely would have done in earlier years, Mississippi's most strident segregationists held it up as an example of the state's racial rebirth. Even the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld Cannon's conviction and life sentence a year later. By punishing Cannon, state officials could bolster Mississippi's reputation outside the South and fend off further federal intrusions.\n\nThe verdict could not have come at a better time. On November 15 the _Hattiesburg American_ reported that the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a report that \"called for new laws to permit prosecution of racial violence in federal courts when local officials fail to act.\" At the White House the next day, President Johnson told civil rights advocates that the Justice Department would act on the commission's recommendations and \"introduce new civil rights legislation to attack discrimination in the justice system.\" \"We intend to make the jury box, in both state and federal courts,\" he declared, \"the sacred domain of justice under the law.\" It is possible that Cannon's life sentence served as a defensive measure\u2014a metaphorical finger in the dike, holding back federal intervention in Mississippi's courts.\n\nEven if Senator Stennis and the Sovereignty Commission thought Cannon's conviction would shore up segregation, it had broad implications for the civil rights movement and the nation as a whole. The life sentence was recognized nationally as a major win for the African-American freedom struggle. While the legal victory flew under the radar of local civil rights activists, it made the front page of the nation's top newspapers, including _The New York Times_ , the _Los Angeles Times_ , and _The Washington Post_. Correspondent Jack Nelson of the _Los Angeles Times_ hailed the verdict as a sign of a \"new respect for the Negro as a person.\" Until recently, he argued, \"a white man could rape a Negro in Hattiesburg with virtual impunity, but... feelings have been changing.\" For example, Nelson said, \"the conviction rested solely on the testimony of the Negro girl. The fact that the jury would believe [her] over [a white man] is as significant as the verdict itself.\" And yet the story has not received the historical attention it deserves.\n\nThis is due, in part, to the jury's decision to keep Cannon from the electric chair. The life sentence fueled criticism of the South's unequal sentencing practices, breathing new life into the NAACP's campaign to end the \"racial double standard\" in rape cases. In the spring of 1966 the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) sent its army of lawyers to court on behalf of hundreds of African-American men languishing on death row for rape. Armed with sociological studies and statistics documenting discrimination in sentencing for rape cases, its representatives demanded equal justice. Newspapers documented the LDF's new campaign and followed the organization's legal maneuvering in a number of cases, some of which reached the Supreme Court. Over time the issue became a crusade to end the death penalty.\n\nBy focusing on men convicted of rape rather than the female survivors of sexual violence, the LDF's efforts steered attention away from the larger meanings of the Cannon conviction. The guilty verdict was the result of decades of black women's testimony of rape and years of campaigns to protect black women from sexual attack\u2014from Recy Taylor to Betty Jean Owens to Rosa Lee Coates. It also came after black Mississippians' long struggle to open the \"closed society\" and indicated that the state of Mississippi had finally recognized black women's right to bodily integrity. Even if the life sentence served the state's political purposes, Cannon could have easily been acquitted or, more typically, could have served a minimum sentence. The attorneys' decision to take a black woman's complaint seriously, the willingness of the all-white, all-male jury to sentence Cannon to life in prison, and state officials' determination to let him rot in Parchman penitentiary for many years indicated, at least symbolically, the full arrival of African Americans as human beings. Because it destroyed a pillar of white supremacy that was rooted in slavery\u2014the ability of white men to rape black women without legal consequence\u2014the Cannon decision ought to be considered a significant milestone in the modern civil rights movement.\n\nMildred and Richard Loving (sitting center) share a laugh with friends during an outing in Virginia in 1965. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Virginia's antimiscegenation statute, which had resulted in the couple's arrest shortly after their 1958 marriage, was unconstitutional. (photo credit 7.9)\n\nOne of the last legal barriers to black women's bodily integrity and respectability fell in 1967, when the Supreme Court banned laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the landmark _Loving v. Virginia_ decision. Rooted in colonial rules regulating interracial relationships, these laws served as a foundation for slavery and white supremacy. In 1691 Virginia legislators made \"miscegenation\" illegal and criminalized those who transgressed this racial boundary. Designed to \"prevent that abominable mixture of negroes, mulattoes, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women,\" the antimiscegenation laws awarded white men exclusive sexual access to white women and preserved racial \"purity\" in property and inheritance rights. At the same time white slave masters' stolen access to black women's bodies strengthened their political, social, and economic power, partly because other colonial laws made the offspring of slave women the property of their masters. Together, these laws denied black women the rights granted by a legal relationship by restricting and punishing marriage but not fornication or childbirth out of wedlock. They also created a system that allowed white men to use black women as concubines and sexually abuse them with impunity. By policing white women and black men's sexual and marital choices while retaining power over black women's bodies, white men maintained their position on top of the racial and sexual hierarchy. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, but the antimiscegenation laws remained.\n\nThe sixteen states that still prohibited interracial marriage in 1967 were, with one exception, all former slave states. When Richard Loving, a twenty-four-year-old white bricklayer from Caroline County, Virginia, and Mildred Jeter, an eighteen-year-old black woman who was his childhood sweetheart, exchanged vows in Washington, D.C., on June 11, 1958, they avoided the 1691 law rooted in Virginia's slave past but risked arrest each time they returned to their home state. When the newly-weds visited their in-laws just one month after their wedding, three policemen barged into their bedroom in the middle of the night, dragged them out of bed, and arrested them for violating the state's antimiscegenation laws. The Lovings pleaded guilty in court a few months later and received a one-year prison sentence, which the judge suspended provided the interracial couple left the state and did not return as husband and wife for twenty-five years. They moved to Washington, D.C., where they were safe from prosecution but were otherwise miserable. They longed for the day when they could return to Virginia to be near their families.\n\nIn 1963, at the height of the civil rights movement, Mrs. Loving sought assistance from the Justice Department. In a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, she asked if \"there was any way he could help us.\" Kennedy suggested she contact the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) since it had been involved in litigation for many years to overturn laws banning interracial marriage. Bernard S. Cohen, a lawyer and ACLU member from Virginia, eagerly embraced the Lovings' case. With assistance from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Lovings carried their argument all the way to the Supreme Court. Cohen and members of the Legal Defense Fund argued that the law was rooted in an unconstitutional slave system and that they had a \"right\" to marry whomever they wanted without fear of being terrorized or treated like criminals.\n\nOn June 12, 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court and declared that \"the racial classifications in these statutes [are] repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment.\" The Fourteenth Amendment, Warren said, required \"that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations.\" The Lovings cheered the decision at a press conference later that day. Richard Loving told reporters that he and his wife were \"just really overjoyed\" and that they planned to \"go ahead and build a new house\" in Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred Loving offered a more telling analysis of what the victory meant. \"I feel free now,\" she said.\n\nIssued just two years after Norman Cannon was sentenced to life in prison for raping an African-American teenager, _Loving v. Virginia_ signaled the emancipation of black women and constituted another nail in Jim Crow's coffin. Along with the NAACP's legal challenges to Southern jury discrimination and unequal sentencing, and passage of the 1968 Civil Rights Act granting bodily protection for civil rights workers, the Cannon and Loving verdicts ushered in the \"new day of justice\" for black women that John McCray had wondered about after the Tallahassee case in 1959. _State v. Cannon_ and _Loving v. Virginia_ helped dismantle the legal infrastructure that denied black women dignity, respectability, and bodily integrity. These cases destroyed the racial and sexual argument for segregation and white supremacy. The century-long struggle to protect African-American women from white sexual violence, built upon the testimonies of black women like Ida B. Wells, Recy Taylor, Gertrude Perkins, and Betty Jean Owens, had laid the groundwork for this victory. African-American women's willingness to speak out against sexual violence, to publicly testify about interracial rape in the segregated South, and to organize campaigns to demand full legal and social rights slowly destroyed these legacies of slavery.\n\nBut would these victories last? The right of black women to defend themselves from sexual violence was tested in 1975, when Joan Little, an African-American woman from Washington, North Carolina, stood trial in the ice-pick slaying of a white jailer.\n\n# CHAPTER 8 \n\"Power to the Ice Pick!\"\n\nIN THE QUIET DARKNESS just before daybreak on August 27, 1974, Sergeant Jerry Helms ambled into the Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina. Escorting a drunken prisoner, he walked through the double doors, down the carpeted stairs to the basement, and turned left toward the women's section of the small but clean jailhouse. Poking out of the cell of the sole female prisoner was a pair of shoeless feet in brown socks. Moving closer, Helms saw that the feet belonged to the burly, sixty-two-year-old white jailer, Clarence Alligood, whose lifeless torso slumped over his thighs. Except for the socks, Alligood was naked from the waist down. His yellow-and-white plaid shirt was caked with blood, and a thin line of semen stretched down his leg. His right hand loosely held an ice pick, and his left arm, dangling toward the floor, clutched his pants. Blood pooled on the linoleum tiles next to a woman's nightgown. A bra hung on the cell door. The petite twenty-year-old black woman who had occupied that cell for two months was gone.\n\nHelms and the Beaufort County police immediately began a search for Joan Little, who they believed had murdered Alligood as part of an elaborate plan to escape. After the state declared Little an armed and dangerous outlaw, local police issued orders to shoot her on sight. Armed with service dogs and \"high-powered rifles,\" police combed through the dusty streets of \"Back of Town,\" the black community in Washington, going door to door inquiring about Little's whereabouts.\n\nIn hiding for over a week after killing Clarence Alligood and escaping from the Beaufort jail, Joan Little surrenders to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation on September 7, 1975. She is accompanied by her attorney Jerry Paul. (photo credit 8.1)\n\nFew knew where she had been hiding. Ernest \"Pops\" Barnes, an aged and nearly blind man, had granted Little shelter in his tiny run-down shack that was notorious among neighbors as a \"liquor house.\" Pops agreed to provide a safe sanctuary for Little after she told him that Alligood forced her to strip. He \"tried to make me suck him,\" she said. She told Pops she killed him with an ice pick in self-defense. Squeezed between a couple of old feather mattresses, Little managed to elude police during four nerve-wracking searches of the house. When an officer sat down on Pops's bed during one investigation, Little remained still as a stone, barely able to breathe.\n\nAfter nearly a week in hiding, the fear and tension finally forced Little out. She sent word to Marjorie Wright, a childhood friend and sympathetic ally. Wright called Jerry Paul, a local attorney who worked on civil rights cases, who was known among whites and blacks as an eccentric nonconformist. Together they spirited Little out of the county in the middle of the night and helped her surrender to the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) in Chapel Hill. On September 7, Charles Dunn, head of the SBI, arrested Joan Little for first-degree murder. Two days later a grand jury indicted her. If found guilty, Little would die in the state's gas chamber.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nMuch had changed since 1947, when the NAACP, the Civil Rights Congress, and the Sojourners for Truth and Justice had launched a national and international campaign to free Rosa Lee Ingram. That year an all-white jury sentenced Ingram, a black sharecropper and mother of twelve, to death in the self-defense slaying of a white man in Ellaville, Georgia. In the 1940s it was nearly impossible for black victims of sexualized violence to receive justice in the courts. In 1944 a grand jury in Henry County, Alabama, refused to indict Recy Taylor's assailants despite their admissions, a gubernatorial intervention, and a national campaign for her defense. In 1949 the Montgomery police department would not even hold a lineup for Gertrude Perkins, who charged two officers with kidnapping and rape. After a citywide protest, Perkins had her day in court, but the grand jury refused to indict anyone for the crime. Black women had achieved small victories in their fight for bodily integrity throughout the 1950s, but they were few and far between. It was not until 1959 that an all-white jury in Tallahassee, Florida, sentenced four white men to prison for life in the brutal gang rape of Betty Jean Owens. It took another six years before Mississippi, the most unreconstructed Southern state, followed suit. In 1965 an all-white jury in Hattiesburg sent Norman Cannon to prison for life for kidnapping and raping Rosa Lee Coates.\n\nVictories of the mid-1960s rested on decades of black women's organizing and personal testimony. Courage and persistence had dramatically altered the political and legal landscape for black women raped or sexually abused by white men. Despite the threat of life sentences, some white men still believed black women's bodies belonged to them. As a result, African-American women continued to organize and use their public voices to demand safety from sexual abuse. In 1974 Joan Little became the symbol of a campaign to defend black womanhood and to call attention to the sexualized racial violence that still existed ten years after Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.\n\nThe Free Joan Little campaign brought disparate activists and organizations, each with their own resources and agendas, into a loose but powerful coalition. Feminists and women's liberation organizations spoke out against sexual violence and advocated a woman's right to self-defense; civil rights and Black Power groups saw the Little case as another example of police brutality and Southern injustice; opponents of the death penalty and prison reformers hoped the case would draw attention to their emerging campaigns. Ultimately, the Joan Little case became a test of whether an African-American woman, as Karen Galloway, one of Little's attorneys, put it, \"finally had a right to defend herself against a white man's sexual assault.\"\n\nAlthough African-American voter registration and political participation surged in the years after the Selma campaign, political rights did not guarantee full equality or economic opportunity. In 1966 Martin Luther King, Jr., argued that a \"tragic gulf\" existed between the promises of civil rights legislation and their fulfillment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, for example, did little to remedy the de facto segregation, squalid housing conditions, chronic unemployment, police brutality, and lack of educational opportunity that blacks still faced throughout the country. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, the leading black critic of nonviolence, only fueled the movement toward black nationalism and Black Power and away from the \"beloved community,\" splitting the civil rights coalition. Riots engulfed cities throughout the country for three searing summers after the Selma-to-Montgomery march. The uprisings exposed and expressed the betrayal many African Americans felt in the failure of the civil rights movement and the federal government to remedy racial and economic oppression. In 1966 alone thirty-eight riots erupted in cities from San Francisco to Providence, Rhode Island. In 1967 Detroit exploded: forty-three people were killed, two thousand were wounded, and more than five thousand were burned out of their homes. By the end of the decade, a half-million blacks in more than three hundred cities witnessed violent uprisings in which 250 people died, eight thousand were injured, and more than fifty thousand were arrested.\n\nAs younger black activists began to move toward organizations that advocated Black Power, white activists used the lessons of the civil rights movement to challenge the social and political inequalities of power in new, predominantly white organizations. The New Left, a mostly student-led movement that emerged in the early 1960s and was critical of Cold War brinkmanship and committed to participatory democracy, direct action, and mass mobilization, gained power as the Vietnam War escalated. By the end of the decade, New Left activists were the leading antiwar protesters and were convinced that the United States was \"the leading enemy of peace and justice on the planet.\" Instead of working within the existing political system, young radicals advocated a wholesale transformation.\n\nAt the same time, a rising white backlash spread throughout the nation, undermining support for civil rights advances. In the 1968 presidential election, George Wallace captured 13.5 percent of the popular vote by appealing to white anger and fears of unrestrained civil rights activists and antiwar demonstrators. The small number obscures the fact that more than 30 percent of Democratic voters in Wisconsin and Indiana, and 43 percent of Democrats in Maryland, chose the unabashed racist for president, indicating significant support outside the Deep South. Though not as overtly racist as Wallace, Richard Nixon appealed to the \"silent majority\" by opposing \"forced busing\" for school desegregation, criticizing social disorder, and promising to restore \"law and order.\" Nixon's language was softer than Wallace's, but the message was equally harsh.\n\nIn an atmosphere of increased racial polarization, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC struggled to revive the spirit of the beloved community and to wed continuing struggles for racial and economic justice to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. For a brief moment in the spring of 1968, during the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, the old civil rights coalition rallied together. Strikers asserted their personhood, demanded dignity and respect, and called for economic justice. Carrying signs that declared \"I _AM_ A Man,\" the Memphis garbage workers placed their protest in the long struggle for freedom and human rights.\n\nThe assassination of King on April 4, 1968, shattered the Memphis movement and killed any hopes for a renewed freedom movement. Racial violence flared in 125 cities in twenty-nine states, leaving thirty-nine dead, thousands injured, and millions reeling with sadness and disbelief. Amid the riots, Black Panthers in Oakland, California, engaged in a ninety-minute shoot-out with city police that left co-founder Eldridge Cleaver wounded and seventeen-year-old Bobby Hutton dead. The murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., combined with FBI surveillance, leadership upheavals, internal violence, incarceration, and gender problems among civil rights and Black Power organizations, signaled the end of an era.\n\nThe Little case unfolded amid murderous violence as African Americans in North Carolina fought to integrate public schools and gain full citizenship. Events in two cities provide the most gripping examples. In May 1970 African Americans in Oxford torched the town's tobacco warehouses after three white men brutally murdered Henry Marrow in broad daylight. Marrow, an African-American soldier and young father, allegedly talked fresh to a white woman. The historian Timothy Tyson, who was a child at the time, remembered living in an \"atmosphere of war.\" After the riot, a siege mentality set in among whites who defended the murderers and targeted blacks for violent reprisal. In the spring of 1971 Wilmington, like Oxford, \"hovered on the edge of racial cataclysm,\" as Tyson put it. The controversies over school desegregation\u2014busing, discrimination toward black students, the closure of all-black schools, and the dismissals of beloved black teachers and administrators\u2014left many African Americans angry and resentful.\n\nFueling this rancor in Wilmington, the Rights of White People, a white supremacist organization, terrorized blacks and incited violence. White racists and black militants exchanged gunfire, while black snipers fired at police officers, many of whom were members of the Ku Klux Klan. The National Guard patrolled the streets, and storefronts and businesses regularly went up in flames. Accused of arson but primarily guilty of leading a boisterous movement for Black Power, Ben Chavis, a field organizer for the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice, was sentenced to prison along with nine others implicated in the racial conflagration. They became known as the \"Wilmington Ten.\" Angela Davis, an outspoken prison reform activist and an icon of the Black Power movement, used her organization, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, to launch a campaign for their defense. It was through her work on the Wilmington Ten case that she heard about Joan Little's plight in Washington, North Carolina.\n\nRace relations were as volatile in the small towns and hamlets of Beaufort County as they were in Wilmington. Police killings, Klan burnings, and bomb threats met African-American integration efforts. When Sheriff Otis \"Red\" Davis bragged to a Northern reporter about the \"racial harmony\" that existed in eastern North Carolina \"since integration was forced on us in 1965,\" he was painting a picture of a New South that did not yet exist. In fact, many clung to the past; 70 percent of voters in Beaufort County supported Wallace in the 1972 presidential primary. \"If time had not exactly stood still in eastern North Carolina until the late 1960s,\" the journalist Mark Pinsky noted, \"it was dragging its feet. And nowhere did it dig in its heels more than in Beaufort County\u2014in matters of voting rights, jury service, public accommodations, school desegregation, and police brutality.\" When a federal court ordered Beaufort County to desegregate its public schools in 1965\u2014more than a decade after _Brown\u2014_ whites responded with violence and intimidation. The Ku Klux Klan enjoyed a resurgence and night riders terrorized African Americans who supported desegregation. The next year the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a lawsuit alleging that the \"intimidation of black students... had made school desegregation impossible without federal intervention.\"\n\nWhen the _Washington Daily News_ broke the story about the murder of jailer Clarence Alligood and the missing black female inmate, calling it the \"most brutal ever to happen in this county,\" it practically invited reprisal against Little. As if he were a soldier killed in action in Vietnam, the paper eulogized Alligood's service to the county and said he \"gave his life in the line of duty.\" The newspaper failed to report that Alligood had been found naked from the waist down. Once word got out that the medical examiner had found semen on his thighs and that his \"urethral fluid was loaded with spermatozoa,\" evidence that he died at the moment of sexual climax, Joan Little's claim that he sexually assaulted her gained credibility. However, since many whites still could not believe that a black woman could be raped, they fell back on old stereotypes to explain the unusual circumstances of Alligood's death.\n\nCasual conversations among whites in Washington pegged Little as a stereotypical jezebel, and rumors about her respectability, or lack thereof, spread throughout town. Joan Little, some whites argued, seduced Alligood, lured him into her cell, and killed him so she could escape. For the local car dealer, this excuse made perfect sense\u2014only the murder was a strange turn of events. \"Hell, to them fucking is like saying good morning, or having a Pepsi-Cola,\" he snorted. Henry Hardy, a textile executive, agreed. \"I'll tell you one thing,\" he said, \"she didn't lose her honor in that cell. She lost that years ago at Camp Lejeune,\" a marine base outside town. Hardy obviously believed the rumor that Little was a budding madam, who \"ferried her girlfriends to the base for prostitution.\" The plant manager at Coca-Cola, who claimed to know Alligood well, found it hard to believe he had a sexual encounter with a black woman. Alligood, he said, \"was so racially biased that he wouldn't want a colored woman.\" Sheriff Jack O. Harris sided with the plant manager but wondered why, if Alligood was going to break down and integrate, he would choose Little, \"all eat up with syphilis like she was.\"\n\nJerry Paul, Little's long-haired, heavy-lidded, shambling primary defense attorney, knew that many white men in and around Washington still believed black women existed, as he put it, \"somewhere between the animal and the human.\" A husky former East Carolina football player who was born and raised in Washington, North Carolina, Paul reveled in bucking the small town's strict racial codes by befriending African Americans and working on civil rights causes. Local people told reporters he was not a native son but was adopted. \"That's what my daddy always used to say,\" Paul told _The New York Times_. \"Always said that I must have some nigger blood or some Jewish blood as much as I love the niggers.\" Racial politics aside, he knew that liaisons between white men and black women, whether coerced or consensual, had a long history. Among white men, he said, they were \"completely accepted.\" \"I used to hear 'em in the workplaces,\" Paul explained, \"bragging about how they got some pussy the night before, and always the question would come up, 'Was it white or black?' \" Invariably, he said, someone would say, \"Oh, it was black... I picked up this nigger walking on the road.\"\n\nNative son. Attorney Jerry Paul, a former East Carolina football player, defied the state's racial status quo by representing African Americans and working on civil rights cases. (photo credit 8.2)\n\nLocal whites sympathized with Clarence Alligood, Paul explained. \"They're programmed to believe that she lured him in there,\" he said. \"And if she didn't... then he went back there to have a little fun [and] that's okay too. That's expected.\" Most whites believed that the mistake Alligood made, Paul said, was _\"getting caught_ back there.\" With no eyewitnesses and only circumstantial evidence available to pin a first-degree murder charge on the young black woman, Paul expected the prosecution to fall back on these time-worn stereotypes to win its case. He also expected them to call up Joan Little's dysfunctional family history and her criminal record, which was long, to paint a picture of a sexually deviant delinquent who murdered Alligood in cold blood.\n\nLittle was no Rosa Parks. She was the oldest of nine children. Her mother had been married twice and had four children with Little's father, and five children with her stepfather. Little's father abandoned the family and moved to New York when she was still a child, and her new stepfather had a tendency to drink too much. Little had her first sexual encounter when she was fourteen and contracted syphilis the following year. As a teenager, Little often ran away from home, earning a reputation among family and friends as an \"escape artist.\" She dropped out of high school at fifteen, but her mother had a judge declare her a truant and sent her to Dobbs Farm Training School in Kinston, North Carolina. When she ran away from Dobbs Farm, Little's mother sent her to live with relatives in Philadelphia. There Little developed a thyroid problem and came home for surgery three weeks before she was supposed to graduate from high school. Without a diploma and no real job prospects, Little worked sporadically until 1973, when at age eighteen she went to work as a Sheetrock finisher and got romantically involved with Julius Rogers, a man twenty years her senior. Toward the end of the year, she began to get in trouble with the law as well.\n\nIn Jacksonville, North Carolina, police charged Little with possession of stolen goods and a sawed-off shotgun; on January 3, 1974, police in Washington, North Carolina, arrested her for shoplifting, but the charge was dismissed. Six days later police arrested her again for shoplifting, and this time she drew a suspended sentence. Less than a week passed before Little was arrested again. This time police charged her with three separate felonies: breaking, entering, and larceny. A grand jury indicted Little on March 15, 1974, and on June 4, 1974, she received a seven-to-ten-year jail sentence.\n\nLittle's attorneys knew that her criminal record would make it easy for the prosecution to present her as a calculating killer. Such an argument would play well locally\u2014and not just among whites. Many African Americans in Washington did not think Joan Little was a respectable young woman either. Maggie Buck, a white beautician at the Cinderella Beauty Salon, told a reporter that even \"my black maid didn't sympathize with Joan Little.\" Little was so mean, Buck recalled, \"she stole her own aunt's color TV.\" Buck's maid may not have been completely forthright with her employer on issues regarding race, but other African Americans expressed similar opinions. Golden Frinks, perhaps the most well-known civil rights leader in North Carolina, argued that prominent members of the black community in Washington had \"ostracized\" Little because she was a \"wayward girl\" who had \"led a fast life.\" Little's behavior, he said, \"was not up to the general moral standard of the community.\" After hearing about Little's escape and subsequent arrest, Frinks went to Mount Hebron Baptist Church, where Little's family were registered members, hoping to organize a campaign for her defense. They turned him away. \"You see,\" Frinks recalled, \"the community had moved thumbs down on Little because of her previous record [and] her breaking and entering into a mobile home of a black person.\"\n\nJoan Little, February 3, 1975. (photo credit 8.3)\n\nRespectability mattered, but not as much as it had in previous decades. The year 1975 was not 1955, when respectability had been the defining issue that made Rosa Parks\u2014and not Claudette Colvin\u2014the symbol of wronged black womanhood in Montgomery, Alabama. The two decades between the Montgomery bus boycott and Joan Little's trial witnessed enormous social, political, and economic changes that permanently altered the American landscape. The civil rights movement and the women's movement helped free African Americans and women from the strict racial and sexual codes that had been inscribed in the social and legal bedrock of the United States for centuries. Certainly the national exposure of police brutality, institutional racism, and the violent practices of white supremacists in the 1960s and early 1970s\u2014especially the murder of Viola Liuzzo and the kidnapping and rape of Rosa Lee Coates in 1965\u2014undermined arguments linking race and sex and played a role in challenging the importance of the victim's respectability and innocence.\n\nBy the mid-1970s the National Organization for Women had made tremendous legal and political inroads, partly because of the legacy of the civil rights movement and African-American activism on sexual violence. The Equal Rights Amendment was debated fiercely across the country and had been ratified by more than thirty states. In 1973 the Supreme Court gave women power over their own reproductive choices in the landmark _Roe v. Wade_ decision. Women's liberation groups challenged conventional definitions of rape and domestic violence and pressured police and other law enforcement officials to stop blaming the victim. White feminists in New York finally caught up with their African-American sisters by testifying publicly about rape in 1971. In 1973 the National Organization for Women formed the NOW Rape Task Force to investigate rape laws around the country. Over the next few years, rape crisis centers and rape hotlines sprouted up throughout the country; radical feminists held conferences dedicated to discussing sexual violence; and a wave of public speak-outs put rape on the national political agenda.\n\nMaggie Buck, the white beautician in Washington, seemed to grasp these historic changes when she told a reporter that \"even if a girl has loose morals, she should be able to pick the man she wants to be raped by.\" Buck's bizarre phrasing of the right of women to choose their sexual partners\u2014and even their assailants\u2014indicated that Little might garner more sympathy among all women, regardless of race or political position, whose views on gender and sexuality had been influenced by the women's rights movement.\n\nHowever, Joan Little was not going to be the only one on trial. If the prosecution drew on racial stereotypes of wanton women and blacks' tendency toward criminality, then Little's defense attorneys would paint a picture of North Carolina mired in a Tobacco Road past, where ignorant \"rednecks\" lorded over innocent and defenseless blacks. This strategy would hurt the state's image and, given the still-contested great social changes, maybe even lead to an acquittal. Indeed, the violent clashes over school desegregation made North Carolina the focal point of national news stories throughout the 1970s and seriously damaged the state's \"progressive mystique.\" _The New York Times_ reported the \"growing concern\" of state officials, who feared losing tourists and industry to other \"sunbelt\" states in the South. They worried that \"national attention... [will hurt] the state's already battered image of racial moderation.\" Governor James E. Holshouser, the _Times_ noted, was especially \"sensitive to the critical publicity the state has been receiving lately.\" \"They know they're racists,\" attorney Jerry Paul quipped, \"but in 1975, it may not be a good thing to admit you're a racist\u2014they think that the nation comes down on you if you're that way and you won't get industry in your town.\"\n\nIn the year leading up to Little's trial, Jerry Paul presented her to the public as a poor but brave black woman who had defended her dignity from a lecherous racist and was being railroaded into the gas chamber by a Jim Crow justice system. Paul pounced on state prosecutors every time they said or did something that hinted of racial prejudice as proof that they were stuck in an Old South mind-set. David Milligan, the editor of the _Beaufort-Hyde News_ , resented Paul's strategy because, he complained, the Northern press eagerly lapped it up and spat it out in caricature: \"This is the South. Here's a rinky-dink town with its shacks and shanties. You've got this old redneck sheriff and this old redneck jailer and this pore little ole colored gal. She's there in jail, so defenseless, so innocent, and she gets raped and ravaged by this gross jailer and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she struck out, trying to defend herself. She had to kill the jailer and now those ignorant rednecks are gonna get their revenge on her. They're gonna make her pay for it with her life.\"\n\nPaul couldn't have said it better himself. He and a coterie of supporters spent ten months repeating that story, or versions of it, at rallies and media events, whipping up support for Little throughout the country. More than a canny legal strategy, Little's story would resonate with feminist and antirape organizations, Paul realized, as well as large swaths of the black public. Civil rights and Black Power activists, who had intimate knowledge of Jim Crow justice, would rally to her defense. He teamed up with Karen Galloway, the first African-American woman to graduate from Duke Law School, who signed on as Little's co-counsel the same day she passed her bar exam. Together the novice and the native son traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak to women's organizations. We \"sold the Joan Little case,\" Paul said later, \"and all the women's groups started to pick it up.\"\n\nMovement magazines and newsletters, like the feminist periodical _Off Our Backs_ , helped spread Little's story through feminist circles before the mainstream media picked it up. Angela Davis's article in _Ms_. magazine brought national attention to the trial and introduced thousands of activists and institutions across the nation not only to Joan Little's plight but to black women's long battle against sexual violence. \"All people who see themselves as members of the existing community of struggle for justice, equality, and progress,\" Davis argued, \"have a responsibility to fulfill toward Joan Little.\" The Southern Poverty Law Center, with former SNCC leader Julian Bond at the helm, signed on early as well. They used Morris Dees's direct mail expertise to solicit funds from people across the nation for Little's defense. The letter they mailed to a quarter of a million people claimed Little's case represented the \"most shocking and outrageous example of injustice against women on record.\"\n\nAs word of Little's defiant stand against sexual violence spread, national feminist groups and civil rights organizations rallied behind her. The Women's Legal Defense Fund, the Feminist Alliance Against Rape, the Rape Crisis Center, the National Black Feminist Organization, and the National Organization for Women, which was struggling to appeal to women of color, joined the fund-raising effort and mobilized nationwide support. The national NAACP maintained its historic reluctance to embrace \"sex cases\" and did not get involved; however, local chapters helped raise money.\n\nIn an article for _The Black Scholar_ , Maulana Ron Karenga, a Black Power advocate, cultural nationalist, founder of the US Organization, and inventor of Kwanzaa, called on African Americans to \"accept and support [Little's] account of what actually happened and to reject... the version offered by the oppressor.\" Karenga placed the attack on Little into a long history of \"personal and political terrorism directed against black women and the black community since slavery.\" Her willingness to resist Alligood's advances, Karenga argued, proved that even though \"the movement was at a lull, our people were still in motion, still resisting.\" Little's decision to fight back became a catalyst for a much larger struggle.\n\nRosa Parks, who had been an antirape activist since she helped organize the campaign to defend Recy Taylor in the early 1940s, helped found a local branch of the Joan Little Legal Defense Committee in Detroit, where she had fled two years after the Montgomery bus boycott. In a press release issued on March 12, 1975, the committee announced a student rally at the University of Detroit, a march to be held April 18, and a massive fund-raising drive to defend Little \"all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.\" They hoped that \"Miss Little will be acquitted of the charge of first degree murder,\" the press release stated, \"but, also, that the question, 'should a woman defend herself against a rapist?' will be decided in the affirmative.\" Within a month the Detroit committee had secured local speakers and entertainment for the April rally, sent five hundred solicitations for donations, and appeared on local television and radio programs to call on Detroit citizens to rally to Little's defense. Similar chapters emerged throughout the country.\n\nBernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, and a former SNCC activist who worked closely with Fannie Lou Hamer the summer after she was assaulted in the Winona, Mississippi, jail, saw Joan Little as a kind of everywoman trapped by a racist and sexist society. Her song, \"Joanne Little,\" became the anthem for what became the \"Free Joan Little\" movement. The song's refrain, \"Joanne is you, Joanne is me, our prison is this whole society,\" rallied Little's diverse supporters.\n\nThe Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., supported Little and demanded protection for black womanhood. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, King's hand-picked successor and Montgomery bus boycott veteran, joined Golden Frinks to headline a protest at the Beaufort County Courthouse. \"Here is a young Black woman locked in jail,\" Abernathy shouted, \"sexually assaulted [and] charged with first degree murder, simply because she protected herself from being raped by a white barbarian.\" It was perhaps the SCLC's most outspoken statement in defense of black women's bodily integrity.\n\nAt the grassroots level, African-American women in North Carolina who had labored for human dignity without recognition or celebration began organizing on Little's behalf. They drew from deep wells of experience fighting racial injustice and sexual abuse. In 1975 a number of them joined hands across the state to form Concerned Women for Justice and Fairness to Joan Little (later known as the Concerned Women for Justice or CWJ). Mrs. Christine Strudwick, veteran of the Durham, North Carolina, freedom struggle, who became CWJ's second vice president, recalled that she \"felt like Joan could have been one of my daughters and was caught up in a situation [in which] she really had no control.\" Strudwick cultivated local support and introduced Little's attorneys to black churchwomen at the Union Baptist Church in Durham, which served as the organizational base for local civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s. By calling on the churchwomen at Union Baptist, Strudwick placed Little's case in the hands of experienced activists who understood the long history of sexual abuse of black women. Together they helped raise money, provided moral support, and offered assistance to Little's mother.\n\nThe Durham branch of the Joan Little Defense Fund served as the home base for state and national organizing. It was originally founded by Little's attorneys to help raise funds for her defense but was primarily run by black female college students. According to a press release, Yvonne Davis, a student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, \"traveled, making talks and arranging publicity... for little or no pay.\" She was also responsible for keeping in contact with groups around the country. Alexis Randolph \"kept [the Joan Little Defense Fund] going almost single-handed.\" Vivian Grimes, a secretary in Jerry Paul's law firm, \"spent numerous hours working on the case, on and off the job.\" Tyree Barnes, a student at Guildford College, was in charge of a survey for jury selection and, according to a committee newsletter, \"has on many occasions taken it upon herself to carry out many of the things that needed doing.\" Nancy Mills helped set up the first rally in Washington, D.C. Celene Chernier, a prison reform activist and representative of the North Carolina Alliance Against Racial and Political Repression, helped nurture relationships with like-minded organizations. Larry Little, head of the Winston-Salem Black Panther Party, secured support from Black Power advocates. Their efforts, along with the direct mail efforts of Julian Bond and Morris Dees at the Southern Poverty Law Center, raised approximately $250,000 for Little's defense. Months before Joan Little's trial began, her supporters had already decided she was innocent.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nLittle still had to face a North Carolina judge and jury. Her attorneys hoped it would not be in Beaufort County, where too many people knew Little's criminal history and hard reputation. In April 1975, Jerry Paul and Karen Galloway petitioned Superior Court Judge Henry A. McKinnon for a change of venue, arguing that Beaufort County's jury-selection process was racially biased. Paul and Galloway spent $38,992 on social scientists who helped develop an \"attitude profile survey\" designed to detect patterns of prejudice. They wanted to know if African Americans and young people were purposely excluded from the local jury pool\u2014a tactic used by white Southerners for many years to deny blacks equal justice. A diverse jury would render a different verdict than an all-white jury, they reasoned, because the attitudes of blacks, women, and the young significantly diverged from average white male jurors. \"If it could be shown that attitudes were different, and the three groups were underrepresented,\" Courtney J. Mullin, the social psychologist who headed the survey, said, \"then Joan Little would receive... not a jury of her peers... but rather the justice of a middle-class, middle-aged white male segment only.\"\n\nOn April 22 Judge McKinnon granted the change of venue, not because of systematic racial discrimination, he argued, but \"because it would be almost impossible to select an impartial jury... because of extensive pre-trial publicity.\" Little and her attorneys won a double victory that day. Despite McKinnon's denials, Paul and Galloway succeeded in portraying racism as the reason for the change of venue. By moving the trial to Raleigh, the state capital, Little could count on a jury drawn from a more urban and liberal population, who knew virtually nothing about her disreputable past.\n\nThe \"trial of the decade,\" as the _Chicago Tribune_ put it, began on July 15, 1975. Five hundred supporters rallied outside the Wake County Courthouse, a white cement behemoth in downtown Raleigh. They hoisted placards demanding the court \"Free Joan Little\" and \"Defend Black Womanhood,\" and loud chants could be heard over the din of traffic and conversation. \"One, two, three. Joan must be set free!\" the crowd sang. \"Four, five, six. Power to the ice pick!\" Inside, Little sat quietly in a modest pink and blue dress as her attorneys and the prosecutors tested competing narratives and argued over potential jurors. William Griffin, the boyish thirty-one-year-old prosecutor, presented Little as a seductive and calculating killer who murdered Alligood as part of a plot to escape. She deserved the death penalty, he claimed, and looked for potential jurors who supported it.\n\nDemonstrators demand \"Justice for Joanne\" outside the Wake County Courthouse. (photo credit 8.4)\n\nThe defense, _The New York Times_ reported, \"made clear today that they were putting the Southern system of justice on trial as much as defending a young black woman accused of first-degree murder.\" When assistant prosecutor Lester Chalmers dismissed the first black prospective juror, Jerry Paul, hewing to this strategy, yelled, \"I object! He's excusing them because they're black.\" Chalmers was an easy target\u2014he had defended the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee a few years earlier\u2014and the defense eagerly exploited it. Chalmers \"bristled\" at the charge and told Judge Hamilton Hobgood, the sixty-four-year-old jurist with a reputation for fairness and a knack for country humor, that he \"objected to the objection.\" \"I'd expect the Klan to object to that statement,\" Jerry Paul quickly shot back. Paul goaded Chalmers about his past association with the bedsheet brigade for the nearly two weeks it took to pick a jury, setting the stage for a courtroom brawl between the South's legacy of racial and sexual violence and Joan Little. In the end, the jury consisted of six African Americans and six whites. Nine of the twelve were women, and all but five were under forty years old.\n\nAs prosecutors struggled to present a case based on circumstantial evidence, defense attorneys placed the case in its historical context. They argued that Southern police officers had a long history of assaulting and sexually harassing black women in their custody. In the Beaufort County Jail, they said, black women were wholly unprotected. Officers kept a camera trained on female prisoners at all times, watching them\u2014or \"peeping at them,\" as Paul put it\u2014while they showered, changed clothes, and used the toilet. Little testified that when she tried to \"tie up a blanket to block the TV monitor\" and protect her privacy when she was naked, officers took her blanket away. She also described how, when she wanted to take a shower, she \"had to call the jailer and have him turn the water on.\" Then he would stand outside her cell and watch, she said.\n\nKaren Galloway told the jury that Little was not the only victim of sexual abuse in the Beaufort County Jail but was one of many black women harassed by Alligood and other white officers who routinely attacked black women. Galloway summoned a stream of black women to the stand to testify about their experiences. Rosa Ida Mae Roberson, described by the _Los Angeles Times_ as a \"hefty black woman who was jailed for twenty-one days for making threatening phone calls,\" told the jury that Alligood propositioned her about \"seven to ten times\" while she was incarcerated. Alligood, she said, teased her about being \"confined so long [she] needed sex.\" When Roberson warned the wizened jailer that she \"would kill him if he entered her cell,\" he backed off. Phyllis Ann Moore, a nineteen-year-old black woman, testified that during her short stay in the Beaufort County Jail, she witnessed Alligood sexually harass Little by repeatedly asking her if she \"missed her man.\" Little ignored the sexual innuendo, Moore said, and once \"turned away in disgust and muttered that she'd report the jailer if he said it again.\" But it was the last witness, who, according to the _Los Angeles Times_ , \"seemed to command the closest attention of the jury.\"\n\nAn eclectic group of protesters join forces to \"Free Joan Little,\" July 14, 1975. (photo credit 8.5)\n\n\"Power to the Ice Pick\"\u2014an African-American woman pickets outside the Wake County Courthouse in Raleigh, July 21, 1975. (photo credit 8.6)\n\nJurors listened with rapt attention as Galloway questioned Anne Marie Gardner, a twenty-six-year-old black woman, who said Alligood made repeated sexual advances toward her. \"Alligood came to the female section just about every night,\" Gardner told the jury. When she scrubbed the floors, she said, Alligood shuffled along behind her, attempting to pinch and fondle her breasts. \"I'd knock his hand away,\" she said. When Lester Chalmers asked Gardner on cross-examination why she did not report the behavior, someone in the audience said, \"Come on, mister.\" \"I wanted to forget it,\" Gardner snapped back.\n\nBy presenting multiple victims of Alligood's predatory lust, the defense readied the jurors for Little's testimony. Paul and Galloway had prepared her for this moment; they spent months training Joan Little in the art of respectability. She had to assert her dignity and personhood without being too brash and appear reputable without being too demure. It was a difficult task since Little had what Paul called a \"negative side\" that her attorneys did not want to slip out. \"She's not an honest person,\" Paul admitted later. \"She's not a kind person. She's a violent person. That doesn't mean she committed this crime,\" he explained, \"it only means she's a product of her environment.\" If she had said, \" 'I did a brave thing, I killed the old lecher and I'm glad of it,' \" Paul argued, \"she would have blown it.\" Paul and Galloway taught Little how to behave in a way that made the jury believe she was an honorable and decent young woman and that any allusions by the prosecution to her criminal or sexual history were signs of their racism, not her moral shortcomings.\n\nOutside the Wake County Courthouse, Raleigh, July 14, 1975 (photo credit 8.7)\n\nBlack and white women assert their right to self-defense outside the Joan Little trial, August 17, 1975. (photo credit 8.8)\n\nJerry Paul helped create an image of respectability by pairing Little with Galloway, who was middle-class, educated, poised, well spoken, and respectable. \"To be really good on the stand,\" Paul told a journalist later, \"the client must be an extension of her lawyer. The client literally must _be_ her lawyer.\" Paul saw that Galloway commanded respect when she spoke to the jurors. White women in particular responded to her grace and self-assurance. \"I figure if they'll accept Karen,\" Paul said, \"she'll drag Joan along with her. They'll never look at Joan.\" Galloway's presence, Paul explained, provided jurors with \"an image of what Joan can be... and maybe is.\"\n\nBy the time Little testified on her own behalf, almost a month after the trial began, the prosecution's case was severely weakened. On August 6 Judge Hobgood reduced the charge against her to second-degree murder because, he said, the \"state had failed to offer sufficient evidence that she had planned the killing.\" As prosecutors lost legal ground, they increasingly relied on racial and sexual stereotypes to make their case. This was most clear when Little, after sitting expressionless for nearly three weeks, finally took the stand.\n\nWearing a peach pullover and checkered pants, the petite woman testified that she killed Clarence Alligood in self-defense after he forced his way into her cell. She spoke so softly at times that jurors and spectators leaned forward, straining to hear the details of what happened almost a year earlier. Choking back tears, Little told the jury how Alligood brought her sandwiches and snacks, often after midnight, without her asking. After about three weeks in jail, she said, Alligood started making passes at her, \"talking about how nice I looked in my gown and that he wanted me to you know, have sex with him.\"\n\n\"Well, what did you say?\" Paul asked.\n\n\"I told him to leave and that if he didn't I was gonna tell.\"\n\nOn cross-examination, prosecutor William Griffin asked her why she did not follow through on the threat to report Alligood.\n\n\"Coming up as a black woman,\" Little told the jury, \"it's a difficult thing... it's a question of your word against a white person.\"\n\nAll of Alligood's late-night visits with snacks and sandwiches were a ploy, the defense claimed, to manipulate Little into having sex with him. When he walked into her cell in the early-morning hours of August 27, 1974, he had a \"silly grin on his face, a weird look,\" Little testified. \"He said that he had been nice to me and it was time I be nice to him.\" Holding back tears, Little told the jury that she rebuffed Alligood and told him that she \"wasn't gonna be nice to him.\" Alligood was unmoved, she said; he slipped his shoes off, walked into the cell, and started to fondle her breasts. \"You might as well [tell],\" Little claimed Alligood said as he \"started to feel all over me.\" The other police officers, he said, \"aren't going to believe you anyway.\" With a tiny voice barely audible in the courtroom, Little told the jury that she began to cry when Alligood stepped closer, pulled her nightgown up over her head, and \"stuck his left hand in between my legs.\" With his right hand, she said, he grabbed her neck and said, \"Give me some pussy.\" \"I was scared,\" she said, \"so I just let him do that.\"\n\nLittle continued with her raw testimony. She described how the jailer removed his pants, then forced her to her knees and, ice pick in hand, pushed her head down between his legs and told her to \"suck him.\" \"I didn't know whether he was going to kill me or what,\" she said, trembling. She wept as she described how she grabbed the ice pick when his grip loosened. \"I reached for it and it fell,\" she said. \"He grabbed for it... I grabbed for it,\" she said, burying her face into a handkerchief. She looked at the jury, her eyes puffy from crying, and told them that she \"got to the ice pick first [and] struck at him each time he came at me.\" In the struggle, she said, she lashed out at Alligood after he grabbed her wrists and ran when he finally fell down. Little's testimony touched a raw nerve among the black women jurors, especially Cora Judkins and Pecola Jones, who wept softly as Little dried her eyes and prepared for more of Griffin's cross-examination.\n\nThree hours of \"wheedling and battering\" by Griffin, _The New York Times_ reported, \"failed to evoke any anger from the young black woman.\" Griffin's cross-examination followed what Wayne King, the _Times_ reporter, called \"the classic courtroom pattern where allegations of rape are made\u2014an attempt to impeach the accuser's reputation and\/or force her into a contradiction through anger or simple repetition of the facts.\" On the latter point, Griffin and his assistant prosecutors failed miserably. By making Little repeat answers to their questions and retell the more brutal aspects of her struggle, they appeared insensitive.\n\n\"You never screamed?\" Griffin asked.\n\n\"No, I just stood there,\" Little said quietly.\n\n\"You just stood there,\" Griffin said with incredulity. \"You didn't slap his hands away from you, you didn't push him away from you?\"\n\n\"No sir,\" Little replied.\n\n\"Did you strike him, hit him, push him?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"I just stood there.\"\n\n\"You just stood there.\"\n\nClearly exasperated, Griffin raised his voice. \"You never hollered, shouted, pushed him away, struck him or anything?\"\n\n\"I was scared and I didn't know whether to scream or what, because he could have killed me right then and there.\"\n\n\"He had not threatened you at that point, had he?\" Griffin argued.\n\n\"He was bigger than me,\" she said, pointing out that the jailer was over two hundred pounds and she was half that size.\n\n\"But you didn't fight him off, is that right?\"\n\n\"May I say something?\" Little asked.\n\n\"No I want you to answer my question,\" Griffin replied.\n\n\"No I did not,\" Little said. \"But if you had been a woman,\" Little added, \"you wouldn't have known what to do either, you probably wouldn't have screamed either because you wouldn't have known what he would have done to you.\"\n\nWhen prosecutors could not rattle Little, they attacked her credibility and portrayed her as a prostitute. Griffin asked Little if she gave a bondsman sexual favors in return for a loan to get out of jail; if another woman was her lover while she awaited trial in the women's prison; if she had a venereal disease; and if she ferried women to Jacksonville, North Carolina, as part of a prostitution ring. To all but one question, Paul objected, and Judge Hobgood overruled. Little calmly defended herself, maintaining her composure and her dignity. Griffin and his fellow prosecutors continued their strategy during their closing arguments.\n\nJust because there was \"sexual activity under way,\" Griffin argued, did not \"give her the right to kill this man.\" He suggested that not only did Little have consensual sex with the jailer, _she_ seduced _him_. What else could explain Alligood's erection, Griffin asked. \"[It's] strange to me that a man with rape on his mind would go in with an erection?\" Griffin said. \"That's strange to me. Does that make any sense at all? A man with rape on his mind?\" Finally, Griffin described Little as a \"calculating criminal, who, bent on escape, lured the jailer into her cell with a promise of sexual favors\" and then, \"at the moment of ecstasy, she let him have it.\" She \"stabbed a man all over his body,\" Griffin told the jury. She directed the blows at his heart, he said. \"How else would a man sit there and take those kind of wounds? How else?\"\n\nDefense attorneys painted a different picture in their closing statements. Wearing the same color and sporting a similar, short Afro as her client, Karen Galloway taped off a four-by-seven-foot box on the courtroom floor and stood inside it, inviting the jurors to put themselves in Joan Little's shoes. Galloway skillfully transported the jurors to the Beaufort County Jail the night of the crime. Imagine a \"young black woman whose white jailer had come to her cell demanding sex,\" she said. \"Imagine Alligood's power and Miss Little's sense of fear.\" Here is a \"two hundred pound man sitting on the bunk; you on your knees on the floor,\" Galloway said, adroitly re-creating the sense of physical powerlessness Little must have felt. _The New York Times_ reported that the young attorney then \"described in stark language the sexual assault, weaving into the account over and over again, the power of the jailer.\" Alligood was a \"man of position, of authority,\" she argued. Little ran, Galloway said, because \"white men in the South could do anything to black women and get away with it. She ran to save her own life.\" Pointing to the white male prosecutors as if they were guilty too, Galloway said, \"They suggest that she enjoyed it.\" As a respectable black woman, Galloway's condemnation of white men's lawlessness and indifference toward black women's humanity was a powerful indictment. Her ability to make Alligood's power and perversion real enabled the jury to gain a sense of what she called Little's \"defenselessness, paralysis, [and] violation.\" Her performance reduced the jurors to tears.\n\nThe defense team could have easily rested after Galloway's wrenching closing argument, but Paul wanted the jury to understand that Little's story fit into a long and painful history. Taking the jury back to Jim Crow, Paul opened his dog-eared copy of Gerda Lerner's _Black Women in White America_ and read a long passage written in 1902 by an anonymous African-American woman. The essay denounced white men for defiling black women while simultaneously proclaiming, \"No Negro women are virtuous.\" The author hoped that \"someone will arise who will champion [black women's] cause and compel the world to see that we deserve justice, as other heroes compelled it to see that we deserved freedom.\" Paul argued that that someone was Joan Little.\n\n\"God chose Joan Little,\" Paul insisted, \"like he chose Rosa Parks\" to end the \"domination of southern black women by white males.\" \"And that is what this case is all about. This case compels the world to see that women, black women, deserve justice; that women are victims of rape and that rape is not a sex crime and that they do not lure men into raping them. It is a crime of violence, of hatred, of humiliation.\" He then put the entire history of the South's racial and sexual subjugation on trial and asked the jury to decide whether it wanted to continue to live in a world dominated by white supremacy. \"Whose word do you believe?\" he asked. \"The history of whiteness on a pedestal, white southern womanhood on the pedestal, righteousness, purity, or do you believe the black woman who has a history of being lower than the prostitute?\"\n\nAfter deliberating for seventy-eight minutes, the jury unanimously voted to acquit Joan Little. As Mark Neilson, the jury foreman, read the verdict, Little's attorneys clustered around her as she broke into sobs. Wiping the tears away, she said, \"It feels good to be free.\" News of the victory quickly spread to the crowd of one hundred supporters outside. When Little emerged, the throng erupted into cheers and chanted, \"Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!\" At a press conference later that day in the green-and-yellow lobby of the Lemon Tree Inn, Little told reporters that she \"always had confidence in the people.\" She believed she received a fair trial, Little said, despite the fact that prosecutors were, as she put it, more \"interested in sending black women to the gas chamber than the truth.\" Standing next to Galloway, Little told the crowd of television reporters and journalists that she hoped her experience might help women who \"go through the same kinds of abuse.\"\n\nJoan Little (left) and Karen Galloway, July 14, 1975. Galloway was the first African-American woman to graduate Duke Law School. (photo credit 8.9)\n\nMichael Coakley, a reporter for the _Chicago Tribune_ who sat through the five-week trial, argued that Little's case provided a national airing for issues that plagued the country, particularly \"racism, sexism, and prison reform\" and \"the whole question of self-defense against rape.\" The case helped fuel a public debate about the prosecution of sex crimes and aided feminist efforts to redefine rape as a crime of violence, aggression, and humiliation that had little, if anything, to do with sex. Additionally, by constantly challenging prosecutors' implied arguments that Little could not have been raped because she was not respectable, she and her attorneys helped dispel stereotypes of black women as promiscuous jezebels who could not be legitimate victims of rape. The fact that these characterizations were seen as racist attempts to smear the victim indicated that a New South could emerge from the ruins of the old. \"I like to think we at least made a beginning,\" Galloway said later. \"Maybe now rape victims won't have to take the witness stand and become the defendant.\"\n\nThe Joan Little case proved that respectability still mattered, but only to a degree. Despite the fact that Paul compared Little to Rosa Parks, she was _nothing_ like the heroine of the Montgomery bus boycott. By 1975, respectability was no longer the defining trait supporters looked for before rallying to the cause. Everyone knew that Little had been incarcerated, but that did not stop supporters from insisting that she still had a right to her own body and deserved to be treated with respect. Certainly the modern civil rights movement, which forced the nation to recognize African Americans as citizens and human beings, created the conditions for the change. When Paul told the jury that \"there is no human being on the face of the earth\" who has the right to violate or abuse another person, \"no matter who you are or where you think you come from or whatever possession or control you have,\" he expressed those changes.\n\nWhile the verdict in the Little case highlighted these breaks with the past, there was much continuity with it. The trial drew national and international attention, and a broad coalition of supporters rallied in defense of Little's womanhood and her right to self-defense. The widespread support for Little among disparate leftist and liberal organizations resembled the nationwide coalitions that formed to demand justice for Recy Taylor in 1944 and Rosa Lee Ingram in 1947. Like the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor and the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, the Free Joan Little campaign, led primarily by African-American women, helped mobilize support on behalf of black womanhood and served as a catalyst for larger struggles.\n\nThe Free Joan Little campaign is often portrayed as the product of second-wave feminism, which finally enabled women to break the code of silence surrounding sexual violence and \"speak out\" against rape. While this may be true for white, middle-class feminists who became active in the antirape movement in the early 1970s, African-American women had been speaking out and organizing politically against sexual violence and rape for more than a century. When Jerry Paul read to the jury an African-American woman's essay from 1902 decrying the lack of protection for black womanhood, he bore witness to not only the decades of abuse black women faced during slavery and Jim Crow but also to their long history of speaking out against it. While Paul highlighted this history and helped it find a broader audience, it was African-American women who bore the ultimate burden of testimony.\n\nSpeaking out was never easy. Joan Little told reporters shortly after her trial ended that the \"toughest thing\" about her entire ordeal was testifying. \"I spent many months trying to force it from the bottom of me, to try to tell people what happened. I knew people would think that I must have enticed him,\" she said. \"I don't think any woman enjoys talking about being sexually attacked.\" For African-American women who were raped or sexually harassed in the segregated South, or anywhere their bodies were not their own, speaking out was downright dangerous. As a result, testimony must be seen as a form of direct action and radical protest against the racial and sexual status quo. Indeed, the willingness of African-American women to testify about the crimes committed against their personhood took enormous courage and strength and indicated that even decades before the women's movement, they understood that the \"personal is political.\"\n\nIn this cartoon, published in the _Baltimore Afro-American_ , Joan Little is portrayed as a champion prizefighter who knocked out Jim Crow, August 19\u201323, 1975. (photo credit 8.10)\n\nIn 1959 John McCray wondered if African-American women had finally been emancipated after an all-white jury in Florida found four white men guilty of raping Betty Jean Owens. Fourteen years later, a cartoon published in the _Baltimore Afro-American_ provided an answer. Portrayed as a champion boxer, Joan Little stands atop a battered and bruised Jim Crow. With stars swirling around his head, looking tired and overweight in his Confederate flag shorts, old Jim Crow is down for the count. Hoisting Little's gloved fists up into the air, \"trainers\" Jerry Paul and Karen Galloway proclaim victory for their champ and a triumph over \"Dixie Racism.\"\n\n# EPILOGUE \n\"We All Lived in Fear for Years\"\n\nRECY TAYLOR TURNED EIGHTY-NINE on December 31, 2008. I met her and her youngest brother at his tidy ranch house just down the street from the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. We came together on the same day that one million Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., to witness the inauguration of the country's first black president. I talked with the slight, spry woman whose courage and testimony in 1944 helped inspire the modern civil rights movement. Recy, Robert Corbitt, and I watched the inaugural events on television in a sunroom filled with family photos and lush houseplants. The little cabin where Recy and Robert's father, Benny Corbitt, lived out his final days was visible through the windows, reminding us, as William Faulkner put it, that \"the past is never dead, it isn't even past.\"\n\nThis seems especially true in Abbeville, where Taylor's family and the families of her assailants have lived nearly side by side for decades. On the night before the inauguration, fifteen family members crowded into the living room to talk about what had happened to Recy. Corbitt, a lean man with a warm smile, said, \"You'd be surprised at how close they lived. We were very segregated\u2014but we were neighbors. It's just that we were in the gray houses and they were in the nicer houses.\"\n\nHugo Wilson's house is within sight of Lewey Corbitt's sprawling bungalow. The sagging ranch that Billy Howerton grew up in is right across the street from Will Cook's old place. Joe Culpepper's peeling two-story colonial is around the corner from Three Points. Although the cow pastures surrounding Abbeville lie fallow and the sharecropping shacks gave way to modern apartments and fast-food restaurants, the physical layout and population of the tiny rural outpost remain nearly the same as they were in 1944.\n\nFor the Corbitt family, those county roads and old homes surrounding Abbeville will always be crime scenes\u2014there has been no resolution or reconciliation, no justice. The violence resonates through generations.\n\n\"I used to watch for them,\" Robert said, referring to the assailants, most of whom stayed in Abbeville until they died. Many of their children and grandchildren are still there. Corbitt used to drive past their houses whenever he was in town and kept an eye on their comings and goings.\n\n\"I didn't do anything,\" he said, \"but I was angry.\"\n\nAt seventy-two, he is still haunted by what happened to his oldest sister more than six decades ago. When he returned to Abbeville in 2001, after living most of his adult life in New York City, he spent days searching through microfilmed copies of the local newspaper and pestering locals about what they remembered. Not surprisingly, most whites denied it ever happened, while blacks remembered it well.\n\n\"For sixty-five years I've been thinking about it,\" Corbitt said, his voice even softer than usual. \"A whole week didn't go by without me thinking about it. She was like a mother to me,\" he said, recalling how their mother died when Recy was seventeen and he was one. \"She raised me and took care of all six of us, so when I came back here, I tried to dig up something on it.\"\n\nRecy's other brother, R.J., the oldest son in the family, now an octogenarian, had clear memories of the day he found out about the assault. He had been out of town, \"putting down pipe\" for Hennison, Black and Green, a construction company, and heard about the rape from migrant farmworkers passing through town. He rushed home and asked his father to name the men so he could find them and retaliate.\n\n\"He sat me down and talked to me,\" R.J. recalled.