Hole in the Bruno Hauptmann Case Frank Pease Lindbergh Kidnapping 1936 Rare

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Hole in the Bruno Hauptmann Case Frank Pease Lindbergh Kidnapping 1936 Rare:
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The Hole in the Hauptmann Case? Major Frank Pease, 1936, 2nd Edition. An extremely rare anti-communist conspiracy theory involving the Lindbergh kidnapping and Pease\'s assertion that the communist GPU was somehow involved. Also included is a facsimile of Hauptmann\'s last letter to Governor of New Jersey. Major Frank Pease was president of the Hollywood Technical Director\'s Institute, an anti-communist activist organization during the 1920s and 1930s. His major claim to fame was his opposition to Sergei Eisenstein’s presence in America while the filmmaker was on contract with Paramount Studios. Due to Pease’s instigation, the Fish Committee (predecessor to the House UnAmerican Activities Council) investigated Eisenstein for contaminating American cinema with Communist propaganda.Excellent article about Pease by @JoshuaBluBuhs Frank Chester [Clymer] Pease as a Fortean Fran Pease in 1907, from To-Morrow. A Fortean who seems to have stepped out of the pages of James Ellroy’s Underworld USA Trilogy—and the anachronism of it is just part of the Fortean mystery.Well, that is, if he’s a Fortean at all. Gawd only knows. There are a surprising number of gaps in his biography: he’s qualifications as a Fortean isn’t the biggest—no, those big ones could be explained by the FBI, if they ever answered their mail—but it is the most relevant. Already I’ve spent way more time researching him than would seem necessary for someone who appears to be such a minor Fortean.Frank Chester—or Clyner—Pease was most likely born in September 1881, although it could have been 1879 or 1883, too. Perhaps he was born in Boston; perhaps in New York; perhaps somewhere else altogether. His parents may have been from Boston or New York, too, or possibly England. Maybe Pease didn’t know where he was born, or when, at all. September 1881 seems the most likely because it’s the date he gave when he first enlisted in the military and, if that’s true—if he was born just on this side of 1880—the difficulty finding him in the census is not too surprising. The 1890 census was destroyed by fire and, by 1900, he would have been old enough to leave home, making it hard to track him, and harder still to know who his parents were.Nonetheless, some of this mystery seems . . . self-created. There’s the various dates and birthplaces he gave to himself and his parents over the years. And there’s the lack of birth records. At one point, Pease claimed to have been born to a prominent Boston family; to be related to the Reverend Louis Pease, who in the 1850s helped to clean up New York’s notorious “Five Points.” Boston (as well as New York) have well-documented online birth records for the end of the nineteenth century, however, and I find no reference to a Frank Pease that could be him, which seems odd, particularly if his was a prominent family. The difficulty of tracking his actual birth is complicated because Pease was a surprisingly common surname in that era, and there were, indeed, a number of both Frank and Frank C. Pease’s wandering about America. (In fact, Boston in 1881 witnessed a Frank C. Pease murder his wife and unsuccessfully attempt suicide.) Mabelle Foster Abbot Pease, from newspaper reports in 1915. And yet . . . there may be a story. It is hypothetical, but worth considering. There was a census of school children in 1890s’ Pittsfield, MA. In 1892, Clymer C. Pease, born in Lenox on 6 September 1881 to William H., and living in Bradford, attended school; he was still there in 1894, now as C. Clymer—Chester?—though his birthdate was September 1882. (Everything else was the same.) The 1895 census dropped the initial C., and returned his birth year to 1881. There is a birth record for a Chester D. C. Pease, born to William H. and Eunice S. Pease in Lenox on 20 September _1883_. Could this be the same person? Maybe. There’s a William H. Pease, born in New York in 1832, who married Eunice S. Thompson in September of 1875. He was 43, she was 24. In 1880, they were living in Berkshire County, where he farmed; they were childless.The 1900 census had them in Pittsfield, still doing agricultural work. Eunice was said to have born two children, only one of whom was still living—our man, then? Again, the answer is maybe. The 1900 census does have an entry for a Chester C. Pease—Clymer—born in September 1881, and living in Concord, Middlesex county, Massachusetts about 140 miles away. This Chester was single, had been a bell boy, and was, as of 2 June 1900, a prisoner at the Massachusetts Reformatory. A background such as this one may prompt a man, upon release, to go by a slightly different name—same Frank Chester, even if (maybe because) it had been attached to a notorious murderer. As for the varying birthdates, that seems to have been a family tradition, since he was very young. Again, he may not have known exactly when he was born.Speculation aside, documentary evidence of Frank Chester Pease’s life is incontestable starting in 1902. On 30 April, he enlisted in the army, giving his place of birth as Boston, his age as 21 (which puts his birth closer to 1880). Five-foot eight-and-half inches tall, he was a draughtsman. Pease was a private in the hospital corps and shipped out to the Philippines. Three years later, he wad discharged wit an evaluation of “excellent.” At the time, America was involved in a brutal war there—Mark Twain famously excoriated the U.S. for its actions—but Pease re-enlisted in Cotaboto. He’d grown a bit—5’9” now—and his age was a bit different—at 24 years and 7 months, his birthdate was now placed in September 1881. Boston was still his hometown.In November of 1905, not quite eight months after he re-enlisted, Pease was discharged. He was again rated as “excellent”—but