I should apologize for being delighted to tell the story I am about to tell.
Should. Can't!
One hundred years ago, a lawsuit filed by Mrs. Joseph A. Meyer came to trial in Chancery Court at Little Rock. The complaint involved her husband, Captain Meyer, and Mrs. G.H. Walker, alias Mrs. James C. Smith, alias Miss W.A. Meyer.
Mrs. Meyer — Annie Meyer — we can call her Annie because the Arkansas Democrat let slip one time that she had a given name — said the two of them had perpetrated a fraud against her. They used her money to buy a blue Paige car for Mrs. Walker. They had gone motoring in it around town, together. She wanted the car.
Lookie-loos gathered in the courtroom to watch the scene unfold.
The captain was in charge of Camp Pike's Army school for cooks and bakers, Bakery Company 22. He had 20 years of active duty service. The Arkansas Gazette described his manner as an "abrupt military tone, much in the manner of one giving commands."
Mrs. Walker, a tall, willowly, dashing young woman with bronze hair, sat with folded hands at the other end of the table. Her only movement was an occasional nervous quiver of the eyelids and catching of the breath. Mrs. Walker was very quietly dressed in a midnight blue suit, with black hat and veil, and black satin slippers.
Annie Meyer, a little woman — "who wears glasses" — sat at one end of the table in front of the witness stand, occasionally nodding her head in confirmation of her husband's statements and always swinging one foot.
The captain testified that when men of his company had introduced him to Mrs. Walker in the summer, she represented herself as a woman of means with houses in Memphis and a farm in Tennessee.
One day in July 1918, she visited him at camp with Little Rock's Paige dealer, Frank L. Reed. She asked her friend Meyer for help buying a $2,100 car, saying her monthly allowance had not yet arrived. Her trade-in would cover $750; she needed to put down $400 in cash and the rest in promissory notes.
The captain said he gave her $400 in cash and a check then and there, but he signed the notes with her later, at 4:30 p.m.
"You had known Mrs. Walker more or less intimately for about a month?" Gordon Huffmaster, one of Mrs. Meyer's attorneys, asked Captain Meyer.
"Yes, quite intimately," replied Captain Meyer laconically.
And then later that same night, he said, he had found himself in a compromising position with "that one" in one of the leading hotels of the city.
Three days later, he said, "that woman" demanded he pay off the notes at once or she would turn him over to the government.
"She sneered at me. It was because of her threats that I paid $300 more to her and that she and I went to my wife at our home at 909 Louisiana street, and I finally induced my wife to give us $650, $100 in cash, the balance a check payable to the Paige company. My wife was to receive a mortgage on the car."
Annie Meyer insisted he lock the notes and the mortgage in his safe at Camp Pike.
In August, he and a noncommissioned officer drove to Memphis with Walker in her blue car. His wife heard about it and beat them to Memphis by train. She jumped on the running board of the automobile on Main Street in Memphis.
There was "a scene" between the two women at a hotel. Mrs. Walker soon left, and he and Annie returned to Little Rock on the next train.
A few days after that, he said, came a long-distance phone call from Memphis — Mrs. Walker threatening him with a blind but scandalous clipping from a newspaper. Blind because it named no names — but everyone, she said, knew it was about him:
"There resided in Memphis a certain woman known to many men, including the police. But her stately manner and pretty face did not betoken the manner of life she lived. She hied herself to Little Rock, where the youth of the land garbed in khaki are assembled."
There she came to ruin.
He left at once for Memphis, taking the notes and the mortgage. Mrs. Walker drove him to a house where they collected her aunt and then drove to a remote corner of Memphis along the river. He handed over the mortgage in exchange for the clipping.
But then — but then! — he continued his friendship with Mrs. Walker. Until Jan. 1.
"That woman got the best part of $2,700 from me," said Captain Meyer passionately. "I thought that by keeping touch with her I might get some of my money back."
"Did you not get value received?" asked M.E. Dunaway, Mrs. Walker's attorney ironically.
"No, I don't think I did," answered Captain Meyer.
When Mr. Dunaway suggested that Mrs. Walker had repaid him some of the money, Captain Meyer thundered:
"No! Never! That woman never returned a red cent!"
He said he was just returning to his wife's good graces when he learned she had sued him. He had married Annie in September 1914 and then married her again in 1918 because there had been some question about the legality of her divorce from an earlier husband in 1914.
This case was not before a jury; Chancellor John E. Martineau ruled in favor of Annie Meyer.
But the saga of the captain and Mrs. Walker did not end there. Other charges were pending against her and against one Ike Hanf — selling bootleg whiskey at Camp Pike, immorality, distributing liquor without paying a special tax.
She was out of jail on $2,000 bond, paid in part by Mayor Simon Bloom of Pine Bluff; but he said he would not remain her bondsman if she was held to the grand jury.
The case had become notorious.
A WORD
The dictionary tells me the word "notorious" arose from medieval Latin in the 1540s, and it meant publicly known, well known, generally known. It built upon the Latin word "notus," meaning "known."
The dictionary also says "notorious" gained its negative connotations in the 17th century, through association with derogatory nouns; but I have seen it associated with derogatory adjectives as well. For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary cites a passage from a 1609 Ben Jonson play in which "notorious" associates with "stinkardly."
Mrs. Walker's attorney Dunaway protested to the Democrat that she was not the "vampire" portrayed in the press. Her father had arrived from Memphis and her husband was on his way. Her father was a railroad engineer and the husband, Sgt. G.H. Walker, had just returned from duty overseas.
Not surprisingly, Judge Jacob Trieber's district courtroom was packed for Mrs. Walker's trial on the booze charges April 23.
Check back with Old News next Monday to read what the newspapers had to say about that trial, at which Mrs. Walker ... was acquitted!
Bet you didn't see that coming.
And here's another item I'm sure nobody sees or ever thought to see coming: I'm posting a link to a preview of next week's column online today.
In a first for Old News, you will be able to read future past news right now.
Email:
cstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 04/08/2019