\n\n\"Now listen,\" Benny Corbitt said to his son, \"you know how these folks is here. She's safe. Just be quiet on it for a while. Don't try to do anything or see anybody. You ask them that done it, you might get in trouble. Somebody could put you up. Best be cool and let me handle it.\"\n\nR.J. remembered that his father would often go to the police station and ask Deputy Lewey Corbitt if they had made any progress on the case, but he was always turned away.\n\n\"On things like that,\" R.J. said, \"you didn't go and get into they [white folks'] business. You stay out of it. See, back then if you say anything or do anything and if you weren't a good worker or something they'll send you to prison. They wouldn't even think nothin' about it. So you had to be very quiet. 'Cause they didn't take no chances on you. When they come on ya, they come on ya with a cry. Daddy always talked to me. He said, 'Recy all right. Just stay out of it.' \"\n\nArthur, a stocky, strong-jawed nephew, shook his head slowly. According to the family, he is the spitting image of Benny Corbitt.\n\n\"You got to remember,\" he said, squinting at me, \"at that time, black men were lynched. They held back because if they got lynched they couldn't protect the family. If you dead, you can't protect anyone.\"\n\nAnother sister, Mary Murry, agreed. \"Daddy wasn't scared, but he couldn't do what he wanted to do because he had no money, no transportation, didn't have an education. It handicapped him.\"\n\n\"It affected him emotionally,\" Robert said to a chorus of \"mm\u2014hmms.\"\n\nRecy's sister, Alma Daniels, a feisty woman with a sharp tongue and a sparkle in her eye, nodded. \"But Daddy stayed mad at them [the police] for a long time,\" she said. \"He always got back at them.\"\n\nA few years after the attack, Lewey Corbitt's wife asked Benny to kill some chickens for her. \"He said okay,\" Alma said, as she started to giggle. \"Daddy had a whole case of chickens. He took every one of those chickens and snatched their heads off and threw them down on Lewey Corbitt's front yard.\" Lewey Corbitt just stood there, bewildered by Benny's behavior. \"There were chickens _everywhere,\"_ she said, laughing.\n\nFor a few years after the attack, Recy Taylor stayed close to home and surrounded herself with family and friends. \"I was so afraid they were going to hurt me,\" she said. \"They did tell me they were going to kill me if I told.\" She and her sisters only went out during the day, stayed away from Will Cook's store, and never walked at night. She did not have any other children.\n\nIt wasn't until most of the assailants left town and joined the army that Taylor finally felt safe. \"I felt like I was back with my good friends and wouldn't be bothered anymore,\" she said. But local whites treated her poorly; most wouldn't talk to her or looked the other way when they saw her. The police continued to deny the crime ever happened.\n\n\"Lewey Corbitt just laughed at me,\" she said. \"He denied he was there.\"\n\n\"The city let her down so bad,\" said Robert.\n\nIn 1965 Recy Taylor, her husband Willie Guy Taylor, and their daughter Joyce Lee moved to a small town in central Florida, where they had been picking oranges for many years. In 1967 Joyce Lee died in a car accident; she left behind one child. Recy's husband died shortly thereafter.\n\n\"Recy had a hard life,\" Robert said. \"When our mother died, everyone fell in her hands. She had to take care of all the children. The school she went to was tiny\u2014the teacher went no higher than sixth grade. It was a tough life livin' in the gray house.\" She is still \"very hurt,\" he said. \"I didn't realize the effect rape took on people until it happened to my sister. After all that,\" he said with a sigh, \"she lost her only daughter.\"\n\n\"I never had nothin',\" Taylor recalled, her gray hair tied up with a shiny red wrap. \"I still don't have nothin'.\"\n\nThe next morning Recy, Robert, and I gathered together to watch the inauguration before they took me on a tour retracing Recy's steps that late summer night in Abbeville, 1944. The past and the present, normally so incongruent, seemed to merge when Michelle Obama, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves and slave owners, cradled Abraham Lincoln's Bible in her palms and extended her hands toward her husband for his oath of office. I turned to Taylor and asked if she ever believed an African-American woman would become the First Lady. \"Not in my lifetime,\" she said.\n\nGrowing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor knew that black women were not even considered _ladies_. From slavery through most of the twentieth century, white Americans denied African-American women the most basic citizenship and human rights, especially the right to ownership and control of their own bodies.\n\nTo see Michelle Obama take her place among a pantheon of distinguished American women was to bear witness to African-American women's centuries-long struggle for dignity and respect. Understanding that struggle, Michelle Obama told _The Washington Post_ before the 2008 election, \"is a process of uncovering the shame, digging out the pride that is part of that story\u2014so that other folks feel comfortable about embracing the beauty and the tangled nature of the history of this country.\"\n\nThe brutal rape of Recy Taylor in 1944, and the sexual exploitation of thousands of other black women in the United States before and after the Civil War, is a central part of our history that has been grossly understated and unacknowledged for far too long. Though it may seem unnecessary, even lurid, to examine the details of sexual violence, it is crucial that we hear the testimonies black women offered at the time. Recy Taylor's willingness, for example, to identify those who attacked her and to testify against them in two grand juries broke the institutional silence surrounding the long history of white men's violation of black women, countered efforts to shame or stereotype her as unchaste, and made white Southern leaders, including the governor of Alabama, recognize her personhood. As a result, her testimony, like so many others, was a momentous event that deserves our recognition. Until we come to terms with our history\u2014even its most shameful secrets and their legacies\u2014we can neither really understand the past nor appreciate the present.\n\n# Acknowledgments\n\nWhen I first thought about becoming a historian, leaders in the field warned me that research and writing is a lonely endeavor. In order to succeed, they cautioned, I would have to endure a long and isolated journey through musty archives, dark microfilm rooms, and silent library stacks. They never told me about all the warm, joyful, and generous people I would meet along the way. This book would not be possible without them.\n\nA hearty thanks goes out to all the archivists, librarians, and fellow historians whose knowledge, good humor, and patience guided my research at institutions around the country. Thanks especially to Curtis Austin and Patricia Buzzard Boyett at the University of Southern Mississippi; Karen Jean Hunt of the John Hope Franklin Collection at Duke; the amazing folks at the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; William LeFevre at the Walter P. Reuther Library in Detroit; Cornelia Taylor at the S.H. Coleman Library at Florida A & M University; Kenneth Chandler at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House; and the staffs at Cayuga Community College Library, the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Emory University, and the Wisconsin Historical Society.\n\nFinancial and moral support for the initial research came from the Department of History at Rutgers University, where I completed my Ph.D. During my time there, Steven Lawson and Nancy Hewitt treated me like family. They opened their home to me, shared meals and conversation, taught me how to be a better scholar and teacher, and spilled gallons of ink on draft chapters. Deborah Gray White, Jennifer Morgan, Jan Lewis, Ann Fabian, Herman Bennett, and Paul Clemens embraced my project early on and provided encouragement and support when I needed it most. My classmates rescued me from the loneliness of archival research, and provided inspiration, friendship, and dark chocolate when necessary. During my \"spare time,\" I taught tenth-grade history at the Horace Mann School in New York City alongside some of the finest historians, teachers, and students. Barry Bienstock, Peter Sheehy, Andy Trees, and Elisa Milkes made every day a pleasure.\n\nWhen it came time to revise my dissertation into a book, I had the great luck to receive a one-year fellowship from the Center for the Study of the American South in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was a luxury to devote myself full-time to writing in such a beautiful and collegial environment, where Harry Watson, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, William Ferris, Barb Call, Nancy Gray Schoonmaker, and Stephen Inrig offered fellowship and fun in equal measure. Tim Tyson, Perri Morgan, and Hope and Sam opened their home and their hearts to me that year. I am forever grateful for their love and friendship. My new colleagues at Wayne State University welcomed me into a lively intellectual environment in 2008 and have provided substantial financial and moral support for this book. Thanks especially to Marc Kruman, Denver Brunsman, Jose Cuello, Liette Gidlow, Marsha Richmond, Fran Shor, Kidada Williams, and Sandra Van-Burkleo, who took time out of their busy schedules to read early drafts. Their ideas and insights undoubtedly made this a better book.\n\nFor thirteen years Tim Tyson and Craig Werner have offered unwavering support, encouragement, and faith in this book and its author. Tyson once told me that \"ink is love\" and they _must_ love me because they read and reworked every page of every draft I gave them. Their insight and artistry as scholars and storytellers are evident throughout. If there is anything poetic in this book, it is because of them. The mistakes are mine alone. I hope someday I can repay them for welcoming me into, and showing me how to build and sustain, a beloved community.\n\nThat beloved community is made up of some of the best folks around and they have enriched this book and my life in innumerable ways. Thank you to Davarian Baldwin, Rebecca Bortner, Martha Bouyer, Lance Broumand, Sean Cassidy, David Cecelski, Bill Chafe, Katherine Charron, Heesun Choi, Robert Corbitt and family, John Dittmer, Crystal Feimster, Gillian Brown-Fink, Krystal Frazier, Marisa Fuentes, Glenda Gilmore, Ed and Carmen Gitre, David Goldberg, Robin Goldstein, Francina Graef, Christina Greene, Matt and Kathy Grossman, Lori Henn, Darlene Clark Hine, Charles Hughes, Melody Ivins, Hassan Jeffries, Steve Kantrowitz, Jenny Kelly, Carmen Khair, Shirley Kramer, Peter Lau, Rhonda Lee, Bill Levy, Phil and Gina Levy, Steve Levy, Andy Lewis, the Mattheis family, Rob McCreanor, Grace and Richard McGuire, Janice Min, Richard Mizelle, Perri Morgan, Sarah and Brett Mountain, Danielle Olekszyk, Marcia, Karl, Jen, and Felicia Rosh and their families, Karen Routledge, Erandy Pacheco Salazar, Rebecca Scales, Adriane Lentz-Smith, Lisa and Pete St. John, Heather Thompson, Hope and Sam Tyson, and the Zenner\/Azzolina family.\n\nCharlotte Sheedy is my real-life fairy godmother. Her lifelong commitment to women's rights and the African-American freedom struggle is an inspiration to me and I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have her as an agent and friend. She immediately saw the possibilities and promise of this project and has skillfully shepherded me through the publication process. Not only has she taught me how to be a better writer, she inspires me to be a better woman. She is whip-smart and witty, gracious and nurturing, and full of love and joy. Thank you, Charlotte.\n\nEvery good writer has a good editor and I am fortunate to have Vicky Wilson in my corner. She fought to publish this book while it was still a dissertation and has championed it throughout the editing and production process at Knopf. Her sharp eye and creativity freshened the manuscript, and her patience and good humor throughout were indispensable.\n\nMy family's unconditional love and support make everything possible. Thank you to Phyllis St. Michael and Tim and Dee McGuire for giving me the world. I met Adam Rosh in 1998 at the University of Wisconsin. For the past twelve years, he has been my inspiration, my best friend, and biggest advocate. I love him more each day. In July 2008, we welcomed our first child, Ruby, into the world. She is my light and my joy and I hope we can give her everything that has been given to us. This book is dedicated to her.\n\nIt is also dedicated to Recy Taylor and all the survivors of sexual violence. Their silent resistance and sometimes bold testimonies are examples of human dignity and hope.\n\n# Notes\n\nNote on abbreviations and citations: Names of archival collections, most newspapers, and a few magazines and journals are abbreviated, as are some oral interviews. See the bibliography for full citations.\n\n## PROLOGUE\n\n1. \"Report\" and \"Supplemental Report,\" submitted by N. W. Kimbrough and J. V. Kitchens, December 14 and 27, 1944, folder 1, CS. Hereafter cited as \"Report\" and \"Supplemental Report\" respectively. See also Earl Conrad, Eugene Gordon, and Henrietta Buckmaster, \"Equal Justice Under Law,\" pamphlet prepared by the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor, n.d., in folder 3, ibid. The Rockhill Holiness Church is still there but is now called the Church of God in Christ. Thanks to Robert Corbitt and Josephine Baker for a tour of the church.\n\n2. I-Corbitt 3, I-Corbitt, and I-RTC. Corbitt, Recy's youngest brother who was a witness to the events that followed the attack, corroborated nearly every detail in the governor's report.\n\n3. \"Report,\" 7. According to reports, seven men were in the car but only six participated in the gang rape. Billy Howerton claims he did not have sex with her. The other assailants corroborated Howerton's testimony. See \"Report,\" 9\u201310.\n\n4. I-RTC, I-Corbitt 8.\n\n5. Gerda Lerner, _Black Women in White America: A Documentary History_ (New York, 1972). See also Jacqueline Dowd Hall, \"The Mind That Burns in Each Body: Women, Rape and Racial Violence,\" in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds., _Powers of Desire: the Politics of Sexuality_ (New York, 1983), 328\u201349; Leslie Schwalm, _A Hard Fight For We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina_ (Chicago, 1997), 37, 44\u201345, 119\u201321; Tera Hunter, _To 'Joy My Freedom_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 10\u201411; Leon Litwack, _Trouble in Mind_ (New York, 1998), 342\u201343; and Sharon Block, \"Lines of Color, Sex and Service: Comparative Sexual Coercion in Early America,\" in Martha Hodes, ed., _Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History_ (New York, 1999), 141\u201363.\n\n6. Hall, \"Mind That Burns,\" 330.\n\n7. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, \"Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,\" in Wells-Barnett, _On Lynchings: Southern Horrors, A Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans_ (Salem, Mass., 1991), 65, 30.\n\n8. Chana Kai Lee, _For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer_ (Urbana, Ill., 1999), 9\u201310.\n\n9. Maria Bevacqua, _Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault_ (Boston, 2000), 21.\n\n10. Linda Brent, \"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,\" in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., _The Classic Slave Narratives_ (New York, 1987), 335.\n\n11. Bevacqua, _Rape_ , 24.\n\n12. Paula Giddings, _When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America_ (New York, 1984), 31.\n\n13. Ibid., 86\u201387.\n\n## CHAPTER 1. \"THEY'D KILL ME IF I TOLD\"\n\n1. Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins, _Rosa Parks: My Story_ (New York, 1992). The population estimate for Abbeville in 1940 was 2,080 people, about 30 percent of whom were African American; see _The WPA Guide to 1930s Alabama_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1941), 343. Professional genealogists at ProGeneaologists Family Research and Ancestry Research charted Rosa Parks's family lineage using census records and death certificates. They put their findings, which parallel historical and autobiographical accounts, online. See (accessed October 22, 2007).\n\n2. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 8.\n\n3. For more on the \"New South,\" see Edward L. Ayers, _The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction_ (New York, 1992).\n\n4. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 9.\n\n5. C. Vann Woodward, _The Strange Career of Jim Crow_ (New York, 1966), 67\u2013109 passim.\n\n6. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 15.\n\n7. Ibid., 12\u201318; \"belligerent attitude,\" 16.\n\n8. Douglas Brinkley, _Rosa Parks_ (New York, 2000), 16.\n\n9. Leona stayed behind, Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 9; \"don't put up with bad treatment,\" ibid., 15.\n\n10. The description of Abbeville comes from Earl Conrad, _Jim Crow America_ (New York, 1947), 5\u20136.\n\n11. I-Corbitt 3, I-RTC.\n\n12. Petitions and letters signed by Parks in folder 4, CS.\n\n13. Statement of Recy Taylor, in \"Report,\" 8. Recy and her brother Robert remember events differently. In interviews conducted in 2008 and 2009, they both say that Will Cook did not pick up their father and did not search for the assailants. Instead, they say that Benny Corbitt went searching for his daughter on his own and met her on the roadside near the intersection of Elm Street and East Alabama. Given Will Cook's reputation among blacks as a brutal racist and his dishonesty in the report itself, I tend to believe Corbitt and Taylor's account. Cook had a vested interest in portraying himself as a respectable policeman who followed standard procedures when the governor's investigators interviewed him in 1944. See I-RTC, I-Corbitt.\n\n14. I-Corbitt 3.\n\n15. Statement of West Daniel, in \"Report,\" 11\u201313; statement of Fannie Daniel, ibid., 9\u201411; statement of Recy Taylor, ibid., 8; statement of George H. Gamble, ibid., 2\u20133.\n\n16. Statement of George H. Gamble, ibid., 3.\n\n17. John Dollard, _Caste and Class in a Southern Town_ (Madison, Wis., 1988), 139.\n\n18. \"Supplemental Report,\" folder 1, CS.\n\n19. \"New World of Black Men,\" in Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 23. For more on Garvey and the UNIA, see Mary G. Robinson, _Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association_ _in the Rural South, 1920\u20131927_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007); Colin Grant, _Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey_ (New York, 2008).\n\n20. Glenn Feldman, _Politics, Society and the Klan in Alabama, 1915\u20131949_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1999), 16.\n\n21. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 30.\n\n22. Feldman, _Politics_ , 54\u201355.\n\n23. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 31.\n\n24. Ibid., 48.\n\n25. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 27.\n\n26. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 55\u201360.\n\n27. Robin D. G. Kelley, _Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990), 84\u201385.\n\n28. Dan Carter, _Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South_ (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 7\u20138.\n\n29. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 38.\n\n30. \"Nigger rape case,\" in Carter, _Scottsboro_ , 12; stunning rapidity and harsh sentence, ibid., 50; \"cold blooded 'illegal' lynching,\" ibid., 49; \"synonymous with,\" ibid., 50.\n\n31. For the best summary of African-American activism in Alabama in the 1930s and early 1940s, see Kelley, _Hammer and Hoe_.\n\n32. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 75.\n\n33. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 58; Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 79.\n\n34. Johnnie Carr was the first female member of the Montgomery branch. Parks was the second. See Steven M. Millner, \"The Emergence and Career of a Social Movement,\" in David Garrow, ed., _The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955\u20131956_ (New York, 1989), 445; J. Mills Thornton, _Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2002), 58\u201359. See also Brinkley, _Rosa_.\n\n35. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 48, 68. Brinkley notes that these early records were permanently lost when a friend inadvertently threw them away while cleaning out the shed where they were stored; Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 49.\n\n36. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 70; Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 84\u201385.\n\n37. Petitions and letters signed by Parks in folder 4, CS.\n\n38. Fred Atwater, \"$600 to Rape Wife? Alabama Whites Make Offer to Recy Taylor Mate!\", CD, January 27, 1945, 1.\n\n39. \"Report,\" 3.\n\n40. See witness list, \"Report,\" 14. For more on Bill Baxley, see Diane McWhorter, _Carry Me Home: Birmingham Alabama and the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution_ (New York, 2001), 573\u201375.\n\n41. Earl Conrad, \"Death Threat Made Against Rape Victim,\" CD, March 17, 1945, 9; I-RTC 30.\n\n42. I-Corbitt 3.\n\n43. For more on Alabama's \"Popular Front\" politics, see Kelley, _Hammer and Hoe_ , 152\u201392 passim. Biondi calls the coalition between radical or leftist black organizations, labor unions, and more middle-class, traditional organizations like the NAACP, the \"Black Popular Front.\" Martha Biondi, _To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City_ (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 9.\n\n44. More than thirty national labor unions and many more locals supported Recy Taylor. See \"Press Release,\" February 3, 1945, folder 4, box 430, ECC. Other organizations that played an active role in Taylor's defense include the National Council of Negro Women, the International Labor Defense, and the Montgomery branch of the NAACP: \"Partial Sponsor List,\" December 28, 1944, ibid.\n\n45. SNYC held its first conference in Richmond, Virginia, in 1937, and more than five hundred delegates from thirteen states attended. While many leaders in SNYC were members of the Communist Party, its advisory committee was staffed by prominent, respectable middle-class leaders like Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and sociologist Charles Johnson. The conference helped SNYC members lead a campaign to organize five thousand tobacco workers into the Tobacco Stemmers and Laborers Industrial Union, netting them a 20\u201333 percent wage increase. The third annual SNYC conference, held in Birmingham in 1940, was the \"largest to date\" and drew 650 delegates and much praise throughout the South as a beacon of hope and light amid white repression. See Kelley, _Hammer and Hoe_ , 201, 202.\n\n46. Ibid., 222.\n\n47. Ibid., 203.\n\n48. Erik S. McDuffie, _Long Journeys: Four Black Women and the Communist Party, USA, 1930\u20131956_ , Ph.D. diss (New York University, 2003), 295. Kelley, _Hammer and Hoe_ , 204\u201305.\n\n49. Rosa Parks also served as E. D. Nixon's secretary. Nixon was president of the Montgomery branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the Voters League. He became president of the local branch of the NAACP in 1945 and served as a key organizer of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. For more on E. D. Nixon, see Thornton, _Dividing_ , 28\u201332, 59\u201364 passim, and 99\u2013102 passim; Taylor Branch, _Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954\u20131963_ (New York, 1988), 120\u201336 passim; Howell Raines, _My Soul Is Rested; Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered_ (New York, 1977), 37\u201339, 43\u201351.\n\n50. \"Alabama Whites Attack Woman; Not Punished,\" PC, October 28, 1944, 2.\n\n51. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, _The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation_ (New York, 2006), 22.\n\n52. Ibid., 22. Timothy B. Tyson, \"Wars for Democracy,\" in David S. Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson, eds., _Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 255; see also Harvard Sitkoff, \"Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War,\" _Journal of American History_ 58, no. 3 (December 1971): 661\u201382 passim.\n\n53. FBI report on the Southern Negro Youth Conference, December 11, 1944, 2; see also Agent Abbaticchio's FBI report, dated November 30 to December 3, 1944, HK. See also \"Delegation to Ask Alabama Governor for Justice for Rape Victim,\" _DW_ , November 26, 1944, clipping found in Scrapbook Collection, ECC.\n\n54. Eugene Gordon, \"Alabama Authorities Ignore White Gang's Rape of Negro Mother,\" _Worker_ , November 19, 1944, n.d.\n\n55. Biondi states that New York City was the site of a postwar civil rights movement for jobs, equality, desegregation, and human dignity, which set the stage for the Southern movement a decade later. \"With its large Black population, progressive race leadership, strong trade unions, and progressive print media,\" Biondi argues, New York City \"became a major battleground in the postwar push for racial equality.\" It was also home to the United Nations, which \"Black Popular Front\" coalitions petitioned \"seeking some form of assistance or intervention to aid the Black freedom struggle in the United States,\" especially the 1951 _We Charge Genocide_ petition submitted by the Civil Rights Congress. Biondi, _Stand_ , 37, 57.\n\n56. \"Press Release,\" November 20, 1944, folder 2, box 370, ECC.\n\n57. Minutes from \"Conference Held at Theresa Hotel, November 25, 1944 on Case of Mrs. Recy Taylor,\" series IV, reel 6, NNCP-M. See Charles A. Collins, executive secretary of the Negro Labor Victory Committee, to Governor Chauncey Sparks, November 30, 1944, folder 1, CS. The Negro Labor Victory Committee claimed to represent more than 300,000 black workers in more than one hundred affiliated CIO, AFL, and independent unions.\n\n58. Moore was a Harlem activist, Garveyite, and member of the ILD and CPUSA, who fought on behalf of the Scottsboro boys in the 1930s. She headed up the New York branch of the Committee to Save Mrs. Rosa Lee Ingram, fought to desegregate major league baseball, and founded the first organization advocating black reparations in 1955. Biondi, _Stand_ , 281; See also McDuffie, _Long Journeys_.\n\n59. \"Delegation to Ask Ala. Governor for Justice for Rape Victim,\" newspaper clipping, November 26, 1944, series IV, reel 6, NNCP-M.\n\n60. Minutes from \"Conference Held at Theresa Hotel,\" series IV, reel 6, NNCP-M. FBI reports show that at least fifty people participated in the panel discussion on \"civil liberties\" and Recy Taylor.\n\n61. \"Delegation to Ask Ala. Governor for Justice for Rape Victim,\" newspaper clipping, November 26, 1944, series IV, reel 6, NNCP-M.\n\n62. Samuel L. Webb and Margaret E. Ambrester, eds., _Alabama Governors: A Political History of the State_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2001), 191.\n\n63. Dan T. Carter, _The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics_ (New York, 1995), 31.\n\n64. While it is impossible to know exactly how many letters came in, the postcards, petitions, and personal letters in the Chauncey Sparks Papers number well over five hundred. If you count the number of signatures on the petitions sent in, they easily number in the thousands.\n\n65. Mrs. Gretchen Coon to Governor Sparks, November 29, 1944, folder 1, CS.\n\n66. A \"Friend of the South\" to Governor Sparks, December 3, 1944, folder 1, CS.\n\n67. Charles A. Collins to Governor Sparks, November 30, 1944, folder 1, CS.\n\n68. For an account of one of the worst racial pogroms in the United States during this period, see Cecelski and Tyson, _Democracy Betrayed_. See also David Fort Godshalk, _Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2009).\n\n69. W. J. Cash, _The Mind of the South_ (New York, 1991), 116.\n\n70. Tyson, \"Wars for Democracy,\" in Cecelski and Tyson, _Democracy Betrayed_ , 262.\n\n71. Kari Frederickson, _The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932\u20131968_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), 33.\n\n72. Cecelski and Tyson, _Democracy Betrayed_ , 262. Howard W. Odum, _Race and Rumors of Race: The American South in the Early Forties_ (Baltimore, Md., 1997), xi.\n\n73. Odum, _Rumors_ , 97\u2013103.\n\n74. Ibid.\n\n75. Ibid., 55.\n\n76. Ibid., 57.\n\n77. Ibid., 57\u201358.\n\n78. Ibid., 64.\n\n79. Marilynn S. Johnson, \"Gender, Race, and Rumours: Re-examining the 1943 Race Riots,\" _Gender and History_ 10, no. 2 (August 1998): 259.\n\n80. Ibid., 258.\n\n81. Ibid., 258\u201359.\n\n82. Ibid., 259.\n\n83. Cecelski and Tyson, _Democracy Betrayed_ , 267.\n\n84. For more on the Detroit riot, see Dominic J. Capeci and Martha Wilkerson, _Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943_ (Jackson, Miss. 1991).\n\n85. Odum, _Rumors_ , 138. The rumors reflected reality. Banner headlines in African-American and leftist newspapers detailed the injustices: \"Negro WAC Beaten Up by Kentucky Cop, Faces Trial,\" DW, July 20, 1945; \"Wife of Vet Beaten Twice,\" BAA, September 22, 1945; \"Georgia White Men Beat 2nd Negro Woman,\" April 3, 1945, reel 91, frame 168, TCF; \"White Soldiers Slug Two War Wives,\" _BAA_ , September 22, 1945, 1; and \"Three WACS Beaten by Cops Acquitted in Court Martial,\" CD, August 11, 1945, 8.\n\n86. Letter signed by thirty-three soldiers from \"Somewhere in Belgium\" to Governor Sparks, January 27, 1945, folder 3, CS.\n\n87. Eugene Henderson to Governor Sparks, January 16, 1945, folder 3, CS.\n\n88. Ernest Scott to Governor Sparks, December 22, 1944, folder 3, CS.\n\n89. Charles S. Seely to Governor Sparks, May 5, 1945, folder 4, CS.\n\n90. Mr. and Mrs. Scott McCall to Governor Sparks, December 18, 1944, folder 3, CS.\n\n91. Julius Crane to Governor Sparks, January 18, 1945, folder 3, CS.\n\n92. Robert Norrell, _The Making of Modern Alabama_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1993), 141\u201342. According to Norrell, German POWs received the same food and shelter as U.S. troops, played sports, and took classes in English, music, and theater.\n\n93. William Warren Rogers et al., _Alabama: The History of a Deep South State_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1994), 511.\n\n94. \"Alabama Officials Feel People's Pressure in Mrs. Taylor's Case,\" DW, December 12, 1944, 4.\n\n95. Ibid.\n\n96. Postcards and petitions for Recy Taylor, folder 2, 3, 4, CS.\n\n97. \"Taylor Case Is Now Nationwide,\" _Worker_ , December 31, 1944, p. 12, clipping, folder 8, box 104, JBM.\n\n98. Ibid.\n\n99. Earl Conrad, \"Dixie Sex Crimes Against Negro Women Widespread,\" _CD_ , March 10, 1945, 5. Though the article keeps anonymous the African-American leader whom Conrad interviewed, I am confident it is E. D. Nixon\u2014not only because he pledged support from his \"organization\" but also because he said he had a \"dossier\" of fifty similar cases. Given Rosa Parks's role in investigating racial violence, her meticulous record keeping, and her interest in rape cases, along with her close relationship to Nixon (she was his secretary), I believe there is enough evidence to conclude Conrad's source was Nixon. Since Conrad also interviewed E. G. Jackson, it is reasonable to assume that Jackson put Conrad in touch with his colleague and close ally Nixon. (When Nixon waged a fierce battle to oust Robert L. Matthews, the president of the Montgomery NAACP, throughout 1945, Jackson used his paper to aid his campaign. Nixon finally became president of the Montgomery branch in December 1945.) See Thornton, _Dividing_ , 31.\n\n100. John White, \"Nixon Was the One: Edgar Daniel Nixon and the Montgomery Bus Boycott,\" in Brian Ward and Tony Badger, eds., _The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement_ (New York, 1996), 45.\n\n101. Earl Conrad, \"Dixie Sex Crimes Against Negro Women Widespread,\" _CD_ , March 10, 1945, 5.\n\n102. John H. McCray, \"South's Courts Show New Day of Justice,\" BAA, July 11, 1959.\n\n103. \"Fayetteville White Man Sentenced to 15 Years for Raping a Negro Girl,\" CT, March 16, 1940. This case is interesting because of the relatively long sentence Davis received even after he was allowed to plead a lesser crime, attempted assault. Apparently sixteen-year-old black girls still could not be \"raped.\" Still, the local NAACP raised enough money in order to wage a court battle and win. The clothes Davis casually threw out the window turned out to be the main evidence used against him.\n\n104. \"Young Woman Charges Crime at Rifle-Point,\" June 2, 1942, newspaper clipping, NAACP Papers, Alabama Chapter, 1940\u20131955, microfilm. See also Emory O. Jackson to Walter White, June 3, 1942, box C2, series II, NAACP Papers.\n\n105. \"Accused of Rape on Teen-Age Dunbar High School Girl,\" ASP, July 17, 1942, 1. Thanks to Story Matkin-Rawn for finding this article for me.\n\n106. Reverend James M. Hinton to Thurgood Marshall, December 14, 1945; Thurgood Marshall to Reverend James M. Hinton, December 28, 1945; Milton Kemnitz to Thurgood Marshall, December 7, 1945; all letters in box 123, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n107. Lisa Lindquist Dorr, _White Women, Rape and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900\u20131960_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004), 233\u201334. Strayhorn told her brother what happened and filed charges. Both men were arrested, tried, and ultimately convicted of rape. They were each sentenced to seven years in prison. The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the verdict. Ibid., 299n98.\n\n108. Reverend V. E. Hilsman to Constance Baker Motley, January 12, 1950, box 123, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n109. \"Two Denied Bail in Rape Case,\" PC, February 2, 1948, 5. The article about Berryhill and Gasque being held without bail was featured just above another article about a black man, titled \"Stares Too Hard Gets Six Months.\" The juxtaposition of these two stories highlighted the unequal system of justice in the South. Richard Sutton, a nineteen-year-old African American from Plymouth, North Carolina, was sentenced to work six months on the county roads for \"assault on a female\" after he apparently frightened the woman by \"staring at her in the County Courthouse Building.\" According to the report, Sutton had an appointment with the sheriff and stopped at the window of the recorder's office. He asked directions to the office but, according to the young white woman, \"stared at her so hard she became frightened and ran.\"\n\n110. Press release, February 25, 1948, box 123, Series III, NAACP Papers, Patterson managed to escape and told her story to the NAACP.\n\n111. \"I don't think it would be too much,\" Jones said, \"if each branch in each state and each city... would ask each member to donate a small amount to see that this man is convicted.\" Franklin Williams, an assistant special counsel for the NAACP, assured Jones that \"representatives of the Association are looking into the matter\" and hoped to bring the \"guilty person before the bar of justice.\" Mrs. Joy B. Jones to Arthur Springarn, July 31, 1947; Franklin H. Williams to Jones, July 31, 1947; Jones to Springarn, n.d.; \"Rape of Girl, 11, Charged; No Action,\" n.d., newspaper clipping; \"Alleged Rape on Girl Goes Unnoticed,\" n.d., newspaper clipping; all in box 123, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n112. Press release, \"Negro Girl Beaten, Raped in Meridian,\" August 22, 1947; Edward Knott, Jr., to Walter White, August 19, 1947; Oliver W. Harrington to Robert Ratcliffe, August 21, 1947, box 123, series III, NAACP Papers. Press release states that \"NAACP officials in this city were attempting to arouse sufficient public opinion to guarantee the prosecution\" of Perry. See also, \"Charge Woman's Rape to Mississippi Oil Man,\" _CD_ , August 30, 1947, 8. Perry's strategy was similar to that employed by the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor.\n\n113. Charles Payne, _I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle_ (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 15.\n\n114. Ibid., 15.\n\n115. Marian Wynn Perry to Edward Knott, Jr., August 22, 1947, box 123, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n116. This strategy had proven relatively effective in the campaign to end lynching. Payne posits that negative nationwide publicity, coupled with the falling price of cotton, electoral changes wrought by mass migration out of the South, and pending federal antilynching legislation, made the South subject to more scrutiny than ever before. \"By the 1930s, newspapers in larger southern cities typically criticized lynchings, at least in principle. By the 1940s, their criticisms were clearly linked to fear of such scrutiny.\" The fact that the United States was engaged in a global war against fascism and racism abroad made lynching African Americans a foreign policy faux pas and helped to decrease the public \"spectacle\" lynchings popular in the early part of the twentieth century. See Payne, _Light of Freedom_ , 19. Of course, these pressures did not end white violence against African Americans, as evidenced by the brutal murders and sexual attacks in Mississippi in the 1940s.\n\n117. \"Alabama Has No Race Problem, Claims Official,\" _CD_ , March 31, 1945, 11. Conrad's articles appeared as a series of three separate essays in early spring 1945, but drafts found in his papers suggest that he conducted the interviews with residents in Montgomery, Abbeville, and Birmingham in late December 1944.\n\n118. Mrs. (P. B.) Margaret H. Moss to Governor Sparks, n.d., folder 3, CS.\n\n119. \"Governor Sparks to Press Charges Against Rapists Following Protests,\" _PC_ , December 23, 1944, 1.\n\n120. \"Report,\" 3\u20134.\n\n121. \"Report,\" 3\u20134; \"Supplemental Report,\" 4.\n\n122. Ibid., 5.\n\n123. Ibid.\n\n124. Ibid., 14.\n\n125. Ibid., 9\n\n126. \"Supplemental Report,\" 4.\n\n127. \"Report,\" 4.\n\n128. \"Supplemental Report,\" 5\u201314.\n\n129. Ibid., 10\u201312.\n\n130. Agent Abbaticchio's FBI report, dated January 11 to January 27, 1945, box 45, HK.\n\n131. \"This Evening,\" BN, February 21, 1945, and \"The Henry County Case,\" _BN_ , February 25, 1945, 6, clippings, folder 2, CS.\n\n132. \"Second Henry County Grand Jury Finds No Bill in Negro's Charges,\" _DE_ , February 15, 1945.\n\n133. Esther Cooper Jackson to James Jackson, n.d., James E. Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson Papers, Tamiment Library, New York City. Thanks to Sara Rzeszutek for mailing me a copy of the letter.\n\n134. \"Strange As It Is,\" n.d. clipping, NAACP-Alabama Files, 1940\u201355, microfilm. I-Corbitt 3; Corbitt verified the move. He said Rosa Parks came to Abbeville to move Taylor to Montgomery. Recy and her husband stayed in Montgomery for two to three months, living in a rooming house on South Jackson Street.\n\n135. Clara Hard Rutledge was the wife of a state highway engineer. Her liberal views and actions were unusual at the time. Rutledge was joined by other white liberal women including Miss Juliette Gordon, a librarian; Mrs. Olive Andrews, the wife of a local insurance agent; Mrs. Bea Kaufman, the wife of a wholesale grocery executive; Mrs. Frances P. McLeod, the wife of a Methodist minister; and (after 1951) Virginia F. Durr, the wife of attorney and New Deal appointee Clifford Durr. See Thornton, _Dividing_ , 36. Clara Hard Rutledge to Earl Conrad, n.d., folder 6, box 365, EC.\n\n136. Henrietta Buckmaster to Dorothy Laing, March 1, 1945, folder 19, box 8, series II \"Political Activities,\" AKL. Thanks to Jacki Castledine for finding this material for me.\n\n137. Governor Sparks to Alexander Nunn, April 2, 1945, folder 1, CS.\n\n138. Glenda Sullivan to executive board members, April 2, 1945, NNCP-M.\n\n139. Press release, March 30, 1945, NNCP-M.\n\n140. Glenda Sullivan to executive board members, April 2, 1945, NNCP-M.\n\n141. Kelley, _Hammer and Hoe_ , 224. For more on McCarthyism and anti-Communism, see Ellen Schrecker, _Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America_ (Boston, 1998); David Oshinsky, _A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy_ (New York, 1983); David Caute, _The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower_ (New York, 1978); and Richard Fried, _Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective_ (New York, 1990).\n\n142. In Montgomery, for example, E. D. Nixon and Rufus A. Lewis organized competing voter-registration clubs. After _Smith v. Allwright_ ended the white primary in 1944, Nixon's Alabama Voters League and Lewis's Citizens Club had helped 813 African Americans register to vote\u20143.7 percent of the city's black population. By 1955, the number had doubled. They also waged battles against police brutality and mobilized community action to defend other black women who were assaulted in the late 1940s and early 1950s. See Thornton, _Dividing_ , 28\u201335.\n\n## CHAPTER 2. \"NEGROES EVERY DAY ARE BEING MOLESTED\"\n\n1. Ella Ree Jones statement, July 12, 1942, Thurgood Marshall to T. T. Allen, president of the Montgomery, Alabama, NAACP, August 4, 1942, box 114, series II, NAACP Papers.\n\n2. Lamont H. Yeakey, _The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott, 1955\u201356_ , Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University, 1979), 195.\n\n3. See \"Incidents and Complaints\u2014Transportation Department, Race Question, Twelve Months Ending March 31st 1944\"; \"Report of Complaint Reports\u2014Race Question, Twelve Months Ending June 30th 1943\"; \"Analysis of Complaints and Incidents Concerning Race Problems on Birmingham Electric Company's Transportation System, 12 Months Ending August 31, 1942,\" CP.\n\n4. Ella Ree Jones statement, July 12, 1942, in Marshall to Allen, August 4, 1942, box 114, series II, NAACP Papers.\n\n5. Juan Williams, _Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary_ (New York, 1998), 130.\n\n6. Thurgood Marshall to T. T. Allen, August 4, 1942, box 113, series II, NAACP Papers. It is unclear how Allen handled the case after Marshall alerted him to Jones's beating, but it is worth noting that Allen was considered by local activists a do-nothing leader, which caused blacks to oust him and elect E. D. Nixon in the next NAACP election. See Dorothy A. Autrey, _The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama, 1913\u20131952_ , Ph.D. diss. (University of Notre Dame, 1985), 244. See also Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 62.\n\n7. Thurgood Marshall to Hon. William H. Hastie, dean of Howard Law School, January 13, 1945, box 194, series II, NAACP Papers.\n\n8. Ibid.\n\n9. Barbara Ransby, _Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003), 141\u201342.\n\n10. Timothy B. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), 51. African Americans emerged from World War II determined to force the United States to reconcile the wartime rhetoric of democracy with the reality of Jim Crow. See Steven F. Lawson, ed., _To Secure These Rights: The Report of President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Civil Rights_ (Boston, 2004), 5. World War II ushered in dramatic changes in the domestic political landscape. Two million African Americans left the South during the war as a result of many forces, including the mechanization of farming, which reduced Southern dependency on sharecroppers, and the lure of defense jobs, which pulled hundreds of thousands of African Americans north, dramatically altering electoral politics. By 1948 African Americans had enough voting power in the North to tip the balance in any presidential contest. Black ballots determined political victors in sixteen non-South states. In the South, _Smith v. Allwright_ led to renewed registration efforts, and black registered voters rose from 250,000 in 1944 to more than a million in 1952. See Steven F. Lawson, _Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944\u20131969_ (Lanham, Md., 1999), 139. For other ways the South changed during the war, see John Egerton, _Speak Now Against the Day_ (New York, 1994), 347\u201361. The emerging Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the creation of the United Nations in 1945, presented African Americans with myriad opportunities to publicly address racial issues and call American practices into question on the world stage. See Mary Dudziak, _Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy_ (Princeton, N.J., 2000), 11\u201313.\n\n11. On \"shock troops,\" see John Dittmer, _Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi_ (Urbana, Ill., 1994), 9.\n\n12. Egerton, _Speak_ , 366: \"Georgia and Alabama were the principal killing fields.\" Each state had at least seven confirmed racial murders in 1946 alone.\n\n13. Ibid., 362; Patricia Sullivan, _Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996), 197.\n\n14. Egerton, _Speak_ , 362\u201363.\n\n15. Laura Wexler, _Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America_ (New York, 2003), 51.\n\n16. \"In their place,\" Egerton, _Speak_ , 367; Maceo Snipes story in Sullivan, _Days_ , 213.\n\n17. Wexler, _Fire_ , 82.\n\n18. Egerton, _Speak_ , 369. Loy Harrison spoke freely about his role in the lynching in 1981 to Clinton Adams, who witnessed the murders when he was ten years old. Harrison and his accomplices were never prosecuted. In 1992 Adams broke his silence and told the FBI and reporters at the _Atlanta Constitution_ what he had seen in 1946. He named four of the murderers (deceased at the time) and said that one of the five cars at the scene was a state police car.\n\n19. Glenda E. Gilmore, \"Murder, Memory and the Flight of the Incubus,\" in Cecelski and Tyson, _Democracy Betrayed_ , 75.\n\n20. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 58; see also Leon F. Litwack, \"Hellhounds,\" in Hilton Als et al., eds., _Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America_ (Santa Fe, N.M., 2000).\n\n21. Frederick Douglass quoted in Martha Hodes, _White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth Century South_ (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 206.\n\n22. Egerton, _Speak_ , 370.\n\n23. Ibid., 371. See also Lawson, _To Secure_ , 8. Harris survived and later identified five of the murderers. An all-white jury acquitted the men after deliberating five hours in February 1947.\n\n24. Sullivan, _Days_ , 214.\n\n25. Lawson, _To Secure_ , 9.\n\n26. Ibid., 9; See also Dudziak, _Cold War_ , 23.\n\n27. Dudziak, _Cold War_ , 20.\n\n28. Ibid., 31.\n\n29. Steven F. Lawson, _Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941_ (New York, 2008), 42.\n\n30. Lawson, _To Secure_ , 28\u201329.\n\n31. Ibid., 179, 31.\n\n32. Egerton, _Speak_ , 476\u201377.\n\n33. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 59.\n\n34. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 84.\n\n35. Ibid., 85.\n\n36. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 94.\n\n37. Philip Dray, _At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America_ (New York, 2002), 399.\n\n38. Ibid.\n\n39. Ibid., 397.\n\n40. Ibid., 398.\n\n41. The Civil Rights Congress was formed at a conference in Detroit on April 27\u201328, 1946. By the mid-1950s it consisted of sixty chapters across the nation, most on the East and West coasts; only ten chapters existed in the South. In the summer of 1948, black Communist William L. Patterson, former head of the ILD, became the national secretary of the organization. Patterson hoped to pattern the CRC protest strategies and tactics after those used in the defense of the Scottsboro boys. See Charles H. Martin, \"The Civil Rights Congress and Southern Black Defendants,\" _Georgia Historical Quarterly_ 71, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 25\u201352 passim; Gerald Horne, _Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress_ (London, 1988), 29\u201332.\n\n42. Dray _, Persons Unknown_ , 397: \"no white man had ever been executed for rape in Mississippi.\"\n\n43. Ibid., 402. Braden came as a representative of the Southern Conference Education Fund.\n\n44. Willie McGee to Rosalie McGee, May 7, 1951, folder 14, box 48, ACB.\n\n45. \"Mississippi Whites Roar Approval as Willie McGee Dies in the Chair,\" _CD_ , May 19, 1951, 5.\n\n46. Eric Rise, _The Martinsville Seven: Race, Rape, and Capital Punishment_ (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 1.\n\n47. Ibid., 2.\n\n48. \"Two Va. Cops Guilty of Raping Negro Woman Get 7 Years,\" _PC, May_ 14, 1949, 1.\n\n49. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 68.\n\n50. \"Assault... at 75 Feet,\" pamphlet distributed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, box 128, series IIB, NAACP Papers.\n\n51. \"Neighbors Say God Aiding Mack Ingram,\" _CD_ , March 29, 1952, 3.\n\n52. Dray, _Persons Unknown_ , 405.\n\n53. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 86.\n\n54. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 182; See also Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 85\u201386. The Montgomery NAACP challenged Reeves's sentence in the state supreme court, which upheld the death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down his conviction and returned the case to lower courts, which found him guilty again. The state supreme court reaffirmed the lower court's decision, and Reeves was executed in 1957. See also _Jeremiah Reeves, Jr. v. State of Alabama_ , 246 Ala. 476; 88 So. 2d 561; 1956 Ala. Lexis 392.\n\n55. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 86.\n\n56. Martin Luther King, Jr., _Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story_ (San Francisco, 1958), 32.\n\n57. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 109.\n\n58. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 94.\n\n59. Marcel Reedus, George King, and Vertamae Grosvenor, _Cradle of the Confederacy_ , episode 6 of WTCBUd.\n\n60. Ibid.; S. S. Seay, _I Was There by the Grace of God_ (Montgomery, Ala., 1990), 130\u201331. \"All kinds of sexual relations,\" in Solomon Seay, Sr., interview by Worth Long with Randall Williams, (accessed February 2, 2006); I-SS. See also _MA_ , April 5, 1949, 8A; April 6, 1949, 1B; April 7, 1949, 2A; April 15, 1949, 8A; April 17, 1949, 3A; April 20, 1949, 3A; April 21, 1949, last page; May 3, 1949, 1A; May 21, 1949, 1A; May 27, 1949, 12A; _AT_ , April 22, 1949, 1; April 29, 1949, 1; _PC_ , June 4, 1949, 3. See also Thornton, _Dividing_ , 34\u201335.\n\n61. \"Court Denies 2 Petitions in Rape Case; Mayor Needn't Identify, Nor Sheriff Arrest Accused Men,\" _MA_ , April 29, 1949; \"Drew Pearson Changes Mind; Criticizes City,\" _MA_ , May 3, 1949, 1.\n\n62. \"Rape Cry Against Dixie Cops Falls on Deaf Ears,\" _BAA_ , April 9, 1949, 1.\n\n63. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 152. See also Stewart Burns, ed., _Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997), 7.\n\n64. Seay, _Grace of God_ , 131, 135, 136.\n\n65. \"Drew Pearson Changes Mind; Criticizes City,\" _MA_ , May 3, 1949, 1.\n\n66. \"Mayor Denies Negro Raped,\" _MA_ , April 15, 1949, 8; E. G. Jackson, \"Attack Case Drags On; No Arrests Made,\" _AT_ , April 22, 1949, 1.\n\n67. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 33, 591n28.\n\n68. Ibid., 33\u201336 passim. Thornton documents a number of crimes white police officers committed against black men and women throughout the 1940s and claims that police brutality was the number-one issue affecting the black community in the decade preceding the bus boycott.\n\n69. E. G. Jackson, \"Attack Case Drags On; No Arrests Made,\" _AT_ , April 22, 1949, 1. Chief King was finally relieved from his job by Mayor John L. Goodwyn in 1948. See Brenna Greer, _\"Our Leaders Is Just We Ourself\": Black Women's Resistance in the Making of the Montgomery Bus Boycott_ , master's thesis (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2004), 19.\n\n70. E. G. Jackson, \"Attack Case Drags On: No Arrests Made,\" _AT_ , 22 April 1949, 1.\n\n71. \"Racial Discord Is Promoted by NAACP, Says Mayor,\" _MA_ , April 15, 1949. See also _MA_ , April 5, 1940, 8A; April 6, 1949, 1B; April 7, 1949, 2A; April 15, 1949, 8A; April 17, 1949, 3A; April 20, 1949, 3A; April 21, 1949, last page; May 3, 1949, 1A; May 21, 1949, 1A; May 27, 1949, 12A.\n\n72. Seay was arrested two weeks before the grand jury hearing for disorderly conduct during a public meeting about the Perkins affair. His arrest and short stint in jail roused the local ministers, who were relatively conservative and less outspoken than Reverend Seay. It served as a catalyst for more ministerial involvement in the Perkins protest.\n\n73. Seay interview by Long and Williams, (accessed April 2005).\n\n74. Ibid.\n\n75. Seay, _Grace of God_ , 138\u201339.\n\n76. \"96 Indictments Returned Here,\" MA, May 21, 1949, 1.\n\n77. Ibid.\n\n78. An all-white jury sentenced John C. Howard and Jack Oliver to more than forty years in prison for raping Melinda Jackson, twenty-two, and Annie Grayson, twenty-four. Howard and Oliver robbed a group of African Americans at gunpoint on April 25, 1948, stealing money and a truck. They pushed Jackson and Grayson into the truck, drove them to a secluded area, and then raped them at gunpoint. They were arrested immediately and held without bail. County prosecutor U. G. Jones urged the jury to bring in a verdict that would \"show the world that the Negro can get justice in the courts\" and that the \"people of Elmore County will not tolerate such conduct.\" The lengthy sentence was a first for Elmore County, if not Alabama as a whole. According to the _Chicago Defender_ , the sentences \"appeared to meet with full approval of both white and colored citizens, more than 300 of whom attended the trials.\" See \"Alabama Lily-White Jury... jails 2 white rapists,\" CD, December 11, 1948, 1; \"White Gets 45 Years for Raping a Negro,\" _NYT_ , December 3, 1948, 28; \"Man Gets 45 Year Term for Rape of Alabama Negro,\" _WP_ , December 3, 1948, 1; \"Found Guilty of Raping Negro; Gets 45 Years,\" _CDT_ , December 3, 1948.\n\n79. \"Due Process of Law for Gertrude Perkins,\" MA, May 22 1949, 2B.\n\n80. Seay interview by Long and Williams.\n\n81. _Cradle of the Confederacy_ , WTCBUd.\n\n82. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 187.\n\n83. Case 2, folder IV, box 30, 14, MLK; Townsend Davis, _Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement_ (New York, 1998), 34.\n\n84. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 30. See also MA, February 15, 22, March 1, May 24, June 7, 1951.\n\n85. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 98.\n\n86. Ibid., 95.\n\n87. Case 2, folder IV, box 30, 14, MLK; Davis, _Weary Feet_ , 34; Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 85.\n\n88. According to documents, Flossie Hardman died five years after her attack from shock \"which her mother claims was caused by her never recovering from the ordeal she went through.\" See Case 2, folder IV, box 30, 14, MLK.\n\n89. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 35; Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, _The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It_ (Knoxville, Tenn., 1987), 21.\n\n90. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 22.\n\n91. Thomas Gilliam, \"The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955\u201356,\" in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 198. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , argues that African Americans made up approximately 70 percent of riders, most of them being domestics, maids, cooks, service workers, and day laborers. African Americans made up 39.9 percent of Montgomery's 106,525 people in 1950. Montgomery was home to more black women than black men. The 23,847 black women accounted for 56 percent of the total black population. Of these, 54.5 percent worked in private households as domestics. Another 18.7 percent did \"service work\" (as attendants, beauticians, housekeepers, cleaners, janitors, cooks, waitresses, etc.). A total of 73 percent of these African-American women worked as domestics or service workers, and the majority relied on public transportation to get to work. Forty-eight percent of black men were common laborers or domestic or service workers. See Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 9\u201313. Yeakey also notes that even a \"cursory survey of those who had run-ins with bus drivers reveals a preponderance of women involved in such incidents\" (226).\n\n92. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 20. This information is taken from the 1950 census.\n\n93. Ibid., 352; See also Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 17.\n\n94. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 70.\n\n95. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 26.\n\n96. William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstadt, eds., _Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South_ (New York, 2001), 9.\n\n97. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 36.\n\n98. Norman Walton, \"The Walking City: A History of the Montgomery Bus Boycott\" in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 16\u201317.\n\n99. See Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 209\u201313. For information on similar bus conditions in Birmingham, Alabama, see Robin D. G. Kelley, _Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class_ (New York, 1994), 55\u201370.\n\n100. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 220. Certainly some women preferred not to sit anywhere near white men, given their historic mistreatment of black women.\n\n101. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 62.\n\n102. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 209.\n\n103. Ibid., 197, n. 2.\n\n104. E. D. Nixon, interview, in Earl Selby and Miriam Selby, _Odyssey: Journey Through Black America_ (New York, 1971), 53.\n\n105. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 198.\n\n106. Rosa Parks, interview, in Selby and Selby, _Odyssey_ , 54.\n\n107. Ibid.\n\n108. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 47.\n\n109. Ibid., 12\u201313, 48. Eight percent of Montgomery's female labor force could be classified as professionals in 1950. Most of the 671 professionals were elementary and secondary school teachers, college professors, and librarians. Only two percent, just 161 black women, were stenographers, typists, secretaries, and file clerks.\n\n110. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 54.\n\n111. Ibid., 49.\n\n112. Ibid., 100\n\n113. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 22, 24.\n\n114. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 110.\n\n115. For more on Vernon Johns, see Ralph E. Luker, \"Murder and Biblical Memory: The Legend of Vernon Johns,\" in Joyce Appleby, ed., _The Best American History Essays, 2006_ (New York: Macmillan, 2006), 201\u201330.\n\n116. Mary Fair Burks, \"Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,\" in Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., _Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement, Trailblazers and Torchbearers: 1941\u20131965_ (Bloomington, Ind., 1990), 79; \"would take it over,\" in Belinda Robnett, _How Long? How Long? Black Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights_ (New York, 1997), 56.\n\n117. Burks, \"Trailblazers,\" 78.\n\n118. Ibid., 79. The date of the formation of the WPC is unclear. Burks says she formed the organization in 1946; Jo Ann Robinson concurs in her memoir. J. Mills Thornton claims the WPC was founded in 1949. Robinson became president in 1950, but Burks was president for at least a few years before Robinson took the reins. Therefore I am inclined to believe Burks and Robinson.\n\n119. Burks, \"Trailblazers,\" 79. Some of the women Burks recalled being present at the first meeting also became \"pioneers\" of the WPC. They are Cynthia Alexander, Elizabeth Arrington, Sadie Brooks, Albertine Campbell, Mary Cross, Faustine Dunn, Thelma Glass, Frizette Lee, Jewel Clayton Lewis, Thelma Morris, Geraldine Nesbitt, Ivy Pettus.\n\n120. Ibid., 80.\n\n121. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 29. It is important to point out that Lewis employed a number of canvassers, who went door to door signing people up to register to vote. Almost all of them were women: Mrs. Ethel Alexander, Mrs. Viola Bradford, Mrs. Hattie Carter, Mrs. Gloria Jean German, Mrs. Delores Glover, Mr. Leon Hall, Mrs. Bertha Howard and family, Mrs. Yvonne Jenkins, Mrs. Gwendolyn Patton, Mrs. Bertha Smith, and Mrs. Barbara Williams.\n\n122. Burks, \"Trailblazers,\" 80.\n\n123. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 32.\n\n124. Burks, \"Trailblazers,\" 74.\n\n125. Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 29, 30.\n\n126. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 16.\n\n127. \"Shameful and deplorable,\" in MA, September 15, 1954, 1A. On the drive for better parks and recreational spaces, see Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 158\u201367.\n\n128. J. Mills Thornton, \"Challenge and Response in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955\u20131956,\" in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 332.\n\n129. Burks, \"Trailblazers,\" 81.\n\n130. \"Digest of Proceedings: Sojourn for Truth and Justice\u2014Washington, D.C., Sept. 29 thru Oct. 1, 1951,\" in box 12, LTP.\n\n131. \"A Call to Negro Women,\" pamphlet, box 13, LTP.\n\n132. Here the STJ refers to Rosa Lee Ingram, a black sharecropper, widow, and mother of twelve, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the self-defense slaying of a white man in Ellaville, Georgia, on November 4, 1947. She had served four years of a commuted death sentence when \"A Call\" was issued. Ibid.\n\n133. McDuffie, _Long Journeys_ , 46.\n\n134. \"Digest of Proceedings, Sojourn for Truth and Justice, Washington, D.C., Sept. 29 thru Oct. 1, 1951,\" box 12, LTP.\n\n135. For more on the Rosa Lee Ingram case, see Charles H. Martin, \"Race, Gender and Southern Justice: The Rosa Lee Ingram Case,\" _American Journal of Legal History_ 29, no. 3 (July 1985): 251\u201368; Virginia Shadron, _Popular Protest and Legal Authority in Post\u2013World War II Georgia: Race, Class, and Gender Politics in the Rosa Lee Ingram Case_ , Ph.D. diss. (Emory University, 1991).\n\n136. Robert M. Ratcliffe, \"He Tried to Go with Me,\" PC, March 20, 1948, 1.\n\n137. Ibid.\n\n138. Martin, \"Race, Gender,\" 252. What exactly transpired the day Stratford died is hard to reconstruct. Whether Rosa Lee grabbed the gun from Stratford as they fought, and then beat him herself, or whether her sons used other farm tools to beat him to death is unclear. All the testimony used to sentence the Ingrams was provided by white men and women. The Ingrams each gave statements. Rosa Lee first claimed that she killed Stratford herself, but her sons told different stories after they were separated. None of them spoke to an attorney, and none were advised of their right to remain silent. While all the white officials involved in questioning the Ingrams swear they did not use coercion or intimidation to extract statements, the children were doubtless terrified. The trial record indicates that they were not defended in any meaningful way and that their interests were not represented. The trial began on Monday, January 26, 1948, and ended the same day, with a unanimous guilty verdict from an all-white, twelve-man jury. The guilty verdict, rendered without consideration of mercy, sentenced them to death. Throughout the trial, white prosecutors portrayed Mrs. Ingram as a kind of monster, brutish and overpowering, while Stratford was presented as a weak, wimpy old man who did not have the strength to fight. See transcript of supreme court case file 1624, 1623, _Rosa Lee Ingram v. The State of Georgia_ , Georgia Archives, Atlanta. The question of whether Stratford attacked Ingram sexually never came up at the trial, but Ingram claimed later in an exclusive interview that Stratford had tried on numerous occasions to \"go with her.\" \"He was mad because I wouldn't go into the cotton house with him,\" she claimed. \"He had tried three times to make me go into the cotton house and have something to do with him.\" He never tried to rape her, she said, \"He just tried to compel me.\" Robert M. Ratcliffe, \"He Tried to Go with Me,\" PC, March 20, 1948, 1. See also, Shadron, _Popular Protest_ , 145\u201347, 151\u201353. The _Courier's_ portrayal of Ingram as another victim of white men's lust rallied readers and supporters to the cause. The _Courier_ made the Ingram story their main news item each day for the entire year of 1948, drawing new subscribers and $37,933 in donations for her defense. The NAACP fought the Ingrams' case in the courts, raised money for the family's well-being, and organized local campaigns to pressure state officials. In March 1948 the NAACP persuaded Judge W. M. Harper to commute their sentences, but could not convince him to grant the Ingrams a new trial altogether. As the NAACP appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, the CRC used the Ingram case to mobilize left-wing pressure groups by presenting it to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. When the Georgia Supreme Court refused to reverse the life sentence and grant a new trial, the NAACP began to quietly pursue a strategy for parole or pardon. The NAACP also raised thousands of dollars to provide for Ingram's nine other children and built the family a new house. Rosa Lee Ingram was finally released from prison on August 26, 1959, long after the CRC and the STJ had dissolved. See Martin, \"Race-Gender,\" 260\u201366, and Shadron, _Popular Protest_ , 235\u201338.\n\n139. \"Proclamation of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice,\" box 12, LTP. The short-lived organization did not survive the Red Scare of the 1950s. For more on the Sojourners, see Erik S. McDuffie, \"A 'New Freedom Movement of Negro Women': Sojourning for Truth, Justice, and Human Rights during the Early Cold War,\" _Radical History Review_ 101 (2008): 81\u2013106.\n\n140. Thornton, \"Challenge and Response,\" in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 332.\n\n141. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 42.\n\n## CHAPTER 3. \"WALKING IN PRIDE AND DIGNITY\"\n\n1. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 74; Interview with Claudette Colvin, MBd, . (accessed December 18, 2007).\n\n2. Claudette Colvin, testimony, May 11, 1956, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 75. See also Thornton, _Dividing_ , 53.\n\n3. Gary Younge, \"She Would Not Be Moved,\" _Guardian_ , December 16, 2000. Greer rightly notes in her master's thesis that this statement indicates that defying segregation laws on the buses was relatively common and that either Colvin had refused to give up her seat for whites in the past, or that she witnessed other black passengers refuse to abide by the segregation laws. See Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 36.\n\n4. Colvin testimony, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 75.\n\n5. Claudette Colvin, interview, MBd.\n\n6. Colvin testimony, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 75. See also Lynne Olson, _Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970_ (New York, 2001), 93.\n\n7. Younge, \"She Would Not,\" _Guardian_ , December 16, 2000; see also Colvin interview, MBd.\n\n8. Most accounts of the Montgomery bus boycott portray Colvin as out of control. Brinkley claims Colvin was an \"unruly tomboy with propensity for curse words\" _(Rosa_ , 89\u201390); Branch says she was \"immature\u2014prone to breakdowns and outbursts of profanity\" _(Parting the Waters_ , 122). Colvin denies swearing, screaming, or kicking. Testimony from the court trial, including testimony from the bus driver, Cleere, and the officers present, all corroborate Colvin's claim. The real question, then, is why is this characterization so persistent? Thornton, _Dividing_ , 53; Younge, \"She Would Not,\" _Guardian_ , December 16, 2000.\n\n9. Younge, \"She Would Not,\" _Guardian_ , December 16, 2000.\n\n10. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 239.\n\n11. Ibid., 245; King, _Stride Toward Freedom_ , 41.\n\n12. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 39.\n\n13. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 246; Thornton, _Dividing_ , 55.\n\n14. King, _Stride Toward Freedom_ , 26.\n\n15. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 112.\n\n16. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 56.\n\n17. Gray quoted in Olson, _Daughters_ , 94.\n\n18. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 54, 55.\n\n19. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 241, 242.\n\n20. Ibid.\n\n21. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 54. See also MA, March 19, 1955, 7A.\n\n22. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 244, 245.\n\n23. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 42.\n\n24. Ibid.\n\n25. Mrs. A. W. West, interview by Willie M. Lee, January 23, 1956, box 4, folder 4, PBV.\n\n26. John A. Salmond, _The Conscience of a Lawyer: Clifford J. Durr and American Civil Liberties, 1899\u20131975_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1990), 174.\n\n27. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 269.\n\n28. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 39.\n\n29. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 270.\n\n30. Ibid. Colvin states that she was not sexually active, but that her pregnancy was the result of statutory rape. Colvin interview, MBd.\n\n31. Younge, \"She Would Not,\" _Guardian_ , December 16, 2000; Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 270.\n\n32. Younge, \"She Would Not,\" _Guardian_ , December 16, 2000.\n\n33. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 271.\n\n34. Ibid.\n\n35. Raines, _Rested_ , 38\u201339.\n\n36. Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 44.\n\n37. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 112.\n\n38. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 123.\n\n39. Olson, _Daughters_ , 94.\n\n40. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 271; Smith later denied this and argued that her father never drank, nor did they live in a dilapidated house.\n\n41. See Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 123\u201328; Olson, _Daughters_ , 94\u201395; Marissa Chappell, Jenny Hutchinson, and Brian Ward, \" 'Dress modestly, neatly... as if you were going to church': Respectability, Class, and Gender in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Early Civil Rights Movement,\" in Peter J. Ling and Sharon Monteith, eds., _Gender in the Civil Rights Movement_ (New York, 1999), 84. On respectability and the \"culture of dissemblance,\" see Darlene Clark Hine, \"Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on a Culture of Dissemblance,\" _Signs_ 14 (Summer 1989): 912\u201320. For more on the silencing of sexuality during this era, see Thaddeus Russel, \"The Color of Discipline: Civil Rights and Black Sexuality,\" _American Quarterly_ 60, no. 1 (2008): 101\u201328.\n\n42. Joseph Crespino, _In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution_ (Princeton, N.J., 2007), 20.\n\n43. Charles Payne, _I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle_ (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), 35.\n\n44. The White Citizens' Councils counted approximately 250,000 members throughout the South. See Numan V. Bartley, _The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s_ (Baton Rouge, La., 1969), 83\u201384; Neil R. McMillen, _The Citizens' Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954\u20131964_ (Urbana, Ill., 1994), 184, 186; Tom P. Brady, _Black Monday: Segregation or Amalgamation, America Has Its Choice_ (Winona, Miss., 1955).\n\n45. For more on the ways respectability, dignity, manhood, and womanhood shaped the strategies and goals of the middle- and working-class black activists during Reconstruction and the Progressive Era, see Glenda Gilmore, _Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896\u20131920_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996); and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, _Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880\u20131920_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).\n\n46. Hine, \"Rape and Inner Lives,\" 915.\n\n47. See Chapter 2 for more on Rosa Lee Ingram.\n\n48. McMillen, _Citizens' Council_ , 44.\n\n49. Ibid., 159. State senators Walter Coats Givhan and Sam Englehardt were leaders of the Central Alabama Citizens' Council.\n\n50. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 60; Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 115.\n\n51. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 109.\n\n52. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 115.\n\n53. Ibid., 115\u201316.\n\n54. Ibid., 101.\n\n55. Ibid., 106.\n\n56. Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 49.\n\n57. Olson, _Daughters_ , 109.\n\n58. See postcards and petitions signed by Leona McCauley in folder 3, CS.\n\n59. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 121.\n\n60. Olson, _Daughters_ , 111.\n\n61. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 125. See also the similar response Nixon gave to Steven M. Millner in an interview on July 27, 1977, in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 546.\n\n62. Olson, _Daughters_ , 110.\n\n63. Robinsin, _Montgomery_ , 45.\n\n64. Ibid., 45, 50.\n\n65. Ibid., 45\u201346; italics mine.\n\n66. Ibid., 46\u201347.\n\n67. Sidney Rogers, interview, Pacifica Radio, April 1956, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 84.\n\n68. Chappell, et al., \" 'Dress modestly, neatly...,' \" 87.\n\n69. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 133.\n\n70. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 128.\n\n71. Olson, _Daughters_ , 115.\n\n72. Ibid., 114.\n\n73. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 57.\n\n74. Parks with Haskins, _My Story_ , 132.\n\n75. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 131.\n\n76. Olson, _Daughters_ , 115.\n\n77. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 133.\n\n78. E. D. Nixon, interview, in Selby and Selby, _Odyssey_ , 60.\n\n79. Ibid., 61.\n\n80. Ibid.\n\n81. On E. D. Nixon choosing King for the MIA leadership, see _Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement_ , vol. 1, Blackside Productions, PBS Video, 1986, 2006, DVD.\n\n82. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 137.\n\n83. Nixon interview in Selby and Selby, _Odyssey_ , 60.\n\n84. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 136.