Kathleen O’Neill vs. Eugene G. O’Neill: Editor’s Note

Yale University Press’s publication of Eugene O’Neill’s lost play Exorcism last February (2012) astonished O’Neill scholars with the uncanny timing of its appearance—within a month of the one-hundredth anniversary of the play’s setting, mid-March 1912. This was also within a few months of the actual events that inspired the play the previous December 1911, when O’Neill attempted suicide at Jimmy the Priest’s.

To many of us, the twist of fate seemed almost mystical. Here’s another one:

This past June I contacted the Westchester County Clerk’s Office in New York State to inquire whether the file for O’Neill and Kathleen Jenkins’s divorce proceedings were available to the public. The file clerk expressed some doubt, but after consulting with his superior, he informed me that it would be legally considered public information on July 9, 2012, exactly one hundred years and a day after the filing date of July 8, 1912.

The legal testimonies found in Kathleen O’Neill vs. Eugene G. O’Neill are, like Exorcism, a blend of fact and fiction. But unlike the actors who performed Exorcism in good faith as drama (while at the same time understanding that it was based on O’Neill’s actual suicide attempt), these divorce proceedings reveal evidence of perjury on the part of at least two witnesses, Kathleen’s mother Kate Jenkins’s legal aide James C. Warren and Kathleen herself. At one point, referring to O’Neill’s hiring a prostitute to prove adultery, the presiding judge Joseph Morschauser asks Warren, “This was not pre-arranged with the plaintiff?” “No, sir,” he replied. “It was not.” Of course we now know it was. “You know the law in New York,” O’Neill’s autobiographical protagonist Ned Malloy says in Exorcism, “There’s only one ground that goes” (31). Earlier in the proceedings, Kathleen informs the court that O’Neill and she were married at Trinity Church in New Jersey on July 26, 1909, instead of the actual date, October 2, thus concealing the fact that their son, Eugene Jr., born on May 5, 1910, was conceived out of wedlock.

More scholarship on these proceedings will come with time, of course, and Arthur and Barbara Gelb and Doris Alexander have already cited them in their most recent work. But whatever value future scholars assign them, one thing is sure: These testimonies, combined with Exorcism, provide the only first-hand accounts of those awful nights in late December 1911, nights that unalterably affected Eugene O’Neill’s life, and, I think it can be said without hyperbole, over one hundred years of American theater history.

Fig. 1.

What follows is a facsimile of the first page of the proceedings and a transcription of the rest. I have regularized the format to some degree, but tried to preserve the rawness of the court record. I have also silently corrected minor spelling errors, but left the occasional misspellings of names intact and followed by “[sic].”

[Stamped]: filed/July 8, 1912/Frank M. Buck/Clerk

Supreme Court, Westchester County,

kathleen o’neill, Plaintiff,

vs.

eugene j. [sic] o’neill, Defendant.

Tried at White Plains, N.Y., June 10, 1912.

Before: hon. joseph morschauser, Justice of the Supreme Court.

Appearances:

van schaich & brice, for the plaintiff.

No appearance for the defendant.

mrs. kathleen o’neill, being duly sworn as a witness on he[r] behalf, testified as follows:

examined by mr. brice

Q

You are the plaintiff in this action?

A

Yes, sir.

Q

You are the wife of the defendant?

A

Yes, sir.

Q

Just tell when and where you were married?

A

July 26, 1909, three years ago this July at Trinity Church, Hoboken.

Q

Have you any children?

A

One.

Q

The issue of this marriage?

A

Yes: a boy two years old.

Q

What is his name?

A

Eugene.

Q

Did you live in the state before this?

A

I live in White Plains, 17 Church Street, now.

Q

Prior to...