he’d been injured. According to later reports, he had voluntarily rushed forward to help injured soldier under fire and was hurt himself. He was sent to the Presidio in San Francisco, and ended up losing his right leg. Pease was recommended for “meritorious service,” but if he received an award, I have found no evidence of it. The later reports also mention that he was serving under General Leonard Wood, who at the time was governor of Moro Province, which was the sight of much fighting with Muslim insurgents from 1903-1906; presumably it was during one of these battles that Pease was injured.Recuperated, Pease made his home in Oakland, form which he started to make a name for himself as an author. The first published piece by him that I can find is “The Sentry: A Philippine Incident,” published in Harper’s Weekly 19 May 1906 (50: 708-709). It tells about an inattentive soldier killed by an insurgent. Pease may have also taken classes at the University of California. Early reports have him attending classes in sociology and economics—which makes sense, in light of his coming interests—while later reports call hum a graduate of the University, which seems unlikely given the timing of events. Pease met Jack London in the Spring of 1907, at a “beer bust,” just before London headed off on the snark. He was impressed by him as a physical specimen but, at least years later, was not quite as taken by London as a writer. (A few years later, London would come in contact with other Fortean writers, Kenneth MacNichol and Harry Leon Wilson, but it is unlikely these met Pease; the timing just doesn’t work.)During this Bay Area reverie—if not before—Pease became attracted to socialism; this is not entirely surprising, socialism being an attractive for many of the time as an answer to the ills of industrial capitalism. As early as September 1906, he was at a rally in from of Oakland’s Hall of Justice protesting for the freedom of members of the Western Federation of Miners, who had been accused of conspiring in the murder of a former governor of Idaho; the story in the San Francisco Chronicle said that Pease was the leader, and had also saleed off a rare French coin to raise money for the defense. A month later, the socialist rag “Appeal to Reason,” mentioned that he and a man named Andrew Saunders—both of Oakland—were preparing to publish “The Army and Navy Socialist.” (Saunders would go on to be arrested in May 1907—according to the San Francisco Call—for distributing socialist literature without a permit, and publish a call in “The Navy,” 1910, enjoining sailors to take up socialism.)At the beginning of 1907, Pease made plans for a world tour. He asked the Department of War for permission to wear his private’s uniform—the Department said there were no regulations against hm wearing it, though it would not offer official approval either. Pease’s plan was to visit the military camps of Europe, England, the Africa and study their personnel. (One imagines he hoped to proselytize a bit.) The articles about this plan were the ones to mention his prominent Boston family—his uncle Louis Pease, as well as another uncle, A. Thomas Chester, a sculptor. (Louis actually existed, though I’ve found no connection between him and Frank Chester; I have no information on A. Thomas Chester.) The article further noted that Pease had stirred up controversy in military circles with an article on army desertions, that called for a more democratic administration of the military—I have not found such an article—and was planning another controversial essay, “The Positive Decadence of Patriotism in America, Its Cause and Remedy,” (of which I have also seen no evidence).Pease’s world tour did not take him far, though. Going opposite future Fortean Kenneth Rexroth—who would come to San Francisco after experiencing Chicago’s literary renaissance—Pease made it to Chicago. And stopped. Apparently, he enrolled in classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was studying either sculpture—like his uncle—or line drawing—he had been a draughtsman, after all—or both. According to one report, he hoped to illustrate his own stories, in the manner of Jack London. Pease’s time in Chicago would be short—but fully packed.Apparently while in Chicago he connected with Parker H. Sercombe, a radical thinker—proponent of free love, alternative cures, socialism, and secular though—who edited the magazine “To-Morrow,” tagline, “For People Who Think.” Pease had a number of works—essays and poems—appear there in late1907: The poem “?” showcased his materialistic leanings, at least in philosophy and politics:“Whose was the hand which wring from emptiness This world of men?Whose was the hand that strung in endlessness The stars, and thenStruck—swift—shat’ring through the dark, the light From distant sun,And gave each finite cell the start, the might ITS race to run.Who set Eternity its never-ending task Of aimless life?Who set the brutal elements steadfast-- In futile strife,Against this course inexorable, and makes Construction,From the same source which it takes Destruction,Who from the awful, pristine silence wrought This subtle plan?Who through the early eocene has brought This foolish man;To have him worship fact of consciousness,Himself without,AND THEN—to hurl him back to nothingness-- In awful doubt?Another poem, “Arisen,” was a call to socialist arms: Midst the rumble and the grumbleOf the bloody profit-tumbril,As it grinds and crushesOn its way,Comes the steady, tramping, tramping,Of a million feet a-stamping:Heard a moment in the rushesOf the dollar making day.Surging forward to the battle,Hear the clanking and the rattleOf their fetters falling,Cast away:Mingled with the moaning, moaning,Of the multitudes a-groaning,‘Neath the burden of their galling,Ever-present slavery.Thrones in days gone by have trembledWhen these hosts have e’er assembled,And again they’re learningOf their might:Strength that’s ever growing, growing,Like a mighty