\n\n85. \"The men took it over,\" in Jo Ann Robinson, interview by Steven Millner, August 10, 1977, in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 570; \"definitely decided to assume leadership,\" in Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 64.\n\n86. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 139\u201341.\n\n87. Ibid., 140.\n\n88. Transcript of mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 5, 1955. Martin Luther King Estate Collection, copy online at (accessed October 30, 2005).\n\n89. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 274.\n\n90. Ralph Abernathy, \"The Natural History of a Social Movement: the Montgomery Improvement Association,\" in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 124.\n\n91. On Robinson's complaint about black men's failure to protect black women on the buses, see _Montgomery_ , 37.\n\n92. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 15.\n\n93. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 69.\n\n94. Ibid., 66.\n\n95. Rufus Lewis, interview by Donald T. Ferron, January 20, 1956, folder 7, box 3, PBV. In a letter to Preston Valien on January 21, 1956, Ferron said, \"Mrs. Jo Ann Robinson seems to have been the key organizer for the protest. She is the backbone of this collective effort.\" Folder 7, box 1, PBV.\n\n96. Rosa Parks, interview by Sidney Rogers, Pacifica Radio, April 1956, transcript in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 86.\n\n97. Erna Dungee Allen, interview by Steven Millner, August 6, 1977, in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 522\u201323.\n\n98. Georgia Gilmore, interview, in Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer, _Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s_ (New York, 1990), 29. Mrs. A. W. West argued that the \"working people\" were the \"ones who keep this movement going... The leaders could do nothing by themselves. They are only the voice of thousands of colored workers.\" See Mrs. A. W. West, interview by Willie M. Lee, January 23, 1956, folder 4, box 4, PBV.\n\n99. Willie M. Lee, \"Statements heard in various places,\" January 27, 1956, folder 4, box 4, PBV.\n\n100. Irene Stovall, interview by Willie M. Lee, February 1, 1956, folder 4, box 4, PBV. Lee notes that Mrs. Stovall is a \"large woman of brown complexion\" whose \"eyes became narrow slits while talking about her previous employer.\"\n\n101. Mrs. Beatrice Charles, interview by Willie M. Lee, January 20, 1956, folder 4, box 4, PBV.\n\n102. Ibid.\n\n103. Sam Englehardt, interview by Anna Holden February 8, 1956, folder 3\/14, box 3, PBV.\n\n104. Mrs. Beatrice Charles, interview by Willie M. Lee, January 20, 1956, folder 4, box 4, PBV.\n\n105. Ibid.\n\n106. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 12. At a mass meeting on March 26, 1956, Jo Ann Robinson gave a pep talk and argued that whites deny African Americans a sense of dignity. \"Look at our schools... we have no titles, we are not respected\u2014every man is entitled to a certain dignity.\" She then went on to argue that the boycott was restoring that sense of dignity. \"Transcript\u2014Mass Meeting, MIA,\" March 26, 1956, folder 6, box 3, PBV.\n\n107. Domestic, interview by Willie M. Lee, January 24, 1956, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 229.\n\n108. Mrs. Allen Wright, interview by Willie M. Lee, January 24, 1956, folder 4, box 4, PBV.\n\n109. Ibid.\n\n110. Ibid.\n\n111. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 16.\n\n112. Anna Holden, \"Report from MIA mass meeting,\" March 22, 1956, folder 6, box 3, PVB.\n\n113. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 149.\n\n114. Ibid.\n\n115. Reedus, et al., _Cradle of the Confederacy_ , WTCBU, episode 7.\n\n116. Reedus, et al., _My Feet Is Tired, But My Soul Is Rested_ , WTCBU, episode 9.\n\n117. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 372.\n\n118. Vernon Jarret, \"Club from Nowhere Paid Way of Boycott,\" ChT, December 12, 1975, 1.\n\n119. Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 83.\n\n120. Jarret, \"Club from Nowhere,\" ChT, December 12, 1975, 1.\n\n121. Ibid.\n\n122. Ibid.\n\n123. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 16.\n\n124. Jarret, \"Club from Nowhere\" ChT, December 12, 1975, 1.\n\n125. Ibid.\n\n126. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 147.\n\n127. Erna Dungee Allen, interview by Steven Millner, August 8, 1977, in Garrow, _Walking_ _City_ , 522\u201323. On \"formal leadership,\" see Belinda Robnett, _How Long? How Long? African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights_ (New York, 1997), 18.\n\n128. Robnett, _How Long?_ , 65.\n\n129. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 147.\n\n130. Ibid.\n\n131. Yeakey, _Boycott_ , 410.\n\n132. Ibid., 389.\n\n133. Robnett, _How Long?_ , 65.\n\n134. Robinson, _Montgomery_ , 125.\n\n135. Jo Ann Robinson, interview in Hampton and Fayer, _Voices of Freedom_ , 31.\n\n136. Willie M. Lee, \"Statements heard in various places,\" January 27, 1956, folder 4, box 4, PBV.\n\n137. Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 98.\n\n138. Martin Luther King, \"The 'New Negro' of the South: Behind the Montgomery Story,\" _Socialist Call_ 24, No. 6 (June 1956), in box 273, series III, A, NAACP Papers.\n\n139. Clifford J. Durr to Mr. Nathan David, February 2, 1956, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 152.\n\n140. Georgia Gilmore interview, in Hampton and Fayer, _Voices of Freedom_ , 30\u201331.\n\n141. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 42.\n\n142. Clifford J. Durr to Mr. Nathan David, February 2, 1956, ibid., 152.\n\n143. Minutes of the Executive Board Meeting, February 2, 1956, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 148\u201350; \"List of Persons and Churches Most Vulnerable to Violent Attack,\" folder IV, 14, MLK.\n\n144. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 168.\n\n145. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 153\u201354; Burns, _Daybreak_ , 153\u201354.\n\n146. Burns, _Daybreak_ , 153.\n\n147. \"Preview of the 'Declaration of Segregation,' \" in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 154.\n\n148. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 168; Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 154.\n\n149. Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 104. Greer notes that Jo Ann Robinson, Irene West, and Euretta Adair, all key members of the WPC, were indicted. So were Ida Mae Caldwell, a local labor leader; Lottie Varner, owner of a beauty shop; Audrey Bell Lanford and Cora McHaney, both teachers; Lollie Boswell and Addie James Hamilton, a widow and housewife respectively; Martha L. Johnson, a student at Alabama State College; and Alberta Judkins, Mrs. Jimmie Lowe, and Alberta James. See also, \"Indicted in Bus Boycott,\" folder 1, box 3, PBV.\n\n150. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 169.\n\n151. Bayard Rustin, \"Montgomery Diary,\" _Liberation 1_ , no. 2 (April 1956): 8. It was Bayard Rustin who instructed Nixon to turn the arrest into a badge of honor.\n\n152. Robinsin, _Montgomery_ , 150.\n\n153. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 177.\n\n154. Robnett, _How Long?_ , 151.\n\n155. B. J. Simms, interview by Steven Millner July 16, 1977, in Garrow, _Walking City_ , 579\u201380.\n\n156. _Christian Century_ 67, no. 10 (March 28, 1956): 387.\n\n157. Transcript, _State of Alabama v. M. L. King Jr._ , March 19\u201322, 1956, folder 3, box 3, PBV.\n\n158. Transcript, _State of Alabama v. M. L. King Jr._ , March 19\u201322, 1956, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 64\u201365 (Walker); 67 (Brooks); 69 (Brimson); 72 (Moore). See also folder 3, box 3, PBV.\n\n159. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 184.\n\n160. \"New Sounds in the Courthouse,\" _Time_ , April 2, 1956, 24; see also Greer, _Our Leaders_ , 105.\n\n161. Transcript, _State of Alabama v. M. L. King Jr._ , March 19\u201322, 1956, folder 3, box 3, PBV.\n\n162. Ibid.\n\n163. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 184.\n\n164. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 160.\n\n165. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 184.\n\n166. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 160.\n\n167. Fellowship of Reconciliation, \"Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story: How 50,000 Negroes Found a New Way to End Racial Discrimination,\" n.d., box 207, series AIII, NAACP Papers.\n\n168. _Gayle v. Browder_ , 352 U.S. 903, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Alabama Clergy, November 30, 1956, in Burns, _Daybreak_ , 305.\n\n169. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 194.\n\n170. Martin Luther King, Jr., _Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?_ (Boston, 1968), 123.\n\n## CHAPTER 4: \"THERE'S OPEN SEASON ON NEGROES NOW\"\n\n1. Melba Patillo Beals, _Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High_ (New York, 1994), 22\u201325.\n\n2. Ibid., 25\u201326.\n\n3. Ibid., 26. At a distance of decades and in the absence of police reports and newspaper accounts of the incident, it is difficult to substantiate Melba Patillo Beals's story, but the attempted rape fits within a documented history. Beals declined to be interviewed.\n\n4. Ibid., 26\u201327.\n\n5. Ibid., 27.\n\n6. Daisy Bates, _The Long Shadow of Little Rock_ (Fayetteville, Ark., 1986), 15.\n\n7. Ibid., 11\u201312, 15.\n\n8. Robnett, _How Long?_ , 77.\n\n9. Ibid.\n\n10. \"Two City Policemen Indicted,\" _ASP_ , July 17, 1942, 1; \"Rape Case Ends in Mistrial,\" AG, July 29, 1942, 14.\n\n11. Though not exhaustive, my research found at least eleven trials, reported in local newspapers, mainly the _State Press_ , of white men accused of raping black women in and around Little Rock between 1942 and 1959. Of those eleven trials, three men were found guilty, but only one received a jail sentence (four years). The other two men received suspended sentences and were allowed to go free. Two trials resulted in a mistrial; two men were acquitted. Most cases, of course, never made it past a grand jury. Bates publicized many more reported rapes and attempted rapes: see the prominent trial of two white policemen accused of raping Rosa Lee Cherry, a black high school student, on June 15, 1942. The _Arkansas State Press_ publicized the rape, placed photographs of the officers on the front page of the paper, and demanded they be held accountable. Vigilance by Bates and the black community forced a trial in July 1942. The case ended in a mistrial. See _State of Arkansas v. L. S. Mullinax, C. B. Eddie Jr., Dan Ellard_ , No. 43862, Pulaski County Circuit Court, July 15, 1942; \"Two City Police Men Indicted: Accused of Rape on Teenage Dunbar High School Girl,\" ASP, July 17, 1942, 1; \"Keeping the Negro in His Place,\" ASP, July 17, 1942, 1; A. F. Cunningham, \"A Disgrace in Disgrace,\" ASP, August 14, 1942, 4; \"Grand Jurors Begin Probe of Two Cases,\" AD, July 15, 1942, 2; \"Four Indicted on Capital Charges,\" AG, July 16, 1942, 11; \"Assault Case Ends with 'Hung' Jury,\" AD, July 28, 1942, 16; \"Rape Case Ends in Mistrial,\" AG, July 29, 1942, 14. Other headlines in _ASP_ throughout the 1940s and 1950s indicate Bates's personal interest in securing justice for African-American women assaulted by white men. See, for example, \"Expectant Mother Brutally Beaten by White Grocer,\" ASP, June 12, 1942, 1; \"Still Pending!\" ASP, November 20, 1942, 1; \"Something Must Be Done,\" editorial, ASP, November 20, 1942, 6; \"Girl Awarded Damages Against Kroger Grocery,\" ASP, May 21, 1943, 1; \"Following Their Training,\" ASP, August 27, 1943, 1; \"A 64$ '?,' \"ASP, August 28, 1944; \"Alleged White Rapists Freed by All-White Jury in Ash-down; Raping Negro Is No Offense if Rapist Is Drunken White Jury Finds,\" _ASP_ , July 22, 1949, 1; \"Bus Driver Beats Up Negro Woman in Heart of City; Knocks Her Down While Negro 'Men' Merely Look,\" ASP, September 16, 1949, 1; \"Alleged Rape Laid to White Man; Seven Year Old Girl Is Victim,\" ASP, January 2, 1953, 1; \"Attack on Girl Brings Sentence,\" ASP, April 3, 1953, 1; \"White Attacker of Negro Girl Must Pay,\" ASP, October 23, 1953, 1; \"Eight Year Old Girl Accuses White Man of Assault,\" ASP, November 20, 1953, 1; \"Light of Approaching Car Prevents Rape of 11-Year-Old Girl,\" ASP, December 30, 1955, 1; \"Rape Attempt on Negro Girl Charged to White Man,\" ASP, July 24, 1959, 1; \"Jury Sees No Crime When Whites Rape Negro Girls,\" ASP, October 23, 1959, 1. Thanks to Story Matkin Rawn and John Adams for finding these articles for me.\n\n12. _U.S. News & World Report_ 40 (February 24, 1956): 134, 135, 138. Leander and Talmadge are quoted in Stephen J. Whitfield, _A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till_ (Baltimore, Md., 1988), 9.\n\n13. Michael J. Klarman, _From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality_ (New York, 2004), 427.\n\n14. McMillen, _Citizens's Council_ , 185.\n\n15. For more on the tension between \"respectable\" leaders and white vigilantes in Mississippi, see Crespino, _Another Country_ , 24\u201328.\n\n16. Klarman, _Jim Crow_ , 427.\n\n17. Crespino, _Another Country_ , 20.\n\n18. Ibid., 28\n\n19. Annette Butler, testimony, in Charles B. Gordon, \"Lurid Case Being Heard: Duncan Trial in 2nd Day\u2014Signed Statement Admitted,\" _MCEJ_ , March 28, 1957, 1.\n\n20. Ibid.\n\n21. Ibid.\n\n22. \"Brady to Hear Mississippi Rape Case,\" _CDD_ , May 16, 1956, 6.\n\n23. \"Tom P. Brady,\" obituary, _Time_ , February 12, 1973.\n\n24. Charles B. Gordon, \"Walthall Countian Cleared: Olen Duncan Acquitted by Pike Jury on Rape Count, Faces Kidnap Charge,\" _MCEJ_ , March 29, 1957, 1.\n\n25. Charles B. Gordon, \"Court Bulletin,\" _MCEJ_ , March 26, 1957, 1.\n\n26. Charles B. Gordon, \"Trial of Duncan Pending,\" _MCEJ_ , April 4, 1957, 1.\n\n27. Gordon, \"Walthall Countian Cleared,\" _MCEJ_ , March 29, 1957, 1.\n\n28. Ibid. In the fall of 1957 he pleaded nolo contendre to the kidnapping charge and received a suspended two-year sentence. See \"Duncans Freed from Jail on Suspended Sentences,\" _MJEC_ , October 28, 1957; clipping, SCR ID # 10\u201367\u20130-3\u20131-1\u20131, MSSC-d (accessed February 12, 2008).\n\n29. \"Negro Women Ask That Statement Be Published,\" _MCEJ_ , April 4, 1957, 4.\n\n30. \"Negro Committee Expresses Views of Alleged Rape of Colored Girl,\" _MCEJ_ , May 17, 1956, 8.\n\n31. Charles B. Gordon, \"Ernest Dillon Is Sentenced to 20 Years at Hard Labor,\" _MCEJ_ , April 5, 1957, 1.\n\n32. \"Testimony of Hollis Turner (Colored) McComb Mississippi, General Legislative Investigating Committee,\" May 14, 1958, SCR ID # 9\u20133-0\u20131-21\u20131-1, MSSC-d (accessed February 12, 2008).\n\n33. Oliver Emmerich, \"High-Lights in the Headlines,\" _MCEJ_ , May 15, 1956, 1.\n\n34. Brinkley, _Rosa_ , 165.\n\n35. Ibid., 174.\n\n36. Payne, _Light of Freedom_ , 36\u201340.\n\n37. The best account of the Till murder remains Whitfield, _Death in the Delta_. William Bradford Huie. \"The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,\" _Look_ , January 24, 1956, 46\u201350.\n\n38. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 58.\n\n39. Andrew M. Manis, _A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1999), 147. Aaron survived the attack but remained psychologically scarred for years.\n\n40. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 94. According to Thornton, Raymond Britt, Henry Alexander, Kyle Livingston, and James York were indicted for the murder in 1976, but after a series of lie detector tests cleared Livingston, the other indictments were \"quashed as legally defective.\" The same men were charged with the bombings at the Graetz, King, and Abernathy homes. See Thornton, _Dividing_ , 610\u201411n123.\n\n41. \"He Whistled at Me Says Witness to Slaying,\" RAA, September 1, 1956, 1.\n\n42. \"Mashers Molest Women, Police Look Other Way,\" RAA, September 1, 1956, 1.\n\n43. Ibid.\n\n44. \"Freed in Wolf Whistle Death: Judge Suspends Sentence,\" RAA, November 11, 1956, 1.\n\n45. Cash, _Mind_ , 115\u201316.\n\n46. Wendell Berry, _The Hidden Wound_ (San Francisco, 1989), 59; see also Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 94\u201395.\n\n47. McMillen, _Citizens' Council_ , 184.\n\n48. Brian Ward, ed., _Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle_ (Gainesville, Fla., 2001), 5.\n\n49. Glenn C. Altschuler, _All Shook Up: How Rock 'n'_ _Roll Changed America_ (New York, 2003), 37\u201338.\n\n50. Bertrand, _Race, Rock_ , 181.\n\n51. Ibid., 188.\n\n52. Altschuler, _All Shook_ , 40.\n\n53. Dan T. Carter, _From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963\u20131994_ (Baton Rouge, La., 1996), 2. Carter reminds us that the _Southerner_ was one of the \"most racist magazines published in the 1950s.\" Asa Carter was also the organizer of a secret paramilitary force he called the \"Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy.\" When George Wallace launched a gubernatorial campaign in 1962, he chose Asa Carter to be his speechwriter.\n\n54. Altschuler, _All Shook_ , 38.\n\n55. Ibid.\n\n56. Bertrand, _Race, Rock_ , 188.\n\n57. John Oliver Killens, _Black Man's Burden_ (New York, 1965), 127.\n\n58. Gunnar Myrdal, _An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy_ (New York, 1944), 587.\n\n59. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 92\u201393., provides the best account of what came to be known as the \"Kissing Case.\" See also George Weissman, \"The Kissing Case,\" _Nation_ , January 17, 1959, 46\u201349.\n\n60. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 95.\n\n61. Ibid., 95\u201396.\n\n62. Ibid., 96.\n\n63. Ibid., 92.\n\n64. Ibid., 101.\n\n65. Ibid., 117\u201319. The \"Kissing Case\" gained worldwide publicity due to Williams and the Committee to Combat Racial Injustice's shrewd exploitation of America's Cold War politics. See Patrick D. Jones, _Communist Front Shouts \"Kissing Case\" to the World: The Committee to Combat Racial Injustice and the Politics of Race and Gender During the Cold War_ , master's thesis (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1996).\n\n66. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 134\u201335.\n\n67. For the impact of the Cold War on civil rights, see Mary L. Dudziak, _Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy_ (Princeton, N.J., 2000); and Thomas Borstelmann, _The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena_ (Cambridge, Mass., 2001). For more on the Little Rock crisis, see Elizabeth Jacoway, _Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis that Shocked the Nation_ (New York, 2007); John Kirk, _Epitaph for Little Rock_ (Fayetteville, Ark., 2008); and Daisy Bates, _The Long Shadow of Little Rock_ (Fayetteville, Ark., 1986).\n\n68. Borstelmann, _Cold War_ , 104.\n\n69. Ibid., 103.\n\n70. \"Dwight Eisenhower's Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Situation in Little Rock,\" September 24, 1957, in Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, _Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945\u20131968_ (Lanham, Md., 1998), 60\u201364.\n\n71. Borstelmann, _Cold War_ , 103.\n\n72. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia respectively. Nullification resolutions in all four states passed in 1957. See Bartley, _Resistance_ , 131.\n\n73. McMillen, _Citizens' Councils_ , 267.\n\n74. Harvard Sitkoff, _The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954\u20131992_ (New York, 1993), 66; Editorial, _NYT_ , June 16, 1959; Altschuler, _All Shook_ , 37.\n\n75. Adam Fairclough, _To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr_. (Athens, Ga., 2001), 37.\n\n76. Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , 207.\n\n77. Bartley, _Resistance_ , 215. Bartley claims that besides Alabama, in which the NAACP was legally barred from operating, Texas and Arkansas effectively stymied the NAACP during the 1950s and early 1960s.\n\n78. Roy Wilkins to Mr. Barbee William Durham, February 14, 1957, box A273, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n79. Roy Wilkins to LeRoy Collins, May 6, 1959, box A91, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n## CHAPTER 5. \"IT WAS LIKE ALL OF US HAD BEEN RAPED\"\n\n1. \"Report on Tallahassee Incident,\" May 9, 1959, box A91, series III, NAACP Papers. Thanks to Timothy B. Tyson for finding this small folder for me. For information on the Roy Hamilton concert, see _PC_ , May 16, 1959.\n\n2. _NYAN_ , June 20, 1959, 37. Jimmy Carl Cooper, a white youth, testified that David Beagles told him he planned to go out and get \"some nigger 'stuff' \" and noted that \"stuff was not the word used.\" See Trezzvant W. Anderson, \"Rapists Missed Out on First Selection,\" _PC_ , June 20, 1959, 3. A cleaned-up version reported that Beagles had plans to get a \"Negro girl\": \"Four Convicted in Rape Case,\" TD, June 14, 1959, 7. \"I Was Scared,\" PC, June 20, 1959, 1. \"Four Begin Defense in Trial on Rape,\" _NYT_ , June 13, 1959. A13. See also criminal case file 3445, _State of Florida v. Patrick Gene Scarborough, David Ervin Beagles, Ollie Odell Stoutamire, and William Ted Collinsworth, 1959_ , Leon County Courthouse, Tallahassee, Fla.. Thanks to Leon County Courthouse for sending me the file. Because the original trial transcript is no longer available, I have had to rely on newspaper reports, particularly those in African-American newspapers: the _Baltimore Afro-American_ , the _Louisiana Weekly, the New York Amsterdam News_ , the _Pittsburgh Courier_ , and the South Carolina _Lighthouse and Informer_. The fact that the transcript is missing is verified in the case file notes of _Patrick G. Scarborough v. State of Florida_ , 390 So. 2d 830 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App., 1980). See also Robert W. Saunders, \"Report on Tallahassee Incident,\" May 9, 1959, box A91, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n3. \"Deputy Tells of Confessions,\" TD, June 12, 1959.\n\n4. Russell Anderson, interview by Jackson Lee Ice, July 1978, in Jackson Lee Ice Papers (JLI).\n\n5. For more on the double lynching, see Walter T. Howard, \"Vigilante Justice and National Reaction: The 1937 Tallahassee Double Lynching,\" _Florida Historical Quarterly_ 67, no. 1 (July 1988).\n\n6. Glenda Alice Rabby, _The Pain and the Promise: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Tallahassee, Florida_ (Athens, Ga., 1999), 18, 30\u201331.\n\n7. Saunders, \"Report on Tallahassee Incident.\"\n\n8. \"Deputy Tells of Confessions,\" TD, June 12, 1959. Original reports stated that Owens was \"bound and gagged,\" but she later testified that she was only blindfolded; after she pulled the blindfold down, she appeared to have been gagged.\n\n9. \"Four Whites Seized in Rape of Negro,\" _NYT_ , May 3, 1959, A45.\n\n10. On the Tallahassee bus boycott, see Rabby, _Pain_ , 9\u201346.\n\n11. Ibid., 13.\n\n12. Ibid., 28.\n\n13. Ibid., 17. For C. K. Steele on students in movement, see Robert M. White, _The Tallahassee Sit-ins and CORE: A Nonviolent Revolutionary Sub-movement_ , Ph.D. diss. (Florida State University, 1964), 65.\n\n14. White, _Sit-ins_ , 65.\n\n15. Ibid.\n\n16. \"Rapists Face Trial,\" _FAMUAN_ 27 (May 1959), 1, 3; \"Negroes Ask Justice for Co-ed Rapists,\" AC, May 4, 1959, 2; \"Four Whites Seized in Rape of Negro,\" _NYT_ , May 3, 1959, A45; ibid., May 5, 1959, A23; \"Mass Rape of Co-ed Outrages Students,\" _LW_ , May 9, 1959, 1; _L'Osservatore Romano_ , June 12, 1959; _Herald Tribune\u2014London_ , June 13, 1959; \"Jury to Take Up Rape of Negro Co-ed,\" AC, May 5, 1959, 5.\n\n17. Patricia Stephens Due interview by author, March 4, 1999. See also Tananarive Due and Patricia Stephens Due, _Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights_ (New York, 2003), 40\u201341; White, _Sit-ins_ , 65.\n\n18. See Howard Smead, _Blood Justice_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); \"Lynch Victim Mack Parker's Body Is Found,\" _NYT_ , May 5, 1959; Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 143.\n\n19. \"4 Indicted In Rape of Negro Co-Ed,\" _NYHT_ , May 7, 1959, 5.\n\n20. M. C. Williams quoted in \"Packed Court Hears Not Guilty,\" _PC_ , May 16, 1959, 1\u20132; \"Judge Instructs Jury Here,\" TD, May 6, 1959, 1; \"Indictment for Rape,\" criminal case file 3445, _Florida v. Scarborough, Beagles, Stoutamire, and Collinsworth;_ \"Four Plead Not Guilty to Rape,\" TD, n.d., clipping, folder 4, box 912, WMW.\n\n21. Claude Sitton, \"Negroes See Gain in Conviction of Four for Rape of Co-ed,\" _NYT_ , June 15, 1959, A1; statistics are from David R. Colburn and Richard K. Scher, _Florida's Gubernatorial Politics in the Twentieth Century_ (Gainesville, Fla., 1980), 13. Willis McCall is quoted in Steven F. Lawson, David R. Colburn, and Darryl Paulson, \"Groveland: Florida's Little Scottsboro,\" in David R. Colburn and Jane L. Landers, eds., _The African American Heritage of Florida_ (Gainesville, 1995), 298\u2013325, esp. 312.\n\n22. See Moses J. Newson, \"The Wind Blew, the Sky Was Overcast,\" BAA, June 20, 1959; Moses J. Newson, \"Abraham's Shadow Hangs Low Over Tallahassee,\" ibid.; and Moses J. Newson, \"His Mother Can Never Forget Him,\" ibid.\n\n23. \"Another Dixiecrat Headache,\" PC, June 20, 1959; \"The Other Story,\" n.d., clipping, folder 1, box 912, WMW.\n\n24. William H. Chafe, \"Epilogue from Greensboro, North Carolina,\" in Cecelski and Tyson, _Democracy Betrayed_ , 281\u201382.\n\n25. \"Senate to Get Racial Measures,\" TD, June 14, 1959, 1; \"Pent Up Critique on the Rape Case,\" ibid., May 14, 1959.\n\n26. _PC_ , May 30, 1959, 3; \"Mr. Muhammad Speaks,\" _PC_ , May 16, 1959.\n\n27. Ella Baker quoted in _PC_ , May 30, 1959, 3; see also Ransby, _Ella_ , 210. \"Enforce the Law,\" _NYAN_ , May 9, 1959; \"What Will Florida Do,\" _PC_ , May 16, 1959.\n\n28. \"King Asks Ike to Go to Mississippi,\" _BAA_ , May 23, 1959; see also Martin Luther King, Jr., to Clifford C. Taylor, May 5, 1959, in _The Papers of Martin Luther King_ , vol. 6 (Berkeley, Calif., forthcoming). Thanks to Kieran Taylor for sending me this information. \"Report from Europe,\" _BAA_ , May 23, 1959.\n\n29. \"Report from Europe,\" BAA, May 23, 1959; \"King Asks Ike to Go to Mississippi,\" ibid.; \"Appeal to U.N. to Stop Race Violence,\" LW, May 9, 1959, 1.\n\n30. Tyson, _Radio Free Dixie_ , 148\u201350.\n\n31. Ibid., 149\n\n32. Ibid., 145\u201351, esp. 148, 149; 163\u201365.\n\n33. Roy Wilkins to LeRoy Collins, May 6, 1959, box A91, series III, NAACP Papers.\n\n34. TD, May 4, 1959. On the \"fair maiden,\" see Hall, \"Mind That Burns,\" 335.\n\n35. \"I Was Scared,\" PC, June 20, 1959; see also \"Did Not Consent,\" TD, June 11, 1959; \"Rape Co-ed's Own Story,\" _NYAN_ , June 20, 1959, 1; _AC_ , June 12, 1959; \"Negro Girl Tells Jury of Rape by Four,\" _NYT_ , June 12, 1959, A16. Coverage of Owens's testimony was nearly identical in newspapers cited.\n\n36. \"Did Not Consent,\" TD, June 11, 1959; \"I Was Scared,\" PC, June 20, 1959, 1; CO, June 12, 1959, 1A.\n\n37. \"Did Not Consent,\" _TD_ , June 11, 1959. \"I Was Scared,\" PC, June 20, 1959, 1; \"State's exhibits\" (knife) in criminal case file 3445, _Florida v. Scarborough, Beagles, Stoutamire, and Collinsworth, 1959_.\n\n38. \"Rape Co-ed's Own Story,\" _NYAN_ , June 20, 1959, 1; \"I Was Scared,\" PC, June 20, 1959, 1; see also \"Four Begin Defense in Trial on Rape,\" _NYT_ , June 13, 1959, A13.\n\n39. Doctors quoted in \"Rape Co-ed's Own Story,\" _NYAN_ , June 20, 1959, 1; also in \"Four Begin Defense in Trial on Rape,\" _NYT_ , June 13, 1959, A13; friends quoted in \"Did Not Consent,\" _TD_ , June 11, 1959; John Rudd and Richard Brown quoted in \"Deputy Tells of Confessions,\" TD, June 12, 1959.\n\n40. Trezzvant W. Anderson, \"Rapists Missed Out on First Selection,\" PC, June 20, 1959, 3; \"Four Begin Defense in Trial on Rape,\" _NYT_ , June 13, 1959, A13; Howard Williams quoted in \"Rape Defendants Claim Consent,\" TD, June 13, 1959.\n\n41. \"Negro Co-ed Gave Consent, Rape Defendants Tell Jury,\" AC, 13 June 1959.\n\n42. \"Four Convicted in Rape Case; Escape Chair; 2 hr 45 min Verdict Calmly Received in Court,\" TD, June 14, 1959, 1; Pearlie Collinsworth and friends quoted in \"Rape Defendants Claim Consent,\" TD, June 13, 1959; Maudine Reeve's History of Ted Collinsworth, \"States exhibit #15,\" criminal case file 3445, _Florida v. Scarborough, Beagles, Stoutamire, and Collinsworth, 1959;_ Mrs. W. T. Collinsworth, letter, \"State's exhibit #16,\" ibid.\n\n43. W. M. C. Wilhoit, testimony, in \"Motion for Leave to File Notice of Defense of Insanity,\" May 28, 1959, criminal case file 3445, _Florida v. Scarborough, Beagles, Stoutamire, and Collinsworth, 1959;_ \"Four Begin Defense in Trial on Rape,\" _NYT_ , June 13, 1959, A13; John Rudd quoted in \"Four Guilty of Raping Negro; Florida Jury Votes Mercy,\" _NYT_ , June 14, 1959, A1; Arthur Everett, \"Four Convicted in Florida Rape Case,\" WP, June 14, 1959; \"Insanity Plea Prepared as Rape Case Defense,\" TD, May 28, 1959; \"Mental Exam Set for Collinsworth,\" TD, May 29, 1959.\n\n44. \"Four Guilty of Raping Negro; Florida Jury Votes Mercy,\" _NYT_ , June 14, 1959, A1; Charles U. Smith, interview by Jackson Lee Ice, 1978, in JLI; verified in I-CUS, March 9, 1999.\n\n45. \"Precedent Seen in Rape Trial,\" TT, June 15, 1959; TD, June 14, 1959, 1.\n\n46. \"Verdict,\" June 14, 1959, criminal case file 3445, _Florida v. Scarborough, Beagles, Stoutamire, and Collinsworth, 1959;_ \"Guilty as Charged,\" BAA, June 20, 1959; A. H. King quoted in \"No Brutality Proof, Says Florida Jury,\" AC, June 15, 1959, 1.\n\n47. \"Mild Verdict Angers Negroes in Rape Case,\" PC, June 20, 1959; Claude Sitton, \"Negroes See Gain in Conviction of Four for Rape of Co-ed,\" _NYT_ , June 15, 1959, A1; \"I'm Leaving Dixie,\" _NYAN_ , June 20, 1959.\n\n48. Apparently students at Florida A&M ostracized Thomas Butterfield and Richard Brown for failing to protect Betty Jean Owens and Edna Richardson; students thought they ought to have shown some \"physical resistance\" rather than run away from the \"point of a knife and gun\": \"I'm Leaving Dixie,\" _NYAN_ , June 20, 1959; \"Hits Negro Men,\" _NYAN_ , June 6, 1959, 8; \"Williams Was Right,\" BAA, June 27, 1959; \"Four Convicted in Rape Case,\" TD, June 14, 1959, 7.\n\n49. Sitton, \"Negroes See Gain in Conviction of Four for Rape of Co-ed,\" _NYT_ , June 15, 1959, A1; \"Negroes Say They Will Use Tallahassee Case as Precedent in Rape Trials,\" TT, June 15, 1959.\n\n50. Trezzvant W. Anderson, \"Four Florida Rapists Near Chair,\" PC, July 4, 1959; Trezzvant W. Anderson, \"Fla. Rape Case Mercy Sought for Four Negroes,\" _PC_ , June 27, 1959.\n\n51. BAA, June 27, 1959.\n\n52. \"Hunt Convicted Rapist in Florida Woman's Murder,\" _CDD_ , February 11, 1969, 4. This article is the only source that mentions Beagles's name and his relationship to the murder of Betty Jean Robinson Houston. His criminal record, available online, does not mention a second murder charge. I am reluctant to say with certainty that he committed this crime without other evidence. David Beagles currently lives in Alabama and is on supervised parole. Florida Department of Corrections inmate number DC 66792, (accessed February 11, 2008). Patrick Scarborough was paroled in 1965, then sent back to prison for violating his parole in 1968. He was paroled again and then incarcerated again in 1993 for second-degree murder. He is currently serving out the remainder of his life sentence. DOC inmate number DC 022849, (accessed February 11, 2008). Ollie Stoutamire was paroled in 1965 and currently lives in Grand Ridge, Florida. William T. Collinsworth was paroled in 1965; I do not know his whereabouts.\n\n53. Roy Wilkins to Frederick Cunningham, June 23, 1959, box A91, series III, NAACP Papers; \"This Is Not Equal Justice,\" LW, July 4, 1959; Editorial, _NYAN_ , June 20, 1959, 8.\n\n54. Fred G. Millette to Judge W. May Walker, June 15, 1959, folder 1, box 912, WMW; Mrs. Laura Cox to Judge Walker, June 15, 1959, ibid., Mrs. Bill Aren to Judge Walker, June 15, 1959, ibid.\n\n55. On the \"incubus,\" see Glenda Gilmore, \"Murder, Memory, and the Flight of the Incubus,\" in Cecelski and Tyson, _Democracy Betrayed_ , 73\u201393.\n\n56. For information on Florida's moderate racial politics, see Thomas R. Wagy, _Governor LeRoy Collins of Florida: Spokesman of the New South_ (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1985); and \"From Sit-in to Race Riot: Businessmen, Blacks, and the Pursuit of Moderation in Tampa, 1960\u20131967,\" in Elizabeth Jacoway and David Colburn, eds., _Southern Businessmen and Desegregation_ (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), 257\u201381.\n\n57. Cases cited in Kimberly R. Woodard, \"The Summer of African-American Discontent,\" unpublished paper (Duke University, 1992). See also \"Death to be Demanded in Rape Case,\" BAA, 4 July 1959; \"S.C. Judge Makes History! Dooms Marine to Death in Chair,\" CD, July 11, 1959, 1; John H. McCray, \"Marine Doomed to Electric Chair in S.C. Rape Case,\" _BAA_ , July 11, 1959, 1; Clarence Mitchell, \"Separate but Equal Justice,\" BAA, July 11, 1959; \"Girlfriend Turns in Rape Suspect,\" BAA, August 1, 1959; \"Two Win New Trials,\" _NYT_ , November 15, 1961, 19; \"Free Marine Doomed for Raping Negro,\" _CDT_ , June 30, 1962,C10. Fred G. Davis appealed his death sentence to the South Carolina Supreme Court; they reversed the decision and returned it to the trial judge. See _State v. Fred G. Davis_ , 239 SC 280; 122 SE 2d 633; 1961 Lexis 52. Ralph Lee Betts of North Carolina was incarcerated and made numerous escapes. See his record on the North Carolina Department of Corrections website: http:\/\/webapps6.doc.state.nc.us\/apps\/offender\/offend1?DOCNUM=0030630&SENTENCEINFO=yes&SHOWPHOTO=yes (accessed February 11, 2008). At least one case did not follow the Tallahassee precedent. On July 15, Tommy Paul Daniels, a white man from Macon, Georgia, raped a black babysitter, then bragged about it to his friend's boss and told him he planned to take his brother back to the house for another round with the teenage girl. \"I even threatened to kill her when she cried out,\" Daniels boasted. The police arrived as Daniels and his brother were about to assault the girl again. Two months later an all-white jury acquitted Daniels, despite a city-wide campaign by the NAACP. See Andrew M. Manis, _Macon, Black and White: An Unutterable Separation in the American Century_ (Macon, Ga., 2004), 197\u201398; Trezzvant Anderson, \"Negroes Weep as Georgia White Is Acquitted,\" PC, September 26, 1959; \"Free White Georgian in Rape Case,\" CD, September 29, 1959, 9; \"Freed in Racial Rape,\" _NYT_ , September 16, 1959, 78. See also box 15, folder 83, and box 11, folder 36, TWA.\n\n58. James Booker, \"The Tallahassee Case\u2014A Turning Point in the South,\" _NYAN_ , July 18, 1959.\n\n59. Editorial, \"A Step Toward Equal Justice,\" LW, July 18, 1959.\n\n60. \"The Tallahassee Case: A Turning Point in the South,\" _NYAN_ , July 18, 1959; John H. McCray, \"South's Courts Show New Day of Justice,\" BAA, June 11, 1959.\n\n61. Richard Haley, \"Reports on Events in Tallahassee, October 1959-June 1960,\" folder 7, box 10, series 5, CORE Papers.\n\n62. Ella J. Baker, \"Bigger Than a Hamburger,\" in Clayborne Carson, ed., _The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle, 1954\u20131990_ (New York, 1991), 120.\n\n63. For more on the sit-ins in Greensboro, see William H. Chafe, _Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom_ (New York, 1981).\n\n64. An electronic search of articles about white men who raped black women, in the _Chicago Defender_ from 1950 to 1960, yielded thirty-one articles, while a similar search turned up only eleven articles in the same paper from 1960 to 1970.\n\n65. Gerda Lerner, _Black Women in White America: A Documentary History_ (New York, 1972), 172. See also Hall, \"Mind That Burns,\" 328\u201349; and Leslie A. Schwalm, _A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina_ (Urbana, Ill., 1997), 37, 44\u201345, 119\u201321.\n\n66. James W. Silver, _Mississippi: The Closed Society_ (New York, 1964), 151.\n\n## CHAPTER 6. \"A BLACK WOMAN'S BODY WAS NEVER HERS ALONE\"\n\n1. Chana Kai Lee, _For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer_ (Urbana, Ill., 1999), 9, 11.\n\n2. Ibid., 9\u201310.\n\n3. Harriet A. Washington, _Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present_ (New York, 2006), 190. In 1973 the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a class-action lawsuit to end federal funding for involuntary sterilization. SPLC lawyers discovered that 100,000 to 150,000 women had been sterilized using federal funds; half of them were black women. Ibid., 202\u20134; According to Dorothy Roberts, \"It was a common belief among Blacks in the south that Black women were routinely sterilized without their informed consent for no valid medical reasons,\" and \"teaching hospitals performed unnecessary hysterectomies on poor black women as practice for their medical residents. This sort of abuse was so widespread,\" Roberts continues, that \"these operations came to be known as Mississippi appendectomies.\" Dorothy Roberts, _Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty_ (New York, 1999), 90. U.S. Congress, \"Hearing Before a Select Panel on Mississippi and Civil Rights, Testimony of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer,\" _Congressional Record_ , 88th Cong., 2d sess., June 4 to June 16, 1964, vol. 110, pt. 10, 14001\u20132; Lee, _Freedom's Sake_ , 20\u201321. Hamer was a lifelong opponent of birth control. The women's movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s fought to restrict the practice of coercive or forced sterilization. The Reproductive Rights National Network (R2N2) \"investigated and documented thousands of cases of forced sterilization, especially of people of color; of welfare recipients threatened with cutoffs of stipends unless they submitted to sterilization; and of women asked to sign sterilization consent forms while in labor, either in pain or partly anesthetized.\" In 1974 the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare finally issued guidelines that required informed consent and prohibited sterilization of women under the age of twenty-one. See Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, \"Second Wave Feminism,\" in Nancy Hewitt, ed., _A Companion to American Women's History_ (New York, 2002), 420.\n\n4. Ibid., 21; Kay Mills, _This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer_ (New York, 1993), 22.\n\n5. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 171.\n\n6. Lee, _Freedom's Sake_ , 49; See also \"The Winona Incident: An Interview with Annelle Ponder and Fannie Lou Hamer, June 13, 1963,\" in Pat Watters and Reese Cleghorn, _Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Arrival of Negroes in Southern Politics_ (New York, 1967); SNCC Papers, microfilm, reel 40, frames 454\u201357.\n\n7. Annell Ponder, interview by Jack Minnis, SNCC Papers, microfilm, reel 38, frame 502; Watters and Cleghorn, _Climbing_ , 366.\n\n8. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 171.\n\n9. Payne, _Light of Freedom_ , 242.\n\n10. Lee, _Freedom's Sake_ , 9\u201310, 78\u201381, 51\u201352. Although Lee argues that Hamer was \"inclined to dissemble when it came to sex, race and violence\" (78\u201381), Lee's own evidence suggested that Hamer testified publicly to the sexualized aspects of her beating in Winona, Mississippi, and her forced sterilization as often as she kept them hidden (see 54, 59, 79, 80\u201381, 89, 198n42, 196n2).\n\n11. Ibid., 52; Fannie Lou Hamer, interview, in Selby and Selby, _Odyssey_ , 186. See also Jerry DeMuth, \"Tired of Being Sick and Tired,\" _Nation_ , June 1, 1964.\n\n12. Lawrence Guyot, interview by John Rachal, 1996, transcript, vol. 673, COHCH. See also Lee, _Freedom's Sake_ , 53.\n\n13. Lee, _Freedom's Sake_ , 59.\n\n14. Ibid., 78\u201381.\n\n15. WNEW Radio transcript, June 6, 1963, CORE Papers on microfilm, series III, reel 22, frames 219\u201329. See also \"The Uses of Nonviolence,\" _Nation_ , July 6, 1963, 2\u20133.\n\n16. WNEW Radio transcript. Demonstrations in Jackson took place in the spring and early summer of 1963, just a few months after James Meredith integrated Ole Miss and just before Medgar Evers was assassinated. Between 1890 and 1920 middle-class black women active in the Baptist Church and Convention movement relied on the politics of respectability to counter negative stereotypes and to advance an agenda of racial equality. Strict adherence to \"manners and morals\" in public helped black women protect their sexual identities and assert themselves as dignified human beings in a white supremacist society that ridiculed them as lazy, dirty, and\/or promiscuous. According to Darlene Clark Hine, middle-class black women also adopted a \"culture of dissemblance\" to shield themselves emotionally and physically from Jim Crow. As a result, clubwomen used respectability and dissemblance as political weapons to fight racism and win sympathetic white allies. See also Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, _Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880\u20131920_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 193\u201394.\n\n17. WNEW Radio transcript, June 6, 1963, CORE Papers on microfilm, series III, reel 22, frames 219\u201329.\n\n18. Olson, _Daughter_ , 191.\n\n19. Ibid., 192.\n\n20. Robnett, _How Long?_ , 134\u201335. SNCC released Turner's sworn affidavit on January 20, 1962.\n\n21. Unita Blackwell, interview, in Tiffany Joseph and Gabriel Mendes, \"Voter Registration and the Missisppi Freedom Democratic Party,\" on the _Freedom Now! Archival Project of Tougaloo College and Brown University_ website, (accessed July 21, 2009).\n\n22. \"Police Brutality in Southwest Georgia, 1963,\" folder 2, box 47, CAB.\n\n23. Ibid.\n\n24. Medical Committee for Human Rights, Report, June 1965, folder 11, box 55, CAB. For more on the Medical Committee, see John Dittmer, _The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care_ (New York, 2009). For more on the abuse of black women in Southern prisons, see Douglas Blackmon, _Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II_ (New York, 2009); and Mary Ellen Curtin, _Black Prisoners and Their World: Alabama, 1865\u20131900_ (Charlottesville, Va., 2000).\n\n25. WNEW Radio transcript, June 6, 1963, CORE Papers on microfilm, series III, reel 22, frames 219\u201329. See also _Nation_ , July 6, 1963, 3.\n\n26. Dorothy Height, _Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir_ (New York, 2003), 158; and Deborah Gray White, _Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894\u20131994_ (New York, 1999), 194.\n\n27. \"Background: Atlanta, Jackson, London, Selma 1963\u20131966,\" folder 2, box 2, series 19, NCNWR. Thanks to Kenneth Chandler for his help locating this transcript.\n\n28. Ibid.\n\n29. Height, _Open Wide_ , 158\u201359.\n\n30. \"Cowan, Polly\u2014Writings,\" folder 22, box 4, series 19, NCNWR. Thanks to Kenneth Chandler for finding this document for me.\n\n31. Height, _Open Wide_ , 162.\n\n32. Ibid., 169.\n\n33. White, _Too Heavy_ , 198.\n\n34. For more on the Birmingham movement, see Glenn T. Eskew, _But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997); Andrew Manis, _A Fire You Can't Put Out (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1999);_ Diane McWhorter, _Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution_ (New York, 2001); and Thornton, _Dividing_.\n\n35. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 157. Between 1962 and 1964, when the VEP organized throughout the South, black voter registration in Mississippi barely budged.\n\n36. _Freedom on My Mind_ , produced and directed by Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, California Newsreel, 1994, videocassette.\n\n37. Endesha Ida Mae Holland, _From the Mississippi Delta: A Memoir_ (New York, 1997), 78.\n\n38. Ibid., 83.\n\n39. Ibid., 84.\n\n40. Ibid., 86.\n\n41. Ibid., 91, 90. It is unclear if Holland is suggesting that many Delta families were headed by single mothers, or if the oppressive racial environment made it difficult, if not dangerous, for black men to protect their wives and daughters.\n\n42. Ibid., 85.\n\n43. Ibid., 90.\n\n44. Moses came to Mississippi as an SNCC volunteer in the federally sponsored Voter Education Project. President John F. Kennedy helped raise money from liberal philanthropic organizations to steer civil rights activists into voter registration, which he hoped would provoke less violence and fewer headlines than the nonviolent direct action strategies pursued by SNCC and CORE during the 1960 sit-ins and 1961 Freedom Ride. Major civil rights organizations\u2014the NAACP, SCLC, CORE, and SNCC\u2014agreed to participate, believing that the Kennedy administration would protect them from white violence. Between 1962 and 1964, they fanned out across the South to register black voters. Wiley Branton, director of the VEP, believed the \"Justice Department would take all necessary steps to protect federal or constitutional rights,\" including the \"elementary matter of protection.\" The Justice Department, however, had no intention of sending federal troops to the South \"for fear of alienating powerful southern lawmakers whose cooperation the administration needed to pass its legislative program.\" When law enforcement was left up to hostile local officials, civil rights activists were often mistreated, beaten, sexually abused, and, in some cases, killed. See Lawson, _Running_ , 86\u201390.\n\n45. Holland, _Delta_ , 210.\n\n46. Ibid., 219. Holland went on to earn her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and became a professor at the University of Southern California and SUNY Buffalo. Her play, _From the Mississippi Delta_ , was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Endesha Ida Mae Holland died January 25, 2006.\n\n47. Even after Byron de la Beckwith assassinated Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers on June 11, 1963, the Kennedy administration's solution to white violence was to get \"black people off the streets\" and negotiate with white leaders who continued to flout the constitution. According to Dittmer, the \"Kennedys demonstrated once again that in the short run, at least, they preferred order to justice.\" Dittmer, _Local People_ , 169. For more on the life and death of Medgar Evers, see Myrlie Evers, _For Us, the Living_ (New York, 1967); Adam Nossiter, _Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers_ (Cambridge, Mass., 2002); Myrlie Evers-Williams, Manning Marable, and Medgar Wiley Evers, _The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches_ (New York, 2005).\n\n48. Olson, _Daughters_ , 294.\n\n49. Sally Belfrage, _Freedom Summer_ (Charlottesville, Va., 1965), 10.\n\n50. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 263.\n\n51. John Herbers, \"Mississippi: A Profile of the Nation's Most Segregated State,\" _NYT_ , June 28, 1964, E3.\n\n52. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 266; clipping, _Newsweek_ , February 24, 1964, box 274, series IIIA, NAACP Papers.\n\n53. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 266.\n\n54. \"Went into State to Enroll Voters,\" _NYT_ , December 5, 1964, 19.\n\n55. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 266.\n\n56. Clipping, _Newsweek_ , February 24, 1964, in box 274, series IIIA, NAACP Papers.\n\n57. Ibid.\n\n58. Robnett, _How Long?_ , 127; Dittmer, _Local People_ , 251.\n\n59. Klansmen murdered Charles Moore, a twenty-year-old Alcorn College student, and Henry Dee, twenty-one, after beating them in the Homochitto National Forest on May 2, 1964. Bystanders also found the body of a black teenager wearing a CORE T-shirt floating in the Big Black River that summer. He was never identified. See Dittmer, _Local People_ , 251\u201352.\n\n60. Ibid., 251.\n\n61. Often called the \"Emmett Till generation,\" many SNCC workers remember the brutal lynching of Till and the image of his mutilated body printed in _Jet_ magazine as a galvanizing force. Ibid., 58. Sally Belfrage saw pictures of Till in _Jet_ for the first time during Freedom Summer. She remembered it being \"the most awful picture I had ever seen.\" Belfrage, _Summer_ , 159.\n\n62. For more on the interracial tensions during Freedom Summer, see Sara Evans, _Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left_ (New York, 1979); and Mary King, _Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement_ (New York, 1987), esp. chap. 12.\n\n63. A number of scholars seem to be interested in whether interracial sex did actually occur during Freedom Summer and, if so, what it means. I am not interested in this issue, agreeing with Bernice Johnson Reagon that \"a lot of it was nobody's business.\" Robnett, _How Long?_ , 131; See also Renee C. Romano, _Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America_ (Gainesville, Fla., 2006), 177\u201385; and Allen Matusow, \"From Civil Rights to Black Power: The Case of SNCC, 1960\u20131966,\" in Barton J. Bernstein and Allen J. Matusow, eds., _Twentieth Century America: Recent Interpretations_ (New York, 1969), 531\u201336.\n\n64. Olson, _Daughters_ , 267.\n\n65. Ibid., 305; Robnett, _How Long?_ , 124.\n\n66. Olson, _Daughters_ , 267.\n\n67. Belfrage, _Summer_ , 111.\n\n68. Ibid.\n\n69. \"Innocent Plea in Rape Case,\" _JDN_ , July 27, 1960, 5; \"White Youth Guilty in Rape,\" NYT, July 28, 1960, 5.\n\n70. Ibid. It is unclear whether the girl normally carried a penknife when in the company of white men, or if she was wary of Loden, but it is an interesting detail. Did black women carry small weapons when they went to work for whites? Did mothers and fathers warn their daughters and encourage them to protect themselves?\n\n71. \"Report on Rape Cases Beginning January 1, 1940, Through March 31, 1965, Compiled from the Records of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, Mississippi,\" box 21, LSCRRCP. The report contains the name, charge, sentence, and status of each man charged with rape in every county of Mississippi, but it does not list the dates on which they were charged. Charles Coffee and Louis Coffee received life sentences for raping a \"Negro age 5\" and, as of March 31, 1965, were still in Parchman (see note 74 below). With the exception of Abraham Sloan and the Coffee brothers, none of the white men charged or sentenced were from the Delta. Eighty-nine African Americans in Delta counties were charged with rape or attempted rape and sentenced to prison between 1940 and 1965. Of those, the report indicates, seventeen were charged with rape or attempted rape of white women. The sentencing patterns indicate that when charged with rape or attempted rape of white women, black men were sentenced to life in prison. They received paltry sentences for similar charges brought by black girls or women. The breakdown of the numbers of black men charged and sentenced in Delta counties: Bolivar, 11; Carroll, 2; Coahoma, 15; Humphreys, 3; Issaquena, 3; Leflore, 11; Sharkey, 7; Sunflower, 13; Tallahatchie, 2; Tunica, 3; Washington, 15; Yazoo, 4.\n\n72. \"Rapes Race Girl; Saved by Jury,\" CD, August 6, 1960, 1; \"White Youth Guilty in Rape,\" NYT, July 28, 1960, 5.\n\n73. \"Rapes Race Girl; Saved by Jury,\" _CD_ , August 6, 1960, 1. In 1965, when the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council researched sentencing patterns for rape in the South, they compiled a record of rape cases in Mississippi from 1940 to 1965. The record indicates that as of March 31, 1965, L. J. Loden was still serving time in Parchman penitentiary. See \"Report on Rape Cases Beginning January 1, 1940, Through March 31, 1965, Compiled from the Records of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, Mississippi,\" box 21, LSCRRCP.\n\n74. \"White Youth Gets Life in Rape Case,\" WP, December 12, 1965, A3. On February 8, 1961, two white male pedophiles from Yazoo City, Mississippi, were convicted of raping a five-year-old African-American child on a plantation and sentenced to life in prison. The assailants, Louis Coffee, eighteen, and Charles Coffee, twenty, pleaded guilty. I do not include this in my calculation since pedophilia is a different and unique sex crime, but it is worth mentioning. See \"Whites Get Life Sentences,\" JA, February 8, 1961, 1; and \"Two Get Life for Rape,\" _NYT_ , February 10, 1961, 15.\n\n75. My research indicates that no white man was executed by the state of Mississippi\u2014or any other Southern state, for that matter\u2014for the crime of rape on a black woman between 1940 and 1975, the period this book covers.\n\n76. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, including hotels, restaurants, and theaters; banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment; created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce this provision and investigate discrimination in the workplace; made federal funding contingent upon fair practices; barred unequal voter-registration requirements but failed to eliminate literacy tests; and enabled the Justice Department to file lawsuits to force states to desegregate their schools. The act contained no provision that could be used to protect civil rights activists from physical harm. See Lawson, _Running for Freedom_ , 91, 95.\n\n77. Fannie Lou Hamer and Victoria Gray were elected congresspersons in the November 1964 statewide mock elections. Payne, _Light of Freedom_ , 321.\n\n78. American Radio Works, \"Fannie Lou Hamer Testimony in Front of the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 22, 1964,\" , accessed March 12, 2008; Lawson, _Running for Freedom_ , 97; Dittmer, _Local People_ , 272\u2013302 passim; and Lee, _Freedom's Sake_ , 99.\n\n## CHAPTER 7. SEX AND CIVIL RIGHTS\n\n1. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 488.\n\n2. Dan T. Carter, _From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich_ (Baton Rouge, La., 1999) 1; Branch, _At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965\u20131968_ (New York, 2006), 162.\n\n3. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 165; Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, after speedy action by Congress. The act banned literacy tests; authorized the use of federal registrars and observers to enforce voting rights; required states to have electoral changes approved to guarantee the rules; did not discriminate against black voters (known as preclearance); brought Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and parts of North Carolina under federal supervision; and enabled the Justice Department to bring suit against states that continued to use the poll tax. In order to avoid federal supervision, states have to appeal to federal district court in Washington, D.C., and prove that they did not use a \"discriminatory test or device for the previous five years.\" Lawson, _Running_ , 117\u201318.\n\n4. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 403\u201306.\n\n5. Ibid., 399\u2013401; on Jim Clark's posse, see 411.\n\n6. For a good description of Clark, see \"Jim Clark, Sheriff Who Enforced Segregation, Dies at 84,\" _NYT_ , June 7, 2007. See also \"Bridge to Freedom,\" _Eyes on the Prize_ DVD. Approximately 14,000 blacks and 14,500 whites made up Selma's population in 1964; the county population was about 58 percent black in 1960. In 1970, 29,000 blacks and 26,500 whites lived in Dallas County. See Thornton, _Dividing_ , 414, 498\u201389.\n\n7. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 8.\n\n8. For more on the Jimmie Lee Jackson case and the current legal proceedings against James Bonard Fowler, see journalist John Fleming's investigative work at the _Anniston Star_ , (accessed April 23, 2008). See also Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 8, and Thornton, _Dividing_ , 486.\n\n9. \"Bridge to Freedom,\" _Eyes on the Prize_ DVD.\n\n10. Al Turner, ibid.\n\n11. Lawson, _Running, 110_ \u201311. This was King's strategy in Birmingham, where he and the SCLC counted on \"Bull\" Connor to attack the respectable and nonviolent marchers, many of whom were children. For more on the way white violence attracted national media attention and thus compelled federal action, see Payne, _Light of Freedom_ , 394\u201399.\n\n12. David Garrow, _Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference_ (New York, 1989), 381.\n\n13. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 46.\n\n14. F. D. Reese, interview by Larry Vasser, box 121, series 4, TB.\n\n15. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 50.\n\n16. Ibid., 52.\n\n17. See film footage of the confrontation on \"Bridge to Freedom,\" _Eyes on the Prize_ DVD.\n\n18. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 56.\n\n19. Thornton, _Dividing_ , 488.\n\n20. Mary Stanton, _From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo_ (Athens, Ga., 1998), 143; Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 153.\n\n21. \"Alabamian in House Assails March,\" _NYT_ , March 31, 1965, 17; \"Says Sex Is Motive in Rights Movement,\" CD, March 31, 1965, 9.\n\n22. Stanton, _From Selma_ , 144.\n\n23. \"Photos Prove March Orgies, Says Solon,\" BN, April 4, 1965; \"Godless riff-raff\" quote from \"Says Sex Is Motive in Rights Movement,\" CD, March 31, 1965, 9.\n\n24. Stanton, _From Selma_ , 144\u201345; Albert C. Persons, _Sex and Civil Rights: The True Selma Story_ (Birmingham, Ala., 1965), 1.\n\n25. Persons, _Sex_ , 9.\n\n26. Affidavits from Alabama Department of Public Safety, GW.\n\n27. Ibid.\n\n28. Ironically, an entire section of the book is devoted to \"How 'Images' Are Created,\" detailing how media bias manipulates images to advance a pro\u2013civil rights agenda.\n\n29. Persons, _Sex_ , 7.\n\n30. Ibid., 4.\n\n31. Ibid., 6.\n\n32. On Bayard Rustin, see John D'Emilio, _Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard_ _Rustin_ (New York, 2003); Jervis Andersen, _Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen_ (Berkeley, Calif., 1998).\n\n33. Persons, _Sex_ , 14.\n\n34. Stanton, _From Selma_ , 144.\n\n35. Patricia Sullivan, ed., _Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr: Letters from the Civil Rights Years_ (New York, 2003), 328.\n\n36. Virginia Durr to Carl and Anne Braden, May 3, 1965, folder 1, box 41, CAB. See also Virginia Foster Durr with Hollinger F. Barnard, ed., _Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr_ (New York, 1987), 327, 328.\n\n37. Virginia Durr to Carl and Anne Braden, May 3, 1965, folder 1, box 41, CAB.\n\n38. See the stack of telegrams sent to the NAACP, \"Telegrams Relating to Selma-Montgomery March,\" box 274, series IIIA, NAACP Papers.\n\n39. Al Kuettner, \"Reporter Digs into Talk of Alabama Sex Orgies,\" _Mississippi Press Scimi_ tar, April 1, 1965.\n\n40. \"Clerics in March Rebut Dickinson,\" April 29, 1965, _NYT_ , 16.\n\n41. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 153.\n\n42. Durr with Barnard, _Outside_ , 175.\n\n43. Ibid., 326\n\n44. Governor George Wallace to Congressman Malcolm Bethea, April 7, 1965, GW.\n\n45. Stanton, _From Selma_ , 147.\n\n46. James G. Clark, _I Saw Selma Raped: The Jim Clark Story_ (Birmingham, Ala., 1966). Clark's book recycles information found in Persons's magazine, _Sex and Civil Rights_ , and offers up Lost Cause justifications for white oppression of African Americans.\n\n47. Clark, _Selma Raped_ , 42.\n\n48. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 173.\n\n49. FBI report on murder of Liuzzo, March 26, 1965, folder 2, box 124, TB; Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 173\u201374.\n\n50. \"Action squad\" in Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 178; \"panicked\" in Stanton, _From Selma_ , 52.\n\n51. Jack Anderson, \"FBI Informer Was Traveling in Murder Car,\" WP, March 21, 1983, B13; Stanton, _From Selma_ , 55.\n\n52. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 218; Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, _We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi_ (New York, 1988), 442; \"The Imperial Klonsel: Matt Murphy,\" NYT, May 7, 1965, 25.\n\n53. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 177. See also, \"Memorandum for Mr. Tolson, Mr. Belmong, Mr. Deloach, Mr. Rosen,\" from J. Edgar Hoover, March 26, 1965, folder 2, box 124, TB.\n\n54. Stanton, _From Selma_ , 54.\n\n55. Ibid., 55.\n\n56. \"Liuzzo Case Jury Retires for Night Without a Verdict,\" _NYT_ , May 7, 1965, 1.\n\n57. \"Klansman Linked to Death Bullet,\" _NYT_ , May 6, 1965, 1.\n\n58. Eliza Heard, \"Economics and a Murder Trial,\" _New South_ , October, 1965, 5; Olson, _Daughters_ , 346.\n\n59. Virginia Foster Durr, _Freedom Winter_ , ed. Patricia Sullivan (New York, 2003), 331; See also \"Press Release,\" May 7, 1965, box 273, series IIIA, NAACP Papers.\n\n60. Stanton, _From Selma_ , 116.\n\n61. Ibid., 55.\n\n62. Ibid., 121; _Time_ , May 14, 1965.\n\n63. \"Liuzzo Case Jury Retires for Night Without a Verdict,\" _NYT_ , May 7, 1965, 1; Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 218.\n\n64. \"Liuzzo Case Jury Retires for Night,\" _NYT_ , May 7, 1965, 1.\n\n65. All of Liuzzo's murderers, Eugene Thomas, forty-three, of Bessemer; William Orville Eaton, forty-one, of Bessemer; Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., twenty-one, of Fairfield; and Gary Thomas Rowe (FBI informant), thirty-one, of Birmingham, were found not guilty of state murder charges. On December 3, 1965, Thomas, Eaton, and Wilkins were found guilty on federal charges of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Liuzzo. See Thornton, _Dividing_ , 489; Stanton, _From Selma_ , 130.\n\n66. Stanton, _From Selma_ , 120\u201321.\n\n67. Ibid., 121.\n\n68. \"FBI Has Drawn Cloak of Secrecy Around Arrests of Four Klansmen,\" _WP_ , March 28, 1965, A2; Stanton, _From Selma_ , 54.\n\n69. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 219; \"Murder in Alabama: American Wives Think Viola Liuzzo Should Have Stayed Home,\" _Ladies' Home Journal_ , July 1965, in folder 2, box 124, TB.\n\n70. The \"decaying structures of family life\" are indicated by the statistics found in the report: \"1\/4 of all negro marriages dissolved; 1\/4 of all negro births illegitimate; 1\/4 of negro families headed by women; 90% higher infant mortality rate, heavy narcotics addiction and delinquency, and rampant poverty.\" See Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor, _The Negro Family: The Case for National Action_ (U.S. Government Printing Office, No. 1965 0\u2013794\u2013628, March 1965). By August, the report had become headline news. \"Inside Report,\" _WP_ , August 18, 1965, A19. See also Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 370. For the definitive account of how Americans responded to the Moynihan report, see Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, _The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).\n\n71. \"Race Problems Pointed Up in Moynihan Report,\" LAT, September 29, 1965, A4.\n\n72. Peniel W. Joseph, _Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour_ (New York, 2006), 152.\n\n73. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 371.\n\n74. Whites in the area were not nonviolent; only thirty miles away, in Poplarville, a mob kidnapped and lynched Mack Charles Parker in 1959. In Hattiesburg, only 25 of the 7,495 eligible black voters were registered in 1961. The Kennedy Justice Department filed a number of lawsuits in an attempt to force Lynd to at least permit blacks to attempt to register to vote. Lynd defied the Justice Department at every turn and even refused to obey a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals prohibiting him from discriminating against blacks. When the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's rulings, Lynd still did not comply. The lawsuits made Hattiesburg the \"major testing ground in the battle for suffrage rights.\" Dittmer, _Local People_ , 179\u201380, 184.\n\n75. Ibid., 179.\n\n76. Ibid., 182.\n\n77. Ibid., 259.\n\n78. Kennard's case was a frame-up organized and carried out by the State Sovereignty Commission with the full support of Governor J. P. Coleman and William D. McCain, president of USM. The commission spied on Kennard, used friendly blacks to dissuade him from applying to USM, and jailed him when he persisted. When Kennard was diagnosed with end-stage cancer in 1963, state leaders released him from prison to avoid any outside scrutiny should he die in custody. The trumped-up conviction and sentence were just \"another example of racial justice in the closed society\" and indicated whites were willing to do just about anything to thwart black advancement. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 79\u201383 passim.\n\n79. Ibid., 213.\n\n80. HA, November 9, 1965, 2.\n\n81. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 217. Sam Bowers was convicted along with seven other Klansmen of federal civil rights violations in the murders of James Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney in October 1967. Bowers was finally convicted in 1998 of murdering Vernon Dahmer on January 10, 1966. After Dahmer announced he would help blacks register to vote by collecting poll taxes at his store, Bowers and two carloads of Klansmen firebombed Dahmer's home and business. Dahmer died shortly thereafter from burns and injuries sustained during the attack. See Dittmer, _Local People_ , 391.\n\n82. Laurie Pritchett was the chief of police in Albany, Georgia, from 1959 to 1966. When the SCLC launched a campaign to desegregate local institutions and register voters there in 1961, Pritchett declared he was in favor of nonviolence and ordered his officers to use restraint. Pritchett's decision kept negative nationwide publicity to a minimum, contributing to the \"failure\" of the SCLC's Albany campaign. For more on the Albany movement, see Branch, _Parting the Waters_ , and Garrow, _Bearing the Cross_. Only one person was arrested during Freedom Day, a break from past practices. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 221.\n\n83. \"Negro Girl Reports Rape by White Man,\" HA, July 14, 1965, 7; \"Cannon Indicted, Pleads Innocent to Rape Charge,\" HA, July 17, 1965, 1.\n\n84. Lois Miles interview by author, October 17, 2007, Hattiesburg, Mississppi.\n\n85. \"Negro Girl Reports Rape by White Man,\" _HA_ , July 14, 1965, 7; \"Cannon Indicted, Pleads Innocent to Rape Charge,\" HA, July 17, 1965, 1. Description of crime scene based upon author visit to Hattiesburg on October 17, 2007; I-JD.\n\n86. \"Cannon Indicted, Pleads Innocent to Rape Charge,\" HA, July 17, 1965, 1; \"Southern White Found Guilty of Raping Negro,\" LAT, November 12, 1965, 12.\n\n87. Yashuhiro Katagiri, _Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil Rights and States Rights_ (Jackson, Miss., 2001), 173; see also \"Press Release,\" n.d, in M191, folder 7, box 137, GPJ.\n\n88. \"White Convicted of Raping Negro,\" _NYT_ , November 12, 1965, 1.\n\n89. \"Cannon Indicted, Pleads Innocent to Rape Charge,\" HA, July 17, 1965, 1; I-JD.\n\n90. \"Rape Trial Under Way; Grandmother Points to Cannon,\" HA, November 9, 1965, 1.\n\n91. \"Conflicting Stories Told,\" HA, November 10, 1965, 1.\n\n92. \"Southern White Found Guilty of Raping Negro,\" LAT, November 12, 1965, 12.\n\n93. I-JD.\n\n94. \"Conflicting Stories Told,\" HA, November 10, 1965, 1; I-JD. Dukes described the language of the defense attorney as \"rude\" and \"crass.\" He said that he asked inappropriate things and made everyone in court sick with his perverted language.\n\n95. \"Rape Trial Under Way; Grandmother Points to Cannon,\" HA, November 9, 1965, 1.\n\n96. Ibid.\n\n97. \"Grandmother Points Out Man Accused of Assault,\" CL, November 10, 1965, 4.\n\n98. I-JD.\n\n99. \"Conflicting Stories Told,\" HA, November 10, 1965, 1.\n\n100. Ibid.\n\n101. \"Cannon Found Guilty of Rape, Jury Gives Him Life,\" HA, November 11, 1965, 1.\n\n102. \"Southern White Found Guilty of Raping Negro,\" LAT, November 12, 1965, 12.\n\n103. \"Cannon Found Guilty of Rape,\" 1; \"White Convicted of Raping Negro,\" _NYT_ , November 12, 1965, 1.\n\n104. \"State Man Gets Life for Rape of Negro Girl,\" _JA_ , November 20, 1965, 1.\n\n105. None of the movement activists I interviewed or contacted remembered the case, including Raylawni Branch, who desegregated USM in the fall of 1965, and Daisy Wade Harris, who housed movement activists and whose sons helped desegregate the public schools. I-RB, I-DWH. Joyce Ladner said hearing about Cannon's conviction \"hit me like a bolt of lightning.\" Joyce Ladner to author, March 7, 2006. None of the oral histories collected at USM's Center for Oral History mention the case, except for Judge Stanton Hall, who claimed he sent Cannon to prison for life because \"I have justice in the back of my heart and justice is blind, we have no difference here between race, creed and color. And whoever you are, we try them on their merits.\" See \"Interview with Judge Stanton Augustus Hall, Judge, 12th district, Mississippi Circuit,\" by Prof. Carl Willis, 1972, vol. III, 45, COHCH. Thanks to Curtis Austin for his assistance and hospitality.\n\n106. Dittmer, _Local People_ , 327.\n\n107. The _Chicago Defender_ ran a small paragraph issued by UPI that reported the guilty verdict but offered very little detail or commentary. \"Dixie White Guilty in Rape of Negro Girl,\" CD, November 13, 1965.\n\n108. I-JD.\n\n109. \"South Must Enforce Own Criminal Laws,\" HA, November 11, 1965, 1.\n\n110. \"Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, Mississippi,\" November 23, 1965, M191, folder 4, box 138, GPJ.\n\n111. Ibid.\n\n112. \"Rape Conviction Here Is Upheld,\" HA, October 3, 1966, 3; _Norman Cannon v. State of Mississippi_ , 190 So 2d 848; 1966. Cannon appealed his conviction a number of times, most recently in 2001. Thanks to Jean Smith Vaughn, assistant attorney general, who shared the state's brief with me.\n\n113. \"Cite Southern Courts, Officers in CR Woes,\" HA, November 15, 1965, 1.\n\n114. Branch, _At Canaan's Edge_ , 382.\n\n115. \"White Convicted of Raping Negro,\" _NYT_ , November 12, 1965, 1; \"Southern White Found Guilty of Raping Negro,\" LAT, November 12, 1965, 12; \"White Youth Gets Life in Rape Case,\" _WP_ , November 12, 1965, A3.\n\n116. \"South Finds New 'Sense of Somebodiness,' \" LAT, November 21, 1965, K3.\n\n117. After the Tallahassee verdicts in 1959, the NAACP indicated it would focus on making sentencing in interracial rape cases more equal, especially in Florida, where a number of black men waited on death row for rape or attempted rape of white women. See Chapter 5. See also \"Racial Double Standard Is Charged in Rape Cases,\" _WP_ , September 22, 1966.\n\n118. In January 1966, the Southern Regional Council (SRC) issued a special report reinforcing the NAACP's findings. The report used statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to show that \"despite the fact that more than half of all convicted rapists are white, eighty-seven percent of all the persons executed for rape between 1930 and 1963 were Negroes convicted and sentenced by southern courts.\" According to the report, the skewed sentences were firmly rooted in the legal and customary exclusion of African Americans and women on Southern juries. The jury system in the South, the SRC argued, existed in a \"crippled condition.\" Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach told the _Chicago Defender_ that he concurred with the SRC's findings. \"The jury system as it now operates in most parts of the South,\" he said, \"is grossly unfair.\" Harry Golden, \"Southern Justice and the Negro,\" CD, January 15, 1966, 14. Because the death penalty for rape was a \"peculiar product of Southern history and culture,\" the LDF announced a major study that would examine twenty-six hundred rape cases in eleven Southern states over the previous twenty years. With a grant of $100,000 from the LDF, Marvin Wolfgang, a University of Pennsylvania criminologist, and Anthony Amsterdam, a legal scholar at Stanford, supervised twenty-eight law students selected by the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council (LSCRRC) as they journeyed into 225 counties investigating every rape conviction after 1945 that they could find. Jack Greenberg, the director of the LDF's efforts, hoped the survey would yield information that could be used to \"establish precedents on the sentencing issue\" in eighteen capital punishment cases being handled by the LDF. \"We are making the legal argument that the arbitrary discretion to choose between life and death, by southern juries, violates due process plus equal protection because, in the absence of any standards... southern juries are free to act arbitrarily and discriminatorily.\" A _Chicago Defender_ headline neatly summarized the issue: \"Rape Trap Helps Dixie Lynch Legally.\" See \"Study Probes 'Bias' in Rape Cases,\" CD, April 25, 1966, 6; \"Rape Penalties in South Studied,\" _NYT_ , April 26, 1966. See also box 21, LSCRRCP; \"Rape Trap Helps Dixie Lynch Legally,\" CD, February 11, 1967, 7. The LDF used results from the study to challenge a number of cases in which African-American men convicted of rape received the death penalty, many of which even reached the Supreme Court.\n\n119. _Norman Cannon, Appellant, v. State of Mississippi, Appellee_ , 816 So 2d 433; 2002 Miss. Cannon's appeal for post conviction relief and motion for habeas corpus were denied on April 30, 2002. Cannon may have died in prison, as he is no longer listed as an inmate at Parchman penitentiary and there is no record of his conviction being overturned.\n\n120. Peter Wallenstein, _Tell the Court I Love My Wife_ (New York, 2002), 15.\n\n121. On the way gender and sexuality structured slavery, see Kathleen Brown, _Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996) 128\u201336; Kirsten Fischer, _Suspect Relations: Sex, Race and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina_ (Ithaca, N.Y., 2002); and White, _Too Heavy_.\n\n122. Romano, _Race Mixing_ , 186; _Loving v. Virginia_ 388 U.S. 1 (1967). Eleven former Confederate states plus five border states. See also, Wallenstein, _Tell the Court_ , 232.\n\n123. Romano, _Race Mixing_ , 189. The Lovings violated the 1691 law established during slavery and its modern manifestations. However, the \"only way in which the Lovings' case was clearly affected\" by twentieth-century changes were in the penalties they faced. Before 1932, the penalty for violating the antimiscegenation laws was two to five years in prison. In 1932 the minimum penalty was reduced to just one year in prison. Wallenstein, _Tell the Court_ , 216.\n\n124. Wallenstein, _Tell the Court_ , 216; Romano, _Race Mixing_ , 189.\n\n125. The Caroline County grand jury brought indictments in October 1958 and Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile issued the one-year sentence. Wallenstein, _Tell the Court_ , 217; Romano, _Race Mixing_ , 189.\n\n126. Wallenstein, _Tell the Court_ , 217.