Caresse Crosby - Harry's Suicide

Harry's Suicide

On July 9, 1928, Harry met 20 year old Josephine Noyes Rotch, whom he would call the "Youngest Princess of the Sun" and the "Fire Princess." She was descended from a family that first settled in Provincetown on Cape Cod in 1690. Josephine would inspire Crosby's next collection of poems called Transit of Venus. Though she was several years his junior, Harry fell in love with Josephine. In a letter to his mother, dated July 24, 1928, Crosby wrote:

I am having an affair with a girl I met (not introduced) at the Lido. She is twenty and has charm and is called Josephine. I like girls when they are very young before they have any minds.

Josephine and Harry had an ongoing affair until she married, when it temporarily ended. However, Josephine rekindled their affair, and in the late fall of 1929, Harry and Josephine met and traveled to Detroit where they checked into an expensive, US$12 (about $162 today) a day hotel as husband and wife. For four days they took meals in their room, smoked opium, and had sex.

On December 7, 1929, the lovers returned to New York where once again they attempted to end the affair, and Josephine agreed that she would return to Boston and her husband. But two days later she had delivered a 36-line poem to Crosby who was staying with Caresse at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. The last line of the poem read:

Death is our marriage.

On December 9, Harry Crosby wrote in his journal for the last time:

One is not in love unless one desires to die with one's beloved. There is only one happiness it is to love and to be loved.

Harry was found at 10pm that night in bed at Stanley Mortimer's studio in the Hotel des Artistes. He had a .25 caliber bullet hole in his right temple next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple. They were in an affectionate embrace. Both were dressed but had bare feet. Harry sported red-painted toenails and tattoos on the bottom of his feet. The Coroner said the Josephine had died at least two hours before Harry. There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for days about the murder or suicide pact—they could not decide which.