stream a-flowing,Onward to its final turning,As WORKINGMEN UNITE.Two essays united his materialism and political philosophy. Pease argued that one of nature’s fundamental principles was the bringing together of units into groups—that cooperation was nature’s most important organizing principle. Humans had gotten this wrong, yielding the group to the dictates of kings and rulers, which brought about hatred, competition, race and class prejudices. Each individual was, indeed, different, he said, each one undergoing slightly different development from the others, but they needed to unite into a cooperative whole. It was time, he said, for humans to apply the fundamental principles of nature—organization into a democratic group—to humanity itself.Sercombe himself was not so sure that Pease was committed to the cause. In November, Sercombe organized a rally calling for the dissolution of personal property. A report in the “Chicago Daily Tribune” noted that Pease was among the strikers—a one-legged veteran no doubt would have caught the attention of the journalist, who apparently asked Sercombe about the unusual protester. According to the newspaper, “Sercombe said Pease didn’t have any special grouch—he was just misanthropic.”Which doesn’t seem fair, exactly, but does start to suggest that Pease was complicated, not easily pigeon-holed, which fits with his next, and most notorious exploit in Chicago. At some point, Pease, the art student and materialist, heard tell of a commune in Ingleside, Illinois, the so-called “Spirit Fruit Society.” It also preached the end of private property and cooperation but its leader, Jacob Beilhart, rejected materialism and seemed to expect that there was to be a spiritual revolution in the dawning. Pease went to Ingleside to study the commune and see if he could win a convert; he may also have been drawn by Miss Belle Norris, who had become a symbol of the commune, having rejected her conservative family some seven years before, when she was only nineteen. She was advertised as the “flower” of the community. According to news reports, Pease and Norris had known each other before, although it’s not clear how that is possible: Belle was born to John Norris and Elizabeth Norris in Wisconsin, the family having moved to Iowa by 1900, when Belle joined the commune.At any rate, Pease won over Belle—she rejected the dreamy philosophy of the commune for Pease’s materialism. The “San Francisco Call,” dated 5 December, quoted Pease triumphant: “To have rescued that beautiful girl from that bunch of dreamers I consider the best act of my career,’ said Pease. ‘She was roped in when only 19 years of age. It would drive an ordinary man insane to live a year with that man Beilharz and his everlasting metaphysical, philosophical, abstruse, absurd tommyrot.” The “Chicago Daily Tribune,” sounded a note similar to Sercombe’s” Pease was a materialist, but not so easily classified: he had “a philosophy all of his own.” Belle’s break with the commune led to a rapprochement with her family; and a fast engagement to Pease. They were married in Chicago on 13 December 1907.Apparently, they settled down to life in Chicago for a time, and tried to start a family. On 8 January 1909, Belle gave birth to Elisabeth Pease. But it didn’t last: there would be nothingness. There would be awful doubt. In June 1909, not yet six months old, Elisabeth died. The marriage did not survive the tragedy. In 1910, she was living as a boarder in Chicago, with a relative, also named Elizabeth. She was still listed as married; I cannot find her in the 1920 or 1930 census, but she shows up again in the 1940 census, divorced and living in New York doing merchandising research.According to one of the newspaper stories, Frank was planning to head to Washington, D.C. after liberating Belle. Obviously, that did not immediately happen. I cannot, however, find him in the 1910 census. If he did leave, though, he returned to Chicago, from where he continued to write, though his eyes were turning westward again. For a while he was associated with the ancho-communist Jay Fox, who was putting out “The Agitator,” from the Home Colony, in the state of Washington. Pease published, for example, “Necessity for the Modern School.” 1:23 (Oct. 15,1911); 2:1 (Nov. 15, 1911)—neither of which I have seen. As it happens, there was another Frank Pease also writing for the magazine, which may be why the Frank in question was using his middle name. After Fox was (inevitably) arrested, the Tacoma newspaper came out in support of him, and free speech, which prompted Pease, using a Chicago address, to send a letter commending the paper. He mused, “It seems as though the best in American journalism had or is migrating westward.” That was in January 1912.The following year, in August, Pease published a long essay in “The Forum,” declaring his revolutionary beliefs. Entitled “The I.W.W. and Revolution,” the essay began lightly mocking the radical ideal of a general progressive movement in society—an idea he had toyed with in his own earlier writing. He went on to note the diversity of agendas, Progressivism, revolutionary sentiment, new religions and cults, agitation against marital laws, arguments in favor of free love and women’s suffrage, prison reforms, muckraking in general. It seemed as though the world was getting better—but all of these movements were distractions from the one true revolution: the Marxist revolution that would end the wage system. Pease did not like those battling for a fair wage or any of the other reforms: they were comforting the powers-that-be. Capitalists could adapt to free love and voting women; they would still be in power. The only way to really change the world was to abolish private property—and only the I.W.W. had kept its eyes on the prize. It was the only organization fighting for genuine revolution.Pease followed up the essay with short stories. He published “The Rolling Stone,” in the same magazine two months later. Two