Editing Harry Crosby (section)

==Murder and suicide==
[[File:RMS Mauretania.jpg|thumb|The Mauretania before 1923]]
On the evening of the play, December 10, 1929, Caresse, Crosby's mother Henrietta Grew, and Hart Crane met for dinner before the play, but Crosby did not show up, which was uncharacteristic of him as it was not like him to needlessly cause Caresse to worry. She called their friend Stanley Mortimer at his mother's apartment, whose studio Crosby was known to use for his trysts. He agreed to check his studio. Mortimer had to enlist help to break open the locked door and found Crosby and Josephine's bodies. Crosby was in bed with a .25 calibre bullet hole in his right temple next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple, in what appeared to be a suicide pact. Crosby was still clutching the Belgian automatic pistol in one hand, Josephine in the other.<ref name=wolff/>{{rp|9}}

The steamship tickets he had bought that morning for the return to Europe with Caresse were in his pocket. The coroner also found in his pocket a cable from Josephine addressed to Crosby on the RMS ''Mauretania''. The coroner reported that Crosby's toenails were painted red, and that he had a Christian cross tattooed on the sole of one foot and a pagan icon representing the sun on the other.<ref name=wolff/>

Crosby's wedding ring was found crushed on the floor, not on his finger, where he always promised Caresse it would remain.<ref name=hamalian/>{{rp|172}} Caresse refused to witness the carnage and begged [[Archibald MacLeish]], who was in town from his farm, to take charge.<ref name=wolff/>{{rp|11}} While waiting for the doctors to finish their examination, MacLeish wondered if Crosby's literary aspirations had not contributed to his death.<ref>{{cite web|last=King|first=Steven|title=Hart Crane & Harry Crosby|url=http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/7/1929|publisher=Today in Literature|date=7 December 2012|access-date=24 February 2014|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140301212302/http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12%2F7%2F1929|archive-date=1 March 2014}}</ref>

{{blockquote|As I sat there looking at his corpse, seating myself where I wouldn't have to see the horrible hole in back of his ear, I kept saying to him: you poor, damned, dumb bastard. He was the most literary man I ever met, despite the fact that he'd not yet become what you'd call a Writer. I never met anyone who was so imbued with literature; he was drowned in it. I think I'm close to deciding literature is the one thing never to be taken seriously...}}

Crosby's suicide, along with [[Hart Crane]]'s suicide two and a half years later, were cited by later writers as emblematic of the Lost Generation.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/hart.crane.asp|title=Hart Crane – Life Stories, Books, and Links|access-date=25 March 2010|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100325093152/http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/hart.crane.asp|archive-date=25 March 2010}}</ref><ref name=poem>{{Cite web|url=http://www.poemhunter.com/harry-crosby/biography/|title=Biography of Harry Crosby|publisher=PoemHunter.com|access-date=25 March 2010|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091221010402/http://www.poemhunter.com/harry-crosby/biography/|archive-date=21 December 2009}}</ref>

===Scandal follows===
The next day, the headlines revealed all: ''Tragedy and Disgrace.'' There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for many days about the murder or suicide pact—they could not decide which.<ref name=wolff/> ''The New York Times'' front page blared, "COUPLE SHOT DEAD IN ARTISTS' HOTEL; Suicide Compact Is Indicated Between Henry Grew Crosby and Harvard Man's Wife. BUT MOTIVE IS UNKNOWN. He Was Socially Prominent in Boston—Bodies Found in Friend's Suite."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1929/12/11/archives/couple-shot-dead-in-artists-hotel-suicide-compact-is-indicated.html?sq=harry%2520crosby&scp=7&st=cse|title=COUPLE SHOT DEAD IN ARTISTS' HOTEL; Suicide Compact Is Indicated Between Henry Grew Crosby and Harvard Man's Wife. BUT MOTIVE IS UNKNOWN He Was Socially Prominent in Boston--Bodies Found in Friend's Suite.|pages=1|access-date=February 14, 2023|newspaper=The New York Times|url-status=live|date=December 11, 1929|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605134243/http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60613FF3F5D117A93C3A81789D95F4D8285F9&scp=7&sq=harry%20crosby&st=cse|archive-date=5 June 2011}}</ref> The New York newspapers decided it was a murder-suicide.<ref name=Slosberg/>

Gretchen Powell had lunch with Crosby the day of his death. Her memory of the luncheon supported the notion that Josephine was one of Crosby's many passing fancies. She related that Crosby had told her, "the Rotch girl was pestering him; he was exasperated; she had threatened to kill herself in the lobby of the Savoy-Plaza if he didn't meet her at once."<ref name=wolff/>{{rp|11}}

The deaths polarized the several prominent families affected. The Rotch family considered Josephine's death to be murder. Josephine's erstwhile husband Albert Bigelow blamed Crosby for "seducing his wife and murdering her because he couldn't have her."<ref name=Slosberg/>

Crosby's poetry possibly gave the best clue to his motives. Death was "the hand that opens the door to our cage the home we instinctively fly to."<ref name=wolff/>{{rp|12}} His death mortified proper society. Crosby's biographer Geoffrey Wolff wrote, "He had meant to do it; it was no mistake; it was not a joke. If anything of Harry Crosby commands respect, perhaps even awe, it was the unswerving character of his intention." Crosby's death, given the macabre circumstances under which it occurred, scandalized Boston's Back Bay society.<ref name="poem" />