One half of Eugene’s leather jewelry box is shown here, with the hinged upper shelf pulled out to the left side. The three compartments to the left contain, from the top: cufflinks, most of them made of braided silk threads; a watch chain, several collar studs, and a pair of garter fasteners, all of gold; and a $20 gold coin and a coral cameo showing Carlotta’s profile.
The ring compartment holds two gold rings set with opals and two plain gold rings with identical inscriptions inside, which the couple exchanged when they reconciled after one of their many turbulent arguments.
In the lower shelf at right are a gold cigarette case (in a chamois pouch) and a pair of garters with clasps bearing Eugene’s initials.
In the main compartment at left is a Longines wristwatch that Eugene often wore while working in his study. In pouches are a stainless steel pocket watch (a “very novelty” at the time, Carlotta wrote) with a platinum and pearl chain, and a pair of cufflinks made of coral and ebony.
In the smaller compartment of the bottom shelf are a gold collar pin and three tokens of Eugene’s lapsed Catholicism: two medals of the Virgin Mary and a ceramic representation of the infant Jesus.
Two of the rings in the hinged upper shelf are made of gold; the third is of jade. The leather case to the far right holds two cameos framed in gold. In the chamois pouch is a gold Dunhill cigarette lighter; it has a small clock set into one side and an inscription on the other: To Genie from Carlotta 7/22/29.
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The leather jewelry box, about 12 inches by 7 inches, bears the monogram “E. O’N.” on its lid. Inside is the trademark E. Goyard Ainé—Paris. (The Goyard shop, which has crafted leather and travel items since 1853, still exists in Paris on the rue Saint-Honoré.) Carlotta probably bought the box for Eugene in the 1920s. The objects are arranged on two shelves; the top shelf is divided in half, and each half is hinged so that it can swing out to the side. Inside are rings, watches, cufflinks, and a few other accessories. A number of the pieces carry messages, most of them engraved inscriptions and dedications from Carlotta to “Gene.”
Seven rings are wedged into padded slots in the two top drawers. There are three in the right drawer: one made of interlocking gold chain links, one carved out of dark green stone, and one—a “trinity ring” with the Cartier mark—consisting of three rings welded together, each a different shade of gold.
In the left drawer are two gold rings inset with stones, one a dark green-and-brown opal and one a fire opal. The latter is inscribed inside C. to E. 1st year. Does it commemorate the couple’s first meeting or their marriage? We do not know. This same ring is visible on Eugene’s finger in a photo of the couple taken in the 1930s.
The last two rings are identical, in gold with engraved inscriptions: on the exterior, Port Said Jan.15.29; on the inside, I am not as I was. These rings have a history. In 1928, Carlotta and Eugene, who was not yet divorced, decided to leave on a trip incognito. They spent two years in Europe and then visited India and South Africa. They planned to visit China together, but the sea crossing went badly: Eugene was gambling, and his bouts of drinking became at times violent. Carlotta left him and continued the trip on a different ship. Later, the couple reunited in Port Said, Egypt. These two rings, one for Eugene and one for Carlotta, symbolized their reconciliation. The words I am not as I was doubtless referred to Eugene’s promise to stop drinking—a promise that he kept. In a letter to Carlotta later that year, after another quarrel, Eugene would write that he was “drowned in despair that dissension should have again sprung up between us” and begged, “Oh Dearest Heart of Mine, look at your Port Said ring and feel with me!”
The pair married in Paris on July 22. The jewelry box contains a gold cigarette lighter by Dunhill that Carlotta gave to her new husband for the occasion; on one side there is a small clock inset, and on the other a dedication reading, To Genie from Carlotta 7/22/29. By this date, Eugene was free, and Carlotta had rented a 45-room chateau in Touraine so that he could work in solitude and calm, without domestic concerns. (It was there that the couple bought Blemie, a Dalmatian, toward which they directed enormous affection. They ordered Blemie’s collar—now in the Beinecke, along with Blemie’s leash—in Paris at Hermès, the celebrated luxury store.)