years after that, he broke into H. L. Mencken’s “The Smart Set,” with three pieces in 1915: The Doctor’s Wife, a short story, in June; The Maysang’s Cargo, a short story, in October; and Fata Morgana, a vignette, in December. He also wrote for an issue of “Camera Work,” in July 1914, edited by Alfred Stieglitz. Pease was using the byline “Frank Pease”—no Chester—but the contributor’s notes make clear it is the same person: a soldier who had served in the Philippines, and a labor agitator. “Camera Work,” also noted that he lived in New York—going East before West. (“The Smart Set” was also publishing some the early work of the first Fortean, Ben Hecht.)New York is, it seems, where Pease met his second wife, the former Mabelle Foster Abbot. They were married no later than early December 1915, for it was on the third of that month that newspapers around the country reported on a lawsuit in which she was involved, noting both her former name and affiliations, and her new one, as well as the fact that her husband had served in the Philippines. Foster had been born in Plymouth, Ohio on 27 March 1888—making her nine or so years younger than Pease—and graduated from Radcliffe University in 1909 with honors in English. (She had served as the President of the English Club from 107 to 1909.) Interested in progressive politics—child labor, socialism, and the conservation movement—Abbott had heard tell of a letter that caused some embarrassment to the Department of the Interior, which made her famous, though the letter itself was never seen again. In December, already having married, she was suing the Interborough Railroad company for damages after a subway door had closed on her. Likely, it was a shared political philosophy as well as a love for writing that had drawn Mabelle and Frank together. In New York, though, Frank seems to have turned most of his attention to writing—the note in “Camera Work” had him a “former” labor agitator. In 1916, he had four more pieces published in “The Smart Set”: “A Plea for More Malice,” in February; “This is the Life,” April; “Ca Ira!,” July; and “Should a Pretty Woman Eat?,” also July. The “Plea” was a request for more Mercian skewering of fools; “The Life” showed a developing conservatism and acceptance of married life: the brief vignette told of a world-renowned suffragette who confronted a housewife, asking how it felt to lack freedom, only to get laughed at by the “Mere Woman.” “Pretty Woman,” is harder to parse. An essay, it seems to argue that pretty women should not eat—that they are to be an embroidered decoration, but there is the sense that Pease may be striving for satire—think “Modest Proposal”—but, if so, the effect falls flat. “Ca Ira,” was more satire: a fool answering the wise man’s question, “Why so foolish?,” with the apparently unanswerable “Why be so wise?” Again, though, the satire seems to fail, many obvious responses suggesting themselves. If Pease was taking his own advice to be more malicious, he wasn\'t quite as adept as Mencken himself.In 1917, he contributed another long essay, this one to the New York magazine “The Seven Arts.” This one was based on his impressions of Jack London, gleaned some decade before. Distance had clearly cooled him. Pease argued that London did not write literature—he wrote autobiography—and that was because he was not fully developed as an artist. He was trying too hard to make himself distinctive, acting too much the moralizer. True literature transcended autobiography and the limits of science and sociology—to which London hewed so tightly; literature needed culture, selection, and simplicity, none of which London exhibited. Better, Pease thought, for London to have been a man of action. He would have been a natural leader, his inmate superiority coming through. It was an interesting argument, downplaying the socialism and democracy that had motivated him earlier—allowing for natural hierarchies—and putting literature and the word above the materiality of the world: life, he said, should follow, not lead, literature.Over the next year, Pease deepened his artistic criticism. In October 1918, he praised the French illustrator Aubrey Beardsley in the pages of “The International Studio.” Beardsley, he said, injected an otherworldliness into art, and helped touring Decadence to America. He had the “courage of the frivolous” and offered “spiritual antidotes to the ordinary; something which should lift our faculties of appreciation, imagination and enjoyment out of the deadening ruts of realism”—which sounded nothing like his materialist or socialist writings of only a decade before. The next month, as the horrors of World War I finally came to a close, he published a sensitive reading of Conrad in “The Nation,” arguing for the synchronicity of character and setting in “Heart of Darkness.” Pease’s philosophical musings are even more complicated when set against his own Environment. By 1917, he had followed his own suggestion and headed West. When he registered for the Great War, on 12 September 1918, Pease and Mabelle were living in Port Townsend, Washington. (He gave his birthday as Sept. 21 18— and age as 37, meaning the blank should have been 81.) His eyes were still blue, his hair still brown, his height now the vague “medium,” the same as his build. Apparently, his writing days had stopped—or were nearly stopped—at least for a time. He had a new job, as Field Director of the Salvation Army—which meant he was a “Major.” It seems likely he was driven to this new career by the War, a voluntary way of helping the troops. But if so, the hiatus was short, and the 1920 census had the two renting a house in Seattle, where he was working as a magazine journalist. (For this census, he said that both of his parents had been born in England.) Mabelle was not working.Here, in Washington, where Jay Fox had been jailed, and where the IWW was very active, Pease was drawn back into labor agitation, even as his literary criticism