Haldon Chase (1923 – 2006), often referred to as "Hal Chase", was a Denver-born archaeologist, who was known for his archaeological research on several rock art sites at Colorado. Outside the field of archaeology, he was best known as part of the earliest Beat circle.
Early years and life with the Beats
Chase was born around 1923 in Denver, Colorado, where he was brought up. In high school, by composing a fictional dialogue between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, he attracted the attention of an official and a Columbia alumnus from Denver called Justin Brierly. Brierly, who had a reputation of selecting young male protégés and placing them to his own alma mater, recommended Chase to Columbia University.
Chase met Joan Vollmer in New York in the early 1940s, and became one of Vollmer's tenants in the apartments at 421 West 118th Street (1943 – 1944) and at 419 West 115th Street (1945 – 1946) in New York. The other people who shared or frequented Vollmer's apartments in the period would later be known as the Beat Generation figures, including Edie Parker, Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg (who shared a room with Chase), William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
In the apartment on 115th Street, Chase befriended Kerouac over their shared "passion for life", the latter of whom was intrigued by Chase's "outgoing ease and sexual prowess". Ginsberg also showed infatuation towards Chase, and was said to have "made some unsuccessful sexual overtures toward him", but Chase was unimpressed due to his own "unshakable heterosexuality". Chase joined the literary talks with the Beat circle as well: in the fall of 1945 there were seminal nightly discussions called "the Night of the Wolfeans", with Chase and Kerouac as the Thomas Wolfe-lovers in the group, and Burroughs and Ginsberg the "non-Wolfeans".
Back in Denver, Chase had been the friend and mentor of Neal Cassady, who was then another notable protégé of Brierly's. It was Chase who introduced Neal Cassady to the Beat circle in 1940s, although at first not yet in person: Chase had passed around his collection of Neal's letters from reform school; on the other end, Chase had also showed his correspondence with Ginsberg and Kerouac to Cassady as well. Sometime around the end of 1946 – the beginning of 1947, Neal with his then wife Lu Anne went to visit Chase in New York. Through Chase's introduction, Ginsberg met Cassady over a booth in the West End bar, and shortly after, Kerouac met Cassady in Chase and his friend Ed White's attic room in Columbia University’s Livingston Hall. Cassady would then soon become a prominent figure of the group, and the muse who inspired Kerouac's and Ginsberg's numerous works, including two of Kerouac's most famous novels, On the Road and Visions of Cody.
Chase moved out of the 115th Street apartment in 1946, drifting away from the scene, because he disapproved of the Beat circle's lifestyle. He was thereafter less often heard of by the Beat writers.
In 1949, upon hearing that Chase was back in Colorado for some archaeological field work, Kerouac called Chase in the hope of reunion. Although they had a long talk over the phone, Chase did not agree to see him, which was, according to Kerouac, possibly because Chase's wife disapproved. Kerouac wrote in his letter to Ginsberg, "Hal is really dead."
In 1951, Chase went to Mexico and briefly reunited with some of the Beats there, including William Burroughs, and Frank Jeffries, his childhood friend who also went to Columbia University. Chase and Burroughs encountered in a bar in Mexico City, where Burroughs asked Chase to spend the night with him but was rejected. In the same year, Chase also came upon Vollmer whom he found in a bad shape. After Burroughs shot Vollmer in the head, killing her, Chase distanced himself from Burroughs.
Marriage with Ginger Bailey
Virginia Bailey (nicknamed "Ginger") was born in 1928 in New York City, the youngest of three children born to musician parents. Her father, named Charles Bailey, was a voice teacher, and her mother, Ida Mayhew, taught piano. In the early 1940s, she worked as a model for perfume advertisements, as well as a singer and guitarist in night clubs. Around this time, she met Kerouac and started a short-lived romantic relationship with him (Kerouac mentioned her as "Dark Eyes" in his journal). Around 1945, Bailey began to date Chase, whom she later married in 1949.