\n\n127. Ibid., 217, 219. The ACLU helped win _Perez v. Sharp, a_ 1948 California Supreme Court decision that made miscegenation laws illegal under the state constitution. See Wallenstein, _Tell the Court_ , 192\u201399, passim, 213, 240, 242. See also _Perez v. Sharp_ , 32 Cal.2d 711, 198 P.2d 171 (1948). The ACLU also argued a case challenging the constitutionality of Oklahoma's ban on interracial marriage. The state supreme court ruled in 1965 that because the U.S. Supreme Court had not issued a ruling outlawing interracial marriage, the Oklahoma laws were constitutional. By the time the ACLU was ready to appeal to the Supreme Court, the plaintiff had married someone else. See Wallenstein, _Tell the Court_ , 211\u201314.\n\n128. Ibid., 224.\n\n129. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 on April 11 of that year, shortly after Martin Luther King was assassinated. Known as the Fair Housing Act, it banned discrimination in the rental, sale, and financing of housing and provided federal enforcement provisions. It also protected civil rights activists from intimidation, coercion, violence, and reprisals, something civil rights workers had been demanding for a long time. See Lawson, _Running for Freedom_ , 133.\n\n## CHAPTER 8. \"POWER TO THE ICE PICK!\"\n\n1. Joan's name is spelled several ways but is always pronounced _Jo-Ann_. See \"Exhibit A,\" Medical Examiner's Report, folder 4, box 4, HH; James Reston, Jr., _The Innocence of Joan_ _Little: A Southern Mystery_ (New York, 1977), 9\u201311. Little was serving a seven-to-ten-year sentence for breaking and entering and larceny and began serving time on June 6, 1974. See James Reston, Jr., \"The Joan Little Case,\" _NYT Magazine_ , April 6, 1975.\n\n2. Reston, _Innocence_ , 37.\n\n3. Joan Little with Rebecca Ranson, \"I Am Joan,\" _Southern Exposure_ 6, no. 1 (1978), 46. See also Testimony of Joan Little, transcript, folder 2, box 1, JR.\n\n4. Marjorie Wright, interview by James Reston audiocassette, JR.\n\n5. Little with Ransom, \"I Am Joan,\" 47.\n\n6. For more on the Rosa Lee Ingram case, see Charles H. Martin, \"Race, Gender and Southern Injustice: The Rosa Lee Ingram Case,\" _American Journal of Legal History_ 29, no. 3 (July 1985), 251\u201368.\n\n7. Karen Bethea-Shields quoted in Anne Blythe, \"Role of Women in the Civil Rights Plight,\" _RNO_ , July 23, 2005.\n\n8. Lawson, _Running for Freedom_ , 111. According to Lawson, four years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, about three-fifths of Southern black adults had registered to vote. In Mississippi alone, black registration jumped from 6.7 percent in 1964 to 59.4 percent in 1968. In Alabama, black registration increased from 23 to 53 percent.\n\n9. Joseph, _Waiting_ , 157.\n\n10. Steve M. Gillon and Cathy D. Matson, _The American Experiment: A History of the United States_ , vol. 2 (Boston, 2002), 1155; Lawson, _Running for Freedom_ , 127.\n\n11. Lawson, _Running for Freedom_ , 127. For more on urban riots during the 1960s, see Thomas J. Sugrue, _The Origins of Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit_ (Princeton, N.J., 1996).\n\n12. Doug Rossinow, \"The New Left: Democratic Reformers or Left-Wing Revolutionaries,\" in David Farber and Beth Bailey, eds., _The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s_ (New York, 2001), 92. For more on the origins and struggles of the New Left, see James Miller, _\"Democracy Is in the Streets\": From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago_ (New York, 1987); Todd Gitlin, _The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage_ (New York, 1987); Terry H. Anderson, _The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee_ (New York, 1995).\n\n13. Carter, _Wallace to Gingrich_ , xii.\n\n14. Ibid., 33. See also Dan T. Carter, _The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics_ (New York, 1995).\n\n15. Beth Tompkins Bates, \"The Upheaval of Jim Crow: African Americans and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the 1960s,\" in Farber and Bailey, _Columbia Guide_ , 85. For more on Memphis, see Michael K. Honey, _Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign_ (New York, 2008).\n\n16. Joseph, _Waiting_ , 227.\n\n17. Ibid., 228; Lawson, _Running for Freedom_ , 129.\n\n18. Joseph, _Waiting_ , 244. Joseph argues that the Panthers' gender politics became \"more progressive rhetorically\" but remained \"conflicted internally.\" Women often did the cooking, cleaning, and secretarial work, while men served in public leadership roles. Still, things were beginning to change, and in the early 1970s Elaine Brown became party chair. For more on Brown and the role of women in the Black Panther Party, see Charles Jones, ed., _The Black Panther Party (reconsidered)_ , (Baltimore, Md., 1998); Elaine Brown, _A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story_ (New York, 1992); Bobby Seale, _Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton_ (New York, 1970); and Hugh Pearson, _The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America_ (Reading, Mass., 1994).\n\n19. Timothy B. Tyson, _Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story_ (New York, 2004), 118\u201329 passim.\n\n20. Ibid., 257.\n\n21. Ibid., 258.\n\n22. Ibid., 258, 268\u201369. Tyson says the New Hanover County sheriff's department was \"heavily infiltrated by the Ku Klux Klan\" and notes that Sheriff Marion Millis admitted as much in the RNO, October 27, 1965, 342.\n\n23. Chavis drew a thirty-five-year prison sentence. The Wilmington Ten garnered massive media attention, and in 1977 Amnesty International launched a campaign to have them declared \"political prisoners.\" In 1980 a federal court reversed the verdicts after discovering that \"the prosecution's tactics had worked hand in glove with the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) operation to shut down the black freedom movement.\" See Tyson, _Blood Done Sign My Name_ , 270. For more on the Wilmington Ten, see Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, _It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America_ (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), 195\u2013212; Larry Reni Thomas, _The True Story Behind the Wilmington Ten_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980); Ben Chavis, _Wilmington 10: Editorials and Cartoons_ (New York, 1977).\n\n24. Angela Davis, \"The Struggle of Ben Chavis and the Wilmington 10,\" _Black Scholar_ , April 1975, 29\u201331. It was because of her involvement with the Wilmington Ten that Davis first heard about Joan Little. For more on Davis's activism and involvement with the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, see Joseph, _Waiting_ , 241\u201375 passim.\n\n25. Reston, _Innocence_ , 28. In Ayden, North Carolina, twenty-five miles to the west of Washington, white students bombed the high school bathroom, and months of turmoil followed the murder of a black laborer by a white policeman. In Williamston, twenty miles to the north, Golden Frinks, SCLC field secretary and the best-known and most experienced civil rights organizer in North Carolina, led the Williamston Freedom Movement from 1963 to 1965. National leaders in the SCLC eyed Williamston for a national campaign in 1965\u2014it had a vibrant black community that was well organized, and a violent white leadership connected to an active Ku Klux Klan. According to David Cecelski, the SCLC chose Selma instead of the \"small Tobacco Belt\" town to make a national stand. \"Bloody Sunday,\" Cecelski notes, \"would become world famous; Williamston and Frinks, thus far, historical footnotes.\" See Cecelski, _Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina and the Fate of Black Schools in the South_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 82\u201385.\n\n26. Mark Pinsky, \"The Innocence of James Reston, Jr.,\" _Southern Exposure_ 6, no. 1 (1978): 40.\n\n27. Cecelski, _Freedom Road_ , 36, 185n70.\n\n28. Reston, _Innocence_ , 22.\n\n29. Ibid., 6, 176.\n\n30. Ibid., 14.\n\n31. \"Heavy lidded and shambling\" from \"Trial Gives New Twist to Old Racial Issues,\" _NYT_ , August 12, 1975, 14.\n\n32. Ibid.\n\n33. Reston, _Innocence_ , 73; \"The Joan Little Case,\" _NYT Magazine_ , April 6, 1975. See also Jerry Paul and Joan Little, interview by Reston, audiocassette, JR.\n\n34. See Reston, _Innocence_ , 284\u201389. See also Joan Little, interview by Reston audio cassette, JR.\n\n35. Golden Frinks, interview by James Reston audiocassette, JR.\n\n36. Baxandall and Gordon, \"Second Wave Feminism,\" in Nancy Hewitt, ed., _A Companion to American Women's History_ (Oxford, 2005), 417. For more on the women's movement see Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, eds., _Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women's Liberation Movement_ (New York, 2000); Sara M. Evans, _Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End_ (New York, 2003); and Ruth Rosen, _The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America_ (New York, 2000).\n\n37. New York Women Against Rape (NYWAR) founded the first rape crisis center in October 1971; Maria Bevacqua, _Rape on the Public Agenda_ (Boston, 2000), 33.\n\n38. The Crenshaw Women's Center in Los Angeles organized an \"anti-rape squad\" and created a rape hotline; in Berkeley, California women organized the Bay Area Women Against Rape; In Washington D.C., women's rights activists created a rape crisis center; and in Chicago Women Against Rape organized a conference dedicated to rape. Bevacqua, _Rape_ , 33, 36.\n\n39. Reston, _Innocence_ , 7.\n\n40. Erskine Caldwell, _Tobacco Road_ (New York, 1932).\n\n41. For more on the \"progressive mystique,\" see William H. Chafe, _Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom_ (New York, 1981).\n\n42. \"Justice in North Carolina: Once More Old South,\" _NYT_ , March 9, 1975, B5E.\n\n43. Reston, _Innocence_ , 77.\n\n44. Ibid., 13.\n\n45. David Cecelski, \"Karen Bethea-Shields: In Joan Little's Cell,\" _RNO_ , January 12, 2003.\n\n46. Reston, \"The Innocence of Joan Little,\" _Southern Exposure_ 6, no. 1 (1978): 37.\n\n47. \"Joanne Little: No Escape Yet,\" _Off Our Backs_ , January 1975, folder 3, box 4, HH.\n\n48. Angela Davis, \"Forum: Joanne Little: The Dialectics of Rape,\" _Ms_. 3, no. 12 (June 1975): 74\u201377.\n\n49. Julian Bond's letter soliciting funds, n.d., folder 3, box 4, HH.\n\n50. Reston, \"The Joan Little Case,\" _NYT Magazine_ , April 6, 1975 folder 16, box 2, HH.\n\n51. The file on Joan Little in the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Papers contains few documents, mainly letters to constituents indicating that it stood ready to support Little if she asked it to, but in the meantime, it deferred to the Southern Poverty Law Center. See \"Memorandum to Mabel Smith from Mildred Bond,\" February 5, 1975; Nathanial R. Jones to Alfred Baker Lewis, March 11, 1975; and Charles E. Carter to Ms. L. Wailes, April 22, 1975. A draft of a memo to Joan Little offering the NAACP's assistance was crossed out and \"not sent\" was written on the top. All documents found in folder 2, part V, 1911, NAACP Papers.\n\n52. Maulana Ron Karenga, \"In Defense of Sister Joanne: For Ourselves and History,\" _Black Scholar_ , July\u2013August 1975, 40, 42.\n\n53. \"Minutes of the Joanne Little Defense Committee,\" folder 1, box 3, RLP. Thanks to William LeFevre for sending me these documents and to Jeanne Theoharis, who shared her find with me.\n\n54. Genna Rae McNeil, \"Joanne Is You, Joanne Is Me,\" in Bettye Collier Thomas and V. P. Franklin, eds., _Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights Black Power Movement_ (New York, 2001), 271.\n\n55. Christina Greene, _Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005), 225.\n\n56. Ibid., 225\u201326.\n\n57. McNeil, \"Joanne,\" in Thomas and Franklin, _Sisters_ , 270.\n\n58. Ibid., 270.\n\n59. Newsletter, n.d., box 1, \"Southern Poverty Law Center,\" JLP, and n.d., JLP; \"Funds Sought for Miss Little's Defense,\" _Durham Morning Herald_ , n.d., box 1, \"Ann and Raymond Cobb,\" in JLP, and n.d., JLP.\n\n60. Reston, _Innocence_ , 180.\n\n61. See \"Motion for Change of Venue,\" _State of North Carolina v. Joan Little_ , folder 4, box 4, HH. Mullin later published her findings. See John B. McConahay, Courtney J. Mullin, and Jeffrey Frederick, \"The Uses of Social Science in Trials with Political and Racial Overtones: The Trial of Joan Little,\" _Law and Contemporary Problems_ 41, no. 1, (1977): 205\u201329; See also \"A Case of Rape or Seduction?\" _Time_ , July 28, 1975, 19.\n\n62. Ginny Carroll, \"500 Stage Courthouse Rally,\" _RNO_ , July 15, 1975, 1. \"Trial of decade,\" quoted in Michael Coakley, \"The Joan Little Trial Is Over, but the Issues Remain,\" _ChT_ , August 24, 1975, B1. The rally included members of NOW, the National Black Feminist Organization, the Black Panther Party, and local members of the Free Joanne Little Defense Fund, as well as other individuals and groups.\n\n63. Rick Nichols, \"Stage Set to Weigh a Killing,\" RNO, July 27, 1965, 1.\n\n64. Wayne King, \"Jury Selection Challenged by Joan Little's Lawyers,\" _NYT_ , July 15, 1975, 20.\n\n65. \"Joan Little Trial Begins: First Juror Is Selected,\" RNO, July 27, 1965, 1, 5B. Chalmers claimed he was associated with the Klan only because they asked him to represent them. \"It was not an ideological thing, it was a professional thing. They paid a fee and are entitled to a lawyer,\" another attorney said in his defense. But Chalmers also represented Klan members in local legal matters. Before the HUAC hearings, Chalmers established a considerable reputation as a criminal prosecutor. As Wake County solicitor, he \"successfully prosecuted North Carolina's notorious basketball point-fixing case involving prominent college teams.\" Chalmers also admitted becoming a \"severe alcoholic\" in the late 1960s and attempted suicide in 1968 \"by shooting a small caliber rifle into his mouth.\" \"Prosecutor Bristles at Klan Stereotype; Points to Record,\" _RNO_ , July 16, 1975, 1\u20132.\n\n66. \"Jury Seated in Murder Trial of Joan Little,\" _RNO_ , July 24, 1975, 1. The newspaper featured pictures of the jurors after the trial. \"Jurors Say Evidence Too Thin to Convict,\" RNO, August 16, 1975, 1, 5B.\n\n67. The defense exploited the lax practices of the small-town Southern policemen, their lack of education and experience, and their careless collection of evidence, creating the perception that they had bungled the investigation from the start. State's witnesses added to the impression that the investigation had been incompetent. For example, according to Reston, \"the local detective could produce no identifiable fingerprint from the bars or the bed or the sink or the clothes or the ice pick. The SBI chemist's test of Joan Little's scarf, found underneath Alligood's body, was inconclusive.\" Photographs were splattered with developing chemicals, making it impossible to tell the difference between blood spatters and chemical dots. Worse, \"from the technical legal standpoint,\" the prosecution could not even establish Joan Little's presence in the jail cell where Alligood was murdered. See Reston, _Innocence_ , 259, 260\u201376 passim.\n\n68. Testimony of Joan Little, transcript, folder 2, box 1, JR.\n\n69. Frances B. Kent, \"Joan Little's Lawyers to Show Jailer Made Frequent Sexual Advances,\" LAT, August 8, 1975, B20.\n\n70. \"Ex-Inmates Testify in Little Case,\" RNO, August 8, 1975, 1, folder 3, box 3, HH. See also Hobgood's trial notes, folder 4, box 3, HH.\n\n71. Ibid.\n\n72. Reston, _Innocence_ , 113.\n\n73. Ibid., 114.\n\n74. Reston, \"Innocence of Joan Little,\" _Southern Exposure_ , 36.\n\n75. Rick Nichols, \"Charge Is Reduced in Joan Little Trial,\" RNO, August 7, 1975, 1.\n\n76. \"Little Says She Stabbed Jailer,\" _NYT_ , August 12, 1975.\n\n77. Testimony of Joan Little, transcript, folder 2, box 1, JR.\n\n78. Rick Nichols, \"Testifies at Trial,\" RNO, August 12, 1975, 1.\n\n79. Testimony of Joan Little, transcript, folder 2, box 1, JR.\n\n80. Ibid. Little used the word \"sex\" at first and admitted that Alligood said \"pussy\" only after Griffin harassed her. \"Is that what you said yesterday? What did you say he said yesterday? Did he say sex or use some other term?\" Little replied calmly, \"I am using the word sex because I don't want to use any other word because it's still embarrassing to me.\" Griffin's point was to raise questions about why, if Alligood wanted to \"get some pussy,\" did he accept oral sex instead? At best, the line of questioning made Griffin look like he was subjecting Little to unnecessary harassment. Worse, it forced Griffin into admitting that Alligood asked for sex\u2014it didn't matter what kind.\n\n81. Ibid. See also Michael Coakley, \"Admits She Stabbed Him,\" ChT, August 12, 1975, 1.\n\n82. Testimony of Joan Little, folder 2, box 1, JR; Coakley, \"Admits She Stabbed Him,\" ChT, August 12, 1975, 1; \"Testifies at Trial,\" RNO, August 12, 1975, 1.\n\n83. Wayne King, \"Defense Closes for Joan Little,\" _NYT_ , August 13, 1975, 68.\n\n84. Testimony of Joan Little, transcript, folder 2, box 1, JR.\n\n85. Hobgood ruled that the question about whether she had a sexually transmitted disease was \"irrelevant.\" Testimony of Joan Little, folder 2, box 1, JR; \"Defense Closes,\" _NYT_ , August 13, 1975, 68. John A. Wilkinson, who was retained by the Alligood family to act in their interests, gave a closing statement as well, arguing that oral sex, or \"unnatural sex,\" was not rape. \"It is a detestable, horrible thing, but it's not the statutory crime of rape, and it's not punishable by death.\" Wilkinson argued that what Alligood allegedly did to Joan Little was only \"mistreatment,\" for which he did not deserve to be murdered. See \"Jury Argument of John A. Wilkinson,\" transcript, folder 10, box 2, JR.\n\n86. \"Joan Little Case Goes to Trial Today,\" LAT, August 15, 1975, B5; \"Mr. Griffin's Argument to the Jury,\" transcript, folder 8, box 2, HH.\n\n87. \"Final Arguments Heard in Trial of Joanne Little,\" n.d., clipping, folder 12, box 3, HH.\n\n88. \"Prosecutor and Defense Present Final Arguments in Joan Little Case,\" _NYT_ , August 15, 1975; \"Final Arguments Heard in Trial of Joanne Little,\" n.d., clipping, folder 12, box 3, HH.\n\n89. Reston, _Innocence_ , 320\u201321. A transcript of Galloway's closing argument was not in the Judge Hamilton Hobgood Papers or the James Reston Collection. It is interesting that of all the people Reston interviewed for his book, he did not speak to Karen Galloway, who could have shed the most light on the racial and sexual dynamics of the Little trial. When Reston refers to Galloway in his book, it is only in passing.\n\n90. \"Mr. Paul's Argument to the Jury,\" transcript, folder 9, box 2, JR. See also Lerner, _Black Women_ , 166\u201369.\n\n91. \"Final Arguments heard in trial of Joanne Little,\" n.d., clipping, folder 12, box 3, HH. Paul's portrayal of Little as a civil rights heroine was a stretch, but it helped counter the negative images the prosecution presented to the jury. It also set up expectations that Little could not meet. After the trial, supporters hoped she would become a political activist, and she often pledged to fight racism, sexual violence, and prison abuse. Instead, in the months and years after her acquittal, she moved in and out of prison. In December 1975 she missed a court date, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. She then served twenty-one months in prison for the original breaking and entering charge. In October 1977 she escaped from prison and was finally captured in Brooklyn two months later. Little refused to return to North Carolina until the Supreme Court ordered her to do so. Beginning in February 1979, she served four months in the women's prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was arrested again ten years later in New York for driving a car with a stolen license plate and possession of an illegal weapon. See Melynn Glusman, \"Forgetting Joan Little: The Rise and Fall of a Mythical Black Woman,\" unpublished paper in author's possession.\n\n92. \"Mr. Paul's Argument to the Jury,\" transcript, folder 9, box 2, JR.\n\n93. Wayne King, \"Joan Little Acquitted in Jailer's Slaying,\" _NYT_ , August 16, 1975, 49.\n\n94. Ibid.\n\n95. Rick Nichols, \"Wake Jury Acquits Joan Little, Says State Didn't Prove Its Case,\" _RNO_ , August 16, 1975, 1.\n\n96. \"Joan Little Says Jurors Just,\" RNO, August 16, 1975, 5B.\n\n97. Michael Coakley, \"The Joan Little Trial Is Over, but the Issues Remain,\" _ChT_ , August 24, 1975, B1.\n\n98. Ibid.\n\n99. \"Mr. Paul's Argument to the Jury,\" folder 9, box 2, JR.\n\n100. Bevacqua, _Rape_ , 56. Bevacqua argues that the first \"speak-out\" held by the New York Radical Feminists on January 24, 1971, served as a catalyst for the antirape movement. See also Flora Davis, _Moving the Mountain: The Women's Movement in America Since 1960_ (New York, 1991), 310\u201411; Ruth Rosen, _The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America_ (New York, 2000), 181\u201383; Estelle B. Freedman, _No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women_ (New York, 2002), 282\u201387. I would argue that silence, even among white women, was not nearly as ubiquitous as historians suggest, since hundreds of men had been arrested, thrown in jail, and even executed for rape and attempted rape before the women's movement took root.\n\n101. \"Joan Little Says Jurors Just,\" RNO, August 16, 1975, 5B.\n\n102. \"Dixie Racism,\" cartoon in BAA, August 19\u201323, 1975, 4, clipping, folder 13, box 3, HH.\n\n## EPILOGUE. \"WE ALL LIVED IN FEAR FOR YEARS\"\n\n1. William Faulkner, _Requiem for a Nun_ (New York, 1987).\n\n2. I-Corbitt.\n\n3. Ibid.\n\n4. R. J. Corbitt, interview by author, January 19, 2009, Abbeville, Ala.\n\n5. Arthur Corbitt, interview by author, January 19, 2009, Abbeville, Ala.\n\n6. Mary Murry, interview by author, January 19, 2009, Abbeville, Ala.\n\n7. I-Corbitt.\n\n8. Alma Daniels, interview by author, January 19, 2009, Abbeville, Ala.\n\n9. I-RTC 30.\n\n10. I-Corbitt 3.\n\n11. I-RTC 30.\n\n12. I-Corbitt.\n\n13. I-RTC.\n\n14. Ibid.\n\n15. Shailagh Murray, \"A Family Tree Rooted in American Soil,\" WP, October 2, 2008, C1.\n\n# Bibliography\n\nMANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS\n\n**Atlanta, Georgia**\n\n**Archives and Special Collections, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center**\n\nTWA | Trezzvant W. Anderson Papers \n---|--- \nSCHW | Southern Conference for Human Welfare Papers \nRM | Ralph McGill \nGWR | Glenn W. Rainey Papers, Congress of Interracial Cooperation \nCSP | Claude Sitton Papers \nPS | Interviews by Patricia Sullivan\n\n**Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library, Emory University**\n\nMECP | Matt N. and Evelyn Graves Crawford Papers \n---|--- \nHK | Harvey Klehr Papers \nLTP | Louise Thompson Patterson Papers \nCSP-E | Claude Sitton Papers \nLS | Lillian Smith Papers\n\n**The Georgia Archives** \n _Rosa Lee Ingram v. State of Georgia_\n\n**Auburn, New York**\n\n**Cayuga Community College Library**\n\nECC | Earl Conrad Collection \n---|---\n\n**Birmingham, Alabama**\n\n**Department of Archives, Birmingham Public Library**\n\nBPSF | Birmingham Police Surveillance Files, 1947\u201380 \n---|--- \nBWOF | _Birmingham World_ Office Files \nEBCP | Eugene \"Bull\" Connor Papers \nCP | Cooper Green Papers \nNAACP-m | NAACP Papers, Alabama Chapter, 1940\u201355, microfilm\n\n**Boston, Massachusetts**\n\n**Howard Gotleib Archival Research Center, Boston University**\n\nMLK | Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers \n---|---\n\n**Chapel Hill, North Carolina**\n\n**Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill**\n\nHH | Judge Hamilton H. Hobgood Papers \n---|--- \nJR | James Reston Collection \nTB | Taylor Branch Papers\n\n**Detroit, Michigan**\n\n**Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University**\n\nRLP | Rosa L. Parks Collection \n---|---\n\n**Durham, North Carolina**\n\n**Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University**\n\nJHC | John Hope Franklin Collection \n---|--- \nWHC | William H. Chafe Oral History Collection \nBTV | Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Collection \nJBM | J. B. Matthews Papers \nJLP | Joan Little Papers, 1973\u201375 and n.d.\n\n**Hanover, New Hampshire**\n\n**Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth University**\n\nAKL | Alexander Kinnan Laing Papers \n---|---\n\n**Hattiesburg, Mississippi**\n\nCOHCH | Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, University of Southern Mississippi \n---|---\n\n**McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi**\n\nGPJ | Governor Paul Johnson Papers \n---|---\n\n**Madison, Wisconsin**\n\n**State Historical Society of Wisconsin**\n\nCAB | Carl and Braden Papers \n---|--- \nCORE | Congress of Racial Equality Papers \nCIC | Commission on Interracial Cooperation Papers \nDB | Daisy Bates Papers \nHRC | Highlander Research and Education Center Records\n\n**Montgomery, Alabama**\n\n**Alabama Department of Archives and History**\n\nCS | Governor Chauncey Sparks Papers, Recy Taylor Case, Administrative Files \n---|--- \nGW | Governor George Wallace Papers, Administrative Files \nTCF | Tuskegee Clipping File, microfilm\n\n**New Orleans, Louisiana**\n\n**Amistad Research Center, Tulane University**\n\nPBV | Preston and Bonita Valien Papers \n---|---\n\n**New York, New York**\n\n**Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture**\n\nNNCP-M | National Negro Congress Records, microfilm \n---|--- \nILD | International Labor Defense Papers \nEG | Eugene Gordon Papers \nBJD | Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., Papers \nECHT | Earl Conrad\/Harriet Tubman Collection\n\n**Princeton, New Jersey**\n\n**Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University**\n\nLSCRRCP | Law Students Civil Rights Research Council Papers \n---|---\n\n**Tallahassee, Florida**\n\n**Leon County Courthouse**\n\n_State of Florida v. Patrick Gene Scarborough, David Erwin Beagles, Ollie Odell Stoutamire, William Ted Collinsworth_ , 1959\n\n**Special Collections, Robert Manning Strozier Library, Florida State University**\n\nGLC | Governor LeRoy Collins Papers, in Florida Governors Manuscript Collection \n---|--- \nJLI | Jackson Lee Ice Papers \nWMW | W. May Walker Papers\n\n**Samuel H. Coleman Library, Special Collections, Florida A and M University**\n\nFAMUANA FAMUana Collection\n\n**Washington, D.C**.\n\n**Library of Congress**\n\nNAACP | National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers \n---|--- \nAPR | A. Philip Randolph Papers \nUL | Papers of the Urban League \nBR | Bayard Rustin Papers\n\n**Mary McLeod Bethune Council House NHS and National Archives for Black Women's History**\n\nNCNWR National Council of Negro Women Records, Wednesdays in Mississippi Series\n\n**Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard University**\n\nSNYC | Southern Negro Youth Congress Papers \n---|---\n\n**Selected Manuscripts on Microfilm**\n\nCORE-M | Congress of Racial Equality Papers, 1941\u201367 (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilm Corporation of America, 1980) \n---|--- \nFBI-VL | FBI File on Klu Klux Klan murder of Viola Liuzzo (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990) \nSRC | Southern Regional Council Papers, 1944\u201368 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1984) \nSNCC | Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959\u201372 (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilm Corporation of America, 1982)\n\n**DIGITAL SOURCES**\n\nEOPI | Eyes on the Prize Interviews, Washington University Special Collections, [http:\/\/library.wustl.edu\/units\/spec\/filmandmedia\/ \nhampton\/eyesIinterviews.html](http:\/\/library.wustl.edu\/units\/spec\/filmandmedia\/hampton\/eyesIinterviews.html) \n---|--- \nMSSC-d | Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Records, 1994-2006, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, \nCRMd | Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive, University of Southern Mississippi, \nMBd | \"They Changed the World: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,\" \nNCDCd | North Carolina Department of Corrections, Offender Information, \nFDCd | Florida Department of Corrections, Offender Search, [http:\/\/www.dc.state.fl.us\/InmateInfo\/ \nInmateInfoMenu.asp](http:\/\/www.dc.state.fl.us\/InmateInfo\/InmateInfoMenu.asp) \nProgenealogists | \nFLHTd | Fannie Lou Hamer Testimony in front of Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, N.J., August 22, 1964, [http:\/\/americanradioworks.publicradio.org\/features\/ \nsayitplain\/flhamer.html](http:\/\/americanradioworks.publicradio.org\/features\/sayitplain\/flhamer.html) (accessed March 12, 2008) \nWCBUd | _Will the Circle Be Unbroken?_ Radio Series, www.unbrokencircle.org (accessed April 2005); transcripts have since been acquired by Emory University in Atlanta, [http:\/\/marbl.library.emory.edu\/findingaids\/ \ncontent.php?id=src-circle934_106912#descriptiveSummary](http:\/\/marbl.library.emory.edu\/findingaids\/content.php?id=src-circle934_106912#descriptiveSummary) \nHSBd | Transcript, mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, Montgomery, Ala., December 5, 1955, [http:\/\/www.stanford.edu.libproxy.lib.unc.edu\/ \ngroup\/King\/publications\/papers\/vol3\/551205.004-MIA_Mass_Meeting_at_Holt_ \nStreet_Baptist_Church.htm](http:\/\/www.stanford.edu.libproxy.lib.unc.edu\/group\/King\/publications\/papers\/vol3\/551205.004-MIA_Mass_Meeting_at_Holt_Street_Baptist_Church.htm) (accessed October 30, 2005)\n\nSELECTED NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS\n\n_BAA_ | _Baltimore Afro-American_ \n---|--- \n| _The Black Scholar_ \n_AT_ | _Alabama Tribune_ \n_AC_ | _Atlanta Constitution_ \n_ADW_ | _Atlanta Daily World_ \n_AD_ | _Arkansas Democrat_ \n_AG_ | _Arkansas Gazette_ \n_ASP_ | _Arkansas State Press_ \n_BN_ | _Birmingham News_ \n_BW_ | _Birmingham World_ \n_CT_ | _Carolina Times_ \n_CO_ | _Charlotte Observer_ \n_CDT_ | _Chicago Daily Tribune_ \n_CD_ | _Chicago Defender_ \n_ChT_ | _Chicago Tribune_ \n_CL_ | _Clarion Ledger_ [Mississippi] \n| _Crisis_ \n_DW_ | _Daily Worker_ \n_DE_ | _Dothan Eagle_ \n| _Ebony_ \n_FAMUAN_ | Florida A&M University \n| _The Guardian_ \n_HA_ | _Hattiesburg American_ [Mississippi] \n_JA_ | _Jackson Advocate_ [Mississippi] \n_JDN_ | _Jackson Daily News (Mississippi)_ \n| _Jet_ \n_LLC_ | _Laurel-Leader Call_ [Mississippi] \n_LI_ | _Lighthouse and Informer_ [South Carolina] \n_LAT_ | _Los Angeles Times_ \n_LW_ | _Louisiana Weekly_ \n_MEJ_ | _McComb Enterprise Journal_ [Mississippi] \n| _Messenger_ \n_MA_ | _Montgomery Advertiser_ \n| _The Nation_ \n| _Newsweek_ \n_NYAN_ | _New York Amsterdam News_ \n_NYHT_ | _New York Herald-Tribune_ \n_NYT_ | _New York Times_ \n_OOB_ | _Off Our Backs_ \n_PC_ | _Pittsburgh Courier_ \n_RNO_ | _Raleigh News and Observer_ [North Carolina] \n| _Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society_ \n_SE_ | _Southern Exposure_ \n_SD_ | _Tallahassee Democrat_ \n_TT_ | _Tampa Tribune_ \n| _Time_ \n_US_ | _U.S. News & World Report_ \n_WP_ | _Washington Post_\n\nINTERVIEWS BY AUTHOR\n\n**Correspondence, audiotapes, video recordings, and\/or transcripts in author's possession**\n\nI-TB | Theralene Beachem, Birmingham, Ala., March 19, 2003 \n---|--- \nI-JB | Joanne Bland, Selma, Ala., March 15, 2004 \nI-MB | Martha Boyer, Birmingham, Ala., March 18, 2003 \nI-RB | Raylawni Branch, Hattiesburg, Miss., with Patricia Buzzard, June 3, 2006 \nI-JC | Johnnie Carr, Montgomery, Ala., March 17, 2004 \nI-JL | J. L. Chestnutt, Selma, Ala., March 15, 2004 \nI-AC | Arthur Corbitt, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 2009 \nI-Corbitt | Robert Corbitt, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 20, 2009 \nI-Corbitt 3 | Robert Corbitt, telephone interview, December 3, 2008 \nI-Corbitt 8 | Robert Corbitt, telephone interview, December 8, 2008 \nI-RJC | R. J. Corbitt, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 2009 \nI-RTC | Recy Taylor Courtney, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 20, 2008 \nI-RTC 30 | Recy Taylor Courtney, telephone interview, December 30, 2008 \nI-AD | Alma Daniels, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 2009 \nI-GD | Gloria Dennard, Birmingham, Ala., March 19, 2003 \nI-PSD | Patricia Stephens Due, telephone interview, March 4, 1999 \nI-JD | James Dukes, Hattiesburg, Miss., October 17, 2007 \nI-FG | Fred Gray, Montgomery, Ala., March 15, 2004 \nI-DWH | Daisy Wade Harris, Hattiesburg, Miss., with Patricia Buzzard, June 5, 2006 \nI-LSH | Linda S. Hunt, Birmingham, Ala., March 19, 2003 \nI-LMJ | Lucille M. Johnson, Birmingham, Ala., March 16, 2003 \nI-LK | Lillie Kinsey, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 2009 \nI-JL | Joyce Ladner, correspondence, March 7, 2006 \nI-LM | Lois Miles, Hattiesburg, Miss., October 17, 2007 \nI-ALM | Annie Lois Murry, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 2009 \nI-MM | Mary Murry, Abbeville, Ala., January 19, 2009 \nI-SS | Solomon Seay, Jr., telephone interview, March 9, 1999 \nI-SPS | Sam Pat Skipper, telephone interview, January 5, 2009 \nI-CUS | Charles U. Smith, telephone interview, March 9, 1999\n\nBOOKS\n\nAls, Hinton, John Lewis, Leon F. Litwack, and James Allen, eds. _Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America_. Santa Fe, N.M.: Twin Palms, 2000.\n\nAltschuler, Glenn C. _All Shook Up: How Rock 'n'_ _Roll Changed America_. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.\n\nAnderson, Jervis. _A. Philip Randolph_. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen: A Biography_. 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New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.\n\nCecelski, David. _Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina and the Fate of Black Schools in the South_. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.\n\nCecelski, David, and Tim Tyson, eds. _Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy_. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.\n\nChafe, William Henry. _Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom_. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Paradox of Change: American Women in the Twentieth Century_. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II_. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies_. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.\n\nChafe, William Henry, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstadt, eds. _Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South_. New York: New Press, 2001.\n\nChalmers, David M. _Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan_. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1981.\n\nChappell, David L. _A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow_. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.\n\nChateauvert, Melinda M. _Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925\u20131957_. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.\n\nChavis, Ben. _Wilmington 10: Editorials and Cartoons_. New York: United Church of Christ, Commission for Racial Justice, 1977.\n\nChestnut, J. L., Jr., and Julia Cass. _Black in Selma: The Uncommon Life of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.: Politics and Power in a Small American Town_. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.\n\nCivil Rights Congress. _We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government Against the Negro People_. New York: International Publishers, 1970.\n\nClark, James G. _I Saw Selma Raped: The Jim Clark Story_. Birmingham: Selma Enterprises, 1966.\n\nCobble, Dorothy Sue. _The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America_. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003.\n\nColburn, David R. _Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877\u20131980_. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.\n\nColburn, David R., and Jane L. Landers. _The African American Heritage of Florida_. Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1995.\n\nColburn, David R., and Richard K. Scher. _Florida's Gubernatorial Politics in the Twentieth Century_. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1980.\n\nCollier-Thomas, Bettye, and V. P. Franklin, eds. _Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement_. New York: New York University Press, 2001.\n\nCollins, Patricia Hill. _Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment_. New York: Routledge, 1991.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism_. New York: Routledge, 2005.\n\nConrad, Earl. _Jim Crow America_. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947.\n\nCrawford, Vicki L., Jacqueline Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds. _Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers_. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990.\n\nCrespino, Joseph. _In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution_. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007.\n\nCurry, Constance. _Silver Rights_. New York: Algonquin Books, 1995.\n\nCurry, Constance, Joan Browning, et al., eds. _Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement_. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.\n\nDailey, Jane. _Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Post-emancipation Virginia_. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.\n\nDailey, Jane, Glenda Gilmore, and Bryant Simon, eds. _Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights_. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.\n\nDaniel, Pete. _Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century_. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s_. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.\n\nDavidson, Osha Gray. _The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South_. New York: Scribner, 1996.\n\nDavies, David, ed. _The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement_. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001.\n\nDavis, Angela. _If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance_. 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Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 1994.\n\nDray, Philip. _At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America_. New York: Random House, 2002.\n\nDu Bois, W. E. B. _The Souls of Black Folk_. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.\n\nDudziak, Mary L. _Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy_. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.\n\nDue, Patricia, and Tananarive Due. _Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights_. New York: Ballantine, 2003.\n\nDurr, Virginia Foster. _Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr_ , ed. Hollinger F. Barnard. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years_ , ed. Patricia Sullivan. New York: Routledge, 2003.\n\nDyson, Michael Eric. _I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr_. New York: Free Press, 2000.\n\nEagles, Charles W. _The Civil Rights Movement in America_. 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Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967.\n\nFager, Charles E. _Selma, 1965_. New York: Scribner, 1974.\n\nFairclough, Adam. _To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr_. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Martin Luther King, Jr_. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915\u20131972_. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890\u20132000_. New York: Viking, 2001.\n\nFairstein, Linda A. _Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape_. New York: Morrow, 1993.\n\nFarber, David, and Beth Bailey. _The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s_. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.\n\nFeldman, Glenn, ed. _Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South_. 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Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.\n\nFried, Richard M. _Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective_. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.\n\nGaillard, Frye. _Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America_. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.\n\nGardner, Michael. _Harry Truman and Civil Rights_. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.\n\nGarrow, David. _Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference_. New York: Morrow, 1986.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott: 1955\u20131956_. New York: Carlson, 1989.\n\nGates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. _The Norton Anthology of African American Literature_. New York: Norton, 1997.\n\nGiddings, Paula. _When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America_. New York: Morrow, 1984.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. 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New York: Beacon Press, 1965.\n\nARTICLES\n\nAnderson, Karen. \"Last Hired and First Fired: Black Women Workers During World War II.\" _Journal of American History_ 69 (June 1982).\n\nBoris, Eileen. \"You Wouldn't Want One of 'Em Dancing with Your Wife': Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II.\" _American Quarterly_ 50 (1998).\n\nBraukman, Stacy. \" 'Nothing Else Matters but Sex': Cold War Narratives of Deviance and the Search for Lesbian Teachers in Florida, 1959\u20131963.\" _Feminist Studies_ 27, no. 3 (Fall 2001).\n\nBrown, Elsa Barkley. \"Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of Saint Luke.\" _Signs_ 14 (1989).\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \" 'What Has Happened Here': The Politics of Difference in Women's History and Feminist Politics.\" _Feminist Studies_ 18 (Summer 1992).\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom.\" _Public Culture_ 7 (1994).\n\nCampbell, Kirsten. \"Legal Memories: Sexual Assault, Memory, and International Humanitarian Law.\" _Signs_ 28, no. 1 (2002).\n\nCardyn, Lisa. \"Sexualized Racism\/Gendered Violence: Outraging the Body Politic in the Reconstruction South.\" _Michigan Law Review_ (February 2002).\n\nDavis, Angela. \"The Struggle of Ben Chavis and the Wilmington Ten.\" _Black Scholar_ (April 1975).\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Joanne Little: The Dialectics of Rape.\" _Ms_. 3, no. 12 (June 1975).\n\nDorr, Lisa Lindquist. \"Black-on-White Rape and Retribution in 20th Century Virginia: 'Men, Even Negroes, Must Have Some Protection,' _Journal of Southern History_ 66, no. 4 (November 2000).\n\nEdwards, Alison. \"Rape, Racism and the White Women's Movement: An Answer to Susan Brownmiller.\" Sojourner Truth Organization, pamphlet, n.d.\n\nEdwards, Laura F. \"Sexual Violence, Gender, Reconstruction, and the Extension of Patriarchy in Granville County, North Carolina.\" _North Carolina Historical Review_ 68, no. 3 (July 1991).\n\nFine, Michelle, and Lois Weis. \"Disappearing Acts: The State and Violence Against Women in the Twentieth Century.\" _Signs_ 25, no. 4 (2000).\n\nFlood, Dawn Rae. \" 'They Didn't Treat Me Good': African American Rape Victims and Chicago Courtroom Strategies During the 1950s.\" _Journal of Women's History_ 17, no. 1 (2005).\n\nFreedman, Estelle B. \" 'Uncontrolled Desires': The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920\u20131960.\" In Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons, eds., _Passion and Power: Sexuality in History_. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.\n\nGoldblatt, Beth. \"Special Hearing Women: May 1996.\" Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Report, 4.\n\nHall, Jacquelyn Dowd. \"The Mind That Burns in Each Body: Women, Rape and Racial Violence.\" In Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds., _Powers of Desire: the Politics of Sexuality_. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983.\n\nHelliwell, Christine. \" 'It's Only a Penis': Rape, Feminism and Difference.\" _Signs_ 25, no. 3 (2000).\n\nHengehold, Laura. \"Remapping the Event: Institutional Discourses and the Trauma of Rape.\" _Signs_ 26, no. 1 (2000).\n\nHigginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. \"African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race.\" _Signs 1_ 7, no. 2 (1992).\n\nHine, Darlene Clark. \"Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on a Culture of Dissemblance.\" _Signs 1_ 4, no. 4 (Summer 1989).\n\nJohnson, Marilynn S. \"Gender, Race and Rumours: Re-Examining the 1943 Race Riots.\" _Gender and History 1_ 0, no. 2 (August 1998).\n\nKaplan, Temma. \"Reversing the Shame and Gendering the Memory.\" _Signs_ 28, no. 1 (Summer 2002).\n\nKarenga, Maulana Ron. \"In Defense of Sister Joanne: For Ourselves and History.\" _Black Scholar_ (July\u2013August 1975).\n\nLawson, Steven F. \"Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement.\" _American Historical Review_ 96 (1991).\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Civil Rights and Black Liberation.\" In Nancy Hewitt, ed., _Blackwell's Companion to Women's History_. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002.\n\nLawson, Steven F., David R. Colburn, and Darryl Paulson, \"Groveland: Florida's Little Scottsboro.\" In David R. Colburn and Jane L. Landers, eds., _The African American Heritage of Florida_. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1994.\n\nMartin, Charles H. \"Race, Gender and Southern Justice: The Rosa Lee Ingram Case.\" _American Journal of Legal History_ 29, no. 3 (July 1985).\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"The Civil Rights Congress and Southern Black Defendants.\" _Georgia Historical Quarterly_ 71, no. 1 (Spring 1987).\n\nMatthews, Nancy A. \"Surmounting a Legacy: The Expansion of Racial Diversity in a Local Anti-Rape Movement.\" _Gender and Society_ 3, no. 4 (December 1989).\n\nMcNeil, Genna Rae. \"Joanne Is You, Joanne Is Me.\" In Bettye Collier Thomas and V. P. Franklin, eds., _Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights Black Power Movement_. New York: New York University Press, 2001.\n\nMorgan, Jennifer. \"Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder: Male Travelers, Female Bodies and Gendering Racial Ideology, 1500\u20131700,\" _William and Mary Quarterly_ 54 (1997).\n\nNasstrom, Kathryn L. \"Down to Now: Memory, Narrative, and Women's Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, Georgia.\" _Gender and History 11_ , no. 1 (April 1999).\n\nNovkov, Julie. \"Racial Constructions: The Legal Regulation of Miscegenation in Alabama, 1890\u20131934.\" _Law and History Review_ 20, no. 2 (Summer 2002).\n\nPascoe, Peggy. \"Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America.\" _Journal of American History_ 44 (June 1996).\n\nRosen, Hannah. \" 'Not That Sort of Woman:' Race, Gender and Sexual Violence During the Memphis Riot of 1866.\" In Martha Hodes, ed., _Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History_. New York: New York University Press, 1999.\n\nSitkoff, Harvard. \"Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War.\" _Journal of American History_ 58 (December 1971).\n\nSommerville, Diane Miller. \"The Rape Myth in the Old South Reconsidered.\" _Journal of Southern History_ 61, no. 3 (August 1995).\n\nStiglmayer, Alexandra. \"The Rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.\" In Alexandra Stiglmayer, ed., _Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovinia_. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.\n\nSwiss, Shana, and Joan E. Giller. \"Rape as a Crime of War: A Medical Perspective.\" _Journal of the American Medical Association_ 270, no. 5 (August 4, 1993).\n\nWalker, Alice. \"Advancing Luna and Ida B. Wells.\" In Henry Louis Gates and Nelly Y. McKay, eds., _The Norton Anthology of African American Literature_. New York: Norton, 1997.\n\nDISSERTATIONS AND THESES\n\nBlock, Sharon. _Coerced Sex in British North America: 1700\u20131820_. Ph.D. diss., Princeton, 1995.\n\nGreer, Brenna. _\"Our Leaders Is Just We Ourselves\": Black Women's Resistance in the Making of the Montgomery Bus Boycott_. Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2004.\n\nJones, Patrick D. _Communist Front Shouts \"Kissing Case\" to the World: The Committee to Combat Racial Injustice and the Politics of Race and Gender During the Cold War_. Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1996.\n\nMatthews, Tracye. _\"No One Ever Asks What a Man's Place in the Revolution Is\": Gender and Sexual Politics in the Black Panther Party, 1966\u20131971_. Ph.D diss., University of Michigan, 1998.\n\nMcDuffie, Erik S. _Long Journeys: Four Black Women and the Communist Party USA, 1930\u20131956_. Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2003.\n\nMcGuire, Danielle. _Race, Rape, and Resistance: The Tallahassee Story_. Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1999.\n\nShadron, Virginia. _Popular Protest and Legal Authority in Post\u2013World War II Georgia: Race, Class and Gender Politics in the Rosa Lee Ingram Case_. Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1991.\n\nWhite, Robert M. _The Tallahassee Sit-ins and CORE: A Nonviolent Revolutionary Sub-movement_. Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1964.\n\nWoodard, Kimberly R. \"The Summer of African-American Discontent.\" Unpublished paper, Duke University, 1992.\n\nYeakey, Lamont H. _The Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott, 1955\u20131956_. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1979.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\n\nFor more than forty years, \nYearling has been the leading name \nin classic and award-winning literature \nfor young readers.\n\nYearling books feature children's \nfavorite authors and characters, \nproviding dynamic stories of adventure, \nhumor, history, mystery, and fantasy.\n\nTrust Yearling paperbacks to entertain, \ninspire, and promote the love of reading \nin all children.\n**THE BLACK STALLION SERIES BY WALTER FARLEY**\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION RETURNS\n\nSON OF THE BLACK STALLION\n\nTHE ISLAND STALLION\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION AND SATAN\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION'S BLOOD BAY COLT\n\nTHE ISLAND STALLION'S FURY\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION'S FILLY\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION REVOLTS\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION'S SULKY COLT\n\nTHE ISLAND STALLION RACES\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION'S COURAGE\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION MYSTERY\n\nTHE HORSE-TAMER\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION AND FLAME\n\nMAN O' WAR\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION CHALLENGED!\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION'S GHOST\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION AND THE GIRL\n\nTHE BLACK STALLION LEGEND\n\nTHE YOUNG BLACK STALLION _(with Steven Farley)_\n\nPublished by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York\n\nText copyright \u00a9 1955 by Walter Farley \nText copyright renewed 1983 by Walter Farley and Random House, Inc.\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Random House Children's Books.\n\nYearling and the jumping horse design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.\n\nVisit us on the Web\n\nEducators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at \nwww.randomhouse.com\/teachers\n\neISBN: 978-0-307-80489-1\n\nReprinted by arrangement with Random House Children's Books\n\nv3.1\n_For Steve_\n\n# CONTENTS\n\n_Cover_\n\n_Other Books by This Author_\n\n_Title Page_\n\n_Copyright_\n\n_Dedication_\n\n1. \"Run, Flame! Run!\"\n\n2. Nothing\n\n3. The New Day\n\n4. The Strangers\n\n5. \"... Always Worrying About Nothing\"\n\n6. A Matter of Convenience\n\n7. \"Laugh, Please\"\n\n8. Final Training\n\n9. The Unleashing\n\n10. The Room\n\n11. And a Star to Guide Her By\n\n12. The Visitor\n\n13. The Wealthy Gentleman\n\n14. The Invitation\n\n15. The Waiting\n\n16. Off to the Races\n\n17. Post Parade\n\n18. The International Race\n\n19. The End...\n\n20\\.... And the Beginning\n\nEpilogue\n\n_About the Author_\n\n# \"RUN, FLAME! RUN!\"\n\n1\n\nThe tropical sun was hot and brilliant. It made the open waters of the Caribbean Sea appear more blue than they actually were. It turned the golden, rounded dome of Azul Island into a flaming apparition. Yet its rays could not pierce the mist which hung like a gray veil about the base of this island of stone. Blue waters churned white going over the protective reef that lay a short distance out, then turned black as the waves gathered momentum and height to disappear behind the heavy shroud. They could be heard seconds later crashing against the walled barriers of Azul Island.\n\nA lone boy guided the motor launch _Sea Queen_ toward the perilous reef, his eyes never leaving the waters directly before him. He handled the wheel carefully, expertly. He watched the submerged coral slide past to either side of the hull. He seemed to know this particular area well. He piloted his launch in an ever alternating course, but one that took him always closer to the gray mist.\n\nHis name was Steve Duncan. He was no experienced mariner, for only recently had he been given the privilege and the responsibility of guiding the _Sea Queen_ between the two islands of Antago and Azul, a distance of more than twenty miles. His home was in a small city in the United States, and he was on summer vacation from school. He wore a T-shirt and shorts. His body was deeply tanned from weeks spent beneath this hot, tropical sun, and the corners of his eyes were cracked with the white lines that come from squinting in the glaring sunlight for hours at a time. His black hair was cut short and uncovered.\n\nHe could have been any average and normal American boy... except for what he was about to do. In that respect, he did not conform to rule or type or standard.\n\nHe took the _Sea Queen_ into the gray mist. If he heard the heavy thud of waves crashing hard against the wall of stone beyond, it did not seem to frighten him. He went in a direct line now. The engine throbbed noisily as though in protest to the mounting surge of the sea that would hurl it forward too fast. No longer could Steve see the dome-shaped top of Azul Island. He watched only for the precipitous wall that soon would rise a thousand and more feet above him.\n\nLike the island itself, the approach foreboded danger. But Steve Duncan welcomed it, for it had kept all other people away. Now he began moving the wheel often again, and the propeller was reversed to steady the launch and hold it back from sweeping against the wall of stone that suddenly loomed ahead.\n\nSteve had left the doors of the low sea hole open, and now he skillfully took the launch through it and into the narrow canal which cut the floor of a large chamber within Azul Island. He moored the launch to moss-covered piles that were centuries old, and for a second he thought of the men from the Spanish galleons who had sunk them so long ago. Then he crossed the sandy floor of the chamber and closed the sliding partitions above the sea entrance. There was less light and wind now, but the waters in the canal still flooded and ebbed with the waves that found their way through the opening at the base of the hole.\n\nHurriedly Steve left the chamber and went down the tunnel which would take him to where he wanted to be more than any other place in the world. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light he ran faster, never once looking at the coral rock in brilliant shades of pink, green, gray and white that had always attracted his attention before. Nor did he give another thought to the Spanish Conquistadores who had brought their men, weapons and horses along this path in their final flight from the English and French. For it belonged to the far distant past, and Steve Duncan was interested only in the present and the great red stallion who awaited him.\n\nHe emerged from the tunnel and entered a long chasm, not bothering to glance up at the sky above the close, sheer walls on either side of him. He ran faster, breathing easily but becoming very excited. Soon he arrived at a small sliver of a valley, and crossed the stream that cut its center. Still he ran on till he came to a rock-strewn gorge. There he slowed down to a walk, for the trail was jagged and twisting. He went down the dry river bed, following the gorge until he came to a wide patch of marshland. Here he went a little faster but he didn't run. He hated this particular area with its high reeds, swamp ferns and the thick vapors whose stench of rotting vegetation had been made worse by the sweltering afternoon sun. He held his breath as long as possible between short gasps of the foul air, his eyes remaining fixed on the narrow green swath of solid ground before him. He saw Flame's oval-shaped hoofprints and it made this part of the trip a little easier to bear. Soon he'd be with his stallion. There was only a short distance to go now.\n\nFinally his path led upward, taking him from the hollow that fostered and nurtured the marsh. He began running again, leaving the dense vapors far behind. He climbed higher\u2014and then, just beyond a field of wild cane, he saw Blue Valley! At the upper end a band of horses grazed. A few of them were drinking from a pool that was fed by a waterfall dropping a hundred feet or more down the precipitous wall.\n\nSteve Duncan stopped then and whistled as loud as he could. In answer, a lone stallion emerged from the band... a tall chestnut horse whose mane and tail seemed to move like burning flame when he broke into a gallop. Steve ran to meet him.\n\nNo longer was the valley a place of quiet and peaceful solitude. The great stallion moved faster and faster over the short, thick grass, the beat of his hoofs resounding loudly from the walls of the natural amphitheater. He ran easily and without effort, his small head held high, his eyes never leaving the distant figure of the boy coming to meet him.\n\nSteve entered one side of the field of wild cane as the horse reached the other. He saw the stalks bend and break beneath the tall body of his horse. As he called and kept running, the red stallion swept by him, close enough almost to touch but without slowing stride. Steve did not turn back but ran faster through the cane.\n\nWhen he had reached the grassy floor of the valley, he heard Flame behind him, and then the stallion thundered by again, running halfway down the valley before slowing. Steve watched him make his sweeping turn, moving from sunlight into shadows cast by the high western wall. Flame's great body was now shrouded with a clinging veil of blue, a color that the shadows picked up from the grass and coral rock.\n\nAnd now Flame's call rose above the beat of his hoofs. It wasn't his clarion whistle of angry challenge. Soft and wavering, it hung on the air and welcomed Steve back home.\n\nThe boy laughed and kept running across the valley floor. He'd been gone only two days on this last trip to Antago but to him, as well as to Flame, it had seemed much longer. He was breathing heavily but soon he would stop running. He watched Flame sweep by him once more, and saw the short thrust of a foreleg as the stallion struck out in play without breaking stride.\n\nUpon reaching the opposite side of the valley, Steve jumped onto a flat rock and then turned around, awaiting his horse. In only a few seconds Flame was beside him and he slid quickly onto the stallion's back. He gave no command. He barely had time to close his knees before Flame was off, stretching out as he had not done before.\n\nOnly twice during the long ride down the valley floor did Steve call to him, and then he spoke softly into the pricked ears. \"Run, Flame! Run!\" He had learned long ago never to shout, only to whisper to Flame. He saw his stallion make for the band, the mares and foals scattering at his swift approach. Flame turned on winged hoofs and Steve shifted with him; then he went all-out up the valley and Steve had to close his eyes against the force of the wind Flame created. He pressed his head against the stallion's mane and neck. He was content to let Flame run as long and as fast as the horse liked. He'd know when the ride was over. But now he was _one_ with Flame.\n\nA half hour later he slid down from the sweaty back, as hot and wet as his horse. They were near the pool, and from all about them came the neighs of the mares. Flame had scattered them to the far corners of the valley by his playful but rough antics. Steve went to the pool and ducked his head in the cool waters. Flame joined him, snorting and lowering his small head to drink. As always, Steve marveled when after a few swallows Flame left the pool to rejoin his band. Hot as he was, thirsty as he was, this wild stallion would drink very little when overheated. Steve wondered how many domestic horses would have left the cool water as Flame had done.\n\nNow too happy and tired to move, Steve stretched out on the soft carpet of grass. It had been a long hard day but just being back made everything all right again. What could be more wonderful than this? He had found that even the confusion of a small island like Antago bothered him now. He was well spoiled. But who wouldn't be, having found a lost world inhabited only by Flame and his band? It was a world free of every care except the care of horses.\n\nSteve lay back, resting his head on his clasped hands, a long blade of succulent grass between his lips. He looked at the late afternoon sky with its light wisps of rippling clouds. The sun was well down behind the barrier walls, and Blue Valley was as blue as blue could be and very, very pleasant.\n\nHe supposed that if the day ever came when an airplane flew close to the dome of this island its pilot would know there was a valley down here. But the pilot would really have to be looking to find it. And where would such a plane be heading anyway? There was no land to the east as far as Africa, and the transatlantic airlines came nowhere near Azul Island. To the west there was only Antago, and no airline served that remote island outpost in the Caribbean Sea. Nor was there any nearby airport to service private planes.\n\nSteve had no fear of discovery of his lost world from the sea. A few tramp steamers put in each year at Antago, but the more traveled sea lanes between North and South America were much farther to the east and west. Besides, no captain in his right mind would approach very close to Azul Island; it looked like a massive, egg-shaped boulder and was ringed by dangerous reefs. Small launches could get only to the island's small southern sandspit, and from there it was impossible to reach Blue Valley or even to learn of its existence. Natives of Antago said of Azul Island, _\"Except for the sandspit it's nothing but solid rock.\"_ Well, let them go on believing so.\n\nSteve closed his eyes but quickly opened them again. He didn't want to fall asleep. He had some work to do before it got dark. Pitch wouldn't be around tonight to help get camp in order and do the cooking. He wouldn't be around for many nights to come, for that matter. But it was as Steve had wanted it. He hadn't liked the idea of staying at Pitch's home in Antago while his elderly friend was doing his historical research in the New York libraries and museums.\n\nPitch had finally consented to Steve's remaining alone in Blue Valley, knowing full well that he could take care of himself. But he wasn't really alone, Steve reminded himself. He had Flame and the band. It was exciting being the only one on the island with them. Somehow it changed things a lot not to have Pitch around. Not that he'd ever seen much of Pitch during the daytime. Pitch had always been too busy exploring the maze of tunnels that ran through the coral rock of Azul Island. And when Pitch hadn't been on a tunnel exploration he'd been working on his manuscript, writing in detail all they'd found here and giving his reasons for believing that Azul Island was the last great stronghold of the Conquistadores, almost three hundred years ago! The Spaniards had left this natural fortress hurriedly, for all the relics Pitch had found indicated this... and as further evidence there were the horses which had been left behind. Where else could this pure-blooded band have originated?\n\nAt this point in his thoughts, Steve sat up to look at Flame. Flame's forebears were Arabians of the finest strain. All one had to do to be convinced of this was to look at him and the mares. Their pure blood and the ideal conditions in Blue Valley had kept the strain free of flaw through generations of inbreeding. Now they were as perfect a group of horses as their ancestors had been... perhaps even finer.\n\nAgain Steve lay back on the grass, looking at the sky that was spotted with small, fleecy clouds. He was finding it difficult to keep his eyes open and began to realize that he must be more tired than he had thought. But he told himself that he mustn't go to sleep. He had time to rest after his long sea trip... plenty of time... just so he didn't fall asleep.\n\nHe listened to the splash of the waterfall and the occasional nicker of a mare to her suckling foal. Nothing else disrupted the peace and quiet of Blue Valley. Steve closed his eyes. Flame had come down the valley and was standing close by. Steve didn't have to open his eyes to know the stallion was there. Nor did he need to hear him. It seemed that the very air vibrated with the red stallion's greatness whenever he was around. If one looked, Flame's greatness could be seen in his eyes. But it wasn't necessary to look. One could _feel_ it.\n\nSteve suddenly felt a tightening in his throat, and he swallowed hard. Ordinarily he would have wanted Flame to be seen and appreciated by people other than himself, by horsemen who had never looked upon such a perfect stallion. But that kind of thinking wasn't for him, Steve knew. It wasn't possible for anyone but Pitch and himself to look upon Flame. To bring others here would mean the destruction of Blue Valley, the end of everything they held so dear. What they had here would last a long time. No one would know of Blue Valley until Pitch had his historical manuscript ready for publication, and it would take him many years to complete that work.\n\nSteve opened his eyes. Flame had taken another drink from the pool and was returning to his band.\n\nSteve's thoughts turned to all the swift rides he'd had on Flame. Had there ever been a faster horse than his stallion? He sat up and watched Flame move from one patch of grass to another. His red body was scarred heavily from all his battles to maintain leadership of the band, but his legs were straight and clean of any serious injuries. He'd give any horse in the world the race of his life!\n\n\"Stop daydreaming,\" Steve told himself. \"You have Flame and that's all that matters. Ride him as fast as you like here in the valley and let it go at that.\"\n\nHe looked up at the sky and decided to rest just a short while more before going to camp. He lay back again, closing his eyes and listening to the steady drone of the waterfall; the long moments passed pleasantly, easily, sleepily....\n\n_Sure, he wouldn't change things from the way they were. But it didn't do any harm to imagine how things would have been under different circumstances. It didn't hurt to dream, to pretend that he was riding Flame in a great race back home. He could just see...._\n\n# NOTHING\n\n2\n\nThe great light came suddenly, so suddenly that it made Steve's eyelids smart before he had a chance to open them. And when he did, it was simultaneously with the screams of the mares and Flame. In that flashing second it was Flame's high whistle that made Steve's heart skip a beat, for never before had he heard anything like it! It was shrill but without defiance or challenge or welcome. Instead it held the worst kind of fear and terror, that of unknown peril.\n\nBlue Valley was alive with a kind of golden light that had never before been seen there even under the brightest sun. Not even the deepest crag or fissure escaped. The light found everything and bathed it all in an awesome glow.\n\nSteve looked up and saw the hurtling sun coming directly at him! He screamed, his terror matching that of Flame and the mares. Then he flung himself flat, his face buried in the grass, his hands pressed hard against the sides of his head.\n\n_A sun where there had been no sun. The end of the world had come!_\n\nHis face unnaturally pale, Steve lay motionless, waiting for the end to come. In quick successive mental pictures he saw his mother and father, his home and Pitch and Flame. Then a heavy black curtain fell and he saw nothing at all. Seconds more he waited, perhaps minutes. From the smell of the earth he knew that he was conscious. He forced himself to use his ears, to listen. He heard the distant rush of the mares' and Flame's hoofs. Then he opened his eyes.\n\nBlue Valley was as it had been... how long ago? Minutes? A lifetime? Had he imagined all this? No, of that much he was certain. He had only to look at the band and Flame to know. The mares had directed their suckling foals into the middle of a small tight ring they had formed; their heads were toward the center, their hindquarters ready to fling strong hoofs at any attacker. Outside the ring stood yearling colts willing to do battle but trembling with fear. Flame encircled the whole group, his eyes constantly shifting in every direction, his every sense alerted to the responsibility of defending his band. But he too was afraid because he could not _see_ what threatened them.\n\nThe only brightness to the valley now came from the last reflections of the setting sun on the high eastern wall. There was nothing to fear or fight. Blue Valley was as quiet and peaceful as it had been before. _Before what?_\n\nSteve sat up but did not attempt to get to his feet. He wasn't at all certain that he'd be able to stand yet. What had bathed the valley in that awesome glow? A meteor from outer space? He had seen shooting stars with long flaming tails in many a night sky. But never in the daytime or so close as this had been. He had read that most meteors were no larger than a grain of sand, becoming extinguished long before they reached the earth. But there'd been cases too of meteors so large that they resisted all the burning friction of the earth's atmosphere and fell intact, digging great holes in the ground.\n\nSteve got to his feet and walked slowly to the pool, where he bathed his throbbing head. A meteor, then, was what it had been. It had almost landed on Azul Island. Where had it struck? Somewhere close, very close to the west. Now it must be at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.\n\nHe turned to the band. The mares had broken their circle. But they were not yet grazing, nor did they allow the foals to leave their sides. With short, incessant neighs and nips they kept the long-legged colts and fillies from straying away.\n\nSteve left the pool and climbed the narrow trail up along the end wall. Reaching a broad ledge that overlooked Blue Valley, he went into the cave behind it. Just within the entrance but far enough back to be protected against any driving rains were the stove, table, chairs and canned provisions. But Steve wasn't thinking of food. Whatever appetite he'd had was gone. He got one of the large lanterns, a flashlight and Pitch's binoculars. Then, leaving the cave, he continued up the trail until he reached the great opening where the underground stream rushed out from blackness to daylight, plummeting downward in a silken sheet to the pool far below.\n\nFor a second Steve stopped. He turned to look at Flame and the band, then lit the lantern and went into the great opening. He walked to the right of the underground stream. Only when he rounded a long bend in the tunnel did he leave completely the light of day. He walked a little slower then, his hand occasionally touching the jagged rock on either side of him. Finally he came to a fork leading to many tunnels. Steve raised the lantern and saw the chalked figures and letters Pitch had marked on every wall of the explored passageways. Steve knew where he was going and how to get there, but he had learned to take nothing for granted in this underground maze. He made certain he had the right passageway before going on.\n\nHe continued for fifteen minutes or more, stopping only at intersections of other tunnels to cast the light upon the walls. His lantern bobbed from the short, mincing strides he had to take in the low-ceilinged passageways. If he hurried, he thought, he might be in time to look upon a sea still angry with the searing it had received.\n\nJust ahead, a small square of daylight lay on the floor of the tunnel. Reaching it, he stopped and looked up the high ventilation shaft that pierced the stone. Pitch's rope hung down the shaft, but Steve had no intention of climbing to the outer ledge that was directly above him. He'd be able to look out upon the western sea without doing that. He began walking forward again, his head tucked between his shoulders, his back bent more and more as the tunnel became smaller. He went only a short distance before reaching the outer wall. There he extinguished his lantern, for three narrow slits of daylight came through the rock.\n\nHe looked through the middle slit first and saw nothing but the open sea. When he moved to the slit on the far right he could see the red sun resting on the water and just beginning its descent into the sea. For a moment he forgot everything in the beauty of the western sky. Seldom had he left Blue Valley to watch a sunset over the Caribbean Sea.\n\nHe blinked his eyes often in the brightness of the setting sun and suddenly realized that the glow from it was unusually strong. His gaze left the sun to search the waters around him for any vapors, any steaming bubbles to indicate that a flaming mass of molten metal had fallen. But he saw nothing of the sort so his eyes returned to the setting sun.\n\nThe huge red ball was now half obliterated by the sea, and the sky was aglow with all the colors in the universe. But the unusual brightness still marked the sun, and Steve blinked his eyes again. Once more he thought of the meteor. Perhaps it had struck directly in the path of his vision. Perhaps its steaming vapors were rising from the water and causing the golden glow that enveloped the brilliant red of the setting sun. He turned away, waiting for the sun to set completely so he'd know.\n\nMinutes later the sun disappeared but the bright light on the water remained, _the same brilliant glow that had come to Blue Valley!_ Steve told himself that it was being caused by gases from the meteor, still hot, still smoldering at the bottom of the sea. This was what he had hoped to see! This was why he had come! But although this made sense to him, there was no lessening to the pounding of his heart.\n\nHe squinted his eyes, hoping to see better. It was a nebulous, glowing mass of light and transparent, for he could make out the red sky directly behind it. Now he was certain it was produced by vapors rising from the sea. It was less bright than it had been only a moment ago. The meteor was losing its self-contained heat. The sea was crushing it, transforming it into nothing but heavy metal, fathoms upon fathoms deep.