drifted away from materialism. Sometime in late 1919 or early 1920—just as Fort’s “Book of the Damned” was published—Pease formed the “Private Soldiers and Sailors Legion.” As reported by the “Labor Journal” of Everett, Washington, the organization was open to all ex-service members below the level of commissioned officer—this was in opposition two the more conservative American Legion, which centered around officers. The goal was to bring about the democracy the had been promised by the War. Echoes of his plan to socialize the army and the navy while in the Bay Area. The Legion demanded a $500 bonus for veterans and land upon which they could build homes.In February, Pease presented his ideas in front of some labor groups. The paper reported he was a “fluent, rapid speaker and held the audience in rapt attention throughout his address.” His hope was to unite his group with the labor movement. Which sounds like a return to the socialism of a decade before, but also vitiated the points he had made in his 1913 essay about the I.W.W. He was not working for the overthrow of the wage system and the abolition of private property. He was angling to get veterans a better deal from the system as it was currently constituted. This was not revolution. Rather, he gave speeches on the evils of militarism and ran for state treasurer on the “Farm-Labor Ticket. (He lost badly.) In 1921, he copyrighted a play, “Lenin: A Drama of Revolution in Five Acts.” It would be fascinating to see, to understand his position at what proved to be a critical moment in his evolution, but I have only found references to it in catalogs of copyrights, nowhere else.We do have some insight into his more personal views at this time, though, thanks to a by-product of his activism: Pease was being spied on, as were many, many of the Washington labor activists. (At least) one report by a spy is preserved in the University of Washington archives. Roy John Kenner met with Pease on the last day of March, 1920. He claimed to be broke, but was still trying to organize his League and work with the Central Labor Council. Kenner saw an article Pease hoped to be published by the Associated Press—if it was, I’ve seen no evidence—that apostrophized his wayward country: America you have been generous to European nations; generous to capital, etc., during the war; now is the time to show your generosity toward ex-service men, and do it now or suffer the result.” (Another future Fortean, Kenneth MacNichol, who had been profoundly emotionally disturbed by the War was also trying to get the country to honor its vets.) Pease also showed Kenner a letter from Marvin Gates Sperry, the national leader of the Private Soldiers and Sailors Legion praising Pease for his organizing.All was not so copacetic with Pease, though, beyond his shaky financial situation. As his warning to America showed, he was feeling vengeful, threatening. Pease was upset at an official of the International Longshoreman’s Association for staying at a high-priced scab hotel—such people were “not worth the time and they should be lined up and shot,” he told Kennerly. He was also angry with Jewish people—surprising, in a way, given how many Jewish people were involved with socialism. According to Pease, “a Jew got away with five thousand dollars” which was supposed to be used to start a periodical for the Legion. For him, it was indicative of a much larger problem. Ominously, he told Kennelly, “The world would get sore one of these days and kill all the Jews.” It is worth noting that London, Mencken, Conrad, and Beardsley all treated Jews disparagingly, at times, in their various artworks.Eventually, it seems, Pease gave up on his organizing and returned to his literary career. I find no more references him in regards to radical politics after 1920, while his name did reappear in The Smart Set. In May 1922, it published his “The Nietzschean Follies”; December 1922, “The Goof”; May 1923, “The Old Man, or the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.” He may also have written about (another future Fortean) Havelock Ellis in a 1923 issue of “The Birth Control Review,” comparing him to St. George defeating the dragon of Evil Conscience—though this may not be the same man, given his biography calls him a Canadian. I have not seen the last of his “Smart Set” writings, a novelette. “The Goof” dealt with a Chinese man in America who was too fond of white women, an attraction that led to his death. There was more than a little fear of racial pollution animating the story. “The Nietzschean Follies” was the fifth in a series, begun earlier in the year by Thomas Beer and continued by various other authors. Pease wrote his as a series of epigrammatic paragraphs, 38 in all, dealing with everything from the existential to the practical—God’s existence to the necessity of manners in women. (It’s worth noting that in September and October of 1922, the future Charles Fort fan Benjamin de Casseres took over the series, and wrote in the same fragmented manner as Pease.) Among these aphorisms, one can see Pease’s further drift from radical politics. Thesis number 11 reads “Socialism is out of place in America, for what is America but Proletaria come into its own? A few parvenues do not make a ruling class, nor a few capitalists an aristocracy. What _are_ America’s capitalists but yesterday’s proletarians? It does not that sharp eyes to detect beneath the motley of America’s capitalists the folk—that immemorial foe to culture.”City directories have Frank and Mabelle in Seattle as late as 1922. After that, their story gets sketchy for five years. Later, Frank would recall that 1922 was the year he became a pamphleteer, putting out what he called propaganda via tracts and pamphlets—and many of the future Forteans would be pamphleteers of various sorts. Consider it an old form of blogging, or an updated version of what Peter Burke calls Chapbook Culture. I have seen no evidence of these pamphlets—not a