Wilson knew that once they sold the house on Nob Hill and moved to Tahoe, there would no longer be a job for her. She, Houghton the butler, and one of the maids were the only employees they were still paying, but they couldn’t do it for long. Wilson had contacted her relatives in Boston, and they said the situation there was just as desperate, and there were no jobs available. She was going to use her savings to go back to Ireland, and get whatever work she could there.
The cook had just gotten a job in a restaurant for abysmal pay, but at least she was employed. Houghton was thinking of going back to Europe, like Wilson, and hoped for a job with a family there, after years of faithful service to the Deveraux. The only maid they were still paying was trying to find a job in a hotel, but no one was hiring at the moment. Most of the country appeared to be unemployed. Alex spent hours every day trying to find a job in a bank, however lowly. The interviews were depressing, and those who were still employed seemed to gloat at how the mighty had fallen. The interviews were all humiliating for Alex, and he got turned down every time, for being vastly overqualified for the meager jobs he was applying for.
In the end, Eleanor was the first to get a job. She had gone to her old school, Miss Benson’s School for Young Ladies, and literally begged for a job. She had been candid about her situation, and they hired her for a very small salary to teach French, drawing, and art. She had been a good student herself, had some talent with watercolors, and her French was fluent. The teacher Eleanor was replacing was having a baby in January, so the timing of her application was fortuitous, and she would be starting after Christmas. She had just turned nineteen and would only be a few years older, if that, than the young women she’d be teaching. Their enrollment had dwindled dramatically in the last two months, since many of the families whose daughters attended the school could no longer pay the tuition. They were happy to get Eleanor’s services for a fraction of what they normally paid their teachers. But she was grateful to have found work, and Alex was proud of her. She said she was looking forward to it, and sounded enthusiastic for his sake. She and her mother had had a long talk about their current situation and Louise had reminded her that it was up to them now to bolster their men and give them strength. Charles was not doing well, and looked as though he had aged ten years in two months.
Alex’s house sold first, before the Deveraux’s. It was bought by a speculator, who wanted to turn it into a hotel. He bought it with all its museum quality contents, so he didn’t have to furnish it, and the price he paid Alex was shameful it was so low, but Alex had his back to the wall and needed money from somewhere. It was his only option for now. The house and contents were worth fifty or a hundred or a thousand times what the purchaser paid for them, but Alex had no choice. He took it, and cringed at the thought of the beautiful home his grandfather had built being used as a hotel. His mother’s jewelry had brought pathetically little at auction, and he needed some kind of cushion in the bank for him and Eleanor to live on. The house was the only important asset he had now. All of his investments and fortune had been lost in the crash.
The purchaser of the house took possession immediately, and in December, Alex and Eleanor moved in with her parents. It was cheering to be in their familiar home, after losing his, but it was only a matter of time before theirs would sell too.
His brothers, Phillip and Harry, had left San Francisco by then, and gone to live with cousins in Philadelphia who still had their home and had offered to house them. Neither of them had jobs, or anything to live on, and no skills to sell. Alex had gone to the train station to see them off. All three of them had cried, not knowing when they would see each other again. The boys would be forced to grow up now, and find some way to earn their keep. Alex was sad to see them go, but he couldn’t house them or support them. They would be under their cousins’ roof, but financially on their own, and Alex knew only too well how ill prepared they were, and blamed himself for it. He felt the pain of separating from them as he hugged them tight.
It was a time of losses and goodbyes. Christmas was a grim affair, with reports of more suicides among the people they knew, mostly by older men who couldn’t face the loss of their entire world.
Charles had sold the cars, except for the one he drove himself. Eleanor and Louise cooked their Christmas dinner with Wilson’s help, and it was surprisingly good. There were no debutante balls or Christmas parties this year. Louise felt sure there would be again one day, but certainly not now. There was nothing to celebrate with the whole country in mourning for their jobs, their savings, their homes, and their way of life.
In January, Alex found a job, as the lowest clerk at a commercial bank. The man who hired him was a particularly unpleasant person, whose eyes gleamed every time he reminded Alex that he was no longer a bank president, but a lowly clerk. Alex came to work every day looking distinguished and elegant, which only enraged his new boss more. The pay was poor, but he was grateful to be employed. He had the money he’d gotten for his house on upper Broadway and his mother’s jewelry, Eleanor’s salary and his own, and it would have to last them until the economy turned around again and he could get a better job, and there was no telling when that would be. The Depression seemed to worsen day by day, with unemployment constantly rising. It was a dark time for all.
Alex and Eleanor were still living with her parents, in the grandeur of the Deveraux home. Many of the walls were bare now that the paintings had been sold. And all of Louise’s jewelry was gone, except the wedding tiara which she kept. She was determined to be cheerful about their losses for her husband’s sake. Charles was struggling with the changes that had been forced on them, and the loss of the bank that had existed for seventy years before it went bankrupt. He blamed himself for not being better prepared, and for the investments that hadn’t survived the crash. He was as depressed as the economy, despite Louise’s efforts to cheer him. He and Alex talked about the economy and where the country was headed every night. Charles said frequently that only another war would save them, which Alex thought was a dismal point of view.