\n\nSuddenly Steve thought he saw a movement within the golden mass. He tried to smile at this illusion but found he couldn't move his lips. Nothing was out there except vapors, he reminded himself. He reached for the binoculars hanging from his neck. Before he could get them to his eyes he saw another slight movement, then it too was gone.\n\nHe focused the binoculars many minutes before he became certain of what he had thought he'd seen twice before.\n\n_At first the object had no color or shape. Then as it became separated from the mass it appeared silver and needle-like against the background of red sky. It traveled downward, just above the water, and that was the last he saw of it. He didn't know if it had climbed back into the heavens or had sunk into the depths of the sea_.\n\nHe was frightened but it wasn't the same kind of fear as when he had thought the end of the world had come. Never again would he feel such total, all-engulfing fear as that had been. It was as if he had suffered the very worst that could happen to anyone and, having survived, was stronger for it. Yet he didn't take his eyes from the glowing mass. He watched its brightness fade until it was nothing at all... only a small, round patch of grayish-white floating on the sea.\n\nSteve held the binoculars up to his eyes until the world outside was as black as the tunnel... but even then he could tell where _it_ was, for the patch was luminous. To anyone else it would have been nothing but the phosphorescence of a tropical sea. Steve knew otherwise. Something was out there! He turned and stumbled down the passageway.\n\nArriving at Blue Valley, he went to Flame in the darkness. He sought a return to normalcy in the familiar nearness of his horse. But, like himself, Flame was alert and watchful. The stallion's wild instincts told him that whatever had disrupted the quiet of his kingdom a short while ago hadn't gone. He wouldn't stray from his band that night. He wouldn't sleep or relax his vigil. And Steve knew that it would be no different for himself. But, actually, what had they to watch for? Neither knew, and that's what made the long hours to come so dangerous.\n\nFor the time of year, the weather that night was very unusual. No moon or stars were to be seen through a heavy, rolling overcast, yet only a few hours before the sky had been clear except for the flimsy lacework of rippling white.\n\nSteve felt the chilling dampness, the nearness of the drenching rain to come. He moved closer to his horse, wondering if the heavens, like Flame and himself, were uneasy because of what had come to Blue Valley.\n\n\"You're being silly,\" he told himself, aloud and angry. Flame jumped away, startled by his voice. Steve called him back.\n\nOver and over again he decided that what he had seen was only a meteor. He must accept that as a fact and nothing else. The meteor had sunk into the sea, leaving behind a bubbling trail that had created a great disturbance in the water _and in the air above it_. This had caused the golden mass, giving rise to his illusion of the three slender objects he had thought he'd seen but actually _hadn't_. The round, grayish-white patch that had remained on the water afterward was only something that had been created by the chemical reaction of gases and water. Tomorrow it would be gone.\n\nJust then, and without further warning, the night rain came down heavily. Steve felt its rawness and decided that he and his horse were uneasy only because of the unseasonable cold. Suddenly he welcomed the rain, turning his face to the sky and letting it drench him thoroughly.\n\nAfter a few minutes he told himself that he was being very foolish standing in the rain when it could lead to a bad cold and perhaps complications that would make it necessary for him to leave Blue Valley. \"Pitch would really be angry if he caught me doing this,\" he thought.\n\nLeaving Flame, Steve climbed the trail to camp. He went inside the cave and lit the stove for the warmth it would provide. He'd have a lot to tell Pitch. Pitch would never believe that Blue Valley had gotten so cold he had had to get the stove going to keep warm!\n\nSteve removed all his clothes and rubbed himself hard with a large towel, then got dry clothes from the trunk and put them on. The rain was still coming down hard and cold currents of air swept through the cave. He moved closer to the stove. He thought of having some hot soup, not because he was hungry but for added warmth.\n\nLater he put the bowl of soup, half finished, to one side. He wondered at his lack of appetite. He was still shivering. He had brought no sweaters, no woolen clothes to the tropics. Then he remembered the light blankets and got one to wrap around himself. He didn't lie down, for he knew he couldn't sleep. He sat in a deep-seated canvas chair, watching and listening to the torrential downpour outside. It was going to be a long, long night.\n\nNow, if Pitch were here it would be different, he thought. They'd watch the cold rain together and talk about how unusual it was. Pitch would insist upon having a big, hot meal. Afterward Pitch would sit beside him, smoking his pipe and telling about his latest tunnel exploration.\n\nSteve closed his eyes so as not to see the rain any more. He would have liked to close his ears to it too. The rain wasn't helping matters at all. He wished that Pitch were there with him. He could have discussed with him all he'd seen at sunset, and then he would have been able to forget it and go to sleep.\n\nPerhaps all he had to do was to pretend that Pitch was sitting over there in the other chair, listening. It wasn't hard to visualize Pitch with his bared, knobby knees covered by a blanket, his round face boyish and jovial despite his fifty-odd years. Pitch would be looking very serious, very intent.\n\nAnd he, Steve, would be saying, \"Pitch, the strangest thing happened today. For a while I was as scared as I'll ever be in my life, but now that I know what actually happened it makes a great story. There I was down in the valley with Flame when...\"\n\nSteve went to sleep with his lips moving, explaining to Pitch all that had happened at sunset.\n\n# THE NEW DAY\n\n3\n\nSteve awakened to a morning unlike any he had ever known on Azul Island. The air was so crystal clear that only the finest of fall days in the northern hemisphere could have been compared with it. Never had his valley been more beautiful; it was a sky-blue gem set in soft, warm, molten gold.\n\nSteve breathed deeply and felt his whole being expand with the exhilarating air. It was as though he'd never really breathed before! Would Pitch believe this, when he told him? Would Pitch be able to imagine that a hard, cold rain such as they'd had the night before could wash the valley and air as never before, breathing new life into everything? Look at the horses! Look at Flame! They were frolicking, playing like young weanling colts, every one of them!\n\nListen to the birds! Where were they? Few birds ever came to Blue Valley and then they never stayed very long. They preferred the lush, green, volcanic islands such as Antago to the comparative coral-rock barrenness of Azul. Steve swept his eyes over the wild cane below, where the birds probably had gone in search of cover. He didn't see them yet their songs filled the valley, echoing and re-echoing from the walls.\n\nThere, up the trail! He saw them then, perched on the jagged rocks beside the waterfall. There were only two, but their incessant calls made it sound as though a whole flock of birds had migrated to Blue Valley.\n\nSteve's gaze left them for the horses again. Oh, he had so much to tell Pitch! He wished his friend were here to share this morning with him. Never had he felt so well, so happy! There were so many things he _wanted_ to do today. For a few minutes more he watched Flame frolicking with his band, the tall stallion stopping occasionally to press hard against the yearling colts. Flame did this not in combat but in play. The colts seemed to understand and they pushed back and rose with him, but never too strenuously, for they did not want to antagonize their leader. The day would come when these colts would fight Flame in earnest, teeth for teeth, hoof for hoof, in their attempt to take the leadership from him. But at their present age they were willing to play.\n\nSteve turned away from them and went into the cave. He cooked a large breakfast of powdered eggs and milk and hot biscuits. While he ate he looked often at the gleaming valley and listened to the birds. He had plenty of company today! Not once did he think fearfully of what had happened the day before at sunset. It was something he was glad to have experienced. How many other people had seen a glowing meteor fall to earth? And wouldn't it add further interest to the written record he'd kept of his life on Azul Island?\n\nSteve thought of the filled notebooks he had hidden away. They told of his finding Flame and the band and all the exciting times he'd shared with them. They were something he had kept completely to himself. Even Pitch didn't know of them.\n\nWhen Steve had washed the breakfast dishes he wanted very much to share this glorious morning in play with Flame. But first he had some work to do. There was the stove to be cleaned, crates of provisions to be opened and stored away, blankets and clothing to be aired. There'd be time later for Flame, plenty of time, all the rest of the day.\n\nFor several hours he worked, emerging from the cave every so often to look at the horses. He always drove himself back inside. But the desire to play was very strong on such a day! Finally he was finished except for getting a fresh supply of water. Picking up a bucket, he climbed the trail. The birds, still perched beside the waterfall, flew away at his approach. He was sorry that he had interrupted their song.\n\nOne, a bright blue bird with crested head, dove headlong down the wall, not leveling off until just before he reached the pool. The other, a mottled brown-backed bird, was less daring. He glided down, circling several times before coming to rest.\n\nSteve made a mental note to get an accurate description of them for Pitch, who'd probably tell him that the previous night's wind and rain had swept these birds to Azul Island from Antago.\n\nSteve got his water from the rushing stream and then returned to the ledge. Now for Flame!\n\nThe red stallion and the band had stopped their play and were grazing. The air remained crisp and cool even though it was almost noon. This had never happened before, and Steve marveled at it. Even the marsh at the far end of the valley wasn't sending up its foul vapors as it usually did at this time of day. He looked for the birds but couldn't find them. He hoped he hadn't scared them away. They belonged with this lovely day.\n\nSteve whistled to Flame and the red stallion came loping toward him as he hurried down the trail. Flame stopped a short distance away, neighed and tossed his head, his heavy forelock falling over his eyes.\n\n\"Come on,\" Steve called.\n\nThe stallion shook his head but finally he came forward.\n\nSteve gathered Flame's forelock. \"I keep braiding this so you won't go blind trying to see through it, and you keep loosening it somehow,\" he said, laughing. \"Stand still now, and we'll do it over again.\"\n\nFlame tossed his head when Steve had finished, and the braided forelock moved up and down like a thumping whip. Steve slid onto the stallion's back.\n\nFlame didn't bolt as he had done the previous afternoon. He stood restless but unmoving, awaiting commands from Steve's legs. Finally the light touch came and he went off at a slow gallop.\n\nSteve kept Flame at that gait for a long while. They went down the valley, circled the band and came back. It was a day meant for riding and Steve intended to make the most of it. Just to be astride his horse, to be alone with him, was more than he could ever want.\n\nBut that wasn't exactly what he had thought yesterday, he reminded himself. Hadn't he wanted Flame's greatness to be appreciated by others? Hadn't he once again daydreamed of racing Flame? Yes, he admitted all this and he knew the reason for it.\n\nSteve recalled the colorful poster he had seen in the Cuban air terminal during his long flight from the United States to Port of Spain, Trinidad, on his way to Azul Island well over a month ago. He had read it with great interest, as he did anything that had to do with horses. The poster had announced the running of an International Race to be held in Havana, Cuba, August 3rd. That was now less than a week away, he figured. The race was \"OPEN TO THE WORLD\"\u2014and beneath this screaming declaration was a huge drawing of the globe.\n\nSteve remembered boarding his plane again, wondering if \"Open to the World\" included Azul Island. So even then he'd been daydreaming of racing Flame! Such a fantastic prospect must be on his mind to a greater extent than he had realized.\n\nSuddenly he heard the whir of feathered wings, and as a bird flew close overhead he saw the flash of the white under-body, the large blue wings and the crested head. It was the bird that had dived so recklessly down the end wall. The smaller, brown-backed bird was flying near the cane, squeaking loudly as though in warning or reprimand to the other.\n\nSuddenly the blue bird flew in front of Flame and then downward, almost in the stallion's path. Flame thrust out a foreleg without breaking stride. He did it not in play but in anger. The bird annoyed him.\n\nSteve, aware of Flame's mounting fury, turned him away from the cane, but the bird followed. Steve let Flame gallop faster and the tall stallion welcomed the opportunity to leave his winged tormentor behind. His strides became longer as he swept across the valley floor.\n\nSteve's clucking matched the rhythm of his horse's hoofs. As the beat became faster and they left the bird behind, he thought once more of the poster he had seen. He pretended that he had Flame on the Havana race track. _Steve Duncan racing Flame!_ He bent closer to his horse's neck and told him to go on. Now they were passing all the other horses in the International Race. Now they were really moving!\n\nThey swept down the valley floor and as he neared the pool Flame began his wide, sweeping turn. Steve leaned with him, urging him to still greater speed. Now they were entering the homestretch. _\"Come on, Flame! The finish wire is just ahead!\"_\n\nAs the stallion lengthened out a low blue streak cut in front of him. Flame slowed his strides and struck out viciously. He even swerved aside, striking again at the bird who had dared to come so close to his legs. This time his hoof grazed the bird's long tail and the feathers flew. The bird dove into the tall cane, then rose again to be joined by his brown-backed friend whose high, squeaky calls of reprimand could be heard above the pounding of Flame's hoofs. After circling, the birds flew away.\n\nSteve buried his head in Flame's flowing mane again, glad that the blue bird had left them alone. The stallion picked up stride and once more the valley echoed only to the beat of winged hoofs.\n\nMinutes later Steve slowed his horse and circled the band. Finally he stopped and slipped off Flame's back. He walked toward the mares but did not go close enough to frighten the foals. He sat down on the grass and waited for the mares to come to him.\n\nHe did not have long to wait, for the adult members of the band had accepted him long ago. The mares came closer but the suckling foals stayed behind their mothers, a little timid, a little afraid. It was they whom he wanted to make his friends. Every day he spent a short while with them, trying to win their confidence and acceptance.\n\nHe called to these long-legged, furry-coated sons and daughters of Flame, waiting for them to lose their shyness and come to him. But today they showed no curiosity over his presence and did not move from behind their mothers' protective bodies. Steve waited a long while before finally giving up. He got to his feet, regretting that he had made no progress.\n\nOn the way down the valley he passed a group of yearling colts at play. He called to one of them but the colt took no notice of him. This was the one whose broken leg he had cared for the summer before and whom he had intended to take home. But his parents had given him the choice of using the money he earned each year to maintain a horse of his own _or_ continuing his summer visits with Pitch, and he had chosen the latter. He couldn't give up Flame and Blue Valley.\n\nSteve walked on, aware that he didn't feel as well as he had only a short while before. Perhaps it was due to the blunt rebuff he'd received from the foals and the yearling colt... especially the colt, for they had been such fast friends the previous summer. The colt had grown up and away from him during the months he'd been away.\n\nHe brushed the sweat from his face, realizing suddenly that the weather too had changed. The sun's rays had finally penetrated the cool air of the valley. No longer was the day crystal clear but heavy with tropic heat. Steve decided, as he approached the end wall, that the afternoon was no warmer than any other in the past. It was just oppressive by comparison with those wonderful earlier hours.\n\nReturning to camp, he made himself a sandwich, and stayed within the cave to eat it. Finally he rose from his chair and went out on the ledge to stand in the sun again. He felt the beads of perspiration come to his forehead, but he didn't leave the open ledge. His eyes and feet shifted uneasily as he looked down the valley.\n\nSomehow, just as the weather had changed so had he. He was restless, even becoming concerned again about that floating white patch on the water. It was all so silly, so foolish. There was no reason to be concerned. He had decided once and for all it was something that had been caused by the chemical reaction of gases and water. It would be gone by now, swallowed by the sea just as the meteor had been.\n\nHe walked from one side of the ledge to the other, still ignoring the relief from the sun which the cave offered him. If it was the floating patch that was bothering him, why not make certain that it had long since disappeared? If his mind would not listen to reason, the only way to rid himself of his apprehension was to go and look again. He'd find nothing, and that would make everything all right.\n\nTaking his knapsack and lantern, he went up the trail. The valley was very quiet; it seemed that the birds too had sought refuge from the heat. He hoped they hadn't forsaken Blue Valley altogether. It was nice having them around, even if the larger one had annoyed Flame. He turned to look at his stallion and the band. They were grazing in the shade of the western wall. Flame moved restlessly from one patch of grass to another, raising his head every so often, ears pricked and listening.\n\nSteve went into the great opening, wondering if Flame felt the same anxiety that he did. And if so, for what reason, when everything had been so serene before? He hurried along the underground stream, anxious to reach the lookout post over the western sea.\n\nWhen he arrived there he pressed his eyes close to the narrow slit. The afternoon sun was higher than during his last visit, so its rays did not obstruct his view of the sea's surface. He saw immediately that the grayish-white patch was still there, and the blood began pounding in his temples. He pressed his head closer to the stone, welcoming its coolness. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It must be floating algae, phosphorescent at night, grayish-white during the day. But why then hadn't it moved? Why was it anchored in the same identical spot as last night?\n\nHe forsook the coolness of the stone against his head for the binoculars and the better view they would provide. As he put the glasses to his eyes, he found that his hands were moist. He chastised himself, ridiculed himself for his mounting concern. But nothing helped.\n\nHe looked through the binoculars. The patch was no different than when seen with the naked eye... it was grayish-white, round and motionless. Steve stayed there a long while, not wanting to leave without having decided once and for all what it really was. He didn't want to spend another uneasy night.\n\nHe could not have told how long he had been there when he saw some sort of a stirring directly above the patch. He told himself it was being caused by the sun's rays. But the sun was still high in the heavens. A light was beginning to dance directly above the grayish-white patch. Rapidly it became brighter, and then Steve knew what it was. _The golden mass of the day before. The second sun that had swept over Blue Valley. The meteor that was no meteor!_\n\nIn a few seconds the mass was big and round and glowing. Steve closed his eyes against its brightness. Yet he didn't keep them closed, for he wanted to watch. He saw the long flash of an object high above the golden mass before it plummeted down to the water. He made out its needle-like shape just before it disappeared within the great light. Then the mass faded rapidly until nothing was left on the water but that small patch of grayish-white.\n\nSteve lowered the binoculars, turned away and staggered through the tunnel. What was out there on the water? What had he seen?\n\nWhatever it was, he and the horses were safe in Blue Valley. Nothing, _no one_ could reach them within the barrier walls of Azul Island. Soon _it_ would go away, and all would be quiet and peaceful again. But what was it? He wanted to _know_.\n\nHis breath came faster just as his steps did, without his being aware of it. The needle-like object that had flashed through the sky had been guided to that mass of golden light, he decided. Guided by whom? What was the light? Where had it gone?\n\nHe stumbled and fell, but managed to keep his lantern from being broken. For a moment he lay on the ground, finding comfort in his familiarity with this underground world. A soothing quietness came to his body and mind. Perhaps he had seen nothing at all. Perhaps his eyes, affected by long weeks of bright, tropical sun, had created these optical illusions of mass and objects. Mirages had appeared to others at sea and in the desert. Why not to him?\n\nFinally he got to his feet and began walking again. But he had gone only a short distance when suddenly he fell to his knees with a force that sent the lantern crashing hard against the jagged wall. The strong current of tunnel air quickly extinguished the flame and then he was in total darkness.\n\nHe made no attempt to get the flashlight from his knapsack but remained absolutely still, listening. Yet the voices could not be real, nothing he actually heard! His ears, like his eyes, he decided, must be playing tricks on him in this black world a thousand and more feet beneath the dome of Azul Island.\n\nOn hands and knees he went forward, feeling his way along the ground. The voices rang constantly in his ears, soft and almost musical, _clear and so distinct_. Was his mind too playing tricks on him? No one else could be in this maze of tunnels known only to Pitch and himself!\n\nHe inched forward, rounding a turn, and there he saw the light of a burning lantern coming from a side chamber. He dropped flat on the ground so quickly that his head struck the stone, the impact making the blood gush from his nose. But he felt nothing, saw nothing... only his ears seemed alive.\n\n\"Really, Jay,\" a voice said impatiently, \"it's getting late and we should go back. We've wasted most of the day already.\"\n\n\"Wasted?\" another voice asked. \"Did you expect to find anything like this? You know as well as I do that we're most fortunate.\"\n\n\"Well, of course. I admit all that. But at the same time we mustn't overdo it. After all, there's work to be done.\"\n\n\"It can wait.\"\n\nSteve raised his head, listening to the voices and experiencing a strange solace in his final acceptance that they were _real_. No longer did he have to fear discovery with no chance to fight back. The danger was here, only a few feet away from him. He rose and went slowly forward, making no noise. He tried to still the pounding of his heart, afraid that it might betray his presence. Closer and closer he moved to the doorway, stealthily transferring his weight from one leg to the other. Not once did he take an awkward, uncertain step or dislodge a loose stone. Every movement was fluid, coordinated and planned. Fear stole silently along with him, but this fear he understood and accepted. It was as real as the voices of the men within the chamber. When he was almost at the doorway, he stopped and listened. The waiting had come to an end. Now he would know what he must face to protect himself and the horses.\n\n_\"Come in, Steve,\"_ one voice said suddenly. _\"We've been waiting for you.\"_\n\n# THE STRANGERS\n\n4\n\nThe words came as unexpectedly as an unseen blow, almost striking him down as he stood there rigidly, his back against the side of the tunnel. He had felt so certain he could not have been seen or heard.\n\n\"Please, Steve, come in,\" the voice repeated. \"We really don't have much time.\" It was not a command, only an impatient but gracious request.\n\nBut Steve had no intention of entering the chamber. And, finding that his legs had lost their temporary immobility, he moved quickly. He knew where this tunnel would take him and he planned to lose his pursuers forever in this world of darkness.\n\nHis hands were raised to ward them off if they sought to stop him when he passed the doorway. But they weren't there. A swift glance disclosed that they were well to the rear of the room, one sitting on the edge of the chamber's lone table, while the other stood beside it holding a lantern.\n\nSteve came to a sudden stop, telling himself they could never reach him from where they were or travel the tunnels as fast as he. But what made him stop was more than that. It was the men themselves.\n\nThey were no taller than Pitch, who was a short man, and they were just as thin and light-boned. But it was their clothes that startled him most of all. They were dressed more for a northern business office than a tropical expedition, much less one to the rocky depths of Azul Island. Their suits were heavy and newly pressed with knife-edged creases. They wore fine shirts and bow ties.\n\nAs Steve looked at them they stared back, their gazes unwavering and interested. Their faces were round and, like their voices, soft and gracious. There was nothing evil or sinister about them. They smiled at him and then were silent, as though waiting for him to speak.\n\nSteve gripped the jagged stone of the doorway, ready to pull himself away at a run. He must not be influenced by their appearance. He must not step inside the chamber, where they might catch him.\n\nFinally the one holding the lantern said, \"I _do_ wish you wouldn't take so much time, Steve. We must be getting on.\"\n\nThe other slid easily from his seat on the table. \"You're always taking so much for granted, Flick,\" he reprimanded. \"Can't you see that Steve is startled at finding us here? First, we should introduce ourselves.\" He came across the room, his hand outstretched. \"My name is Jay, and...\" He stopped abruptly when he saw the boy draw back from the doorway. \"Don't go, Steve. Please don't go. Are you really so frightened by us?\"\n\nIt was impossible for Steve to say anything. He could only look at them, wondering who they were and how they had ever gotten there. The eyes of the man standing only a short distance away from him were crystal clear and yet had color. More than anything else they promised him no harm. Yet Steve said not a word, nor did he relax his muscles.\n\n\"Flick,\" the man said without taking his eyes off Steve, \"please bring the lantern over here. I want to talk to Steve, and one _can't_ talk to a person in the dark.\"\n\nAs the other came forward with the lantern, Steve was about to run but he checked the impulse. The two men were now within a few feet of him, but they were still far enough away for him to be able to elude them, he decided.\n\nThe man who had brought the lantern spoke. \"Really, Jay, this is all taking much too long,\" he said impatiently. \"Let's try again some other time. We're neglecting our duties.\"\n\n\"Nonsense. Just relax, Flick. I'll attend to everything, and it won't take very long.\"\n\n\"No,\" the other answered. \"You're too impetuous. I'm in charge, remember that.\"\n\nSteve turned from one to the other. Far from being sinister, these two men were arguing like a couple of children. He looked at them again in the bright light of their lantern. The one called Flick wore a brown tweed suit, a white shirt and a black-and-gold tie. His hair was gray and cropped short; it had a bright reddish tint, and yet the small mustache beneath his large beaked nose was more black than gray or red. Steve found it impossible to be alarmed by him.\n\nThe other man wore a sky-blue suit, a white shirt and a black string bow tie. His hair was very long and wavy, more blue than black. There was nothing frightening about him, either.\n\n\"Careful,\" Steve warned himself. \"That may be what they want you to think. Don't let them come closer.\"\n\nJay's gaze was still on him. Steve glanced at the man called Flick and found the same shimmering clearness of eye, devoid of all color yet containing all the colors in the world. He felt a sudden throbbing in his head.\n\n\"Aren't you surprised to see us, Steve?\" Jay asked again. \"You're more startled than frightened, isn't that so?\"\n\nSteve nodded as he felt a numbness claim his body. He fought it, telling himself that he should run, but he couldn't leave. He could only stare into those eyes, thinking how much they resembled glass marbles. And yet they looked back at him as marbles never could, with more expression than he had ever seen in anyone's eyes.\n\nThe men waited patiently, kindly, while he tried again to speak. They came no closer... but even if they had, he could not have left.\n\nThey were helping him, and finally his words came in a whisper. \"How did you get here?\"\n\nBoth smiled, and it was Jay who answered. \"Why, in our ship, of course. You've seen it, Steve. You've been watching us right along.\"\n\n\"We're just over there,\" Flick added, nodding his cropped gray head to one side.\n\nSteve turned his head toward the wall of the chamber, and Flick chuckled and said, \"Of course I mean _outside_ , Steve.\"\n\n\"There you go taking too much for granted again,\" Jay said disapprovingly.\n\nFlick's small mustache trembled in his irritation. \"I wish you'd stop saying that, Jay. It's all I've heard from you during this trip. You know as well as I do that there's only so much we can tell Steve.\"\n\n\"Oh, nonsense,\" Jay retorted. \"You're always worrying about nothing. No wonder you're gray long before your time. And wearing that ridiculous crew-cut doesn't fool anyone, either.\" He turned quickly to Steve, not wanting to give Flick an opportunity to speak just then. \"Steve,\" he explained, \"we're on the water out there. We arrived late yesterday afternoon, and of course we knew that you were watching us. We realize how concerned you've been. Please don't be any longer.\"\n\nFlick said, \"Actually, we've been just as concerned about _you_.\"\n\nJay nodded his blue-black head in agreement. \"That's one of the reasons for this visit. I don't believe we've ever been seen before. It's quite...\"\n\n\"Now, now, Jay,\" Flick interrupted nervously. \"You know what Julian said.\"\n\n\"Worrying, always worrying, you and Julian. Just leave it to me to know how much to explain.\"\n\n\"I've tried that before and it hasn't worked out very well,\" Flick answered gravely. He turned to Steve and smiled. \"You mustn't mind our bickering. This has been going on a long time.\"\n\n\"Too long,\" Jay said. \"The next trip will be different. I'll team up with Victor.\"\n\n\"They won't have it,\" Flick answered. \"You and Victor are too much alike.\" He shrugged his thin shoulders, adding, \"But it would be perfectly all right with me. In fact it would be a pleasure not to have to worry about you at all.\"\n\nSteve realized vaguely that none of this could be real. He couldn't be thousands of feet deep within the walls of Azul Island, listening to these men argue as they might have done in any living room! It couldn't be happening, _and yet it was_.\n\nFinally Jay turned to him again. \"I suppose old Flick is right in a way, Steve. Maybe you'd better just accept our being here. It'll be easier on you. Of course you know about our ship, having seen it. Unfortunately, it takes us a little while to cool down after a long voyage... friction, you know. But we never dreamed anyone would be at this remote spot to see us come in.\"\n\n_They were talking about the golden mass of light, only it was more than light. It was their ship and it was still there, above that small grayish-white patch, without being visible!_\n\nSudden alarm passed through Steve like an electric shock, shattering the numbness that had brought immobility to his legs. He moved them now, seeking to turn and run.\n\nBut their hands caught him quickly, keeping him still, and he knew he could not get away, that all hope of escape was lost.\n\nFlick said casually, \"So little has missed Steve's attention. Really, it's most remarkable. He's even seen the cruisers.\"\n\n\"So he has,\" Jay returned. \"But I don't think it matters. Steve has as much to conceal as we do. He's a very unusual person.\"\n\nAs Steve listened, there flashed through his mind all he had read about the frightening, secret weapons of war that were being developed and tested by countries throughout the world. Was this ship one of them? Were those needle-shaped objects he'd seen even now bent on the destruction of distant cities? This was very real and _deadly_!\n\n\"Look at us, Steve,\" Jay said.\n\nOnly then did Steve realize that Jay and Flick had been silent for many minutes. He made a great effort to focus his eyes upon them, to see them as they actually were. He _had_ to know the answers to his questions.\n\nThey were looking at him, but neither spoke. Their features had become so blurred it was difficult for Steve to make them out. He tried to blink to clear his vision, but found he could not move his eyelids. The two faces grew more and more indistinct until they were blotted out completely. Only the shimmering light of their eyes remained and that shone brighter and brighter, seemingly enveloping him in an intense heat.\n\nSteve knew that he could not fight this growing inner warmth, that all he could do was to welcome it. Stronger and stronger it became, flooding his body and very being till there was no room left for fear or suspicion. He felt only a deep sense of comfort and confidence and trust.\n\nHow long it was before he could see their faces again, he could not have told. But suddenly he was asking himself how anyone could look at these two men and think anything but good of them. Flick was smiling, pleased and happy that Steve trusted them completely, that he now felt confident no one, no country, had anything to fear from them. Jay, too, was smiling, even chuckling.\n\n\" _Now_ , Steve,\" Flick said softly, \"I was wondering when you and Pitch first found this place.\"\n\n\"Pitch! Do you know Pitch?\" Steve asked aloud, surprised at their mentioning his friend's name, surprised even more that his words came so easily.\n\n\"Oh, no,\" Flick answered hastily, \"... just a little _of_ him.\" He glanced at Jay with fleeting concern.\n\n\"Who told you about him?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Well... well, _you_ did, Steve.\" Flick turned to Jay helplessly.\n\n\"There you go getting yourself into a jam,\" Jay said, \"and wanting me to get you out of it. I told you before that if you start something with Steve you must finish it. You just can't let it hang in the air. He won't have it.\"\n\n\"He's only a boy,\" Flick answered defiantly.\n\n\"Of course, and that's exactly what I mean, Flick. We're not dealing with a closed, inflexible, adult mind here. Young people _are_ different, Flick, and we might as well accept that right now. We must get used to having Steve ask questions that I believe no one but a young person _would_ ask. And really, Flick, it's going to make our visit much more fun.\"\n\n\"But, Jay...\" Flick began.\n\nJay ignored him and turned to Steve. \"Getting back to your question about our knowing Pitch, Steve. As Flick started to say, _you_ told us about him. What I mean is that you've been thinking about him right along and we're able to tune our minds to yours without much trouble. It's something on the order of what you'd call telepathic power, I believe. But it's simply an exchange of thought messages, which we've taken great pride in doing for a long, long while.\" He chuckled, then added, \"However we don't overdo it, Steve, for fear we'll lose the use of our voices. Now let's talk about Flame. While we were watching you ride him this morning we...\"\n\n\"Y\u2014you mean you know about Flame too? You were in the valley this morning?\"\n\n\"Yes to both questions, Steve,\" Jay replied. \"As Flick mentioned a few minutes ago, we were concerned about your having seen us. Naturally, we thought it best to check up on you.\" He straightened his black string tie and smiled, hoping to relieve Steve's anxiety. \"Of course everything is all right, perfectly all right _now_. It's just that we didn't know what to expect.\"\n\nFlick nodded his cropped head in full agreement, and Jay went on, \"But let's talk about the horses, Steve. Flame is a very beautiful animal and you sit him well.\"\n\n\"Can't you get your mind off horses, Jay?\" Flick asked in a bored tone. \"That's all I've heard from you since we arrived.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry but that's the way I feel about the subject,\" Jay answered brusquely. \"My interest in horses is nothing new, as you very well know.\"\n\n\"I know. I know,\" Flick said resignedly. \"You certainly have a well-balanced mind, ninety percent horse, I'd say. I should have known better than...\" He stopped abruptly, and raised the lantern to Jay's face. Then he went on, \"It's just occurred to me, Jay, that you might have known there were horses on this island when you picked our landing site. After all you were at the controls at the time.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, Flick,\" Jay said, hurt. \"This is just as much of a surprise to me as it is to you.\"\n\n\"How did you get in here?\" Steve interrupted the argument.\n\nJay smiled. \"Oh, we have means of leaving the ship,\" he replied casually. \"You've seen us.\"\n\nSteve thought of the cruisers they'd mentioned. Even now one of those slender objects must be somewhere within the barrier walls of Azul Island... probably in the smaller valley near the sea entrance.\n\nFlick came around Jay to join in the discussion. \"And then of course we followed you into the tunnels, when you went to look at our ship again. We stopped to rest when we came to this chamber, knowing you'd return presently.\"\n\n\"That was your idea,\" Jay said bitterly. \"I wanted to go ahead and surprise Steve.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you didn't,\" Steve spoke up.\n\nFlick said, \"We'd better be getting back now, Jay. I'm sure it must be very late.\"\n\n\"Julian is there. He'll take care of things.\"\n\n\"But it's _our_ job,\" Flick insisted. \"The others won't like it.\"\n\n\"We're late now, so they're angry already,\" Jay answered. \"A few minutes more won't change things.\" He turned to Steve. \"I'd like a cup of tea, Steve. You do have some, don't you?\"\n\nSteve nodded and obediently followed them out of the chamber. He marveled that they knew their way through the tunnels but he was not surprised. One's mind could take in only so much and his had had its fill. Later he'd find out all he needed to know. From what country had they come? What manner of people were they to have built an airship that could not be seen while anchored and were so far advanced in the power of telepathy that they knew about Pitch just from his having thought of him?\n\nHe continued walking close behind Flick, who led the way, the light bobbing before him. He felt no fear or suspicion of them, only the confidence and trust that had come to him in the chamber. This, too, had been their doing. Otherwise wouldn't he have been afraid for himself and the horses?\n\nWhen they emerged from the tunnels and stood beside the waterfall, Blue Valley was in deep shadow. The air was very cool and pleasant, much as it had been that morning.\n\nJay glanced at him and said, \"Lovely, isn't it? And you'd like it to remain this way?\"\n\nSteve nodded.\n\nJay winked and said, \"Sometimes weather can be a state of mind, Steve... like a lot of other things.\"\n\nFlick gave Jay a stern look of reprimand as they started down the trail.\n\nIt took only a few minutes to get the canister of tea Pitch had stored away and to have the water boiling. Jay balanced his cup of tea on the fine crease of his blue pants. \"Let's talk about Flame, Steve,\" he said.\n\n\"Not now,\" Flick interrupted. \"Make it another time. Drink your tea and let's go.\"\n\n\"You'll be coming back then?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Of course, Steve,\" and Jay chuckled. \"I wouldn't miss this for anything.\" He looked at the table behind Steve. \"May I have one of those biscuits?\" he asked.\n\nSteve passed the can to him. Jay had taken only a bite when Flick rose from his chair, his face red with anger.\n\n\"You're being most difficult,\" he told Jay. \"You know you'll get plenty to eat when we get back. I've taken enough of your lack of consideration.\" He pulled Jay from his chair and forcefully led him down the steep trail.\n\nSteve watched them go. After they had reached the valley floor they walked across to the field of wild cane. Flame was grazing in the distance, and Steve wondered if he should warn his departing visitors that the red stallion would not tolerate strangers in his kingdom. Almost at once he decided it was not necessary to warn them... yet he wondered why he felt so certain of this.\n\nIt was becoming quite dark, so he could barely see the two men. They were directly across the valley from Flame, and yet the stallion never stopped his grazing. Like everything else that had happened, Flame's lack of vigilance was unbelievable. Even though Flame might not be able to see the two strangers in the darkness, he should have been able to sense their presence.\n\nSteve felt the cool night air on his face. Moments passed, and then the two men were gone. Steve stayed where he was, his gaze shifting to the sky above the dome of Azul Island, watching for a thin streak of silver. He waited a long while without seeing anything.\n\nFinally he looked down at the plate that held Jay's half-eaten biscuit. If it were not for this bit of evidence, he would have found it hard to believe the two men had actually been there.\n\nSuddenly he heard a noisy outburst from the birds. They were above him as they had been early that morning, perched on the rock beside the waterfall. The large blue bird was closer, and as usual was more bold and boisterous. Apparently he had seen the biscuit and wanted it, for he flew down and came to rest a short distance away.\n\nSteve tossed the biscuit outside on the ledge. The bird dove quickly, snapping it up with one hard thrust of his bill.\n\nAs Steve watched him fly off with the biscuit, he regretted having given away his only tangible evidence of the last weird hour. It was all too fantastic to believe! He looked up at the night sky and saw nothing but the two birds in flight. A chill swept over him. It was all a dream, wasn't it? Nothing had actually happened. There were no such persons as Jay and Flick.\n\n# \"... ALWAYS WORRYING ABOUT NOTHING\"\n\n5\n\nSteve cooked a large meal. He opened tins of beef and peas and carrots and onions. He used garlic and herbs, trying to remember all that Pitch had told him about preparing a savory stew. Actually he was not hungry, although he knew that once the food was before him he would eat. To keep busy was his main objective. He did not want to think about his strange visitors any longer.\n\nWhen he finally sat down to eat, he found the stew not at all to his liking and not at all like Pitch's. Too much garlic. Too much thyme. But he scarcely paused between mouthfuls. It was as though he were willing to do anything, anything at all, to keep from thinking. The next stew would be better, he told himself. He'd been experimenting. He'd learned a lot. The next stew would be better. He'd go easy on the garlic, easy on the thyme.\n\nLater he heated water and washed the dishes and pots. He dried them slowly, not certain what he could find to do next. He looked outside the cave. The evening sky was clear. There would be no cold rain tonight to chill him, no shivering. He heard the soft neighs of the mares calling their colts. Flame was quiet. There was not a sound from him, not even a hoofbeat.\n\nWhen Steve had finished doing the dishes, he walked onto the ledge, where he could see the dark silhouettes of the band. His eyes followed their movements but his thoughts wavered and then rushed headlong past every mental barrier he had erected to keep himself from thinking of Jay and Flick. Surely their being here meant the destruction of all he held so priceless!\n\nWhy was it that he was so alarmed now, when he had willingly accepted them without fear only a short while ago? Was this the aftermath of all he had seen and experienced? Was _this_ reality and the other a ghastly hoax, a scheme by which Jay and Flick had somehow warped his mind, making him see good where there was only evil?\n\nHe thought of the airship that had swept through the heavens like a second sun and had come to rest, invisible, on the water. Surely this craft with its slender cruisers was the most advanced, most secret weapon in the world! Jay had said he didn't believe it had been seen before.\n\nIf the United States had developed it, he'd surely be taken to Washington. And if it belonged to another country, a potential foreign enemy, he might be... Steve walked restlessly about the ledge, the skin drawn taut and white about his high cheekbones.\n\nWas it any wonder that he was fearful, when all his life he had heard and read of the hatred among so many countries of the world? Was it not the reason for great standing armed forces and the fantastic advancement of secret weapons? Had he not seen with his own eyes the most powerful weapon of them all?\n\nHe stopped walking and told himself to forget all he had read about prejudices and misunderstandings between governments. If he thought only of Jay and Flick as they were everything would be all right again. He could trust them completely without preconceived suspicion and hatred, without alarm or dread, regardless of what country they were from.\n\nFor many minutes he stood still, trying to visualize their faces. How hard it was to form a mental picture of them! How long had they been gone? An hour, two hours at most.\n\nHe could remember details, their suits and shirts and ties, Jay's heavy hair that was more blue than black and Flick's short cropped head and small black mustache. But he couldn't put everything together and say to himself, \"This is Jay... and that's Flick.\" No matter how hard he tried he couldn't form a mental image of their features, and he wanted so much to look into their eyes again. He knew that if he were able to do this, the inner warmth and trust would come once more.\n\nHe began walking again, making every effort to bring their faces to mind. But only an indistinct blur of faces resulted, not old, not young... real and yet not real. Finally, frustrated and angry with himself, he lay down upon his cot.\n\nLooking up at the night sky, he thought, \"At least I can remember that there was nothing sinister or evil about them. I know they were good faces, kind faces. Besides, how could anyone have listened to Jay and Flick argue like a couple of small kids and still be afraid of them? Jay was so irresponsible while Flick acted like the worst kind of a worrier, constantly reminding his friend that they were being neglectful of their shipboard duties. And Flick had gotten so angry when Jay said, _'No wonder you're gray long before your time. And wearing that ridiculous crew-cut doesn't fool anyone either!'_ \"\n\nSteve laughed and closed his eyes. He had a teacher back home who wasn't unlike Flick in that the older he got the shorter he had his hair cut and the louder became his clothes.\n\nIt was good to be able to laugh, to have confidence that he would get everything straightened out the next day and that there was nothing at all to fear. He settled down in the brisk coolness of the night, as did the mares and Flame in the valley below.\n\nEarly the next morning the red stallion stretched out his long legs to the greatest of strides. His hoofs hardly touched the cropped grass before he lifted them again, taking Steve down the valley with a speed that made the walled amphitheater much too small and confining.\n\nAs always when his horse was in full run, Steve had no alternative but to move forward over Flame's withers, his knees pulled high to keep from falling off, his hands and head on the stallion's neck. A silhouette would have revealed only the outlines of the horse, for Steve's position never changed, even when Flame swept into sharp turns that took him across the valley and into the borders of the cane before he straightened out again.\n\nAfter a long while Flame's strides shortened. He slowed to a gallop and then finally to a walk, his body white with lather. When Steve slipped from the stallion's back he was as sweaty as his horse. He pulled Flame's head down toward him, breathing heavily. Suddenly a voice from behind said, \"You should keep a hot horse moving, Steve!\"\n\nSteve whirled around to face Jay, then looked beyond.\n\nJay smiled and said, \"I got away _alone_ this time.\"\n\nSteve shifted his gaze back to this man, who came and went without his seeing him. Eagerly he scrutinized Jay's face. Why hadn't he been able to remember it last night or this morning? It seemed so easy now. Soft and kind, a most common face. But somehow Steve knew he'd never remember it once Jay had left him again. For it was real and yet not real. The eyes had color and yet were crystal clear without color. The skin was white and yet not white, without blemish\u2014not even a stubble of beard\u2014and ageless.\n\nFinally Jay broke the long silence. \"Nothing accounts for more hind end lameness than _standing_ a hot horse. You'd better walk him, Steve.\"\n\nIt was strange that only then did Steve think of Jay's nearness to Flame. Quickly he turned to his horse. No fire burned in Flame's eyes. The tall stallion looked past Jay, seemingly unconcerned over the stranger's presence.\n\nSteve didn't move. He couldn't take his eyes off Flame, so astonished was he at the stallion's easy acceptance of Jay. He heard the man say, \"Really, Steve, I've seen more good horses ruined by trainers doing just what you're doing now! Flame should be sponged off with warm water, swiped, blanketed and walked for at least an hour.\"\n\nSteve answered, \"Flame's used to this. He'll cool himself out. He won't stand still.\"\n\n\"Really, that's too much to expect of any horse, Steve,\" Jay said with concern. \"Please walk him.\"\n\nSteve touched Flame, and the stallion moved toward the pool.\n\nJay began to follow Flame, but then returned to Steve. \"I dislike interfering like this, Steve. I really do. I know you're well able to take care of your horse. But believe me, Flame shouldn't be allowed to drink any water now. Why, that's even worse than his standing still! He'll founder himself. He'll get cramp colic. He'll die!\"\n\nSteve laughed at Jay's outburst and said, \"Watch him.\"\n\nFlame wet his long nose and left the pool, walking down the valley.\n\nSteve added, \"He knows how to take care of himself. They all do. That's all they've ever known... they and their forebears.\"\n\nJay said nothing, but he didn't take his eyes off the constantly moving stallion. Finally he sat down on the grass, pulling up his pantlegs to keep the fine crease in his blue suit. \"I suppose you're right, Steve, but I wouldn't take any chances.\" He looked up at the boy, and then back at Flame. \"Especially after such a hard ride as you gave him,\" he added gravely.\n\n\"You watched us?\"\n\n\"Of course, Steve. There's nothing I enjoy more than getting up early, before dawn sometimes, and getting to a convenient track to watch horses in training. It really does something for me!\"\n\nSteve looked down at this well-dressed man who might have been at a popular metropolitan club, telling friends of his visits to Belmont Park or Churchill Downs. Yet here he was, where so few had ever been, very much at ease and urging him to sponge Flame, to blanket him, to walk him.... Flame, a wild stallion!\n\n\"I just wouldn't want anything to happen to him,\" Jay said. \"He's too fine a horse. I've never seen a better one. You must do everything possible to keep him sound.\"\n\nIn the distance Flame lowered himself carefully to the grass and began rolling, his long limbs cutting the air.\n\n\"You sit him beautifully, Steve,\" Jay said without taking his eyes off the rolling horse. \"No one could have a better seat. It wouldn't get by in a show ring, of course, but on the race track it's the only way to ride.\"\n\n\"I've never raced,\" Steve said.\n\n\"I know,\" Jay replied quietly.\n\nSteve continued standing. He couldn't sit down beside Jay and chew thoughtfully on a succulent blade of grass as the man was doing. He was not sufficiently at ease for that. He wondered how it was that Jay knew he had done no racing. Perhaps he would be able to find out. He was aware from having listened to him yesterday that Jay loved to talk and that it wouldn't be long before he knew a lot more about this man and where he was from.\n\n\"Do you know why you have the ideal racing seat?\" Jay asked.\n\n\"No. I just try to keep from falling off.\"\n\nJay laughed loudly, and his hair fell low on his forehead when he shook his head. He turned quickly to the boy, only his eyes smiling now. \"I wasn't laughing at you,\" he said when he saw Steve's flushed face. \"Your saying that reminded me of what happened a short while ago. I was down South on a visit when...\"\n\n\"South America?\" Steve asked quickly.\n\n\"No. Southern United States,\" Jay replied. \"Kentucky, I think it was, but it's not important. Anyway, I was watching the horse races at a small country fair and most of them were being won by kids riding bareback. There were a couple of big Eastern trainers there, and I got talking to them. It seems they went to the small fairs looking for horses they might be able to use on the big city tracks. They were disturbed because while they'd been buying a lot of the winning horses at the fairs it turned out that they didn't run very well when they reached the Eastern tracks. The trainers couldn't understand what happened to the horses' speed.\"\n\nJay stopped, and his eyes glowed with an unusual brightness.\n\n\"Maybe it was the faster competition,\" Steve suggested.\n\n\"No, it wasn't that at all,\" Jay answered. \"The reason was that the trainers took the horses but left the kids who had ridden them behind.\"\n\n\"Were they such good riders?\"\n\n\"In a way,\" Jay replied thoughtfully. \"You see, those kids at the fairs didn't have enough money to buy saddles, so in riding bareback their first objective was to keep from falling off.\" He smiled and then went on, \"A simple matter of self preservation, Steve, as you pointed out a moment ago. They hung on to whatever was best to keep their balance. They moved forward over their mounts' withers. They pulled up their knees and leaned close to their horses' necks, holding mane as well as rein. In doing all these things their weight was forward, where it should be for extreme speed, and in addition they cut down wind resistance to a minimum; their bodies didn't act as a brake.\"\n\nJay paused to glance at Flame, who was walking slowly around the band.\n\nIt gave Steve a chance to say, \"But certainly that's the way jockeys ride even with saddles.\"\n\nJay turned quickly to the boy. \"Oh, no, Steve. You're mistaken. I've watched them. They ride with very long stirrups and sit straight up in the saddle with their weight in the _middle_ of a horse's back. Really I can't understand why they do it! They just don't seem to use their heads at all. It makes me a little angry, especially when I think of what happened in England not long after my visit to that country fair.\"\n\nSteve said nothing. He knew that the crouched forward seat of riding had been first introduced to horse racing well over a half-century ago!\n\nJay continued, \"I was spending only a few days in England, but naturally I visited the track every morning. And, Steve, listen to this. One morning I saw the trainer I'd spoken to at the country fair, and working for his stable was one of the boys who had ridden bareback! I realized immediately that this man had finally come to his senses. I told him as much and he agreed fully. His boy was using a saddle then, of course, but his seat was exactly the same as it had been while riding bareback at the fairs.\n\n\"Now what disappointed me so greatly was this,\" Jay went on sadly. \"Even though the boy was winning more than his share of races over the long-stirrup, middle-of-the-back type rider that's currently so popular, his crouch style was being ridiculed in England. His trainer confided to me that he felt the reason for the public's non-acceptance of the boy and his excellent style of riding was because he wasn't _'fashionable'_!\"\n\nJay paused, waiting for Steve to say something. But Steve was too bewildered to move his lips, much less able to get any words out. Anyone who had read the history of horse racing knew that the great American jockey Tod Sloan had successfully introduced the popular crouch style of riding in England as long ago as _1897_!\n\n\"Aren't you surprised, Steve?\" Jay asked. \"Doesn't it make you furious too?\"\n\nSteve finally got his words to come. \"I don't know what you mean by 'fashionable,' \" he said.\n\n\"I believe the trainer meant that it was because of the color of the boy's skin. He was black. His name was Billy Sims. Yes, I believe that's what he was called. So many things happened during that hurried trip, and all were so very _new_ to me. Although as I said it was only a short while ago, it's difficult for me to remember some of the terms and language usage.\"\n\nSteve could not take his eyes off the man who sat on the grass in front of him. And when he spoke, he did not recognize his own voice. \"Y-you s-said all this happened a short while ago. Do you remember the year?\"\n\n\" _Your_ year? No, I'm afraid not, Steve. I'm not very good at that kind of thing. But wait. Let's see now.\" The blue-black head suddenly turned, the clear eyes alive and dancing. \"Why of course! I went to the Doncaster Sales and saw that beautiful gray colt sold. I've carried his picture in my wallet ever since. I clipped it from a magazine. It may give the date.\"\n\nA long wallet was drawn from the inner pocket of the striking blue suit, and then Jay read the clipping silently. Finally he said happily, \"Eighteen ninety-five, Steve.\"\n\n_A short while ago to Jay. But to anyone else, well over a half-century!_\n\nWhen Jay saw the expression on Steve's face a somber curtain fell over his bright eyes and he spoke with concern. \"Something I've said has startled you, Steve. Tell me what it is. I don't want you to be frightened of me.\"\n\n\"I\u2014I'm not frightened,\" Steve heard himself say. \"It's just that it h-happened so long ago.\"\n\n\"Really? In your time, you mean?\"\n\nSteve could only nod, and Jay said, \"I suppose I should have thought of it. Details like that always escape me.\" The shadowy darkness left his eyes and the brightness returned, greater than before. \"Then the crouch style of riding is now being used in racing horses?\"\n\nSteve nodded in still greater bewilderment.\n\n\"Oh, how I wish I could see them go! To think that I have to stay near the ship. The pity of it!\" And then the man's eyes were no longer bright but blood-red in sudden anger. \"It was Flick who insisted that we visit _Mao_ rather than _Earth_. He said so little had changed here since my last visit. The blackguard!\" he shouted bitterly. \"The scoundrel! No doubt he knew of this all along! So what did he do, Steve? What did he do?...\"\n\nSteve's face had whitened; his head seemed too heavy to move.\n\n\"I'll tell you what he did,\" Jay went on. \"He excited my interest in Mao by telling me of some horses that inhabited that planet. And what did I find? Scraggly, flea-bitten animals that were no more horse than I... _or you are_ , Steve,\" he added hastily. \"Oh, the imbecile he is, not to know a horse when he sees one! And then he takes me on a great tour of the oceans of Mao, the most boring trip of my life. Nothing but colored water! And when I think what was awaiting me here, why, Steve, I could just...\"\n\nHe stopped and the anger left his eyes while he studied the boy's face. Finally he said, \"Why, you're _surprised_ , aren't you, Steve? After yesterday I just took it for granted that you had figured out who we were.\"\n\nSteve's tongue felt too thick for speech.\n\n\"Not that Flick or the others would approve of my telling you this in so many words,\" Jay went on. \"They're always worried that people will be frightened if they know about us, and then we won't be able to come back again. I think that's all rather silly, don't you?\"\n\nWhen Steve did not answer, Jay continued. \"Oh, I'll admit that if you saw us as we really are you'd probably be frightened. Of course there wouldn't be any good reason for your fear, but that's the way you are. Sometimes I find it difficult to understand, and I try.... I really do, Steve. It seems you're always jumping to conclusions without thinking things out. Oh, I don't mean you personally, Steve,\" he added quickly. \"You're doing fine, just fine. It's your people I'm talking about... your _adults_.\"\n\nJay glanced toward the valley where he could see Flame. \"And I don't mean to infer that this is true only so far as we are concerned. Take your own kind. Take Billy Sims. His was only a difference of skin color, as I understand it.\" Jay's gaze returned to Steve. \"But, as you've reminded me, that was all many years ago. I'm sure the people of your world must be more understanding of each other in every way now. Aren't they, Steve?\"\n\nSteve looked at the face before him, but no words came. _Then it wasn't real_. And yet the eyes that weren't eyes at all found his own, holding him forever. Would they make him accept all of this that he was being told in the most casual way, as one friend talking to another? He stared back into the glowing, bottomless pits and an eternity seemed to pass.\n\nMeanwhile he was asking himself, \"Is what I've heard more fearful than what I dreaded last night, the secret weapons of war and foreign enemies? Isn't what I know to be _real_ more dangerous, more deadly and vicious than this, which I consider _unreal_?\"\n\nJay said, \"Don't think about it any more, Steve. I have your answer, and I'm sorry to hear it.\"\n\nIt was the overpowering disappointment in Jay's voice that startled Steve even more than his remembering that nothing could be kept from this man, not even one's thoughts. _But Jay wasn't a man_.\n\n\"Oh, but I am, Steve,\" the sad voice came again. \"Perhaps I'm not exactly what you think of as a man, but I am one, all right. You want to know what I really look like? Well...\" He paused to study Steve, and at the same time ran a hand through his hair. \"I guess we'd better not go into that, Steve. Not that you don't have a very open mind, but really there's no reason for my showing you. One form is as good as another, we've found. It's what a person _is_ that counts. We learned so long ago to change from one shape to another that it comes almost automatically now. It's simply a matter of taste and convenience at the time.\"\n\nHe stopped abruptly. \"You're not really frightened by what I'm telling you, are you, Steve?\" he asked with grave concern. \"Just surprised, perhaps a little startled?\"\n\nSteve got his head to nod. The truth was that he _wasn't_ frightened. No matter what he was being told, he couldn't look at this man with the troubled eyes and be scared.\n\nJay laughed in a pleased way. \"I knew you wouldn't be frightened, Steve! I knew it the moment I first saw you riding Flame. You were so carefree, so happy with your horse, wanting only to share the morning with him! I told Flick as much. I really did. But he and the others are such old 'fuddy-duddies,' Steve. They didn't believe me at all. They're so afraid to divulge anything to _anyone_.\"\n\nJay shrugged his thin shoulders. \"But then I suppose it's because they never really got together with a boy before. I told them that it's entirely different than dealing with an adult. And I'm right, I know I am. Just the short time I've been with you makes me very, very certain of it. Oh, you're skeptical of everything I've told you about us, and wary too. But the point I'm trying to make, Steve, is that _inside_ where it counts you've accepted us even though it's contrary to everything you've ever known or been told. Thank heavens for your youth, Steve!\"\n\nThe man bounded to his feet in quickening enthusiasm. \"At your age, Steve, I believe I could help you in many ways if you'd only let me. I've always said that it could be done if we found the right open-minded person.\" Jay paused and a bold and eager light blurred his features. \"We can try it _now_ , Steve, but it won't be easy. You'll have to listen to me very carefully. No closed mind now, not one bit of it!\"\n\nDesperately Steve tried to raise his head above the heat that was fast enveloping him. He sought Jay's face, but nothing was there except an indistinct shimmer of light... that and the blue-black hair, a black string tie, a white shirt, a blue suit. His hands shot up to his eyes, covering them so he could not see the dancing light. _\"Do what? What do you want me to do?\"_ he heard himself ask in a voice that did not seem to be his own.\n\nStill eager and with overwhelming curiosity Jay asked, \"Would you like to _fly_ , Steve? It's the easiest thing and the most fun of all. Listen to what I have to say now. You must relax a bit more and help me. Make your mind a blank. Forget everything you've ever known in this world you call Earth. Forget all you've ever seen and been told. Now, Steve...\"\n\nSteve felt a heavy blackness come swiftly to his mind, claiming it for its very own. He fought it as he had never fought anything before. There was no pain but he writhed in agony and his arms flayed the air, fighting nothing. He opened his mouth to yell, but no sound emerged.\n\n\"You're _thinking_ , Steve.\" Jay's patient words came to Steve from somewhere deep within the recesses of his brain. \"You're thinking of all you know as _normal_. Don't let it come to that, Steve. Shut it out of your mind, and just listen to me.\n\n\"You _want_ to go on with this experiment. I know you do, for I can feel it so strongly. Don't let what you've been told through the years stand in your way. Push it out, Steve... push... push... don't let it take over. I realize it's strong for it's all you've ever known. Don't let it come between us, please _don't_.\"\n\nSteve fought all the harder, seeking to drive the blackness away. An overwhelming desire to see Blue Valley and the horses again had risen within him. He felt it surge stronger and stronger as he fought against the dark void that Jay would have him enter. Yet there were long moments when he was confused by his fighting, for he was willing to go with Jay.\n\nThe blackness lightened a little, and he didn't know if he was glad or sorry. Where was Flame? He had to see his horse! He struggled more furiously, forcing the dark void further back with all the will he possessed.\n\nJay's voice came again, disappointed now. \"I guess I was wrong, Steve. Some other generation, perhaps, but not yours. What your mind has absorbed as normal is much too strong for me, even though you _did_ want to cooperate.\"\n\nWhen Steve emerged from the darkness, his first responsive reflex was to shout. His voice, throttled for so long, split his clenched lips and shattered the quiet of the valley. When it had died, the sound of Flame's swift hoofbeats could be heard. But from closer still came Flick's angry voice.\n\n\"I knew you were up to something, Jay, the moment I found you gone.\" Flick stood beside Jay, his eyes as angry as his voice. \"You can't do this to Steve,\" he went on. \"Mark my words, your conduct this morning will be reported to Julian!\"\n\n\"You and Julian,\" Jay replied quietly, \"... always worrying about nothing.\"\n\n# A MATTER OF CONVENIENCE\n\n6\n\nAs the sound of rhythmical pounding grew louder Steve turned away from the men and saw Flame coming down the valley, his ears back, his nostrils spread wide in fury. For a second Steve thought how easy it would be to say nothing, just to stand still and allow Flame to destroy Jay and Flick and the nightmare they had brought to Blue Valley. But was that what he wanted, _now that he knew who they were?_\n\nHe looked at them again, and from somewhere deep within him came a sudden cry of warning. _\"Run!\"_\n\nThey turned toward him, startled by the urgency in his voice. But Jay continued sitting on the grass, making no attempt to get to his feet. It was Flick who turned around and, seeing the oncoming stallion, shouted and ran.\n\nJay looked back, then scrambled to his knees and with the speed of a sprinter followed Flick. Both had reached the rocky trail before Flame swept past Steve.\n\nThe stallion came to a halt at the wall, his eyes large and red. He screamed at the men above him. He rose high on his hind legs and pawed the air in his fury and frustration. When he came down he bolted along the wall, sending large clods of earth flying behind him. Then he turned and came back, running like a caged animal, his anger never abating.\n\nSteve made no attempt to quiet Flame. Instead, he kept looking at Jay and Flick, who were seated on the trail, breathing heavily and scared. They were safe because Flame would never attempt the steep climb, regardless of his fury. They could have been two normal people who had run from an enraged animal. But they weren't. They were men from another world. Steve waited and watched them, thinking of all he had been told and what Jay had attempted to do to him.\n\n_\"Would you like to fly, Steve? It's the easiest thing and the most fun of all.... Forget everything you've ever known in this world you call Earth.\"_\n\nFor long minutes Steve's gaze was fixed on the two frightened figures huddled together on the trail above Flame. Seeing them so afraid helped him more than anything else. For if he accepted their fear as the kind of fear that was normal in his own world, mustn't he try to think of what he had been told by Jay as normal in _their_ world? His head throbbed. Would there come a time when even the people of Earth would be able to...\n\n_\"I guess I was wrong, Steve. Some other generation, perhaps, but not yours.\"_\n\nHe had his answer.\n\nFlame came to Steve, and his wide nostrils began to close as the anger ebbed from his giant body. He had understood Steve's shout and the danger that had threatened him but not the reason for it. Now he heard the boy's voice, soft and caressing. He listened, his ears no longer flat against his head but pricked and alert to every sound. He felt the comforting touches on his neck, and the fingers that ran from his mane to his forelock. He lowered his head still more, and stood quietly, very docile and content. He knew everything was all right now. Not that he understood the words, but the rhythm of the sounds and the soft touches comforted him. Finally he was told that he could go to his band, if he liked. He stayed a moment more and then left, moving up the valley at a slow gallop.\n\nSteve went to the trail. Jay and Flick got to their feet when he neared them, their eyes as sheepish and embarrassed as those of two children who had run away, leaving another behind to fight in their defense.\n\nFlick was the first to pull himself together. He turned angrily upon Jay. \"You see! You see what you did! We might have been killed!\" he accused the other.\n\nJay shrugged his narrow shoulders in an attempt to appear casual. \"Flame took me by surprise or we wouldn't have needed to run. After all, I've had _some_ experience with horses.\"\n\n\"I don't mean only that,\" Flick raged. \"You were told to leave Steve alone, and if you think for a moment that I'm going to forget this...\"\n\n\"Now, Flick, now,\" Jay said calmly. But suddenly he turned to Steve as though he were remembering his experiment for the first time. \"Ah, Steve...\" He paused and began again. \"You're not angry with me, are you? After all, you really _wanted_ to try it.\"\n\nSteve looked at this little man in the blue suit who now was perched above him, having passed Flick in his frantic climb to get away from Flame. He stared into eyes that in spite of all their wonder and knowledge were as troubled as a small boy's, asking forgiveness. Steve shook his head.\n\nJay smiled and turned to Flick once more. \"There, Flick,\" he said. \"Steve's not angry at all!\" He paused and then added bitterly, \"I don't see why you're getting so upset.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless, I'm reporting this to Julian,\" Flick answered. \"You were told to leave Steve alone, and you disregarded your instructions.\"\n\n\"What about Mao?\" Jay asked. The tone was soft, but the expression in the eyes was hard, stony. \"Weren't you told to confine our trip to the seas alone?\"\n\nFlick blurted out something that Steve couldn't hear, but he saw the back of the cropped gray head turn uneasily.\n\n\"You wouldn't, Jay. You _couldn't,_ \" Flick said, loud enough for Steve to hear him. \"After all, that was a side excursion in the interest of the _arts_.\"\n\nJay smiled. \"You're so sensitive to the beauties of art and nature, Flick,\" he said. And then Jay no longer smiled. \"But so indifferent to the practical matter of getting along with _people_!\" He glanced sidewise at Steve and added, \"My chat with Steve here was on that order... creating a mutual understanding of each other and our different ways of doing things.\"\n\nSteve turned away from Jay to watch Flame and the band. But after a few seconds he felt compelled to turn back to Jay and Flick and listen to every word they had to say.