surprise—but a review of their culture would be fascinating to see, as Pease would continue to revise his views, ending up far from the anarcho-socialism and radical politics of his earlier life. The next time I find him mentioned in official documents—or, any documents, really—was 1927, when he was admitted to a veteran’s home in Dayton, Ohio. He had bronchitis (and hemorrhoids, too). At the time, he claimed to be 44—moving his birthday to 1883—with eyes still blue and hair still brown. He was not as tall anymore, coming in only at 5’6.5”. When he was discharged, he went to meet his wife, then residing at the Hotel Mark Twain in Hollywood, California. They would remain there until 1930, and Pease would come to the public’s attention again.According to the 1930 census, the Peases rented a home on Sunset Boulevard. Mabel shaved a few years off her age, claiming only to be 34—which meant she was about fifteen when she married Frank. Frank put his birthdate as 1883, his parents New Yorkers. Mabel was not working. As it happens, they show up in the Salem, Massachusetts, city directory for 1930, too, suggesting that they moved that year. In Salem, they lived at 60 Front Street. By Mabelle’s name was the phrase “Hollywood Gardens,” the meaning of which is unclear, but may have something to do with Frank’s activities. He told the census taker he was a motion picture writer; he listed himself in the directory as a movie director; and press reports from the time call him a movie agent. Clearly, he was trying to present himself as a Hollywood mover-and-shaker.Which he was seen as, although not for any artistic work he was doing, but rather for his propagandizing. Around 1929—according to Pease’s own later account—he organized the “American Defenders,” which was open to white Gentiles interested in stopping communism in America; dues were a dollar a year, and members were to distribute Pease’s pamphlets—a long way, then, from agitating for labor and a revolution against private property. A long way from desiring a literature that allowed one to transcend national, racial, and autobiographical boundaries. Except that . . . maybe it wasn’t so long away. There was a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Pease was, for a time, running something called “The Motion Picture Characters Association” and trying to organize actors into a union. His anti-Semitism seems to have been the main driver of his changing views, eventually pulling along with it more extreme reactionary ideas.After his organizing attempt failed and he closed the “Characters Association,” Pease started a new group, “The Hollywood Technical Directors’ Institute,” which seems to have been hardly more than him and perhaps Mabelle, and used it as a cudgel in a widening culture war. When Universal Studios brought out “All Quiet on the Western Front”—an adaptation of the novel—in 1930, Pease, now going as “Major Frank Pease”—the Major from his Salvation Army Days—and his Institute attacked it as “brazen propaganda” that “undermines beliefs in the army and authority”—that was certainly a change from his days trying to make the army more democratic. (That the movie’s director was of Jewish heritage may have had something to do with Pease’s objection.) About the same time, he attacked Paramount and (Jewish) producer Jesse Lasky for inviting Russian director Sergei Eisenstein to America. As it happened, Eisenstein had trouble finding a suitable project in America, and, at least according to one historian, it’s likely that Pease’s objections were a convenient excuse for his leaving. Maybe inspired in part by Pease, Hamilton Fish, a notorious red-baited, brought his House Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities to Los Angeles in 1930—Pease was there to give evidence—but the report was not so much concerned with Eisenstein, or Hollywood’s communism, as the spread of Soviet-made propaganda films to America—indeed, Hamilton doubted the power of American communists to foment revolution at all. Nonetheless, Pease’s letter on Eisenstein was excoriating and, failure or success, it brings no glory to him. His letter, which was released publicly, illustrates how strong and animating was his anti-Semitism: “If your Jewish clergy and scholars haven’t enough courage to tell you and you yourself haven’t enough brains to know better, or enough loyalty to this land which has given you more than you ever had i history, the prevent your importing a cut-throat red-dog like Eisenstein, then let me inform you hat we are bending every effort to have him deported. We want no more Red propagandists in our country.“What are you trying to do, turn the American cinema into a Communist cesspool? Remember, America s a harbor and asylum, the refuge of the ages for the Hebrew, a land where there has never been a pogrom, a land where never a Jew has been killed because he was a Jew—a land that has no Pale, a land where worthy, intelligent and characterful Jews are as respected and honored as all other men.“Your unspeakable crime in importing Eisenstein should be as much resented and resisted by decent Jewish-Americans as it will be by all the other loyal Americans. It won’t take any Samson to pull down the Bolshevik ample you are starting, and a this rate it won’t be long now. