Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: More Bennie

Don't Get Discouraged, but Call Me Up!

A quick followup to my last missive, which touched on the fascinating story of Mavis Gallant’s (MG) mother, the legendary (as she’s becoming) Benedictine Wiseman. The story of how she was arrested in Toronto as a vagrant, dressed as a boy, singing in a bar, etc., and was then returned to her family in Montreal, has been well reported. I noted that in the 1911 census, she is listed as a son of the Wiseman family, which I attributed to an error on the part of the census taker. Now, I’m more of the mind that she was routinely represented herself as a young man. Bennie’s cross dressing — if that’s what we can call it — was a feature of her day-to-day well before the 1913 escapade in Toronto. For your reading pleasure, a few clippings, 1910 - 1913.

What’s plain from this — of course, this is true only if the Bennie Wiseman here named is OUR Bennie — is that Benedictine was not only a daring junior criminal mastermind, the leader of the pack, but very persuasive in her gender presentation. Had the cops twigged, the story would have had a very different slant in its telling, count on it. Solomon Wiseman, her father, seems to have lived as an invalid. But what of Mama Rose? In this report, she seems to be just going along with the ruse.

Given how often Bennie must have been brought home by the police, the claim “I didn’t know he was in trouble” seems disingenuous. But maybe that’s just me. On other occasions, the elder Wisemans (Wisemen?) supported the law and its enforcement, even if it meant misery for a child. This is from one of the accounts of Benny’s brother Constantine’s (Constant, here) run-ins with the authorities. (This pertains to his stealing Bennie’s violin, among other chattels.)

It ended badly.

And a year later, Constantine was dead.

After 1913, things go quiet — or seem to — for Bennie. Then, in 1917, the papers have a field day with a robbery gone wrong: an end of summer break and enter, a big heist involving family silver, a police chase, shots fired, three criminals apprehended, no one killed. One is named Jack Harris, one is Henry or Harry Wiseman, and one is Benny (not Bennie) Wiseman. Harris does time. The Wiseman boys skip bail, and are never heard from again. This could easily be, of course, and probably is, some other Wiseman. And yet, one wonders. The fabulously inventive Nicholas Wiseman, Constantine’s twin, confined to the reformatory, is absent from the news all this time. His trail was littered with pseudonyms, and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that, in a police interview, he would give his name as Harry. Or Henry. But this is just speculation, and holds no water.

Again, Wiseman was a usual kind of name and the only reason the following story interests me is that it dates from 1911, which is the year, I believe, that Nicholas landed in the reformatory. Is there possibly a connection? Again, remembering Nicholas’s particular genius for identity shifting, it’s not impossible that is one of his markers.

Bennie, as noted, went on the leave the country (dressed as a boy scout, according to some reports) and live a kind of Paul et Virginie idyll in the woods of upper state New York with Oren Robert Earl. Then she married Stewart Young, and soon, Mavis was on the way. Did Mrs. Wiseman attend the registry wedding, October 2, 1921? A few days later, October 6, this spunky ad ran in the Gazette.

1024 St. Catherine W. That’s the address for Rosa, or Rose. That’s Mrs. Wiseman — phone Uptown 8890W — cheerfully getting by.