Accessories of Eugene’s are mixed in with the jewelry. Two sleeve garters with gold hooks are engraved with Eugene’s initials. A very fine cigarette case in gold is engraved on the back: To Gene from Carlotta 1927. A series of “button” cufflinks in passementerie (ornamental braiding, in this case of silk thread) originated with the firm of Charvet, a famed Parisian shirt maker. Carlotta loved to recount how, when she first met O’Neill, he had dressed with little or no refinement, and she had accustomed him to fine clothing.
Two watches Carlotta gave Eugene are in the jewelry box. She described them in notes written for the archivist of the collection, Donald Gallup ’34. About a Longines wristwatch, with his name engraved on the back, she commented: “When I first met Gene I brought him this watch because he had none! And this he wore most of all working in his study, in the garden.” The other, a pocket watch, is from the firm of Morgan and was accompanied by a platinum chain. “A platinum (not silver) chain with pearls . . . goes with this. The watch is made of stainless steel . . . a very novelty in Paris when I purchased it for him circa 1930.”
Not all of the pieces are luxurious. At the bottom of the box are three small tokens, essentially good-luck charms but with religious meaning: two medals with images of the Virgin Mary and a porcelain fève (literally “bean”) depicting the infant Jesus. In France, Epiphany is celebrated on January 6 with a flat cake, the galette, which has a fève hidden somewhere inside. Perhaps Eugene sampled a galette at an Epiphany celebration and discovered the charm; he would have been declared king of the festivities. The medals—as well as a missal case among the Beinecke’s memorabilia that had belonged to Eugene’s father, the actor James O’Neill (1847–1920)—point to the importance Eugene always placed on religion. He had abandoned Catholicism, but he missed it, with a sense of guilt. During one stay in France, he and Carlotta made a trip to the celebrated cathedral of Notre-Dame de Chartres.
The Beinecke has a few other pieces that Eugene evidently did not keep in the jewelry box. One is a gold and crystal watch; in her notes to Gallup, Carlotta called it “very rare” and “a much finer affair” than the other watches. She gave it to Eugene in July 1930 to celebrate the completion of Mourning Becomes Electra, her favorite among his plays. (He had penned six successive versions, all of which Carlotta typed.) The Beinecke also has a gold ring that Eugene gave Carlotta in 1934, when they were living in New York; it is inscribed You are my laughter. Yale does not have its mate, which she had inscribed for him and you are mine.
Carlotta’s wealth, her presence, and all the goodwill with which she surrounded her husband helped him to write at an extraordinary rate: his biographers Arthur and Barbara Gelb list 47 plays. The jewelry at Yale memorializes their happiest period together, roughly 1928 to 1934. The collection is not, of course, complete. Eugene certainly gave jewelry to Carlotta, but many of the items vanished—some when she decided to distribute them as gifts, some when she began to lose her mental abilities, in about 1967. The remainder went to her daughter, Cynthia, whom Carlotta had neglected, and who put them up for sale in 1971.
O’Neill’s life ended tragically. An illness mistakenly diagnosed as Parkinson’s, and which he believed was caused by his early drinking, gradually disabled him physically. (Researchers confirmed in 2000 that the disease was a rare genetic disorder.) The great author, with his manifold critical and popular successes, who had received two Pulitzers and the Nobel Prize for literature, became bit by bit unable to write by hand. He tried dictating, but found he could not compose without writing the words on the page.
Cared for with supreme dedication by Carlotta, he nonetheless became depressed and suicidal, and estranged from his children (with whom he had never been deeply involved). For his wife, however—despite tumultuous quarrels in his last years—he sustained an undying love that he expressed each year in a poem or a letter. In 1952, the year before his death, he managed to inscribe a copy of Moon for the Misbegotten to Carlotta: “I am old and would be sick of life, were it not that you, Sweetheart, are here, as deep and understanding in your love as ever—and I as deep in my love for you as when we stood in Paris . . . on July 22, 1929, and both said faintly ‘Oui!’”
After Eugene died, Carlotta dressed only in black and wore only jade jewelry. She would die seven years after him, but in her remaining years, before descending into senility, she continued to shepherd his oeuvre. The manuscripts, letters, photographs, and memorabilia she gave to Yale testify to the intimate life of a man who was both emotionally injured and in love. The Beinecke holds one token Eugene preserved that was even more intimate than the gifts of jewelry he kept in the box: a long braid of Carlotta’s hair, bound with red ribbon, that she had cut off one day in anger.
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