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.MAJOR FRANK PEASE.”In short, nice life you Jews have there. It’d be a shame if anyone started systematically you. The reference to to Daniel 5, and the Writing on the Wall, was meant to suggest the Jewish people of America were bringing the coming problems on themselves.After what seemed to be a win against Eisenstein—the director wasn’t deported, but left for Mexico—Pease apparently decided on that trip he had put off so many years ago; perhaps that was why he was in Salem in 1930, easier access to Eastern ports. The next mention I find of him is at the end of 1931, with U.S. newspapers carrying a report from the “Paris Herold.” Pease claimed that he had been drugged and robbed of $1,000. (One report added that he was an “ex-diplomat,” evidence for which I have not seen.) Two years later, American papers reported that Great Britain was trying to deport him for spreading anti-communist propaganda, but he refused. There are some reports, though, that he was actually deported; the evidence to this point is ambiguous. He finally left Europe altogether on 31 January 1934, aboard the “Black Gull,” which departed from Antwerp, and arrived in New York on 11 February. At the time, he was going by the name Frank _Clymer_ Pease.Just after he returned, Pease opened up his American Defender group—and its press—on 221 Centre Street, New York, and published “What I Learned in Nazi Germany.” A booklet—less than 60 pages long, the exact length is reported differently by different libraries, and I have not seen it—Pease’s interpretation of German fascism opened with a foreword from Charles Fort’s old friend Benjamin de Casseres. Press reports on the work make clear that while Pease could be vitriolic in his anti-Semitism, he was no fan of Hitler or Nazi Germany. The Nazis, he said, were a refuge for communists, who masqueraded as Brown Shirts, and they were sure to bring upon another World War. Anti-Americanism was particularly acute: he and Mabelle were attacked, he said, and American diplomats merely shrugged it off. “The Vaterland,” Pease wrote, “itself is a country of overgrown kindergartners who look upon the nations around them as but blocks to play with–never mind the blood, and damn the consequences. Germans have more intellectual intolerance than any other tribe on earth. They are of the fearful breed which is ‘always right.’ Their very sneers are ex cathedra.”That work done, Pease submitted it to the U.S. Congress as evidence, then went on to other topics—in particular, he was excited by the famous kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby. (Later he would claim to have started pamphleteering on the topic in 1932, but this dating seems unlikely.) His work would culminate in the 1936 booklet—about the same size as his Nazi investigation—“The ‘Hole’ in the Hauptmann Case—which I also have not seen. (It’s very rare.) Reports suggest that the man eventually convicted of the crime, Richard Hauptmann, was only a fall guy in a vaster conspiracy that included Lindbergh himself and may have been coordinated by the Soviet Union. His old friend from the Smart Set, H.L. Mencken, increasingly becoming a crank himself, wrote to say that Pease’s theory was plausible and that Lindbergh’s testimony had been embarrassingly strange.Pease had other opinions about how the world was going to Hell in a hand basket, thanks to the Jews and the communists. Many others. And even a possible solution. When Harvard proposed giving an honorary degree to Hitler’s one-time confidante Ernst F. S. Hanfstaengl, Pease sent a letter—apparently using a fake New York address—to the press repeating the claims from his booklets that Nazi Germany was a communist operation. In 1935, he convinced Randolph Hears to fire journalist Emile Gavreau of the “Daily Mirror” because of his pro-Soviet sympathies. That same year, he put out another booklet, “Pole to Panama,” arguing that American capitalism could be saved if the country whose so imperialize all of North and Central America. H. Allen Smith—the journalist who met Fort and learned to distrust supposedly smart men because he saw so many flocking around Fort, when he himself realized Fort was a flake—reviewed it in his national column, “Bound to be Read”: “An appeal for America imperialism and a defense of American capitalism’ in which Major Pease loudly and positively affirms that the remedy for America’s ills is simply that the U.S.A. should rule from the Pole (North) to Panama. Imperialists and capitalists will be embarrassed by the Major’s plans, we think, since he assigns the working out of all the details to this expansion.” The booklet was put out by Robert Speller, Inc, of New York, so was the only (?) one of his pamphlets not to be self-published.That Pease found a publisher for his work suggests the though he was moving toward the fringe, he had not set himself up outside of mainstream discourse—was only balanced on its edge. One the hand hand, in 1937 “The New Yorker,” ran examples of the Thanksgiving cards he and Mabelle sent out, promising their patriotism and anti-communism. The essay—described, oddly, as fiction (I have not seen it)—was titled “O’er the Ramparts They Watch,” and ran under Mabelle’s byline. On the other, in March 1938, Brooklyn Representative Eugene J. Keogh—acting on information generated by the D.A.—claimed that the “American Defenders” was trying to recruit an armed force in the borough to begin a campaign of “progroms” in Brooklyn. He demanded that the FBI investigate.By this point, Pease himself had left New York—one thing that had been constant throughout his shifting life was that he had itchy feet—and settled in Coral Gables, Florida: and just as his philosophy would settle, so would he and Mabelle, staying here for the rest of their lives. Back in new York, The American Legion promised to form a “Law and Order Committee” against the Defenders—which may have harkened back to Pease’s break with the Legion almost two decades earlier. Meanwhile, in Coral Gables—now home of the American Defenders, Keogh said—the city manager declaimed any knowledge of the group. As it happened, J. Edgar Hoover was in Miami at just that moment—but his visit had nothing to do with Keogh’s demands—and the FBI Agent in charge of the region was—sources vary—either out of town or said he had not been told to investigate.