The Trial of Lizzie Borden(31)
MONDAY, JUNE 5, 1893
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No spectators were allowed on the first day but crowds lingered around the courthouse nonetheless. Around 11:00 a.m., a ripple of excitement announced Lizzie Borden’s arrival: “a modest little carryall stopped at the door, from which alighted the heroine of the day.” She might have been arriving to Central Congregational Church, striding quickly to her seat in the dock as if it were her regular pew. For the occasion, she wore a black wool dress with a new black lace hat, accented by two blue rosettes and a small blue feather, and black gloves that were to be her unvarying accessory throughout the trial. The dress, trimmed with purple velvet at the cuffs and hem, “fitted her as perfectly as if she had been measured for it in Paris.” The hat alone was “a model for theatregoers.” Despite her new finery, the elegance of the ensemble was undercut by a large, “rather loud” enamel pansy pin at her throat.
Lizzie Borden herself was a bit of a disappointment. As Julian Ralph observed with apparent surprise: “She is, in truth, a very plain-looking old maid. She may be likened to a typical school marm, plain, practical and with a face that shows the deep lines of either care or habitual low spirits . . . There is nothing wicked [or] criminal, or hard in her features.”
“Every picture which has been made of this woman,” wrote Elizabeth Jordan, “either absurdly flatters her or grossly maligns her.” She explained: “Viewed fully in the face Lizzie Borden is plain to the point of homeliness . . . Viewed in profile, much of the unpleasantness of the woman’s face disappears. It becomes then rather a refined and sensitive face, which is not without womanly gentleness.” Popular reports transformed her into “a brawny, big, muscular, hard-faced, coarse-looking girl.” Ralph declared: “She is, in fact, neither large nor small, nor tall nor short, but is of the average build, and in demeanor is quiet, modest, and well bred.” More than that, there was, Ralph concluded, “about her that indefinable quality which we call ladyhood.” He admitted she was “far from good looking” and observed delicately that the “lower part of her countenance” was “greatly overweighted,” but he also rhapsodized about Lizzie’s “beautiful, fine, nut-brown hair, soft and glossy to a degree.” Elizabeth Jordan noticed that she tended her hair carefully, with a perfect curl in her bangs. Others were less kind, emphasizing the broadness of her face and her masculine jaw. One even noted her awkward gait, adding, “I could not be sure, but I strongly suspect she toes in.” All of the descriptions grappled with the disjuncture between the relative ordinariness of her physical appearance and the horror of the crime for which she was on trial.
But what was most striking was her extraordinary self-possession. Despite the scrutiny, she remained unruffled, the still center of the spectacle unfolding around her. At the direction of her counsel, Lizzie received no visitors the day before the trial so that she could rest before her impending ordeal. Whether or not she required this intervention, she walked confidently before the press gauntlet. “A most interesting study is this young lady from Fall River,” observed Joe Howard. “Lizzie Borden has a remarkable temperament and her control over herself is always voluntary; seldom does she lose the strong grasp she has upon the muscles of her entire person.” Julian Ralph concurred: “She behaved like a self-possessed girl, with all the grit that comes of American blood . . . She was modest, calm, and quiet and it was plain to see that she had complete mastery of herself, and could make her sensations and emotions invisible to an impertinent public.” Elizabeth Jordan questioned whether her self-possession arose from the “sheer force of an iron resolution or by a hopeless resignation to a malign fate.” Regardless, she characterized Lizzie Borden as “aloof as a Buddha in a temple.” Lizzie Borden herself objected to the popular image of her stoicism in an earlier interview. She explained to Kate McGuirk of the New York Recorder: “I never did reveal my feelings, and I cannot change my nature now . . . I have tried hard . . . to be brave and womanly through it all. I know I am innocent, and I have made up my mind that no matter what comes to me I will try to bear it bravely and make the best of it.”
Shortly afterward, she was joined by her legal team led by the Borden family lawyer and Fall River counselor, Andrew Jennings. Jennings, thought Julian Ralph, had “more energy than all the rest of the people in the courtroom.” He was followed by the expert trial lawyers he had recruited to bolster the defense: the urbane Boston lawyer Melvin O. Adams and the former governor George D. Robinson. Together, they were, as the Providence Journal put it, “a powerful triumvirate.”
Because of Pillsbury’s illness, Knowlton headed the prosecution. Perhaps it was only fitting that the task had fallen to Knowlton, the man who would succeed Pillsbury as attorney general. Knowlton threw himself into the task: “If he were a witch burner, or, possessed the spirit of one . . . he could not be more firm and unyielding than he is in his regard, and he has behind him the strong pressure of his big and powerful personality.” Indeed, Julian Ralph described him as “a veritable Cromwell, a round-headed powerful and bustling big man, built like a bull.” His impatience to begin was manifest immediately: he had come in and out of the courtroom several times before the arrival of the Borden team. His colleague District Attorney William Moody, whose appearance for the prosecution would be formally entered that day, was calmer but vigilant. They were not quite a Mutt and Jeff pairing: Knowlton did not tower over Moody but his muscular solidity seemed to dwarf his lithe colleague.