At the end of the month, a purchaser appeared for the Deveraux mansion. A group of investors wanted to buy it to use as a school, and knew this was the ideal time to buy. It was an opportunity that would never come again at an absurdly low price. They walked through the house trying to figure out how they could use it, and it was painful listening to them. But they were the only buyers who had appeared. The price they offered was painfully small, but in the current market it was the best the Deveraux could hope for, and the house had to be sold. They could no longer afford to maintain it or staff it, and Charles needed to put some money back in their empty coffers to live on, since at fifty-two he couldn’t find a job. He discussed it with Louise and accepted their offer the next day. They gave him thirty days to move out, and Louise got busy packing immediately. Charles wanted to send the furniture to auction, but Louise insisted on keeping some of it. They had room for quite a bit in the barn in Tahoe, and furniture, and fine antiques like theirs were selling for pennies. She decided to keep as much as they could store in the barn, and sell it later if they needed to.
She and Wilson packed the entire house in a matter of weeks. Charles insisted that they sell some of the silver, that was selling for pennies too, but Louise held on to as much as they needed to turn the servants’ house in Tahoe into a decent home for them, with familiar objects around them. She seemed to have a plan as she sent furniture and many paintings to Tahoe, her favorite rugs, the china she loved which wasn’t worth selling, as many of their linens as she could take with them. She made several trips, with young men to drive the five hours from the city, and unload the truck they borrowed. And little by little she filled the house they were keeping, the cottage, and the barn with beautiful antiques and treasured objects from their home. There was no market for them now anyway, except at bargain prices, and they were making enough from the house sale not to be desperate for a while. They still had th
e main property at Lake Tahoe to sell, so Charles let Louise fill the barn with whatever she wanted. They could always sell it later if they needed to, and everyone was selling everything now. The market was flooded and Charles still had some minor investments which had dropped in value dramatically and he was hanging on to, convinced that they might revive again one day.
Their preparations to move to Lake Tahoe put Alex and Eleanor in a quandary about where they would live, once her parents turned the house over to the people who had bought it as a school. They had gotten it at a bargain price, and had been looking for a proper building for years, and the location on the top of Nob Hill would lend dignity to the institution they planned to establish, the Hamilton School. They were planning on opening an exclusive girls’ school, which would go from kindergarten through twelfth grade, which was a very progressive idea.
“We have to find an apartment before your parents leave,” Alex said to Eleanor one night. “We can’t stay here after that.” They’d been given thirty days by the new owners to vacate the house, and time was flying.
“Can we afford to move into an apartment?” Eleanor asked him. She liked her new job more than Alex liked his. She liked the girls she was teaching at Miss Benson’s, and the school was familiar to her since she had gone there herself. The headmistress was sympathetic with her situation. Her own family had lost their money when she was a young girl, and she knew how painful it was when life changed suddenly. Both their salaries were meager, but they had to live somewhere to keep their jobs, and Alex didn’t want to be a burden to Eleanor’s father.
“We don’t have any choice,” Alex said. “We can’t afford Pacific Heights. Maybe something downtown.” They combed the paper for apartments, and visited several of them that weekend. Many of the buildings were awful, most were filthy, and even dangerous. They found one on the fringes of Chinatown, above a restaurant. The building appeared to be full of families. No one spoke English, and the apartment was cheap, but the living room was big and sunny, the bedroom was cozy and pleasant, and the kitchen and bathroom were clean. They agreed to take it. Eleanor asked her mother for some of the furniture she was planning to send to the barn in Tahoe. Louise told her to take whatever she wanted, and helped her pick enough to furnish the apartment, from an upstairs sitting room they rarely used, and from Eleanor’s own bedroom, which would be familiar to her. They picked two sets of china Eleanor thought they’d have room for, all the kitchen equipment she needed and some silver and linens, and some of the paintings that hadn’t gone to Tahoe yet. None of it had great value in the current market, but they were handsome pieces, and some truly beautiful.
The following weekend they hired two of their old hall boys who were still living at the house, but no longer working for them, and Alex and Eleanor installed everything in the apartment. Alex looked around in amazement when they were finished.
“You are a magician,” he said, beaming at her. The apartment actually looked elegant, as soon as one entered. The paintings looked lovely, the furniture fit and was covered in rich damasks and velvets. “It looks like your parents’ house.” He laughed with pleasure at their new home.
“It’s a bit smaller,” Eleanor said, grinning. She was happy with the result too. She and her mother had chosen well, and they had plenty to choose from, with the contents of the enormous mansion to dispose of rapidly. Even the rugs she brought were the right size for the apartment. She had measured carefully and all of it fit. She had even brought curtains, and had the hall boys hang them, which really finished the room. You would never have known you were in a simple building in Chinatown, looking around the apartment. “You’re amazing, and I love you,” Alex said, putting his arms around her. “Where do we put a baby, when we have one?” Alex asked her gently, holding her.