\n\n\"After all,\" Flick was saying, \"the Mao incident was such a little thing, Jay. Really nothing at all.\"\n\n\"My chat with Steve was just as little,\" Jay returned quietly.\n\nThey kept standing there, looking at each other. Finally Flick repeated, \"You wouldn't tell Julian, Jay. You _couldn't_.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't, couldn't either,\" Jay said. \"If you'll forget about this morning and give me a little more cooperation than you have in the past, I'll forget Mao.\" He grinned broadly at Steve, disclosing his small, white teeth. \"Let's continue this discussion over some tea,\" he suggested. \"It's just what we all need to soothe us down.\"\n\nSteve followed them to the ledge. He put the water on to boil, and then got the tea. \"This is Pitch's tea,\" he told himself, his fingers tightening about the can. \"It's imported and costly. He's going to be sore when he finds so much of it gone.\" And then he laughed at the absurdity of his thoughts, considering what he was going through.\n\nFlick said crossly, \"Well, Jay, I suppose it _is_ too late to do anything about you and Steve now. I'll simply have to assume full responsibility for your actions, as I've done before.\"\n\nJay chuckled. \"That's the ticket, Flick. Handle me _yourself_ without any help from Julian. You're perfectly capable of doing the job, and there's no sense getting Julian mixed up in it.\"\n\nFlick said nothing.\n\nThe water boiled and Steve made the tea extra strong, the way Jay liked it. Flick came up and stood beside him, holding out his cup.\n\n\"Since Jay told you as much as he did it's only right that you know more about us,\" Flick said. \"The little information he's given you can be a very dangerous thing.\"\n\nSteve was not aware if Flick's words were being spoken aloud or not. It didn't matter. All he knew was that he heard everything in the softest, most rhythmic cadence and that he understood it completely.\n\nHe poured the tea into cups. \"Would you like a biscuit?\" He laughed inwardly. Did he imagine for a minute that this was a party, that friends had come to tea? He passed the biscuits around and thought of the one Jay had not finished the night before.\n\n\"Oh, but I did,\" Jay said, smiling. \"But I'll have another if you can spare it, Steve. Thank you very much.\"\n\nSteve stared at Jay a long time, thinking, _The blue bird had dived quickly, snapping up the biscuit with one hard thrust of his bill, and then had flown away_.\n\nFlick ran his fingertips through his stiff brush of hair, and then said, \"I believe the best way for us to explain what we are, Steve, is to say that we're simply tourists.\" He turned to Jay. \"Don't you think so?\"\n\n\"You're the scholar,\" Jay answered. \"Explain it your way, now that you've consented to take Steve into our confidence.\"\n\nThe coolness of the morning swept in a sudden wind across the ledge. Steve rubbed his bare arms to warm them, but felt no chill, no shivering.... That would come later, after his two visitors had gone.\n\nFlick said, \"Well, we'll just call ourselves tourists, then. We travel a great deal, Steve, truly great distances as you know them.\"\n\n\"You mean as he _doesn't_ know them,\" Jay interrupted, laughing.\n\nThe sound of Jay's laughter startled Steve, for now he knew why it had sounded so familiar to him all along. It was like the raucous call of the blue bird. He turned to Flick and asked, \"Where are you from?\"\n\n\"Our world is called Alula,\" Flick answered. \"It's not too unlike your Earth.\"\n\n\"As far as the geological features go,\" Jay interrupted again.\n\n\"Of course,\" Flick said sharply, \"that's all I meant.\"\n\nJay smiled. \"And it's cooler. That's why we prefer a day like this.\"\n\nSteve rubbed his chilled bare arms again but said nothing. He thought of the cold rain the first night Jay and Flick had arrived and wondered whether they had preferred that too.\n\n\"But we don't have your sunsets,\" Flick said. \"Never have I seen a more glorious one than on the night of our arrival! Why, the sky had more color than the seas of Mao. Didn't you think so, Jay?\"\n\n\"Let's not talk about Mao,\" Jay answered sullenly. \"When I think of what that trip has kept me from seeing here, I could just...\" He stopped, and a band of red appeared in his eyes. \"Why did you tell me there was so little change on Earth, when you knew of my interest in horses? _Why_ , Flick?\" Jay had risen from his chair and was standing over Flick.\n\n\"But I didn't know of any great change,\" Flick insisted nervously.\n\nJay waved a long, bony finger in Flick's face. \"Do you mean to tell me that during your last trip here you never noticed jockeys crouched forward in their saddles, their knees pulled up?\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" Flick said defiantly. \"You know I never go to the races.\"\n\n\"But you _heard_ of this new racing seat, didn't you?\" Jay insisted. \"After all, you're supposed to be the scholar, the well-informed person who knows what's going on, even in the most remote of planets!\"\n\nFlick looked at Steve helplessly, and then threw up his hands. \"One can't possibly remember _everything_ , Jay! Perhaps I did hear of this new riding style, now that you've mentioned it. But I didn't think it was important. There are so many other things that...\"\n\n_\"Not important!\"_ Jay shouted, and then he put his head in his hands, rocking it. After a moment he turned abruptly, went back to his chair and sat down. \"To think,\" he said softly, \"that they had to assign an old man like you as my companion on this trip... one who no longer can appreciate the drama of a horse race, and in addition cannot retain a single important fact!\"\n\nFlick rose from his chair, the red band in his eyes also. He spluttered, finding it difficult to speak as he turned and looked at Steve.\n\nThis man old? Steve studied Flick's soft, lineless face and the hair that just now seemed to be more red than gray. \"He's not old at all,\" Steve thought.\n\nSuddenly the little man beamed and the angry red left his eyes. \"Oh, I'm old, all right,\" he said appreciatively. \"Still, it's nice to be told I'm not.\" Glancing over his shoulder, he added fiercely, \"And you're just as old, Jay. Don't forget that.\"\n\n\"Not in _heart_ ,\" the other answered.\n\nFlick ignored Jay. \"What's bothering him,\" he explained to Steve, \"is that two of us always have to stay with the ship while the others go off touring. It worked out that our turn for ship duty came here on Earth.\"\n\n\"We could have traded with Julian and Victor,\" Jay said. \"Julian wanted to visit Mao again, but you insisted upon _our_ going instead.\"\n\n\"Julian might have traded, but not Victor,\" Flick said thoughtfully. \"Victor really wanted to visit Earth. He'd never been here, remember.\"\n\n\"I wish Victor and I had been assigned together,\" Jay said wistfully.\n\n\"It wouldn't have worked,\" Flick answered. \"Everybody knew that.\" He turned back to Steve. \"You see, we use the 'buddy system,' as you do in your Boy and Girl Scout organizations. And it's for the same purpose... to keep track of each other, and to... ah, avoid trouble. One is supposed to have a restraining influence over the other. That's why Jay was assigned to me.\"\n\nJay snickered. \"It was the other way around,\" he said.\n\n\"Look at it any way you like,\" Flick said, shrugging his shoulders. \"But now we must get back to the ship.\"\n\n\"Why must we go?\" Jay asked furiously. \"You know the others won't be back for...\" He glanced at Steve, \"... a week, I guess it is in your time.\"\n\n\"We're not certain of that,\" Flick said quietly in the face of Jay's angry outburst. \"Some of them might just change their minds and return sooner. Anyway, it's our job to be on the ship and keep everything in order. You're well aware that we mustn't shirk our duties.\"\n\n\"We can clean everything up just before they get back. No sense working now when we can enjoy ourselves. After all, it's very unusual to have someone like Steve around.\"\n\n_\"Very,\"_ Flick admitted in the same soft, patient tone. \"But they expect no less of us than we did of Julian and Victor while we were visiting Mao, even though...\" He paused, his small eyes traveling over Steve, \"... we are more fortunate.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" Jay muttered. \"They'd be glad we had a chance to enjoy ourselves while still keeping an eye on the ship.\"\n\n\"Maybe so, but we still have our moral obligations.\"\n\n\"You didn't think of moral obligations when we were on Mao,\" Jay grumbled.\n\nThe red streak reappeared in Flick's eyes. \"You promised not to mention that again,\" he said fiercely.\n\n\"I only promised not to report you to Julian, providing you'd give me a little more cooperation than you have in the past,\" Jay reminded him.\n\n\"Well, haven't I?\" Flick demanded, his short hair bristling. \"Doesn't Steve know more about us than anyone else has ever known?\"\n\n\"You realize as well as I do that we don't have to worry about Steve,\" Jay returned quietly.\n\n\"Well, didn't I promise not to report your... _your experiment_?\"\n\n\"Sure. Sure you did.\" Jay began moving down the trail. \"All right, we'll go... but really you're not very adventurous, Flick.\"\n\nSteve followed them down the trail. He knew they wouldn't allow him to witness their departure. He didn't understand how he knew, but it was there, somewhere in his brain.\n\nWhen they had reached the valley floor Steve continued walking with them. He told himself that he was going to see Flame. But he knew that was not his only reason for staying close to Jay and Flick. He did not want them to go. There was still too much he wanted to learn.\n\nThey walked very quietly with their heads down. Perhaps, Steve decided, they were bothered by his presence. Perhaps they wanted him to leave now. But he would have _known_ , wouldn't he? And nothing had as yet told him to go.\n\nJay suddenly broke the silence. \"There's something else, Flick,\" he blurted. \"I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to watch just one race while I'm here. After all it would _only_ be a matter of a few minutes to get to...\" He stopped and turned to Steve. \"Where'd you say that race was going to be?\"\n\nSteve just looked at him.\n\n\"Yesterday morning while you were riding Flame,\" Jay prompted anxiously. \"You were racing him somewhere. Now where was it? You were going so fast that it was difficult to...\"\n\n_\"Jay!\"_ Flick said, horrified. \"You wouldn't make a trip, even a short one! You _couldn't_. Why, Julian would be furious!\"\n\n\"Julian needn't know,\" Jay answered quietly. He turned back to Steve. \"Where was it?\"\n\nSteve said finally, \"Cuba... Havana, Cuba.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" Jay said. \"See, Flick, it wouldn't take any time at all. Julian wouldn't know, would he, Flick? After all, there are some things that don't need to be reported to him. Your side excursion on Mao, for example.\"\n\nFlick's face was as taut as stretched wire; he said nothing.\n\nThey walked a few strides more, and then Jay grabbed Steve by the arm excitedly. \"Why don't you and Flame come too, Steve? _You can race him!_ That's what you wanted, wasn't it? We'd have plenty of room in the ship.\"\n\nSteve could not have told how long he stood there in astonished, numbed silence. His only recollection of time afterward was hearing the sudden rush of Flame's hoofs. The stallion was coming up from behind them, his ears flat against his head, his eyes bright with anger at sight of Jay and Flick.\n\nSteve ran toward Flame.\n\nThe red stallion slowed when Steve appeared between him and the men, but he did not stop. He swerved to one side and went on, his nostrils flared, lips pulled back.\n\nSteve tried to swerve with his horse but tripped in his hurried, frantic plunge and went down hard upon his hands and knees. Picking himself up, he turned around. He was about to call to Flame when the sound died quickly on his lips. _Jay and Flick were nowhere to be seen!_\n\nMeanwhile Flame had swept into the wild cane, seeking the men who had escaped him once before! His loud snorts shattered the stillness and his tall body cut great swaths in the waving field of green. He refused to give up his search, galloping in winding paths that took him back and forth through the cane.\n\nSteve watched in silence, knowing that Flame's search was futile. His stallion was no match for Jay and Flick, any more than he was. Where had they gone, and how? Were they even now somewhere within that field of cane and, if so, in what form? Hadn't Jay said, _\"We learned long ago to change from one shape to another. It's simply a matter of taste and convenience at the time.\"_\n\nTurning his gaze skyward, Steve saw the two birds circling above the dome of Azul Island. He thought of the blue feathers of one, of the high-crested head and the splash of white. He thought of the other's brown mottled back, the long beaked bill, the bit of red on the head and the black mark beneath the bill. And then he sat down on the grass and successfully pictured Jay and Flick.\n\nWhile Steve sat there, occupied with his thoughts, Flame came up and stood beside him. He was alert and ready to fight in the boy's defense. But he saw and heard nothing, even though he remained with Steve for some time.\n\n# \"LAUGH, PLEASE\"\n\n7\n\nSteve felt a tongue licking his forehead. He could tell it was not Flame's for there was no affection in the motion, only an eagerness to lick the salty beads of perspiration that covered his face and matted his hair.\n\nHe rolled over on the grass and at once the suckling foal ran to its mother and stood behind her large, protective body. \"Come, Princess,\" Steve called softly to the mare.\n\nThe mare had been gray but was now white with age. Her body was heavy and sagging but there was nothing aged about her head. It was still small and fine and beautiful.\n\nShe was the oldest of all the mares, and for this reason Steve regretted having named her \"Princess.\" She was more a queen, a proud dowager queen, and the filly by her side would probably be her last. But it was too late to change her name now for she knew it so well. Unlike the other mares, she would come at once in answer to his call, just as she was doing now.\n\nWhen the white mare reached him she lowered her head so he might rub it. After a minute or two of this Steve rose to his knees, fondling the soft muzzle with the bristling hairs. \"Good girl,\" he said. \"Good old girl.\"\n\nFlame stopped his grazing to watch them but stayed away.\n\nSoftly Steve stroked the mare, his fingers finding spots that gave her much pleasure and contentment to have scratched because she could not reach them herself. She lowered her head still more so he might rub behind her small ears. He held her close. It was good to be wanted, to be needed....\n\nHe looked beyond the mare to the suckling filly, who stood quietly in the shadow of her mother's big body. Cautiously the filly peered at him from beneath the mare's tail, her eyes big and fuzzy in her curiosity and shyness. He called to her, \"Come, little Princess.\"\n\nThe foal pricked up her small, furry ears at the sound of his voice, and remained so as he continued talking to her. The white mare nickered for more attention and shoved her head against his chest. Steve continued rubbing the mare but he spoke only to the filly. Finally she moved to her mother's side, her slender neck and head stretched out, trying to reach him without coming any closer. Her soft, large eyes gazed intently into his own; there was no wavering, no fear... just a girlish shyness. Her mother was accepting him, loving him, but the filly was still uncertain and very, very cautious.\n\nFinally the filly took another step closer, her thin muzzle stretched out and trembling. Steve made no attempt to touch her. He waited for her to come to him. And at last the mole-soft nose was on his cheek, the lips moving, searching and finally nipping. He drew back a little, for her milk teeth were strong, and continued stroking the white mare. Now the filly moved eagerly forward to pull at his shirt. She did not want to be left out of things. When Steve scolded her for tearing his shirt she drew back but did not run off in alarm. Instead her eyes glittered naughtily and she renewed her nuzzling.\n\nSteve patted them both for a long while, and then found his eyes turning often to Flame.\n\n_\"Why don't you and Flame come too, Steve? You can race him! That's what you wanted, wasn't it? We'd have plenty of room in the ship.\"_\n\nJay's words couldn't be shrugged off as sheer folly! For how often had he dreamed of racing Flame? How many times had he taken him about the valley, pretending they were in a great race? Only yesterday morning he had pretended he was riding Flame at Havana. And Jay had known. How had he known? Where had he been? It was one thing to have Jay and Flick standing beside you, looking at you, knowing they were able to read every one of your thoughts. But it was something else to have them know so much when you were not even aware of their presence.\n\nSteve remembered Flame's winged tormentor, who had flown about him during the fast ride and then had narrowly escaped being trampled by the stallion's powerful hoofs. Yes, Jay had been in the valley yesterday morning, and Flame had come close to destroying him.\n\nSteve fondled the two heads in front of him, one so mature and wise, the other so young and eager. A cold wind was blowing and yet he was perspiring freely. He thought of everything Jay and Flick had told him, and then he said aloud, \"It can't be true!\" But inside, where Jay had said it counted most, he knew it was all very true and that he had accepted Jay and Flick and the world from which they had come.\n\n\"I know they're from a distant planet,\" he thought. \"Is that so fantastic, when we've been told of the possibility of there being other peoples, other worlds in a universe so great it defies description? Therefore, I accept what they've told me of their world of Alula. I accept their world as being far older, far more advanced than my own. I accept Jay and Flick from that world, not as deadly, threatening enemies to our very existence, but as good and kind friends touring other worlds in much the same manner as we visit other states and countries. I accept all this, and having accepted it I have nothing to fear except what I've learned to fear in my own world.\"\n\nLater that afternoon Steve got pencil and paper and sat down to write. Quickly he made notes of Jay and Flick and the ship, of everything he had been told, everything he had felt. He tried to believe that this was but another account of his life in Blue Valley... one that would follow in sequence the records he had hidden away. Only the others were nothing like this, nothing in this world could... He stopped writing, looked at the sky and repeated aloud, _\"Nothing in this world.\"_\n\nHe had no chance to turn back to his notes just then, for a voice suddenly asked, \"What are you writing, Steve?\"\n\nJay was standing on the trail.\n\n\"You know what I'm writing, Jay,\" Steve said. \"Why do you ask?\"\n\nThe man chuckled. He came within the cave to join Steve, but he did not look at the papers. \"It's more polite and sociable to ask, Steve,\" he answered. \"After all, if we can't _talk_ to each other...\" He stopped, paused a moment and then went on, \"You're becoming quite the historian, aren't you?\"\n\nSteve turned back to his notes. \"Do you mind my writing about you?\" His voice was steady. He wanted to know.\n\n\"Of course not,\" Jay answered. \"Flick might raise the very roof if he knew, but not I. It's nice to keep records, Steve, and to write a little every day. I know because I do some writing myself. Straight fiction, though, nothing historical. History bores me. Much too factual.\"\n\n\"Then you're not afraid that people might read this someday?\"\n\nJay laughed loudly, his voice reverberating within the close confines of the cave. \"Why no, Steve,\" he finally said. \"Who'd believe it? Take this from an old hand, Steve, it's difficult to get people to stretch their imaginations very far. They say 'it just isn't so,' and it ends there. It would be that way with this.\"\n\nJay walked to the ledge and stood there for a moment, his eyes roaming over the valley. \"If I know Flick, he'll have missed me by now. Should be on his way. He's such an old fuss-budget, afraid to leave me alone a minute.... My, your Flame is a beauty, Steve!\" he went on excitedly. \"Just look at him go out there! I've never seen better action... as slick as light, I'd say! I do hope you've given more thought to that little trip I suggested this morning. We'd have a time, all right!\" He re-entered the cave, his eyes searching Steve's.\n\n\"I won't take Flame away from the valley,\" Steve said, afraid for his horse. \"Nothing you can do will make me.\"\n\n\"Oh, I know that, all right, Steve. Even if I could, I wouldn't make you do anything you didn't _want_ to do. I was only suggesting that since you've had it in mind to race Flame for so long you just might take advantage of my being here and go to it.\"\n\n\"I was only pretending, dreaming,\" Steve said.\n\n\"Dreams are fine.\" Jay smiled. \"Nothing wrong with them at all. They very often lead to the real thing.\"\n\nSteve felt the heavy throbbing of his temples. He tried to look at Jay and couldn't. His notes fell to the floor and he didn't bother to pick them up.\n\n\"Oh, you _want_ to race Flame, all right,\" Jay said. \"No doubt about that. I believe what's troubling you is that you're afraid people will find out where Flame is from. That's silly, Steve. I promise you no one will learn your secret. After all, I have had a great deal of experience in that sort of thing.\"\n\nSteve glanced up at Jay. He was no match for this man. It was like arguing with oneself. And he'd give so much to race Flame. If only...\n\n\"That's the boy, Steve,\" Jay said. \"Just leave all the details to me. Just relax. Now what bothers me most is that Flame may not be as fast as I think he is. After all, I've been away from the races a long time, as you pointed out to me only yesterday. The horses must be very speedy these days, especially with their riders using the crouch seat.\"\n\nAs Steve said nothing Jay went on, \"I realize you're no professional jockey but certainly you've seen them go?\"\n\nIt was a question, not a statement. So there _were_ some things Jay still didn't know about him! \"I've watched them race a few times,\" he admitted.\n\n\"And Flame is faster?\" Jay prodded eagerly. \"After all, we wouldn't want to go to the work of getting him there and then have him _lose_ the race. It would be a terrible disappointment for both of us.\"\n\nSteve had no time to answer for at that moment Flick, puffing hard from his climb up the trail, entered the cave.\n\n\"What's ailing you, Jay?\" Flick asked angrily. \"I've never known your conduct to be worse than it's been today! I turn my back a few minutes and you're...\"\n\n\"Now, Flick,\" Jay interrupted, \"I just wanted to have another _private_ little chat with Steve.\"\n\nFlick's gaze shifted quickly to the boy and there was no lessening of the fury in his eyes. He wouldn't be having all this trouble with Jay if it hadn't been for Steve and that horse of his! He saw the notes on the floor and picked them up, his bright eyes running quickly down one page after another. Finally he put a match to them, and when the papers were afire he dropped them on the ground, stepping on the charred fragments with his small, brilliantly polished shoes.\n\n\"You shouldn't have done that, Flick,\" Jay admonished softly.\n\n\"Were you...?\" Flick sputtered and began again, \"You weren't going to stand idly by and let him make use of those notes!\" he shouted.\n\n\"What harm would come of it, Flick? No one would ever believe what he's written.\" Jay paused, and his face and voice contained only a disturbing sadness. \"But the point I'm trying to make, Flick, is that you have just destroyed something which belonged to Steve and that he prized very highly. What are you going to do about it? How are you going to make amends?\"\n\nAgain Flick had trouble finding his voice. \"What... What am _I_ going to do about it? You have the colossal nerve...\"\n\n\"Ah, Flick. Be careful what you say now,\" Jay cautioned even more quietly. \"You must remember our ironclad policy, _never to show anything but sympathy and understanding toward the people we visit_. And most important, as you very well know, is never to hurt them one bit by word or action. You've hurt Steve dreadfully. Hasn't he, Steve?\"\n\nSteve straightened in his chair. He didn't even look at the charred remains that had been his notes. It didn't matter. Neither Flick nor Jay could destroy his memory, and he would always remember. Or would they see to that too?\n\nJay turned back to Flick. \"Well, you've hurt Steve, even if he has the graciousness not to speak of it. How do you intend to make up for what you've done?\"\n\nFlick shook his head in disgust, but a troubled look appeared in his eyes. \"I know what you're suggesting,\" he said, \"but I don't propose to do anything about it.\"\n\nJay's eyes opened wide in astonishment. \"But you _must_ , Flick. After all, you can't expect me to forget two such grave infractions of the rules... this and what happened on Mao. Actually I've done nothing to compare with either of them, as you very well know. I'm afraid I'll have to speak to Julian.\"\n\n\"You're being silly,\" Flick said hastily, but the uneasiness remained in his eyes. He turned to Steve. \"I'm certain Steve doesn't want to go to the races with you,\" he added, a note of desperation creeping into his voice.\n\nJay also turned to Steve, and they silently awaited his answer.\n\nSteve looked at them. Race Flame? Is that what he was being asked? Is that what he had to decide? Now?\n\n\"Well, Steve?\" Jay asked, holding the boy's eyes. \"I promised you that no one will learn your _secret_.\"\n\nSteve answered, \"Flame wouldn't go with you. He'd kill you!\"\n\n\"Oh, no, Steve. You're wrong,\" Jay said. \"It's just that at this point Flame isn't being very receptive to anything we try to tell him. Isn't that right, Flick?\" he asked, turning to his friend.\n\nFlick nodded numbly, for he was looking at Steve's eyes and knew that Jay had won again. The boy really wanted to race his horse.\n\n\"You see,\" Jay continued, trying to make Steve understand, \"Flame thinks we're evil because he heard you shout this morning when I was... ah, when _we_ were trying our little experiment. He thought I was hurting you, and now his mind is closed tight to anything but hatred of us. Right, Flick?\"\n\nAgain the other's cropped head moved in sad and resigned agreement.\n\n\"Now all we need is an opportunity to reach Flame again, Steve,\" Jay continued. \"The only possible way, of course, is for him to see you enjoying our company. It would be nice if you'd just put your arms around our shoulders. Your laughing at anything we have to say would also help. Flame will then rid himself of that mental barrier that's keeping us from reaching him. It's as simple as that. We can take the first step now by sitting down below rather than here. Come, Steve.\"\n\nThey went down the trail and when they were only a short distance from the valley floor they sat down. Steve saw Flame leave the band and come toward them at a run. The red stallion stopped when he saw them, his intent eyes watching every move they made.\n\n\" _Now_ , Steve... laugh, please,\" Jay said, \"and put your arms around our shoulders.\"\n\nSteve did as Jay had requested, but his laugh was forced. It couldn't have been otherwise, for he knew that before long he and Flame would be passengers on that ship of light.\n\n# FINAL TRAINING\n\n8\n\nA little over an hour later Steve was sitting alone on the trail. Jay and Flick had gone moments before, and Flame was moving up the valley. Steve watched the stallion but his thoughts were of Jay's final warning.\n\n_\"Of course, the big job will be yours, Steve. Do you think you can manage to get Flame out to the ship? And then once you're at the track you'll be on your own too. So please make sure you have absolute control over him. It would be terrible if he put on a bad show!\"_\n\nSteve continued sitting there for many minutes, while Flame and the band moved to the most distant shadows of the valley. He wanted to go to his horse but he wasn't certain just then that his legs would bear his weight.\n\nFinally he got to his feet, wavering a bit at first, then steadying himself enough to make his way down the trail. When he reached the valley floor he attempted a whistle but what came out wasn't loud enough to attract Flame's attention and save him any steps. He had to go halfway up the valley before Flame saw him and stepped out of the shadows into sunlight.\n\nSteve waited for his horse, and when Flame came to a stop beside him he put both hands up, one finding and grasping the long red mane, the other on the high withers. He steeled himself for the jump, knowing that it would take all of whatever strength he had left. He was furious at his weakness but there was no fighting it... or that to which he had committed himself and Flame.\n\nThere was a quivering of the stallion's muscles. Flame knew what was coming and was waiting impatiently. He sidestepped and his finely molded body moved away from Steve. Snorting through wide nostrils, Flame waited for the boy to mount. He turned his small, wedge-shaped head, his eyes surprised and puzzled at Steve's unusual clumsiness. His small ears almost touched at the tips when he pricked them forward inquisitively.\n\nOnce more Steve put his hands upon Flame. This time he jumped as high as he could, pulling at mane and back. He hung on face downward, his legs dangling. Flame whirled, and Steve's hold upon him became even more precarious. He pulled harder on the mane with one hand, the fingers of the other pressing deep into Flame's withers. Only then did the stallion come to a halt as though in sudden realization that something was terribly wrong.\n\nSteve was successful in getting more of his weight on the off side of his horse, and finally he swung around. Flame bolted immediately, and for a while Steve made no effort to control him. He simply hung on as the stallion swept across the valley.\n\nWhen Steve had brought Flame to a stop he straightened and then sat still for a moment, making certain he was all right and that he was prepared for what he had to do. After all, what had begun as the wildest of dreams was now very close to becoming a reality!\n\nSatisfied that he was in full control of himself, he touched his horse and took him down the valley at a slow walk. Flame tried to break from it, crab-stepping and tossing his head, telling Steve in no uncertain terms that he wanted to run. But Steve did not give in to his demands. Instead, he turned Flame often, sometimes making large circles that swept them from one border of cane to the other; then again he took him in small, tight circles that made of Flame's hindquarters little more than a pivot for his tall body.\n\nThe stallion fidgeted constantly but made no attempt to break away. And that was what Steve had needed to know. He had never before asked so much of Flame at any one time.\n\nLater he reversed the circles, keeping Flame at a walk; then he took him through figure \"eights,\" some large, some very small and tight. Finally, allowing Flame to move into an easy lope, he made the circles and the figure \"eights\" again. When he had finished he was as hot as his horse, and almost as impatient.\n\nBut he did not dismount. Instead, he took Flame through the field of cane in a hard run. He kept him at that gait until they emerged from the cane and started over the stony ground near the western wall of Blue Valley. There he slowed him to a walk again and went on to the hollow near the marsh.\n\nFlame came to a stop before the murky veil of gray and his nostrils curled. He did not like the smell of rotting vegetation any more than Steve did. But he went forward again when the pressure came from Steve's legs, his hoofs making soft, sucking sounds in the wet ground. Although he knew his way, he was very, very cautious. He had been given his head, for he was no stranger to this cloud-like world, but his eyes never left the path.\n\nSteve glanced at the slimy wilderness of swamp ferns and high reeds on either side of them. Most of all he feared those still black pools. One false step, a slip, and he and Flame would become victims of these horrible quagmires.\n\nMoments later they left the marsh behind, and there was a quickening of Flame's strides. He chose his path through the twisting gorge as carefully as he had done in the marsh. They went up the dry stream bed, their way strewn with rocks and boulders, the high yellow cliffs rising on either side of them. At the end of their climb the walls widened, and stretched before them was the smaller valley.\n\nFlame broke into a run when he stepped onto dry grass again, and Steve let him go. He felt the stallion gather himself just before reaching the brook that cut the middle of the tiny valley. He knew Flame was going to jump the water rather than go through it, so he was ready when the stallion sprang from one bank to the other.\n\nSoon after, he slowed Flame, for they were moving in a rush toward the far wall. The wall was split by many narrow chasms and Steve purposely guided Flame down one that came to a dead end. As the high, precipitous walls closed in about them, the red stallion stopped in his tracks.\n\nHe disclosed no hesitation or uneasiness when Steve asked him to back up. Instead, he let his rider become his eyes, moving his hindquarters in quick response to Steve's touches. And finally he was free of the narrow, twisting chasm.\n\nSteve felt no great elation at Flame's easy and prompt obedience to his requests. The test of final, complete control over Flame was yet to come.\n\nHe rode Flame alongside the wall, and then turned him into the chasm that led to the sea entrance. Soon he could hear the dull thud of waves beating against the outer wall. He stopped Flame at the end of the chasm and dismounted.\n\n\"Come on, boy,\" he said, entering the high cave. There was no need to look back, for he heard Flame's hoofbeats behind him.\n\nHe hurried through the large cave, having no trouble making his way in the dim, gray light. Flame followed him with equal ease for he, too, had been there many times. At last they entered the great chamber, and the winds from the sea whipped about them. The crash of waves outside was thunderous as was the rush of water in the canal. The motor launch rocked against the wooden piles. It was here, Steve knew, that the final test of his control over Flame would come.\n\nThe stallion stopped just within the chamber. Steve glanced back at him, and then went to the launch. He hauled out the wide planks that were used in sliding barrels and heavy boxes onto the sunken deck and then called to his horse, \"Come on, boy!\"\n\nFlame came quickly, showing no fear or hesitation until Steve stepped aboard the launch and continued calling him. Then he stopped, his eyes on the boy, and backed away, only to come forward again. He snorted and pawed the sand, sending it flying. He carried on for many minutes without setting hoof on the planks. He knew what he was being asked to do.\n\nSteve sat down in the boat, talking to Flame, and waiting. His task would take a long time, if he succeeded in it at all. Whenever Flame moved away from the launch Steve called to him again. The stallion's eyes were bright in his bewilderment, and once he ran out of the chamber. Steve stayed in the boat and finally Flame returned to plunge about the sandy floor, his snorts softening the crash of waves outside.\n\n\"We're not going anywhere,\" Steve told him. \"I just want to see if you'll do it.\"\n\nIt was a long while before Flame even consented to lower his small head to smell the wooden planks. He walked up and down the canal, sniffing the hull of the launch. Then he turned abruptly away and began plunging about the chamber once more. Finally he settled down but stood in a far corner, waiting patiently for Steve to return to Blue Valley.\n\nAfter a half-hour had passed Flame lost his patience. As he snorted and came forward, Steve rose and stood close to the planks. \"Come, Flame,\" he said softly, \"and then we'll go back.\"\n\nFlame angrily tossed his head and rose high on his hind legs, almost touching the top of the chamber. When he came down he stood still, watching Steve and listening to him. He put one hoof on a plank, then quickly took it off. He tried the other hoof and this one remained planted on the plank. A few seconds more and the second hoof had joined it. And thus he stood, making no sound, two hind feet on sand, two forefeet on wood. He listened to the rhythm of the boy's voice and inched forward carefully. Then he stopped again, undecided.\n\nWhen he finally went down the planks, it was with an abruptness that shook the boat. There was a lurching of his great body, the hard thud of all four hoofs on wood planking, and then a restless shifting of his weight once he was aboard.\n\nFortunately the _Sea Queen_ was a sturdy vessel and she easily withstood the stallion's constant movement. Steve stayed close to Flame's head, talking to him, comforting him. The sides of the launch were not very high, and Flame could have jumped onto the sandy floor. But he didn't. He knew Steve wanted him in the boat and for the moment he was willing to stay there. He had no room to turn, he could hardly move. Finally he quieted and looked inquisitively at the wheel and the glistening brass objects behind Steve.\n\nSteve backed up to the wheel then and Flame, taking a cautious step forward, followed. Now very curious and unafraid, he thrust his small head beneath the wooden overhang. Seeing this, Steve realized that he would be able to take Flame in the launch, but that it would be a hazardous trip for the first few hundred yards. He'd have all he could do to guide the boat safely through the submerged coral rock, much less have time to watch his horse.\n\nWas he actually considering taking Flame from Azul Island? Even if they were successful in reaching Cuba, what about the still greater risks they'd be taking at the track? Jay knew nothing of the rules and regulations governing the running of a race of this magnitude, and neither did he! What would he say when the officials asked him where he and his horse were from? _The Windward Islands of the Caribbean Sea?_ Would that satisfy them? Would they accept such a vague answer and allow him to race Flame? Just because the poster had said that the International Race was open to the world? Of course not! In the end they'd make him divulge everything and Flame might even be taken from him!\n\n\"Come on, Flame,\" he said. \"We're going back _to stay_.\" He stepped out of the launch and his horse followed him eagerly, glad to be returning to Blue Valley.\n\n# THE UNLEASHING\n\n9\n\nSteve moved away from the stove where he had been cooking his evening meal. Flame and the mares were drinking at the pool below. For a long while Steve stood watching them, the skin drawn tight on his angular face. He wasn't going to race Flame at the risk of losing him! He didn't care what he had told Jay. He had changed his mind... and Jay couldn't make him do anything he didn't _want_ to do. Hadn't Jay said so, time and time again?\n\nHe went back to the stove and put his dinner on a plate. But when he sat down, he found he was toying with his food. Was his appetite never coming back? Or was it simply that whatever he cooked was tasteless compared to Pitch's meals?\n\nLong after night had fallen, he kept trying to convince himself that he had made up his mind, that he had no intention of taking Flame to Cuba. Actually it was this that was absorbing him, leaving no room for appetite or sleep.\n\nWhen the first streaks of dawn appeared in the sky, Steve turned face downward on his cot. Closing his eyes, he sought the rest that had evaded him throughout the night. Once more he tried to rid his mind of every thought but sleep. He forced himself to see only a heavy black curtain. He concentrated on the blackness, and waited for sleep to come. But heavy hands seemed to part his mental curtain and divulge all that lay behind, all that had kept him awake for so many hours. He fought to keep the curtain closed, to see only the blackness. His head and pillow were wet and clammy with sweat, yet he continued fighting and refused to give up. But it was a losing battle. The hands were winning; he felt their pull. Then the curtain opened and his mind began racing again. He decided to get up. As tired as he was he couldn't fight any longer.\n\nHe felt the hands on his shoulders, shaking him gently... only these hands were real, as was the voice.\n\n\"Steve, are you awake?\" Jay asked.\n\nAs Steve turned over, he could see Jay's eyes glowing in the semi-darkness of the cave.\n\n\"I'm sorry that I've awakened you so early, Steve, but I couldn't wait any longer to tell you what I've learned!\"\n\nJay sat down on the cot, but got up again quickly. \"I'm a little too excited to sit still, I guess. I've found a wonderful place to land, Steve. Actually it's much closer to Cuba than I thought we dared go. Even Flick seems satisfied that we won't be seen.\"\n\nJay chuckled before adding, \"Flick thought I meant to bring the ship down between Cuba and Florida. Really, he doesn't give me credit for having any sense at all, sometimes. As though I weren't well aware of the tourist traffic there.\"\n\nJay moved past the cot, pacing the cave restlessly. \"I feel just like a race horse going to the post. Really I do, Steve. Planning this trip of ours is the most exciting thing I've done in a long, long time. But it's only natural, I suppose, when I think that we're working this out _together_. Nothing like it has ever happened before to _any_ of us.\" He stopped abruptly and his eyes glowed less brightly. \"Oh, my, if Julian ever hears of this! But he won't. Flick wouldn't dare tell him.\"\n\nJay began pacing again, then stopped and sat down beside Steve. \"I can see I've startled you by coming so early. You must have been sound asleep. Really, Steve, I _am_ sorry, but you'll understand my impatience when I tell you the rest.\"\n\nHe rose and went to the ledge, talking all the while. \"Quite close to Cuba is a small group of islands. We'll come in off the most eastern of the group. Using your launch you won't have any trouble reaching a small fishing village on the Cuban coast. This village is about fifty miles, I'd say, from Havana and the track. Really, Steve, it's going to be much easier than we thought. I'm sure we won't be seen coming in, and your trip to shore with Flame will be a very short one. We can only bring our ship down at sea, you know. It couldn't have worked out better. Even Flick has raised no objections.\"\n\nJay retraced his steps and stood in front of Steve. \"You're not saying much, Steve.\" He laughed. \"But then I haven't given you much of a chance, have I? Aren't you pleased with what I've learned?\"\n\nOnly then did Steve remove his gaze from Jay's eyes. He saw what looked like a rope in the man's hand. Jay was twirling it in his excitement and it too glowed in the semi-darkness. Jay must have noticed his interest for suddenly it was offered to him and he held it in his own hands. Only it wasn't a rope at all. It was as soft as flesh and just as pliant. It had no weight and yet there was a good deal of it, fashioned in the shape of a hackamore, complete with reins. It had no color at all and yet contained the most brilliant of all colors. The fibers pulsated beneath his fingers, seemingly alive and warm. He was not frightened. Instead he held it close, looking at the long golden tassels that hung from it.\n\n\"That's my race offering, Steve,\" Jay said quietly. \"I figured you'd need some kind of a headpiece in guiding Flame. I realize you use nothing of the kind here, but it will be different at the track. Besides, it would look very strange to have you out there with nothing on him at all, no bridle or saddle. I don't suppose they'll require you to use a saddle, but they'll insist upon your having some obvious control over your horse's head. They'd never believe you if you said you needed nothing at all. And I think you'll need the hackamore, Steve. Really I do. I'm sure Flame won't mind wearing it. He'll hardly know it's on. Try it today.\"\n\nSteve looked up at him. \"We're not going,\" he said quietly.\n\nFor the first time wrinkles appeared in Jay's high brow, and the light suddenly was gone from his eyes. He looked at Steve a long while, and then sat down beside him.\n\n\"You've changed your mind then?\" he asked.\n\nSteve nodded.\n\n\"All right, Steve, if that's the way you think you want it. But you really don't, you know. You're very anxious to race Flame.\"\n\nWith that he got up again and stood before Steve, watching him, waiting for him to speak. And when the boy remained silent, he said, \"Of course I'm disappointed. But above all, Steve, I don't want you feeling sorry later on that you missed this chance. Promise me that, won't you?\"\n\nStill Steve said nothing.\n\n\"I know you're worried about a lot of things, Steve, and I'm sorry that I can't help you more. It's impossible for me to reassure you that Flame will win the race. What Flame does on the track is strictly up to you and him. I've told you before that your part in all this is much more difficult than mine. But that's the chance you must take. I can't help you there.\"\n\nSteve said, \"It's not what might happen during the race that has made me change my mind.\"\n\n\"It isn't?\" Jay was surprised. \"I thought for sure...\" He paused, looking more intently into the boy's eyes. Then he said, \"But I promised you that no one will learn of your secret valley, Steve. It just won't be possible for anyone to see you and Flame travel between this island and Cuba. You have my word that I've gotten away with much more than this during my travels.\"\n\nSteve turned away. \"I'm sure you have,\" he answered. \"But I don't think you have any idea of what I'll be up against at the track. The officials will want to know where we're from. What will I tell them? And what will they do when they're not satisfied with my answer? They might even take Flame from me, thinking perhaps that I've stolen him!\"\n\nThe frown returned to Jay's face. \"I don't believe they would do that, Steve. But I never really considered _details_ like that. I thought you'd just go and race, and then return to the ship. I can understand your concern now, but I'm sure something can be worked out. Let's see....\"\n\nSteve interrupted before Jay could continue. \"I'm certain there are many rules governing the running of a race such as this. We don't just...\"\n\n\"But you said it was _Open to the World_ , Steve,\" Jay insisted. \"Doesn't that mean what it says? If it's an open race, it's open to any horse in the world which may want to race in it. You have every legal right to race Flame. You can demand it!\"\n\nJay was shaking his head angrily, and his blue-black hair fell down over his forehead, making him look very funny. The whole thing was so absurd that Steve laughed. Was he actually in this cave in a lost valley, listening to a man from another world remind him of his legal rights?\n\n\"Don't laugh, Steve,\" Jay said. \"You have every right to demand that you be allowed to race Flame. After all, if you can't believe what you read here on Earth, why...\"\n\nSteve interrupted again. \"But I _still_ have to answer their questions. And they'll ask where we're from.\"\n\n\"You and Flame are from this world, aren't you?\" Jay demanded. \"That's all that is necessary to tell them.\"\n\nSteve made no reply. Instead he looked around him, finding familiar objects... the stove, Pitch's pipes and can of tea, the trunks and boxes, anything at all to help him keep his mental balance.\n\nJay lapsed into a moment of thoughtful silence, then his hand descended roughly on Steve's shoulder. \"I've got it, Steve. I know exactly what we can do.\" Swinging around, he sat down on the cot.\n\n\"Flick's been pretty insistent that we just drop you and Flame off near Cuba while I join you later for the race itself. But I think that when I tell him of your grave concern for Flame's safety he might be convinced that it's necessary for me to remain with you. After all, it's pretty important to us too that you don't run into any trouble with the officials. We mustn't start a lot of talk.\n\n\"Now near this fishing village I mentioned there are several homes that are closed tight,\" Jay continued. \"I'm certain they're available for rental, and one has a small stable behind it.\"\n\n\"How do you know all this?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"I told you I found out early last night, Steve,\" Jay answered impatiently. \"Flick was agreeable to my taking the cruiser and doing a little reconnaissance. It took only a few minutes. It'll be nothing at all in the big ship. Whiff!... and we're there.\"\n\nSteve's head reeled. Only a few minutes... with Cuba almost two thousand miles away! Jay was going on, unmindful of the impact of his words upon Steve.\n\n\"I'll stay with Flame while you go to Havana and find out if this race is open to the world or isn't. If it is, you return for Flame and race him. If it isn't, we bring you back here. It's all very simple, and I can't see that anything can go wrong.\"\n\nSteve rose from the cot. \"But how will we get him to Havana? He can't walk fifty miles and then race.\"\n\n\"Of course not, Steve. There you go, bothering yourself with details again! We'll hire a truck. I'm sure there must be a number available in the village. And don't say that we don't have any Cuban money. I'll attend to that. Really, Steve, in some ways you're so much like Flick. You don't give me any credit for...\"\n\nJay stopped, and then added apologetically, \"I didn't mean that the way it sounded, Steve. I'm very fond of you, just as I am of Flick. But I wish you would let me attend to a _few_ things. I've really been very busy, much more so than you may think. After I got back from Cuba I went right to work on this hackamore, and I still have plenty to do. I must make a blanket for Flame, Steve. I won't have him uncovered while he's hot.\"\n\nJumping nimbly to his feet, Jay patted the boy's shoulder. \"You relax now, Steve, and leave all the details to me. You'll have plenty to do just seeing to it that Flame runs the best race he can. Oh, I do hope he doesn't let us down!\"\n\nJay started for the ledge, stopped and said, \"We'll leave _tomorrow at sunset_ , Steve. It's very important that you be not a minute late. We'll glow a bit coming in even though it is only a skip. Don't fail me now.\"\n\nAfter Jay had gone Steve looked at the living, fibrous tissue of the strange hackamore. His fingers closed over it and he felt its warmth, the same warmth and trust Jay and Flick conveyed to him whenever they were near. Somehow he knew it had taken their place. He hoped they would let him keep it always.\n\nHe left the cave then, knowing what he had to do. He whistled to Flame before going down the trail, and the stallion was there to meet him when he reached the valley floor.\n\nFor a moment he let Flame smell the bitless bridle. Flame, nuzzling the long tassels of sheer thread, showed no fear of it.\n\nWhen Steve slipped the bridle on him the fibers seemed to shorten, causing the bridle to fit snugly about Flame's small head. But the golden tassels, hanging below and on either side of his large nostrils, remained their original length. Steve led Flame back to the trail and, after mounting, drew up the reins.\n\nHe sat quietly on Flame's back, and the stallion made no move. Then Steve leaned forward, whispering. He looked down the valley at the long stretch before them. He waited and Flame waited too. Both were tense and eager to go. Eyes were straight ahead. Flame's ears were pricked. The waiting became harder but neither moved. Muscles were strained almost to the breaking point. Then, just as the first rays of the morning sun struck the dome of Azul Island, came the unleashing, the end of waiting.\n\n_\"Go!\"_ called Steve, and on either side of them raced the horses of the world.\n\n# THE ROOM\n\n10\n\nSunset the following day came swiftly to Steve Duncan, and now he stood beside his horse in the great sea chamber. He looked at the soft flow of water in the narrow canal as it rocked the launch quietly against the aged wooden piles. Even the sea was encouraging him to leave, for most days the canal was white with salty foam from great waves crashing against the outer wall before finding their way inside. How often he and Pitch had awaited just such a calm sea as this before undertaking the perilous passage through the coral rock!\n\nSteve whispered to his horse but made no effort to lead him down the wide planks. Flame wore his hackamore and the long tassels seemed alive when he tossed his head, snorting at the launch. If it had not been for the hackamore, Steve might have believed that Jay and Flick had never been, that he could not be leaving Azul Island with Flame! He had not seen Jay since the early morning visit of the day before.\n\nIt was almost sunset. They had better be on their way quickly and yet... Steve did not move and the seconds passed, long seconds filled with dread and doubts and yet wonderful dreams as well. He felt the lines of the bitless bridle contract in the palms of his perspiring hands, becoming as light as the sheerest thread yet heavy in their lifelike throbbing.\n\nHe knew what he was about to do, and that he had no _earthly_ right to be doing it. Soon he and Flame would be passengers aboard that ship from outer space. It was all so fantastic, so incredible... but all so true. As true and real as his standing there beside Flame. And he was about to go of his own free will. That too was true.\n\n\"Come, Flame,\" he said.\n\nThe red stallion raised his forefeet to the planks, took another step and then stood still, his legs rigid.\n\nSteve waited, talking to him all the while. He held the lines taut but did not pull, and neither did Flame. The daylight coming through the low sea hole was fading, but Steve did not want to open the wide doors above the hole until Flame was aboard the launch, his head turned away from the outer world. He must not become frightened by what he saw.\n\nSteve's voice became edgy in his anxiety over the growing darkness. He was late now, for Jay had said that it was most important to be at the ship by sunset. He began to turn Flame's head one way and then the other, trying to get him to shift his balance, to move his forelegs.\n\n\"Come, Flame,\" he repeated urgently.\n\nThe long, straight legs moved a little, the small head bent down, sniffing the boards. The chamber grew darker. Desperately Steve pulled on the lines. What if they didn't leave after all! He realized then how much he really wanted to go with Jay and Flick.\n\nFlame raised his head at Steve's urgent pull on the lines. His large eyes met the boy's curiously, wanting to know just how much was expected of him.\n\n\"You've done this before, Flame,\" Steve pleaded.\n\nThe stallion bent his head once more, sniffing the boards, his nostrils blown wide.\n\nSteve turned Flame's head from one side to the other. Suddenly the horse's forelegs shifted, and there was a great lurching of his body. The sound of his hoofs on the boards thudded hollowly as he followed Steve onto the launch.\n\nThe first step had been taken! Steve stood still for a moment, stroking his horse, quieting him. Then he tied the lines to the gunwale, although he knew that nothing would hold Flame if he really wanted to get away. He continued talking while he went behind Flame to the stern; there he slid open the wooden doors to the sea.\n\nA fresh evening breeze swept into the chamber with the increased light. But Steve felt utter dismay when he saw how low the sun had descended. Another moment and it would be gone!\n\nSuddenly Flame shifted his weight, and the launch rocked as he sought to turn his head, to see what lay behind him.\n\nSteve hurried to Flame, but he could not stay there long. He had no time. For him, a dangerous game of chance had begun, and there was no turning back, now or ever. He switched on the ignition, and the engine caught with a sudden roar made louder by the close confines of the chamber. The sound startled Flame and Steve touched him lightly, trying to comfort him. At the same time he had the launch moving, backing slowly out of the chamber.\n\nAs the boat slid along the canal, Flame tore the lines loose from the gunwale. Steve grabbed them, keeping his horse from rearing as the launch swept through the exit.\n\nThey rose with the swells of the sea, and Flame screamed shrilly. But there was not much else he could do, with open water on either side of him.\n\nSteve continued talking to his horse, trying to reassure him that everything was all right. He would have liked to close the doors of the sea chamber, but without Pitch's help it was impossible. That someone might discover the entrance to Azul Island during his absence was another hazard in the dangerous game he was playing.\n\nFlame looked all around, constantly screaming while the launch backed farther away from the sheer wall of stone. Suddenly Steve turned the wheel and the boat slid between two pieces of rock whose tips just broke the surface. Then the launch went forward, its prow pointed toward the open sea.\n\nThe sun had set, and only the brilliant afterglow remained. Carefully and slowly, Steve guided the launch through the coral reef.\n\nBehind him he heard the dull thud of Flame's pawing. He continued talking to the stallion, soothing him with words while his eyes and thoughts were momentarily elsewhere. Then the pawing stopped, and he heard the quick shifting of hoofs. He felt Flame's hot breath on his neck, but he couldn't turn to him, couldn't take his eyes off the narrow channel ahead. Nor could he reach back and touch Flame, for both hands were needed on the wheel. So he stood there quietly and terribly concerned, becoming alarmed for himself and his horse, and all that lay beyond.\n\nThe white patch he sought lay a few hundred yards past the last of the coral reefs. It rose gracefully with the giant swells but remained always in the same spot, as if it were anchored to the depths of the Caribbean.\n\nBy this time the brilliance of the heavens had faded and the sky was a pale, murky red. As Steve neared the patch it too changed color, becoming phosphorescent in the twilight of early evening. He knew that he had arrived much too late, but there was no turning back. He could not come again another day... he would not have had the courage to return. For now, with the patch directly before him, he felt all the fears he had successfully imprisoned seeking release. He tried to quell his mounting dread. He repeated everything he had told himself so many times. He must accept Jay and Flick and their world. He must be confident and trusting. He must believe in them.\n\n_\"I have nothing to fear except what I've learned to fear in this world,\"_ he said aloud.\n\nBut his spoken words rang with insincerity. Now, nothing he could say could crush the doubts, the suspicions and fears which rose within him. His hands turned the wheel, seeking to take the launch away from the patch. He would return to Blue Valley and all that he knew to be standard and normal and sane.\n\nThe wheel turned easily but the boat did not respond to the change in course. Its prow cut the waters directly ahead, drawing closer and closer to the luminous patch. Even when Steve reversed the propeller there was no slackening of their forward speed!\n\nHe knew then that the launch was no longer under _his_ control. He turned to Flame for comfort, but the stallion held his head high, his bright eyes staring beyond. No sound came from him, and Steve turned to look with him at the area above the patch, which was now bathed in a golden light that grew in size and brilliance. The waters below it turned from a deep, dark blue to a bubbling silver gray. The swells disappeared, leaving the sea flat.\n\nThe prow of the boat pierced the veiled, golden shroud and then came to an abrupt stop, throwing Steve and Flame forward. Before their eyes the bow rose and they stumbled backward, their simultaneous cries shattering the silent evening. Then they too were enveloped by the light.\n\nSteve felt the wooden deck rise beneath his feet, yet he could not see the launch or Flame or anything else. His keenest sense was that of great empty spaces all around him, and he stared into the vastness seeing nothing at all, not even light or darkness. And yet, strangely enough, all dread and fear had left him.\n\nFrom close beside him Jay said, \"Get out, Steve. You're here at last.\"\n\n\"I am?\" he asked into the nothing, his voice echoing and re-echoing in the vast, empty void.\n\n\"Of course,\" Jay said, impatient now. \"I'm having such a time with Flick because you're late. He's afraid we'll be seen and now he doesn't want to go at all.\"\n\nSteve felt Jay's hands on his arm but he could not see him. He knew he was being guided hurriedly off the launch because he went up what he knew were the planks leading from the deck. Behind him came Flame. But he could not hear the stallion's hoofs any more than he could his own footsteps.\n\n\"Careful, Steve,\" Jay cautioned. \"Watch your step. We're getting off now.\"\n\nSteve thought it ridiculous to be told to watch his step when he could see nothing but those murky, endless spaces of... Of what? He couldn't decide. But they were there all the same.\n\nHe stepped from that void into a great room. Jay, whom he could now see, went over to the stallion and straightened the brow band of the hackamore.\n\n\"I do wish you had started earlier, Steve,\" he said gravely without taking his eyes off Flame. \"I'm not sure what's going to happen now. Flick's in a very nervous state.\"\n\nSteve glanced around the room in which they stood.\n\n\"You won't find him here,\" Jay said. \"He went to the chart room to check the screen.\"\n\nIt wasn't important to Steve where Flick was. He took hold of the lines of the hackamore, grasping them tightly for support, while he took another look around the room.\n\nThe walls were hung with great tapestries which changed color constantly before his eyes, becoming shades he recognized and still others that no one in this world had ever seen before. It was their movement that caused him to tremble suddenly. They seemed to be alive and breathing! They all billowed together and glowed in a new and fiery brilliance. He stared at them, feeling their resentment at his very presence.\n\nJay noted the alarm in Steve's eyes and said kindly, \"Don't let them bother you. They're disturbed easily but soon get over it.\" Then, smiling, \"Of course you're very new to them,\" he added.\n\n\"Then they are real,\" Steve said. _\"They're alive.\"_\n\n\"In a way, Steve. In the same way everything is alive in one form or another. Nothing is ever really dead, you know.\"\n\nThere was neither depth nor height to the room, neither length nor width. Steve felt that he could walk forever without ever reaching those living walls, that the harder he tried the farther back they would move. Suddenly their colors changed again. They were no longer an angry red but were billowing in soft, somber tones. Yet they continued to move, breathing lightly as if at rest in their final acceptance of him.\n\n\"See, Steve,\" Jay said. \"They've settled down again, just as I said they would.\" He placed an arm around the boy's shoulders. \"Let's have a seat now and decide on the best way to handle Flick.\"\n\nSteve let Jay guide him forward. There seemed to be a floor of soft metal beneath his feet, so pliable that it yielded with every step he took.\n\nHe stopped in his tracks once, turning his head to see where Flame was. The stallion was still standing where Jay had left him, his red coat shining brighter than ever against the background of colorless, empty space from which they had emerged. But it was not empty space, Steve reminded himself. The launch had to be there, somewhere.\n\nFlame's head was held high, his neck arched in a manner that he seldom maintained for very long. Steve noticed that the lines of the hackamore hung tautly to the floor, as though held by the molten metal itself.\n\n\"Let him be, Steve,\" Jay said. \"It's the easiest way of handling him now. We don't want him upset, and it's only for a little while. He's resting comfortably. Sit down, please.\"\n\nThere were no chairs, no furniture in this endless room. Yet Jay gently pushed him down and Steve felt a support of some sort beneath him. Whatever it was, it hugged him close, molding itself to his figure even when he moved his arms and legs. Never before had he sat so comfortably or been so relaxed, so completely at ease.\n\n\"That's it, Steve,\" Jay said approvingly, \"just take it nice and easy. Let me figure out the best way of handling Flick. Of course he's absolutely right about the possibility of our being seen when we don't have the setting sun as a backdrop for our landing.\"\n\nHe paused, turning his disturbed eyes upon Steve. \"In a night sky this ship is about as concealable as a fireball. We haven't been able to do much about that, Steve, not yet. No more than we can get rid of those gases that lie upon the water after we do arrive. They're apt to betray our location to anyone who knows the score, as you found out for yourself.\n\n\"But getting back to our traveling at night. I say we ought to take a chance on it, don't you, Steve? What can your people think we are but a falling star or, at most, a meteor, as you did. _Whisk_ , we're down and away in the launch. _Whisk_ , Flick and the ship are back here. Nothing to it, really, if I can just get old Flick to think along those lines.\"\n\nJay recrossed his legs and thoughtfully rubbed his smooth chin. Steve watched him, trying hard to concentrate on what Jay was saying. But to have this man sitting so comfortably beside him with no visible support was at that moment more astounding than anything else. He looked down at his own legs, one on the floor, the other outstretched. What was supporting him?\n\nSuddenly Flick appeared in front of the nearest wall, and Jay called out to him, \"Well, Flick, I guess you're satisfied that we can go now, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Not in the least,\" the other answered, nodding to Steve and then sitting down beside him. \"The screen shows plenty of lights there. We haven't a chance of landing without being seen.\"\n\n\"So what?\" Jay asked defiantly. \"You'll be back here before they know what it's all about.\"\n\nFlick shook his head. \"It'll cause talk, though, and that we must avoid. You know the rules, Jay, as well as I do, and we'd be taking a very unnecessary risk going at this hour.\"\n\nJay glared at him. \"Unnecessary to you but not to us,\" he bellowed. \"After all, Flick, you _promised_.\"\n\n\"I promised a good many things that I never should have,\" Flick returned gravely. \"However, that can't be helped now, and I mean to go through with it but not at the expense of the ship's being seen. You and Steve will just have to put off going until tomorrow.\"\n\n\"I don't know if Steve would come back,\" Jay said sullenly. \"After all, this is a pretty unusual thing for him to be doing.\"\n\nSteve said nothing. He remembered how he had tried to steer the launch off course just before reaching the patch, how at the last moment he had sought the normalcy of his own world. Yet now he was in this ship, startled and astounded by all he saw but seated quietly, waiting for Jay and Flick to decide what to do because he had arrived late. But would he have the courage to return tomorrow?\n\nJay rose to his feet and began pacing the great room. Finally he stopped in front of Flick and said, \"We'd better have Steve spend the night with us.\"\n\nFlick jumped to his feet. _\"Jay!\"_ he said sharply. \"Remaining on the ship is out of the question. Why...\"\n\nHe stopped abruptly and wheeled around, facing the far wall. Steve's gaze shifted with Flick's, and he saw the tapestries billowing as if a great wind had swept the room. Somehow he knew that they were upset by the noise in the room and by the very suggestion that he should spend the night there. Without saying a word he got to his feet.\n\n\"Now, Steve,\" Jay said softly. \"Don't _you_ go getting upset, too. It's bad enough to have Flick raging around here without your doing it as well. Sit down, please.\"\n\nAfter Steve was seated again, Jay turned to Flick. \"If you won't agree to his spending the night, it must be now or never, Flick.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid it must be _never_ then,\" Flick answered, matching Jay's defiance.\n\n\"You'd break a promise?\"\n\n\"I would when it involves the disturbance and talk we'd create by moving the ship at night,\" Flick answered more calmly. \"After all, Jay, you know as well as I do that the little glimpse these people have had recently of our _cruisers_ have been trouble enough. If we're not careful we won't be allowed to visit Earth any more.\"\n\n\"Oh, pshaw,\" Jay said. \"The cruisers couldn't upset anyone.\"\n\n\"If that's the way you feel, why don't you take ours then?\" Flick suggested reasonably. \"You're perfectly right... probably no one will even see you.\"\n\n\"It would be much too small and uncomfortable with Flame in it,\" Jay answered after a moment's thought.\n\nFlick smiled critically. \"So now you're thinking of the few discomforts you may have to endure while helping Steve to race his horse. My, Jay, you are the one, aren't you?\"\n\nJay shifted uneasily and avoided looking at Steve when he said, \"One doesn't like to be cramped.\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" Flick answered, still smiling. \"Let's not suffer any discomforts while helping our fellow man.\"\n\n\"You know we wouldn't have room to move even the slightest bit,\" Jay said sheepishly.\n\n\"Terrible,\" Flick agreed sadly. \"And for just those _few_ minutes it would take to get there!\"\n\n\"Steve wouldn't like to go that way at all!\" Jay returned, a little defiantly.\n\n\"Wouldn't you, Steve?\" Flick asked, turning to the boy.\n\nSteve said, \"I don't care how we go. Flame didn't have room to move in the launch, either.\"\n\nFlick chuckled. \"See, Jay? I hope you'll learn something from all this. In fact, you might change quite a bit before you're through with Steve and Flame.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Jay said finally, \"if that's the only way you'll have it. But it's not going to be very comfortable.\" He got to his feet. \"Come on, Steve,\" he added resignedly.\n\n\"Oh, just one thing more,\" Flick said, enjoying his moment of triumph. \"You must promise not to take any unnecessary chances when you're with... ah... with other people.\"\n\n\"I promise,\" Jay said angrily. \"Of course I promise.\"\n\n\"And if I send for you, you'll come straight back whether the race has been run or not?\" Flick asked, more serious now.\n\n\"Of course!\" Jay screamed at the top of his voice. \"Anything else, Flick? Anything else?\"\n\nAt Jay's loud words, Steve saw the hanging tapestries boil into a turmoil of seething, angry crimson again. Instinctively his footsteps quickened to catch up with Jay's.\n\nTogether they went toward the great red stallion, who stood silently awaiting them.\n\n# AND A STAR TO GUIDE HER BY\n\n11\n\nJay turned Flame's head to one side so the stallion could see Steve. \"Now take him inside,\" he said quietly.\n\nThe lines of the hackamore were placed in Steve's hands and he felt the heat of Flame's blood flowing through them. Stepping back into the colorless veil from which he had entered the room, he was conscious once more of the sudden brightness that burned his eyes. Then it was gone and there was neither light nor darkness, only a deep sense of vast, empty space all around him. He could see nothing, no part of himself or Flame or Jay.\n\n\"Careful of that tank, Steve!\" Jay said impatiently.\n\nSteve stopped in his tracks and waited.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" Jay asked more kindly.\n\nFrom somewhere behind them Flick said scornfully, \"You've forgotten again that Steve can't see a thing in this port, Jay.\"\n\nFor a moment heavy silence filled the vastness, and then Jay said, \"Sorry, Steve. Details again, at which I've admitted my shortcomings.\"\n\nSteve felt Jay's hand on his arm, guiding him to the left. He was not certain but he thought he saw a faint glow just ahead. He looked harder, wanting to _see_.\n\nJay mumbled something about untrained eyes, and Flick asked gravely, \"Where do you think we'd be if their eyes _were_ trained?\"\n\n\"Not here, sure enough,\" Jay answered.\n\n\"Then don't ever forget it again. Now I'll check the screen once more. Don't leave until I get back.\"\n\nSteve continued looking at the shimmering glow. Was it not growing? A few moments more and his eyes began to burn fiercely and he had to turn away.\n\nJay said, \"I guess we might as well get aboard, Steve, although I don't like the idea of spending any more time than necessary in there. However, Flick should be back any second now. Come, follow me.\"\n\nSteve didn't move, for Jay's hand had left his shoulder. \"Where?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why, right here, of course,\" and once more Jay's hand was on his arm.\n\nSteve took a step forward, at the same time trying desperately to pierce the void. It was as though he were walking with closed eyelids, actually seeing nothing but conscious of a whole world about him.\n\n\"Lower Flame's head a little, Steve. Unfortunately this door wasn't meant for anyone but ourselves and we're a small race, as you know. However, if I raise this top partition he'll be able to make it. Sometimes we do have to carry a bit of cargo in these cruisers... never very comfortably though,\" Jay added with a twinge of regret.\n\nSteve heard a soft whirring noise. Once again he concentrated on the area directly before him. _It_ had to be there, somewhere.\n\nFor what seemed a long while he saw nothing, then the small glow appeared again, spreading more rapidly than before. His eyes began to burn but he refused to turn away this time. And he saw it was no glow at all but a thin, liquid mass. It was an elongated bubble, growing brighter and larger, glistening in his eyes and setting them afire. Then suddenly it seemed to burst in his face and he turned away quickly to avoid its spitting, liquid fingers.\n\nNothing touched him. Nothing burned except his eyes, and he wondered if he would ever be able to see again. Then he heard Jay's voice.