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Correspondence from Leah Hirsig to Montgomery Evans
8 Place Jean Baptiste Clement Montmartre, Paris.
Nov. 30/24 E.V.
Dear M.E. 2nd.,
Your letter reached me 24 hours after your threatened departure for London. I took a chance in spite of your assertion that you were leaving as a definite time, and sent you a pneaumatuque which was promptly returned to me as you had no address at the Hotel des Mines.
It may be just as well that you did not get that letter. It was full of E n_':=nm, of the most deadly kind and very bloody at that. Now I am become resigned to your desertion I can almost write legibly and think quite clearly, though much too quickly.
Won't you let me hear your plans? Don't go to America without a commission which I have for you. I want your advice and help about several matters but especially about the matter of the abduction of my son [Hansi] from Cefalů by my crazy sister [Alma Hirsig Bliss]—I do not know whether I have written you about it—so here goes.
—on separate sheet—[1]
These are the bare facts. I am preparing a full statement but am swamped with the material at hand, not knowing what to select nor whom to go to with it. I am more or less living in retirement here—for various reasons; but that is not sticking to the point.
Evidently you did not get my letter sent to Venice, nor the prospectuses for the Confessions of A.C., nor a letter left with Bankers' Trust giving this address (Nov. 13).
Will you let me hear from you by return, if this ever reaches you? Sometimes a telegram seems a great expense but it does save time—and time is———blastit, there I am almost quoting bad American.
Yours in full sanity and in full bloom,
Leah H.
Statement of facts connected with the abduction of my son Hans Hammond, an American Citizen.
1. Hans Hammond, born in hospital in St. Petersburg; Florida, Nov. 13, 1917.
Birth certificate among effects held in storage or by Custom's in London. Duplicate sent for but not yet received.
2. Mrs. L.E. Bliss, my sister, Late of the Hayden Co.? N. Good St. Rochester, New York—or c/o Mrs. Elsie Slaon Farley, Decorator, 435 Park Av. N.Y.C.
Sept. 13. Alma Bliss visited me in August in Paris and then proceeded to Switzerland and finally to Cefalů, arriving the very day that the governess who had charge of my son had received notice not to admit her to the house, and which instruction she disobeyed. Alma Bliss wormed her way in and a week after her first visit, lured my son from the House (I have the governess's full statement of the process) then took him to Palermo, Switzerland, back to Italy and evaded the police and was assisted by the American Consul Palermo, one Isaac Nathan, to get the child out of the country.
The American Consul in Paris had telegraphed to various places some of which Mrs. Alma visited and in spite of the warnings, she got safely to America.
All this while I was ill and practically penniless and could do nothing. But the information is in the hands of the American officials, as also with Mrs. Marion Clark (ex-Chief Investigator of Immigration, N.Y.C.) address 315 West 94 ST. N.Y.C. and Bill Seabrook of the International feature service.
Only now do I feel fit to cope with the problem and bring the low creature to justice. But I need help and I am unwilling that the facts should be garbled by the Press. I am willing and anxious to make a complete statement of the facts, from the reason or reasons of Alma Bliss's action to the present moment they will be quite sensational enough even to suit the yellow journals.
Alma Bliss has communicated with both the governess and myself as though she had done a wonderful deed. She is quite crazy.
I am a Swiss citizen, having resumed my Swiss citizenship some two and a half years ago.
(This is not at all what I wanted to write but I think there is enough material for you to give your advice about.)
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