“By the time we have one, you’ll have a better job and we can get a better apartment,” she said cheerfully. He loved her optimism and was grateful for her strength. She and her mother had faced their reversals with courage and good humor, which had made it easier for Alex to live with the humiliation he had to tolerate daily from his boss at the bank, who hated him for what he’d come from, even though he’d lost it all. He resented Alex’s determination not to be broken by it, which was in great part due to his wife.
When Charles saw what Louise had done with the servants’ house and cottage in Tahoe, he was equally impressed. She had turned both houses into a home for them, with beautiful objects and treasures, the furniture that had made their home so distinguished and welcoming. She had put the best paintings in the house they would occupy, and some lovely ones in the cottage for Alex and Eleanor, and she had managed to cram an immense amount of their furniture and favorite belongings into the barn “for better days,” as she put it. Charles could no longer imagine “better days” ever coming. But when they did, Louise was prepared for it and could have furnished a whole house with what they’d saved. Charles agreed that they would get next to nothing for it all if they sold it, so he didn’t object to her keeping it. She had furnished a lovely home for them with what she’d used, and filled the barn with the rest.
They were ready to vacate the house on Nob Hill in the thirty days they’d been allotted, which seemed remarkable to Charles, but Louise had done it quietly and steadily. She thought the mountain air, and fishing in the lake in the spring would do him good. It had been snowing there for the past two months, but she had bought used snowshoes and cross-country skis and planned to get him out of the house and moving, once they got up there. It wasn’t good for him to sit around, mourning their losses and looking back at a time that would probably never come again for anyone in their lifetime. The days of unlimited grandeur were over. Louise was determined to make the best of it, as she had urged Eleanor to do with Alex. She was planning to drag Charles along with her if she had to. It was easier with Alex, at thirty-three. Charles at fifty-two no longer had a career to occupy him, or any hope for the future. Louise was determined to gently pull him into the present at least, and out of the past they had lost. It was undeniably a sudden change. All their lives they had been rich men, until four months before, and now they were paupers and had almost nothing. It was a brutal change in a very short time, and a huge adjustment.
On her last trip to Tahoe before they moved, Louise took some favorite objects out of the main house, and moved them to their new one, and put some more pieces in the barn. The rest of it they were going to sell with the Tahoe property if the buyer wanted it furnished. There had been no interest in it so far. The property was vast and the land too valuable to sell for very little. Charles wanted to hold out for a good price, for as long as he could. And they weren’t as desperate for a fast sale, now that they had sold their home in the city.
Eleanor and Alex moved into their new apartment the weekend before her parents were leaving for Tahoe. Leaving the house was painful for all of them, and the house was too quiet once the young people moved out. Eleanor had looked around the house and the ballroom for the last time, remembering her debut there only a year before, and their wedding in the tented garden four months before. It was a time and a lifestyle that they all sensed would never come again.
The hall boys and maids they were no longer paying but were housed for free, had to move out that weekend. They had all found minor jobs as waitresses in restaurants and maids in hotels, truck drivers, and janitors. They were paid poorly and used none of their skills and experience working in a fine home, but they were grateful to find work, and all moved to boardinghouses now that the Deveraux family was finally leaving. There were countless tearful goodbyes among the staff, and with their employers who had always been kind to them, respectful, and fair.
Wilson was leaving for New York the day before Charles and Louise were moving to Lake Tahoe. She had booked passage in third class on a boat to England, and at the last minute Houghton had decided to join her. They planned to try and find a job together in a home
in London, as housekeeper and butler or chauffeur. The British economy was suffering too, but not as severely as in the States, or at least not yet. They came to say goodbye to their employers on Monday morning. Charles and Louise were having breakfast, which Louise had prepared for him. She was getting quite good at it, and had never cooked in her life till then.
“We came to say goodbye,” Wilson said, already overcome with emotion, and Houghton looked equally moved. They had both worked for them for almost thirty years, their whole adult lives. It broke their hearts to leave them, but there was no place for them in Lake Tahoe, nor money to pay them, and they both needed jobs. “And we have something to tell you,” Wilson said as she choked back tears. “We got married on Friday,” she said as she reached out to hug Louise, and Houghton shook hands with Charles.
“You did? Why didn’t you tell us? We would have celebrated,” Charles said immediately. It hadn’t seemed right to them to expect the Deveraux family to celebrate anything, when they were facing such severe losses. The newlywed couple had gone out for a quiet dinner on their own.
“We thought that if we were going to try and find a job together, we might as well be married and be a proper couple.” Wilson smiled through her tears and Houghton beamed.
“We really hope you find a good job in London,” Charles said. He had written a glowing reference for each of them, and given them each a generous check to thank them for their years of service. The kind of jobs they wanted and were so well trained for still existed in England to some degree.
“Please write to us,” Louise said, hugging her again. They had been through so much together, Louise’s marriage to Charles, the birth of her two children, the death of one of them, Eleanor’s debut and marriage more recently, and her own debut in Boston when Wilson first came to work for Louise’s parents. They had shared an entire lifetime, and now they were all leaving. It was the end of an era.
The Wedding Dress Page 8