\n\n\"There, Steve, Flame should be able to get through now. Just lower his head a bit more.\"\n\nSteve dropped his right hand, feeling the weight of Flame's head at the end of the lines. Didn't Jay know that for a few seconds he had actually _seen_ the cruiser?\n\n\"Come, Steve. I'm anxious to be off the second Flick returns. We've wasted enough time already.\"\n\nSteve was led forward and when they came to a stop he knew they were inside the cruiser.\n\n\"I'll take Flame now,\" Jay said. \"My, this is going to be a most uncomfortable trip!\"\n\nThe lines were removed from Steve's hand, but Jay did not take Flame away. Instead, Steve heard the man's soft, birdlike mutterings. Finally Jay said, \"There, he's resting again. It'll be safest during the trip.\"\n\nAnd from outside came Flick's voice, \"All right, Jay. There are no lights except in the village. Be sure to land to the east of it.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Jay answered bitterly. \"I had no intention of landing anywhere else. Really, Flick...\" He stopped without finishing his sentence, and then said to Steve, \"Sit down, but move more to your right, please, so I'll have a _little_ room for my legs. That's it.\"\n\n\"Remember what I said about taking no unnecessary chances,\" Flick warned.\n\n\"Of course,\" Jay said. \"Don't worry so, Flick.\"\n\nFlick grunted. \"You're all set then?\"\n\n\"As set as we'll ever be in this thing,\" Jay muttered. \"At least we don't have to take Steve's launch now. That's something to be thankful for.\"\n\nSteve heard the soft whirring noise again and knew the cruiser's door was being closed. Any moment now and they'd be off! His heart pounded at the thought. One hand left his side, reaching high and groping until it found Flame.\"\n\nThe fear within him said, _\"Here you go, never to return.\"_\n\n\"Don't be silly,\" he answered. \"They're my friends.\"\n\n_\"You'll never see your real friends again. Do you think any of your friends would change places with you? Of course not!\"_\n\n\"They would if they were here, if they had looked into Jay's and Flick's eyes.\"\n\n_\"What a child you are to believe that.\"_\n\nSteve felt the hot blood rushing through his body. \"I'm no child,\" he said defiantly. \"I'm big, as big as anyone could be because of their help. I'm the luckiest fellow in this world! I'm not afraid!\"\n\nThe cruiser moved.\n\nThere was no blinding glare of atomic or hydrogen power, no great roar for which Steve had prepared himself. He was aware at first only of rocking gently backwards in his seat and of the swaying of Flame's great body beneath his hand. Then there was no movement at all. Nothing but deathly silence. No hum of powerful engines, no darkness, no light. Everything was the same as before, and yet he knew they were on their way.\n\nJay said, \"You're not even looking, Steve. I thought you'd like to see where we're going.\"\n\n\"But there's nothing to see,\" Steve protested.\n\nJay chuckled. \"There is, if you'll just turn your head and look out the window.\"\n\nSteve turned quickly and looked out into a night sky studded with multitude upon multitude of stars. They were very bright and there were many more than he had ever seen before. But otherwise he could have been back in Blue Valley looking up at the heavens.\n\nHe felt no sense of flight and yet, he figured, they must be traveling at frightening speed to go almost two thousand miles in a matter of a few minutes. He steeled himself to peer below... as one would have done from a very precarious height with no secure hold. Yet there was nothing to be seen below.\n\n\"Where are we?\" he asked.\n\nJay laughed again. \"Straight up,\" he said. \"We literally hop, just as I told you. Up and then down. Faster that way and less chance to be seen, scarcely any friction at all. We learned long ago not to cruise below. Your people always mistake us for something else.\"\n\n\"And _your_ people, Jay, where are they?\" Steve asked, his eyes fixed once more on the splendor and brilliance of the sky. \"Is Alula one of those?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, Steve. We're much further beyond. What you see is nothing. You've no idea what lies beyond.\"\n\n\"No... no, I haven't,\" Steve said, patting Flame.\n\n\"This is only your galaxy,\" Jay went on, \"nine planets and something like a hundred thousand million stars. Flick would know the exact figures. I'm always a little hazy on things like that.\"\n\n\"Is there other life on our planets?\"\n\n\"Life? I told you once before that nothing is ever really dead, Steve.\"\n\n\"But people, Jay... are there other people?\"\n\n\" _People?_ No, no people, Steve. You have to go beyond for that.\" Jay moved his legs, brushing against Steve's. \"Sorry,\" he said. \"I'm trying to get rid of a bad cramp. If you'd just move your right leg a bit more. There, that's better. Oh, this is the worst kind of discomfort!\"\n\nSteve said nothing, and Jay added, \"But thank goodness we're just about there.\"\n\nSilence again closed upon them, silence and always the stars, but now Steve was aware of movement for the first time since take-off. Not the cruiser's movement, but the quick shifting of the heavens. The stars began to slip by, slowly at first and then more rapidly until they were no longer stars but long, fiery tails streaming through the night sky.\n\nSteve did not need to be told that the cruiser was descending.\n\nJay said with relief, \"Another few seconds now, Steve. Sit back, please.\"\n\nBut Steve couldn't sit back, for the stars were gone. In their place was his world, the sea and the land beyond. Not just the tiny specks he knew must be the islands of the Greater Antilles but the great, bulging masses of North and South America as well.\n\nThen, as with the stars, the two continents were gone. Only the sea remained and the one small island that grew rapidly before his eyes. Still and silent it awaited them, a land of papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mountains and heavier-than-night depths.\n\nSuddenly the land and sea became alive. Distant lights that were not stars twinkled in cities and scattered villages. Cars moved across a great plain. A boat pushed its prow into the sea, churning white the dark waters before it while the smoke from its lone stack billowed gray in the night sky.\n\nThere was a quickening blur before Steve's eyes and then he saw nothing. Startled, he drew back, afraid that they were about to crash into the earth. He felt the forward swaying of his body, then a sudden backward jerk, and his left hand went up involuntarily to his neck.\n\n\"Sorry, Steve,\" Jay apologized, \"but I did tell you to sit back in your seat. At any rate we're here, safe and sound... except for my legs which feel as if they belong to somebody else.\"\n\nSteve felt Jay's legs withdraw from beside his own. Then once more he heard the whirring sound and knew the door was being opened.\n\nA sudden rush of night air filled the cruiser, and it felt good upon his face. He remained still, knowing that Jay would tell him when to leave. He heard Jay's soft murmurings to Flame, quickly followed by a throaty snort from the stallion.\n\n\"S-sh, Flame,\" Jay reprimanded the horse. \"Take him out, Steve.\"\n\nSteve rose to his feet, seeing nothing and wondering where he should go to find the door. He waited and finally Jay took him by the arm again.\n\n\"I keep forgetting, Steve. This way.\" Jay chuckled softly. \"A few more steps and I won't have to lead you around like a blind man. I imagine you'll be grateful for that, too.\"\n\nSteve emerged into a small clearing in a heavily wooded area. Flame jumped beside him, neighing shrilly, and Jay hushed the stallion again.\n\n\"Let's get out of here,\" he said to Steve, leading the way.\n\nSteve followed, with Flame moving restlessly alongside, his head high, his eyes glaring, but never pulling upon the lines.\n\nAt the end of the clearing, Jay stopped. \"Dash it,\" he said, \"I've forgotten my bag. Hold on a minute, Steve.\"\n\nSteve watched Jay run across the clearing. He sought to train his eyes to see the cruiser, if only by the slight gleam of a bubble to fix its location. But he saw nothing, and meanwhile Jay disappeared from sight long before reaching the trees.\n\nFlame snorted again, and Steve turned back to him. The stallion's nostrils were flared widely, sniffing unfamiliar scents. Steve stroked him softly, comforting him, and Flame turned his head at the boy's touch, nuzzling his hand before once more shattering the night air with a shrill whistle.\n\nJay returned, carrying a large bag. \"It wouldn't be wise to be found here,\" he told Steve anxiously. \"Can't you keep him quiet? I've done all I can, and he continues making enough noise to wake up the countryside! We'll have the dogs on us, if he keeps it up.\"\n\nJay hurried through the trees, and Steve led Flame after him without answering. The stallion continued his neighing but otherwise gave Steve no trouble.\n\nThey walked a long while, emerging from the trees to follow a deep ditch, then climbing out and entering the woods again. Steve had no doubt that Jay knew exactly where he was going. When they finally reached a dirt road, they were perspiring and breathing heavily. But Flame seemed tireless; he pressed on, impatient at their slowing footsteps, snorting loudly and neighing.\n\nJay said, \"Let him make all the noise he wants to now.\" He took a few quick breaths before adding, \"I just didn't want anyone to find us near the cruiser.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't be able to see it anyway,\" Steve said.\n\n\"No, but they might walk into it and become alarmed. Perhaps they'd even damage it in some way. Then where would we be?\"\n\nSteve had no answer.\n\nIn the distance they heard dogs barking, and Flame shrilled his challenge again.\n\nJay said, \"He isn't pulling, is he?\"\n\n\"No,\" Steve said. And strangely enough, the lines were loose in his hands, even though the barking of the dogs and the open dirt road beneath Flame's restless hoofs should have caused the stallion to pull hard on the lines.\n\n\"Could they find us here?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Of course. Although it isn't the villagers' custom to leave their homes at night. They're fishermen... early risers, you know. However, what if they did come upon us walking along here? We'd only be what we look like, you know, two men and a horse.\"\n\nSteve said not a word. Two men and a horse. It was as simple as that. No Blue Valley. No mother ship from a distant planet. No cruiser that had brought them here in a matter of minutes. Nothing before them but a village where people lived and faced the reality of catching fish for their livelihood, day after day. Two men and a horse, walking through the night. As simple as that.\n\nJay's pace slowed still more, and Steve said, \"You're tired. Shall I carry your bag for a while?\"\n\n\"No, thanks, Steve. You've got enough to do with Flame acting as he is. I can't understand it. He should be very quiet.\" Jay paused, taking a long breath before adding, \"But we haven't far to go now.\"\n\nFinally they were able to see the distant lights of the village, and the sea was close for they could hear the crash of waves. Once they heard shrill laughter carried on the night breeze from the village, and later music from a juke box or radio.\n\nFlame neighed at each strange sound, but he did not rear or bolt and Steve kept him at his side.\n\nSuddenly Jay stopped. \"Well, we're here, Steve,\" he said.\n\n\"Where do we go?\" Steve asked, seeing nothing but trees and the bare road.\n\n\"Why, right here, of course,\" Jay answered, turning in from the road.\n\nOnly when Steve too had stepped off the road was he aware of the graveled driveway. It circled through the trees, going in the direction of the sea. Occasionally he could see the lights of the village, and once more he heard faint music.\n\nFlame's whistle pierced the night, and it was echoed by louder barking from the dogs.\n\nJay said, \"I suppose that hearing all these unfamiliar noises is good for Flame. He'll get used to them and settle down, making it easier for us later.\"\n\n\"I guess so,\" Steve said. \"But the people will hear him tonight for sure.\"\n\n\"I suppose so,\" Jay agreed. \"But it doesn't matter. A horse is nothing unusual to them. No more than my renting this seaside home for the week-end.\"\n\nJust ahead Steve saw the dim outline of a sprawling house, and closer still a small shed. \"When did you rent it?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yesterday. Didn't you miss me, Steve?\"\n\n\"Yes, but weren't they surprised to see you?\"\n\n\"Surprised?\" Jay asked, turning to Steve in the darkness and smiling kindly, patiently. \"The renting agents, you mean? Surprised to see a wealthy gentleman from Havana seeking a few days' rest from business problems? I'm more surprised at your asking such a question, Steve! They were pleased, very pleased, I can assure you. Their price for this house was exorbitant but I didn't quibble one bit.\"\n\nUndaunted, Steve said, \"But they could tell you were not one of them.\"\n\n\"A matter of speaking Spanish, you mean?\" Jay laughed gaily. \"Again, I'm surprised at you. It's a very simple language. It just flows.\"\n\nJay turned and went to the shed. Removing a key from his pocket, he opened the doors. He turned on the light and inside Steve saw a large box stall, also a bale of hay... both waiting for Flame.\n\n\"Horseback riding is a sport enjoyed by many Havana businessmen,\" Jay said. \"They love to ride along the coast. So a seaside house is not a home without a stable.\" He chuckled at his remark, then said, \"Bring in our charge, Steve. His room and dinner await.\"\n\nFlame's hoofs rang on the wood floor as he followed Steve into the shed. He reared when Jay put on the light, almost striking his head on the ceiling. When he came down he pawed the floor hard, his large eyes bright with fright.\n\n\"Put him in the stall,\" Jay said, alarmed and full of anxiety now. \"He'll settle down there.\"\n\nSteve led Flame into the roomy stall and remained beside him, trying to soothe him by words and gentle stroking. Finally he told Jay, \"He'll never get used to a stall, no matter how large it is.\"\n\nJay cut the cord binding the bale of hay, and offered some to Flame. \"Maybe if he eats something, Steve,\" he suggested.\n\nThe red stallion sniffed the hay without touching it.\n\nSteve said, \"I'll have to graze him. He won't eat this.... Not now, anyway.\"\n\n\"He will if he has nothing else,\" Jay said, his irritation returning. \"You can take him out for grass tomorrow morning. We can do nothing more at this time, and there's no possibility of his hurting himself in such a fine big stall.\" He turned away. \"Come on, Steve. You must be as hungry as I am.\"\n\n\"You go in the house,\" Steve said. \"I'll stay here with him.\"\n\n\"But...\" Jay began, bewilderment in his eyes as he looked first at Steve, then at Flame. \"All right then,\" he said, \"I'll bring something to you.\" Suddenly he brightened.\n\n\"Just wait until you taste what I'm cooking tonight! It's called _paella_. I picked up the recipe yesterday at lunch. It has yellow rice and bits of sausage, hot sausage, Steve... and chicken and clams and mussels.\"\n\nSteve watched Jay hurry to the door; there the little man stopped, turning around again. \"Of course you won't be sleeping here, will you? Not when you can have a comfortable bed for a change.\"\n\n\"I'm not leaving him,\" Steve answered firmly.\n\nJay shrugged his narrow shoulders. \"Sometimes I just don't understand you at all,\" he said. \"But have it your own way. I just thought you'd like a good night's sleep with all the work you have ahead of you.\" He left the shed, his voice trailing behind him.\n\nSteve thought, _\"It's a party for Jay, a big party. Eat well. Sleep well. Have fun. Soon we'll be off to the races!\"_ He turned to Flame, trying to quiet the stallion's mounting uneasiness. _\"For us, it's different, a lot different. But I guess Jay doesn't understand. It's a detail he's forgotten.\"_\n\nLater Steve heard music again, only now it was much louder, being ever so much closer. Jay had turned on the radio.\n\n# THE VISITOR\n\n12\n\nThe _paella_ had been everything Jay promised... savory with just the right amount of hot peppers and sausage, fresh chicken and seafood, all garnishing the steaming, yellow rice. They had eaten in the shed, straddling a bale of hay that was covered by a gaily checkered tablecloth which Jay had supplied.\n\n\"It's not exactly the way I'd planned it,\" Jay said. \"But I dislike eating alone more than anything else. Good, isn't it?\"\n\nSteve's mouth had been too full to answer. Jay laughed, very pleased that his cooking was being so well appreciated.\n\nHours later, Steve lay in the straw just outside Flame's stall. His eyes were closed but he was not asleep. Sleep would come only when Flame had settled down for the night. The horse's movements within the stall never ceased, and there was no end to his neighing.\n\nIn the darkness of the shed, Steve continued talking to Flame. It made no difference what he said so long as he kept talking. Only the sound of his voice mattered, that and the rhythm.\n\n\"It's a nice, big stall, isn't it? Almost as big as my room at home, Flame. I wonder what my folks are doing tonight? Reading, I suppose, if they're not in bed by now. Unless there's a fight on, of course. Then Dad will be watching television, and Mom will be out in the kitchen to get away from it. I guess she reads more than anyone else in the world. It would be nice if she had a book of mine to read some day. I'd be proud, Flame. I sure would be.\"\n\nThe stallion pawed the straw and neighed loudly. There were also sounds of hay being quickly pulled from the manger and then Flame's cautious chewing.\n\n\"It's grass, all right,\" Steve told him, \"cured grass. Not the kind you're used to, but a lot of horses eat it. Up north where it gets cold, horses eat it all winter long... and some who don't have any pastures to graze even eat it during the summer.\"\n\nThe chewing stopped and Flame began moving about the stall again.\n\n\"I'll bet Mom and Dad would be surprised if they knew I was a couple of thousand miles closer to home,\" Steve continued. \"And they'd never believe the way I got here. Nobody I know would believe that. Yet we're here. I wish they could meet Jay. Flick, too. I wonder if the others from the ship are as nice. I'm sure they must be. They're all somewhere in our world, seeing things, and nobody even knows it. Nobody but me.\"\n\nThe stallion snorted. He must have had his head over the stall door, for Steve felt his warm breath.\n\n\"All right,\" Steve said quietly, \"you know about them, too. Just you and me, then. I'll have to watch Jay while we're here. Not that he'd intentionally do anything wrong. But he takes an awful lot for granted sometimes. He doesn't know you as I do, Flame, in spite of everything he _does_ know.\"\n\nThe high windows in the shed held the first gray light of dawn when Steve opened his eyes. Startled, he jumped to his feet, worried about Flame. He had slept and couldn't remember if Flame had ever settled down or not.\n\nThe shed was terribly still, and he could see nothing of Flame in the grayness of early morning. Frantically he searched for the hanging light cord. When he finally found it he pulled hard on it, his eyes on the stall. Still no movement there. No sign of Flame. Rushing to the door, he yanked it open. In the straw lay the red stallion, breathing easily. His eyes had opened as the light had struck them and now they blinked in its glare. He raised his head from the straw, neighing softly, and Steve was beside him, laughing with relief and running his hands down the long, slim neck while Flame drew his forelegs beneath him and rose.\n\nSteve pulled the matted straw from Flame's mane, telling him how glad he was that he had rested. The stallion pulled a mouthful of hay from the rack and Steve knew then that everything was all right. He smoothed the mane and then cleaned Flame's long tail. He found himself wishing he had a brush, and he thought of the shining metal water pail Jay had left in the shed the night before. Jay must have a brush, too, somewhere around. Steve wondered how long Jay usually slept in the morning.\n\nPicking up the pail, he refilled it, glad to see that Flame had emptied it during the night. He glanced at the hackamore hanging from a peg outside the stall. All this was far removed from the life they'd known in Blue Valley. He felt very domesticated. But at least it could be done. He had proved that much, even though he preferred what had been left behind. And he didn't have to wonder if Flame felt any differently.\n\nA little later he slipped the hackamore over Flame's head. He noticed the rapid swaying of the long tassels even though there was no movement from Flame and no draft in the shed. For a moment he thought of the billowing, angry tapestries again and of how Jay had said, _\"... everything is alive in one form or another. Nothing is ever really dead.\"_\n\nSteve took up the lines, and their warmth felt good in the early morning dampness. \"If nothing is ever really dead,\" he thought, opening the shed doors, \"then no one is ever really alone. Come on, Flame. Easy now.\"\n\nThe stallion stepped lightly into the heavy grayness. He sniffed the moist sea wind. Steve made no attempt to keep him quiet, for Flame's calls held neither alarm nor fright as they had during the previous evening. The stallion was sure of himself once more, and his shrill whistles carried all of his Blue Valley arrogance. His head disclosed it too, for he held it high, undaunted by the strangeness of this land.\n\nFlame moved quickly in the dim light, and his coat, so red and glistening beneath the electric bulbs, now looked somber in color; yet his body appeared larger and more powerful. Steve let him go, holding the lines loose in his hands and allowing the stallion to choose his own grass to graze. There were few patches to Flame's liking, and he moved constantly from one place to another, his head close to the ground and nostrils sniffing.\n\nWhen he stopped it was to snatch only a few blades, if any at all, then he would go on, taking Steve farther and farther away from the shed. Often, too, he would turn his head curiously about him, his eyes bright and his ears pricked up. He was wary, interested and unafraid.\n\nFinally in a distant field Flame found the kind of grass he wanted. He grazed for many minutes while Steve watched him, wondering why this particular plot appealed to him when the grass looked no greener, no different from that which he had scorned before.\n\nFlame grazed until he had had his fill, then he stepped forward again, his head still bent close to the ground. To Steve, who was following, Flame's actions seemed strange, since he was certain the stallion was not looking for more grass. Finally he saw what it was that Flame wanted.\n\nThe red stallion stopped before a shallow, sandy depression in the ground. Then he pulled on the lines.\n\nSteve smiled and dropped the lines, turning Flame loose. Carefully the stallion lowered his great body and swung over on his back. He rolled from one side to another as only a slim, fit horse could do. He kicked and grunted with sheer pleasure for many minutes before getting to his feet again.\n\nSteve, observing Flame's dusty red coat, laughed and said, \"Now I _do_ hope Jay brought along a brush for you. Before it wasn't so very necessary but now it is.\"\n\nBut Flame wasn't listening to him. He started off before Steve had finished, pulling impatiently.\n\n\"It'd be easier if I rode you,\" Steve said. He began looking for a place from which to mount. Flame needed the exercise. It would help matters the rest of the day if the red stallion got rid of some of his energy now.\n\nThey reached the top of a knoll and the waters of the Caribbean were before them. It was not an empty sea, for a group of fishing boats had put out from the village. They rode in a long line of brilliantly colored sails. The boats changed course just before reaching a point opposite Steve, and headed for the reef over which the waves were breaking. After they had passed through a channel and were well out to sea they spread out, moving southward.\n\nThe sun was just breaking over the horizon when Steve led Flame down the path to the beach. Flame jumped when his hoofs touched the sand for the first time but he did not pull away. He pawed the deep, granular softness of the sand, flailing it about him. Steve got out of the way, and managed to get Flame near a high rock. He stepped onto it quickly and was on Flame's back while the stallion was still occupied with the sand.\n\nFlame whirled when he felt Steve's weight, and his legs sent the sand flying still more. It peppered his belly, and he bolted to get away from it. But the footing was too soft for swiftness of gait. Also, Steve held the lines tight; he didn't want his horse to go all out just then.\n\nFar down the beach Steve guided Flame close to the waters where the waves had made the sand more firm. Here Flame sought more line but Steve wouldn't give it to him. The stallion snorted and shook his head. Then he bolted and for a few seconds he was free!\n\nSteve had no intention of letting Flame continue his extended run, and finally he was able to turn the stallion's head toward the sea. Flame swerved away from the rush of waters, and Steve continued turning him. He rode him in a large circle that took them back to the sea again. After he had done this several times, Flame came to an abrupt, plunging halt.\n\nSteve said, \"That's enough.\"\n\nFlame was no longer interested in running anyway. He picked up his feet high as the white, curling waves rushed to meet him. And he let them catch him, striking out playfully as the water rounded his legs. Then he became more daring, chasing each wave as it rolled back.\n\nFor many minutes Steve let Flame play with the sea, then his hands and legs moved, telling his horse what he wanted him to do. Flame was reluctant to leave the waves but he turned away, obediently going down the beach at a slow gallop.\n\nSteve dismounted near the house. Was Jay up? he wondered. It was getting late. He didn't look forward to his trip to Havana today but there were many things he needed to know. Would he and Flame race tomorrow or would they, instead, be returning to Blue Valley?\n\nReaching the side door of the house, he called loudly, \"Jay, are you up?\"\n\n\"Come in, Steve. Come in.\"\n\nThe door opened and Jay was standing in the entrance, wearing pajamas and bathrobe. \"Oh, my, you can't go anywhere without him, can you? Put Flame in his stall, Steve, and then come back. I'm just getting breakfast.\"\n\n\"I won't leave him alone,\" Steve said.\n\n\"My! Hasn't he settled down yet? He _looks_ settled.\"\n\n\"We've been out.\"\n\n\"So early?\" Jay asked. \"Well, have it your way, Steve. I'll bring breakfast to you.\"\n\n\"I don't like to have you waiting on me.\"\n\n\"No trouble at all, Steve. Glad to do it, really.\"\n\n\"Did you bring a brush?\"\n\n\"I don't use one, Steve.\"\n\n\"I mean for Flame.\"\n\n\"Oh, of course. It's in my bag. Forgetful of me not to have given it to you last night. I'll bring it along, Steve.\"\n\nAs Steve led Flame back to the shed, he realized that he was very reluctant to leave his horse alone with Jay while he went to Havana. Why, Jay might just go off and forget all about Flame... not intentionally, of course.\n\nA little later Steve heard footsteps outside the shed. He turned as the door opened, and he said, \"Jay, you mustn't forget...\" Then he stopped abruptly, for it wasn't Jay whom he saw.\n\nA thin, sallow face peered around the door, small eyes bright and searching. Steve's muscles tensed. He was certain the man had not expected to find any person inside the shed. But apparently the stranger knew about Flame, for he cast a quick interested glance at the stallion. Then his beady eyes fixed themselves on Steve.\n\n\"What do you want?\" Steve asked.\n\nThe door opened wider and the man stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He wore a torn cotton shirt and his thick black hair grew far down on the sides of his head. Moving noiselessly on bare feet, he took several steps forward, both hands outstretched and shoulders hunched.\n\nSteve moved toward him, very tense but unafraid. No one was going to get at Flame, and this man was no bigger than himself... and apparently unarmed. \"What do you want?\" he repeated.\n\nOnly when the stranger was less than a foot away did he speak, and then it was in Spanish, which Steve did not understand. But the man's actions made it plain that he was determined to reach Flame. His eyes were on the stallion, and he took another step closer to the stall door.\n\nAs Flame snorted, Steve attempted to stop the man. He saw the stranger's hand go quickly to his back pocket. He was certain the man was reaching either for a knife or a gun. He jumped on him, his fingers digging into the man's wrist and around it, imprisoning the hand within the pocket. His free arm swept around the thin chest, while his legs struck the stranger's stiff knees, bringing him down hard on the floor. He brought the man's other arm back, doubling it behind him and twisting it.\n\nThe stranger struggled but Steve did not release his grip; instead he tightened it even more, conscious only of a frenzy to protect his horse.\n\nSuddenly the door opened and Jay entered, carrying a tray of fried eggs, toast, bacon and a pot of coffee. When he saw the two struggling figures he almost dropped the tray. \"What is it, Steve?\" he shouted. \"What's happening here?\"\n\n\"Don't stand there!\" Steve shouted back, for the man had managed to get one hand free.\n\nJay moved toward them, but he didn't put down the tray. Instead he bent over awkwardly to look at the stranger's lowered face. Then he asked in surprise, _\"Qu\u00e9 es, Juan?\"_\n\nA torrent of angry Spanish words burst forth from the stranger while Steve sought to regain his hold of him. \"Don't stand there, Jay!\" he called again. \"Put down that tray and help.\"\n\nBut Jay was laughing so he could hardly stop. Meanwhile Flame was screaming and the stranger was still shouting. Only Steve was quiet, furiously quiet.\n\nFinally Jay managed to stop laughing. He spilled some coffee on his bathrobe and proceeded to wipe it off while he said to Steve, \"Let him go. He's our _neighbor_!\"\n\nSteve kept tight hold of the man. \"I don't care,\" he said savagely. \"He tried to get to Flame!\"\n\n\"What's wrong with feeding Flame a carrot?\" Jay asked, starting to laugh again. He pried Steve's hand loose from the man's wrist, and withdrew a large carrot from the stranger's back pocket. Holding it directly in front of Steve's face, he said patiently, \"Now let him go, Steve. He says you're hurting him very much and he's _furious_.\"\n\nSteve's arms dropped quickly to his sides, and he said, \"I'm sorry. If only he'd told me.\"\n\nThe stranger leaned forward till their noses were almost touching, and Steve understood only the anger in the renewed outburst. Turning helplessly to Jay, he pleaded, \"Tell him I didn't know, that I'm sorry.\"\n\nJay chuckled. \"I guess Juan realizes by now that you don't understand Spanish.\" He took the man by the arm and led him to the door. Even after they were outside Steve heard and _felt_ the visitor's wrath.\n\nLater Jay returned to the shed and they ate breakfast in silence. Only when their plates were wiped clean did Jay say, \"You're a very suspicious young fellow, Steve.\"\n\n\"I think I had a right to be,\" Steve answered.\n\n\"I suppose so since you don't understand Spanish,\" Jay agreed. \"Juan lives just down the road, sort of a farmer-caretaker more than a fisherman. I met him yesterday. It was he who had the key to this place and showed me around, even did our marketing for us. I told him we'd have a horse here today. He loves them but can't afford one of his own.\"\n\nSteve looked up from his plate, his eyes angry. \"Don't make it any harder for me, Jay. I said I'm sorry, and I meant it.\"\n\n\"I apologize,\" Jay said kindly. \"However, I just feel that you're going to get yourself into a lot of trouble by being so suspicious of these people. Or you'll make them suspicious of us by your very actions, and that's worse. Take it easy, Steve. You don't see me getting upset, and I've a lot more to conceal than you have.\"\n\nSteve rose from the bale of straw and went to Flame. \"You're right,\" he conceded. \"I'm not very good at pretending to be what I'm not.\"\n\nJay laughed. \"That's understandable, Steve. You've never had occasion to do it before. Now take me, I'm an old hand at this sort of thing. And the first rule, Steve, is never to be put on the defensive. Take the offensive right away. Make it plain that you're a man of action, a man...\"\n\nSteve interrupted, smiling for the first time. \"Didn't I do that?\" he asked.\n\n\"Of course, Steve. But you didn't even know what Juan wanted here.\" Jay shook his head sadly. \"I'm really afraid you're going to get yourself into a terrible jam in Havana today by not understanding Spanish. Perhaps...\" He turned and faced Steve without completing his sentence.\n\nSteve said, \"You really want to go in my place, don't you? That's why you talked about my being so suspicious of the people here.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, Steve,\" Jay replied. \"I'll gladly stay with Flame. Unless, of course, you'd _prefer_ my going. And I'll tell you one thing, if I go no one will put anything over on me. I'll see that you race, all right.\" He stopped, waiting hopefully, his eyes never leaving the boy.\n\nSteve went over to Flame, and as he stood close to him he remembered his earlier concern at leaving him alone with Jay. \"Okay, Jay,\" he said. \"I guess you _are_ better equipped to go.\"\n\nThe little man jumped nimbly in the air, bringing the heels of his leather slippers together with a soft little click. \"I'll get dressed and leave right away, Steve!\" He rushed to the door, then stopped and turned around. \"I do hope you won't be bored being left alone. I'll get back just as soon as I can.\"\n\nSteve waited until the door closed behind Jay, then he turned to his horse. Bored? He had Flame for company, and there was a lot to think about. Tomorrow they might be going to Havana themselves.\n\n# THE WEALTHY GENTLEMAN\n\n13\n\nJay was in no hurry to reach Havana once he had left Steve and Flame behind. He was enjoying his close contact with people from Earth and their acceptance of him as one of their own. He was happy, too, over the way he had handled Steve. Of course, everything he had said was quite true. With his background he could handle the racetrack officials far better than an inexperienced boy. However, there was no need to think of that little job just yet. All that mattered now was that he was on his own and could enjoy himself as much as he liked.\n\nHe had been standing in the aisle of the crowded Havana-bound bus for a long while, and his fine black homburg hat had been knocked off his head several times. But he had taken the jostling from the other passengers very well. In fact, he had joked about it to those standing close by. At first they hadn't laughed with him, feeling perhaps that he was not one of them. Oh, not that they knew he was from Alula. Indeed not, nothing like that. Rather it was his clothes\u2014his fine dark hat, suit and tie and his white shirt with the stiff collar\u2014these and the silver-handled cane he carried must have given them the impression that he was a very wealthy man, and they had been afraid to joke with him.\n\nAll this had changed, however, when a sudden stop had thrown him down hard to the floor, and a very fat woman had landed on top of him. Of course she had hurt him dreadfully, and he must have looked ridiculous while two grinning men had pulled the lady to her feet. Everyone had laughed at his frightful predicament. After that it had been easy to get along with them.\n\nHalfway to Havana he found that most passengers were changing buses, and he decided to go along with these very nice people.\n\n\"But you were going to the city,\" the man next to him said in very bad Spanish. \"This is not the way. We go to work in the factories.\"\n\n\"I'll go along,\" Jay said quietly, slurring his Spanish, just as the man had done. \"I'm in no hurry, and I enjoy your company very much.\"\n\nThe man shook his head sadly but smiled at the same time. The other passengers too, Jay noted, were pleased that he was accompanying them, for they called out and made very pleasant remarks to him.\n\nThe other bus was waiting for them and he was very flattered when his new friends insisted upon his having a seat this time.\n\nHe never remembered a more wonderful trip than the one that followed. Oh, it was true they all made much fun of him and his apparent wealth. They told him that he would never get a job in the factory wearing such beautiful clothes. They passed his black homburg around, each one trying it on while he in turn wore their straw hats. They even took his cane and he thought for a while that he would never see it again. But eventually it came back to him, just as his hat did.\n\nIt was all a great deal of fun, and he was sorry when it came to an end. By separate large groups the passengers left the bus at factories along the way, and finally he was alone and the driver asked if he were going to spend the day with him. Only then did Jay think of Havana and the business at hand.\n\nGlancing at his gold watch he said impatiently, \"I must get to Havana immediately.\"\n\nThe driver smiled tolerantly. \"Then you must ride back with me to where you got on. Once there you must wait for still another bus.\"\n\n\"How long will all that take?\" Jay asked anxiously, getting to his feet.\n\n\"It will not be soon,\" the driver said. \"I do not leave here for another thirty minutes.\"\n\n\"Is there no other way to reach Havana?\" Jay looked out the windows. \"Are there no taxis?\" On the gate of a nearby factory he saw a huge poster announcing the great International Race to be run the next day at El Dorado Park, and his impatience to reach the city broke out afresh. \"There must be cars to hire out here,\" he said.\n\nThe bus driver smiled, and his eyes surveyed Jay's fine clothes again. \"If there are any around they will find you,\" he said.\n\n\"But what do you suggest I do?\" Jay asked.\n\n\"Get out and walk,\" the driver said. \"Something should happen very quickly.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Thank you very much,\" Jay answered in his finest Spanish.\n\nHe walked past the factory and down the asphalt-topped road, looking for a taxi. But the only signs of activity came from the belching smokestacks. He felt very much alone with everyone working but himself. He hurried along, climbing a steep hill. At the top he could see nothing before him but great fields of sugar cane on either side of the road. He knew then that it would do no good to walk aimlessly along, waiting for something to happen, as the bus driver had suggested.\n\nAs he stood there, his eyes on the long empty stretch of road, his ears listening for the sound of a car, he became more nervous than ever. It was most frustrating! He looked up at the sky. There was a large black buzzard circling just above him. Oh, he could get to Havana all right. But his flying was very much against the rules on such a trip as this. They'd leave him here if they ever found out. He'd never see home again.\n\nPearly beads of perspiration appeared on his forehead and he swept them angrily away. His Earth body functioned in a very strange manner indeed....\n\nHe waited longer, but not patiently. Well, if there was no alternative he had to take a chance of getting to Havana the only way left, although he certainly wished... He looked at the buzzard again. It was such a big bird.... Suddenly he heard the noise of a car's engine, and with great relief turned toward it.\n\nThe car came up the hill, hissing and rattling under the strain of making the steep ascent. Jay stepped out in the middle of the road and raised his hand high in the air.\n\nThe car stopped, but the driver, barely glancing at Jay, got out and went forward to remove the cap from the steaming radiator.\n\nJay jumped back at sight of the geyser of steam that emerged, and the man laughed at him. He was still laughing when he went to the back of the car and returned with a large can of water which he poured into the hot radiator. Then he put back the cap and turned to Jay, studying him closely for the first time.\n\nHis eyes brightened as he scrutinized Jay's fine clothes and the silver-handled cane. \"Sir,\" he said anxiously, \"you are in trouble, and in need of help?\"\n\n\"I must reach Havana at once,\" Jay said, using his finest, richest Spanish. He had met this type of man before, and had not forgotten how best to impress him. \"If I may hire your car and services...\"\n\n\"But of course,\" the man interrupted, opening the car door with a great flourish. \"We will waste no time in further words while not in transit. I understand your emergency and quickly respond to your bidding.\" He hurried Jay into the car, happy that no fare for the trip had been set and he could demand his own figure upon their arrival in Havana.\n\nJay made no attempt to carry on a conversation with this man as he had done with his good friends on the bus. He was a sullen person who would not have helped him, or anyone else for that matter, without expecting and obtaining a very high price for his services.\n\nWhile the man talked on and on, Jay looked out at the countryside, trying hard to concentrate on the fields of cane, the citrus fruit orchards and finally the long avenues that were shaded by laurel trees, ceibas and stately royal palms. Eventually, the road descended to the sea and a light wind brought the smell of dead sea grass lying in the hot sun. He glanced at his watch again, and seeing that it was almost noon he fidgeted more than before.\n\n\"It won't be long now,\" the man said, letting the car roll recklessly down the hill. \"See, there is the dome of the Capitol!\"\n\nJay only nodded, not sharing the man's jubilation at sight of the city. The important thing was that other cars were now on the road, most of them passing quickly by. If anything happened to the sputtering engine he would not be without further conveyance.\n\nFrom having studied the ship's screen the day before, he knew where they were in Havana. The towering National Hotel was near the white dome of the Capitol, and then he could see the Morro Castle, and many other buildings, all looking clean and beautiful in the bright noonday sun.\n\nFor a moment he thought of the fun it would be just to sit quietly in some restaurant, watching the people that passed... or, better still, walking leisurely through the streets, talking to passers-by. He turned his gaze away from the buildings to watch a ship leaving the harbor. Still farther beyond were some fishing smacks. His eyes remained on the dark line made by the Gulf Stream, and he thought of the lonely island from which Steve and Flame had come.... Then he remembered all he had promised the boy.\n\n\"I'll be getting out soon,\" he told the driver.\n\n\"But, sir, this is only the suburbs.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Jay answered, \"but there is no need of my going downtown. I must go directly to El Dorado Park.\"\n\n\"The racetrack? Then I will take you there. It is a much longer ride, of course.\"\n\n\"No, I will get a taxi, thank you. There's one now.\"\n\n\"But there is no need,\" the man said insolently. \"I can take you there as well. And the fare...\"\n\n\"No,\" Jay insisted, \"a taxi suits me better.\"\n\n\"Better?\" the man asked irritably.\n\nJay's face flushed. \"I mean that it will get me there faster. Please stop now, and I will pay you.\"\n\nThe driver jammed the foot brake. \"I will have to charge you for the whole trip,\" he said, smiling. \"All the way to El Dorado Park, since it is there that you intended to go.\"\n\n\"That's perfectly all right,\" Jay said, glad that the car had stopped and he was able to get out. Opening the door, he hailed a taxi, and then turned to the man in the car. \"You've been most kind,\" he said, taking a bill from his wallet and handing it to him.\n\nThe driver looked at the bill, and said nothing. It was more than he would have asked for, and he had intended to charge a great deal. When he took his eyes off the bill, he saw his wealthy passenger climbing into the taxi. \"Sir,\" he called, \"one moment, please.\"\n\nJay waited, wondering what the man wanted. Surely he had paid him well.\n\nThe man's eyes were bright, almost frantic, Jay thought.\n\n\"Yes?\" Jay said.\n\n\"Sir, perhaps you know the winner of the great race tomorrow? No doubt you are a famous horseman. And it would help me greatly to know the name of the winning horse.\"\n\nJay closed the taxi door. \"It would help me too,\" he said through the open window.\n\n\"But, sir...\"\n\nThe taxi moved, and Jay told the driver, \"El Dorado Park, please. And skirt the traffic. I'm in a great hurry.\"\n\nJay sat back, content that he had done right in transferring to the taxi. Not only because he would reach the Park much faster, but also because he would make a much better impression arriving there in a taxi rather than in the unfashionable vehicle he had just left. The latter was important because he well knew how much emphasis was placed upon such things by Earth-men. And, of course, he must do his best to impress the racetrack officials with his importance from the very beginning. Yes, he must take the offensive immediately, just as he had told Steve.\n\nHe relaxed, unaware of the mounting speed of the taxi, the blaring horn and the many near accidents that were avoided as he was taken from one residential section to another. Instead he was thinking that what he should do at once was to telephone the track and advise the officials of his coming. This, too, would be most impressive, especially if he allowed them to think that it was his secretary who was calling.\n\n\" 'I am calling for Mr.... Mr....' I must have a name,\" he thought. \"One worthy of such an occasion. I believe I'll be Dutch... yes, that'll be just fine. I'll say I'm from the Dutch West Indies. What's the name of that Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela? Cura\u00e7ao, that's it. Now for my name. I'll call myself Van Oss... yes, I like that. I like it very much. 'Hello. Hello. I am calling for Mr. Henry Van Oss of Cura\u00e7ao.' Umm. Hm. Very good.\"\n\nJay saw the drug store on the corner just ahead. Surely he'd find a public telephone there. \"Driver,\" he called, \"stop here a moment. I want to make a call.\"\n\nA little later Jay returned to the taxi, very pleased with his telephone conversation with Mr. Garcia-Pena, Race Secretary of El Dorado Park. Mr. Garcia-Pena had been most gracious. He was awaiting Mr. Van Oss of Cura\u00e7ao with the utmost pleasure, eager to assist him in every way possible, whatever his wishes might be.\n\nJay smiled as the taxi moved on again. _Whatever his wishes might be_. Little did Mr. Garcia-Pena realize what Mr. Van Oss would ask of him!\n\n\"Sir...\" the driver began, turning his head around so he could look at Jay.\n\nThey almost collided with a passing car, and Jay said quickly, \"Please keep your eyes on the road!\"\n\nChastened, the driver obeyed. Then, without taking his eyes off the boulevard, he said, \"May I ask if you're an owner of a horse in tomorrow's great race?\"\n\n\"In a sense,\" Jay answered, enjoying the man's deference. \"Yes, I suppose you might call me a part-owner. Although we're undecided about starting tomorrow. I've only just arrived.\"\n\n\"The fifty-thousand-dollar purse would decide me pretty quick about starting,\" the driver said, laughing.\n\n\"Yes,\" Jay admitted, \"it _is_ an impressive purse.\"\n\n\"I guess everybody's figuring on Kingfisher taking it home with him.\"\n\n\"Kingfisher?\" Jay asked.\n\n\"Sure... the _big_ horse from the United States. He's handicap champion there, as I guess you know.\"\n\n\"No, I didn't know,\" Jay answered. \"I haven't kept in touch with races in the United States. You said his name is Kingfisher?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" the driver said. \"It's a good name, don't you think?\"\n\n\"Kingfisher,\" Jay repeated. \"Yes, the name appeals to me, too.\"\n\n\"Then you like him for the big race, sir?\"\n\n\"I like anything that has to do with birds,\" Jay answered quietly.\n\nThe man glanced back at him. \"What have birds got to do with it?\"\n\n\"Watch the road, please,\" Jay repeated nervously. \"Nothing, I suppose... except that kingfisher is also the name of a bird.\"\n\n\"It's an easy name to remember.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jay said thoughtfully. \"But come to think of it, it's strange that they should give such a name to a horse. A kingfisher has very weak feet, and I'm sure you're acquainted with the old saying, 'No feet, no horse.' \"\n\n\"You don't have to worry about his feet, sir. They've carried him a long way. He's six years old now and hasn't been beaten since he was three.\"\n\n\"I'm surprised,\" Jay said. \"A kingfisher's feet just don't stand up under hard going for a very long time.\"\n\nBewildered, the driver looked back at his passenger again. \" _This_ Kingfisher's a horse,\" he said.\n\nJay said nothing more for the main entrance to El Dorado Park and the high fence surrounding it were directly ahead. He settled back in his seat, concerned now only with Mr. Garcia-Pena and all that he had to say to him.\n\nThey passed through the gate, and Jay wouldn't let himself look at the gigantic grandstand and clubhouse or, a little later, at the horses being walked beside the stable sheds. He shut his ears, too, to the loud voices of caretakers calling to each other and the neighs and nickering of the horses.\n\nOh, he wanted so very much to look, to listen, for he had waited a terribly long time to enjoy once more the activity of a racetrack. But today was not the day. Tomorrow, yes, but not today. He must think only of his coming session with Mr. Garcia-Pena. He must be fully prepared to outwit the Race Secretary no matter how formidable an opponent Mr. Garcia-Pena might turn out to be. He must not return to Steve with anything but the happiest news, that Flame would be going to the post tomorrow. Nothing less would do, so every move, every remark, must be well planned. He must not let Mr. Garcia-Pena put him on the defensive at any time.\n\n\"Sir, are you not getting out?\"\n\nJay glanced at the driver, then with further surprise he saw that the taxi was parked in front of a low building. He wondered how many minutes they'd been parked there.\n\n\"Why, yes... yes, of course,\" he answered, a little flustered. He got out of the taxi, furious with himself for his hesitancy and embarrassment. This wouldn't do at all. This was not a good start for what he had to do.\n\nLifting his cane deftly with a quick, confident snap of the wrist, he told the driver to wait, and then walked into the building.\n\n# THE INVITATION\n\n14\n\nJay did not have long to wait for the Race Secretary to see him. And as he waited he was thoroughly at ease and, indeed, nonchalant, sitting comfortably in a deep leather chair with his legs crossed and his fine black homburg balanced on one knee. His long fingers drummed the silver head of his cane but not impatiently... or so it would have seemed to an onlooker.\n\nIn a little while a girl emerged from the inner office, smiled and said that Mr. Garcia-Pena would see him. Jay did not leave his chair, but smiled graciously in return and waited for Mr. Garcia-Pena to appear and escort him inside. There was an uneasy moment or two, then the girl disappeared within the office and seconds later a small dark-haired man stood in the doorway.\n\n\"Mr. Van Oss?\" the Race Secretary asked, smiling.\n\nJay rose to his feet, nodding graciously but not smiling. \"Mr. Garcia-Pena?\" He waited until the man crossed the floor to greet him, and then they went into the office.\n\nFor a few minutes more Jay allowed Mr. Garcia-Pena to scrutinize him while they discussed the unusually hot day, the lack of a breeze and the little rain there had been.\n\n\"Of course,\" and Mr. Garcia-Pena smiled, \"we would not like to have it rain tomorrow. We're expecting a tremendous crowd for the International.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" Jay returned, still aloof and unsmiling. He recrossed his knees, fingering the knife-edged crease of his trousers.\n\n\"If you don't mind my saying so,\" the Race Secretary continued, \"you speak beautiful Spanish, Mr. Van Oss. It is most unusual to hear, for most of our visitors' Spanish is not... well, shall I say not very well spoken?\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Jay said, turning abruptly from the man to look at the portraits of horses on the walls.\n\nThere was a long moment of strained silence, then the Race Secretary moved some papers on his desk and said, \"You didn't mention the purpose of your visit over the phone, Mr. Van Oss.\"\n\n\"No, I thought it best to wait,\" Jay said, \"since it could only be done here, and will take but a few minutes of your time. I have a horse that I wish to enter in the International.\"\n\nIn the pause that followed, the smile that had been forming at the corners of the Race Secretary's mouth died. He looked straight into his visitor's eyes, and found himself thinking of his children... or, rather, of the glass marbles with which they played. This man's eyes had the same cloudy, agate-like quality and still they were clear. Colorless, yet with thin bands of color running through them; again, like the glass marbles. Uneasy, Mr. Garcia-Pena turned back to his papers.\n\nAs if from a distance he heard his visitor say, \"The horse's name is Flame. I suppose you'll want that for the program.\"\n\nMr. Garcia-Pena looked up to find the man's cane raised and then drumming the carpet lightly. He chose to stare at the cane rather than to meet those eyes again. Somehow, just looking into them made it very difficult for him to concentrate.\n\n\"If there is an entry fee, I'll pay it now,\" Jay said. \"So if you will tell me the amount...\"\n\nMr. Garcia-Pena continued staring at the cane. \"Five hundred dollars is the fee to start, but...\" He had never seen such beautiful, highly polished silver as that on the cane's head. It seemed almost to glow with life... and so soft that it looked molten. His eyes were playing tricks on him, he decided. No metal was so pliable that it could be manipulated with the fingers, as seemed to be the case here.\n\nMr. Garcia-Pena smiled at his thoughts. He was being very silly. \"I'm afraid, Mr. Van Oss, that what you ask is out of the question,\" he said graciously.\n\nHis visitor acted as if he had not heard, for he began taking money out of his wallet.\n\n\"This will cover the entry fee,\" Jay said, placing the bills on the desk. \"Now if you'll just tell me the time we go to the post...\"\n\nMr. Garcia-Pena was no longer smiling. \"Please sit down again, Mr. Van Oss. You see...\"\n\n\"I'm sorry but I have an appointment,\" Jay said urgently. \"You have the entrance money, paid in full. There is nothing else required by the conditions of the race as advertised.\" He pushed the bills toward the center of the desk, hoping Mr. Garcia-Pena would at least look at them.\n\nBut the Race Secretary, ignoring the money, had turned and pressed a button on the office intercom. \"Dora,\" he said to his secretary, \"have Mario come in immediately.\" Then, to his visitor, \"Please sit down,\" he repeated. \"You see, Mr. Van Oss, what you're asking is ridiculous.\"\n\n\"Ridiculous?\" Jay's tone of voice matched the sudden sternness of his face. \"Are you or are you not running the International Race tomorrow?\"\n\n\"Of course, of course. But you see...\"\n\nJay drew his head up scornfully. \"I see nothing, Mr. Garcia-Pena, except my entry fee on your desk.\"\n\nThe man's eyes implored him to sit down, to listen, but Jay turned toward the door. \"If you won't tell me what time they go to the post, I'll get the information from your secretary,\" he said curtly.\n\n\"But this race is by invitation only,\" the man said.\n\nJay didn't answer, and kept moving toward the door. He was reaching for the knob when the door opened and a tall young man entered.\n\n\"Ah, Mario,\" Mr. Garcia-Pena said, \"just in time. I want you to meet Mr. Van Oss, from Cura\u00e7ao. He's a little confused over the conditions of the race tomorrow and I thought you could help me straighten him out.\" Then, to Jay, \"This is Mr. Santos, Mr. Van Oss. He's our Publicity Director.\"\n\nMr. Santos held out his hand, and Jay shook it without returning the man's brisk smile. He felt confident that he could handle Mr. Santos. Except for his high-sounding title, there was nothing about him that commanded respect.\n\nJay could see at a glance that Mr. Santos was ambitious. Eager and enterprising, he would not be aloof to a suggestion or two that might take him a step closer to whatever goal he had in mind. As Jay took in the mustache that Mr. Santos was beginning to grow, he wondered if this young man's ambition was to sit behind Mr. Garcia-Pena's luxurious desk.\n\n\"Please sit down,\" the Race Secretary urged Jay again.\n\nJay smiled understandingly and shrugged his shoulders. \"If you will not waste time then, Mr. Garcia-Pena.\"\n\n\"This will take only a few minutes,\" the Race Secretary said placatingly. \"Mario, will you please take the chair next to Mr. Van Oss? I may need your help to explain matters fully.\"\n\n\"There should be little to explain,\" Jay said abruptly. \"The race is tomorrow, and the entry fee has been paid. You have it there on your desk. I don't see...\"\n\nMr. Garcia-Pena picked up the bills. \"But again I'd like to say that our race is by invitation only. After all, Mr. Van Oss, we just couldn't allow any horse to...\" He paused and smiled sheepishly.\n\nThere was no answering smile from Jay. \"Your posters made no mention of that condition,\" he said sternly. \"No mention that you'd invited _only_ the horses you wanted to race in the International. You advised the public that the International Race was _Open to the World_.\"\n\nThe Race Secretary turned to Mr. Santos, seeking assistance, but the Publicity Director avoided his gaze and continued looking at their visitor. \"Well, in a sense it is open to the world,\" the Secretary said awkwardly, \"but by invitation only.\"\n\nJay uncrossed his knees, stomping his cane hard on the floor. \"You can't have it both ways,\" he said. \"My attorneys will...\" He rose quickly to his feet and, just as he had hoped and had rather expected, the Publicity Director rose, too.\n\n\"Mr. Van Oss, please...,\" Mr. Santos said. \"I'm certain we can handle this without any, ah, legal difficulties.\"\n\nJay studied the man's large frame that was so sparingly covered with flesh. It made him think of a heron, especially since Mr. Santos had the kind of head that perfected the illusion. It was very large, and his nose was long and beaked. Jay was staring at the man's high forehead with the brown, well-groomed hair growing above it when Mr. Santos graciously placed a hand on his arm.\n\n\"Please sit down, Mr. Van Oss,\" the Publicity Director said, his voice as polished as his hair. \"We, of course, had no idea that anyone would object to the conditions of our race. We simply sent invitations to the owners of the world's fastest horses, hoping they'd accept. Fortunately eight of them did, and we have a field tomorrow that will make racing history for Cuba.\"\n\n\"And for El Dorado Park,\" Mr. Garcia-Pena interrupted. \"The race will be featured in every newspaper in the world.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" the Publicity Director said. \"It's what I counted on after all my work.\"\n\nJay allowed himself to be seated in the big chair again. \"Then you have no objection to my horse racing?\" he asked insistently, meeting the Race Secretary's gaze.\n\nOnce more Mr. Garcia-Pena turned helplessly to his Publicity Director.\n\nThis time the Publicity Director was ready with a suggestion. \"Could we not issue another invitation... one to Mr. Van Oss, Eduardo?\"\n\nThe Race Secretary rose to his feet, then quickly sat down again. \"The United States Jockey Club wouldn't like it, Mario! You know that as well as I do. After all, we have two horses here from the States, and if we issue a last-minute invitation such as you're suggesting, why...\"\n\n\"The United States Jockey Club is not running _this_ race,\" the Publicity Director returned quietly. \"I see no reason why we can't invite any horse we please, providing...\"\n\nThere was a moment of heavy silence and then Jay turned to him. \"Providing what, Mr. Santos?\"\n\nHis face cupped in his hands, chin outthrust, Mr. Santos was staring into space thoughtfully. \"Providing, Mr. Van Oss, that you have a horse that will not embarrass us.\"\n\n\"Embarrass?\" Jay repeated.\n\nThe Publicity Director's eyes were beginning to shine with excitement. \"We must be sure, Mr. Van Oss, that your horse will give a creditable performance... if not in the race at least during the post parade. He must compliment our field, for the world will be watching.\"\n\nOnce more the Race Secretary rose to his feet, his face angry now. \"You mean, Mario, you'd go along with this? What Mr. Van Oss has asked is impossible! We'll be the laughingstock of the world. How do we know what he'd send onto the track? A burro, maybe, that would bray in our faces!\"\n\n\"That, Eduardo, we must find out, of course,\" the Publicity Director returned quietly. \"But I've been thinking of all the publicity that we might obtain from this late entry of Mr. Van Oss's. After all, we did announce that our race is open to the world, as Mr. Van Oss has reminded us. What objection could anyone have to our acceptance of his horse, even at this late date, since he is willing to pay five hundred dollars to start?\n\n\"Better still, don't you know what such startling news will do for us? Can't you see it in every paper tomorrow? It will make headlines, Eduardo! It will have an air of mystery that we'll do our best to maintain. Through the press services we'll announce to the world that an unexpected entry from...\"\n\nThe Publicity Director turned eagerly to Jay. \"From where, Mr. Van Oss? Where is your horse from?\"\n\nJay smiled, enthusiastically going along with the Director's plan. \"Wouldn't the Windward Islands be enough?\" he asked. \"It would add to the mystery.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" Mr. Santos agreed excitedly. \"From the Windward Islands, from the area of the Caribbean Sea!\" Then, to the Race Secretary, \"We can say that he is _our_ representative in the International, since we have no other. I assure you we'll get publicity such as we've never had before! An unknown _Island_ horse meeting the champions of the world! Think of it, Eduardo!\"\n\nThe Race Secretary went to the window. \"You're being ridiculous, Mario. You're making a farce out of a race among the world's fastest horses. Isn't it enough that we have managed to get them together _without all this_?\"\n\nThe Publicity Director went hurriedly after him and placed an arm about his friend's shoulders. \"Eduardo, you don't understand,\" he said quietly. \"The race itself will be the finest ever run. And you have arranged it... you and you alone. But please remember that even the greatest races are made more memorable by unusual stories that are written in advance. Have you forgotten how much publicity we received as a result of my suggestion that the purse money be hung from the finish wire?\"\n\nJay saw the Race Secretary nod his head in answer, and his own interest quickened. \"Did I understand you to say you're hanging the money from the finish wire?\" he asked.\n\nThe Publicity Director turned to him. \"You must have read about that, Mr. Van Oss. It was in _every_ newspaper....\"\n\n\"No,\" Jay said, \"I haven't seen a paper in some time. Tell me about it.\"\n\n\"Briefly, the money will be sewn in a purse, which will be given to the winner immediately following the race. It's the way they did it long ago, and that's how the term 'purse' originated in racing terminology. You've no idea the amount of publicity we've received since the story went out.\"\n\n\"I guess I haven't,\" Jay said quietly. And how convenient, he thought, for him and Steve. All they had to do was to collect the purse after the race and leave. Lovely, just lovely... and so convenient.\n\nThe Publicity Director continued, \"Go along with me, Eduardo, on this one last request before tomorrow's race. An unknown horse from the Islands is just what we need to stimulate further world interest in our race. I can have the news release sent out this afternoon. Every wire service, every radio and television station will carry it!\" He waved his arms in the air, and Jay was reminded of the long, flopping wings of a heron in flight.\n\nResignedly the Race Secretary returned to his desk. \"I must see this horse first,\" he said in a very tired voice. \"Where is he, Mr. Van Oss?\"\n\nJay jumped to his feet. \"Not far from here,\" he said. \"I have a taxi waiting. Come along.\"\n\n# THE WAITING\n\n15\n\nSteve slid off the bale of straw on which he had been sitting, and went to the door again. Still no sign of Jay, and the sun was close to setting. For a moment he watched the wind chase the heavy ragged clouds across the sky. It could rain either tonight or tomorrow.\n\nHe closed the door, shutting out the dying brilliance of the sun, and returned to Flame. The stallion had his head over the stall door, eyes alert as he watched every move Steve made.\n\nSteve said, \"Wet footing wouldn't make any difference to you. I wonder about the others?\"\n\nAll day long he had thought of nothing but the race, preparing Flame and himself for it. Soon after Jay's departure he had cast aside any doubts and uncertainties as to their racing in the International. A man who had taken them this far would not be stopped by the conditions of a race. It was only a matter of waiting, and soon\u2014tomorrow\u2014the waiting would end.\n\n\"It'll be up to us alone then, Flame... just you and me. No Jay to help us once we're on the track. But we'll go just as we do in Blue Valley. Oh, it'll be different, a lot different, for both of us. There'll be noise and people... and other stallions too, Flame. But you'll do what I ask, won't you?\"\n\nFlame let go a couple of kicks against the wooden sides of his stall, and then reached over the half-door, taking hold of Steve's shirt in play.\n\nSteve patted him, at the same time thoughtfully eyeing the bitless bridle which hung from a peg beside the door. It would be of some help in guiding Flame once the stallion stepped onto the track. But he must not put too much confidence in the bridle. Only his voice and hands, his love for Flame and the stallion's love for him would keep the great horse under control. Even then... yes, even then nothing was certain. He had no assurance that Flame would listen to him as he always had done before. The sight of other stallions, Flame's natural instinct to fight, might well bring on insurmountable problems. But it was a risk he had to take, and he accepted the challenge willingly.\n\nHe rubbed the stallion's muzzle and Flame released his shirt without drawing back. \"I want the world to see how fast you are, Flame,\" he said softly. \"I don't think you'll mind at all once we get going. You'll be as anxious to beat them as I am. Once we're on our way you'll know what it's all about. You'll race because it's the most natural thing in the world for you to do.\"\n\nHe believed everything he told Flame. He was impatient for Jay to return, for the night to pass, for the moment when he would ride Flame onto the track. It was the _waiting_ that he hated.\n\nAs he looked at the hackamore again, he wished for a moment that it were an ordinary bridle that hung there. If it had been he could have undone all the fasteners, separating every movable part; then he could have spent a lot of time carefully cleaning each piece of leather with sponge and soap. It would have kept him busy. It would have helped a lot.\n\nHe took down the bitless bridle, his hands fingering the long tassels that were as fine as spun gold. He examined the breathing, living fibers as he turned the hackamore over, searching for any marks of sweat that might have stained it during the morning ride or any grains of sand that might cause Flame discomfort when he wore it again. But the bitless bridle was as unsoiled as on the day Jay had given it to him. His hands tightened about it, and a warmer, deeper red flooded the fibers. He was comforted by the warmth, but still he wished it were an ordinary bridle so he might have spent some time in cleaning it.\n\nFinally he put it back on the peg, and turned again to Flame. For a moment he thought of unbraiding the stallion's long forelock and doing it over again. But he had already done that three times. Lightly he pushed Flame's head a little to the side so he could look into the stall. The bedding was clean, so there was nothing to be done there, either.\n\nAcross the stallion's back, just draping his barrel, was the folded red cooler Jay had brought along. Steve thought of pulling it up around Flame's neck, then rejected the idea. The stallion hadn't minded the blanket earlier and there was little likelihood of his objecting to it now.\n\nFor want of anything better to do, Steve went into the stall and, drawing the cooler high up, pinned it snugly around Flame's neck. Flame nipped at the edges, then lost interest. A new idea had come to him. He wanted to leave the stall.\n\n\"Not now,\" Steve said. \"Not until tomorrow.\"\n\nFlame stepped around him, and the draped blanket billowed and changed color with his movements. Steve thought of _the room_ again, and the great tapestries hanging on the walls. Uneasy, he removed the cooler from Flame's back. The weather was too warm for it anyway, and there were no drafts in the shed.\n\nHe was turning away from the stall when the door of the shed opened and Jay stepped inside. Steve was about to run toward him when he noticed the two strangers standing in the doorway behind Jay.\n\nWith a gesture, Jay signaled to Steve to move away from the stall, and then he said graciously to the men, \"Come in, gentlemen. Here he is.\"\n\nSteve did as he had been bid, seeking enlightenment in Jay's eyes. But Jay avoided his gaze, and now spoke only in Spanish so Steve couldn't understand a word that was said. He saw the men approach the stall with Jay to look at Flame. They didn't go too close for Flame had his ears swept back. Yet they were anxious to see his body and legs, for they stepped to one side, peering into the stall.\n\nJay turned on the light so they could get a good look at Flame. The two men were pleased with what they saw, Steve could tell, for they nodded in agreement to almost everything Jay said. It was Jay who did all the talking, and not once did the visitors pay any attention to Steve. The gaunt, gangling man was especially impressed with Flame, for being taller he had a better view of the inside of the stall. His eyes were bright and he kept rubbing his long, bony hands together vigorously.\n\nSteve wondered who they were and why Jay had brought them, but he knew better than to ask just then. He moved farther away from them, knowing it was what Jay wanted of him.\n\nFinally the visit neared its close, and there was a brief discussion among the three as they turned from the stall and walked slowly to the door.\n\nSteve waited until they were outside, then went to the door himself. From where he stood he saw the taxi, and the two men shaking hands with Jay. The smaller of the visitors wore a sober expression, but he seemed to be in full agreement with his friend. Steve wished he understood Spanish. Well, soon Jay would explain what it all meant.\n\nThe men stepped into the taxi, and the door closed behind them. Jay gave the driver a bill, and called, _\"Hasta la vista,\"_ to the departing visitors.\n\nAs the driver looked at the bill Jay had given him, he exclaimed, _\"Mil gracias, Se\u00f1or!... Mil gracias!\"_\n\nJay waved them off, then turned to Steve. For a moment he just looked at the boy, his face seeming to glow from the unusual brightness of his eyes. There was no need for Steve to ask if the trip to Havana had been successful.\n\n\"We're in, Steve!\" Jay finally said.\n\n\"I know,\" the boy answered. \"All I have to do is look at you to know.\"\n\n\"Of course, of course,\" Jay agreed jubilantly.\n\nTogether they walked into the shed, and Jay flung his black hat onto the bale of straw. \"They had to see Flame before they'd agree to his starting in the International. Think of it, Steve,\" he went on, \"they were afraid he might not look well in the post parade! That was their only worry, for they don't consider an untried horse as a serious contender in such a race. Oh, what a surprise they'll get, Steve... especially that Mr. Santos! He was the one who looked so much like a heron, you'll recall. And in his mind the only reason our horse has been accepted is that it will give him a chance to write some good publicity stories tonight. But it's just as well for us that Mr. Santos is thinking along those lines; otherwise we might not be racing tomorrow.\"\n\n\"What is he going to do?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Mr. Santos is going to tell the world that an unknown, unproven horse will face the champions in tomorrow's great International.\"\n\n\"Oh, Jay...\" Steve began, the color leaving his face.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" Jay said quickly. \"I told him nothing about Flame or you. Furthermore, Steve, he didn't want to know anything. That's part of it. The mystery, I mean. That's the angle Mr. Santos is depending upon to gain publicity in the newspapers, radio and on television. An unknown horse from the Windward Islands will race against the world's fastest horses! A late entry! An Island Stallion! Oh, that Mr. Santos knows his job, all right. Why, he's even arranged to hang the purse money from the finish wire. This race has been tailor-made for us, Steve... and so has Mr. Santos!\"\n\nToo many facts in too short a time. Steve walked to the back of the shed. He didn't want to hear any more. That he and Flame were to race the next day was enough.\n\nJay's voice became louder, but Steve tried not to listen.\n\n\"I'm sorry that it was necessary to be discourteous and ignore you when I arrived, Steve. But you see, I didn't want them to take a good look at you. No one must be able to recognize you later as the person who rode Flame in the big race. Tomorrow morning I'll fix you up so your own mother wouldn't know you.