“The Miami News” saw no reason to wait for the FBI and had a reporter out to talk with Pease the very next day. Pease and Mabelle were then living ins a small bungalow at 814 Milan Ave. “Several rooms [were] crowded with shelves of books and tracts, files and correspondence, mimeograph machines and typewriters.” Pease, claiming to be the “American Defenders” “Commander-in-Chief” admitted that he enjoyed the publicity—which is no doubt why he chose such a provocative title. As for arming his members—that was needed to protect the country in case of a revolution. Pease had come full circle, from demanding revolution to preparing a defense against one. Along these lines, he published in April 1939 “Technicians of Revolution,” which diagnosed communist tactics for overthrowing the state. (I have not read it.)Presumably, the FBI has a file on Pease, and it would be enlightening to read. The file on (Fortean) Lilith Lorraine helped to corroborate bits of her dramatic and tortuous biography, and the same would like be true here—it is hard to imagine that Pease had not come to the attention of the Bureau long before Keogh’s demands. Under the Freedom of Information Act, I requested a copy of Pease’s file on 8 April of this year. The FBI was acknowledged that it has found material responsive to the request, but it still awaits review by a government information specialist some seven months later. That’s a lot of foot-dragging.I do not have very much more information on the Peases. In the late 1930s, Pease was associated with William Gregg Blanchard’s “Nation and Race,” in which he claimed to be a friend to the Jewish race but nonetheless continued to spew anti-Semitic rhetoric. (Apparently his friendliness was of the sort he had expressed earlier: he was pointing out the many faults of the Jewish people that led others to hate them, so that they could see the writing on the wall and reform. How serious that pose was meant to be taken is a mater of conjecture.) “Nation and Race” did not last very long, though. In 1944 and 1950 Mabelle was listed among those running private schools, something called “The Radcliffe Club at Coral Gables. Pease died in January 1959 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where he is listed as Frank Clyner Pease. Mabelle died seven years later, and was interred at the spot next to his.All of which is a large build-up to a very small Fortean pay-off. I spent way too much time researching and writing this entry—it stopped being about Forteanism and just about fascination with Pease, his volte-face from revolutionists to vitriolic anti-Semite.Pease’s name appears only once in Doubt magazine—issue 17, March 1947. Under the title “New Honors,” Thayer noted that “Major and Mrs. Frank Pease” had sent a thank you card to Thayer “in memory of their Mayflower ancestor Francis Eaton.” The Pease’s had taken up this practice in late 1937—the New Yorker reported, a week after publishing Mabelle’s piece—that 1,500 people had received such notices. Apparently, the continued the practice and there’s a letter from the 1940s to the CIA. In the case of the letter sent to Thayer, the appreciation was for publishing “The Best Book of the Century.” The trouble is that the card did not specify the book. It could have been one of Thayer’s after all, but presumably it was the omnibus Fort edition.Let’s go with that supposition. Certainly the Fortean Society attracted a lot of fringe; many of those were mystically-minded and, as we have seen, a strong bent toward left-libertarianism and anarchism. But there was also a conservative streak, too, blending toward Fascism—in the form of Lilith Lorraine and George Sylvester Vlerick and N.V. Dagg. Margot “Metroland” has written about this cadre of Forteans—and the Peases could have easily slipped into this stream easily. Thayer’s sedition was welcoming to many stripes, even if he privately griped about Dagg’s extremism.And certainly there are clues in Pease’s earlier writing that he might have been opened to Fort, especially around the time when Fort was writing his first book. The structure of his “Nietzschean Follies” was Fortean in its fragmentation, for example. His writings about Beardsley also showed an openness to Fortean imagination—and his story for “The Smart Set,” “This is the Life” had an Ambrose Bierce-weird story vibe to it. He was seemed to have some affection for Poe, which underwrote a lot of Forteans’s appreciation for Charles Fort himself. His 1917 article on Jack London showed, as well, a skepticism toward science, though it is unclear how much of this skepticism survived his political conversion: “science is a mask of utilitarianism,” he said, limiting one to facts and starving the imagination.If this interpretation of Pease’s thought is vaild, and remains germane throughout his career, the question then becomes how he came across Fort in the first place. His praise of Thayer’s publication effort might suggest that he did not read Fort until after the omnibus came out, in 1941, which would further analysis difficult, since I do not know much about this time of his life. It’s also possible, given his wide reading in the late 1910s and early 1920s, that he read “The Book of the Damned” himself, and then followed Fort’s career.Even if that second supposition is true, it is likely that any interest he had in Fort would have been underlined by his connection to Benjamin de Casseres. Casseres was also an iconoclastic thinker who ended up with a similarly right-wing political philosophy at the end of his life. As it happened, he also became one of Fort’s few friends, exchanging letters, and writing a paean to Fort. Given that Pease and de Casseres moved in similar intellectual circles in the 1920s and 1930s—their presumed connections bracketing the years when de Casseres was in contact with Fort—one can assume that de Casseres would have drawn Pease’s attention to Fort.This whole section is a castle built on sand, so let’s plant the Flag. If Pease did indeed come to Fort through de Casseres; if his appreciation to Thayer was indeed a thanks for Fort’s book. Then it meant that whatever shifts had occurred in his political philosophy by 1947, his literary ideals remained subtle, valuing the imaginative above the utilitarian.