\"\n\nDetails, important details, all of which Jay enjoyed doing so much. But to Steve, just then, nothing mattered except the actual running of the race.\n\n\"I must go to the village now,\" Jay continued excitedly, \"and rent a truck for tomorrow. I hope you won't mind being left alone again, Steve.\"\n\n\"No, I don't mind... not at all.\"\n\nJay had not been gone very long when the sky darkened and a peal of thunder came rolling in from the sea. Steve listened to it, wondering if the storm would break before Jay reached the village. Jay would hate to get his fine clothes wet. And would he have enough foresight to get a closed truck in case it continued to rain the next day?\n\nThe shed was illuminated by a sudden flash of lightning, and then swift angry pellets of rain began falling on the tin roof. Steve's eyes became accustomed to the darkness and he made out Flame's head over the stall door. He went to him as the lightning came again and the storm in all its fury burst upon them.\n\nThe rain didn't stop until shortly after Steve awakened the next morning. He watered Flame, then went to the shed door, opening it to look at the gray, sweeping clouds. There was little chance of the sun's breaking through such an overcast. Parked near the shed was the small closed van which Jay had driven home the night before during the storm. They had bedded it down well with straw. It was ready for Flame.\n\nHe returned to his horse, offering him a bale of hay through which the stallion sniffed, searching for the particular grasses that pleased him most. As he pulled them forth, chewing slowly, his eyes remained on Steve.\n\nThe boy said, \"I know you'd rather go outside and graze, so let's do it.\"\n\nA few minutes later he led Flame from the shed. He took him over to the truck, and with flared nostrils and bright eyes Flame walked around it, sniffing the sides.\n\nThen Steve mounted his horse, his hands light on the reins as he took him down the driveway.\n\n\"Easy, Flame. No running this morning.\"\n\nTurning into the road, he let Flame go into a slow, easy gallop and his bare hoofs made soft, sucking sounds in the mud. The stallion asked for more rein but didn't demand it. The wind had freshened and Flame held his head high, enjoying his early morning exercise. His strides gradually lengthened and he chose the side of the road that was fetlock-deep in mud. Not once did he falter or slip.\n\nSteve needed no reassurance of Flame's ability to handle himself in such footing. He had only to think of Blue Valley and the many times he had ridden his horse through the slimy, dangerous marsh to know there were few animals in the world more sure-footed than Flame.\n\nHe wondered about the other horses in the race. Would they take to this kind of going?\n\n\"Easy, Flame,\" he said again.\n\nThe stallion listened to Steve and there was no further lengthening of his strides. Steve stroked him, and turned him off the road, guiding him to the place where Flame had found the grass most to his liking the day before. Dismounting, Steve walked alongside his horse. He was glad to be away from the shed, for it helped in the matter of waiting. He wondered how long Jay would sleep this morning, and what time they would leave for Havana. Probably not until shortly after noon, for Jay had said last night that they shouldn't get there much before the race.\n\nPost time was at three o'clock. Soon the waiting would come to an end.\n\nSteve took his time returning to the shed, walking Flame all the way back. There was no sign of Jay when he arrived. The house was quiet and the shades were drawn. If Jay was waiting for the sun to awaken him this morning he would sleep a long time. The sky hadn't changed from its earlier leaden gray, although the force of the wind had abated.\n\nAs Steve lowered the tailgate of the van, he let it fall with a loud bang, hoping the noise would wake Jay.\n\n\"Come, boy,\" he said, leading Flame to the tailgate. It was a steeper ascent than Steve would have liked for his horse but an easy climb compared to some of the trails over which he had ridden Flame. He was confident the stallion would follow him.\n\nFlame hesitated at the foot of the tailgate, his eyes searching the dark interior of the van. It was this that bothered him, Steve knew. He made his way up into the van and then stood inside, slowly moving the lines. \"Come, Flame,\" he repeated.\n\nThe stallion's forelegs moved onto the wood, and then he stopped again, looking past Steve. Again the boy called him, and after a short pause there was a quick lurching of his body as he gathered himself for the ascent. He raised his head a little too high when he reached the top, and bumped into the roof. For a second he was alarmed by the sudden blow and the close confines of the truck. He sought to rear but Steve held his head down, talking to him all the while.\n\nFinally Steve led him farther into the truck, carefully holding Flame's head so that it could not be raised as high as the stallion would have liked. The truck wasn't meant for hauling horses as tall as Flame. But there was no exchanging it now, and perhaps there was none other in the village that was more suitable anyway.\n\nSteve remained with Flame for a long while, letting his horse look around to familiarize himself with his new surroundings. He gave Flame a little more line, so that the stallion might stretch his head a little higher and find out for himself just how far he could go. Soon Flame was content to keep his head lower than he usually carried it, and began sniffing the straw.\n\nIt was almost noon and Flame was back in his stall when Jay entered the shed, still in pajamas and bathrobe.\n\n\"Steve,\" he said, \"you should have awakened me. I had no idea it was so late. I thought surely I'd hear you in the kitchen.\"\n\n\"I didn't go to the kitchen,\" Steve said.\n\n\"You mean you haven't eaten?\"\n\n\"I haven't even thought about it.\"\n\n\"Then you come with me, and fast, Steve. This is no day to go without food! You'll need every bit of strength you possess. Come on, now.\"\n\nSteve watched the small man in the bright blue bathrobe scurry to the door in his fast, bouncing gait. There Jay stopped. \"Come on, Steve,\" he repeated. \"We really haven't much time for all we have to do.\"\n\nSteve followed him. That was just it... they didn't have much time. And that was why he couldn't eat at all.\n\n# OFF TO THE RACES\n\n16\n\nAs the truck left the village the sky cleared and the sun made its appearance.\n\nJay, dressed as immaculately as on the day before, with his silver-headed cane on the seat beside him, drove faster and faster down the road. Without glancing back at the open window of the cab he said, \"The sun's out, Steve!\"\n\n\"Is it?\" Steve couldn't tell much about the weather from inside the truck. He stood beside Flame, holding the lines tight for fear the stallion would raise his head too high and strike the roof again. As it was, Flame didn't like the semi-darkness of the truck nor the jostling they were taking over the bumpy road.\n\nJay called, \"It'll mean a great crowd there to see you go.\"\n\nThe truck lurched and Steve had trouble keeping his feet. He touched Flame and found him sweaty from uneasiness, so he put the red cooler over him.\n\n\"Go slower,\" he told Jay angrily, \"or no one will see us go! You're not driving a car.\"\n\n\"But, Steve, everyone drives this way. I watched very closely yesterday.\"\n\n\"Cubans aren't the best drivers in the world.\"\n\n\"They're not? You mean there are _other_ ways to drive a car?\"\n\n\"Slower ways,\" Steve said, still angry. \"If you don't take it easier, Jay...\"\n\n\"Now don't get mad, Steve. After all, I didn't know. _You're_ the one who lives on this planet.\"\n\n\"Please go slower then,\" Steve repeated, \"and miss the bumps. I'm having a hard enough time as it is keeping Flame still.\"\n\n\"Sure, Steve.\"\n\nThere was a slackening of speed and an end to the jostling. Steve stroked Flame's neck.\n\n\"All right back there?\" Jay asked later.\n\n\"Much better,\" Steve answered.\n\n\"If there's anything else, just tell me, Steve. You must remember that all this is very new to me. But I enjoy driving. I really do.\"\n\nSteve continued talking to Flame while listening to Jay. He didn't mind the man's incessant chatter. Anything was better than just waiting. It wouldn't be long now... an hour at the most, Jay had said.\n\n\"Even with the sun out it'll be a wet track,\" Jay called. \"But I guess Flame won't mind, will he?\"\n\n\"No, he won't mind.\"\n\nJay chuckled. \"I don't imagine Kingfisher will like it, though. Their feet are weak enough without having to cope with such footing.\"\n\nKingfisher was the famed handicap champion from the United States, Steve recalled. Last night Jay had told him that this great horse would be in today's race. Steve had heard of Kingfisher long before he'd ever known Jay. At home one didn't read about racing without being aware of Kingfisher's unchallenged crown.\n\n\"This is a horse, not a bird,\" Steve reminded Jay.\n\n\"Oh, I know that, all right,\" Jay answered. \"But there must have been some reason for naming him after a bird. Perhaps it was because of his feet, Steve. I'll know better when I see him.\"\n\nSteve rubbed Flame's nose, and noticed that his hand was shaking a little. Sure, he was nervous. Wasn't it the most natural thing in the world to wonder if every move he made in the race would come instinctively, without thought or plan? It was no time to try to recall all he'd read about racing a horse, of blind switches and holes. Yesterday he'd been able to think, to plan. Today every attempt was futile, and his only hope was that it would be different once he rode Flame onto the track. He realized too that in spite of all the other horses and the great crowd, it would be, for him, the loneliest place in the world.\n\n\"Steve, Steve, what's the matter back there?\"\n\n\"Nothing, Jay.\"\n\n\"You haven't answered any of my questions. You haven't said a word.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I was wondering if we couldn't go a little faster now. It's getting so late, and we don't have much time.\"\n\nSteve listened to the wheels turning on the pavement, and wondered how long they'd been off the dirt road. \"Sure, go ahead,\" he said. \"But take it easy on the turns. And no sudden stops, Jay.\"\n\nThe truck lurched forward but Steve and Flame kept their feet. Jay talked of the great thrill it would be for him to watch the International. It would give him something to remember for a long, long time.\n\nSteve was no longer listening to him. He heard only the hum of rubber tires, turning faster now, taking him and his horse closer and closer to El Dorado Park and all that awaited them.\n\nLater came the sound of traffic on either side of the truck, and Steve knew they were approaching the city of Havana. The truck stopped often, only to plunge forward again. Jay had no feeling for the release of the clutch pedal.\n\nSteve didn't go near the cab window. He did not want to see anything until it was time to leave the truck. It would be easier that way. He touched his face and wondered what he looked like. Jay had rubbed some kind of liquid over his skin and into his hair just before they had left. Steve turned his hands over, palms upward. These too Jay had treated, but only lightly. He hadn't rubbed the liquid in as he had done on Steve's face and scalp.\n\nSteve noticed that while the color of his hands was the same as before, they had changed during the last hour. It seemed that they had grown, not in length but in breadth. He looked at them more closely and was sure of it. They were broad and flat with large knuckles, the hands of a man, not a boy... hands that had known many years of hard work.\n\nYet when Steve flexed his fingers they felt no different than before.\n\nAgain he touched his face, remembering Jay's words, \"Take my word for it that no one will ever recognize you, Steve. It's important, of course, as they'll be taking pictures.\"\n\nThe truck swayed but Steve's hands remained on his face. He touched his nose. It was big, and the opening of his nostrils was large and round. His cheekbones seemed lower than they had any right to be, and there were deep lines in his face.\n\nFor a moment he was startled by the thought of what Jay must have done to him! Then Flame pushed his soft muzzle forward, and Steve realized that nothing about him had really changed as long as his horse knew him.\n\nThe truck stopped again, and while waiting for the traffic light to change Jay said, \"We're almost at the track, Steve. Is everything all right?\" Turning around, he looked through the cab window and studied the boy's eyes. Then he said, \"Don't be concerned about how you look, Steve. It'll only last a few hours.\"\n\nSteve said, \"There's only one thing I'm concerned about, and it isn't my face.\"\n\nJay chuckled. \"Don't worry about the race, Steve. Just get him out in front and keep him there.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Steve said, \"just like that.\"\n\nThe light changed and Jay was facing front again. \"Just like that,\" he agreed.\n\nThe next time the truck stopped they were within El Dorado Park. Steve heard the neighs and nickers of horses and Flame became restless. The stallion's nostrils were spread wide, and when he screamed the shrillness of his whistle within the close confines of the truck was deafening.\n\n\"Easy, Flame,\" Steve said urgently.\n\nBut there was no quieting Flame now with the scent of other horses all around him. He tried to raise his head, and Steve had all he could do to keep him from striking the roof.\n\n\"Jay!\" he called. \"I must get him out of here soon.\" He wondered if he really expected it to be any easier once they were out of the truck.\n\n\"We're parked behind the barns, Steve. We must wait for Mr. Santos before unloading Flame. He wanted it that way.\"\n\nThe stallion moved uneasily beneath Steve's hands. \"Don't you see Mr. Santos anywhere, Jay?\" Steve asked impatiently. \"Maybe he's forgotten all about us.\"\n\n\"No, not Mr. Santos, Steve. Don't worry so. We have five minutes before post time, and this is the way it was arranged. We're to make a dramatic entrance, Steve, after the introduction of the other horses. We're part of the show, and Mr. Santos won't forget us. He thinks of himself as being a superb showman.\"\n\nSteve said bitterly, \"Part of his show but not the race.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jay agreed, \"that's about the way he figures it. Flame is to provide a bit of last-minute interest and color before the great race itself. After that we're not very necessary to Mr. Santos.\"\n\nFlame gathered himself to rear, and Steve moved quickly, keeping him down.\n\n\"I do wish you'd come to the window and look at the crowd in the stands, Steve. I've never seen anything like it! And I believe... yes, the horses are now coming onto the track. Oh, I do hope Mr. Santos has _not_ forgotten all about us! Perhaps we'd better unload Flame, Steve.\"\n\nSteve heard the cab door open and then Jay called in relief, \"Here comes Mr. Santos now. Are you all set, Steve?\"\n\nThe tailgate was lowered and Steve led Flame toward it. He was set as he ever would be. The waiting was over. _Don't look at anyone but Flame. He's your only concern now_.\n\nFlame followed him quickly off the truck, and Steve removed the red cooler, tossing it to Jay. He saw Mr. Santos step back hurriedly as Flame reared to his utmost height.\n\nSteve knew that only then did the man realize what kind of a horse he had accepted for the International. The color of Flame's eyes changed to red at sight of the horses in the adjacent barns. And when he screamed his high-pitched clarion call of challenge, it carried beyond the stable area to the stretch where eight world-famous horses paraded to the post.\n\nWhen the scream died down, Steve heard Mr. Santos blabbering wildly to Jay. But whatever he was saying went unheeded. Steve raised his knee to Jay's clasped hands and was boosted onto Flame's back. He gave Flame his head, and the stallion went forward eagerly, his bright eyes fixed on the parading horses.\n\n# POST PARADE\n\n17\n\nHigh above Flame's craned head Steve saw the television cameras set up on the roof of the overflowing grandstand. He lowered his eyes, not wanting to look at anything but his horse and the track directly before them.\n\nThe footing was not as heavy as he had expected it to be after the long night of rain. The track had drained well, and that, together with a hot afternoon sun and the pounding hoofs of horses in preceding races, had made it a good track, almost fast.\n\nHe tried to pretend that he was back in Blue Valley. There was nothing ahead but a long run around the walled amphitheater of yellow, towering stone; they were alone except for the band of mares that would scatter at Flame's swift approach. If he could make believe it was that way, it would help. At least until they were off and running. Then he could let himself think of the race itself, hoping to make the right moves. If he could just get Flame out in front early, clear of all the other horses and running, then... yes, then there would be nothing to this race but a great red stallion.\n\nSteve buried his head a little more in Flame's heavy mane, and he kept repeating, \"Easy, boy. Easy now. There's no hurry. No hurry at all.\"\n\nThe sodden sand and clay slipped by in endless waves beneath the red stallion's ever lengthening strides. He snorted often but uttered no shrill call of angry defiance and challenge.\n\nSteve took up more line, winding the reins about his fingers so they would not slip. Yet there was no slackening of Flame's strides, and Steve sensed in his horse a mounting eagerness to do battle with other stallions.\n\nSteve's legs moved simultaneously with his hands and lips. \"Around, Flame,\" he called. \"All the way around.\"\n\nHe felt the tightening of Flame's muscles against the pressure of his legs. Flame knew what he was being asked to do, and still he did not respond.\n\nSteve exerted more pressure with his legs, knowing that he could do no more than ask and then ask again. There was no forcing a horse like Flame. No battle of strength or wills. He could only hope that Flame would want to do what he asked of him. Their love for each other had to be greater than the stallion's wild instinct to fight. If not, the race would be over before it had begun, so far as they were concerned.\n\nThe first break in stride came with the sudden, metallic voice of the announcer over the public address system. The sound startled Flame, and Steve, taking advantage of this, was able to turn the stallion's head toward the outer rail.\n\nThe announcement was given first in Spanish, then in English. \"Ladies and gentlemen, the horses are now approaching the starting gate,\" the announcer said. \"Number One is Gusto from Italy. Number Two is Kingfisher from the United States. Number Three is Slow Burn, also from the United States. Number Four is Wellington from England....\"\n\nSteve managed to turn Flame a little more. There was no lessening of the pressure of his legs or the urgency in his voice as he said softly, \"Keep going, Flame. I want you all the way around.\"\n\nThe red stallion was in the center of the track, his strides slowing.\n\n\"... Number Five is Tout de Suite from France. Number Six is Bismarck from Germany. Number Seven is El Chico from Chile....\"\n\nSteve had Flame all the way around now, facing the backstretch again. \"Good boy,\" he said. \"Slow and easy now. We have lots and lots of time.\" He wanted to wait until the other horses were in their starting stalls, out of the way, making it easier for him to take Flame down to the gate.\n\n\"Number Eight,\" the announcer continued, \"is Mister Tim from Ireland. Number Nine is...\"\n\nThere was a pause and for an instant Steve stopped talking to his horse. _Here it comes_ , he thought. _For the first time on any track. If they only knew... if they only knew!_\n\n\"Number Nine,\" the announcer repeated, \"is Flame from the Windward Islands. He's been excused from the post parade and can be seen on the far turn. The horses are now in the hands of the starter, ladies and gentlemen, with one minute before post time.\"\n\nOnly the distant rumble of the tremendous crowd could be heard then. Suddenly above the roar Steve heard Jay's high-pitched voice calling him and then he saw the little man running across the track's infield. He had never seen Jay's legs move so fast before.\n\nNearing the rail, Jay shouted, \"Go back and race, Steve. _Hurry!_ \" He waved his cane at them, and Flame, seeing it, shied across the track.\n\n\"Put your cane down,\" Steve called angrily. \"I want to wait until the others are in the gate. It's the only...\"\n\n\"I don't care what you've planned,\" Jay interrupted. \"Don't keep them waiting a minute. Every second counts now. It's terribly important. Hurry, Steve, hurry!\"\n\nSteve got Flame over to the rail, and only then was he near enough to take a good look at Jay's face. First he was aware of nothing but a deep reddish color that distorted every feature. Then before his eyes Jay's face became nothing but a nebulous fiery swirl which spoke to him, the voice matching the terror that was in the blurred image. \"You must hurry or I'll be left behind....\"\n\nSteve was already turning Flame, and as he rode him away Jay's thought message reached him, as clear and distinct as his spoken words had been.\n\n_\"I've heard from Flick. Something has happened, and the others are returning to the ship today. We're leaving, and if I shouldn't get back in time...\"_\n\nThe message faded, and Steve heard only the increased pounding of Flame's hoofs as he urged him faster and faster toward the starting gate. Then suddenly Jay's thought message came again, fainter this time. _\"I won't leave you here alone, Steve, but you must hurry, hurry, hurry....\"_\n\nSteve leaned forward as his horse went into the turn. \"Run, Flame, run!\" he called, his own words echoing the urgency of Jay's message. He didn't want to be left behind, either!\n\nAlongside the starting gate and just off the track, the official starter stood on a high platform watching the red horse come around the far turn. The man's heavy eyebrows swept upward in astonishment and then he shook his head. His voice was awesome and threatening as he called to a member of his ground crew, \"Bert, go meet that fool rider! Slow him down!\"\n\nThe starter turned back to the gate and to his immediate problem of quieting the horses which were already inside the stalls. The padded doors were being closed behind Gusto but the big brown gelding was trying to back out.\n\n\"Straighten his head, Cellini. Keep him in there,\" he barked through his amplifier to Gusto's rider.\n\nThe Italian jockey shouted back at him but the starter couldn't understand a word since Cellini spoke his native tongue. The starter turned his attention to the Number Five horse, the gray from France who was backjumping in back of the gate, refusing to go into the narrow alleyway that was his stall.\n\n\"Get that Tout de Suite horse inside, Joe,\" he rasped at another of his ground crew, \"but don't upset him. Easy, now.\"\n\nThe French jockey was screaming something too, but as with Cellini the starter couldn't understand a word. He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness, and wished that he had never taken this job of starting such a race. Back in the States he could keep jockeys in line, but not these jibbering riders who were supposed to understand and speak English, and didn't!\n\nThe jockey on El Chico was making as much noise as the rest of them and, of course, was speaking _his_ language. The fellow up on Bismarck, the German horse, was the only quiet one in the bunch, and that included the two jocks from the States. But at least he could understand those two.\n\nBraddish up on Kingfisher was screaming, \"No chance! No chance!\"\n\nOf course there was no chance of his opening the gate yet. He had no intention of sending them off without that Number Nine horse. \"Quiet!\" he bellowed. \" _I'll_ do the talking!\"\n\nAnxiously the starter turned to see what was holding up Number Nine. The red horse had been brought to a stop by his rider a short distance away, and was now rearing high on his hind legs. The sight sickened the starter. No wonder Bert wasn't going any closer! The crewman, his arms raised high, stood in the middle of the track a good twenty feet away from the horse.\n\nAs if he didn't have enough trouble without _this_! the starter thought. He fingered the button that would cut the current from the magnets holding the front doors of the gate shut. All he had to do was to touch it and the race would be on without Number Nine.\n\nHe realized that the great stands were suddenly quiet, so he was not alone in his amazement that the red horse should be here at all. Of course, that animal couldn't be what he looked like... a wild, unbroken stallion. Not here in such a race. He must be just part of the show, and a very spectacular show it had been with the field parading in the flag colors of their respective countries. But the starter was very tired of all these preliminaries. He wanted to send the horses off, as he'd been paid to do, and then go home.\n\n\"Bring that Number Nine horse down, Bert,\" the starter barked through the amplifier. \"Don't be afraid of him.\" He had decided not to send the field off without the red horse. After all, difficult as the job might be, he had his reputation to maintain.\n\nThe more the starter looked at the red horse the more convinced he became that the animal was part of the show. A very beautiful horse, with fine classic features... too fine to be a race horse, really. He wore nothing but a rope hackamore with two long golden tassels hanging from it. His rider was sitting bareback and wore no silks, just T-shirt and jeans. Strange, very strange indeed. But the starter was not one to question what went on so long as there was no trouble at the gate. There was no doubt that this horse was being brought under control by his rider. However, he would like to have seen a bit in the stallion's mouth. He wished, too, that the jock would bring him down to the gate. Bert, apparently, wasn't going any closer in spite of his orders. He'd settle with Bert later.\n\nImpatiently, the starter turned to one of the two red-coated outriders who had led the post parade before turning over the field to him and his crew. The nearer outrider was just beyond the gate, waiting to catch any runaway. The starter thought that he might just tell him to get that red horse down to the gate. However, he didn't have very much confidence in these track employees. Oh, the outriders tried hard enough and he supposed they had courage. But he doubted that they had the true _skill_ to help out if trouble really started. It took a good horseman with many years of experience to stop a horse that was superior in speed to his own. Now back in the States he wouldn't have hesitated a moment to order an outrider after that red horse. He finally decided that if he was to get this race off at all, he'd better not hesitate here, either. Take a chance on the track's outrider. It was better than waiting any longer. He signaled to the man to bring the red horse down.\n\nThe starter watched the outrider go past the gate, eager enough but taking his horse along much too fast. He barked through the amplifier for him to slow down, and then finally to stop altogether.\n\nThe starter's bushy eyebrows had drawn together in dismay. He had seen something unexpected in the red horse, a wild, trembling eagerness to fight that hadn't been there before. \"Forget him,\" he told the outrider, nervously. \"Get your horse back and leave him alone.\"\n\nWhen the outrider was safely away, the starter turned to the red horse again. He called to the hunched figure on the horse's back, \"I'm sending them off! Bring your horse down, if you're going with them!\" He used his most authoritative tone.\n\nThe starter watched the horse take a few steps forward. It was amazing enough that such a fractious animal was here at all, and more incredulous that his rider seemed to have him under some kind of control. The starter decided that he might get the field off without trouble if he put the red horse in the far end stall with three cages between him and the others.\n\nAs the red horse neared the gate, the starter could make out the jagged scars on his body. He took hold of his amplifier, clenching it hard. It couldn't be, of course! But where else would a horse get such scars but in battle with other stallions?\n\n\"Take that Number Nine horse to the stall at the very end!\" he shouted to the rider. \"Don't get him near the others!\" His hand moved to the button that would open the stall doors. All he wanted to do was to start this race and catch the next plane home.\n\nAs Steve let the wet lines slip another inch between his fingers, and Flame approached the gate, he tried to keep the stallion's attention on the barrier, telling him that the narrow alleyway before them was no different from the passageways on Azul Island.\n\nFlame suddenly stopped, fearful, Steve thought, of the wire-mesh door at the front of the stall. He pawed at the criss-crossed shadow it made on the track in back of the gate. Steve let him alone, glad that it was the mesh door that held Flame's interest and _not_ the other horses. If he could only get him into the starting gate and then come out running...\n\nA heavy silence had descended upon the stands and the track.\n\n\"It's only a shadow, Flame. See how that man walks right through it. But he won't come close to you. He won't lead you into the stall as he's done with the others. Don't look at him, Flame. Look only at the shadow, then at the stall. That's it. Go ahead now.\"\n\nFlame chose to jump over the criss-crossed pattern rather than walk through it. His leap took him into the stall, and he stopped abruptly, startled by the wire-mesh door in front of him.\n\nSteve comforted Flame as best he could, but actually he welcomed the close confines of the cage for, like the shadow, it alone now held the stallion's attention. And that was better than Flame's becoming aware of the horses in the stalls to his left.\n\nHe urged Flame a little closer to the wire door, and the stallion took a step forward, his head extended toward the screen, his nostrils flared and sniffing.\n\nSuddenly from directly behind them came the heavy thump of the cage's back door being closed. Flame panicked at the loud noise. He reared and flung himself sideways against the padded stall. As he came down his forelegs struck the front door which gave easily as it was supposed to do in such emergencies. Startled by his easily won freedom, Flame reared again just as the starting bell rang and the other stall doors sprang open. From their cages emerged the famed horses of the world! The International had begun!\n\n# THE INTERNATIONAL RACE\n\n18\n\nSteve's every reflex was committed to keeping his seat as Flame twisted in midair, turning toward the sudden uproar on his left. When the stallion came down, Steve had urgent need for the bitless bridle. He pulled the reins hard, trying to straighten Flame's head and divert his attention from the onrushing field.\n\nThe horses swept past in the shape of a flying wedge, those late in breaking from the gate to the rear and jamming against each other while their jockeys screamed for racing room.\n\nFor a fraction of a second Flame stood flat-footed, his startled eyes following the tumultuous scene. He was aware of the pressure of hands and legs upon his body asking him to turn away, but above everything else he felt a mounting eagerness to do battle with those of his kind. He bolted after them, his shrill clarion call rising above the pound of many hoofs.\n\nHe did not rush headlong down the track. Instead his strides, while swift, were light and cautious. He continued screaming while waiting for one of the horses beyond to turn and accept his challenge. But they drew farther and farther away from him and he had to lengthen his strides. This caused his fury to mount still more, for he would have preferred that the fight be brought to him.\n\nSteve knew that Flame had singled out the trailing gray horse to run down. He exerted more pressure, seeking to control his horse again. But Flame's ears remained flat against his head, and there was no change in the direction his long strides were taking him.\n\nThe stands began to slip by on their far right, but Steve was not aware of the roaring crowd. Only the trailing gray horse held his attention as he sought to prevent Flame's terrible onslaught of hoofs and teeth. His hands moved along the lines, constantly asking Flame to turn away. But the red stallion only leveled out still more.\n\nThe gray horse did not drop back as quickly as Steve had thought he would. In Blue Valley there was no horse to equal Flame's swiftness, but here it was different. For generations these horses had been bred for speed alone.\n\nSteve sat back, not wanting to help Flame in his chase to run down the gray. They swept beneath the finish wire for the first time, with a mile of the race to go. Steve's hands and legs exerted more pressure on Flame, demanding now rather than asking. He had to get Flame to the middle of the track. Perhaps with no horse directly before him he would race!\n\nBut Flame knew no command but the one that came most inherently to him... to fight with teeth and hoofs, to kill or be killed! His strides came swifter and now he could almost reach his chosen opponent.\n\nSteve mentally urged the gray on, at the same time trying desperately, with hands and legs, to break down the barrier of savagery that kept him from reaching Flame with his commands. He felt that if he were given just one slight opening he'd be able to control his horse again. He was certain that the bedlam at the start had so alarmed Flame that his horse wasn't even aware that he, Steve, was on his back!\n\nWhen he was merely a stride's length behind the gray horse, Flame screamed again. Fury took hold of him when the gray did not even flick an ear in his direction. He stretched his head closer but his eyes were alert for any sudden move that might put him on the defensive. He drew alongside, wary now of the gray's hind legs. He hesitated a second, wondering why the other stallion did not turn upon him so they could rise together in deadly combat.\n\nA pinpoint of hope glowed within Steve at Flame's hesitation. He felt Flame's bewilderment at the gray stallion's ignoring him so completely. He suddenly realized that Flame would find no _willing_ opponent on this track, for the first and foremost instinct of these horses was to race, just as Flame's was to fight.\n\n\"Flame!\" Steve called repeatedly into the flattened ears while his hands and legs worked harder than ever. If he could just get Flame's attention! But his horse plunged forward, seeking with bared teeth to tear and ravage the gray.\n\nSteve saw the flaying whip of the gray horse's rider just before Flame was struck by it. Flame was so enraged he had eyes only for the horse. He wasn't even aware of the man who rocked on the gray's back, his leather whip moving rhythmically along his mount's side without touching him.\n\nFlame thrust his head into this pendulum of hard leather. He felt the searing pain on his muzzle and drew back, more startled than hurt. Associating the unexpected blow with his opponent, he swerved abruptly away as he had done in countless battles, seeking time before attacking again.\n\nHis sharp turn took him across the track, bringing him face to face with an adversary so overwhelming that he forgot everything else in his sudden alarm. Tier upon tier before him rose a screaming mass of humanity!\n\nSteve, too, seeking to regain his balance, saw the sea of faces in the grandstand. Their voices drowned out the plop of Flame's hoofs in the soft, moist dirt as the stallion plunged on in full flight. Then suddenly Steve was aware of the change that had come over Flame. He felt his horse's fear of the great crowd, and at the same time he saw the outer rail rushing to meet them.\n\nHe pulled hard on the left rein while his right hand slipped quickly across Flame's moving shoulder. He twisted his body, and for the first time since the race began Flame responded to his commands.\n\nWithout breaking stride Flame curved away from the stands and his speed blurred the faces of the spectators. Steve knew that Flame's fear had enabled him to break through the barrier that had kept them apart. Yet the streaming white rail came ever closer, matching the speed of Flame's swift turn. Steve bent more urgently to the left, seeking to narrow Flame's running arc and to avoid crashing into the rail.\n\nWhen he was only inches away from it Flame straightened out, but like a magnet the rail held horse and rider close for another long stride. Then Steve saw the rail slip beneath his raised right knee, moving as though alive upon his horse's barrel. He felt the point of contact as soon as Flame did, the rail bending beneath the stallion's weight but not breaking. It seared the length of Flame's body before the stallion flung himself clear and bolted crazily toward the center of the track.\n\nSteve made no attempt to stop him, knowing that his horse had not been injured, only burned by the friction of his running body against the wood. He tried to straighten Flame's zigzag flight down the track. Finally the stallion's head came up and there was a flick of the small ears when Steve called to him.\n\nThey approached the first of the long banked turns and Steve kept Flame high up on the graded dirt. He completely ignored the inner rail and the short inside way around the track, just as he ignored the racing horses far beyond. For flashing seconds he was aware only that Flame was listening to him again. It was as if they were back in Blue Valley, running for the sheer joy of running and being together. Steve rubbed Flame between the shoulder blades, then slipped forward and began asking him for more and more speed.\n\nBack where the race had begun, the starter watched a tractor pull the gate from the track, leaving it clear for the horses when they came around again. That was the end of his job and he had little interest in the race itself. He barely listened to the call of the announcer when the horses came off the first turn.\n\n_\"That's Bismarck in front, followed closely by Slow Burn and Wellington. El Chico and Kingfisher are going wide. Mister Tim and Gusto are in a drive, coming up on the inside. Tout de Suite is...\"_\n\nThe sounds from the public address horn continued to crackle in the starter's ears but he didn't turn to the bunched field starting down the backstretch. Instead he walked across the track. Halfway to the outer rail he glanced toward the turn where the red horse which had caused all the trouble was being straightened out by his rider. Funny, that he should be watching him. Of course the horse wasn't going to get even a call. He was well out of the race already. That was the way the track officials had meant it to be, he supposed. The red horse had been asked here to put on a show, and he surely had obliged!\n\nThe starter's gaze followed the red horse, noting the way he stretched out going into the turn. No wasted effort there. He was really a very handsome horse, more beautiful by far than anything else on the track. But the starter remembered the scars on the stallion's red body and was glad that he had been successful in getting the race off without an accident. He could go home any time now.\n\nHis disinterested eyes turned to the racing field beyond. To him it was just another horse race, regardless of what they called it or had tried to make of it with all the dramatics beforehand. Oh, there was plenty of speed out there, a world of it, one might say, he decided. But after forty years in the business he'd seen the fastest horses there were. He recalled especially the match race in Chicago when the Black had beaten Sun Raider and Cyclone. After seeing that one he doubted that he'd ever be thrilled by another race.\n\nHe cast another look at the red horse, which was seemingly under control now and being taken high on the turn by his rider. Come to think of it, the horse reminded him a little of the Black. Same kind of wildness to his action that a domesticated horse never had. He was lengthening out yet holding his head high in pretty much the same way, too. But there was no comparison in speed. The Black would have been running the others to the ground by now while the red horse wasn't closing up any distance. Yet he wasn't falling back either, and that was surprising since he was only supposed to be part of the pre-race show.\n\nThe starter shrugged his heavy shoulders and continued across the track. Before reaching the outer rail he turned to watch the red horse once more. It was very unusual that he should be thinking of that Chicago match race here in Cuba years later.\n\nSteve took Flame around the turn, his eyes sweeping over the field moving down the backstretch. No longer could he hear the roar of the crowd or anything else but Flame's hoofs lightly beating out a rhythm on the soft track. Suddenly the quiet was shattered by the call of the race announcer.\n\n_\"Bismarck has increased his lead over Slow Burn, but on the far outside Kingfisher is moving up!\"_\n\nSteve leaned more to the left, swaying with Flame into the graded turn. He took his horse over to the inner rail to save ground. He had never ridden Flame so fast _yet they were not overtaking the field!_ Had he overestimated his horse's speed? Could a wild stallion compete with horses which had been bred through generations for racing speed alone?\n\n\"Run, Flame! Run!\"\n\nSteve listened to the stallion's snorts in response to his calls for more speed. He began pumping Flame with his legs, which he had never done before, and the snorts became louder. Only when they were on the straightaway did Flame quicken his strides. Steve felt the change that swept over the great red body when Flame saw the other horses far down the backstretch. He realized then what he had to do to make his horse run as he never had before.\n\n\"Go, Flame!\" he screamed, kindling the fire of Flame's natural hatred for those of his kind, encouraging him to run the others down! Only by taking advantage of the generations of breeding behind Flame could he hope to make a race of it. He felt the growing heat of the reins while his own blood surged crazily, making him unmindful of the possible consequences of his act. His body and hands were never still, his voice never quiet. He had but one goal and that was to bring out every bit of speed the stallion possessed.\n\nFlame listened to the never-ending calls urging him to catch up with those ahead. He felt the quickening beat of the hands upon his neck and the burning lines that kept his head straight. He lengthened his strides to keep time with the maddening rhythm on his back.\n\nHis eyes never left the horses which were now dropping back as he ran faster and faster. He selected an opponent. Just as he made his move to run him down there was a sudden twisting on his back. Then the lines seared his neck and he turned his head to relieve the pressure. Immediately his reddened eyes saw another horse still farther beyond. Again came the calls in his ear and the rhythmical beat of the hands against his body. He leveled out still more, needing greater speed to reach his newly selected opponent.\n\nSteve waited until Flame neared the next horse, then once more he twisted on the stallion's back, throwing his weight heavily to the outside. The reins in his hands were like throbbing arteries through which coursed his blood as well as Flame's.\n\nSteve straightened Flame's head so his horse could see the brown stallion running in the middle of the track. Every move was planned. He was encouraging Flame to attack and attack again while they went ever closer to the front.\n\nThe announcer said, _\"Going into the far turn it's still Bismarck by three lengths. Kingfisher is on the far outside, passing Slow Burn and Wellington. Flame is now going up with Kingfisher....\"_\n\nThe official starter had not left the track as he had intended doing. As though hypnotized, he had watched the beginning of Flame's mad rush down the backstretch. He had seen the huddled figure on the horse's back suddenly begin to rock wildly. Then the horse had exerted more speed, the rhythm of his strides finally matching that of his rider's movements. After that the rider had sat still, so still he seemed barely conscious of what was happening... except at times. One of the times was when he had twisted his body as the red stallion overtook Mister Tim, another when the horse had sought to ravage Gusto and now when he had pulled him wide around the others and the red stallion was going after Kingfisher!\n\nSteve watched the brown stallion drop back as those before him had done. He knew what he had to do again to get his horse away. He sat balanced, awaiting the precise second when by his weight and hands he could move Flame on to the last horse in front of them.\n\nHe saw Kingfisher begin to wobble and then bear out as they swept into the turn. Flame tried to swerve with him, but Steve had seen the opening left on the rail... and just beyond, three lengths away, was the leader, Bismarck! Steve moved quickly, tipping his weight to the inside and pulling hard on the left rein. Flame's head came around, and then the red stallion saw the running bay leader beyond!\n\nSteve was taking Flame over to the rail when Kingfisher swerved back, closing the opening that had been there! Steve felt Flame gather himself to attack the horse before him. Desperately he threw his weight to the outside, and as his body and hands moved, Kingfisher suddenly stumbled and went down in a sprawling heap.\n\nWith the agility of one who has faced such emergencies in many battles, Flame avoided the fallen horse. He swerved, then jumped, twisting in the air. When he came down he sought to check his great speed in order to turn upon his beaten opponent. He felt the ground rise beneath his running feet, and then he saw the streaming outer rail which had caused him pain once before. In fear of it he quickly responded to the pressure upon his back to go on. He swept along the high banked turn and when the ground leveled out again he saw a lone horse running just beyond. His ears flattened in still another charge of relentless fury.\n\n_\"In the homestretch,\"_ the announcer called, _\"it's still Bismarck by four lengths. Flame is second....\"_\n\nSteve heard the announcement but not the screams from the stands to their right. With each closing stride between the two stallions, he tried to decide what to do in this final run. His horse would catch up with Bismarck before the finish. But between the leader and the wire there was an empty track. What would happen when Flame saw no other horse beyond Bismarck? How could he get him to go on? If Flame hesitated or swerved to do battle with Bismarck the race would be lost.\n\nFlame stretched his head, baring his teeth in his fury and reaching for Bismarck as he had done with the others. Steve slipped back in his seat, ready now to shift his balance and turn Flame away from Bismarck regardless of the outcome of the race. He gripped the reins tighter, and the heat coming from them seared his hands. He waited until Flame was close to the bay stallion's sweaty hindquarters and then he swayed far to the right.\n\nFlame jumped away in quick response. His eyes were bright with anger and frustration as he sought still another horse upon which to vent his fury. But there was no horse beyond and to his right he heard the bedlam from the stands. He drew back before the frightening, ever mounting roar, seeking again the horse to his left.\n\nSteve knew that what he had feared was happening. His horse was not going on! He took a fraction of a second to straighten Flame's head, keeping the stallion's eyes focused on the track. Suddenly there was a flash of red beyond the wire. _The crimson-coated outrider and his pinto horse had moved onto the track awaiting the finish of the race_.\n\nFlame saw the outrider's mount and he swept forward eagerly, leaving Bismarck behind in great leaps. There was no slackening of his speed when he passed beneath the finish wire, for here at last was an opponent coming forward to meet him in combat!\n\n# THE END...\n\n19\n\nIf the spectators had not known previously that they were witnessing the furious charges of an unbroken stallion, they were aware of it immediately following the end of the race. For the great red horse who had won surged past the finish line like a raging demon. They saw the object of his attack, for the outrider's pinto horse was rearing high in the air while his rider sought to take him off the track.\n\nIn silent horror they watched the distance close between the two horses. They saw the outrider slip from his saddle and vault the rail, leaving his horse alone to face the red stallion. They did not blame him for his fear.\n\nTheir eyes swept to the huddled figure on the back of the red horse as the jockey suddenly straightened, then twisted. They thought that he too would vault from his horse before the clash of bodies came. But he stayed on and they saw the quick movements of his hands.\n\nThe pinto horse came down, trembling in his fear, then bolted for the paddock gate. The red stallion swerved, cutting off escape, and the pinto rose again, screaming in terror. The red stallion plunged forward, but before he reached his opponent, the crowd saw his rider move again. The stallion swerved abruptly away from the pinto, his strides coming long and fast as he swept down the track! In stunned silence the spectators watched him round the turn and go into the backstretch.\n\nSuddenly a small, well-dressed man appeared on the track, waving his arms in front of the red horse and its rider. Impatiently the hushed spectators awaited an official explanation of what they had witnessed. When, instead, the red horse was taken out through the stable area gate and nothing was heard coming over the public address system, their voices broke as one and the great stands were no longer quiet.\n\nThe truck moved slowly through the stable area of El Dorado Park. Steve listened to the continuous roar of the crowd while pulling the red blanket over Flame's wet, trembling body.\n\n\"They'll follow us for sure,\" he told Jay through the open cab window.\n\n\"Let them,\" the man answered impatiently, \"as long as they don't try to stop us. I won't tolerate any further delay.\"\n\nSteve pulled the blanket high up on Flame's head and pinned it tight. \"Will you be late?\" he asked.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" Jay said. Then he added eagerly, \"Oh, it _was_ a race, Steve! There'll never be one to equal it. Nobody else could have ridden as you did today. No other horse could have run so fast. I scarcely believed my eyes, Steve. I stood there stunned, forgetting everything but the sheer beauty of it.\"\n\nSteve said nothing. Perhaps later he would see the beauty of it, too. But not now. Nothing was real except that they had won. He wanted only to be back in Blue Valley.\n\nThe truck went faster once they were outside the park. Steve steadied Flame, but did not tell Jay to slow down. After a long while the man said, \"I do wish I didn't have to rush things so. The post-race ceremonies would have been a lot of fun, Steve.\"\n\nSteve remained silent.\n\n\"And the purse, that fifty thousand dollars... I wish I could make it up to you. But I can't, Steve. I just can't afford that much. Maybe you can claim the money later?\"\n\nNo, he'd never claim the purse at the risk of losing something which to him was so much more valuable than money. \"It's not important,\" he told Jay.\n\n\"A nice way to look at it, but not very practical,\" the man answered. \"However, it's strictly your decision to make. I just regret that we didn't have the time...\"\n\n\"I think it's better this way,\" Steve said. \"Hurry up, Jay.\"\n\nJay stepped more heavily on the accelerator. \"I guess you're right. Hold on now, Steve. We're outside Havana and I'm really going to run this motor over.\"\n\nCity noises were left behind but there still remained the roar of many cars following them.\n\n\"Who's behind us, Jay?\" Steve asked anxiously.\n\nThe man's gaze shifted to the side mirror. \"Probably newspaper men and photographers,\" Jay answered. \"At least I can see cameras in some of the open cars.\"\n\n\"They're not trying to stop us?\"\n\n\"No, just staying with us, Steve.\"\n\nFaster and faster went the truck. Steve steadied himself and Flame. Would they get back in time, if the big ship was to leave at sunset? He took a firm grip on the side rail as the floor heaved crazily beneath his feet.\n\nLess than an hour of the day remained when Jay swung the truck around a sharp turn and went down the dirt road which led past the house and shed. Flame was knocked off balance by the bumpy road and when his head struck the roof he snorted in fury and pain. Steve comforted him without asking Jay to slow down, for behind them he could hear the screech of many tires rounding the turn. Soon now they would be face to face with their pursuers.\n\nFinally the truck came to a stop, and when Jay lowered the tailgate Steve saw the taxicabs and cars parked behind.\n\n\"Bring him down as quickly as possible,\" Jay said. \"Time's growing very short, Steve, and as much as I'd like to...\" The newsmen surrounded him and he furiously pushed them away, his cane raised menacingly.\n\nThe newsmen fell back quickly but not because of Jay's threats of violence. They saw the blanketed red stallion come down the tailgate, his ears flat against his head and fire burning in his eyes at sight of them. Remembering all they had witnessed at the track, they made room for him. Where was this wild, unbroken stallion being taken? Stunned, they watched his small, meticulously dressed owner step from the road and start across an open field, closely followed by horse and rider.\n\nThey called to one another not to get too close to the horse, that he was being taken somewhere, and soon they'd know the answers to all their questions. Flash bulbs brightened the day as photographers stopped to take pictures of this weird chase of the winner of the International. The story that was unfolding would be far more interesting to their readers than the race itself! Knowing this, they were content to wait.\n\nThey entered a rather dense woods and, using the trees for protection against any possible attack by the red horse, drew a little closer. Finally they saw a clearing just beyond. They looked for a farm. Certainly the end of the chase had to be here!\n\nTheir steps slowed when they stepped into the clearing, for they did not like to leave the protection afforded them by the trees. They came to an abrupt stop when the small owner ceased running. They saw him turn to his horse and rider, then he waved his hand in the air... and there were those among them who said later that they heard a soft whirring noise at that moment. They didn't go any closer.\n\nFlashlight bulbs popped as the photographers took advantage of the few precious seconds in which to shoot pictures. When the barrage of light was over, the clearing was empty.\n\nFor a moment the newsmen stood in stunned, shocked silence. Then one of them walked forward, stopped in the middle of the clearing and continued on, finding nothing. The others turned to one another, still silent and unmoving, their eyes asking questions they could not ask aloud... and there were no answers.\n\nMiles upon miles above the clearing, Steve Duncan sat in the cruiser and was as silent as the newsmen they had left behind.\n\n\"Comfortable, Steve? I'm trying to give you as much room as possible after all your hard work.\"\n\n\"Yes, thanks.\" He saw the flaming backdrop of the sun out the window. He might have been sitting by himself in outer space, except that there was no rush of air, no ripping, sucking void, nothing but deathly quietness and finally the revolving heavens. They must be turning now.\n\nJay spoke again, his voice less grim than it had been below. \"I'll get back in time, Steve, just a matter of a minute or so now.\"\n\nSteve said nothing.\n\n\"I won't forget that race,\" Jay went on. \"I've never seen such speed!\"\n\nSteve remained silent, and finally Jay said, \"You're wondering why I should be so impressed by a horse's speed when we're traveling pretty fast right now, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am.\"\n\nThe man chuckled. But there was no laughter in his voice when he said, \"Don't envy our perfection of mass acceleration, Steve. Sure, there's no place in the universe we can't go, but actually you should feel sorry for us.\"\n\n\"Sorry?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"Sorry,\" Jay repeated. \"Perhaps your people won't make the same mistake we did, but most likely they will. We perfected so many startling things, Steve, that in our haste and eagerness to get on we left behind something pretty valuable in itself. You have one of them standing right beside you.\"\n\nThe heavens began to move faster and Steve knew they had begun their descent. \"Flame?\" he asked. \"Are horses what you mean, Jay?\"\n\n\"Not only horses, Steve,\" Jay answered quietly, \"but _all_ animals.\"\n\nSteve saw the Caribbean Sea rushing to meet them, then the glowing patch on the water, even before he could make out Azul Island.\n\n\"We're not the same without animals,\" Jay continued, \"although many of us are inclined to think so; Flick is one. Oh, it's not what you may think of as my selfish interest in the race horse that prompts me to say this. For generation upon generation I've seen what's happening to our young people. They need animals desperately.\"\n\nSteve felt Jay's hand on his arm. \"Don't envy us our ships of metal, Steve. Your love for Flame and his love for you go far beyond anything that we have to offer our young people. Young hands such as yours that can calm a frightened animal are the beginning of better worlds for all of us. It's love without selfishness, and by achieving such a state you and your people are well on your way. I earnestly hope that you'll never go astray as we did, traveling the bright, gay avenues that consist only of material things.\"\n\n\"Will I see you again?\" Steve asked.\n\n\"I don't know, Steve. It will be a long, long time, if I do return.\"\n\n\"In your time or mine, Jay?\"\n\n\"Yours, of course, Steve. It won't be long for me. You wouldn't even notice any change in me. But you...\"\n\n\"Yes, Jay? Will I be an old man?\"\n\n\"Pretty old, Steve,\" Jay replied quietly.\n\nAzul Island had emerged from the sea, a speck, a dot, then the walls of Blue Valley enveloped them. As Steve's body swayed, Jay spoke. \"It's just as easy for me to drop you off here, Steve. You've had a hard day, and I'll see that your launch gets back. I still have time for that.\"\n\nAll was quiet again. Steve felt Jay's hand on his arm, helping him to his feet.\n\n\"Out with you now,\" Jay said with feigned lightness. \"We must part for a little while.\"\n\n_\"A little while, Jay? It won't be a little while at all. It'll be a long time... a long, long time!\"_\n\n\"You're tired and upset, Steve,\" Jay's voice came from a great distance. \"I've asked too much of you these last few days. You'd better rest. Here's a good spot. Stretch out now. Take it nice and easy, Steve. That's it, go to sleep now... go to sleep....\"\n\n# ... AND THE BEGINNING\n\n20\n\nSteve Duncan opened his eyes to find his hands clasped beneath his head while he lay on the ground. A long blade of succulent grass was between his lips and he removed it, wondering when he'd put it there. The waterfall droned behind him and some of the mares nickered. Foals answered in high-pitched, wavering neighs.\n\nHe looked at the sky. It was well past sunset but the brilliant afterglow still colored the clouds.\n\nJay and his friends would be gone by now. Steve sat up, turning again to the sky, wishing he could have seen their ship rise from this world. But then Jay had said it glowed only when landing. So even if he'd stayed awake he wouldn't have seen it.\n\nGetting to his feet, he found Flame with the band. His horse wore neither the red blanket nor the bridle, so Jay had taken those with him. Disappointment flared in Steve's eyes, for he would have liked to keep the hackamore. Then Jay would have been with him always, regardless of the light years and endless space which separated them.\n\nHe called to Flame, wanting to make certain his horse had suffered no injuries from the race and trip. There was no sign of lameness or injury in the stallion when Flame came to him at a fast walk. In fact Flame looked so fresh and eager that it seemed to Steve he could have raced again, at that very moment, with no trouble at all.\n\nSteve walked around his horse, finding no caked dirt or mud from the track on the red body. He picked up the oval-shaped hoofs and found them clean also. Quickly he went to Flame's right side again, searching for evidence of the long burn from the outer rail. Here too he was disappointed, finding nothing but the jagged scars he had known before.\n\n_Flame looked as if... yes, he looked as if he had not raced at all!_\n\nSteve turned quickly away from Flame, and the first light of uncertainty appeared in his eyes. He climbed the trail as fast as his legs would carry him, stopping only at the ledge to grab a flashlight and go on. Upon reaching the tunnel he went inside, his strides coming faster than he'd ever traveled the underground world. Finally he reached the slits in the far western wall of Azul Island. He looked hard and long, searching but finding nothing except the flat, still surface of the Caribbean Sea. He rushed headlong through the tunnels again, telling himself that he hadn't really expected to find the white patch on the water. The big ship had left at sunset.\n\nWhen he arrived back at the ledge he went first to the box in which he kept the empty food tins before burying them. But once there he turned quickly away, telling himself there was no way of gauging if the box was any more full than when he had left with Pitch for Antago. Burying the cans was one of the jobs he had meant to do immediately upon his return.\n\nWhen _had_ he returned... days ago?... or an hour ago? He remembered stretching out on the grass, looking up at the sky that was so spotted with small, fleecy clouds. He hadn't wanted to fall asleep. But had he slept after all? Was this the very same day? Were Jay and Flick and their ship nothing but a fantastic dream that had included racing Flame?\n\nHe moved quickly to the rear of the cave to get Pitch's can of tea. He looked at it, wondering exactly how much tea Pitch had left there. Jay and Flick had liked their tea strong, so he must have used a lot. Or had he? There was no way of being sure.\n\nThe can dropped from his hands and he ran down the trail, calling to Flame at the top of his voice. The stallion came from the nearby pool at his call, and Steve mounted him quickly. Then he rode down the valley, feeling the surge of muscles that carried him along at greater and greater speed. Flame could _not_ have raced only a few hours before and go so fast now! A numbness swept over Steve, yet he continued taking his horse through the marsh and gorge and finally across the smaller valley.\n\nHe slid down from Flame's back at the entrance leading to the sea chamber and ran inside. Reaching the chamber he stopped abruptly when he saw the launch gently rocking in the waters of the canal. But then, he had expected to find it there. Jay had said he would return it. He moved forward slowly, his eyes on the ropes that held the _Sea Queen_ to the wooden pilings. Here he would have his final answer, for no one tied knots exactly the way he did. If Jay had returned the launch, the knots would be different.\n\nSteve went from one rope to the next, examining each a long, long time. Finally in a dazed stupor he left the chamber and returned to Flame.\n\nNight had come to Azul Island. Yet Steve made no attempt to mount his horse. He merely stood beside him, looking up at the stars.\n\n_It was the same day, the very day he had told himself to stop daydreaming of racing Flame. He had gone to sleep, to dream the most fantastic dream of all!_\n\nSuddenly he laughed at the thought of how ridiculous he had been to think it might be true.\n\n\"Come on, Flame,\" he said sadly. \"Let's go back.\"\n\nHe rode at a slow gallop, his eyes turning often to the night sky as the stars grew in number, millions upon millions, and millions more. Yet Jay had said they were nothing compared to what lay beyond.\n\n\"What a very silly person I am, Flame,\" Steve said, \"to keep thinking about a man I made up in a dream.\"\n\nFlame tossed his head and snorted as if in complete agreement. Steve grinned and sent the red stallion into a hard run, for what he had in reality was far better than anything a dream could offer.\n\n# EPILOGUE\n\nIn the Reading Room of the New York Public Library a thin, wiry man removed his steel-rimmed glasses and softly pressed his eyeballs to help relieve the strain of a long day of research. Finally he looked around the large, quiet room and rose to his feet, closing his books and picking up his notes. He went to the desk in the center of the room, very careful to keep from rustling his papers so as not to disturb the other readers.\n\n\"I didn't quite finish today, Ray,\" he told the young man behind the desk, \"so I'll take this one home.\"\n\nThe librarian smiled and said, \"You've said that every day for the past week, Mr. Pitcher. Why don't you see something of New York tonight instead of working?\"\n\nThe man called Pitcher met the librarian's smile with grave seriousness. \"I couldn't find anything so fascinating as this,\" he said, gesturing toward the book. \"And I wish you'd stop calling me Mr. Pitcher, Ray. It's _Pitch_.\" He laughed. \"I don't answer to anything else, and we've known each other a whole week.\"\n\nThe librarian pushed the book across the desk. \"All right, _Pitch_. See you tomorrow then.\"\n\nPitch left the room and went down the winding marble steps without waiting for the elevator. He held the book close to his thin chest thinking how little Ray must know about Spanish-American history to believe _anything_ in New York could be as interesting. Why, nothing could be so exciting as reading about those Spanish conquests! There was no doubt that the Spaniards had used Azul Island as a supply base. He'd found that out for sure. Oh, he'd have a lot to tell Steve, all right. He was being very well rewarded for this long trip.\n\nOutside the library he paused on the steps, almost frightened by the scurrying horde of people on their way home from work. He was finding it difficult to get used to all this confusion and rush after his life on Antago and with Steve in Blue Valley.\n\nHe watched the seemingly endless crowd at the newsstand below as commuters picked up their evening papers and then disappeared into the subway entrance with scarcely a pause. He held his book a little closer.\n\nHe passed the stand with no intention of buying a paper. But suddenly he was being pushed by the mob and he found himself directly in front of the stand. A folded newspaper was thrust in his hand.\n\n\"I don't want it,\" he said politely.\n\nThe newsman continued handing out papers, but his eyes kept shifting back to the customer who hadn't paid. \"Come on. Come on,\" he said impatiently. \"Evenin' papers... _Journal, Post, Telly_... Here y'are... C'mon, Mister, pay up... Papers, get your evenin' papers... _Journal, Post_...\"\n\nAfraid that he might be jostled again and that his glasses might fall off and break if he remained in front of the crowded stand any longer, Pitch paid for the newspaper and allowed himself to be pushed to the sidewalk. There he safely avoided the subway entrance and walked quickly down the street to the nearest public waste receptacle. He began to stuff the newspaper inside.\n\nSuddenly he stopped, his attention caught by the front-page picture of a horse and rider. For a long while he just stared at it in dazed bewilderment, then he withdrew the paper and unfolded it.\n\nThe caption beneath the picture read:\n\nFifty-thousand-dollar purse still unclaimed by the owner of winning horse in yesterday's International Race at Havana, Cuba. Mystery deepens as newsmen state that horse, rider and owner disappeared before their eyes in an open clearing during chase immediately following the race. Equally astounding is that no racing association has the registration of a horse named Flame, yet he defeated eight of the world's best! Who is this horse? Where is he?\n\nUp the crowded street Pitch ran, talking aloud to himself, yet no one paid him the slightest attention.\n\n_\"It's Steve's Flame,\"_ he said. _\"There's no mistake about that. So it has to be Steve riding him. But what has the boy done to his face? How on earth did he and Flame ever get to Cuba? What's going on back in Blue Valley? Steve, Steve_ , _what in the world has happened? Who is that small man standing beside you?\"_\n\nPitch turned into the airlines terminal, carrying only the day's newspaper, for his book on the past had been dropped and forgotten long minutes before.\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nWalter Farley's love for horses began when he was a small boy living in Syracuse, New York, and continued as he grew up in New York City, where his family moved. Unlike most city children, he was able to fulfill this love through an uncle who was a professional horseman. Young Walter spent much of his time with this uncle, learning about the different kinds of horse training and the people associated with them.\n\nWalter Farley began to write his first book, _The Black Stallion_ , while he was a student at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School and Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. He eventually finished it, and it was published in 1941 while he was still an undergraduate at Columbia University.\n\nThe appearance of _The Black Stallion_ brought such an enthusiastic response from young readers that Mr. Farley went on to create more stories about the Black, and about other horses as well. In his life he wrote a total of thirty-four books, including _Man o' War_ , the story of America's greatest thoroughbred, and two photographic storybooks based on the two Black Stallion movies. His books have been enormously popular in the United States and have been published in twenty-one foreign countries.\n\nMr. Farley and his wife, Rosemary, had four children, whom they raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and at a beach house in Florida. Horses, dogs and cats were always a part of the household.\n\nIn 1989 Mr. Farley was honored by his hometown library in Venice, Florida, which established the Walter Farley Literary Landmark in its children's wing. Mr. Farley died in October 1989, shortly before the publication of _The Young Black Stallion_ , the twenty-first book in the Black Stallion series. Mr. Farley co-authored _The Young Black Stallion_ with his son, Steven.\n**THE EXCITING TALE \nOF HOW STEVE MET FLAME**\n\nSteve Duncan had a haunting vision of finding a magnificent red stallion... and finally discovered him in a hidden island paradise. But the giant horse was wild and unapproachable. Then Steve saved Flame from a horrible death, and a miraculous friendship began\u2014changing _both_ their lives forever.\n**A THRILLING SAGA OF DANGER \nON AZUL ISLAND**\n\nFlame faces a vicious new enemy! The giant red stallion is used to fighting horses\u2014his leadership of the wild band on the remote island has been tested again and again. But never before has he been threatened by people. Now a greedy and violent man is coming after the unwary stallion... determined to break his body _and_ his spirit!\n**TWO GREAT HORSES \nMEET FOR THE FIRST TIME!**\n\nWhen their plane crashes in the Caribbean Sea, Alec and the Black are swept apart. The exhausted stallion is carried by the currents to a remote island. There he finds a herd of wild horses ruled by the giant red stallion Flame. But before the Black and Flame can determine which is the dominant male, they must fight a rabid vampire bat intent on destroying the entire herd.\n**FLAME WILL GIVE THE BLACK \nTHE RACE OF A LIFETIME!**\n\nSteve Duncan has claimed that his horse, Flame, is faster than the Black. And when Flame and the Black had their first run together, Alec had to admit that the Black might have met his match. Now that the two stallions are meeting in a major race, the whole _world_ wonders if the Black can hold his own against the upstart challenger....\n**DON'T FORGET THE STORY \nTHAT BEGAN IT ALL....**\n\nAlec Ramsay first saw the Black Stallion when his ship docked at a small Arabian port on the Red Sea. Little did he dream then that the magnificent wild horse was destined to play an important part in his young life; that the strange understanding that grew between them would lead through untold dangers to high adventure in America.\n**AN EXCITING RACING STORY \nWITH THE BLACK'S OLDEST FILLY**\n\nCan a filly win the Kentucky Derby? That's what Henry Dailey hopes when he buys the Black Stallion's filly. But Black Minx has a mind of her own. Her desire to go fast is great, but so strongly does she resist training that Alec and Henry have to trick her into running! As they bring her to Churchill Downs for the great race, they wonder if she truly is up to the challenge.\n**NO ONE CAN WRITE A RACING ADVENTURE \nLIKE WALTER FARLEY**.\n\nWhen Hopeful Farm burns down, Alec Ramsay's dreams for the future go up in smoke. To make matters worse, a strong young colt named Eclipse is threatening to replace the Black in the hearts of racing fans. The Black is getting older, and no one believes that he could win again. No one, that is, but Henry Dailey. Against all odds, Henry and Alec create a sensation as they bring the Black back to the track\u2014and the crowd knows that they are about to watch the race of the century!\n**HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW \nABOUT HARNESS RACING? \nMEET A NEW HERO, AND A FASCINATING SPORT!**\n\nYoung Tom Messenger has been taking care of Bonfire, the second son of the famous Black Stallion, since his birth. Tom has earned the trust of Jimmy Creech, the veteran driver who owns Bonfire, and Tom is eager to work with the young colt, building his strength and endurance. But suddenly Jimmy's health takes a bad turn and Tom must take the reins himself. The horse is a natural, but Tom doesn't know the first thing about harness racing. And he'd better learn fast....\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}